Who is prince Klemens Von Metternich?

Answer 1

Metternich was a German nobleman who served as foreign minister (and, for a while, as chancellor as well) for the Austrian Empire at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. He is considered to be the main person responsible for the Congress of Vienna, which was a major meeting that sought to resolve issues caused by Napoleon.

The Congress of Vienna set up what is called the Concert of Europe- this was a semi-formal system where the powerful countries of Europe would use alliances, politics, and diplomacy to balance each other out and prevent major wars from happening again. This way, one powerful country can't try to conquer all other countries, as Napoleon had tried to do. When things got very tense, then the nations would get together and hold new Congresses similar to that first one in Vienna (the last one was in Berlin in 1878). This "Concert" did not always succeed in preventing wars (there were, in fact, many smaller wars, notably the Crimean War, the wars involving Italian and German unification, and some independence wars in the Balkans), although widespread, devastating conflicts were avoided for about a century.

Metternich stood as the major figure behind the system as the influential foreign minister of the Austrian Empire, which was an immensely powerful country at the time. However, his system was very conservative in nature (some would say "reactionary"); it largely reset Europe to pre-French Revolution status, even restoring the old French monarchs who had been dethroned by the Revolution. The lower classes remained at the mercy of the old aristocracy, and this eventually boiled over into a series of revolutions across Europe in 1848, sometimes called the Spring of Nations. These rebellions, while ultimately ineffective for the most part, did finally end Metternich's ministerial career. The Concert continued well after Metternich's retirement and death (a decade later).

The Concert and its careful balancing act directly led to the complicated system of alliances that eventually led to World War I. While it largely succeeded in preventing major wars for a while, the Concert was ultimately unsuccessful and led to one of the largest and most destructive wars in the history of mankind.