Читать книгу Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna - Adam Zamoyski - Страница 10
6 Farce in Prague
ОглавлениеA few days after Metternich’s departure from Dresden, Napoleon received unwelcome news from Spain. Wellington had taken the offensive at the end of May, obliging the French to fall back. Threatened with the possibility of being cut off, Napoleon’s brother King Joseph was forced to abandon Madrid. The British caught up with him and the retreating French army and routed it at Vittoria on 21 June. It was a shattering defeat, rendered all the more shameful by the loss of all the army’s and the King’s baggage.
Berthier and other marshals advised Napoleon to evacuate all his garrisons, pull back his forces from Germany and concentrate a powerful army on the Rhine. It would have been the sensible course. But if he were to pull back he would be abandoning his German allies, and such a sign of weakness would give heart to all his enemies; besides which he found the idea of giving ground hard to stomach. He was also haunted by the notion that his people would not tolerate his making peace on any but victorious terms, that if he failed to come up with something that could be dressed up as a victory, what he called his ‘magie’ would be dispelled. He therefore held firm, and demonstrated his determination to stand by his allies by signing, on 10 July, a fresh treaty of alliance with Denmark.1
Napoleon was still hoping that at some point he might be able to strike a deal with Alexander. ‘Russia has the right to an advantageous peace,’ he told his secretary Baron Fain. ‘She will have bought it with the devastation of her lands, with the loss of her capital and with two years of war. Austria, on the contrary, does not deserve anything. In the present state of affairs, I would not mind a peace that would be glorious for Russia; but I would feel a very real repugnance to see Austria reap the fruit and the honours of a pacification of Europe as the prize for the crime she is committing by betraying our alliance.’2
But Alexander was by now the one monarch least likely to make peace with Napoleon on any terms. And even if his own army was not in belligerent mood, he knew that he was strongly supported by the Prussian generals, who were so sanguine that in the course of a military confabulation at Trachenberg (Żmigród) in mid-July, they came to the conclusion that they could defeat Napoleon without the help of Austria.3
Napoleon’s only hope of peace lay with Metternich, who still favoured a peaceful outcome, for a number of practical reasons. Having inherited a virtually bankrupt state in 1809, he had worked hard to rebuild its finances and was unwilling to see these frittered away on war, the most ruinous activity a state could pursue. War was also notoriously unpredictable, and even if successful could produce unexpected political tremors. Finally, the outbreak of war necessarily relegated diplomatists like himself to a secondary, and therefore unacceptable, role. As he took up residence in his roomy palace in Prague, which had been chosen as the venue for the congress due to open on 10 July, he faced with relish ‘the grand and immense task’ that faced him, and assured Wilhelmina that ‘I will do what I can to save this world.’4
He was certainly well placed to manage events, and his choice of Prague as the venue for the congress was no whim. The ancient Czech city lay within the Habsburg dominions, and was embraced by the formidable Austrian intelligence apparatus. As well as running the government of the empire, Metternich’s State Chancellery controlled a number of auxiliary services, such as the posts, the archives, and so on. It had a codes office to encrypt and decrypt secret correspondence, and a translation department, since the official language of government for Hungary was Latin, which was also employed in communications with the Vatican and in other state business; the administration of most of the monarchy’s German lands was carried on in German; and that of its Italian dominions in Italian, with French remaining the language of diplomacy and the court.
In the last decades of the eighteenth century the sheer quantity of information being processed through this immense machine inspired greater invigilation. With the outbreak of the French Revolution and the supposed threat of Jacobin conspiracy and contagion, the accent was shifted to surveillance. Francis and Metternich shared an almost obsessive fear of conspiracy and revolution, and both believed in being well-informed.
Metternich employed hundreds of spies and battalions of men who were expert at unsealing letters, copying them and resealing them with the speed necessary to avoid arousing suspicion – the letters might be lifted from a post bag while the horses were being changed, or simply removed from a desk in a private house for a few moments. Others would then translate and decrypt the copies. The head of the decryption office once boasted that he had broken eighty-five foreign codes, one of them, used by the Russian diplomatic service, taking him as long as four years to crack. In order to extend the range of his surveillance, Metternich managed, by offering faster communications and cheaper rates, to divert various international postal routes through Austrian dominions, where interesting-looking letters could be examined.5
No matter or item was too humble, or for that matter too grand, for the attention of Metternich’s spies. The archives of the State Chancellery are to this day full of copies of intercepted letters, some of them of the utmost banality, others of evident diplomatic or political interest, some of them between people of no social or political standing whatever, others quite the opposite. Not only was the public and private correspondence of all foreign diplomats and statesmen to and from Vienna intercepted and scrutinised; even intimate letters between members of the imperial family, including those sent and received by the Emperor Francis himself, were intercepted and copied just like anyone else’s.6
In the event, the Congress of Prague turned out to be little short of a farce. Napoleon’s nomination as his plenipotentiaries of Caulaincourt and Narbonne, both of them negotiators of the highest rank, suggested that his intent was serious. Narbonne, who reached Prague first, was surprised to discover that Frederick William had sent not Hardenberg, but Humboldt, a man of recognised talents but mediocre diplomatic standing, and a declared advocate of war besides. He was downright shocked when he heard that instead of Nesselrode Alexander had sent as his plenipotentiary Jean Anstett, a man of no experience and of poor reputation who, to make matters worse, was Alsatian by birth and therefore theoretically a renegade French subject. It was an astonishing demonstration of contempt for Napoleon and for the congress, and Narbonne informed Metternich that he could not sit down to talks with them, pending the arrival of Caulaincourt with instructions from Napoleon. On hearing the identity of the allied plenipotentiaries, Napoleon held back Caulaincourt, and when he did finally send him he did not furnish him with the requisite credentials.
This boded ill for the congress’s chances of success. The armistice had been prolonged, to 10 August, and if terms were not agreed by midnight on that date hostilities would resume, with Austria in the allied camp. This deadline, the nature of the allied plenipotentiaries and Napoleon’s sluggishness raise the question of whether anyone was serious about the congress.
‘At heart, nobody truly wanted peace,’ Nesselrode would later admit, adding that the congress was a ‘joke’ and that Alexander and Frederick William had been opposed to it from the start. Hardenberg was similarly sceptical, while in his letters from Prague Humboldt repeatedly assured his wife that nobody, least of all himself, was interested in making peace at this stage.
Metternich probably did favour a peaceful solution, though he was growing increasingly sceptical of its chances with each passing day. And while he reassured an anxious Humboldt that there would be war on 11 August whatever happened, he was determined to make it look as though he had been left with no option.7
Ironically, the one person who genuinely hoped to gain something from the congress was Napoleon, even though his motives were questionable. Caulaincourt and Narbonne were very much in earnest, though the latter thought peace a forlorn hope, and they set themselves up in a manner befitting a delegation to proper peace talks, much to Hardenberg’s amusement. Their brief was to keep negotiations going independently of the armistice. ‘After 10 August the armistice works against us,’ Napoleon explained: he believed that the Russians and the Prussians would be ready to take the field, while the Austrians would still be unprepared. This would allow him to defeat the Russians and Prussians while continuing to negotiate with Austria. ‘This is what we wish, but we must dissimulate and let them believe that we want the armistice to be prolonged indefinitely,’ he wrote. It seems that Napoleon still believed that he could make mischief between the allies, and that he would be able to split them at some stage and make a separate peace with Russia.8
His calculations were based on two false premises. The first was that the Austrians would not be ready to take the field on 10 August. The second was that a decisive victory over the Russians and the Prussians would tip the balance in his favour. Over dinner on 3 August Metternich explained to Caulaincourt, in whom he recognised a kindred soul, that times had changed in this respect. A battle lost by the allies now would make no material difference, as it could not change their attitude, which was one of exasperation with Napoleon based on the conviction that it was not possible to make a lasting peace with him. A battle lost by Napoleon on the other hand weakened him fundamentally, since it diminished his military prestige.9
The congress never did convene properly. Metternich had proposed that rather than sitting down to open verbal negotiations, the plenipotentiaries of the three powers should put their case in verbal notes addressed to him as mediator. Humboldt and Anstett agreed, while Narbonne and Caulaincourt insisted that there must at least be some verbal negotiation. This difference of opinion quickly degenerated into pointless argument, with both sides invoking various eighteenth-century congresses as precedent. ‘Nothing could be more amusing than the story of this supposed Congress, which has already lasted more than three weeks without a single question of form having been decided, and which will, it appears, be dissolved before it opens,’ Gentz wrote to a friend on 30 July.10
Gentz was certainly enjoying himself. There was little for him to do, since there were no conferences to minute and no memoranda to draft. The weather was fine, and he would spend the long summer evenings and balmy nights strolling through the beautiful city with Humboldt and Metternich, discussing everything from love to philosophy. Metternich was less happy. Wilhelmina had promised to come to Prague so they could continue their intimacy, but he waited and waited, sending her letter after letter brimming with despair and jealousy. He complained to Humboldt that he had ‘lost his joie de vivre’.
Humboldt, who was beginning to alter his view of Metternich, assuring his wife that he was intelligent and ‘never unreasonable’, was in contrastingly high spirits. He was comfortably lodged in a princely palace and filled his spare time with work on his translation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. His superior Hardenberg had recently been distracted by an affair with a woman of whom Humboldt apparently disapproved, and this show of ‘depravity’ encouraged his speculations that he might be able to take over his post himself.11
As the deadline of 10 August approached, Caulaincourt made one last attempt to establish a line of negotiation with Metternich. He explained that Napoleon’s suspicions of him were largely based on the fact that the four conditions for negotiation put forward until now were not credible, and invited conjecture as to what others might lurk behind them. If Metternich were to state the allies’ full demands at the outset, Napoleon would know what he was up against and respond accordingly.
On 5 August, just five days before the armistice was to expire, Napoleon sent a note to Caulaincourt instructing him to sound out Metternich on his price for abandoning the allies and returning to the French alliance. Metternich’s response was contained in a note dated 8 August which confirmed the same four conditions, with the only difference that he now dropped the one that Illyria be returned to Austria and demanded that instead of dissolving the Rheinbund, Napoleon renounce his protectorate over it. He also added the stipulation that the conclusion of a general peace was to be accompanied by an agreement to be enforced by all sides aimed at protecting weaker powers. Caulaincourt said that if it were up to him, he would accept, but expressed doubt as to whether Napoleon would.12
‘The great moment has arrived at last, my dearest friend,’ Metternich wrote to his wife on 10 August. That evening Humboldt, Anstett and all those in favour of war gathered in Metternich’s palace. Watches were consulted with impatience, and when the chimes of midnight rang out over the sleeping city Metternich announced that the armistice was over and Austria was now a member of the alliance. He ordered a beacon to be lit which, by a chain reaction, carried the news all the way to the Silesian border and on to allied headquarters at Reichenbach. By the morning Russian and Prussian troops were on the march to join the Austrian army outside Prague. ‘Everything is decided, dearest Li,’ a delighted Humboldt wrote to his wife.13
But in his letter to his wife, Metternich had made it clear that ‘the official negotiation has finished today with no result’. ‘There remain 6 days of unofficial negotiation; will it lead to anything or not?’ he continued. Although he told her he was preparing his campaign baggage, it seems he was not excluding a last-minute negotiated outcome.14
On 12 August, just as Caulaincourt and Narbonne were preparing to leave, a courier arrived from Dresden with Napoleon’s instructions to make peace at all costs. Caulaincourt called on Metternich without delay, but was told that it was too late. That very day Austria issued her declaration of war, a document full of mournful complaint detailing how she had been wronged by France.15
‘I am the most unhappy being on earth,’ Metternich moaned in a letter to Wilhelmina, who had let him down by not coming to Prague. The probable reason – Alfred Windischgraetz’s reappearance at Ratiborzitz – only deepened his despair. ‘Adieu! There can be no more happiness for me in this world – may all that remains of it on earth be for you!’ he went on, in an interminable letter.16
It was not only on account of Wilhelmina that he felt disappointment. He had failed to broker a peace, which would not only have been the best solution for Austria but would also have placed him in the pivotal position he aspired to. Everything was now left to the vagaries of war. Having done all he could to prevent it, and incurred the mistrust and insult not only of the allies but also the war party in Austria, his credibility demanded that he pursue it with enthusiasm.
Napoleon had not given up, and he instructed Caulaincourt to delay his departure from Prague in the hope of being able to obtain an interview with Alexander when the latter arrived a couple of days later. On 18 August, by which time the armies were in the field, Maret wrote to Metternich arguing that no peace congress could possibly be expected to take as little as a month, quoting examples drawn from history and proposing that a fresh congress to include all the powers of Europe, great and small, be convoked to some neutral city. But Metternich dismissed the suggestion. ‘The 6 days, my dearest, have passed,’ he wrote to his wife on 16 August. ‘Hostilities begin tomorrow.’ And Napoleon’s hopes that an interview between Caulaincourt and Alexander might yield something were very wide of the mark. In his eagerness to pursue the war the Tsar had single-handedly scuppered the only real chance of peace.17
Cathcart had received Castlereagh’s instructions to the effect that Britain would be prepared to enter into negotiations with France shortly after Caulaincourt reached Prague. He showed them to Alexander, who determined that they must not be passed on to Metternich. He had never wavered in his determination to pursue the war against Napoleon, and as Nesselrode explained in a letter of 9 August to Russia’s ambassador in London, he had only humoured Francis’s desire to negotiate in the conviction that nothing would come of it. Having watched Austria gradually come round to the acceptance that there was nothing to be gained from negotiating, he was certainly not going to produce the British proposal to join the negotiations. It would only ‘weaken the energetic resolutions taken by the Austrian cabinet’ and encourage Napoleon to take the negotiations more seriously.18
Had Napoleon known that Britain was willing to participate, he would probably have been prepared to concede a great deal. Britain was his principal enemy. It had been to bring her to the negotiating table that he had invaded Russia. He had wanted Britain included in the Congress of Prague, and hopes had been entertained that she might send a plenipotentiary. The possibility of a general peace with the participation of Britain – involving as it would not only huge economic relief, but also the return of most of the French colonies – could have been dressed up as a victory of sorts and would have allowed Napoleon to claim that he was making peace with honour.19
The only victory Napoleon could hope for now was on the battlefield, and that was going to be difficult to achieve. The coalition ranged against him was formidable. Facing him was the main allied army under Schwarzenberg, consisting of 120,000 Austrians, 70,000 Russians under Barclay de Tolly and 60,000 Prussians under General Kleist, a total of 250,000. Behind it stood Blücher’s army of Silesia, 40,000 Russians under Langeron, 18,000 under Osten-Sacken, and 38,000 Prussians under Yorck. In the north Bernadotte commanded an army of 150,000 Swedes, Russians and Prussians, bringing the total to well over half a million men. Morale, particularly among the German contingents, was reinforced by a sense that the hour of liberation had struck, fostered by an avalanche of poetry and propaganda, and supported by a nationwide commitment in the form of a ‘gold for steel’ fund-raising programme and numerous women’s welfare committees.
On 19 August Schwarzenberg’s combined army paraded before Alexander, Francis and Frederick William. The newly formed units were presented with standards, ‘and the three allied sovereigns nailed their respective colours together to the pole, in token of the firmness of their alliance and the intimacy of their union’, recorded Jackson. It was, in the words of Jackson’s superior, Stewart, ‘a most exhilarating moment’. The following day the army took the field.20
Napoleon was already on the march. ‘I have an army as fine as any and more than 400,000 men,’ he boasted to one of his officials. ‘That will suffice to re-establish my affairs in the North.’ But later in the conversation he complained that he was short of cavalry and needed more men, particularly seasoned troops. His forces were in fact greatly inferior to those of the allies. His garrisons at Danzig, Stettin (Szczecin), Thorn (Toruń), Cüstrin (Kostrzyn), Glogau (Głogów), Modlin and Zamość accounted for almost a quarter of his nominal army of 400,000, and they were effectively left out of the action. They included a large number of seasoned troops and some experienced generals, while the bulk of the 300,000 or so men at his immediate disposal were conscripts with only rudimentary training. Much the same was true of the army of Italy which Prince Eugène had been forming up to threaten Austria’s southern flank. By mid-July it had reached a paper strength of over 50,000 men, but there were nothing like as many actually under arms, while their quality and training left a great deal to be desired.21
Morale was remarkably good among the troops under Napoleon’s immediate command as they marched out of Dresden on 16 August, and they were cheered by the arrival of Joachim Murat, King of Naples, who was to take command of the cavalry. Napoleon’s plan was to push back Blücher and then, leaving Marshal Macdonald to cover him, veer south and outflank the main allied army under Schwarzenberg, which was moving on Dresden. The first part of the operation went according to plan, but at Löwenberg (Lwówek śląski) on 23 August, as Napoleon snatched a hurried lunch standing up, a courier arrived with news from Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr at Dresden warning him that the main allied army was already threatening the city, which would not be able to hold out much longer. Napoleon smashed the glass of red wine he was holding against the table as he read the despatch.
He hesitated. A potentially decisive victory was within his grasp. But the fall of Dresden might have grave political repercussions given the current mood in Germany. He changed his plan, ordering General Vandamme with a corps of not much more than 10,000 men to continue with the original aim of attacking the allied rear, while he himself hastened back to Dresden with the main forces.
He arrived outside the city on 26 August, and in the course of the next three days defeated all the allies’ attempts to break through, putting them to flight on the third. He was taken violently ill with fits of vomiting at the moment of triumph, and had to go back to Dresden. He was much better by 30 August, but on that day he received three disastrous pieces of news: in the north, Marshal Oudinot had been defeated by the Prussians at Grossbeeren; Macdonald had been pushed back with heavy losses by Blücher on the river Katzbach; and finally Vandamme, who had dutifully cut the main allied army’s line of retreat, had himself been surrounded and forced to capitulate with his entire force at Kulm (Chlumec). Although he had triumphed at Dresden, all Napoleon could show for the five days’ fighting was a loss of some 100,000 men and a considerable quantity of artillery. If he had persevered in his original intention, he would, in Nesselrode’s opinion, have routed the allied army and captured all three allied sovereigns and their ministers. ‘That’s war,’ Napoleon said to Maret that night. ‘Up there in the morning, down there in the evening.’22
He did not allow himself to be disheartened by this setback. Two days later he moved to push Blücher back once more, and then advanced into Bohemia, harassing the main allied army. But on 6 September Ney, whom Napoleon had sent out to reinforce Oudinot, was himself beaten by the Prussians and Swedes under Bernadotte at Dennewitz.
Napoleon displayed extraordinary energy over the next weeks, taking command of one or other of his corps in order to push back the advancing allies. What saved them was the tactic they had agreed on at the conference held at Trachenberg in July of refusing battle and falling back whenever Napoleon himself took command of the armies facing them, and going over to the attack as soon as he had gone, leaving his troops under the command of one of the marshals.
In any other circumstances Napoleon could have pulled back all his remaining forces and struck at one point with all his might, as he always had in the past. But if he retreated now he would be abandoning his German allies, who would then be forced into alliance with his enemies. He therefore carried on thrusting and parrying, keeping greatly superior allied forces in check. Soon after hostilities began, the weather turned wet and cold. The roads turned into muddy morasses, adding to the difficulty of this highly mobile campaign and reducing the effectives of every unit with each march. He could no longer hold on to his exposed position at Dresden, and on 15 October, having abandoned that, he fell back on the second city of Saxony, Leipzig.
However grim the situation looked from Napoleon’s headquarters, the view from the other side of the lines was not correspondingly rosy. The three monarchs, their ministers, their military staffs and the diplomats accredited to their courts were crammed into the little spa town of Toeplitz (Teplice) in Bohemia. This normally delightful place was choked with people, quartered on top of each other in hostelries meant for more gracious conditions. The wounded of Dresden and Kulm lay packed into all the larger spaces available. Among them was Stewart, who despite his ambassadorial role could not resist the lure of the battlefield and had taken a wound at Kulm. The streets were knee-deep in mud, continually churned up by the boots and hooves of couriers on duty and units on the march. ‘Toeplitz is now a sad place,’ Metternich wrote to his daughter Marie. ‘Everywhere is full of wounded; in the redoute hall at the entrance to the gardens they have been amputating arms & legs …’ She was so moved that, like other patriotic ladies, she tore old linen sheets and garments into strips and sent them to the army for dressing wounds.23
The allies’ morale was not good. Losses in the fighting at Dresden, Kulm, on the Katzbach and Dennewitz had been heavy. It was proving difficult to raise troops, and desertion was rife, even among officers. The anticipated surge of volunteers inspired by the idea of liberating Germany from the French yoke had not materialised. According to Hardenberg people ‘murmured more than they acted’. And the cause was beginning to look less glorious – General von Walmoden’s volunteers went about raping and pillaging with abandon those they were supposed to be liberating. The war had taken a further lurch into barbarism, and some of the Russian commanders regularly massacred French prisoners.24
The ‘harmony, confidence and mutual satisfaction’ that Cathcart had reported from Trachenberg, where the commanders of the various armies had agreed their plan of action and mutual support, had been dissipated by mistrust, jealousy and recrimination. A struggle for control of the army was under way.25
Alexander had wanted to command the allied army. He had invited General Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, who had been in American exile since 1804 when he had been implicated in a royalist plot to overthrow Napoleon, to return to Europe and accept a post on his staff. He assumed that with him and the renegade Swiss General Jomini at his side as advisers, he would be able to realise his dream of proving himself as a commander in the field. The other allies were having none of it, and after acrimonious discussions, which involved Metternich threatening to withdraw Austria from the coalition, Alexander gave way and Schwarzenberg was placed in overall command.
But he was, as Stewart pointed out, in the unprecedented position of having ‘two Emperors and a King superintending and controlling not only movements in agitation, but also operations decided on’. Alexander had interfered during the battle of Dresden, riding about the battlefield issuing orders to individual units without reference to their commanders or the overall plan, and unity of action was further impaired by pronounced hostility and jealousy between the allied commanders. They were mostly mediocre generals, while their troops, a majority of whom were conscripts, reflected all the national and regional prejudices and enmities of their places of origin.
The coalition itself was under constant strain. ‘The general desire, whatever may be said to the contrary, is for peace,’ noted Jackson, adding that Hardenberg’s spirits ‘rise and fall, like the weatherglass under atmospheric changes’. Stewart suspected the Austrians of wanting to make a separate peace, while Metternich remarked that he ‘had to keep an eye on the allies no less than on the enemy’. There were moments when the only thing that appeared to unite them was the French language in which they communicated with each other.26
Metternich nevertheless remained optimistic. ‘Everything is going well, beyond expectation,’ he wrote to Wilhelmina. ‘Everything is beautiful, perfect, and God appears to be protecting his cause.’ While acknowledging the contribution of the Almighty, he did not fail to point out that it was actually his own doing. His optimism may have stemmed from the fact that she was now returning his love with passion. ‘Mon amie, you have given me everything you can, you have made me drunk with happiness, I love you, I love you a hundred times more than my life – I only live and will only ever live for you,’ he wrote from Toeplitz a few days later. And a couple of days after that he admitted that he found it difficult to distinguish between her and the other great object in his thoughts. ‘Mon amie and Europe, Europe and mon amie!’27
But when not writing to her, he worked at strengthening the coalition, and on 9 September his efforts bore fruit in the new treaties signed by Austria with Russia and Prussia at Toeplitz. These committed the three powers to continue the war together until a durable peace based on ‘a just balance’ was achieved. The most significant element was contained in article XI, which bound the contracting parties into a coalition.28
The vagueness of the treaties on all other matters, and particularly on territorial arrangements, was intentional. Back in Prague, Metternich had turned his mind to limiting the scope of the war and laying down some ground rules for the eventual peace settlement. ‘As far as the allies are concerned, there can be no question of conquest, and, as a result, there must be a return of France, Austria and Prussia to their ancient frontiers,’ he wrote. He went on to draw a distinction between ‘conquêtes consommées’, by which he meant areas whose cession had been by treaty, and ‘territorial incorporations via facti, made without the former possessors’ formal renunciation of their rights in favour of the conqueror’. Lands falling into the latter category, in which he included Hanover, the mainland possessions of the King of Sardinia, the possessions of the house of Orange, and so on, should be restituted to their rightful owners without discussion. As for ‘conquêtes consommées’, as an example of which he gave the lands the Papacy had been forced to cede to Napoleon under the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797, they were to be regarded ‘as lands delivered from French domination by the allied powers, as a common acquisition whose disposal should be reserved to the said powers’. The fate of all other liberated areas was to be left to a congress to be held once peace had been made.29
Metternich did not at this stage wish to confront the issue of how those ‘common acquisitions’ should be disposed of. The only lands that had been ‘delivered’ to date were those of the grand duchy of Warsaw, some of which had belonged to Austria and Prussia before Napoleon’s incursion into the region. The common understanding was that all three powers would recover their fair share as a result of a deal to be made privately between them, or ‘à l’amiable’, to use the phrase contained in the Convention of Reichenbach. But nothing had been formally agreed. The whole area was under Russian occupation, and Metternich had no doubts that Alexander had his own plans for it, which did not take into account those of either Prussia or Austria.
A seed of discord was gradually germinating, but Metternich was not going to challenge Alexander over the matter. First, because since he held what he wanted while the ‘common acquisitions’ that were meant to fall to Austria and Prussia had not yet been acquired, Alexander was in a stronger position than both of them. Second, because however alarmed he was by the threat of Alexander holding on to most of Poland, Metternich was far more anxious about Alexander’s possible intentions for Germany.
Metternich and Francis were against the recreation of the Holy Roman Empire in any form. But neither did they relish the idea of a Prussian hegemony over the German lands or the plans being hatched by Stein for a unified German state. Alexander was showing a worrying interest in German affairs, and appeared to be looking to place himself in a position of dominance there. He neither encouraged nor restrained Stein, and kept his cards close to his chest, sensing, rightly, that his position was growing stronger every day. There was still everything to play for, and the stakes were high.30