Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna - Softcover

Zamoyski, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 006077519X ISBN 13: 9780060775193

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2008

Synopsis

Following Napoleon's defeat and exile in 1814, the future of the European continent hung in the balance. Eager to negotiate a lasting, workable peace, representatives of Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia—along with a host of lesser nations—gathered in Vienna for an eight-month-long political carnival, combining negotiations with balls, tournaments, picnics, artistic performances, and other sundry forms of entertainment for the thousands of assembled aristocrats. While the Congress of Vienna resulted in an unprecedented level of European stability, the price of peace would be shockingly high, with many crucial questions ultimately decided on the battlefield or in squalid roadside cottages amid the vagaries of war.

Internationally bestselling author Adam Zamoyski's Rites of Peace is a meticulously researched, masterfully told account of these extraordinary events and their profound historical consequences, featuring a cast of some of the most influential and powerful figures in history.

About this title

About the Author:

Adam Zamoyski was born in New York and educated at Oxford. He is the author of Moscow 1812. He lives in London.

From Booklist:

This sequel to Zamoyski's fine Moscow 1812 (2004) shifts from military to diplomatic affairs surrounding the defeat of Napoleonic France and the disposal of its empire. Zamoyski narrates their course from 1813, when Russia's Alexander I decided to continue the war rather than settle with Napoleon, to 1815 and the latter's final Waterloo. The enigmatic personality of Alexander, a mystic, a self-regarding liberal, and a maladroit negotiator, joins Zamoyski's well-drawn portraits of the czar's chief interlocutors: Austria's Metternich, Prussia's Hardenberg, and Britain's Castlereagh. The intimacy of this cavalcade, which followed the allied armies into France, adjourned to London for a fête, and got down to brass tacks in the landmark Congress of Vienna, cues Zamoyski for the atmospheric details of travel, fashion, dances, and assignations. Zamoyski more centrally attends to the great power fundamentals of redrawing Europe's map as they played out in têtes-à-têtes among the principals and with France's crafty cynic Talleyrand. Underscoring the influence of personality on history, Zamoyski's fast-moving chronicle will enthrall the diplomacy audience. Taylor, Gilbert

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 006077519X
• ISBN 13: 9780060775193
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 672