9 - The Nineteenth Century

Summary

France

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the delegates at the Congress of Vienna sought to establish the balance of power as the key theme in European politics. The delegates joined small nations together to form larger, and theoretically more powerful, states. Belgium and the Netherlands, different in religion, language, and culture, became Kingdom of the Netherlands; the German states, different in religion and political orientation, were welded together into the German Confederation; and Sweden's claim to Norway was recognized. It is perhaps no coincidence that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), the story of a man who created a monster by joining together body parts from several corpses, was written only a few years after the Congress of Vienna.

The restored Louis XVIII wasted little time punishing Napoleon's supporters. Fourier lost his baronial title, and Carnot and Monge were expelled from the French Academy and replaced with Augustin-Louis Cauchy (August 21, 1789–May 23, 1857). Cauchy, through the lessons he taught at the Royal Polytechnical School (formerly the Polytechnical School), would be largely responsible for establishing calculus on a rigorous basis, giving what amounts to the modern definition of limit, derivative, continuity, convergence, and the definite integral; Cauchy's publication record (789 items) is second only to Euler's (866 items).

On June 4, 1814, Louis issued a constitution that established a bicameral legislature consisting of an elected Chamber of Deputies and a hereditary Chamber of Peers; he also gave guarantees of religious and civil liberty. In August 1815, the Ultras, a group of conservatives who wanted to restore the nobility to the privileges and positions they held before the Revolution, gained a majority in the Chamber of Deputies.