It was a recognition of the decisive part played by Austria in these great events that Vienna was chosen as the scene of the great international congress summoned (September 1814) for the purpose of re-establishing the balance of power in Europe, which Napoleon's conquests had upset. An account of the congress is given elsewhere (see VIENNA, CONGRESS OF). The result for Austria was a triumphant vindication of Metternich's diplomacy. He had, it is true, been unable to prevent the retention of the grand-duchy of Warsaw by Alexander of Russia; but with the aid of Great Britain and France (secret treaty of January 3, 1815) he had frustrated the efforts of Prussia to absorb the whole of Saxony, Bavaria was forced to disgorge the territories gained for her by Napoleon at Austria's expense, Illyria and Dalmatia were regained, and Lombardy was added to Venetia to constitute a kingdom under the Habsburg crown; while in the whole Italian peninsula French was replaced by Austrian influence. In Germany the settlement was even more fateful for Austria's future. The Holy Empire, in spite of the protests of the Holy See, was not restored, Austria preferring the loose confederation of sovereign states (_Staatenbund_) actually constituted under her presidency. Such a body, Metternich held, "powerful for defence, powerless for offence," would form a guarantee of the peace of central Europe--and of the preponderance of Austria; and in its councils Austrian diplomacy, backed by the weight of the Habsburg power beyond the borders of Germany, would exercise a greater influence than any possible prestige derived from a venerable title that had become a by-word for the union of unlimited pretensions with practical impotence. Moreover, to the refusal to revive the Empire--which shattered so many patriotic hopes in Germany--Austria added another decision yet more fateful. By relinquishing her claim to the Belgian provinces and other outlying territories in western Germany, and by acquiescing in the establishment of Prussia in the Rhine provinces, she abdicated to Prussia her position as the bulwark of Germany against France, and hastened the process of her own gravitation towards the Slavonic East to which the final impetus was given in 1866.