Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

Settlement of Saxony.

The result of Talleyrand’s skilful policy was thus to unite England, Austria, and France, supported by many of the secondary states, such as Bavaria and Spain, against the pretensions of Prussia and Russia. Powerful armies were immediately set on foot. France in particular raised her military forces from 130,000 to 200,000 men, and her new army was in every way superior to that with which Napoleon had fought his defensive campaigns in 1814, for it contained the veteran soldiers who had been blockaded in the distant fortresses or had been prisoners of war. England too was enabled to make adequate preparations, for on December the 24th, 1814, a treaty had been signed at Ghent between the United States and England which put an end to the war which had been proceeding ever since 1812 on account of England’s naval pretensions. Bavaria also promised to put in the field 30,000 men for every 100,000 supplied by Austria. Although the secret treaty of January 3d was not divulged until after the return of Napoleon from Elba, the determined attitude of the opposition caused the Emperor Alexander to give way. It was decided that instead of the whole of Saxony, Prussia should only receive the district of Lusatia, together with the towns of Torgau and Wittenberg; a territory which embraced half the area of Saxony and one-third of its population. The King of Saxony, who had been treated as a prisoner of war, and whom the Emperor of Russia had even threatened to send to Siberia, was released from captivity, and induced by the Duke of Wellington, who succeeded Lord Castlereagh as English plenipotentiary in February 1815, to agree to these terms. The salvation of Saxony was a matter of great gratification to Louis XVIII., who remembered that though the king had been the faithful ally of Napoleon, he was also his own near relative.

Settlement of Poland.

Since Prussia was obliged to give up her claim to the whole of Saxony, Russia also had to withdraw from her scheme of uniting the whole of Poland. Nevertheless, Russia retained the lion’s share of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw; in 1774 her frontier had reached the Dwina and the Dnieper; in 1793 she obtained half of Lithuania as far as Wilna; in 1795 she annexed the rest of Lithuania and touched the Niémen and the Bug; in 1809 Napoleon had granted her the territory containing the sources of the Bug; and now in 1815 her borders crossed the Vistula, and by the annexation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, including that city, penetrated for some distance between Eastern Prussia and Galicia. Prussia received back its share of the two first partitions of Poland, with the addition of the province of Posen and the city of Thorn, but lost Warsaw and its share in the last partition; while Austria received Cracow, which was to be administered as a free city. Alexander was deeply disappointed by the frustration of his Polish schemes, but he nevertheless kept his promise to Prince Adam Czartoryski and granted a representative constitution and a measure of independence to Russian Poland.

The Germanic Confederation.

Though the great diplomatic struggle arose over the combined question of Saxony and Poland, the most important work of the Congress was not confined to it alone. Committees were appointed to make new arrangements for Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and to settle other miscellaneous questions. Of these committees the most important was that which reorganised Germany. It had been arranged by the secret articles of the Treaty of Paris that a Germanic Confederation should take the place of the Holy Roman Empire. The example of Napoleon and his institution of the Confederation of the Rhine was followed and developed. Instead of the hundreds of small states which had existed at the commencement of the French Revolution, Germany, apart from Austria and Prussia, was organised into only thirty-eight states. These were the four kingdoms of Hanover, Bavaria, Würtemburg, and Saxony; the seven grand duchies of Baden, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Saxe-Weimar; the nine duchies of Nassau, Brunswick, Saxe-Gotha, Saxe-Coburg, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Hildburghausen, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Bernburg, and Anhalt-Köthen; eleven principalities, two of Schwartzburg, two of Hohenzollern, two of Lippe, two of Reuss, Hesse-Homburg, Liechtenstein, and Waldeck, and the four free cities of Hamburg, Frankfort, Bremen, and Lübeck. The number of thirty-eight was made up by the duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg, belonging to the King of Denmark, and the grand duchy of Luxembourg, granted to the King of the Netherlands. In its organisation the Germanic Confederation resembled the Confederation of the Rhine. The Diet of the Confederation was to be always presided over by Austria and was to consist of two Chambers. The Ordinary Assembly was composed of seventeen members, one for each of the larger states, one for the free cities combined, one for Brunswick, one for Nassau, one for the four duchies of Saxony united, one for the three duchies of Anhalt united, and one for the smaller principalities. This Assembly was to sit permanently at Frankfort and to settle all ordinary matters. In addition there was to be a General Assembly to be summoned intermittently for important subjects, consisting of sixty-nine members returned by the different states in proportion to their size and population. Each state was to be supreme in internal matters, but private wars against each other were forbidden as well as external wars by individual states on powers outside the limits of the Confederacy. In the territorial arrangements of the new Confederation, the most important point is the disappearance of all ecclesiastical states. The Prince-Primacy, which Napoleon had established in his Confederation of the Rhine, was not maintained, and Dalberg, who had filled that office throughout the Empire, was restricted to his ecclesiastical functions.

Territorial arrangements on the Rhine.

The most difficult problem to be decided was the final disposition of the districts on the left bank of the Rhine, which had been ruled by France ever since 1794. It had been settled by the secret articles at Paris that these dominions should be used for the establishment of strong powers upon the borders of France. The main difficulty was as to the disposition of the important border fortresses of Mayence and Luxembourg. Prussia laid claim to both these places, but was strongly resisted by Austria, France, and the smaller states of Germany. It was eventually resolved that Prussia should receive the northern territory on the left bank of the Rhine, stretching from Elten to Coblentz, and including Cologne, Trèves, and Aix-la-Chapelle. In compensation for the Tyrol and Salzburg, which she was forced to return to Austria, and in recognition of her former sovereignty in the Palatinate, Bavaria was granted a district from the Prussian borders to Alsace, including Mayence, which was designated Rhenish Bavaria. Finally, Luxembourg was formed into a grand duchy, and given as a German state to the House of Orange. It was not united to the new kingdom of the Netherlands, which was formed out of Holland and Belgium, but was to retain its independence under the sovereignty of the King of the Netherlands. The union of the provinces of the Netherlands was one of the favourite schemes of England, and was carried into effect in spite of the well-known feeling of opposition between the Catholic provinces of Belgium and the Protestant provinces of Holland.

Switzerland.

As in its reorganisation of Germany, so in the settlement of Switzerland, the Congress of Vienna followed the example set by Napoleon. The Emperor had quite given up the idea which had fascinated the French Directory of forming Switzerland into a Republic, one and indivisible. He had yielded to the wishes of the Swiss people themselves, and organised them on the basis of a confederation of independent cantons. The Congress of Vienna continued Napoleon’s policy of forbidding the existence of subject cantons in spite of the protests of the Canton of Berne. Napoleon’s cantons of Argau, Thurgau, Saint-Gall, the Grisons, the Ticino, and the Pays de Vaud were maintained, but the number of the cantons was raised from nineteen to twenty-two by the formation of the three new cantons of Geneva, the Valais, and Neufchâtel, which had formed part of the French Empire. The Canton of Berne received in reply to its importunities the greater part of the former Bishopric of Basle. The Swiss Confederation as thus constituted was placed under the guarantee of the great powers and declared neutral for ever. The Helvetic Constitution, which was promulgated by a Federal Act dated the 7th of April 1815, was not quite so liberal as Napoleon’s Constitution. Greater independence was secured in that the constitutions of the separate cantons and organic reforms in them had not to be submitted to the Federal Diet. The prohibition against internal custom houses was removed. The presidency of the Diet was reserved to Zurich, Berne, and Lucerne alternately, and the Helvetic Diet became a Congress of Delegates like the Germanic Diet rather than a Legislative Assembly. It is to be noted that in spite of the declaration of the Congress of Vienna, Prussia refused to renounce her claims on her former territory of Neufchâtel, the independence of which as a Swiss canton was not recognised by her until 1857.