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not one of the powers. The downfall of Napoleon, thedouble restoration of the Bourbons in France, and thereconstruction of Europe were the work of the GrandAlliance headed by the four powers, Russia, Austria,Great Britain, and Prussia. Never has the influence ofRussia throughout Europe been greater than during theyears 1813-15. The might of Russia weighed heavilyon Metternich and Castlereagh, and at the Congress ofVienna the Polish-Saxon struggle almost brought themto blows with Alexander and Frederick William.Napoleon's escape from Elba renewed the combinedaction of the four powers. Waterloo decided the fate ofNapoleon for ever, that of France for fifteen years. Toguard against any recrudescence of revolutionary orNapoleonic France the Quadruple Alliance (November1815) was renewed for twenty years, and in it the fourpowers also agreed to continue their periodical meetingsin order to maintain "the repose . . . and peace ofEurope." This, together with the comprehensive natureof the final act of Vienna, was the original, diplomaticbasis of the Concert of Europe, into which France wasadmitted in 1818, and of the conferences which metbetween 1818 and 1822 at Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau,Laibach, and Verona.Alexander from the first viewed the Concert of Europein a special light. For him it meant his own child,the Holy Alliance (September 1815). This is usuallyregarded as an unholy alliance of reaction againstliberalism, constitutionalism, and nationality. But inorigin it was not intended to be an instrument ofobscurantism or the ancien regime. Nor was it a suddenidea first embraced by Alexander in Paris in 1815.Many years earlier, when negotiating the third coalition,he had suggested to Pitt (1804) as a principal war aimthe constitution of a new international order in Europe;the countries emancipated from the "tyrannical"Napoleon "should ... be assured of liberties on a solidbasis"; "a sort of new code of international law" mightbe laid down, to include a provision that no state should"begin a war without exhausting every means of mediationby a third power"; a league for the preservation405