In a secret, unpublished article of the Treaty, the four victorious powers resolved to decide among themselves the ultimate direction of the Congress. By September 23, this general program had been refined. Proposals on all territorial matters would be decided upon first by the members of the Quadruple Alliance (the Grand Coalition of four great powers), then submitted to the French and Spanish for approval, and then forwarded to the Congress for ratification. The five chief German powers would draft their own plan for a German constitution. Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, plus Spain and France, would determine procedural matters.
On that same day, Friday, September 23, 1814, His Serene Highness Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince of Bénévent, formerly the bishop of the Revolution and Napoleon's foreign minister, arrived in Vienna. Within a week he had thrown the plans of the Coalition into complete disarray. Talleyrand—that “pattern of subtlety and finesse,” “a creature of grandeur and guile,” as the biographer Philip Ziegler refers to him—was not going to be content with the subordinate role the Four had assigned to France. He immediately objected to the exclusion of France from the directing role of the great powers. He took up the cause of all the excluded powers, arguing that the Four had no mandate to decide matters in advance of the convocation of the Congress, and in this he was supported by the Spanish representative, Don Pedro Labrador. After a meeting on September 30, a shaken Gentz, the secretary of the Congress, wrote in his diary: “The intervention of Talleyrand and Labrador has hopelessly ruined all our plans. They protested against the procedure we have adopted; they gave us a dressing-down which lasted for two hours; it is a scene I shall never forget.”38 Repeatedly Talleyrand threatened to take his case to the Congress as a whole.
Talleyrand even objected to the use of the word allies. He argued that the Quadruple Alliance had ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The legal status of the Alliance existed only so long as hostilities remained unresolved; the four member states were legally bound as individual states simply to carry out the provisions of the Treaty, one of which was to convene the Congress—in its entirety—on October 1. The directing body of the Congress, insofar as it took its authority from the Treaty, must therefore consist of all eight powers who were parties to the Treaty, if their authority was confirmed by the whole Congress in plenary session.
Talleyrand's intervention was a tour de force. The defeated state had turned the ideology of the state-nation—its vulnerability to charges of illegitimacy, its ideology of consent, its sensitivity to public opinion, in short its entire superstructure of the man-made and thus the accountable—against the victors. On October 8 another meeting was held: Sweden, Portugal, Spain, and France would be added to the Four Powers, to make a “Preliminary Committee of the Eight.” Four days later the Eight published their first declaration: the opening of the Congress would be postponed until November 1. This declaration expressed, perhaps a little defensively, the intention that all procedural issues would be resolved “in harmony with public law, the provisions of the [Treaty of Paris] and the expectations of the Age.”39
The Committee of Eight handled most vital questions, often following meetings of the Four and, after January 9, the Five, France having finally been included in the smaller directing group. Ten special committees were set up to which various problems were allocated. The Congress, as such, only really came together in order to adopt the Final Act on June 9, 1815, when the assembled representatives with some exceptions (notably Spain) adhered to the findings of the committees, including those of the directorate of Eight.
Five particular questions bedeviled the peacemakers: the German Question (Napoleon had destroyed most of the three hundred kingdoms and principalities that composed the Holy Roman Empire, which in any case had been declared defunct in 1806); the Italian Question (Napoleon had driven Austria, the principal prewar power in Italy, from that entire country, stripped the Vatican of its temporalities, and imposed a usurper who still reigned in Naples); recognition and territorial problems associated with the new states of Switzerland, the United Netherlands, and with the Kingdom of Sweden, whose monarch was a former French marshal; and most intractably, the crucial issues of Poland and Saxony, described above, which pitted the policies of the prewar territorial states with respect to annexation, against those of the new state-nations and their quest for collective legitimacy.
It was widely assumed that because Prussia, a victor, could scarcely be expected to lose territories it held in 1805, the tsar and the King of Prussia must have concluded a secret compact by which Prussia would receive Saxony (still occupied by Russian troops) in order for Russia to create a new Polish kingdom that would incorporate Prussia's former Polish provinces. Initially both Britain and Austria supported Prussia in its bid for Saxony—Britain on grounds of improving the balance of power by bringing Prussia westward, Austria as part of a bribe to induce King Frederick William of Prussia to renege on his promises of support to Russia over Poland. By mid-October the British thought they had the makings of a compromise and proposed that Metternich present to the tsar a joint position on behalf of the other three powers: Poland could be wholly repartitioned, or given a genuinely independent status, or returned to its partial configuration as in 1791. On October 24, Metternich met with the tsar. The meeting was a disaster. Afterwards the tsar, joined by Frederick William, demanded that Emperor Francis replace Metternich. It was evident that an agreement among the coalition partners could not be achieved by the time of the proposed opening of the Congress.
Now the four powers faced a new dilemma: should they jeopardize the Congress itself by another postponement or should they risk throwing the settlement into the hands of an open constitutional convention? It was proposed that a three-man commission begin examining the credentials of the accredited representatives; that would buy time. The Committee of Eight would be convened when the credentialing process was complete, in order to discuss the organization of the Congress itself. Talleyrand began to speak sarcastically of “the Congress that [is] not a Congress.”40
As public opinion began to turn against the annexation of Saxony (and as the tsar seemed intransigent regarding Poland), both Britain and Austria backed away from their support for Prussian ambitions. Castlereagh changed his position and advised the Prussians not to press the claim to all Saxony “against the general sentiment of Europe.”41 In reaction, the Prussians on November 7 informed the Austrians that they were breaking off all talks with Castlereagh over Saxony and Poland. That evening it was learned in Vienna that Russia had turned over the administration of Saxony to the Prussian army.
Now Austria played its German card: if Prussia wished to participate in the new German Confederation, it could not afford to alienate the other German states by consuming Saxony. Metternich sent Prussia a proposal to divide Saxony, giving some territory to Prussia but retaining Dresden and Leipzig in an independent kingdom ruled by the hereditary heir. For the first time, these proposals were sent to Talleyrand.
In a state paper of December 19, Talleyrand argued that the important issue raised by Saxony was one of legitimacy, not merely one of territorial compensation or the balance of power. An established heir could not be deposed simply because other sovereigns coveted his lands, as Frederick the Great had coveted Silesia. In the new world of the state-nation, the right of marginal conquest so dear to the territorial state had to give way to the claims of legitimacy. It was “contrary to justice and reason,” Talleyrand wrote, for Prussia to demand territory; it was a matter for the lawful monarch, the king of Saxony, to decide what he was prepared to yield to the Prussians, and in any case, he could not yield the state itself because it was impossible on legitimate grounds for him to do so. Saxony belonged to its people, not to its king.
In October Castlereagh had had a similar exchange with the tsar. The Russian emperor had angrily pointed out that he had 200,000 troops in Poland, and occupied every city and village. Castlereagh had replied:
It is
very true, His Imperial Majesty [is] in possession and he must know that no one [is] less disposed than myself hostilely to dispute that possession, but I [am] sure His Imperial Majesty would not feel satisfied to rest his pretensions on a title of conquest in opposition to the general sentiment of Europe.42
Now, in the last two weeks of December, Metternich and Castlereagh brought Talleyrand increasingly into their confidence. In January a secret defensive alliance was concluded among France, Britain, and Austria in case negotiations broke down completely. Historians disagree whether this move had any impact on the other members of the coalition, but in any case within two days Castlereagh was writing to London that “the alarm is over.” Poland was once more partitioned; Austria retained Galicia and Tarnopol; Prussia got back Poznania; and the rest of Napoleon's Grand Duchy of Warsaw became a Kingdom of Poland ruled by the tsar. Cracow became a Free City. Three-fifths of Saxony was restored to the king, the remainder going to Prussia.
Other matters were more easily settled. Prussia was given territories in the Rhineland that, with her Saxon acquisition, doubled her population; Austria ceded Belgium to the Netherlands. Austria received Dalmatia and territories in northern Italy from which she had been driven by Napoleon, including Lombardy and Milan, and various possessions of Venice. Events now took an unexpected turn that not only resolved the remnants of the Italian Question but also solidified the former coalition that had begun to show strains at the peace conference.
On the evening of Monday, March 8, Talleyrand, Wellington (who had replaced Castlereagh in February), the Prussian chancellor Hardenberg and the tsar's chief foreign minister, Nesselrode, met with Metternich at his official residence to discuss their trip the next day to inform the king of Saxony of the outcome of the debates over his future. At 3 a.m., the meeting finally broke up and Metternich went to bed, to be awakened at 6 a.m. by an urgent dispatch from the Austrian consul at Genoa. Metternich ignored this, but at 7:30 a.m., nagged by the presence of the message, he opened the envelope and learned that Napoleon had disappeared from Elba.
Within half an hour he was at the side of the emperor Francis; at 8:15 he saw the tsar; at 8:30 the king of Prussia. By 10:00 a.m. the ministers of the great powers were gathered in Metternich's study, and couriers were dispatched to the armies of each of the allies. Austrian forces were concentrated in northern Italy, the Prussians in Saxony, the Russians in Poland, and the British in Belgium. For some days these forces were kept on the alert as all Europe waited to see what Napoleon would do. Would he make for the Italian coast, as Wellington and Talleyrand thought, or go directly to France? Not until March 11 was it known that Napoleon had landed near Cannes on March 1. His first words on landing on French soil were reported to have been, “Le Congrès est dissous.”*
Napoleon had headed directly for Lyons, where he arrived on March 10. By the 17th he was in Auxerre.
It was not a campaign, but a procession. Troops were sent against him—and joined him. Ney, who was to bring him to Paris in an iron cage, fell on his neck. The peasants whose lands were threatened, the ex-soldiers who had lost their livelihood, the serving soldiers who had been given strange and dandified officers, the ordinary Frenchmen, who disliked the émigrés, remembered the victories and forgot the wounds—all rallied to his support.43
On the 13th, the Committee of Eight met and issued a declaration indicting Bonaparte as an outlaw and the “disturber of world repose.” He had placed himself, they declared, “outside the pale of civil and social relations.” Reports were received that French regiments, sent by the king to arrest Napoleon, were defecting to their former commander as he proceeded toward Paris. Rumors began to circulate that he had already taken Paris and although these were premature, Napoleon did in fact triumphantly invest the capital on March 20. Louis, who on the 16th had put on the rosette of the Legion of Honor and promised the Chambers that he would die in their defense, fled in a closed carriage on March 19. “Mon chèr,” Napoleon is reported to have said to Mollien, as he passed through the colonnades of blazing torches and the exhilarated crowds, and into the throne room at the Tuileries, “the people have let me come, as they have let the others go.”
At Vienna, work began on creating a new coalition; a treaty of grand alliance was presented on March 25. The four allies would contribute 150,000 men each to defend the frontiers they had drawn. They promised not to lay down their arms until Napoleon had been defeated. Louis and the other powers were invited to associate themselves with the campaign. For the congress, or rather for its directorate, the negotiations over a constitution for Europe continued; indeed, great progress was made during the Hundred Days of Napoleon's brief resurgence, doubtless because this new threat united all parties and imbued the Congress with a sense of urgency.
At the end of March a message was received by the tsar from Napoleon. It contained conciliatory words and a copy of the secret alliance against Russia agreed to by Metternich, Talleyrand, and Castlereagh in January during the Polish dispute. It had apparently been left behind in Paris when Louis fled. There are differing accounts* of Alexander's reaction—some have him flinging the document into the fire in Metternich's presence; one eyewitness reported that the tsar merely presented Metternich with the treaty and said, “Let us never mention this incident again and let us attend to more serious matters.”44
The Committee of Eight now finally set the boundaries of the new Kingdom of the Netherlands and accepted the constitution of the new confederation of Swiss cantons. Formal treaties ratifying the Polish settlement, including a constitution for the Republic of Cracow, were presented. The Committee set to work with twenty-five secretaries to draft a Final Act, which would be presented to the entire Congress. Agreement was reached over the abolition of the slave trade (the movement for which gained momentum when Napoleon announced his own declaration of abolition) and over the human rights of Jews in Germany. By early May, committee reports were finalized on the navigation of international rivers and on the protocols for diplomatic rank. Only the question of the German constitution and the residue of the Italian Question remained.
On April 7 the entire mosaic of northern Italy fell into place with the creation of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. The Habsburgs were returned to the principalities of Parma, Modena, and Tuscany. The Papal States were restored to the Vatican. But there remained the question of Naples.
Austria had concluded a secret treaty before the Treaty of Paris, supporting the former Napoleonic marshal, Murat, in his claim to Naples in return for which the latter had agreed to restore the Bourbon heir to the Kingdom of Sicily. This treaty violated all the principles of legitimacy the Congress was asserting, and though the allies had tacitly accepted this settlement, the Italian Question could not be resolved until a consensus was achieved regarding Naples. It was widely thought that Murat would be difficult to dislodge, as he had an 80,000-man force at his disposal (although the previous monarch had said of this army, “You may dress it in blue, or in green or in red [that is, in the colors of France, Austria or Britain] but, whichever you do, it will run”45).
By an ill-fated coincidence, Murat chose this moment to attempt a general Italian uprising. Ten days after Napoleon entered Fontainebleau, Murat issued an appeal from Rimini calling on the Italian people to rise against Austria. Fighting broke out between Austrian units in central Italy and Murat's Neapolitan army. The allies now denounced the treaty with Murat, and on April 18 war was declared by Austria. The campaign was over in a month. This cleared the way for the restoration of the Bourbon king, Ferdinand, to the throne of the Two Sicilies, and now there remained only the German Question.
The committee appointed to draft proposals on this issue faced opposition from three quarters: liberal nationalists, who wanted a state-nation for all Germany; dispossessed princes and kings who wanted the return of the territorial states they had held before being turned out by Napoleon; and those lingering dynasties—like Saxony—that feared the action of the Congress would terminate their
sovereignty, or at least greatly compromise it. Finally, in the third week in May, the Committee adopted a plan jointly submitted by Austria and Prussia, the ninth constitutional draft to be discussed in five months. This provided for a federal parliament at Frankfurt, under an Austrian presidency. The sovereign rights of the members of the federation were limited in two respects only: by restraints on foreign alliances and by a requirement that each member state grant a constitution to its citizens based on popular representation.46 Thus a common constitutional system was provided for the German states derived from state-nation principles, even if a German state-nation was not achieved.
On June 9 the Final Act of the Congress, embodying its schemes for the reconstruction of the frontiers of Europe, for the provision of constitutions for numerous states, and above all, for a constitution for Europe itself, was presented. The document contained 121 articles. Of the eight powers, all signed except Spain (though Sweden consented subject to reservations). On June 18 Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. On June 19, the entire Congress was convened again for signing by the smaller powers.
THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES Page 80
