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Strasbourg, June 2005
DIPLOMATIE UND HELDENTUM:
ROMANTICISM AND REALIISM
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A Franco-Austrian Case-Study - Wessenberg, Napoleon, Talleyrand
Wessenberg,like his contemporary, Metternich, attended Strasbourg
University (among others) in the 1790s, only 20 years after Goethe. These
years had of course seen Europe transformed by the French Revolution, and
in particular by Napoleon, the architypal Romantic hero - unless we accept
his own propagandistic neo-Classical Imperial image of himself. Goethe's
creation Faust had meanwhile shown that "two souls" co-exist in every
human breast. And this conflict, in politics as much as in art, can
perhaps be seen at in its most acute form in the early 19th Century, not
least in the life and work of such a civilised and cultured diplomat and
child of his time as Wessenberg.
Duty and accident of birth, rather than - to say the least - sympathy,
compelled him to serve a rival Empire and, for the greater part of his
career, an almost mythical Master whose life's unwaveringly-pursued
mission was to "put the genie back in the bottle"- successfully enough
where the Man was concerned, though, as was inevitable, ultimately
unsuccessfully in the case of the Zeitgeist, which defies any cork, and
with which Napoleon was, rightly or wrongly, identified. When France
sneeezes, Europe catches cold, Metternich famously remarked, or, in the
words of Norman Davies: "French-style democracy was a menace threatening
monarch, Church and property - the pillars of all he stood for" ('Europe:A
History').
NAPOLEON
Of interest, as a prelude to the account of the tete-à-tete at St-Dizier
in March 1814 (see below), are the melancholy reflections of 20 years
later to be found in Wessenberg's Diary on the French people's treatment
of Napoleon as he made his way homewards from London, back across France,
following his distinguished but ill-rewarded work on Belgian independance
- de facto dismissal by Metternich - in March 1834.(A J P Taylor:"W. was a
man of liberal mind and had always advocated a 'western' orientation in
Austrian foreign policy: he had wished to rely on England instead of on
Russia and had been dismissed from the foreign service for working too
closely with England in the Belgian question" - 'The Habsburg Monarchy,
1809 - 1918'):
"Ein Gefuehl der Traurigkeit ergriff mich, als ich Frankreich widersah;
Ich finde dort Symptome des Unbehagens , welche glauben machen, dass der
Held, dessen Sturz es so schmachvoll zuliess, das ganze Glueck Frankreichs
mit sich nahm in der Verbannung...Theuer hat Frankreich es bezahlt, dass
es im Augenblicke des Ungluecks den Mann verliess,der es der Anarchie
entrisssen und und in die vorderste Reihe der civilisierten Voelker
gestellt hat"(Arneth 'JPvW Ein oesterr.Staatsmann d.19.Jhds'[see also
below].
While
there can be no doubt that Wessenberg was a liberal by the standards of
the Court he served, he does not appear to have absorbed much of the
spirit of democracy from his lengthy postings and stays in England if he
can so harshly criticise the French people for refusal to accept further
self-sacrifice: "Nicht das Heer, sondern die durch ihre Repraesentanten
entmuthigte und irregefuerte Nation war es, welche die nothwendigen
Verstaerkerung verweigerte und um jeden Preis nach dem Frieden verlangte,
Waehrend as darum sich handelte, sich zu schlagen und bis auf den Tod zu
schlagen, um ein ehrenvollen Frieden zu erhalten." In particular, the
Parisian 'classe politique' is blamed - that is to say "Maenner, welche
von Napoleon mit Wohlthaten ueberschuettet worden waren, die nach der
Gewalt luesternen Talleyrand [see below] und Genossen, welche einen
erniedrigenden Frieden einem edlen und heldenhaften [here speaks the
Romantic!] Widerstand vorzogen". Would Metternich have considered trial
for High Treason more appropriate than dismissal, had he been aware of
such subversive private thoughts, one wonders?
To return to the events immediately preceding Wessenberg's meeting with
the Hero,he himself showed admirable coolness and quick wit in a situation
of great peril when he and his entourage,in the prevailing anarchy,fell
into the hands of a band of French peasants hungry for booty and
potentially bloodthirsty towards the invading Allies, who were pushing the
remnants of la Grande Armée back towards Paris. One member of this
entourage expressed in his Memoirs, and with every reason, admiration for
Wessenberg. This was the royalist emissary of Provençal origin, Baron de
Vitrolles, whose lobbying of the Allies for a Bourbon Restoration,
although not yet succesful - later he was to to hold several Ministerial
posts under Louis XVIII and Charles X - could well either have provoked
homicidal tendencies among their captors or simply be betrayed to
Napoleon, still with the means to deal with such treasonable enterprises.
..."J'appelai M.de Wessenberg à mon secours, en lui faisant une confiance
complète. Les lettres [of the Pretender to the throne] aux souverains et
autres, tout ce que j'avais sur moi fut déchiré en petits morceaux; enfin,
meme nous en mangions...Je serais Anton Mayer, natif d'Aarau [luckily he
knew a little German!] et son valet de chambre-secrétaire".
The interview given to Wessenberg on 28 March, hungry,tired and humiliated
by rioting peasants ("Ich bin ohne Diener,ohne Kleider,ja ohne Hemd",as he
informed Metternich), is of much more than personal interest, since it was
Napoleon's last to an allied diplomat before his abdication. In Arneth's
account, which gives a digest of the elegant French of the 'Résumé de la
conversation de l'Empereur Napoléon avec le Baron de Wessenberg au
quartier-général à Saint-Dizier',Bonaparte cleverly starts things on the
right footing and exploiting his famous understanding that "an army
marches on its stomach" by extending it to his grateful diplomatic visitor:
"Nie werde ich die schmackhafte Schoepfenkeule mit weissen Bohnen
vergessen, die mir der Held des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts vorsetzen liess".
Where the content of Napoleon's monologue is concerned, it is easy to be
cynical today about its blatent self-pity and attempted bribery:
Thus, "Kann Metternich vergessen, dass meine Heirat mit einer
oesterreichischen Erzherzogin sein Werk ist?..ich beging einen argen
Fehler, als ich mich mit ihr [Marie-Louise] vermaehlte...ich haette doch
nicht geglaubt, dass die Kaiserin ihrem Vater voellig fremd werden
koennte...Oesterrich bleibt nicht zu wuenschen uebrig, denn es wird alles
erhalten, was es in Polen, in Italien, in Deutschland erlangen will" usw
usw
In all probability, Wessenberg, with his cool diplomat's intellect,
grasped the truth of the current brutal bon mot of Baron Louis (the future
Restoration Finance Minister) that "l'homme est un cadavre, mais il ne put
pas encore" [stinkt noch nicht], but it would seem that his heart beat
with the Romantics, like Alfred de Musset for whom, in the coming epoch
"la France se sentit veuve de César", and we should not forget that the
Hero was only 4 years his senior in age.
TALLEYRAND
George Sand, whose writings, like those of her fellow Romantics Balzac,
Chateaubriand and Hugo, reviled the Prince of Benevento (the title
Talleyrand received from Napoleon), rightly linked him with another Prince
- that of Machiavelli, which she characterised as "un parfait bréviaire de
perfidie et de scélératesse". And in fact Wessenberg's library, donated to
Strasbourg's Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek (today's BNU) in 1876,
includes, as its oldest volume the 1550 'Historie' of the great "secretario
fiorentino" whose work has ever since been required reading for aspiring
politicians and diplomats of the classical/realist school.
Wessenberg of course worked closely with this latter-day Prince in some of
the crucial European negotiations of the age, notably Talleyrand's triumph
at the Congress of Vienna and the London Conference on Belgium to which
the 76-year-old was named by Louis-Philippe after 15 years in the
wilderness. Like many among his contemporaries and subsequently,
Wessenberg was at the same time fascinated and repelled, writing about him
at length.
1n 1797, the former (but excommunicated by the Pope) Bishop of Autun, who
in 1789 had advocated confiscation of Church property, returned from a
prudent exile in America from 'la Terreur' to become the Directoire's
Foreign Minister, at the recommendation of Mme De Stael, who was much more
than a literary figure as well as being the daughter of Louis XVI's
Finance Minister, Jacques Necker. Napoleon incidentally was afraid of her,
as of all "geistreiche Frauen die sich mit der Politik beschaftigten" as
Wessenberg wrote in his 'Commentar' anonymously issued in 1857 (see full
title in fine), in which he observes that Talleyrand "war einer der
ersten, welcher die Bedeutendheit Napoleons erriet. Er ward sein eifriger
Advocat bei dem Directorium, als er von demselben wegen des angeblich zu
guenstig fuer Oesterreich abgeschlossenen Friedenschlusses zu Campo Formio
zur Verantwortung gezogen wurde". And the same work quotes Napoleon's 'Mémorial
de Sainte-Hélène': "M de Talleyrand était toujours en état de
trahison...je ne disconvins pas qu'il soit un rare talent et ne puisse en
tout temps mettre un grand poids dans la balance".
Wessengerg too recognises Talleyrand's "Gabe, immer zu rechter Zeit den
Ausbruch der drohenden Katastrophen vorherzusehen, und wusste sich mit
vieler Geschicklichkeit jedesmal der siegenden Partei nothwendig zu
machen; Als man ihm in letzteren Zeiten einmal vorwarf, dass er so leicht
seine Herren und Wohltaeter verlassen konnte, antwortete er:'Je n'ai
jamais abondonné personne, mais je n'ai jamais voulu courir après ceux qui
s'abondonnent'". Indeed, the chapter in the 'Commentar' (on Talleyrands
Verhaeltniss zu Napoleon) end on an elegiac note of admiration for the
older man: "Mit Talleyrand verschwand die letzte Spur von Voltaire'schen
Witzes".
One could not expect Wessenberg, the family man, to sympathise with
Talleyrand's "vie sentimentale" - too scandalous for the far from
blameless George Sand - , although sentiment is scarcely the word that
springs to mind for this disciple of Machiavelli, whose notorious liaisons
were not so much "dangereuses" as cynically calculated for their polital
usefulness ("faisons travailler les femmes"). Thus, at the Vienna
Congress, his incomparable spy network consisted of his mistress, the
duchesse de Courlande and her delectable daughters who shared (with
Talleyrand) the pillow secrets of anyone who counted, to the extent that
Friedrich Gentz, the Secretary of the Congress, who was so close to
Wessenberg, lamented "die ganze Curlaendischer Hurengesippschaft...in alle
politische Gehemnisse eingeweiht". One of the daughters, the delicious
Dorothée, duchesse de Dino - 39 years his junior - was to become the
comfort of his old age,including acting as hostess at the London Embassy.
There,
the (easily bored?) old man's high-rolling gambler's life-style astonished
Wessenberg: "Merkwuerdig ist wie dieser so geistreiche, ueber die
gewoehnlichen Dinge so erhabene Mann sich nur wirklich gluecklich fuehlt,
wenn er fuenf Stunden nach einander dem Kartenspiel obliegen kann..Er
sieht sich genoethigt in den Traveller-Club zu begeben, wo er bis zwei Uhr
Morgens verweilt.. es geschieht selten, dass er vor vier Uhr zu Bett geht"
(from the Essay 'Ein Tag des Herren von Talleyrand in London').
When the Congress of Vienna was,in early March 1815, momentarily stunned
by the news that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, Talleyrand, one can
imagine, was not best pleased with Wessenberg's efforts (of which he was
proud) to tone down the language declaring the latter's (secret, see above!)
hero an outlaw. Still, in his 'Mémoires', Talleyrand's reference to
Wessenberg is condescending and highly unfair, contrasting him
unfavourably with the princely(!) Esterhazy, his Head of Mission in
London, adding: "J'avais déjà connu le baron de Wessenberg au congrès de
Vienne; et je savais que ce n'était qu'un homme d'affaires instruit, actif,
travailleur, mais rien de plus; les vues d'un homme d'Etat lui manque
absolument ...bon homme du reste, et qui croit savoir tout, parce que,
pendant quarante ans, il a écouté et retenu tous les commérages de
l'Europe" - the implication being that the Prince was supremely
indifferent to such "Eurogossip"! But such criticism is nothing to what
Talleyrand ("boiteux comme le diable") received from the pen, among others,
of Chateaubriand in 'Memoires d'outre-tombe'.
A final irony lies in the strong probability that this icon of the totally
immoral classical school of political diplomacy was the real father of
Eugène Delacroix, the greatest of France's Romantic painters, at the
expense of a colleague in the Foreign Ministry, who may of course have
felt honoured to be so cuckolded.
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Note:
'Commentar zu einem zu einem Theil der Denkwuerdikeiten des Marschalls
Marmont von einem Zeitgenossen' (full title of Wessenberg's
anonymously-published reflections on Napoleon and Talleyrand, published in
Freiburg in 1857, which is just one of many works consulted in Strasbourg
and London)
The above compilation is the work of a direct descendant of
Reichsfreiherr Wessenberg (English branch, through his granddaughter
Olga), having worked in the cause of Europe for many years, ignorant until
recently of the proximity of the Wessenberg library from Schloss Feldkirch,
donated to the Strasbourg BNUS by the acquirer of that Schloss, Graf
Clotar Blankensee-Firks, Prussian Major-General, as a result of the 1876
Imperial appeal following damage caused in the 1870 seige of Stasbourg, as
a prelude to its annexation.
It is dedicated respectfully to Peter Heinrich von Wessenberg,tireless
animator of the Wessenberg-Akademie and annual July "Wessenberg-Tage"; to
Sir Brian Crowe (O.S.), Member of the Council of Chatham House,London, and
former British Ambassador to Vienna; to Gregor Dallas (O.S.),author of
'1815:Roads to Waterloo' and John Hartland (O.M.), for their transcultural
inspiration;and to Gérard Littler, Curator, BNUS, and Monica Azulay Gaspar,
Council of Europe, for their specialist historical help and advice in
exploiting the Strsabourg 'Buecherschatz'.
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