Prince Klemens von Metternich was a conservative Austrian
statesman and diplomat who was at the center of the European balance of power
known as the Concert of Europe for three decades as the Austrian Empire’s
foreign minister from 1809 and Chancellor from 1821 until the liberal
Revolutions of 1848 forced his resignation.
Metternich was a champion of conservatism
. He believed that the best government was absolutism, but that it was best
because it guaranteed equal justice and fair administration for all. In the
Habsburg monarchy and in the Italian governments he saved from revolution, he
advocated reforms that would provide good government for the people . He was a
confident leader who put little faith in popular opinion or sentiment because
he believed that the common man was too fickle in his loyalties and too inept
to understand the magnitude of foreign policy.
The Congress of Vienna (September 1814–June 1815) was the
climax of Metternich’s work of reconstruction. The very fact that it was held
in Vienna was in itself a great success for him . He had precise ideas about
the basis for a new order in Europe, after the napoleonic wars, but knew from
the start that he would have to modify them substantially if he was to salvage
even a small part of his plans against the opposition of self-interested
princes. He wanted to secure Austria’s predominance by forming two
confederations, one German and the other Italian, with Austria as the leading
power in both. Within Germany, he proposed the creation of a hereditary German
imperial title, and he thought that Austria and Prussia should share the task
of protecting Germany’s western frontier. Friendship with Prussia on the one
hand and with Bavaria on the other thus seemed to him to be the prerequisite of
success. Supported by the British foreign secretary, Robert Stewart, Viscount
Castlereagh, Metternich sought to prevent the elimination of France, which he
saw as a necessary counterweight against Russia. Likewise, he resisted the
territorial aggrandizement of Russia and Prussia and objected in particular to
Prussia’s designs for annexing all of Saxony .
After the Congress of Vienna, Metternich continued to play a
significant role in European politics. He was able to create a common front of
Austria, England, and France that held Russia and Prussia in check.
Metternich’s moderation produced a long-lasting European order . He continued
to serve as Austria’s foreign minister until 1848 and was a key figure in the
Concert of Europe, a series of international meetings aimed at maintaining the
balance of power in Europe and preventing the spread of revolution. He was also
instrumental in the formation of the German Confederation, a loose association
of German states dominated by Austria and Prussia.
The Concert of Europe was a general consensus among the
great powers of 19th-century Europe to maintain the European balance of power,
political boundaries, and spheres of influence . It was an extended period of
relative peace and stability in Europe following the Wars of the French
Revolution and Napoleonic Wars which had consumed the continent since the
1790s. The Concert of Europe, also known as the Congress System or the Vienna
System after the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), was dominated by the five
great powers of Europe: Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the United
Kingdom. The more conservative members of the Concert of Europe, members of the
Holy Alliance (Russia, Austria, and Prussia), used the system to oppose
revolutionary and liberal movements and weaken the forces of nationalism.
Klemens von Metternich died on June 11, 1859, in Vienna,
Austria at the age of 86. He had outlived his generation of politicians and was
keen to maintain the balance of power, particularly by resisting Russian
territorial ambitions in Central Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
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