Castlereagh, Lord
the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and the abolition
(1769–1822)
OWAIN WRIGHT
Leeds Beckett University, UK
Although Robert Stewart, Viscount Cast-
lereagh, never attained the office of prime
minister, he might be said to have exercised
all of its influence; “he was one of the most
influential and successful politicians of the
age and played a central role in the greatest
struggle that Britain had ever faced” (Bew
2014: 558–59). He rose to a level of interna-
tional renown that probably exceeded that of
any other British statesman during the nine-
teenth century. The principles and style of his
policy as foreign secretary surely influenced
his successors in that office, not least George
Canning and Viscount Palmerston. However,
while he earned immense respect in Europe
and North America, Castlereagh was never
popular at home.
Born in Dublin in 1769, the son of a promi-
nent Ulster landowner and Whig politician,
Stewart’s mother died when he was just one
year old. In his youth he made several trips to
continental Europe, before marrying Amelia
Hobart; his wife went on to play a conspic-
uous role on his many diplomatic missions.
Stewart was elected the member of the Irish
Parliament for Down as an Independent,
and the British Parliament as the member
for the government-controlled seat of Tre-
gony, before being transferred to Orford. He
tended to oppose the British government’s
Irish policies, while broadly supporting the
government of William Pitt in British and
international affairs. During the 1790s he
served as an officer in the Irish militia and
held several important Irish offices, through
The Encyclopedia of Diplomacy. Edited by Gordon Martel.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118885154.dipl0347
which he played a significant role in defeating
of the Irish Parliament that followed. Stewart
assumed the title Viscount Castlereagh in
1796. Although a Protestant, Castlereagh
was a lifelong supporter of Catholic eman-
cipation. During the Napoleonic Wars, he
served twice as the secretary for war and
the colonies, in which capacity he presided
over the creation of the largest British army
ever assembled. This responsibility brought
him into frequent conflict with the foreign
secretary, George Canning. In particular,
the two men disagreed over the ill-fated
Walcheren Expedition, which Castlereagh
advocated, but which was considered by
Canning to be a risky diversion of resources
from the strategically important Peninsular
War. They also disagreed over who should be
appointed to lead the venture, Castlereagh
favoring Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of
Wellington, while Canning preferred the Earl
of Chatham. In 1809 Canning threatened
to resign unless Castlereagh were removed
from office, leading the latter to challenge
the former to a duel; in the event, Canning
missed his target, and Castlereagh injured
him in the leg. The duel caused a scandal, and
both men resigned from government.
Castlereagh became foreign secretary in
the administration of Spencer Perceval in
1812, a position he retained under Lord
Liverpool, and it is for his foreign policy
that he is best remembered. He played a
leading role in the formation of the Quadru-
ple Alliance between the most formidable
opponents of Napoleon – Britain, Austria,
Prussia, and Russia – and he ensured that
Britain’s wealth was used to subsidize the
conscription of the powerful international
force that ultimately defeated France in
1815. The Treaty of Chaumont, a series of
2 CASTLEREAG H, LORD (1769–1822)
identical but discrete agreements between
Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia,
formed the basis for the close cooperation of
those powers in bringing about the defeat of
Napoleon, and establishing a mechanism to
guarantee the subsequent peace. Castlereagh
referred to Chaumont as “my treaty” (Bew
2014: 370), and it was important because
it laid the basis by which the international
relations of Europe would be governed once
peace was restored. The terms were written
largely by Castlereagh himself, and were
adopted by the Congress of Vienna. They
advocated the formation of a confederation
in Germany, affirmed the restoration of the
Bourbon monarchy to Spain, and approved
the aggrandizement of Holland into the
kingdom of the Netherlands. The signatories
called upon Napoleon to surrender all French
conquests, and required France to revert to its
pre-revolutionary borders, a demand rejected
by the French emperor (Schroeder 1994:
501–4). The treaty also laid the foundation
for the Concert of Europe, a broad system
that aimed to resolve international disputes
through the preservation of a balance of
power, and the establishment of a general
spirit of cooperation whereby efforts would
be made to resolve international disputes
through dialog rather than through conflict.
Castlereagh stood out among his contempo-
raries for his “uncommon fund of good sense,
his ability to see other points of view, and his
willingness to adapt British policy to the facts
and needs of Europe” (Schroeder 1994: 458).
He possessed a genuine interest in Europe,
and expended a great deal of effort in keeping
a coalition of very different governments
together. The general principle established
through the Concert of Europe remained
firmly intact for the rest of Castlereagh’s
life, and despite various challenges it can
be considered to have survived for much
of the nineteenth century; indeed, it can be
viewed as a precursor to the modern concept
of collective security, and the more formal
international organizations formed during
the twentieth century.
From the establishment of this system in
1815, Britain controlled most of Europe’s
overseas colonies, dominated maritime
trade, and led the way in industrialization.
In this context, the general principles of
Castlereagh’s foreign policy were to exert
Britain’s influence, in combination with the
cooperation of the other Great Powers, so
that a balance of power could be maintained
in European affairs (Kennedy 1988: 139).
This policy would subsequently be followed
by Castlereagh’s successors, Canning and
Palmerston. However, during his lifetime
Castlereagh was widely criticized for a settle-
ment that gave substantial power to author-
itarian regimes, as well as his parliamentary
support for the repressive measures of the
Liverpool government on the domestic scene.
He has been described as an arch-realist, and
a loathed reactionary. Through his collabora-
tion at the Congress of Vienna with the Aus-
trian chancellor Clemens von Metternich, he
has been dismissed as someone who bolstered
imperial regimes by putting the freedoms won
by the American and French Revolutions “on
hold for a century” (Bew 2014: xii). Nonethe-
less, Castlereagh was foremost in laying “the
foundation for a next experiment” in interna-
tional government. Both Lord Salisbury and
Henry Kissinger ([1957] 2013) celebrated
Castlereagh’s “principle of non-intervention”
(Bew 2014: 583). Paul Schroeder (1994) has
observed that the Congress of Vienna created
a far more stable international system than
had existed in the eighteenth century, and
that fewer people died in the power struggles
of the nineteenth century than those of the
eighteenth (Bew 2014: 584). Adam Zamoyski
(2007) maintains that the Vienna settlement
was short-sighted and flawed, in that it failed
to take into account the growth of nationalist
and liberal sentiments across Europe, and

ignored them in favor of the restoration
of more traditional and authoritarian gov-
ernment, thereby storing trouble for future
generations. Yet Castlereagh was described
by a Russian contemporary as being perhaps
“the only man in England who understood
European politics”; John Bew suggests that
without his perseverance, Wellington would
never have made it to Waterloo (Bew 2014:
xxviii). Castlereagh’s career ended in tragic
circumstances with his suicide in 1822, but
without him the remarkably tranquil inter-
national relations of the nineteenth century
might have been very different.
SEE ALSO: Balance of Power; Canning,
George (1770–1827); Concert of Europe;
Congress of Vienna (1815); Metternich,
Clemens von (1773–1859); Napoleon I
(1769–1821); Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815);
Palmerston, Lord (1784–1865)
REFERENCES
Bew, J. (2014) Castlereagh: The Biography of a
Statesman. London: Quercus.
Kennedy, P. (1988) The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict
from 1500 to 2000. London: Unwin Hyman.
Kissinger, H. ([1957] 2013) A World Restored: Met-
ternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace,
1812–22. London and Brattleboro, VT: Echo
Point Books.
CASTLEREAG H, LORD (1769–1822) 3
Schroeder, P. W. (1994) The Transformation of
European Politics, 1763–1848. Oxford: Claren-
don Press.
Zamoyski, A. (2007) Rites of Peace: The Fall of
Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. New York:
HarperCollins.
SUGGESTED READINGS
Bartlett, C. J. (1966) Castlereagh. Basingstoke:
Macmillan.
Derry, J. W. (1976) Castlereagh. London: Allen
Lane.
Hinde, W. (1981) Castlereagh. London: Collins.
Hunt, G. (2008) The Duel: Castlereagh, Canning
and Deadly Cabinet Rivalry. London: I. B. Tauris.
Jarrett, M. (2013) The Congress of Vienna and Its
Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy After
Napoleon. London: I. B. Tauris.
Malchow, H. L. (2016) History and Interna-
tional Relations: From the Ancient World to the
Twenty-First Century. London: Bloomsbury.
Muir, R. (1996) Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon.
London: Yale University Press.
Webster, C. (1912) “Aspects of Castlereagh’s For-
eign Policy.” Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, 3rd series 6: 65–88.
Webster, C. (1931) The Foreign Policy of Lord
Castlereagh, 1812–1815: Britain and the Recon-
struction of Europe. London: Bell and Sons.