this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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A lot of good came out of it in the end, but I doubt the French felt great after the battle at Waterloo and the resulting peace treaty
For France that was a great peace treaty, way better than what many French people would have expected, Talleyrand had worked wonders. After Waterloo there were many who would have wanted a complete dismemberment of France, but instead the pre Waterloo negotiations were followed and a relatively strong state was created, with all the territorial gains of Louis 14 left intact.
That peace was also far better for French people than Napoleon's endless large scale wars of the prior 15 years. It's that massive death toll that we should blame Napoleon for, not the treaty of Vienna. And after a bit of a respite, the french did kick out the Bourbons again, so that peace did work out ok for France. It was easily a far better peace than the "peace" of Versailles after WW1.
Yeah I guess you're right that it came out about as well as it possibly could for France. I still feel there was a significant bit of humiliation at play for the great power that France was at the time, but then again it took a coalition to get there and this was an army of a country torn between monarchists and republicans.