Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/228

3, 1860.] asunder after a time, from mutual repugnance. He cut and carved, and fixed unions and divisions and boundaries—as he believed, for all future time.

Among other incidents, those Italian provinces were assigned to Austria, which she is now losing; and Genoa was given to Piedmont.

For seven years the complacent statesman boasted of the peace of Europe, and the grandeur of Austria. In 1822 his work already began to totter to its fall. The Italian states broke out into revolution; and, on the other hand, the Czar was undermining Austria. The mouth of the Danube was already gone.

For thirty years the system of Prince Metternich was crumbling and shaking; and his career can hardly be considered a happy one, though he persisted, to the last, in his faith in his method of restriction and meddling, and balancing power, as he called it, while always giving preponderance to the despots of Europe, and especially to the Austrian. That the policy of England should have been virtually guided by such a man for a course of years will be a drawback on the history of the century for all future time: but the reputation of the Balance of Power is so good and true—it is so clearly the result and expression of political civilisation, by which the weak are sustained against aggression, and the smaller bodies hold their place in the system, and move in their courses as freely as the larger ones, that it is no great wonder if the system has been credited with more than it could effect.

Metternich’s mistake was in overlooking one of the strongest forces implicated in the case,—that of the will of the nations themselves; and the real disgrace of English statesmanship lay in the oversight not being at once exposed and denounced. It was left for the peoples themselves to do this, and they have done it, from time to time, till Prince Metternich’s system may be regarded as shattered beyond repair. His characteristic obstinacy prevented his ever owning himself beaten: and his virtual government of Austria to the last has sentenced that wretched empire to ruin: but when we look back to his seven years of supremacy in Europe, and follow the handsome, agreeable, self-confident and flattered statesman through his daily life of power and success, we can hardly wonder that he was estimated at far more than his real worth by men who should have known better, or that he could never learn to distrust himself, after a series of rude lessons, extending over thirty years.

To show how his system was foiled and broken up would be to quit a portraiture of Metternich for that of George Canning. Our business here is only with Metternich’s reception of his mortifications.

After the outbreaks of restiveness, in 1822, the Prince-Minister manifested the narrowness of his mind and the insolence of his temper more unmistakeably than ever. All Europe knew how he and the Emperor Francis—“the Father of his people”—occupied themselves (as if they had not otherwise enough to do!) in settling the minutest details of the life of the political prisoners in the state dungeons. They appointed which man (scholar, philosopher, poet, statesman, as it might be) should be shut in under the leads at Venice, and broiled there to the last degree of fever; and which should be buried in a subterranean hole, without fire, through a German winter. The Prince-Minister and the Emperor it was who themselves ordered the periodical stripping to the skin of dignified gentlemen in the presence of jail-officers, under pretence of a search for implements which the prisoners had no means of obtaining. The food, the dress, the exercise of the prisoners were all arranged for torture by Metternich and his imperial crony, with a petty malignity which almost became a grand cruelty by its vigilance and perseverance. The pitch of self-confidence which Metternich had attained is shown by the fact of the Austrian censorship having permitted the publication of Pellico’s memoir of his imprisonment. Simple folk asked how the book got issued at all, and the answer was, that it was policy on Prince Metternich’s part. He trusted that such a picture of suffering would frighten dissatisfied subjects from moving; and, as to the exposure of his government he was quite callous. He called his—good government; and if other peopled questioned it, they did not know what good government was.

Thus he went on for a few years, when, one fine summer day, news came of a fearful shock to the system—so fearful that the Emperor Francis cried out “All is lost!”

There was another revolution in France. Metternich himself was dismayed; but not for long. He found in the Citizen King qualities which would make him a useful tool. The growing centralisation of the French administration, and the contraction of electoral rights suited Metternich’s notions so well that he hardly regretted the Bourbons, after all. Even when the system once more exploded under the Orleans management, and in one place after another within the area of Metternich’s influence, his views underwent no change. His was good government: and those who threw it off were ungrateful, perverse, rebellious people, who must be put down. So he said in 1848, as confidently as in 1822; and when his sovereign abdicated, he had no idea of not ruling the young Emperor as he had ruled the old one. Giving place to new methods and new men was to him past conceiving. When Vienna was insurgent on the 13th of March, 1848, and the princes were in consultation, while a deputation of citizens brought a demand for a new system of rule, Metternich asserted himself and his claims against friends and foes. The Archduke John, who received the deputation, assured them that their wish as to the resignation of the minister should be complied with. Prince Metternich, however, opening the door between the two rooms, declared aloud—“I will not resign.” The Archduke repeated his pledge in a louder voice, and the Wolsey of our age exclaimed, in bitter wrath: “Is this the reward of my fifty years’ services?” An equally bitter laugh from the princes was the response. It was he who had brought their house to this pass; and his fifty years of service had ruined the empire.