Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/360

 to Holland, and constituted the kingdom of the Netherlands; Savoy and Piedmont were restored to the King of Sardinia; Tuscany to its former grand-duke, Ferdinand III.; and Lombardy was given to Austria.

But no sooner had the powers assembled at Vienna to settle the delineations of territory which had been so grievously disturbed by Napoleon, than difficulties met them at every stage. The Bourbons at Paris were beset with claims quite impossible to be conceded. Insolvency, consequent upon Napoleon's wars, stared them in the face. Russia demanded the whole grand-duchy of Warsaw as the reward of her sacrifices, and adduced abundant arguments to support her claims. Prussia wished to be reinstated in all respects, statistical, financial, and geographical, as she stood at the commencement of the war in 1806, with such additions as might be practicable according to the treaty of Kalitsch. Accordingly, besides various provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, she claimed the whole of Saxony, while Prussia and Russia, by friendly concessions, were united in their demands.

France, Austria, and England opposed these sweeping annexations of the northern nations; and Alexander, annoyed that England and Austria should resist his pretensions, was even more fiercely indignant that Talleyrand, representing France, should "with black ingratitude" hesitate to grant what he asked. To support these pretensions Alexander kept up an army of two hundred and eighty thousand men in Lithuania and Poland, and published an address announcing his intention to restore to the Poles their lost nationality; Prussia had reorganised