Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/210

Rh 200 METTEKNICH general rising throughout Germany, he expressed in his despatches no distrust of the power of Austria to cope with Napoleon. This is the more singular because, after the disastrous issue of the campaign of 1809, Metternich seems to have taken credit for having opposed the policy of war. Napoleon again captured Vienna ; the battle of Wagram was lost ; and after a long negotiation Austria had to purchase peace by the cession of part of Austrian Poland and of its Illyrian provinces. Metternich, who had virtually taken Count Stadion s place immediately after the battle of Wagram, was now installed as minister of foreign affairs. The first striking event that took place under his administration was the marriage of Marie Louise, daughter of the emperor Francis, to his conqueror Napoleon. To do justice to Metternich s policy it must be remembered that the alliance of Tilsit between France and Russia was still in existence, and that Austria was quite as much threatened by the czar s designs upon Turkey as by Napoleon s own aggressions. Metternich himself seems, in spite of his denials, to have been the real author of the family union between the houses of Hapsburg and Bonaparte, a most politic, if not a high-spirited measure, which guaranteed Austria against danger from the east, at the same time that it gave it at least some prospect of security from attack by Napoleon, and enabled Metternich to mature his plans for the contingency of an ultimate breach between France and Russia. In 1812 this event occurred. Metternich, in nominal alliance with Napo leon, sent a small army into southern Russia, allowing it to be understood by the czar that the attack was not serious. Then followed the annihilation of the French invaders. While Prussia, led by its patriots, declared war against Napoleon, Metternich, with rare and provoking coolness, held his hand, merely otating that Austria would no longer regard itself as a subordinate ally, but would act with all its force on one side or the other. The result of this reserve was that Metternich could impose what terms he pleased on Russia and Prussia as the price of his support. The armies of these two powers, advancing into central Germany, proved no match for the forces with which Napoleon took the field in the spring of 1813 ; and the hard-fought battles of Liitzen and Bautzen resulted in the retreat of the allies. After the combatants had made an armistice, Met ternich tendered Austria s armed mediation, requiring Prussia to content itself with the restoration of its territory east of the Elbe, and leaving Napoleon s ascendency in Germany almost untouched. Napoleon, after a celebrated interview with Metternich, madly rejected terms so favour able that every Prussian writer has denounced Metternich s proposal of them as an act of bitter enmity to Prussia. On the night of the 10th of August the congress of Prague, at which Austria, as armed mediator, laid down conditions of peace, was dissolved. Metternich himself gave orders for the lighting of the watch-fires which signalled to the armies in Silesia that Austria had declared war against Napoleon. The battle of Leipsic and the campaign of 1814 in France followed, Metternich steadily pursuing the policy of offering the most favourable terms possible to Napoleon, and retarding the advance of the allied armies upon the French capital. Metternich had nothing of that personal hatred towards the great conqueror which was dominant both in Prussia and in England ; on the contrary, though he saw with perfect clearness that, until Napoleon s resources were much diminished, no one could be safe in Europe, he held it possible to keep him in check without destroying him, and looked for the security of Austria in the establishment of a balance of power in which neither Russia nor France should preponderate, while Prussia should be strictly confined within its own limits in northern Germany. The assistance of the Austrian army, which was no doubt necessary to the allies, had, so far as related to Prussia, been dearly purchased. When, at the beginning of 1813, Prussia struck for the freedom of Germany, its leading statesmen and patriots had hoped that the result of the war of liberation would be the establishment of German unity, and that the minor German princes, who had been Napoleon s vassals since 1806, would be forced to surrender part of their rights as sovereigns, and submit to a central authority. This dream, however, vanished as soon as Austria entered the field as an ally. It was no part of Metternich s policy to allow anything so revolu tionary as German unity to be established, least of all under the influence of Prussian innovators. He made treaties with the king of Bavaria and Napoleon s other German vassals, guaranteeing them, in return for their support against France, separate independence and sove reignty when Germany should be reconstructed. Accord ingly, though the war resulted, through Napoleon s obstinate refusal of the terms successively offered to him, in the limitation of France to its earlier boundaries and in a large extension of Prussia s territory, the settlement of Germany outside Prussia proceeded upon the lines laid down by Metternich, and the hopes of unity raised in 1813 were disappointed. A German confederation was formed, in which the minor sovereigns retained supreme power within their own states, while the central authority, the federal diet, represented, not the German nation, but the host of governments under which the nation was divided. Metternich even advised the emperor Francis of Austria to decline the old title of German emperor, dis liking any open embodiment of the idea of German unity, and preferring to maintain the ascendency of Austria by a gentle pressure at the minor courts rather than by the avowed exercise of imperial rights. In this unprogressive German policy Metternich was completely successful. His great opponent, Stein, the champion of German unity and of constitutional systems, abandoned his work in despair, and refused the useless post of president of the diet, which Metternich, with a kind of gentle irony, offered to him. The second branch of Metternich s policy in 1813-14 was that which related to Italy. Following the old maxims of Austrian statesmanship, Metternich aimed not only at securing a large territory beyond the Alps but at making the influence of Austria predominant throughout the Italian peninsula. The promises of national independence which had been made to the Italians when they were called upon to rise against Napoleon were disregarded. In the secret clauses of the first treaty of Paris the annexation of both Lombardy and Venetia was guaranteed to Austria, and the rest of Italy was divided into small states as of old. Napoleon s return from Elba led to the downfall of Murat, who had been allowed to retain the kingdom of Naples, and to the reunion of this country with Sicily, under the Bourbon Ferdinand. After the second overthrow of Napoleon, Metternich endeavoured to make every Italian sovereign enter into a league under Austria s presidency. Ferdinand of Naples accepted the position of vassal, but the pope and the king of Sardinia successfully maintained their inde pendence. With the construction of the German federation, and the partial construction of an Italian federation, both under Austria s guidance, the first part of Metternich s career closes. He had guarded Austria s interests with great skill during the crisis of 1813 and 1814. It was not his own fault, but the fault of ages, that Austria s interests were in antagonism to those of German and of Italian nationality. He thought as an Austrian, and as nothing else ; his task was to serve the house of Hapsburg, and this he did with signal ability and success. To denounce Metternich as a kind of criminal, according to the practice