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

Private scores were settled as the French regime imploded, and unruly troops bent on rapine added to the misery. The situation was rendered all the more tragic as a typhus epidemic swept through the Rhineland, turning the military hospitals into morgues, striking down exhausted and underfed stragglers and taking with it even healthy men such as the venerable comte de Narbonne, who had survived the retreat from Moscow with such stoicism.

The collapse of Napoleon’s power-structure in Germany meant that all the French troops still holding out in fortresses such as Danzig, Magdeburg, Modlin and Zamość were now utterly beyond his reach. They did not even represent a serious inconvenience to the allies, as they were easily contained by small forces of militia. And the retreat of Napoleonic power in Germany was replicated in Italy.

As soon as the armistice had expired in August, Austrian troops had invaded the Illyrian provinces, forcing the weak French garrisons to evacuate. Prince Eugène could do little to halt their advance, and fell back on Milan. In November he was approached on behalf of the allies by his father-in-law King Maximilian of Bavaria, who urged him to safeguard his future by changing sides, but he refused. His wife, Maximilian’s daughter, supported him in his resolve. ‘Courage, my friend,’ she wrote, ‘we do not merit our fate, yet our love and our clear conscience will be enough to sustain us, and in a simple cottage we will find the happiness that so many others seek fruitlessly on thrones. I say again to you, let us abandon everything, but never the path of virtue, and God will take care of us and of our poor children.’

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Virtue was not much in evidence further south, at Naples, whose King Joachim, Napoleon’s brother-in-law Murat, was engaged in secret negotiations with the Austrians in the hope of keeping his throne. Napoleon had ordered his former chief of police Fouché to Naples with instructions to keep an eye on Murat and prevent him from defecting. But while Fouché had little time for Murat, he was even less interested in shoring up the Napoleonic empire, whose fall he was eagerly anticipating for reasons of his own. So he merely observed the game being played out before him, not so much by Murat as by his pushy and scheming wife, Napoleon’s beautiful sister Caroline, who had no intention of giving up the pleasures of royalty at the age of thirty.

Murat disposed of an army of not more than 20 to 25,000 men, magnificently uniformed but undisciplined, barely trained and poorly officered. Metternich, who may have been influenced by fond memories of the short but passionate affair he had enjoyed in Paris a couple of years before with Caroline, seems to have believed that Murat’s forces were stronger, and to have been impressed by his overblown military reputation. He therefore thought it prudent to detach Murat from Napoleon by offering him Austria’s recognition of his status and promising to obtain Britain’s as well. Castlereagh did not approve, but accepted that Metternich must be given freedom of action in this instance, on the understanding that Britain’s ally Ferdinand IV of Naples, now holed up in the Sicilian half of his kingdom, would be compensated with land elsewhere in Italy.

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Napoleon was back at Saint-Cloud on 10 November. The following day he held a council of state during which he complained that he had been betrayed by everyone, venting particular rage against King Maximilian and vowing vengeance. ‘Munich shall be burned!’ he ranted repeatedly. He gave orders for the raising of 300,000 soldiers, who were to be found by conscripting ever younger men and taking extra quotas from age groups which had not been heavily levied in the past. But as the area under his control shrank, so did his manpower pool, not to mention the number of uniform and munitions factories. The price of hiring a replacement soldier doubled to 4,000 francs. In Ghent, even a hundred seminarists preparing for the priesthood were packed off to fill the ranks of the artillery. Resistance to conscription increased commensurately. In November 1813 a young man who had been called up shot himself publicly in the main square of Cologne. As it became easier to escape from France and the administration in the country came under strain, the number evading conscription by fleeing or going into hiding rose drastically, and according to some estimates reached 100,000.

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On 9 December Napoleon presided over the opening of the Legislative Chambers and lectured them on the need for more men, more money and more determination. He set an example by acting as though nothing were amiss, and court life continued as usual. The receptions were as glittering and crowded as ever.

His remarkable show of confidence failed to inspire any in those around him. ‘The master was there as always, but the faces around him, the looks and the words were no longer the same,’ recorded one official who attended the imperial lever at the Tuileries. ‘There was something sad and tired about the very demeanour of the soldiers, and even of the courtiers.’ The mood in Paris was one of despondency. ‘People were anxious about everything, foreseeing only misfortune on all sides,’ wrote Pasquier. ‘People no longer had faith in anything, all illusions had been shattered.’

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As he contemplated the invasion of France itself, Napoleon did what he could to improve her defences by closing off potential points of entry. One of these was Switzerland, which he had refashioned in accordance with the spirit of the age into a Helvetic Republic, of which he was the Mediator. Following the battle of Leipzig, the head of the government, Landamann Reinhard, had called the Diet to Zürich. The Diet declared the country’s neutrality, without going so far as to recall the Swiss troops in Napoleon’s ranks. Unable to defend Switzerland and wishing to deny it to the allies, Napoleon withdrew his forces, renounced his role as Mediator and recognised Swiss neutrality.

He also freed King Ferdinand of Spain, a prisoner in France since 1807, on the promise that when he repossessed his throne he would expel Wellington’s army from Spanish soil. This would permit Napoleon to withdraw all his troops from Spain and south-western France. Such a ruse might conceivably have worked six months earlier, but was doomed to failure at this stage. Napoleon’s only real chance of survival now lay in direct negotiations which might allow him to divide the coalition enough to give him a reasonable peace, or at least buy him much-needed time.

In the first days of November, the allies reached Frankfurt on the Main. The liberation of Germany was complete, and they were now poised on the frontiers of France. For Metternich it was a moment of personal triumph. ‘It is I alone who has vanquished everything – hatred, prejudice, petty interest – to unite all the Germans under one and the same banner!’ he wrote to Wilhelmina on 5 November. The following evening he rode out to greet his sovereign and escort him into the city in which he had watched him being crowned Holy Roman Emperor twenty-one years earlier. ‘What cheering, what holy enthusiasm!’ he exclaimed, seeing in it a defining moment in the struggle between good and evil.

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For the diplomats and other civilians attending their sovereigns the principal merit of the place was that after having to sleep rough in squalid inns and farmhouses, they could at last set themselves up in some measure of comfort. Metternich informed his wife that he had found ‘a charming apartment’, and relished being able to give elegant dinners. He also went shopping for silk dress-material to send to her and his daughters.

For the soldiers, Frankfurt offered a welcome rest. There were theatres and other entertainments to take their minds off the war. ‘When I went into the Club,’ noted Admiral Shishkov, ‘I felt as though I were back in St Petersburg, as whichever room I went into was filled with Russian officers.’ The city provided those officers with an opportunity to swagger and to reap the gratitude of the liberated citizens.

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‘We have ladies here at Frankfurt,’ Stewart wrote to Castlereagh, assuring him that ‘you know me too well to think they occupy any portion of my precious time’. The consensus was that the nineteen-year-old Priscilla, Lady Burghersh, wife of the British Military Commissioner at Austrian headquarters, was the prettiest. But Alexander, who had begun to lose interest in Zinaida Volkonskaya, was drawn into the plump arms of the comely Dutch-born wife of one of the city’s most prominent bankers, Simon Moritz Bethmann. Metternich dismissively likened her to ‘a Dutch cow’. It was perhaps just as well, for had Alexander taken a shine to Priscilla Burghersh he might have been disappointed. She was one of the few women in Europe who failed to fall for the charm of the Tsar, who made a disagreeable impression on her when she met him at Frankfurt, and reminded her of her dentist. ‘He has certainly fine shoulders, but beyond that he is horribly ill-made,’ she wrote to a friend. ‘He holds himself bent quite forward, for which reason all his Court imitate him and bend too, and gird their waists like women! His countenance is not bad, and that is all I can say of him.’

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There were services of thanksgiving for the liberation of Germany, and balls given by the citizens in honour of the three allied sovereigns and their ministers. Alexander’s sisters the Grand Duchesses Catherine and Maria arrived in Frankfurt to grace the proceedings, as did a number of German ladies anxious to safeguard their future prospects. A carnival atmosphere reigned, and the proceedings were not always as decorous as they might have been. At one of the balls lack of familiarity with the waltz and an unevenness in the floor resulted in a collision and a pile-up, with one young lady falling so that ‘all her secrets were revealed to everyone’, as Metternich informed his daughter Marie.

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The city also filled up with princes high and low from all over Germany with more serious things on their minds. Rheinbund rulers were desperate to ensure that they did not lose their realms. The smaller and the more vulnerable their states, the more they sought to reassure all and sundry that they had always detested Napoleon and longed to join the allied cause. Mediatised Standesherren, formerly sovereign princes who had exchanged their ancient bond with the Holy Roman Emperor for one with the Rheinbund ruler into whose realms their estates had been incorporated under the protection of Napoleon, came to denounce those rulers, in the hope of recovering their independence. Imperial knights, prelates and others who had lost their status as a result of Napoleon’s rearrangements came to demand reinstatement, brandishing ancient deeds and charters. All had powerful relatives or backers at one or other of the allied courts; they lined up to put their case to Metternich, Nesselrode and other ministers, and pestered anyone with influence.

In letters to his wife, Stein complained of a ‘deluge of princes and sovereigns’, a ‘princely canaille as ridiculous as it is contemptible and despised’. As far as short-term arrangements were concerned, he was the single most important man in Germany. He was in charge of the administration even in those states whose rulers had joined the allies, and they groaned at the numbers of men and horses he was requisitioning, the victuals he was seizing, and the taxes he was levying. Particularly unsettling was his setting-up of Landsturm recruitment districts that totally ignored existing state boundaries. Those who had lost everything thought he might prove sympathetic and take their part against the rulers, but he treated them with similar disdain. They could hardly expect better.

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Stein, Metternich and Nesselrode had all three been sovereign nobles of the Holy Roman Empire, and they had lost their status too. They had successfully made new lives for themselves, realising that times had changed. They could not be expected to feel any sympathy for those who had made comfortable compromises with Napoleon or those who had not been able to come to terms with their loss.

Humboldt, who was also besieged by petitioners begging for his protection, found it ‘excellent sport’ being badgered by princesses who in other circumstances would never have noticed his existence. He developed a formula for dealing with them which consisted of speaking with feigned sympathy of members of the class of petitioner being oppressed by them: a Rheinbund Prince would have to listen to the woes of a mediatised noble, the mediatised noble to the complaints of a deposed prelate, and so on.

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Metternich had nevertheless managed to secure Austria’s position in southern Germany by signing up the more substantial states as allies. The King of Württemberg, who had been given his crown by Napoleon and grown fat on devouring mediatised states and Church lands, doubling the population of his realm in ten years, had much to lose from any change; he signed a treaty of alliance with Austria that guaranteed his continued sovereignty, within whatever arrangements were finally reached in Germany. He was followed by the Grand Duke of Hesse and the Grand Duke of Baden. The latter had also done well under French rule, marrying Napoleon’s adoptive daughter Stephanie de Beauharnais, whom he now repudiated. He tried to obtain outright recognition of his sovereignty by pleading with Alexander, who was his brother-in-law, but Alexander did not like him, and he too was guaranteed sovereignty only within the limits of the eventual German settlement.

When they had planned their campaign in August, the allies had concentrated on forcing Napoleon out of Germany, and their military commanders had only envisaged operations as far as the Rhine. Having reached that natural barrier, which was also the frontier of the French Empire, they hesitated. To carry the war into France would give their enterprise a different character.

Alexander was inclined to continue the advance, but his ministers, particularly the Russian ones, were violently opposed to this course. On 6 November Admiral Shishkov presented him with a long memorandum arguing that Russia had, by defending herself and defeating Napoleon, fulfilled her duty to herself. She had gone on to accomplish Alexander’s self-imposed goal of liberating Europe. There could, as a result, be no point or indeed justification for pursuing the war further. Shishkov pointed out that with France pushed back to the Rhine and Germany restored to vigour, Napoleon would never be able to threaten Europe, let alone Russia, again, particularly as she herself would have acquired a new defensible frontier. He also warned that taking the war into France might have the effect of galvanising the French nation in support of their Emperor and their motherland, and inflict defeat on the invaders.

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Alexander’s generals were of the same view, while his soldiers were keen to go home. The Russian army was down to some 50,000 men, and an anxious Aberdeen reported on 8 November that ‘The sentiments of the Russian army are more loudly expressed every day; from the highest to the lowest they are clamorous for peace.’ Stewart also warned that they wanted to ‘pull up’. The situation in the Prussian army was not much better. Gneisenau painted a dismal picture of its condition: the men were exhausted and short of arms. Most wanted to go into winter quarters at the very least.

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But Alexander was supported by people such as Pozzo di Borgo, who would never rest until he saw his enemy Napoleon destroyed; Anstett, who nurtured a similar vendetta; Stein, who wished to see France reduced further; and a number of others in his entourage, mostly non-Russians. They were seconded by Hardenberg and particularly Blücher, who longed to avenge the shame of Jena and the humiliations his country had suffered at the hands of Napoleon. He strongly urged an immediate advance, believing that if they denied Napoleon the opportunity to reorganise his forces, they could defeat him and take Paris within two months. Frederick William was a good deal less bellicose, and frequently expressed the fear that Napoleon’s military talents might yet produce a reversal of the situation.

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Francis was equally wary, while the Austrian military commanders were similarly respectful of Napoleon’s abilities. Metternich was opposed to further advance for other reasons. He did not wish to see France weakened further, as his view of a viable settlement in Europe included a strong France acting as a counterbalance to Russia. He therefore urged making peace proposals to Napoleon, pointing out, to appease Alexander, that they would probably not be accepted, and that this would only enhance the moral standing of the allies.

Conveniently enough, Napoleon’s minister at the court of Weimar, the baron de Saint-Aignan, had been captured in the allied advance and brought to Frankfurt. Before sending him on his way back to Paris, on 9 November, Metternich invited him to a meeting with himself and Nesselrode. He told the Frenchman that the allies would be prepared to make peace now. All France would have to do was give up her conquests in Italy, Spain and Germany, returning to her natural frontiers on the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees, thereby keeping Belgium and Savoy as well as the whole left bank of the Rhine. The status of the rest of the Netherlands was left unspecified, and there was talk of negotiation on the subject of colonies and maritime matters.

The ‘historic’ and ‘natural’ borders of France

Metternich suggested that Saint-Aignan write this up in the form of an aide-mémoire, which he could present to Napoleon on his return to Paris, and led him into a neighbouring study for the purpose. While they were out of the room Aberdeen arrived, and when they emerged from the study Metternich asked Saint-Aignan to read the document out to the three of them, just to make sure he had listed the terms correctly.

Aberdeen had recently received letters from Castlereagh saying that the British cabinet was not inclined to negotiate with Napoleon, as public opinion in Britain wished to see him destroyed. He also knew that Castlereagh deplored Metternich’s ‘spirit of catching at everything that can be twisted into even the hope of a negotiation’. He therefore listened to the reading with detached scepticism, and appears not to have protested at the inclusion of the frontier on the Rhine.

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When Saint-Aignan came to the passage concerning Britain, Aberdeen asked him to repeat it, and then declared that the expression ‘freedom of the seas and of commerce’ was too vague. He stated that while Britain was prepared to return almost all the colonies she had taken in the cause of a durable peace, ‘she would never consent to anything that might impinge her maritime rights’. The next day he delivered a formal note to Nesselrode and Metternich reiterating that Britain would never take part in negotiations in which these conditions were to be discussed. Nevertheless, his very presence at the reading of the memorandum lent it a spurious authority.

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Saint-Aignan reached Paris with the so-called ‘Frankfurt proposals’ on 14 November, and was received by Napoleon the following day. Napoleon noted at once that, as they did not specify any of Britain’s war aims, the proposals could not serve as the basis for a final settlement. But he also realised that they opened up possibilities. Through Caulaincourt, with whom he had replaced Maret as Foreign Minister, he wrote to Metternich accepting the proposals, suggesting Mannheim as the venue for the congress.

He was by now prepared to make peace on the basis of France’s ‘natural frontiers’ and the return of most of her colonies. But this would only be possible if pressure were brought to bear on Britain to agree to France’s retention of Belgium, and the only way of bringing the allies to do this was by placing the entire onus for the continuation of the war on Britain. Thus the ‘Frankfurt proposals’ seemed to offer a chance of introducing a wedge with which to split the coalition.

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‘The Coalition is beginning to have the decrepitude of age,’ Aberdeen wrote to his father-in-law the Earl of Abercorn, ‘and the evils inherent in its very existence are felt daily.’ This is not surprising. Russia and Prussia were bound together by treaty, and each of them was bound by other treaties with Austria and with Britain. Austria had also concluded, on 3 October, the vaguest of preliminary treaties with Britain, alongside a treaty of subsidy. Austria had concluded unilateral agreements with Bavaria and a number of other minor powers, while Russia, Prussia and Britain had signed their own treaties with Sweden. All of these treaties were vague, many were contradictory or at least incompatible in spirit, and all of the contracting parties were mistrustful of all the others.

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