Europe in an Age of Nationalism, 1848–70 487wrote an idealistic constitution for unified Germany. It
stripped the nobility of privileges, opening the bureau-
cracy and the officer corps to commoners; it abolished
the pillory, branding, and other forms of corporal pun-
ishment; it proclaimed “The Fundamental Rights of the
German People,” including civil liberties; and it
promised free state education. The pressure of nonvot-
ing women “observer-delegates,” championing the pro-
gram of a German feminist newspaper, the Frauenzeitung
(the Women’s Newspaper), did not persuade the men of
1848 to add women’s rights.
Another dramatic chapter in the springtime of peo-
ples began in the Italian states. Sicily rose against its
Neapolitan monarch, for its fifth insurrection in eigh-
teen years. When revolution shook the Austrian Em-
pire, the Habsburg provinces in northern Italy joined in
the claims of minority peoples. When news of Metter-
nich’s departure reached Milan, barricades appeared in
the streets. In a battle known as “the five glorious days,”
the Lombards expelled the Austrian garrison from
Milan. The news from Milan and Vienna inflamed
all of northern Italy. While the fighting continued in
Lombardy, rebels led by Daniele Manin proclaimed the
end of Austrian rule at Venice and formed a republic.
On the other side of Lombardy, King Charles Albert of
Piedmont-Sardinia supported the revolution rather than
face upheaval at Turin. As the Austrian army retreated
from Milan, Piedmont declared war on Austria. In cen-
tral Italy, rebels drove out pro-Austrian rulers and
adopted constitutions.
The refusal of Pope Pius IX to join the Italian war
led to a democratic insurrection at Rome in November
1848 in which the pope’s prime minister and personal
confessor were both killed. Pius fled Rome, and revolu-
tionaries abolished his temporal powers. The Roman
republic attracted two of the heroes of Italian national-
ism: Giuseppe Mazzini (the theorist who had created
Young Italy) and Giuseppe Garibaldi (a Genoese radical
who became the most famous general of the Italian
wars). Despite papal threats to excommunicate all vot-
ers, they organized the Roman republic as a “pure
democracy.” One of Garibaldi’s first acts was to abolish
the Jewish ghetto and emancipate Roman Jews. Like
the emancipation of the serfs in Germany, the emanci-
pation of the Jews became one of the lasting accom-
plishments of the Italian revolution of 1848.
In mid-1848, the age of Metternich seemed over at
Turin, Milan, Venice, and Rome. Austrian revolutionar-
ies planned to grant Lombardy its independence. While
constitutional governments were still being formed,
however, an Austrian general dramatically changed
events. Count Joseph Radetzky, the Austrian chief-of-
staff during the Napoleonic Wars, commanded the gar-
rison driven from Milan. Radetzky regrouped his forces
and crushed a combined Italian army in the battle of
Custozza ( July 1848). The outcome at Custozza (a vil-
lage in Venetia) left few doubts: Revolutionaries could
not defeat determined professional armies, and they
could not drive the Austrians from Italy.
The French, German, and Italian revolutions were
the most significant upheavals of 1848, but important
changes occurred in many countries, often when alert
monarchs voluntarily introduced liberal innovations. In
Denmark, a new king (Frederick VII) came to the throne
in 1848 and launched a reform program culminating in
the Danish constitution of 1849. Frederick accepted
constitutional limits on his powers, a strengthened Par-
liament, widespread manhood suffrage (15 percent of
the population voted in 1850 versus 4 percent in
Britain), guarantees of civil liberties, and the emancipa-
tion of religious minorities. In the Netherlands, King
William II agreed to liberal constitutional revision. The
Dutch liberals, led by a noted constitutional jurist, Johan
Thorbecke, won new parliamentary authority at the ex-
pense of the throne, including the principle of minister-
ial responsibility to a majority in Parliament.The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1849–52
Most of the changes made during the revolutions of
1848 did not survive for long. Conservatives, typically
led by army commanders, went on the counteroffensive
in 1849 and reasserted principles of the Old Regime.
Constitutions and reforms were nullified; royal author-
ity reasserted. Pius IX summarized conservative senti-
ment in December 1848: “We... declare null and of no
effect, and altogether illegal, every act” of the govern-
ments of 1848. The end of slavery in French colonies,
the abolition of serfdom in Germany, and the emanci-
pation of Jews in Italy remained a legacy of the revolu-
tionary moment, but few of the governments and none
of the republics of 1848 endured. The Italian republics
at Venice and at Rome fell in 1849; the French Second
Republic became so conservative that it helped to sup-
press the Roman republic and was itself overturned in- The nationalist fires of 1848 turned to ashes
everywhere. By 1850 a Neapolitan radical concluded,
“The concept of nationality sufficed to bring about the
insurrection, but it was not enough to bring victory.”
Alexis de Tocqueville had foreseen such problems in
early 1848. “In a rebellion, as in a novel,” he said, “the
most difficult part to invent is the end.”