Page:The League of Nations in history.djvu/10

 their recent experience, that war was the outcome of revolution, and that peace could be best preserved by providing against insurrection. This line of thought led to the Holy Alliance, which has almost by common consent been confused with the Quadruple Alliance of the four great Powers, Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, which overthrew Napoleon and actually kept the peace for some years after his fall.

The Holy Alliance was inspired by the Tsar Alexander, a monarch with a mind almost as nebulous as that of his latest successor. He was not without liberal leanings, he was devoted to mystical piety, and even talked of the sacred rights of humanity. But he could not help being an autocrat even though, he regarded himself as merely a vicar of God, the only Sovereign of the world. On 26th September, 1815, he persuaded his Prussian and Austrian colleagues to sign with him the Act of the Holy Alliance, in which they spoke of their peoples as being branches of one Christian nation, announced their conviction that States no less than individuals were bound by the precepts of Christianity, promised to regulate thereby their domestic and foreign policy, and undertook to render each other assistance in every case and in every place. It was to be a universal union of Christian fathers of national families, and George IV and the Pope" were the only Christian princes who did not subscribe. But the Holy Alliance effected nothing. It held no Congresses, passed no executive