Transcription
Too, hello! Welcome back to our lecture series for Western Civilization 102. Our topic today will be revolution. I know you're thinking, we have discussed so much revolution, um, recently with this lecture series. It was hoped, of course, after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, and and it's the reason why some of the European, the major European states got together at that Congress of Vienna, it was hoped that they could maintain a balance of power and and that, you know, they could make sure that what happened in France, of course, doesn't happen again. But not, not long after, obviously, we will experience some revolutionary years in Western civilization. The year 1820, around 1820, was was huge. We have quite a lot of revolutions taking place in different European countries. For example, they had a very famous revolution that took place in Greece. The Greek Revolution was was actually romanticized in some of the literature of the time. Greece had rebelled against the Ottoman Empire. We've heard the name the Ottoman Empire in the past, and Greece won, which was not always the case, you'll see. But Greece won this rebellion. They actually had help, outside help, which was not always the case as well, from places like Britain and France and Russia. Why would other countries help them in a rebellion, so to speak? Because, you know, when a country's rebelling and they're trying to become independent, for example, at this time from the Ottoman Empire, that's not maintaining the status quo. That's not go. Remember, Europe wanted to go back to the way it was before the French Revolution. But I guess the powers in Europe felt that an independent Greece would be better for them because Greece, of course, right there on the Mediterranean, it maybe would help them with naval positions. In fact, uh, and it would also help give them access to Christian shrines in the Holy Land. You know, Russia also wanted territories in this area and wanted to become the protector of the Christian shrines there in the Holy Land. So, anyway, Greece experienced a revolution. Spain experienced a revolution in 1820, and we'll find out, of course, you know, what happens as far as that, you know, Spain is concerned. A lot of these revolutionaries, a lot of these people that were revolting in these different countries, for the most part, they believed in what's called liberalism, not modern liberalism, but but the liberalism in this time period. They believed they wanted written constitutions. They they wanted the middle class to have more of a say in government and in politics, which they hadn't had in the past. And so then you have the conservatives, the rulers, the monarchs, who are obviously do not want written constitutions, and they will have problems and have rebellions because of this. So we'll see what happens as well as that. Italy experiences a revolution in 1821 as well. Now, we're going to see that Britain will remain revolution-free, I guess you could say, pretty much, because Britain decides that they will start putting forth some reform measures because they do not want to go the way of some of these other countries with that with those problems. They will start to give their middle class more of a say in government. It's called the Great Reform Bill of 1832. Because, like I said, we have revolutions in the 1830s as well. Um, now we also will see a series of revolutions that take place in the year 1848 and 1849. It's kind of the year of the revolutions, and and we'll find out, of course, why we see this during this time period. Remember that there was also something called nationalism, and it's where people of a certain ethnic group, a certain cultural that are tied together culturally or historically, wanting to create their own countries. That sounds fine, but it will create a huge problem because, for example, the Austrian Empire is is made up of a lot of different ethnic groups. You have, of course, even in Italy, the Austrians are prominent there in Italy as well. So we will, of course, see nationalism play a huge role in some of these revolutions that take place in the years 1820, 1830, and and, of course, that really prominent year of 1848. So let's learn more about, once again, revolution.
At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the great powers were sharply divided over the issue of whether or not the Concert of Europe, that is the aggregation of great powers, should intervene in countries to prevent revolution. Alexander I of Russia and Prince Metternich of Austria were strongly in favor of doing so. They were joined in this by Frederick William III of Prussia and even by the French, who now with a Bourbon back on the throne were opposed to revolution and willing to intervene elsewhere. The one strong exception was the British, whose Lord Castlereagh was steadfastly opposed to intervening in any other state's business. This, of course, was a purely theoretical point in 1815, but in beginning in 1820, it became a very concrete issue. There were, in fact, in the next three decades, three great waves of revolutions in Europe: one in the 1820s, a second in the early 1830s, and a third pervasive wave of revolution in 1848 and 1849.
At the heart of these revolutions were two revolutionary ideologies, that is revolutionary for the early 19th century. One of these was liberalism. 19th-century liberals sought to reduce the authority of monarchy and to increase the rights, particularly of the middle class, through legislative assemblies and a wider extension of the franchise. A second factor was nationalism. In many places, notably in Germany and Italy, there were nationalistic groups who did not yet have a nation-state, and in most cases, the nationalists and the liberals worked together because both faced the same opponent, that is the conservatives, who were interested in preserving the status quo. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, there was also a third element: an increasing role played by workers in this period, some of whom, though not all of whom, embraced socialism, and this is particularly evident in the 1848 revolutions.
The first wave began in the 1820s. In 1820, revolution erupted in Spain and in Portugal. The following year, in 1821, in Italy and in Greece, and in 1825, there was a short-lived revolution in Russia. In Spain, the Spanish Revolution of 1820 to 1823 was directed against the restored Bourbon King Ferdinand VII. Ferdinand had initially agreed to a constitution, the Constitution of 1812 in Spain, which granted rights to the Spanish people and granted representation in the form of the the ancient representative institution, the Cortes. However, in 1820, Ferdinand dissolved the Cortes and began making plans to send the Spanish army to the New World, where there had also been a number of successful revolutions in Spanish colonies, colonies that Ferdinand hoped to recapture. Much of the opposition to Ferdinand, in fact, came from younger liberal officers in the Spanish army. The result was the outbreak in 1820 of a very veritable civil war in Spain between supporters of the king and supporters of the liberals. For a time, Ferdinand himself actually became a captive of his opponents. The Concert of Europe responded, of course. Alexander I of Russia wanted to intervene, France agreed, and so also did Metternich of Austria, but they recognized the British sphere of influence in Spain, which was closer to Britain than it was to either Austria or Russia. The British opposed both because they did not want to get involved in Spain and also because they had their own colonial interests in the New World to pursue, and the upshot of that was that in the short term, there was no intervention, although that's not the end of the story.
In 1820, also, there was rebellion in Portugal against John VI. Here, the army also revolted, and here too, the British backed the rebels to the extent of opposing any sort of intervention. There was also revolution in the Two Sicilies, or the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, however you prefer, against Ferdinand I, another Bourbon restored to the throne. After the revolution there too, the army revolted, led by Guglielmo Pepe. In the midst of all of this, the great powers met again in 1820 at the Congress of Troppau, the second major Congress since the Congress of Vienna. At this particular Congress, Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed upon something known as the Troppau Protocol, which gave the great powers the right to intervene in the case of revolutions. Knowing that this would be the case, the British refused to participate, and the French also, for the time being, refused to give their permission.
The following year, in 1821, at the Congress of Laibach, the great powers who were in attendance, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, gave permission to Austria to intervene in the revolt in Naples, where they restored Ferdinand I and went on to suppress an additional revolt in Sardinia. In response to this, Britain formally repudiated the Troppau Protocol and the whole notion of interfering in revolutions. A final Congress occurred in 1822 in Verona. The Congress of Verona actually authorized French intervention in Spain. The French, making the argument that Spain is their next-door neighbor, was their business, and there in 1823, they restored Ferdinand VII. So, in the first part of the wave of revolutions of the 1820s, the more conservative or indeed reactionary wing of the Concert of Europe got exactly what it wanted. It suppressed revolution in Italy, it suppressed revolution in Spain. Now, Portugal was an exception to that. One of the offshoots of this, interestingly enough, was that the activities of the Concert of Europe had a bearing on United States foreign policy in this period, insofar as that they contributed to the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine, issued in 1823 by James Monroe, although largely formulated by John Quincy Adams. What this stated was that the United States would not tolerate European interference in the Western Hemisphere. This was directed primarily against any sort of efforts on the part of Spain, for example, to try to regain its recently liberated colonies. Interestingly enough, though, the United States really lacked a navy sufficient to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in the 1820s, and the actual enforcement was carried out by, at the time, America's ally, Britain, which was eager to thwart the other European countries and played a major role in keeping them out of the Western Hemisphere.
Now, all this was going on. Revolt also broke out in Greece in 1821. This was the latest stage in the long-running and by no means soon concluded Eastern Question that that involved pretty much the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Greece had for hundreds of years been part of the Ottoman Empire of the Turks. Now, in 1821, it sought to break free. There was a revolutionary group in Greece known as the Phanariots, made up primarily of merchants who were eager to establish Greek independence and who embraced both Greek liberalism and Greek nationalism in the process. They were led by a man named Alexander Ypsilantis, and curiously enough, there was no opposition to the revolution in Greece from the Concert of Europe. There are two reasons for this: one is that in the West at this time, there was a wave of what we call Philhellenism, that is sympathy with the Greeks, who were regarded as among the founders of Western civilization and who were seen in the West as Christians seeking to obtain their independence from an Islamic overlord, and therefore the Western states were quite enthusiastic about the Greek Revolution, and volunteers from Britain and France and others went and actually fought on behalf of the Greeks. With respect to Austria and Prussia, there was a somewhat different motive, although it was couched in in somewhat ideological terms. Both Austria and Russia bordered on the Ottoman Empire. Both Austria and Russia lusted for territory that was currently in the hands of the Turks, particularly territory in the Balkans and territory along the Black Sea. In addition, Russia also was eager to extend its influence far enough into the Black Sea to have access unimpeded to the Turkish Straits. Therefore, anything that weakened the Ottoman Empire, anything that led to a gradual chipping away of Ottoman territory, was good as far as Austria and Russia were concerned. Therefore, they did not oppose the Greek Revolution as they had in the past. Therefore, no one from the Concert of Europe stepped in to oppose the Greeks.
This revolutionary fighting in Greece continued for over a decade, but in the meantime, there was yet another uprising in, of all places, Russia, with an uprising known as the Decembrist Revolution in December of 1825. In the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, many Russian soldiers came back to Russia from fighting in France, having been exposed to the greater liberty that the French enjoyed and convinced that they ought to have more of the same at home. Moreover, early on in his career, Tsar Alexander I had given the Russians reason to believe that he was a reformer, that he was interested in creating a Russian parliament, that he was interested in recognizing many of the rights that France had recognized during the Revolution. So there was a widespread expectation among Russian soldiers that they would be rewarded for their work in fighting against Napoleon by being given greater rights, but that in fact is not what happened. Indeed, it was just the opposite. Alexander I became more repressive in the wake of the Revolution, and the result of this is that many of the younger officers in the Russian army, attracted to the liberal principles of the French Revolution, began organizing secret revolutionary societies. None of these did very much until 1825, but in that year, Alexander, still a relatively young man, suddenly died, leaving the throne vacant. Now, the question was, who would take his place? His next brother in terms of age was a brother named Constantine, but Constantine at the time was administering Russian territory in Poland and seemed quite happy to continue doing that. A third brother named Nicholas was actually in Russia, and there ensued a brief comedy of errors in which Nicholas recognized Constantine as the heir, and Constantine recognized Nicholas as the heir. Revolutionary societies in both northern and southern Russia attempted to seize the opportunity that this afforded for a revolution, and indeed the northern society actually marched into Saint Petersburg and was on the verge of seizing control of the Winter Palace when they stopped to make speeches and to celebrate, which allowed the tsarist forces to muster enough troops to put them down. The Decembrist Revolution, therefore, came to a very quick and bad end. Nicholas I wound up being Tsar and proved to be far more repressive than Alexander I ever had been. It will tell you something about Nicholas I to know that he was one of the few Tsars who was a hero of Joseph Stalin. Now, in the succeeding century, the Decembrists were heroes for every revolutionary group to come along in Russia, but in the short term, they accomplished little except to make the Russian government even more repressive than it had been.
Meanwhile, Russia had become involved in the vicinity of Greece for a rather different reason. It had entered in 1828 into a war with the Turks on its own, not necessarily to help Greece, but in pursuit of its own interests. This Russo-Turkish War lasted from 1828 until 1829, and the principal bone of contention here was possession of the two territories of Moldavia and Wallachia, which controlled access to the Danube River, particularly its mouth as it enters into the Black Sea. Ultimately, the war came to an end in 1829 with the Treaty of Adrianople, which made Moldavia and Wallachia protectorates of the Russian Empire and required the Turks to abide by the judgment and direction of Britain, France, and Russia when it came to Greece. Not surprisingly, then, the Turks were shortly compelled to recognize Greek independence. In 1830, the great powers issued what were known as the Protocols of 1830, which recognized Greek independence. Subsequently, a Convention of London in 1832 set the boundaries and placed on the Greek throne a German prince, Otto of Bavaria. Thus, the Greek Revolution, uh, uniquely was successful among the revolutions of the 1820s.
The second wave of revolutions began in 1830, and interestingly enough, it was sparked in that home ground of revolution, France. There, of course, the Bourbons had been restored in 1814 in the person of Louis XVIII, who had briefly had to escape during the Hundred Days when Napoleon returned, but had been restored again in 1815 and ruled until the end of his life in 1824. There, France was split between two groups known as the liberals, who embraced liberal ideology, the ideology of the French Revolution, and a group known as the Ultras, who supported absolute monarchy and a very powerful church. Louis, not surprisingly, sympathized with the Ultras, but he recognized the reality of the situation, knew that it was not practical to simply go back on all of his promises to the revolutionaries, and so he abided by that constitution he had granted in 1814, the Charter of 1814. Of course, he spoiled it to some extent by insisting on referring to it as a gift rather than the right of the French people, but in any case, it meant that he shared power with a bicameral legislature, the Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies. However, in 1824, Louis XVIII died without heirs of his own and was followed by his younger brother, Charles, the Count of Artois, who now became Charles X. Charles was far more reactionary than Louis, much more openly pro-Ultra, much more closely tied to the church. He began attacks on liberal groups, also on universities, which were seen as a heartland of liberal ideas, and in 1830, matters came to a head when Charles issued something called the July Ordinances of 1830, in which he dissolved the old bicameral assembly, established a new election system, deprived the middle class of the vote, implemented rigid censorship, and abrogated the Charter of 1814. The result of this was revolution, although as a relatively non-violent revolution compared to what happened in 1789 and after. The government was completely unprepared for what happened on July 26, 1830. The workers threw up barricades in the streets of Paris. Over the next three days, the 27th, the 28th, and the 29th of July, which the French came to call the Three Glorious Days, workers, students, and Republicans, that is, those who opposed a monarch, manned the barricades, and as a result, Charles fled the country. He was replaced, not by a republic, but by a cousin, by the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe, who is in fact a descendant of Louis XIV. Received the crown on July 31st and began an 18-year reign, which is sometimes referred to as the July Monarchy and sometimes referred to as the Bourgeois Monarchy because of Louis Philippe's fondness for the French middle class.
The French Revolution of 1830 in turn helped to spark a revolution in Belgium. There, the Congress of Vienna had combined Belgium and the old Protestant United Provinces of the Netherlands into a single kingdom under the rule of William I. Belgium was not particularly happy about that because it found itself at odds with its northern neighbors, the Dutch, in a number of respects. The Dutch in the northern half of the new Kingdom of the Netherlands spoke Dutch, they were Calvinists, they were largely commercial, and they held the Belgians in contempt. The Belgians were ethnically Walloon, they spoke French and Spanish, they were Catholic in terms of religion, they were agricultural and industrial in terms of their economy, they resented tariffs imposed upon them by William I and economic problems in general, and they held the Dutch in contempt. So, in a sense, trouble was brewing from the beginning. What brought it to a head is that on August 9th, the 25th, 1830, about four weeks after the French Revolution, there was a play, or rather an opera, that was performed at a theater in Brussels, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, called "La Muette de Portici" by Daniel Auber. This particular opera is actually an Italian opera; it's set in 1647 in Naples, and it is set amidst a rebellion that took place in Naples in that year. It appealed greatly to the Belgians' romantic nationalism, and in the aftermath of the play, it sparked rioting in Brussels, which spread to the rest of Belgium and led to the setting up in October of a provisional government in opposition to William I. Now, not surprisingly, the great powers reacted to this. Austria, Prussia, and Russia wanted to intervene in the Belgian Revolution. However, they were distracted by the fact that there was also trouble in 1830 in Poland, about which more in a minute, and Austria, at least, by the fact that there was trouble in Italy. In addition, Britain opposed any interference in Belgium, as did the French, and the upshot of this was a conference in London in 1831, which recognized the independence of Belgium and led to the creation of a Belgian constitution and a constitutional monarchy headed by yet another German prince imported for Belgian purposes, Leopold I. Belgium would go on to be a major player in the diplomatic affairs and especially the empire-building of the 19th century.
In Poland, of course, there is no Poland per se. That is, there is no independent country of Poland, Poland having been absorbed by the partition of Poland in the 1770s and 90s and then restored to its owners after Napoleon's experiment with the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. However, the Poles were certainly still there, and the Poles were not at all happy about being ruled variously by Russians, Austrians, or Prussians. And in November of 1830, there was an uprising led by an army officer named Piotr Wysocki against primarily Nicholas I of Russia. Because this is a revolution that involves the army, it is also sometimes called the Cadet Revolution. Unfortunately, Prussia, or rather Poland, was surrounded by its three adversaries: Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and the result was that the Polish uprising was crushed in 1831, primarily by a Russian army led by Ivan Paskevich. So the Polish Revolution came to very little, though it did help to distract Austria, Prussia, and Russia from being involved in Belgium.
Meanwhile, there were also insurrections in Italy, particularly in Modena and in that collection of states in northeastern Italy known as the Papal Legations. In Modena, there was a ruler at the time named Francis IV, the Duke of Modena, who actually encouraged revolutionaries in his own kingdom and in others around him or in his own duchy because he wanted to create a North Italian Kingdom with himself at its head. He, however, was not a very trustworthy individual, as the Modenese revolutionaries were about to discover. In 1830, a revolutionary in Modena by the name of Menotti led an uprising, but as it turned out, Francis, the Duke of Modena, double-crossed him, and the Modenese Revolution was put down in 1831. In the Papal Legations, a series of states between the Papal States and Venice, revolution also broke out in 1830. The revolutionaries adopted the tricolor flag of the French Revolution and called for a united Italy. They were opposed, of course, by Pope Gregory XVI, and Gregory sought help where he knew he was likely to get it, that is to say, he asked Prince Metternich of Austria for assistance, and Austria sent in troops who crushed the rebellion. Thus, of the 1830s rebellions, the one in France and the one in Belgium succeeded; those in Poland and in Italy did not. The implications, though, seem to be that the Concert of Europe worked after a fashion. Austria and Prussia had shown restraint regarding Belgium; Britain and France had shown restraint regarding Italy and Poland, and there had been no wider war. One reason for the Concert of Europe was, of course, to avoid warfare among the great powers, and that is what seems to have happened at this time.
Now, from 1831 until 1848, things remained relatively quiet, although trouble was brewing in many places in that period. Nationalism growing stronger, liberalism growing stronger, and among liberals, an increasing number turning to republicanism rather than liberal monarchy as their ideal, and even some liberal republicans embracing the idea of democracy. The working class also grew larger as a result of the Industrial Revolution, and the workers tended to either support liberals or to embrace socialism in some cases. In 1848, there would be a veritable explosion of revolutions. The first broke out in January of 1848 in Palermo, in Italy, and over the next four months, there were almost 50 in other European states. In fact, the only two major states not to experience revolution in 1848 were Britain and Russia, countries which were at the opposite ends of the map in terms of geography and at the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of politics: Britain having the most open, liberal sort of government at the time, and Russia the most repressive, autocratic government at the time.
One of the sparks for this revolution, as is so often the case with upheavals like this, was an economic crisis. As a general rule, if you find a severe economic crisis, particularly one that leads to hunger, you can look down the road three to five years and find serious trouble, and this is no exception. In 1845 and 1846, there was a severe agricultural crisis in Europe that led to poor harvests, shortages of food, high prices, and hunger, even to starvation in some places. Another problem is that by this time, the Industrial Revolution had become so large and had begun to move so quickly that there was industrial overproduction and lots of goods that failed to sell, with the result that workers were laid off and what have you. And then, of course, there were the ever-present forces of liberalism and nationalism.
The real spark for the 1848 revolutions was not the uprising in Palermo, which was of relatively small significance, but yet another revolution in France: the Revolution of 1848. There, over the last 18 years, the July Monarchy had at first proven to be very popular. Louis Philippe had embraced the middle class; he had done a great deal to promote business and industry in France. He was known for his thrift, for his sobriety, for his hard work, all things that were values that the middle class in France could embrace. But as time went on, his policies came more and more to favor the wealthy, not the lower middle class or the workers, and there was increasing dissatisfaction. Moreover, and this is not to be discounted lightly, Louis Philippe had a very unambitious foreign policy, which in some respects may have been exactly what France needed at the time after years of the French Revolution and Napoleon, but people quite frankly found him boring, were not necessarily happy with the fact that France was failing to cut a major figure on the stage of Europe, and for all of these reasons, there was increasing dissatisfaction and opposition to Louis Philippe.
Not everyone opposed him. There was a party in France at the time known as the Party of Resistance, and that means not resistance to Louis Philippe, but resistance to his opponents or resistance to any kind of change. This party was led by a man named François Guizot. It was somewhat right of center and tended to believe that the status quo in France was exactly right, that there should be no further changes. On the other hand, there was a party called the Party of Movement, led by a man named Adolphe Thiers, which was a more liberal group, wanting a broader electorate and more constitutional rights for the French people. These were the two major parties in the assembly, but there were other groups of significance as well. There were a group of individuals known as the Legitimists, and what the Legitimists wanted to do was to bring back the Bourbons. There weren't any real strong Bourbon candidates in the 1840s, but such men did exist, and the Legitimists held out a thin hope that they might bring them back. There was also a group known as the Bonapartists. The original Bonaparte, of course, was dead, as was his son by this time, but his nephew, Louis Napoleon, was very much alive, and the Bonapartists supported the notion of placing him in charge of the country. However, at the time, he was largely regarded as something of a joke, not taken very seriously. His early forays into politics were not successful, and so about nobody paid a whole lot of attention to him. Then there were a variety of Republicans in France: college students, young radicals, secret societies, purveyors of propaganda, individuals who wanted to extend the right to vote, individuals who wanted a salary for members of the assembly, individuals who wanted a free public education, and prominent among them was the Republican Louis Blanc, and of course, there were some socialists, notably Louis Blanc, whom we discussed earlier when talking about the so-called Utopians.
Well, all of this came to a head in France in 1847-1848 during what was called the Winter of Discontent. Food was short, prices went up, jobs dropped in number, there were worker demonstrations all over France. The government cracked down on these, and the response among the liberal middle class was to come up with a very clever gimmick for holding political meetings without calling them political meetings. They began something known as the banqueting campaign. What they would do is to hold a banquet, and it would just so happen that at this banquet there would be somebody on hand to serve as speaker who would give a political speech criticizing the government and attempting to rally the opponents of Louis Philippe. All of this was intended to culminate in Paris in February of 1848, but Guizot, who was a member of Louis Philippe's government, banned the banquet in Paris, and the result of that was revolt. Members of the middle class initially rose up in revolt; they were joined by the workers who threw up barricades in the street, and when the government sent the National Guard out to suppress them, the National Guard crossed the lines and joined the rebels. In short, Louis Philippe was in big trouble. In fact, within hours, he fled the country, and the rebels set up a provisional government, a provisional government which initially was quite radical, which included a lot of Republicans and even some socialists like Louis Blanc, and which set up a number of essentially socialist-based workshops to put people to work during the unemployment crisis. There was, however, a backlash against this among the more well-to-do middle class and the nobility, and the upshot was that in the summer of 1848, the socialists were purged from the government, and by late in the year, the government had adopted a new constitution, the Constitution of the Second French Republic, which was meant to act as a barrier against radicalism and to protect order and stability.
One of the features of this Second Republican Constitution was a very strong president, another was a separate legislature, and a third was universal manhood suffrage, that is, all male citizens of adult age had the right to vote. An election was held in which there were several strong candidates, but to the surprise of almost everyone, the man who was elected in 1848 as the president of the Second French Republic was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, whose name carried such cachet that people voted for him in large numbers and were attracted by his own attempts to pose as a defender of order and as somebody who could restore the greatness of France to what it had been under his uncle, the original Napoleon. As we will see in days to come, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte would serve as president for four years and then declare himself emperor of France, with very far-reaching consequences.
In the meantime, revolution spread from France to other states in Germany. The French Revolution frightened the rulers of the 39 German states, and many of them responded to the fear of revolution by granting very liberal constitutions to their people and by embracing part of the agenda of German liberals and nationalists, hoping thereby to win over the liberals and nationalists to their side and to avoid confrontation. But there were also social forces going on here as well as political. There was still a threat of violence. Artisans were opposed to industrialists and vice versa; peasants were opposed to nobles and vice versa. And these newly liberal governments now had to find a way to restore order. It would be impossible here to talk about all 39 German states, but one that is especially important because of its size and its expected leadership role was Prussia. Prussia, by now, was ruled by Frederick William IV, who in 1848 engaged in a great deal of romantic talk about German national unity, about creating a single Germany, although in Prussia itself, he had absolutely no intention of giving up power. He did allow elections, he did allow the creation of a Prussian parliament, but then he reasserted power and modified the constitution so as to safeguard liberties but at the same time to keep most power in his hands. This was something of a disappointment to liberals and nationalists in the rest of Germany because they had seen Prussia as their best hope for creating a united Germany, since Austria was steadfastly opposed to such an idea.
In the meantime, something else happened in Germany which is rather peculiar, and that is the creation of something called the Frankfurt Parliament. This was not actually a government-sponsored endeavor at all. It was not sponsored by any of the governments of any of the 39 German states. Rather, what happened is that liberal intellectuals in all of these states set up elections which led to the election of 830 delegates, again by universal manhood suffrage, most of them from the upper middle class, and they began meeting in Frankfurt on May 18, 1848. They claimed to represent all the German people, and many of the German people applauded that, but the rulers of the 39 German states did not recognize their authenticity. And in fact, while what the Frankfurt Parliament hoped to achieve was a united Germany, it found itself facing a number of conflicting aims. Was the German state to be a confederation of the 39 states, or was it to be a truly unified nation, one Germany? Was it to have an emperor, a king, or be a republic? What would its boundaries be? Would it include Austria or not? Would it have an army? Most people thought that would be impossible, and in fact, they would have to rely on the Prussian army, but that made many of the non-Prussian states nervous. Also, the Frankfurt Parliament eventually came to annoy the two largest German states, Austria and Prussia, and misjudged the extent to which those two were prepared to act. Nonetheless, the Frankfurt Parliament got around to writing a constitution called the Fundamental Rights of the German People in early 1849. Had it been effectively implemented, this would have granted freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and a good deal of representation. Unfortunately, it was passed by the Frankfurt Parliament too late to be accepted by the German states. The most important problems were, first of all, that there was a split in the group between whether to have a Greater Germany or a Lesser Germany. A Greater Germany would include Austria as a part; a Lesser Germany would exclude Austria. Austria, not surprisingly, was opposed to either. Another thing is that the Austrians didn't like this idea, not only because they didn't want to be subsumed within Germany, they also feared that they would have to give up their non-German territories elsewhere. Francis Joseph, the new ruler in Austria, absolutely refused, and when the Frankfurt Parliament offered the crown to Frederick William IV of Prussia, the crown of all Germany, he turned it down, saying that he would not take a crown from the gutter. And thus, the German Revolution began to crumble. The idea of German unity does not go away; it will be back, but this attempt came to naught.
Meanwhile, in Austria itself, there was also revolution, revolution against Metternich, and you might say Metternich's last hurrah. Metternich had done his best in the 1840s to insulate Austria and its territories from revolutionary ideas, but the population there had grown increasingly restive. The biggest threat being nationalism: German nationalism in Austria, where there was a lot of sentiment for joining in a larger Germany; Magyar nationalism in Hungary, where there was a desire for greater autonomy; and Czech nationalism in Bohemia, where there was a similar desire. To the extent that Austria held Italian territories, there was a similar problem there as well. In Hungary, a group of Magyars led by Lajos Kossuth demanded Hungarian autonomy in 1848. The Czechs did the same in Bohemia, the Croats, and the Romanians in the Balkans. Vienna students in Vienna, and ultimately Metternich found himself forced to resign and to sneak out of Vienna in the back of a taxi in March 1848. Hungary forced through the passage of something called the March Laws, which made Hungary virtually independent, created a Hungarian parliament, established a Hungarian army, an independent budget, and an independent foreign policy. Oddly enough, though, Hungary, which had demanded this from Austria, now in turn refused to recognize the rights of its own minorities, people like the Croats, for example, and that would come back to haunt them a bit later on.
In Bohemia, in the city of Prague, a Pan-Slav Congress began meeting in 1848 with the idea of trying to create a single Slavic state in Southeastern Europe or in Eastern Europe. There were demonstrations, but this was quickly suppressed by the Austrian General Alfred Windischgrätz, who established a military dictatorship there. In Vienna, there was at first no radical change until after Metternich fled, but there, eventually, the students and others pushed through a liberal constitution. The Emperor Ferdinand fled, but once again, Windischgrätz came in, suppressed the revolution, and put a new relative of Ferdinand on the throne, a young 18-year-old ruler named Francis Joseph, or Franz Joseph, who would remain on the throne there all the way down to 1916, ruling Austria through the majority of World War I. Of course, Francis Joseph was very young and inexperienced, so he turned over a good deal of decision-making in 1848 to his chief minister, Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, and under Schwarzenberg, with the assistance of generals like Windischgrätz, the revolution in Hungary was put down. Louis Kossuth escaped, and like escapees from political turmoil all over Europe in the 19th century, he fled to Britain, where he would be safe, and the revolution subsided.
Well, that leaves Italy. In Italy, the Revolutions of 1848 came in three phases. The first of these was revolutions in states that were under Austrian rule, revolutions against the Austrian government. The second phase came with a full-blown war for independence led by Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia, and the third phase came with the attempt by a man named Mazzini to establish a republic in the city of Rome. None of these, in the short term, would come to fruition. The wars in Italy were inspired by both liberalism and nationalism, by a desire for more liberal government, for more popular participation, and also by out of the desire for the creation of a single Italian state. There were calls for a war of liberation. Liberals and nationalists all over Italy looked to Charles Albert of Sardinia to lead them, but as was the case with Frederick William IV and Prussia, Charles Albert was not especially enthusiastic. The difference is, though, he eventually was won over and reluctantly but valiantly fought against the Austrians. Unfortunately, the Italian soldiers at this juncture, and Charles Albert himself in particular, were no match for the Austrian troops, which were led into Italy in 1848 by a general named Joseph Radetzky. In fact, the Italian revolutions were put down. Moreover, of all people, Louis Napoleon of France intervened in 1849 in Rome. Mazzini and one of his sidekicks, Giuseppe Garibaldi, later to be a major Italian hero, had attempted to set up a republic centered in Rome, expecting the hope of the Pope or that the support of the Pope, but in fact, the Pope resisted them. The Pope appealed to France for aid, and Louis Napoleon, who was looking for an opportunity to make a splash on the European continent, came to the Pope's assistance. Mazzini was driven out of Rome, Garibaldi fled initially to the United States, and the Roman Republic was squashed, the papacy restored, and Louis Napoleon cemented a strong relationship, for the time being at least, with the Catholic Church.
The only place where there was any success for revolutionary activity in Italy in 1848 and 1849 was in Sardinia. There, interestingly enough, Charles Albert abdicated after the failure of the other revolutions and was replaced by his son, Victor Emmanuel II. Victor Emmanuel was assisted at this juncture by a minister named Count Camillo Cavour, who, like Garibaldi, would later become a hero of Italian nationalism. Now, aside from the fact that Sardinia, or Piedmont-Sardinia, is the only state to enjoy any sort of success because Victor Emmanuel does grant a liberal constitution there, there were some lessons that Italian liberals and nationalists learned from the failures of 1848 and '49. Number one, they recognized that they were unlikely to get any help from the papacy. One of the options previously had been to try to create a united Italy under the Pope, but that no longer seemed like a workable idea. A second lesson was that the most likely state to lead an Italian revolution was indeed Piedmont-Sardinia, the realm of Victor Emmanuel II. And the third lesson was that the Italian states were not strong enough to drive the Austrians out by themselves. Therefore, in the years to come, they would begin looking for an ally to help them drive out the Austrians, and they would eventually find such an ally in Louis Napoleon of France.
The overall consequences of the 1848 revolutions were, by and large, failure outside of France. But what they did do in all countries was to focus a demand for national unity where national unity did not already exist. Nationalism in Germany and Italy, especially, became much more powerful after the 1848 revolutions, and the fusion of liberal and nationalist ideas also became stronger. One result of the revolution in France was universal suffrage there, although the hopes of the workers in France, and even more elsewhere, were largely not realized. Another thing is that the Revolutions of 1848 pretty much shattered any romantic, utopian ideas of revolution and convinced future revolutionaries that they must rely less on idealism and more on force, and for better or for worse, that is how it would be in the years to come.
Well, of course, you know, you would think France would not experience revolution after they had gone through so much chaos and terror at certain times during their own revolution, that they would not experience revolution again. But that is simply not the case, because France will not be immune, as you see, to the revolutions that are happening in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. In fact, when we come back on our next lecture, we'll learn more about France, and we'll learn about how there will be a Second Empire created there, and amazing, interestingly, uh, another Bonaparte, another Napoleon, will gain power in France again, which, of course, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, as you would think, would never have happened. So, of course, we'll find out why and how that happened. Until next time.