Kindle Notes & Highlights
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May 18 - June 2, 2022
Castlereagh did not like the prospect of France and Spain being excluded, partly because it would appear high-handed, but more importantly because it would rob him of the support of France.
Castlereagh suggested setting up a Steering Committee representing the six major powers – Russia, Prussia, Austria, Britain, France and Spain – to oversee the congress. This committee would nominate a German Committee to deal with the German question, and other committees to address questions such as the navigation of rivers. Interested parties who had come to Vienna would be invited to make their case to the Steering Committee, which, after evaluating it, would present its decisions to a general assembly for approval.
the crucial question of the territorial settlements in Poland, Germany and Italy,
Metternich produced his original proposal with slight modifications reflecting the discussions of the past four days. Invoking the first of the secret articles of the Treaty of Paris, he proposed that they settle amongst themselves all questions regarding the territories ceded by France – i.e. former French territory and that of the French dependencies in Poland, Germany and Italy. Once they had reached agreement, they would communicate their decisions to the plenipotentiaries of France and Spain for their comments, which they would take into consideration before submitting the final version
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Castlereagh voiced his misgivings and repeated his suggestion that France and Spain be allowed to participate in directing the proceedings, but Hardenberg was not about to let Prussia’s newly acquired great-power status be diluted by the inclusion of France and Spain.
Talleyrand had mixed feelings about going to Vienna. He knew that only he could represent French interests adequately. But he confessed to a colleague that he expected to ‘play a very sad role’ there, and feared that he would not be able to make his views heard. He also realised that since there was no possibility of his being able to bring back any prizes, he would be open to criticism when he returned.
In the end, more personal motives prevailed. His obsessive need to be at the centre of affairs was strongly reinforced by the fact that he was in financial straits, and one of his remaining assets was in jeopardy. His Napoleonic apanage the Principality of Benevento, originally a Papal fief, was now in the kingdom of Naples, and it would almost certainly be returned to its rightful owner if Talleyrand did not take a hand in the matter.
since France had nothing to gain from the congress he could take an impartial line in support of legitimacy and international law, which would give him a moral edge over all other plenipotentiaries.
After the signature of the Treaty of Paris, France had only one priority, which was to break out of isolation and resume her place among the great powers in order to exert influence over the settlement in Germany and Italy. The only way she would be able to do this was by dividing the four allies. That would not be difficult, in view of their incipient differences. But Talleyrand would have to move carefully, as the one thing guaranteed to reunite them was any sign that France was attempting to play an active part in European affairs.
France was not after any territorial or other advantages for herself. She did have two specific objectives: to remove Murat from the throne of Naples and reinstate Ferdinand IV, and to preserve the King of Saxony on his.
Both of these objectives could credibly be dressed up in the guise of a selfless pursuit of justice for its own sake, along with many a pious utterance about the desirability of restoring an independent Poland.
‘We want nothing, absolutely nothing, not a single village,’ he would say to all and sundry, ‘but we do want to see justice done.’
chef Antonin Carême. A pastry-cook by training but a master in all fields, with a repertoire of over two hundred soups, and the founder of haute cuisine, Carême held that ‘The culinary art serves as the escort to European diplomacy.’
‘I have just returned from Court,’ Metternich wrote to Wilhelmina that evening. ‘Instead of being with my love I had my first skirmish with the Emp. A. He summoned me and I saw that he wanted to see the lie of the land. […] the result is that he knows nothing of what I want and that I know exactly what he wants.’
‘The object of today’s conference,’ Castlereagh told Talleyrand, ‘is to inform you of what the four Courts have done since we have been here.’
Talleyrand ran his eyes over the text and frowned. ‘In every paragraph of this piece I found the word allies,’ he reported to Louis XVIII. ‘I picked up this word: I said that it obliged me to wonder where we were,
For me,’ he said, ‘there are two dates of importance and nothing between them: that of 30 May, on which the convocation of a Congress was stipulated, and that of 1 October, when it is meant to convene. Everything that has been done in the interval is alien to me and does not concern me.’
They withdrew the declaration, which became the first of what was to become a heap of discarded effort.
They then attempted to persuade Talleyrand and Labrador of the necessity of working through restricted committees, to which all interested parties could address their cases, and whose decisions would be ratified at the end by the first full meeting of the congress. Talleyrand held to his view that if they wanted to endow their decisions with the approval of Europe, this should be sought at the outset rather than at the end. Castlereagh and Metternich argued that to throw the conference open to all would lead to endless complications and end in chaos.
The firmness he and Labrador showed at this first meeting took the others aback. They had grown used to heeding only each other, and it had not occurred to them that they would be obliged to argue points with the plenipotentiaries of powers they regarded as strictly passive players. ‘The intervention of these two persons violently disrupted our plans and reduced them to naught,’ recorded Gentz in his diary. ‘They protested against the form we had adopted, they berated us vigorously for two hours; it is a scene I shall never forget.’
While Metternich and Alexander were indulging themselves in the Palm Palace, Talleyrand was working on a document that would annoy the four ministers even more than his performance of that afternoon. His note was ready the next day, 1 October, when he sent it round to the plenipotentiaries of all eight signatories of the Treaty of Paris. It proposed that while the eight should indeed be the ones in charge of preparing the groundwork and the form the conference was to take, and should appoint committees to deal with specific questions, they had no right to make decisions governing the whole of
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‘I put the law first and interests second.’
there were more alarming implications to Talleyrand’s actions. The text of the note had been leaked, and this had spurred the plenipotentiaries of thirteen minor German states to gather together and call on larger states such as Bavaria to join them in resisting what they termed the ‘usurpation’ of the great powers. This gave the conference held at Metternich’s that afternoon ‘a most unpleasant complexion’, in Castlereagh’s words. They decided not to lend Talleyrand’s note added importance by a formal response, but agreed that they would now have to include Portugal and Sweden in their
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On 5 October the four ministers met for what Hardenberg described as a ‘very stormy conference about Mr Club-foot’s notes’. The upshot was a forceful letter to Talleyrand in which Castlereagh summed up their views. This merely elicited a reply in which Talleyrand protested that while ‘nobody likes bringing up difficulties less than I do; nobody wishes more ardently than me to simplify, abbreviate and to conclude’, he held to his conviction that denying the whole congress a say in the initiation of the process would be to deny its final decisions popular legitimacy.
Metternich asked Talleyrand to withdraw his notes, repeating all the reasons why the four should keep control of the proceedings. Talleyrand refused. He stated that if they wished to proceed in that manner, they could do so without him; he would join the others present in Vienna in waiting for the congress to open. This was a barely veiled threat – Talleyrand on the outside, in a position to rally the hundreds of disgruntled petitioners great and small, was not an attractive prospect.
As long as you follow principles, you will find me amenable in everything.
When the others joined them, at 8 o’clock in the evening, Metternich read out the project of a declaration prepared by himself in consultation with Castlereagh, Nesselrode and Hardenberg, adjourning the opening of the congress to 1 November. Asked whether he would sign it with them, Talleyrand declared that he would, provided a phrase was introduced to the effect that the opening of the congress would take place ‘in accordance with the public law’. This provoked irritation in most of the ministers, and near apoplexy in Hardenberg, who stood up and began thumping the table with his fist and
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When the commotion died down a vote was taken, and Talleyrand’s point was carried. They had argued for three hours,
Alexander sneered that Talleyrand was behaving as though he were the minister of Louis XIV, and Stewart dismissed his behaviour as ‘wicked’ troublemaking. In a letter to the Duchess of Courland Talleyrand admitted that he was now ‘in dispute with all the potentates on earth’
He had nevertheless achieved his first aim. He had eliminated any possibility of the four former allies doing a deal amongst themselves, and he had won a place for France as one of the players. ‘Our words are beginning to carry some weight,’ he reported with satisfaction to Louis XVIII.
Yet he was not being gratuitously perverse and obstinate. He was genuinely alarmed at the tone being adopted, particularly by Russia and Prussia. The one thing he had hated in Napoleon was his refusal to acknowledge any right but that of the strongest, and he was horrified to see the new masters of Europe slipping into the same habit. ‘I recognise in all the cabinets the principles and manner of thought of Bonaparte,’ he confided in a letter to the Duchess of Courland on 4 October.
By casting France in the role of the only one of the major powers that was truly disinterested, he had built up a following among the minor German princes, who saw in his championing of legitimacy their only hope of recovering lost lands and privileges.
The refined but relaxed atmosphere of his house, rendered all the more appealing by his witty conversation, its enchanting hostess Dorothée and the culinary masterpieces of Carême, enticed ever more influential personages, giving him privileged access to information (Gentz was a fingerlicking regular) and influence in widening circles.
Talleyrand’s intervention had not only dashed the four ministers’ hopes of settling matters rapidly amongst themselves, it had highlighted a fundamental flaw in their strategy. Metternich and Castlereagh had planned to form a united front against Alexander made up of Austria, Britain and Prussia, with France in the second rank. But this could never work, however Hardenberg might have wished it.
‘The parties are exhausting me,’ Talleyrand complained in a note to the Duchess of Courland after the opening ball.
Those representing minor interests found that, since the great powers occasionally needed to call on the support of those they had taken under their wing in a confrontation over some issue, they wanted to be their exclusive protector, and therefore looked with displeasure on their talking to other great powers.
Most had expected to stay in Vienna for no more than a month or so. But while they saw time pass without any result, they could not go home without forfeiting the chance, however slight, of a say in their own fate. So they hung about, increasingly bored and frustrated.
‘I contributed almost nothing to the conversation,’ he recorded after one such evening. ‘Metternich and Talleyrand went on in their usual way. Meanwhile I was overcome as never before by the futility of all human endeavour and the foibles of those who hold the world in their hands, as well as by my own superiority; but all this half-unconsciously, and as though lost in a fog that descended on my mind from the empty twaddle of these gentlemen …’
Sexual favours were traded for political or other advantage.
At first the Viennese had been proud to see their city singled out as the venue for the congress, and the property-owners among them delighted by the financial benefits. But by the second week of October the police were reporting that people were growing tired, and longed for it all to end.
Castlereagh had again taken the lead. He determined to tackle Alexander once more on his Polish plans, believing them to be the obstacle preventing progress on every other matter.
Castlereagh suggested that if Alexander really did wish to make the Poles happy, he should combine with Prussia and Austria to establish a truly independent Poland. The one thing Britain could not countenance was a Russian-ruled Polish state, as this would not only give Russia the whole territory of the grand duchy of Warsaw, but also put her in a position to gradually prise back former Polish territory acquired by Prussia and Austria.
Alexander stuck to his guns with ‘warmth and tenacity’, and threatened to use force to achieve his aims.
‘The destruction of Poland as a political power virtually defines the modern history of Russia,’ he explained.
Nesselrode agreed with Pozzo di Borgo. He had no sympathy at all for Polish national aspirations. ‘If the partition of this country was in principle an illegal measure contrary to public law and the maintenance of the equilibrium, at least it had the fortunate result of diminishing the germs of discussion and troubles in Europe,’ he wrote. Stein concurred, arguing that an autonomous kingdom of Poland would not survive anyway as it had no developed third estate.4 But Alexander’s resolve was unshakeable.
Talleyrand suggested that Britain, Austria, Prussia and France issue an ultimatum to Russia on the matter, and on 14 October Castlereagh drew up a memorandum proposing that they lay three options before Alexander: the revival of Poland under an independent monarch, with all three powers returning Polish territory they had taken since 1772; the revival of a similar kingdom within its reduced boundaries of 1791; or a partition of Poland between the three powers, with Russia’s western frontier running along the Vistula. If Russia were to accept one of these three options, the congress could be
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Castlereagh took it upon himself to put their arguments on paper and indulge in what Cooke called ‘a guerre de plume’ with Alexander, while Metternich proposed that he would lay their arguments before the Tsar verbally.
Alexander was not in a good mood on his return. He probably realised that he had blundered up a blind alley. On his arrival in Vienna he had begun by stating his will, assuming that it would be done. When objections were raised, by Castlereagh, then Talleyrand and then Metternich, he had tried to intimidate them. Castlereagh had responded with firmness and two memoranda setting out all the reasons why Alexander’s plans were unacceptable. Talleyrand had confronted him with almost disdainful lectures on legitimacy and international law. And Metternich, while appearing to be open to any proposal,
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I would like a law to be passed in every country after this great migration obliging every sovereign to stay at home.’ Jokes were being made to the effect that by drawing out the negotiations, Russia and Prussia were waging a novel kind of war on Austria, aimed at bankrupting her Emperor.
Representatives of minor interests, who had instinctively looked to Russia and to Britain as their natural protectors, were coming round to the view that Alexander was beginning to pose a greater threat than Napoleon, while Britain was not concerned with anything beyond her own maritime and overseas interests.
