Final Act of Vienna

June 9, 1815

Nine days before Waterloo, the Congress signed its final act. Poland was partitioned again; the Netherlands swallowed Belgium; Prussia took the Rhineland; a German Confederation replaced the dead Holy Roman Empire. A conservative peace, cynical and durable, had been carved from Napoleon's wreckage. Metternich's settlement kept Europe largely free of continental war for nearly a century, until the system collapsed in the summer of 1914.