Holy Alliance

[[File:Map of the Holy Alliance (1840).svg|thumb|The Holy Alliance in 1840

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The Holy Alliance (; ), also called the Grand Alliance, was a coalition linking the absolute monarchist great powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, which was created after the final defeat of Napoleon at the behest of Emperor Alexander I of Russia and signed in Paris on 26 September 1815.

The conservative alliance aimed to restrain secular liberalism in Europe in the wake of the devastating French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars; it nominally succeeded in this until the Crimean War. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck managed to reunite the Holy Alliance, as League of the Three Emperors, following the unification of Germany in 1871. However the alliance faltered by the 1880s due to Austrian and Russian conflicts of interest over the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Establishment

The alliance was formed to instil the divine right of kings and Christian values in European political life, as pursued by Alexander I under the influence of his spiritual adviser Baroness Barbara von Krüdener. It was written by Emperor Alexander I of Russia and edited by Ioannis Kapodistrias and Alexandru Sturdza. Under the treaty European rulers would agree to govern as "branches" of the Christian community and offer mutual service. About three months after the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, the monarchs of Catholic (Austria), Protestant (Prussia), and Orthodox (Russia) confession promised to act on the basis of "justice, love, and peace", both in internal and foreign affairs, for "consolidating human institutions and remedying their imperfections". The Alliance was quickly rejected by the United Kingdom (though George IV declared consent in his capacity as King of Hanover), the Papal States, and the Ottoman Empire. Lord Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary, called it "a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense". Nonetheless, Britain participated in the Concert of Europe. In the late 1820s,

Charles X of France sought to strengthen and protect his conservative monarchy through an alliance with Russia, leveraging their shared monarchist interests and anti-revolutionary activity.

Organisation

In practice, the Austrian state chancellor and foreign minister, Prince Klemens von Metternich made it a bastion against democracy and citizen-nationalism. It also allowed coordinating suppression of Polish efforts to restore an independent state, by Austria in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, by Russia in its Congress Poland and by Prussia in the Grand Duchy of Posen and in West Prussia.

The last meetings had revealed the rising antagonism between Britain and France, especially on Italian unification, the right to self-determination, and the Eastern Question. The Alliance is conventionally taken to have become defunct with Alexander's death in 1825. France ultimately went her separate way following the July Revolution of 1830, leaving the core of Austria, Prussia, and Russia as a Central-Eastern European block which once again congregated to suppress the Revolutions of 1848. The Austro-Russian alliance finally broke up in the Crimean War. Though Russia had helped to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Austria did not take any action to support her ally, declared herself neutral, and even occupied the Danubian Principalities upon the Russian retreat in 1854. Thereafter, Austria remained isolated, which added to the loss of her leading role in the German states, culminating in her defeat during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866.

Establishment

Organisation

See also

References

Further reading