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.The treaties signed at Tilsit in July 1807 marked the zenith of Napoleon’s power.They also showed the seductions of summitry: by meeting face to face, Alexander had put himself in the hands of a man who was master of the personal interview.19The crisis generated by Napoleon’s inveterate war-mongeringforced his European neighbors into real cooperation.In the later stages of the conflict monarchs and ministers accompanied thearmies, making it relatively easy to confer.Alexander I left Russia with his troops in January 1813 and did not return until August 1814; the British foreign secretary, Lord Castlereagh, virtually lived on the continent for a year and a half in 1814–15.This collaboration was institutionalized in the Congress of Vienna, the long-running peace conference to wind up the Napoleonic wars.Al-though almost all of Europe was represented, the real work was done by the foreign ministers of the four leading Allied powers (Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia) plus the French, leaving most of the delegations with little to do but amuse themselves.For a few years after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 allied ministers continued to meet in a series of congresses, building on contacts forged in war.Prince Clemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister, remarked before conferring with Castlereagh in 20reynolds_01.qxd 8/31/07 10:30 AM Page 21toward th e sum m i tOctober 1821: “I shall achieve more in a few days.than in six months of writing.” But during the 1820s diplomacy slipped back into more formalized channels.The personal ties forged by the Napoleonic wars had been broken; moreover Europe was at peaceand there seemed little need for personal diplomacy.Occasional crises were usually settled by conferences of ambassadors chaired by the foreign minister of the host country.20At this time ambassadors remained essential due to the slowness of communications.It could take a month for a letter to travel from London to St.Petersburg; in 1822 the record for an urgent dispatch to Vienna was one week.But in the 1840s and 1850s railwaysstarted to spread across the Continent, while steamships dramatically reduced the duration of sea voyages.After the introduction of the electric telegraph in the 1870s, ciphered telegrams replaced written dispatches for urgent business.Now that messages could be sent and answered within hours, the embassies in far-flung capitals could be subject to daily supervision.In 1904 the British diplomat Sir Francis Bertie complained that an ambassador had been reduced to the status of a “damned marionette,” with the Foreign Office pulling the wires.21The communications revolution was profoundly important forsummitry.Not only did it emasculate the role of ambassadors, it also allowed heads of government to take center stage once more.The Congress of Berlin in 1878 is in many ways a precursor ofmodern summits.Bismarck, the German chancellor, acted as host.Prince Alexan-der Gorchakov, the ailing Russian chancellor, and Count GyulaAndrassy, his Austro-Hungarian counterpart, were also there.The British delegation was led by the Tory prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, recently ennobled as Lord Beaconsfield.In protracted sessions in June and July 1878 the congress resolved a Balkan crisis that threatened to plunge Europe into war.All the leaders played a part, notably Bismarck, but the British side is especially important because of the lasting images of summitry it generated.22Much of the groundwork for the agreement was laid by LordSalisbury, Disraeli’s foreign secretary, who worked behind the 21reynolds_01.qxd 8/31/07 10:30 AM Page 22sum m i t sscenes before the conference in negotiations with Russia, Turkey and Austria.Salisbury, from one of England’s great landed families, distrusted Disraeli as a cynical opportunist—“the Artless Dodger”—and complained that the prime minister had only “the dimmestidea of what is going on” in Berlin.He “seemed to have forgotten the various agreements we had made” and needed constant memoranda by way of reminders.23But it was Disraeli who hit the headlines
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