Madame de Staël and the Transformation of European Politics, 1812–17

Abstract

What place do women have in international history? This article approaches the chronic uncertainty surrounding this question through an examination of the role of one woman, Germaine de Staël (1766–1817), in the processes of peace-making that Paul W. Schroeder has described in his landmark study The Transformation of European Politics as ‘the decisive turning point’ in the transformation of ‘the governing rules, norms, and practices of international politics’. The author argues that Staël's intellectual and personal involvement in these events give us cause to reconsider the presence of women in international history, as actors intruding on what is normatively a masculine landscape, and as the agents of the political ideas that informed the ‘transformational’ peace-making agenda in the period leading up to and after the celebrated Congress of Vienna. She argues that adding Staël to this history recasts the relevance of female élites to the shifting parameters of diplomacy and the rise of a new Europe-centred liberal internationalism in the early nineteenth century, while inviting larger questions about the intersecting trajectories of gender relations and international politics and power.

Keywords:

• Congress of Vienna
• gender
• international history
• women

Acknowledgments

The research for this article was generously funded by the Australian Research Council as part of a larger project on the Congress of Vienna. I would also like to acknowledge the incomparable research assistance of Roderic Campbell, and the conversations from which I benefitted at the International History seminar at the Austrian Academy Institute for Modern and Contemporary Historical Research, and the University of Sydney. My special thanks to: (in Austria) Peter Becker, William Godsey, REinhard Stauber, and Melissa Mueller; (in Sydney) Barbara Caine, Danielle Celermajer, Moira Gatens, Julia Kindt, and Jennifer Milam.

Notes

1. J.W. Scott, ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, The American Historical Review, xci, no. 5 (1986), 1053–75.

2. For discussion of these developments see G. Sluga, ‘Gender’ in P. Finney (ed), Advances in International History (Basingstoke, 2005).

3. Feminist scholars have found the question easier to answer (although never uncontroversial) in the context of the twentieth century when the realm of international politics itself was subject to a gradual democratisation; see, for example, Cynthia Enloe's landmark work in I.R. In my own work I have tackled this question in the context of peace-making in 1919, the history of twentieth-century internationalism, and the cold war; see G. Sluga, The Nation, Psychology, and International Politics on women and peace-making at the end of the First World War, and idem, The Problem of Trieste on women and the cold war. See also T. Hampton, Fictions of Embassy (2009), 197.

4. P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848, The Oxford History of Modern Europe (Oxford, 1994), vii–viii.

5. See A. Zamoyski, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (New York, 2007), xv: ‘“The Congress of Vienna” is a blanket term for a process that began in the summer of 1812 and did not end until ten years later.’ In some accounts the Fourth Coalition is the Sixth Coalition. In this essay I follow the chronology: The First Coalition (1792–7), the Second (1799–1801) the Third (1805–6); the Fourth (1812–14). See H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity: 1812–1822 (New York, 1946), 14, 281; and Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, 445.

6. M. Mazower, Governing the World (New York, 2012), 21.

7. See Eileen O’Neill's forceful argument in ‘Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History’ in J.A. Kourany (ed), Philosophy in a Feminist Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions (Princeton, 1998), 17–62.

8. For these ‘popular’ versions, see most recently D. King, Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (2010) and A. Zamoyski, The Rites of Peace (2008). The classic Anglophone texts include Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna and C. Webster, Congress of Vienna (1919).

9. H. Spiel, Congress of Vienna, an Eyewitness Account (Philadelphia, 1968). Even Spiel dealt mainly with the undocumented and unanalysed detail of their sexual influence.

10. This claim can be traced to Madame de Chastenay, Mémoires (Paris, 1897), ii. 445.

11. For more on Staël's oeuvre see: G. Sluga ‘Passions, Patriotism, and Nationalism and Germaine de Staël’, Nations and Nationalism, xv, no. 12 (2009), 1–20; idem, ‘The Nation’ in M. Spongberg (ed), The Palgrave Guide to Women. Writing History (Basingstoke, 2005); idem, ‘Defining Liberty: Italy and England in Madame de Staël's Corinne’, Women's Writing, i (2003), 241–51.

12. ‘Mme de Staël to Alexandre de Lameth, c 1794, from Coppet, “given to me by Charles du Verac, J d’Estournel, 7 January 1843”‘, Bibliothèque de Genève [BGE], do44-066 to do44-068. See also G. de Staël, Réflexions sur le procès de la Reine par une femme [August 1793] (Accessed through Gallica, 27 January 2010).

13. See S.D. Kale, ‘Women, Salons, and the State in the Aftermath of the French Revolution’, Journal of Women's History, xiii, no. 4 (2002), 64.

14. Talleyrand was once Staël's lover, and a man who successfully transitioned from the court of Louis XVI to Napoleon's cabinet, and then the Restoration ministry of Louis XVIII, and beyond.

15. G. Gengembre, ‘Fréquentation et sociabilité mutuelles’, Revue Francaise d’histoire des idées politiques, xviii, no. 2 (2003), 267.

16. Staël, Considérations, 473. See also C. Takeda, ‘Deux origines du courant libéral en France’, Revue Francaise d’histoire des idées politiques, xviii, no. 2 (2003), 233–58 Cf. Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, 441.

17. For the transnational and international context of her activism in the 1790s, see Spalding in K. Szmurlo, Germaine de Staël: Forging a Politics of Mediation (Oxford, 2011).

18. Staël, Considérations, 624.

19. Scholars of her work such as Lucien Jaume argue that Staël, like the Coppet circle at large, represents a lost strand in French liberal thought that privileged the individual rather than the state, while simultaneously promoting the importance of a liberal culture. L. Jaume, ‘Coppet, creuset du libéralisme comme “culture morale”‘ in idem (ed), Coppet, creuset de l’esprit libéral (Paris, 2000), 69.

20. Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 9.

21. Bernadotte had distanced himself from Napoleon and set himself up as a rival of sorts in Sweden, where Karl XIII had adopted him.

22. From mid-October 1811, Napoleon put into operation preparations ‘for a great offensive’ (Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, 425).

23. Staël, De l’Allemagne (Paris, 1968 [1813]), i. 322.

24. Gautier, Mme de Staël et Napoléon, 314.

25. À Bernadotte, 25 mai 1813, letter 404, in G. Solovieff, Madame de Staël, ses amis, ses correspondants, Choix de Lettres (1778–1817) (Paris, 1970).

26. Pange, Schlegel, 399.

27. King, ‘Madame de Staël et la chute de Napoleon’ in Madame de Staël et l’Europe (Paris, 1970), 65.

28. Rovigo, Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, pour servir à l’histoire de l’empereur Napoléon, iii. 95 (Accessed at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21023, 18 February 2013). See also Sukhtelen Letters 18–21; Pange, Schlegel, 395.

29. G. Solovieff, ‘Madame de Staël et ses correspondants russes’, Cahiers staëliens, 1 (nouvelle série) mars (1962), 4–30.

30. See S. Balayé, Les Carnets de voyage de Mme de Staël (Genève, 1971), 313, 321, and N. King, ‘A.W. Schlegel et la guerre de libération: Le Mémoire sur L’etat de L’Allemagne’, Cahiers staëliens, xvi (nouvelle série 1973), 3.

31. Moritz von Arndt, the future German hero of the crucial Battle of Nations in October 1813, was also listening.

32. Stein, 31 Aug. 1812, in Briefe und Samtliche Schriften, hrsg. Von E. Botzenhart und W. Hubatech (Neue Ausgabe, Stuttgart, 1961–1970), III, 719; King, ‘A.W. Schlegel’, 4.

33. Stein to Ouvaroff, 28 mars 1813 [my translation], ‘I would in general like it if Mme de Staël kept to literature and did not occupy herself with politics at all, at least I am not in the least interested in getting mixed up in her politics’, Briefe IV, 68–9.

34. King, ‘A.W. Schlegel’, 7; Pange, Schlegel, 392 cf. Solovieff, Madame de Staël, 23. See also H. Straus, The Attitude of the Congress of Vienna toward Nationalism in Germany, Italy and Poland (New York, 1949).

35. Pange, Schlegel, 393.

36. Sophie von Knorring, cited in P. Tisseau, ‘Les Illusions de la Baronne Sophie con Knorring’, Cahiers staëliens 60 (nouvelle serie), 2009 [1932], 102.

37. S.M. Riordan, ‘Sentiments of Travel: Madame de Staël on Sweden’, Moderna Sprak, xc, no. 2 (1996), 190–9.

38. Cited in M. Trail, Mme de Staël Her Russian-Swedish Journey (University of Southern California, Ph.D. thesis, 1946), 262.

39. Staël's proximity to Bernadotte was also noted by the Danish Ambassador who sought her out as a result; Trail, Mme de Staël, 282. Gautier argues that all diplomatic activity was in effect focused on Staël's residence, and that at its centre she directed a form of secret agency run alongside the formal work of the embassies based in Stockholm; Madame de Staël et Napoléon, 365; Riordan, ‘Sentiments of Travel’, 191.

40. Cabre reported to Talleyrand, who was busy running Napoleon's Foreign Ministry and playing a double game - as Foreign Minister - while collecting a salary by betraying Napoleon to Russia on behalf of the Bourbons-in-exile; Lady Blennerhasset, Talleyrand II (London, 1894), 193; M. Winock, Madame de Staël (Paris, 2010), 329.

41. Bernadotte to Napoleon, cited in Trail, Mme de Staël, 298.

42. Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoléon, 335.

43. Trail, Mme de Staël, 265, working from Gautier, who had access to the Coppet archives.

44. Letter written 5 May 1813, in N. King, ‘Correspondances suédoises de Germaine de Staël (1812–1816)’, Cahiers staëlien, nouv. sér., 39 (1988), 75.

45. J.C. Herold, Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël (New York, 1958), 444. See also Rovigo, Mémoires, 91–4.

46. See BGE, Ms2763 Papiers Galiffe. See for example, letters 277–340, esp. 289, 292.

47. S.M. Riordan, ‘Politics and Romanticism: Germaine de Staël's Forgotten Influence on Nineteenth-Century Sweden’, Australian Journal of French Studies xxxv, no. 3 (1998), 335.

48. Letter to the Grand Duchess of Weimar, 12 Jan. 1813 cited in S. Balayé, Madame de Staël: Lumières et liberté (Paris, 1979), 214.

49. Thomas Jefferson to Ann L.G.N. Staël–Holstein, 3 July 1815, Thomas Jefferson Papers series 1. General Correspondence 1751–1827, Library of Congress, (Accessed 18 February 2013) http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/. See also John Quincy Adams’ record of his discussions with Staël around this time in Writings of J.Q. Adams iv. 1811–13, W.C. Ford (ed) (New York, 1914).

50. Winock, Madame de Staël, 431.

51. King, ‘Madame de Staël et la chute de Napoléon’, 70. See also Letter to Frederike Brun, in Riordan, ‘Germaine de Staël's Influence on Nineteenth Century Sweden’, 337, and Winock, Madame de Staël, 425.

52. Staël à Dorothea Lieven, Stockholm, November 1813 [London, British Library,] Lieven Papers, MSS. 47374, f.59–63.

53. N. King, Correspondance suédoise de Germaine de Staël (Paris, 1988), 68.

54. Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, 459.

55. Staël à Lieven, mai 1813, Lieven Papers MSS. 47374, f.75.

56. Ibid.

57. Cited in Trail, Mme de Staël, 263.

58. John Quincy Adams had no difficulty believing it to be Staël's work, ‘To John Adams’, St Petersburg, 19 April 1813, in Writings of J.Q. Adams iv. 1811–13, 473.

59. R. Whitford, Mme de Staël's Literary Reputation in England (Johnson Reprint Society, February 1918).

60. À la Reine de Suède, 8 juillet 1813, letter 410, Solovieff, Madame de Staël; and à A.W. Schlegel, Londres, 2 juillet 1813, letter 407.

61. Godefroi Martens to Earl of Aberdeen, 23 Sep. 1813, [London, British Library,] Aberdeen Papers, Add MSS. 43074.

62. Lady Blennerhassett, Madame de Staël (London, 1889), cxi. 538.

63. Sir James Mackintosh, The Miscellaneous Works (New York, 1871).

64. See J. Mistler, Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell, 1805–1817, d’après des lettres inédites (Paris, 1926), 306.

65. À Bernadotte, 2 juillet 1813, letter 408, Solovieff, Madame de Staël.

66. À Bernadotte, 11 octobre 1813, letter 420; ibid, my translation.

67. 8 juillet 1813 lettre 410; fin octobre 1813, letter 421, Solovieff, Madame de Staël.

68. Letter to Lord Grey, 7 mai 1814 Londres, letter 441, Ibid.

69. Jessie Allen to her sister Mrs Josiah Wedgwood, 5 July 1813, in H.E. Litchfield (ed), Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters, 1792–1896 (London, 1915), i. 32–3.

70. Lettre à Galiffe, 20 Nov. 1812, Papiers Galiffe, no. 297.

71. Copy of a note from Lord Bathurst to Mr de Staël dated Foreign Office 9 Feb. 1814, National Archive, London, FO139/4, f.210.

72. See R. Escarpit, L’Angleterre dans l’oeuvre de Madame de Staël (Paris, 1954), 41. She attacked the Duke of Wellington's brother, the Marquis Wellesley, on his speech opposing the Swedish Treaty.

73. Emma Allen to her sister Mrs Josiah Wedgwood, 28 July 1813.

74. In Corinne, or Italy, England stood as the morally upright antithesis of corrupted France and a politically dysfunctional Italy, Sluga, ‘Defining Liberty’.

75. Aberdeen to Lord Abercorn, Freyberg, 19 Dec. 1813, CLIII, Aberdeen Papers, Add Mss. 43259; Staël forwarded a copy of De l’Allemagne to the Austrian Foreign Minister, Metternich, for his instruction; À Metternich, dec 1813, M. Ullrichova, Lettres de Madame de Staël conservées en Bohême (Prague, 1960), 75.

76. N. King, ‘Libéralisme et legitimité’, Europe, lxiv (1987), 65.

77. See à Bernadotte, 25 mai 1813, Stockholm, letter 404, Solovieff, Madame de Staël.

78. 23 Jan 1814, letter 433; à Constant, Londres 24 avril 1814, letter 438; à Necker de Staël, 29 avril 1814, letter 440, all in Solovieff, Madame de Staël.

79. 15 March 1814, letter 415, Ibid.

80. See H. Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein, A Daughter of the Enlightenment, 1758–1818 (Oxford, 1991), 279–80.

81. Cited in B. Craveri, The Age of Conversation (New York, 2005), 289.

82. De L’Allemagne, i. 105.

83. Staël, Considérations, 252.

84. Cited in Kale, ‘Women, Salons, and the State’, 65.

85. Staël, Considérations, 253, 377. Staël's critical assessment of the changing shape of the salon is backed up by Steven Kale's recent account of Napoleon's attempt to supersede political salons by creating alternative government salons. These official salons were run by respective foreign ministers, including Talleyrand, and took the form of drawing-room receptions or dinners hosting visiting dignitaries and diplomats. They were spaces where the woman or ‘maitresse de maison’ ‘did the honors of the house, supported her husband, and cultivated respect for the emperor by enforcing civility and silencing frondeurs’; Kale, French Salons, 93.

86. Bulletin de l’état des esprits en France, Direction Générale de la Police de France, July 1814; 24 Sep. 1814; 26 Sep. 1814, MAE, Paris, vol. 337, France, Affaires Intérieurs, 1814–1815.

87. Mémoires of Mme de Remusat (London, 1880), ii. 155.

88. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Lippincott, 1874), i. 278–9, 371.

89. L. Cramer (ed), Correspondance Diplomatique de Pictet de Rochemont et de François D’Ivernois (Paris, 1914).

90. ‘Letter from Gen. Lafayette to Mr. Crawford, giving an account of an interview with the Emperor Alexander and showing the latter's inclination to promote peace, May 26, 1814’ in Count Gallatin (ed), The Diary of James Gallatin: Secretary to Albert Gallatin. A Great Peacemaker, 1813–1827 (New York, 1920), 22.

91. For more on Staël's politics in this period, see A. Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748–1830 (Princeton, 2012).

92. In the early 1790s, the revolutionary government had introduced abolition, provoked in part by Staël's own father. Napoleon, however, relegitimated the French slave trade. For a thorough account of the context for Staël's abolitionism, and all its recorded manifestations, see J. Isbell, ‘Voices Lost? Staël and Slavery, 1786-1830’ in D. Kadish (ed), Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World (Atlanta, 2000), and F. Massardier-Kenney, ‘Staël, Translation, and Race’ in D.Y. Kadish and F. Massardier-Kenney, Translating Slavery: Gender and Race in French Women's Writing, 1783–1823 (Kent, 1994), 140.

93. A.T. Gardiner, ‘Representing Slavery: Germaine de Staël and the French Abolition Debate at the Revolutionary Turn of the 19th Century’, Conference on Humanitarian Responses to Narratives of Inflicted Suffering 13–15 October 2006, University of Connecticut Human Rights Institute, 10.

94. G. Staël, ‘An Appeal to the Sovereigns’ in Kadish and Massardier-Kenney, Translating Slavery, 159.

95. Article 5. In its English translation, peuples was translated as ‘nations’.

96. It was not until 1848 that slavery was ‘finally and definitively banned’, by the intermediary revolutionary government. Gardiner, ‘Representing Slavery’, 15.

97. See H. Adams, The Life of Albert Gallatin (Lippincott, 1879), 563.

98. M. Berger, Madame de Staël on Politics, Literature, and National Character (New York, 1964), 27.

99. Talleyrand to Staël, Vienne 21 octobre 1814, letter 456, Solovieff, Madame de Staël.

100. J.-G. Eynard, Au Congrès de Vienne (Paris, 1914), 82. My translation.

101. Comte A. De la Garde–Chambonas, Souvenirs du Congrès de Vienne, 1814–15 (Paris, 1901), 125. Staël had organised for a selection of Ligne's letters to be published, and written a preface to help sell them.

102. Pozzo to Lady Burghersh, 12 aout 1813, (my translation), in J. McErlean et N. King ‘Mme de Staël, A.W. Schlegel et Pozzo di Borgo’, Cahiers staëlien, xvi (nouvelle serie 1973), 49.

103. Madame de Chastenay, Mémoires, ii. 445.

104. D’Albany 12 nov 1814. MAE, vol. 676, f. 22.

105. Letter From Lady Romilly, 9 Oct. 1814, in J. Bentham, The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (London, 1968), viii. 435.

106. Lady Melbourne to Lord Byron, Whitehall, 31 Jan. 1815, in Jonathan David Gross, Byron's ‘Corbeau Blanc’ The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne (Texas A&M University Press, College Station, 1998), 281.

107. ‘Chronique littéraire’, Le Nain Jaune ou Journal des Arts, des Sciences et de la littérature t.1er, n. 337, cinquième anne, 15 Jan. 1814, xxvii –ix.

108. ‘Bruits de ville et revue de journaux’, Le Nain Jaune, 10 Jan. 1815, 70.

109. ‘To Abigail Adams’, Paris, 21 Feb. 1815, Writings of J.Q. Adams, vol. v, 1814-1816, W.C. Ford (ed.) (New York, 1915), 279.

110. Staël, Considérations, 719.

111. Staël to Prosper de Barante, Geneva, 28 octobre 1814, ‘Lettres de divers ouvertes et copiées à la poste de Paris’, f.395, MAE, vol. 675 France et Divers États de l’Europe. 1814; see also Staël, Considérations, 744.

112. Staël suffered a stroke in December 1816, from which she never recovered, and died in July 1817.

113. Staël, Considérations, 598, 709–11.

114. V. de Pange, Madame de Staël et le duc de Wellington, correspondance inédite, 1815–1817 (Paris, 1962).

115. Tolstoy, Epilogue, War and Peace, trans. R. Edmunds (Penguin, 1957 [1869]), 1406–7.

116. P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848, The Oxford History of Modern Europe (Oxford, 1994), vii–viii.

117. Norman King concludes she was able to bring order to the preparations for war against Napoleon, and conviction to the uncertainty and vacillation of Europe's reticent sovereigns, see ‘Mme de Staël et la chute de Napoléon’ in Madame de Staël et l’Europe (Paris, 1970). F.D. Scott has claimed that ‘Bernadotte, guided and aided by Madame de Staël, August Schlegel, and Benjamin Constant, gives us the only example outside of France in this period of the deliberate use of propaganda for demoralizing the enemy’, Bernadotte and the Fall of Napoleon (Cambridge, MA, 1935), 101.

118. Staël, Considérations, 755.

119. King, ‘Mme de Staël et la chute de Napoléon’, 75.

120. See Sluga, ‘Passions, Patriotism and Nationalism’.

121. J.C. Isbell, The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda in Staël's ‘De l’Allemagne’, 1810–1813 (Cambridge, 1994), 9.

122. Nicolson, Diplomacy (London, 1963), 101 cf. M. Mosslang and T. Riotte, ‘Introduction’ in idem (eds), The Diplomats’ World: The Cultural History of Diplomacy, 1815–1914 (Oxford, 2008).

123. Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, 803; Castlereagh to Liverpool, Aix, 20 Oct 1818, [London, British Library,] Liverpool Papers, MS. 38566, ff. 67–8.

124. See G. Sluga, C. James, and G. Calvi (eds), Women, Diplomacy and International Politics (London, forthcoming, 2014); and for rare examples of mainstream interest, D.H. Thomas, ‘Princess Lieven's Last Diplomatic Confrontation’, The International History Review, v, no. 4 (1983), 550–6, and H. Temperley (ed), The Unpublished Diary and Political Sketches of Princess Lieven Together with some of her Letters (London, 1925).

125. The coinciding intellectual influence exerted by the Prussian Rahel Levin/Varnhagen before and after the Congress suggests that even the salon of an untitled and relatively impecunious Jewish woman could be noticed if she were smart and feisty; see H. Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen.

126. Gallatin à Staël, Gand, 4 oct. 1814, letter 454, Solovieff, Madame de Staël.

127. N. Rosenkrantz, Journal du Congrès de Vienne, 1814–1815 (Copenhagen, 1953).

128. A. Necker de Saussure, Notice sur le Caractère et les Écrits de Madame de Staël (Treuttel and Wiirtz, 1820), viii.

129. Ibid, v–vi, viii.

130. War and Peace, 1406.

131. B. von Schinkel, Minnen ur Sveriges nyare historia (1853), 12 vols, vii, 69. Riordan, ‘Sentiments of Travel’, 190, and idem, ‘Germaine de Staël's Influence on Nineteenth Century Sweden’, 335.

132. Histoire du gouvernement parlementaire en France 1814–1848 (Paris, 1860), iv. 97.

133. Escarpit, L’Angleterre, 49, 166.

134. P. Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoleon (Paris, 1903); H. Guillemin, Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant et Napoléon (Paris, 1959); M.L. Pailleron, Madame de Staël (Paris, 1931); L. Pinguad, Bernadotte, Napoléon et les Bourbons (1901); J. de la Pange, Auguste Wilhelm Schlegel et Madame de Staël d’après des documents inédit (Paris, 1938); J. Wickman, Mme de Staël och Sverige (Lund, 1911). For more on her ‘history of denigration’, see Szmurlo, Germaine de Staël, xv.

135. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was predictably curmudgeonly in its criticisms, which were as revelatory of the increasing difficulty of reading her work uninfluenced by gender stereotypes: ‘The men of her own time exalted her to the skies and the most extravagant estimates of her (as the greatest woman in literary history, as the foundress of the romantic movement, as representing ideas, while her contemporary Chateaubriand only represented words, colours, and images and so forth) are to be found in minor histories of literature. On the other hand, it is acknowledged that she was soon very little read. No other writer of such eminence is so rarely quoted; none is so entirely destitute of the tribute of new and splendid editions. Nor, when the life and works are examined is the neglect without excuse. Her books are seen to be in large part merely clever reflections of other peoples’ views or views current at the time. The sentimentality of her sentiment and the florid magniloquence of her style equally disgust the reader.’

136. Acton to George Eliot, mai 1887, Selection from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton (London, 1917), i. 277.

137. See J. Isbell, Introduction to Madame de Staël, Corinne or Italy, trans. and ed. S. Raphael (New York, 1998); Balayé, Lumières et liberté; M. Delon, ‘Le Libéralisme au féminin’, Europe, lxiv (1987), 5.

138. David King's Vienna, 1814 (New York, 2008) cites Staël's De l’Allemagne for its reference to the mediocrity of Vienna's salons; and Adam Zamoyski's Rites of Peace (New York, 2007) mentions that Stael supported Bernadotte, and that her salon was en vogue in April 1814. Henry Kissinger's A World Restored (New York, 1964) like all the earlier best-known Anglophone studies of the Congress, including Nicolson, Webster, and Schroeder's, ignores women as agents altogether.

139. Balayé, Lumières et liberté, 232. See also J. Isbell for an interesting parsing of this paradox, ‘The Painful Birth of the Romantic Heroine: Staël as Political Animal, 1786–1818’, Romanic Review, lxxxvii, no. 1 (1996), 59–67.

140. Trail, Mme de Staël, 195; À Galiffe, 25 8bre, 1812, Stockholm, Papiers Galiffe, BGE, f.299.

141. À Bernadotte, 20 aout 1814, Coppet, letter 451, Solovieff, Madame de Staël.

142. Staël, De l’Allemagne, 524

143. Staël, De l’Allemagne, i. 29

144. See for example, K. Hagemann, ‘“Heroic Virgins” and “Bellicose Amazons”: Armed Women, the Gender Order and the German Public during and after the Anti-Napoleonic Wars’, European History Quarterly, xxxvii (2007), 507.

145. S. Tenenbaum, ‘Staël: Liberal Political Thinker’ in M. Gutwirth et al. (eds), Germaine de Staël: Crossing the Borders (Rutgers, 1991), 161.

146. Staël, Considérations, 692, 735.