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Metternich : Councillor of Europe
As a man Metternich emerges as very different from the austere figure of popular imagination. Worldly, urbane and witty, he was a connoisseur of good living and enjoyed a sequence of scandalous love affairs and as much at home in Paris as Vienna.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Alan Warwick Palmer
94 books24 followersAuthor also writes under Alan Palmer
Alan Palmer was Head of the History Department at Highgate School from 1953 to 1969, when he gave up his post to concentrate on historical writing and research.
Alan Palmer was Head of the History Department at Highgate School from 1953 to 1969, when he gave up his post to concentrate on historical writing and research.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 29, 2017
The stated goal of Alan Palmer is to defend the reputation of Clement von Metternich's whose name conjures up images of courageous partisans of liberty in some corner of the Austrian Empire suffering in dank dungeons awaiting execution. Indeed it is well known that Beethoven as he was composing Fidelio and Puccini as he was composing Tosca was thinking of Metternich who for fifty years fought with all his energy against democracy and freedom of expression. Metternich was no less hated by writers than by opera composers. Alexandre Dumas, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Stendhal, Lord Byron and William Wordsworth are among the many nineteenth century literary figures to have excoriated the nefarious Metternich. In the big picture, the artists and poets are right about Metternich who was indeed a terrible foe of what is now generally considered to be political progress.
What Palmer does is to show the tremendous intelligence, finesse, diplomat skill and tenacity that Metternich possessed in is lifelong struggle to preserve the domination of aristocracy in European politics. Thus instead of denouncing Metternich for opening the mail of diplomats, student leaders and liberal politicians, Palmer praises Metternich for how he used the information that he gathered in this manner. Skill is necessary after all to determine what can or cannot be believed. Even more skill is required in order to determine what measures should be taken.
By any standards, Palmer brushes rather lightly over the savage methods of repression used by Metternich. Palmer's justification would be that there is virtually no documentary evidence to link Metternich to the abuses. We know that Metternich scrupulously reviewed any letters that he had purloined mail due to the memoranda that he drafted about them. However, there is nothing in his correspondence or diaries about who was detained or what the conditions were like in any of the many prisons in the Austrian empire none of which he would have ever visited.
One example of Palmer's disingenuousness that struck me was his treatment of the 1846 Revolt in Galicia fomented by nationalist among the Polish nobility. One response taken by the Austrian authorities during this period was to pay a bounty to any Polish peasant who would deliver to them the severed head of a Polish head. According to the legend in Poland, it was Metternich who ordered the bounties. If indeed this was case, Metternich left no paper trace. Thus Palmer is able to write based on the available evidence, that Metternich regretted the abuses committed by Austrian officials in Galicia as they suppressed putting down the revolt.
Despite my reserves, about what Palmer chooses to omit or sweep under the carpet, there is no question that what Palmer does set out to do, he does well. For example his examination of Metternich's Congress system whereby the political leaders of England, France, Prussia, Russia and Austria met at regular intervals during the 1820s and 1830s to manage crises that threatened European peace or dynastic stability is masterful.
It was Metternich's firm belief that monarchs must rule as autocrats with absolutely no sharing of power with the middle classes. In Metternich's view, the middle classes were impossible to satisfy. The more power you would give them, the more they would demand until they would usurp the legitimate monarch. Once in power they would fall victims to their own incompetence in government and the unrealistic expectations that they would have stirred up in the masses in their struggles with the king. Thus the middle class or bourgeois government would fall to mob rule. A strong man like Napoleon would be needed to restore order and hopefully restore power to the rightful royal dynasty. Given this world outlook, Metternich wanted the ruling monarchs to meet in regular councils to resolve differences among themselves. They were act together to prevent any of their number from being other thrown by liberal democratic forces. Above all they were to abstain from supporting democratic movements in the territories of their fellow monarchs in hopes of seizing territories from their royal peers.
Metternich's approach to suppressing liberal democratic reform worked quite well up until the catastrophic events of World War I which saw the fall of the Habsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov empires in Central Europe. One can only wonder in retrospect if these regimes might have made a peaceful transition to democracy if they had not so ruthlessly suppressed all opposition for the roughly one hundred years that followed the Napoleonic wars.
Palmer's book is well worth the read. Readers looking for a more critical review of Metternich should consult: Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789-1848 by Adam Zamoyski.
What Palmer does is to show the tremendous intelligence, finesse, diplomat skill and tenacity that Metternich possessed in is lifelong struggle to preserve the domination of aristocracy in European politics. Thus instead of denouncing Metternich for opening the mail of diplomats, student leaders and liberal politicians, Palmer praises Metternich for how he used the information that he gathered in this manner. Skill is necessary after all to determine what can or cannot be believed. Even more skill is required in order to determine what measures should be taken.
By any standards, Palmer brushes rather lightly over the savage methods of repression used by Metternich. Palmer's justification would be that there is virtually no documentary evidence to link Metternich to the abuses. We know that Metternich scrupulously reviewed any letters that he had purloined mail due to the memoranda that he drafted about them. However, there is nothing in his correspondence or diaries about who was detained or what the conditions were like in any of the many prisons in the Austrian empire none of which he would have ever visited.
One example of Palmer's disingenuousness that struck me was his treatment of the 1846 Revolt in Galicia fomented by nationalist among the Polish nobility. One response taken by the Austrian authorities during this period was to pay a bounty to any Polish peasant who would deliver to them the severed head of a Polish head. According to the legend in Poland, it was Metternich who ordered the bounties. If indeed this was case, Metternich left no paper trace. Thus Palmer is able to write based on the available evidence, that Metternich regretted the abuses committed by Austrian officials in Galicia as they suppressed putting down the revolt.
Despite my reserves, about what Palmer chooses to omit or sweep under the carpet, there is no question that what Palmer does set out to do, he does well. For example his examination of Metternich's Congress system whereby the political leaders of England, France, Prussia, Russia and Austria met at regular intervals during the 1820s and 1830s to manage crises that threatened European peace or dynastic stability is masterful.
It was Metternich's firm belief that monarchs must rule as autocrats with absolutely no sharing of power with the middle classes. In Metternich's view, the middle classes were impossible to satisfy. The more power you would give them, the more they would demand until they would usurp the legitimate monarch. Once in power they would fall victims to their own incompetence in government and the unrealistic expectations that they would have stirred up in the masses in their struggles with the king. Thus the middle class or bourgeois government would fall to mob rule. A strong man like Napoleon would be needed to restore order and hopefully restore power to the rightful royal dynasty. Given this world outlook, Metternich wanted the ruling monarchs to meet in regular councils to resolve differences among themselves. They were act together to prevent any of their number from being other thrown by liberal democratic forces. Above all they were to abstain from supporting democratic movements in the territories of their fellow monarchs in hopes of seizing territories from their royal peers.
Metternich's approach to suppressing liberal democratic reform worked quite well up until the catastrophic events of World War I which saw the fall of the Habsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov empires in Central Europe. One can only wonder in retrospect if these regimes might have made a peaceful transition to democracy if they had not so ruthlessly suppressed all opposition for the roughly one hundred years that followed the Napoleonic wars.
Palmer's book is well worth the read. Readers looking for a more critical review of Metternich should consult: Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789-1848 by Adam Zamoyski.
October 30, 2015
A long-reaching biography of one of the great statesmen of Europe, spanning the age of Napoleon and the coming of Italian independence. A great "tell-all" account of a man who lived long enough to know pretty much everyone on the Who's Who list in Europe for the better part of a century. A bit turgid and haughty in tone at times - not unlike the Chancellor himself - it was well worth the read.
June 11, 2021
The book was well written but I found its endless commentary on political events rather laborsome. I had originally purchased this book because I wanted to know more about Metternich's mindset. I was especially enthralled by my initial reading of him, his system, and the vast intelligence apparatus that he had personally set up. I felt this book did not cover much of those elements with the author choosing to focus on a much broader view of the man's life.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews