The final act

the long version

No diplomatic event in history had so stellar a cast as the Congress of Vienna: Tsar Alexander, with his mystical visions, his chimerical moods. Talleyrand, cunning and duplicitous, who would act as a victor though he represented a defeated nation. Castlereagh, alone in His Majesty's government to understand the necessity for a Concert of Europe, who single-handedly built Britain's foreign corps and who would end a suicide. Wellington, the Iron Duke, who would go on to underwrite the diplomatic decisions with military victory. And Metternich, the force majeure, seemingly everywhere at once, trading, entreating, finagling in his unremitting attack on the forces of liberalism. Along with a supporting cast of rogues and mistresses, clairvoyants and spies, they turned Vienna into a theater of intrigue that shaped the face of Europe for a century to come. And hovering over it all, the brooding presence of the man who was not there: Napoleon Bonaparte, whose shadow was the force that drove them to find common ground. He would confirm their worst fears, breaking free of exile to challenge them on the plains of Waterloo.