HISTORY OF ENGLAND, CIVIL, MILITARY, AND ECCLESIASTICAL; FROM THE INVASION BY JULIUS CÆSAR TO THE YEAR 1846. BLACKIE AND SON: LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND GLASGOW. MDCCCLV. CABINET HISTORY OF ENGLAND. BOOK XI.-Continued.* CHAPTER I.-Continued. GEORGE III.-Continued. A.D. 1815.-THE return of Bonaparte from Elba necessitated the departure of the Duke of Wellington and some other diplomatists from Vienna, but it did not for a moment interrupt the proceedings of the grand Congress assembled in that capital for the pacification and partial re-modelling of Europe. On the 9th of June, 1815, while the armies were gathering in Belgium and on the north-west frontier of France, and just nine days before the battle of Waterloo, a general treaty was signed in Congress at Vienna. Whatever may be wrong in the details, or even in the spirit of this greatest of all diplomatic acts, it is indisputable that Europe has owed to it a peace of more than thirty years' duration; a peace attended by a wonderful progress and development. The negotiations, debates, and conferences, which preceded the conclusion of the treaty, were on many points most difficult and embarrassing, and were in some instances so violent as to threaten a renewal of war. France, under the government of Louis XVIII., was admitted a party into the Congress; and she faintly joined England in the * The abridgement of the Pictorial History of England' was concluded with the last volume (vol. xxiv.). The matter contained in this and the following volume (vols. xxv. and xxvi.) is new, and has been written expressly for the 'Cabinet History.' VOL. XXV. B |