After the fall of Napoleon, the powers were called upon to decide the political status of Belgium. The Belgians were not consulted in the matter, vitally important as it was, and their country was considered merely as the spoil of the Allies. The main idea that actuated the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) in rearranging the map of Europe was to prevent a new menace from the side of France. This country was not allowed to hold more territory than it possessed in 1789, before the outbreak of the Revolution; at the same time the Allies who had defeated Napoleon sought to erect a bulwark against any new extension of France in the North. They could have granted independence to Belgium, but as the country was weak it seemed that independence would mean reabsorption by France. The final settlement of this important question resulted, therefore, in the formation of the new Kingdom of the Netherlands, whereby both Belgium and Holland, united under the same sovereign, would, it was expected, present a sufficiently strong barrier against France. The new kingdom was declared also to be neutral territory. This is the first time that the conception of neutrality was realized with regard to a buffer-state in Western Europe, located between England, France, and Germany. But the conception of neutrality, as applied to the Netherlands, is much older than the Congress of Vienna; and it seems worth while to trace the different schemes dealing with Belgian neutrality before the years 1814-15.[19] The idea of establishing the neutrality of the Netherlands goes back in history as far as the government of Maria of Hungary, at the time of Emperor Charles V. The former proposed the neutrality of the Belgian provinces on February 8, 1536, in order that they might escape being made the battlefield of Europe during the impending international conflicts. Charles V refused to consider the scheme, as he himself was planning to raise the Netherlands into an independent kingdom, to be governed by the son of Francis I, King of France. This plan, of course, was never carried out.