In 1832 the Eastern Question reemerged, in a different form, when Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, rebelled against the Porte, wiping out Sultan Mahmud's armies in both Syria and Anatolia. The Tsar intervened to protect the Porte against invasion, landing 14,000 men on the shore opposite Constantinople, which was further defended by the Russian navy. On 26 June Count Orloff signed the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi with the Turks, a document which had been drawn up personally by Tsar Nicholas. The Russians promised to defend Turkey-in-Europe against any aggression; in return, by a secret clause the Porte promised to forbid entry into the Dardanelles to all foreign warships while allowing those of Russia free passage. An indirect Russian protectorate had been established over the Ottoman Empire.
Britain in particular was outraged. It meant the end of Lord Palmerston's scheme for reviving Canning's alliance with Russia; he would never again trust the Tsar. Broglie was no less angry; since Napoleon's conquest of Egypt, France had taken an almost proprietary interest in Egyptian affairs. Like the French, Metternich was taken completely by surprise at the news of Unkiar-Skelessi, at first refusing to believe it; unlike them, however, he welcomed it, seeing not only a long-desired chance of meeting the Tsar and negotiating face-to-face, but also a possibility of reviving the Triple Alliance.
A conference was arranged, to meet at Münchengrätz (now Mnichovo Hradiste) in Bohemia early in September. It would be attended by the Tsar and the Austrian Emperor, with their foreign ministers. First, however, Metternich went to discuss the problems of Germany with his old friend the King of Prussia, and also to let Frederick William know just what he hoped to achieve at the conference; he never took anyone for granted, especially when the Prussian chancellor, Ancillon, was covertly hostile. According to Mélanie, her husband came back well satisfied from his talks with the King at Teplitz in August.
Münchengrätz, 'a very small and filthy town' in Princess Mélanie's opinion, was to be the scene of one of Metternich's greatest triumphs. He was aware that he had influential enemies in Russia, such as the ambassador at Paris, General Pozzo di Borgo—'After England, it is Austria for whom he has born the most active and long standing hatred,' the chancellor had observed in 1826. He knew that the foreign minister, Nesselrode, had great confidence in Pozzo. However, he was not in the least worried about his ability to handle Nesselrode, that 'poor little fellow' whom in the past he had so often brought round to his way of thinking.
The Russian whom Metternich regarded as most formidable was Nicholas I, the 'Nebuchadnezzar of the North', who was a very different man from Alexander. 'This new Tsar has succeeded in enveloping himself in a system of fear, and rule by fear suits the Russians,' he had written. 'His policy will be Russia first and foremost.' Metternich realized that Nicholas was only interested in the Alliance as long as it profited Russia, that 'empire on the frontier of civilisation, with no resemblance to other European states'. He had no fear of Tsarist Russia; it was the thought of a non-Tsarist Russia, a revolutionary Russia, which frightened him. 'What would happen to Europe if 30 million slaves and an army of 800,000 were let loose?' he once asked. 'Where we and every thinking European see a vista of death they [the revolutionaries] see life and triumph.' No one can deny the clarity of his vision of a 'Jacobin' Russia. He had every reason for wishing that Tsar Nicholas's regime should prosper.
The Tsar did not like what he had heard of Prince Metternich, who had manipulated his elder brother Alexander so cunningly. Moreover, the chancellor was not a soldier, the only type of man with whom Nicholas felt at ease, but a polished and supremely Western bureaucrat. No doubt like the Comte de Falloux, the Tsar expected to see an overdressed survival from the eighteenth century; if so, as Falloux puts it, he would have been surprised at beholding 'one of the most handsome and distinguished men of his day, in no way antique or foppish, very well informed and thoroughly up to date in his conversation'.
The Metternichs dined with the Emperor and Empress every day at Münchengrätz, usually playing billiards afterwards. When Tsar Nicholas arrived on 10 September he told the chancellor, 'I have come to place myself under the orders of my chief—tell me my mistakes.' He called on Mélanie, who had at first thought him cold and stiff, and was very friendly, later revealing that he too played billiards. He confided his private opinion of Metternich in a letter to the Tsarina: 'Every time I go near him I pray God to deliver me from the Devil.' (In 1839 he referred to Metternich as 'a cohort of Satan'.) Even so, during the conference he succumbed to Metternich's charm, admitting that he was very amusing. Moreover, even before the 1830 revolution, Nicholas had decided that the survival of Turkey-in-Europe was in the best interests of European stability and of Russia.
The chancellor knew at once that he was going to get what he wanted. He told General Benckendorff (Darya Lieven's brother), 'At meetings like this they used to discuss matters and scribble papers for months on end. But your Tsar has another method. Everything is decided and settled in an hour.' In Mélanie's words, her husband 'was shut up with Nesselrode'. On 18 September 1833, Austria and Russia signed an agreement that they should do everything in their power to save the Ottoman Empire, and to decide together on what action should be taken if despite their efforts it showed signs of disintegrating. They also agreed on joint action in case of future Polish risings. In addition, there was to be a declaration by Austria, Russia and Prussia (signed at Berlin the following month) reaffirming the three powers' support for legitimacy and for nonintervention—unless invited by a legitimate sovereign. Mün-chengrätz had not only settled the Polish and Eastern Questions—at any rate while Metternich was chancellor—but it had revived the Triple Alliance.
No less hostile a critic than A. J. P. Taylor has to admit his success:
To keep the peace between Russia and Austria and yet to prevent any further advances in the Near East was Metternich's greatest diplomatic achievement, all the greater for his rating it less high than his struggle against the 'revolution'.
Not everyone saw it in that light at the time.
As Metternich had commented earlier in 1833, 'In short Lord Palmerston is worrying about everything.' When Palmerston heard of the conference at Münchengrätz he was convinced that Austria and Russia had agreed to divide up Turkey between them. The French were no less alarmed. The 'entente' responded by creating what it hoped would be a power bloc to counter the Triple Alliance. They saw their opportunity in the Iberian Peninsula. Supported by the arch-reactionary Ferdinand VII of Spain, King Miguel and his traditionalist followers had been in complete control of Portugal for some years; the liberals who supported Queen Maria held only one small island in the Azores. The situation changed when Ferdinand died in September 1833, the same month as the Münchengrätz conference. Spanish liberals soon took over Spain in the name of Ferdinand's daughter, Queen Isabella, and ousted the legitimist claimant, Don Carlos, the late King's brother; to preempt a Carlist-Miguelist axis, they then undermined Don Miguel's regime so effectively that he was quickly replaced on the Portuguese throne by Queen Maria. England and France supported the new governments with enthusiasm, the four countries forming a 'Quadruple Alliance' in April 1834 to preserve the Spanish and Portuguese constitutions; Palmerston wrote exultantly to his brother, 'I should like to see Metternich's face when he reads our treaty.'
Although thoroughly in favour of Don Carlos and Don Miguel, the Austrian chancellor had made a point of recognising neither, restricting himself to a threat of intervention in both Iberian countries if revolution ensued as a result of the altered successions. He tried to defuse the situation by urging a return to the Concert of Europe; in July he suggested a pact between the 'Northern Powers' on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other, with the declared intention of guaranteeing European peace. Britain rejected the proposal.
In November 1834 Lord Palmerston sent a letter to the British chargé d'affaires at Vienna, Mr Fox-Strangways, to inform him that the Whig government had resigned and he was leaving office. He added, 'Lose no time i
n taking this note to Prince Metternich. I am convinced he will never in his life have been more overjoyed than when he reads it, and that I shall never have seemed so agreeable to him now that I am bidding him "goodbye".' The chancellor replied with a letter to Fox-Strangways, commenting, 'If instead of the word "joy" he had used "hope" he would not have been far wrong.' But Palmerston returned as foreign secretary within a very few months.
Quite apart from the danger of going to war over Belgium or the Iberian Peninsula, there was the constant menace of the Italian secret societies. After the rout of the Carbonari in 1831, from his lair at Marseilles Mazzini had formed Giovine Italia, whose objective was a united socialist republic of Italy under what he termed 'a species of Comité du Salut Publique'. Most menacing if even more ineffectual were Buonarotti's Veri Italiani.
Filippo Buonarotti (1761–1837) had a history of the sort which aroused Metternich's worst suspicions. He had been in Paris during the Terror, when he was a member of the Jacobin Club and an enthusiastic Robespierrist; later he played a prominent role in the abortive 'communist' rising led by Babeouf, the 'Conspiracy of Equals'. His society of 'Sublime Perfect Masters' had three levels of initiation: members of the first were told simply that they must strive to achieve Deism and the Sovereignty of the People; of the second that their aim was a republic; and of the third that they were working for a communist society. When the July Revolution had made it possible for him to return to Paris in 1830 he was hailed by the left as a ghost from the glorious past, becoming a living embodiment of 1793 to whom every revolutionary flocked, and had reorganised what was left of the French Carbonari, the Charbonnerie Démocratique Universelle. Needless to say, Austrian agents reported whatever they could learn of his activities to the chancellor at Vienna. If his organisation was not the Comité Directeur, which supposedly controlled all Europe's secret societies from Paris, Metternich must have been convinced that Buonarotti's organisation was very close to it. The involvement of this Terrorist of '93 in the societies strengthened Metternich's belief that the real struggle was not between conservatism and liberalism but between conservatism and red revolution.
Soon entire regions of Piedmont were disaffected as a result of Mazzini's activities, and remained so until purged in 1833. Other cells were discovered in Tuscany and Naples. Like the Carbonari, their members plotted ceaselessly to assassinate both Emperor Francis and his chancellor. There were Mazzininians from Italy among the men who attempted a coup at Frankfurt in April 1833; the free city was promptly occupied by 'federal' troops—in practice mainly Austrians and Prussians. The invasion of Piedmontese Savoy from Switzerland by a band of Italian and Polish revolutionaries in February the following year, during which a steamboat was seized on Lake Geneva, failed disastrously when its leaders quarrelled. 'The enterprise in question is the work of Giovine Italia, which looks on the law of the land as a mere dream in comparison to where it has undertaken to lead the human race' was Metternich's comment on hearing the news. 'The dregs of the entire population of Europe are the promoters of the great work.'
A hundred took refuge in Switzerland but the chancellor forced the Swiss to expel them, moving Austrian troops up to the frontier. (Palmerston protested about the occupation of Frankfurt and warning to Switzerland, a piece of arrogant interference which irritated every German government.) The society Young Italy collapsed, whereupon Mazzini established another society, Young Europe, whose members numbered not only Italians but French, Germans, Swiss, Poles and even Austrians, their object being the creation of a socialist, republican Europe—after they had destroyed the Metternichian system. These bitter young men, forerunners of the anarchists of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, were feared throughout the continent.
However, Metternich was a happy man, very fond of his high-spirited Hungarian wife. Jäger warned him to curb his 'conjugal excesses', angering Mélanie, who refused to speak to the well-meaning doctor. Jäger loathed her, claiming in his memoirs that 'she brought a spirit of arrogance into the house', although Prince Metternich himself was 'a simple, sincere, good natured man'. She was amazed at the easy way in which her husband spoke to lesser mortals. (She is confirmed by Marshal Marmont, who comments on Metternich's manner 'never varying towards great or small'.)
The chancellor was blind to Mélanie's faults, telling his friend August Vernhagen von Enser, 'I met her very late in life and now I couldn't do without her.' She helped with his work, reading despatches to him. He confided in her, even what would now be termed top-secret information—as in 1834 when his agents learnt that Don Carlos had left London secretly to start a civil war in Spain. She took a keen interest in foreign affairs, sometimes questioning Metternich's judgement. 'It is not known who will succeed Lord Grey and Lord Palmerston,' she commented in July 1834. 'Clemens dreads the [English] government falling into still worse hands. I on the contrary think it's the beginning of better times.' (They were both wrong, since the Whigs came in again.) But there is no evidence that she influenced her husband's policies in any way.
If the chancellor insisted 'I've never been a Richelieu', he was indisputably the second man in the Monarchy. In his Souvenirs the Comte de Sainte-Aulaire, the French ambassador, recalls the Archdukes' deferential manner when they met Metternich at the Hofburg, taking off their hats, standing with backs to the wall and behaving 'like corporals before their captain', while he responded with a curt bow and a few words. He was the main topic of gossip at the capital among all classes, and a familiar figure on state occasions—each Corpus Christi (18 June), as senior Knight of the Golden Fleece he walked at the Emperor's side in robes of purple and gold.
He possessed a strong if discreet link with the great families—Schwarzenberg, Furstenberg, Schönburg and Lobkowitz, Clary, Czernin, Dietrichstein, Esterházy, Apponyi, Palffy, and Czartoryski. All aspired to join the orders of chivalry, of Maria Theresa, the Golden Fleece and Malta. No one could do so without the Emperor's permission, which meant Metternich's permission. He was chancellor of the Maria Theresan Order, whose Knights were the Monarchy's greatest heroes, and doyen of the Golden Fleece, whose Knights were its greatest nobles. He controlled admission to the Austrian Knights of Malta, the Grand Priory of Bohemia, regarding it as one of the last bastions of pre-1789 Europe; in 1838 he encouraged it to erect a new priory in Lombardy-Venetia, with an Archduke as Grand Prior. (He saw that the Emperor accorded its Lieutenant Grand Master at Rome full diplomatic status as a reigning sovereign, receiving his resident envoy at Vienna, although the Knights had no hope of regaining Malta.)
The Metternichs' supremacy in Viennese society was absolute. Every member of the great families who could obtain an invitation flocked to their balls and routs, their dinners and receptions. In her diary Mélanie writes of rooms filled to overflowing, of staircases crowded to the point of suffocation—'I could scarcely push my way into my own drawing room.' Nonetheless, she enjoyed herself thoroughly, sometimes waltzing till four in the morning, after her husband had stolen back to his despatch boxes.
The Princess describes an entertainment she gave in May 1834, at their villa on the Rennweg (then a suburb of Vienna). The party was for the plenipotentiaries of the Princes and free cities of Germany, assembled at the Imperial capital to discuss ways of combating the revolutionary spirit. (The chancellor had been warning them that its adherents were by now 'questioning the claims of the middle classes to privileges or property rights while simultaneously wooing the lower classes by encouraging them to hope that all types of property would sooner or later become theirs'.) Mélanie tells us:
On the grass a Turkish tent had been put up, with tea-tables on either side, the beautiful dresses [and uniforms] making the scene very gay. Two military bands were stationed near the house, playing in turn . . . In the tent a very pretty theatre had been erected and comic tableaux were performed by Scholz, Nestroy and Fritz Furstenberg, which were very funny and earned loud applause. Good music was being played in the salon . . .
There was a gypsy c
amp with gypsy dancers, lighted by Bengal fire, a 'charming military dance by children' and fireworks. One suspects that the part of the entertainment which pleased Metternich most were his conservatories, lighted by different-coloured lamps—'We lingered for a moment, to look at the pelargonium which were just in full bloom.'
Occasionally Mélanie's vivacity caused problems. On New Year's Day 1834, M de Sainte-Aulaire congratulated her on her diamond tiara, saying amiably, 'It looks like a crown.' 'Why not?' retorted the chancellor's consort. 'It belongs to me—if it wasn't my property I wouldn't wear it.' Louis Philippe's envoy blenched at this all too clear jibe at his sovereign's usurpation. He complained to Metternich, who is said to have replied, 'You must forgive me but I am not responsible for my wife's upbringing.' Sainte-Aulaire called on her to extract an apology, without success.
Their entertainments were not restricted to the great princely families or ambassadors—even if the Viennese middle class was ruthlessly excluded. Distinguished writers and scientists were made welcome. Balzac came on at least two occasions, a fat and ludicrously overdressed little man. The chancellor shook the novelist's hand warmly. 'I haven't read any of your books,' he told Balzac somewhat disconcertingly. 'But I know all about you—you're obviously mad, or at any rate you amuse yourself at the expense of other madmen, in trying to curse them with a madness even greater than your own.' Balzac, as much a snob as he was a legitimist, pretended to be amused, and the two men undoubtedly took to one another. Metternich even suggested a plot for a play, 'L'Ecole du ménage', which Balzac actually wrote, though it never reached the stage.
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