A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

Counter-Revolution 635

hesitation the Russian tsar sent

140,000 troops into Hungary
and Transylvania. Kossuth franti­
cally implored the Frankfurt Par­
liament for assistance, but that
body had no army. The British
government disliked the Russian
intervention in Central Europe,
but it wanted to preserve the
Habsburg monarchy as a buffer
against French and, above all,
Russian interests. Hungarian
resistance ended in August as
Russian and Austrian forces
advanced. Kossuth escaped to
Turkey, never to return to Hun­
gary. Austria executed thirteen
Hungarian generals for treason,
imprisoned thousands of peo­
ple, and imposed martial law. An early photograph of the Hungarian
The “Patent” of December 31, noble, lawyer, and patriot Lajos Kossuth.
1851, officially restored imperial
absolutism.
One by one in the other German states, the “March ministries” of 1848
fell from power as rulers abrogated constitutions granted that spring. Even
where constitutions remained on the books, the counter-revolutions orches­
trated by rulers with the help of nobles left parliaments and assemblies with
little or no effective power. Scattered radical insurrections failed. After being
chased from his duchy in June 1849, the grand duke of Baden returned to
oversee the trials of more than 1,000 people. The German Revolution of
1848 was over. On August 23, 1851, the German Confederation annulled
the Basic Rights of the German People, the major work of the Frankfurt
Parliament.

Prussian-Austrian Rivalry

Now that the German revolutionaries had been swept away by the jugger­

naut of counter-revolution, Prussian King Frederick William IV proposed

the creation of a “Prussian Union.” It would consist of two “unions”: the

larger would include the states of the defunct German Confederation, as

well as non-German Austrian territories; the smaller would be a confedera­

tion of all German-speaking lands, including those of Austria. In proposing

these clumsy structures, a loose confederation based both on conservative

political premises and an expansion of Prussian influence, Frederick

William took advantage of the insurrections against Austrian authority