#Congress vienna series

Defeating him had required a massive joint effort from the other powers. With a powerful army, he had managed to crush all his opponents except Britain and Russia, creating a continental empire. During the 18th century the military strengths had been evenly divided between the two major alliances, but Napoleon had tipped the scales. Why did the participants at Vienna want to reform the Utrecht system? Why had active cooperation become so necessary in 1814 and not before? The explanation is rather obvious: the previous equilibrium was broken. It was the first attempt in history to build a peaceful Continental order based on the active co-operation of major states. This led to the creation of a cycle of regular multilateral conferences in various European cities, the so-called Congress System, which functioned at least from 1815 to 1822. By contrast, the victors over Napoleon aimed for a ‘System of Peace’: there was to be only one political bloc of powers in Europe. Based on the principle of the balance of power, it required two opposing military alliances (initially led respectively by France and Austria). The previous one had been established a century earlier, in 1713, at the Peace of Utrecht. Settling the consequences of the war was difficult enough, but the Great Powers had a broader agenda: creating a new political system in Europe. Napoleon was shipped to St Helena, a forlorn British possession in the South Atlantic, where he stayed out of mischief until his death. In the end, however, the French got away with a foreign military occupation and heavy war reparations.

To prevent France from ever again becoming a threat to Europe, they briefly entertained the idea of dismembering it, just as they had Poland a few decades earlier. The allies banded together once again and defeated him decisively at Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, nine days after having signed the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna. In March 1815, in the midst of all these feverish negotiations, the unthinkable happened: Napoleon escaped from his place of exile on Elba and re-occupied the throne of France, starting the adventure known as the Hundred Days. There had been other pressing matters to settle: the rights of German Jews, the abolition of the slave trade and navigation on European rivers, not to mention the restoration of the Bourbon royal family in France, Spain and Naples, the constitution of Switzerland, issues of diplomatic precedence and, last but not least, the foundation of a new German confederation to replace the defunct Holy Roman Empire.

#Congress vienna series

Though the allies came close to blows over the partition of Poland, by February 1815 they had averted a new war thanks to a series of adroit compromises. The first priority of the Congress of Vienna was to deal with territorial issues: a new configuration of German states, the reorganisation of central Europe, the borders of central Italy and territorial transfers in Scandinavia. At the end of the summer, emperors, kings, princes, ministers and representatives converged on the Austrian capital, crowding the walled city.

The victorious Great Powers (Russia, Great Britain, Austria and Prussia) invited the other states of Europe to send plenipotentiaries to Vienna for a peace conference.

The ‘long 19th century’ was a period of relative peace that began arguably with the Congress of Vienna in September 1814 and lasted until the outbreak of the First World War in July 1914.Įmperor Napoleon was defeated in May 1814 and Cossacks marched along the Champs-Elysées into Paris.