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Il n’existe toutefois pas de consensus quant à un plan détaillé de réorganisation des relations internationales, mais un air du temps favorable à la conciliation et surtout viscéralement hostile à la Révolution, en tant que projet de renversement complet des hiérarchies entre États, mais aussi entre gouvernants et gouvernés. Parmi les différents projets de refondation de l’équilibre européen, celui du tsar Alexandre Ier, en particulier, entend constituer l’Europe en une « nation chrétienne ».
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It was in late 15th century Italy, divided between several rival states, that the notion of a balance of power was first truly put into effect. The following century, it could be seen on a larger scale in the struggle between the Valois and Habsburg dynasties. Henry VIII of England chose to alternate his continental alliances, and his goodwill, between François I and Charles V, depending on how the power relationship between the two most powerful princes of the age evolved. He thereby adopted the principle of a balance of power, which remained the cornerstone of English and, later, British policy towards continental Europe for centuries to come. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the European balance of power was taken to mean one weight and one counter-weight which should cancel each other out. The establishment of an equilibrium between powers was considered a factor in maintaining peace on the continent. Article 2 of the Anglo-Spanish peace treaty signed at Utrecht in July 1713 specified that its aim was “to settle and establish the peace and tranquillity of Christendom by an equal balance of power.” In the 18th century, however, geopolitical shifts and changes in the hierarchy of powers did not allow balance to be understood in the same terms, even if the principle itself remained. Firstly, the concert of five great powers (Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia) made it necessary to think of the European balance as the product of a combination of alliances and no longer as one-on-one rivalries. Also, the inclusion of economic and commercial factors in the estimation of power, coupled with the globalisation of international issues, meant that overseas territories were drawn into calculations of the European balance. Finally, with the French Revolution, ideological models also entered into the complex equation of the European equilibrium.
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