Europe’s Balance of Power 1815–1848

227 Pages·1979·22.556 MB·English

by  Alan Sked (eds.)

Europe's Balance of Power
1815-1848
Each volume in the 'Problems in Focus' series is designed
to make available to students important new work on key
historical problems and periods that they encounter in
their courses. Each volume is devoted to a central topic or
theme, and the most important aspects of this are dealt
with by specially commissioned studies from scholars in
the relevant field. The editorial Introduction reviews the
problem or period as a whole, and each chapter provides
an assessment of the particular aspect, pointing out the
areas of development and controversy, and indicating
where conclusions can be drawn or where further work is
necessary. An annotated bibliography serves as a guide to
further reading.
PROBLEMS IN FOCUS SERIES
TITLES IN PRINT
Church and Society in England: Henry VIII to James I
edited by Felicity Heal and Rosemary O'Day
The Reign ofJ ames VI and I
edited by Alan G. R. Smith
The Origins of the English Civil War
edited by Conrad Russell
The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement 1646-166o
edited by G. E. Aylmer
The Restored Monarchy I66£r-J688
edited by J. R.Jones
Britain after the Glorious Revolution !68]-17 I 4
edited by Geoffrey Holmes
Popular Movements, c. 183£r-I85o
edited by J. T. Ward
The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century
edited by Derek Fraser
Britain Pre-eminent: Studies of British World lr!fluence in the Nineteenth
Century
edited by C. J. Bartlett
The Conservative Leadership 1832-1932
edited by Donald Southgate
Perspectives in English Urban History
edited by Alan Everitt
The Edwardian Age: The Search for Order 190£r-1914
edited by AlanO'Day
Europe's Balance of Power I8I5-1848
edited by Alan Sked
Sweden's Age of Greatness 1632-J7I8
edited by Michael M. Roberts
The Republic and the Civil War in Spain
edited by Raymond Carr
VOLUMES IN PREPARATION INCLUDE
The Mid-Tudor Polity, c. 154£r-156o
edited by Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler
Europe's Balance of Power
1815-1848
EDITED BY
ALAN SKED
M
©Alan Sked, Douglas Dakin, Roy Bridge, Roger Bullen, Matthew Anderson, Chris
topher Bartlett, 1979
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or trans
mitted, in any form or by any means, without permission.
First published 19 79 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basing stoke
Associated companies in Delhi Dublin
Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos
Melbourne New rork Singapore and Tokyo
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Europe's balance of power,
r8rs-1848. - (Problems in focus).
I. Europe-Politics and government
-r8rs-1848 2. Balance of power
3· Europe-Foreign relations
I. Sked, Alan II. Series
327'. 112'094 D363
ISBN 978-o-333-23087-9 ISBN 978-1-349-16196-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-16196-6
This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement.
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by
way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on
the subsequent purchaser.
Contents
Introduction
Vll
ALAN SKED
The Congress of Vienna, 1814-15, and its Antecedents
DOUGLAS DAKIN
2 Allied Diplomacy in Peacetime: the Failure of the Con- 34
gress 'System', 1815-23
ROY BRIDGE
3 The Great Powers and the Iberian Peninsula, 1815-48 54
ROGER BULLEN
4 Russia and the Eastern Question, 1821-41 79
MATTHEW ANDERSON
5 The Metternich System, 1815-48 98
ALAN SKED
6 France and Europe, 1815-48: the Problem of Defeat and 122
Recovery
ROGER BULLEN
7 Britain and the European Balance, 1815-48 145
CHRISTOPHER BARTLETT
8 Metternich 's Enemies or the Threat from Below
ALAN SKED
Bibliographical Notes
190
Notes and References 194
Notes on Contributors 210
Index 211
Introduction
ALAN SKED
THE statesmen who redrew the map of Europe in 1814-15 were deter
mined, above all else, to create a lasting balance of power. In other
words, they hoped that no one power would ever again be able to
dominate the Continent in the way in which France had done under
the Emperor Napoleon I. Too much blood and treasure had been
expended, too many thrones toppled, too many sacrifices made for the
monarchs of Europe to want to contemplate his like again. The result
ofthe Vienna Congress, therefore, was a territorial settlement which,
although primarily directed against France, was also designed to pre
vent the potential domination of Europe by any single power. It was
achieved not without difficulty-there was an ominous split between
Britain, France and Austria on the one hand, and Russia and Prussia
on the other, over the Saxon-Polish question - but it was achieved
nonetheless. This was possible because the diplomats involved were
highly realistic and (mostly) unideological men. Thus, although they
paid lip-service - perhaps more than lip-service - to the notion of
'legitimacy', they also took into account not only the essential inter
ests of the Powers but a variety of commitments entered into by the
allies during the Napoleonic Wars. The 1815 Settlement as a result left
no major power with a major grievance and even managed to make a
few concessions to the spirit of the age. France, it was known, would
receive a constitution; so too, would the 'Congress Poland' of Alex
ander I and the new United Netherlands.1 Moreover, the German
princes were allowed under the constitution of the German Confed
eration-Germany's peculiar form of unification-to grant a form of
constitution themselves. Yet it is probably true to say that what liber
alism and nationalism there was in 1815 was sacrificed to legitimacy
and the balance of power. How then should one judge the Settlement?
We shall return to this question later. However, before he reaches a
conclusion, the reader should fully acquaint himself with the complex
process of negotiations of which the Vienna Congress formed only the
final part. He can do so by reading the account by Professor Douglas
2 EUROPE's BALANCE OF POWER
Dakin of 'The Congress of Vienna, I8I4-I5 and its Antecedents'
which constitutes the first essay of this book.
The Settlement, as has been mentioned, was directed primarily
against France. Her boundaries were reduced by the Second Treaty
of Paris to those of I7go; she had to suffer the indignity of an army of
occupation; and had to agree to pay an indemnity of 700 million
francs. She also lost some territory to Switzerland and Savoy. The
powers, in fact, had attempted to surround her with a cordon sanitaire.
The Kingdom of the United Netherlands (in contemporary language,
Holland united with Belgium) was established to the north; the King
dom of Savoy was enlarged to the south and the control of northern
Italy was given to the Habsburgs in the form of a newly created King
dom of Lombardy-Venetia. On France's eastern frontier the neutral
ity of Switzerland was guaranteed by the powers, while the Rhineland
was given to Prussia, which state was also enlarged by Saxon and
other German territory. Indeed, as a result of the Congress of Vienna,
Prussia was placed in a potentially very powerful position. Not only
would she in future have to take the lead in any war against the
French: her territories were so distributed that by consolidating them
economically she could bring about the economic union of Germany;
to consolidate them politically she confronted the temptation of cre
ating a united Germany. Still, all this was far in the future. In the
period between IBIS and I848 the most powerful German state ap
peared to be Austria who not only regained territory she had lost to
Bavaria but received the presidency of the German Confederation,
the spiritual successor of the Holy Roman Empire. Austria's sur
render of the Austrian Netherlands, in fact, had made her a com
pletely central European power - dominant in Italy through her
possessions of Lombardy-Venetia and her treaties with the other Ita
lian states-and dominant in Germany through her presidency of the
German Confederation. Together, Austria and Prussia, it was hoped,
would be strong enough to defend Germany against France or
Russia. In fact the central achievement of the I8I5 Settlement was
that, in continental Europe, both France and Russia appeared suf
ficiently contained to allow a balance of power to emerge.
For a variety of reasons, however, the statesmen were unsure of
their work. None ofthem expected peace to last for more than five or
six years and the experience of the Hundred Days did nothing to in
crease their faith in the future. Most of them had already witnessed so
many different treaties and peace settlements that the thought that
INTRODUCTION 3
one could endure with any permanence seemed something of a slim
hope. Thus, apart from the territorial arrangements agreed upon at
Vienna, a number of other proposals were put forward in order to
safeguard the peace. All of these were aimed at guaranteeing in one
way or another that the territorial arrangements would be adhered to.
Most important amongst these proposals were the 'Holy Alliance' of
Alexander I and the suggestion, put forward by the British Foreign
Secretary, Castlereagh, of a Quadruple Alliance against France. The
final outcome of the negotiations which led to the establishment of the
latter, however, cannot properly be understood without a discussion
of the Vienna Settlement as it affected Great Britain and Russia.
Russia, with an army of almost a million men in I 8 I 5, was militarily
the most impressive power in Europe. Her defeat of Napoleon in I8I2
and her march through Europe to Paris had given proof enough of
that. She was economically backward but given her possession of
most of Poland (Austria had been left with Galicia, Prussia with
Posen), together with her unlimited reserves of cannon-fodder, this
did not seem to matter. If aroused it would be very difficult for a state
like Austria or Prussia to resist her. It was a source of some discomfort
to the other powers in I 8 I 5, therefore, that on the throne of Russia sat
Alexander I. The Tsar was intellectually fickle, apt to strike a pose
and determined to capture the public imagination. Having imbibed
the ideas of the enlightenment in his youth he continually expressed a
desire to help the peoples of Europe. This 'liberalism' was combined
with a Christian mysticism and the fusion of the two had a deeply
unsettling effect on the statesmen of Europe. What on earth were the
Tsar's intentions? On the one hand he demanded a constitution for
the French and gave constitutions to Finland and Poland, on the other
he consistently spoke of a general European guarantee against the
revolution. By I8Ig Metternich was exasperated with him. Having
secured the passing of the Carlsbad Decrees he wrote:2 'It is the first
time that such a group of correct, peremptory, anti-revolutionary
measures have appeared. I did what I have wished to do since I8I3
and I have done it because that terrible Emperor Alexander, who
always spoils things, was not there'. Nonetheless, the Tsar could not
be wished away. In I8I8 Gentz, Metternich's closest colleague, was
reflecting:8 'He is at the head of the one standing army really capable
of action in Europe today. Nothing could resist the first assault of that
army .... None of the obstacles that restrain and thwart the other
sovereigns ... exists for the Emperor of Russia. What he dreams of at
4 EUROPE's BALANCE OF POWER
night, he can carry out in the morning'. When in 1815 Alexander
suggested that the Kings of Europe should form a Holy Alliance, the
European chancelleries could not ignore his proposal. The fears
which Gentz was to express three years later were already affecting
their thinking.
The Holy Alliance itself was perhaps the vaguest document ever to
trouble European diplomacy. 4 It bound its signatories to base their
foreign policies upon the 'precepts of justice, charity and peace', to
treat their fellow sovereigns as 'brothers' and to acknowledge that the
Christian nation as a whole had 'no other sovereign' save 'God, Our
Divine Saviour, Jesus Christ'. They were also to recommend His
teachings to their peoples to bring about the 'happiness of nations'.
Metternich dismissed it as a 'loud-sounding nothing', Castlereagh as
a 'piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense'. In the end, however, it
was signed by all the sovereigns of Europe, save the Pope (who would
not associate with heretics), the Sultan of Turkey (who was not Chris
tian) and the Prince Regent of Britain (who explained politely to the
Tsar, that, much as he admired it, only Parliament could commit the
nation). Metternich reworded the document slightly, and in a reac
tionary sense, but even in its final form he took it to mean nothing.
Probably he was right. The Belgian historian, Pirenne, suggested
once5 that Alexander was really aiming to bring about a world organi
sation of states in which to oppose the maritime ambitions of Great
Britain. But this seems extraordinarily farfetched. Alexander I at this
time was exploiting his rights in Alaska and Canada (Russian terri
tory in 1815 still extended beyond the Baring Straits) and thus anta
gonising that other notable maritime power, the United States. It is
possible that the Tsar was thinking of undermining Great Britain's
recently established links with the rebellious colonies of Spain in
South America. Yet the future of these colonies was not as yet a major
diplomatic issue and, in any case, any interference on the part of
Russia would once again have elicited American as well as British re
sistance.
The final arrangements of I815, however, were certainly the result
of a compromise between Russian and British proposals. Castle
reagh, who also saw a need to back up the Settlement with some sort
of guarantee, had put forward the much more concrete idea of a four
power alliance against France. This alliance was to be restricted,
however, to maintaining the terms of the Second Treaty of Paris only.
When Alexander suggested that the powers should guarantee the