Free Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna by David King Page B

and founded Berlin University. His brother Alexander was a famous explorer and naturalist.
    Article XXXII of the Treaty of Paris had called for a “general congress” consisting of representatives from “all the powers that have been engaged on either side in the present war.” But in a secret article attached to this treaty, the Big Four had given themselves the authority to organize the peace conference and establish the rules for the deliberations. This had proved more difficult than expected, and the group struggled to agree.
    Ever since their first secret meeting, a five-hour affair on September 15, Metternich had emphasized the problems of a congress in the usual sense of a parliament-style assembly. First of all, it would be too large and unwieldy. Too many states with too many demands would hopelessly complicate the negotiations and cause the whole affair to degenerate into a sorry spectacle of disorder. They could, as Metternich put it, poison diplomacy by rekindling “all the maneuvers, intrigues, and plots, which had so great a share in causing the misfortunes of late years.”
    It was much better, Metternich argued, to adopt a more confidential style of diplomacy, with the four powers making all the decisions themselves, as a cabinet meeting behind closed doors. Compromise-friendly exchange would be much better than a wild free-for-all diplomatic bazaar. The Prussians and the Russians agreed completely. Castlereagh, on the other hand, was skeptical.
    While the British foreign secretary also wanted to maintain control over the actual decision making, he advocated establishing a congress of states that would ratify or sanction their decisions. This was more in line with the public articles of the Treaty of Paris, and besides, was not all of Vienna being filled with delegates, who had come on this pretense, and expected to see the congress open soon, presumably in one of the large ballrooms of the imperial palace?
    Yes, Metternich conceded, but there were messy problems. Who exactly would be allowed to participate in such an assembly? Take Naples, for example. Would the representative of the current king, Joachim Murat, a former Bonaparte marshal who received his crown from Napoleon, be recognized as the official delegate, or would it be the representative of the exiled King Ferdinand IV, who claimed his throne on the grounds of legitimacy? What about all the princes and knights of the former Holy Roman Empire? There were hundreds of them—or “millions of them,” as someone scoffed—and each had a representative. Would every self-proclaimed delegate in Vienna be permitted in the congress?
    On September 22, the day before Talleyrand’s arrival in Vienna, the four powers had finally agreed on the organization of the conference. Castlereagh had been outvoted. The Vienna Congress was not in fact going to be a congress. It was no parliament of equal sovereign states, and certainly not any kind of a “deliberate assembly of Europe.” Rather, the congress was simply the “site of many individual negotiations.” It was only a “Europe without distances.”
    As for the management of the diplomacy, the Great Powers had agreed simply to take it upon themselves to appoint the Central Committee, or Directing Committee, that would facilitate all the negotiations. More exactly, this committee would control everything from selecting the agendas to making the final decisions:
     
This committee is the core of the congress; the congress exists only when the committee is in being, and it is terminated when the committee dissolves itself.
     
    This central committee, further, would be staffed only with members of the four Great Powers—the idea of a “Great Power” enjoying its own special privileges was about to be born in this secret protocol.
    This arrangement was only fair, they reasoned. The Big Four were the ones who had carried the brunt of the fight against Napoleon, and, as a result, earned the right to decide