Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/40

 further reduction of from eight hundred to seven hundred millions in the war indemnity, and induced the Allies to give up Condé, Charlemont, Givet, and the forts of Écluse and Joux, positions which would have given the enemy command of the French valleys. Finally, the 150,000 men who composed the corps of occupation were to remain in France five years instead of seven.

This second Treaty of Paris was received in Germany with transports of indignation ; but for all its apparent lenity it seemed hard enough to the French ; the more so, no doubt, as it entailed painfully humiliating conditions, such as the disbanding of the army which had fought at Waterloo, the removal from Paris of the pictures and objets d’art obtained in twenty-five years of foreign conquest, and, last, the drawing up of the famous Holy Alliance. To be sure, France would have been less offended at this Alliance if she had understood its absurd tenor and still more absurd origin. But when we realise the nation's situation at that time, it is difficult to estimate too highly all that she owed to the intervention of Alexander and of Wellington. By a