Word: castlereagh
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Russia alone that had conquered Bonaparte. But when the citizens of Paris looked for the other Allied leaders, they looked in vain. Britain's Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh, Austria's Emperor Francis I and his Foreign Minister Metternich were dallying in distant Dijon; King Frederick William of Prussia was off tobogganing. Bonaparte was defeated; but the victors' sturdy unity was already succumbing to mutual anxiety, suspicion, self-seeking, and secretiveness...
...Common Aim. ". . . At every international conference," says Nicolson bluntly, "it is the duty of a Minister, first o defend and further the interests of his jwn country, and secondly to adjust those nterests to the requirements of the community of nations." Alexander, Metternich, Castlereagh-the Big Three-were no more "cynical or selfish . . . than their successors of 1919 or 1946. Their common aim was to secure the stability, and herefore the peace, of Europe...
...each saw that "stability" in his own ,vay. To Metternich and Castlereagh, thousands of Russian soldiers in Europe were almost as frightening as Napoleon's rand Army. Instead, England, France and Austria signed a secret treaty of military alliance against Russia and her satelite Prussia. Even while the Congress was sitting in Vienna, war between its peacemakers was often considered inevitable. Who Won? Each delegate also brought the peace table his own valuation of his country's contribution to victory. Britons were in no doubt that their 20 years' resistance to Napoleon had been decisive. Austria believed...
...Moral Principles. Nicolson believes that it is to England's credit that she did not exploit this power. The Congress of Vienna contains brilliant, mostly sympathetic pen-portraits of all the principal actors, but Britain's Lord Castlereagh is Nicolson's favorite. In his day, Castlereagh was the best-hated statesman in England. (Byron called him "the vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want," and "the intellectual eunuch"; Shelley wrote the famous lines: I met Murder on the way-He had a mask like Castlereagh.) Contemptuous of parliamentary and public opinion, antiliberal, cold-blooded Castlereagh desired the independence...
...Castlereagh's power-balancing, which looked so evil to so many of his contemporaries, to Author Nicolson now looks like the path of wisdom. The deals of Europe's Big Three of that day brought most of Europe peace, if not necessarily a just one, for 100 years...