The Age of Elegance (30 page)

hand over Saxony and, with it, the leadership of northern Germany to Berlin. The first would bring a neighbour of immense size and unpredictable ambition to the passes above the Hungarian plain; the second the hated martial State, which had seized Silesia from the Habsburgs, to the gates of Bohemia.

By the aristocratic and Catholic standards of Austria both Russia and Prussia were barbaric and upstart Powers. The Austrian nobility, who had been the guardians of Christendom from the Turk for two centuries, understood far better than the English how thin was the civilised veneer on which the values of the West depended. They knew how quickly it vanished as one moved eastwards into the plains and forests where Rome had never penetrated. It had been this fear of eastern barbarism that had caused the Emperor Francis to hesitate before dethroning his son-
in-law, Napoleon. There seemed li
ttle advantage in exchanging the yoke of a Corsican brigand for that of a Calmuck chief.

Behind the Czar and his European Ministers lay Russia with her boundless territories and population. Her dramatic defeat of Napoleon had struck the imagination of Europe; her armies, triumphant on the Seine, stood revealed as the force of the future. It seemed a strange thing for eighteenth-century gentlemen to see "a Bashkir Tartar with the Phrygian cap and bow" gazing about him from his ragged horse in a Paris street. The inscrutable, smiling barbarism of Russia both fascinated and r
epelled the West. Beneath the gli
tter of its elegant, Europeanised aristocracy, its people were still the savage, elemental creatures that ancient tra
vellers had found beyond the Poli
sh marches. When they spilled into Europe out of the remote plains and impenetrable forests from which Napoleon
had roused them, they behaved li
ke beings of a different species. They cut off the heads of their prisoners, drank the oil out of street lamps and performed their natural functions in parlours. At one
moment they would be standing li
ke automata on parade, ready to be struck down by their officers if they moved a muscle, at another singing in unison in emotion-charged ranks before their incense-swinging priests; or capering about in dirty slovenly grey coats like herds of intoxicated animals. In all they did beauty and savagery we
re strangely mingled. To human li
fe and the rights of the individual they seemed utterly indifferent; even a General whose men fa
iled to keep their mechanical ali
gnment at a review was punished with instantaneous imprisonment. Yet their fierce rhythm and sense of colour haunted the imagination of those who saw them. A British officer recorded his impressions of a Russian equipage in a Paris street: the bearded coachman with the brow and neck of a Jupiter, the beautiful boy outrider with flaming caftan and flowing elf-locks, the little, wild, long-maned horses that at a shake of the whip and a cry were off like the wind.
¹

A Power so impulsive and barbaric, with standards so different from those of the West, could not be allowed to dictate to Europe. Yet, having liberated the Continent from the Jacobin, it had become its strongest part. Both Castlereagh and Metternich saw that the preservation of peace depended on the maintenance of a common front by the victors. It was not by opposing Russia but by influencing her that European equilibrium must be established. And, as no one had been more insistent on the idea of an international order than the Czar, it was the task of western statesmanship to win him from his selfish insistence on purely Russian ends and recall him to the measures necessary to restore the balance and unity of Christendom.

Castlereagh's attempt to reason with Alexander, however, proved no more successful in Vienna than in London. When reminded that his proposal to publish a liberal Constitution for all Poles would not only put his allies, Austria and Prussia, in an invidious position but vex his own subjects who enjoyed no such Constitution, Alexander replied that the Constitution was the handiwork of a British liberal, Jeremy Bentham, and that by opposing it the British Foreign Secretary was flouting the conscience of his countrymen. This was awkward, for it was true. When Castlereagh went on to inform, the Czar's Minister, Nesselrode, that it was not the resurrection of a free Poland that Britain opposed but of a puppet one under Russian control, he was curtly informed that Russia, already in occupation of Poland, possessed an army of 600,000 men.

On October 12th, therefore, Castlereagh addressed to the Czar a letter. After recalling that Britain could not condone a unilateral aggrandisement by an ally, he appealed to him to make the forthcoming Congress a blessing to mankind instead of "a scene of discordant intrigue and a lawless scramble for power." Simultaneously he sought common action with the other victor Powers to induce

¹
Mercer, II, 229-30. See Gronow, II, 19-20; Stanley, 178; Brownlow, 151-4; Granville, II, 476;
Paget Brothers,
262; Dr. Gray,
Autobiography,
II, 269; Haydon, I, 254, 257; Lady Shelley, I,

Russia to modify her claims. But his efforts broke down, not only on the King of Prussia's almost pathological subservience to the Czar but on the desire of Prussian statesmen for hegemony in northern Germany and their realisation that this might be achieved with Russian but never with Austrian aid. Castlereagh, true to the traditional policy of the Pitts, could see little objection to an enlargement of Prussia, especially on the left bank of the Rhine where she could keep watch on France. He shared the view common to most Englishmen who had grown up in the eighteenth century that the Prussians were natural allies; they might be bellicose, but they hated the French.
¹
But his proposal to give Prussia, in return for a stand against Russia, not only most of Saxony but the great southern German fortress of Mainz, was more than Vienna could stomach. She could not permit her rival to control the Main as well as the Elbe, Rhine and Oder.

Meanwhile Mett
ernich too had become embroiled
with the Czar. When informed by the complacent Rhinelander that Austria would welcome a free Poland re-established by Europe but not a puppet state made by Russia, Alexander became hysterical with rage, accused him of insubordination and threatened to force the Emperor Francis to dismiss him. He subsequently challenged him to a duel and, when this was prevented, declined to speak to him for three months. At the same time he made sure of the Prussians. On November
8th
the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army of Occupation handed over Saxony to Berlin. A week later Alexander's brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, issued from Warsaw a proclamation calling on all Poles to unite and fight for their independence.

The eastern barbarians were thus aligned and the cloven hoof shown. If Castlereagh gave way Russia would not only secure a preponderance in eastern Europe so great as to overturn the balance of power, but would destroy the system of agreement between the Powers created at Chaumont. Yet not only was Austria by herself incapable of expelling the Russian and Prussian armies from Poland

¹
"I know," he wrote to Wellington, "there may be objections to . . . placing a Power, peculiarly military and consequently somewhat encroaching, so extensively in contact with Holland and the Low Countries; but, as this is only a secondary danger, we should not sacrifice to it our first object." It was also widely believed—in England—that the Prussians loved the English. "Every Prussian is thoroughly attached to England, and all the young Prussian Princes are
desperate
when they talk of Russia." Duke of Cumberland to Prince Regent, 10th Jan., 1S15. George IV,
Letters,
II, 4.

and Saxony, but the British people were utterly weary of war and unable for the moment to think of anything but the export market and the reduction of taxes. Such military force as they had chosen to retain was mostly on the other side of the Atlantic fighting the Americans, while the Opposition, heedless of geography and completely misled by the Czar's platitudes, was raising Cain over the Foreign Secretary's resistance to his benevolent plans for Poland's constitutional progress. The Cabinet, conscious of its weakness in Parliament, sent off dispatch after dispatch urging Castlereagh not to carry matters to extremities. Vansittart, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, struggling with the demand for lower taxes, was particularly insistent on the need for appeasement. "We ought," he wrote, "to avoid irritating Russia by a pertinacious opposition which is unlikely to be successful."

But Castlereagh was unmoved. He had seen his country pouring out its blood and treasure for the ideal of international law for twenty years. He did not now intend to let that law be flouted with impunity by anyone, foe or ally. He would not allow a "Calmuck Prince" to dictate to Europe. "You must make up your mind to watch and resist him as another Bonaparte," he wrote to the Prime Minister. "You may rely upon it, my friend Van's philosophy is untrue as applied to him. Acquiescence will not keep him back nor will opposition accelerate his march."

Having chosen his course, Castlereagh did not shrink from the measure to implement it. It was his habit, when threatened, to face danger boldly.
¹
Having failed in his attempt to use the machinery of the quadruple alliance to restore European equilibrium, he called in an outside Power. For his ultimate objective was not the Grand Alliance, but the purpose for which the Grand Alliance had been created.

Talleyrand's opportunity had come. He had gone to Vienna with two convictions: that an alliance of the great Powers from which a defeated France was excluded would produce not stability but instability, and that the westward expansion of Russia must be halted if civilisation was to recover. As a Polish nation could only be recreated with safety to Europe if given the strength to preserve its

¹
Walter Scott used to repeat, as an illustration of his courageous temper, a tale he had heard Castlereagh tell of how, approached by a giant spectre in a lonely Irish house, he had sprung from his bed and faced the spectre in an attitude of defiance, following it step by step across die room until it vanished. Lockhart, V, 213-14. See for his demeanour in the presence of a mob, Gronow, I, 221
.

independence, and as this was impossible, there was only one thing to be done: to return to the
status quo
and leave Poland divided between the original partitioning Powers. By throwing the weight of France into the scales to ensure this, Talleyrand could align her beside Britain and Austria and so end her isolation.

He had carefully prepared the way. The Peace of Paris, which referred questions affecting Europe as a whole to a conference of all the belligerent nations, had imposed on defeated France a secret article by which the four main victor Powers reserved to themselves the disposal of the non-French territories they had reconquered. This clause had never been communicated to the smaller Powers, who, being equally concerned in such general territorial dispositions, were bound to resent it. Relying on this, Talleyrand at an informal discussion on conference procedure inquired why the other signatories to the Treaty of Paris were not present as convening Powers, why, having pledged themselves to call an all-European Congress, the big Powers were setting up a council of four only, and why, five months after the restoration of the Bourbons, they were still using the invidious word,
Allies.
As by international law all sovereign States were equal, it was hard for those who were setting themselves up as the champions of public law to traverse this argument. The cunning Frenchman had thus been able to secure a reluctant admission that all eight signatories of the Treaty of Paris, including Fr
ance, had a right to attend preli
minary discussions on conference procedure. The only alternative answer was that might was right: the one argument which he knew Great Britain and Austria were determined to avoid.

Having gained France's admission on equal terms to the preliminary discussions, Talleyrand had put forward his own formula for the solution of the Congress's problems. It was that which the Allies had already, at his instance, applied to his own country. "I ask for nothing," he told them, "but I bring something very important —the sacred principle of Legitimacy." Based on the theory of government to which every hereditary Sovereign at the Congress owed his crown, it was almost impossible for them to reject. Yet it conflicted with vital dispositions the victors were trying to make. It involved both the restoration of the imprisoned King of Saxony, and the rejection of Austria's protege, Joachim Murat of Naples.

Talleyrand had put the victors in a cleft stick. To break up the quadruple Alliance and align France with Britain and Austria he now sacrificed the interests of the French West Indian planters and agreed to the British demand that the Slave Trade should be forbidden at once everywhere north of Cape Formosa. He proposed, too, that a committee of the Congress should consider its universal abolition. Having won the goodwill of the
British, he obliged Mettern
ich
by opposing the Spanish delegate's proposal for a European committee on Italy and so left Austria free to deal with that peninsula piecemeal. At the same time he ordered the partial mobilisation of the French Army.

Thus armed, he offered his country's support to Great Britain and Austria at the very moment that Russia and Prussia were threatening to enforce their claims to Poland and Saxony by arms. Proclaiming that the dethronement of the Saxon King and the annexation of his dominions would undermine the whole principle of Legitimacy, he organised a collective protest by the lesser German States against the lawless liquidation of one of their members. To the Czar's rejoinder that the King of Saxony had forfeited his throne by treachery to the "common cause," he replied that that was merely a question of dates.

This intervention by their country's hated enemy so enraged the Prussians that they threatened war unless their claim to Saxony was allowed. The effect on Castlereagh was immediate. If such a temper prevailed, he told the Prussian Chancellor, the Congress was no longer in a state of independence and had better be dissolved. At the same time he accepted Talleyrand's offer. Fortified by the news that a peace had been agreed by the British and American plenipotentiaries at Ghent, he signed on January 3rd, 1815, a secret treaty with Austria and France by which the three countries agreed to stand by one another in the event of an attack on any of them arising from the Peace Conference proposals. Austria and France were each to provide 150,000 troops and Great Britain an equivalent either in money or mercenaries. Bavaria, Hanover, Hesse-Darmstadt and Piedmont were to be invited to join this western
bloc
against Russian and Prussian blackmail.

Meanwhile the wildest rumours circulated in Vienna and London. It was said that the Grand Alliance was dissolved, that the Russian army was on the march and that Prussia was to occupy the English King's hereditary domain of Hanover instead of Saxony—this an entirely baseless report of the Ru
ssian Ambassador's wife who in
vented, it to distract the amorous attentions of the Duke of Clarence in a coach. Even Napoleon joined in the clamour. "If the Russians succeed in uniting the Poles," he wrote from Elba, "the whole of Europe ought to dread them. It will be impossible to foresee or limit the consequences. Hordes of Cossacks and barbarians, having seen the riches of more civilised countries, will be eager to return. They will overrun Europe and some great change will probably result from it, as has been the case in former times from incursions of barbarians."

During these days Castlereagh remained calm. "The climate of Russia," he wrote, "is often more serene after a good squall." He knew that the Czar would bluff and bluster from gain to gain so long as he thought that the West was pacific and divided. Yet he knew that he wanted war no more than anyone else, that his troops were homesick and his people war-weary, and that Russia was embarrassed by internal financial and social difficulties.
¹
He knew, too, that the Prussians, for all their threats, were anxious not to outrage Liberal German opinion which in the Cat
holic South and Rhineland was ali
gning itself with the forces of civilisation and public law. Above all, he understood the moral prestige that his country enjoyed: her reputation throughout the world, even among those who least loved her, her renown for constancy and tenacity, her prodigious resources and practical genius for achieving her ends. He therefore allowed the secret of his alliance with France and Austria to leak out discreetly. "The alarm of war," he wrote on January 5th, "is over."

The Russian and Prussian negotiators had learnt the strength of Castlereagh's character. They knew that he was a man of his word and that the conscience of Europe was behind him. Like everyone else they had been impressed by the news that the American war was over, and that Britain's hands were free. With as little fuss as possible they began to climb down. On January 28th Metternich proposed that Austria and Prussia should agree to certain, though not sweeping, modifications of their pre-war frontiers in Russia's favour, and that part of Saxony should be given to Prussia in compensation, the remainder returning to its legitimate sovereign. Without a word the olive branch was accepted. The Concert of Europe was saved.

¹
H. M. C. Bathurst, 324; see Webster, 112-16; Webster,
Castlereagh,
i,
369, 370-1.

Early in February, 1815, a settlement was reached of the Polish-Saxon question. Austria retained her share of the 1792 partition except for the town of Cracow, which was relinquished by the Russians and made a free city. Prussia, of her former Polish lands, regained Posen but abandoned Warsaw to Russia, receiving as compensation the Duchy of Westphalia, Swedish Pomerania, part of the left bank of the Rhine and about two-thirds of Saxony. The rest of the latter was reconstituted as an independent State under its legitimate King. Russia kept three-quarters of Napoleon's Grand Duchy of Warsaw—about 127,000 square miles with rather over three million inhabitants. Austria recovered the Tyrol and received Salzburg, the Illyrian littoral of the Adriatic and a free hand in Italy. A statistical committee was appointed to work out the exact frontiers.

"The territorial arrangements on this side of the Alps," wrote Castlereagh to Lord Liverpool, "are settled in all their essential features." With Talleyrand's and Metternich's help the British Foreign Secretary had achieved his object: a readjustment of frontiers by general agreement which allowed time for a new European generation to grow up in habits of peace. Whether that new generation would accept the settlement or, by repudiating it, plunge Europe into new revolutions and wars, remained to be seen. For, in the nature of things, Castlereagh's prescription for peace was based on the ideals of the past. After a quarter of a century in which force and expediency had ruled the world, it seemed to statesmen enough to return to a framework of principle and law. Almost inevitably that framework was a reproduction of what they had known rather than an anticipation of the hopes and beliefs of youth. The rough and ready work of governing mankind is not done by prophets or philosophers. The European settlement of 1814 was, indeed, a reaction from the disastrous consequences of their speculations.

Its defect was that it enthroned a principle no longer universally accepted. Its underlying belief—one going back to the Middle Ages —was that an established succession of "lawful" hereditary princes, bred from infancy to their functions, acknowledging the Christian ethic, and governing themselves by it in their relations with their subjects and one another, was alone calculated to preserve peace and foster the habits of social happiness. It afforded a foundation for stable government, justice—of
a kind—and tranquillity. It was
acclaimed by hereditary rulers of all kinds from emperors to village seigneurs, upheld by the priests of the Christian Faith, and accepted, without question, by the simple peasants of those lands to which an Allied victory had restored familiar ways and traditions in place of a foreign despotism imposed in the name of abstract equality. It was even acquiesced in, though without enthusiasm, by the middle classes, whose hopes of a more egalitarian and fluid society had been shaken by the massacres, plunderings, conscriptions, and commercial restrictions of the Revolutionary Wars, and by the moral inadequacy, especially in Germany, of some of the adventurers to whom in France's conquered provinces power had too often been entrusted.
¹

Yet oppressive as Napoleon's bayonet rule had been, the ideas of the germinating Revolution he embodied were not dead. They had awakened men as well as scourged them. The static dream of centuries had been broken. The old Order could never again be accepted without question where men had seen the overthrow of the thrones and altars they had believed eternal. The success of ragged armies led by men who had had no place in the old order of things— poor sergeants, broken-down attorneys and innkeepers' sons—had started thoughts, formerly inconceivable, in the most submissive minds. For a whole generation, Figaro had ruled Europe: a Figaro who in the last decade had assumed an imperial grandeur and imposed a new order more impressive than anything known under the legitimate rulers of the past. However absurd it might seem to men of hereditary caste that clerks and tradesmen should be tricked out in plumes and titles by Jacobin invaders, it did not seem so to those who belonged to these classes. The drums of Napoleon's armies had set men's minds marching along new roads. They continued to follow them even after the Emperor's fall. The transition from the music of Mozart to that of Beethoven, whose Seventh Symphony was conducted by the composer before the assembled diplomats at Viemia, is a measure of the troubled journey man had made, across the fields of Austerlitz and Borodino, from the peasant's cot of the
ancien regime.

All this the peacemakers ignored. In their hour of triumph, like Napoleon himself, they treated what was unpalatable as though it

¹
For an amusing account of such a government see "Le
Royawne de Westp
halie—Jerome Buonaparte—sacour—ses
f
avoris—et ses ministres." Par u
n temoin oculaire.
Paris, 1820, reviewed in
Quarterly,
XXII, 481.

did not exist. They tried to eliminate everything that had happened since 1789. Instead of making provision for the ideas of the young, they assumed that these had been discredited for ever by the crimes of Napoleon and the Jacobins. By refusing to compromise with the riew, they made its ultimate rebellion certain. They thus undermined the world order they so carefully restored and left it exposed to great, though as yet remote, perils. In recasting the frontiers they had no regard to the racial feelings which the glorification of one nation by its citizens had aroused in others. The people of Germany, whose young patriots, with a new-found unity, had risen in the rear of the French armies, were herded back into the little ring fences in which they had lived before the Revolution, or consigned, without a chance to express their preferences, to some new ruler in order to achieve an equilibrium between Europe's lawful sovereigns. Being himself without racial prejudice,
Metternich—a Rhineland land o
wner in Habsburg service—thought only in terms of balancing the claims of princes so nicely that the hegemony of any one of them was impossible. So far as he sought to enlarge his master's dominions it was not in order that Austria should be strong, but that she should have the power to prevent anyone else from being so.