by
unconstitutional means. Great Britain and Austria, on the other hand,
with a juster instinct, considered armed interference an extreme remedy
which might often be worse than the disease of a revolution.

[Pageheading: _ROYALIST REACTION IN EUROPE._]

The numerous restorations of 1814 and 1815 were followed by a royalist
and aristocratic reaction in many countries of Europe. In France Louis
XVIII. found himself confronted by an ultra-royalist chamber of deputies
which clamoured for vengeance on the partisans of the republican and
imperial _regimes_ and for the restoration of the privileges and estates
of the Church. Ferdinand VII. of Spain swept away the unwieldy
constitution of 1812 amid the rejoicings of his people, who little
foresaw his future tyranny; and Great Britain did not venture to resist
the action of Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies in abolishing a constitution
which British influence had induced him to grant his island kingdom in
1813. In Prussia the government dealt sternly with the liberal press,
and the provincial estates opposed the institution of a national diet;
while in Wuertemberg a parliament assembled under a liberal constitution
demanded the restoration of the ancient privileges of the nobility and
clergy. In the Two Sicilies British influence, supported by that of
Austria, was used to prevent outrages on the defeated party; in Spain
the moderate counsels of Great Britain were less successful. Austria
endeavoured to prevent future disturbance in the Italian peninsula by a
secret treaty, which obtained the sanction of the British government,
requiring the Two Sicilies to adopt no constitutional changes
inconsistent with the principles adopted by Austria in the
Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. Similar treaties were concluded by Austria
with Tuscany, Modena, and Parma, and she thus gained an ascendency in
Italy, from which only Sardinia and the papal states were exempt.
Russian agents meanwhile began to conduct a liberal propaganda in Spain
and Italy, and Russia was even credited with a desire to make a
liberalised Spain a counterpoise to England on the sea.

For a time, however, there were no European complications of a
formidable nature. In 1816 a British squadron was sent out under Lord
Exmouth lo execute the decree of the congress of Vienna against the
Barbary states. The Dey of Algiers and the Beys of Tunis and Tripoli
were called upon to recognise the Ionian Islands as British, to accept
British