Episode 512: The Congress of Vienna

to the glittering city of Vienna. The guns had finally fallen silent Napoleon Bonapartes, the insatiable conqueror who had upset the apple cart of Europe, who had redrawn maps like he was reshuffling cards and playing just a large game of risk, and finally abdicated in April and been sent to the island of Elba. But no treaty yet stitched the continent back together, and as a result, peace remained fragile.

No principle explained how monarchies toppled and shaken by the French Revolution and decades of war could or would recover. There was honestly only one simple and yet impossible question for Europe to answer, what was the world going to look like after Napoleon? And into this uncertainty stepped the greatest diplomatic gathering that Europe had ever seen to date, the Congress of Vienna, the Congress that will dictate basically the terms of play through the rise of Germany, and

that is a mass of achievement. Now. When the delegates began to arrive in September eighteen fourteen, Vienna became something like the capital of an empire of hope, and of course intrigue aristocrats, diplomats and military men flooded into the city. Contemporary observers joked quote, the Congress does not work, it dances, But behind the music deals were forged that would determine

the structure of Europe for the next century. And at the center of the proceedings stood the glittering host, Prince Clements von Metterniche, Austria's foreign minister. Cunning, elegant, and tirelessly calculating meta Niche envisioned a Europe held together by conservatism, by tradition, and by careful balance of the great powers. He once quipped, when France sneezes, Europe catches a cold,

and he didn't want any more epidemics of revolution. That's worth spending a couple of minutes and talking about Metterniche a little bit more. By the time Napoleon seized power in France, Metterniche had already begun to make his reputation as one of Austria's most promising young diplomats. His postings in Dresden and Berlin taught him the subtle balance of German politics, but it was his ambassadorship into Paris, beginning in eighteen o six that transformed him into a statesman

of European stature. In Paris, he observed Napoleon at the height of his power, commandeering and utterly totally unbounded by traditional constraints. Metterniche studied him closely, almost clinically, understanding that France's new emperor could both destroy Europe and unknowingly maybe create the conditions for its renewal. As Napoleon reshaped the continent through the camp Pains of eighteen oh five, eighteen oh six and eighteen oh nine, Metterniche reported at home

with a mixture of admiration and dread. He grasped earlier than most that Austria would need to survive this storm, not by bravado and military means, but by prudence and diplomacy. The turning point, of course, came in eighteen oh nine, when Austria suffered another shattering defeat at Wagram that Autumn, meta Niche became Austrian's Foreign minister, inheriting a state that

was exhausted, humiliating, and honestly unsure of its future. His first task was to buy time, time for Austria to recover, to rebuild, and to choose its moment. It was Metterniche who engineered a marriage between Napoleon and the Archduchess Marie Luis, a gesture of conciliation that massed a much deeper calculation. Napoleon, he realized, was burning through his strength, and Austria would reap advantage by appearing coure operative until France's inevitable overreach.

As Moscow went up in flames in eighteen twelve and Napoleon's army dissolved into the Russian Snow. Metterniche now saw his long awaited opportunity, and so by eighteen thirteen it was meta Niche who had maneuvered Austria into a position to join the Sixth Coalition, helping to bring down the

empire that had dominated Europe for two decades. And when Napoleon finally fell from power in eighteen fourteen, it was Metterniche, elegant certain of his purpose, who stepped forward to guide the shattered continent toward the Congress of Vienna, determined to restore not only borders, but the very principle of order itself. Now meta niche wasn't the only powerful man present in Vienna. Other giants arrived in turn. Czar Alexander the First swept

into Vienna with almost mystical ambitions. Part warrior saint, part idealistic reformer, Alexander the First saw himself honestly as the man who had liberated Europe from Napoleon's tyranny, and believed his destiny had placed him at the center of new world order. He was also a man who was highly cognizant of the price that the Russian people had paid

to bring Napoleon down. Now, Britain sent its brilliant statesmen via Count castorlith steady and precise, representing an island nation that had funded the struggle against Napoleon for twenty years and now wanted a stable continent that wooden't threat in

trade or peace. Prussia arrived with dreams of territorial expansion, hungry to strengthen its position after suffering under French occupation for over a decade, and then of course, there was France, the conquered, humiliated nation that had caused all the upheaval in the first place. Yet France, astonished, sent the one man who had become perhaps the most skillful voice at the Congress, tally Rand, the wily diplomat who had survived

Revolution Empire in exile. He now came representing the restored Bourbon monarch of Louis the eighteenth, Claiming that France, though defeated, could not be treated as a pariah. Tally Brand would quickly turn his tables on his rivals in ways that few could be predicted. Now, the central work of the Congress of Vienna was to restore an equilibrium what Metterniche

calls the balance of power. And this is going to be the deciding principle that is going to guide Europe really all the way up until the First World War, certainly until the Franco Prussian War. It's really the rise of Germany that's going to upset the apple cart with all of this. But the idea was that no single state should ever again become powerful enough to dominate Europe as France had under Napoleon. So the question was how to do this and really they only had a couple

of tools at their disposal. They had land, they had economic power, and then they had population. You know, if you're thinking about it from a nineteenth century perspective, you know, those are the pieces that are on your board. You know, if the country's going to become more powerful and put in a position to dominate the rest of Europe, then it has to have those three things, and enough of those three things that they can actually overwhelm the combined

weight of other territorial powers. So the first thing that had to happen were certain territories had to be shifted around, because the reality was that land was tied to economic productivity. Still. Although the industrial Revolution had now begun in England, and we'll come back to that actually really short over here, but it had not really taken over to the extent that now we were going to be dealing with this

totally industrialized society. The vast majority of Europe was still by and large agrarian, and so the income that came from the land was really important establishing economic dominance. Likewise, you needed food to support a large population, and so land and population retied together. So as a consequence, territories got swapped around, just kind of traded back and forth like chess pieces in order to try to achieve this magical balance of power that Meturnetian everybody else thought was

so important. First was the idea is that Austria would lose influence in the Holy Roman Empire, but in exchange, it was going to get control over a lot of northern Italy, including Lombardy and Venice, and Prussia would be the one who'd be compensated because they were now going to get large swaths of Saxony and the Rhineland territories that are actually going to sow the seeds of the destruction of the balance of power principle in general, because

those are the territories that are going to allow Prussia to industrialize, and those are the territories that are going to allow Bismarck eventually to knit Germany together with iron Ore and Tracks. Now, Russia kept pressing for control of Poland, seeking a large Polish kingdom under Russian influence. This proposal, however, terrified both Austria and Britain and didn't want to change a French domination of Europe for a Russian domination of Europe.

And so that was going to be checked. For the moment, Britain was least concerned with land. Britain didn't want land holdings on the continent. Britain, and a lot of his experience in the Americas as well, tended to see these pieces of land not as benefit but as ulcers, as territories that we're going to be requiring defending without not

a ton of upside. Britain's gaze was now shifting to worldwide commerce, and their domination in that area is going to become principal to understanding our story as it goes forward. It wanted naval bases and it wanted colonial outposts that would protect its global trade routes, so that was its goal. Now the bargaining table was rather relentless. Tsar Alexander was determined to have Poland, insisting that he alone had the

moral authority to restore Polish nationhood. Metter Niche resisted fiercely. He saw how close Russia would be to Austria if it got control over Poland, which was the only buffer state at the time, and if that happened, he realized that a poor little Austria simply wouldn't have the capacity to stand up to the Tsar. Now, meanwhile, Prussia continued to make demands for more and more of Saxony, whose

king had actually sided with Napoleon. In the last little one hundred days, Europe seemed like it was on the brink of another war, this time actually amongst the victors of the last war. And that is when tally Rand stepped in. France had no right to leave these negotiations, and everybody kind of recognized this. Tallyrand saw, however, that there was a huge weakness in the Allied coalition. He argued with elegance that quote unquote, the great powers must

act according to legitimacy. That it wasn't just a balance of power that was going to restore order to Europe. It was that overarching idea of legitimacy that kings or ruling powers had to be vested with that right to rule. The people who were under them had to see that they had that right to rule, because if they didn't have that, then you were just going to deal with space after space of French revolution cropping up in Prussia, then maybe Austria and then Spain again, and maybe even

background to France. You know, there was never going to be any end to this carousel. So there had to be the restoration of rightful monarchs. And therefore he decided and argued that Saxony's king had to keep his throne because he was the proper king of Saxony. By siding with Austria and Britain against Prussia and Russia, France astonishingly found itself back in the circle of great powers only

a year after Napoleon had been finally defeated. Talleyrand's maneuverings they saved Saxony, but more importantly, they checked Russian ambition and they re elevated France among its European peers. His success today remains one of diplomacy's greatest achievements. Now, by early eighteen fifteen, the diplomats had now pretty much finished up what they were going to be doing. But then came the shock, of course that we know that rippled like a thunder across Europe. And that was on March

the first Napoleon escaped from Elba. As news spread through the ballrooms of Vienna, there was suddenly an eerie silence. Metterniche, who had built his entire worldview on containing the revolution's chaos, saw his fears materialized literally overnight. The great Powers reacted in unison, saying, quote, the outlaw is no longer an empire, he is a criminal. They vowed not to negotiate with him, each signing declarations that made war not against France but

against Napoleon personally. And while the Congress continued its technical work, the armies, as we know, marched again, and one hundred days later at Waterloo, Napoleon was again and finally defeated again, as we know. The Congress then reconvened with grim determination to finish its work and to secure the peace terms forever.

The final Act of the Congress of Vienna, which was signed on the ninth of June eighteen fifteen, became one of the most important diplomatic documents, really and honestly in the history of the w world. It's goals were conservative, but they were very visionary. A listen, the Congress of Vienna was a conservative body, like there's no doubt about it. Like the goal behind the Congress of Vienna was to

turn back the clock to before the French Revolution. They didn't realize that there was no way to do that, but the reality was is what they were trying to do from a pragmatic standpoint, which is secure a world without war is something that we're still trying to do well today. And so should we fault them necessarily because it didn't work out? I can't say that. I think so.

The idea was to create a Europe where no single power could ignite another continent wide war, and so I think there's a couple of key takeaways I want to go over. First is that, at least for the next oh, gosh, I'll say roughly century, one hundred years, the balance of power was restored. There was no state that emerged overwhelmingly dominant. Territory was distributed in such a way that equilibrium was kept. Traditional monarchies were also restored in France, Spain, Portugal and

in parts of Italy. So there was that sort of legitimacy restoration that both Meta Niche and to an extent Tallyrand were looking for. And then there was the success of the German Confederation, because remember Napoleon ended the Holy Roman Empire kind of it really ended. However, during the Congress of Vienna. Now there was going to be a modern German Confederation, not some old holdover from the days

arguably of Charlemagne going back to the ninth century. Now there's going to be a German Federation, a loose association of thirty nine German states, which replaced the Holy Roman Empire and came under at least temporarily Austrian leadership. Of course, there was the success of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands have been fighting for freedom forever, against Spain, Britain for a little bit, and then of course against France.

And now the Kingdom of the Netherlands joined with Belgium to create a strong buffer state against France and anyone else around. In fact, Switzerland was now declared permanently neutral, a status that actually continues to this day. So if you look at things that have been accomplished several hundred years ago, it's pretty rare to find something, but we did. The slave trade was also officially condemned. The Congress issued one of the earliest multi national statements against the African

slave trade, largely led by Britain. More on slavery next week. Perhaps the most enduring creation wasn't a map, but it was a system. It was a commitment among the great powers to consult with one another and resolve disputes through diplomacy rather than war. This Concert of Europe became kind of an early United Nations. It was informal, but it was effective at maintaining the peace, and so over almost a century, from eighteen fifteen to nineteen fourteen, there would

be no general European war. The Congress of Vienna by and large achieved what few had expected, a real and lasting peace. Now, finally the delegates departed Vienna, and the city was able to breathe the sigh of I suppose a little relief. The waltzes forever faded, the carriages rolled away, but the imprint of the work that they did endured. Metterniche conservative order would dominate Europe's for decades, battling back revolutions in eighteen thirty and again in eighteen forty eight.

The equilibrium that he built allowed states to industrialize, to modernize, and to compete without plunging immediately into chaos. Critics later condemned the Congress or resisting liberalism, for upholding the idea of absolute monarchies, for ignoring national self determination, in short, for resisting change, but they weren't entirely wrong. Yet. Even

those critics acknowledged something remarkable. The Congress of Vienna created the most stable international system Europe had ever known, and in a century that had been defined by rapid change, nationalism, ideology, the railroads, we haven't even begin to talk about that yet. It kept the peace long enough for the modern world to take shape. So next week, and we've really kind of finally put a pin on the French Revolution episodes.

Next week we've got to fly back across the Pond, and I'm going to kind of go back and also go forward. We're going to talk about a couple of presidential administrations and why they matter in the scope of Western civilization. But then we're also going to start to look at what is going to become by far and away the most pressing issue for the young American Republic,

and that is, of course, shadow slavery. Shadow slavery is going to dictate everything that America does up and through the American Civil War, which is now sixty some years away from when we at least last left off in the War of eighteen twelve. So we're going to pick

it back up. We're going to talk about that a little bit, and then we're going to continue in the Americas to visit a number of revolutions that are rocking Central and South America in ways that will continue to reshape the globe in ways that we continue to see them today as we continue this rapid roller coaster descent in our final year of Western civ Love