Caulaincourt had come to Stockholm with four goals in mind:
• Secure guarantees from all Powers to respect the Regency Council and the Chambers as the legitimate government of France and disavow all support for royalist pretenders, Bourbon or otherwise.
• Secure guarantees from all Powers to respect the new borders of France, from Savoy to the Waal. Lanjuinais and the Council were willing to cede (at a minimum) the majority-Dutch-speaking regions of north Brabant and Limbourg to the Netherlands in exchange for that kingdom forming an alliance with France and replacing William I with Louis Bonaparte.
• Rebuild alliances with Denmark and Bavaria.
• Persuade Britain and Austria to recognize the Kingdom of Italy under Gioachino I and withdraw from the peninsula, gaining France yet another ally.
The first of these goals had already nearly been achieved. Prussia and Britain had, most reluctantly, agreed to recognize the French government two years ago. The tsar had not even been reluctant to do so — with Napoleon safely gone, far better to concentrate on domestic reform than to spill more Russian blood into the Rhine and Moselle in the service of “allies” who would merely seek to hobble his empire at the peace table. The king of Spain had refused to recognize any government in which the House of Bonaparte had a role. In doing so, of course, he had more or less assured that his own Cortes would recognize the Regency Council in order to further undercut his power, despite residual hostility in Spain towards “José de las Joyas.” Only in Austria and the Two Sicilies was the dream of Royalist France alive at this point.
The second of these goals was, at least from Castlereagh’s point of view, more of a problem. He didn't care about Savoy, but allowing the current borders to stand in the north would mean reducing the Netherlands to the status of a rump state — to say nothing of leaving the major port and shipyard of Anvers (Antwerp) in French hands and compounding the difficulty of invading France again, should it become necessary. For the Netherlands (at whatever size) to accept France as an ally would be downright catastrophic to British commerce. But last year’s campaign to drive them out of that land had been a complete failure.
The third and fourth goals were still preventable. If post-Bourbon France could no longer be defeated, it could still be isolated — and Metternich and von Hardenburg agreed with Castlereagh that this was worth pursuing. The hostility towards the Revolution that had defined the policies of Europe since 1789 had not yet dissipated, particularly since Lanjuinais and the Regency Council derived much of their support from the sort of unrepentant Jacobins that were every crowned head’s worst nightmare.
Moreover, Denmark straddled the entrance to the Baltic, and Bavaria sat squarely in the middle of Austria’s new sphere of influence. With them, the Netherlands and a united Italy as allies, France would dominate western Europe. As Castlereagh put it, “Let us not give the French in Stockholm what we denied them at Leipzig and Nancy.”
In any case, Austria and the Neapolitan Bourbons were never going to be dislodged from Italy by anything short of force. “Brigands and republicans are not to be bargained with,” said Metternich on June 3. “They are in a permanent state of war with the civilized world.”
Caulaincourt disagreed. “The brave descendants of the Romans have had enough of feudal division and foreign rule,” he said. “The time has come for their right of self-determination to be acknowledged by all Europe.” He added that if Austria sent another army into Italy, “France will come to the aid of the Italian freedom fighters.” This threat left Metternich unmoved…
H. Michael Wolcott, A History of Western International Diplomacy, 1648-1858
