Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (46 page)

As the king sped away, the palace no longer flew the white flag of Bourbon France, and instead showed an unmistakable “gloomy appearance of its being deserted, with a straggling sentry here and there.” Paris itself, as Napoleon approached, looked like “a great city which feels itself to be on the eve of a catastrophe.”

Peacemakers in Vienna were clearly facing the prospects of another war. But what was the best way to defeat Napoleon? Where should the armies be placed, and who was to command them?

Appearing to enjoy the challenge again, the tsar volunteered to take personal charge of the Allied troops. Wellington, a far better strategist and tactician, wisely hesitated at the offer. Metternich also balked, having seen the tsar, with all his shortcomings, a little too closely the last six months. With polite firmness, Alexander was persuaded to accept another supreme war council that would include, like last time, himself, the king of Prussia, and the Austrian field marshal Schwarzenberg. Wellington declined to join them, preferring instead “to carry a musket,” and the Allies certainly needed his presence on the battlefield.

For the moment, it seemed, the British and the Prussians would take charge in the north, probably somewhere in the Low Countries; the Austrian army would be in the center and south, on the Rhine. The Russian army, still in Poland, was far away from the conflict and would have to hurry to reach the likely battleground, somewhere near France. That, of course, raised an additional concern: Given all the recent tensions with Russia over its claims to occupied Poland, did anyone really want to see the Russian army march across Germany and western Europe?

One of the most important decisions in the series of strategy sessions that followed took place on March 25, when the Great Powers renewed an agreement made at Chaumont at the end of war, and officially created the so-called Seventh Coalition. Each power pledged not to make a separate peace with Napoleon and furnish 150,000 troops for the campaign, with Britain reserving the right to pay additional funds in lieu of its quota. This agreement, moreover, would last for twenty years, or “until Bonaparte should have been rendered absolutely incapable of stirring up further trouble.”

B
Y
M
ARCH, THE
Duchess of Sagan had spent months hosting parties in her salon at the Palm Palace, where everything was said to be “debauched, dissolute, unconcerned, extravagant, and racked with debts and blunders.” Her personal debts were enormous, and she was having to find ways to raise money to pay off her creditors.

As Metternich had earlier expressed interest in a particular sapphire necklace, the duchess bundled it up in a piece of silk and sent it over to his office. She hoped the jewels would fetch a reasonable price, and asked for his assistance in selling them. Metternich, for his part, was eager to help. “You have not wanted to share the throne with me,” Metternich had written before, “but you do not rule less in my realm.”

Sure enough, two days later, Metternich had managed to scrounge up a buyer for the duchess’s sapphires. The gems were going to Madame de Montesquiou, the former governess of Napoleon’s son, who had just been sacked in the alleged kidnapping plot. The price was a solid 3,000 ducats, and the tab was picked up by Emperor Francis. Metternich had convinced the Austrian emperor to buy the sapphires as a farewell gift for Montesquiou’s years of services looking after the energetic boy. The necklace traded hands, a small example of Metternich’s dexterity, smoothly juggling issues and sometimes managing to have everything fall in the right place.

That Easter weekend, Talleyrand also had to do some juggling of his own. At midnight on Good Friday, the French embassy received an unexpected visitor: the Duchess of Courland, Dorothée’s mother and also Talleyrand’s mistress.

Like many aristocrats, the fifty-four-year-old duchess had fled Paris in a hurry, and decided to come to Vienna, which had welcomed many French émigrés over the last quarter of a century. The arrival of the duchess, however, must have been awkward, to say the least. A woman of her sophistication could hardly have failed to sense that Talleyrand had come to appreciate her daughter as someone more than a successful embassy hostess.

What a bizarre weekend it must have been, even for Talleyrand, who had seen his share of the unusual. The prospect of the mother and daughter, already suffering a strained relationship, competing for the attentions of the wily Frenchman was simply too much for gossipers. Even Dorothée’s older sister, the Duchess of Sagan, could not resist commenting on Talleyrand’s rumored affections for her sister: “The great man is at least kept in the family.”

A
CCORDING TO TRADITION
, Napoleon had promised at his abdication to return to France with the spring violets. On Tuesday, March 28, Vienna learned that Napoleon had indeed returned to power. It had taken twenty-three days. Moreover, just as he promised, he had succeeded without firing a shot. The flight from Elba was, in many ways, the most audacious and reckless undertaking in his long career of monumental achievements and colossal blunders. The beautiful flower would be adopted by Bonapartists as a symbol for their hero.

Symbolically, too, Napoleon had returned on March 20, his son’s fourth birthday. His supporters went wild with joy. Inside the palace courtyard, cheering enthusiasts swarmed the coach, and, as one put it, “seeing that he could advance no further, the Emperor descended in the midst of the immense crowd, which quickly engulfed him.” Eyewitness accounts do not agree on all the details, but give a vivid impression of the euphoria. Some describe the emperor being carried halfway up the palace steps; others claim that he calmly strode them on his own, preceded by a supporter walking backward, repeating in disbelief, “It’s you! It’s you! It’s finally you!”

After Louis XVIII’s flight, Napoleon’s supporters had prepared the palace for the return of their emperor. Royal emblems were removed from carpets and curtains—in many cases, the fleur-de-lis had only been sewn hastily over the Napoleonic golden bees from the last restoration. “The explosion of feelings was irresistible,” one soldier described the enthusiasm, and Napoleon was no less thrilled, calling these days “the happiest period of [his] life.”

Street vendors were now hawking small portraits of Napoleon, Marie Louise, and the little prince. A newspaper account in the
Königsberger Zeitung
reported that tailors were gearing up for the task of supplying many new imperial uniforms. Bonapartist cafés and restaurants enjoyed a brisk trade, full of celebrants whose “carousing, feasting, drinking, singing never cease.”

As Napoleon’s stunning triumph became apparent, Metternich was returning to some old habits, including regular visits to Wilhelmine’s salon in the Palm Palace. The duchess was actually delighted, congratulating the foreign minister for having “at last broken the chains that kept you away from my house.” Then she added her wish that in the times of uncertainty and the threat of war, they could once again “enjoy peacefully the charms of a friendship and of an agreeable relationship.”

But friendship was, of course, not what Metternich wanted. Underneath his cheerful smile, Metternich had not ceased loving her, and it probably seemed at the time that he never would. He had cried a great deal, he confessed, and he had sought help from friends, though without success. Without the duchess, he was only a wanderer adrift in a cruel world—“a man who sees cast up on the shore the wreck of the vessel carrying his whole fortune.”

With the news that Napoleon had reached Paris, March 28 was to be the Duke of Wellington’s last night in Vienna. “I am going into the Low Countries to take command of the army,” he announced. The Duchess of Sagan hosted a farewell party for him that evening, the duke “kissing each lady good-bye and arranging a rendezvous in Paris with one and all.”

Britain would once again have new leadership at the embassy. This time, the responsibility would be shared by Lord Clancarty and Lord Cathcart, who had come originally as Castlereagh’s advisers. The peace conference was still unfinished, but war was about to begin.

A
FTER ANOTHER TENSE
late-night session, Friedrich von Gentz, the congress’s secretary, woke up and found, at his bedside, a cup of coffee and the morning newspaper
Wiener Zeitung.
As he picked up the paper, Gentz was struck by an announcement on the front page: “Reward. 10,000 ducats. To whosoever delivers Friedrich von Gentz, the well-known publicist, dead or alive, or simply produces proof of his murder.” The manifesto was signed Napoleon.

What a shock it must have been to read his own death warrant. Nervous and high-strung, Gentz already suffered from insomnia for fear that Napoleon would seek revenge on him for drafting the document that branded him an outlaw. Now, presumably with a price on his head, any assassin, mercenary, or bounty hunter eager to make a quick fortune could track him down in his flat on Seilergasse. Everyone knew where he lived. How could he walk home on the narrow dark streets at night, after a salon or late diplomacy session? Would he ever be safe again?

Later that morning, Dorothée and Count Clam-Martinitz came by Gentz’s apartment and found him in a terrible state—a wreck amid the half-stuffed suitcases that suggested he was about to leave town in a hurry. “Look at the front page,” Gentz explained, flinging the copy of the newspaper to them. “I’ve got to get out of town.” He poured more of his powders into a cup, jerkily stirred them around, and then managed a drink, requiring “both shaking hands to raise it to his lips.”

Dorothée could not watch Gentz suffer any longer, and advised him to look at the date of the newspaper. It was the first of April. Prince Metternich had thought it would be amusing to orchestrate an April Fools’ prank, and he had overseen its execution, right down to having the paper printed especially for this occasion. That night, at a dinner hosted by Bavaria’s Prince Wrede, Gentz had boasted that he had not, in the least, been fooled by the phony paper. People near him, however, knew otherwise. The prince’s prank had “almost paralyzed the unfortunate secretary.”

Pranks may have helped Metternich cope with the enormous stress, but, unfortunately, what Talleyrand faced was no laughing matter. After seizing power, Napoleon had ordered an immediate halt to the transmission of funds to Vienna. He had also canceled the French embassy’s account at the Bank of France, along with its standing credit. In addition, Talleyrand’s personal property, worth millions, had been impounded, as had the assets of many other employees at the embassy.

At this time, too, Talleyrand inquired about the state of all his confidential correspondence with the king and the Foreign Ministry since he had arrived in Vienna. “I trust that your Majesty has taken with you all the letters I had the honor of addressing to your Majesty,” along with all the other papers sent to the Foreign Ministry, Talleyrand wrote. The reason for his concern was simple: There were many things in his correspondence that Talleyrand feared might upset his new allies, and he did not want it to fall into the wrong hands.

The response came from the acting foreign minister then in the king’s temporary headquarters in Brussels, and it was not at all comforting. A few dispatches had been burned, including the secret reports sent from Elba and presumably the documents surrounding the alleged kidnapping and assassination attempts. But, unfortunately, the government had been in a hurry to leave. “I did not take with me, Prince, any important papers,” one of the king’s officials confessed sadly. None of the other ministers, regrettably, had done so either.

And so the vast majority of Talleyrand’s private correspondence during the Vienna Congress, not to mention the secret treaty signed with Britain and Austria, were now lying openly in the ministry offices, just waiting for Napoleon.

Chapter 28

C
RIERS OF
V
IVE LE
R
OI
!
D
OERS OF
N
OTHING

Let us embrace and let all be forgotten.

—T
SAR
A
LEXANDER TO
M
ETTERNICH

W
ith the return of Napoleon, the Vienna Congress was now forced to confront the unpleasant fact that the emperor’s former marshal, Joachim Murat, was still king of Naples. Murat was still the same restless and swaggering cavalry leader prone to risky moves. He was also eager to play his own role in the unfolding drama. On March 30, while the attentions of the Vienna Congress were focused on events in France, Murat had called for nothing less than the unification of Italy, and launched a surprise attack against the Papal States.