1815   


After Napoleons defeat, the map of Europe needed to be redrawn. Some states, notably the ones Napoleon erected, ceased to exist, and the area in which France expanded after 1795 was lost to it. Napoleon was given the tiny Principality of Elba, and was allowed to keep the personal title of Emperor. He however escaped from Elba and restored his Empire for a famous "hundred days" in 1814. In 1815 Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo and banished as a prisoner to St. Helena.

The Congress of Vienna tried to restore the powers that were before the French Revolution. Restoration of the "legitimate" rulers was the guiding principle. A conservative reaction to the French Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, caused an inclination to turn back the clock. A return to the days of before the French Revolution was out of the question however. The reforms that had taken place since the last decades of the Eighteenth Century, and that had done away with many medieval and later anachronisms were too deeply imbedded in the life of the modern state and in overall society. Reaction against the liberal state would result in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 in the century to come.

The Holy Roman Empire was not restored, but replaced by a loose German Confederation, again shown in a red border. The Austrians did not regain Belgium, which was added to Holland in the new Kingdom of the Netherlands, a buffer state against France. Austria gained the Lumbardovenetian Kingdom in North Italy instead.

The French Kingdom was restored under Louis XVIII, brother of beheaded Louis XVI, counting the little dauphin who died in a Jacobin prison as Louis XVII. Absolute rule was only restored in name, since the "absolute" King granted a liberal constitution, signifying that the clock could not be turned back, however much the Viennese delegates wanted it to.

An independent Kingdom of Norway was revived. It was however bound to Sweden in a personal union that lasted until the year 1905. The Russians took the larger part of Poland, creating a dependent sub-Kingdom of Poland ruled by the Russian Emperor, the so called "Congress Poland". Since most of that territory had been Prussian before 1806, this almost triggered a war between Prussia and Russia. The Prussians were however compensated with a large part of the Kingdom of Saksony, that had remained an ally of Napoleon to the very end and was under Russian occupation. Prussia also took former church lands and former Bavarian possessions in the Rhineland and Westphalia. The result being, that Prussia was firmly shoved towards the west, back into Germany and thus regained its German character that had been compromised by its rule over the large Polish territories that now became of Congress Poland. The map of Germany was much simplified. Thirty-six countries remained, out of about three hundred that existed before the French Revolution.

The European possessions of the large Ottoman Empire would become the focus of attention of the European powers, notably Russia and Austria in the coming century.