Of these states, only one could be referred to as a nation; the others were personal dynasties with a more-or-less able solicitor, who alone was capable of understanding the implications of the alliances the Congress sought to establish. The Congress, in turn, failed to win the assent of the UK for its reactionary alliance. There were many reasons, all of which will play a role later in our narrative.

One was that the UK’s leadership was alone in being absolutely constrained by public sentiment; a permanent alliance of the UK with Russia against, say, Polish patriots or with Austria against Italian ones, was politically untenable. Another, however, was angst towards Russia: the Austrian and Prussian leadership might have dreaded France, but they dreaded Russia more and they feared to antagonize the Czar. The UK’s leaders did not. They had no common border, and they were receptive to secret entreaties by the emissaries of Continental bankers to prevent a Russian-dominated union.
The Revolutions of 1830

A final reason was the tension between big nations and little ones. Britain’s closest friends on the Continent were small countries like Portugal, Denmark, and Norway. In addition, it had close ties to patriotic movements in Poland, Hungary, Greece, and Italy. These were all the primary strategic preoccupations of the occupying powers, and often stimulated (rather than squelched) expansionism against neighbors. Hence, Poland (a repressed nation) was an objective ally of Denmark (a sovereign nation with a territorial dispute with Prussia), and of Saxony (another sovereign nation that Prussia openly wished to annex). Britain could do little to counter balance Prussia against Austria or both against Russia; it could, however, influence the balance of power by preventing the big nations from developing a sort of super-duper sovereignty at the expense of little neighbors like Belgium.

II. 1848-1870

While the common account of this period insists that the soi-disant “Holy Alliance” was in favor of the status quo, in fact, only Britain was; and it effected the status quo by constantly thwarting its alliance partners (see above). At this time, the monarchies were in a race against the development of patriotic ideologies among their subjects; the latter represented a rival claim on the loyalties, or even the basic goals and desires, of their subjects. The alternative to patriotic ideologies was officially cultivated pan-Slavic and pan-Germanic associations, in which the absolutist monarchs claimed they alone had the power to defend a large, nation-transcending, ethniki.

In the fullness of time, these ultramonarchist movements glorified the subordination of individual judgment and initiative to that of the putative “people,” the sentimentally conceived majority who were supposedly not merely silent, but void of personal opinions and personal visions. This was not only supposed to be adopted by the emperor’s own subjects, but purported to pre-empt the patriotism other Slavs or Germans owed their own countries.
The Revolutions of 1848 (in Austria)

In 1848, liberal patriotism won a brief, but impressive, victory over the official cults of autocracy. In Paris, then Italy, Hungary, Vienna, Frankfurt, Munich, and so forth, the Continent was racked by revolutions against the absolute despotisms. In France and Bavaria, this culminated in the actual transformation of the state: the King stepped down, and the national assembly imposed a new constitution. France had been “outside” the Holy Alliance, and hence was never covered by its interventionist provisions. Increasingly, France patriotism was divorced from the person of the monarchy. Bavaria, as a long-time enemy of Austria and Prussia alike, was also outside the protections of the 5-power alliance.

In the other countries, the alliance worked as intended. King Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies awarded concessions, then reneged en bloc and shelled his cities. In Hungary, the Russian Army invaded in support of the Viennese imperial regime; this was accompanied by joint Russian-Turkish intervention in the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldova (modern-day Romania). This was to dramatically discipline the character of nationalist movements on the continent. Rather than reflect spontaneous effusions of national feeling, as they were typically imagined to have done, they instead became willing accomplices of dynastic ambitions on the continent.

(Part 2)