refugee in England. As the three Princes
of the House of Conde, the Prince de Conde, his son, the Duc de Bourbon,
and his: grandson, the Due d'Enghien, all died without further male
issue, that noble line is extinct.
When the news of the escape of Napoleon from Elba reached Vienna on the
7th of March 1815, the three heads of the Allies, the Emperors of Austria
and Russia, and the King of Prussia, were still there. Though it was
said that the Congress danced but did not advance, still a great deal of
work had really been done, and the news of Napoleon's landing created a
fresh bond of union between the Allies which stopped all further chances
of disunion, and enabled them to practically complete their work by the
9th of June 1815, though the treaties required cobbling for some years
afterwards.
France, Austria, and England had snatched the greater part of Saxony from
the jaws of Prussia, and Alexander had been forced to leave the King of
Saxony to reign over half of his former subjects, without, as he wished,
sparing him the pain of such a degradation by taking all from him.
Russia had to be contented with a large increase of her Polish dominions,
getting most of the Grand-Duchy of Westphalia. Austria had, probably
unwisely, withdrawn from her former outlying provinces in Swabia and the
Netherlands, which had before the Revolution made her necessarily the
guardian of Europe against France, preferring to take her gains in Italy,
gains which she has gradually lost in our days; while Prussia, by
accepting the Rhine provinces, completely stepped into the former post of
Austria. Indeed, from the way in which Prussia was, after 1815, as it
were, scattered across Germany, it was evident that her fate must be.
either to be crushed by France, or else, by annexing the states enclosed
in her dominions, to become the predominating power in Germany. It was
impossible for her to remain as she was left.
The Allies tightly bound France. They had no desire to have again to
march on Paris to restore Louis to the subjects who had such unfortunate
objections to being subjected to that desirable monarch. By the second
Treaty of Paris, on the 20th of November 1815, France was to be occupied
by an Allied force, in military positions on the frontier, not to exceed
150,000 men, to be taken from all the Allied armies, under a commander
who was eventually the Duke of Wellington. Originally the occupation.
was not to exceed five years, but in
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