In 1848, Europe didn’t catch cold; it caught a major case of “Revolutionitis.” This time, the old regime would be left in terminal condition.
Causes of 1848 revolutions:
France fell first. Louis Phillipe’s government faced the barricades of the unemployed in February 1848, and this time the army was no help. Louis fled the country, and the Republicans (anti-monarchists) under Alexandre Ledru-Rollin proclaimed the Second Republic (the first preceding Napoleon). Ledru-Rollin’s government:
In April 1848, elections gave the Republicans a huge majority in the Chamber of Deputies, after which they ended the National Workshops. Thinking the Republicans were going the same route as Louis Phillipe’s government, the unemployed revolted again. The slogan that summarized the problem: “The bread or the bomb!”
The government responded by turning General Louis Caviagnac loose in Paris. Caviagnac ended the revolt, but the chaos and resentment he caused doomed the republic. The Second Republic would elect only one president before it would fall.
The German lands were next. Citizens revolted in Berlin, Vienna, and Frankfurt. In Berlin, Prussian emperor Frederick William IV tried to use the army only to find the people more infuriated than before. Rather than turn the army loose, Frederick abolished censorship, called for elections to the Diet, and promised a constitution.
In Austria, Metternich tried to keep the lid on things. The Hungarians, the largest non-Austrian nationality in the empire, would have none of it. The Hungarians actually declared independence in 1849. Czech patriots revolted and won the right for a separate Parliament in Bohemia in 1848. Other areas soon followed. In March 1848, the revolution reached Vienna itself. Metternich fled into exile, leaving Emperor Ferdinand I to deal with the problems. Ferdinand promised freedom of the press, a constitution, and a parliament, then fled Vienna. The liberals then abolished serfdom and removed restrictions on Jews preventing them from living in cities.
Meanwhile, Frankfurt, a free city in the German Confederation, became the center of German nationalism. The Confederation’s parliament, the Diet, met in Frankfurt. The Diet was replaced by the Frankfurt Parliament, to which all areas of Germany elected representatives. The Parliament wrote a constitution but accomplished little else. The biggest discussion was whether all the German-speaking lands would be united (as Prussia wanted) or whether all the German controlled lands would be united, including other nationalities (as the Austrians wanted). Prussia’s idea would have led to the end of the Austrian Empire.
Italy was soon to follow. Sicily rose in revolt; Venice revolted against Austrian dominance, and peasants everywhere revolted against Austrian rule. The king of the Piedmont region, Charles Albert, chose to side with the revolutionaries. In Rome, Pope Pius IX refused to join the war against Austria. The Romans responded by revolting against papal authority, killing the pope’s prime minister and his personal confessor. Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italy’s soon to be uniter, joined with Giuseppe Mazzini to organize a democracy in Rome.
It looks like liberalism is winning, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the generals to surrender.
Count Joseph Radetzky of Austria commanded the Austrian garrison that had been driven from Milan. Rather than return to Austria, Radetzky pulled his troops together and counterattacked. Radetzky destroyed a combined Italian army at Custozza in July 1848.
In Bohemia, Prince Alfred zu Windischgratz — whose wife was killed in democratic riots — ignored orders and bombarded Prague a month before Radetzky’s victory at Custozza. (Radetzky also ignored orders to fight this battle.) Within days, Prague surrendered. Windischgratz then went after the Hungarians, taking the cities of Buda and Pest (today’s Budapest). Windischgratz arrived in Vienna in October 1848 and shelled the city into submission as he had Prague. The army took over the city, executed the democratic leaders, and installed Ferdinand’s 18-year-old grandson, Franz Joseph, as emperor. Franz Joseph would reign for the rest of the century and until 1916.
Austria’s successes emboldened Frederick William IV, who sent his army back to Berlin. This time, the conservatives won. Minister of the Interior Baron Otto von Manteuffel dismissed the parliament, but he also persuaded Frederick William to grant a constitution and create a new legislature. The Prussian Constitution of 1850 protected the Hohenzollern right to rule by divine right. The lower house of Parliament, the Landtag, was elected by near-universal suffrage, but the electorate was divided into 3 classes, each of which elected one-third of the representatives.
A German prince summarized events this way: “It takes soldiers to put democrats in their place.”
Germany was left with the Frankfurt parliament. This parliament was disbanded, and the Prussians were forced to agree to the recreation of the German Confederation dominated by the Austrians. The agreement was known to the Prussians as the “humiliation of Olmutz.”
France wasn’t finished yet. In December 1848, General Cavaignac ran against Ledru-Rollin for the presidency. Instead, the French elected Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon’s nephew. The new Bonaparte reintroduced censorship, restricted the universal suffrage of the Republic, gave education over to the Catholic Church, and sent an army to Rome to restore Pius IX’s authority.
Within 3 years, Bonaparte orchestrated a coup d’etat (as had his uncle) and created the Second Empire, ruling as Napoleon III. The Empire was authoritarian, but Napoleon also increased French industrialization, aided the workers, and later allowed an opposition party. Napoleon would later send an army to conquer Mexico and install a French-dominated emperor there.
After the revolutions died down, another problem arose in southern Europe. The Ottoman Empire, the “sick man of Europe,” had a major problem: Russia.
Russia was upset with the Ottoman Empire for accepting Russian revolutionaries. Russia was upset with France when Napoleon III tried to protect Catholic interests in Jerusalem. Tsar Nicholas I wanted the Turks to grant similar protections to the Orthodox under Russian auspices, but the British and French blocked it. In retaliation, Nicholas ordered his army to invade and occupy the Turkish provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia (both Christian provinces). The British and French sent a joint fleet into the demilitarized Black Sea, and the war was on.
The Crimean War (1853-1856) witnessed the introduction of rifles with Minie balls into warfare. The British and French defeated the Russians in battles with the new weapons, but disease was still the major killer. More than 250,000 soldiers died. The War was settled with the Peace of Paris in 1856.
Unification
Italy
The Italians hadn’t forgotten their dreams of unification. The revolutionaries realized that street fighting would not win independence from the French or Austrians. King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont kept the liberal constitution his father had granted and limited the Catholic Church’s authority in the region by enacting a separation of Church and State unheard of in Italy. Victor Emmanuel’s premier, Count Camillo di Cavour, began working quietly for indepdence.
First, Cavour sought an alliance with Napoleon III. (He sent his teenage cousin and lover to Paris to become Napoleon’s mistress and a secret agent.) Cavour’s alliance came through in 1858, and Napoleon promised a 200,000 man army to drive out the Austrians from Italy. Cavour then mobilized the Piedmontese army; the Austrians demanded he stand down. Cavour refused; the Austrians invaded. Napoleon sent his army to protect the Piedmont. Revolutions then “spontaneously” drove the Austrian-supported rulers from central Italy. The Austrians were driven from Italy, but only after Napoleon III became nauseated at his first sight of battle.
At the Treaty of Villafranca, Napoleon and Franz Joseph agreed to terms. Victor Emmanuel accepted the treaty because it unified northern Italy. Cavour was furious nonetheless.
Southern Italy was united when Garibaldi joined a Sicilian revolution and set up a provisional government there. Following votes in Sicily, southern Italy, and central Italy to join the Piedmont, the Kingdom of Italy was born in March 1861 with Victor Emmanuel II as the first king. Venetia was still Austrian, and Rome was still protected by the French army. After losing a battle to the papal armies, Garibaldi retired to his farm where he farmed with a team of donkeys named Napoleon III, Pius IX, and Immaculate Conception. Venice joined Italy in 1866 when the Prussians defeated Austria in the Seven Weeks’ War; Rome became part of Italy (and its capital) when the French withdrew in 1870 following the Franco-Prussian War.
Germany
After the 1848 revolutions, Germany was again a loose confederation of roughly 39 states, including the Austrian Empire and Prussia. Prussia soon became the leading German state because of its advanced army and efficient government.
The Prussian army’s advantages:
The army introduced a major innovation: the General Staff, a group of officers to organize and plan warfare. The Prussian General Staff quickly adapted industrial techniques to military materiel.
1859: Frederick William IV named General Albrecht von Roon as the new minister of war. Roon chose General Helmuth von Moltke to serve as chief of the General Staff. The army needed money; the liberals in the Landtag refused to give it. In 1862, Wilhelm I named another Roon friend, Otto von Bismarck, as Minister-President and Foreign Minister.
Bismarck was a Junker and diplomat who believed in realpolitik. Bismarck’s motto: A statesman... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment. Bismarck simply ignored the liberals and levied taxes, collected the money and spent it without legislation, a budget, or accounting. Moltke was able to buy breech-loading rifles and Krupp cannons. Bismarck’s philosophy: “The great issues to the day will not be decided by speeches and the decisions of a parliamentary majority... but by iron and blood.”
Bismarck’s wars:
This time, General von Moltke added telegrams to his advantages. The Prussians drove the French army out of Alsace, then captured Napoleon III at the battle of Sedan. Napoleon was overthrown and the Third Republic was proclaimed 2 days later. The Prussians besieged Paris for 4 months, forcing the Parisians to eat zoo animals, domestic pets, rats, and finally shoe leather before the French government surrendered in January 1871.
After the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia took Alsace and part of Lorriane. The French were forced to watch as Bismarck declared a German nation at Versailles and the Prussian army took a triumphal march down the Champs Elysee. France was forced to pay an indemnity of 5 billion francs, and Germany was allowed to occupy eastern France until it was paid
France recalled its army from Rome.
Meanwhile, the Austrians had finally made peace with the Hungarians by allowing them joint status in the empire. The Hungarians were allowed self-rule, and the empire was renamed the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Vienna controlled the western half, while the Hungarians controlled the eastern half.