Soon after, he engineered Austria's entry into the War of the Sixth Coalition on the Allied side, signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau that sent Napoleon into exile and led the Austrian delegation at the Congress of Vienna that divided post-Napoleonic Europe amongst the major powers.

Metternich was also a supporter of the arts, taking a particular interest in music; he knew some of the most eminent composers in Europe at the time including Haydn, Beethoven, Rossini, Paganini, Liszt, and Strauss.

[4] At this time Metternich's father, described as "a boring babbler and chronic liar" by a contemporary, was the Austrian ambassador to the courts of the three Rhenish electors (Trier, Cologne and Mainz).

[7] Metternich left Strasbourg in September 1790 to attend Leopold II's October coronation in Frankfurt, where he performed the largely honorific role of Ceremonial Marshal to the Catholic Bench of the College of the Counts of Westphalia.

[7] Between the end of 1790 and summer of 1792 Metternich studied law at the University of Mainz,[8] receiving a more conservative education than at Strasbourg, a city unsafe to return to due to the unfolding French Revolution, which had begun in 1789.

[10] In England, he met King George III on several occasions and dined with a number of influential British politicians, including William Pitt, Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke.

[16] Initially his father, who headed the imperial delegation, took him as a secretary while ensuring that, when proceedings officially started in December 1797, he was named the representative of the Catholic Bench of the College of the Counts of Westphalia.

[16] The Holy Roman Empire's defeat in the War of the Second Coalition shook up diplomatic circles, and the promising Metternich was now offered a choice between three ministerial positions: to the Imperial Diet at Regensburg; to the Kingdom of Denmark at Copenhagen; or to the Electorate of Saxony at Dresden.

The trip was designed, Metternich explained, to transport his family (stranded in France by the outbreak of war) home and to report to the Austrian Emperor about Marie Louise's activities.

[29] Requiring that only 30,000 Austrian troops fight alongside the French,[30] the alliance treaty was more generous than the one Prussia had signed a month earlier; this allowed Metternich to give both Britain and Russia assurances that Austria remained committed to curbing Napoleonic ambitions.

Over the next three months, he would slowly distance Austria from the French cause, while avoiding alliance with either Prussia or Russia,[31] and remaining open to any proposal that would secure a place for the combined Bonaparte-Habsburg dynasty.

Diplomatically, with the war drawing to a close, he remained determined to prevent the creation of a strong, unified German state, even offering Napoleon generous terms in order to retain him as a counterweight.

I cannot stand it much longer and the Emperor Francis is already ill. [The other leaders] are all mad and belong in the lunatic asylum.Metternich continued negotiations with the French envoy Caulaincourt through early to mid March 1814, when victory at the Battle of Laon put the Coalition back on the offensive.

Metternich was eventually reunited with his family in Austria in the middle of July 1814, having stopped for a week in France to soothe fears surrounding Napoleon's wife Marie Louise, now the Duchess of Parma.

Before ministers from the "Big Four" (the Coalition allies of Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia) arrived, Metternich stayed quietly in Baden bei Wien, two hours to the south.

Disappointed, and exhausted by social rounds, Metternich let his guard drop, angering Tsar Alexander during negotiations over Poland (then ruled by Napoleon as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw) by implying Austria could match Russia militarily.

Despite the blunder, Francis refused to dismiss his foreign minister, and political crisis rocked Vienna throughout November, culminating in a declaration by Tsar Alexander that Russia would not compromise in its claim on Poland as a satellite kingdom.

After the military commanders left, the Vienna Congress settled down to serious work, fixing the boundaries of an independent Netherlands, formalising proposals for a loose confederation of Swiss cantons, and ratifying earlier agreements over Poland.

He was also concerned by liberal-minded Ioannis Kapodistrias' increasing influence over Tsar Alexander and the continual threat of Russia annexing large areas of the declining Ottoman Empire (the so-called Eastern Question).

[59][60] Metternich carried the day, using a recent attempt on the life of the Chief Minister of Nassau, Carl Ibell to win agreement for the conservative program now known as the Convention of Teplitz.

He chose "sympathetic inactivity" on Spain[nb 6] but, much to his dismay and surprise, Guglielmo Pepe led a revolt in Naples in early July and forced King Ferdinand I to accept a new constitution.

[71] The Tsar's dual proposal for the St Petersburg meetings, a settlement of the Eastern Question favourable to Russia and limited autonomy for three Greek principalities, was a pairing unpalatable to the other European powers, and potential attendees like British Foreign Secretary George Canning slowly turned away, much to the annoyance of Alexander.

In August 1826 Russian Foreign Minister Nesselrode rejected a proposal by Metternich to convene a congress to discuss the events that eventually led to the outbreak of civil war in Portugal.

[78] Although pleased by this, Metternich's mood was soured by news of unrest in Brussels (then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands), the resignation of Wellington in London, and calls for constitutionality in Germany.

Just three weeks after its creation, Metternich's European League of Great Powers (his diplomatic response to aggressive moves by French Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers) had become a mere curiosity.

[85] Italy was quiet, and neither Metternich's attempt to lecture the new Prussian king Frederick William IV nor the boredom of the new British Queen Victoria at their first meeting posed immediate problems.

The new Pope Pius IX was gaining a reputation as a liberal nationalist, counterbalancing Metternich and Austria; at the same time, the Empire experienced unemployment and rising prices as a result of poor harvests.

After Ludwig sent him a message to the effect that the government could not guarantee his safety, Metternich left for the house of Count Taaffe and then, with aid from friends Charles von Hügel and Johann Rechberg, reached the family seat of Prince Liechtenstein forty miles away at Feldsberg.

Franz Josef asked for his advice on numerous issues (though he was too headstrong to be much influenced by it), and both of the two emerging factions in Vienna courted Metternich; even Tsar Nicholas called on him during a state visit.

[93]Particularly during the remainder of the nineteenth century, Metternich was heavily criticised, decried as the man who prevented Austria and the rest of central Europe from "developing along normal liberal and constitutional lines".