Prince Clemens von Metternich, who directs Austria's foreign policy from 1809 until 1848, is the dominant political figure within the confederation.

He wages a decades-long campaign to prevent the spread of revolution in Europe by seeking to restore much of the political and social order that had existed before the French Revolution.

Metternich's Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 establish a pervasive system of press censorship and regulation of the universities that dampen German intellectual life and hinder the publication of writings advocating the principles of liberalism.

In the 1820s, he engineers the formation of the Holy Alliance of the monarchs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia to quash political, social, and economic developments within Central and Eastern Europe thought to threaten political stability.