Transcription
To hello, welcome back to our lecture series for Western Civilization 102. We have been discussing the French Revolution in Western Civilization, and of course, um, Napoleon has been exiled for the second time. First time he was exiled on the island of Elba. He manages to escape, gathers up an army, and marches back to France, to Paris, where he will rule for a hundred days before he is yet again exiled to the island of Saint Helena. It's a bit further away. Elba is right off the coast of the Italian Peninsula, and so, um, they wanted him a little bit further away on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic. And according to, um, to history, he lived a very kind of dreary life here on the island of Saint Helena. He wrote memoirs, and he died in 1821. So that's not much long, not much longer after the, um, the war was over, the revolution was over. Of course, we also had warfare with Austria and Prussia and Britain. Um, Britain, of course, gets into it as well. They're against France. So there's also speculation about, you know, was Napoleon poisoned? I remember a few years ago, well, quite a few years ago, they actually did some testing on his remains to see if they could find any arsenic, because arsenic is supposed to remain for quite a long time in fingernails and hair. Um, so there's, you know, there's a little bit of mystery around his death because it, it happens so quickly after the French Revolution was over.
But now that Napoleon is exiled, soon, of course, to die, what's going to happen in Europe? Because Napoleon had been such a pivotal figure in most of the European states. He had put his his family members on thrones in Europe. For example, in Spain, I believe he put his brother on the throne of Spain. He had gone up against Britain with his Continental System. He had mistakenly, and big mistake, invaded Russia, um, which of course, Adolf Hitler will not learn of later in history from Napoleon's mistake of invading Russia, because Hitler will also invade Russia with the same consequence. It wasn't good, of course, for either France or Germany much later in history, of course, with Germany. So Europe has to, has a lot of work to do. They have a lot of of planning on how to move forward now that France has been defeated and they have finally, of course, gotten rid of Napoleon.
So we have a group of prominent European states will get together. States like Britain and Austria and Russia and Prussia, and meet and talk about what is going to happen. They will meet at the Congress of Vienna. You'll hear more about this as well. But basically, what's discussed here after the French Revolution is the, the primary idea was of legitimacy. So basically, all the rulers that were in power before the revolution would be restored to power. Now that France has been defeated, and all of the countries would have the same territory that they held in 1789, which had been the start of the French Revolution. Uh, you know, Europe wanted to make sure that France did not grow powerful and expand. So they wanted to erect barriers against France as well. Um, and of course, they also created a new league of German states called the Germanic Confederation. Germanic Confederation. This would, if you, of course, learned a lot about the Holy Roman Empire in previous lectures, this was basically Central Europe, the Holy Roman Empire area. When Napoleon had taken over much of Europe, he had created the Confederation of the Rhine, and now after the French have been defeated, uh, with these European states getting together, they created a new league of German states called the Germanic Confederation. They were hoping, of course, this would help, you know, stop France from expanding and help contain it. Well, this, you know, what they were talking about doing in Europe doesn't always happen, of course, because we'll see that some of these countries will not be restored to their 17 pre-1789 territories. Some will, of course, grab other areas and territories. Russia got a large portion of Poland, and Prussia got a part of Saxony. You know, so, um, it was important for this Congress of Vienna, however, that the major powers, Russia and Austria and Prussia and Great Britain, will agree to talk with each other about Europe. They agreed to have post-war conferences, um, and this was called the Concert of Europe. They wanted to maintain the balance of power, and they wanted to maintain peace in Europe. Will not happen. We're not going to see a major war, of course, at this time and for for some time to come, until 1914 with World War I. But we will, as we go through the lectures, upcoming lectures, we will see that quite a lot of revolutions will take place in Europe, not not a big world war, no one like Napoleon, for example, coming in, but we will have a lot of revolutions that are taking place as well. But it was, you know, it was a good thing that the the countries of Europe decided that they would meet and talk and discuss, and they would continue to do so with their alliance. So let's find out more about the post-French Revolution years with the Congress of Vienna and the Quadruple and the Concert of Europe.
Napoleon Bonaparte redrew the map of Europe with his conquests within the Napoleonic Empire. He also dramatically restructured government. As Napoleon's defeat went from possible to inevitable in 1814, it was clear that the Allies opposed to him would not allow these changes to stand. After Napoleon was defeated for the first time in 1814, he was exiled to the island of Elba, and the great powers assembled in Vienna in what is known as the Congress of Vienna to restructure the map and to reorder Europe as much as possible. Key to the Congress of Vienna was an alliance made in 1814 among the four leading powers opposed to Napoleon. This alliance is known as the Quadruple Alliance of 1814, and the principles were Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia. The Quadruple Alliance had two purposes when it was created. One of these was to defeat Napoleon, a goal that had apparently been achieved in March of 1814. The second goal was to contain France, that is, to prevent France from ever expanding again as it had done under Napoleon. France, of course, at the time was regarded as the biggest threat to international peace because it had become the the most powerful nation in Europe twice in recent centuries, first under Louis XIV and then again under Napoleon. So there was a great deal of concern at the Congress of Vienna to prevent this from happening again.
The Congress first assembled in November of 1814, and the big four, so to speak, Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia, were actually joined by a representative from France. The the idea here was to allow the French to function as observers. The host of the Congress of Vienna, being that it was in Vienna, was the Austrian Emperor Francis I. Francis, of course, was in a somewhat ticklish position, as his daughter Marie Louise was married to Napoleon, but he quickly demonstrated his willingness to throw Napoleon under the rails, so to speak. He faced enormous difficulties of protocol, however. Assembling the the leaders of all of the major and lesser states of Europe, uh, created a dilemma as to who took precedence over who. Uh, still a matter of enormous social importance at the time, reflected in everything from where you stood to how you dressed, and so on. He also found it necessary to keep these people entertained for months at a time. And one of the sidelights to the Congress of Vienna is that while all of the diplomatic negotiation went on during the daytime, there was wild festivity in the evenings. Affairs among a number of the diplomats and various women at the conference, and, uh, in, in fact, it is an event noted as much noted at the time for the debauchery of the evenings as for the diplomacy of the day. But of course, it is the diplomacy of the day that ultimately winds up being of the greatest importance.
Austria, of course, was represented by both the Emperor Francis I and his chief advisor, Clemens von Metternich. Von Metternich had been, in fact, the foreign secretary for Austria. He had negotiated on a number of occasions with Napoleon, but he now became perhaps the most important single individual at the Congress of Vienna. And indeed, Metternich would, would arguably become the most important diplomatic force in Europe between 1814 and 1848, when he was finally evicted from office. Metternich was a brilliant diplomat. He also was by this point harshly opposed to any of the innovations that Napoleon had made and to the whole ideology of the French Revolution. Metternich was, in a word, a reactionary. He wanted to restore Europe to the way it had been prior to 1789, prior to the French Revolution and the creation of the Napoleonic Empire, and he had both the ability and the influence to make a great deal of this happen. Another figure representing Austria at this Congress, less influential than Metternich, but important nonetheless, was Friedrich von Gentz, who also played a major role in the deliberations. So Austria, represented by its Emperor, by Metternich, and by von Gentz.
Russia was represented by its Tsar. Tsar Alexander I was actually present at the Congress of Vienna itself and took a fairly significant role. Indeed, he is the only monarch among all those either present or represented at the Congress of Vienna who took part in the negotiations to a greater extent than his ministers did. He did, of course, have a diplomatic minister with him, Karl Robert Nesselrode, but Nesselrode took a back seat to Alexander in most cases. The Prussians were represented by their King, Frederick William III, but also by a diplomat by the name of von Hardenberg, and also by the scientist William von Humboldt, or the son, the brother of the scientist von Humboldt, William von Humboldt, who conducted most of the negotiations there.
Britain, uh, of course, was still nominally ruled in 1814 by George III, but George III by this point was a very old, very feeble, and very ill individual. He was practically blind, practically deaf, not in full possession of his mental faculties, and there was little chance of him playing any significant role by this time. In fact, there was a regency set up in Britain under George III's son, the future George IV, but the Prince Regent, as he was known at the time, uh, was a man characterized by a good deal of personal dissolution, and he was not really fit to participate either. So at the beginning of the Congress of Vienna, by far the most important representative of the British was the diplomat Viscount Castlereagh. Castlereagh was to prove to be the most important voice in opposition to some of the ideas put forth at the Congress by Metternich. Castlereagh would eventually, uh, return to England during the course of the Congress of Vienna and would be replaced first by the Duke of Wellington, the man who finally defeated Napoleon for the second time at the Battle of Waterloo, and Wellington himself would later be replaced by the Earl of Clancarty. But even when Castlereagh was not present in Vienna, he still was the guiding force in the decisions that the British made there.
The French had a new king in 1814 after the defeat of Napoleon and his abdication and his failed attempt to put his son on the throne in his place. What the Allies had done was to restore the Bourbon monarchy in the person of a king known as Louis XVIII. This number sometimes mystifies, uh, people who are new to the subject of post-Napoleonic Europe, because the question is obviously, where was Louis XVII? Louis XVI was, of course, the king overthrown by the French Revolution and executed in 1793, but in the eyes of supporters of the Bourbon dynasty, his son, Prince Louis, who eventually died in prison, was the rightful Louis XVII during the 1790s. Hence, when the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1814, it is Louis XVIII that takes the throne. Another confusing aspect of this is that Louis XVIII was, in fact, the brother of Louis XVI, and many people ask, well, how could it be that you have two kings who are brothers who are both named Louis? The reason for this is that typically French monarchs were given a whole string of names, and which name a monarch chose to use once he took the throne was up to him. And in order to stress the continuity of the Bourbon dynasty, which had been represented by Louises going all the way back to Louis XIII in 1610, Louis XVIII chose to use Louis rather than one of his other given names.
Now, Louis XVIII was in Paris during the Congress of Vienna, but he was represented at the Congress by one of the most wily diplomats of the 18th and 19th centuries, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, or Talleyrand for short. Talleyrand is one of the great opportunists in history. Talleyrand had worked for the Bourbons before the French Revolution. He had signed on, so to speak, to the revolution just in time, had managed to move from government to government, uh, without falling afoul of anyone so badly as to lose his head. He had been a supporter of Napoleon, and then when it became apparent that Napoleon might be in trouble, he put out secret feelers to the Allies, and therefore was well connected among the Allies by the time that he arrived at the Congress of Vienna. Technically, Talleyrand was meant to be just an observer, but as matters turned out, he wound up having a good deal of influence over how things transpired at the Congress.
There were a number of other notable participants there, although not as important as the big four and Talleyrand. The Marquis of Labrador represented the Spanish. The first Duke of Palmella represented the Portuguese. Carl Lowenhielm represented the Swedish, and Frederick VI, the King of Denmark, represented Denmark himself.
Now, there were several guiding principles that that motivated the actions of the Congress of Vienna and that are advocated especially by Metternich, but embraced by pretty much all of the participants to one degree or another. The first of these, to use a slightly anachronistic term, was the idea of containment. Containment, of course, is a term coined after World War II, during the Cold War, to explain what Western policy was towards the Soviet Union, but it's the same basic idea here with regard to France. The idea is to build a ring of countries around France strong enough that France cannot expand again as it had done under Louis XIV and then to an even greater degree under Napoleon. So the plan is to redraw the map so that France is surrounded on all sides by strong countries, and in fact, even so that there is a first ring of countries and then a second ring beyond that which would resist any sort of French expansion.
A second guiding principle was the principle of legitimacy. Obviously, the Congress of Vienna was not going to allow all the changes that Napoleon had made in government to stand. What they proposed to do, wherever possible, was to restore what they regarded as the legitimate monarchs who had ruled prior to the French Revolution. The most obvious example of this is the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France itself, but the Bourbons would be returned in Spain, and other legitimate monarchs would be returned wherever possible. Now, there was no thought of recreating the old Holy Roman Empire; that was dead and gone. There was also no thought of recreating some of the smaller German states that Napoleon had done away with, but wherever old monarchies were restored, the idea was to bring back the pre-revolutionary dynasties.
A third guiding principle, and one that also represents a return to 18th-century ways of thinking, was the idea of balance of power. In the 18th century, following the conquest of Louis XIV, one of the most important diplomatic principles had been that the five great powers should remain in balance, that none should be allowed to become so powerful as to be a threat to all the others. That had worked fine for most of the 18th century. It had broken down with Napoleon, and now the idea is to re-establish that. So there is no thought to annihilating France. There is no thought to making France too weak, because you want a France that will stay in rough balance with the other powers. So France is to be contained, but it is not to be weakened to the point where it might create a power vacuum.
And finally, there is the principle of compensation. Where territory is taken away from a major power, it is to be compensated with other territory elsewhere. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Congress of Vienna and the major powers there were not terribly concerned about compensating the lesser states for anything that they might lose.
So how does this work out in practice? Well, almost before the diplomats could set about drawing a map, they found themselves distracted by a crisis. At this crisis involved primarily the Duchy of Saxony, or the Kingdom of Saxony in Northern Germany, and the Kingdom of Poland. Alexander I, the Tsar of Russia, who arrived at Vienna as the only monarch, remember, who intended to participate fully, made an offer to the other powers at the Congress of Vienna. He offered, ever so generously, to serve as the protector of Poland, which is to say that all of what had formerly been Poland would be drawn within the orbit of Russia. Now, Poland, as you may recall, had disappeared from the map during the French Revolutionary decade. It had been subject to a series of partitions orchestrated by Russia, Prussia, and Austria that concluded in 1795, and Poland literally disappeared. Napoleon had made an attempt to recreate a Polish state with the Duchy of Warsaw, but now what Alexander is offering to do is to protect Poland in a way that would have really made Polish territory Russian territory. The initial response of the other great powers was absolutely not. Uh, there was no enthusiasm for this whatsoever. So Alexander tried a different angle. He approached the Prussians and suggested to the Prussians that if they would agree to his becoming protector of Poland, that he would agree to Prussia seizing the territory of the of the Kingdom of Saxony, something which the Prussians had long coveted. Thus, Prussia switched to the side of Russia, and now we find ourselves with a potentially very dangerous stalemate. Prussia and Russia on one side, France, I'm sorry, Austria and Britain on the other side, and the, the four great powers which had just defeated France, very nearly went to war in 1814 and early 1815 over this issue of Poland and Saxony.
This is what opened the opportunity for Talleyrand. Talleyrand went to the Austrians and the British and worked out a secret agreement whereby the French agreed to support Austria and Britain in any hostilities that might erupt. Now, I say this was a secret agreement, but like many secrets, it was leaked, deliberately leaked, so that the Russians and the Prussians would hear about it. And of course, both Alexander I and Frederick William III were highly alarmed when they learned that there might be an alliance involving Austria, Britain, and France. France, after all, had been powerful enough militarily to conquer all of Europe just recently, and although it no longer had Napoleon, it was still something to be reckoned with. And therefore, Prussia and Russia backed down. They ultimately wound up being a compromise on this issue, in which Russia extended its protection to a portion of what had been Poland, Prussia got a tiny little piece of Saxony, and conflict was avoided. But one of the results of this is that Talleyrand now became, although unofficially, a full player at the table. Although he had no official role, he would be consulted, and his opinion would be interjected from here on in.
In the midst of all of this, of course, Napoleon was not idle. Restricted to the island of Elba, he had proceeded to reorganize the entire island along his own administrative lines, and in March of 1815, using the little bit of force that he had at his disposal at Elba, he escaped. He escaped the island of Elba and made his way on a boat across to the southern coast of France. And as you will have heard in the discussions of Napoleon's final campaign, he landed on the southern coast of France, was immediately welcomed by many of his old soldiers, and made a triumphant march toward Paris, in which the towns opened their gates to him, and thousands and thousands of Frenchmen came out to support him. Louis XVIII fled, and the members of the Congress of Vienna suddenly had to drop their diplomatic concerns and concentrate on defeating Napoleon for a second time. This, of course, they did do. In June of 1815, Napoleon was in fact defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by the Duke of Wellington, leading British forces, and General Blücher, leading those of Prussia. This time, he would be sent much farther away than the island of Elba, being sent far off into the Atlantic on the island of Saint Helena, where he would spend the rest of his life.
Napoleon, uh, actually wanted to spend his exile in Britain, of all places, but the British felt that this was too risky. Uh, that it left him too close to France, and it was felt to be safest to simply get him as far away from France as possible. And once exiled to Saint Helena, there was very little chance of him escaping and getting back. It's a thousand miles off the coast of Africa and in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He was under heavy guard at all times. Only ships approved by the British ever landed there, so he was effectively imprisoned. Now, many people ask why, after having had to defeat Napoleon a second time, the Allies didn't simply have him executed. And that's not an unreasonable question, but to have done so would have created a number of disadvantages. The most important of these is that it would have made Napoleon into a martyr, and this is not something that the Allies wanted to do. Uh, secondly, it would have made it much more difficult to restore the Bourbon dynasty. Uh, the idea that the Allies had was to restore Louis XVIII with as little disturbance as possible. They wanted to ensure that he would be welcome back by as many of the French as possible, and taking a less radical approach to Napoleon was one way of doing that. There's also the problem that it would have been difficult to justify in the law. Therefore, the idea is simply to get him as far away from France as possible so that there is no risk of him coming back and making more trouble.
Now, on the island of Saint Helena, Napoleon devoted himself to writing his memoirs, in which he is his own greatest hero, and in which he does a great deal to construct his own legend. Uh, he eventually died at a rather young age in 1821, and there has always been suspicion that his death might not have been entirely of natural causes. The truth of the matter is, there were any number of people who had motives for wanting Napoleon dead. All of his enemies would rest easier once he was no longer alive, even in distant exile. He remained a powerful, iconic figure for many of the French, so there certainly is a motive there. The question is, was anything done to do away with Napoleon? And the honest answer is, we don't really know. Uh, Napoleon was not in particularly good health while he was on Saint Helena. He had suffered all his adult life with stomach ailments, and he seemed to continue to do so while he was there. But in the 1970s, a team of scientists exhumed his body, took some scrapings from his fingernails, and discovered that he had an unusually high content of arsenic in his fingernails. Well, that proves he was poisoned, right? Well, not necessarily. In the 19th century, arsenic was often used for medicinal purposes. In fact, in small doses, carefully measured small doses, it is medicinal, and one of the things that arsenic was used for was treating stomach ailments. So it is quite possible that the higher concentration of arsenic in Napoleon's system at the time of his death was simply a result of medication. It's also conceivable that he might have poisoned himself by taking too much medication as his condition worsened. The bottom line is that we don't know for sure. He could have died from natural causes. He could have died with some assistance, so to speak, for many, uh, or any of the same countries involved at the Congress of Vienna.
But back at the Congress itself, once Napoleon was defeated for a second time, the Congress got down to the details of its business. Now, no longer distracted by the Polish-Saxon issue, and now no longer distracted by Poland or by Napoleon himself, one of the first things they did was to deal with the question of French boundaries. As you may recall, the, the four allies, the Quadruple Alliance, had made a number of offers to Napoleon for a smaller France that nonetheless would have still been a larger French nation than the one that had existed in 1789, when the French Revolution broke out. As Napoleon's situation had become less and less tenable, how much the, the Allies were willing to give him had gradually reduced in size. And in fact, between the first defeat of Napoleon in 1814 and the second defeat in 1815, the amount that the Quadruple Alliance was to willing to give to his successors also shrunk. So basically, what happens in the Congress of Vienna is that France is restored to its pre-1792 boundaries. It's still a slightly larger France than the one that existed in 1789, but one that is stripped of almost all the territory it acquired during both the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic conquests.
Now, what about outside of France? Well, obviously, on the west of France, the barrier is pretty much unchangeable, and that is the Atlantic Ocean, and there, especially the presence of the British Navy, was considered to be sufficient security to prevent further French expansion. In part of the southern boundary, you of course have the Mediterranean Sea. Again, that's not a changeable boundary. Again, it's one where, in particular, the British Navy can guarantee security. But on the landed parts of the French boundary, now the idea is to create stronger nations. So to the direct north of France, what the Congress of Vienna does is to create a new state called the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Now, there have been any number of states referred to as the Netherlands or the Low Countries in that region before, but what this does is that it recombines the 17 provinces that had once been governed by Spain, and that had split into the United Provinces of the Netherlands and into the first the Spanish and then Austrian Netherlands, what we nowadays know as Belgium, and combine them back into a single state, and this time a state with a king. The king was chosen from the long-standing House of Orange, or Orange, if you prefer, and the first king was one of those many Williams of Orange that we encounter in history. He becomes King William I of the Netherlands, and the idea here is to create a larger state, presumably stronger state, a state that embodies monarchy instead of republicanism with a little R, and a state that would be able to prevent French expansion. Every time that the French had expanded, whether under Louis XIV or under Napoleon, one of their first targets had been the Low Countries for the obvious reason that the Low Countries were the source of an enormous amount of commercial wealth and also strategically important because they contained the mouth of the Rhine River. So what is now Belgium, what is now the Netherlands, combined into a single kingdom with a single king, this seemed like a good idea at the time. It would prove to be problematic in the future. The Belgians, those in the southern half of the kingdom, were French speakers, they were Catholics, and they were mostly involved in manufacturing or agriculture. The Dutch, those in the north half, spoke Dutch, they were Protestants, and they were mostly involved in commerce, and those two groups would ultimately prove to be incompatible over the next 15 years. But at the time, it was an idea that very much fit in with this whole notion of containing France.
Now, Napoleon, when he had dismantled the Holy Roman Empire, had created a confederation of German states with himself as its president. This was done away with, but what instead was put in its place is that the Congress of Vienna created a new German Confederation, made up of 39 states loosely linked together by a common legislative institution and council known as the Diet, and wherever possible, tried to restore legitimate rulers in the constituent states. So you go from having the the German Confederation that was created by Napoleon to a larger German Confederation that includes all of the German-speaking states, uh, including Austria, and they are linked together by the Diet. Now, these states are by and large bigger, so they would be better able to contain France. They are also confederated, so collectively they would have a better chance of containing France. Within the Confederation, there are two states in particular that are dominant, and not surprisingly, these two states are two of the great powers. In the south, the most important of these, the largest, was Austria, which, like most of southern Germany, was Catholic, and which over the next half century would dominate the southern half of Germany. In the north, of course, you have Prussia, also a great power, and like most of the northern German states, Protestant, so it will dominate northern Germany for the next half century. Also in Germany, the Congress of Vienna restored the old Kingdom of Hanover, which was given back, uh, to the the monarchs in Britain, and it remained in the hands of the kings of Britain until the succession of Queen Victoria in 1837. Uh, Hanover had a version of the Salic Law, which did not allow a woman to inherit the throne, so ultimately, when Victoria became Queen of Great Britain, Hanover would choose another king. But for the time being, it too is restored. A portion of Saxony was given to Prussia. Prussia also acquired control of territory in Northern Germany known as Pomerania. The Kingdom of Norway was restored to full independence, and the Polish territory that had been in the Duchy of Warsaw was reapportioned to the countries that had controlled it before. One of the important things that happened at the Congress of Vienna is that Switzerland was recognized as a neutral country, something that remains the case until this very day. Now, Switzerland is not a terribly easy country to invade because it is surrounded by mountains. Switzerland, which had earlier been a source of mercenaries for other armies, had retreated from that occupation, and so it has largely been left untouched in subsequent conflicts.
In Italy, there were a number of the states that Napoleon had consolidated into the Kingdom of Italy that were restored to independence. In particular, Modena, Tuscany, Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, and all returned were possible to legitimate rulers. The Papal States were also restored to independence with the Pope as the ruler, and that's how it would remain until the unification of Italy. The Kingdom of Naples, which had initially been left, uh, in the hands of pro-Napoleonic forces, was restored to the Bourbons in 1815. And perhaps most importantly, in all of Italy, what had been the Kingdom of Savoy or Sardinia was enhanced in size and turned into what is called the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, including both the regions of Savoy and Nice and the island of Sardinia. Now, this bordered on southeastern France, and like the Netherlands, like the German states, it was meant to form a more important barrier to French expansion, and indeed it did. What nobody anticipated at the time was that Piedmont-Sardinia would later become the principal mover in shaking in the unification of Italy, something that will be discussed further down the road. Finally, Spain and Portugal were restored to their respective monarchies. The Bourbons, who had found themselves a little shaky when Napoleon returned in 1815, are re-established permanently, or at least permanently for the 19th century, and the House of Braganza is restored in Portugal. Therefore, what we see here is an implementation of those guiding principles. France is to be contained by a ring of stronger states. Those states are restored to legitimate government as much as possible. A balance of power is established among the five great powers: Austria, Britain, Prussia, Russia, and France, and states are compensated, or at least the large states are compensated for the loss of territory by a shifting around of other territory.
Now, this would seem to solve all the problems. Napoleon has been dealt with. He is safely in exile. France has been restored to the Bourbon monarchy, and the, the map of Europe redrawn. There were, however, some continuing difficulties in France itself. Louis XVIII had agreed to a charter which put some limits on royal power. This was inevitable in the wake of 25 years of the French Revolution and Napoleon, but for years to come, the Bourbon monarchy, first in the person of Louis XVIII and later in the person of his brother Charles X, would be restive under the restraints of this charter or constitution, and there would be varying opinions among the French about how it was supposed to work. So, in short, there will continue to be discontent over the French government on both the side of the monarch and the side of those who might prefer a republic, and not surprisingly, there will be further revolutions in France in the 19th century, in 1830, in 1848, in 1871.
On the international front, there was another problem that now emerged that was almost as divisive as the problem of Poland and Saxony. Metternich suggested that since the Congress of Vienna had worked so well, that the states of Europe should continue to meet from time to time in congresses to work out their problems peacefully rather than resorting to war. Now, that certainly seems like a good idea, a way of avoiding bloodshed and destruction and what have you. Therefore, he argued for the creation of what he called the Concert of Europe, that is, the, the great powers of Europe and their lesser partners coming together in concert, in in a concerted effort to maintain peace. Now, the problem is, this term Concert of Europe, which is kind of an umbrella term for a whole bunch of different things, is very vague, and exactly what it is meant to accomplish differs depending upon whom you ask. Now, one thing that nobody disagreed about was that one purpose of the Concert of Europe was to maintain peace, and that maintaining peace could best be achieved by maintaining a balance of power and by containing the might of France. There is no disagreement about that. Even the French sort of bought into that idea. But what else was it meant to do? Well, Metternich also suggested that the Concert of Europe and, and the Quadruple Alliance of the four great powers that had defeated France ought to also commit themselves to preventing any further revolutions anywhere in Europe. And here there was disagreement. Britain argued, Castlereagh in particular, that this was not a purpose of the Quadruple Alliance, and in that he was absolutely right. If you remember, the Quadruple Alliance had two purposes: defeat Napoleon and contain France, to to prevent further French expansion. It was the British point of view that the internal affairs of European nations were not the business of the Concert of Europe. If, for example, the people of Portugal decided to overthrow their government and replace it with another, that was the business of the people of Portugal, and as long as Portugal did not become a threat to the rest of Europe, then that's the way it would remain. That is not, however, how Metternich saw it, and among the great powers, Alexander I agreed with Metternich, Frederick William III of Prussia agreed with Metternich, and Louis XVIII of France agreed with Metternich that the Concert of Europe ought to set about to prevent revolution. Well, if the Quadruple Alliance is not to be the practical arm for that goal, then what?
Well, in 1815, Tsar Alexander I proposed to his colleagues the creation of a new alliance that he termed the Holy Alliance. And as you've probably learned in History 102, frequently when the word "holy" appears in the, the front of the word "alliance," you probably should add the prefix "un" in front of the word "holy." Unholy Alliance is often a better label. Now, what Alexander said this was about, what he proposed was an alliance of all European states, everyone, in which all European states agreed to renounce war as an instrument of international policy and promised to negotiate with one another in a spirit of Christian brotherhood. Now, that sounds pretty good. We're going to do away with war, we're going to negotiate peacefully in a spirit of Christian brotherhood. Surely nobody could object to that. The problem is that there were several states that did object to that. First and foremost were the British. Castlereagh and the British clearly recognized that what Alexander was really up to here was creating another alliance structure, separate from the Quadruple Alliance, which could be used to prevent revolutions within individual states. Alexander and Metternich, especially, were adamant about wanting to do this because they saw any revolution as having the potential to expand in the way that the French Revolution did and to spread into other countries. So the British said, nope, we're not going to be part of this. We will have nothing to do with Alexander's Holy Alliance. The Papal States also refused to be part of the Holy Alliance. The Pope was not at all happy about the idea of an alliance proposed by the Russian Orthodox Tsar of Russia. There was a long-standing rivalry between Rome and Moscow as to which was the true head of the true church, and the Pope allowed, as he said, he didn't need the Russians to teach him how to negotiate in a spirit of Christian brotherhood. The third state that did not buy into this was Ottoman Turkey, which would have had problems with the whole notion of negotiating in a spirit of Christian brotherhood, since the Turks were in fact Muslims. So the Holy Alliance does not become an all-embracing idea either. But one thing that the members of the Holy Alliance do share with Britain excluded is the idea that the wider Concert of Europe should be used to prevent revolutions. And herein lies a great deal of vagueness and ambivalence and confusion in the years to come. Does the Concert of Europe apply only to the Quadruple Alliance? Does the term Concert of Europe apply only to the Congress system? Does the Concert of Europe apply only to the Holy Alliance? And in short, most people were unclear.
It gets even more confusing in 1818. In 1818, the first of the post-Vienna congresses was held. There was a congress held in Aix-la-Chapelle. The purpose of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle was to deal with post-Napoleonic France. The French, under the terms of the Vienna settlement of 1815, had paid off all their debts, they had pretty much established themselves as a post-revolutionary state, and therefore they were to be welcomed back into the circle of great powers on an equal basis. Well, in order to do that, yet another alliance was created called the Quintuple Alliance, which is basically the four states from the Quadruple Alliance, Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia, plus France. So now we have multiple structures here. We have the amorphous term Concert of Europe. We have the Holy Alliance that includes pretty much everybody except the Turks, the Pope, and the British. We have the Quintuple Alliance, which is the five great powers, and we have the Quadruple Alliance, which includes the four great powers minus France. All still existing, all having different rationales for existing, and all lumped together under this umbrella term of Concert of Europe, which is also associated with the continuing meeting of congresses. Small wonder that most people were confused about what the Concert was meant to achieve. In the eyes of pretty much everybody but Britain, the goal really was twofold: keep peace by containing France, keep peace by preventing revolution. And as a result, the British would take less and less part in the, the operations of the Concert of Europe as the years went along.
Now, up to this point, this is a theoretical discussion. After all, France has been defeated, France is being contained, and no revolutions have erupted anywhere since 1815. But what if they did? Well, in 1820, there were the first stirrings of revolutionary activity in several states. There was revolutionary activity in Spain, there was revolutionary activity in Portugal, there was revolutionary activity in several states within Italy, and all this would eventually erupt into fairly significant revolutions in the 1820s, although that is the subject for another day. But recognizing that this might be in the offing, most of the great powers got together in 1820 at another Congress, the Congress of Troppau. At the Congress of Troppau, Alexander took a leading role and put forth a proposal known as the Troppau Protocol, in which he asked that the great powers officially sign on to the idea that the Concert of Europe would be used to prevent revolutions. At this juncture, the British walked out. They wanted nothing to do with this. But without the British there to oppose it, the Troppau Protocol, of course, passed, and therefore the remaining members of the Concert of Europe became committed not only to containing France but also to preventing revolution. And as it would turn out, over the next three decades or more, containing France was not particularly an issue. France would never again attempt to expand militarily as it had done under Louis XIV and Napoleon. It would attempt to expand its influence diplomatically, but that is a whole different thing. On the other hand, there would be a number of revolutions. In fact, revolutions would break out in Spain and Italy and Portugal in the early 1820s. There would also be a revolution in Greece, and there would even be an attempted revolution in Russia in 1825. All these revolutions led to intervention, and thus the Concert of Europe came to be a counter-revolutionary force. There would be a second wave of revolutions in the 1830s: revolution in France, revolution in Belgium, where the Belgians broke away from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and quite a bit of revolutionary stirring in other parts of Europe as well. And then in 1848, revolutions would erupt in every single country in Europe except for two. The only countries where there was no revolution in 1848 were Britain on one end of Europe geographically speaking, and Russia on the other end geographically speaking. As a matter of fact, not only were Britain and Russia at opposite ends of Europe geographically, they were at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Britain had the most open, progressive sort of government with the most popular participation at the time. Russia had the most repressive government. But revolutions, in fact, would become a recurrent phenomenon in the first half of the 19th century, and therefore the Concert of Europe would be tempted again and again to intervene. Sometimes these interventions would succeed, sometimes they would not, but that is the story for another lecture.
Okay, so we see that, of course, Europe is striving for a balance of power, and we've heard that in previous lectures as well. And they are striving for legitimacy, placing, uh, rulers on their prospective thrones from 1789. And we see that they're continuing to meet in a series of of conferences in the post-French Revolution and post-war years. When we come back for our next lecture, we'll also learn about what's emerging here in Europe after the French Revolution. We have, I call them the three isms, lots of isms at this time in history: conservatism, and we'll find out, of course, what exactly that means in the definition of that according to this time in history, of course, not modern times. Liberalism, again, we'll find out what that means and how that will play a role, as well as conservatism in the upcoming revolutions that we're going to learn about. And nationalism also plays a huge role in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon and, of course, the French Revolution ending. So when we come back, we'll learn about conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism. Until next time.