Metternich- The First European

by Desmond Seward

  He even paid occasional visits to Thugut. Sometimes he appeared at court, in the Hofburg or Schönbrunn. One day the Emperor told Metternich, 'Be ready for my orders.'

  After ten years of warfare and many defeats, Austria was exhausted. In December 1800 General Moreau smashed the Imperial army at Hohenlinden and invaded Austrian territory, capturing Linz. At the peace of Luneville two months later Francis II recognised France's right to her conquests, including the Rhineland and Northern Italy. Thugut resigned, to be succeeded by Count Trauttmansdorff and then by Ludwig Cobenzl.

  In Metternich's opinion, 'the Austrian cabinet's weakness and indecision came to a head with the peace of Luneville'. He considered it a disastrous settlement, resulting from the sheer mediocrity of the ministers who had followed Kaunitz—'that great statesman who presided over the cabinet at Vienna for over forty years, though suffering from the infirmities of old age during his last days'. He had as low an opinion of Trauttmansdorff and Cobenzl as he did of Thugut. He particularly blamed Thugut for his lack of professionalism, for concentrating on the war with France to the exclusion of all else and for not even bothering to read, let alone answer, dispatches from minor embassies. (When he left a special commission had to be set up to deal with hundreds of unopened letters and reports.) It was Thugut's hostility which had so far prevented young Count Metternich from receiving a diplomatic post.

  4

  Kaunitz's Man

  The great comedy of the world, the grand intrigue of the European scene, never had so fertile an author or so consummate an actor.

  ALBERT SOREL,

  Essais d'Histoire et de Critique

  Europe was in a state of extreme tension, the natural result of the uncertainty hanging over the whole world.

  METTERNICH looking back on 1801, Memoirs

  A few days after taking office, Trauttmansdorff informed Metternich that the Emperor Francis wished to appoint him ambassador to either Dresden or Copenhagen. Metternich claims that he told Francis he had no vocation for a diplomatic career but would accept Dresden from a sense of duty. He tells us that it was close enough to Berlin and St Petersburg to make a good listening post. 'As I was forced to enter the service I wanted some chance of at least being useful. I have never done anything by halves and since I had to become a diplomatist I was going to do it properly.'

  The Emperor realised belatedly that Kaunitz had been right and Thugut had made a terrible mistake in committing Austria to a decade of war. Not only was Metternich the son of Kaunitz's protege and married to his granddaughter, but one of the old minister's last official acts had been to commend him to Francis—'a likeable young man, good company and amusing, suitable for some important embassy'. It cannot be too much emphasised that Metternich was the heir of Kaunitz.

  Eighteenth-century diplomacy is too often seen as the amateurish preserve of dilettante noblemen. In The Marriage of Figaro Beaumarchais caricatures how a diplomat of the period was expected to behave: 'Pretend to be ignorant of what everyone knows, and to know what others don't, seem to understand what no-one understands, not to hear what all are hearing, and, in particular, appear able to do the impossible. Seem profound when one is only empty' (behaviour not entirely unknown today). Admittedly noblemen monopolised the career and differed from modern diplomats in many ways. However, the real differences were that in Metternich's time ambassadors were servants of the monarch rather than of the state, men who were on close terms with him, and that they were accustomed to taking decisions which might affect the fate of nations.

  Before taking up his post at Dresden, Metternich drafted a paper on the state of Europe at the end of 1801, a paper so practised and mature that his father must have helped him. (A Baron Daiser von Sylbach has also been suggested, implausibly, as his mentor.) Much of it was pure Kaunitz. While Metternich agreed that the upheavals caused by the Revolution far exceeded changes brought about by eighteenth-century wars—'any attempt to create a lasting system of European states out of the present chaos is impossible for the near future'—he was more distrustful of Prussia than he was of France: 'Her entire policy has been designed to increase her territory with a total disregard for accepted international and moral principles.' He deplored the fate of the Poles: 'Only the Berlin government's blind desire for aggrandisement, and the revolutionary period which enabled the Empress Catherine to put her long prepared plans into action, brought about the partition of Poland, contrary to all sound policy.' Summing up, he stressed how remote was the prospect of 'restoring the European balance of power and a general peace'.

  He defined his task at Dresden as the reduction of Prussian influence, attributing 'hideous designs' to Prussia in the past, 'designs whose sole aim was to bring the Empire's affairs under her own despotic control and make most of Germany subservient'. He also stressed Dresden's value as a listening post, since the international situation prevented direct communication with St Petersburg—and that the many influential Russians and Poles living in the Saxon capital should provide important information, though this would have to be checked.

  Dresden was one of the pleasantest capitals in Europe. A Baroque city famous for palaces, gardens and theatres, as well as for its musical tradition, it had a deserved reputation for elegant amusement. The new ambassador called it an oasis amid the recent horrors—'one might have thought the world was standing still.' He admired the manners—'just as they might have been in the middle of the eighteenth century.' The Elector Frederick Augustus III has gone down to history as an amiable incompetent, fond of the arts and landscape gardening. Yet Metternich recalled 'a prince of sound abilities whose government might have remained a happy memory to his quiet, hard working country but for the storms of later years'. Even so, Frederick Augustus was a dissatisfied man, with dreams of becoming King of Poland like his grandfather and great-grandfather before him.

  Metternich made friends with the British minister in Dresden, Hugh Elliot. A Scot from the Border and a brother of the Earl of Minto, he had led a life which even Metternich considered colourful. As a boy he had been educated in Paris with Mirabeau, who dominated the early stages of the Revolution, and contacted him in 1790 as the British government's secret envoy; when a young man he had fought in the Russian army against the Turks; as minister in Copenhagen he had declared war on Denmark on his own responsibility; at Berlin, refusing to be snubbed by the King, he had displayed an arrogance which staggered the Prussians. According to Metternich he had quieted down by the time he came to Dresden. 'A pleasanter man in society I have never known . . . I consider my friendship with him one of my pleasantest memories.' He remembered with amusement Elliot's advice on how to seem useful, by sending two dispatches a week. 'If I have nothing I invent some news and then contradict it by the next courier.'

  In the summer, after he arrived at Dresden, he met one of the Revolution's most formidable foes, a Prussian intellectual of obscure origin called Friedrich Gentz. Once a minor civil servant, Gentz had become what would now be called a political journalist, specialising in foreign affairs—to such effect that he was being paid for advice by nearly every government in Europe save the French. An odd figure in a red wig and dark glasses, he was always in debt because of his weakness for actresses, gambling and amazingly expensive chocolate, yet his mind—he had been a pupil of Kant at Königsberg—was as sharp as a diamond. Treitschke admitted that Gentz had been the outstanding German publicist of his day, commenting on 'the classic beauty of his style, coupled with the compressed power of his logic'.

  The second time that Metternich met Gentz he lent him £100 to visit England with Hugh Elliot. He at once realised that this strange man could be a valuable ally. For years Gentz had been waging his own war of ideas. In 1793 he had published a translation of Burke's Thoughts on French Affairs; he admired its emphasis on historical tradition and saw that it was a superb weapon with which to counterattack the Revolution. In 1802 he considered translating Chateaubriand's Génie du Christianisme, recognising that it marked the beginn
ing of a Catholic revival in France with political implications. In 1799 he had begun to publish a little magazine, written entirely by himself, the Historisches Journal; a commentary on current affairs, its message was that the new French ideas threatened all Europe. It was read throughout the world—in Philadelphia John Quincy Adams approved highly of the author's argument that the American Revolution in no way resembled that of France. The journal was widely read in England, since Gentz was a vociferous Anglophile. His semi-official visit was a triumphant success; he was praised by the Times, presented to George III and met Castlereagh and Canning.

  Almost as soon as he took up his post, Metternich embarked on a love affair. Princess Catherine Bagration was the wife of one of Russia's most distinguished generals. Twenty years old, born a Countess Skavronskaya, she had married her husband because of his reputation for bravery but then refused to sleep with the future hero of Borodino, embarking instead on a career of wild promiscuity. Dark-haired, with a perfect figure, her small size, pale face and shortsightedness gave her a deceptively timid air. The susceptible Comte de la Garde credited her with 'a touch of Oriental languor to which is added a soupçon of Andalusian allure'. She was so outrageously dressed that her low neckline earned her the name of 'naked angel'. She was not unintelligent, developing an interest in politics, but she was shallow and jealous. In September 1802 she gave birth to Metternich's one acknowledged bastard, a daughter whom she christened Clémentine. He had the baby brought up at a village outside Vienna.

  He met a much more dangerous woman, Wilhelmine, Duchess of Sagan, with whom he would eventually have a long and unhappy liaison. About the same age as Catherine, she was a daughter of the last Duke of Courland on the Baltic and had recently married a young emigre general in the Austrian service, the Prince de Rohan-Guéménée—shortly after bearing a child by another lover. Totally amoral, tall and willowy, with black eyes and blond hair, speaking German in a seductively husky voice, she enthralled Metternich to the extent that he credited her with more intelligence than she possessed. But it is unlikely that she became his mistress for several years.

  Extramarital amusements did not stop him being an attentive husband. Eleanor bore a third child, Victor, in 1800, and a fourth, another Clémentine, in 1804. There were unfounded rumours that he was not the father. He continued to sleep with his wife intermittently for many years and they remained firm friends, writing constantly to each other even during his most torrid infidelities.

  His premonition at Rastatt that the family estates in the Rhineland had gone forever was justified. However, there was compensation. Franz-Georg was created an hereditary Prince of the Empire and given an estate near Ulm, the former abbey of Ochsenhausen.

  In February 1803 Metternich was made ambassador to Prussia, though he did not take up his appointment till the end of the year. Amid sandy wastes and pine forests, Berlin was very different from Dresden, its grim court pompous and dull. But despite Frederick William Ill's preoccupation with military uniforms and normal haughty reserve towards the diplomatic corps, he received the Austrian ambassador as an old friend. So did his queen, the same Princess Louise with whom Metternich had opened the Esterházy ball at Frankfurt in 1792. He noticed that since then she had acquired great dignity and grace. However, for all his pleasant reception, his task at Berlin was an extremely difficult one.

  As Metternich wrote at the end of September 1804, the interests of Prussia and Austria were inextricably involved. But the two leading Prussian ministers, Haugwitz and Lombard, dreaded war with France. He describes the former as 'unprincipled, perfidious and false', the latter as 'a man devoted to France's interests, and . . . Bonaparte's spy'. They wanted the French to buy neutrality from Prussia. Metternich records that 'the year 1804 went by in that unhappy condition which is neither peace nor war'.

  Meanwhile, he acquired a new mistress in Berlin, Princess Catherine Dolgoroukaya, wife of one of the Tsar's aides-de-camp. It does not seem to have been a very serious affair. He was pursued unsuccessfully by that voracious bluestocking Mme de Staël. While enjoying her salon, he disliked intensely its ugly, mannish, overbearing hostess.

  Every Prussian as well as Austrian had been outraged by Napoleon's kidnap and murder of the Duc d'Enghien in March 1804, and they regarded his assumption of the title of Emperor in the following May as an insult to the thousand-year-old Reich. Gentz wrote that to recognise it would be to accept the sovereignty of the people and the Revolution, and undermine every legitimate throne. The situation was complicated by no one at Berlin or Vienna being able to fathom Napoleon's intentions, or what he was going to do next. Most observers thought his primary objective was the invasion of England, though Metternich afterwards claimed that he had always suspected that the great army concentrated at Boulogne was really being held in readiness for an attack across the Rhine. In January 1805 he suggested to Karl von Hardenberg of the Prussian Foreign Office that the 'restorer of the Empire of Charlemagne' was aiming at 'a universal monarchy'.

  Austria had made peace in 1801 because she was exhausted, her army decimated and demoralised, her treasury empty. When Britain too gave up in 1802, it had seemed for a moment that Europe had accepted the new France. But after only a year, hostilities recommenced, the official casus belli being Britain's refusal to return Malta to its Knights. British diplomacy, and British money, set about building another coalition against the 'Corsican demon'. By 1805 Austria had recovered, her army's losses made good, her treasury replenished. Even so, Metternich was still having difficulty in convincing Vienna that Napoleon meant to extend his hegemony over all Europe, even if it was a view well known to be shared by the Tsar. Eventually, Austria and Russia agreed on an alliance. The armies of Sweden and Naples, who joined them, were scarcely a substitute for what was still seen as the might of Prussia.

  In Metternich's opinion, however, 'The Prussian monarchy, which is three times bigger than it was when Frederick the Great died, is far weaker in real terms.' Its government was 'a conspiracy of mediocrities . . . united solely by a dread of taking a single decisive step'. Not only ministers such as Haugwitz but the King himself were terrified by the international situation. Yet if Prussia had benefitted by not opposing France, securing a species of protectorate over north Germany, Metternich was nonetheless convinced that an alliance with Berlin was possible. His diplomacy was so persuasive that Tsar Alexander massed troops on the Prussian border, demanding peace or war. But Frederick William was more frightened of the French than he was of the Russians.

  Napoleon struck with devastating speed, attacking General Mack from behind and finally annihilating Mack's entire army at Ulm on 26 September 1805. Six weeks later he marched into Vienna. Then, unexpectedly, Prussia joined the coalition. The Tsar came to Berlin, telling Metternich that he already knew all about him—'You've steered the ship perfectly.' 'Had the allied armies kept their distance, instead of insisting on fighting at Austerlitz, the French would have been forced to fall back on Vienna,' wrote Metternich later. 'Napoleon was in grave danger. Archduke Karl was advancing by forced marches through Styria with his army of Italy, while the Prussians were advancing from Regensburg.' But the Tsar wanted a battle.

  On 1 December 1805 Napoleon won the greatest victory of his career, routing the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz—and then spent the night at Metternich's Schloss. At Berlin its owner begged the Prussians to send troops, arguing that together the allies still outnumbered Napoleon and now was the time to counterattack. Metternich may have been right, but Haugwitz had the ear of Frederick William; Napoleon bought Prussia's neutrality with Hanover, which he had seized from George III. The Russians withdrew into Poland. At the Treaty of Pressburg, only three weeks after Austerlitz, Austria had to surrender Venice and Dalmatia to France besides ceding the Tyrol to Bavaria. She also had to pay eight million francs in gold as the first instalment of a crushing indemnity.

  Metternich was so desperate that in January 1806 he proposed a species of Iron Curtain. Three lines of fortres
ses would stretch from the mouth of the river Weser to the Adriatic, making use of the Thuringian forests. It would separate an 'Eastern Alliance' of Austria, Prussia and Russia from the Napoleonic Empire, quarantining what was left of ancien regime Europe from the French contagion. But he was overtaken by events.

  5

  'In the Lion's Den'

  I do not think it was a good idea on Napoleon's part to summon me to a post which, while giving me the chance to appreciate his brilliant qualities, also gave me the opportunity to discover the weaknesses which in the end ruined him and freed Europe.

  METTERNICH

  I spent with Napoleon, or near him, the best years of my life.

  METTERNICH

  In 1806 Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine, with himself as Protector. Instead of a state for every day in the year it consisted of sixteen kingdoms and principalities, whose rulers obeyed France. In August Francis II relinquished his ancient title of Holy Roman Emperor for that of 'Emperor of Austria'. The Habsburg lands in Italy became part of Napoleon's new Italian realm, while French bayonets placed Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Naples. Metternich saw little future for Austria in this new Europe. He had written in January:

  Whose side does Russia mean to take? What will happen to the Ottoman Empire, placed in direct contact with France on its most vulnerable frontier? How will negotiations with Prussia turn out? Peace, and the Austrian monarchy's very existence, depends on these three questions.

  Immediately after Prussia joined the coalition in November 1805 Haugwitz had gone to Napoleon's headquarters, on the pretext of a courtesy call, to assure him that Prussian participation was merely a diplomatic manoeuvre. Yet there was also a powerful war party at Berlin. And, as has been seen, Metternich suspected that Prussia might be destroyed in a confrontation with France.