Edition of Founding edition
World · Post-Napoleonic Europe
Crowned Heads Assemble at Vienna to Settle the Fate of Europe
The Powers that humbled Bonaparte now sit to divide his spoils; Prince Metternich presides over a Congress of unexampled splendour.
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VIENNA, November 1, 1814. — The Imperial capital is this week thronged as never before in living memory. The Emperors of Austria and of all the Russias, the King of Prussia, and a multitude of lesser princes, ministers and envoys have arrived to determine how the continent shall be ordered now that the late Emperor of the French is confined upon the isle of Elba.
Lord Castlereagh speaks for His Britannic Majesty; Prince Talleyrand, with that dexterity for which he is notorious, contrives to seat the restored Bourbon crown of France among the very Powers which so lately made war upon it. The questions of Saxony and of Poland are said already to divide the allies more sharply than any cannon of the late campaigns.
Between the conferences the Court has provided balls, tournaments and illuminations upon a scale which the wits of the city declare to be the true business of the assembly. 'The Congress dances,' remarked the Prince de Ligne, 'but it does not advance.'
Persons of judgment nevertheless hold that a balance of power, and not the ambition of any single throne, must be the fruit of these deliberations, lest Europe be plunged anew into a generation of war.
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