Europe:1848-50

In the summer of 1848, economic recovery began across Europe. In Switzerland, those favoring liberalism and national unity were victorious. Switzerland's civil war was over, and Switzerland was unified into a single federated nation with a constitution modeled after that of the United States. Democratic rights were guaranteed to all people of the Christian faith. September 12, 1848, the day the new constitution was issued, became an annual celebration. (In 1866 democratic rights would be extended to everyone.)

Another state that remained liberal was Belgium, with lowered requirements for participating in elections.

In France, in December, 1848, a nephew of Napoleon, Louis-Napoleon, a member in 1848 of France's Constituent Assembly, ran for President of the Republic. He was helped by his name, but he disassociated himself from his uncle, saying "I am moved by no ambition which dreams one day of empire and war." He ran as everybody's friend and announced that he would "ever remain faithful to the duties which your suffrages and the will of the Assembly impose upon me." He was overwhelmingly elected, winning by a margin of almost four to one -- supported by some wealthy bourgeoisie, by peasants, some workers, socialists and by the Catholic Church.

In December, 1848, in Austria, people around Emperor Ferdinand convinced him to step aside in favor of his eighteen-year-old nephew, Franz Joseph, who had been carefully groomed for rule by his mother, princess Sophia. Ferdinand was only fifty-five, but he had been subject to periods of mental incapacity and was childless. He went along with the transfer of power, telling Franz Joseph "Be good and God will protect you." Franz Joseph had demonstrated only mediocre intelligence for his tutors, but he had a love of uniforms and the military, and he was devoted to his duties and to his Catholic faith. He believed in the sanctity of his Habsburg inheritance and ignored its mundane origins in property ownership, opportune marriages, bloodshed and historical accident. He held a firm and intense belief that Habsburg rule was ordained by the grace of God.

Franz Joseph taking the throne was the beginning of a harder line in Austria. Parliament was forced to drop the claim that sovereignty was derived from the people -- which to Franz Joseph and his mother was blasphemy. And the position taken by those around the new emperor was that Franz Joseph was not bound by any of the agreements or promises that had been made by Ferdinand, including promises to the Hungarians.

In January, 1849, troubles were brewing in Rome. Pellegrino Rossi, who had been chosen by Pope Pius IX as prime minister had been assassinated. Conservatives in Rome boycotted elections for the new Constituent Assembly, resulting in mostly left-wingers being elected as deputies, and on February 8 the new assembly replaced the Pope's secular monarchy with a republic. Religious conformity was removed as a qualification for citizenship. Some resisted these changes by resorting to violence. The Pope disguised himself as a monk and fled to the conservative haven of Naples-Sicily.

In Piedmont, meanwhile, democrats won parliamentary elections. In March, a new prime minister took office, and on March 20, 1849, he discarded the peace agreement with Austria and moved troops toward Lombardy. General Radetzky and his army intercepted the Piedmontese ten miles short of the border with Lombardy, at Novara, and he defeated them. King Charles Albert took refuge in a Portuguese monastery and died in July, leaving his son, Victor Emmanuel, to deal with the victorious Radetzky.

In Florence in February, 1849, an uprising against the authority of its Grand Duke had resulted in the Grand Duke and his minister fleeing and revolutionaries taking power. Encouraged by Radestzky's victory at Novara, the countryside in Tuscany rallied in favor of the restoration of their Grand Duke and the restoration of Pope Pius IX in Rome. The government that had taken power in Florence opposed waging war against their opposition. They withdrew to the stronghold of radicalism in the port city of Livorno, where people were determined to resist the conservative forces. At the end of April, Austrian troops arrived in Tuscany to secure the rule of the Grand Duke, and an assault on Livorno suppressed the rebels there.

In April, France's professed friend of the Roman Catholic Church, Louis-Napoleon, sent French troops on a mission to restore the power of Pope Pius IX in Rome -- while armed bands of republicans and pro-papal conservatives were still trying to kill each other. The French troops believed they would be welcomed as liberators. Austria was also determined to restore the Pope in Rome, and its troops were advancing through the Papal States. In Rome, supporting the republic, were the Italian nationalists Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi and his troops.

In April, the Habsburg monarchy formally withdrew from its 1848 agreement with Hungary and now considered Hungary to be one of its provinces. Hungary responded on April 14 by declaring itself independent and a constitutional republic, with Lajos (Louis) Kossuth its president. International backing did not follow, with Britain among those who rejected Hungarian independence and support for the Habsburg monarchy.

In May another rising occurred in Sicily, and the king of Naples-Sicily, Ferdinand II, sent an army that crushed it.

In Germany, meanwhile, the National Assembly in Frankfurt had completed its constitution for a united Germany. The Assembly offered Wilhelm IV imperial authority over a united Germany, but Wilhelm turned it down, saying in private that he did not want a crown given him from the gutter. Wilhelm's rejection of the assembly's constitution inspired mass meetings and demonstrations in much of Germany, except where people had recently been defeated at the barricades - as in Berlin. The mass meetings and demonstrations developed into armed rebellions, with armed civil guards and army reservists pledging loyalty to the National Assembly's constitution. Prominent in the gatherings were red flags -- symbols of radical republicanism. Speakers denounced Wilhelm as a blood soaked murderer and a tyrant. In the city of Dresden, in Saxony, in the Grand Duchy of Baden and in the Palatinate in the Rhineland, revolutionaries took power. But in June the risings were overpowered by Prussian or Austrian armies, in the usual manner of artillery shelling followed by a cleanup assault by infantry. The National Assembly fled from Frankfurt to Stuttgart, and there it was scattered by troops from the German kingdom of Wüerttemburg.

Another armed rising took place also in Paris, and people in Lyons raised barricades, in opposition to Louis-Napoleon's intervention against the Roman Republic. These risings were easily overwhelmed by the military force, followed again by the arrest or flight of many of the leaders of the political left.

In June, Franz Joseph's government asked Tsar Nicholas of Russia for help against the Hungarians -- in the spirit of the Holy Alliance against ungodly rebellion. Nicholas was eager to crush Hungarian nationalism to prevent it from spreading to his Polish subjects. Indeed, some Poles were fighting alongside the Hungarians. The Russian force was around 370,000 men, against Hungary's 152,000, and the Russians had the advantage in artillery.

In early July, French troops overcame the resistance of Rome's republican forces -- Garibaldi fleeing to Piedmont, and later to the United States, to fight another day. Rome's republic was no more. The French military paved the way for the return of the Pope and his authority, which was not to come for nine months.

A five-week siege by Austrian troops against Venice ended with the surrender of Venice in August -- Venice suffering also from cholera and starvation. And with the surrender came the reprisal executions of Venetian leaders.

Also in August the Russians overwhelmed the Hungarians at Világos, near the city of Arad, ending Hungarian resistance. Lajos Kossuth fled to the United States. The Austrians took control of Hungary, and they executed thirteen who had been high-ranking officers in the Hungarian army.

The nationalist movement among Romanians was also crushed, most of its leaders fleeing to Paris -- Napoleon III, not quite an ally of Austria, in sympathy with their cause.

Austria was exhausted and satisfied that its wars were over. It left Savoy-Piedmont independent and a constitutional monarchy under Victor Emanuel. Austria imposed a repressive regime on Hungary and ruled Transylvania directly through a military governor. In Austria itself the Constituent Assembly had been dissolved and a constitution created that left no checks on the power of the monarchy. The monarchy wanted whatever reforms that were created to be seen as its creation, not a creation from below. The Church retained all the powers that had been denied it in 1848, including in schooling. Freedom of the press was nominal, but the press and publishing of ideas was again subject to restrictions. Secular teachers were harassed and professors again subject to governmental scrutiny and harassment.

Tariffs within the Habsburg empire were abolished and a customs union created, which benefited the empire's economy. And feudal obligations were terminated, a move to help win the hearts of peasants and which also had the blessing of those who had been feudal lords, who were paid compensation for their loss.

Prussia emerged from the turmoil of 1848-49 with government programs to mollify peasants and others who labored. Prime Minister Brandenburg was one of those aristocrats who disliked the way that industrialists were treating their workers. He believed that the times called for governmental action that provided common people with some protections -- while preserving conservative monarchism.

Brandenburg created a constitution as did other German states, and Wilhelm IV eventually (in 1859) swore allegiance to "a piece of paper." Prussia maintained an upper and lower chambers of parliament, with powers over taxes and the budget. A third of its seats went to those who paid the top third in taxes.

Practicing good politics, Brandenburg made some concessions to the industrialists, seeing industrial and technological advances as good for the country. Freedom of the press and expression was nominal under Prussia's new constitution and subject to government control. The conservatives were devoted to improving education and science, which they saw as contributing to the nation's power.

Prussia's government had ended Serfdom earlier in the century, "looking enviously at England and the Netherlands," according to Joyce Appleby, they hoped to make agriculture more efficient. A decree in Prussia in March, 1850, moved 640,000 peasants to free farming. Landlords received the same kind of compensation that the aristocrats did in Austria's empire. Appleby writes:

...landlords who controlled the government, took hundreds of thousands of acres from these newly feed serfs, who were left to fend for themselves as agricultural laborers. (The Relentless Revolution, p. 170)

In Europe, serfdom remained only within the Russian empire and Ottoman-ruled territory.

Economic Recovery, Political and Social Change, 1848-50