Several British colonies and dependencies became alienated. The whole of the Australian dependencies threw off the yoke of England. The French became the ultimate possessors of Newfoundland, owing to the supineness of the Government to which it looked for protection. A treaty between the United States and France was the means of robbing England of Canada, and in order to prevent the loss of further slices of the Empire, Great Britain was obliged to maintain a large standing army and navy.
There were a great many republicans in the House of Commons, and these people always played upon one string. They urged that all the troubles and worries of the English had their origin in the huge sums of money which were paid to the Royal family, which ever grew more exacting and rapacious in its demands for money. So powerfully did the republicans appeal to the nation that many of the royalists began to consider the situation anxiously, and feared lest the reigning dynasty should be dethroned, and England be turned into a republic.
Others, however, considered that so much had been done to conciliate the Germans and Scots, who were both brave and of great skill in warfare, that an alliance with them could be safely counted upon in the event of a civil war breaking out.
Meanwhile France was also the scene of great political changes. The people had once more tired of the republic, and, with their usual extremeness, had once more rejoiced at the coronation of an Emperor. Bourbonists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists were alike powerless in the election of a supreme ruler, and their respective claims were all set on one side in favour of an obscure adventurer, who, emulating Napoleon, had used the army as the step-ladder for his ambition. The French nation, jealous of the fast-increasing power of its big German neighbour, gladly placed in supreme command a man who, among other things, promised to make the hated Teuton lick the dust.
Russian Autocracy was fast becoming a thing of the past, but Germany steadily grew in power, until it threatened to emulate the days of Charlemagne, and engulph all the countries between which it was sandwiched.
Such was the condition of some of the principal countries of Europe when the Irish, resolved no longer to “groan under the yoke of the oppressor,” formed themselves into a secret society which embraced nearly all the nation; held many clandestine meetings, at which all manner of dark things were plotted; and finally invoked the aid of France in a grand fight which they were going to make for independence and freedom.