Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna

by Adam Zamoyski

‘An undisguised personal and national haughtiness (with a sweet sauce of studied, unremitting, ceremonious, condescending politeness and attention) is much more advantageous than is supposed or guessed’ in an ambassador.

The Treaty of Chaumont, signed on 9 March 1814 and dated 1 March, not only distorted the European balance of power in a radical way. It was a completely new departure in the history of international relations. It identified the four signatories, henceforth the Great Powers, as the arbiters of Europe, in effect enshrining the rights of the strongest, in an act which was meant to provide the framework for the conduct of European affairs over the next two decades at least. The four biggest players had taken control of the game, and intended to set the rules from now on.

None had been preparing for Napoleon’s fall more carefully and adroitly than his erstwhile Foreign Minister and current Grand Chamberlain, Talleyrand. Born in 1754 into a prominent noble family, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was destined for the priesthood

he became a bishop, at the age of thirty-four.

He eagerly embraced the Revolution in 1789. It was he who celebrated the great national service on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille,

He avoided the Terror by travelling to England and the United States of America, but was soon back in Paris...

He transferred his loyalties to Bonaparte at the opportune moment and served him well for many years, being richly rewarded for it. In 1804 he became Grand Chamberlain of the Empire, then Arch-Chancellor and Grand Elector, and was given as an apanag...

Immensely clever, pragmatic and versatile, Talleyrand was admired and feared in equal measure. Napoleon affected to desp...

Talleyrand had realised early on that Napoleon’s megalomania would drive him into making miscalculations, and he foresaw that sooner or later the Emperor would lead his army and himself to destruction. Talleyrand wished to save France – and himself – from that unpleasant eventuality. In September 1808, during a meeting of the two Emperors at Erfurt in Germany, he had made his position clear to Alexander, and remained in secret contact with him from then on.

Following the disastrous Russian campaign, Talleyrand had begun to reflect on the subject of who or what could succeed Napoleon.

The Bourbons represented legitimacy against usurpation, legality against illegality. Only a return of the dynasty could guarantee future peace and stability, by making France a respectable but not a threatening power. He had begun to prepare the ground accordingly, making contact with people who were in touch with the exiled royals. He kept himself ready and his hands free (declining Napoleon’s request that he take over the Foreign Ministry once more at the beginning of 1814).

many of those interested in his downfall or just their own future gravitated to Talleyrand’s side.

With the air reverberating to the sound of the guns pounding at the northern and eastern defences of the capital, Talleyrand conducted a series of brief negotiations with various interested parties. But there was always the possibility that Napoleon might return and take the city back. Talleyrand therefore made a show of packing up his belongings, and in the evening obediently set off for Blois too. He chose to exit Paris via the gate of Passy, where his friend Charles de Rémusat was the National Guard officer on duty. In accordance with an agreement reached between them earlier, Rémusat refused to let him through on technical grounds, so Talleyrand turned back and went home.

Talleyrand did not sleep. His hôtel particulier on the rue Saint-Florentin was a focus of activity through the night, with people coming and going as he sounded out and persuaded all those of mark left in the city. By the morning of 30 March he was ready for the allies. But he could still not exclude the possibility that Napoleon might turn up before they did. What happened next would depend entirely on timing.

on the morning of 31 March, Alexander’s aide-de-camp Count Orlov rode into Paris and straight to Talleyrand’s house on the rue Saint-Florentin. Talleyrand gave him to understand, in one non-committal sentence, that Alexander had a free hand to do what he liked. It was the first step in what was to be an almost random settlement of one of the most important questions affecting the future of Europe.

Nesselrode rode into Paris escorted by a single cossack, and also made straight for the rue Saint-Florentin. Talleyrand was at his toilette. This was a remarkable daily performance, often enacted before a series of callers who, in the words of one who witnessed it, could at first ‘see only an enormous assemblage of flannel, felt, fustian, percale, a mass of white’ being attended by two valets in white aprons under the direction of a third in silk stockings and powdered wig. From the upper reaches of this ragged mass, out of a coil of cravats, jutted a firm chin, a permanently curled lip and a small upturned nose. The valets would begin by removing the woollen stockings and strips of flannel from his legs, which were plunged into a small basin of mineral water. This was the only part of Talleyrand that was ever exposed. ‘The remaining parts of his person were covered by drawers, waistcoats, dressing gowns, with various pieces of cloth hanging off every bit of him, and his head wrapped in a kind of tiara of percale, held in place by a pale coloured ribbon,’ continues the diarist. ‘The two valets would then begin to comb, curl, pomade, powder, while he dabbed at his face with swabs which he dipped into a silver dish held before him for the purpose. Amongst the more remarkable elements in his toilette was one, curious enough to overcome the disgust one might have experienced witnessing it, which involved the consumption of one or two large glasses of tepid water which he sucke...

Talleyrand allowed the Tsar to expatiate on the various possibilities – a regency for the King of Rome, the choice of another Frenchman such as Bernadotte as King, even a republic. He then dismissed all of them, declaring that the problem demanded a more radical solution. He argued that the only institution that could successfully replace the Napoleonic regime was one built on a strong principle that would give it the power to endure. As the rightful King of France, Louis XVIII embodied a principle, the very principle on which the French state had been built. It followed that he was the only possible guarantor of peace, law and order. At the same time France must be given a constitution that enshrined all that was best in the legacy of the Revolution and the Empire.

Talleyrand was, in effect, claiming for the Bourbon cause a new kind of divine right to rule, based not on the old legitimacy of succession, but rather on a more modern and pragmatic kind of legitimacy, founded on principle and mutual acceptance, the very opposite of the usurpation embodied by Napoleon, and therefore a fitting antidote to his rule.

As the bearer of an imperial title less than a hundred years old and, like Napoleon’s, unilaterally assumed, Alexander did not like talk of legitimacy in its traditional sense. The idea of a brave new age founded on a fresh concept was appealing.

Napoleon was still at Fontainebleau in command of some 45,000 men, including the elite Old Guard, not a negligible force even at this stage. A determined attempt to rally the people of Paris in his favour might well have ended in catastrophe for the allies. The option of having him assassinated was considered, but it was not Talleyrand’s way of doing things. He suggested that Schwarzenberg propose an armistice to Marshal Marmont, whose 12,000-strong army corps was camped nearest to the capital. When Marmont accepted and moved his camp on 3 April, he appeared to have abandoned Napoleon. This encouraged others to leave what they assumed was a sinking ship.

Perhaps the most challenging moment for Talleyrand was when Caulaincourt, accompanied by Marshals Ney and Macdonald, arrived at the rue Saint-Florentin with Napoleon’s offer to abdicate in favour of his son. Alexander’s chivalrous instincts and sentimental nature reacted with sympathy for the fallen Emperor, and he was inclined to accept. Talleyrand and others pointed out that this would be unworkable, as, short of imprisoning Napoleon on another continent, they could not expect him not to assume a dominant role again. Even that argument did not convince the Tsar. It was only when Talleyrand pointed out that going back on the decision to restore the Bourbons at this point would condemn all those, including himself, who had declared in their favour, that Alexander realised it was too late to change his mind. The offer was refused.

Talleyrand’s residence on the rue Saint-Florentin was a hive of activity. ‘The Emperor of Russia and his aides had taken over the first floor; his Minister of Foreign Affairs Count Nesselrode and his secretaries occupied the second,’ recorded Beugnot, the Minister of the Interior in Talleyrand’s provisional government.

During those chaotic first days of April the fate of France was decided in Talleyrand’s six-room apartment, where he and Alexander dined, worked and received people, Alexander holding court, Talleyrand keeping watch and gently steering him in the desired direction. It was there that Talleyrand, with the sanction of Alexander, turned France into a constitutional monarchy under the Bourbons.18 It was also there that the Treaty of Fontainebleau, regulating Napoleon’s fate, was prepared.

They did not reach Paris until 10 April, and they were not happy with what they found there. All three ministers were outraged to discover that Alexander had concluded the Treaty of Fontainebleau without consulting them. They were unanimous in their assessment that leaving Napoleon on Elba would place him in a position to cause trouble in France and Italy whenever he pleased.

Hardenberg was furious. ‘I permitted myself to reproach the Emp[eror] Alex[ander] on the Convention with Napoleon,’ he noted in his diary the day after arriving in Paris. ‘He invoked Christianity, which enjoins us to forgive our enemies.’

Metternich was beside himself. ‘Your fine E[mperor] has done many foolish things and has conducted himself like a schoolboy who has got away from his tutor,’ he wrote to Wilhelmina.

Along with Castlereagh and Hardenberg, he had no option but to sign the treaty, which they did on 11 April; but he could not forgive ‘the biggest baby on earth’, as he termed Alexander.

the treaty with France that was signed by Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Britain, Spain and Portugal on 30 May was relatively generous. It was neither vindictive nor punitive, recognising as all the plenipotentiaries did that the best guarantee of peace and stability in Europe lay in the rapid recovery of France from the political evils that had overcome her.

Castlereagh had pressed for an outright abolition of the trade by all the signatories of the treaty. His attempts had been blocked by Talleyrand and the representatives of Spain and Portugal, who argued that Britain could afford to abolish the trade, as she had moved more slaves from Africa into her colonies in the past fifty years than the rest of them put together.

Britain had been the most enthusiastic practitioner of the trade, her ships carrying over half of all slaves traded across the Atlantic, and up to four-fifths of her income deriving from the West Indies, which were entirely dependent on it, by the 1780s. But in that same decade humanitarianism had entered British politics under the influence of John Wesley, the Quakers, James Ramsay, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce.

the Treaty of Paris was satisfactory to Castlereagh. His principal goals had been achieved: France had been forced back within her historic frontiers, Holland had been enlarged to include Belgium and the Scheldt estuary, and the Prussian presence on the Rhine had been reinforced, though the details were still to be fixed. And with her acquisition of Malta, the Cape Province, Tobago, St Lucia and Mauritius, Britain had acquired complete strategic control of the Mediterranean and the sea routes to the West and the East Indies.

Stein was not happy with the treaty. Nor was Hardenberg. His feelings had been so strong when Alexander rejected his project that on that very day Münster wrote to the Prince Regent warning of the possibility of war breaking out. It was true that Prussia had been guaranteed possession of the grand duchy of Berg and the area between the Rhine, the Meuse and the Moselle. But the lack of a final settlement in Germany awarding her the whole of Saxony left her extremely vulnerable.

The Prussian military were disappointed that their triumphs had not been rewarded more fully. They had borne the brunt of the fighting in the later stages of the war, and without their courage and determination Napoleon might well have prevailed.

A secret article of the Treaty of Paris stipulated that the powers which had been engaged in the recent war would send their plenipotentiaries to Vienna within the space of two months ‘in order to settle, in a general congress, the arrangements required to complete the dispositions of the present treaty’.

It went on to make it clear that the decision-making would be in the hands of the four great powers. But it was already beginning to dawn on them that, having made peace with France, they could not actually ignore her. A curious anomaly had come into being: while the four were still leagued against France by the Treaty of Chaumont, they were now at peace with her and exchanging ambassadors, so she would have as much right to pass comment and make her influence felt as any of them.

He still believed there would be ‘less to negotiate than to ratify at Vienna’, and that the congress would assemble in July and be over by mid-August.

they concentrated on how to organise the work of the forthcoming congress, and decided that the plenipotentiaries of Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria, along with those of France, Spain and Sweden, would make up ‘a committee which would bring forth the Project for the arrangement of Europe according to the plan previously agreed by the 4 courts, of Austria, Russia, England and Prussia’. The plenipotentiaries of these four courts should therefore meet in Vienna two weeks before the start of the congress in order to agree the project.

The date for the opening of the congress had been set in Paris as 1 July, but time was slipping by, and at a conference in London on 15 June the ministers decided to push it back to 15 August.

The congress itself, they believed, would not last beyond four to six weeks.

But their plans were upset by Alexander, who declared that he must be present, and since he could not waste two months hanging about in western Europe he would go back to Russia.

insisted that the congress should not open ...

Alexander was asked, and agreed, to pledge that he would make no decisions and take no action with regard to the territorial settlement in areas under occupation by his troops.

Vienna gradually filled up with new arrivals as people gathered for the congress.

Up till now, occasional disagreements among the allies had been drowned out by the roar of cannon, their arguments cut short by the need to move on in pursuit of the French, and their differences dissolved in their common fear of Napoleon. Now they were to resume their negotiations, not only at a direct personal level, but also in the hot-house atmosphere of a small, almost provincial city, under the eager gaze of thousands of interested people, and egged on by some of the ablest troublemakers ever produced by the female sex.

Metternich’s main reason for holding the congress in Vienna had been that it would place him in a position of control, but the extent of the advantage to be derived from this would depend entirely on how well-informed he was of his guests’ thoughts and activities.

As Talleyrand was to point out, a major capital was a bad place for a congress. And this one was getting larger by the minute. Vienna, whose population stood at some 250,000, accommodated 16,000 new arrivals in the course of September alone. Some estimates put the number of visitors during the congress as high as 100,000. This is probably too high, but if not only those who came to the congress, but their servants, their retinues and their troops, as well as the thousands of extra servants drafted in from the surrounding countryside are all taken into account, it may not be too far off the mark.

The first to arrive, on 13 September, was Castlereagh. Since Britain had already achieved her goals, he saw his role at the congress as that of mediator. While distrusting the French as much as ever, both he and Liverpool had come to see a defeated France as a potential junior partner in a new entente that would strengthen Britain’s hand.

The business of the congress could be broken down into three categories: territorial arrangements not settled by the Treaty of Paris, the new constitution of Germany, and a range of general issues such as the slave trade and navigation of international rivers.

!

Metternich’s proposal, which he put to Castlereagh on 14 September, was to delegate the drafting of the German constitution to a body representing the principal states concerned; to leave the general issues to be resolved by the plenipotentiaries of Russia, Prussia, Austria, Britain, France and Spain; but to settle the outstanding territorial questions first between the four principal allies without any outside

interfe...