The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states, chaired by the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September 1814 to June 9, 1815.[1]

Its objective was to redraw the continent's political map and settle many other issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. The immediate background was France's defeat and surrender in May, 1814, which brought an end to twenty-five years of almost continuous war. The negotiations continued despite a final outburst of fighting triggered by ex-Emperor Napoleon's dramatic return from exile and resumption of power in France during the Hundred Days in March-July, 1815. The Congress's "Final Act" was signed nine days before his final defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815.

An unusual feature of the "Congress of Vienna" was that it was not properly a Congress: it never met in plenary session, and most of the discussions occurred in informal sessions among the Great Powers with limited participation by delegates from the lesser states. On the other hand, the Congress was the first occasion in history where on a continental scale people came together in place to hammer out a treaty, instead of relying mostly on messengers and messages between the several capitals.

The Congress of Vienna settlement, despite later changes, formed the framework for European international politics until 1914.

Preliminaries

Partial settlements had already occurred at the Treaty of Paris between France and the Sixth Coalition, and the Treaty of Kiel which covered Scandinavia. The Treaty of Paris had determined that a Congress should be held in Vienna and that invitations would be issued to "all the Powers engaged on either side in the present war."[2] In practice most decisions were made by the five Great Powers.

Participants

1. Wellington (UK)
2. Joaquim Lobo da Silveira (Portugal)
3. António Saldanha da Gama (Portugal)
4. Count Carl Löwenhielm (Sweden)
5. Jean-Louis-Paul-François, 5th Duke of Noailles (France)
6. Metternich (Austria)
7. André Dupin (France)
8. Count Karl Robert Nesselrode (Russia)
9. Pedro de Sousa Holstein, 1st Count, 1st Marquess and 1st Duke de Palmela (Portugal)
10. Castlereagh (UK)
11. Emmerich Joseph, Duke of Dalberg (France)
12. Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg (Confederation of the Rhine)
13. Prince Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky (Russia)
14. Charles Stewart, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (UK)
15. Pedro Gómez Labrador, Marquis of Labrador (Spain)
16. Richard Le Poer Trench, 2nd Earl of Clancarty (UK)
17. Wacken (Recorder)
18. Friedrich von Gentz (Congress Secretary)
19. Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt (Prussia)
20. William Schaw Cathcart, 1st Earl Cathcart (UK)
21. Prince Karl August von Hardenberg (Prussia)
22. Talleyrand (France)
23. Count Gustav Ernst von Stackelberg (Russia)
24. probably Francis I of Austria
25. Count Wenzel Anton Kaunitz (Austria)

The Great Powers

1. The UK was represented firstly by its Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh; then by the Duke of Wellington, after Castlereagh's return to England in February 1815; and in the last weeks, by the Earl of Clancarty, after Wellington left to face Napoleon during the Hundred Days.
2. Prussia was represented by Prince Karl August von Hardenberg, the Chancellor, and the diplomat and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt.
3. Austria was represented by Prince Metternich, the Foreign Minister, and by his deputy, Baron Wessenberg.
4. Although Russia's official delegation was led by the foreign minister, Count Nesselrode, Tsar Alexander I acted on his own behalf for the most part.
5. France was represented by its foreign minister, Talleyrand.

The lesser powers, and others

• Spain – Marquis of Labrador
• Portugal – Pedro de Sousa Holstein, Count of Palmela; António Saldanha da Gama; Joaquim Lobo da Silveira
• Sweden and Norway – Count Carl Löwenhielm
• Denmark – Count Niels Rosenkrantz, Foreign Minister[3]
• The Netherlands – Earl of Clancarty, the British Ambassador at the Dutch court,[4] and Baron Hans von Gagern[5]
• Switzerland – Charles Pictet de Rochemont
• The Papal States – Cardinal Ercole Consalvi [6]
• On German issues, the states of Hanover (then in a personal union with the British crown), Bavaria, and Württemberg. King George III had refused to recognize the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and maintained a separate diplomatic staff to conduct the affairs of the family estate, the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, as Elector of Hannover, until the results of the Congress were concluded establishing the Kingdom of Hanover.

Virtually every state in Europe had a delegation in Vienna. In addition, there were representatives of cities, corporations, religious organizations (for instance, abbeys) and special interest groups (for instance, there was a delegation representing German publishers, demanding a copyright law and freedom of the press).[7]

The Course of the Congress

Initially, the representatives of the four victorious powers hoped to exclude the French from serious participation in the negotiations, but Talleyrand managed to skillfully insert himself into "her inner councils" in the first weeks of negotiations. He allied himself to a Committee of Eight powers (Spain, France, Sweden, and Portugal) to control the negotiations. Once Talleyrand was able to use this to make himself a part of the inner negotiations, he then left this committee.

The major Allies' indecision on how to conduct their affairs without provoking a united protest from the lesser powers led to the calling of a preliminary conference on protocol, to which Talleyrand and the Marquis of Labrador, Spain's representative, were invited on September 30, 1814.

Congress Secretary Friedrich von Gentz would report, "The intervention of Talleyrand and Labrador has hopelessly upset all our plans. Talleyrand protested against the procedure we have adopted and soundly [be]rated us for two hours. It was a scene I shall never forget."[8] The embarrassed representatives of the Allies replied that the document concerning the protocol they had arranged actually meant nothing. "If it means so little, why did you sign it?" snapped Labrador.

Talleyrand’s policy, directed as much by national as personal ambitions, demanded the close but by no means amicable relationship he had with Labrador. Talleyrand regarded Labrador with "Olympian disdain.[9] The testy Spaniard would remark of Talleyrand: "that cripple, unfortunately, is going to Vienna."[10] Talleyrand skirted additional articles suggested by Labrador: he had no intention of handing over the 12,000 afrancesados - "frenchified" Spanish fugitives who had sworn fealty to Joseph Bonaparte - with whom he had shady business connections, nor the bulk of the documents, paintings, pieces of fine art, and works of hydrography and natural history that had been looted from the archives, palaces, churches and cathedrals of Spain.[11]

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord.

Final Act

The Final Act, embodying all the separate treaties, was signed on June 9, 1815, (a few days before the Battle of Waterloo).[12] Its provisions included:

• Russia was given most of the Duchy of Warsaw (Poland) and was allowed to keep Finland (which it had annexed from Sweden in 1809 and held until 1917).
• Prussia was given two fifths of Saxony, parts of the Duchy of Warsaw (the Grand Duchy of Posen), Danzig, and the Rhineland/Westphalia.
• A German Confederation of 38 states was created from the previous 300, under the presidency of the Austrian Emperor. Only portions of the territory of Austria and Prussia were included in the Confederation.
• The Netherlands and the Southern Netherlands (approx. modern-day Belgium) were united in a constitutional monarchy, with the House of Orange-Nassau providing the king.
• To compensate for the Orange-Nassau's loss of the Nassau lands to Prussia, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg were to form a personal union under the House of Orange-Nassau, with Luxembourg (but not the Netherlands) inside the German Confederation.[13]
• Swedish Pomerania, ceded to Denmark a year earlier, was ceded to Prussia.
• The neutrality of Switzerland was guaranteed.
• Hanover gave up the Duchy of Lauenburg to Denmark, but was enlarged by the addition of former territories of the Bishop of Münster and by the formerly Prussian East Frisia, and made a kingdom.
• Most of the territorial gains of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Nassau under the mediatizations of 1801–1806 were recognized. Bavaria also gained control of the Rhenish Palatinate and parts of the Napoleonic Duchy of Würzburg and Grand Duchy of Frankfurt. Hesse-Darmstadt, in exchange for giving up the Duchy of Westphalia to Prussia, was granted the city of Mainz.
• Austria regained control of the Tirol and Salzburg; of the former Illyrian Provinces; of Tarnopol district (from Russia); received Lombardy-Venetia in Italy and Ragusa in Dalmatia. Former Austrian territory in Southwest Germany remained under the control of Württemberg and Baden, and the Austrian Netherlands were also not recovered.
• Habsburg princes were returned to control of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Duchy of Modena.
• The Papal States were under the rule of the pope and restored to their former extent, with the exception of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, which remained part of France.
• The United Kingdom was confirmed in control of the Cape Colony in Southern Africa; Tobago; Ceylon; and various other colonies in Africa and Asia. Other colonies, most notably the Dutch East Indies and Martinique, were restored to their previous owners.
• The King of Sardinia was restored in Piedmont, Nice, and Savoy, and was given control of Genoa (putting an end to the brief proclamation of a restored Republic).
• The Duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla were given to Marie Louise, Napoleon's wife.
• The Duchy of Lucca was created for the House of Bourbon-Parma, which would have reversionary rights to Parma after the death of Marie Louise.
• The Bourbon Ferdinand IV, King of Sicily was restored to control of the Kingdom of Naples, but only after Joachim Murat, the king installed by Bonaparte, rose up and supported Napoleon in the Hundred Days, triggering the Neapolitan War.
• The slave trade was condemned.
• Freedom of navigation was guaranteed for many rivers, including the Rhine.

Polish-Saxon crisis

The most contentious subject at the Congress was the so-called Polish-Saxon Crisis. The Russians and Prussians proposed a deal in which much of the Prussian and Austrian shares of the partitions of Poland would go to Russia, which would create a Polish Kingdom in personal union with Russia and Alexander as king. In compensation, the Prussians would receive all of Saxony, whose King was considered to have forfeited his throne as he had not abandoned Napoleon soon enough. The Austrians, French, and British did not approve of this plan, and, at the inspiration of Talleyrand, signed a secret treaty on January 3, 1815, agreeing to go to war, if necessary, to prevent the Russo-Prussian plan from coming to fruition.