In some respects the triumph of the national principle, which had brought victory to the old dynasties, strengthened the European fabric. The Treaties of Vienna brought the boundaries of States more nearly into accord with racial interests and sentiments than had been the case before; but in several instances those interests and feelings were chafed or violated by designing or short-sighted statesmen. The Germans, who had longed for an effective national union, saw with indignation that the constitution of the new Germanic Confederation left them under the control of the rulers of the component States and of the very real headship exercised by Austria, which was always used to repress popular movements. The Italians, who had also learned from Napoleon the secret that they were in all essentials a nation, deeply resented the domination of Austria in Lombardy-Venetia and the parcelling out of the rest of the Peninsula between reactionary kings somnolent dukes, and obscurantist clerics. The Belgians likewise protested against the enforced union with Holland in what was now called the Kingdom of the United Netherlands (1815-30). In the east of Europe the Poles struggled in vain against the fate which once more partitioned them between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The Germans of Holstein, Schleswig, and Lauenburg submitted uneasily to the Danish rule; and only under the stress of demonstrations by the allies did the Norwegians accept the union with Sweden. It should be carefully noted that these were the very cases which caused most of the political troubles in the following period. In fact, most of the political occurrences on the Continent in the years 1815 to 1870--the revolts, revolutions, and wars, that give a special character to the history of the century--resulted directly from the bad or imperfect arrangements of the Congress of Vienna and of the so-called Holy Alliance of the monarchs who sought to perpetuate them. The effect of this widespread discontent was not felt at once. The peoples were too exhausted by the terrific strain of the Napoleonic wars to do much for a generation or more, save in times of popular excitement. Except in the south-east of Europe, where Greece, with the aid of Russia, Britain, and France, wrested her political independence from the grasp of the Sultan (1827), the forty years that succeeded Waterloo were broken by no important war; but they were marked by oft-recurring unrest and sedition. Thus, when the French Revolution of 1830 overthrew the reactionary dynasty of the elder Bourbons, the universal excitement caused by this event endowed the Belgians with strength sufficient to shake off the heavy yoke of the Dutch; while in Italy, Germany, and Poland the democrats and nationalists (now working generally in accord) made valiant but unsuccessful efforts to achieve their ideals.