Metternich- The First European

by Desmond Seward

  From Hanover the new chancellor went to Frankfurt, to attend the Bundestag. Everywhere he was received with wild enthusiasm, welcomed obsequiously by the 'humming bird kings' and their little courts, cheered even at the universities. He reported with satisfaction that in retrospect the 'student business' which had had to be settled by the Carlsbad Conventions was beginning to look ridiculous. Correctly, he ascribed his popularity to smashing the Carbonari in Italy—'merely a band of ragamuffins', he disclaimed modestly. He was now playing almost as important a role in German life as he did in Austrian.

  Nevertheless, he was worried by Greece and Spain. Opponents hoped to weaken his grip on Tsar Alexander. After all, the Orthodox Christians of Greece were the Russians' coreligionists and the Tsars had been their Protectors for half a century; it had always been Russian policy that one day New Byzantium should liberate the Old. During the previous summer Baroness Krüdener had written to Alexander preaching a new Crusade, promising that he would attend the Christmas Liturgy at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in a liberated Jerusalem. Just before Metternich's meeting with Castlereagh, Russia had very nearly declared war on Turkey.

  Capo d'Istria bombarded the Tsar with hideous tales of Turkish atrocities. The Austrian chancellor countered with reports of revolutionary plots all over Europe, claiming that the western leaders of the Greek rising were Carbonari whose real aim was a general European revolution. His correspondence shows complete confidence. 'Just now I'm fighting Tatischev,' he wrote of the Russian ambassador in March 1822. 'The good man is just like an eel. Luckily I'm an experienced old fisherman.' He compared the battle between himself and Capo d'Istria to a conflict between positive and negative, believing that 'two parties are fighting each other all over the world, the Capo d'Istrias and the Metternichs. Since the Tsar is a Metternich, his opponents will have to be abandoned to their fate.' He knew that his hold over the Tsar was almost unbreakable—'Tsar Alexander is of all children the most childish.'

  However, Metternich realized that, with his restless army, Alexander might well try to compensate himself for prestige lost in the East by increased Russian activity in the West. The Tsar revived a scheme for an Allied invasion of Spain to evict the liberals. Metternich knew that the British would oppose it even more strongly than they had intervention in Naples, and feared it might destroy his reconciliation with Castlereagh. Early in June he wrote to ask the British foreign secretary for support against the Russians at the next congress, which would meet at Verona in the autumn, begging him to come to a preliminary congress at Vienna if he could not be at Verona. 'Should you fail me, I shall be alone,' he pleaded, 'and the battle will be unequal.'

  'Sometimes Capo d'Istria behaves like a mouse in a hole, sometimes like the cat outside,' he observed on 19 June. 'If things don't go the way he wants, he squeaks in his hole. If it gets really difficult the cat shows her claws.' But a week later Capo d'Istria was sent on leave, never to set foot again on Russian soil. He had been finally outmanoeuvred by a promise of Austrian support for the Tsar should Turkey refuse any Russian demands which were specifically guaranteed by treaty. Accepting that he must pay a price for Allied cooperation, Alexander dismissed the minister whom Metternich considered an 'evil element of perpetual dissension'.

  Meanwhile, the chancellor felt 'a hundred years old'. He was cheered by his new sculpture by Canova, Amor and Psyche's First Kiss. 'The two children kiss as if they had never done anything else. When the very pure and innocent visit me, however, I have to hang a dressing gown round Amor and throw a sheet over Psyche.' He enjoyed Barbaia's new Italian opera at Vienna, attending rehearsals. 'Rossini himself is in charge, with an orchestra and chorus which amaze everyone.' He liked only bel canto. 'This evening I went to a German opera for the first time—a German voice is pitiable compared to an Italian.' He grumbled at his work load. 'My office is just like a headquarters. Every minute someone comes in to interrupt me . . . There are times when my poor head is so tired that I long to lie down alone and sleep.' He hated his wife and children leaving him to go to the country. 'I have no family life, which is my main pleasure,' he complained. 'I have my two gardens, the sun and Italian opera, which are well worth having but don't add up to happiness.' He would read himself to sleep with two or three chapters of Livy, in Latin.

  In July 1822 the Marquess of Londonderry, as Castlereagh had been known since his father's death, confirmed that he would be coming to Verona accompanied by the Duke of Wellington. Only a month later Metternich was informed that the British foreign secretary had gone off his head and cut his throat with a penknife. During his last, deranged meeting with George IV he had told the King, 'It is necessary to say goodbye to Europe; you and I alone know it and have saved it; no one after me understands the affairs of the Continent.' Metternich was distraught:

  The man is not to be replaced, not where I am concerned. He was devoted to me, heart and mind, not only because he liked me, but out of conviction. Most of what would have been easy with him will be hard work with his successor, whoever he is. I was waiting for him here as if for my other self.

  Darya Lieven was fully aware that it was a disaster for her lover:

  Besides mourning Lord Londonderry as a friend, you have to mourn him as a minister—perhaps the only man in England who understood European politics, and whose principles as well as his inclinations urged him towards friendship with Austria. What a loss for us all, but above all for you!

  Metternich asked the British government to send Wellington to Verona, as 'the only man who, up to a point, can replace him.'

  The partnership of Metternich and Castlereagh had been a vital element in the Congress System. Both had believed in it, if in different ways; where Castlereagh thought that Britain should take military action only if war threatened the continent's equilibrium—'We shall be found in our place when actual danger menaces the system of Europe'—Metternich was more positive. Yet each had respected the other's position. Castlereagh assured Darya in March 1822, 'We are in perfect agreement, Prince Metternich and I, on the fundamentals of every question; but in the application of our views on the Eastern Question, I find a shade of difference which makes me anxious to bring him round to my own point of view.' Such an approach explains why they worked so well together.

  Britain's new foreign secretary was George Canning, determined to appeal to British xenophobia. 'He is no more capable of conducting foreign affairs than your baby,' George IV told Mme Lieven. 'He doesn't know the first thing about his job; no tact, no judgement, no idea of decorum.' The King had appointed him with the utmost reluctance. Three years later Darya would answer Tsar Alexander's inquiries about Canning with, 'The distinctive mark of his policy is to be the enemy of Prince Metternich.'

  In the meantime, the Spanish question was growing still thornier. In July the problem was to find some means of dissuading the Tsar from marching across Europe to Madrid to reinstate King Ferdinand as absolute monarch. The situation had since been altered radically by France's ambitious new foreign policy, inspired by the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, French ambassador at London. The Bourbon army wished to replace memories of Napoleonic glory with battle honours of its own and relished the prospect of rescuing a Bourbon King from his subjects. By autumn 1822 a French 'army of observation' had taken up position in the Pyrenees. When the Duke of Wellington arrived in Paris at the beginning of October on his way to Vienna, the head of His Most Christian Majesty's government, the Comte de Villèle, informed Wellington that the army might conceivably be poised for invasion; hitherto it had been disguised as a cordon sanitaire against an epidemic of yellow fever just across the frontier. The Duke at once sent to London for instructions on how to deal with this new development. Castlereagh wrote back insisting that he oppose any form whatever of intervention in Spain—depriving him of any scope for manoeuvre at Verona.

  At Vienna Wellington realized that nothing but Spain would be discussed during the Congress of Verona. Before the Duke left the Austrian capital, Tsar Alexander, w
ho had also gone there, told him that he was in favour of intervention but by a Russian, not a French, expeditionary force. Since Metternich's new influence over the Tsar was by now well known, Wellington felt that the Austrians should be able to defuse the issue. He reported that in his view there was going to be 'an unanimous decision to leave the Spaniards to themselves'.

  The congress which met at Verona in October 1822 recalled the splendours of that of Vienna. The Austrian Emperor and the Empress Charlotte (his fourth consort) were accompanied by Metternich and Austria's ambassadors to London, Berlin and St Petersburg, with Gentz discreetly in attendance. The King of Prussia brought his chancellor Count Bernstorff. The Tsar's suite included not only Nesselrode (now sole foreign secretary) and his envoys to London and Paris, but General Prince Volkonsky, chief of the Russian general staff, with five other generals. Wellington was supported by the British ambassadors to Vienna, Berlin and Constantinople. Among France's representatives were the Vicomte de Montmorency, foreign minister, and M de Chateaubriand.

  All the Italian sovereigns were present, including the Duchess of Parma—Napoleon's widow. Chateaubriand teased her, saying that he had seen some of her Parmesan soldiers at Piacenza but that once upon a time she had had many more of them. Marie Louise, who was enjoying the festivities after missing those at Vienna in 1815, replied simply, 'I don't think about that sort of thing any more.' Everyone was amused when she repeatedly defeated Wellington at whist.

  The royal personages and their entourages attended a notably spectacular state banquet given by Emperor Francis in the great Roman amphitheatre. Metternich had invited Rossini, who long remembered the chancellor writing to him that 'since I was "The God of Harmony" would I please come to where harmony was so badly needed'. Night after night the maestro—whom Metternich now called 'my good friend Rossini'—conducted performances of his operas in Verona's little theatre.

  Nevertheless, in many ways the congress was run on surprisingly modern lines. Metternich had what would nowadays be termed a keen sense of public relations and was particularly concerned about coverage by the press. Chateaubriand (who later published a book, Le Congrès de Vérone), recalls seeing him rush into a corner with Gentz to compose a counterblast to some hostile article.

  The chancellor did not anticipate any trouble over Greece, and indeed the congress would swiftly condemn the Greek War of Independence as 'a rash and criminal enterprise'. However, from the very beginning he realized that Spain was going to be a different matter altogether. He was deeply opposed to intervention; his plan was to present invasion as the only possible course and then to show that it was impractical, after which all five powers would send letters of protest to the Madrid government—Russia and Prussia might make the tone as stern as they liked, Britain as mild. He hoped that this would be sufficient to frighten the Spanish liberals into reaching a compromise with King Ferdinand. He genuinely feared that intervention here might upset the equilibrium throughout Europe, telling Lord Londonderry, the British ambassador to Vienna, that the Tsar wanted the French to take their 'gangrened armies' into Spain simply because he expected a revolution to break out in their absence, which would enable him to send '200 to 300,000' Russian troops into France.

  Just as Wellington had predicted, the Spanish question dominated discussions. The Tsar wished to send an army of 150,000 men into Piedmont, where a base would be set up from which it could easily invade Spain or put down revolutions in France or Italy; he fancied the idea of Cossacks in Andalusia. A Russian military presence in Western Europe was totally unacceptable to Metternich. Nor did he want French intervention, proposed by Montmorency and Chateaubriand; they were exceeding their brief, since Villèle's intention was for France to threaten, not to invade. Far from favouring military intervention, the chancellor saw it as a last resort; Austrian interests were not endangered in Spain as they had been in Naples. On 19 November a protocol was signed by Austria, France, Prussia and Russia in which they pledged cooperation in the event of 'a war declared or provoked by the present government of Spain'. Intentionally, it was a vague and inconclusive document.

  Alone, the Duke of Wellington refused to sign. Metternich tried desperately to persuade him. After all, during the Neapolitan crisis the Duke's advice had been 'Prince Metternich must march.' But he thought himself bound by Canning's directions which, in his soldierly way, he obeyed blindly. As George IV put it afterwards, 'He had the great, great disadvantage of being incapable of flexibility or of making a diplomatic approach.' At one meeting with the chancellor he clapped his hat on his head to show that his decision was final. 'We have passed but a stormy week,' he reported. It was the second time Britain had fallen out with the Alliance. Even so, few at Verona can have guessed that it meant the end of the Concert of Europe. In the same month Canning declared 'for Europe, I shall be desirous, now and then, to read England'.

  Wellington did not realize that his refusal had been Canning's first shot in a campaign to destroy the Alliance. However, the Duke soon regretted his hard line. 'He said he quite understood that his visit had had worse results than those which had first appeared,' Darya recorded two months later. 'That every day the separation of England from the great Alliance became, and would become, more noticeable; that it was certainly a misfortune for everyone and a very great misfortune for England; and that he did not know to what to ascribe it. Was it Londonderry's death, or his own behaviour at Verona?'

  In another letter of January 1823 Darya describes how all too many people felt about Metternich, relating Lady Grenville's opinion:

  What she finds particularly remarkable about you is the hatred, the enthusiasm, the distrust, that pursue you in turn. She sees you as both god and devil; and I can understand her perplexity; for I have not a very clear idea of you myself.

  Yet Darya had seen him only recently, having been at Verona, though this time accompanied by her husband. It was the last time that she and Metternich would meet as lovers. He wrote to his wife, telling her how he spent his evenings at the Lievens' house with Wellington, the Duc de Caraman (the French ambassador to Vienna), Prince Ruffo (the Neapolitan ambassador) and Count Bernstorff. 'Princess Lieven's salon in Verona is just like ours in Vienna.'

  Darya had not enjoyed herself, however. She complained of being 'the sole representative of my species', that all the other ladies were 'thorough barbarians'. There was too much competition. Not only had M de Chateaubriand brought his beautiful mistress, Mme Récamier, but Lady Londonderry (wife of the British ambassador to Vienna and Castlereagh's sister-in-law) had captivated Tsar Alexander despite her plumpness. 'I have had some good scenes with her,' Lady Londonderry wrote of Mme Lieven from Verona. 'The other day I received a note from the [Russian] Emperor during dinner, and her curiosity was so excited that after repeatedly asking who it was from, she put out her thin red paw to snap at it, but Metternich, who was sitting between us, interposed and said "Ce serait une indiscretion impardonnable pour une jeune femme de produire ses billets." She was not to be pacified, and as I took care she should not see the note she turned sulky.' Darya's unhappiness was compounded by Nesselrode refusing her request to transfer her husband to Vienna as ambassador.

  Metternich was very pleased with his son Victor, by now nineteen, who had come with him to the congress and who wanted to follow in his father's footsteps. 'Victor enjoys his work as much as his friends and comrades in Vienna do the Prater.' He was proud of the way in which the boy translated an important English despatch.

  Altogether, it seemed that Metternich had achieved a good deal in those few weeks. Perhaps he had not forged closer links with Britain, as he had hoped to do before Castlereagh's tragedy. But he had stopped the Tsar from overrunning Europe with his troops, delayed the French and kept the Alliance in being. He did not despair of Britain playing a larger role in European affairs, reassured by George IV's enthusiasm; the King's diplomatic service in Hanover communicated His Majesty's views to 'his beloved Metternich'—Canning's phrase. Metternich believed Wel
lington to be basically well disposed, for all his stubborn contrariness at Verona. But he failed to appreciate the powerlessness of a British monarch and the Duke's mediocrity as a statesman.

  Moreover, the congress demonstrated triumphantly Metternich's domination of the Tsar. Not only had he routed Capo d'Istria, but, as Wellington observed, he was almost Alexander's prime minister. He had achieved this by his flood of correspondence on the subject of imminent revolution. An undated memorandum which he sent to the Tsar at about this time gives some idea of his arguments. He told the former disciple of Baroness Krüdener that 'one of the weakest aspects of the human mind has been an inclination down the ages towards the shadowy domain of mysticism'. Men who joined the clandestine societies which now threatened Europe, 'dupes of their own imagination', were—so he claimed—coordinated by a secret committee at Paris. Luckily, 'the world has never seen such an example of unity and solidarity among great polities as that by Russia, Austria and Prussia during recent years'.

  He left Verona in excellent humour. He would not have understood the satire of his favourite English poet Lord Byron, in 'The Age of Bronze'.

  Strange sight this Congress! destined to unite

  All that's incongruous, all that's opposite.

  Even Gentz did not see that anything disastrous had happened at Verona. 'God holds his hand over Austria,' he assured his friend Pilat. 'So long as the Emperor and Prince Metternich live, no storm can destroy us.' Yet Byron had underlined the congress's weakness.