Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (10 page)

Why not call him aside and win him over to this plan? Surely as the representative of a defeated country, Talleyrand would go out of his way to be accommodating, if only for the hopes of making gains for his country, or himself. This was, of course, possible. It was also possible that the plan would backfire.

Chapter 6

B
ARTERING
D
ESTINY

What took twenty years to destroy can’t be rebuilt in thirty days.

—T
ALLEYRAND

O
n the morning of September 30, Metternich sent a note over to Kaunitz Palace curtly inviting Talleyrand to a “private conference” later that afternoon. The invitation arrived between nine and ten in the morning, long before Talleyrand was usually out of the bed.

Getting ready for the day ahead, Talleyrand entered his dressing room and took his seat by the porcelain stove. Three valets waited on him, one supervisor and two assistants dressed in gray livery, covered with long aprons. The team began removing his flannel and stockings from the night before, and placed them in a bucket of eau de cologne. One handed him a cup of camomile tea, and the others set about taking away the rest of the night garments, the “drawers, vests, dressing gowns, with all sorts of odds and ends flopping about.”

After the nightcap, a cambric bonnet tied with lace ribbon around his neck, was removed, two valets attacked his hair, “combing, curling, pomading, and powdering him.” In the meantime, Talleyrand refreshed himself with a glass or two of warm water, which he then emptied into a silver basin, as one eyewitness described the maneuver, “sucked in through the nose and spit out, much the way the elephant uses his trunk.”

A warm cloth was applied to his face, and his feet were washed in unpleasant, medicinal eau de barèges, dried, and then perfumed. His valets put on his white silk stockings, his breeches, and his shoes. As he stood up, the valets skillfully removed the last dressing gowns and maneuvered the shirt over his head—everything was done modestly, as he often entertained guests at the same time. By the end of the lengthy ritual, usually just under two hours, Talleyrand was immaculately dressed in velvet, silk, and satin. He was ready for his first showdown.

Early that afternoon, with the beautiful summer weather still holding, Talleyrand’s dark-green coach clattered and clanked its way down the narrow Johannesgasse, lined with impressive palaces. It was a twenty-minute carriage ride out to Metternich’s summer villa, a sprawling, rather than towering, classical Italianate structure located on the Rennweg, a main road that passed through another area full of aristocratic palaces.

On the way to the meeting, the French minister met a colleague, Don Pedro Gomez Havela de Labrador, the Spanish envoy, who also found himself unhappily excluded from Metternich’s secret meetings. Like Talleyrand, Labrador had received an invitation to the meeting at the summer villa as one of the signatories of the Treaty of Paris.

Spain had played a major role in defeating Napoleon, Labrador could say with justice. Napoleon’s invasion of Spain, back in 1808, had been catastrophic. The French army had found itself mired in a long bitter struggle that drained resources, eroded morale, and kept them spread out over a great distance, unable to concentrate effectively in a single arena. As a result, Spain rightly expected to participate at the Vienna peace conference. And its role, Labrador said, would not be simply rubber-stamping the decisions of others. “We are not going to play the role of marionettes.”

Talleyrand had a long history of working with his neighbor to the west. Even if the two delegates did not always get along well, they shared several traits: They were aristocratic, haughty, and resourceful when it came to finding ways to attain their own goals. Not everyone, however, had been impressed with the Spanish envoy. “Never have I met a more stupid man,” the Duke of Wellington had said after meeting him. Labrador was certainly a dogged and extravagant fellow with a volatile temper.

Arriving early at Metternich’s mansion, which was in the final stages of its refurbishment for the congress, including the installation of a brand-new ballroom, the French and Spanish delegates climbed the granite steps, passed through the spacious halls, and entered a large room. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon, and they were right on time. When they crossed the threshold, however, they found other ministers already seated comfortably around a long table. Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Britain were the only powers present, just as they had heard.

Talleyrand calmly took his seat, in the empty high-backed chair between Prince Metternich and Lord Castlereagh, and Labrador sat down on the opposite side near the two Prussian ministers. Britain’s foreign secretary, sitting at one end of the table, seemed to be in charge, running the meeting, despite his poor French. At the far end of the table sat Metternich’s assistant, Friedrich von Gentz, who had just been appointed secretary for the Vienna Congress.

Glancing around the room and sizing up the handful of men around the table, Talleyrand asked suspiciously: Why was he the only member of the French embassy who had been invited to this meeting?

“It was wished to bring together only the heads of the Cabinets at the preliminary conferences,” Castlereagh declared.

“But Count de Labrador is not a head of Cabinet, and he has also been invited,” Talleyrand rightly objected, pointing to the Spaniard who accompanied him.

“That is because the Secretary of State of Spain is not in Vienna,” Metternich explained in his nasal drawl.

“Even so,” Talleyrand countered, looking over at two members of the Prussian delegation. “I see that Herr von Humboldt is here in addition to Prince von Hardenberg, and he is not a Secretary of State.”

“This is an exception to the rule,” someone said, politely referring to Hardenberg, who used a hearing horn. This exception was “made necessary by the infirmity with which, as you know, Prince Hardenberg is afflicted.”

“Oh, well then, if it’s a question of infirmities, each of us has one of his own, and we can all claim an exception on that basis,” Talleyrand retorted, referring to his limp.

Cantankerous in his disarmingly becoming style, Talleyrand was not one to act like he represented a defeated country, even though he did. His confident approach was already working. In the future, it was agreed that a French diplomatic assistant would also be welcome at the meetings. More important than winning this small point, Talleyrand was demanding equality with the other powers.

Calling the meeting to order, Lord Castlereagh began by reading a letter from the representative of Portugal, the Comte de Palmella, who was disturbed at being excluded from the meetings. His country, after all, had also signed the Treaty of Paris. Why had he not been invited to these meetings, he asked, and why was Vienna’s Big Four insulting the crown of Portugal in this way?

When Castlereagh finished reading the letter, both Talleyrand and Labrador voiced their support of the Portuguese count. The other ministers listened politely, and then promptly decided to postpone a decision about who should be invited to the organizational meetings until a later date.

“The object of today’s conference,” Castlereagh droned in a dry monotone voice, “is to acquaint you with what the four Powers have done since we have been here.” He glanced over to Prince Metternich, who on cue handed Talleyrand the protocol. (The protocol, an official summary of policy or a decision, just coming into greater use, remains one legacy of the Vienna Congress.)

The French minister started reading the document, already signed at the bottom by the four powers, and found it sprinkled freely with the term
allies.
Talleyrand stopped reading at once. Allies? “Allies against whom?” Talleyrand asked with displeasure:

Not against Napoleon, he’s on Elba. Not against France, peace has been made. Surely not against the King of France. He guarantees the durability of this peace.

“Gentlemen, let’s speak frankly,” he added. “If there are still Allied Powers, then I don’t belong here.”

Talleyrand was hitting upon a potential public relations problem—public opinion becoming an increasingly important force in a close-knit, gossip-ridden town like Vienna. The war was over, and the tasks ahead were daunting. It served no purpose to maintain such divisive vocabulary.

No harm was intended, the leaders explained, trying to brush aside the objection. The word was simply convenient, “chosen only for the sake of brevity.”

“Brevity,” Talleyrand objected, “should not be purchased at the price of accuracy.”

The point evidently hit home, and Talleyrand returned to the protocol, making his way through the dense prose.

“I don’t understand,” Talleyrand muttered.

The articles were read over again. “I do not understand any better,” Talleyrand said. The blank look was deliberately overplayed, he later admitted, to highlight the absolute inappropriateness of the secret meetings. Decision after decision had already been made, even before the other diplomats had had a chance to arrive in town.

Talleyrand was being handed a summary of their conclusions and basically being asked to consent. He was not, however, willing to play along as easily as they had hoped. Talleyrand took a direct shot at the legality of decisions coming from secret, unauthorized meetings:

For me there are two dates and between them there is nothing—the 30 May, when it was agreed to hold a Congress, and the 1st of October, when the Congress is to open. Nothing that has taken place in the interval exists so far as I am concerned.

Talleyrand’s words were greeted with an oppressive silence. Remarkably, when Metternich spoke up, the protocol was immediately withdrawn, and Talleyrand had won another point. How pliable the conquerors of Napoleon seemed before the representative of the defeated power.

No sooner had Metternich retrieved the protocol than he pulled out a second one for consideration, placing it on the table as smoothly as if he were playing a card in a game of whist.

This protocol was more complicated, though, Talleyrand noticed, it hardly seemed any less suspect. This plan proposed dividing every possible issue or territorial question at the Vienna Congress into two categories: general (concerning Europe as a whole) and particular (deemed relevant only on a local or regional basis). But both categories would still be dealt with by committees, appointed by the Great Powers. After the two committees had deliberated and reached their conclusions, the Congress would
then
be assembled. This was proposing, Talleyrand later said, “to finish where I had thought it would be necessary to begin.”

Besides, this protocol would also effectively make the four Great Powers, as Talleyrand pointed out, “absolute masters of all the operations of the Congress.”

Thinking quickly on his feet, as he was known to do, Talleyrand knew that he had to stall for time. “A first reading,” he said, “was not sufficient for the formation of an opinion upon a project of this nature.” He would need some time for reflection. “We have assembled to consecrate and secure the rights of each of the powers,” he said. After the anarchy of the last war, it would be unfortunate indeed if Vienna’s diplomats violated the very rights that they should protect. Working out all the details “before convening the Congress,” he added, was new to him.

It was a question of practicality, Castlereagh answered calmly. The smaller number of powers could work with haste and fairness.

Talleyrand also shared these goals, but proved his impatience with his next question: “When is the general Congress going to open?” Why can’t it open right now?

Listening to Talleyrand defend the rights of all the states who deserved a voice at the conference, Prussia’s Hardenberg blurted out that he would not be dictated to by a bevy of petty princes, such as the Prince of Leyen and the Prince of Liechtenstein. At this point, Castlereagh quickly adjourned the meeting. He did not want to give Talleyrand the chance to score another point.

Talleyrand’s opposition was threatening to upset the designs of the Great Powers for transforming the congress into an elite club meeting behind closed doors. That night, Friedrich von Gentz confided in his diary the severity of the crisis. Talleyrand had “savagely upset our plans, and torn them to shreds.”