The Child Wife

Not only were they threatened, but many of them dethroned. The imbecile Emperor of Austria had to flee from his capital, as also the bureaucratic King of France. Weak William of Prussia was called to account by his long-suffering subjects, and compelled, upon bended knees, to grant them a Constitution.

A score of little kinglets had to follow the example; while the Pope, secret supporter of them all, was forced to forsake the Vatican – that focus and hotbed of political and religious infamy – driven out by the eloquent tongue of Mazzini and the conquering blade of Garibaldi.

Even England, secure in a profound indifference to freedom and reform, trembled at the cheers of the Chartists.

Every crowned head in Europe had its “scare” or discomfiture; and, for a time, it was thought that liberty was at length achieved.

Alas! it was but a dream of the people – short-lived and evanescent – to be succeeded by another long sleeps under an incubus, heavier and more horrid than that they had cast off.

While congratulating one another on their slight spasmodic success, their broken fetters were being repaired, and new chains fabricated, to bind them faster than ever. The royal blacksmiths were at work, and in secret, like Vulcan at his subterranean forge.

And they were working with a will, their object and interests being the same. Their common danger had driven them to a united action, and it was determined that their private quarrels should henceforth be set aside – to be resuscitated only as shams, when any of them required such fillip to stimulate the loyalty of his subjects.

This was the new programme agreed upon. But, before it could be carried out, it was necessary that certain of them should be assisted to recover that ascendency over their people, lost in the late revolution.

Sweeping like a tornado over Europe, it had taken one and all of them by surprise. Steeped in luxurious indulgence – in the exercise of petty spites and Sardanapalian excesses – confident in the vigilance of their trusted sentinel, Wellington – they had not perceived the storm till it came tearing over them. For the jailor of Europe’s liberty was also asleep! Old age, with its weakened intellect, had stolen upon him, and he still dotingly believed in “Brown Bess,” while Colt’s revolver and the needle-gun were reverberating in his ears.

Yes, the victor of Waterloo was too old to aid the sons of those tyrant sires he had re-established on their thrones.

And they had no other military leader – not one. Among them there was not a soldier, while on the side of the people were the Berns and Dembinskys, Garibaldi, Damjanich, Klapka, and Anglo-Hungarian Guyon – a constellation of flaming swords! As statesmen and patriots they had none to compete with Kossuth, Manin, and Mazzini.

In the field of fair fight – either military or diplomatic – the despots stood no chance. They saw it, and determined upon treachery.

For this they knew themselves provided with tools a plenty; but two that promised to prove specially effective – seemingly created for the occasion. One was an English nobleman – an Irishman by birth – born on the outside edge of the aristocracy; who, by ingenious political jugglery, had succeeded in making himself not only a very noted character, but one of the most powerful diplomatists in Europe.

And this without any extraordinary genius. On the contrary, his intellect was of the humblest – never rising above that of the trickster. As a member of the British Parliament his speeches were of a thoroughly commonplace kind, usually marked by some attempted smartness that but showed the puerility and poverty of his brain. He would often amuse the House by pulling off half-a-dozen pairs of white kid gloves during the delivery of one of his long written-out orations. It gave him an air of aristocracy – no small advantage in the eyes of an English audience.

For all this, he had attained to a grand degree of popularity, partly from the pretence of being on the Liberal side, but more from paltering to that fiend of false patriotism – national prejudice.

Had his popularity been confined to his countrymen, less damage might have accrued from it.

Unfortunately it was not. By a professed leaning toward the interests of the peoples, he had gained the confidence of the revolutionary leaders all over Europe; and herein lay his power to do evil.

It was by no mere accident this confidence had been obtained. It had been brought about with a fixed design, and with heads higher than his for its contrivers. In short, he was the appointed political spy of the united despots – the decoy set by them for the destruction of their common and now dreaded enemy – the Republic.

And yet that man’s name is still honoured in England, the country where, for two hundred years, respect has been paid to the traducers of Cromwell!

The second individual on whom the frightened despots had fixed their hopeful eyes was a man of a different race, though not so different in character.

He, too, had crept into the confidence of the revolutionary party by a series of deceptions, equally well contrived, and by the same contrivers who had put forward the diplomatist.

It is true, the leaders of the people were not unsuspicious of him. The hero of the Boulogne expedition, with the tamed eagle perched upon his shoulder, was not likely to prove a soldier of Freedom, nor yet its apostle; and in spite of his revolutionary professions, they looked upon him with distrust.

Had they seen him, as he set forth from England to assume the Presidency of France, loaded with bags of gold – the contributions of the crowned heads to secure it – they might have been sure of the part he was about to play.

He had been employed as a dernier ressort– a last political necessity of the despots. Twelve months before they would have scorned such a scurvy instrument, and did.

But times had suddenly changed. Orleans and Bourbon were no longer available. Both dynasties were defunct, or existing without influence. There was but one power that could be used to crush republicanism in France – the prestige of that great name, Napoleon, once more in the full sunlight of glory, with its sins forgiven and forgotten.

He who now represented it was the very man for the work, for his employers knew it was a task congenial to him.

With coin in his purse, and an imperial crown promised for his reward, he went forth, dagger in hand, sworn to stab Liberty to the heart!

History records how faithfully he has kept his oath!

Chapter Twenty Three.

The Programme of the Great Powers

In a chamber of the Tuileries five men were seated around a table.

Before them were decanters and glasses, wine bottles of varied shapes, an épergne filled with choice flowers, silver trays loaded with luscious fruits, nuts, olives – in short, all the materials of a magnificent dessert.

A certain odour of roast meats, passing off under the bouquet of the freshly-decanted wines, told of a dinner just eaten, the dishes having been carried away.

The gentlemen had taken to cigars, and the perfume of finest Havana tobacco was mingling with the aroma of the fruit and flowers. Smoking, sipping, and chatting with light nonchalance, at times even flippantly, one could ill have guessed the subject of their conversation.

And yet it was of so grave and secret a nature, that the butler and waiters had been ordered not to re-enter the room – the double door having been close-shut on their dismissal – while in the corridor outside a guard was kept by two soldiers in grenadier uniform.

The five men, thus cautious against being overheard, were the representatives of the Five Great Powers of Europe – England, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and France.

They were not the ordinary ambassadors who meet to arrange some trivial diplomatic dispute, but plenipotentiaries with full power to shape the destinies of a continent.

And it was this that had brought together that five-cornered conclave, consisting of an English Lord, an Austrian Field-Marshal, a Russian Grand Duke, a distinguished Prussian diplomatist, and the President of France – host of the other four.

They were sitting in conspiracy against the peoples of Europe, set free by the late revolutions – with the design to plot their re-enslavement.

Their scheme of infamy had been maturely considered, and perfected before adjourning to the dinner-table.

There had been scarce any discussion; since, upon its main points, there was mutual accord.

Their after-dinner conversation was but a résumé of what had been resolved upon – hence, perhaps, the absence of that gravity befitting such weighty matter, and which had characterised their conference at an earlier hour.

They were now resting over their cigars and wines, jocularly agreeable, as a band of burglars, who have arranged all the preliminaries for the “cracking of a crib.”

The English lord seemed especially in good humour with himself and all the others. Distinguished throughout his life for what some called an amiable levity, but others thought to be an unamiable heartlessness, he was in the element to delight him. Of origin not very noble, he had attained to the plenitude of power, and now saw himself one of five men entrusted with the affairs of the Great European Aristocracy, against the European people. He had been one of the principal plotters – suggesting many points of the plan that had been agreed upon; and from this, as also the greatness of the nation he represented, was acknowledged as having a sort of tacit chairmanship over his fellow-conspirators.

The real presidency, however, was in the Prince-President – partly out of regard to his high position, and partly that he was the host.

After an hour or so passed in desultory conversation, the “man of a mission,” standing with his back to the fire, with hands parting his coat tails – the habitual attitude of the Third Napoleon – took the cigar from between his teeth, and made résumé as follows: —

“Understood, then, that you, Prussia, send a force into Baden, sufficient to crush those pot-valiant German collegians, mad, no doubt, from drinking your villainous Rhine wine!”

“Mercy on Metternich, cher Président. Think of Johanisberger!”

It was the facetious Englishman who was answerable for this.

“Ya, mein Prinz, ya,” was the more serious response of the Prussian diplomatist. “Give ’em grape, instead of grapes,” put in the punster. “And you, Highness, bind Russia to do the same for these hog-drovers of the Hungarian Puszta?”