6 The teaching of de Maistre

1801 on the eve of the Concordat, to turn the laugh against the age when " the documents of human wisdom were arranged in alphabetical order in the Encyclopedie, that Babel of the sciences and reason," and to show that the worship of Jehovah was at least as respectable as that of Jove, and that the Virgin had occupied as great a place as Venus in the history of art.

More important than the eloquent, but shallow, volumes of Chateaubriand, was the celebrated work of Count Joseph de Maistre, Du Pape, which is dated 1817, though not published until 1819. It was written during a critical time in the history of the Church. The Papacy, after weathering the storms of the Reformation, had seemed on the verge of succumbing to the solvent forces of the new enlightenment. The frontier line between Catholicism and the world outside, sharply defined at Trent, had become blurred and indistinct; and the belief was widely expressed that on the death of Pius VII the Holy See would share the fate of the Holy Empire. In Fiance, though Napoleon's Concordat had made an end of the constitutional Church, Gallicanism was still a militant force. In Germany, in spite of the abolition of the ecclesiastical States, the ideals of " Febronius " were still in the ascendant, aiming at a great national German Church, which should absorb at least the Lutherans, and owe at best but a shadowy allegiance to Rome; and the Prince Primate, Karl von Dalberg, had sent to the Congress of Vienna, to represent the interests of the German Church, Bishop von Wessenberg, who, as Vicar-General of Constance, had, on his own authority, reformed the services in his diocese in an avowed effort to meet the Protestants halfway. The Catholic princes of the Confederation were willing to follow any system which would most readily make the Church the instrument of their secular ambitions. The reply of Pope Pius VII to these movements was the issue on August 7, 1814, soon after his return to Rome, of the bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, reconstituting the Order of Jesus. The Du Pape of de Maistre revealed the full significance of this act, an act which proclaimed the irreconcilable attitude to be taken up by the Papacy toward the Liberal movements of the century, which was defined in Pius IX's Syllabus of 1864, and culminated in 1870 in the dogma of papal infallibility. With a sincere and forcible style, with much display of erudition, and with admirable logic, the author of The Pope proffered once more for the acceptance of the world the medieval ideals of Gregory VII and Innocent III. The Revolution, he argued, was but the logical outcome of the principles of the Reformation. The rejection by half Christendom of the God-appointed central authority had loosened the ties of all authority; and the true cure for the present ills was the recognition of the Pope as in all causes, both temporal and spiritual, the supreme and inspired head of all Christian nations. In place of a committee of the Powers, de Maistre would have established the Holy See as the central court of appeal, and this, not only in

1815] The Quadruple Alliance 7

international questions, but in all serious disputes between sovereigns and subjects. The book created a deep impression. To Gentz, no shallow critic of men and things, it displayed "a political insight such as no Montesquieu ever had, with the eloquence of Burke, and an inspiration bordering at times on the loftiest poetry"; it was at once accepted as the text-book of the Ultramontane party.

On the morrow of the Revolution the cross currents of thought produced by it had not, of course, as yet united into any streams of public opinion capable of shaping the destinies of the world; nor, had there been such a defined force of opinion, could it have influenced directly the course of affairs. Europe had been liberated ; but the sword was yet supreme, though it had been put into commission, and, for the one man of genius who had wielded it, had been substituted a committee of comparative mediocrities. " What is Europe ? " Alexander of Russia had exclaimed, after Tilsit, to the ambassador of France, "what is Europe, if it is not you and I ? " After Waterloo Europe consisted, in effect, of the four Great Powers constituting the Grand Alliance. Of these Powers three, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, were autocracies; the fourth, Great Britain, was represented by statesmen who, though hampered by their responsibility to Parliament, were less so than if Parliament had been truly representative of popular opinion. Under these conditions the character and the point of view of the few men in whose hands power was concentrated were for the moment of more importance than the great movements of thought which only became politically effective at a later period, and of which the tendencies were still either unsuspected or misunderstood.

Of all the members of the Alliance by far the most conspicuous, and, for the time, the most important, was the Emperor Alexander I of Russia. It is true that Great Britain, her long struggle with Napoleon crowned by the victory of Waterloo, still dominated the councils of Europe ; but the transparent honesty of Lord Castlereagh's diplomacy at Vienna and afterwards had tended to discount the effects of her power. All the world knew that she wanted peace, the establishment of "a just equilibrium" in Europe, the abolition of the slave-trade; and that for these ends she was willing to make enormous sacrifices, and, whether on the Continent or in the colonies, to identify British with European interests. Austria too, though disinterestedness could hardly be predicated of her policy, was prepared for the moment to subordinate her peculiar ambitions. Exhausted and all but bankrupt, the Habsburg monarchy needed peace and time to recuperate; and to this end, during the negotiations leading up to the Treaty of Chaumont, Metternich had, as his faithful henchman Gentz bitterly complained, substituted " Europe " for " Austria" in his policy, had broken the dynastic ties which had bound the Habsburg monarchy to France, and risked the

8 Alexander 1 of Russia 1812-5

revival of the Franco-Russian alliance which during the next few years was to be the nightmare of the chanceries. As for Prussia, she was still less than Austria in a position to take any leading part in the councils of the Alliance. Her soldiers might exact from France barbarous vengeance for barbarous wrongs; King Frederick William III, pious and narrow-minded, was bound to the Tsar by ties of gratitude as well as of personal affection, and, apart from all these considerations, was to be occupied for years to come in the task of trying to absorb into the life of the Prussian monarchy the heterogeneous populations assigned to it by the Treaty of Vienna. Thus Alexander found himself in the position of which he had long dreamed — the central figure of the Confederation of Europe, and arbiter of the world, by the grace of God, and the sanction of the unbroken might of Russia, thrust forward now, in consequence of the acquisition of Poland, into the heart of Europe.

Under these conditions the menace of Russia to the liberties of Europe seemed to men of affairs nearly as alarming as had been that of France. Apprehension was increased by the enigmatic character of the Emperor. Behind the handsome mask of his face, with the smiling lips and the eyes that never smiled, was hidden a nature moulded and transformed by the most contradictory influences. His childhood had been spent at the voluptuous Court of the Empress Catharine, his adolescence under the sombre tutelage of his father Paul, who had inspired him with his own love of military detail, his theoretical love of mankind, and his contempt for men. The Jacobin Frederic Cesar de La Harpe had been his tutor, and from him he had imbibed the doctrines of Rousseau ; while his military governor, Marshal Soltikoff, had drilled him in the traditions of Russian autocracy. Lastly, to all this had been added, after he had mounted the throne over the body of his murdered father, a mystic melancholy liable at any moment to issue in extravagance of thought or action. With him the moment had come during the horrors of the campaign of 1812. At the burning of Moscow, he declared afterwards to Bishop Eylert, his own soul had been illuminated. During the campaign that followed he had sought to calm the unrest of his conscience by corresponding with the leaders of the evangelical revival on the Continent, and had searched for omens and supernatural guidance in texts and passages of Scripture. Finally, in the autumn of 1813 he had met at Basel the Baroness von Krudener, a lady who had turned from a life of pleasure to the congenial task of converting princes, and who had the singular good fortune to make a spiritual conquest of the most powerful of them all. From this time a mystic pietism became the avowed motive of his public as of Lis private action. Madame von Krudener and her colleague, the evangelist Empaytaz, were during the allied occupation of Paris the confidants of the Tsar's most secret thoughts, and the Imperial prayer-meetings the oracle on whose revelations hung the fate of the world.

1814-5 Triumph of the Coalition 9

With the memory of Tilsit still fresh in their minds, it is not surprising that men of the world like Metternich believed the Russian autocrat to be disguising " under the language of evangelical abnegation " vast and perilous schemes of ambition. The suspicion was increased by other and seemingly inconsistent tendencies of the Emperor, which yet seemed all to point to a like disquieting conclusion. Alexander had declared open war on the Revolution; but La Harpe was again at his elbow, and the catchwords of the gospel of humanity were still on his lips. The very proclamations, in which he had denounced Napoleon as the genius of evil, had denounced him in the name of " liberty" and " enlightenment." A monstrous intrigue was suspected between the autocrat of all the Russias and the Jacobinism of all Europe, its aim the substitution of an all-powerful Russia for an all-powerful France. At the Congress of Vienna Alexander's conduct had accentuated and given point to the distrust of an Imperial conscience which had suffered him to keep his hold on Poland in violation of his treaty obligations; and, though the Hundred Days had intervened since the secret alliance of January 3, 1815, between Austria, Great Britain, and France, the distrust of which it was the symbol remained.

The links that bound the Powers together, of which the first had been riveted at Teplitz, had been slow in forging; and more than once they had threatened to give way under the sledge-hammer blows of Napoleon's masterly defensive campaign. It was not until the breakdown of the conferences at Chatillon had proved the impossibility of coming to terms with the French Emperor, that the tactful diplomacy of Castlereagh succeeded in welding them together at Chaumont, in the treaty which gave to the Grand Alliance the form it was to retain until finally shattered by the revolutions of 1848. The Treaty of Paris of May 30, 1814, and that of Vienna of March 25, 1815, were essentially but renewals of that of Chaumont. All were directed primarily to the preservation of Europe from any further peril of French aggression. The triumph of the Coalition had proved the quality of the Concert of Europe; but, its object achieved, there was danger that it would resolve itself into its elements. When the Abbe de Saint-Pierre communicated his project to Flemy, the Cardinal told him that he had forgotten one essential article, namely, to send missionaries to touch the hearts of princes and convert them to his views. In 1815 the omission seemed to be supplied; for the councils of Europe were presided over by an Imperial evangelist whose mission, loudly proclaimed, was to substitute in all public relations the principles of the gospel of Christ for the evil traditions of Machiavellian statecraft. On September 26, 1815, the Emperor Alexander announced to the world, at a great review held on the plain of Vertus, the scheme of the Holy Alliance, already signed by himself and his brother sovereigns of Austria and Prussia. Henceforth princes were to regard each other as brothers and their peoples as their

10 The Holy Alliance [1815

children ; and all their acts were to be founded on the sacred principles of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

The Holy Alliance, by one of the strange ironies of history, came to be regarded as the symbol of all that was oppressive and reactionary. Yet there was nothing in its provisions, nor in the intentions of its creator, to warrant the sinister meanings read into it by a suspicious world. To Alexander himself it was calculated "to give a lofty satisfaction to Divine Providence " as an attempt to lift polities on to a higher plane; and so little was it a hypocritical conspiracy against liberty, that in one of his " Jacobin " moods he urged on his reluctant brother autocrats that Liberal constitutions were the logical outcome of its doctrines. The manifesto was, in fact, of immediate practical importance only in so far as it tended to complicate the diplomatic relations of the Allies during the years that followed—owing to the Russian claim, persistently repeated, that it committed the Powers to Alexander's ideal of a " universal union," which they in fact repudiated. Of all the princes who signed the Holy Alliance probably only Alexander himself did so with conviction. To Metternich it was " a loud sounding nothing," to Castlereagh "a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense." The British Government, divided between fear of offending the Allies and exposing itself to the shafts of the Opposition, found a loophole of escape in the constitutional objection to the Prince Regent signing any document without the counter-signature of a Minister. The powerful endorsement of the ruler of Great Britain was thus lacking to this new family compact of the European sovereigns; and the Allies had to be content with a personal letter from the Regent, expressing his hearty approval of their sublime principles. With this, and two other notable exceptions, the document was signed by all the sovereigns, great and small, of Europe. The other exceptions were the Pope and the Sultan. Pius VII, busy with his preparations for a new crusade against Liberalism, would be no party to a compact devised by a heretic and a Liberal. The Sultan, for reasons sufficiently obvious, was never invited to sign ; but, in view of the fact that the integrity of the Ottoman Empire had found no place in the guarantees of the Vienna treaties, the omission of his name was held to be ominous of Alexander's intention to exclude Turkey from the sphere of the Concert, in order to retain its destinies in his own hands.

At the date of the promulgation of the Holy Alliance the fate of France had not yet been definitely settled; and, in the councils of the Allies, while all were agreed that she must for ever be rendered incapable of again oversetting the balance of Europe, opinion was sharply divided as to the means for attaining this end. But counsels of moderation prevailed ; and in the settlement with France the principle was reaffirmed which had guided the policy of the Allies before the Hundred Days. France, defined by her " legitimate" frontiers, was to be