And Princess Mélanie complains that “no one interfered with this indecent demonstration,” and that “no one attempted to silence the brawlers.”
She called the demonstrations “indecent” because they were obviously aimed at her husband, who, far more than the Emperor, symbolised that ancien régime which the students and artisans were resolved to end. The Emperor, indeed, was merely a weak-minded, good-natured old gentleman to whom no one wished any harm. He was as ready to grant concessions as to give alms; and his subjects knew it, cheered him when he drove through the streets, and decorated their barricades with his portraits. Their objection was not to him, but to his police, who took Princess Mélanie’s old-fashioned view of concessions: notably, therefore, to Metternich, the policeman of genius.
It was idle for Metternich to protest, as he sometimes did, in after years, that, though he might sometimes have governed Europe, he certainly had never governed Austria. The people knew—or thought that they knew—better. The chief article in their simple creed was that Metternich must go; and the sole question for Ferdinand and his Court and Ministers was whether Metternich should or should not be thrown overboard as a Jonah who brought ill luck to the Austrian ship of state. The upshot appears from these entries in Princess Mélanie’s Journal:—
“At half-past six, Clement was sent for to the Palace.”
“Yes, Clement has resigned.”
The circumstances of the interview in which he did so were afterwards related by him to Hübner:—
“The Archduke Louis came to me and said: ‘These gentlemen tell me that, if you could make up your mind to resign, order could be re-established.’ I asked, ‘What is it that your Highness desires me to do?’ He replied, ‘It is for you to decide what to do.’ Thereupon I instantly resigned the office of Chancellor, and went into the adjoining apartment to inform the Delegates of the States that I had done so. One of these gentlemen spoke of generosity, and said that my resignation put a worthy coping-stone upon a long career. ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It is merely a concession to the revolution.’”
But he not only had to quit office; he also had to leave Vienna, where his life, in spite of his resignation, was not safe. He could not even leave at his leisure, but had to depart in a hurry without packing, dining with his friends, the Taaffes, and then driving off, in great haste, to Feldsberg, whence he made his way through Germany and Holland to England, where he landed just in time for his son Richard to be sworn in as a special constable, and bludgeon the Chartists, shoulder to shoulder with the future Napoleon III. The fluttered Diary records it all in a succession of shrill screams: What has Metternich—once the policeman of Europe—done to deserve such treatment! How black is the ingratitude of man! But Princess Mélanie might as well have exclaimed against the black ingratitude of water, which, under the exciting influence of heat, expands into steam, and blows up the man who sits on the safety-valve, without the least regard to his personal charm and intellectual culture.
So ironical is fate; and there was a still more cruel irony in the fact that the House of Habsburg, which owed so much to Metternich, seemed rather relieved to be rid of him, regarding his policy as an asset but his personality as an incubus. Alone among the members of the Imperial House, Francis Joseph’s mother remembered to write a polite letter, inquiring how he was getting on, and confiding to him the hopes which were concentrated in her son, his political pupil:—
“My poor Franzi has been my sole consolation in our hours of trouble. In the midst of my anguish and despair, I have continued to bless God for giving me such a boy. His courage, his firmness, his judgment have been unshaken—altogether beyond what one would expect from a lad of his age—and have encouraged the hope that God will grant him a great career, since He has given him the strength to face all the risks of life.”