CHAPTER 7 THE LORD OF EUROPE: 1815-1825

Emperor Alexander I
A.M. ALIO

The second stay in Paris turned out to be less pleasant for the Sovereign than the first. He left the capital of France, in which he had spent several months, and headed through Switzerland to Prussia, noting in the end with sadness: 30 million two-legged animals live on this earth, possessing the gift of speech, but having neither rules nor honor: and what can be where there is no religion? And he wrote to his beloved sister Ekaterina: Finally, I got away from this accursed Paris.

Union of England, Russia, France, Austria and Prussia. 1819. Watercolor by Reeve after an original by Heath and Fry
William HIT

On November 20, Russia signed bilateral acts with Austria, England and Prussia, which constituted the so-called Quadruple Alliance. The Union was supposed to ensure the implementation of the decisions of the Congress of Vienna and the coordination of efforts in defense of legitimism. Article VI of the treaty laid the foundation for the subsequent convening of the Congresses of the Allied Powers, the so-called congressional diplomacy.

And on January 6, 1816 in Russia, the Act of the Holy Alliance was promulgated in the tsar's manifesto on the formation and mission of the Holy Alliance. It said: we undertake mutually, both among ourselves and in relation to our subjects, to accept the rule drawn from the words and teachings of Our Savior Jesus Christ, who proclaims to people to live, like brothers, not in enmity and malice, but in peace and love. By order of the Holy Synod, upon the publication of the manifesto, it was necessary to expose its text on the walls of temples, as well as to borrow thoughts from it for sermons.

The era of the new world in Europe. Freedom, Trade and Prosperity, 1815
Friedrich KAMP

HOLY UNION

A reactionary association of European monarchs that arose after the fall of Napoleon's empire. 26. IX 1815 the Russian emperor Alexander I, the Austrian emperor Franz I and the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III signed the so-called. "Act of the Holy Alliance".

The real essence of the "Act", sustained in a pompously religious style, was that the monarchs who signed it were obliged "in any case and in any place ... to give each other benefits, reinforcements and assistance." In other words, S. s. was a kind of mutual assistance agreement between the monarchs of Russia, Austria and Prussia, which was extremely broad.

19. XI 1815 to S. p. the French king Louis XVIII joined; in the future, most of the monarchs of the European continent joined him. England did not formally become part of the Soviet Union, but in practice England often coordinated its behavior with the general line of the Soviet Union.

The pious formulas of the "Act of the Holy Alliance" covered up the very prosaic aims of its creators. There were two of them:

1. Maintain intact that redrawing of European borders, which in 1815 was carried out on Congress of Vienna(cm.).

2. To wage an uncompromising struggle against all manifestations of the "revolutionary spirit."

Actually S.'s activity of page. focused almost entirely on the fight against the revolution. The key points of this struggle were the periodically convened congresses of the heads of the three leading powers of the Soviet Union, which were also attended by representatives of Britain and France. The leading role at the congresses was usually played by Alexander I and K. Metternich. Total congresses S. s. there were four Aachen Congress 1818, Troppau Congress 1820, Laibach Congress 1821 And Congress of Verona 1822(cm.).

Powers of S. with. They stood entirely on the basis of "legitimism," that is, the most complete restoration of the old dynasties and regimes overthrown by the French Revolution and the armies of Napoleon, and proceeded from the recognition of absolute monarchy. S. s. was a European gendarme, holding the European peoples in chains. This was most clearly manifested in the position of S. s. in relation to the revolutions in Spain (1820-23), Naples (1820-21) and Piedmont (1821), as well as to the uprising of the Greeks against the Turkish yoke, which began in 1821.

On November 19, 1820, shortly after the outbreak of the revolution in Spain and Naples, Russia, Austria, and Prussia signed a protocol at the Troppau Congress, which openly proclaimed the right to intervene in the three leading powers of the Socialist Revolution. into the internal affairs of other countries in order to fight the revolution. England and France did not sign this protocol, but they did not go beyond verbal protests against it. As a result of the decisions taken at Troppau, Austria received the authority to suppress the Neapolitan revolution by force and at the end of March 1821 occupied the Kingdom of Naples with its troops, after which the absolutist regime was restored here. In April of the same 1821, Austria forcibly crushed the revolution in Piedmont.

At the Verona Congress (October - December 1822), through the efforts of Alexander I and Metternich, a decision was made on armed intervention in Spanish affairs. The authority for the actual implementation of this intervention was given to France, which really invaded Spain on 7. IV 1823 with a 100,000-strong army under the command of the Duke of Angouleme. The Spanish revolutionary government resisted the foreign invasion for half a year, but in the end the interventionist forces, supported by the Spanish internal counter-revolution, were victorious. In Spain, as earlier in Naples and Piedmont, absolutism was restored.

S.'s position was no less reactionary. in the Greek question. When a delegation of Greek rebels arrived in Verona to ask the Christian sovereigns, and above all Tsar Alexander I, for help against the Sultan, the congress even refused to listen to her. England immediately took advantage of this, which, in order to strengthen its influence in Greece, began to support the Greek rebels.

The Congress of Verona in 1822 and the intervention in Spain were, in essence, the last major acts of the S. s. After that, it actually ceased to exist. S.'s disintegration with. was due to two main reasons.

First, within the union, contradictions between its main participants very soon came to light. When in December 1823 the Spanish king Ferdinand VII turned to S. s. For help in subduing her "rebellious" colonies in America, England, interested in the markets of these colonies, not only declared a strong protest against all attempts of this kind, but also defiantly recognized the independence of the American colonies of Spain (31.XII 1824). This drove a wedge between S. s. and England. Somewhat later, in 1825 and 1826, on the basis of the Greek question, relations between Russia and Austria, the two main pillars of the Soviet Union, began to deteriorate. Alexander I (toward the end of his reign) and then Nicholas I supported the Greeks, while Metternich continued his former line against the Greek "rebels". 4. IV 1826 between Russia and England was even signed the so-called. Petersburg protocol on the coordination of actions in the Greek question, clearly directed against Austria. Contradictions were also revealed between other participants in S. s.

Secondly—and this was especially important—despite all the efforts of reaction, the growth of revolutionary forces in Europe continued. In 1830 revolutions took place in France and Belgium, and an uprising against tsarism broke out in Poland. In England, the turbulent movement of the popular masses forced the Conservatives to adopt the electoral reform of 1832. This dealt a heavy blow not only to the principles, but also to the very existence of the Soviet Socialist Party, which actually disintegrated. In 1833, the monarchs of Russia, Austria, and Prussia tried to restore the S. s, but this attempt ended in failure (see. Munich Convention).

The ideological and political basis of the Vienna system of international relations was the union of the great powers of Europe - at first the Quadruple (tetrarchy) consisting of Russia, Austria, Prussia and Great Britain, as the main participants in the victory over Napoleon, and later, with the addition of France, the Five (pentarchy). The core of both on a contractual basis was the Holy Alliance of the first three, in which Russia played a significant role, focusing on close cooperation with the two main German states, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia.

The Quadruple Alliance was a purely secular confederation of four great powers that overturned Napoleon's dominion. Its direct purpose was, firstly, to remove the Napoleonic dynasty from the French throne and, secondly, to prevent the spread of the ideas of the French revolution in Europe. According to the meaning of the treaty, the four powers perpetuated and carried out that close alliance, which was originally concluded to continue the war against the Corsican usurper until a favorable outcome and then extended to the subsequent period of peace. A European "domination of four" (tetrarchy) was created and established, instead of the French hegemony, which the powers opposed and crushed. But since the sphere of their united legislation was wider than that of Napoleonic influence, it can be argued that never before that time had Europe been so close in terms of government to a unitary state as in the treatise of November 20, 1815. The four Powers took the Continent of Europe under their guard, declared themselves "equally favorable to every saving measure taken to ensure the tranquility of Europe", and came to an agreement in order to "strengthen the relations which at the present moment so closely bind the four monarchs to the well-being of the universe to resume meetings “at certain intervals or in the direct presence of the monarchs themselves, or with the participation of ministers replacing them, for meetings on issues of interest to each of them, as well as to discuss those measures that for a given era can be recognized as most useful for peace and the well-being of peoples and for the maintenance of European peace.” Thus was founded in Paris on those principles which had been accepted as fundamental in Chaumont and Vienna, that European concert which for the next seven years kept the Continent in strict discipline. Under his patronage, congresses were convened in Aachen, Troppau, Laibach and Verona. Between these congresses, the ambassadors of the four powers, who had their residences in Paris, formed something in the nature of a standing committee, through; which four governments could conveniently and quickly come to unanimous decisions. The main leadership of the "concert" was in the hands of Metternich, who took advantage of his enormous influence in order to fight against the principles of the revolution, i.e., democracy and nationalism, at every opportunity. But the consent and unanimity of the concerto did not long follow the course that its leader Metternich had given it. In 1822, Britain officially separated from its three accomplices, protesting against the principle of interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. In 1827, Russia was forced to break with Prussia and Austria in order to be able to freely act in defense of the Greeks, who were destroyed by the Turks. Kinyapina NS Russia's foreign policy in the first half of the 19th century. - M., 1963 ..

If Russian pre-revolutionary conservative historians praised tsarism, speaking as apologists for the aristocratic-autocratic system in Russia, then Western ones, on the contrary, downplay the role of Russia in every possible way and glorify the governments of European powers. The common shortcomings of both are the immense subjectivity in assessing the rulers of states and the very weak use of archives.