The spontaneous rising of the French people to expel their King, Charles X., who had ventured to infringe the Constitution, aroused the enthusiasm of Liberals all over Europe. But the real character of the movement which brought about the downfall of the elder branch of the Bourbons was, at the time, very imperfectly understood. It was not a determination to preserve at all costs the parliamentary system which animated the combatants in the "glorious days of July." "Long live the Charter" was the watchword of the peaceful _bourgeois_. "Down with the Bourbons" was the war cry of the men of the barricades. Outside the limited circle of the old Royalist families the restored monarchy had never been popular. Yet it was unquestionably the best and freest form of government which the country had ever enjoyed. The reason of the unpopularity of the Bourbons lay in the circumstances which had attended their return to France. By the large majority of Frenchmen their restoration was deeply resented, as one of the humiliating conditions imposed upon their country by the allied sovereigns, after Waterloo. In respect to her frontiers, France in 1815 had been replaced in the position which she had occupied in 1789. Seeing the expenditure of blood and treasure which her wars had entailed upon Europe, these terms cannot be regarded as onerous. Nevertheless, it is not surprising that the treaties of 1815 should have been extremely distasteful to her. They were conceived in a spirit of suspicion and were directed mainly towards securing Europe from a fresh outbreak of her aggressiveness. Nor were the barriers, by which it was hoped to confine her within her boundaries, the only cause of her irritation. Her vanity and love of military glory had been dangerously stimulated by the Republican and Imperial wars, and it was a bitter blow to find that, in the final settlement, France, alone of all the great Powers, was to acquire no increase of territory. Vexation at these conditions was not confined to Republicans and Bonapartists. Hatred for the treaties of 1815 was the one political sentiment which Liberals and Royalists possessed in common.