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manhefnawi

France - France, 1815-1940 | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • King Louis XVIII’s second return from exile was far from glorious. Neither the victorious powers nor Louis’s French subjects viewed his restoration with much enthusiasm, yet there seemed to be no ready alternative to Bourbon rule.
  • Within France, political tensions were exacerbated by Napoleon’s mad gamble and by the mistakes committed during the first restoration. The problem facing the Bourbons would have been difficult enough without these tensions
  • The most heterogeneous of all was the independent group—an uneasy coalition of republicans, Bonapartists, and constitutional monarchists brought together by their common hostility to the Bourbons and their common determination to preserve or restore many of the Revolutionary reforms.
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  • Spain had been in a state of quasi-civil war since 1820, when a revolt by the so-called liberal faction in the army had forced King Ferdinand VII to grant a constitution and to authorize the election of a parliament. The European powers, disturbed at the state of semianarchy in Spain, accepted a French offer to restore Ferdinand’s authority by forcible intervention.
  • In the elections of 1824 the ultras increased their grip on the Chamber and won a further victory in September 1824 when the aged Louis XVIII died, leaving the throne to a new king who was the very embodiment of the ultra spirit.
  • Charles X, the younger brother of Louis XVIII, had spent the Revolutionary years in exile and had returned embittered rather than chastened by the experience.
  • a return to the unsullied principle of divine right, buttressed by the restored authority of the established church.
  • King and ministers prepared a set of decrees that dissolved the newly elected Chamber, further restricted the already narrow suffrage, and stripped away the remaining liberty of the press. These July Ordinances, made public on the 26th, completed the polarization process and ensured that the confrontation would be violent.
  • Charles X threw himself enthusiastically into the campaign for Catholic revival. The anticlericals of the liberal left were outraged,
  • King Charles and his ultra ministers might nevertheless have remained in solid control if they had been shrewd and sensitive men, aware of the rise of public discontent and flexible enough to appease it. Instead, they forged stubbornly ahead on the road to disaster.
  • the republicans of Paris began to organize; an Orleanist faction emerged, looking to a constitutional monarchy headed by the king’s cousin, Louis-Philippe-Joseph, duc d’Orléans.
  • Some of Polignac’s ministers urged a royal coup d’état at once, before the rejuvenated opposition could grow too strong.
  • Under the Bourbons several new missionary orders and lay organizations were founded in an effort to revive the faith and to engage in good works.
  • The king retaliated by dissolving the Chamber and ordering new elections in July.
Javier E

200 Years After Battle, Some Hard Feelings Remain - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • While the battle ended two centuries ago, however, hard feelings have endured. Memories are long here, and not everyone here shares Britain’s enthusiasm for celebrating Napoleon’s defeat.
  • Belgium, of course, did not exist in 1815. Its Dutch-speaking regions were part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, while the French-speaking portion had been incorporated into the French Empire. Among French speakers, Mr. Jacobs said, Napoleon had a “huge influence — the administration, the Code Napoléon,” or reform of the legal system. While Dutch-speaking Belgians fought under Wellington, French speakers fought with Napoleon.
  • That distaste on the part of modern-day French speakers crystallized in resistance to a British proposal that, as part of the restoration of Hougoumont, a memorial be raised to the British soldiers who died defending its narrow North Gate at a critical moment on June 18, 1815, when Wellington carried the day. “Every discussion in the committee was filled with high sensitivity,” Mr. Jacobs recalled. “I said, ‘This is a condition for the help of the British,’ so the North Gate won the battle, and we got the monument.”
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  • If Belgium was reluctant to get involved, France was at first totally uninterested. “They told us, ‘We don’t want to take part in this British triumphalism,’ 
  • “In no way will this be Anglocentric or triumphalist in any way,” said Michael Mitchell, an aircraft consultant who volunteers as secretary of the organizing committee. “We never talk about a celebration, but a commemoration,”
  • “Many brave men died,” he said. “All the belligerents played an incredibly impressive role.”
  • For Germany, the events are welcome. Next year, commemorations will mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, but unlike that war the Napoleonic wars are not something the Germans may feel they have to apologize for.
  • In 2000, a group of Belgian taxpayers brought suit, demanding that the government rescind an agreement dating back to just after the battle under which the Duke of Wellington was given the rights to 2,600 acres around the battlefield. The lands were bringing in about $160,000 annually for the Wellington family, and the taxpayers argued it was time to end the arrangement. The case stagnated until 2009, when the finance minister, Didier Reynders, told Parliament that the government had no intention of backing out of its commitment, which was anchored in the 1839 Treaty of London guaranteeing the independence of Belgium.
  • “Our concern is the experience of the visitor,” Ms. Du Parc said. “What is the message? What is the legacy, what purpose does it serve?” She contrasted the Napoleonic wars with World War I, which was followed only two decades later by an even greater war.
  • Mr. Jacobs agreed. “Still today, you find Belgians on both sides,” he said, “but thanks to the British this foolish Napoleonic experience was brought to an end. It changed the history of Europe.” “It brought a hundred years of peace,” he said.
g-dragon

History of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars - 0 views

  • French Revolution
  • After the French Revolution transformed France and threatened the old order of Europe, France fought a series of wars against the monarchies of Europe to first protect and spread the revolution, and then to conquer territory. The later years were dominated by Napoleon and France’s enemy was seven coalitions of European states.
  • Austria and Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz - which asked Europe to act to restore the French monarchy – they actually worded the document to prevent war. However, France misinterpreted and decided to launch a defensive and pre-emptive war, declaring one in April 1792.
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  • A group of European powers opposed to these developments was now working as the First Coalition, the start of seven such groups formed to fight France before the end of 1815. Austria, Prussia, Spain, Britain and the United Provinces (Netherlands)
  • effectively mobilizing the whole of France into the army. A new chapter in warfare had been reached, and army sizes now began to rise greatly.
  • Napoleon was then given a chance to pursue a dream: attack in the Middle East, even on into threatening the British in India
  • Britain and France were briefly at peace but soon argued, the former wielding a superior navy and great wealth.
  • The relationship between Napoleon and Russia began to fall apart, and Napoleon resolved to act quickly to overawe the Russian tsar and bring him to heel. To this end, Napoleon gathered what was probably the largest army ever assembled in Europe, and certainly a force too big to adequately support. Looking for a quick, dominant victory, Napoleon pursued a retreating Russian army deep into Russia, before winning the carnage that was the Battle of Borodino and then taking Moscow.
  • But it was a pyrrhic victory, as Moscow was set alight and Napoleon was forced to retreat through the bitter Russian winter, damaging his army and ruining the French cavalry.
  • With Napoleon on the back foot and obviously vulnerable, a new Sixth Coalition was organized in 1813, and pushed across Europe, advancing where Napoleon was absent, and retreating where he was present.
  • He was sent to the island of Elba in exile.
  • With time to think while exiled in Elba, Napoleon resolved to try again, and in 1815 he returned to Europe. Amassing an army as he marched to Paris, turning those sent against him to his service, Napoleon attempted to rally support by making liberal concessions. He soon found himself faced by another coalition, the Seventh of the French Revolutionary and Napoleon Wars, which included Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia.
  • Napoleon was defeated, retreated, and forced to abdicate once more.
  • The monarchy was restored in France, and the heads of Europe gathered at the Congress of Vienna to redraw the map of Europe.
  • Europe would not be so disrupted again until World War 1 in 1914.
manhefnawi

House of Savoy | European dynasty | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • the ruling house of Italy from 1861 to 1946
  • acquired considerable territory in the western Alps where France, Italy, and Switzerland now converge
  • raised to ducal status within the Holy Roman Empire, and in the 18th century it attained the royal title (first of the kingdom of Sicily, then of Sardinia). Having contributed to the movement for Italian unification, the family became the ruling house of Italy in the mid-19th century and remained so until overthrown with the establishment of the Italian Republic in 1946
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  • By the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Victor Amadeus II (reigned 1675–1730) was raised in 1713 from duke to the status of a king as ruler of Sicily
  • During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), only Sardinia remained free of French control, but in 1815, Victor Emmanuel I (reigned 1802–21) added Genoa to the family’s holdings
  • At the beginning of the Risorgimento, the territory of the house of Savoy, centred on Piedmont, was unique among Italian states for its freedom from foreign influence and for its relative military strength. A liberal revolution in 1821 forced Victor Emmanuel I to abdicate in favour of his brother, Charles Felix. On the death of the latter in 1831, Charles Albert, of the Carignano branch of the family, obtained the throne. He contributed to the cause of unification under Piedmont’s leadership by modernizing his government
  • and fighting against Austrian power in Italy in the First War of Independence of 1848–49. Under his son Victor Emmanuel II (reigned 1849–1878, king of Italy from 1861), who supported Piedmont’s prime minister, Count Cavour, in the diplomatic maneuvering immediately before unification, the Kingdom of Italy was formed with the house of Savoy at its head
  • Victor Emmanuel III (reigned 1900–46), who remained as figurehead king during the Fascist regime, abdicated in 1946, at the end of World War II, in favour of his son Umberto II in an attempt to save the monarchy, but the Italian people voted in a referendum of June 2, 1946, for a republic, ending the rule of the house of Savoy
  • No longer royal, the Savoy family moved abroad, and the monarchist movement, strong in the 1950s, went into decline
manhefnawi

Return of the King: The Bourbon Restoration | History Today - 0 views

  • On June 18th, the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end Napoleon's attempted comeback in the Hundred Days
  • At this point, two centuries ago, the victorious Allies – Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia – would determine the fate of France
  • The Austrian chancellor, Metternich, came from Vienna, Tsar Alexander from St Petersburg and, from Berlin, the 72-year-old Prussian Marshal Blücher
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  • Since both the republican and imperial models were discredited and unacceptable to the victorious Allies, a royal restoration was inevitable; Wellington warned that there would be no peace in Europe unless the Bourbons mounted the throne again. The Congress of Vienna, held to define European frontiers after two decades of war, reversed Napoleon's conquests but was otherwise generous to France
  • The new monarch, Louis XVIII, had made a poor fist of it on his first return from exile in Britain in May 1814. He surrounded himself with appointees who had been out of government business for more than two decades and the first restoration was brought to an abrupt end by the Hundred Days. Louis fled once more, to return three weeks after Waterloo
  • Louis Stanislas Xavier Bourbon, grandson of Louis XV and brother of Louis XVI, became heir to the throne when Louis' son died in prison in 1795
  • If France is still France, it is thanks to the Russians
  • Ignoring the king's desire for national unity, royalists in various parts of the country exacted their revenge for events since the Revolution of 1789
  • The Allies imposed financial indemnities on an economy that had been weakened by the demands of Napoleon's constant war-making and the effects of the British naval blockade
  • At the end of November 1815 a white-faced Richelieu signed the definitive peace agreement dictated by the Allies, lamenting that 'all is finished (by) this fatal treaty'
  • Russia, Prussia and Austria proclaimed their Holy Alliance and Britain joined them in the Quadruple Alliance
  • Then came 15 years wandering around Europe, including two in remote Courland in the Baltic, after which he came to rest for seven years in England
  • France was on its way to being re-integrated into the European system. This reflected the country's continental importance; Europe could not function without it. The path to national recovery was faster than might have been expected in the summer of 1815
  • the Hexagon between the Alps and the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Channel could no longer aspire to dominate Europe as it had sought to do under Louis XIV and Bonaparte
brookegoodman

Battle of Waterloo - HISTORY - 0 views

  • The Battle of Waterloo, which took place in Belgium on June 18, 1815, marked the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century. Napoleon rose through the ranks of the French army during the French Revolution, seized control of the French government in 1799 and became emperor in 1804. Through a series of wars, he expanded his empire across western and central Europe. The Battle of Waterloo, in which Napoleon’s forces were defeated by the British and Prussians, marked the end of his reign and of France’s domination in Europe.
  • After seizing political power in France in a 1799 coup d’état, he was given the title of first consul and became France’s leading political figure.
  • In 1812, Napoleon led a disastrous invasion of Russia in which his army was forced to retreat and suffered massive casualties. At the same time, the Spanish and Portuguese, with assistance from the British, drove Napoleon’s forces from the Iberian Peninsula in the Peninsular War (1808-1814).
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  • On April 6, 1814, Napoleon, then in his mid-40s, was forced to abdicate the throne. With the Treaty of Fontainebleau, he was exiled to Elba, a Mediterranean island off the coast of Italy.
  • The new king, Louis XVIII, fled, and Napoleon embarked on what came to be known as his Hundred Days campaign.
  • Upon Napoleon’s return to France, a coalition of allies—the Austrians, British, Prussians and Russians—who considered the French emperor an enemy began to prepare for war. Napoleon raised a new army and planned to strike preemptively, defeating the allied forces one by one before they could launch a united attack against him.
  • Two days later, on June 18, Napoleon led his army of some 72,000 troops against the 68,000-man British army, which had taken up a position south of Brussels near the village of Waterloo.
  • Although Napoleon’s troops mounted a strong attack against the British, the arrival of the Prussians turned the tide against the French. The French emperor’s outnumbered army retreated in chaos.
  • Ultimately, the Battle of Waterloo marked the end of Napoleon’s storied military career. He reportedly rode away from the battle in tears.
  • Did you know? Today, the expression that someone has “met his Waterloo” means the person has suffered a decisive or final defeat or setback.
  • On June 22, 1815, Napoleon once again abdicated. That October, he was exiled to the remote, British-held island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic Ocean. He died there on May 5, 1821, at age 51, most likely from stomach cancer.
marvelgr

The Complex Life of Charles Maurice De Talleyrand - 0 views

  • While some tout him as one of the most skilled and proficient diplomats in French history, others paint him as a self-serving traitor, who betrayed the ideals of Napoleon and the French Revolution—liberty, equality, and fraternity. Today, the term “Talleyrand” is used to refer to the practice of skillfully deceitful diplomacy.
  • During his stay in the United States, Talleyrand lobbied the French government to allow him to return. Always the crafty negotiator, he succeeded and returned to France in September 1796. By 1797, Talleyrand, recently persona non grata in France, had been appointed the country’s foreign minister. Immediately after being appointed foreign minister, Talleyrand added to his infamous reputation of placing personal greed above duty by demanding the payment of bribes by American diplomats involved in the XYZ Affair, which escalated into the limited, undeclared Quasi-War with the United States from 1798 to 1799. 
  • Having resigned as Napoleon’s foreign minister, Talleyrand abandoned traditional diplomacy and sought peace by accepting bribes from the leaders of Austria and Russia in return for Napoleon’s secret military plans. At the same time, Talleyrand had started plotting with other French politicians on how to best protect their own wealth and status during the struggle for power they knew would erupt after Napoleon’s death. When Napoleon learned of these plots, he declared them treasonous. Though he still refused to discharge Talleyrand, Napoleon famously chastised him, saying he would “break him like a glass, but it’s not worth the trouble.”
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  • On April 1, 1814 Talleyrand convinced the French Senate to create a provisional government in Paris, with him as president. The next day, he led the French Senate in official deposing Napoleon as Emperor and forcing him into exile the island of Elba. On April 11, 1814, the French Senate, in approving the Treaty of Fontainebleau adopted a new constitution that returned power to the Bourbon monarchy.
  • Representing the aggressor nation, Talleyrand faced a daunting task in negotiating the Treaty of Paris. However, his diplomatic skills were credited for securing terms that were extremely lenient to France. When the peace talks began, only Austria, the United Kingdom, Prussia, and Russia were to be allowed to have decision-making power. France and the smaller European countries were to be allowed only to attend the meetings. However, Talleyrand succeeded in convincing the four powers to allow France and Spain to attend the backroom decision-making meetings. Now a hero to the smaller countries, Talleyrand proceeded to secure agreements under which France was allowed to maintain its pre-war 1792 boundaries without paying further reparations. Not only did he succeed in ensuring that France would not be partitioned by the victorious countries, he greatly enhanced his own image and standing in the French monarchy.
  • Though Napoleon was ultimately defeated in the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, Talleyrand’s diplomatic reputation had suffered in the process. Bowing to the wishes of his quickly expanding group of political enemies, he resigned in September 1815. For the next 15 years, Talleyrand publicly portrayed himself as an “elder statesman,” while continuing to criticize and scheme against King Charles X from the shadows.
  • Upon learning of Napoleon’s death in 1821, Talleyrand cynically commented, “It is not an event, it is a piece of news.”
  • Talleyrand may be the epitome of a walking contradiction. Clearly morally corrupt, he commonly used deceit as a tactic, demanded bribes from persons with whom he was negotiating, and openly lived with mistresses and courtesans for decades. Politically, many regard him as a traitor because of his support for multiple regimes and leaders, some of which were hostile toward each other. On the other hand, as philosopher Simone Weil contends, some criticism of Talleyrand’s loyalty may be overstated, as while he not only served every regime that ruled France, he also served the “France behind every regime.”
  • “I am more afraid of an army of one hundred sheep led by a lion than an army of one hundred lions led by a sheep.”
  • And perhaps most self-revealing: “Man was given speech to disguise his thoughts.”
fischerry

French Revolution: Effects of the Revolution - 0 views

  • The French Revolution, though it seemed a failure in 1799 and appeared nullified by 1815, had far-reaching results.
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    The quote shared from this article seems to be both arguments from our third French Revolution debate.
manhefnawi

War of the Austrian Succession | Europe [1740-1748] | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • with the overall aim of crippling or destroying Austria, France’s long-standing continental enemy
  • Frederick II of Prussia invaded Silesia, one of the richest Habsburg provinces. His army defeated the Austrians at Mollwitz in April 1741 and overran Silesia
  • an alliance with Bavaria and Spain and, later, with Saxony and Prussia against Austria
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  • The Austrian ruler Maria Theresa (daughter of Charles VI) derived her main foreign support from Britain, which feared that, if the French achieved hegemony in Europe, the British commercial and colonial empire would be untenable. Thus, the War of the Austrian Succession was, in part, one phase of the struggle between France and Britain that lasted from 1689 to 1815
  • Austria temporarily neutralized Prussia by allowing it to retain Silesia in July 1742, drove the French and Bavarians out of Bohemia (1742), and overran Bavaria. Austria’s allies—the British, Hanoverians, and Hessians—defeated the French
  • the emperor Charles VII (Charles Albert of Bavaria), who was also chief claimant to the Austrian succession, died. His son Maximilian III Joseph gave up these claims and pledged to support Francis Stephen at the imperial election in return for Austria’s restoration of its conquests to Bavaria
  • The British had withdrawn their army to England to oppose the French-supported efforts of the young pretender, Charles Edward, to win the thrones of Scotland and England for the Stuarts
  • The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (see Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of) in October 1748 preserved the bulk of the Austrian inheritance for Maria Theresa. Prussia remained in possession of Silesia
krystalxu

Age of Revolution: Italian Nationalism/Unification - 0 views

  • The rise of nationalism in Italy and Germany were two major events that dominated European history after 1815.
  • Piedmont, Tuscany, and Rome also had similar constitutions. In Milan and Venice, the respective capitals of Austrian Lombardy and Venetia, there were revolutionary upsurges.
  • The economic exploitation of Venetia by Austria fueled the demand for independence. The desire for political change was voiced by all, including manufacturers, bankers, and intellectuals.
manhefnawi

Nicholas I: Russia's Last Absolute Monarch | History Today - 0 views

  • Nicholas’ power as an Autocrat was indeed so absolute that any command, even as extreme as the one to march on France, was fully within his power should he choose to exercise it
  • Throughout his reign, Nicholas jealously guarded the recognized prerogatives of the ruler in all aspects of government and he exercised a more personal control in state affairs than any other ruler since Peter the Great
  • Only a strong Emperor could bear the crushing burden of such a system of personal government and, as events after 1848 made clear, even Russia’s iron-willed Emperor himself could not bear such a burden in the face of serious crises.
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  • Indeed, the second quarter of the nineteenth century saw the greatest flowering of Russian literature in the Imperial period
  • As the third son of the Emperor Paul I, Nicholas Pavlovich was given the traditional education of a Russian Grand Duke. He was taught not the art of statecraft, but that of military command; more precisely, in view of his father’s love of the parade ground, he was trained for command on the drill field. Because of his junior position in the Imperial family he was never regarded as a possible candidate for the throne during his childhood or adolescent years; but, during the last decade of his elder brother Alexander I’s reign (1815-1825), the order of succession changed dramatically.
  • Nicholas, as the third son of Paul I, became the heir apparent. As such, the matter of succession seemed clear enough
  • The ill-advised secrecy about the succession soon bore chaotic fruit in late 1825 when Alexander died under mysterious circumstances while on a visit to southern Russia
  • In the absence of his two older brothers, he often had acted as the senior member of the royal family, but even so, Constantine Pavlovich remained heir-apparent in the eyes of the senior state counsellors, the officers of the army, and the nobility. Because he felt that he could not assume the Imperial title until Constantine had publicly renounced the crown, Nicholas therefore proclaimed his brother Emperor when news of Alexander’s death reached St Petersburg in late November 1825
  • Constantine chose to regard his younger brother’s title to the throne as an accomplished fact and, for reasons best known only to himself, he steadfastly refused to come to St Petersburg from Warsaw publicly to renounce his rights to the throne
  • As the victor in the revolt of December 14th, he must defend the full power of autocracy by all possible means, and all threats to such power must be eliminated; translated into terms of foreign policy, this meant that he must stand as the defender of the status quo, of the Holy Alliance of his brother Alexander, in Europe
  • Nicholas I must be considered Russia’s last absolute monarch, therefore, not because his power was unlimited, but because never again after his reign would the power of the Autocrat be completely undivided
  • Nicholas thoroughly distrusted the intelligentsia, he also was apprehensive about the nobility and had no confidence in the regular bureaucracy to plan and execute changes in the existing order. The nobility, he felt, could never be trusted to set aside the social and economic interests of their class in order to work for the welfare of the state as a whole. Further, Nicholas saw in the actions of the Decembrists a potential threat to his power from the nobility
  • From the beginning of his reign, then, Nicholas was aware that changes must come, and he had concluded that these matters could best be accomplished by concentrating the work of reform in institutions over which he could exercise direct personal control. One should, at this point, examine how his efforts worked in practice
  • Agents of the Third Section were everywhere and any unusual event, even such a seemingly insignificant occurrence as the arrival of a stranger in a provincial town, made its way into the Section’s files in St Petersburg
  • the peasantry in Russia did require attention for the conditions under which they lived were extremely harsh. Yet a solution to the serf problem, whether in terms of abolishing serfdom or simply ameliorating peasant living conditions, was beyond the capacities of the system that Nicholas had created. Reforms of state finances, the codification of the law, and the creation of an efficient and paternalistic gendarmerie were possible in Russia of the 1830s and 1840s because their success depended neither on the full co-operation of all levels of the bureaucracy nor on that of the nobility.
  • The Emperor’s reaction to the revolutions of 1848 caused the Nicholas System to degenerate rapidly from a type of paternal state conservatism to a system of stark, sterile reaction. After 1848 it became impossible to discuss progressive ideas in print, and even the works of Karamzin, the court historian during the reign of Alexander I, were censored
  • That the Nicholas System was severely shaken by the revolutions of 1848 is clear enough; nevertheless, it managed to survive the shock. The following year, in response to the pleas of the Habsburg Emperor, Russia’s armies crushed the revolt of Kossuth’s rebels in Elungary, and a year later Russia preserved the uneasy balance of power between the Habsburg Monarchy and Prussia in Germany by dictating the Convention of Olmutz
  • Crushing defeats in the Crimean War dealt the death blow to the Nicholas System. From the very first losses in the South, it was evident that the Empire of 1854 was only a failing shadow of the Empire of 1812 whose armies had driven the Grande Armee from Russia and had pursued Napoleon into Germany. The defeat in the Crimea meant that broad and fundamental reforms must come to Russia, and the Nicholas System had paved the way for them by its failure
  • When Alexander II mounted the throne in 1855, the nobility was indeed weaker, for the policy that Nicholas had pursued toward them during the first twenty years of his reign had taken its toll. Further, the lack of a legal basis for the nobility’s power over their serfs was now clear as a result of the compilation of the laws that Nicholas’ government had achieved
  • Nicholas himself did not live to see the Great Reforms nor did he live to see the final failure of his system; he died in 1855 while war still raged in the Crimea. His system had preserved the absolute power of the Autocrat intact at a time when absolute monarchy had vanished from the scene in Western Europe. The price for preserving an anachronistic system was paid in the Crimea, but it was also paid by Russian society as well
manhefnawi

Napoleon III, Lord Palmerston and the Entente Cordiale | History Today - 0 views

  • In July 1830, the ‘bourgeois revolution’ in France ousted Charles X and the Second Bourbon Restoration, and a new era in Anglo-French relations ensued. The terms set down at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 following Napoleon’s defeat were now considered academic. Britain, as victor against France, had been obliged to uphold the articles of the various treaties, designed, as one of them stated, for the purpose of ‘maintaining the order of things re-established in France’. The quasi-constitutional Orleans monarchy of Charles X’s successor Louis-Philippe was therefore recognised by Britain
  • In a diplomatic dispatch of 1832, Lord Granville, British ambassador in Paris, noted that Perier, then president of the Council, believed that ‘the welfare of France and England and the peace of Europe depended upon an intimate alliance and concert between the two governments’
  • By 1848, once more heading foreign affairs (June 1846 to December 1851), the ‘Jupiter Anglicanus of the Foreign Office’ allowed Anglo-French relations to sink to a level not witnessed since 1814. He had orchestrated the creation of Belgium in 1831, a supposedly neutral country but one which would naturally  be pro-British and often anti-French
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  • Five years later he had attempted to manipulate the outcome of the marriage of Isabella II of Spain against French interests in order to align Britain with a liberal Spain
  • In February 1848, a new revolution in Paris threatened to upset Anglo-French relations altogether
  • he Second Republic was therefore seen as unstable and potentially militaristic, and Palmerston’s reaction was to issue a confidential  paper outlining government preparations for an imminent invasion of Britain
  • There was considerable relief in London, then, when in October the political body in France agreed to usher in a republic under the authority of a president elected for four years by universal adult manhood suffrage. The future of Anglo-French relations would now hinge  on the identity of the new president
  • In December, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew to the great defeated enemy of England, was elected first president of the Second Republic, gaining 74.3 per cent of the 7,449,471 votes cast in metropolitan France
  • In Britain, initial reaction to the news was mixed. Louis-Napoléon had spent three years in exile in England between 1831 and 1848, and over five separate visits had acquired a respect for, and knowledge of, the country unrivalled among European heads of state
  • The sepoy revolt in India in May 1857 could hardly be blamed on Napoleon III, but in some quarters the suggestion was made that he was secretly helping them. A short visit to Osborne in August to meet the Queen and Palmerston put the matter straight (though none there had believed it).
  • When the French navy was not seen to be steaming up the Thames the panic dissipated, but the fears were resurrected after Louis-Napoléon’s coup d’état of December 2nd, 1851, dissolving the National Assembly and declaring a new constitution. Opinion polarised both in France and Britain; on the one hand Louis-Napoléon was declared a ‘saviour of society’ and on the other the ‘Antichrist’
  • even the Queen hoped that Louis-Napoléon’s enemies abroad would remain ‘perfectly passive’. But the press and its public were united in bitter condemnation. By January 1852, the poet Coventry Patmore had persuaded nineteen friends to form the first Rifle Club as part of a nation-wide army of volunteers to repel, as he put it later, ‘the threats of the French colonels and by suspicions of the intentions of Louis-Napoléon
  • The second invasion panic did not subside until a formal alliance was established in March 1854, preceding the Crimean War. In April 1855 the Emperor Napoleon III (as Louis-Napoléon had declared himself in December 1852) enjoyed a successful state visit to Britain, reciprocated by an equally successful visit by Victoria to Paris in August. Throughout the Crimean War, Napoleon III allowed Britain to lead affairs
  • personal relations between Palmerston and Napoleon III continued to deteriorate throughout the early 1860s
  • The incident most dangerous to Franco-British relations occurred on January 14th, 1858, when an attempt was made to assassinate Napoleon III in the streets of Paris, the plot hatched in London by political refugees
  • But popular opinion in England remained suspicious of the Second Republic, and the economic upturn was accompanied by the first of three intense ‘invasion panics’, which recalled to mind those set in motion many years earlier by Napoleon I
  • Outright war between France and England might have resulted had two different players been involved: Napoleon III apologised to Lord Cowley, Britain’s ambassador in Paris, for having overlooked the jingoistic pronouncements in Le Moniteur universel, while Palmerston attempted to introduce a Conspiracy Bill, which would have elevated the crime of conspiring to murder persons abroad from a misdemeanour to a felony.
  • To Napoleon III from Queen Victoria’ promised to him in 1855 but somehow ‘forgotten’. The entente had been saved by an imperial whisker
  • In the wake of the assassination attempt Napoleon III was keen to demonstrate that his improvements to the naval base at Cherbourg were not a threat to Britain, and in August 1858 he invited Victoria and Albert, several politicians and naval men, to inspect them as a mark of trust.
  • The third invasion panic, the following year, originated in Napoleon III’s military attempt in May 1859 to oust Habsburg influence in Italy and prepare the peninsula for some form of unification and self-government
  • France’s annexation of Nice and Savoy in 1860 as a reward from Piedmont-Sardinia following the war in Italy was wholeheartedly approved by the local populace in a referendum
  • Napoleon III’s attempt to set up by direct intervention a European monarchy in Mexico from October 1861 (when a French, Spanish and British naval fleet worked in concert to extract the payment of debts from a corrupt Mexican administration) was approved by Palmerston but again vigorously opposed by Albert and all the royal family – and was unpopular in Britain, although offset by several other actions. Napoleon III’s vigorous support of free trade resulted in the pioneering Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 which, while it undoubtedly harmed a minority of trades, vastly improved the majority, increasing prosperity and mutual trust
  • Napoleon III was careful to appear subservient, enabling Palmerston to acknowledge that the British ‘throughout had their own way and ... led the way’
  • The Duruz were the aggressors in this instance, and thousands of Christians were killed during a period resolved only through French diplomacy, Turkish aid and Algerian sympathy
  • Napoleon III reacted by sighing that once he used to say ‘avec Lord Palmerston on peut faire les grandes choses’ but now he seemed determined to prevent him doing anything at all
  • The most bizarre was that Napoleon III was looking for the nephew of Marie Cantillon, a man who had attempted to assassinate the Duke of Wellington in Paris in 1818, to pay him money Napoléon I had bequeathed Cantillon in his recently published will
  • Napoleon III’s attempt to set up a European monarchy in Mexico was his only independent action undertaken in the 1860s to meet with Palmerston’s general approval, but only for what the scheme potentially meant for British trade
  • Following military defeat by Prussia and deposition by Parisian ideologues in 1870, Napoleon III died in England on January 9th, 1873.
  • Gladstone soon came to terms with the new Third French Republic, and the rest of Europe again took Britain’s lead in officially recognising the new French regime
  • The Napoleonic wars did not end at Waterloo, but in Paris in the hands of Napoleon III. Punch stated why on January 18th, 1873
manhefnawi

Louis-Philippe | Facts, Reign, & Legacy | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • Louis-Philippe was the eldest son of Louis-Philippe Joseph de Bourbon-Orléans, duc de Chartres, and Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre. At first styled duc de Valois, he became duc de Chartres when his father inherited the title duc d’Orléans in 1785.
  • Despite the fact that he had voted for the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, the elder Louis-Philippe was arrested in Paris after his son’s desertion.
  • The execution of Philippe Égalité in November 1793 made Louis-Philippe the duc d’Orléans, and he became the centre of the Orleanist intrigues. He refused to countenance any plan to set himself up as king in France, however, possibly because he was negotiating with the revolutionaries for the release of his two brothers,
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  • the power of the first consul was so well established that there was no hope of intervening in France. Instead, the house of Orléans became reconciled with the elder branch of the Bourbon family. Even so, Louis-Philippe never took up arms to fight with émigré forces for the royalist cause against other Frenchmen
  • On November 25 he married Marie-Amélie, a daughter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Maria Carolina of Austria. About this time there was some suggestion that Louis-Philippe should join the English forces in the Peninsular War. Maria Carolina—who held the real power in Naples and whose sister Marie-Antoinette had been executed by the French Revolutionary government—had long backed the campaign against the Revolutionary armies and Napoleon. She certainly would have supported such a move by her son-in-law, but nothing came of it, probably because Louis XVIII again feared any activity that might further the Orleanist cause.
  • Louis-Philippe returned to France at the First Restoration (1814). Although Louis XVIII refused to grant Louis-Philippe the style of royal highness (later allowed to him by Charles X), the king did grant Louis-Philippe the dignities traditionally held by the head of his family. More important perhaps, Louis-Philippe regained possession of the family estates and forests that had not been sold after his own emigration and his father’s execution. During the Hundred Days (1815) he returned to England instead of following the court to Ghent.
  • Under the second Restoration the duc d’Orléans was a steady and more or less open adherent of the liberal opposition
  • when Louis-Philippe had become king and his eldest son, Ferdinand-Louis-Philippe, was heir to the royal domain, he could reserve the Orléans inheritance for his other sons instead of merging it with the crown lands.
  • In 1830 Charles X’s attempt to enforce repressive ordinances touched off a rebellion (July 27–30) that gave Louis-Philippe his long-awaited opportunity to gain power.
  • The revolution that brought Louis-Philippe to power constituted a victory for the upper bourgeoisie over the aristocracy. The new ruler was titled Louis-Philippe, king of the French, instead of Philip VII, king of France. He consolidated his power by steering a middle course between the right-wing extreme monarchists (the Legitimists) on the one side and the socialists and other republicans (including the Bonapartists) on the other. The July Monarchy, with its “Citizen King,” could never command the support of all the factions, however. Its opponents resorted to political intrigue, insurrection, and even assassination plots. In July 1835 an attempt on the king’s life by Giuseppe Fieschi resulted in the deaths of 18 people and the wounding of many more, but the royal family escaped injury. Throughout Louis-Philippe’s reign, it was said that “for shooting kings there is no close[d] season.”
  • before abdicating in favour of his 10-year-old grandson, Henri Dieudonné d’Artois, comte de Chambord. On August 7 the provisional government of deputies and peers present in Paris declared the throne vacant. Following the terminology of the Constitution of 1791, Louis-Philippe was on August 9 proclaimed “king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the people.” A modified version of the Charter of 1814 was issued, which the new king was obliged to accept.
  • The death of the popular duc d’Orléans in a carriage accident in July 1842 not only grieved Louis-Philippe very deeply but also seriously weakened the dynasty. The new heir to the throne, the duke’s son Philippe d’Orléans, comte de Paris, was an infant for whom a regency had to be prearranged.
  • The marriage (August 1832) of his daughter Marie-Louise to Queen Victoria’s uncle Leopold I, king of the Belgians, established an excellent relationship between Paris and London, almost foreshadowing the Entente Cordiale.
  • The British were finally alienated by Louis-Philippe’s policy on the “Spanish marriages.” In an attempt to revive the traditional family alliance between the French and Spanish Bourbons, he had at first wanted his sons Henri d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, and Antoine, duc de Montpensier, to marry Spanish Queen Isabella II and her sister and heiress presumptive, the infanta Luisa Fernanda, respectively. The British objected to this obvious threat of French predominance in Spain, and in 1843 Louis-Philippe agreed that Isabella should marry neither Henri nor the British nominee, Prince Albert’s cousin Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, but rather some Spanish Bourbon instead.
  • French opposition to the regime had become much more embittered. The industrial and agricultural depression of 1846 aroused widespread popular discontent, and Louis-Philippe’s constant refusal of any electoral reform meant that many members of the lower middle class—from whom he might still have drawn support—remained without the vote. Finally, his narrow-minded conservatism and his unwillingness to seek any solution for pressing political and social problems drove many divergent interests into union against him.
  • The July Monarchy was but one casualty of the great revolutionary movement that swept through Europe in 1848. In any case, a change had come to seem unavoidable in France.
  • The July Monarchy was really an anachronism. To the French people—for whom, whether or not they favoured the institution, monarchy meant the splendours and absolutism of the ancien régime
  • In power Louis-Philippe strove to implement his desire to rule as well as to reign. The political difficulties with which he was faced revealed in him the weaknesses of an obstinate man; increasingly, his only response to crises was words and theories, and ultimately inaction lost him his crown.
brookegoodman

Otto von Bismarck - Biography, World Wars & Facts - HISTORY - 0 views

  • Germany became a modern, unified nation under the leadership of the “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who between 1862 and 1890 effectively ruled first Prussia and then all of Germany. A master strategist, Bismarck initiated decisive wars with Denmark, Austria and France to unite 39 independent German states under Prussian leadership.
  • Bismarck was educated in Berlin and after university took a series of minor diplomatic posts before retiring, at age 24, to run his family’s estate at Kneiphof. In 1847 he married and was sent to Berlin as a delegate to the new Prussian parliament, where he emerged as a reactionary voice against the liberal, anti-autocratic Revolutions of 1848.
  • William I became Prussia’s king in 1861 and a year later appointed Bismarck as his chief minister. Though technically deferring to William, in reality Bismarck was in charge, manipulating the king with his intellect and the occasional tantrum while using royal decrees to circumvent the power of elected officials.
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  • Bismarck was less circumspect in his conduct of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). Seeing the opportunity to unify Germany’s loose confederations against an outside enemy, Bismarck stirred political tensions between France and Prussia, famously editing a telegram from William I to make both countries feel insulted by the other. The French declared war, but the Prussians and their German allies won handily. Prussia levied an indemnity, annexed the French border provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and crowned William emperor of a unified Germany (the Second Reich) in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles—a tremendous insult to the French.
  • In the 1880s Bismarck set aside his conservative impulses to counter the socialists by creating Europe’s first modern welfare state, establishing national healthcare (1883), accident insurance (1884) and old age pensions (1889). Bismarck also hosted the 1885 Berlin Conference that ended the “Scramble for Africa,” dividing the continent between the European powers and establishing German colonies in Cameroon, Togoland and East and Southwest Africa.
  • William I died in 1888 and was succeeded by his son Frederick III and then his grandson William II, both of whom Bismarck found difficult to control. In 1890 the new king forced Bismarck out. William II was left in control of a flourishing unified state but was ill-equipped to maintain Bismarck’s carefully manipulated balance of international rivalries. Respected and honored by the time of his death eight years later, Bismarck quickly became a quasi-mythic figure invoked by political leaders calling for strong German leadership—or for war.
Javier E

FC95: The Age of Louis XIV, the "Sun King" (1643-1715) - The Flow of History - 2 views

  • Introduction From 1643 to 1815 France dominated much of Europe's political history and culture.  Foreigners came to France, preferring it to the charms of their own homeland.  Even today, many still consider it the place to visit in Europe and the world.  In the 1600's and 1700's there was a good reason for this dominance: population.  France had 23,000,000 people in a strongly unified state compared to 5,000,000 in Spain and England, and 2,000,000 in the Dutch Republic and the largest of the German states.  This reservoir of humanity first reached for and nearly attained the dominance of Europe under Louis XIV, the "Sun King".
  • Louis' early life and reign (1643-61) Louis was born in 1638 and succeeded his father, Louis XIII, as king in 1643 at the age of five.  Luckily, another able minister and Richelieu's successor, Cardinal Mazarin, continued to run the government.  In 1648, encroachment by the government on the nobles' power, poor harvests, high taxes, and unemployed mercenaries plundering the countryside after the Thirty Years War led to a serious revolt known as the Fronde, named after the slingshot used by French boys.  Louis and the court barely escaped from Paris with their lives.  Although Mazarin and his allies crushed the rebels after five hard years of fighting (1648-53), Louis never forgot the fear and humiliation of having to run from the Parisian mob and fight for his life and throne against the nobles.  This bitter experience would heavily influence Louis' policies when he ruled on his own.
  • Louis XIV may not have said, "I am the state", but he ruled as if he had said it.  Louis was the supreme example of the absolute monarch, and other rulers in Europe could do no better than follow his example.  Although Louis wished to be remembered as a great conqueror, his first decade of active rule was largely taken up with building France's internal strength.  There are two main areas of Louis' rule we will look at here: finances and the army. Louis' finance minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert, was an astute businessman of modest lineage, being the son of a draper.  Colbert's goal was to build France's industries and reduce foreign imports.  This seventeenth century policy where a country tried to export more goods and import more gold and silver was known as mercantilism.  While its purpose was to generate revenue for the king, it also showed the growing power of the emerging nation state.  Colbert declared his intention to reform the whole financial structure of the French state, and he did succeed in reducing the royal debt by cutting down on the number of tax farms he sold and freeing royal lands from mortgage.  Colbert especially concentrated on developing France's economy in three ways.
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  • Versailles Louis' religious faith was largely a superficial one attached to the elaborate ritual of the Catholic mass.  This love of ritual also showed itself in how Louis ran his court at his magnificent palace of Versailles, several miles outside of Paris.  Much of the reason for building Versailles goes back to the Fronde that had driven Louis from Paris as a young boy.  Ever since then, Louis had distrusted the volatile Paris mob and was determined to move the court away from the influence of that city.  Versailles was also the showpiece of Louis' reign, glorifying him as the Sun King with its magnificent halls and gardens.
  • Religion was one aspect of Louis' reign that illustrated the absolute nature of his monarchy quite well.  Louis himself was quite a pious Catholic, learning that trait from his mother.  However, in the spirit of the day, he saw religion as a department of state subordinate to the will of the king.  By the same token, not adhering to the Catholic faith was seen as treason. As a result, Louis gradually restricted the rights of the French Huguenots and finally, in 1685, revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given them religious freedom since the end of the French Wars of Religion in 1598.  This drove 200,000 Huguenots out of France, depriving it of some of its most skilled labor.  Thus Louis let his political and religious biases ruin a large sector of France's economy.
  • Results of Louis' reign The age of Louis XIV was important to European history for several reasons.  First of all, it saw the triumph of absolutism in France and continental Europe.  Versailles was a glittering symbol and example for other European rulers to follow.  Any number of German and East European monarchs modeled their states and courts after Louis XIV, sometimes to the point of financial ruin.  Second, Louis' wars showed the system of Balance of Power politics working better than ever.  French aggression was contained and the status quo was maintained.  All this had its price, since the larger sizes of the armies and the final replacement of the pike with the musket took European warfare to a new level of destruction.  Finally, Louis' reign definitely established France as the dominant power in Europe.  However, the cost was immense and left his successors a huge debt.  Ironically, the problems caused by Louis XIV's reign would help lead to the French Revolution in 1789 and the spread of democratic principles across Europe and eventually the world.
  • Louis' main goals were to expand France to its "natural borders": the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.  This, of course, would make him enemies among the Dutch, Germans, Austrians, Spanish, and English.  Therefore, Louis' diplomacy had to clear the way to make sure he did not fight everyone at once.  For this purpose he skillfully used money to neutralize potential enemies (such as Charles II of England in the Secret Treaty of Dover) and extracted favorable terms from stalemate or losing situations.  But Louis could also make some fateful blunders to hurt his cause.  His obsessive hatred of the Dutch dominated his policy too much, as did his own self-confidence and arrogance in trying to publicly humiliate his enemies.  However, this just alarmed Louis' enemies more, especially the Dutch, Austrians, and English, who allied against Louis to preserve the balance of power.
  • Exhaustion on both sides finally led to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.  Louis' grandson took the throne of Spain and its American empire, but the French and Spanish thrones could not be united under one ruler.  Austria got the Spanish Netherlands to contain French aggression to the north.  Just as the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 had contained Hapsburg aggression, the Treaty of Utrecht contained French expansion.  Two years later Louis XIV was dead, with little to show for his vaunted ambitions as a conqueror except an exhausted economy and dissatisfied populace.
  • Just as Louis's palace at Versailles dominated European culture during the late 1600's and early 1700's, his diplomacy and wars dominated Europeans political history.  As Louis himself put it: "The character of a conqueror is regarded as the noblest and highest of titles."  Interestingly enough, he never led his troops in battle except for overseeing a few sieges from a safe distance.
  • I am the state. — Voltaire, incorrectly quoting Louis XIV
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