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Updated: May 27, 2025
What is curious is that Metternich's conduct towards Napoleon while Ambassador had led even such men as Duke Dalberg to believe that he was really so well disposed towards Napoleon as to serve his cause more than that of Austria.
If we may judge from Metternich's statements in his "Memoirs," written many years later, he was all along in secret sympathy with these views. But his actions and his official despatches during the first six weeks of the armistice bore another complexion; they were almost colourless, or rather, they were chameleonic.
Hence, the policy of Metternich's home rule was fatal to all expansion, to all emancipating movements, to all progress, to everything which looked like popular liberty.
The police force allowed nothing to be printed or spoken against the government that was strong to condemn disorder. There were ardent souls longing to fight for the cause of Italy and Liberty. There were secret societies resolving desperate measures. There was discontent everywhere to war with Metternich's distrust of social progress.
This extract from Metternich's Memoirs will serve to show how anxious the Emperor was at this time to spare his wife every form of annoyance: "In the summer of 1810, Napoleon asked me to wait after one of his levees at Saint Cloud. When we were alone, he asked me, with some embarrassment, if I would do him a great favor.
So deep was the Czar's distrust of the Austrian statesman and commander-in-chief that he resolved to brush aside Metternich's diplomatic pourparlers, to push on rapidly to Paris, and there dictate peace. But it was just this eagerness of the Czar and the Prussians to reach Paris which kept alive Austrian fears.
I sang "Suwanee River," "Shoo-fly," and "Good-by, Johnny, come back to your own chickabiddy." Then I sang a song of Prince Metternich's, called, "Bonsoir, Marguerite," which he accompanied. I finished, of course, with "Beware!" which Charles accompanied. The Emperor came up to me and asked, "What does chickabiddy mean?"
Sir Robert Gordon, her Majesty's ambassador, whose unbounded and truly sumptuous hospitalities are worthy of his high position, did me the honour to take me to one of Princess Metternich's receptions, in the apartments of the chancery of state, one side of which is devoted to business, the other to the private residence of the minister.
For this purpose it was considered necessary to revive Metternich's policy of 1820 as defined at Troppau. The three powers had for some time been drawing together, and in September, 1833, the Emperors Francis and Nicholas and the Crown Prince of Prussia met at Münchengrätz in Bohemia, where a secret convention was signed on the 18th.
Finlay's Greece under Ottoman Domination; Leake's Travels in Northern Greece; Gordon's Greek Revolution; Metternich's Memoirs; Howe's Greek Revolution; Mendelssohn's Graf Capo d'Istrias; Ann. Hist. Valentini; Alison's Europe; Fyffe's History of Modern Europe; Müller's Political History of Recent Times.
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