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Introduction
By December 1813 the only obstacle to a victory for Sixth Coalition, in the protracted Napoleonic Wars, was their own diplomatic and military disunity.[1] Until this point Britain had acted as paymasters of the coalition against the French Emperor, but now sought to have a greater diplomatic influence on the end of the war and the subsequent settlement of Europe.[2] The Secretary of Sate for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Castlereagh, was chosen by the British Cabinet to represent Britain in the allied negotiations on the continent. The British government deemed it essential to dispatch a senior minister to secure their primary objectives, particularly after terms had been offered to Napoleon at Frankfurt in November that endangered some key interests.[3]
Thus Castlereagh spent the majority of his time on the continent between January 1814 and February 1815, acting on behalf of the British government at the allied negotiations at Châtillon, Chaumont, Paris and Vienna. [4] This study asserts that Castlereagh continually and consistently acted to fulfil the aims of the British government during this period. It argues that despite briefly defying the orders of his Cabinet at the end of 1814, Castlereagh predominantly followed the wishes of his government and successfully guaranteed their aims by January 1815.
Castlereagh departed for the continent with a clear set of objectives, agreed by the Cabinet on 26th December 1813.[5] The primary evidence will illustrate that the foreign minister followed these instructions and any further orders from Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister, and his Cabinet implicitly until October 1814. At the Congress of Vienna however, Castlereagh’s perception of how to successfully guarantee these aims differed from the other members of his government, particularly during the negotiations over the Polish and Saxon settlements. The challenges faced in negotiating a settlement for Poland appeared to cause Castlereagh to develop a vested interest in the fate of central Europe.[6]
The focus of the topic is that of a British perspective. This will help to comprehensively support the notion that Castlereagh consistently acted within the interests of his government, helping to secure lasting peace in Europe, and allow Britain to consolidate its status as an international hegemonic power.[7] The importance of the Russian, Prussian, Austrian and French ministers in the negotiation process cannot be understated and an appreciation their influence on Castlereagh’s thoughts and actions will be included if only in a secondary nature. The focus of the investigation has also contributed to the selection of evidence, which will primarily focus on the correspondences between Castlereagh and other senior officials in the British government. Liverpool and Earl Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, took charge of the domestic discussions of British foreign policy and were Castlereagh’s principle contacts at home.[8] Thus the correspondences between these men offer the greatest insight into Castlereagh’s thought process and actions while on the continent.
Most primary material been selected from collections of these regular communications. The General Correspondence before 1906: Continent Conferences (FO 139) and Continent Conferences: Delegation Archives (FO 92) are both incredibly useful collections of Foreign Office Records, which include the correspondences, memoranda and protocols between the ministers in Europe and the British government in this period.[9] Individual dispatches will illustrate Castlereagh’s thoughts and actions during his time in Europe, and also indicate the response and orders of his government on aspects of the negotiations. The investigation will also utilise correspondences found in other collections to add depth to the analysis of Castlereagh’s actions as a representative of Britain, such as the Correspondence, Despatches, and other papers of Viscount Castlereagh, Second Marquess of Londonderry (1853) and Supplementary Despatches, Correspondences and Memoranda of Field Marshal Arthur Duke of Wellington (1862).[10] These include, for example, Castlereagh’s communication to Wellington regarding indirect importance the Polish settlement to British securities. Despatches hold the primary significance to this evaluation, as they will best help to understand to what extent Castlereagh followed the aims of British government from Châtillon to Vienna.
The influence of parliamentary and public opinion grew substantially during Liverpool’s government, as publications and pamphlets such as Tory Quarterly, Whig Edinburgh, Radical Westminster and The Times were often explicitly sceptical of government policies.[11] While evidence of this nature contributes to a wider understanding of policy formulation, it had a minimal effect on Castlereagh’s actions while on the continent. It even took two weeks for news to reach the foreign minister when at Vienna.[12] Public sentiment would be relayed to Castlereagh by correspondences from Bathurst or Liverpool. An understanding of whether Castlereagh actions were effected by public opinion can be extracted from these communications alone.
The focus of the study is such that parliamentary debates do not contribute to an understanding of Castlereagh’s actions on the continent. Although Castlereagh held the position as Leader of the House of Commons after Spencer Perceval’s assassination in 1812, his extended absences from England meant that he faced few interrogations of his negotiation policy from the Commons. [13] As the sources will illustrate Castlereagh’s actions were subject to approval in parliament, but this was generally just part of the ratification process. The Cabinet faced little resistance to sending Castlereagh to Europe, and as Bew highlights, even a Whig MP, Sir Robert Heron, argued that the pressing continental matters should be placed in the hands of Liverpool’s ministers at this time. [14] Once again Castlereagh’s primary source of news of any public or parliamentary development were his correspondences from London, and thus they are understandably the central focus of this study.
This investigation is unique in nature in discussing Castlereagh’s agency in securing British aims between December 1813 and January 1814. By predominantly examining correspondences between Castlereagh and the Cabinet, the investigation can suggest more assertively that Castlereagh did follow the direct desires of his government and achieve success for Britain. It will profit from a narrower focus that other works have lacked, and be less influenced by its contemporary environment for it.
Perceptions of Castlereagh
Castlereagh’s career as a whole was criticised by contemporaries and later liberals, who wished to exaggerate the juxtaposition between George Canning, the liberal, and Castlereagh, the reactionary.[15] He was perceived as a repressor of liberalism and nationalism and ‘repelled contemporary poets.’[16] Lord Bryon and Percy Bysshe Shelley memorialised him harshly after his suicide in 1822.[17] Lord Robert Cecil failed to redeem his reputation in the Quarterly Review in 1862, and this meant that Castlereagh was generally viewed with ignominy in the nineteenth century.[18] The publication of his correspondences, by half brother Charles Stewart, also failed to improve this perception, because there was ‘little historical explanation or analysis through its twelve volumes.’[19]
The historian responsible for changing this was C. K. Webster, who in his various works on the foreign secretary and the Congress of Vienna expatiates the central role Castlereagh had in securing British aims on the continent.[20] Webster wrote these texts with close analysis of the communication archived in the Foreign Office Continental Records, the collection of Castlereagh’s correspondences and Wellington’s despatches. The sophistication of Webster’s works has warranted it to be a ‘definitive’ study of the subject.[21] This investigation therefore follows Webster’s methodological approach to primary material, and even corroborates that Castlereagh’s role in these continental negotiations was crucial to achieving British objectives. This study does however intend to challenge Webster’s seminal work on one aspect.
Webster wrote that Castlereagh attempted to emulate the foreign policy of William Pitt the Younger; arguing that these men both prioritised a balance of power in Europe instead of advancing the hegemony of the British Empire.[22] H. Nicholson reiterates the view presented by Webster in, The Congress of Vienna: A study in Allied Unity (1946), which has been criticised for a lack of independent thought.[23] Importantly there has been recognition that these views were formulated in proximity to both World Wars.[24] Discussing the foreign policy of Vienna in an analogous manner is something that H. Kissinger continued in A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the problems of peace 1812-22 (1954), and this can perhaps simplify Castlereagh’s approach to foreign policy.[25] Indeed Graubard observed that historians were merely reiterating Webster’s notion that Castlereagh followed Pitt’s policy in these negotiation, without challenging the idea itself.[26]
J. W. Derry was among the first to challenge this view and argued that Castlereagh ‘did not approach the problems of foreign policy in any doctrinal spirit.’[27] In doing so Derry was more assertively endorsing others who had suggested that Castlereagh’s policy was personal and related to priority to secure British interests.[28] Historians increasingly began to appreciate that Castlereagh had complete control of foreign policy while on the continent, and the analysis of sources will support this.[29]
The investigation will highlight that while Castlereagh appreciated Pitt’s plans for Europe, he negotiated in his own manner to secure British aims above any other objectives.
Castlereagh’s endeavours were in fact unique to his circumstance, and he followed a policy that he believed would ensure the security of British interests. His actions during the protracted polish negotiations, during the Congress of Vienna, have become a contentious issue though. Castlereagh has been branded an idealist for over pursuing an over calculated solution for Poland, and that his pursuit of equilibrium caused his priorities to change.[30] Indeed even Kissinger describes Castlereagh’s Polish solution as ‘mechanical’.[31] Castlereagh’s priorities did not change however, and as the sources will indicate, he believed that creating equilibrium in Europe was crucial to safeguarding the securities he had obtained at the beginning of 1814.
More recently Schroeder has argued that balance of power politics, and that ‘under the lead of the hegemonic powers’ the ministers returned to practices of political equilibrium.[32] This study substantiates this perception of Vienna, and argues that although Castlereagh lost Poland to Russia, he succeeded in resisting Prussia over Saxony. Castlereagh did achieve equilibrium in Europe, although not in the manner he hoped, and successfully ensured Britain’s that Britain retained its status as a world power.[33] This perception of the negotiations in central Europe is more nuanced, and helps to illustrate that Castlereagh did have an important perception of how his actions were directly contributing to British. Castlereagh did defy orders to achieve this security however, as the correspondences indicate, and it is at this point where Castlereagh appears to be acting of his own accord and not those of his government.
Castlereagh, up until November 1814, had secured the majority of British aims in negotiations prior to Vienna, and the more delicate aspects of the Congress caused a divide between him and the Cabinet. The complications of the Polish and Saxon arrangements almost led to the crisis of war, and resulted in a secret defensive alliance between France, Austria and Britain on the 3 January 1815.[34] The threat of war against Russia and Prussia illustrated a clear disregard by Castlereagh of the interests of the Cabinet, Parliament and the British public. This study will argue however that Castlereagh gained greater perspective at Vienna, and that despite appearing to follow a doctrinal policy over Poland and defying government concerns by threatening war that he consistently attempted to fulfil the aims of his government. Thus between his departure, in January 1814, and his return, in February 1815 the foreign minister intended to follow the orders of his government and successfully guaranteed British securities for years to come.
This study is comprised of four chapters. Chapter one, ‘Departure and the Treaty of Chaumont’, discusses Castlereagh’s objectives prior to departure and his actions to successfully ensure these primary securities by March 1813. Next the investigation focuses on Castlereagh’s role in deciding Napoleon’s replacement upon the French throne, and how government opinion shaped his policy in ‘Châtillon abandoned – The Peace of Paris’. The second half of the study focuses on Castlereagh at the Congress of Vienna from September 1814, and more specifically on his experiences of the Polish and Saxon settlements. Chapter three, ‘Castlereagh and Poland’, illustrate how Castlereagh’s perspective of these negotiations changed considerably during October 1814, and explains why Castlereagh surrendered his position of ‘natural mediator’ in order to resist Russian aggrandisement.[35] The final chapter analyses the significance of his government’s orders to withdraw Britain from the polish negotiations, amidst a fear of European war. ‘Disobedience and fear of war’ also argues that Castlereagh ignored these orders for the benefit of Britain, allowing him to secure peace on the continent and finally secure the criteria outlined in the Memorandum of the Cabinet 26th December 1813.
Memorandum of 26th December
The memorandum of the 26th of December includes certain criteria that the Cabinet wanted Castlereagh to fulfil, additional instructions and a memorandum for Maritime Peace.[36] The memorandum, written by Castlereagh, finalised the aims of the Cabinet after six weeks of ministerial conference.[37] This is a key document to this study as it outlines what the aims of the British government were at the start of 1814, and Castlereagh would continually refer to these aims in his subsequent correspondences. The memorandum states the aims of the British government in relation to both shared continental peace and security, and securities specific to Britain herself. It also helps contextualise the thought process of the Cabinet, and how they perceived the situation in Europe.
The first aim of the British government relates to securing its superiority as an international superpower. Put simply the Cabinet desired the restriction of French maritime power ‘within due bounds by the effectual establishment of Holland, the Peninsula, and Italy in security and independence’.[38] Evidently improving the maritime security of Britain, by weakening a competitor, helps to ensure the financial and commercial hegemony of the country. The enclosure of a separate memorandum for Maritime Peace helps to reiterate the importance of this securing this aim.[39] Webster believes it can be considered as part of the overall document, and that it was probably of more interest to some of the ministers than the details of the continental settlement.[40]
The details of the continental settlement was of utmost importance to Castlereagh however, who would have to secure certain territories to ensure British security and maritime freedom. The memorandum instructs that Britain must obtain the ‘absolute exclusion of France from any establishment on the Scheldt, and especially Antwerp’; secure Holland with ‘a barrier under the House of Orange’ including Antwerp; and that Spain and Portugal be ‘independent under their legitimate sovereigns’ with a guaranteed protection against future French attack.[41] These aims were achievable but the barrier for Holland would require sacrifice, particularly as the allies had accorded Napoleon territories in Belgium at this point of their peace negotiations.[42]