Prince Metternich

Prince Metternich

Introduction

Prince Klemens Von Metternich was born in Koblenz, Germany on May 15, 1773. He was the son of Count Georg, the Austrian envoy of the Count of Vienna at Koblenz,- and Maria Beatrix, nee Countess Von Kageneck. The French revolutionary wars were going on at the time of his childhood. This affair forced Metternich and his family to disappear from Germany to Austria in 1794. Prince Klemens Von Metternich is known today for being a remarkable diplomat and also creating The German Federation under Austrian Leadership. Metternich's major impact on the world was that he helped to bring Germany together as one nation and not just a cluster of principalities.

Prince Clement Wenceslas Lothair von Metternich, chancellor and foreign minister of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, was the longest-serving first minister in the nineteenth century and, arguably, one of the most successful. And yet in terms of the numbers of A-Level students writing essays about him he is a long way down the historical hit parade, trailing after such apparently more exciting figures as Napoleon, Bismarck, Cavour, Gladstone, Lenin, Stalin and of course Hitler. So why does Metternich lack pulling power? The answer I feel lies in the fact that no one is quite sure how to interpret Metternich. He is often associated with reconstructing the ancien régime after the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras but he is also seen as the man who was destroyed by the revolutions of 1848.

Discussion

When Metternich was first appointed foreign minister in 1809 the Habsburg Empire was at its lowest point in its struggle against Napoleon. The French leader had forced the Empire out of its northern Italian territories, taken over the Austrian Netherlands and subsumed the Habsburg parts of Poland into the Duchy of Warsaw. Habsburg domination of Germany had also been smashed as a result of the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. This was a particularly powerful psychological blow to the dynasty's sense of self worth: the Habsburgs had been Holy Roman Emperors for almost all of the previous 400 years and suddenly it no longer existed. To add insult to injury, this particular act of Napoleonic modernisation changed the title of the Habsburg Emperor from Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, to Francis I, Emperor of the remaining Habsburg dominions(Henry 1968). One of the few times in history that a monarch has been devalued.

For a short period around 1809 the complete collapse of the Habsburg Empire seemed a possibility. In that year Metternich was appointed foreign minister and, within a few years, he had pulled the Empire back from the brink of possible extinction. In short, Metternich used his diplomatic skills to outgeneral Napoleon. In 1810 he persuaded the Habsburg Emperor, Francis I, to ally with Napoleon. When it became clear that the French leader was not prepared to settle down and play the part of an old-fashioned absolute monarch he turned against him and joined the Fourth Coalition, which eventually defeated France.

But Metternich's greatest triumph was still to ...