Metternich married Napoleon to an archduchess, then helped send him into exile
As Austria's new foreign minister, Klemens von Metternich arranged for Napoleon to wed the Habsburg archduchess Marie Louise. Within a few years he had switched Austria to the allied side, signed the treaty that exiled the French emperor and hosted the congress that redrew Europe. Then he spent decades trying to freeze it.
Metternich was born in 1773 into an old Rhineland noble family; his father was a diplomat in Habsburg service. He studied law at Strasbourg until the French Revolution made the city unsafe, then at Mainz, until France's declaration of war on Austria in 1792 ended that too. Sent to the front on a mission for his father, he questioned a captured French war minister. On a visit to England he met George III, dined with Pitt, Fox and Burke, and ate with Joseph Haydn after hearing his concerts.
The French annexation of the Rhine's west bank cost his family its Moselle estates, compensated in 1803 with new lands and a princely title. He served as envoy in Dresden, Berlin and then Napoleonic Paris, and in 1809 became foreign minister. After the Napoleon marriage bought breathing space, he brought Austria into the Sixth Coalition, signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau and led Austria's delegation at the Congress of Vienna, earning the title of prince in 1813.
For three decades he stood at the centre of the Concert of Europe, a system of great-power congresses meant to keep the peace. Abroad he resisted Russian expansion into Central Europe and the Ottoman lands; at home and in Austrian northern Italy he fought liberalism and nationalism with censorship, spies and force. From 1821 he was also chancellor, until the revolutions of 1848 forced him out and briefly into exile in London, Brighton and Brussels.
Opinions still split. Admirers credit his diplomacy with preventing major European wars and note how much he won from a weak bargaining hand; critics see him as a roadblock to the reforms Austria needed. He loved music and knew Beethoven, Rossini, Paganini and Liszt. Returning to Vienna in 1851 to advise the young Franz Josef, he outlived his generation and died in 1859 at 86.
Source: Klemens von Metternich
