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Europe After Napoleon
After Napoleon’s domination of Europe from 1800 to 1814, the rulers of Europe wanted to ensure that no one would ever be able to come so close to taking over the entire continent again. To this end, the diplomats from all of the Great Powers met at the Congress of Vienna to negotiate from 1814 to 1815. There, they reorganized boundaries in hopes of creating a stable Europe where coalitions of nations could always ally to defeat any nation that got out of hand.
After Napoleon, a period of Reactionary, or anti-revolutionary, governments swept Europe. Having swung so far one way during the French Revolution and Napoleon’s rule, the historical pendulum now swung back the other way, as rulers tried to prevent the “excesses” of the French Revolution from happening again. Fear among the traditional rulers was not without basis, either. Revolution was brewing throughout Europe.
France
In France, Louis XVIII did his best to balance the tense situation following Napoleon’s defeat. On both sides, Louis granted amnesties, hoping that France could “start over.” The wealthy, however, remembering the leveling effects of the Revolution, became passionately reactionary, or anti-revolutionary. The reactionary element only increased after the King’s nephew, the Duke of Berry, was assassinated in 1820.
In 1824, Louis XVIII died, and was replaced by the assassinated Duke’s father, Charles X. Unlike the moderate Louis, Charles was an extreme reactionary, and hated all the changes taking place in France, even the ones Louis had initiated. Charles, believing himself to be a monarch appointed by God, started trampling on the French constitution and other elements of liberalism.
Poland
Poland, ruled by Tsar Alexander I of Russia, was a state re-created by the Congress of Vienna. Initially, its government was quite liberal and even had its own. Alexander considered himself an “enlightened despot” and spoke often of granting freedom to the people, but he soon found that when he did give the people some self-government, they didn’t always agree with what he wanted them to do. Liking liberal reforms in theory more than practice, Alexander increasingly curtailed Poland’s right of self-government. As a result of its frustrated desire for self-rule, Polish Nationalism began to rise amidst secret societies and university movements.
Germany
In Germany, nationalists motivated by Romantic ideas, such as the belief in a special German Volksgeist, or unique national spirit, hated the results of the Congress of Vienna, which had split the German states up into a loose federation called the Bund. Dissatisfaction was prevalent among students and intellectuals, who began to form highly nationalist clubs called Burschenschaft. In 1817, the Burschenschaft held a national meeting at Wartburg, convincing Metternich, who feared an upset in the balance of power, that German nationalism was a force to be reckoned with. After German nationalists began assassinating reactionary leaders, Metternich intervened with the Carlsbad Decrees in 1819. The decrees outlawed the Burschenschaft, pushing them underground, increased government regulation of the universities, and made way for government censorship of German newspapers. Through these, tthe Carlsbad Decrees quieted the German nationalist movement for about a decade.
Great Britain
In Great Britain, the aristocrat-dominated Parliament passed the Corn Law in 1815, which raised tariffs on grain to make imports impossible, as well as raising prices beyond the reach of the working class. In December 1816, starving workers rioted in London. Hoping to take advantage of how discontented the workers were, industrialists who wanted parliamentary representation helped organize 80,000 workers to demonstrate at St. Peters Field against the Corn Law and for universal male suffrage. The protest was peaceful, but when British soldiers nonetheless fired into the crowd, killing several, the event, known as the Peterloo Massacre, became a national scandal. The conservative Tory Parliament, now frightened of the potential of worker revolts, passed acts in 1819 aimed at stopping mass political organization. Not appeased, a group of workers known as the Cato Street Conspiracy decided to try and assassinate the Tory cabinet but was discovered in 1820.
