The Greatest Story in the World, Period 3 by Horace G. Hutchinson

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 {196} 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.

[Sidenote: 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 {197} / 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.