The allied powers were concerned first and foremost with the defeated enemy, France. Agreeing to the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, the allies offered France lenient terms in the first Treaty of Paris, signed after Napoleon’s abdication and exile to Elba. Thus the victorious powers avoided provoking a spirit of victimization and desire for revenge in the defeated country.

Representatives of the Quadruple Alliance (plus a representative of the restored Bourbon monarch of France) fashioned the peace at the Congress of Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815. One of the main tasks of the four allies was to raise a number of formidable barriers against renewed French aggression. The Low Countries — Belgium and Holland — were united under an enlarged Dutch monarchy capable of opposing France more effectively. Prussia received considerably more territory on France’s eastern border to stand as the “sentinel on the Rhine” against France. In these ways, the Quadruple Alliance combined leniency toward France with strong defensive measures.

Self-interest and traditional ideas about the balance of power motivated allied moderation toward France. To Klemens von Metternich (MEH-tuhr-nihk) and Robert Castlereagh (KA-suhl-ray), the foreign ministers of Austria and Great Britain, respectively, as well as their French counterpart, Charles Talleyrand, the balance of power meant an international equilibrium of political and military forces that would discourage aggression by any combination of states or, worse, the domination of Europe by any single state.

The Great Powers — Austria, Britain, Prussia, Russia, and France — used the balance of power to settle their own dangerous disputes at the Congress of Vienna. The victors generally agreed that each of them should receive compensation in the form of territory for their successful struggle against the French. The compromises they reached in this context fell very much within the framework of balance-of-power ideology.

Unfortunately for France, Napoleon suddenly escaped from the island of Elba and reignited his wars of expansion for a brief time (see "The Grand Empire at Its End" in Chapter 19). Yet the second Treaty of Paris, concluded after Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, was still relatively moderate toward France. The members of the Quadruple Alliance did agree, however, to meet periodically to discuss their common interests and to consider appropriate measures for the maintenance of peace in Europe. This agreement marked the beginning of the European “Congress System,” which lasted long into the nineteenth century and settled many international crises peacefully, through international conferences or “congresses” and balance-of-power diplomacy.