METTERNICH, KLEMENS LOTHAR WENZEL, prince of. — Statesman, born in Coblenz on 15 May 1773, died in Vienna on 11 June 1859. He studied at the University of Strasbourg and at that of Mainz (here the theory of the historian Nicola Vogt influenced his formation, according to which equilibrium governs the destinies of the life of States and of humanity itself). After the French entered Mainz, he went to Brussels, thence to England, and finally to Vienna, where he entered high society.
He began his diplomatic career in 1801 as minister plenipotentiary in Dresden. In 1803 he moved to Berlin, where
his attempt to establish an Austro-Russian-Prussian union directed against France failed. After the Peace of Pressburg (December 1805), he was sent as ambassador to Paris. When M. arrived in the French capital, the pact of the Confederation of the Rhine had already been signed, and, once the Empire had ended, M. remained simply Austria’s ambassador. Instigator of the war of 1809, after Vienna was taken by Napoleonic troops, the battle of Wagram, and the armistice, he withdrew to Hungary with Francis I.
On 7 October M. was appointed head of the State Chancellery and became the principal author of an alliance with France: Austria’s desperate situation drove him to arrange the marriage of Maria Luisa, the Emperor’s daughter, with Napoleon. In the internal life of the State he reorganized the army and finances, centralizing political and administrative organization by establishing the Council of the Empire. At the beginning of the Russian campaign, he granted Napoleon a strong contingent of Austrian troops on condition that the principle of Austria’s neutrality and inviolability be accepted. But in these circumstances M.’s policy was one of waiting, in order “not to risk,” and the group around Archduke John and Giuseppe von Hormayr, which was envisaging a grand anti-Napoleonic uprising, was struck down. After Napoleon evacuated Moscow, the Austrian troops commanded by Prince Schwarzenberg were ordered to withdraw to the frontier of western Galicia. With the refined skill of a diplomat by birth, M. prepared the withdrawal from the compromising alliance with France: thus one passed from the proposal of the famous Austrian “armed mediation” between Napoleon and the Allies to the annulment of the Treaty of 1812. After the English victory in Spain and Bernadotte’s “betrayal,” when he went over to the Allied side, M. became a fervent advocate of the war against Napoleon. On 8 August 1813 Austria sent Napoleon an ultimatum (demanding, among other things, the end of the Confederation of the Rhine, the restoration of Prussia’s former frontiers, etc.), and when this was not accepted, war began on 12 August. Following the defeat at Leipzig (16–18 October 1813), new problems arose in the political and diplomatic arena of Mittel-Europa. Skillfully, M. limited Russia’s political power through a policy of isolation. He initially agreed to the proposal to annex Saxony to Prussia, provided that Prussia opposed Russian designs on Poland. He linked his policy to that of the Englishman Lord Castlereagh.
With Napoleon’s star having set, M. was among the principal architects, at the Congress of Vienna (v. VIENNE, CONGRESSES of), of the “reorganization” of Europe according to that policy of equilibrium and that “paternalism” in which old Enlightenment ideals and new “organicist” demands converged—demands that regarded tradition not as dead weight but as something capable of being revitalized on the ethical and political plane. On the technical-diplomatic level, M.’s directives centered on Austrian penetration into Italy, which was to keep the political situation stable and constituted one of the cornerstones of the “European concert.” His resolute opposition to liberalism, or more simply to any movement of the political-diplomatic “needle of the balance,” was confirmed by Metternich’s policy at the Congresses of Aachen, Troppau, Laibach, and Verona. M. suffered a considerable setback, which he attributed to the triumph of the detested “liberalism,” over the question of Greek independence, where he found himself opposed by his allies, Tsar Alexander and the English prime minister Canning. Despite his alliance with the Russian minister Nesselrode, in order to avoid worse evils he proceeded to accept the July Revolution of 1830 (Louis Philippe was recognized by Austria as King of the French). M. obtained at least a political-diplomatic revenge by suppressing the revolts in Italy in 1831 and by once again binding Germany to Austria (Diet of Frankfurt, 1832; Vienna Conference, 1834). Faced with the Viennese revolt of March 1848, and unable, because of the opposition of the court, to suppress the movement in bloodshed, he resigned and withdrew to London.
From England and Belgium he kept himself informed of the situation in continental Europe, unable to understand
those things that he regarded as the “follies” of liberalism. He was able to return to Vienna in September 1851. Always consistent in his opposition to the idea of nationality, even in 1859 he regarded the Italian question as a “specter.” As for ecclesiastical policy, from the time of the Restoration M. had convened a ministerial conference for the conclusion of a concordat with the Holy See and for the revision of the right of regalia over the Church:
but because of the persistent Viennese Josephinism, nothing concrete was achieved; it was possible, however, in 1818 to conclude an agreement with the Holy See concerning religious affairs in Venetia. In 1814 supervision of primary and religious education, as well as censorship, was entrusted to the bishops. In 1822 they were restored to supervision over theological education and to the appointment of examination commissioners. In 1855 M. supported the Concordat concluded by Francis Joseph with the Holy See.