Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (5 page)

Talleyrand looked like he had stepped right out of an eighteenth-century salon, complete with silk stockings, tight knee breeches, diamond buckled shoes, and velvet coats, often in purple, scarlet, or apple green. His starched satin cravat was impeccably tied, and the lace at the end of his cuffs exquisite. His movements were slow and deliberate, as he dragged his lame right foot across the floor. He was known for his elegance, his sophistication, and his immense charm. “If Talleyrand’s conversation could be purchased,” one admirer said, “I would gladly go into bankruptcy.”

But in many ways the limping French minister was the ultimate survivor. In the previous thirty years, he had served everyone from the Church to the Revolution, the upstart Bonaparte to the restored Bourbon king, Louis XVIII. He certainly had an uncanny ability to make himself indispensable, and he also had a way of leaving his mark on every regime that he had served.

Indeed, some in Vienna had never forgiven Talleyrand for his past. He had been a witty and worldly priest who had left a trail of admirers, lovers, and, in some cases, even illegitimate children (including probably the romantic painter Eugène Delacroix). He had scandalized further when, after his consecration as bishop of Autun, he had resigned, and even married. His bride, the beautiful Catherine Grand, had also had a notorious past; it was, as some wits quipped, the former bishop who married the former courtesan.

Additionally, Talleyrand was notorious for having turned his position in the foreign ministry into a highly lucrative enterprise. He routinely collected diamond rings and large payments for his services—gifts, bribes, “user’s fees,” or whatever one wanted to call them. When France sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803, for example, Talleyrand had personally pocketed as much as one-third of President Thomas Jefferson’s $15 million purchase price.

What troubled his Vienna colleagues most, of course, was not his financial affairs, his romantic liaisons, or even his string of broken oaths. It was instead his relationship with Napoleon. It was Talleyrand, after all, who had helped mastermind Napoleon’s seizure of power in the coup of 1799. It was Talleyrand, too, who had helped guide the young, inexperienced, and tactless general through the quagmire of French politics. “Talleyrand is an extraordinarily intelligent man,” Napoleon once acknowledged. “He gives me excellent advice.”

But it was also Talleyrand who, as everyone knew, had helped bring down Napoleon. By 1805, Talleyrand had realized that the general’s many military triumphs had clouded his judgment and rendered him incapable of listening to advice. Again and again, Talleyrand had protested against Napoleon’s actions—his blind aggression, his harsh authoritarian rule, and his appalling humiliation of conquered peoples. Repeatedly, Talleyrand had pressed in vain for a more just and humane approach that, he argued, would also better serve France’s national interests. By August 1807, Talleyrand had had enough. “I do not wish to become the executioner of Europe,” he said, and resigned from office.

Talleyrand had come to realize that Napoleon, despite all his raw charisma, was a frightening figure with an inability to stop waging war. Napoleon had come to power illegitimately, and he could only maintain his authority by extraordinary measures, or, in his case, by waging constant warfare. If France or Europe were ever to know peace any time soon, Napoleon would simply have to be stopped. Of course, with a tyrant, legal opposition was out of the question, and the only effective means of resistance, Talleyrand concluded, was to help Napoleon’s enemies. Indeed, over the next few years, he would do just that.

Most prominently, Talleyrand had sent a secret message back in the spring of 1814 to Allied supreme headquarters, encouraging its hesitant leaders to march on Paris at once. Napoleon’s regime was tottering, he said, and this was the time to act: “You are walking on crutches, when you should be running.” The note, written with his invisible ink and smuggled by an accomplice through the war zone, arrived at the Allied camp at just the right time. Tsar Alexander ordered the army to march, and within a few days, they had captured Napoleon’s capital. For Bonapartists, Talleyrand’s action was treason. For others, it was a heroic act that saved many lives.

Now, in the autumn of 1814, Talleyrand’s arrival in Vienna was causing some concern. To be sure, few diplomats at the congress had not applauded Talleyrand for his services to the Allied cause, and most wanted the newly restored king of France, Louis XVIII, to succeed. But at the same time, many remembered the French minister’s checkered past and showed a marked reluctance to deal with him too closely. Talleyrand was a “double-edged sword,” Metternich warned; “it was extremely dangerous to toy with him.” He was a master of manipulation, a helpful friend who might also turn into a dangerous foe. France’s delegate must be treated with great caution.

Chapter 3

I
LLUSTRIOUS
S
TRANGERS

That’s right, those poor kings ought to have a holiday.

—P
RINCE DE
L
IGNE

I
n the late morning of September 25, while church bells clanged and cannons thundered, crowds poured onto the streets and peered out of upper-story windows with great excitement for the arrival of Vienna’s most anticipated guest: the Russian tsar Alexander. He was celebrated as a modern Alexander the Great. If Napoleon had been the “Conqueror of Europe,” then Alexander was enjoying his reputation as the foremost conqueror of the Conqueror of Europe. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and the burning of Moscow had set his soul on fire, the tsar said to awestruck audiences. Arriving in Vienna, Alexander was ready for the time of his life.

Evidently, the Festivals Committee had been eager to welcome the tsar. That morning, at dawn, cannons had woken the town with news that Alexander had just departed from a nearby village and would arrive in Vienna in just over two hours. How ridiculous this salute was, Metternich noted; it just proved “that nobody has any common sense any more, for never did anyone wake up a whole city with cannon shots to inform them that a sovereign is still forty leagues away.”

The weather was beautiful that morning, sunny and warm with a light breeze. The timing was also good, as the tsar’s arrival fell on a Sunday, when a large part of the town could turn out to watch the spectacle. Obviously, the crowds were anxious to see the famous tsar in person, and this was particularly the case for many younger women, who adored him like “maniacs at full moon.”

The tsar, riding on a white Lipizzaner stallion trained in the Austrian emperor’s stables, tipped his hat and waved his large hand, looking and acting like someone accustomed to the cheering crowds. Witty, handsome, and urbane, he stood about six feet tall. Wavy light-brown hair curled around the top of his high forehead, and thick whiskers wrapped around his face. He had a straight nose, a small mouth, very white teeth, and the blue eyes of his grandmother, Catherine the Great. Alexander’s cheeks were so rosy that they were often confused with a blush.

Riding at his side on another white stallion was the king of Prussia, Frederick William III, a forty-four-year-old man with dark brown hair and eyes as blue as his uniform. The two were entering Vienna together, just as they had entered Paris in triumph at the end of the war. They were joined by a third monarch, the host, Emperor Francis of Austria, who had ridden through town and crossed the Tabor Bridge to greet his guests.

It was certainly a grand entrance into the emperor’s capital. The three victorious monarchs were followed by archdukes, generals, former princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and an escort of soldiers that sported a dazzling array of uniforms from the Napoleonic Wars. The procession passed under the chestnut trees of the Prater, through the Red Tower Gate in the northeast, and then along the narrow streets of the town, ending about an hour later in one of the inner courtyards of the imperial palace. The parade was full of “brilliance and pomp,” one police agent in the crowds noted. “Perfect order,” he added. “No incident or accident to report.”

Later that morning, the tsar and the king of Prussia sat down to a large formal breakfast at the palace, joined by the king of Denmark, the king of Württemberg, and the emperor of Austria. Only the king of Bavaria, who would arrive three days later, was absent. It was rare to see so many monarchs together at the same table—a sight that would soon be almost commonplace in Vienna that autumn.

T
SAR
A
LEXANDER WAS
, in many ways, one of the most puzzling and complex figures at the congress. On one hand, he was praised by Thomas Jefferson as a beacon of enlightenment: “A more virtuous man, I believe, does not exist, nor one who is more enthusiastically devoted to better the condition of mankind.” Others thought this saint was really a terrible sinner with blood on his hands.

Alexander had grown up in difficult and rather unusual circumstances. His grandmother, Catherine the Great, had fawned on him as her obvious favorite. He was raised in the spirit of the enlightenment, with an upbringing that emphasized the importance of reason, liberty, the happiness of the people, and the value of a written constitution. This education was somewhat strange, some thought, for an apprentice tsar who would one day rule over one of the most autocratic realms on earth.

Catherine’s indulgence and obvious preference for her grandson displeased Alexander’s father, Catherine’s own son and successor, Grand Duke Paul. Intensely jealous by nature, Paul reacted to his rival in his own brutally simple way. He took every opportunity to humiliate his son, and the abuse was mental as well as physical. When Paul became tsar in 1796 (despite Catherine’s direct orders to pass the throne to her grandson), life had not gotten any easier for Alexander. Paul’s unpredictable outbursts of cruelty gave him the name “the mad tsar” and the bullying only ended in March 1801, when he was violently murdered. A gang of conspirators, including a commander of the elite guard, the Semeonovsky Regiment, stormed the castle, forced their way into the tsar’s rooms, and strangled him to death.

It was this murder that placed the young, idealistic Alexander on the throne. The twenty-three-year-old’s role in the assassination has long been debated. Some contemporaries, as well as historians, have accused him of outright complicity; others have suggested that he knew of the plot, though made no attempt to prevent it. He certainly did not prosecute or punish the murderers, many of whom would later be at his side. At the very least, Alexander was severely shaken, burdened with a sense of guilt that, by all accounts, only grew worse. He would long be tortured in his sleep, hearing his father’s awful screams over and over in his head.

His marriage was not a source of comfort, either. Alexander was married unhappily to Elizabeth of Baden, a German princess with ash blonde hair and sparkling eyes, who was described by one as “certainly one of the most beautiful women in the world.” The two looked like angels together—Cupid and Psyche, Catherine the Great had said. But they were not well matched, and ended up living almost separate lives. Elizabeth, for her part, was stuck in a foreign country, feeling, as she put it, “alone, alone, absolutely alone.”

Both were certainly having affairs on each other: the tsar with his mistress, Maria Narishkiva, and some speculated even his sister, Grand Duchess Catherine; and Elizabeth with a number of people, ranging from soldiers to a certain “ambiguous intimacy” with a lovely countess. Empress Elizabeth also had an affair with one of the tsar’s advisers, Prince Adam Czartoryski, the Polish patriot who had come to Russia as a hostage after the destruction of Poland and won Alexander’s trust. The tsar, however, never seemed disturbed by his wife’s relationship with his adviser, and in fact, by most accounts, encouraged it as only fair, given the liberties he was taking himself.

When Alexander came to Vienna for the peace conference, he had ruled for thirteen taxing years. During this time, Russia had been invaded by Napoleon and well over six hundred thousand troops, at that time the largest army the world had ever seen. Villages had been destroyed, the countryside devastated, several hundred thousand people killed, and the city of Moscow burned to the ground. Surely Russia should be compensated for its sacrifices in the war against Napoleon. At the very least, its concerns should not be ignored. Under no circumstances would the tsar compromise on an issue as important to him as Poland.