armies far beyond the borders of the Republic, the Convention in Paris still made vain efforts to keep its faith with principle by asserting that the wars were not for conquest, and that all peoples should be free to choose their own sovereignty.

The first demand for annexation to revolutionary France was from Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin. In the heart of the Midi, Avignon and the Venaissin had for many hundreds of years been under the sovereignty of the Pope with occasional brief periods of French rule. The partisans of union in the Constituent Assembly pointed with some show of reason to the faulty title of the Pope and to the strategic value of Avignon, and were content to consider the first votes of the communes, cast during the Civil War, as sufficient. They had the Parisian crowd with them, but so devoted was the majority of the Constituent Assembly to the principle of popular sovereignty and the recent pledge against conquest that for two years no measures looking to union could get a majority, in spite of the frequent appeals which came from the territory itself. In the Constituent Assembly the party for annexation at any price advanced the flaws in the papal title. The majority, however, looked on this argument as one of no value to the French claim which they based on the popular vote. This claim being in their eyes supreme, they regarded the historical argument for the French title as of use only in the eyes of a Europe which did not recognize popular sovereignty and whose sole concern was for treaties and public law. It was only after mediators had been dispatched to end the civil war which was consuming the territory and which had rent Provence and moved all France, and after these mediators had reported that the opposing forces had been pacified and a fair vote taken in the communes and ratified by the Assembly of elected delegates, that the Constituent Assembly finally voted the union.1

By both contemporary and later historians, doubt has been thrown on the fairness of the vote cast. Religious as well as political controversies were involved. On one side we find united in an effort to discredit the vote both the Catholic historians and those Protestants whose sympathy with liberal institutions had been alienated by the later excesses of the French Revolution. The conditions of the vote, the primitive methods of voting common to the time, the presence of the French agents and armed troops, the fact that the civil war had been an especially vindictive one with numerous atrocities on

1 In their characterization of the plebiscites of the revolution as mere comedies to cover conquest, some authors include that of Avignon. Cf. Frantz Despagnet, Droit international public, § 391, and Alphonse Rivier, Principes du droit des gens, vol. I, p. 208. Such a characterization does not appear, however, to be consistent with the actual nistory of the affair. 2 Voting in the eighteenth century was customarily viva voce. The ballot, although introduced in some of the American States in 1775, was in reality a nineteenth century institution. The Australian ballot was not introduced in England until 1872.

both sides

these facts make it impossible to contend that the reproaches are not well founded, though it appears certain that they are exaggerated. As for the actual will of the majority having been ascertained, there can be no doubt. Even the most partisan historians admit that the majority were satisfied and that the question of union soon ceased to be a vital one.1 The important aspect, however, is not so much whether the vote taken was actually fair, but whether the Constituent Assembly intended it to be fair and thought it so when it finally acted on it. As to this question, from a careful examination of the many pages of debate there can be little doubt.

This attitude of the Assembly was repeated even after the war against the Coalition had been undertaken and French forces were in Savoy and Nice. Both soldiers and politicians seemed determined to adhere to the fundamental principles on which the Revolution was based. The attitude of the Assembly concerning Savoy brought the highest praise from its American sympathizer, Joel Barlow. It was, he said, an instance forming an epoch in the history of Europe. "Here we see a sovereign people, uninfluenced by any fears, hopes, or connections from abroad, deliberating in the most solemn manner, whether they will extend their territorial boundaries by the admission of seven new provinces, inhabited by four hundred thousand freemen who had sent their deputies to solicit a union. To raise a question on a proposition of this kind is certainly a new thing in politics. Louis XIV would have carried on a war for half a century and sacrificed twice that number of his own subjects to have made such an acquisition for his dominions." 2 The elections of Savoy, though taken during the French occupation and under the auspices of the French Commissioners as well as the local authorities, are without reproach from historians. Those of Nice, perhaps more open to question, are equally accepted.

The drama of the Revolution was, however, progressing swiftly. The war against Prussia and Austria was becoming the chief fact to which all theory must be subordinated. The French forces had not only entered Savoy and Nice, Custine was now advancing into German territory and Dumouriez into the Austrian Netherlands.

It had been the consuming ambition of many kings of France, and particularly of Louis XIV, to incorporate the Netherlands into their kingdom and thus regain the ancient boundaries of Charlemagne, but this national aspiration was now dormant. The idea of conquest was utterly foreign to the expedition in its initiation. The Constituent Assembly had declared the

1 Soullier, Histoire de la révolution d'Avignon et du Comtat Venaissin en 1789 et années suivantes, vol. 2, p. 72 et seq.

2 Joel Barlow, "A Letter to the People of Piedmont," in The Political Writings of Joel Barlow, p. 233.

inviolability of popular sovereignty; the war was a defensive one from the point of view of the Legislative Assembly which had begun it and of the Convention which was carrying it on. Respect for popular sovereignty had been rewarded by the eager union of Savoy and Nice. Little doubting that other peoples would be equally eager to adopt revolutionary principles the French were at first content to repeat the policy with the Belgians. The Belgians, however, in their first elections under French occupation, showed an attachment to their old institutions. The growth of the scale of the war and the cost of the maintenance of troops on foreign soil were causing grave financial embarrassment to the Convention. Further funds were necessary. The Belgians showed a disposition to adopt neither revolutionary principles nor revolutionary money. In this juncture the temptation not to repudiate the principle of popular sovereignty but so to tamper with it that the result would be assured proved irresistible. The old argument of the natural limits revived and added its appeal.

On December 15, 1792, Cambon, in charge of the financial policy of the Convention, presented a report for the Committees on Finance, Military Affairs and Diplomacy, regarding the conduct to be followed by the generals in the countries occupied by the armies of the Republic. On October 24 Lasource had made a report and read a draft decree on this same subject which had not been acted upon.1 The report of Cambon was far different from that of Lasource which had urged the Convention to decree that the generals should pay a most meticulous respect to the sovereignty of the invaded peoples. Totally abandoning this policy, the decree of Cambon suspended the existing governments, abolished taxes, limited the franchise to those in sympathy with the revolution and provided for two sets of agents to aid in the further manipulating of the vote. Thus the Convention, not daring to forsake the principle of self-determination, perhaps not realizing that it was forsaking it, was guilty for the first time of the most drastic infringement of popular sovereignty. These conditions prescribed by the decree, even had they been unaccompanied by the improper acts of the French agents and the excesses of the sans-culottes would have served to discredit the votes of the Belgian communes. Had methods of coercion not been resorted to, the electoral qualifications alone would have served to disfranchise the opposition in each community. The stigma attaching to these votes attaches to all those cast after the decree. No vote, whether in Mayence, the Saar valley, or Monaco, should have been considered valid by the Convention. No vote was free, no vote was significant. Yet the Convention, deaf to warnings, steadfastly pursued its policy of annexations based on plebiscites without 1 Documents, post, p. 283.

any attempt to investigate the conditions of the vote. Two short years of war had served to change completely the attitude of France towards conquest.

The Decree of December 15 marked a transition in the policy of the Convention. It is a turning point in the Revolution. Hitherto acts infringing on the sovereignty of foreign peoples, when committed by the generals, had been disavowed by the Assembly at Paris. From now on these acts were authorized by the Convention itself. Political expediency had overthrown the basic philosophy of the Revolution. Military necessity and the search for the sinews of war had turned the Revolution into paths which soon led them far from that renunciation of all conquest with which the Revolution had started. The way was paved for Napoleon, and by the time of his advent and his triumph the campaign of forcing other people to be free had begun in earnest. Except for the treaties of union of the little republics of Mülhausen and of Geneva with France, in which the annexations are based on the votes of the inhabitants, we hear no further echo of the right of selfdetermination.

The Napoleonic era consigned the principle to oblivion, and the Congress of Vienna appeared to be its death-blow. Thanks to Talleyrand, Metternich and the other reactionaries, once more the ancient dynastic principle was restored, again the land was held to belong to the sovereign. Thus the struggle between principle and expediency ceased, for principle now coincided with the current conception of expediency. But the very disregard of national desires intensified the nationalistic spirit among the people so disposed of,1 and the numerous subsequent outbreaks promised anything but permanence for the Vienna patchwork.

ments.

Revolted by the excesses of the Revolution and exhausted by the Napoleonic wars resulting from it, the world had become weary of the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Any suggestion of doctrines reminiscent of the Rights of Man met with scorn from intellectuals and harsh repression from governSuch a condition of instability could not be permanent, however. The smouldering fires of nationalism which had been repressed in 1815, fanned by the rising wind of democracy, burst into flame in 1848. With the resurgence of the subject nationalities arose again, with greater virility, the twin principles of popular sovereignty and of national self-determination. The two places where the doctrine assumed importance were in the Italian

1 The treaty of Kiel of January 14, 1814, by which Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden, was repudiated by the Norse on the ground that, while the Danish King might renounce his right to the Norwegian crown, it was contrary to international law to dispose of an entire kingdom without the consent of its people. The Norse thereupon attempted armed resistance, which was so far successful that the union was based not on the treaty but on the Act of Union of 1815, which declared Norway to be a free, independent, and indivisible kingdom. British and Foreign State Papers, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 297.

problem and the question of Schleswig-Holstein. In each case it was resorted to by a subject nationality in its effort to win freedom from reluctant rulers by establishing before Europe the justice of its claim.

The method of founding the union of Italy on the voluntary wish of the people of each province which was expressed in a popular vote by manhood suffrage the method followed in the union of each of the nine provinces, ending with that of Rome in 1870 — began with 1848. The choice of this method was doubtless due to the fact that there was no other way to establish a title against the opposition of the various European courts, which could point to the treaties and the principle of legitimacy in support of the dispossessed petty sovereigns and against union. The event proved the wisdom of the Italian statesmen who had chosen this method to defeat the attempted arrangements of the Holy Alliance, and the opposition of the northern Powers.

The first plebiscite was held in Lombardy under the provisional government to determine whether or not there should be immediate union with Sardinia or whether the decision should be delayed. The vote was by manhood suffrage with no literacy qualification. Plebiscites followed in Parma, Modena and the cities of the Venetian mainland. In Venice itself the vote was by an elected assembly. The method of voting in the plebiscites was the primitive one of writing the name and vote in registers in the presence of election officials, the chief of whom was the parish priest. In the case of Lombardy there were consequent accusations of fraud and intimidation, largely religious, and the republicans charged that the haste shown in holding the plebiscite was unfair. There is, however, no serious assertion now that the result did not represent the popular will.

The laws of the Sardinian Parliament uniting these States to the kingdom state that "in view of the popular vote of the inhabitants of Lombardy [Modena, etc.] "the province is declared to be an integral part of the Sardinian Kingdom." The immediate results of the plebiscites of 1848 were short-lived and the union so decreed fell with the reverses attending the Piedmontese arms. The idea of popular consultation as a method of attaining union was not dead, however; it merely awaited a favorable opportunity to reassert itself, an opportunity which came with the aid of France in the war of 1859.

The year 1848 not only saw the method of the plebiscite resorted to in Italy, but also advocated by Prussia and the Germanic Confederation as a means of settling the Schleswig question. The situation in Schleswig in 1848 was dramatic. Here two nationalist movements, the Danish and the German, each reaching out to gather in all the people of common origin, came into conflict. In race the northern part of Schleswig was admittedly Danish, the southern part admittedly German. Holstein was wholly German and was a member