XXV. 1831. a national guard for the defence of the public liberties. CHAP. The example of this successful revolution, which was effected without shedding a drop of blood, or disorders of any kind, speedily spread to the adjoining towns. The whole cities in the papal dominions to the north of the Alps broke out into open insurrection. Modena again Feb. 5. rose the day after the success at Bologna, and the autho- Feb. 7. rity of the government was speedily overturned. Ancona and Reggio followed the example, as well as Ferrara, which Feb. 8. had an Austrian garrison. The troops having no orders, and not knowing what to do, shut themselves up in the citadel, and let the citizens do what they pleased; and the feeble government of the Duchess of Parma, the widow of Napoleon, yielded to the request of a deputation of the inhabitants that she would abdicate and leave the country. In less than a week the authority of the Pope had ceased in all the provinces to the north of the Apennines; and the insurgents, encouraged by their easy success over the pontifical troops, took steps to extend their movements in every direction. Efforts were made to spread the conflagration to Tuscany, Piedmont, and Naples. A detachment from Bologna crossed the mountains, and advanced as far as Otricoli, in order to lend a hand to an insurrection which was expected in Rome; and an animated proclamation was addressed to the inhabitants of Lombardy, calling on them to shake off the hated yoke of the stranger, and concur in the general establishment of 264. Italian freedom.1 * Austria, ever nervous about her Italian possessions, did * "Concitoyens de Lombardie ! Suivez l'exemple de la France, imitez les patriotes de l'Italie centrale; brisez les chaînes honteuses dont la Sainte Alliance vous a chargés. Nous étions esclaves et misérables sous le despotisme des prêtres, mais nos oppresseurs étaient du moins Italiens. Vous êtes esclaves d'étrangers qui s'enrichissent de vos dépouilles, et qui, chaque jour, vous rendent plus malheureux. Le jour où vous vous lèverez contre eux, 40,000 de nos compatriotes marcheront pour vous aider à écraser les Autrichiens. Ne tardez point; car il y a péril à hésiter. Déployez votre courage, concitoyens, et le despotisme fuira de nos belles contrées. Notre pays, notre liberté, et notre indépendance nationale avant tout !”—Proclamation, Bologne, 10th Feb. 1831; Ann. Hist. xiv. 537. Ann. Hist. xiv. 534, 536; Cap. iv. 262, XXV. 1831. 27. Interven tion of Austria in Italy. CHAP. not require this provocation to induce her to interfere in the strife to the south of the Alps. Ever since the Revolution of July in France, she had sedulously augmented her forces in Italy, and they now amounted to little short of a hundred thousand men. The Pope, the Duke of Modena, the Duchess of Parma, had each implored succour from the cabinet of Vienna, to enable them to put down the insurrection in their several states, and regain their lost possessions. On the other hand, the French at first declared that they would not permit any armed intervention of the Austrians in the affairs of Italy. After some negotiations, however, this resolution was so far modified that the cabinet of the Tuileries declared they would not object to the Imperialists moving into the Papal States to suppress the insurrection, provided they came under an engagement not to remain there, which was at once agreed to. Fortified by this consent, a division of Austrians, in the first week of March, crossed the Po, and marched on Parma and Modena; while General Frimont, at the head of twenty thousand men, advanced against Bologna. The insurgents, scarcely armed, and wholly undisciplined, were in no condition to resist forces so considerable. The Duke of Modena re-entered his dominions at the head of the Austrian troops, and immediately erected scaffolds. Menotti and Borilla, the two leaders of the insurrection, were hanged, and numbers of others sentenced to long imprisonment. Ann. Hist. Inspired with better as well as wiser feelings, the Duchess 540; Cap. of Parma accorded a general amnesty, on the mild condition only of the leaders being excluded for three years from public employments.1 March 5. xiv. 539, iv. 263, 264. 28. Austrians into Bo logna, and At Bologna some resistance was attempted, but finding Entry of the General Frimont was at the head of such formidable forces, all thoughts of combating were laid aside, and the suppression Austrians entered the city without resistance on the 21st. of the insur- Some skirmishes between the insurgents and Imperialists March 21. took place afterwards, but nothing that could be called war anywhere ensued; and the rebels, refluent from rection. XXV, 1831. all quarters, were soon cooped up in Ancona, where CHAP. they were glad, on 29th March, to conclude a convention by which the fortress was given up, and they laid down their arms on condition of an absolute amnesty for their persons and estates. This condition the papal government refused to ratify; various arrests took place, and commissions were instituted to try the rebels. Happily, however, no lives were sacrificed; the leaders had escaped, and a general amnesty was proclaimed, with the exception only of the members of the provisional government who had signed the deposition of the Pope. The insurrection being thus extinguished, the French government called upon the cabinet of Vienna to redeem its pledge, and withdraw from the Ecclesiastical States; Ann. Hist. but the latter, on various pretexts, delayed doing so, and 541; Cap. it was not till the 17th July that their troops retired into 265. Lombardy, and finally evacuated the papal dominions.1 this 1 xiv. 540, iv. 263, Germany, measures Although the fermentation in Germany, in the course of 29. year, did not assume so formidable an appearance as Affairs of it did in Italy, yet enough existed to excite disquietude, and precauoccasion armaments, and presage war. The King of Hol- tionary land, in his character of Grand-duke of Luxembourg, in there. which he was a member of the Germanic Confederation, presented a petition to the Diet, praying that he might be protected in his German dominions by the Federal forces; and upon this requisition a force of 24,000 men was, by a reso- March 18. lution of the Federal Assembly, ordered to be stationed in that duchy to maintain the authority of the King of Holland. When this resolution was known in Brussels, the hot-headed revolutionists of that country prepared to assert their right to it by force; and if they had adhered to that resolution, a general war would have ensued; for the German Diet, to be prepared for any emergency, immediately armed the frontier fortresses on the Rhine, and put them in a respectable posture of defence. Fortunately for the peace of Europe, more rational councils ere long prevailed with the Belgian provisional government. They XXV. 1831. CHAP. hesitated to come to a rupture with a Confederation which could bring three hundred thousand men into the field. The refusal of the throne of Belgium for his son by Louis Philippe rendered it doubtful whether, in such a contest, they would have the support of France; and the resolution of the assembled ambassadors in London that Luxembourg should form part of the dominions of the King of Holland, proved that, in attempting to enforce their pretensions, they would incur the hostility of all Europe. These considerations were so obvious that they forced themselves even on the most unwilling minds; and accordingly the intention to assert their rights by force was abandoned, and the Belgian government contented itself with making a formal demand upon the Diet for the duchy, which was formally refused. The conservative tendency of the Diet was still further evinced by two resolutions which it soon after passed, by the first of which it declared that it would refuse to receive any petitions relative to the general interests of the Confederation, as they were dangerous to the tranquillity of particular states; while by the second it was recommended to all governments to take the most vigilant steps to coerce the licentiousness of the press. Soon after the Diet passed a resolution asserting its own right to exercise a control of the press in all the states of the Confederation, and immediately gave a practical proof of its determination to enforce its power by prohibiting the circulation in all Ger Aug. 12. Oct. 27. Nov. 10. Nov, 19. xiv. 457, 459. 1 Ann. Hist. many of a liberal journal entitled L'Allemagne Constitutionnelle, published at Strasbourg, which advocated the overthrow of existing governments.1 30. measures in Austria had serious matter for consideration at this Defensive period, from the state both of its own dominions and of the Austria. adjoining districts. The insurrection in Italy, which has been already mentioned, caused its government to augment largely its forces, already considerable, in that peninsula, and brave the threatened hostility of France, to prevent the spread of the revolutionary movement XXV. 1831. through the north of Italy. But the cabinet of Vienna CHAP. had soon still more pressing cause for anxiety in its own dominions. The fierce and deeply interesting war in Poland, of which an account will immediately be given, excited the warmest sympathy in all parts of the Austrian dominions, and especially in Hungary, which adjoined it, and among the inhabitants of which a strong identity of feeling with the efforts of the Sarmatian race has always existed. Alarmed at the growing fermentation in Hungary, the government of Vienna issued ordinances against the exportation of arms or munitions to Poland, and, under pretence of a cordon sanitaire against the cholera, established posts along the frontier of Gallicia, so as to intercept all communication with the kingdom of Poland, where the war was raging. This immediately led to anxious petitions from all parts of Hungary, in which they demanded the immediate repeal of the ordinances which prohibited the export of arms and munitions of war to Poland, and the convocation of a diet to consider of what could be done to soften the fate of the Poles. So warm were these petitions, and so deep the sympathy felt in all parts of Hungary with the efforts of the Poles to re-establish their independence, that there is no saying to what it might have led, had not a new enemy, still more formidable, appeared within themselves, which absorbed the national mind, and for the remainder of the year diverted it from the consideration of external objects. In May, the cholera, which had been very fatal in Gallicia and Poland, made its appearance in Hungary, and before it ceased in the end of September, it had Aun. Hist. carried off 102,657 persons out of 256,000 who had 459. been seized with the disease.1 xiv. 456, In Prussia, the dominions of which adjoined Po- 31. land on the one side, and Belgium on the other, in State of both of which countries the revolutionary fever was Prussia. feeling in raging with peculiar violence, and the sovereigns had |