ABSTRACT
Alexander, Frederick William, Metternich, and Castlereagh held collectively the power to decide the map of Europe and to establish whatever form of government they chose, both internationally and in the several countries of the Continent. Certain treaties limited their freedom. During 1813, first Russia, then England, then Austria, had promised Prussia that she should again become as great as before Napoleon defeated her in 1806. The Treaty of Paris (May 30, 1814) assigned to France the limits of 1792; all the conquests of the revolutionary and Napoleonic epoch were renounced, and the right to dispose of them to new owners was one from which France was to be excluded in the deliberations of the Congress. In view of the fact that France was completely at the mercy of the Allies after twenty-two years of war, during which almost every continental country had suffered invasion, the mildness of the Treaty of Paris was surprising; it was largely due to the magnanimity of Alexander. He had marched into Paris at the head of the armies, had declared that the enemy was Napoleon, not France, and had accepted the semi-voluntary restoration of the Bourbons by the French Provisional Government as a ground for not depriving France of any of the territory previously possessed by the legitimate kings.
