ABSTRACT
Internationally, the situation changed dramatically between 1831 and 1848. The consolidation of the liberal regime in France after the July Revolution (1830), and the long tenure of office of the Whig-dominated ministries in the United Kingdom (1830–4, 1835–41 and 1846–52), meant that the acquiescence on which the Holy Alliance and the Treaty of Vienna rested was seriously shaken for the first time. Now the two main Western European powers were ideologically at odds with the system of absolutism still enshrined in both the Austrian and Russian systems. France and Britain actively cooperated in support of the liberal faction in the Spanish civil war (1833–40), which resulted in the victory of Queen Isabella's constitutional party. This time there was no Holy Alliance intervention, which, in any case, could not have been carried out without invading liberal France and precipitating a European war, which nobody wanted. Yet, within the Italian peninsula these events had a limited impact: the situation remained as the Congress of Vienna had left it.
