Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (43 page)

 

8. British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh pressed for a balance of power (except, of course, on the seas). He spoke little, smiled less, it was said, though in private, he could be quite charming.

 

 

9. The oldest and one of the ablest of the delegates, Prussia’s Chancellor Hardenberg, strongly disagreed with many policies that he was forced to carry out.

 

 

10. Philologist, scholar, administrator, and ambassador to Vienna, Wilhelm von Humboldt, served Prussia with the same energy that he had used when he had reformed the Prussian educational system and founded Berlin University.

 

 

11. The Duke of Wellington was one of the most popular men alive. His arrival in February 1815 raised expectations: peace or war in fourteen days, it was widely believed.

 

 

Women had never before and have never since played a more influential role at a peace conference.

 

 

12. Hostess of a lively salon and center of intrigue in the Palm Palace, Princess Bagration the “beautiful naked angel” who wore scandalously revealing dresses. She was immortalized in a Balzac novel, as well
as le potage Bagration
and
la salade Bagration,
both coined by Talleyrand’s chef.

 

 

13. Hostess of a rival salon in the Palm Palace, the glamorous Duchess of Sagan, who, like her archenemy Princess Bagration, seduced Vienna, becoming a major source of tension between Metternich and the tsar.

 

 

14. The twenty-one-year-old younger sister of the Duchess of Sagan, Dorothée, served as hostess of the French Embassy. She won many hearts at the congress—not least, it seemed, was that of Talleyrand himself.

 

 

15. View of Vienna as seen by many travelers who approached by land. Others arrived on the Danube, which appeared to Jacob Grimm one moonlit night in September 1814 as neither blue nor muddy, but “melting silver.”

 

 

16. Vienna was one of the most sophisticated cities in Europe. It had welcomed French aristocrats who had fled the French Revolution, and former princes of the Holy Roman Empire who had been dispossessed by Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna added even more luster, leaving a legacy of chic elegance that survives today.

 

 

17. On September 25, 1814, the Emperor of Austria (center) met the Russian tsar (right) and the king of Prussia (left), just north of Vienna, prior to their arrival for the congress.