The Congress of Vienna
Simulation Game
Mr. McKinney
AP European History
Historical Background
The events leading up to the Congress
In 1811, Napoleon was at the summit of his career; the borders of France stretched from
the Baltic to the Tyrrhenian Sea and contained within them such historic cities as Lubeck,
Antwerp, Cologne, Turin and Rome. To the east of this frontier lay the new states
spawned by Napoleon’s armies, the Rhine Confederation, the Kingdome of Italy, the
Kingdom of Naples, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, each of them dependent on France
for its survival. Neighboring these were the humiliated powers of central Europe, Prussia
and Austria, now in uneasy alliance with their former enemy. To the east of this group lay
Russia, whose neutrality had been bought at Tilsit in 1807. Of the great powers only
Britain stood outside Napoleon’s orbit, maintaining a lone struggle against French armies
in the Iberian Peninsula.
Then in 1812, Napoleon launched his disastrous campaign against Russia. By the end of
that year the Grand Army, demoralized by the lack of a decisive victory over the
Russians and grown degenerate by the pillaging of Moscow, was disintegrating in the
snows of western Russia and Poland. In February 1813 Frederick William of Prussia
signed a treaty with Tsar Alexander for the immediate cooperation of the Prussian and
Russian armies. In June, by the Treaty of Reichenbach, Britain stepped up her subsidies
to those powers and by August, Austria had joined the coalition. For the first time,
Napoleon had to face a Grand Coalition of four great powers, each one now pledged to
stay in the field until France had been reduced to her pre-revolutionary frontiers.
After some reverses, the allies achieved a crushing victory over Napoleon at Leipzig. In
this Battle of the Nations, fought on October 16 – 18, 1813, two-thirds of the French
army of 200,000 were killed, wounded or captured. By the close of 1813, with his empire
in ruins, Napoleon had withdrawn across the Rhine.
Early in 1814, Castlereagh Metternich, Hardenberg and Alexander met in Northern
France and agreed on a formula for peace negotiations. These began, without an
armistice, at Chatillon-sur-Seine in February. It soon became clear that Napoleon would
not accept a return to France’s 1792 frontiers. The allies responded by signing the Treaty
of Chaumont, which committed them to continuing the struggle until the complete defeat
of Napoleon and bound them together in a defensive alliance against any future French
attack for the next twenty years. The treaty also outlined the kind of post –war Europe
which the allies wanted to establish – a Europe in which the major powers would all be of
roughly equal size and strength, so that no one power could establish a mastery in Europe
in becoming one of the main preoccupations of the negotiators who met at Vienna seven
months later.
With the failure of peace talks and the allied agreement on war aims, the march on Paris
was resumed. The capital was captured on March 30th and plans were set in motion for
the reinstatement of the Bourbon dynasty. On April 6th, the Senate invited Louis XVIII to
return from his exile in England and, on the 13th, Napoleon finally agreed to the Treaty of
Fontainebleau, by which he was to abdicate as Emperor of the French and in return
become the Prince of Elba, with an annual revenue of two million francs to be furnished
by the French government; in addition, his wife would receive the Parma Duchies. This
treaty was the work of Alexander who, left in charge of Paris by the allies, allowed
Christian magnanimity to get the better of political vision. In this instance magnanimity
was to cost, within a little over a year, the lives of thousands of men when Napoleon,
slipping back to France from his Elban exile, swept the Bourbons out of France again,
called his old soldiers to arms and met the allies armies on the field at Waterloo.
In April 1814, however, the allies felt that they could afford to be generous. With
Napoleon disposed of, peace terms were quickly arranged with the new French
government under the extremely able leadership of Talleyrand, who had been the chief
architect in France of the Bourbon restoration. The terms of the Peace of Paris, signed on
May 30th, were as follows:
1. France was to be restored to the frontiers which she had on January 1, 1792.
2. France was to agree in principle to:
a. free navigation of the Rhine
b. the enlargement of Holland
c. the confederation of the German States
d. the independence of Switzerland
e. the handing over of certain Italian territories to Austria
f. the retention of Malta by Britain
g. attend a Congress to be held at Vienna to settle the territorial arrangement
of post war Europe and many other matters requiring attention.
3. In addition, the French signed secret clauses by which they promised
a. to submit to the decisions of the allies concerning the redistribution of
territory to be undertaken at Vienna;
b. to uphold the free navigation of the Scheldt;
c. to sanction the transference of the former Austrian Netherlands to
Holland;
d. to accept and the division of the left bank of the Rhine among Holland,
Prussia and certain South German States.
It was the intention of the allies to meet at Vienna within two months of the signing of
peace, but once the immediate pressure of war was removed their energies for work
flagged. All the leading statesmen and rulers adjourned to London to celebrate the peace
and the Congress was postponed until September.
In the interim Castlereagh, who had little taste for frivolity, worked hard to secure
Britain’s primary interests before the Congress met. This work took the form of
negotiations with the Dutch to ensure that there should be no obstacle in the way of
enlarging Holland to include the Austrian Netherlands and at the same time reaching an
agreement over the British retention of Guiana and the Cape Colony. Britain’s
commercial and strategic interests thus secured, Castlereagh was able to go to Vienna and
concentrate on the more general problems of establishing a balance of power among the
European states. We must now take a closer look at the nature of these problems.
The Legacy of the wars
One obvious legacy of the Napoleonic Wars was the political chaos in which Central
Europe was left. Before the French revolution, Germany and Italy were little more than
geographical expressions; in the former, an assortment of more than four hundred kings,
princes, dukes, margraves, prince-bishops and lesser nobles held despotic power in their
lands; in the latter were eleven proud and independent states. As Napoleon extended his
power he sought to introduce administrative order so as to have more effective allies. By
1811, the German states, with the exception of Prussia and Austria, had been bullied into
forming the Confederation of the Rhine, whilst in Italy eleven states had been reduced to
two, the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Naples. None of these creations survived
the defeat of Napoleon and clearly one major task for the powers at Vienna would be to
decide who should rule what in the great ‘vacuum’ between Prussia and Austria in the
east and France in the west.
There was another, and potentially more dangerous legacy from the war era. In the 1790s,
befire Napoleon established his dictatorship, the French revolution had forced attention
away from one of the great questions of the late eighteenth century, namely that of the
future of Poland.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Poland had ranked amongst the foremost of the
European powers. However, a long series of wars with Sweden, Russia and the Ottoman
Empire had left her weak and divided. The Polish constitution, which provided for an
elected monarchy, only stimulated faction and intrigue amongst the ruling families. In
these circumstances it was comparatively simple for Poland’s three powerful neighbors to
cooperate in dismembering the country, provided western powers could be persuaded to
tolerate such a development. The partition of 1772 gave West Prussia to the Kingdom of
Prussia, Galicia to Austria and most of White Russia to the Russian Empire. As can be
seen from the map, this still left a vast area of Eastern Europe in Polish hands and Russia
remained isolated from the rest of Europe by the great band of territory stretching from
Courtland by the Baltic to Fodolia near the Black Sea. It was clear that Russia would look
for any opportunity to push her frontiers further west.
The opportunity came with the outbreak of war between the western powers and
Republican France. In 1793, Prussia and Russia invited each other to further slices of
territory, Prussia taking the districts around Pren and Thorn, whilst Russia absorbed the
rest of White Russia, Podolia and the eastern halves of Podlesia and Volhynia. Austria,
meeting with no success against France, abandoned her allies in 1795 to join in the final
share-out of the Polish spoils. She took the Lublin district, whilst Prussia added the
Warsaw region and the area around Bialystock and Russia engulfed Courland and the rest
of Podlesia.
These latest gains were short lived as far as Prussia and Austria were concerned. In 1807,
Napoleon created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, an area incorporating Posen, Thorn,
Warsaw and the Bromberg district of West Prussia, but excluding Bialystock which was
handed over to the Russians as part of the Tilsit compromise. The Duchy was given to the
King of Saxony as a reward for his loyalty to Napoleon. In 1809, after Austerlitz, the
Lublin district was added and thus the Duchy remained until the collapse of the Franch
armies after the Moscow campaign.
As the French were pushed back into western Europe so that the Russian armies
advanced and occupied the Grand Duchy. Thus by the time the Congress was ready to
meet at Viennna the Russians were the effective masters of the whole of Poland with the
exception of West Prussia and Galicia. The Russian frontier, which only 20 years
previously had passed within 250 miles of Moscow, now threatened to lie within 80 miles
of Berlin and 200 miles of Vienna. There seemed a very real danger to the delegates
assembling at Vienna that the mastery of Europe which they had fought for so long to
keep from the French was now, almost by sleight of hand, to be delivered to the Russians.
Thus a second major task fro the Congress was to decide how much of Poland Russia
should be allowed to keep and what compensations should be given to Prussia and
Austria to balance the Russian gains.
The political balance in 1814
According to E. V. Gulick, writing in the New Cambridge Modern History, Volume IX,
‘The period 1814-15 is indeed one of the best examples of Europe’s classical balance of
power in operation’. The first Peace of Paris testifies to this claim. The allies resisted any
temptation to penalize their old enemy excessively, because every statesman believed that
the key to the future security of Europe was an arrangement whereby all the five major
powers were roughly equal, so that no state could dominate the others. This may seem
surprising in view of the secret clauses of the Paris Treaty which, had they been effective,
would have relegated France to a subordinate rank at Vienna. But the Paris treaty was
signed in May and the Congress did not meet until October. In May the fighting had only
just ended and France was still regarded primarily as the enemy, and only secondarily as
a partner in a recreated balance of power. By October the illogicality of the secret clauses
was more apparent and Talleyrand lost not time at Vienna in persuading the allies to
forget that they had ever been written.
Thus decision making at Vienna was, after an initial period of uncertainty and crisis, a
five power activity. Given the multiplicity of state interests this meant that there were
many opportunities for negotiation and compromise. It is upon this particular aspect of
the Congress of Vienna that the game concentrates.
Item1: The territorial settlement of Saxony and the Grand
Duchy
Since it was Russia that initiated the debate over Poland and Saxony in 1814, the
Chairman begins by calling on the leader of the Russian delegation to propose a motion
concerning the future of EACH of the eight areas of the former Grand Duchy of Warsaw
and EACH of the eleven areas of the Kingdom of Saxony.
In the case of the former Grand Duchy, each area may be:
a. kept under Russian control
b. handed over to Prussia
c. handed over to Austria
d. granted independence in a reconstituted Kingdom of Poland
In the case of the Kingdom of Saxony, each area may be:
a. handed over to Prussia
b. left in the possession of the King of Saxony
This Russian motion can only be carried if (a) Russia, Prussia and Austria vote for it, and
(b) no more than one power votes against it.
If the Russian motion is not carried when a vote is taken, the Chairman calls on the leader
of the Prussian delegation to propose an alternative. If this Prussian motion is not carried,
the Chairman calls on the Austrian delegation leader to propose a motion, which must
fulfill the same conditions as the other before it can be passed.
If all three motions are defeated the Congress reverts back to informal negotiation for a
period determined by the Chairman. If at least two of the motions failed because
condition (a) above was not satisfied, then Russia, Prussia and Austria must deduct 20
points each from their scores, recording the deduction in Section 6 of the score sheet.
After this further period of informal diplomacy the voting procedure outlined above is
repeated and if no proposal is carried the same penalty may be imposed again. It should
be clear that continued deadlock over the Polish and Saxon issues will so penalize Russia,
Prussia and Austria that they cannot possibly win the game. If other powers are
responsible for a dead lock, no penalty is inflicted.
Once a settlement has been reached on this item it is recorded on the score sheet and each
power calculates the points it has gained.
Item 2:The territorial settlement of North and West Germany
The Chairman first calls upon the British delegation’s leader to propose a motion, which
must deal with each of the fourteen areas listed under Section 3 of the score sheet. In the
case of Emden, Osnabruck, Minden and Brunswick, each area may be:
a. handed over to Hanover
b. handed over to Prussia
c. granted the status of independent states.
In the case of all the other areas there are only two possibilities – they may be:
a. handed over to Prussia
b. granted the status of independent states.
This Russian motion can only be carried if (a) Britain, France and Prussia vote for it,
and (b) no more than one power votes against it.
If the British motion is not carried when a vote is taken, the Chairman calls on the leader
of the French delegation to propose an alternative. If this French motion is not carried,
the Chairman calls on the Prussian delegation leader to propose a motion, which must
fulfill the same conditions as the other before it can be passed.
If all three motions are defeated the Congress reverts back to informal negotiation for a
period determined by the Chairman. If at least two of the motions failed because
condition (a) above was not satisfied, then Britain, France and Prussia must deduct 20
points each from their scores, recording the deduction in Section 6 of the score sheet.
After this further period of informal diplomacy the voting procedure outlined above is
repeated and if no proposal is carried the same penalty may be imposed again. It should
be clear that continued deadlock over the Polish and Saxon issues will so penalize
Britain, France and Prussia that they cannot possibly win the game. If other powers are
responsible for a dead lock, no penalty is inflicted.
Item 3: The territorial settlement of Italy and the Adriatic
The Chairman calls on the Austrian delegation leader to propose a motion concerning
each of the ten areas listed in Section 4 of the score sheet. The options for each area are
as follows:
For Genoa:
a. be handed over to Piedmont
b. become an independent state again.
For the Kingdom of Two Sicilies:
a. remain under French influences
b. come under Austrian influence
c. became a completely independent state.
For the Ionian Islands:
a. remain part of Venice IF Venice remains independent
b. become part of Austria, IF the rest of Venice is handed over to Austria
c. be handed over to Britain, regardless of what happens to the rest of Venice
For the Dalmation provinces of Venice:
a. remain part of Venice IF Venice remains independent
b. become part of Austria, regardless of what happens to the rest of Venice
For mainland Venice and the state of Milan:
a. be handed over to Austria
b. become independent states again.
For Parma, Modena, Lucca and Tuscany:
a. become states of Austria
b. be restored to full independence
This Russian motion can only be carried if (a) Austria, Britain and France vote for it, and
(b) no more than one power votes against it.
If the Austrian motion is not carried when a vote is taken, the Chairman calls on the
leader of the British delegation to propose an alternative. If this British motion is not
carried, the Chairman calls on the French delegation leader to propose a motion, which
must fulfill the same conditions as the other before it can be passed.
If all three motions are defeated the Congress reverts back to informal negotiation for a
period determined by the Chairman. If at least two of the motions failed because
condition (a) above was not satisfied, then Austria, Britain and France must deduct 20
points each from their scores, recording the deduction in Section 6 of the score sheet.
After this further period of informal diplomacy the voting procedure outlined above is
repeated and if no proposal is carried the same penalty may be imposed again. It should
be clear that continued deadlock over the Polish and Saxon issues will so penalize
Austria, Britain and France that they cannot possibly win the game. If other powers are
responsible for a dead lock, no penalty is inflicted.
Item 4:The future form of the Germanic Confederation
The procedure for this is simpler. Delegations are allowed only brief informal
negotiation; since this is the last item, and a simple one, the scope for compromise is
limited and there is none at all for written agreement, but it is quite likely that by this
stage some of the powers will be committed to voting in a particular way.
After informal negotiations, the Congress holds a formal session and the Chairman puts
the following motions:
a. That a strong Confederation under joint Austro-Prussian leadership be
established.
b. That a weak confederation under joint Austro-Prussian leadership be established.
c. That a strong Confederation under Austrian leadership be established.
d. That a weak Confederation under Austrian leadership be established.
For a motion to be carried it must receive at least four votes in favor, three of which must
be cast by Prussia, Austria, France or Britain. If no motion is carried after the first vote,
then each of these four powers will lose ten points from its total. The Congress reverts to
a session of informal negotiation and is then recalled to vote on the motions again, with
the same penalties being imposed if no settlement is reached. When a settlement is
achieved, it is recorded under Section 5 of the Score sheet and the points gained by each
power for this item is calculated.
When all the items have been dealt with each delegation adds up all its points gained,
deducts any penalty points recorded in Section 6 and establish its Grand Total.
The winner is the delegation scoring the highest number of points.