Thus, then, in this wonderful month of March, 1848, the whole system of Metternich had crumbled to the ground. The German national feeling, which he had hoped to crush out, was steadily ripening and embodying itself in a definite shape. The feeling for that "Geographical Expression" Italy had proved strong enough to drive Radetzky from Milan and Palffy from Venice. The rivalry between the Bohemians and Germans of the Austrian Empire seemed, for the moment, to have been merged in a common desire for liberty; and the Hungarian opposition, which Metternich had hoped to manipulate, had shaken him from power and from office, and had secured liberty to Vienna and practical independence to Hungary. Of the terrible divisions and rivalries which were to undermine the new fabric of liberty, the story will have to be told in the succeeding chapters. But the vigour, heroism, and self-sacrifice which had been brought to light in this early part of the movement will always make the March Risings of 1848 memorable in the history of Europe. FOOTNOTES: [9] The word "Anschluss" seems hardly to imply so complete a union as was afterwards aimed at by the German party in Vienna. [10] This petition must be given at length in order that students of the Revolution may realize the peculiar character of the Bohemian movement, since this is the only one of the March risings in which the claim of an oppressed people to live in peaceable equality beside their former oppressors was, for the time, successfully established. CHAPTER VIII. THE STRUGGLE OF THE RACES--APRIL TO JUNE, 1848.