The Story of Mankind [144]
borne the brunt of the battle wanted peace and they said so.
But they did not want the sort of peace which the Holy
Alliance and the Council of the European powers had now
bestowed upon them. They cried that they had been betrayed.
But they were careful lest they be heard by a secret-police spy.
The reaction was victorious. It was a reaction caused by men
who sincerely believed that their methods were necessary for
the good of humanity. But it was just as hard to bear as if
their intentions had been less kind. And it caused a great deal
of unnecessary suffering and greatly retarded the orderly
progress of political development.
THE GREAT REACTION
THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA
OF UNDISTURBED PEACE BY SUPPRESSING
ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE
POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY
IN THE STATE AND SOON THE PRISONS
OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH
THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE
HAVE THE RIGHT TO GOVERN THEMSELVES
AS THEY SEE FIT
To undo the damage done by the great Napoleonic flood
was almost impossible. Age-old fences had been washed away.
The palaces of two score dynasties had been damaged to such
an extent that they had to be condemned as uninhabitable.
Other royal residences had been greatly enlarged at the expense
of less fortunate neighbours. Strange odds and ends
of revolutionary doctrine had been left behind by the receding
waters and could not be dislodged without danger to the entire
community. But the political engineers of the Congress did
the best they could and this is what they accomplished.
France had disturbed the peace of the world for so many
years that people had come to fear that country almost
instinctively. The Bourbons, through the mouth of Talleyrand,
had promised to be good, but the Hundred Days had taught
Europe what to expect should Napoleon manage to escape for
a second time. The Dutch Republic, therefore, was changed
into a Kingdom, and Belgium (which had not joined the Dutch
struggle for independence in the sixteenth century and since
then had been part of the Habsburg domains, firs t under Spanish
rule and thereafter under Austrian rule) was made part
of this new kingdom of the Netherlands. Nobody wanted this
union either in the Protestant North or in the Catholic South,
but no questions were asked. It seemed good for the peace
of Europe and that was the main consideration.
Poland had hoped for great things because a Pole, Prince
Adam Czartoryski, was one of the most intimate friends of
Tsar Alexander and had been his constant advisor during the
war and at the Congress of Vienna. But Poland was made a
semi-independent part of Russia with Alexander as her king.
This solution pleased no one and caused much bitter feeling
and three revolutions.
Denmark, which had remained a faithful ally of Napoleon
until the end, was severely punished. Seven years before, an
English fleet had sailed down the Kattegat and without a
declaration of war or any warning had bombarded Copenhagen
and had taken away the Danish fleet, lest it be of value to
Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna went one step further.
It took Norway (which since the union of Calmar of the year
1397 had been united with Denmark) away from Denmark
and gave it to Charles XIV of Sweden as a reward for his betrayal
of Napoleon, who had set him up in the king business.
This Swedish king, curiously enough, was a former French general
by the name of Bernadotte, who had come to Sweden as one
of Napolean's{sic} adjutants, and had been invited to the throne of
that good country when the last of the rulers of the house of
Hollstein-Gottorp had died without leaving either son or
daughter. From 1815 until 1844 he ruled his adopted country
(the language of which he never learned) width great ability. He
was a clever man and enjoyed the respect of both his Swedish
and his Norwegian subjects, but he did not succeed