Most people seem to see this as a defining period in modern history. Gave us Napoleon, which led to a unified Germany, which later developed a (somewhat enforced) taste for unity, which gave us Prussian domination of Germany and with one thing and another the First World War. Everybody knows what happened next.
Is it possible that at one point in those 125 years the calamities of the 20th Century could be avoided? Certain individuals being in different places, such as Napoleon remaining in Paris as a young officer instead of going back to Corsica.