Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna PDF Download

Author: Adam Zamoyski
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007368720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 658

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Following on from his epic ‘1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow’, bestselling author Adam Zamoyski has written the dramatic story of the Congress of Vienna.

Author: Adam Zamoyski
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007203063
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 658

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Book Description
"In the wake of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, the French emperor's imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat. While the Treaty of Paris that followed Napoleon's exile in 1814 put an end to a quarter century of revolution and war in Europe, it left the future of the continent hanging in the balance." "Eager to negotiate a workable and lasting peace, the major powers - Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia - along with a host of lesser nations, began a series of committee sessions in Vienna: an eight-month-long carnival that combined political negotiations with balls, dinners, artistic performances, hunts, tournaments, picnics, and other sundry forms of entertainment for the thousands of aristocrats who had gathered in the Austrian capital. Although the Congress of Vienna resulted in an unprecedented level of stability in Europe, the price of peace would be high. Many of the crucial questions were decided on the battlefield or in squalid roadside cottages amid the vagaries of war. And the proceedings in Vienna itself were not as decorous as is usually represented." "Adam Zamoyski draws on a wide range of original sources, which include not only official documents, private letters, diaries, and firsthand accounts, but also the reports of police spies and informers, to reveal the steamy atmosphere of greed and lust in which the new Europe was forged. Meticulously researched, masterfully told, and featuring a cast of some of the most influential and powerful figures in history, including Tsar Alexander, Metternich, Talleyrand, and the Duke of Wellington, Rites of Peace tells the story of these extraordinary events and their profound historical consequences."--BOOK JACKET.

Author: David King
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307407365
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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“Reads like a novel. A fast-paced page-turner, it has everything: sex, wit, humor, and adventures. But it is an impressively researched and important story.” —David Fromkin, author of Europe’s Last Summer Vienna, 1814 is an evocative and brilliantly researched account of the most audacious and extravagant peace conference in modern European history. With the feared Napoleon Bonaparte presumably defeated and exiled to the small island of Elba, heads of some 216 states gathered in Vienna to begin piecing together the ruins of his toppled empire. Major questions loomed: What would be done with France? How were the newly liberated territories to be divided? What type of restitution would be offered to families of the deceased? But this unprecedented gathering of kings, dignitaries, and diplomatic leaders unfurled a seemingly endless stream of personal vendettas, long-simmering feuds, and romantic entanglements that threatened to undermine the crucial work at hand, even as their hard-fought policy decisions shaped the destiny of Europe and led to the longest sustained peace the continent would ever see. Beyond the diplomatic wrangling, however, the Congress of Vienna served as a backdrop for the most spectacular Vanity Fair of its time. Highlighted by such celebrated figures as the elegant but incredibly vain Prince Metternich of Austria, the unflappable and devious Prince Talleyrand of France, and the volatile Tsar Alexander of Russia, as well as appearances by Ludwig van Beethoven and Emilia Bigottini, the sheer star power of the Vienna congress outshone nearly everything else in the public eye. An early incarnation of the cult of celebrity, the congress devolved into a series of debauched parties that continually delayed the progress of peace, until word arrived that Napoleon had escaped, abruptly halting the revelry and shrouding the continent in panic once again. Vienna, 1814 beautifully illuminates the intricate social and political intrigue of this history-defining congress–a glorified party that seemingly valued frivolity over substance but nonetheless managed to drastically reconfigure Europe’s balance of power and usher in the modern age.

Author: Modris Eksteins
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307361772
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Named "One of the 100 best books ever published in Canada" (The Literary Review of Canada), Rites of Spring is a brilliant and captivating work of cultural history from the internationally acclaimed scholar and writer Modris Eksteins. Dazzling in its originality, witty and perceptive in unearthing patterns of behavior that history has erased, Rites of Spring probes the origins, the impact and the aftermath of World War I--from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet Le Sacre du Printemps in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. "The Great War," Eksteins writes, "was the psychological turning point...for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places." In this extraordinary book, Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts in human consciousness brought about by this great cataclysm through the lives and words of ordinary people, works of literature, and such events as Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and the publication of the first modern bestseller, All Quiet on the Western Front. Rites of Spring is a remarkable and rare work, a cultural history that redefines the way we look at our past and toward our future.

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 1455543713
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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A New York Times Notable BookAn ALA Notable Book "Original and illuminating." --The Washington Post What draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to "become" men? Newly reissued in paperback, Blood Rites takes readers on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century "total war." Ehrenreich sifts deftly through the fragile records of prehistory and discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place -- not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species, but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experiences of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception and rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that continues to transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.

Author: Mark Jarrett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857722344
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
Two centuries ago, Europe emerged from one of the greatest crises in its history. In September 1814, the rulers of Europe and their ministers descended upon Vienna to reconstruct Europe after two decades of revolution and war, with the major decisions made by the statesmen of the great powers. The territorial reconstruction of Europe, however, is only a part of this story. It was followed, in the years 1815 to 1822, by a bold experiment in international cooperation and counter-revolution, known as the 'Congress System'. The Congress of Vienna and subsequent Congresses constituted a major turning point - the first genuine attempt to forge an 'international order', to bring long-term peace to a troubled Europe, and to control the pace of political change through international supervision and intervention. In this book, Mark Jarrett argues that the decade of the European Congresses in fact marked the beginning of our modern era, with a profound impact upon the course of subsequent developments. Based upon extensive research, this book provides a fresh look at a pivotal but often neglected period.

Author: Vladimir Megre
Publisher: Ringing Cedars Press LLC
ISBN: 9780980181289
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Over 10 million copies sold in 20 languages

Author: Peter Sahlins
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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In May 1829, strange reports surfaced from the Ari ge department in the French Pyrenees, describing male peasants, bizarrely dressed in women's clothes, gathering in the forests at night to chase away state guards and charcoal-makers. This was the raucous War of the Demoiselles, a protest against the national French Forest Code of 1827, which restricted peasants' rights to use state and private forests. Peter Sahlins unravels the fascinating story of this celebrated popular uprising, and in his telling captures the cultural, historical, and political currents that swept the countryside during France's July 1830 Revolution. Sahlins explains how and why the Ari ge peasants drew on the practices and rituals of folk culture, as well as on a revolutionary tradition, to defend their inherited rights to the forest. To explore these rights and their expression, he delves into the history of forest management, of peasant conflicts with the state, and of popular culture--particularly the disputed history of Carnival and of local rituals of justice. Sahlins also sheds new light on the French revolutionary tradition and the "Three Glorious Days" of July 1830. The drama and symbolism of the War of the Demoiselles have inspired nearly a dozen plays, novels, films, and even a comic book. Using the concepts of anthropology and cultural studies as transport, Sahlins moves from this rich event to the wider worlds of peasant society in France. Focusing on the years from 1829 to 1832 but drawing on sources since the sixteenth century, his book should captivate social, cultural, and political historians of both early modern and modern Europe.

Author: Adam Zamoyski
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541644557
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 638

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The definitive biography of Napoleon -- hailed as "magnificent" by The Economist. "What a novel my life has been!" Napoleon once said of himself. Born into a poor family, the callow young man was, by twenty-six, an army general. Seduced by an older woman, his marriage transformed him into a galvanizing military commander. The Pope crowned him as Emperor of the French when he was only thirty-five. Within a few years, he became the effective master of Europe, his power unparalleled in modern history. His downfall was no less dramatic. The story of Napoleon has been written many times. In some versions, he is a military genius, in others a war-obsessed tyrant. Here, historian Adam Zamoyski cuts through the mythology and explains Napoleon against the background of the European Enlightenment, and what he was himself seeking to achieve. This most famous of men is also the most hidden of men, and Zamoyski dives deeper than any previous biographer to find him. Beautifully written, Napoleon brilliantly sets the man in his European context.

Author: Marcus George Halley
Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1640654216
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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In a world and nation marked by suffering and division, Marcus Halley invites readers to explore rituals of healing and reconciliation in parish practice. How is Christian community fostered when healing and reconciliation are prayerfully and actively sought? How do the ancient rituals of healing practiced among us today form a community committed to the Way of Love, the Way of Healing? And how does such practice lead the Christian community to seek peace? The basics of Episcopal and Anglican worship in North America are explored in this Little Books series, which invites parishioners and newcomers to consider both the beauty of worship and Episcopal ethical commitments.