ABSTRACT
For sixty years Europe has been convulsed by a series of political struggles which have assumed all aspects by turns, which have raised every conceivable fl ag, from that of pure despotism to that of anarchy, from the organization of the bourgeoisie in France and elsewhere as the dominant caste, to the jacqueries of the peasants of Gallicia. irty revolutions have taken place. Two or three royal dynasties have been engulfed in the abyss of popular fury. Nations have risen, like Greece, from the tombs where they had been for ages buried; others, like Poland, have been erased from the map.136 Forgotten, almost unknown races, the Sclavonian race, the Roumaine race, silent until now, have disinterred their traditionary titles and demanded to be represented in the Congress of nations. Kings and Queens have gone to die in
exile. e Austrian Empire, the China of Europe, has been on the brink of destruction. A Pope, drawn along by the popular current, has been obliged to bless a national insurrection, and then to fl y under favour of disguise from the capital of the Christian World.137 Vienna has twice been covered with barricades. Rome has seen the republican banner fl oat above the Vatican. Governments, attacked and overthrown, have ten, twenty times recovered strength, drawn closer their alliances, overrun the half of Europe with their armies, annihilated revolutions, eff aced by the sword, the scaff old, prison and exile, entire generations of revolutionary spirits, and crushed, as they term it, the hydra of disorder and anarchy. . . .
