2: The Congress of Vienna and the Restoration of a European Balance Flashcards
Alexander I
Emperor of Russia from 1801. In 1805 he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after suffering massive defeats at the battles of Austerlitz and Friedland, he switched sides and formed an alliance with Napoleon by the Treaty of Tilsit.
Alexander’s greatest triumph came in 1812 when Napoleon’s invasion of Russia proved to be a catastrophic disaster for the French. He formed the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia and Austria to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe which he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs. He also helped Austria’s Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements
Metternich
He was conservative Austrian statesman and diplomat: He was at the centre of European affairs as the Austrian Empire’s foreign minister and Chancellor until the liberal Revolutions of 1848 forced his resignation. Metternich led the Austrian delegation at the Congress of Vienna that divided post-Napoleonic Europe amongst the major powers. Under his guidance, his system of international congresses continued for another decade as Austria aligned itself with Russia and to a lesser extent Prussia. This marked the high point of Austria’s diplomatic importance.
A traditional conservative, Metternich was keen to maintain the balance of power, in particular by resisting Russian territorial ambitions in Central Europe and lands belonging to the Ottoman Empire. He disliked liberalism and strove to prevent the breakup of the Austrian Empire by crushing nationalist revolts in Austrian northern Italy. At home, he pursued a similar policy, using censorship and a spy network to suppress unrest.
Lord Castlereagh
Lord Castlereagh was the British Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons. He organised and financed the alliance that defeated Napoleon, bringing the powers together at the Treaty of Chaumont in 1814. After Napoleon’s second abdication in 1815, Castlereagh worked with the European courts represented at the Congress of Vienna to frame the territorial, and broadly conservative, continental order that was to hold until mid-century. He blocked harsh terms against France believing that a treaty based on vengeance and retaliation would upset a necessary balance of powers.
Canning
Charles Canning, 1st Earl Canning, was a British statesman and governor-general of India during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. In 1857, an uprising of Bengali soldiers developed into a widespread revolt against British rule in northern India. Canning gathered reinforcements and reoccupied the rebel strongholds. He presided over the reorganization of the Indian government after its transfer from the British East India Company to the crown. Canning is credited for ensuring that the administration and most departments of the government functioned normally during the rebellion and took major administrative decisions even during the peak of the Rebellion in 1857, including remodelling the Indian army, encouraging railway development, taking measures for famine relief, and establishing the first three modern universities in India. On the one hand he created opportunities for suitably westernized Indians, while on the other he tightened the grip of the British on Indian society.
Talleyrand
Talleyrand was a French clergyman and leading diplomat. After studying theology, he became Agent-General of the Clergy, and then in 1789, he became Bishop of Autun. He worked as the foreign minister or in some other diplomatic capacity during the regimes of Louis XVI, the FR, Napoleon, Louis XVII, and Louis-Philippe. He was Napoleon’s chief diplomat during the years when French military victories brought one European state after another under French hegemony. He succeeded in obtaining peace with Austria (1801 Treaty of Luneville) and Britain (1802 Treaty of Amiens). Talleyrand sought a negotiated secure peace so as to perpetuate the gains of the French revolution. Napoleon rejected peace and, when he fell in 1814, Talleyrand supported the Bourbon Restoration. He played a major role at the Congress of Vienna, where he negotiated a favourable settlement for France and played a role in unwinding the conquests of Napoleon by playing out the other major players against each other.
Frederick William III
He was King of Prussia from 1797 until his death in 1840. Frederick William’s first and most successful early endeavour was to restore his dynasty’s moral legitimacy, and he ruled Prussia during the difficult times of the Napoleonic Wars and reluctantly joined the coalition against Napoleon in the Befreiungskriege. Following Napoleon’s defeat, he took part in the Congress of Vienna where his ministers succeeded in securing significant territorial increases for Prussia. Following the war, Frederick William turned towards political reaction, abandoning the promises he had made in 1813 to provide Prussia with a constitution. He was determined to unify the Protestant churches to homogenize their liturgy, organization, and architecture. The long-term goal was to have fully centralized royal control of all the Protestant churches in the Prussian Union of Churches. The king was said to be extremely shy and indecisive.
Hardenberg
Karl August von Hardenberg was a Prussian statesman and PM of Prussia. During his political career, he made major improvements to Prussia’s army, he abolished serfdom and feudal burdens, he opened the civil service to all classes, and reformed the education system.
At the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) was the chief representative of Prussia. n diplomacy, he was no match for Metternich, whose influence soon overshadowed his own in the councils of Europe, Germany and ultimately even Prussia itself. At Vienna, in spite of the powerful backing of Alexander of Russia, he failed to secure the annexation of the whole of Saxony to Prussia. At Paris, after Waterloo, he failed to carry through his views as to the further dismemberment of France and had weakly allowed Metternich to forestall him in making terms with the states of the Confederation of the Rhine, which secured to Austria the preponderance in the German federal diet.At the congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), Troppau, Laibach and Verona, the voice of Hardenberg was but an echo of that of Metternich.
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach, Verona
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818): The purpose was to decide the withdrawal of the army of occupation from France and renegotiate the reparations it owed. It produced an amicable settlement, whereby France refinanced its reparations debt, and the Allies in a few weeks withdrew all of their troops. Inception of the Quintuple Alliance between Russia, Prussia, Austria, France, and GB.
Congress of Troppau (1820): The Congress of Troppau was a conference of the Quintuple Alliance to discuss means of suppressing the revolution in Naples of July 1820, and at which the Troppau Protocol was signed on 19 November 1820. The Congress met on 20 October 1820 in Troppau in Austrian Silesia at the behest of Tsar Alexander I of Russia. The characteristic note of this congress was its intimate and informal nature; the determining fact at the outset was Metternich’s discovery that he had no longer anything to fear from the “Jacobinism” of the emperor Alexander. The main pronouncement of the “Troppau Protocol” is as follows: “States, which have undergone a change of government due to revolution, the result of which threaten other states, ipso facto cease to be members of the European Alliance, and remain excluded from it until their situation gives guarantees for legal order and stability.”
Congress of Laibach (1821): The Congress of Laibach was a conference of the allied sovereigns or their representatives, held in 1821. A result of the Congress was the authorization of Austrian intervention in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in order to quell a liberal uprising.
Congress of Verona (1822): The last of the meetings held by the European powers in accordance with the terms of the Quadruple Alliance between Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain. The congress was also the last effective manifestation of the Holy Alliance (Austria, Russia, Prussia). It was held mainly to consider the revolutionary situation in Spain. Convened because the French king Louis XVIII wanted his allies’ consent to intervene in Spain to overthrow the constitutional regime established there in 1820, the congress agreed to support France if it should be attacked by Spain and authorized a French expedition into Spain. The British, however, by threatening the use of their sea power, prevented the allies from interfering with the revolts occurring in Spanish America and created enough discord among the allies to cause a breakdown in the congress system.
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was a United States foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the U.S. The doctrine was central to U.S. foreign policy for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
At the time, nearly all Spanish colonies in the Americas had either achieved or were close to independence. Monroe asserted that the New World and the Old World were to remain distinctly separate spheres of influence, and thus further efforts by European powers to control or influence sovereign states in the region would be viewed as a threat to U.S. security. In turn, the U.S. would recognize and not interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal affairs of European countries.
Mehemet Ali
Muhammad Ali of Egypt was the Albanian Ottoman governor and the de facto ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, who is considered the founder of modern Egypt. He was a military commander in an Albanian Ottoman force sent to recover Egypt from a French occupation under Napoleon. Following Napoleon’s withdrawal, Muhammad Ali rose to power through a series of political maneuvers, and in 1805 he was named Wāli (viceroy) of Egypt and gained the rank of Pasha.
As Wāli, Muhammad Ali attempted to modernize Egypt by instituting dramatic reforms in the military, economic and cultural spheres.
Militarily, Muhammad Ali recaptured the Arabian territories for the sultan, and conquered Sudan on his own accord. His attempt at suppressing the Greek rebellion failed decisively, however, following an intervention by the European powers at Navarino. In 1831, Muhammad Ali waged war against the sultan, capturing Syria, crossing into Anatolia and directly threatening Constantinople, but the European powers forced him to retreat. He launched an invasion of the Ottoman Empire in 1840; he defeated the Ottomans again and opened the way towards a capture of Constantinople. Faced with another European intervention, he accepted a brokered peace in 1842 and withdrew from the Levant; in return, he and his descendants were granted hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan.
Louis-Philippe
Louis Philippe was the King of the French from 1830 to 1848, the last king and penultimate monarch of France.
As Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartres, he distinguished himself commanding troops during the Revolutionary Wars, but broke with the Republic over its decision to execute King Louis XVI. He fled to Switzerland in 1793 after being connected with a plot to restore France’s monarchy. His father Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (Philippe Égalité) fell under suspicion and was executed, and Louis Philippe remained in exile for 21 years until the Bourbon Restoration. He was proclaimed king in 1830 after his Charles X was forced to abdicate by the July Revolution.
The reign of Louis Philippe is known as the July Monarchy and was dominated by wealthy industrialists and bankers. He also promoted friendship with Britain and sponsored colonial expansion, notably the French conquest of Algeria. His popularity faded as economic conditions in France deteriorated in 1847, and he was forced to abdicate after the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1848. He lived out the remainder of his life in exile in the United Kingdom.
Navarino
The Battle of Navarino was a naval battle fought on 20 October 1827, during the Greek War of Independence (1821–29), in Navarino Bay on the west coast of the Peloponnese peninsula. Allied forces from Britain, France, and Russia decisively defeated Ottoman and Egyptian forces which were trying to suppress the Greeks, thereby making Greek independence much more likely.
The context of the three Great Powers’ intervention in the Greek conflict was the Russian Empire’s long-running expansion at the expense of the decaying Ottoman Empire. Russia’s ambitions in the region were seen as a major geostrategic threat by the other European powers, which feared the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of Russian hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean. Fearing unilateral Russian action, Britain and France bound Russia, by treaty, to a joint intervention which aimed to secure Greek autonomy, whilst still preserving Ottoman territorial integrity as a check on Russia.
The Powers agreed, by the Treaty of London (1827), to force the Ottoman government to grant the Greeks autonomy within the empire and despatched naval squadrons to the Eastern Mediterranean to enforce their policy.
Carlsbad Decrees
The Carlsbad Decrees were a set of reactionary restrictions introduced in the states of the German Confederation by resolution of the Bundesversammlung on 20 September 1819. They banned nationalist fraternities (“Burschenschaften”), removed liberal university professors, and expanded the censorship of the press. They were aimed at quelling a growing sentiment for German unification.
The meeting of the state’s representatives was called by the Austrian Minister of State Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich after the liberal Burschenschaft student Karl Ludwig Sand had murdered the conservative writer August von Kotzebue on 23 March 1819. In the course of the European Restoration Metternich feared liberal and national tendencies at German universities which might conduct revolutionary activities threatening the monarchistic order. At this time, the outrage about the assassination cited was a welcome pretext to take action.
An essential attribute of the decrees was that the reactionary German Confederation understood liberal and nationalistic ideas as sedition and persecuted those spreading these ideas as demagogues. This persecution of demagogues, Demagogenverfolgung, was especially vigorous in Prussia.
Nicholas I
Nicholas I was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until his death in 1855. Nicholas inherited his brother’s (Alexander I) throne despite the failed Decembrist revolt against him. He is mainly remembered in history as a reactionary whose controversial reign was marked by geographical expansion, economic growth, and massive industrialisation on the one hand, and centralisation of administrative policies and repression of dissent on the other.
Nicholas I was instrumental in helping to create an independent Greek state, and resumed the Russian conquest of the Caucasus by seizing Iğdır Province and the remainder of modern-day Armenia and Azerbaijan during the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828. He ended the Russo-Turkish War (1828–29) successfully as well. Later on, however, he led Russia into the Crimean War (1853–1856), with disastrous results. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its geographical zenith, spanning over 20 million square kilometers, but had a desperate need for reform.
Poor Law
The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief in England and Wales. English Poor Law legislation can be traced back as far as 1536, when legislation was passed to deal with the impotent poor, although there were much earlier Tudor laws dealing with the problems caused by vagrants and beggars.[2] The history of the Poor Law in England and Wales is usually divided between two statutes: the Old Poor Law passed during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and the New Poor Law, passed in 1834, which significantly modified the system of poor relief. The New Poor Law altered the system from one which was administered haphazardly at a local parish level to a highly centralised system which encouraged the large-scale development of workhouses by poor law unions.
