ABSTRACT
A "Frenchified" German dandy from the Rhineland, witty, pleasure-loving, and arrogant, Clemens von Metternich entered the Hapsburg diplomatic service at the age of 22. The young nobleman came as a refugee from the invading armies of the French Revolution. Cosmopolitanism and fear of revolution: such were the two decisive biographical facts of this internationalist anti-Jacobin. Historians differ between an old and new view of Metternich. A majority prefer the old view, seeing him as almost the worst reactionary in history. The old view spotlights his Carlsbad decrees of censorship, 1819. Some authorities prefer to call the repressive side of the so-called "Metternich system" the "Emperor Francis system". Metternich dominated his emperor in foreign policy, not in Austrian police administration. Metternich was host and presiding officer of the Congress of Vienna, the international peace conference of 1815 after the Napoleonic wars.
