France was the possessor of the most extensive collection of works of art ever before known; acquired, not by the genius of her people, but by the grasping policy of her Imperial master. Napoleon, having taken possession of every large city in continental Europe, during the plenitude of his power, had systematically seized all that was remarkable therein, and had transferred his plunder to Paris. The French were inordinately proud of this vast and unique collection, which served to flatter their vanity and to form a lasting monument of their extraordinary military successes. It had been untouched by the Allies in 1814, but in 1815 the disturbers of Europe were to be severely punished, and the stolen property was to be restored to its former owners. Attempts having failed to effect a restoration amicably, owing to the opposition of Talleyrand, forcible possession of the Louvre was taken on the 23rd of September, by a body of British troops, and with the assistance of Austrians and Prussians, the splendid galleries of that palace were stripped of those treasures of art, which belonged principally to Italy and to the Netherlands. Out of fifteen hundred celebrated pictures, it is said that only seventy-four were left in Paris. The restoration of the statuary was not less complete; and the well-known antique Corinthian bronze horses, taken from Venice, to form, in the Place Carrousel, the supporters of the great monument, designed—but not finished—to perpetuate Napoleon’s fame, were taken down and conveyed back to that city. Nothing affected the Parisians so much as this act of strict justice; for it showed them their own absolute weakness and humiliation, and it wounded their pride in the most sensitive point.[65] ----- Footnote 65: _Paris revisited in 1815_ , p. 312, etc.; Alison, _History of Europe, from 1789-1815_, x. 969. -----