ous difficulty arose, as the British commissioners
demanded the delimitation of an Indian territory which should be exempt
from territorial acquisitions on the part of either power, and also
claimed the military occupation of the lakes for their own government.
The Americans thereupon suspended the negotiations, and Castlereagh
expressed grave discontent with the conduct of the British negotiators
in pressing these points. Late in the year negotiations were resumed,
when the British abandoned these claims. The far more comprehensive
questions about the rights of neutrals, which had occasioned the war,
had ceased to be of practical importance now that peace was restored in
Europe. They were therefore, by tacit consent, suffered to drop, and a
treaty signed at Ghent on December 24, 1814, ended a war of which the
Canadians alone had reason to be proud.

The most dramatic incident in the domestic annals of England in this
year was the visit of the allied sovereigns to this country, after their
triumphal entry into Paris, and the signature of a convention, to be
described hereafter, for the resettlement of Europe. Louis XVIII. left
his retreat at Hartwell on April 20, and reached his capital on May 3
to find it occupied by foreign armies, and to discover that his French
escort, composed of Napoleon's old guard, was of doubtful loyalty. On
July 8 the Tsar of Russia and the King of Prussia, having accepted an
invitation from the prince regent, which the Emperor of Austria
declined, landed at Dover, and were afterwards received with the utmost
enthusiasm in London. Their appearance betokened the supposed
termination of the greatest, and almost the longest, war recorded in
European history, but it was also accepted as a tribute of gratitude for
the unique services rendered by Great Britain, the only European power
which had never bowed the knee to the French Republic or the French
Empire. They attended Ascot races, were feasted at the Guildhall,
witnessed a naval review at Portsmouth, and were decorated with honorary
degrees at Oxford, where Bluecher was the hero of the day with the
younger members of the university. There were men of calmer minds and
maturer age, who must have remembered the time, but seven years before,
when Alexander swore eternal friendship with Napoleon, on the basis of
enmity to Great Britain, and Frederick William of Prussia shrunk from no
depths of dishonour, first to aggrandise his kingdom and then to sa