Books: How to Fight a Peace

THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA (312 pp.)—Harold Nicolson—Harcourt, Brace ($4).

The retreat from Moscow was over; in a room at Fontainebleau, the defeated Emperor Napoleon meditated suicide. “Preceded by the enormous Cossacks of the Imperial Guard . . . [Tsar Alexander I] rode slowly through the streets. In gaping astonishment the citizens of Paris gazed upon their conqueror. His enormous feet were thrust into stirrups of wrought gold . . . above the gold collar . . . they saw the face of a benignant calf.”

It was not Russia alone that had conquered Bonaparte. But when the citizens of Paris looked for the other Allied leaders, they looked in vain. Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh, Austria’s Emperor Francis I and his Foreign Minister Metternich were dallying in distant Dijon; King Frederick William of Prussia was off tobogganing. Bonaparte was defeated; but the victors’ sturdy unity was already succumbing to mutual anxiety, suspicion, self-seeking, and secretiveness.

Britain’s ex-Diplomat Harold Nicolson is no rookie in the wars of peacemaking. Some of his best, best-known books (Portrait of a Diplomatist; Curzon: The Last Phase) are centered around World War I’s Versailles Conference, to which Nicolson was a delegate. More recently, he has been giving British radio listeners a blow-by-blow account of 1946’s Paris Peace Conference. Few readers of this timely, lucid study of post-Napoleonic peacemaking will be able to resist drawing analogies between then and now—which is just what Author Nicolson warns them not to overdo.

The Common Aim. “. . . At every international conference,” says Nicolson bluntly, “it is the duty of a Minister, first o defend and further the interests of his jwn country, and secondly to adjust those nterests to the requirements of the community of nations.” Alexander, Metternich, Castlereagh—the Big Three—were no more “cynical or selfish . . . than their successors of 1919 or 1946. Their common aim was to secure the stability, and herefore the peace, of Europe. . . .”

But each saw that “stability” in his own ,vay. To Metternich and Castlereagh, thousands of Russian soldiers in Europe were almost as frightening as Napoleon’s rand Army. Instead, England, France and Austria signed a secret treaty of military alliance against Russia and her satelite Prussia. Even while the Congress was sitting in Vienna, war between its peacemakers was often considered inevitable. Who Won? Each delegate also brought the peace table his own valuation of his country’s contribution to victory. Britons were in no doubt that their 20 years’ resistance to Napoleon had been decisive. Austria believed that her support had tipped the balance; Prussia gloried in the exploits of her flaming youths, who had chivied Napoleon’s rearguard on the way home from Moscow. Tsar Alexander was so sure he had won singlehanded that he managed to forget completely that he had been Napoleon’s ally—until Napoleon had invaded Russia. He sternly charged the King of Saxony (who had backed the wrong horse too long) with being “a traitor to the common cause.” “That, Your Imperial Majesty,” answered Talleyrand, “is a question of dates.”

The Nuisances. Whatever the differences of the Big Three, says Nicolson, their peacemaking would have been easier if the major powers alone were involved. Inevitable “nuisances,and . . . eccentrics” were present at the Congress of Vienna. Prussian Delegate Prince Hardenburg was stone-deaf. Spanish Delegate Don Pedro Gomez Labrador spent his time mimicking French Delegate Talleyrand. Thirty-two minor German royalties attended—and brought their wives, mistresses and secretaries of state.

To add to the general bitterness, most of the delegations had also brought their own spies. Baron Hager, president of the Austrian Oberste Polizei und Censur Hofstelle, sent secret reports daily to Emperor Francis. Sample: “The Emperor of Russia went out at 7 p.m. . . . to visit the Princess Thurn and Taxis. Every morning a large block of ice is brought to the Emperor with which he washes his face. . . . The British Mission, owing to excessive caution, has engaged two housemaids on its own. Before I can get at [their] waste paper … I must see whether I can count on these two women.”

War of Nerves. Author Nicolson does not introduce the comic-opera aspects of the Peace Congress for laughs, but to show the powerful accumulative effect of minor irritations on men who are tired and overburdened. Inevitably, he argues, in any great conference, personal characteristics exercise a growing influence. Delegates become filled with personal rancors, and follow their prejudices into side issues. And as the nerve-racking routine stretches into months of inconclusiveness, a weariness, an urge to be done and go home, settles over the conference table.

And while they talked at Vienna, the world changed about them. When the talking began, Russia and Austria were the major European land-powers. But when Napoleon escaped from Elba, the Russian armies had dribbled home; Austria was occupied in Italy. Only England and Prussia were set to smash Napoleon at Waterloo, and their joint victory made Prussia a major nation, England the most powerful country in Europe.

Not for Moral Principles. Nicolson believes that it is to England’s credit that she did not exploit this power. The Congress of Vienna contains brilliant, mostly sympathetic pen-portraits of all the principal actors, but Britain’s Lord Castlereagh is Nicolson’s favorite. In his day, Castlereagh was the best-hated statesman in England. (Byron called him “the vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,” and “the intellectual eunuch”; Shelley wrote the famous lines: I met Murder on the way—He had a mask like Castlereagh.) Contemptuous of parliamentary and public opinion, antiliberal, cold-blooded Castlereagh desired the independence of Poland, Saxony, Genoa, but when he found these aims were unattainable he set them aside. “The Congress of Vienna,” he said bluntly to his furious critics in Parliament, “was not assembled for the discussion of moral principles, but for great practical purposes, to establish effectual provisions for the general security.”

Castlereagh’s power-balancing, which looked so evil to so many of his contemporaries, to Author Nicolson now looks like the path of wisdom. The deals of Europe’s Big Three of that day brought most of Europe peace, if not necessarily a just one, for 100 years.