The Congress of Vienna 67
hoped, but he was well satisfied with the eastern frontier,
as he well might be. For Prussia had acquired a population
as numerous as at the time of her greatest extent, and one
vastly more homogeneous. Not so much by the help of the
weak Frederick William and of the deaf Hardenberg, but
through Stein and Alexander of Russia, she had lost Poles
and gained Germans. Her boundaries gave her the central
position which made her the natural leader of the future
German Empire, and which has proved of such inestimable
military value in the present war. Her real grievance
against the diplomats of Vienna lay in the north and centre,
where Hanover, under the English king, lay like a great
wedge cutting her territories in two and shutting her off
effectually from the sea. It was not until almost half a cen-
tury later that Prussia acquired a single important window
which looked out toward the open Atlantic.
The return of Napoleon found all these arrangements
virtually completed, and a great fear did that for unity
which nine months of discussion had been unable to accom-
plish. As a result of the Hundred Days and the cowardice
of his soldiers,1 Murat was to lose his throne and life;
France, too, was to give up a little of the very favorable
frontier which the genius of Talleyrand had secured for her;
but the final act of the congress was expected to usher in a
new age of peace and good will, under wise kings and kindly
landlords, after the Corsican should have ceased from
troubling and the weary peoples be at rest, and the battle of
Waterloo seemed to place the seal of a divine approval on
its deeds.
1 It was of these soldiers that their former king said: “You may dress them
in blue, or you may dress them in green, or you may dress them in red, but
any way you dress them they will run!”