CHAPTER XXI.

THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA II.

 

When Napoleon was meditating his return to France, he had been well served by the agents whom he maintained at Vienna, but not supremely well. Before the middle of February the moment had passed away when his advent would have found his adversaries on the brink of a conflict with one another. As it was, the news of his departure from Elba did not for some days give rise to any overt sign of apprehension on the part of the sovereigns and statesmen assembled at the Congress. Metternich, however, showed promptitude of action as well as presence of mind; and, within an hour after the receipt of the news, the Four Allied Powers had resolved on ordering their troops back upon France, while the necessary dispositions were at once made for the movements of the Austrian forces. During their journey to Pressburg, Metternich and his companions discussed the terms of the Declaration to be addressed to the French nation and army. On their return, the news having arrived of Napoleon’s landing at Cannes, it was agreed at a meeting of the Committee of the Eight Powers, on the proposal of Metternich, to issue in their name the Declaration which was actually promulgated on the following day (March 13, 1815). Gagern’s suggestion that the Declaration should be issued by the entire Congress had been waived aside; but, after an almost continuous series of political and military conferences, a further step, the expediency of which had from the first been urged by Wellington, was on March 25 taken by the Four Powers, in the conclusion of a solemn treaty of alliance. This treaty expressly applied to the new situation the principles of the Treaty of Chaumont, and invited the adherence of all the Governments of Europe. The King of France was specially invited to join the alliance, and to specify the succour required by him in accordance with its provisions. In notifying its acceptance of the treaty, the Government of Great Britain, of whose loyalty towards the Alliance her new and ample subsidies furnished the most convincing proof, refused to bind itself to continue the war with the intent of obliging France to adopt any particular form of government; and the Tsar was at this time by no means favourable to the elder branch of the Bourbons. The tact and skill with which, in these circumstances, Talleyrand maintained his position and that of his Government at Vienna certainly call for admiration. The smaller States of Europe, almost without exception, gave in their adhesion to the treaty. The German States, in acceding on April 27, agreed that all their efforts should be directed towards maintaining the provisions of the First Peace of Paris; Gagern’s refusal to sign seems to have been due to his dissatisfaction with the frontier assigned to the Netherlands. His Dutch colleague signed, but Munster also held back; and the adhesion of the King of Denmark, who it must be allowed had reason enough for delay, did not come in till all was over (August). Spain and Sweden persisted in their refusal; but their abstention, caused in the former case by sullen pride, and in the latter by the withholding of a British subsidy, counted for very little.

At Vienna, though all eyes were turned towards the theatre of the impending struggle, there was at the same time a general wish to prevent the threads of the diplomatic transactions from being scattered while it was still possible to gather them up; and the settlement by the sword for which Europe was once more waiting might be hastened by removing all doubt as to conclusions already settled in principle. Thus, on April 7, the Emperor of Austria proclaimed the union of the Italian States now subjected to his rule, under the designation of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom. A few days earlier (April 2) he had provisionally taken over from his daughter the administration of the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. The affairs of the Helvetic Confederation were hastened by the Declaration adopted by the Eight Powers on March 20, which was solemnly accepted by the Diet on May 27 following. The arrangements as to Poland were rapidly formulated in two treaties, con­cluded on May 3 between Austria and Russia, and between Russia and Prussia, respectively; and on the same day the plenipotentiaries of the three Eastern Powers signed a further treaty as to the Republic of Cracow. This scanty remnant received, as if by way of compensation for the incorporation in Prussia of the free city of Danzig, a guarantee of its independence and neutrality, together with a Constitution. To the Poles who were subjects of any one of the Three Powers the treaties promised the grant, at such time as might seem expedient to each Government, of institutions preservative of their nationality; and, before the Tsar quitted Vienna, he proclaimed the bases of the Constitution intended by him for his kingdom of Poland, which were immediately to regulate its provisional administration, and included an indissoluble union with the Russian Empire. The Saxon difficulty ended with the conclusion of a treaty of peace on May 18 between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, and King Frederick Augustus, who had at last been made to see the wisdom of yielding to necessity.

Only two problems of first-rate importance still remained unsolved. These were the two questions which, as has been seen, Castlereagh had before his departure from Vienna specified to Liverpool—viz. the Neapolitan, and that concerning the future Germanic Constitution. The former necessarily entered into a new phase with Napoleon’s return, though already Murat’s action had been influenced by the hopes which he founded on that event. By acting blindly on the assumption that Austria was in complete accord with those who sought his ruin, Murat relieved her from the difficulties in which she had involved herself by guaranteeing Naples to him in the treaty of January 11, 1814. He now called upon Italy to arm on behalf of her independence • whereupon, on April 18, the Austrian Government published a manifesto which, while exposing the duplicity of Murat’s conduct, declared him to be (as de facto he had been for weeks) at war with Austria. A British declaration of war against him speedily followed. Early in May the Austrian Government signed a treaty of alliance with King Ferdinand IV; and on the 23rd of the month the Austrian troops entered Naples. Yet no overt act of the Congress or of any of the Powers had declared King “Joachim Napoleon” to have forfeited his throne; and in the British Parliament Castlereagh had to argue that their engagements towards him lapsed with his attack upon Austria. Even now, had he shaped his conduct with more circumspection, some compensation might have been allotted him. His end is told elsewhere; his consort Queen Caroline, whom a revolt of the lazzaroni had forced to make terms for herself, was treated very considerately by the Emperor of Austria.

After the collapse of the endeavours of the “Pentarchy”, the question of the future Germanic Constitution had, it will be remembered, been kept alive by the efforts of the minor States and by the imperturbable assiduity of Humboldt. On Napoleon’s return, it became clear that the choice lay between two courses. Either the whole subject must be deferred till a more favourable season—and, as a matter of fact, Hardenberg would have been content with the merest laying of foundations till the war was over—or, if the Congress was to offer something beyond this to the German nation, then what had to be done must be done quickly, even though inadequately. After two further drafts had been brought forward by the Prussian plenipotentiaries, Metternich at last, early in May, took action by laying before them, in a slightly revised form, Wessenberg’s draft of the previous December. In a series of con­ferences, at which this draft served as basis, he and Hardenberg evolved a final draft—the ninth of the series—which Metternich in the name of both the Austrian and the Prussian Governments submitted to those of all the German States.

This draft proposed a Federal Diet, in which out of fifteen votes Austria and Prussia should have but one each, the former Power holding the presidency, but without a casting vote. There was to be no smaller council, committee, or other executive body; and the members of the Confederation were to be possessed of equal rights. They were pro­hibited from entering into any alliance with foreign Governments against the Confederation or against any members of it. The provision of a judicial tribunal, which should in accordance with the laws of the Con­federation determine differences between it and them, or between any of them, was reserved for the Diet. Nothing could have been briefer than the article declaring that in every German State a Constitution of Estates (Landstände) should be set up; and the enumeration of the fundamental rights of German citizenship was indisputably meagre. On the other hand, the article as to the rights of the so-called “ Media­tised” was long and elaborate. It is to the credit of Wessenberg, the author of the draft, no doubt inspired on this head by his brother Henry, who at this time (April, 1815) published anonymously some notable proposals on the subject, that it contained a stipulation for the grant of a Constitution to the entire Catholic Church in Germany, safeguarding its natural rights as well as providing for its needs.

The conferences which out of this draft elaborated the Federal Act were eleven in number, and lasted from May 23 to June 10. In the first two the associated minor States were represented by five ministers only; nor was it till the third sitting that the entire body of pleni­potentiaries found admission. Würtemberg took no part in any of these conferences; and Baden withdrew at the sixth sitting. For the rest, Metternich, in his opening remarks on May 23, while pointing out that the Congress could not be ended until the bases of the Germanic Confederation had been laid down, stated that the development of these in detail must be left to the Diet. The statesmen whom Metternich thus instructed took him at his word, and frankly declined to address themselves to their task in any such thoroughgoing spirit as that, for instance, which animated the Frankfort Parliament in 1848. Accordingly the Federal Act commits to the Diet the drawing-up of the fundamental laws of the Confederation, and of the organic institutions concerned with its foreign, military, and internal affairs.

After, at the sitting of May 26, much time was wasted on vexatious questions of precedence, the discussion turned on the distribution of votes at the Diet, and a proposal was made to reserve one “curial” (or combined) vote for the “Mediatised.” On the other hand little opposi­tion was now offered to the prohibition of the conclusion of separate alliances by members of the Confederation. Hardenberg and Humboldt, whether reasonably or not, were so much discouraged by the slow pro­gress made that about this time they urged Metternich to join in a kind of ultimatum, refusing any further amendments to the draft. As a matter of fact, no addition of importance was made to it except that besides the ordinary body of the Diet, now extended to seventeen votes, there was instituted for the discussion of organic changes in its funda­mental laws and Constituent Act, and for other questions affecting the entire Confederation, a larger assembly or plenum with sixty-nine votes, proportionately distributed among the States, but so as to give at least one vote to each (June 3). The final discussions produced one other important change. Already on May 26 Bavaria, on the plea that its Government had already resolved on granting a Constitution, had carried a proposal for a significant change in the text of the much-vexed article as to such grants. On May 22 King Frederick William had signed the ordinance promising representative institutions in the whole of the Prussian monarchy; and the article now ran that, in each State, Constitutions “will be granted,” instead of “shall be granted.”

At the sitting on June 5, Metternich (who was just about to quit Vienna) announced that before the close of the Congress the German Federal Act must be placed under the protection of the European Powers; and, while proposing that the twenty articles, which had been pushed through committee, should be accepted as the requisite founda­tions for the Germanic Federal Constitution, he declared that they were so accepted by the Emperor of Austria. At the same time he disclaimed all intention of putting pressure upon any Government, thus exhibiting a characteristic deference to the pretensions of the minor States, instead of adopting the Prussian way of offering them the proposed Federal Constitution as a thing to be taken or left, or Munster’s contention that Europe had a right to insist on all the German Governments entering the new Confederation, whether they liked it or not. Here­upon the Federal Act of twenty articles was unreservedly accepted by Prussia and Hanover (on the ground that it seemed better to agree upon an imperfect Confederation than upon none at all), by Holstein (Denmark), and with certain reservations by several of the minor States; Luxemburg (Netherlands) assented only on condition that all the other German States became members of the Confederation. For the present, the Saxon and Bavarian plenipotentiaries declared themselves obliged to await sufficient instructions; but on June 8 Metternich met the remaining Bavarian objections by carrying certain modifications of the Act.

The most important of these substituted for the Federal judicial tribunal, as the means of settling disputes between members of the Confederation, the obsolete Austrägalinstanz—i.e., the appointment of special Courts nominated ad hoc by particular States. Bavaria, too, now obtained the omission (proposed by Austria already on June 1) of Wessenberg’s article promising a common Constitution to the Catholic Church in Germany, which at first Cardinal Consalvi had in his tentative way seemed disposed to favour. The claims of the Jews had been actively urged at the Congress by the agents of the Jewish com­munities of Frankfort and of the three Hanseatic free cities, and strongly supported by the Viennese banking interest; but notwith­standing the goodwill of the Austrian, Prussian, and Hanoverian Governments, they were unable to secure the insertion in the Federal Act of more than a guarantee of the rights already possessed by them in particular States of the Confederation. For the Diet was also reserved the drawing-up of uniform regulations concerning the liberty of the press, and the protection of authors and publishers against piracy.

Thus, then, concession carried to an extreme had made it possible for the Federal Act in its entirety to be signed and sealed (June 8, 1815) by the plenipotentiaries of thirty-six German Governments. The signatures of Würtemberg and Baden were still wanting, an offer on the part of the plenipotentiaries of the former to sign the first eleven articles only of the Act having been declined. They did not come into the Confederation till July 26 and September 1 respectively. Landgrave Frederick VI of Hesse-Homburg, whose military services and connexion with the royal family of Great Britain secured him special consideration, was, by a protocol drawn up during the con­ferences on the Second Peace of Paris, included in the Confederation as a sovereign prince.

After the Federal Act had been signed, there was just time enough for inserting its first eleven articles in the Final Act of the Congress, and adding a further clause giving to the remaining articles the same force as if they had likewise found a place there. Thus, the Germanic Constitution was—like the Helvetic and that of the Republic of Cracow—to be placed under a European guarantee; per contra, an inevitably complicated, manifestly artificial, and avowedly imperfect constitutional fabric depended for its endurance upon the interested goodwill or the indifference of the Powers at large. In any case, as Metternich had himself in the first instance hinted, the vitality of the constitutional settlement depended upon the endurance of the territorial changes which had so materially altered the size and power of the several German States and their mutual relations; while each of the two Great Powers on whose cooperation the whole structure hinged was placed in a position towards the other which, without constant loyalty and prudence on both sides, could not fail to end in jealous rivalry.

On the day after that on which the German Federal Act at last passed through committee, the Final Act of the Congress itself was formally adopted. So early as March 12, at the sitting of the Com­mittee of the Eight which had agreed upon the Joint Declaration against Napoleon as the disturber of the peace of Europe, a Special Committee, composed of one plenipotentiary of each of these Powers and of three secretaries, had been appointed to draft in a definitive form a General Act of the Congress, summarising its results. Before the labours of this Committee were completed, the Tsar, the King of Prussia, and the Emperor of Austria left Vienna. On June 9 the plenipoten­tiaries of seven out of the eight Powers signed the Final Act, the Swedish plenipotentiary alone recording certain reservations, as to no indemnity having been provided for the deprived “Grand Duchess of Tuscany” (Napoleon's sister Élise), or for the Crown Prince (Bernadotte) in consideration of the restoration of his former principality of Ponte­Corvo to the Holy See. Spain refused altogether to sign, Labrador recurring to the complaint by which he had answered a previous invitation to agree to the settlement about Parma and the restoration of Olivença to Portugal. Only a small proportion of the subjects dealt with in the Final Act had, he urged, been reported in the sittings of the Committee of the Eight; and a fraction of these Powers ought not to be permitted to settle the affairs of all Europe, merely summoning the rest to accord or refuse their signature. The Spanish protest was at bottom much the same as that of Gagern, who, when dissatisfied with the conditions of the Netherlands settlement and informed by Wellington that it had been made by the Great Powers, “very much as was the case with the Treaty of Chaumont,” retorted that of this newly-invented term “the Great Powers” he knew neither the precise import nor the intention. The Congress of Vienna by its procedure set the seal upon the principle that the settlement of the affairs of Europe appertained to the Great Powers, and that the other States had merely to decide whether they would accede to such settlement or not.

Whether we review the provisions of the Final Act of the Congress in detail, or as a whole, it is not easy to keep asunder the two questions as to what it actually accomplished and as to what it left undone. First and foremost, the Congress had sought to secure to the political system of Europe a stability which it had not enjoyed since the First Partition of Poland. The fulfilment of this purpose was not easily reconcilable with the “satisfaction” of those Powers who were desirous either of recovering or extending their former limits, or of sacrificing as few as possible of their recent gains; nor again could it consistently be combined with deference to the principle of legitimacy, as cherished by many of the sovereigns and statesmen assembled at Vienna, and put forward, by the Bourbon interest in general and by the sagacity of Talleyrand in particular, as of paramount importance for the Governments of Europe. In seeking to restore the balance which the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era had upset, the Congress of Vienna was not content, like that of Westphalia, with more or less localising the range of its efforts, or, like that of Utrecht, with directing them entirely against the danger of the preponderance of a single Power. France, while recovering the greater part of her colonial possessions, had been virtually restricted to her boundaries of 1792; and by means of new territorial dispositions along her eastern borders securities had been provided against a new infraction of the peace of Europe. But the Congress had at the same time shown itself sensitive to an excessive increase of the territorial strength of Russia, whose partnership Napoleon had formerly been prepared to accept in his vastest schemes of dominion. To the question of the balance of maritime power the Congress shut its eyes; for Great Britain, from the first the mainstay of the defensive alliance of Europe, was still its paymaster.

With regard, then, to France, the Final Act added nothing of moment to the provisions of the First Peace of Paris. Talleyrand’s attempts to obtain for France at least those portions of the Belgic lands which were comprised in the grand-duchy of Luxemburg and the see of Liege, as well as Geneva and Savoy, had ended only in the confirmation of certain extensions in the latter quarter already settled in that Peace. Belgium, as Louis-Philippe said a quarter of a century afterwards, was, to the Galliphobe statesmen at Vienna, “ the stumbling-block of Europe.” Of the colonial restorations not effected before the opening of the Congress, the Final Act specifies only that by Portugal of French Guiana, whose climatic conditions were afterwards pronounced unfit even for a continuance of the penal settlement into which it had shrunk. Both Guadeloupe and Martinique were restored to France by Great Britain before the adoption of the Act, as the last remnants of a dominion which France had administered with so conspicuous a success.

The moderation exhibited by the Allied Powers in their treatment of France was the result partly of a recognition of her services to civilisation, partly of deliberate judgment. At Paris and Vienna it was not held to be in the interest of Europe to leave France in a condition of weakness which would be a source of disquiet to herself and therefore to her neighbours. The return of Napoleon, however, once more revived the thought of securing a better western frontier for Germany. This was recognised in England as opportune; and Stein, Harden berg, and Metternich agreed in June that France ought to be deprived of Alsace and Lorraine as well as of French Flanders. But even then it was held certain that the Tsar would intervene in favour of France. Castlereagh and Wellington were opposed to any serious diminution of her territory; and the German demand was not formulated so as to allow of its being pressed in the subsequent negotiations for peace. As it was, France had preserved at Vienna what constituted her chief source of strength, namely, the compactness and unity of her territory; indeed, she was in this respect stronger than she had been in 1792, inasmuch as all the enclaves which had at that time remained within the boundaries of France were now incorporated in it; nor were any of these except certain German districts taken back at the Second Peace of Paris. As for the government of France, her throne was at the time of the dissolution of the Congress of Vienna left in the nominal possession of the House of Bourbon; and the plenipotentiaries of King Louis XVIII were among those who signed the Final Act. There was nothing to cause apprehension in the disclaimer by Great Britain of any intention to impose any particular form of government upon the French nation; for Louis XVIII had himself acknowledged that to the British Govern­ment he above all owed his restoration. The aversion of Alexander I from the Bourbons was very soon to give way to reactionary influences. The Austrian Emperor’s goodwill to Napoleon was an audacious fiction. Nothing would prevent a second recovery of the throne of France by the Bourbons but a manifestation, such as now seemed wholly improbable, of the national will; and nothing was likely again to cut short their tenure of that throne but disloyalty to their own promises, or a fatal want of common-sense in themselves.

While the Final Act thus avoids much direct reference to France, it accords even slighter mention to the Power on the rock of whose resistance the wave of her disturbing action had broken. Great Britain’s maritime supremacy was tacitly allowed by the European Concert; nor did the Congress so much as consider the propriety of subjecting to international discussion the practices and claims which that supremacy involved. Her colonial conquests in part were retained and in part renounced, according to her own decisions. Of her own free choice she returned portions of her conquests to France, which in 1810 had been left without a single colony. To the Dutch, whose entire East Indian possessions had been in her grasp before the close of the war, she now returned them all except Ceylon; on the other hand, she retained Demerara and Cape Colony. No notice was taken in the Act of the final cession to Great Britain by Denmark of the island of Heligoland, the occupation of which had proved highly profitable during the War. The influence of Great Britain was, naturally enough, thought traceable in the considerable increase of territory granted at the Congress to the new kingdom of Hanover, and in the exclusion, by the restoration of East Frisia to that State, of Prussia from the coast-line of the German Ocean. Nothing had come of the feeble attempt to amend the provision of the Peace of Paris which had finally established British rule in Malta. The return of Napoleon frustrated any scheme for providing the Order of St John with an indemnity in Corfu, or elsewhere. Elba was now transferred to the Grand Duke of Tuscany ; while Corfu (where Bavaria would have liked to settle Eugene Beauharnais) was with the other Ionian Islands soon afterwards placed under the British pro­tectorate. Ypsilanti and his fellow Hotspurs, incessantly scheming to engage the sympathies of the Tsar on behalf of the liberation of Hellas, were checked by the unwillingness of the other Great Powers to open the Eastern Question, of which the Greek problem formed an integral part; and the Tsar himself had no wish again to revive a jealousy like that provoked by his attitude of friendship to Poland.

Great Britain had throughout taken the most active interest in the negotiations concerning the newly-established kingdom of the Nether­lands. The treaty which placed Belgium and Luxemburg under the Prince of Orange, now King of the Netherlands, was not concluded between him and the Four Allied Powers till May 31, 1815 ; but his acceptance of the sovereignty of the Belgic Provinces had been signified by him, in accordance with the invitation of those Powers, so far back as July 21, 1814. The question had therefore become one of boundaries; and the article of the Final Act incorporating Belgium with Holland, the hereditary sovereignty of which was vested in the House of Orange, was accordingly a long and elaborate one. Luxemburg, while included as a grand-duchy in the Germanic Confederation, was assigned to the King of the Netherlands in compensation for the German principalities formerly belonging to him as head of the Orange-Dietz branch of the House of Nassau, and now ceded by him to Prussia. The city of Luxemburg, occupying a position which nature rendered all but im­pregnable, became a German federal fortress. With the grand-duchy was united the portion of the contested duchy of Bouillon not joined to France by the Peace of Paris.

Thus was introduced into the European family of States a Power of considerable strength, though of secondary rank, deliberately intended to serve as a barrier against France, in the interests more especially of the Low Countries themselves, of Germany and of Great Britain. Holland was at the same time compensated for important colonial losses by a great augmentation of its importance as a European State. No serious doubts as to the endurance of the reunion seem to have suggested themselves to its authors and abettors. Yet nowhere were the reasons for such doubts more manifold and deep-seated, and more abundantly illustrated by the history of the past.

The first fourteen articles of the Final Act were concerned with the Polish question, and the following nine with the Saxon, which together had so occupied the attention of the Congress during its earlier period. In accordance with the treaties of May 3, 1814, between the three Eastern Powers, the greater part of the grand-duchy of Warsaw was secured to Russia under the title of the kingdom of Poland, to be perpetually bound to the Russian Empire. Like the portions of Poland assigned to Prussia and Austria, the kingdom was to receive such representative national institutions as the Russian Government might determine. Before leaving Vienna, the Tsar carried out his promise by solemnly laying down on May 31, 1815, the bases of its future Constitution; and this was actually proclaimed on November 27. Prussia’s share of the grand-duchy of Warsaw included, together with her Polish acquisitions of 1770, the fortress of Thorn with the surrounding district, and portions of what had hitherto been the departments of Posen and Kalisch. Austria remained in possession of the parts of Eastern Galicia assigned to her at the Peace of Vienna (1806), together with the salt mines of Wiliczka and their vicinity. Cracow was declared a free city, with a Constitution and an episcopal see of its own, whose independence and neutrality were placed under the joint protection of the three partitioning Powers.

The Polish question had thus, though within a more limited range and at the cost of considerable concessions to the two other partitioning Powers, been settled on the lines to which Russia had from the first adhered ; and the alternative of an independent Poland, after being momentarily entertained at Vienna and London, with the certainty of its finding favour at Paris, had been finally shelved. A reasonable limit had been set to the advance of Russia’s western frontier ; and, since she had already established her predominance in the northern Baltic, the natural process of expansion would henceforth have to take other directions. Meanwhile, the agreement of the three Eastern Powers, effected at Vienna in the face of difficulties for which they were originally alike responsible, once more helped to establish an enduring community of interests between them.

The other partner in the Kalisch compact was likewise obliged to content himself with a partial satisfaction of his expectations. The Treaty of May 18 and the articles of the Final Act founded upon it, which transferred to Prussia, under the title of the duchy of Saxony, a portion of the former Saxon kingdom, represented a solution full of hazard. Whatever importance might attach to the feeling of historical right which had survived the changeful experiences of the German nation under the Holy Roman Empire and since its extinction, there can be no doubt that, in the eyes of a large proportion of that nation (to say nothing of foreign peoples), Prussia, whose conduct towards Hanover in the Revolutionary period was unforgotten, was morally discredited by this annexation. On the other hand, while what remained of the kingdom of Saxony could not suffice as a barrier in the case of a conflict between the two Great Powers of Germany, a State had been preserved of sufficient importance to add considerably at a critical moment to the balance against Prussia. Austria renounced the Bohemian rights of overlordship over the portions of the two Lusatias now ceded to Prussia, except in case of the extinction of the House of Brandenburg.

Passing over the treaties by which Prussia regulated her territorial arrangements with other Governments, we come to her treaties of June 4 and 7 with Denmark and Sweden respectively, by which the former ceded to Prussia Swedish Pomerania and the island of Rügen (acquired by the Treaty of Kiel) in return for part of the duchy of Lauenburg (previously ceded to Prussia by Hanover) and a sum of two million dollars.

The general provisions of the Final Act as to the reconstituted and expanded Prussian monarchy were contained in three articles, of which the first enumerated the territories recovered by it, viz., those which had been formerly under Polish sovereignty, including the city of Danzig and its district; the circle of Cottbus (retroceded by Saxony) and the Old Mark (formerly part of the kingdom of Westphalia); all the former Prussian dominions between Elbe, Weser, and Rhine, but not the former Brandenburg principalities of Ansbach and Baireuth; the portion of the duchy of Cleves on the left bank of the Rhine, and Neuchatel and Valengin. The second of these articles recounted the new acquisitions of Prussia east of the Rhine, comprising, besides the duchy of Saxony and part of Lauenburg, part of the Westphalian department of Fulda, including the former abbacy of Corvey; the free town of Wetzlar, the seat of the Reichskammergerlcht; the grand-duchy of Berg, including the city of Dortmund and parts of the former dominions of the Arch­bishop of Cologne ; the duchy of Westphalia, as assigned at Lunéville to the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt; a large number of princi­palities, countships and lordships formerly “immediate” and belonging to the Westphalian Circle; and those portions of the former dominions of the Nassau-Dietz line, ceded to Prussia by the King of the Nether­lands, which she had not again exchanged with the Duke of Nassau. Finally, a third article defined the districts assigned to Prussia on the left bank of the Rhine, which followed a long line beginning at Bingen, including nearly the whole of the former electorate of Trier and so much of the electorate of Cologne as had lain on the left bank, and terminated by the old Dutch frontier between Rhine and Meuse.

As a result of all these acquisitions and exchanges, the Prussian monarchy gained in population not more than half a million of in­habitants, while, as compared with her extent in 1805, she suffered an actual loss in area. More disappointing, however, to Prussian statesman­ship was its failure to secure to the monarchy the territorial continuity and cohesion for which two military roads connecting its halves afforded no equivalent; nor did the rights of trade and navigation that Prussia had reserved to herself on the Ems make up for her being cut off by Hanover from the North Sea. Prussia’s greatest gain, as has been truly pointed out, lay in the fact that the reconstitution of her territories had not only made the German element in her population more decidedly preponderant than it had been in 1805, but had brought her into cooperation or contact with almost every German interest, and had marked her out as henceforth the principal guardian of the national security on the Rhine. Loyal attachment towards the Prussian throne was certain to be a plant of slow growth in the Catholic Rhine-valley and in ultra-conservative Westphalia ; but all these difficulties must in the end be overcome by Prussia, if her statesmen were resolved to achieve what Austria dared not contemplate.

Among the remaining German States a material increase of strength had been gained, with a rise in dignity, by the new kingdom of Hanover; thanks perhaps partly to her close connexion with Great Britain and partly to the remembrance of the exceptional severity of her recent experiences, but chiefly to the sagacity and vigilance of her represen­tative, Count Munster, and to the peculiar influence which he had so long enjoyed with some of the chief princes and statesmen of Europe. Besides recovering her former province of East Frisia, Hanover acquired the principality of Hildesheim, with the ancient Imperial city of Goslar, and several other additions.

Few transactions at the Congress had given more trouble than the arrangement of the compensations which the Treaty of Ried (October 8, 1813) and the supplementary treaty concluded at Paris (June 3, 1814) between the two Governments promised to Bavaria in return for her cessions to Austria. Bavaria was strongly suspected of an ambition to play the part of a Great Power; and, while distrust of Montgelas combined with dislike of Wrede and his bluster to thwart such schemes, a strong current of patriotic jealousy opposed the scheme of placing Mainz, the key of western Germany, in the hands of a Power so long an eager ally of France. Metternich had, however, very skilfully succeeded in changing the traditional hostility of Bavaria to Austria into an attitude of expectant friendliness. Before the opening of the Congress the two States had advanced a large part of the way towards a settlement by taking possession, Austria of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, and Bavaria of Wurzburg and Aschaffenburg. On April 23, 1815, a treaty was con­cluded between them, and approved by Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain, which, in return for the cession to Austria of the Hausruck and part of the Inn Quarter (old divisions of Upper Austria), with the bulk of the former archiepiscopal territory of Salzburg, assigned to Bavaria an ample series of cessions and reversions which would have secured to her an acceptable frontier. But this treaty, which would have necessi­tated further exchanges, remained unratified; and the Final Act secured no acquisition to Bavaria beyond that of Wurzburg and Aschaffenburg. At Paris, on November 3, a supplementary treaty approved by the Allied Powers secured an exchange to Bavaria by which she received districts in the former French departments of Donnersberg, the Lower Rhine, and the Laar, including the sovereignty of the federal fortress of Landau, with a total population of not far from half-a-million, besides the reversion of the Baden share of the Palatinate; and to this Bavaria at last assented in the Treaty of Munich (April 17,1816).

The Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt was compensated for the duchy of Westphalia and for some minor cessions by a considerable territory on the left bank of the Rhine, which had been included in the French department of Donnersberg, and by a smaller territory on the right bank, formerly under the sovereignty of the Prince of Isenburg. The remaining lands on the left bank at the disposal of the Powers were ultimately distributed among several minor German potentates.

The grand-duchy of Frankfort had in December, 1813, been broken up by the Allies, who had at the same time restored to the city of Frankfort its ancient status as a free Imperial city. This recognition of its historic past, as well as of its future political distinction, found full expression in the final Act, where, in tacit commemoration of Dal berg’s enlightened tolerance, an equality of rights for the several Christian confessions was declared to be established in the city, the care of whose Constitution was committed to the Germanic Diet.

The Germanic Confederation established by the Federal Act, com­prised thirty-eight States, among which a total population of between twenty-nine and thirty millions was distributed with the utmost un­evenness. Austria and Prussia joined for those only of their provinces which had formerly belonged organically to the German Empire, Denmark for Holstein and Lauenburg, and the kingdom of the Netherlands for Luxemburg only. Though the Federal Act had confessedly been con­cluded in haste, its imperfections were not due to any declared funda­mental dissension as to its provisions between the two great German Powers; and its failure, if such was to ensue, would only declare itself gradually. To the claims of the Princes and Counts formerly “immediate” to the Empire, the Emperor of Austria had listened benignly, and the Prussian Government, in the royal ordinance of June 21, 1815, had shown much consideration; but their example was not followed by Bavaria and Würtemberg, and by some of the minor States. It must be allowed that, while some of these former petty potentates had entered into compromising relations with the French Empire, others had, without any fault of their own, lost not only their rights of sovereignty, but in some instances rights of property likewise, besides suffering personal ill-treatment. The provisions of the Federal Act secured to the “mediatised” Princes and in a modified measure to former members of the “immediate” nobility of the Empire, the main­tenance of former family compacts, exemption for themselves and their families from amenability to any but superior judicial tribunals and from military service, and the exercise of criminal jurisdiction at certain definite stages. Their demand of a curial (collective) share in the voting of the plenum of the Diet was reserved for decision by the Diet; so that the protest in which the “Mediatised” placed on record the maximum of their claims, had received distinct encouragement. In the end, however, it proved futile.

Notwithstanding the labours of the special Military Committee, no provision of a satisfactory military frontier for Germany had been introduced into the Federal Act; and the deficiency was only partially supplied in the Final. Though, in the latter, Luxemburg was named as a federal fortress, no such mention was made of Mainz, notwithstanding the pressure put upon Austria and Prussia first by some of the minor German States, and then by Russia, no doubt instigated by Stein. Of the other intended federal fortresses some had been presciently demol­ished by the French; the reconstruction of Ehrenbreitstein was committed to Prussia. On November 3, at Paris, the plenipotentiaries of the Four Allied Powers drew up a final agreement, constituting Luxemburg, Landau, and Mainz federal fortresses—the last-named to be garrisoned, as hitherto, by Austrian and Prussian troops conjointly, with an Austrian governor and a Prussian commander.

If Austria, in the negotiations concerning the Germanic Constitution, displayed a persistent reluctance to assume Imperial responsibilities towards the nation at large, this was not due to any waning of dynastic ambition in the House of Habsburg. Indeed, at the Congress, the power of that House was raised to a height which it had not reached since the age of the Counter-reformation. Adhering to a policy which she had long pursued, Austria had declined to reunite the former “Austrian Netherlands” with her dominions; and any lands recovered or acquired by her on the left bank of the Rhine she merely meant to utilise for later arrangements; but she made up for this self-denial in other quarters. Throughout, she kept a firm hold on the portions of Upper Austria and Salzburg, which Bavaria had consented to give up in addition to Tyrol and Vorarlberg. The Final Act set the seal upon her recovery of all the losses to which a succession of disastrous treaties had subjected her in Italy, and upon the union of all her Italian dominions under the name of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, pro­claimed by her two months earlier. The Valtelline, with Chiavenna and Bormio, which had been reunited with Italy by France, formed part of Austria’s new Italian kingdom; she regained Trent, Aquileia, and Trieste. Carinthia, Carniola, and Trieste (Istria), were likewise re­covered, and henceforth named the kingdom of Illyria. Dalmatia fell back to her, and, enlarged by the territory of the former Republic of Ragusa, and by the Montenegrin seaport of Cattaro, was henceforth also designated a kingdom. Though the reckoning is not easily cast up, it has been estimated that Austria issued from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars with an increase in population amounting to between four and five millions over that of the Habsburg dominions in 1792; she had, moreover, by the large extension of her Adriatic coast-line, become a maritime Power of considerable importance.

Austria might perhaps have been inclined to retain a permanent hold of the Legations; these, however, had been restored to the Holy See with the exception of certain Ferrarese districts on the left bank of the Po, Austria also obtaining the right of garrisoning the fortresses of Ferrara and Comacchio. The duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla were definitively assigned to the “Empress” Marie-Louise, but for her own life only; the succession to be determined by the Five Powers and Spain in common, subject to the reversionary rights of the King of Sardinia. The Final Act defined the enlarged limits of the Sardinian kingdom, and confirmed its possession of Genoa; to the north it made certain cessions to the canton of Geneva; and the Sardinian provinces of Chablais and Faucigny were admitted to a participation in the Swiss neutrality. The Act confirmed Grand Duke (Archduke) Ferdinand in his possession of Tuscany, to which the Stati degli Presidi and part of Elba were added, the rights of Prince Ludovisi Buoncampagni being however reserved both in that island and in the principality of Piombino. Lucca was assigned as a duchy to the Infanta Marie-Louise (late Queen of Etruria), with an increase of income payable by the Emperor of Austria and the Grand Duke of Tuscany, to whom the duchy was to revert in the event of the demise of the Duchess and her son Don Carlos, or of their succession elsewhere. Finally, King Ferdinand IV was recognised by the Powers as King of the Two Sicilies.

The above, together with the stipulations already noticed concerning the Helvetic Constitution, make up the main provisions contained in the Final Act as to the territorial limits of the several European States, and the internal institutions of some of them. With the exception of a reference to the restoration of Olivença as a desirable act of justice to Portugal, the Act was, for the best of reasons, quite silent as to Spain; and it also contained nothing respecting Scandinavian affairs proper. The Swedish plenipotentiary, Count Lowenhielm, had, in the Committee of the Eight, played a more or less passive part, reflecting both the disappointment of Bernadotte’s ulterior ambitions and his desire to adhere to his bargain with Russia, to whose power in the Baltic that of Sweden was now altogether inferior. The King of Denmark’s hopes of a compensation for the cession of Norway had been grievously disappointed; Denmark had to content herself with Lauenburg and the sum of two million dollars, while another sum of three and a half million was paid by Prussia to Sweden. These arrangements, made by treaty on June 4 and 7, found, however, no expression in the Final Act; and indeed Denmark hung back from joining the coalition against Napoleon on his return till sometime after the dissolution of the Congress (August, 1815). Denmark had to pay a severe penalty for her ill-luck; and this may help to explain the fact, otherwise surprising, that no protest was raised by the Powers against her retention of the very profitable right of levying the Sound Dues on European commerce.

A vast number of other claims were left unsatisfied in the final settlement adopted by the Congress—from the persistent prayer of the Greeks for liberation from the Turkish rule and the demand of the Papacy for the restoration of Avignon, down to the grievances of the French military recipients of Napoleonic dotations in Germany and in Italy, where a special fund had been reserved at Milan for the purpose.

If the Congress lacked time for completing those territorial changes and adjustments which formed its primary purpose, it necessarily failed to satisfy expectations as to the settlement of ulterior questions of European interest. With regard to river navigation, the Final Act recited certain bases of agreement settled by the Committee appointed on the subject, providing for the nomination of another Commission to be charged with elaborating these in the form of regulations. Absolute freedom of navigation, in the case of rivers traversing several States or dividing them from one another, was declared, on a uniform system, subject to special regulations in each case; and moderate dues, not variable unless with the consent of all the States concerned, were prescribed. The distinct advantage hereby secured for continental com­merce was of the highest importance at a time when rivers still afforded the principal means for the transport of heavy goods; and it was not unnaturally regretted that the Congress should not have proceeded further, and essayed the more difficult task of facilitating on similar lines the commercial intercourse between States on the coasts of the internal seas of Europe, especially the Mediterranean and the Baltic.

The Declaration of February 8, 1815, concerning the African slave-trade, had announced the intention of the Eight Powers to carry out its universal abolition as promptly and efficaciously as possible by all the means at their disposal But, as this Declaration left to each Power the choice of the date which it might consider most suitable for carrying out the definitive abolition in its own case, the universal accomplishment of the great reform remained a matter of negotiation among the Powers. The document was printed among the annexes to the Final Act, the text of which contained no reference to the subject. An important step forward was taken when Napoleon, anxious to conciliate British public opinion on his return from Elba, decreed the immediate abolition of the slave-trade throughout the French Empire; and, Louis XVIII having been prevailed upon by British diplomacy to follow the usurper’s example, Talleyrand could on July 30 inform the representatives of the Allied Powers that, so far as France was concerned, the slave-trade was forever at an end. The reproach deliberately cast upon Great Britain in one of the sittings of the Slave-trade Committee (January 30) was afterwards repeated by Cardinal Consalvi—that, while so ardent in her condemnation of the African slave-trade, she had displayed culpable indifference as to the acts of violence committed against the personal liberty of Christians by the Barbary pirates. The subject had been brought and kept before the Congress by the exuberant energy of Sir Sidney Smith; but, although Great Britain seemed more than ever called upon to set it at rest since she had taken possession of Malta, whose knights had been the appointed protectors of Mediterranean Christendom, it was only by the Algiers expedition of 1816 that she effectually met this responsibility.

The last of the annexes to the Final Act of the Congress was that which, as already mentioned, classified the diplomatic agents of the several Powers. These regulations expressly abstained from introducing any change as to the legates and nuncii of the Pope, who as a matter of course were ranked in the first class with ambassadors. But the official wrath of the Vatican at much that the Congress had done, or neglected to do, was not thus to be appeased. On June 14 Con-alvi addressed to the Signatory Powers of the Peace of Paris, with an accompanying note, a protest which once more adopted the attitude observed by the Papacy at Münster and at Nymegen. But, in an allocution addressed not long afterwards to the Secret Consistory, Pius VII adopted a more conciliatory tone; and in truth, while his complaint as to the incomplete restoration of his temporal dominions was inevitable, his lament over the extinction of the Holy Roman Empire was little more than a rhetorical flourish. The really important facts for the Church of Rome, though not of a nature to be dealt with either in protests or in allocutions, were that, while the rule of Protestant princes had been newly established over large bodies of Catholic subjects—notably so in Prussia and the Netherlands—the greater part of Poland, whose ecclesiastical allegiance was likewise due to Rome, had been permanently subjected to the dominion of Russia, the representative Power of Eastern Christianity. For Rome and her agents new methods of policy had once more become necessary; and a new period in the history of the Western Church began.

With the exception of the Papacy and Spain, all the Governments of Europe successively sent in their adhesion to the Filial Act and joined in the ratification which involved a general, complete, and reciprocal guarantee of all its articles. The large majority of the provisions contained in the Act and elaborated in its annexes, in so far as they had not been already carried out before the close of the Congress, were executed immediately afterwards. Thus the perpetual neutrality of the Swiss Confederation and the inviolability of its territory were solemnly recognised by the Four Allied Powers and by France at Paris on November 20, 1815. After the conclusion of a series of conventions between the several German Governments, and the promise, in one form or another, of representative Constitutions to their respective subjects by all of them except Austria, the Diet of the Germanic Confederation was opened on November 5, 1816.

 

When the Hundred Days were over, and Paris was once more occupied by the Allies, it became necessary to negotiate another peace with France. The protests of Louis XVIII, who had adhered to the coalition against Napoleon, and had now returned to Paris (July 8), were quite logical; but the Great Powers were unanimous in concluding that a rupture had once more taken place between France and Europe, and that the closing of it must be marked by a general pacification. To the negotiations concern­ing this it was determined by the Four Powers on August 10 not to admit representatives of the other Governments till after the main issues had been decided. In the previous conferences, held from the middle of July onwards between the leading ministers of the Four Powers, a disagreement had already manifested itself as to the securities to be taken against another disturbance of the peace of Europe. On July 22 Hardenberg laid before the Committee of the Four^- Powers the Prussian proposals, which included the strengthening of the Belgian frontier by the cession of a series of French fortresses, and of the German by the cession of Alsace, whose fortresses were to be garrisoned by Austria, and by the transfer to Prussia of those oil the Saar and Upper Moselle; while some of the strong places in the Jura were to be included within the Swiss frontier, and Piedmont was to be placed in possession of the whole of Savoy. It was well known that these views were shared by several of the smaller German Governments, and enthusiastically advo­cated by the Crown Princes of Bavaria and Würtemberg. During the discussions which ensued, Metternich appears to have argued that a territorial cession might fairly be demanded from France, together -with a permanent guarantee consisting in the surrender of the outermost of her three lines of fortresses; and Humboldt finally insisted on much the same minimum. Had Austria and Prussia, before entering upon the new war, agreed upon the demands which they would make on its termination, they might possibly have succeeded in carrying their proposals; but it is open to doubt whether it would have suited Metter­nich, as it assuredly would have been repugnant to Gentz, the confidant of his policy at the Congress of Vienna, to make any radical alteration in its conclusions. The problem was decided by the unwillingness of Great Britain materially to modify, and of Russia to disturb at all, the arrangements of the First Peace of Paris as elaborated at Vienna. Wellington, though unwilling to impose important cessions upon France— a policy which Castlereagh upheld with remarkable resolution—allowed that this First Peace had left her in a position of relatively excessive strength; while Capodistrias argued that, since the war had been under­taken to maintain the conditions then settled, no alteration of them could be expected at its close.

The controversy ended by a rearrangement which cannot be called a compromise. A new line of demarcation was drawn in the north-east, separating from France the whole of the duchy of Bouillon and a portion of the department of the Ardennes; the fortresses of Saarlouis and Landau were transferred to Germany, and Fort Joux to the Swiss Confederation, while the fortifications of Huningen were to be razed. Part of the heavy pecuniary indemnity to be imposed on France was meant to enable her neighbours to complete their defensive system against her. This ultima­tum having been communicated to the French ministry by the pleni­potentiaries of the Four Powers in the conference held on September 20, Talleyrand resisted it with so much vehemence and bitterness, and with so inopportune a reference to first principles, as to convey the impres­sion that in his own opinion the situation would best be saved by his making himself impossible. His speedy resignation of his ministerial office, in which he was succeeded by the Duke of Richelieu, facilitated the conclusion of peace. Thanks to the efforts of the Tsar, easier terms were granted to France, so far as the pecuniary indemnity was concerned.

On September 26, 1815, the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia signed the manifesto known as the Holy Alliance, which proclaimed that, alike in the government of their own monarchies and in their political relations with other States, their conduct would be absolutely regulated by the principles of the Christian religion, and invited the adhesion to this declaration of all the Christian sovereigns and Powers of Europe, including the Most Christian King. This docu­ment, which had been reluctantly signed by the Emperor Francis and King Frederick William without being communicated to their Cabinets, though Metternich had seen and disliked it and suggested certain changes of wording, was not of a nature to be fitted into the peace negotiations; but the Tsar, the author of this “diplomatic apocalypse”, was unmis­takably anxious that the Peace concluded under his predominant influence should be accounted its first-fruits. Nor would it be difficult to show that, though the Holy Alliance had no direct or formal connexion with the Second Peace of Paris, the train of ideas which led Alexander to conceive the one strongly influenced his policy with regard to the other, more especially as to the treatment of France. Under the guidance of Richelieu, the friend of Madame de Krüdener, France would, the Tsar hoped, support him in the execution of his Eastern designs, counter­balancing Great Britain, as his faithful ally Prussia would counterbalance Austria. Yet he did not resist the establishment of the Protectorate of Great Britain over the “United States” of the seven Ionian Islands, which was recognised by the Four Allied Powers on November 5, 1815, though it implied the practical recognition of British naval supremacy in the Mediterranean.

The treaties known collectively as the Second Peace of Paris were concluded on November 20, 1815, the bases of these agreements, after­wards elaborated by Wessenberg, Capodistrias, and Humboldt, and put into their final shape by La Besnardiere and Gentz, having been settled some weeks previously by the representatives of the Great Powers. These treaties provided that the frontiers of France should be those of 1790, with the modifications already indicated, and a few others, including the bipartition between France and Baden of the bridge between Strassburg and Kehl: while certain further contractions of the French frontier, both towards Switzerland and Savoy and towards the Netherlands, were suc­cessfully opposed by Richelieu. No other changes of significance were made in the permanent provisions of the First Peace of Paris and of the Vienna Final Act; and it was stipulated that, in all cases where these provisions were not expressly altered by the present treaty, they were to be regarded as confirmed and maintained by it. The Second Peace of Paris made no attempt to supplement the Final Act where (as in the case of the Bavarian compensation) the Vienna settlement had remained incom­plete. Metternich was therefore very near the mark in observing that the only difference between the First and the Second Peace of Paris, apart from the transfer of a few frontier-places, and the provisions as to the war-indemnity payable by France and the occupation of her soil by the Allies, lay in the wholly justifiable restitution of the artistic spoils brought to Paris by Napoleon.

The stipulations, intrinsically more important, as to the continued occupation of French soil by the allied troops were devised with studied moderation. The total of troops distributed among the northern and eastern fortresses of the kingdom was not to exceed 150,000 men; and the duration of their presence was not to extend beyond five years. The indemnity payable by France was fixed at 700,000,000 francs, to be handed over within five years; and exchequer bonds to the amount of 140,000,000 more were issued, to cover the debts due from France to other countries, which in reality reached a much larger total.

On the same day as that on which this Peace was signed (November 20) the Four Allied Powers agreed to a joint guarantee for its maintenance, thus carrying out the treaties of alliance concluded at Vienna on March 25, 1815, and at Chaumont on March 1, 1814. In this convention, while maintaining the exclusion of Napoleon and his family from the French throne, and renewing their mutual promise to unite if necessary in common measures of war, they undertook to renew at stated intervals meetings between the sovereigns and their plenipotentiaries on subjects of common interest, and for the discussion of measures conducive to the tranquillity and prosperity of their peoples, and to the preservation of the peace of Europe. Thus, while the Holy Alliance was distinctly regarded by the statesmanship of Europe as a declaration of principle leading to no direct results, the agreement between the Four Powers based upon the Treaty of Chaumont meant not only the renewal of an offensive and defensive Quadruple Alliance of the utmost moment, but also the actual beginning of the congressional epoch of European politics. It was left to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) to complete the system of the Five Powers acting in conference by the admission of France into what it declared to be a union animated by the fraternal principles of the Holy Alliance. Certain territorial questions left open at Vienna were here set at rest; others (including those of the Bavarian compensation and the garrisoning of Mainz) were settled by a Committee of representatives of the Four Allied Powers at Frankfort (July, 1819).

 

The Congress of Vienna was in its earlier days accused by critics, judging near at hand like the Prince de Ligne, or at a distance like Goethe, of wasting time. But the assembly which in June, 1815, hurriedly brought its labours to a conclusion was not justly chargeable with slackness. Its task had been, not to make peace in Europe—for, where this had not been accomplished before the meeting of the Congress it had no commission to bring it about—but to elaborate out of the conditions laid down by the First Peace of Paris a political system which should ensure to Europe an endurance of peaceful relations among her States. Within the nine months during which the Congress remained assembled, it was called upon to repair the consequences of a quarter of a century of upheaval. It was therefore incumbent upon the Con­gress, after safeguarding Europe against a recurrence of the same peril from the same quarter by strengthening the frontier against France from the Low Countries to Italy, to redistribute the territories which had been directly or indirectly subject to French rule. This had to be done with a regard to the security and balance of Europe on the one hand, and on the other to just and reasonable claims of former possession. The Congress accomplished its twofold task by reducing France within limits virtually the same as those which had bounded her territory before the Revolutionary Wars, including all her acquisitions under Louis XIV; by constructing on her north-eastern boundary an important secondary State, the Netherlands; by reconstructing Prussia as a Great Power, materially strengthened on the Middle and Lower Rhine, and by the transfer to her of part of Saxony; by establishing in the centre of Europe the Germanic Confederation as a permanent political organi­sation, and restoring, likewise under European guarantee, the Confede­ration of the Swiss Cantons ; by reapportioning Poland among the three Eastern Powers in such a way as to increase the Russian share; and by' enlarging the conservative Austrian Empire, while at the same time balancing its control over northern Italy through the re-establishment of the throne of Sardinia (with increased territorial power) and of the Bourbon throne of the Two Sicilies.

Among the criticisms to which these results were open, the most obvious was that of their incompleteness, as measured not only by the expectations of the European public, but also by the designs of those who took a prominent part in its labours. The scheme cherished, according to Talleyrand, by himself, Castlereagh, and others—that of establishing, in lieu of mere temporary alliances, a permanent system of general and reciprocal guarantee and international adjustment—was broken off by the return of Napoleon. There was some question of deferring the conclusion of the Congress until it should have been com­pleted on these broader lines; and Talleyrand took credit for having perceived the necessity of pressing on the Final Act without waiting for such a consummation. The scheme, had it been carried out, must have amounted to the substitution of a body representing all the European Governments for the self-appointed Committee of the Four Powers which took action at Chaumont and Paris, and into which France was not admitted till 1818.

There is, however, no reason for concluding that the establishment of the former kind of tribunal seriously entered into the conceptions of the leading statesmen of the Congress. The adherence to the Final Act of all the European Governments, its express confirmation by the Second Peace of Paris, and the assumption by the Four Allied Powers of the task of watching over the peace of Europe on the basis thus agreed upon, might fairly be regarded as together offering as complete a security as in the existing condition of things could be obtained. At the same time, it cannot be said that in its territorial arrangements the Congress consistently followed either the principle of legitimacy or any other single principle; indeed, as was more or less inevitable, it largely followed Napoleonic precedent. This applies to the establish­ment of secondary States on the borders of States of the first class (“buffer-states” in more recent phraseology), as in the instances of the Netherlands and of Sardinia; and to the extinction, where possible, of republican Governments (though, paradoxically, Neuchatel was forced into the Swiss Confederation), as well as of aristocratic political corporations. Nor did the Congress, though it might shrink from ruthless disregard of historic usage or tradition, show itself at bottom more readily moved than Napoleon had really been by considerations of nationality. The great historic wrong done to that principle by the partition of Poland was not undone at Vienna. Austria was allowed to consolidate her sway over a large part of Italy; Finland was left under the Russian dominion; Norway was severed from Denmark, to which it was bound by ties of language as well as by other associations. Historic antagonisms and antipathies were treated with as scant regard as were differences of nationality; Catholic Belgium was united with Protestant Holland; Genoa was subjected to her ancient foe the House of Savoy; and Sicily which, when in reluctant union with Naples, had possessed a separate Constitution, was now once more joined to her under a single despotic Government. But on the whole, a business-like spirit predomi­nated in the territorial dispositions of the Congress; violent transfers of sovereign authority were avoided so far as possible; and there was little of that juggling with thrones and principalities which had been habitual with Napoleon. There was, however, a good deal of favouritism in the distribution to the advantage of petty potentates whom the great sovereigns, for reasons of state or of family, desired to oblige; and little appreciation of the claims of nationalities.

The Eastern Question in its various branches—among which the future of Greece, of the Danubian Principalities, and of Egypt had already become prominent—was, with the common consent of the Great Powers, passed by. From want of foresight, probably, rather than of courage, British statesmanship lost an admirable opportunity of impress­ing upon the Porte the necessity of reforming its internal administration, and adhering to treaty engagements with the European Powers; and the indecision which had hitherto characterised Metternich’s Oriental policy likewise operated in favour of inaction. But this was not the only important political question, sooner or later certain to become one of burning interest, which the Congress left untouched. The future of Spanish America likewise remained undiscussed, although British states­men, and Castlereagh in particular, were fully aware that the old régime, which had been restored in the Pyrenean peninsula, could not be revived in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies; and although it was manifest that an independent Spanish America would supply Great Britain, whose own colonial possessions had been so largely augmented, with a market such as had never before been opened to her in the New World. The repressive policy of the Spanish Government was sure to hasten a crisis; as for Portugal, the incorporation with it of Brazil into a single country had been announced, but the Prince Regent prudently remained at Rio. None of the Great Powers besides Great Britain cared to meddle with the Spanish American colonies, Russia wishing to play the part of trusted counsellor at Madrid in Great Britain’s place, and France espousing the interests of the Spanish Bourbons.

Of special methods ensuring the peace and tranquillity of the European family of States, or the good government on which the general peace so largely depended, the Congress was not regardless; but it lacked the time and preparation for profitable discussion. Kant’s Project of a Perpetual Peace bad been just nine years before the world; but it had not yet won the deference which the principles recited in it, rather than the accompanying proposals for their application, deserved; and the London Peace Society was not founded till 1816. The ex­pedient agreed upon at Chaumont and reaffirmed on the conclusion of the Second Peace of Paris had to suffice—namely that of periodical meetings of representatives of the chief European Bowel’s, to whose decisions the other States were to be invited to accede. No proposal for instituting a permanent tribunal of arbitration, or any similar authority for the settling of disputes between the States of Europe, could at present be expected to find serious support; the principles of the public Law of Nations, as interpreted by a preponderance of learning, had in the last resort to be enforced by the joint action of what Metternich called “ moral Pentarchy,” approved and supported by the remaining Govern­ments. When the Congress assembled, there were no doubt many hopes that the dawn of a long if not perpetual era of peace might itself be heralded by a general disarmament. The Congress gave no sign of the willingness of the European Governments, or of the Great Powers in particular, to entertain any such proposal. But a reduction of the military forces of the individual Powers had been actually begun on a considerable scale when the return of Napoleon put a stop to the process. It was something that a beginning, however abortive, should have been made; and the negotiations for the termination of the second occupation of France probably benefited by the precedent. The conception of a permanent armed camp in each of the European States was foreign to the generation which had undergone the experience of a vast military tyranny.

The belief, in the main sincere, that the good government of the several States of Europe, and consequently its general peace, would be greatly assured by the grant of popular representative Constitutions, was encouraged by many influences. Among these were the enthusiastic receptivity of the Emperor Alexander for the liberal ideals presented to him by some of his chosen associates, a widespread conviction of the excellence of the British Constitution, and the extraordinary prestige that had accrued to the constitutional form of government from the stability of the British State and its policy. Yet the process was repugnant to nearly all phases of continental conservatism, and most of all to the dynasty and statesmen of the Austrian Empire. Even Austria, however, made no objection to Constitutions outside her own dominions; and, in more cases than one, the statesmanship of the Congress, like that of Napoleon, was prepared to treat the grant of Constitutions as much less hazardous than their growth. The Final Act itself guaranteed the Germanic Constitution, which in one of its clauses announced that representative Constitutions would be granted in each of the States of the Confederation. It also declared the participation of the Belgic Provinces of the Netherlands in the consti­tutional rights of the Butch; while it protected the national institutions of the Poles who had become subjects of the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Governments respectively, conferred a Constitution on the republic of Cracow, and secured representative rights to Genoa on its annexation to Sardinia. Elsewhere, in Norway, in Spain, and in France itself, the Great Powers were understood to approve the grants of Con­stitutions which they and the Congress were not bound to guarantee.

That the Congress of Vienna was chargeable with shortcomings, omissions, mistakes, and failures; that some of its creations, like the union of Belgium and Holland, proved of very brief endurance, while others, like the Germanic Confederation, were more and more loudly decried; that the aspirations which its settlement failed to satisfy found vent in conflicts, in conspiracies, in insurrections from which no part of the period ending with the revolutionary outbreak of 1848 re­mained wholly free—all this is as true as it was inevitable. But to make the Congress of Vienna the scapegoat of the troubles which marred the general peace and prosperity of the next thirty years is to overlook several considerations. In the first place, the task of the Congress was limited by the terms of its commission, while it must in candour be allowed to have rendered substantial services to the exten­sion of intercourse between European States and to the progress of human civilisation. Secondly, if the commission of the Congress was restricted, so was its real power. Amid the clash of divergent interests, compromise was .the only alternative to coercion or war; and this was clearly seen by the representatives of the Great Powers who virtually controlled the situation. It was indeed no secret; Spain openly defied the Great Powers, of whom she would have fain been accounted one, to deprive her of Olivença; Aargau at one time declared that force alone should compel her to return to subjection under Bern. How near the Great Powers came to an armed conflict among themselves has been seen from the brief account given above of the Saxo-Polish difficulty. The results actually attained by the Congress, or the Committee of the Great Powers which acted on its behalf, could only have been accomplished by means of patient argument, resourceful diplomacy, and a judicious display of firmness. Thus, while much of its success was due to the toil of the Humboldts and the Wessenbergs and of their indefatigable subordinates, some of the credit should in equity also be given to the magnanimous impulses of Alexander, the fairmindedness of the British plenipotentiaries, and above all to the tact of Metternich and his confidential adviser Gentz.

What the Congress, within such limits and restrictions, actually did achieve, was not only to restore a number of princes to the dominions formerly held by themselves or their dynasties, and to revive the independent existence of a number of States which had been subjected to an alien rule; to furnish fresh securities for the reorganised political system of Europe by instituting a federal union of the States of Germany, strengthening that of the cantons of Switzerland, and opening a prospect of constitutional life for a number of European peoples; to rescue a large and unfortunate section of humanity from the indefinite endurance of a cruel and wicked abuse; and to add not a few further provisions favourable to the principle of tolerance and to that of freer and more frequent intercourse between the nations. The Congress did more than this. It built up for Europe a territorial system, which had some doubtful points and some unmistakable defects, and for which permanency could not be hoped any more than for any other set of human devices. But the system itself was neither accidental in its main principles, nor altogether transitory in its main conditions. It re-established a real balance of power in Europe, if this expression be understood to mean that every security was provided against the violent disturbance of the peace of Europe by any one Power, or by any actually existing or probable combination of Powers. An augmented Austrian Empire, a stronger and more thoroughly German Prussia, and a Germanic Confederation whose conditions showed in some respects an unmistakable advance on those of the old Empire, furnished guarantees for the security of continental Europe against Russia as well as against France. The results achieved by the Congress may fairly be described as a settlement which, though open to many criticisms, and in many respects inadequate, on the whole fairly met both the com­mission that it had received, and the demands that could reasonably be made upon its efforts. The method which it exemplified in dealing with the affairs of Europe, though likewise full of imperfections, yet deserved to be called the best and most expeditious hitherto devised by her statesmen in the common interest of her peace.

 

CHAPTER XXII.

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND (1792-1815).