Vienna 1814

Chapter 1 Bread and Circuses There is literally a royal mob here. Everybody is crying out: Peace! Justice! Balance of power! Indemnity! As for me, I am a looker-on. All the indemnity I ask for is a new hat. --Prince de Ligne Ornate rococo carriages rumbled through a landscape scorched by twentysome years of revolution and warfare. Dangers lurked everywhere on the poor, unlit roadways. Cutthroat highwaymen preyed on isolated travelers, and inns were hardly safe havens, either, often little better than "murderer's dens." Venturing out into the bleak postwar world was for "the fearless, the foolish, or the suicidal." During the autumn of 1814, it was also for the idealistic and the idle. Hordes of pleasure-seekers would flock to Vienna for an unprecedented pageant. The occasion was the Congress of Vienna, the long-awaited peace conference to decide the future of Europe. Kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes, duchesses, diplomats, and about a hundred thousand other visitors would make their way to the central European city, swelling the population by as much as a third. No one, though, it must be said, really had an idea of what to expect. The invitation for the congress had been sent by way of an announcement in the newspaper. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had ripped Europe apart. For the first time in history, enormous armies based on universal conscription had marched across the continent to wage a "total war." France had set the standard for this comprehensive mobilization of the people with the famous decree of August 1793: The young shall fight; married men shall forge weapons and transport supplies; the women will make tents and clothes and will serve in the hospitals; the children will make old linen into lint; the old men will have themselves carried into the public squares to rouse the courage of fighting men. By the end of the war in the spring of 1814, the suffering had been immense--a terrible ordeal that ruined states, wrecked economies, and ravaged families. As many as 5 million people were dead, and many more had been permanently or seriously disabled. Entire villages had been wiped off the map. Lands had been devastated, laws trammeled, and atrocities committed on a horrific scale. The many issues arising out of this wreckage were, to be sure, tangled, thorny, and controversial. During the war, the Allied powers had understandably hoped to postpone the many difficult decisions until after victory. Now that Napoleon had been defeated, the only matter that had been officially decided was the question of France, which had been settled back in May 1814, after two months of wrangling following the capture of the capital. According to the terms of the Treaty of Paris, France's frontiers were redrawn as they had been on the first of January 1792. This meant that France would have to surrender the vast majority of its conquests, but not, in fact, all of them. Any territory that France had seized by that date twenty-two years before would be retained, including communities in the northeast, Chambery in Savoy, the former papal enclave of Avignon, and even some colonies in the new world. Thanks to the treaty, France would actually possess more territory and a greater population than it had under Louis XIV, Louis XV, or Louis XVI. The Allies had hoped that such generous terms would help the new king, Louis XVIII, establish himself on the throne, and at the same time, reintegrate his country peacefully into the international community. That's also why the victors spared France many of the usual penalties inflicted on a defeated power. There was no indemnity to pay, no foreign occupation army to endure, and no limitation, in any way, on the size of the army. This was, in many ways, a remarkably lenient agreement. Everything else, however, remained unresolved. The Vienna Congress would haveKing, David is the author of 'Vienna 1814', published 2008 under ISBN 9780307337160 and ISBN 0307337162.