o peace is always hard; and now these gaunt warriors came back to
a little France that perforce discharged them or placed them on
half-pay. Perhaps they might have been won over by a tactful Court:
but the Bourbons, especially that typical _emigre_, the Comte
d'Artois, were nothing if not tactless, witness their shelving of the
Old Guard and formation of the Maison du Roi, a privileged and highly
paid corps of 6,000 nobles and royalist gentlemen. The peasants, too,
were uneasy, especially those who held the lands of nobles confiscated
in the Revolution. To indemnify the former owners was impossible in
face of the torrent of exorbitant claims that flowed in. And the year
1814, which began as a soul-stirring epic, ended with sordid squabbles
worthy of a third-rate farce.

Moreover, at this very time, the former allies seemed on the brink of
war. The limits of our space admit only of the briefest glance at the
disputes of the Powers at the Congress of Vienna. The storm centre of
Europe was the figure of the Czar. To our ambassador at Vienna, Sir
Charles Stewart, he declared his resolve to keep western Poland and
never to give up 7,000,000 of his "Polish subjects."[459] Strange to
say, he ultimately gained the assent of Prussia to this objectionable
scheme, provided that she acquired the whole of Saxony, while
Frederick Augustus was to be transplanted to the Rhineland with Bonn
as capital. To these proposals Austria, England, and France offered
stern opposition, and framed a secret compact (January 3rd, 1815) to
resist them, if need be, with armies amounting to 450,000 men. But,
though swords were rattled in their scabbards, they were not drawn.
When news reached Vienna of the activity of Bonapartists in France and
of Murat in Italy, the Powers agreed (February 8th) to the
Saxon-Polish compromise which took shape in the map of Eastern Europe.
The territorial arrangements in the west were evidently inspired by
the wish to build up bulwarks against France. Belgium was tacked on to
Holland; Germany was huddled into a Confederation, in which the
princes had complete sovereign powers; and the Kingdom of Sardinia
grew to more than its former bulk by recovering Savoy and Nice and
gaining Genoa.

This piling up of artificial barriers against some future Napoleon was
to serve the designs of the illustrious exile himself. The instinct of
nationality, which his blows had aroused to full vigour, was now
outraged by the sovereigns who