Congress of Troppau

Congress of Troppau, (October–December 1820), meeting of the Holy Alliance powers, held at Troppau in Silesia (modern Opava, Czech Republic), at which the Troppau protocol, a declaration of intention to take collective action against revolution, was signed (Nov. 19, 1820). Attended by Francis I of Austria, Alexander I of Russia, and Frederick William III of Prussia, their foreign ministers, and observers from Britain and France, the congress decided to intervene in Naples against the democratic revolution there (July 1820). Having excluded France and Britain from its talks, it also adopted a protocol, generally asserting that states having undergone revolutions would be excluded from the European alliance, that the allied powers would not recognize illegal changes in such states, and that the powers would use force to restore them to the alliance. Austria, Russia, and Prussia then invited the king of the Two Sicilies to attend a congress at Laibach to determine the conditions of the intervention in Naples. Britain and France, however, refused to accept the protocol, demonstrating the division between the eastern and western members of the Quintuple Alliance and seriously weakening it.