Metternich began his first meeting with Castlereagh declaring that there was no time for them to sound each other out, and proceeded to give him a summary of his own views and aims. ‘If you think as I do, if you wish for the same things, the world is safe – if you do not, it will perish,’ he announced. He was overjoyed to discover that they agreed in all essentials. ‘From that moment we have been working together like two clerks from the same office. It is as though we had spent our lives together,’ he enthused. ‘He is cool and collected; his heart is in the right place, he is a man, and he keeps his head.’ To Schwarzenberg, he put his feelings in only slightly more measured terms. ‘He has everything; amiability, wisdom, moderation,’ he wrote on 21 January. ‘He suits me in every way, and I am convinced that I suit him.’ A couple of weeks later he made the most astonishing avowal for a man as vain as him. ‘I am equal to Lord C. and he is equal to me, because he is good, excellent, as I assuredly am when it comes to feelings and principles,’ he confided to Wilhelmina.8
Castlereagh was less forthcoming, and reserved judgement for the while. After meeting Metternich and Hardenberg, and being presented to Francis I and Frederick William, and buying a couple of Swiss dolls for Emily and Emma Sophia and sending them off, he set out to join Alexander at headquarters, which had moved to Langres on French territory.
Castlereagh’s official instructions, composed largely by himself in consultation with Liverpool and other senior members of the cabinet, were that France must be excluded from the river Scheldt and the port of Antwerp, Holland must be given the former Austrian Netherlands as a ‘barrier’ against France, and strengthened by the addition of Jülich and Berg; the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies must be reinstated; and Italy must be so rearranged as to preclude the possibility of future French incursions. Britain would then return all the French colonies she had captured, except for Malta, Mauritius, the Île de Bourbon (Réunion), the Saintes islands and Guadeloupe (promised to Sweden, though Castlereagh was authorised to return Guadeloupe as well if Sweden could be induced to relinquish her claim and take the Île de Bourbon instead). Britain would also return to Holland all the Dutch colonies she had captured, except for the Cape, for which she would indemnify Holland with £2 million, to be dedicated to building a string of fortifications against the French along the new ‘barrier’. A strong Holland incorporating Belgium and defended by such a barrier was Britain’s sine qua non. Much to his relief, Castlereagh was able to ascertain from his first conversations with them that both Metternich and Hardenberg were amenable to these conditions.9
Negotiations, set to take place at Châtillon, were ready to start as soon as Castlereagh arrived. But Caulaincourt, who was waiting at Châtillon, was Napoleon’s plenipotentiary, and there was some doubt among the allies as to whether it was with Napoleon that they should be making peace.
Of all the European powers, Britain alone had never recognised Napoleon’s title of Emperor of the French, and in all official correspondence he was referred to simply as General Bonaparte. Over the years British public opinion had turned him into a bogeyman, and the majority of the population regarded him with a mixture of horror and disdain. As the war with France dragged on it assumed the character of a fight to the death, and there was a widespread desire to see ‘Boney’ hanged or at least put behind bars. For his part, the Prince Regent wanted the old French dynasty of the Bourbons reinstated. Its senior living member, Louis XVIII, brother of the guillotined Louis XVI, was living in exile at Hartwell in Buckinghamshire as the guest of the King of England.
Liverpool, Castlereagh and the majority of the cabinet felt that it would be wrong to intervene in the internal affairs of another power, even an enemy one, and impose their choice of ruler on it. They hoped the Bourbons would be reinstated by force of events, but feared that any declaration by the British government in support of Louis XVIII might have the adverse effect of rallying the nation to Napoleon’s side.
Alexander on the other hand was determined that Napoleon should pay for his misdeeds with the loss of his throne. But he had a low opinion of the current representatives of the house of Bourbon, and believed that the French nation required a more modern and dashing monarch. His personal favourite was Bernadotte. Rumours of the scheme hatched between them had been circulating for some time, and Bernadotte’s posturings had featured in Stewart’s reports to Castlereagh in recent months. But the idea was so absurd that nobody had paid it much heed. It was only now that Alexander began to voice it openly, much to Metternich’s alarm.
Metternich’s legitimist principles should have inclined him to the Bourbon cause. But he did not have much faith in Louis XVIII’s ability to keep France stable and strong. And while neither he nor Francis considered the dynastic link with Napoleon of any relevance, his survival would provide a powerful counterbalance to the might of Russia. Francis feared that the restoration of the Bourbons would increase British influence on the Continent to an undesirable degree. If Napoleon did have to go, Metternich envisaged his abdication in favour of his son the King of Rome, with some kind of regency during his infancy.10
Castlereagh argued that a regency would be inherently unstable and would embroil Austria in the affairs of France, and that the only viable alternative to Napoleon was a Bourbon restoration. But they were both for making peace as quickly as possible, and agreed that for the time being they should do everything to achieve a satisfactory one with Napoleon, and not press for a change of regime unless his intractability or circumstances made it inevitable. Either way, the idea of putting Bernadotte on the throne had to be knocked out of Alexander’s head, and it was one of the first matters Castlereagh broached with him shortly after his arrival at headquarters in Langres.11
Castlereagh’s intercourse with crowned heads had been limited. The demented George III did not count. The Prince Regent was not a sovereign, and neither the British constitution nor his outrageous conduct and scandalous private life, exposed to the public in print and caricature, demanded that he be treated with more deference than the conduct of affairs and common civility dictated. At Bâle Castlereagh had briefly encountered the anxious and awkward Frederick William and the homely and timid Francis. Nothing had prepared him for Alexander’s peculiar combination of autocracy and liberalism, haughtiness and bonhomie, priggishness and deviousness.
Castlereagh came quickly to the point, declaring that the Prince Regent would never agree to Bernadotte becoming the ruler of France, and rehearsing all the arguments against it. Alexander professed to agree with him, and ‘disclaimed ever having expressed any intention of taking a step to favour the Prince Royal’s claims, it being repugnant to his own principles to interfere in the Government of a foreign State’; but Castlereagh was not convinced. He sensed that Alexander would do everything to prevent the Bourbons being reinstated. This alarmed him, for, as he said to Alexander, leaving question marks hanging over a matter such as this introduced a new issue and a possible bone of contention among the allies, inviting intrigue and potentially leading to differences. There were quite enough of these as it was, as he discovered when he arrived at headquarters.12
The agreed plan of action was that the Austro-Russian main army under Schwarzenberg was to deploy on the right bank of the Seine, while Blücher’s Prussians, reinforced by a Russian contingent, were to operate on the Marne. Each time Napoleon attempted to attack one of these forces, the other was to threaten his rear. In this way the allies, who still feared his military talents, hoped to wear down his forces without risking defeat. Their lines of communication and supply were by now stretched, and they could not provision themselves properly in what had turned out to be a severe winter in a country ground down by years of war exactions and ravaged by the current campaign. The troops were