Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (34 page)

Good news had indeed rung in the New Year, but Talleyrand was glad to report, in a dispatch to the king of France, that the end of the war between Britain and the United States was in fact only “the precursor of a still more fortunate event.” Enjoying the boost in confidence, Castlereagh had approached Talleyrand with a bold plan: Britain was now willing to offer an alliance with none other than its mortal enemy France.

Castlereagh had been upset at the Prussian and Russian behavior in the last meetings. Prussian arrogance seemed intolerable, and its delegation insisted on adopting a “very warlike” stance unsuitable for negotiation. Castlereagh felt that there was no other way to avoid an all-out war than this pact. The only problem was that it was unauthorized, and again, strictly speaking, against his government’s orders.

The whole negotiation was conducted under the strictest secrecy, and the resulting treaty hurriedly written up and signed on January 3, 1815. According to its terms, Britain, Austria, and France pledged to support each other in the case of an attack from any other power, and contribute 150,000 troops, though Britain reserved the right to replace its quota of soldiers with additional financing. There was nothing in the treaty that bound the powers to join an ally in an attack. It was a purely defensive alliance.

That night, at a crowded soiree held at the British embassy, as two Italians strummed a guitar and fiddled on a violin, Talleyrand played cards as usual, Metternich surrounded himself with women, and Castlereagh danced a frantic Scottish reel. The three ministers were not seen together, even for a minute. Few could have imagined that they had just signed a secret agreement that would have a great impact on the negotiations.

Talleyrand, in particular, had reason to rejoice. After only three and a half months in town, representing a shunned, defeated power, he had maneuvered his way right into the council chamber of the Great Powers. The congress had reached such an impasse that Britain and Austria had preferred to work with an enemy they had fought for almost a quarter of a century, rather than with their own allies of the victorious coalition.

R
UMORS OF SOME
sort of secret pact were soon circulating throughout Vienna, though no one had any confirmation, and they were lost in a sea of other rumors: that war would break out at any moment; the widowed king of Prussia would soon remarry (and his next wife, some wildly predicted, would be Marie Louise!); the tsar had caught a venereal disease; almost every leading figure of the congress would be sacked, and a new team would be appointed to wrap up the negotiations.

Then, all of a sudden, at one of the first meetings of the Big Four in early January, Metternich, rather nonchalantly, proposed that Talleyrand be allowed to join in the deliberations. Castlereagh supported the motion. But while the Prussians fumed and fumbled, there was another surprise that day. The Russian delegation actually gave way and agreed to admit Talleyrand to the committee.

But why would Russia suddenly be so willing to cooperate with Britain and Austria? This is a difficult and important question, because the tsar was now, in many ways, unmistakably proving more accommodating. He was, as Metternich put it, experiencing one of his “periodic evolutions of the mind.” The tsar was now even willing to discuss Poland, something that he had so far only adamantly refused. Why?

Certainly, the awareness that Britain was no longer restrained by a war across the seas had played a role in causing the tsar to begin to doubt the wisdom of fully supporting Prussia. Alexander had also suspected that some sort of deal had been struck between Britain, Austria, and France. When he met Castlereagh on January 7, for instance, he asked him directly about the rumored alliance, but Castlereagh neither acknowledged nor denied it. He said only that if the tsar “acted on pacifick [
sic
] principles he would have nothing to fear.”

In addition, over the last few weeks, Alexander had seemed more serious and reflective, tired of the frivolous parties and endless bickering. Some historians claim that the tsar was returning to a full-fledged mysticism that had flourished back in 1812 when Napoleon invaded Russia. Alexander was receiving some remarkable letters from an admirer, and apparently he devoured their contents.

The author of these letters was Baroness Julie von Krüdener, a fifty-year-old widow from Latvia, who had preached a fiery apocalyptic mysticism nourished in cold Baltic winters. In letter after letter, Krüdener had instructed the tsar to remember his “divine mission,” just as he had in the dark days of Napoleon’s invasion. No matter what the tsar suffered at the congress, Krüdener assured him that she knew the “deep and striking beauties in the Emperor’s soul.”

The flattering letters were increasing in frequency and intensity that winter, reaching the tsar in Vienna with the help of one of Krüdener’s well-placed admirers, Roxanne Stourdza, his wife’s lady-in-waiting. Alexander had come to look forward to each new letter, and then discussing every shade of meaning with this lady-in-waiting. They would meet in private, away from his foreign policy advisers, and usually in her quarters, a tiny room on the fourth floor of the Hofburg. There they conversed, as the tsar saw it, as “spiritual husband and wife.”

Sometimes the letters contained prophecies, or dark troubling visions that awaited the dancing congress: “You do not know what a terrible year 1815 is going to be,” Krüdener had predicted that autumn.

Do you suppose that the Congress will finish its labors? Undeceive yourself. The emperor Napoleon will leave his island. He will be more powerful than ever, but those who support him will be pursued, persecuted and punished. They will not know where to lay their heads.

To the tsar, she was a “divine prophetess,” and he hoped, one day, to meet her in person.

Yet even with this rekindled interest in mysticism, there is probably also another factor for the tsar’s abrupt change in attitude: Alexander was more cooperative, it seems, because he was tiring of the Prussian alliance. When Hardenberg had shown Metternich’s private letters to him a few weeks before, the Austrian foreign minister had retaliated by allowing the tsar to read one of Hardenberg’s own letters. In this piece, the Prussian minister had written, in a striking indiscretion, that he was only supporting Russian policy in Poland because it was official Prussian policy, and also because “it would make Russia weaker.”

As the tsar looked back over the last few months, he had cooperated with Prussian desire to gain territory, and now he was rewarded, he felt, by treachery from his so-called ally—an ally, the tsar was increasingly convinced, whose aggression would only drag Russia into an unwanted war over Saxony. Alexander, feeling like a man of peace once again, was disillusioned with the Prussians. He now had a reason, or at least a rationalization, for abandoning his ally.

So, indeed, there were many reasons for the tsar’s sudden burst of cooperation with Britain and Austria at the congress. Unfortunately for Prussia, she would now suffer the consequences, and find herself an angry but isolated power. As for Talleyrand, he was ready to join the Directing Committee. The former Big Four was now going to be a Big Five, the real center of power and decision making at the Vienna Congress.

M
EANWHILE,
M
ETTERNICH WAS
trying to move on with his life and finally put closure on his ill-starred affair with the Duchess of Sagan. Despite his midnight gift on New Year’s Eve, the duchess clearly still preferred Prince Alfred, and Metternich was trying to resign himself to this reality. The same day that he signed the secret treaty with Britain and France, Metternich wrote another letter to the duchess that tried to put the irrational into a meaningful perspective.

I was your lover for two years. I loved you—I ended by adoring you. You ceased even wishing me well the day when I began to love you—natural enough course of human affairs! I was not disheartened; I did not ask you for love at all but only for some certainty—either refusal or hope. You did not cease giving me [hope]; you nourished that feeling in me that you saw as more than imperious; you encouraged it even while you saw it exhaust those faculties of which my honor demanded the full use.

“Called to lead twenty million men,” he added, “I should have known how to conduct myself.” Metternich was indeed trying to put the past behind him.

Metternich was also busy in January using the secret treaty to great advantage and recruiting other states to join the coalition against Prussia. Bavaria signed on, and so did many smaller German states that wanted a guarantee of their safety. Some were so frightened of Prussia and eager to join that they swore not to deal with any other state without first discussing the matter with Austria. The treaty was thus not only helping break the deadlock of the Vienna Congress, but also, in Metternich’s hands, likely to pay rich dividends for Austrian influence in central Europe.

Esteem for Talleyrand had also been growing on the wake of his support for Saxony and his newfound position on the Directing Committee. The French foreign minister likewise knew how to seize this opportunity. The embassy at Kaunitz Palace would entertain even more flamboyantly than before.

One of his great successes that winter was actually a somber event: Talleyrand staged a requiem for the dethroned king of France, Louis XVI, who was guillotined in 1793. January 21, 1815, marked the twenty-second year since that “day of horror and eternal mourning.” Talleyrand proposed that Vienna acknowledge the anniversary with a “solemn expiatory service.”

When the emperor of Austria heard of Talleyrand’s plans for a ceremony, he offered his help—Louis XVI was, after all, his uncle, and Marie-Antoinette his aunt. With the emperor’s support, Talleyrand knew that he would now probably have his choice of locations for the service, and it would, moreover, be packed. Sure enough, Talleyrand was offered Vienna’s largest and most stately church, the medieval Gothic masterpiece St. Stephen’s.

With the emperor’s blessing, too, Talleyrand had gained access to the Festivals Committee. Stalwarts of the committee would be turned loose and their “melancholy zeal” would adorn St. Stephen’s for a day of public mourning. The cathedral itself was draped in black velvet. A pyramid was placed in the center, with four statues at its base, symbolizing “France sunk in grief, Europe shedding tears, Religion holding the Will of Louis XVI, and Hope raising her eyes to heaven.” On every pillar in the church hung the Bourbon crest.

The emperor of Austria appeared, as promised, in mourning. Although the empress could not attend due to her poor health, the other sovereigns had appeared on their platform draped in black velvet and decorated with silver tassels. Members of the noble order Knights of the Golden Fleece and Vienna Congress participants were placed in the choir. Seats in the nave were reserved for other prominent figures, many of the ladies dressed in “flowing veils” and ushered to their pews by the handsome French ambassador, Marquis de la Tour du Pin. Seats open to the public were quickly taken, the crowds everywhere in thick fur and sable coats.

The emperor’s confessor, the archbishop of Vienna, celebrated Mass. Antonio Salieri, Vienna’s
Hofkapellmeister,
led the chorus of 250 voices, and Talleyrand’s piano player, Sigismund Neukomm, composed the music. Another Frenchman in town, the parish priest of St. Anne’s, Abbé de Zaignelins, delivered the address, neither a funeral oration nor a lecture nor a sermon. The theme was “The earth shall learn to hold the Lord’s name in awe.”

The French priest gave a stirring speech that touted the glorious fourteen-hundred-year history of the French monarchy—and the horrors the Revolution committed against the legitimate dynasty. It was a speech that Talleyrand, almost certainly, wrote or edited himself. True to form, Talleyrand had made sure that both the Russian tsar and the king of Prussia were seated prominently in the front of the cathedral. That way, they would not miss the lesson and, equally important, no one could avoid seeing their participation.

Twenty-two years after his execution, Louis XVI finally received his memorial service. Like many of Talleyrand’s other projects, the requiem worked on several levels. It honored the past, championed the importance of legitimacy, and, at the same time, subtly though forcefully promoted causes dear to France—from preserving the
legitimate
king of Saxony to restoring the
legitimate
king of Naples. The post-requiem soiree and banquet offered further opportunities for gathering in remembrance of the guillotined king. Although it was an expensive day, indeed, Talleyrand had managed to have all of Vienna celebrate France and its royal dynasty. It was a marvelous success.

Chapter 22