Between 1814 and 1852 Paris was the capital of Europe, a city of power and pleasure, a magnet for people of all nationalities that exerted an influence far beyond the borders of France. Paris was the stage where the great conflicts of the age, between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, revolution and royalism, socialism and capitalism, atheism and Catholicism, were fought out before the audience of Europe. As a contemporary proverb put it: when Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold.