1814. The defeated Napoleon is exiled to Elba. The heads of 216 large and small states gathered in Vienna to build a new Europe on the ruins of the destroyed Napoleonic empire... They faced many of the most difficult diplomatic and political problems that required immediate solution. What to do with defeated France? How to divide the newly liberated lands? What compensation to offer the families of the victims? The Congress of Vienna became famous as the most sophisticated "battle of diplomats," in which the best political minds of then Europe came together - the elegant and calculating Austrian prince Metternich, the genius and cynic - the French envoy Talleyrand, the intellectual Alexander I and the cold-blooded British Lord Castlereagh. But what happened behind the scenes of the Vienna Congress? David King's book will help the reader see it with his own eyes.