Encyclopedia of Russian History

The Vienna Congress provided the conclusion to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Negotiations took place in France from February to April of 1814, in London during June of that year, in Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815, and then again in Paris from July to November of 1815. The chief representatives included Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereigh of Britain; his ally, Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich of Austria; F?rst Karl August von Hardenberg of Prussia; and Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-P?rigord, Prince de B?n?vent of France. Tsar Alexander I directed the Russians, aided and influenced by his diverse multinational coterie of assistants: Count Andreas Razu-movsky, who was ambassador to Austria; the Westphalian Graf Karl Robert von Nesselrode, who served as a quasi-foreign minister; the Corfu Greek

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Count Io?nnis Ant?nios Kapodstrias; the Corsican Count Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo; the Prussian Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein; the Alsatian Anstedt; and the Pole Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski.

At the peak of his influence in early 1814, Alexander directed the non-punitive occupation of Paris and the exile of Napoleon I to Elba. The Treaty of Chaumont established the Quadruple Alliance to contain France, while the first Treaty of Paris restored the French monarchy. Alexander also helped block a Prussian scheme to frustrate France and Austrian designs on Switzerland and Piedmont-Sardinia, but supported the attachment of Belgium to the Netherlands and part of the Rhineland to Prussia as checks on French power. In London, however, he frightened the British with plans to reunite the ethnic Polish lands as his own separate kingdom.

At Vienna, the British, Austrians, and French thwarted this scheme, which was supported by a Prussia bent on annexing all of Saxony. By January 1815 Alexander was ready to compromise, an attitude strengthened by Napoleon’s temporary return to power in March. The Final Act of June 4, 1815, drawn up by Metternich’s mentor, Friedrich Gentz, reflected this spirit of compromise. Austria retained Galicia, and Prussia regained Poznan and Torun, and also acquired part of Saxony and more of the Rhineland. Most of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw became the tsarist Kingdom of Poland. Denmark obtained a small duchy as partial compensation for Norway, which the Swedish crown acquired as Russian-sponsored compensation for the loss of Finland. A German Confederation dominated by Austria and, to a lesser extent, Prussia, but with Russian support for such middle-sized states as W?rttemberg, replaced the defunct Holy Roman Empire. The Ottomans remained outside the Final Act, refusing to allow Anglo-French-Austrian mediation of differences with Russia as a precondition of a general guarantee.

Back in Paris, Alexander promoted the Holy Alliance, which Metternich insisted be an ideal brotherhood of Christian sovereigns, not peoples, as the Russian emperor envisioned. Of the Europeans, only the British, the Papacy, and the Ottomans refused to sign it. The (Congress of) Vienna system weathered revolutions and diplomatic crises. Except for Belgian independence in 1830, Europe’s borders remained essentially stable until 1859. See also: ALEXANDER I; FRENCH WAR OF 1812; NAPOLEON I

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VIETNAM, RELATIONS WITH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. (1969). The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schroeder, Paul. (1994). The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848. Oxford: Oxford University/ Clarendon.

DAVID M. GOLDFRANK

VIETNAM, RELATIONS WITH

The Soviet Union began its relationship with Vietnam through the Communist International (Comintern), one of whose purposes was to support the liberation of colonized peoples from Western colonial powers. From the last half of the nineteenth century until 1954, the formerly unified nation of Vietnam was divided into three segments (Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina), along with Cambodia and Laos, within the French colony Indochine (Indochina).