Conservatism after 1815 and the revolutionaries

Detail

What "conservatism" meant after 1815

• After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, European rulers followed an idea called conservatism.
• Conservatives wanted to keep the old things that had lasted a long time:
• monarchy (rule by king)
• the Church
• social hierarchy (fixed high and low ranks in society)
• property

• the family

• But this was not a plan to go back fully to the world before 1789.

• Most conservatives had learnt one lesson from Napoleon: modern changes can make autocracy stronger, not weaker. So they kept:
• a modern army
• an efficient bureaucracy (trained paid officials who run the state by rules)
• a dynamic economy

• the end of feudalism and serfdom (serfdom = peasants tied by law to a lord's land)

• In short: modern tools, old masters. Efficiency for the king, not freedom for the people.

The Treaty of Vienna, 1815

• In 1815 the powers that had together beaten Napoleon met to redraw Europe: Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria.
• The host was Duke Metternich, the Austrian Chancellor.
• The meeting (the Congress of Vienna) opened in September 1814, five months after Napoleon's first abdication, and finished in June 1815, just before the Waterloo campaign [2].
• Other leading names at the table: Viscount Castlereagh for Britain, Talleyrand for France, and Tsar Alexander I of Russia [3].
• Metternich built the settlement on legitimism — the idea that the "rightful" old royal families must be put back on their thrones [4].

Main decisions of the treaty

• Bourbon restoration: the Bourbon royal family, removed during the French Revolution, was put back in power in France.
• France lost the lands it had taken under Napoleon.
• A ring of buffer states (strong states placed around France to block any future French expansion) was set up:
• the kingdom of the Netherlands, which included Belgium, in the north

• Genoa added to Piedmont in the south

• Prussia got new lands in the west and part of Saxony.

• Britannica notes the Prussian gains lay in Westphalia and the Rhine region, and that Metternich cut down Prussia's demand for the whole of Saxony [2][4].

• Austria got control of northern Italy.

• Britannica names this as Lombardy and Venice, with most of Tirol returned too [2].

• Russia was given part of Poland.

• Britannica: the Duchy of Warsaw became a separate kingdom under the Russian emperor [2].

• The German confederation of 39 states, set up by Napoleon, was left untouched.

• Talleyrand won France equal status at the table, and Metternich blocked Russia's bigger demands [4].

Note: Britannica says the Congress largely ignored the rising feeling of nationality among peoples [2]. This fits the NCERT point — the map was drawn for the balance of power between rulers, not for nations.

What conservative rule felt like

• The restored monarchies were autocratic (one ruler, no check on their power).
• They did not tolerate criticism, so they used censorship laws to control what newspapers, books, plays and songs could say.
• Many of these censored works questioned the Vienna settlement or carried the memory of the French Revolution — liberty and equality.
• Result: freedom of the press became the central demand of liberal-nationalists all over Europe. Ask for a free press, and you were asking for everything else too.

The revolutionaries and secret societies

• Repression did not kill the liberal-national idea. It pushed it underground.
• After 1815 many trained liberal-nationalists joined secret societies across Europe to train revolutionaries and spread their ideas.
• Two things they believed:
• opposing monarchical forms set up after Vienna
• fighting for liberty and freedom
• and a nation-state was seen as the necessary container for that liberty.

Giuseppe Mazzini

• Born in Genoa in 1805.
• Became a member of the secret society of the Carbonari (a secret revolutionary society in Italy).

• Britannica: he joined the Carbonari as a lawyer, and was imprisoned for Carbonari activity [5].

• At the age of 24 he was sent into exile in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria.

• He then founded two underground societies:
• Young Italy — in Marseilles
• Young Europe — in Berne, with members from Poland, France, Italy and the German states
• Britannica: he founded Young Italy after moving to Marseille in 1831, because the Carbonari revolts kept failing [5].
• Mazzini himself claimed Young Italy grew from 40 members in 1831 to more than 50,000 by 1833 [5].

• Young Italy's programme was openly republican and unionist — one Italy, no king — and it wanted ordinary people to take part, but it avoided social-revolutionary aims [5]. As it rose, the Carbonari declined [5].

• Mazzini's core belief: God had intended nations to be the natural units of mankind.

• So Italy must not stay a patchwork of small kingdoms.
• Italy had to become a single unified republic, forged by the people themselves.

• A wider alliance of such nations was, for him, the only base for Italian liberty.

• His secret societies in Germany, France, Switzerland and Poland frightened the conservatives.

• Metternich called Mazzini "the most dangerous enemy of our social order."

Prelims Hooks

• Treaty of Vienna, 1815 — drawn up by Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria; hosted by Metternich, Austrian Chancellor.
• Congress of Vienna ran September 1814 to June 1815 [2].
• Buffer states around France: kingdom of the Netherlands including Belgium (north) and Genoa added to Piedmont (south).
• Austria was given northern Italy; Russia got part of Poland; Prussia got western lands plus part of Saxony.
• The German confederation of 39 states was left untouched by the 1815 settlement.
• The Bourbon dynasty was restored in France in 1815.
• Freedom of the press became the signature demand of liberal-nationalists after 1815.
• Mazzini — born Genoa, 1805; member of the Carbonari; exiled 1831 after a rising in Liguria.
• Young Italy was founded at Marseilles; Young Europe at Berne.
• Metternich's line on Mazzini: "the most dangerous enemy of our social order."
• Conservatism after 1815 accepted modern army, efficient bureaucracy, dynamic economy, end of feudalism and serfdom.

Mains Points

• Vienna was a settlement of rulers, not of peoples. The 1815 map was cut to balance the great powers and box in France. Nationality was ignored — Austria in northern Italy, Russia in Poland, Belgium inside the Netherlands. Each of these became a national grievance that exploded in 1830, 1848 and 1859-71.
• Conservatism after 1815 was modern, not medieval. It borrowed Napoleon's tools — bureaucracy, army, code, abolished serfdom — to make autocracy efficient. This explains why 19th-century autocracies could survive so long, and why later unifications (Piedmont, Prussia) were led from above by conservative modernisers rather than by Mazzini's republicans.
• Repression shaped the form of opposition. Censorship closed open politics, so liberal-nationalism went into secret societies, exile networks and the press demand. This made the movement elite, conspiratorial and weak in mass support — a key reason the revolts of 1831 and 1848 failed.
• Mazzini shows the link between liberalism and nationalism. For him a unified republic was not merely a political demand but a moral and religious duty — nations as God's natural units. Young Europe also shows the early internationalist side of nationalism, before it turned aggressive and exclusive after 1871.