413

[introduction.]

The revolution of 1830 had dealt the first serious blow at the supremacy of the Holy Alliance, yet it had not undermined its power definitively. The main bastions of this Alliance were the Russian Empire under Nicholas I, Metternich’s Austria and the Kingdom of Prussia. Even that very country where the revolution of 1830 had taken place was soon to become yet another stronghold of European reaction. King Louis Philippe attempted to drive from his subjects’ minds all memories of the revolutionary origins of the July monarchy. After a number of popular uprisings had been ruthlessly crushed during the 1830s, a period of social and political conservatism and police rule set in. France became a close friend of Austria—a country which was one of the pillars of the Holy Alliance. Guizot, Louis Philippe’s Prime Minister, and Prince Metternich, the Austrian Chancellor, were both of the opinion that only with the co-operation of conservative France could anarchy and revolution be successfully contained and the old order preserved.

The Revolutions of 1848 in Europe

p Even the combined forces of European reaction were unable to combat revolution with the degree of success for which Guizot, Louis Philippe’s Minister, had hoped. The forces of social emancipation long since driven underground were gathering strength and steadily gaining momentum. In 1848 the volcano erupted. The whole of Europe was gripped by revolutionary ferment and the Holy Alliance was shattered irreparably.

p The first outbreak of revolution was in Sicily. The hated Bourbon King Ferdinand II, renowned for his ruthless suppression of popular movements, fearing the collapse of his tottering throne hastily agreed to a series of concessions: all reactionary ministers were dismissed and a constitution was promised.

414

p On February 22nd-24th revolution broke out in France. A trivial incident was sufficient to bring thousands of workers out onto the streets. Soon the barricades were up and before long the whole town was in the hands of the insurgents. The proud Guizot, who at the outset referred to the revolt as a storm in a tea-cup, was later obliged to flee from revolutionary Paris disguised as a woman. The next day he was followed by Louis Philippe in a plain carriage. After breaking into the royal palace, the Paris insurgents dragged the king’s throne along the cobbled streets of the city to the Bastille where it was ceremoniously burnt amidst triumphant rejoicing.

p On March 13th barricades appeared in the streets of Vienna and it was now Metternich’s turn to flee. Budapest and Prague followed Vienna’s example and soon the whole multinational Austrian Empire was seething with revolutionary ferment. On March 18th, a popular uprising captured Berlin. This victory had been preceded by revolutionary triumphs in a number of western German states. A mighty revolutionary tide was to sweep through the states of Italy. In Lombardy, the insurgent Italians defeated the Austrian occupation forces, and Marshal Radetzky’s army was everwhelmed in the course of a popular uprising. The Austrians were driven out of Venetia, which was then proclaimed an independent republic. In England the Chartist movement was at its height. The revolutionary movement also spread to Spain,. Switzerland and Belgium; the Poles rose up in protest against the partition of their country. The revolutionary tide was to sweep across the whole of Europe bringing about the downfall of hated political regimes, monarchs and ministers from the Atlantic coast to the borders of Tsar Nicholas’s Empire.

The outstanding Russian revolutionary publicist Alexander Herzen wrote on April 20, 1848: "These are remarkable times. My hand trembles as I pick up the newspapers; each day there is something unexpected happening, some new peal of thunder to be heard: a radiant rebirth of mankind or a day of reckoning is at hand. New energy has gripped men’s hearts, old hopes have risen once more and courage that will stop at nothing is the order of the day.”

The February Revolution in France

p At first there was every justification for such jubilant hope. In Paris at the outset of the revolution real power was in the hands of the insurgent working class, which played the decisive role in the overthrow of the monarchy. The workers were still armed and the masters of the streets in the capital. At the demand of the 415 proletariat and contrary to the intentions of the bourgeois politicians, France was proclaimed Republic on February 24th. Thus the February revolution of 1848 achieved on its second day what it had taken the revolution of 1789 about three years to achieve. A red rosette was attached to the tricolor which bore witness to yet another concession to the proletariat, which was demanding a red flag to keep uppermost in men’s minds the fact that the Second Republic must be a "democratic republic of social justice".

p The weakness of the French proletariat lay in the fact that, in its wave of revolutionary enthusiasm it was not sufficiently organised or aware of its tasks and goals. Not only the proletarians did not have their own party which might have brought organisation and direction to their struggle, but they did not even have trade unions. A large number of political clubs sprang up, but they had few common aims, and feuds between them were rife. Neither did the proletariat have any real leaders. The majority of the workers blindly followed Louis Blanc, a Utopian Socialist who hoped by means of negotiation and persuasion to wrest social reforms from a bourgeois government.

p The bourgeois political leaders who had cowered with fear at the initial stage of the revolution and had hypocritically assured the workers of their fraternal sentiments towards them, made skilful use of the latter’s blind trust and lack of organisation. At the outset of the revolution the bourgeois politicians had possessed no real power and they had been obliged to resort to intrigue and cunning manoeuvres. They had succeeded in setting up a provisional government headed by a figure trusted by the people, namely Dupont de 1’fiure who had taken part in the revolution of 1789 and was a veteran of the democratic movement. However, he had already reached the age of 81, was half-blind and weak and incapable of exerting any appreciable influence on the government’s policy. The Foreign Minister and leading spokesman of the government was Alphonse Lamartine, famous poet and one of the finest orators of his day, who was given the task of stemming the revolutionary tide with his eloquence. Louis Blanc, representing the workers’ interests, was also elected to the provisional government. He was to head the Commission du Luxembourg to enquire into social reforms at the magnificent Palais de Luxembourg, which was not however allocated any funds or concrete rights.

p On seeing that “their” hero Louis Blanc had been made a Minister in the provisional government, the workers had confidence in the new government and instead of pressing their former demands patiently waited for Louis Blanc to come to terms with his colleagues and achieve results that would alleviate their plight. However, the real power in the government was in the 416 hands of calculating representatives of the bourgeoisie, who on recovering from their initial panic at once began to embark on a counter-offensive against the proletariat, masking their true intentions by conceding prominence in the public eye to popular figures such as Dupont de 1’fiure, Lamartine and Louis Blanc, of whom they were only too glad to make use in order to promote their own ends.

p The main concern of the bourgeoisie and its political champions, although cleverly disguised, was to get the working class to submit and to deprive it of its newly acquired power. The problem was how to keep the proletariat at bay in the conditions of a democratic revolution. The bourgeois politicians realised that the best way was to isolate the proletariat from its potential allies.

p The revolution had inherited from the July Monarchy an empty treasury and large debts. After the revolution, the powerful financiers refused to co-operate with the government to enable it to solve its difficulties. A solution to this financial crisis was quite simple, if only those who profited from state loans—the bankers and wealthy industrialists—were obliged to contribute towards their privileges. However, the provisional government in compliance with the wishes of the bourgeoisie chose a different path and introduced the 45 centime tax. This meant a tax increase of 45 centimes in the franc. The main burden of the new taxation was borne by the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie. Instead of the improvements for which these two social groups had been hoping, the revolution merely brought them increased taxation and still more difficult material conditions.

p The bourgeois politicians in the state apparatus and the bourgeois press presented this increased taxation to the people as a measure made necessary by the growing demands of the proletariat. In Paris in view of the large number of unemployed, socalled national workshops were set up, where for two francs a day workers were employed as navvies and so on. The bourgeois politicians insinuated that enormous expenses were being incurred in connection with these workshops and the sessions of the Commission du Luxembourg, and that it was thus because of the workers that tax increases had had to be introduced. Such were the methods employed by the bourgeoisie to embitter the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

p The true champions of the French proletariat such as Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), a staunch revolutionary who was a violent critic of all bourgeois regimes, protested against this policy of provocation pursued by the Provisional Government. However Blanqui was powerless to do anything, for the majority of the workers still meekly followed Louis Blanc who was a member of the Provisional Government and consequently, in his 417 defence of all that government’s policies, was able to present them in a more acceptable light to the working class on the strength of the authority he still enjoyed among them.

What was more, on March 17th, when revolutionary clubs organised a demonstration in Paris in protest against the new policies of the Provisional Government, Louis Blanc came out onto the balcony of the Hotel de Ville and appealed to the workers to have confidence in the Provisional Government. His tremendous influence among the proletariat was sufficient to ensure the peaceful dispersal of the demonstration.

The June Uprising

p Thus the bourgeoisie, making skilful use of Louis Blanc’s popularity to further their own ends, succeeded in creating a rift between the proletariat and the peasantry. This was to influence the outcome of the elections to the Constituent Assembly held in April 1848, the first since the time of the First Republic to be organised on a basis of universal suffrage. The candidates put up by the proletariat suffered a crushing defeat. The peasants, who constituted the majority of the voters, voted for the proteges of the bourgeoisie. Now that their position in the country had been effectively consolidated, the bourgeois politicians decided that the time had come to strike the decisive blow at the proletariat.

p On May 4th, the first session of the Constituent Assembly was opened. The Provisional Government was to be replaced by an executive committee that was bourgeois through and through. Dupont de 1’Eure, Lamartine and Louis Blanc had outlived their usefulness to the bourgeoisie and they were quietly left on the shelf. The bourgeoisie then indulged in a whole series of manoeuvres designed to further weaken the proletariat’s position, setting the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie against the workers.

p On May 15th, a group of Paris workers attempted to disband the reactionary Constituent Assembly, but their efforts came to nought. As a result of this attempt, the revolutionary clubs were closed down and Blanqui was arrested.

p On June 21st, the government issued a decree ordering the national workshops to be closed down and thousands of workers came out into the streets in protest. The government had known full well that the workers would not accept such a decree lying down, and indeed they were counting on a new uprising in a situation in which the odds would be against the workers.

p As was to be foreseen, the working class took up the challenge. Karl Marx, a contemporary of these revolutionary events, was to comment: "The workers were left no choice; they had to starve 418 419 or let fly. They answered on June 22nd with the tremendous insurrection in which the first great battle was fought between the two classes that split modern society. It was a fight for the preservation or annihilation of the bourgeois order.”

p The whole of the Paris proletariat manned the barricades together with their brothers from the national workshops. The workers put up a heroic struggle, ready to sacrifice their lives for the cause. They revealed remarkable aptitude and initiative in their instinctive approach to military problems which seldom led them astray. Women and children helped their husbands, brothers and fathers, fearless in the face of a rain of bullets. The courage and determination of the insurgent proletariat stunned the world.

p Yet the odds were against them. All property-owning interests in the country were concentrated against the workers. The big bourgeoisie launched a furious attack against their numerically weak class enemy, and they were aided by the peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie, misled as they were by bourgeois politicians; these natural allies of the workers struck out with ferocious zeal against what was really their own cause as well.

p General Cavaignac, who had earned the confidence of the bourgeoisie after his ruthless treatment of the Algerians in their struggle against the French conquerors was invested with extraordinary powers; the exterminator of the colonial peoples was equally ruthless towards the working class. The boundless cruelty with which Cavaignac suppressed the revolt was to arouse the indignation of all progressive people of the times. "Slaughter was the order of those terrible days,” wrote Alexander Herzen. "Any individual whose hands were not stained with proletarian blood was suspicious in the eyes of the philistines.”

The bodies of five hundred workers lay in the streets of Paris after Cavaignac’s butchers had razed the last barricades to the ground with cannon fire. The bourgeoisie were to unleash all their fury only after the revolt had been crushed: eleven thousand workers—twenty-two times more than those killed in the actual fighting—were shot once the wealthy had asserted their rule once more.

Louis Bonaparte Becomes President

p The working class was the most loyal defender of democracy and social progress and its defeat in the June uprising of 1848 paved the way for a new wave of reaction.

p This soon became evident during the elections to the presidency of the Republic which took place in December 1848. One 420 of the many candidates was Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. This nephew of Napoleon I was an unprincipled hedonist engaged in the pursuit of thrills and melodrama in whatever milieu he might happen to find himself, both in the ranks of the secret revolutionary organisations in Italy, through his participation in impractical attempts to bring about political coups and subsequent imprisonment and in his vagabond life among the London rabble. When he came to France after the revolution full of ambitious plans and thirsting for riches, he decided to stake everything on his celebrated name and all that was associated with it. No one in the country knew anything about this political careerist or took him seriously. However, to the amazement of all his contemporaries it was this political nonentity, "the little nephew of the great uncle”, who attracted the most votes.

Louis Bonaparte was elected to rule over bourgeois France. He or rather his great name associated with military victories and firm imperial rule attracted the votes of the big bourgeoisie, the more prosperous sections of the peasantry and even the petty bourgeoisie of the towns which proved highly susceptible to blatant chauvinistic propaganda.

The Coup d’État of December 2,1851

p The very election of Louis Bonaparte to the presidency of the Second Republic spelled the republic’s downfall. Louis Bonaparte made the most of every opportunity available to him as head of state to do away with the republic. On December 2, 1851 with the help of the army he seized absolute power. In Paris and in the provinces small groups of republicans attempted to put up some sort of resistance but such moves were soon crushed. The main defender of democracy, the proletariat, was in no state to take up arms after the June massacre and there was no one left to save the republic. It was formally done away with a year later, in December 1852. A monarchist regime was established once more in France—Louis Napoleon declaring himself Emperor of the Second Empire, Napoleon III.

p Thus the Second Republic, which had been greeted with such enthusiasm and had met with what had seemed such unanimous support in February 1848, was destined to come to an end a mere four years later and be replaced by a reactionary and militant Bonapartist Empire.

Unlike the revolution of 1789 which had advanced from strength to strength, that of 1848 from the very outset had seemed destined to collapse, because the French bourgeoisie, which had come to hate and fear the working class, already represented by 421 that time a counter-revolutionary force. The proletariat, although it had displayed its strength and determination in the June uprising, was still lacking the necessary political experience to unite and lead forward in its wake the majority of the working people.

The Revolution in Germany

p In Germany revolution also broke out in the spring of 1848. This was Germany’s first revolution and many of those problems which had been resolved in France at the end of the eighteenth century were now confronted by the Germans for the first time.

p The most vital task was the unification of the country and the establishment of a German nation state. While England and France had long since been united nation states, Germany was still little more than an abstract concept. There were thirtyeight German states, large and small, all with their own monarchs, all carrying on constant feuds with one another. Among the most powerful were Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Wftrtemberg and Hesse. In all these states—both the large ones and the pocket-handkerchief ones—the rulers and nobles clung desperately to their mediaeval privileges, while feudal practices, hidebound tradition and iron discipline were the order of the day. Administrative and economic disunity created serious obstacles in the path of Germany’s economic development. Although machines had already been introduced and the first railways had been built, Germany still lagged far behind France and England in the sphere of economic development. The lack of a united central power was the most obvious pointer to the vestiges of feudalism which still played such an important role in German life. The campaign against feudal rule—the uprooting and abolition of all feudal practices in particular in agriculture where they served to hold back the advance of a peasantry numbering many million—was the second vital task before the German revolution, and was inextricably tied up with the first.

p German literature of the 1830s and ’40s, and in particular the works of the great German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) and the group of progressive poets, novelists and playwrights known as "Junges Deutschland" (Young Germany) boldly exposed and ridiculed the hideous and repellent traits of the pompous and reactionary monarchies of the petty states and narrow-minded Prussian arrogance. Their bold political poetry played an important part in stirring the social conscience of their fellow countrymen.

p Revolutionary outbreaks were to occur first of all in the western states. In Baden, Wiirtemberg, Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt 422 street gatherings and demonstrations demanding political reform began early in March 1848. "German Unity" and " Freedom" were the main slogans of these March days. In Baden a small group of democrats called for the establishment of a republic but this demand met with little support.

p This tide of revolutionary activity was so powerful that the rulers of the western states came to realise that they had no choice, but to make some political concessions at once. King Wilhelm I of Wiirtemberg hastened to decree freedom of the press, dismiss his former ministers and replace them with the leaders of the local bourgeois liberals. In Bavaria, where the popular demonstrations were on a particularly large scale, King Ludwig I decided he would do as well to abdicate in his son’s favour. In Baden, after the Foreign Ministry had been burnt down in Karlsruhe, the capital, Duke Leopold immediately dismissed the most hated reactionary ministers and appointed local liberals in their place.

p The political atmosphere in Prussia soon grew tense as well. Here the Berlin workers constituted the most active revolutionary force. Before the revolution even started their militancy had struck terror into the German bourgeois, who in a state of panic had jumped to the conclusion that a storm was brewing that would make the French unrest look like a tea-party. That was of course an exaggeration but this mood of alarm revealed the ambivalent contradictory position of the German bourgeoisie. The German bourgeois liberals who were deprived of political rights and held in contempt by the Prussian Junkers (the local landowning gentry) naturally aspired to becoming the leading political force in the country. However, although they hated and feared the monarchy and the nobility, they hated and feared the workers still more. Hence the vacillations and indecisive weakness of the German bourgeoisie during this period of revolutionary ferment.

The Prussian King, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, and in particular crown-prince Wilhelm had no desire to make any concessions to the bourgeoisie. They relied on the support of their loyal troops which were slowly mustered in force to Berlin and on the help of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, whom they asked at the beginning of March to send troops to Germany. Meanwhile Friedrich Wilhelm played for time, making various vague promises.

The Berlin Uprising of March 18-19

p At last appreciating the risk involved in continuing to resist the political demands of his subjects, on the night of March 17th Friedrich Wilhelm announced that he would grant Prussia a 423 constitution and promised other liberal reforms. On the morning of March 18th large crowds of workers, craftsmen and burghers came out into the streets to celebrate their first victory. At the walls of the royal palace this peaceful demonstration was mown down by government troops and soon the streets were strewn with slain and wounded.

The news of this cruel reprisal gave rise to bitter indignation. Soon barricades were set up everywhere, manned largely by the Berlin workers. Despite hastily summoned reinforcements, the state troops were defeated in the grim street fighting that followed. A certain liberal politician remarked to the King on the evening of March 18th that the crown was about to fall from his head. The Prussian monarch was in a state of extreme confusion and felt he could no longer rely on brute force. On the morning of March 19th he issued an appeal "To My Dear Berliners”. He promised to have the troops withdrawn from the capital immediately and gave orders to that effect the same day. When on the following day a public funeral was held for those who had been killed in the street fighting the King found himself obliged to pay his last respects to the victims of his own troops.

Betrayal by the Bourgeoisie

p The victory secured by the people of Prussia on March 18-19 in their first encounter with the monarchy, was to prove their first and last.

The German bourgeoisie was very much on guard after the severe fright it had been given by the valorous stand of the Berlin workers. The ministers newly appointed by the King and led by the banker Camphausen and the industrialist Hansemann were concerned first and foremost with gaining the monarch’s confidence. They went out of their way to come to terms with the King and the nobility in order to combine efforts to hold in check the revolutionary fervour of the workers. Similar behaviour was to be observed on the part of nearly all the German bourgeoisie, which feared the people and betrayed its interests. The landless and poor peasantry, which had hoped to be released from cruel feudal oppression by the revolution and granted land gratis also had its illusions shattered. The National Assembly of Prussia which opened in May 1848 in Berlin rejected these just demands put forward by the peasants. The bourgeoisie thus betrayed not only the workers but the peasants as well. Before long the bourgeois leaders turned to the King with the request that troops be brought back to the capital, a request which he willingly granted.

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The Work of Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels in 1848

p The German proletariat was too weak, inexperienced and poorly organised to put up a successful resistance to the combined forces of the monarchy, the nobility and the bourgeoisie.

p The great founders of scientific communism, Marx and Engels, hastened back to their native Germany as soon as the revolution began there. Neither of these two champions of the proletariat were drawing-room revolutionaries who took refuge in peaceful isolation from the stormy torrents of political developments, but were always to be found in the forefront of revolutionary activity. In Germany they made their headquarters in Cologne, an important industrial centre.

They were now faced with the question as to how best to reach a wide audience and organise progressive revolutionary forces. In Cologne Marx started to put out a newspaper, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which was to prove an effective militant organ of revolutionary democracy. Marx and Engels drew up a clear programme of action for the German people, calling for the overthrow of all feudal German governments, the abolition of feudal society throughout German lands and the establishment of a united democratic German Republic. This programme was the vital prerequisite for the next stage in the struggle, the fight for socialism. This coherent, militant and far-sighted programme drawn up by Marx and Engels in the pages of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was to attract many supporters. Yet at that particular stage in the history of the German workers’ movement such a newspaper was unable to rally together all the progressive forces of the country. In addition, the paper’s life was to be limited to less than a year. The last issue appeared in May 1849, when the counter-revolutionary forces had already regained the upper hand. Engels was later to recall: "We had to surrender our fortress, but we withdrew with our arms and baggage, with band playing and flag flying, the flag of the last issue, a red issue.”

The Tide of Counter-Revolution

p As early as May 1848 an all-German Constituent Assembly was convened in Frankfurt-On-Main to discuss the issue of German unification. Many democrats placed great hopes in this Assembly since its members were elected by universal suffrage and it might well have become an authoritative platform for the interests of the German people. The majority of the deputies to the Frankfurt Parliament were bourgeois liberals, professors and lawyers. 425 They delivered long speeches on abstract themes vying with one another in oratorial skill, but proved ill-prepared for political action and the solution of practical problems. After the June uprising of the Paris proletariat the Frankfurt deputies, like the German bourgeoisie as a whole, were carried away by a wave of fear and hatred of the working class and veered sharply to the right. Closing their eyes to the tide of counter-revolution which was building up throughout the country, they continued to deliver lengthy ineffective speeches and elaborate the “fundamentals” of the all-German constitution.

p Meanwhile the counter-revolutionary forces in Prussia led by the Junkers had embarked on a new offensive. By now convinced of the utter incompetence of the bourgeois politicians where real action was concerned, the Prussian King issued a decree on November 9, 1848, giving instructions for the transfer of the Constituent Assembly from Berlin to a small provincial town, Brandenburg-on-the-Havel, dismissing all the ministers and replacing them with his own supporters. This amounted to a virtual disbandment of the Assembly and in December its dissolution was officially ratified.

The orators of the "Frankfurt talking-shop" who “failed” to notice what had taken place, continued to churn out interminable speeches. The decision they finally reached was to offer the crown of the German Emperor to the most reactionary of all German rulers, Friedrich Wilhelm of the house of Hohenzollern. However, Friedrich Wilhelm did not deign to accept this crown "from out of the dirt”. What was more, the Prussian King refused to recognise the constitution drawn up by the Frankfurt Parliament, and the other German monarchs were quick to follow suit. The revolutionary democrats in Dresden and the western states organised a popular uprising in May 1849. Engels was also to take part in this armed uprising, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the people in their struggle for their freedom. Despite the valiant resistance put up by the insurgents, the movement as a whole was too weak and unorganised, so that defeat was inevitable in face of the vast numerical superiority of the enemy. The intervention of Prussian troops in the Palatinate and Baden made defeat even more rapid, and also meant that the fate of the Frankfurt Parliament was sealed in advance. Its fruitless debate and compilation of protests to which no one paid the slightest attention continued until June 1849 when it was quite simply disbanded once and for all. This event signified the final triumph of counterrevolution in Germany.

426

Revolution and Counter-Revolution
in the Austrian Empire

p In the multinational Austrian Empire the question of revolution was complicated by a number of additional issues which did not apply to the French and German situations. In this empire revolutionaries were faced not merely with the task of overthrowing the feudal absolutist order but also with freeing various enslaved peoples from national oppression. Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Rumanians, Ukrainians, Poles, Croats and Serbs were all under the Hapsburg yoke. All these peoples aspired to national independence and freedom. As soon as a popular uprising broke out in Vienna on March 13, 1848, and the hated despot Metternich fled the country, all the subject peoples of the Empire were caught up in violent waves of revolutionary activity. On March 15th a revolution broke out in Hungary. The Hungarian revolutionary democrats possessed extremely gifted leaders in Sandor Petofi (1823-1849) and Mihaly Tancsics (1799-1884). Revolutionary outbreaks in Prague and other Czech towns, Transcarpathia in the Ukraine, Croatia and the other southern Slav states occurred almost simultaneously.

The revolution in the Austrian Empire was far from being a homogeneous process; it consisted rather of a number of revolutions: Austrian, Czech, Hungarian, etc. The tragedy of this revolt against Hapsburg rule was its lack of unity. Not only did the individual peoples fail to join forces in the struggle against the common enemy but they even stood in the way of each other’s success. In this situation the bourgeoisie and the liberal sections of the nobility were to prove once again cowardly and indecisive: instead of seeking the support of the masses—the workers and peasants—they chose to ignore their just demands and seek a compromise with the Hapsburgs and the Austrian nobility.

The Hungarian Revolution and Its Defeat

p On June 12-17, 1848 the army of Field Marshal Prince Windischgratz suppressed a heroic popular uprising in Prague. At the end of October and the beginning of November the troops of this hated commander put down a democratic revolt in Vienna with unprecedented cruelty. Hungary was to hold out longest of all. On April 14, 1849, the Hungarian Diet declared itself independent of Hapsburg rule. Under the leadership of the talented patriot Lajos Kossuth independent Hungary started to wage a revolutionary war against its former oppressors. The Austrian Emperor, Franz Joseph, fearing that he would be unable to put 427 down the Hungarian revolution on his own, turned to the Russian Tsar Nicholas I for help. The intervention of the tsarist troops in Hungary made possible the rapid defeat of the Hungarian revolution. Russian revolutionary democrats such as Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Chernyshevsky voiced indignant protests at the Tsar’s action, but were quite powerless to change the situation. In August 1849 the Hungarian revolution was finally defeated.

p Revolutionary outbreaks in Italy and movements in other European states such as Belgium, Spain and Switzerland were crushed still earlier.

The triumph of counter-revolution was complete throughout the whole of Europe. Yet although the revolutions of 1848 ended in defeat, they were to exert a major influence on the subsequent course of European history. They are significant not only because of the various concessions gained, such as the abolition of serfdom and a certain reduction of national oppression in the Austrian Empire and the introduction of some bourgeois liberal reforms in Germany. These revolutions gave the European proletariat invaluable experience in political struggle. These revolutions, which did not achieve the aims they set out with, demonstrated that the bourgeoisie, now that the proletariat had come into being as a large and influential social class, had ceased to be a revolutionary class and instead had come to represent a counter-revolutionary force. They also demonstrated that liberation from feudal exploitation and democratic freedoms were something that the people could attain only on its own under the leadership of the working class and that therefore an alliance of the working class and the peasantry and other sections of the working people was a vital prerequisite for this goal. The experience of the revolutions of 1848-1849 and the wave of counter-revolutionary reaction which followed them also showed that national strife was fatal for the revolutionary movement and unity and solidarity of the peoples of different nationalities were an essential condition for success in the struggle against the common enemy.