380 Chapter XVI
Frankfurt, and his political opinions, like those that he conveyed from Louis XVI,
were brushed aside as too conciliatory toward the Revolution. The Abbé Maury
represented the Pope. He had sat for two years in the Constituent Assembly, where
he had been one of the chief spokesmen against the early phase of the Revolution.
He now anticipated an early restoration of the French church and clergy.
Representing the younger generation, apart from the Emperor himself, were
Prince Augustus Frederick, the sixth son of King George III of England, who had
come down from his studies at Göttingen, and the young Klemens von Metter-
nich, who had recently, as a student at Strasbourg, had a chance to see something
of the French Revolution at first hand. His father, newly appointed imperial min-
ister for the Belgian provinces, was grappling with the problem of bringing the
Belgian revolutionaries of 1789 under control. It was at Frankfurt in 1792 that
Francis II and the younger Metternich first met. They were to know each other
well in later years, cooperating at the interminable task of putting down revolu-
tion, a task which in Metternich’s case would last until 1848.
The city was full of excitement. Prussian troops kept passing through on the way
to France. Three regiments marched through the streets, pausing stiffly before the
Emperor’s lodgings, during the days of the celebration. It was uncertain whether
they could arrive in time. The Emperor expressed concern that harm might befall
his aunt, Marie Antoinette, during the Bastille Day demonstrations in Paris. The
date provoked apprehension for Frankfurt also, since the city was full of newspa-
pers and pamphlets brought in from Strasbourg, written in German and extolling
the new order in France. It was possible that there might be manifestations of
sympathy for France among the townspeople. Internal security was turned over to
the Austrian General Brentano, who used reliable troops, and took care to close
the city gates on July 14. It was reassuring to learn at this moment that the Erfurt
Academy of Sciences was offering a prize of one hundred thalers, to be given for
“the best popular writing in which the German people are instructed in the advan-
tages of the Constitution of their own country, and warned against the evils to
which exaggerated ideas of unlimited liberty and idealistic equality may lead.”^5
The Emperor arrived on July 11, incognito, but with a train of forty carriages,
already chosen by the imperial electors, as a Hamburg paper expressed it, “to the
supreme headship of the German empire, the first of the human race... to cele-
brate the thousandth year of the Roman emperorship, and in another eight short
years to begin a new millennium of the Roman- German empire.”^6
The coronation was staged in keeping with the Golden Bull of 1356, but with
more than the usual solemnity in view of the seriousness of the times. Maury told
the Pope that he wept with emotion, and that the Archbishop of Mainz had em-
ployed the Roman pontifical service. Francis took the oath in a firm voice. The
gorgeous procession then left the cathedral in the rain, amid cheers of undampened
enthusiasm, to the discharge of cannon and peal of bells, with the Emperor wear-
5 Hamburgische unparteisehen Correspondent for July 20, 1792.
6 Politisches Journal (Hamburg, 1792), II, 767. Details on July 14 at Frankfurt are taken from re-
ports in these two Hamburg periodicals, from the memoirs of Maury, studies of Metternich, Calonne,
Mallet du Pan, and Fersen; and from I. Kracauer, “Frankfurt und die französiche Revolution, 1789–
92,” in Archiv für Frankfurts Gesehiehte und Kunst, 3rd ser. IX (1907), 211–97.