16.3: The Revolutions of 1848

In 1848, all across Europe, revolutions combined the liberal, socialist, and nationalist movements in a temporary alliance against the conservative order. Starting in France, but quickly spreading to Prussia, Austria, the smaller German kingdoms, and regions like Italy and Hungary, coalitions rose up and, temporarily, succeeded in either running their monarchs out of their capital cities (as in Paris) or forcing the monarchs to agree to constitutions and rationalized legal systems (as in Prussia and Austria).

France

In February of 1848 in France, the unpopular king Louis-Philippe unwisely tried to crack down on gatherings of would-be reformers. After panicked soldiers fired and killed forty protesters, crowds began to build barricades and prepared to fight back. The king promptly fled the city. A diverse group of liberals and socialists formed a provisional government, declared France to be a new republic, and drew up plans for a general election for representatives to a new government. There would be no property restrictions on voting - although women remained disenfranchised. Never again, would a monarch hold the throne of France simply because of his or her dynastic birth.

Revolutionary coalitions soon discovered that their constituent elements did not necessarily agree on the major political issues that had to be addressed in creating a new government. The socialists in the new French parliament (called the National Assembly, just as it was in the first French republic earlier) created new "National Workshops" in Paris that offered good wages to anyone in need of work. Soon, however, the workshops were shut down as the alliance between liberals and socialists broke down over resentment at the facilities' costs. The workers of Paris rose up in protest. A series of bloody street battles called the June Days broke out, resulting in the deaths and imprisonment of thousands of Parisian workers. Conservative peasants were sent by railroad from the countryside under orders from the Assembly. In just a few days, the great socialist experiment was crushed.

In the aftermath of the June Days, the government of the Second Republic was torn between liberals, socialists, and conservatives (the latter of whom wanted to restore the French monarchy). Amid the chaos, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Louis Napoleon, successfully ran for president of the Republic. Posing as a unifying force above the fray of petty politics, he was genuinely popular across class and regional lines throughout France. In 1852, he staged a coup and declared himself Emperor of France, just as his uncle had decades earlier. Also, like the first Napoleon, his power was ratified by bypassing the Assembly entirely and calling for a plebiscite (vote of the entire male population) in support of his title, which he won by a landslide. He took the title of Napoleon III. (Napoleon II, the first Napoleon's son, had died years earlier.) Thus, in a few short years, the second experiment in democratic politics in France ended just as the first one had: a popular dictator named Napoleon took over.

Austria

Meanwhile, in Austria, crowds took to the streets of Vienna after learning of the revolution in Paris. (Telegraphs now carried information across Europe in hours. Thus, this was the first time revolutions were tied together via "social media".) Peasants marched into the capital, demanding the end of feudalism. Workers demanded better wages and conditions. Liberals demanded a constitution. After learning about events in Austria, nationalists in non-German areas rose up in the regional capitals of Prague and Budapest demanding their own independent nations. It looked like the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself was on the verge of collapse.

Figure 16.3.1: Europe in 1848. Note the red marks on the map - those denote major revolutionary outbreaks.

German States

In Prussia and the other German kingdoms, a series of revolutions saw hundreds of would-be politicians in the city of Frankfurt. In a historical first, a popularly elected national assembly gathered to draw up a constitution based on the principle of German unity and a liberalized legal order. Not only Prussians, but representatives of the various other kingdoms of Germany came together and began the business of creating a unified state. However, the representatives had to debate some thorny issues. Should the German liberals support free enterprise or a guaranteed "right to work," as demanded by German socialists? Should they support the independence of Poland at the expense of the German minority there? Should they favor Bohemian independence at the expense of the German minority in the Czech lands? About 800 delegates, elected from all over the German states, operating without the official sanction of any of the kings and princes of their homelands, all wanted the chance to speak.

The major debate was about the form of German nationalism that should be adopted: should Germany be a “smaller German” state defined by German speakers and excluding Austria, or a “greater German” state including Austria and all of its various other ethnicities and languages? It took months, but the final conclusion was that any state could join Germany, only if it “left behind” non-German territories (like Hungary). Further, the delegates agreed that Polish and Czech nationalism had to be crushed because of German “racial” superiority, an early anticipation of the Germanic ethnocentrism that would eventually give rise to Nazism almost a century later.

This flowering of revolutionary upheaval proved shockingly short-lived. The coalitions of artisans, students, and educated liberals who had spearheaded the uprisings were good at arguing with one another about the finer points of national identity, but not so good at establishing meaningful links to the bulk of the population who did not live in or near capital cities. Despite the growing popularity of German nationalism, the Frankfurt Congress was the quintessential expression of that form of dysfunction: impassioned, educated men, mainly lawyers, with few direct links to the majority of the German population. Unlike France, in the German kingdoms, Italy, and Austria, monarchs and officials worked behind the scenes to re-establish control of armies and shore up their own support while hastily-created assemblies were trying to draw up liberal constitutions.

Austria and Prussia

In both Austria and Prussia (as well as the smaller German kingdoms), conservative forces turned the tide as the revolutionary coalitions wasted time debating the minutia of the new political order. By the autumn of 1849, forces loyal to the Austrian emperor, aided by a full-scale Russian invasion of Hungary in the name of Holy Alliance principles, restored Habsburg rule throughout the empire. In the meantime, when the Prussian King Wilhelm IV was presented with the constitution, he simply refused to accept it (he called the offered position a “crown from the gutter”). At the same time, the kings of the smaller German states reasserted their control across the German lands.

Consequences

Ultimately, all the revolutions “failed” in their immediate goals of creating liberal republics, as did the socialist dreams of state-sponsored workshops for the unemployed. According to one prominent historian, in 1848, Europe had “reached its turning point and failed to turn.” This statement is not entirely true, however. Even though conservative regimes ultimately retained power, the revolutions altered the definition of conservatism and the methods conservatives used.

First, some limited constitutional and parliamentary reforms did occur in many kingdoms. Relying on Russian support, the Austrian Empire had been restored by conservative forces, and the new constitution of 1849 did institute a parliament. By the latter half of the century, elected representative bodies became the norm across Europe. Electorates were almost always limited to property owners. (Women were not part of electorates until the 20th Century.) Likewise, accepting the need for written constitutions and ending the old feudal obligations of peasants were marked steps toward liberalism.

Second, the power of nationalism was obvious to everyone in the aftermath of 1848, including conservative monarchs. Only the Russian invasion had prevented Hungary from achieving its independence, and Italian uprisings against Austria had been contained only with great difficulty. Subsequently, conservatives began to adopt some of the trappings of nationalism to retain their power. For example, the most noteworthy success stories of nineteenth-century nationalism, those of Italy and Germany, were led by conservative politicians, not by utopian insurgents.