Revolutions of mid-century
The revolutionary movement began in Italy and then spread to France. The movement extended throughout the whole of Europe, with the exception of Russia, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries. It manifested itself in peaceful reforms of existing institutions; but democratic insurrections broke out in the capitals of the three great monarchies, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, where the governments, rendered powerless by their fear of “the revolution,” did little to defend themselves. The revolution was successful in France alone; the Second Republic and universal manhood suffrage were established, but the quarrell between the supporters of the république démocratique and the partisans of république démocratique et sociale culminated in a workers’ insurrection in June 1848.
In the name of the Provisional Government in France, Alphonse de Lamartine declared that the treaties of 1815 were no longer valid in the eyes of the French Republic, but he added that he accepted the territorial delimitations effected by those treaties. France did not lend its support to the revolutionaries in Europe.
The restoration had commenced even before the revolution was over, and it was accomplished by the armies that had remained faithful to their respective governments. Military repression was first employed in Paris by Louis-Eugène Cavaignac against the insurgents in June, and by Alfred, prince von Windischgrätz, on June 17 against the Czechs in Prague, and later by the Austrian Army in Lombardy and in Vienna; then in Berlin in December, and in 1849 by the Prussian Army in Saxony and Baden. Order was restored in Rome only by French intervention, and in Hungary with the help of the Russian Army. The king of Prussia, having refused the title of emperor offered to him by the Frankfurt Assembly, sought to achieve the unity of Germany by a union between the German princes. Austria and Russia, however, compelled him to abandon his design by the Convention of Olmütz in 1850.
The immediate result of the reaction became manifest in the withdrawal of liberal democratic or nationalist concessions which had been made during the revolution: universal manhood suffrage, liberty of the press and of assembly. Absolute monarchy was reestablished in Germany, Austria, and Italy; and the governments, in alliance with the middle classes and the clergy, who were terrified by the Socialist proposals, strengthened the police forces and organized a persecution of the popular press and associations that paralyzed political life. In France the reaction led to the coup d’etat against the assembly on the part of Prince Louis-Napoléon on Dec. 2, 1851, and the reestablishment of the hereditary empire under Napoleon III in 1852.