Peace was established in Europe. It had cost France great anguish and great grief. The Duke Richelieu, who had concluded it, and whose personal influence over the Emperor Alexander had powerfully contributed to soften its conditions, expressed the sentiment of all France when he wrote to his sister, Madame Montcalm, "All is consummated. More dead than alive, I have affixed my name to that fatal treaty. I had sworn not to do it, and I had said it to the king. The unhappy prince conjured me, breaking into tears, not to abandon him. I no longer hesitated. I have the confidence to believe that no one else could have obtained as much. France, expiring under the weight of the calamities which overwhelm her, claims imperiously a prompt deliverance."
England again breathed: triumphant, but weighed down by her long efforts. The state of the public finances and the monetary situation occupied all minds, and served as a theme for the attacks of the opposition against Lord Liverpool and Lord Castlereagh. A certain inquietude manifested itself also upon the subject of the secret conditions of the peace. Henry Brougham, a young advocate of great talent, in a speech upon this question, demanded the publication of the Treaty, half mystical, half absolute, known under the name of the Holy Alliance, and signed at Paris on the 20th of November, 1815, by the Emperors of Russia and Austria, as well as by the King of Prussia.
"In his capacity as constitutional sovereign, the Prince Regent was not competent to affix his signature to this treaty, concluded by the sovereigns themselves," said Lord Castlereagh; "England has therefore no right to call for its publication." The Houses gave themselves the noble pleasure of rewarding the valor of their generals and their armies. Monuments were erected to the memory of those who had fallen in the war. The pensions formerly accorded to the Duke of Wellington were doubled; he received from the just gratitude of his country five hundred thousand pounds sterling. It is to the honor of the English nation that no absolute monarch was ever more liberal toward his favorites than it has shown itself in regard to its great servants.
England, as well as all Europe, had founded great expectations upon the re-establishment of peace. She had assured security to the commerce of the Mediterranean, by an expedition against the Dey of Algiers, nominal sovereign of the hordes of pirates constantly infesting that sea, to the great peril of merchant vessels. Lord Exmouth had bombarded Algiers, destroyed the vessels of the pirates, and obtained the liberation of all the Christian slaves. But this new achievement was not sufficient to re-awaken commerce, overwhelmed by numerous and repeated losses. The harvest had been bad; to the actual and pressing evils was added the bitterness of ignorant hopes cruelly deceived. Popular movements manifested themselves in many places; the Regent was insulted as he came from Westminster, after having opened Parliament (January 28th, 1817). The government was informed of a vast conspiracy that threatened "to fire the four corners," of Great Britain. Energetic measures were adopted; the suspension of the habeas corpus act was prolonged; a new law imposed the most severe penalties upon seditious re-unions. The forces intended for the maintenance of order in the interior, were increased to ten thousand men. The nation was still agitated and suffering, after the long trial of a war energetically carried on during twenty years, and was weary and overburdened, in spite of the victory.
Before the delights of peace had calmed the spirits and re-assured all minds, before all hearts had lost the habit of suffering and resisting suffering, it required an effort on the part of the nation, as of the individual, to enjoy the charms of repose.
An unforseen event deeply moved public feeling. Princess Charlotte, heiress to the throne, loved and esteemed by all, and upon whom reposed those loyal sympathies (of which her father was justly deprived), had just died at Claremont, on the 6th of November, 1816, in giving birth to her first child.
All England shared in the grief of her young husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg. He was destined subsequently to be the first to ascend the throne of Belgium, assisted thereto by new family ties that he contracted in France, as well as by the affection still cherished for him in England. He was sagacious enough to make use of both these influences for the good of his adopted country, as well as a beneficial influence in the counsels of European politics. On the 29th of May, 1819, less than two years after the death of Princess Charlotte, the Princess Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Kent, was born at London. Some months later the old King George III. died (January 28th 1820); blind and insane during the last ten years of his life. Patient and quiet in his madness, he preserved in the hearts of his people a respectful and melancholy popularity which showed itself at the time of his death. Honest and obstinate, seriously and sincerely religious, observant of his duties both as man and as king, as he understood them, he had often served and often hindered the policy and the government of his country; he had always loved it, and had always believed himself obligated to consecrate to it his life and his strength, to the prejudice of his tastes or personal desires. During these ten years, in the long silence of his sad isolation, he had exhausted all anger and extinguished all hatred. The nation remembered only his simple and honest virtues, his immovable courage and his patriotic disinterestedness. No illusion regarding the abilities and faults of his successor was possible.
