EUROPE 



sealed the naval supremacy of 

 Great Britain at Trafalgar, 1805, 

 but Napoleon, now emperor of the 

 French, shattered the new coalition 

 at Austerlitz. Prussia, aroused at 

 last, took up the challenge and 

 was crushed at Jena, 1806, and 

 Napoleon made his peace with 

 Russia at Tilsit in 1807, and set 

 about the reconstruction of Europe 

 according to his own fancy. His 

 attempt to appropriate the Spanish 

 peninsula brought Great Britain 

 into the war for the first time as a 

 military power, 1808. For five 

 years Napoleon's generals strove in 

 vain to drive the British into the 

 sea. But Napoleon quarrelled with 

 the tsar, and his Moscow expedi- 

 tion in 1812 ended in irretrievable 

 disaster. The uprising of the 

 peoples rather than of the govern- 

 ments overwhelmed him, he was 

 compelled to abdicate in 1814, and 

 though he reappeared to make a 

 last bid for victory, he was finally 

 crushed at Waterloo, 1815. 



The congress of Vienna restored 

 the map of Europe so that the 

 state boundaries were much as 

 they had been in 1792, except that 

 the Netherlands were formed into 

 a new kingdom. The old dynas- 

 ties were replaced and the old 

 despotisms renewed, the former 

 states of the empire forming the 

 German Confederation. But the 

 French Revolution had kindled new 

 ideas of liberty, partly democratic, 

 partly nationalist, and despite the 

 efforts of Metternich, those move- 

 ments could not be crushed. Greece 

 broke free from her subjection to 

 Turkey ; France turned out the 

 Bourbons and established the con- 

 stitutional Orleans monarchy in 

 1830. The S. Netherlands separ- 

 ated from Holland in 1839 and 

 became the Belgian kingdom. 

 Liberals and reactionaries did 

 battle in Spain and Portugal. 

 Austria and the German Confederation 



Then in 1848 came the Year of 

 Revolutions. In almost every 

 country, nationalist, constitution- 

 alist, or democratic movements 

 came to a head. Generally, though 

 not always, the Reaction was for 

 the time victorious. France made 

 herself into a republic, but in five 

 years the nephew of Napoleon had 

 turned the republic into the Second 

 Empire. Limited constitutions 

 were conceded in sundry German 

 states. Austria kept her grip on the 

 diverse portions of her empire, 

 and though the title of the Holy 

 Roman Empire had been dropped 

 since 1806, she still retained her 

 place as leader, or as joint leader 

 with Prussia, of the German con- 

 federation. The mutual jealousies 

 and distrust between Great Britain 

 and Russia, the causes of which 



3O20 



were more Asiatic than European, 

 were a constant disturbing factor 

 in European affairs. 



The three great movements afoot 

 were towards the liberation of the 

 Balkan peninsula from Turkish 

 rule, towards the unification of 

 Italy, and towards the unification 

 of Germany under the headship of 

 Prussia. The rising of N. Italy 

 under the leadership of Victor 

 Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, sup- 

 ported by Napoleon III, in 1859, 

 liberated most of N. Italy from 

 Austria and from the temporal 

 control of the papacy and created 

 the kingdom of N. Italy. The 

 revolt of Sicily and Naples against 

 the Bourbon dynasty in 1860 was 

 followed by the adhesion of S. Italy 

 to the N. kingdom, and in 1861 the 

 united kingdom of Italy was es- 

 tablished, though Austria still held 

 the N.E. corner and Rome still 

 belonged to the pope. In 1871, 

 however, it was united to the new 

 kingdom of which it was made the 

 capital. 



Policy of Bismarck 



Bismarck organized the Prussian 

 military power, contrived the an- 

 nexation of Slesvig and Holstein 

 from Denmark, and procured the 

 Seven Weeks' War with Austria in 

 1866, which in effect ejected 

 Austria from the German con- 

 federation and gave Prussia decis- 

 ive ascendancy therein. Incident- 

 ally, Italy was rewarded for her 

 assistance to Bismarck by the 

 acquisition of Venetia. Bismarck's 

 policy achieved its triumph with 

 the Franco-Prussian War of 1870- 

 71. The recovery of the Rhine 

 provinces from France was accom- 

 panied by the recognition of the 

 king of Prussia as German em- 

 peror and by the consolidation 

 of the new German Empire under 

 Prussian direction, with a machin- 

 ery which, for the first time in 

 Germany's history, brought her 

 under a single control and made 

 her the first military power in 

 Europe. Another outcome of the 

 war was the establishment of the 

 third republic in France. 



Turkish misrule was the excuse 

 or justification of the wars with 

 Turkey upon which Russia entered 

 in 1853 and 1877. In both, British 

 intervention was responsible for 

 the preservation of Turkey, but 

 those wars brought about the vir- 

 tual independence, first of Ru- 

 mania and then of the Slav states of 

 Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro, 

 while Bosnia and Herzegovina were 

 placed under Austrian administra- 

 tion, paving the way for annexa- 

 tion after an interval of 30 years. 

 The outstanding features, how- 

 ever, of the European situation 

 in the latter years of the 19th 



EUROPE 



century were the alliance of the 

 three emperors, and the substitu- 

 tion for it of the alliance of the 

 three powers, Germany, Austria- 

 Hungary, and Italy, which was 

 answered by the alliance between 

 France and Russia. The settle- 

 ment of outstanding differences 

 between Great Britain and France 

 in 1905 prepared the way for the 

 Triple Entente between Great 

 Britain, France, and Russia, which 

 became an accomplished fact in 

 1907, while its solidarity was 

 proved to the great dissatisfaction 

 of Germany in 1911 by the British 

 support of the French in connexion 

 with the Agadir incident. The 

 Balkan Wars of 1912-13 liberated 

 the Balkan States from the last 

 relics of Turkish sovereignty, but 

 failed to establish a concord among 

 them, whereof the fruits were later 

 to become apparent. 



Two more events prior to 1914 

 have here to be noted. In the 15th 

 century Denmark, Norway, and 

 Sweden had been united under one 

 crown ; in the 16th Sweden had 

 separated herself, but Norway had 

 remained attached to Denmark. 

 At the European reconstruction in 

 1815 Norway had been taken from 

 Denmark and attached to Sweden. 

 The union, however, had never 

 been harmonious or satisfactory to 

 Norway, and in 1905 she procured 

 her establishment as a separate 

 kingdom. In 1908 a revolution in 

 Portugal expelled the reigning 

 dynasty, and changed Portugal 

 into a republic. 



The Great War, 1914-1918 



In 1914 Europe was again flung 

 into the melting-pot, from which 

 it had not fully emerged at the 

 close of 1920. The Kaiser, with the 

 carefully educated public opinion 

 of Germany at his back, planned to 

 bring on at Germany's own time a 

 world conflict which should result 

 first in the subjection of France and 

 the paralysis of Russia, and ulti- 

 mately in the collapse of the British 

 Empire. Reckoning that she would 

 have only Russia and France to 

 deal with immediately, Germany 

 prepared for an Austro- Russian 

 quarrel in the Balkans which should 

 either at once establish Austro- 

 German supremacy in the Near 

 East or precipitate the great conflict 

 in which she anticipated prompt 

 and overwhelming triumph. 



But while Russia, necessarily 

 joined by France, met the chal- 

 lenge, Germany's violation of Bel- 

 gium brought Great Britain de- 

 cisively into the struggle. For four 

 years Europe was the stage of the 

 most terrific and devastating war 

 in the annals of mankind. In the 

 west the German rush just failed to 

 reach Paris, and a long battle- 



