Metternichianadj.

1832 Age 8 Apr. 119/2 The Metternichian troops are masters of most of the strong military passages and posts in Italy.

1851 A. B. Richards Poems, Essays, & Opinions II. 309 America..o'erleaps the age to come to snatch its crown of glory, in defiance of the grey old Metternichian spirit of Austria.

1881 Appletons' Jrnl. 10 455 We feel for him a sympathy as well as respect—a rare attitude for the reader to take toward a man of the Metternichian type.

1905 Amer. Hist. Rev. 10 665 His close identification with Metternich and the Metternichian policy has been due in part at least to his faith in the necessity of maintaining the continental alliances.

1962 Economist 20 Jan. 217/3 This problem is hardly soluble without the Metternichean concert of the great powers.

1987 New Left Rev. Mar. 109 ‘Metternichian’ policies of playing one potential enemy against another are therefore inapplicable.

1994 Foreign Affairs May–June 137/2 He had tried to create one [sc. a multipolar world] in the 1970s, with China, Europe and Japan as potential great powers, together with the Soviet Union and the United States, making possible a Metternichian or Bismarckian balancing game.