‘The variations in the conduct of the English plenipotentiaries are the key to the whole history of the congress of Vienna,’ Gentz wrote on 20 December. ‘It is they that explain why, after three months, the congress has not achieved a single result.’ Metternich would later blame Castlereagh’s initial mistakes for skewing the entire course of the congress. ‘Therein, there can be no doubt, lay the principal cause of the unsatisfactory result of the Congress,’ he wrote in his memoirs.
