Counterrevolution: The Holy Alliance
Now we begin the series proper, looking at past attempts at counterrevolution, what would be required of one today, and means to circumvent the most apparent challenges. Before us we have two examples of counterrevolution, that of the Holy Alliance and the case the National Movements. There are certainly more examples, such as the Mountbatten attempt, but I chose these two case examples for the following reasons:
They provide a contrast between a counterrevolution from without, and a counterrevolution from within
They provide a contrast between throne and altar traditionalism, and reactionary modernism1
They provide a contrast between armed, and electoral, combat
They both involved numerous European powers forming a block against democracy
There being key contrasts, yet essential similarities, makes these two counterrevolutionary attempts fruitful for our series. Here, we shall focus our attention on the Holy Alliance, what it was, and why it failed.
In 1818, at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, representatives from Russia, Prussia, and Austria formed the Holy Alliance, “the mechanism through which the conservative powers sought to suppress popular uprisings and uphold the monarchical principle.”2 Not only was the Alliance formed to prevent the spread of democracy, but Klemens von Metternich, an Austrian statesman who played a significant role at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, guided what became an interventionist policy on the grounds that Europe is a body and a disease anywhere, provided it is not cleansed, would eventually spread through the rest of the continent.3
Immediately there is a question of “why Russia, Prussia, and Austria?”, “why these three, and not others?” Although the other monarchies of Europe were concerned about revolution, there were differing opinions on how to properly deal with a revolution. Britain, for instance, was concerned about France becoming a military threat, but not about its potential to spread revolutionary ideas, and she did not oppose the democratic revolution in Portugal on this basis.4 The division between Britian and the eastern powers became solidified at the Congress of Verona in 1822, where Britain officially embraced non-intervention and, through the words of statesman Castlereagh, argued “Our engagements have reference wholly to the state of territorial possession settled at the peace; to the state of affairs between nation and nation; not…to the affairs of any nation within itself.”5
Already we can see the seeds of the Alliance’s failure. If a military alliance is to be formed against Jacobinism, and since France was the main exporter of Jacobinism, it would seem advantageous to enclose the Jacobins, by which we mean the French, on all sides. This is not to say that if Britain joined the Holy Alliance, that it would have succeeded, or that Britian’s absence from the Alliance was the cause of its failure, but simply that from its outside the Alliance faced less than ideal circumstances.
First signs of the international conservative project failing were the successes of The Monroe Doctrine, by which The United States of America supported revolutionary movements in Latin America for the purposes of expanding its geopolitical influence and rivaling that of the Continent.6 Although The Monroe Doctrine was not ideological, but was rather a geopolitical strategy for gaining hegemony, it did have the effect of giving legitimacy to the cause of democracy. America herself would soon begin the transition from republic to democracy with the rise of Andrew Jackson and his turn away from the Athenian based republicanism of the Founding Fathers. With the shifting of America, whose natural resources made it a considerable rival to the whole of Europe, to the side of democracy, the Holy Alliance suffered a second blow. Neither Latin America nor North America could have been intervened in by the Holy Alliance due to the military strength of America, her natural resources, and the growing bonds between her and Britain, and her and France.
Belgium and Greece, in the 1830s, became the next countries to join the democratic sphere. Yet, despite the Holy Alliance not being able to maintain an international opposition to democracy, in large part due to a lack of sufficient military strength and the lack of popular will for not only a sustained intervention in foreign countries, but also the, albeit temporary, occupation needed to reinstate throne and altar, the Alliance was successful at staving off revolutions in the member countries.7 By the time of the revolutions of 1848, which were to rapid and widespread for the Alliance to launch a concentrated counter-offensive, even staunch reactionaries like Thomas Caryle conceded that democracy is, in all likeliness, an inevitability.8
Why did the Holy Alliance fail? To formalize what was previously said, we can ascribe the failure to the following conditions:
The lack of strategic allies in the West and in the Balkans
The military insufficiency to resist The United States in Latin America
The lack of popular will to wage a sustained military effort against, and the necessary occupation of, countries that would neither become military nor economic enemies upon their conversion to democracy
The speed and range at which democratic revolutions spread across Europe
If there was to be a military intervention against democracy, it might have had success at the outset of the French Revolution. For the future counterrevolutionary, one lesson to learn from the failure of the Holy Alliance would be as follows: a geopolitical alliance, no matter how noble its intent, means little unless it can accurately identify its chief threat and nullify it. Having too wide of a goal will result in the inability to identify, isolate, and nullify the significant geopolitical opposition and will lead to, as in the case of the Holy Alliance, a lot of talk about intervening in this or that country but never actual boots on the ground. Even if the future counterrevolutionary is concerned with domestic, rather than foreign, political concerns, having such goals as “retake America” is too wide to provide concrete praxis.
It should be kept in mind that modernism here is used in the artistic sense, as the school to which Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis belonged to. Modernism was, in many ways, the vanguard of reactionary thought in the mid-twentieth century and should not be confused with “Modernity”, so often used to mean so many things, that even contradict themselves, that the term has slipped from an accurate historical label to a mere epithet to be hurled at the other.
Hobson, Christopher. “REACTION, REVOLUTION AND EMPIRE: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.” In The Rise of Democracy: Revolution, War and Transformations in International Politics since 1776, 106–39. Edinburgh University Press, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1bgzcgz.8. 115
Hobson, Christopher. “REACTION, REVOLUTION AND EMPIRE: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.” In The Rise of Democracy: Revolution, War and Transformations in International Politics since 1776, 106–39. Edinburgh University Press, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1bgzcgz.8. 115
Ibid, 115
Ibid, 116
Ibid, 116
Ibid, 117
Ibid, 131