![]() And that covers only the first half of the ‘century of peace’.īritain dropped out of the Concert very quickly and proceeded to conduct dozens of wars around the globe, as did France, never a dedicated member. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 caused carnage on a scale hitherto unknown, and led to the internecine bloodbath of the Paris commune. They were all put down with military force and all cost lives. Nor should one forget the dozens of revolts and insurrections that took place across Europe between 1820 and the Polish insurrection of 1863-4. In 1859-60 there was war between France, Sardinia and Austria which was so bloody it inspired the foundation of the Red Cross, and in 1866 one between Prussia, Austria and Denmark. In 1854 Britain, France and Sardinia went to war with Russia in the Crimea. Between 18 there were wars involving Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sardinia, fought in Poland, Hungary, Italy and parts of Germany. The 1830s witnessed two protracted vicious civil wars in Spain and Portugal, as well as a wave of popular risings in Switzerland which nearly turned into civil war in 1847. Two full-scale wars broke out in 1830, one between France and Holland over Belgium, the other between Russia and Poland. ![]() The decade following the signature of the Vienna settlement in 1815 saw wars break out in Spain, Italy and Greece, involving the armed intervention of France, Austria and Russia, and ultimately Britain and Turkey. Schroeder, was a small price to pay for a hundred years of peace in Europe. That, implied Kissinger, a view endorsed by other historians such as the revered Paul W. There was no room in this arrangement for the aspirations of lesser powers, let alone nations or ordinary people. As long as those four, and later five with the admission of France, worked in the ‘Concert of Europe’, they could maintain peace and stability. This new legitimacy was based on power – that of the four ‘Great Powers’ as they styled themselves: Russia, Prussia, Austria and Great Britain. He argued that as there could be no going back to the principle of divine right on which the ancien régime had rested before 1789, a new legitimacy had to be established to replace it, and this had been achieved by his hero, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich. ![]() Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-1822, Henry Kissinger put up a strong defence of the settlement reached at the Congress of Vienna. In his doctoral thesis, published in 1957 as A World Restored. ![]()
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