Following Napoleon's final exile, European powers convened at the Congress of Vienna to re-establish order, legitimacy, and a balance of power, aiming to prevent future French expansion and revolutionary upheaval.
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to
hello welcome back to our lecture series
for Western Civilization 102. we have
been discussing the French Revolution in
western civilization and of course
um Napoleon has been exiled for the
second time
first time he was exiled on the island
of Elba he manages to escape gathers up
an army and marches back to France to
Paris where he will rule for a hundred
days before he is yet again
exiled to the island of Saint Helena
it's a bit further away
elbow is right off the coast of the
Italian Peninsula and so
um they wanted him a little bit further
away on the island of Saint Helena in
the South Atlantic
and according to um
um
to history he lived a very
kind of dreary life here on the island
of Saint Helena he wrote Memoirs and he
died in 1821 so that's not much long not
much longer after the um the war was
over the Revolution was over of course
we also had Warfare with Austria and
Prussia and Britain
um Britain of course gets into it as
well they're against France
so there's also speculation about you
know was Napoleon poisoned I remember a
few years ago well quite a few years ago
they actually did some testing
on his remains to see if they could find
any arsenic because arsenic is supposed
to remain for quite a long time and
fingernails and hair
um so there's you know there's a little
bit of mystery around his death because
it it happens so quickly after
the French Revolution was over
but now that Napoleon is exiled
soon of course to die
what's going to happen in Europe
because Napoleon had been such a pivotal figure
figure
and and most of the European states
he had put his his family members on
Thrones in Europe for example in Spain I
believe he put his brother on the throne
of Spain he had a
he had gone up against Britain with his
Continental System he had mistakenly and
big mistake invaded Russia um
um
which of course Adolf Hitler will not
learn of later in history from
Napoleon's mistake of invading Russia
because Hitler will also
invade Russia with the same consequence
it wasn't good of course for either
France or Germany much later in history
of course with Germany
so Europe has to
has a lot of work to do they have a lot of
of
of planning on how to move forward now
that France has been defeated and they
have finally of course gotten rid of Napoleon
Napoleon
so we have a group of prominent European
States will get together
States like Britain
and Austria and Russia and Prussia
and meet and talk about what is going to happen
happen
they will meet at the Congress of Vienna
you'll hear more about this as well but
basically what's discussed here after
the French Revolution
is the the primary idea was of legitimacy
legitimacy
so basically all the rulers that were in
power before the Revolution
would be restored to power now that
France has been defeated
and all of the countries would have the
same territory that they held in 1789
which had been the start of the French Revolution
Revolution
uh you know Europe wanted to make sure
that France did not grow powerful and
expand so they wanted to erect barriers
against France as well um
and of course they also created a new
League of German states called the
Germanic Confederation
Germanic Confederation this would if you
of course learned a lot about the Holy
Roman Empire in previous lectures this
was basically Central Europe the Holy
Roman Empire area when Napoleon had
taken over
much of Europe
he had created the confederation of the Rhine
Rhine
and now after the French have been
defeated uh
with these European States getting
together they created a new League of
German states called the Germanic Confederation
Confederation
they were hoping of course this would
help you know stop France from expanding
and help contain it well
well
this you know what they were talking
about doing in Europe doesn't always
happen of course
because we'll see that some of these
countries will not be restored to their 17
17
pre-1789 territories some will of course
grab other
areas and territories
Russia got a large portion of Poland and
Prussia got a part of Saxony you know
it was important for this Congress of
Vienna however that the major Powers
Russia and Austria and Prussia and Great
Britain will agree to talk with each
other about Europe they agreed to have
post-war conferences
um and this was called the concert of
Europe they wanted to maintain the
balance of power and they wanted to
maintain peace
in Europe
will not happen we're not going to see a
and for for some time to come until 1914
with World War One
but we will as we go through the
lectures upcoming lectures we will see
that quite a lot of revolutions will
take place in Europe not not a big world
war no one like Napoleon for example
coming in but we will have a lot of
revolutions that are taking place as
well but it was you know it was a good
thing that the the countries of Europe
decided that they would meet and talk
and discuss and they would continue to
do so
with their Alliance so let's find out
more about the post
French Revolution years
with the Congress of Vienna and the quadruple
quadruple
and the concert of Europe
Napoleon Bonaparte redrew the map of
Europe with his conquests
within the Napoleonic Empire he also
dramatically restructured government
as Napoleon's defeat went from possible
to inevitable in 1814. it was clear that
the Allies opposed to him would not
allow these changes to stand
after Napoleon Was Defeated for the
first time in 1814 he was exiled to the
island of Elba and the great Powers
assembled in Vienna in what is known as
the Congress of Vienna to restructure
the map and to reorder Europe as much as possible
possible
key to the Congress of Vienna was an
alliance made in 1814 among the four
leading Powers opposed to Napoleon this
Alliance is known as the quadruple
Alliance of 1814 and the principles were
Austria Britain Prussia and Russia the
quadruple Alliance had two purposes when
it was created one of these was to
defeat Napoleon a goal that had
apparently been achieved in March of 1814.
1814.
the second goal was to contain France
that is to prevent France from ever
expanding again as it had done under Napoleon
Napoleon
France of course at the time was
regarded as the biggest threat to
International Peace because it had
become the the most powerful nation in
Europe twice in recent centuries first
under Louis XIV and then again under
Napoleon so there was a great deal of
concern at the Congress of Vienna to
prevent this from happening again
the Congress first assembled in November
of 1814 and the big four so to speak
Austria Britain Prussia and Russia were
actually joined by a representative from France
France
the the idea here was to allow the
French to function as Observers
the host of the Congress of Vienna being
that it was in Vienna was the Austrian
Emperor Francis the first
Francis of course was in a somewhat
ticklish position as his daughter Marie
Louise was married to Napoleon but he
quickly demonstrated his willingness to
throw Napoleon under the rails so to speak
speak
he faced enormous difficulties of
protocol however
assembling the the leaders of all of the
major and lesser states of Europe uh
created a dilemma as to who took
precedence over who uh still a matter of
enormous social importance at the time
reflected in everything from where you
stood to how you dressed and so on
he also found it necessary to keep these
people entertained for months at a time
and one of the sidelights to the
Congress of Vienna is that while all of
the Diplomatic negotiation went on
during the daytime there was wild
festivity in the evenings
Affairs among a number of the diplomats
and various women at the conference and
uh in in fact it is an event noted as
much noted at the time for the
debauchery of the evenings as for the
diplomacy of the day but of course it is
the diplomacy of the day that ultimately
winds up being of the greatest importance
importance
Austria of course was represented by
both the emperor Francis the first and
his chief advisor Clemens Von maetternick
maetternick
Von maurnick had been in fact the
foreign secretary for Austria he had
negotiated on a number of occasions with
Napoleon but he now became perhaps the
most important single individual at the
Congress of Vienna and indeed madernick
would would arguably become the most
important diplomatic force in Europe
between 1814 and 1848 when he was
finally evicted from office meternik was
a brilliant Diplomat he also was by this
point harshly opposed to any of the
innovations that Napoleon had made and
to the whole ideology of the French
Revolution medernick was in a word a
reactionary he wanted to restore Europe
to the way it had been prior to 1789
prior to the French Revolution and the
creation of the Napoleonic Empire and he
had both the ability and the influence
to make a great deal of this happen
another figure representing Austria at
this Congress less influential than
madernic but important nonetheless with
Friedrich Von gents who also played a
major role in the deliberations so
Austria represented by its Emperor by
medernick and by Von gants Russia was
represented by its Czar Tsar Alexander
the first was actually present at the
Congress of Vienna itself and took a
fairly significant role indeed he is the
only monarch among all those either
present or represented at the Congress
of Vienna who took part in the
negotiations to a greater extent than
his ministers did he did of course have
a diplomatic minister with him Carl
Robert Nestle road but Nestle Road took
a back seat to Alexander in most cases
the prussians were represented by their
King Frederick William III but also by a
diplomat by the name of Von hardenberg
and also by the scientist William R or
the son the brother of the scientist Von
Humboldt William Von Humboldt who
conducted most of the negotiations there
Britain uh of course was still nominally
ruled in 1814 by George III but George
III by this point was a very old very
feeble and very ill individual uh he was
practically blind practically deaf not
in full possession of his mental
faculties and there was little chance of
him playing any significant role by this
time in fact there was a Regency set up
in Britain under George III's son the
future George IV but the prince region
as he was known at the time uh was a man
characterized by a good deal of personal
dissolution and he was not really fit to
participate either so at the beginning
of the Congress of Vienna by far the
most important representative of the
British was
the Diplomat Viscount Castle Ray
Castle Ray was to prove to be the most
important voice in opposition to some of
the ideas put forth at the Congress by
madernic Castle Ray would eventually uh
return to England during the course of
the Congress of Vienna and would be
replaced first by the Duke of Wellington
the man who finally defeated Napoleon
for the second time at the Battle of
Waterloo and Wellington himself would
later be replaced by the Earl of Clan
cardi but even when Castle Ray was not
present in Vienna he still was the
guiding force in the decisions that the
British made there
the French
had a new King in 1814. after the defeat
of Napoleon and his abdication and his
failed attempt to put his son on the
throne in his place what the Allies had
done was to restore the bourbon monarchy
in the person of a king known as Louis
the 18th this number sometimes mystifies
uh people who are new to the subject of
post Napoleonic Europe because the
question is obviously where was Louis
the 17th Louis XVI was of course the
king overthrown by the French Revolution
and executed in 1793 but in the eyes of
supporters of the bourbon Dynasty his
son Prince Louis who eventually died in
prison was the rightful Louis xvii
during the 1790s
hence when the bourbon monarchy was
restored in 1814 it is Louis the 18th
that takes the throne another confusing
aspect of this is that Louis the 18th
was in fact the brother of Louis XVI and
many people ask well how could it be
that you have two kings who are brothers
who are both named Louie the reason for
this is that typically French monarchs
were given a whole string of names and
which name a monarch chose to use once
he took the throne was up to him and in
order to stress the continuity of the
bourbon Dynasty which had been
represented by Louie's going all the way
back to Louis XIII in 1610
Louis the 18th chose to use Louis rather
than one of his other given names
now Louis the 18th was in Paris during
the Congress of Vienna but he was
represented at the Congress by one of
the most Wily diplomats of the 18th and
19th centuries Charles Maurice de
talerand paragord or taliran for short
taleran is one of the great opportunists
in history Talleyrand had worked for the
Bourbons before the French Revolution he
had signed on so to speak to the
revolution just in time had managed to
move from government to government uh
without falling afoul of anyone so badly
as to lose his head he had been a
supporter of Napoleon and then when it
became apparent that Napoleon might be
in trouble he put out secret feelers to
the allies and therefore was well
connected among the Allies by the time
that he arrived at the Congress of Vienna
Vienna
technically taliran was meant to be just
an observer but as matters turned out he
wound up having a good deal of influence
over how things transpired at the Congress
Congress
there were a number of other notable
participants there although not as
important as the big four and tally ran
the Marquis of Labrador represented the Spanish
Spanish
the first Duke of palmella represented
the Portuguese
Carl lowenheim represented the Swedish
and Frederick VI the king of Denmark
represented Denmark himself
now there were several guiding
principles that that motivated the
actions of the Congress of Vienna and
that are advocated especially by
meternik but embraced by pretty much all
of the participants to one degree or
another the first of these to use a
slightly anachronistic term was the idea
of containment containment of course is
a term coined after World War II uh
during the Cold War to explain what
western policy was towards the Soviet
Union but it's the same basic idea here
with regard to France the idea is to
build a ring of countries around France
strong enough that France cannot expand
again as it had done under Louis XIV and
then to an even greater degree under
Napoleon So the plan is to redraw the
map so that France is surrounded on all
sides by strong countries and in fact
even so that there is a first ring of
countries and then a second ring beyond
that which would resist any sort of
French expansion
a second guiding principle was the
principle of legitimacy obviously the
Congress of Vienna was not going to
allow all the changes that Napoleon had
made in government to stand what they
proposed to do wherever possible was to
restore what they regarded as the
legitimate monarchs who had ruled prior
to the French Revolution the most
obvious example of this is the
restoration of the bourbon monarchy in
France itself but the Bourbons would be
returned in Spain and other legitimate
monarchs would be returned wherever
possible now there was no thought of
recreating the old Holy Roman Empire
that was dead and gone there was also no
thought of recreating some of the
smaller German states that Napoleon had
done away with but wherever old
monarchies were restored the idea was to
bring back the pre-revolutionary dynasties
dynasties
a third guiding principle and one that
also represents a return to 18th century
ways of thinking was the idea of balance
of power in the 18th century following
the conquest of Louis XIV one of the
most important diplomatic principles had
been that the five Great Powers should
remain in balance that none should be
allowed to become so powerful is to be a
threat to all the others that had worked
fine for most of the 18th century it had
broken down with Napoleon and now the
idea is to re-establish that so there is
no thought to annihilating France there
is no thought to making France too weak
because you want a France that will stay
in rough balance with the other powers
so France is to be contained but it is
not to be weakened to the point where it
might create a power vacuum
and finally there is the principle of
compensation where territory is taken
away from a major power it is to be
compensated with other territory
elsewhere perhaps not surprisingly the
Congress of Vienna and the major Powers
there were not terribly concerned about
compensating the Lesser States for
anything that they might lose so how
does this work out in practice
well almost before the diplomats could
set about
drawing a map they found themselves
distracted by a crisis
at this crisis involved primarily the
duchy of Saxon or the kingdom of Saxony
in Northern Germany and the kingdom of Poland
Poland
Alexander the first the tsar of Russia
who arrived at Vienna as the only
monarch remember who intended to
participate fully made an offer to the
other powers at the Congress of Vienna
he offered ever so generously to serve
as the protector of Poland
which is to say that all of what had
formerly been Poland would be drawn
within the orbit of Russia now Poland as
you may recall had disappeared from the
map during the French Revolutionary
decade it had been subject to a series
of partitions orchestrated by Russia
Prussia and Austria that concluded in
1795 and Poland literally disappeared
Napoleon had made an attempt to recreate
a Polish state with the duchy of Warsaw
but now what Alexander is offering to do
is to protect Poland in a way that would
have really made polish territory
Russian territory the initial response
of the other great Powers was absolutely
not uh there was no enthusiasm for this
whatsoever so Alexander tried a
different angle he approached the
prussians and suggested to the prussians
that if they would agree to his becoming
protector of Poland that he would agree
to Prussia seizing the territory of the
of the kingdom of Saxony something which
the prussians had long coveted
thus Prussia switched to the side of
Russia and now we find ourselves with a
potentially very dangerous stalemate
Prussia and Russia on one side
France I'm sorry Austria and Britain on
the other side and the the four Great
Powers which had just defeated France
very nearly went to war in 1814 and
early 1815 over this issue of Poland and Saxony
Saxony
this is what opened the opportunity for
tally Rand
tally Rand went to the austrians and the
British and worked out a secret
agreement whereby the French agreed to
support Austria and Britain in any
hostilities that might erupt now I say
this was a secret agreement but like
many Secrets it was leaked deliberately
leaked so that the Russians and the
prussians would hear about it and of
course both Alexander the first and
Frederick William III were highly
alarmed when they learned that there
might be an alliance involving Austria
Britain and France France after all have
been powerful enough military to conquer
all of Europe just recently and although
it no longer had Napoleon it was still
something to be reckoned with and
therefore Prussia and Russia backed down
they're ultimately wound up being a
compromise on this issue in which Russia
extended its protection to a portion of
what had been Poland Prussia got a tiny
little piece of Saxony and conflict was
avoided but one of the results of this
is that tally Rand now became although
unofficially a full player at the table
although he had no official role he
would be consulted and his opinion would
be interjected from here on in
in the midst of all of this of course
Napoleon was not idle
restricted to the island of Elba he had
proceeded to reorganize the entire
Island along his own administrative
lines and in March of 1815 using the
little bit of force that he had at his
disposal at Elba he escaped
he escaped the island of Elba and made
his way on a boat across to the southern
coast of France and as you will have
heard in the discussions of Napoleon's
final campaign he landed on the southern
coast of France was immediately welcomed
by many of his old soldiers and made a
triumphant March toward Paris in which
the towns opened their gates to him and
thousands and thousands of Frenchmen
came out to support him Louis the 18th
fled and the members of the Congress of
Vienna suddenly had to drop their
diplomatic concerns and concentrate on
defeating Napoleon for a second time
this of course they did do
in June of 1815 Napoleon was in fact
defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by
the Duke of Wellington leading British
forces and general blucher leading those
of Prussia this time he would be sent
much farther away than the island of
Elba being sent
far off into the Atlantic on the island
of Saint Helena where he would spend the
rest of his life
Napoleon uh actually wanted to spend his
Exile in Britain of all places uh but
the British felt that this was too risky
uh that it left him too close to France
and it was felt to be safest to Simply
get him as far away from France as
possible and once exiled to Saint Helena
there was very little chance of him
escaping and getting back it's a
thousand miles off the coast of Africa
and in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
he was under heavy guard at all times
only ships approved by the British ever
landed there so he was effectively
imprisoned now many people ask why after
having had to defeat Napoleon a second
time the Allies didn't simply have him
executed and that's not an unreasonable
question but to have done so would have
created a number of disadvantages the
most important of these is that it would
have made Napoleon into a martyr and
this is not something that the Allies
wanted to do uh secondly it would have
made it much more difficult to restore
the bourbon Dynasty uh the idea that the
Allies had was to restore Louis the 18th
with his little disturbance as possible
they wanted to ensure that he would be
welcome back by as many of the French as
possible and taking a less radical
approach to Napoleon was one way of
doing that there's also the problem that
it would have been difficult to justify
in the law therefore the idea is simply
to get him as far away from France as
possible so that there is no risk of him
coming back and making more trouble
now on the island of Saint Helena
Napoleon devoted himself to writing his
Memoirs in which he is his own greatest
hero and in which he does a great deal
to construct his own Legend
uh he eventually died at a rather young
age in 1821 and there has always been
suspicion that his death might not have
been entirely of natural causes
the truth of the matter is there were
any number of people who had motives for
wanting Napoleon Dead all of his enemies
would rest easier once he was no longer
alive even in distant Exile he remained
a powerful iconic figure for many of the French
French
so there certainly is a motive there the
question is was anything done to do away
with Napoleon and the honest answer is
we don't really know uh Napoleon was not
in particularly good health while he was
on Saint Helena he had suffered all his
adult life with stomach ailments and he
seemed to continue to do so while he was there
there
but in the 1970s a team of scientists
exhumed his body took some scrapings
from his fingernails and discovered that
he had an unusually high content of
arsenic in his fingernails well that
proves he was poisoned right well not
necessarily in the 19th century arsenic
was often used for medicinal purposes in
fact in small doses carefully measured
small doses it is medicinal and one of
the things that arsenic was used for was
treating stomach ailments so it is quite
possible that the higher concentration
of Arsenic and Napoleon system at the
time of his death was simply a result of medication
