Page 140 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

peacemaking in the modern era 1441

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, above our poor
powerto add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. • Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

making process that preserved the political equilibrium that ended the numerous European wars waged in the
that had arisen from the war that preceded it. In the par- seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
ticular case of the Thirty Years’ War, the peacemaking
process organized by the king of France, the queen of The Congress of Vienna
Sweden, and the Holy German empire, by its division of The French Revolution and the rise to power of Na-
the German states, ensured French predominance in poleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) posed a major chal-
continental Europe for the next two hundred years. Fur- lenge to the basis of balanced peacemaking.The shift of
thermore, it showed the way to other peace settlements the political system toward the nation-state system and

France signs the preliminary agreements of a peace treaty ending the Franco-Prussian War
in 1871. The painting is rich in symbolism with most of the characters wearing Prussian
helmets. One is pointing to where France (the woman, who is no doubt a representation of
Marianne, the revolutionary symbol of France) needs to sign the treaty. Another, behind her,
has a dagger to her breast. She's holding the hand of a dead child. Other Prussians (on the
right) are silencing a woman and leading away a screaming child.