A Rock of Order Christopher Clark
Review of: Metternich: Strategist and Visionary
by Wolfram Siemann, translated by Daniel Steuer.
Harvard, 900 pp., £31.95, November 2019, 9780674743922
"Wolfram Siemann’s evocative and deeply researched biography places the quest for peace at the centre of Metternich’s life and thought. Peace did not mean for him the mere absence of war. The vortex of violence that swept across Europe between 1792 and 1815 showed that peace was vulnerable unless it was founded on robust structures and principles, in short on a European order. But this order had to be of a special kind, capable of connecting the arrangements regulating the interaction between states with factors that ensured a stable social and political order within them."
Great review, thank you.
Here is another ranty review by convicted fradster and author of a sycophantic biog of Trump, Conrad Black, who had a bust of Napoleon in his office https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Metternich-gets-a-makeover
Like Napoleon, people like to put their own agendas on to Metternich - and the Napoleon-fans get a fit of the vapours when confronted with evidence that doesn’t suit. Like Roberts, Black is wrong on the famous Dresden comment.
Another interesting review by Ferdinand Mount in the TLS, albeit mostly focussed on the post-Congress events https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/metternich-wolfram-siemann-book-review/
(Helpfully, he points out the poor research of Roberts in pursuit of his main agenda, flogging books to one audience).
Very well written and making the point that politicians suited to one set of circumstances may not necessarily be suited to ones radically different (Churchill’s rejection in favour of Attlee in 1945 is the example most often used).
For the complete opposite - agenda driven, superficial nonsense - there is inevitably a review by Andrew Roberts, the history version of the populist politicians. https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/11/metternichs-strength-in-law