At Vienna he made a long stay, not leaving it until January, 1797. Here, as usual, he fraternized at once with the various diplomatists; the English ambassador, Sir Morton Eden, in particular, going out of his way to show him every attention. The Austrian prime minister, M. Thugut, was also very polite; and so were the foreign ministers of all the powers. He was soon at home in the upper social circles of this German Paris; but from the entries in his journal it is evident that he thought very little of Viennese society. He liked talking and the company of brilliant conversationalists, and he abominated gambling; but in Vienna every one was so devoted to play that there was no conversation at all. He considered a dumb circle round a card-table as the dullest society in the world, and in Vienna there was little else. Nor was he impressed with the ability of the statesmen he met. He thought the Austrian nobles to be on the decline; they stood for the dying feudal system. The great families had been squandering their riches with the most reckless extravagance, and were becoming broken and impoverished; and the imperial government was glad to see the humiliation of the haughty nobles, not perceiving that, if preserved, they would act as a buffer between it and the new power beginning to make itself felt throughout Europe, and would save the throne if not from total overthrow, at least from shocks so fierce as greatly to weaken it.
Morris considered Prince Esterhazy as an archtypical representative of the class. He was captain of the noble Hungarian Guard, a small body of tall, handsome men on fiery steeds, magnificently caparisoned. The Prince, as its commander, wore a Hungarian dress, scarlet, with fur cape and cuffs, and yellow morocco boots; everything embroidered with pearls, four hundred and seventy large ones, and many thousand small, but all put on in good taste. He had a collar of large diamonds, a plume of diamonds in his cap; and his sword-hilt, scabbard, and spurs were inlaid with the same precious stones. His horse was equally bejeweled; steed and rider, with their trappings, "were estimated at a value of a quarter of a million dollars." Old Blücher would surely have considered the pair "very fine plunder."
The Prince was reported to be nominally the richest subject in Europe, with a revenue that during the Turkish war went up to a million guilders annually; yet he was hopelessly in debt already and getting deeper every year. He lived in great magnificence, but was by no means noted for lavish hospitality; all his extravagance was reserved for himself, especially for purposes of display. His Vienna stable contained a hundred and fifty horses; and during a six weeks' residence in Frankfort, where he was ambassador at the time of an imperial coronation, he spent eighty thousand pounds. Altogether, an outsider may be pardoned for not at first seeing precisely what useful function such a merely gorgeous being performed in the body politic; yet when summoned before the bar of the new world-forces, Esterhazy and his kind showed that birds of such fine feathers sometimes had beaks and talons as well, and knew how to use them, the craven flight of the French noblesse to the contrary notwithstanding.
Morris was often at court, where the constant theme of conversation was naturally the struggle with the French armies under Moreau and Bonaparte. After one of these mornings he mentions: "The levee was oddly arranged, all the males being in one apartment, through which the Emperor passes in going to chapel, and returns the same way with the Empress and imperial family; after which they go through their own rooms to the ladies assembled on the other side."
The English members of the Corps Diplomatique in all the European capitals were especially civil to him; and he liked them more than their continental brethren. But for some of their young tourist countrymen he cared less; and it is curious to see that the ridicule to which Americans have rightly exposed themselves by their absurd fondness for uniforms and for assuming military titles to which they have no warrant, was no less deservedly earned by the English at the end of the last century. One of Morris's friends, Baron Groshlaer, being, like the other Viennese, curious to know the object of his stay,—they guessed aright that he wished to get Lafayette liberated,—at last almost asked him outright about it. "Finally I tell him that the only difference between me and the young Englishmen, of whom there is a swarm here, is, that I seek instruction with gray hairs and they with brown.... At the Archduchess's one of the little princes, brother to the Emperor, and who is truly an arch-duke, asks me to explain to him the different uniforms worn by the young English, of whom there are a great number here, all in regimentals. Some of these belong to no corps at all, and the others to yeomanry, fencibles and the like, all of which purport to be raised for the defense of their country in case she should be invaded; but now, when the invasion seems most imminent, they are abroad, and cannot be made to feel the ridiculous indecency of appearing in regimentals. Sir M. Eden and others have given them the broadest hints without the least effect. One of them told me that all the world should not laugh him out of his regimentals. I bowed.... I tell the prince that I really am not able to answer his question, but that, in general, their dresses I believe are worn for convenience in traveling. He smiles at this.... If I were an Englishman I should be hurt at these exhibitions, and as it is I am sorry for them.... I find that here they assume it as unquestionable that the young men of England have a right to adjust the ceremonial of Vienna. The political relations of the two countries induce the good company here to treat them with politeness; but nothing prevents their being laughed at, as I found the other evening at Madame de Groshlaer's, where the young women as well as the girls were very merry at the expense of these young men."
After leaving Vienna he again passed through Berlin, and in a conversation with the king he foreshadowed curiously the state of politics a century later, and showed that he thoroughly appreciated the cause that would in the end reconcile the traditional enmity of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs. "After some trifling things I tell him that I have just seen his best friend. He asks who? and, to his great surprise, I reply, the Emperor. He speaks of him well personally, and I observe that he is a very honest young man, to which his Majesty replies by asking, "Mais, que pensez vous de Thugut." "Quant à cela, c'est une autre affaire, sire." I had stated the interest, which makes him and the Emperor good friends, to be their mutual apprehensions from Russia. "But suppose we all three unite?" "Ce sera un diable de fricassée, sire, si vous vous mettez tous les trois à casser les œufs.""
At Brunswick he was received with great hospitality, the Duke, and particularly the Duchess Dowager, the King of England's sister, treating him very hospitably. He here saw General Riedesel, with whom he was most friendly; the general in the course of conversation inveighed bitterly against Burgoyne. He went to Munich also, where he was received on a very intimate footing by Count Rumford, then the great power in Bavaria, who was busily engaged in doing all he could to better the condition of his country. Morris was much interested in his reforms. They were certainly needed; the Count told his friend that on assuming the reins of power, the abuses to be remedied were beyond belief—for instance, there was one regiment of cavalry that had five field officers and only three horses. With some of the friends that Morris made—such as the Duchess of Cumberland, the Princess de la Tour et Taxis and others—he corresponded until the end of his life.
While at Vienna he again did all he could to get Lafayette released from prison, where his wife was confined with him; but in vain. Madame de Lafayette's sister, the Marquise de Montagu, and Madame de Staël, both wrote him the most urgent appeals to do what he could for the prisoners; the former writing, "My sister is in danger of losing the life you saved in the prisons of Paris ... has not he whom Europe numbers among those citizens of whom North America ought to be most proud, has not he the right to make himself heard in favor of a citizen of the United States, and of a wife, whose life belongs to him, since he has preserved it?" Madame de Staël felt the most genuine grief for Lafayette, and very sincere respect for Morris; and in her letters to the latter she displayed both sentiments with a lavish exaggeration that hardly seems in good taste. If Morris had needed a spur the letters would have supplied it; but the task was an impossible one, and Lafayette was not released until the peace in 1797, when he was turned over to the American consul at Hamburg, in Morris's presence.
Morris was able to render more effectual help to an individual far less worthy of it than Lafayette. This was the then Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis Philippe, who had fled from France with Dumouriez. Morris's old friend, Madame de Flahaut, appealed to him almost hysterically on the duke's behalf; and he at once did even more than she requested, giving the duke money wherewith to go to America, and also furnishing him with unlimited credit at his own New York banker's, during his wanderings in the United States. This was done for the sake of the Duchess of Orleans, to whom Morris was devotedly attached, not for the sake of the duke himself. The latter knew this perfectly, writing: "Your kindness is a blessing I owe to my mother and to our friend" (Madame de Flahaut). The bourgeois king admirably represented the meanest, smallest side of the bourgeois character; he was not a bad man, but he was a very petty and contemptible one; had he been born in a different station of life, he would have been just the individual to take a prominent part in local temperance meetings, while he sanded the sugar he sold in his corner grocery. His treatment of Morris's loan was characteristic. When he came into his rights again, at the Restoration, he at first appeared to forget his debt entirely, and when his memory was jogged, he merely sent Morris the original sum, without a word of thanks; whereupon Morris, rather nettled, and as prompt to stand up for his rights against a man in prosperity as he had been to help him when in adversity, put the matter in the hands of his lawyer, through whom he notified Louis Philippe that if the affair was to be treated on a merely business basis, it should then be treated in a strictly business way, and the interest for the twenty years that had gone by should be forwarded also. This was accordingly done, although not until after Morris's death, the entire sum refunded being seventy thousand francs.
Morris brought his complicated business affairs in Europe to a close in 1798, and sailed from Hamburg on October 4th of that year, reaching New York after an exceedingly tedious and disagreeable voyage of eighty days.