He goes on to state that the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had destroyed the old legitimacy and failed to create a new one, with the result that all parties, including Napoleon, felt continuously threatened and insecure. According to him, the Congress of Vienna succeeded in forging a new ‘legitimacy’, which lasted a hundred years and was therefore of great benefit to humanity. ‘Not for a century was Europe to know a major war,’ he declared, echoing a by then accepted view that the congress had guaranteed a hundred years of peace.
