The allies, though their treaty with France was not made in the same humour of romantic generosity which dictated that of 1814, insisted upon no articles which could be considered as dishonourable to that nation. The disjoining from her empire three or four border fortresses was stipulated, in order to render a rapid and successful invasion of Germany or the Netherlands more difficult in future. Large sums of money were also exacted in recompense of the heavy expenses of the allies; but they were not beyond what the wealth of France could readily discharge. A part of her fortresses were also detained by the allies as a species of pledge for the peaceable behaviour of the kingdom; but these were to be restored after a season, and the armies of Europe, which for a time remained within the French territories, were at the same time to be withdrawn. Finally, that splendid Museum, which the right of conquest had collected by the stripping of so many states, was transferred by the same right of conquest, not to those of the allies who had great armies in the field, but to the poor and small states, who had resigned their property to the French under the influence of terror, and received it back from the confederates with wonder and gratitude. These circumstances were indeed galling to France for the moment; but they were the necessary consequence of the position in which, perhaps rather passively than actively, she had been placed by the Revolution of the Hundred Days. All the prophecies which had been circulated to animate the people against the allies, of their seeking selfish and vindictive objects, or endeavouring to destroy the high national rank which that fair kingdom ought to hold in Europe, were proved to be utterly fallacious. The conquered provinces, as they are called, the acquisitions of Louis XIV., were not rent from the French empire--their colonies were left as at the peace of Paris. The English did not impose on them an unfavourable treaty of commerce, which Napoleon affirmed was their design, and the omission to insist on which he afterwards considered as a culpable neglect of British interests by the English ministers. France was left, as she ought to be, altogether independent, and splendidly powerful.