Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (49 page)

Ever since the duke had arrived in Brussels back on April 4, and moved into the hotel on rue Montagne du Parc, he had worked to whip the troops into shape. Besides the small size of the army, the soldiers were young, poorly trained, and appallingly “ill-equipped,” not to mention being encumbered by a “very inexperienced Staff.” The commander in chief of the Allied armies in Belgium at this time was the Prince of Orange, a twenty-three-year-old who had been given command as a token of British support for the Dutch royal family. His nickname was “Slender Billy,” and the soldiers were not exactly impressed by his leadership abilities.

Indeed, many things had rankled the duke on his arrival. Besides the fact that most of the army spoke German and he did not, Wellington had to worry about the loyalty of some troops. There were Saxons who resented the treatment of their kingdom and refused to be commanded by the Prussians, and Belgians who likewise did not like the prospects of Dutch rule and were reluctant to fight their idol, Napoleon. Wellington had been voicing these complaints and many others, but he was increasingly frustrated by the slow response of the British government. “In my opinion,” he wrote to Lord Stewart in Vienna, “they are doing nothing in England.”

While the Austrians were mainly on the Rhine, or in Italy facing Murat, and the Russians were farther back as a reserve force, Wellington was to be assisted primarily by the Prussians. Their commander was officially Field Marshal von Blücher, a seventy-two-year-old with silver hair, a pinkish face, and a bushy white mustache. He was rather large—one person who saw him the previous summer thought he was “the stoutest man that ever did live.” Blücher may not have been the best general of the Prussian staff, but he certainly was brave. His no-nonsense aggressive approach verged on recklessness, and his usual order, “Attack,” earned him the nickname “Old Marshal Vorwarts!”

Blücher’s chief of staff, General August von Gneisenau, had considerable authority and actually helped counter this rashness. The king of Prussia had even given Gneisenau authority to assume control, should Blücher again fall sick. The field marshal was prone to some strange delusions, including one belief that he had become pregnant and would soon give birth to an elephant!

Wellington was prepared to shrug aside such beliefs as the harmless idiosyncrasies of an exceptional soldier. The Prussian field marshal, he insisted, was eager for battle—“if anything too eager.” At any rate, Wellington preferred Blücher to his assistant, Gneisenau, who had some marked suspicions of the British that would soon be even more pronounced.

Amid the public attempts to display German unity, Vienna learned of trouble in the Prussian army. In early May, the Saxon army had rioted, and in fact almost captured its Prussian commander. Both Blücher and Gneisenau had to “slip out” their back door and flee to safety. Worse still, the rigorous suppression of the mutiny confirmed the worst fears of Prussian brutality.

Allied troops were in the meantime waiting—waiting for orders from their officers, waiting for what Napoleon would do, waiting for what would happen next in the remarkable year of 1815. They passed the time as best they could. The First Regiment of Foot Guards, for instance, played a friendly game of cricket: The soldiers with last names beginning with the letters
A
through
G
faced all the rest, and, reportedly, to use a popular phrase of the day, “beat the others hollow.”

A
LL THROUGHOUT
M
AY
, as dignitaries and guests prepared to leave, awarding jeweled snuffboxes and portraits freely all around, Vienna looked more beautiful than ever. The green expanse of the Prater seemed ideal for a leisurely carriage ride down the boulevard under chestnut trees exploding in brilliant pink. It was “divine weather,” and as Gentz noted in his diary, “the most beautiful spring I’ve ever seen.”

With feelings no doubt of excitement, fear, sadness, and exhaustion all at once, the delegates and guests alike made their plans to depart. The tsar of Russia and the king of Prussia, having entered town together, planned to leave together. On May 26, 1815, eight months and a day after their entrance into town, the two sovereigns departed for the new Allied headquarters at Heilbronn. The king of Prussia would stop off first, briefly, in his capital of Berlin.

After some difficult moments, the tsar was nevertheless leaving with Poland, smaller than he liked, though still large enough for him to feel that he had accomplished something. This was, of course, in addition to his previous gains in the war, including Finland and Bessarabia, which were confirmed. Some of his last known appearances were actually in taverns. One person claimed to have seen His Majesty, the Tsar of All the Russias, engaging challengers in a contest to see who “could make the most horrible face.” And according to an anonymous informant, Alexander had said, in the end, that if he had not been tsar, he would desire “nothing more than being a general in Austria.”

Metternich was also leaving town for his summer villa on the Rennweg. He would spend a couple of weeks there with his wife, his children, and the most recent addition to the family, the pet parrot Polly. This parrot had been given to Metternich by an old English sea captain, though the bird had by now, he joked, “lost his English accent.” Metternich would celebrate his forty-second birthday with fellow diplomats at his summer residence on May 15, and return to the Chancellery office periodically in the last month to wrap up the congress.

His assistant, Gentz, was bagging a number of sundry gifts for his many services: honors, payments, snuffboxes, and even a new carriage, which had been dropped off at his apartment by an unnamed benefactor. So many were happy with and grateful to the man who would write the official treaty of the Vienna Congress. One historian called Gentz the most bribed man in history. Although certainly an overstatement, the secretary of the congress did, in fact, pocket a fortune, and as soon as he finished working on the draft, he went house hunting. He found a large, eighteenth-century manor outside town, in the Weinhaus, and felt “as happy as a child” looking forward to moving in there, “as soon as this wretched Congress is over.”

Princess Bagration, by contrast, was spending the last days at the congress in deep financial trouble. Already that spring, her chef, Monsieur Bretton, had been forced to stop advancing the princess money for the food and dinners that he prepared himself. He could no longer continue this way until his wages, back wages, and all the other reimbursements were paid. Of all her friends in Vienna the last several months, few were willing or able to help. She wrote her stepfather back in St. Petersburg to send more money.

Ironically, while many had earlier urged the police to remove Princess Bagration from the city, there were a great number in late May trying to make sure that she did not leave, at least before she repaid her enormous debts. According to her close friend Aurora de Marassé, the princess owed a staggering 21,801 ducats, another 18,121 florins, and some 7,860 in promissory notes. There were other outstanding debts to various bankers around town. It was feared that the princess might move straight from the gilded salon to the debtor’s prison.

Another matter that bothered the princess was the departure of a new lover she had taken, the Crown Prince of Württemberg. She accompanied the handsome prince out of town, all the way to the first postal stop, Purkersdorf, where they said good-byes so tender that one police agent noted ironically that it might lead to the birth of another “illegitimate child for the virtuous princess.”

The Duchess of Sagan was one of the last to leave town. She would, however, vacate the Palm Palace first, leaving Princess Bagration there reigning, though besieged less by admirers than creditors. The duchess’s lover, Prince Alfred von Windischgrätz, had left Vienna in April to join his regiment as it prepared to fight Napoleon. The duchess moved into his mansion, the nearby Windischgrätz Palace. The parties were tapering off back in Vienna, she said, and she was “dying of boredom.”

In truth, though, the duchess was losing interest in Prince Alfred, and their relationship would soon be over, though Alfred would fight for its continuation, just as Metternich had done before him. While he was away, the duchess had been seeing more and more of the British ambassador, Lord Stewart.

They dined together and rode through the city’s many parks, Wilhelmine on a prized horse that she had earlier purchased from Stewart. They took several excursions into the countryside, just as she had done with Alfred. Stewart was like him in many ways, though more wild and unpredictable. “Lord Pumpernickel” had taken advantage of the absence of Castlereagh, Wellington, and Clancarty and, according to one disapproving critic, turned the British embassy into a gambling den and brothel.

Clearly, the Duchess of Sagan and Lord Stewart were struggling to adjust to a city that no longer hosted a spectacular royal carnival. By the end of May, most of the guests had left town, either to face Napoleon, return home, or head off elsewhere in search of the next adventure. “Vienna is becoming a desert,” the Duchess of Sagan said with sadness.

Chapter 30

C
ONQUERING THE
P
EACE

I have spent the whole day cutting Europe into bits like a piece of cheese.

—P
RINCE
M
ETTERNICH

O
n the first of June, Napoleon celebrated his triumphant return with a massive public ceremony, arguably the most grandiose since his coronation as emperor in Notre Dame eleven years before. It was held on the Champs de Mars, a wide parade ground in central Paris that would later hold the Eiffel Tower. A pyramid-like platform and amphitheater had been constructed there for the occasion, outside the officer cadet academy, the École Militaire.

At the center was Napoleon, sitting on a purple throne, wearing a black hat with white ostrich feather and a purple coronation mantle tossed over his shoulders. He was surrounded by his brothers, his marshals, his eagles on columns, and many war trophies. Only his wife and son were missing.

Shouts of
“Vive l’Empereur!”
were heard in the throngs below, estimated at two hundred thousand. After the cannon boomed and Mass was celebrated, a spokesman for the new legislature addressed the crowd, at least those at the very front who could hear:

What do these monarchs desire, Sire, who are advancing against us with such warlike preparations? What have we done to justify their aggressive proceedings? Have we violated any of the treaties of peace?

Posing the question to the crowd, he then promptly answered it. The enemies of France “do not like the ruler we have chosen, and we do not like him, they would impose on us.”

After the speech and the applause, the emperor’s arch-chancellor introduced the new constitution, the Acte Additional, which the people of France had affirmed in a recent vote. The margin had been large. About 1.3 million approved the constitution, and only 4,206 cast their vote against it—voting under Napoleon always revealed more about his manipulation of the procedures than it evidenced any real freedom of expression. The constitution was then dropped at the foot of the throne for Napoleon’s signature.

Napoleon was very good at creating grandiose spectacles to demonstrate, symbolize, and enhance his power. “A government must dazzle and astonish,” he had long known, and this was never truer than with a new government. Napoleon needed to fire imaginations, just as he had done in other crucial moments, such as when he first seized power, launched a risky endeavor, or experienced a major setback.

The whole event had originally been planned as a large democratic forum inaugurating the proclaimed new reign of liberty. But only a fraction of the eligible voters had participated, the turnout in Paris estimated at one in ten, indicating that neither Napoleon nor his constitution was as popular as he wished. So he changed his plans and, instead, staged an event with every detail tightly controlled to present a picture of a country rallying around its enlightened emperor.

Tsar Alexander, meanwhile, had arrived at the southern German town of Heilbronn, literally meaning “holy spring,” which then temporarily served as Allied headquarters. He was happy about the outcome in Poland, but he agonized over other matters. Why had the French welcomed Napoleon so enthusiastically, and why had the power of the Bourbon king collapsed so easily? Was it really worth shedding more blood just to restore this dynasty?