Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/58



III. AFTER THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA
THE convulsions of the French revolution and the Napoleonic conquests did not seem materially to affect the principles and practices of diplomacy. When the Congress of Vienna met to re-arrange the state of Europe, it was guided by men who still looked upon diplomacy entirely in the manner of the 18th century, when, in the words of Horace Walpole, "it was the mode of the times to pay by one favor for receiving another."The idea of restoring the balance of Europe or patching up the rents and cracks in the old system which had been so severely shaken was the purpose which animated these men. They viewed everything from the dynastic interests of their respective rulers and traded off lesser kingdoms and slices of territory with the same spirit of the gamester that has always characterized the absolutist diplomacy.

Of the three master minds of the Congress of Vienna, Talleyrand, Metternich and Pozzo di