1851 LONDON. MAZZINI’S EUROPEAN DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE And not only is England a safe place of refuge for every foreigner who, in his native land, has fallen a victim to civil discords, but she is, in fact, the last sanctuary, in Europe, open to the human mind itself. Louis Blanc, 1848. Historical Revelations218 With France’s international role as defender of civil and political liberties in free-fall, it was London’s turn to rise as a beacon of freedom for the world and a meeting point for exiled and persecuted political dissenters. The French authorities were becoming concerned that arrests, surveillance and intimidation at home drove French and foreign agitators away from France to London, which quickly acquired a reputation as an international centre for the activities of conspiratorial groups aiming to launch a pan-European revolution. A report of the Parisian prefect of police of August 1851 listed an Association of exiled French socialist democrats, a Socialist democratic committee of German refugees, a Hungarian democratic society, a section of the Polish Democratic Committee and an Italian national committee, all operating on British soil.219 In the summer of 1850, Giuseppe Mazzini, exiled in London, had formed the Central European Democratic Committee, an underground association bringing together some of the leading republicans, revolutionaries and radicals expelled from their countries by the defeat of the 1848 movements, people such as the former Montagnard Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, the Pole Albert Darász and the German professor of philosophy Arnold Ruge. Romanian moderates such as Ion Ghica and Nicolae Bălcescu were reluctant to join the Committee and risk appearing, in Ghica’s words, as the “anarchists and enemies of social order” feared by the Turkish and the European governments.220 218 Louis Blanc, 1848. Historical Revelations, inscribed to Lord Normanby (London, 1858), Preface, v–vi. 219 I. Tchernoff, Associations et sociétés secrètes sous la deuxième république, 1848– 1851 (Paris, 1905), 343, 373–6. 220 Din arhiva lui D. Brătianu, 1: 44–5. 190 1851 Dumitru Brătianu, who had no such qualms, applied to join, in the firm belief that common action would be a step towards greater cohesion among the European and Central-European left and especially among the exiled revolutionaries. In April 1851 he arrived in London with a letter to Mazzini from Edgar Quinet and another to LedruRollin from Michelet. “Mr. Bratiano aîné” was, Michelet wrote in his letter, “one of the founders of Wallachian liberty and his country’s foremost thinker.”221 The formal Wallachian offer of underground revolutionary collaboration was accepted by the Committee in mid-June and the Committee’s “Manifesto to the Romanians” welcomed their adoption into the great family of the peoples in preparation for the great battle between “the spirit of good and the spirit of evil” in the world.222 The Romanians responded on 11 September with a “Manifesto to the European Committee”. “Forgotten, unknown by the peoples of the West (Occident), by our own blood brethren of the Latin family, misunderstood by the peoples of the East (Orient), harassed by our neighbours, alone we have walked erect throught the times and the numberless tempests that Asia kept hurling towards us.”223 The Romanians declared themselves ready to join “the holy crusade for democracy” and aim towards building a “Danubian confederation of equal nations”.224 Mazzini also negotiated an agreement between Hungarians and Romanians prior to Brătianu’s admission to the Committee: a pledge towards a peaceful solution to ethnic differences in Transylvania, guaranteed universal suffrage for all the ethnic minorities, as well as a truce pending victory and the start of a European Democratic Congress were among Mazzini’s conditions for admitting Hungarians and Romanians into the republican brotherhood.225 In his visionary enthusiasm, Mazzini obviously glossed over ethnic, geopolitical and diplomatic nuances and conundrums, an approach which partly justified Golescu-Albu’s criticism of the Italian leader.226 Nevertheless, the Romanians were pleased enough with their new international affiliation to send their “Manifesto” for publication to six major French 221 Ibid., 45. Ibid., 46. 223 Smochină, “Sur les émigrés roumains à Paris”, 187–8. The entire text is reproduced by Smochină on pp. 187–93. 224 Ibid., 190. 225 Ibid. 226 See p. 197 below. 222
