ABSTRACT

Whether the realistic terms of the 1815 treaties were chiefly responsible for the long period of peace that followed the settlement of Vienna can be doubted. But the fact must be noted that Europe had enjoyed fifteen years of uninterrupted peace by 1830. There had been brief military expeditions sent by one or other of the powers into Italy, Spain or Greece, to suppress or support revolutions there; Russia had waged a short war on Turkey in 1828; but there had been no major war, and no war of any kind between two or more great powers, since Waterloo. From 1830 to 1854 peace between the great powers continued. The Crimean War, which ended this long record, still did not disturb the peace of western Europe. It was drastically limited in space to a small peninsula, and the belligerent powers kept in constant touch with each other, through neutral Austria, until peace was patched up early in 1856. In 1859 war at last broke out in western Europe, but again it was a war strictly limited in time and place – to only two months of fighting, in north Italy. Bismarck’s wars in 1864, 1866 and 1870 again never involved more than two great powers at once, and were, again, localized. The war of 1866 lasted for only seven weeks, and even the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 lasted for less than a year. In the final decade of the period an uneasy peace was continuously preserved; the powers settled their differences over the Eastern Question by negotiation, if sometimes reluctantly.