What would you do if your power was threatened?

Throughout history when any one person had all the power, people were going to threaten it. People do not like when one person is making all the decisions for himself or herself. Napoleon was all powerful, but in 1814 he was dethroned. Europe needed a new leader, so the Congress of Vienna was formed. The congressmen were from over 200 states and they came together to solve the unresolved issues that Napoleon left behind.

In class we were put into groups and we were put in the shoes of Prince Metternich. Prince Metternich was an Austrian representative. He had to help decide where to redraw the borders, and pick governmental leaders, and had to help future revolutions. Once we guessed what happened, our teacher told us what really happened.

When trying to prevent future revolutions Prince Metternich and the Congress of Vienna put the Holy Alliance into place. The Holy Alliance made it so that monarchs had the divine right to rule. Also, it made it so any revolution was treason and against god. England did not take part in the Holy Alliance. Once that was put into place there were many less revolts. That was because if revolutions were treason people were afraid to revolt.

I think that the Congress of Vienna and Prince Metternich made some good decisions, and some bad. The good decisions they made were The Holy Alliance, and The Principle of Intervention. They were good because they were the most effective. They kept the revolutions from occurring. The Balance of Power was also good because it split up the power equally between the countries. That was bad for France because they lost a lot of their power, but in the long run it kept everyone else a lot happier than they were before. One bad decision they made was to keep the monarchy. That was bad because the same problem that they had with Napoleon could happen again. The monarchs could get greedy and keep all the power for themselves. The monarchs also could act like Napoleon and overstep their boundaries. This would start all the revolutions over again. In the long run I think they should have made a democracy because this keeps the equal representations from all ideologies, but eliminates the monarchy. That would have been the best of both worlds.