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the latter described as ‘one of the most stormy I have ever attended’. In the end Metternich managed to placate them by declaring that while Austria would only bind herself to join Russia and Prussia in war against France if Napoleon did not accept to negotiate on the first four conditions, he nevertheless agreed that a durable peace could not be achieved without excluding France and French influence entirely from Italy, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. The fruit of these meetings was the Convention of Reichenbach, signed a few days later, on 27 June.

      This defined the conditions on which Napoleon was to be invited to negotiate, and stipulated that if he did not agree to them, or if the negotiations did not lead to peace, Austria would automatically become an ally of Russia and Prussia, and declare war on France.¹⁹

      Mistrust nevertheless lingered like an unhealthy fog – with some justification, since the allies had accepted Metternich’s assurance that the peace proposals were only a ploy to wrong-foot Napoleon, while he himself was still in favour of making peace provided reasonable terms could be obtained. That seemed infinitely preferable to embarking on a new war as part of a coalition which, in Gentz’s words, was ‘a weak, rotten, poorly designed structure in which hardly two pieces fit together’. But a satisfactory peace could only be made with the participation of Britain, and Metternich was doing everything possible to make contact with the British cabinet through Wessenberg and various British agents.²⁰

      The British diplomats had been left out of the secret talks between their allies and Metternich, and seemed to be unaware of them. But Castlereagh was anxious. On 13 June he wrote to Cathcart instructing him to write to Metternich himself and pin him down as to Austria’s intentions, and enclosing a letter to the Austrian Foreign Minister in which he insisted on ‘without loss of time, be[ing] informed in the most authentic and confidential manner of the views and intentions of the Austrian cabinet’.²¹

      Stewart, who regarded himself first and foremost as a soldier and longed to get to grips with the enemy, had gone off to Prussia in order to review the troops concentrating for the next stage of the campaign in northern Germany. It was only when he returned a couple of weeks later that he discovered, entirely by chance, that Russia and Prussia had signed a convention with Austria without consulting their British allies, in stark and insulting contradiction to the engagements made in the subsidy treaties signed with them only ten days before.

      The British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and his Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh had already been rattled by the news of their Russian and German allies’ signature of the armistice of Plesswitz on 4 June without consulting them. When they were informed of this second breach of faith there was mild panic in London. They had to consider the very real possibility that Austria might succeed in subverting their allies and broker a peace between them and Napoleon which would once again exclude Britain. Faced with this bleak prospect, Castlereagh readjusted his policy.

      ‘You must guard against a Continental peace being made to our exclusion,’ he warned Cathcart on 6 July, stressing the weakness of Britain’s position. He hated the prospect of having to take part in a settlement negotiated by Metternich, but there seemed to be no alternative. He had made up his mind to send an envoy to the Austrian court.

      ‘The risk of treating with France is great, but the risk of losing our Continental Allies and the confidence of our own nation is greater,’ he argued, instructing Cathcart to inform the allies that Britain would join them in any negotiations they entered into with Napoleon. He listed ‘the points on which His Royal Highness can under no circumstances relax’, which were that Spain, Portugal and Naples must be returned to their rightful sovereigns, that Hanover be handed back, that an enlarged Holland be restored and that Prussia and Austria be strengthened. A further point concerned Britain’s maritime rights, which were not negotiable. To his intense annoyance Russia had recently renewed its offer to mediate in the Anglo-American conflict, which he saw as an attempt to bring these rights up in the international arena.²²

      On his return to Gitschin after his crucial conferences with Alexander and the allied ministers, Metternich had found a letter from the French Foreign Minister Maret asking whether Austria still considered herself to be bound by the treaty of 1812 with France, and if so, whether she would designate a plenipotentiary to renegotiate it so as to accommodate Austria’s new role as mediator. Metternich replied with a specious document explaining Austria’s behaviour towards France, and then set off for Dresden himself.²³

      He arrived in the Saxon capital on 25 June, and on the following day he presented himself at the Marcolini villa. On his arrival he was struck by the look of weariness and despondency on the faces of the senior officers in the Emperor’s ante-rooms. He found Napoleon standing in the middle of a long gallery, his sword at his side and his hat under his arm. The Emperor opened the conversation with cordial enquiries about Francis’s health, but his countenance soon grew sombre. Irritated by Austria’s tergiversation, and feeling he was being betrayed, Napoleon reacted with his usual truculence. ‘So it is war you want: very well, you shall have it,’ he challenged Metternich. ‘I annihilated the Prussian army at Lützen; I beat the Russians at Bautzen; and now you want to have your turn. I shall meet you at Vienna. Men are incorrigible; the lessons of experience are lost on them.’

      When Metternich pressed him to make peace, stressing that this was his last opportunity to do so on favourable terms, Napoleon gave full vent to his irritation. ‘I might even consider giving Russia a piece of the duchy of Warsaw,’ he ranted, ‘but I will not give you anything, because you have not beaten me; and I will give nothing to Prussia, because she has betrayed me.’ He declared that he could not give up an inch of territory without dishonouring himself. ‘Your sovereigns, born on the throne, can afford to let themselves be beaten twenty times and still return to their capitals; I cannot, because I am a parvenu soldier,’ he said. ‘My authority will not survive the day when I will have ceased to be strong, and therefore, to be feared.’

      He suspected that the four conditions for negotiation put forward by Metternich were some kind of trick, as they would not buy peace by themselves (if only because British demands would have to be added), so in agreeing to them Napoleon would be entering an open-ended negotiation. And he saw Metternich as the principal intriguer rather than the honest broker the Austrian minister thought himself.

      Realising that he could not force Austria to fight at the side of France, Napoleon attempted to buy her neutrality by offering to return her Illyrian provinces. But Metternich stood firm by his insistence that the only role Austria was prepared to play was that of independent mediator. If Napoleon did not accept this, Francis would consider himself relieved of any obligation to stand by their alliance, and free to act as he saw fit. Napoleon tried to browbeat Metternich, by accusing him of treachery and of being in the pay of Britain, by ridiculing Austria’s military potential and by threatening to crush her. He lost his temper more than once, threw his hat into the corner in a rage, only then to resume the conversation on polite, even friendly terms. The meeting lasted more than nine hours, and it was dark outside when the exhausted Metternich left the room.²⁴

      That evening Metternich returned to the Marcolini villa at Napoleon’s invitation to see a play put on by the actors of the Comédie Française, who had been brought over from Paris. He was astonished to find himself watching the famous actress Mademoiselle Georges playing Racine’s Phèdre. ‘I thought I was at St Cloud,’ he wrote to his wife before going to bed, ‘all the same faces, the same court, the same people.’²⁵

      Over the next days he had a couple of meetings with Maret and another inconclusive one with Napoleon, who kept invoking Austria’s obligations under the treaty of 1812. Metternich did everything he could to persuade Napoleon that he wanted to help him make a satisfactory peace, while Napoleon alternated between bullying and trying to convince Metternich that Austria needed France more than France needed Austria.

      Metternich

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