It was peace at last. For the first time, apart from one short break, for a generation. 

Peace, however, requires managing, just like war does. That management took the form of a new approach to the relations between European states, with the old concept of a Balance of Power giving way to the new one of a Concert of Nations. The innovation meant that nations would find a way to settle their differences by diplomatic rather than military means, instead of lining up in two hostile camps, of slightly varying composition down the decades, with only fear of each other to keep the peace.

After all, that Balance of Power approach hadn’t worked too well. Remember how many wars we’ve talked about as we worked out way through the eighteenth century?

To give the new thinking a secure foundation, the victorious allies set up the Congress of Vienna, where a minister from the United Kingdom would play a key role: the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh would draft most of the documents, just as he drafted the terms imposed on defeated France. Which, in passing, meant he had no time for the simultaneous negotiations of a peace treaty with the United States, ending the War of 1812. Perhaps explaining why the British representatives at that second set of discussions were perhaps outmanoeuvred.

And then, just to spoil the moment, France, and above all its deposed Emperor, showed the world that they didn’t take their defeat as conclusive.

Illustration: Frontispiece of the Final Declaration of the Congress of Vienna (public domain).

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License