Metternich Sentence Examples

The Diet, which met in 1839, supported the agitation for the release of the prisoners, and refused to pass any government measures; Metternich long remained obdurate, but the danger of war in 1840 obliged him to give way.

From 1816 to 1818 he was Luxemburg envoy at the German diet, but was recalled, at the instance of Metternich, owing to his too independent advocacy of state constitutions.

To the north-east of Marienbad lies the small watering-place of KOnigswart; near it is a castle belonging since 1618 to the princes of Metternich, which contains an interesting museum, created by the famous Austrian statesman in the first part of the 19th century.

Not only did she govern Lombardy and Venetia directly, but Austrian princes ruled in Modena, Parma and Tuscany; Piacenza, Ferrara and Comacchio had Austrian garrisons; Prince Metternich, the Austrian chancellor, believed that he could always secure the election of an Austrophil pope, and Ferdinand of Naples, reinstated by an Austrian army, had bound himself, by a secret article of the treaty of June 12, 1815, not to introduce methods of government incompatible with those adopted in Austrias Italian possessions.

The contrast between the new regime and the ancient tradition of the city was curiously illustrated in 1818 by a scene described in Metternich's Memoirs, when, before the opening of the congress, Francis I., emperor of Austria, regarded by all Germany as the successor of the Holy Roman emperors, knelt at the tomb of Charlemagne amid a worshipping crowd, while the Protestant Frederick William III.

Thus, in spite of his academic sympathy with liberal ideas, he became, together with Metternich, a champion of political stagnation, and co-operated willingly in the reactionary measures against the revolutionary movements in Germany, Italy and Spain.

Opinions were divided in the emperor's circle between a Russian and an Austrian princess; but the marked coolness with which overtures for the hand of the tsar's sister were received at St Petersburg, and the skill with which Count Metternich, the Austrian chancellor, let it be known that a union with the archduchess, Marie Louise, would be welcomed at Schonbrunn, helped to decide the matter.

Metternich, on visiting Compiegne and Paris, found the emperor thoroughly devoted to his bride.

Napoleon began to suspect his father-in-law, and still more the Austrian chancellor, Metternich; but instead of humouring them, he resolved to stand firm.

At bottom the emperor Francis, perhaps also Metternich, wanted peace, but on terms which the exhaustion of the combatants would enable them to dictate.

His actions at this time have been ascribed to righteous indignation against Metternich's double-dealing.

Metternich persuaded the tsar and the king of Prussia to make a declaration that the allies would leave to Napoleon the "natural boundaries" of France - the Rhine, Alps, Pyrenees and Ocean.

His first sojourn was in Vienna, where the friendship of Gentz and the protection of Metternich opened to him the Venetian archives, of which many were preserved in that city - a virgin field, the value of which he first discovered, and which is still unexhausted.

The recommendations of Metternich opened to him almost every library except the Vatican; and it was during these three years of study in Venice, Ferrara, Rome, Florence and other cities, that he obtained that acquaintance with European history which was to make him the first historian of his time.

It is probable, though not quite certain, that the first suggestions as to this marriage alliance emanated secretly from the Austrian chancellor, Metternich.

In that year Wagner visited Paris for the third time; and after much negotiation, in which he was nobly supported by the Prince and Princess Metternich, Tannhduser was accepted at the Grand Opera.

But the Princess Metternich continued to befriend him, and by 1861 she had obtained a pardon for his political offences, with permission to settle in any part of Germany except Saxony.

For at the outset Metternich was not alone in maintaining that the war should be allowed to burn itself out " beyond the pale of civilization."

But, though the sultan remained stubborn, the emperor Alexander, who since the Congress of Laibach had been wholly under Metternich's influence, resisted the clamour of his people for war, and dismissed his Greek minister Capo d'Istria.

The stubborn persistence of the Greeks, however, dashed Metternich's hope that the question would soon settle itself, and produced a state of affairs in the Levant which necessitated some action.

The acceptance of the principle of complete independence, once more warmly advocated by Metternich, seemed now essential if Greece was not to become, like the principalities, a mere dependency of Russia.

Beust was the only " imperial chancellor " in Austro-Hungarian history; even Metternich bore only the title of " chancellor "; and Andrassy, who succeeded Beust, styled himself " minister of the imperial and royal household and for foreign affairs."

Metternich especially ascribed this mainly to the "weakness" of the ministry, and when in 1819 the political elections still further illustrated this trend, notably by the election of the celebrated Abbe Gregoire, it began to be debated whether the time had not come to put in force the terms of the secret treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

Of Metternich, Stadion's successor, he had at the outset no high opinion, and it was not till 1812 that there sprang up between the two men the close relations that were to ripen into life-long friendship. But when Gentz returned to Vienna as Metternich's adviser and henchman, he was no longer the fiery patriot who had sympathized and corresponded with Stein in the darkest days of German depression and in fiery periods called upon all Europe to free itself from foreign rule.

For ten years, from 1812 onward, Gentz was in closest touch with all the great affairs of European history, the assistant, confidant, and adviser of Metternich.

But the Liberalism of his early years was gone for ever, and he had become reconciled to Metternich's view that, in an age of decay, the sole function of a statesman was to "prop up mouldering institutions."

Yet he never made any secret of these gifts; Metternich was aware of them, and he never suspected Gentz of writing or acting in consequence against his convictions.

At the Congress of Verona (1822) the Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich, tried to induce Charles Felix to set aside Charles Albert's rights of succession.

After the Danubian campaign of 1809 and the divorce of Josephine, Talleyrand used the influence which he still possessed in the imperial council on behalf of the choice of an Austrian consort for his master, for, like Metternich (who is said first to have mooted the proposal), he saw that this would safeguard the interests of the Habsburgs, whose influence he felt to be essential to the welfare of Europe.

An offer from Metternich of Austrian arms to repress the discontent by force had been refused.

European Liberalism, too, gagged and fettered under Metternich's "system," recognized in the Greeks the champions of its own cause; while even conservative statesmen, schooled in the memories of ancient Hellas, saw in the struggle a fight of civilization against barbarism.

The threatened breach with Russia had been avoided by Metternich's influence on the tsar Alexander; the death of Ali of Iannina had set free the army of Khurshid Pasha, who now, as seraskier of Rumelia, was charged with the task of reducing the Morea.

Metternich, though he had not yet completely established his position, acted as chief Austrian representative, and he was naturally in his capacity as host the president of the congress.

For Austria Saxony was really of more vital interest than Poland, but Castlereagh, despite a vigorous resistance from a section of the Austrian court, was able to win Metternich over to his views.

But Metternich wavered on the question of Saxony, and December saw the allies hopelessly at difference.

As Castlereagh and Metternich began to regard the position as hopeless they began to look upon him as a possible ally.

In 1814 it was given by Francis, emperor of Austria, to Prince Metternich, in whose family it still remains.

It must be admitted that, in pursuance of his "system," Gertz displayed a genius for diplomacy which would have done honour to a Metternich or a Talleyrand.

He was one of the original co-signatories of the Holy Alliance, though, in common with most, he signed it with reluctance; and in the counsels of the Grand Alliance he allowed himself to be practically subordinated to Alexander and later to Metternich.

But his incapacity was so notorious that the conduct of affairs was entrusted to a council of state, consisting of Prince Metternich (q.v.) with other ministers, and two archdukes, Louis and Francis Charles.

Here Wellington supported the proposal for the immediate evacuation of France, and it was owing to his common-sense criticism that the proposal of Prussia, supported by the emperor Alexander and Metternich, to establish an "army of observation" at Brussels, was nipped in the bud.

The reactionaries in power put off their promised reforms so persistently as to anger even Metternich; nor did the replacement of Bernetti by Lambruschini in 1836 mend matters; for the new cardinal secretary of state objected even to railways and illuminating gas, and was liberal chiefly in his employment of spies and of prisons.

To these regions the Napoleonic regime had given a certain measure of unity; but Metternich, dominant after 1815, held Italy to be merely a geographical term.

He covered his defection from Hardenberg's liberal constitutionalism by a series of "philosophical" treatises on the nature of the state and of man, and became the soul of the reactionary movement at the Berlin court, and the faithful henchman of Metternich in the general politics of Germany and of Europe.

Ancillon had convinced himself that the rigid class distinctions of the Prussian system were the philosophically ideal basis of the state, and that representation "by estates" was the only sound constitutional principle; his last and indeed only act of importance as minister was his collaboration with Metternich in the Vienna Final Act of the 12th of June 1834, the object of which was to rivet this system upon Germany for ever.

In this quarter of the town, too, is the Liebfrauenkirche, a fine church (nave 1250, choir 1404-1431) with lofty late Romanesque towers; the castle of the electors of Trier, erected in 1280, which now contains the municipal picture gallery; and the family house of the Metternichs, where Prince Metternich, the Austrian statesman, was born in 1773.

His triumph seemed complete when, on the 11th of October 1807, Metternich signed at Fontainebleau, on behalf of Austria, a convention that conceded all his outstanding claims, and seemed to range the Habsburg monarchy definitely on his side.

Metternich had been allowed to take the initiative in negotiating with the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, and the price of their adhesion to the cause of the allies had been the guarantee by Austria of their independent sovereignty.

The guarantee had been willingly given; for Metternich had no desire to see the creation of a powerful unified German empire, but aimed at the establishment of a loose confederation of weak states over which Austria, by reason of her ancient imperial prestige and her vast non-German power, would exercise a dominant influence.

It was the work of a special committee of German the congress, presided over by Metternich; and, con federa- owing to the panic created by Napoleons return from lion.

The diet, then, properly controlled, was capable of being converted into an effective instrument for furthering the policy of stability which Metternich sought to impose upon Europe.

The mass of the people, as Metternich rightly observed, wished for rest, not constitutions; but the minority of thoughtful menprofessors, students, officials, many soldiersresented the dashing of the hopes of German unity aroused by the War of Liberation, and had drunk deep of the revolutionary inspiration.

To Metternich they were wholly unwelcome.

In October, after a preliminary meeting between Metternich and Hardenberg, in the course of which the latter signed a convention pledging Prussia to Austrias system, a meeting of German ministers was held at Carlsbad, the discussion of which issued in the famous Carlsbad Decrees (October 17, 1819).

The king of WUrttemberg, ever the champion of German particularism, gave expression to his feelings by issuing a new constitution to his kingdom, and appealed to his relative, the emperor Alexander, who had not yet been won over by Metternich to the policy of war ii outrance against reform, and took this occasion to issue a fresh manifesto of his Liberal creed.

At the conference of ministers which met at Vienna, on the 20th of November, for the purpose of developing and completing the Federal Act of the congress of Vienna, Metternich found himself face to face with a more formidable opposition than at Carlsbad.

Metternich realized the situation, and yielded so gracefully that he gave his temporary defeat the air of a victory.

On the vexed question of the interpretation of Article 13 Metternich recognized the inexpediency of requiring the South German states to revise their constitutions in a reactionary sense.

But the governments of Prussia and Austria were unaffected; and when the storm had died down Metternich was able,with the aid of the federal diet, to resume his task of holding the Revolution in check.

But, as Metternich had prophesied, this only provided an organ for giving voice to larger constitutional aspirations.

The effect of the revolution in Vienna, involving the fall of Metternich (May 13) and followed by the nationalist movements in Hungary and Bohemia, was stupendous in Germany.

It was the beginning of that policy of " stability " associated later with Metternich, which was to last till the cataclysm of 1848.

The skilful diplomacy of Metternich, who was now at the head of the Austrian government, enabled Austria to take full advantage of the situation created by the disaster to Napoleon's arms. His object was to recover Austria's lost possessions and if possible to add to them, a policy which did not necessarily involve the complete overthrow of the French emperor.

The result for Austria was a triumphant vindication of Metternich's diplomacy.

Such a body, Metternich held, " powerful for defence, powerless for offence," would form a guarantee of the peace of central Europe - and of the preponderance of Austria; and in its councils Austrian diplomacy, backed by the weight of the Habsburg power beyond the borders of Germany, would exercise a greater influence than any possible prestige derived from a venerable title that had become a by-word for the union of unlimited pretensions with practical impotence.

In order to understand the foreign policy of Austria, inseparably associated with the name of Metternich, during the period from the close of the congress of Vienna to the out- Internal break of the revolutions of 1848, it is necessary to know affairs of something of the internal conditions of the monarchy Austria before and during this time.

Metternich himself was fully conscious of the evil.

This, then, is the explanation of the system of " stability " which Metternich succeeded in imposing for thirty years upon Europe.

For a moment, indeed, Metternich had meditated taking advantage of the popular feeling to throw the weight of Austria into the scale in favour of the Poles, and thus, by re-establishing a Polish kingdom under Austrian influence, to restore the barrier between the two empires which the partition of Poland had destroyed.

In the German provinces also, in spite of Metternich's censors and police, the national movements in Germany had gained an entrance, and, as the revolution of 1848 in Vienna was to show, the most advanced revolutionary views were making headway.

Threatened by the violence of the mob, Metternich, on the evening of the 13th of March, escaped from the Hofburg and passed into exile in England.

The fall of Metternich was the signal for the outburst of the storm, not in Austria only, but throughout central Europe.

For months after the fall of Metternich Austria was practically without a central government.

See further the bibliographies to the articles on Metternich, Gentz, &c. For the latest developments of the " Austrian question " see Andre Cheradame, L'Europe et la question d'Autriche au seuil du XX.

To Metternich he was a madman to be humoured.

From this time dates the ascendancy of Metternich over the mind of the Russian emperor and in the councils of Europe.

Though alarmed by the revolutionary agitation in Germany, which culminated in the murder of his agent, the dramatist Kotzebue, Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of " the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples," as formulated in the Carlsbad decrees, 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support " a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of absolute power."

In the seclusion of the little town of Troppau, where in October of 1820 the powers met in conference, Metternich found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander which had been wanting amid the turmoil and feminine intrigues of Vienna and Aix.

At first, under the careful nursing of Metternich, the former motive prevailed.

Once more in Russia, far from the fascination of Metternich's personality, the immemorial spirit of his people drew him back into itself; and when, in the autumn of 1825, he took his dying empress for change of air to the south of Russia, in order - as all Europe supposed - to place himself at the head of the great army concentrated near the Ottoman frontiers, his language was no longer that of " the peace-maker of Europe," but of the Orthodox tsar determined to take the interests of his people and of his religion "into his own hands."

Opposed to absolutism, Louis took great interest in the work of organizing the Bavarian constitution (1818) and defended it against Metternich and the Carlsbad Decrees (1819); he was also one of the most zealous of the ardent Philhellenes in Germany at the time.

The emperors of Russia and Austria were present in person, and with them were Counts Nesselrode and Capo d'Istria, Metternich and Baron Vincent; Prussia and France were represented by plenipotentiaries.

Metternich was anxious to secure an apparent unanimity of the powers to back the Austrian intervention in Naples, and every device was used to entrap the English representative into subscribing a formula which would have seemed to commit Great Britain to the principles of the other allies.

It is to be noted that this did not involve the obligation of interfering with the ancient constitution of Sicily, which Metternich desired to see remain undisturbed.

Ferdinand to some extent maintained French legislation, but otherwise reorganized the state with Metternich's approval on Bourbon lines; he proclaimed himself king of the Two Sicilies at the congress of Vienna, incorporating Naples and Sicily into one state, and abolished the Sicilian constitution (December 1816).

Austria, too, now that the revolutionary spectres of 1830 had been laid, was reverting to her traditional opposition to Russia in the affairs of the Near East, and Metternich supported Palmerston's proposal of an international conference at Vienna.

Metternich protested against a course which would result, in his opinion, either in a war or a revolution in France; King Leopold enlarged on the wickedness and absurdity of risking a European war for the sake of putting an end to the power of an old man who could have but few years to live; Queen Victoria urged her ministers to come to terms with France and relieve the embarrassments of the "dear King"; and Lord Melbourne, with the majority of the cabinet, was in favour of compromise.

He had hoped that the king would end by granting a constitution, but when that hope failed he meditated seizing Ferdinand, the emperor of Austria, and Metternich, who were expected at Avellino, and thus compelling them to liberate Italy (1819).

On the fall of Napoleon, the emperor of Austria took possession of the vineyard and gave it to Prince Metternich.

In 1806 he was secretary of the embassy in Londo n ., and in 1807 worked with Prince Metternich in the same capacity in Paris.

But his reputation in court circles was increasing; he was appointed a member of the committee for the reform of the criminal law in 1840; and, the same year with a letter of recommendation from Metternich in his pocket, visited England and France, Holland and Belgium, made the acquaintance of Thiers and Heine in Paris, and returned home with an immense and precious store of practical information.

The arbitrary and absolutist government of Prince Metternich rendered all political action impossible in the lands ruled by the house of Habsburg.

After the breach of diplomatic relations with Russia in 1811, Nesselrode returned to St Petersburg by way of Vienna in order to exchange views with Metternich.

By a secret treaty he had bound himself not to advance further in a constitutional direction than Austria should at any time approve; but, though on the whole he acted in accordance with Metternich's policy of preserving the status quo, and maintained with but slight change Murat's laws and administrative system, he took advantage of the situation to abolish the Sicilian constitution, in violation of his oath, and to proclaim the union of the two states into the kingdom of the Two Sicilies (December 12th, 1816).

But, under these circumstances, Metternich had no difficulty in persuading the king to allow an Austrian army to march into Naples "to restore order."

The rigid conservatism that resulted from this attitude served, indeed, a useful purpose in giving weight to Castlereaghs counsels in the European concert; for Metternich at least, wholly occupied with propping up mouldering institutions, could not have worked harmoniously with a minister suspected of an itch for reform.

Then after the battle of Leipzig he deserted the waning fortunes of the French emperor, and by a treaty made with Metternich at Fulda in November 1813 he secured the confirmation of his royal title and of his recent acquisitions of territory,.

At the court of Austria, too, which was accused of having cynically sacrificed the hero, it produced a painful impression, and Metternich, when he visited Paris on the occasion of the marriage of the archduchess Marie Louise to Napoleon, was charged to remonstrate with the emperor.

The Metternich stela (XXXth Dynasty), the finest example of a class of prophylactic stelae generally known by the name of "Horus on the crocodiles," is inscribed with a long text relating the adventures of Isis and Horus in the marshes of the Delta.

Metternich was anxious to summon a European conference to Vienna, with a view to placing Turkey under a collective guarantee.

He at once became the leader of the European revolution; his speech was read aloud in the streets of Vienna to the mob by which Metternich was overthrown (March 13), and when a deputation from the Diet visited Vienna to receive the assent of the emperor to their petition it was Kossuth who received the chief ovation.

Thus he resisted all Metternich's efforts to draw him into his "system"; stoutly maintained the doctrine of non-intervention against the majority of the Powers of the continental alliance; protested at the congress of Troppau against the suggested application of the principle of intervention to the States of the Church; and at Verona joined with Tuscany in procuring the rejection of Metternich's proposal for a central committee, on the model of the Mainz Commission, to discover and punish political offences in Italy.

Metternich had declared that the one thing which had not entered into his calculations was a Liberal pope, only that was an impossibility; still he was much disturbed by Piuss attitude, and tried to stem the revolutionary tide by frightening the princes.

Little reliance can be placed on his subsequent statements (as, for instance, to Metternich in 1810) that the huge preparations at Boulogne and the long naval campaign of Villeneuve were a mere ruse whereby to lure the Austrians into a premature declaration of war.

His actions at this time have been ascribed to righteous indignation against Metternich's double-dealing; and in a long interview at the Marcolini palace at Dresden on the 26th of June he asked the chancellor point blank how much money England had given him for his present conduct.

On the occasion of the Galician outbreak of 1845, when the Ruthenian peasantry massacred some hundreds of Polish landowners, an outbreak generally attributed to the machinations of the Austrian government, Wielopolski wrote his famous Lettre d'un gentilhomme polonais au prince de Metternich (Brussels, 1846), which caused a great sensation at the time, and in which he attempted to prove that the Austrian court was acting in collusion with the Russian in the affair.

Disillusioned and cynical, though clear-sighted as ever, he was henceforth before all things an Austrian, more Austrian on occasion even than Metternich; as, e.g., when, during the final stages of the campaign of 1814, he expressed the hope that Metternich would substitute "Austria" for "Europe" in his diplomacy and - strange advice from the old hater of Napoleon and of France - secure an AustroFrench alliance by maintaining the husband of Marie Louise on the throne of France.

The preoccupation of the sultan with Ali gave their opportunity to the Greeks whose disaffection had long been organized in the great secret society of the Hetaeria Philike, against which Metternich had in vain warned the Ottoman government.

He came boldly to the front in the middle of December as the champion of Saxony; and, as Russia and Prussia were still obstinate, Metternich and Castlereagh demanded the admission of France to the secret council.

The estates, indeed, were summoned in March 1815, but the attempt to devise a constitution broke down; their appeal to the federal diet at Frankfort to call the elector to order in the matter of the debt and the domains came to nothing owing to the intervention of Metternich; and in May 1816 they were dissolved, never to meet again.

To sovereigns whose nerves had been shattered by the vicissitudes of the revolutionary epoch these symptoms were in the highest degree alarming; and Metternich was at pains to exaggerate their significance.

The impotence of the Austrian government in this crisis was due to the necessity of keeping the bulk of the Austrian forces in Italy, where the news of Metternich's fall had also led to a concerted rising against the Habsburg rule (see Italy).

With the memory of Tilsit still fresh in men's minds, it was not unnatural that to cynical men of the world like Metternich he merely seemed to be disguising " under the language of evangelical abnegation " vast and perilous schemes of ambition.

At Aix he came for the first time into intimate contact with Metternich, and the astute Austrian was swift to take advantage of the psychological moment.

But the universal historian Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the specialist historian, tries to prove that the campaign of 1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons were due to other things beside Alexander's will--such as the activity of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte, Chateaubriand, and others.

In a personal interview Metternich offered to take him into the government service.