Читать книгу Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna - Adam Zamoyski - Страница 9

Metternich had received a report of Caulaincourt’s mission to Russian headquarters not long before he heard of the allied defeat at Bautzen. The first opened up the terrifying possibility that Napoleon and Alexander might strike a deal over his head, while the second raised the equally alarming one that the allied armies would withdraw into Poland and Prussia respectively, leaving Austria militarily defenceless and at Napoleon’s mercy.

The time was fast approaching when Metternich would have to commit Austria to one side or the other, and he was not ready. Schwarzenberg was massing all available Austrian forces at Prague, but would not be ready to take the field before the second week in August at the earliest. Only diplomacy could buy Metternich that time, and when a courier from Dresden brought news of Bautzen at 4 p.m. on the afternoon on 29 May, he sprang into action.

He drove over to the palace of Laxenburg to see the Emperor Francis. He persuaded him to leave Vienna and take up residence at some point midway between Alexander’s headquarters and Napoleon’s, in order to underline his intention of assuming an autonomous role. The only suitable residence in the area was Wallenstein’s former stronghold, the gloomy old castle at Gitschin (Jicin). The move was prepared with the utmost secrecy, but the French ambassador Narbonne got wind of it through his spies at the imperial stables and rushed to Metternich for an explanation. Metternich fobbed him off with evasive answers. The anxious Narbonne immediately set off for Dresden to warn Napoleon, but Metternich had pre-empted him. He had already sent off two couriers, one to Bubna in Dresden instructing him to renew the offer to Napoleon of Austria’s good offices as mediator in reaching a peace settlement, the other to allied headquarters announcing that Francis had left Vienna in order to be closer to his army.

This in itself was hardly likely to convince Alexander of Austria’s good faith. He needled Stadion and Lebzeltern about her true intentions, and pointed to signs of her treachery. He was furious when he heard that Austria had allowed Poniatowski’s Polish corps, which had been isolated in Kraków, to march through Austrian territory in order to rejoin Napoleon’s main forces in Saxony. His suspicions were further aroused when news reached him of Bubna’s mission to Dresden.¹

On 1 June, as they were making their way to Gitschin, Francis and Metternich encountered Nesselrode coming the other way. He had been sent by an exasperated Alexander with instructions to pin the Emperor of Austria down to committing himself, on which point he stressed ‘that I need a categorical decision, in writing’. The last thing Francis was prepared to do at this stage was to commit himself in writing, but he did give Nesselrode a strong verbal assurance of his intent to join the allies if a satisfactory peace settlement could not be wrenched from Napoleon.²

In the circumstances, the armistice of Plesswitz, which came into effect on 4 June, the day after Francis and Metternich reached Gitschin, was a godsend. ‘The first great step has been taken, my dearest friend,’ Metternich wrote to his wife on 6 June, making out that the signature of the armistice was somehow the consequence of his own deft diplomacy. In a letter to his daughter written two days later, he complained of the strain of being the prime mover, on whom the eighty million inhabitants of the Continent depended for their salvation. Full of his sense of mission, he set about manipulating events.³

His first move was to provide himself with a stage on which he would be able to direct the actors as he wished. One of his reasons for choosing Gitschin was that it lay not far from Ratiborzitz (Ratiboric), the estate of Wilhelmina de Biron, Princess of Sagan. She was one of the four daughters of the late Duke of Courland. Originally an autonomous prince under the suzerainty of Poland, he had foreseen the extinction of that kingdom and of his principality with it, and had purchased substantial estates as insurance for the future. One of these was the principality of Sagan (Zagan) in Silesia, which he had left Wilhelmina on his death in 1800. He had also left her the estate of Ratiborzitz, with a simple but luxurious country house set in the grounds of the ancient castle. As this was conveniently close to Gitschin and to the allied headquarters at Reichenbach (Dzierzoniów), which had already attracted her mother the Duchess of Courland, Metternich suggested that she take up residence there. She could not resist the call to be near the epicentre of events; and, like so many ladies in Europe at the time, she worshipped Alexander, so she agreed.

She was joined there by Gentz, whom Metternich wished to have near at hand, since he had planned to arrange a number of meetings at Ratiborzitz that even Napoleon’s spies would not get wind of. ‘I live here as in heaven,’ Gentz wrote to a friend. He loved the relaxed atmosphere that reigned in the elegant house, and was beginning to fall under the spell of its beautiful châtelaine.⁴

Metternich had met her a few years before and had even begun a mild flirtation with her in 1810, but this had been interrupted by the appearance of the dashing young Prince Alfred von Windischgraetz, an officer in the Austrian army, with whom she fell in love. She still was, but this did not stop her growing close to Metternich during the spring of 1813, when he was feeling politically isolated and under pressure. He would discuss his ideas and policies with her as though she were a colleague. She would now act as his stage manager as he put together one of the great acts of his career.

Alexander was in no mood for play-acting. Although he had been obliged to accept Napoleon’s offer of the armistice, he was still bent on war. It was not in his nature to back down in the face of adversity. At Bautzen, where he had insisted on exercising command at one point, he had, when informed that his right flank had been turned, declared that ‘In war the obstinate will always triumph,’ and had nearly been cut off as a result. ‘I noticed that the idea of breaking off the war without having achieved the grand results he had allowed himself to dream of tormented him like a gnawing parasite,’ Gentz reported to Metternich after a meeting with the Tsar.⁵

The allies had established their headquarters in the little town of Reichenbach, to the south of Breslau, but Alexander himself had taken up quarters a few miles away in a derelict country house at Peterswaldau (Pieszyce). He was attended only by Admiral Shishkov and his chief of police, Aleksandr Balashov, as well as a few aides-decamp. But he ignored their presence, spending hours alone in the overgrown gardens and orchards of the house or walking over to the nearby colony of Herrnhut Moravian Brethren at Gnadenfrei (Piława Górna), with whom he communed.⁶

Partly out of a growing reluctance to relinquish control and partly out of a sense that, since he was the instrument of God, he did not need advice, Alexander delegated less and less. His Foreign Minister, Chancellor Rumiantsev, had suffered a slight stroke and was in no condition to carry out his duties, but rather than replace him Alexander left him in his post back in St Petersburg and took control of foreign affairs himself. Instead of being elevated to ministerial rank, Rumiantsev’s natural successor Nesselrode merely became a sort of secretary to the Tsar.

He was perfectly suited for such a role. Born in Lisbon, the son of a minor Westphalian noble in Russian service, Nesselrode had come to Russia in 1796, aged sixteen, and served as a midshipman in the Baltic fleet. He moved on to a commission in the horseguards, and after a spell as aide-de-camp and chamberlain to Tsar Paul, he transferred to the diplomatic service. As a junior diplomat at the embassy in Paris, he established and became the link in a secret communication between Alexander and the then French Foreign Minister Talleyrand. Small and ordinary-looking, he challenged no one. He was a competent bureaucrat, loyal, hard-working and always ready to oblige his superiors. Gentz, with whom he also kept up a clandestine correspondence through war and peace, thought him ‘a man of upright character, good judgement, born for work and solid things’. Metternich once said that ‘If he were a fish, he would be carried away with the current.’ He would probably not have minded, as he saw himself primarily as the Tsar’s instrument. ‘I am called when I am needed,’ he explained to his wife. ‘I am completely passive.’⁷

With ministers such as Nesselrode around him, Alexander never needed to fear being contradicted. He also had a number of people in his entourage who had their own programmes and who would support him robustly whenever he needed reassurance. One such was Stein, who could be counted on to argue against all the Russians who were for retrenching on their conquests in Poland. Another was Carl’Andrea Pozzo di Borgo.

Corsican by birth, he was a contemporary and erstwhile close friend of Napoleon, with whom he had made common cause during the early stages of the French Revolution. He had gradually drifted away from and eventually turned against his famous compatriot, becoming an implacable enemy whose hatred was kept warm by burning jealousy. After spending some time in London and Vienna, Pozzo had taken service in Russia, where Alexander had rewarded him with the rank of General and the title of Count. He was more cunning than intelligent, and could certainly be counted on to support Alexander in any venture, however risky, aimed at the destruction of Napoleon.

Strong in the conviction that God meant him to save Europe, buoyed up by the vigorous support of the likes of Stein and Pozzo, Alexander was unlikely to be deflected from his aim. Particularly as every day reinforcements marched into camp from the depths of Russia and newly formed Prussian regiments took their place in the allied ranks.

The situation in the Prussian camp was quite the reverse of that in Alexander’s entourage. When news of the armistice became known at allied headquarters ‘the Prussian officers were so indignant that they tore off their pelisses and trampled them underfoot’, according to Stewart. Their exasperation was shared by Hardenberg, and particularly by Humboldt.⁸

Wilhelm von Humboldt was an ardent patriot, and had put his faith in Prussia as the only agency through which the German lands could be freed. A prominent literary figure and a close friend of Schiller, he had neglected his career as a writer to become a Prussian minister and, in 1810, Prussia’s ambassador in Vienna. He was now forty-six years old and somewhat overshadowed by the reputation of his younger brother, the renowned naturalist and traveller Alexander von Humboldt. He was highly intelligent and dedicated, yet many found him difficult to like. He was censorious and at times priggish, which did not prevent him from liberally indulging a seedy taste for preferably fat lower-class girls whom he could treat as objects while writing curiously high-minded letters to his wife Caroline, his ‘dearest Li’.

On 13 June he wrote to her from Reichenbach venting his anger at the armistice. Not only was it entirely unnecessary, he felt, it was psychologically damaging to the German cause. The first wave of enthusiasm which had brought volunteers flocking to the Prussian colours had spent itself, partisan activity had fizzled out, and if the allied armies remained behind the Elbe for much longer, it would be impossible to breathe fresh life into the movement for the liberation of Germany. The behaviour of the Russian troops towards the German population was undermining the alliance, while the Russian command was growing increasingly war-weary. Humboldt bemoaned the lack of committed leadership, and feared that in these conditions Metternich, whom he distrusted and disliked, would be able to make an ‘Austrian peace’ that would leave Prussia in the lurch and cancel out all hope of a Germany free from foreign influence. ‘The future looks unbelievably dark and uncertain,’ he wrote to her on 22 June.⁹

King Frederick William also thought the future looked bleak, but for different reasons. He did not share his army’s spirit of belligerence, and could not make up his mind which threatened him more: the continuation of the war, with its perils and unforeseen consequences, or the conclusion of peace, which would probably take place at the expense of Prussia. His natural inclinations were for the latter course. He would whip himself up into a warlike mood in order to support Alexander, but talk of war raised the spectre of unrest and possible revolution in his mind. ‘His Majesty, therefore, cools down rapidly, and sinks back into the same amiable nonentity he has ever been,’ noted George Jackson, Stewart’s secrétaire d’ambassade.¹⁰

Stewart had come from London a few weeks earlier by a round-about route which had taken him by ship through the Baltic to Prussia, and on to allied headquarters at Reichenbach, where he finally delivered his letters of credence to Frederick William. To his intense disappointment, the atmosphere there was anything but warlike.

There were daily parades as Alexander and Frederick William reviewed newly arrived reinforcements, but there were also banquets, lunch parties and excursions to nearby beauty spots and places of interest. The presence of the sovereigns drew minor German princes eager to pay court to what they assumed would be the new powers in Germany, and ladies who had come to see the chivalrous liberator. ‘Female society of the most perfect description was within our reach; and its allurements and dissipations often divided the mind of soldier and politician from their more severe duties,’ recorded Stewart. Jackson contributed an English flavour. ‘We have enlivened our leisure hours by getting up some pony races, which have gone off wonderfully well,’ he wrote home. But the British diplomats were far from happy.¹¹

Alexander had withdrawn into himself. In between meditations on the doctrines of the Moravian Brethren and his divine destiny, he was penning love notes to Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya, the wife of one of his aides-de-camp, with whom he had enjoyed a dalliance at Kalisch, and who had gone to Bohemia to await his projected arrival there. While pouring out his heart, he stressed the ‘purity’ of his feelings, and affirmed that he felt no scruples about making her unwitting husband carry the notes between them.¹²

While Alexander believed that the sufferings endured by his people over the previous twelve months entitled Russia to special consideration, Britain had, in the course of the past century, acquired a sense of embattled righteousness which translated effortlessly into an arrogant perception of her needs and her God-given right to them. This was the cause of some resentment, and not only among the Russians.

According to Jackson, Hardenberg seemed to regard Britain ‘rather as a thorn in his side, and an obstacle to a peaceful settlement of affairs amongst the three Powers, than as an ally making the greatest efforts and sacrifices to aid in restoring permanent tranquillity in Europe’.¹³

In his instructions to Stadion of 7 May, designed to give as much pleasure as possible to the Russians short of committing Austria to an alliance, Metternich insisted that Britain would have to give up some of her maritime rights, adding that ‘England’s dominion on [the seas] is no less monstrous than Napoleon’s on the continent.’¹⁴

Lord Cathcart, who had followed Alexander from St Petersburg, and the newly arrived Stewart, who thought highly of himself, felt they were not given enough respect at allied headquarters. But they were both relatively inferior in rank and personal reputation, and they were dealing with ministers and monarchs. Matters were not improved by the fact that they had taken an instant dislike to each other; as a result they did not always see eye to eye or coordinate their actions.

Neither Cathcart nor Stewart was given any information as to what was going on, and their anxiety mounted as they watched couriers come and go. As far as they were concerned, Austria was still an ally of France, and they found the presence of Stadion and Lebzeltern at allied headquarters puzzling. They had no inkling of what Metternich might be up to, and suspected the worst. ‘I fear political treachery,’ Stewart wrote excitedly to Castlereagh on 6 June. They were taken aback when they were at last informed that an armistice had been signed with Napoleon.¹⁵

The one thing Cathcart and Stewart did have going for them was money. Russia and Prussia were both desperate to pay and feed their armies and raise the new divisions they would need in order to confront Napoleon. On 14 June Stewart concluded a treaty with Prussia which bound her to put an extra 80,000 men in the field in exchange for an immediate cash subsidy of £666,000. Prussia also agreed to respect British claims to the lands of the houses of Hanover and Brunswick, while in a secret article Britain pledged herself to support Prussia’s right to regain a position at least equivalent to that she had held in 1806. The following day Cathcart signed a twin treaty by which Russia was to receive twice as much money in return for an army of 150,000. Britain also agreed to spend £500,000 on refitting the Russian fleet. The two treaties provided for a further advance of £5 million in the form of ‘federal paper’, which could be issued by the allies to cover the expenses of war. It was backed by British credit and would be redeemed jointly by all three at the conclusion of the war.¹⁶

Possibly the most important article in the treaties was that which bound the signatories not to enter into any negotiations of any kind with any party without consulting each other. The suspension of hostilities had brought out mistrust between the allies, as each of them considered the possibility that the other might make a separate deal with Napoleon. ‘Conjecture was still very busy, and had a wide field of action,’ in Stewart’s words.¹⁷

The deepest suspicions were focused on Austria, and on Metternich in particular. On 10 June Hardenberg was sent to Gitschin to obtain firmer commitments from Austria. Amongst other things, he wanted to ensure that the bases for negotiation which were to be submitted to Napoleon should not be too acceptable to him; if Metternich were to offer him terms that he could stomach, Napoleon might seize on the opportunity to make a peace that would satisfy neither Russia nor Prussia, and certainly not their British ally.

The conditions proposed by Hardenberg as the starting-point for negotiations with Napoleon were: 1. The dissolution of the grand duchy of Warsaw and its partition between the three neighbouring powers; 2. The cession to Prussia of Danzig and other areas in northern Germany; 3. The return of Illyria to Austria; 4. The reinstatement of Hanseatic ports such as Hamburg and Lübeck; 5. The dissolution of the Rheinbund; and 6. The reconstruction of Prussia to its pre-1806 status.

When Hardenberg presented these conditions to him, Metternich balked at the inclusion of the last two. He knew they would be unacceptable to Napoleon, and that if they were put to him he would not agree to negotiate at all. This would entail the resumption of hostilities at a moment when Austria was not ready – which in turn would mean that she would have no option but to resume her role as Napoleon’s ally. He had also come to the conclusion that it would be politic to preserve the Rheinbund, as this would effectively scotch any plans Alexander and Stein might have for the rearrangement of Germany and any designs Prussia might be nursing with regard to German territory.

Over two days of often heated discussion Metternich managed to make his case that the most important thing was to get Napoleon to agree to negotiations. This would have the twin advantages of buying Austria the time necessary for mobilising her army, and making Napoleon look like the aggressor when the negotiations eventually broke down. That they would break down he had no doubt, because, he explained, the allies would, as soon as the negotiations started, introduce the other two conditions and then include British demands with regard to Spain and the Netherlands. But while he stood by his insistence that Napoleon must be lured into negotiations, he did agree to commit Austria to war when these failed, and a formal convention was to be prepared to that effect.

This went only a little way to dispel mistrust of Metternich at allied headquarters, and the suspicion lingered that he was setting a trap – the awareness of each of the three powers that they could at any moment strike a deal with Napoleon over the heads of the others made them extraordinarily sensitive to the possibility of the others doing so, hence the high degree of mistrust emanating from the notes and letters of those involved in these delicate and secretive talks.

Alexander decided to talk to Metternich himself, and a meeting was arranged for 17 June at Opotschno (Opočno). The two had not seen each other since 1805, and although they had been on cordial terms then, much had happened since to make the Tsar suspicious of the Austrian Foreign Minister. But in a long interview Metternich succeeded in allaying those suspicions by explaining his plan of action. He assured Alexander that if Napoleon agreed to talks, ‘the negotiations will demonstrate, beyond any doubt, that he has no intention of behaving wisely or justly’, and that war would inevitably follow. Alexander accepted the logic of the plan, and left the meeting in a brighter mood. But that only made the Prussians more suspicious.¹⁸

Two days later Metternich had a secret conference in the discreet venue of Wilhelmina de Sagan’s house at Ratiborzitz, with Hardenberg and Humboldt representing Prussia and Nesselrode Russia, which the latter described as ‘one of the most stormy I have ever attended’. In the end Metternich managed to placate them by declaring that while Austria would only bind herself to join Russia and Prussia in war against France if Napoleon did not accept to negotiate on the first four conditions, he nevertheless agreed that a durable peace could not be achieved without excluding France and French influence entirely from Italy, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. The fruit of these meetings was the Convention of Reichenbach, signed a few days later, on 27 June.

This defined the conditions on which Napoleon was to be invited to negotiate, and stipulated that if he did not agree to them, or if the negotiations did not lead to peace, Austria would automatically become an ally of Russia and Prussia, and declare war on France.¹⁹

Mistrust nevertheless lingered like an unhealthy fog – with some justification, since the allies had accepted Metternich’s assurance that the peace proposals were only a ploy to wrong-foot Napoleon, while he himself was still in favour of making peace provided reasonable terms could be obtained. That seemed infinitely preferable to embarking on a new war as part of a coalition which, in Gentz’s words, was ‘a weak, rotten, poorly designed structure in which hardly two pieces fit together’. But a satisfactory peace could only be made with the participation of Britain, and Metternich was doing everything possible to make contact with the British cabinet through Wessenberg and various British agents.²⁰

The British diplomats had been left out of the secret talks between their allies and Metternich, and seemed to be unaware of them. But Castlereagh was anxious. On 13 June he wrote to Cathcart instructing him to write to Metternich himself and pin him down as to Austria’s intentions, and enclosing a letter to the Austrian Foreign Minister in which he insisted on ‘without loss of time, be[ing] informed in the most authentic and confidential manner of the views and intentions of the Austrian cabinet’.²¹

Stewart, who regarded himself first and foremost as a soldier and longed to get to grips with the enemy, had gone off to Prussia in order to review the troops concentrating for the next stage of the campaign in northern Germany. It was only when he returned a couple of weeks later that he discovered, entirely by chance, that Russia and Prussia had signed a convention with Austria without consulting their British allies, in stark and insulting contradiction to the engagements made in the subsidy treaties signed with them only ten days before.

The British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and his Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh had already been rattled by the news of their Russian and German allies’ signature of the armistice of Plesswitz on 4 June without consulting them. When they were informed of this second breach of faith there was mild panic in London. They had to consider the very real possibility that Austria might succeed in subverting their allies and broker a peace between them and Napoleon which would once again exclude Britain. Faced with this bleak prospect, Castlereagh readjusted his policy.

‘You must guard against a Continental peace being made to our exclusion,’ he warned Cathcart on 6 July, stressing the weakness of Britain’s position. He hated the prospect of having to take part in a settlement negotiated by Metternich, but there seemed to be no alternative. He had made up his mind to send an envoy to the Austrian court.

‘The risk of treating with France is great, but the risk of losing our Continental Allies and the confidence of our own nation is greater,’ he argued, instructing Cathcart to inform the allies that Britain would join them in any negotiations they entered into with Napoleon. He listed ‘the points on which His Royal Highness can under no circumstances relax’, which were that Spain, Portugal and Naples must be returned to their rightful sovereigns, that Hanover be handed back, that an enlarged Holland be restored and that Prussia and Austria be strengthened. A further point concerned Britain’s maritime rights, which were not negotiable. To his intense annoyance Russia had recently renewed its offer to mediate in the Anglo-American conflict, which he saw as an attempt to bring these rights up in the international arena.²²

On his return to Gitschin after his crucial conferences with Alexander and the allied ministers, Metternich had found a letter from the French Foreign Minister Maret asking whether Austria still considered herself to be bound by the treaty of 1812 with France, and if so, whether she would designate a plenipotentiary to renegotiate it so as to accommodate Austria’s new role as mediator. Metternich replied with a specious document explaining Austria’s behaviour towards France, and then set off for Dresden himself.²³

He arrived in the Saxon capital on 25 June, and on the following day he presented himself at the Marcolini villa. On his arrival he was struck by the look of weariness and despondency on the faces of the senior officers in the Emperor’s ante-rooms. He found Napoleon standing in the middle of a long gallery, his sword at his side and his hat under his arm. The Emperor opened the conversation with cordial enquiries about Francis’s health, but his countenance soon grew sombre. Irritated by Austria’s tergiversation, and feeling he was being betrayed, Napoleon reacted with his usual truculence. ‘So it is war you want: very well, you shall have it,’ he challenged Metternich. ‘I annihilated the Prussian army at Lützen; I beat the Russians at Bautzen; and now you want to have your turn. I shall meet you at Vienna. Men are incorrigible; the lessons of experience are lost on them.’

When Metternich pressed him to make peace, stressing that this was his last opportunity to do so on favourable terms, Napoleon gave full vent to his irritation. ‘I might even consider giving Russia a piece of the duchy of Warsaw,’ he ranted, ‘but I will not give you anything, because you have not beaten me; and I will give nothing to Prussia, because she has betrayed me.’ He declared that he could not give up an inch of territory without dishonouring himself. ‘Your sovereigns, born on the throne, can afford to let themselves be beaten twenty times and still return to their capitals; I cannot, because I am a parvenu soldier,’ he said. ‘My authority will not survive the day when I will have ceased to be strong, and therefore, to be feared.’

He suspected that the four conditions for negotiation put forward by Metternich were some kind of trick, as they would not buy peace by themselves (if only because British demands would have to be added), so in agreeing to them Napoleon would be entering an open-ended negotiation. And he saw Metternich as the principal intriguer rather than the honest broker the Austrian minister thought himself.

Realising that he could not force Austria to fight at the side of France, Napoleon attempted to buy her neutrality by offering to return her Illyrian provinces. But Metternich stood firm by his insistence that the only role Austria was prepared to play was that of independent mediator. If Napoleon did not accept this, Francis would consider himself relieved of any obligation to stand by their alliance, and free to act as he saw fit. Napoleon tried to browbeat Metternich, by accusing him of treachery and of being in the pay of Britain, by ridiculing Austria’s military potential and by threatening to crush her. He lost his temper more than once, threw his hat into the corner in a rage, only then to resume the conversation on polite, even friendly terms. The meeting lasted more than nine hours, and it was dark outside when the exhausted Metternich left the room.²⁴

That evening Metternich returned to the Marcolini villa at Napoleon’s invitation to see a play put on by the actors of the Comédie Française, who had been brought over from Paris. He was astonished to find himself watching the famous actress Mademoiselle Georges playing Racine’s Phèdre. ‘I thought I was at St Cloud,’ he wrote to his wife before going to bed, ‘all the same faces, the same court, the same people.’²⁵

Over the next days he had a couple of meetings with Maret and another inconclusive one with Napoleon, who kept invoking Austria’s obligations under the treaty of 1812. Metternich did everything he could to persuade Napoleon that he wanted to help him make a satisfactory peace, while Napoleon alternated between bullying and trying to convince Metternich that Austria needed France more than France needed Austria.

Metternich filled in his spare time pleasantly enough. The weather had turned fine and there was a festive atmosphere in the beautiful baroque city, which, in the words of Napoleon’s secretary Baron Fain, ‘presented the curiously mixed aspect of a capital and a military camp’. The armistice had cheered all those who longed for peace, and there were balls and parties for the French officers and members of Napoleon’s court.²⁶

Metternich was feeling very pleased with himself. ‘I am beginning to believe a little in my star as Napoleon believes in his, when I see that I am now making the whole of Europe turn around a point that I and I alone have determined some months ago,’ he wrote to his wife after his second meeting with Napoleon. ‘There are crowds of people continually standing under my windows hoping to discover what I think,’ he noted with satisfaction, adding that he was frequently stopped in the street and asked whether there would be peace or war. He also took the opportunity to go shopping for presents for his wife and daughter, for which he received touching thanks. But his mind, when it was not occupied with affairs of state, was elsewhere. Metternich had fallen in love.²⁷

The object of his affections was Wilhelmina, Princess of Sagan. She had, according to Countess Rozalia Rzewuska, who knew her well, ‘noble and regular features, a superb figure, and the bearing of a goddess’; but if she was a goddess, she was a fallen one. ‘She sins seven times a day and loves as often as others dine,’ Metternich would later write, with some justification. But it was not entirely her fault. ‘The consequences of a neglected upbringing and the frightening immorality of her paternal home had the most unfortunate influence on the destiny of the young and charming Wilhelmine,’ Rzewuska continues. ‘Abandoned to the vivacity of her senses, devoid of any religious principles, her imagination branded by pernicious example, Wilhelmine found herself defenceless against the great dangers which her beauty stored up for her.’

As a young girl she was seduced by her mother’s lover, the Swedish adventurer Gustav von Armfeldt, and became pregnant. A hasty marriage was arranged to the Prince de Rohan, who tolerated her continuing depravities as she tolerated his. But their ‘entente immorale’ was of short duration. They divorced, and Wilhelmina married the Russian Prince Trubetskoy, who was besotted by her and whom she dismissed ‘as they left the altar’. She was similarly curt with her third husband, Count Schulemburg. She was enormously rich and generous with it, and she made up in charm and natural wit what she lacked in upbringing and education.²⁸

Metternich had originally regarded her as a friend and confidante, and the passionate feelings she kindled in him took him unawares. In lengthy and somewhat adolescent love letters he expressed his astonishment at the way they had crept up on him. He revelled in the first paroxysms of love, mixing up passionate outpourings with increasingly exalted views on the political situation. ‘I am going there like the real man of God, bearing the burden of mankind on my shoulders!’ he announced in a note penned hastily as he was leaving for Dresden.²⁹

She returned his love, but she did not believe in exclusivity, and continued to receive visits from Windischgraetz whenever he could get leave from the army. She was enjoying life now that her country house had become the nexus of European politics. ‘Since the Emperor went to Gitschin at the beginning of June, I established myself here and experienced the most interesting, lively and extraordinary weeks of my life,’ Gentz wrote to Wessenberg from Ratiborzitz on 5 July. ‘You probably know, my dear friend, that at this strange point in time, when the four foremost sovereigns of the continent, along with their cabinets, ministers, foreign envoys, etc., and with 600,000 men under arms are concentrated in the narrow strip of land between Dresden and Reichenbach, the glamour of the residences and capitals of Europe – that is, as far as interest is concerned – are outshone by three or four Bohemian castles and today, a man of the world no longer speaks of Paris, Vienna, Petersburg, and so on, but of Gitschin, Optoschna and Ratiboržiz. In this last place – on top of everything, a little paradise which the Duchess of Sagan is making into a veritable heaven – one has seen in the last three weeks nothing but crowned heads, prime ministers, diplomatic conferences, couriers, etc.’³⁰

As he was getting nowhere in Dresden, Metternich decided to leave on 30 June. He was in his travelling clothes and his coach was waiting below when he received a note summoning him for an interview with Napoleon. He gave orders for the horses to be unharnessed and went to the Marcolini villa, dressed as he was. He found Napoleon in the same mood as before, and was resigning himself to listen to the habitual torrent of bluster and complaint, when the Emperor suddenly ushered him into a study and sat him down at a table at which Maret was poised to take notes. He then asked him to set out Austria’s proposals for the mediation. Metternich obliged, and to his surprise Napoleon gave his assent. A note was drawn up to the effect that the belligerent parties would send plenipotentiaries to a congress to be held under Austrian mediation at Vienna or Prague, to begin in the first days of July.

Napoleon suggested including plenipotentiaries from Britain, the United States of America and Spain, but Metternich demurred. He considered it so unlikely that Britain would agree to take part that he refused to agree to inviting her, as her probable failure to respond might provide Napoleon with an excuse for declaring the congress invalid. It was therefore agreed that only Spain and the United States be invited to send their representatives.

‘Never has an important piece of business been expedited so promptly,’ Metternich noted with satisfaction. An hour later his carriage was rolling out of Dresden, and on 1 July he was back with Francis at Gitschin. On 4 July he was at Ratiborzitz, conferring with Hardenberg, Humboldt, Nesselrode and Stadion on how to conduct the negotiations in the congress that was to assemble at Prague in a few days’ time.³¹