Paris

An unknown painter, working after Jügel and Wolf in 1815, shows the Russian army entering Paris on 31 March 1814. Alexander I rides with Frederick William III of Prussia and Barclay de Tolly; the Porte Saint-Martin stands behind. Do not ask the canvas to do the Berezina. The last article closed on broken thousands at the Niemen. This page is what Alexander did with the victory: the wars of liberation of 1813–14, an entry into Paris, a congress in Vienna, a Polish kingdom under his sovereignty, and a Holy Alliance signed in Paris in September 1815. The Decembrists have the next article. Keep this one as the years when Russia became, in Britannica’s phrase, Europe’s greatest land power and the first among the continental victors over Napoleon.

From the westward advance of its arms in the two years of heavy fighting after 1812, Russia emerged with immense prestige, maintained until mid-century. Russia became a party to the Quadruple Alliance against France. Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain, the four powers chiefly instrumental in the overthrow of Napoleon, had concluded a special alliance among themselves with the Treaty of Chaumont on 9 March 1814, a month before Napoleon’s first abdication. The subsequent treaties of peace with France, signed on 30 May not only by the four but also by Sweden and Portugal, and on 20 July by Spain, stipulated that all former belligerents should send plenipotentiaries to a congress in Vienna. The four still intended to reserve the real decision making for themselves. Alexander directed his own diplomacy.

The Congress of Vienna assembled in 1814–15 to reorganize Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. It began in September 1814, five months after Napoleon’s first abdication, and completed its Final Act in June 1815, shortly before the Waterloo campaign and the final defeat of Napoleon. The settlement was the most comprehensive treaty Europe had ever seen. Representatives began to arrive toward the end of September 1814. Klemens, prince von Metternich, represented Francis II of Austria. Tsar Alexander I directed his own diplomacy. King Frederick William III of Prussia had Karl, prince von Hardenberg, as principal minister. Great Britain was represented by Viscount Castlereagh, later by the duke of Wellington and Lord Clancarty. The restored Louis XVIII sent Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand. The social side of the congress delayed business; Metternich at least sometimes subordinated business to pleasure. The congress as a representative body of all Europe never met. A committee of five became the real Congress of Vienna.

Jean Godefroy engraved Isabey’s Congress of Vienna in 1815: a crowded table of named statesmen. Use it as the room, then return to the Final Act. A posed engraving is not 9 June on paper.

The Final Act was signed on 9 June 1815 by the eight powers: Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and France. The congress reduced France to its 1789 borders, established a new kingdom of Poland under Russian sovereignty, and strengthened France’s neighbours to prevent future aggression. The German states were loosely joined in a new German Confederation under Austria’s influence. The Duchy of Warsaw became a separate kingdom under the Russian emperor. Prussia gained territory in Westphalia and the Rhine region. Austria was compensated with Lombardy and Venice. The political boundaries established by the Congress of Vienna lasted for over forty years. The Polish kingdom under Alexander is this chapter’s sequel to Napoleon’s duchy and to Catherine’s partitions: not the Commonwealth restored, a kingdom in personal union with the man who had ridden into Paris.

The Holy Alliance was a loose organization of most of the European sovereigns, formed in Paris on 26 September 1815 by Alexander I of Russia, Francis I of Austria, and Frederick William III of Prussia when they were negotiating the Second Peace of Paris after the final defeat of Napoleon. The avowed purpose was to promote the influence of Christian principles in the affairs of nations. The alliance was inspired by Alexander, perhaps under the influence of the visionary Barbara Juliane von Krüdener. It was eventually signed by all European rulers except the Prince Regent of Britain, the Ottoman sultan, and the Pope. Its importance was not great, but liberals and later historians believed it was a major force and symbol of conservatism and repression in central and eastern Europe. Both Metternich and Castlereagh, Britannica records, saw the Holy Alliance as an insignificant and ephemeral association.

Alexander took part in the Congress of Vienna, drove for the establishment of the Holy Alliance in 1815, and took part in the conferences that followed. That is Britannica’s summary of the man after 1812. Students’ Britannica adds that he had become highly religious, and that the alliance was supposed to bring about a peace based on Christian love; instead it became a league of monarchs who mistreated their peoples, and in several countries, including Russia, people rose up against their rulers. This page will not invent the risings. It will keep the sourced tension: an emperor who wanted Christian principles on paper, partners who thought the paper slight, and a later liberal memory that treated the Alliance as a police. The Decembrists are not yet those people. They are officers who had seen Paris and would stand on a square ten years later. Keep them for the next title.

Gatteaux’s medal design for the Treaty of Paris of 1814 is an altar and Latin, not a street. Chaumont in March, Paris entered at the end of March, peace with France in May, Vienna from September, Final Act in June 1815, Holy Alliance in September 1815: that calendar is the article. Waterloo belongs to Napoleon’s last campaign, which the congress completed its act just before. This page need not refight Waterloo. It needs Alexander in the procession, Alexander directing his own diplomacy, a Polish kingdom under his sovereignty, and a Christian alliance whose importance Britannica calls not great. Prestige until mid-century is the sequel. Mid-century is the Crimean War, still four articles away. Do not spend the prestige here as if it were already lost.

He rode into Paris as a victor and tried to baptise the settlement. The map lasted forty years. The baptism impressed liberals more than Metternich.

The previous article’s fire was Moscow in 1812. This article’s procession is Paris in 1814. Do not swap them. Do not let Vienna’s ballrooms erase Chaumont’s alliance or the May treaties that summoned the congress. Do not let the Holy Alliance steal the Final Act’s borders. Three documents, three jobs: Chaumont bound the four; Vienna redrew Europe; the Alliance offered Christian language. Alexander is in all three, directing his own diplomacy in the middle one, inspiring the last. Barclay in the procession is a reminder that the man who had retreated in 1812 also entered Paris. Kutuzov did not. The wars of liberation were a second campaign, not a repetition of Borodino.

Keep Paul’s Gatchina out of this page. Keep Speransky’s carriage out of it except as already told. Keep Senate Square out of it. Paris here is occupation as ceremony, a congress that never sat as a full Europe, a Polish kingdom under a Russian emperor, and a Holy Alliance signed while the Second Peace of Paris was being negotiated. Readers who want the officers who had walked these streets to refuse an oath in 1825 will find them next. This article’s inventory should remain European: gates, tables, medals, signatures. A greatest land power is a rank. A Final Act is a map. A Holy Alliance is a text Metternich thought slight.

Catherine had partitioned Poland with two other courts. Napoleon had hung a duchy on the border. Vienna hung a kingdom on Alexander. That is the Polish thread through three chapters, not a new invention. The kingdom under Russian sovereignty is what the Final Act established. How Nicholas later treated a Polish rising is a later article. How Decembrists talked about constitutions after seeing France is the next article. This one should not preview the hanging of five men. It should leave the reader with a tsar who had entered Paris, sat in Vienna’s real committee, and signed a Christian association in September 1815.

Jacques-Édouard Gatteaux designed a medal for the Treaty of Paris, 1814: an altar, PACI ORBIS, a date in May. Use it as the peace on paper, then put it aside. Ink is not the Porte Saint-Martin.

Stop this page before Alexander’s death at Taganrog and before a confusing interregnum. Those open the Decembrists. Paris here is 1813–15: Chaumont, the entry of 31 March, May treaties, Vienna from September, Final Act on 9 June 1815, Holy Alliance on 26 September. The procession painting is the street. Isabey’s table is the room. Gatteaux’s altar is the emblem. Prestige until mid-century is the claim. The next officers to spend that prestige would spend it against a brother who had not been in the procession as emperor.

The large Russia of the nineteenth century is, on this page, a Russia that has stood in Paris. It will not stand there again in this chapter. It will freeze, Britannica later says, under Nicholas, and it will fail in the Crimea. Those failures are not 1814’s secret. 1814 is a procession, a congress, a Polish kingdom, and a Holy Alliance. Alexander still had ten years to live. He would grow more religious, more suspicious of rebellion, more ready to see plots. The men who had occupied France would remember the occupation. The next article is what they did with the memory on a December morning in St Petersburg.