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During the nineteenth century, a great Central European statesman, Cleroens von Metternich - whose diplomacy had destroyed Napoleon - tried to build his own form of European unity in order to create lasting peace. From 1815 until 1848, he controlled not only the Habsburg empire but Germany and Italy his skill at preserving the balance of power maintaining Austrian primacy. Having brought Austria through the Napoleonic maelstrom, his brinkmanship at the Congress of Vienna had saved Europe from another continental war for a hundred years, while he created a European Alliance foreshadowing NATO.
Desmond Seward1s exciting biography, based on the latest scholarship and including previously unpublished material, tells with pellucid readability the story of a very great statesman.
book reviews
- Andrew Roberts
"It really is an excellent, elegant work in the tradition of Duff Cooper's Talleyrand...It strikes me as, if anything, much more likely to appeal to a British readership." - The Chicago Tribune
"Readers interested in the seeds of modern politics will be fascinated by Seward!s pen portrait of the man he calls 'the first European'." - Library Journal
"Klemens von Metternich has inspired a wealth of interpretive biographies. Few of these characterisations are as refreshing and positive as Sewardfs. Seward portrays Metternich as the consummate statesman of his time ... and argues that much of the chancellor's work anticipated many of the arrangements surrounding the current European community. The book relies heavily on Metternich's personal and state papers and contains superb sections on his rather tragic family life." - Die Presse, Vienna
"highly readable ... A shadowy figure becomes a person." - Peter Vodzek, eks-informationsdienst
"The English historian Seward, using fresh sources, has created a completely new portrait ... brilliantly written."
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