LAIR: Congress of Vienna, Setting (September 14)

1. "Congress of Vienna" Britannica entry

2. "The Congress of Vienna: Metternich's Conservative Order" by Tom Richey

3. "The Role of Talleyrand in the Congress of Vienna" by Dorothy Jane Colburn 

4. "The Congress of Vienna: 1814-1815, Origins, Processes, and Results" by Tim Chapman

3. Letter from Lord Castlereagh to the Duke of Wellington, August 7, 1815:

"I have to request that you will, as early as possible after your arrival at Paris, endeavour to learn his Highness's views upon the subjects that are likely to occupy the attention of the Congress, and especially upon the points of Poland and Naples. It is desirable that I should be as fully informed of the sentiments of the French government as possible, before I meet the Allied Ministers at Vienna. Your Grace will observe that I have explained to the Prince of Benevent the object of these preliminary conferences. So far as you can regulate the Prince's arrival, I should wish him to be there about the 25th. The Emperor comes on the 27th, and we should then have time to discuss the more difficult matters previous to the assembly of the Congress, having previously methodized the less complicated parts of the arrangement. You will, I hope, be able to obviate any jealousy of these previous deliberations: they are the necessary result of our former relations, which must throw upon the four principal Allied Powers the initiative in most of the arrangements."

4. Excerpt from the Protocol of the Congress of Vienna, 1815:

"The objects to be treated in the Congress will be classed in two series:
1. The first will include the general arrangement of the affairs of Europe, territorial divisions, fixation of boundaries, the definite fate of the countries provisionally occupied and administered by the Allied Powers, and other questions of a general interest, such as that of the slave trade.
2. The second will be consecrated to the establishment of the political bases of the federative pact of Germany.
The preparatory work of the two classes will be confided to two committees, of which one,- composed of the plenipotentiaries of will be charged with the part relative to general questions, and the other, composed of the plenipotentiaries of with that relative to the organization of Germany.
The six cabinets desire that the plenipotentiaries of the other powers make known to the first committee and those of the states of Germany to the second, the propositions and the views of their governments, and when as a consequence of these communications the committee charged with the general affairs will have drawn up its plan and taken cognizance of that which the other committee will have formed for the establishment of the political bases of the federative system of Germany, the six cabinets will hasten to carry to the sanction of the Congress the result of their deliberations."

5. Letter from Charles de Talleyrand, Prince of Bénévent, to King Louis XVIII, 1815:

"This project was clearly intended to render the four powers who call themselves allied, absolute masters of all the operations of the Congress, since, supposing the six principal powers were to constitute themselves judges of the questions relative to the composition of the congress, to the questions which it -as to regulate, to the procedure to be followed in order to regulate them, to the order in which they will be regulated, and were to name alone and without control the committees which were to prepare everything. France and Spain, even supposing they agreed on all questions, would be always only two against four."