The document summarizes the political developments in Europe following Napoleon's defeat in 1815. The Great Powers (Russia, Prussia, Austria, Britain, and France) established the Congress system to suppress revolutionary and liberal ideas and uphold the status quo. However, nationalist and revolutionary sentiments continued to emerge across Europe and Latin America, challenging the conservative order. By the 1820s, the Congress system began to break down as it was unable to contain new political realities, such as the independence movements in Latin America and revolutions in Spain, Naples, and Russia.

1. The Dike and
The Flood:
Domestic
By: Brady Rose

2. Background Information
• Napoleon defeated
• The governments that defeated Napoleon wanted to make sure the past 25 years
wouldn’t recommence
• Russia - Tsar Alexander said he wanted to bring Christianity into politics. He was
feared by representatives, a self-chosen world savior, and a liberal. Metternich
really wanted to convert Alexander to conservatism.
• France - Louis XVIII aspired to keep his throne for himself and his successors.
• Great Britain - Tory governing class hoped to preserve the old England that they
worked so hard to save from Bonaparte
• Germany, Austria, Italy, and central Europe - Metternich wanted to maintain a
system in which the prestige of the Habsburg dynasty should be supreme.

3. Reaction after 1815:
France, Poland
• The “white terror” - In 1815, most regicides rallied to Napoleon when he came
back from Elba; royalist counterrevolutionaries were mad. Upper-class youths
murdered Bonapartists and republicans; Catholic mobs seized and killed
protestants at Marseilles and Toulouse.
• In Poland, the Vienna settlement created a constitutional kingdom - Tsar
Alexander as king, joined in merely personal union with the Russian empire. It
didn’t work out very well. Alexander didn’t like anyone to disagree with him,
therefore the Poles couldn’t do much with legislation-wise with their freedom from
the constitution.
• Nationalism started to emerge in Poland and since Alexander didn’t allow many
freedoms, secret societies brought repression.

4. Reaction after 1815: The
German States
• National ideas were most common in the numerous universities.
• National ideas tended to glorify the German common people and made them have
an opposition to aristocrats, princes, and kings.
• Burschenschaft - Students in many of the universities in 1815 formed college
clubs collectively called this. Their happenings weren’t immediate threats to any
established state, but the nervous governments took alarm.
• Metternich intervened, although he had no authority in Germany except that
Austria was a member of the Germanic federation. He called a conference at
Carlsbad, Bohemia and there, the Carlsbad Decrees were made. They dissolved
student groups and censored any new ideas.

5. Reaction after 1815:
Britain
• After Waterloo, Britain was a country devoted to its old traditions. It was also
affected by some of the most advanced social problems of a rapidly developing
industrial economy.
• The Propertied Classes (farmers) passed Corn Laws, a high tariff on grain.
Workers protested them in Manchester and were attacked by police (the Peterloo
Massacre).
• Parliament passed the Six Acts, outlawing
• “Seditious and blasphemous” literature
• Using a stamp act to limit cheap newspapers
• Allowing the search of private houses
• Forbidding demonstrations of any kind

6. The Dike and
The Flood:
International
• At the Congress of Vienna, the powers agreed to hold meetings in the future to
enforce the treaty and take up new issues as they arose.
• Many congresses of the Great Powers resulted, which signified an experimental
step toward international regulation of European affairs.
• The Holy Alliance became the term for the collaboration of the European states in
the congresses.
• The Holly Alliance, gradually became an alliance for the suppression of
revolutionary and even liberal activity, following in that respect the trend of the
governments which made it up.

7. The Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle, 1848
• Tsar Alexander was still the most advanced internationalist of the day. He
suggested that a permanent European union be formed, with international
military forces to safeguard recognized states against change by violence.
• Britain refused to make a commitment on being obligated to act upon indefinite
and unforeseeable future events, reserving the right of independent judgment of
foreign policy.
• The Congress agreed to suppress the slave trade; but since only Britain had the
power to do so, no one wanted to give them the right to act. The illicit trade
continued.

8. Revolution in Southern Europe: The
Congress of Troppau, 1820
• The Revolutionary demonstrations in Spain and Naples brought the
collapse of corrupt governments.
• The Congress met at Troppau, where France and Britain refused to accept
it, but Russia, Prussia, and Austria agreed to send an Austrian army to
Naples (to restore the corrupt Bourbons).
• Metternich convinced Alexander that he was right politically. Metternich
drew up a document, the protocol of Troppau, to be considered by the five
Great Powers.
• It recognized that all European states should be protected by collective
international action and from internal changes brought on by outside
forces.
• A gap opened between the Eastern and Western powers

9. Spain and the Near East: The
Congress of Verona, 1822
• Many Neapolitan revolutionaries fled to Spain, where revolution
soon broke out.
• A Russian Greek named Ypsilanti led a force into Rumania in a
Grecophilic movement. Alexander refused to support the Greeks,
who were defeated.
• The Congress then agreed to send a French army to Spain, and the
small force of constitutionalists, liberals, and revolutionaries were
quickly crushed

10. Latin American
Independence
• The Portuguese royal family had taken refuge in its Brazilian
empire. When the dynasty was restored to Lisbon, one of its
members refused to leave Brazil, which remained as an “empire”
independent of Portugal.
• Spanish America took advantage of trading with Britain during the
Napoleonic wars, and after 1815 opposed returning to tight
Spanish control.
• Latin American revolutions were led by constitutional liberals,
including Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín. Bolívar freed
Colombia and Venezuela, San Martín freed Chile and Argentina,
and they both cooperated in Peru.
• Spanish Americans mostly remained independent because no
armed force could sail to America because Britain had sea power.

11. The End of the Congress
System
• After the Congress of Verona no more meetings of the kind were
held. The attempt at a international control of European matters
was given up.
• It only represented the status quo and was unable to accommodate
new realities. They propped governments that weren’t able to
stand alone and battled change.
• Members supported their own interests rather than the idea of
cooperation.

12. Russia: The Decembrist
Revolt, 1825
• Tsar Alexander I died in 1825. His death was the signal for revolution in Russia.
• A secret society of young officers, influenced by revolutionary ideals, made a brief
rebellion in support of the more liberal of two possible successors.
• Constantine renounced his claims of being the new heir because Nicholas was the
rightful heir., even though most of the people wanted Constantine.
• There was an uprising, known as the Decembrist revolt, that was soon put down.
• Five of the officers were hanged and many others were put to hard labor.
• It was the first manifestation of a modern revolutionary movement in Russia.
• Reaction, repression, and political immobility seemed to prevail.
• The dike was still containing the flood.

13. Looking Ahead
• In 1830, the dike broke and in western Europe the stream
afterward never stopped.
• It had actually already started seeping before that. Many countries
were changing and becoming independent, which was what the
dike was trying to prevent from happening.