to where these two chapters on the nineteenth century began: politics. The dynamic
international and domestic political contexts of the nineteenth century are vitally
important because they, and they alone, provide strategic meaning to the largely military
discussion provided here. The political end of the metaphorical bridge that strategy
provides to connect policy with military effort needs to be revisited.
There were two long periods of peace among the great powers, interrupted by a
twenty-year burst of brief wars (Russia against France and Britain, 1 8 54–6; France
against Austria, 1 8 59; Prussia against Austria, 1 8 66; and France against Prussia,
18 70–1). By the Treaty of Chaumont of 9 March 1 8 14, Britain, Austria, Prussia and
Russia formed the Quadruple Alliance and committed themselves to the goal of securing
Napoleon’s final fall, in other words to regime change in Paris. In addition, and probably
of greater significance, they committed themselves, albeit vaguely, to pursue the practice
of consultation over prospective diplomatic initiatives and particularly military actions.
Their purposes were to restore and sustain domestic and international order, and espe-
cially to prevent the recurrence of another period of general European war. They were
not so concerned to prevent war per se, because they believed that it was an occasional
necessity if order were to be restored. But the aims and therefore the character of warfare
should be modest and defensive. Thus began the so-called Congress System, launched
with rather different agendas by the eccentric apostle of Christian royal legitimacy Tsar
Alexander I, the over-cunning Austrian Machiavelli Prince Klement von Metternich
and the deeply conservative British Foreign Minister Viscount Robert Castlereagh, 2nd
Marquis of Londonderry.
The Congress System was driven initially by fear of Napoleon, then by a residual fear
of France, just as a parallel residual fear of Germany animated French policy in the 1920s
and 1930s, and again in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Also, as just noted, the Congress
powers were moved by fear of domestic and international disorder and its revolutionary
implications, as had been demonstrated so recently by events. After seven years, though,
the Congress System effectively died when Castlereagh, a key player who by then was
suffering from advanced paranoia, cut his own throat. Strategic historians must never
forget that the tempo of historical change, be it rapid or slow, is driven by individuals.
Commitment to ‘the repose of Europe’, to quote Castlereagh, was not a popular political
principle in British domestic politics. And his successor, George Canning, was not
inclined to attempt to sustain it.
Just two months after Castlereagh took his own life, France was allowed back into the
charmed circle of recognized and somewhat respected legitimate great powers at the
Congress of Verona, a conclave which met to discuss the controversial topic of Spain. It
is an error to write off the system of regular great power congresses as a general failure,
even though that system appeared to breathe its last in Verona. The system persisted in
the more adaptable and resilient form of the so-called Concert of Europe, certainly
until mid-century, and in some occasionally significant residual practices even until 1914.
The Concert has been described persuasively as a great power club with norms (Clark,
198 9: 115). It was all about great power rights and duties, and its most vital norm was
the master precept that no unilateral military action should be taken by a great power
which could affect the European balance without a prior effort being exerted to concert
understanding and secure at least tacit consent or tolerance. Each great power was
obliged to be sensitive to the legitimate defensive concerns of the others.
70 War, peace and international relations