Holy Alliance

Holy Alliance, a league formed (1816) after the fall of Napoleon by the sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, whereby they pledged themselves to rule their peoples like fathers of families, and to regulate all national and international relations in accordance with the principles of Christian charity. But the alliance was made in actual fact a means of mutual encouragement in the maintenance of royal and imperial absolutism, and an instrument for suppressing free institutions and checking the aspirations for political liberty struggling into realisation amongst the nations of the Continent. The league died a natural death after the lapse of a few years.