Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/19

Rh but iniquitous scheme. The moral influence of the free elected representatives of two hundred and seventy millions of Englishmen, whose united armaments would hardly have made up 300,000 men, was sufficient to overawe the master of five millions of soldiers.

With regard to the other states of Europe vast political changes had taken place during the past century. The German-speaking peoples had become united under the House of Hohenzollern. The Hapsburg family, having abandoned the imperial title and their hereditary dominions, reigned as kings of Hungary at Buda-Pesth. Italy was united under the House of Savoy: France, that great disturber of international peace, had after two great wars been partitioned and reduced to impotence; Spain, Portugal and other minor nationalities remained in statu quo. The Grand Turk had removed his Capital to Bagdad, and the King of Bulgaria reigned at Constantinople. The despotism of the Czar, still "tempered with assassination," was otherwise supreme in his desolate dominions.

The Nineteenth Century had ended, as it had begun, in war, and since the terrible European conflict of