The Congress of Vienna (Part 2) (1814 to 1815)

0:08 This was how the Congress of Vienna was organized.

0:12 There was an 8 member Central Committee that would vote on the final treaty.

0:17 This group included the 5 Great Powers,

0:20 plus 3 secondary powers, Spain, Portugal,

0:23 and Sweden, who each had played an important role in the victory over Napoleon.

0:28 But the 5 Great Powers agreed to cut

0:31 out the Central Committee by negotiating informally among themselves.

0:35 If the Great Powers could hammer out a consensus,

0:39 they could steamroll the Central Committee and the rest of the Congress.

0:42 In the end, this was where the real power lie,

0:45 the secondary powers had very little influence over the final settlement.

0:47 Then there were a number of sub-committees, at least 12,

0:50 that would go off to the side and debate isolated issues among themselves.

0:54 When they reached a a consensus,

0:57 they would bring their proposal to the Central Committee for approval.

1:01 Most of these sub-committees were pretty boring,

1:03 which countries had shipping rights in which rivers, stuff like that.

1:07 But the most important sub-committee was the German Committee.

1:11 This committee would be chaired by Metternich of Austria and would

1:16 have members from every German state in central Europe, including Prussia.

1:20 Together, the German states would go away and collectively decide what central

1:25 Europe would look like in in a post Holy Roman Empire world.

1:30 The negotiations that took place within the German Committee

1:33 were perhaps the most consequential of the entire Congress.

1:49 The first roadblock was that the diplomats couldn't agree

1:52 upon which map to use as a baseline for negotiations.

1:55 As I've said before, none of these maps accurately reflect what was

2:00 going on on the ground at this time,

2:02 there were armies from every Great Power scattered all over Europe.

2:05 The default map that Britain, Austria,

2:08 and Russia wanted to use was the 1792 map, with some minor modifications.

2:12 In other words, they wanted the default map to be France

2:16 as it existed before any of its Revolutionary wars of conquest.

2:23 France and Prussia favoured using 1806 as the starting point.

2:27 This was when Prussia was at its beefiest,

2:30 so obviously the land-hungry Prussians would push for this date.

2:35 Talleyrand backing Prussia's 1806 proposal was a shrewd move,

2:39 because not only would it result in an extra beefy France, but more importantly,

2:44 it allowed Talleyrand to open the Congress

2:47 by throwing a wedge into the anti-French alliance.

2:50 There was always the danger of the other 4 Great Powers ganging

2:54 up on a defeated France and taking from them whatever they wanted.

2:58 Hardenberg of Prussia even spoke of partitioning France.

3:01 But with Talleyrand at the table, that wasn't happening.

3:05 By pulling Prussia away from the other Great Powers,

3:08 Talleyrand was signalling to everybody

3:10 that France was capable of making trouble,

3:12 and if the other Great Powers wanted to reach a consensus,

3:16 they would actually have to negotiate with France.

3:25 Metternich and Castlereagh eventually talked

3:27 Hardenberg down from his 1806 position.

3:30 It's possible that they made certain

3:33 informal promises regarding Prussian territorial expansion,

3:36 but those details are lost to us.

3:44 So it was decided that they would start with the old 1792 borders,

3:53 but these brought with them a huge problem.

3:58 Poland.

3:59 A beefy Poland had existed in 1792, and if it were to be restored,

4:04 it would come at the expense of Russia and Prussia.

4:08 Prussia was land-hungry, and would not willingly let go of any

4:13 of its Polish provinces without being compensated somewhere else.

4:17 Russia didn't want Poland to exist at all, since it would serve as nothing more

4:21 than a buffer between it and central Europe.

4:24 Metternich loved the idea of restoring Poland.

4:27 Not only would it keep Russia out of central Europe,

4:31 but it would push Russia back from the Austrian border.

4:34 Metternich was even willing up to give up

4:37 Austria's Polish speaking provinces to make this happen.

4:41 Castlereagh and Metternich pulled Hardenberg aside

4:43 and came to a preliminary agreement over Poland.

4:47 Prussia would give up its Polish speaking provinces,

4:50 but Castlereagh and Metternich promised to compensate

4:53 for this with German speaking provinces in central Europe.

4:57 The three of them came to a handshake

5:00 agreement that Prussia would receive Saxony,

5:02 along with several German cities to the west.

5:05 Under this framework, Prussia's population would increase by 6%,

5:08 and Poland would remain independent.

5:11 All three were happy with this.

5:15 When Tsar Alexander of Russia caught wind of this secret agreement,

5:18 he threw a pretty public tantrum.

5:21 He announced that he intended to keep 100% of Poland,

5:26 including the Polish speaking provinces currently held by Austria and Prussia.

5:31 These demands were extreme, and it was difficult to imagine Austria and Prussia

5:37 simply handing their territory over to Russia for nothing.

5:41 Talleyrand was also unhappy with the secret Poland agreement,

5:44 and went to see Tsar Alexander privately.

5:47 Talleyrand specifically wanted to preserve a strong and independent Saxony,

5:53 since France and Saxony had traditionally been strong allies.

5:57 Talleyrand made his pitch to the Russian Emperor.

6:01 Alexander replied, "I would rather have war than give up what I

6:06 occupy." Talleyrand was stunned when he heard this, and asked for clarification.

6:11 "Yes, I would rather have war," Alexander said.

6:15 Talleyrand began trying to talk the Emperor down into a compromise,

6:19 but before he could make any progress Alexander stood up and declared,

6:23 "it's time for the theatre!

6:24 I have to go!" He then gave Talleyrand an affectionate hug, and ran off.

6:29 After casually threatening a World War,

6:32 the Russian Emperor stayed out partying until 4 in the morning.

6:37 Talleyrand was appropriately alarmed by this behaviour,

6:41 and informed the other Great Powers of Russia's intransigence.

6:46 Hardenberg began to fear that Prussia may

6:48 on the losing end of any conflict over Poland,

6:51 and so he began to move soldiers around

6:54 to fortify the parts of Poland that they currently occupied.

6:59 As if that isn't bad enough,

7:00 Metternich then found out that his monarch was upset with him.

7:04 The Austrian Emperor Francis summoned Metternich,

7:07 and chastised him for using the Kingdom of Saxony as a bargaining chip.

7:14 Austria was trying to position itself

7:16 internationally as the defender of the rule

7:19 of law and the defender of the rights of smaller central European states.

7:22 They couldn't credibly do this if they sold

7:25 their neighbours up the river as first opportunity.

7:28 Emperor Francis told Metternich that the Kingdom

7:32 of Saxony must survive the negotiations,

7:35 and it must survive at at least half of its current size.

7:40 This made Metternich's task infinitely more complex.

7:44 Prussia must be convinced to take less of Saxony

7:47 than they had been promised in their handshake deal.

7:50 This meant that they would want to hold onto their Polish speaking provinces.

7:54 In order to make that work,

7:56 Metternich would need to strike a deal with Tsar Alexander.

8:09 Metternich went to meet with Alexander, and things got heated.

8:13 Metternich did not find the Russian Emperor particularly intimidating,

8:17 and spoke to him in the manner that he would speak to any other diplomat.

8:22 Alexander wasn't really used to that, and after 2 long hours of back and forth,

8:28 he jumped to his feet, marched over to Metternich, and challenged him to a duel.

8:34 This kind of thing was above Metternich's pay grade,

8:37 and required the personal intervention of the Austrian Emperor.

8:41 Francis of Austria soothed Alexander's ego by saying

8:45 that of course he would win a duel against Metternich,

8:48 but murdering the Austrian Foreign

8:50 Minister might cause an international incident.

8:53 Recall Metternich's first impression of Alexander,

8:57 "the biggest baby on earth." Was he wrong?

9:04 After this incident,

9:05 Alexander would privately describe Metternich as "a permanent

9:10 obstacle" and "a sworn enemy." The feeling was mutual.

9:17 Russia was apparently a dead end, so Metternich went to Prussia next.

9:22 Metternich explained to Hardenberg that he could

9:25 now only give Prussia half of Saxony.

9:28 This was not what they had agreed to, and Hardenberg was understandably upset.

9:33 The two diplomats parted ways with sore feelings and no agreement.

9:38 The entire deal over Poland seemed to be dead, or at least dying,

9:43 and the prospect of war with Russia was becoming a growing concern.

9:48 In desperation, Metternich brought Britain and France into the negotiations.

9:53 He thought that if 3 Great Powers could bring a compromise to the other two,

9:58 they might be pressured into accepting it.

10:04 Castlereagh went to see Alexander.

10:06 He explained to the Russian Tsar that Britain

10:09 would not accept a Poland under Russian domination.

10:13 The British public demanded an independent Poland.

10:17 Alexander finally let his guard down,

10:20 (or at least pretended to,) and confessed to Castlereagh that the war

10:24 with Napoleon had left him in a precarious situation back in Russia.

10:28 The Russians had sacrificed everything to defeat Napoleon,

10:32 and the Russian aristocracy felt that they deserved Poland as a reward.

10:37 Alexander doesn't come right out and say this, but he

10:41 hints that he had promised them exactly that before he left.

10:44 The implication was that there may be a coup if he went back empty handed.

10:50 Castlereagh explained to Alexander that if he took

10:53 Poland without the consent of the other Great Powers,

10:56 it would not end well for him.

10:59 Prussia and Austria would become permanent enemies of Russia,

11:03 and natural allies to the occupied Polish population.

11:10 One way or another, Poland would be free.

11:20 It seemed that negotiations were approaching an impasse.

11:24 And then disaster struck.

11:26 News got out that the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III

11:29 had publicly signed off on the Russian annexation of Poland.

11:32 Tsar Alexander had been personally negotiating with him in secret.

11:38 Hardenberg was inconsolable.

11:39 His own king had just stabbed him in the back.

11:43 It was humiliating.

11:44 What made matters worse was that the Prussian

11:46 king was too stupid to realize he wasn't helping.

11:49 This turn of events lit a fire under the members of the Congress.

11:54 Castlereagh grabbed Hardenberg and said that if Hardenberg could

11:57 get the Prussian king to walk back those Poland comments,

12:00 then Britain would be prepared to back Prussia's demand to annex 100% of Saxony.

12:06 Hardenberg agreed, and marched off to wrestle back control of his monarch.

12:13 Metternich stayed strategically silent during this exchange.

12:16 He had secretly written to Castlereagh

12:19 and promised Austrian support in this scheme,

12:21 even though it was in direct violation of his Emperor's

12:25 instructions to preserve at least half of Saxony.

12:29 But that was a problem for another day.

12:34 And just like that, because of Russian overreach, Britain, France, Prussia,

12:40 and Austria were on the same page when it came to Poland.

12:44 It was 4 against 1.

12:46 With newfound urgency, the 4 powers came together and drafted

12:51 3 possible options to resolve the Poland crisis.

12:55 Option #1 called for an enlarged Poland,

12:58 which would include Polish speaking provinces from Russia, Austria, and Prussia.

13:04 Option #2 called for a reduced Poland, where Russia,

13:08 Austria, and Prussia each held onto their Polish speaking provinces.

13:14 Option #3 called for a full partition, where Russia, Austria,

13:18 and Prussia would come in and divide Poland 3 ways.

13:22 Under this plan, the people of Poland would

13:25 have certain political protections across all 3 countries,

13:28 including full freedom of movement.

13:30 You might notice that there was no option

13:32 in which Russia got to keep all of Poland.

13:35 That was on purpose.

13:38 Talleyrand was selected to go and present these options to the Russian Tsar.

13:43 He explained to Alexander that France's official position

13:46 was that there should be an independent Poland.

13:49 He said that if Russia acted on its own and annexed Poland,

13:53 Prussia and Austria would have no choice

13:56 but to seriously consider a potential war with Russia.

14:00 In such a scenario, both would

14:02 seek to strengthen themselves through territorial expansion.

14:06 If 3 of the Great Powers were going around Europe gobbling up territory,

14:11 France and Britain would have no choice but to intervene.

14:14 Talleyrand was very clear with Alexander; if he took Poland by force,

14:20 the Great Powers would go to war.

14:24 Alexander was growing frustrated with this constant diplomatic meddling,

14:28 and finally snapped.

14:29 "I have 200,000 men in the Duchy of Warsaw, [a.k.a.

14:33 Poland,] and I would like to see anyone try to drive me out of it.

14:39 I have given Prussia Saxony,

14:40 and Austria consents to it." Alexander had spies everywhere,

14:44 and apparently he knew that Saxony was secretly being used as a bargaining chip.

14:51 Talleyrand feigned innocence and asked an innocent question:

14:55 how could Prussia annex Saxony when they had no claim to the Saxon throne?

15:02 Alexander responded, "if the King of Saxony will not abdicate,

15:05 he will be packed off to Russia;

15:07 he will die there." This was an open threat of violence against another monarch,

15:13 and it was not the answer that Talleyrand was expecting.

15:18 After a pause, he responded with caution,

15:21 "the Congress was not assembled to witness a violence assault

15:26 of this kind." At this, Alexander truly lost his temper.

15:30 "Do you really think I give much weight to all your parchments and treaties?

15:35 The King of Prussia will be the King of Prussia and Saxony,

15:38 just as I will be the Emperor of Russia and the King

15:42 of Poland." With that, he stormed out of the room,

15:49 leaving Talleyrand alone with his thoughts.

15:54 When Metternich learned of Alexander's outburst, he finally lost his patience.

15:59 He decided to meet once more with the Russian Tsar,

16:04 this time with a different negotiating tactic.

16:07 He told Alexander that Austria was considering unilaterally selecting

16:12 a Polish king to rule over and independent Poland.

16:17 This was an unspoken threat.

16:19 Metternich was telling Alexander that all he had to do was

16:25 snap his fingers and Poland would rise up against Russian occupation.

16:29 Alexander responded by issuing an unspoken threat of his own.

16:33 He invited Metternich to come to Poland,

16:36 and inspect the Russian soldiers stationed there.

16:40 All 200,000 of them.

16:42 Metternich then dropped the subtly.

16:44 He flatly told Alexander that if he took Poland,

16:48 the entire Congress of Vienna would stand united against him.

16:52 After this, tempers flared, voices were raised, and things got personal.

16:57 From this moment on, Metternich would refuse to be

17:00 in the same room with the Russian Tsar unless others were present,

17:03 which frankly is exactly the kind of grudge that I respect.

17:10 And then a very troubling thing happened.

17:13 Without notice, the Russian soldiers in Saxony began to pack up and leave.

17:18 Shortly after this, the Prussian soldiers

17:21 occupying parts of Poland did the same.

17:23 All of a sudden there was a lot of military movement, and nobody knew why.

17:28 Within a matter of weeks, a lot more Prussian soldiers entered Saxony

17:32 and a lot more Russian soldiers entered Poland.

17:36 It became clear that there was some kind of hand-off happening,

17:40 a secret agreement between Russia and Prussia.

17:43 Both were openly fortifying their positions and preparing for war.

17:48 Bad bad bad.

17:51 Castlereagh wrote a summary of these events

17:54 to Prime Minister Liverpool back in Britain.

17:56 "Unless the Emperor of Russia can be brought

17:59 to a more moderate and sound course of public conduct,

18:03 the peace, which we have so dearly purchased, will be but of a short duration.

18:09 You must make up your mind to watch him

18:12 and resist him if necessary as another Bonaparte." Back in Britain,

18:19 the domestic political situation was approaching a boiling point.

18:23 The narrow conservative Whig majority in the House of Commons was in jeopardy.

18:29 The liberal Whig opposition had weaponized the Saxony and Poland crisis,

18:33 and were using it as a rallying cry against authoritarianism everywhere.

18:38 The liberals had the public on their side,

18:41 and now they were calling for an independent Saxony

18:44 and an independent Poland with no concessions to the other powers whatsoever.

18:50 Liverpool was in a precarious situation,

18:52 and could not appear to be throwing the people of Poland to the Russian wolves.

18:58 Or bears or whatever.

19:00 The liberals wanted to paint Liverpool as sympathetic to the Russian tyrant,

19:04 and so Liverpool needed to prove them wrong.

19:07 He wrote to Castlereagh, instructing him to back away from any

19:12 deal that would partition Saxony or Poland.

19:15 The official British position would now

19:17 call for full independence for both countries.

19:23 You would think that such an abrupt

19:26 shift in priorities would blow up the negotiations, but it really didn't.

19:30 After being stabbed in the back by Russia and Prussia,

19:34 Metternich felt no obligation to bend over backwards for them anymore.

19:38 The Austrian Emperor had always wanted an independent Saxony,

19:42 and Metternich had always wanted an independent Poland,

19:45 so he joined the British in calling for both.

19:49 Talleyrand had always favoured full independence for both countries,

19:53 and quickly followed Metternich's lead.

19:55 But it didn't stop there.

19:57 This audacious show of force from Russia and Prussia

20:01 spooked every small and medium sized state in central Europe.

20:05 If Saxony could get steamrolled like this, nobody was safe.

20:10 Virtually every central European state

20:13 found their courage and backed Castlereagh

20:16 and Metternich's call for an independent Saxony and an independent Poland.

20:22 Austria had long sought to position itself as the defender

20:25 of precedent and tradition and the rule of law,

20:29 and now that strategy was paying off.

20:31 Metternich suddenly found himself at the center of attention,

20:34 the most popular guy in Vienna,

20:36 the hub to which every central European state wanted to attach itself.

20:41 When the dust settled,

20:43 it became clear that Russia and Prussia's power grab had been a massive blunder.

20:50 Tsar Alexander must have realized that he had backed himself into a corner,

20:54 because he began sending signals to Austria that he

20:58 might be satisfied with less than 100% of Poland.

21:02 This was exactly the sort of opening that everybody was waiting for.

21:07 Attention then turned to Prussia.

21:10 There were reports that the Prussians

21:12 were building fortifications inside of occupied Saxony,

21:16 which drew broad international condemnation.

21:19 It soon became conspicuous that Tsar Alexander was remaining silent.

21:24 Prussia was being left hanging out to dry.

21:28 A desperate Hardenberg visited Talleyrand and tried to get him

21:32 to break away from the other powers by making wild promises.

21:36 At one point Hardenberg offered France the Netherlands,

21:40 which of course was a red line for Britain,

21:42 and not something that Hardenberg was in a position to give away.

21:47 Talleyrand wisely turned him down.

21:49 Hardenberg was out of options.

21:51 He backed down from his maximalist position,

21:54 and began telling people that he would accept no less than half of Saxony.

21:59 Metternich jumped at this.

22:01 An independent Saxony at half of its current size would satisfy

22:05 both the Austrian Emperor and all of those smaller central European states.

22:11 After some back and forth over specifics, an agreement was reached.

22:16 Prussia would receive half of Saxony,

22:18 along with some German speaking territory along the Rhine.

22:22 A reduced Saxony would remain fully independent, and war would be averted.

22:32 But then there was still the issue with Poland.

22:36 Alexander re-opened negotiations by offering to let

22:39 Austria and Prussia keep their Polish speaking provinces.

22:42 A real change of tune from last time.

22:45 Castlereagh then called for the creation

22:48 of a strong Polish constitution built upon liberal-democratic values.

22:52 Tsar Alexander immediately agreed,

22:55 and publicly thanked Castlereagh for his advocacy

22:59 on behalf of the people of Poland.

23:02 If you find Alexander's change in demeanour a little shocking, you aren't alone.

23:07 It's clear that there were some backchannel

23:09 talks going on during the Saxony crisis,

23:12 and it seems that concessions were made in order to get

23:15 Alexander to back off and throw Prussia under the bus.

23:18 What was happening now over Poland seemed well-choreographed,

23:22 as if it had all been drawn up in some back room somewhere.

23:27 The Great Powers quickly reached an agreement over Poland,

23:30 and it looked like this.

23:32 Austria and Prussia would be allowed to keep their Polish speaking provinces.

23:36 The rest would become the Kingdom of Poland.

23:40 The new kingdom would have a strong liberal-democratic constitution,

23:43 with an independent legislature, independent courts, and an independent army.

23:48 The King of Poland would be a quasi-ceremonial role,

23:53 tightly constrained by the Polish constitution.

23:55 Under this deal, it was decided that Tsar Alexander

24:00 of Russia would separately and simultaneously become the King of Poland.

24:05 On paper, this satisfied British and Austrian demands for an independent Poland,

24:10 since the new kingdom retained the right to make

24:13 its own laws and field its own military.

24:16 It also satisfied Alexander's demand to take

24:19 Poland as a prize for defeating Napoleon.

24:23 But obviously Poland could not be truly independent under this arrangement.

24:28 With the Russian Emperor as their king,

24:31 it became impossible for Poland to resist creeping Russian influence.

24:36 For the rest of Alexander's reign,

24:38 he would chip away at Poland's independent political institutions,

24:42 and slowly work towards swallowing Poland into the Russian Empire.

24:46 By the time his successor came to the throne,

24:49 the new Russian Emperor declared that he

24:51 no longer felt bound by the Polish constitution, and then that was that.

24:59 It's undeniable that Castlereagh and Metternich

25:02 sacrificed Poland for an independent Saxony.

25:06 Perhaps they saw the writing on the wall.

25:08 The truth was that if Russia took Poland by force,

25:11 Austria and Britain weren't really in a position to take it back.

25:15 Perhaps they decided that if they couldn't stop Russia from taking Poland,

25:19 they could turn the whole thing into a poison pill.

25:22 As an island of liberalism within the Russian Empire,

25:26 Poland would confound and distract Tsar Alexander for the rest of his reign.

25:32 The Poland and Saxony crisis brought the Great Powers back to the brink of war.

25:38 But now that there was a deal in place,

25:41 (messy as it was,) there was finally room to breathe.

25:44 One of the conditions attached to the Poland deal was that Tsar Alexander,

25:49 having received his great prize, was to get out of the way and let

25:53 everyone else negotiate what they came to negotiate.

25:57 There were still several outstanding questions that needed to be settled,

26:02 but none more pressing than the fate

26:08 of the German speaking states in central Europe.

26:19 Metternich was the chair of the German committee,

26:21 and now that the crisis over Poland was resolved,

26:24 he was finally able to get some real work done.

26:27 Recall that the Congress of Vienna had agreed to use

26:31 the 1792 borders as a starting point for negotiations.

26:34 Well, in 1792 the Holy Roman Empire existed.

26:38 Metternich had no interest in turning back the clock,

26:42 the Holy Roman Empire had proved itself to be

26:45 a totally inept institution when faced with a real threat.

26:48 The German Committee had the task of figuring out what central

26:52 Europe would look like in a post Holy Roman Empire world.

26:57 As far as Metternich could see, there were four possible paths forward.

27:03 Option #1: Complete independence for everybody.

27:07 Option #2: A German Empire united under one government.

27:12 Option #3: A loose confederation of German states Option #4:

27:17 Austria and Prussia expand, and conquer their smaller neighbours.

27:23 All four of these options presented problems.

27:26 If they decided to go with option #2, a united German Empire,

27:31 Metternich would obviously insist upon a Habsburg Emperor.

27:35 But given recent experience over Saxony,

27:38 Metternich did not believe that the Prussians

27:41 would submit to the Austrians like that.

27:43 In addition to that, Metternich was

27:45 getting signals from Castlereagh that the British

27:47 would not sign off on the creation of a German Empire.

27:51 So option #2 seemed a dead end.

27:55 Option #4, Austria and Prussia conquering their neighbours,

27:58 didn't seem great either.

28:00 Such aggressive behaviour would frighten all of the other Great Powers,

28:03 and if any of them tried to protect one of the smaller German states,

28:07 they would all be at war again.

28:09 Nobody wanted that.

28:10 This option seemed way too risky.

28:11 That left option #1 or option #3.

28:15 Either complete independence, or a loose confederation.

28:18 Of the two, Metternich's preference for a loose confederation.

28:22 He thought that complete independence would leave central Europe weak,

28:26 and unable to defend itself.

28:28 It would only be a matter of time until some

28:32 outside power went to war with one of Austria's weaker neighbours,

28:36 and then Austria would intervene,

28:37 and then we're back in a Great Power Conflict situation.

28:41 A loose confederation, on the other hand,

28:43 might be enough to deter meddling from outside powers.

28:50 If there was to be a German Confederation,

28:53 Metternich first would need to mend the relationship with Hardenberg.

28:57 The Prussian duplicity over Saxony had left a sour taste in everyone's mouth,

29:02 but if the two Great Powers were to live under the same umbrella,

29:06 they would have to be friends.

29:08 Metternich began making his pitch to some of the smaller German states.

29:12 He found very little resistance.

29:14 Many felt burned over the Saxony debacle,

29:17 and sought a closer strategic relationship

29:20 with Austria for their own protection.

29:24 Metternich's vision for a German Confederation would look like this.

29:32 All states within the Confederation would maintain their independence,

29:36 except when it came to matters of military defence.

29:40 Under the German Confederation, an attack on one would be an attack on all,

29:45 any outside power sticking their nose into German affairs would

29:49 be met with the combined strength of every German state.

29:53 This ruffled some feathers because it restricted the ability of German

29:57 states to make alliances with outside powers- Bavaria in particular was upset

30:02 by this- but Metternich smoothed things over by pointing out that this would

30:07 put them in a military alliance with 38 other German states.

30:11 Such a thing had not been possible under the Holy Roman Empire,

30:14 and such a thing would not be possible

30:17 to anybody negotiating out there on their own.

30:20 Of course Austria and Prussia were to be exempt from this.

30:24 They had their own goofy reasoning,

30:27 they had non-German provinces in their respective Empires, whatever.

30:31 The real reason was that they were Great Powers,

30:35 and reserved the right to make alliances or war as they wished.

30:41 Austria and Prussia would be the two anchors of the German Confederation,

30:46 and it was paramount to the survival of the Confederation

30:49 that the two Great Powers within it got along.

30:52 The German Confederation would have a central Diet,

30:55 a legislature, located in the Free City of Frankfurt.

30:58 The Diet was conceived as a sort of United Nations of Germany,

31:03 where various independent German states would come together

31:06 and resolve any disputes that might lead to war.

31:10 They would also work to reduce barriers so that Germans could

31:14 live and work and write in any German speaking country without fear.

31:18 To this end, they created a weak federal

31:21 legal system to protect certain political rights across borders.

31:26 Hardenberg of Prussia was surprisingly supportive of this proposal.

31:30 The German Diet treated Austria and Prussia as equal partners,

31:34 which was reassuring to an insecure and young power such as Prussia.

31:40 The only thing Hardenberg wanted was

31:44 to enshrine this agreement into a written constitution,

31:49 which Metternich agreed to.

31:52 There were other areas that could not be fully restored under the 1792 borders.

31:58 Italy had been totally reshaped under French rule,

32:01 and the Congress of Vienna needed to decide how

32:04 much French influence was acceptable in the region going forward.

32:09 At the moment of his defeat, Napoleon had been the King of Italy,

32:13 (really Northern Italy,) his son had been King of Rome,

32:16 (also Northern Italy,) and one of his top generals had been the King of Naples,

32:21 (Southern Italy.) Obviously this arrangement couldn't continue,

32:24 but it was not immediately clear what the Congress should do.

32:28 Metternich and the Austrian Emperor took a particular interest in this.

32:33 They considered Northern Italy Austria's back yard,

32:35 and Metternich believed that if Austria and France

32:39 were in constant competition for influence in Northern Italy,

32:42 it would eventually end in another war.

32:45 Whatever the new political settlement in Northern Italy looked like,

32:48 it had to be able to resist French influence going forward.

32:54 Metternich spoke to Castlereagh about this, and the two

32:57 found that they were of the same mind.

32:59 Castlereagh told him that Britain was not

33:02 overly concerned about the future of North Italy,

33:05 so long as it remained out of reach for the French.

33:08 The two men came to an agreement.

33:11 Remembering the Poland-Saxony crisis, Castlereagh said that the British public

33:16 was in an anti-imperialist mood right now,

33:18 and so he couldn't support any sweeping annexations of territory.

33:23 However, Britain had no problem with Austrian hegemony in the region.

33:28 If Metternich could draw up a plan that only made minor territorial adjustments,

33:34 wink wink, he could count on Castlereagh's support.

33:39 Once it became clear to all parties

33:41 that the future of Italy was being discussed,

33:43 there were calls to replicate the success

33:46 of the German Committee by forming an Italian Committee.

33:49 Metternich and Castlereagh shut this talk down immediately.

33:53 Per their agreement, the future of Italy would be decided my Metternich alone.

34:04 This is what he came up with.

34:06 Austria would conduct a minor territorial

34:09 adjustment by directly annexing Lombardy and Venice.

34:13 This would add millions of Italians to the Austrian Empire.

34:16 Metternich knew that the Hungarians would have opposed any

34:19 deal that added more ethnic Germans to the Empire,

34:23 since it would have upset the delicate balance within Austria.

34:27 Expanding into Northern Italy was seen as politically neutral,

34:30 so Metternich used this opportunity to beef up Austria

34:34 by annexing one of the richest parts of Europe.

34:38 Castlereagh noticed this, but deemed it minor enough

34:41 to escape the notice of the British public.

34:44 Next, Metternich re-created the Duchy of Parma

34:47 and handed it over to Marie Louise of Austria,

34:51 the Austrian Emperor's eldest daughter.

34:53 The fact that she remained the wife of Napoleon was a bit inconvenient,

34:58 so Metternich carved out a rule so that the duchy would

35:01 go to some nephew of the Spanish King upon her death.

35:05 Spain had been upset when Metternich

35:07 got the authority to reshape Northern Italy,

35:09 and this was Metternich's way of throwing them a bone.

35:14 The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was also re-created

35:16 and handed over to the brother of the Austrian Emperor.

35:21 Similarly, the Duchy of Modena was re-created

35:23 and handed to some cousin of the Austrian Emperor.

35:27 Noticing a pattern yet?

35:28 By doing this, Metternich technically met Castlereagh's requirement

35:33 to not openly annex all of Northern Italy.

35:37 But it was a bit deceptive.

35:39 In some cases, the Prime Ministers of these new

35:42 states would be Austrian officials hand-picked by Metternich.

35:46 On paper these were all independent countries,

35:49 but in reality the Austrians were treating Northern Italy like a colony.

35:55 In addition to all of this, Metternich re-formed the Papal States,

35:58 which was an important sticking point for the majority Catholic Austrian Empire.

36:04 He also strengthened and restored the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.

36:07 Unlike the other restorations, Metternich left Piedmont-Sardinia alone.

36:10 As an independent and fairly strong regional power,

36:13 they would serve as a buffer against any future French expansion.

36:18 Finally, Napoleon's former general was eventually removed from Southern Italy,

36:22 and a distant relation of the King

36:25 of Spain returned to rule the region once more.

36:28 I should briefly speak about how

36:30 Napoleon's general was removed from Southern Italy.

36:33 It involves an event that is known to history as the Hundred Days.

36:46 Here's a brief summary of what happened.

36:48 When the Congress of Vienna was like six months into negotiations,

36:52 Napoleon secretly slipped away from his confinement

36:55 on the island of Elba and landed in Southern France.

36:59 He marched north with maybe 1,000 supporters,

37:02 but as he advanced thousands more flocked to his banner.

37:06 Three weeks after landing in France, he captured Paris without firing a shot.

37:10 The new French King fled to the Netherlands.

37:12 The allies had long feared something like

37:14 this, and in fact during the last 6 months of negotiations,

37:18 the Great Powers had kept their armies mobilized for this very reason.

37:23 Within hours of Napoleon's disappearance from Elba,

37:26 hundred of thousands of soldiers were marching on France.

37:32 Three months after Napoleon captured Paris,

37:35 British and Prussian armies faced the French

37:38 outside the town of Waterloo in the Netherlands, current day Belgium.

37:42 At Waterloo, Napoleon was soundly defeated by the British

37:46 general Arthur Wellesley the Duke of Wellington.

37:48 Napoleon fled, and about a month later he surrendered to the British,

37:52 who promptly sent him to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic,

37:57 where under the watchful eye of the British,

38:00 he would spend the rest of his days.

38:04 I've been strategically talking around

38:07 the Hundred Days this entire video because,

38:10 while it's certainly militarily interesting,

38:13 and Napoleonically interesting, it's not diplomatically interesting.

38:18 From the perspective of the Congress of Vienna,

38:21 the Hundred Days were a brief pause in negotiations,

38:25 after which everyone just picked back up where they left off.

38:28 Also- and this may annoy some people but it must

38:31 be said- the Hundred Days was not a particularly close call.

38:35 When Napoleon captured Paris he had maybe 50,000 soldiers at his disposal.

38:41 The allies had a million.

38:44 Naturally Napoleon immediately began raising 100,000 additional soldiers,

38:48 but so did the allies, and by this point the allies were faster.

38:52 If Napoleon had won at Waterloo,

38:54 there would have been another Waterloo later that summer.

38:58 If he had won 10 Waterloos, the allies still would have had him outnumbered.

39:03 The entire Hundred Days was an act of delusion,

39:06 and there was never a serious threat of a French victory.

39:10 Anyways, I bring all of that up because Napoleon's former

39:14 general the King of Naples sided with Napoleon during the crisis,

39:18 which gave Metternich a good excuse to remove

39:20 him from power and have him executed.

39:34 So here was the framework for the final settlement.

39:37 Broadly speaking Europe would return to its 1792 borders.

39:41 Russia would swallow up Poland under a strict constitutional arrangement,

39:46 and Prussia would annex half of Saxony.

39:49 The Holy Roman Empire would be replaced

39:51 with the much more practical German Confederation,

39:54 and Northern Italy would become an anti-French zone under Austrian supervision.

40:01 With negotiations drawing to a close,

40:03 there was one lingering issue that had not yet been addressed.

40:08 The British Prime Minister Liverpool

40:11 instructed Castlereagh to begin discussing slavery.

40:14 By 1815, the British anti-slavery political movement had

40:18 truly become a force to be reckoned with.

40:22 In 1788, a bunch of local abolitionist groups sent

40:26 Parliament 60,000 signatures calling for the abolition of slavery.

40:30 In 1815, these same groups gathered almost a million signatures,

40:35 but this time they didn't send them to Parliament,

40:38 they sent them to Castlereagh in Vienna.

40:41 One statistic that was not lost on anybody was that the number of signatures

40:45 sent to Castlereagh was greater than the total

40:48 number of votes in the last election.

40:50 This was not simply an act of protest, it was a shot across the bow.

40:55 By this time, every British city and most British towns

40:58 had an abolitionist group that was active in local politics.

41:02 It was not uncommon for the average British voter to hear about the ongoing

41:07 sin of slavery on a weekly basis in their church and in their newspaper.

41:12 The issue became impossible to avoid.

41:16 After one particularly incendiary pamphlet went viral,

41:19 more than 300,000 women pledged to boycott sugar

41:23 since it was exclusively produced with slave labour.

41:27 People were hungry for action,

41:29 and when the government showed no interest in doing anything

41:32 they grabbed at whatever consumer choices might make a difference.

41:36 Political activism against slavery was so popular

41:39 in some circles that it became fashionable.

41:42 Literally.

41:43 This medallion, called the Wedgwood Medallion,

41:45 was mass produced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

41:50 Men generally wore these around their necks,

41:52 and women around their wrists or pinned into their hair.

41:56 The inscription reads:

41:57 "Am I Not A Man And A Brother?" This image of a man kneeling

42:02 in chains became the most widely distributed

42:05 piece of art depicting a black man ever,

42:08 and the unofficial logo of the anti-slavery movement.

42:12 In 1807, at the end of a political fight that lasted more than 15 years,

42:17 Britain passed an Act that abolished the British slave trade.

42:21 It did not abolish the practice of slavery, but it made it illegal to transport

42:27 enslaved persons across the Atlantic to the colonies.

42:30 Advocates believed that without new bodies coming over from Africa,

42:33 chattel slavery in the colonies would mostly die out within 1 or 2 generations.

42:38 They were wrong, but it was nevertheless a big deal

42:42 that Britain finally acknowledged that their goal

42:44 was to eventually abolish slavery.

42:47 The abolitionists were (correctly) not satisfied by this half measure.

42:52 They demanded nothing less than the complete and total abolition of slavery,

42:56 and as the years went on their influence only continued to grow.

43:03 Lord Liverpool inherited this political situation when he became Prime Minister,

43:07 and he wasn't happy about it.

43:09 He was holding onto his conservative Whig

43:12 majority in Parliament by the barest of threads,

43:14 and now the abolitionists had sent a million

43:17 signatures to his Foreign Secretary in Vienna.

43:20 Liverpool didn't really care one way or the other about slavery,

43:23 and to the extent he expressed any opinion

43:24 about it at all he thought it was fine.

43:25 But if he didn't give these people something, they might topple his government.

43:29 He instructed Castlereagh to try to get some

43:37 anti-slavery commitments into the final agreement at Vienna.

43:47 Castlereagh approached the 8 member Central Committee,

43:50 that is the 5 Great Powers plus Spain, Portugal, and Sweden,

43:54 and asked them to include a provision in the final agreement

43:57 that committed everybody to the eventual abolition of the slave trade.

44:03 Of those present, only Britain and Sweden had abolished the slave trade.

44:08 Castlereagh's opening position was that everybody

44:11 else should adopt Britain's anti-slavery laws.

44:13 Another way of saying this is that Castlereagh

44:16 was not committing Britain to any further anti-slavery reforms.

44:20 This fact was not lost on Castlereagh's negotiating partners.

44:25 Spain, Portugal, and France threw a fit.

44:29 France is an interesting case because they had

44:32 heroically abolished slavery at the beginning of their Revolution,

44:36 and then under Napoleon they shamefully brought it back.

44:40 Spain and Portugal were the other two

44:43 powers most heavily enmeshed with the slave trade.

44:45 Spain, Portugal, and France argued that Britain only wanted to stop

44:49 the slave trade because they had a head start out in the colonies.

44:54 They also argued that an agreement like this would give the British

44:58 Navy an excuse to stop and inspect every ship in the Atlantic.

45:02 In other words, this would all be to Britain's advantage.

45:06 Castlereagh tried to respond by appealing to morality,

45:09 but this only incensed them even further.

45:12 One Spanish diplomat got in Castlereagh's face and told him "the English

45:17 have always been good at making business march alongside honour." Joke's on him.

45:27 Castlereagh was Irish.

45:33 If we think about this for a moment,

45:36 Castlereagh could have shown Britain's commitment to the cause

45:39 by talking about complete and total abolition,

45:42 which would have hurt Britain more than anyone.

45:45 If he had walked into the room talking about abolition,

45:48 he would have had some credibility,

45:51 because he would have been saying "let's all do something difficult,

45:55 together." But Castlereagh didn't bring up total abolition,

45:59 because he was an imperialist,

46:02 and he wasn't that personally bothered by slavery.

46:07 After some agonizing negotiations,

46:08 they agreed to attach a document to the final treaty coming out of Vienna

46:14 called "A Declaration of Intent to Abolish

46:17 the Slave Trade." At Spain and Portugal's insistence,

46:21 this declaration would be non-binding, which sucks.

46:25 Castlereagh was like...if it's non-binding,

46:27 we're going to need to show people some specific goals, at least.

46:32 France agreed to abolish the slave trade within 5 years.

46:36 They would blow right past that deadline.

46:38 Spain agreed to abolish the slave trade within 8 years,

46:42 with some pretty large loopholes.

46:44 They would blow right past that deadline.

46:47 Portugal would only agree to abolish the slave trade north of the equator,

46:51 and since they didn't really have any colonies north of the equator,

46:54 this was pretty much a giant middle finger to the rest of the Congress.

47:00 Castlereagh also got all of the participants to declare

47:04 their intention to eradicate slavery once and for all,

47:07 but they provided absolutely no specifics and no deadlines.

47:11 A meaningless statement meant to simply soothe public opinion.

47:16 In the end, Britain's attempt to inject

47:19 anti-slavery commitments into the Congress was a failure.

47:23 The reason it was a failure was that Castlereagh didn't even really try.

47:27 He was half-hearted from the start,

47:29 and his reluctance to come in there with any radical proposals was

47:33 a signal to the other Great Powers

47:35 that Britain wasn't really taking this seriously.

47:37 It's a shame, because this was a moment

47:40 when something big could have been accomplished.

47:43 Britain had serious leverage and serious public support,

47:47 and Castlereagh didn't use any of it.

47:50 One of the consequences of Castlereagh's lack of enthusiasm in 1815 was

47:55 that slavery continued in places like Cuba and Brazil until the late 1880s.

48:01 That's a lot of lives and a lot of years,

48:05 and it's a real stain on Castlereagh's record

48:07 that he didn't really try to do anything about it.

48:11 But from a purely political standpoint, the anti-slavery negotiations worked.

48:17 Prime Minister Liverpool now had something to show the discontents back home,

48:23 and for now, that was enough.

48:26 His government would live to see another day.

48:34 The Treaty of Vienna was finalized in July of 1815.

48:38 All of the Great Powers signed off on it.

48:42 The only outlier was Spain,

48:44 who remained upset over Metternich's heavy-handed treatment of Northern Italy.

48:48 Spain refused to sign the final document, which was unfortunate,

48:53 but so long as all the Great Powers were on board this was deemed acceptable.

48:58 The final treaty was (mostly) built upon Realist principals,

49:02 and created a balance of power with clearly defined spheres

49:07 of influence that would hopefully prevent future Great Power Conflicts.

49:13 After Vienna, it was widely understood and accepted

49:16 that if anybody invaded one of those tiny German states,

49:20 it would automatically mean war with Prussia and Austria.

49:24 If anybody invaded Northern Italy, it would automatically mean war with Austria.

49:29 If anybody invaded the Netherlands,

49:31 it would automatically mean war with Britain.

49:33 If anybody invaded Poland, it would automatically mean war with Russia.

49:38 The belief was that so long as governments

49:41 understood what was and wasn't off limits,

49:44 minor disagreements could be solved diplomatically,

49:47 and Great Power Conflicts on the scale of the French

49:51 Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars could be entirely avoided.

49:56 It was in the interest of all Great Powers to respect these limitations,

50:01 and if any Great Power was found to be acting recklessly or belligerently,

50:05 it was in the interest of everybody else to put them in their place.

50:10 After 25 years of chaos and war,

50:13 the Great Powers were trying to have a go at stability.

50:20 This international system that emerged

50:22 from Vienna is sometimes called "The Concert

50:25 of Europe," as in all of Europe acting in concert, or in unison.

50:30 The next 15 years would put a severe test upon the Concert system,

50:35 and we will see, in time,

50:38 whether these frenzied and far-reaching negotiations were worth it.