A unique book by Enno Edward Kreyer, a well-known writer and publicist, professor of history at the universities of Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina.The author highlights the main stages of the confrontation with Napoleon by the outstanding Austrian Foreign Minister Clemens Lothar von Metternich against the backdrop of the historical picture that developed in Europe in the late XVIII - early XIX century. It introduces the main facts of the life and work of a brilliant politician, whose talent for intrigue and flexible diplomacy to a large extent influenced the development of the political situation during the collapse of the Reich and the division of the third Germany.