The Congress of Verona met at Verona on 20 October 1822 as part of the series of international conferences or congresses that opened with the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15, which had instituted the Concert of Europe at the close of the Napoleonic Wars.
Representation
The Quintuple Alliance was represented by the following persons: : Emperor Alexander I and Count Karl Robert Nesselrode (minister of foreign affairs). Count George Mocenigo (Ambassador of Russia in Turin) was also present; : Prince Metternich; : Prince Hardenberg and Count Christian Gunther von Bernstorff; : Anne-Adrien-Pierre de Montmorency-Laval (minister of Foreign Affairs) and François-René de Chateaubriand; : The Duke of Wellington, who was taking the place of Lord Londonderry after the latter's suicide on the eve of the congress.
Issues
While the representatives of Great Britain and the European powers had at first, during the Congress of Vienna, acted largely in concert, the extent to which the concord epitomized in the expression the "Concert of Europe" had unraveled in seven years became apparent in the way in which the three main questions before this Congress were handled.
The instructions drawn up by Londonderry, as he then was, for his own guidance, had been handed to Wellington by George Canning without alteration. They defined the British position towards the three questions which it was supposed would be discussed: the Eastern question (currently surfacing in the Greek insurrection), the question of intervention in favor of the Bourbon royal power in Spain and the revolted Spanish colonies in America, and the Italian Question.
Italian Question
The matter of the Italian Question dealt with the continued Austrian rule in Northern Italy. Since Britain could not undertake to support a system in which she had merely acquiesced, Wellington did not even formally present his credentials until the other Powers had disposed of the matter, a British minister Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (Castlereagh's half-brother and successor in the Londonderry title) attending merely to keep informed and to see that nothing was done inconsistent with the European system and the treaties.
Greek Question
In the Greek Question, the probable raising of which had alone induced the British government to send a minister plenipotentiary to the Congress, Wellington was instructed to suggest the eventual necessity for recognizing the belligerent rights of the Greeks, and, in the event of concerted intervention, to be careful not to commit Britain, beyond a supporting role. (See Greek War of Independence.)
As for Russia and Austria, the immediate problems arising out of the Greek Question had already been privately settled between the Emperor Alexander and Metternich, to their mutual satisfaction, at the preliminary conferences held at Vienna in September.
Spanish Question
When the plenipotentiaries met in Verona, the only question raised was the Spanish Question, of the proposed French intervention in Spain, in which Wellington's instructions were to express London's uncompromising opposition to the whole principle of intervention.
The discussion was opened by three questions formally propounded by Montmorency: Would the Allies withdraw their ministers from Madrid in the event of France being compelled to do so? In case of war, under what form and by what acts would the powers give France their moral support, so as to give to her action the force of the Quintuple Alliance, and inspire a salutary fear in the revolutionaries of all countries? What material aid would the powers give if asked by France to intervene, under restrictions which France would declare and they would recognize?
A series of gilt-copper medals apparently struck in England represent participants of the Congress in less than flattering lights: the "Count de Chateaubriand" (Ludwig Ernst Bramsen, Médallier) bears an inscription that offers the British view of the French position in a nutshell: "The King of France, my master, demands the freedom of Ferdinand VII to give his people institutions which they cannot hold but from him", while the Emperor Francis I of Austria asserts "My troops occupy Naples to chastise the Neapolitans for daring to change their constitution."