Frederick William IV Refuses the Throne
In March 1849 after months of deliberation and constitution making, the Frankfurt Assembly offered the throne of its proposed German state to the Prussian monarch Frederick William IV, who quickly turned it down. He had already reflected on the matter In an earlier (December 1848) letter to one of his advisers, the diplomat Christian von Bunsen, he had set out his reasoning as follows.
Want the princes' approval of neither this election nor this crown. Do you understand the words emphasized here? For you I want to shed light on this as briefly and brightly as possible. First, this crown is no crown. The crown which a Hohenzoller [the Prussian royal house] could accept, if circumstances permitted, is not one made by an assembly sprung from a revolutionary seed in the genre of the crown of cobble stones of Louis Philippe—even if this assembly was established with the sanction of princes. . . but one which bears the stamp of God, one which makes [the individual] on whom it [the crown] is placed, after his anointment, a "divine right" monarch—just as it has elevated more than 34 princes to Kings of the Germans by divine right and just as it bonds the last of these to his predecessors. The crown worn by Ottonians,
Staufens [earlier German royal houses], Habsburgs can of course also be worn by a Hohenzoller; it honors him overwhelmingly with the luster of a thousand years. But this one, to which you regrettably refer, overwhelmingly dishonors [its bearer] with its smell of the gunpowder of the 1848 revolution—the silliest, dumbest, worst, though—thank God!— not the most evil of this century. Such an imaginary headband, baked out of dirt and the letters of the alphabet, is supposed to be welcome to a legitimate divine right king: to put it more precisely, to the King of Prussia who is blessed with a crown which may not be the oldest but, of all those which have never been stolen, is the most noble? . . . I will tell you outright: if the thousand-year-old crown of the German nation. . . should be bestowed again, it will be I and my equals who will bestow it. And woe to those who assume [powers] to which they have no title.
Source: Ralph Menning, The Art of the Possible:
Documents on Great Power Diplomacy 1814-1914
(New York: 1996), p. 82.
Questions for Analysis
1. For Frederick William IV, what was the only legitimate source of a monarch's authority?
2. Why did he call the crown offered to him by the Frankfurt Assembly a "crown of cobble stones. . . with its smell of gunpowder of the 1848 revolution"?
3. Frederick William referred to himself by his family name, Hohenzollern, and to his title, king of Prussia, but he also used the expression "German nation" once in his letter. What relationship did he see among his family, the kingdom of Prussia, and the possibility of a unified German nation?
Spectacle of disintegration in the Habsburg Empire. This was the “Great German” position. It was countered by a minority who called for a “Small Germany,” one that left out all lands of the Habsburg Empire, including German Austria. Great Germans had a majority but were stymied by other nationalities unwilling to be included in their fold. Many Czechs in Bohemia, for instance, wanted no part of Great Germany, believing that they needed the protection of the Habsburg monarchy to avoid being swallowed up by a new German state on one side and the Russian monarchy on the other. After a long and difficult debate, the Austrian emperor withdrew his support, and the assembly retreated to the Small German solution. In April 1849, the Frankfurt Assembly offered the crown of a new German nation to the Prussian king, Frederick William IV.
By this time, however, Frederick William was negotiating from a position of greater strength. Already in the fall of 1848, he had used the military to repress the radical revolutionaries in Berlin while the delegates debated the constitutional question in Frankfurt. He was also encouraged by a backlash against revolutionary movements in Europe after the bloody repression during the June Days
THE FRANKFURT PREPARLIAMENT MEETS AT ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, 1848. This assembly brought together 500 delegates from the various German states to establish a constitution for a new German nation. An armed militia lined the square, and lines of student gymnasts (dressed in white with wide-brimmed hats) escorted the delegates. Their presence was a sign that the organizers of the preparliament feared violence. The black, red, and gold banners were also associated with republicanism. ¦ What image did the organizers mean to convey with this pageantry, the disciplined lines of students and delegates, their forms of dress, and their use of republican symbols?
In Paris. He therefore refused to become a constitutional monarch on the terms offered by the Frankfurt Assembly. The proposed constitution, he said, was too liberal and receiving his crown from a parliament would be demeaning. The Prussian monarch wanted both the crown and a larger German state, but on his own terms, and he therefore dissolved the assembly before they could approve it with an official vote. After brief protests, summarily suppressed by the military, the Frankfurt delegates went home, disillusioned by their experience and convinced that their liberal and nationalist goals were incompatible. Some fled repression by immigrating to the United States. Others convinced themselves to sacrifice their liberal views for the seemingly realistic goal of nationhood. In Prussia itself, the army dispatched what remained of the revolutionary forces.
Elsewhere in the German-speaking states as popular revolution was taking its own course, many moderate liberals began to have second thoughts about the pace of change. Peasants ransacked tax offices and burned castles; workers smashed machines in protests against industrialization. In towns and cities, citizen militias formed, threatening the power of established elites. New daily newspapers multiplied. So did political clubs. For the first time, many of these clubs admitted women (although they denied them the right to speak), and newly founded women’s clubs demanded political rights. This torrent of popular unrest made moderate reformers uneasy; they considered universal manhood suffrage too radical. While peasant and worker protests had forced the king to make concessions in the early spring of 1848, moderate reformers now found those protests threatening. Throughout the German states, rulers took advantage of this shift in middle-class opinion to undo the concessions that they had granted in 1848 and to push through counterrevolutionary measures in the name of order.
For German liberals, national unification was now seen as necessary to maintain political stability. “In order to realize our ideas of freedom and equality, we want above all a strong and powerful government,” claimed one candidate during the election campaigns for the Frankfurt Assembly. Popular sovereignty, he continued, “strengthened by the authority of a hereditary monarchy, will be able to repress with an iron hand any disorder and any violation of the law.” In this context, nationhood stood for a new constitution and political community but also for a sternly enforced rule of law. After the failure of the Frankfurt Assembly, therefore, German liberals increasingly looked to a strong Prussian state as the only possible route toward national unification.
Peoples against Empire: The Habsburg Lands
In the sprawling Habsburg (Austrian) Empire, nationalism played a different role. On the one hand, the Habsburg emperors could point to a remarkable record of political success: as
"NO PIECE OF PAPER WILL COME BETWEEN MYSELF AND MY PEOPLE" (1848). In this cartoon, Frederick William IV and a military officer refuse to accept the constitution for a new Germany offered to him by the Frankfurt Assembly. Note that the caption refers to a conservative definition of the relationship between a monarch and "his people." Compare this autocratic vision of the nation-state with the liberal nationalist's demand for a government that reflects the people's will. ¦ What contrasting visions of the nation and its relation to the state are contained in this cartoon?
HUNGARIAN REVOLUTIONARY LAJOS KOSSUTH, 1851.
A leader of the Hungarian nationalist movement who combined aristocratic style with rabble-rousing politics, Kossuth almost succeeded in an attempt to separate Hungary from Austria in 1849.
Heir to the medieval Holy Roman Empire, Habsburg kings had ruled for centuries over a diverse array of ethnicities and language groups in central Europe that included Germans, Czechs, Magyars, Poles, Slovaks, Serbs, and Italians, to name only the most prominent. In the sixteenth century, under Charles V, the empire had included Spain, parts of Burgundy, and the Netherlands. In the nineteenth century, however, the Habsburgs found it increasingly difficult to hold their empire together as the national demands of the different peoples in the realm escalated after 1815. Whereas the greater ethnic and linguistic homogeneity of the German-speaking lands allowed for a convergence between liberal ideas of popular sovereignty and national unification, no such program was possible in the Habsburg Empire. Popular sovereignty for peoples defined in terms of their ethnic identity implied a breakup of the Habsburg lands.
At the same time, however, the existence of nationalist movements did not imply unity, even within territories that spoke the same language. In the Polish territories of the empire, nationalist sentiment was strongest among aristocrats, who were especially conscious of their historic role as leaders of the Polish nation. Here, the Habsburg Empire successfully set Polish serfs against Polish lords, ensuring that social grievances dampened ethnic nationalism. In the Hungarian region, national claims were likewise advanced by the relatively small Magyar aristocracy. (Hungarian is a political term; Magyar, which was often used, refers to the Hungarians’ non-Slavic language.) Yet they gained an audience under the gifted and influential leadership of Lajos (Louis) Kossuth (KAW-shut). A member of the lower nobility, Kossuth was by turns a lawyer, publicist, newspaper editor, and political leader. To protest the closed-door policy of the empire’s barely representative Diet (parliament), Kossuth published transcripts of parliamentary debates and distributed them to a broader public. He campaigned for independence and a separate Hungarian parliament, but he also (and more influentially) brought politics to the people. Kossuth staged political “banquets” like those in France, at which local and national personalities made speeches in the form of toasts and interested citizens could eat, drink, and participate in politics. The Hungarian political leader combined aristocratic style with rabble-rousing politics: a delicate balancing act but one that, when it worked, catapulted him to the center of Habsburg politics. He was as well known in the Habsburg capital of Vienna as he was in Pressburg and Budapest.
The other major nationalist movement that troubled the Habsburg Empire was pan-Slavism. Slavs included Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, and Bulgarians. Before 1848, pan-Slavism was primarily a cultural movement united by a general pro-Slavic sentiment. It was internally divided, however, by the competing claims of different Slavic languages and traditions. Pan-Slavism inspired the works of the Czech historian and political leader, Frantisek Palacky, author of the History of the Bohemian People, and the Slovak Jan hollar, whose book Salvy Dcera (“Slava’s Daughter”) mourned the loss of identity among Slavs in the Germanic world. The movement also influenced the Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz (mihtz-KYAY-vihch), who sought to rekindle Polish nationhood against foreign oppression.
The fact that Russia and Austria were rivals in eastern Europe made pan-Slavism a volatile and unpredictable political force in the regions of eastern Europe where the two nations vied for power and influence. Tsar Nicholas of Russia sought to use pan-Slavism to his advantage, making arguments about “Slavic” uniqueness part of his “autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality” ideology after 1825. Yet the tsar’s Russian-sponsored pan-Slavism alienated Western-oriented Slavs who resented Russia’s ambitions. Here, as elsewhere, nationalism created a tangled web of alliances and antagonisms.
Springtime of Peoples and the Autumn of Empire
The empire’s combination of political, social, and ethnic tensions came to the point of explosion in 1848. The opening salvo came from the Hungarians. Emboldened by uprisings in France and Germany, Kossuth stepped up his reform campaigns, pillorying the “Metternich system” of Habsburg autocracy and control, demanding representative institutions throughout the empire and autonomy for the Hungarian Magyar nation. The Hungarian Diet prepared to draft its own constitution. In Vienna, the seat of Habsburg power, a popular movement of students and artisans demanding political and social reforms built barricades and attacked the imperial palace. A Central Committee of Citizens took shape, as did a middle-class militia, or national guard, determined at once to maintain order and to press demands for reform. The Habsburg regime tried to shut the movement down by closing the university, but that only unleashed more popular anger. The regime found itself forced to retreat almost entirely. Met-ternich, whose political system had weathered so many storms, fled to Britain in disguise—a good indication of the political turmoil—leaving the emperor Ferdinand I in Vienna. The government conceded to radical demands for male suffrage and a single house of representatives. It agreed to withdraw troops from Vienna and to put forced labor and serfdom on a path to abolition. The government also yielded to Czech demands in Bohemia, granting that kingdom its own constitution. To the south, Italian liberals and nationalists attacked the empire’s territories in Naples and Venice. In Milan, the forces of King Charles Albert of Piedmont routed the Austrians, raising hopes of victory. As what would be called “the springtime of peoples” unfolded, Habsburg control of its various provinces seemed to be coming apart.
Yet the explosion of national sentiment that shook the empire later allowed it to recoup its fortunes. The paradox of nationalism in central Europe was that no cultural or ethnic majority could declare independence in a given region without prompting rebellion from other minority groups that inhabited the same area. In Bohemia, for instance, Czechs and Germans who lived side by side had worked together to pass reforms scuttling feudalism. Within a month, however, nationalism began to fracture their alliance. German Bohemians set off to attend the all-important Frankfurt Assembly, but the Czech majority refused to send representatives and countered by convening a confederation of Slavs in Prague. What did the delegates at the Slav confederation want? Some were hostile to what the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin called the “monstrous Austrian Empire.” But the majority of delegates preferred to be ruled by the Habsburgs (though with some autonomy) than to be dominated by either the Germans or the Russians.
This bundle of animosities allowed the Austrians to divide and conquer. In May 1848, during the Slav Congress, a student - and worker-led insurrection broke out in Prague. On the orders of the newly installed liberal government, Austrian troops entered the city to restore order, sent the Slav Congress packing, and reasserted control in Bohemia. For economic as well as political reasons, the new government was determined to keep the empire intact. The regime also sent troops to regain control in the Italian provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, and quarrels among the Italians helped the Austrians succeed.
Nationalism and counternationalism in Hungary set the stage for the final act of the drama. The Hungarian parliament had passed a series of laws including new provisions for the union of Hungary and Austria. In the heat of 1848, Ferdinand I had little choice but to accept them. The Hungarian parliament abolished serfdom and ended noble privilege to prevent a peasant insurrection. It also established freedom
Dent organizations, and put twenty-five revolutionary leaders to death in front of a firing squad. Kossuth went into hiding and lived the rest of his life in exile.
THE FIRST UNCENSORED NEWSPAPER AFTER THE REVOLUTION IN VIENNA, JANUARY 1848. This watercolor illustrates the power of public information during the 1848 revolution in the Austrian capital. An uncensored newspaper, wall posters, caps with political insignia and slogans, and an armed citizenry all are evidence of a vibrant and impassioned public discussion on the events of the day. Note, too, the modest dress of the woman selling the papers, the top hat and fashionable dress of the middle-class man smoking a pipe, and the presence of military uniforms, all of which illustrate support for the revolution among a broad portion of the population. ¦ How does this vision of the public sphere in action compare with previous depictions of public debate in the Enlightenment (see page 571) or in the French Revolution (see page 599, or elsewhere in Europe in 1848 (see page 704)?
Paradoxically, then, the Habsburg Empire of Austria was in part saved during the revolutions of 1848 by the very nationalist movements that threatened to tear it apart. Although nationalists in Habsburg lands, especially in Hungary, gained the support of significant numbers of people, the fact that different nationalist movements found it impossible to cooperate with one another allowed the new emperor, Franz Josef, to defeat the most significant challenges to his authority one by one and consolidate his rule (with Russian help), ultimately gaining popular support from many quarters, especially from middle-class populations that came to express a certain civic pride in the spirit of toleration that allowed so many peoples to live together within such a patchwork of peoples and tongues. Franz Josef would survive these crises, and many others, until his death in 1916 during World War I, a much larger conflict that would finally overwhelm and destroy the Habsburg Empire for good.
Of the press and of religion and changed the suffrage requirements, enfranchising small property holders. Many of these measures (called the March laws) were hailed by Hungarian peasants, Jewish communities, and liberals. But other provisions—particularly the extension of Magyar control— provoked opposition from the Croats, Serbs, and Romanians within Hungary. On April 14, 1848, Kossuth upped the ante, severing all ties between Hungary and Austria. The new Austrian emperor, Franz Josef, now played his last card: he asked for military support from Nicholas I of Russia. The Habsburgs were unable to win their “holy struggle against anarchy,” but the Russian army of over 300,000 found it an easier task. By mid-August 1849, the Hungarian revolt was crushed.
In the city of Vienna itself, the revolutionary movement had lost ground. When economic crisis and unemployment helped spark a second popular uprising, the emperor’s forces, with Russian support, descended on the capital. On October 31, the liberal government capitulated. The regime reestablished censorship, disbanded the national guard and stu-
The Early Stages of Italian Unification in 1848
The Italian peninsula had not been united since the Roman Empire. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, like the German-speaking lands of central Europe, the area that is now Italy was a patchwork of small states (see map on page 655). Austria occupied the northernmost states of Lombardy and Venetia, which were also the most urban and industrial. Habsburg dependents also ruled Tuscany, Parma, and Modena, extending Austria’s influence over the north of the peninsula. The independent Italian states included the southern kingdom of the Two Sicilies, governed by members of the Bourbon family; the Papal States, ruled by Pope Gregory XVI (1831-46); and most important, Piedmont-Sardinia, ruled by the reform-minded monarch Charles Albert (r. 1831-49) of the House of Savoy. Charles Albert had no particular commitment to creating an Italian
LANGUAGES OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE. In
Habsburg Austria-Hungary, ethnic/linguistic boundaries did not conform to political boundaries between states.
¦ How many different language groups can you count in the Austrian Empire? ¦ Why was it ultimately easier for the German states to unify when looking at this map? ¦ How did the diversity of peoples in the Habsburg Empire make a convergence between liberal revolution and nationalism more difficult to achieve?
National state, but by virtue of Piedmont-Sardinia’s economic power, geographical location, and long tradition of opposition to the Habsburgs, Charles Albert’s state played a central role in nationalist and anti-Austrian politics.
The leading Italian nationalist in this period—one whose republican politics Charles Albert disliked—was Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) from the city of Genoa, in Piedmont. Mazzini began his political career as a member of the Carbonari (see Chapter 20), an underground society pledged to resisting Austrian control of the region and establishing constitutional rule. In 1831, Mazzini founded his own society, Young Italy, which was anti-Austrian and in favor of constitutional reforms but also dedicated to Italian unification. Charismatic and persuasive, Mazzini was one of the best-known nationalists of his time. He spoke in characteristically Romantic tones of the awakening of the Italian people and of the common people’s mission to bring republicanism to the world. Under his leadership, Young Italy clubs multiplied. Yet the organization’s favored tactics, plotting mutinies and armed rebellions, proved ineffective. In 1834, Mazzini launched an invasion of the kingdom of Sardinia. Without sufficient support, it fizzled, driving Mazzini into exile in England.
Mazzini’s republican vision of a united Italy clashed with the goals of his potential allies. Many liberals shared his commitment to creating a single Italian state but not his enthusiasm for the people and popular movements. They hoped instead to merge existing governments into some form of constitutional monarchy or, in a few cases, for a government under the pope. Mazzini’s insistence on a democratic republic committed to social and political transformation struck pragmatic liberals as utopian and well-to-do members of the middle classes as dangerous.
The turmoil that swept across Europe in 1848 raised hopes for political and social change and put Italian unification on the agenda. As in Germany, those who hoped for change were divided in their goals, but they shared a common hope that national unification might allow them to achieve the reforms they sought, whether it was a constitution, civil liberties, universal suffrage, or revolutionary social change that would benefit the working poor.
World History
