>there are plenty of historic examples There are more examples of peaceful protests that fail to achieve anything. The most famous "peaceful" protest movements (MLK and Gandhi) were backed up by the implicit threat of violence by aligned groups. If you're interested in this subject, I highly recommend the book How Nonviolence Protects the State.
And yet there are many examples (probably more, in fact) of armed and violent protests also failing to achieve their goals, or having their goals distorted. It is true that the peaceful movements of Gandhi and MLK in particular were also accompanied by an implied violence from allied groups, but at the same time there were movements (especially in India) that had tried to achieve independence via violence for well over 70-80 years, always failing.