Holy Alliance

The initiative came from Alexander I, whose mysticism had been exalted by the campaign of 1812 and the entry into Paris, and sustained by the circle of Baroness von Krüdener. He wanted to found peace not on the balance of forces but on a moral undertaking by sovereigns.

Signed in Paris on 26 September 1815 by the Tsar, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, the text bound the three princes to govern their peoples according to the precepts of the Christian religion and to treat one another as brothers, lending assistance on every occasion.

Metternich signed while judging the text empty, but saw in it a useful instrument: under cover of Christian brotherhood, the undertaking of mutual assistance authorised intervention in a neighbour's affairs. Castlereagh refused on England's behalf, where no treaty binds the king without Parliament.

The pope, not invited to an alliance mixing Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants, abstained; the sultan was excluded by definition. The Holy Alliance was thus from the outset an affair of the three continental monarchies.

The real instrument lay elsewhere: on 20 November 1815 the Quadruple Alliance joined England to Russia, Austria and Prussia, renewed the undertaking against any return of the Bonapartes and provided for periodic meetings of the sovereigns.

From this came the congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, of Troppau and Laibach in 1820-1821, of Verona in 1822, which authorised interventions against the revolutions in Naples, Piedmont and Spain. The Europe of congresses would hold until the 1820s, and its principle — powers consulting together to preserve an order — would long survive it. In common speech, 'Holy Alliance' would end by denoting reaction itself.