Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (37 page)

Wellington had been a quiet and introverted young boy who excelled at the violin. He had drifted into a military career after a lackluster record as a student, and after becoming a soldier, he destroyed his violin in 1793, never to play again. He advanced quickly in the military ranks, serving eight years in India, before the Spanish campaign that really won his reputation. Wellington had won big at Salamanca and Vitoria, and, in 1814, he drove Napoleon’s army out of Spain.

Confident and distinguished, he could also be smug, brash, icy, and haughty. Few suggested that he was a budding philosopher. When one man asked his views about whether humanity creates the environment, or vice versa, Wellington merely replied, “It would take a volume to answer your question [and] I must go and take off my muddy boots.” Others noted that Wellington was not the most engaging conversationalist. He was a stern “master of monosyllables.”

Vienna salons were immediately competing for the honor of hosting the new celebrity in town, the excitement coming in part at least because this arrival “supplied something new, for which they were really at a loss.” With the famous opera singer and society sweetheart Giuseppina Grassini on his arm, the duke entered Vienna as the “Victor of the World.”

Talleyrand won the honor of holding an introductory dinner, Saturday night, February 4, at Kaunitz Palace. Sixty guests feasted on the chef’s excellent meal, to the accompaniment of Neukomm’s music. Most of the leading figures of the congress were there; in an embassy drawing room, decorated in white carnations and azaleas, the illustrious guests paid their respects to the Duke of Wellington, and, by implication, the host, Talleyrand, and his country, France.

A series of events for the new head of the British delegation followed. Metternich hosted him the next day with a dinner, and then a ball for a few hundred guests. Castlereagh, of course, hosted him at a reception, and then another one that evening, at a salon of the rich banking family the Herzes, “since nowadays,” one disgruntled aristocrat observed, “the world’s great ones gather at the homes of the moneymen.”

With his replacement already in town, Castlereagh’s days were numbered. Ironically, only a few months before, Castlereagh could not wait to leave Vienna. Now, with hopes of progress on several diplomatic fronts, Castlereagh wanted to finish the negotiations himself. But sure enough, the order came from London demanding his return. Castlereagh made plans to hand over the portfolios to his celebrated successor, though he stalled as much as he could.

T
HERE WAS ONE
issue that Castlereagh was particularly anxious to address before returning to London: the terrible practice of African slavery. To the horror of an increasing number of reformers, there was an entire industry built on the buying, selling, and trading of human beings.

Conditions were brutal at every stage of the business—human beings seized, bound in chains, strapped together in a yoke, and then subjected to a perilous forced march to the coast. If they managed to survive this ordeal, fighting off extreme heat during the day and cold during the night, the captives were then loaded onto slave vessels, crammed below deck in dark cellar compartments, for a nightmare ocean voyage without sufficient water, air, or space. Sharp irons tore at the skin, and the smell made it difficult to breathe, the stench so bad that it often crept into the porous wood of the ship. Cries, shrieks, and groans further “rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.”

Once the survivors, often no more than about two-thirds of the cargo, arrived in the New World, whether the United States, Brazil, the Caribbean, or elsewhere, the vast majority would spend the rest of their lives laboring unfreely on large tobacco, rice, coffee, cotton, and especially difficult sugar plantations. They were at all times at the mercy of their masters.

Many reformers had hoped that the Congress of Vienna would abolish this practice entirely, and Castlereagh was one delegate who pushed for action. The problem was that he faced many special-interest groups that benefited from slavery and resisted any limits imposed on their lucrative business. Fortunes and indeed entire industries were built on “the Trade,” as it was known, and outlawing it was not going to be easy.

Slave captains, plantation owners, and other defenders had come up with many arguments why they should be allowed to continue business as usual. There would be lost income, the deterioration of tax revenue, and even, some prophesied, the collapse of the British economy. One merchant declared hysterically that banning the trade would “render the City of London one scene of bankruptcy and ruin.”

Others pointed out that should the slaves be freed, they would likely rise up, murder their former masters, and then set the entire British West Indies on fire. Recent riots in Jamaica and Haiti provided a chilling reminder, and self-styled pragmatists urged the eager reformers to move slowly on this issue.

Back in December, Talleyrand proposed that the Great Powers establish a committee to look into the question of the slave trade more closely, but this had been blocked by the protests of Spain and Portugal. In the middle of January, Castlereagh renewed the call for a committee, and this time one was appointed by the Committee of Eight. Abolitionists and vested interests alike were represented at the regular meetings, though Castlereagh sometimes felt as if he were the only real spokesman for abolition.

Specifically, one immediate problem that this Slavery Commission encountered was enforcement. If the Vienna Congress banned the slave trade, how would they make sure that this policy was obeyed? What would prevent renegade captains from smuggling contraband slaves, or other nations, for that matter, from trying to meet the enormous demand? Britain’s answer—the Royal Navy—did not reassure its colleagues.

In Castlereagh’s plan, naval officers would take it upon themselves to board vessels and search for transgressors, a particularly sensitive issue given the resentment this practice had long caused. Britain was the undisputed mistress of the sea, and opponents of the measure tried to position Castlereagh’s countrymen as arrogant islanders trying to dominate even more. Wasn’t the right to board and search
any
trading vessel all that the British really wanted, some asked, and wasn’t it shameful how they cloaked these ambitions under the idealistic pretext of championing the abolition of slavery?

Another argument that opponents of any restriction on the slave trade used was that Britain, already well stocked with slaves in its colonies, wanted to impose a ban to cement its hold over the lucrative colonial trade. To agree to this abolition was then to submit to losing, permanently, to the British.

While trying to overcome this resistance, the British delegation was also constantly being pressed from the government back home to advance further and faster. Around the country, speeches were made, petitions signed, and many letters written, all demanding that the abomination be ended and pressuring the British government to achieve something in Vienna. In Castlereagh’s view, all these efforts, no matter how well-meaning, were actually hampering his ability to make progress.

The word was out that England was desperate, and Castlereagh found himself forced to bargain for each and every concession, no matter how small. States were dangling out hints of possible support—for a price, that is. Talleyrand was not immune to this temptation. Castlereagh offered France the beautiful island of Trinidad in return for his support, but Talleyrand did not at first bother to answer, and when he did, one month later, it was a refusal. The French minister held out for what he really wanted: help in restoring the Bourbon dynasty to Naples. Castlereagh eventually agreed.

It was frustrating and tiresome business wringing out concessions from other powers, and Castlereagh’s experiences made him seriously consider employing other tactics. For instance, should the Vienna peacemakers be unwilling to cooperate on banning the slave trade, Castlereagh was looking into the possibility of employing economic sanctions—probably the first ever in peacetime. He did, in fact, threaten, as a last resort, to lay an embargo against the very lucrative colonial products of any country that persisted in this “immoral and pernicious” activity.

With the hope of avoiding such a drastic move and most likely igniting a chain of escalating retaliations, Castlereagh went about his diplomacy with verve, making concession after concession. Countries in southern Europe proved to be most difficult to win over. Portugal finally agreed to end the trade in eight years, in return for 300,000 pounds. Spain, too, showed willingness to agree, though Spain’s price seemed odd. In return for banning the slave trade, Spain’s diplomats demanded Louisiana.

As Spain’s argument went, the U.S. purchase of Louisiana in 1803 was illegal. President Thomas Jefferson had bought the enormous region that comprises some thirteen states today from Napoleon, and, at one stroke, more than doubled the size of the United States. But Napoleon did not have a clean lease to sell, Spain argued. He had only acquired Louisiana three years before from Spain, which had sold it under duress. Besides, Napoleon had promised never to part with the territory until he had first offered Spain the chance to buy it back. He had not done that, either. The Vienna Congress should, the Spanish legal team argued, correct this injustice.

In other words, Spain was arguing that over half of the United States was held inappropriately, if not also illegally. If Britain would support Spain on regaining its rightful territory, then Spain would return the good measure and ban the slave trade.

Such were the challenges that Castlereagh had to face in fighting against this “odious and criminal Traffick in Human flesh.” Whatever the merits of Spain’s arguments—and its legal advisers, of course, claimed that they had a strong case—this was hardly a realistic proposal at that time. Britain had, only weeks before, ended a war with the United States and had no desire to renew one, especially over the Louisiana Purchase. Castlereagh politely turned down Spain’s proposal and offered instead a tidy 400,000 pounds. Spain accepted.

On February 8, 1815, just days before his expected departure, Castlereagh could finally point to some success. France, Portugal, Spain, and others had come on board, and the Great Powers issued a joint declaration condemning the practice as “repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality.” They further agreed in the importance of putting an end to a scourge that had so long “desolated Africa, degraded Europe and afflicted humanity.” The slave trade should be abolished as soon as possible; France promised to do so in five years, Spain and Portugal agreed on eight years. Admittedly, this was slow and tentative, an abolition of neither slavery nor even of the trade itself. Yet it was a start, and human rights, for the first time, had been made a subject of a peace conference.

Chapter 24

B
EFORE THE
C
AKE
W
AS
C
UT

Everything is over or nearly over. All the clouds are dispersed. Europe owes the happy issue of the negotiations to the departure of Lord Castlereagh.

—C
ONVERSATION OVERHEARD AT A BALL IN EARLY
1815

T
he arrival of the Duke of Wellington had not only affected Vienna’s diplomatic activity and social calendar; it was also posing a problem to the painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey, who was trying to capture the congress on canvas. He had been working for some time, and he had finally found a way to balance all the strong personalities, many of them patrons, into one single painting, and yet not offend national sensibilities or fragile egos.

The painting, which depicted the delegates gathered in a conference room, turned out to be a compromise in the best spirit of Vienna diplomacy. Metternich, the president of the Congress, draws the eye, as the only standing figure in the foreground. Castlereagh, though, commands the center, sitting with his legs gracefully crossed and elbow resting on the table. The light shining through the window, however, falls onto Talleyrand, sitting across the table with his dress sword at his side. An empty chair on both his right and left make him further stand out, as do the nearby figures who look to him, just as many of the smaller powers had sought his leadership the last few months.

As Isabey was putting the finishing touches to his composition, he had to figure out what to do about the fact that the Duke of Wellington was now also in town. Starting over was out of the question. Omitting a man of his stature was equally impossible. Yet it was not easy to incorporate him into a canvas on which all the best places had already been taken. The painter’s solution was simple and elegant: Why not make the painting commemorate the Duke of Wellington’s arrival in Vienna?