Metternich’s German Policy, Volume I: The Contest with Napoleon, 1799-1814 PDF
Preview Metternich’s German Policy, Volume I: The Contest with Napoleon, 1799-1814
METTERNICH'S GERMAN POLICY VOLUME I: THE CONTEST WITH NAPOLEON, 1799-1814 METTERNICH'S GERMAN POLICY VOLUME I: THE CONTEST WITH NAPOLEON, 1799-1814 BY ENNO E. KRAEHE PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS !963 Copyright © 1963 by Princeton University Press All Rights Reserved L.C. Card: 63-9994 Publication of this book has been aided by the Ford Foundation Program to support publication, through university presses, of works in the humanities and social sciences. Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, N.Y. PREFACE This volume is not an effort to explain the origins of Nazism or to solve today's diplomatic problems through the lessons of "Professor" Metternich. Those lessons may have some value for us; but they were not the reason for writing this book. Actually the study grew out of an investigation of the German Confederation. That an enterprise which started out to describe the historical development of an institution became instead an account of the German policy of Austria's great foreign minister is due to two considerations. One was the dis covery that much detailed research on many special topics needs to be done before a balanced history of the Confederation can be written. The other was the realization that the description of an institution tends to impute ontological reality to super- personal entities and to make the values of the historian more important than the values of the human components of the institution. Examining the German Confederation within the categories of state versus nation, disunity versus unity, and reaction versus liberal reform, I discovered that I was pur suing issues that were somewhat remote from those that occu pied Metternich, Stein, Hardenberg, and the other practicing statesmen of the time. An understanding of their ambitions and motives is a precondition for an objective history of the Ger man Confederation, and since Mettemich's role in the Confed eration was paramount, the investigation led to him. At first it appeared sufficient to begin with the Congress of Vienna, where the Confederation was founded. Further inves tigation, however, disclosed in Mettemich's German policy such a continuity with the period of the French Revolution and Na poleon that an earlier start was indicated. The present volume, which centers on Mettemich's contest with Napoleon, is the result. A second volume will follow, dealing with the years from 1814 to 1820 and stressing the contest with Alexander of Russia. The need for a study of Mettemich's German policy after the Congress of Vienna has long been felt. (See A. O. Meyer, "Der Streit um Metternich," Historische Zeitschrift, CLVII 1^937]' 75-84; and Paul W. Schroeder, "Metternich Studies vii PREFACE Since 1925," Journal of Modern History, xxxm [1961], 259.) By contrast, much of the ground covered in the present volume has been treated before. Yet the literature of the Napoleonic era has dealt only haphazardly with Metternich's German pol icy, allowing the subject to fall between general diplomatic histories and specialized monographs on minute points. For all Metternich's renown as a diplomat, neither his diplomacy as a whole nor broad regional aspects of it have been so carefully treated as is true, for example, of Napoleon or Castlereagh. An excellent beginning was made toward the end of the last cen tury when the European archives for this period were opened, enabling such dispassionate pioneers as Adolf Beer, Eduard Wertheimer, August Fournier, Wilhelm Oncken, and Fedor von Demelitsch to produce monographs and publish documents which even today remain the basis of investigation. But death carried off the older men and the first world war interrupted the work of the others. The war did more: it plunged the history of the nineteenth century into the political and ideological disputes of the twen tieth. Thus Viltor Bibl, in his Metternich, der Damon Oster- reichs (Vienna, 1936), instead of reflecting the objectivity or dinarily to be expected with the passage of time, returned to the older practice of blaming Metternich for every mishap of Austria, including the catastrophe of 1918—just as many Ger man writers began to blame Bismarck for the collapse of Ger many. Heinrich Ritter von Srbik, the successor to Fournier at the University of Vienna, constructively revised our notions of Metternich's political and social values but diverted attention from his diplomacy to his philosophy. Later, Srbik played a leading role in entangling Metternich studies in the revival of the grossdeutsch-kleindeutsch controversy from which they had earlier been on the verge of rescue. As far as historical scholar ship is concerned, the grossdeutsch doctrines popular in Nazi Germany provided a desirable antidote to the Prussia-centered emphasis of an earlier day and, in moderate hands, inspired a good many useful monographs and source collections we would not otherwise have had. Nevertheless, the polemical tone of this literature and its tendency to read twentieth-century interests viii PREFACE into the world of Metternich have left unfulfilled the promise of Fournier's generation. Taken as a whole, the literature bearing directly and in directly on Metternich's German policy in the Napoleonic era is enormous and on some topics exhaustive. In this volume therefore it has been neither necessary nor physically possible to utilize unpublished sources throughout. The several chapters relating to Metternich's role in the war of 1809 are based pri marily on records in the Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, but otherwise I have found the published documents and litera ture adequate—in contrast to volume two, where the situation will be reversed. This is not to say that the problem was simply one of putting the pieces together as in a jigsaw puzzle. On the contrary, as the larger picture emerged, it often revealed shapes and colors not apparent in the specialized studies. As a result, although I have gratefully made use of the facts unearthed by others, I have fre quently been compelled to correct the arrangement of them. My method—insofar as I have stressed anything beyond the usual canons of historical scholarship—has been to maintain, within the bounds of intelligibility, a conscious and scrupulous attention to chronology, and this in turn has led to a predom inantly narrative presentation. That this procedure is any the less analytical, however, I would deny. The truth is that an abstract analysis which cannot be expressed in narrative form— which is never retested against the sequence of events it purports to explain—is more apt to satisfy the intellect of the historian than the facts of history. The important thing is that the narra tive take into account not merely external deeds but also in ternal events, the mental states of the principals. This note is offered as a long-overdue explanation to the many friends, colleagues, employers, and benefactors who in recent years have discreetly ceased to inquire about my progress. To them collectively I extend thanks for patience and interest. In particular, however, I am happy to register at last my gratitude for a Fulbright research grant to Austria for the year 1952-1953 and for a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in 1960-1961, which enabled me to complete my research in IX
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