[Louis Philippe.]

The train was now laid throughout central Europe; it needed but a flash from Paris to kindle the fire far and wide. That the Crown which Louis Philippe owed to one popular outbreak might be wrested from him by another, had been a thought constantly present not only to the King himself but to foreign observers during the earlier years of his reign. The period of comparative peace by which the first Republican movements after 1830 had been succeeded, the busy working of the Parliamentary system, the keen and successful pursuit of wealth which seemed to have mastered all other impulses in France, had made these fears a thing of the past. The Orleanist Monarchy had taken its place among the accredited institutions of Europe; its chief, aged, but vigorous in mind, looked forward to the future of his dynasty, and occupied himself with plans for extending its influence or its sway beyond the limits of France itself. At one time Louis Philippe had hoped to connect his family by marriage with the Courts of Vienna or Berlin; this project had not met with encouragement; so much the more eagerly did the King watch for opportunities in another direction, and devise plans for restoring the family-union between France and Spain which had been established by Louis XIV. and which had so largely influenced the history of Europe down to the overthrow of the Bourbon Monarchy. The Crown of Spain was now held by a young girl; her sister was the next in succession; to make the House of Orleans as powerful at Madrid as it was at Paris seemed under these circumstances no impossible task to a King and a Minister who, in the interests of the dynasty, were prepared to make some sacrifice of honour and good faith.

[The Spanish Marriage, October, 1846.]

While the Carlist War was still continuing, Lord Palmerston had convinced himself that Louis Philippe intended to marry the young Queen Isabella, if possible, to one of his sons. Some years later this project was unofficially mentioned by Guizot to the English statesman, who at once caused it to be understood that England would not permit the union. Abandoning this scheme, Louis Philippe then demanded, by a misconstruction of the Treaty of Utrecht, that the Queen's choice of a husband should be limited to the Bourbons of the Spanish or Neapolitan line. To this claim Lord Aberdeen, who had become Foreign Secretary in 1841, declined to give his assent; he stated, however, that no step would be taken by England in antagonism to such marriage, if it should be deemed desirable at Madrid. Louis Philippe now suggested that his youngest son, the Duke of Montpensier, should wed the Infanta Fernanda, sister of the Queen of Spain. On the express understanding that this marriage should not take place until the Queen should herself have been married and have had children, the English Cabinet assented to the proposal. That the marriages should not be simultaneous was treated by both Governments as the very heart and substance of the arrangement, inasmuch as the failure of children by the Queen's marriage would make her sister, or her sister's heir, inheritor of the Throne. This was repeatedly acknowledged by Louis Philippe and his Minister, Guizot, in the course of communications with the British Court which extended over some years. Nevertheless, in 1846, the French Ambassador at Madrid, in conjunction with the Queen's mother, Maria Christina, succeeded in carrying out a plan by which the conditions laid down at London and accepted at Paris were utterly frustrated. Of the Queen's Spanish cousins, there was one, Don Francisco, who was known to be physically unfit for marriage. To this person it was determined by Maria Christina and the French Ambassador that the young Isabella should be united, her sister being simultaneously married to the Duke of Montpensier. So flagrantly was this arrangement in contradiction to the promises made at the Tuileries, that, when intelligence of it arrived at Paris, Louis Philippe declared for a moment that the Ambassador must be disavowed and disgraced. Guizot, however, was of better heart than his master, and asked for delay. In the very crisis of the King's perplexity the return of Lord Palmerston to office, and the mention by him of a Prince of Saxe-Coburg as one of the candidates for the Spanish Queen's hand, afforded Guizot a pretext for declaring that Great Britain had violated its engagements towards the House of Bourbon by promoting the candidature of a Coburg. In reality the British Government had not only taken no part in assisting the candidature of the Coburg Prince, but had directly opposed it. This, however, was urged in vain at the Tuileries. Whatever may have been the original intentions of Louis Philippe or of Guizot, the temptation of securing the probable succession to the Spanish Crown was too strong to be resisted. Preliminaries were pushed forward with the utmost haste, and on the 10th of October, 1846, the marriages of Queen Isabella and her sister, as arranged by the French Ambassador and the Queen-Mother, were simultaneously solemnised at Madrid. [410]

[Louis Philippe and Guizot, 1847.]

Few intrigues have been more disgraceful than that of the Spanish Marriages; none more futile. The course of history mocked its ulterior purposes; its immediate results were wholly to the injury of the House of Orleans. The cordial understanding between France and Great Britain, which had been revived after the differences of 1840, was now finally shattered, Louis Philippe stood convicted before his people of sacrificing a valuable alliance to purely dynastic ends; his Minister, the austere and sanctimonious Guizot, had to defend himself against charges which would have covered with shame the most hardened man of the world. Thus stripped of its garb of moral superiority, condemned as at once unscrupulous and unpatriotic, the Orleanist Monarchy had to meet the storm of popular discontent which was gathering over France as well as over neighbouring lands. For the lost friendship of England it was necessary to seek a substitute in the support of some Continental Power. Throwing himself into the reactionary policy of the Court of Vienna, Guizot endeavoured to establish a diplomatic concert from which England should be excluded, as France had been in 1840. There were circumstances which gave some countenance to the design. The uncompromising vigour with which Lord Palmerston supported the Liberal movement now becoming so formidable in Italy made every absolute Government in Europe his enemy; and had time been granted, the despotic Courts would possibly have united with France in some more or less open combination against the English Minister. But the moments were now numbered; and ere the projected league could take substance, the whirlwind descended before which Louis Philippe and his Minister were the first to fall.

[Demand for Parliamentary Reform.]

A demand for the reform of the French Parliamentary system had been made when Guizot was entering upon office in the midst of the Oriental crisis of 1840. It had then been silenced and repressed by all the means at the disposal of the Executive; King Louis Philippe being convinced that with a more democratic Chamber the maintenance of his own policy of peace would be impossible. The demand was now raised again with far greater energy. Although the franchise had been lowered after the Revolution of July, it was still so high that not one person in a hundred and fifty possessed a vote, while the property-qualification which was imposed upon the Deputies themselves excluded from the Chamber all but men of substantial wealth. Moreover, there existed no law prohibiting the holders of administrative posts under the Government from sitting in the Assembly. The consequence was that more than one-third of the Deputies were either officials who had secured election, or representatives who since their election had accepted from Government appointments of greater or less value. Though Parliamentary talent abounded, it was impossible that a Chamber so composed could be the representative of the nation at large. The narrowness of the franchise, the wealth of the Deputies themselves, made them, in all questions affecting the social condition of the people, a mere club of capitalists; the influence which the Crown exercised through the bestowal of offices converted those who ought to have been its controllers into its dependents, the more so as its patronage was lavished on nominal opponents even more freely than on avowed friends. Against King Louis Philippe the majority in the Chamber had in fact ceased to possess a will of its own. It represented wealth; it represented to some extent the common-sense of France; but on all current matters of dispute it only represented the executive government in another form. So thoroughly had the nation lost all hope in the Assembly during the last years of Louis Philippe, that even the elections had ceased to excite interest. On the other hand, the belief in the general prevalence of corruption was every day receiving new warrant. A series of State-trials disclosed the grossest frauds in every branch of the administration, and proved that political influence was habitually used for purposes of pecuniary gain. Taxed with his tolerance of a system scarcely distinguishable from its abuses, the Minister could only turn to his own nominees in the Chamber and ask them whether they felt themselves corrupted; invited to consider some measure of Parliamentary reform, he scornfully asserted his policy of resistance. Thus, hopeless of obtaining satisfaction either from the Government or from the Chamber itself, the leaders of the Opposition resolved in 1847 to appeal to the country at large; and an agitation for Parliamentary reform, based on the methods employed by O'Connell in Ireland, soon spread through the principal towns of France.

[Socialism.]

But there were other ideas and other forces active among the labouring population of Paris than those familiar to the politicians of the Assembly. Theories of Socialism, the property of a few thinkers and readers during the earlier years of Louis Philippe's reign, had now sunk deep among the masses, and become, in a rough and easily apprehended form, the creed of the poor. From the time when Napoleon's fall had restored to France its faculty of thought, and, as it were, turned the soldier's eyes again upon his home, those questionings as to the basis of the social union which had occupied men's minds at an earlier epoch were once more felt and uttered. The problem was still what it had been in the eighteenth century; the answer was that of a later age. Kings, priests, and nobles had been overthrown, but misery still covered the world. In the teaching of Saint-Simon, under the Restoration, religious conceptions blended with a great industrial scheme; in the Utopia of Fourier, produced at the same fruitful period, whatever was valuable belonged to its suggestions in co-operative production. But whether the doctrine propounded was that of philosopher, or sage, or charlatan, in every case the same leading ideas were visible;—the insufficiency of the individual in isolation, the industrial basis of all social life, the concern of the community, or of its supreme authority, in the organisation of labour. It was naturally in no remote or complex form that the idea of a new social order took possession of the mind of the workman in the faubourgs of Paris. He read in Louis Blanc, the latest and most intelligible of his teachers of the right to labour, of the duty of the State to provide work for its citizens. This was something actual and tangible. For this he was ready upon occasion to take up arms; not for the purpose of extending the franchise to another handful of the Bourgeoisie, or of shifting the profits of government from one set of place-hunters to another. In antagonism to the ruling Minister the Reformers in the Chamber and the Socialists in the streets might for a moment unite their forces: but their ends were irreconcilable, and the allies of to-day were necessarily the foes of to-morrow.

[The February Revolution, 1848.]

[Feb. 22nd.]

At the close of the year 1847 the last Parliament of the Orleanist Monarchy assembled. The speech from the Throne, delivered by Louis Philippe himself, denounced in strong terms the agitation for Reform which had been carried on during the preceding months, though this agitation had, on the whole, been the work of the so-called Dynastic Opposition, which, while demanding electoral reform, was sincerely loyal to the Monarchy. The King's words were a challenge; and in the debate on the Address, the challenge was taken up by all ranks of Monarchical Liberals as well as by the small Republican section in the Assembly. The Government, however, was still secure of its majority. Defeated in the votes on the Address, the Opposition determined, by way of protest, to attend a banquet to be held in the Champs Elysees on the 22nd of February by the Reform-party in Western Paris. It was at first desired that by some friendly arrangement with the Government, which had declared the banquet illegal, the possibility of recourse to violence should be avoided. Misunderstandings, however, arose, and the Government finally prohibited the banquet, and made preparations for meeting any disturbance with force of arms. The Deputies, anxious to employ none but legal means of resistance, now resolved not to attend the banquet; on the other hand, the Democratic and Socialist leaders welcomed a possible opportunity for revolt. On the morning of the 22nd masses of men poured westwards from the workmen's quarter. The city was in confusion all day, and the erection of barricades began. Troops were posted in the streets; no serious attack, however, was made by either side, and at nightfall quiet returned.

[Feb. 23rd.]

On the next morning the National Guard of Paris was called to arms. Throughout the struggle between Louis Philippe and the populace of Paris in the earlier years of his reign, the National Guard, which was drawn principally from the trading classes, had fought steadily for the King. Now, however, it was at one with the Liberal Opposition in the Assembly, and loudly demanded the dismissal of the Ministers. While some of the battalions interposed between the regular troops and the populace and averted a conflict, others proceeded to the Chamber with petitions for Reform. Obstinately as Louis Philippe had hitherto refused all concession, the announcement of the threatened defection of the National Guard at length convinced him that resistance was impossible. He accepted Guizot's resignation, and the Chamber heard from the fallen Minister himself that he had ceased to hold office. Although the King declined for awhile to commit the formation of a Ministry to Thiers, the recognised chief of the Opposition, and endeavoured to place a politician more acceptable to himself in office, it was felt that with the fall of Guizot all real resistance to Reform was broken. Nothing more was asked by the Parliamentary Opposition or by the middle-class of Paris. The victory seemed to be won, the crisis at an end. In the western part of the capital congratulation and good-humour succeeded to the fear of conflict. The troops fraternised with the citizens and the National Guard; and when darkness came on, the boulevards were illuminated as if for a national festival.

[Feb. 24th.]

In the midst, however, of this rejoicing, and while the chiefs of the revolutionary societies, fearing that the opportunity had been lost for striking a blow at the Monarchy, exhorted the defenders of the barricades to maintain their positions, a band of workmen came into conflict, accidentally or of set purpose, with the troops in front of the Foreign Office. A volley was fired, which killed or wounded eighty persons. Placing the dead bodies on a waggon, and carrying them by torchlight through the streets in the workmen's quarter, the insurrectionary leaders called the people to arms. The tocsin sounded throughout the night; on the next morning the populace marched against the Tuileries. In consequence of the fall of the Ministry and the supposed reconciliation of the King with the People, whatever military dispositions had been begun had since been abandoned. At isolated points the troops fought bravely; but there was no systematic defence. Shattered by the strain of the previous days, and dismayed by the indifference of the National Guard when he rode out among them, the King, who at every epoch of his long life had shown such conspicuous courage in the presence of danger, now lost all nerve and all faculty of action. He signed an act of abdication in favour of his grandson, the Count of Paris, and fled. Behind him the victorious mob burst into the Tuileries and devastated it from cellar to roof. The Legislative Chamber, where an attempt was made to proclaim the Count of Paris King, was in its turn invaded. In uproar and tumult a Provisional Government was installed at the Hotel de Ville; and ere the day closed the news went out to Europe that the House of Orleans had ceased to reign, and that the Republic had been proclaimed. It was not over France alone, it was over the Continent at large, that the tide of revolution was breaking.

END OF VOL. II.



VOLUME III.



CHAPTER XIX.

Europe in 1789 and in 1848—Agitation in Western Germany before and after the Revolution at Paris—Austria and Hungary—The March Revolution at Vienna—Flight of Metternich—The Hungarian Diet—Hungary wins its independence—Bohemian movement—Autonomy promised to Bohemia— Insurrection of Lombardy—Of Venice—Piedmont makes war on Austria—A general Italian war against Austria imminent—The March Days at Berlin—Frederick William IV.—A National Assembly promised— Schleswig-Holstein—Insurrection in Holstein—War between Germany and Denmark—The German Ante-Parliament—Republican rising in Baden—Meeting of the German National Assembly at Frankfort—Europe generally in March, 1848—The French Provisional Government—The National Workshops—The Government and the Red Republicans—French National Assembly—Riot of May 15—Measures against the National Workshops—The Four Days of June— Cavaignac—Louis Napoleon—He is elected to the Assembly—Elected President.

[Europe in 1789 and 1848.]

There were few statesmen living in 1848 who, like Metternich and like Louis Philippe, could remember the outbreak of the French Revolution. To those who could so look back across the space of sixty years, a comparison of the European movements that followed the successive onslaughts upon authority in France afforded some measure of the change that had passed over the political atmosphere of the Continent within a single lifetime. The Revolution of 1789, deeply as it stirred men's minds in neighbouring countries, had occasioned no popular outbreak on a large scale outside France. The expulsion of Charles X. in 1830 had been followed by national uprisings in Italy, Poland, and Belgium, and by a struggle for constitutional government in the smaller States of Northern Germany. The downfall of Louis Philippe in 1848 at once convulsed the whole of central Europe. From the Rhenish Provinces to the Ottoman frontier there was no government but the Swiss Republic that was not menaced; there was no race which did not assert its claim to a more or less complete independence. Communities whose long slumber had been undisturbed by the shocks of the Napoleonic period now vibrated with those same impulses which, since 1815, no pressure of absolute power had been able wholly to extinguish in Italy and Germany. The borders of the region of political discontent had been enlarged; where apathy, or immemorial loyalty to some distant crown, had long closed the ear to the voices of the new age, now all was restlessness, all eager expectation of the dawning epoch of national life. This was especially the case with the Slavic races included in the Austrian Empire, races which during the earlier years of this century had been wholly mute. These in their turn now felt the breath of patriotism, and claimed the right of self-government. Distinct as the ideas of national independence and of constitutional liberty are in themselves, they were not distinct in their operation over a great part of Europe in 1848; and this epoch will be wrongly conceived if it is viewed as no more than a repetition on a large scale of the democratic outbreak of Paris with which it opened. More was sought in Europe in 1848 than the substitution of popular for monarchical or aristocratic rule. The effort to make the State one with the nation excited wider interests than the effort to enlarge and equalise citizen rights; and it is in the action of this principle of nationality that we find the explanation of tendencies of the epoch which appear at first view to be in direct conflict with one another. In Germany a single race was divided under many Governments: here the national instinct impelled to unity. In Austria a variety of races was held together by one crown: here the national instinct impelled to separation. In both these States, as in Italy, where the predominance of the foreigner and the continuance of despotic government were in a peculiar manner connected with one another, the efforts of 1848 failed; but the problems which then agitated Europe could not long be set aside, and the solution of them complete, in the case of Germany and Italy, partial and tentative in the case of Austria, renders the succeeding twenty-five years a memorable period in European history.

[Agitation in Western Germany.]

The sudden disappearance of the Orleanist monarchy and the proclamation of the Republic at Paris struck with dismay the Governments beyond the Rhine. Difficulties were already gathering round them, opposition among their own subjects was daily becoming more formidable and more outspoken. In Western Germany a meeting of Liberal deputies had been held in the autumn of 1847, in which the reform of the Federal Constitution and the establishment of a German Parliament had been demanded: a Republican or revolutionary party, small but virulent, had also its own avowed policy and its recognised organs in the press. No sooner had the news of the Revolution at Paris passed the frontier than in all the minor German States the cry for reform became irresistible. Ministers everywhere resigned; the popular demands were granted; and men were called to office whose names were identified with the struggle for the freedom of the Press, for trial by jury, and for the reform of the Federal Constitution. The Federal Diet itself, so long the instrument of absolutism, bowed beneath the stress of the time, abolished the laws of censorship, and invited the Governments to send Commissioners to Frankfort to discuss the reorganisation of Germany. It was not, however, at Frankfort or at the minor capitals that the conflict between authority and its antagonists was to be decided. Vienna, the stronghold of absolutism, the sanctuary from which so many interdicts had gone forth against freedom in every part of Europe, was itself invaded by the revolutionary spirit. The clear sky darkened, and Metternich found himself powerless before the storm.

[Austria.]

There had been until 1848 so complete an absence of political life in the Austrian capital, that, when the conviction suddenly burst upon all minds that the ancient order was doomed, there were neither party-leaders to confront the Government, nor plans of reform upon which any considerable body of men were agreed. The first utterances of public discontent were petitions drawn up by the Chamber of Commerce and by literary associations. These were vague in purport and far from aggressive in their tone. A sterner note sounded when intelligence reached the capital of the resolutions that had been passed by the Hungarian Lower House on the 3rd of March, and of the language in which these had been enforced by Kossuth. Casting aside all reserve, the Magyar leader had declared that the reigning dynasty could only be saved by granting to Hungary a responsible Ministry drawn from the Diet itself, and by establishing constitutional government throughout the Austrian dominions. "From the charnel-house of the Viennese system," he cried, "a poison-laden atmosphere steals over us, which paralyses our nerves and bows us when we would soar. The future of Hungary can never be secure while in the other provinces there exists a system of government in direct antagonism to every constitutional principle. Our task it is to found a happier future on the brotherhood of all the Austrian races, and to substitute for the union enforced by bayonets and police the enduring bond of a free constitution." When the Hungaran Assembly had thus taken into its own hands the cause of the rest of the monarchy, it was not for the citizens of Vienna to fall short in the extent of their demands. The idea of a Constitution for the Empire at large was generally accepted and it was proposed that an address embodying this demand should be sent in to the Emperor by the Provincial Estates of Lower Austria, whose meeting happened to be fixed for the 13th of March. In the meantime the students made themselves the heroes of the hour. The agitation of the city increased; rumours of State bankruptcy and of the impending repudiation of the paper currency filled all classes with the belief that some catastrophe was near at hand. [411]

[The March Revolution at Vienna.]

The Provincial Estates of Lower Austria had long fallen into such insignificance that in ordinary times their proceedings were hardly noticed by the capital. The accident that they were now to assemble in the midst of a great crisis elevated them to a sudden importance. It was believed that the decisive word would be spoken in the course of their debates; and on the morning of the 13th of March masses of the populace, led by a procession of students, assembled round the Hall of the Diet. While the debate proceeded within, street-orators inflamed the passions of the crowd outside. The tumult deepened; and when at length a note was let down from one of the windows of the Hall stating that the Diet were inclining to half-measures, the mob broke into uproar, and an attack was made upon the Diet Hall itself. The leading members of the Estates were compelled to place themselves at the head of a deputation, which proceeded to the Emperor's palace in order to enforce the demands of the people. The Emperor himself, who at no time was capable of paying serious attention to business, remained invisible during this and the two following days; the deputation was received by Metternich and the principal officers of State, who were assembled in council. Meanwhile the crowds in the streets became denser and more excited; soldiers approached, to protect the Diet Hall and to guard the environs of the palace; there was an interval of confusion; and on the advance of a new regiment, which was mistaken for an attack, the mob who had stormed the Diet Hall hurled the shattered furniture from the windows upon the soldiers' heads. A volley was now fired, which cost several lives. At the sound of the firing still deeper agitation seized the city. Barricades were erected, and the people and soldiers fought hand to hand. As evening came on, deputation after deputation pressed into the palace to urge concession upon the Government. Metternich, who, almost alone in the Council, had made light of the popular uprising, now at length consented to certain definite measures of reform. He retired into an adjoining room to draft an order abolishing the censorship of the Press. During his absence the cry was raised among the deputations that thronged the Council-chamber, "Down with Metternich!" The old man returned, and found himself abandoned by his colleagues. There were some among them, members of the Imperial family, who had long been his opponents; others who had in vain urged him to make concessions before it was too late. Metternich saw that the end of his career was come; he spoke a few words, marked by all the dignity and self-possession of his greatest days, and withdrew, to place his resignation in the Emperor's hands.

[Flight of Metternich.]

For thirty-nine years Metternich had been so completely identified with the Austrian system of government that in his fall that entire system seemed to have vanished away. The tumult of the capital subsided on the mere announcement of his resignation, though the hatred which he had excited rendered it unsafe for him to remain within reach of hostile hands. He was conveyed from Vienna by a faithful secretary on the night of the 14th of March, and, after remaining for a few days in concealment, crossed the Saxon frontier. His exile was destined to be of some duration, but no exile was ever more cheerfully borne, or sweetened by a profounder satisfaction at the evils which a mad world had brought upon itself by driving from it its one thoroughly wise and just statesman. Betaking himself in the general crash of the Continental Courts to Great Britain, which was still as safe as when he had visited it fifty-five years before, Metternich received a kindly welcome from the Duke of Wellington and the leaders of English society; and when the London season was over he sought and found at Brighton something of the liveliness and the sunshine of his own southern home. [412]

[The Hungarian Diet.]

The action of the Hungarian Diet under Kossuth's leadership had powerfully influenced the course of events at Vienna. The Viennese outbreak in its turn gave irresistible force to the Hungarian national movement. Up to the 13th of March the Chamber of Magnates had withheld their assent from the resolution passed by the Lower House in favour of a national executive; they now accepted it without a single hostile vote; and on the 15th a deputation was sent to Vienna to lay before the Emperor an address demanding not only the establishment of a responsible Ministry but the freedom of the Press, trial by jury, equality of religion, and a system of national education. At the moment when this deputation reached Vienna the Government was formally announcing its compliance with the popular demand for a Constitution for the whole of the Empire. The Hungarians were escorted in triumph through the streets, and were received on the following day by the Emperor himself, who expressed a general concurrence with the terms of the address. The deputation returned to Presburg, and the Palatine, or representative of the sovereign in Hungary, the Archduke Stephen, forthwith charged Count Batthyany, one of the most popular of the Magyar nobles, with the formation of a national Ministry. Thus far the Diet had been in the van of the Hungarian movement; it now sank almost into insignificance by the side of the revolutionary organisation at Pesth, where all the ardour and all the patriotism of the Magyar race glowed in their native force untempered by the political experience of the statesmen who were collected at Presburg, and unchecked by any of those influences which belong to the neighbourhood of an Imperial Court. At Pesth there broke out an agitation at once so democratic and so intensely national that all considerations of policy and of regard for the Austrian Government which might have affected the action of the Diet were swept away before it. Kossuth, himself the genuine representative of the capital, became supreme. At his bidding the Diet passed a law abolishing the departments of the Central Government by which the control of the Court over the Hungarian body politic had been exercised. A list of Ministers was submitted and approved, including not only those who were needed for the transaction of domestic business, but Ministers of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs; and in order that the entire nation might rally round its Government, the peasantry were at one stroke emancipated from all services attaching to the land, and converted into free proprietors. Of the compensation to be paid to the lords for the loss of these services, no more was said than that it was a debt of honour to be discharged by the nation.

[Hungary wins independence.]

Within the next few days the measures thus carried through the Diet by Kossuth were presented for the Emperor's ratification at Vienna. The fall of Metternich, important as it was, had not in reality produced that effect upon the Austrian Government which was expected from it by popular opinion. The new Cabinet at Vienna was drawn from the ranks of the official hierarchy; and although some of its members were more liberally disposed than their late chief, they had all alike passed their lives in the traditions of the ancient system, and were far from intending to make themselves the willing agents of revolution. These men saw clearly enough that the action of the Diet at Presburg amounted to nothing less than the separation of Hungary from the Austrian Empire. With the Ministries of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs established in independence of the central government, there would remain no link between Hungary and the Hereditary States but the person of a titular, and, for the present time, an imbecile sovereign. Powerless and distracted, Metternich's successors looked in all directions for counsel. The Palatine argued that three courses were open to the Austrian Government. It might endeavour to crush the Hungarian movement by force of arms; for this purpose, however, the troops available were insufficient: or it might withdraw from the country altogether, leaving the peasants to attack the nobles, as they had done in Galicia; this was a dishonourable policy, and the action of the Diet had, moreover, secured to the peasant everything that he could gain by a social insurrection: or finally, the Government might yield for the moment to the inevitable, make terms with Batthyany's Ministry, and quietly prepare for vigorous resistance when opportunity should arrive. The last method was that which the Palatine recommended; the Court inclined in the same direction, but it was unwilling to submit without making some further trial of the temper of its antagonists. A rescript was accordingly sent to Presburg, announcing that the Ministry formed by Count Batthyany was accepted by the Emperor, but that the central offices which the Diet had abolished must be preserved, and the functions of the Ministers of War and Finance be reduced to those of chiefs of departments, dependent on the orders of a higher authority at Vienna. From the delay that had taken place in the despatch of this answer the nationalist leaders at Pesth and at Presburg had augured no good result. Its publication brought the country to the verge of armed revolt. Batthyany refused to accept office under the conditions named; the Palatine himself declared that he could remain in Hungary no longer. Terrified at the result of its own challenge, the Court now withdrew from the position that it had taken up, and accepted the scheme of the Diet in its integrity, stipulating only that the disposal of the army outside Hungary in time of war, and the appointment to the higher commands, should remain with the Imperial Government. [413]

[Bohemian movement.]

[Autonomy promised.]

Hungary had thus made good its position as an independent State connected with Austria only through the person of its monarch. Vast and momentous as was the change, fatal as it might well appear to those who could conceive of no unity but the unity of a central government, the victory of the Magyars appears to have excited no feeling among the German Liberals at Vienna but one of satisfaction. So odious, so detested, was the fallen system of despotism, that every victory won by its adversaries was hailed as a triumph of the good cause, be the remoter issues what they might. Even where a powerful German element, such as did not exist in Hungary itself, was threatened by the assertion of provincial claims, the Government could not hope for the support of the capital if it should offer resistance. The example of the Magyars was speedily followed by the Czechs in Bohemia. Forgotten and obliterated among the nationalities of Europe, the Czechs had preserved in their language, and in that almost alone, the emblem of their national independence. Within the borders of Bohemia there was so large a German population that the ultimate absorption of the Slavic element by this wealthier and privileged body had at an earlier time seemed not unlikely. Since 1830, however, the Czech national movement had been gradually gaining ground. In the first days of the agitation of 1848 an effort had been made to impress a purely constitutional form upon the demands made in the name of the people of Prague, and so to render the union of all classes possible. This policy, however, received its deathblow from the Revolution in Vienna and from the victory of the Magyars. The leadership at Prague passed from men of position and experience, representing rather the intelligence of the German element in Bohemia than the patriotism of the Czechs, to the nationalist orators who commanded the streets. An attempt made by the Cabinet at Vienna to evade the demands drawn up under the influence of the more moderate politicians resulted only in the downfall of this party, and in the tender of a new series of demands of far more revolutionary character. The population of Prague were beginning to organise a national guard; arms were being distributed; authority had collapsed. The Government was now forced to consent to everything that was asked of it, and a legislative Assembly with an independent local administration was promised to Bohemia. To this Assembly, as soon as it should meet, the new institutions of the kingdom were to be submitted.

[Insurrection of Lombardy, March 18.]

Thus far, if the authority of the Court of Vienna, had been virtually shaken off by a great part of its subjects, the Emperor had at least not seen these subjects in avowed rebellion against the House of Hapsburg, nor supported in their resistance by the arms of a foreign Power. South of the Alps the dynastic connection was openly severed, and the rule of Austria declared for ever at an end. Lombardy had since the beginning of the year 1848 been held in check only by the display of great military force. The Revolution at Paris had excited both hopes and fears; the Revolution at Vienna was instantly followed by revolt in Milan. Radetzky, the Austrian commander, a veteran who had served with honour in every campaign since that against the Turks in 1788, had long foreseen the approach of an armed conflict; yet when the actual crisis arrived his dispositions had not been made for meeting it. The troops in Milan were ill placed; the offices of Government were moreover separated by half the breadth of the city from the military head-quarters. Thus when on the 18th of March the insurrection broke out, it carried everything before it. The Vice-Governor, O'Donell, was captured, and compelled to sign his name to decrees handing over the government of the city to the Municipal Council. Radetzky now threw his soldiers upon the barricades, and penetrated to the centre of the city; but he was unable to maintain himself there under the ceaseless fire from the windows and the housetops, and withdrew on the night of the 19th to the line of fortifications. Fighting continued during the next two days in the outskirts and at the gates of the city. The garrisons of all the neighbouring towns were summoned to the assistance of their general, but the Italians broke up the bridges and roads, and one detachment alone out of all the troops in Lombardy succeeded in reaching Milan. A report now arrived at Radetzky's camp that the King of Piedmont was on the march against him. Preferring the loss of Milan to the possible capture of his army, he determined to evacuate the city. On the night of the 22nd of March the retreat was begun, and Radetzky fell back upon the Mincio and Verona, which he himself had made the centre of the Austrian system of defence in Upper Italy. [414]

[Insurrection of Venice.]

[Piedmont makes war.]

Venice had already followed the example of the Lombard capital. The tidings received from Vienna after the 13th of March appear to have completely bewildered both the military and the civil authorities on the Adriatic coast. They released their political prisoners, among whom was Daniel Manin, an able and determined foe of Austria; they entered into constitutional discussions with the popular leaders; they permitted the formation of a national guard, and finally handed over to this guard the arsenals and the dockyards with all their stores. From this time all was over. Manin proclaimed the Republic of St. Mark, and became the chief of a Provisional Government. The Italian regiments in garrison joined the national cause; the ships of war at Pola, manned chiefly by Italian sailors, were only prevented from sailing to the assistance of the rebels by batteries that were levelled against them from the shore. Thus without a blow being struck Venice was lost to Austria. The insurrection spread westwards and northwards through city and village in the interior, till there remained to Austria nothing but the fortresses on the Adige and the Mincio, where Radetzky, deaf to the counsels of timidity, held his ground unshaken. The national rising carried Piedmont with it. It was in vain that the British envoy at Turin urged the King to enter into no conflict with Austria. On the 24th of March Charles Albert published a proclamation promising his help to the Lombards. Two days later his troops entered Milan. [415]

[General war against Austria, beginning in Italy.]

Austria had for thirty years consistently laid down the principle that its own sovereignty in Upper Italy vested it with the right to control the political system of every other State in the peninsula. It had twice enforced this principle by arms: first in its intervention in Naples in 1820, afterwards in its occupation of the Roman States in 1831. The Government of Vienna had, as it were with fixed intention, made it impossible that its presence in any part of Italy should be regarded as the presence of an ordinary neighbour, entitled to quiet possession until some new provocation should be given. The Italians would have proved themselves the simplest of mankind if, having any reasonable hope of military success, they had listened to the counsels of Palmerston and other statesmen who urged them not to take advantage of the difficulties in which Austria was now placed. The paralysis of the Austrian State was indeed the one unanswerable argument for immediate war. So long as the Emperor retained his ascendency in any part of Italy, his interests could not permanently suffer the independence of the rest. If the Italians should chivalrously wait until the Cabinet of Vienna had recovered its strength, it was quite certain that their next efforts in the cause of internal liberty would be as ruthlessly crushed as their last. Every clearsighted patriot understood that the time for a great national effort had arrived. In some respects the political condition of Italy seemed favourable to such united action. Since the insurrection of Palermo in January, 1848, absolutism had everywhere fallen. Ministries had come into existence containing at least a fair proportion of men who were in real sympathy with the national feeling. Above all, the Pope seemed disposed to place himself at the head of a patriotic union against the foreigner. Thus, whatever might be the secret inclinations of the reigning Houses, they were unable for the moment to resist the call to arms. Without an actual declaration of war troops were sent northwards from Naples, from Florence, and from Rome, to take part, as it was supposed, in the national struggle by the side of the King of Piedmont. Volunteers thronged to the standards. The Papal benediction seemed for once to rest on the cause of manhood and independence. On the other hand, the very impetus which had brought Liberal Ministries into power threatened to pass into a phase of violence and disorder. The concessions already made were mocked by men who expected to win all the victories of democracy in an hour. It remained to be seen whether there existed in Italy the political sagacity which, triumphing over all local jealousies, could bend to one great aim the passions of the multitude and the fears of the Courts, or whether the cause of the whole nation would be wrecked in an ignoble strife between demagogues and reactionists, between the rabble of the street and the camarilla round the throne. [416]

[The March Days at Berlin.]

Austria had with one hand held down Italy, with the other it had weighed on Germany. Though the Revolutionary movement was in full course on the east of the Rhine before Metternich's fall, it received, especially at Berlin, a great impetus from this event. Since the beginning of March the Prussian capital had worn an unwonted aspect. In this city of military discipline public meetings had been held day after day, and the streets had been blocked by excited crowds. Deputations which laid before the King demands similar to those now made in every German town received halting and evasive answers. Excitement increased, and on the 13th of March encounters began between the citizens and the troops, which, though insignificant, served to exasperate the people and its leaders. The King appeared to be wavering between resistance and concession until the Revolution at Vienna, which became known at Berlin on the 15th of March, brought affairs to their crisis. On the 17th the tumult in the streets suddenly ceased; it was understood that the following day would see the Government either reconciled with the people or forced to deal with an insurrection on a great scale. Accordingly on the morning of the 18th crowds made their way towards the palace, which was surrounded by troops. About midday there appeared a Royal edict summoning the Prussian United Diet for the 2nd of April, and announcing that the King had determined to promote the creation of a Parliament for all Germany and the establishment of Constitutional Government in every German State. This manifesto drew fresh masses towards the palace, desirous, it would seem, to express their satisfaction; its contents, however, were imperfectly understood by the assembly already in front of the palace, which the King vainly attempted to address. When called upon to disperse, the multitude refused to do so, and answered by cries for the withdrawal of the soldiery. In the midst of the confusion two shots were fired from the ranks without orders; a panic followed, in which, for no known reason, the cavalry and infantry threw themselves upon the people. The crowd was immediately put to flight, but the combat was taken up by the population of Berlin. Barricades appeared in the streets; fighting continued during the evening and night. Meanwhile the King, who was shocked and distressed at the course that events had taken, received deputations begging that the troops might be withdrawn from the city. Frederick William endeavoured for awhile to make the surrender of the barricades the condition for an armistice; but as night went on the troops became exhausted, and although they had gained ground, the resistance of the people was not overcome. Whether doubtful of the ultimate issue of the conflict or unwilling to permit further bloodshed, the King gave way, and at daybreak on the 19th ordered the troops to be withdrawn. His intention was that they should continue to garrison the palace, but the order was misunderstood, and the troops were removed to the outside of Berlin. The palace was thus left unprotected, and, although no injury was inflicted upon its inmates, the King was made to feel that the people could now command his homage. The bodies of the dead were brought into the court of the palace; their wounds were laid bare, and the King, who appeared in a balcony, was compelled to descend into the court, and to stand before them with uncovered head. Definite political expression was given to the changed state of affairs by the appointment of a new Ministry. [417]

The conflict between the troops and the people at Berlin was described, and with truth, as the result of a misunderstanding. Frederick William had already determined to yield to the principal demands of his subjects; nor on the part of the inhabitants of Berlin had there existed any general hostility towards the sovereign, although a small group of agitators, in part foreign, had probably sought to bring about an armed attack on the throne. Accordingly, when once the combat was broken off, there seemed to be no important obstacle to a reconciliation between the King and the people. Frederick William chose a course which spared and even gratified his own self-love. In the political faith of all German Liberals the establishment of German unity was now an even more important article than the introduction of free institutions into each particular State. The Revolution at Berlin had indeed been occasioned by the King's delay in granting internal reform; but these domestic disputes might well be forgotten if in the great cause of German unity the Prussians saw their King rising to the needs of the hour. Accordingly the first resolution of Frederick William, after quiet had returned to the capital, was to appear in public state as the champion of the Fatherland. A proclamation announced on the morning of the 21st of March that the King had placed himself at the head of the German nation, and that he would on that day appear on horseback wearing the old German colours. In due time Frederick William came forth at the head of a procession, wearing the tricolor of gold, white, and black, which since 1815 had been so dear to the patriots and so odious to the Governments of Germany. As he passed through the streets he was saluted as Emperor, but he repudiated the title, asserting with oaths and imprecations that he intended to rob no German prince of his sovereignty. At each stage of his theatrical progress he repeated to appropriate auditors his sounding but ambiguous allusions to the duties imposed upon him by the common danger. A manifesto, published at the close of the day, summed up the utterances of the monarch in a somewhat less rhetorical form. "Germany is in ferment within, and exposed from without to danger from more than one side. Deliverance from this danger can come only from the most intimate union of the German princes and people under a single leadership. I take this leadership upon me for the hour of peril. I have to-day assumed the old German colours, and placed myself and my people under the venerable banner of the German Empire. Prussia henceforth is merged in Germany." [418]

[National Assembly promised.]

The ride of the King through Berlin, and his assumption of the character of German leader, however little it pleased the minor sovereigns, or gratified the Liberals of the smaller States, who considered that such National authority ought to be conferred by the nation, not assumed by a prince, was successful for the moment in restoring to the King some popularity among his own subjects. He could now without humiliation proceed with the concessions which had been interrupted by the tragical events of the 18th of March. In answer to a deputation from Breslau, which urged that the Chamber formed by the union of the Provincial Diets should be replaced by a Constituent Assembly, the King promised that a national Representative Assembly should be convoked as soon as the United Diet had passed the necessary electoral law. To this National Assembly the Government would submit measures securing the liberty of the individual, the right of public meeting and of associations, trial by jury, the responsibility of Ministers, and the independence of the judicature. A civic militia was to be formed, with the right of choosing its own officers, and the standing army was to take the oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Hereditary jurisdictions and manorial rights of police were to be abolished; equality before the law was to be universally enforced; in short, the entire scheme of reforms demanded by the Constitutional Liberals of Prussia was to be carried into effect. In Berlin, as in every other capital in Germany, the victory of the party of progress now seemed to be assured. The Government no longer represented a power hostile to popular rights; and when, on the 22nd of March, the King spontaneously paid the last honours to those who had fallen in combat with his troops, as the long funeral procession passed his palace, it was generally believed that his expression of feeling was sincere.

[Schleswig-Holstein.]

In the passage of his address in which King Frederick William spoke of the external dangers threatening Germany, he referred to apprehensions which had for a while been current that the second French Republic would revive the aggressive energy of the first. This fear proved baseless; nevertheless, for a sovereign who really intended to act as the champion of the German nation at large, the probability of war with a neighbouring Power was far from remote. The cause of the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, which were in rebellion against the Danish Crown, excited the utmost interest and sympathy in Germany. The population of these provinces, with the exception of certain districts in Schleswig, was German; Holstein was actually a member of the German Federation. The legal relation of the Duchies to Denmark was, according to the popular view, very nearly that of Hanover to England before 1837. The King of Denmark was also Duke of Schleswig and of Holstein, but these were no more an integral portion of the Danish State than Hanover was of the British Empire; and the laws of succession were moreover different in Schleswig-Holstein, the Crown being transmitted by males, while in Denmark females were capable of succession. On the part of the Danes it was admitted that in certain districts in Holstein the Salic law held good; it was, however, maintained that in the remainder of Holstein and in all Schleswig the rules of succession were the same as in Denmark. The Danish Government denied that Schleswig-Holstein formed a unity in itself, as alleged by the Germans, and that it possessed separate national rights as against the authority of the King's Government at Copenhagen. The real heart of the difficulty lay in the fact that the population of the Duchies was German. So long as the Germans as a race possessed no national feeling, the union of the Duchies with the Danish Monarchy had not been felt as a grievance. It happened, however, that the great revival of German patriotism resulting from the War of Liberation in 1813 was almost simultaneous with the severance of Norway from the Danish Crown, which compelled the Government of Copenhagen to increase very heavily the burdens imposed on its German subjects in the Duchies. From this time discontent gained ground, especially in Altona and Kiel, where society was as thoroughly German as in the neighbouring city of Hamburg. After 1830, when Provincial Estates were established in Schleswig and Holstein, the German movement became formidable. The reaction, however, which marked the succeeding period generally in Europe prevailed in Denmark too, and it was not until 1844, when a posthumous work of Lornsen, the exiled leader of the German party, vindicated the historical rights of the Duchies, that the claims of German nationality in these provinces were again vigorously urged. From this time the separation of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark became a question of practical politics. The King of Denmark, Christain VIII., had but one son, who, though long married, was childless, and with whom the male line of the reigning House would expire. In answer to an address of the Danish Provincial Estates calling upon the King to declare the unity of the Monarchy and the validity of the Danish law of succession for all its parts, the Holstein Estates passed a resolution in November, 1844, that the Duchies were an independent body, governed by the rule of male descent, and indivisible. After an interval of two years, during which a Commission examined the succession-laws, King Christian published a declaration that the succession was the same in Schleswig as in Denmark proper, and that, as regarded those parts of Holstein where a different rule of succession existed, he would spare no effort to maintain the unity of the Monarchy. On this the Provincial Estates both of Schleswig and of Holstein addressed protests to the King, who refused to accept them. The deputies now resigned in a mass, whilst on behalf of Holstein an appeal was made to the German Federal Diet. The Diet merely replied by a declaration of rights; but in Germany at large the keenest interest was aroused on behalf of these severed members of the race who were so resolutely struggling against incorporation with a foreign Power. The deputies themselves, passing from village to village, excited a strenuous spirit of resistance throughout the Duchies, which was met by the Danish Government with measures of repression more severe than any which it had hitherto employed. [419]

[Insurrection in Holstein, March 24.]

[War between Germany and Denmark.]

Such was the situation of affairs when, on the 20th of January, 1848, King Christian VIII. died, leaving the throne to Frederick VII., the last of the male line of his House. Frederick's first act was to publish the draft of a Constitution, in which all parts of the Monarchy were treated as on the same footing. Before the delegates could assemble to whom the completion of this work was referred, the shock of the Paris Revolution reached the North Sea ports. A public meeting at Altona demanded the establishment of a separate constitution for Schleswig-Holstein, and the admission of Schleswig into the German Federation. The Provincial Estates accepted this resolution, and sent a deputation to Copenhagen to present this and other demands to the King. But in the course of the next few days a popular movement at Copenhagen brought into power a thoroughly Danish Ministry, pledged to the incorporation of Schleswig with Denmark as an integral part of the Kingdom. Without waiting to learn the answer made by the King to the deputation, the Holsteiners now took affairs into their own hands. A Provisional Government was formed at Kiel (March 24), the troops joined the people, and the insurrection instantly spread over the whole province. As the proposal to change the law of succession to the throne had originated with the King of Denmark, the cause of the Holsteiners was from one point of view that of established right. The King of Prussia, accepting the positions laid down by the Holstein Estates in 1844, declared that he would defend the claims of the legitimate heir by force of arms, and ordered his troops to enter Holstein. The Diet of Frankfort, now forced to express the universal will of Germany, demanded that Schleswig, as the sister State of Holstein, should enter the Federation. On the passing of this resolution, the envoy who represented the Denmark. King of Denmark at the Diet, as Duke of Holstein, quitted Frankfort, and a state of war ensued between Denmark on the one side and Prussia with the German Federation on the other.

[The German Ante-Parliament, March 30-April 4.]

[Republican rising in Baden.]

The passionate impulse of the German people towards unity had already called into being an organ for the expression of national sentiment, which, if without any legal or constitutional authority, was yet strong enough to impose its will upon the old and discredited Federal Diet and upon most of the surviving Governments. At the invitation of a Committee, about five hundred Liberals who had in one form or another taken part in public affairs assembled at Frankfort on the 30th of March to make the necessary preparations for the meeting of a German national Parliament. This Assembly, which is known as the Ante-Parliament, sat but for five days. Its resolutions, so far as regarded the method of electing the new Parliament, and the inclusion of new districts in the German Federation, were accepted by the Diet, and in the main carried into effect. Its denunciation of persons concerned in the repressive measures of 1819 and subsequent reactionary epochs was followed by the immediate retirement of all members of the Diet whose careers dated back to those detested days. But in the most important work that was expected from the Ante-Parliament, the settlement of a draft-Constitution to be laid before the future National Assembly as a basis for its deliberations, nothing whatever was accomplished. The debates that took place from the 31st of March to the 4th of April were little more than a trial of strength between the Monarchical and Republican parties. The Republicans, far outnumbered when they submitted a constitutional scheme of their own, proposed, after this repulse, that the existing Assembly should continue in session until the National Parliament met; in other words, that it should take upon itself the functions and character of a National Convention. Defeated also on this proposal, the leaders of the extreme section of the Republican party, strangely miscalculating their real strength, determined on armed insurrection. Uniting with a body of German refugees beyond the Rhine, who were themselves assisted by French and Polish soldiers of revolution, they raised the Republican standard in Baden, and for a few days maintained a hopeless and inglorious struggle against the troops which were sent to suppress them. Even in Baden, which had long been in advance of all other German States in democratic sentiment, and which was peculiarly open to Republican influences from France and Switzerland, the movement was not seriously supported by the population, and in the remainder of Germany it received no countenance whatever. The leaders found themselves ruined men. The best of them fled to the United States, where, in the great struggle against slavery thirteen years later, they rendered better service to their adopted than they had ever rendered to their natural Fatherland.

[Meeting of the German National Assembly, May 18.]

On breaking up on the 4th of April, the Ante-Parliament left behind it a Committee of Fifty, whose task it was to continue the work of preparation for the National Assembly to which it had itself contributed so little. One thing alone had been clearly established, that the future Constitution of Germany was not to be Republican. That the existing Governments could not be safely ignored by the National Assembly in its work of founding the new Federal Constitution for Germany was clear to those who were not blinded by the enthusiasm of the moment. In the Committee of Fifty and elsewhere plans were suggested for giving to the Governments a representation within the Constituent Assembly, or for uniting their representatives in a Chamber co-ordinate with this, so that each step in the construction of the new Federal order should be at once the work of the nation and of the Governments. Such plans were suggested and discussed; but in the haste and inexperience of the time they were brought to no conclusion. The opening of the National Assembly had been fixed for the 18th of May, and this brief interval had expired before the few sagacious men who understood the necessity of co-operation between the Governments and the Parliament had decided upon any common course of action. To the mass of patriots it was enough that Germany, after thirty years of disappointment, had at last won its national representation. Before this imposing image of the united race, Kings, Courts, and armies, it was fondly thought, must bow. Thus, in the midst of universal hope, the elections were held throughout Germany in its utmost federal extent, from the Baltic to the Italian border; Bohemia alone, where the Czech majority resisted any closer union with Germany, declining to send representatives to Frankfort. In the body of deputies elected there were to be found almost all the foremost Liberal politicians of every German community; a few still vigorous champions of the time of the War of Liberation, chief among them the poet Arndt; patriots who in the evil days that followed had suffered imprisonment and exile; historians, professors, critics, who in the sacred cause of liberty have, like Gervinus, inflicted upon their readers worse miseries than ever they themselves endured at the hands of unregenerate kings; theologians, journalists; in short, the whole group of leaders under whom Germany expected to enter into the promised land of national unity and freedom. No Imperial coronation ever brought to Frankfort so many honoured guests, or attracted to the same degree the sympathy of the German race. Greeted with the cheers of the citizens of Frankfort, whose civic militia lined the streets, the members of the Assembly marched in procession on the afternoon of the 18th of May from the ancient banqueting-hall of the Kaisers, where they had gathered, to the Church of St. Paul, which had been chosen as their Senate House. Their President and officers were elected on the following day. Arndt, who in the frantic confusion of the first meeting had been unrecognised and shouted down, was called into the Tribune, but could speak only a few words for tears. The Assembly voted him its thanks for his famous song, "What is the German's Fatherland?" and requested that he would add to it another stanza commemorating the union of the race at length visibly realised in that great Pailiament. Four days after the opening of the General Assembly of Frankfort, the Prussian national Parliament began its sessions at Berlin. [420]

[Europe generally in March, 1848.]

At this point the first act in the Revolutionary drama of 1848 in Germany, as in Europe generally, may be considered to have reached its close. A certain unity marks the memorable epoch known generally as the March Days and the events immediately succeeding. Revolution is universal; it scarcely meets with resistance; its views seem on the point of being achieved; the baffled aspirations of the last half-century seem on the point of being fulfilled. There exists no longer in Central Europe such a thing as an autocratic Government; and, while the French Republic maintains an unexpected attitude of peace, Germany and Italy, under the leadership of old dynasties now penetrated with a new spirit, appear to be on the point of achieving each its own work of Federal union and of the expulsion of the foreigner from its national soil. All Italy prepares to move under Charles Albert to force the Austrians from their last strongholds on the Mincio and the Adige; all Germany is with the troops of Frederick William of Prussia as they enter Holstein to rescue this and the neighbouring German province from the Dane. In Radetzky's camp alone, and at the Court of St. Petersburg, the old monarchical order of Europe still survives. How powerful were these two isolated centres of anti-popular energy the world was soon to see. Yet they would not have turned back the tide of European affairs and given one more victory to reaction had they not had their allies in the hatred of race to race, in the incapacity and the errors of peoples and those who represented them; above all, in the enormous difficulties which, even had the generation been one of sages and martyrs, the political circumstances of the time would in themselves have opposed to the accomplishment of the ends desired.

[The French Provisional Government.]

[The National Workshops.]

France had given to Central Europe the signal for the Revolution of 1848, and it was in France, where the conflict was not one for national independence but for political and social interests, that the Revolution most rapidly ran its course and first exhausted its powers. On the flight of Louis Philippe authority had been entrusted by the Chamber of Deputies to a Provisional Government, whose most prominent member was the orator and poet Lamartine. Installed at the Hotel de Ville, this Government had with difficulty prevented the mob from substituting the Red Flag for the Tricolor, and from proceeding at once to realise the plans of its own leaders. The majority of the Provisional Government were Republicans of a moderate type, representing the ideas of the urban middle classes rather than those of the workmen; but by their side were Ledru Rollin, a rhetorician dominated by the phrases of 1793, and Louis Blanc, who considered all political change as but an instrument for advancing the organisation of labour and for the emancipation of the artisan from servitude, by the establishment of State-directed industries affording appropriate employment and adequate remuneration to all. Among the first proclamations of the Provisional Government was one in which, in answer to a petition demanding the recognition of the Right to Labour, they undertook to guarantee employment to every citizen. This engagement, the heaviest perhaps that was ever voluntarily assumed by any Government, was followed in a few days by the opening of national workshops. That in the midst of a Revolution which took all parties by surprise plans for the conduct of a series of industrial enterprises by the State should have been seriously examined was impossible. The Government had paid homage to an abstract idea; they were without a conception of the mode in which it was to be realised. What articles were to be made, what works were to be executed, no one knew. The mere direction of destitute workmen to the centres where they were to be employed was a task for which a new branch of the administration had to be created. When this was achieved, the men collected proved useless for all purposes of industry. Their numbers increased enormously, rising in the course of four weeks from fourteen to sixty-five thousand. The Revolution had itself caused a financial and commercial panic, interrupting all the ordinary occupations of business, and depriving masses of men of the means of earning a livelihood. These, with others who had no intention of working, thronged to the State workshops; while the certainty of obtaining wages from the public purse occasioned a series of strikes of workmen against their employers and the abandonment of private factories. The chocks which had been intended to confine enrolment at the public works to persons already domiciled in Paris completely failed; from all the neighbouring departments the idle and the hungry streamed into the capital. Every abuse incidental to a system of public relief was present in Paris in its most exaggerated form; every element of experience, of wisdom, of precaution, was absent. If, instead of a group of benevolent theorists, the experiment of 1848 had had for its authors a company of millionaires anxious to dispel all hope that mankind might ever rise to a higher order than that of unrestricted competition of man against man, it could not have been conducted under more fatal conditions. [421]

[The Provisional Government and the Red Republicans.]

[Elections, April 23.]

The leaders of the democracy in Paris had from the first considered that the decision upon the form of Government to be established in France in place of the Orleanist monarchy belonged rather to themselves than to the nation at large. They distrusted, and with good reason, the results of the General Election which, by a decree of the Provisional Government, was to be held in the course of April. A circular issued by Ledru Rollin, Minister of the Interior, without the knowledge of his colleagues, to the Commissioners by whom he had replaced the Prefects of the Monarchy gave the first open indication of this alarm, and of the means of violence and intimidation by which the party which Ledru Rollin represented hoped to impose its will upon the country. The Commissioners were informed in plain language that, as agents of a revolutionary authority, their powers were unlimited, and that their task was to exclude from election all persons who were not animated by revolutionary spirit, and pure from any taint of association with the past. If the circular had been the work of the Government, and not of a single member of it who was at variance with most of his colleagues and whose words were far more formidable than his actions, it would have clearly foreshadowed a return to the system of 1793. But the isolation of Ledru Rollin was well understood. The attitude of the Government generally was so little in accordance with the views of the Red Republicans that on the 16th of April a demonstration was organised with the object of compelling them to postpone the elections. The prompt appearance in arms of the National Guard, which still represented the middle classes of Paris, baffled the design of the leaders of the mob, and gave to Lamartine and the majority in the Government a decisive victory over their revolutionary colleague. The elections were held at the time appointed; and, in spite of the institution of universal suffrage, they resulted in the return of a body of Deputies not widely different from those who had hitherto appeared in French Parliaments. The great majority were indeed Republicans by profession, but of a moderate type; and the session had no sooner opened than it became clear that the relation between the Socialist democracy of Paris and the National Representatives could only be one of more or less violent antagonism.

[The National Assembly, May 4.]

[Riot of May 15.]

[Measures against the National Workshops.]

The first act of the Assembly, which met on the 4th of May, was to declare that the Provisional Government had deserved well of the country, and to reinstate most of its members in office under the title of an Executive Commission. Ledru Rollin's offences were condoned, as those of a man popular with the democracy, and likely on the whole to yield to the influence of his colleagues. Louis Blanc and his confederate, Albert, as really dangerous persons, were excluded. The Jacobin leaders now proceeded to organise an attack on the Assembly by main force. On the 15th of May the attempt was made. Under pretence of tendering a petition on behalf of Poland, a mob invaded the Legislative Chamber, declared the Assembly dissolved, and put the Deputies to flight. But the triumph was of short duration. The National Guard, whose commander alone was responsible for the failure of measures of defence, soon rallied in force; the leaders of the insurgents, some of whom had installed themselves as a Provisional Government at the Hotel de Ville, were made captive; and after an interval of a few hours the Assembly resumed possession of the Palais Bourbon. The dishonour done to the national representation by the scandalous scenes of the 15th of May, as well as the decisively proved superiority of the National Guard over the half armed mob, encouraged the Assembly to declare open war against the so-called social democracy, and to decree the abolition of the national workshops. The enormous growth of these establishments, which now included over a hundred thousand men, threatened to ruin the public finances; the demoralisation which they engendered seemed likely to destroy whatever was sound in the life of the working classes of Paris. Of honest industry there was scarcely a trace to be found among the masses who were receiving their daily wages from the State. Whatever the sincerity of those who had founded the national workshops, whatever the anxiety for employment on the part of those who first resorted to them, they had now become mere hives of disorder, where the resources of the State were lavished in accumulating a force for its own overthrow. It was necessary, at whatever risk, to extinguish the evil. Plans for the gradual dispersion of the army of workmen were drawn up by Committees and discussed by the Assembly. If put in force with no more than the necessary delay, these plans might perhaps have rendered a peaceful solution of the difficulty possible. But the Government hesitated, and finally, when a decision could no longer be avoided, determined upon measures more violent and more sudden than those which the Committees had recommended. On the 21st of June an order was published that all occupants of the public workshops between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five must enlist in the army or cease to receive support from the State, and that the removal of the workmen who had come into Paris from the provinces, for which preparations had already been made, must be at once effected. [422]

[The Four Days of June, 23-26.]

The publication of this order was the signal for an appeal to arms. The legions of the national workshops were in themselves a half-organised force equal in number to several army-corps, and now animated by something like the spirit of military union. The revolt, which began on the morning of the 23rd of June, was conducted as no revolt in Pans had ever been conducted before. The eastern part of the city was turned into a maze of barricades. Though the insurgents had not artillery, they were in other respects fairly armed. The terrible nature of the conflict impending now became evident to the Assembly. General Cavaignac, Minister of War, was placed in command, and subsequently invested with supreme authority, the Executive Commission resigning its powers. All the troops in the neighbourhood of Paris were at once summoned to the capital, Cavaignac well understood that any attempt to hold the insurrection in check by means of scattered posts would only end, as in 1830, by the capture or the demoralisation of the troops. He treated Paris as one great battle-field in which the enemy must be attacked in mass and driven by main force from all his positions. At times the effort appeared almost beyond the power of the forces engaged, and the insurgents, sheltered by huge barricades and firing from the windows of houses, seemed likely to remain masters of the field. The struggle continued for four days, but Cavaignac's artillery and the discipline of his troops at last crushed resistance; and after the Archbishop of Paris had been mortally wounded in a heroic effort to stop further bloodshed, the last bands of the insurgents, driven back into the north-eastern quarter of the city, and there attacked with artillery in front and flank, were forced to lay down their arms.

[Fears left by the events of June.]

Such was the conflict of the Four Days of June, a conflict memorable as one in which the combatants fought not for a political principle or form of Government, but for the preservation or the overthrow of society based on the institution of private property. The National Guard, with some exceptions, fought side by side with the regiments of the line, braved the same perils, and sustained an equal loss. The workmen threw themselves the more passionately into the struggle, inasmuch as defeat threatened them with deprivation of the very means of life. On both sides acts of savagery were committed which the fury of the conflict could not excuse. The vengeance of the conquerors in the moment of success appears, however, to have been less unrelenting than that which followed the overthrow of the Commune in 1871, though, after the struggle was over, the Assembly had no scruple in transporting without trial the whole mass of prisoners taken with arms in their hands. Cavaignac's victory left the classes for whom he had fought terror-stricken at the peril from which they had escaped, and almost hopeless of their own security under any popular form of Government in the future. Against the rash and weak concessions to popular demands that had been made by the administration since February, especially in the matter of taxation and finance, there was now a deep, if not loudly proclaimed, reaction. The national workshops disappeared; grants were made by the Legislature for the assistance of the masses who were left without resource, but the money was bestowed in charitable relief or in the form of loans to associations, not as wages from the State. On every side among the holders of property the cry was for a return to sound principles of finance in the economy of the State, and for the establishment of a strong central power.

[Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon.]

[Louis Napoleon elected Deputy but resigns, June 14.]

General Cavaignac after the restoration of order had laid down the supreme authority which had been conferred on him, but at the desire of the Assembly he continued to exercise it until the new Constitution should be drawn up and an Executive appointed in accordance with its provisions. Events had suddenly raised Cavaignac from obscurity to eminence, and seemed to mark him out as the future ruler of France. But he displayed during the six months following the suppression of the revolt no great capacity for government, and his virtues as well as his defects made against his personal success. A sincere Republican, while at the same time a rigid upholder of law, he refused to lend himself to those who were, except in name, enemies of Republicanism; and in his official acts and utterances he spared the feelings of the reactionary classes as little as he would have spared those of rioters and Socialists. As the influence of Cavaignac declined, another name began to fill men's thoughts. Louis Napoleon, son of the Emperor's brother Louis, King of Holland, had while still in exile been elected to the National Assembly by four Departments. He was as yet almost unknown except by name to his fellow-countrymen. Born in the Tuileries in 1808, he had been involved as a child in the ruin of the Empire, and had passed into banishment with his mother Hortense, under the law that expelled from France all members of Napoleon's family. He had been brought up at Augsburg and on the shores of the Lake of Constance, and as a volunteer in a Swiss camp of artillery he had gained some little acquaintance with military life. In 1831 he had joined the insurgents in the Romagna who were in arms against the Papal Government. The death of his own elder brother, followed in 1832 by that of Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, made him chief of the house of Bonaparte. Though far more of a recluse than a man of action, though so little of his own nation that he could not pronounce a sentence of French without a marked German accent, and had never even seen a French play performed, he now became possessed by the fixed idea that he was one day to wear the French Crown. A few obscure adventurers attached themselves to his fortunes, and in 1836 he appeared at Strasburg and presented himself to the troops as Emperor. The enterprise ended in failure and ridicule. Louis Napoleon was shipped to America by the Orleanist Government, which supplied him with money, and thought it unnecessary even to bring him to trial. He recrossed the Atlantic, made his home in England, and in 1840 repeated at Boulogne the attempt that had failed at Strasburg. The result was again disastrous. He was now sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and passed the next six years in captivity at Ham, where he produced a treatise on the Napoleonic Ideas, and certain fragments on political and social questions. The enthusiasm for Napoleon, of which there had been little trace in France since 1815, was now reviving; the sufferings of the epoch of conquest were forgotten; the steady maintenance of peace by Louis Philippe seemed humiliating to young and ardent spirits who had not known the actual presence of the foreigner. In literature two men of eminence worked powerfully upon the national imagination. The history of Thiers gave the nation a great stage-picture of Napoleon's exploits; Beranger's lyrics invested his exile at St. Helena with an irresistible, though spurious, pathos. Thus, little as the world concerned itself with the prisoner at Ham, the tendencies of the time were working in his favour; and his confinement, which lasted six years and was terminated by his escape and return to England, appears to have deepened his brooding nature, and to have strengthened rather than diminished his confidence in himself. On the overthrow of Louis Philippe he visited Paris, but was requested by the Provisional Government, on the ground of the unrepealed law banishing the Bonaparte family, to quit the country. He obeyed, probably foreseeing that the difficulties of the Republic would create better opportunities for his reappearance. Meanwhile the group of unknown men who sought their fortunes in a Napoleonic restoration busily canvassed and wrote on behalf of the Prince, and with such success that, in the supplementary elections that were held at the beginning of June, he obtained a fourfold triumph. The Assembly, in spite of the efforts of the Government, pronounced his return valid. Yet with rare self-command the Prince still adhered to his policy of reserve, resigning his seat on the ground that his election had been made a pretext for movements of which he disapproved, while at the same time he declared in his letter to the President of the Assembly that if duties should be imposed upon him by the people he should know how to fulfil them. [423]

[Louis Napoleon again elected, Sept. 17.]

[Louis Napoleon elected President, Dec. 10.]

From this time Louis Napoleon was a recognised aspirant to power. The Constitution of the Republic was now being drawn up by the Assembly. The Executive Commission had disappeared in the convulsion of June; Cavaignac was holding the balance between parties rather than governing himself. In the midst of the debates on the Constitution Louis Napoleon was again returned elected, to the Assembly by the votes of five Departments. He saw that he ought to remain no longer in the background, and, accepting the call of the electors, he took his seat in the Chamber. It was clear that he would become a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, and that the popularity of his name among the masses was enormous. He had twice presented himself to France as the heir to Napoleon's throne; he had never directly abandoned his dynastic claim; he had but recently declared, in almost threatening language, that he should know how to fulfil the duties that the people might impose upon him. Yet with all these facts before it the Assembly, misled by the puerile rhetoric of Lamartine, decided that in the new Constitution the President of the Republic, in whom was vested the executive power, should be chosen by the direct vote of all Frenchmen, and rejected the amendment of M. Grevy, who, with real insight into the future, declared that such direct election by the people could only give France a Dictator, and demanded that the President should be appointed not by the masses but by the Chamber. Thus was the way paved for Louis Napoleon's march to power. The events of June had dispelled any attraction that he had hitherto felt towards Socialistic theories. He saw that France required an upholder of order and of property. In his address to the nation announcing his candidature for the Presidency he declared that he would shrink from no sacrifice in defending society, so audaciously attacked; that he would devote himself without reserve to the maintenance of the Republic, and make it his pride to leave to his successor at the end of four years authority strengthened, liberty unimpaired, and real progress accomplished. Behind these generalities the address dexterously touched on the special wants of classes and parties, and promised something to each. The French nation in the election which followed showed that it believed in Louis Napoleon even more than he did in himself. If there existed in the opinion of the great mass any element beyond the mere instinct of self-defence against real or supposed schemes of spoliation, it was reverence for Napoleon's memory. Out of seven millions of votes given, Louis Napoleon received above five, Cavaignac, who alone entered into serious competition with him, receiving about a fourth part of that number. Lamartine and the men who ten months before had represented all the hopes of the nation now found but a handful of supporters. Though none yet openly spoke of Monarchy, on all sides there was the desire for the restoration of power. The day-dreams of the second Republic had fled. France had shown that its choice lay only between a soldier who had crushed rebellion and a stranger who brought no title to its confidence but an Imperial name.



CHAPTER XX.

Austria and Italy—Vienna from March to May—Flight of the Emperor— Bohemian National Movement—Windischgratz subdues Prague—Campaign around Verona—Papal Allocution—Naples in May—Negotiations as to Lombardy—Reconquest of Venetia—Battle of Custozza—The Austrians enter Milan—Austrian Court and Hungary—The Serbs in Southern Hungary—Serb Congress at Carlowitz—Jellacic—Affairs of Croatia—Jellacic, the Court and the Hungarian Movement—Murder of Lamberg—Manifesto of October 3 Vienna on October 6—The Emperor at Olmuetz—Windischgratz conquers Vienna—The Parliament at Kremsier—Schwarzenberg Minister—Ferdinand abdicates—Dissolution of the Kremsier Parliament—Unitary Edict— Hungary—The Roumanians in Transylvania—The Austrian Army occupies Pesth—Hungarian Government at Debreczin—The Austrians driven out of Hungary—Declaration of Hungarian Independence—Russian Intervention— The Hungarian Summer Campaign—Capitulation of Vilagos—Italy—Murder of Rossi—Tuscany—The March Campaign in Lombardy—Novara—Abdication of Charles Albert—Victor Emmanuel—Restoration in Tuscany—French Intervention in Rome—Defeat of Oudmot—Oudmot and Lesseps—The French enter Rome—The Restored Pontifical Government—Fall of Venice— Ferdinand reconquers Sicily Germany—The National Assembly at Frankfort— The Armistice of Malmoe—Berlin from April to September—The Prussian Army—Last days of the Prussian Parliament—Prussian Constitution granted by Edict—The German National Assembly and Austria—Frederick William IV. elected Emperor—He refuses the Crown—End of the National Assembly—Prussia attempts to form a separate Union—The Union Parliament at Erfurt—Action of Austria—Hesse Cassel—The Diet of Frankfort restored—Olmuetz—Schleswig-Holstern—Germany after 1849— Austria after 1851—France after 1848—Louis Napoleon—The October Message—Law Limiting the Franchise—Louis Napoleon and the Army— Proposed Revision of the Constitution—The Coup d'Etat—Napoleon III. Emperor

[Austria and Italy.]

The plain of Northern Italy has ever been an arena on which the contest between interests greater than those of Italy itself has been brought to an issue, and it may perhaps be truly said that in the struggle between established Governments and Revolution through out Central Europe in 1848 the real turning point, if it can anywhere be fixed, lay rather in the fortunes of a campaign in Lombardy than in any single combination of events at Vienna or Berlin. The very existence of the Austrian Monarchy depended on the victory of Radetzky's forces over the national movement at the head of which Piedmont had now placed itself. If Italian independence should be established upon the ruin of the Austrian arms, and the influence and example of the victorious Italian people be thrown into the scale against the Imperial Government in its struggle with the separatist forces that convulsed every part of the Austrian dominions, it was scarcely possible that any stroke of fortune or policy could save the Empire of the Hapsburgs from dissolution. But on the prostration or recovery of Austria, as represented by its central power at Vienna, the future of Germany in great part depended. Whatever compromise might be effected between popular and monarchical forces in the other German States if left free from Austria's interference, the whole influence of a resurgent Austrian power could not but be directed against the principles of popular sovereignty and national union. The Parliament of Frankfort might then in vain affect to fulfil its mandate without reckoning with the Court of Vienna. All this was indeed obscured in the tempests that for a while shut out the political horizon. The Liberals of Northern Germany had little sympathy with the Italian cause in the decisive days of 1848. Their inclinations went rather with the combatant who, though bent on maintaining an oppressive dominion, was nevertheless a member of the German race and paid homage for the moment to Constitutional rights. Yet, as later events were to prove, the fetters which crushed liberty beyond the Alps could fit as closely on to German limbs; and in the warfare of Upper Italy for its own freedom the battle of German Liberalism was in no small measure fought and lost.

[Vienna from March to May.]

Metternich once banished from Vienna, the first popular demand was for a Constitution. His successors in office, with a certain characteristic pedantry, devoted their studies to the Belgian Constitution of 1831; and after some weeks a Constitution was published by edict for the non-Hungarian part of the Empire, including a Parliament of two Chambers, the Lower to be chosen by indirect election, the Upper consisting of nominees of the Crown and representatives of the great landowners. The provisions of this Constitution in favour of the Crown and the Aristocracy, as well as the arbitrary mode of its promulgation, displeased the Viennese. Agitation recommenced in the city; unpopular officials were roughly handled the Press grew ever more violent and more scurrilous. One strange result of the tutelage in which Austrian society had been held was that the students of the University became, and for some time continued to be, the most important political body of the capital. Their principal rivals in influence were the National Guard drawn from citizens of the middle class, the workmen as yet remaining in the background. Neither in the Hall of the University nor at the taverns where the civic militia discussed the events of the hour did the office-drawn Constitution find favour. On the 13th of May it was determined, with the view of exercising stronger pressure upon the Government, that the existing committees of the National Guard and of the students should be superseded by one central committee representing both bodies. The elections to this committee had been held, and its sittings had begun, when the commander of the National Guard declared such proceedings to be inconsistent with military discipline, and ordered the dissolution of the committee. Riots followed, during which the students and the mob made their way into the Emperor's palace and demanded from his Ministers not only the re-establishment of the central committee but the abolition of the Upper Chamber in the projected Constitution, and the removal of the checks imposed on popular sovereignty by a limited franchise and the system of indirect elections. On point after point the Ministry gave way; and, in spite of the resistance and reproaches of the Imperial household, they obtained the Emperor's signature to a document promising that for the future all the important military posts in the city should be held by the National Guard jointly with the regular troops, that the latter should never be called out except on the requisition of the National Guard, and that the projected Constitution should remain without force until it should have been submitted for confirmation to a single Constituent Assembly elected by universal suffrage.

[Flight of the Emperor, May 17.]

[Tumult of May 26.]

The weakness of the Emperor's intelligence rendered him a mere puppet in the hands of those who for the moment exercised control over his actions. During the riot of the 15th of May he obeyed his Ministers; a few hours afterwards he fell under the sway of the Court party, and consented to fly from Vienna. On the 18th the Viennese learnt to their astonishment that Ferdinand was far on the road to the Tyrol. Soon afterwards a manifesto was published, stating that the violence and anarchy of the capital had compelled the Emperor to transfer his residence to Innsbruck; that he remained true, however, to the promises made in March and to their legitimate consequences; and that proof must be given of the return of the Viennese to their old sentiments of loyalty before he could again appear among them. A certain revulsion of feeling in the Emperor's favour now became manifest in the capital, and emboldened the Ministers to take the first step necessary towards obtaining his return, namely the dissolution of the Students' Legion. They could count with some confidence on the support of the wealthier part of the middle class, who were now becoming wearied of the students' extravagances and alarmed at the interruption of business caused by the Revolution; moreover, the ordinary termination of the academic year was near at hand. The order was accordingly given for the dissolution of the Legion and the closing of the University. But the students met the order with the stoutest resistance. The workmen poured in from the suburbs to join in their defence. Barricades were erected, and the insurrection of March seemed on the point of being renewed. Once more the Government gave way, and not only revoked its order, but declared itself incapable of preserving tranquillity in the capital unless it should receive the assistance of the leaders of the people. With the full concurrence of the Ministers, a Committee of Public Safety was formed, representing at once the students, the middle class, and the workmen; and it entered upon its duties with an authority exceeding, within the limits of the capital, that of the shadowy functionaries of State. [424]

[Bohemian national movement.]

[Windischgraetz subdues Prague, June 12-17.]

In the meantime the antagonism between the Czechs and the Germans in Bohemia was daily becoming more bitter. The influence of the party of compromise, which had been dominant in the early days of March, had disappeared before the ill-timed attempt of the German national leaders at Frankfort to include Bohemia within the territory sending representatives to the German national Parliament. By consenting to this incorporation the Czech population would have definitely renounced its newly asserted claim to nationality. If the growth of democratic spirit at Vienna was accompanied by a more intense German national feeling in the capital, the popular movements at Vienna and at Prague must necessarily pass into a relation of conflict with one another. On the flight of the Emperor becoming known at Prague, Count Thun, the governor, who was also the chief of the moderate Bohemian party, invited Ferdinand to make Prague the seat of his Government. This invitation, which would have directly connected the Crown with Czech national interests, was not accepted. The rasher politicians, chiefly students and workmen, continued to hold their meetings and to patrol the streets; and a Congress of Slavs from all parts of the Empire, which was opened on the 2nd of June, excited national passions still further. So threatening grew the attitude of the students and workmen that Count Windischgraetz, commander of the troops at Prague, prepared to act with artillery. On the 12th of June, the day on which the Congress of Slavs broke up, fighting began. Windischgraetz, whose wife was killed by a bullet, appears to have acted with calmness, and to have sought to arrive at some peaceful settlement. He withdrew his troops, and desisted from a bombardment that he had begun, on the understanding that the barricades which had been erected should be removed. This condition was not fulfilled. New acts of violence occurred in the city, and on the 17th Windischgraetz reopened fire. On the following day Prague surrendered, and Windischgraetz re-entered the city as Dictator. The autonomy of Bohemia was at an end. The army had for the first time acted with effect against a popular rising; the first blow had been struck on behalf of the central power against the revolution which till now had seemed about to dissolve the Austrian State into its fragments.