Congress of Vienna

The Congress of Vienna was held in 1814 as a way for the powers of Europe to reconstruct their nations after the corruption of Napoleon. Representatives from all over the continent gathered together in Vienna, Austria to construct the best possible solution to fix the mess of Europe. Prince Metternich of Austria, Prince Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand of France, Frederick William III of Prussia, Foreign Secretary Robert Steward, Viscount Castlereagh from Great Britain, and Tsar Alexander of Russia represented the most important countries at the grand peace conference. However, when a large amount of the richest, most vain people in the world get together for any reason not much gets done through the all the partying. This goes on until the next year and finally after Napoleon returns once again to attempt conquering the world, they start making some actual decisions.

Most Famous Painting of the Congress of Vienna

In order to stop any one country from becoming a dominating power in the future, the Congress of Vienna made sure to keep in mind a balance of power when redrawing the borders of each country. France was not punished for the actions of its leader, and was given back its original borders from before taking over everything. Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria were all given more than what they started with making them the five great powers of Europe. With the majors close to equal the only problem was the small countries, who ended up taken over, given away, or generally excluded completely. For the big countries to expand they took land away from others, angering many people from places such as Poland, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Belgium. This may have stopped fighting between the big nations but the little ones ended up fighting for their own freedom or inclusion.

Personally, I believe the Congress of Vienna was not horrible. They didn't make it as peaceful as they had planned to but in the face of the problems they had, the resolutions they came up with were pretty good. It would've been better if the smaller states were listened to by the big ones instead of ignored and disrespected, so they wouldn't end up so bitter about their fate. Also, each country probably could've been able to reconstruct their own government instead of installing the monarchies back to every single country since that worked out so well before. They shouldn't have let other countries storm in with their military and stop rebellions without permission, it just sounds like a bad idea. But the choices made during the peace treaty were pretty good at preventing any future Napoleonic power from wiping out the entire continent, which was one of the most important concerns they were supposed to deal with. They even managed to stop major warfare for like 40 years, which is pretty amazing for Europe.