Discuss (c) Article 16 of the Covenant

The post-Napoleonic order's first "association of princes": the September 1815 declaration — Tsar Alexander I of Russia, Emperor Francis I of Austria and King Frederick William III of Prussia — the monarchs' pledge to govern and mutual-relate according to the principles of Christian charity (the holy, brotherly union of the crowned). The nature: not a treaty-based organization with organs — a proto-institution of dynastic legitimacy: a shared ideology (legitimacy, monarchy, opposition to revolution) more than a machinery. The companions: the Quadruple Alliance (1815) — the operational pact (Britain joining) that congressed against Napoleon's return — and the Congress of Aix/Verona/Troppau line of meetings. The significance for this course: the first attempt at collective management of the international order by standing principle and periodic conference — the germs of the concert and congress system; the critique: the reaction's instrument (the intervention against liberal revolutions — the Troppau Protocol's doctrine of intervention against revolution) — the alliance of the thrones, not of the peoples; dissolved in practice by the mid-century's rifts (Britain's 1822 withdrawal from the congress principle — the Castlereagh-Canning divide; the Crimean War's end of the concert's unity).