History Of Modern Europe Since 1789 By Vd Mahajan Pdf 55

The fatal flaw of the Vienna settlement was its contempt for national self-determination. The map of 1815 deliberately ignored the aspirations of Italians (who remained under Austrian heel in Lombardy-Venetia), Germans (divided into 39 states with no unity), and Poles (partitioned again among Russia, Prussia, and Austria). As Mahajan would note, repression did not destroy these ideas; it radicalized them. Secret societies like the Carbonari in Italy shifted from reform to armed insurrection. By the 1820s, revolutions in Spain, Naples, and Greece showed that Metternich’s “fire brigade” system could only extinguish flames locally, not remove the fuel. The Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) was particularly damaging to the Congress System, as Russia and Britain supported Greek nationalism against their fellow signatory, the Ottoman Empire, proving that the great powers would abandon the principle of legitimacy when it suited their interests.