Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert PeelAnonymous
History
Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert Peel
Anonymous
Great Britain -- History
The Congress of Vienna, interrupted by the last razzia of Buonaparte,
now resumed its sittings, and the conditions between France and the
Allies were finally settled, and treaties embodying them were signed at
Paris by Louis XVIII. on the 20th of November. France was rigorously
confined to the frontier of 1790, losing the additions conferred on it
by the first Treaty of Paris; and to prevent any danger of a recurrence
of the calamities which had called the Allies thus a second time to
Paris, they were to retain in their hands seventeen of the principal
frontier fortresses, and one hundred and fifty thousand of their
soldiers were to be quartered, and maintained by France, in different
parts of the kingdom. The term of their stay was not to exceed five
years, and that term might be curtailed should the aspect of Europe
warrant it. The Allied sovereigns also insisted on the payment of
the enormous expenses which had been occasioned by this campaign of
the Hundred Days--the amount of which was estimated at seven hundred
millions of francs. This sum, however, was not to be exacted at once,
but to be paid by easy instalments.
There was one restitution, however, which the Allies had too delicately
passed over on their former visit to Paris--that of the works of art
which Napoleon and his generals had carried off from every town in
Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, during their wars. As has been
already stated, museums had been freely pillaged by Buonaparte or by
his orders. Accordingly, there was now a great stripping of the Louvre,
and other places, of the precious pictures and statues which the hands
of the greatest marauder that the world had ever seen had accumulated
there. The "Horses of the Sun," from St. Mark's, Venice, the "Venus di
Medici," the "Apollo Belvedere," the "Horses of the Car of Victory,"
which Buonaparte had carried away from Berlin, and many a glorious
painting by the old masters, precious books, manuscripts, and other
objects of antiquity, now travelled back to their respective original
localities, to the great joy of their owners, and the infinite disgust
of the French, who deemed themselves robbed by this defeat of robbery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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