The international order created in 1814–15 was from the beginning controversial. The main participants did not agree on all of its fundamental contours and on the tasks they were to fulfill to maintain it. Detractors had many targets for criticism. They challenged the elitist structure of the system, the presumption of the policeman roles by the great powers. The statements of dynastic solidarity appeared to liberals as little more than commitments to reaction. Whatever the line of criticism, there was an underlying consensus that the peace had firmly joined domestic and international issues. The two were inextricably combined: royal legitimacy and international peace (cf. Holbraad, 1970:15).

Whether the condominium of the great powers was essentially an instrument to crush challenges to the principle of legitimacy (as Prussia and Austria were to interpret it), or an organization to guarantee the territorial settlements, that is, the balance of power (as the British generally interpreted it), the diplomats of the period commonly regarded the outcomes of the Paris and Vienna negotiations as watershed events. Like the Treaties of Westphalia, they were the yardsticks against which all change in individual countries' domestic and foreign policies were to be measured.