19

The Duke of Texas

Tsar Alexander was still fixated on Spain. ‘He regarded Spain,’ the British minister plenipotentiary in Vienna, Sir Robert Gordon, reported to Castlereagh in May 1821, ‘as the tribune to which all the revolutionists of Europe have recourse, as to a vehicle from which they can disseminate their pernicious doctrine.’ The fall of Richelieu’s ministry in December 1821 had unsettled the tsar, and he feared that if the Spanish revolutionaries were permitted to continue, their ‘insolent victory’ might provoke revolution in France. Also, as he explained to Wellington, it was impossible for him, a monarch who relied so heavily on his army, to countenance anything that originated in military insubordination.¹

He suggested marching a Russian army of 40,000 men through Austria and Italy into France, where it could be used to quell revolution if the need arose, or alternatively to invade Spain in order to restore King Ferdinand.

The hostility of the powers to the constitutional government in Spain, and the encouragement given to the king’s supporters by Ultras in France, had undermined the moderates and strengthened the extremists, known as exaltados. In the elections of 1822 they gained a majority, and Riego was elected president of the Cortes. Civil war loomed as the government held the king a virtual captive in Madrid, and a group of royalists gathered in Catalonia and set up a regency in his name.²

Metternich now took the view that what was happening in Spain was ‘one of the greatest plagues which have been reserved to our century’. The language in which his letters were couched was by now verging on the pathological: in June he had assured Lebzeltern that the conspiracy had penetrated ‘every vein of the body of society’. ‘This revolution is special in that it is the premeditated work of a faction spread across the whole of Europe,’ he wrote to Vincent in Paris on 5 July 1822, with the Parisian comité directeur dispensing ‘considerable funds’ to finance revolutions wherever it chose. He had reached the conclusion that the Carbonari, the Teutomaniacs, Bonapartists, Neapolitan, Spanish and other rebels had ‘consummated their fusion’ into one organisation.3

Events in Spain could not be divorced from what was happening in its former colonies in the Americas, from Mexico to Peru. These had by now almost entirely broken free of Spain, and this confronted the European powers with the dilemma of whether to recognise them as independent states, thereby sanctioning revolution. ‘There are already enough republican ideas in the world,’ René de Chateaubriand, France’s ambassador in London, said to Castlereagh during an interview on 10 April 1822; ‘to increase the sum of these ideas is to compromise more and more the fate of monarchy in Europe.’ Castlereagh, who had acceded to the title of Marquess of Londonderry on the death of his father the preceding year, assured him that the British cabinet was ‘by no means disposed to recognise the revolutionary governments’. Chateaubriand suggested they direct their efforts ‘to bringing monarchies into existence in the New World rather than these republics, which will send us their principles with the products of their soil’. Castlereagh agreed in principle, although he was wary of the French interest in Spain and its former colonies.⁴

The issue was complicated by a declaration on 8 March by the American president James Monroe to the effect that the new nations of South and Central America deserved recognition, the first of a number of utterances that would culminate in the United States warning the European powers off the Americas. Lebzeltern termed the declaration ‘subversive of every legally constituted government of whatever form’. He had long suspected Monroe of ‘Jacobin opinions’, and in his view the United States government derived its authority from ‘an impure source’, since it had been born of revolution. He was also convinced that the move had been prepared in concert with the revolutionary leaders of the rebellious colonies. Metternich went further, asserting that the evidence ‘does not allow of any doubt that these various moves derive from a common source and were orchestrated by the same body which is relentlessly occupied with the destruction of the old social order in both the old world and the new’, and implying that President Monroe had been given his orders by the comité directeur. Alexander too saw the global threat, and suggested the formation of a combined European army which could put down the revolution in Spain, then cross the Atlantic and deal with the rebellious colonies. The idea was described by one British diplomat as ‘bordering on madness’.5

Castlereagh took the same view, and was determined to distance Britain from the reactionary policy of the three absolutist monarchies. But, in the hope of being able to restrain them, he gave in to Metternich’s entreaties that he should participate in the congress which was to convene in September 1822. He agreed to attend not the congress of monarchs in Florence, which would be concerned primarily with Italian affairs, but a conference of foreign ministers that was to take place beforehand in Vienna, where Greece and Spain were to be discussed. On his way to Vienna he meant to pause in Paris in order to dissuade Louis XVIII and his ministry from intervening in Spain. Metternich considered it a major coup to have obtained the attendance of the British foreign secretary, even if only for the one conference. ‘The moment, my dear marquess, is immense,’ he wrote to Castlereagh on 6 June 1822. ‘I frankly regard it as the point of departure for a new era, and if the results were not to be such as I expect, the fault could only lie at the doors of the allied Cabinets.’⁶

Castlereagh was not well. He had been showing signs of mental strain, even muddling his words while speaking in the House. Liverpool and Wellington were concerned, and he was persuaded to go and rest at his beloved retreat at Cray in Kent. His secretary Hamilton Seymour visited him there, and was struck by the change that had taken place in him. They took a walk in the garden, and Seymour ventured that Castlereagh must be looking forward to the forthcoming trip, which would afford him the pleasure of renewing some old acquaintances. ‘Lord Londonderry drew his hand across his forehead, and said, very slowly, “At any other time I should like it very much, but I am quite worn out here” (keeping his hand upon his forehead), “quite worn out; and this fresh responsibility is more than I can bear.”’ A couple of days later, the British foreign secretary committed suicide by cutting his throat.7

‘This catastrophe is one of the most terrible that could have struck me,’ Metternich wrote on hearing the news, with good reason. Castlereagh was succeeded at the Foreign Office by George Canning, who immediately imposed his view that Britain should have as little to do with Europe as possible. He nominated Wellington as Britain’s observer at the congress, with a brief to do nothing beyond urging the powers to implement the ban on the slave trade and trying to discourage France or anyone else from intervening in Spain.⁸

By the time Wellington reached Vienna, the monarchs had arrived and there was no time to hold the preliminary conference of ministers. He was therefore obliged to attend the congress of monarchs, whose venue Metternich had changed to Verona. ‘Florence is crowded with foreigners of every kind,’ he explained to Lebzeltern, ‘and there is no doubt that busybodies of every sort will aim to take themselves to that place for the conference, some to satisfy their idle curiosity, others with all manner of intrigue and espionage in mind.’ Lying as it did within Austrian jurisdiction, Verona could be more easily isolated and covered by his own spies. He reached the city on 13 October 1822, which gave him a few days to conduct preparatory meetings and set the agenda for the congress, which he considered ‘the most important to have been held since 1814’.⁹

The turnout was certainly impressive. As was the custom, the inhabitants hung tapestries, carpets, bedspreads and even clothes from their windows to decorate their houses in honour of the monarchs as they drove into the city. These included the tsar, the Emperor Francis, the King of Prussia with his two sons, the Kings of Sardinia and of the Two Sicilies, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Duke of Modena, the Duchess of Parma and lesser Italian rulers, ministers, ambassadors and aristocrats. When they gathered at the theatre for a play or an opera, performed by singers and actors imported for the occasion, it glittered as much from the decorations on the breasts of the men as from the diamonds on those of the ladies. Only Wellington usually appeared in civilian dress and without decorations. The guest book of the better of the city’s two hotels, the Torre di Londra, looked to one bemused visitor like a court almanac, with its list of princes, dukes, counts and barons. Those who could not find a space there or at the other hotel were accommodated in the rundown palazzos of local nobles who dusted down and refreshed grand interiors that had grown shabby with the decline of their fortunes.10

The sessions of the congress were held irregularly, usually prompted by a note from one of the courts which needed to be discussed. While it had been called to review the security of Italy and take the necessary measures to defend the European order in the face of the revolutionary threat, it quickly became apparent that there was no unity of purpose, and that each of the powers had its own agenda. Individual state interests and great-power rivalry overrode any common policy on the supposed threat from the universal conspiracy. Austria needed to reinforce its hegemony over Italy, France yearned to invade Spain, Russia wanted to gain for France the permission to do so and for itself to intervene in Greece, Prussia wanted to avoid involvement and keep out of trouble, and Britain was principally interested in enforcing the ban on the slave trade. Metternich would ostentatiously doodle whenever such subjects, of no interest to him, were being discussed. The congress rapidly degenerated into a series of disjointed horse-trades. The clash of national interests intersected with personal prejudice and private animosity. ‘A thousand little hatreds, envies and calumnies intersected,’ in Chateaubriand’s picturesque view; ‘people loathed one another while professing their esteem; between four walls a man whose praises had been sung outside was torn to pieces …’11

While Gentz held discreet meetings with Lord Strangford, the British ambassador in Constantinople, to work out a way of pandering to the philhellenic rage sweeping Europe without supporting the rebels, Chateaubriand discussed with Alexander how to organise an invasion of Spain behind the back of France’s foreign minister, Montmorency. The tsar’s conviction that the Spanish mutineers had to be punished went deep, but his desire to see the Alliance agree to armed intervention there was reinforced by the idea that this might give him some purchase to demand the right to intervene in Greece. Metternich was not having this, and kept reminding Alexander that the Greek rebels were no different from any of the others directed by the comité directeur. ‘Conceived by the artifice of a sect, nourished and supported by it, the Greek people is no more than a tool in the hands of men who, under false pretences, have never had any other goal than to sow discord among the allied Powers, and particularly between the imperial Courts of Austria and Russia,’ he reminded Nesselrode.¹²

Metternich’s reason for inviting the rulers of the Italian states lay in the hope that he might be able to bully them into adopting a form of administration dictated by himself. He had not had much success so far: the overthrow of the Neapolitan revolution might have been a triumph, but what followed was less than glorious. Two months elapsed from the moment the Austrians marched into Naples before Ferdinand could be persuaded to return to his kingdom, and when he did he began a vicious purge of all those who had not sided with him during the revolution. The allied commissioners supposedly advising him were powerless to prevent this, and their advice was ignored. Ferdinand appointed a government even less competent than that which had provoked the revolution. The introduction of Metternich’s new order was sluggish and the results disappointing. It failed to address the real evils, which, his chargé Menz reported, were not and never had been the Carbonari, but rather the ‘buffoonery’, the ‘degradation of morals’, and the lack of education of those in power. ‘Instead of uniting the king and his nation,’ Lord Burghersh reported, ‘the Allies have widened the breach between them.’13

While he refused to accept advice even from Metternich, Ferdinand begged him to leave the Austrian army of occupation in Naples. Metternich had insisted that the costs of the campaign would be borne by the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and since this had been in financial difficulties even before the revolution, he had brought in the banking house of Rothschild to provide it with a loan with which to discharge its obligations towards Austria. This was just as well, as the troops would remain in Naples until 1827, eating up some 75 per cent of the kingdom’s revenues. Further north, in Piedmont, Charles Felix, who had ascended the Sardinian throne in the wake of the unsuccessful rebellion, wanted the Austrians who had assisted him to leave. Metternich on the other hand contrived to keep them there, as it suited him to have garrisons stationed in various parts of Italy at the hosts’ expense. In other respects too, the situation in Piedmont was less than satisfactory, as the new king was not introducing the forms of government suggested by Metternich.¹⁴

Metternich lectured the rulers and ministers of the various Italian states on the subject of good governance, and encouraged them to agree a common programme. The result was the adoption of a set of principles according to which all the states were to frame their legislation and reorganise their administration. These were: 1. a close union of throne and altar, with the propagation of the faith to counteract subversive ideas; 2. the strengthening of the role of the nobility in government and society; 3. the reinforcement of paternal authority; 4. more rapid and severe punishment of the crime of lèse-majesté; 5. limiting the number of schools and universities; and 6. tighter censorship of the press.¹⁵

Metternich had hoped to obtain the support of the Italian states for his plan of setting up in Milan an investigating commission on the model of the one at Mainz, and for a postal convention that would give him power to inspect mail throughout the peninsula. Most of the Italian states were amenable to the idea of the commission, but the best-ruled of them, Tuscany, saw no point in it and questioned the principle, while Rome was openly hostile to the idea, fearing that the spiritual independence of the papacy might be impaired. Cardinal Consalvi recruited the French ambassador at St Petersburg, La Ferronnays, and his minister Montmorency to his cause, and they had little difficulty in engaging the support of Alexander. Consalvi also resisted Metternich’s attempts to route all mail services through the Austrian offices in Lombardy, in which he was likewise supported by Russia and France. Needing all the influence he could command over them to prevent armed intervention in Spain and Greece, Metternich could not force the issue.16

Alexander had brought with him not only Nesselrode but also his ambassadors in Madrid and London, Tatishchev and Lieven, and the latter had, to the delight of Metternich, brought his wife. She wasted no time in establishing her drawing room as the heart of the congress. Metternich, Wellington, the Neapolitan plenipotentiary Ruffo, the French plenipotentiary Caraman and the Prussian minister Bernstorff would spend their evenings there (Chateaubriand’s presence was not encouraged, as he was inclined to bore everyone with tales of his recent travels in America). Much of the business of the congress was carried on there, often with her participation and encouragement. ‘I am very glad to find myself here; my curiosity is altogether satisfied; it is perhaps a more interesting meeting than any of the previous [congresses],’ she wrote to her brother in St Petersburg on 23 October. ‘The feminine element is weak; there is not a single woman here …’¹⁷

This is a curious remark, given that among those present was Napoleon’s widow Marie-Louise – who shocked more than one person by her gaiety, as she would appear at the opera, covered in diamonds and make-up, squired by her one-eyed consort Count Neipperg. To Chateaubriand, who tried to draw her out on the subject of past glories, she retorted that she never thought about the old days. Another lady of note present in Verona was Madame Récamier, with whom Metternich is believed to have had an affair while he was Austria’s ambassador in Paris. He did not renew his tender acquaintance with her but, as gossip related, in his spare time stalked new and younger women. In this he was outdone by Wellington, who, as Chateaubriand noted acidly, when not attending to exclusively British interests was looking for sex in the streets of Verona. The authorities had banned all the prostitutes from the city, and they had withdrawn to the country, but many would come into town with baskets of fruit or vegetables, posing as street vendors. Since they could not very well ply their trade in the street, those who craved their company had to move them into their quarters and employ them in some domestic capacity.18

Countess Lieven noted that the other Russians in Verona treated her with coolness. ‘As I have spent ten years in England, they consider me English, and as I see Metternich every day, they think of me as an Austrian,’ she wrote to her brother. This may have had something to do with the fact that the tsar was not paying her enough attention. He had been bowled over by the sight of the new Lady Londonderry, the former Lord Charles Stewart’s young wife Frances, and he was following her around like a star-struck young lover. His feelings were, however, almost certainly platonic.¹⁹

The Quaker abolitionist William Allen, whom Alexander had met in London in 1814, had come to Verona expressly to see him. The books on the slave trade he was bringing the tsar had been confiscated by the Austrian police, but in the course of two long interviews he briefed him on that and various other subjects close to his heart, such as prison reform and education. They also talked about the Greek insurgents, and Allen noted that ‘the Emperor seemed to feel deeply for them, and said, he had proofs that this rebellion against the Turks was organised at Paris, by the revolutionists’. At the end of their second meeting, Alexander suggested they pray together. ‘We then had a precious tender time of silent waiting upon the Lord, and were favoured with a sweet holy feeling,’ Allen recalled. Alexander’s physician Dr Tarasov recorded that as a result of spending so much time on his knees, the tsar had a large area of hardened skin tissue around his kneecaps.20

Alexander was still set on military intervention in Spain. ‘He said that he considered that country as the head-quarters of revolution and Jacobinism,’ Wellington reported after a conversation with him on 21 October, ‘that the king and the Royal Family were in the utmost danger; and that so long as the revolution in that country should be allowed to continue, every country in Europe, and France in particular, was unsafe.’ Metternich hoped to block Alexander by suggesting the five powers make a ‘moral stand’ against the Spanish revolutionary government, in the form of a joint condemnation. But at the second full session of the congress Montmorency insisted that France would keep its options open with regard to Spanish affairs, as it alone was directly threatened by events there. Alexander backed Montmorency, pledging to support French military intervention if necessary. Wellington protested that Britain would not tolerate such action. The tsar persisted, and told him he wanted to march an army of 150,000 into Piedmont, with the aim of supporting France.²¹

In an attempt to paper over the rift that had opened in the Alliance, Metternich came up with a new idea. He suggested that the powers each address a note to the Spanish government and the Cortes, demanding that changes be made to the constitution, failing which they would withdraw their ambassadors. He managed to persuade Alexander and Frederick William to follow this course, but Montmorency reserved for France the right of addressing its own note independently. The three courts eventually agreed the text of a note, and pledged support and military assistance if necessary, should France come under attack or be obliged to go to war with Spain. They also, at Metternich’s behest, sent a joint circular to all their respective ambassadors and ministers informing them of the official line regarding the Greek rising. ‘At the very moment when the military insurrections which had broken out in Naples and Turin were faltering in the face of the approach of regular troops, the Revolution cast one of its firebrands on the Ottoman empire,’ it ran. ‘The coincidence of these facts can leave no room for doubt on the identity of the causes which produced them. The appearance of the evil at so many different places, the fact that everywhere it appeared under the same forms and spoke the same language, even if it did not always break out under the same pretexts, point only too clearly to the common fount from which it sprang.’ With this reaffirmation of faith, the congress closed. The end was marked by a horse race and illuminations. Two days later, Metternich accompanied Francis and Alexander on a trip to Venice, which involved a visit to the opera and a meeting with Rossini – despite the warnings of the Austrian police that the composer was ‘strongly infected with revolutionary principles’.22

On 25 December, the day Metternich left Venice to return to Vienna, Montmorency was replaced as foreign minister by Chateaubriand. He was set on military intervention in Spain, not so much because he wished to see the revolution crushed, more out of a desire to employ the French army in a manner that would take its mind off subversion, efface the shame of Waterloo and restore the prestige of France. Metternich did everything he could to discourage him, as he feared that, having defeated the revolution, the French might allow the Spaniards to keep a constitution on the model of the Charte. The last thing he wanted was to see Spain become a functioning constitutional monarchy, as that would pose the question why Naples had not been allowed to. He even came up with the bizarre suggestion that Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies should be appointed regent during the reconstruction of Spain, to ensure that this would take place along legitimist lines. Canning was also desperate to prevent French intervention in Spain, for quite different reasons. He thought any extension of French influence in the Iberian peninsula would be a ‘calamity’, and wrote to the French government, Louis XVIII and Monsieur urging them to hold back. None of this made any impression on the French ministry, which prepared for war.²³

On 6 April 1823 a French army 60,000 strong, supported by 35,000 Spanish volunteers, commanded by Monsieur’s son the duc d’Angoulême, crossed the border into Spain. Notwithstanding his disappointment at Russia not being allowed to participate, Alexander was delighted at the news. So was public opinion in Vienna, to Metternich’s annoyance.

Nobody could be certain how the troops would perform in military terms, or how they would be received by the population – Napoleon’s invasion and the guerrilla it had inspired were still fresh in the memory of both sides. Another unknown was how the troops would react when confronted with Spanish constitutionalist forces, which might seek to subvert them politically: many Napoleonic officers had gone to Spain to fight for the constitutionalist cause. To complicate matters, there was an explosion of rumour, particularly rife in south-western France, that Napoleon was not dead and had landed in Spain. In March the gendarmerie of the Puy-de-Dôme region reported that most of the population was convinced that he had joined up with the Spanish revolutionary General Francisco Espoz y Mina and was preparing to march into France. In Toulouse it was rumoured that Mina was in fact none other than Napoleon in disguise.24

The fears proved groundless. When the French army crossed the Bidassoa river on 6 April it was confronted by a band of some five hundred men clad in a variety of Napoleonic uniforms drawn up under the French tricolour, singing the ‘Marseillaise’ and urging the soldiers to join them. One artillery salvo was enough to disperse them. A later brush with a force of French ex-Napoleonic soldiers near Corunna, led this time by the British general Sir Robert Wilson, passed off without any hesitation on the part of the royal troops, let alone the feared defections. In contrast to 1808, the French were generally well received by the rural population of Spain, and sometimes greeted with joy. This time they were seen as liberators by the clergy, who were on the side of the throne. When they entered Madrid on 23 May the crowds burned an effigy of Riego in a show of enthusiasm.

The Spanish government had retreated to Cádiz, taking King Ferdinand with it, so Angoulême established a regency in his name in the capital. Metternich, still insisting that Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies should be made regent, refused to recognise it. The French ignored him, and their armies made good progress. At the end of September, Angoulême stormed the fortress of the Trocadero and delivered the king. A few days later, Ferdinand rescinded all the reforms introduced since 1820 and put in hand savage reprisals. On 7 November Riego was executed: he was dragged through the streets of Madrid in a basket attached to a donkey’s tail, then hanged, and his body was cut into five pieces.25

The victorious invasion of Spain was a triumph for the French government and the Bourbon monarchy in more ways than one. The cloak of military glory in which they could wrap themselves did much to eclipse the previous image of obese indolence and unmerited privilege. Significantly, 2 December, the anniversary of Austerlitz and of Napoleon’s coronation, was chosen for Angoulême’s triumphal entry into Paris at the head of his victorious troops.

More important, a bored and frustrated army which had found no outlet for its energies other than conspiracy had been given something to do, and had enjoyed the experience. Its interest in subversion vanished overnight and, in the words of Francisque de Corcelle, ‘the secret societies were left to die of feebleness and boredom’. Without the army, Carbonarism withered. It had, according to Corcelle, never been anything but ‘a transaction between some bitter resentments and diverse principles, a kind of transitory coalition incapable of surviving the singular circumstances that produced it’. Ironically, the great alliance ranged against it withered concurrently, and for much the same reasons. While Alexander now considered duplicating the French triumph across the Atlantic, and King Ferdinand decided to honour Metternich with the title of Duke of Texas, in total disregard of his allies Canning appointed British consuls in all the successor states to the former Spanish colonies. On 3 December President Monroe declared both American continents, north and south, closed to European colonialism.²⁶