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

When the armies of Revolutionary France had occupied the Dutch Republic in 1795, the head of state, the Stadholder William V, fled across the Channel, to spend the last ten years of his life as an exile at Kew. Shortly after his death, his son William, who had taken service in Prussia, was taken prisoner by the French at Auerstadt in 1806. Napoleon recognised his title of Prince of Orange and granted him a pension in order to neutralise him and undermine his standing in England. The French-dominated Dutch Republic, renamed the Batavian Republic in 1795, was turned into the kingdom of Holland in 1806, with Napoleon’s brother Louis as King. When Louis proved to be too good a Dutchman, Napoleon deposed him and in 1810 incorporated the kingdom into France.

While the Prince of Orange lived on a French pension, his son, also named William, studied at Oxford and then went on to serve against the French in the Peninsular War under Wellington. This suited Liverpool and Castlereagh, who envisaged restoring the house of Orange to a strengthened Holland after the defeat of Napoleon. In the spring of 1813 the Prince of Orange, referred to by the British as the Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands, was back in London. That summer Castlereagh began planning a rising in the Netherlands to coincide with the advance of the allied armies, and formed up an Orange Legion, mainly from French prisoners of Dutch nationality. At the same time plans were made for the marriage of the Sovereign Prince’s son, known as the Hereditary Prince, to the British Prince Regent’s daughter Princess Charlotte, who was just under eighteen years old.

The Netherlands

She was a tall, fresh-looking girl, a little on the massive side. She was intelligent but poorly educated. Her upbringing had been bedevilled by the atrocious morals of her father and the vagaries of her mother, compounded by their quarrels and the break-up of their marriage. She could be unruly and stubborn, and her behaviour often shocked by its lack of decorum and restraint.

When the match was first suggested to her, she was not overjoyed. She had known ‘Silly Billy’, as she called him, since childhood, and felt little in the way of love for the short, skinny young man he had grown into. But her father managed to convince her of the advantages of the match, and on 12 December 1813 she had given her consent.

By then the Hereditary Prince was in the Netherlands, commanding the British and Dutch forces operating against the French. His father was also in the country. In his desire to strengthen the future Dutch state, Castlereagh envisaged turning it into a monarchy. This went against Dutch political tradition, as the Netherlands had been a republic before the French invasion. But circumstances appeared to favour Castlereagh’s plans. ‘The Prince is a Sovereign, nobody knows how, but everyone considers him as such,’ William’s First Minister Gijsbert van Hogendorp wrote to Castlereagh in November 1813, at the same time asking him to resolve the question of his future status. ‘It is of course solely up to the Nation to make him a Sovereign, but his title is subject to agreement between the Powers.’

(#litres_trial_promo)

Castlereagh encouraged the Prince to occupy Belgium (formerly the Austrian Netherlands) as the French were forced to abandon it, and discreetly extend his rule over it. Having been assured by the Prince that the Belgians would welcome Dutch rule, Castlereagh, whose knowledge of the area was limited to the study of maps, foresaw no problems. He was however realistic enough to dismiss as outdated the proposal put forward by Hogendorp that Britain take Dunkirk for herself in order to possess a military base on the Continent, as she had before the fall of Calais in 1558.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Castlereagh did not linger in The Hague. He had already wasted enough time on the Channel crossing and he was eager to get on. So, after discharging his business with the Sovereign Prince, he set off again on 9 January 1814. He left most of his party behind in The Hague, despite angry protests from his wife, whose mind was set on accompanying him. His mission would take him through dangerous territory, lately the theatre of war, infested with deserters who had turned bandits and regular troops who were often little better, and roamed by Russian irregular cossacks eager for loot. There could be no question of exposing Lady Castlereagh and her young charges to such dangers.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Castlereagh, Planta, Robinson, Montagu and their various servants clambered into four travelling coaches and set off. Desperate to make up for lost time, they covered the distance of nearly 1,000 kilometres between The Hague and Bâle at breakneck speed, only stopping for the night once. It was a gruelling experience. ‘My dearest Em,’ Castlereagh wrote from Münster on 13 January, ‘We arrived here this morning at 8 o’clock, having travelled without a halt since we parted. The roads for the last forty miles have been dreadfully bad – worse than a ploughed field frozen. The servants’ coach broke down, which has given us some hours in bed whilst they were coming up in a country wagon. The last twenty English miles took us 10

/

; hours and I only marvel at how our English carriages could bear it.’

They made for Paderborn, Cassel and then Frankfurt, where they arrived two days later, and from where Castlereagh complained to his wife that ‘our bones are a little sore’ and that ‘German dirt is beyond the worst parts of Scotland’. He may have been exaggerating the discomfort in order to demonstrate his wisdom at dissuading her from making the trip with him. ‘Robinson and I have hardly ever seen any other object than the four glasses of the carriage covered with frost which no sun could dissolve, so that we were in fact imprisoned in an icehouse for days and nights, from which we were occasionally removed into a dirty room with a black stove smelling of tobacco smoke or something worse,’ he continued.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Two days later, from Durlach, he was able to report that there had been a thaw, and indeed that he had found time when they passed through Frankfurt to go out and buy her some ‘finery’. That night, at a post-house, he met Gentz, who had just come away from headquarters and was on his way back to Vienna. The next day, 18 January, he reached Bâle, having taken fifty hours to cover the last 350 kilometres from Frankfurt in freezing conditions.

His appearance at Bâle caused something of a sensation. He was kitted out in a curious blue tailcoat covered in braid of a kind not seen on the Continent since the 1780s, a pair of bright scarlet breeches and ‘jockey boots’. One of his attendants was decked out in what looked like a hussar uniform, and ‘appeared to have put his shirt on over his coat’, while Planta ‘does nothing but flourish about with a long sword and a military cloak’, according to one witness. ‘Castlereagh is a pretty man, with a calm, thoughtful and earnest manner,’ Humboldt wrote to his wife the following day, greatly amused by the contrast between the Austrian, Prussian and Russian diplomats, all uniformed, booted and dripping with decorations, and Castlereagh, who in his gold-braided blue coat, red waistcoat and breeches, and white silk stockings, ‘resembled nothing so much as a footman’.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Alexander had left for headquarters. Before going he had told Cathcart that he wanted to be the first to talk to Castlereagh, and requested that he refrain from holding any discussions with others. Castlereagh had no intention of complying. The next morning at 10 o’clock he called on Metternich, with whom he spent two hours. At midday Metternich had to attend a conference, but the two met again at 4 o’clock over dinner, hosted by Aberdeen and attended by Hardenberg. The latter then took Castlereagh to be presented to Frederick William, but at six he was back with Metternich, with whom he conferred till midnight. ‘I spent the day carving up Europe like a piece of cheese,’ Metternich wrote to Wilhelmina before going to bed. ‘I talked so much that I am quite hoarse, I thought so much that I feel quite stupid. I applied my conscience to so many matters that I am quite spent.’

(#litres_trial_promo)

Metternich began his first meeting with Castlereagh declaring that there was no time for them to sound each other out, and proceeded to give him a summary of his own views and aims. ‘If you think as I do, if you wish for the same things, the world is safe – if you do not, it will perish,’ he announced. He was overjoyed to discover that they agreed in all essentials. ‘From that moment we have been working together like two clerks from the same office. It is as though we had spent our lives together,’ he enthused. ‘He is cool and collected; his heart is in the right place, he is a man, and he keeps his head.’ To Schwarzenberg, he put his feelings in only slightly more measured terms. ‘He has everything; amiability, wisdom, moderation,’ he wrote on 21 January. ‘He suits me in every way, and I am convinced that I suit him.’ A couple of weeks later he made the most astonishing avowal for a man as vain as him. ‘I am equal to Lord C. and he is equal to me, because he is good, excellent, as I assuredly am when it comes to feelings and principles,’ he confided to Wilhelmina.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Castlereagh was less forthcoming, and reserved judgement for the while. After meeting Metternich and Hardenberg, and being presented to Francis I and Frederick William, and buying a couple of Swiss dolls for Emily and Emma Sophia and sending them off, he set out to join Alexander at headquarters, which had moved to Langres on French territory.

Castlereagh’s official instructions, composed largely by himself in consultation with Liverpool and other senior members of the cabinet, were that France must be excluded from the river Scheldt and the port of Antwerp, Holland must be given the former Austrian Netherlands as a ‘barrier’ against France, and strengthened by the addition of Jülich and Berg; the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies must be reinstated; and Italy must be so rearranged as to preclude the possibility of future French incursions. Britain would then return all the French colonies she had captured, except for Malta, Mauritius, the Île de Bourbon (Réunion), the Saintes islands and Guadeloupe (promised to Sweden, though Castlereagh was authorised to return Guadeloupe as well if Sweden could be induced to relinquish her claim and take the Île de Bourbon instead). Britain would also return to Holland all the Dutch colonies she had captured, except for the Cape, for which she would indemnify Holland with £2 million, to be dedicated to building a string of fortifications against the French along the new ‘barrier’. A strong Holland incorporating Belgium and defended by such a barrier was Britain’s sine qua non. Much to his relief, Castlereagh was able to ascertain from his first conversations with them that both Metternich and Hardenberg were amenable to these conditions.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Negotiations, set to take place at Châtillon, were ready to start as soon as Castlereagh arrived. But Caulaincourt, who was waiting at Châtillon, was Napoleon’s plenipotentiary, and there was some doubt among the allies as to whether it was with Napoleon that they should be making peace.

Of all the European powers, Britain alone had never recognised Napoleon’s title of Emperor of the French, and in all official correspondence he was referred to simply as General Bonaparte. Over the years British public opinion had turned him into a bogeyman, and the majority of the population regarded him with a mixture of horror and disdain. As the war with France dragged on it assumed the character of a fight to the death, and there was a widespread desire to see ‘Boney’ hanged or at least put behind bars. For his part, the Prince Regent wanted the old French dynasty of the Bourbons reinstated. Its senior living member, Louis XVIII, brother of the guillotined Louis XVI, was living in exile at Hartwell in Buckinghamshire as the guest of the King of England.

Liverpool, Castlereagh and the majority of the cabinet felt that it would be wrong to intervene in the internal affairs of another power, even an enemy one, and impose their choice of ruler on it. They hoped the Bourbons would be reinstated by force of events, but feared that any declaration by the British government in support of Louis XVIII might have the adverse effect of rallying the nation to Napoleon’s side.

Alexander on the other hand was determined that Napoleon should pay for his misdeeds with the loss of his throne. But he had a low opinion of the current representatives of the house of Bourbon, and believed that the French nation required a more modern and dashing monarch. His personal favourite was Bernadotte. Rumours of the scheme hatched between them had been circulating for some time, and Bernadotte’s posturings had featured in Stewart’s reports to Castlereagh in recent months. But the idea was so absurd that nobody had paid it much heed. It was only now that Alexander began to voice it openly, much to Metternich’s alarm.

Metternich’s legitimist principles should have inclined him to the Bourbon cause. But he did not have much faith in Louis XVIII’s ability to keep France stable and strong. And while neither he nor Francis considered the dynastic link with Napoleon of any relevance, his survival would provide a powerful counterbalance to the might of Russia. Francis feared that the restoration of the Bourbons would increase British influence on the Continent to an undesirable degree. If Napoleon did have to go, Metternich envisaged his abdication in favour of his son the King of Rome, with some kind of regency during his infancy.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Castlereagh argued that a regency would be inherently unstable and would embroil Austria in the affairs of France, and that the only viable alternative to Napoleon was a Bourbon restoration. But they were both for making peace as quickly as possible, and agreed that for the time being they should do everything to achieve a satisfactory one with Napoleon, and not press for a change of regime unless his intractability or circumstances made it inevitable. Either way, the idea of putting Bernadotte on the throne had to be knocked out of Alexander’s head, and it was one of the first matters Castlereagh broached with him shortly after his arrival at headquarters in Langres.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Castlereagh’s intercourse with crowned heads had been limited. The demented George III did not count. The Prince Regent was not a sovereign, and neither the British constitution nor his outrageous conduct and scandalous private life, exposed to the public in print and caricature, demanded that he be treated with more deference than the conduct of affairs and common civility dictated. At Bâle Castlereagh had briefly encountered the anxious and awkward Frederick William and the homely and timid Francis. Nothing had prepared him for Alexander’s peculiar combination of autocracy and liberalism, haughtiness and bonhomie, priggishness and deviousness.

Castlereagh came quickly to the point, declaring that the Prince Regent would never agree to Bernadotte becoming the ruler of France, and rehearsing all the arguments against it. Alexander professed to agree with him, and ‘disclaimed ever having expressed any intention of taking a step to favour the Prince Royal’s claims, it being repugnant to his own principles to interfere in the Government of a foreign State’; but Castlereagh was not convinced. He sensed that Alexander would do everything to prevent the Bourbons being reinstated. This alarmed him, for, as he said to Alexander, leaving question marks hanging over a matter such as this introduced a new issue and a possible bone of contention among the allies, inviting intrigue and potentially leading to differences. There were quite enough of these as it was, as he discovered when he arrived at headquarters.

(#litres_trial_promo)

The agreed plan of action was that the Austro-Russian main army under Schwarzenberg was to deploy on the right bank of the Seine, while Blücher’s Prussians, reinforced by a Russian contingent, were to operate on the Marne. Each time Napoleon attempted to attack one of these forces, the other was to threaten his rear. In this way the allies, who still feared his military talents, hoped to wear down his forces without risking defeat. Their lines of communication and supply were by now stretched, and they could not provision themselves properly in what had turned out to be a severe winter in a country ground down by years of war exactions and ravaged by the current campaign. The troops were suffering terribly from the cold. The Austrian army alone had 50,000 men lying sick in makeshift hospitals in its rear. The chosen tactic was meant to put maximum pressure on Napoleon to make peace without straining their own resources, exposing them to defeat or committing them to further advance.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Alexander took an entirely different view of the situation: his mind was set on an immediate march on Paris. His warlike ardour was being powerfully fanned by Stein, Pozzo di Borgo and Count Andrei Kirilovich Razumovsky, his former ambassador in Vienna, whom he had called to his side. All three were driven by deep personal hatred of Napoleon. He was also being encouraged by Blücher, Gneisenau and the Prussian military, who wanted to march down the streets of Paris and to blow up the bridges of Jena and Austerlitz and the Vendôme column. Their King, fearful as he was of prolonging the war, could do nothing but support Alexander, on whom his entire future depended.

(#litres_trial_promo)

‘I think our greatest danger at present is from the chevalresque tone in which the Emperor Alexander is disposed to push the war. He has a personal feeling about Paris, distinct from all political or military combinations,’ Castlereagh reported to Liverpool on 30 January. ‘He seems to seek for the occasion of entering with his magnificent guards the enemy’s capital, probably to display, in his clemency and forbearance, a contrast to that desolation to which his own was devoted.’ A negotiated peace would certainly rob Alexander of this pleasure. But there was more to it than that.

(#litres_trial_promo)

His sense of mission had moved on from the liberation of Europe to the removal of Napoleon and the inauguration of a new age, and he was not about to make peace with the ogre now. In a letter to a friend written at this time, Alexander describes how in the course of a military conference he was suddenly overcome with the desire to pray, how he got up, went into the next room and fell to his knees, how after a moment of turbulent and emotional prayer he heard the voice of God and arose feeling ‘a sweet peace in my thoughts, an all-embracing sense of calm, a hard resolution of will and a kind of blazing clarity of purpose’. He was not going to be easily diverted from his chosen course.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Castlereagh, like Metternich, was apprehensive both of what Alexander might do once he was in Paris and of the possibility that a foreign invasion of the capital, accompanied by a toppling of the throne, might provoke a Jacobin revolution. Aberdeen was not the only one to point out that the position of the allies in France was comparable to that of the French in Spain, ‘with the difference of having to deal with a more intelligent and active population’. None of these arguments made any impact on Alexander.

(#litres_trial_promo)

The matter was eventually decided by a categorical declaration from the Austrians that their army would not advance one step unless negotiations were started with Napoleon, and Alexander was forced to give way. Metternich was not slow to congratulate himself, assuring Wilhelmina that he had ‘accomplished a task greater perhaps than any achieved by a mortal’. Alexander behaved towards him ‘like a mistress who has got into a sulk’ for a few days, but he felt he had carried his point.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Castlereagh was nevertheless anxious. From his very first meetings with the sovereigns and their ministers at Bâle, he had been struck by the pervasive miasma of mistrust. ‘You may estimate some of the hazards to which affairs are exposed here, when one of the leading monarchs, in his first interview, told me that he had no confidence in his own Minister, and still less in that of his Ally,’ he wrote to Liverpool. ‘There is much intrigue, and more fear of it. […] Suspicion is the prevailing temper of the Emperor [Alexander], and Metternich’s character furnishes constant food for the intriguants to work upon.’ Not only Alexander, but most of his entourage and his diplomats, remained convinced that Austria could not be counted on and might make a separate peace at any moment.