he was first brought into diplomatic contact with him. Writing from Chaumont to Lord Liverpool, on the 26th of February 1814, he said: “Austria both in army and government is a timid Power. Her minister is constitutionally temporizing—he is charged with more faults than belong to him, but he has his full share, mixed up, however, with considerable means for carrying forward the machine, more than any other person I have met with at Head Quarters” (F.O. 2 France, From Lord Castlereagh). This gives the key to Metternich’s character and policy: Austria was a timid Power, and Metternich was an Austrian minister. His policy of “stability,” so necessary for the Habsburg monarchy, at least secured a long period of peace for Europe at large. Europe, her strength renewed, passed a severe judgment on the statesman who acted on the assumption that what the generality of people wanted was peace, not liberty; and justly, in so far as his pessimism led him to convert what might have been legitimate as a temporary counsel of expediency into an immutable principle. But, as Demelitsch points out, it will be time for Austrians to condemn him when Austria shall have survived half a century of constitutional experiment under the dual monarchy.
Of the technique of diplomacy Metternich was a master. His despatches are models of diplomatic style. If they have any fault, it is that they are often over-elaborate, the work of a man who evidently loves diplomacy for its own sake and glories in the fine turn of a phrase. In this respect they are comparable to those of Canning, who modelled himself upon Chateaubriand; they are in vivid contrast to the crabbed businesslike letters of Castlereagh. Metternich almost invariably begins his despatches and his reports with a broad discussion of the principles involved in the case in point, and argues from these down to the facts. In this again he is in sharp contrast with Castlereagh, who, with characteristic British practical sense, politely sweeps the principles aside and prefers to argue upward from the facts. Yet Metternich’s phrase-making was often the result of astute calculation. His diplomatic genius was never so well displayed as in disguising perilous issues in phrases that soothed even when they did not convince; and, like Gladstone after him, when the occasion demanded it, he was master of the art of appearing to say much when in fact he said nothing. When he wished to make his meaning plain, no one could do so more clearly; when he wished to be reticent, no reticence could have been more pleasingly eloquent.
In private life Metternich was a kind, if not always faithful, husband and a good father, devoted to his children, of whom he had the misfortune to lose several before his death. He was three times married. His second wife, Baroness Antonie von Leykam, Countess von Beilstein, died in 1829; his third wife, Melanie, Countess Zichy-Ferraris, died on the 3rd of March 1854. Of his sons three survived him: Richard Clemens Lothar (1829–1895), his son by his second marriage, who was Austrian ambassador in Paris from 1859 to 1871; Prince Paul (1834–1906), and Prince Lothar (1837–1904), his sons by his third marriage. His grandson Prince Clemens (b. 1869), son of Prince Paul, married in 1905 Isabella de Silva Carvajal, daughter of the marquis de Santa Cruz.
Bibliography.—A vast mass of unpublished material for the life of Prince Metternich exists in public and private archives; to some of those in the F.O. Records references are given in the bibliography to chap. i. of vol. x. of the Cambridge Mod. Hist. Of published documents the most important are in the collection Aus Metternichs nachgelassenen Papieren (8 vols., 1880–1884), edited by his son, Prince Richard Metternich. There is a complete French translation issued contemporaneously, and an English version, of which only five volumes (down to 1835) have been published, under the title Memoirs, &c. (London, 1880–1882). These Memoirs, especially the autobiographical parts, must be read with considerable reserve; even the official letters and documents, which are their most valuable contents, have been to a certain extent “edited.” See also Count Anton Prokesch-Osten (the younger) Aus dem Nachlass von Prokesch-Osten (2 vols., Vienna, 1881); the writings and correspondence of Friedrich von Gentz (q.v.), especially as collected under the title Oesterreichs Theilnahme an den Befreiungskriegen; Wilhelm Oncken, Österreich und Preussen im Befreiungskriege (1876–1879); A. Beer, Zehn Jahre österreichischer Politik, 1801–1810 (1877); Die Finanzen Österreichs (1883); Die orientalische Politik Österreichs seit 1774 (1883); T. T. de Martens, Recueil des traités, &c., vols. iii. and iv.; Thiers, Hist. du consulat et de l’empire, which was frequently commended by Metternich himself as giving an accurate account of his policy, a statement, however, controverted by Albert Sorel, whose l’Europe et la revolution française, gives a detailed and masterly account of Metternich’s share in the overthrow of Napoleon. Fedor von Demelitsch’s Fürst Metternich und seine auswärtige Politik, vol. i., to 1812 (Munich, 1898), is an elaborate and useful analysis of Metternich’s foreign policy, based on a large mass of unpublished archives. The best short biography of Metternich is that by A. Beer in Der neue Plutarch (1877), vol. v.; but both this and Colonel G. B. Malleson’s Life of Metternich (London, 1888) were written before the publication of the important works of Demelitsch and Sorel. (W. A. P.)
METZ, a town, first-class fortress and episcopal see of
Germany, in the imperial province of Alsace-Lorraine, capital of
(German) Lorraine, on the Moselle, 99 m. N.W. of Strassburg by
rail, and at the radiation of lines to Luxemburg, Coblenz and
Novéant, on the French frontier (1012 m. W.). Pop. (1905),
60,396. The general appearance of the town is quaint and
irregular, but there are several handsome modern streets. The
Moselle, which is here joined by the Seille, flows through it in
several arms, and is crossed by fourteen bridges. In the south-west
corner of the town is the esplanade, with an equestrian
statue of the emperor William I., and monuments to Prince
Frederick Charles and Marshal Ney, commanding a fine view of
the “pays messin,” a fertile plain lying to the south. Of the
ten city gates the most interesting are the Porte d’Allemagne,
or Deutsche Tor, on the east, a castellated structure erected in
1445 and still bearing traces of the siege by Charles V.; the Porte
Serpenoise, or Römer Tor, on the south, and the Porte Française,
or Französische Tor, on the West. Among its ecclesiastical
edifices (nine Roman Catholic and four Protestant churches)
the most noteworthy is the Roman Catholic cathedral, with huge
pointed Windows, slender columns and numerous flying buttresses,
which, begun in the 13th century and consecrated in
1546, belongs to the period of the decadence of the Gothic style.
The Gothic churches of St Vincent and St Eucharius, and the
handsome Protestant garrison church, completed in 1881, also
deserve mention. Among secular buildings the most important
are the town-hall, the palace of justice, the theatre, the governor’s
house, and the various buildings for military purposes. The
public library contains 40,000 volumes, including an extensive
collection of works relating to the history of Lorraine. In the
same building is the museum, which contains a picture gallery,
a numismatic cabinet, and a collection of specimens of natural
history. Metz also possesses several learned societies, charitable
institutions and schools, and a military academy. The cemetery
of Chambière contains the graves of 7200 French soldiers who
died here in 1870. The chief industries are tanning and the
manufacture of weapons, shoes, cloth, hats and artificial flowers.
There is a trade in wine, beer, wood and minerals.
As a fortress, Metz has always been of the highest importance, and throughout history down to 1870 it had never succumbed to an enemy, thus earning for itself the name of La pucelle. It now ranks with Strassburg as one of the two great bulwarks of the west frontier of Germany. The original town walls were replaced by ramparts in 1550, and the citadel was built a few years later. By 1674 the works had been reconstructed by Vauban. Under Napoleon III. the fortress was strengthened by a circle of detached forts, which, after 1870, were modified and completed by the Germans, who treated the fortress as the principal pivot of offensive operations against France. The plans in Fortification and Siegecraft (fig. 43) show Metz as it was about 1900; in the years following a new outer chain of defences was constructed, which extends as far as Thionville on the north side and has its centre in front of Metz on the Gravelotte battleground. The old enceinte (which includes Cormontaingne’s forts—Moselle and Bellevroix) is doomed to demolition, and has in part been already removed. The garrison, chiefly composed of the XVI. Army Corps, numbers about 25,000. (See Germany: Army.)
History.—Metz, the Roman Divodurum, was the chief town of the Mediomatrici, and was also called by the Romans
