Concerts and Dissonance

Abstract

Europe’s princes had had a terrible fright, and fear is known to be a poor guide: the France of 1789, as well as of 1792 (declaration of war with Austria) and 1804 (coronation of Napoleon and the founding of the First Empire), had at once altered the map of Europe and shaken Europe’s thrones. Already in 1815, the most conservative sovereigns knew that the international order was not so clearly distinct from domestic orders. The old Hobbesian philosophy that still today inspires the realist creed was already defunct in their minds: saving one’s crown and the regime that served it meant if not a common power, at least the common exercise of shared power. Czar Alexander I would have much preferred for that alliance of convenience to be also an alliance of values and even sanctified under the banner of the “Holy Alliance.”