VIII. CHAP. ing day, the Austrian troops took possession of Alessandria, and other fortresses on the frontier; and as the old 1821. king, Victor Emmanuel, persisted in his resolution to April 19. abdicate after he had become a free agent, and his sincerity could no longer be suspected, his brother, the Duke de Genevois, assumed the title, and began to exercise the powers of royalty. A commission was appointed to examine the conduct of the chiefs of the insurrection the leaders had, for the most part, escaped into 1 Ann. Hist. France; but the effects of forty-three were put under sequestration, and themselves executed, happily only in effigy.1 iv. 357, 359, 370. 85. action in Italy. April 12. May 15. The violent repression of the revolution in Italy, by Violent re- the Austrian bayonets, was followed by a great variety of harsh and oppressive measures on the part of the conquerors, which augured ill for the peace of the peninsula in future times. A general disarmament of all the provinces of the Neapolitan territories where Austrian soldiers had been assassinated was decreed, and enforced by domiciliary visits; the whole irregular corps, raised since 5th July 1820, were disbanded; foreign journals loaded with such heavy taxes as amounted to a prohibition; and the most rigorous inquiry made into the books, many of them highly dangerous, which had been put into the hands of the young at schools. The king, on his return, published a decree, engaging to "stifle all personal resentment, and make the nation forget, in years of prosperity, the disastrous events which have stained the last days of Neapolitan history;" but within three days after, measures of severity began. Four courts-martial were constituted, to take cognisance of the military who had taken part in the revolts which ended in the revolution, and several of the leading deputies of the assembly were sent into confinement in Austria. By a decree on July 1, which commented, in severe but just terms, on their treacherous conduct, the army, which had been the chief instrument of the revolution, was disbanded, and reorganised anew on a different July 1. VIII. 1821. footing.* The finances were found to be in so deplorable CHAP. a condition, that loans to the amount of 3,800,000 ducats (£850,000) alone enabled the king to provide for immediate necessities, and heavy taxes were levied to enable him to carry on the government. Finally, a treaty was signed on 28th October, by which it was stipulated that the army of occupation should consist of forty-two thousand men, including seven thousand cavalry, besides troops stationed in Sicily; and that it should remain the Neapolitan territory for three years, entirely at the 651. charge of its inhabitants.1 1 ii. 459, 481; the Treaty, Oct. 28, 1821; in Ann. Hist. iv. 360, 367, The Reaction in Piedmont, tria. Piedmont did not fare better, after the dissolution of 86. the revolutionary forces, than Naples had done. prosecutions against the principal authors of the revolt, and treaty both civil and military, were conducted with vigour, and with Ausgreat numbers of persons were arrested, or deprived of July 26. their employments. Happily, however, as the whole chiefs of the conspiracy had escaped into France, there were no capital executions, except among a few of the most guilty in the army. To tranquillise the fears of Austria, and give stability to the restored order of things in Piedmont, a treaty between the two powers was concluded on the 26th July, by which it was stipulated July 26. that an imperial force of twelve thousand men should continue in occupation, until September 1822, of Stradella, Voghera, Tortona, Alessandria, Valencia, Coni, * "L'armée est la principale cause de ces maux. Factieuse, ou entretenue par des factions, elle nous a abandonnés au moment du danger; et nous a par là, privés des moyens de prévenir les malheureuses conséquences d'une révolution. S'étant livrée à une secte qui détruit tous les liens de la subordination, et de l'obéissance, l'armée, après avoir trahi ses devoirs envers nous, s'est vue incapable de remplir les devoirs que la révolte avait voulu lui imposer. Elle a opéré elle-même sa destruction, et les chefs qu'elle s'était donnés, n'ont fait que présider à sa dissolution; elle n'offre plus aucune garantie nécessaire à l'existence d'une armée : le bien de nos états exige cependant l'existence d'une force protectrice, nous avons été obligés de la demander à nos Alliés ; ils l'ont mise à notre disposition. Nous devons pourvoir à son entretien, mais nous ne pouvons pas faire supporter à nos sujets, le pesant fardeau des frais d'une armée qui n'existe plus, parce qu'elle n'a pas su exister. Ces motifs nous ont déterminés à dissoudre l'armée, à compter du 24 Mars de cette année."Décret, 1 Juillet 1821. Annuaire Historique, iv. 364. VIII. 1821. Sept. 30. Oct. 5. CHAP. and Vercelli. Its pay, amounting to 500,000 francs (£20,000) a month, and its maintenance, extending to thirteen thousand rations daily, was to be wholly at the charge of the Piedmontese government. A general amnesty, disfigured by so many exceptions as to render it applicable only to the mass of the insurgents, was published on 30th September; and a few days after, a very severe decree was fulminated against the secret societies, which had brought such desolation and humiliation on Italy. The king made his public entry into Turin shortly after, assumed the reins of government, and appointed a royalist ministry; but every one felt that it was a truce only, not a peace, which had been established between the contending parties, and that beneath the treacherous surface there lurked the embers of a conflagration which iv. 370,379. would break out with additional violence on the first favourable opportunity.1 Oct. 17. 1 Ann. Hist. 87. Revolt in a regiment of guards at St Petersburg. Sept. 28, 1820. The Emperor Alexander found, on his return to St Petersburg after the closing of the Diet of Warsaw, that the danger had reached his own dominions, and infected even the guards of the imperial palace. During his absence in Poland a serious mutiny occurred in the splendid regiment of the guards called Semenoff, which had been established by Peter the Great, and was much esteemed by the present emperor. It was occasioned by undue severity of discipline on the part of the colonel, who was a Courlander by birth, and enamoured of the German mode of compelling obedience by the baton. The regiment openly refused to obey orders, broke the windows of its obnoxious colonel, and was only reduced to obedience by the courage and sang froid of the governor of St Petersburg, General Milaradowitch, at whose venerated voice the mutineers were abashed, and retired to their barracks. It was ordered by the Czar to be dissolved, and the officers and men dispersed through other regiments, and the most guilty delivered over to courts VIII. 1821. martial. The St Petersburg papers all represented this CHAP. mutiny as the result merely of misgovernment on the part of its colonel, and unconnected with political events; but its succeeding so rapidly the military revolutions in Spain and Naples led to an opposite opinion being generally entertained, and it had no slight influence in producing the vigorous resolutions taken at the congresses of Troppau and Laybach against the insurgents in the south of Europe. This impression was increased by the emperor in the following year, after his annual journey to the southern provinces, after the usual great reviews of the army there, returning abruptly to St Petersburg.1 1 Ann. Hist. iv. 304. iii. 306, 307, 88. refuses to Greeks. In truth, Alexander was now seriously alarmed, and the suspicions which he had conceived as to the fidelity Alexander of his troops, and the dread of insurrection, not only support the embittered all the remaining years of his life, but materially modified his external policy. This appeared in the most decisive manner in his conduct in regard to the Greek revolution, which began in this year, and which will form the interesting subject of a subsequent chapter of this History. Everything within and without eminently favoured a great and decisive movement in favour of the Greeks, on whose behalf, as co-religionists, the warmest sympathy existed among all classes in the Russian empire. The army was unanimous in favour of it, and at a great review of his guards, fifty thousand strong, in September 1821, at Witepsk, the feelings of the soldiers were so strong on the subject that, amidst unbounded demonstrations of enthusiastic loyalty, they could not be prevented from giving vent to their warlike ardour in favour of their Greek brethren. The news of the insurrection of Prince Ipsilanti in Moldavia reached the emperor at Laybach, and such was the consternation of the European powers at the revolutions of Spain and Italy at that period, that no serious opposition was to be apprehended to any measures, how formidable soever, which he might have proposed, against VIII. 1821. CHAP. the Turks, or even their entire expulsion from Europe. But that very circumstance determined the Czar, in opposition to the declared wish of both his army and people, to disavow the insurrection. He saw in it, not, as heretofore, a movement in favour of the Christian faith, or an effort for religious freedom, but a revolutionary outbreak, similar to those of Spain and Italy, which he could not countenance without departing from his principles, or support without the most imminent risk of the contagion spreading to his own troops. He returned for answer, accordingly, to the earnest application for aid from the insurgent Greeks, "Not being able to consider the enterprise of Ipsilanti as anything but the effect of the excitement which characterises the present period, and of the inexperience and levity of that young man, he had given orders to the Minister of the Interior to dis1 Ann. Hist. approve of it formally." The consequence was that the Biog. Univ. insurrection was crushed, and a great number of the heroic youths who had taken up arms in defence of their faith perished under the sabres of the Mussulmans.1* lvi. 186, 189. 89. of the Rus in North This year the already gigantic empire of the Czar reExtension ceived a huge addition by the appropriation of a vast terrisian empire tory opposite Kamtschatka, on the north-western coast of America. Several settlements of the Russians, chiefly for the purpose of fishing and the fur trade, had already been made on this desert and inhospitable coast from the opposite shores of Asia, which, in the immensity of the wilder America. * The Emperor Alexander, in a highly-interesting conversation with M. de Chateaubriand at Verona in 1823, explained his views on this important subject: "Je suis bien aise," said he, " que vous soyez venu à Vérone, afin de rendre témoignage à la vérité. Auriez-vous cru, comme le disent nos ennemis, que l'Alliance n'est qu'un mot qui ne sert qu' à couvrir des ambitions? Cela eut pu être vrai dans l'ancien état des choses; mais il s'agit bien aujourd'hui de quelques intérêts particuliers, quand le monde civilisé est en péril. Il ne peut plus y avoir de Politique Anglaise, Française, Prussienne, Autrichienne. Il n'y a plus qu'une politique générale qui doit, pour le salut de tous, être admise en commun par les peuples et les rois. C'est à moi de me montrer le premier convaincu des principes, sur lesquels j'ai fondé l'Alliance. Une occasion s'est présentée, le soulèvement de la Grèce. Rien sans doute ne paraissait être plus dans mes intérêts, dans ceux de mon peuple, dans l'opinion de mon pays, qu' une |