Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon & the Congress of Vienna

London: Harper Collins, 2007. New book, 634 pages. In the wake of his disastrous Russina campaign of 1812, Napoleon's imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the Continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat. There were many who dreamed of a peace to end all wars, in which the interests of peoples as well as rulers would be taken into account. But what followed was an unseemly and at times brutal scramble for territory by the most powerful states, in which countries were traded as if they had been private estates and their inhabitants counted like cattle. The result, fixed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, not only laid the foundations of the European world we know; it put in place a social order and a security system that lie at the root of many of the problems which dog the world today. Drawing on a wide range of first hand accounts in six languages, which include not only official documents, private letters, and diaries, but are also the reports of police spies and informers, Adam Zamoyski gets below the thin veneer of courtliness and reveals that the new Europe was forged by men in thrall to feer, greed and lust, in an atmosphere of moral depravity in which sexual favours were traded as readily as provinces and the 'souls' who inhabited them. . Soft Cover. As New. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.