Anecdotal Recollections of the Congress of Vienna

by Comte de Auguste Louis Charles La Garde-Chambonas

[34] Emeric Joseph, Duc de Dalberg, was the nephew of the Bishop of Constance, who was Elector of Mainz and Prince-Primate and Grand Duke of Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and in his various dignities gave such startling proofs of his honesty in private life and his high intellectual culture. The nephew, at first Baron de Dalberg, after having represented the Margraviate of Baden in Paris, became a great friend of Talleyrand, married the Marquise de Brignole, lady of honour to the Empress Josephine, took out letters of naturalisation and obtained the title of duc with a counsellorship of State. He was one of the negotiators of the marriage of Napoleon with Marie-Louise, but in 1814 promptly deserted the fortunes of Napoleon. He was one of the five members of the Provisional Government, and took part in the Congress of Vienna as a plenipotentiary. Subsequently he was created a peer of France and appointed to the ambassadorship at Turin. Born in 1773 at Mainz, he died at Hernsheim in 1833. His ducal title went to his nephew, the Comte de Tascher de la Pagerie.

[35] This correspondence has been annotated and published by M. Pallain, (Plon, 1888). The correspondence of M. de Talleyrand with Louis XVIII. forms part of the third volume of the Talleyrand Memoirs.

[36] Known at first as the Comte de Chinon, and subsequently, up to the death of his father in 1791, as the Duc de Fronsac, Armand Emmanuel Sophie Septimanie, Duc de Richelieu, and grandson of the famous marshal, was born in 1776, and died in 1822. He was the First Gentleman of the Chamber of Louis XVI. at the moment the Revolution broke out. He emigrated and entered the service of Catherine II., and distinguished himself under Suvaroff at the siege of Ismaël, and subsequently commanded an army corps under Condé before Valenciennes in 1793. Having returned to Russia, where they gave him a cavalry regiment, he fell into disgrace during the reign of Paul I., and went back to France in 1801. He declined, however, to renounce foreign military service, and was compelled to leave; when he placed himself at the disposal of Alexander I., who appointed him Governor of Odessa. His services to New Russia in general, and to Odessa in particular, are well known; but on the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814, he re-entered France with them and had a peerage conferred upon him, while at the same time he was appointed First Gentleman of the Chamber. During the Hundred Days he followed Louis XVIII. to Ghent, then at the second Restoration was given the Presidency of the Council (Premiership) with the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. He rendered eminent services, in using his credit with Alexander I., by reducing the War Indemnity, and the occupation of France by foreign troops from seven years to five. When he resigned the Ministry in 1818, the Chambers voted him an income of fifty thousand francs as a national reward; he employed those sums for the foundation of an asylum for the aged at Bordeaux. In 1820, after the assassination of the Duc de Berry and the disgrace of Decazes, he once more accepted the Presidency of the Council, but his difficulties with the Chambers made him resign in 1821. He died in the following year, universally esteemed and regretted. He had been a member of the Académie Française since 1816. Several memoirs of recent works have contributed much to bring his figure into relief: the Mémoires of General Comte de Rochechouart; Le Duc de Richelieu, by M. R. de Cisternes; Louis XVIII. et le Duc Decazes, by M. Ernest Daudet, etc.

[37] Charles André, Comte Pozzo di Borgo, born in Corsica in 1764, died in Paris in 1842. He began his career as an advocate at Pisa, and was secretary to Paoli, member of the Corsican Directory in 1790, deputy in 1791 of the Legislative Assembly. At his return, he openly declared himself the enemy of the Bonaparte family, and seconded Paoli, who wished to deliver Corsica to the English. Having become the creature of Lord Eliot, the viceroy, he was the cause of the recall of Paoli to London. He himself was bound to fly before the hatred of his countrymen. As a secret diplomatic agent, he served in turns Prussia, England, Austria, and Russia. Expelled from Russia in 1807 at the demand of Napoleon, he was obliged to retire to Constantinople. In 1813 he was recalled to Russia, and in the following year was sent to Louis XVIII. as ambassador. He took part in all the Congresses of the Holy Alliance, and in 1823 was entrusted with the surveillance of the French army in Spain. In 1835 he was the Russian ambassador in London, and retired from public life in 1839.

[38] Written about 1830. Charles XIV. (Bernadotte), who died in 1844.

[39] Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, afterwards Marquis of Londonderry, English statesman, born in 1769, died in 1822. In the Commons he supported the policy of Pitt; sent to Ireland in 1797, his administration was marked by extreme violence. He joined one of the Cabinets of Fox as Minister of War and of the Colonies, resigned his portfolio in 1806, resumed office in the following year, and became the directing power of England’s policy. He was the relentless enemy of the Revolution and of Napoleon, and granted subsidies to all the powers arrayed against him. At the Congress of Vienna, where he sacrificed Poland, Saxony and Belgium, he incurred great hatred, and his acts were strenuously opposed in Parliament itself. His anti-liberal government rendered him unpopular, and besides his weakness for the Holy Alliance, his malignant persecution of Caroline of Brunswick, the Consort of George IV., and his brutality towards the poorer classes made him generally disliked. He killed himself in a fit of insanity. Castlereagh had a great reputation as a political orator, but though more fluent than Canning (with whom he fought a duel in 1806), his speeches lacked the charm of the latter’s. His son, the Marquis of Londonderry, ambassador and political writer, distinguished himself in the House of Lords by a violent Toryism and his hatred of France.

[40] See the Mémoires du Général Comte de Rochechouart (Plon, 1895).

[41] Mme. Davidoff was a daughter of the Duc de Gramont and of the Duchesse, née de Polignac.

[42] It is difficult to take this panegyric at its own estimate. M. de La Garde had been well treated by M. de Talleyrand, and his rare gratitude does him infinite credit; but to lay stress on M. de Talleyrand’s heart is a dubious piece of flattery.

[43] Maximilian-Joseph, Elector, and subsequently King, of Bavaria, under the title of Maximilian I., son of Frederick, Prince des Deux-Ponts Berkenfeld. He was born in 1756, and died in 1825. He at first served in the French army, became colonel of the regiment of Alsace, and remained at Strasburg from 1782 to 1789. He succeeded his brother, Charles II., in the dukedom of Deux-Ponts, and his uncle, Charles Theodore, as Elector of Bavaria, and as Duke of Berg and Juliers in 1799. In 1805 he threw in his lot with the Confederation of the Rhine, and at the Peace of Presburg received the title of king. In 1806 he married one of his daughters to Eugène de Beauharnais, and the other to the Emperor Francis of Austria. In 1813 he joined the coalition against France. In 1818 he gave a Constitution to his subjects; he made some salutary reforms in the administration, and greatly encouraged art and science.