The Breakdown of the Congress System

 

One final congress was held at St Petersburg in 1825 when Austria, France, Prussia and Russia met to discuss the Greek War of Independence. But by then the Congress System was virtually over. Luckily the breakdown of the Congress System heralded no new European war. Far from it, this Great Power continued to meet, and to agree, but there was no set pattern of Congress. Two of the Great Powers even participated in a joint military action with Britain in 1827 when an allied fleet destroyed the Turkish and Egyptian navies at the battle of Navarino.

The Congress system was a notable first attempt, however, to set up method by which the major world powers could sit down at a conference table and trash out their problem together, instead of confronting each other on the battlefield. At this time the only significant powers were Britain, Austria, Prussia, France and Russia; so the congress of Vienne and the subsequent congress at Aix-la Chappelle, Troppau, Laibach and Verona, were really the forerunners of the council meetings of the League of Nations (1920-45) and the United Nations Security Council (1945 to the present).

In the end the congress system broke down because the countries concerned put national interests before the pious principles which had led them to agree to the system in the first place. On the Continent the fear of revolution was very real, and justified by events in Germany, Spain, Naples, Sicily, the Piedmont, Portugal and Greece. But the Great Powers were inconsistent, favoring the Christian Greeks in rebellion against their lawful ruler, the sultan, but supporting the tyranny of the two Ferdinand’s in Naples and Spain.

Czar Alexander I Vehemently opposed the revolutionaries of Naples, the Piedmont, Spain and Portugal but supported those in Greece because it suited Russia to weaken the Ottoman Empire. Austria, a catholic country, opposed Russian support for the Christian Greeks against the Moslem Turkish Empire because it would upset the balance of power. Britain opposed foreign intervention in Spain in 1823 but intervened herself in Portugal in 1826 and in Greece in 1827