By Paul W. Schroeder
What Metiernich sought after on the height of his occupation, why he sought after it, and the equipment wherein he completed his objectives are questions brilliantly replied during this survey and research of the Austrian chancellor's international relations through the interval while he was once the pre-eminent determine in ecu politics.
Metternich's single-minded goal in the course of 1820–1823 used to be to maintain the Austrian hegemony he had won in imperative Europe after lengthy wars, huge, immense attempt, and nice sacrifice. If the interior defense and international-power place secured via Austria on the Congress of Vienna have been to be defended opposed to the impression of common revolution in Europe, it was once primary that peace in Europe and the established order be maintained. This required an unyielding competition to all political pursuits that would disturb the equilibrium, specially French chauvinism and the unfold of French constitutional ideas.
A one-man distillate of the doctrine of absolute monarchy, Metternich was once the relentless foe of any reason, simply or unjust, that threatened ecu repose. accordingly, whilst the revolution in Naples heavily menaced Austrian hegemony in Italy, Metternich made up our minds that the constitutional regime in Naples needs to be overthrown through an Austrian armed strength, an absolute monarchy restored, and an Austrian military of career saved there. Nor did he scruple to take advantage of duplicity, mystery negotiation, trickery, or deceit opposed to best friend and adversary alike in his attempt to enlist them within the universal reason behind all thrones. on the Congress of Troppau, Metternich succeeded not just in defeating Russian rules for peaceable intervention and a average structure at Naples, but additionally in changing Tsar Alexander to entirely conservative perspectives, thereby making Russia a robust supporter of Austrian regulations and knowingly alienating England, previously Austria's closest ally.
Paul W. Schroeder brings to this bookexceptional scholarship and an objectivity demanding to realize while facing a character. even if Metternich, as Schroeder sees him, no doubt helped to keep up eu peace and order, his genuine greatness consisted now not in his ecu rules, yet in his skill to safeguard Austrian pursuits below the guise of eu rules. The facts, accumulated from documentary fabric within the Haus Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, has compelled the writer to the realization that Metternich was once no genuine statesman. The very characteristics that exotic him as an excellent diplomat—keen imaginative and prescient, cogent research, fertility of expedients, farsightedness, flexibility, and firmness of purpose—were switched over into these of blindness to fact, superficial research, sterility of expedients, dogmatism, and failure of will while faced with primary difficulties of country and society.