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Reference one: When Russia lost its war and the better part of its navy against Japan, everyone expected it to pay a heavy price. Russian statesman Sergei Witte managed to minimize territorial concessions and avoid the question of reparations altogether.

Reference two: after a certain Napoleon was finally sent to his retirement home on Elba, the victors assembled in Vienna to redraw the map of Europe. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord managed to maneuver himself into the negotiations and ensured France lost only its new acquisitions and not, say, Alsace or Nice. Austria, on the other hand, ended up in a worse position than it was in 1790.

France lost only its new acquisitions and not, say, Alsace or Nice.

Extreme pedantry, I know, but Nice wasn't part of France immediately before or after Napoleon:

The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) once more gave the city back to the Duke of Savoy, who was on that same occasion recognised as King of Sicily. (...) From 1744 until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) the French and Spaniards were again in possession. (...) Conquered in 1792 by the armies of the First French Republic, the County of Nice continued to be part of France until 1814; but after that date it reverted to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.

It only became part of France for good in 1860:

After the Treaty of Turin was signed in 1860 between the Sardinian king and Napoleon III as a consequence of the Plombières Agreement, the county was again and definitively ceded to France as a territorial reward for French assistance in the Second Italian War of Independence against Austria, which saw Lombardy united with Piedmont-Sardinia.

Thank you. I should've trusted my nagging doubt about Nice and just written "Provence".