13. The Congress of Vienna and the Concert of Europe, 1814-1830
The Congress of Vienna (by Isabey, 1815)
With the defeat and abdication of Napoleon in 1814, the victorious allies met in Vienna to reconstruct a Europe that had been torn by some twenty-five years of revolution and war. Their task was formidable, but their major objectives were clear: first, to restore the balance of power and also to create a new state system based on the principle of "legitimacy."
The Congress of Vienna would meet from September 1814 to June 1815. Of the some 700 diplomats representing every European state, the Congress was dominated by five powerful figures. (Descriptive profiles of each of the major Congress participants are at the end of this reading.) The guiding force and president of the Congress was the reactionary Foreign Minister of Austria, Prince Klemens von Metternich. So pervasive was Metternich's influence that he would continue to dominate European diplomacy for the next thirty years, causing historians to label the years 1815 to 1848 the "Age of Metternich." Equaling Metternich in their desire to see Europe made safe for royal absolutism were the Russian Czar, Alexander I and Frederick William III, the King of Prussia. Britain's Foreign Minister Lord Castlereagh was determined to see the Congress create a new Europe that would be no threat to Britain's security and expanding commercial interests. The fifth major player at Vienna was Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, Foreign Minister for Louis XVIII, the restored Bourbon king of France. A brilliant opportunist, the wily Talleyrand sought primarily to play off the other powers against each other to the benefit of France. It was Talleyrand who gave the Congress its guiding principle - "legitimacy." [1]
Legitimacy, very simply, meant the restoration of the legitimate ruling families displaced during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. To this end the Bourbons were reconfirmed as the hereditary rulers in France, Spain, and Naples. Hapsburg princes were placed in power in the Italian states of Parma, Modena, and Tuscany (Florence). Other than in France and Switzerland, royal absolutism was either reconfirmed or restored. Switzerland, always having been a republic, was permitted to retain its status as a republic under its Napoleonic constitution in return for a pledge of permanent neutrality. In Italy, Spain, and the German states, legitimacy not only meant restoration of hereditary ruling families but also meant restoration of all traditional rights and privileges held by hereditary nobilities and established churches. The return to legitimacy meant, in effect, undoing the constitutional systems and restoring the "Old Regime." All confiscated lands (mostly those of nobles and churches) were to be returned to their former legitimate owners. And, the lands of all formerly-autonomous nationalities were to be restored to their legitimate rulers.
Legitimacy in France, however, was somewhat different. With the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814, King Louis XVIII (wisely following the advice of Talleyrand and Czar Alexander I) issued the Charter of 1814. Much to the dismay of some of the more reactionary royalists, there would be no return to the “Old Regime” with its divine right absolutism and privileged estates. Under the Charter of 1814 the French would retain the right to legal equality, equality of opportunity, and the other provisions of the Napoleonic Civil Code. The Concordat of 1801 with the Catholic Church would remain in place. All property changes since 1789 were confirmed in the possession of those holding them in 1814. A parliamentary bicameral legislature based on a wealth-restricted franchise was established. France, consequently, retained much of what was achieved by the Revolution. The Charter of 1814 was not, however, a constitution. It made no recognition of the principle of national sovereignty nor was it seen as the Supreme Law derived from a sovereign people. Rather, it was a “gift” to the French people from their legitimate crown.
In addition to restorations made on the principle of legitimacy, the Congress made territorial changes intended to restore the balance of power. They likewise sought to surround France with a ring of strong states. The major changes are listed here. (See map below.)
- Belgium (the former Austrian Netherlands) was awarded to the Netherlands which the Congress recognized as a hereditary monarchy under the ruling House of Orange.
- Austria received direct sovereignty over the Italian states of Lombardy (Milan) and Venetia (Venice) and was returned Illyria along the Adriatic coast.
- Russia received sovereignty over Finland and most of Poland (formerly the Grand Duchy of Warsaw).
- Prussia received the German Rhineland (thus putting Prussia on the border of France), part of Saxony, and the western portions of Poland.
- Norway was taken from Denmark and awarded to Sweden.
- Savoy was restored to Sardinia.
- Britain, seeking to expand its empire and guarantee its security, was awarded (from France) the islands of Tobago and St. Lucia in the West Indies; (from the Netherlands) Guiana in South America, Ceylon in the Indian Ocean, and South Africa's Cape Colony; (from Denmark) the North Sea island of Helgoland; and the mid-Mediterranean island of Malta.
- The German states were reorganized as a new German Confederation of 39 states including Prussia and Austria. Each state was autonomous, but Austria was recognized as the permanent holder of the presidency of the German Confederation, giving Vienna hegemony over most of Germany.
- Through the Treaty of Paris, May 1814, France was deprived of all of its revolutionary and Napoleonic conquests and restored to its 1792 borders (those of France as a monarchy). Corsica remained under French sovereignty.
The Congress of Vienna was disturbed by two disruptions. A bitter dispute over Russia's claim to all of Poland and Prussia's claim to all of Saxony threatened to divide the allies and break up the Congress. Using all of his skills as a diplomat, Talleyrand defused the crisis by suggesting an acceptable compromise. Prussia was to receive part of Saxony and the western portion of Poland and Russia would receive central and eastern Poland. This compromise served well Talleyrand's ambitions and won Bourbon France greater influence in the Congress' deliberations. A good thing, too. In March 1815 Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to France where he successfully restored his government. Louis XVIII fled to Brussels. The Congress rejected Napoleon's appeal for recognition as France's legitimate ruler and renewed the war. In June, combined British and Prussian forces defeated a massive French army at Waterloo forcing Napoleon to surrender himself to the British. The Congress then exiled him to St. Helena. With the Napoleonic threat removed, the allies then imposed a new treaty on France (a second Treaty of Paris, Nov. 1815). Under this agreement France pledged to pay the allies an indemnity of some 700 million francs as well as pay the costs of allied garrisons in forts along the French borders and pay for an international occupation force of some 100,000 (mostly Russian) troops. France paid the indemnity by 1818 (testimony to the effectiveness of Napoleon's reform of the governmental finance system) and the foreign troops were withdrawn. In that year France was admitted as a full member to the Concert of Europe.
The Concert of Europe and the Metternich System
In order to preserve the settlement made by the Congress of Vienna, the four major allied powers created an alliance system. Seeking to preserve the gains of the Vienna settlement by cloaking legitimacy in Christian principles, Czar Alexander called for all European powers to join a "Holy Alliance." While almost all states (except for Britain, the Papacy, and Ottoman Empire) agreed in principle to this concept, a more direct response was the formation of the Quadruple Alliance in November 1815. This was a formal military alliance of the four great allied powers: Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Britain, the purpose of which was to maintain international peace and preserve legitimacy. In 1818 France, having arranged to pay the indemnity and proven its commitment to legitimacy and the preservation of the status quo, was admitted to the Concert. The alliance thus became the Quintuple Alliance.
The allies saw the greatest threats to the peace of Europe as those forces that had thrown it into some 25 years of chaos and war, liberalism and nationalism. Because the members of the Quadruple Alliance would act in concert (mutual agreement) to preserve peace and prevent revolution, their relationship became known as the Concert of Europe. Acting as an international government and policeman, the big powers would periodically hold congresses to respond to threats to the new European order. The first such congress met at Aix-la-Chappelle in 1818 to admit France to the Concert. Later congresses, discussed below, would authorize military intervention.
The dominant figure behind the Concert of Europe was Klemens von Metternich, who was determined to keep liberal and nationalist sentiments from in any way disrupting the Austrian Empire or the peace of Europe. The resulting "Metternich System" was one of reactionary domination of both domestic and international affairs. In 1819 Metternich presided as the Diet of the German Confederation imposed the Carlsbad Decrees on German universities. In order to prevent the teaching of liberal thinking (Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc.), strict restrictions were imposed on curriculum development. Throughout the German states, student and academic publications and courses came under severe censorship and surveillance by government agents. Student organizations espousing German nationalism, collectively called the Burschenschaft, were outlawed.
In 1820 Metternich wrote a secret memorandum to Czar Alexander I. In it, he outlined his political thinking. The overall good order of society, he wrote, was threatened by “passions” resulting from “presumption.” By presumption he meant those liberal ideals that had been unleashed by the Enlightenment and French Revolution, particularly those principles wherein the “people” should have the power to legislate on behalf of claimed rights under so-called natural law. He sees this presumption as making “every man the guide of his own belief, the arbiter of laws according to which he is pleased to govern himself, or allow someone else to govern him and his neighbors; it makes him, in short, the sole judge of his own faith, his own actions, and the principles according to which he guides them…”[2] Presumption, thus, will lead to a rejection of all that was moral and good from the past and bring on society’s collapse into anarchy. The agents of this presumption were very clear to Metternich – the middle classes. The lesson the Czar – and the rest of Europe – should learn? The forceful preservation of legitimacy and order was paramount in order to save civilization from such destructive “passions.”
On the international level, the Metternich System operated through a policy of direct military intervention by the allied powers. In 1820 liberal revolutions in Naples and Spain compelled the Bourbon kings of those countries to accept constitutional limitations on their power and recognize rights and freedoms to be held by their subjects. The allied response was to authorize Austrian armies to invade Naples and restore royal absolutism by force. Metternich and Alexander met at an inn in Troppau and, over teacups, agreed to the intervention. Prussia joined in sanctioning the decision of this Troppau “congress.” Likewise, it was agreed at a congress in Verona in 1822 that French armies would intervene to restore legitimacy in Spain.
Military action in Spain, however, caused division among the allies. Britain objected to direct intervention in Spain and withdrew from the Concert of Europe as a result. During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain enjoyed a very lucrative trade with Spain's Latin American colonies, then freed from the restraint of Spanish mercantilist controls. Not wanting to lose its trade benefits, Britain supported independence movements in Latin America and recognized many former Spanish colonies as independent states. Britain feared that successful French intervention in Spain could lead to future efforts by the Concert of Europe to restore Spanish sovereignty in Latin America. (Spain did not recognize the Latin American independence movements and was attempting to suppress them by force.)
In 1823 French armies numbering some 200,000 troops easily succeeded in suppressing the Spanish revolutionaries. The constitution was scrapped and King Ferdinand VII was restored to full authority. He began a policy of severe repression that virtually destroyed all possibility of a liberal revival.
There would be, however, no attempt to bring the rebellious Spanish colonies back under Spain's control. The British had made it clear that Britain would resist any such attempt; and as the British navy controlled the seas, transport of Concert forces across the Atlantic was an impossibility. In December 1823, the United States added its national voice to the British position through President James Monroe’s annual message to Congress. The Monroe Doctrine, as this policy statement is known, warned all European powers (Britain included) that the American hemisphere was henceforth closed to all future European imperialism and that the U.S. would act to defend and protect the independence of its Latin American neighbors. It was a bold statement for the young nation to make; but as it was in conformity with Britain's interests in Latin America, Spain and the other European countries grudgingly accepted the new reality. Thus while Spain was restored to absolutism, some eight Latin American countries secured their independence.
While the liberal movements in Naples and Spain failed, the Metternich System would be more successfully challenged by nationalist movements in Greece and Belgium. In 1821 a rebellion broke out when Greek nationalists declared independence from the Ottoman Empire. The result was a brutal and bloody war characterized by Turkish atrocities against the Greeks and rising popular demands for intervention to save the Greeks. The Greek rebellion became a cause célèbre for romanticist art and literature. The British poet Lord Byron traveled to Greece and died there in 1824. The French artist Eugene Delacroix’s painting of the Turks massacring helpless Greeks on Chios likewise reflected European hostility towards the Turks.
Metternich urged his alliance partners not to intervene on behalf of the Greeks, but the vision of Muslim Turks slaughtering Christian Greek populations caused Britain, France, and Russia to demand that the Turkish Sultan grant an armistice. When the Sultan refused, British, French, and Russian warships attacked and sank the Turkish fleet (1827). Russia then took advantage of the Turkish war with Greece to itself declare war on the Ottoman Empire in order to extend Russian influence into the straits area. Unable to sustain the conflict, the Ottoman Empire made peace in 1829 and, through the Treaty of Adrianople, granted Greece its independence. Nationalism had triumphed.
In 1830 a nationalist rebellion in Belgium broke out against Dutch rule. The Concert of Europe seemed powerless to intervene. Metternich called for an international response, but Russia was preoccupied with a nationalist rebellion in Poland. Austria and Prussia were confronted with liberal uprisings in their own territories. A liberal revolution in France established a constitutional government that was sympathetic to Belgian independence. And, Britain again made it clear that it would tolerate no major power intervention in the Low Countries, a region of strategic vital interest to Britain. Britain sponsored an international conference in London that agreed to Belgian independence under a constitutional monarchy as long as the new country remained neutral in international affairs. The Dutch rejected the proposal, and a French army was authorized to move into Belgium and force the Dutch out. Dutch armies withdrew, but the Netherlands did not recognize Belgium as independent until 1839 when an international treaty guaranteed Belgium's sovereignty and neutrality.[3]
Thus, by 1830 there were two new nations in Europe, both the result of nationalist revolution against their former masters. There was not to be a third. In 1830 the Poles rebelled against the Russians. The powers meeting at Vienna in 1815 had assigned Poland to Czar Alexander I of Russia. Alexander allowed this “Congress Poland” a constitution similar to the one it had held as the Napoleonic Grand Duchy of Warsaw with the Russian czar as Poland’s hereditary monarch. The Polish constitution created an elected diet (parliament) based on a broad franchise and allowed continuation of the Napoleonic Civil Code, freedom of press and religion, and exclusive use of the Polish language (rather than Russian). Alexander, however, did not care for how the Poles exercised their constitutional autonomy, particularly as they demanded restoration of once-Polish lands then held by Russia. The Russian nobles, jealously protective of serfdom, saw Polish constitutionalism within Russia as a threat to their interests. Alexander died in 1825 and was succeeded by his far less liberal brother Nicholas I.
Inspired by the revolutions of 1830 elsewhere in Europe, the Poles, seeking independence, rebelled. The Polish diet proclaimed the dethronement of the Polish king, Czar Nicholas I. The Russians responded with brutal armed force and easily crushed the rebellion. In order to pacify Poland effectively, the Russians sought to destroy Polish national identity. Nicholas ordered the closing of all Polish universities. Thousands of Polish liberals and nationalists were arrested or exiled, while others fled to the West. The use of the Polish language was outlawed and the practice of Polish customs was banned. The last two policies would prove impossible to enforce and the Polish language and culture did survive, but their intent demonstrated the extreme to which the czarist government was willing to go to ensure Polish subservience to Russian sovereignty. Poland would remain an integral part of the Russian Empire until 1918.
The Metternich System seemingly so strongly in place in 1815 was fifteen years later breaking down. The forces of liberalism and nationalism could be suppressed but not eliminated. Under suppression they would grow even stronger and more challenging. Weakened by the experiences of the 1820s and 1830s, the Metternich System would be swept away in a wave of liberal and nationalist revolutions that broke out in 1848. The Peace established by Vienna would survive.
The Vienna Settlement: An Evaluation
We have seen that since 1648 peace settlements tended to resolve the issue(s) that caused the war and restore the balance of power. The issues that upset the balance of power and threw Europe into almost a quarter century of warfare were those that underlay the French Revolution: liberalism and nationalism. The forces of liberalism caused the Revolution and created the nationalism that enabled Revolutionary and Napoleonic France to dominate the Continent.
The Vienna Settlement created a new status quo that would preserve the peace of Europe for another century. Between 1815 and 1914 the balance of power would be preserved, even if liberalism and nationalism could not be eradicated or contained. While there would be wars, they would be relatively short conflicts limited in scope and purpose and would not threaten the balance of power.[4] Likewise, the big powers saw cooperation and diplomacy as effective means to pursue their goals without resorting to war. Skillful combinations of diplomacy and force, what would later be called Realpolitik, would keep war from engulfing the great powers in a major international conflict. The combination of force and diplomacy to preserve overall peace was a direct legacy of the Vienna Settlement and the Concert of Europe.
Vienna worked because all the participants agreed to build the peace on common principles – legitimacy and preserving the peace. France, under the restored Bourbon monarchy, was included in the negotiations and actually became a major player in creating the peace. It was France that called for legitimacy as the guiding principle and negotiated resolution of the Prussian - Russian disagreement over Saxony and Poland. While France lost its Continental empire and was required to pay reparations, it was allowed to preserve significant gains of the Revolution and was not treated as a pariah. By 1818 France would be a full and participating partner in the Concert of Europe.
The last half of the Nineteenth Century would see two new powers come into existence: Italy and Germany. Both, however, would be monarchies, the constitutions of which assured conservative control over the new governments. Once established, both Italy and Germany would be primarily focused on their own national development and did not want to see any disruption of the balance of power, of which they were now a significant part. Germany, using the Vienna precedent, sponsored a major international conference (the Congress of Berlin in 1878) to prevent a crisis in the Balkans from destabilizing the power balance.
By the start of the Twentieth Century nationalism had become the pervasive force underlying international relations. The combination of nationalism with industrialism and imperialism caused the great powers to become increasingly militaristic and assertive in their foreign policies. New alliances now aligned states against each other. It would be nationalism that would plunge Europe into war in 1914.
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The images in this section are all from Wikipedia sources.
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Sources for the Vienna Settlement and Concert of Europe
Brinton, Crane et al. A History of Civilization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960.
Droz, Jacques. Europe between the Revolutions 1815 – 1848. New York: Harper, 1967.
Durant, Will and Ariel. The Age of Napoleon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution 1789 – 1848. New York: Vintage, 1996.
Johnson, Paul. The Birth of the Modern. New York: Harper-Collins, 1991.
Knapton, Ernest and Thomas Derry. Europe 1815 – 1914. New York: Scribners, 1965.
Langer, Walter et al. Western Civilization. New York : Harper and Row, 1968.
Mayer, Arno J. The Persistence of the Old Regime. New York: Pantheon, 1981.
Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: Norton, 1996.
Palmer, Robert R. et al A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.
[1] Talleyrand is one of history’s most successful political chameleons. A brief biography of Talleyrand is at the end of this reading.
[2] quoted from “Metternich’s Secret Memorandum” in Dennis Sherman, Western Civilization since 1660. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000, pp. 139 – 140.
[3] What of Greece and Belgium? The European powers met in London in early 1830 and determined the boundaries and government of the newly independent Greece. Greece would be a constitutional monarchy. Its monarch, Otto I, a German, came from the ruling family of Bavaria. The last Greek monarch fled the country in a military coup in 1967. In 1973 Greece was proclaimed a republic.
The same London conference also bestowed the new crown of Belgium on Prince Leopold of the German state of Saxe-Coburg. The present Belgian royal family is descended from King Leopold I.
[4] Europe’s wars, 1815 – 1914
The Crimean War, 1853 – 1856 (Britain, France, Ottoman Empire vs. Russia)
The wars for Italian unification, 1859 – 1860 (Sardinia, France vs. Austria),
The Seven Weeks War, 1866 (Italy, Prussia, vs Austria)
The wars for German unification: The Danish War, 1864 (Prussia, Austria vs. Denmark),
The Seven Weeks War, 1866 (Prussia, Italy, vs. Austria)
The Franco-Prussian War, 1870 – 1871 (Prussia vs. France)
Russo-Turkish War, 1877 – 1878 (Congress of Berlin)
Numerous Balkan Wars, 1884 – 1913 involving the Ottoman Empire, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania
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Major Participants at the Congress of Vienna
Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859)
Metternich served as the Austrian ambassador to France, 1806-1809 and as foreign minister from 1809 to 1848. Of aristocratic background, Metternich’s family held estates in the German Rhineland, only to see them lost to French conquest during the Revolution. His father had served in the diplomatic corps of the Holy Roman Emperor, and it was through his father’s work that Metternich entered the Austrian foreign service. (Remember that the Holy Roman Emperor was the Habsburg ruler of Austria.)
Metternich’s strong conservatism arose from his distaste for the revolutionary movement that had so destabilized Europe and created Napoleon. The Revolution had taken his family’s lands; Napoleon’s power threatened Austria. In 1806 Napoleon abolished the Holy Roman Empire. Austria’s dominions then became the Austrian Empire. French-inspired liberal and nationalist sentiment s, however, were undermining the unity of Austria’s multi-national empire. Austria’s – and Europe’s – future well-being, Metternich believed, were dependent upon the preservation and restoration of traditional values, those embodied in absolute monarchy, hereditary aristocracy, and the Church. As both ambassador and foreign minister, Metternich directed his energies to achieving those ends.
At times it was necessary to work with Napoleon. Metternich facilitated the 1810 alliance between France and Austria through which Napoleon married the Austrian princess, Marie Louise. Such an alliance would prolong peace between the two countries and enable Austria to build up its strength.
On the disastrous defeat of Napoleon’s armies the 1812 Russian Campaign, Austria, in 1813, after months of complex diplomatic maneuvering, took up arms and joined Russia, Prussia, and Sweden in alliance against France. (Napoleon was also at war with Britain in Spain.) As allied forces pushed Napoleon back towards France, Metternich sought to strengthen his influence among the coalition leadership, namely Czar Alexander I and the British foreign minister Lord Castlereagh.
In September 1814 Metternich became President of the Congress of Vienna and instrumental in the negotiations that restored the balance of power and created the new international order based on legitimacy.
Throughout Metternich's political life, lasting to 1848, France continued to vex his efforts to preserve international legitimacy. In an observation regarding an1830 revolution in France and successful independence movements in Belgium and Poland, he is reputed to have remarked, "If France sneezes, all of Europe catches cold."
Alexander I (1777-1825), Czar of Russia, 1801 - 1825
Generally labeled “enigmatic,” Alexander vacillated between liberal and conservative positions. Educated by a Swiss tutor, he was attracted to the ideals of the Enlightenment and twice during his reign authorized the drafting of a constitution that would have limited the czar’s powers. However, as Napoleon spread his conquests eastward, Alexander abandoned constitutional reform in favor of actively protecting Russia’s interests in Poland and Eastern Europe. In 1805 Russia joined the Third Coalition as an ally of Prussia and Austria. By 1807 all three had been defeated and compelled to make peace on Napoleon’s terms. While the 1807 Peace of Tilsit was generous to Russia, Alexander proved a reluctant “ally.” Issues relating to the status of Poland, trade restraints of Napoleon’s Continental System, and France’s refusal to support Russia in a war with the Ottoman Empire, caused Franco-Russian relations to deteriorate. Napoleon renewed war with Russia in 1812 with the massive, ultimately disastrous, campaign to take Moscow.
With the defeat of the French invasion, Alexander became imbued with spiritual mysticism. He identified himself as the “White Angel of the North” destined by God to save Christianity from the “Black Angel of the West,” Napoleon. Russia would remain at war with France continually until Napoleon’s abdication in 1814, Alexander personally leading his armies in their advance westward.
In the negotiations at Vienna, Alexander pressed for a “Holy Alliance” of Russia, Austria, and Prussia to preserve the new order created by the Congress. Through such an alliance, the czar believed, divine right monarchy would provide the proper spiritual protection of “religion, peace, and justice.” His colleagues at Vienna opposed clothing the peace settlement in spiritual dressing and basically distanced themselves from the concept of a “holy” alliance by ignoring the Czar’s intent to name it as such. (Still, the subsequent Quadruple Alliance of great powers committed to the 1815 status quo would occasionally be identified as the Holy Alliance.)
Alexander was not Russia's official delegate to the Congress. That responsibility was held by Count Karl Nesselrode. Nesselrode, however, was directly responsible to the Czar and had no real power in the negotiations.
Talleyrand (1754-1838), French Foreign Minister, 1814-1824
Perhaps the most fascinating figure at the Congress of Vienna was the French delegate, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, known to history simply as Talleyrand. A man of little principle other than ambitious self-service, the engaging, intelligent, and manipulative Talleyrand was a dilettante and womanizer, but, above all, he was a brilliant political chameleon who knew how to change his colors in order to assure his survival and enhance his career.
Born into an aristocratic family distinguished for its military services, Talleyrand became lame at age four and was resigned by his parents to a future in the Church. While at theological seminary, he read the works of the philosophes and was known as a playboy. He was expelled from seminary, but because of his aristocratic connection, he was appointed by Louis XVI as an abbot in 1775. He was ordained a priest in 1779 and appointed Bishop of Autun in 1788 (over his mother’s protest!). As clergyman, Talleyrand enjoyed the benefits of wealth and privilege that befitted his status but had no interest in the exercise of his spiritual responsibilities. He continued to be fascinated by philosophy, politics, and women (through one of whom he fathered a son who later served as an officer for Napoleon). In 1789 he was chosen as a delegate for the First Estate and attended the Estates-General. He became a supporter of the Revolution and was a member of the National Assembly. At the celebration of the first anniversary of the Revolution in July 1790, he cynically bestowed God’s blessing on the proceedings, remarking to Lafayette as he mounted the rostrum, “don’t make me laugh.” He was one of the seven bishops who took the oath of loyalty upholding the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and was an author of the Constitution of 1791.
With the Revolution’s violent swing to the left in the fall of 1792, Talleyrand fled to Britain and then in 1794 crossed to the United States, where he spent a year before returning to France in 1796. In 1797 he was appointed by the Directory as Foreign Minister, a position he would continue to hold under Napoleon for the next ten years (to 1807). As Foreign Minister he was intimately involved in the “XYZ Affair” with the United States and was later instrumental in the US purchase of the Louisiana Territory (1803).
Following his dismissal from the foreign ministry, Talleyrand anticipated Napoleon’s eventual downfall and cautiously observed the political winds. Manipulating his political relationships in such a way as not to provoke Napoleon further, he worked to make favorable contacts with those who might serve his ambitions. By the time of Napoleon’s abdication in 1814, Talleyrand had identified himself with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy and was named by Louis XVIII as Foreign Minister. He served as France’s representative to the Congress of Vienna and ably promoted France’s interests by playing off Metternich against Alexander and championing the causes of the lesser states. He was instrumental in defusing the Polish-Saxony issue to French advantage – France’s acceptance as a major power in the Congress’ deliberations. Having proved himself a major diplomatic player, he moved the Congress to “legitimacy” as the principle upon which Europe’ political and social order should be restored. Talleyrand served as French Foreign Minister until 1824 and then later as the French ambassador to Britain, 1830 - 1834.
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822), British Foreign Minister, 1812 - 1822
Robert Stewart was born into an Irish Anglican landholder family. His father was active in Irish politics (limited by Britain to Protestants only) and it was inevitable that young Stewart would pursue a political career. In 1790 he was elected to the Irish House of Commons and became an accomplished player in Irish-British politics, being instrumental in suppressing the 1798 Irish Rebellion and in securing passage of the 1801 Act of Union that brought Ireland into the United Kingdom. He received the title Viscount Castlereagh in 1796. Between 1802 and 1809 he served in several Cabinets and built a reputation as an accomplished government officer. In 1809 he resigned following a dispute that led to a duel with a fellow Cabinet member. In 1812 he was named Foreign Minister (actual title: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs), a position he would hold until his death in 1822.
In 1814 Castlereagh successfully negotiated the Treaty of Chaumont forming the military and political alliance of Britain with Austria, Prussia, and Russia (the Quadruple Alliance) in the war against Napoleon. Chaumont guaranteed that Britain would have a major voice in the peace process. At Vienna he was quick to understand the motives and ambitions of his alliance partners, primarily Metternich and Alexander I, and worked to achieve an effective balance of power would keep them in check. He flat out opposed Alexander’s “Holy Alliance” (Britain, after all, was a constitutional monarchy) and won renewal of the Quadruple Alliance as the guarantor of the new European order. It was his idea that the Alliance meet in periodic congresses to monitor the international situation.
Throughout his diplomatic career, Castlereagh championed British interests even when they collided with those of Britain’s allies. Britain actively called for support for the Greeks in their war for independence from the Turks. In 1822 Britain would withdraw from the Alliance in disagreement over the Alliance’s decision to authorize military intervention in in Spain. In his last years his support for repressive government measures made him increasingly unpopular. Despondent, depressed, and possibly insane, he took his own life.
Frederick William III (1770-1840) King of Prussia, 1797-1840
Of the “big four” at Vienna, The Prussian King Frederick William was perhaps the least influential. Prussia had not fared well in the war against Napoleon. Soundly defeated in 1806, Frederick William was compelled to accept Napoleon’s reconstruction of Germany. Prussia lost its lands in Poland and west of the Elbe River in Germany. As an “ally” of France, Prussia had to accept the Continental System and pay an indemnity for the maintenance of French garrisons on Prussian territory.
Initially lacking the ability, or will, to act forcefully, Frederick William allowed his Queen, Louise, to direct the country. Ironically, the king’s inaction enabled Prussia to recover. With Louise’s sanction the Prussian chancellor Baron Heinrich vom Stein and his successor Prince Karl von Hardenberg undertook reforms intended to modernize the state. Serfdom was virtually, albeit not completely, abolished. Peasants were free to marry, relocate, and take up trades without their lords’ permission. Peasants remaining on the land, however, would be subject to labor service. By an 1810 ordinance, peasants could convert their land to private property provided one third of that land be ceded to their manor lord. Occupations were opened to persons of all classes. The civil service was opened to all classes. A new system of municipal administration was created whereby the citizens of towns and villages elected their local officials. These measures caused Prussians to see themselves as citizens rather than subjects, instilling in them a nationalist pride in their country. Through reforms made by General Gerhard Scharnhorst and Count August von Gneisenau the Prussian army was modernized, allowing persons of all classes to become officers. Military recruits were given training and then secretly returned to civilian life as reserves. In this way the Prussians were able to create a far larger army than the 42,000-man force allowed by Napoleon. The result of these and other changes was to create a large, well-trained, and disciplined fighting force anxious to avenge the humiliation of 1806. Responding to Baron Stein’s call for greater German patriotism, the writer and philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte delivered a series of speeches in Berlin titled Addresses to the German Nation (1808), urging the German peoples to "have character and be German” and rise and resist the French. French occupation authorities in Prussia allowed Fichte’s lectures, seeing them as too intellectual for Germans to understand.
When Napoleon’s Grand Army met disaster in Russia, Frederick William’s revitalized Prussia was ready to take to the battlefield. The king accompanied his armies in the allied campaigns of 1813-1814 that pushed Napoleon back to Paris and ultimate abdication.
At the Congress of Vienna, Prussia was officially represented by Hardenberg, although Frederick William, also in Vienna, had the final word. Aiming to challenge Austria for supremacy over the new German Confederation, Prussia sought the restoration of its German territories lost to Napoleon. Frederick William also demanded that all of Saxony be awarded to Prussia, this in exchange for Prussian support for Alexander’s demand that all of Poland be granted to Russia. Neither demand, however, was acceptable to Austria and Britain. The Polish-Saxon issue, consequently, threatened to break up the Congress and possibly throw Europe back into war. The crisis was resolved when Talleyrand suggested a solution calling for both Russia and Poland to take portions of Poland and Saxony respectively. He then secretly threw France’s weight to Austria and Britain. When word was leaked to Alexander, he agreed to compromise, taking part of Poland organized as an autonomous state under the Czar as its constitutional ruler. Now lacking Russia’s support, Frederick William reduced his demand to only part of Saxony. The matter was resolved and the Congress was saved. And, in compensation for the loss, Prussia was awarded the German Rhineland.
Louis XVIII (1755-1824), King of France, 1814-1824
While not a "player" at Vienna, Louis XVIII represented the overall principle upon which the Congress' decisions were made, legitimacy. Younger brother of Louis XVI, he held the title Count of Provence. On the background of the Revolution, he fled France in 1791 and became an instrumental voice in émigré opposition. He would remain in exile throughout the revolutionary and Napoleonic years. With the death of Louis XVII (the ten-year old son of Louis XVI) in 1795, French royalists recognized him as the legitimate heir with the title Louis XVIII. He took the throne in the Bourbon Restoration of 1814.