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Revolutionary Experiences in 1848

T he striking similarities between the different national revolutions in 1848 suggest that Europeans lived through common experiences that shaped a generation, and this was indeed true. The first such experience was raising the barricades, fighting in the streets, and overthrowing rulers or forcing major concessions. The result of this astonishing triumph was a tremendous surge in political participation and civic activity throughout most of Europe. This unprecedented mass politics took many forms. Politics in the streets — demonstrations, protests, open-air meetings — played an ongoing role as large crowds pressured kings and legislatures. Newspaper publishing exploded as censorship ended and interest in public affairs soared. In Paris, where many new papers like Le Salut Public (The Public Safety) appeared, daily newspaper production increased eightfold in three months. In the Austrian Empire, urban workers and artisans listened to newspapers read aloud in taverns and followed developments. Intense political activity led to a multitude of political clubs and associations based on occupation. Women also formed organizations for the welfare of children and families, although few women as yet pushed for equal rights.

Newly politicized and increasingly divided into competing groups, the peoples of Europe then shared the onslaught of reaction and the trauma of defeat and civil war. In Prague and in Paris, almost simultaneously, army commanders found a deadly way to respond to urban uprisings. First they used cannon and field artillery to bombard and destroy the fighters behind their makeshift fortifications. Only then did obedient infantrymen attack and take the barricades in hand-to-hand combat, as Prussian soldiers did later in Frankfurt. Fleeing insurgents were hunted down and often shot. Thus the remembered experiences of 1848 included a tragic finale of grief and mourning. This is captured in the painting Memory of the Civil War by Ernest Meissonier, an artillery captain in the French National Guard who viewed at close range the carnage of the June Days in Paris. Though the revolutions of 1848 ended in bloody defeat, hard-won lessons in civic organizing and mass politics would remain important tools for political activists in the second half of the nineteenth century.

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QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS