Metternich- The First European

by Desmond Seward

  The young Metternich, by Anton Graff. (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

  Metternich's father, Count Franz-Georg Karl von Metternich-Winneburg, later Prince of Ochsenhausen, an underrated diplomat and statesman. (Private collection)

  Metternich's mother, born Maria-Beatrix-Aloisia von Kagenegg, by Franz Lieder. (Private collection)

  Metternich's first wife, born Princess Eleanor von Kaunitz—'Laure'—in middle age during the 1820s, by Franz Lieder. (Private collection)

  Wilhelmine of Courland, Duchess of Sagan, an unfaithful mistress who made Metternich very unhappy. (Bild-Archiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna)

  Duchesse d'Abrantès, Napoleon's 'little pest', whom Metternich seduced for political reasons. (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)

  Napoleon in 1814 after hearing that the Allies had entered Paris—'Prince Metternich . . . has destroyed me systematically,' he commented later—by Paul Hippolyte Delaroche. (Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin)

  Metternich in 1818, one of three portraits by Thomas Lawrence; the prince disliked this version because of its sardonic expression. (Bild-Archiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna)

  Bust of Metternich in 1819, by Bertel Thorwaldsen. (Bild-Archiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna)

  Bust of Alexander I, by Bertel Thorwaldsen. At first Metternich's opponent, the Tsar eventually became his political disciple. (Private collection)

  Princess Lieven—'Darya'—Metternich's mistress and a Russian agent who betrayed him, by Thomas Lawrence. (Tate Gallery, London)

  George Canning, the British statesman who wrecked Metternich's plans for European cooperation, by Thomas Lawrence. (National Portrait Gallery, London.)

  Metternich's third wife, twenty-two years younger, countess Mélahie Zichy-Ferraris. (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

  Metternich at sixty-three, still the most powerful man in Europe, by Giuseppe Molteni. (Bild-Archiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna)

  Francis (Holy Roman Emperor, 1792–1806; Emperor of Austria, 1806–35), Metternich's 'august master' and best friend in 1834, by Friedrich von Amerling. (Österreichischen Gallerie im Belvedere).

  Metternich in 1837 as senior Knight of the Golden Fleece, by Johann Ender. (Bild-Archiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna)

  Emperor Ferdinand (1835-48) and the Empress Maria Anna Carolina, as King and Queen of Hungary. (Bild-Archiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna)

  Metternich in his eighties, from a photograph of about 1855 by Mylius. (Bild-Archiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna)

  Catholicism formed another strong bond. After the terrible months during 1828–9, Metternich had installed a private chapel at the Ballhausplatz. His cult of St Paul was by now so strong that he would insist on calling one of their sons after him, although Mélanie—no less devout—disliked the name.

  He even told her about his work. 'Today I breakfasted alone with Clemens for the first time since my marriage,' she records in her diary for 17 February. 'He spoke a great deal about business and explained to me all his views and plans.' She adds, 'Gentz interrupted our conversation.'

  One day in 1831 she found the Grand Inquisitor and his henchman blowing soap bubbles with Richard, his three-year-old son by Antoinette. Gentz was part of the Metternich household, despite frequent arguments. Often a waspish critic of the chancellor's policies, he continued to breakfast with them almost every morning (although he had a beautiful and devoted mistress, Fanny Elssler, the ballet dancer). 'I love hearing them talk together since the former [Gentz] has tremendous wit, for all his oddities,' Mélanie observes. She adds, 'Things seem to be going rather badly in England. Worst of all, my poor Clemens, having taken vast pains on a plan which is the only safe way out for us can find no-one to support him but is constantly frustrated.' She writes with rather less affection for Gentz in November. 'Clemens showed me a letter from Prince Wittgenstein to Gentz from which it is quite obvious that the latter is in the habit of telling all his friends abroad that Clemens no longer does any work, and that he [Gentz] has to attend to business of every kind single-handed . . . I am astonished at Clemens who, although well aware of it, remains friendly.'

  Gentz was desperately frightened by the prospect of hostilities with France. There was a vociferous war party at Vienna, led by Prince Albert Schönburg (Austrian envoy to Württemberg) which he feared was beginning to win over the chancellor. In February 1831 Gentz believed that war was inevitable. However, Metternich was always aware of the fragile condition of Austria's finances, an awareness which induced caution. Even so, at the end of March his wife noted, 'I found Clemens sad and thoughtful. Affairs in France give him great anxiety and he is expecting war.' He had decided that Austria and Prussia should intervene in France to restore Charles X, but Archduke Karl refused to command the Imperial army on the grounds that the Monarchy's finances could not take the strain; the campaign had to be called off when it was learnt that Austria could find only 170,000 men for the purpose, as opposed to Prussia's 250,000. The atmosphere continued to be explosive for several months. Mélanie reveals how much Metternich worried beneath that imperturbable exterior. 'In spite of a fearful storm, Clemens and I set out for Baden,' she records on 1 July 1831. 'My husband wanted to speak with the Emperor. Everywhere he finds cause for anxiety in foreign affairs. One cannot conceive how things can get any better. We are faced by terrible crises and I see no way out. Clemens was with the Emperor till three in the morning.'

  Meanwhile, the Belgians were in revolt against their Dutch King. The Prussian army prepared to march in and restore him, but it was clear that the French would go to the aid of the Belgians. While sympathising with the Dutch King, Metternich had no wish for a full-scale European war. A conference met at London in November 1831, attended by envoys from all the great powers, and concluded that the only viable solution would be an independent state of Belgium. Austria and Prussia disliked upsetting the 1815 settlement but accepted that it was better than war, the conference deciding that the frontiers should be those of the old United Provinces as they had been under Austrian rule. Many Belgians would have liked union with France and in February, as a compromise, the Belgian assembly chose Louis Philippe's son, the Duc de Nemours, to be their King. Britain then threatened to declare war. Austria's candidate was Archduke Karl, who had briefly been governor-general at Brussels in 1793–4. The ultimate choice was Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (the widower of Princess Charlotte of Wales). Even then, the Dutch invaded the country in August, to be swiftly driven out by a French army with the approval of the London conference.

  During the Belgian crisis a new—and, from Metternich's point of view, malevolent—figure entered the stage of European politics, in 1830. This was the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, a xenophobic Whig with a taste for popularity, who would pander to the most chauvinist instincts in the British character. A politician more skilled and far tougher than Canning, he liked to pose as a champion of liberal causes. His biographers emphasise his desire for peace, which is beyond question. They are less convincing when they infer that Palmerston was Metternich's rival rather than opponent; they suggest that both were competing for the leadership of Europe, which is why each tried so often and so unsuccessfully to stage a peace conference he hoped to dominate. Continental historians (such as Jacques Droz) disagree, arguing that Palmerston considered a divided Europe beneficial to British interests. 'Everywhere, indeed, by stirring up national feeling and liberal agitation, she [Britain] prepared to overthrow the Europe established by the 1815 treaties' is how Droz interprets his policy. Certainly Talleyrand had understood Palmerston's aims in this way before leaving the French Embassy in London in 1834. So did Metternich.

  Two months after the Polish uprising of November 1830, the Seym (Diet) deposed the Tsar as King of Poland. Austria and Prussia agreed on joint action to deal with revolts in their own Polish provinces. Metternich warned Trauttmansdorff, Austr
ian ambassador in Berlin, that the crucial factor would be the Russian army's morale. In the spring heavily outnumbered Polish forces brought to a halt General Diebitsch's advance on Warsaw, and went on to win further victories. Volunteers from all over Europe joined them, including many Napoleonic veterans. But in September 1831 the Russians stormed their way into Warsaw and the war was over. The Poles had offered the throne to an Archduke, but a restored Kingdom of Poland was scarcely welcome to Austria, fearful that disaffection might spread to its Galician provinces. In September, Metternich told a Polish envoy, Count Zamoyski, that his countrymen's only course was to surrender. 'We are putting a stop to much bloodshed, and saving the Russians from losing a battle, a defeat which might affect all Europe,' Mélanie wrote proudly, reflecting her husband's view. Not many Poles would have agreed with his comment in March that 'Tsar Nicholas displays the greatest calm and gentleness'.

  It is unlikely that Metternich obtained a true picture from Prince Esterházy's despatches of what was happening in England during 1830–32 when the country was disrupted by the agitation for the Reform Bill. It was sufficient for him that his old friend the Duke of Wellington had his house in Piccadilly stoned by a mob. It seemed as if France's 'trois glorieuses' might be repeated across the Channel; there were even rumours that William IV and the Duke were planning a coup like that attempted by Charles X and Polignac. When the bill was passed, in Metternich's opinion the old British constitution had been replaced by something similar to the French Charte which he so much despised. He was justified in believing that it opened the way for the middle classes to supersede the aristocracy as Britain's rulers.

  As he had expected, there was some serious trouble in Italy. Lombardy-Venetia was too firmly under control for the Carbonari to attempt a rising, but in February they rose in the Duchies of Parma and Modena, establishing 'governments'. Austrian troops chased them away early in March. A revolutionary government was also set up at Bologna in the Papal States, its leaders intending to march on Rome. This rising too was swiftly crushed by the Austrians, who maintained a garrison at Bologna until 1838. Metternich attributed the risings to the 'Paris Committee', that great central revolutionary committee which his agents never quite succeeded in tracking down; he believed it had assured the rebels that the Austrians would not intervene. 'The passage of the Po by our troops having dispelled the phantasmagoria, panic seized the conspirators,' he told Apponyi. He added that the 'Italian Revolution' was the result of French propaganda, and that whenever a village rose in revolt it was led by a Frenchman. He grew surer than ever that the French were behind Italian disaffection when, in a melodramatic and futile gesture, a French expeditionary force occupied the Papal port of Ancona in February 1832 as a protest against 'intervention'.

  Sometimes he treated the French with the utmost gentleness. 'A young Frenchman, editor of the Journal des Débats, has arrived here,' Mélanie recorded on 20 June 1831. 'He is a bitter opponent of my husband and his policy. Clemens at once invited him to dinner. That is so like his way of revenging himself!' He could be more brutal, if as subtle. In February he had used the presence in Vienna of the Duc de Reichstadt, the son of Napoleon and Marie Louise, as a threat to bring Louis Philippe to heel. 'What we ask is not to declare war against us by helping the Italian Revolutionaries.' He stressed the extent to which the Bonaparte family were intriguing and enclosed a letter from Joseph Bonaparte written in October 1830; it urged Metternich to place Napoleon's son on the French throne as the one man who could stop the Orleanists. He had already instructed Apponyi to remind the French how extraordinarily tactful he was being about 'Napoleon II'.

  Metternich seems to have felt genuinely uneasy about the young man. Gentz's friend Count Prokesch von Osten noticed that whenever his name was mentioned the chancellor's expression was that of someone swallowing a pill, yet it may have been sheer pity. The Eaglet died at Schönbrunn from phthisis in July 1832, still only twenty-one. No doubt he was something of a political embarrassment, but despite Bonapartist attempts to portray Francis and Metternich as his gaolers, he is known to have been very fond of his grandfather, while the chancellor sent a message—'apart from France, access to which doesn't depend on me, he can go to whatever country suits him. The Emperor puts the restoration of his grandson's health before all else.' He visited the Eaglet just before he died and reported to Francis that 'it was a heart rending spectacle of decay'.

  At the end of June 1831 Metternich confided in Count Apponyi, 'We are very busy with German affairs at the moment. The country is a prey to frightful disorder. Through listening to Liberals, and under the delusion they are ruling democratically, its Princes have reduced their powers to zero. Luckily the Confederation exists and we're about to use it.' He waited another year until he had a pretext. In May 1832 a journalist named Philipp Jacob Siebenpfeiffer assembled some radical students at Schloss Hambach in the Bavarian Rhineland, ran up a German tricolour of black, red and gold—the flag's first appearance—drank the health of Lafayette as architect of the July monarchy and demanded a German republic. Shortly after, German republicans in Paris gave a banquet in his honour at which Lafayette presided. At Frankfurt a month later the Bundestag passed the 'Six Articles', banning political rallies still more rigorously, further restricting the freedom of the press and imposing stricter university discipline; above all, they empowered the confederation—meaning Austria and Germany—to intervene in any state which introduced a new constitution. As the chancellor explained, the question was 'whether Germany remains an independent country or whether she is to be absorbed into the French Revolution'.

  Exactly a month afterwards Palmerston attacked the Six Articles in the House of Commons as a champion of European liberalism. On 7 September he sent a despatch to the president of the Bundestag, protesting that intervention by Austrian and Prussian troops 'might produce a general convulsion in Europe'. Metternich wrote to him, complaining that this was gross interference in German affairs. Even Palmerston's sovereign William IV was outraged as King of Hanover. What made the foreign secretary seem more than a little hypocritical was his refusal to condemn the Tsar's savagery in Poland—he was hoping to revive Canning's Anglo-Russian alliance.

  As if this maelstrom of foreign policy were not enough trouble, the Metternichs had their private sorrows. 'Clemens came to me with the news that our old friend had passed away at nine o'clock,' Mélanie records of Gentz's death on 9 July 1832. 'He feels deeply the fresh loss he has sustained. All those whose company he really enjoyed are gone and he finds himself sadly desolate.' Metternich arranged and attended a Protestant funeral and, since Gentz had left only debts, paid for the tombstone himself. He also had a street in Vienna named after Gentz. 'A rare combination of the most marked talent and true genius has gone down into the grave with the dead man,' the chancellor wrote a week later to Count Prokesch von Osten. 'His place can never be filled, and though for the last few years Gentz worked for me only nominally, I feel his loss in so many important ways.'

  Fortunately another friend, still more valuable, survived. 'Clemens described a really touching conversation he has had with the Emperor,' Mélanie noted in her diary on 13 November 1832:

  The latter said he prayed to God, above all, to preserve Clemens for him since 'without you I don't know how to undertake anything'. Clemens explained to the Emperor that he couldn't continue without him, that his strength would fail. He also said that the Emperor was doubly necessary to him, since he was always influenced by his probity and judgement.

  The loyal wife adds, 'May God preserve them both because truly one without the other cannot save the world.'

  Something of the reason for the undoubted affection in which Emperor Francis was held by many of his subjects may be learnt from a story recorded by Princess Mélanie:

  During his stay at Schönbrunn, as he was walking through Hietzing he saw them burying a poor man who was accompanied to the grave by only the two men carrying the coffin and a priest. The Emperor said to his adjutant Appel 'W
e will follow this fellow, he is so deserted.'

  No similar tale could be told of any other monarch of the period.

  Yet for all his kindness, Francis was a harder man than his chancellor. In 1848 Metternich would tell Count von Hübner that if the Emperor had taken his advice on foreign affairs, he had not done so on internal matters. 'As chancellor I had the right to speak but I did so very moderately, and only during real crises when vital principles were at stake.' Surveillance of writers, artists and musicians was encouraged by Francis, not by Metternich. Nor would he take any notice when the chancellor spoke of the need to reorganise the Monarchy. 'His basic benevolence towards his subjects did not make Francis want to improve their lot by bringing in a programme of rational reform,' says the French historian Victor-Louis Tapié. 'In his view it was enought for them to be given the right to live in peace and order—in "Ruhe und Ordnung".'

  In April, Mélanie gave birth to her first son, whom she insisted on calling after his father. 'I never saw Clemens so pleased,' she writes. On 15 May Metternich was sixty. But on 10 June the baby died. His wife begged him not to grieve so much, since it might injure his health. He answered that he was far too accustomed to sorrow to have any fear of it making him ill. They went off to Königswart, always his favourite refuge.

  Meanwhile, foreign affairs were as threatening as ever, even if war seemed less likely. The most extraordinary development was an entente between France and Britain. As early as August 1830 the chancellor had remarked on the resemblance of the upheaval in France to the English Revolution of 1688, a resemblance stressed enthusiastically by the July Monarchy which welcomed the Reform Bill of 1832 as a kind of British Charte. Louis Philippe had many influential English friends, while in 1832 his daughter married King Leopold of the Belgians, still much liked across the Channel. His new foreign minister, appointed the same year, was the Duc de Broglie, hailed as a French Whig. More important, Talleyrand, France's ambassador in London, had charmed Palmerston. Metternich was more realistic: 'In England revolution only begins as yet to threaten' was his comment. 'If it has made some progress in men's minds it has not so far overturned the existing order of things, whereas in France there is nothing left for the Revolution to destroy.'