The leading part which Prussia had in the Liberation War and in the first overthrow of Napoleon caused her to be reconstructed by the Congress of Vienna; and her part in the war of 1815 confirmed the impression she had made on the world. Waterloo was as much a Prussian as an English victory,--the loss of the Prussians in that action being about as great as the purely English loss.[51] She became one of the Five Powers which by common consent were rulers of Europe. Down to 1830 she had more influence than France, and from 1830 to the re-establishment of the Napoleonic dynasty, she was France's equal; and even after Napoleon III. had replaced France at the head of Europe, Prussia was the only member of the Pentarchy which had not been humiliated by his blows, or yet more by his assistance. England has suffered from her connection with him,--a connection difficult on many occasions to distinguish from inferiority and subserviency; and in war the old superiority of the French armies to those of Russia and Austria has been asserted in the Crimea and in Italy. Prussia alone has not stooped before the avenger of the man whom she had so vindictive a part in overthrowing, and whom her military chief purposed having slain on the very spot where the Duc d'Enghien had been put to death by his (Napoleon's) orders. Of all the enemies of Napoleon and France in 1815, Prussia was the most malignant, or rather she was the only member of the Alliance which exhibited malignity.[52] She would have had France partitioned; and failed in her design only because openly opposed by Russia and England, while Austria, fearing to offend German opinion, secretly supported the Czar and Wellington. Bluecher, an earnest man, was never more in earnest than when he purposed to shoot Napoleon in the ditch of Vincennes; and it required all Wellington's influence to dissuade him from so barbarous a proceeding. Yet Napoleon III. has never been able to avenge these injuries and insults,--to say nothing of Waterloo, and of the massacre of the flying French in the night after the battle, or of the shocking conduct of the Prussians in France in 1815; and the events of the current year would seem to favor, and that strongly, the opinion of those persons who say that France never will be able to obtain her long-thought-of revenge. Certainly, if _Prussia_ was safe, Prussia with most of Germany to back her cannot be in any serious danger of being forced to drink of that cup of humiliation which Napoleon III. has commended to so many countries.