SANTA ALLEANZA. — In September 1815, Tsar Alexander I of Russia—whose mystical temperament is well known—personally drafted, albeit under the influence of Baroness von Krüdener, a document which he presented in Paris on the 26th for the signature of Emperor Francis I of Austria and King Frederick William III of Prussia. It was a veritable declaration of principles, in which the three monarchs, acknowledging themselves indebted to God for the victory over Napoleon and considering themselves as “delegates of Providence to govern three branches of the same family,” pledged themselves to “take as the rule of their conduct the precepts of the holy Christian religion,” to govern their peoples “as fathers of a family,” to maintain unalterable mutual friendship and fraternal cooperation, with the sole aim of “protecting religion, peace, and justice.”
This initiative of the three signatories, who declared themselves vicars of the one King, the Divine Saviour Jesus Christ, was to be open to the adhesion of any Power wishing to join “a certain Holy Alliance.” This expression, which is taken from the original French, gave its name to the “Christian” community proposed by the document, to which nearly all the States of Europe soon adhered, with the sole exception of the King of England and the Pope. The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, indeed regarded it as “a monument of sublime mysticism and folly,” while the Court of Rome viewed such a declaration—which placed Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy on the same level in a singular and nebulous Christian syncretism—with distrust. Had it remained at this initial stage, the Holy Alliance would have had no practical consequences and would remain in history solely as a generous utopia. Instead, the improper name of Holy Alliance has been extended to the political pact concluded on November 20, 1815, between Russia, Prussia, Austria, and England for the maintenance of European peace through the preservation of the status quo established by the Congress of Vienna. Thus arose the “system” of the Holy Alliance, which soon became an international organization aimed at safeguarding monarchical absolutism against the rising tide of European liberalism, in accordance with the directives of the all-powerful Austrian Chancellor, Prince Metternich. The great statesman indeed committed the States adhering to the “system” to periodic consultation on the developments of the international political situation and to mutual military assistance in the event of insurrections or external attacks. Among these were the Congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), to decide on the withdrawal of Allied troops from France; of Carlsbad (1819) and Troppau (1820), to implement measures against the German student movements; of Laybach (1821), for the armed intervention of Austria against the constitutional movements in Naples and Piedmont; and of Verona (1822), for the repression, by a French army, of the Spanish Revolution. At these Congresses, in addition to the representatives of the four signatory Powers, plenipotentiaries of those Powers concerned with the various issues also took part. The London Conference of 1827, in which England, France, and Russia agreed to mediate between the Sultan of Turkey and the rebellious Greeks—with the abstention of Austria and Prussia, which were inclined to uphold the “legitimate rights” of the Porte—marked the first crack in the “system,” destined to collapse when Great Britain opposed European intervention in South America to restore the Spanish American States to obedience and especially when the French Revolution of 1830 led the so-called July Monarchy to adopt a “policy of non-intervention” in support of the Belgian Revolution against the King of Holland. Despite this severe crisis, the Holy Alliance still managed to suppress the liberal uprisings of 1831 through Austrian intervention in Italy and Russian intervention in Poland. In the immediately following years, however, France and England effectively withdrew from the Holy Alliance by supporting the constitutional regimes in Spain and Portugal against the Carlists and the “Miguellists,” who backed the absolutist regime, while Austria, Prussia, and Russia renewed their alliance pacts of 1815 at Münchengrätz (September 1833). At this point, through this “realignment”—as it was called—of the European Powers, the history of the Holy Alliance came to an end, of which only distant echoes remain, such as the platonic offers of assistance from the German Confederation to Austria engaged in Lombardy in 1848 and the Russian military intervention in Hungary in support of the Habsburgs in 1849.
In the fifteen years of its greatest splendor (1815–1830), the Holy Alliance—far removed from the initial conception of Tsar Alexander—became “an instrument of struggle and oppression against liberal and national movements and produced violent expeditions and repressions: hence the odious meaning that has clung to its name” (Silva). It is worth recalling that the Holy See, which remained outside the original Holy Alliance, adopted varying attitudes toward the policy of intervention: opposed, for example, in 1821, through the voice of Cardinal Spina, to the Austrian expedition to Naples, it nonetheless supported the Spanish campaign of 1822; it suffered, without having provoked it, the Austro-French intervention in Romagna and the Marches in 1831–1832 and strongly reproached the Tsar for the atrocities of the Polish repression of the same period. The papal government, even under the popes who were accused of being “reactionaries” (Leo XII, Pius VIII, and Gregory XVI), therefore did not participate in the “system” of the Holy Alliance, contrary to common opinion.