This paper is concerned with two different sorts of problems. It is an attempt to explain and interpret the diplomatic and political concepts which guided Castlereagh and his fellow-negotiators at Vienna; it also raises questions about certain conventional interpretations of the nature of Castlereagh's own accomplishment. The credit generally accorded Castlereagh for his work at Vienna derives largely from the acceptance of conclusions reached by the late Sir Charles Webster. Since Webster's analysis reversed an earlier adverse judgment on Castlereagh, it must not be thought that the purpose of this study is to reassert the old view. Quite the contrary; the intention, very simply, is to ask whether Webster and those who have followed him have not neglected to ask certain sorts of questions about the Napoleonic era, most particularly about the climate of opinion which prevailed at that time. While twentieth-century historians have succeeded in rescuing Castlereagh from his critics, it is just possible that they have tended to think of his accomplishment in terms more appropriate to this century than to the early nineteenth. As a result, they may praise him for qualities which are less remarkable than they imagine, while failing to appreciate his unique capacities, which were not so much intellectual as diplomatic.

This should not be taken to imply that a fundamental revision of the main outlines of this period is in prospect. The debt owed Sir Charles Webster by those who have followed him in the study of early nineteenth-century European diplomacy is not likely soon to be redeemed. Had Webster's sole accomplishment been to create order in an area where something like chaos had previously existed, this would have been reason enough to perpetuate his memory. By his imaginative and meticulous methods, however, he achieved considerably more than this; he restored a reputation which had too long remained in question and showed conclusively that certain traditional judgments about the Vienna accords reflected a thinly veiled political bias. Webster succeeded in doing what Lord Robert Cecil, the later Lord Salisbury, attempted in 1862 in the Quarterly Review, where he expatiated on the unusual qualities of the man who served as British Foreign Secretary in the tumultuous decade 1812 to 1822.