Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (14 page)

Behind the scenes, too, Dorothée was beginning to help Talleyrand in many other ways, apparently even in drafting key documents. In a style reminiscent of the eighteenth century, Talleyrand preferred to avoid the strain of composing his letters and dispatches himself. He would rather dictate as he paced up and down the room, while Dorothée, lying on the bed or sitting at the mahogany desk, scratched away with her quill. Together the two then went over the memorandum or dispatch, line by line, waging “the battle of the words.”

Working with Talleyrand must have been an extraordinarily valuable experience, especially for someone as intelligent and observant as Dorothée. She had come to admire his “cool-headed courage” he had “a presence of mind, a bold temperament, [and] an instinctive type of defiance,” all of which, she added, “rendered danger so seductive.”

While Talleyrand and Dorothée were trying to lure the congress over to Kaunitz Palace, Metternich was consumed by his affair with Dorothée’s older sister, the Duchess of Sagan. To his critics, Metternich’s work as foreign minister and host of ceremonies sometimes looked neglected, and now this was getting worse because the Big Four had just voted him “President of the Congress.” The Prussian ambassador, Humboldt, for one, complained that “Metternich was mad with love, pride and vanity…wasting all his mornings getting up only at ten and then running off to sigh at the feet of Sagan…”

Metternich looked forward to seeing the duchess at their morning meetings and everywhere else, from her box at the theater to her commanding presence in a hot, crowded drawing room. He was glad to be able to help the duchess obtain her daughter, and he had put some of his best assistants on the case, including even Gentz, the secretary of the Congress. Metternich continued pouring out his heart to her by night:

If ever the world were lost and you remained to me, I would need nothing more; but if I lose you, I would not know what to do with the world—except for the [plot of land] they’d need to bury me.

With Metternich’s regular visits to her salon in the Palm Palace, other leading members of the Austrian Foreign Ministry followed suit. So did the British, who were clearly finding common ground with the Austrians in opposing the Russians. In fact, the duchess’s salon was called “Austrian headquarters,” and Princess Bagration’s, across the way, “Russian headquarters,” frequented, as it was, by so many Russian and Prussian well-wishers.

The duchess’s salon on Friday night, September 30–October 1, was particularly lively, and Metternich thoroughly enjoyed himself. As the carriages waiting outside in the courtyard gradually took the last lingering guests away, there was no sign that Metternich had left. He was not seen again until the afternoon of the following day, when he arrived at the Chancellery. Almost certainly Metternich spent the night with the duchess. It was then, he later confessed, that he had experienced “the greatest happiness of [his] life.”

At the opposite end of the Palm Palace, the same night, Tsar Alexander was also distracted by matters of the heart. He was seen with Princess Catherine Bagration, barely dressed, at his side. The princess had been sending callers away all evening, her servants apologizing that she had a terrible headache. Then the servants themselves were sent away. If this was to quiet rumors, it was not successful.

Vienna heard the stories of the tsar’s visit: how he arrived at the palace, rang the bell four times, and the princess descended the staircase in only her negligee. Some also heard of one tense moment: When the tsar had entered her bedroom, he found, to his surprise, a man’s hat. Nonplussed, the princess smiled and answered, “Oh, that’s the hat of the decorator Moreau. He’s the one who is decorating my house for the party tomorrow.”

Perhaps the princess was telling the truth, as she did in fact have a ball planned for the next day, and Karl von Moreau, being on the Festivals Committee, was one of the most active decorators in town. The tsar, at least, accepted the explanation, and they laughed at his “unfounded assumptions.” The spy who related the gossip remarked ironically, “Evil to him who evil thinks.”

The tsar’s late-night visit to the princess set Vienna ablaze. “No one,” one spy reported, “is talking of anything else.”

Chapter 9

D
ANCING WITH THE
W
ORLD IN
T
HEIR
H
ANDS

Truly, the ruins of a ball are as interesting to contemplate as the ruins of monuments and empires.

—C
OUNT
Z
AT THE
R
OMAN EMPEROR
H
OTEL ONE NIGHT IN THE AUTUMN OF
1814

T
he congress was scheduled to begin on October 1, 1814. But that day had arrived, and there still had not been any official word about the peace conference. The opening masked ball at the imperial palace the following day, however, was proceeding as planned. Emperor Francis and Empress Maria Ludovika wanted to make sure it was a success, and as one countess recalled years later, it was “a truly magnificent affair.”

Large crystal chandeliers and an estimated eight thousand candles produced a “blinding almost dizzy effect” in the white and gilt paneled ballroom. The central staircase, adorned with a wide array of flowers and plants, led to the upper galleries and balconies, which were draped in red and gold velvet, and overlooked rows of chairs arranged symmetrically on the fine parquet floors below. Some ten to twelve thousand guests had filled the spacious ballroom, spilling over into the smaller ballroom, the Kleiner Redoutensaal, and the indoor arena of the Spanish Riding School. Some of the side rooms had been transformed into a lush orange grove scented with loans from the emperor’s greenhouses.

The Grand Ball had been vastly oversold, thanks in part to enterprising counterfeiters who had superbly forged the invitations. Even more responsible for swelling the event beyond capacity were a few doorkeepers, who had apparently adopted a simpler method of cashing in on the enthusiasm: They would take the admission tickets from the guests and then resell them to the crowds eager to experience, if only for an evening, the revelry of emperors and kings.

The waiters, a “broad and noisy phalanx,” struggled with the “murderous crush” of the masked guests and gate-crashers. It is not known what exactly the Festivals Committee served that night, but a catering record survives for a similar grand ball for the same number of guests at the congress that called for some 300 hams, 200 partridges, 200 pigeons, 150 pheasants, 60 hares, 48
boeuf à la mode,
40 rabbits, 20 large white young turkeys, and 12 “medium-sized wild boar.” Among many other things, there was also an assortment of roasted, baked, and cold meats, and other delicacies, including 600 pickled and salted tongues.

The confectionary supplied a range of pies and pastries, as well as almond, pistachio, chocolate, Seville orange, and French puff-pastry gateaux. There were between 2,500 and 3,000 liters of olla soup, 2,500 assorted biscuits, 1,000 Mandl-Wandl (oval-shaped pastries with an almond filling), 60 Gugelhupf (sponge cakes), and other cakes and sweets. Almond milk, lemonade, chocolate, tea, and many kinds of wine were also available, including Tokay and Meneser. Filling the empty wineglasses and replenishing the dishes on the buffet tables must have seemed a never-ending task.

Suddenly, resounding trumpet blasts signaled the arrival of congress royalty. The emperor, the tsar, and many kings entered, with empresses, queens, and archduchesses on their arms. All eyes turned to the glittering promenade that circled the room and ended at their seats on an honored platform, adorned with large white silk hangings “fringed with silver.” The empress of Austria sat in the front, along with the empress of Russia; behind them were the queen of Bavaria and the Russian grand duchess Catherine, Alexander’s sister. The dignitaries were flanked with elegant women “as beautiful as statues.”

Most of the leading diplomats and ladies attended, with a few prominent exceptions, such as Prussian ambassador Wilhelm von Humboldt. He had been to a party the night before, and had evidently had enough of trying to squeeze into a hot room packed elbow to elbow, where he could not move and the sweat poured down his face. He had been so miserable that he found himself somewhat jealous of the delegate of Hanover, Count Münster, who had broken a rib in a recent carriage accident and had a good excuse for staying home.

The young songwriter August de La Garde-Chambonas found his way to the ball that night, and he was thrilled with everything he saw. What impressed this happy adventurer most was not, of course, the leaders of the world:

You should have seen those ravishing women, all sparkling with flowers and diamonds, carried away by the irresistible harmonies, leaning back into the arms of their partners.

Many of these women would have worn elegantly simple gowns with deep décolletage. The outer dress was usually in petinet or crepe, the underdress in satin of the same color, white being the most popular, followed by light blue, yellow, pink, or pastels. Sleeves were usually long, tight, and edged in lace, embroidery, or satin. Some preferred short sleeves, or combined them with long white gloves. Flowers and ribbons were often fixed into the hair, along with diamonds, pearls, and other precious stones that glittered marvelously from the light of thousands of candles. When dancing, the women looked like “brilliant meteors” lighting up the heavens.

Orchestras had started with a polonaise, the long procession, like a rhythmic march, through the giant room. Alternatively, in one of the smaller rooms, the minuet was danced, it seemed, with a stiff “Teutonic gravity” that drew snickers from young, fashionable wags. The favorite for the younger generation was, of course, the waltz, the graceful gliding and twirling across the floor, as if the first chords of the orchestra sent an electric current through the happy dancers.

The waltz in the autumn of 1814 was not yet the waltz of later Vienna fame, such as Johan Strauss the Younger’s “The Blue Danube,” “Tales from the Vienna Woods,” and “The Emperor Waltz.” It was slower and closer to its origins as a southern German or Austrian country dance. Still, it was a “revolving dance,” or
Walzer,
that was every bit as controversial. The waltz, after all, divided the dancers into couples, not groups, and involved much more touching than any previous dance in modern history. It was perhaps only appropriate the congress would be captivated by this intimate dance. Lord Byron described the waltz in a famous ode:

Round all the confines of the yielded waist

The strangest hand may wander undisplaced;

The lady’s, in return, may grasp as much

As princely paunches offer to her touch…

Just like the waltz, the masquerade was also a central feature of the entertainment in Vienna during the congress. The ballroom, teeming with revelers in mask, became the “the living image of a society devoted to pleasure, to flirting, and seductive pastimes of every description.” Elaborate, at times oppressive protocol easily collapsed, on those occasions, behind the mask, which added a rare freedom, not to mention the allure and enchantment of the unknown. The person behind the mask could, in Vienna of 1814, be literally almost anyone at all.

The dresses, the diamonds, and the dances—La Garde-Chambonas was dazzled. He rhapsodized further on the ladies he saw, with their “shimmering silks and light gauzes of their gowns floating and swaying in graceful undulations.”

The continuous music, the mystery of the disguises, the intrigues with which I was surrounded, the general incognito, the unbridled gaiety…in a word, the magic of the whole vast tableau turned my head.

“Older and stronger heads than mine,” the young man continued, “found it equally irresistible.” Unfortunately for Austria’s Festivals Committee, many guests found other things irresistible as well. Almost three thousand of the imperial silver tea spoons disappeared that night.

T
HE DAILY ROUTINE
was already emerging at the Vienna Congress. While the delegates of the Big Four worked in their offices, attended meetings, or tried to schedule appointments, the sovereigns generally spent the mornings on hunts, reviews of troops on parade grounds, or some other activity with their fellow monarchs or favorite companions. Afternoons were usually devoted to meetings and sessions, though by no means, as some complained, simply undoing what the diplomats had done during the day. By the evening, they were in dress uniform again, “sparkling in the truly magical festivities given by the Emperor of Austria.”