Klemens von Metternich

Biography

Klemens von Metternich was born in Koblenz in 1773, the son of a Rhineland count in the Habsburg diplomatic service. He studied law at the universities of Strasbourg and Mainz, attended the Congress of Rastatt as a young delegate in 1797, and in 1795 married Princess Eleonore von Kaunitz.

He began his diplomatic career as Austrian envoy in Dresden from 1801 and then in Berlin, and from 1806 to 1809 he was ambassador to Napoleon's France. Appointed foreign minister in October 1809, he arranged Napoleon's marriage to the archduchess Marie Louise, then brought Austria into the coalition against France in 1813, signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau that sent Napoleon into exile and led the Austrian delegation at the Congress of Vienna. He was made a prince in 1813.

In the following years he shaped the congress system of the great powers at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, Troppau in 1820, Laibach in 1821 and Verona in 1822, winning approval for Austria's intervention against the liberal revolt in Naples. In the German Confederation he called the conference that produced the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which tightened press censorship and banned the nationalist student fraternities. He became state chancellor in 1821 and kept the government running after the epileptic Ferdinand I succeeded in 1835.

The revolution in Vienna in March 1848 forced him to resign, and he went into exile in London, Brighton and Brussels. He returned to Vienna in 1851 as an adviser to the young emperor Franz Joseph and died there in 1859.