Puzzle No. 80: When?

From late 1814 the great powers convened at Vienna under the guiding hand of the Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich to reconstruct Europe after more than two decades of revolutionary and Napoleonic upheaval. Joined by Britain's Castlereagh, Russia's Tsar Alexander I, Prussia and a rehabilitated France represented by Talleyrand, the assembled diplomats negotiated a comprehensive territorial and political settlement. Its Final Act, signed on 9 June 1815, redrew the map of Europe to restore a balance of power: France was returned to roughly its pre-war borders, Russia gained much of Poland, Prussia expanded in the west and into Saxony, and a German Confederation replaced the defunct Holy Roman Empire. Guided by principles of legitimacy and equilibrium, the settlement and the cooperative diplomacy it inaugurated, known as the Concert of Europe, helped preserve general peace among the major powers for much of the nineteenth century, even as it sought to contain the liberal and nationalist forces unleashed by the Revolution.

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