who sought to perpetuate them.  The effect of this widespread discontent was not felt at once.  The peoples were too exhausted by the terrific strain of the Napoleonic wars to do much for a generation or more, save in times of popular excitement.  Except in the south-east of Europe, where Greece, with the aid of Russia, Britain, and France, wrested her political independence from the grasp of the Sultan (1827), the forty years that succeeded Waterloo were broken by no important war; but they were marked by oft-recurring unrest and sedition.  Thus, when the French Revolution of 1830 overthrew the reactionary dynasty of the elder Bourbons, the universal excitement caused by this event endowed the Belgians with strength sufficient to shake off the heavy yoke of the Dutch; while in Italy, Germany, and Poland the democrats and nationalists (now working generally in accord) made valiant but unsuccessful efforts to achieve their ideals.

The same was the case in 1848.  The excitement, which this time originated in Italy, spread to France, overthrew the throne of Louis Philippe (of the younger branch of the French Bourbons), and bade fair to roll half of the crowns of Europe into the gutter.  But these spasmodic efforts of the democrats speedily failed.  Inexperience, disunion, and jealousy paralysed their actions and yielded the victory to the old Governments.  Frenchmen, in dismay at the seeming approach of communism and anarchy, fell back upon the odd expedient of a Napoleonic Republic, which in 1852 was easily changed by Louis Napoleon into an Empire modelled on that of his far greater uncle.  The democrats of Germany achieved some startling successes over their repressive Governments in the spring of the year 1848, only to find that they could not devise a working constitution for the Fatherland; and the deputies who met at the federal capital, Frankfurt, to unify Germany “by speechifying and majorities,” saw power slip back little by little into the hands of the monarchs and princes.  In the Austrian Empire nationalist claims and strivings led to a very Babel of discordant talk and action, amidst which the young Hapsburg ruler, Francis Joseph, thanks to Russian military aid, was able to triumph over the valour of the Hungarians and the devotion of their champion, Kossuth.

In Italy the same sad tale was told.  In the spring of that year of revolutions, 1848, the rulers in quick succession granted constitutions to their subjects.  The reforming Pope, Pius ix., and the patriotic King of Sardinia, Charles Albert, also made common cause with their peoples in the effort to drive out the Austrians from Lombardy-Venetia; but the Pope and all the potentates except Charles Albert speedily deserted the popular cause; friction between the King and the republican leaders, Mazzini and Garibaldi, further weakened the nationalists, and the Austrians had little difficulty in crushing Charles Albert’s forces, whereupon he abdicated in favour of his son,