72
DYNASTIC EMPIRE, ,.1765 1867
METTERNICH'S AUSTRIA
73
anti-Prussian line of Kaunitz or Thugut and the support of Balkan Christians against Ottoman rule. Following Thugut's fall in 1801 the influence of the balance of power theorist Gentz and the young diplomat Metternich came to the fore. Austria did not support the Serb rising against the Turks in 1804, destined to be the first stage in the.: recreation of an independent Serbia. Where the status quo ante was irrecoverable, as in Germany, Vienna's policy was directed at main-taining as much of her traditional preeminence as possible. This meant thwarting both new aspirations for a more 'national1 organic sation of Germany and traditional Russo-Prussian or Russo-French power deals liable to entrench the influence of flanking states in the German centre of the continent. But this runs ahead: in the firsts instance Napoleon's humiliating hegemony had to be challenged:] and overthrown. The prospects lor this in the first post-1809 years seemed slim. As France's ally, Austria had to participate militarily! in Napoleon's grandiose anti-Russian expedition of 1812. Mearilj while the German national movement, against which Austria! (much less so Prussia) now shut her face, was growing apace among! patriotic notables and the student Burschenscliaften. Yet in these years Metternich, who had moved from the Paris embassy to take over foreign affairs in the Vienna Chancellery in 1809, made the reputation he never subsequently allowed Europe to forget. Skilfully taking advantage of Napoleon's Russian failure he positioned Austria liirsi as intermediary between the French and the other powers, thenij&iii neutral mediator and finally as an armed one, till aligning her openhjj with the fifth anti-French coalition of 1813-15, all the while wilhMjl provoking Napoleon into a preemptive strike. Under Field MarSplij Karl Schwarzenberg Austrian troops joined Russia and Prussiafilj inflict Napoleon's first major defeat at the battle of Leipzig in Oeto-: bcr 1813; eventually three hundred thousand were under arms. The other hvo powers' alliance at Kalisch in February that year risHjj enabling the Russian presence in central Europe which MctterhjHi: feared, but he was confident enough to go along with it so as tod3jP the Russians west against the French, while expecting to frus£§pj|tj their ambitions in Poland later. The claim to have tipped the sc]flift against Napoleon gave Austria, however, high prestige in theicsailfeij tion and laid the basis for Metternich's conservative influence%;j!ljj§ij post-war era. Indeed, historians have often called it after him.;i"!~!ij This exaggerated the underlying strength of Austria's poskiffliSi 1815. The empire that had seemed on the verge of extinction iijfflj$| mid-eighteenth century look too complacent a view of its Eur6pj$§§£
role into the nineteenth; its victory proved a Pyrrhic one. Its best military leader, the Archduke Karl, a man with a more pressing license of the Monarchy's underlying weaknesses and more nuaneed attitude to the French Revolution than Metternich's, had been defi-!j|nitively side-lined by Austria's escape. His pessimism about opposing the spirit of the age had no doubt influenced his preference for avoiding war with France, but his offensive military strategy and his Ijlfeforms as war minister were innovatory: the development of mili-itary medicine and archives, the reduction of life-long military service to 1 \ years, the abolition of the harshest punishments in new regulations ofl 807. The common soldier came under consideration tor the Hirst,time. But flogging was retained and Karl's endeavours to abolish isale of commissions failed, while inflation-hit pay remained at Maria ms§|teresan levels. The army that emerged from the Napoleonic wars ii#;iii: hardly equipped to underwrite an Austrian paramountcy in Europe. Besides, the issue in 1811 of a new paper currency at a nom-«;lnlfvalue one-fifth that of the paper money withdrawn - effectively a forced devaluation by 80%    showed that the Monarchy had not : overcome her endemic financial problems. War-induced inflation had swelled the volume of paper notes in circulation from 35 million Ignsin 1795 to 337 million in 1802 and 1060 million by 1811. ii!iijijjlhe,peace terms of the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) reflected, iiiiappway, only a qualified victory for Metternich. They endorsed his iiiiiijliport of dynastic legitimacy in France and Italy, and put in place of the defunct Holy Roman Empire a toothless enough body, a 'German Confederation' [the Bund) of 39 states with a Diet at Frank-fiirt, tinder Austrian presidency. But he was unable to prevent the advance of Russia into central Europe through the creation of the Congress Kingdom of Poland under the Tsar, or the compensation illlBtassia for this by the acquisition of half of Saxony. The definitive :!:l||Eange of Austrian possessions in the Netherlands and south-west Germany for the northern Italian provinces of Lombardy-Venetia ;:a territorially united monarchy for the first time. But it was iiiHlfeilcss German one just at the point when Prussia was strengthening hrr German credentials by taking over the Rhineland. sglljjjncei Clemens von Metternich  (1773-1859)  was,  next to "Emperor Francis, the most important political figure in the Empire ili|||:the settlement off 815 to the revolution of 1848. Arguments that iflffisncellor (from 1824 State Chancellor) his influence was largely ffSnjfihrai to foreign policy overlook the interlinkage of domestic and .iifeign policy in a polity several of whose constituent peoples