Ah Maria, Long Range Plans Can Be Obscure

Queen Maria Theressa of Austria put a lot of faith in her diplomat, Count Kaunitz. She fully expected the impossible from him, and he was eager to give it.

Arriving in Paris, Count Kaunitz settled in to play the roll of courtier/diplomat. Sparing no expense, he surrounded himself with “the utmost splendor.” He was careful to invite all the right people to his extravagant dinner parties. On one point, Kaunitz’s realistic assessment of the situation stood him in good stead; nothing would happen quickly.

Austria had just finished fighting the French and their German allies. To have an emissary of Maria’s suddenly arrive in Paris, waving an olive branch while the Austrian army was being made bigger, stronger and better armed…no, the French would smell a rat.

As it was; “Thus the new ambassador was treated-with perfect courtesy- less as an emissary of peace than as a high grade spy, a harbinger of revenge.” In this environment, Kaunitz began to play his long game. It was well that Maria understood what he was doing. His ostensible superiors in Vienna, Ulfeld and Bartenstien, did not.

It is entirely possible, highly probable even, that neither Maria or the Count took either of these gentlemen into their confidence. Which didn’t change the fact that these gentlemen felt that Kaunitz seemed to be throwing fabulous, and fabulously expensive, parties at crown expense while accomplishing doodly-squat.

Fortunately for the Count, Maria told him to stay with it. Even Kaunitz had his moments, however. At one point, feeling he was getting nowhere, he wrote to the Queen, suggesting that perhaps it might be better to get the best deal they could from Prussia and cut their losses.

Maria would have none of it. Go back to what you were doing and keep doing it, she told him. And he did. For three long, arduous years he slaved away in the ballrooms, salons and dining rooms of Paris. He returned to Vienna in 1753, having accomplished, apparently, nothing.

This was far from the case. Although he had nothing he could show others, treaties or things of that sort, he had something much more valuable. Treaties in that day and age were hardly worth the parchment they were written on. What Kaunitz returned to Vienna with was something he could not publicly discuss without loosing it. The goodwill of King Louis XV.

Of much, much greater importance was something he could not discuss with anyone but the Queen. He had gained the confidence of the King’s mistress Madam de Pompadour. This was an ace in the hole and worth every minute spent in Paris. Maria didn’t need to be told how important this relationship was. Like Kaunitz, she was content to let things move at their own speed for the moment.

She, more than anyone besides Kaunitz, realized that her long range plans would talk a great deal of time to mature. What she wanted in the interim was peace. She got that. And with Kaunitz’s return to Vienna, she got a new foreign minister.

Kaunitz was determined to make a clean sweep of foreign affairs. Ulfeld and Bartenstine were moved along. All of the old offices were either absorbed into the new foreign ministry or abolished. The affairs of what was left of Austria’s foreign possessions were bundled up and taken care of by Kaunitz personally. This had the happy effect of closing the spigot of Austrian secrets that the Prussians had easy access to under Bartenstien and Ulfeld.

And then there was Kaunitz the man. As bright and able as he was, he had more than his share of undesirable traits. His arrogance was legendary, as was his hypochondria. Along with these traits went some rather peculiar personal habits. According to Sir Henry Swinburne after attending dinner at Kaunitz’s home; “After dinner the prince treated us with a cleaning of gums; one of the most nauseous operations I have ever witnessed, and it lasted a prodigious long time,accompanied with all manner of noises. He carries a hundred implements in his pock for this purpose…His whims are innumerable. Nothing allusive to the mortality of human nature must ever be rung in his ears. To mention the smallpox is enough to knock him up for the day.”

While under Kaunitz things moved in the direction that he and the Queen wished them to move, there was little reflection on whither or not this was the direction that things should move. The long term goal, almost single-mindedly so, was the recovery of Silesia. Little thought was given to the ramifications of secretly courting France should England find out. The problem, when you have two people who are of one mind, when one is a queen and the other her hand-picked adviser, is that, not to put too fine a point on it, there is no one to tell them they’re wrong.

— Mr. Al