Congress of Vienna; No More Napoleon

Napoleon's reign as emperor was influential not only when he was alive and conquering, but even after he had been exiled and out of power.

In fact, he was so influential, that all of the European powers decided to hold a Congress in order to make a plan and set up new rules that would protect from one becoming as powerful as Napoleon did.

Our essential question this week was "What should people in power do when their power is threatened?". It pertains to the decisions made in the Congress of Vienna to protect against a napoleonic abuse of power. In class, we modeled the congress of Vienna. We were given problems to discuss in small groups, and then picked which  solution we thought would best benefit the "New Europe". After all of the groups decided what would be best, we were told what solution was actually picked by the congress members. This gave us insight to how the congress worked, and the ideas behind the new customs Europe implemented.

The Holy Alliance was a concept initiated by Czar Alexander of Russia, in which monarchs had Divine right to rule, and any revolution was treason and against God. The congress implemented this concept in order to stamp out the threat of revolution, which is what had caused Napoleon's rise to power in the first place. They hoped that making revolution a charge of treason and declaring it "against God" would ensure that peace would continue. This, and all of the other concepts initiated by the Congress of Vienna, were all to prevent anything like Napoleon's reign of power from happening again.

I don't think that the best solution would have been the Holy Alliance. Personally, I feel that if the Congress of Vienna chose to have the "monarchs act with more benevolence toward their peoples in the hope of quelling revolutionary ideas" and have "European leaders support religious toleration and greater freedom of speech and develop and support the arts, sciences and education"; or, in other words, choice C, Europe would have had a better chance at maintaining peace. In order for chaos and revolution to be avoided, a ruler needs to listen and accommodate people. By doing that, trust will be built between the monarch/government, and the people wouldn't have a reason to uprise. The powerful should be willing to sacrifice some of their power in order to maintain a peaceful country.

SOURCE: http://www.napoleonguide.com/convienna.htm