Amidst all these horrors, in the autumn of 1792 a French army showed the first sign of what the soldiers of revolutionary France could do by the defeat of a force of Prussians and Austrians marching on Paris to restore Louis to the throne. One of the immediate results was that, early in the following year, the king was tried for treason and conspiracy against the nation, was sentenced to death and beheaded. He was soon followed to the guillotine by the queen, his wife. Their son, styled Louis XVII., though he never reigned, died in prison.

That was an act which at once bound the enemies of France into some sort of unity against her. Hitherto there had been much division of opinion, in England especially, about the events of the Revolution. There had been sympathy with a people fighting to be free.

The act of king-killing and of queen-killing alienated all sympathy among the nations ruled by kings. They made a solid ring around republican France, and France herself fell more and more into the hands of the extremists, governing by terror and by executions. All suspected of sympathy with the aristocrats fell by the guillotine. Even the deposed revolutionary leaders themselves, who had not gone far enough to please the yet more murderous leaders that followed them, were arraigned and executed.

The Reign of Terror, as it was well named, reached its terrible height when Robespierre was chief man in the Government, and after he too, failing in an attempt to commit suicide, had suffered the death to which he had consigned a thousand others, the murders committed in the name of justice and patriotism abated. The worst of the Terror passed.

France and her foes

So here was this poor vexed country, thus cruelly misgoverned, ringed round by the kings under arms. What chance had she? Perhaps her best chance lay in the fact that in spite of the misery there was much enthusiasm in the people. After Robespierre's death in 1794 they might draw breath and consider what all the bloodshed had meant, and they might conclude that it meant that they had won France for themselves, for the French people, out of the hands of the king. Therefore it was their own France, their own country, that they saw now menaced by the ring of monarchs. England, Prussia, Austria Spain—in whichever direction France looked she saw an enemy.

She had, as before in the days of the Habsburg menace, the advantage of her central position. Moreover, she had the advantage of one single purpose, namely, her very existence, over those enemies who, although they might coalesce against her, yet had their own rivalries and jealousies. On the northern frontier, where the troops of Austria, Prussia, England, and Holland were gathered, the fortunes of war went badly, for a time, for France. There was a moment when the Allies, if they had shown unity of purpose and determination, might have marched on Paris with but little opposition. Besides the enemy on the frontier, the republic had her own enemies, who were still in favour of the monarchy, within, especially in the district of La Vendée in the west and in some of the large towns of the south.

The indecision of the Allies allowed France a breathing space, and she made wonderful use of her opportunity.

We have to realise two points in particular, first the singular and tragic condition of the French armies at the moment—short of pay, short of equipment, short of seasoned soldiers, and especially short of experienced leaders, because most of those who should have led them had been executed or were in prison expecting execution—and secondly the fact that the methods of making war and of fighting battles were in a transition state, from the old fashion to the new.

The old fashion of fighting had been, roughly speaking, for the armies to advance in a mass, firing as they went, until one yielded and fell back or until they clashed together with the bayonet. Now the new method was introduced of keeping a big body of troops in reserve, to throw in, and so gain a decision in the battle, after the first encounter of the others. And gradually that disposition of the troops developed into the throwing forward of a single line of shooters in advance of the main body—skirmishers as they came to be called, when the thinning of the line was brought to its extreme.

Together with that new way of fighting battles, there came in a new idea of war. For the old idea had been chiefly to capture some important city or fortress of the enemy, and so to gain a decision in the campaign. The new idea was that a decision might be most quickly and convincingly reached by destroying the enemy's army. And, with that new idea, the value of time seems to have been appreciated more fully—the importance, that is to say, of arriving in numbers at a certain place before the enemy could have time to mass his forces there, and so of beating his armies piecemeal, before they could be concentrated.

As a very rough sketch, that may perhaps serve to give a notion of the way in which war and battles were changing.

It was out of the great danger menacing her very life as a nation that France was now able to draw new strength. The Government passed a decree that all men of suitable age were liable to conscription to the army. They were called on to fight for their own hearths and homes. It was not unlike the idea which had inspired the earliest Roman legions.

Republican victories

The Allies had lost their opportunity. They did not drive their stroke home. France, with much reinforced armies, took the offensive again. She poured into the Netherlands and into Holland. It was indeed only due to the inexperience of her own commanders, and to the interference of her Government with the generals, that the defeats of the Allies were no heavier than they were. A conclusion, for the time being, of the fighting on that front was reached in 1795, when the Austrians retired from the Netherlands—which were then annexed to the French Republic—when Prussia made a separate peace with her, when the English armies were withdrawn, and when Holland was allowed to retain her nominal independence with the style of the Batavian Republic.

And so, ingloriously for the Allies, ended the first coalition against Revolutionary France. The young Republic was for the moment saved; yet it must have been hard to think that the salvation could be more than temporary, so many and so strong were her foes. Her crisis brought forth, for her rescue, the extraordinary being whom most historians agree in deeming the greatest military genius in the whole course of man's story—Napoleon Bonaparte, born, as we have seen, in that little island of Corsica only lately ceded to France by Genoa. It is ever difficult to say to what degree this or that remarkable man has influenced the story of mankind, but we can hardly have a doubt of the immense effect due to the genius of Napoleon.

He came into notice first in course of the attack by the Republican troops on Toulon, which was held by Royalists aided by some English and Spanish ships. He was a Colonel of Artillery then, and conducted certain artillery operations with a masterly success.

After the death of Robespierre the chief power in the Government was put into the hands of a Council of five Directors. Together, they were called the Directory. It was their special business to see that the laws were carried out. The Paris mob did not appreciate the carrying out of the laws, and rose in protest, with the militia, called the National Guard, supporting them. They marched on the Tuileries, where the Government offices were established. The President, warned in time, summoned that young officer of artillery, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was then in Paris, with his batteries, for their defence. Napoleon placed his guns to command the streets approaching the Tuileries, and when the columns of the mob appeared he opened fire on them with grapeshot. Grapeshot: consider the effect of it on those dense columns of humanity advancing through a street! Even the Paris mob, frantic with enthusiasm, could not stand such butchery. They wavered, halted, then streamed back, mangled and beaten. The Directory, the Government of the country, was saved. The reputation of that artillery officer, first heard of at Toulon, was made. He was appointed to the command of what was known as the Army of the Interior.

France and the kings

It was in 1795 that Prussia had made peace, that Austria had yielded the Netherlands, and that all immediate danger to France from the north had passed. And it was in the same year that the "whiff of grapeshot" ploughed its furrows through these living masses, and may be said to have ended the French Revolution, properly so-called. From that time forward the story is not of revolution in the heart of France but of France struggling with, and strangling, the kings of Europe. And the struggle and the strangling are all dominated by one man and his amazing personality—Napoleon.

CHAPTER XIII

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS

We have seen the Austrians fighting and suffering defeat from France in the Netherlands. There was another battle ground where these two had now to meet, and that was in the beautiful country of Northern Italy where the Austrian Habsburgs and the Bourbons of France and Spain had met many a time. Of all the Allies, Austria had the right to feel most bitterly towards the French, for the queen whom the French had beheaded was daughter of the Austrian Empress.

Napoleon I

As early as 1792 the armies of revolutionary France had swept over Savoy—at that time an independent State with which Sardinia was conjoined. Sardinians were now in the coalition against France, and there was a Sardinian army co-operating with the Austrians in North Italy. In 1796 Napoleon was put in command of the Army of Italy, and at once he gave evidence of those qualities which made him the master mind in war.

THE GREAT NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. (From an Engraving after a Portrait by Paul Delarothe.)
THE GREAT NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
(From an Engraving after a Portrait by Paul Delarothe.)

But in all his campaigns we find a common point, that he realised probably more fully than any of his opponents the value of time, and had so masterly a power of organisation that he nearly always arrived at the place where he had determined to give battle before his enemies were ready for him.

It was just so with this his first campaign in Italy. He was across the Alps, with his army, and into Milan and the Austrian dominions far quicker than he had been expected; and here he did execute one of his most favourite manœuvres, which, at all events, might always be foreseen if the opportunity for it were given him. He thrust his army in between the armies of the Austrians eastward and the Sardinians westward and so disabled the latter, and less powerful, foe from any valuable co-operation at the very outset. Then, turning eastward, he defeated the Austrians again and again, driving them from Italy and pursuing them far along the road to Vienna.

He turned southward thence and seized the lands of Venice. In the treaty which ended this campaign, in 1797, France gained the Netherlands, the Ionian Islands, and territory along the Rhine and in Albania. The following year the French were in Rome, which they captured, making the Pope a prisoner and establishing what was called the Tiberine Republic.

We have to note that in all these early battles of the French Republic, the victors—for they were nearly always victorious—came with the pretence, at all events, that their purpose was to relieve the populace from their burdens, their dukes and archdukes and kings. Accordingly they set up this Tiberine Republic along the Tiber, and the Transpadane Republic, of the country beyond the river Po, and the Cis-Alpine Republic on this side of the Alps, and so on. We have already seen how they had set up the Batavian Republic in Holland. By these fine promises and pretences they gained much favour with the civil population in all countries. In 1798 Napoleon was no longer in Italy: he was in Egypt, intent on extending the French power over the East—thus quickly had events moved since France, only three or four years before, had been fighting for her very existence among the nations of Europe!

It was English sea-power that foiled him in that Eastern enterprise, and in the following years he was back again—badly needed. For there was war again with the Austrians, who had recuperated their forces in North Italy, and the fortunes of the war were going all against the French. They had been forced to retire from Italy and from a part of Switzerland which they had held. French armies, moreover, had suffered defeat on the Rhine, and in consequence the Directory had fallen from popular favour.

The First Consul

Rather as our Cromwell had once appeared, backed by his Ironsides, in Parliament, so now Napoleon made a dramatic entry into the Council Hall of the French Government. There was a cry from some of the legislators of "No Dictator," which Napoleon's friends, doubtless according to plan, chose to interpret as an attack on Napoleon's person. His soldiers entered, and turned the Assembly out of the Hall. The Assembly was dissolved, and a new constitution formed which entrusted the Government for ten years to three consuls, of whom Napoleon was nominated as the First Consul. The other two might be relied on to do his dictates. Thus, by the end of 1799 he was the virtual ruler of France.

By his diplomacy he came to terms with Russia, but Austrian armies still held North Italy. Taking the command again of the Army of Italy, he repeated the chief incidents of the former campaign. Again he crossed the Alps unexpectedly; again he beat the Austrians in Lombardy; the terms of the treaty which had ended the former battles were reaffirmed in 1801, and before the end of 1800 French victories on the Rhine had re-established the position there. Again there was a breathing space.

Beyond question we have to look on Napoleon as one of the most extraordinary of all the actors in our story. His intellectual powers, whether for the organization of war or of peace, must have been almost more than human: his absence of any love for his fellows and of any kindness of heart must appear almost equally below the human mark. He had no regard for truth or for morality or religion in any form. Christian worship, abolished in France by the earlier revolutionary Governments, had been re-established. Napoleon was as ready to profess himself a good Catholic in France, as to pretend a leaning towards Mahommedanism in the East, in order to gain favour with the Orientals.

In spite of his lack of sympathy with mankind, he was a subtle judge of human nature. He observed men's weaknesses with a coldly critical eye. He knew that men—and Frenchmen more than most men, and perhaps women even more than men—are attracted and fascinated by show and splendour. Therefore, as First Consul, he caused all the ceremonies in connection with Government to be splendid; he encouraged or commanded his officers and civil servants to be richly dressed, and their wives and daughters to wear gorgeous gowns.

So, in this breathing space, all was triumph and splendour in Paris; but Napoleon had already, as we have seen, been thwarted in his great designs upon the East by the naval defeat which he suffered from the English in Egypt. He realised very clearly that England was the foe whom it was most essential that he should remove out of his way if he were to achieve all his ambitions for world power. As a first step he renewed that Armed Neutrality against her which had been formed by the Northern Powers when she was at war with the United States, and insisted on searching neutral vessels to see whether they were carrying what is called "contraband of war."

He forced Denmark, contrary to her will, into the compact. Against the unfortunate Denmark, then, England declared war, in order to drive her to withdraw from the compact into which she had been forced so unwillingly; and compelled that withdrawal by a bombardment, under Nelson, of Copenhagen. It was here that Nelson, who was then only second in command, is recorded to have put up his telescope to his blind eye in order not to see the signal to break off the engagement which had been hoisted by the superior admiral.

Another special effort against England had been made by the French in 1797, who landed a force in Ireland; but it was not supported as had been expected by the native Irish and was broken to pieces the year following by the English troops. Ireland was then no part of the United Kingdom; but in 1801 was passed the Act of Union, whereby the two did become incorporated.

By 1803 there was again a state of active war between Great Britain and France, and Napoleon was threatening an invasion. He now had the navy of Spain to aid his own; but against him was a coalition of Russia, Austria, and Sweden. From the idea of invading England, he was called eastward and southward by the pressure of Austria and Russia, and there the French gained a great victory over the Austrians in the autumn of 1805.

Trafalgar

Four days later the united fleets of France and Spain met the British at Trafalgar, where Nelson destroyed them as a fighting force, but at the grievous cost to Britain of his own life.

Six weeks later again Napoleon fought the crowning land battle of that campaign at Austerlitz, when the Russian and Austrian armies suffered a crushing defeat which, for a time, ended the fighting and gave Europe another short spell of peace.

A principal result of this victory was the dissolution of that so-called Holy Roman Empire which had existed since the days of Charlemagne. The title of German Emperor was no longer known. The electors were abolished. Kings were appointed by Napoleon to govern Wurtemberg and Bavaria, Hanover was given to Prussia, and other German States were formed into the Confederation of the Rhine. The ruler of Austria retained the title of Emperor of that country. Eighteen months earlier in the story a new emperor altogether had been created—Napoleon himself, as Emperor of the French.

H.M.S. "VICTORY" AFTER TRAFALGAR.
H.M.S. "VICTORY" AFTER TRAFALGAR.

By this period in his career Napoleon was no longer posing as a republican come to free peoples from their kings. On the contrary, he became himself a king-maker on the most extensive scale. Naples and Holland each had a brother of Napoleon's imposed on it as ruler. A little later it was the turn of Spain. One of his Marshals was named as successor to the throne of Sweden.

The "Continental System"

And now Prussia engaged his attentions. She had been a doubtful friend of both sides, for she had received Hanover from the hand of the victor and yet she professed to be the friend of England. In a single day Napoleon utterly smashed the elaborate Prussian fighting machine; and it was actually from Berlin that he proclaimed that state of blockade against England sometimes called the Continental system—as we should now say "boycotting England"—declaring her as an outlaw, outside the protection of the law of nations, and commanding that no Continental port should receive her ships.

This was in 1806. In 1807 came Russia's turn to receive chastisement. We may observe, however, that neither of the Eastern Empires, Russia or Austria, seems to have been disabled from further fighting by defeat. They had vast territories to retreat to and recuperate.

So far then has gone the tide of Napoleon's success, ever mounting. But now, in 1808, we begin to see it turn towards the ebb, and again it is England, though on land this time, that is chief in so turning it, for now begins the story of what we call the Peninsular War, waged in Spain and Portugal.

At first it is a story of England, of Wellington, on the defensive. Napoleon in person is in command of the French. He is once more called away eastward, to deal with Austria, and again he deals with her drastically. Once more he crushes her armies and extorts from her a peace which gives a large slice of her territories to France.

And something more it now pleased him to take from Austria, a daughter of the great house of Habsburg as his wife—for he had obtained a divorce from his first wife. The daughter of the oldest, proudest family in the whole Western world was thus married to the Corsican adventurer, become Emperor of the French!

It appeared indeed as if there was nothing in Europe which he might not take, if he so pleased. He treated spiritual power when it was opposed to him precisely as he dealt with kings, for the Pope's reply to his annexation of the papal dominions in Italy was to excommunicate him; and that excommunication Napoleon countered by sending soldiers to climb the walls of the Vatican, the Pope's palace in Rome, and bring out the Pope a prisoner.

Still Wellington stood firmly against his troops on a line near the boundary between Spain and Portugal, holding back the tide. Russia, despite Napoleon, had opened her ports to British ships, wherefore once more he declared war upon her. And now, marching into the heart of Russia in the autumn days, which constantly grew shorter, of 1812, he came to Moscow to find it in flames and its inhabitants gone. Destroy the enemy's army in the field had always been Napoleon's maxim, but now he found no enemy to destroy. That enemy had all the East on which he might fall back. To pursue farther would be madness. Through the snows of winter, with the Cossacks hanging on their flanks and rear and taking every opportunity to attack, began that return of the French Grand Army from Russia which is one of the most pathetic scenes in all the story.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

That tragedy was his ruin. The powers of Europe gathered about him again in the spring of 1813. He fought brilliantly on the defensive beyond the Rhine, but against increasing odds, and in the autumn of that year suffered the defeat that finally broke him, at Leipsic. Already, earlier in the year, Wellington had taken the offensive triumphantly in the Peninsula, had pushed the French back, had driven and pursued them across the Pyrenees and was on their heels in the South of France.

For two months longer, after the blow at Leipsic, Napoleon fought on, till he made a fatal error in turning upon the rear of the allies to cut off their communications. Their effective reply was to disregard that threat, and to march straight upon the defenceless Paris which they occupied on the last day of March, 1814. He was formally deposed by a vote of his own Senate, and on April 4th he abdicated.

He was taken by a British ship to Elba and imprisoned there. The Bourbon monarch was brought back to the throne of France. A congress of the Powers sat at Vienna to restore and regulate the affairs of Europe. Then in February of 1815 came the appalling news that Napoleon had escaped, was back in the South of France, the old soldiers, fascinated by his name and his victories, flocking to him—so he marched to Paris with an army that ever grew as he went. Louis XVIII. fled. The Emperor was on his throne again.

Once more the Powers gathered; but for Napoleon the only two that mattered were the British and the Prussians, close upon the French boundary, in Belgium. As ever of old, he sought to break these up before others should come to strengthen them. The Prussians had to meet the French armies first, and had to admit defeat, had to retreat. Napoleon marched on to meet the British at Waterloo; and all through the long June day his soldiers charged again and again, only to break upon the steadfast red line.

Towards evening the Prussians, far less shattered by their defeat of two days before than Napoleon had supposed, appeared upon the French right flank. That apparition was the beginning of the end. Wellington ordered an advance of his whole army. The French defeat became a rout. The Emperor preceded the remnants of his broken force to Paris, where, yet again, he signed his abdication. He had an idea of escaping to America, but the British ships were on the look-out, and, foiled in this, he voluntarily gave himself up to one of them.

The Code Napoleon

His final destiny was the Island of St. Helena, where he lived in failing health till his death six years later. One good work at least he did, in directing his lawyers to draw up into a code, called the Code Napoleon, the laws of France, which also were the laws which he imposed on a large part of conquered Europe. Based on the existing system of laws, it embodied many wise and liberal changes and is widely accepted even to-day. He was twenty-six years of age when he won his first victories in Italy in 1796. He had become virtual ruler of France by 1799, was acclaimed Emperor in 1804, and set kings, chiefly of his own family, on the thrones of Europe from 1806 onward, was prisoner in Elba in 1814, and finally in St. Helena in 1815—surely the most amazing chapter in the whole of this Greatest Story!

CHAPTER XIV
THE EXPANSION OF THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE SLAV

In such manner this tragedy, called the French Revolution, was played to its dénouement at Waterloo on the European stage, and on its conclusion, despite all the agony, we find that stage strangely little altered. Norway had been separated from Denmark and joined to Sweden. Belgium was no longer Austrian, and Belgium and Holland were united as the kingdom of the Netherlands. Austria had become independent of the rest of Germany and was dominant in Italy, but all main boundaries of the greater nations' territories were restored nearly as they were before.

A great change, however, had been wrought in the minds of men, by the French Revolution in the first place and by the Napoleonic wars in the second. Kings had been so thrown from their pedestals and set up again that they could never more have the sanctity in the eye of the people which they had long enjoyed. The exaggerated reverence paid to social rank, surviving from the exaggerated regard paid to the knight by popular opinion in the Middle Ages, had gone. The no less exaggerated ideas on the subject of liberty with which the Revolution had opened had been modified by the inevitable discovery that it is impossible for men to live together in anarchy and without discipline. Indeed there was a marked reaction in thought for a few years after the Revolution, because men had realised the excesses to which these liberal ideas could lead. But still all that was best in those ideas was retained. The principle was conceded that no class should be treated as slaves by the class above. Even the humblest was recognised to have his rights as man.

Perhaps that is the most important lesson which had to be learnt by all men, kings, nobles, and poor men alike, from those cruel years in Europe; and it was more important than changes in territorial possessions.

Anglo-Saxon world-power

But if political boundaries were little altered in Europe by the fighting of the Napoleonic wars, a very extensive change will be seen to have occurred during those years if we take the whole world-stage into our view. The Anglo-Saxon had been extending his possessions and his domination almost immeasurably.

Since Great Britain was the strongest sea-power, and at war, at one time or other of the Napoleonic period, with France, Spain, and Holland—that is to say, with all the colonising nations, except Portugal—it was only to be expected that she should have captured nearly all the colonial possessions of each. And this actually is what had occurred. Moreover, on her own account she had established new settlements in places which seemed favourable for trade.

The boundaries of Canada and most of what now is British in the North of America had been settled by the wars with the French in that region, and by the War of American Independence, before the French Revolution and all that followed it. One of its consequences was indeed a renewed and lamentable outbreak of war, in 1812, between the now independent States and the mother country. The integrity of Canada was threatened by it at one moment, but in the end the boundaries were left as before.

New Zealand, as we have seen, had been declared a British possession in 1787. British colonists had established themselves in New South Wales in the year following. Honduras had become British some years earlier. And Britain had her African West Coast Settlement at Sierra Leone.

Then in 1795 Ceylon was ceded to her by the Dutch, and from that time onward until the end of the wars almost every year added to her colonies. Already she had many of the West Indian islands. Now she acquired Trinidad, a little later St. Lucia, and in the same year Tasmania and British Guiana. In 1800 she gained Malta. In 1806 the Cape of Good Hope and the Seychelles, which had been held by the Dutch, were given up to her. A year later she took the island of Heligoland. Mauritius passed to her by capitulation in 1810; and at the conclusion of the war she was confirmed by the King of the Netherlands in her unquestioned domination in South Africa. All the while, moreover, she was consolidating and extending her hold on India.

Many of these settlements and acquisitions were no more than the formation of so many nuclei or starting centres whence the Anglo-Saxon was swiftly to extend his power over vast regions—in Australia most notably.

But despite all this nearly world-wide expansion of what we have now to begin to call the old Anglo-Saxon stock, an addition which was to prove of scarcely, if at all, less importance in the story was made to the territories of the younger branch of that stock when the United States, in 1803, purchased Louisiana.

It was of immense importance, not only because of the territory's own very considerable extent and richness, but also because it so lay, as we have seen already, as to prevent the expansion westward of the people of British race who were settled in America along the shores of the Atlantic. For the Louisiana of the French was vastly more extensive than the State which now has that name. It reached up right from New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi to the neighbourhood of the Great Lakes, so that the United States were absolutely cut off from the west by this French barrier westward, and by the British Canadians northward. It was a happy circumstance for the world that this purchase was peacefully made and that Anglo-Saxons—continually strengthened, we should note, by successive immigrations of Celts from Ireland—were thus left free to fight their way to the west against the tribes of the Red Indians, and to cultivate the wild.

Those unfortunate Red Indians are to be pitied for the fate which came upon them. Again and again they combined and took savage vengeance on the pioneers of the white men who were evicting them from their age-long homes. But they had no equal chance, and step by step were driven back or tamed.

Gradual expansion westward

Limitless therefore, until the Pacific, was now the gradual expansion of the Anglo-Saxon westward, and world-wide, as we have just seen, the expansion from his ancient stock in other quarters.

But there was also another race that, all through these years of storm in Europe, was spreading itself extensively—though more from its own centre outwards, and in a less scattered manner—the Slav or Slavonic race. All round its already great circumference the Russian Empire was growing. On its immense Eastern borders were vast areas still inhabited by nomad tribes, mainly remnants of those great Tartar hordes which had been wont to sweep over all that now was Russia. Modern Russia stretched her conquering arm ever farther and farther over them till she came up against the borders of China and, in the far north-east, to the Pacific Ocean. Across the Straits of Behring she joined hands in Alaska with the Anglo-Saxon when he pushed up into the extreme north-west of his new Continent: for until the United States acquired Alaska, by purchase, in 1867, it was a Russian possession. In the North of Europe Russia had won Finland from Sweden after the fighting of 1808 and 1809. In the extreme south she had been victoriously at war with Persia, and a result of that war was that the Persian province of Georgia became Russian. Also she was nearly continuously, and on the whole victoriously again, fighting with the Turk, of which fighting the general outcome was that she gained more and more territory in the Balkan region and more and more authority in those Balkan States which remained nominally independent.

And let me say now a word which will have to apply to all the rest of the story, so far as it touches these Balkan States, Danubian Principalities, and so on: that the changes which have taken place in their governments and political conditions have been so many and so quickly varied that it is quite impossible to give them place in this story. They are changes, moreover, of relatively little importance for the story as a whole. The population is almost inextricably mixed, with the Slav generally predominating. Among this mixture the Turk appears quite alien in blood, as he is in religion, and therefore it seems only natural and right, that Russia, as the leading Slav nation, with the headquarters of the Greek Church, which is the national Church of the Slav, at her southern capital city of Moscow, should extend, as she did, her sway over the Balkans and that the domination of the Turk should continually recede. Perhaps the really most interesting outcome of all this anti-Turk fighting is the independence won by Greece and acknowledged by Turkey in 1820, after some ten years of intermittent wars.

The power of Russia

In the main we have to realise that by this date Russia had taken over what used to be Austria's part in the defence of Christendom against the Moslem Turk. Not indeed that Austria had lost importance, except, maybe, in comparison with Russia, for she had become for the moment the most important of the Teutonic States. Prussia was still her chief rival among them, but until the other German States were brought to act together under Prussia's lead Austria was singly the most powerful of them all.

In a second Persian war, Russia gained a large territory in the Caucasian district which reached right down to the borders of Armenia. The unfortunate Poland, already thrice divided, had become nominally a kingdom, but was subject to Russia's dictation, and in 1831 she was annexed by that vast and ever-increasing empire—-a domination from which she has only recently been delivered as a result of the Great War.

Thus it is that, on all sides except the west, where she was up against the solid Teuton block of the German States, the great Slav monster, whose appropriate emblem was the bear, was stretching its huge grasping paws ever farther.

The Turk had suffered losses not only from Russia, and not only in Europe, but also in that land of Egypt where he had been sovereign. Napoleon had given the Turkish armies a bad battering there before the end of the eighteenth century. Now, in 1811, the Turkish power received a blow much more lastingly severe in a revolt of the Egyptians themselves. They revolted against the rule of the Mamelukes, originally a bodyguard of Turkish slaves formed to protect the sovereign of Egypt. The Mamelukes had continued to be influential in the government all through the Turkish regime. But the popular rising against them now was completely successful; they were massacred without mercy, and Egypt passed into the hands of a ruler entirely independent of Turkish dominance. Under that rule she so prospered that within less than half a century she went pushing up northward, just as the old Pharaohs had thrust up thousands of years before, into Syria, and won that province also back from Turkey.

CHAPTER XV

STEAM AND EVOLUTION

The realisation of the power of steam, and its application to machinery, have made a greater difference in this Greatest Story than any other single event that ever happened in it before or since. It is a realisation that came just before the end of the eighteenth century, and it made a greater difference between the story of the nineteenth century and that of all the centuries before it than there ever had been between any two former periods. That is indeed a large claim to make for it, but it is none too large.

Hitherto, the force that man had made use of to do his work had been, with few exceptions, the force of his own muscles or those of his horses or oxen. He had used the winds to blow his ships along. He had used both wind and water to turn his corn-grinding mills. He had used explosive gunpowder to propel his missiles. Earlier still, he had used the resilient force of wood, for his bows, to shoot his arrows, and this was perhaps his first use of the forces of Nature which surrounded him and which he, like everything else, without knowing it, obeyed. But now, all at once, he discovered the use of another exceedingly strong force, in steam. The real wealth of the world consists more truly in man's power to control and turn to his own use the forces of Nature than in anything else. Hitherto he had possessed scarcely any of this true wealth, because his force was limited by the muscular power of himself and his domestic animals. Now he had a servant whose power to do work for him was almost without limit. The steam-engine was invented.

When we speak of a steam-engine the first idea it brings to mind is a locomotive engine drawing a train or driving a ship; but it was not to this that the steam-engine was turned on its first invention, nor is it perhaps its most important use.

The first steam-engine

Its first use was as a stationary engine, and the purposes to which those stationary engines could be, and soon were, turned are far too many to tell. Already some previous inventions in hand-worked and foot-worked machines had greatly increased the manufacture of textile goods in England.

But now cotton and wool began to be made into thread by the steam-driven machines. By them, the thread was woven into sheets and pieces. They cut and finished metal and wood into the shapes needed for a thousand different articles of daily use—furniture, agricultural implements, pots and pans, and so forth. They made and combined and pieced together parts of new machines for the making of yet more and more useful things. They had the power to hammer out great sheets of metal, and the delicacy to make a thread of wire or a needle. They became more and more efficient and fine as experience led to improvements, but it would be true to say that even in the very early days of their development a machine which it took only one man to mind and keep in working order could do as much work as had been done by twenty men who were served only by their own hands and muscles. Thus, if we may regard the productive work accomplished as the true wealth of the nation, we find it already increased by twenty times as the result of this engine.

But it is no use producing more unless there are people who want that increased produce. And that is exactly what there were just at this moment. In spite of the wars, the population had been growing in Europe, and when they ceased, in 1815, it began to grow even faster. Besides, there was growth of humanity all the world over, and especially in America. And the end of the wars allowed the produce of one country to be freely carried across sea and exchanged for the produce of another. It was especially in British ships that the produce was carried; and this carrying trade, as it is called, was a great cause of the wealth which Britain began to make in this century.

She needed that replenishment, because it was very largely by the help of her money that the allies—especially Prussia when she was in the coalition—had been able to keep their armies in the field against France. The British were very heavily taxed in and after the Napoleonic wars even as in and after what we now call the Great War.

This Industrial Era, of which the application of steam power was the principal cause, had been in progress many years before the steam-engines were used for drawing railway trains. Perhaps 1775 may be given as the date of the first practical steam-engine in Great Britain; yet it was not till 1830 that the first steam-worked railway line was opened to the public. But once this new mode of travel was introduced it quickly superseded the old mail-coach traffic and gradually drove the coaches off the road.

Besides her carrying trade across the seas, Britain had the good fortune to find iron ore close to her coal in her North Midlands. Wherever those two were found together—the coal to heat the water into steam for the driving of the machines, and the iron as the chief material of the machines themselves and of a thousand things made by them—the conditions favoured manufacturing. So, in such places, both in England and elsewhere, there grew up the large and ever-increasing towns, as the people gathered to work together in the factories. For though the machines might do the work of twenty men, many more than twenty times the former total of work was performed within the space that each of these big towns occupied.

Hand loom and power loom

OLD HAND LOOM AND MODERN POWER LOOM. (By kind permission of Northrop Loom Co., Blackburn.)
OLD HAND LOOM AND MODERN POWER LOOM.
(By kind permission of Northrop Loom Co., Blackburn.)

AN OLD MAIL COACH.
AN OLD MAIL COACH.

But all this work done in the towns by the machines meant that less work was done in the villages, and the country cottages. There was no longer any profitable sale for the cloth woven at home by the little machines which the women used to work with hand and foot, because the very same, or almost the same, could be made so much more cheaply by the big steam-driven machines.

And while a machine attended by one man did the work formerly done by twenty, what about the other nineteen? Obviously, at first, they fell out of work. Therefore, when the steam-engines first came in they produced great hardship, great unemployment. The men rose up against them in organised gangs of machine-breakers. Very many machines were broken up.

Conditions of industry

But everywhere authority prevailed in the long run: the machine-breakers were put down. Men had to learn, sometimes at the cost of much suffering, to adapt themselves to a changed condition which had come to stay. The point of principal importance in the change is that it enabled the earth to support a larger population than had been possible before. We may notice this as a main result of each of the successive big changes. In the first known phase of human society we find man in the hunting stage; that passes into the pastoral stage, of keeping domestic animals, which supported more human beings than the hunting stage could. After the pastoral came the agricultural, with again an increase in the numbers that the earth could support, and lastly has come this industrial stage in which many more can be fed and clothed and kept in tolerable comfort than ever before.

And yet this industrial era had to bring its own hardships, and, unhappily, its own hatreds. The class hatred, as it is called—the animosity felt by the man who works with his hands against the class that has the money and works with its brains—arose directly out of the conditions which the steam-engine produced. To-day, when that industrial era has lasted more than a hundred years, it is that hatred which makes our life so very difficult for us all, both for the classes above and for the classes below. And we are compelled to realise that the hate is largely due to the hard treatment of the lower classes by the higher in those early years. It is quite different now; there is little or no animosity, as I believe, felt by the upper classes in any country towards the lower, but I do believe that the lower classes are in some part justified in thinking that their better treatment has been won by their own effort rather than freely given by those above them. In the East the same animosities have not been aroused, for the Eastern industries have not developed along the same lines and have not caused the same difficulties.

In the industrial West, and everywhere that the white man has made his settlements, the hand workers are now protected by their organisation into Trades Unions—combinations of workers formed principally in order to bargain with the employers about the wages and the hours of work and the conditions under which the work is to be done.

At the beginning of the industrial era the workers were not able to come together in this way; so the employer made his bargain with each man separately, and, as many were anxious to get work, the employer could engage them very cheaply and make them work very hard. Nor was it only the men, or only the fully grown women, that were thus made to labour long hours for low pay. Even little children, because their labour could be engaged so cheaply, were hired to work many hours a day at such jobs about the machines and factories as a child could do. Very often the conditions as to ventilation, and so on, under which the work had to be done, were such as would not be allowed by the law now; but no one then seems to have considered the hardships of the men and women and, above all, of the children. We may believe it was out of thoughtlessness and lack of recognition of their sufferings, rather than sheer cruelty, on the employer's part, that all this was done; but done it was, and it has left a bitterness of feeling which still lasts.

So the wealth of the world, as measured by its productive labour and its power of supporting human life, increased vastly; and its population increased vastly therewith. At the same time it is very much to be doubted whether the happiness of the people generally increased. But gradually, by coming together into the combinations of which I have spoken, and so being able to say to the employer, "You will not get any of us to work for you unless you give us so much money for so many hours of work"—gradually, by this argument, and sometimes by carrying it into actual effect by "striking," and ceasing to work altogether, they have won better and better terms for themselves. Employers now recognise that the workman should receive such a wage as the profits of the industry in which he is engaged suffice to pay him. Perhaps some of our more recent labour trouble is due to the worker's claim to be paid a larger wage than the industry can afford, if it is to turn out its products at a cost at which any one will buy them. And if it cannot turn them out at such cost, it must, and it will, stop producing them altogether; so that thus the workman is unemployed.

Further remarkable discoveries followed. Coal gas was used for lighting, and was later superseded by electricity. Electricity was used to give motion to machinery in place of steam. The telegraph was invented and the telephone. Engines were constructed to work by means of petrol firing within themselves—by internal combustion, as it is called—whence came motor-cars and flying machines. Wireless telegraphy made its marvellous appearance. Radio-activity with its terrifying possibilities has been discovered. But no one, not even all of these together, made a new start, with a new chapter in the story, at all in the same sense as did the application of the power of steam. All these others were rather in the nature of a development from that starting-point. They were further successful efforts on the part of man to "harness," as has been said—which means, to control for his own purposes—the forces of Nature.

Evolution

There was, however, one scientific discovery of about the middle of the nineteenth century, which is of very remarkable interest in man's history, because it gave quite a new direction to his thoughts about his own origin. It is that discovery which is summed up in the word "Evolution," and which is associated especially with the name of Darwin.

Its main importance consists in its revelation that, whatever we may think about the origin of man's soul, there can be no reasonable doubt that his bodily form, his bones and all his organs, have descended to him from ancestors belonging to the same common stock as the apes or monkeys. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century man had regarded himself as specially created in his present form. He had also supposed all other living things to have been similarly created as they are. From 1850 or so, onward, he had to realise that all the many and complicated forms of life, both of plants and animals, have developed—"evolved" was the word adopted for the process—from the very simplest forms, even from single tiny cells.

It required countless ages for such a process; but the discoveries of geologists and astronomers—the earth-diggers and the star-gazers—combined to show that such countless ages not only might, but must, be assigned to the process. Our universe and our earth are by many millions of years older than men had thought.

But perhaps the chief fact of all, about this new discovery, is that it turned men's eyes forward, instead of backward. They began to look with a new hope towards the future of the race of men. Heretofore there had been an idea that the "Golden Age," when man was very good and very happy, lay somewhere in the remote past, and that present man had very much deteriorated. The new discovery showed him that he was, on the contrary, continually "evolving" into something higher, or, at the least, that, as he now is, he has evolved from something very much lower, even from the very lowest tiny atom that has any sort of life. It was an enlivening, hope-giving discovery.

But let us not ascribe to it, as some, at its first coming, almost certainly did, more than its due. It revealed to man the origin of his body; perhaps, but of less certainty, it showed him the origin of his mind. That it tells him anything of the origin of his spiritual self is really only asserted by those who virtually deny that he has any spiritual side at all in his nature. Or so, let me say to avoid dogmatic assertion, it seems to me that they deny it.

CHAPTER XVI

THE RESETTLEMENT OF EUROPE

When Napoleon had been finally chained down, under the ward of the British Government, on the rock of St. Helena, the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia made a compact, which was called the Holy Alliance, with the principal and excellent object of maintaining peace. It is not easy to estimate how far it succeeded in that good aim, because we cannot be sure how many wars were checked by the existence of the alliance. Probably we ought to give it credit for some negative results of this kind which do not make any show in the story.

It had one curious effect, at all events. The Spanish settlements in South America had taken advantage of the distracted condition of Europe to declare their independence of the mother country. Spain appealed to the Holy Alliance to help her in regaining them, and the Alliance received the appeal favourably. But, before anything came of it, the United States put forward a famous declaration, known as the Monroe Doctrine, saying that they would not tolerate any interference, or any further colonisation, by any European Power, in either of the American Continents. Even so, Spain and the Holy Alliance might possibly have proceeded with their project had Great Britain favoured it. But Great Britain, on the contrary, was found to be not at all in its favour—for one thing her own experience in attempting to bring American colonists under a home Government which they disliked had not been encouraging—so the idea of putting pressure on the Spaniards in South America was at once and finally abandoned. It could not have been undertaken with any prospect of success if two nations so dominant at sea as Great Britain and the United States were opposed to it.

This Holy Alliance was formed between the three most powerful and most despotic rulers in Europe. Its essential idea was to maintain peace and order, but, as was evident from this very design of forcibly helping Spain to bring back her South American sheep into the home fold, it was peace and order according to the ideas of these despotic rulers. That is to say, that its ideals were in no accord with the spirit of freedom which had been let loose by the French Revolution, and was still working throughout the world, although for the moment it had lost some of its vitality because of the alarm excited by the extreme violence of that Revolution.

Both the allied Emperors had within their boundaries peoples over whom they held a sovereignty by force, and much against the will of the governed. The Russian great bear had his paw on a prostrate, but always protesting, Poland. The Austrian double-headed eagle had occasion to be on watchful guard in two directions, both east and south-west. The rulers of all the States of Italy held their governments virtually under Austrian direction, and by none, except perhaps the Pope, whom she had been influential in restoring to his Papal States, was she beloved.

Austro-Hungarian War

But she had more cause for anxious watchfulness on the east. In course of the gradual relaxing of the Turk's grip on Europe, that Oriental power had been forced to relinquish Hungary to Austria at the end of the nineteenth century. The population of Hungary was mixed, but by far the largest blend in the mixture was of people of Magyar race, which had affinity with the Finns, the natives of Finland. The language and the chief men were Magyar. They never blended kindly with the Germanic Austrians, and were jealous in maintaining their own national identity. In 1833 they obtained the concession that the debates in their own Parliament might be conducted in the Magyar language. But there was ever this constant friction, the Austrian Crown trying to reduce the Hungarians to more complete dependence and the Hungarians constantly striving for more freedom. Finally war blazed out, from all this smouldering trouble, just before the middle of the century, when the Austrian Emperor abdicated in favour of Francis Joseph, his nephew, and the Hungarians refused to recognise the nephew as their king.

The Magyar orator and statesman, Kossuth, was the great figure in this gallant effort of the Hungarians for their liberty. In the early period of the struggle the Hungarians gained victories, and there was a moment when it seems that, had they pushed forward, they might have taken Vienna itself, Austria's capital city. But they did not so push on. The Austrian armies were reinforced, and then Austria called in the help of her friend in the Holy Alliance, Russia. That was a combination against which the Hungarians could not well be successful. Their revolt was put down with cruel severity. For the time being they gave up the idea of independence, though their sense of a nationality distinct from that of their conquerors remained as vivid as ever.

This rising, and its suppression, occurred in the years 1848 and 1849. By the year 1866 a rift had appeared in the Alliance so-called Holy; and Austria was actually at war with Prussia. The war arose out of a work of spoliation done by the two allies two years before, when they had combined to take the provinces of Schleswig-Holstein from under the rule of Denmark. The population of those provinces was in part Scandinavian and in part Germanic, so that they were divided in their political desires, some of the people favouring union with Denmark and others wishing to be taken into the Confederation of German States. On their own part they were claiming their independence of the Danish rule. There was therefore a certain excuse for the action of these two Holy Allies; but now, when they had done the act of robbery, they quarrelled over the division of the spoils. Prussia claimed to take both Schleswig and Holstein under her own dominance. Austria said that she should at least be given one of them for her share. The result was the outbreak of that which has been called the Seven Weeks' War, in which Prussia was completely victorious.

And in this brief campaign there were Hungarian legions fighting on the side of Prussia against Austria, their own sovereign. That, however, did not imply that Austria's sovereignty was weakened, and in the following year, that is, in 1867, Francis Joseph the Austrian Emperor, was formally crowned King of Hungary at Buda-Pesth, the Hungarian capital.

In this way Austria and Hungary came to stand in a curious position towards one another. They were two kingdoms under the same ruler—a double kingdom.

Another outcome of that Schleswig-Holstein conflict and of the Seven Weeks' War was that the Confederation of the German States was reconstituted. The old single confederation was broken up into a North German Confederation, of which Prussia was the head, and a South German Confederation, the river Maine being taken as the boundary between them. Austria stood apart politically, though geographically belonging to the Southern group.

In spite of her defeat then, Austria maintained her old dominance over Hungary, but she did not succeed in maintaining for long the far less definite dominance which the European Powers had assigned to her, at the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars, over the various States of Italy.

Italy was later than any other land of Europe in settling down into the national boundaries which remained without any break of importance until the Great War. We may indeed say that the very idea of Italy as a single nation had scarcely existed before the year 1830 or thereabouts. Men did not regard Italy as a unit; but thought of Tuscany, of Venice, of the Papal States, of the Kingdom of Naples, and so on.

The Young Italy Party

But the year 1831 was epoch-making, as we say, for Italy, because it was the year in which the great Italian patriot Mazzini began to gain men's attention. He formed what was styled the "Young Italy" party, of which the leading idea might be called, according to a phrase now in common use, "Italy for the Italians." He had this good ground to work on, that the people of Italy, speaking of the country as we know it to-day, were for the most part of the same stock and, with certain local differences, spoke the same language.

Mazzini then, and his "Young Italy" party, went working and speaking to inspire the people with their own views. Already there was a widespread hatred of the Austrians, which made these views acceptable. In 1846 a Pope of liberal tendencies came to the papal throne and accorded his subjects a measure of freedom which gave offence and alarm to the Austrians. They sent an army to subvert these popular measures, and on that there was a general rush to arms on part of the peoples of Central and Northern Italy.

For a while all went in favour of the Italian arms, but the Austrians brought reinforcements, the tide of Italian success was stayed, was driven back; by the middle of the century all was as before the rising—except that a keen national spirit had been aroused in the Italian people.

For a while it could not find expression. But in the year 1859 it at length found outlet by the help of a neighbour who had not usually played the part of Italy's friend in our story. Already, ten years before, the French had taken a hand in the internal struggles of Italy. They had captured Rome, when its citizens had declared for a republic and had driven out their Pope; and had restored the Pope to the sovereignty of his Papal States.

But in the interval strange things had been happening in France. The Bourbon who was brought back to the French throne at the end of the Napoleonic wars, and his younger brother who succeeded him, ruled not much more wisely than their fathers. Bitter experience had taught them nothing. In 1830 the mob of Paris rose against the king, forced him to flee for his life, and elected his relative, Louis Philippe, of the younger, the Orleans, branch, king in his stead. He was acceptable to the people as the son of that Philippe who had been, entitled Philippe "Egalité," because he took the side of the people in the early days of the French Revolution.

Louis Philippe ruled France from 1830 to 1848, and then his government also gave offence. Again, there was a rising of the people of Paris, supported by the old soldiers of the National Guard, which the king had unwisely disbanded. Again the rising was successful, and now it was no longer a king of any kind that the vote of the people called to govern them. They declared for a republic, and as President they elected one of the deputies to the Assembly. The name of that deputy was Louis Napoleon, and he was nephew of the great Emperor. Twice he had made attempts to seize the government by force, but each time with so little success as to seem merely ridiculous.

From the moment of his election he began to have difficulties with the Assembly. Its members still seem to have regarded their President as a man of small account, an adventurer, trading on the reputation of his name, who twice had made himself a laughing stock. Then, on a certain night in 1851, he sent soldiers to the houses of the leaders who opposed him in the Assembly. The soldiers took the surprised statesmen from their beds and threw them into prisons. The next morning Paris awoke to find its walls placarded with the announcement that the Assembly was dissolved and that Paris was under martial law.

Napoleon III

The people were reconciled to the surprising stroke by the right of universal suffrage—every man of age to have a vote—being restored to them. There was an attempt at a counter-stroke; but after some hundreds had been shot down, as by that "whiff of grapeshot" with which this Napoleon's uncle had dispersed the Paris mob years before, all further trouble ceased. Yet another change in the constitution of the government appointed Louis Napoleon ruler of France for ten years. Less than a year later he was proclaimed Emperor of the French with the style of Napoleon III.; for the title of Napoleon II. had been given to the son of Napoleon I. who had died without ever reigning as Emperor.

There had been many adventures in the new Emperor's life. In his young days he had served with the Italian revolutionists against the Papal States, and had thus a rather personal interest in the Young Italy movement of Mazzini. It is certain too, and very natural, that he felt the influence of his name, and the tradition of his uncle's glory. The very fact that he had followed that uncle to the imperial throne would strengthen that influence. In obedience to it he was impelled to lead France to further adventures, in some small imitation of that uncle's grandiose schemes. Moreover, his hold on the throne was none too secure: the more distraction he could find abroad for the restless spirit of the people, the less risk there was of disturbances to shake him from the throne at home.

Some such blend of motives seems to have driven him to be constantly seeking occasions to put his armies in the field. He found such occasion first against Russia—against Russia, and in support of the Turk!

It was a curious reversal of all that seems right and natural, though already we have seen the Turk strangely and occasionally allied with one Christian power against another. But generally we have found the Turk regarded as the common foe against whom all Christendom must combine. The truth is that the Turk was no longer at this time the power to be dreaded that he had been. He had for long been standing on the defensive in Europe, trying, but on the whole rather failing, to hold what he had won.

And on the other hand Russia, now the Turk's principal foe, had become so powerful that all Europe was afraid of her, afraid of her upsetting that "balance of power" in Europe of which we now begin to hear a good deal. In particular, she was reaching down to get Constantinople for her port; and France, and other nations of Europe, conceived it their business to see that she did not get it, with all the increase of power that it would bring her.

The Crimean War

To that opinion Napoleon III., a man of character and abilities which have puzzled all historians, but certainly a man of much astuteness, had brought opinion in Great Britain. Great Britain was beginning, on her own account, to fear the Russian push down towards the northern bounds of her Indian possessions. And so now, that is to say, most particularly in 1854, we see another reversal, another happening rather different from all that the story has been wont to show us. For we see now those old enemies, England and France, in friendly alliance together, partners in the very fruitless enterprise known as the Crimean War. It was fought with much bloodshed and misery and cost to all three nations involved, and ended in a barren victory for the English and French.

Possibly it did check the Russians in their movement towards Constantinople, possibly it did something to maintain that much desired balance of power; but of positive result there was little or even none.

Nor did the Crimean War put a final end to the troubles between Russia and Turkey. Russia, as the great Slav power, was sure to find herself opposed to Turkey, who ruled over the Slavs in portions of the Balkans. There was war between them again, thirty years later, in 1877, but yet again its result solved no problems.

Shortly after the conclusion of his Crimean enterprise the Emperor went adventuring again—on the adventure at which I have already hinted—and this time, it must be admitted, with a far more evident mark set upon the world's story as its outcome. For in 1859, in conjunction with the Sardinian army, we find him helping the Italians, inspired by their new sense of nationality, to express their hatred for the domination of Austria. Again following the footsteps of his great uncle, he defeated the Austrians in two successive battles in the North of Italy, and drove them out of Lombardy.

Meanwhile, under the popular leader Garibaldi, the southern part of the peninsula had been won for the Italian people in 1860. An Italian Parliament, so called for the first time, was summoned, and the King of Sardinia elected King of Italy, though not yet with a kingship over the whole of what we now call Italy. There were, still outstanding, Venice and the Papal States. As the price of her help, France received the Sardinian provinces of Savoy and Nice.

GARIBALDI.
GARIBALDI.