About The Book

In 1812, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a congress convened in Vienna at which the fate of Europe for the next hundred years was to be determined. Beginning with Napoleon’s harrowing retreat from Moscow, Harold Nicholson’s classic account sweeps its audience through the many stages that led up to the negotiations in the Austrian capital. While the balance of power rocked unsteadily back and forth, personal relations broke and mended, and egos, weaknesses, and strengths were exposed. Nicolson’s portraits of the great statesmen of the time are masterpieces of characterization—the wily French foreign minister, Talleyrand; his brave but misguided British counterpart, Lord Castlereagh; the conservative Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich; and the idealistic but unstable Tsar Alexander. Powerfully told and wonderfully paced, the narrative holds throughout the final negotiations, where the struggle to restore a lost world and ensure a stable future caused unforgettable turmoil and tested even the strongest of men.

Hailed by The New York Times as “narrative history at its best,” this harrowing account exhibits a compelling study of policymaking as well as the heroic study of the men who sought to impose order on a dynamic world.

Praise

“With swift pace, clear focus and a series of brilliant character sketches, this is narrative history at its best.” –The New York Times

“The author, who knows the ways of diplomacy as well as he knows how to write, is particularly illuminating when he is explaining why the allies who fall in together in war can easily fall out in peace.” –The New Yorker

“Insight, clarity, a restrained humor, and a very pleasant style . . . His book should be required reading for all commentators on foreign affairs, for all students of diplomatic history–for all men, in fact, who are willing to learn, from experience of the past, lessons which apply most urgently today.” –The Atlantic Monthly