Part 5

In America, public feeling was no less excited. The occasion for this was the first serious clash of the Northern and Southern factions of the United States over what was known as the Missouri Compromise. On February 18, the Missouri Compromise bill passed the Senate, and on March 2 the House. It admitted Missouri as a slave State, and prohibited slavery north of parallel 36 deg. 30', the southern line of Missouri. Henry Clay declared that it settled the slavery question "forever." The bill went to the President. There was still another compromise, and that was in the Cabinet. The President asked advice on two points. The first point was whether Congress had a Constitutional right to prohibit slavery in a Territory. The Cabinet agreed that the right existed. Then the question arose whether the section prohibiting slavery "forever" referred only to the territorial condition, or whether it also applied when the Territory became a State. The Cabinet, with the exception of Adams, agreed that "forever" applied only to the territorial condition; Adams held that "forever" meant literally forever, in State as well as in Territory. In order to escape this dilemma it was proposed that the question of "forever," as relating to States, should be avoided; and that the only question should be, whether the section prohibiting slavery in the Territories forever was Constitutional. The order of proceeding was reversed; Mr. Adams was to reply in the affirmative without giving his reasons, while the others were to explain in writing that the provision was Constitutional; but "forever" meant only while the territorial condition existed. With this understanding the bill was signed. It is plain now that in the unsettled point the whole pith and meaning of the Missouri Compromise was contained, as the country learned fully and decisively thirty-five years afterward.

[Sidenote: Monroe elected President]

New issues then came to the front--protection, internal improvements, and recognition of the South American republics. Presently, in order to preserve the balance of power between slavery and freedom, it was enacted that Maine was to be admitted on March 15, making twelve free and twelve slave holding States. A bill was passed pronouncing the maritime slave trade piracy. On October 20, Spain ratified the treaty ceding Florida. Congress reassembled in November. James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were the opposing candidates for the Presidency. Monroe received 231 electoral votes; Adams received one from a New Hampshire elector who voted in sympathy with a popular sentiment that Washington should stand alone in the high honor of a unanimous choice.

[Sidenote: Quinine]

In this year the great fever drug quinine was first clearly separated and identified by Drs. Pelletier and Caventou, who were spurred on to their labors by the previous experiments with the drug by Drs. Gomez and Lambert. In its crude form the bark of the chinchona tree had been used for its medical properties since times immemorial.

[Sidenote: Homeopathy]

It was about this time that the German physician Hahnemann's theory of homeopathy caused general discussion among medical practitioners and laymen. Hahnemann's first thesis was that many diseases could most quickly be eradicated by similar effects--fever with fever, poison with anti-poison. This theory of "like with like"--the Greek homoia homoiois--was accordingly named by him homeopathy. It was most fully expressed in his "Dogma of Rational Healing" and in the later treatise "Chronic Ailments and their Homeopathic Cure." These books created such a widespread sensation that they were at once translated into several languages and ran through a great number of editions. As a matter of course, Hahnemann's peculiar theories were violently combated by his fellow practitioners.

[Sidenote: Hydropathy]

Almost at the same time with the rise of the new science of homeopathy came Vincenz Priessnitz's innovation of hydropathy or water cure. He established his first sanitarium at Grafenberg, his birthplace, and in the face of vehement medical opposition soon won government recognition for his sanitarium. Similar water-cure establishments were erected by many imitators and followers in Germany and elsewhere.

[Sidenote: Convention of Troppau]

[Sidenote: Intervention in Naples]

Late in the year Emperor Alexander of Russia and Metternich came together to settle on the counter strokes to be delivered against the revolutionists of Spain and southern Italy. When Metternich first heard of the fall of absolute government in Naples he was dismayed. Gentz, who saw him at that time, has left this record: "Prince Metternich went to-day to inform the Emperor of the sad events in Naples. As long as I know him I have never seen him so upset by any event." Metternich had reason to feel alarmed. A revolution in Naples was almost sure to be followed by an Italian uprising in the Austrian possessions of Venice and an insurrection in the Papal States. Had Metternich felt free to follow his own devices, he would forthwith have marched an Austrian army into southern Italy to put an end to the troubles there. With all his exasperation he did not feel free to cut loose from joint action with the Czar and with the other sovereigns of Europe. Thus it came that the summer was spent in arranging for another conference of the allied monarchs. They met on October 20, at Troppau in Moravia. The Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia received one another in state. The envoys of England and France were found to be in accord against armed intervention in southern Italy. The other powers determined to proceed on their course without them. Metternich's diplomatic dealings with the Czar were greatly hampered by the clever intrigues of Count Capodistrias, Alexander's foreign minister. For once Metternich found himself matched by a diplomat even more subtle than himself. In the end, he prevailed over Capodistrias sufficiently to overcome Alexander's scruples against harsh measures in Naples. It was determined to invite King Ferdinand to meet the sovereigns at Leibach, in Austria, and to address a summons to the Neapolitans commanding them to abandon their constitution, under threat of immediate invasion. Accordingly a note was issued from Troppau to all the courts of Europe, embodying the doctrine of federative intervention, as applied to Naples.

[Sidenote: King Ferdinand's duplicity]

As soon as King Ferdinand received the summons he prepared to leave Naples. The populace became aroused, and angry crowds surrounded the palace. Ferdinand was not allowed to leave Naples until he had once more sworn on his honor to maintain the constitution borrowed from Spain. The King took this oath as readily as he did the other. Then he journeyed northward. Half way, at Leghorn, he sent letters to each of the five principal sovereigns of Europe declaring his last declaration just as null and void as his previous perjuries. His double-dealing was rather too much even for the Holy Alliance. As Gentz, the secretary of the Congress, expressed himself in private: "The conduct of this wretched sovereign, since the beginning of his troubles, has been nothing but a tissue of weaknesses and lies. Happily they will remain secret. No Cabinet will care to draw them from the graveyard of its archives. Till then there is not much harm done."

[Sidenote: Benjamin West]

Benjamin West, the celebrated American-English artist, died at London in his eighty-second year. At the opening of the Eighteenth Century, West was in the forefront of the agitation that grew out of his contested succession to Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy. Wearied with these quarrels he visited Paris, where he studied the newly pillaged masterpieces at the Louvre. He resigned from the Royal Academy, but was almost unanimously re-elected. It was then that he painted his famous "Christ Healing the Sick." His later works failed to attain the success of his earlier historical paintings. When West died, his reputation had declined appreciably, still a public funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral was accorded to him, a unique honor for an American.

1821

[Sidenote: Congress of Leibach]

[Sidenote: Naples under duress]

The Congress of Leibach met in January. It was attended by the representatives of Russia, Austria, Prussia, England, France, Sardinia and Modena. When King Ferdinand of Naples arrived he was received by the Emperors of Russia and Austria in person. It was predetermined that absolute government in Naples should be restored by Austrian arms. The only problem remaining to diplomacy was to put a respectable face on King Ferdinand's dishonor. Capodistrias offered to make up some fictitious correspondence in which Ferdinand was proudly to uphold the constitution which he had sworn to support, and to yield protestingly to the powers only after actual threats of war. The device was rejected as too transparent. Moreover, the old king scarcely cared how his conduct appeared to his subjects. A letter was sent in his name to his son, the acting-viceroy, stating that the Powers were determined not to tolerate the order of things sprung from revolution, and that certain securities for peace would have to be given. The reference to securities meant the occupation of the country by an Austrian army. The letter reached Naples on February 9. Three days before the Austrian troops had received their orders to cross the Po.

[Sidenote: Battle of Rieti]

[Sidenote: Revolt of Piedmont]

The invading army of Austria was 50,000 strong. The Neapolitan soldiers numbered a little more than 40,000, of whom 12,000 were in Sicily engaged at Palermo in suppressing a counter revolution for home rule. At the first encounter at Rieti in the Papal territory, the Neapolitans under General Pepe were utterly routed. Their forces melted away, as they did when Murat made his last stroke for Italy and Napoleon. Not a single strong point was defended. On March 24, the Austrians entered Naples. Then came a moment of danger. Rebellion broke out in Piedmont, and an attempt was made to unite the troops of Piedmont with those of Lombardy. The King of Piedmont rather than sign the Spanish Constitution abdicated his throne. On the refusal of the King's brother, Charles Felix, to recognize a constitution, his cousin Charles Albert of Carignano was made the regent and commander of the troops. He advanced so cautiously that the conspirators at Milan dared not follow suit with a revolution of their own. In the meanwhile the Czar had ordered 100,000 Russians to march in the direction of the Adriatic. The Austrian forces advanced westward from the Venetian strongholds, and, brushing aside all resistance, entered Piedmont.

[Sidenote: End of Italian revolution]

[Sidenote: Silvio Pellico]

The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete. Courts-martial sat all over Italy. Morelli, the officer who had led out the so-called sacred band of Nola, was shot. His followers were expressly excluded from all amnesty acts. An attempted insurrection in Sicily cost the conspirators their lives. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison, or were marched off to distant fortresses in Austria. It was at this time that Silvio Pellico, the author of the famous "Prison Records," was sent to the dungeon of Spielberg. Then began that long stream of fugitives to England and America.

[Sidenote: Revolt in Brazil]

[Sidenote: Mexican independence]

[Sidenote: San Martin's Campaign]

The Holy Alliance, sitting at Leibach, thought the time was ripe to pronounce its anathema against all peoples seeking their liberties elsewhere than in the grace of their legitimate sovereigns. Yet the spirit of revolt was abroad, and its flames continued to flicker up at widely separated points. On February 26, the Portuguese troops in Brazil rose in revolt. The king, still residing at Rio Janeiro, was compelled to appoint a new Ministry pledged to give to both Portugal and Brazil a new representative system. In Mexico, General Iturbide, at the same time, issued a pronunciamiento, containing his so-called "Plan of Iguala," which proposed independence for Mexico under a Spanish Bourbon prince. Several rebel leaders acquiesced in this, and forced the Spanish viceroy to resign. Juan O'Donoju became acting-viceroy. He signed a treaty with Iturbide virtually accepting the plan. The people of Buenos Ayres profited by the military troubles in Brazil to throw in their lot with that of the Argentine Republic. Their popular idol, San Martin, meanwhile was leading his victorious troops from Chile into Peru. Lima, one of the greatest Spanish strongholds in South America, was threatened by the revolutionists.

[Sidenote: War in Annam]

[Sidenote: Taouk-Wang]

At the other end of the earth, the new force of national feeling showed itself in popular uprisings. In distant Annam the death of Emperor Gia-Long, followed by a bloody struggle for the succession between his sons, incited the people to a national demonstration against the encroachments of the French in Tonquin. In China the new Emperor Taouk-Wang was enthroned. He was the first to throw his whole personal influence against the evils of the opium trade inflicted upon China by English merchants since 1800.

[Sidenote: Philike Hetairia]

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti]

[Sidenote: Vladimiresco]

In Greece and in the Balkans the people rose against the yoke of Turkey. The plan of the Philike Hetairia--_i.e._ Patriotic Association--was to begin their revolution on the Danube, so as to induce Russia to take a hand in their favor. They believed that Capodistrias, the Prime Minister of Russia, himself a Greek, would win the Czar to their cause. Unfortunately for them, Metternich's influence proved stronger than that of the Greek Minister. Capodistrias deemed it advisable to publish a pamphlet warning his countrymen against any rash step. Failing to win the open support of Capodistrias, the Hetairists turned to Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek exile serving in the Russian army. Ypsilanti agreed to raise the standard of revolt in Moldavia. It was arranged that Theodore Vladimiresco, a Roumanian who had served in the Russian army, was to call his countrymen to arms against the Turk. Then the Greeks were to step in, and the help of Russia was to be invoked.

[Sidenote: Rising of Roumania]

In February, Vladimiresco proclaimed the abolition of feudal servitude in Roumania, and marched with a horde of peasants upon Bucharest. Early in March, the Greek troops at Galatz, let loose by their commander, Karavias, massacred the Turkish population of that town.

Ypsilanti, waiting on the Russian frontier, crossed the Pruth and appeared at Jassee with a few hundred followers. A proclamation was issued, calling upon all Christians to rise against the Crescent. Ypsilanti went so far as to declare that "a great European power," meaning Russia, was "pledged to support him." The Greek Hospodar of Jassee immediately surrendered the government, and supplied a large sum of money. Troops to the number of 2,000 gathered around Ypsilanti. The road to the Danube lay open.

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti repudiated]

[Sidenote: Death of Vladimiresco]

[Sidenote: Georgakis]

Ypsilanti wasted valuable time loitering at Jassee. A month was lost before he reached Bucharest. He delayed partly on account of his expectations of Russian help in response to a letter he had written to the Czar. The delay proved fatal to him. The Czar, now wholly under the influence of Metternich, sent a stern answer from Leibach. Ypsilanti was dismissed from the Russian service. The Russian consul at Jassee issued a manifesto that Russia repudiated and condemned Ypsilanti's enterprise. The Patriarch of Constantinople was made to issue a ban of excommunication against the rebels. In an official note of the Powers, the Congress of Leibach branded the Greek revolt as a token of the same spirit which had produced the revolution of Italy and Spain. Turkish troops crossed the Danube. The Roumanian peasants, seeing no help from Russia, held aloof. Vladimiresco plotted against the Greeks. It was in vain that brave Georgakis captured the traitor at his own headquarters and carried him to his death in the Greek camp. Ypsilanti was defeated in his first encounter with the Turks. He retired before them toward the Austrian frontier. In the end he fled across the border and was promptly made a prisoner in Austria. His followers dearly sold their lives. At Skuleni, 400 of them under Georgakis made a last stand on the Pruth. They were surrounded by ten times their number. Georgakis refused to surrender. Bidding his followers flee, at the moment when the Turks broke in the doors, he blew himself up in the monastery of Skuleni.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Morea]

[Sidenote: Gregorios hanged]

At the news of Ypsilanti's uprising in Moldavia the entire Greek population of the Morea rose against the Turk. From the outset, the Moreotes waged a war of extermination. They massacred all Turks, men, women and children. Within a few weeks the open country was swept clear of its Mohammedan population. The fugitive Turks were invested within the walls of Tripolitza, Patras, and other strong towns. Sultan Mahmud took prompt vengeance. A number of innocent Greeks at Constantinople were strangled by his executioners. The fury of the Moslem was let loose on the Infidel. All Greek settlements along the Bosphorus were burned. But the crowning stroke came on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day of the Greek Church. The Patriarch of Constantinople, while he was celebrating service, was summoned away by the dragoman of the Porte. At the order of the Sultan he was haled before a hastily assembled synod and there degraded from his office as a traitor. The synod was commanded to elect his successor. While the trembling prelates did their bidding, Patriarch Gregorios was led out in his sacred robes and hanged at the gate of his palace. His body remained hanging throughout the Easter celebration, and was then given to the Jews to be dragged through the streets and cast into the Bosphorus. A similar fate befell the Greek archbishops of Salonica, Tirnovo, and Adrianople. The body of Gregorios floating in the sea was picked up by a Greek ship and carried to Odessa. This return to Christian soil of the remains of the Patriarch was hailed as a miracle in Russia. Gregorios was solemnly buried by the Russian Government as a martyr.

[Sidenote: Russia aroused]

[Sidenote: The Czar found wanting]

If the will of the Russian people had been carried out, the Russian army and nation would have avenged the murder of their high-priest by an immediate war upon the Turks. Strogonov, the Russian Ambassador at Constantinople, at once proposed to his diplomatic colleagues to join him in calling for warships to protect the Christians there. Lord Stranford, the British Ambassador, refused to accede to this proposition. Single-handed, Strogonov presented an ultimatum to the Sultan demanding the restoration of Christian churches and the Porte's protection for Christian worship. A written answer was exacted within eight days. Encouraged by England's attitude, the Sultan ignored Strogonov's requests. On July 27, the Russian Ambassador left Constantinople. To the amazement of his moujiks, the Czar did not declare war. The councils of Prince Metternich prevailed. With the help of the representatives of England, Metternich persuaded the Czar to view the rebellion of Greece as a mere unfortunate disturbance. Any countenance of it, he argued, would imperil the peace of Europe.

[Sidenote: Rising of the Greeks]

[Sidenote: Ali Pasha]

[Sidenote: Moreote campaign]

[Sidenote: Petrobei]

[Sidenote: Kolokotrones]

[Sidenote: Maurokordatos]

[Sidenote: Massacre of Navarino]

[Sidenote: Sack of Tripolitza]

The murder of the Greek Patriarch was followed by risings of the Greeks throughout continental Greece and the Archipelago. Here, as in the Morea, the cause of Greek freedom was disgraced by massacres, and indignities to Turkish women. The Sultan's troops, led by able commanders, retaliated in kind. Khurshid, with a large Turkish army, besieged Janina. He held firmly to his task, even after his whole household fell into the hands of the Moreotes. The Greeks in Thessaly failed to rise, and thus the border provinces were saved for the Ottoman Empire. The risings in remoter districts were soon quelled. In Epirus, Ali Pasha, the Albanian chieftain, was surrounded by overwhelming numbers and lost his life. On the Macedonian coast the Hetairist revolt, in which the monks of Mount Athos took part, proved abortive. Moreover, the desultory warfare on water carried on by the islanders of Hydra, Spetza, and Psara served only to annoy the Turks. The real campaign was waged in the Morea, where Tripolitza, the seat of the Turkish Government, was besieged by the insurgents. Demetrios Ypsilanti, Prince Alexander's brother, landed on the coast and was welcomed as a leader by the peasants in arms. Three other leaders rose to prominence. First, in the eyes of the people, came Petrobei, chief of the family of Mauromichalis. Surrounded by his nine sons, this sturdy chieftain appeared like one of the old Homeric kings. Second in popular favor was Kolokotrones, a typical modern Clepht, cunning and treacherous, but a born soldier. The ablest political leader was Maurokordatos, a man of some breadth of view and foresight, but over-cautious as a general. The early insurgent successes were marred by bad faith and gross savagery. On the surrender of Navarino, in August, a formal capitulation was signed, safeguarding the lives of the Turkish inhabitants. In the face of this compact the victorious Greeks put men, women and children to the sword. Two months later the Turkish garrison of Tripolitza, after sustaining a siege of six months, began negotiations for surrender. In the midst of the truce, the Greek soldiery got wind of a secret bargain of their leaders to extend protection for private gain. In defiance of the officers, the peasant soldiers stormed Tripolitza and scaled the walls. Then followed three days of indiscriminate looting and carnage. By thousands, the Turks, with their women and children, were slaughtered. Kolokotrones himself records how he rode from the gateway to the citadel of Tripolitza, his horse's hoofs touching nothing but human bodies.

[Sidenote: Philhellenism]

The Greek struggle for independence aroused conflicting emotions in Europe. The passionate sympathy of the Russians rested wholly on their religious bonds. The more enlightened Philhellenes of France and Germany affected to see in this struggle a revival of the ancient Greek spirit that blazed forth at Thermopylae and Marathon. For this same reason, perhaps, Metternich and his colleagues in the Holy Alliance looked upon the Greek revolution with an evil eye. Any cause espoused by the hot-headed liberals at the universities in those days of itself became obnoxious to the reactionary rulers of the German and Austrian states.

[Sidenote: Lord Byron's Greek lyrics]

The sympathy with the Greeks was most pronounced in England. There the stirring lyrics of Lord Byron had reached the height of their popularity. His songs of Greece and Greek freedom were justly regarded as among his best. It was but a short time before this that the poet, to use his own phrase, had awakened one morning to find himself famous. Now his Greek songs were hailed by the whole world as classics. Notable among them were the "Isles of Greece," embodied in the third canto of his "Don Juan" with the famous stanza:

The mountains look on Marathon-- And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

And the equally celebrated lines from "The Bride of Abydos":

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!

[Sidenote: Death of Keats]

[Sidenote: Byron's satire]

[Sidenote: Keats's work]

In English literary annals this year was marked furthermore by the death of John Keats. He was but twenty-five, still in the first flush of his genius. Keats was buried in Rome, where he died. On his gravestone is the epitaph composed by himself: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was generally assumed in England that the poet's death was caused by his anguish over the merciless criticisms of "Blackwood's Magazine" and the "Quarterly Review." Lord Byron was unkind enough to exploit this notion in his "Don Juan":