24.2: France after 1815

24.2.1: Louis XVIII and the Bourbon Restoration

Learning Objective

Define the Bourbon Restoration and its goals

Key Points

• The Bourbon Restoration was the period of French history following the fall of Napoleon in 1814 until the July Revolution of 1830.
• After Napoleon abdicated as emperor in March 1814, Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, was installed as king and France was granted a quite generous peace settlement, restored to its 1792 boundaries and not required to pay war indemnity.
• On becoming king, Louis issued a constitution known as the Charter which preserved many of the liberties won during the French Revolution and provided for a parliament composed of an elected Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber of Peers that was nominated by the king.
• A constitution, the Charter of 1814, was drafted; it presented all Frenchmen as equal before the law, but retained substantial prerogative for the king and nobility and limited voting to those paying at least 300 francs a year in direct taxes.
• After the Hundred Days, when Napoleon briefly returned to power, Louis XVIII was restored a second time by the allies in 1815, ending more than two decades of war.
• At this time, a more harsh peace treaty was imposed on France, returning it to its 1789 boundaries and requiring a war indemnity.
• There were large-scale purges of Bonapartists from the government and military, and a brief “White Terror” in the south of France claimed 300 victims.
• Despite the return of the House of Bourbon to power, France was much changed; the egalitarianism and liberalism of the revolutionaries remained an important force and the autocracy and hierarchy of the earlier era could not be fully restored.

Key Terms

Napoleonic Code

The French civil code established under Napoléon I in 1804. It marked the end of feudalism and the liberation of serfs where it took effect. It recognized the principles of civil liberty, equality before the law, and the secular character of the state. It discarded the old right of primogeniture (where only the eldest son inherited) and required that inheritances be divided equally among all children. The court system was standardized; all judges were appointed by the national government in Paris.

White Terror

Following the return of Louis XVIII to power in 1815, people suspected of having ties with the governments of the French Revolution or of Napoleon suffered arrest and execution. 

House of Bourbon

A European royal house of French origin, a branch of the Capetian dynasty, who first ruled France and Navarre in the 16th century and by the 18th century, also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma.

biens nationaux

Properties confiscated during the French Revolution from the Catholic Church, the monarchy, émigrés, and suspected counter-revolutionaries for “the good of the nation.”

The Bourbon Restoration was the period of French history following the fall of Napoleon in 1814 until the July Revolution of 1830. The brothers of executed Louis XVI of France reigned in highly conservative fashion, and the exiles returned. They were nonetheless unable to reverse most of the changes made by the French Revolution and Napoleon. At the Congress of Vienna they were treated respectfully, but had to give up all the territorial gains made since 1789.

King Louis XVI of the House of Bourbon had been overthrown and executed during the French Revolution (1789–1799), which in turn was followed by Napoleon as ruler of France. A coalition of European powers defeated Napoleon in the War of the Sixth Coalition, ended the First Empire in 1814, and restored the monarchy to the brothers of Louis XVI. The Bourbon Restoration lasted from (about) April 6, 1814, until the popular uprisings of the July Revolution of 1830. There was an interlude in spring 1815—the “Hundred Days”—when the return of Napoleon forced the Bourbons to flee France. When Napoleon was again defeated they returned to power in July.

During the Restoration, the new Bourbon regime was a constitutional monarchy, unlike the absolutist Ancien Régime, so it had limits on its power. The period was characterized by a sharp conservative reaction and consequent minor but consistent civil unrest and disturbances. It also saw the reestablishment of the Catholic Church as a major power in French politics.

First Restoration

Louis XVIII’s restoration to the throne in 1814 was effected largely through the support of Napoleon’s former foreign minister, Talleyrand, who convinced the victorious Allied Powers of the desirability of a Bourbon Restoration. The Allies had initially split on the best candidate for the throne: Britain favored the Bourbons, the Austrians considered a regency for Napoleon’s son, François Bonaparte, and the Russians were open to either the duc d’Orléans, Louis Philippe, or Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Napoleon’s former Marshal, who was in line for the Swedish throne. Napoleon was offered to keep the throne in February 1814 on the condition that France return to its 1792 frontiers, but he refused.

The Great Powers occupying Paris demanded that Louis XVIII implement a constitution. Louis responded with the Charter of 1814, which included many progressive provisions: freedom of religion, a legislature composed of the Chamber of Deputies, and the Chamber of Peers, a press that would enjoy a degree of freedom, and a provision that the Biens nationaux would remain in the hands of their current owners. The two Chambers’ role was consultative (except on taxation), as only the King had the power to propose or sanction laws and appoint or recall ministers. Voting was limited to men with considerable property holdings, and just 1% of people could vote. 

Louis XVIII signed the Treaty of Paris on May 30, 1814. The treaty gave France its 1792 borders, which extended east of the Rhine. The country had to pay no war indemnity, and the occupying armies of the Sixth Coalition withdrew instantly from French soil.

Despite the return of the House of Bourbon to power, France was much changed from the era of the Ancien Régime. The egalitarianism and liberalism of the revolutionaries remained an important force and the autocracy and hierarchy of the earlier era could not be fully restored. The economic changes, which were underway long before the revolution, had been further enhanced during the years of turmoil and were firmly entrenched by 1815. These changes saw power shift from the noble landowners to the urban merchants.

Many of the legal, administrative, and economic reforms of the revolutionary period were left intact; the Napoleonic Code, which guaranteed legal equality and civil liberties, the peasants’ biens nationaux, and the new system of dividing the country into départments were not undone by the new king. Relations between church and state remained regulated by the Concordat of 1801. However, in spite of the fact that the Charter was a condition of the Restoration, the preamble declared it to be a “concession and grant,” given “by the free exercise of our royal authority.”

After a first sentimental flush of popularity, Louis’ gestures towards reversing the results of the French Revolution quickly lost him support among the disenfranchised majority. Symbolic acts such as the replacement of the tricolore flag with the white flag, the titling of Louis as the “XVIII” (as successor to Louis XVII, who never ruled) and as “King of France” rather than “King of the French”, and the monarchy’s recognition of the anniversaries of the deaths of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were significant. A more tangible source of antagonism was the pressure applied to possessors of biens nationaux by the Catholic Church and returning émigrés attempting to repossess their former lands.

Hundred Days

On February 26, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped his island prison of Elba and embarked for France. He arrived with about 1,000 troops near Cannes on March 1. Louis XVIII was not particularly worried by Bonaparte’s excursion, as such a small number of troops could be easily overcome. There was, however, a major underlying problem for the Bourbons: Louis XVIII failed to purge the military of its Bonapartist troops. This led to mass desertions from the Bourbon armies to Bonaparte’s. Furthermore, Louis XVIII could not join the campaign against Napoleon in the south of France because he was suffering from gout.

Louis XVIII’s underestimation of Bonaparte proved disastrous. On March 19, the army stationed outside Paris defected to Bonaparte, leaving the city vulnerable to attack. That same day, Louis XVIII quit the capital with a small escort at midnight. Louis decided to go first to Lille, then crossed the border into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, staying in Ghent.

However, Napoleon did not rule France again for very long, suffering a decisive defeat at the hands of the armies of the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18. The Allies came to the consensus that Louis XVIII should be restored to the throne of France.

Second Restoration

Talleyrand was again influential in seeing that the Bourbons reigned, as was Fouché, Napoleon’s minister of police during the Hundred Days. After the Hundred Days, a harsher peace treaty was imposed on France, returning it to its 1789 boundaries and requiring a war indemnity. Allied troops were to remain in the country until it was paid.

Louis XVIII’s role in politics from the Hundred Days onward was voluntarily diminished; he resigned most of his duties to his council. He and his ministry embarked on a series of reforms through the summer of 1815. The king’s council, an informal group of ministers that advised Louis XVIII, was dissolved and replaced by a tighter knit privy council, the “Ministère de Roi.” Talleyrand was appointed as the first Président du Conseil, i.e. Prime Minister of France. On July 14, the ministry dissolved the units of the army deemed “rebellious.” Hereditary peerage was reestablished to Louis’s behest by the ministry.

In August, elections for the Chamber of Deputies returned unfavorable results for Talleyrand. The ministry wished for moderate deputies, but the electorate voted almost exclusively for ultra-royalists. Talleyrand tendered his resignation on September 20. Louis XVIII chose the Duke of Richelieu to be his new Prime Minister. Richelieu was chosen because he was accepted by Louis’s family and the reactionary Chamber of Deputies.

Anti-Napoleonic sentiment was high in Southern France, and this was prominently displayed in the White Terror, the purge of all important Napoleonic officials from government and the execution of others. The people of France committed barbarous acts against some of these officials. Guillaume Marie Anne Brune (a Napoleonic marshal) was savagely assassinated and his remains thrown into the Rhône River. Louis XVIII deplored such illegal acts, but vehemently supported the prosecution of marshals that helped Napoleon in the Hundred Days. The White Terror claimed 300 victims.

The king was reluctant to shed blood, which greatly irritated the ultra-reactionary Chamber of Deputies, who felt that Louis XVIII was not executing enough people. The government issued a proclamation of amnesty to the “traitors” in January 1816, but the trials in progress were finished in due course. That same declaration banned any member of the House of Bonaparte from owning property in or entering France.

In 1823, France intervened in Spain where a civil war had deposed King Ferdinand VII. The British objected as this brought back memories of the still recent Peninsular War. However, the French troops marched into Spain, retook Madrid from the rebels, and left almost as quickly as they came. Despite worries to the contrary, France showed no sign of returning to an aggressive foreign policy and was admitted to the Concert of Europe in 1818.

Louis XVIII died on September 16, 1824, and was succeeded by his brother, the comte d’Artois, who took the title of Charles X.

Allegory of the Return of the Bourbons on 24 April 1814 : Louis XVIII Lifting France from Its Ruins 

A painting by Louis-Philippe symbolizing the Bourbon Restoration as “lifting France from its ruins.” It shows the newly appointed king, Louis XVIII, lifting up a falling women, who symbolized France after the Napoleonic Wars.

A painting of a large group of people surrounding the royal court. In the center it shows Louis XVIII, in royal attire, including a crown, lifting up a falling woman, symbolizing France.

24.2.2: Charles X and the July Revolution

Learning Objective

Evaluate why the July Revolution occurred

Key Points

• Charles X of France took a far more conservative line than his brother Louis XVIII. 
• He attempted to rule as an absolute monarch in the style of Ancien Régime and reassert the power of the Catholic Church in France.
• His coronation in 1824 also coincided with the height of the power of the Ultra-royalist party, who also wanted a return of the aristocracy and absolutist politics.
• A few years into his rule, unrest among the people of France began to develop, caused by an economic downturn, resistance to the return to conservative politics, and the rise of a liberal press.
• In 1830 the discontent caused by these changes and Charles X’s authoritarian nomination of the Ultra prince de Polignac as minister culminated in an uprising in the streets of Paris known as the 1830 July Revolution.
• Charles was forced to flee and Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, a member of the Orléans branch of the family and son of Philippe Égalité who had voted the death of his cousin Louis XVI, ascended the throne, beginning the more liberal July Monarchy.

Key Terms

ultra-royalist

A political part in 19th century France who wished for a return to the Ancien Régime of before 1789, with a view toward absolutism: domination by the nobility and “other devoted Christians.” They were anti-republican, anti-democratic, and preached Government on High by a marked noble elite. They tolerated vote censitaire, a form of democracy limited to those paying taxes above a high threshold.

Ancien Régime

The monarchic, aristocratic, social, and political system established in the Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th century until the latter part of the 18th century (“early modern France”) under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties.

July Revolution

This uprising of 1830 saw the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who after 18 precarious years on the throne would be overthrown in 1848. It marked the shift from one constitutional monarchy, the Bourbon Restoration, to another, the July Monarchy.

Compared to his brother Louis XVIII, who ruled from 1814-1824, Charles X of France took a far more conservative line. He attempted to rule as an absolute monarch and reassert the power of the Catholic Church in France. Acts of sacrilege in churches became punishable by death, and freedom of the press was severely restricted. Finally, he tried to compensate the families of the nobles who had had their property destroyed during the Revolution. 

In 1830 the discontent caused by these changes and Charles X’s authoritarian nomination of the Ultra prince de Polignac as minister culminated in an uprising in the streets of Paris, known as the 1830 July Revolution (or, in French, “Les trois Glorieuses,” the three glorious days of July 27-29). Charles was forced to flee and Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, a member of the Orléans branch of the family and son of Philippe Égalité who had voted the death of his cousin Louis XVI, ascended the throne. Louis-Philippe ruled not as “King of France” but as “King of the French” (an evocative difference for contemporaries). It was made clear that his right to rule came from the people and was not divinely granted. He also revived the tricolore as the flag of France in place of the white Bourbon flag that had been used since 1815, an important distinction because the tricolore was the symbol of the revolution.

Charles X (1824–1830)

The ascension to the throne of Charles X, the leader of the Ultra-royalist faction, coincided with the Ultras’ control of power in the Chamber of Deputies; thus, the ministry of the comte de Villèle was able to continue, and the last “restraint” (i.e., Louis) on the Ultra-royalists was removed. As the country underwent a Christian revival in the post-Revolutionary years, the Ultras saw fit to raise the status of the Roman Catholic Church once more.

On May 29, 1825, Charles was crowned in Reims in an opulent and spectacular ceremony that was reminiscent of the royal pomp of the coronations of the Ancien Régime. Some innovations were included upon request by Villèle; although Charles was hostile towards the 1814 Charter, commitment to the “constitutional charter” was affirmed with four of Napoleon’s generals in attendance.

While his brother had been sober enough to realize that France would never accept an attempt to resurrect the Ancien Régime, Charles had never been willing to accept the changes of the past four decades. He gave his Prime Minister, Jean-Baptiste de Villèle, lists of laws that he wanted ratified every time he opened parliament. In April 1825, the government approved legislation proposed by Louis XVIII but implemented only after his death, that paid an indemnity to nobles whose estates had been confiscated during the Revolution (the biens nationaux).

The law gave government bonds to those who had lost their lands in exchange for their renunciation of their ownership. This cost the state approximately 988 million francs. In the same month, the Anti-Sacrilege Act was passed. Charles’s government attempted to re-establish male-only primogeniture for families paying over 300 francs in tax, but the measure was voted down in the Chamber of Deputies.

On May 29, 1825, King Charles was anointed at the cathedral of Reims, the traditional site of consecration of French kings; it had been unused since 1775, as Louis XVIII had forgone the ceremony to avoid controversy. It was in the venerable cathedral of Notre-Dame at Paris that Napoleon consecrated his revolutionary empire, but in ascending the throne of his ancestors, Charles reverted to the old place of coronation used by the kings of France from the early ages of the monarchy.

That Charles was not a popular ruler became apparent in April 1827, when chaos ensued during the king’s review of the National Guard in Paris. In retaliation, the National Guard was disbanded but as its members were not disarmed, it remained a potential threat.

Downfall of the Bourbons

There is still considerable debate among historians as to the actual cause of the downfall of Charles X. What is generally conceded, though, is that between 1820 and 1830, a series of economic downturns combined with the rise of a liberal opposition within the Chamber of Deputies ultimately felled the conservative Bourbons.

Between 1827 and 1830, France faced an economic downturn, industrial and agricultural, that was possibly worse than the one that sparked the Revolution of 1789. A series of progressively worsening grain harvests in the late 1820s pushed up the prices on various staple foods and cash crops. In response, the rural peasantry throughout France lobbied for the relaxation of protective tariffs on grain to lower prices and ease their economic situation. However, Charles X, bowing to pressure from wealthier landowners, kept the tariffs in place.

While the French economy faltered, a series of elections brought a relatively powerful liberal bloc into the Chamber of Deputies. The 17-strong liberal bloc of 1824 grew to 180 in 1827 and 274 in 1830. This liberal majority grew increasingly dissatisfied with the policies of the centrist Martignac and the Ultra-royalist Polignac, seeking to protect the limited protections of the Charter of 1814.

Also, the growth of the liberal bloc within the Chamber of Deputies corresponded roughly with the rise of a liberal press within France. Generally centered around Paris, this press provided a counterpoint to the government’s journalistic services and to the newspapers of the right. It grew increasingly important in conveying political opinions and the political situation to the Parisian public and can thus be seen as a crucial link between the rise of the liberals and the increasingly agitated and economically suffering French masses.

July Revolution

Protest against the absolute monarchy was in the air. The elections of deputies on May 16, 1830, had gone very badly for King Charles X. In response, he tried repression but that only aggravated the crisis as suppressed deputies, gagged journalists, students from the University, and many working men of Paris poured into the streets and erected barricades during the “three glorious days” (French Les Trois Glorieuses) of July 26-29 1830. Charles X was deposed and replaced by King Louis-Philippe in the July Revolution. It is traditionally regarded as a rising of the bourgeoisie against the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons. Participants in the July Revolution included Marie Joseph Paul Ives Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette. Working behind the scenes on behalf of the bourgeois-propertied interests was Louis Adolphe Thiers.

The July Revolution marked the shift from one constitutional monarchy, the Bourbon Restoration, to another, the July Monarchy; the transition of power from the House of Bourbon to its cadet branch, the House of Orléans; and the replacement of the principle of hereditary right by popular sovereignty. Supporters of the Bourbon were called Legitimists, and supporters of Louis Philippe Orléanists.

The Revolution broke out on July 27, 1830. Throughout the day, Paris grew quiet as the milling crowds grew larger. At 4:30 pm, commanders of the troops of the First Military division of Paris and the Garde Royale were ordered to concentrate their troops, and guns, on the Place du Carrousel facing the Tuileries, the Place Vendôme, and the Place de la Bastille. To maintain order and protect gun shops from looters, military patrols throughout the city were established, strengthened, and expanded. However, no special measures were taken to protect either the arm depots or gunpowder factories. For a time, those precautions seemed premature, but with the coming of twilight, the fighting began. According to historian Phil Mansel, “Parisians, rather than soldiers, were the aggressor. Paving stones, roof tiles, and flowerpots from the upper windows… began to rain down on the soldiers in the streets.” At first, soldiers fired warning shots into the air. But before the night was over, 21 civilians were killed. Fighting in Paris continued throughout the night.

On day two, Charles X ordered Maréchal Auguste Marmont, Duke of Ragusa, the on-duty Major-General of the Garde Royale, to repress the disturbances. Marmont’s plan was to have the Garde Royale and available line units of the city garrison guard the vital thoroughfares and bridges of the city and protect important buildings such as the Palais Royal, Palais de Justice, and the Hôtel de Ville. This plan was both ill-considered and wildly ambitious; not only were there not enough troops, but there were also nowhere near enough provisions. At 4 p.m., Charles X received Colonel Komierowski, one of Marmont’s chief aides. The colonel was carrying a note from Marmont to his Majesty:

Sire, it is no longer a riot, it is a revolution. It is urgent for Your Majesty to take measures for pacification. The honour of the crown can still be saved. Tomorrow, perhaps, there will be no more time… I await with impatience Your Majesty’s orders.

On day three, the revolutionaries were well-organized and very well-armed. In only a day and a night, over 4,000 barricades had been thrown up throughout the city. The tricolore flag of the revolutionaries – the “people’s flag” – flew over buildings, an increasing number of them important buildings. By 1:30 pm, the Tuileries Palace had been sacked. By mid-afternoon the greatest prize, the Hôtel de Ville, had been captured. A few hours later, politicians entered the battered complex and set about establishing a provisional government. Though there would be spots of fighting throughout the city for the next few days, the revolution, for all intents and purposes, was over. 

The revolution of July 1830 created a constitutional monarchy. On August 2, Charles X and his son the Dauphin abdicated their rights to the throne and departed for Great Britain. Although Charles had intended that his grandson, the Duke of Bordeaux, would take the throne as Henry V, the politicians who composed the provisional government instead placed on the throne a distant cousin, Louis Philippe of the House of Orléans, who agreed to rule as a constitutional monarch. This period became known as the July Monarchy.

Liberty Leading the People

A painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman personifying the concept and the Goddess of Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution – the tricolore flag, which remains France’s national flag – in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne.

Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman personifying the concept and the Goddess of Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution – the tricolour flag, which remains France’s national flag – in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne.

24.2.3: The July Monarchy

Learning Objective

Contrast the July monarchy with the reign of Charles X

Key Points

• In 1830, the discontent caused by Charles X’s authoritarian policies culminated in an uprising in the streets of Paris known as the 1830 July Revolution.
• Charles was forced to flee and Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, a member of the Orléans branch of the family and son of Philippe Égalité who had voted the death of his cousin Louis XVI, ascended the throne, marking the beginning of the July Monarchy, so named for the Revolution. 
• Louis-Philippe ruled not as “King of France” but as “King of the French,” which made clear that his right to rule came from the people and was not divinely granted.
• Despite this and other such gestures (for example, reviving the tricolore as the flag of France in place of the white Bourbon flag that had been used since 1815), Louis-Philippe remained conservative, and reforms mainly benefited the upper-class citizens.
• Because of the conservative character of Louis-Philippe’s regime, civil unrest remained a permanent feature of the July Monarchy, with riots and uprising continuing throughout his rule.
• In February 1848, the French government banned the holding of the Campagne des banquets, fundraising dinners by activists where critics of the regime would meet (as public demonstrations and strikes were forbidden). 
• As a result, protests and riots broke out in the streets of Paris. An angry mob converged on the royal palace, after which the hapless king abdicated and fled to England; the Second Republic was then proclaimed, ending the July Monarchy.

Key Terms

campagne des banquets

Political meetings during the July Monarchy in France that destabilized the King of the French Louis-Philippe. The campaign officially took place from July 9, 1847, to December, 25 1847, but in fact continued until the February 1848 Revolution during which the Second Republic was proclaimed.

Louis Philippe I

King of the French from 1830 to 1848 as the leader of the Orléanist party. His government, known as the July Monarchy, was dominated by members of a wealthy French elite and numerous former Napoleonic officials. He followed conservative policies, especially under the influence of the French statesman François Guizot from 1840–48.

haute bourgeoisie

A social rank in the bourgeoisie that can only be acquired through time. In France, it is composed of bourgeois families that have existed since the French Revolution. They hold only honorable professions and have experienced many illustrious marriages in their family’s history. They have rich cultural and historical heritages, and their financial means are more than secure. These families exude an aura of nobility that prevents them from certain marriages or occupations. They only differ from nobility in that due to circumstances, lack of opportunity, and/or political regime, they have not been ennobled.

The French Kingdom, commonly known as the July Monarchy, was a liberal constitutional monarchy in France under Louis Philippe I, starting with the July Revolution of 1830 (also known as the Three Glorious Days) and ending with the Revolution of 1848. It began with the overthrow of the conservative government of Charles X and the House of Bourbon. Louis Philippe, a member of the traditionally more liberal Orléans branch of the House of Bourbon, proclaimed himself Roi des Français (“King of the French”) rather than “King of France,” emphasizing the popular origins of his reign. The king promised to follow the “juste milieu”, or the middle-of-the-road, avoiding the extremes of the conservative supporters of Charles X and radicals on the left. The July Monarchy was dominated by wealthy bourgeoisie and numerous former Napoleonic officials. It followed conservative policies, especially under the influence (1840–48) of François Guizot. The king promoted friendship with Great Britain and sponsored colonial expansion, notably the conquest of Algeria. By 1848, a year in which many European states had a revolution, the king’s popularity had collapsed, and he was overthrown.

Louis Philippe I

The July Monarchy (1830–1848) is generally seen as a period during which the haute bourgeoisie was dominant. It marked the shift from the counter-revolutionary Legitimists to the Orleanists, who were willing to make compromises with the changes brought by the 1789 Revolution. Louis-Philippe’s taking of the title “King of the French” marked his acceptance of popular sovereignty, which replaced the Ancien Régime’s divine right. Louis-Philippe clearly understood his base of power: the wealthy bourgeoisie carried him aloft during the July Revolution through their work in the Parliament, and throughout his reign, he kept their interests in mind.

During the first several years of his regime, Louis-Philippe appeared to move his government toward legitimate, broad-based reform. The government found its source of legitimacy within the Charter of 1830, written by reform-minded members of Chamber of Deputies upon a platform of religious equality, the empowerment of the citizenry through the reestablishment of the National Guard, electoral reform, the reformation of the peerage system, and the lessening of royal authority. Indeed, Louis-Phillippe and his ministers adhered to policies that seemed to promote the central tenets of the constitution. However, the majority of these were veiled attempts to shore up the power and influence of the government and the bourgeoisie, rather than legitimate attempts to promote equality and empowerment for a broad constituency of the French population. Thus, though the July Monarchy seemed to move toward reform, this movement was largely illusory.

During the years of the July Monarchy, enfranchisement roughly doubled, from 94,000 under Charles X to more than 200,000 by 1848. However, this represented less than one percent of population, and as the requirements for voting were tax-based, only the wealthiest gained the privilege. By implication, the enlarged enfranchisement tended to favor the wealthy merchant bourgeoisie more than any other group.

The reformed Charter of 1830 limited the power of the King – stripping him of his ability to propose and decree legislation, as well as limiting his executive authority. However, the King of the French still believed in a version of monarchy that held the king as much more than a figurehead for an elected Parliament, and as such, he was quite active in politics. One of the first acts of Louis-Philippe in constructing his cabinet was to appoint the rather conservative Casimir Perier as the premier. Perier, a banker, was instrumental in shutting down many of the Republican secret societies and labor unions that had formed during the early years of the regime. In addition, he oversaw the dismemberment of the National Guard after it proved too supportive of radical ideologies. 

The regime acknowledged early on that radicalism and republicanism threatened it by undermining its laissez-faire policies. Thus, the Monarchy declared the very term republican illegal in 1834. Guizot shut down republican clubs and disbanded republican publications. Republicans within the cabinet, like the banker Dupont, were all but excluded by Perier and his conservative clique. Distrusting the sole National Guard, Louis-Philippe increased the size of the army and reformed it in order to ensure its loyalty to the government.

Louis-Philippe, 1842

King Louis-Philippe I, the liberal and constitutional King of the French, brought to power by the July Revolution.

Image of Louis-Philippe I, seated in a chair.

Unrest in the July Monarchy: Revolution of 1848

Louis-Philippe, who had flirted with liberalism in his youth, rejected much of the pomp and circumstance of the Bourbons and surrounded himself with merchants and bankers. The July Monarchy, however, remained a time of turmoil. A large group of Legitimists on the right demanded the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne. On the left, Republicanism and later Socialism, remained a powerful force.

Civil unrest continued after the July Revolution, supported by the left-wing press. Louis-Philippe’s government was not able to end it, mostly because the National Guard was headed by one of the Republican leaders, the marquis de La Fayette, who requested a “popular throne surrounded by Republican institutions.” The Republicans then gathered themselves in popular clubs in the tradition established by the 1789 Revolution. Some of those were fronts for secret societies, which requested political and social reforms or the execution of Charles X’s ministers. Strikes and demonstrations were permanent.

Despite the reforms made by Louis-Philippe’s regime, which targeted the bourgeoisie rather than the people, Paris was once again rocked by riots on February 14-15, 1831. Riots and protests continued throughout his reign, including the Canuts Revolt, started on November 21, 1831, during which parts of the National Guard took the demonstrators’ side.

Late in his reign, Louis-Philippe became increasingly rigid and dogmatic. For example, his President of the Council, François Guizot, had become deeply unpopular, but Louis-Philippe refused to remove him. 

Around this same time, there was another economic downturn, which especially affected the lower classes. There was an increase in workers’ demonstrations, with riots in the Buzançais in 1847. In Roubaix, a city in the industrial north, 60% of the workers were unemployed. At the same time, the regime was marred by several political scandals (Teste–Cubières corruption scandal, revealed in May 1847, and Charles de Choiseul-Praslin’s suicide after murdering his wife, daughter of Horace Sébastiani).

Since the right of association was strictly restricted and public meetings prohibited after 1835, the opposition was paralyzed. To sidestep this law, political dissidents used civil funerals of their comrades as occasions for public demonstrations. Family celebrations and banquets also served as pretexts for gatherings. This campaign of banquets (Campagne des banquets), was intended to circumvent the governmental restriction on political meetings and provide a legal outlet for popular criticism of the regime. The campaign began in July 1847. Friedrich Engels was in Paris from October 1847 and was able to observe and attend some of these banquets.

The banquet campaign lasted until all political banquets were outlawed by the French government in February 1848. As a result, the people revolted, helping to unite the efforts of the popular Republicans and the liberal Orleanists, who turned their backs on Louis-Philippe.

Anger over the outlawing of the political banquets brought crowds of Parisians flooding into the streets at noon on February 22, 1848. The crowds directed their anger against the Citizen King Louis Philippe and his chief minister for foreign and domestic policy, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot. At 2 p.m. the next day, Prime Minister Guizot resigned. Upon hearing the news of Guizot’s resignation, a large crowd gathered outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An officer ordered the crowd not to pass, but people in the front of the crowd were being pushed by the rear. The officer ordered his men to fix bayonets, probably wishing to avoid shooting. However, in what is widely regarded as an accident, a soldier discharged his musket, which resulted in the rest of the soldiers firing into the crowd. Fifty-two people were killed.

Paris was soon a barricaded city. Omnibuses were turned into barricades, and thousands of trees were felled. Fires were set, and angry citizens began converging to the royal palace. King Louis Philippe abdicated and fled to the UK.

24.2.4: The Second French Republic

Learning Objective

Break down some of the challenges faced by the Second French Republic

Key Points

• The 1848 Revolution in France ended the Orleans monarchy (1830–48) and led to the creation of the French Second Republic.
• Following the overthrow of King Louis Philippe in February, a provisional government (Constituent Assembly) was created, which was disorganized as it attempted to deal with France’s economic problems created by the political upheaval.
• Frustration among the laboring classes arose when the Constituent Assembly did not address the concerns of the workers, leading to strikes and worker demonstrations.
• Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president on December 10, 1848, by a landslide; his support came from a wide section of the French public.
• Because of the ambiguity surrounding Louis Napoleon’s political positions, his agenda as president was very much in doubt.
• The 1850 elections resulted in a conservative body, which renewed the power of the Church, especially in education.
• As 1851 opened, Louis-Napoleon was not allowed by the Constitution of 1848 to seek re-election as President of France; instead he proclaimed himself President for Life following a coup in December that was confirmed and accepted in a dubious referendum.

Key Terms

National Workshops

Areas of work provided for the unemployed by the French Second Republic after the Revolution of 1848. The political issues that resulted in the abdication of Louis Philippe caused an acute industrial crisis adding to the general agricultural and commercial distress which had prevailed throughout 1847. It greatly exacerbated the problem of unemployment in Paris. The provisional government under the influence of one of its members, Louis Blanc, passed a decree (February 25, 1848) guaranteeing government-funded jobs.

French Second Republic

The republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and the 1851 coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte that initiated the Second Empire.

French Revolution of 1848

Sometimes known as the February Revolution, one of a wave of revolutions in 1848 in Europe. In France the revolutionary events ended the Orleans monarchy (1830–48) and led to the creation of the French Second Republic.

The French Revolution of 1848 had major consequences for all of Europe; popular democratic revolts against authoritarian regimes broke out in Austria and Hungary, in the German Confederation and Prussia, and in the Italian States of Milan, Venice, Turin and Rome. Economic downturns and bad harvests during the 1840s contributed to growing discontent.

In February 1848, the French government banned the holding of the Campagne des banquets, fundraising dinners by activists where critics of the regime would meet (as public demonstrations and strikes were forbidden). As a result, protests and riots broke out in the streets of Paris. An angry mob converged on the royal palace, after which the hapless king abdicated and fled to England. The Second Republic was then proclaimed.

The revolution in France brought together classes of wildly different interests. The bourgeoisie desired electoral reforms (a democratic republic); socialist leaders (like Louis Blanc, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, and the radical Auguste Blanqui) asked for a “right to work” and the creation of national workshops (a social welfare republic) and for France to liberate the oppressed peoples of Europe (Poles and Italians). Moderates (like the aristocrat Alphonse de Lamartine) sought a middle ground. Tensions between groups escalated, and in June 1848, a working class insurrection in Paris cost the lives of 1,500 workers and eliminated once and for all the dream of a social welfare constitution.

The constitution of the Second Republic, ratified in September 1848, was extremely flawed and permitted no effective resolution between the President and the Assembly in case of dispute. In December 1848, a nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, was elected as President of the Republic, and pretexting legislative gridlock, in 1851 he staged a coup d’état. Finally, in 1852 he had himself declared Emperor Napoléon III of the Second Empire of France.

Founding of the Second Republic

The French Second Republic was the republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and the 1851 coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte that initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The Second Republic witnessed the tension between the “Social and Democratic Republic” and a liberal form of Republic, which exploded during the June Days Uprising of 1848.

On February 26, 1848, the liberal opposition came together to organize a provisional government. The poet Alphonse de Lamartine was appointed president. Lamartine served as a virtual dictator of France for the next three months. Elections for a Constituent Assembly were scheduled for April 23, 1848. The Constituent Assembly was to establish a new republican government for France. In preparation for these elections, two major goals of the provisional government were universal suffrage and unemployment relief. Universal male suffrage was enacted on March 2, 1848, giving France nine million new voters. As in all other European nations, women did not have the right to vote. However, during this time a proliferation of political clubs emerged, including women’s organizations. 

Naturally, the provisional government was disorganized as it attempted to deal with France’s economic problems. The conservative elements of French society were wasting no time in organizing against the provisional government. After roughly a month, conservatives began to openly oppose the new government, using the rallying cry “order,” which the new republic lacked.

Frustration among the laboring classes arose when the Constituent Assembly did not address the concerns of the workers. Strikes and worker demonstrations became more common as the workers gave vent to these frustrations. These demonstrations reached a climax when on May 15, 1848, workers from the secret societies broke out in armed uprising against the anti-labor and anti-democratic policies being pursued by the Constituent Assembly and the Provisional Government. Fearful of a total breakdown of law and order, the Provisional Government invited General Louis Eugene Cavaignac back from Algeria in June 1848 to put down the worker’s armed revolt. From June 1848 until December 1848 General Cavaignac became head of the executive of the Provisional Government.

Additionally, there was a major split between the citizens of Paris and citizens of the more rural areas of France. The provisional government set out to establish deeper government control of the economy and guarantee a more equal distribution of resources. To deal with the unemployment problem, the provisional government established National Workshops. The unemployed were given jobs building roads and planting trees without regard for the demand for these tasks. The population of Paris ballooned as job seekers from all over France came to Paris to work in the newly formed National Workshops. To pay for these and other social programs, the provisional government placed new taxes on land. These taxes alienated the “landed classes”—especially the small farmers and the peasantry of the rural areas of France—from the provisional government. Hardworking rural farmers were resistant to paying for the unemployed city people and their new “Right to Work” National Workshops. The taxes were widely disobeyed in the rural areas and the government remained strapped for cash. Popular uncertainty about the liberal foundations of the provisional government became apparent in the April 23, 1848 elections. Despite agitation from the left, voters elected a constituent assembly which was primarily moderate and conservative.

Election of Napoleon III and a Short-Lived Republic

The election was keenly contested; the democratic republicans adopted as their candidate Ledru-Rollin, the “pure republicans” Cavaignac, and the recently reorganized Imperialist party Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. Unknown in 1835 and forgotten or despised since 1840, Louis Napoleon had in the last eight years advanced sufficiently in the public estimation to be elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1848 by five departments. He owed this rapid increase of popularity partly to blunders of the government of July, which had unwisely aroused the memory of the country with recollections of the Empire, and partly to Louis-Napoléon’s campaign carried on from his prison at Ham by means of pamphlets of socialistic tendencies. Moreover, the monarchists, led by Thiers and the committee of the Rue de Poitiers, were no longer content even with the safe dictatorship of the upright Cavaignac, and joined forces with the Bonapartists. On December 10 the peasants gave over 5 million votes to Napoléon, who stood for order at all costs, against 1.4 million for Cavaignac.

Louis Napoleon’s support came from a wide section of the French public. Various classes of French society voted for him for very different and often contradictory reasons; he encouraged this contradiction by “being all things to all people.” One of his major promises to the peasantry and other groups was that there would be no new taxes.

The new National Constituent Assembly was heavily composed of royalist sympathizers of both the Legitimist (Bourbon) wing and the Orleanist (Citizen King Louis Philippe) wing. Because of the ambiguity surrounding Louis Napoleon’s political positions, his agenda as president was very much in doubt. For prime minister, he selected Odilon Barrot, an unobjectionable middle-road parliamentarian, who had led the “loyal opposition” under Louis Philippe. Other appointees represented various royalist factions.

In June 1849, demonstrations against the government broke out and were suppressed. Leaders were arrested, including prominent politicians. The government banned several democratic and socialist newspapers in France; the editors were arrested. Karl Marx, who was living in Paris at the time, was at risk so he moved to London in August.

The government sought ways to balance its budget and reduce its debts. Toward this end, Hippolyte Passy was appointed Finance Minister. When the Legislative Assembly met at the beginning of October 1849, Passy proposed an income tax to help balance the finances of France. The bourgeoisie, who would pay most of the tax, protested. The furor over the income tax caused the resignation of Barrot as prime minister, but a new wine tax also caused protests.

The 1850 elections resulted in a conservative body. As 1851 opened, Louis-Napoleon was not allowed by the Constitution of 1848 to seek re-election as President of France. Instead he proclaimed himself President for Life following a coup in December that was confirmed and accepted in a dubious referendum.

Prince Louis Napoleon

“Messieurs Victor Hugo and Emile de Girardin try to raise Prince Louis upon a shield [in the heroic Roman fashion]: not too steady!” Honoré Daumier’s satirical lithograph published in Charivari, December 11, 1848.

A cartoon by Honoré Daumier showing two men struggling to hold up Louis Napoleon with a caption: “Messieurs Victor Hugo and Emile de Girardin try to raise Prince Louis upon a shield [in the heroic Roman fashion]: not too steady!”

24.2.5: Napoleon III

Learning Objective

Summarize the reign of Napoleon III and his efforts to recreate his uncle’s empire

Key Points

• In 1851, Louis Napoleon was not allowed by the Constitution of 1848 to seek re-election as President of the Second Republic of France; instead, he proclaimed himself President for Life following a coup in December and in 1852 declared himself the Emperor of France, Napoleon III.
• The structure of the French government during the Second Empire was little changed from the First under Napoleon Bonaparte.
• Despite his promises in 1852 of a peaceful reign, the Emperor could not resist the temptations of glory in foreign affairs.
• Napoleon did have some successes; he strengthened French control over Algeria, established bases in Africa, began the takeover of Indochina, and opened trade with China.
• In Europe, however, Napoleon failed again and again; the Crimean war of 1854-56 produced no gains, in the 1860s Napoleon nearly blundered into war with the United States in 1862, and his takeover of Mexico in 1861-67 was a total disaster.
• In July 1870, Napoleon entered the Franco-Prussian War without allies and with inferior military forces; the French army was rapidly defeated and Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan. 
• The French Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris, and Napoleon went into exile in England, where he died in 1873.

Key Terms

Franco-Prussian War

A conflict between the Second French Empire of Napoleon III and the German states of the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. The conflict was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded. A series of swift Prussian and German victories in eastern France, culminating in the Siege of Metz and the Battle of Sedan, saw Napoleon III captured and the army of the Second Empire decisively defeated.

Napoleon III

The only President (1848–52) of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor (1852–70) of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I. He was the first President of France to be elected by a direct popular vote. He was blocked by the Constitution and Parliament from running for a second term, so he organized a coup d’état in 1851 and then took the throne as Napoleon III on December 2, 1852, the 48th anniversary of Napoleon I’s coronation. He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution.

reconstruction of Paris

A vast public works program commissioned by Emperor Napoléon III and directed by his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870. It included the demolition of crowded and unhealthy medieval neighborhoods; the building of wide avenues, parks, and squares; the annexation of the suburbs surrounding Paris; and the construction of new sewers, fountains, and aqueducts. Haussmann’s work met with fierce opposition and was finally dismissed by Napoleon III in 1870, but work on his projects continued until 1927. The street plan and distinctive appearance of the center of Paris today is largely the result of Haussmann’s renovation.

The constitution of the Second Republic, ratified in September 1848, was extremely flawed and permitted no effective resolution between the President and the Assembly in case of dispute. In 1848, a nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, was elected President of France through universal male suffrage, taking 74% of the vote. He did this with the support of the Parti de l’Ordre after running against Louis Eugène Cavaignac. Subsequently, he was in constant conflict with the members of the National Assembly.

Ascension to Power

Contrary to the Party’s expectations that Louis-Napoleon would be easy to manipulate (Adolphe Thiers had called him a “cretin whom we will lead [by the nose]”), he proved himself an agile and cunning politician. He succeeded in imposing his choices and decisions on the Assembly, which had once again become conservative in the aftermath of the June Days Uprising in 1848.

The provisions of the constitution that prohibited an incumbent president from seeking re-election appeared to force the end of Louis-Napoleon’s rule in December 1852. Not one to admit defeat, Louis-Napoleon spent the first half of 1851 trying to change the constitution through Parliament so he could be re-elected. Bonaparte traveled through the provinces and organized petitions to rally popular support but in January 1851, the Parliament voted no.

Louis-Napoleon believed that he was supported by the people, and he decided to retain power by other means. His half-brother Morny and a few close advisers began to quietly organize a coup d’état. They brought Major General Jacques Leroy de Saint Arnaud, a former captain from the French Foreign Legion and a commander of French forces in Algeria, and other officers from the French army in North Africa to provide military backing for the coup.

On the morning of December 2, troops led by Saint-Arnaud occupied strategic points in Paris from the Champs-Élysées to the Tuileries. Top opposition leaders were arrested and six edicts promulgated to establish the rule of Louis-Napoleon. The Assemblée Nationale was dissolved and universal male suffrage restored. Louis-Napoleon declared that a new constitution was being framed and said he intended to restore a “system established by the First Consul.” He thus declared himself President for Life, and in 1852, Emperor of France, Napoleon III.

France was ruled by Emperor Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870. During the first years of the Empire, Napoleon’s government imposed censorship and harsh repressive measures against his opponents. Some six thousand were imprisoned or sent to penal colonies until 1859. Thousands more went into voluntary exile abroad, including Victor Hugo. From 1862 onward, he relaxed government censorship, and his regime came to be known as the “Liberal Empire.” Many of his opponents returned to France and became members of the National Assembly.

Legacy

Napoleon III is best known today for his grand reconstruction of Paris, carried out by his prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. He launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon, and other French cities. Napoleon III modernized the French banking system, greatly expanded and consolidated the French railway system, and made the French merchant marine the second largest in the world. He promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established modern agriculture, which ended famines in France and made France an agricultural exporter. Napoleon III negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier free trade agreement with Britain and similar agreements with France’s other European trading partners. Social reforms included giving French workers the right to strike and the right to organize. Women’s education greatly expanded, as did the list of required subjects in public schools.

The Reconstruction of Paris

One of the Haussmann’s Great Boulevards painted by the artist Camille Pissarro (1893)

An impressionist painting of Boulevard Montemartre (Paris) filled with horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians

Foreign Policy

In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and around the world. He was a supporter of popular sovereignty and nationalism. Despite his promises in 1852 of a peaceful reign, the Emperor could not resist the temptations of glory in foreign affairs. He was visionary, mysterious, and secretive; had a poor staff; and kept running afoul of his domestic supporters. In the end he was incompetent as a diplomat. Napoleon did have some successes: he strengthened French control over Algeria, established bases in Africa, began the takeover of Indochina, and opened trade with China. He facilitated a French company building the Suez Canal, which Britain could not stop. In Europe, however, Napoleon failed again and again. The Crimean war of 1854–56 produced no gains, although his alliance with Britain did defeat Russia. His regime assisted Italian unification and in doing so, annexed Savoy and the County of Nice to France; at the same time, his forces defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy. On the other hand, his army’s intervention in Mexico to create a Second Mexican Empire under French protection ended in failure.

The Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck provoked Napoleon into declaring war on Prussia in July 1870, beginning the Franco-Prussian War. The French troops were swiftly defeated in the following weeks, and on September 1, the main army, which the emperor himself was with, was trapped at Sedan and forced to surrender. A republic was quickly proclaimed in Paris, but the war was far from over. As it was clear that Prussia would expect territorial concessions, the provisional government vowed to continue resistance. The Prussians laid siege to Paris, and new armies mustered by France failed to alter this situation. The French capital began experiencing severe food shortages, to the extent that even the animals in the zoo were eaten. As the city was bombarded by Prussian siege guns in January 1871, King William of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Shortly afterwards, Paris surrendered. The subsequent peace treaty was harsh. France ceded Alsace and Lorraine to Germany and had to pay an indemnity of 5 billion francs. German troops were to remain in the country until it was paid off. Meanwhile, the fallen Napoleon III went into exile in England where he died in 1873.

Painting depicting the Franco-Prussian War

French soldiers assaulted by German infantry during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870, which led to the defeat of Napoleon III and the end of the Second French Empire.

Painting of French soldiers assaulted by German infantry in a snowy forest during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870.

Structure of Second French Empire

The structure of the French government during the Second Empire was little changed from the First. But Emperor Napoleon III stressed his own imperial role as the foundation of the government. If government was to guide the people toward domestic justice and external peace, it was his role as emperor, holding his power by universal male suffrage and representing all of the people, to function as supreme leader and safeguard the achievements of the revolution. He had so often, while in prison or in exile, chastised previous oligarchical governments for neglecting social questions that it was imperative France now prioritize their solutions. His answer was to organize a system of government based on the principles of the “Napoleonic Idea.” This meant that the emperor, the elect of the people as the representative of the democracy, ruled supreme. He himself drew power and legitimacy from his role as representative of the great Napoleon I of France, “who had sprung armed from the French Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove.”

The anti-parliamentary French Constitution of 1852, instituted by Napoleon III on January 14, 1852, was largely a repetition of that of 1848. All executive power was entrusted to the emperor who as head of state was solely responsible to the people. The people of the Empire, lacking democratic rights, were to rely on the benevolence of the emperor rather than on the benevolence of politicians. He was to nominate the members of the council of state, whose duty it was to prepare the laws, and of the senate, a body permanently established as a constituent part of the empire.

One innovation was made, namely that the Legislative Body was elected by universal suffrage, but it had no right of initiative as all laws were proposed by the executive power. This new political change was rapidly followed by the same consequence as of Brumaire. On December 2, 1852, France, still under the effect of Napoleon’s legacy and the fear of anarchy, conferred almost unanimously by a plebiscite the supreme power and the title of emperor upon Napoleon III.

The Legislative Body was not allowed to elect its own president, regulate its own procedure, propose a law or an amendment, vote on the budget in detail, or make its deliberations public. Similarly, universal suffrage was supervised and controlled by means of official candidature by forbidding free speech and action in electoral matters to the Opposition and gerrymandering in such a way as to overwhelm the Liberal vote in the mass of the rural population.

For seven years France had no democratic life. The Empire governed by a series of plebiscites. Up to 1857 the Opposition did not exist. From then till 1860 it was reduced to five members: Darimon, Émile Ollivier, Hénon, Jules Favre, and Ernest Picard. The royalists waited inactively after the new and unsuccessful attempt made at Frohsdorf in 1853 by a combination of the legitimists and Orléanists to recreate a living monarchy out of the ruin of two royal families.

24.3: Russia after Napoleon

24.3.1: Alexander I’s Domestic Reforms

Tsar Alexander I wanted to reform the serf system but was stymied. With his news law, only 7,300 male peasants with families were freed (about 0.5%), but all classes except the serfs could own land, a privilege previously confined to the nobility.

Learning Objective

Determine the significance of Alexander I’s efforts to reform the serf system in Russia

Key Points

• Alexander I, who ruled as Tsar of Russia from 1801-1825, was raised on the ideals of the Enlightenment by his grandmother, Catherine II, leading him to adopt liberal rhetoric and a spirit of reform.
• In the first years of his reign, he initiated some minor social reforms and in 1803–04 major liberal education reforms, such as building more universities.
• One of his main goals was to reform the inefficient, highly centralized systems of government that Russia relied upon.
• He promised to reform serfdom in Russia but made no concrete proposals; his new laws only freed 0.5% of the serf population.
• However, he did extend land ownership to all classes except serfs, a privilege previously confined to the nobility.
• After 1815, military settlements (farms worked by soldiers and their families under military control) were introduced, with the idea of making the army or part of it self-supporting economically and for providing it with recruits.

Key Terms

serf

The status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism. It was a condition of bondage, which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century. Those who occupied a plot of land were required to work for the lord of the manor who owned that land, and in return were entitled to protection, justice, and the right to exploit certain fields within the manor for their own subsistence. They were often required not only to work on the lord’s fields, but also his mines, forests, and roads.

Age of Enlightenment

An intellectual movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. It centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy and advanced ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state. It was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy.

state-owned peasants

A special class in 18th-19th century Russia that during some periods comprised half of the agricultural population. In contrast to private Russian serfs, these were considered personally free although attached to the land.

Alexander I reigned as Emperor of Russia from March 23, 1801, to December 1, 1825. He was born in Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Emperor Paul I, and succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered. He ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars. As prince and emperor, Alexander often used liberal rhetoric, but continued Russia’s absolutist policies in practice. In the first years of his reign, he initiated some minor social reforms and in 1803–04 major, liberal educational reforms, such as building more universities. He promised constitutional reforms and a desperately needed reform of serfdom in Russia but made no concrete proposals. Alexander appointed Mikhail Speransky, the son of a village priest, as one of his closest advisers. The Collegia was abolished and replaced by the The State Council, created to improve legislation. Plans were also made to set up a parliament and sign a constitution.

In the second half of his reign he was increasingly arbitrary, reactionary, and fearful of plots against him; he ended many earlier reforms. He purged schools of foreign teachers as education became more religiously oriented and politically conservative. Speransky was replaced as adviser with the strict artillery inspector Aleksey Arakcheyev, who oversaw the creation of military settlements. Alexander died of typhus in December 1825 while on a trip to southern Russia. He left no children as heirs and both of his brothers wanted the other to become emperor. After a period of great confusion that included the failed Decembrist revolt of liberal army officers, he was succeeded by his younger brother, Nicholas I.

Early Reign

At first, the Orthodox Church exercised little influence on Alexander’s reign. The young tsar was determined to reform the inefficient, highly centralized systems of government upon which Russian relied. While he retained the old ministers for a time, one of the first acts of his reign was to appoint the Private Committee, comprising young and enthusiastic friends of his own—Victor Kochubey, Nikolay Novosiltsev, Pavel Stroganov, and Adam Jerzy Czartoryski—to draw up a plan of domestic reform, which was supposed to result in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in accordance with the teachings of the Age of Enlightenment.

In a few years the liberal Mikhail Speransky became one of the Tsar’s closest advisors, and drew up many plans for elaborate reforms. By the Government reform of Alexander I the old Collegia were abolished and new Ministries created in their place, headed by ministers responsible to the Crown. A Council of Ministers under the chairmanship of the Sovereign dealt with all interdepartmental matters. The State Council was created in order to improve technique of legislation. It was intended to become the Second Chamber of representative legislature. The Governing Senate was reorganized as the Supreme Court of the Empire. The codification of the laws initiated in 1801 was never carried out during his reign.

Domestic Improvements

When Alexander’s reign began, there were three universities in Russia, at Moscow, Vilna (Vilnius), and Dorpat (Tartu). These were strengthened, and three others were founded at St. Petersburg, Kharkov, and Kazan. Literary and scientific bodies were established or encouraged, and the reign became noted for the aid lent to the sciences and arts by the Emperor and the wealthy nobility. Alexander later expelled foreign scholars.

After 1815, military settlements (farms worked by soldiers and their families under military control) were introduced, with the idea of making the army, or part of it, self-supporting economically and providing it with recruits.

The Status of Serfs

Alexander wanted to resolve another crucial issue in Russia—the status of the serfs, although this was not achieved until 1861 during the reign of his nephew Alexander II. His advisers quietly discussed the options at length. Cautiously, he extended the right to own land to most classes of subjects, including state-owned peasants, in 1801 and created a new social category of “free agriculturalist” for peasants voluntarily emancipated by their masters in 1803. The new laws allowed all classes except the serfs to own land, a privilege previously confined to the nobility. As the title of the 1803 decree, informally known as “Decree on Free Ploughmen” says, the serfs were freed and endowed with land by the will on the serf owner under payment or work obligations. During the reign of Alexander I only about 7,300 male peasants (with families) or about 0.5% of serfs were freed.

The Russian state also continued to support serfdom due to military conscription. The conscripted serfs dramatically increased the size of the Russian military, leading to victory in the Napoleonic Wars and Russo-Persian Wars; this did not change the disparity between Russia and the rest of Western Europe, who were experiencing agricultural and industrial revolutions. Compared to Western Europe it was clear that Russia was at an economic disadvantage. European philosophers during the Age of Enlightenment criticized serfdom and compared it to medieval labor practices which were almost non-existent in the rest of continent. Most Russian Nobles were not interested in change toward western labor practices that Catherine the Great proposed. Instead they preferred to mortgage serfs for profit. In 1820, 20% of all serfs were mortgaged to state credit institutions by their owners. This was increased to 66% in 1859.

A Peasant Leaving His Landlord on Yuriev Day

A painting by Sergei V. Ivanov from 1908, depicting a family of serfs leaving their landlord on Yuriev Day, a two-week period that was the only time of the year when the Russian peasants were free to move from one landowner to another before the abolition of serfdom in 1861.

A painting depicting a family of serfs leaving their landlord. It shows several peasants with their belongings packed onto a cart tied to a horse, standing by a small house. A large farm field is shown in the background.

24.3.2: Territorial Gains Under Alexander I

Tsar Alexander I, one of the most brilliant diplomats of his time, focused his foreign affairs on the Napoleonic Wars and the expansion of Russian territory.

Learning Objective

List some of the territorial gains made by Tsar Alexander I

Key Points

• Tsar Alexander I, who ruled the Russian Empire from 1801-1825, had a complicated relationship with Napoleon during the lengthy Napoleonic Wars.
• He changed Russia’s position relative to France four times between 1804 and 1812 among neutrality, opposition, and alliance. 
• In 1805 he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after the massive defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz he switched and formed an alliance with Napoleon by the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and joined Napoleon’s Continental System.
• The tsar’s greatest triumph came in 1812 as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia proved a total disaster for the French. 
• As part of the winning coalition against Napoleon, Russia gained Finland and Poland at the Congress of Vienna. 
• He formed the Holy Alliance to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe that he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs.
• Under Alexander, Russia also fought a successful war with Persia, gaining disputed territory in the Caucasus region, which provides vital access to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea.

Key Terms

Napoleonic Wars

A series of major conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European powers formed into various coalitions, primarily led and financed by the United Kingdom. The wars resulted from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and the Revolutionary Wars, which had raged for years before concluding with the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. The resumption of hostilities the following year paved the way for more than a decade of constant warfare. The wars had profound consequences for global and European history, leading to the spread of nationalism and liberalism, the rise of the British Empire as the world’s premier power, the independence movements in Latin America and subsequent collapse of the Spanish Empire, the fundamental reorganization of German and Italian territories into larger states, and the establishment of radically new methods in warfare.

Russo-Persian War (1804–13)

One of the many wars between the Persian Empire and Imperial Russia that like many of their wars began as a territorial dispute. The new Persian king, Fath Ali Shah Qajar, wanted to consolidate the northernmost reaches of his kingdom—modern day Georgia—which had been annexed by Tsar Paul I several years after the Russo-Persian War of 1796. Like his Persian counterpart, the Tsar Alexander I was also new to the throne and equally determined to control the disputed territories. The war ended in 1813 with the Treaty of Gulistan, which irrevocably ceded the previously disputed territory of Georgia to Imperial Russia, but added the Iranian territories of Dagestan, most of what is nowadays Azerbaijan, and minor parts of Armenia.

Caucasus region

A strategically valuable region at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian seas. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, which contain Europe’s highest mountain, Mount Elbrus (18,510 feet).

Alexander I’s Foreign Affairs: Persia and France

Tsar Alexander I was perhaps the most brilliant diplomat of his time. His primary focus was not on domestic policy but foreign affairs, particularly Napoleon. Fearing Napoleon’s expansionist ambitions and the growth of French power, Alexander joined Britain and Austria against Napoleon. Napoleon defeated the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz in 1805 and the Russians at Friedland in 1807. The Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 was one of the most important and decisive engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. In what is widely regarded as the greatest victory achieved by Napoleon, the Grande Armée of France defeated a larger Russian and Austrian army. Austerlitz brought the War of the Third Coalition to a rapid end, with the Treaty of Pressburg signed by the Austrians later in the month. The battle is often cited as a tactical masterpiece, in the same league as other historic engagements like Cannae or Arbela.

After these defeats, Alexander was forced to sue for peace with France, and with the Treaty of Tilsit, signed in 1807, he became Napoleon’s ally. Russia lost little territory under the treaty, and Alexander made use of his alliance with Napoleon for further expansion. By the Finnish War he wrested the Grand Duchy of Finland from Sweden in 1809, and acquired Bessarabia from Turkey as a result of the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812.

Alexander was determined to acquire disputed territories in the Caucasus region and beyond, mainly held by Persia. His predecessors had already waged small wars against Persia, but they had not been able to consolidate Russian authority over the regions, so these were either ceded or conquered back by Persia.

After the Russian armies officially liberated allied Georgia from centuries-long Persian occupation in 1801, , Alexander fought the Russo-Persian War (1804–13), the first full-scale war against the neighboring Persia, over the control and consolidation of Georgia and eventually Azerbaijan, Dagestan, and the entire Caucasus.

After nine long years of battle, Russia managed to end the war on highly favorable terms, completing Russian consolidation and suzerainty over major parts of the Caucasus including the gains of Dagestan, Georgia, most of Azerbaijan, and other regions and territories in the Caucasus over Persia. By now, Russia had full, comfortable access to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea and would use these newly gained grounds for further wars against Persia and Turkey.

The Russo-French alliance gradually became strained. Napoleon was concerned about Russia’s intentions in the strategically vital Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. At the same time, Alexander viewed the Duchy of Warsaw, the French-controlled reconstituted Polish state, with suspicion. The requirement of joining France’s Continental Blockade against Britain was a serious disruption of Russian commerce, and in 1810 Alexander repudiated the obligation. In June 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with 600,000 troops—a force twice as large as the Russian regular army. Napoleon hoped to inflict a major defeat on the Russians and force Alexander to sue for peace. As Napoleon pushed the Russian forces back, however, he became seriously overextended. Obstinate Russian forces, members of which declared the Patriotic War, brought Napoleon a disastrous defeat: Less than 30,000 of his troops returned to their homeland. Victory came at a high cost as the areas of the country the French army had marched through lay in ruins. The campaign was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars. The reputation of Napoleon was severely shaken and French hegemony in Europe was dramatically weakened. The Grande Armée, made up of French and allied invasion forces, was reduced to a fraction of its initial strength. These events triggered a major shift in European politics. France’s ally Prussia, soon followed by Austria, broke its imposed alliance with France and switched sides. This triggered the War of the Sixth Coalition.

Russo-Persian War

The Battle of Ganja (1804) during the Russo-Persian War (1804–1813). From this war, the Russian Empire gained major parts of the Caucasus including Dagestan, Georgia, most of Azerbaijan, and other regions and territories in the Caucasus from Persia.

Image of the Russian soldiers storming a castle wall during the battle of Ganja.

Congress of Vienna and Beyond

As the French retreated, the Russians pursued them into Central and Western Europe and to the gates of Paris. After the allies defeated Napoleon, Alexander became known as the savior of Europe and played a prominent role in the redrawing of the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. In the same year, Alexander initiated the creation of the Holy Alliance, a loose agreement pledging the rulers of the nations involved—including most of Europe—to act according to Christian principles. More pragmatically, in 1814 Russia, Britain, Austria, and Prussia formed the Quadruple Alliance. When Napoleon suddenly reappeared, Russia was part of the alliance that chased him down. The conservative Bourbons were back in power in Paris and on good terms with Russia. The allies created an international system to maintain the territorial status quo and prevent the resurgence of an expansionist France. The Quadruple Alliance, confirmed by a number of international conferences, ensured Russia’s influence in Europe.

At the same time, Russia continued its expansion. The Congress of Vienna, held in Vienna from November 1814 to June 1815, aimed to provide a long-term peace plan for Europe by settling critical issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The tsar had two main goals: to gain control of Poland and promote the peaceful coexistence of European nations. The Congress created the Congress Poland (formerly the Duchy of Warsaw), to which Alexander granted a constitution. Though officially the Kingdom of Poland was a state with considerable political autonomy guaranteed by a liberal constitution, its rulers, the Russian Emperors, generally disregarded any restrictions on their power. Effectively it was little more than a puppet state of the Russian Empire. Thus, Alexander I became the constitutional monarch of Poland while remaining the autocratic tsar of Russia. He was also the monarch of Finland, which had been annexed in 1809 and awarded autonomous status. The Congress finalized Russia control of Finland.

Despite the liberal, romantic inclinations of his youth, later in his rule Alexander I grew steadily more conservative, isolated from the day-to-day affairs of the state, and inclined to religious mysticism. Once a supporter of limited liberalism, as seen in his approval of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland in 1815, at the end of 1818 Alexander’s views began to change. A revolutionary conspiracy among the officers of the guard and a foolish plot to kidnap him on his way to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle are said to have shaken the foundations of his liberalism. At Aix he came for the first time into intimate contact with Metternich, initiating the ascendancy of conservatism over the mind of the Russian emperor and in the councils of Europe. It was the apparent triumph of disorder in the revolutions of Naples and Piedmont, combined with increasingly disquieting symptoms of discontent in France, Germany, and among his own people, that completed Alexander’s conversion.

Alexander had upheld the ideal of a free confederation of the European states, symbolized by the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, symbolized by the Quadruple Treaty; he had protested against the claims of collective Europe to interfere in the internal concerns of the sovereign states. But on November 19, 1820, he signed the Troppau Protocol, which consecrated the principle of intervention against revolution and wrecked the harmony of the concert created at the Congress of Vienna.

The lofty hopes that the tsar had once held for his country were frustrated by its immense size and backwardness. While vacationing on the Black Sea in 1825, Alexander fell ill with typhus and died at only 47, although there were unfounded stories that he faked his own death, became a monk, and wandered the Siberian wilderness for many years afterwards.

24.3.3: The Decembrist Revolt

On December 26, 1825, Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne after the death of Tsar Alexander I.

Learning Objective

Identify the impetuses for the Decembrist Revolt

Key Points

• A revolutionary movement was born during the reign of Alexander I.
• The background of the Decembrist Revolt lay in the Napoleonic Wars, when a number of well-educated Russian officers in Western Europe during the course of military campaigns were exposed to its liberalism and encouraged to seek change on their return to autocratic Russia. 
• Army officers created the Union of Salvation, aimed at the abolishment of serfdom and introduction of constitutional monarchy by means of armed revolt at the next emperor’s succession to the throne.
• The revolt occurred on December 1825, when about 3,000 officers and soldiers refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar, Alexander’s brother Nicholas, proclaiming instead their loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution and a constitutional monarchy.
• The revolt was easily crushed, and the surviving rebels exiled to Siberia, leading Nicholas to turn away from the modernization program begun by Peter the Great.

Key Terms

Peter the Great

He ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from May 7, 1682, until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his elder half-brother, Ivan V. Through a number of successful wars, he expanded the Tsardom into a much larger empire that became a major European power. He led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, westernized, and based on The Enlightenment. His reforms made a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of Russian government trace their origins to his reign.

Union of Salvation

The first secret political society of the Decembrists. Founded in 1816 at the initiative of Alexander Nikolayevich Muravyov by a group of young officers of the Russian army who had taken part in the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns of 1813–1814. They aimed at the abolishment of serfdom and introduction of constitutional monarchy by means of armed revolt at the time of next emperor’s succession to the throne.

The Decembrist revolt took place in Imperial Russia on December 26, 1825. Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession.

The Decembrist revolt was an aristocratic movement whose chief actors were army officers and members of the nobility. The reasons for Decembrist Uprising were manifold: opposition on part of the nobility to the regime that successfully limited its privileges through its peasant policy spread among a section of young officers with liberal and even radical ideas, along with fears among the nationalist section of society inspired by some of Alexander’s policies. Officers were particularly angry that Alexander granted Poland a constitution while Russia remained without one. 

Several clandestine organizations were preparing for an uprising after Alexander’s death. There was confusion about who would succeed him because the next in line, his brother Constantine Pavlovich, relinquished his right to the throne. A group of officers commanding about 3,000 men refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar, Alexander’s brother Nicholas, proclaiming instead their loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution. Because these events occurred in December 1825, the rebels were called Decembrists. Nicholas easily overcame the revolt, and the surviving rebels were exiled to Siberia.

Background: Union of Salvation

In 1816, several officers of the Imperial Russian Guard founded a society known as the Union of Salvation, or of the Faithful and True Sons of the Fatherland. The society acquired a more liberal cast after it was joined by the idealistic Pavel Pestel. After a mutiny in the Semenovsky Regiment in 1820, the society decided to suspend activity in 1821. Two groups, however, continued to function secretly: a Southern Society, based at Tulchin, a small garrison town in Ukraine, in which Pestel was the outstanding figure, and a Northern Society, based at St Petersburg, led by Guard officers Nikita Muraviev, Prince S. P. Trubetskoy and Prince Eugene Obolensky. The political aims of the more moderate Northern Society were a British-style constitutional monarchy with a limited franchise, the abolition of serfdom, and equality before the law. The Southern Society, under Pestel’s influence, was more radical and wanted to abolish the monarchy, establish a republic, and redistribute land, taking half into state ownership and dividing the rest among the peasants.

At first, many officers were encouraged by Tsar Alexander’s early liberal reformation of Russian society and politics. In 1819 Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky was appointed as the Governor of Siberia, with the task of reforming local government. Equally, in 1818 the Tsar asked Count Nikolay Nikolayevich Novosiltsev to draw up a constitution. However, internal and external unrest, which the Tsar believed stemmed from political liberalization, led to a series of repressions and a return to a former government of restriction and conservatism.

Meanwhile, spurred by their experiences of the Napoleonic Wars and realizing many of the harsh indignities through which the peasant soldiers were forced, Decembrist officers and sympathizers displayed their contempt for the regime by rejecting court lifestyle, wearing their cavalry swords at balls (indicating their unwillingness to dance), and committing themselves to academic study. This new lifestyle captured the spirit of the times, as a willingness to embrace both the peasant (i.e. the “Russian way of life”) and ongoing reformative movements abroad.

The Events of the Revolt

When Tsar Alexander I died on December 1, 1825, the royal guards swore allegiance to the presumed heir, Alexander’s brother Constantine. When Constantine made his renunciation public and Nicholas stepped forward to assume the throne, the Northern Society acted. With the capital in temporary confusion and one oath to Constantine having already been sworn, the society scrambled in secret meetings to convince regimental leaders not to swear allegiance to Nicholas. These efforts would culminate in the Decembrist Revolt. The leaders of the society (many of whom belonged to the high aristocracy) elected Prince Sergei Trubetskoy as interim dictator.

On the morning of December 26, a group of officers commanding about 3,000 men assembled in Senate Square, where they refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar, Nicholas I, proclaiming instead their loyalty to Constantine and their Decembrist Constitution. They expected to be joined by the rest of the troops stationed in Saint Petersburg, but were disappointed. The revolt was further hampered when it was deserted by its supposed leader Prince Trubetskoy, who had a last minute change of heart and failed to turn up at the Square. His second in command, Colonel Bulatov, also vanished from the scene. After a hurried consultation the rebels appointed Prince Eugene Obolensky as a replacement leader.

For long hours there was a stand-off between the 3,000 rebels and the 9,000 loyal troops stationed outside the Senate building, with some desultory shooting from the rebel side. A vast crowd of civilian on-lookers began fraternizing with the rebels, but did not join the action. Eventually Nicholas, the new Tsar, appeared in person at the square and sent Count Mikhail Miloradovich, a military hero who was greatly respected by ordinary soldiers, to parley with the rebels. Miloradovich was fatally shot by Pyotr Kakhovsky while delivering a public address to defuse the situation. At the same time, a rebelling grenadier squad, led by lieutenant Nikolay Panov, entered the Winter Palace but failed to seize it and retreated.

After spending most of the day in fruitless attempts to parley with the rebel force, Nicholas ordered a cavalry charge which slipped on the icy cobbles and retired in disorder. Eventually, at the end of the day, Nicholas ordered three artillery pieces to open fire, with devastating effect. To avoid the slaughter the rebels broke and ran. Some attempted to regroup on the frozen surface of the river Neva to the north but were targeted there by the artillery and suffered many casualties. As the ice was broken by the cannon fire, many of the dead and dying were cast into the river. After a nighttime mopping-up operation by loyal army and police units, the revolt in the north came to an end. The surviving rebels were tried and sentenced to exile in Siberia.

For the most part, the rebellion led Nicholas to turn away from the modernization program begun by Peter the Great and champion the doctrine of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.

Though defeated, the Decembrists did effect some change on the regime. Their dissatisfaction forced Nicholas to turn his attention inward to address the issues of the empire. To some extent, the Decembrists were in the tradition of a long line of palace revolutionaries who wanted to place their candidate on the throne, but because the Decembrists also wanted to implement classical liberalism, their revolt has been considered the beginning of a revolutionary movement. The uprising was the first open breach between the government and reformist elements of the Russian nobility, which would subsequently widen.

Decembrist Revolt

Decembrists at the Senate Square. On December 26, 1825, Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession.

Image of the Decembrist revolt in Peters Square. The image shows loyalist cavalry firing upon the rebels in the center of the square, with onlookers surrounding the fighting.

24.3.4: The Wars of Nicholas I

In war, Tsar Nicholas I was successful against Russia’s neighboring southern rivals, Persia and the Ottoman Empire, seizing the last territories in the Caucasus held by Persia. Later in his rule, however, he led Russia into the Crimean War (1853–56) with disastrous results.

Learning Objective

Recall some of the wars fought by Nicholas I

Key Points

• Nicholas I became Tsar of Russia in 1925 after crushing the Decembrist revolt against him and went on to become the most reactionary of all Russian leaders.
• His reign had an ideology called “Official Nationality,” proclaimed officially in 1833, that was a reactionary policy based on orthodoxy in religion, autocracy in government, and Russian nationalism.
• His aggressive foreign policy involved many expensive wars that had a disastrous effect on the empire’s finances.
• The late 1820s were successful military years. Despite losing almost all recently consolidated territories in the first year of the Russo-Persian War of 1826-28, Russia managed to end the war with highly favorable terms. This included the official gains of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iğdır Province, earning the clear geopolitical and territorial upper hand in the Caucasus region.
• In the 1828-29 Russo-Turkish War, Russia invaded northeastern Anatolia and occupied strategic Ottoman holdings, posing as protector and savior of the Greek Orthodox population and thus receiving extensive support from the region’s Greek population.
• In 1854-55, Russia lost to Britain, France, and Turkey in the Crimean War. 
• Since playing a major role in the defeat of Napoleon, Russia was regarded as militarily invincible, but once opposed against a coalition of the great powers of Europe, the defeats it suffered in the Crimean War revealed the weakness and backwardness of Tsar Nicholas’ regime.

Key Terms

Eastern Question

Refers to the strategic competition and political considerations of the European Great Powers in light of the political and economic instability in the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. Characterized as the “sick man of Europe,” the relative weakening of the empire’s military strength in the second half of the 18th century threatened to undermine the fragile balance of power system largely shaped by the Concert of Europe.

Crimean War

A military conflict fought from October 1853 to March 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, part of the Ottoman Empire. The French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics while Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the unwillingness of Britain and France to allow Russia to gain territory and power at Ottoman expense.

“Official Nationality”

The dominant ideological doctrine of Russian emperor Nicholas I. It was “the Russian version of a general European ideology of restoration and reaction” that followed the Napoleonic Wars. It was a reactionary policy based on orthodoxy in religion, autocracy in government, and Russian nationalism.

Tsar Nicholas I

Nicholas I was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855 as well as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland. He is best-known as a political conservative whose reign was marked by geographical expansion, repression of dissent, economic stagnation, poor administrative policies, a corrupt bureaucracy, and frequent wars that culminated in Russia’s disastrous defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-56. His biographer Nicholas V. Riasanovsky says that Nicholas displayed determination, singleness of purpose, and an iron will, along with a powerful sense of duty and a dedication to hard work. He saw himself as a soldier – a junior officer totally consumed by spit and polish. Trained as an engineer, he was a stickler for minute detail. In his public persona, says Riasanovsky, “Nicholas I came to represent autocracy personified: infinitely majestic, determined and powerful, hard as stone, and relentless as fate.” 

His reign had an ideology called “Official Nationality” that was proclaimed officially in 1833. It was a reactionary policy based on orthodoxy in religion, autocracy in government, and Russian nationalism. He was the younger brother of his predecessor, Alexander I. Nicholas inherited his brother’s throne despite the failed Decembrist revolt against him and went on to become the most reactionary of all Russian leaders. His aggressive foreign policy involved many expensive wars, with a disastrous effect on the empire’s finances.

He was successful against Russia’s neighboring southern rivals as he seized the last territories in the Caucasus held by Persia (comprising modern day Armenia and Azerbaijan) by successfully ending the Russo-Persian War (1826-28). Russia had gained what is now Dagestan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia from Persia, and therefore had the clear geopolitical and territorial upper hand in the Caucasus. He ended the Russo-Turkish War (1828–29) successfully as well. Later, however, he led Russia into the Crimean War (1853–56) with disastrous results. Historians emphasize that his micromanagement of the armies hindered his generals, as did his misguided strategy. Fuller notes that historians have frequently concluded that “the reign of Nicholas I was a catastrophic failure in both domestic and foreign policy.” On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its geographical zenith, spanning over 7.7 million square miles but in desperate need of reform.

Military and Foreign Policy

For much of Nicholas’s reign, Russia was seen as a major military power with considerable strength. At last the Crimean war at the end of his reign demonstrated to the world what no one had previously realized: Russia was militarily weak, technologically backward, and administratively incompetent. Despite his grand ambitions toward the south and Turkey, Russia had not built its railroad network in that direction, and communications were bad. The bureaucracy was riddled with graft, corruption, and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. The Navy was weak and technologically backward; the Army, although very large, was good only for parades, suffering from colonels who pocketed their men’s pay, poor morale, and disconnection with the latest technology developed by Britain and France. By war’s end, the Russian leadership was determined to reform the Army and the society.

In foreign policy, Nicholas I acted as the protector of ruling legitimism and guardian against revolution. In 1830, after a popular uprising occurred in France, the Poles in Russian Poland revolted. They resented limitation of the privileges of the Polish minority in the lands annexed by Russia in the 18th century, and sought to reestablish the 1772 borders of Poland. Nicholas crushed the rebellion, abrogated the Polish constitution, and reduced Congress Poland to the status of a Russian province, Privislinsky Krai.

In 1848, when a series of revolutions convulsed Europe, Nicholas was in the forefront of reaction. In 1849, he helped the Habsburgs suppress the uprising in Hungary and urged Prussia not to adopt a liberal constitution.

While Nicholas was attempting to maintain the status quo in Europe, he followed a somewhat more aggressive policy toward the neighboring empires to the south, namely the Ottoman Empire and Persia. Nicholas was widely believed to be following the traditional Russian policy of resolving the so-called Eastern Question by seeking to partition the Ottoman Empire and establish a protectorate over the Orthodox population of the Balkans, still largely under Ottoman control in the 1820s. In fact, in line with his commitment to upholding the status quo in Europe, he feared any attempt to devour the decaying Ottoman Empire would both upset its ally Austria, which also had interests in the Balkans, and bring about an Anglo-French coalition in defense of the Ottomans. 

Further, during the war of 1828-29, the Russians had defeated the Ottomans in every battle fought in the field and advanced deep into the Balkans, but the discovered that they lacked the necessary logistical strength to take Constantinople. Nicholas’s policy towards the Ottoman Empire was to use the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, which gave Russia a vague right to be the protector of the Orthodox peoples in the Balkans, to place the Ottoman Empire into the Russian sphere of influence. This was seen as a more achievable goal than conquering the entire Ottoman Empire. Nicholas actually wanted to preserve the Ottoman Empire as a stable but weak state that would be unable to stand up to Russia, as he viewed the country first and foremost as a European power and regarded Europe as more important than the Middle East.

In 1826-1828, Nicholas fought the Russo-Persian War (1826–28), which ended with Persia being forced to cede its last remaining territories in the Caucasus, comprising modern-day Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iğdır. By now, Russia had conquered all Caucasian territories of Iran in both the North and South Caucasus, comprising modern-day Georgia, Dagestan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, through the course of the 19th century.

Fearing the results of an Ottoman defeat by Russia, in 1854 Britain, France, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire joined forces in the conflict known as the Crimean War to the Ottomans and Western Europeans and in Russia as the “Eastern War.” In April 1854, Austria signed a defensive pact with Prussia. Thus, Russia found itself in a war with the whole of Europe .

Austria offered the Ottomans diplomatic support and Prussia remained neutral, thus leaving Russia without any allies on the continent. The European allies landed in Crimea and laid siege to the well-fortified Russian base at Sebastopol. The Russians lost battles at Alma in September 1854 followed by lost battles at Balaklava and Inkerman. After the prolonged Siege of Sevastopol (1854–55) the base fell, exposing Russia’s inability to defend a major fortification on its own soil. On the death of Nicholas I, Alexander II became Tsar. On January 15, 1856, the new tsar took Russia out of the war on very unfavorable terms which included the loss of a naval fleet on the Black Sea. Since playing a major role in the defeat of Napoleon, Russia was regarded as militarily invincible, but once opposed against a coalition of the great powers of Europe, the reverses it suffered on land and sea exposed the decay and weakness of Tsar Nicholas’ regime. Russia now faced the choice of initiating major reforms or losing its status as a major European power.

Siege of Sevastopol

After the prolonged Siege of Sevastopol (1854–55) the base fell, exposing Russia’s inability to defend a major fortification on its own soil and leading to defeat in Crimean War.

Detail of Franz Roubaud’s panoramic painting The Siege of Sevastopol (1904). It depicts a chaotic battlefield, focusing on the Russian solders defending their position.

24.3.5: The Westerners and the Slavophiles

During the second half of the 19th century, a group of “Slavophiles” emerged in intellectual circles. They opposed the modernization and westernization begun by Peter the Great and Catherine the Great and advocated for a return to a simple peasant-based society centered on the Orthodox faith.

Learning Objective

Compare and contrast the opinions and goals of the Westerners and the Slavophiles

Key Points

• Peter the Great, the Tsar of Russia from 1672-1725, started a trend in Russia of modernization and westernization of Russian culture and economics.
• Peter implemented absolute social modernization by introducing French and western dress to his court and requiring courtiers, state officials, and the military to shave their beards and adopt modern clothing styles.
• Catherine the Great, who ruled from 1762 until her death in 1796, continued Peter’s project and helped herald the Russian Enlightenment, transforming education and culture to mirror the European Enlightenment.
• This trend of westernization and modernization continued into the 19th century, but was eventually opposed by the “Slavophiles,” a group of intellectuals opposing the influences of Western Europe in Russia.
• The Slavophiles aimed at returning Russia to a simple peasant-based society centered on the Orthodox faith.

Key Terms

Pochvennichestvo

A late 19th-century Russian movement tied closely with its contemporary ideology, the Slavophile movement, whose primary focus was to change Russian society by the humbling of the self and social reform through the Russian Orthodox Church rather than the radical implementations of the intelligentsia.

enlightened despot

A form of absolute monarchy or despotism inspired by the Enlightenment, that embraced rationality, fostered education, and allowed religious tolerance, freedom of speech, and the right to hold private property.

Slavophiles

An intellectual movement originating in the 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history, opposing the influences of Western Europe in Russia.

During the second half of the 19th century, a faction of so-called “Slavophiles” emerged in intellectual circles. They were convinced that Peter the Great made a mistake in trying to modernize and Westernize the country and that Russia’s salvation lay in the rejection of Western ideas. Slavophiles believed that while the West polluted itself with science, atheism, materialism, and wealth, they should return to a simple peasant-based society centered on the Orthodox faith. The government rejected these ideas in favor of rapid modernization.

The Westernization of Russia 

Peter the Great, the Tsar of Russia from 1672-1725, started a cultural revolution in Russia that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with those that were modern, scientific, westernized, and based on the Enlightenment. Peter’s reforms made a lasting impact on Russia and many institutions of Russian government trace their origins to his reign.

Peter implemented sweeping reforms aimed at modernization. Heavily influenced by his advisers from Western Europe, Peter reorganized the Russian army along modern lines and dreamed of making the country a maritime power. He faced much opposition to these policies at home, but brutally suppressed any and all rebellions against his authority: Streltsy, Bashkirs, Astrakhan, and the greatest civil uprising of his reign, the Bulavin Rebellion.

Peter implemented absolute social modernization by introducing French and western dress to his court and requiring courtiers, state officials, and the military to shave their beards and adopt modern clothing styles. One means of achieving this end was the introduction of taxes for long beards and robes in September 1698. Peter also taxed many Russian cultural customs such as traditional bathing, fishing, and beekeeping.

Catherine the Great, the most renowned and the longest-ruling female leader of Russia from 1762 until her death in 1796, revitalized Russia under her reign, allowing it to grow larger and stronger than ever and become recognized as one of the great powers of Europe. An admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine continued to modernize Russia along Western European lines. She enthusiastically supported the ideals of The Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot. Catherine held western European philosophies and culture, especially from the French Enlightenment, close to her heart, and she wanted to surround herself with like-minded people within Russia. She believed a “new kind of person” could be created by inculcating Russian children with European education. This meant developing individuals both intellectually and morally, providing them knowledge and skills, and fostering a sense of civic responsibility.

“Westernization” carries different meanings in different countries at different times. In reference to 18th century Russia, it meant legislative changes to economics, politics, and culture. It also entailed the Russian gentry’s adherence to a set standard and its imitation of the Western values. Westernization in Russia included the modernization of machinery, the refinement of a more efficient bureaucracy, and the acceptance of Western European tastes.

Peter and Catherine’s reforms set the tone for Russian domestic policies for centuries to come. His legacy could be seen into the 19th century and beyond. Westernizers were a group of 19th century intellectuals who believed that Russia’s development depended upon the adoption of Western European technology and liberal government. In their view, western ideas such as industrialization needed to be implemented throughout Russia to make it a more successful country.

Catherine the Great

Marble statue of Catherine II in the guise of Minerva (1789–1790), by Fedot Shubin. The style exemplifies Catherine’s love for Western philosophy and culture, Minerva being the Roman goddess of wisdom.

Marble statue of Catherine II in the guise of Minerva (1789–1790), by Fedot Shubin.

Slavophilia

Slavophilia was an intellectual movement originating in the 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history. Slavophiles opposed the influences of Western Europe in Russia. There were similar movements in Poland, Hungary, and Greece. Depending on the historical context, its opposite could be termed Slavophobia, a fear of Slavic culture, or even what some Russian intellectuals called Westernism, begun by Peter the Great’s efforts in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Slavophonism developed into many branches of the same movement. Some were leftist and noted that progressive ideas such as democracy were intrinsic to the Russian experience, as proved by what they considered to be the rough democracy of medieval Novgorod. Some were rightist and pointed to the centuries-old tradition of the autocratic tsar as the essence of the Russian nature.

The Slavophiles were determined to protect what they believed were unique Russian traditions and culture. In doing so, they rejected individualism. The role of the Orthodox Church was seen as more significant than the role of the state. Socialism was opposed by Slavophiles as an alien thought, and Russian mysticism was preferred over “Western rationalism.” Rural life was praised by the movement, which opposed industrialization and urban development, and protection of the “mir” (peasant village communities) was an important measure to prevent the growth of the working class.

The movement originated in Moscow in the 1830s. Drawing on the works of Greek Church Fathers, the poet Aleksey Khomyakov (1804–60) and his devoutly Orthodox colleagues elaborated a traditionalistic doctrine that claimed Russia has its own distinct way that should avoid imitating “Western” institutions. The Russian Slavophiles criticized the modernization of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, and some of even adopted traditional pre-Petrine dress.

Pochvennichestvo (roughly “return to the soil”) was a late 19th-century Russian movement tied closely with its contemporary ideology, the Slavophile movement. Both were for the complete emancipation of serfdom, stressed a strong desire to return to the idealized past of Russia’s history, and opposed Europeanization. The movement also chose a complete rejection of the nihilist, classical liberal, and Marxist movements of the time. Their primary focus was to change Russian society by the humbling of the self and social reform through the Russian Orthodox Church rather than the radical implementations of the intelligentsia.

The major differences between the Slavophiles and the movement were that the former detested the Westernization policies of Peter the Great, but the latter praised what were seen as the benefits of the notorious ruler but maintained a strong patriotic mentality for the Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. Another major difference was that many of the movement’s leaders and supporters adopted a militantly anti-Protestant, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic stance.

The concept had its roots in the works of the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who focused primarily on emphasizing the differences among people and regional cultures. In addition, it rejected the universalism of the Enlightenment period. The most prominent Russian intellectuals who founded the ideology were Nikolay Strakhov, Nikolay Danilevsky, and Konstantin Leontyev.

24.3.6: The 1861 Emancipation of the Serfs

In 1861 Alexander II freed all serfs (over 23 million people) in a major agrarian reform, stimulated in part by his view that “it is better to liberate the peasants from above” than to wait until they won their freedom by uprisings “from below.”

Learning Objective

Determine the effectiveness of the 1861 emancipation of the serfs

Key Points

• The emancipation reform of 1861 that freed the serfs was the single most important event in 19th-century Russian history; it was the beginning of the end for the landed aristocracy’s monopoly of power.
• Serfdom was abolished in 1861, but its abolition was achieved on terms not always favorable to the peasants and increased revolutionary pressures.
• The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and by this edict more than 23 million people received their liberty.
• Through emancipation, serfs gained the full rights of free citizens, including rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property, and to own a business.
• The serfs from private estates were given less land than they needed to survive, which led to civil unrest.

Key Terms

1848 revolutions

A series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848 that remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history. The revolutions were essentially democratic in nature, with the aim of removing the old feudal structures and creating independent national states. The revolutionary wave began in France in February and immediately spread to most of Europe and parts of Latin America. Over 50 countries were affected, but with no coordination or cooperation between their respective revolutionaries.

mir

Peasant village communities, as opposed to individual farmsteads or khutors, in Imperial Russia. The vast majority of Russian peasants held their land in communal ownership within a community, which acted as a village government and a cooperative. Arable land was divided in sections based on soil quality and distance from the village. Each household had the right to claim one or more strips from each section depending on the number of adults in the household.

Alexander II

The Tsar of Russia from March 2, 1855, until his assassination in 1881. He was also the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Finland. His most significant reform as emperor was emancipation of Russia’s serfs in 1861, for which he is known as Alexander the Liberator.

The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of liberal reforms effected during the reign (1855-1881) of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The reform effectively abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire.

The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. By this edict more than 23 million people received their liberty. Serfs gained the full rights of free citizens, including rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property, and to own a business. The Manifesto prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords. Household serfs were the least affected, gaining only their freedom and no land.

In Georgia the emancipation took place later, in 1864, and on much better terms for the nobles than in Russia. The serfs were emancipated in 1861, following a speech given by Tsar Alexander II on March 30, 1856. State-owned serfs, those living on Imperial lands, were emancipated in 1866.

Background

The liberal politicians who stood behind the 1861 manifesto recognized that their country was one of a few remaining feudal states in Europe. The pitiful display by Russian forces in the Crimean War left the government acutely aware of the empire’s backwardness. Eager to grow and develop industrial and therefore military and political strength, they introduced a number of economic reforms, including the end of serfdom. It was optimistically hoped that after the abolition the mir (peasant village communities) would dissolve into individual peasant land owners and the beginnings of a market economy.

The main issue was whether the serfs should remain dependent on the landlords or be transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors. The land owners initially pushed for granting the peasants freedom but not land. The tsar and his advisers, mindful of 1848 revolutions in Western Europe, were opposed to creating a proletariat and the instability this could bring. But giving the peasants freedom and land left existing land owners without the large and cheap labor force they needed to maintain their estates and lifestyles. By 1859, however, a third of their estates and two -thirds of their serfs were mortgaged to the state or noble banks, so they had no choice but to accept the emancipation.

To balance this, the legislation contained three measures to reduce the potential economic self-sufficiency of the peasants. First, a transition period of two years was introduced, during which the peasant was obligated as before to the land owner. Second, large parts of common land were passed to the major land owners as otrezki (“cut off lands”), making many forests, roads, and rivers accessible only for a fee. The serfs also had to pay the land owner for their allocation of land in a series of redemption payments, which in turn were used to compensate the land owners with bonds. Three-quarters of the total sum would be advanced by the government to the land owner and then the peasants would repay the money plus interest to the government over 49 years. These redemption payments were finally canceled in 1907.

Emancipation Reform of 1861

A 1907 painting by Boris Kustodiev depicting Russian serfs listening to the proclamation of the Emancipation Manifesto in 1861.

A 1907 painting by Boris Kustodiev depicting Russian serfs listening to the proclamation of the Emancipation Manifesto in 1861. A few dozen peasants stand around a porch with a nobleman reading from a piece of paper, in front of a yellow house.

Effects of Emancipation

Although the emancipation reform was commemorated by the construction of the enormous Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Moscow and history books give Alexander II the name of “Alexander the Liberator,” its results were far from ideal. Household serfs were the worst affected as they gained only their freedom and no land. Many of the more enlightened bureaucrats had an understanding that the freeing of the serfs would bring about drastic changes in both Russian society and government. However, their idea that these changes would affect only the “lower stories” of society and strengthen the autocracy, rather than weaken it was wrong. In reality, the reforms created a new system in which the monarch had to coexist with an independent court, free press, and local governments that operated differently and more freely than in the past.

More specifically, in regards to new localized government, the reforms put in place a system where the land owners had more of a say within their newly formed “provinces.” While this was not the direct intent of the reforms, it was evident that it significantly weakened the idea of the autocracy. Now, the “well-to-do” serfs, along with previously free peoples, were able to purchase land as private property. While early in the reforms the creation of local government changed few things about Russian society, the rise in capitalism drastically affected not only the social structure of Russia, but the behaviors and activities of the self-government institutions.

The serfs from private estates were given less land than they needed to survive, which led to civil unrest. The redemption tax was so high that the serfs had to sell all the grain they produced to pay the tax, which left nothing for their survival. Land owners also suffered because many of them were deeply in debt, and the forced selling of their land left them struggling to maintain their lavish lifestyles. In many cases, the newly freed serfs were forced to “rent” their land from wealthy landowners. Furthermore, when the peasants had to work for the same landowners to pay their “labor payments,” their own fields were often neglected. Over the next few years, the yields from the peasants’ crops remained low, and soon famine struck a large portion of Russia. With little food and in a similar condition as when they were serfs, many peasants started to voice their disdain for the social system.

Lastly, the reforms transformed the Russian economy. The individuals who led the reform were in favor of an economic system similar to that of other European countries, which promoted the ideas of capitalism and free trade. The idea of the reformers was to promote development and encourage private property ownership, free competition, entrepreneurship, and hired labor. They hoped this would bring about an a more laissez-faire economic system with minimal regulations and tariffs. Soon after the reforms, there was a substantial rise in the amount of grain production for sale.

24.4: German Unification

24.4.1: The German Confederation

The German Confederation was the loose association of 39 states created in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries, which most historians have judged to be weak and ineffective as well as an obstacle to German nationalist aspirations.

Learning Objective

Diagram the political relations and structure of the German Confederation

Key Points

• One of the major outcomes of the Congress of Vienna was the creation of German Confederation, a loose association of 39 states designed to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries.
• It acted as a buffer between the powerful states of Austria and Prussia to preserve the Concert of Europe.
• Most historians have judged the Confederation as weak and ineffective, as well as an obstacle to German nationalist aspirations.
• Further efforts to improve the Confederation began in 1834 with the establishment of a customs union, the Zollverein, to manage tariffs and economic policies.
• It collapsed due to the rivalry between Prussia and Austria, warfare, the 1848 revolution, and the inability of the multiple members to compromise.
• It was replaced by the North German Confederation in 1866.

Key Terms

Zollverein

A coalition of German states formed to manage tariffs and economic policies within their territories, formed during the German Confederation.

Rights of Man

A book by Thomas Paine, including 31 articles, that posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Using these points as a basis, it defends the French Revolution.

German dualism

A long-standing conflict and rivalry for supremacy between Prussia and Austria in Central Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. While wars were a part of the rivalry, it was also a race for prestige to be seen as the legitimate political force of the German-speaking peoples. The conflict first culminated in the Seven Years’ War.

Holy Roman Empire

A multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806. The largest territory of the empire after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany, though it also came to include the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy, and numerous other territories.

The German Confederation (German: Deutscher Bund) was an association of 39 German states in Central Europe, created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries and to replace the former Holy Roman Empire. It acted as a buffer between the powerful states of Austria and Prussia. Britain approved of the confederation because London felt there was need for a stable, peaceful power in central Europe that could discourage aggressive moves by France or Russia. Most historians have judged the Confederation as weak and ineffective, as well as an obstacle to the creation of a German nation-state. It collapsed because of the rivalry between Prussia and Austria (known as German dualism), warfare, the 1848 revolution, and the inability of members to compromise. It was replaced by the North German Confederation in 1866.

In 1848, revolutions by liberals and nationalists were failed attempts to establish a unified German state. Talks between the German states failed in 1848, and the Confederation briefly dissolved but was reestablished in 1850. It decidedly fell apart only after the Prussian victory in the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866.

The dispute between the two dominant member states of the Confederation, Austria and Prussia, over which had the inherent right to rule German lands ended in favor of Prussia after the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866. This led to the creation of the North German Confederation under Prussian leadership in 1867. A number of South German states remained independent until they joined the North German Confederation, which was renamed the German Empire.

History and Structure of the Confederation

Between 1806 and 1815, Napoleon organized the German states into the Confederation of the Rhine, but this collapsed after his defeats in 1812 to 1815. The German Confederation had roughly the same boundaries as the Empire at the time of the French Revolution (less what is now Belgium). It also kept intact most of Confederation’s reconstituted member states and their boundaries. The member states, drastically reduced to 39 from more than 300 under the Holy Roman Empire, were recognized as fully sovereign. The members pledged themselves to mutual defense, and joint maintenance of the fortresses at Mainz, the city of Luxembourg, Rastatt, Ulm, and Landau.

The only organ of the Confederation was the Federal Assembly, consisting of the delegates of the states’ governments. There was no head of state; the Austrian delegate presided the Assembly but was not granted extra power. The Assembly met in Frankfurt.

The Confederation was enabled to accept and deploy ambassadors. It allowed ambassadors of the European powers to the Assembly, but rarely deployed ambassadors itself.

During the revolution of 1848-49, the Federal Assembly was inactive and transferred its powers to the revolutionary German Central Government of the Frankfurt National Assembly. After crushing the revolution and illegally disbanding the National Assembly, the Prussian King failed to create a German nation state by himself. The Federal Assembly was revived in 1850 on Austrian initiative, but only fully reinstalled only in the Summer of 1851.

Rivalry between Prussia and Austria grew substantially beginning in 1859. The Confederation was dissolved in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War, and was succeeded in 1866 by the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation. Unlike the German Confederation, the North German Confederation was in fact a true state. Its territory comprised the parts of the German Confederation north of the river Main, plus Prussia’s eastern territories and the Duchy of Schleswig, but excluded Austria and the other southern German states.

Prussia’s influence was widened by the Franco-Prussian War resulting in the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles on January 18, 1871, which united the North German Federation with the southern German states. Constituent states of the former German Confederation became part of the German Empire in 1871, except Austria, Luxembourg, the Duchy of Limburg, and Liechtenstein.

Politics and Economy of the Confederation

Although the forces unleashed by the French Revolution were seemingly under control after the Vienna Congress, the conflict between conservative forces and liberal nationalists was only deferred. The era until the failed 1848 revolution when these tensions escalated is commonly referred to as Vormärz (“pre-March”), in reference to the outbreak of riots in March 1848.

This conflict pitted the forces of the old order against those inspired by the French Revolution and the Rights of Man. The sociological breakdown of the competition was roughly one side engaged mostly in commerce, trade, and industry, and the other side associated with landowning aristocracy or military aristocracy (the Junker) in Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy in Austria, and the conservative notables of the small princely states and city-states in Germany.

Meanwhile, demands for change from below had been stirring since the influence of the French Revolution. Throughout the German Confederation, Austrian influence was paramount, drawing the ire of the nationalist movements. Metternich considered nationalism, especially the nationalist youth movement, the most pressing danger: German nationalism might not only reject Austrian dominance of the Confederation, but also stimulate nationalist sentiment within the Austrian Empire itself. In a multinational multilingual state in which Slavs and Magyars outnumbered the Germans, the prospects of Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Serb, or Croatian sentiment along with middle-class liberalism was certainly horrifying.

Further efforts to improve the Confederation began in 1834 with the establishment of a customs union, the Zollverein. In 1834, the Prussian regime sought to stimulate wider trade advantages and industrialism by decree—a logical continuation of the program of Stein and Hardenberg less than two decades earlier. Historians have seen three Prussian goals: as a political tool to eliminate Austrian influence in Germany; as a way to improve the economies; and to strengthen Germany against potential French aggression while reducing the economic independence of smaller states.

Inadvertently, these reforms sparked the unification movement and augmented a middle class demanding further political rights, but at the time backwardness and Prussia’s fears of its stronger neighbors were greater concerns. The customs union opened up a common market, ended tariffs between states, and standardized weights, measures, and currencies within member states (excluding Austria), forming the basis of a proto-national economy.

German Confederation

Map of the German Confederation, circa 1815, following the Congress of Vienna. The territory of the Austrian Empire and Kingdom of Prussia not within the confederation is shown in light green.

The map shows that the present-day countries whose territory were partly or entirely located inside the boundaries of the German Confederation are Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Belgium, Italy, and Croatia.

24.4.2: Toward a German Identity

The surge of German nationalism, stimulated by the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period, the development of a German cultural and artistic identity, and improved transportation through the region, moved Germany toward unification in the 19th century.

Learning Objective

Break down the cultural aspects that lent themselves to a common German identity in the 19th century

Key Points

• The transition of German-speaking people throughout central Europe into a unified nation-state had been developing for some time through alliances formal and informal between princely rulers, as well as the gradual emergence of a German cultural identity.
• The German identity is largely centered around the common German language, but at the turn of the 19th century, German intellectuals began to develop a sense of artistic and philosophical identity freed from the leadership of France during the Enlightenment.
• Under the dominance of the Napoleonic French Empire (1804–1814), various justifications emerged to identify “Germany” as a single state.
• The Burschenschaft student organizations and popular demonstrations, such as those held at Wartburg Castle in October 1817, contributed to a growing sense of unity among German speakers of Central Europe.
• Historians regard the development of the German railway as the first indicator of a unified state.
• As travel became easier, faster, and less expensive, Germans started to see unity in factors other than their language.

Key Terms

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A German writer and statesman. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of meters and styles; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; treatises on botany, anatomy, and color; and four novels. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters, and nearly 3,000 drawings by him exist.

Burschenschaften

One of the traditional student fraternities of Germany. They were founded in the 19th century as associations of university students inspired by liberal and nationalistic ideas. They were significantly involved in the March Revolution and the unification of Germany. 

Carlsbad Decrees

A set of reactionary restrictions introduced in the states of the German Confederation on September 20, 1819, after a conference held in the spa town of Carlsbad, Bohemia. They banned nationalist fraternities (“Burschenschaften”), removed liberal university professors, and expanded the censorship of the press. They were aimed to quell a growing sentiment for German unification.

Unification of Germany

The unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in France. Princes of the German states gathered there to proclaim Wilhelm I of Prussia as German Emperor after the French capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War. Unofficially, the de facto transition of most of the German-speaking populations into a federated organization of states had been developing in fits and starts for some time through alliances formal and informal between princely rulers. Self-interests of the various parties hampered the process over nearly a century of autocratic experimentation beginning in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, which saw the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire (1806) and subsequent rise of German nationalism.

Unification exposed tensions caused by religious, linguistic, social, and cultural differences among the inhabitants of the new nation, suggesting that 1871 only represented one moment in the larger unification process. Given the mountainous terrains of much of the territory, it was inevitable that isolated peoples would develop cultural, educational, linguistic, and religious differences over such a long period. Germany of the 19th century enjoyed transportation and communications improvements that began uniting people and culture.

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which included more than 500 independent states, was effectively dissolved when Emperor Francis II abdicated during the War of the Third Coalition in August 1806. Despite the legal, administrative, and political disruption associated with the end of the Empire, the people of the German-speaking areas of the old Empire had a common linguistic, cultural, and legal tradition further enhanced by their shared experience in the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. 

European liberalism offered an intellectual basis for unification by challenging dynastic and absolutist models of social and political organization; its German manifestation emphasized the importance of tradition, education, and linguistic unity of people in a geographic region. Economically, the creation of the Prussian Zollverein (customs union) in 1818 and its subsequent expansion to include other states of the German Confederation reduced competition between and within states. Emerging modes of transportation facilitated business and recreational travel, leading to contact and sometimes conflict among German speakers from throughout Central Europe.

German Cultural Identity

In the late 18th century, the sense of a German cultural identity began to emerge. Before 1750, the German upper classes looked to France for intellectual, cultural, and architectural leadership; French was the language of high society. By the mid-18th century the “Aufklärung” (The Enlightenment) had transformed German high culture in music, philosophy, science, and literature. Christian Wolff (1679–1754) was the pioneer as a writer who expounded the Enlightenment to German readers; he legitimized German as a philosophic language. 

Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) broke new ground in philosophy and poetry as a leader of the Sturm und Drang movement of proto-Romanticism. Weimar Classicism was a cultural and literary movement based in Weimar that sought to establish a new humanism by synthesizing Romantic, Classical, and Enlightenment ideas. The movement, from 1772 until 1805, involved Herder as well as polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), a poet and historian. Herder argued that every folk had its own particular identity expressed in its language and culture. This legitimized the promotion of German language and culture and helped shape the development of German nationalism. Schiller’s plays expressed the restless spirit of his generation, depicting the hero’s struggle against social pressures and the force of destiny.

Rise of German Nationalism

Under the hegemony of the Napoleonic French Empire (1804–1814), popular German nationalism thrived in the reorganized German states. Due in part to the shared experience under French dominance, various justifications emerged to identify “Germany” as a single state. For the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte,

The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole.

A common language may have been seen to serve as the basis of a nation, but as contemporary historians of 19th-century Germany noted, it took more than linguistic similarity to unify these several hundred polities. The experience of German-speaking Central Europe during the years of French hegemony contributed to a sense of common cause to remove the French invaders and reassert control over their own lands. The exigencies of Napoleon’s campaigns in Poland (1806–07), the Iberian Peninsula, western Germany, and his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 disillusioned many Germans, princes and peasants alike. Napoleon’s Continental System nearly ruined the Central European economy. The invasion of Russia included nearly 125,000 troops from German lands, and the loss of that army encouraged many Germans, both high- and low-born, to envision a Central Europe free of Napoleon’s influence.

The surge of German nationalism, stimulated by the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period and initially allied with liberalism, shifted political, social, and cultural relationships within the German states during the beginning of the German Confederation. Figures like August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Ludwig Uhland, Georg Herwegh, Heinrich Heine, Georg Büchner, Ludwig Börne, and Bettina von Arnim rose in the Vormärz era. Father Friedrich Jahn’s gymnastic associations exposed middle-class German youth to nationalist and democratic ideas, which took the form of the nationalistic and liberal democratic college fraternities known as the Burschenschaften. 

The Wartburg Festival in 1817 celebrated Martin Luther as a proto-German nationalist, linking Lutheranism to German nationalism, and helping arouse religious sentiments for the cause of German nationhood. The festival culminated in the burning of several books and other items that symbolized reactionary attitudes. One item was a book by August von Kotzebue, who was accused of spying for Russia in 1819 and then murdered by a theological student, Karl Ludwig Sand, who was executed for the crime. Sand belonged to a militant nationalist faction of the Burschenschaften. Metternich used the murder as a pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which dissolved the Burschenschaften, cracked down on the liberal press, and seriously restricted academic freedom.

Metternich was able to harness conservative outrage at the assassination to consolidate legislation that would further limit the press and constrain the rising liberal and nationalist movements. Consequently, these decrees drove the Burschenschaften underground, restricted the publication of nationalist materials, expanded censorship of the press and private correspondence, and limited academic speech by prohibiting university professors from encouraging nationalist discussion.

Other Factors for Unification

By the early 19th century, German roads had deteriorated to an appalling extent. Travelers both foreign and local complained bitterly about the state of the Heerstraßen, the military roads previously maintained for the ease of moving troops. As German states ceased to be a military crossroads, however, the roads improved; the length of hard-surfaced roads in Prussia increased from 3,800 kilometers (2,400 mi) in 1816 to 16,600 kilometers (10,300 mi) in 1852. By 1835, Heinrich von Gagern wrote that roads were the “veins and arteries of the body politic…” and predicted that they would promote freedom, independence, and prosperity. As people moved around, they came into contact with others on trains, at hotels, in restaurants, and for some, at fashionable resorts such as the spa in Baden-Baden. Water transportation also improved.  

As important as these improvements were, they could not compete with the impact of the railway. Historians of the Second Empire later regarded the railways as the first indicator of a unified state; the patriotic novelist, Wilhelm Raabe, wrote: “The German empire was founded with the construction of the first railway…” Rail travel changed how cities looked and how people traveled. Its impact reached throughout the social order, affecting everyone from the highest-born to the lowest. Although some of the outlying German provinces were not serviced by rail until the 1890s, the majority of the population, manufacturing centers, and production centers were linked to the rail network by 1865.

As travel became easier, faster, and less expensive, Germans started to see unity in factors other than language. The Brothers Grimm, who compiled a massive dictionary known as The Grimm, also assembled a compendium of folk tales and fables that highlighted the storytelling parallels between different regions. Karl Baedeker wrote guidebooks to different cities and regions of Central Europe, indicating places to stay, sites to visit, and giving a short history of castles, battlefields, famous buildings, and famous people. His guides also included distances, roads to avoid, and hiking paths to follow.

The words of August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben expressed not only the linguistic unity of the German people but also their geographic unity. Patriotic songs as “Die Wacht am Rhein” (“The Watch on the Rhine”) by Max Schneckenburger began to focus attention on geographic space, not limiting “German-ness” to a common language. Schneckenburger wrote “The Watch on the Rhine” in a specific patriotic response to French assertions that the Rhine was France’s “natural” eastern boundary.

Germania

Germania, a personification of the German nation, appears in Philipp Veit’s fresco (1834–36). She is holding a shield with the coat of arms of the German Confederation. The shields on which she stands are the arms of the seven traditional Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. She holds the “Reichsschwert” (imperial sword) and the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire sits at her side.

Germania, a personification of the German nation, appears in Philipp Veit’s fresco (1834–36). She is holding a shield with the coat of arms of the German Confederation. The shields on which she stands are the arms of the seven traditional Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. She is depicted as a robust woman with long, flowing, reddish-blonde hair and wearing armour. She holds the “Reichsschwert” (imperial sword) and the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire sits at her side.

24.4.3: The German Revolutions of 1848

Growing discontent with the political and social order imposed by the Congress of Vienna led to the outbreak in 1848 of the March Revolution in the German states.

Learning Objective

Connect the German Revolutions of 1848 to other revolutions happening throughout Europe

Key Points

• News of the 1848 Revolution in Paris quickly reached discontented bourgeois liberals, republicans, and more radical working-men. 
• The first revolutionary uprisings in Germany began in the state of Baden in March 1848 and within a few days, there were revolutionary uprisings in other states including Austria and Prussia.
• On March 15, 1848, the subjects of Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia vented their long-repressed political aspirations in violent rioting in Berlin, while barricades were erected in the streets of Paris.
• Friedrich Wilhelm gave in to the popular fury and promised a constitution, a parliament, and support for German unification, safeguarding his own rule and regime.
• On May 18, the Frankfurt Assembly opened its first session with delegates from various German states, and after long and controversial debates, the assembly produced the so-called Frankfurt Constitution, which proclaimed a German Empire based on the principles of parliamentary democracy.
• In the end, the 1848 revolutions turned out to be unsuccessful: King Frederick William IV of Prussia refused the imperial crown, the Frankfurt parliament was dissolved, the ruling princes repressed the risings by military force, and the German Confederation was re-established by 1850. 
• Many leaders went into exile, including a number who went to the United States and became a political force there.

Key Terms

Frankfurt Assembly

The first freely elected parliament for all of Germany, elected on May 1, 1848. The session was held from May 18, 1848, to May 31, 1849, in the Paulskirche at Frankfurt am Main. Its existence was both part of and the result of the “March Revolution” in the states of the German Confederation. After long and controversial debates, the assembly produced the so-called Frankfurt Constitution.

Forty-Eighters

Europeans who participated in or supported the revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe. Disappointed at the failure of the revolution to bring about the reform of the system of government in Germany or the Austrian Empire and sometimes on the government’s wanted list because of their involvement in the revolution, they gave up their old lives to try again abroad. Many emigrated to the United States, England, and Australia after the revolutions failed.

Zollverein

A coalition of German states formed to manage tariffs and economic policies within their territories. It was the first instance in history in which independent states had consummated a full economic union without the simultaneous creation of a political federation or union.

The revolutions of 1848 in the German states, the opening phase of which was also called the March Revolution, were initially part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many European countries. They were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire. The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the 39 independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire. They demonstrated the popular desire for the Zollverein movement.

The middle-class elements were committed to liberal principles while the working class sought radical improvements to their working and living conditions. As the middle class and working class components of the Revolution split, the conservative aristocracy defeated it. Liberals were forced into exile to escape political persecution, where they became known as Forty-Eighters. Many immigrated to the United States, settling from Wisconsin to Texas.

Unrest Spreads

The groundwork of the 1848 uprising in Germany was laid long beforehand. The Hambacher Fest of 1832, for instance, reflected growing unrest in the face of heavy taxation and political censorship. The Hambacher Fest is noteworthy for the republicans adopting the black-red-gold colors (used on today’s national flag of Germany) as a symbol of the republican movement and of unity among the German-speaking people.

Activism for liberal reform spread through many of the German states, each of which had distinct revolutions. They were also inspired by street demonstrations of workers and artisans in Paris, France, from February 22-24, 1848, which resulted in the abdication by King Louis Philippe of France and his exile in Britain. In France the revolution of 1848 became known as the February Revolution.

The revolutions spread across Europe; they erupted in Austria and Germany, beginning with the large demonstrations on March 13, 1848, in Vienna. This resulted in the resignation of Prince von Metternich as chief minister to Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, and his exile in Britain. Because of the date of the Vienna demonstrations, the revolutions in Germany are usually called the March Revolution.

Fearing the fate of Louis-Philippe of France, some monarchs in Germany accepted some of the demands of the revolutionaries, at least temporarily. In the south and west, large popular assemblies and mass demonstrations took place. They demanded freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, written constitutions, arming of the people, and a parliament.

Uprisings: Austria and Prussia

In 1848, Austria was the predominant German state. It was considered the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved by Napoleon in 1806, and was not resurrected by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. German Austrian chancellor Metternich had dominated Austrian politics from 1815 until 1848.

On March 13, 1848, university students mounted a large street demonstration in Vienna, and it was covered by the press across the German-speaking states. Following the important but relatively minor demonstrations against Lola Montez in Bavaria on February 9, 1848, the first major revolt of 1848 in German lands occurred in Vienna on March 13, 1848. The student demonstrators demanded a constitution and a constituent assembly elected by universal male suffrage.

Emperor Ferdinand and his chief adviser Metternich directed troops to crush the demonstration. When demonstrators moved to the streets near the palace, the troops fired on the students, killing several. The new working class of Vienna joined the student demonstrations, developing an armed insurrection. The Diet of Lower Austria demanded Metternich’s resignation. With no forces rallying to Metternich’s defense, Ferdinand reluctantly complied and dismissed him. The former chancellor went into exile in London.

In Prussia, in March 1848, crowds of people gathered in Berlin to present their demands in an “address to the king.” King Frederick William IV, taken by surprise, yielded verbally to all the demonstrators’ demands, including parliamentary elections, a constitution, and freedom of the press. He promised that “Prussia was to be merged forthwith into Germany.”

On March 13, the army charged people returning from a meeting in the Tiergarten; they left one person dead and many injured. On March 18, a large demonstration occurred; when two shots were fired, the people feared that some of the 20,000 soldiers would be used against them. They erected barricades, fighting started, and a battle took place until troops were ordered 13 hours later to retreat, leaving hundreds dead. Afterwards, Frederick William attempted to reassure the public that he would proceed with reorganizing his government. The king also approved arming the citizens. 

Starting on May 18, 1848, the Frankfurt Assembly worked to find ways to unite the various German states and write a constitution. The Assembly was unable to pass resolutions and dissolved into endless debate. After long and controversial discussions, the assembly produced the so-called Frankfurt Constitution, which proclaimed a German Empire based on the principles of parliamentary democracy. This constitution fulfilled the main demands of the liberal and nationalist movements of the Vormärz and provided a foundation of basic rights, both of which stood in opposition to Metternich’s system of Restoration. The parliament also proposed a constitutional monarchy headed by a hereditary emperor (Kaiser).

King Frederick William IV of Prussia unilaterally imposed a monarchist constitution to undercut the democratic forces. This constitution took effect on December 5, 1848. On December 5, 1848, the revolutionary Assembly was dissolved and replaced with the bicameral legislature allowed under the monarchist Constitution. Otto von Bismarck was elected to the first congress elected under the new monarchical constitution.

Other uprising occurred in Baden, the Palatinate, Saxony, the Rhineland, and Bavaria.

Revolutions of 1848

Origin of the Flag of Germany: Cheering revolutionaries in Berlin, on March 19, 1848.

A painting of the uprising in Berlin 1848. It shows several people atop battle-worn barricades holding a tattered German flag.

Failures of the Revolutions

By late 1848, the Prussian aristocrats including Otto von Bismarck and generals had regained power in Berlin. They were not defeated permanently during the incidents of March, but had only retreated temporarily. General von Wrangel led the troops who recaptured Berlin for the old powers, and King Frederick William IV of Prussia immediately rejoined the old forces. In November, the king dissolved the new Prussian parliament and put forth a constitution of his own based upon the work of the assembly, yet maintaining the ultimate authority of the king.

The achievements of the revolutionaries of March 1848 were reversed in all of the German states and by 1851, the Basic Rights from the Frankfurt Assembly had also been abolished nearly everywhere. In the end, the revolution fizzled because of the divisions between the various factions in Frankfurt, the calculating caution of the liberals, the failure of the left to marshal popular support and the overwhelming superiority of the monarchist forces.

The Revolution of 1848 failed in its attempt to unify the German-speaking states because the Frankfurt Assembly reflected the many different interests of the German ruling classes. Its members were unable to form coalitions and push for specific goals. The first conflict arose over the goals of the assembly. The moderate liberals wanted to draft a constitution to present to the monarchs, whereas the smaller group of radical members wanted the assembly to declare itself as a law-giving parliament. They were unable to overcome this fundamental division, and did not take any definitive action toward unification or the introduction of democratic rules. The assembly declined into debate. While the French revolution drew on an existing nation state, the democratic and liberal forces in Germany of 1848 were confronted with the need to build a nation state and a constitutional at the same time, which overtaxed them.

24.4.4: Otto von Bismarck and the Franco-Prussian War

In the 1860s, Otto von Bismarck, then Minister President of Prussia, provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, aligning the smaller German states behind Prussia in its defeat of France. In 1871 he unified Germany into a nation-state, forming the German Empire.

Learning Objective

Clarify Bismarck’s intentions with respect to the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War

Key Points

• King William I appointed Otto von Bismarck as the new Minister President of Prussia in 1862.
• The Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 enabled him to create the North German Confederation which excluded Austria from the federation’s affairs and ended the previous German Confederation.
• After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the German princes proclaimed the founding of the German Empire in 1871 at Versailles, uniting all scattered parts of Germany except Austria.
• Victory in the Franco-Prussian War proved the capstone of the nationalist issue, rallying the other German states into unity.
• Some historians argue that Bismarck deliberately provoked a French attack to draw the southern German states—Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria, and Hesse-Darmstadt—into an alliance with the North German Confederation dominated by Prussia, while others contend that Bismarck did not plan anything and merely exploited the circumstances as they unfolded.
• Juggling a very complex interlocking series of conferences, negotiations, and alliances, Bismarck used his diplomatic skills to maintain Germany’s position and used the balance of power to keep Europe at peace in the 1870s and 1880s.

Key Terms

Kulturkampf

Refers to power struggles between emerging constitutional and democratic nation states and the Roman Catholic Church over the place and role of religion in modern polity, usually in connection with secularization campaigns.

Junker

A noble honorific, meaning “young nobleman.” The term became popularly used as a reference for the landed nobility (particularly of the east) that controlled almost all of the land and government, or by extension the Prussian estate owners regardless of noble status. With the formation of the German Empire in 1871, this dominated the central German government and the Prussian military. The term is often contrasted with the elites of the western and southern states in Germany, such as the city-republic of Hamburg, which had no nobility.

North German Confederation

A confederation of 22 previously independent states of northern Germany with nearly 30 million inhabitants, formed after Prussia left the German Confederation with allies. It was the first modern German nation state and the basis for the later German Empire (1871–1918) when several south German states such as Bavaria joined. 

realpolitik

Politics or diplomacy based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than explicit ideological notions or moral and ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism. The term is sometimes used pejoratively to imply politics that are coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian.

Otto von Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890. In the 1860s he engineered a series of wars that unified the German states, significantly and deliberately excluding Austria, into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership. With that accomplished by 1871, he skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany’s position in a Europe which, despite many disputes and war scares, remained at peace.

In 1862, King Wilhelm I appointed Bismarck as Minister President of Prussia, a position he would hold until 1890 (except for a short break in 1873). He provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, aligning the smaller German states behind Prussia in its defeat of France. In 1871 he formed the German Empire with himself as Chancellor while retaining control of Prussia. His diplomacy of realpolitik and powerful rule at home gained him the nickname the “Iron Chancellor.” German unification and its rapid economic growth was the foundation to his foreign policy. He disliked colonialism but reluctantly built an overseas empire when it was demanded by both elite and mass opinion. Juggling a very complex interlocking series of conferences, negotiations, and alliances, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain Germany’s position and used the balance of power to keep Europe at peace in the 1870s and 1880s.

A master of complex politics at home, Bismarck created the first welfare state in the modern world, with the goal of gaining working-class support that might otherwise have gone to his Socialist enemies. In the 1870s he allied himself with the Liberals (who were low-tariff and anti-Catholic) and fought the Catholic Church in what was called the Kulturkampf (“culture struggle”). He lost that battle as the Catholics responded by forming a powerful Centre party and using universal male suffrage to gain a bloc of seats. Bismarck then reversed himself, ended the Kulturkampf, broke with the Liberals, imposed protective tariffs, and formed a political alliance with the Centre Party to fight the Socialists.

Bismarck—a Junker himself—was strong-willed, outspoken, and sometimes judged overbearing, but he could also be polite, charming, and witty. Occasionally he displayed a violent temper, and he kept his power by melodramatically threatening resignation time and again, which cowed Wilhelm I. He possessed not only a long-term national and international vision but also the short-term ability to juggle complex developments. As the leader of what historians call “revolutionary conservatism,” Bismarck became a hero to German nationalists; they built many monuments honoring the founder of the new Reich. Many historians praise him as a visionary who was instrumental in uniting Germany and, once that had been accomplished, kept the peace in Europe through adroit diplomacy.

Franco-Prussian War and Creation of the German Empire

Prussia’s victory over Austria in 1866, a war that ended the German Confederation and resulted in the creation of the North German Confederation, increased already existing tensions with France. The Emperor of France, Napoleon III, tried to gain territory for France (in Belgium and on the left bank of the Rhine) as compensation for not joining the war against Prussia and was disappointed by the surprisingly quick outcome of the war. The conflict was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded. Some historians argue that Bismarck deliberately provoked a French attack to draw the southern German states—Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt—into an alliance with the North German Confederation dominated by Prussia, while others contend that Bismarck did not plan anything and merely exploited the circumstances as they unfolded.

A suitable pretext for war arose in 1870 when the German Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was offered the Spanish throne, vacant since a revolution in 1868. France pressured Leopold into withdrawing his candidacy. Not content with this, Paris demanded that Wilhelm, as head of the House of Hohenzollern, assure that no Hohenzollern would ever seek the Spanish crown again. To provoke France into declaring war with Prussia, Bismarck published the Ems Dispatch, a carefully edited version of a conversation between King Wilhelm and the French ambassador to Prussia, Count Benedetti. This conversation had been edited so that each nation felt its ambassador had been slighted and ridiculed, thus inflaming popular sentiment on both sides in favor of war.

France mobilized and declared war on July 19. The German states saw France as the aggressor, and—swept up by nationalism and patriotic zeal—they rallied to Prussia’s side and provided troops. A series of swift Prussian and German victories in eastern France, culminating in the Siege of Metz and the Battle of Sedan, saw Napoleon III captured and the army of the Second Empire decisively defeated. A Government of National Defense declared the Third Republic in Paris on September 4 and continued the war for another five months; the German forces fought and defeated new French armies in northern France. Following the Siege of Paris, the capital fell on January 28, 1871, and then a revolutionary uprising called the Paris Commune seized power in the capital and held it for two months until it was bloodily suppressed by the regular French army at the end of May 1871.

Bismarck acted immediately to secure the unification of Germany. He negotiated with representatives of the southern German states, offering special concessions if they agreed to unification. The negotiations succeeded; patriotic sentiment overwhelmed what opposition remained. While the war was in its final phase, Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor on January 18, 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors in the Château de Versailles. The new German Empire was a federation; each of its 25 constituent states (kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities, and free cities) retained some autonomy. The King of Prussia, as German Emperor, was not sovereign over the entirety of Germany; he was only primus inter pares, or first among equals.

Victory in the Franco-Prussian War proved the capstone of the nationalist issue. In the first half of the 1860s, Austria and Prussia both contended to speak for the German states; both maintained they could support German interests abroad and protect German interests at home. After the victory over Austria in 1866, Prussia began internally asserting its authority to speak for the German states and defend German interests, while Austria began directing more of its attention to possessions in the Balkans. The victory over France in 1871 expanded Prussian hegemony in the German states to the international level. With the proclamation of Wilhelm as Kaiser, Prussia assumed the leadership of the new empire. The southern states became officially incorporated into a unified Germany at the Treaty of Versailles of 1871 (signed February 26, 1871; later ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt of May 10, 1871), which formally ended the war.

Under the Treaty of Frankfurt, France relinquished most of its traditionally German regions (Alsace and the German-speaking part of Lorraine); paid an indemnity, calculated (on the basis of population) as the precise equivalent of the indemnity that Napoleon Bonaparte imposed on Prussia in 1807; and accepted German administration of Paris and most of northern France, with “German troops to be withdrawn stage by stage with each installment of the indemnity payment.”

The Unification of Germany: The German Empire

18 January 1871: The proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Otto von Bismarck appears in white in the center. The Grand Duke of Baden stands beside Wilhelm I, proclaimed here as German Emperor, leading the cheers. Crown Prince Friedrich, later Friedrich III, stands on his father’s right. Painting by Anton von Werner.

18 January 1871: The proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. A large group of men, in formal military uniforms, gathered to proclaim the German Empire. Bismarck appears in white. The Grand Duke of Baden stands beside Wilhelm, leading the cheers. Crown Prince Friedrich, later Friedrich III, stands on his father’s right. Painting by Anton von Werner.

24.4.5: The German Empire

After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the German princes proclaimed the founding of the German Empire in 1871 at Versailles, uniting all scattered parts of Germany except Austria.

Learning Objective

Examine the structure of the newly formed German Empire and the role of the Kaiser

Key Points

• On December 10, 1870, the North German Confederation Reichstag renamed the Confederation as the German Empire and gave the title of German Emperor to William I, the King of Prussia.
• Following the unification of Germany, Bismarck’s foreign policy as Chancellor of Germany under Emperor William I secured Germany’s position as a great nation by forging alliances, isolating France by diplomatic means, and avoiding war. 
• On the domestic front Bismarck tried to stem the rise of socialism by anti-socialist laws, combined with an introduction of health care and social security.
• In 1888, the young and ambitious Kaiser Wilhelm II became emperor and dismissed Bismarck as Chancellor, moving Germany on a different course.
• Under Wilhelm II, Germany, like other European powers, took an imperialistic course, leading to friction with neighboring countries.
• Wilhelm II promoted active colonization of Africa and Asia for those areas that were not already colonies of other European powers; his administration of the colonies was notoriously brutal.
• The Kaiser’s approach in Europe eventually led to the assassination of the Austrian-Hungarian crown prince, sparking World War I.

Key Terms

Reichstag

The Parliament of Germany from 1871 to 1918. It shared legislative powers with the Bundesrat, the Imperial Council of the reigning princes of the German States. It had no formal right to appoint or dismiss governments, but by contemporary standards it was considered a highly modern and progressive parliament. All German men over 25 years of age were eligible to vote, and members of were elected by general, universal, and secret suffrage.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

The last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from June 1888 to November 1918. He dismissed the Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, in 1890 and launched Germany on a bellicose “New Course” in foreign affairs that culminated in his support for Austria-Hungary in the crisis of July 1914 that led in a matter of days to the First World War.

Otto von Bismarck

A conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890. In the 1860s he engineered a series of wars that unified the German states, significantly and deliberately excluding Austria, into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership. With that accomplished by 1871, he skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany’s position in a Europe which, despite many disputes and war scares, remained at peace.

The German Empire (officially Deutsches Reich) was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in November 1918, when Germany became a federal republic (the Weimar Republic).

The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, most ruled by royal families. This included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies (six before 1876), seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although the Kingdom of Prussia contained most of the Empire’s population and territory, it eventually played a relatively lesser role in politics. As Dwyer (2005) points out, Prussia’s “political and cultural influence had diminished considerably” by the 1890s, after the era of Bismarck’s leadership.

After Germany was united by Otto von Bismarck into the “German Reich,” he dominated German politics until 1890 as Chancellor. Bismarck tried to foster alliances in Europe to contain France and consolidate Germany’s influence in Europe. Bismarck’s post-1871 foreign policy was conservative and sought to preserve the balance of power in Europe. British historian Eric Hobsbawm concludes that he “remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for almost twenty years after 1871, [devoting] himself exclusively, and successfully, to maintaining peace between the powers.” His chief concern was that France would plot revenge after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. As the French lacked the strength to defeat Germany by themselves, they sought an alliance with Russia that would trap Germany between the two in a war (as would ultimately happen in 1914). Bismarck wanted to prevent this at all costs and maintain friendly relations with the Russians, and thereby formed an alliance with them and Austria-Hungary. The League of Three Emperors was signed in 1872 by Russia, Austria, and Germany. It stated that republicanism and socialism were common enemies and that the three powers would discuss any matters concerning foreign policy.

Bismarck’s domestic policies played an important role in forging the authoritarian political culture of the new Empire. Less preoccupied by continental power politics following unification in 1871, Germany’s semi-parliamentary government carried out a relatively smooth economic and political revolution from above that pushed them along the way to becoming the world’s leading industrial power of the time. 

Bismarck’s “revolutionary conservatism” was a conservative state-building strategy designed to make ordinary Germans—not just the Junker elite—more loyal to state and emperor. His strategy was to grant social rights to enhance the integration of a hierarchical society, forge a bond between workers and the state to strengthen the latter, maintain traditional relations of authority between social and status groups, and provide a countervailing power against the modernist forces of liberalism and socialism. He created the modern welfare state in Germany in the 1880s, with an introduction of health care and social security, and enacted universal male suffrage in the new German Empire in 1871. He became a great hero to German conservatives, who erected many monuments to his memory and tried to emulate his policies.

At the same time Bismarck tried to reduce the political influence of the emancipated Catholic minority in the Kulturkampf, literally “culture struggle.” The Catholics only grew stronger, forming the Center (Zentrum) Party. Germany grew rapidly in industrial and economic power, matching Britain by 1900. Its highly professional army was the best in the world, but the navy could never catch up with Britain’s Royal Navy.

In 1888, the young and ambitious Kaiser Wilhelm II became emperor. He could not abide advice, least of all from the most experienced politician and diplomat in Europe, so he fired Bismarck. The Kaiser opposed Bismarck’s careful foreign policy and wanted Germany to pursue colonialist policies as Britain and France had been doing for decades, as well as build a navy that could match the British. The Kaiser promoted active colonization of Africa and Asia for those areas that were not already colonies of other European powers; his record was notoriously brutal and set the stage for genocide. In what became known as the “First Genocide of the Twentieth-Century,” between 1904 and 1907, the German colonial government in South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) ordered the annihilation of the local Herero and Namaqua peoples as a punitive measure for an uprising against German colonial rule, killing over 100,000 people. The Kaiser took a mostly unilateral approach in Europe with the Austro-Hungarian Empire as its main ally, and an arms race with Britain eventually led to the assassination of the Austrian-Hungarian crown prince sparked World War I.

After four years of warfare in which approximately two million German soldiers were killed, a general armistice ended the fighting on November 11, and German troops returned home. In the German Revolution (November 1918), Emperor Wilhelm II and all German ruling princes abdicated their positions and responsibilities, marking the beginning of the Weimar Republic. Germany’s new political leadership signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

The Kulturkampf

Tensions between Germany and the Catholic Church hierarchy are depicted in a chess game between Bismarck and Pope Pius IX. Cartoon from 1875.

A political cartoon depicting a chess game between Bismarck and the Catholic Pope.

Political Structure

On December 10, 1870, the North German Confederation Reichstag renamed the Confederation as the German Empire and gave the title of German Emperor to William I, the King of Prussia. The new constitution (Constitution of the German Confederation) and the title Emperor came into effect on January 1, 1871. During the Siege of Paris on January 18, 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.

The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on April 14, 1871, and proclaimed by the Emperor on April 16. It was substantially based upon Bismarck’s North German Constitution. The political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage. However, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas. As a result, by the time of the great expansion of German cities in the 1890s and first decade of the 20th century, rural areas were grossly over-represented.

Legislation also required the consent of the Bundesrat, the federal council of deputies from the 27 states. Executive power was vested in the emperor, or Kaiser, who was assisted by a chancellor responsible only to him. The emperor was given extensive powers by the constitution. He alone appointed and dismissed the chancellor (which in practice was used by the emperor to rule the empire through him), was supreme commander-in-chief of the armed forces, final arbiter of all foreign affairs, and could disband the Reichstag to call for new elections. Officially, the chancellor was a one-man cabinet and was responsible for the conduct of all state affairs; in practice, the State Secretaries (bureaucratic top officials in charge of such fields as finance, war, foreign affairs, etc.) acted as unofficial portfolio ministers. The Reichstag had the power to pass, amend, or reject bills and initiate legislation. However, as mentioned above, in practice the real power was vested in the emperor, who exercised it through his chancellor.

Although nominally a federal empire and league of equals, in practice the empire was dominated by the largest and most powerful state, Prussia. It stretched across the northern two-thirds of the new Reich, and contained three-fifths of its population. The imperial crown was hereditary in the House of Hohenzollern, the ruling house of Prussia. With the exception of the years 1872–1873 and 1892–1894, the chancellor was always simultaneously the prime minister of Prussia. With 17 out of 58 votes in the Bundesrat, Berlin needed only a few votes from the small states to exercise effective control.

The other states retained their own governments, but had only limited aspects of sovereignty. For example, both postage stamps and currency were issued for the empire as a whole.