Holy Alliance

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‘Holy Alliance’ was the derisive name given to the declaration at Paris in September 1815 by Alexander I of Russia, Frederick William III of Prussia, and Francis I of Austria that they would govern and collaborate in accordance with Christian principles. The driving spirit was the tsar in the midst of a devout phase. Britain, pleading her constitutional position, did not sign, though the prince regent expressed personal approval. Castlereagh, then foreign secretary, dismissed it privately as ‘a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense’. No mechanism was included in the declaration and disagreements between the signatories soon appeared.

The Holy Alliance is the name given to the treaty signed on September 26, 1815, in Paris by the monarchs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Its maker and prime mover was Tsar Alexander I. In 1815 after the downfall of Napoleon, Alexander was at the height of his powers. A romantic, an idealist, indeed something of an evangelical who had experienced a religious conversion in 1812, Alexander had fallen under the influence of a spiritualist, Baroness Julie von Krüdener, the wife of one of his diplomats, and the alliance was the product of nightly prayer meetings between the two. The alliance called upon the three powers to deal with one other and with their peoples on the basis of the Christian Gospel so there could emerge a fraternal union of rulers and peoples that would forever rid the earth of the scourge of war. At the insistence of the Austrian chancellor, Klemens von Metternich, Alexander's ally in the war against Napoleon, "fraternal" was struck out and changed to "a paternal alliance of monarchs over their peoples," lest the former clause be interpreted by Russia in a manner that would conflict with the language of other treaties under negotiation at this time.

Two common criticisms of the Holy Alliance are that its members (which in time included most the sovereigns of Europe) forged it into an instrument of oppression against their subjects, and, more important, that Alexander used it as a base to attain hegemony in Europe. Neither criticism is persuasive. The first can be challenged on factual grounds. The aspirations of the overwhelming majority of Europeans in the aftermath of the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars ran to one thing and one thing only: peace. National rights, national liberties, and the like were at this time simply not matters of priority. Moreover, the Holy Alliance powers exercised considerable restraint after 1815, as demonstrated by the extent to which they allowed multiple revolutionary fuses to be lit before they stepped in - in a real sense they allowed revolutions to explode (the Spanish and Italian revolutions of 1820 - 1821; the revolutions in France, Belgium, the Papal States, and Poland in 1830 - 1831; those in France, Germany, Austria, and Italy in 1848). Similarly, the argument that Alexander was bent on expansion in Europe overlooks the many things he did that pulled the opposite way. With a combination of threats and persuasion, he forced Prussia from the path of aggrandizement in Poland and onto that of cooperation with Austria. He resisted repeated appeals from the smaller German states for an anti-Austrian alliance - a move that he believed would be inimical to the interests of the general peace. Finally, he continually urged Russians to respect Turkish interests in the Balkans and especially in Greece. The fact is that Alexander was a committed moderate statesman who happened to believe what he said, and what he said illustrates a point often forgotten by historians and political scientists - that there is a place in the international system for principles and moral values.

Bibliography

Knapton, Ernest John. (1939). The Lady of the Holy Alliance: The Life of Julie de Krüdener. New York: Columbia University Press.

Nicolson, Harold. (1946). The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812 - 1822. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

Schroeder, Paul. (1994). The Transformation of European Politics, 1763 - 1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

—DAVID WETZEL

The founding countries of the Holy Alliance, against European boundaries as of 1840.

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   Austrian Empire

   Kingdom of Prussia

   Russian Empire

For Holy Leagues, see Catholic League (disambiguation).

The Holy Alliance (also called the Grand Alliance) was a coalition of Russia, Austria and Prussia created in 1815 at the behest of Czar Alexander I of Russia, signed by the three powers in Paris on September 26, 1815, in the Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleon.^[1] Ostensibly it was to instill the Christian values of charity and peace in European political life, but in practice Klemens Wenzel von Metternich made it a bastion against revolution. The monarchs of the three countries involved used this to band together in order to prevent revolutionary influence (especially from the French Revolution) from entering these nations. It was against democracy, revolution, and secularism. The Alliance is usually associated with the Quadruple and Quintuple Alliances, which included the United Kingdom and (from 1818) France with the aim of upholding the European peace settlement concluded at the Congress of Vienna. The Alliance was conventionally taken to have become defunct with Alexander's death in 1825.

See also

• Concert of Europe
• Great Powers

References

1. ^ Holy Alliance, Catholic Encyclopedia

Further reading

• Ghervas, Stella. Réinventer la tradition. Alexandre Stourdza et l'Europe de la Sainte-Alliance. Paris, Honoré Champion, 2008. ISBN 978-2-7453-1669-1

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