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Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. Adam Zamoyski
Читать онлайн.Название Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna
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isbn 9780007368723
Автор произведения Adam Zamoyski
Издательство HarperCollins
One young native of Vaud, Frédéric César de La Harpe, had been persecuted in his youth by the patricians of Berne and been forced to flee. He had gone to Russia, where he had found employment as the tutor of the young Grand Duke Alexander, on whom he had exerted an enormous influence, which he continued to wield now that his pupil was Tsar. La Harpe had later gone to France, and had been instrumental in bringing about the French intervention that had liberated Vaud and Aargau from the domination of Berne and toppled the oligarchs who had ruled that city.
At the beginning of November, Alexander and Metternich had despatched two agents, Capodistrias and Lebzeltern, to Zürich with instructions to persuade the head of the Swiss government, Landamann Reinhard, to declare for the allies, or, failing that, to declare Switzerland’s neutrality. In the latter eventuality, they were to negotiate permission for allied troops to march through Swiss territory. The two envoys reached Zürich on 21 November only to find that the Swiss Diet was far from united, and many still felt loyalty to Napoleon. Napoleon’s renunciation of his role as Mediator of Switzerland resolved that issue and the Diet duly declared the country’s neutrality.
Unbeknown to Alexander, Metternich had also sent an agent to Berne with the aim of encouraging it to undermine the authority of the existing government and to call for a return to the ancien régime. The main body of allied troops due to march through Swiss territory were Austrian, which would assure them protection and Metternich a dominant influence in the affairs of Switzerland. By this time allied troops were on the move, and Schwarzenberg’s vanguard was about to enter Switzerland between Schaffhausen and Bâle. But, since the Zürich Diet had not produced the necessary authority for them to do so, and realising that this would constitute an infringement of Swiss neutrality, Alexander countermanded their orders.
Metternich could see no reason to disrupt the entire allied plan merely for the sake of Alexander’s sensibilities. He persuaded Francis to order Schwarzenberg to go ahead, and at 2 a.m. on 21 December the Austrians entered Bâle, whose garrison had capitulated. When news of this reached Alexander, he flew into a violent rage. ‘Metternich has behaved detestably in the Swiss question, and I am indignant about it,’ he wrote to his sister. He did not yet realise the full implications of Metternich’s actions, which were to be rich in consequence, but he felt personally betrayed and resented his reputation having been damaged. He never forgave him, and the incident poisoned relations between them forever.31
Stein was quick to take advantage. ‘There is every reason to fear that Count Metternich will bring to the ultimate arrangement of the affairs of Germany the same spirit of frivolity, of vanity, the same lack of respect for truth and principle which has already partly spoiled them and which he has just flourished with such harmful results in Switzerland,’ he wrote to Alexander.32
Metternich made light of the matter. But he had already come to realise that he would no longer be able to handle Alexander on his own, and neither Hardenberg, Nesselrode nor the ‘English Trinity’ were of much use. There was also the consideration that as they drew closer to a final settlement decisions would need to be made fast. And while the presence of the three sovereigns at headquarters meant that Russia, Prussia and Austria could agree anything on the spot, the absence of a representative of Britain endowed with decision-making powers meant that the coalition as a whole could not. The British constitution did not permit the head of state to leave the country, so there could be no question of the Prince Regent coming to allied headquarters, but things could not be allowed to go on as they were.
On receiving Napoleon’s letter accepting the ‘Frankfurt proposals’ as a basis for negotiation, on 5 December, Metternich informed Nesselrode and Hardenberg, and they resolved to send Pozzo di Borgo to London to talk to Castlereagh directly. Stewart got wind of this through clandestine access to Metternich’s papers, and communicated his sense of outrage to his colleagues. Aberdeen felt he had been tricked and charged Metternich to his face with disloyalty. ‘More chicane and manoeuvring have been, and still are, going on concerning this business than on any that has hitherto come within my experience,’ commented Jackson.33
Metternich, who was mortified to discover that his chancellery had been ‘plundered’, was not in fact trying to trick anyone. He and his colleagues had merely come to the conclusion that ‘the Triumvirate we presently have at our headquarters is not fitted to advancing the cause’, and Pozzo di Borgo’s mission was to instruct the Russian, Prussian and Austrian ministers in London to ask the British cabinet to nominate one man to speak with authority in its name. They did not mention names, but it was clear whom they had in mind. ‘What bliss it would be to have Castlereagh here to put an end to this English Sanhedrin and the silliness of the good Stewart,’ Hardenberg noted in his diary on 8 December. Metternich had already written to Caulaincourt deferring the start of the negotiations, anticipating the arrival of Castlereagh.34
The British cabinet considered the request at its meeting on 20 December. Foreign Secretaries did not normally travel abroad in the pursuance of their duties. But the circumstances were exceptional. Britain had spent some £700,000,000 fighting the French over the past twenty years, which, according to some historians, represented a greater burden in terms of men and resources than the Great War of 1914–18 would impose. The country could not afford to carry on much longer at this rate, and if a peace settlement unfavourable to her were reached in Europe, she might find herself alone, at war with France and the United States, cut off from European markets, stranded and friendless. The cabinet decided that ‘the Government itself should repair to headquarters’, in the person of Castlereagh.35
‘Certainly, that is his only chance of having any finger in the pie,’ Lord Grenville wrote on hearing of Castlereagh’s departure, adding that if he did not make haste he would probably arrive too late.36
A dense fog lay over the streets of London on the afternoon of 26 December 1813 as Castlereagh drove home to No. 18 St James’s Square. Although it was Boxing Day, Lord Liverpool’s cabinet had forgone their traditional country pursuits and spent the day around the table at No. 10 Downing Street discussing the fine points of his impending mission.
A few hours later, two heavily laden travelling carriages trundled out of the square bearing the Foreign Secretary off on his adventure. Loving husband that he was, Castlereagh could not envisage going anywhere without his wife Emily. She in turn insisted on taking along her young niece Lady Emma Sophia Edgcumbe and little nephew Viscount Valletort, whom she had more or less adopted when, seven years earlier, her sister had died. They set off ‘in a fog so intense’, according to Emma Sophia, ‘that the carriages went at a foot’s pace, with men holding flambeaux at the head of the horses’. After covering barely eight miles in this way, they stopped for the night at Romford. They rose early the next morning, paused at Colchester for breakfast, and then drove on to Harwich.
The next day they went aboard HMS Erebus, but soon after leaving harbour the vessel was becalmed, and they were obliged to spend the next three days anchored off Harwich. Apart from Lord and Lady Castlereagh, her bulldog Venom, Emma Sophia and her brother, and their tall and gangly cousin Alexander Stewart, the party included Castlereagh’s assistant Joseph Planta, his secretaries Frederick Robinson (who in 1827 would become Prime Minister as Lord Goderich) and William Montagu. They had been joined by Pozzo di Borgo, who entertained them with his stock of famously second-hand and oft-repeated anecdotes and bons mots.
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