ermany, and Metternich declared that they were revolutionary.
The horror of liberalism was destined to be heightened in 1819 by the
murder of the tsar's agent, the dramatist Kotzebue, by a lunatic member
of a political society at Giessen. Its immediate result was a conference
of German ministers at Carlsbad, where several resolutions for the
suppression of political agitation were passed, and afterwards adopted
by the diet at Frankfort. This policy was embodied in the "final act" of
a similar conference held at Vienna in the following year (1820), which
empowered the greater states of Germany to aid the smaller in checking
revolutionary movements. At the same time it reaffirmed the general
principle of non-intervention, and even laid down the pregnant doctrine
that constitutions could not be legitimately altered except by
constitutional means. The union of Austria and Prussia on the
conservative side had rather the effect of throwing the secondary states
of southern Germany upon the liberal side. In the spring and summer of
1818 Bavaria and Baden framed constitutions, and in 1819 Wuertemberg once
more essayed parliamentary government, which the reactionary policy of
her first parliament had compelled her to abandon. The significant fact
in European politics was that Frederick William III. of Prussia, always
accustomed to being led, had passed from the influence of Russia to that
of Austria.

[Pageheading: _THE CONFERENCE OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE._]

Such were the general tendencies of European politics when the
conference of Aix-la-Chapelle assembled on September 30, 1818. The
primary object of this conference was to consider the request of France
for a reduction in the indemnity demanded of her and for the evacuation
of her territories by the four allied powers. Wellington and
Castlereagh, who represented Great Britain, earned the gratitude of
France by readily agreeing to these requests, which were granted without
any difficulty. This question was obviously one which required such a
conference to settle it; but the conference, having once assembled, was
urged to deal with other difficulties that less directly concerned it.
One of these was a dispute between Denmark and Sweden about the
apportionment of the Danish debt, which, in consideration of the
annexation of Norway to Sweden, under the treaty of Kiel, was to be
partly borne by Sweden. Denmark appealed to the four powers,
representing that treaty as in fact a part of t