Revolutions of 1848
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| Part of the Age of Revolution | |
 Barricade on the rue Soufflot,[1] an 1848 painting by Horace Vernet depicting the June Days uprising. A red flag, symbol of the workers, is visible in opposition to the tricolour of the French Second Republic. | |
| Date | 12 January 1848 – 4 October 1849 |
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| Location | |
| Also known as | Springtime of the peoples |
| Participants | People and governments of France, the German Confederation, the Austrian Empire, Italian states, Denmark, Ireland, Moldavia, Wallachia, Greater Poland, and others |
| Outcome | See Events by country or region
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The revolutions of 1848, also known as the springtime of the peoples,[2][a] were a series of revolutions throughout Europe that spanned almost two years, between January 1848 and October 1849. They remain the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history to date.[3]
The revolutions varied widely in their aims but generally opposed conservative systems, such as absolute monarchy and feudalism, and sought to establish nation states, founded on constitutionalism and popular sovereignty. The revolutionary wave began with the revolution in Sicily in January and spread across Europe after the revolution in France in February 1848.[4] Over fifty countries were affected, but with no significant coordination or cooperation among their respective revolutionaries. Some of the major political contributing factors were widespread dissatisfaction with political leadership, demands for more participation in government and democracy, for freedom of the press, and by the working class for economic rights, and the rise of nationalism.[5] Other economic factors, such as the European potato failure, triggered mass starvation, migration, and civil unrest.[6]
The uprisings were led by temporary coalitions of workers and reformers, including figures from the middle and upper classes (the bourgeoisie); however, these coalitions did not hold together for long. Many of the revolutions were quickly suppressed, as tens of thousands of people were killed, and even more were forced into exile. Despite this, significant lasting reforms included the abolition of serfdom in Austria and Hungary, the end of absolute monarchy in Denmark, and the introduction of representative democracy in the Netherlands. The revolutions were most prominent in France, Italy, the Austrian Empire, and the states of the German Confederation that would make up the German Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The wave of uprisings ended in October 1849.
Background
[edit]The revolutions were shaped by a wide variety of causes, which were linked to the short- and long-term socioeconomic transformations brought about by industrialization and the political legacy of the French Revolution. These included the adoption of modern agricultural practices and subsequent rapid population growth, the intensification of industrialization and urbanization, the repressive political environment established in reaction to the French Revolution, and the spread of ideologies opposed to repressive governments, including liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism.[7] In addition to longer-term trends, an acute economic crisis between 1845 and 1847, resulting from the combination of a food crisis and an industrial recession, led to significant civil unrest and revolutionary agitation.[8] The failure of governments to adequately address popular demands for reform led to an accumulation of discontent across Europe, culminating in the simultaneous outbreak of revolutions across the continent in 1848.[9]
Social discontent and conflict
[edit]In rural areas
[edit]
According to Jonathan Sperber, conflict over agricultural land rights was the most prevalent form of social conflict in the pre-revolutionary period.[11] The abolition of feudalism in parts of Western and Central Europe (especially in France) in the wake of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had major ramifications for the rural populace. Customary rights that peasants had once held on common land, especially to acquire wood from communal forests, were increasingly lost with the enclosure and privatization of the commons.[12] These processes were often aided by modernizing states, such as France, which, with the enactment of the Forest Code of 1827, legally abolished peasants' rights to forests and the wood within them.[13]
Peasants resorted to both legal and violent means to reclaim their land rights. Lawsuits were frequently filed by peasants against landowners, and could remain active for decades;[14] one such lawsuit in Sicily was first brought in 1829 and not settled until 1896.[15] Peasants also stole wood from privatized forests or occupied them to reassert their land rights by force.[14] Wood theft in particular was widespread in parts of Germany. Between the 1820s and 1840s, the number of those convicted of wood theft in the Bavarian Palatinate increased from 37,500 in 1821–22 to 185,000 in 1846–47, accounting for a third of the population.[16] In France, opposition to the Forest Code led to the "War of the Maidens" from 1829 to 1832, in which peasants disguised in women's clothes violently resisted the Code's implementation in the department of Ariège.[17]
Unrest among the peasantry was also widespread in regions that retained feudalism, as in parts of Central Europe and most of Eastern Europe, though this had been commonplace for several centuries.[18] Disputes and revolts were directed variously at oppressive lords, taxation and military conscription by the state, and religious authorities.[19] The largest pre-revolutionary peasant uprising against feudal lords occurred in Austrian Galicia in 1846, which put an end to the Kraków Uprising by the Polish nobility.[19]
Among urban workers
[edit]
Rapid population growth was the most serious issue affecting urban workers, as migration into the cities due to poor conditions in the countryside led to a major oversaturation of labour markets and a decline in real wages among workers, while the cost of living continued to increase.[21] Poor workers became more vulnerable to economic shocks, and the inability to afford foodstuffs other than potatoes and bread proved catastrophic amid a major food crisis affecting both between 1845 and 1847.[22] Industrialization and the transition from the traditional economy to capitalist production also negatively affected urban workers, leading to a decline in their standard of living and social status.[23] Most workers in 1848 were artisans who worked in the trades, while there were relatively few factory workers.[24] Mechanization threatened some trades, such as the textile industry and metalworking, leading to a growing sense of insecurity among artisans, who felt their livelihoods and economic agency threatened.[25]
The most prevalent disputes, however, were between employers and workers. Master craftsmen and journeymen came into increasing conflict as the guild system was weakened across Europe in the early nineteenth century. Under the new economy, master craftsmen began to accumulate wealth and were able to hire more workers, many of whom were unemployed due to the massive surplus of artisans.[26] At the same time, masters sought to prevent the growing number of journeymen and apprentices from ever advancing to become masters to protect their economic interests from growing competition.[27]
Both master craftsmen and journeymen were threatened by economic transformations within the proto-industrial putting-out system, in which self-employed artisans were contracted by capitalist merchants to manufacture finished products.[28] Conflict between merchants and artisans, especially in the textile industry, was primarily over payment disputes, as merchants frequently underpaid outworkers for their finished products to maximize profit.[29] These disputes led to civil unrest, including uprisings by weavers in Lyon in 1831 and 1834, and in Silesia in 1844.[30] Deep frustration among artisans continued into 1848, as they demanded the right of association to reclaim economic agency lost during the transition. This was advocated for both in novel forms such as the establishment of cooperatives, mutual benefit societies, and early trade unions, as in France, or through a return to the traditional guild system, as in Germany.[31]
Among the educated
[edit]The educated middle class was also affected by a decline in living standards. Across Western Europe, industrialization had increased the demand for professionals to support the new industries.[32] Societal expectations also began to favor education and careerism as means to achieve upward mobility, especially after the French Revolution. As a result, more young men across Europe enrolled in universities, expecting, according to Lenore O'Boyle, that "the diploma might do what a title of nobility had once done"[33] and they would achieve positions of leadership in society.[34] In the more industrialized economies of Britain and the United States, more educated men were able to find work in private businesses, and consequently, there was little to no revolutionary agitation among them in 1848. In mainland Europe, however, where the pace of industrialization lagged, the only available professional careers were in the civil service, which could not open enough positions to meet demand.[34]
The lack of work led to dissatisfaction among the educated, who felt that they were unable to live as their status demanded.[35] This issue was most pronounced in Germany, where overcrowding in professional careers was so severe that it gave rise to what sociologist Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl termed an "intellectual proletariat" of "underpaid and aspiring lower civil servants, journalists, and schoolteachers". The intellectual proletariat was so numerous in Germany that, according to Riehl, they, not manual labourers, comprised "the real proletariat".[36] Apart from the overcrowding of the professions, the middle class was also often deliberately excluded from political life and the bureaucracy by the state. Positions in the bureaucracy were restricted to those who could afford the education required for them, and, especially in France and the Austrian Empire, aristocrats remained influential, hindering career advancement.[37] Professionals who could not find work turned to journalism as "the last refuge of those who had failed in other middle-class or professional careers", and were able to channel their frustration into political agitation, eventually becoming leaders in the revolutions in 1848.[38]
Revolutionary politics
[edit]Ideology
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New political ideologies were emerging in the 1840s that would go on to influence the revolutions in 1848, with liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism being the principal opposition movements to European governments.
Liberals formed a distinct political force in the 19th century but varied widely in their beliefs.[40] Generally, liberals supported equality before the law and the protection of civil liberties, such as the freedoms of speech, the press, association, religion, and especially to own property, and favoured constitutions to achieve such.[41] They opposed both absolute monarchies and radical republics, which they viewed as equally despotic, and favoured constitutional monarchies as a balance between the two extremes.[42] They favoured popular sovereignty, but made a distinction between "the people" and "the rabble". To that end, liberalism generally sought a restriction of the franchise to male property-owners.[43] Liberals were reluctant to engage in revolution or seek popular support due to their fears of a radical takeover and violent mob rule, as they had experienced during the French Revolution under the Jacobins and the Reign of Terror.[44] Liberals saw gradual, political reforms and economic development through parliaments, free markets, industrialization, and public education as means by which societal equality could be achieved, as more men could become property-owners and enter into political life.[45] When liberals gained power, as in the July Monarchy in France after 1830, they trended toward conservatism, and their restriction of political life alienated wide swaths of the population, bringing them into conflict with the radical left.[46]
Radicalism generally represented the loose and ill-defined coalition of democrats and socialists.[47] Radicals differed from moderate liberals in their support for democracy and universal manhood suffrage, extending the franchise to all adult men.[48] Both liberals and radicals shared in their opposition to "backwards" institutions, and especially in their anti-clericalism, which was considered synonymous with liberal and left-wing thought, though radicals were notably more violent in their opposition.[49] While liberals were generally more concerned with political and legal questions and sought the expansion of civil liberties,[50] radicals placed greater weight on the "social question", or the question of how to address the growth and precarity of the working poor in the capitalist economy.[51] Radicals were divided as to how to address the social question; radical democrats generally sought to address the social question through regulation and state intervention, whereas socialists sought the abolition of capitalism and economic redistribution.[52] Some radical democrats were economic liberals who tended to support political reform, especially universal manhood suffrage, over economic reform, and did not support government intervention of any sort.[53][b] Both democrats and socialists were, however, united in their desire to overthrow the existing regimes through revolution.[54]
"Nationalism" promoted the unity and primacy of people bound by some mix of common language, culture, religion, shared history and destiny, and immediate geography.[55] There were also irredentist movements. Nationalism had developed a broader appeal during the pre-1848 period, as seen in the František Palacký's 1836 History of the Czech Nation, which emphasized a national lineage of conflict with the Germans, or the popular patriotic Liederkranz (song-circles) that were held across Germany: patriotic and belligerent songs about Schleswig had dominated the Würzburg national song festival in 1845.[56]
Expression and participation
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Political participation was increasing in the pre-revolutionary period, though it was limited in scope, and what forms existed were heavily restricted by state authorities.[57] Where elections were held, very few people could vote or run for office due to strict property requirements; in France, for example, the franchise was open to 0.5 percent of the population, or 241,000 people out of a population of 26 million.[58]
Outside of elections, the reading, writing, and publishing of newspapers was the most basic form of political participation and expression, and the means by which political awareness as a whole was expanding.[57] Papers such as the Rheinische Zeitung in Germany and La Réforme in France became outlets for oppositional thought. Circulation was generally low, ranging from several thousand for regional papers to hundreds for town and city papers.[57] However, newspapers were often available to read communally or were read aloud to large public gatherings for those who were illiterate, allowing for a wider dissemination of political thought.[59] Mass politics was carried out through public celebrations, such as festivals and banquets, which were organized as de facto political rallies to circumvent state restrictions on them.[60]
Informal political organizations existed to a degree in informal social circles, such as reading clubs, coffeehouses, and Masonic lodges.[61] Formal political parties and organizations were largely banned, leading the editorial staffs of newspapers to also became leaders of the political opposition.[60] What formal organizations did exist were in the form of illegal secret societies, many of which attempted to organize unsuccessful uprisings in the pre-revolutionary period. Among the most famous was the Young Italy movement, part of the larger Young Europe international network led by Giuseppe Mazzini, whose activism and methods in political organization were widely admired by contemporaries and imitated by other revolutionaries.[62]
Economic crisis
[edit]
According to economic historians Helge Berger and Mark Spoerer, the most immediate cause of the revolutions of 1848 was the multitudinous economic crisis between 1845 and 1847.[8] The crisis began with a major food crisis in Europe in 1845. Phytophthora infestans, the microorganism responsible for potato blight, arrived in Europe from North America around 1840 and spread rapidly during a period of unusually wet weather in 1845, devastating harvests across Northern Europe.[63] Potatoes had become a staple food due to their high nutritional value and affordability, and were being grown on a large scale to feed growing populations, especially in Northern Europe.[64] The effects of the potato blight were most severe in Ireland, where the Great Famine directly killed over an eighth of the population, or over 1 million people out of a population of 8 million. Other countries, including Scotland, Belgium, and the Netherlands saw similar damage to crops, with 60,000 deaths in the Netherlands due to the potato blight.[65] Drought conditions in 1846 stopped the spread of the potato blight but damaged grain harvests, resulting in a sharp increase in food prices across the continent, and consequently virtually all foodstuffs became unaffordable for the poor.[66] Food riots erupted across Europe as the poor attempted by force to stave off starvation, with over 400 such riots in France between 1846 and 1847 and 164 riots in the German states in 1847.[67][c]
Although severe famine was averted in most countries through strong government intervention, the rising cost of food, coupled with poor cotton harvests from the Southern United States necessary for textile manufacture, led to a major industrial recession in 1847.[68] Unemployment and pauperism spread rampantly among urban communities: according to Christopher Clark, by 1847 a fifth of the population in Friesland in the Netherlands were receiving relief from the state, or 47,482 out of 245,000 people; and in the same period, "the number of residents officially classified as poor in German towns could swell to two thirds or even three fourths of the population".[69] Berger and Spoerer found a strong correlation among the countries that were most deeply affected by the industrial shock of 1847 and those that underwent a revolution in 1848.[70][d]
Chronology
[edit]"Springtime of the peoples" (January–May 1848)
[edit]
The revolutionary events in 1848 began after the "February Revolution" in France, which overthrew the July Monarchy and led to the establishment of the French Second Republic. The revolution in France was not the first to occur, as a revolution had already occurred in January in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In previous years, the Greater Poland uprising in 1846 and the Sonderbund War in Switzerland in 1847 had also seen similarly violent struggles for political reform.[72] However, the revolution in France held far greater import among contemporaries due to the central role of France in European politics after the French Revolution, and the belief that the events in France were a portent for the rest of Europe.[73] Over the course of one week, news of the revolution in France spread rapidly throughout the continent and was met with excitement by reformers and deep anxiety by reactionaries:[74] in Vienna, the news came "like a thunder-bolt from a clear sky, and caused a shock which vibrated though every nerve of her political system",[75] and Klemens von Metternich, upon receiving word of the revolutions, exclaimed, in French, "well, my dear, it's all over!" (Eh bien, mon cher, tout est fini!)[76]
Within weeks of the revolution in France, similar uprisings occurred in Munich, Vienna, Buda and Pest,[e] Venice, Krakow, Milan, and Berlin through early-to-mid March.[77] As the revolutions spread, reformers across Europe demanded the formation of a representative parliament, the freedom of the press, freedom of association, universal manhood suffrage, and the arming of the people under a national guard.[78] Faced with overwhelming political pressure, governments capitulated without offering significant resistance, and granted various political concessions.[79] In Austria, after violent clashes in Vienna from 13 to 15 March, Metternich was forced to resign and went into exile, and Emperor Ferdinand I pledged to grant an imperial constitution.[80] Revolution broke out in Hungary shortly afterward, and the Diet of Hungary successfully appealed for Hungarian national sovereignty within the Habsburg monarchy.[81] When the news from Vienna reached Austrian-ruled northern Italy some days later, revolutionary governments were declared in Milan and Venice, and the Kingdom of Piedmont–Sardinia declared war on Austria, beginning the First Italian War of Independence.[82] In Prussia, after a brief but deadly spate of barricade fighting in Berlin on 18 March, King Frederick William IV ordered the army to withdraw, appointed a liberal ministry, and committed Prussia to the cause of German national unification.[83]
Early achievements and conflicts
[edit]
The earliest months of the revolutions were characterized by profound political change across Europe. Elections were held under broad franchises through the spring of 1848 for newly established or reformed parliaments.[84][f] These included, among many others, the French Constituent Assembly, which replaced the unrepresentative Chamber of Deputies, the Austrian Reichstag, the Hungarian Diet, and five other national parliaments within the Austrian Empire, and the Frankfurt National Assembly, the first national parliament representing all of Germany.[86]
Political participation increased substantially among the people as press censorship was relaxed and restrictions on association were lifted under the new constitutions. Political clubs and newspapers massively increased in number, extending political awareness to far more people than in the pre-revolutionary period.[87] A labour movement also began to develop during the early revolutions, though workers' associations were less organized and widespread compared to political clubs.[88]
A "revolutionary psychosis"[89] was felt across Europe during the earliest phase of the revolutions as people celebrated the accomplishments of the "springtime of the peoples". Even in the smallest provincial towns in Germany "there were illuminations, festive parades by the riflemen’s associations, banquets of local notables, and embracing in the streets".[90] A "wave of fraternization" was also felt, "uniting the most implausible elements"; in France "priests blessed the planting of trees of liberty", in Transylvania "Romanians and Hungarians [...] embraced each other", and in Mainz "Protestants, Catholics, and Jews [...] all came to the Rhineland city's cathedral to celebrate jointly the great tidings of liberty."[91]
The early revolutions, however, also saw widespread violence and a major increase in social conflict, as people of all backgrounds sought to affect a social revolution and further their position or to violently seek revenge for various grievances.[92] In urban centres, rioters ransacked the homes and offices of their employers, broke machines and destroyed factories and workshops, and attacked tax collectors and customs officials.[93] In the countryside, peasants occupied and took control of lost common land; where feudalism remained, peasants attacked their lords and destroyed records of their obligations, and where it was abolished, they attacked government officials, especially foresters, who were perceived as infringing on peasants' customary rights to forests.[94]
National conflicts also began to emerge in the late spring of 1848, especially in Germany and the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire. Efforts toward German national unification led to conflict with other nationalities within German territory, including Poles, Danes, and Czechs.[95] In the Grand Duchy of Posen in eastern Prussia, an uprising by Polish nationalists led to conflict between Germans and Poles, despite earlier German support for Polish independence; the uprising was suppressed by Prussian troops by April.[96] In Schleswig, the German population revolted against efforts by Denmark to annex the duchy, and were supported by the German states, leading to the First Schleswig War.[97] Some maximalist German nationalists also sought to extend the German nation to the crown lands of the Habsburg monarchy, including the German Archduchy of Austria as well as Czech Bohemia, Slovenian Carniola, and Italian Trieste and Trentino.[98] National conflicts pervaded throughout the entire Habsburg monarchy, especially in Hungary, where non-Magyars (especially Croats and Romanians) resisted attempts to form a homogeneous Hungarian nation, as well as in Galicia between Poles and Ruthenians, and Bohemia between Czechs and Germans.[99]
Counter-revolution (May–December 1848)
[edit]
In the summer of 1848, serious divisions emerged in France between radical workers and the moderate government. In the early spring, the provisional government had been able to rely on their support, agreeing to their demands for the right to work and the "organization of labour" through the formation of the national workshops.[100] However, after the conservative victory in the Constituent Assembly elections on 23 April and the radical attempt to overthrow the Assembly on 15 May, the new French government came under pressure to close them.[101] After 15 May, the government also began to repress the left by jailing its leaders, closing its clubs and newspapers, and dissolving the Luxembourg Commission.[102] On 21 June, the national workshops were closed, leading to a major insurrection by workers against the government, known as the "June Days". The uprising was suppressed with significant bloodshed by General Louis-Eugène Cavaignac, who was vested with dictatorial powers by the Constituent Assembly to restore order, targeting both the insurgents and the left-wing opposition in general.[103]
The counter-revolution in the Austrian Empire was carried out largely by the army and conservatives in the Habsburg court.[104] The first Habsburg victories were against the June Uprising in Prague, provoked by the reactionary Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz.[105] The uprising was suppressed when the city was bombarded with artillery, despite attempts at conciliation by the liberal government of Baron Franz von Pillersdorf.[106] More crucially in northern Italy, the army under Joseph Radetzky defeated the disorganized Piedmontese army at the Battle of Custoza in July, leaving Austria in near-total control of its Italian provinces.[107] As conservatives gained strength, they mobilized Josip Jelačić, the Ban of Croatia, to invade Hungary and put an end to its sovereignty.[108] The beginning of the Hungarian War of Independence on 11 September led to the Vienna Uprising in October, during which radicals occupied the city for three weeks, until they were crushed by the forces of Jelačić and Windisch-Grätz on 31 October.[109]
In Germany, the counter-revolution began in the early autumn of 1848 with the reaction to the Armistice of Malmö, signed between Prussia and Denmark to temporarily suspend the Schleswig War. Although Prussia's unilateral action undermined the Frankfurt parliament's supremacy, the parliament was forced to accept the armistice due to the threat of a war with the great powers, especially Russia.[110] Widespread anger at the Frankfurt parliament's "betrayal" of the German revolution, combined with frustration among the lower classes at the slow pace of reform, led to the outbreak of renewed uprisings in western Germany in September.[111] The radical uprisings were crushed by the German states, with the support of the central government established by the Frankfurt parliament.[112] With the execution of parliamentary deputy Robert Blum by Austrian troops at the end of the October uprising, the Frankfurt parliament's claims of exercising authority over any part of Germany were further discredited.[113]
By the end of 1848, the springtime of the peoples was effectively over, and decidedly conservative governments had come into power across Europe. In Prussia, Frederick William IV, with the support of the army, carried out a coup d'état, dismissing the liberal ministers he appointed in the spring and imposing a conservative constitution.[114] In Austria, Emperor Ferdinand I was made to abdicate in favour of his nephew Franz Joseph I, under the expectation that he would not be beholden to the constitutionalist concessions made during the revolutions.[115] In France, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew of the last French emperor, was elected president, in large part with the backing of conservatives, who expected him to restore public order in the wake of the June Days.[116]
Second wave of the revolutions (1849)
[edit]
At the end of 1848, the revolutions were over where they had begun, with the major centres in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Milan largely pacified. However, the expansion of political activity in 1848 allowed for radicals to begin organizing in new regions outside of the major cities.[117] In France and Germany, left-wing organizations turned to the provinces, achieving greater support among rural workers in parliamentary elections in 1849.[118] Meanwhile, in central Italy and Hungary, the revolutions gained new strength, and established new regimes to contest the old order.
In central Italy, radicals gained power in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States, proclaiming the Tuscan Republic and the Roman Republic in February. Together with Piedmont–Sardinia, where radicals won the parliamentary elections, the new revolutionary governments in Italy began to make plans for an all-Italian constituent assembly, as had been formed in Germany, and resumed the war with Austria.[119] Piedmont–Sardinia was again decisively defeated by Austria at the Battle of Novara in March, resulting in the abdication of Piedmontese King Charles Albert and the end of the war in August.[120]
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Counter-revolution continued in the Habsburg empire under the new emperor Franz Joseph, with the imperial government dissolving the Reichstag and rejecting its constitutional proposal in favour of the imposed March Constitution. The new constitution applied to the entire empire, ending Hungary's autonomy and mandating its partition into several military districts.[121] In response, Hungary declared full independence from the Habsburg empire and dethroned Franz Joseph as King of Hungary.[122] Through the spring, Hungary launched a military campaign that led to the recapture of almost all of Hungary's territory from Habsburg forces.[123] Facing a new crisis in Hungary, the Habsburg empire appealed for Russia's intervention in "the holy struggle against anarchy".[124] Russia mobilized 200,000 troops to invade Hungary, combined with 175,000 Habsburg troops, against the 170,000 troops of Hungary, many of whom were ill-equipped and exhausted.[125] For Russia's support, Austria offered no concessions, and Russia demanded none.[126]
In Germany, after much deliberation, the Frankfurt National Assembly agreed to the Frankfurt Constitution for the new German Empire in March 1849, and elected Frederick William IV to serve as Emperor of the Germans. However, he rejected the crown on the basis that the Assembly did not have the authority to confer it, and he further denounced the Frankfurt Constitution, refusing any restrictions on his monarchical powers.[127] In response, a new wave of uprisings swept through Germany during the Imperial Constitution campaign as radicals, working largely among the lower classes, sought to force the acceptance of the Frankfurt Constitution. The campaign, lasting between May and July 1849, ultimately ended in defeat, ending the German revolutions.[128]
After the summer of 1849, the last remaining revolutionary regimes were in Rome, Venice, and Hungary. The revolutionary Roman Republic was defeated in July after the intervention of France, and Venice surrendered in August after enduring more than a year of siege and isolation.[129] With the entry of Russia into the war, Hungary, the last revolutionary state, was placed on the defensive, suffering numerous defeats between late June and August. On 13 August, Hungary surrendered to Austria and Russia, formally ending the war of independence; the last Hungarian holdouts at the fortress of Komárom surrendered between 2 and 5 October, marking the end of the revolutions of 1848.[130]
Events by country or region
[edit]Italian states
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The first of the numerous revolutions to occur in 1848 in Italy came in Palermo, Sicily, starting in January 1848.[131] There had been several previous revolts against Bourbon rule; this one produced an independent state that lasted only 16 months before the Bourbons were restored to the throne. During those months, the constitution was quite advanced for its time in liberal democratic terms, as was the proposal of a unified Italian confederation of states.