| Page | |
| NOTE BY THE EDITOR | [3] |
| I. GERMANY AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION | [13] |
| II. THE PRUSSIAN STATE | [28] |
| III. THE OTHER GERMAN STATES | [44] |
| IV. AUSTRIA | [52] |
| V. THE VIENNA INSURRECTION | [62] |
| VI. THE BERLIN INSURRECTION | [68] |
| VII. THE FRANKFORT NATIONAL ASSEMBLY | [76] |
| VIII. POLES, TSCHECHS, AND GERMANS | [84] |
| IX. PANSLAVISM; THE SCHLESWIG WAR | [91] |
| X. THE PARIS RISING; THE FRANKFORT ASSEMBLY | [98] |
| XI. THE VIENNA INSURRECTION | [105] |
| XII. THE STORMING OF VIENNA: THE BETRAYAL OF VIENNA | [114] |
| XIII. THE PRUSSIAN ASSEMBLY: THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY | [128] |
| XIV. THE RESTORATION OF ORDER: DIET AND CHAMBER | [136] |
| XV. THE TRIUMPH OF PRUSSIA | [144] |
| XVI. THE ASSEMBLY AND THE GOVERNMENTS | [151] |
| XVII. INSURRECTION | [158] |
| XVIII. PETTY TRADERS | [166] |
| XIX. THE CLOSE OF THE INSURRECTION | [174] |
| XX. THE LATE TRIAL AT COLOGNE | [183] |
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
I.
GERMANY AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION.
October 25, 1851.
The first act of the revolutionary drama on the continent of Europe has closed. The "powers that were" before the hurricane of 1848 are again the "powers that be," and the more or less popular rulers of a day, provisional governors, triumvirs, dictators, with their tail of representatives, civil commissioners, military commissioners, prefects, judges, generals, officers, and soldiers, are thrown upon foreign shores, and "transported beyond the seas" to England or America, there to form new governments in partibus infidelium, European committees, central committees, national committees, and to announce their advent with proclamations quite as solemn as those of any less imaginary potentates.
A more signal defeat than that undergone by the continental revolutionary party—or rather parties—upon all points of the line of battle, cannot be imagined. But what of that? Has not the struggle of the British middle classes for their social and political supremacy embraced forty-eight, that of the French middle classes forty years of unexampled struggles? And was their triumph ever nearer than at the very moment when restored monarchy thought itself more firmly settled than ever? The times of that superstition which attributed revolutions to the ill-will of a few agitators have long passed away. Everyone knows nowadays that wherever there is a revolutionary convulsion, there must be some social want in the background, which is prevented, by outworn institutions, from satisfying itself. The want may not yet be felt as strongly, as generally, as might ensure immediate success; but every attempt at forcible repression will only bring it forth stronger and stronger, until it bursts its fetters. If, then, we have been beaten, we have nothing else to do but to begin again from the beginning. And, fortunately, the probably very short interval of rest which is allowed us between the close of the first and the beginning of the second act of the movement, gives us time for a very necessary piece of work: the study of the causes that necessitated both the late outbreak and its defeat; causes that are not to be sought for in the accidental efforts, talents, faults, errors, or treacheries of some of the leaders, but in the general social state and conditions of existence of each of the convulsed nations. That the sudden movements of February and March, 1848, were not the work of single individuals, but spontaneous, irresistible manifestations of national wants and necessities, more or less clearly understood, but very distinctly felt by numerous classes in every country, is a fact recognized everywhere; but when you inquire into the causes of the counter-revolutionary successes, there you are met on every hand with the ready reply that it was Mr. This or Citizen That who "betrayed" the people. Which reply may be very true or not, according to circumstances, but under no circumstances does it explain anything—not even show how it came to pass that the "people" allowed themselves to be thus betrayed. And what a poor chance stands a political party whose entire stock-in-trade consists in a knowledge of the solitary fact that Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted.