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the fall of Napoleon he had returned
to Paris. He was much more intelligent than his Bourbon
cousins. He was a simple man who went about in the public
parks with a red cotton umbrella under his arm, followed by a
brood of children like any good housefather. But France had
outgrown the king business and Louis did not know this until
the morning of the 24th of February, of the year 1848, when
a crowd stormed the Tuilleries and drove his Majesty away and
proclaimed the Republic.
When the news of this event reached Vienna, Metternich
expressed the casual opinion that this was only a repetition
of the year 1793 and that the Allies would once more be obliged
to march upon Paris and make an end to this very unseemly
democratic row. But two weeks later his own Austrian capital
was in open revolt. Metternich escaped from the mob through
the back door of his palace, and the Emperor Ferdinand was
forced to give his subjects a constitution which embodied most
of the revolutionary principles which his Prime Minister had
tried to suppress for the last thirty-three years.
This time all Europe felt the shock. Hungary declared itself
independent, and commenced a war against the Habsburgs
under the leadership of Louis Kossuth. The unequal
struggle lasted more than a year. It was finally suppressed by
the armies of Tsar Nicholas who marched across the Carpathian
mountains and made Hungary once more safe for autocracy.
The Habsburgs thereupon established extraordinary
court-martials and hanged the greater part of the Hungarian
patriots whom they had not been able to defeat in open battle.
As for Italy, the island of Sicily declared itself independent
from Naples and drove its Bourbon king away. In the Papal
states the prime minister, Rossi, was murdered and the Pope
was forced to flee. He returned the next year at the head of a
French army which remained in Rome to protect His Holiness
against his subjects until the year 1870. Then it was
called back to defend France against the Prussians, and
Rome became the capital of Italy. In the north, Milan and
Venice rose against their Austrian masters. They were supported
by king Albert of Sardinia, but a strong Austrian army
under old Radetzky marched into the valley of the Po, defeated
the Sardinians near Custozza and Novara and forced
Albert to abdicate in favour of his son, Victor Emanuel, who
a few years later was to be the first king of a united Italy.
In Germany the unrest of the year 1848 took the form of a
great national demonstration in favour of political unity and a
representative form of government. In Bavaria, the king who
had wasted his time and money upon an Irish lady who posed as
a Spanish dancer--(she was called Lola Montez and lies buried
in New York's Potter's Field)--was driven away by the enraged
students of the university. In Prussia, the king was
forced to stand with uncovered head before the coffins of those
who had been killed during the street fighting and to promise a
constitutional form of government. And in March of the year
1849, a German parliament, consisting of 550 delegates from
all parts of the country came together in Frankfort and proposed
that king Frederick William of Prussia should be the
Emperor of a United Germany.
Then, however, the tide began to turn. Incompetent Ferdinand
had abdicated in favour of his nephew Francis Joseph.
The well-drilled Austrian army had remained faithful to their
war-lord. The hangman was given plenty of work and the
Habsburgs, after the nature of that strangely cat-like family,
once more landed upon their feet and rapidly strengthened
their position as the masters of eastern and western Europe.
They played the game of politics very adroitly and used the
jealousies of the other German states to prevent the elevation
of the Prussian king to the Imperial dignity. Their long train-
ing in the art of suffering defeat had taught them the value of
patience. They knew how to wait. They bided their time
and while the liberals, utterly untrained in practical politics,