After Napoleon's stunning victory at Austerlitz in 1805, William Pitt the Younger reportedly declared: "Roll up the map of Europe, it will not be wanted these 10 years." The Yes side would argue that the same can be said if the Treaty of Nice is rejected.
The broad sweep of history was on the mind of the letterwriter in yesterday's Irish Times who compared the treaty to the major reshapings of Europe at the Congress of Vienna (1815) and Versailles Peace Conference (1919).
A few years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama wrote an influential essay called The End of History, pointing to a rather bland future of liberal democracy and market economy. Judging from the Nice debate it might be more accurate to say it was "the end of history's ability to stir the masses".
Canvassers report "huge" apathy on the doorsteps. The turnout on Thursday may well be under 50 per cent. Anecdotal evidence suggests that people couldn't be bothered, don't understand, don't know and don't want to know. So leave me alone and let me watch the soccer, OK?
This insouciant approach flies in the face of the Yes campaign's insistence that the enlargement of the EU and the incorporation of communism's former vassals is at stake.
The No people are saying you can vote against the treaty and still feel good about yourself. Nothing will happen if Nice is defeated, claims the Eurosceptic MEP Jens-Peter Bonde, currently making the most high-profile Danish intervention on the Irish scene since the Battle of Clontarf.
Poll figures confirm that the gap between the two sides is narrowing dramatically. The "gut feeling" among old hands is that the vote will be tight: the Yes side remain favourites, but few are prepared to bet serious money on the result.
A key role could be played by respected public figures who are not "the usual suspects" declaring their views. The likes of Mr John Rogers and Senator David Norris make it seem OK to vote No.
Up to now there has been a definite sense in some quarters that anyone who even toys with voting No is regarded as somehow suspect: maybe a religious zealot, a "treehugger", a Provo fellow-traveller or a bit of a "Pinko".
Some of the hardline No people remind one irresistibly of the anti-Agreement politicians in the North vainly presenting what one unionist calls "the stone face" when confronted with the inevitability of a new dispensation.
There is also a feeling that the political and bureaucratic elite has reluctantly given the public temporary custody of the treaty but is drumming its fingers impatiently for the right result.
Whatever way the vote goes, the campaign has highlighted the need for ordinary citizens to become more assertive about their place in the European scheme of things, particularly the right of access to comprehensible information about what is being done in their name. Perhaps the Referendum Commission should be set up on a permanent basis with the brief of "Explaining Europe to the Europeans".