Rites of Peace recounts the history of the Congress of Vienna based on a vast collection of sources in six languages, including not only official documents, personal letters, diaries, and original accounts, but also reports from spies and police informants. Adam Zamoyski cuts through the thin veneer of politesse to reveal that the new Europe was forged by men who were nothing more than slaves to fear, ambition, and lust, amid an atmosphere of moral depravity in which provinces and the souls within them were exchanged as readily as sexual favors. "In writing this book, I set out to give the fullest possible account of the negotiations that led to the establishment of peace, in the hope that the unfolding of events might shed light on how it was achieved. I have tried to present the hopes and fears of each side as impartially—and yet sympathetically—as possible, in the conviction that we are neither 'good' nor 'bad' players, just frightened," states Zamoyski. The author shows how the outcome of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 not only laid the foundations for the European world we know but also established the social order and security system that represent the root of many of the problems that plague the world today. Although the defining moments took place in Vienna, and the leading roles included the Russian Tsar Alexander I, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, the Duke of Wellington, the French master diplomat Talleyrand, and Napoleon himself, the view that the Congress represented a gathering of statesmen seeking to reorder the continent in an elegant hall is completely false. Many of the crucial issues were actually decided on the battlefield or in squalid roadside hovels amid the vagaries of war. Even the conduct adopted in Vienna was not as decorous as is often portrayed.
