Читать книгу The Secrets of Spies - Weldon Owen - Страница 46

REACTION, REFORM, REVOLUTION

47

SEX, SPIES, AND DIPLOMACY

The Congress of Vienna was a hotbed of

intrigue. As organizers of the event, the

Austrians had obvious home advantages and

their chief statesman, Prince Metternich, ensured

that the servants drafted in to serve the foreign

monarchs and their retinues contained suitable

numbers of informers. The Viennese black

chamber worked overtime to covertly open

and decrypt the vast amount of correspondence

that flowed to and from the city. The major

participants were often accompanied by their

mistresses, and the Congress became infamous

for congress of another type, complete with the

swapping of partners and pillow talk. Metternich’s

former mistress, Princess Catherine Bagration,

gave both sexual favors and her old lover’s

correspondence to Tsar Alexander I of Russia.

“WE CANNOT GET INTO AN

OMNIBUS OR ENTER A COFFEE

HOUSE WITHOUT BEING

FAVORED WITH THE COMPANY

OF AT LEAST ONE OF THESE

UNKNOWN FRIENDS.”

Karl Marx, on the activities of police spies

Above: Revolutionaries enter the throne room of the Tuileries Palace,

Paris. The 1848 revolution established the French Second Republic.

YEAR OF REVOLT

Reformers had greater success in France. In 1830, the

repressive regime of Charles X was overturned in favor of the

somewhat more enlightened rule of King Louis Philippe. But

his government collapsed in the face of the 1848 revolution,

a mass uprising demanding better economic conditions and

greater popular involvement in government. Louis Philippe

fled to Britain and a new French republic was established.

The revolt in France was the first of a series of uprisings

that swept through Europe in 1848, and although the other

monarchies held on to their thrones, the beginnings of a

new social order was emerging. The middle classes had

enjoyed great economic success but they were faced by

an expanding working class, whose desperate poverty saw

the emergence of a new political movement: socialism and

its new champion, Karl Marx.

MARKING MARX

Britain’s greater tolerance of political dissent turned it into a safe haven for European

revolutionaries forced to flee their home countries. The most famous of these was

German Karl Marx, who arrived in England in 1849 and lived there for the remainder

of his life. Marx was a focus for the activities of police spies from continental Europe,

most notably Wilhelm Stieber of the Prussian police. Stieber was totally unscrupulous

and sent back fraudulent reports to his masters in Prussia. In one instance he

claimed—without any evidence—that Marx was planning to assassinate Queen

Victoria and her family. The credulous Prussian foreign ministry fell for the report

and swiftly informed the British government, who, with greater knowledge

of the actual situation, filed the warning in the waste basket.

Right: Karl Marx