Beacon Lights of History, Volume 09: European Statesmen

Prussia, however, was the most greedy and insatiable of all the contracting parties. She always has been so since she was erected into a kingdom. The cruel terms exacted by Bismarck and Moltke in their late contest with France indicate the real animus of Prussia. The conquerors would have exacted ten milliards instead of five, as a war indemnity, if they had thought that France could pay it. They did not dare to carry away the pictures of the Louvre, nor perhaps did those iron warriors care much for them; but they did want money and territory, and were determined to get all they could. Prussia was a poor country, and must be enriched any way by the unexpected spoils which the fortune of war threw into her hands.

This same rapacity was seen at the Congress of Vienna; but the opposition to it was too great to risk another war, and Prussia, at the entreaty of Alexander, abated some of her demands, as did also Russia her own. The result was that only half of Saxony was ceded to Prussia, raising the subjects of Prussia to ten millions. The tact and firmness of Talleyrand and Castlereagh had prevented the utter absorption of Saxony in the new military monarchy. Talleyrand, whose designs could never be fathomed by the most astute of diplomatists, had succeeded also in isolating Russia and Prussia from the rest of Europe, and raising France into a great power, although her territories were now confined to the limits which had existed in 1792. He had succeeded in detaching Austria and the southern States of Germany from Prussia. He had split Germany into two rival powers, just what Louis Napoleon afterwards aspired to do, hoping to derive from their mutual jealousies some great advantage to France in case of war. Neither of them, however, realized the intense common love of both Austria and Prussia, and indeed of all the German States at heart, for "Fatherland," needing only the genius of a very great man finally to unite them together in one great nation, impossible to be hereafter vanquished by any single power.

Austria retained for her share Lombardy, Venice, Parma, Placentia,–the finest part of Italy, that which was known in the time of Julius Caesar as Cisalpine Gaul. She did not care for the Low Countries, which formed a part of the old empire of Charles V., since to keep that territory would cost more than it would pay. She also received from Bavaria the Tyrol. As further results of the Congress of Vienna, the Netherlands and Holland were united in one kingdom, under a prince of the house of Nassau; Naples returned to the rule of the Bourbons; Genoa became a part of Piedmont. The petty independent States of Germany (some three hundred) were united into a confederation of thirty-seven, called the German Confederacy, to afford mutual support in time of war, and to be directed by a Diet, in which Austria and Prussia were to have two votes each, while Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Hanover were to have one vote each. Thus, Prussia and Austria had four votes out of seven; which practically gave to these two powers, if they chose to unite, the control of all external relations. As to internal affairs, the legislative power was vested in representatives from all the States, both small and great. It will be seen that the higher interests of Germany were not considered in this Congress at all, attention being directed solely to a division of spoils.

But while the Congress was dividing between the princes who composed it its acquisition of territory by conquest, and quarrelling about their respective shares like the members of a family that had come into a large fortune, news arrived of the escape of Napoleon from Elba, after a brief ten months' detention, the adherence to him of the French army, and the consequent dethronement of Louis XVIII. The Congress at once dispersed, forgetting all its differences, while the great monarchs united once more in pouring such an avalanche of troops into France and Belgium that Napoleon stood no chance of retaining his throne, whatever military genius he might display. After his defeat at Waterloo the allies occupied Paris, and this time exacted a large war indemnity of £40,000,000, and left an army of occupation of one hundred and fifty thousand men in France until the money should be paid. They also returned to their owners the pictures of the Louvre which Napoleon had taken in his various conquests.

It was while the allies were in Paris settling the terms of the second peace, that what is called the "Holy Alliance" was formed between Alexander, Frederick William, and Francis (to whom were afterward added the kings of France, Naples, and Spain), which had for its object the suppression of liberal ideas throughout the Continent, in the name of religion. Some of these monarchs were religious men in their way,–especially the Czar, who had been much interested in the spread of Christianity, and the king of Prussia; but even these men thought more of putting down revolutionary ideas than they did of the triumphs of religion.

We must, however, turn our attention to Metternich as the administrator of a large empire, rather than as a diplomatist, although for thirty years after this his hand was felt, if not seen, in all the political affairs of Europe. He was now forty-four years of age, in the prime of his strength and the fulness of his fame,–a prince of the empire, chancellor and prime minister to the Emperor Francis. On his shoulders were imposed the burdens of the State. He ruled with delegated powers indeed, but absolutely. The master whom he served was weak, but was completely in accord with Metternich on all political questions. He of course submitted all important documents to the emperor, and requested instructions; but all this was a matter of form. He was allowed to do as he pleased. He was always exceedingly deferential, and never made himself disagreeable to his sovereign, who could not do without him. From first to last they were on the most friendly terms with each other, and there was no jealousy of his power on the part of the emperor. The chancellor was a gentleman, and had extraordinary tact. But his labors were prodigious, and gave him no time for pleasure, or even social intercourse, which finally became irksome to him. He was too busy with public affairs to be a great scholar, and was not called upon to make speeches, as there was no deliberative assembly to address. Nor was he a national idol. He lived retired in his office, among ministers and secretaries, and appeared in public as little as possible.

After the final dethronement of Napoleon, the policy of Metternich with reference to foreign powers was pacific. He had seen enough of war, and it had no charm for him. War had brought Germany to the verge of political ruin. All his efforts as chancellor were directed to the preservation of peace and the balance of power among all nations. At the close of the great European struggle the finances of all the German States were alike disordered, and their industries paralyzed. Compared with France and England Germany was poor, and wages for all kinds of labor were small. It became Metternich's aim to develop the material resources of the empire, which could be best done in time of peace. Austria, accordingly, took part in no international contest for fifty years, except to preserve her own territories. Metternich did not seem to be ambitious of further territorial aggrandizement for his country; it required all his talents to preserve what she had. Indeed, the preservation of the status quo everywhere was his desire, without change, and without progress. He was a conservative, like the English Lord Eldon, who supported established institutions because they were established; and any movement or any ideas which interrupted the order of things were hateful to him, especially agitations for greater political liberty. A constitutional government was his abhorrence.

Hence, the policy of Metternich's home rule was fatal to all expansion, to all emancipating movements, to all progress, to everything which looked like popular liberty. Men might smoke, drink beer, attend concerts and theatres, amuse themselves in any way they pleased, but they should not congregate together to discuss political questions; they should not form clubs or societies with political intent of any kind; they should not even read agitating tracts and books. He could not help their thinking, but they should not criticise his government. They should be taught in schools directed by Roman Catholic priests, who were good classical scholars, good mathematicians, but who knew but little and cared less about theories of political economy, or even history unless modified to suit religious bigots of the Mediaeval type. He maintained that men should be contented with the sphere in which they were born; that discontent was no better than rebellion against Providence; that any change would be for the worse. He had no liking for universities, in which were fomented liberal ideas; and those professors who sought to disturb the order of things, or teach new ideas,–anything to make young scholars think upon anything but ordinary duties,–were silenced or discharged or banished. The word "rights" was an abomination to him; men, he thought, had no rights,–only duties. He disliked the Press more than he did the universities. It was his impression that it was antagonistic to all existing governments; hence he fettered the Press with restrictions, and confined it to details of little importance. He would allow no comments which unsettled the minds of readers. In no country was the censorship of the Press more inexorable than in Austria and its dependent States. All that spies and a secret police and priests could do to ferret out associations which had in view a greater liberty, was done; all that soldiers could do to suppress popular insurrection was effected,–and all in the name of religion, since he looked upon free inquiry as logically leading to scepticism, and scepticism to infidelity, and infidelity to revolution.

In the Catholic sense Metternich was a religious man, since he recognized in the Roman Catholic Church the conservation of all that is valuable in society, in government, and even in civilization. He brought Catholics to his aid in cementing political despotism, for "Absolutism and Catholicism," as Sir James Stephen so well said, "are but convertible terms." Accordingly, he brought back the Jesuits, and restored them to their ancient power and wealth. He formed the strictest union with the Pope. He rewarded ecclesiastics, and honored the great dignitaries of the established church as his most efficient and trusted lieutenants in the war he waged on human liberty.

But I must allude to some of the things which gave this great man trouble. Of course nothing worried him so much as popular insurrections, since they endangered the throne, and opposed the cherished ends of his life. As early as 1817, what he called "sects" disturbed central Europe. These were a class of people who resembled the Methodists of England, and the followers of Madam von Krüdener in Russia,–generally mystics in religion, who practised the greatest self-denial in this world to make sure of the promises of the next. The Kingdom of Würtemberg, the Grand Duchy of Baden, and Suabia were filled with these people,–perfectly harmless politically, yet with views which Metternich considered an innovation, to be stifled in the beginning. So of Bible societies; he was opposed to these as furnishing a class of subjects for discussion which brought up to his mind the old dissertations on "the rights of man." "The Catholic Church," he writes to Count Nesselrode, the Russian minister, "does not encourage the universal reading of the Bible, which should be confined to persons who are calm and enlightened." But he goes on to say that he himself at forty-five reads daily one or two chapters, and finds new beauties in them, while at the age of twenty he was a sceptic, and found it difficult not to think that the family of Lot was unworthy to be saved, Noah unworthy to have lived, Saul a great criminal, and David a terrible man; that he had tried to understand everything, but that now he accepts everything without cavil or criticism. Truly, a Catholic might say, "See the glorious peace and repose which our faith brings to the most intellectual of men!"

In 1819 an event occurred, of no great importance in itself, but which was made the excuse for increased stringency in the suppression of liberal sentiments throughout Germany. This was the assassination of Von Kotzebue, the dramatic author, at Manheim, at the hands of a fanatic by the name of Sand. Kotzebue had some employment under the Russian government, and was supposed to be a propagandist of the views of the Czar, who had lately become exceedingly hostile to all emancipating movements. In the early part of his reign Alexander was called a Jacobin by Metternich, who despised his philanthropical and sentimental theories, and his energetic labors in behalf of literature, educational institutions, freer political conditions, etc.; but when Napoleon was sent to St. Helena, the Russian ruler, wearied with great events and dreading revolutionary tendencies, changed his opinions, and was now leagued with the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria in supporting the most stringent measures against all reformers. Sand was a theological student in the University of Jena, who thought he was doing God's service by removing from the earth with his assassin's dagger a vile wretch employed by the Russian tyrant to propagate views which mocked the loftiest aspirations of mankind. The murder of Kotzebue created an immense sensation throughout Europe, and was followed by increased rigor on the part of all despotic governments in muzzling the press, in the suppression of public meetings of every sort, and especially in expelling from the universities both students and professors who were known or even supposed to entertain liberal ideas. Metternich went so far as to write a letter to the King of Prussia urging him to disband the gymnasia, as hotbeds of mischief. His influence on this monarch was still further seen in dissuading him to withhold the constitution promised his subjects during the war of liberation. He regarded the meeting of a general representation of the nation as scarcely less evil than democratic violence, and his hatred of constitutional checks on a king was as great as of intellectual independence in a professor at a gymnasium. Universities and constituent assemblies, to him, were equally fatal to undisturbed peace and stability in government.

In the midst of these efforts to suppress throughout Germany all agitating political ideas and movements, the news arrived of the revolution in Naples, July, 1820, effected by the Carbonari, by which the king was compelled to restore the constitution of 1813, or abdicate. Metternich lost no time in assembling the monarchs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, with their principal ministers, to a conference or congress at Troppau, with a view of putting down the insurrection by armed intervention. The result is well known. The armies of Austria and Russia–170,000 men–restored the Neapolitan tyrant to his throne; while he, on his part, revoked the constitution he had sworn to defend, and affairs at Naples became worse than they were before. In no country in the world was there a more execrable despotism than that exercised by the Bourbon Ferdinand. The prisons were filled with political prisoners; and these prisons were filthy, without ventilation, so noisome and pestilential that even physicians dared not enter them; while the wretched prisoners, mostly men of culture, chained to the most abandoned and desperate murderers and thieves, dragged out their weary lives without trial and without hope. And this was what the king, supported and endorsed by Metternich, considered good government to be.

The following year saw an insurrection in Piedmont, when the patriotic party hoped to throw all Northern Italy upon the rear of the Austrians, but which resulted, as will be treated elsewhere, in a sad collapse. The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete, and all people seeking their liberties became the object of attack from the three great Powers, who obeyed the suggestions of the Austrian chancellor,–now unquestionably the most prominent figure in European politics. He had not only suppressed liberty in the country which he directly governed, but he had united Austria, Prussia, and Russia in a war against the liberties of Europe, and this under the guise of religion itself.

Metternich now thought he had earned a vacation, and in the fall of 1821 he made a visit to Hanover. He had previously visited Italy with the usual experience of cultivated Germans,–unbounded admiration for its works of art and sunny skies and historical monuments. He was as enthusiastic as Madame de Staël over St. Peter's and the Pantheon. In his private letters to his wife and children, so simple, so frank, so childlike in his enjoyment, no one would suppose he was the arch and cruel enemy of all progress, with monarchs for his lieutenants, and governors for his slaves. His journey to Hanover was a triumphant procession. The King George IV. embraced him with that tenderness which is usual with monarchs when they meet one another, and in the fulsomeness of his praises compared him to all the great men of antiquity and of modern times,–Caesar, Cato, Gustavus Adolphus, Marlborough, Pitt, Wellington, and the whole catalogue of heroes. On his return journey to Vienna, Metternich stopped to rest himself a while at Johannisberg, the magnificent estate on the Rhine which the emperor had given him, near where he was born, and where he had stored away forty huge casks of his own vintage, worth six hundred ducats a cask, for the use of monarchs and great nobles alone. From thence he proceeded to Frankfort, a beautiful but to him a horrible town, I suppose, because it was partially free; and while there he took occasion to visit five universities, at all of which he was received as a sort of deity,–the students following his carriage with uncovered heads, and with cheers and shouts, curious to see what sort of a man it was who had so easily suppressed revolution in Italy, and who ruled Germany with such an iron hand.

And yet while Metternich so completely extinguished the fires of liberty in the countries which he governed, he was doomed to see how hopeless it was to do the same in other lands by mere diplomatic intrigues. In 1822 the Spanish revolution broke out; and a year after came the Greek revolution, with all its complications, ending in a war between Russia and Turkey. From this he stood aloof, since if he helped the Turks to put down insurrection he would offend the Emperor Alexander, thus far his best ally, and commit Austria to a war from which he shrank. It was his policy to preserve his country from entangling wars. It was as much as he could do to preserve order and law in the various States of Germany, at the cost of all intellectual progress. But he watched the developments of liberty in other parts of Europe with the keenest interest, and his correspondence with the different potentates–whether monarchs or their ministers–is very voluminous, and was directed to the support of absolutism, in which alone he saw hope for Europe. The liberal views of the English Canning gave Metternich both solicitude and disgust; and he did all he could to undermine the influence of Capo D'Istrias, the Greek diplomatist, with his imperial master the Czar. He hated any man who was politically enlightened, and destroyed him if he could. The event in his long reign which most perplexed him and gave him the greatest solicitude was the revolution in France in 1830, which unseated the Bourbons, and established the constitutional government of Louis Philippe; and this was followed by the insurrection of the Netherlands, revolts in the German States, and the Polish revolution. With the year 1830 began a new era in European politics,–a period of reform, not always successful, but enough to show that the spirit of innovation could no longer be suppressed; that the subterranean fires of liberty would burst forth when least expected, and overthrow the strongest thrones.

But amid all the reforms which took place in England, in France, in Belgium, in Piedmont, Austria remained stationary, so cemented was the power of Metternich, so overwhelming was his influence,–the one central figure in Germany for eighteen years longer. In 1835 the Emperor Francis died, recommending to his son and successor Ferdinand to lean on the powerful arm of the chancellor, and continue him in great offices. Nor was it until the outbreak in Vienna in 1848, when emperor and minister alike fled from the capital, that the official career of Metternich closed, and he finally retired to his estates at Johannisberg to spend his few declining years in leisure and peace.

For forty years Metternich had borne the chief burdens of the State. For forty years his word was the law of Germany. For forty years all the cabinets of continental Europe were guided more or less by his advice; and his advice, from first to last, was uniform,–to put down popular movements and uphold absolutism at any cost, and severely punish all people, of whatever rank or character, who tempted the oppressed to shake off their fetters, or who dared to give expression to emancipating ideas, even in the halls of universities.

In view of the execrable tyranny, both political and religious, which Metternich succeeded in establishing for thirty years, it is natural for an ordinary person to look upon him as a monster,–hard, cruel, unscrupulous, haughty, gloomy; a sort of Wallenstein or Strafford, to be held in abhorrence; a man to be assassinated as the enemy of mankind.

But Metternich was nothing of the sort. As a man, in all his private relations he was amiable, gentle, and kind to everybody, and greatly revered by domestic servants and public functionaries. By his imperial master he was treated as a brother or friend, rather than as a minister; while on his part he never presumed on any liberties, and seemed simply to obey the orders of his sovereign,–orders which he himself suggested, with infinite tact and politeness; unlike Stein and Bismarck, who were overbearing and rude even in the presence of the sovereign and court. Metternich had better manners and more self-control. Indeed, he was the model of a gentleman wherever he went. He was the hardest worked man in the empire; and he worked from the stimulus of what he conceived to be his duty, and for the welfare of the country, as he understood it. Though one of the richest men in Austria, and of the highest social rank, he lived in frugal simplicity, despising pomp and extravagance alike. His highest enjoyment, outside the society of his family, was music. The whole realm of art was his delight; but he loved Nature more even than art. He enjoyed greatly the repose of his own library,–an apartment eighteen feet high, and containing fifteen thousand volumes. The only unamiable thing about Metternich was his fear of being bored. He maintained that it was impossible to find over six interesting men in any company whatever. With people whom he trusted he was unusually frank and free-spoken. With diplomatists he wore a mask, and made it a point to conceal his thoughts. He deceived even Napoleon. No one could penetrate his intentions. Under a smooth and placid countenance, unruffled and calm on all occasions, he practised when he pleased the profoundest dissimulation; and he dissimulated by telling the truth oftener than by concealing it. He knew what the ars celare artem meant. When he could find leisure he was fond of travelling, especially in Italy; but he hated and avoided the discomforts of travel. If he made distant journeys he travelled luxuriously, and wherever he went he was received with the greatest honors. At Rome the Pope treated him as a sovereign. The Czar Alexander commanded his magnates to give to him the same deference that they gave to himself.

While the world regarded Metternich as the most fortunate of men, he yet had many sorrows and afflictions, which saddened his life. He lost two wives and three of his children, to all of whom he was devotedly attached, yet bore the loss with Christian resignation. He found relief in work, and in his duties. There were no scandals in his private life. He professed and seemed to feel the greatest reverence for religion, in the form which had been taught him. He detested vulgarity in every shape, as he did all ordinary vices, from which he was free. He was self-conscious, and loved attention and honors, but was not a slave to them, like most German officials. Nothing could be more tender and affectionate than his letters to his mother, to his wife, and to his daughters. His father he treated with supreme reverence. No public man ever gave more dignity to domestic pleasures. "The truest friends of my life," said he, "are my family and my master;" and to each he was equally devoted. On the death of his second wife, in 1829, he writes,–