For a comprehension of Byron’s motives in writing _The Age of Bronze_, it is necessary to understand something of the situation in Europe at the time. Following the numerous insurrections of 1820–22 in Spain, Portugal, Naples, Greece, and the South American States, the European powers, guided by the three members of the Holy Alliance, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, sent delegates to meet at Verona on October 20, 1822, for a consideration of recent developments in politics. The leading figure at the conference was Metternich, the Austrian statesman, although Francis of Austria, Alexander of Russia, and Frederick William of Prussia were among the monarchs present. Montmorenci, representing an ultra-royalist ministry under Villiele, was there to look after the interests of France; while England, deprived at the last moment of Castlereagh’s services by his suicide, sent Wellington. The gathering finally resolved itself into a conclave for the purpose of discussing the right of France to interfere in the affairs of Spain, by restoring Ferdinand VII, a member of the House of Bourbon, to the throne of which he had been deprived by the Constitutionalists. Wellington, after protesting against the agreement reached by the other envoys to permit the interference of France, left the Congress,[378] by Canning’s instructions, in December. His withdrawal, however, did not affect the ultimate decision of the Congress to stamp out revolt whenever it assailed the precious principle of Legitimacy. War between France and Spain broke out in 1823; Ferdinand VII was replaced upon his tottering throne; and the despotic policy of Metternich triumphed, for a time, over democracy. Canning’s only reply was to recognize the independence of the rebellious colonies of Spain, and to assert the belligerency of the Greeks, then fighting for their liberty against the Turks. It is to the year which saw the work of the Congress of Verona that Byron’s secondary title, _Annus haud Mirabilis_, obviously refers. In a striking passage in the beginning of the poem, he pays a tribute to the mighty dead, contrasting, by implication, the leaders of the Congress with the departed heroes: Pitt and Fox, buried side by side in Westminster Abbey; and Napoleon, “Who born no king, made monarchs draw his car.” The summary which Byron presents of Napoleon’s career is full of admiration for the fallen emperor’s genius, and of resentment at the indignities which, according to contemporary gossip, he had been compelled to undergo on St. Helena. The man “whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones” was forced, says the poet, to become the slave of “the paltry gaoler and the prying spy.” The passage is both an appreciation and a judgment, wavering, as it does, between sympathy and condemnation for the conqueror who burst the chains of Europe only to renew, “The very fetters which his arm broke through.”