Challenges
to the
“Concert” System:
The 1820s-1830
Revolutions
c
19
Latin American Independence
Movements
Revolutionary Movements
Independence
Movements
in the Balkans
Greek Revolution – 1821
Greek Independence
• The “Eastern Question”
• Hetairia Philike  a secret
society that inspired an uprising against the
Turks in 1821.
• Pan-Hellenism
• 1827  Battle of Navarino
• Br, Fr, Rus destroyed the OttomanEgyptian fleet.
• 1828  Rus declared war
on the Otts.
• 1829  Treaty of Adrianople
• 1830  Greece declared an independent
Greece on the Ruins of Missilonghi by
Delacroix, 1827
nation [Treaty of London].
Lord Byron – Martyr in Greece
The 1830 Revolutions
Liberal Reform in Great Britain
• Parliament manipulated by the king
• Undemocratic
• Aristocracy repressed every kind of
popular protest
• Corn Laws 1815
• Prohibited importation of foreign grain
unless the price at home rose to improbable
levels
• Resulted in protests and demonstrations by
urban laborers
• 1817- Tory government responded by
temporarily suspending traditional rights of
peaceable assembly and habeas corpus
Peterloo Massacre
• 1819- Parliament passed the Six Acts
• Controlled heavily taxed press and
practically eliminated all mass meetings
• Saint Peter’s Field- Manchester
• Orderly protest
• Broken up by armed cavalry
• “Battle of Peterloo”
Reform Bill of 1832
• New manufacturing and commercial groups
demanded for more government
representation
• Liberal Reform• Reform of town government
• Organization of new police force
• More rights for Catholics and dissenters
• Reform of the Poor Laws
• Whig Party more responsive to commercial
and manufacturing interests
• Introduced “an act to amend the
representation of the people of England and
Wales”
Reform Bill of 1832
• Reluctantly approved by the House of
Lords
• House of Commons emerged as the allimportant legislative body
• New industrial areas gained
representation
• Eliminated “rotten boroughs”
• Electoral districts with few voters and
controlled by landed aristocracy
• Number of voters increased by about
50%
• Gave 12% of adult males right to vote
Radical Reform
• “People’s Charter”- Chartist
Movement
• Parliament rejected all petitions for
universal suffrage
• Anti-Corn Law League- Manchester
1839
• Repealed in 1846
• Ten Hours Act of 1847• Limited workday for women and young
people in factories to 10 hours
Ireland and the Great Famine
• Irish peasantry (rented their land from a tiny
minority of Church of England protestants) lived
in poverty
• Population rise
• 3 million (1725), 4 million (1780), 8 million (1840)
• Due to cultivation of the potato, early marriage,
and exploitation of peasants by landlords
• Potato crop failed in 1845, 1846, 1848, 1851
• British inaction (committed to laissez-faire)
• 1 million emigrants fled famine between 18451841
• 1911- population of 4.4 million
• Spurred Irish nationalism
France: The “Restoration” Era
• France emerged from the chaos of its
revolutionary period as the most liberal large
state in Europe.
(1815-1830)
• Louis XVIII governed France as a Constitutional
monarch.
• He agreed to observe the 1814 “Charter” or
Constitution of the Restoration period.
•
•
•
•
Limited royal power.
Granted legislative power.
Protected civil rights.
Upheld the Napoleon Code.
Louis XVIII (r. 1814-1824)
The “Ultras”
• France was divided by those who had
accepted the ideals of the Fr. Revolution and
those who didn’t.
• The Count of Artois was the leader of the
“Ultra-Royalists”
• 1815 “White Terror”
• Royalist mobs killed 1000s of former
revolutionaries.
• 1816 elections
The Count of Artois,
the future King Charles X
(r. 1824-1830)
• The Ultras were rejected in the Chamber of
Deputies election in favor of a moderate
royalist majority dependent on middle
class support.
France: Conservative Backlash
• 1820the Duke of Berri, son of Artois, was murdered.
• Royalists blamed the left.
• Louis XVIII moved the govt. more to the right
• Changes in electoral laws narrowed the eligible voters.
• Censorship was imposed.
• Liberals were driven out of legal political life and into illegal activities.
• 1823 triumph of reactionary forces!
•
Fr troops were authorized by the Concert of Europe to crush the Spanish
Revolution and restore another Bourbon ruler, Ferdinand VII, to the throne
there.
King Charles X of France
• His Goals:
(r. 1824-1830)
• Lessen the influence of the
middle class.
• Limit the right to vote.
• Put the clergy back in charge of
education.
• Public money used to pay nobles
for the loss of their lands during
the Fr Revolution.
King Charles X of France
• His Program:
(r. 1824-1830)
• Attack the 1814 Charter.
• Control the press.
• Dismiss the Chamber of Deputies when it turned against him.
• Appointed an ultra-reactionary as his first minister.
• 1830 Election brought in another liberal majority.
• July Ordinances
• He dissolved the entire parliament.
• Strict censorship imposed.
• Changed the voting laws so that the government in the future could be assured of a
conservative victory.
To the Barracades 
Revolution, Again!!
Workers, students and some of the middle class call for a Republic!
Victor Hugo’s
Les Miserables
 Published in 1862
 Plot from 1815- June Rebellion of 1832
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2
BlWAImZevs
Louis Philippe  The “Citizen King”
•
•
The Duke of Orleans.
•
•
Lead a thoroughly bourgeois life.
Relative of the Bourbons, but
had stayed clear of the Ultras.
His Program:
• Property qualifications reduced
enough to double eligible voters.
• Press censorship abolished.
• The King ruled by the will of the
people, not by the will of God.
• The Fr Revolution’s tricolor
replaced the Bourbon flag.
•
The government was now under the control of the
wealthy middle class.
(r. 1830-1848)
Louis Philippe  The “Citizen King”
• His government ignored the needs and
demands of the workers in the cities.
• They were seen as another nuisance
and source of possible disorder.
• July, 1832  an uprising in Paris was put
down by force and 800 were killed or
wounded.
• 1834  Silk workers strike in Lyon was
crushed.
• Seething underclass.
• Was seen as a violation of the status
quo set down at the Congress of
Vienna.
A caricature of
Louis Philippe
Rue Transnonian- 1834
Honoré Daumier
Belgian Independence, 1830
• The first to follow the lead of France.
• Its union with Holland after the Congress of Vienna had not proved successful.
• There had been
very little popular
agitation for Belgian
nationalism before
1830  seldom had
nationalism arisen so
suddenly.
• Wide cultural
differences:
• North  Dutch  Protestant  seafarers and traders.
• South  French  Catholic  farmers and individual workers.
Belgian Revolution - 1830
A Stirring of Polish
Nationalism - 1830
A Stirring of Polish
Nationalism - 1830
• The bloodiest struggle of the 1830 revolutions.
• The Poles in and around Warsaw gain a special status by the
Congress of Vienna within the Russian Empire.
• Their own constitution.
• Local autonomy granted in 1818.
• After Tsar Alexander I dies, the Poles became restless under the
tyrannical rule of Tsar Nicholas I.
A Stirring of Polish
Nationalism - 1830
• Polish intellectuals were deeply influenced by
Romanticism.
• Rumors reached Poland that Nicholas I was planning
to use Polish troops to put down the revolutions in
France and Belgium.
• Several Polish secret societies rebelled.
A Stirring of Polish
Nationalism - 1830
• Had the Poles been united, this
revolt might have been successful.
• But, the revolutionaries
were split into moderates
and radicals.
• The Poles had hoped that Fr &
Eng would come to their aid,
but they didn’t.
A Stirring of Polish
Nationalism - 1830
• Even so, it took the Russian army
a year to suppress this rebellion.
• The irony  by drawing the Russian army to
Warsaw for almost a year, the Poles may well have
kept Nicholas I from answering Holland’s call for
help in suppressing the Belgian Revolt.
Europe in 1830
The Results of the 1820s-1830 Revolutions?
1. The Concert of Europe provided for a recovery
of Europe after the long years of Revolution and
Napoleonic Wars.
2. The conservatives did NOT reverse ALL of the
reforms put in place by the French Revolution.
3. Liberalism would challenge the conservative
plan for European peace and law and order.
The Results of the 1820s-1830 Revolutions?
4. These revolutions were successful only in W. Europe:
•
Their success was in their popular support.
•
Middle class lead, aided by the urban lower classes.
5. The successful revolutions had benefited the middle
class  the workers, who had done so much of the rioting and
fighting, were left with empty hands!
6. Therefore, these revolutions left much unfinished & a seething,
unsatisfied working class.
The
Revolutions
Of 1848
“The Springtime of Peoples”
Pre-1848 Tensions: Long-Term
• Industrialization
• Economic challenges to rulers.
• Rapid urbanization.
• Challenges to the artisan class.
• Population doubled in the 18c
• Food supply problems  Malthus
• Ideological Challenges
• Liberalism, nationalism, democracy, socialism.
• Romanticism
• Repressive Measures
• Carlsbad Decrees [Prus.]
• Six Acts [Eng.]
• Secret police created in many European
states.
Pre-1848 Tensions: Short-Term
• Agricultural Crises
• Poor cereal harvests
• prices rose 60% in one year.
• Potato blight  Ireland
• Prices rose 135% for food in one year!
• Financial Crises
• Investment bubbles burst  railways,
iron, coal.
• Unemployment increased rapidly [esp.
among the artisan class].
Working & middle classes are now joined in misery as
are the urban and agricultural peasantry!
Prince Metternich
1815: We have redrawn Europe’s map for eternity.
Not Really: Centers of
Revolution in 1848
No Coherent Organized
Revolutions
• Many different reasons for
revolutionary activities.
• Reactions to long- and short-term causes.
• Competing ideologies in different
countries.
• Different revolutionary leaders, aims,
and goals in different countries.
• Some countries had no revolutions:
• England.
• Russia.
FRANCE: The Giant Sea
Snake?
FRANCE
Louis Philippe, “The Pear,” 1848
Prince Louis: Not Too Steady!
Victor Hugo & Miguel de Girardin try to raise Prince Louis upon
a shield. [Honoré Damier’s lithograph published in Charavari,
December 11, 1848].
The February Revolution
• Working class & liberals
unhappy with King Louis
Philippe, esp. with his
minister, Francois Guizot
[who opposed electoral
reform].
• Reform Banquets used to
protest against the King.
•
•
•
•
Paris Banquet banned.
Troops open fire on peaceful protestors.
Barricades erected; looting.
National Guard [politically disenfranchised] defects
to the radicals.
• King Louis Philippe loses control of Paris and
abdicates on February 24.
Alphonse Lamartine
• A poet & liberal, he
believed in the “Rights
of Man.”
• To vote, to free
speech, to property, &
to a secular education.
• Declared a new
Provisional
Government.
• Conservatives &
liberals are suspicious
of republicanism
• Reminiscent of the
Reign of Terror.
Louis Blanc
• A Social Democrat.
• He believed in the
“Right to Work.”
• National Workshops.
• Provide work for the
unemployed.
• Financial Crisis
• Flight of capital.
• Stock market crashes
[55% decline].
• New 45% increase of
taxes on the
peasants.
The Coalition Splits: Mar.-May
• The conflicts between liberals & socialists
over:
• The timing of elections to the Constituent
Assembly.
• The costs of government social programs.
• Did they violate laissez-faire?
• The question of whether you could have
liberty for all men and still have a system
based on private property.
• Growing social tensions between the working
class & the bourgeois middle class regarding:
• The nature of work.
• The right to unionize.
• Pay levels.
April Elections
• Resulted in a conservative majority in
the National Assembly.
• They began debating the fate of social
programs [like the National
Workshops].
• The conservative majority wanted
the removal of radicals like Blanc
from the government.
• In early June, the National Workshops
were shut down.
• This heightened class tensions!
The “June Days”
• Worker groups in Paris rose up in
insurrection.
• They said that the government had
betrayed the revolution.
• Workers wanted a
redistribution of wealth.
• Barricades in the streets.
• A new liberal-conservative
coalition formed to oppose this lower
class radicalism.
Paris: To the Barricades Again!
The 2nd French Republic (1848-1852)
• General Louis
Cavaignac assumed
dictatorial powers &
crushed the revolt.
• 10,000 dead.
• A victory for
conservatives.
The Republic
by
Jean-Leon Gerome
• Nov., 1848  a new
constitution provided
for:
• An elected President.
• A one-house
legislature.
President Louis Napoleon
• The December election:
• The “law and order” candidate,
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,
defeated Cavaignac.
• This was a big shift in middle
class opinion to the right!
• The New President:
• Purged the govt. of all radical officials.
• Replaced them with ultra-conservative and
monarchists.
• Disbanded the National Assembly and held
new elections.
• Represented himself as a “Man of the People.”
• His government regularly used forced
against dissenters.
1851 Coup d’Etat
• President Louis
Napoleon
declared a
hereditary 2nd
French Empire.
• A national
plebiscite
confirmed this.
The
HAPSBURG
EMPIRE
The Austrian Empire: 1830
Ferdinand I (1793-1875)
• The nature of the Austrian
Empire:
• Very conservative monarchy
[liberal institutions didn’t
exist].
• Culturally and racially
heterogeneous.
• Social reliance on serfdom
dooms masses of people to a life without
hope.
• Corrupt and inefficient.
• Competition with an increasingly powerful
Prussia.
Therefore, the Empire was vulnerable to
revolutionary challenges.
Austrian Students Form a Militia
Vienna, 1848: The Liberal
Revolution
• The “February
Revolution” in France
triggered a rebellion
for liberal reforms.
• March 13  rioting
broke out in Vienna.
• The Austrian Empire
collapsed.
• Metternich fled.
• Constituent Assembly
met.
• Serfdom [robot] abolished.
• The revolution began to wane.
• The revolutionary government failed to govern
effectively.
The New Austrian
Emperor Franz Joseph I [r. 1848-1916]
The Hungarian Revolution
Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894)
• Hungarian revolutionary
leader.
• March laws provided for
Hungarian independence.
• Austrians invade.
• Hungarian armies drove
within sight of Vienna!
• Slavic minorities resisted
Magyar invasion & the
Hungarian army withdrew.
• Austrian & Russian armies defeated the
Hungarian army.
• Hungary would have to wait until 1866 for
autonomy.
Tsar Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855)
• He raised an
army of 400,000
in response to a
request from
Franz Joseph.
• 140,000 put
down the
Hungarian
revolt.
The
German
States
Germania - 1848
Frederick William IV of
Prussia
(1840-1861)
• Mad as a hatter!
• Anti-liberal, but an
‘Arthurian’ medieval
romantic.
• Agricultural romantic.
• Relied on Junker
support.
• Prussia in the mid-19c:
• Efficient.
• Good economy.
• Strong military.
The Germans Follow the French
• After the February French revolutions,
there were many riots in minor German
states.
• Austria and Prussia expected to intervene
to crush these revolts, BUT:
• Vienna Revolution  led to the fall of
Metternich.
• Berlin riots
• Prussian army efficiently suppressed the
revolutionaries.
• King Frederick William IV withdraws the
troops and hand the Prussia liberals a big
victory!
• Other Princedoms collapse when Prussia’s
nerve fails.
Funeral for Berlin Freedom
Fighters
The Frankfurt Assembly
• German liberals are overjoyed!
• German National Assembly established in
Frankfurt:
• Universal suffrage.
• Delegates mostly from the middle class.
• Debate over the nature of the state 
monarchy of Habsburgs or Hohenzollerns?
• They chose the Austrian Habsburg Archduke
John rather than the King of Prussia.
• He was a well-known liberal sympathizer.
• But they couldn’t guarantee the loyalty of the
Prussian Army.
Frankfurt Assembly Meets
A Citizen Militia on Parade in
Berlin
The “Three Germanies”
Prussian Resurgence
• The Prussian army moved to crush the new
Polish Grand Duchy.
• The Prussian parliament disagreed with the
Frankfurt Parliament.
• The Prussian army
invaded Schleswig-Holstein
(at Frankfurt’s request).
• Horrified international
liberal opinion.
• Britain & Russia
threatened war
with Prussia.
• Prussia agreed to its own
peace with Denmark.
• The Prussian army abandoned the Frankfurt
government.
Austria & Prussia Reassert
Control
• Austria re-gained
control of Vienna.
• Frederick William
deposed the Berlin
parliament.
• The Frankfurt
Assembly offered the
emperorship to
Frederick William.
• He declined.
• Radicals took to the
barricades again.
• The Prussian army crushed all resistance.
• April, 1849  the Assembly collapsed.
A New German Confederation
• Frederick William IV of Prussia was still
interested in ruling a united Germany.
• 1850  the German Confederation was
re-established at Olmutz.
• But, Frederick was forced to accept
Austrian leadership of Central Europe.
Liberalism Discredited in
Germany
• Little popular support.
• The union of liberals and democrats
didn’t last.
• Rule of force was the only winner!
• There was a massive exodus of liberal
intelligentsia.
• Militarism, hierarchy, and statism were
triumphant!
• Capitalists followed suit.
THE
AFTERMATH
Democrats Swept Out of
Europe
Why did the 1848 Revolutions
Fail?
• They failed to attract popular support from
the working classes.
• The middle classes led these revolutions, but
as they turned radical, the middle class held
back.
• Nationalism divided more than united.
• Where revolutions were successful, the Old
Guard was left in place and they turned
against the revolutionaries.
• Some gains lasted [abolition of serfdom, etc.]
• BUT, in the long term, most liberal gains would
be solidified by the end of the 19c:
• The unification of Germany and Italy.
• The collapse of the Hapsburg Empire at the end
of World War I.
The Bottom Line
• It looked like the Conservative forces
had triumphed.
• BUT…
• Things had changed forever.
• Economic/social problems continued to be
constant challenges to the ruling order.
• Conservatives would have to make
concessions in order to stay in power.
• Many of the limited Liberal achievements
remained permanent.