Conspiracy, Riot and Revolt

In the three and a half decades which followed the defeat of Napoleon, conspiracy, riot and revolt were constant features of the European scene. No prison was storng enough to prevent Blanqui from plotting, no place of excile distant enough to seperate Mazzini from his revolutionary agents. Cities were insubordinate, universities discontented, garrisons mutionous. Whole regions of Spain, southern Italy, the Balkans and central europe lay outside the bounds of ordinary law and order. In more sophisticated countries of western Europe no government could feel secure for long, and a monarch like Charles X of France, who refused to make concessions to the formal demands of his people, can hardly appear to have been other than extraordinarily blind to his own interests...