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Narratives : Restauration, Early Nationalism http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sat/texts/narrrest.html |
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The Vienna Congress concluded peace after more than two decades of almost uninterrupted warfare.
Decisions at the Vienna Congress were made by diplomats representing Europe's various ruling
dynasties. While they made verbal concessions to the bourgeoisie, mainly the promise to promulgate
written constitutions, the main goals which influenced the Congress were the establishment of a new
and stable balance of powers, and the restauration of the Ancien Regime. As an instrument designed
to maintain the Ancien Regime, the Holy Alliance was founded. In France, the monarchy was restored. Most of France's nobility had been killed during the revolution; King Louis XVIII. strove to replace the losses by ennobling individuals deemed worthy of the honour. The Vienna Congress had restored Dutch independence (and enlarged the country), but former stadholder William V. returned as King William I. With authority none of his ancestors had, he pursued a policy of Neo-Absolutism; he even attempted to mold the Calvinist state church into an instrument of the state. King Friedrich Wilhelm III. attempted to force a union of the country's Lutheran and Calvinist churches. The church was regarded as a political instrument, a pillar of the Ancien Regime. Many among Europe's bourgeois, while rejecting the violence displayed by the French Revolution and, in countries like Spain or Germany, having made personal sacrifices in order to liberate Europe from French rule, approved of a number of accomplishments of the French Revolution - equality in front of the law, separation of church and state, a written constitution, protection of property, free trade, freedom of assembly, of the press. They hoped for written constitutions to be adopted. Romanticist writers had stirred up nationalist feelings during the Napoleonic years; the patriots in Europe's various countries were opposed to the Ancien Regime and regarded a (republican) nation-state as a substitute for king and monarchy. Patriotic university students in Germany founded the Burschenschaften (fraternities, the oldest in Jena 1815); patriots founded the gymnastic movement. A member of the Jena fraternity, Karl Sand, dissatisfied with the lack of progress regarding political constitutions, in 1819 assassinated Russian diplomat August von Kotzebue. Austrian chancellor Clemens von Metternich used the opportunity, in cooperation with his Russian and Prussian colleagues, to issue the Carlsbad Decrees - establishment or extension of authorities of the secret police, imposition of press censorship, banning of suspect clubs and societies. The police state was created; political activities of suspicious kind (patriotic, democratic, liberal) observed and, if possible, suppressed. Representatives of the European Powers attended follow-up congresses to the Vienna Congress (Aachen 1818, Troppau 1820, Laibach 1821, Verona 1822). Here the Holy Alliance powers decided to reverse political developments which had taken place in Sicily (1820) and Spain (1822), dispatching the Austrian respectively French army with the task to cancel liberal constitutions adopted there and to restore absolute rule of the King of Two Sicilies respectively the King of Spain. In 1822, the British delegate left the Verona Congress in protest of the action taken. Many among those German patriots who had volunteered to join regiments fighting the French in the War of Liberation (1813-1814), in the atmosphere of a police state, gave up any involvement in politics and focussed on the pleasures of private life (Biedermeier, a term also describing an unpolitical branch of later Romanticist art). The Greek Rebellion (1821-1825) did not involve the Holy Alliance, because the Ottoman Empire had not been represented at the Vienna Congress. Patriots all over Europe sympathised with the Greeks for a number of reasons (Philhellenism) : (a) they mistook the Greeks of the 1820es with the Greeks of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., who fought for democratic ideals. Classical Greek history was taught in high schools all over Europe. (b) the Greek patriots stood up for their principles, against a ruler deemed tyrannical - an act many patriots in European countries liked to imitate. Romanticist painters and writers idealized the Greek Rebellion; British poet Lord Byron even travelled to Greece, where he died of disease. Militarily, the Greek Rebellion was crushed by Mehmet Ali's Egyptian troops. Then, in 1827, a combined Anglo-Russian fleet defeated the Ottoman fleet; diplomats arranged for a Kingdom of Greece to be granted independence (1829/1832). If the Holy Alliance would make it impossible to change the political system in an individual member country, the patriots of various countris had to coordinate their actions in order to be successful. In 1830, both Paris and Brussels saw a revolution. When Russian Czar Nicholas I. ordered the army of Russian Poland to march on Paris, the Polish soldiers dismissed their Russian officers and rebelled themselves. While Russian troops suppressed the Polish ebellion (1830-1831), the revolutions in Paris and Brussels succeeded; in France, unpopular King Charles X. was toppled, replaced by the 'liberal king', Louis Philippe (1830-1848). France ceased to be a member of the Holy Alliance. And Belgium separated from the Kingdom of the United Netherlands, to form Europe's first Liberal State. After the revolutions of 1830, state suppression intensified. In Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini founded Young Italy, advocated a unified republican Italy. Among the disciples he inspired was Giuseppe Garibaldi, soon to become a professional revolutionary. The Restauration governments had to face social and economic change taking place at a faster speed than ever before. The fact that Germany was split in 43 states was an obstacle to economic development. In 1828, the first of several customs unions was founded; these then merged into the Zollverein, a German customs union which abolished the collection of export and import tariffs in intra-Zollverein trade, standardized currencies etc. The Zollverein can be regarded as preparing German political unification. Restauration governments, in regard to the emerging factory and mining industries, pursued a laissez-faire policy. The misery, in which the working classes lived, occasionally resulted in violence (Luddites England 1811-1817, Lyon silk industry worker rebellions France 1831, 1834, Silesian weaver revolt Prussia 1844). The state reacted by sending troops, but failed to solve the fundamental problem. In case of the Irish potato famine of 1845, the only relief the state came up with as the abolition of the Corn Laws, which had held the price for wheat at a high level (UK 1846). The year 1848 again saw revolution, beginning in Paris, and, within a matter of days, spreading to Germany, Italy, Bohemia, Hungary. Because of the tense atmosphere, the Kings of the Netherlands, enmark and Sardinia signed written constitutions, thus introducing the Cabinet System and avoiding revolution. In the various cities of Germany and Italy, the revolutionaries were in control. The authority of the Emperor in Vienna was limited to his palace and garden; similarly, the King of Prussia was no longer in control. The various cities and regions of Germany sent representatives to a National Assembly convened in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. They debated over two main issues - German unification and a liberal constitution. They foresaw a federal constitutional monarchy with an Emperor on the throne. They offered the post to the Emperor of Austria, and then to the King of Prussia - both declined, stating they were monarchs by the grace of God, not by the grace of parliament. Another problem lay in the borders of the German nation state to be created. The combined duchies of Schleswig-Holstein attracted the center of attention. In dynastic union with the Kingdom of Denmark, Holstein was old German territory, while Schleswig originally formed a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Since the 14th century, the two duchies had been united in dynastic union, had a unified diet. Part of the population of Schleswig had assimilated into German culture (nobility, part of the urban population). While the Danes wanted to integrate Schleswig into a Danish nation state, German-feeling Schleswigers rejected this and rebelled. The crisis escalated, as the German National Assembly sided with the rebels and ordered Prussia's army to march; Sweden declared to support Denmark. Europe was on the brink of a major European war. Diplomacy set in, and the Prussian army command was pursuaded not to enter Danish territory; they declared no longer to recognize orders from the Paulskirche assembly, but from the King instead. The Schleswig-Holstein rebellion was suppressed; the Prussian army moved from city to city, ending the democratic administration. In 1849 the German National Assembly dissolved, all of her goals unaccomplished. Russian troops supported Austrian forces in suppressing rebellion in Hungary, then Austrian troops moved into Italy ending the revolution there. In France, the revolutions of 1848 ended the monarchy and declared the Second Republic, which introduced universal adult manhood suffrage and abolished slavery, but failed to address the economic depression and social misery. In 1852 the French, in a plebiscite, approved strongman Louis Napoleon to become Emperor (Napoleon III.). For the next chapter, From Empire to Nation State, click here For more detailed chapters on the history of the early 19th century click here |
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EXTERNAL FILES |
Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions Modern History Sourcebook : Romanticism, Conservative Order, Nationalism, Liberalism, 1848 Documents on German History in the 19th Century, from psm-data |
| REFERENCE |
Charles Breunig, The Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1789-1850, NY : Norton (1970) 1977, KMLA Lib.Sign. 940.2 N882h v.5 Raymond Pearson, European Nationalism 1789-1920, London : Longman 1994, 336 pp. [G] Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna, a Study in Allied Unity, 1812-1822, NY : Grove (1946) 2001, 320 pp. [G] |
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