Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XIII

The Congress of Vienna represented, not a confederation of states, but a league of dynasties posing as nations and banded for mutual self-preservation. To them the permanent restoration of Napoleon could mean only one thing, the recognition of a nation's right to choose its own rulers, and that would be the end of absolutism in Europe. To Great Britain it would mean the destruction of her prosperity, or at least a serious diminution of both power and prestige. The late coalition, therefore, was re-cemented without difficulty, but on a basis entirely new. The account of Napoleon's escape reached Vienna on March sixth. Within the week Maria Louisa, now entirely under Neipperg's influence, wrote declaring herself a stranger to all Napoleon's schemes, and a few days later the French attendants of the little King of Rome were dismissed; the child's last words to Méneval were a message of affection to his father.[17] At that time negotiations among the powers were progressing famously, each having secured its main object; on March thirteenth the Congress, under Castlereagh's instigation, publicly denounced Napoleon as the "enemy and disturber of the world's peace," and proclaimed him an outlaw. The Whigs stigmatized the paper in parliament as provocative of assassination and a disgrace to the English character, but, of all the important journals, the "Morning Chronicle" alone was courageous enough to sustain them, asserting that it was a matter of complete indifference to England whether a Bourbon or a Bonaparte reigned in France. These manly protests were unheeded, and by the twenty-fifth all Europe, except Naples, was united against France alone.