It was terribly humiliating to the people who had sacrificed
everything for a national ideal. But the Congress was not
interested in the private feelings of ``subjects,'' and the debate
was closed.
Did anybody object? Most assuredly. As soon as the first
feeling of hatred against Napoleon had quieted down--as soon
as the enthusiasm of the great war had subsided--as soon as
the people came to a full realisation of the crime that had been
committed in the name of ``peace and stability'' they began to
murmur. They even made threats of open revolt. But what
could they do? They were powerless. They were at the mercy
of the most pitiless and efficient police system the world had
ever seen.
The members of the Congress of Vienna honestly and sincerely
believed that ``the Revolutionary Principle had led to
the criminal usurpation of the throne by the former emperor
Napoleon.'' They felt that they were called upon to eradicate
the adherents of the so-called ``French ideas'' just as Philip II
had only followed the voice of his conscience when he burned
Protestants or hanged Moors. In the beginning of the sixteenth
century a man who did not believe in the divine right
of the Pope to rule his subjects as he saw fit was a ``heretic''
and it was the duty of all loyal citizens to kill him. In the
beginning of the nineteenth century, on the continent of Europe,
a man who did not believe in the divine right of his king to
rule him as he or his Prime Minister saw fit, was a ``heretic,'' and
it was the duty of all loyal citizens to denounce him to the nearest
policeman and see that he got punished.
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