Britain, unlike most other nations in Europe, is a constitutional monarchy. That is to say, power rests not with the sovereign alone, but rather is shared by the sovereign and a representative body, in Britain�s case Parliament. In reality, Parliament wields most political power in Britain at this time. The monarch�s main power lies in his ability to muster public support, if he is popular; to appoint and dismiss ministers, although electoral results can affect his decisions in this regard; and to veto legislation passed by Parliament. The present king, George III, has exercised this last power several times during his reign, particularly regarding the ongoing British controversy over whether or not to give Catholics and Dissenters (evangelical Protestants who do not belong to the Church of England) equal legal rights. Parliamentary leaders, especially of the Tory party who currently control the government, have been in favor of the equal-rights legislation, but George III refused to approve it because he believed it would contradict the oath he took at his coronation as head of the Church of England. As a result of their system of government, Britain�s representatives at the Congress of Vienna have a slightly different outlook and orientation than the representatives of other nations: they are not the agents of an individual, a monarch, but rather they represent the nation, or at least the interests within the nation with whom they are aligned. They also need to worry to a certain extent about public opinion back home, which is something to which no other European government really has to pay attention.
The British monarch in 1814 is still George III, but since late 1810 he has been incapacitated by mental illness. An earlier lapse into incompetence, from which he recovered, is detailed in the play and film �The Madness of King George.� As the afterword to that film notes, King George suffered a relapse, in 1810, from which he never recovered. Following that relapse, Parliament in early 1811 passed the Regency Act, which empowered the king�s eldest son, also named George, to rule in his father�s stead as Prince Regent. To distinguish him from his father, Prince George was referred to as �the Prince Regent� (or more familiarly, or contemptuously, as �Prinny�).
There was a lot of contempt to go around. Prince George (age 42) is as unlike his father as a son could be. His father was a sober, hard-working monarch-if a bit literal-minded, stubborn, and dull-devoted to his wife and his kingdom. Before his illness, he used to enjoy the simple life of a gentleman farmer when affairs of state permitted it, rather than the sophisticated entertainments of London. In startling contrast, his son the Prince Regent is a profligate and extravagant debauchee, who managed to run up debts in excess of 60,000 pounds sterling before his 21st birthday. A lot of these were for food, drink, fashionable clothes, racehorses, and gambling; although some were for purchasing artworks and undertaking architectural projects. Whatever his moral failings, it must be admitted that Britain�s Prince Regent has a vast knowledge of art and exquisite (and expensive) taste.
The Prince Regent�s family life has not endeared him to the British public, either. It is not merely that he has had numerous mistresses, most of whom have adored helping him spend too much money. (His current mistress is the married Lady Hertford.) Worse yet, at age 23, he was rumored to have contracted a secret marriage to an English lady named Maria Fitzherbert, who was not only a widow slightly older than he, but also a Catholic. Under British law, not only may no member of the royal family marry before age 25 without the monarch�s permission, but anyone in direct line to the throne is expressly forbidden to marry a Catholic. If the rumors about his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert were true, Prince George was risking losing his claim to succeed his father on the throne. But the rumors were publicly denied in Parliament by the prince�s supporters, so he remained the heir. Moreover, at age 30, in large part in return for the payment of his enormous debts, Prince George agreed to marry a properly Protestant German princess, Caroline of Brunswick, who he almost immediately came to loathe. The couple have had one child-Princess Charlotte (age 19), second in line to the throne after her father-but they then separated, after only a few months of marriage, although they are not actually divorced. Princess Caroline is, if possible, even more unappealing than her husband: a loud, crude, vulgar woman with virtually no sense of tact and very poor impulse control. She has not lived in England for many years, but rather travels around the Continent, crashing upper-class social events, living off a pension paid her by her husband as part of their agreement that she will not come back to Britain. She is rumored to have carried on any number of sordid affairs with her male servants. Nearly everyone in Continental high society does their best to pretend she doesn�t exist, and prays she will never show up on their doorstep. To receive her socially would create a diplomatic incident with Great Britain. Both Prince George and Princess Caroline have run rather obviously to fat in their middle years, another source of embarrassment to their allies, and ammunition for their enemies. He, at least, dresses elegantly (if expensively); she, at age 47, dresses like a frilly teenaged girl and often neglects to bathe.
Having separated from his wife, Prince George has continued to engage in scandalously profligate behavior that not only horrified his father, but has alienated the nation as a whole. He has set up his own household at Carleton House, and before the Regency he asociated almost exclusively with opposition politicians (the Whigs). Nevertheless, he is next in line to the throne, so when his father became incapable of ruling, he was, at age 49, elevated to the Regency by act of Parliament. He thereupon promptly abandoned his Whig friends and now favors the Tories, as his father did before him.
The responsibilities of rulership have not made Prinny much more serious. Indeed, his continued extravagances in the face of the responsibilities of the Regency have served to make him even more unpopular at home. He rarely goes out in public anymore, as people actually have been known to throw rocks at his carriage. Fortunately for Britain, the incompetence or unpopularity of a ruler is far less of an impediment to good government than might be the case in other nations, where monarchs exercise more complete control. Britain�s ministers-including Lord Liverpool, the current Prime Minister; Lord Castlereagh, the current Foreign Minister and the leader of the Tory Party; and the Duke of Wellington, currently ambassador to France-serve the country ably.
Britain has the distinction of having been almost continually at war with Napoleon since he was a general for the Revolutionary government. With the exception of the year following the Peace of Amiens in 1802, when all of Europe was at peace, a state of war existed between Britain and France from 1793 until Napoleon�s final defeat and abdication in 1814. Napoleon�s strengths as a general in command of a huge and well-trained land army were largely negated by geographic and strategic considerations. After Britain�s Admiral Nelson destroyed the combined Franco-Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Napoleon could not threaten Britain directly with invasion. Instead-as described in the Overview of the Napoleonic Wars page of this website-he tried to starve Britain into submission with his Continental System, which was designed to choke off British trade with the Continent. Britain replied by fighting its war against Napoleon from its own strengths: commerce and sea power. In response to the Continental System (declared in 1806), the British blockaded the Continent, to the chagrin of Napoleon�s allies, especially Russia. Moreover, the British landed an expeditionary force in Portugal, from which base the Duke of Wellington (originally mere Sir Arthur Wellesley), working with Portuguese and Spanish guerrillas, eventually drove the French from the Iberian Peninsula and invaded France from the south. Perhaps most importantly, Britain served as the main diplomatic organizer of the various coalitions opposed to Napoleon throughout the two decades he ruled, frequently providing subsidies to its cash-strapped allies to help them keep armies in the field against France. For example, during the course of the Peninsular Campaign in Portugal and Spain, annual British subsidies to Portugal ranged from 1 to 2 million pounds sterling. In 1813, following Napoleon�s defeat in Russia, Britain paid Russia a million pounds, and Prussia and Austria 700,000 pounds each. In the case of Russia, these subsidies were sometimes tied to commitments to put a certain number of men in the field. Napoleon understood the power of British gold, which came from British commerce, but he did not know how effectively to stop it.
Britain has by far the largest navy in the world, with 146 ships of the line (of which up to 113 are battle-ready at any given time, as the others need repairs, etc.), and 176 frigates, served by 150,000 men. Contrast that with France, the next greatest naval power, which before the disastrous battle of Trafalgar could boast at most 80 ships of the line. The British army, however, has always been among the smallest of those in Europe, topping out at 260,000 men during 1813. About a third of the British army�s soldiers, interestingly, are from Ireland.
It also is, at present, divided. A few thousand troops are left in Europe (mostly new recruits), while the rest (mostly the experienced troops Wellington led in Spain)-following Napoleon�s abdication in the spring of 1814 and the end of war in Europe-have been shipped to North America to fight against Britain�s former colony, the United States, with whom Britain has been at war since 1812. A certain portion of Britain�s naval forces also have been diverted to that conflict. Therefore, Britain�s military forces in Europe are much less powerful than one might otherwise expect. Those that do remain are stationed at present either in the Low Countries or back in Britain (including Ireland, where their job is to suppress the local population).
The majority of the British public have little interest in what happens outside their own country, unless it directly affects them or their commerce. The main issues that currently interest the British public are improving their economy after the damage done it by two decades of war (although Britain�s economy, despite the war, is by far the strongest in the world), and moral issues, such as abolishing the slave trade and improving social conditions at home.
Those few British politicians who do take an interest in foreign affairs-most notably the Foreign Minister, Lord Castlereagh, and his political allies-try to follow a policy of supporting a balance of power on the Continent. If one power should grow too strong, it might threaten British interests and security. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic years, that power was France, and certainly the potential exists for France to rise again. Therefore, Britain advocates the formation of a ring of strong nations around France, both in the Low Countries and across the Rhine in Germany, to keep France in check.
While France may have been the former over-mighty power on the continent, Russia threatens to take over that role, following Napoleon�s defeat, by virtue of its huge army, vast population, and expansionistic tendencies. Russia wishes to gain control over Poland by making Tsar Alexander I king of Poland as well as Emperor of the Russians. Prussia supports this move, and in return Russia supports Prussian demands that it be allowed to annex the German kingdom of Saxony. These two moves would greatly strengthen both nations, and Russia in particular. Prussia�s king is a great admirer of the Tsar (some uncharitable souls might even say �virtual puppet� of the Russian Tsar), at the expense of Austria, which seriously opposes the moves to annexation of Poland and Saxony. Fearing too much Russian influence in Europe, and desiring balance, Britain supports Austria against Russian and Prussian expansion.
Finally, Britain looks with suspicion on nationalist movements that have arisen throughout Europe. While many nationalist leaders believe that Britain, with its elective system of government, should be a natural supporter of such movements, the British in fact are leery of such movements after their experiences with the excesses of French nationalism during long years of war. Moreover, Britain rules its own national minority, which continually agitates for independence: the Irish. Britain has no interest in supporting movements that might encourage further agitation in Ireland.
Napoleon encapsulated one common view of the British when he called them �a nation of shopkeepers.� The British are considered somewhat insular (ha ha!), not up on continental fashions, and poor speakers of the languages of other nations. But they are widely admired for their representative government and the notion of rights and liberties that apply to all their citizens. In many ways, the views of continental Europeans towards the British around 1814 mirror the views of contemporary Europeans towards Americans: they admire the country�s ideals and freedoms, but are jealous and resentful of its economic and military powers.