Polish Plans Metternich example essay topic

After Austria was crushed by Napoleon in 1809, Metternich was created Austria's Foreign Minister, and replaced Johann Philipp von Stadion. He pursued a pro-French policy, going so far as to manage the marriage of Napoleon to Marie-Louise, Emperor Francis's daughter. Following Napoleon's defeat in Russia in 1812, Metternich turned to a policy of neutrality, and attempted to make peace between Napoleon and his Russian and Prussian enemies. In June 1813 he famously met with Napoleon at Dresden, and by his own account came away telling the intolerant Emperor that he was lost. Soon after, mediation having failed, Metternich brought Austria into the war against France. As the war came towards its conclusion in the spring of 1814, Metternich quickly came to the conclusion that no peace with Napoleon was possible, and abandoning ideas of a Bonapartist regency under Marie Louise, came to support a Bourbon restoration, which brought him closer to Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary.

Metternich was one of the principal negotiators at the Congress of Vienna. During this period, Metternich came to have a bitter personal hate with Tsar Alexander I of Russia, whose Polish plans Metternich deeply feared, and who competed with the womanizing Metternich for the affections of the beautiful Wilhelmina von Sagan. Metternich's attempts to form a united front with Viscount Castlereagh and Hardenberg, the Prussian chancellor, to oppose Alexander's plans for a constitutional Kingdom of Poland under his own rule, came to nothing due to Prussia's unwillingness to stand up to Alexander. Metternich then shocked the Prussians by signing an alliance with Castlereagh and Talleyrand, the French ambassador, on January 3, 1815, to prevent Prussian takeover of Saxony, which was to be Prussia's payment for giving up Polish land to Alexander. While this was successful in saving the King of Saxony, Alexander managed to get most of what he wanted in Poland. At the same time, Metternich worked hard in negotiations with Prussia, Hanover, Bavaria, and Wurttemberg to resolve the organization of Germany, and the Germanic Confederation that resulted bore much of the stamp of Metternich's ideas.

Metternich's most notable achievement in the years that followed the Congress was his conversion of the Tsar, who had seen himself as a protector of liberalism, to the protection of the old order, which culminated by the Tsar's decision at the Congress of Trop pau in 1820, when the Tsar agreed to Metternich's termination of a Neapolitan rebellion and refused to aid Greek rebels against the Ottoman Empire. Over the succeeding decades, Metternich came to be seen as a rigid protector of the rights of Kings and Emperors in this era of rising democratic attitudes, and had a free hand in conducting the Austrian Empire's foreign affairs for some 30 years, especially after Emperor Francis's death in 1835, when his son Ferdinand took the throne. The Revolutions of 1848, however, marked the end of his rule. Mobs in Vienna demanded his resignation, and he did so on March 13th. Metternich and his third wife had to flee to England. Although they returned three years later, and Metternich, although never resuming office, became a close personal advisor to Emperor Franz Joseph.

He died in Vienna. Metternich's conservative views regarding the nature of the state influenced the outcome of the Congress of Vienna. He believed that since the people have become acquainted with the old institutions, national revolutions such as those in France and Greece are illegitimate. The Legitimacy Principle played a vital role in the placing of ancient states such as the Papal States in Italy, and the renewal of the Bourbon monarchy in France under Louis XV. Through the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, Metternich introduced policing in universities to keep a watch on the activities of professors and students, whom he held responsible for the spread of radical liberal ideas.

Considered an unreliable liar and an romantic amateur by many of his contemporaries, Metternich has earned the admiration of succeeding generations for his deft management of foreign policy, although his rigid domestic policies still remain controversial.