Metternich and Castlereagh
STERN, KRITZ
WRITERS and WRITING Metternich and Castlereagh A World Restored. Reviewed by Fritz Stern By Henry A. Kissinger. . ¦ , , , . „ , ,. jj . Associate professor of history, Columbia Houghton...
...They had bought peace at the expense of frustrating liberal aspirations, and the peace itself, though a blessing to contemporaries, may have been a mortgage on the future...
...in some instances, have been an uncertain, intuitive groping...
...Like the British historian A. J. P. Taylor...
...Kissinger ends his study with a chapter on the nature of statesmanship, a proper summary of his book's primary interest...
...Kissinger is always quick to define the precise aims and motives of the several actors...
...But "it is Metternich's smug self-satisfaction with an essentially technical virtuosity which prevented him from achieving the tragic stature he might have, given the process in which he was involved...
...As Kissinger points out, a century of peace had so dulled men's fear of war that in 1914 no one, except Sir Edward Grey, would believe that the old order could really be destroyed...
...No one, not even Metternich, could have saved Austria in an age of nationalism...
...Once more the main figures are judged not by the traditional liberal standards but by the standard of the politically and humanly possible...
...While he could still rely on the implicit support of Castlereagh and of the insular power that shunned intervention, he gained a personal ascendancy over the erratic Tsar Alexander I, trapping him ultimately into a belief that the legitimate order in Europe had to be maintained and the existing social system preserved...
...Metternich's initial tasks were to detach a weak and highly vulnerable Austria from its French alliance, and then to enter and quickly dominate the anti-French alliance...
...The tie snapped at the time of the Greek revolt in 1822...
...Houghton Mifflin...
...He fathered the Congress system which ruled Europe for seven years, long enough for Metternich to legitimize the Vienna settlement and to become the Prime Minister of Europe, the acknowledged and accepted leader of the conserving powers...
...The order established at Vienna lasted for a hundred years, though obviously this long peace depended on much more than the work of two statesmen...
...His work is more than a close scholarly analysis, based on thorough reading of the relevant texts, of the decade of diplomacy between 1812 and 1822...
...Henry Kissinger has written a highly original book on a familiar subject, the establishment after the Napoleonic upheaval of a legitimate world order...
...His book demonstrates anew the merit of Ranke's deceptively simple maxim that the particular ought to be illuminated by the universal, the universal buttressed by the particular...
...The ever shrewd Metternich and the marvelously perceptive Castlereagh of these pages at times appear as the puppets of the author's fine imagination...
...Both men, according to Kissinger, failed as they succeeded—-"Castlereagh in making Britain a permanent part of the concert of Europe...
...Together they prevented the conclusion of a punitive peace, moderated Russia, curbed Prussia, and forged an instrument for the preservation of peace...
...editor, "The Varieties of History" A World Restored...
...The main difference, alas, is that in 1815 peace came after the defeat of the revolutionary power, whereas in 1045 the defeat of one dynamic power was achieved by the victory of another...
...Kissinger's story begins in 1812, when the European equilibrium had been shattered, and when Napoleon's might, though bruised in Russia, was still the dominant threat...
...none has brought to such a study a more incisive intelligence, a more penetrating judgment, or a more distinguished style...
...6.00...
...Castlereagh, representing insular Britain with only a pragmatic and intermittent interest in the Continent, had simpler hopes and fears...
...jj . Associate professor of history, Columbia Houghton Mifflin...
...But their successes were tangible enough...
...To the end, Mr...
...and one wonders whether what strikes him as design may not...
...The diplomacy of that decade was infinitely complex, though at times Kissinger may be exaggerating slightly the difficulties and dangers in order to magnify the achievements of his two protagonists...
...University...
...Not that Castlereagh and Metternich are sentimentally glorified...
...This achieved, England would be satisfied, though not Austria, whose "security depended on the first battle, not the last...
...he sought the destruction of Napoleon, the strengthening of Holland as a barrier against future French aggression, and the preservation of Britain's maritime rights...
...Kissinger insists on the personal responsibility of the statesman, insists, too, that the statesman is not impotent, and avows that circumstances and conditions do not make a policy...
...354 pp...
...6.00...
...With almost exasperating skill and caution, Metternich built up the coalition against Napoleon, fearful that Napoleon might yet win, more fearful still that his defeat might bring about Russia's ascendancy on the Continent...
...and the end was hastened, as well as tragically symbolized, by the suicide of Castlereagh...
...Clearly the author chose a subject to which he was perfectly attuned, a subject, moreover, that relates to his current best-seller, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy...
...His high conception of the duties of statesmen remind one that our belief in human freedom implies as much a challenge to action as a protection of passivity...
...In some ways, of course, the problems of the post-1812 period were similar to those of the Versailles and post-Teheran periods, and Kissinger discreetly points to these analogues...
...His narrative is illuminated by wise and memorable aphorisms about the condition of man and is informed by an implicit theory of politics...
...It was Castlereagh who proposed that the Quadruple Alliance should provide for periodic meetings to consider "the measures for the repose and prosperity of nations and the peace of Europe...
...Kissinger distinguishes between a relatively stable, because legitimate, system, where conflicts are limited in scope, and a revolutionary order where "nothing can reassure" the revolutionary power...
...Many historians have studied Metternich, many have sought to revisit conservatism...
...Once the coalition was formed...
...Castlereagh and Metternich emerged as the two great leaders who together "rescued stability from seeming chaos...
...ultimately he strove to anchor Austria's survival by the re-establishment of a legitimate order in Europe...
...Just as in the latter he ponders the alternative modes of policy and defense in the contemporary world, so here he probes and reflects on the means by which Metternich and Castlereagh restored a stable society...
...354 pp...
...The several revolutionary outbreaks in Europe strengthened Metternich's position in Europe, though with each crisis the tie of England to the police powers of the Continent became more tenuous...
...Only a shallow historicism would maintain that successful policies are always possible...
...Metternich in preserving the principle of legitimacy he had striven so hard to establish...
Vol. 40 • December 1957 • No. 48
