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

by Adam Zamoyski

Two months had passed, and precisely nothing had been achieved.

‘There is no kind of rudeness and gaucherie which they do not commit.’ Baron Karl von Nostitz thought the English ‘a strange tribe, with their own clothes and manners’. Similar comments abound.

The image of the British delegation was not improved by the behaviour of the ambassador, Lord Stewart, who drank and whored quite openly, touched up young women in public, and who at the end of October had a brawl with a coachman.

More damaging to Britain than the comportment of her representatives was the policy they appeared to be pursuing. Britain had traditionally been perceived as a defender of liberty. Yet Castlereagh had not uttered a word in defence of the Poles, had never even considered restoring the republic of Venice, had just condemned the Genoese to Sardinian absolutism, and was now conspiring to dispossess the King of Saxony of his birthright and his subjects of their beloved sovereign.

That would not have bothered Liverpool, who was more interested in the situation at home. The opposition was growing aggressive in the Commons, and he needed Castlereagh back to rally the Tory ranks in the House. He planned to adjourn Parliament by the middle of December and to put off the next session until 7 February, in the hope that Castlereagh would manage to settle the more important outstanding business at the congress a couple of weeks before then. He had already found a successor for him in the shape of the Duke of Wellington, now ambassador in Paris.

Liverpool had wanted Wellington to take command of the war in North America, but Wellington saw no opportunity of advancing his career there. ‘Though I feel no particular wish to remain here, I don’t like to be frightened away,’ he wrote on 19 November, making that his excuse for avoiding a transfer to America. In the circumstances, the Vienna posting was an ideal solution, and Wellington could leave Paris without appearing to be running away from anyone.

At Count Francis Palffy’s ball, he came up to Countess Szechenyi, whose husband had just gone to dance with another lady. ‘Your husband seems to have left you,’ said Alexander. ‘It would be a great pleasure to occupy his place for a while.’ To which the Countess retorted: ‘Does Your Majesty take me for a province?’27

what Castlereagh described in a letter to Liverpool as ‘a diplomatick explosion’.

The mechanisms of diplomacy, devised expressly to guard against such potentially dangerous encounters, had not so much broken down as been dispensed with. Instead of dealing through third parties, who, provided they were professional enough to lay aside their most passionate feelings, acted as neutral buffers, Alexander had insisted on conducting the negotiations himself, and had repeatedly attempted to use his position and personal prestige to force an issue. The inevitable result had been a series of confrontations that could easily have led to war.

Although none of the major players could face the prospect of war without dread, and certainly none wished to be seen to provoke one, they remained keenly aware of the dangers of too pacific an approach.

At the beginning of October Wellington duly sounded out the French government on whether it would be prepared to go to war over Saxony, and received a positive reply.17 The approach did not come as a surprise. On 17 October, the eve of the festival of peace in the Prater, Talleyrand warned Louis XVIII that France must be prepared to fight, and his letter crossed one from the King stating that he was putting the army on a war footing. Within a month the possibility of war had turned into likelihood. ‘All the appearances announce a great war,’ Cardinal Consalvi warned his deputy in Rome on 18 November.

It was being rumoured that Alexander had opened up a channel of communication with him, and even that he might consider bringing Napoleon back on the scene. He was reported to have told Prince Eugène that ‘If they force me to, I shall unleash the monster himself on them.’

‘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.

an impression shared by Talleyrand. ‘Lord Castlereagh is like a traveller who has lost his way and cannot find it again,’

by far the most important and most difficult question facing the congress had been that of Poland. But once it had become clear that the three powers which had partitioned that country were not prepared to give up their shares, the Polish question had been superseded by the Saxon one, which had now become pre-eminent.

‘I think as you do,’ replied Talleyrand. ‘We must do everything [to maintain peace] except sacrifice honour, justice and the future of Europe.’

On that very morning of 1 January 1815, news reached Vienna of the signature at Ghent on 24 December of peace between Britain and the United States. ‘The news of the American peace came like a shot here,’ Lord Apsley wrote to Bathurst. ‘Nobody expected it.’ As the implications sank in, everyone realised that the balance of power had shifted dramatically, and there was a noticeable degree of gloom among the Prussian delegation. ‘We have become more European, and by the Spring we can have a very nice army on the Continent,’ mused Castlereagh.

Castlereagh and Metternich had continued to demand the inclusion of France in the formal conferences begun on 29 December. There was still resistance on the part of Russia and Prussia. But Talleyrand declared flatly that if France were not admitted he would have no option but to pack up and go home. Castlereagh stood firmly behind him, and so did Metternich. Alexander was not going to foul his chances of a future alliance with France and dropped his objection, leaving Prussia isolated and therefore powerless.

The first official meeting of the Five took place on 7 January, the second two days later, the third three days after that, on 12 January – the first actually attended by Talleyrand. Many felt that the congress had at last begun, particularly as regular meetings of the eight signatories of the Treaty of Paris were also being held.

Convention demanded, as it still does, that when a member of a reigning house is expected, all the other guests should be present before his or her entrance. This had been punctiliously observed at first, but the aristocracy of Vienna and the visiting diplomats and courtiers had grown so blasé as a result of rubbing shoulders with half a dozen reigning princes on a daily basis that by now they had little inclination to hurry, and preferred to finish their dinners and get dressed in their own time.

Fewer and fewer people could be bothered to go to the parties at all, and in stark contrast to the crush that attended those in October and November, by January many balls were so sparsely attended that the sovereigns could not even find enough partners to make up a dance.

The former allies seemed so thoroughly at odds that one of Francis’s Chamberlains suggested bringing back Napoleon in order to reunite them.

On the evening of 1 February Wellington’s carriage trundled into Vienna and stopped at the door of Stewart’s embassy, where the Duke took up his quarters.

The Duke’s arrival was welcomed by many who believed that he would prove more decisive than Castlereagh, and that his soldierly energy might finally move things on to some kind of conclusion.

Wellington’s introduction to the curious war-dance taking place in Vienna came when, the morning after his arrival, he was graced by a visit from the Tsar of all the Russias. After complimenting him and solicitously enquiring about his journey from Paris, Alexander began to bemoan, with affected anxiety, the fact that from what he had heard France was in poor shape politically, and that its army was riven with dissension and quite unfit for anything. Wellington put him right, briskly affirming that the government of Louis XVIII was strong and that the army was in excellent condition. This news did not, Wellington noted, cheer Alexander, and he left looking more troubled than when he arrived.

The time had come for Castlereagh to leave.

he was determined to see all those issues which he regarded as crucial to Britain settled irrevocably before he left.

he would be held to account on those issues that English public opinion held dear. Foremost among these was the abolition of the slave trade.

the Tsar seemed willing to back him up.

The Portuguese plenipotentiary Palmella objected strongly to this, saying that only those powers which possessed colonies with slaves should be involved. He was backed by Labrador, who argued that since everyone was agreed on the principle of the desirability of abolition, the only points at issue were how and when to implement the ban.

the Iberian sovereigns were torn in the matter ‘between two injustices, one to the inhabitants of Africa, the other to their own subjects’.

The meeting was split between the two Iberian powers and the rest, but the majority was powerless to exert any influence, particularly as Palmella bluntly declared that he did not consider the issue as being subject to international law.

Castlereagh appealed to morality and went to great lengths to explain that abolition did not necessarily entail economic suffering for the slave-owners of the colonies.

He suggested that the conference should at least make a declaration of its intent to abolish the trade, and he was seconded in this by Talleyrand, Nesselrode and the others. Labrador and Palmella agreed, but only on condition it was made clear that each power could choose when to abolish the trade.

Palmella defended his position by declaring that Brazil lacked the workforce necessary to its economy. He claimed that the Portuguese trade was less cruel in terms of the conditions than the others, and also stipulated a minimum term of eight years.

The truculence of the Spanish and Portuguese annoyed Castlereagh. ‘It seems as if the recollection of our services made it impossible for them to do anything without endeavouring most unnecessarily and ungratefully to display their independence,’ as he put it.

On 22 January a treaty was signed between Britain and Portugal to the effect that no Portuguese subject would purchase any slaves on the coast of Africa north of the Equator, in return for which Britain cancelled the £600,000 still outstanding on a loan taken out by the Portuguese government in 1809.19

Castlereagh tried a new approach. He explained that since the entire western coast of Africa north of the Equator had fallen under British dominion during the recent wars, the slave trade had been abolished there. He therefore suggested that the ban should remain in force everywhere north of the line. Talleyrand declared that Louis XVIII had already agreed to this,

Labrador protested that the issue was an internal one for each country and reminded those present that the congress had not been called to decide such matters or discuss morality.

When they next met, on 8 February, all the powers signed a declaration to the effect that the slave trade was repugnant and immoral. They declared the intention of eradicating it and their commitment to work to that end with zeal and perseverance. It was not much of a victory for Castlereagh, but it was the best he could do in the circumstances.

Thanks to the resolution of the Polish and Saxon issues, the question of Prussia’s other possessions and frontiers could at last be addressed, which in turn meant that Castlereagh could make the final arrangements with respect to the frontiers of Holland and Hanover.

Castlereagh finally left Vienna at 10 o’clock on the morning of 15 February, after a sleepless night. The diary of the Dutch plenipotentiary von Gagern records that the British delegation were up all night, desperate to complete every piece of business they could before the Foreign Secretary left.

Statistical Committee, set up at Castlereagh’s behest on 24 December. It had held a total of six meetings, culminating in that of 19 January. It had ploughed through mountains of often dubious documentation to produce an acceptable set of figures which permitted the final settlement of Prussia’s claims.

The Committee on Diplomatic Precedence had been no less efficient. In the course of four sessions, held on 16, 24, 27 and 30 December, it agreed that precedence among diplomats should be dictated by date of accreditation, with no special privileges to be granted to allies or great powers. When it came to treaties, each monarch would sign the copy to be retained by his own chancellery at the top, followed by the others in order of ascending the throne, or, in the case of republics, of election. The same order of precedence was to govern the order of salutes given by ships both in port and at sea. In all cases, the Papal Legate was to have absolute precedence.

the assembled plenipotentiaries were far from happy with the concept of equality they implied. The matter was discussed more fully at the conference of the Eight on 9 February. Palmella and Labrador suggested that all political units be classified into two categories, according to their power status, arguing that it was absurd to treat the ambassador of a tiny principality as if he were on a par with that of Russia or Britain. Nor did they think that republics should enjoy the same consideration as ancient kingdoms. Razumovsky, Talleyrand, Metternich, Löwenhielm and Humboldt argued that there should be three categories.

this would lead to ridiculous and unnecessary complications.

in the end the committee’s eminently sensible original plan was accepted and set the rules which have governed diplomatic protocol ever since.

The Committee on Swiss Affairs was a perfect example of what was wrong with the whole congress. The ‘intervening powers’ represented in

the committee were ostensibly there to adjudicate impartially on both the internal disputes between the cantons and on a number of minor border adjustments, none of which touched on the vital interests of any but the Swiss. But as each of the five powers had its own clients in Switzerland, and as each of them was engaged in negotiations with the others on entirely different matters, the consequence was that far from being addressed dispassionately, the affairs of Switzerland were dragged into the power struggle over Poland and Saxony.

Altogether less contentious was the Committee on the Free Navigation of International Rivers, which met for the first time on 2 February 1815 to discuss the arrangements for rivers such as the Rhine, the Meuse, the Neckar, the Main and the Scheldt which flowed through or between different sovereignties. It included representatives of all the riparian powers directly affected as well as delegates of Britain, Austria and France. It held its second session on 8 February, its third twelve days later, its fourth three days after that, and its fifth on 24 February, by which time it had not only covered most of the issues but also decided that a permanent international commission should be established, at either Mainz or Frankfurt, to rule on all disputes and further developments. Its seventh session, on 3 March, filled in details on tolls, levies and duties, and the classification of boats.