Achievements of the Congress Statesmen

The Congress statesmen desired, above all, a territorial settlement that would maintain  peace and stability. Since they saw the greatest threat to Europe as coming from France, they surrounded her with a series of buffer states: Belgium was united with the Netherlands to the northeast; the Italian state of Piedmont was given control of Genoa to the south; and Prussia was awarded the Rhineland to the west. All the states of Europe were further invited to sign the Vienna “Final Act,” making it the cornerstone of public law in Europe. No war between any of the great powers occurred for the next 40 years—until the outbreak of the Crimean War—and no major war on the scale of the Napoleonic Wars took place until the outbreak of World War I a century later.