The revolutions of 1830 broke the Vienna settlement's Low Countries arrangement after only fifteen years. Clausewitz feared that territorial rewards for France would revive a drive toward the Rhine and other so-called natural frontiers. He treated Belgium as an outwork of fortified Germany because French armies had repeatedly crossed the region to attack German states. The simultaneous Polish revolt and Italian nationalism deepened fears that the eastern powers would be weakened and revolutionary conflict would escape cabinet control. Rivers, mountains, and seas appeal to strategists as defensible boundaries, but claims to natural frontiers threaten states on the other side. Contemporary observers also misread France's July Revolution chiefly as a bid for European dominance rather than domestic unrest.
Notable Point · 7:15-10:57
Clausewitz, Belgium, and the danger of natural frontiers
Clausewitz treated an independent Belgium as a fortified barrier against renewed French expansion and warned that changing the Vienna settlement could restart revolutionary war.