Quadruple Alliance (1815)

The Quadruple Alliance was an international treaty signed on November 20, 1815 until 1830 between Austria, the Kingdom of Prussia, the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom. It should not be confused with the Quadruple Alliance of 1834. It is a political treaty signed in principle as a security pact against France after the Napoleonic wars, although in practice it was extended to avoid a new European war. The most innovative of its content was its sixth article that promoted the holding of conferences to reach agreements on European affairs. In 1818, at the Aachen Congress, France joined the Quadruple agreements, becoming renamed < i>Five Alliance.

This is how the so-called Europe of Congresses arose, which provided for the periodic holding of conferences aimed at maintaining peace and enforcing the common interests of the signatories. The congresses, which take place between 1818 and 1822, discuss the measures to be taken in the face of concerns and disorders of a liberal or nationalist nature. The main congresses will be those of Aachen (1818), Troppau (1820), Laibach (1821) (which authorized the Austrian intervention in Italy) and Verona (1822). This last congress involved the intervention in Spain of a French army called the One Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis to end the liberal Triennium and restore absolutism in the person of Fernando VII.

The British government's aversion to the reactionary policies of the other allies meant that the alliance fell into ineffectiveness after the mid-1820s. The death of the alliance is conventionally set at the death of Tsar Alexander in 1825.

Signatory countries

Austrian Empire Kingdom of Prussia Russian Empire United Kingdom

Europe and the Restoration against the Revolution

After Napoleon's definitive defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, the victorious nations proposed to restore the monarchies and establish a new balance between them that would prevent the spread of ideas inspired by the French Revolution. That same year, the Congress of Vienna met, in which Austria, Spain, France, England (it was not a great ally, since it was a constitutional country and rejected the Old Regime), Portugal, Prussia and Russia participated with the objective to seal that commitment. This agreement was reinforced with the creation of the Holy Alliance, which in order to guarantee militarily the defense of the principles of monarchical absolutism.

However, the period between 1815 and 1848 was one of the most eventful in European history. The seeds of liberal and democratic ideas spread by the French Revolution were spreading throughout the European continent. The despotic oppression of the restored monarchies was the breeding ground for the outbreak of a wave of revolutions in which the claims of the bourgeoisie, the popular sectors and some peoples with nationalist claims converged.
Indeed, during the first half of the 19th century, Europe went through a revolutionary cycle on three occasions:

Between 1820 and 1824

Spain, Portugal, Naples and Greece were the scene of revolutionary movements that sought to establish British-style constitutional monarchies, that is, where the power of kings was limited by a constitution that established the rights and duties of rulers and ruled.

Between 1829 and 1834

Revolutionary movements began in France and practically spread to all of Europe to demand an end to absolutism. In France, the revolution against the Bourbon King Charles X began in July 1830. Bourgeois and workers took to the streets of Paris and demanded the king's resignation. The result was the establishment in France of a new constitutional monarchy, governed by King Louis Philippe of Orleans, who accepted the ideas of liberalism. Power passed from the hands of the noble aristocracy to the high bourgeoisie made up of industrialists and bankers. A new constitution was sanctioned that recognized the right to vote for the most affluent and enlightened sectors of the population.
The lower bourgeoisie, made up of small businessmen, intellectuals and workers, did not obtain, on the other hand, any benefit from the new political situation and continued to demand the possibility of voting and participating in the elections of the authorities.

Between 1848 and 1870

In France, a delicate economic situation and the authoritarian turn of the Louis-Philippe government sparked another revolution in February 1848. Barricades and tricolor flags evoking the values of the French Revolution were unfurled throughout Paris. The king fled the country and universal suffrage was recognized. However, it was becoming increasingly clear that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat could not go together, and the former became increasingly conservative. For this reason, in 1852, they gladly supported the replacement of the Republic by the Second Empire, under the command of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon's nephew, who assumed power under the name Napoleon III.