Stein’s verdict was hardly less withering: the congress was not only a missed opportunity, it had ended in ‘a farce’. He blamed ‘the distractedness and shallowness’ of Alexander, the ‘obtuseness and coldness’ of Hardenberg, Nesselrode’s ‘feeble-mindedness, meanness and dependence on Metternich’, and ‘the frivolity of all’ for the failure to achieve anything for Germany.
