The Quintuple Alliance comes into being at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, when France joins the Quadruple Alliance created by Russia, Austria, Prussia and the United Kingdom.

The European peace settlement had concluded at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.After Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen), the Alliance powers meet three more times: in 1820 at the Congress of Troppau (Opava), in 1821 at the Congress of Laibach (Ljubljana); and in 1822 at the Congress of Verona.The four Continental monarchies are successful in authorizing Austrian military action in Italy in 1821 and French intervention in Spain in 1823, though British government distaste for the other allies' reactionary policies mean that it lapses into ineffectiveness after the mid-1820s.The Alliance is conventionally taken to have become defunct along with the Holy Alliance of the three original Continental members with the death of Tsar Alexander I of Russia in 1825.