SUPERPOWER BULLIES AND NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY-4
Created | Updated May 9, 2016
~~THE COMBINED EFFORTS OF THE WEAK
But Bonaparte’s efforts to impose his version of “the general will” of the French people on the whole continent of Europe was defeated by what Lord Acton later referred to as “the combined efforts of the weak, made under compulsion, to resist the reign of force and constant wrong”.
Faced with a France newly empowered by an unchained revolutionary nationalism the English people accepted a second loss of some sovereignty in less than a hundred years by becoming citizens of an even larger United Kingdom, but perhaps this also made it possible to give strong support to allies like Portugal and pro-British Indian states. But also, frustrated by the Russian refusal to comply with his attempts to defeat “the nation of shopkeepers” by economic warfare, Napoleon risked sending an army’ of 600,000 men into that vast country in 1812 with disastrous consequences.
But perhaps no consequences of French revolutionary aggression were more disastrous in the long run than the impact of yet another French invasion that swept across the German plains. In the Seven Years War (1756-63) Britain had been able to farm out the land war to Frederick the Great of Prussia, but that Prussia was no match for Napoleonic France and the Prussians themselves reacted to Napoleon’s efforts to shape a new Europe with their own revolutionary nationalism so that the victories of 1814 and again at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 were achieved by a combination of British forces under Wellington and Prussian forces under Blucher.
For the English, however, who were now just the largest nationality within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, these latest French Wars fitted an historical pattern that Lord Acton described as “the rhythmic movement of History” in his lecture on the “Beginning of the Modern State”, which was called into being as the “First Europe” collapsed.
Suddenly Medieval Christendom was confronted by a “Bursting of the Dykes” that found geographical expression in the Fall of Constantinople in 1456 followed by the invasion of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire. The Italian City States, including the Papal States, had now found themselves thrust into “the Front Line” of a war to defend their ‘world’ and military competence suddenly assumed a new importance that reached a literally crowning moment when the military campaigns of Charles V, Emperor of Germany and King of Spain, was formally crowned as Holy Roman Emperor with the Pope’s blessing at Bologna in 1530.
As Lord Acton put it, this was a moment that: “revived the ancient belief in a supreme authority elevated on alliance with the priesthood, at the expense of the independence and the equipoise of nations. The exploits of Magellan and Cortez…called up vain dreams of the coming immensity of Spain, and roused the phantom of universal empire. The motive of domination became a reigning force in Europe; for it was an idea that monarchy would not willingly let fall…For centuries it was constantly asserted as a claim of necessity and of right. It was the supreme manifestation of the modern state, according to the image which Machiavelli had set up, the state that suffers neither limit nor equality, and is bound by no duty to nations or to men, that thrives on destruction, and sanctifies whatever things contributed to increase of power.”
“This law of the modern world, that power tends to expand indefinitely, and will transcend all barriers, abroad and at home, until met by superior force, produces the rhythmic movement of History. Neither race, nor religion, nor political theory has been in the same degree an incentive to the perpetuation of universal enmity and national strife. The threatened interests were compelled to unite for the self-government of nations, the toleration of religions, and the rights of men. And it is by the combined efforts of the weak, made under compulsion, to resist the reign of force and constant wrong, that, in the rapid change but slow progress of four hundred years, liberty has been preserved, and secured, and extended, and finally understood.” (pages 50-51)
But Bonaparte’s efforts to impose his version of “the general will” of the French people on the whole continent of Europe was defeated by what Lord Acton later referred to as “the combined efforts of the weak, made under compulsion, to resist the reign of force and constant wrong”.
Faced with a France newly empowered by an unchained revolutionary nationalism the English people accepted a second loss of some sovereignty in less than a hundred years by becoming citizens of an even larger United Kingdom, but perhaps this also made it possible to give strong support to allies like Portugal and pro-British Indian states. But also, frustrated by the Russian refusal to comply with his attempts to defeat “the nation of shopkeepers” by economic warfare, Napoleon risked sending an army’ of 600,000 men into that vast country in 1812 with disastrous consequences.
But perhaps no consequences of French revolutionary aggression were more disastrous in the long run than the impact of yet another French invasion that swept across the German plains. In the Seven Years War (1756-63) Britain had been able to farm out the land war to Frederick the Great of Prussia, but that Prussia was no match for Napoleonic France and the Prussians themselves reacted to Napoleon’s efforts to shape a new Europe with their own revolutionary nationalism so that the victories of 1814 and again at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 were achieved by a combination of British forces under Wellington and Prussian forces under Blucher.
For the English, however, who were now just the largest nationality within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, these latest French Wars fitted an historical pattern that Lord Acton described as “the rhythmic movement of History” in his lecture on the “Beginning of the Modern State”, which was called into being as the “First Europe” collapsed.
Suddenly Medieval Christendom was confronted by a “Bursting of the Dykes” that found geographical expression in the Fall of Constantinople in 1456 followed by the invasion of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire. The Italian City States, including the Papal States, had now found themselves thrust into “the Front Line” of a war to defend their ‘world’ and military competence suddenly assumed a new importance that reached a literally crowning moment when the military campaigns of Charles V, Emperor of Germany and King of Spain, was formally crowned as Holy Roman Emperor with the Pope’s blessing at Bologna in 1530.
As Lord Acton put it, this was a moment that: “revived the ancient belief in a supreme authority elevated on alliance with the priesthood, at the expense of the independence and the equipoise of nations. The exploits of Magellan and Cortez…called up vain dreams of the coming immensity of Spain, and roused the phantom of universal empire. The motive of domination became a reigning force in Europe; for it was an idea that monarchy would not willingly let fall…For centuries it was constantly asserted as a claim of necessity and of right. It was the supreme manifestation of the modern state, according to the image which Machiavelli had set up, the state that suffers neither limit nor equality, and is bound by no duty to nations or to men, that thrives on destruction, and sanctifies whatever things contributed to increase of power.”
“This law of the modern world, that power tends to expand indefinitely, and will transcend all barriers, abroad and at home, until met by superior force, produces the rhythmic movement of History. Neither race, nor religion, nor political theory has been in the same degree an incentive to the perpetuation of universal enmity and national strife. The threatened interests were compelled to unite for the self-government of nations, the toleration of religions, and the rights of men. And it is by the combined efforts of the weak, made under compulsion, to resist the reign of force and constant wrong, that, in the rapid change but slow progress of four hundred years, liberty has been preserved, and secured, and extended, and finally understood.” (pages 50-51)
