Restoration Europe 577The Restoration of Monarchs} Nobles, and Clergy
Monarchs, nobles, and clergy returned to power, prestige, and influence. In
the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the members of the ruling House of
Savoy came back wearing powdered wigs in the style of the eighteenth cen
tury, and the religious orders returned in force. In Lombardy-Venetia, con
sultative assemblies were established in Milan and Venice, but they did little
more than assess taxes. With the exception of Baden, in the German states
such bodies routinely approved legislation without limiting the power of
the sovereign. The governments of the German states that had been occu
pied by France completely purged the remnants of Napoleonic administra
tion, annulled French-inspired legislation, and imposed strict censorship.
When the French left the Papal States, Pope Pius VII immediately tried to
exorcise all traces of French influence. Administrative reforms undertaken
during the occupation ended; so did street lighting and even vaccinations,
which were identified with the godless French. The clergy reclaimed most
public offices. In Tuscany the duke ordered the colors of Giotto’s portrait of
Dante altered, fearing that observers would see in them the French tricolor
flag.
The French Revolution had by no means eliminated noble influence in the
states of Europe. Even in Britain, where the lines between landed and busi
ness wealth were more blurred than anywhere else, nobles still dominated
the House of Commons. In France, the Bourbon monarchy restored nobles
to political primacy. An electoral system based on landed wealth gave them a
disproportionate advantage. In Spain, nobles were particularly numerous,
although many of them were relatively poor. Sweden still counted about
12,000 nobles in the middle of the nineteenth century. In the Italian states,
nobles still held sway in declining or stagnant walled towns like Palermo,
Naples, and Rome, as they did in the countryside. Even in industrializing
Milan and in Turin, nobles dominated the civic administration.
The farther east one went, the more nobles still dominated economic,
social, and political life. Nobles (Junkers) owned 40 percent of the land of
Prussia and retained their stranglehold over the officer corps. The army
defiantly brushed aside possible competition from the Landwehr, the civil
ian reserve force commanded by mere commoners—merchants, teachers,
and bureaucrats. In Russia, the officer corps remained a noble stronghold,
reinforced by the aristocracy’s near monopoly on appointments to military
academies and to important posts in the civil service. In Austria, where the
greatest 300 to 400 hereditary aristocratic families remained close to the
Habsburg throne, 70 percent of those in top official posts had noble titles
in 1829, and twenty years later the percentage had grown even more.
Austrian Chancellor Metternich warned Tsar Alexander I about the dan
gers of the “intermediate class,” which prospered by adopting “all sorts of
disguises.”