West Europe was neutralised by British sea-power.
After Waterloo, East Europe was united by the Holy League of the three Powers—Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Each of the three advanced westward a stage, as though drawn by a magnet in that direction. Russia obtained most of Poland, and thus extended a political peninsula into the heart of the physical peninsula of Europe. Austria took the Dalmatian coast, and also Venice and Milan in the mainland of Northern Italy. Prussia obtained a detached territory in the old Germany of the West, which territory was divided into the two provinces of the Rhineland and Westphalia. This annexation of Germans to Prussia proved to be a much more significant thing than the addition of Poles to Russia and of Italians to Austria. The Rhineland is an anciently civilised country, and so far Western that it accepted the Code Napoleon for its law, which it still retains. From the moment that the Prussians thus forced their way into West Europe a struggle became inevitable between the Liberal Rhineland and the Conservative Brandenburg of Berlin. But that struggle was postponed for a time owing to the exhaustion of Europe.
