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CHAPTER XXVIII: Mexico
In 1879, another war took place between the British in India and Afghanistan, and ended by the Ameer consenting to place himself under British protection.
The Texans having won their independence from Mexico in 1836, applied for admission to the Union in 1844, and was received as a State, Dec. 27, 1845. The Texans claimed that the Rio Grande was the boundary between Texas and Mexico, while the latter claimed the territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. This boundary dispute finally led to a war between Mexico and the United States. The Americans, after several severe battles, captured the Mexican Capital, and a treaty of peace was concluded, whereby the United States acquired the immense territory stretching south to the Gila river and west to the Pacific ocean. 1848 a revolutionary movement convulsed most of the countries of Europe. Louis Philippe was driven from the French throne; Berlin was the scene of bloodshed and riot; Hungary revolted against Austria, and the insurrection would have been successful were Austria not assisted by Russia; Pius IX. was forced to fly from Rome, and a Roman Republic was established, in 1849. The same year a French army captured the eternal city, and the pope's temporal power was restored. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I., succeeded in becoming emperor of the French in 1852. He was accepted as an ally by the English when Russia showed her purpose of conquering Turkey, and the English and French armies opposed her by attacking her outpost in the Crimea, where three great victories were gained and the fortress of Sebastapool taken in 1855.
Meantime Italian liberty and unity had found a royal head in Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, and a gallant champion in Garibaldi. War with the Austrians began, and Napoleon III. assisted till the north was won; but there the French stopped short and would not aid in the overthrow of the Papal dominion at Rome, where Pius IX., terrified at the result of his liberal ideas, had become narrower than ever, and more resolved to assert his spiritual as well as his temporal power.
England had been engaged in repressing the insurrection of the Sepoys or native troops in India, known as the Mutiny of 1857. These men murdered their officers and their families in Bengal, hoping to exterminate the whole of the English, and horrors unspeakable happened at Delhi, Cawnpore and other places, but many others remained firm; the Sepoys were put down. India was made over by the company to the crown as an empire.
In America, the northern and southern states had a sharp war on the election of president Lincoln, because he was known to be unfavorable to the negro slavery which prevailed in the southern states. After a five years' war, from 1861 to 1865, the north was victorious and slavery came to an end. All Christian states except Portugal have thus given it up. (See special article.)
Prussia had risen to be the leading state in Germany, and, under king William and his minister Bismarck, succeeded in uniting all German states under her. Great jealousies existed between her and France, and these were fanned into a flame when Spain, having expelled her queen, Isabella II., elected a cousin of the king of Prussia. Determined on war, the French crossed the frontier in 1870, but defeat followed on defeat, the emperor was made prisoner, and Paris in a fury overthrew his government and proclaimed a republic. The Germans advanced, and in the midst of the seige, king William was elected German emperor, and received the Crown at Versailles. Famine forced Paris to surrender, but no sooner were the enemy gone, than the populace, declaring that they had been betrayed, closed their gates against the government, murdered generals and clergy, and held out till the soldiers who had been captives in Germany returned, when they set fire to their public buildings, and many of them were shot down or sent to the colonies. It was a wild attempt to destroy the rights of property, and the like spirit is the present danger of the world. The fall of Napoleon led to the fall of the temporal power of the pope. Deprived of the support of France, Rome was an easy conquest. The pope retired into the Vatican, where he and his successor, Leo XIII., have continued in a sort of voluntary captivity, refusing to recognize any right on the part of the king of Italy, who now holds the entire peninsula.
In 1866, a short and bloody war occurred between Austria on the one hand, and Italy and Prussia on the other, resulting in the cession of Venice to Italy, and the dual reorganization of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Since then the Slavonic Bohemians have continued to struggle in vain for the separate crown rights of their ancient kingdom.