Non-Fiction
3 Best Non-Fiction Books About Congress of Vienna
Histories, biographies and reference works are listed separately from the historical novels above.
Phase
Congress of Vienna
1814–1815
Representatives of the European powers gathered in Vienna from 1814 to settle the political and territorial consequences of the Napoleonic Wars. Negotiations involved Austria, Russia, Prussia, Britain and France as well as numerous smaller states, and mixed formal diplomacy with private bargaining and court society.
The settlement redrew frontiers across Europe and attempted to construct a balance of power capable of containing renewed French expansion and revolutionary instability. Napoleon’s return from Elba interrupted the proceedings but did not prevent the Final Act from being signed in June 1815.
Adam Zamoyski’s Rites of Peace reconstructs the congress through its statesmen, monarchs and diplomatic manoeuvres, including Metternich, Talleyrand, Castlereagh and Alexander I. The work is nonfiction.
