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

by Adam Zamoyski

Back in the summer of 1815, as he was relaxing in his villa outside Vienna a couple of weeks after the signature of the Final Act, Gentz had noted down some of his reflections on the events of the past nine months. ‘Never have the expectations of the general public been as excited as they were before the opening of this solemn assembly,’ he wrote. ‘People were confident of a general reform of the political system of Europe, of a guarantee of eternal peace, even of the return of the golden age. Yet it produced only restitutions decided beforehand by force of arms, arrangements between the great powers unfavourable to the future balance and the maintenance of peace in Europe, and some quite arbitrary rearrangements in the possessions of the lesser states, but not one act of a more elevated character, not one great measure of public order or security which might compensate humanity for any part of its long sufferings or reassure it as to the future.’

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