The Concert of Europe and the Policy of Intervention

THE CONCERT OF EUROPE AND THE POLICY OF INTERVENTION The defeat of Napoleon put an end to the attempt to unite Europe under the domination of a single State. The four great Powers—England, Russia, Austria and Prussia—who in 1814 assumed the title of allies, decided the fate of Europe. The allies determined to confine France within the frontiers of 1790 and to restore the dynasty of the Bourbons. With the restored king of France they signed the Treaty of Paris of May 3o, 1814, and announced their intention of establishing "a firm peace, based on a just equilibrium of strength between the Powers." The great Powers were united in their determination to keep the peace of Europe by maintaining the balance of power, and, as they alone possessed power, they agreed among themselves on the measures to be taken and imposed their decision on all the other States. The Congress of Vienna.—The Treaty of Paris restored to the allies all the territories that had been annexed to France since as well as those of the States created by Napoleon (Belgium, Holland, the left bank of the Rhine, Italy, Germany, the grand duchy of Warsaw) and also the kingdom of Saxony which the allies themselves had conquered in 1813. The allies summoned to Vienna a general congress of the representatives of all the States which had taken part in the war, to regulate the re-distribution of these territories (see VIENNA, CONGRESS oF) ; but in a secret article they reserved to themselves the right of determining between them the arrangements for the countries evacuated by France. They only referred to the congress the definitive settle ment of Germany and Poland.

The congress thus appeared as a sovereign assembly of the representatives of all Europe, who for the first time gave a body to European unity. But in truth the congress did little more than register the decisions of the allies. The representatives of small States were not even permitted to discuss them. The discussions over the territories of the king of Saxony became so violent that the concert of the allies was temporarily broken and agreement was only restored by a compromise which gave Prussia four non contiguous districts in place of Saxony. No question was discussed in the congress and all the arrangements were effected in the form of separate treaties between the different States and summed up under the title Final Act of the Congress of Vienna.

The deliberations had not yet reached their conclusion when Napoleon, who had escaped from Elba, restored the empire. The representatives assembled at Vienna declared, in the name of Europe, that Napoleon Bonaparte was "the enemy and disturber of the peace of the world," and undertook to preserve against all attack the order so happily re-established in Europe (March 24, 1815). Settlement in Europe.—The territories annexed by France in Italy and Germany were restored to their former and legitimate sovereigns, but none of the States which had been suppressed in Germany in 1803 were restored. The king of Bavaria received the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine; Prussia took the Polish province of Posen, received as indemnity three German provinces (Saxony, Westphalia and the Rhine Province), and acquired the remainder of Swedish Pomerania. Germany was formed into a confederation of sovereign States represented by a diet. In Italy the Genoese and Venetian republics were not restored, and Genoa was annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia. Austria re ceived the Milanais and Venice, which were united in a Lombard Venetian kingdom, and in Germany she received the ecclesiastical domain of Salzburg. Switzerland acquired the former bishopric of Basle and a piece of Savoy; Belgium and the kingdom of Holland were united into the kingdom of the Netherlands; and Norway, which was taken away from the king of Denmark, was given to the king of Sweden. Russia and England retained their conquests; England kept Malta and Heligoland, the protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and, outside Europe, the Dutch colonies in the Cape as well as Ceylon and Mauritius, while Russia retained Finland, which she conquered from the Swedes, and Bessarabia, which she had taken from Turkey. These arrangements were made secretly by the Governments, and without consulting the peoples of the countries concerned; they were based on the claims of legitimate princes and the denial of any right on the part of the peoples to determine their own destiny.

The Holy Alliance.

The tsar Alexander wished to strengthen the political alliance between the sovereigns by one of a mystic nature, and hence arose the agreement known as the Holy Alliance (q.v.), by which the European monarchs undertook to regard themselves as appointed by Providence to rule the three branches of a single family. It was a pact of Christian brotherhood; but, while Louis XVIII. adhered to it, out of regard to the tsar, the British Government refused their assent, and it resulted in a mere demonstration, having no practical effect. The public, how ever, confused it with the Quadruple Alliance, formed in 1814, and were thus in the habit of calling the coalition of the allies against France "the Holy Alliance." Treaties of 1815.—The events of the Hundred Days (see WATERLOO CAMPAIGN), determined the allies to adopt new meas ures in regard to France, and by the treaty of Nov. Io, 1815, they forced her to surrender her frontier fortifications, to pay an in demnity, and to submit to the occupation of a part of French ter ritory until payment had been made. Napoleon and his family were for ever excluded from the French throne, and in certain secret articles the four allied sovereigns agreed to hold, at stated intervals, conferences for the prosecution of common interests and the examination of the means of maintaining the peace of Europe. Their ambassadors at Paris were to meet once a week to enquire into the condition of France and to give advice to the French Government ; the conference was presided over by Welling ton, the commander-in-chief of the allied army of occupation, who was informed by his Government that the allies had promised Louis XVIII. to uphold him by force of arms against all revolu tionary movements. Thus there came into being a permanent European institution destined to furnish legitimate monarchies with an instrument for "intervention" in their internal affairs, and these measures—which were specially directed against France— stamped upon French public opinion a violent hatred of the treaties of 1815, which for half a century was to be a cause of anxiety to Europe.

Metternich.

The Vienna treaties only guaranteed the main tenance of the territorial status quo in Europe ; but the allies felt that to maintain peace, which they conceived to be threatened by the spirit of revolution, it was necessary to uphold the internal established governmental system of the States by supporting "legitimate" sovereigns against their subjects. Of all the allied Governments, that of Austria was the most hostile to innovations. The emperor Francis said, "My empire is an ancient edifice; if it is touched it may crumble." Metternich, who directed the foreign policy of Austria, summed up the theory in general formulae and extended the principle to the whole of Europe. "The basis of contemporary politics," he wrote in 1817, "is and must be peace and quiet"; he regarded every "constitution" as a potential means of disorder devised by those whom we should now call "the intellectuals," and held that "the people at large dreaded the movement"; it was the rich, the civil servants, the writers, the lawyers and teachers who, with their battle cry, "the Constitution !" were really aiming at innovation and disorder. "The aim of the agitators," he wrote, "is the over throw of everything by law existing; the guiding principle of kings, on the contrary, should be to conserve everything by law existing." This maintenance of the status quo is the policy known as "Met ternich's system." Liberal Movement.—Ever since 1814 the same political sys tem had obtained throughout almost the whole of Europe ; with the exception of France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway, all the European States were absolute monarchies in which the power of the throne was uncontrolled by any Consti tution or elected assembly. As lands had been distributed among princes without regard to the feelings of the peoples, Europe had been divided into States irrespective of nationalities. Germany, Italy and Poland had thus been dismembered, while a single State—the Austrian empire—united under one Government many nationalities.

This system was intolerable, both to those who desired to set up a Constitution as a means to political liberty, and to those who sought to create States on a basis of nationality. These mal contents formed an opposition, henceforward called Liberal, and one which was later to be known as National. The Liberals and the Nationalists, in struggling against the same enemy, united in an attempt to destroy the system set up in 1815, and as all the European Governments were in agreement in seeking to main tain it, the opposition in each country had common interests with those in other countries and sought to act in concert with them. Since the Governments made it impossible for the oppositions to act in accordance with the law, they pursued illegal courses, by means of secret associations, murder and intrigue. (See CAR BONARI.) Their most efficacious method was to win over officers of the armies in order to compel the Government by means of military revolts to grant Constitutions.

The Congress.

The Tsar Alexander had retained the liberal and humanitarian fancies that had at first brought him into con flict with Metternich in Germany and Italy. In order to dis courage the opposition, Metternich wished to make plain to Europe the agreement of the great Powers. When Wellington declared that France could,be evacuated without danger to the peace of Europe, the allies arranged the evacuation at the con ference of Aix-la-Chapelle (q.v.) in 1818. By inviting the king of France to enter into the alliance of the great Powers and by terminating the permanent session of the ambassadors' confer ence in Paris, the allies put an end to the exceptional position hitherto occupied by France. But by secret convention they agreed to make common cause in the event of a revolution in France which might menace the security of her neighbours. This conference was a decisive success for Metternich; for Alexander, disquieted by the French elections in 1819, and en raged by the assassination, by a German student, of the Russian agent Kotzebue, became a convert to the policy of intervention.

For some years Metternich directed the policy of Europe. He took advantage of demonstrations on the part of German students and afterwards of four military revolts in 1820 in Spain, Por tugal, Naples and Sardinia to assemble congresses, which always met on the Austrian soil, at which the great Powers took steps for intervention in the internal affairs of other States. The con gress of Carlsbad in 1819 imposed on all the German States a system of police surveillance of the universities and the press; the congress of Troppau in 1820, which was subsequently trans ferred to Laibach, decided the intervention of the Austrian army in the Neapolitan kingdom ; while the congress of Verona in 1822 determined the French armed intervention that restored absolute monarchy in Spain. The three great autocratic Powers—Austria, Prussia, Russia—signed a declaration by declaring that any European State in a condition of internal revolution should remain excluded from the concert of Europe until law and order had been restored, and they reserved to themselves the right of using force to re-establish that order. Thus there came into inter national law the principle of intervention, and the Governments which were united in their common battle against the revolution sought not only to maintain by force the territorial settlement of 1815, but also the autocratic form of government. They estab lished themselves as the supreme political court of Europe for the control of international affairs. (See TROPPAU, CONGRESS OF ;