ABSTRACT
Following the Napoleonic upheavals it was, as Lord Castlereagh put it, the duty of politicians to ‘bring back the world to peaceful habits’ (Knapton and Deny 1965 p. 4). The Congress of Vienna (1814-15) achieved a broad measure of success over reconstruction in Germany, Italy and Poland; thanks to a spirit of cooperation among restored hereditary monarchies and new enlarged kingdoms within a ‘Concert of Europe’ which convened congresses to deal with threats to stability. A further massive conflagration was prevented for almost exactly a century (apart from the Crimean interlude). However, the three eastern powers were largely responsible for redrawing the map of Europe, with a balance of power between them. The Russians, who had contributed so much to the overthrow of Napoleon, obtained the greater part of Poland (more than had been gained under the eighteenth-century partitions) and held on to Finland and Bessarabia (gained in 1809 and 1812, respectively); Austria regained Dalmatia and Istria as well as portions of Carinthia and Carniola; Prussia made progress in Saxony as well as the Rhineland, but regained only part of her Polish territory which Napoleon had appropriated for his Grand Duchy of Warsaw. These powers were highly reactionary after 1815 and rightly saw nationalism as a threat to empire. In the Habsburg Empire the notion of balance inherent in the ‘Metternich System’—named after the empire’s highly intelligent foreign minister-was based on a frank recognition of conflicting ethnic elements (German, Italian, Magyar, Romanian and Slavic) that only an absolute power could mediate successfully, even though the grand design trampled on the aspirations of the peoples of ECE after the stimulation of the Napoleonic era. The compromise-such as it was-would clearly not be sustainable as the nineteenth century turned out to be a period of unprecedented change across Europe with the growth of urban-industrial interests, and while the basic outline proved durable there were continual struggles and adjustments and significant changes in the balance among the great powers of the region which finally erupted in the First World War.
