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When he was a student in Strasbourg, Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich was a witness to terrific revolutionary excesses, and it was this that he later credited with shaping his extreme conservatism and hatred of political unrest. In 1795, Metternich he married Eleonora von Kaunitz, granddaughter of the eminent Austrian statesman Wenzel von Kaunitz. This marriage brought Metternich large estates and admission into the highest court circles. Metternich got his first
taste of the statesman’s life when, in 1797, he acted as representative of the
Westphalian college of counts at the Congress of Rastatt.
His diplomatic career truly began when he became Austrian ambassador to
the court of Saxony in 1801. This
was followed by a similar appointment as ambassador to Prussia in 1803. The good
impressions he made upon the French envoy while he was in Berlin led Napoleon I
to request that he be sent to France as the Austrian representative to his court
in 1806. Metternich’s influence increased considerably when he succeeded Johann Philipp von Stadion as the Austria foreign minister in1809. Up until 1813, Metternich had pursued a strict policy of acquiescence to French supremacy, but he constantly sought to strengthen the diplomatic and military position of Austria so as to make future resistance possible and to disrupt the alliance between Napoleon and Czar Alexander I of Russia. One of his first successes was in securing the marriage of Archduchess Marie Louise to Napoleon in1810 and a signing a temporary alliance with France in 1812. The conservative course that Metternich pursued between France and Russia soon developed into a policy of armed mediation, and was later supplanted by one of substituting Austrian for French supremacy in 1813. When the Quadruple Alliance was formed, the coalition against France resulted in the allied victories at Leipzig and at Waterloo. While Metternich sought to keep French domination under check, he had no desire to see the country crushed, for he did not want Prussia and Russia to become too strong and the balance of power that he had created, upset. Metternich hoped to make Austrian influence supreme in Italy and, while vigorously opposing German unity, sought Austrian ascendancy in the newly formed German Confederation. Even though his role in Austrian affairs was weakened by rivalry with the liberal minister Franz Kolowrat, the period from 1815–48 is often referred to as the “Age of Metternich”, for during this time he was the chief arbiter of Europe. Using skillful diplomacy as the leader of conservatism in Europe, Metternich was the guiding spirit of the international congresses at Vienna (1814–15), Aachen (1818), Carlsbad (1819), Troppau (1820), Laibach (1821), and Verona (1822) and was the chief statesman of the “Holy Alliance”. In 1813 he was created prince. He owed much of his success to his brilliant assistant, Friedrich von Gentz.
The “Metternich System” depended upon political and religious
censorship, espionage, and the suppression of revolutionary, socialist and
nationalist movements. His name became anathema to liberals, and the revolutions
of 1848 (which forced him to seek refuge in England) were in part directed at
his repressive system. Metternich returned to Austria in 1851, where he later
died in 1859.
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