The Revolutions of 1848

FEB 22 1848 · 12:00

Eugène Delacroix, 'La Liberté guidant le peuple' (1830), iconographic anchor of the 1848 revolutionary wave. Place: Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Venice, Budapest, Frankfurt, Prague, Rome Figures: Louis-Philippe, abdicating · Klemens von Metternich, fleeing · Frederick William IV of Prussia, refusing the German crown · Lajos Kossuth, Hungarian · Giuseppe Mazzini, Roman · the Frankfurt Parliament, deliberating itself out of relevance The Springtime of Peoples Paris rises on 22 February 1848 over a banned political banquet. Louis-Philippe abdicates within two days. The Second Republic is declared on 25 February. Within six weeks the contagion reaches Vienna (Metternich resigns 13 March and flees in disguise to England), Berlin (Frederick William IV bareheaded behind the coffins of the March dead), Milan (the Five Days drive Radetzky's Austrians from the city), Venice (Manin's republic restored), Budapest (Kossuth's Hungarian Diet voting itself a constitution), Frankfurt (an all-German parliament convening at the Paulskirche), Prague, Rome, Palermo, Munich. The program is liberal-nationalist and broadly consistent: constitutions, parliaments, abolition of remaining feudal dues, freedom of press and assembly, and (where applicable) national unification or independence. The Concert (see [[congress-of-vienna-1815]]) is, for a season, simply absent. What Failed and What Did Not By summer 1849 nearly every rising is suppressed. The June Days in Paris are crushed by Cavaignac. Windischgrätz retakes Prague and Vienna. Radetzky retakes Milan. A Russian army (sent by Nicholas I under the Holy Alliance's principle of intervention) destroys the Hungarian republic at Világos in August 1849. The Frankfurt Parliament, having debated all year, offers the German imperial crown to Frederick William IV of Prussia, who refuses it as a crown from the gutter. Italy and Germany remain disunited. Politically, 1848 fails. Structurally, it transmits the program. Serfdom is abolished in the Habsburg lands (and not reimposed). Constitutions granted in 1848 and then withdrawn are demanded again in 1860, in 1867, in 1871, and eventually conceded. The Marxist reading (see [[communist-manifesto-1848]], published three days before the Paris rising) reframes the failure as evidence that bourgeois revolution alone cannot resolve the social question. Italian and German unification (see [[italian-unification-1861]] and [[german-unification-1871]]) will be achieved within a generation by the more conservative means of war and dynastic consolidation. The Concert survives 1848 in form, but Video: Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Budapest. The continental wave that failed politically and won the long argument for nationalism.