The statesmen who assembled in Vienna to discuss how to design a peaceful order had been through a whirlwind of upheavals overturning nearly every established structure of authority. In the space of twenty-five years, they had seen the rationality of the Enlightenment replaced by the passions of the Reign of Terror; the missionary spirit of the French Revolution transformed by the discipline of the conquering Bonapartist empire. French power had waxed and waned. It had spilled across France’s ancient frontiers to conquer almost all of the European continent, only to be nearly extinguished in
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