was silenced by command of the German confederation, also became an inmate of the fortress of Asberg. In Hesse and Brunswick, all the old abuses practised in the petty courts in the eighteenth century were revived. William of Hesse-Cassel returned, on the fall of Napoleon, to his domains. True to his whimsical saying, "I have slept during the last seven years," he insisted upon replacing every thing in Hesse exactly on its former footing. In one particular alone was his vanity inconsistent notwithstanding his hatred towards Napoleon, he retained the title of Prince Elector, bestowed upon him by Napoleon's favour, although it had lost all significance, there being no longer any emperor to elect.* He turned the hand of time back seven years, degraded the counsellors raised to that dignity by Jerome to their former station as clerks, captains to lieutenants, etc., all, in fact, to the station they had formerly occupied, even re-introduced into the army the fashion of wearing powder and queues, prohibited all those not bearing an official title to be addressed as 66 Herr," and re-established the soccage dues abolished by Jerome. This attachment to old abuses was associated with the most insatiable avarice. He reduced the government bonds to one third, retook possession of the lands sold during Jerome's reign, without granting any compensation to the holders, compelled the country to pay his son's debts to the amount of two hundred thousand rix-dollars, lowered the amount of pay to such a degree that a lieutenant received but five rix-dollars per mensem, and offered to sell a new constitution to the Estates at the low price of four million rix-dollars, which he afterwards lowered to two millions and a tax for ten years upon liquors. shameful bargain being rejected by the Estates, the constitution fell to the ground, and the prince elector practised the most unlimited despotism. Discontent was stifled by imprisonment. Two officers, Huth and Rotsmann, who had got up a petition in favour of their class, and the Herr von Gohr, who by chance gave a private fete whilst the prince was suffering from a sudden attack of illness, were among the victims. The purchasers of the crown lands vainly appealed to the federative assembly for redress, for the prince This *He endeavoured, but in vain, to persuade the allied powers to bestow upon him the royal dignity. elector" refused the mediation of the federative assembly until it had been authorized by an organic law drawn up with the co-operation of the prince elector himself."-This prince expired A. D. 1821, and was succeeded by his son, William II., who abolished the use of hair-powder and queues, but none of the existing abuses, and demonstrated no inclination to grant a constitution. He was, moreover, the slave of his mistress, Countess Reichenbach, and on ill terms with his consort, a sister of the king of Prussia, and with his son. Anonymous and threatening letters being addressed to this prince with a view of inducing him to favour the designs of the writer, he had recourse to the severest measures for the discovery of the guilty party; numbers of persons were arrested, and travellers instinctively avoided Cassel. It was at length discovered that Manger, the head of the police, a court favourite, was the author of the letters. Similar abuses were revived by the house of Brunswick. It is unhappily impossible to leave unmentioned the conduct of Caroline, princess of Brunswick, consort to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., king of England. Although this German princess had the good fortune to be protected by the Whig party and by the people against the king and the Tory ministry, she proved a disgrace to her supporters by the scandalous familiarity in which she lived in Italy with her chamberlain, the Italian, Pergami. The sympathy with which she was treated at the time of the congress was designedly exaggerated by the Whigs for the purpose of giving the greatest possible publicity to the errors of the monarch. Caroline of Brunswick was declared innocent and expired shortly after her trial, in 1821. Charles, the hereditary duke of Brunswick, son to the duke who had so gallantly fallen at Quatre-bras, was under the guardianship of the king of England. A constitution was bestowed in 1820 upon this petty territory, which was governed by the minister, Von Schmidt-Phiseldek. The youthful duke took the reins of government in his nineteenth year. Of a rash and violent disposition and misled by evil associates, he imagined that he had been too long restricted from assuming the government, accused his well-deserving minister of having attempted to prolong his minority, posted handbills for his apprehension as a common delinquent, de He nied all his good offices, and subverted the constitution. was surrounded by base intriguers in the person of Bosse, the counsellor of state, formerly the servile tool of Napoleon's despotism, of Frike, the Aulic counsellor, "whose pliant quill was equal to any task when injustice had to be glossed over," of the adventurer, Klindworth, and of Bitter, the head of the chancery, who conducted the financial speculations. Frike, in contempt of justice, tore up the judgment passed by the court of justice in favour of the venerable Herr von Sierstorff, whom he had accused of high treason. Herr von Cramm, by whom Frike was, in the name of the Estates, accused of this misdemeanour before the federative assembly, was banished, a surgeon, who attended him, was put upon his defence, and an accoucheur, named Grimm, who had basely refused to attend upon Cramm's wife, was presented with a hundred dollars. Häberlin, the novelist, who had been justly condemned to twenty years' imprisonment with hard labour for his civil misdemeanours, was, on the other hand, liberated for publishing something in the duke's favour. Bitter conducted himself with the most open profligacy, sold all the demesnes, appro priated the sum destined for the redemption of the public debt, and at the same time levied the heavy imposts with unrelenting severity. The federative assembly passed judgment against the duke solely in reference to his attacks upon the king of England. CCLXVI. The European congress. The German THE great political drama enacting in Europe excited at this time the deepest attention throughout Germany. In almost every country a struggle commenced between liberalism and the measures introduced on the fall of Napoleon. In France more particularly it systematically and gradually undermined the government of the Bourbons, and the cry of liberty that resounded throughout France once more found an echo in Germany. The terrible war was forgotten. The French again became the objects of the admiration and sympathy of the radical party in Germany, and the spirit of opposition, here and there demonstrated in the German chambers, gave rise, notwithstanding its impotence, to precautionary measures on the part of the federative governments. In the winter of 1819, a German federative congress, of which Prince Metternich was the grand motor, assembled at Vienna for the purpose, after the utter annihilation of the patriots, of finally checking the future movements of the liberals, principally in the provincial diets. The Viennese Act of 1820 contains closer definitions of the Federative Act, of which the more essential object was the exclusion of the various provincial diets from all positive interference in the general affairs of Germany, and the increase of the power of the different princes vis-à-vis to their provincial diets by a guarantee of aid on the part of the confederates. During the sitting of this congress, on new-year's day, 1820, the liberal party in Spain revolted against their ungrateful sovereign, Ferdinand VII., who exercised the most fearful tyranny over the nation that had so unhesitatingly shed its blood in defence of his throne. This example was shortly afterwards followed by the Neapolitans, who were also dissatisfied with the conduct of their sovereign. Prince Metternich instantly brought about a congress at Troppau. The czar, Alexander, who had views upon the East and was no stranger to the heterarchical party which, under the guidance of Prince Ypsilanti, prepared a revolution in Greece (which actually broke out) against the Turks, was at first unwilling to give his assent unconditionally to the interference of Austria, but on being, in 1821, to his great surprise informed by Prince Metternich of the existence of a revolutionary spirit in one of the regiments of the Russian guard, freely assented to all the measures proposed by that minister.* The new congress held at Laibach, A. D. 1821, was followed by the entrance of the Austrians under Frimont into Italy. The cowardly Neapolitans fled without firing a shot, and the Piedmontese, who unexpectedly revolted to Frimont's rear, were, after a short encounter with the Austrians under Bubna at Novara, defeated and reduced to submission. The Greeks, whom Russia now no longer ventured openly to uphold, had, in the mean time, also risen in open insurrection. The affairs of Spain were still in an unsettled state. The new congress held at Verona, in 1822, however, decided the fate of both these countries. Prince Hardenberg, the Prussian minister, expired at Genoa on his return home, and Lord Castlereagh, * Vide Binder's Prince Metternich. the English ambassador, cut his throat with his penknife, in a fit of frenzy, supposed to have been induced by the sense of his heavy responsibility. At this congress the principle of legitimacy was maintained with such strictness, that even the revolt of the Greeks against the long and cruel tyranny of the Turks was, notwithstanding the Christian spirit of the Holy Alliance and the political advantage secured to Russia and Austria by the subversion of the Turkish empire, treated as rebellion against the legitimate authority of the Porte and strongly discouraged. A French army was, on the same grounds, despatched with the consent of the Bourbon into Spain, and Ferdinand was reinstated in his legitimate tyranny, A. D. 1823. 66 Russia, in a note addressed to the whole of the confederated states of Germany, demanded at the same time a declaration on their parts to the effect that the late proceedings of the great European powers at Verona were in accordance with the well-understood interests of the people." Every member of the federative assembly at Frankfort gave his assent, with the exception of the Freiherr von Wangenheim, the envoy from Würtemberg, who declaring that his instructions did not warrant his voting upon the question, the ambassadors from the two Hesses made a similar declaration. This occasioned the dismissal of the Freiherr von Wangenheim; and the illegal publication of a Würtemberg despatch, in which the non-participation of the German confederation in the resolutions passed by the congresses, to which their assent was afterwards demanded, was treated of, occasioned a second dismissal, that of Count Winzingerode, the Würtemberg minister. In the July of 1824, the federal diet resolved to give its support to the monarchical principle in the constitutional states, and to maintain the Carlsbad resolutions referring to censorship and to the universities. The Mayence committee remained sitting until A. D. 1828. On the sudden decease of Alexander, the czar of all the Russias, amid the southern steppes, a revolution induced by the nobility broke out at Petersburg, but was suppressed by Alexander's brother and successor, the emperor Nicolas I. Nicolas had wedded Charlotte, the eldest daughter of the king of Prussia. This energetic sovereign instantly invaded Persia and rendered that country dependent upon his em |