572 Ch. 1 5 • Liberal Challenges To Restoration Europe
state from becoming too power
ful and potentially aggressive,
and to make future revolution
ary movements impossible. At
the beginning, defeated France
played only the role of a very
interested observer (although
French was the official language
of the conference). But Tal
leyrand’s wily off-stage negotia
tions gradually brought France
to the position of a full-fledged
participant in the deliberations.
The dominant figure in
Vienna was the Austrian chan
cellor Prince Klemens von Met
ternich (1773-1859). Born in
the German Rhineland, Metter
British Foreign Secretary Viscount Robert nich was the son of a noble who
Castlereagh. had served at the court of the
Habsburg monarch. Forced to
flee his homeland by the French invasion in 1792, he subsequently entered
the diplomatic service in Vienna, rising to become the minister of foreign
affairs in 1809. Metternich was a handsome dandy with immaculately pow
dered hair as at home in the social whirl of formal receptions and magnifi
cent balls as in the petty intrigues of high society. He could bore people in
five languages. But he was a determined, calculating practitioner of tough
minded diplomacy. Metternich dominated international affairs of the conti
nent until 1848.
Foreign Secretary Viscount Robert Castlereagh (1769-1822) represented
Britain. Aloof and painfully shy, Castlereagh, whose passion was sheepherd
ing, went to Vienna in the hope of establishing Britain as the arbiter of Euro
pean affairs. Now Europe’s greatest power, the British Empire included one
of every five people in the world. The British government sought the elimina
tion of the French threat to its commercial interests as well as security.
Moreover, Castlereagh and Metternich both viewed the prospect of Russian
expansion in Central Europe with anxiety. Only Russia now seemed in a
position to disrupt Europe through unilateral acts.
Tsar Alexander I of Russia (ruled 1801-1825) wanted the allies to affirm
formally what he considered the religious basis of the European alliance.
Alexander 1 was, above all, a deeply religious man who occasionally lapsed
into an intense mysticism and overwhelming unhappiness as he became
increasingly reactionary. Alexander 1 drafted a document that became the
basis for the Holy Alliance. It asserted that the relations of the European
sovereigns, “the delegates of Providence,” would thereafter be based “upon