The age of revolution

The age of  revolution

During the decades of economic and social transformation, western Europe also experienced massive political change. The central event throughout much of the Continent was the French Revolution (1789–99) and its aftermath. This was followed by a concerted effort at political reaction and a renewed series of revolutions from 1820 through 1848.

Connections between political change and socioeconomic upheaval were real but complex. Economic grievances associated with early industrialization fed into later revolutions, particularly the outbursts in 1848, but the newest social classes were not prime bearers of the revolutionary message. Revolutions also resulted from new political ideas directed against the institutions and social arrangements of the preindustrial order. Their results facilitated further economic change, but this was not necessarilytheir intent. Political unrest must be seen as a discrete factor shaping a new Europe along with fundamental economic forces.

The  French Revolution

Revolution exploded in France in the summer of 1789, after many decades of ideological ferment, political decline, and social unrest. Ideologically, thinkers of the  Enlightenment urged that governments should promote the greatest good of all people, not the narrow interests of a particular elite. They were hostile to the political power of the Roman Catholic church as well as to thetax exemptions and landed power of the aristocracy. Their remedies were diverse, ranging from outright democracy to a more efficient monarchy, but they joined in insisting on greater religious and cultural freedom, some kind of parliamentary institution, and greater equality under the law. Enlightenment writings were widely disseminated, reaching many urban groupsin France and elsewhere. The monarchy was in bad shape even aside from new attacks. Its finances were severely pressed, particularly after the wars of the mid-18th century and French involvement against Britain during the American Revolution. Efforts to reform the tax structure foundered against the opposition of the aristocracy. Finally, various groups in France were pressed by economic and social change. Aristocrats wantednew political rights against royal power. Middle-class people sought a political voice to match their commercial importance and a government more friendly to their interests. The peasant majority, pressed by population growth, sought access to the lands of the aristocracy and the church, an end to remaining manorial dues and services, and relief from taxation.

These various discontents came to a head when King Louis XVI called the  Estates-General in 1789 to consider new taxes. This body had not met since 1614, and its calling released all the pressures building during recent decades, exacerbated by economic hardships resulting from bad harvests in 1787–88. Reform leaders, joined by some aristocrats and clergy, insisted that the  Third Estate, representing elements of the urban middle class, be granted double the membership of the church and aristocratic estates and that the entire body of Estates-General vote as a unit—they insisted, in other words, on anew kind of parliament. The king yielded, and the new National Assembly began to plan a constitution. Riots in the summer of 1789 included a symbolic attack on the Bastille, a royal prison, and a series of risings in the countryside that forced repeal of theremnants of manorialism and a proclamation of equality under the laws. A  Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen trumpeted religious freedom and liberty of press and assembly, while reaffirming property rights. Church lands were seized, however, creating a rift between revolutionary and Roman Catholic sentiment. Guilds were outlawed (in 1791), as the revolution promoted middle-class beliefs in individual initiative and freedom for technological change. A 1791 constitution retained the monarchy but created a strong parliament, elected by about half of France's adult males—those with property.

This liberal phase of the French Revolution was followed, between1792 and 1794, by a more radical period. Economic conditions deteriorated, prompting new urban riots. Roman Catholic and other groups rose in opposition to the revolution, resulting in forceful suppression and a corresponding growing insistence on loyalty to revolutionary principles. Monarchs in neighbouring countries—notably Britain, Austria, and Prussia—challenged the revolution and threatened invasion, which added foreign  war to the unstable mix by 1792. Radical leaders, under the banners of the  Jacobin party, took over the government, proclaiming a republic and executing the king and many other leaders of the old regime. Governmental centralization increased; the decimal system was introduced. Mass military  conscription was organized for the first time in European history, with the argument that, now that the government belonged to the people, the people must serve it loyally. A new constitution proclaimed universal manhood suffrage, and reforms in education and other areas were widely discussed. The radical phase of the revolution brought increasing military success to revolutionary troops in effectively reorganized armies, which conquered parts of the Low Countries and Germany and carried revolutionary laws in their wake. The revolution was beginning tobecome a European phenomenon.

Jacobin rule was replaced by a more moderate consolidation after1795, during which, however, military expansion continued in several directions, notably in parts of Italy. The needs of war, along with recurrent domestic unrest, prompted a final revolutionary regime change, in 1799, that brought General  Napoleon Bonaparte to power.

 

 

The Napoleonic era

Napoleon ruled for 15 years, closing out the quarter-century so dominated by the French Revolution. His own ambitions were to establish a solid dynasty within France and tocreate a French-dominated empire in Europe.To this end he moved steadily to consolidate his personal power, proclaiming himself emperor and sketching a new aristocracy. Hewas almost constantly at  war, with Britain hismost dogged opponent but Prussia and Austria also joining successive coalitions. Until 1812, his campaigns were usually successful, as he was a master strategist, particularly in the rapid deployment of masses of troops and mobile field artillery. Napoleonic France directly annexed territories in the Low Countries and western Germany, applying revolutionary legislation in full. Satellite kingdoms were set up in other parts of Germany and Italy, in Spain, and in Poland. only after 1810 did Napoleon clearly overreach himself. His empire stirred enmity widely, and in conquered Spain an important guerrilla movement harassed his forces. Russia, brieflyallied, turned hostile, and an 1812 invasion attempt failed miserably in the cold Russian winter. A new alliance formed among the other great powers in 1813. France fell to the invading forces of this coalition in 1814, and Napoleon was exiled. He returned dramatically, only to be defeated at Waterloo in 1815; his reign had finally ended.

Napoleon's regime produced three major accomplishments, aside from its many military episodes. First, it confirmed many revolutionary changes within France itself. Napoleon was a dictator, maintaining only a sham parliament and rigorously policing press and assembly. Though some key  liberal principles were in fact ignored, equality under the law was for the most part enhanced through Napoleon's sweeping new law codes; hereditary privileges among adult males became a thing of the past. A strongly centralized government recruited bureaucrats according to their abilities. New educational institutions, under state control, provided access to bureaucratic and specialized technical training. Religious freedom survived, despite some conciliations of Roman Catholic opinion. Freedom of internal trade and encouragements to technical innovation allied the state with commercial growth. Sales of church land were confirmed, and rural France emerged as a nation of strongly independent peasant proprietors.

Napoleon's conquests cemented the spread of French revolutionary legislation to much of western Europe. The powers of the Roman Catholic church, guilds, and manorial aristocracy came under the gun. The old regime was dead in Belgium, western  Germany, and northern Italy.

Finally, wider conquests permanently altered the European map.Napoleon's kingdoms consolidated scattered territories in Germany and  Italy, and the welter of divided states was never restored. These developments, but also resentment at Napoleonic rule, sparked growing nationalism in these regions and also in Spain and Poland.  Prussia and Russia, less touched by new ideologies, nevertheless introduced important political reforms as a means of strengthening the state to resist the Napoleonic war machine. Prussia expanded its school system and modified serfdom; it also began to recruit larger armies. Britain was less affected, protected by its powerful navy and an expanding industrial economy that ultimately helped wear Napoleon down; but, even in Britain, French revolutionary example spurred a new wave of democratic agitation.

In 1814–15 the victorious powers convened at the  Congress of Vienna to try to put Europe back together, though there was no thought of literally restoring the world that had existed before 1789. Regional German and Italian states were confirmed as a buffer to any future French expansion. Prussia gained new territories in western Germany. Russia took over most of Poland (previously divided, in the late 18th century, until Napoleon's brief incursion). Britain acquired some former French, Spanish, and Dutch colonies (including South Africa). The Bourbon dynasty was restored to the French throne in the person of LouisXVIII, but revolutionary laws were not repealed, and a parliament, though based on very narrow suffrage, proclaimed a constitutional monarchy. The Treaty of Vienna disappointed nationalists, who had hoped for a new Germany and Italy, and it certainly daunted democrats and liberals. However, it was not reactionary, nor was it punitive as far as France was concerned. Overall, the treaty strove to reestablish a balance of power in Europe and to emphasize a conservative political order temperedby concessions to new realities. The former was remarkably successful, preserving the peace for more than half a century, the latter effort less so.

The conservative reaction

 Conservatism did dominate the European political agenda through the mid-1820s. Major governments, even in Britain, usedpolice agents to ferret out agitators. The prestige of the Roman Catholic church soared in France and elsewhere. Europe's conservative leader was Prince von  Metternich, chief minister of the Habsburg monarchy. Metternich realized the fragility of Habsburg rule, not only wedded to church and monarchy but also, as a polyglot combination of German, Hungarian, and Slavic peoples, vulnerable to any nationalist sentiment. He sedulously avoided significant change in his own lands and encouraged the international status quo as well. He sponsored congresses at several points through the early 1820s to discuss intervention against political unrest. He was particularly eager to promote conservatism in the German states and in Italy, where Austrian administration of northern provinces gave his regime a new stake.

Nevertheless, in 1820 revolutionary agitation broke out in fringe areas. Risings in several Italian states were put down. A rebellion in Spain was also suppressed, though only after several years, foreshadowing more than a century of recurrent political instability; the revolution also confirmed Spain's loss of most of itsAmerican colonies, which had first risen during the Napoleonic occupation. A  Greek revolution against Ottoman control fared better, for Greek nationalists appealed to European sympathy fora Christian nation struggling against Muslim dominance. With French, British, and Russian backing, Greece finally won its independence in 1829.

 Liberal agitation began to revive in Britain, France, and the Low Countries by the mid-1820s. Liberals wanted stronger parliaments and wider protection of individual rights. They also sought a vote for the propertied classes. They wanted commercial legislation that would favour business growth, whichin Britain meant attacking Corn Law tariffs that protected landlord interests and kept food prices (and so wages) artificially high. Belgian liberals also had a nationalist grievance, for the Treaty of Vienna had placed their country under Dutch rule.

Liberal concerns fueled a new round of revolution in  1830, sparked by a new uprising in Paris. The  French monarchy had tightened regulation of the press and of university professors, producing classic liberal issues. Artisans, eager for more political rights, also rose widely against economic hardship and the principles of the new commercial economy. This combination chased the Bourbon king, producing a new and slightly more liberal monarchy, an expanded middle-class voting system, and some transient protections for freedom of the press; the new regime also cut back the influence of the church. Revolution spread to some German and Italian states and also to Belgium, where after several years an independent nation with a liberal monarchy was proclaimed. Britain was spared outright revolution, but massive agitation forced a  Reform Bill in 1832 that effectively enfranchised all middle-class males and set the framework for additional liberal legislation, including repeal of the Corn Laws and municipal government reform, during the next decade.

Europe was now divided between a liberal west and a conservative centre and east.  Russia, indeed, seemed largely exempt from the political currents swirling in the rest of the continent, partly because of the absence of significant social andeconomic change. A revolt by some liberal-minded army officers in 1825 (the Decembrist revolt) was put down with ease, and a new tsar, Nicholas I, installed a more rigorous system of political police and censorship. Nationalist revolt in Poland, a part of the 1830 movement, was suppressed with great force. Russian diplomatic interests continued to follow largely traditional lines, with recurrent warfare with the Ottoman Empire in an effort to gain territory to the south. only after 1850 did the Russian regime seriously rethink its adamantly conservative stance.

This pattern could not prevail elsewhere in Europe.  Scandinavian governments moved toward increasing liberalism by expanding the power of parliaments, a development that was completed in the late 1840s; the Dutch monarchy did the same. Elsewhere, the next major step resulted once again from a series of revolutions in 1848, which proved to be western Europe's finalrevolutionary round.

 The revolutions of 1848

 France's monarchy had turned toward greater repression in the 1840s, spurring new liberal agitation. Artisan concerns also had quickened, against their loss of status and shifts in work conditions following from rapid economic change; a major recession in 1846–47 added to popular unrest. Some  socialist ideas spread among artisan leaders, who urged a regime in which workers could control their own small firms and labour in harmony and equality. A major propaganda campaign for wider suffrage and political reform brought police action in February 1848, which in turn prompted a classic street rising that chased the monarchy (never to return) and briefly established a republican regime based on universal manhood suffrage.

Revolt quickly spread to Austria, Prussia, Hungary, Bohemia, and various parts of Italy. These risings included most of the ingredients present in France, but also serious peasant grievances against manorial obligations and a strong nationalist current that sought national unification in Italy and Germany and Hungarian independence or Slavic autonomy in the Habsburg lands. New regimes were set up in many areas, while a national assembly convened in Frankfurt to discuss German unity.

The major rebellions were put down in 1849. Austrian revolutionaries were divided over nationalist issues, with German liberals opposed to minority nationalisms; this helped the Habsburg regime maintain control of its army and move against rebels in Bohemia, Italy, and Hungary (in the last case, aided by Russian troops). Parisian revolutionaries divided between those who sought only political change and artisans who wanted job protection and other gains from the state. In a bloody clash in June 1848, the artisans were put down and the republican regime moved steadily toward the right, ultimately electing a nephew of Napoleon I as president; he, in turn (true to family form), soon established a new empire, claiming the title Napoleon III. The Prussian monarch turned down a chance to head a liberal united Germany and instead used his army to chase the revolutionary governments, aided by divisions between liberals and working-class radicals (including the socialist Karl Marx, who had set up a newspaper in Cologne).

Despite the defeat of the revolutions, however, important changes resulted from the 1848 rising. Manorialism was permanently abolished throughout Germany and the Habsburg lands, giving peasants new rights. Democracy ruled in France, even under the new empire and despite considerable manipulation; universal manhood suffrage had been permanently installed. Prussia, again in conservative hands, nevertheless established a parliament, based on a limited vote, as a gesture to liberal opinion. The Habsburg monarchy installed a rationalized bureaucratic structure to replace localized landlordrule. A new generation of conservatives came to the fore—Metternich had been exiled by revolution—who were eagerto compromise with and utilize new political forces rather than oppose them down the line. Finally, some new political currents had been sketched. Socialism, though wounded by the failure of the revolutions, was on Europe's political agenda, and some feminist agitation had surfaced in France and Germany. The stage was set for rapid political evolution after 1850, in a process that made literal revolution increasingly difficult.

The years between 1815 and 1850 had not seen major diplomatic activity on the part of most European powers, Russia excepted. Exhaustion after the Napoleonic Wars combined with a desire to use diplomacy as a weapon of internal politics. Britain continued to expand its colonial hold, most notably introducing more direct control over its empire in India. France and Britain, though still wary of each other, joined in resisting Russian gains in the Middle East. France also began to acquire new colonial holdings, notably by invading Algeria in 1829. Seeds were being planted for more rapid colonial expansion after mid-century, but the period remained, on the surface, rather quiet, in marked contrast to the ferment of revolution and reaction during the same decades.