Establishing Fair Power

After the seemingly endless prosperity of the Napoleonic empire was finally crushed under a group of allied forces, Europe was left with some major decision making to do in order to clean up the mess that the French emperor had left behind. With intentions to provide peace and fairness to their continent, representatives from several countries discussed significant issues like how the map of Europe should be redrawn, who will be established as France’s new leader, and how to prevent rebellion within countries in the future. The meeting in which these discussions took place was named “The Congress of Vienna.” The three previously mentioned issues are ones that we looked at in our history course. We were able to answer the question: What should people in power do when their power is threatened, based on what the congress and Austrian prince Metternich decided to do to solve the problems, as well as our own opinions on the situations.

       When addressing the issue of how to reestablish European borders, Metternich and the participants at the Congress of Vienna decided to then forth maintain a balance of power. Maintaining a balance of power means that no one country can dominate the others. The boundary changes made by Napoleon’s empire were reversed. France’s boundaries became exactly what they were before Napoleon’s conquests, and Prussia was enlarged so that France was surrounded by stronger forces. The Netherlands were also created to secure French borders, and as a repayment for faced difficulties during the empire's reign of success, Russia and Austria received more territory. The powers of Europe became distributed to bring about peace, and make complete domination highly unlikely.

The people of the Congress seem to have chosen the best possible solution to ease their territory concerns. By surrounding France with newly strengthened nations, an attack from them would be made nearly impossible. France wouldn’t be ready to overtake their neighbors, and Prussia and the kingdom of The Netherlands could handle any attempts at doing so. Russia and Austria’s enlargement created even more protection from future rebellion. These boundaries made for a continent that would not experience any major overtaking, but still ensure independent nations the right and possibility to fairly expand themselves. Constructing Europe this way was the right choice because it limited chaos as much as possible, and it did lead to very few issues in the near future. Putting the boundaries back to the way they were would have led to more revolutions, and equalizing territories would have led to just as many, since countries would want to keep their own earned success. Rearranging by nationality would have led to the downfall of certain areas and the rising of others, since some nationalities hadn't had their own land to reign before and wouldn’t be ready to take on the responsibility. In certain circumstances I do believe that powerful beings should be willing to sacrifice some of their power. Power should not be equalized between countries; just balanced so that one does not have enough to dominate. If the powerful possess enough to dominate, they should be willing to make a sacrifice not only to save others but to save themselves, because as seen by Napoleon’s story, destruction will only come back around to those who cause it, and extreme power is never everlasting.

Link to Map: https://thefrenchrevolution11.wikispaces.com/The+Congress+of+Vienna