by Napoleon. And finally it was Alexander who played the leading part in securing for both the former emperor and his country the generous terms they were initially accorded. As he later said, ‘I have but done my duty. It was frightful to see the evils about me [such as] the Austrians’ and Prussians’ fury and cupidity, which it was difficult to control. They wanted to use the right of reprisal, but that right has always been revolting to me, for one ought never to take vengeance except by doing good for evil.’2 Mixed in with all this were the wildest contradictions: full of good intentions when it came to France or Germany, the tsar was to show, at the very least, a considerable capacity for self-delusion when it came to Poland, and was always inclined to exempt Russia from the rules of conduct which he sought to impose on other countries. Nor were there any moves in the direction of political or social reform in Russia, the limit of Alexander’s generosity here being the cancellation of all tax arrears and a general release of all prisoners except those guilty of robbery or murder. That Poland did not in the end do very well out of the peace settlement, he did not deny: ‘I have not kept all my promises to . . . the Poles, but in working for them I have had great obstacles to overcome . . . The other sovereigns were opposed as much as possible to my projects.’3 But there was none the less a very different agenda here from the one developed by Castlereagh, and what made this all the more alarming was that in both Germany and Italy there were influential figures whose views chimed with those of the tsar, good examples being Heinrich vom Stein, who continued to favour a united Germany, and Lord William Bentinck, of whom an exasperated Castlereagh complained: ‘You will see by Lord William’s official dispatches . . . how intolerably prone he is to Whig revolutions everywhere . . . He seems bent on throwing all Italy loose. This might be well as against France, but against Austria and the King of Sardinia, with all the new constitutions which now menace the world with fresh convulsions, it is most absurd.’4
Conservatism, then, was set to clash with liberalism. Meanwhile, to complicate matters still further, none of the powers had in any sense abandoned their own particular interests. Britain was determined to exclude the issue of maritime rights from the peace settlement; took care to ensure that the disposition of the colonies of France and her allies was handled by herself alone; and strove hard to keep Belgium out of France’s hands, not just to strengthen the buffer state that from the time of Pitt onwards had been envisaged in the Low Countries, but also because the exclusion of France from Belgium had always been deemed central to Britain’s security. Equally, beneath the cover afforded by the need to restrain France, Prussia remained bent on the relentless search for territorial acquisitions that had been the mark of its foreign policy in the eighteenth century. As Talleyrand wrote in instructions drawn up for France’s conduct at the Congress of Vienna:
In Italy it is Austria who must be prevented from acquiring paramount power by opposing other influences to her. In Germany it is Prussia. The exiguity of her monarchy makes ambition a sort of necessity to her. Any pretext seems good to her. No scruples stop her. Her convenience forms her right. It is thus that, in the course of sixty-three years, she has raised her population from less than four millions of subjects to ten million, and that she has been able to form for herself, if I may so term it, the frame of an immense monarchy, by acquiring here and there scattered territories, which she aims at uniting by incorporating in herself those that separate them. The terrible fall that her ambition brought upon her has not yet cured her of it . . . She would have liked to have had Belgium. She would like to have all that lies between the present frontiers of France, the Meuse and the Rhine. She wants Luxembourg. All is lost if Mainz is not given her. She can have no security