My entire piece was about how brilliant and essential Metternich was; at no point did I shortchange him as a “well-bred pimp.”
I’m not sure what your second paragraph means. Metternich was opposed to the Revolution and Napoleon from the start and Austria was the motive force on the continent behind the various coalitions.
Napoleon was a creature of the Directory, was sponsored by them, and betrayed them. I explained the Escobar analogy.
I point out in the essay how much Metternich respected Napoleon’s talents, drive, and genius. Napoleon’s aristocracy was just his aping of the actual thing, his crew of gangsters being handed titles for their loyalty to his regime. At no point did the French Empire have balanced budgets; it was a predatory enterprise that funded itself through plunder and kept its war machine going through forced levies of troops from conquered populations. The idea that women did not play an important role in the culture, diplomacy, and intrigues of the day is without support in the literature, primary or secondary.
The Bourbons are still the reigning monarchs in Spain. I make the same point about liberalism etc. in my essay.
When the warlord does come, it will be terrible, more so because their is no Metternich to oppose him. Such a figure, a true aristocrat of the spirit and not a bloody gangster, will have to emerge from the same mists of history as a true king, and may God speed the day.
Nov 22, 2023·edited Nov 22, 2023Liked by Librarian of Celaeno
What I'm getting out of this is that Metternich deserves to have a bunch of those neon RETVRN memes and maybe a Little Dark Edge edit. For real though, good write up for a criminally underrated figure of the Napoleonic age. Even though the eponymous French chud himself is, obviously, pretty important to the time, I think you only appreciate and understand his story and time period itself if you also understand most of the other players, but they all get overlooked because... they aren't flashy enough, I guess.
All sigma beta incel whatever jokes aside, the movie seems like it's going to just be fodder for pop history TEN THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT type things to pick apart for the next fifty years. I don't think I've ever seen a movie's hype deflate as quick or as hard as this one. It's so over for Napofags.
To be clear, I haven’t seen the movie. However, I was a big fan of the 2002 A&E miniseries about Napoleon. Christian Clavier played the emperor, and the film featured Isabella Rossellini as Josephine, John Malkovich as Talleyrand, Gerard Depardieu as Foché, and the late Julian Sands as Metternich. A really solid production. Here’s a scene:
What's the american phrase? "You said a mouthful", is that it?
If you pardon the 'Finnegan's Wake'-ish style:
I sometimes wonder if it's me or if it's a real discrepancy between how americans understand "nationalism" as compared to various europeans - apart from the concept being tainted by the national socialists and that taint weaponised by Moscow-loyal stooges throught the post-war period, "nationalism" has always been a positive thing, natural and borne in the blood. Pretty much the same as with the concept of "Blued und Boden": until it was weaponised in german propaganda, it was so self-evident it didn't really need to be pointed out or at. Land and people is the nation, and cannot be separated: citizenship and -isms and all that is just words the high and mighty use.
I posit the difference in how the term is understood on the emotional, instinctual level is even more marked between americans and slavic peoples, or turkish ones. Soil, people, language, tradition, and faith. Few russians or serbs would fight for a "leader"; virtually all of them would fight for the mother-land if foreign invaders comes a-calling. The ongoing war in Ukraine f.e. The soldiers aren't fighting for Zelensky, but for their nation and people. They know full well Zelensky is corrupt, a gangster and a puppet. Same as the russians re: Putin.
Or it's a "me" thing and I'm the one seeing something that's no longer there. Fully possible, as most people don't think of self-evident things until they are gone and they wonder "What happened?".
Anyways, the one who defeated Napoleon was Napoleon, I'd argue. Also, Kutuzov and Rostopchin. Napoleon should have learned the bitter lesson of Charles XII and the campaign culminating in the swedish defeat at Poltava in 1709. Kutuzov used the same tactics Peter I used against the swedes and their kossack allies, and Napoleon fell for it, hook line and sinker.
Going by your description of his personality as someone with both a sense of grandiosity and an inferiority complex, he surely forgot that most important thing:
Titles, clothes, airs, and so on of the nobility is nothing more than window-dressing. It's not real - soon as any nobility needs to, the lace-fringed gloves come off, as Kutuzov and Rostopchin showed him.
Great write-up, as always. You do spoil your readers, you really do.
For Metternich, traditional loyalties were bound up with personalities; a king was a father to the people over whom he ruled, even if he was not of them. His own relationship with the Habsburgs was of that kind, and he believed that Magyars, Slavs, Jews, and sundry others shared a unity that was stronger than their particular historically determined characteristics. Nationalism is more of an abstraction, a sense of belonging to a collective rather than having a relationship. It lends itself well to liberalism and democracy and is thus belligerent and unstable. It seems counterintuitive, because so many RW thinkers tend to assume homogenous societies are natural and enduring, but royal houses, historically speaking, have far more longevity ruling over disparate peoples than self-determined nations. Consider Poland, only really a country for eighty years or so, vs. the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and its polyglot population. Or witness the stillborn attempts to craft something called Ukraine out of something that was once one of the three Russias ruled by the Tsars.
Poland the nation-state vs poles the people. First comes people, then nation, then state. It is organic, autonomous and natural. And indeed homogenous, if and only if viewed with modern-day indivudalism as an anti-pode and ideal.
Cultural/racial homogenity has never meant until the modern era that all are identical or must strive towards a common narrow identity; that is the modernist ideal that doesn't exist until after 1850s - after the modern idea of the nationstate.
Look at swedish, danish, norwegian and finnish history - especially finnish. First came the people, then everything grew from the people. No people, no nation - only a geographically defined area with citizens, and that latter thing is not a nation at all, only a state.
This is precisely the difference in understanding nationalism I was fishing for: americans do not understand nationalism the same way we do, because in US discourse race is the over-arching factor. Here, it is people.
That does seem to be how American nationalism is portrayed publicly, however that is controlled by our leaders who set up the race problems in order to create chaos. Divide and Conquer vs Unite and Rule.
Many White Americans are beginning to see the problems with that, and are embracing a more Euro view of nationalism. i.e., you can't immigrate to become a co-national, you are either born here of the right culture and ethnicity or you are not.
I enjoy these history pieces, and I think your stance on Napoleon is right. Many RWers celebrate Napoleon because he played the part of a based strongman nationalist, and established a kind of monarchy, but he never had any intention of reestablishing the old order. I don't know much about Metternich, but it sounds like he was the real deal, and should be better known to us.
I am a bit surprised how unknown Metternich is, judging by my comments. I suppose that because he was the very opposite of a conqueror he loses something in the popular imagination, but he is one of the towering statesmen of the 19th century.
You’re a historian. It’s sort of like how most people don’t know of any punk bands besides The Sex Pistols. There is an apparatus at play in which the greats are obscured by the appointed media figures, even on the radical right. No industry is immune from this. Name one figure on the dissident right with any recognition besides BAP. All of this is part of the apparatus. It’s all the same, regardless of industry or century. None of it is organic or meritocratic. These are Appointed Representatives.
I think the appeal of Napoleon to the RW imagination is pretty straightforward- he was a conqueror who rose from relative obscurity and dominated his establishment enemies for more than a decade, imposing his will on the world. A RW Renaissance will similarly have to come out of the same kind of nowhere. But in the end Napoleon’s ideology was the same sort of mix of self-serving progressive cynicism that animates much of the modern managerial elite, whom Napoleon’s reforms laid the groundwork for. His was an empire of bureaucrats as much as it was military officers and I think that that flies in the face of what an actual RW revival would need to be- spiritual, aristocratic, Classically informed and infused with the spirit of traditional Christianity. That was Metternich and the world he fought for; we should not be confused by the fact that the roles of rebel and system will be reversed in our own time.
Yea, subtle political dealings aren't as exciting as military conquests. But politics and strategy were clearly just as important as military might in this conflict, it could have gone very differently.
Very good piece. I recently read Henry Kissinger's A World Restored - fascinating on the balancing act Metternich managed to pull off over ten years in order to shepherd Austria from a French puppet state, to a neutral friendly country linked to France by that most unbreakable of ties, a marriage alliance (thought Napoleon - lol only a true aristocrat would know how easy it is to discard one of those when necessary), to a mediator acceptable to all parties as Napoleon retreated, to a great power providing the Sixth Coalition with much of its legitimacy. All very 無為, a true sagechad.
(To say nothing of then successfully keeping the Concert of Europe and Holy Alliance intact in the following years despite the various enthusiasms of the Tsar).
Kissinger, for all his flaws and unfortunate associations, has the rare sort of experience needed to understand Metternich as a peer. His takes are cited in the Siemann book I mentioned.
So much to digest here. Also, one of the most mature criticisms of Nietzsche that I’ve seen. I didn’t know about Metternich… there’s no doubt that hundreds of thousands of these figures have also been rendered obscure by the media complex that is history. Perhaps these spiritual aristocrats, drowned out by the “algorithms” of their own times, were actually more influential than the Napoleon’s and their handlers. Yet the PR machine forces us into these invisible corners, wondering where all the others are. I believe the origin of folk tales is the telling of the stories of people like Metternich. We are “the folk.”
The Napoleon movie probably would have been fun in some black and white style CGI romp.
I admire Nietzsche to a point and think he had a lot of very valid criticisms of the spirit of his age. I’ve said before that I think he (and Marx) were better diagnosticians than prescribers. And I will concede that it’s not entirely fair to expect every advocate of a philosophy to be a flawless representative of its ideals. But seriously, the man who called for the age of the pitiless conqueror ended his days in an insane asylum after a nervous breakdown he had caused by watching someone whipping a horse. What would he have done if he had actually met the Ubermensch? One shudders to think of the condition his pants would be left in.
This dispute over Napoleon's place as world-historical figure and what he represented (Nietzschean superman fuck you collectivist deniers of muh vitalist WILL or avatar of ruinous liberalism) reminds me a little of Marxists debating whether the building of the pyramids was 'HisTORicaLly PRogrESsive' or 'opPreSSiNG tHe felAhEen'. I mean what does it matter now?
Suppose for example that the Nietzschean types were able conclusively to claim him as their own. Would liberals even contest ownership? I don't think they care; they're too intensely focused on consolidating their chokehold on the present. They recognise that they can't make Napoleon into a black woman or a tranny or whatever, so, aside from some petty psychologising, they basically leave him alone. They only fight battles over the past where there's room for doubt, however small (cf. Cheddar Man, Roman legionaries on Hadrian’s Wall, Achilles etc).
It's a bit of a midwit take for sure (I flatter myself that I'm an upper midwit), and I'm not saying that history should be left alone because...it's just one damned thing after another or whatever, but why fight over Napoleon? You point out here that Napoleon was both a chad conqueror and a spreader of LEFism--even if opportunistically and partly for reasons of lineage inferiority.
On the other hand maybe I’m taking it way too seriously and it’s all just for fun I don't know...
There is no more fundamental task in learning than the interpretation of history. How we view the past shapes our individual and collective identities. My more specific point in writing this post was to point out that Metternich was a peacemaker and restorer of a correct and transcendent social order, making him a worthier figure of admiration for rightists than Napoleon. The irony, which no one has yet noted, is that since visible hereditary aristocracies are functionally dead, new ones will have to arise, and ironically they will probably have to do so in much the same way as Napoleon. I wrote in the hope that people treat the example of the Corsican as the means and that of Prince Metternich as the end.
Nov 23, 2023·edited Nov 23, 2023Liked by Librarian of Celaeno
I agree of course that historical interpretation is of the first importance. But it's obvious that this sub-subcultural beef on the internet right doesn't arise from a fissure between those who believe in an aristocratically-guided order and those who believe in...I don't know...a reformed liberal democracy or something. I would guess that 99 per cent of real rightists, including both those who admire and those who dislike Napoleon, advocate re-establishing an aristocracy of some sort--and as you say it will have to come from revealed merit rather than established bloodlines, a la Napoleon. So what's the dispute (NAPOFAGZ SEETHE! etc etc) in aid of?
Anyway I realise your purpose was to bring to light Metternich's remarkable career and to show that he's a figure more than worthy of representation on film. But maybe the Nietzscheans would say that Metternich was a mere reactionary whose project history ultimately consigned to failure and that Napoleon shouldn't have been opposed because his role was...historically progressive (in which case...NIETZSCHEANS ARE THE REAL MARXISTS!)
Well there’s a positive agenda then, Napoleon as means and Metternich as end, yes...
We have left out Ways , but events shall speak more eloquently than I.
This RETVRN - What exactly are we returning to??
The defects by the way of the Ancien Regime made either an improbably wide reform or overthrow inevitable. They’re not too dissimilar to our own in America now - an unnatural and cobbled together over centralization resulting in defective administrative rule (France was ruled by 30 Intendants, think combination of DOJ, Governor and Central Bank) and an underemployed elite that had lost it’s purpose but not their expenses.
The Third Estate you know had a large number of Aristocracy illegally elected to office, the peasants and bourgeoisie voted for the leaders they had.
Our actual situation is closer to that of the end of Qing Dynasty China (the Manchus) with Biden as the Old Buddha, not that we don’t have lots of Old Buddhas.
= there’s no feasible or even risible succession.
DC is clearing out.
Joe dies , DC will be deserted...in hours... they won’t even stick around for his funeral.
Then follows “The Anarchy”.
If we are granted a miracle from God , we’ll have a reasonably short war to RETVRN to the Articles of Confederation...
Some good points, but I don't think there will be an Anarchy. Most likely someone else will pick up the mantle of... whatever Biden is wearing to denote power. Slight chance of entering a War of the Diadochi period. Those Diadochi will be existing figures in power: generals, governors, urban mayors, etc.
There won't be a disappearance of government such that regular people can rise up out of whole cloth to rule.
Well written but if this is history as opposed to a book review I don’t know if you’re being fair here to Metternich, there was considerably more to him than being a well bred pimp. He would have kept Napoleon in power if Napoleon would have let him, he would not.
The role of Austria in the downfall of Napoleon has always been underrated, it wouldn’t have happened without him.
That the destruction of Napoleon was Metternich’s aim upon meeting him... this is not what I read in his own words.
You are most unfair to Napoleon, he was more a creature of his times who rose to the challenge, when he “found the Crown of France in the gutter” and picked it up with his sword. That gutter was The Directory, think of Stalin being followed directly by Yeltsin and you have the idea. Calling him Pablo Escobar is absurd.
Napoleon saw far more of the horrors of the Jacobins and first hand. Someone had to do what he did and it was him, and it was better. Even with the wars.
Talleyrand helped far more than Josephine, indeed Talleyrand was most impressed with him.
Napoleon’s problems were he did not stop making war, frankly I’m not sure he could. At no point was Europe going to rest with a parvenu on the throne of France, at no point was England going to contemplate a powerful France astride all of Europe.
Napoleon- if you read his diary “The Corsican” was a creature of enormous genius and incredible energy and memory. The energy wasn’t just spent on war but The Napoleonic legal code and may we add instantly balanced budgets, he knew his accounts to the sou.
What would we give for such a man?
The actual RETVRN started under him. Including the return of the Aristocracy. A good source for that entire world is “The Origins of Contemporary France” by Hipplolyte Taine.
He describes a mind nearly unique in history.
You’re also turning the entire matter into a soap opera, sorry.
This is like getting the history of “Rome” from HBO. Marvelous series, in real life the women were not important. Josephine was a stepping stone and then a pit stop between campaigns.
Napoleon’s inferiority complex is ... this is Freudian and anachronistic... no. He correctly judged the intentions of Europe especially England. There was no peace. There’s never peace if England is challenged however indirectly (ask the Germans).
As far as the return of the Bourbons that was over fast by 1830 actually , and by 1848 all over.
The real victor was England, Liberalism, Capitalism and look where that has led us?
Here.
I shouldn’t turn up my nose at warlords by the way, what do you think is going to happen here 🇺🇸?
Napoleon? We should be so lucky. We’re going to be ruled by the American Mao (the most fit warlord) and considering the sorting process that will require we’ll be happiest when there’s a winner.
I correct - the role of Austria in Napoleon’s downfall was not just Metternich but the Archduke Charles- who figured out how to beat the French (don’t fight Napoleon, avoid him, fight the other generals and marshals, all quite capable men as well).
At Leipzig when Napoleon was finally really defeated it took all the armies of the Sixth coalition together and was yet a near thing.
My entire piece was about how brilliant and essential Metternich was; at no point did I shortchange him as a “well-bred pimp.”
I’m not sure what your second paragraph means. Metternich was opposed to the Revolution and Napoleon from the start and Austria was the motive force on the continent behind the various coalitions.
Napoleon was a creature of the Directory, was sponsored by them, and betrayed them. I explained the Escobar analogy.
I point out in the essay how much Metternich respected Napoleon’s talents, drive, and genius. Napoleon’s aristocracy was just his aping of the actual thing, his crew of gangsters being handed titles for their loyalty to his regime. At no point did the French Empire have balanced budgets; it was a predatory enterprise that funded itself through plunder and kept its war machine going through forced levies of troops from conquered populations. The idea that women did not play an important role in the culture, diplomacy, and intrigues of the day is without support in the literature, primary or secondary.
The Bourbons are still the reigning monarchs in Spain. I make the same point about liberalism etc. in my essay.
When the warlord does come, it will be terrible, more so because their is no Metternich to oppose him. Such a figure, a true aristocrat of the spirit and not a bloody gangster, will have to emerge from the same mists of history as a true king, and may God speed the day.
That warlord will have to be our Metternich, as the Napoleons of the world won. And yes, he will have to be terrible and bloody.
What I'm getting out of this is that Metternich deserves to have a bunch of those neon RETVRN memes and maybe a Little Dark Edge edit. For real though, good write up for a criminally underrated figure of the Napoleonic age. Even though the eponymous French chud himself is, obviously, pretty important to the time, I think you only appreciate and understand his story and time period itself if you also understand most of the other players, but they all get overlooked because... they aren't flashy enough, I guess.
All sigma beta incel whatever jokes aside, the movie seems like it's going to just be fodder for pop history TEN THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT type things to pick apart for the next fifty years. I don't think I've ever seen a movie's hype deflate as quick or as hard as this one. It's so over for Napofags.
To be clear, I haven’t seen the movie. However, I was a big fan of the 2002 A&E miniseries about Napoleon. Christian Clavier played the emperor, and the film featured Isabella Rossellini as Josephine, John Malkovich as Talleyrand, Gerard Depardieu as Foché, and the late Julian Sands as Metternich. A really solid production. Here’s a scene:
https://youtu.be/uOxK-7Vsi4E?si=R7m5BLWFaD7bcnps
Best movie with Napoleon in it, "Time Bandits" or "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure"?
Seriously though, my favorite has always been "Waterloo" with Rod Steiger. I'll have to check out that miniseries when I have time.
What's the american phrase? "You said a mouthful", is that it?
If you pardon the 'Finnegan's Wake'-ish style:
I sometimes wonder if it's me or if it's a real discrepancy between how americans understand "nationalism" as compared to various europeans - apart from the concept being tainted by the national socialists and that taint weaponised by Moscow-loyal stooges throught the post-war period, "nationalism" has always been a positive thing, natural and borne in the blood. Pretty much the same as with the concept of "Blued und Boden": until it was weaponised in german propaganda, it was so self-evident it didn't really need to be pointed out or at. Land and people is the nation, and cannot be separated: citizenship and -isms and all that is just words the high and mighty use.
I posit the difference in how the term is understood on the emotional, instinctual level is even more marked between americans and slavic peoples, or turkish ones. Soil, people, language, tradition, and faith. Few russians or serbs would fight for a "leader"; virtually all of them would fight for the mother-land if foreign invaders comes a-calling. The ongoing war in Ukraine f.e. The soldiers aren't fighting for Zelensky, but for their nation and people. They know full well Zelensky is corrupt, a gangster and a puppet. Same as the russians re: Putin.
Or it's a "me" thing and I'm the one seeing something that's no longer there. Fully possible, as most people don't think of self-evident things until they are gone and they wonder "What happened?".
Anyways, the one who defeated Napoleon was Napoleon, I'd argue. Also, Kutuzov and Rostopchin. Napoleon should have learned the bitter lesson of Charles XII and the campaign culminating in the swedish defeat at Poltava in 1709. Kutuzov used the same tactics Peter I used against the swedes and their kossack allies, and Napoleon fell for it, hook line and sinker.
Going by your description of his personality as someone with both a sense of grandiosity and an inferiority complex, he surely forgot that most important thing:
Titles, clothes, airs, and so on of the nobility is nothing more than window-dressing. It's not real - soon as any nobility needs to, the lace-fringed gloves come off, as Kutuzov and Rostopchin showed him.
Great write-up, as always. You do spoil your readers, you really do.
For Metternich, traditional loyalties were bound up with personalities; a king was a father to the people over whom he ruled, even if he was not of them. His own relationship with the Habsburgs was of that kind, and he believed that Magyars, Slavs, Jews, and sundry others shared a unity that was stronger than their particular historically determined characteristics. Nationalism is more of an abstraction, a sense of belonging to a collective rather than having a relationship. It lends itself well to liberalism and democracy and is thus belligerent and unstable. It seems counterintuitive, because so many RW thinkers tend to assume homogenous societies are natural and enduring, but royal houses, historically speaking, have far more longevity ruling over disparate peoples than self-determined nations. Consider Poland, only really a country for eighty years or so, vs. the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and its polyglot population. Or witness the stillborn attempts to craft something called Ukraine out of something that was once one of the three Russias ruled by the Tsars.
This is precisely what I meant.
Poland the nation-state vs poles the people. First comes people, then nation, then state. It is organic, autonomous and natural. And indeed homogenous, if and only if viewed with modern-day indivudalism as an anti-pode and ideal.
Cultural/racial homogenity has never meant until the modern era that all are identical or must strive towards a common narrow identity; that is the modernist ideal that doesn't exist until after 1850s - after the modern idea of the nationstate.
Look at swedish, danish, norwegian and finnish history - especially finnish. First came the people, then everything grew from the people. No people, no nation - only a geographically defined area with citizens, and that latter thing is not a nation at all, only a state.
This is precisely the difference in understanding nationalism I was fishing for: americans do not understand nationalism the same way we do, because in US discourse race is the over-arching factor. Here, it is people.
That's the difference.
That does seem to be how American nationalism is portrayed publicly, however that is controlled by our leaders who set up the race problems in order to create chaos. Divide and Conquer vs Unite and Rule.
Many White Americans are beginning to see the problems with that, and are embracing a more Euro view of nationalism. i.e., you can't immigrate to become a co-national, you are either born here of the right culture and ethnicity or you are not.
I enjoy these history pieces, and I think your stance on Napoleon is right. Many RWers celebrate Napoleon because he played the part of a based strongman nationalist, and established a kind of monarchy, but he never had any intention of reestablishing the old order. I don't know much about Metternich, but it sounds like he was the real deal, and should be better known to us.
I am a bit surprised how unknown Metternich is, judging by my comments. I suppose that because he was the very opposite of a conqueror he loses something in the popular imagination, but he is one of the towering statesmen of the 19th century.
You’re a historian. It’s sort of like how most people don’t know of any punk bands besides The Sex Pistols. There is an apparatus at play in which the greats are obscured by the appointed media figures, even on the radical right. No industry is immune from this. Name one figure on the dissident right with any recognition besides BAP. All of this is part of the apparatus. It’s all the same, regardless of industry or century. None of it is organic or meritocratic. These are Appointed Representatives.
I think the appeal of Napoleon to the RW imagination is pretty straightforward- he was a conqueror who rose from relative obscurity and dominated his establishment enemies for more than a decade, imposing his will on the world. A RW Renaissance will similarly have to come out of the same kind of nowhere. But in the end Napoleon’s ideology was the same sort of mix of self-serving progressive cynicism that animates much of the modern managerial elite, whom Napoleon’s reforms laid the groundwork for. His was an empire of bureaucrats as much as it was military officers and I think that that flies in the face of what an actual RW revival would need to be- spiritual, aristocratic, Classically informed and infused with the spirit of traditional Christianity. That was Metternich and the world he fought for; we should not be confused by the fact that the roles of rebel and system will be reversed in our own time.
Yea, subtle political dealings aren't as exciting as military conquests. But politics and strategy were clearly just as important as military might in this conflict, it could have gone very differently.
Very good piece. I recently read Henry Kissinger's A World Restored - fascinating on the balancing act Metternich managed to pull off over ten years in order to shepherd Austria from a French puppet state, to a neutral friendly country linked to France by that most unbreakable of ties, a marriage alliance (thought Napoleon - lol only a true aristocrat would know how easy it is to discard one of those when necessary), to a mediator acceptable to all parties as Napoleon retreated, to a great power providing the Sixth Coalition with much of its legitimacy. All very 無為, a true sagechad.
(To say nothing of then successfully keeping the Concert of Europe and Holy Alliance intact in the following years despite the various enthusiasms of the Tsar).
Kissinger, for all his flaws and unfortunate associations, has the rare sort of experience needed to understand Metternich as a peer. His takes are cited in the Siemann book I mentioned.
Brilliant piece. I hadn't even heard of Metternich before, but I intend to read more about him. What an incredible life.
The first thing that comes to mind about napoleon was that he didn't want his wife to bathe because he liked her B.O...🤣
Could be haram but I remember reading that somewhere ...
So much to digest here. Also, one of the most mature criticisms of Nietzsche that I’ve seen. I didn’t know about Metternich… there’s no doubt that hundreds of thousands of these figures have also been rendered obscure by the media complex that is history. Perhaps these spiritual aristocrats, drowned out by the “algorithms” of their own times, were actually more influential than the Napoleon’s and their handlers. Yet the PR machine forces us into these invisible corners, wondering where all the others are. I believe the origin of folk tales is the telling of the stories of people like Metternich. We are “the folk.”
The Napoleon movie probably would have been fun in some black and white style CGI romp.
I admire Nietzsche to a point and think he had a lot of very valid criticisms of the spirit of his age. I’ve said before that I think he (and Marx) were better diagnosticians than prescribers. And I will concede that it’s not entirely fair to expect every advocate of a philosophy to be a flawless representative of its ideals. But seriously, the man who called for the age of the pitiless conqueror ended his days in an insane asylum after a nervous breakdown he had caused by watching someone whipping a horse. What would he have done if he had actually met the Ubermensch? One shudders to think of the condition his pants would be left in.
My impression was that he invented the Ubermensch to cope with his own weakness, finding a way to transcend his own suffering.
I very much appreciate your take on history. I always feel like my worldview is expanded.
Two of your funniest captions and an excellent article
Which captions did you find funniest? I always wonder because people can’t comment on them individually.
These two:
Joachim Phoenix IS Commodus PLAYING the Joker starring AS Napoleon
“At least we don’t have some king telling us what to d-”
I've been reading about the Habsburgs lately and Metternich came up and I can say he was the real deal.
Good post.
The Siemens biography is excellent.
I agree; I thought the way it was organized was especially interesting and helpful.
A well written and fascinating piece of history. We are fortunate indeed.
This dispute over Napoleon's place as world-historical figure and what he represented (Nietzschean superman fuck you collectivist deniers of muh vitalist WILL or avatar of ruinous liberalism) reminds me a little of Marxists debating whether the building of the pyramids was 'HisTORicaLly PRogrESsive' or 'opPreSSiNG tHe felAhEen'. I mean what does it matter now?
Suppose for example that the Nietzschean types were able conclusively to claim him as their own. Would liberals even contest ownership? I don't think they care; they're too intensely focused on consolidating their chokehold on the present. They recognise that they can't make Napoleon into a black woman or a tranny or whatever, so, aside from some petty psychologising, they basically leave him alone. They only fight battles over the past where there's room for doubt, however small (cf. Cheddar Man, Roman legionaries on Hadrian’s Wall, Achilles etc).
It's a bit of a midwit take for sure (I flatter myself that I'm an upper midwit), and I'm not saying that history should be left alone because...it's just one damned thing after another or whatever, but why fight over Napoleon? You point out here that Napoleon was both a chad conqueror and a spreader of LEFism--even if opportunistically and partly for reasons of lineage inferiority.
On the other hand maybe I’m taking it way too seriously and it’s all just for fun I don't know...
There is no more fundamental task in learning than the interpretation of history. How we view the past shapes our individual and collective identities. My more specific point in writing this post was to point out that Metternich was a peacemaker and restorer of a correct and transcendent social order, making him a worthier figure of admiration for rightists than Napoleon. The irony, which no one has yet noted, is that since visible hereditary aristocracies are functionally dead, new ones will have to arise, and ironically they will probably have to do so in much the same way as Napoleon. I wrote in the hope that people treat the example of the Corsican as the means and that of Prince Metternich as the end.
I agree of course that historical interpretation is of the first importance. But it's obvious that this sub-subcultural beef on the internet right doesn't arise from a fissure between those who believe in an aristocratically-guided order and those who believe in...I don't know...a reformed liberal democracy or something. I would guess that 99 per cent of real rightists, including both those who admire and those who dislike Napoleon, advocate re-establishing an aristocracy of some sort--and as you say it will have to come from revealed merit rather than established bloodlines, a la Napoleon. So what's the dispute (NAPOFAGZ SEETHE! etc etc) in aid of?
Anyway I realise your purpose was to bring to light Metternich's remarkable career and to show that he's a figure more than worthy of representation on film. But maybe the Nietzscheans would say that Metternich was a mere reactionary whose project history ultimately consigned to failure and that Napoleon shouldn't have been opposed because his role was...historically progressive (in which case...NIETZSCHEANS ARE THE REAL MARXISTS!)
Well there’s a positive agenda then, Napoleon as means and Metternich as end, yes...
We have left out Ways , but events shall speak more eloquently than I.
This RETVRN - What exactly are we returning to??
The defects by the way of the Ancien Regime made either an improbably wide reform or overthrow inevitable. They’re not too dissimilar to our own in America now - an unnatural and cobbled together over centralization resulting in defective administrative rule (France was ruled by 30 Intendants, think combination of DOJ, Governor and Central Bank) and an underemployed elite that had lost it’s purpose but not their expenses.
The Third Estate you know had a large number of Aristocracy illegally elected to office, the peasants and bourgeoisie voted for the leaders they had.
Our actual situation is closer to that of the end of Qing Dynasty China (the Manchus) with Biden as the Old Buddha, not that we don’t have lots of Old Buddhas.
= there’s no feasible or even risible succession.
DC is clearing out.
Joe dies , DC will be deserted...in hours... they won’t even stick around for his funeral.
Then follows “The Anarchy”.
If we are granted a miracle from God , we’ll have a reasonably short war to RETVRN to the Articles of Confederation...
If God is just we’re in Deep Shit.
Some good points, but I don't think there will be an Anarchy. Most likely someone else will pick up the mantle of... whatever Biden is wearing to denote power. Slight chance of entering a War of the Diadochi period. Those Diadochi will be existing figures in power: generals, governors, urban mayors, etc.
There won't be a disappearance of government such that regular people can rise up out of whole cloth to rule.
Well written but if this is history as opposed to a book review I don’t know if you’re being fair here to Metternich, there was considerably more to him than being a well bred pimp. He would have kept Napoleon in power if Napoleon would have let him, he would not.
The role of Austria in the downfall of Napoleon has always been underrated, it wouldn’t have happened without him.
That the destruction of Napoleon was Metternich’s aim upon meeting him... this is not what I read in his own words.
You are most unfair to Napoleon, he was more a creature of his times who rose to the challenge, when he “found the Crown of France in the gutter” and picked it up with his sword. That gutter was The Directory, think of Stalin being followed directly by Yeltsin and you have the idea. Calling him Pablo Escobar is absurd.
Napoleon saw far more of the horrors of the Jacobins and first hand. Someone had to do what he did and it was him, and it was better. Even with the wars.
Talleyrand helped far more than Josephine, indeed Talleyrand was most impressed with him.
Napoleon’s problems were he did not stop making war, frankly I’m not sure he could. At no point was Europe going to rest with a parvenu on the throne of France, at no point was England going to contemplate a powerful France astride all of Europe.
Napoleon- if you read his diary “The Corsican” was a creature of enormous genius and incredible energy and memory. The energy wasn’t just spent on war but The Napoleonic legal code and may we add instantly balanced budgets, he knew his accounts to the sou.
What would we give for such a man?
The actual RETVRN started under him. Including the return of the Aristocracy. A good source for that entire world is “The Origins of Contemporary France” by Hipplolyte Taine.
He describes a mind nearly unique in history.
You’re also turning the entire matter into a soap opera, sorry.
This is like getting the history of “Rome” from HBO. Marvelous series, in real life the women were not important. Josephine was a stepping stone and then a pit stop between campaigns.
Napoleon’s inferiority complex is ... this is Freudian and anachronistic... no. He correctly judged the intentions of Europe especially England. There was no peace. There’s never peace if England is challenged however indirectly (ask the Germans).
As far as the return of the Bourbons that was over fast by 1830 actually , and by 1848 all over.
The real victor was England, Liberalism, Capitalism and look where that has led us?
Here.
I shouldn’t turn up my nose at warlords by the way, what do you think is going to happen here 🇺🇸?
Napoleon? We should be so lucky. We’re going to be ruled by the American Mao (the most fit warlord) and considering the sorting process that will require we’ll be happiest when there’s a winner.
I correct - the role of Austria in Napoleon’s downfall was not just Metternich but the Archduke Charles- who figured out how to beat the French (don’t fight Napoleon, avoid him, fight the other generals and marshals, all quite capable men as well).
At Leipzig when Napoleon was finally really defeated it took all the armies of the Sixth coalition together and was yet a near thing.
Austria was the key partner.