The Holy Alliance (German: Heilige Allianz; Russian: Священный союз, Svyashchennyy soyuz; also called the Grand Alliance) was a coalition created by the monarchist great powers of Russia, Austria and Prussia. It was created after the ultimate defeat of Napoleon at the behest of Tsar Alexander I of Russia and signed in Paris on 26 September 1815. The intention of the alliance was to restrain republicanism and secularism in Europe in the wake of the devastating French Revolutionary Wars, and the alliance nominally succeeded in this until the Crimean War (1853–1856). Otto von Bismarck managed to reunite the Holy Alliance after the unification of Germany but the alliance again faltered by the 1880s over Austrian and Russian conflicts of interest with regard to the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.
Ostensibly, the alliance was formed to instill the divine right of kings and Christian values in European political life, as pursued by the tsar under the influence of his adviser Baroness Barbara von Krüdener. About three months after the Final Act of the Vienna Congress, the monarchs of Orthodox (Russia), Catholic (Austria) and Protestant (Prussia) confession promised to act on the basis of "justice, love and peace", both in internal and foreign affairs, for "consolidating human institutions and remedying their imperfections."