Klemens von Metternich
Klemens von Metternich was Austrian foreign minister for thirty-nine years and the architect of the European order that followed Napoleon. Born in Koblenz in 1773 into a family of imperial Rhineland nobility, he lost the family estates to the French revolutionary armies, which shaped a lifelong conviction that revolution destroys everything it touches. He served as ambassador to Dresden, Berlin and then Paris, where he studied Napoleon closely, and became foreign minister in 1809 after Austria's defeat at Wagram. His policy was to survive by flexibility until circumstances changed. He arranged the marriage of the Archduchess Marie Louise to Napoleon in 1810, supplied a contingent for the Russian campaign, and then switched sides in 1813 when the Grande Armée was destroyed, bringing Austria into the coalition on his own terms. He presided over the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, which redrew the map on the principles of legitimacy, compensation and a balance of power designed so that no single state could dominate the continent. The settlement produced no general European war for ninety-nine years. He then spent three decades suppressing what he called the revolution: the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 censoring the German press and universities, a network of informers, and armed intervention in Naples and Piedmont in 1821 to restore absolutist rulers. He held the Austrian Empire together as chancellor from 1821, an assemblage of a dozen nationalities for which nationalism was fatal by definition. The revolutions of March 1848 forced him out; he fled to England disguised, returned in 1851, and died in 1859.
- Lived: 1773 CE – 1859 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: diplomat, foreign_minister, statesman
