Age of Revolutions · CHAPTER 11 ·
Age of Metternich
Chapter 11 of The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848: “The Age of Restoration”
After 1815 the great powers fought revolution with censorship, surveillance and intervention, from the Carlsbad Decrees to France’s 1823 invasion of Spain and Russia’s defeat of the Decembrists. Greek independence exposed the system’s limits, and in 1830 revolutions in France and Belgium succeeded without a general intervention.
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The map above is the world of Europe, August 1830 — The barricades return.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1830 · Europe in 1830.
Part of IB History: The Age of Revolutions →
SHORT EXPLANATION
After 1815, rulers who remembered the wars of the French Revolution tried to prevent another upheaval from spreading across Europe. Austria suppressed constitutional movements in Italy, France restored Ferdinand VII’s absolute rule in Spain in 1823, and Russia defeated the Decembrists. Britain used force against reformers at Peterloo, then gradually extended parliamentary representation.
The settlement could defeat a movement without removing the demands behind it. Greek independence grew from sympathy for the revolt and rivalry among the powers; revolutions in France and Belgium survived in 1830 without a general intervention to reverse them. Governments now faced a choice between allowing change and waiting for barricades to force it.
The full story
The rulers who gathered after Napoleon’s defeat knew that a revolution could travel. France’s upheaval had led to years of war and the overthrow of monarchies, so Metternich and his allies treated opposition within one state as a danger to its neighbors. After a political murder, the Carlsbad Decrees censored German universities and newspapers. Austria suppressed constitutional movements in Naples and Piedmont, France invaded Spain in 1823 to restore Ferdinand VII’s full power, and Russia crushed the Decembrist officers in 1825. Governments gained protection, but moderate opponents lost legal ways to seek change.
The Greek revolt showed that the powers had other interests besides defending established rulers. Greeks rose against Ottoman rule in 1821. Reports and art depicting the massacre and enslavement at Chios in 1822 stirred sympathy across Europe; when Ottoman-Egyptian forces threatened to defeat the rebels, British, French and Russian fleets destroyed their fleet at Navarino in 1827. Public pressure and strategic rivalry helped bring about Greek independence. Support for a revolution could serve the powers when the alternative threatened their interests more.
In July 1830, Charles X’s emergency ordinances brought Parisians to the barricades. Three days later he had lost his throne. Belgium rose soon afterward and gained independence, and the powers managed these changes instead of reversing them. In 1823, restoring an absolute monarch in Spain had seemed a common interest; intervention in France or Belgium now risked a wider war and offered no such agreement. Britain took another course at home. Its 1832 Reform Act expanded representation without satisfying every demand, giving some opponents a legal route while preserving the political system. Repression and concession could both be intended to maintain order, but they left reformers with very different possibilities.
FULL EXPLANATION
Two kinds of security
The Concert of Europe offered rulers two kinds of security. Consultation, buffers and a balance of power helped the great states manage disputes with one another. Censorship and intervention protected governments from opposition at home. Men who remembered the wars after 1792 could see a connection: revolution might cross a border or bring armies with it. But the two tasks were distinct. Britain joined in maintaining the balance while resisting a general continental right of intervention, and later changed its own representation. The powers negotiated over Greece and Belgium without fighting a general war to restore the old order. These examples suggest that peace did not require every police measure. Suppression could protect a regime immediately while denying moderates a legal voice and making later compromise harder.
The Greek exception
Why did Greek rebels obtain support that Italian and Spanish liberals could not count on? European education encouraged identification with ancient Greece, and Christian solidarity shaped sympathy for its people. Reports from Chios and Byron’s death made the cause widely known. Governments, meanwhile, faced a contest over Ottoman affairs. Russia sought influence, Britain feared gains made by Russia alone, and France wanted a part in the settlement. Each could prefer a managed Greek state to a crisis left to a rival. Public sympathy helped determine what governments could defend; strategic competition gave them reasons to act. At Navarino these pressures converged. The powers’ management of the Eastern Question took precedence over Ottoman legitimacy.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
The fear behind restoration. At Vienna, rulers remembered how the French Revolution had been followed by war and the fall of monarchies. Censorship and policing seemed a modest cost if they could prevent another upheaval. Yet arresting conspirators did not remove the reasons for opposition. Literacy, railways and factory towns were changing society, while the settlement treated political agitation chiefly as a danger to control.
A changing economy. Restoring a monarch did not restore the society over which that monarch ruled. Between 1815 and 1848, steam power, cotton manufacturing and railways transformed towns; a growing middle class read, traded and lent money, and workers crowded into industrial districts. Handloom weavers were among the crowd at Peterloo. The Lyon silk workers’ risings of 1831 and 1834 brought wages and work into politics, raising questions that a settlement concerned with dynasties had left unanswered.
National movements in exile. National movements could be driven out of public life without disappearing. Activists organized through Carbonari lodges, Mazzini’s Young Italy, German gymnastic societies and student Burschenschaften. After the Polish rising of 1830–31 was crushed, exiles carried its cause abroad. Secrecy protected some organizers; emigration also carried their arguments and contacts between European capitals.
Why Greece was different. European sympathy for Greek rebels drew on Christian solidarity and memories of ancient Greece. The Eastern Question gave governments reasons of their own to act: Russia sought influence at Ottoman expense, while Britain wanted to contain Russian gains. Each could prefer a Greek settlement in which it had influence to one dominated by its rival. Sympathy for rebels and strategic interest thus came together, despite the powers’ usual defense of established rulers.
THE TURNING POINT
Paris, 27–29 July 1830. Charles X’s July Ordinances restricted the press, dissolved the chamber and reduced the franchise. Parisians fought back on 27–29 July 1830; the troops failed to suppress them, and the Bourbon dynasty fell. The other powers faced troubles including Belgium and Poland and had to consider opinion at home. They let the new French government stand. A change of dynasty in a great power had survived where earlier revolts had met force. The settlement of 1815 could be revised; the question was whether further change would come through reform or barricades.
What it changed
Different political paths. The settlement left different kinds of government on either side of the Rhine. In France, the “citizen king” ruled under a constitution, but the pays légal was narrow: roughly one man in 170 could vote. Farther east, Metternich’s influence remained strong. Russia crushed Poland’s 1830–31 rising with an army reported at 250,000 and abolished its constitution. Demands met by restricted constitutional government in the west and repression in the east would return in 1848.
Reform in Britain. After two years of intense crisis, the 1832 Reform Act removed many rotten boroughs and enlarged Britain’s electorate by roughly 50 percent. Some supporters hoped to preserve the system by making a concession; others wanted to change it. Many people still could not vote. Slavery abolition followed in 1833, as did factory legislation. Britain passed through 1848 without the continental wave of barricades, having given some grievances a parliamentary outlet.
Belgium and the powers. Belgium’s revolution became a new state through negotiation as well as fighting. It acquired an invited king and a constitution in 1831 that liberals elsewhere admired and copied. The powers negotiated its place in Europe and guaranteed its neutrality, later described in 1914 as a “scrap of paper”. Together with Greece, Belgium showed that diplomacy could accommodate a new state without a general European war.
Workers and the social question. The July barricade fighters helped bring a monarchy associated with bankers to power. Lyon’s silk workers raised a different demand in 1831, under the banner “Live working or die fighting.” Constitutions and nations mattered to opponents of the old order, but so did food, wages and the right to work. Political and social demands would meet, and sometimes conflict, in 1848.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Metternich called his system the “repose” Europe needed. It helped preserve peace among the great powers for a generation. Did that peace require repression?
The peace was real, but its preservation and the security of individual rulers were different tasks. Balance, consultation and restraint helped the great powers manage disputes; censorship and armed intervention directly protected governments against their subjects. Leaders who remembered the wars after 1792 had good reason to connect revolution with international danger. Yet Britain supported the European balance while resisting a general right of intervention and later reforming at home, and the powers managed Greek and Belgian independence without a general war. These comparisons give us reason to question whether repression was necessary for peace. It could secure a regime for a time while closing legal routes to reform and encouraging underground opposition.
An interesting fact
At Navarino, the last great battle fought entirely under sail, British, French and Russian ships fired close-range broadsides in a crowded bay. In about two hours they destroyed some sixty Ottoman and Egyptian vessels and thousands of their crews, without losing an allied ship. London was embarrassed by this victory over a friendly power’s navy: the King’s Speech of 1828 called it “an untoward event”, and Admiral Codrington was recalled to explain himself.
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