This timeline is set in a world where the revolutions that erupted in 1848 are more successful, with Germany being unified through luck (and Austrian frailty) and Italy's unification beginning earlier. The POD is that the Hungarian parliament withdraws all troops from the Hapsburg armies, thus weakening the forces Radetzky is able to deploy against the Sardinian coalition. As a result the Austrians are defeated in Northern Italy, persuading the Prussian establishment to support the Frankfurt Parliament which is less disorganised in this world.
[FONT="]Chapter I-The Springtime of Nations[/FONT]
[FONT="]The immediate period of 1848-49 saw revolution and turmoil engulf Europe on an unforeseen scale. The surprising triumph of the forces of revolution in Germany, finally unifying what seemed the most divided nation in Europe, and the success of the beginnings of Italian unification contrasted rather viciously with the failures of reform in the Habsburg territories, as the Hungarian revolution was crushed by the great hand of reaction, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The revolutions of 1848 first broke out in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies which saw a popular uprising against the Bourbon king Ferdinand II, forcing him hastily to declare a new liberal constitution. Nevertheless he was forced from Palermo, with a coalition of nobles, radicals and others forming a quasi-independent state (Ferdinand himself fleeing to Naples.) The new government of Sicily quickly resuscitated the constitution of 1812, which brought parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster system and called for an Italian Confederation. In response monarchs throughout the peninsula, hastily declared new liberal constitutions. Regardless of this, the fate of Italy didn’t rest with the turmoil emerging in the peninsula, but the situation emerging within their Austrian neighbours. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The uprisings that brought the Habsburgs to the brink of collapse were caused by nationalism and the desire for reform. Since the beginning of the Congress era, Austria had been the pre-eminent European power. A bastion of absolutism, as its enemies would like to claim, the real power within the Habsburg lands lay with Metternich, a veteran of the Napoleonic era, who found himself up against the new forces of liberalism and nationalism unleashed by the bygone conflict. The uprisings in the empire, however initially broke out in response to the successful French revolution which overthrew the despondent regime of Louis-Philippe I. In response the Diet of Austria demanded Metternich’s resignation so as to begin a new era of reform: Metternich would flee to London. Uprisings arose in Venice, the Crown Lands of Bohemia and Moravia, Lombardy, Hungary and Galicia, leaving the empire looking decrepit. However the uprisings in the “German” lands of the empire were of no real significance: in Hungary and Northern Italy, however the empire saw a serious threat.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Certainly the end of the Orleanist regime in France, began the process of sweeping change throughout Europe: as a new provisional republic was declared in France, the Austrian territories in Italy drove out their nominal overlords, with Austrian forces driven out of Milan and Lombardy by the Milanese uprising. What turned a problematic situation for the Habsburg into a potential disaster was the declaration of the Hungarian revolution, placing the Habsburgs in the unpleasant scenario of two serious uprisings on two fronts. Sardinia, newly liberalised under Charles Albert (now theatrically reinvented as a moderate champion of democracy), saw a chance to unify Italy, and promptly declared war.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Meanwhile in Germany, the model of conservatism Frederick William IV, like many monarchs, proclaimed a new constitution (based on the Belgian one of 1831) granting freedom of press and association and a fully democratically elected parliament. Throughout the rest of Germany, monarchs of various shapes were faced with the same dilemma. This was to be exacerbated by the declaration of the first German Parliament in the neutral city of Frankfurt, which declared the “Empire of Germany” and then proceeded to spend most of the rest of the year struggling to formulate what this new state should consist of. Nevertheless the Provisional Government declared itself an entity, and found itself faced with a war not of its choosing: the new Danish constitution of 1848 claimed Saxe-Lauenburg and Schleswig-Holstein as part of its territory, depriving both duchies of sovereignty. This, chiming against the spirit of nationalism prevalent in the assembly, as well as enraging both Prussia and Austria (the leaders of the German Confederation) to declare war; the Provisional Government formed a loose federal army of the many states of Germany. The first battle of this war resulted in a Prussian victory: this however was not how the rest of the war would pan out.[/FONT]
[FONT="]With new states being declared, on what seemed an almost daily basis (the Republic of Saint Mark in Venice, always unfairly lumped in with the Italian nationalists is a personal favourite), the forces of reaction began to fight back. Pope Pius IX withdrew his support from the Sardinian unification efforts (the Sardinians having allied with the Tuscans, Papal States and Two Sicilies against the Austrians), leaving the Sardinian force reduced. However, while this would appear to deal the Sardinians a major blow, they had a stroke of luck, as the Hungarian parliament fully threw its support behind the Hungarian revolution and withdrew all of its troops from the Habsburg armies, leaving them (in Italy at least) serious reduced in numbers. The climax of this was the bloody Battle of Custoza, where the Sardinians after two days of brutal fighting emerged victorious, and began to push back the Austrians into Veneto. [/FONT]
[FONT="]While Italy and Hungary were slowly turning into disasters for the embattled Ferdinand I (who due to his various illnesses was not a monarch designed for crises), his forces managed to crush the rebellions within the vicinity of the Austrian territory, with both Prague and Vienna quickly recaptured by imperial forces. Despite this however, Hungarian forces marched ever further into Austrian land, and their uprising gained momentum. In Germany, meanwhile the first cabinet of the Provisional Government had collapsed over the constitutional question (whether Austria or Prussia should dominate). In its place emerged the two key chancellors of the period: Schmerling and Gagern. As the war in Denmark became a humiliating quagmire (the Danes pushed back the initial invasion, and were greatly helped by the continuous feuds between the various generals in the federal army), Schmerling signed the brief Armistice of Malmö, which allowed the Germans to regroup. Facing widespread unrest in Frankfurt over the slow progress of the formation of the new state, he assumed dictatorial powers, and placed martial law and a curfew across the city (inadvertently saving his biggest critic, radical Democrat Robert Blum’s life.) However this dictatorial approach made him deeply unpopular and his party (the Großdeutschland or Big Germany) were whitewashed in the parliamentary elections of that year, as many came around to the pragmatic realisation that a Prussian lead Germany would be a more likely scenario.[/FONT]
[FONT="]This however they could have mentioned to Frederick William, who toyed indecisively with the crown offered to him by the new cabinet of Gagern, who had finished drafting the constitution. What eventually persuaded him were concessions offered by the Provisional Government: the states and their rulers would not be forced to abdicate and would be treated as equals and property rights would be respected. The Prussian establishment, while not overly keen on the democratic state of affairs the new state would encourage, saw within the carnage that had engulfed the Habsburg territories a chance to emerge as the pre-eminent power within Germany (the prestige of the position of hereditary emperor also greatly appealed.) Thus Germany, after much deliberating and uncertainty finally came into being. The first act of this new nation was to fight an inconclusive naval battle with the Danes at Helgoland, under the command of Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who at this point in time, was the interim German Chancellor, perhaps making him the only man to command a fleet and a cabinet in the same day. However the war would end with a Danish victory at Fredericia, bringing the Schleswig War to an end. [/FONT]
[FONT="]While new leaders were emerging in Germany, in the old bastions of order Austria and France, they were being swept away. Louis-Philippe I had fled, following the raising of the Parisian barricades, while in Vienna the clinically unwell Ferdinand I abdicated in favour of his strapping young reactionary nephew Francis Joseph I (Franz-Joseph I), who immediately planned to destroy the Hungarian revolt, while simultaneously driving the Sardinians away from the Italian lands of the empire. In France, following the departure of Louis-Philippe, the French elected the nephew of former emperor Napoleon (the inspiringly named Louis-Napoleon) as President of the Republic. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The war against the Hungarians ends the year on a positive note for Francis Joseph, as the Habsburg forces defeated the Hungarians at the Battle of Mór, and recaptured Buda, depriving it of its independence. The Italian campaign however would see the Austrians, who had begun to push the Sardinians further and further out of Veneto, see disaster as Palermo (which had been recaptured by an Austro-Neapolitan force) rose up against the Austrians, diverting further troops south. Despite this however, the front had stabilised with neither side able to force the other out of Lombardy: this would change with the Battle of Novara, fought in late March, 1849. After two days of brutal fighting the Sardinians and their allies drove the Austrians out of Lombardy (having inflicted heavy losses), and pushed onwards to Brescia, where they forced the Austrians to surrender, after a ten day siege, resulting in Lombardy falling under Sardinian control.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Although the Austrians were defeated in the west, they had thanks to Francis Joseph’s gaining of Russian support (and the lack of genuine non-Hungarian support for the revolutionaries), started to crush the Hungarian revolutionaries who had obstinately declared their internationally unrecognised independence from Austria. The Hungarians, squeezed from both sides and with no real support from anyone powerful enough to take on the Austrians and Russians began to wither. In the Italian peninsula outside of the north, the radicals and revolutionaries who had forged new states in Rome, Venice and Sicily were crushed, with the Sardinians, who had by this point signed an armistice with the Austrians, refusing to intervene. The First Italian War of Independence would officially end in September with the Treaty of Amsterdam, which saw Sardinia, Tuscany, Lombardy and the Bourbon Duchies of Parma and Modena unified into the United Provinces of Northern Italy, with newly crowned Sardinian king Victor Emmanuel II as its first President (his father, Charles Albert I sadly dying before he could see his ambition realised.) Veneto, which following the armistice had been swiftly reconquered by the Austrians remained in Austrian hands.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Shifting our focus, it should be mentioned that given the political situation, most Western European monarchies had shifted to constitutionalism. During the two-year period of political upheaval the various Liberal parties and politicians found themselves in the position of governance: in the Low Countries and the newly constitutional Denmark, the Liberals won significant victories. Britain during this period found itself in control of another chunk of India, the Punjab, and while in the United States, Whig Zachary Taylor won the presidency. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The 1840s thus ended with new states and governments, with the dreams of liberalism and nationalism (not yet at this point mutually exclusive) somewhat realised.[/FONT]
[FONT="](Extract from Robert H. Mumby’s ‘Introduction’ to Accidental Nations: The Aftermath of the Springtime of Nations by Nikolai Ivanov (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958) pp. xi-xv)[/FONT]
[FONT="]Part I[/FONT]
[FONT="]New Beginnings[/FONT]
[FONT="]The immediate period of 1848-49 saw revolution and turmoil engulf Europe on an unforeseen scale. The surprising triumph of the forces of revolution in Germany, finally unifying what seemed the most divided nation in Europe, and the success of the beginnings of Italian unification contrasted rather viciously with the failures of reform in the Habsburg territories, as the Hungarian revolution was crushed by the great hand of reaction, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The revolutions of 1848 first broke out in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies which saw a popular uprising against the Bourbon king Ferdinand II, forcing him hastily to declare a new liberal constitution. Nevertheless he was forced from Palermo, with a coalition of nobles, radicals and others forming a quasi-independent state (Ferdinand himself fleeing to Naples.) The new government of Sicily quickly resuscitated the constitution of 1812, which brought parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster system and called for an Italian Confederation. In response monarchs throughout the peninsula, hastily declared new liberal constitutions. Regardless of this, the fate of Italy didn’t rest with the turmoil emerging in the peninsula, but the situation emerging within their Austrian neighbours. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The uprisings that brought the Habsburgs to the brink of collapse were caused by nationalism and the desire for reform. Since the beginning of the Congress era, Austria had been the pre-eminent European power. A bastion of absolutism, as its enemies would like to claim, the real power within the Habsburg lands lay with Metternich, a veteran of the Napoleonic era, who found himself up against the new forces of liberalism and nationalism unleashed by the bygone conflict. The uprisings in the empire, however initially broke out in response to the successful French revolution which overthrew the despondent regime of Louis-Philippe I. In response the Diet of Austria demanded Metternich’s resignation so as to begin a new era of reform: Metternich would flee to London. Uprisings arose in Venice, the Crown Lands of Bohemia and Moravia, Lombardy, Hungary and Galicia, leaving the empire looking decrepit. However the uprisings in the “German” lands of the empire were of no real significance: in Hungary and Northern Italy, however the empire saw a serious threat.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Certainly the end of the Orleanist regime in France, began the process of sweeping change throughout Europe: as a new provisional republic was declared in France, the Austrian territories in Italy drove out their nominal overlords, with Austrian forces driven out of Milan and Lombardy by the Milanese uprising. What turned a problematic situation for the Habsburg into a potential disaster was the declaration of the Hungarian revolution, placing the Habsburgs in the unpleasant scenario of two serious uprisings on two fronts. Sardinia, newly liberalised under Charles Albert (now theatrically reinvented as a moderate champion of democracy), saw a chance to unify Italy, and promptly declared war.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Meanwhile in Germany, the model of conservatism Frederick William IV, like many monarchs, proclaimed a new constitution (based on the Belgian one of 1831) granting freedom of press and association and a fully democratically elected parliament. Throughout the rest of Germany, monarchs of various shapes were faced with the same dilemma. This was to be exacerbated by the declaration of the first German Parliament in the neutral city of Frankfurt, which declared the “Empire of Germany” and then proceeded to spend most of the rest of the year struggling to formulate what this new state should consist of. Nevertheless the Provisional Government declared itself an entity, and found itself faced with a war not of its choosing: the new Danish constitution of 1848 claimed Saxe-Lauenburg and Schleswig-Holstein as part of its territory, depriving both duchies of sovereignty. This, chiming against the spirit of nationalism prevalent in the assembly, as well as enraging both Prussia and Austria (the leaders of the German Confederation) to declare war; the Provisional Government formed a loose federal army of the many states of Germany. The first battle of this war resulted in a Prussian victory: this however was not how the rest of the war would pan out.[/FONT]
[FONT="]With new states being declared, on what seemed an almost daily basis (the Republic of Saint Mark in Venice, always unfairly lumped in with the Italian nationalists is a personal favourite), the forces of reaction began to fight back. Pope Pius IX withdrew his support from the Sardinian unification efforts (the Sardinians having allied with the Tuscans, Papal States and Two Sicilies against the Austrians), leaving the Sardinian force reduced. However, while this would appear to deal the Sardinians a major blow, they had a stroke of luck, as the Hungarian parliament fully threw its support behind the Hungarian revolution and withdrew all of its troops from the Habsburg armies, leaving them (in Italy at least) serious reduced in numbers. The climax of this was the bloody Battle of Custoza, where the Sardinians after two days of brutal fighting emerged victorious, and began to push back the Austrians into Veneto. [/FONT]
[FONT="]While Italy and Hungary were slowly turning into disasters for the embattled Ferdinand I (who due to his various illnesses was not a monarch designed for crises), his forces managed to crush the rebellions within the vicinity of the Austrian territory, with both Prague and Vienna quickly recaptured by imperial forces. Despite this however, Hungarian forces marched ever further into Austrian land, and their uprising gained momentum. In Germany, meanwhile the first cabinet of the Provisional Government had collapsed over the constitutional question (whether Austria or Prussia should dominate). In its place emerged the two key chancellors of the period: Schmerling and Gagern. As the war in Denmark became a humiliating quagmire (the Danes pushed back the initial invasion, and were greatly helped by the continuous feuds between the various generals in the federal army), Schmerling signed the brief Armistice of Malmö, which allowed the Germans to regroup. Facing widespread unrest in Frankfurt over the slow progress of the formation of the new state, he assumed dictatorial powers, and placed martial law and a curfew across the city (inadvertently saving his biggest critic, radical Democrat Robert Blum’s life.) However this dictatorial approach made him deeply unpopular and his party (the Großdeutschland or Big Germany) were whitewashed in the parliamentary elections of that year, as many came around to the pragmatic realisation that a Prussian lead Germany would be a more likely scenario.[/FONT]
[FONT="]This however they could have mentioned to Frederick William, who toyed indecisively with the crown offered to him by the new cabinet of Gagern, who had finished drafting the constitution. What eventually persuaded him were concessions offered by the Provisional Government: the states and their rulers would not be forced to abdicate and would be treated as equals and property rights would be respected. The Prussian establishment, while not overly keen on the democratic state of affairs the new state would encourage, saw within the carnage that had engulfed the Habsburg territories a chance to emerge as the pre-eminent power within Germany (the prestige of the position of hereditary emperor also greatly appealed.) Thus Germany, after much deliberating and uncertainty finally came into being. The first act of this new nation was to fight an inconclusive naval battle with the Danes at Helgoland, under the command of Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who at this point in time, was the interim German Chancellor, perhaps making him the only man to command a fleet and a cabinet in the same day. However the war would end with a Danish victory at Fredericia, bringing the Schleswig War to an end. [/FONT]
[FONT="]While new leaders were emerging in Germany, in the old bastions of order Austria and France, they were being swept away. Louis-Philippe I had fled, following the raising of the Parisian barricades, while in Vienna the clinically unwell Ferdinand I abdicated in favour of his strapping young reactionary nephew Francis Joseph I (Franz-Joseph I), who immediately planned to destroy the Hungarian revolt, while simultaneously driving the Sardinians away from the Italian lands of the empire. In France, following the departure of Louis-Philippe, the French elected the nephew of former emperor Napoleon (the inspiringly named Louis-Napoleon) as President of the Republic. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The war against the Hungarians ends the year on a positive note for Francis Joseph, as the Habsburg forces defeated the Hungarians at the Battle of Mór, and recaptured Buda, depriving it of its independence. The Italian campaign however would see the Austrians, who had begun to push the Sardinians further and further out of Veneto, see disaster as Palermo (which had been recaptured by an Austro-Neapolitan force) rose up against the Austrians, diverting further troops south. Despite this however, the front had stabilised with neither side able to force the other out of Lombardy: this would change with the Battle of Novara, fought in late March, 1849. After two days of brutal fighting the Sardinians and their allies drove the Austrians out of Lombardy (having inflicted heavy losses), and pushed onwards to Brescia, where they forced the Austrians to surrender, after a ten day siege, resulting in Lombardy falling under Sardinian control.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Although the Austrians were defeated in the west, they had thanks to Francis Joseph’s gaining of Russian support (and the lack of genuine non-Hungarian support for the revolutionaries), started to crush the Hungarian revolutionaries who had obstinately declared their internationally unrecognised independence from Austria. The Hungarians, squeezed from both sides and with no real support from anyone powerful enough to take on the Austrians and Russians began to wither. In the Italian peninsula outside of the north, the radicals and revolutionaries who had forged new states in Rome, Venice and Sicily were crushed, with the Sardinians, who had by this point signed an armistice with the Austrians, refusing to intervene. The First Italian War of Independence would officially end in September with the Treaty of Amsterdam, which saw Sardinia, Tuscany, Lombardy and the Bourbon Duchies of Parma and Modena unified into the United Provinces of Northern Italy, with newly crowned Sardinian king Victor Emmanuel II as its first President (his father, Charles Albert I sadly dying before he could see his ambition realised.) Veneto, which following the armistice had been swiftly reconquered by the Austrians remained in Austrian hands.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Shifting our focus, it should be mentioned that given the political situation, most Western European monarchies had shifted to constitutionalism. During the two-year period of political upheaval the various Liberal parties and politicians found themselves in the position of governance: in the Low Countries and the newly constitutional Denmark, the Liberals won significant victories. Britain during this period found itself in control of another chunk of India, the Punjab, and while in the United States, Whig Zachary Taylor won the presidency. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The 1840s thus ended with new states and governments, with the dreams of liberalism and nationalism (not yet at this point mutually exclusive) somewhat realised.[/FONT]
[FONT="](Extract from Robert H. Mumby’s ‘Introduction’ to Accidental Nations: The Aftermath of the Springtime of Nations by Nikolai Ivanov (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958) pp. xi-xv)[/FONT]
