Europe with the Congress of Vienna (1815)
Chart Alain Houot
Europe with the autumn 1814
Thus, as of before the behavior of the congresses, united nonwhich occurred some of the most important objectives of the strategy external of revolutionary France had declared, like that of the natural borders, which had allowed direct integration the French territory of Belgium - old Austrian Netherlands - in 1795 and of left bank of the Rhine (1800). Thus, it remains mainly with the Congress of Vienna to fix to become to it transitory States reorganized by Napoleon, mainly German (Confederation of the Rhine, kingdoms of Westphalia and Wurtemberg) and Polish (Grand Duchy of Warsaw).
Will to insulate France
The representatives of Austria, of Russia, of the United Kingdom and Prussia intend to reaffirm that the reigning houses installed before the revolutionary and imperial wars have a legitimate right on the territories and the populations whose Providence their granted the government. Similar resolutions are, in theory, complete opposition with the principles exported by the French revolution, as with that of the national sovereignty, which is the source of the “right of the people to have themselves”.
It however appears that the united powers gathered in Vienna do not wish all to draw a feature on this heritage, even if, ideologically, they reject it. Thus, Austria will never express the intention to give the hand on the part of the Netherlands which it managed before 1792: the revolutionary wars showed the extreme difficulty of controlling these States, distant from Vienna and not very faithful. Moreover, the strategic requirement paramount being to insulate France, it is preferable to integrate this small province, which seems a too weak link, in a more solid State, in fact in the old United Provinces.
The United Kingdom, entered in war in 1793 to be opposed to any French presence on the coasts of the North Sea, and in particular to Antwerp, its natural outlet on the continent, sees the things in the same way. In the same way, in Italy, where Metternich intends to compensate for the abandonment of the Netherlands, Austria prefers to leave the kingdom of Naples to Murat , placé on the throne by Napoleon but which took the weapons against him in 1814, that to restore it with the Bourbons of Spain, which would counterbalance its influence in the south of the peninsula. The question of the duchies of central Italy, whose sovereigns had been driven out by their own subjects at the time of the French presence and had lost a great part of their legitimacy, also poses problem. Many freedoms are thus taken, as of the access, with the principle of legitimacy, and the personal claims of the princes mix with the dynastic competitions and the territorial ambitions to make the distribution of the skins difficult.
The case of Poland
The thorny case of Poland will block work of the congress at least until January 1815: Russia wishes to annex most of the ex-Large-Duchy, well beyond thus of what was allotted to him at the time of the division of 1796, and the Minister for the tsar, Nesselrode, obtained on this point the agreement of the representatives of king de Prusse. With his ministers Hardenberg and Humboldt, Frederic-Guillaume indeed hopes to reorientate the Prussian influence towards central Germany; it is ready to give up its a few million Polish subjects in return for the right to sit its authority on Saxony, whose sovereign supported Napoleon, and wants to be compensated with the old Rhenish ecclesiastical principalities.
Austria and the United Kingdom will be opposed violently to these projects, so much so that the rupture will appear close between the Allies during the autumn: threats of war will be even agitated by Alexandre. Habsbourgs want indeed neither of a seizure of Russia on their piece of Poland (Cracow and Galicie) nor of a reversal of the Prussian power towards the German States - zone which they still dominated to the XVIII E century through the crown of the Saint Worsens. England, with Castlereagh in Foreign Office, is quickly run up against by the claims of the autocracy tsarist, and she judges also more convenient than Prussia comes to settle directly on left bank of the Rhine, and thus contains France on its Eastern borders.