to the
Swedish Crown.

In some respects the triumph of the national principle, which had
brought victory to the old dynasties, strengthened the European fabric.
The Treaties of Vienna brought the boundaries of States more nearly into
accord with racial interests and sentiments than had been the case
before; but in several instances those interests and feelings were
chafed or violated by designing or short-sighted statesmen. The Germans,
who had longed for an effective national union, saw with indignation
that the constitution of the new Germanic Confederation left them under
the control of the rulers of the component States and of the very real
headship exercised by Austria, which was always used to repress popular
movements. The Italians, who had also learned from Napoleon the secret
that they were in all essentials a nation, deeply resented the
domination of Austria in Lombardy-Venetia and the parcelling out of the
rest of the Peninsula between reactionary kings somnolent dukes, and
obscurantist clerics. The Belgians likewise protested against the
enforced union with Holland in what was now called the Kingdom of the
United Netherlands (1815-30). In the east of Europe the Poles struggled
in vain against the fate which once more partitioned them between
Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The Germans of Holstein, Schleswig, and
Lauenburg submitted uneasily to the Danish rule; and only under the
stress of demonstrations by the allies did the Norwegians accept the
union with Sweden.

It should be carefully noted that these were the very cases which caused
most of the political troubles in the following period. In fact, most of
the political occurrences on the Continent in the years 1815 to
1870--the revolts, revolutions, and wars, that give a special character
to the history of the century--resulted directly from the bad or
imperfect arrangements of the Congress of Vienna and of the so-called
Holy Alliance of the monarchs who sought to perpetuate them. The effect
of this widespread discontent was not felt at once. The peoples were too
exhausted by the terrific strain of the Napoleonic wars to do much for a
generation or more, save in times of popular excitement. Except in the
south-east of Europe, where Greece, with the aid of Russia, Britain, and
France, wrested her political independence from the grasp of the Sultan
(1827), the forty years that succeeded Waterloo were broken by no
important war; but they were marked by oft