Henry Kissinger on Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

“[I]t was this man, more than any other, who forged again a European connection for Britain, who maintained the Coalition, and negotiated the settlement which in its main outlines was to last for over fifty years. Psychologists may well ponder how it came about that this Irish peer, whose career had given no indication of profound conceptions, should become the most European of British statesmen. No man more different from his great protagonist, Metternich, could be imagined. Metternich was elegant, facile, rationalist; Castlereagh, solid, ponderous, pragmatic; the former was witty and eloquent, if somewhat pedantic; the latter cumbersome in expression, although effective in debate; Metternich was doctrinaire and devious; Castlereagh, matter-of-fact and direct. Few individuals have left behind them such a paucity of personal reminiscences. Icy and reserved, Castlereagh walked his solitary path, as humanly unapproachable as his policy came to be incomprehensible to the majority of his countrymen. It was said of him that he was like a splendid summit of polished frost, icy, beautiful, aloof, of a stature that nobody could reach and few would care to.”

“There was one at Paris, however, who for a brief three months represented the conscience of Europe. It is difficult to explain why it should have been Castlereagh who resisted the Prussian clamour for the dismemberment of France in which even Metternich joined to the extent of demanding the permanent dismantling of the outer belt of French fortifications. Or why he should have refused always in such periods to go along with the Cabinet and Parliament, both urging a punitive peace. Yet France was spared and the equilibrium of Europe saved by the representative of the insular power which stood in least danger from immediate attack. At no other time in his career did Castlereagh show to greater advantage than in his battle for the equilibrium at Paris. Misunderstood at home, without the support of the moral framework which Metternich had provided in previous frays, he conducted himself with his customary methodical reserve, cumbersomely persuasive, motivated by an instinct always surer than his capacity for expression. This was the man on whom Europe for two generations heaped opprobrium as the destroyer of its liberties, because so much had the political equilibrium come to be taken for granted that the social contest overshadowed all else; to the extent that it was forgotten that without the political structure so resolutely preserved by Castlereagh, there would have been no social substance left to contend for.”