The Congress of Vienna

The French Revolution and the rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) posed a major challenge to the basis of balanced peacemaking. The shift of the political system toward the nation-state system and

France signs the preliminary agreements of a peace treaty ending the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. The painting is rich in symbolism with most of the characters wearing Prussian helmets. One is pointing to where France (the woman, who is no doubt a representation of Marianne, the revolutionary symbol of France) needs to sign the treaty. Another, behind her, has a dagger to her breast. She's holding the hand of a dead child. Other Prussians (on the right) are silencing a woman and leading away a screaming child.

The introduction of mass armies transformed the basis of peacemaking. By marching on Europe, the Napoleonic armies seemed like an irresistible force challenging the structures of the ancient regime. The conquest of Europe by French armies risked making France the dominating power, putting Britain in league with Austria, and leaving Prussia and Russia to defeat Bonaparte.

The resulting peacemaking agreement was similar to the established diplomatic tradition of the Westphalian system. The Vienna settlement established Austria, Britain, and Russia as the dominant European powers. When the victorious states met in Vienna in September 1814, the fundamental change behind the peacemaking process was the will of Austria, Britain, and Russia to keep France from regaining its capacity to transform the European balance of power. Napoleon’s “hundred days”—when he returned from captivity on the isle of Elba in 1814 and led his troops to a final stand at Waterloo—confirmed the need for a diplomatic system capable of ensuring the continuation of the new balance of power.

Given that the aim of the major powers’ representatives (Czar Alexander I of Russia, Klemens von Metter-nich, foreign minister of Austria, and Robert Stewart Castlereagh, Britain’s foreign minister) was to restore the ancien regime and limit the impact of the French Revolution on Europe’s political system and social values, they understood the need to build a diplomatic system capable of keeping at bay the impact of the Revolution.

University students in Xian, China, flash the peace sign in 1989 following the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

With its fundamentally reactionary stance toward the Revolution, the Congress ofVienna, under the leadership of Met-ternich, adopted a pragmatic approach to the peacemaking process. France was included in the negotiations, the French monarchy was restored but contained by a written constitution, and to limit the risk of antagonizing the French population, the country was allowed to keep its 1789 borders. As a way of controlling France, which had come out of the Congress of Vienna still a major world power, Alexander I, Holy Roman emperor Francis II, and Frederick William IV of Prussia devised the Holy Alliance. Aimed at ensuring the European status quo, it was shunned by Britain, which considered it too intrusive and conservative. Its first article read as follows:

In conformity with the words of the Holy Scripture which ordain that all men should regard themselves as brothers the three contracting monarchs will live united by the bonds of an indissoluble fraternity, and considering themselves as compatriots will in all cases lend one another assistance, aid and help; regarding themselves in relation to their subjects and armies as fathers of families, they will direct them in the same spirit of fraternity by which they are animated in order to protect religion, peace and justice. (Simpson and Jones 2000, 94)

The main achievement of the Vienna system was to introduce a framework for the collaboration of the victorious powers to ensure the preservation of the European status quo. The result was the congress system, by which Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia met to respond to and consult with each other on various international crises that threatened the balance of power created in Vienna. Although conservative by nature, the Vienna peace settlement and the congress system that it instituted led to a century of peace that lasted until World War I.