
The Roads to Waterloo
The book tells, essentially, the story of seventeen months, from April 1814 to August 1815 that saw two sieges of Paris, a complete revision of Europe’s political frontiers, an international Congress in Vienna, a civil war in Italy and an international war in Belgium.
Some ten years ago, a friend of mine in Paris told me I should drive to Berlin. "In twenty-four hours you’ll be facing the Red Guard," he said, "and you will understand what Europe is all about." A week later, I was on the flat fast road to Berlin; over a stretch of seven hundred miles nature (...)