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The Congress of Vienna

p After Napoleon’s Empire had been finally crushed, the destiny of Europe was not to be decided by the peoples who had fought for their freedom but by monarchs and ministers. In October 1814, a Congress of the European powers was opened in Vienna, attended by 216 representatives of all the European states with the exception of Turkey. This was the first congress ever to be attended by so many delegates. Yet among this large number there was not one democrat. No spokesman of the people was to be heard at this congress: it was sovereigns and their representatives who congregated in Vienna and who adopted decisions against the interests of their peoples.

p The decisive role at the Congress was played by Tsar Alexander, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich (1773-1859), the English Prime Minister, Lord Castlereagh, and Talleyrand and Prince von Hardenberg who represented France and Prussia respectively. Nothing of importance was decided at the plenary sessions. The Congress was in session almost a whole year but most of that time was devoted to lavish receptions, balls and other forms of entertainment. In between the dancing, secret tete-a-tete negotiations were conducted which were to decide the destinies of millions.

p The main principle which united the majority of those taking part in the Congress and coloured the decisions adopted was that of legitimism, i.e., the restoration of the “legitimate” rights of former monarchs who had been deprived of their kingdoms. This principle of legitimism provided the powers of reaction with their ideological weapon, which they used in order to justify the reversal of the main political and territorial changes which had been introduced by the revolution and the Napoleonic wars.

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p In defiance of the national interests of the peoples of Europe and in complete disregard of their demands, the Congress of Vienna recarved the map of Europe. Belgium was made part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Norway part of the Kingdom of Sweden. Poland was once more partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria. Prussia made territorial gains at the expense of Saxony and a number of other German states. Austria regained all she had lost and in addition received the Kingdom of Lombardy and Venetia. Italy, which Metternich referred to disdainfully as a "geographical concept" was divided up into a number of small states, ruled over by members of ancient dynasties. The Congress also recognised Britain as the rightful ruler of Cape Province at the southern tip of Africa, the islands of Ceylon and Malta and other colonial possessions which she had seized.

The hated Bourbon dynasty was restored in France, Spain and the Kingdom of Naples, and in other states too, dynasties which had been driven into exile were reinstalled. The principle of legitimism now assured the forces of reaction a free hand, and the seizure of territory by force by the great powers was to be viewed from then on as a perfectly legitimate practice.

The Hundred Days

p In March 1815 one of the balls in Vienna was interrupted by a piece of stunning news. It was whispered that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, landed in France on March 1st and was marching on Paris. These rumours were soon confirmed. So great was the hatred of the French people for Louis XVIII who had been installed on the throne with the help of foreign bayonets and for the emigre nobles who had returned with him that Napoleon was able to gain control of the whole of France within three weeks without firing a single shot, and march in triumph to Paris.

p This news put the whole of Europe into a state of ferment. The story went that when the news of Napoleon’s landing in the Gulf of Juan in the south of France spread as far as Eastern Prussia, the Prussian landowners started hurriedly packing their trunks, planning to seek refuge in the depths of Siberia. In Vienna this news put an immediate stop to all disagreements and eight powers signed a declaration condemning Napoleon’s action as illegal. Another anti-French coalition was formed on the spot within a month’s time, and the armies of a united Europe set out to confront Napoleon.

Napoleon had one chance left open to him faced as he was by this mighty coalition and that was to rely on popular support 390 391 and wage a revolutionary war against the European monarchies. The French people was more than willing to trust its fortunes to such a cause. However, Napoleon himself was afraid of popular aspirations and revolutionary war. "I have no desire to be a king of the Jacquerie,” he stated. Rejecting this kind of war Napoleon threw away his last and only chance of overcoming the numerical superiority of the coalition armies. Napoleon was crushed once and for all at the battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815. On June 22nd, he signed another declaration of abdication. This second reign of his had lasted for a hundred days, after which he was sent into exile on the remote island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

The Holy Alliance and European Reaction

p In September 1815 Tsar Alexander I, the Austrian Emperor Francis I and the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III signed a document which laid the foundation of the Holy Alliance, which the majority of the monarchs of Europe were later to join. The Holy Alliance was an alliance of European monarchs united in their aim to keep down revolutionary and national liberation movements. It was the most reactionary of all the international institutions that had so far come into being: its one and only goal was to avert, root out and crush "revolutionary sedition" wherever it might happen to raise its head.

p The Holy Alliance was backed up by all the forces of European reaction and encouraged them to wage battle with the "spirit of free-thinking”. The Church, in particular the Catholic Church with its all-pervasive tentacles, the mighty Jesuit order, a widespread police system of secret investigations, espionage, informers and anonymous letters, all this was made use of in the drive to root out the "revolutionary heresy".

p The reactionary policies pursued by the feudal nobility were designed to reverse the course of history, as if everything that had taken place during the Revolution had never been, and to restore the old order that had existed before the storming of the Bastille. Reactionary ideologists mocked at the literature of the Enlightenment and tried to set up as a counter-weight to it "all-redeeming faith”, propagating humble submission to absolutist power. Gabriel Bonald demonstrated in his works the need to restore the former class system and power of the Church. Ludwig Haller pressed for unquestioning obedience to the power of absolute monarchs; Joseph de Maistre extolled the Inquisition as the bastion of society, condemned the natural sciences, and proposed that there should be a ban on spreading knowledge among the common people.

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However, the activities of such reactionaries were not limited to words alone. The Bourbons, who were with good reason regarded as "having learnt nothing and forgotten nothing" during their twenty-five years of exile started a campaign of ruthless persecution of prominent figures of the revolutionary movement and the Napoleonic era. Many such individuals were summarily executed without trial and extraordinary tribunals pronounced more than ten thousand harsh sentences. In 1825, during the reign of Charles X (1824-1830) a law was introduced decreeing that former emigres would be rewarded as much as a thousand million francs by way of compensation for the lands which had been confiscated from them by the revolutionary government. That same year a further law was passed enacting stern penalties for sacrilege or acts perpetrated against the church: in extreme cases such sentences even went as far as the guillotine, after the victim had first had his right hand cut off. In Spain, Ferdinand VII (1814-1833) abolished the constitution of 1812 and reintroduced a regime of repressive absolutism. Once again Spain was in the hands of a feudal nobility and the Catholic grandees; auto-da-fes were once more the order of the day. Similar developments were to be observed in the Italian kingdoms. Even in England, which had not in fact signed the Holy Alliance and had the reputation of being the most progressive country in Europe, strong reaction set in. In August 1819, at St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester, the police opened fire on a gathering of unarmed workers. Fifteen people were killed and 400 wounded. This cruel reprisal of the military against defenceless workers was ironically christened the Peterloo Massacre. Parliament at once adopted the reactionary Six Combination Acts which did away with freedom of assembly and introduced strict limitations on the freedom of the press. These laws were referred to by the common people as the Six Gagging Acts.

Ideological and Political Struggle Against
the Forces of Reaction

p The arbitrary sway of feudal and clerical reaction aroused the indignation of all the great minds of the time. The great English poet George Byron (1788-1824) in his outstanding works Childc Harold, Don Juan and The Age of Bronze subjected the hypocritical, insidious world of reaction holding sway in England to bitter, savage criticism. With complete justification he was to write of himself: "And I will war, at least in words with ... every despotism in every nation.” Another fine English poet, Shelley (1792-1822), also openly opposed the powers that be. The famous French writer Stendhal (Henri Beyle, 1783-1842) in his novels Le 393 Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme painted a graphic picture of the all-powerful black forces of reaction and religious oppression. The great Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828), who devoted his whole life to depicting the dread world of the inquisition and obscurantism, was ever mindful of his responsibility before the Spanish people. The noble themes of civic responsibility and love of freedom inspired the outstanding German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

That which was expressed by the scores of great artists and writers, was also experienced in perhaps less astute and coherent form by hundreds of thousands and often millions of Europe’s poor, who but recently had been breathing the heady air of revolutionary ferment and the liberation struggle and were now subjected to savage police and religious persecution. The peoples of Europe were not prepared to reconcile themselves with this arbitrary return to the hated patterns of the past.

The Revolutions of the 1820s

However savage this wave of reaction might be, it was not in a position to turn back the clock of history. The far-reaching processes which had affected the very fabric of European and American society had led to a rapid consolidation of bourgeois social patterns, more progressive than the feudal ones which had preceded them, and to the emergence of a more pronounced class and national consciousness among the peoples of the world. The fierce reprisals of this feudo-clerical reaction served merely to crystallise this new consciousness. This situation was to give rise to a number of revolutions and revolutionary movements in the 1820s and ’30s. The results they achieved varied considerably and many were suppressed, but nevertheless they all influenced the subsequent fate of the peoples who rose up to defend their freedom.

The Revolution of 1820-1823 in Spain

p In January 1820, near the town of Cadiz, one of the Spanish regiments under the command of Rafael Riego y Nunez (1785-1823) mutinied. Colonel Riego was a valiant defender of the Spanish people’s freedom and together with other officers he set about preparing a revolt. There were a number of like-minded officers in other regiments and the uprising which broke out in Cadiz soon spread throughout the whole country. The chief demand of the officers was that the constitution of 1812 be reintroduced, and Ferdinand VII was forced to grant this concession. 394 In July 1820, the Cortes (legislative assembly) was convened in Madrid and Riego was elected its president. The Cortes then proceeded to do away with the inquisition and restore the freedoms laid down in the 1812 constitution.

p These were all important developments but they did not go far enough. Spain was above all an agrarian country and the peasants, deprived of land and forced to live in abject poverty by their masters, naturally hoped first and foremost for a solution of the agrarian question. The officers, however, who were in the main liberal nobles or bourgeois were loath to touch the problem of landownership. With their hopes shattered, the peasants were unwilling to support the revolution with any enthusiasm. This was to prove fatal for the revolution’s further progress. In the autumn of 1822, at the Congress of Verona, the Holy Alliance passed a resolution to crush the Spanish revolution by force. Bourbon France was to undertake this punitive mission.

In the spring of 1823, the French army of intervention together with Spanish counter-revolutionary forces marched through the country and captured Madrid. By the autumn of that year their mission was accomplished—the revolution had been crushed. Riego was executed and died a hero’s death. The famous "Riego March" written by the Spanish composer Huerta was to become the battle hymn of many generations of Spanish revolutionaries, and in 1931 it was made the National Anthem of the Spanish Republic. Although the revolution of 1820-1823 was crushed, it was to call forth a wide movement demanding social and political change throughout the rest of the world. Byron, Pushkin and the French democrat poet Beranger sang the praises of the defenders of the Spanish revolution, and bitterly condemned the Holy Alliance, now stained with the blood of the innocent.

The Italian Revolutions of 1820-1821

p A wave of revolutionary activity was to sweep the cities of Italy at almost the same time as the revolution in Spain took place. These outbreaks were prepared by the secret Carbonari organisation, which by this time had set up a network of conspiratorial cells or lodges, subject to strict discipline, throughout the country. Brave, determined men joined the Carbonari, men who were not afraid to risk their lives for the sake of their countrymen. The majority of them were members of the bourgeois intelligentsia or the liberal nobility. The weakness of the Carbonari, as had been the case with the Spanish revolutionaries, was their isolation from the masses and their failure to appreciate the fundamental importance of the agrarian problem and landownership.

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p In July 1820, one of the regiments near Naples mutinied. It was soon joined by troops under General Pepe who was a member of the Carbonari, and Pepe’s action was followed by various other regiments. King Ferdinand IV hastily granted a constitution and vowed that he would rule according to its principles, and meanwhile lost no time in turning to the Holy Alliance for help. The members of the congresses of the Holy Alliance held at the end of 1820 and the beginning of 1821, who had been waiting eagerly for a pretext to crush the revolutionary movement in Italy entrusted Austria with the task of putting down the revolution in the Kingdom of Naples.

p When the Austrian punitive expedition invaded Italy in March 1821, revolution also broke out in Piedmont. Here the movement was also led by officers and members of the liberal nobility. Count Santa Rosa, the leader of the movement, was not prepared to summon the people to take up arms and neither he nor the Neapolitan revolutionaries were able with their limited forces to put up an effective resistance to the Austrian army of intervention. In March in Naples, and in April in Piedmont the revolutionary movements were crushed. There followed a wave of executions and cruel persecution against all those who had taken part.

Both the Spanish and the Italian revolutions were crushed by counter-revolutionary armies of intervention mustered by the Holy Alliance. This alliance was clearly to be interpreted as the convenient executioner of the European monarchs. The fate of both movements was determined by the fact that they were led by a small minority of the bourgeois class and that their leaders were unwilling to rely on the support of the popular masses.

The National Liberation Movement in Greece

p The Greek people had for a number of centuries been at the mercy of Turkish rulers. Now they too rose up against their oppressors. In March 1821 an uprising broke out and spread rapidly, and in January 1822 a national assembly convened in Epidaurus declared Greece independent. This was only the beginning of the struggle. The Turks struck back with ruthless savagery. The whole Greek population of the island of Chios which numbered over 100,000 was either massacred or sold into slavery. This bestial massacre was immortalised by the famous French painter Delacroix in one of his canvases. Large forces of the Turkish army were then sent out to put down the insurgents.

p The Greeks fought valiantly for the freedom of their homeland. Detachments of guerillas dealt the Turkish oppressors 396 serious blows. The strength of the Greek liberation movement lay in the fact that it was a popular movement in which the whole people took part. Many fine leaders came from the masses, of which Makriyannis was undoubtedly the most outstanding. Another skilful commander was General Kolokotronis, who also enjoyed wide popular support.

p The valiant struggle of the Greek people won the support and sympathy of progressive circles everywhere. Byron was to fall righting for Greek independence, and Pushkin and Shelley were both inspired by Greek heroism. The members of the Holy Alliance meanwhile, although the Greeks were their fellow Christians, regarded them as lawless insurgents.

p In 1825, a powerful Egyptian army under Ibrahim Pasha moved against Greece. The Sultan’s government, not strong enough to cope with the situation on its own, turned to its vassal state Egypt, on Metternich’s advice, to seek help in crushing the Greek insurgents. The Egyptian army advanced slowly across the country, destroying everything in its path.

Yet the Greek patriots fought bravely on, preferring death to surrender. The fighting became more and more desperate. Conflicting interests which had arisen between the European powers in connection with the Middle East and rivalry for spheres of influence in Greece led them to intervene in the Greek issue. On October 20, 1827, a combined fleet of English, French and Russian warships completely destroyed the Egyptian and Turkish fleets at Navarino. The war between Turkey and Russia which began in 1828 kept a large proportion of the Turkish troops out of Greece and eventually the Greek people was to emerge victorious from its just war of liberation. In 1830 Greece was recognised as an independent sovereign state.

The War of Liberation Waged by the Peoples
of the Spanish Colonies in America

Further successes in the revolutionary movement for national liberation were also being scored on the far side of the Atlantic. The peoples of Central and South America had been exposed for more than two centuries to cruel exploitation by Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, who had plundered the fertile land and vast natural resources of Latin America. Ever since the end of the eighteenth century, and in particular during the North American War of Independence and the French Revolution, the liberation movement in the Spanish colonies had been gaining ground. The overthrow by the French of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain provided favourable conditions for the commencement of an open struggle against the oppressors.

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The First Stage of the Liberation Movement

p In 1810-1815 the first stage of the wars of liberation in the Spanish colonies in America were fought out. The Creoles, Mestizos and Indians rallied to the struggle for the liberation of their native lands.

p On April 11, 1810, a revolutionary junta under Francisco de Miranda (1756-1816) who had taken part in the French revolution organised an uprising in Caracas which was soon to spread to the whole of Venezuela. This uprising served to spark off revolutionary outbreaks throughout the continent. In May a Provisional Government of the united provinces of La Plata (later to be renamed Argentina) was convened by a junta in Buenos Aires. 398 The liberation movement in La Plata was led by Mariano Moreno and later Jose de San-Martin (1778-1850) and Belgrano. The war of liberation then spread from La Plata to Uruguay and Paraguay, who also declared themselves independent. In September 1810 a liberation movement began in Mexico under the leadership of the village priest Miguel Hidalgo.

The struggle against the Spanish colonialists was a very grim one and the odds were now on one side, now on the other. In the course of the liberation war Miranda and Hidalgo were to perish at the hands of Spanish executioners. The legendary hero Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) was to win immortal fame in the struggle for the liberation of Venezuela. However, after Ferdinand VII had been reinstalled on the Spanish throne the colonialists were to receive considerable reinforcements from the mother country and go over on to the offensive. In 1815 all strongholds of the revolution were crushed, with the exception of La Plata.

The Second Stage of the War of Liberation.
Bolivar’s Expeditions

p In November 1816 Simon Bolivar, after returning to Venezuela from the island of Haiti with a detachment of his supporters, liberated the town of Angostura in the Orinoco delta and from there set out on his famous expedition to free Venezuela. Bolivar declared the abolition of slavery and in 1817 announced that all llaneros (peasants) who joined his army would be granted land holdings after the war. These progressive measures brought Bolivar’s army a large influx of volunteers. Over 5,000 volunteers of different nationalities also came from Europe to help the South American liberation army. Bolivar succeeded in making his liberation army a well-disciplined and efficient combat force. The Spanish colonialists were thus confronted with an invincible army of dedicated fighters ready to give their lives in the name of freedom.

In 1819 the Angostura Congress proclaimed the Republic of Great Colombia, incorporating Venezuela and Nueva Granada. The illustrious Bolivar was elected president of the new republic. Meanwhile, a large part of the country still remained to be won from the Spaniards. Bolivar’s army embarked on its heroic expedition across the snow-capped Andes. Many of these brave champions of freedom perished in the course of this hazardous journey, beset with countless perils. In 1822 Bolivar succeeded in liberating Quito (Ecuador) which was then also incorporated into Great Colombia.

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The Liberation of La Plata, Chile and Peru

p The Spanish colonialists also launched an offensive in the South. On July 9, 1816, at the Congress of Tucuman a Declaration of the Independence of the United Provinces of La Plata was 400 adopted. Another army of freedom fighters, this time under the leadership of another talented commander and hero of the liberation movement Jose de San-Martin, also made a valiant crossing of the Andes in the course of its successful struggle against the Spaniards. In Chile they were to be joined by the local champions of freedom led by Bernardo O’Higgins. At the battles of Chacabuco (February 1817) and Maipii (April 1818) San-Martin’s army defeated the Spaniards. These victories were followed by the declaration of Chilean independence.

p Meanwhile the stronghold of the Spanish rulers in Peru still held firm and it was here that San-Martin and Bolivar led their armies in 1821. The war against the Spaniards in Peru was to last for several years, until Simon Bolivar finally succeeded in breaking the stubborn resistance of the Spanish colonialists. On August 6, 1824, the Spaniards suffered a decisive defeat at Junin, which marked the turning point in their resistance. In 1825 Alto (Upper) Peru was liberated and named Bolivia in honour of the commander of the liberation armies. In January 1826 the last Spanish garrison in the town of Callao surrendered.

At last the rule of the Spanish colonialists in South America was at an end. During the same period (1821-1824) Mexico and Central America also gained their independence. After a period of revolt against the Portuguese (1817-1822) Brazil also gained her independence.

The Historical Significance
of the Latin American Wars
of Liberation

The heroic liberation struggle which had lasted for more than 15 years freed the whole of Latin America, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico, from Spanish and Portuguese rule. This victory was due in the main to the fact that the masses had united in a just struggle against their hated oppressors. The victory of this revolution in Latin America was of major international significance, making possible the establishment of a number of new independent republics in the New World and thus serving to seriously undermine the forces of international reaction led by the Holy Alliance. The victory of the Latin American revolutions dealt a crushing blow to two vast colonial empires—those of Spain and Portugal—and represented an important stage in the struggle of the colonial peoples against their oppressors.