Part 503

"The French revolution of February, the flight of Louis Philippe and the fall of the throne of the barricades, and the proclamation of a republic, had kindled from one end to the other of Europe the enthusiasm of the republican party. The conflagration rapidly extended itself. The Rhenish provinces of Prussia, whose near neighbourhood and former connexion with France made them more peculiarly combustible, broke out with a cry for the most extensive reforms; that is to say, for representative institutions, the passion for which had spread over the whole of Germany. … The reform fever which had attacked the Rhenish provinces quickly spread to the rest of the body politic. The urban populace—a class in all countries rarely incited to agitation—took the lead. They were headed by the students. Breslau, Königsberg, and Berlin, were in violent commotion. In the month of March, a great open air meeting was held at Berlin: it ended in a riot. The troops were called out to act against the mob. For near a week, Berlin was in a state of chronic disturbance. The troops acted with great firmness. The mob gathered together, but did not show much fight; but they were dispersed with difficulty, and continued to offer a passive resistance to the soldiers. On the 15th, ten persons were said to have been killed, and over 100 wounded. At the same time, similar scenes were, being enacted at Breslau and Königsberg, where several persons lost their lives. A deputation from the Rhenish provinces arrived at Berlin on the 18th, bearing a petition from Cologne to the king for reform. He promised to grant it. … Finding he could not keep the movement in check, he resolved to put himself at the head of it. It was probably the only course open to him, if he would preserve his crown. … {1534} The king must have previously had the questions which were agitating Germany under careful consideration; for he at once published a proclamation embodying the whole of them: the unity of Germany, by forming it into a federal state, with a federal representation; representative institutions for the separate states; a general military system for all Germany, under one federal banner; a German fleet; a tribunal for settling disputes between the states, and a right for all Germans to settle and trade in any part of Germany they thought fit; the whole of Germany formed into one customs union, and included in the Zollverein; one system of money, weights, and measures; and the freedom of the press. These were the subjects touched upon. … The popularity of the proclamation with the mob-leaders was unbounded, and the mob shouted. Every line of it contained their own ideas, vigorously expressed. Their delight was proportionate to their astonishment. A crowd got together at the palace to express their gratitude; the king came out of a window, and was loudly cheered. Two regiments of dragoons unluckily mistook the cheering for an attack, and began pushing them back by forcing their horses forward. … Unfortunately, as the conflict (if conflict it could be called, which was only a bout of which could push hardest) was going forward, two musket-shots were fired by a regiment of infantry. It appears that the muskets went off accidentally. No one was injured by them. It is not clear they were not blank cartridges; but the people took fright. They imagined that there was a design to slaughter them. At once they rushed to arms; barricades were thrown up in every street. … Sharpshooters placed themselves in the windows and behind the barricades, and opened a fire on the soldiery. These, exasperated by what they thought an unfair species of fighting, were by no means unwilling for the fray. … The troops carried barricade after barricade, and gave no quarter even to the unresisting. As they took the houses, they slaughtered all the sharpshooters they found in them, not very accurately discriminating those engaged in hostilities from those who were not. Horrible cruelties were committed on both sides. … The flight raged for fifteen hours. Either the king lost his head when it began, or the troops, having their blood up, would not stop. … The firing began at two o'clock on the 18th of March, and the authorities succeeded in withdrawing the troops and stopping it the next morning at five o'clock, they having been during that time successful at all points. … The king put out a manifesto at seven o'clock, declaring that the whole business arose from an unlucky misunderstanding between the troops and the people, as it unquestionably did, and the people appear to have been aware of the fact and ashamed of themselves. … A general amnesty was proclaimed for all parties concerned, and orders were given to form at once a burgher guard to supply the place of the military, who were to be withdrawn. A new ministry was appointed, of a liberal character. … The troops were marched out of the town, and were cheered by the people. … It is estimated that, of the populace, about 200 were killed: 187 received a public funeral. No accurate account of the wounded can be obtained. … Of the troops, according to the official returns, there fell 3 officers and 17 non-commissioned officers and privates; of wounded there were 14 officers, 14 non-commissioned officers, and 225 privates, and 1 surgeon. … The king's object was to divert popular enthusiasm into another channel; he therefore assumed the lead in the regeneration of Germany. On the 21st he issued a proclamation, enlarging on these views, and rode through the streets with the proscribed German tricolor on his helmet, and was vociferously cheered as he passed along. Prussia was not the first of the German states where the old order of things was overturned. During the whole of the month of March, Germany underwent the process of revolution. … On the 3d of March … the new order of things … began at Wurtemberg. The Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt abdicated. In Bavaria, things took a more practical turn. The people insisted on the dismissal of the king's mistress, Lola Montez: she was sent away, but, trusting to the king's dotage, she came back, police or no police—was received by the king—he created her Countess of Lansfeldt. This was a climax to which the people were not prepared to submit. … The king was compelled to expel her, to annul her patent of naturalization, and resume the grant he had made of property in her favour. This was more than he could stand, and he shortly after abdicated in favour of his heir. In Saxony the king gave way, after his troops had refused to act, and the freedom of the press was established, and other popular demands granted. In Vienna, the old system of Metternich was abolished, after a revolution which was little more than a street row. The king of Hanover refused to move, but was eventually induced to receive Stube as one of his ministers, who had been previously in prison for his opinions. However, he was firmer than most of his brother monarchs, and his country suffered less than the rest of Germany in consequence."

_E. S. Cayley, The European Revolutions of 1848, volume 2: Germany, chapter 2._

ALSO IN: _C. E. Maurice, The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9, chapter 7._

GERMANY: A. D. 1848 (March-September). Election and meeting of the National Assembly at Frankfort. Resignation of the Diet. Election of Archduke John to be Administrator of Germany. Powerlessness of the new government. Troubles rising from the Schleswig-Holstein question. Outbreak at Frankfort. The setting in of Reaction.

"In south-western Germany the liberal party set itself at the head of the movement. … The Heidelberg assembly of March 5th, consisting of the former opposition leaders in the various Chambers, issued a call to the German nation, and chose a commission of seven men, who were to make propositions with regard to a permanent parliament and to summon a preliminary parliament at Frankfort. This preliminary parliament assembled in St. Paul's church, March 31st. … The majority, consisting of constitutional monarchists, resolved that an assembly chosen by direct vote of the people … should meet in the month of May, with full and sovereign power to frame a constitution for all Germany. … These measures did not satisfy the radical party, whose leaders were Hecker and Struve. As their proposition to set up a sovereign assembly, and republicanize Germany, was rejected, they left Frankfort, and held in the highlands of Baden popular meetings at which they demanded the proclamation of the republic. {1535} A Hesse-Darmstadt corps under Frederic von Gagern … was sent to disperse them. An engagement took place at Kandern, in which Gagern was shot, but Hecker and his followers were put to flight. … The disturbances in Odenwald, and in the Main and Tauber districts, once the home of the peasant war, were of a different description. There the country people rose against the landed proprietors, destroyed the archives, with the odious tithe and rental books, and demolished a few castles. The Diet, which in the meantime continued its illusory existence, thought to extricate itself from the present difficulties by a few concessions. It … invited the governments to send confidential delegates to undertake, along with its members, a revision of the constitution of the confederation. … These confidential delegates, among them the poet Uhland, from Würtemberg, began their work on the 30th of March. The elections for the National Assembly stirred to their innermost fibres the German people, dreaming of the restoration of their former greatness. May 18th about 320 delegates assembled in the Imperial Hall, in the Römer (the Rathhaus), at Frankfort. … Never has a political assembly contained a greater number of intellectual and scholarly men—men of character and capable of self-sacrifice; but it certainly was not the forte of these numerous professors and jurists to conduct practical politics. The moderate party was decidedly in the majority. … It was decided … that a provisional central executive should be created in the place of the Diet, and created, not by the National Assembly in concert with the princes, but by the National Assembly alone. June 27th, following out the bold conception of its president, the assembly decided to appoint an irresponsible administrator, with a responsible ministry; and June 29th, Archduke John of Austria was chosen Administrator of Germany by 436 votes out of 546. He made his entry into Frankfort July 11th, and entered upon his office on the following day. The hour of the Diet had struck, apparently for the last time. It resigned its authority into the hands of the Administrator, and, after an existence of 32 years, left the stage unmourned. Archduke John was a popular prince, who found more pleasure in the mountain air of Tyrol and Styria than in the perfumed atmosphere of the Vienna court. But, as a novice 66 years of age, he was not equal to the task of governing, and as a thorough Austrian he lacked a heart for all Germany. The main question for him and for the National Assembly was, what force they could apply in case the individual governments refused obedience to the decrees issued in the name of the National Assembly. This was the Achilles's heel of the German revolution. … Orders were issued by the federal minister of war that all the troops of the Confederation should swear allegiance to the federal administrator on the 6th of August; but Prussia and Austria, with the exception of the Vienna garrison, paid no attention to these orders; Ernest Augustus, in Hanover, successfully set his hard head against them, and only the lesser states obeyed. … There certainly was no other way out of the difficulty than by the formation of a parliamentary army. … Instead of meeting these dangers resolutely, and in a common-sense way, the Assembly left matters to go as they would, outside of Frankfort. One humiliation was submitted to after another, while the Assembly, busying itself for months with a theoretical question, as if it were a juristic faculty, entered into a detailed consideration of the fundamental rights of the German people. The Schleswig-Holstein question, which had just entered upon a new phase of its existence, was the first matter of any importance to manifest the disagreement between the central administration and the separate governments; and it opened, as well, a dangerous gulf in the Assembly itself. The question at issue was one of succession [see SCANDINAVIAN STATES (DENMARK): A. D. 1848-1862]. … The Estates of the duchies [Schleswig and Holstein] established a provisional government, applied at Frankfort for the admission of Schleswig into the German confederation, and besought armed assistance both there and at Berlin. The preliminary parliament [this having occurred in April, before the meeting of the National Assembly] approved the application of Schleswig for admission, and commissioned Prussia, in conjunction with the 10th army corps of the Confederation, to occupy Schleswig and Holstein. On the 21st of April, 1848, General Wrangel crossed the Eider as commander of the forces of the Confederation; and on the 23d, in conjunction with the Schleswig-Holstein troops, he drove the Danes out of the Danewerk. On the following day the Danes were defeated at Oeversee by the 10th army corps, and all Schleswig-Holstein was free. Wrangel entered Jutland and imposed a war tax of 3,000,000 thalers (about $2,250,000). He meant to occupy this province until the Danes—who, owing to the inexcusable smallness of the Prussian navy, were in a position unhindered to injure the commerce of the Baltic—had indemnified Prussia for her losses; but Prussia, touched to the quick by the destruction of her commerce, and intimidated by the threatening attitude of Russia, Sweden, and England, recalled her troops, and concluded an armistice at Malmö, in Sweden, on the 26th of August. All measures of the provisional government were pronounced invalid; a common government for the duchies was to be appointed, one half by Denmark, and the other by the German confederation; the Schleswig troops were to be separated from those of Holstein; and the war was not to be renewed before the 1st of April, 1849—i. e., not in the winter, a time unfavorable for the Danes. This treaty was unquestionably no masterpiece on the part of the Prussians. All the advantage was on the side of the conquered Danes. … It was not merely the radicals who urged, if not the final rejection, at least a provisional cessation of the armistice, and the countermanding of the order to retreat. … A bill to that effect, demanded by the honor of Germany, had scarcely been passed by the majority, on the 5th of September, when the moderate party reflected that such action, involving a breach with Prussia, must lead to civil war and revolution, and call into play the wildest passions of the already excited people. In consequence of this the previous vote was rescinded, and the armistice of Malmö accepted by the Assembly, after the most excited debates, September 16th. This gave the radicals a welcome opportunity to appeal to the fists of the lower classes, and imitate the June outbreak of the social democrats in Paris. … {1536} A collision ensued [September 18]; barricades were erected, but were carried by the troops without much bloodshed. … General Auerswald and Prince Lichnowsky, riding on horseback near the city, were followed by a mob. They took refuge in a gardener's house on the Bornheimer-heide, but were dragged out and murdered with the most disgraceful atrocities. Thereupon the city was declared in a state of siege, all societies were forbidden, and strong measures were taken for the maintenance of order. The March revolution had passed its season, and reaction was again beginning to bloom. … Reaction drew moderate men to its side, and then used them as stepping-stones to immoderation."

_W. Müller, Political History of Recent Times, section 17._

ALSO IN: _Sir A. Alison, History of Europe, 1815-1852, chapter 53._

GERMANY: A. D. 1848-1849. Revolutionary risings in Austria and Hungary. Bombardment of Vienna. The war in Hungary. Abdication of the Emperor Ferdinand. Accession of Francis Joseph.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1849.

GERMANY: A. D. 1848-1850. The Prussian National Assembly, and its dissolution. The work and the failure of the National Assembly of Frankfort. Refusal of the imperial crown by the King of Prussia. End of the movement for Germanic unity.