n Parma, where the protest of Spain against the rule of Maria Louisa
could now be ignored. Genoa was annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia; the
pope received back the states of the Church; the Grand Duke of Tuscany
and the Duke of Modena were restored; while Austria had to be content
with Venetia and Lombardy as far as the Ticino. The organisation of
Germany occupied the congress until June, and was the least durable part
of its work. The basis of it was a confederation of thirty-eight states,
represented and in theory controlled by a diet under the presidency of
Austria. This diet naturally resolved itself into a mere permanent
congress of diplomatists for the purpose of settling the mutual
relations of the constituent states. Each state was ordered to adopt a
constitutional form of government, but, as no provision was made for
enforcing this clause, it remained a dead letter. Prussia regained her
provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, with a population exceeding
1,000,000, and was allotted the northern part of Saxony, with a
population of 800,000, besides retaining her original share of Poland,
with the province of Posen, which had formed part of the duchy of
Warsaw. Most of this duchy was annexed by Russia, but Cracow was left a
republic. Prussia also gained Swedish Pomerania. Bavaria, Hanover, and
Denmark profited more or less by the repartition of Germany. Denmark,
however, finally lost Norway, and Sweden paid the price of this
acquisition by resigning Finland to Russia. The neutrality of
Switzerland was proclaimed and her constitution simplified. The Belgian
Netherlands were united to Holland, the two forming together the kingdom
of the Netherlands, to which Austria ceded all her claims in the Low
Countries.

[Pageheading: _THE SECOND TREATY OF PARIS._]

The treaty of Vienna left the boundaries of France itself as they had
been defined by the first treaty of Paris in 1814. The second treaty of
Paris, however, signed on November 20, 1815, was less favourable to
France, which had already ceded Western Savoy to Sardinia, and was now
required to abandon Landau and other outlying territories beyond the
frontier of 1792. She was also compelled to restore all the works of art
accumulated during the war.

Great Britain had failed to obtain from the congress any binding
regulation on the subject of the slave trade. The most that she could
obtain was a solemn denunciation of that trade issued on February 8,
which declared