Rites of peace

Rites of peace : the fall of Napoleon & the Congress of Vienna / Adam Zamoyski .— New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
xviii, 634 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), maps ; 25 cm.
ISBN: 9780060775186 (hbk.)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 599-617) and index.

1. Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) 2. Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815 -- Peace. 3. Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815 -- Diplomatic history. 4. Europe -- History -- 1789-1815.

940.2714

For two decades the scourge of the ancien régime Napoleon Bonaparte had been the fear and master of the crowned heads of Europe, but his attempt to add Russia to his list of conquests proved the beginning of his downfall. In December 1812 he was forced back to Paris in advance of his retreating army by the Russians, who as they advanced across Europe, turned his former allies Prussia, Austria, and the other German states into theirs. In April 1813 the allied armies joined by England and several exiled kings arrived in Paris and forced Napoleon’s surrender. But months before the question of how to undo what revolutionary and then imperial France had done to Europe occupied the minds of the kings and their diplomats as much as defeating the French army.

Following victory parades and triumphal visits they convened in the Austrian capital in 1814 to work out the details of the peace. They were filled with a hope for a lasting peace and the new ideal of international law. They even invited the defeated power, France, represented by newly restored monarchy to attend the Congress. Ironically the French ambassador, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, had previously done the same job for the last French ruler, Napoleon. The Congress with its multiple attending sovereigns immediately became the new center of European diplomacy and social life, compete with accompanying diversions. As the author puts it,

“Perhaps the most striking aspect of the great charade known as the Congress of Vienna is the continuous interplay between the serious and the frivolous, an almost parasitical co-existence of activities which might appear to be mutually exclusive. The rattling of sabres and talk of blood mingled with the strains of the waltz and court gossip, and the most ridiculously trivial pursuits went hand in hand with impressive work.” Page 385

Zamoyski has plowed though voluminous official archives and memoirs of the participants to give a detailed, highly readable, account of the preparation for and the proceedings of the Congress, both official and social, followed by his own assessment of what it accomplished: consultation and cooperation between multiple states, what we would now call a Summit Meeting, as a means of resolving an international crisis, and what it failed to accomplish: a permanent peace and stable boundaries.