Congress of Frankfurt, 1796

[TLS]

February, 1796

After years of bloody conflict in the Low Countries, Northern France, Northern Italy and then the Rhineland, the French National Assembly is finally comfortable with pursuing peace negotiations with the Prussians and their allies as the last states standing between France and recognition of its new constitutional and geopolitical order.

While Napoleon Bonaparte is the military champion of the last year, particularly in light of his stunning victories against Austria and his hard-won battles against the Prussians, his enemies in Paris ensure that he is kept away from Frankfurt. Instead, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord is, as France's premier diplomat, dispatched to Frankfurt to lead the French delegation.

Talleyrand is empowered by the National Assembly to pursue the most appropriate course of action to ensure France's maximal interests are obtained at the negotiating table. To that effect, he is somewhat constrained by the maximalist demands sent by the hot-heads of the National Assembly to the assembled negotiations at Maastricht the year before, in which a number of powerful pronouncements against the German Confederation and Holy Roman Empire were issued. However, he is given some cover by the fact that, despite the same rhetoric, the peace agreed with Vienna was on more equitable terms.

Therefore, when Talleyrand arrives at the Palais Thurn und Taxis, he opens with the following offer of peace to the Prussians and their allies:

1) France shall be the sole and undisputed owner of all lands of the Left Bank of the Rhine, in accordance with the previously delineated peace reached with the Austrian Empire and per the dictates of France's natural borders.

2) The Rhine shall be demilitarized and open to commerce by all parties.

3) France will not dictate the terms of political organization across the Rhine, but will not recognize the German Confederation as an equal treating power--as it does not recognize the Holy Roman Empire. Any and all agreements will be signed bilaterally between France and the member states of the German Confederation individually.

[Lefty]

Von Hardenburg arrives, not with a bit of confusion over his exact position. As a favorite of Prince Louis Ferdinand and a known reformer, he serves as the Reichsprasident’s foreign advisor, and possibly his successor given the young Prince’s detention. Yet still he remains in the Prussian civil service, nominally under Graf von Haugwitz. Despite the confusion, his deft personal diplomacy and plenipotentiary status (at least from the Prussian king) brings him enough authority to meet Talleyrand. He quickly establishes correspondence with the Mecklenburgs, Hannover, Saxony, and Saxe-Meiningen seeking plenipotentiary status from them.

Von Hardenburg first raises the issue of recognition. Prussia – and her armies – have formed, with the consent of her northern German neighbors, a new political entity. For a lasting peace, there must be recognition of this new political order, just as Prussia and her allies recognize the new authority of the National Assembly.

In private conversations with the French emissaries, he makes note that the North German Confederation is in France’s interest. Through this new political order, the Prussian crown’s power has been significantly limited. If the Confederation project fails, the alternative is an expanded Prussian domain. He notes that reactionaries in Berlin may be plotting to simply annex Hannover and the other states as part of mediatisation. Failure to recognize their authority would merely empower the reactionaries and push the two sides further to future war. He hopes that the Assembly can agree to recognize the North German Confederation.

At other times he addresses the Rheinland. While the land provides France with rational geographic boundaries, he must stand for the rights of the Germans living there. He proposes a counter: Lands between the Rhine and France’s 1792 borders may be organized into a new state, modeled after similar states in Italy and Switzerland. Clienthood is preferable to annexation.

[Lefty]

ooc: What were Franco-Austrian peace terms?

[Ottoman]

Here is Austro-Franco terms

1) The Austrian Netherlands are ceded in their entirety to France, and France will take control of all Austrian territory on the Western bank of the Rhine (there are small holdings scattered throughout Alsace-Lorraine).

2) The Austrian Emperor recognizes all French acquisitions on the Western side of the Alps (i.e. annexing the Savoie region and Nice) and the re-organization of Northern Italy -- including the cession of Mantua and Milan to the Kingdom of Piedmont. In return, France will not annex anything across the Alps. Venice will be re-organized as a client state of France, but will not be annexed.

3) France will make no further inroads into Austrian or allied territory over the Rhine, and will only seek to ensure France's borders are secure up to the Rhine.

4) France will not subjugate Austria, Bavaria or any of their Southern German allies as client states.

[TLS]

Talleyrand considers the Prussian response with his trademark cool demeanor. While lesser members of his delegation are imbued with the revolutionary fervor that prompted the original demands of jurisdiction over the entirety of mankind in the name of liberty, Talleyrand's notorious dedication to practicality were what landed him leadership of the delegation. Ultimately, he recognizes that organization of states beyond the Rhine is, under the current circumstances, beyond the writ of France to enforce.

However, the organization of territory controlled by France is within France's rights to enforce. The assertion that some sort of linguistic or cultural marker grants the peoples of the Rhineland special rights is rejected out of hand. German-speaking Protestants have lived within the French domain for centuries, and are no less Frenchmen than a Occitan-speaking denizen of the Dauphinat or a Breton-speaking denizen of Brest. The inhabitants of the left bank of the Rhine, like the inhabitants of the former Southern Netherlands, will be integrated as equal brothers in the fraternal French nation, with the same freedoms and rights won by other Frenchmen. To carve out an exception for the Rhinelanders would be to undermine the very legitimacy of the French state.

Thus, Talleyrand responds with the following terms:

1) France shall be the sole and undisputed owner of all lands of the Left Bank of the Rhine, in accordance with the previously delineated peace reached with the Austrian Empire and per the dictates of France's natural borders. Inhabitants of the newly-incorporated territories will be given the same civil and political liberties granted to all French citizens, with no discrimination on account of their heritage, religion or language.

2) The Rhine shall be demilitarized and open to commerce by all parties.

3) France shall recognize the existence of the North German Confederation as a league and covenant between its members states, and, if agreed upon by the members of that confederation, will consider this peace binding to all parties.

4) France forswears any plans to institute the French system of government beyond the Rhine on any parties to this treaty as long as the peace is upheld.

[Lefty]

The events of the past few years have developed a nascent sense of German brotherhood among those serving in the government, especially among the Prussians who — obviously — are the big older brother. Much blood and treasure has been spent to defend Germany and the Prussians have every intention of achieving what they can in these discussions.

Even so, Von Hardenburg is no fool. The Rheinland is obviously lost, and gaining recognition and a peace to allow the reformist cause the room to expand. Knowing he must salvage a victory out of a perilous year, Von Hardenburg accepts all the terms as presented.

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