ABSTRACT
The most prominent figure in nineteenth-century Habsburg history was Prince Metternich, Foreign Minister between 1809 and 1848 and House, Court and State Chancellor from 1821. Metternich himself would scarcely have been able to understand the distinction. Certainly he would have rejected Schroeder’s argument that in abandoning Britain at Troppau in 1820, he abandoned European solidarity. With England abandoning the struggle against the revolution and France forever damned as being the homeland of it, Metternich’s diplomacy became increasingly dependent on Russian support. Metternich believed that the only proper system of government was monarchy, and by monarchy he meant the pure rather than the constitutional brand. It is sometimes argued that Metternich hoped to improve matters by ‘federalizing’ the Monarchy. The system which Metternich would have liked to devise for the Monarchy was that the government should consist first of all of a council advising the Emperor.
