The Concert of Europe and the Conservative
Order
The Concert of Europe and the Conservative Order
• Before ten years have passed, all Europe will be Cossack or republican.
--Napoléon, 1816
The Concert of Europe and the Conservative Order
• Austria is Europe’s House of Lords: so long as it is not dissolved, it will keep the Commons in check.
-Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, 1815.
The Concert of Europe and the Conservative Order
• You see in me the chief Minister of Police in Europe. I keep an eye on everything. My contacts are such that nothing escapes me.
-Prince Klemens von Metternich, 1817
The Burschenshaften
Karl Sand and August von Kotzebue
The Carlsbad Decrees
The Concert of Europe and the Conservative Order
• (The Great Powers) desire nothing but to maintain peace, to free Europe from the scourge of their revolution and to prevent, or to lessen, as far as in their power, the evil which arises from the violation of all the principles of order and morality. On these conditions they think themselves entitled, as the reward of their cares and exertions, to the unanimous approbation of the world.
- Protocol addressed to the chancelleries of Europe by Austria, Russia, Prussia, 1820 .
The Concert of Europe and the Conservative Order
• Regicides and sans-culottes do not suddenly appear. In France there were first Encyclopedists, then Constitutionalists, next Republicans, and finally regicides and high traitors. In order not to have the last type one must prevent Encyclopedists and Constitutionalists from becoming established.
- Austrian minister to Prussia, 1824
Postwar Repression in Great Britain
Lord Liverpool
Postwar Repression in Great Britain
• The Corn Laws
Postwar Repression in Great Britain
Henry Orator Hunt William Cobbett Major John Cartwright
Postwar Repression in Great Britain
The Coercion Acts 1817• Temporarily suspended habeas corpus.• Extended existing laws against seditious gatherings.
Postwar Repression in Great Britain
St. Peter’s Fields
Manchester
August 16, 1819
The Peterloo Massacre
Postwar Repression in Great Britain
A View of England 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king, Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flowThrough public scorn - mud from a muddy spring, Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,But leech-like to their fainting country cling,Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, An army which liberticide and preyMakes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;Religion Christless, Godless - a book sealed;A Senate, Time's worst statute unrepealed, Are graves, from which a glorious phantom mayBurst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poetical Works
Postwar Repression in Great Britain
The Six Acts
December 1819• Large public meetings
forbidden.• Fines for seditious libel
raised.• Trials of political agitators
expedited.• Increased newspaper taxes.• Prohibited the training of
armed groups.• Allowed for the search of
private homes in certain disturbed counties.
Postwar Repression in Great Britain
Cato Street Conspiracy February, 1820
The Concert of Europe and the Conservative Order
• If we ask what will become of Europe as a result of the unleashing of thirty millions serfs and an army of 300,000 men, the revolutionaries ask themselves the same question, and they see in the prospect life and triumph of their cause, whereas we, and all the enlightened leaders of Europe, can only see death. -Metternich on the Decembrists, 1826
The Concert of Europe and the Conservative Order
• It is Our duty to think of our security. When I say Ours, I mean the tranquility of Europe.
- Tsar Nicholas I to his brother, 1830