heir own settlement of
Europe. Sweden would not admit the right of the powers to intervene, but
finally settled her difficulty with Denmark by a separate negotiation
conducted by the mediation of Great Britain in 1819.

A still more doubtful question was raised by the request of Spain for
the assistance of the allied powers against her revolted colonies. The
Spanish dependencies in America had declined to acknowledge Joseph
Bonaparte, and had lapsed into a state of chaos; the restoration of
Ferdinand VII. had induced most of them to return to their allegiance,
but the three south-eastern colonies, Banda Oriental (Uruguay), La Plata
(the Argentine), and Paraguay, continued in revolt. In 1817 fortune
turned still further against Spain; Monte Video, the capital of Banda
Oriental, was taken by Portugal, or rather by Brazil, and Chile revolted
against Spain. On February 12, 1818, Chile proclaimed her independence,
and she began at once to procure warships in England and the United
States, of which Lord Cochrane took command. The four allied powers and
France had protested against the seizure of Monte Video, but otherwise
Spain had been left to herself. Great Britain seemed to have more to
gain than to lose by the insurrection. The revolted colonies were open
to her commerce, and by weakening Spain they had strengthened the
maritime supremacy of Great Britain. Nevertheless Great Britain was
willing to mediate, on condition that Spain would make reasonable
concessions. Spain, however, refused to make any concessions at all, and
called on the allied powers to aid her in crushing the insurrection by
force. Great Britain did not regard an unconditional subjection of the
colonies as either expedient or practicable, and opposed this course;
Austria took the same view, and thus placed intervention out of the
question.

[Pageheading: _THE EUROPEAN ALLIANCE._]

But the principal question before the conference of Aix-la-Chapelle was
not one relating to any particular difficulty, but the permanent form of
the European alliance. The tsar desired a general confederacy of
European powers, such as had signed the treaty of Vienna and the holy
alliance. This confederacy was to guard against two evils--that of
revolutionary agitation and that of arbitrary administration and
sectional alliances. Such a project, though doubtless proposed in good
faith, practically gave Russia an interest in the domestic movements,
both reactionary and constit