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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. From time to time, I dip into my collection of significant artifacts, pictures, silver, furniture, rugs, signed photographs and more, to tell you the tale of a particular artifact; to show you how even the least significant and most mundane is a superb aperture into a world once vibrant, now defunct and dispersed.
Today it is my privilege, as Prince of Tornavan, to bring you as part of my official party to the grandest fete in Paris in the fall of 1813, the dinner party and soiree in honor of the ascendant ambassador of the brand new Austrian empire, Klemens von Metternich. Today's party is being held in honor of his elevation to Prince, henceforward this is his title and style: Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar, Furst von Winneburg zu Beilstein. His friends, who are legion, call him Prince Metternich. Since you are destined to be one of them do take note.
The background, politics and statecraft played by the best, the stakes enormous.
Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859), sprig of the Austrian aristocracy, was a very clever man. When he was just 16, in 1789, the world of his forefathers collapsed as the French nation and its various revolutionary manifestations challenged and rearranged absolutely everything that Metternich knew, believed in, and desired.
He was a man with a mission... and that mission was to contain the revolutionary bacillus that was France. You will never understand the man or what he did unless you understand that. It was the theme of a long life filled with the polished deceptions, lies, half truths, distortions and occasional (but only occasional) home truths that characterized diplomacy at the Courts of Europe, seething with activity from the moment Parisian malcontents captured the Bastille, chopped off the head of its hapless governor, M. le marquis de Launay, and paraded it on a pike through the streets of Paris, epicenter of everything that was happening and would happen until Metternich and his ideas got in the saddle. But that was years from the pool of blood and severed head that had once been Austrian princess Marie Antoinette.The revolutionaries meant business... but so did Metternich.
And now this newly minted Prince was Ambassador to the Evil Empire that was France... and there he had much to do, most importantly dangling the bait that sent Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria to France as Napoleon's second (and infinitely less lovable) wife. It was one of Metternich's greatest triumphs in a life of so many achievements. Here's why...
Napoleon needed an heir. And he wanted, indeed insisted, on a wife of royal pedigree. He wanted an alliance with Russia and wanted to cement it by marrying the Tsar's younger sister, a notion which horrified her mother who blocked the marriage. Cunningly Metternich turned the discussion to Marie Louise who had been brought up to regard Napoleon (who did, after all, capture the Austrian capital often enough, dislocating the imperial family) as a monster.
What matter that, when the object was gaining time to rebuild Austria's much beaten army and ramshackle finances, to be ready for the final confrontation with son-in-law Napoleon? To sacrifice an Austrian princess to save Austria's empire and dynasty made perfect sense. What did not make sense was that Napoleon thought "Papa Francis," Emperor Francis I, Marie Louise's father, would never attack his own son-in-law (and ultimately, with the birth of Napoleon's son, the King of Rome in 1811) his own grandson. How little Napoleon knew of the wiles of the Habsburgs who were past masters in always smooth deceptions.
Rue d'Austerlitz
Metternich wove his webs from the embassy of his sovereign Francis I, whom he always called (with calculated insolence) his "Master." He didn't believe it and Papa Francis probably didn't either. They both knew who really ruled. This embassy was situated on the Rue d'Austerlitz, which shows that Metternich could turn a blind eye to what he chose not to see. So it was with the street name. It celebrated one of the greatest defeats of the Habsburgs. Napoleon was clueless in such matters; the Austrians were not. They held their rage until they could properly rectify the matter.
And that was why you were on your way in your dashing carriage to a street so outrageously misnamed. You were nervous, of course, but thanks to Tornavan's precise instructions you looked terrific... and, more importantly you had been briefed on what to do and (as vital) what not to do. If tonight went well....
The embassy was spectacular, not least for the staircase you ascended. Marble, highly polished (and therefore tricky), cuirassiers in full kit with resplendent panache every three feet. You looked out the corner of your eye at your wife, never more alluring than in her mauve silk and the diamonds she'd borrowed from a friend. All was going well.
Then, there, at the top of the staircase the new Prince and the first of his three wives, Eleonore von Kaunitz; "charme de vous voir," they heard the Princess say over and over again. She'd come from one of Austria's best families, rich too, and she knew precisely what to do. You were worried she would give you only one finger in greeting, but you were ecstatic when she gave you two while the new Prince graced you with a smile that could mean everything... or nothing. It was a diplomat's skill and enigma. Still the warm greeting they gave to His Highness of Tornavan was surely authentic...
Then you were directed by chamberlains, always jeunesse dore, to the dining room... graced by a full length portrait of the Emperor... with additional family portraits... the Empress of Austria Maria Ludovica; her daughter Marie Louise Empress of the French, her husband Napoleon, and their son the King of Rome.
Everything sparkled including the brand-new silver service given by Metternich's Master, the Kaiser, to celebrate the new Prince. It was nothing short of spectacular, service so you'd been told for 100, the elegant work of the French imperial silver smith Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot, a man whose special talent was turning mere metal into smooth elegance, admired by every eye, caressing to the touch. It seemed a sacrilege to eat from them... so dazzling, polished to perfection.
The Loyal Toast
Then it was time for the toasts.... and this,too, was an art form.
Metternich, epicene connoisseur, was on his feet delivering the Loyal Toast, to his "Master" Papa Francis, the essence of the principle of legitimacy, the principle affronted by Napoleon's mere existence. And so the Loyal Toast this evening focused on the virtues of monarchy, the need for stability, the benefits of continuity, everything Papa Francis had... and which Napoleon so conspicuously lacked. And as glasses were raised towards the imperial picture the orchestra broke into the grandiose chords of the Imperial Hymn... written by Haydn in 1797, "Gott erhalte Franz, den Kaiser." You'll find it in any search engine. It is regal indeed.
Then powdered flunkies having refilled every glass, it was time for the toast to their host, the new Prince. And here, by pre-arrangement, Herr Baron von und zu Joachim Peter, so obviously a favorite, launched into words so apt, so discerning, so obviously auspicious that all present predicted the greatest success for a man they now all resolved to invite to dinner at the earliest occasion, sad only that Odiot himself had promised Metternich that the pattern of his service would not be copied for anyone, no matter how exalted.
Envoy.
Thirty silver plates from this service now reside with me, your author. They are lovely, and a superb reminder of the Prince, his sovereign, and the high stakes game they played and won for the destruction of Napoleonic France and the comfortable arrangement of the Europe they treasured and controlled. After the final fall of Napoleon in 1815, Metternich went back to Vienna where he ran the iconic Congress of Vienna, then, as Austrian Foreign Minister and State Chancellor ran Europe until he was deposed and exiled as a result of the Revolution of 1848.
It is reasonable to suppose that the silver service commissioned in Paris served him as well in Vienna, capital of the empire he had strengthened and preserved. Your author now has the largest portion of these eye-catching morsels of history and is assiduously seeking the rest....
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