PRINCE VON METTERNICH MOST RENOWNED OF AUSTRIAN DIPLOMATS, THE REAL RULER OF EUROPE FOR OVER THIRTY YEARS 1773-1859 (INTRODUCTORY NOTE) Clemens von Metternich was the Austrian statesman who organized all Europe against Napoleon in 1813 and so brought about the downfall of the great French empire. It was also Metternich who chiefly directed the rearrangement of Europe in 1815, and who then, as the champion of autocracy against democracy, suppressed the uprisings of the common people everywhere through Europe. Under Metternich's shrewd guidance Austria thus became the chief state of Europe during the reactionary period between 1815 and 1848; and when in the latter year the peoples everywhere burst into revolt, Metternich had to flee from Vienna for his life. In the period of less autocratic government that followed, the aged Metternich took no part. Civilization had swept beyond the control of his diplomatic cleverness. It is obvious that the account of his own life, from the pen of this the most prominent man of his period, must be a work of enormous value. It was most carefully prepared by him in the years between 1815 and 1844, and was entrusted to his son to be published after his death. It deals mainly with the period of his early successes and his great triumph · against Napoleon, the theme upon which in his old age of retirement the rejected diplomat naturally loved best to dwell. It was for his successes of 1813 that Metternich was made a Prince of the Austrian Empire. His family had always been among the aristocracy of the empire; and his sovereign had long before accepted him as the chief guide of the state. It was Metternich who arranged the marriage of Napoleon to the Austrian Princess, Maria Louise. He thus, among all the haughty Austrians, saw most clearly the necessity of compromise in order to save Austria. He made the proudest court in Europe bow humbly before the French "upstart" until the hour arrived when resistance might be successful. MEMOIRS OF METTERNICH I DEPOSIT this manuscript in the archives of my family, and I am led to do so by the following considerations: My life belongs to the time in which it has passed. That time is an epoch in the history of the world; it was a period of transition! In such periods the older edifice is already destroyed, though the new is not yet in existence; it has to be reared, and the men of the time build it. Architects present themselves on all sides: not one, however, is permitted to see the work concluded; for that, the life of man is too short. Happy the man who can say of himself that he has not run counter to Eternal Laws. This testimony my conscience does not deny me. I leave to those who come after me not a finished work, but a clew to guide them to the truth of what I intended and what I did not intend. Mindful of my duty to the State, I have inserted in this manuscript nothing belonging to its secrets; but many things which ought to be known, and which ought not to remain in obscurity. I have especially desired to render a last service, the greatest I can render, to the dead: to make known, as he was, the Emperor Francis I., who in his last will has conferred on me the title of his best friend. My life was full of action in a time of rapidly moving events. This narrative shows that from my earliest youth to the thirty-sixth year of a laborious ministry, when I write these lines, I have not lived one hour to myself. A spectator of the order of things before the Revolution in French society, and an observer of or a participator in all the circumstances, which accompanied and followed the overthrow of that order, of all my contemporaries I now stand alone on the lofty stage on which neither my will nor my inclination placed me. I acknowledge, therefore, the right and the duty to point out to my descendants, the course by which alone the conscientious man can withstand the storms of time. This course I have indicated by the motto I have chosen as the symbol of my conviction, for myself and my descendants: "TRUE STRENGTH LIES IN RIGHT"; save this, all is transitory. |