Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/76

 was not the least of his many titles to glory ; it authorised the French commandants to set at liberty every person unjustly arrested. When Ferdinand VII. was liberated, and had recovered his independence, the Duc d'Angoulême urged him to proclaim a Liberal Constitution and a general amnesty, bitterly regretting his inability to do this himself. But he had no illusions as to what he had to expect from a weak, deceitful, and cruel King like Ferdinand VII. On his return the prince refused to be fêted at Madrid, but paid long visits to the French troops stationed from one end of Spain to the other, giving many evidences of his solicitude for the Army. One of the good results of this war was that it threw full light on the future heir to the throne, the man who then seemed destined to become Louis XIX. Unhappily his excess of modesty and filial reverence caused him, in 1830, to add his abdication to that of his father, with disastrous consequences to France.

The instructions which Villèle had given to the French plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Verona entailed, besides the reduction of the Austrian army of occupation at Naples, the evacuation of Piedmont and the guarantees