Metternich gets a makeover

This is a giant Teutonic forest of a book, to be progressed through with determination as if by seasoned infantry; it is as far as biography can get from a Viennese waltz. But it has its rewards. It is a very extensive and well-researched chronicle of the subject’s monumental career — 39 years as foreign minister of the Austrian Empire, the last 27 of them also as the state chancellor, and an extensive diplomatic career prior to all that. Wolfram Siemann presents and argues for a new and rather liberal interpretation of ‘the Metternich system’ in place of the normal view of Metternich’s influence as rigid and reactionary. The author goes through considerable gymnastics and arbitrary allocations of guilt and imputations of motives to others that are debatable, to portray Metternich as a far-seeing modernist and constitutional democrat, persevering against less principled and capable people, both hidebound reactionaries and nihilistic revolutionaries and militarists.

The author embraces without question the theory that Napoleon was solely responsible for all the wars of the Coalitions, from his elevation as first consul in 1799 through to Waterloo. And he subscribes to Metternich’s view that the only way to make Europe somewhat peaceful was to maintain an almost artistic and precise balance between the five-and-a-half Great Powers: Austria, England, France, Prussia and Russia, with the Ottoman Empire as half-Great. For more than 20 years, Metternich was known as ‘the coachman of Europe’, because of his insight into and ability to elicit agreement from the monarchs and chief ministers of Russia and Prussia especially, but also the British and French. He knew the Austrian (Habsburg) emperors who were in power from 1780 to 1916, the British monarchs from 1760 to 1901, and the French directors, consuls, kings and emperors from 1795 to 1870. He dealt with all the great figures of Europe from Wellington to Bismarck.