Troppau Protocol Signed

19 November 1820

“The Pyrenees first fiercely rumbled/Then Naples spewed volcanic fire,” Pushkin wrote in his never-completed Chapter X of Eugene Onegin, which seems to have been intended as a sort of pre-history to the Decembrist revolt. Why would Russian officers dreaming of limiting autocratic power and abolishing serfdom be concerned about what was happening in Spain and Naples?

In 1820, a mere five years had passed since Napoleon was conclusively defeated, and the great emperor was now on Saint Helena, far from his admirers and potential liberators. The House of Bourbon had reclaimed the French throne, and across Europe the reforms introduced by the French had been abolished and appeared destined for history’s dust bin. King Ferdinand of Naples, whose domain had been taken over by the French more than once, felt such hatred toward them that, once back in power, he refused to enter the alley on his grounds that had been planted by Marshal Joachim Murat, whom Napoleon had appointed to rule the kingdom.

Alexander I, who had entered Paris and led his army’s proud procession down the Champs-Élysées after Napoleon’s defeat, used his authority and influence to try to forestall new revolutions. He was able to convince Louis XVIII that if he attempted to reverse the freedoms granted by the revolution – if he took away the peasants’ land and restored an absolute monarchy – then a new revolution would topple him and he might even face the same fate as his guillotined brother, Louis XVI. The Russian tsar, who had never gone through with his youthful wish to introduce a constitution in Russia, persuaded the French king to let his people keep theirs, albeit in somewhat abridged form. 

Nevertheless, revolutionary rumblings continued across Europe, which had been unsettled by two decades of war, so Alexander and the Austrian Chancellor Klemens von Metternich decided to bring Europe’s monarchies together into a new alliance. To this day, there are extremely mixed opinions about this alliance: some consider the Holy Alliance that Russia and Austria instigated to have been an “alliance of monarchs against the people,” while others see it as the precursor to the European Union.

For his part, Alexander felt certain that the Holy Alliance was the very approach needed to protect the realms that God had entrusted to him and his fellow rulers – there was a reason the alliance had been dubbed “Holy.” Indeed, in the final decade of his reign, the Russian tsar became increasingly religious and disenchanted with the “freethinking” ideas of the Enlightenment that had so enamored him in his youth. The Holy Alliance was designed to ensure peace for Europe and peace of mind for its autocrats.

This was a tall order. In the autumn of 1920, five years after the alliance had been established, the legacy left by the “Corsican monster” still captivated the popular imagination. Germany, Spain, and Italy had been liberated from their conquerors, but they had fond memories of the laws and reforms the French had introduced. Young officers and lawyers started forming secret societies. In Russia, the first associations established by the future Decembrists were meeting. Initially, their plan was to encourage and assist the emperor in his efforts at reform, although with every passing year they became more and more disillusioned with their government: serfdom and autocracy were still firmly entrenched, and freedom was being curtailed at the country’s universities. To add insult to injury, the tsar who had convinced the French king that he should adopt a constitution had now introduced one in his own domain – but in Poland rather than Russia. This infuriated the future rebels. The sovereign thought that Poland was ready for a constitution but Russia was not!?

While tensions were building in Russia, they had already reached the boiling point elsewhere. In January 1920, the Spaniards revolted, and in July there was an uprising in The Kingdom of Two Sicilies – in Palermo and Naples – and King Ferdinand, who despised the legacy the French had left, was compelled to give the kingdom a constitution and pretend to be an enthusiastic reformer. In August, yet another revolution broke out, in Portugal. And now, it seemed, the Greeks were preparing to revolt against the Ottoman sultan.

Europe’s anxious monarchs assembled in Troppau, Austria (now the Czech Republic’s Opava). King Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies was prevented from attending this congress of the Holy Alliance by his parliament. That was fine – the other monarchs would take care of his problems for him. In November, the rulers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia granted themselves the authority to invade other countries in order to maintain calm and protect the power of the ruling monarchs. England and France shied away from openly supporting a resolution that legitimized intervention and declined to sign what came to be known as the Troppau Protocol, although they approved of its contents in principle. Ferdinand also approved, and in fact was urging the Austrians to hurry up and invade his kingdom.

Alexander, who never liked to play the villain, insisted that the protocol also include wording guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, and giving Ferdinand the right to rule under a constitution. Surprising as it may seem, Ferdinand did not exercise this right. He simply waited until the Austrian forces came to his aid and then arrested a few revolutionaries and generally subordinated his country to the Austrians, while formally maintaining its independence and territorial integrity, since Alexander seemed to have strong feelings about that.

By the time Alexander returned to Russia, the country’s secret societies had already begun to give up on peaceful methods and were seriously contemplating the need for an armed uprising and the emperor’s overthrow. The emperor, meanwhile, was confronted with a ticklish problem: what to do about the brewing revolution in Greece. Greeks rebelling against Ottoman rule was a cause with which Russians could sympathize. How could they fail to help their Orthodox brethren? Improving their position in the strategically important Balkans was also appealing. On the other hand, the Greeks, like the Neapolitans, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese were rising up against a lawful monarch – the sultan. This was not an easy decision for Alexander, but in the end, he decided that he could not (at least overtly and officially) support the Greeks. A sovereign’s power came first.

Back in Russia, the conspirators were watching what was happening in Spain and increasingly wondering whether they might succeed where the Neapolitans had failed. In Spain, Rafael del Riego had even managed to force the king, another Ferdinand, to give the country a constitution. Sometime later, Spain’s Ferdinand dealt with the revolutionaries just as his Neapolitan namesake had, and also with the help of the Holy Alliance, but this time the French army also joined in. Again, Alexander concluded that preserving monarchs’ God-given powers was the highest priority – more important than the inviolability of borders and the keeping of royal promises.

How sadly this all turned out for Russia, and for Alexander. Depressed and disappointed with life, having basically achieved nothing in his own country, the emperor died in the southern city of Taganrog. By then, he seemed to be avoiding his own capital. Whether he was merely world-weary or genuinely afraid of plots to overthrow him is unclear. As things turned out, he probably need not have worried.