Before the conference met, Palmerston was to cause Metternich trouble elsewhere. The Neapolitan government had declared its sulphur mines a state monopoly, selling them to an international cartel. It had every right to take such a step. However, in April 1840 the foreign secretary sent the British Navy to blockade Naples, demanding the abolition of the monopoly together with compensation for British sulphur merchants. Metternich complained that the blockade might very well cause a revolution and that if it did, Austrian troops would have to put it down; he begged Britain to save him from such an embarrassment. Palmerston then asked France to mediate, the end of the affair being that King Ferdinand was bullied into submission and the monopoly was revoked.
Adolphe Thiers became head of the French government in March 1840. A hot-tempered little adventurer, the model for Balzac's ruthless hero Rastignac in Le père Goriot, he lacked any sense of moderation. Metternich considered him to be totally unscrupulous, without beliefs or principles. Nevertheless, Metternich knew that Louis Philippe, despite distrusting the man, would be forced to appoint him. The chancellor had written of M Thiers early in 1839: 'Travelling light and being decidedly agile, he is one of those men who slip, like a draught, through every crack.'
Hungry for popularity, Thiers arranged for Napoleon's body to be brought back from St Helena for reburial at the Invalides. In the Bonapartist tradition he took a passionate interest in Egypt and Syria, being determined to help Mehemet Ali and his son Ibrahim. Both men were extremely popular in France for having given employment to so many French ex-officers, while it was widely hoped that a strong Egyptian-Syrian state would buttress France's North African empire. Thiers intervened on his own without bothering to consult the other powers; he attempted to arrange a settlement between the Porte and Egypt which would leave Mehemet Ali and his son in undisputed possession of Syria—he was convinced that he could force it through in the face of Palmerston's preference for a partition of Syria. Nor would he send a French representative to the conference in London.
Palmerston took advantage of the absence of French representation to induce Russia, Austria and Prussia to sign the London Convention of July 1840 which offered Mehemet Ali Egypt to bequeath to Ibrahim with the Pashalik of Acre for his lifetime only. Palmerston felt no qualms about breaking the entente, the Northern Powers being delighted to help him do so. The French received the news with fury. 'A wave of anger swept the entire country,' the Bonapartist historian Victor Duruy recalled. 'The government gave the appearance of associating itself with this understandable outburst of national pride and France had her hand on her sword hilt.' To the French it seemed as if all Europe was against them. Thiers lost his head, declaiming 'an army ready and well armed, that's our policy'—he threatened to invade the Rhineland. Germany erupted, every local newspaper printing Becker's fierily patriotic verses, 'Sie sollen ihn nicht haben, den freien deutschen Rhein' ('They're not going to have it, the free German Rhine'). The situation grew even worse when the British, Russian and Austrian fleets shelled Mehemet Ali's garrison at Beirut into surrender after he had tried to crush an uprising by Syrian Christians. However, France recalled her own fleet, although it outnumbered the British, and Mehemet Ali ceased to be a threat to Turkey. King Louis Philippe had had enough, Thiers being forced to resign in October. Metternich, who had genuinely feared that war might break out in the West, commented, 'The man was wrong in every way'—he had 'taken no nationality into account apart from the French'.
Thiers was succeeded by François Guizot. Surprisingly, this austere Protestant intellectual soon showed in his foreign policy that he had more in common with the Austrian chancellor than any other European statesman, even if they did not always agree. Both learnt to trust and even like each other. Guizot too possessed a 'philosophical' approach to conservatism while, ironically, his mistress was Princess Lieven, still pursuing her taste for love and power politics. In 1841, France rejoined the Concert of Europe, signing the Straits' Convention together with the other powers; this put an end to Russia's right of passage through the Dardanelles, closing the straits to warships of every nationality.
The chancellor appeared to be isolated when his great ally Clam-Martinitz died in 1840. However, he found that he had much in common with Karl Freiherr von Kübeck, who became president of the Hofkammer (Imperial Exchequer) the same year and joined the Ministerkonferenz. 'Hans' Kübeck, the son of a Moravian tailor, had worked his way up through the civil service and had been the real architect of Kolowrat's widely acclaimed balancing of the budget estimates in 1829. He concentrated on improving the monarchy's economic resources and, largely due to Salomon Rothschild's support, gave Austria excellent railways. Flattered by Metternich's friendliness, he was in any case sympathetic towards his proposals that Austria should either enter the Zollverein or else take over southern Germany's commerce by exploiting the rail link between Austria and the Adriatic.
During his visits to Germany, the chancellor received the distinct impression, only too well justified, that Austria was lagging behind economically. 'I observed [industrial] forces in operation, and the direction they were taking; I felt strongly that we are in a position of inferiority because we have no commercial policy of our own, no policy which was specifically Austrian, and which answers to the situation,' he reported. 'I felt that our policy was negative in contrast with the unceasing activity I could see elsewhere.' He was determined to redress the balance.
By 1841, the South German states, growing nervous at unmistakable signs of Prussian expansionism, were ready to welcome Austria into the Zollverein. Metternich dreamt of creating a customs union in the centre of Europe, which would include not only Germany and the Habsburg lands but the Italian states as well, a Zollverein of seventy million people, extending from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, and from the Rhine to the Russian border; it would enable Austria to reassert her domination over Germany and make possible the formation of a Lega Italica, bypassing the misgivings of Italian sovereigns. Kübeck supported the plan warmly. When put to the Ministerkonferenz in November 1841, it was received with no less enthusiasm by Archduke Ludwig and Kolowrat, a commission under Count Hartig being appointed to examine its feasibility. However, Hartig's commission decided against it, on the grounds that the integration of the Hungarian and Austrian customs which must first take place would cause such resentment in Hungary that it might lead to demands for secession. The chancellor was bitterly disappointed. 'Austria is on the point of seeing herself to some extent excluded from the rest of Germany', he told Kübeck, 'and treated as a foreign country.' Metternich's alternative scheme of developing the Adriatic outlet was also rejected, because it would cost too much to build the railways.
If he failed over the Zollverein, Metternich was far more successful in his encouragement of railways. For once the Ministerkonferenz was less obstructive than Emperor Francis, who had feared that railways might be used to bring revolution into the Habsburg lands. After Francis's death, Metternich had been swiftly converted to the idea by Salomon Rothschild, who obtained concessions to build lines from Vienna to Galicia and to Brünn (Brno) in 1839. Soon there were lines to Budapest and Trieste. When further expansion was threatened by mismanagement and corruption, the state took over the task. It is perhaps surprising that Metternich was so keen a supporter of the railroads' construction. 'Generally speaking, I am against [such] enterprises being promoted by the state,' he was to write in 1844—in words which sound strangely modern today. 'They should be left to private individuals, though I speak only of those which require a great amount of capital. Nonetheless I would like to keep a government's right to exercise protection and control.'
He made a further attempt to take the Monarchy into the Zollverein in 1843, producing a workable scheme for the abolition of tariffs between Austria and Hungary. As before, it was supported by Kübeck. However, Metternich was absent when the plan came up for discussion by the Ministerkonferenz. Unexpectedly, Kolowrat decided to oppose it and made certain that it was rejected.
The 1830s and early 1840s had seen the autumn of Metternich's dominance. Despite the July Revolution, and despite the death of Francis, he still towered over every other statesman in Europe. In 1836 he had some unusually revealing conversations with an American scholar. In June that year Mr George Ticknor of Boston, sometime professor of modern languages at Harvard and a close friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, called on Metternich at the Ballhausplatz with a letter of introduction from Alexander von Humboldt. It was the first of four meetings. 'Prince Metternich is now just sixty-three years old,' Ticknor wrote, 'a little above the middle height, well preserved in all respects, and rather stout, but not corpulent, with a good and genuinely German face, light blue eyes that are not very expressive, and a fine Roman nose . . . His hair is nearly white, and his whole appearance, especially when he moves, is dignified and imposing; but his whole appearance is winning.'
At the second meeting (on 1 July) the chancellor spoke with remarkable frankness about himself and about his political attitude. 'I am myself moderate in everything, and I endeavour to become more moderate. I have a calm disposition, a very calm one,' he assured his guest. 'Monarchy alone tends to bring men together, to unite them into compact and effective masses; to render them capable by their combined efforts, of the highest degrees of culture and civilisation.' Ticknor objected, arguing that individuals were of more importance in a republic, since a republican government had less power.
'I am aware that your country could never have made so much progress in so short a time under any other than a democratic system,' answered Metternich, 'for democracy, while it separates men, creates rivalships of all kinds, and carries them forward very fast by competition among themselves.' Democracy was natural to Americans. But:
In Europe it is a lie, and I hate all lies . . . I have always, however, been of the opinion expressed by Tocqueville, that democracy, so far from being the oldest and simplest form of government, as has so often been said, is the latest invented form of all, and the most complicated. With you in America it seems to be un tour de force perpetuel. You are, therefore, often in dangerous positions, and your system is one that wears out fast . . . You will go on much further in democracy; you will become much more democratic. I do not know where it will end, nor how it will end; but it cannot end in a quiet, ripe old age.
Metternich then asked who would be the next President of the United States. Ticknor, a Whig, replied that to his regret it would be the Democrat, Martin Van Buren. The chancellor commented:
Neither should I be of Mr Van Buren's party were I in America. I should rather be of that old party of which Washington was originally the head. It was a sort of conservative party, and I should be conservative almost everywhere, certainly in England and America. Your country is a very important one. This government is about to establish regular diplomatic relations with it. You have always managed your affairs with foreign nations with ability.
'The present state of Europe is disgustful to me' was a remark which Metternich made over and over again. 'England is advancing towards a revolution . . . has no great statesmen now, no great statesmen of any party, and woe to the country whose condition and institutions no longer produce great men . . . '
France, on the other hand, had the Revolution behind her, though she too lacked able men—'Louis Philippe is the ablest statesman they have had for a great while.' Yet:
The influence of France on England since 1830 has been very bad. The affair of July, 1830, is called a revolution: it was no such thing; it was a lucky rebellion, which changed those at the head of government, nothing else. But when Louis Philippe said, at the famous arrangement of the Hôtel de Ville, 'The Charter will become a reality', he uttered a falsehood . . . there existed no Charter at the moment when he spoke, for that of 1814 was destroyed, and what became of the Charter afterwards he knew as little as anybody in such a moment of uncertainty. The elements of things in France are very bad . . . there is a great deal of talk about a constitutional government like the English, which they can comprehend as little as they can our German theories or your practical democracy.
He told the man from New England, 'I do not like my business—Je n'aime pas mon métier . . . the present state of Europe disgusts me' and how at the turn of the century he had thought of emigrating to America but had been held back by his inheritance. Curiously, after so many years, he explained, 'I did not make the peace of 1809, for I did not choose to make it. When a minister begins, under such circumstances, as I began under then, he must have a clear ground—un terrain net . . .'
The conversation lasted for about an hour and a half. The chancellor spoke throughout with great earnestness and eloquence, sometimes striking the table, but, Ticknor tells us, 'He was always dignified, winning and easy in his whole air and manner.'
When they rejoined Mélanie and the rest of the party, the conversation was about the legal action brought against the British prime minister by the husband of his mistress, Mrs Norton. 'If Lord Melbourne had been convicted he must have gone out, and perhaps the Ministry would have been entirely dissolved—an event which would have diminished, I am sure, the Prince's disgust at the present state of Europe,' says Ticknor. (Palmerston was Melbourne's foreign secretary.)
Ticknor was impressed by the dinner, 'as delicious, I suppose, as the science of cookery could make it, and extended through from ten to fourteen courses, with many kinds of wines, and among the rest Tokay'. He adds:
We had good Johannisberg, of course, and the Princess made some jokes about her selling it to the Americans, to which the Prince added, that he had an agent in New York for the purpose, and that we could buy there as good wine as he gives to his friends in Vienna.
Metternich was still immensely proud of Schloss Johannisberg, where he spent a few weeks every year, entertaining so lavishly that on one occasion his wife compared it to a hotel. Yet his favourite country houses were those in Bohemia and Moravia, where he now had extensive estates. According to the Almanach de Gotha for 1836, in Bohemia he owned 'the seigneurie of Plass joined to the domains of Katzerow, Biela and Kraschau' and 'the seigneurie of Königswart joined to the domains of Miltogau, Amonsgrun and Marensgrun'; in Moravia 'the seigneurie of Brzezowitz and the domain of Kowalowitz'. He liked Königswart best. He told Ticknor that no part of Europe had prospered more than Bohemia during the last twenty years.
The two men genuinely respected each other. 'I take him to be the most consummate statesman of his sort that our time has produced' was the American's verdict on the chancellor. The latter's friend Humboldt told Ticknor, 'Prince Metternich, whom I met at Teplitz, was delighted by his meeting with you. You seem much more rational in his eyes than what he calls my liberalism.'
However, the dialogue had taken place when the chancellor was still in his self-confident sixties. The septuagenarian Metternich would be a very different man—and in very different circumstances.
17
Metternich at Seventy
Metternich is only a shade of his former self.
TSAR NICHOLAS I in 1845
A final victory of this policy of pure monarchism was an impossibility.
SRBIK, Metternich, der Staatsmann und der Mensch
Metternich reached the age of seventy in 1843, despite a conviction that he would die young. He was less vigorous and Mélanie worried about his health, but his mental energy was unimpaired. He kept pace with events—it has been said that he was never ahead of his time or behind it—and could cope with any crisis. There was no apparent threat to Restoration Europe; Orléanist France had been contained, while the Triple Alliance remained intact. The Italian societies had been broken, their leaders chased into exile. If he had been checked over the Zollverein, it looked as though he had found a solution to the Hungarian problem. When the first hint of disaster appeared in 1846 it came from a most unlikely quarter.
The political situation at Budapest began to improve during the Diet of 1843–4. A new and effective conservative leader emerged, Count
György Apponyi, with whom Metternich established a cautious alliance. The chancellor encouraged a programme of economic reforms (an investment bank, new roads and railways) very like that advocated by Széchenyi, so that 'hollow theories and sterile polemics would go up in smoke'. It was his answer to Magyar nationalism and separatism, 'a saving operation'. He warned that 'though the fire of revolution has not broken out, it smoulders on and if the elements are not halted they will transform the old structure into a heap of cinders'. Since emerging from prison in 1841, Kossuth had been rabble-rousing through his paper Pesti Hirlap, which blamed Hungary's woes on Vienna instead of on the 'plum-tree' nobles' refusal to pay taxes. Metternich took some of the wind out of Kossuth's sails in 1844 by accepting Magyar as the Diet's official language; Ferdinand would open the 1847 Diet by reading out a speech in Magyar. The chancellor had fully accepted that Hungary could only be governed through its constitution.
If Hungary was the centre of nationalist debate within the Monarchy, Metternich saw the problem as a whole. He still intended to build an all-embracing central government behind a constitutional façade. (In 1847 Count Ficquelmont would define it neatly when complaining of the problems of attempting to 'go on running the Kingdom [of Lombardy-Venetia] as a province but organise and above all govern it in such a fashion that we might present it as an Italian state'.) The chancellor continued to encourage local languages and traditions, looking with a benevolent eye on provincial Diets as long as they did not try to discuss politics, and dreamt of Ferdinand being crowned as Emperor of Austria at a coronation to be attended by representatives from every Diet. After 1848 and the attempt to build a Grossdeutschland, he was to write that he had never seen Germanisation as an option for the Monarchy, since Austria was 'a Magyar-Slav state' and that even its German-speaking provinces had no bond with Germany.
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