THE EUROPEAN PENTARCHY AND THE CONGRESS OF VERONA, 1822 THE EUROPEANPENTARCHY AND THE CONGRESS OF VERONA, 1822 by IRBY C. NICHOLS, JR. North Texas State University MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE I 1971 @ 1971 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1110-9 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-2725-0 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-2725-0 TO MY MOTHER PAULINE WRIGHT NICHOLS AND THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER IRBY COGHILL NICHOLS WHO INSPIRED ME TO BECOME A DISCIPLE OF CLIO CONTENTS PREFACE XI PART I GENESIS OF THE CONGRESS: FEBRUARY 1821-0CTOBER 1822 1 PROLOGUE THE DIPLOMATIC BACKGROUND OF THE CoNGRESS 3 1. The Congress is called 3 2. The Eastern Question 5 3. The Hanoverian Rendezvous 8 4. The Shift from Castlereagh to Canning 13 CHAPTER I THE ROAD TO VIENNA 19 1. The Castlereagh Instructions 19 2. The Wellington Mission 23 3. The Ascendancy of Villele 25 4. Franco-Spanish Relations, 1820-1822 27 5. The Villele-Wellington Interview 34 CHAPTER II THE VIENNA STALEMATE 40 1. The Conference Convenes 40 2. The Spanish Question 42 3. The Eastern Question 48 4. Italian Questions 54 5. A Retrospect 59 VIII CONTENTS PARTn THE CONGRESS AT WORK: OCTOBER-DECEMBER 1822 63 CHAPTER ill FROM VmNNA TO VERONA: PRELlMINARmS TO THE CoNGRESS 65 1. Exodus 65 2. The Canning Instructions 68 3. The Villcle Instructions 72 4. Reunion in Verona: The Congress at Play 75 5. Agenda and Procedure 81 CHAPTER IV THE SPANISH QUESTION 84 1. The Montmorency Mbnoire 84 2. The British Remonstrance and Allied Reaction 88 3. Dichotomy of the French Delegation 107 4. Triumph of the Franco-Russian Entente 112 5. International Finance and Intervention: The Brothers Rothschild and Ouvrard 127 6. A Retrospect 133 CHAPTER V THE SPANISH CoLONIAL QUESTION 137 1. Genesis 137 2. Wellington's Dissent 144 3. The Villcle-Montmorency Vendetta Revisited 145 4. The British Brief 147 5. The AngIo-Continental Impasse 148 6. The Gameiro Affair 151 7. The British Reservation 154 8. A Retrospect 159 CHAPTER VI THE SLAVB TRADE QUESTION 161 1. Genesis 161 2. The Impossible Quest 165 3. The Black Tide 171 4. The Six Points 176 CONTENTS IX 5. The Implacable French and Diffident Allies 180 6. A Retrospect 186 7. Epilogue 189 CHAPTER VII THE ITALIAN CONGRESS 191 1. The Charles Albert Affair 191 2. The Evacuation of Piedmont 195 3. The Evacuation of Naples 200 4. Metternich's Italian League (Lega Ita/ica) 205 5. The Sardinian Waldenses 211 6. The Swiss Confederation and Piedmontese Refugees 212 7. The Knights of Malta 215 8. The Aldobrandini Appeal 215 9. A Retrospect 216 CHAPTER VIII GREAT BRITAIN AND THE GOLDEN MAXIM 218 1. The Austrian War Debt 218 2. The Russian Ukase 229 3. The Eastern Question 244 4. The Navigation of the Rhine 258 5. A Retrospect 262 CHAPTER IX THE CURTAIN FALLS 264 1. The Verona Circular (December 14, 1822) 264 2. Exodus 266 3. The Second ViIlele-Wellington Interview 267 4. A Retrospect 272 PART III PROBLEMS IN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND INTERPRETATION 275 CHAPTER X WELLINGTON AND THE CoNGRESS 277 1. The Alleged Crime 277 2. The Prosecution 277 x CONTENTS 3. The Defense 280 4. The Verdict 284 CHAPTER XI CHATEAUBRIAND AND THE CONGRESS 286 1. The Debate 286 2. Ambition and Intrigue 288 3. The Mission 292 4. Reception at Verona 295 5. A Retrospect 299 CHAPTER XU CHATEAUBRIAND'S WAR 302 1. The French Ministerial Crisis (December 1822) 302 2. France Goes It Alone 307 3. Britain Adopts Neutrality 312 4. A Retrospect 315 EPILOGUE FROM CoNGRESS SYSTEM TO CONCERT OF EUROPE 317 1. The Secret Treaty of Verona 317 2. The Congress and the Alliance 320 3. Fall of the Alliance 321 4. The Legacy 324 BmuOGRAPHY 327 INDEX 349 PREFACE For one reason or another. modem historians have neglected the Congress of Verona. some because they thought the field already had been thoroughly plowed. while others doubted that enough material could be found for more than an article or two on the subject. Indeed. not a single book-length monograph of this international assembly has ever been published in any language. This study. therefore. attempts to fill the gap by (1) explaining the genesis of the Congress. (2) furnishing a comprehensive account of its work. (3) revising some of the interpretations of Sir Charles K. Webster. Harold W. V. Tempedey. and others. and (4) analyzing the significance of the Congress. with emphasis on its contribution to the fall of the Quintuple Alliance. a consequence aided by the dissimilar and often contradictory interests of the allies themselves. This book is essentially a diplomatic history. but diplomats. of course. do not live in a vacuum. Numerous political. social. commercial. financial. and sometimes even religious factors. impinge upon their consciousness. It soon became apparent. therefore. that the scope of this work would be enormous and that its span would stretch from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. if the alpha and omega of every issue discussed at Verona were recounted. Yet anything less than a catholic approach would reduce the claim of comprehensive coverage to an empty pretense. Included within the purview of the study. perforce. are questions which range from Black Sea commerce to the Atlantic slave trade. from the Greek insurrection to Latin American independence. from the navigation of the Rhine to the interdiction of foreign trade with Russian America. and from intervention in the Iberian Peninsula to the persecution of Piedmontese Vaudois. The present volume is an outgrowth of researches which began twenty­ three years ago in Professor James Logan Godfrey's seminar at the Uni­ versity of North Carolina. By 1949 the paper had grown into a master's thesis which six years later at the University of Michigan envolved into a doctoral dissertation: "Great Britain and the Congress of Verona." But hardly more than the foundation for this work had been laid. for the greater XII PREFACE task of giving equal and adequate treatment to the diplomacy of the four great continental powers remained. There were. moreover. other important questions which required investigation: what impact. if any. did the negoti­ ations at Verona have upon the balance of power in Europe. the foreign policy of the United States. or on Habsburg hegemony in Italy? Nonetheless. the obvious need for a central theme in the midst of involved negotiations on multitudinous issues led me to retain the focus on British diplomacy. Of all the great powers. only Britain. by virtue of her empire. commerce. and ambivalent position in Europe (at once insular and continental). had interests which were truly global. Further research. writing. revision. and the occasional pUblication of findings have occupied my attention for the last decade and a half. For the sake of clarity. I have modernized the spelling and punctuation of most quotations - retaining some archaic forms for their dramatic effect - and have translated foreign titles of nobility and office into English. Also to avoid confusion. all Old Style dates have been converted to New Style. During the nineteenth century. the Russian. Old Style calendar was twelve days in arrears of the Gregorian. New Style calendar. Both the organization of this book and my own historiographical creed hang on five basic assumptions. First. the author should take the reader into his confidence at frequent intervals. not just in the Preface and the concluding chapter. Secondly. the essence of history is problems. not chroni­ cles. though no theory of historical interpretation or system of social dialectics in definitive. because such factors as human courage. faith. and ambition are indefinable and unpredictable. Thirdly. notwithstanding the influence of complex material forces. accidents and men's free choice also have produced dynamic results throughout the continuum of history. Does not aio often seem capricious? Fourthly. symbols. such as the martyred Joan of Arc or the modem propaganda image. are sometimes greater than the reality. Fifthly. the interpretation of events is the proper function of the historian and is as important as their narration. Since analyses are subjective and cannot be guaranteed. however. each reader must judge for himself whether a particular conclusion is astute or naive. proven or unwarrented. germane or irrelevant. In conformity with these suppositions. at least one section of each chapter analyzes problems of causation. relationships. and significance. while all of Part III (three chapters and the Epilogue). focuses on questions of historiography and interpretation. Most of the published materials for this study and all of the manuscript collections (except the Adams Papers). are deposited in London. at the British Museum and the Public Record Office. and in Paris. at the Biblio- PREFACE XIII theque Nationale and the Quai d'Orsay. While I have not consulted the governmental archives of Vienna, Berlin, and Leningrad (St. Petersburg), this omission, in my opinion, does not present any serious difficulty in understanding the policies of those cabinets. The British and French archives, especially the embassy files, contain rich deposits of documents pertaining to the diplomacy of the three eastern courts, and these holdings are supplemented by many published collections of Austrian, Prussian, and Russian diplomatic dispatches, memoirs, and diaries. Almost all of the Austrian papers found in the Vienna Staatsarchiv, Kongressakten, Verona, Fascs. 43, 45, and 50, moreover, have been printed in Wellington's new Despatches. Vol. I. I have, of course, made use of the secondary accounts of historians who have labored in foreign archives: Bertier de Sauvigny, Cresson, Schroeder, Sweet, Temperley, and Webster, among others.