Table Of ContentMetternich's Europe
A volume
in
THE DOCUMENTARY HISTORY
of
WESTERN CIVILIZATION
-
METTERNICH'S EUROPE
edited by
MACK WALKER
Palgrave Macmillan
METTERNICH'S EUROPE
Introductory essay, editorial notes,
chronologies, bibliographies, compilation,
and translations by the editor
Copyright© 1968 by Mack Walker
Translation of article 26
Copyright© 1968 by Laurence Veysey
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1968 978-0-333-08435-9
First published in the United States 1968
First published in the United Kingdom by
Macmillan & Co 1968
Published by
MACMILLAN & CO LTD
Little Essex Street London w c
2
and also at Bombay Calcutta and Madras
Macmillan South Africa (Publishers) Pty Ltd Johannesburg
The Macmillan Company of Australia Pty Ltd Melbourne
ISBN 978-1-349-00562-8 ISBN 978-1-349-00560-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-00560-4
Contents
Introductory Essay
I. WAR AND REVOLUTION 23
Metternich's Conversation with Napoleon, June
I.
26, 1813 25
Benjamin Constant on the Spirit of Conquest and
2.
Usurpation, 181 3 31
3. The Act of the Holy Alliance, and Castlereagh on
Unity among European States, 18 I 5 37
4. Metternich on the Sects in Central Europe, 18 I 7 42
5. Heinrich von Gagern to his Father on the Ger-
man Student Movement, 18 I 8 44
6. Josef Gorres, "Germany and the Revolution,"
1819 48
7. Metternich on Students, Professors, and the Press,
1819 63
II. EUROPE AND THE STATES 69
8. Friedrich von Gentz, "Considerations on the Po-
litical System Now Existing in Europe," 1818 71
9. Intervention in Germany: T eplitz and Carlsbad,
1819 84
10. Principles and Personalities III the Metternich
System 93
I I. Intervention in Europe: T roppau, 1820 I 27
12. Canning on Intervention, 1826 136
III. A NEW GENERATION: THE NATIONS 145
I 3. The Decembrist Insurrection in Russia, 1825 147
14. Adam Mickiewicz, "The Books of the Polish Na-
tion," 1832 151
IS. Giuseppe Mazzini on "Young Italy," 1832 160
vi CONTENTS
16. Edgar Quinet, Introduction to the epIc poem
"Napoleon," 1836 169
17. Felicite de Lamennais, from The People's Own
Book, 1837 179
18. Heinrich Heine, from Germany: A Winter's
Tale, 1844 182
19. Friedrich List on a National System of Political
Economy, 1840 192
IV. POPULATION AND POVERTY
20. Article on "Population," from the Staats-Lexikon,
1846 210
Excerpts from the Report of the Parliamentary
2 I.
Commission of Inquiry into the Poor Laws,
1834 227
22. "Developments in the Population of Paris," from
the Revue des deux Mondes, 1845 248
V. MACHINES, MOTION, AND PROGIU,SS
23. Dr. Ure on the Philosophy of Manufactures,
1835 269
24. Friedrich Engels on The Condition of the Work-
ing Class in England, 1845 283
25. Amedee Pommier on "Progress," 1844 299
26. Camillo di Cavour on Railways in Italy, 1846 306
VI. TOWARD 1848, AND THE END OF METTERNICH'S EUROPE 323
27. A Farewell to Metternich's Europe in the Revue
des deux Mondes, 1846 325
28. Heinrich von Gagern on Coming Developments
in Germany, 1847 330
29. Cavour on the Rebirth of Italy: II Risorgimento,
1847 336
30. T ocqueville on Impending Revolution,
January 27, 1848 341
Tndex 347
Introductory lSssay
Pick up a newspaper, in 18 I 5; booksellers in the larger towns have
them. The news of Europe is news of high politics, diplomacy,
and war. There is gossip about what the prominent figures of high
politics have been saying and doing. That was the "Europe" of the
people who read newspapers in 18 I 5. Its most eminent political
figure was the Austrian statesman Prince Metternich.
The workings and the aims of high politics make the headlines
in the great cosmopolitan newspapers nowadays, too. But modern
journalists include many other matters that were not part of the
"Europe" of 18 15. The newspaper reader of 18 I 5 would find no
mention of gross national product, for example, nor of what labor
wants, nor of the effect on national economies of price rises in
stituted by a major industry, nor of the need to foster capital
formation or technological progress so as to keep up with rival
powers, nor even of the farm problem. For some of these questions
he might find equivalents, usually in terms of the politics and goals
of leading individuals; but for many others he would not. They
were not Europe.
One must not conclude from this that there was no economic
motion, no social tension in the Europe of that day. Of course
there was. But circumstances varied so much from place to place
that these were local matters, unconnected and out of phase with
one another. They did not add up to a general picture that would
interest the reader who wanted to know and talk about the world
outside his own homely surroundings. They were not part of what
the French called Ie monde-the world, society-and they entered
into the political artistry of the statesmen and the literary artistry
of the writers who made Ie monde only obscurely, intuitively, or
anecdotally. That is one reason why the men trained to prominence
in 18 I 5 resisted the coming of a world that measurements, totals,
and classified descriptions could portray, and that made their ways
of understanding and of acting obsolete.
The analytical and statistical descriptions we should now think
2 METTERNICH'S EUROPE
fundamental for understanding a country or a continent (the de
scriptions one finds today, say, in an almanac or an encyclopedia)
were neither possible nor did they seem useful in 18 5, apart from
I
tax surveys and some very rough population counts. The beginnings
of these descriptions would come together with the end of Met
ternich's Europe, in the 1840's. There was no fundamental eco
nOlnic entity, comparable to the modern steel industry, to affect
everybody, unless it was land and climate, and they were in the
hands of God. Economic resources on the European Continent
were uncentralized, separate, and autonomous, and so were the
populations that lived directly from them. They were not inter
dependent-except sometimes when it came to high politics and
war. Nobody talked of the laboring class, not because there were no
laborers, but because they were scattered and had little in common
with one another. As for finance: of course there was banking,
associated mainly with state finance, some commerce, and a modi
cum of industry in western Europe. But not one person in a thou
sand was materially affected by transactions among financiers, ex
cept where fiscal decisions affected the conduct of soldiers and
statesmen.
The life of any individual, to be sure, was mainly made up then
as now of questions surrounding his changing prosperity, the
security of his personal relations with the people around him, and
so on. But these were pretty much his private concerns, or shared
within a small group. They did not provide the common denomi
nators that connected him with large numbers of others and made
him part of Europe. Europe in 1815 was too diversified and frag
mented, and the changes within it were too uneven, to provide
many common denOlninators-except for the high politics of war
and peace.
Except for high politics: the Congress at Vienna, called to re
establish European order out of a quarter-century of revolution
and war, was a common denominator of politics the like of which
Europe had never seen, nor has it since. The Congress of Vienna
was Europe in 1815. It was attended by nearly everybody who was
anybody in "the world," even by representatives of the countries
defeated; and news of the doings there would sell the same news
papers in Paris, St. Petersburg, Belgrade, Rome, or London-or
Boston or Philadelphia for that matter. Here a number of men were
going to settle that crisis of political arrangement and political con-
INTRODUCTION 3
sciousness that had mauled the Old Regime of stable leadership so
badly.
At Vienna the politicians and aristocrats and kings and soldiers
were in charge. Reforming enthusiasm, or the brooding doctrinaire
passion and moralism of a Robespierre, were more than bad fonn
among the Europe assembled at Vienna; they were a threat to the
success of its deliberations. Levity and a studied absence of prin
cipled seriousness were in style, as they are in most restorations.
The Congress did not talk of the need to get Europe moving again.
Europe moving was just what had been giving them trouble.
Europe moving was not the Europe at Vienna.
Yet serious work was done at Vienna: the political reconstitu
tion of Europe, with a redrawing of nearly every frontier; the
establishment of an equilibrium that was to bring peace among the
states. There was indeed peace among the states for forty years, but
whether this was a result of an equilibrium of powers planned at
Vienna, as some historians have contended, is doubtful. The as
sumption at Vienna was that the kind of stability sought there re
quired more than the redrawing of boundaries. Stability was asso
ciated with social peace and ethical peace, even with moral casual
ness, perhaps. For stability there had to be contentment, and quiet,
however these might have to be safeguarded.
• • •
What brought the politicians of Europe together at Vienna, and
what made them seem Europe itself, was their shared political ex
perience of the preceding years. The French Revolution and the
Napoleonic doInination of Europe that followed it had been such
pervasive events that they had provided nearly everyone with the
same mental equipment for viewing the world and deciding how
to proceed. That is what gives the thirty-year period of Metternich's
Europe its particular character. Notions of what actions or events
were likely to lead to what consequences were drawn from the
lessons of the recent past. The sequence seen in past events
was a progression from the fashion in the later eighteenth century
for "enlightened," rational, and humane practices to a quest for
progress and change, then to the overthrow of order and authority,
the Reign of Terror, the guillotine, despotism, and decades of con
tinental warfare. It was the historical logic imposed by this succes-
