Metternich- The First European

by Desmond Seward

  Liedekerke Beaufort was with Metternich's parents on 27 September when news came that Napoleon had entered Moscow on the 12th [actually the 14th]. After dining with him on 7 October he recorded,

  High politicians assure us that peace will be made in a month. Details of the battle of the Moskva [Borodino], very glorious for France, arrived in the Moniteur . . .

  At his hotel he and fellow guests discussed the burning of Moscow:

  Some approved, and others disapproved, of the action taken by the Russians. I was among the latter. To me it seems barbarous and more harmful to themselves than to their enemy.

  For some weeks there would be no more news, only rumours.

  If Metternich was staggered by the Grande Armée's disaster, he showed no sign of concern on receiving the news in the first week of December. He sent a dispatch to Floret at Vilno ordering him to inform Napoleon that Austria was ready to arbitrate, and that Emperor Francis had declared, 'The hour has come for me to show the Emperor of the French who I am.' For the moment Austria could make a bid to be the peace broker. Prussia was still a broken land, Frederick William being too frightened of Napoleon to contemplate opposing him, even if a number of Prussian generals went over to the Russians at the end of 1812. 'There ensued a contest as stylized as a Japanese play and with rules as intricate,' writes Henry Kissinger, who stresses that Napoleon remained convinced that Austria was on his side but did not wish to be involved in another armed conflict. 'Because the parvenu from Corsica identified obligation with personal relations, he could not conceive that a father might make war on the husband of his daughter.' He did not grasp till too late that Austria had always been determined to profit from his defeat in Russia.

  As usual, Metternich was criticised by those in Vienna who understood neither his aims nor his methods. People of the highest rank, forming a party who called themselves the 'Napoleon Haters', they clamoured for Austria to declare war on France without delay. In March 1813 Metternich had to stop Archduke Johann's raising the Tyrol. Meanwhile, 'we implemented a plan known only to ourselves, unobtrusively and in secret,' he recalls. 'Building up our armament . . . in the conviction, which grew stronger every day, that Napoleon would begin a new campaign in Germany during 1813.' The defence minister, Count Bellegarde, worked at breakneck speed, recruiting and rearming—with French approval.

  In January 1813, before breaking openly with France, Prussia asked Austria for an alliance. She proposed that in the event of victory north Germany should be ruled from Berlin, south Germany from Vienna. While insisting that Prussian and Austrian interests were identical, Metternich refused, but at the same time urged Prussia to ally with Russia. He told Berlin that Austria was in an exceptionally difficult position because of Marie Louise's marriage.

  By waiting and refusing to commit himself to either side, he was able to obtain just what he wanted from Tsar Alexander. He needed strong nerves. It was only too clear from the Treaty of Kalisch of February 1813 between Russia and Prussia that they intended to remake the map of Europe—Russia meant to have all Poland and to compensate Prussia with Saxony and other German territories. The implication was that Prussia was determined to dominate all north Germany. However, at the end of March Russia offered Metternich the liberation of Germany, the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire under a Habsburg Emperor and the return of all Austria's former possessions, including those in Poland.

  In consequence Austria had effortlessly secured her recognition as mediator by Russia and Prussia on the one hand, by France on the other, all of whom hoped that she would bring her army into the approaching war on their side. 'It is a tribute to his [Metternich's] skill and patient preparation that what might have been considered a declaration of Austrian self-interest came to be seen as the expression of simple justice' is Kissinger's comment. As always, Metternich was aiming at the restoration of a political equilibrium in Europe. He did not see the future of Germany in terms of a revived Empire, in which the Kaiser and the Princes would be constantly at loggerheads with each other, but as a confederation dominated by Austria, whose position would be buttressed by the member states' fear of Prussian aggrandisement. He believed that stability in Central Europe must depend on a strong Austria and on Prussia. He was not so much intent on the destruction of Napoleon as on ending the Napoleonic hegemony and on confining the Emperor behind the frontiers of France. If at all possible he wanted to do so by peaceful means. He manoeuvred to such effect that in March Austria ceased to be a French satellite and became what Kissinger calls the 'pivotal power of Europe', wooed by everybody.

  By the spring of 1813 the Emperor of the French found himself facing a new coalition—Russia, Prussia and Britain, soon to be joined by Sweden. He was still convinced that his father-in-law would support him, and offered Silesia, Illyria and all Galicia to Francis as inducement. In April he requested Austria to concentrate her army, now 100,000 strong, in Bohemia. This was exactly what Metternich wanted, since it would provide an ideal position from which to attack the French should the moment come, as well as increase his bargaining power. In the meantime, he encouraged the Tsar to invade. Metternich assured him that Austria would come in on the Allies' side but in her own time—though we know that privately he still hoped to avoid her being involved in the war.

  During these nerve-racking months he spent much of his time at Ratiborzitz in Bohemia, the country house of the Duchess of Sagan, with whom he recommenced their old affair. He nonetheless continued to write to his wife and family almost every day. He also went frequently to the castle of Gitschin for discussions with his friend from Berlin days, Baron Karl August von Hardenberg, the Prussian Chancellor. The Russian envoy Count Karl Nesselrode was there too, a German who had once been a midshipman in the Tsar's navy but still spoke Russian badly. Both men tried to persuade Metternich to bring Austria into the war on the Allies' side, without success. Nesselrode reported disconsolately, 'Count Metternich has conceived the plan of proposing to Napoleon moderate conditions for a European peace.'

  Conditions acceptable to Russia and Prussia were communicated to Count Stadion by Nesselrode and Hardenberg on 16 May: Austria and Prussia must recover their 1805 frontiers; the Confederation of the Rhine must be dissolved; France must give up northwestern Germany, Holland and northern Italy; and Spain must be restored to the Bourbons. But four days later Napoleon followed an earlier victory at Lützen (on 1 May) with another at Bautzen; if the French had had more cavalry the Allied armies would have been totally destroyed. The Tsar and Frederick William were badly shaken. So was the Emperor Francis, convinced that his son-in-law was going to win again and Austria must join him while there was still time. However, an armistice was signed on 4 June; the French needed new cavalry and the Allies wanted to mobilise more men. Some 'Napoleon Haters' were angered by the halt in hostilities. 'People will shout at the armistice,' Metternich wrote to his wife. 'Such as it is, it will save the world.'

  He visited the other belligerents. On 19 June he went to the Tsar and Frederick William at the castle of Opocno in eastern Bohemia. In his memoirs he tries to give a false impression that he had planned to destroy Napoleon from the very beginning. He claims that the Tsar asked what would happen should the French Emperor accept mediation. ' "If he refuses', I answered, "the truce will end and you'll have Austria as an ally. If he agrees, the negotiations will show beyond doubt that he possesses neither judgement nor honesty, so the result is going to be exactly the same. Whatever happens, we'll gain enough to position our armies in such a way that we shall never again be exposed to separate attacks on any of them, and we can take the offensive ourselves." '

  (Metternich was also trying to take credit for the strategy devised a month later by Bernadotte, the Swedish Crown Prince, and Radetzky, the Austrian chief-of-staff; this was that the Allies should disengage when they faced the Emperor in person, only attacking his flanks or his isolated corps.)

  Whatever Metternich may have actually said to the Tsar, it had the desired effect, enabling him
to keep his options open till the very last moment, and offering a chance of peace. Gentz—by now accompanying Metternich everywhere—had a three-hour conversation with the Tsar, who confessed that previously he had distrusted the Austrian foreign minister but was completely reassured. In consequence, during Metternich's visit to Opocno the Treaty of Reichenbach was drafted, to be signed with his approval after he left. It allowed Austria to mediate with Napoleon for a preliminary peace but committed her to joining Russia and Prussia in fighting France if by 20 July (a dateline later extended by three weeks) the French Emperor had not agreed to surrender the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, Illyria and northwestern Germany, and to a vast increase in Prussian territory. These terms were for only a preliminary, not a comprehensive, peace; by accepting them, Napoleon would obtain no more than the Allies' agreement to negotiate—they were going to insist on nothing less than the end of the Confederation of the Rhine, of Napoleonic Germany.

  After a week at Opocno Metternich set off to see the Emperor of the French. The night before, he wrote to Eleanor, 'I leave for Dresden tomorrow evening. I shall stay for twenty-four hours. Those twenty-four hours are going to be the hardest in my life—they will decide the fate of the world.' He says in his memoirs—and in this case there is no need to doubt his sincerity—that he felt he represented all Europe. He was not over optimistic, telling Stadion in a letter, 'The conversation will lead nowhere.' But Kissinger goes too far in arguing that 'the final step in Metternich's diplomacy was to show that peaceable arrangements were incapable of setting limits to Napoleon'. Metternich certainly hoped to avoid war.

  During the extraordinary six-hour meeting on 26 June, at the Marcolini Palace in Dresden—in which Napoleon raged, 'swearing like a devil' and hurling insults, even throwing his hat on the floor—Metternich remained unmoved, urging peace again and again. The Emperor accused him of taking advantage of France's misfortunes, of wanting Austria's lost territories returned without having to pay for them—'You wish me to surrender more than I would after losing four battles'—and asked him how much he had been paid by the British. Throughout, Metternich begged his host to accept Austrian mediation, pointing out that at the worst France would keep her 'natural' frontiers—the Rhine and the Alps.

  'Between Europe and the aims you have hitherto pursued there is absolute contradiction,' he warned Napoleon, according to his own version of the meeting. 'The world requires peace. In order to secure this peace you must reduce your power within bounds compatible with the general tranquillity, or you will fall . . . The moment has arrived when you and Europe both throw down the gauntlet; you will take it up, you and Europe; and it will not be Europe that will be defeated.' He told Napoleon, 'I have seen your soldiers; they are mere children.' This provoked the response, 'A man such as I does not concern himself much about the lives of a million men.'

  The most cynical exchange came when the Emperor enquired, 'So I have perpetrated a very stupid piece of folly in marrying an Archduchess of Austria?' The foreign minister replied blandly, as if agreeing that Napoleon had been duped, 'Since your Majesty desires to know my opinion, I will candidly say that Napoleon, the conqueror, has made a mistake.'

  If Metternich did not warn, 'Sire, you are lost!' as he claims, he made clear that he thought it. After the meeting he wandered round the shabby city he had once known as a last bastion of eighteenth-century civilisation but which was now an armed camp. He estimated that it contained at least 25,000 wounded, countless houses having been turned into military hospitals. 'I could weep for these unending upheavals they call the history of empires,' he wrote to Eleanor.

  Meanwhile, Napoleon was telling his confidant Caulaincourt that Metternich had spoken nothing but 'peace'. The word was 'just a pretext and will later be used to disguise his treachery'. He (of all men) even accused Metternich of bullying. Yet just as Metternich was about to leave Dresden on 30 June there was another, briefer, meeting. The Emperor agreed to a peace conference at Prague and to accept Austrian mediation. 'Tell your mother I'm coming back from Dresden very pleased with myself,' Metternich wrote to his daughter Marie on 2 July. 'Soon we shall have either peace or a really frightful war.' One surmises that the reason for being so pleased with himself was that he expected it was going to be peace.

  He had contacted the British government in the spring, urging it to take part in the peace talks which he anticipated, but his invitation had been rejected out of hand. However, in mid-July the foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh wrote to the British ambassador at the Tsar's headquarters, Lord Cathcart, to inform him that the government was ready to accept Austrian mediation.

  The Prague conference never materialised, apart from a few vague diplomatic formalities. Afterwards, on St Helena, Napoleon admitted that he had agreed to the conference solely to buy time and never had any intention of making peace. Yet he had had every reason to do so. Two days after the meeting Joseph Bonaparte fled from Spain, his troops having been defeated beyond all hope of recovery by Wellington at Vitoria a week previously. Even Francis could see that his son-in-law was doomed. On the other hand, it is plainly untrue that Metternich's offer to mediate (as he himself later suggested) was a deliberate deception, whose sole object was buying time. He genuinely wanted peace with a French empire cut down to size.

  On 6 August the French Emperor made a last-minute bid to persuade Austria to fight on his side, sending Caulaincourt to Metternich to ask Austria's price. Six days later Caulaincourt tried again, but the foreign minister informed him that 'the fate of Europe is once more being decided by force of arms'. On 11 August Austrian troops entered the conflict on the Allies' side; a manifesto drafted by Gentz stated that Austria's policies since 1809 had been designed to persuade Napoleon to make peace, but she had finally been forced to fight for reasons of self-preservation and to save the social order. Not only did she become the Allies' military leader at once, Prince Schwarzenberg being appointed supreme commander despite Russian protests, but henceforward Metternich was to be virtually their spokesman. Only a few months before, Austria had been the weakest of the great powers, without even a proper army.

  8

  The Colossus Falls, 1814

  For Metternich belongs to the favoured few who achieve both the highest peaks of human destiny and of culture.

  GOETHE, October 1813

  I now believe in Your Excellency as in the Delphic Oracle, even when I don't quite understand everything that you say.

  GENTZ to Metternich, October 1813

  The next nine months were to be, physically, the hardest of Metternich's entire life—spent not in the Ballhausplatz or some elegant chateau but with the Allied armies. They were no less exhausting diplomatically. He had to dance attendance constantly on the sovereigns, their accompanying ministers and their commanders-in-chief, to prevent them from falling out. The Tsar was vain, wilful and vacillating; Frederick William III did just what Alexander told him; while Bernadotte, not content with Sweden, wanted the throne of Imperial France. The very size of the armies involved was against them. The problem was to hold the Alliance together, not just until it defeated Napoleon but until it finally destroyed him. The French Emperor was waiting for it to collapse, as well it might—especially after a major victory.

  By the end of August the Allies had won three minor victories and Metternich severed all communications with Napoleon. Undoubtedly he thought of the struggle as a duel. When the French forces withdrew to Leipzig, awaiting the final, decisive battle, he wrote to his daughter on 1 October, 'Everything indicates that the hour is striking and that Providence has blessed my mission to destroy this great evil. I am sure Napoleon thinks of me constantly.' The bloodiest fighting to be seen in Europe until the twentieth century took place at Leipzig on 16-18 October, the 'Battle of the Nations'. (Schwarzenberg wrote that he had never known a more horrible battlefield.) The Allies had 360,000 troops, the French 185,000. The French lost 40,000 killed while another 20,000 of them were taken prisoner, including 27 generals. Napoleon led what was l
eft of his army in headlong retreat. Metternich wrote triumphantly to Wilhelmine de Sagan, 'We have won the battle for the world.'

  'If the Count has won a battle, then we shall have to worship his star like the one which led the Three Kings of Orient to Bethlehem,' wrote Gentz while waiting for news. He too saw it as a duel. Of the glorious outcome, he told Metternich, 'I now believe in Your Excellency as in the Delphic Oracle, even when I don't quite understand everything you are saying.' It was a personal triumph, a vindication of Metternich's entire policy since his appointment in 1809.

  When the Emperor Francis bestowed the Grand Cross of the Maria Theresa Order on Schwarzenberg, that loyal friend suggested that the foreign minister should also be rewarded. Accordingly, Metternich was made a Prince. Next morning his valet, Giroux, came into his bedroom and asked, 'Will His Serene Highness wear the same suit that His Excellency wore yesterday?' Metternich told this story for the rest of his life.

  He may have had a valet, but he was living in great discomfort, perpetually on the move, visiting other diplomats, reporting to the Emperor and, after Leipzig, following in the wake of the advancing Allied armies. For long periods he seldom slept under the same roof for two nights running. Usually he travelled in a light carriage with a secretary and a portable desk, Giroux and his baggage in another carriage close behind, followed by still more carriages containing his staff—a mobile chancellery. When they went westward after Leipzig it was through a devastated land. The roads were muddy tracks, churned into deep ruts by the retreating French artillery, which had then frozen hard in the autumn frosts, breaking horses' legs and smashing carriage wheels; the verges were strewn with dead or dying Frenchmen. Metternich and his party had to sleep in the verminous public rooms of filthy village inns and, despite bringing provisions with them, suffered real hardship. Often the foreign minister rode ahead of his carriage, sometimes spending ten hours a day in the saddle, or else walked beside it. As he journeyed west he was accompanied throughout by General Merveldt and Lord Aberdeen.