The 1810s was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1810, and ended on December 31, 1819.
The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Participants were representatives of all European powers and other stakeholders. The Congress was chaired by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich, and was held in Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815.
Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry,, usually known as Lord Castlereagh, derived from the courtesy title Viscount Castlereagh by which he was styled from 1796 to 1821, was an Irish-born British statesman and politician. As secretary to the Viceroy in Ireland, he worked to suppress the Rebellion of 1798 and to secure passage in 1800 of the Irish Act of Union. As the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from 1812, he was central to the management of the coalition that defeated Napoleon, and was British plenipotentiary at the Congress of Vienna. In the post-war government of Lord Liverpool, Castlereagh was seen to support harsh measures against agitation for reform, and he ended his life an isolated and unpopular figure.
The Treaty of Paris of 1815, also known as the Second Treaty of Paris, was signed on 20 November 1815, after the defeat and the second abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte. In February, Napoleon had escaped from his exile on Elba, entered Paris on 20 March and began the Hundred Days of his restored rule. After France's defeat at the hands of the Seventh Coalition at the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was persuaded to abdicate again, on 22 June. King Louis XVIII, who had fled the country when Napoleon arrived in Paris, took the throne for a second time on 8 July.
The Hundred Days, also known as the War of the Seventh Coalition, marked the period between Napoleon's return from eleven months of exile on the island of Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815. This period saw the War of the Seventh Coalition, and includes the Waterloo Campaign and the Neapolitan War as well as several other minor campaigns. The phrase les Cent Jours was first used by the prefect of Paris, Gaspard, comte de Chabrol, in his speech welcoming the king back to Paris on 8 July.
The Concert of Europe was a general agreement among the great powers of 19th-century Europe to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence. Never a perfect unity and subject to disputes and jockeying for position and influence, the Concert was an extended period of relative peace and stability in Europe following the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars which had consumed the continent since the 1790s. There is considerable scholarly dispute over the exact nature and duration of the Concert. Some scholars argue that it fell apart nearly as soon as it began in the 1820s when the great powers disagreed over the handling of liberal revolts in Italy, while others argue that it lasted until the outbreak of World War I and others for points in between. For those arguing for a longer duration, there is generally agreement that the period after the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War (1853–1856) represented a different phase with different dynamics than the earlier period.
The Austrian Empire, officially known as the Empire of Austria, was a multinational European great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence, it was the third most populous monarchy in Europe after the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom, while geographically, it was the third-largest empire in Europe after the Russian Empire and the First French Empire.
James Gillray was a British caricaturist and printmaker famous for his etched political and social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810. Many of his works are held at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
The Holy Alliance, also called the Grand Alliance, was a coalition linking the absolute monarchist great powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, which was created after the final defeat of Napoleon at the behest of Emperor (Tsar) Alexander I of Russia and signed in Paris on 26 September 1815.
George Cruikshank or Cruickshank was a British caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth" during his life. His book illustrations for his friend Charles Dickens, and many other authors, reached an international audience.
The Congress of Laibach was a conference of the allied sovereigns or their representatives, held in 1821 in Ljubljana as part of the Congress System which was the decided attempt of the five Great Powers to settle international problems after the Napoleonic Wars through discussion and collective weight rather than on the battlefield. A result of the Congress was the authorization of Austrian intervention in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in order to quell a liberal uprising.
The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, held in the autumn of 1818, was a high-level diplomatic meeting of France and the four allied powers Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia, which had defeated it in 1814. The purpose was to decide the withdrawal of the army of occupation from France and renegotiate the reparations it owed. It produced an amicable settlement, whereby France refinanced its reparations debt; the Allies in a few weeks withdrew all of their troops.
The Treaty of Chaumont was a series of separately-signed but identically-worded agreements in 1814 between the Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom. They were dated 1 March 1814, although the actual signings took place on 9 or 19 March. The treaty was intended to draw the powers of the Sixth Coalition into a closer alliance in case France rejected the peace terms they had recently offered. Each power agreed to put 150,000 soldiers in the field against France and to guarantee for twenty years the European peace against French aggression.
Isaac Cruikshank was a Scottish painter and caricaturist, known for his social and political satire.
Diplomatic timeline for 1815
The Londonderry Vase is a hard-paste porcelain vase, standing at 54 inches tall. It is decorated with polychrome enamels, gilding and gilt bronze mounts. It bears the Sèvres mark, two intersecting Ls with a letter in the center denoting its creation year (1813-1815) and a crown over the L's to mark it as hard-paste. The vase was commissioned by Napoleon around 1805 to be created by the Sèvres Manufactory. The vase is currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Diego Saglia is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Parma. He received his PhD from Cardiff University (UK) and, before joining Parma, taught at Cardiff University and the University of Bath (UK). He is a member of the advisory committee of the “Museo Byron a Palazzo Guiccioli”, the coordinator of the Parma Unit of the Centro Interuniversitario per lo Studio del Romanticismo, and a member of the steering committees of Anglo-Hispanic Horizons, 1780s-1840s and European Romanticisms in Association. In October 2022 he was appointed to the Board of Parma's Teatro Regio
The Secret Treaty of Vienna was a defensive alliance signed on 3 January 1815 by France, the Austrian Empire and Great Britain. It took place during the Congress of Vienna, negotiations on the future of Europe following Napoleon's defeat in the War of the Sixth Coalition.
Laura Sophia Temple was a British poet and novelist associated with the Romantic movement. During her lifetime, Temple published three volumes of poetry, as well as a novel, Ferdinand Fitzormond; or, The Fool of Nature (1806).
The Allied Bakers or the Corsican Toad-in-the-hole is an 1814 political caricature by the British illustrator George Cruikshank. It makes reference to Napoleon's Corsican heritage and the traditional British dish toad in the hole.
