Laibach, Congress of

(1821)

   The completion of the Congress of Troppau and the fourth meeting of the Congress System, held from January until May 1821. At the time, a liberal revolution was underway in Italy, prompted in part by the apparent success of the Spanish revolution of 1820, and Austria had deployed 80,000 troops to “restore order” in the most disaffected regions. Russian Tsar Alexander I was fully under the influence of the Austrian Foreign Minister Metternich and, at one point in the congress, advised the French representative that it might be prudent for France to intervene in Spain on the same principle that Austria applied to Italy. The meeting marked another step in British alienation from the Congress system, insofar as Lord Castlereagh acknowledged Austria’s right to intervene in the particular case of Italy yet rejected any notion of general right of intervention for the Great Powers in the internal affairs of lesser nations as contrary to fundamental British principles and potentially a tyranny in the hands of “less beneficent monarchs.”

   See also <>.

   FURTHER READING:

    Kissinger, Henry. A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problem of Peace 1812–1822 . London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000.

   CARL CAVANAGH HODGE