Revolutions of 1848: The Springtime of Peoples in Europe

The Revolutions of 1848 were a wave of uprisings that spread across much of Europe within a few weeks in early 1848, toppling or shaking governments from Paris to Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, Milan and Venice. Known as the “Springtime of Peoples”, they demanded constitutions, civil liberties, national independence or unity, and relief from economic distress. By the end of 1849 almost all had been defeated, yet they changed European politics and left reforms that were never reversed.

Background and causes

After the defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna had restored monarchies and created a conservative order guarded above all by the Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich. Liberals wanted written constitutions, elected parliaments, freedom of the press and equality before the law. Nationalists wanted states that matched their peoples: a united Germany and Italy, and self-government for Hungarians, Poles, Czechs and others within the multinational Austrian Empire.

Economic hardship turned discontent into crisis. Potato blight and poor grain harvests in 1845–1847 drove food prices to their highest levels in decades, and a financial and commercial crisis in 1847 threw many artisans and workers out of work. Cities had grown quickly, and many craftsmen felt threatened by factories and free markets. Earlier revolutions, notably the July Revolution of 1830 in France, showed that governments could fall quickly.

France: the February Revolution and the June Days

The first uprising came in Palermo, Sicily, in January 1848, but the decisive spark was in Paris. King Louis-Philippe’s government had banned a series of political “banquets” held to demand wider voting rights. On 22 February 1848 crowds took to the streets, barricades went up and the National Guard sided with the protesters. On 24 February Louis-Philippe abdicated and fled to England, and a Provisional Government including the poet Alphonse de Lamartine proclaimed the Second Republic.

The new republic introduced universal male suffrage, abolished slavery in the French colonies and set up National Workshops to provide work for the unemployed. The socialist Louis Blanc chaired the Luxembourg Commission, which discussed working hours and conditions, and a decree limited the working day in Paris to ten hours. Political clubs and newspapers multiplied, and women’s clubs and journals demanded rights for women, though the republic did not give women the vote. Elections in April produced a conservative assembly, however, and when it moved to close the workshops, Parisian workers rose in revolt. In the June Days of 23–26 June 1848 General Louis-Eugène Cavaignac crushed the uprising; several thousand people were killed and thousands more were later deported. In December 1848 Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, was elected president by a large majority. His coup of 1851 ended the republic.

The Austrian Empire: Vienna, Prague and Hungary

News from Paris reached Vienna quickly. On 13 March 1848 students and workers demonstrated, troops fired, and that evening Metternich resigned and fled to Britain. The government promised a constitution, and an elected Reichstag (imperial parliament) met in July. Its most lasting act, passed in September 1848, abolished the remaining feudal obligations of the peasants, ending serfdom in the empire.

The empire’s nationalities pulled in different directions. In Hungary the reformers led by Lajos Kossuth won the April Laws, which created a responsible government in Budapest; this developed into the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and a full war of independence. In Prague a Slav Congress met in June, but an uprising there was put down by Field Marshal Alfred zu Windischgrätz. In October a radical uprising in Vienna was crushed by Windischgrätz and the Croatian commander Josip Jelačić, and in December the young Franz Joseph replaced his uncle Ferdinand as emperor. Hungary held out until August 1849, when Austria, with the help of some 200,000 Russian troops, forced its surrender.

The German states

In March 1848 rulers across the German Confederation appointed liberal ministers and promised reforms. In Berlin, fighting on 18 March left around 300 people dead, and King Frederick William IV withdrew his troops, honoured the fallen and promised a constitution and a Prussian national assembly.

A German National Assembly, the Frankfurt Parliament, opened in May 1848 and drew up a constitution for a united Germany. In April 1849 Frederick William IV refused the imperial crown it offered him, and the uprisings that followed in Saxony, the Palatinate and Baden were crushed by Prussian troops by July 1849. In south-west Germany radicals tried to go further: in April 1848 Friedrich Hecker led an armed attempt to proclaim a republic in Baden, which was quickly defeated by federal troops. In Prussia the elected national assembly in Berlin clashed with the king over the powers of the crown, and in November 1848 troops returned to the capital and the assembly was moved and then dissolved. Prussia did keep a constitution, imposed by the king in December 1848 and revised in 1850, though it was far from democratic.

Italy

In Italy the revolutions combined demands for constitutions with a war to expel Austria from the north. Rulers in Naples, Tuscany, Piedmont-Sardinia and the Papal States granted constitutions in early 1848. In March the people of Milan drove out the Austrian army in the “Five Days”, and Venice proclaimed the Republic of San Marco under Daniele Manin. King Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia declared war on Austria in March 1848. The constitution he had granted that month, the Statuto Albertino, survived his defeat and later became the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy. In the war, however, he was defeated at Custoza in July 1848 and again at Novara in March 1849, after which he abdicated.

In Rome Pope Pius IX fled in November 1848, and a Roman Republic was proclaimed in February 1849, led by Giuseppe Mazzini and defended by Giuseppe Garibaldi. French troops restored papal rule in July 1849, and Venice surrendered to Austria in August 1849 after a long siege and a cholera epidemic.

Elsewhere in Europe

In Denmark, peaceful pressure ended absolute monarchy and produced a constitution in June 1849, while a war broke out with the German states over Schleswig and Holstein. In the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, under Ottoman suzerainty and Russian influence, Romanian liberals briefly took power in Bucharest in June 1848 before Ottoman and Russian troops restored the old order in September. The Netherlands adopted a liberal constitution in 1848 without revolution, and Switzerland, after a short civil war in 1847, adopted a federal constitution in September 1848. In Britain the Chartist movement held a mass meeting in London in April, and in Ireland the Young Ireland group attempted a small rising in July. Russia, under Nicholas I, avoided revolution and acted as the guardian of order in eastern Europe.

Key people

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869), poet and politician, was the leading figure of the French Provisional Government. Klemens von Metternich (1773–1859) symbolised the old order, and his fall became the signal of its collapse. Lajos Kossuth (1802–1894) led Hungary’s struggle and became a celebrated exile. Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) was the prophet of Italian republican nationalism. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808–1873) turned the French Republic’s democratic vote to his own advantage and became Emperor Napoleon III.

Why they failed and what they changed

Historians usually point to several reasons. Moderate liberals, frightened by radical and socialist demands and by street violence, often made peace with the old rulers. Rival nationalisms clashed: Germans and Czechs in Bohemia, Hungarians against Croats, Serbs and Romanians, Germans against Danes and Poles. Peasants, once freed from feudal dues, often lost interest in further change. Most decisively, the armies remained loyal to the monarchs, and Russia was ready to intervene.

The reaction after 1849 was not a simple return to the past. Serfdom was gone in the Austrian Empire, Prussia and Piedmont-Sardinia kept constitutions, and France retained universal male suffrage, even under Napoleon III. Many of the national goals of 1848 were later achieved by conservative statesmen through war rather than revolution, notably the unification of Germany under Prussia and the unification of Italy under Piedmont.

The year also saw the publication of Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto, although it played little part in events at the time. Thousands of defeated revolutionaries emigrated, many to the United States, where the “Forty-Eighters” became influential in politics, journalism and the anti-slavery movement. In Germany, Hungary and Italy, 1848 is remembered as a founding moment of democratic and national traditions.

Timeline

• 1848, 12 January: Uprising in Palermo, Sicily.
• 1848, 22–24 February: Revolution in Paris; Louis-Philippe abdicates and the Second Republic is proclaimed.
• 1848, 13 March: Uprising in Vienna; Metternich resigns.
• 1848, 15 March: Revolution in Pest; Hungary’s reform programme is proclaimed.
• 1848, 18 March: Barricade fighting in Berlin; the Five Days of Milan begin.
• 1848, 18 May: The Frankfurt Parliament opens.
• 1848, 23–26 June: The June Days uprising in Paris is crushed.
• 1848, 2 December: Franz Joseph becomes Austrian emperor.
• 1849, 23 March: Piedmont-Sardinia is defeated at Novara.
• 1849, 13 August: The Hungarian army surrenders at Világos.

Why it matters

The Revolutions of 1848 were the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history. Though they failed in the short term, they ended serfdom in central Europe, spread the ideas of constitutional government and national self-determination, and set the agenda for European politics for the rest of the nineteenth century.