But the principal question before the conference of Aix-la-Chapelle was not one relating to any particular difficulty, but the permanent form of the European alliance. The tsar desired a general confederacy of European powers, such as had signed the treaty of Vienna and the holy alliance. This confederacy was to guard against two evils--that of revolutionary agitation and that of arbitrary administration and sectional alliances. Such a project, though doubtless proposed in good faith, practically gave Russia an interest in the domestic movements, both reactionary and constitutional, of every country, while it forbade any political combination to which Russia was not a party. Castlereagh agreed with Metternich in thinking that such an extension of Russian Influence was more to be dreaded than local disorder, and Great Britain and Austria proposed therefore that the alliance should be based on the treaty of Chaumont, as renewed at Vienna and Paris, though they were willing to have friendly discussions from time to time without extending the scope of the alliance. All parties desired to include France in their alliance, but the tsar pertinently objected that France could not be admitted to an alliance aimed solely against France. A compromise was therefore adopted. The quadruple alliance for war, in case of a revolution in France, was secretly renewed, and centres for mobilisation were fixed, while France was publicly invited to join the deliberations of the allied powers. A secret protocol was then signed providing for the meeting of congresses from time to time, and giving the minor European powers a place in these congresses when their affairs should be under discussion. FOOTNOTES: [64] For details of the riots see _Annual Register_, lviii. (1816), 60-73. They were particularly numerous in May, 1816, and in the counties of Cambridge, Essex, and Suffolk. At Littleport in Cambridgeshire, on May 24, it was found necessary to fire on the rioters. Two men were killed and five were afterwards executed. [65] Greville, _Memoirs_, i., 2; Walpole, _History of England_, i., 392, 393. [66] The curious may be interested in the following list of the names and ages of the persons who stood next in order of succession to the crown after the death of Princess Charlotte. It will be observed that of the fourteen who stood nearest the throne, not one was under forty years of age, and not one had a legitimate child:--