The peace to end all peace

The first world war was the last major conflict to be brought to an end in the traditional fashion, with a formal treaty of peace. Or, rather, several treaties of peace, one for each of the defeated belligerents. They were all negotiated in Paris, but named after the various royal palaces in which the signing ceremonies were held: Versailles, the Trianon, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Neuilly, Sèvres. These great buildings, arranged like pearls in a necklace around Paris across the hunting grounds of the former kings, were built to impress. But the treaties signed in them were arguably the most prodigious acts of folly in the history of European diplomacy.

The process began on a note of high morality, with President Wilson’s Fourteen Points. ‘The Good Lord only needed ten’, said the cynical Clemenceau, who as Prime Minister of France had the job of chairing the conference. He thought that Wilson was an ignorant and impractical idealist.