Quintuple Alliance
Bloc | Defunct
1818 CE to 1825 CE
The Quintuple Alliance comes into being at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, when France joins the Quadruple Alliance created by Russia, Austria, Prussia and the United Kingdom.
The European peace settlement had concluded at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.After Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen), the Alliance powers meet three more times: in 1820 at the Congress of Troppau (Opava), in 1821 at the Congress of Laibach (Ljubljana); and in 1822 at the Congress of Verona.The four Continental monarchies are successful in authorizing Austrian military action in Italy in 1821 and French intervention in Spain in 1823, though British government distaste for the other allies' reactionary policies mean that it lapses into ineffectiveness after the mid-1820s.The Alliance is conventionally taken to have become defunct along with the Holy Alliance of the three original Continental members with the death of Tsar Alexander I of Russia in 1825.
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The latter term (Before March) referring to the period prior to the revolution of March 1848.
Following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the major European powers had agreed to meet and discuss resolutions in the event of future disputes or revolutions.
Because of Metternich's main role in the architecture of the Congress, these meetings are also referred to as the "Metternich congress" or "Metternich system".
While Metternich is the Austrian foreign minister, other congresses meet to resolve European foreign affairs.
These include the Congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), Carlsbad (1819), Troppau (1820), Laibach (1821), and Verona (1822).
The Metternich congresses aim to maintain the political equilibrium among the European powers and prevent revolutionary efforts.
These meetings also aim to resolve foreign issues and disputes without resorting to violence.
By means of these meetings and by allying the Austrian Empire with other European powers whose monarchs have a similar interest in preserving conservative political direction, Metternich is able to establish the Austrian Empire's influence on European politics.
Also, because Metternich used the fear of revolutions among European powers, which he also shared, he was able to establish security and predominance of the Habsburgs in Europe.
Under Metternich, nationalist revolts in Austrian north Italy and the German states are forcibly crushed.
At home, he pursues a similar policy to suppress revolutionary and liberal ideals.
He employs the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which uses strict censorship of education, press and speech to repress revolutionary and liberal concepts.
Metternich also uses a wide-ranging spy network to dampen down unrest.
Alexander and Francis I of Austria are present in person; King Frederick William III of Prussia is represented by the crown prince (the future Frederick William IV).
The three eastern powers are further represented by their foreign policy ministers: Austria by Prince Metternich, Russia by Count Capo d'lstria, Prussia by Prince Hardenberg.
"States, which have undergone a change of government due to revolution, the result of which threaten other states, ipso facto cease to be members of the European Alliance, and remain excluded from it until their situation gives guarantees for legal order and stability. If, owing to such alterations, immediate danger threatens other states the powers bind themselves, by peaceful means, or if need be, by arms, to bring back the guilty state into the bosom of the Great Alliance."
No effort is made by the powers to give immediate effect to the principles enunciated in the protocol; and after it is officially announced the conferences were adjourned.
It is decided to resume them at the Congress of Laibach the following January.
While the British Government will be reluctant to attack it openly, they will find it difficult to answer the Opposition's claims that on a literal reading, Russia or Austria are entitled to invade England to oppose her supposed misgovernment of Ireland.
The "High Contracting Parties" of the Grand, or Holy, Alliance—Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Pope Pius VII of the Papal States of Italy—meet in Verona from October to December to ratify Article Six of the Congress of Vienna that had ended the Napoleonic Wars.
Alarmed by the events in Spain, the other European powers authorize France to intervene in the conflict and restore the rule of Ferdinand, with only Britain abstaining from that decision.
While the representatives of the United Kingdom and the European powers had at first, during the Congress of Vienna, acted largely in concert, the extent to which the concord epitomized in the expression the "Concert of Europe" had unraveled in seven years becomes apparent in the way in which the three main questions before this Congress are handled.
The instructions drawn up by the Marquess of Londonderry, as Castelreagh had become in 1821, for his own guidance, had been handed to Wellington by George Canning without alteration.
They define the United Kingdom's position towards the three questions which it is supposed will be discussed: the Turkish Question (currently surfacing in the Greek insurrection), the question of intervention in favor of the Bourbon royal power in Spain and the revolted Spanish colonies, and the Italian Question.
The matter of the Italian Question deals with the continued Austrian rule in Northern Italy.
Since the United Kingdom cannot undertake to support a system in which she has merely acquiesced, Wellington does not even formally present his credentials until the other Powers have disposed of the matter, a British minister (Castlereagh's half-brother and successor in the Londonderry title) attending merely to keep informed and to see that nothing is done inconsistent with the European system and the treaties.
In the Greek Question, the probable raising of which had alone induced the British government to send a minister plenipotentiary to the Congress, Wellington has been instructed to suggest the eventual necessity for recognizing the belligerent rights of the Greeks, and, in the event of concerted intervention, to be careful not to commit the United Kingdom, beyond a supporting role.
As for Russia and Austria, the immediate problems arising out of the Greek Question had already been privately settled between the emperor Alexander and Metternich, to their mutual satisfaction, at the preliminary conferences held at Vienna in September.
When the plenipotentiaries meet in Verona, the only question raised is the Spanish Question, of the proposed French intervention in Spain, in which Wellington's instructions are to express the uncompromising opposition of the United Kingdom to the whole principle of intervention.
Would the Allies withdraw their ministers from Madrid in the event of France being compelled to do so?
In case of war, under what form and by what acts would the powers give France their moral support, so as to give to her action the force of the Quintuple Alliance, and inspire a salutary fear in the revolutionaries of all countries?
What material aid would the powers give if asked by France to intervene, under restrictions which France would declare and they would recognize?
The reply of Alexander, who expresses his surprise at the desire of France to keep the intervention wholly French, is to offer to march one hundred and fifty thousand Russians through Germany to Piedmont, where they could be held ready to act against any Jacobins, whether in Spain or France.
This solution appeals as little to Metternich and Montmorency as to Wellington; but though united in opposing it, four days of confidential communications reveal a fundamental difference of opinion.
Wellington, firmly based on the principle of non-intervention, refuses to have anything to do with the suggestion, made by Metternich, that the powers should address a common note to the Spanish government in support of the action of France.
Finally, Metternich proposes that the Allies should hold a common language, but in separate notes, though uniform in their principles and objects.
This solution is adopted by the continental powers; but Wellington, in accordance with his instructions not to countenance any intervention in Spanish affairs, will take no part in the conferences that follow.
Russia, Austria and Prussia will act as France should in respect of withdrawing their ministers, and will give to France every assistance she might require, the details to be specified in a treaty.
Wellington, on the other hand, replies on behalf of the United Kingdom that having no knowledge of the cause of dispute, and not being able to form a judgment upon a hypothetical case, he can give no answer to any of the questions.
Thus is proclaimed the open breach of the United Kingdom with the principles and policy of the Quintuple Alliance, as it had become with the admission of France in 1818, which development is what gives to the congress its main historical interest.
The ensuing French intervention will end the following year with the Battle of Trocadero, which will reinstate Ferdinand VII of Spain and open a reactionary period of Spanish and European politics that will lead to the Year of Revolutions, 1848.
The involvement of Egypt in the war is a turning point because Egyptian control of the Peloponnese is unacceptable to the French and British.
Thus motivated, the Great Powers, with Britain taking the lead, begin to search for a diplomatic solution.
The British-sponsored Act of Submission in the summer of 1825 sets the conditions for a Greek state that will be an autonomous part of the Ottoman Empire but under the protection of Britain.