twenty-eighth the commission adjourned its sessions with a formal reiteration of the ultimatum already made by the allied powers. The reason was that by that time its members believed Napoleon to be elsewhere engaged. Schwarzenberg's army had checked Oudinot, and as his troops recuperated their strength the leader recovered partial confidence. Bluecher being off for Paris, with Napoleon on his heels, the main army of the allies had then turned on the forces of Macdonald and Oudinot, and had driven them westward until in the pursuit it reached Troyes, where it halted, ready, in case of Bluecher's defeat, to recross the Rhine. The congress of Chatillon was formally reopened on March first, and continued its useless sessions until the nineteenth, when it closed. During this second period none of the important dignitaries, except Schwarzenberg and the King of Prussia, attended; the rest withdrew to Chaumont, where, on March ninth, the three powers signed a treaty with England, dated back to March first, binding themselves, in return for an annual subsidy of five million pounds sterling equally divided, that each would keep a hundred and fifty thousand men in the field, for twenty years if necessary, provided Napoleon would not accept the boundaries of royal France--a futile stipulation. This treaty was the precursor of that iniquitous triple alliance between Russia, Austria, and Prussia which was destined not merely to hamper England herself so seriously in the subsequent period of history, but to stop for some time the progress of liberal ideas throughout Europe.