Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (16 page)

“How can the Congress be assembled,” Metternich asked, “when nothing is ready to lay before it?”

“Well, then,” Talleyrand replied in a planned burst of cordiality, “since nothing is ready as yet for the opening of the Congress, and since you wish to adjourn, let it be put off for a fortnight or three weeks. I consent to that.” Provided, of course, he added significantly, that the leaders seated around the table accept two conditions. First, they set a firm date for the opening of the congress, and second, they specify the criteria for deciding who will be admitted to the proceedings. He scribbled the terms down immediately and handed the paper over to the Big Four.

This meeting had not gone well for the conquerors of Napoleon, and their disappointment was read in the way the conference ended. It was not adjourned in an orderly fashion, but instead seemed to evaporate, with ministers drifting off at will.

Castlereagh, the last to leave, walked down the wide stone steps afterward with Talleyrand. Like many in Vienna, he preferred to take the personal and informal approach whenever possible. He tried to persuade Talleyrand by hinting at his own help: “certain affairs that most interest [France] could be arranged to my satisfaction.”

“It isn’t at all a question of certain particular objects,” Talleyrand replied, “but rather of the law which ought to serve to rule us all…How can we answer to Europe if we have not honored those rights, the loss of which caused all our troubles?”

Turning again to Castlereagh, Talleyrand emphasized the opportunity at hand, a chance to reestablish law, order, and peace:

The present epoch is one of those which hardly occur once in the course of several centuries. A fairer opportunity can never be offered to us. Why should we not place ourselves in a position to answer to it?

Chapter 10

T
HE
P
EOPLE’S
F
ESTIVAL

I have made two mistakes with Talleyrand—first,
I did not take his good advice,
and second, I did not have him hanged when
I did not follow his ideas.

—N
APOLEON

C
astlereagh had found himself in an awkward and frustrating position. Besides the fact that he sympathized with Talleyrand’s viewpoint, he had another reason for tolerating the sheer defiance of this defeated power. Castlereagh was concerned, more than ever, about the threat of Russia, and its ominously close relationship with Prussia.

In a council of only four powers, the grouping of these two was significant. Castlereagh was about to be left with only one potential ally: Austria, a notoriously ambiguous and tentative partner led by a foreign minister, as a common critique ran, “more polished than steeled.” The British minister was worried about how his Austrian ally would stand up under pressure, and wondered if he might in the future need Talleyrand’s assistance.

Castlereagh’s ideal plan was not, of course, to work with France; he much preferred to win over the Prussians, and shift them away from their Russian ally. He believed that he had a good chance. He related well with the Prussian diplomatic team, and he wanted a strong Prussia anyway. As he saw it, a powerful Prussia would create a “stable foundation” for Germany and, at the same time, provide a valuable counterweight against the temptations of the “devouring powers” from the outside, either France in the west or Russia in the east.

Actually, Prussia’s Chancellor Hardenberg and Humboldt shared many of Castlereagh’s fears of a mammoth Russian power that could potentially dominate Germany and central Europe, if not also the entire continent. They could not voice these concerns openly, however, because Prussia was still closely allied with Russia. Yet both statesmen made it clear, behind closed doors, that they believed that Prussia had a better future working with Britain and Austria. The problem they faced was convincing their king, who was as determined as ever to stick with the Russian tsar.

Meanwhile, inside Kaunitz Palace, Talleyrand was waiting for an invitation, as promised, to discuss his criteria for admitting delegates to the congress. One day passed, and then another. There was still no word of the meeting. The only invitation in circulation, it seemed, was to the royal hunt in a wooded park outside Vienna.

On October 6, while Talleyrand was still waiting, there was another pageant planned for the vast green span of manicured lawns and shady walkways northwest of the inner town. This was the Augarten, a former royal playground and hunting field that had been opened to the public almost forty years before. It had the oldest baroque garden in Vienna, and an eighteenth-century palace that serves today as the home of the Vienna Boys’ Choir. The Augarten also housed a center for porcelain making, and had long staged summer concerts, including Mozart and Beethoven. Now it would host the “People’s Festival”—a celebration for the people who had done so much to achieve the Allied victory.

Organizers of the event had erected a grand amphitheater for the sovereigns, along with a large structure built with colored glass to resemble a rainbow. With flags and trophies prominently displayed, veterans of the Napoleonic Wars marched past the tents and crowds to drum and fife. There were footraces, horse races, and an “open-air circus.” Acrobats tumbled, equestrian teams performed, and crossbowmen from the Tyrolean Alps competed in sharpshooting contests.

At the end of the games, a Vienna hot-air balloonist climbed into his canvas contraption, about the size of a four-story building, and soared “majestically over the heads of the crowd, waving flags of every nation.” Then the honored veterans sat down at sixteen long banquet tables weighed down by food and drink, and enjoyed a feast to military music. They were toasted by fellow soldiers and leaders alike, including the Russian tsar, who stood, drink in hand, and announced in his excellent German, “The Emperor of Russia drinks to the health of you, old men!” Then he sealed the toast by hurling his crystal glass against a nearby garden urn.

Elsewhere in the park, spectators were treated to a group of dancers, in folk costumes, performing regional dances from different parts of the Austrian empire. The grand finale was entrusted to Vienna’s fireworks master, Stuwer. His whistling rockets painted the flags of the victorious Allies in the sky.

Later that night, revelers walked through the streets of Vienna, admiring the palaces and mansions illuminated with candles in their windows. While many moved on to ballrooms such as the Apollo Saal and waltzed all night amid its indoor gardens with make-believe grottoes and moss-covered rocks, the sovereigns and their retinues continued to the theater. They saw the ballet
Flore et Zéphire,
which featured the star ballerina Emilia Bigottini, whose graceful dances held the audience in thrall.

The joy that surrounded the People’s Festival was fueled, as one observer put it, by “the hope of a durable peace, the price of which had been paid by many years of constant sacrifices.” The peacemakers indeed owed it to the people who had suffered so much in the war to make the best peace possible.

T
WO DAYS LATER
, on October 8, Metternich’s invitation to the private meeting to set the terms for the opening of the congress finally arrived. Talleyrand was requested to be at the summer villa at eight o’clock that evening. He was asked to come a little early, if he liked, and Metternich would update him about some developments.

When Talleyrand arrived that evening, Metternich thanked him for his proposal on the opening of the congress, and added that he had taken the liberty of drawing up another plan that differed slightly, but he hoped it would be satisfactory. Talleyrand asked to read it.

“I do not have it yet,” Metternich answered. “Gentz has carried it off to put on some finishing touches.”

“Probably, it is being communicated to your
Allies,
” Talleyrand snapped back sarcastically, referring to the divisive term that had earlier provoked his displeasure.

“Let us not speak any longer of Allies,” Metternich reassured him. “There are no more Allies.”

“But there are people here who ought to be Allies,” Talleyrand added, wasting no time to remind the Austrian foreign minister that both of their countries had a lot in common, not least the desire to stop an aggressive Russia. The tsar wanted Poland, and should he be indulged in this whim, the situation could potentially be disastrous for Austria. Talleyrand hammered home the risks of a Russian Poland with a direct question: “How can you possibly contemplate placing Russia like a girdle all round your principal and most important possessions, Hungary and Bohemia?”

Metternich remarked coolly that the French minister obviously placed no trust in him, and Talleyrand replied, equally coolly, that so far he had not been given any reason to do so.

“Here are pen, ink, and paper,” Talleyrand continued theatrically. “Will you write that France asks nothing, and even that she will accept nothing? I am ready to sign.”

“But there is the affair of Naples, that is properly yours.” Metternich reminded the French minister of his desire to place the Bourbon king Ferdinand IV back on the throne in southern Italy.

“Not mine, more than everybody else’s,” Talleyrand replied, implying that the restoration of law was in the interests of everyone.

For me it is only a matter of principle. I ask that he who has a right to be at Naples should be at Naples; that is all. Now, that is just what everyone, as well as myself, ought to wish.

“Let principles be acted upon, and I shall be found easy to deal with in everything.”

One of those principles that Talleyrand urged upon the congress was legitimacy. Although vague and undefined, the word was generally used to mean the rule of law, or the accepted “order of things” based on the sanction of time. As Talleyrand argued, this was “a necessary element of the peace and happiness of peoples, the most solid, or rather the only guarantee of their strength and continuance.” Legitimacy, in other words, was “the safeguard of nations,” and Talleyrand hoped it would serve as a guiding principle in restoring Europe.

Specifically, he wanted Vienna to maintain the king of Saxony as the
legitimate
ruler of a sovereign state, and restore Ferdinand IV as the
legitimate
king of Naples. As for France’s aggressive neighbors, the Prussians, Talleyrand said that he would never consent to their outlandish demands for territory. Nor would he, for that matter, ever allow the Russian tsar to create a “phantom Poland” and thereby advance his empire all the way to the Vistula River in the center of Europe.

Sharing this fear of Russia, Metternich grasped Talleyrand’s hand and reassured him: “We are much less divided than you think.”

At that point, a footman announced that the other delegates had arrived for the conference, which was, in fact, the first meeting of a new committee, the Committee of Eight. This was actually the Big Four, joined by the four other powers who had signed the Treaty of Paris (France, Portugal, Sweden, and Spain). Reluctantly, the Great Powers had accepted Talleyrand’s argument that they had no basis for simply making all decisions themselves, and they had retreated onto more solid ground with this committee. Everyone went into the large meeting room to hammer out the conditions for accepting delegates to the congress. After some negotiation, they agreed to open the congress on the first of November.

As for who exactly could participate, there were two plans for consideration, one drafted by Talleyrand and the other by Metternich. The two plans were similar. The main difference was that Talleyrand’s plan, by definition, would not permit the delegate of the Bonapartist Murat to participate in the conference, while Metternich’s was vague enough that it did not specify one way or the other. Metternich’s plan won.

Talleyrand consented to this arrangement with one small change: The congress “shall then be conducted in conformity with the principles of public law,” as international law was then called.

At these words, Prussia’s Hardenberg stood up, banged his fists on the table, and shouted, “No, sir, public law is a useless phrase. Why say that we shall act according to public law? That is a matter of course.”