From generation to generation, one critical aspect about human community never changes: criticism and satire of royalty or the government. That's exactly what The Edinburgh Review does in their historical article, “Memoirs of Prince Metternich”. As the famed newspaper makes fun of and corrects Prince Metternich, they defame him as unreliable and generally a fool, demonstrating that the public should withdraw their confidence from a leader who views himself as “infallible”. While they are making sport of the man, The Edinburgh Review adopts a consistent structure throughout the document, employs a sarcastic and dry tone, and includes a vast amount of evidence presented in a scholarly format to support their harsh and humorous opinions of the Prince.
Before proceeding into further analysis, it may be useful to understand the historical context surrounding the text. In 1803, Metternich became a French ambassador and initiated a war between Austria and France. Unfortunately, France was defeated, Metternich was arrested, and he was briefly confined as reprisal for the Austrian detention of two French diplomats. Soon enough, he became Austria’s foreign minister and successfully eroded Napoleon’s power. Metternich had a very high opinion of himself and some descriptions of Metternich by his contemporaries include “pompous pedant,” “infatuated with his own merit,” “a clever manipulator of diplomatic trickery,” and “mad with love, pride, and selfishness.”We will discuss how apt these titles truly are as we investigate the Edinburgh Review’s opinions of the Prince—one which, as you may observe, fell well-in-line with prevailing opinions of the day. In many ways, one might assume that the Edinburgh Review was acting as the mouthpiece of the people by forming the opinion that Matternich was a reckless fool.
A key way The Edinburgh Review justifies their intense scathing of Prince Metternich’s actions is through copious quotations and statistics. In this way, their extreme satire moves away from opinion, and becomes nearly irrefutable fact. The passage focuses on the specific years and dates of some important events that happened to Metternich, “He wrote (September 23, 1804): — ‘The King yields to one feeling…,” “when the king will find himself drawn from his lethargy, which he likes best” (February 18, 1805), and “he abounds in his praise” (The Edinburgh Review pg 3-4) Etc. the exact time added reliability to the context and further supports the credibility of the author’s words. On the other hand, the author also uses a great amount of statistics as evidence: “Metternich objected that the conquest of Turkey would costs 300,000 men” and “he (Napoleon) would be obliged to devoted to it 200,000 men, and therefore have only 250,000 at his disposal” (Pg 11, 17). These two quotes illustrate the situation during the war that was started by Metternich in 1803, as the author uses statistics to concisely emphasize and strongly persuade readers about the truthfulness of the context.
Moreover, the author adopts a repeated structure throughout the document to maintain consistency and conciseness and help readers to better understand the point that they seek to make. In the text, the author first points out a fact Metternich stated in his earlier life and claims it’s wrong, then further uses evidence to support their claim. On page 4, the author points out the papers Metternich wrote about himself “…did not even consult his own dispatches, and is therefore constantly contradicted by them” (Pg 4), and then he uses evidence such as “…his duty to state how certain important transactions happened about which nothing has been writing, except perhaps by Lord Castlereagh, because the presence of the sovereigns during the war of 1813-15 enabled their minsters to reports verbally” (Pg 4) to contradict Metternich’s own statement by including specific dates and famous people. By using this kind of structure, the author empirically illustrates that even Metternich’s own memory was flawed—either that, or he was a blatant liar.
Another way that the Edinburgh Review took to persuade the audience was its sarcastic, cold and dry tone. In order to hook the audience, the Edinburg Review specifically chose to use some exaggerated words to describe the situation. Indeed, the prince over-exaggerated himself, but the writer uses even more provocative words to trigger the anger of the audience, trying to persuade them to come over to their side. “Memoirs of Prince Metternich has disappointed the public… for although the autobiography in the first volume is historically worthless… the first thing which must strike every reader who even superficially peruses these pages is the wonderful self-sufficiency of the author, barely stopping short of a claim to infallibility” (the Edinburgh Review 1). Likewise, the Edinburgh Review elects words including “worthless”, “strike”, “barely” in order to sharply point out the falsehood of the Prince’s memoirs, and furthermore evoked an emotional response from the audiences. These words consist of somewhat definite meanings reveal the firm will of the Edinburgh Review, and the tone which is represented by the words, evaluated the point of view it has.
Overall, the Edinburgh Review used a consistent structure of the texts, tones and a vast amount of evidence to satirically point out the false information given by the memoirs.
Not only does the author attempt to persuade the readers in a logical manner, but they also attempted to provoke emotional responses from the audience, to enable them to better understand the point of view the Edinburgh Review held.
“Clemens Von Metternich: The Man Who Outwitted Napoleon?” Shannon Selin, 9 Feb. 2019,
shannonselin.com/2014/02/clemens-von-metternich-man-outwitted-napoleon/.
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