Let, then, all timid counsellors be removed from the side of the Emperor Francis.

"I cling to my oft-expressed conviction that we are no longer masters of our own affairs, and that the tide of events will carry us along."[323] If we may judge from Metternich's statements in his "Memoirs," written many years later, he was all along in secret sympathy with these views.

But his actions and his official despatches during the first six weeks of the armistice bore another complexion; they were almost colourless, or rather, they were chameleonic.

At Dresden they seemed, on the whole, to be favourable to France: at Reichenbach, when coloured by Stadion, they were thought to hold out the prospect of another European coalition.
A new and important development was given to Austrian policy when, on June 7th, Metternich drew up the conditions on which Austria would insist as the basis of her armed mediation.

They were as follows: (1) Dissolution of the Duchy of Warsaw; (2) A consequent reconstruction of Prussia, with the certainty of recovering Danzig; (3) Restitution of the Illyrian provinces, including Dalmatia, to Austria; (4) Re-establishment of the Hanse Towns, and an eventual arrangement as to the cession of the other parts of the 32nd military division [the part of North Germany annexed by Napoleon in 1810].