Don't Pass Me By

These last couple of History classes we have politely been disagreeing with the views of many historians. In Europe in 1830 and 1848 there were waves of revolts, and some historians believe these were failures in the harshest degree. That was not how we saw it. The lesson began with us creating a chart (my group’s chart is on the right) and what I enjoyed about this was the level of freedom we were allowed that I do not usually expect in school. We had to have at least five ticks, one success, one neutral, and one failure, and two in between, and that was all the criteria. We never even went over them, just went straight to using them, and I found that very refreshing. Then, in order to use our charts, we reorganized into new groups and read about a particular European revolution from either 1848 or 1830, mine was the Frankfurt Assembly. Once we comprehended and took notes on our revolution we made surveys to help the rest of the groups learn about the Frankfurt Assembly. The surveys worked out well because the students were allowed the same resources that the creators had used to make the survey.

Making this survey helped to reinforce what I had learned, reading about the Frankfurt Assembly. My revolution began with, like the name suggests, an assembly. The members of this assembly were
Nationalists and Liberals who wished to unite the German states under a constitution. The opponent of this revolution was King Fredrick William IV who was at first a person the Frankfurt Assembly had hoped would help them reach their goals. In the one of the sources we were presented with, a speech of Johann Gustav Droysen, one of the members of the 1848 Frankfurt Assembly, he boils down the point of their assembly to two sentences, "We need a powerful ruling house. Austria's power meant lack of power for us, whereas Prussia desired German unity in order to supply the deficiencies of her own power.” The conclusion of the Frankfurt Assembly was to offer the role of German King to Prussia’s King, Fredrick William IV, but as we already know, things did not go as planned. In a proclamation during 1849, Prussia’s King said, "I am not able to return a favorable reply to the offer of a crown on the part of the German National Assembly [the meeting in Frankfurt], because the assembly has not the right, without the consent of the German government, to bestow the crown which they tended me..." That same year the Assembled Germans dissolved when threatened by the Prussian military. It was members of the middle class who were either inspired by the assembly or ex-members who took to the streets and began the revolt, and Conservatives, like usual, were the ones who stopped the revolutionaries. As punishment, the revolutionaries that were not killed were mostly sent to prison. People who had not been sent to jail left their homeland of Germany, fearing for their safety.

Generalizing the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848, none of them succeeded completely, so it is easy to draw the conclusion that they were all failures. However, looking at the chart we made at the beginning of this lesson, a revolution is not something that either accomplishes everything it sets out to or fails to make any difference at all, there are in-betweens. The French Revolution of 1830 was, for the reign of King Louis Philippe, a temporary success. These 1830 French revolutionaries wanted freedom from the restricting govern of King Charles X's ruling, and they got that, even if it was only for a short time, that taste of change could have helped inspire the next revolution in France in 1848. Louis Philippe was only on the throne because his citizens put him there and he thanked his people by having policies that mostly benefiting the middle class. Another revolution that cannot be classified as a complete failure is the 1848 revolt in Hungary. Again here, the key word is temporary. Louis Kossuth, a Hungarian activist and writer of pamphlets, led a revolt against the government, demanding an end to serfdom, an independent government, and a written document protecting the basic rights of Hungarians. Overwhelmed, the government agreed to the propositions and enacted them, but, when Austrian troops regained control of Prague, it was back to the old unhappy ways. With the revolutions of Hungary, 1830 France, and the Frankfurt Assembly, they had ephemeral successes, however, due to the Principle of Intervention, the revolutionaries never got their way, which is how the Congress of Vienna hoped it would play out.