‘Metternich’ Review: Leading Europe’s Dance
The powerful Austrian chancellor guided a continent in the wake of Napoleon, but he wasn’t the reactionary of legend. He favored a ‘middle way.’

“Metternich: Strategist and Visionary”
Wolfram Siemann
Belknap/Harvard, 900 pages, $39.95

"[Siemann] concentrates on Metternich’s contribution to the defeat of Napoleon—an effort that Mr. Siemann sees as his most significant achievement....It is against this background that Metternich’s encounter with Napoleon must be viewed. Like the French revolutionaries before him, Napoleon was the negation of everything Metternich stood for: law, order, tranquility. Metternich was horrified by France’s contempt for international law and established authorities and by the violence that the Revolution and Napoleon’s aggression unleashed. Rising quickly within the Habsburg diplomatic service, Metternich was in the eye of the storm as ambassador to Berlin in 1803—at a time when Prussia was frantically maneuvering between Napoleonic France and the coalition powers: Austria, Britain and Russia. Then he was cast into the belly of the beast as ambassador to Paris. As Austria repeatedly went down to defeat at Napoleon’s hands, Metternich learned the value of allies and careful timing....The focal point of Mr. Siemann’s biography, in fact, is the year 1813. He makes a convincing case that Metternich never intended to reach a compromise with Napoleon, as other historians have claimed. Instead he made offers that he knew the dictator would refuse, thereby putting himself in the wrong and justifying Austria’s defection from its alignment with France. These exchanges culminated in an epic encounter at the Palais Marcolini in Dresden, when Metternich tried to persuade the Frenchman to back down. Napoleon (as Mr. Siemann shows on the basis of new evidence) not merely expressed his contempt for the soldiers who would die in another war but said that he did not give a “f—” for them. This gave Metternich the excuse he needed to join Russia, Prussia and Britain in an alliance against France...."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/metternich-review-leading-europes-dance-11576276932