HOLY ALLIANCE: ANTECEDENTS, OBJECTIVES, CONSEQUENCES - HISTORY - 2024

The Holy Alliance was an agreement signed by Austria, Prussia and Russia in 1815 at the proposal of the Tsar of the latter country, Alexander I. The objective of the treaty was to defend the absolutist monarchies and their Christian character against the advance of liberalism in Europe.

The French Revolution, with its principles based on the Enlightenment, had caused absolutist countries to unite to combat its influence. However, Napoleon Bonaparte had managed to seize part of the continent and, despite establishing authoritarian governments, had contributed to the spread of revolutionary ideas.

Caricature of the Verona Congress - Source: Unknown under CC BY-SA license

Once Napoleon was defeated, the victorious powers convened the Congress of Vienna in order to reorder the map of Europe and return the primacy to the absolutist system. Only three months after that Congress, Austrians, Prussians and Russians decided to go one step further and signed the agreement of the Holy Alliance.

In the following years, the armies of these countries acted in various areas of Europe to end the liberal movements that were emerging. The Holy Alliance remained until the death of Alexander I, in 1825.

Background

The Enlightenment, with its defense of science against religion and the equality of human beings, had posed a threat to the absolutist monarchies that ruled most European countries.

Apart from its philosophical influence, this current of thought was fundamental to the outbreak of the French Revolution, which ended with King Louis XVI guillotined.

Napoleon Bonaparte

The seizure of power in France by Napoleon Bonaparte marked the beginning of a new stage. His form of government was dictatorial and he even had himself proclaimed Emperor. However, he tried to follow the ideals of the Revolution and waged a series of expansionist wars that threatened the absolutist monarchies of the continent.

To combat it, the great powers formed a series of military coalitions. Although England participated in them, with a parliamentary system of government, these coalitions can be considered as a clear antecedent of the Holy Alliance.

Napoleon was defeated in 1814 and was banished to the island of Elba. However, the following year he managed to escape his exile and returned to the continent to once again face his enemies. This stage is called the Hundred Days Empire and ended with the Battle of Waterloo, where the Napoleonic troops suffered final defeat.

Congress of Vienna

Even before the Hundred Day Empire, the European powers began to meet to reorder the map of the continent and nullify the influence of liberal ideas.

In the so-called Congress of Vienna, the European monarchs planned how to abolish the social, economic and political reforms that the revolutionaries had established. Its main objective was to regain the absolute power of the kings against popular sovereignty. In the same way, the Church participated to restore its privileges.

On the other hand, the countries participating in the Congress of Vienna decided to create mechanisms to prevent, by force, new liberal revolutionary outbreaks. In this context, the Tsar of Russia, Alexander I, proposed the formation of the Holy Alliance.

characteristics

As noted above, the Holy Alliance was set up as an agreement between various European royal houses to prevent the implantation of liberalism and enlightened ideals on the continent.

These royal houses were the Russian, the Austrian and the Prussian. All of them, as was common in absolutism, had based their legitimacy on religion. The Holy Alliance was, in this way, also an agreement between the three branches of Christianity in Europe: Orthodox (Russia), Catholics (Austria) and Protestants (Prussia).

Christianity

The document by which the three European powers formalized the formation of the Holy Alliance included the defense of religion as the basis of the agreement. For the signatories, it was essential to safeguard what they called "eternal religion of God the savior."

The Holy Alliance, therefore, attached the highest importance to Christianity, despite the fact that in each country a different branch of this religion was practiced. The signatories left open the possibility of Christian monarchies from other countries joining the pact, although they left Great Britain out of it.

This religious base was not without some controversy. The promoter of the agreement, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, was considered unstable by many of the European leaders. For example, at the Congress of Vienna the representative of England noted that "the Tsar's mental health was not the best."

It was not only the English who felt this way. Metternich, the Chancellor of Austria, who did adhere to the agreement, thought the proposal was too tinged with mysticism. For this reason, he maneuvered to strip the Holy Alliance of several of its religious concepts and tried to make it only the defense of absolutism.

Monarchical legitimacy

Apart from its religious component, the main characteristic of the Holy Alliance was its defense of the absolutist regime. This was threatened by enlightened ideas, which defended liberalism and the equality of human beings.

The French Revolution and Napoleon had caused these ideas to spread across the continent. From that moment on, liberal uprisings occurred in several countries, something that the monarchies that signed the agreement sought to avoid or, where appropriate, to repress.

Right of intervention

Another of the characteristics of the Holy Alliance was the declaration by its members that they had the right to intervene in the face of any threat that arose against the monarchies.

The author of this right was the Chancellor of Austria, Metternich. During the years in which the treaty was in force, the signatory countries intervened on several occasions to suppress various uprisings of a liberal nature.

Various congresses

The document established by the Holy Alliance stated that the member countries would meet periodically to coordinate their actions. Other nations such as France and England participated in these congresses.

After Vienna, the other congresses held were Aachen, in 1818, Troppau, in 1820, Laibach, the following year, and Summer, in 1822.

goals

Russia, Austria and Prussia formed the Holy Alliance with the main objective of defending absolutism as a system of government in Europe. Likewise, they established the defense of the Christian religion as the basis of the reigning monarchies on the continent.

Objectives of the promoter of the agreement

As has been pointed out, the promoter of the Holy Alliance was Alexander I, Tsar of Russia. This was strongly influenced by Baroness von Krüdener, who served as a religious adviser.

Alexander I was sometimes described as a mystic and his mental stability was called into question by some of his allies.

According to the chroniclers, the baroness had convinced him that he had been chosen by God to end the ideals that emerged from the French Revolution and restore the splendor of Christianity embodied in absolute kings.

Execute the agreements of the Congress of Vienna

On the political level, the Holy Alliance brought together the victors of the Napoleonic wars, except England. One of the objectives of the agreement was that what was approved in the Congress of Vienna was put into practice.

In that Congress, the participants had agreed on the need to stop the spread of liberal ideas, embodied in some constitutions. Despite the authoritarian style of Napoleon's rule, his invasions had spread revolutionary ideals throughout Europe, something that went against the interests of the ruling monarchies.

Maintaining the status quo

All of the above was embodied in an agreement to maintain the status quo on the continent, that is, to prevent changes in the political and social situation from taking place.

In practice, this meant that the monarchs who signed the Holy Alliance pledged to help each other in the event of rebellions that could affect them.

The treaty stated that this support had to be given in the "name of religion", in order to "crush with common forces, the revolution wherever it manifested itself."

Strengthening of nation states

Another objective of the Holy Alliance was to prevent an attempt to control the continent, such as the one carried out by Napoleon Bonaparte, from occurring again. To achieve this, they implemented measures to strengthen the nation states.

Consequences

The Congress of Vienna and the creation of the Holy Alliance gave Russia and Austria the role of great European powers. For their part, the British strengthened their status as rulers of the seas and Prussia expanded its influence in the Baltic Sea area after the creation of the German Confederation.

Other alliances

In addition to the Holy Alliance, during the decades following Napoleon's defeat other agreements appeared between the European powers.

England, which had been a participant in the coalitions created to fight Napoleon, did not want to be part of the Holy Alliance. One of the reasons was ideological in nature, since her system was not absolutist.

On the other hand, the British were more interested in trade and felt that the members of the Holy Alliance intended to harm them in this regard.

However, in order not to get lost in the system of pacts in Europe, England did sign, in November 1815, the so-called Quadruple Alliance, along with the three signatory countries of the Holy Alliance.

A little later, France in turn signed another treaty with these four countries: the Fivefold Alliance.

Interventionism

Metternich's request that the Holy Alliance could intervene in those areas of the continent where the monarchies were in danger was approved by the rest of his allies. In the following years, Austrians and Prussians took advantage of this point to intervene militarily in other countries.

All these interventions had in common trying to put an end to the liberal movements. Similarly, the Holy Alliance also fought against the nationalist groups that were emerging. In fact, there was a proposal to send troops to Latin America to avoid its independence from Spain.

Intervention in Spain

Although there is a historiographical current that disagrees, most experts consider that the Holy Alliance played a fundamental role in ending the so-called Liberal Triennium in Spain.

After the Spanish king, Fernando VII, had to accept the Constitution of Cádiz, of a liberal character, the Spanish were endowed with a non-absolutist government.

The reaction of the Holy Alliance, supported by France, was to send a military force, the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, to end their constitutional government.

Congress in Aachen

After meeting at the Congress of Aachen in 1818, the Holy Alliance decided to intervene in Germany. There, groups of students were classified as "revolutionaries" after causing disturbances in the celebrations on the occasion of the three hundred years of the Reformation.

The Holy Alliance harshly repressed them and closed the universities themselves. Similarly, the government censored the country's newspapers.

On the other hand, that same Congress approved the withdrawal of the troops that still remained in France.

Intervention in Italy

The liberal uprisings in Piedmont and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, in 1820, were also subjected to repression by the Holy Alliance. In this case, it was the Austrians who sent troops to put an end to these rebellions.

England refused to support the Holy Alliance in these movements, since it considered that they did not affect its interests.

Latin America

As in Italy, Great Britain also did not want to help the Holy Alliance in its plans for Latin America. In the Spanish colonies, various independence movements had emerged that threatened the dominance of the Hispanic crown in the area.

For this reason, during the Congress of Verona, the Holy Alliance proposed sending troops to put an end to the uprisings. Given the English refusal to participate, the project was never carried out, since none of the members of the Holy Alliance had a powerful enough naval force.

Decline

The end of the Holy Alliance was caused by the differences that arose between its components. First, they failed to quell the Greek independence movement in 1821, as it was supported by France and Great Britain.

For its part, Russia also did not agree to position itself against the Greeks. After the death of Tsar Alexander I in 1825, his heir preferred to develop a strategy to weaken the Ottoman Empire, which involved supporting the independentists in Greece. This discrepancy caused the Holy Alliance to be, de facto, eliminated.

References

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2. Ecured. Holy Alliance. Obtained from ecured.cu
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4. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Holy Alliance, Retrieved from britannica.com
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6. Heritage History. The Holy Alliance and Its Unholy Work. Retrieved from heritage-history.com
7. Ghervas, Stella. What was the Congress of Vienna ?. Retrieved from historytoday.com