He began to dress like an Englishman, very plainly, wearing black or dark blue frock coats, a habit which he retained for the remainder of his life. Since Richmond was clearly going to be too cold and damp for him to spend the winter there, he looked forward to spending it at Brighton.
He was cheered by a letter from Francis Joseph at the end of July. The Emperor expressed concern at rumours about Metternich's health, insisting that his services to the Monarchy would never be forgotten. 'I shall be very happy to repeat my assurances of unaltered feelings if, at a time which I hope is not too far off, kindlier circumstances should bring you back to your native soil . . .' It acted as a tonic, the fainting fits becoming much less frequent. He began to go out for drives and to visit friends.
Mélanie did not like England as much as her husband did, persuading him that Belgium would be cheaper. King Leopold replied to his request for permission with a warm invitation—'The climate is gentler, life easier, than in the beautiful island where you now live.' They went to Mirvat's to prepare for the journey. 'Our dear Duke of Wellington came up from the country expressly to say goodbye and the Duke of Cambridge from Kew,' wrote Mélanie. They steamed out of Charing Cross Station in one of Queen Victoria's personal railway carriages, Lord Brougham and the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz being among the party which travelled with them as far as Dover. The ship's captain gave up his cabin, Metternich sleeping on the bed, Mélanie on the deck.
They had difficulty in finding accommodation at Brussels, finally renting the small Hotel Bériot in the Boulevard de l'Observatoire from a famous violinist. Later they moved to an old house in the Place du Grand Sablon, which belonged to the Duc d'Arenberg. Metternich calculated that the cost of living was 60 per cent cheaper than in England, a Belgian carriage costing a quarter the price of one across the Channel. They spent eighteen months here, treated with as much interest and respect as they had been in England; there was the same stream of visitors, King Leopold calling frequently. 'My grandfather considered him one of the best diplomatists he ever met,' says Pauline Metternich, 'very wary, very far-seeing, and crafty to the highest degree.' Another visitor was Thiers, seeking first-hand information for his monumental study of Napoleon.
Mentally Metternich remained as energetic as ever. He read all the major European newspapers every day, conducted a vast correspondence, and sent reams of advice to Kübeck and to Schwarzenberg at Vienna. It is probable that Schwarzenberg did not want him back at the capital for fear he might meddle. Schwarzenberg abandoned both constitutional government and what may be termed Metternich's 'cultural federalism' for a centralised tradition of Joseph II. The former chancellor had very mixed feelings about his successor, at first praising him as a man of courage and vision but later blaming him for always asking too little or too much. He cannot have approved of Schwarzenberg's aggressive attitude in his dealings with the French.
He was far less happy in Belgium than he had been in England. Francis Joseph's letter had thoroughly unsettled him. Early in 1850 he told his daughter Leontine how deeply he missed his garden at Vienna. 'My own flowers please me so very much more than those of other people,' he wrote to her. 'Go and see the palace when the lilacs are in blossom, and give them my greetings.' The fainting fits went on, as embarrassing as they were alarming; he would fall out of his chair and then be very angry at attempts to help him to his feet, quite unaware that he had briefly lost consciousness. He had to wait for the commission of enquiry to clear him of the charges of financial misconduct. It issued a number of meaningless interim reports without reaching any conclusion. Undeniably his personal expenditure had been astronomic, but there was no evidence whatever of dishonesty; inevitably, his diplomacy on the grand scale had been very expensive indeed, especially when he was entertaining kings and emperors. He had accepted valuable gifts from foreign governments, but in no sense could these be considered bribes, while it was plain that he had never misappropriated state funds. At the end of 1850 the commission dissolved itself. If there was no formal acquittal, its dissolution was a tacit declaration of his complete innocence.
At last, in March 1851—prompted by Mélanie—Metternich wrote to Schwarzenberg asking him to sound out Francis Joseph: 'Would my return to the Empire be an embarrassment for the government?' He reminded Schwarzenberg that he was nearly seventy-seven, that his only real home was Vienna. There was a prompt reply; the Emperor would be very happy to see him back in the capital.
On 9 June the Metternichs left Brussels, not for Vienna but for Johannisberg. The last part of the journey was by paddle steamer down the Rhine. They remained at Johannisberg until September, being visited in August by Frederick William. 'The King embraced my husband with touching warmth,' Mélanie records. A bottle of the best of their wonderful hock was produced in which to drink Francis Joseph's health. No doubt the wine had also been brought out for Prussia's new envoy to the federal Diet: 'M de Bismarck . . . had a long conversation with Clemens and appears to have the best political principles.
They reached Vienna at 4.30 p.m. on 24 September, having travelled down the Danube from Linz. Crowds were waiting on the bank to welcome home the frail old man. 'We found the villa just as we had left it,' wrote Mélanie ecstatically of their palace on the Rennweg. 'The flowers seemed to greet our return.' Schwarzenberg called on them next day, and spoke at length with Metternich, making himself equally amiable to the Princess. Visitors, who included the entire Imperial family, continued to call for weeks to congratulate them on their return.
Not everyone was pleased to see him back. A newspaper announced that in gratitude for his homecoming the ex-chancellor would redeem all pawn tickets under twenty gulden; in consequence, crowds of ticket holders besieged the Metternich palace for several days. This typically Viennese joke was the only unpleasantness.
The Emperor had been away in Galicia, but as soon as he returned to Vienna he went to the Rennweg. On 3 October Mélanie recorded how the twenty-one-year-old Francis Joseph, looking very handsome and serious, had told her 'he was happy to see Clemens back at Vienna after the horrible time we had been through'. He then spent two hours with the Prince, in private conversation behind closed doors; he assured him that he was going to ask his advice on many matters. He did indeed consult the ex-chancellor frequently. Schwarzenberg did not, though remaining on the friendliest terms. They were invited to balls at the Hofburg and Schönbrunn, Mélanie dancing with great enjoyment. She did not enjoy a ball at the Ballhausplatz quite so much. On seeing her in her old home, Archduchess Sophia exclaimed, 'What Mélanie, you've come? You really are admirable!'
Metternich now possessed all the money he needed, his estates and revenues having been restored, even the pension for his years as chancellor. The Rennweg became, so Pauline tells us, 'a rendezvous for all the diplomatic world, as well as for the whole of Viennese society'. Among the most frequent guests were Prince Windischgrätz—who alone had stood by the chancellor in March 1848—the poet Baron von Zedlitz, and the British ambassador the Earl of Westmorland with his wife. Metternich tried to secure better relations between Austria and Britain. He showed Schwarzenberg a letter from Queen Victoria to a German relation, which complained that the chancellor was unbearable, 'Austria's Palmerston'. Alarmed, Schwarzenberg adopted a much more tactful tone in his dealings with Britain, so much so that Westmorland thanked Metternich for his intervention.
Prince Schwarzenberg died suddenly in April 1852, still only fifty-two. During a mere three and a half years in office he had completely restored the Monarchy's authority and the Emperor always remembered him as 'the greatest minister I ever had at my side'. Yet his unified state was not going to last, as he had begun the alienation of Prussia, which from a partner in Germany became a rival.
The office of chancellor remained unfilled, but Count Karl Ferdinand von Buol-Schauenstein, ambassador to London, was appointed foreign minister. He was the son of an old colleague of Metternich who at the time approved of the appointment, though privately he thought Buol quic
k-witted but shallow. Mélanie noted with satisfaction that as soon as the new minister took office, 'He at once came to see Clemens and treated him with the most perfect deference.' At first he consulted the master, who was only too pleased to give advice, including how to handle the British; Metternich sent him an analysis of Palmerston's address to the electors of Tiverton, besides explaining that the names of Whig and Tory had lost their meaning in the days of 'Mr Canning of ill-omened memory'. A flood of paper continued to arrive from the Rennweg until the end of Metternich's life. After a year or two Buol began to ignore his advice, though he never forgot to treat him with the deepest respect.
The man who had persuaded Schwarzenberg and Francis Joseph to bring back absolutism, the octagenarian Baron Kübeck, retired but nonetheless remained extremely influential in government circles. Still a warm friend of Metternich, he was always ready to listen to his opinions. However, he would die within three years.
In the spring of 1852, Mélanie recorded a visit to Vienna by Tsar Nicholas, who called at the Rennweg twice. On the first occasion Nicholas 'showed us really touching affection'. On the second 'he begged us to go on thinking of him as one of our most devoted friends'—a rare display of feeling by one of the most terrifying men in nineteenth-century Europe. Significantly, he did not forget to have a long conversation with Metternich; clearly he was convinced that the ex-chancellor knew what was really happening in the Austrian Empire. Bismarck too came once or twice, to see what a modern historian has called 'the tremendous old man'.
The Crimean War revealed the limitations of Metternichian diplomacy when practised by someone else. Tsar Nicholas's determination to carve up Turkey-in-Europe and Napoleon Ill's ambition to emulate his uncle's military glories had made a major conflict extremely likely. Russia declared war on Turkey in October 1853, ostensibly to protect the Christian shrines of Palestine, France and Britain declaring war on Russia in the following March. At stake was not what Thiers described as 'giving a few miserable monks the key of a grotto', but whether or not the Tsar should have Constantinople. Austria's problem was to remain neutral without alienating Russia; she had no wish to divide the Balkans with her or to fight anyone. Metternich's view was that she should adopt the position she had used during the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, staying aloof from both sides. Although admitting that he was alarmed—in July 1853 he declared that the situation was 'like a bad dream'—he was reasonably optimistic, writing that Francis Joseph's mind was in tune with his own and moving 'towards universal peace'. The situation was complicated still further by the Tsar's conviction that Austria was bound to repay him for saving the monarchy in Hungary in 1849—many Austrian officers thought that the Imperial and Royal army should fight at the Russians' side.
Nicholas tried to preempt Austria, by invading the Danubian principalities on 3 July 1853 without warning, and by suggesting that Francis Joseph should take Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Emperor argued for nearly a year. Then, without consulting Metternich, Buol persuaded Francis Joseph to let him send an ultimatum to St Petersburg—to demand that Russia evacuate Moldavia and Wallachia. When the Russians left, Austrian troops marched in. On the same day as the ultimatum was delivered, the ex-chancellor had written to Buol, warning him that Austria must never let herself be used as 'the East's advance guard against the West, or the West's against the East.' After the ultimatum had gone, he commented, 'The fatal consequences of any and every action are hidden from Count Buol. He can see what is just in front of him; of what is coming he sees nothing.' Buol compounded his folly by allying with Britain and France in December 1854 but then refusing to commit Austrian troops, although a year later he threatened to declare war if Russia did not make peace. He had already destroyed the counterrevolutionary alliance by the ultimatum of 1854. When the war ended, Austria did not have a friend in Europe. The last vestiges of Metternich's Vienna settlement had disappeared forever.
Moreover, Buol ignored the need to restore Austria's understanding with Prussia. Schwarzenberg had destroyed it by thwarting Berlin's plans for a single German state and then humiliating her, but the relationship might still have been reforged. Instead of reviving Metternich's tactful approach, the new foreign minister allowed Austrian officials to behave with insulting arrogance towards Berlin's envoys at Frankfurt. This neglect of Prussian susceptibilities would have disastrous consequences.
Metternich was distracted from foreign affairs by Mélanie's increasingly serious illness. Ever since the birth of her last child in 1837, she had suffered from stomach pains and fever which frequently prostrated her. These had grown worse in 1848. At the very moment when Russia was invading Moldavia, in June 1853, she began to go downhill but lingered for over six months. She died on 3 March, only forty-eight. Mercifully it was a peaceful death; the only sign she gave of sensing its approach was to ask for the Last Sacraments—her husband told Hügel that she never once complained, never showed any fear. Ironically, she had always dreaded outliving Clemens and dragging out a lonely old age. It was a shattering blow for a man of nearly eighty-one.
Hermine, his youngest child by Eleanor, looked after him for the remainder of his life. Characteristically, he once observed of her, 'She is very like my mother and therefore possesses some of my charm.' Despite this tribute she had never married.
A daguerreotype taken during these last years shows a face of great if weary nobility, curiously ascetic—that of an aged abbot rather than an elder statesman. 'Every evening, after the theatre, people flocked to my grandfather's drawing-room, and often it was so full that one could barely find a place to sit down,' Pauline remembered. 'Since my grandfather had grown deaf he could not take part in a general conversation so that anyone who spoke to him had to talk very loudly, which deeply embarrassed those who were shy.' However, he no longer went into society, never attending levées and seldom visiting the Emperor. He was delighted when in 1856 his son Richard, about to become the Austrian minister at Dresden, married his granddaughter Pauline. (As she was the bridegroom's stepsister a dispensation had to be obtained from the Church.) He insisted on giving half his silver to the couple, for them to use at the legation.
He continued to spend midsummer at Johannisberg and most of August at Königswart. He was visited at Königswart in 1857 by Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. At fifteen, the future Edward VII was not very interested. He remembered that Metternich, who reminded him of the Duke of Wellington, spoke a great deal about Napoleon.
Pauline describes his life in the country. He rose at eight and dressed immediately with the utmost care, as if expecting visitors at any moment. He had a cup of tea, then sat down at his desk, where he read the newspapers and wrote letters. (As late as April 1859 he sent a letter to Rossini, inviting 'mon cher maestro' to come and stay with him at Johannisberg before it was too late.) 'His handwriting was still clear and beautifully formed,' she tells us. His mental faculties were unimpaired. In the afternoon he went for a stroll in the gardens and in evening played whist, but most of his time was taken up by reading—according to his granddaughter, he devoured every important new book.
After the end of the Crimean War in 1856, he grew very worried about Piedmont's designs on Lombardy-Venetia. He realized that Cavour, the Piedmontese prime minister and a political genius, hoped to embroil Austria in a war with France, where Napoleon III was posing as a friend of Italian nationalism. In 1859, the Piedmontese goaded Buol into declaring war. A worried Francis Joseph arrived at the Rennweg on 20 April to ask for the master's advice. It was, 'For God's sake, no ultimatum!' The Emperor replied, 'It went off yesterday.' At the beginning of May before going to the front, he again came to ask for advice, having sacked Buol.
Metternich did what he could, advising that Count Rechberg—with whom he had worked for many years—be appointed foreign minister. He suggested seeking help from Prussia and Russia, though they had been alienated by Schwarzenberg and Buol. 'My grandfather followed the news from the front with unflagging interest but owing to constant ba
d news with a growing sense of pain and sorrow,' Pauline tells us. 'His mental faculties had not weakened in the slightest, so we found it impossible to keep anything secret from him. He read the newspapers every day and had a complete grasp of the situation, describing it on the very eve of his death as a desperate one.'
On 21 May the Emperor came to the Rennweg, asking Metternich to draft the necessary documents for a regency should he be killed in the war. He also asked Metternich to draw up a will for him. But Metternich did not have enough strength for the task. When he received Francis Joseph he was so frail that he had to stay in bed during the audience, which lasted for three hours. Hübner, who was back from Paris, where he had been ambassador until the war broke out, took the tottering old man round the gardens of the Rennweg. He told Hübner, 'I was a rock of order' ('ein Fels der Ordnung'). When he said goodbye, he repeated, as if to himself, 'Ein Fels der Ordnung.'
It is the measure of his reputation that even now he was consulted by the new foreign minister, Rechberg. Metternich could not help him. The nucleus of that Concert of Europe which he had maintained for so long had vanished. Schwarzenberg had alienated Prussia, Buol Russia.
On 5 June Count von Rechberg was with him when the report of the Austrian army's defeat at Magenta arrived—Milan lay at the mercy of the French and Piedmontese, who marched in two days later. He fainted. It was said that the battle of Magenta killed him.
Metternich paid his last visit to his garden on 10 June, carried in a chair, but was unable to get out of bed the following morning. His valet summoned the family and Dr Jäger. He was given the Last Sacraments by the Franciscan friar who had been saying Mass daily in his chapel. When the priest left Metternich smiled at Jäger, waving his hand feebly to show that his heart had almost stopped beating. He died just before noon.
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