Monarchs Congresses
Monarchs' congresses are the four successor congresses to the Congress of Vienna (1814/15) between 1818 and 1822, at which the monarchs of the signatory states of the Holy Alliance discussed current problems under the auspices of the Austrian State Chancellor Prince Metternich . In addition to territorial and succession issues, the main focus was on preventing an overthrow of the existing foreign and domestic political order, for example through revolutions and independence movements, in line with the restoration policy of the Vormärz .
List of congresses
The monarchs' congresses and their respective subjects of negotiation were in detail:
- the Aachen Congress in 1818: final settlement of the reparations payments of defeated France; France joins the Holy Alliance; Settlement of the Bavarian-Baden border dispute in favor of bathing.
- the Troppauer Prince Congress 1820: the Carbonari uprising in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ; the Spanish Revolution ; the Liberal Revolution in Portugal .
- the Ljubljana Congress of 1821: again the Neapolitan and the Sardinian-Piedmontese Carbonari uprising.
- the Verona Congress of 1822: the Greek Revolution and the French invasion of Spain .
The negotiations of the congresses are documented in detail, the dates of the meetings are also recorded in a calendar.
Results
Basically, the monarchs' congresses had the goal of suppressing and stifling all constitutional and democratic as well as national independence (as in Greece) and unification (as in the German Confederation and in the Italian states) in Europe. The territorial and mercantile interests of the individual states involved, especially the four great powers Russia, England, Austria and France, were always connected with this dogmatic objective.
Since the Troppau Congress in 1820, there were gradually corresponding conflicts of interest, in particular
- between France and later also England on the one hand and Austria on the other hand on the Italian question as well
- between England and Russia on the Oriental question .
Especially since 1822, these conflicts of interest led to the distancing of England from Russia and Austria as well as France, which on the one hand pursued a restorative-interventionist policy towards the Iberian states after its re-entry into the European pentarchy after the defeat of 1814/15 and the Bourbon restoration until 1830 , but on the other hand posed itself against England on the oriental question due to colonial interests.
In the Italian question Austria had, whose dynasty - the Hapsburgs - into three sovereign states of Italy and the Austrian province of Lombardy-Venetia ruled absolutist, England initially on his side, but leaned after the transition of the British government of Lord Castlereagh on George Canning in The year 1822, which also involved a paradigm shift in foreign policy from the principle of balance of power to the right of peoples to self-determination , was closer to Russia.
consequences
Ultimately, the three founding states of the Holy Alliance: Russia, Austria and Prussia, which was largely uninterested in colonial and foreign policy, turned out to be their "hard core", while (since the 1820s) England and (since the July Revolution of 1830) also more and more More France pursued its own foreign policy, which was no longer based on conservative dogma, but on its own power interests, but also humanitarian principles. The holy alliance of those three founding states was welded together again through the common counter-revolutionary approach in the revolution of 1848/49 until it finally broke up in the Crimean War of 1853-1856 with Austria's turning away from Russia.
literature
- Volker Schäfer: Monarchs Congresses. In: Gerhard Taddey (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German history . Events, institutions, people. From the beginning to the surrender in 1945. 3rd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-81303-3 , p. 853.
Web links
- Power congresses 1818–1822. Digital edition, ed. by Karin Schneider with the assistance of Stephan Kurz, Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Modern and Contemporary History Research 2018. http://maechtekongresse.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/