The revolutions of 1840
is series of republican revolts against European monarchies, beginning in
Sicily, and spreading to France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. They
all ended in failure and repression, and were followed by widespread disillusionment
among liberals.
The revolutionary movement
began in Italy with a local revolution in Sicily in January 1848; and, after
the revolution of February 24 in France, the movement extended throughout the
whole of Europe with the exception of Russia, Spain, and the Scandinavian
countries. In Great Britain it amounted to little more
than a Chartist demonstration and a republican agitation in Ireland. In Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark 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 quarrel between the supporters of the république démocratique and
the partisans of république démocratique et sociale culminated in a
workers' insurrection in June 1848.
In Austria,
where the new ministers promised to grant constitutions, the monarchy withstood
the storm; and in Prussia King Frederick
William IV, who led the movement for the unification of Germany,
hoisted the black, red, and gold flag that had become the symbol of German
unity. The German governments agreed to the convocation of three constituent
assemblies at Berlin, Vienna, and Frankfurt by which democratic constitutions
were to be drafted for Prussia, Austria, and Germany.
In Italy,
at first, the revolution only took the form of a nationalist rising against
Austria led by the king of Sardinia under the Italian tricolour, the “white,
red and green.” The republic was proclaimed in 1849, and then only in Rome and
Tuscany. Within the Austrian empire the nationalities subjected to the German
Government of Vienna agitated for a national government, and Hungary succeeded
in organizing itself on an autonomous basis.
This upheaval seemed to
indicate a redistribution of the territories of Europe. 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declared that the treaties of 1815 were no longer valid in the eyes of the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.
The restoration, however,
was not complete, for universal manhood suffrage was not abolished in France;
in Prussia, the Constitution of January 1850, which established an elective
assembly, and, in Sardinia, the Constitution of March 1848 were retained; the
signorial rights were not restored in Austria.
