Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/575

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Europe after tJie Congress of Vienna 537 policy, necessarily found their prestige dimmed. Accus- tomed as they had been for fifteen years to hold first rank both in the army and at court, they now found themselves forced to share their power with men the greater number of whom had hitherto remained unknown to fame, and who suddenly assumed an attitude characterized by a superior- ity which displayed itself with that ease which usually belongs only to a possession of long date. . . . It not unfrequently occurred that the most illustrious among generals heard people ask in the salons of the Tui- leries who they were. These names, which had so often resounded in the bulletins of the Gra?ide Armee, were known in Vienna, in Berlin, and in the many capitals through which their bearers had passed as conquerors. On the other hand, those who in their own country, and in its very capital, involuntarily put this slight upon them, were perpetually exasperated at heart by the consideration and respectful treatment which policy dictated should be shown to men of the empire, and which seemed to the returned royalists excessive. . . . There was an ever-present and ill-concealed feeling of antagonism between the throng of officers who had won their promotion in the wars of the Revolution and the noblemen of all ages who were in so great a hurry to wear their old epaulets once more or to procure fresh ones. Strained relations between the returned Emigres and the Napoleonic nobility. The constitution which Louis XVIII granted to France upon the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in 1 8 14 is important from two points of view. In the first place, it furnishes an expression of the permanent results of the revolutionary period. Its concessions measure the space which separates the times of Louis XVI from those of his brother, Louis XVIII. In this respect the preamble and the bill of rights are of especial interest. Secondly, no other constitution has ever served France for so long a period. The Charter,