Congress of Verona

The Congress of Verona was the last of the series of international conferences or congresses that opened with the Congress of Vienna in 1815, during which the Quadruple Alliance of the United Kingdom and the European powers had at first acted largely in concert. The extent to which the concord of Congress Europe had unravelled in seven years became apparent in the way in which the two main questions before this Congress were handled.

The Congress met at Verona on October 20 1822. The emperor Alexander I of Russia was present in person. There were also present Count Karl Robert Nesselrode, the Russian minister of foreign affairs; Prince Metternich representing Austria; Prince Hardenberg and Count Christian Gunther von Bernstorff, representing Prussia; the duc de Montmorency-Laval, who was French minister of Foreign Affairs, and Chateaubriand, representing France; and the Duke of Wellington, representing Britain. Wellington was taking the place of Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, recently succeeded as Marquess of Londonderry, whose tragic suicide occurred on the eve of his setting out to the congress.

The instructions drawn up by Londonderry, as he then was, for his own guidance, had been handed to Wellington by George Canning without alteration. They defined Britain's position towards the three questions which it was supposed would be discussed: the Turkish Question (Greek insurrection), the question of intervention in favor of the Bourbon royal power in Spain and the revolted Spanish colonies, and the Italian Question.

In the matter of the Italian Question, the continued Austrian rule in Northern Italy, since Britain could not undertake to support a system in which she had merely acquiesced Wellington did not even formally present his credentials until the other Powers had disposed of the matter; a British minister (Castlereagh's half-brother and successor in the Londonderry title) attending merely to keep informed and to see that nothing was done inconsistent with the European system and the treaties.

In the Turkish Question, the probable raising of which had alone induced the British government to send a minister plenipotentiary to the Congress, he was to suggest the eventual necessity for recognizing the belligerent rights of the Greeks, and, in the event of concerted intervention, to be careful not to commit Britain beyond a supporting role.

The immediate problems arising out of the Turkish Question had, however, already been privately settled between the emperor Alexander and Metternich, to their mutual satisfaction, at the preliminary conferences held at Vienna in September.

When the plenipotentiaries met in Verona, the only question raised was the Spanish Question, of the proposed French intervention in Spain, in which Wellington's instructions were to express the uncompromising opposition of Britain to the whole principle of intervention.

The discussion was opened by three questions formally propounded by Montmorency:

1. Would the Allies withdraw their ministers from Madrid in the event of France being compelled to do so?
2. In case of war, under what form and by what acts would the powers give France their moral support, so as to give to her action the force of the Quintuple Alliance, and inspire a salutary fear in the revolutionaries of all countries?
3. What material aid would the powers give, if asked by France to intervene, under restrictions which France would declare and they would recognize?

A series of gilt-copper medals apparently struck in England represent participants of the Congress in less than flattering lights: the "Count de Chateaubriand" (Ludwig Ernst Bramsen, Médallier) bears an inscription that offers the British view of the French position in a nutshell: THE KING OF FRANCE MY MASTER DEMANDS THE FREEDOM OF FERDINAND VII TO GIVE HIS PEOPLE INSTITUTIONS WHICH THEY CANNOT HOLD BUT FROM HIM, while the emperor Francis II of Austria asserts MY TROOPS OCCUPY NAPLES TO CHASTISE THE NEAPOLITANS FOR DARING TO CHANGE THEIR CONSTITUTION.

The reply of Alexander, who expressed his surprise at the desire of France to keep the intervention wholly French, was to offer to march 150,000 Russians through Germany to Piedmont, where they could be held ready to act against any Jacobins, whether in Spain or France. This solution appealed as little to Metternich and Montmorency as to Wellington; but though united in opposing it, four days of confidential communications revealed a fundamental difference of opinion. Wellington, firmly based on the principle of non-intervention, refused to have anything to do with the suggestion, made by Metternich, that the powers should address a common note to the Spanish government in support of the action of France. Finally, Metternich proposed that the Allies should hold a common language, but in separate notes, though uniform in their principles and objects. This solution was adopted by the continental powers; but Wellington, in accordance with his instructions not to countenance any intervention in Spanish affairs, took no part in the conferences that followed. On October 30 the powers handed in their formal replies to the French memorandum.

Russia, Austria and Prussia would act as France should in respect of withdrawing their ministers, and would give to France every assistance she might require, the details to be specified in a treaty. Wellington, on the other hand, replied on behalf of Britain that having no knowledge of the cause of dispute, and not being able to form a judgment upon a hypothetical case, he could give no answer to any of the questions.

Thus was proclaimed the open breach of the United Kingdom with the principles and policy of the Quintuple Alliance, as it had become with the admission of France in 1818, which is what gives to the congress its main historical interest. The ensuring French intervention ended with the Battle of Trocadero, which reinstated Ferdinand VII of Spain and opened a reactionary period of Spanish and European politics that led to the Year of Revolutions, 1848.

External links

• The Chateaubriand medal illustrated (http://www.christophereimer.co.uk/single/8781.html)
• The Francis II medal illustrated (http://www.christophereimer.co.uk/single/8780.html)

References

• W. Alison Phillips, in Cambridge Modern History, chapter I: The Congresses
• I. C. Nichols, European Pentarchy and the Congress of Verona, 1822