The Concert of Europe and European Conservatism

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Account for how the European political order was preserved and challenged between 1815 and 1914 (Skill 5.B; LO F).
• Account for KC-3.3.I.C: how conservatives developed a new ideology in support of traditional political and religious authorities, anchored in the view that human nature is not perfectible.
• Account for KC-3.4.I: how the Concert of Europe (the Congress System) sought to maintain the post-Vienna status quo through collective action.
• Account for KC-3.4.I.A: how Metternich, the principal architect of the Concert, used it to suppress nationalist and liberal movements.
• Account for KC-3.4.I.B: how conservatives reestablished control in many European states and tried to roll back movements for change.

Topic 6.5 traces the conservative political settlement that defined European international relations between 1815 and 1848. Three connected developments organize the topic: the Concert of Europe as a system of diplomatic coordination, the new conservative ideology that justified the system, and Metternich's leadership of the principal interventions against revolutionary and nationalist movements. The settlement held for roughly thirty-three years and shaped the politics of the period until the 1848 revolutions broke it down (Topic 6.6).

The Concert of Europe. KC-3.4.I captures the system: the Concert of Europe (or Congress System) sought to maintain the post-Vienna status quo through collective action and shared adherence to conservative principles. The Concert grew out of the 1814-1815 Vienna settlement (Topic 5.7) and the November 1815 Quadruple Alliance among Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia. France joined the Concert as a fifth great power at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, after the Bourbon Restoration government had paid off its war indemnity. The Concert operated through periodic congresses where the foreign ministers and (sometimes) heads of state of the principal powers met to coordinate responses to political crises. The principal congresses were Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), Troppau (1820), Laibach (1821), and Verona (1822). After 1822 the Concert continued as ad hoc consultation rather than periodic congress.

The Concert had a narrower diplomatic basis than the more idealistic Holy Alliance. The Holy Alliance, signed by Tsar Alexander I, Emperor Francis I of Austria, and King Frederick William III of Prussia in September 1815, committed the three monarchies to govern according to Christian principles and to support each other against revolutionary threats. Britain and the Papal States declined to sign; the British foreign secretary Castlereagh privately described the Holy Alliance as "a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense," but it nonetheless became closely identified with the conservative international system Metternich led.

The key principles of the Concert were three. First, the principle of legitimacy — that legitimate political authority derived from inherited dynastic right rather than from popular sovereignty — required restoring the Bourbon, Habsburg, Hohenzollern, Bourbon-Sicily, and other pre-revolutionary dynasties. Second, the principle of compensation aimed at preserving a balance of power among the great states by territorial adjustment after each crisis. Third, the principle of intervention, formalized at Troppau in 1820, asserted the right of the great powers to intervene against revolutionary movements in any European state. The intervention principle was the most actively contested: Britain dissented from the Troppau Protocol, marking the beginning of British divergence from the continental Concert.

The new conservative ideology. KC-3.3.I.C: conservatives developed a new ideology in support of traditional political and religious authorities, which was based on the idea that human nature was not perfectible. The principal voices were Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, and Klemens von Metternich.

Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790, covered in Topic 5.1) provided the foundational text. Burke argued that legitimate political reform should build on inherited institutions rather than overthrow them; that society is a partnership across generations rather than a momentary contract among living individuals; and that abstract rationalism applied to politics produces violence rather than liberty. Burke's argument anticipated the radical Jacobin phase of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror that followed in 1793-1794. Reflections became the principal English-language text of nineteenth-century political conservatism.

Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) was a Savoyard counter-revolutionary and the principal French-language conservative theorist. His Considerations on France (1797), Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions (1814), and St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821) defended divine-right monarchy, the institutional authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and the necessity of executive authority backed by force. De Maistre treated the French Revolution as a divine punishment for Enlightenment-era impiety and rejected popular sovereignty in any form. His arguments were more thoroughly anti-revolutionary than Burke's and influenced the Catholic conservative tradition (Lamennais, the Spanish Carlists) and the Russian official conservatism of the nineteenth century.

Klemens von Metternich himself articulated the conservative principles in his diplomatic correspondence and (most explicitly) in the 1820 "Confessions of Faith" memorandum to Tsar Alexander I. Metternich treated the principal political danger as the spread of liberal-revolutionary ideas through journalism, university education, and secret societies. The remedy was systematic suppression of revolutionary infrastructure: censorship, surveillance, prohibition of secret societies, and military intervention against active revolutionary movements. Metternich's view of human nature was unsentimentally pessimistic: stable political order required visible authority and active suppression of subversion, not appeals to popular consent.

Metternich and the Concert in practice. KC-3.4.I.A: Metternich, the architect of the Concert of Europe, used it to suppress nationalist and liberal movements. Three principal episodes illustrate the system in action.

The 1819 Carlsbad Decrees were the German-Confederation application of Metternich's program. After the radical student Karl Sand assassinated the conservative writer August von Kotzebue in March 1819, Metternich convened a conference of the principal German states at Carlsbad. The resulting decrees imposed press censorship across the German Confederation, dissolved nationalist student associations (the Burschenschaften), placed universities under state surveillance, and established a central commission at Mainz to investigate revolutionary activity. The Carlsbad Decrees defined the political climate of the German states for the next thirty years.

The 1820 Troppau Protocol responded to revolutionary outbreaks in Spain (the Riego revolt of January 1820 forcing Ferdinand VII to restore the 1812 constitution) and Naples (the Carbonari-led July 1820 movement forcing Ferdinand I to grant a constitution). Meeting at Troppau in November 1820, Russia, Austria, and Prussia adopted a protocol asserting the right of the great powers to intervene against revolutionary regime changes in member states. Britain (under Castlereagh) and France (under Richelieu) dissented but did not actively oppose the principle. The Austrian army occupied Naples in March 1821 under the protocol, restored Ferdinand I to absolutist rule, and remained as occupation force until 1827. A French army under the Duke of Angouleme invaded Spain in April 1823 (formally authorized at the 1822 Verona congress), restored Ferdinand VII to absolutist rule, and remained until 1828.

KC-3.4.I.B: conservatives reestablished control in many European states and attempted to suppress movements for change and, in some areas, to strengthen adherence to religious authorities. The post-Vienna restoration of dynasties was largely successful in continental Europe through the 1820s. The Bourbons returned to France (Louis XVIII 1814-1824, then his brother Charles X 1824-1830) and to Spain (Ferdinand VII 1814-1833). The Habsburgs retained the Austrian Empire and dominated northern Italy through the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia (1815-1859/1866). The Bourbon-Sicily dynasty returned to Naples and Sicily. The papacy restored the Papal States. The Hohenzollerns retained an enlarged Prussia and the Romanovs an enlarged Russia. In some places — particularly Spain under Ferdinand VII, the Italian states under their restored monarchs, and Austria under Francis I — the restoration also strengthened the institutional position of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Concert was not uniformly successful. Three principal challenges accumulated through the 1820s and 1830s. The Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) produced an awkward outcome: although the Concert powers initially treated the Greek revolt against Ottoman rule as a revolutionary movement, the public sympathy of European liberals (and the strategic interests of Britain and Russia) eventually produced great-power intervention on the Greek side, and an independent Greek state emerged in 1830. The 1830 Belgian Revolution produced a successful liberal-nationalist breakaway from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands; the Concert powers acquiesced and recognized Belgian independence in 1831 (formal recognition came with the 1839 Treaty of London). The 1830 July Revolution in France replaced the Bourbon Charles X with the more liberal Louis-Philippe of the Orleans branch — another revolutionary regime change the Concert could not reverse. By the late 1830s, the Concert was clearly losing its capacity to suppress every revolutionary or nationalist movement that arose. The 1848 revolutions (Topic 6.6) would break the system entirely.

Three sources framing the conservative settlement: Metternich's "Confessions of Faith" memorandum, Joseph de Maistre on monarchy, and the 1820 Troppau Protocol on intervention.

1. (Continuity and Change, Skill 5.B) Account for how the European political order was preserved and challenged between 1815 and 1848. Identify two specific successes of the Concert system and two challenges it could not contain.
2. (Continuity and Change) Account for KC-3.3.I.C: how did conservatives develop a new ideology in support of traditional political and religious authorities? Compare the Burke, Joseph de Maistre, and Metternich versions of the ideology.
3. (Continuity and Change) Account for KC-3.4.I: how did the Concert of Europe seek to maintain the post-Vienna status quo? Identify the four principal congresses (Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach, Verona) and the issues each addressed.
4. (Continuity and Change) Account for KC-3.4.I.A: how did Metternich use the Concert to suppress nationalist and liberal movements? Cite the Carlsbad Decrees, the Troppau Protocol, and the Austrian intervention in Naples.
5. (Continuity and Change) Account for the British dissent from the Troppau Protocol. Why did Britain decline to sign, and how did the British position differ from the continental Concert powers' position?

Draft alignment — pending educator review. AP European History codes correspond to the official College Board Course and Exam Description (Effective Fall 2023, V.1). Statements below are paraphrased in the CountryReports voice; refer to the College Board's published CED for verbatim wording.