A Memorable Month to Europe.
By Peter Bayne
PETER BAYNE, the London correspondent of the Watchman and Reflector, makes the following statement respecting the changes witnessed in Europe during the month of July: ‘The July of 1866 will take rank among the notable months of the world’s history. It came in with the battle of Sadowa; it went out with the laying of the Atlantic Telegraph; and the Europe on which the sun of its first morning rose, was a very different Europe from that on which the sun of its last evening went down. On the first of July, Napoleon III. was unquestionably the foremost man in Europe. He believed himself to be, and others believed him to be, the arbiter in her disputes, the umpire against whose decision none of her potentates would dare appeal. On the last of July, Napoleon III. was by universal consent the second man in Europe, eclipsed, thwarted, out-maneuvered, by a Prussian minister, who a few years ago, had been known only as the fanatically vehement, and eccentrically absurd advocate of reactionary notions in the Prussian Parliament. On the first of July, though already the swiftly advancing army of Prussia, converging from many points toward the great battle-field of Sadowa, had attracted the attention and won the respect of the European public, the general feeling throughout Germany was one of exasperation on account of Prussian arrogance and resolution to defy Prussian aggression. On the last of July, a revolution had taken place in the thoughts of men throughout all the German countries. Bismarck is no longer looked upon as an oppressor and robber, but as the representative man of the German race, the sympathizer with its deepest wants, the conqueror whose victories can be formidable only to the enemies of Germany, and must be for the honor and protection of all the children of Fatherland. On the first of July, the German Confederation, the ultimate form of that old Roman and German Empire, which for a thousand years imposed upon the imagination of mankind, was still in existence; on the last of July it had been swept from the face of the earth, its elements had been thrown into new combinations, and the very possibility of its resuscitation had apparently been annihilated. On the first of July that power, which, in the modern system of European affairs, has been the main support of Popery,—that power to which, as he feels his temporal sovereignty slipping from his grasp, the Pope has looked wistfully, and not without hope, as a refuge both from Italy and from France,—was in command of an army, which, though checked, had not been conquered, and which was still believed by many to be capable of trampling down the squadrons of Prussia, and of dictating conditions of peace in the streets of Berlin. On the last of July, Austria had been vanquished and humiliated, forced to relinquish her place among the powers of Germany, compelled to give up Venetia, driven back, with all the representatives of obstruction and sacerdotalism, into the east of Europe, so that free course may be left for the onward march of civilization in the west.’