There has not been a general war in Europe since the downfall of Napoleon, 85 years ago.

Considering Europe's bloody history, that's a remarkable accomplishment.

How was it done? Through an informal arrangement of great powers, it did not have an official name or a charter or a set of rules.

It was no League of Nations, so to speak.

It was just a group of powerful countries who, when trouble broke out in Europe, would call a meeting and hash out a mutually acceptable diplomatic solution.

But it managed to keep the peace, more or less, for just shy of 100 years.

It has come to be called the Concert of Europe.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music Welcome to the history of the 20th century. Episode 30, The Concert of Europe.

Back in the late 18th century, the French Revolution had sparked a series of wars that had racked the continent of Europe

for a generation. That's a literal generation, as in many of the soldiers fighting at the Battle of

Waterloo had not yet been born when the wars against revolutionary France had started back in

1792.

This was not the first time that Europe had been racked by a series of bloody wars, and Lord knows it will not be the last time.

But in 1815, the Congress of Vienna was convened by the four major powers

that had at last overcome Napoleon, Britain, Austria,

Russia, and Prussia. These four powers were determined to prevent anything like what had

just ended from happening all over again. And what came out of this conference was unprecedented. For the first time in history, the major powers of Europe had come to an agreement on a system designed to keep peace and prosperity over the entire continent.

It was a plan for nothing short of eliminating war in Europe.

It seems very idealistic and forward-looking, and it was, but it was also deeply conservative.

As far as these four powers, all monarchies, although they represent a wide range of ideas about what a monarchy could or should be,

from Britain's relatively liberal and constitutional monarchy through to Imperial Russia,

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