The Troppau Protocol

During the Napoleonic Era, Spain had been occupied by French armies which were at first received as a progressive development by the few bourgeois-liberals there. They later turned against Napoleon and in 1812 proclaimed a new constitution based on the French revolutionary constitution that was put together in the period 1789-1791. As part of the Vienna Settlement, the Bourbon monarch was restored to Spain as well as its Italian branch in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies (Naples). In 1820, revolutionary demonstrations forced both kings to take an oath to the Spanish constitution of 1812. Metternich, who saw "the Italies" as within the Austrian purview, requested a Congress to deal with the situation, which then met in the Bohemian city of Troppau in the fall of 1820. England and France, which were reluctant to use the collective security provision of the "Congress System" to repress revolutions on behalf of liberalism in other countries, sent only observers. At Troppau, Metternich was able to convince Alexander of Russia, who was, himself, worried about the restiveness among the Poles who had come under Russian rule as "Congress Poland," that collective action to maintain the Vienna Settlement was necessary. Metternich drew up a document that became known as the Troppau Protocol for the signature of the five Powers. France and England declined to sign leaving the protocol to be the founding document for what became known as The Alliance of the Three Northern Courts. What is reproduced below is an excerpt from the "Circular Note of the Courts of Austria, Russia and Prussia, 8. December 1820" which explained the general principle of collective security which was then used to justify the specific intervention of Austria in the revolution in The Kingdom of Two Sicilies. ...

The Powers exercised an undisputed right, when they considered of joint measures of precautions against states, in which an overthrow of the Government, effected by rebellion, even considered only as an an example, must give occasion to a hostile attitude. Towards all legitimate constitutions and governments the exercise of this right became the more urgent when those who had come into this situation endeavoured to communicate the misfortune which they had drawn on themselves to the neighbouring countries, and to spred around them rebellion and confusion. In such an attitude, in such conduct, there is an evident breach of the compact which insures to all European governments, besides the inviolability of their territory, the enjoyment of those peaceful relations which exclude every reciprocal encroachment. ... They desire nothing but to maintain peace, to free Europe from the scourage of revolution, and to prevent, or to lessen, as far as in their powr, the evil which arises from the violation of all principles of order and morality....

Summarized from "The Congress of Troppau, 1820" in G.A. Kertesz, Documents in the Political History of the European Continent 1815-1939," (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 17-20.