The Congress of Vienna

JUN 09 1815 · 12:00

Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 'Congress of Vienna' (1819), engraving of the negotiating chamber. Place: Vienna, Habsburg Empire Figures: Klemens von Metternich, host · Talleyrand, French · Castlereagh, British · Hardenberg, Prussian · Alexander I of Russia The Concert of Europe Twenty-two years of revolutionary and Napoleonic war end at Waterloo on 18 June 1815, nine days after the Final Act is signed at Vienna. The Great Powers (Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and a re-admitted France) have spent the previous nine months in Habsburg ballrooms redrawing the European map. Metternich's project: a balance of power maintained by periodic congresses (Aix-la-Chapelle 1818, Troppau 1820, Verona 1822), sovereign legitimacy as monarchical right, the principle of intervention to suppress revolutionary movements that threaten the system itself. It works for a generation. The 1815 to 1853 stretch is the longest period without a Great Power war in Europe since 1648. What Vienna Built and Broke Vienna restores the Westphalian system in monarchical form but cannot suppress the nationalist principle Napoleon scattered. Belgium revolts from the Dutch (1830). Greece from the Ottomans (1830). 1848 sees revolutions in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Naples, Budapest. Metternich himself flees Vienna for England. The 1848 wave fails politically but transmits the nationalist program to a continental scale. The Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 ends the Concert. Russia and Britain fight an actual war over Ottoman succession. The system survives, but its method (Great Powers cooperating through congresses to maintain equilibrium) is replaced by a more nakedly competitive balance of armed alliances. The road to 1914 begins here. Video: John Green on the 1814 to 1815 congress that redrew Europe and tried to put the Napoleonic genie back in the monarchical bottle.