In 1815, once Napoleon was safely exiled in St. Helena, European leaders came together in what is known as the Congress of Vienna, to discuss how Europe would recover. The Congress of Vienna included leaders and politicians from Austria, Britain, Russia, Prussia, and yes, France. Their goal: to make sure a conqueror like Napoleon would never rise up again and destabilize the balance of power in Europe. By restoring old systems of government (such as dynastic monarchies), old hierarchies, and old religious orders (such as Catholicism), they would maintain a conservative atmosphere throughout Europe and crush any leader or revolution that would threaten that atmosphere.
The Congress of Vienna would shape European politics for the next century, leading to what we refer to as the Concert of Europe (1815-1914), where authorities would come together to crush revolutions and other national or liberal aspirations. Vienna was led by Austrian minister Klemens von Metternich, who said the famous “when France sneezes, Europe catches a cold” which refers to the French Revolution. And he was quite right, as revolutions would indeed brew in Europe in the 19th century. The Concert of Europe had better be prepared.
In 1825, a military revolution in St. Petersburg, known as the Decembrist Revolt, was crushed by Tsar Nicholas I, who established an autocratic regime in Russia and ensured that rebellion could not be fermented. In 1830, an uprising in France made the authority of the new French monarch, Louis-Philippe, limited by a constitution. Belgium and Serbia would also gain their independence in 1830; Belgium from the Dutch, Serbia from the Ottomans.
The greatest influx of revolutions came in 1848. France, again, had an uprising, which temporarily established a republican government before the rise of another Napoleon, Napoleon III. Small scale revolutions occurred in Italy as the peninsula tried to unify into one. A Hungarian independence movement led Austria to split into a dual monarchy, Austria-Hungary. In an assembly at Frankfurt in 1848, the idea of a newly unified Germany was brought up, as well as a push for liberal reform.
Although the Concert of Europe was weakened by these revolutions, it did succeed in preventing a large-scale European war until the rise of Germany and Italy (both of which would unify in 1871), which preceded World War I. Napoleon’s conquest had led to many alliances and coalitions of nations that engulfed Europe in war for about a decade. With the Concert in place, that would not happen until 1914. The unifications of Italy and Germany were a serious blow to the conservative atmosphere, and along with some conflicts in the Balkans, the first World War erupted. But more on that in the future.
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