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REFORM and REVOLUTION in EUROPE to 1850

In Vienna, workers issued demands for universal voting rights, a ministry of labor, a minimum wage and a ten-hour work day, and Vienna's bourgeoisie did not like it. Another disturbance to the bourgeoisie was the newspapers that sprang up with the new press freedom. These papers were competing with each other for readership and resorting to sensationalism -- similar to the vitriolic newspapers that sprang up in France in the 1780s. The most successful of these Viennese papers was the creation of Leipold Häfner, which attacked bureaucrats, priests, aristocrats and others, and Häfner's paper was seen by the bourgeoisie as stirring up lawlessness. There were in Austria discomforting disturbances such as physical assaults against monasteries and Church properties, and leftists were demonstrating their displeasure with people by mock serenades at night against priests, shopkeepers they considered to be overcharging customers, tavern keepers not sufficiently generous in dispensing free drinks, employers and landlords - landlords the most frequent target. By late April, many in Vienna were afraid of mob violence and attacks on private property, and they wanted an end to disorder in the streets.

The liberal nobility and the bourgeoisie who had been enthusiastic about political change in early March were satisfied with the constitution that the emperor, Ferdinand, had issued on April 25. But some who still wanted change complained among other things, about the emperor's veto power over legislation. And among the unhappy were university students. In late May they rebelled against a move to disband their armed units. With their allies on the left, they built barricades -- a second rising to defend the first rising. They did not have the support they had had in the first rising, but they appeared to be more of a threat to the emperor and his family, who fled to Innsbruck, in Austria's mountainous west. This troubled the mass of Viennese, many of whom looked upon their king as a kindly, protecting father, fearing that without their emperor Vienna would fall into ruin. Those leading this second rising were surprised by the coldness with which the common Viennese responded to their impositions. They applied pressure on the government, and the government began public works projects. Then, in mid-June, men working on government projects rioted. They wanted higher pay and threatened to join anti-government forces if their demands were unmet. The government crushed the revolt and arrested its leaders.

Emperor Ferdinand remained in Innsbruck, while the second-wave revolutionaries continued as an out-of-government force -- with no majority in Vienna supporting the kind of reforms that they wanted. Meanwhile, both the second-waver revolutionaries and the liberals in government were ignoring that which was necessary to insure the success of revolutionary political change:control over the military. Austria's army was still in the field defending the Habsburg Empire and not committed to the political change that had followed the March rising.

Revolutionaries Crushed in France -- June Days, 1848

In March, 1848, France's provisional government had given in to leftist demands for universal manhood suffrage and the creation of public works. And the government had also abolished the slavery that had remained in France's colonies. The government remained divided between those supporting bourgeois aspirations and those who favored programs for the urban poor, including reduced working hours and the total abolition of unemployment. To meet the need for more money to pay for public works, the government raised taxes, which upset the majority of France's taxpayers: the small farmers. Universal manhood suffrage then proved to be other than helpful for the left. In the April 23, small farmers swung the elections for representatives to a constituent assembly. Of the assembly's 880 seats, about 500 went to moderate republicans, about 300 went to constitutional monarchists and only 80 went to the radicals representing the interests of urban workers.

France's economy was still depressed, and, in early May, Parisians were protesting against the new Constituent Assembly's lack of enthusiasm for reform. In mid-May a mob invaded the assembly and proclaimed another revolution -- a defiance of the will of the majority expressed in the recent elections. The National Guard defended the government and arrested leaders of the disturbance.

In June, the Constituent Assembly moved to disband what it considered the un-economical public works program. Workers and their student supporters built barricades again. The government prepared to do what Louis-Philippe had chosen not to do:to send the army against the barricades. It empowered a leading general, Louis Eugene Cavaignac, for this task -- Cavaignac a man with a past in revolution and republicanism. Those supporting the people at the barricades saw the government as having turned against workers. That the government had the support of an overwhelming majority of the French nation did not matter. The people at the barricades were trying to make revolution against the will of the nation as a whole -- not a formula for success. An army man who had sympathies for those at the barricades, General Bréa, went to persuade people there that they were making a mistake. He and his chief of staff were invited inside the barricades and assassinated. That same day, the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Affre, went to the barricades and he too was murdered. The people at the barricades were uninterested in discussion. They had rejected the politics of patience, persuasion, tolerance and reform. They wanted to fight.

Using its artillery -- as Napoleon had against Parisians in 1795 -- and then an advance of riflemen, Cavaignac's army of 40,000 easily crushed the rebellion. Approximately 1,500 were killed at the barricades. Twelve thousand were arrested, and the streets were cleared once again. The so-called June Days revolution was over.

German Radicalism versus Conservatism

In Frankfurt, a self-appointed Vorparlament (preliminary parliament) had been in session, attended by men who favored a united Germany and a liberal constitutional monarchy. They organized elections to nominate delegates to a National Assembly for all of Germany, and the elections were held across Germany. The 585 elected delegates to the National Assembly opened their first meeting in Frankfurt, on May 18, 1848. Most of the delegates were professors or men with a university education, and the assembly was dubbed the professors' parliament.

But enthusiasm for reform in Germany was dying. Viewing the upheaval in Paris, Germans were thinking that if political agitation and pretty speeches resulted in violence and disorder perhaps reforms should be slowed.

Karl Marx by now had returned to Cologne, where he was running a small newspaper. The paper's banner declared itself an advocate of democracy, and it bore the name of New Rhineland Newspaper (Neue Rheinisch Zeitung) -- a paper he was able to create because of contributions from wealthy British liberals. But Marx was for class struggle and he was not satisfied with liberal reforms. He was annoyed by what he described as the bourgeoisie tumbling over each other in a hurry to patch up their differences with those in power. He described the National Assembly in Frankfurt as going the way of all bourgeois parliaments: headed for conciliation and appeasement rather than siding with change in the interest of the masses.

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Copyright © 2002 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.