Great Negotiations

by Fredrik Stanton

  To Talleyrand’s dismay, France was still left in the cold. “The role of France,” Talleyrand observed, “was singularly difficult. It was very tempting and very easy for the Governments which had so long been hostile to keep her excluded from the major questions affecting Europe.”19 The French foreign minister watched for any opening to join the decision-making inner circle, and waited patiently on the sidelines.

  Knowing that without Prussia behind them there was little the British could do, the tsar brushed off Castlereagh’s ultimatum, and on November 10, in a coordinated move, Russian forces in Saxony pulled out and Prussian troops marched in. “Things in general,” Austrian chief of staff Field Marshal Karl Schwarzenberg told Alexander, were “in a position which would render war inevitable.”20 Most of the statesmen and spectators at Vienna considered the diplomacy at Vienna to have failed and the negotiations to have broken down. Gentz wrote: “magniloquent phrases about ‘restitution of the social order,’ ‘the recovery of European politics,’ ‘enduring peace based on a just apportionment of power,’ and so on were trumped up only to some semblance of import and dignity. But the real sense of the gathering was that the victors should share with one another the booty snatched from the vanquished.”21 Wrote a Russian delegate, “They’ve wandered into a bog, and they have no idea how to get out of it.”22

  Searching for a compromise, Hardenberg and Metternich presented the tsar with a proposal to establish a smaller Kingdom of Poland that left Austria a secure border defended by the strategic strong points of Krakow and Zamosc, and allowed Prussia to keep a substantial portion of its Polish territory. Alexander refused to moderate his demands and replied that he intended to hold on to the entire Duchy of Warsaw. However, he offered the token concession of making Krakow and Thorn free cities. Since Prussia would not be able to recover its former Polish territories, when Hardenberg showed the tsar’s reply to Metternich on December 3, the Prussian chancellor asked that Prussia be allowed to absorb all of Saxony. The king of Saxony would be given a rump state made from other parts of Prussia. Metternich rejected the proposal. But since Prussia had acquiesced to Russia’s designs on Poland, Metternich was no longer bound by his obligation to Hardenberg to help Prussia acquire Saxony.

  The negotiators had reached a deadlock. Castlereagh wrote British Prime Minster Lord Liverpool that Russian, Prussian, Austrian, and French armies had been mobilized, and that the cost of keeping them fielded made their governments more inclined to use them sooner rather than later. Hardenberg reflected the Prussian preference for war if its demands were not met when he wrote, “It were better to have a new war than that Prussia, after such glorious deeds and so many sacrifices, should come out of the affair badly.”23 Castlereagh informed Liverpool on December 5 that “in the present extremely tangled state of affairs”24 war could erupt at any moment, and he expected Britain to be drawn in.

  In a turning point, in response to opposition attacks in Parliament and growing public outrage over Prussia’s move to swallow Saxony, the British cabinet ordered Castlereagh to reverse himself and work to keep Saxony intact. This reversal raised Saxony to the forefront and laid the groundwork for a realignment of the forces at the table.

  On December 10, Metternich made a new offer in response to Hardenberg and Alexander’s proposition. Austria would go along with Russia on Poland with minor adjustments, although it drew the line at the annexation of Saxony by Prussia. Instead Metternich proposed that Prussia take only a part of Saxony, with 432,000 residents. Along with other territories, Prussia was also gaining Westphalia, land along the Rhine, and what it would receive from Russia in Poland. That would be sufficient to restore Prussia to its size before the Napoleonic wars. Metternich insisted that Krakow be given to Prussia and Thorn to Austria. He argued that a Prussian annexation of Saxony would throw the balance of power in Europe out of sustainable proportion and create a perpetual threat to peace. “The Congress,” he argued, “must not degenerate into the sad spectacle of a fight between the two powers which are the most concerned with establishing peace in Europe. Germany must become a political entity; the boundaries between the great intermediate powers must not remain uncertain. The harmony between Austria and Prussia must, in short, be perfect, in order that the great task may be completed. It is as a hindrance to that harmony, an insurmountable obstacle to the pact of federation, that we object to the total incorporation of Saxony in Prussia.”25 The two great powers of Central Europe, which anchored the constellation of German-speaking states that had once composed the Holy Roman Empire, would be forced into open rivalry with each other. This would destroy the project of German federation that relied on stable relations between them, and it would place a hostile divide between the two states needed to hold the center of Europe together to form a secure buffer against an engorged Russia. “All the Prussians and their supporters screamed murder,”26 Metternich recorded.

  Three days later, Alexander’s dispute with Metternich turned personal, and Alexander, accusing Metternich of insulting him, threatened to challenge him to a duel. A shaken Metternich offered his resignation to Emperor Francis, which he wisely rejected. News of the event caused quite a stir with the delegates and statesmen at Vienna, but the outburst appeared to have had a cathartic effect. “The whole, as you may imagine, made for two days a great sensation,” Castlereagh wrote on December 17, “but the result perhaps may serve to prove what I have ventured before to allege, that the climate of Russia is often more serene after a good squall.”27 The next day Alexander went to Francis in a much more conciliatory mood, and Russia made its first real concession. Although unwilling to surrender his claim to Krakow, he offered to return the Polish region of Tarnopol with a population of four hundred thousand, which Austria had lost in 1809. That allowed Austria to back off of its demand over Poland. “Austria, having reached the conclusion that she could not save both Saxony and Poland,” Metternich wrote, “decided to drop the latter.”28 This allowed a shift in focus from the Polish question, which now appeared solved, to the Saxony problem.

  Talleyrand met with Metternich on December 14. With the great powers divided, France’s position as an outsider allowed it to throw its weight behind either camp and suddenly made it a surprisingly powerful player. Talleyrand maneuvered to place France closer to the center of the deliberations by cracking what remained of the unity of the former allies against France. He did this by asking Metternich, who had told Talleyrand of the new Austrian position on Poland, to make an official transmission to him in writing of the note stating Austria’s new position, the diplomatic equivalent of including France in his confidence. “My particular motive for insisting on a formal disclosure lay in the fact that this would mark the real date of the rupture of the coalition,”29 wrote. Recognizing France’s value as a potential future ally, after hesitating briefly, Metternich handed Talleyrand the note along with a personal message, which ended: “I am happy to find myself in agreement with your Cabinet on a point which is so nobly defensible.”30 “Such men as M. de Talleyrand,” Metternich observed, “are like sharp-edged instruments with which it is dangerous to play. But for great evils drastic remedies are necessary and whoever has to treat them should not be afraid to use the instrument which cuts the best.”31

  Talleyrand rushed to exploit the rupture of the coalition. On December 19, he wrote an open response to Metternich’s note outlining his philosophical views on the situation, which reframed the question as one over the nature of the future course of Europe. To recognize the Prussian seizure of Saxony as legitimate, he argued, would require conceding “that the practice of confiscation, which enlightened nations have banished from their code, is in the nineteenth century to be sanctioned by the public law of Europe . . . ; that peoples have no rights, and can be treated like a dairy herd; that sovereignty can be lost and gained by a single fact of conquest; that the nations of Europe are bound . . . only by the law of nature, and that what is called the public law of Europe does not exist; . . . in a word, that a
ll is legitimate for him who is the strongest.” Talleyrand insisted that not only would giving Saxony to Prussia upset the balance between Prussia and Austria and the general stability in Europe, but the structure underpinning the new European order also had to rest on the bedrock of moral legitimacy, which was impossible if small, vulnerable Saxony were allowed to be swallowed by Prussia. “In no other question today,” Talleyrand wrote, “are the two principles of legitimacy and balance so involved at one and the same time and to such a great extent.”32

  On December 20, Talleyrand reported to King Louis XVIII, “The equilibrium of Germany would be destroyed if Saxony were sacrificed, and it is evident that she could not then contribute to the general balance of power. . . . Lord Castlereagh is like a traveler who has lost his way, and does not know how to find it. He is ashamed of having narrowed the Polish question, and, after having expended all his efforts on that question in vain, being duped by Prussia, in spite of our warnings, into giving up Saxony to her. He knows not what to do.”33 Hardenberg’s deputy, Wilhelm von Humboldt, confided to his wife on December 20, “A second war is necessary, and it must take place sooner or later.”34

  As the alliance of the big four disintegrated, the French became the only ones the British felt they could trust. Liverpool described the situation by December 23 in a letter to Wellington. “The more I hear and see of the different Courts of Europe, the more convinced I am that the King of France is (amongst the great powers) the only sovereign in whom we can have any real confidence,” he wrote. “The Emperor of Russia is profligate from vanity and self-sufficiency, if not from principle. The King of Prussia may be a well-meaning man, but he is the dupe of the Emperor of Russia. The Emperor of Austria I believe to be an honest man, but he has a minister in whom no one can trust; who considers all policy as consisting in finesse and trick; and who has got his government and himself into more difficulties by his devices than could have occurred from a plain course of dealing.”35 Castlereagh reported to Liverpool on Christmas Day, “France is now a principal in the question.”36

  On December 23, Castlereagh and Talleyrand struck a bargain. When Hardenberg reiterated, with the tsar’s support, the Prussian demand for all of Saxony, Talleyrand suggested to Castlereagh that together with Metternich they join in publicly announcing their defense of the rights of the king of Saxony and their commitment to defending them. Castlereagh asked whether Talleyrand proposed an alliance. “I think as you do,” Talleyrand replied. “We must do everything [to maintain peace] except sacrifice honor, justice and the future of Europe.” Talleyrand reported to his king: “I told him that I had no objections against that; but that, if we handled it in the same way that we have handled so many other matters up till now, by trusting to luck and following neither principles or rules, we should come to no decision; that we should therefore begin by laying down principles.”37 They agreed to support Saxony’s sovereignty, and to form a statistical commission to calculate and adjust borders in the territories previously conquered by Napoleon according to their populations.

  The statistical commission was given authority to settle disputes. After the introduction of mass conscription and national mobilization during the Napoleonic wars, national strength was measured in population, rather than geographical size or wealth. Talleyrand took Prussian consent to the formation of the statistical committee as a promising sign. “The Prussians,” Talleyrand wrote on December 28, “have evidently subordinated their claims upon Saxony and their hopes to the result of the labors of the Commission, and that result will, most probably, be favorable to Saxony. Thus, the affair of Saxony is in a better position than it has yet been. That of Poland is not concluded, but its termination is talked of. It has been resolved that a thoroughly official character shall be given to these conferences. As boundaries only are to form the subject of this negotiation, the matter ought to be arranged in a few days.”38

  On December 29, Hardenberg reiterated Prussia’s claim to all of Saxony and declared that any delay in transferring Saxony would be interpreted as a declaration of war. Castlereagh called this a “most alarming and unheard-of menace.” He rejected the premise that fear of war could influence Britain’s position on Saxony, declaring that “such an insinuation might operate on a Power trembling for its existence, but must have the contrary effect upon all that were alive to their own dignity,” and adding, “if such a temper really prevailed, we were not deliberating in a state of independence, and it were better to break off the Congress.”39 Hardenberg was breaking down under the strain. He was unable to sleep and would pace his rooms at night. “He is upset beyond measure by everything that is going on, and dismayed that all his hopes have been dashed, and this affects him and his body,”40 his deputy, Humboldt, wrote.

  Hardenberg was on weak ground. Despite its belligerent posture, the Prussian military relied heavily on Russian support, and the tsar, faced with the imminent prospect of war, appeared to be having second thoughts. In a conference the day before with King Frederick William, the tsar gave an “ambiguous”41 response when pressed on what he would do if war broke out over Prussia’s demand for Saxony. Alexander seemed aware that Castlereagh, Metternich, and Talleyrand were moving toward an alliance, and confronted with a united Britain, France, and Austria, he grew unsure. Britain, which had provided much of the financing for the war against Napoleon, was still advancing the cost of keeping Russian troops in the field, so the tsar faced a financial as well as a military disaster. While Hardenberg was acting more belligerent, the tsar began searching for a peaceful way out.

  Hardenberg backed down. But the skirmish showed how critical the situation had become and prompted Castlereagh to turn to Talleyrand for support. “Under these circumstances I have felt it an act of imperative duty to concert with the French and Austrian Plenipotentiaries a Treaty of Defensive Alliance,”42 reported.

  Russia made a countermove on December 30, in a last effort to rally and unify its former allies. Hoping to move past the impasse and reach resolution on Saxony and Poland, Alexander offered a smaller Kingdom of Poland that allowed Prussia to hold on to the principalities of Gnesen and Posen, and part of western Prussia, with 850,000 inhabitants, and also allowed Austria to keep land on the right bank of the Vistula and Tarnopol, with a population of 400,000. Krakow and Thorn would become free, independent cities. Prussia would receive all of Saxony, and the Saxon king would receive a new state with a population of 700,000 made from territory on the right bank of the Rhine. The Prussians were thrilled by the proposal and relieved by Russia’s apparent fresh show of support for Prussia’s desire for all of Saxony. But Prussia and Russia increasingly operated from a position of weakness. Austria was willing to accept the Polish element of the proposal but would not agree to the Saxony arrangement.

  New Year’s Day brought word of the signing on Christmas Eve of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States. “The news of the American peace came like a shot here,” wrote one of the British delegates. “Nobody expected it.” By freeing troops and removing the possibility of the United States becoming a potentially valuable ally of Russia and Prussia, the announcement left Britain in a much stronger position. “We have become more European and by the spring we can have a very nice army on the Continent,”43 observed Castlereagh.

  Talleyrand moved to complete his goal of restoring France to the center of European great power politics. To establish a firm front that could answer the Russo-Prussian alliance and return the direction of Europe to a balance of power system founded on legitimacy while rescuing Saxony, on January 3, at Talleyrand’s suggestion, Castlereagh, Metternich, and Talleyrand signed a secret document that pledged Britain, France, and Austria to come to each other’s assistance if threatened with attack, and committing forces of one hundred fifty thousand men each. “France is no longer isolated in Europe,” Talleyrand declared in a letter to King Louis XVIII the next day. Europe, he reported, now had “a federal system which fifty years of negot
iations might not have constructed.”44

  In January, at Castlereagh’s suggestion, the great powers formed a committee to take up the question of abolishing the slave trade, an important issue for the English public and a priority for Castlereagh. England offered the Caribbean island of Trinidad in exchange for French support, but Talleyrand instead demanded British assistance in replacing the king of Naples, a high French priority as the king was one of Napoleon’s former generals and therefore considered a threat to the Bourbon dynasty. Castlereagh agreed, and secured the acquiescence of Portugal with a payment of three hundred thousand pounds sterling, and Spain with an additional four hundred thousand pounds. On February 8, the great powers produced a joint declaration calling the international slave trade “repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality”45 and agreed to abolish the practice that had “desolated Africa, degraded Europe and afflicted humanity.”46 They agreed to include the abolition as part of the general settlement of Europe, with France allowed to phase it out over five years, and Spain and Portugal over eight.