Holy Alliance

HOLY ALLIANCE. - In September 1815 the Tsar Alexander I of Russia, whose mystical temperament is well known, personally drafted - albeit influenced by Baroness von Krüdener - a document which he submitted in Paris, on the 26th, for the signature of Emperor Francis I of Austria and King Frederick William III of Prussia. It was a genuine declaration of principles, by which the three Sovereigns, acknowledging themselves debtors to God for the victory won over Napoleon and considering themselves as "delegates of Providence to govern three branches of one and the same family," undertook to "take as the rule of their conduct the precepts of the holy Christian religion," to govern their peoples "as fathers of families," to secure for themselves unalterable mutual friendship and fraternal cooperation, with the sole purpose of "protecting religion, peace and justice."

This initiative of the three signatories, who declared themselves vicars of the one King, the Divine Savior Jesus Christ, was to be open to the adherence of as many Powers as wished to accede "to this Holy Alliance." This expression, which appears in the French original, gave the name of H. A. to the "Christian" community proposed by the document, to which almost all the States of Europe soon adhered, with the sole exception of the King of England and the Pontiff. The British Foreign Minister, Lord Castlereagh, indeed considered it "a monument of mysticism and sublime nonsense," while at the Court of Rome such a declaration was viewed with distrust, since it placed Catholicism, Protestantism and "Orthodoxy" on the same level in a singular and nebulous Christian syncretism. Had it remained on this initial plane, the H. A. would have had no practical consequence and would remain in history solely as a generous utopia. By extension, however, the improper name of H. A. was given to the political Pact stipulated on 20 Nov. 1815 between Russia, Prussia, Austria and England for the maintenance of European peace through respect for the status quo that emerged from the Congress of Vienna. Thus arose the "system" of the H. A., which soon transformed itself into an international organism aimed at safeguarding monarchical absolutism against the rising European liberalism, according to the directives of the all-powerful Austrian Chancellor, Prince Metternich. The great statesman in fact committed the States adhering to the "system" to consult periodically on the developments of the international political situation and to lend each other military aid in the event of insurrections or external attacks. Thus are counted the Congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) to decide the withdrawal of the allied troops garrisoning France, of Karlsbad (1819) and of Troppau (1820) to settle the measures to be taken against the German student riots, of Ljubljana (1821) for Austria's armed intervention against the constitutional movements of Naples and Piedmont, of Verona (1822) for the repression, by a French army, of the Spanish Revolution. At these Congresses there took part, besides the representatives of the four signatory Powers, the plenipotentiaries of those Powers from time to time concerned with the various problems. The London Conference of 1827, at which England, France and Russia agreed to interpose their good offices between the Sultan of Turkey and the Greeks who had rebelled against him, with the abstention of Austria and Prussia, inclined instead to uphold the "legitimate rights" of the Porte, marked the first crack in the "system," destined to break up when Great Britain opposed a European intervention in South America to bring the American States back to Spanish obedience and above all when the French Revolution of 1830 led the so-called July Monarchy to support the "policy of non-intervention," in support of the Belgian Revolution against the King of Holland. Despite this grave crisis, the H. A. still managed to stem the liberal movements of 1831 with the Austrian intervention in Italy and the Russian one in Poland, but in the years immediately following France and England in fact withdrew from the H. A. by supporting the constitutional Queens of Spain and Portugal against the "Carlists" and "Miguelists" who supported the absolutist regime, while Austria, Prussia and Russia renewed at Münchengrätz (Sept. 1833) the alliance pacts of 1815. At this point, through this "dislocation" - as it was called - of the European Powers, the history of the H. A. comes to an end, of which the only distant echo is the platonic offers of aid from the German Confederation to Austria engaged in Lombardy in 1848 and the military intervention right in Hungary, in support of the Habsburgs, in 1849. In the fifteen years of its greatest splendor (1815-30) the H. A., quite differently from the initial conception of Tsar Alexander, was therefore "an instrument of struggle and oppression against liberal and national movements and produced violent expeditions and repressions: whence the odious meaning that has remained attached to its name" (Silva). It is still worth recalling how the Holy See, having remained extraneous to the original H. A., assumed different attitudes toward the policy of intervention: opposed, for example, in 1821, through the legate Cardinal Spina, to the Austrian expedition to Naples, it instead supported the Spanish campaign of 1822; it suffered, without having provoked it, the Austro-French intervention in Romagna and the Marches of 1831-32 and energetically reproached the Tsar for the slaughter of the Polish repression of the same period. The pontifical government, even under the popes who were given the reputation of being "reactionary" (Leo XII, Pius VIII and Gregory XVI), therefore did not participate even in the "system" of the H. A., contrary to the current opinion.

Renzo U. Montini