ABSTRACT
After 1856, forty years of peace between the great powers were followed by fifteen years of intermittent warfare. Between 1854 and 1870 all the great powers fought at least one war; Austria, France and Prussia each fought three. The object of all these wars, with the exception of the Crimean War, was the piecemeal destruction of the Vienna settlement. The destruction of the 1815 order in Italy and Germany between 1859 and 1871 was only made possible by the fragmentation of the European states system in the aftermath of the Crimean War. By 1856, both the Quadruple Alliance and the Holy Alliance that had enabled that order to survive in all its essentials amidst the upheavals of 1848-50 had collapsed. The sharpening of Anglo-French rivalry in the spring of 1860 played a vital role in the last phase of the creation of the kingdom of Italy, the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
