Holy Alliance

A league entered into by Alexander I., the Czar of Russia, Francis I., emperor of Austria, and William III., King of Prussia. The alliance was entered into at Paris, 26 Sept. 1815, twenty days before Napoleon landed at St. Helena. All creeds were to be united, Greek, Roman Catholic and Protesant, and all other powers were invited to join, except the Sultan, who was excluded because he was not Christian enough, and the pope, who was so conspicuously Christian that if admitted he would have to take the first place. Those included in it were subsequently joined by all the sovereigns of Europe, except the King of England. The professed objects of the alliance were the union of Christian nations in a Christian brotherhood, and the application of Christian principles to the dealings of sovereign with sovereign and the relations of sovereign to subject. These were no doubt to some extent the real objects, for motives are seldom wholly covert, even in the mind of a king. But other objects there undoubtedly were in the background of consciousness which moved the contracting parties far more powerfully. These were, it cannot be doubted, the strengthening of defenses against the dreaded shape then just banished from the world they hoped to dominate, against him and his, a special clause barring the way to any European throne against any of the Bonaparte family in the erecting of barriers against the notions in regard to the rights of man and the sphere of government which since the first French revolution had been gradually makties against whatever might come against them. The change that was then coming over the world had however gone too far. The alliance really fell before the new forces which it was created to control, enforced no doubt by the obvious fact that the conduct of princes was no more Christian than it was before, thoiigh to the casual eye, the causes of its dissolution were the French revolution of 1830, the European upheaval of 1848, and the re-establishment of the Napoleonic dynasty in 1850.