Unit 5: Conflict, Crisis, and Reaction in the Late 18th Century
AP European History: 51 practice questions with detailed explanations.
Unit Study Guide
Executive Summary
Romanticism answered the Enlightenment with emotion; Napoleon remade Europe's map; the Congress of Vienna tried to freeze time — and revolutions kept breaking through.
Romanticism
A reaction against Enlightenment rationalism: emotion, nature, individual genius (Wordsworth, Beethoven). Nationalism — loyalty to one's people and desire for self-rule — grew alongside it.
The Revolution at war
The levee en masse mobilized the nation. Napoleon's campaigns exported the Napoleonic Code and modern administration. The empire peaked around 1812, then fell: Russia, Leipzig ("Battle of Nations"), Elba, the Hundred Days, Waterloo, St. Helena.
The Congress of Vienna
Metternich dominated. Principles: legitimacy (restore traditional monarchs — Bourbons to France), the balance of power (buffers around France, a strengthened Netherlands and Prussia's Rhineland), and the Concert of Europe for great-power management. The Holy Alliance and Quadruple Alliance guarded the settlement. It kept general European peace until 1914.
Challenges to the conservative order
Liberalism (civil liberties, constitutional government), nationalism, and early socialism (Saint-Simon, Fourier's utopian communities) pressed against restoration. The Carlsbad Decrees censored German universities. Revolts: Spain and Italy (1820s, suppressed), the Decembrist Revolt in Russia (1825), Greek independence (supported by Britain, France, and Russia — a nationalist victory the conservatives tolerated), and the July Revolution of 1830 in France (Charles X replaced by Louis Philippe).
Exam traps
Vienna restored BOTH order and monarchies — it aimed to prevent French-style revolution. Greek independence succeeded where other revolts failed because great powers intervened.