1814. The defeated Napoleon was exiled to Elba. The heads of 216 large and small states gathered in Vienna to build a new Europe on the ruins of the destroyed Napoleonic empire... They were faced with many complex diplomatic and political problems that required immediate solutions. What to do with the defeated France? How to divide the newly liberated lands? What compensation should be offered to the families of the victims?

The Congress of Vienna became famous as the most sophisticated “battle of diplomats”, in which the best political minds of the then Europe came together - the elegant and calculating Austrian Prince Metternich, a genius and the cynic - the French envoy Talleyrand, the intellectual Alexander I and the cold-blooded British Lord Castlereagh.

But what happened behind the scenes of the Congress of Vienna? David King's book will help the reader see it with his own eyes.