guillotine, and the enthronement of reason in the place of God.
The tide of opinion in England was turned by these scenes of
lawless license, and when, in 1793, the revolutionary government
of France offered its armed aid to all oppressed peoples,
England, led by William Pitt, joined Austria and Prussia in a war
to suppress the dangerous republic, and restore the Bourbon
dynasty to its ancient throne. Seven successive coalitions were
thus formed by English diplomacy between 1793 and 1815 to meet
the changing phases of the struggle which, after 1803, had ceased
to be monarchy against democracy and had become a universal war
for self-preservation from Napoleon, the military genius who had
made himself the dictator of revolutionary France. When the great
war seemed to have come to an end, in 1814-15, and Napoleon was
finally caged at St. Helena, England found herself naturally
taking a principal part in re-establishing the Bourbon Louis
XVIII. on the throne of France. She had stood with the other
powers so long against a common foe that she continued to stand
with them now in undoing, as far as might be, the work which the
disturbing and renovating conqueror had wrought in the kingdoms
which he had overrun. Not only were the old boundaries generally
restored and the exiled monarchs brought back to replace the
upstart Bonaparte kings, but the constitutional freedom which the
French arms had introduced in many parts of Europe was annulled
wherever possible. The Congress of Vienna, in which the allied
powers formulated their policy, did its best to turn back the
shadow twenty years on the dial of progress, and England either
joined in the effort or stood by consenting to the death of so
many newly won liberties.

When the allied sovereigns were met in Napoleon's capital after