Divine Rights Defender

METTERMCH--H. du Coudray--Yale University. Press ($4.00).

In the period after the Napoleonic Wars, Prince Metternich of Austria became an almost legendary figure as the great defender of absolute monarchy, the subtle, far-reaching, implacable enemy of revolutions wherever they appeared in Europe. Traveling about the continent, he advised the dissolution of athletic societies in Germany as potential revolutionary groups, the suppression of the Carbonari in Italy for the same reason, while his counsel was sought when students rioted, soldiers mutinied, princes conspired. To conservative historians he has been known as the most accomplished defender of the principle of divine right; to liberals he appeared the archenemy of progress, democracy and the rights of man. To his most recent biographer, however, these are among the lesser distinctions of Clement Wenceslas Lothaire Nepomucene Metternich, ranking little higher than his fabulous wit, his great personal charm, his ability to work without seeming to do so. Although Metternich never mentioned it in his memoirs, and described himself as having always been motivated by his hatred of the Jacobins, Author du Coudray says that he used revolutions when they suited his purposes, the fear of them when they helped to keep quarreling kings united.

Since Metternich's career was an almost unbroken series of triumphs after Napoleon's fall until his own, in the Austrian Revolution of 1848, his biography deals principally with intricate diplomatic maneuvers, grows more tedious as it advances. The best pages in Author du Coudray's book consequently cover Metternich's relations with Napoleon, and the Congress of Vienna. Born in Coblentz in 1773, Metternich was educated at Strasbourg a short time after Napoleon. He possessed a practical, precise mind that made him disinterested in diplomacy, interested in science. Leaving his diplomatic apprenticeship in Dresden and Berlin, he was sent to Paris at the age of 33, soon established himself despite the fact that he represented a defeated country and that Austrian aristocrats could scarcely bring themselves to be civil to Napoleon or his ministers. Since Napoleon liked to talk with him, he soon detected two qualities in the Emperor that he afterwards used effectively in dealing with him. The first was that Napoleon was always laying the ground for future action while seeming to be absorbed in immediate affairs. The second was that Napoleon's cynicism and his belief in the limitless corruptibility of human beings was a deep weakness, blinding him to the possibility of an alliance against him that he could not disrupt. Since few aristocrats could conquer their prejudice enough to study the Emperor carefully, Metternich had a great advantage in the negotiations of the allies, soon maneuvered a weak, twice-defeated Austria into a decisive position among European powers.

Although there is little liveliness in Author du Coudray's discussions of the metaphysics of diplomacy, the high point of her book is her account of the Congress of Vienna which cost the Austrian Emperor $30,000,000 and was attended by "five sovereigns, two hundred and sixteen heads of families and a host of lesser princes, ambassadors, envoys and intruders." Fourteen hundred horses were kept for their use. Court dinners were served on 40 tables. An army of secret police spied on the guests, so that every day the Austrians knew what had happened in bedrooms, at luncheons, balls. Wastepaper baskets were searched, letters opened, apartments discreetly raided. Sometimes the spies gave information more useful to biographers than to diplomats.

The great treaty that came out of the Congress, and that fixed the boundaries of Europe along lines that Metternich had envisioned, was "the vastest political document ever drawn up," consisting of 121 articles. Twenty-six secretaries working all day turned out one copy. Yet when the ceremony of signing began another cautious Englishman suddenly got cold feet, insisted on reading the whole treaty, read until midnight, then signed it and "one epoch was closed, another opened."

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