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World News for this month

In his war against the Austrian army, King Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia was holding back, hoping that British and French troops might fight in place of his troops - support that would never arrive. Meanwhile, the commander of the Habsburg force in northern Italy, General Joseph Radetzky, was employing terror against the Italians. In mid-April, in Venetia he burned the village of Montebelo and slaughtered its men, women and children, the news of which dampened enthusiasm for rebellion against Austria. And that month, Pope Pius IX turned against Italian nationalism and called for peace and an end to Catholics fighting Catholics. Pius IX was siding with Catholic universalism, traditionally opposed to nationalism -- a universalism promoted also by the Catholic Habsburg Empire.

In mid-May, 1848, barricades went up in Naples, accompanied by demands that armed forces be sent to join the war against Austrian occupation of Italian lands to the north. In June, with the help of Swiss mercenaries and pro-monarchist casual laborers, the king of Naples-Sicily, Ferdinand II, crushed the rebellion.

Czech nationalists were also crushed. The most radical of Czech nationalists had placed their hopes in a pan-Slav movement, which met in Prague in June. They were at odds with the Germans in Prague and elsewhere in Bohemia. And the Czech nationalists were opposed by democrats, liberals and conservatives in Vienna. In mid-June, an Austrian army led by Alfred Windeschgätz clashed with Czechs in Prague who had build barricades. Militarily, range remained significant, artillery having a greater range than weapons held by those behind the barricades. Windeschgätz used artillery against those at the barricades in Prague, and the Czech nationalists were crushed. Windeschgätz dissolved the pan-Slav congress and arrested the leaders of the Czech nationalist uprising.

In July, General Radetzky, routed the troops of Piedmont and other Italian troops and marched into Milan. The French considered intervening on the side of the Italians, but the French government decided against it. On August 5 an armistice was signed, ending the war between Piedmont and the Austrians. The people of Milan blamed the return of Austrian troops to their city on Charles Albert. Disgusted by the armistice, an Italian nationalist leader in the Italian Alps, Giuseppe Garibaldi, refused to disband his volunteer militia. The war between the kings was over, he declared, and now a war of the people would begin.

It was in August that the Habsburg emperor, Ferdinand, returned to Vienna, and, in September, Austria's National Assembly voted to abolish serfdom - with compensation for those landlords who lost serfs. The Austrians, meanwhile, were maneuvering to regain control of Hungary, Vienna was upset by the refusal of Hungarians to serve in military units fighting for Habsburg rule in northern Italy. Violence had broken out between the Hungarians on one hand and Croats and Rumanians on the other, the latter two resisting Hungarian domination. Austria sided against the Hungarians and for order within the empire. On September 11, an Austrian army crossed the Drava River, from Croatia into Hungary. It was not marching rapidly toward Budapest, but people in Budapest were alarmed. On September 28, when an Austrian general, Field Marshal Lamberg, arrived in Budapest for consultations, a crowd inspired by radical activists dragged him from his carriage, beat and lynched him. The government in Vienna responded by declaring the government in Budapest dissolved.

In October, Austria's Minister of War, Count Theodor von Latour, ordered reinforcements for an army marching against the Hungarians. Some subject to military orders rebelled against being sent into Hungary, and an impassioned mob in Vienna seized Count Latour in the street and hanged him from a lamp post. This rising in Vienna put the city under the control of the left again, and Emperor Ferdinand and his court fled again - to the German town of Olmütz (Olomouc) in Moravia. The conflict between the radicals in Vienna and conservative Austrians, including the monarchy, had come to a head, with the majority of the Viennese opposed to the radicals.

From Olmütz orders were sent to the Royal Habsburg army in Hungary to take control of Vienna. The army reached the outskirts of Vienna at the end of October. They shelled positions held by the small and amateurish army formed by the radicals, and once again artillery put an end to rebellion. Approximately 2000 radicals were killed in the fighting, and defeated radicals were executed. The army's commander, Windeschgätz, exercised political power in behalf of the emperor and replaced Austria's liberal head of government (the Prime Minister), with his brother-in-law, Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, who favored a return of monarchical absolutism.

The turn of events in Vienna encouraged Wilhelm IV in Prussia to move against leftist disturbances and his kingdom's constitutional monarchists. On his orders, in early November, 13,000 soldiers from the nearby town of Potsdam marched into Berlin and put an end to street demonstrations and the making of noises through the night at the homes of targeted conservatives. Wilhelm replaced his prime minister, Ernst Heinrich Adolf von Pfuel, a constitutional monarchist, with a conservative military commander, Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg. Brandenburg moved 50,000 troops into Berlin and forced retirement of the Constituent Assembly that Wilhelm had agreed to months before. Gone with the Constituent Assembly were the proposals of liberals that army officers take an oath of loyalty to a constitution rather than to the emperor, that the nobility be denied its titles and privileges and that the emperor be denied "by the grace of God" from his title.

Opposed to Wilhelm's reaction and the new Brandenburg government, crowds in a few cities tried to seize government buildings, but to no avail. Wilhelm's armed forces restored order. The National Assembly in Frankfurt, however, remained in session. And liberal constitutions remained in Saxony and Bavaria, where liberals won election victories.

Developments to 1850

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.

More Trouble in Italy

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 have 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, 1849, Karl Marx was in Paris, living under the alias of M. Ramboz. He had been forced to leave Germany, after having been jailed for a week and then released. He had not been entirely displeased by the move, believing that France was ready for a great revolution. But with the crackdown that followed the rising in Paris in mid-June and discovery by the police that M. Ramboz was a radical activist, Karl Marx was ordered out of the city, to the Morbihan area of Brittany, which he believed to be a pestilent swamp and death trap. Instead, Marx chose to go to London where he was to live until his death in 1883.

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. New freedoms won by peasants were maintained, with the same kind of compensation to aristocrats as in the Austrian Empire. And a decree in Prussia in March, 1850, moved 640,000 peasants in Prussia to free farming.

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

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