On Darya's last morning in St Petersburg, Nesselrode brought her instructions from the Tsar; she was to contact Canning and tell him that Russia wanted an alliance with England but it was up to him to make the first move. In October she and her husband called on the foreign secretary at his house at Seaford near Brighton. It is not known what was said, but Lieven had further talks with him at the end of the month during which the ambassador stressed Russia's break with Austria and France over the Eastern Question. Again Darya dissembled, writing to Metternich that 'there is a certain coldness towards you at St Petersburg'. He wrote back that he was well aware of it. 'What have I to fear? The noise?' He joked that 'thick mists lie on the Neva but they will soon clear'. The Russians would realize that they had taken the wrong road. Privately he may have been thinking that they were likely to see a coup by the army.
There were problems to worry the chancellor nearer home. As Apostolic King of Hungary, the Emperor summoned the Hungarian Estates to meet at Pressburg (Pozsony). 'On 11 September the Hungarian Diet, one of the most tiresome constitutional divertissements in the world, will be opened,' he told Gentz. 'I shall have to speak Latin and dress like a hussar.' As a Hungarian magnate (he had been created 'Lord of Daruvar'), clad in dolman, high boots and plumed kalpak, he attended the Empress's coronation as Queen. The Diet was a less cheerful business. It had not been called since 1812, Hungary being ruled by Imperial rescript, but he had advised the Emperor-King to summon it to approve new taxes. Much to his alarm, there was an unexpectedly fierce outburst of Magyar nationalism, one demand being that Hungarian should replace Latin as the language of the Diet. A parliamentary opposition emerged, led by Count István Széchenyi, a rich young magnate who was a cousin of Eleanor.
Széchenyi was the first great Hungarian noble to insist on speaking Magyar during debates in the Diet, and he gave a year's income towards founding an academy to study the language. A Hungarian Whig (who during visits to London had fallen under the spell of Lord Holland), he wanted his country's constitution to become more like that of England, urging fellow magnates to surrender their exemption from taxation. He also produced a whole portfolio of plans for economic and industrial development, of which the most successful was an iron bridge across the Danube linking Buda and Pest, the Lánchíd— modelled on the Hammersmith Bridge. In addition, he inspired a chain of debating clubs. Metternich recognised a formidable opponent, 'a political spitfire', and tried, unsuccessfully, to convert him to absolutism, warning of the peril in which overassertive nationalism placed the Monarchy. 'Pull out a single stone and the whole structure will come crashing down.' Ironically, in future years Metternich was forced to ally with Széchenyi's disciples, adopting many of his economic and industrial ideas. Looking back, Metternich described the Count as 'a heated but high minded patriot', admitting that he had always stayed loyal to the Monarchy.
He began to worry about the revolutionary threat in England, of all places. In September he sent Esterházy an odd instruction about the project to establish a university of London. 'I authorise you to tell His Majesty that I am perfectly certain in stating that should the scheme be accepted, it will be the end of England.' This has caused much amusement among English historians and admittedly it is difficult to understand what inspired the warning—perhaps a memory of his experiences at Strasbourg as a young man. Yet he was justified in suspecting that the framework of English government and society was far from secure, as would be seen in the years before the passing of the Reform Bill.
Tsar Alexander I died suddenly and unexpectedly on 1 December 1825. Metternich genuinely regretted his passing. He was one of the few men who ever understood the Tsar. In 1829 he wrote a 'Portrait' of him for what he called his Gallery of Celebrated Contemporaries. It is a study which tells one a good deal about Metternich's genius for psychological domination:
He was as easily led astray by excessive mistrust of erroneous theories as by a natural weakness for them. His judgement was always under the sway of some new idea which had caught his fancy; he seized on them as if by sudden inspiration and with the utmost enthusiasm. Soon he was ruled by them, making the subjection of his will an easy matter for their originators.
The analyst continues that, 'after long observation', he had discovered that Alexander's thought went in cycles of about five years. An idea
grew in his mind for about two years until he regarded it as a system. During the third year he stayed faithful to the system he had adopted and cherished, incapable of estimating its true value or any dangerous consequences. In the fourth year awareness of these consequences began to diminish his enthusiasm. In the fifth there was a confused mixing of the old, nearly worn out system with the new idea. This new idea was often the exact opposite of the one which he had just abandoned.
In his view the Tsar died 'from weariness with life . . . his character was not strong enough to keep a balance between contradictory inclinations'.
Metternich informed Darya Lieven that 'fiction has come to an end and now we're starting history'. ('Le roman est fini, nous entrons dans l'histoire'.) It was a fair comment. Alexander's enthusiasms and vacillation had thrown the foreign policy of almost every European country into confusion. Yet he had been the original begetter of the Alliance, even if he had thrown it over at the last. Darya wrote with unintentional irony, 'He gave me a new interest in life.'
But would Metternich be able to cope with the new Russian ruler?
14
War?
The system of union known as the Alliance has for long been nothing more than a sham.
METTERNICH in 1827
We should have to declare war if Russia tried to expand her territory in the Levant since it would increase her frontiers with us . . . Those territories, if left in Turkish hands, benefit both our frontiers and our political position.
METTERNICH to Baron Lebzeltern, 1816
The Eastern Question was about to become the greatest threat to European peace since the Hundred Days. Metternich would suddenly find himself faced by the spectre of war in the Balkans. At the same time a series of harrowing personal tragedies devastated what had already been an unusually sad middle life.
Confusion over the succession to the Russian throne resulted in an abortive revolt at St Petersburg by the Decembrists—'Russian Carbonari', as the chancellor called them—who demanded a constitution. Metternich's warnings to Alexander about secret societies had not been so very wide of the mark—the conspiracy was 'an exact copy of those at Madrid, Naples and Turin', he wrote. 'Had Tsar Alexander lived, the same thing would have happened, and he and the Imperial family would have been massacred.' As for the present Tsar, the thirty-year-old Nicholas I, he commented, 'It would be impossible to cast the new reign's horoscope.'
In any case, Metternich was desperately worried by the grave illness of his friend and patron, Emperor Francis, who in March 1826 hovered between life and death. 'I needn't tell you that these last six days have been full of terrible anxieties for me,' he confided to his son Victor. 'Besides the uneasiness I felt from the very beginning of His Majesty's illness, I had to think about the future—or how to arrange it.'
He was taken aback by the news that Wellington was being sent by Canning to bring the new Tsar formal condolences and congratulations from King George. However, he sent a message to his old friend. 'Metternich is quite prepared to enlist under your banners and to leave the interests of Europe in your hands, satisfied that they cannot be placed in better.' He might not have said it had he known that Christopher Lieven (about to be created a Prince) had wept with joy on hearing that Wellington would go to St Petersburg and that Darya was seeing Mr Canning every Sunday afternoon. Metternich was very angry when he learnt that on 4 April 1826 a protocol to work together to secure Greek autonomy had been signed by Britain and Russia; he described the protocol as 'an abortion which in a few weeks will be disowned by those who formed it'. The Alliance was indeed a thing of the past.
Lady Georgina Wellesley, wife of
the British ambassador at Vienna, told one of the protocol's secret architects that Prince Metternich was paying daily visits to a Fräulein Antoinette von Leykam, 'Whom some say is your future wife, others your present mistress,' Darya wrote furiously on 16 May. 'So much for the constancy of men. Don't you think my reproaches are rather lukewarm? If I were to take revenge—Heavens, no I shan't take revenge.' She had heard that while the girl was very pretty, she scarcely belonged to the great nobility; her great-grandfather had been a coachman at Wetzlar, her grandfather an ennobled civil servant and her mother a Neapolitan opera singer. Metternich's own mother remonstrated when she heard that marriage was in the air. But Antoinette Leykam was twenty-one, small and blonde, very attractive, with a taste for the arts, and apparently in love with a man thirty-three years older than herself.
Although he was in his fifties, there seems to have been a cult of Metternich among Viennese young ladies. Mélanie Zichy-Ferraris was the daughter of the acknowledged queen of the capital's society, Countess Molly Zichy-Ferraris—a bosom friend of old Princess Metternich. Twenty-one, tall and striking, with a voluptuous figure, raven-black hair, and one blue eye and one green, she is said to have told her friends that one day she would marry the chancellor; she wrote him a letter of sympathy when Eleanor died. Her parents were eager for the match. But Metternich wanted the socially impossible Antoinette.
'In the French newspapers Mr Canning is beginning to be called "the accomplice of the abominable head of the Holy Alliance," ' he noted with amusement in June. 'I hadn't expected it, but we always get what we least expect.' In reality Canning was working tirelessly to widen the rift between Austria and Prussia.
After 'that detestable Eastern Question' Portugal was the main diplomatic irritant. There had been coups and countercoups in Lisbon since 1822. Its throne was disputed between Dom Miguel, the conservative leader, and his seven-year-old niece Maria, supported by the liberals, a struggle which continued for a decade. The previous monarch had granted a constitution in 1822, much to Metternich's annoyance. By the summer of 1826, full-scale civil war was looming, Miguelista guerillas raiding from Spain, where King Ferdinand gave them shelter. Naturally, Canning supported Queen Maria and the constitutional party. In August Austria proposed that a full-scale congress should meet as soon as possible to discuss the situation, but the Russians refused to attend it. In September Canning went over to Paris—where he too was invited to dinner by Charles X—and persuaded the French government to bring pressure on the Spanish King to curb the Miguelistas. Secretly the Austrian chancellor continued to encourage them.
Despite her anger—perhaps simulated—over Antoinette von Leykam, Darya went on writing to Metternich once a fortnight till 22 November, when she thanked him for his letter 174 and begged him to keep on writing. 'We should be hard put to it, you and I, to find in the whole world people of our own calibre. Our hearts are well matched, our minds too; and our letters are very pleasant.' But the correspondence ceased. Gentz had deduced that the protocol, at first thought to be the result of Wellington's ineptitude, must have been inspired by the Lievens.
In August Metternich visited his country estates. He wrote to his mother that Königswart 'still bears traces of your kind nature and good taste'. He also told her that their new family vault at Plass would soon be finished, Plass being an abandoned but magnificent Bohemian abbey which he had bought recently and was converting into a Schloss. He wrote to her from Johannisberg too, boasting of his magnolias and azaleas—'All the neighbours come to see my garden.' Among his visitors was the Marquess of Hertford (the model for Thackeray's Marquess of Steyne in Vanity Fair), 'the most decided Tory in England'. He told Gentz, 'I haven't met so independent minded, thoughtful and clever an Englishman for years.' What pleased him greatly was Hertford agreeing that Canning was 'the scourge of the world'.
As the chancellor had seen immediately, the protocol between Britain and Russia made war more, rather than less, likely should the Porte not accede to their demands. Admittedly, in May 1826 at Akkerman in Bessarabia the Sultan's envoys gave every indication of wishing to cooperate; but when a convention was signed there in October which gave the Danubian principalities increased independence, they did not yield an inch over Greece. Nevertheless, the Lievens convinced Canning that the protocol could be implemented without going to war. An unexpected development was the sabre-rattling philhelenism of Charles X, who informed Canning during his visit to Paris that he wanted Russia and Austria to threaten Turkey into compliance by land, while France and Britain did so by sea. Metternich could do nothing to stop the slide towards war; in November he acknowledged ruefully that the Tsar obviously disliked him. In January 1827 Russian, British and French delegates began formal negotiations in London to replace the protocol by a tripartite treaty.
The Austrian and Prussian ambassadors represented their countries. On 25 March Metternich sent Eszterházy precise instructions; the powers must agree unanimously on action to be taken; an armistice and a cease-fire should be obtained from the Porte; and Turkey-in-Europe should be divided between Moslems and Christians, under a guarantee by the powers. He stressed that 'the Kaiser is, from conviction and feeling, unwilling to admit the chances of a war with the Porte'. This time Metternich was not optimistic. He ended his instructions with: 'The disorder which reigned for six years in the Eastern Question will not yield easily to a preconceived idea of Tsar Nicholas, which moreover is not quite clear to anyone.' In May the Russian ambassador to Vienna conveyed a message from the Tsar: 'The Emperor sees with the most lively regret the court of Austria bringing forward proposals on the Eastern Question which differ from those of His Imperial Majesty.' Metternich remained unshaken. Yet he hinted at his bitterness in a despatch of 11 June to Count Apponyi, the new Austrian ambassador to Paris: the Emperor preferred to remain true to his principles rather than 'sacrifice them in the hope of saving by his agreement the appearances of an Alliance which one of its principal members constantly disowns'—a hit at Britain, where Canning was now prime minister. On 6 July 1827 the plenipotentiaries of Russia, Britain and France signed the Treaty of London. By it they agreed, in a secret clause, to use their joint navies to intervene forcibly if the Porte did not give way over the Greeks; such intervention would be aimed primarily at preventing Mehemet Ali sending reinforcements from Egypt to the Morea; in effect, it would be a blockade. Even Wellington saw the danger of war, going down on his knees (if he is to be believed) to ask Canning to omit the secret clause.
When the French ambassador to St Petersburg, the Comte de la Ferronays, stayed with Metternich at Königswart en route to Russia, Metternich suggested to him that the 'present difficulty' between the Russian and Austrian governments was 'a kind of game designed to make us give in—a game which will end soon enough if we keep our nerve.' Moreover, 'The absurd Triple Alliance is only in its first stage.' As for Austria, 'Our isolation in the affair stems solely from the unconquerable aversion of our august master to violate what he regards as a principle.' Metternich instructed Baron Ottenfels at Constantinople to persuade the Turks to defuse the situation by making timely concessions. 'Knowing your zeal and devotion to the service, I need not beg you to use all the promptitude of which the forms of Ottoman diplomacy admit.'
Metternich was much encouraged by Canning's death on 8 August. His valediction was: 'the man whom Providence hurled upon England and Europe like a malevolent meteor . . . Englandis delivered from a great scourge.' By then Wellington had come to share his opinion—Canning had 'done as much mischief in four months as it was possible for a man to do. God knows how it is to be remedied.' The chancellor had high but misplaced hopes of the Duke as a friend of Austria.
Meanwhile, there was his marriage. He wrote in October to Countess Molly Zichy-Ferraris, Melanie's mother, to complain of gossip. (Every princely drawing room in Vienna talked of nothing but his mésalliance, including his own mother's.) 'Tittle-tattle is the peculiar characteristic of Viennese society,' he grumbled. The Emperor had been his only
friend in the matter, his only confidant, the 'surest guide and kindest of fathers'. Francis was sympathetic; notoriously uxorious, he had buried three wives. Antoinette was obviously a most attractive girl; rumours circulated that Victor Metternich had wanted to marry her himself, but his father forbade the match as being beneath him. In a gesture of support, the Emperor created Antoinette Countess of Beilstein in her own right.
All this time the situation in the Levant was deteriorating. The Allies had now blockaded the Turkish and Egyptian fleets in the bay of Navarino in the Morea. Vice-Admiral Sir E. Codrington, commanding the British squadron, sent an insulting message to the chief of the Austrian flotilla in the Archipelago, accusing him of aiding the Ottoman fleet; Codrington warned him that he would not make any distinction between Austrian and Turkish vessels.
Metternich's wedding took place quietly on 3 November 1827 at Hetzendorf outside Vienna, at a palace lent by the Emperor. As his carriage was leaving the Ballhausplatz it was stopped by an equerry with an urgent summons to the Hofburg; here Francis gave him the news that on 27 October the Allies had blown the Turkish fleet out of the water at Navarino. The chancellor then went on to his wedding, so late that his mother and sister were beginning to hope that he had changed his mind.
Metternich- The First European Page 18