HistoryAdmirers of Adam Zamoyski's earlier volume, the epic and scarifying 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Rome, will not be disappointed by this hefty sequel.
As before, Zamoyski has cast his research net widely. Sources consulted range from the Castlereagh papers in Belfast to archives in London, Paris, Vienna and Warsaw. And he appears to have read just about everything published relating to the series of negotiations between the Great Powers - Austria, Prussia, Russia and Britain (and occasionally France) - whose emperors, kings, princes and diplomats converged on Vienna in September 1814 and sought to achieve closure to the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that had riven Europe for nearly 25 years. Their negotiations would be dramatically interrupted by Bonaparte's escape from Elba in March 1815 - and with his defeat at Waterloo in June, France would be further punished by the victors - but in essence, the key terms of the peace had been already agreed beforehand. The decisions arrived at concerning Poland, Italy and France, and a host of lesser entities, during the Congress of Vienna would shape the political geography of Europe down to the First World War.
Happily, at an early point in his text Zamoyski assures his readers that he has no intention of entering into "the complexities of the German question", reasoning that only a seasoned scholar of German history could undertake such a task and that only someone equally well-versed could follow the resulting account. In fact, the author does not ignore some of the knottier questions relating to the borders, territories and lands claimed by rival powers, and the issue of Poland's borders (and its future), and the restoration of the Italian and German territorial mosaics does engage his attention. He also finds time and space to engage with the later literature regarding the success or otherwise of the foundations laid down by the Congress. However, where this book excels is in its detailed depiction of the social whirl that engulfed the Habsburg capital during the Congress: Vienna uncovered!
ZAMOYSKI IS FORTUNATE in his cast of characters. The "political puppeteer" Metternich headed the Austrian delegation and was frequently torn between the pressing affairs of the world and the equally insistent affairs of the heart. His reputation in the latter respect closely rivalled his renown in the former for he had already slept with both of Bonaparte's sisters, his step-daughter and the famous actress Mademoiselle Georges. He quickly installed his current lover, the three-times married Wilhelmina, Princess of Sagan, into suitable lodgings, but she proved troublesome and fickle: "She sins" he complained, "seven times a day and loves as often as others dine". There is also a reference to her proclivity for depravity but, regrettably, this is not pursued. In any case, Metternich, disappointed by Wilhelmina could always take up with his old flame Princess Bagration, famous for wearing diaphanous dresses that earned for her the soubriquet "the naked angel". Russia's interests were in the hands of Tsar Alexander who saw himself as the victor in the war and who believed that he was charged with a god-given mission to bring peace and freedom to Europe. On his arrival in Vienna, Alexander quickly succumbed to religious mania, sometimes spending nights in prayer with the mystic Roksandra Sturdza, and then entering into a spiritual marriage with her and Johann Stilling. By early 1815, he had begun leaving a vacant place at his table for "Jesus Christ", but more alarmingly he was talking about freeing the Russian serfs and even sponsoring a free Poland. (The destruction of Poland as a political power defines the modern history of Russia.) Not that Alexander's religious dementia interfered with his pursuit of the ladies, though his chat-up technique did seem a little strange: to the young woman who had caught his attention he would show his handkerchief which had a crown of thorns embroidered over his initial and then he would divulge that he suffered from deep personal unhappiness. Hmmmm.
Compared to Alexander and Metternich, the British foreign secretary, Irish-born Lord Castlereagh was very staid. He had committed a major faux-pas by bringing his wife, Emily, with him, and the knives were out for her immediately. Her size - "colossal", so they claimed - made her "the joke of society", and if Castlereagh's government had not been largely subsidising the frivolity he too might have drawn adverse comment. As it was, he was not particularly light on his feet, and his attempts at Scottish folk-dancing were described as "grotesque". Nor was his playing the cello much appreciated, nor indeed his plea for a European ban on slave-trading. Fortunately for Ireland's standing, Castlereagh's half-brother, General Sir Charles Stewart, was in attendance and he proved a hit with the large number of filles de joie who crowded into Vienna. And England's claim to levity was somewhat redeemed by the scandalous appearance of English ladies who were easily recognised because of "the extreme indecency of their dress . . . every shape is exactly drawn, while they are open in front down to the stomach". Talleyrand conducted matters on behalf of the restored Bourbon court of France, cleverly sowing dissension amongst the allies and seeking to have France seen as a victor too. He quickly found rooms for his mistress Dorothée, Comtesse de Périgord, who was the daughter of his former mistress and a half-sister to Metternich's mistress, Wilhelmina. She was also 40 years Talleyrand's junior in age, but it is unlikely that she was the "young chick barely dressed" seen by a police spy hurrying out of his room late at night. Lastly, the interests of Prussia were represented by the rather anxious Frederick William, King of Prussia. He was quickly smitten by the lovely Countess Julie Zichy whom he "followed around like a spaniel".
TO KEEP THESE personages and their entourages occupied and amused a series of balls, concerts, displays, dinners and even a funeral were laid on. By Christmas 1814, the most enthusiastic party-goers were all showing signs of what might be dubbed ball-fatigue. "These parties are exhausting me," complained Talleyrand, and Alexander had alarmed his advisers by fainting while dancing with Lady Castlereagh. The 79-year-old Prince de Ligne, who never refused an invitation to anything, expired under the strain, and his funeral was made the occasion for another diversion. There was a full turn-out of conferees and the prince's coffin was followed by his black charger, complete with his boots reversed in the stirrups.
The Congress of Vienna witnessed any number of social highlights. One such might be the masked ball thrown by Metternich. "Guests were invited to come in national costume or in red-and-white dominoes. The place was a riot of dirndls and other peasant dresses which permitted the ladies to show a little leg . . . Lady Castlereagh astonished everyone by wearing her husband's decoration of the Order of the Garter on her head". Another might be the huge Carrousel organised in the aptly named riding school in the Habsburg palace. This was the recreation of a supposed medieval chivalric tournament in which 24 knights, each of whom would have a "Queen of Love" as a lady champion, would show their prowess at arms by charging around on horseback slashing at the heads of make-believe Saracens, and so on. The ensuing banquet was lit by thousands of chandeliers. Perhaps the most lavish entertainment was the grand sleighing party thrown in January 1815. Some 32 sleighs upholstered in green and blue velvet, and drawn by horses coiffed with ostrich plumes made their way to the Schonbrunn palace just outside Vienna. A huge sleigh containing an orchestra and pulled by six horses preceded them. Around a frozen lake the guests paused to watch Dutch skaters perform a ballet on ice and, following food and a performance of Cinderella at the palace, the whole party returned to Vienna "like a river of fire". A masked ball awaited them.
Of course, when European royalty get together, no party is complete without slaughtering animals, preferably when no skill, risk or exercise is involved. One morning, some six hundred "wild" boar were rounded up and coralled in a narrow field out of which five or six were released at a time. Firing at them was done in strict order of precedence: emperors first, then kings, then princes, then dukes, then field-marshals, then the rest. The King of Wurtemberg "who rather resembles a wild boar himself" bagged the most, and in all some five hundred were dispatched.
MEANWHILE, THE STRUCTURE of post-Napoleonic Europe was being sorted in small face-to-face negotiations, discussions and intrigues: there were no plenary sessions. Zamoyski is not impressed. He is rightly scathing of Henry Kissinger's claims in his study of the Congress that order and stability were more important than justice, and that the Congress of Vienna ushered in a hundred years of peace. Zamoyski traces later developments in Russia in 1917, and in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the stultifying orthodoxy imposed by the settlement. Since no peaceful change would henceforth be permitted by the Great Powers, then only revolutionary change could occur, as in 1848, 1870 and 1917. Poland was the main casualty: except for a brief period between the wars, it was to remain submerged for 150 years. Prussia was the main beneficiary: it soon embarked on its mission to "fill in the gaps" of its territory. No wonder Zamoyski, the scion of a Polish aristocratic family that had to flee Poland in 1939, is less than impressed. At the Congress, dancing the Polonaise correctly always mattered far more than doing right by Poland.
• Thomas Bartlett is professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin
• Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of ViennaBy Adam Zamoyski HarperPress, 634pp. £25