Klemens von Metternich

Klemens von Metternich (born May 15, 1773, Coblenz, Archbishopric of Trier [Germany]—died June 11, 1859, Vienna, Austria) was an Austrian statesman, minister of foreign affairs (1809–48), and a champion of conservatism, who helped form the victorious alliance against Napoleon I and who restored Austria as a leading European power, hosting the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15.

Early life

Metternich, the descendant of an old Rhenish noble family, was the son of Franz Georg Karl, Graf (count) von Metternich-Winneburg and the Gräfin (countess) Beatrix Kagenegg. His father was then the Austrian envoy to the Rhenish principalities of the empire, and Metternich spent his youth in the Rhine-Moselle region, for which he retained a lifelong affection.

In 1788 he entered the University of Strasbourg, where he studied diplomacy, but the spread of the French Revolution prompted him to leave Strasbourg in 1790 and enter the University of Mainz. Before the French Revolutionary troops entered Mainz, he went to Brussels in the Austrian Netherlands, where his father was then chief minister. In 1794 he undertook a diplomatic mission to England, where he published a pamphlet calling for a general arming of the German people, but in October he rejoined his father, who had in the meantime fled to Vienna as the French invaded the Netherlands. In Vienna he occupied himself with natural, scientific, and medical studies, in which he always kept a lively interest and which he later did much to encourage.

In September 1795 Metternich married Eleonore, Gräfin von Kaunitz, heiress and granddaughter of the former Austrian state chancellor Wenzel Anton, Graf von Kaunitz. That marriage gave him the link with the high nobility of Austria and the access to high office he had long desired. After having represented the Roman Catholic Westphalian counts of the empire at the end of the Congress of Rastatt (1797–99), which ratified compensation for the German princes ousted by the French from their possessions on the left bank of the Rhine, he was in 1801 appointed Austrian minister to the Saxon court at Dresden, and there he formed his friendship with Friedrich von Gentz, the German publicist and diplomat. Serving as Austrian minister in Berlin after 1803, Metternich failed to persuade Frederick William III of Prussia to join Austria in the war of 1805 against France but gained a profound insight into the internal brittleness of the Prussian state, whose speedy ruin he predicted.

Ministry during the Napoleonic Wars

In 1806 Metternich served as Austrian minister to France. In contact with Napoleon’s sister Caroline Murat and other ladies of Parisian society, he won a reputation for licentiousness. Nevertheless, from those ladies and from his relations with the foreign minister Talleyrand and with the Russian envoy, he obtained excellent reports on the state of affairs in France. Although Metternich’s successes in the negotiations leading up to the Franco-Austrian Treaty of Fontainebleau were insignificant, he used his time to acquire a deep insight into the emperor Napoleon I’s character. Yet he overestimated the impact of the Spanish rising of 1808 on the Napoleonic system, and his optimistic reports did much to induce Austria to undertake the disastrous war of 1809 against France. After the Battle of Wagram, he tried to obtain favourable terms in the peace negotiations but was rebuffed by Napoleon.

On October 8, 1809, the emperor Francis (at that time Francis I of Austria but no longer Holy Roman emperor) appointed Metternich minister of foreign affairs. Six days later the oppressive Treaty of Schönbrunn was signed with France. Austria was now in urgent need of a respite, which Metternich obtained by forming the project of a marriage between the archduchess Marie-Louise, a daughter of Francis I, and Napoleon, whose vanity Metternich cleverly exploited. It is not clear how far he expected that the marriage would restrain Napoleon from further campaigns of conquest, but at least he achieved a relationship between France and Austria loose enough to preserve Austria’s freedom of action: Austria neither joined the Confederation of the Rhine, a league of German princes under Napoleon’s protection, nor became one of the client states of the Napoleonic system. Utterly exhausted and debt-ridden, Austria could hardly have resisted any further demands of Napoleon, but it was then no longer the main object of Napoleon’s hostility.

Special 30% offer for students! Finish the semester strong with Britannica.

Learn More

As early as 1811, in order to promote Austria’s internal development, Metternich wanted the state to be reorganized on federal lines instead of continuing under the centralized system that the emperor Joseph II had imposed. Yet Metternich could never overcome the objections of his strictly absolutist emperor. At the same time, the enthusiasm for arming the nation and for a German national rising against Napoleon, which he had felt as late as 1809, began to be superseded by a firm dislike for all popular movements. Agreeing with the emperor on that, he now came to regard those manifestations as a menace to the multinational Habsburg state. He became the strictest exponent of the doctrine of the balance of power in Europe—a doctrine instilled in him originally by Koch, latterly by his diplomat friend Gentz.

When Napoleon launched his invasion of Russia in 1812, Metternich obtained the status of an independent contingent for the Austrian forces under Karl, Fürst zu Schwarzenberg, that accompanied the French army. The disaster that befell Napoleon’s army came as a surprise to Metternich. On January 30, 1813, Schwarzenberg concluded an indefinite armistice with the Russians. But in view of the inadequacy of Austria’s armaments, Metternich could not make up his mind to change over to war on Russia’s side against Napoleon. Resisting all ill-considered projects, in particular those of the archduke John (who was put under house arrest for planning a premature anti-French rising in the Alps), Metternich firmly adhered to neutrality while Austria secretly rearmed. He even drew Saxony into the neutral camp for a time. When, later in 1813, Saxony’s return to the French side and Napoleon’s victory over the Russians and Prussians at Bautzen shook Metternich’s will to make war and stiffened Napoleon’s attitude, Metternich mediated an armistice between France, Russia, and Prussia. Even so, in the subsequent Treaty of Reichenbach, June 24, 1813, between Austria, Prussia, and Russia, Metternich undertook to bring Austria into the war against France if Napoleon rejected the peace terms that he was offering.

By dominating the negotiations with the French during the summer of 1813, Metternich gained more time for rearming. At that point he was not interested in the annihilation of Napoleon’s power, which the emperor Francis likewise was unwilling to destroy altogether, out of consideration for his daughter Marie-Louise. Metternich also distrusted the Russian emperor Alexander I and feared that after the collapse of France, Europe would be at Russia’s mercy. Napoleon’s obstinacy frustrated the attempt at a settlement, but when in August Austria finally declared war on France, Metternich, by his superior conduct of negotiations, had won for his country the leadership both in the political and in the military field. In October 1813 the hereditary title of prince was bestowed on him by the Austrian emperor.

In opposition to the plans of the Prussian minister Karl, Freiherr (baron) vom Stein, and of the Russian emperor, Metternich promised the South German states of the Confederation of the Rhine that if they went over to the allies, they would not forfeit the position they had achieved on Napoleon’s side. That promise alone showed that, while he was striving for a solution compatible with the interests of all parties, he also wanted to gain the South German states as allies against the Prussian-Russian designs of aggrandizement. After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and abdication, Metternich rejected as unrealistic the proposals of Stein and others for the resuscitation of the Holy Roman Empire. The first Treaty of Paris (May 30, 1814) stipulated nothing more for Germany than a loose confederation of states.