Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna

But in his letter to his wife, Metternich had made it clear that ‘the official negotiation has finished today with no result’. ‘There remain 6 days of unofficial negotiation; will it lead to anything or not?’ he continued. Although he told her he was preparing his campaign baggage, it seems he was not excluding a last-minute negotiated outcome.

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On 12 August, just as Caulaincourt and Narbonne were preparing to leave, a courier arrived from Dresden with Napoleon’s instructions to make peace at all costs. Caulaincourt called on Metternich without delay, but was told that it was too late. That very day Austria issued her declaration of war, a document full of mournful complaint detailing how she had been wronged by France.

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‘I am the most unhappy being on earth,’ Metternich moaned in a letter to Wilhelmina, who had let him down by not coming to Prague. The probable reason – Alfred Windischgraetz’s reappearance at Ratiborzitz – only deepened his despair. ‘Adieu! There can be no more happiness for me in this world – may all that remains of it on earth be for you!’ he went on, in an interminable letter.

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It was not only on account of Wilhelmina that he felt disappointment. He had failed to broker a peace, which would not only have been the best solution for Austria but would also have placed him in the pivotal position he aspired to. Everything was now left to the vagaries of war. Having done all he could to prevent it, and incurred the mistrust and insult not only of the allies but also the war party in Austria, his credibility demanded that he pursue it with enthusiasm.

Napoleon had not given up, and he instructed Caulaincourt to delay his departure from Prague in the hope of being able to obtain an interview with Alexander when the latter arrived a couple of days later. On 18 August, by which time the armies were in the field, Maret wrote to Metternich arguing that no peace congress could possibly be expected to take as little as a month, quoting examples drawn from history and proposing that a fresh congress to include all the powers of Europe, great and small, be convoked to some neutral city. But Metternich dismissed the suggestion. ‘The 6 days, my dearest, have passed,’ he wrote to his wife on 16 August. ‘Hostilities begin tomorrow.’ And Napoleon’s hopes that an interview between Caulaincourt and Alexander might yield something were very wide of the mark. In his eagerness to pursue the war the Tsar had single-handedly scuppered the only real chance of peace.

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Cathcart had received Castlereagh’s instructions to the effect that Britain would be prepared to enter into negotiations with France shortly after Caulaincourt reached Prague. He showed them to Alexander, who determined that they must not be passed on to Metternich. He had never wavered in his determination to pursue the war against Napoleon, and as Nesselrode explained in a letter of 9 August to Russia’s ambassador in London, he had only humoured Francis’s desire to negotiate in the conviction that nothing would come of it. Having watched Austria gradually come round to the acceptance that there was nothing to be gained from negotiating, he was certainly not going to produce the British proposal to join the negotiations. It would only ‘weaken the energetic resolutions taken by the Austrian cabinet’ and encourage Napoleon to take the negotiations more seriously.

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Had Napoleon known that Britain was willing to participate, he would probably have been prepared to concede a great deal. Britain was his principal enemy. It had been to bring her to the negotiating table that he had invaded Russia. He had wanted Britain included in the Congress of Prague, and hopes had been entertained that she might send a plenipotentiary. The possibility of a general peace with the participation of Britain – involving as it would not only huge economic relief, but also the return of most of the French colonies – could have been dressed up as a victory of sorts and would have allowed Napoleon to claim that he was making peace with honour.

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The only victory Napoleon could hope for now was on the battlefield, and that was going to be difficult to achieve. The coalition ranged against him was formidable. Facing him was the main allied army under Schwarzenberg, consisting of 120,000 Austrians, 70,000 Russians under Barclay de Tolly and 60,000 Prussians under General Kleist, a total of 250,000. Behind it stood Blücher’s army of Silesia, 40,000 Russians under Langeron, 18,000 under Osten-Sacken, and 38,000 Prussians under Yorck. In the north Bernadotte commanded an army of 150,000 Swedes, Russians and Prussians, bringing the total to well over half a million men. Morale, particularly among the German contingents, was reinforced by a sense that the hour of liberation had struck, fostered by an avalanche of poetry and propaganda, and supported by a nationwide commitment in the form of a ‘gold for steel’ fund-raising programme and numerous women’s welfare committees.

On 19 August Schwarzenberg’s combined army paraded before Alexander, Francis and Frederick William. The newly formed units were presented with standards, ‘and the three allied sovereigns nailed their respective colours together to the pole, in token of the firmness of their alliance and the intimacy of their union’, recorded Jackson. It was, in the words of Jackson’s superior, Stewart, ‘a most exhilarating moment’. The following day the army took the field.

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Napoleon was already on the march. ‘I have an army as fine as any and more than 400,000 men,’ he boasted to one of his officials. ‘That will suffice to re-establish my affairs in the North.’ But later in the conversation he complained that he was short of cavalry and needed more men, particularly seasoned troops. His forces were in fact greatly inferior to those of the allies. His garrisons at Danzig, Stettin (Szczecin), Thorn (Toruń), Cüstrin (Kostrzyn), Glogau (Głogów), Modlin and Zamość accounted for almost a quarter of his nominal army of 400,000, and they were effectively left out of the action. They included a large number of seasoned troops and some experienced generals, while the bulk of the 300,000 or so men at his immediate disposal were conscripts with only rudimentary training. Much the same was true of the army of Italy which Prince Eugène had been forming up to threaten Austria’s southern flank. By mid-July it had reached a paper strength of over 50,000 men, but there were nothing like as many actually under arms, while their quality and training left a great deal to be desired.

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Morale was remarkably good among the troops under Napoleon’s immediate command as they marched out of Dresden on 16 August, and they were cheered by the arrival of Joachim Murat, King of Naples, who was to take command of the cavalry. Napoleon’s plan was to push back Blücher and then, leaving Marshal Macdonald to cover him, veer south and outflank the main allied army under Schwarzenberg, which was moving on Dresden. The first part of the operation went according to plan, but at Löwenberg (Lwówek śląski) on 23 August, as Napoleon snatched a hurried lunch standing up, a courier arrived with news from Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr at Dresden warning him that the main allied army was already threatening the city, which would not be able to hold out much longer. Napoleon smashed the glass of red wine he was holding against the table as he read the despatch.

He hesitated. A potentially decisive victory was within his grasp. But the fall of Dresden might have grave political repercussions given the current mood in Germany. He changed his plan, ordering General Vandamme with a corps of not much more than 10,000 men to continue with the original aim of attacking the allied rear, while he himself hastened back to Dresden with the main forces.

He arrived outside the city on 26 August, and in the course of the next three days defeated all the allies’ attempts to break through, putting them to flight on the third. He was taken violently ill with fits of vomiting at the moment of triumph, and had to go back to Dresden. He was much better by 30 August, but on that day he received three disastrous pieces of news: in the north, Marshal Oudinot had been defeated by the Prussians at Grossbeeren; Macdonald had been pushed back with heavy losses by Blücher on the river Katzbach; and finally Vandamme, who had dutifully cut the main allied army’s line of retreat, had himself been surrounded and forced to capitulate with his entire force at Kulm (Chlumec). Although he had triumphed at Dresden, all Napoleon could show for the five days’ fighting was a loss of some 100,000 men and a considerable quantity of artillery. If he had persevered in his original intention, he would, in Nesselrode’s opinion, have routed the allied army and captured all three allied sovereigns and their ministers. ‘That’s war,’ Napoleon said to Maret that night. ‘Up there in the morning, down there in the evening.’

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He did not allow himself to be disheartened by this setback. Two days later he moved to push Blücher back once more, and then advanced into Bohemia, harassing the main allied army. But on 6 September Ney, whom Napoleon had sent out to reinforce Oudinot, was himself beaten by the Prussians and Swedes under Bernadotte at Dennewitz.

Napoleon displayed extraordinary energy over the next weeks, taking command of one or other of his corps in order to push back the advancing allies. What saved them was the tactic they had agreed on at the conference held at Trachenberg in July of refusing battle and falling back whenever Napoleon himself took command of the armies facing them, and going over to the attack as soon as he had gone, leaving his troops under the command of one of the marshals.

In any other circumstances Napoleon could have pulled back all his remaining forces and struck at one point with all his might, as he always had in the past. But if he retreated now he would be abandoning his German allies, who would then be forced into alliance with his enemies. He therefore carried on thrusting and parrying, keeping greatly superior allied forces in check. Soon after hostilities began, the weather turned wet and cold. The roads turned into muddy morasses, adding to the difficulty of this highly mobile campaign and reducing the effectives of every unit with each march. He could no longer hold on to his exposed position at Dresden, and on 15 October, having abandoned that, he fell back on the second city of Saxony, Leipzig.

However grim the situation looked from Napoleon’s headquarters, the view from the other side of the lines was not correspondingly rosy. The three monarchs, their ministers, their military staffs and the diplomats accredited to their courts were crammed into the little spa town of Toeplitz (Teplice) in Bohemia. This normally delightful place was choked with people, quartered on top of each other in hostelries meant for more gracious conditions. The wounded of Dresden and Kulm lay packed into all the larger spaces available. Among them was Stewart, who despite his ambassadorial role could not resist the lure of the battlefield and had taken a wound at Kulm. The streets were knee-deep in mud, continually churned up by the boots and hooves of couriers on duty and units on the march. ‘Toeplitz is now a sad place,’ Metternich wrote to his daughter Marie. ‘Everywhere is full of wounded; in the redoute hall at the entrance to the gardens they have been amputating arms & legs …’ She was so moved that, like other patriotic ladies, she tore old linen sheets and garments into strips and sent them to the army for dressing wounds.

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The allies’ morale was not good. Losses in the fighting at Dresden, Kulm, on the Katzbach and Dennewitz had been heavy. It was proving difficult to raise troops, and desertion was rife, even among officers. The anticipated surge of volunteers inspired by the idea of liberating Germany from the French yoke had not materialised. According to Hardenberg people ‘murmured more than they acted’. And the cause was beginning to look less glorious – General von Walmoden’s volunteers went about raping and pillaging with abandon those they were supposed to be liberating. The war had taken a further lurch into barbarism, and some of the Russian commanders regularly massacred French prisoners.

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The ‘harmony, confidence and mutual satisfaction’ that Cathcart had reported from Trachenberg, where the commanders of the various armies had agreed their plan of action and mutual support, had been dissipated by mistrust, jealousy and recrimination. A struggle for control of the army was under way.

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Alexander had wanted to command the allied army. He had invited General Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, who had been in American exile since 1804 when he had been implicated in a royalist plot to overthrow Napoleon, to return to Europe and accept a post on his staff. He assumed that with him and the renegade Swiss General Jomini at his side as advisers, he would be able to realise his dream of proving himself as a commander in the field. The other allies were having none of it, and after acrimonious discussions, which involved Metternich threatening to withdraw Austria from the coalition, Alexander gave way and Schwarzenberg was placed in overall command.

But he was, as Stewart pointed out, in the unprecedented position of having ‘two Emperors and a King superintending and controlling not only movements in agitation, but also operations decided on’. Alexander had interfered during the battle of Dresden, riding about the battlefield issuing orders to individual units without reference to their commanders or the overall plan, and unity of action was further impaired by pronounced hostility and jealousy between the allied commanders. They were mostly mediocre generals, while their troops, a majority of whom were conscripts, reflected all the national and regional prejudices and enmities of their places of origin.

The coalition itself was under constant strain. ‘The general desire, whatever may be said to the contrary, is for peace,’ noted Jackson, adding that Hardenberg’s spirits ‘rise and fall, like the weatherglass under atmospheric changes’. Stewart suspected the Austrians of wanting to make a separate peace, while Metternich remarked that he ‘had to keep an eye on the allies no less than on the enemy’. There were moments when the only thing that appeared to unite them was the French language in which they communicated with each other.

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Metternich nevertheless remained optimistic. ‘Everything is going well, beyond expectation,’ he wrote to Wilhelmina. ‘Everything is beautiful, perfect, and God appears to be protecting his cause.’ While acknowledging the contribution of the Almighty, he did not fail to point out that it was actually his own doing. His optimism may have stemmed from the fact that she was now returning his love with passion. ‘Mon amie, you have given me everything you can, you have made me drunk with happiness, I love you, I love you a hundred times more than my life – I only live and will only ever live for you,’ he wrote from Toeplitz a few days later. And a couple of days after that he admitted that he found it difficult to distinguish between her and the other great object in his thoughts. ‘Mon amie and Europe, Europe and mon amie!’

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But when not writing to her, he worked at strengthening the coalition, and on 9 September his efforts bore fruit in the new treaties signed by Austria with Russia and Prussia at Toeplitz. These committed the three powers to continue the war together until a durable peace based on ‘a just balance’ was achieved. The most significant element was contained in article XI, which bound the contracting parties into a coalition.

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The vagueness of the treaties on all other matters, and particularly on territorial arrangements, was intentional. Back in Prague, Metternich had turned his mind to limiting the scope of the war and laying down some ground rules for the eventual peace settlement. ‘As far as the allies are concerned, there can be no question of conquest, and, as a result, there must be a return of France, Austria and Prussia to their ancient frontiers,’ he wrote. He went on to draw a distinction between ‘conquêtes consommées’, by which he meant areas whose cession had been by treaty, and ‘territorial incorporations via facti, made without the former possessors’ formal renunciation of their rights in favour of the conqueror’. Lands falling into the latter category, in which he included Hanover, the mainland possessions of the King of Sardinia, the possessions of the house of Orange, and so on, should be restituted to their rightful owners without discussion. As for ‘conquêtes consommées’, as an example of which he gave the lands the Papacy had been forced to cede to Napoleon under the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797, they were to be regarded ‘as lands delivered from French domination by the allied powers, as a common acquisition whose disposal should be reserved to the said powers’. The fate of all other liberated areas was to be left to a congress to be held once peace had been made.

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Metternich did not at this stage wish to confront the issue of how those ‘common acquisitions’ should be disposed of. The only lands that had been ‘delivered’ to date were those of the grand duchy of Warsaw, some of which had belonged to Austria and Prussia before Napoleon’s incursion into the region. The common understanding was that all three powers would recover their fair share as a result of a deal to be made privately between them, or ‘à l’amiable’, to use the phrase contained in the Convention of Reichenbach. But nothing had been formally agreed. The whole area was under Russian occupation, and Metternich had no doubts that Alexander had his own plans for it, which did not take into account those of either Prussia or Austria.

A seed of discord was gradually germinating, but Metternich was not going to challenge Alexander over the matter. First, because since he held what he wanted while the ‘common acquisitions’ that were meant to fall to Austria and Prussia had not yet been acquired, Alexander was in a stronger position than both of them. Second, because however alarmed he was by the threat of Alexander holding on to most of Poland, Metternich was far more anxious about Alexander’s possible intentions for Germany.

Metternich and Francis were against the recreation of the Holy Roman Empire in any form. But neither did they relish the idea of a Prussian hegemony over the German lands or the plans being hatched by Stein for a unified German state. Alexander was showing a worrying interest in German affairs, and appeared to be looking to place himself in a position of dominance there. He neither encouraged nor restrained Stein, and kept his cards close to his chest, sensing, rightly, that his position was growing stronger every day. There was still everything to play for, and the stakes were high.

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7 The Play for Germany (#ulink_5aadf196-9691-5363-859d-1a9bf57ac0b0)

A lesser man might have been intimidated by the Tsar, but Metternich’s vanity never allowed him to waver in his belief that he could make him do his will, and he too had come to believe that he was fulfilling ‘the decrees of Heaven’, as he put it in a letter to his daughter Marie. He had also just acquired a valuable ally, the new British ambassador to the Austrian court, who had reached Toeplitz on 2 September.

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Castlereagh had been increasingly alarmed both by the vagueness of the treaties binding the allies and by their omission of matters, such as the future of the Netherlands and the Iberian peninsula, that Britain deemed essential preconditions of a durable peace. Although he persisted in his view of Russia as the principal in the coalition and a natural ally of Britain, and could not shed his mistrust of Metternich, he had come to realise that Britain would have to re-establish direct contact with Vienna.

This was what Metternich had wanted all along, and had gone to some lengths to obtain. At the same time he had been afraid that the British cabinet might send what Gentz described as ‘a stock Englishman’, who would know nothing and understand nothing. Castlereagh’s envoy was no stock Englishman, but he was hardly very qualified.