To emphasize this thought, the Emperor employed two devices. The first was to produce an effect intended for home consumption. After the battle of Wagram, Stadion, the Austrian minister of foreign affairs, who had advocated the war, resigned; Metternich, who had been called from the embassy at Paris to negotiate the peace on his master's side, remained in Vienna to succeed Stadion, and Prince Schwarzenberg was appointed to France. But the Countess Metternich was still in Paris. The Beauharnais family--Eugene with the Austrian ambassador, Josephine and Queen Hortense with Frau von Metternich--opened the negotiation for securing Maria Louisa as the second Empress of France. To remove all religious scruples, the bishops' court of Paris met, and on January fourteenth pronounced Napoleon's first marriage null. The second device was to lay before an extraordinary council the two alternatives and ask their decision. Murat, Cambaceres, and probably Fouche, voted for Russia. Fouche, like Talleyrand, had long been suspected of playing not for Napoleon's, but for his own interest. A certain independence of conduct and language which he had displayed in raising the national guards to repel the Walcheren expedition had awakened further suspicion in the Emperor's mind, and there had been plain speaking between them. The minister of police, according to one account, now declared that there were only two parties in Europe--those who had gained and those who had lost by the Revolution; that Russia belonged to the former, and was the true ally for the French empire. It was believed that this argument was an endeavor to regain the Emperor's favor, for the words have a Napoleonic ring. The majority of the council, however, was under Maret's leadership, and after a long, vague harangue from Talleyrand, in which he seemed to concur with Maret, expressed itself in favor of Austria. From immemorial times she had been the pivot of every Continental coalition against France. She was now irritated, and must be soothed.