III.

Major Decisions

As a result of the negotiations at the Congress, France was deprived of all the territory conquered by Napoleon; the Dutch Republic was united with the Austrian Netherlands to form a single kingdom of the Netherlands under the house of Orange; Norway and Sweden were joined under a single ruler, Charles XIV John of Sweden; and the independence and neutrality of Switzerland were guaranteed, with the union of its cantons reconstituted as a loose confederation. In addition, Russia received the major part of the former duchy of Warsaw as the kingdom of Poland, with Alexander I as king; Prussia received West Prussia, Posen (now the Polish province of Poznan), the northern half of Saxony, and the greater part of the provinces of the Rhine and Westphalia; Hanover received territorial additions and became a kingdom; Austria was given back most of the territory it had recently lost and was compensated in Germany and Italy (Lombardy and Venetia) for the loss of the Austrian Netherlands. The formerly Venetian part of Dalmatia (now in Croatia) also went to Austria; Britain kept Cape Colony in South Africa, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mauritius, Helgoland, and Malta; the king of Sardinia recovered Piedmont, Nice, and Savoy and received Genoa; the Bourbon king Ferdinand I was restored to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; and the duchy of Parma was bestowed on Napoleon's wife, Marie-Louise of Austria. A territorial commission was convened at Frankfurt, and by 1819 it had established the Germanic Confederation, uniting 39 sovereign states, including Prussia, under the presidency of Austria.

The Congress took the important step of condemning the slave trade, and also provided for freedom of navigation on rivers that traversed several states or formed boundaries between states. Its chief accomplishment was in re-establishing a balance of power among the countries of Europe, with the result that the peace of Europe remained practically undisturbed for 40 years.