The Congress was held in Laibach (modern day Ljubljana) in what is now Slovenia but was then part of the Austrian Duchy of Carniola, from January 26 until May 12, 1821. Before the breakup of the Congress of Troppau it had been decided to adjourn it until the following January, and to invite the king of Naples, Laibach being chosen as the place of meeting. Castlereagh, in the name of Great Britain, had cordially approved this invitation, as implying negotiation and therefore as a retreat from the position taken up in the Troppau Protocol. Before leaving Troppau however, the three autocratic powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia, had issued a circular letter on December 8, 1820, in which they reiterated the principles of the Protocol, i.e. the right and duty of the powers responsible for the peace of Europe to intervene to suppress any revolutionary movement by which they might conceive that peace to be endangered (Hertslet, No. 105). Against this view Castlereagh once more protested in a circular dispatch of January 19, 1821, in which he clearly differentiated between the objectionable general principles advanced by the three powers, and the particular case of the unrest in Italy, the immediate concern not of Europe at large, but of Austria and of any other Italian powers which might consider themselves endangered (Hertslet, No. 107).
