CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA

 

1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Howard and Paret.

2. Gneisenau observed: “The Revolution has set in motion the national energy of the entire French people…. If the other states wish to restore the balance of power they must open and use the same resources.” Also, consider the Prussian constitutional reform of 1807, discussed in New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 9, 367 – 394.

3. Thomas B. Macaulay, Napoleon and the Restoration of the Bourbons, ed. Joseph Hamburger (Columbia University Press, 1977), 98.

4. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 84.

5. Nussbaum, 178.

6. New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 9, 646 – 647: “To Vienna as guests of Francis I of Austria came King Frederick I of Württemberg, Elector William of Hesse, the Hereditary Grand Duke George of Hesse-Darmstadt, King Maximilian I, Joseph of Bavaria, King Frederick VI of Denmark and Karl August, Duke of Weimar and friend of Goethe. The King of Prussia, present himself, was accompanied by his white-haired chancellor, Prince Hardenberg, assisted by the scholarly Humboldt, and a group of experts, among them the prominent statistician, Hoffmann. Alexander I of Russia… was supported by the most international group of advisers at the Congress—the Russian Razumovski; Nesselrode, his foreign minister of German extraction; Stein, distinguished reformer and exile of the Prussian service; Tsartoryski of Poland; and Pozzo di Borgo, Corsican enemy of Bonaparte…. Talleyrand headed the French delegation…. Castlereagh took with him his three principal European ambassadors… [and] hired his own embassy staff as insurance against the Austrian spy system, at that time the most efficient in Europe. Metternich… was assisted by… a regular group of assistants and specialists, and particularly by Friedrich von Gentz, a most interesting intellectual and publicist…. Prominent among the lesser statesmen were Wrede, chief diplomatist for Bavaria; Cardinal Consalvi, secretary of state for the Pope; and Münster, able and experienced representative of Hanover…. The Congress… attracted to Vienna a medley of princes, aristocrats, tourists, beggars, spies and pickpockets.”

7. This is discussed in Chaters 7 and 8.

8. New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 9, 22, citing K. Waliszewski, Le regne d‘Alexandre I, vol. 2 (1924), 378.

9. It is interesting that Britain only signed a peace with Napoleon when the British state took a retrogressive constitutional move away from state-nationhood. It was the resignation of the Pitt cabinet over the king's refusal to assent to a law removing the disabilities of Catholics that cleared the way for a treaty with the French.

10. Treaty of Union, Concert and Subsidy between Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia, March 1, 1814, art. XVI, 673 Consol. T.S. 84,91; W. Alison Phillips, The Confederation of Europe: A Study of the European Alliance, 1813 – 1823 (H. Fertig, 1966), 74 – 75 (discussing the importance of article XVI for Europe and also noting that the treaty was actually signed on March 10 but antedated).

11. Quoted in Osiander, 243.

12. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 82.

13. Quoted in Osiander, 243.

14. Quoted in Osiander, 194.

15. Osiander, 190.

16. Quoted in Osiander, 191.

17. Ibid.

18. Osiander thinks Webster owes his view to an anachronism also, but not the same one I have in mind. For Osiander, Webster is confounding twentieth century nationalism with early nineteenth century national ideas; this may be true, but it does not go to the public opinion/expediency point; whatever sort of state nationalists wanted, Webster's point is that their feelings were simply ignored rather than that they were not accommodated.

19. In contrast, for example, to the territorial state, for which such allocations were everything.

20. Osiander, 196 – 197.

21. Calabresi and Bobbitt, Tragic Choices.

22. Ibid., 41 – 42.

23. Talleyrand, Memoirs, vol. 2 (Putnam, 1891), 120.

24. Talleyrand thus spoke to the tsar: “Neither you, sire, nor the allied powers, nor I, whom you believe to possess some influence, not one of us, could give a king to France. France is conquered—and by your arms, and yet even today, you have not that power… In order to establish a durable state of things, and one which could be accepted without protest, one must act upon a principle. With a principle we are strong. We shall experience no resistance; opposition will, at any rate, vanish soon, and there is only one principle. Louis XVIII is a principle; he is the legitimate king of France.” Talleyrand, vol. 2, 124, quoted in Osiander, 214; see also the discussion of legitimacy by Macaulay, 70 – 72.

25. For example, the Habsburg realms, though vast, were materially augmented by the addition of the Spanish Netherlands as compensation for the loss of the Spanish throne.

26. This was the Russian delegation; see Osiander, 229.

27. Osiander, 226.

28. Osiander, 227.

29. Osiander, 224.

30. Quoted in Osiander, 226.

31. November 4, 1814; Wellesley ix, 415.

32. October 12, 1814; Wellesley ix, 329, 331.

33. Quoted in Osiander, 187.

34. Final Report to Louis XVIII, Talleyrand, ii, 238, 244f. As Osiander concludes, “[I]t was the turn of the republicanism to return through the back door. Mandated parliamentary assemblies sprang up everywhere, more ambitious and more effective than their precursors in pre-revolutionary Europe,” 220.

35. See Osiander, 220, n. 134.

36. Quoted in Osiander, 202.

37. Ibid.

38. Alan Palmer, Metternich (Harper & Row, 1972), 113.

39. Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity: 1812 – 1822 (Viking Press, 1946), 143.

40. Palmer, 139.

41. Quoted in Osiander, 205.

42. Quoted in Osiander, 206.

43. J. G. Lockhart, The Peacemakers 1814 – 1815 (Duckworth, 1932), 46.

44. This account was given by the Prussian diplomat Stein.

45. Lockhart, 49.

46. Article XIII of the Federal Act provided: “In alien deutschen Staaten wird eine land-standische Verfassung stattfinden.” The term “Verfassung” was variously interpreted as either requiring a “parliamentary constitution” (by liberals) or a system of Estates (by conservatives).

47. Talleyrand, quoted in Holsti, 114.

48. It was largely taken from the code prepared by Francis Lieber for the Union Army in 1863 during the American Civil War.

49. Quoted in Nussbaum, 233.

50. Ibid.

51. Murphy, 117.

52. Quoted in Francis H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations between States (Cambridge University Press, 1963), 224 – 225.

53. Robert B. Mowat, The Concert of Europe (Macmillan, 1930), vi-vii.

54. Murphy, 89.

55. Ibid.