A HARBRACE CASEBOOK IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

Power and Order
6 Cases in World Politics

KISSINGER *Classical Diplomacy*

WADSWORTH *Modern Diplomacy*

OSGOOD *Alliance Policy*

COWAN *Nationalism and Colonialism*

STOESSINGER *The United Nations*

WRIGHT *International Law*

EDITED BY

John G. Stoessinger & Alan F. Westin

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CLASSICAL DIPLOMACY

The Congress of
Vienna

Henry A. Kissinger

ANY INTERNATIONAL settlement represents a stage in a
process by which a nation reconciles its vision of itself with
the vision of it held by other powers. Could a power achieve
all that it wished, it would strive for absolute security. But ab-
solute security for one power means absolute insecurity for
all others; hence it is never a part of "legitimate" settlement
and can be achieved only through conquest. For this reason,
an international settlement that is accepted and not imposed—
as with the pact fashioned by the Congress of Vienna—will
always appear *somewhat* unjust to any one of its participants.
Paradoxically, diplomacy has for one of its objects the even
distribution of dissatisfaction and thus the creation of a stable
equilibrium. Were any country totally satisfied, the others
would in all likelihood be totally dissatisfied, and a revolu-
tionary situation would develop. The foundation of interna-
tional security is the *relative* security—and therefore the rela-
tive insecurity—of all members of the international system.
This case study tells how one particularly durable balance
was attained through skillful diplomacy nearly 150 years ago.

SELDOM had Europe seen such an assemblage. From every
part of the Continent a glittering array of kings, archdukes, and other po-
tentates gathered in Vienna in the autumn of 1814. They had reason to be
jubilant. Napoleon had been defeated and sent into exile. The Bourbons

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had been restored to the French throne. Once again the world had been made safe for hereditary monarchy, and now it was time to frame the formal terms of peace.

Vienna was thronged with nobility, their secretaries, their ladies, and richly liveried servants, who made up a crowd, by some estimates, of nearly 100,000. Opulent carriages crisscrossed the city's boulevards. The Emperor of Austria, Francis I, kept 1,400 horses in readiness in his stables for the royal guests to use. Strolling musicians filled the streets with music. At night, elegant princesses waltzed in rococo ballrooms or chattered happily with their noble escorts at the theater or in quiet cafés. By day, the high-born guests visited the Austrian Court to feast at the imperial tables spread for them. The cost to Francis I was 50,000 florins a day (about $25,000).

In this agreeable setting the great powers of Europe were re-enacting the diplomatic process by which the prizes of victory and the burdens of defeat were to be parceled out. As the Comte de la Garde-Chambonas said,

> Doubtless, at no time of the world's history have more grave and complex interests been discussed amidst so many fêtes. A kingdom was cut into bits or enlarged at a ball; an indemnity was granted in the course of a dinner; a constitution was planned during a hunt; now and again a cleverly placed word or a happy and pertinent remark cemented a treaty.¹

The most recent similar gathering had occurred more than a century before, in 1713, in Utrecht, where France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the Holy Roman Empire, and various Italian kingdoms awarded themselves parts of Spain's holdings in ending the War of the Spanish Succession. Sixty-five years before that, in 1648, representatives of each of 300 petty German states plus diplomats from major European powers had assembled to produce the Peace of Westphalia. That pact sought among other things to establish mutual tolerance between Catholics and Protestants and thereby to bind up the deep wounds left by the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Nearly a century earlier, the first attempt to avoid widespread religious strife in Europe inspired the Peace of Augsburg (1555), from which emerged the famous standard *cuius regio eius religio* (the ruling prince in each state sets up his religion as the official faith).

Each of these conferences (and, for that matter, the Versailles Conference of 1919 and the Potsdam Conference of 1945) suggests the basic procedure and goals of classical diplomacy: to stabilize and conciliate; to negotiate and exchange; to assure the rule of order, legitimacy, and balance. The Congress of Vienna best exemplifies these patterns of diplomatic settlement.

¹ Comte A. de la Garde-Chambonas, *Anecdotal Recollections of the Congress of Vienna*, ed. Comte Fleury (London, 1902), pp. 1-3.

The Congress of Vienna 3

The Spirit of the Times: Equilibrium

Prince Metternich of Austria set the tone for the Congress of Vienna. Balance was what he sought—a “just equilibrium.” If the international order could be constructed with the clarity of a mathematical axiom, powers would consider themselves factors in a balance and arrange their adjustments to achieve a perfect equilibrium between the forces of aggression and the forces of resistance. But an exact balance is impossible, and not only because of the difficulty of predicting the aggressor. It is chimerical, above all, because while states may appear to outsiders as factors in a security arrangement, they appear domestically as expressions of a historical existence. No state will submit to a settlement, however well-balanced and however “secure,” which seems totally to deny its vision of itself. There exist two kinds of equilibrium, however: a general equilibrium that makes it risky for one power or group of powers to attempt to impose its will on the remainder, and a particular equilibrium that defines the historical relation of certain powers among each other. The former is the deterrent against a general war; the latter the condition of smooth cooperation. An international order is therefore rarely born out of the consciousness of harmony. For even when there is an agreement about legitimacy, the conceptions of the requirements of security will vary according to the geographical position and the history of each contending power. Out of just such a conflict over the nature of the equilibrium the Congress of Vienna fashioned a settlement that lasted for almost a century.

The statesmen at Vienna faced a problem characteristic of the end of any general war. The primary negotiating powers—Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria—had just recently been allies in a war to prevent the domination of Europe by Napoleonic France. They had been united to avert a common danger. But as this peril had receded their own more narrow interests came to the fore again. The problem at Vienna was how to relate the general interest of preventing aggression to the particular interests of each country. In this, Great Britain and Austria were generally conservative states; they wanted little for themselves except a period of tranquillity. Russia was expansionist, hiding its aims behind the religious mysticism of its strange tsar. The tsar claimed most of Poland for himself, including a part that had been Prussian before the Napoleonic wars. This Russian claim forced Prussia to look for compensations elsewhere, particularly in Saxony, thus threatening the equilibrium within Germany.

However, the claims of the acquisitive powers and the resistance of the conservative states were not of the same order. Russia's demand of Poland threatened the equilibrium of Europe; Prussia's insistence on Saxony merely imperiled the balance within Germany. When Castlereagh the Englishman talked of the equilibrium, he meant a Europe in which hegemony was im-

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possible; but when Metternich the Austrian invoked the equilibrium, he included a Germany in which Prussian predominance was impossible. Castlereagh was interested in creating a Central Europe that would be strong enough to resist attack from both the West and the East; Metternich wanted the same thing, but he was also concerned about Austria's relative position within Central Europe. To Castlereagh the Continental nations were aspects of a defensive effort, but to the Continental nations the general equilibrium meant nothing if it destroyed the historical position that to them was the reason for their existence. To Castlereagh and to Britain the equilibrium was a mechanical expression of the balance of forces; to the Continental nations, a reconciliation of historical aspirations.

## Five Characters in Search of Agreement

### Prince Metternich: Certitude Personified

Rarely has a diplomatic conference been conducted by men of such strong personality. And their encounter became all the more poignant in that the personality of each diplomat in many ways epitomized the aspirations and the problems of his country. Like the state whose foreign minister he was for forty years, Metternich was a product of an age in the process of being transcended. He was born in the eighteenth century, of which the Frenchman Talleyrand was to say that nobody who lived after the French Revolution would ever know how sweet and gentle life could be. And the certitude of the time of his youth never left Metternich. Contemporaries might sneer at his invocation of the maxims of sound reason, at his facile philosophizing and polished epigrams. They did not understand that it was an accident of history that projected Metternich into a revolutionary struggle so foreign to his temperament. Like the century that formed him, his style was adapted better to the manipulation of factors treated as given than to a contest of will, better to achievement through proportion than through scale. He was a rococo figure, finely carved, all complex surface, like an intricately cut prism. His face was delicate but without depth, his conversation brilliant but without ultimate seriousness. Equally at home in the salon and in the cabinet, graceful and facile, he was the *beau ideal* of the eighteenth-century aristocracy that justified itself not by its truth but by its existence. And if he never came to terms with the new age, it was not because he failed to understand its seriousness but because he disdained it. Therein, too, his fate was the fate of Austria.

Napoleon said of him that he confused policy with intrigue, and Hardenberg, the Prussian envoy at Vienna, wrote the following analysis of Metternich's diplomatic methods at the height of the crisis of 1812:

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Endowed with a high opinion of the superiority of his ability . . . he loves finesse in politics and considers it essential. Since he does not have sufficient energy to mobilize the resources of his country . . . he attempts to substitute cunning for strength and character. . . . It would suit him best if a fortunate accident—the death of Napoleon or great successes of Russia—were to create a situation where he could let Austria play an important role.²

Friedrich von Gentz, for long Metternich's closest associate, has left probably the best capsule description of Metternich's methods and personality: "Not a man of strong passions and of bold measures; not a genius but a great talent; cool, calm, imperturbable and calculator par excellence."³

### Viscount Castlereagh: Icy Pragmatism

Similarly, Castlereagh epitomized the Britain of his time. Born in Ireland of an old, if undistinguished, family, he had undergone the typical education of the British landed aristocracy at a time when contacts with the Continent were tenuous and foreign affairs confined to makeshift coalitions. His career had been solid but unspectacular. His first public acts were connected with putting down the Irish Rebellion and abolishing the Irish parliament, acts that helped to establish his reputation as an ogre to liberalism. He served as secretary of war under Pitt, and this association laid the foundation of his later policy. For the greater part of this period he was overshadowed by the more brilliant Canning. In 1809, after an unfortunate pistol duel (on a second exchange, Canning was wounded in the thigh), both men had to retire from public office. Castlereagh returned in 1812, as foreign secretary and leader of the House of Commons, in the Cabinet of Lord Liverpool, which was not expected to last more than a few months. So well established was Canning's "expertise" in foreign affairs that Castlereagh offered to relinquish to him the Foreign Office provided he could retain his position as leader of the House of Commons. But so dismal seemed the prospects of the Liverpool Cabinet that Canning refused, not to attain his goal for another decade. Castlereagh's place in history thus came about almost as an afterthought, as unobtrusively as his personality.

No man more different from his great protagonist, Metternich, could be imagined. Metternich was elegant, facile, rationalistic; Castlereagh solid, ponderous, pragmatic; the former was witty and eloquent, if somewhat pedantic; the latter cumbersome in expression, although effective in debate; Metternich was doctrinaire and devious; Castlereagh matter-of-fact and direct. Few individuals have left behind them such a paucity of personal

² Wilhelm Oncken, *Österreich und Preussen im Befreiungskriege*, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1880), II, 88.

³ Heinrich von Srbik, *Metternich der Staatsmann und der Mensch*, 2 vols. (Munich, 1925), I, 144.

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reminiscences as Castlereagh. Icy and reserved, he walked his solitary path, as humanly unapproachable as his policy came to be incomprehensible to the majority of his countrymen. It was said of him that he was like a splendid summit of polished frost, icy, beautiful, aloof, of a stature that nobody could reach and few would care to. It was not until his tragic suicide that the world was to learn what solitude had cost him.

## Tsar Alexander: Something Was Missing

As for Tsar Alexander, Napoleon had once said of him that despite his great abilities “something” was always missing in whatever he did. And since one could never foresee which particular piece would be missing in any given instance, he was totally unpredictable. Metternich described him as “a strange combination of masculine virtues and feminine weaknesses. Too weak for true ambition, but too strong for pure vanity.”⁴ At the same time mystical and cunning, idealistic and calculating, he presented an ambivalent mixture of universal principles justifying specifically Russian gains, of high motives supporting aspirations considered selfish in lesser men. He was capable of great self-abnegation, as he proved repeatedly during the period of the Holy Alliance. But he could also be cruel and treacherous. “He was not for nothing the son of [the mad] Tsar Paul,” the French delegate Talleyrand said of him. That he was convinced his goals were identical with the claims of universal justice cannot be doubted. That these claims generally coincided, at least during his early period, with the national interest of Russia is even less open to question.

## Count Talleyrand: Dexterity in Maneuver

Talleyrand was the spokesman for Bourbon France. He was of all his contemporaries the one most similar to Metternich. He possessed the same nonchalance, the same subtlety, and an even more trenchant wit. This was no accident. Both Talleyrand and Metternich were products of the eighteenth century, grand seigneurs caught up in a contest they could only consider gross and even loutish. Both were sufficiently aristocratic to be concerned not only with the substance but with the form of their achievements. Both identified tranquillity with balance and proportion.

Still, the similarities hid basic differences. For fate had not been kind to Talleyrand; it had not given him the opportunity to live his values. To be an aristocrat is not a dogma but a fact; but in Talleyrand there was always an incongruity between his professions and his performance. Forced into the priesthood as a young man, he became Bishop of Auteuil, only to renounce the Church during the Revolution. After breaking with the Revolu-

⁴ Clemens von Metternich, *Aus Metternichs Nachgelassenen Papieren*, 8 vols., ed. Alfons von Klinkowstrom (Vienna, 1880), I, 316 f. Hereafter referred to as *N.P.*

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tion, he had become foreign minister of Napoleon; and when the Allied armies were approaching Paris, Talleyrand was working for the restoration of the Bourbons. It is possible, of course, to find a certain consistency in this behavior, an effort to balance by his changes of side the excesses of his contemporaries. Still one cannot blame his contemporaries for distrusting Talleyrand, because they had to judge him by his actions, not by his ex- planations of them. To be sure, in more tranquil times, Talleyrand would have found more conventional outlets for his talents. But there are two ways of defeating turbulence, by standing above it or by swimming with the tide; by principle or by manipulation. Talleyrand fell short of ultimate stat- ure because his actions were always too precisely attuned to the dominant mood, because nothing ever engaged him so completely that he would bring to it the sacrifice of personal advancement. This may have been owing to a sincere attempt to remain in a position to moderate events; his contempo- raries may be forgiven if they considered it opportunism. Thus Talleyrand's greatest strength always lay in the dexterity of his maneuvers, in the manip- ulations of the principles of others, in the creation of formulas for achieving an agreed goal.

### Prince von Hardenberg: A Vain Wish for Finesse

Finally there was Hardenberg, the Prussian negotiator. He was stolid and unimaginative, eager to show his capacity for finesse but unable to sustain such an impression. By instinct conservative, he was forced into an essentially expansionist policy. Eager for friendship with Austria, he yet did not know how to prevent a clash with it. Of all the negotiators he proved least able to impress his stamp on events.

### First Hopes: A Rapid Settlement

As the plenipotentiaries assembled in Vienna, it was thought that the settle- ment would be rapid, that France would appear as only a spectator, that the rest of Europe would simply have to ratify an instrument drafted in relative harmony. Prussia appeared to contend for Saxony, Russia for Po- land, Austria for the German equilibrium, Castlereagh for that of Europe, and Talleyrand for French participation in European affairs. Nobody seems to have believed that these positions might prove incompatible.

In the process of bringing about a reconciliation of the contending aspira- tions, the Congress of Vienna went through five phases: (a) an initial period dealing with the essentially procedural problem of organizing the Congress around the anti-French Coalition; (b) an effort by Castlereagh to settle the outstanding problems, particularly the Polish-Saxon question, first by a personal appeal to the tsar and then by attempting to rally the powers

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of Europe against him; (c) a complementary effort by Metternich to separate the Polish and Saxon problems and to create a combination of powers united by a consensus of historical claims; (d) the disintegration of the anti-French Coalition and Talleyrand's introduction into the Allied deliberations; (e) the negotiation of the final settlement.

## Organizing the Anti-French Coalition

Castlereagh arrived in Vienna on September 13 and immediately began discussions preliminary to the formal Congress, which was to open on October 1. He still hoped that the basic decisions might be taken before that date and that he could use the overture to Talleyrand implied by a recent sojourn of his in Paris to bring the Russian minister to terms.⁵ As things turned out, however, most of the preliminary discussions were taken up by procedural questions. It soon became apparent that Castlereagh's overture to Talleyrand had been premature and that the other powers were willing to admit France into their concert only as a last resort, after all other combinations had failed. The terrible memory of wartime continued, and it provided the impetus for international relationships. Unity was still considered an end in itself, and harmony the cause, not the expression, of amity. And since the wartime unanimity had been produced by the threat of France, the Allies dealt only hesitatingly and ambiguously with the most fundamental problem of a "legitimate" order: whether it can construct spontaneous relationships or requires the myth of an enemy as a cohesive motive force. They agreed that decisions would be taken by the "Big Four" but stipulated that they be submitted to France and Spain for approval and to the Congress for ratification. If the Allies were in accord, opposition would be of no avail. What would happen in case of disagreement was not even considered, because it would have represented an admission that the requirement of unity did not supersede all other considerations. The only dispute arose over the manner in which this procedure was to be made effective, whether it should be embodied in a formal resolution by the Congress, as Prussia proposed, or simply carried out by informal arrangement, as Castlereagh preferred.⁶

## Talleyrand's Abortive Scheme

At this point, on September 23, Talleyrand arrived in Vienna, prepared to use the legitimizing principle of the anti-French Coalition in order to dissolve it. He argued adroitly that if "legitimate" rulers represented the guarantee for the repose of Europe, no reason existed for excluding a Bour-

⁵ Text in Sir Charles Webster, *British Diplomacy 1813-1815* (London, 1921), p. 192, Sept. 3, 1814. Hereafter referred to as B.D.

⁶ For a full discussion of procedural questions, see Sir Charles Webster, *The Congress of Vienna* (London, 1934), pp. 149-65.

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bon France from the discussion. And if "legitimate" rule was sacrosanct, Prussia had no "right" to dispossess the traditional king of Saxony by annexing his territory. To be sure, the Allies had developed an ingenious subterfuge for this violation of their legitimizing principle by accusing the hapless king of treason for his failure to join the Allies' side in time. But Talleyrand had no difficulty in exposing the tenuity of this argument. "Treason," he said acidly, "is evidently a question of dates."

Talleyrand's heaviest fire, however, was concentrated on the Allied procedural scheme. He protested against the exclusion of France and the minor powers from the deliberations of the Congress. He denied the legal existence of the "Big Four," and he threatened to transform France into the advocate of all the secondary powers chafing under their direction. Despite his brilliance and sarcasm, Talleyrand achieved only a few, minor concessions. It was decided to adjourn the formal opening of the Congress until November 1 and in the meantime to have the pending questions examined by the eight signatories of the Treaty of Paris, the "Big Four" plus France, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. The "Big Four" left no doubt, however, that they intended to continue their private discussions and to treat the "Eight" merely as a ratifying instrument or one to settle peripheral issues.

Talleyrand's first sally failed because a logical inconsistency is not sufficient to dissolve coalitions. A mere appeal to a legitimizing principle is of no avail against the united opposition of all other major powers acting as if the appealing government still represented a threat to their existence. There were in fact two relationships, that within the Coalition and that of the Coalition toward France; the latter was an ambiguous mixture of distrust and pretense of normality, and the Coalition could not decide whether to rely on force or on legitimacy in dealing with France. Only after the claim of special righteousness, which is characteristic of coalitions, had disappeared in a conflict of the Allies among each other, could Talleyrand emerge as an equal partner. But first one more test of the efficacy of the "internal legitimacy" of the Coalition had to be made. It still remained to be determined whether the tsar could be induced to limit his claims without the threat of force. So well had Castlereagh established himself as the prime contender for the European equilibrium that it was he who entered the arena to try the tsar's resolution.

## Castlereagh Tries His Hand

### What Does the Tsar Want?

All efforts to induce the tsar to state the nature of his goals in Poland had heretofore proved futile. It was known that he wanted to re-establish a kingdom of Poland with a liberal constitution, connected with Russia

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only through the person of the monarch; but nothing could be learned about either its territorial extent or the nature of its internal arrangements. This secrecy was not merely a crafty bargaining device to delay a final decision until France had been eliminated as a factor in the balance and Britain had disinterested itself in the Continent. Nothing in the tsar's complex make-up ever worked so simply. When the tsar demanded a free hand in Poland to fulfill the pledges of his youth, he was undoubtedly sincere; but this made a legitimate order all the more difficult to establish. When Alexander insisted on the major part of Poland, not on grounds of expediency but as a moral "right," he was not raising the issue to a more elevated plane but was posing a dilemma that might provoke a new round of violence. For a "right" is established by acquiescence, not by a claim, and a claim not generally accepted is merely the expression of an arbitrary will. Moreover it is the essence of a moral claim that it cannot be compromised, precisely because it justifies itself by considerations beyond expediency. Thus, if the tsar was "really" sincere in his protestations of moral duty, he was making a revolutionary contest—a contest based on the mere assertion of force—inevitable. This is the paradox that the fanatic, however well-intentioned and however sincere, introduces into international relations. His very claim to moral superiority leads to an erosion of all moral restraint.

There ensued a strange and unreal series of interviews between Castlereagh and Alexander; strange because their bitterness was accompanied by protestations of unending friendship, and unreal because Alexander and Castlereagh could never agree on basic premises. In order to obtain a framework for negotiation, the protagonists constantly shifted positions, each one pretending to agree with the other's principles but interpreting them in a manner that reduced them to absurdity. That Alexander proposed to rest his claims on the sanctity of his maxims became apparent on the occasion of his first interview with Castlereagh, the day after his arrival.⁷ For the first time, the tsar was explicit about his Polish plans. He proposed to keep all of the Duchy of Warsaw with the exception of a small portion to be ceded to Prussia. These claims, Alexander argued, were not the result of ambition but the outgrowth of a moral duty, and they were motivated solely by a desire to achieve the happiness of the Polish people. In short, since they were not advanced in the name of security they could not threaten anyone.

Castlereagh, in reply, urged the threat represented by a constitutional Poland to the tranquillity of Austria's and Prussia's remaining Polish provinces, and he added the dubious proposition that an independent Poland would be generally welcomed, even by Austria and Prussia, whereas a Russian appendage extending deep into Central Europe would constitute

⁷ Castlereagh's report: B.D., pp. 197 f., Oct. 2, 1814.

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a constant source of disquiet. The tsar, however, left no doubt that he was
not prepared to withdraw from his Polish possession and to create a truly
independent Poland. The first interview between Castlereagh and Alexan-
der had merely served to demonstrate the duality of the tsar's nature and
the chasm between the two positions.

The contest was renewed, on October 13, with Alexander attempting to
refute Castlereagh's assertion that the possession of Poland represented a
threat to the equilibrium.⁸ Although he did not admit that the requirements
of security limited his moral claim, Alexander was quite prepared to invoke
them when they seemed to support his designs. He therefore advanced the
curious argument that his Polish scheme, far from extending Russian power,
would actually modify it by leading to a withdrawal of Russian troops be-
yond the Niemen. But when Castlereagh pointed out that security depends
on the total strength of states, not on the position of their armies, Alexander
retreated again to his moral duty.

It was in vain that Castlereagh emphasized Alexander's inconsistencies:
his moral claims on one side of the partition line but not on the other, his
duty limited by the claims of Russian national interest. When Castlereagh
declared that it "depends exclusively upon the temper [of] your Imperial
Majesty . . . whether the present Congress shall prove a blessing to man-
kind or only exhibit . . . a lawless scramble for power," he revealed the
exasperation induced by their inability to agree on what constituted a rea-
sonable claim. When the tsar replied that the Polish question could end only
in one way since he was in possession, it was clear that a stalemate had
been reached.⁹ The dispute between the tsar and Castlereagh had thus made
it evident that persuasion would prove unavailing and that relations would
have to be based on force or the threat of force.

## A United Front Against the Tsar?

While Castlereagh was negotiating with the tsar, he made every effort to
assemble such force. As an abstract problem in diplomacy his task seemed
simple. If the tsar's pretensions threatened the European equilibrium, the
obvious countermeasure was to marshal the resources of Europe against
him. But although an equilibrium may be indivisible, it may not appear so
to its components. The tsar could not be resisted without a united front of
the rest of Europe, but the powers of Europe were not at all in accord
regarding the real danger. They did not wish to see the general equilibrium
overturned, yet no one of them was prepared to resist at the sacrifice of that

⁸ Castlereagh's report: B.D., pp. 206 f., Oct. 14, 1814.

⁹ The exchange continued for several weeks by means of memoranda. Duke of Wellington, *Supplementary Despatches, Correspondence and Memoranda*, 15 vols., edited by his son (London, 1858-76): Castlereagh to the tsar, Oct. 12, 1814, IX, 332; the tsar's reply, Oct. 30, IX, 386; Castlereagh's reply, Nov. 8, IX, 410. Source hereafter referred to as W.S.D.

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part of it on which the historical position of the state depended. A strong
Russia might dominate Europe, but a too powerful Prussia would outstrip
Austria, and a united Germany might menace France.

So it came about that Castlereagh, the representative of an insular power that had no Continental position to defend, was the only statesman contending for the general equilibrium. Hardenberg, the Prussian minister, was more interested in Saxony than in Poland; Talleyrand was almost as afraid that the problem of Poland would be settled *without* him as he was that it would be settled *against* him; and Metternich's attitude was as complex as the dilemmas confronting Austria: Austria could not be indifferent to the extension of Russia into Central Europe, because this threatened Austria's European position; or to the extension of Prussia into Central Germany, because this threatened its German position. Austria's geographic location, however, made open resistance foolhardy, for it would cause the full brunt of the effort to fall on the most exposed power and surrender the policy of close cooperation with Prussia, which Metternich considered the key to Austrian security. The easiest solution was to return Prussia's Polish provinces to her in exchange for the independence of Saxony. But Prussia's Polish provinces were beyond reach until the tsar was defeated. This, in turn, was impossible without Prussian support, which Prussia made conditional on Austrian acquiescence in the annexation of Saxony. On the other hand, Metternich could not thwart Prussia in Saxony without British or French assistance. But Castlereagh would contend only for European, not for German, concerns, and French support at an early stage in the proceedings would have alarmed the secondary German powers.

*Metternich Stalls for Time*

In this situation, Metternich adopted a policy of procrastination in order to exploit Austria's only bargaining weapon, that the other powers required Austrian acquiescence to make their annexations "legitimate." For several weeks he was unavailable because of "illness." After he "recovered," festivities succeeded each other in endless profusion, and his love affairs and abstractedness became notorious. Metternich was determined to separate the Polish and Saxon questions so that he could defeat his opponents in detail—to use his adversaries' impatience for a settlement to lure them into a precipitate step that would provide him with a moral basis for action. He therefore assumed what he was wont to call the strongest position: the defensive—the expression of the ethos of a *status quo* power. "I barricade myself behind time," he told the worried envoy of Saxony, "and make patience my weapon."¹⁰

This was a time for patience—a period when men of great affairs relieved their frustrations by turning to lesser pursuits. Metternich, in his leisure,

¹⁰ Wilhelm Schwarz, *Die Heilige Allianz* (Stuttgart, 1935), p. 13.

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reposed in his well-appointed study, tinkering with his collection of astro-
labes, chronometers, and astronomical clocks. Castlereagh and his wife,
shunning the ostentation of an ornate carriage, could often be seen walking
arm and arm through Vienna's streets, stopping occasionally to peer into
a shop window. Conscious, nevertheless, of the demanding duties of the
evening, Lord and Lady Castlereagh gave over part of their morning leisure
to dancing lessons at home. The results were largely invisible, unkindly
Viennese observers said.

Castlereagh's efforts to create a united front against Russia led to an
ambiguous series of constellations, of half-hearted coalitions and tentative
betrayals, of promises of unyielding support coupled with hedges against
bad faith. All during October, Castlereagh labored indefatigably, but he
encountered puzzling hesitation and quibbling delay. When Castlereagh ex-
horted Hardenberg and Metternich to joint action, he found himself forced
to admit that "there was a certain mutual distrust . . . which does not
justify me to speak confidently of the result."¹¹ He complained about Met-
ternich's incomprehensible "timidity" and asserted that the Austrian min-
ister seemed without any fixed plan. And he admonished Talleyrand, glee-
fully exploiting Allied embarrassments from the sidelines, that "it was not
for the Bourbons, who had been restored by the Allies, to assume the tone
of reprobating . . . the arrangements which had kept the Alliance to-
gether."¹²

Prussia Forces the Issue

Matters were finally brought to a head by Prussia, the power that could
least afford delay. To be sure, the treaties of Kalish, Teplitz, and Chaumont
had guaranteed Prussia its territorial boundaries of 1805 (see map, p. 8);
but they had never specified where Prussia might find the requisite terri-
tories, particularly if it lost its Polish possessions to Russia. The available
compensations, composed of former provinces or former satellites of
France, primarily in the Rhineland, were inadequate. And they were un-
desirable because of their geographic separation from the main part of the
Prussian monarchy and the Catholic religion of their inhabitants. Thus
Prussia came to look toward Saxony, coveted since the time of Frederick
the Great, contiguous with its own territories, and predominantly Protes-
tant. But Prussia's negotiating position was the weakest of the major
powers. Unlike Russia, it was not in possession of its prize. Unlike Austria,
it had not made its participation in the war dependent on later acquiescence
to its special demands. If now the Polish question was settled before that
of Saxony, Prussia would have paid the penalty for its total commitment;
for having fought the war with so much fervor that its participation had

¹¹ B.D., p. 202, Oct. 9, 1814.

¹² B.D., pp. 203 f., Oct. 9, 1814.

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never been negotiable; for neglecting the peace because the war, in effect, had become an end in itself. To complicate the situation further, Prussia required Austrian acquiescence in the annexation of Saxony, because the organization of Germany—the indispensable condition of Prussia’s security —would become illusory if Austria emerged on the Saxon issue as the protector of the secondary German powers.

It is not surprising, therefore, that on October 9 Hardenberg submitted a memorandum agreeing to the wisdom of an “intermediary system based on Austria, Prussia and Britain.”¹³ But he made Prussia’s cooperation on the Polish question dependent on Austria’s agreement to Prussian annexation of Saxony and to the provisional occupation of Saxony by Prussia as a token of good faith. The fact was, however, that if Prussia obtained both Saxony and its former Polish territories, it would become the predominant power of Central Europe—a contingency certain to be resisted by all other states. In its pedantic effort to achieve the advantage of every course of action, the Hardenberg memorandum merely served to illustrate Prussia’s dilemma: Russian support might render Saxony but not legitimacy, while Austrian support might yield Poland but not Saxony. The Hardenberg memorandum was a plea not to leave Prussia dependent on the good will of the tsar—to create a European order based on Austro-Prussian friendship, as well as on Prussian possession of Saxony.

It was precisely this effort to combine incompatible policies that provided Metternich with the means to separate the Polish and Saxon questions by one of his intricate maneuvers. On October 22 he transmitted notes to both Hardenberg and Castlereagh; the notes' tone of grudging agreement to Hardenberg's proposal obscured the fact that the moral framework that was being created for resistance on the Polish matter would prove equally effective in creating resistance to the Saxon proposal, as well as the fact that Hardenberg, in his effort to hedge his risks, had made his defeat inevitable.

Indeed, Castlereagh in his overriding concern with the balance of power and Hardenberg in his obsession with Saxony overlooked two subtle and mutually inconsistent reservations in Metternich's dispatches: that Prussia's annexation of Saxony should not lead to a "disproportionate aggrandizement"—a condition clearly impossible to fulfill if Prussia regained her Polish provinces;¹⁴ and that Austria's agreement on the Saxon point was conditional on the success of the effort to thwart the tsar's design on Poland¹⁵—which, in turn, would leave Prussia isolated in the inevitable contest over the interpretation of the first reservation.

But, while Metternich was preparing the moral framework for an effort to

¹³ Text in Comte d'Angeberg, *Le Congrès de Vienne et les Traités de 1815*, 2 vols. (Paris, 1863-64), II, 1934. Hereafter referred to as D'Angeberg.

¹⁴ Text of note to Castlereagh: D'Angeberg, II, 1939 ff.

¹⁵ Text of note to Hardenberg: *ibid.*, I, 316 ff.

The Congress of Vienna 17

separate Prussia and Russia, Castlereagh was looking only to Poland, as if the European equilibrium could be created with the certainty of a mathematical equation. On October 23 he finally succeeded in getting Austria and Prussia to agree on a common plan of action against Russia on the basis of Metternich's memorandum.¹⁶ The three powers undertook to force the issue by confronting the tsar with the threat of bringing the Polish question before the full Congress if a reasonable settlement could not be obtained by direct negotiations. They proposed three acceptable solutions: an independent Poland as it existed prior to the first partition, a rump Poland on the scale of 1791, or the return of the three partitioning powers to their former possessions.¹⁷ It was clear that Polish independence was advanced primarily as a bargaining weapon and for British domestic consumption, because the tsar was not likely to agree to surrender as the result of a victorious war territory considered Russian for two generations.

### A Temporary Stalemate

The threat of an appeal to Europe via the Congress was the last effort to settle the European equilibrium by a combination within the anti-French coalition. When Metternich called on the tsar to present the ultimatum on the Polish question, he was dismissed haughtily and even challenged to a duel, another indication of the tsar's conception of foreign affairs in personal terms. And on October 30, when the three sovereigns left to visit Hungary, Alexander appealed to his brother monarchs against their ministers. He failed with the Austrian emperor, but it was different with the stodgy and unimaginative Prussian king, who had always admired the mercurial tsar for his intrepidity in disaster and for the brilliance of his intellect. It did not prove too difficult to convince him now that the secret negotiations of the three ministers were acts of bad faith. When the monarchs returned to Vienna, Hardenberg was ordered, in the presence of the tsar, to refrain from any further separate negotiations with his Austrian and British colleagues.

In this manner, on November 5 the contest over Poland ended for the time being. Castlereagh's personal appeals had failed because Alexander had insisted on resting his claims on a "right" transcending the requirements of European security. The attempt to marshal a superior force had proved futile because there did not exist sufficient resolution within the anti-French alliance to bring the tsar to terms and because complex problems are not soluble by declaring them simple. The effort to achieve an international order based on agreement and not on force seemed to have returned to its starting point. The Prince de Ligne, concentrating on the festivities that the

¹⁶ Castlereagh's report: B.D., p. 212, Oct. 29, 1814.

¹⁷ Memorandum re procedure: B.D., pp. 213 f.

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negotiators found time to enjoy, remarked: "The Congress has legs to dance—but not to walk." In fact, the Congress seemed to be dancing itself into a stalemate.

## Metternich's Idea: Play Poland Against Saxony

But this was a mistaken impression. For if Castlereagh's failure had proved that the equilibrium could not be achieved through a demonstration of its necessity, Metternich's almost imperceptible complementary effort had created the moral framework for reopening the issue by an appeal to legitimacy. And if defeat in Poland could be translated into victory in Saxony, perhaps victory in Saxony might provide a means to extort concessions in Poland. The procrastination that had proved so maddening to Castlereagh had in fact been Metternich's most effective means to overcome his dilemmas, for delay strengthened Austria's chief bargaining weapon, that no agreement could be made without Austria. His measures during October had therefore been designed primarily to break up the Russo-Prussian front and to provide a framework for action in the direction which proved most vulnerable. "Metternich's greatest art," reported Talleyrand, "is to make us waste our time, for he believes he gains by it." So the weeks had passed while Europe complained about the frivolity of the Austrian minister and the old school of Austrian diplomats raged that their "Rhenish" minister, whom they nicknamed Prince Scamperlin, was betraying the Empire to Prussia.

When Hardenberg offered Metternich his cooperation, he may have believed that he was clinching his gains and obtaining a guarantee of Saxony, however the Polish negotiations ended. But because Metternich's reply had made Austrian agreement to the annexation of Saxony conditional on the success of their common measures, the effort to connect the two issues became a means of separating them. For if the Polish negotiations succeeded, Prussia would lose her moral claim to Saxony in the eyes of Europe. If Prussia regained her Polish possessions, the annexation of Saxony would represent the "disproportionate aggrandizement" that Metternich had told Castlereagh he would not accept. Nor would it be necessary in that event for Metternich alone to bear the brunt of the opposition. Talleyrand was certain to resist—indeed he could be restrained only with difficulty during October—and the secondary German states would rally round him. The tsar, frustrated in Poland, was only too likely to enjoy Prussia's discomfiture; while Castlereagh, under attack in Parliament because of Saxony in any case, could not possibly have supported Prussia's demand for annexation. Castlereagh, at any rate, seems to have foreseen the possibility of such a development. "In the event of success attending the common effort with respect to Poland," he wrote to Liverpool, "[France] would have improved

The Congress of Vienna 19

means of urging amicably upon Prussia some modification of her demands upon Saxony."¹⁸ But if the Polish negotiations failed, Prussia would lose Austrian support for her claim to Saxony.

In either event, Prussia's isolation was assured, because the fact of resistance was almost as certain to alienate the tsar as its success. Having demonstrated concern for Europe by yielding in Saxony, Austria could now defend its intransigence by the requirements of the European and not the German equilibrium. And Castlereagh, having obtained Austrian support in the Polish negotiations, could no longer treat the Saxon issue as an internal German affair. There could be no doubt of the attitude of France or of the smaller German states. Prussia, in its effort to obtain reassurance, had only succeeded in achieving its isolation.

When on November 7 Hardenberg informed Metternich of the Prussian king's orders and of the difficulty of carrying out the agreed plan with respect to Poland, Metternich finally had the moral basis for action.¹⁹ He waited until November 18 before he insisted on the fulfillment of the two conditions of the memorandum of October 22. Then he suggested that, since the king's command had made it impossible to utilize Castlereagh as an intermediary, Hardenberg conduct the negotiations with the tsar himself.²⁰ But this only served to supply Metternich with yet another proof of Austrian good faith and another reason for resisting in regard to Saxony, because, in view of the tsar's dominance over the Prussian king, there could be no doubt about the fate of a solitary Prussian overture. Hardenberg was obliged to report that the tsar had again invoked the purity of his intentions, but that the only concession he was willing to make was to declare Thorn and Cracow free cities.²¹ Although Alexander had slyly made this concession dependent on Austrian acquiescence in the annexation of Saxony, the Saxon negotiation thus became a means of restoring fluidity to the Polish issue. For the tsar's offer, however contingent, was his first admission that the territorial extent of Poland was not irrevocably settled after all.

Metternich submitted the final Austrian reply on December 10.²² Austria was interested in the closest relationship with Prussia but not at the price of the destruction of Saxony for fear that the German Federation, embodying their common welfare, would remain stillborn, because none of the sec-

¹⁸ B.D., p. 213, Oct. 24, 1814.

¹⁹ Hardenberg's note to Metternich: D'Angeberg, I, 406. There is yet another indication, although no proof, that Metternich never intended the Polish negotiations as anything but a means to isolate Prussia on the Saxon question: his dismal defeat during his own interview with Alexander. At no other time in his career did Metternich choose a frontal attack, negotiate so ineffectively, or surrender so easily.

²⁰ D'Angeberg, I, 418, Nov. 18, 1814; also B.D., p. 238.

²¹ D'Angeberg, II, 1941, Dec. 2, 1814; also B.D., p. 248.

²² Text: D'Angeberg, I, 505.

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ondary German states would join an organization based on the destruction of one of their number. Having been forced to tolerate Russian aggrandizement in Poland, Austria could not acquiesce in Prussian aggrandizement within Germany without upsetting the equilibrium completely. Metternich suggested an alternative plan that maintained a nucleus of Saxony, while giving a large part of it to Prussia together with other compensations in the Rhineland. But all protestations of friendship could not hide the fact that Prussia was outmaneuvered, that Metternich had lost out in Poland only to win in Saxony and then partially to restore the situation in Poland by means of Saxony.

It did not matter that, on November 8, the Russian military governor of Saxony turned over the provisional administration to Prussia, or that the Prussian military were threatening war. Russia, at the periphery of Europe, might rest its claim to Poland on the fact of possession, but Prussia, situated in the center of the Continent, could survive only as the component of a "legitimate" order both within Germany and in Europe.

## The Anti-French Coalition Weakens

Thus, although by the middle of December the Congress of Vienna seemed to have reached a complete stalemate, behind the scenes a fundamental transformation was in the making. A stalemate is not total until all the factors are engaged, and France was still uncommitted. The contests during October and November had exploded the myth of Allied unity, and the threat of France no longer loomed larger than that of the erstwhile ally. It was becoming plain that the memory of a common effort would not suffice to restrain any power from attempting to add France to its side of the scale.

While Castlereagh was despairing about the Polish failure²³ and accusing Metternich of having had no real intention to resist, a combination was forming on the Saxon question which was to give a new direction to the contest. For the coalition that could resist in Saxony was, by definition, also the coalition that could resist in Poland. And if the claims of power were defeated in one quarter, this would, almost necessarily, limit the assertions of arbitrariness in the other. So it was proved, after all, that the equilibrium of Europe was indivisible, although the solution did not come about through a consciousness of this. It was not in the name of Europe that Europe was saved, but in the name of Saxony.

## The British Cabinet Balks

Before any new combination could be formed, however, domestic pressures on Castlereagh nearly wrecked Metternich's finely spun plan. An insular

²³ B.D., pp. 248 f.

The Congress of Vienna 21

power may fight its wars in the name of the European equilibrium, but it will tend to identify the threats to the equilibrium with threats to its immediate security. It will make the cause of war depend on an overt act which "demonstrates" the danger. But the danger to the equilibrium is never demonstrated until it is already overturned, because an aggressor can always justify every step except the crucial last one as the manifestation of limited claims and thus can exact acquiescence as the price of continued moderation. To be sure, Great Britain had entered the fray against Napoleon at an early stage and continued the contest with great persistence. But the threat to the equilibrium had become manifest through an attack on the Low Countries, and thereupon the balance of power was identified with the possession of Antwerp.

Now the issue was Poland, but this was a "distant" country both geographically and psychologically. It was not clear until it was "proved" that the Rhine was best defended along the Vistula or that there existed any threat to peace except France. In this frame of mind the Cabinet considered the Polish dispute an irritating outgrowth of Continental rivalry, threatening a peace dearly won, and dealt with it primarily under the aspect of its impact on British domestic politics. This led to a discussion between the Cabinet and Castlereagh in which both sides were trying hard to convince themselves that the disagreement was really a misunderstanding produced by insufficient information. Actually, the gulf separating them was hardly less than that separating the tsar from Castlereagh. The tsar attempted to guarantee Continental security by his good faith; the British Cabinet wished to identify safety with an insular position. Thus the arbitrariness of power and the irresponsibility of isolation were the Scylla and Charybdis between which Castlereagh was forced to navigate.

On October 14 Liverpool wrote Castlereagh that the "less Britain had to do with [Poland] . . . the better," and he pointed out that, from the Parliamentary point of view, the tsar's plan was preferable to a new partition because it preserved the principle of Polish independence.²⁴ Liverpool repeated these arguments on October 28 and transmitted a memorandum by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Vansittart, who simply denied the reality of the Russian danger. With the petulence of mediocrity convincing itself that the easy way out is also the course of wisdom, Vansittart argued that the absorption of Poland would add an element of weakness to the Russian state while proving conducive to British commerce.²⁵ These dispatches forced Castlereagh into a long statement of the connection between British and Continental security. He insisted that he was not opposing Russia for the sake of Poland but for the sake of Europe. If the Polish question

²⁴ B.D., pp. 210 f.

²⁵ B.D., pp. 220 f.

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were settled against the Central Powers, the remaining issues would resolve
themselves into a contest between Austria and Prussia within Germany,
transforming Russia into the arbiter of Central Europe and leaving the
Netherlands defenseless. The security of even the most immediate British
interests thus depended on a European policy: "It appeared to me, that it
was better for Great Britain to contend for a European question of the first
magnitude in the true spirit of the policy that has marked her conduct
throughout the war, than . . . to reserve herself for one object, viz. the
Low Countries . . . which might be exposed to a very unpleasant question
under a discussion between the great German Powers."²⁶

But Liverpool's reply left no doubt that the Cabinet feared France more
than Russia, and war more than any threat to the balance of power. A war
now, argued Liverpool, might turn into a revolutionary struggle, while even
two years of peace might bring about a stability under which the limited
wars of the eighteenth century would again become the rule.²⁷ On Novem-
ber 22, the Cabinet sent its first instructions to Castlereagh since his arrival
in Vienna: "It is unnecessary," wrote Bathurst, Secretary of State for War,
"for me to point out to you the impossibility of . . . consenting to involve
this country into hostilities . . . for any of the objects which have hitherto
been under discussion at Vienna."²⁸

Thus, at the crucial point in the negotiations, Castlereagh was deprived
of his only means of exerting pressure. This happened, moreover, at a mo-
ment when the issue was becoming one of pure power, for Prussia was
being drawn by Metternich's temporizing into precipitate action. As it ob-
served its moral and material basis slipping away, its tone became increas-
ingly bellicose. Its military openly spoke of war, and even the more mod-
erate Hardenberg hinted at extreme measures. But if possession without
legitimacy was illusory, legitimacy through force proved chimerical. Castle-
reagh was merely defining Prussia's dilemma when he told Hardenberg that
"he [Hardenberg] could not regard an unacknowledged claim as constitut-
ing a good title and that he never could in conscience or honour . . . make
the mere refusal of a recognition a cause of war. . . ."²⁹

Castlereagh and Metternich Join Forces

In this situation Castlereagh decided not to follow his Cabinet's instruc-
tions. To announce British disinterest would remove the major deterrent to
war and, in its effort to guarantee peace, the Cabinet would have brought
about what it feared most. Or else, British withdrawal from the contest

²⁶ B.D., pp. 229 f.

²⁷ W.S.D., IX, 285, Nov. 25, 1814.

²⁸ B.D., pp. 247 f.

²⁹ B.D., p. 255, Dec. 7, 1814.

The Congress of Vienna 23

would lead to an Austrian surrender and to a complete overturn of the
equilibrium.

So it happened that Castlereagh and Metternich found themselves on the
same side in a battle whose moral framework had been defined by the wily
Austrian minister. The more intransigent Prussia's attitude, the stronger
became Metternich's position. Without the necessity for abstract discussion,
Austria emerged as the protector of the secondary powers. When Metter-
nich proposed an alliance to Bavaria and Hanover and the construction of
a German league without Prussia, he was simply giving expression to a
general consensus. As the contest of wits was becoming transformed into a
test of power, Metternich had achieved a position where he was able to
resist claims that could be represented as exorbitant and unjust. But as the
test of strength approached, it also became necessary for both sides to mar-
shal a maximum force. It was at this point, when the last vestiges of the
Alliance were disappearing, that Talleyrand reappeared on the scene. His
desire for prominence served Metternich's desire for anonymity. Metter-
nich was not interested in appearing as the agent of Prussia's humiliation;
it was his desire that events should come about "naturally," because this
would minimize the danger of permanent schisms. It was Talleyrand's wish
that they should appear "caused," for that would cement his shaky domestic
position.

Talleyrand was given his opportunity by Metternich, who communicated
to him the Austrian reply to Hardenberg of December 10 and thus made it
clear that the Big Four had not been able to settle the issue.³⁰ Talleyrand
replied in a trenchant memorandum, which asserted the superiority of the
claims of legitimacy over the requirements of the equilibrium, and denied
the possibility of deposing kings, because sovereigns could not be tried, least
of all by those who coveted their territories. It was not for Prussia to state
what she would take, Talleyrand argued boldly, but for the "legitimate"
king of Saxony to define how much he would yield.³¹ It was a masterly
summary of all the inconsistencies of two months of acrimony, but this was
not its significance. Talleyrand had served France better by remaining
"available" than by writing memoranda. The real importance of the ex-
change lay in the fact that France was once again part of the concert of
Europe.

## Prussia's Position Weakens

Prussia by now was becoming panicky. To expose Metternich's trickery,
Hardenberg transmitted some of Metternich's letters on the Polish question
to the tsar, an unheard-of breach of diplomatic etiquette. But here Metter-
nich's dilatoriness during October paid dividends. For almost every action

³⁰ N.P., II, 503 f.

³¹ N.P., II, 509 f., Dec. 19, 1814.

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of Metternich had been in response to a Prussian initiative, and when
Hardenberg had withdrawn from their agreement, he had justified it as de-
ferring the contest with the tsar to a more convenient time. When, there-
fore, Metternich sent all of his letters to the tsar, Hardenberg was again out-
maneuvered, for he did not dare produce his own.³² But this exchange of
pinpricks had a salutary consequence, because it demonstrated to the tsar
how he had disquieted the other powers by his Polish plans. After his
intransigent attitude during October and November, Alexander had in any
case undergone one of the sudden shifts of mood that characterized him.
Gone was his earlier militancy, to be replaced by the first symptoms of the
religious exaltation that was to dominate him for the next decade. When
Emperor Francis of Austria called on him to clear up the misunderstanding,
Alexander accordingly offered to cede the district of Tarnopol, with a popu-
lation of 400,000 back to Austria as a token of his good faith. The tsar
might emerge with the greater part of Poland, but only through a process of
adjustment, which symbolized his need for recognition by other powers.

In desperation Prussia now proposed to transplant the king of Saxony
to the Rhineland, into territories earmarked for Prussia. But neither Met-
ternich nor Castlereagh was ready to acquiesce: Metternich because it
would have transformed the king of Saxony from an ally of Austria into a
Prussian vassal; Castlereagh because he wanted to see a power of the first
order protect the Rhineland and back up the Netherlands.³³ And all the
time the balance was shifting against Prussia, because Castlereagh and
Metternich were slowly insinuating France into the Allied councils. Since
part of the dispute between Austria and Prussia dealt with the technical
question of where to find the territories to reconstitute Prussia to the scale
of 1805, Castlereagh proposed the creation of a statistical commission to
determine the population of disputed territories. When, owing to Austrian
and British pressure, a French delegate was admitted to this commission,
it was evident that the coalition against France was in the process of being
dissolved.

Talleyrand Is Welcomed into the Fold

Only a short step separated Talleyrand from full participation in the de-
liberations. Castlereagh, who had hoped to avoid so drastic a step, finally
agreed on December 27. On December 31 he and Metternich formally pro-
posed that henceforth Talleyrand participate in the meetings of the Big
Four. Prussia was now completely isolated, for the emergence of Talley-
rand was a symbol that the special claims of the Alliance had ceased before
Prussia had gained the fruits of its war. Even the tsar, in Castlereagh's

³² W.S.D., IX, 483, Dec. 17, 1814.

³³ B.D., p. 270, Dec. 24, 1814.

The Congress of Vienna 25

words, "would not advise Prussia to resist now that he has secured his own arrangement in Poland." Thus driven back on its last resources, Prussia threatened war.

This reaction merely served to indicate Prussia's impotence. Castlereagh replied sharply that "such an insinuation might operate upon a power trembling for its existence but must have the contrary effect upon all alive to their own dignity; and I added that if such a temper really prevailed, we were not deliberating in a state of independence and it was better to break up the Congress."³⁴ That same day, Castlereagh proposed a defensive alliance between France, Austria, and Great Britain. To be sure, Talleyrand was required to guarantee the Low Countries and to reaffirm the provisions of the Treaty of Paris. But Talleyrand's greatest achievement at Vienna was precisely this exhibition of self-restraint, this refusal to attempt to sell French participation in the alliance for a territorial advantage, an effort which would have united all the other powers against him. As a result he gained something more important, the end of the isolation of France and the recognition of its equality.

## Devising a Settlement

If the defensive alliance provided the crisis of the Congress of Vienna, it also paved the way for its resolution. In any negotiation it is understood that force is the ultimate recourse. But it is the art of diplomacy to keep the threat of force in reserve and to commit it only as a last resort. For once power has been actually committed, negotiations in the proper sense cease. A threat to use force that proves unavailing does not return the negotiation to the point it was at before the threat was made. It destroys the bargaining position altogether. By bringing matters to a head, Prussia found itself confronted by three powers whose determination could not be doubted and whose strength was overwhelming. And the tsar proved a lukewarm ally. A series of partial settlements had isolated Prussia, because "satisfied" powers will not fight for the claims of another if an honorable alternative presents itself.

It was up to Metternich to see that such an alternative was presented. In his memorandum of December 10 he had already advanced a plan by which Prussia could be reconstituted to the scale of 1805 by acquiring territories in the Rhineland together with a portion of Saxony. This plan was now taken up by Castlereagh, since it had become apparent that Prussia would not carry out her threat of war. By January 3, after Metternich and Castlereagh had declared that they would not negotiate without Talley-

³⁴ B.D., pp. 277 f., Jan. 1, 1815.

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rand, Hardenberg himself, to save face, recommended Talleyrand's partici-
pation.³⁵ On January 5 Castlereagh could report that "the alarm of war is
over."³⁶ The Saxon question was henceforth officially discussed by the Big
Five and was resolved largely through unofficial negotiations, in which
Castlereagh played the role of the intermediary between Metternich and
Talleyrand on the one side and the tsar and Hardenberg on the other.

In his endeavor to achieve a final settlement, Castlereagh had to resist a
new attempt by Prussia to move the king of Saxony to the left bank of the
Rhine and an effort by Austria to save the Elbe fortress of Torgau for
Saxony. But with the aid of the tsar, he convinced Prussia that in the inter-
est of the European equilibrium she would have to assume the defense of
the Rhineland, and he made clear to Austria that the defensive alliance ex-
tended only to an actual attempt to overthrow the European equilibrium,
not to internal German disorders.³⁷ The danger of war had also made the
tsar more pliable. When Castlereagh suggested some concessions in Poland
in order to make the Saxon arrangement more palatable to Prussia, Alex-
ander agreed to return the city of Thorn to Prussia. Metternich immediately
used this opportunity to attempt to lure Alexander into another series of
adjustments and to shift on him the onus of Prussia's unsatisfactory bound-
aries. He offered to cede the district of Tarnopol back to Russia in ex-
change for further concessions to Prussia.³⁸ Although the tsar refused, the
Saxon question had become a means to limit Russia's Polish aspirations.
What could not be exacted for the sake of the general equilibrium of Eu-
rope was obtained, through a number of concessions, for the sake of local
stability.

On February 11 a final agreement was reached. In Poland, Austria re-
tained Galicia and the district of Tarnopol, while Cracow was constituted a
free city. Prussia retained the district of Posen and the city of Thorn, which
controlled the upper Vistula. The remainder of the Duchy of Warsaw with
a population of 3.2 million became the Kingdom of Poland under the tsar
of Russia. In Germany, Prussia obtained two-fifths of Saxony, Swedish
Pomerania, much of the left bank of the Rhine, and the Duchy of West-
phalia. Austria had already been assured compensation in Northern Italy
and predominance in all of Italy through the establishment of dependent
dynasties in Parma and Tuscany.

On June 9, 1815, the Final Acts of Vienna were ratified by Europe as-
sembled in congress. It was the only official meeting of the Congress of
Vienna.

³⁵ B.D., p. 280.

³⁶ B.D., p. 282, Jan. 5, 1815.

³⁷ B.D., p. 295, Jan. 29, 1815.

³⁸ D'Angeberg, I, 676.

The Congress of Vienna 27

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## Conclusion

### *The Task: Winning Stability Through Order*

There are two ways of constructing an international order: by will or by consensus, that is, by conquest or by legitimacy. For twenty-five years Europe had been convulsed by an effort to achieve order through power, and to contemporaries the lesson was not its failure but its near success. It is not surprising, then, that in their effort to create an alternative, the statesmen in Vienna looked back to a period which had known stability and that they identified this stability with its domestic arrangements. The statesmen at Vienna were not interested in transforming humanity, because in their eyes this effort had led to the tragedy of a quarter-century of struggle.

The issue at Vienna, then, was not reform against reaction—this is the interpretation of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Instead, the problem was to create an order in which change could be brought about through a sense of obligation rather than through an assertion of power. For the difference between a revolutionary order and a *healthy* legitimate one is not the possibility of change, but the mode of its accomplishment. A “legitimate” order, as long as it is not stagnant, achieves its transformations through acceptance, and this presupposes a consensus on the nature of a just arrangement. But a revolutionary order, having destroyed the existing structure of obligations, must impose its measures by force, and the reign of terror of *any* revolution is inevitably an almost exact reflection of its success in sweeping away the prevailing legitimacy. A “legitimate” order limits the possible by the just; a revolutionary order identifies the just with the physically possible. A legitimate order confronts the problem of creating a structure that does not make change impossible; a revolutionary order faces the dilemma that change may become an end in itself and thus make the establishment of any structure impossible. In neither case is reform carried out through a sudden act of insight; this is the illusion of Utopians. Nor is it possible to construct an order that will have no defenders of the *status quo* or no reformers, and the attempt to do so leads either to the frenzy of the totalitarian state or to stagnation. The health of a social structure is its ability to translate transformation into acceptance, to relate the forces of change to those of conservation. The statesmen at Vienna had experienced an effort to establish this relation by force; it was not strange that they attempted to construct an alternative based on “legitimacy.”

Whatever one may think of the moral content of their solution, it excluded no major power from the European concert and therefore testified to the absence of unbridgeable schisms. The settlement did not rest on mere good faith, which would have put too great a strain on self-limitation; nor on a pure evaluation of power, which (because of the difficulties of meas-

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urement) would have made calculation too uncertain. Rather, there was created a structure in which the forces were sufficiently balanced, so that self-restraint could appear as something more than self-abnegation, but which took account of the historical claims of its components, so that it could find acceptance. There existed within the new international order no power so dissatisfied that it did not prefer to seek its remedy by abiding within the framework of the Vienna settlement rather than by overturning it. Since the political order did not contain a "revolutionary" power, its relations became increasingly spontaneous, based on the growing certainty that a catastrophic upheaval was unlikely.

That the Vienna settlement came to be so generally accepted was not a fortunate accident. Throughout the war Castlereagh and Metternich had insisted that theirs was an effort for stability, not revenge, that it would rest not on the enemy's defeat, but on his recognition of limits. This is not to say that the settlement revealed a prescience that made all events conform to a certain vision. Castlereagh, in giving up his conviction of the mechanical equilibrium for that of historical balance, maintained through confidential intercourse among its members, increasingly separated himself from the spirit of his own country. Metternich, by attempting to maintain predominance in both Italy and Germany, was forced into a policy beyond his resources. His increasingly inflexible struggle for legitimacy revealed a growing consciousness of the insufficiency of Austria's material base for the European task he had set for her. If a policy of pure power is suicidal for an empire located in the center of a continent, reliance on unsupported legitimacy is demoralizing and leads to stagnation. Finesse can substitute for strength when the goals are fixed, but it is no substitute for conception when the challenges have become internal. And Prussia, with misgivings and hesitations, with a feeling of national humiliation and grudging surrender, was destined to be forced into a German mission in spite of itself. Extending now from the Vistula to the Rhine, it would symbolize the quest for German unity. Scattered in enclaves across Central Europe, it had the need for security, if not the conception of a national mission, that would force it into becoming, albeit reluctantly, the agent of a German policy. Situated athwart the major waterways and land routes, Prussia was to dominate Germany economically before it unified it physically. The defeat in Saxony, so bitterly resented, became the instrument of Prussia's final victory over Austria.

But this was still fifty years in the future, and a truly successful policy may have been impossible for Austria in a century of nationalism. Tragedy can be the fate of nations, no less than of individuals, and it may well stem from living in a world with which one is no longer familiar. In this sense, Austria was the Don Quixote of the nineteenth century. Perhaps Metter-

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nich's policy should be measured not by its ultimate failure, but by the length of time it staved off inevitable disaster.

## *Statesmanship: Creative Policy-Making*

What then was the role of statesmanship in this achievement? A scholarship of social determinism has reduced the statesman to a lever on a machine called “history,” to the agent of a fate that he may dimly discern but that he accomplishes regardless of his will. And this belief in the pervasiveness of circumstance and the impotence of the individual extends to the notion of policy-making. One hears a great deal about the difficulty of planning because of the unavailability of fact, about the difficulty of action because of the limitation of knowledge. It cannot be denied, of course, that policy does not occur in a void, that the statesman is confronted with material he must treat as given. The limits of statesmanship are traced not only by geography and the availability of resources but also by the character of a people and the nature of its historical experience. But to say that policy does not create its own substance is not the same as saying that the substance is self-implementing. The realization that the Napoleonic Empire was tottering was the condition of policy in 1813, but it was not itself a policy. That the period of revolution should be replaced by an order of equilibrium may have been “in the air.” But one has only to study the vacillating measures of most of the powers at Vienna to appreciate that neither the nature of this equilibrium nor the measures to attain it were immediately apparent. However “self-evident” national interest may appear to have been in retrospect, contemporaries were oppressed by the multiplicity of available policies counseling contradictory courses of action.

The test of a statesman, then, is his ability to recognize the real relationship of forces and to make this knowledge serve his ends. That Austria should seek stability was inherent in its geographic position and domestic structure. But that it would succeed, if only temporarily, in becoming the balance wheel of the international order was the work of its foreign minister. That Great Britain should attempt to find security in a balance of power was the consequence of twenty-three years of intermittent warfare. But that it should emerge as a part of the concert of Europe was due to the efforts of a solitary individual. No policy is better, therefore, than the goals it sets itself. It was the measure of Castlereagh's statesmanship that he recognized the necessity of reconciliation with the former enemy in the construction of a legitimate order, and of Metternich's that he never confused the form and the substance of his achievements, that he understood that the Central Empire could survive, not on its triumphs, but only on its reconciliations. It was their joint failure that they set themselves tasks beyond the capacity of their material: Castlereagh through a vision that could not

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muster domestic support, Metternich through a goal unattainable in a century of nationalism.

## Diplomacy: Tactical Skill

But it is not sufficient to judge the statesman by his conceptions alone, for unlike the philosopher he must implement his vision. Yet the statesman is inevitably confronted by the inertia of his material: for one thing, other states are not factors to be manipulated but forces to be reconciled; for another, the requirements of security differ with the geographic location and the domestic structure of the powers. Accordingly, his instrument is diplomacy, the art of relating states to each other by agreement rather than by the exercise of force, by the representation of a ground of action which reconciles particular aspirations with a general consensus. Because diplomacy depends on persuasion and not imposition, it presupposes a more or less fixed framework, either through an agreement on a legitimizing principle or, theoretically, through an identical interpretation of power-relationships, although the latter is in practice the most difficult to attain. The achievements of the Congress of Vienna derived in no small measure from the extraordinary tactical ability of at least three diplomats: Castlereagh's skill in reconciling conflicting points of view and the single-mindedness conferred by an empirical policy; Metternich's almost uncanny faculty of achieving a personal dominance over his adversaries and his art of defining a moral framework that made concessions appear not as surrenders, but as sacrifices to a common cause; Talleyrand's cynical cold-bloodedness, which enabled him to manipulate events when his opportunity came.

## The Essence of Policy

The acid test of a policy, however, is its ability to obtain domestic support. This has two aspects: the problem of legitimizing a policy *within* the governmental apparatus, which is a problem of bureaucratic rationality; and that of harmonizing it with the national experience, which is a problem of historical development. It was no accident, even if it was paradoxical, that Metternich had greater difficulty with the Austrian than with the Russian ministers, or that Castlereagh had to fight a desperate battle with the British Cabinet. For the spirit of policy and that of bureaucracy are diametrically opposed. The essence of policy is its relativity; its success depends on the correctness of an estimate that is in part conjecture. The essence of bureaucracy is its absoluteness; its success depends on the precision of calculation. Profound policy thrives on perpetual creation, on a constant redefinition of goals. Good administration thrives on routine, the definition of relationships that can survive mediocrity. Policy involves an adjustment of risks, administration an avoidance of deviation. Policy justifies itself by the relationship of its measures and its sense of proportion,

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administration by the rationality of each action in terms of a given goal. The attempt to conduct policy bureaucratically leads to a quest for calculability that tends to become a prisoner of events. The effort to administer politically leads to total irresponsibility, because bureaucracies are designed to execute, not to conceive.

There is always the temptation to conduct policy administratively, because most governments are organized primarily for the conduct of domestic policy, whose chief problem is the implementation of social decisions, a task that is limited only by technical feasibility. But the concern with technical problems in foreign affairs leads to a standard that evaluates by mistakes avoided rather than by goals achieved, and to a belief that ability is more likely to be judged by the avoidance of catastrophes than the discovery of opportunities. It is not surprising that, at the height of the dispute at Vienna in 1814, Vansittart simply denied the reality of the Russian threat. The risks were immediately apparent, while the dangers were either symbolic or deferred; the quest for certainty took the form of denying the reality of the danger.

In addition to the obstacle of bureaucratic inertia, a statesman will tend to have great difficulty legitimizing his policy domestically because of the lack of common standards for a nation's domestic experience and its international experience. The whole domestic effort of a people exhibits an effort to transform force into obligation by means of a consensus on the nature of justice. The more spontaneous the pattern of obligation, the more "natural" and "universal" will social values appear. But the international experience of a people is a challenge to the universality of its notion of justice, for the stability of an international order depends on self-limitation, on the reconciliation of different versions of legitimacy. A nation will evaluate a policy in terms of its domestic legitimization, because it has no other standard of judgment. But the effort to identify the legitimizing principle of the international order with a parochial version of justice must lead to a revolutionary situation, particularly if the domestic legitimizing principles are sufficiently incommensurable. If a society legitimizes itself by a principle that claims both universality and exclusiveness, if its concept of "justice," in short, does not include the existence of different principles of legitimacy, relations between it and other societies will come to be based on force. For this reason competing systems of legitimacy find it extremely difficult to come to an understanding; not only are they unable to agree on the nature of "just" demands, but, perhaps more important, they are unable to legitimize the attainable international consensus domestically.

But even when there exists no fundamental ideological gulf between a nation and its competitors, a nation's domestic experience will tend to inhibit its comprehension of foreign affairs. Domestically, the most difficult problem is an agreement on the nature of "justice." But internationally the

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domestic consensus inherent in the definition of a policy must often be compromised with a similar domestic consensus of any other power involved. Not for nothing do so many nations exhibit a powerful, if sometimes subconscious, rebellion against this double standard, which considers what is defined as "justice" domestically merely an object for negotiation internationally. Nor is it an accident that the vision so many societies have of themselves is one of rectitude deprived of its birthright by the sharp practices of foreigners. For the impetus of domestic policy is a direct social experience; but that of foreign policy is not actual, but potential, experience —the threat of war—which statesmanship attempts to avoid being made explicit.

*Statesmanship: Intuition and Experience*

The statesman is therefore like one of the heroes in classical drama who has had a vision of the future but cannot transmit it directly to his fellowmen or validate it. Nations learn only by experience; they "know" only when it is too late to act. But statesmen must act as if their intuition were already experience, as if their inspiration were truth. It is for this reason that statesmen often share the fate of prophets, that they are without honor in their own country, that they always have a difficult task in legitimizing their programs domestically. As for their greatness, it is usually apparent only in retrospect—when their intuition has become experience. The statesman must therefore be an educator, one who bridges the gap between a people's experience and his vision, between a nation's tradition and its future.

In this task, the opportunities are not infinite. But sometimes a happy combination of insight and circumstance produces an extraordinary result. This was the case with the Congress of Vienna, which gave Europe a period of peace lasting nearly a century—the longest interval free of major war that the world has known since the Middle Ages.