British Diplomacy in war and peace

Eighteenth-century Europe was ravaged by violence. Predatory power-politics, culminating in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1792–1815), killed millions. No alliance could contain Napoleon’s dangerous genius. A new system was desperately needed to bring peace and confidence.

Britain, Napoleon’s irreconcilable enemy, took the lead. William Pitt planned ‘a General System of Public Law in Europe’, but Napoleon’s conquests forced him to ‘roll up his map’ in 1805.

In 1813 the Foreign Secretary, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822), revived the plan and took it to the Allies. They invaded north-eastern France in 1813.

Crowned heads and diplomats, including Castlereagh, were mixed up with the fighting as they held the Alliance together in an itinerant summit conference. British money – keeping the Alliance afloat – strengthened Castlereagh’s bargaining power.

The Duke of Wellington marched from Spain and captured Toulouse in April 1814. In June 1815 he gave Napoleon the coup de grace at Waterloo.