he gentle but determining
pressure of the kind which Metternich could so skilfully exert. That
statesman, as usual, schemed and balanced. He saw that Austria had
much to gain by playing the waiting game. Her forces were improving
both in numbers and efficiency, and under cover of her offer of armed
mediation were holding strong positions in Bohemia. In fact, she was
regaining her prestige, and might hope to impose her will on the
combatants at the forthcoming European Congress at Prague. Metternich,
therefore, continued to pose as the well-wisher of both parties and
the champion of a reasonable and therefore durable compromise.

He had acted thus, not only in his choice of measures, but in his
selection of men. He had sent to Napoleon's headquarters at Dresden
Count Bubna, whose sincere and resolute striving for peace served to
lull animosity and suspicions in that place. But to the allied
headquarters, now at Reichenbach, he had despatched Count Stadion, who
worked no less earnestly for war. While therefore the Courts of St.
Petersburg, Berlin, and London hoped, from Stadion's language, that
Austria meant to draw the sword, Napoleon inclined to the belief that
she would never do more than rattle her scabbard, and would finally
yield to his demands.

Stadion's letters to Metternich show that he feared this result. He
pressed him to end the seesaw policy of the last six months. "These
people are beaten owing to our faults, our half wishes, our half
measures, and presently they will get out of the scrape and leave us
to pay the price." As for Austria's forthcoming demand of Illyria, who
would guarantee that the French Emperor would let her keep it six
months, if he remained master of Germany and Italy? Only by a close
union with the allies could she be screened from Napoleon's vengeance,
which must otherwise lead to her utter destruction. Let, then, all
timid counsellors be removed from the side of the Emperor Francis. "I
cling to my oft-expressed conviction that we are no longer masters of
our own affairs, and that the tide of events will carry us
along."[323] If we may judge from Metternich's statements in his
"Memoirs," written many years later, he was all along in secret
sympathy with these views. But his actions and his official despatches
during the first six weeks of the armistice bore another complexion;
they were almost colourless, or rather, they were chameleonic. At
Dresden they seemed, on the whole, to be fa