Holy Alliance

For Holy Leagues, see Catholic League (disambiguation).
The founding countries of the Holy Alliance, against European boundaries as of 1840. ----

The Holy Alliance (German: Heilige Allianz; Russian: Священный союз, Svyashchennyy soyuz; also called the Grand Alliance) was a coalition created by the monarchist great powers of Russia, Austria and Prussia. It was created after the ultimate defeat of Napoleon at the behest of Tsar Alexander I of Russia and signed in Paris on 26 September 1815.[1] The intention of the alliance was to restrain republicanism and secularism in Europe in the wake of the devastating French Revolutionary Wars, and the alliance nominally succeeded in this up until the Crimean War (1853–1856). Otto von Bismarck managed to reunite the Holy Alliance after the unification of Germany, but the alliance again faltered by the 1880s over Austrian and Russian conflicts of interest with regard to the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. By extension, the Alliance can be considered the most potent prevention against any other general wars on the continent of Europe between 1815 and 1914.

Establishment

Ostensibly, the alliance was formed to instill the divine right of kings and Christian values in European political life, as pursued by the tsar under the influence of his adviser Baroness Barbara von Krüdener. About three months after the Final Act of the Vienna Congress, the monarchs of Orthodox (Russia), Catholic (Austria) and Protestant (Prussia) confession promised to act on the basis of "justice, love and peace", both in internal and foreign affairs, for "consolidating human institutions and remedying their imperfections."

Despite this noble wording, the Alliance was not only rejected as non-effective by the United Kingdom (though George IV declared consent in his capacity as King of Hanover), but also by the Papal States and the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

Organization

In practice, the Austrian state chancellor Prince Klemens von Metternich made it a bastion against democracy, revolution, and secularism. The monarchs of the three countries involved used this to band together in order to prevent revolutionary influence (especially from the French Revolution) from entering these nations.

Contemporary caricature of the Veronese congress, 1822

The Alliance is usually associated with the later Quadruple and Quintuple Alliances, which included the United Kingdom and (from 1818) France with the aim of upholding the European peace settlement and balance of power in the Concert of Europe concluded at the Congress of Vienna. On 29 September 1818, the Tsar, Emperor Francis I of Austria and King Frederick William III of Prussia met with the Duke of Wellington, Viscount Castlereagh and the Duc de Richelieu at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle to demand stern measures against university "demagogues", which would realize in the Carlsbad Decrees in the following year. At the 1820 Congress of Troppau and the succeeding Congress of Laibach, Metternich tried to align his allies in the suppression of the Carbonari revolt against King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies. The Quintuple Alliance met for the last time at the 1822 Congress of Verona to strive against the Greek Revolution and to resolve upon the French Invasion into Spain.

The last meetings had revealed the rising antagonism with Britain and France, especially on Italian unification, the right to self-determination and the Eastern Question. The Alliance was conventionally taken to have become defunct with Alexander's death in 1825. France ultimatively went separate ways after the July Revolution of 1830, leaving the core of Russia, Austria and Prussia as Central-Eastern European block which once again congregated to suppress the Revolutions of 1848. The Austro-Russian alliance finally broke up in the Crimean War: though Russia had helped to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Austria did not take any action to support her ally, declared herself neutral and even occupied the Wallachian and Moldavian lands on the Danube upon the Russian retreat in 1854. Thereafter, Austria remained isolated, which added to the loss of her leading role in the German lands, culminating in the defeat of the Austro-Prussian War in 1866.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Holy Alliance, Catholic Encyclopedia

Further reading

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