The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany: With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three YearsMaurice, C. Edmund (Charles Edmund)
History
The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany: With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years
Maurice, C. Edmund (Charles Edmund)
Europe -- History -- 1848-1849; Revolutions -- Europe
The Ministry, which had been formed after the fall of Metternich, was
little likely to satisfy the hopes of the reformers. Kolowrat and
Kübeck, who had been supposed to be rather less illiberal than
Metternich, but who had worked with him in most of his schemes,
were prominent in this Ministry; and another member of it was
that Ficquelmont who had hoped to pacify Milan by help of dancers
and actresses. Only one member of the Ministry, the Freiherr von
Pillersdorf, had any real reputation for Liberalism; and even he had
been a colleague of Metternich, and had done little in that position to
counteract Metternich's policy. Finding it impossible, therefore, to
put any confidence in the official rulers of their country, the
Viennese naturally turned their attention to the formation of some
Government in which they could trust. On March 20 a special legion had
been formed composed of the students of the University; and a Committee
was soon after chosen from those professors and students who had played
a leading part in the Revolution. This Committee, which was at once the
outcome and the guide of the Students' Legion, became the centre of
popular confidence and admiration. Thus then there arose, in the very
first days of the Revolution, a marked division of interest and feeling
between the real and nominal rulers of Vienna. Some such antagonism is
perhaps the scarcely avoidable result of a revolution achieved by
violence, especially when the change of persons and forms produced by
that revolution is so incomplete as it was in Vienna. Those who, by
mere official position, are allowed to retain the leadership of
followers with whom they have no sympathy, are constantly expecting
that reforms which were begun in violence must be necessarily continued
by the same method; while the actual revolutionary leaders can hardly
believe in their own success, and are constantly suspecting that those
who have apparently accepted the new state of things, are really
plotting a reaction.
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