Austrian Foreign Minister, Leading Figure of the Congress of Vienna
Metternich (1773–1859) was foreign minister of the Austrian Empire who in 1814–1815 led the Congress of Vienna, redrawing the political map of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars and seeking to preserve a long European peace through great-power coordination and the restoration of legitimate dynasties — the "Vienna system" or "Concert of Europe." For decades after he worked to suppress the surging nationalist and liberal revolutionary movements across Europe, a representative of early-19th-century conservative diplomacy; when the wave of 1848 revolutions swept Vienna, he too was forced to resign and flee to England, and the old order he had labored to maintain was gradually replaced by the tide of the nation-state.
The Congress of Vienna ran for months, with monarchs and diplomats holding lavish balls and social events, so that someone quipped "the Congress dances but does not advance." But it was precisely in these seemingly extravagant social settings that Metternich held much informal behind-the-scenes negotiation with the delegates, reaching at last the complex agreement that reshaped the European balance.
The conservative order Metternich had labored to maintain collapsed in the wave of 1848 revolutions — Vienna itself rose in revolt, Metternich was forced to flee in disguise and made his way into exile in England, symbolizing that the old dynastic system of coordination he represented could not, in the end, hold down the historical tide of nationalism and liberalism.
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