DISCOVERY 



lOT 



Revolution " in the minds of all potentates and 

 politicians; a general fear lest the peril from France 

 should break out again ; a general consciousness that 

 the settlement of 1S15 would need a good deal of safe- 

 guarding. Hence, after the overthrow of Napoleon, 

 the diplomatic crowd migrated from Vienna to Paris, 

 and when there not only imposed upon France a pacifica- 

 tion proportionate in severity to the offence which she 

 had committed in supporting Napoleon in his mad ad- 

 venture of 1815, but also took steps to perpetuate the 

 Grand Alliance, wliich had thus completed its primary 

 task. Two verj- different schemes were propounded 

 in Paris for the constitution of the permanent Euro- 

 pean Concert. The first emanated from Alexander of 

 Russia, who had arrived in Paris in a state of high 

 reUgious exaltation owing to the influence of the 

 Baroness von Kriidener and her evangehcal company, 

 into whose hands he had fallen in June 1813. On 

 September 26 of that year he announced his plan for a 

 Holy Alliance which should include all the Christian 

 rulers of Europe, and according to which all should 

 pledge themselves " to take for their sole guide the 

 precepts of the Christian religion, to strengthen them- 

 selves every day more and more in the principles and 

 exercise of the duties which the Divine Saviour has 

 taught mankind." To this Holy Alliance all the 

 Christian potentates of Europe gave their adherence, 

 except the Pope and the Regent of England. No one, 

 however, apart from Alexander of Russia, and possibly 

 Frederick Wilham of Prussia, took it seriously. It 

 was from the first a mere " scrap of paper." ' It re- 

 mained entirely inoperative, and when Alexander died, 

 ten years later, it faded out of diplomatic memory 

 altogether. Lord Castlereagh had, when the terms 

 were originally laid before him, described it as " a piece 

 of sublime mysticism and nonsense." He was, all the 

 same, alarmed at it, knowing to what numerous and 

 varied interpretations the Christian religion lent itself, 

 and not knowing what ambitious schemes of Western 

 hegemony floated through the unbalanced mind of the 

 formidable Tsar of all the Russias. Hence he not only 

 prevented the Regent of England from doing more than 

 express a vague and general approval of the Tsar's 

 exalted sentiments, he also advanced another and 

 entirely precise and conventional type of union, accord- 

 ing to which the four Great Powers which had entered 

 into the Treaty of Chaumont should continue to main- 

 tain their Quadruple Alliance for the hmited and 

 definite purpose of securing and ensuring the observ- 

 ance of the Treaties just concluded at Vienna and 

 Paris. It was in this Quadruple Alliance of the four 



' A German historian actually employs this expression, ren- 

 dered so notorious by Bethmann-Holhveg in 1914. It is de- 

 scribed by A. Stem, Geschiclite Europas, vol. i, p. 41, as " ein 

 wirkungsloses Blatt Papier." 



Governments (November 20, 1815) rather than in the 

 shadowy Holy AUiance of the miscellaneous monarchs- 

 that the Concert of Europe embodied itself. As a 

 support to its deliberations and resolutions, a com- 

 bined army of British, Russian, Prussian, and Austrian, 

 troops, under the command of the Duke of Wellington, 

 occupied the north-east frontier of France. As an in- 

 stnmient for the formation of its opinions and the ex- 

 pression of its will, the Ambassadors of the four Powers 

 met daily at 11 a.m. at the British Embassy in Paris. 

 Never before had the ideal of an international authority 

 for Europe been so nearly realised. This condition of 

 things continued for three years (1815-18). Then 

 another Congress was held at Aix-la-Chapelle, which, 

 inter alia, arranged for the disbanding of the inter- 

 national army, the evacuation of the occupied French 

 territories, and the cessation of the quadruple control 

 of French affairs. The members of the Concert dis- 

 persed, and Paris ceased to be the scene of their dip- 

 lomatic operations. 



Ill 



The harmony which, up to 1818, had in the main 

 prevailed among the members of the Concert was after 

 that date speedily broken. Britain was the first Power 

 to strike a discordant note. At the Conference of 

 Troppau (1820) she objected to the principle laid down 

 by Mettemich that in certain specified circumstances 

 interference on the part of the Concert in the internal 

 affairs of the Sovereign States of Europe would be 

 justifiable ; at the Conference of Laibach (1821) she pro- 

 tested against the intervention of the Concert in the 

 domestic politics of Naples, where a revolution had 

 overthrown the intolerable tyranny of the Bourbon 

 Ferdinand ; at the Conference of Verona (1822) she 

 raised her voice against the proposed suppression of 

 the constitutional government just set up in Spain, and 

 against the proposed reduction of the Spanish American 

 Colonies beneath the European yoke which they had 

 repudiated. As in all three cases British objections 

 and protests were ignored or overruled, Britain in 1823 

 withdrew from the Concert, and made her own settle- 

 ments and arrangements with both the reconstituted 

 European States and the revolted American Colonies. 

 In respect of the latter she further came to an agree- 

 ment with the United States of America in accordance 

 with which the Monroe Doctrine was enunciated : both 

 Powers resolved to prevent, by all necessary means, the 

 interference of reactionary Europe in the development 

 of progressive America. George Canning and John 

 Quincy Adams combined to ' ' call a New World into 

 existence to redress the balance of the Old." 



WTiilst this schism between comparatively-liberal 

 Britain and extremely-reactionary Austria, Prussia, 

 and Russia was developing, another rift in the bar- 



