In the Europe of the first half of the 19th century, dominated by autocratic states or doubtfully parliamentary monarchies, a series of revolutions. Liberal demands championed: suffrage, equality, end of servitude… This article will deal with the third wave revolution of the century, the revolutionary process of 1848, also known as the Spring of the Peoples. Those who were the main actors of the revolutionary wave of 1848 are treated: France, Prussia, Austria and Italy, although their trace was global.
In the years before 1848, the countryside around Lemberg (Lviv) was in turmoil. The news had spread that the bosses were rising up against the emperor, the last defense that protected the peasant from his abuses. Vain promises about liberation and rights soon followed, but they were not trusted by the memory of days gone by. The response of the locals, of Ukrainian ethnicity, became known as the Galician Massacre. Death reached thousands of nobles, their heads being handed over to the authorities who ended up curbing the situation. The emperor was protected, promising to free the peasant, his creed and also the stability of the place, which they most wanted to preserve. Or so they believed. This event, which occurred in February 1846, was a preceding of what happened in two years, during 1848, on a continental scale in the well-known Spring of the Peoples.
The revolutionary era marked the continent ideologically, the Napoleonic Wars expanding its ideology, and its ideological trail could not be eliminated. Already in 1815 the victorious powers – Prussia, Russia, Austria and England – agreed on the new European order in the Congress of Vienna, led by Austrian Chancellor Metternich. This congress focused on giving both external and internal “stability” to the states. Faced with the danger of a new great war, they preferred to avoid it. While in the same way the first three powers, with the leadership of the tzar Nicholas I, formed the Holy Alliance, by which they would intervene at any time in the European states in the event of liberal-revolutionary outbreaks. England abstained, beginning to fear the power of the Russian colossus.
Years later, in 1820, the first post-Napoleonic revolutionary wave occurred, mainly affecting the Mediterranean through military uprisings. In Spain Colonel Rafael de Riego triumphed with his pronouncement. However, European reaction dissolved the regime in 1823 by force. If the totality of the uprisings of the time coincided in something, it was in their numerical limitation. They were reduced to small groups lawyers who believed that through their gesture society would be carried away by the common benefit. For this reason, the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) drew attention. This was not limited to the uprising of prominent figures, but that of the whole “nation” as a bloc against the oppressor. He attracted the sympathy of a Europe that ended up intervening against the Ottomans. Although it was this gesture, completed in 1829 with Greek independence, that broke the first fragment of the Congress of Vienna (Hobsbawm, 1964: 123).
In 1830 a new insurrectionary wave began, but in this case through revolutionary days, whose symbol was the barricade. Firstly, Carlos X de Borbón was thrown from the throne, whose attempts to reinstate absolutism did not please. In his place was placed Luís Felipe de Orleans, known as the “citizen king”, with promises of a liberal and tolerant government. Other victories followed one another at the time, such as the Belgian split from the Kingdom of Holland; while the rest ended in failure, such as the Polish repression, the German defeat at the hands of the Austrians and Prussians, and the uprisings of the secret societies in Italy.
The revolutions of 1830 raised two key elements for understanding the phenomenon: the first is that France, and even more Paris, was consolidated as the center of the revolutiontradition inherited from the last century. The second, that the revolutionary front, made up of moderate upper bourgeoisie to the most radical, opposed to absolutism, broke up. Now some monopolized power while the requests of others were ignored. Henceforth the moderates would choose between one side or the other (Hobsbawm, 1964: 115).
Revolutions and industrialization
An important factor at the time is the Industrial Revolution, of which England was a champion. Initiated from the agrarian sector, it did not begin to be noticed in the rest of the continent until 1830. The rural sector required a greater number of iron instruments, which, together with technical and property advances, greatly increased production and with demography, which reached a new peak (Kriedte, 1983: 101). The steel industry also advanced, skyrocketing with the advent of the railway. Classic rural manufacturing was also slowly supplanted by urban manufacturing with the factory system (Hobsbawm, 1964: 33).
In large areas of Eastern Europe serfdom began to be abolished or be progressively replaced by paid work. An example of this is Prussia and its peasant tradition of protest. After the Thirty Years’ War, the depopulation of Brandenburg forced the nobility junker to give better conditions to its peasantry. Over time, these nobles tried to revoke such concessions, to which the workers, with amazing organization and speed, reacted by sabotaging the noble attempts in different ways. Faced with such failures, the nobleman ended up progressively replacing his servants with employees, although the process took a long time. (Clark, 2016: 214)
In some cases such abolition was “little” beneficial. Before, the peasant, even in precarious conditions, had a minimum of legal protection that the lord had to provide in case of adverse situation. With the end of servitude, not only did production increase, since more is produced when there is an incentive than when it is done in a forced way, but the employer saved those aids. In this way, and in cases like the Prussian having to pay for his independence with land, many peasants were either fired or could not live from their work. This happened when agricultural products were devalued due to the surplus, workers stopped consuming and thereby impoverishing the crafts (Clark, 2016: 549).
At this point began a migration uncontrolled from the countryside to the city, in which neighborhoods proliferated without planning or basic services. Poor sewerage, overcrowding and lack of basic services ended up turning poor neighborhoods into nests of epidemics. And through inventions such as gas lighting, working hours could be extended to 3:00 p.m., with which the worker could live with just enough (Rapport, 2008: 43). Such a situation led to two options, either a demoralization that plunged the worker into passivity, or small acts of protest such as non-payment of taxes or petty theft. They led to a climate of rebellion that was the breeding ground for later events (Hobsbawm, 1964: 192).
France in 1848
The advent of Luis Felipe in 1830 as “monarch of the French”, implying such a formula popular sovereignty, proceeded with great joy on the part of the population. Even great fears aroused among the Europe of the Congress of Vienna, but soon agents like Metternich calmed down when they saw the moderate mood of the new king (Rapport, 2008: 29).
With his government, a “expansive peace” through which he wanted to make the country prosper economically, starting its industrialization. But the liberties granted were minimal, closing down newspapers, banning unions, or excluding the middle class from government altogether. An example of this is its insignificant increase in suffrage, from 166,000 people in 1831 to only 244,000 in 1846 (Hobsbawm, 1964: 287), ignoring the lower bourgeoisie or workers. Assassination attempts like the one in 1834 or attempts at rebellion did not take long to arrive, before which the government became more hardened. Alexis de Tocqueville, a liberal of the time, defined the French upper bourgeoisie as the “government class” in a government in which, due to lack of discrepancies, since everyone was of equal status, there was no “political life” (Tocqueville, 1984: 66).
Finally everything was biased against the monarch. Luís Felipe (with his classic “bourgeois” appearance) could no longer shield himself as a son of the revolution, since his only support was the oligarchy; nor in his break with the past, since he neither accepted the possibility of any reform nor heeded the suffragist requests (Palmade, 1981: 31). The crisis that spread throughout Europe after 1846 worsened the situation, with widespread unemployment and hunger in many neighborhoods of the capital. Which at that time, as a European symbol of past times, was a refuge for all exiled or revolutionary at European level. His role was active in future uprisings (Hobsbawm, 1964: 127).
Given the denial of new reforms by Minister Guizot and due to the established prohibition of meetings, the opposition began to hold “banquets”, thus avoiding the law and continuing with their meetings. These grew in size with subversive messages against the current government (not the monarchy) until the banquet scheduled for February 22 was finally banned. Taking advantage of this, the Republicans and Radicals encouraged a march (when until then it was the moderates who led the campaign). It started from the Place de la Madeleine, with the intention of reaching the Chamber of Deputies to ask for reforms, but the army diverted it. In the city at that time there were 31,000 regular soldiers, 3,900 policemen and 85,000 national guardsmen. The government was believed to be secure, but the loyalty of the latter was questionable (Rapport, 2008: 50).
The first shots were fired, the demonstrators dispersing among the alleys of the artisans, erecting barricades. On the afternoon of the 23rd, Luís Felipe, seeing that the situation could get out of control, fired Guizot. Joy was widespread in the city. But that same night a column of soldiers prevented the passage of the crowd towards the ex-minister’s house, firing a volley that mowed down 50 demonstrators. Not even giving a government to the left of Barrot and Thiers (who would repress the Paris commune years later) could stop the popular revolt and the republicanism that continued (Rapport, 2008: 65).
The troops sent to suppress the revolution could do little, with a national guard that either refused to fight or deserted. Finally the king abdicated on February 24 to his grandson the Count of Paris, who, with his mother the Countess of Orleans, stood up in the assembly even at the risk of his life and, according to Tocqueville, with great courage (Tocqueville, 1984: 103). However, the tumult that erupted in the room prevented anything other than the proclamation of a…