TREATY OF PEACE.
The treaty of peace and amity signed at Paris, secured to France its boundaries as they existed in January, 1792. The contracting parties agreed that Holland should have an increase of territory; that the lesser German states should be independent, and united by a Germanic federal league; that Switzerland should enjoy its independence under the government of its own choice; and that Italy, beyond the limits of the Austrian dominions, which were to be restored, should be composed of sovereign independent states. France recovered her colonies from England, with the exception of Tobago, St. Lucie, and the Isle of France with its dependencies. Malta was to be retained by England, which country had recently obtained the Cape of Good Hope by a separate treaty with Holland. French Guiana was restored by Portugal, and the rights of France of fishery on the bank of Newfoundland were all to be restored as they were by the peace of 1783. As a proof of their sincerity in the repeated declarations they had made, that they meant no ill to France—that they waged war only against Napoleon, the allies agreed that their armies should evacuate France, and that all the French prisoners should be restored. This treaty was considered final as regards France; but there were other affairs of an extensive and complicated nature still to be settled, the greater part of Europe requiring reorganization, and her past misfortunes demanding some preconcerted defences for the future—and it was therefore agreed in a separate article that all the powers engaged in the late war should send plenipotentiaries to a congress to be held at Vienna, for the object of completing the pacific dispositions of the treaty of Paris, and of preventing the recurrence of such a war as that in which they had for so many years been engaged, and by which the countries of Europe had been desolated.