This is a curate’s egg of a book, good in parts, not so good in others. Siemann writes fluently and as promised his use of the Metternich family archives in Prague has enabled him to cast unprecedented light on Metternich’s private and family life, his role as a surprisingly progressive landowner and later factory owner, his economic ideas and his previously unknown love of England, a country he believed knew how to marry authority with the rule of law. Some of this was revealed in Siemann’s ‘little Metternich’, the short biography of the Austrian Chancellor, which he published in 2010.1 It was in the introduction to that book2 that he complimented my own work3, although it is hardly mentioned at all in the long historiographical review in this, his ‘big Metternich’4; nevertheless we still agree on many aspects of Metternich’s career, especially that Metternich was a peace-loving statesman with a warm and generous disposition who loathed the shedding of blood and was averse to executing prisoners. He also wanted a balance of power with the emphasis on balance and was reluctant to use force, preferring moderation, compromise, reconciliation and agreement. He abhorred ideology and was a constructive, not reactionary statesman who preferred rational systems of government based on the rule of law and monarchs taking advice from well-informed, well-trained advisors who were devoted to legal and financial rectitude. Metternich himself was extraordinarily well-read and informed and operated from principles of rationalism. Siemann’s new book backs up this case in greater detail.

However, the book is unbalanced and in parts extremely curious. The great problem is that although Siemann has definite views about Metternich after 1815 he cannot be bothered to tell us in any detail why he holds them. He does not talk very much about Metternich’s diplomacy after the Napoleonic wars and the Vienna Settlement at all. Nor does he write much about the development of opposition to Vienna in Lombardy-Venetia and Hungary. The key issue of Metternich’s role in the origins of the 1848 revolutions, therefore, is not covered in any depth at all. The bulk—and the best – of the book is on Metternich’s career up to 1815 and in the immediate aftermath of the Vienna Settlement. Again, rather disappointingly, the Metternich family archives do not seem to have been exploited to illuminate Metternich’s diplomacy after 1815, for many writers the central aspect of Metternich’s career. The same is true of Metternich’s activities in exile and after 1848. If new archive sources were the motive for his ‘Big Metternich’, why not use the collection of his letters from England to be found in the British Library?

The lack of balance in the biography can best be illustrated by looking at the space devoted to the various chapters of his book, which has 879 pages of text. The story of the struggle against the French Revolution and Napoleon climaxing in the Vienna Congress and plans for restructuring Germany up till 1818 takes the reader up to page 638. Within these pages is a chapter, sixty pages long, on Metternich’s love life, marriages and children. From page 639 onwards we are given another eighty pages on Metternich’s response to students and other radicals in Europe between 1815 and 1819. This takes us to page 719. The ‘Congress System’ and the problem of great power intervention in the 1820s is covered in 16 pages, which manage to omit the Congress of Aix-la Chapelle of 1818 altogether, despite the fact that this brought France into the Congress System and was regarded by Metternich, therefore, as part of the foundations of European security.

The Eastern Question, which troubled Europe for decades after the Greek revolt and almost led to war between France and the other powers over her support for Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt in 1840, is covered in six pages of the kind of narrative found in a school textbook, this despite the fact that the brilliant young Czech historian, Miroslav Ṥedivý, has recently published an outstandingly well written and well-researched volume of over 1,000 pages on Metternich’s diplomacy regarding it.5 In my own book on Metternich6 I produced evidence suggesting that peace had been preserved in 1840 due to the fact that Metternich had evidence from two episodes in the career of Louis Philippe, King of the French, which he used to blackmail him and I wondered whether Siemann would find anything in the family archives to justify my suspicions. In fact, he produces a document from one of these episodes and instructions from Metternich to the Austrian ambassador in Paris to read it to the king should he ever propose to attack Austria (pp. 768–69). So blackmail was indeed contemplated. Yet Siemann does not footnote Metternich’s instructions or give a date for them. Was blackmail used in 1840? One would love to know. However, Siemann’s coverage of the 1840 crisis amounts to only one page and he has nothing to say about blackmail (p. 786).

On domestic affairs, most of what Siemann has to say about the period after 1815 is superficial save for his dissection of the court and bureaucratic politics of the period. Otherwise, although he is interested in economic policy and commercial policy and the growth of pauperism, what is remarkable is his complete neglect of the growth of nationalism in the Monarchy, which is covered in a mere two paragraphs (pp. 773–4) and totally ignores work on Lombardy-Venetia7, Hungary8 or on Austro-slavism.9 Key episodes in the run-up to 1848 lack any real analysis (the Galician Massacres of 1846 for example10) or go completely unmentioned (Radetzky’s occupation of Ferrara in 184711 for example) and the whole issue of whether Metternich ran a police state is covered in two pages (pp. 778–790). All of this is highly frustrating since Siemann is clearly a fine historian and this lack of balance in his coverage of Metternich means that his book is a wasted opportunity. He should have written two volumes like Srbik, who, whatever criticisms can be justly brought against him, did give equal space to all decades of Metternich’s career.

My final criticism of Siemann, however, is probably the most substantial. But let me approach it obliquely. In pages 21–22 Siemann admonishes the author of a piece on Metternich published to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Congress of Vienna for stating that in 1809 Metternich wanted war with France. He points out that this myth had been demolished in 1968.12 Hence on page 285 he makes clear that Metternich was not part of the war party. Yet his account was rather different in his ‘Little Metternich’. There on page 40 he wrote that only at first did Metternich believe that war would be nonsense but that in 1808 he appeared to change his mind given Napoleon’s difficulties in Spain and Napoleon’s designs to establish a universal monarchy. I reproached him for this in my review of his first book.

Ironically, Siemann is guilty of exactly the same fault as the author of the piece on Metternich published to commemorate the Congress of Vienna, whom he complained about. For he resurrects the hoary old thesis of the American historian Arthur G. Haas that Metternich in 1817 wished to federalise the Monarchy (pp. 623–629).13 I myself demolished this myth as long ago as 1976 in a Festschrift I co-edited for A. J. P. Taylor’s seventieth birthday.14 Far from wishing to federalise the Monarchy, Metternich wanted to centralise it more efficiently. In a memorandum on the Council of State of 1811 he had already called for the strengthening of the central power and that was again his plan in 1817.

This neglect of my own work, while at the same time making the same error for which he has reproached another scholar, is astonishing. Even more so, because it allows Siemann to argue that Metternich’s failure to get approval for his mythical federalism forever demeans his reputation as a statesman (p. 868). Bismarck in his opinion ranks more highly on account of his domestic and constitutional reforms, although Siemann insists that Metternich was a Liberal, an advocate of freedom of commerce, open capital markets, and the reduction of commercial and tariff barriers (p. 867). Metternich, bizarrely, is not reduced in stature on account of any other failing – his policies in Lombardy-Venetia and Hungary are simply-ignored – but he is placed behind Bismarck (and Cavour) precisely on account of his failure to push through plans to federalise the Monarchy (plans which he never had!).

It is certainly interesting to compare Metternich and Bismarck. Both statesmen used force to overthrow the previous international order; both saw the new one as menaced principally by France; both established alliance systems to check the threat across the Rhine; and both presided over basically authoritarian and conservative systems to maintain peace at home and abroad. Metternich’s alliance system, however, was less complicated than Bismarck’s and created fewer tensions; he avoided making Reichsfeinde; and he lasted longer. Perhaps, therefore, he should really outrank Bismarck as a statesman.

In the end one has to congratulate Siemann for providing new insights and evidence on Metternich. However, despite producing a well-written book, I remain disappointed at its profound imbalances and in his final judgement on the man, however well-founded may be much of his revisionism. It is indeed a curate’s egg.

Editorial Note: An overview of the review symposium on Wolfram Siemann: Metternich can be found here: http://www.hsozkult.de/text/id/texte-3886

Notes:
1 Wolfram Siemann, Metternich, Staatsmann zwischen Restauration und Moderne, Munich 2010.
2 Ibid., S. 20:“The most significant progress (in Metternich studies) has been made recently by the London historian Alan Sked”
3 Alan Sked, Metternich and Austria. An Evaluation, Houndmills 2008.
4 Alan Sked, Review of: Wolfram Siemann, Metternich, Staatsmann zwischen Restauration und Moderne, in: Nations and Nationalism 19, 1 (2013), pp. 193–195.
5 Miroslav Ṥedivý, Metternich, the Great Powers and the Eastern Question, Pilsen 2013.
6 Sked, Metternich and Austria, pp. 97–98.
7 Particularly, Alan Sked, Metternich and the Ficquelmont Mission of 1847–48. The Decision against Reform in Lombardy-Venetia, in: Central Europe 2,1 (2004), pp. 15–46.
8 Erzsébet Andics, Metternich und die Frage Ungarns. Budapest 1973.
9 Andreas Moritsch (ed.), Der Austroslavismus: Eine verfrϋhtes Konzept zur politischen Neugestaltung Mitteleuropas, Vienna 1996.
10 Alan Sked, Benedek and Breinl and the “Galician Horrors” of 1846, in: Laszlo Peter / Martyn Rady (eds.), Resistance, Rebellion and Revolution in Central Europe. Commemorating 1956, London 2008, pp. 87–98; Alan Sked, Austria and the Galician massacres of 1846. Schwarzenberg and the Propaganda War. An Unknown but Key Episode in the Career of the Austrian Statesman, in: Lothar Höbelt / Thomas G. Otte (eds.), A Living Anachronism? European Diplomacy and the Habsburg Monarchy. Festschrift fϋr Francis Roy Bridge zum Geburtstag, Vienna 2010, pp. 56–118.
11 Alan Sked, Poor Intelligence, Flawed Results. Metternich, Radetzky and the Crisis-Management of Austria’s “Occupation” of Ferrara in 1847, in: Peter Jackson / Jennifer L. Siegel (eds.), Intelligence and Statecraft. The Uses and Limits of Intelligence in International Society, Westport Connecticut 2005, pp. 52–86.
12 Although he means in 1967 by Manfred Bozenhardt, Metternichs Pariser Botschafterzeit, Münster 1967.
13 Arthur G. Haas, Metternich, Reorganization and Nationality. 1813–1818. A Story of Foresight and Frustration in the Rebuilding of the Austrian Empire, Wiesbaden 1963.
14 Alan Sked, Metternich and the Federalist Myth, in: Alan Sked / Chris Cook (eds.), Crisis and Controversy. Essays in Honour of A. J. P. Taylor, London 1976, pp. 1–22; Alan Sked, Metternich and Austria, chapter 4.