In Austria conditions were even more reactionary than in Germany. Metternich, the powerful representative of the ancient order of things, had a haughty contempt for the demands of the constitutional party. With the hauteur of absolutism he not only retained political power in the feudal class, but suppressed literature, censored learning, and rigorously superintended religion. A greater power than caste and tradition was slowly eating its way into this country, which had attempted to isolate itself from the rest of the world. This was the power of machine industry. It brought with it, as in every other country, a new class, the manufacturers, who, as soon as their business began to expand, sought favorable laws. This led them into political activity, which, in turn, brought friction with the feudalists. Both sides took to the field. The revolution broke in Vienna, March 13, 1848, seventeen days after the revolutionists had driven Louis Philippe out of Paris, and five days before the Prussian king delivered himself into the hands of a Berlin mob. It was in France that the revolution assumed its most virulent character. In Paris the revolution was "carried on between the mass of the working people on the one hand and all the other classes of the Parisian population, supported by the army, on the other."[2] This Parisian proletarian uprising was the red signal of warning to Germany and Austria. The bourgeois were now as anxious to rid themselves of the Socialist contingent as they had been eager for its support when they began their struggle for political power. Compromises between feudalists and commercialists were effected, and a sort of constitutionalism became the basis of the reconstructed governments. Of these revolutions Marx says: "In all cases the real fighting body of the insurgents, that body which first took up arms and gave battle to the troops, consisted of the working classes of the towns. A portion of the poorer country population, laborers and petty farmers, generally joined them after the outbreak of the conflict."[3]