That, famously, was Clemens von Metternich in 1820, conscious as he always was of the times he lived in and of his own place in them. And how intensely he lived through them. At the age of seven, in 1780, he accompanied his father Franz Georg on a diplomatic mission to Cologne. Pushing eighty, he returned from exile to Vienna to give advice to the impulsive young Emperor Franz Joseph. In between, he had been foreign minister to Francis I for twelve years and Austrian Chancellor for another twenty-seven. For his skill in driving through the Congress of Vienna, the French foreign minister Montmorency dubbed him “the coachman of Europe”. Castlereagh went a step further. After the crucial peacemaking session at Châtillon, he told him, “you are the prime minister of the world”. At least that’s what Metternich said Castlereagh had said. Like most great men, he was no stranger to self-promotion.
