66 Nineteenth Century Peace Congresses
days in Europe. If Napoleon had landed from Elba in
January instead of in March, he would have found his
enemies divided in their councils and have had good chances
of success. For on January 3, England, Austria, and France
signed a secret treaty against the two great powers of the
East.1 But in the weeks which followed the differences were
finally compromised and the famous arrangements were made
by which Prussia received not only the fertile lands on the
banks of the Rhine which had been occupied by France since
1794, but also Swedish Pomerania and the upper half of the
kingdom of Saxony, which, in the language of the day,
brought her population to ten milliop souls! Russia was
satisfied with a large part of Poland, to which Alexander
agreed to give a liberal constitution ; and Austria gained the
rich valley of the Po in northern Italy. England was con-
tent, for the kingdom of Hanover, which was under her
king, was enlarged until it occupied all the southern coast
of the North Sea not already held by other small powers,
thus making the already dangerous Prussia a purely Baltic
power. Peace left Great Britain the undisputed mistress of
the seas.
Modern Germans have sometimes blamed the Congress
of Vienna for not having given them Alsace and Lorraine,
which is like blaming Adam for not having invented gun-
powder. The bare idea had indeed been advocated, but until
the congress had adjourned it does not seem to have en-
tered any one’s head as a serious political possibility that
these provinces should belong to any one except France.
Stein, the great Prussian statesman who acted as one of
Alexander’s chief advisers at the congress, was bitterly dis-
appointed not to receive the whole of Saxony as he had
1 Napoleon found a copy of this treaty on the table of the French king
when he arrived in Paris and, characteristically, sent it to Alexander.