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The University High School Band
The History and Theory of Music

The Revolutions of 1848

Lamartine before the Hôtel de Ville by Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux

After the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, Europe remained generally at peace, with most governments in the hands of conservatives who were wary of any hint of revolution. However, popular sentiment was still deeply influenced by the French Republic's experiment with liberalism, and in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, many people were now further aggrieved by poor working conditions and economic displacement.

The pot boiled over in 1848 with a series of revolutions across Europe. These were not planned, but took place more or less spontaneously. In general, the revolutionaries demanded the replacement of monarchies with representative liberal governments and institutions and a guarantee of basic rights. These were met with varying degrees of success.

The first revolutions took place, of course, in France. The July Monarchy was overthrown, King Louis-Philippe abdicated, and the Second Republic was established. Presidential elections were held later that year and by an overwhelming margin the people elected Louis Napoléon Bonaparte... oui, the nephew of that Napoléon. With a Bonaparte at the helm of a French Republic, what could go wrong?

Meanwhile, in Austria, demonstrations began in March demanding the standard list of basic rights: representative government, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. At the advice of Metternich, Emperor Ferdinand crushed the protests by sending troops in. This resulted in further clashes as protesters demanded the sacking of Metternich, and a rebellion in Hungary, which defeated the troops Ferdinand sent there. Austria's Italian territories also went into revolt. By the end of the year, Ferdinand had removed Metternich and abdicated the throne.

After the revolutions in Austria seemed successful, people in the German states demanded their own rights, as well as German unification. In Bavaria, the protestors pressured King Ludwig I to abdicate. In Prussia, King Frederick Wilhelm IV agreed to all the things the protestors were demanding. By May, a parliament called the Frankfurt Assembly was elected claiming to represent all of Germany, although it lacked legal authority in any of the German states.

By the end of 1848 and into the following year, however, the tide had begun to turn against the revolutionaries. Ferdinand's nephew Franz Joseph was now the Austrian emperor; with some help from Russia, he crushed the rebellions in Italy and placed Hungary under a military dictatorship. In Prussia, Frederick Wilhelm preempted the Frankfurt Assembly by releasing his own liberal constitution, which took the wind out of most of the Assembly's supporters. Trying to stay relevant, the Assembly released its own constitution and offered to make Frederick Wilhelm "Emperor of the Germans," but the king rejected this and continued with his own plan. When open elections were held in Germany, conservative candidates favored by the now-very popular king were swept into power. The Frankfurt Assembly dissolved into irrelevance.

In France, fortunately, the Second Republic was still strong and able to... oh no, President Bonaparte just staged a coup and proclaimed the Second French Empire under himself as Emperor Napoléon III! Wow, nobody saw that coming.

Although the revolutions generally failed to achieve representative government and guarantees of human rights, they were formative in the development of many of Europe's young intellectuals, stoked nationalist sentiments, and loomed large in the minds of Europeans for the next generation.