This is my latest TL. I've been wanting to do a TL with an 1848 PoD for a long time, but I hadn't gotten around to it until now. I purposely avoided reading Aussie Guy's TL 'Ich bin Ein Frankfurter' which is based on a similar PoD AFAIK. I didn't want his ideas to influence my own and I certainly don't want to be accused of plagiarizing his work. I hope everyone likes what I've written so far. I split the first chapter in two because of its size. Enjoy
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The year 1848 would prove to be a very pivotal year in European and world history with the breaking out of the revolutions in Europe and the unifications of Italy and Germany. Such a wide variety of factors contributed to the Revolutions of 1848 that it is difficult to see them as a single, coherent event even if historians of today widely use the denominator Revolutions of 1848, a term that has remained in popular up until even today. Technological advances were revolutionizing the life of the working classes, but little in terms of wage increases or political rights followed. Society was rapidly transforming in the first half of the nineteenth century with liberals and radical politicians agitating for different state forms and ideas like popular liberalism, nationalism, socialism and communism rising up. Large sections of society were discontented with royal absolutism or near-absolutism as shown by an uprising in Austrian Galicia of the Polish nobility in 1846 which was only crushed after the peasantry rose up against said nobles. Similarly, Prussia experienced democratic uprisings in Greater Poland in the same year. The middle and lower working classes wanted reforms with the former providing an impetus while the latter served mostly as cannon fodder for the middle classes. The industrialization had done nothing to improve living standards for workers who toiled for thirteen to fifteen hours a day for little pay. In the meantime, traditional artisans had seen their guilds and therefore their livelihoods disappear while the small, but wealthy industrial bourgeoisie got wealthier as time went by. The rural areas weren’t much better off with the aristocracy still owning most of the land. Here – so it seemed – nothing had changed since before the French revolution of 1789. The peasantry was bound to the nobles who controlled the land and therefore had status and power. Also, a potato blight hit, starting in Belgium and causing a subsistence crisis in Northern Europe. While reforms ameliorated some of feudalism’s hardships, the new socio-economic system of capitalism wasn’t everything either in the 1840s. Increasing population concentration also led to epidemics of cholera and other diseases. While the lower classes demanded a better living, the middle classes with their influence demanded suffrage and democracy. Unrest was brewing in Europe.
In the German states, nationalism was on the rise, especially after the Rhineland Crisis of 1840 when it seemed that France would invade the Rhineland, leading to widespread nationalist sentiment. The Danish declaration that they would invade Schleswig-Holstein also aroused widespread nationalist sentiment. German nationalism was shown in the creation of the Prussia-Hessen Customs Union which by 1834 had grown into a Zollverein. This Zollverein achieved a single set of weights and one currency for its member states. Events in France following the abdication and flight of King Louis-Philippe would affect the German states as well. In Prussia, arguably the most powerful German state besides Austria, crowds took to the streets, overwhelming the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV who caved in to their demands of a constitution, freedom of the press and democratic elections. In Frankfurt, a Constitutional National Assembly was formed in the St. Paul’s Cathedral to write up a liberal constitution for all of Germany, but they proved unable to make any decision on behalf of the whole of Germany and degenerated into a mere debating association while King Friedrich Wilhelm IV unilaterally imposed a monarchist constitution on Prussia and reneged on his word. The only legislation of any importance passed by the Frankfurt Assembly was the creation of a German fleet or Reichsflotte. Furthermore, the Frankfurt Assembly was too divided between Prussia supporters, Austria supporters, Catholics, Protestants, Kleindeutschland supporters and Grossdeutschland supporters. The Assembly had the theoretical military support of Prussia which, however, made them a ploy in the hands of the Prussians. In addition to this, Von Peucker, who they had made their minister of war, announced he would only use his army on Prussia’s behalf. When they offered the crown of a united Germany to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, he initially refused. Despite the weakness of the Frankfurt Assembly, however, and the opposition of the staunch Prussian King, his hand would be forced by events out of his control in Austria and Russia.
Austria was a divided multiethnic state even if it had been nominally the most powerful German state from 1815 to 1848 under Von Metternich. In Vienna too, crowds took to the streets with similar demands as those in Berlin such as democracy and elections. Emperor Ferdinand I fired Von Metternich who left for Britain while the Emperor appointed nominally liberal ministers to draft a liberal constitution. This constitution, however, didn’t allow for the majority of the populace to vote which led to renewed protests. In the meantime, the Emperor who was also King Ferdinand V of Hungary, had to deal with a democratic revolution in Hungary as well. The uprising started on March 15th 1848 with crowds amassing in Pest and Buda who forced the Imperial governor to accept all of the crowd’s demands. A liberal party that had formed in the Hungarian Diet over the past two decades under Lajos Kossuth took charge and issued a sweeping package of reforms known as the April Laws which basically laid the foundations for a democratic political system while also giving the new government authority over the Hungarian regiments in the Habsburg Army. In the summer of 1848, the Hungarians, aware that they were headed toward a civil war, offered support against Italy by sending troops there in exchange for support against general Josip Jelačić who wanted more autonomy for Croatia, but Vienna rebuked the offer and wanted them to cease any attempts to create a Hungarian army. With the enormous chaos within the Austrian Empire, the Italians rising up and events in Germany, Vienna recognised the Hungarian government at first. Franz Joseph, however, replaced his retarded uncle Ferdinand as Emperor and he withdrew recognition of Kossuth’s regime. When Vienna dispatched Count Lamberg to take control of Habsburg troops in Hungary, he was attacked upon arrival and war broke out. The Austrians were supported by the Romanian, Serbian and Croatian peasantry which they manipulated to turn against their oppressive Hungarian masters while Hungary was supported by their own German, Slovak, Rusyn people and Jewish minorities. The Hungarians achieved a number of victories and in April 1849 even declared total independence while Russia was paralyzed by a leadership crisis. Tsar Nicholas I, ‘the Gendarme of Europe’, had been struck by a case of throat cancer. By the time of the Hungarian declaration of independence, he had lost the ability to speak and was bedridden. His ability of decision making had degraded severely due to his ailment which caused him incessant and terrible pain which led to him not being able to focus on anything else. This apparent weakness of St. Petersburg led by an incapacitated Tsar encouraged the Poles to continue their revolt while the Hungarian army scored more victories over Habsburg forces. These events in Central and Eastern Europe led to a Habsburg power crisis which would have severe consequences for the events in the German and Italian states.
First of all, the Hungarian regiments in general Radetzky’s army had to be withdrawn from Italy to fight in Hungary for lack of Russian reinforcements. Like in Germany, there was no unified Italian nation state, but a number of states such as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Papal States, Tuscany, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia and the two small duchies of Parma and Modena. Italy was more rural than the rest of Europe and slow Italian farming which was uncompetitive was the mainstay of the Italian economies which made them very vulnerable to radical changes. Prices were generally not very high and therefore incomes weren’t either. Foreign powers were much more efficient in farming which had led to food riots throughout the 1840s. The Italian states were all absolutist monarchies, but were generally less oppressive with even peasants owning small pieces of land and more rights for women who often participated in public affairs. Nonetheless, discontent simmered in Italy too, albeit in the middle and higher classes who wanted a unified Italy and expulsion of Austria out of the northeast of Italy where they still held Venice. The Italians were divided as well with radicals wanting an Italian republic while moderates wanted to establish a confederation of Italian kingdoms with the Pope as its nominal ruler and mediator. The revolution in Italy started in Milan which soon pledged allegiance to Charles Albert of Savoy, King of Sardinia, to keep the radicals among them at bay, and also rallying northern Italy under one banner. General, by now field marshal, Joseph Radetzky, arrived and retreated his forces to the Quadrilatero, a group of fortresses halfway between Milan and Venice. Charles Albert, seeing how the retreat of the Hungarian regiments had fatally weakened Radetzky’s forces, decided to pursue a quick victory as he outnumbered his enemy right now, before more Austrian troops could be brought to bear once the Hungarian Revolution had been put down by the Habsburgs. The Italian forces under Charles Albert achieved a victory at Custoza and continued to pursue the Austrians, taking Verona, Mantova, Legnano and Peschiera. Radetzky didn’t have the forces he needed to combat the Italian armies effectively and could only retreat from one defensive line to the next although he made the Italians pay with blood for every victory and stopped them on the Piave river. Vienna agreed to peace with the northern Italian states who had now unified under the banner of Sardinia, establishing the border of the nascent Kingdom of Italy on the Piave river, thereby surrendering the coveted doge city Venice to the House of Savoy. The Italian speaking regions of South Tyrol and Trentino were also awarded to the Kingdom of Italy that at this time only unified the northern Italian states of Sardinia, Lombardy-Venetia (minus the territory east of the Piave river), the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the duchies of Parma, Luca and Modena. Victory over Austria had been achieved by 1849, but Italy still wasn’t fully unified. Pope Pius IX, seeing the enormous success of Sardinia in unifying northern Italy, recalled his troops and suddenly didn’t want to become part of a unified Italian nation state any more while the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies hadn’t supported the unification process in the first place, much to the outrage of Italian nationalists who wanted to include the state on the south of the Italian boot in the new Kingdom of Italy. Revolutionaries swept the countryside which forced King Ferdinand II to flee abroad. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was easily incorporated into the north which for now had Turin as its provisional capital although the intention was to take Rome and establish the eternal city as the Italian capital. In 1848, papal rule was temporarily interrupted by a republican revolution. The Italian armies swept into the papal states and reduced the domains of Pius IX to just Rome by the time French forces sent by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte arrived to reinforce the papal armies. He turned from a liberal pope to a narrow-minded conservative one since his relative liberalism hadn’t brought him any good. Only French military might kept him in charge over Rome which was the only part that remained of the Papal States. The Italian capital was moved to Florence, northern Italy. By the start of 1850, Italian unification had nearly been achieved.
.‘A Liberal German Empire? Not while I’m King of Prussia!’
Chapter I: The Revolutions of 1848 and the Unification of the German and Italian Nation States, 1848 – 1861.
The year 1848 would prove to be a very pivotal year in European and world history with the breaking out of the revolutions in Europe and the unifications of Italy and Germany. Such a wide variety of factors contributed to the Revolutions of 1848 that it is difficult to see them as a single, coherent event even if historians of today widely use the denominator Revolutions of 1848, a term that has remained in popular up until even today. Technological advances were revolutionizing the life of the working classes, but little in terms of wage increases or political rights followed. Society was rapidly transforming in the first half of the nineteenth century with liberals and radical politicians agitating for different state forms and ideas like popular liberalism, nationalism, socialism and communism rising up. Large sections of society were discontented with royal absolutism or near-absolutism as shown by an uprising in Austrian Galicia of the Polish nobility in 1846 which was only crushed after the peasantry rose up against said nobles. Similarly, Prussia experienced democratic uprisings in Greater Poland in the same year. The middle and lower working classes wanted reforms with the former providing an impetus while the latter served mostly as cannon fodder for the middle classes. The industrialization had done nothing to improve living standards for workers who toiled for thirteen to fifteen hours a day for little pay. In the meantime, traditional artisans had seen their guilds and therefore their livelihoods disappear while the small, but wealthy industrial bourgeoisie got wealthier as time went by. The rural areas weren’t much better off with the aristocracy still owning most of the land. Here – so it seemed – nothing had changed since before the French revolution of 1789. The peasantry was bound to the nobles who controlled the land and therefore had status and power. Also, a potato blight hit, starting in Belgium and causing a subsistence crisis in Northern Europe. While reforms ameliorated some of feudalism’s hardships, the new socio-economic system of capitalism wasn’t everything either in the 1840s. Increasing population concentration also led to epidemics of cholera and other diseases. While the lower classes demanded a better living, the middle classes with their influence demanded suffrage and democracy. Unrest was brewing in Europe.
In the German states, nationalism was on the rise, especially after the Rhineland Crisis of 1840 when it seemed that France would invade the Rhineland, leading to widespread nationalist sentiment. The Danish declaration that they would invade Schleswig-Holstein also aroused widespread nationalist sentiment. German nationalism was shown in the creation of the Prussia-Hessen Customs Union which by 1834 had grown into a Zollverein. This Zollverein achieved a single set of weights and one currency for its member states. Events in France following the abdication and flight of King Louis-Philippe would affect the German states as well. In Prussia, arguably the most powerful German state besides Austria, crowds took to the streets, overwhelming the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV who caved in to their demands of a constitution, freedom of the press and democratic elections. In Frankfurt, a Constitutional National Assembly was formed in the St. Paul’s Cathedral to write up a liberal constitution for all of Germany, but they proved unable to make any decision on behalf of the whole of Germany and degenerated into a mere debating association while King Friedrich Wilhelm IV unilaterally imposed a monarchist constitution on Prussia and reneged on his word. The only legislation of any importance passed by the Frankfurt Assembly was the creation of a German fleet or Reichsflotte. Furthermore, the Frankfurt Assembly was too divided between Prussia supporters, Austria supporters, Catholics, Protestants, Kleindeutschland supporters and Grossdeutschland supporters. The Assembly had the theoretical military support of Prussia which, however, made them a ploy in the hands of the Prussians. In addition to this, Von Peucker, who they had made their minister of war, announced he would only use his army on Prussia’s behalf. When they offered the crown of a united Germany to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, he initially refused. Despite the weakness of the Frankfurt Assembly, however, and the opposition of the staunch Prussian King, his hand would be forced by events out of his control in Austria and Russia.
Austria was a divided multiethnic state even if it had been nominally the most powerful German state from 1815 to 1848 under Von Metternich. In Vienna too, crowds took to the streets with similar demands as those in Berlin such as democracy and elections. Emperor Ferdinand I fired Von Metternich who left for Britain while the Emperor appointed nominally liberal ministers to draft a liberal constitution. This constitution, however, didn’t allow for the majority of the populace to vote which led to renewed protests. In the meantime, the Emperor who was also King Ferdinand V of Hungary, had to deal with a democratic revolution in Hungary as well. The uprising started on March 15th 1848 with crowds amassing in Pest and Buda who forced the Imperial governor to accept all of the crowd’s demands. A liberal party that had formed in the Hungarian Diet over the past two decades under Lajos Kossuth took charge and issued a sweeping package of reforms known as the April Laws which basically laid the foundations for a democratic political system while also giving the new government authority over the Hungarian regiments in the Habsburg Army. In the summer of 1848, the Hungarians, aware that they were headed toward a civil war, offered support against Italy by sending troops there in exchange for support against general Josip Jelačić who wanted more autonomy for Croatia, but Vienna rebuked the offer and wanted them to cease any attempts to create a Hungarian army. With the enormous chaos within the Austrian Empire, the Italians rising up and events in Germany, Vienna recognised the Hungarian government at first. Franz Joseph, however, replaced his retarded uncle Ferdinand as Emperor and he withdrew recognition of Kossuth’s regime. When Vienna dispatched Count Lamberg to take control of Habsburg troops in Hungary, he was attacked upon arrival and war broke out. The Austrians were supported by the Romanian, Serbian and Croatian peasantry which they manipulated to turn against their oppressive Hungarian masters while Hungary was supported by their own German, Slovak, Rusyn people and Jewish minorities. The Hungarians achieved a number of victories and in April 1849 even declared total independence while Russia was paralyzed by a leadership crisis. Tsar Nicholas I, ‘the Gendarme of Europe’, had been struck by a case of throat cancer. By the time of the Hungarian declaration of independence, he had lost the ability to speak and was bedridden. His ability of decision making had degraded severely due to his ailment which caused him incessant and terrible pain which led to him not being able to focus on anything else. This apparent weakness of St. Petersburg led by an incapacitated Tsar encouraged the Poles to continue their revolt while the Hungarian army scored more victories over Habsburg forces. These events in Central and Eastern Europe led to a Habsburg power crisis which would have severe consequences for the events in the German and Italian states.
First of all, the Hungarian regiments in general Radetzky’s army had to be withdrawn from Italy to fight in Hungary for lack of Russian reinforcements. Like in Germany, there was no unified Italian nation state, but a number of states such as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Papal States, Tuscany, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia and the two small duchies of Parma and Modena. Italy was more rural than the rest of Europe and slow Italian farming which was uncompetitive was the mainstay of the Italian economies which made them very vulnerable to radical changes. Prices were generally not very high and therefore incomes weren’t either. Foreign powers were much more efficient in farming which had led to food riots throughout the 1840s. The Italian states were all absolutist monarchies, but were generally less oppressive with even peasants owning small pieces of land and more rights for women who often participated in public affairs. Nonetheless, discontent simmered in Italy too, albeit in the middle and higher classes who wanted a unified Italy and expulsion of Austria out of the northeast of Italy where they still held Venice. The Italians were divided as well with radicals wanting an Italian republic while moderates wanted to establish a confederation of Italian kingdoms with the Pope as its nominal ruler and mediator. The revolution in Italy started in Milan which soon pledged allegiance to Charles Albert of Savoy, King of Sardinia, to keep the radicals among them at bay, and also rallying northern Italy under one banner. General, by now field marshal, Joseph Radetzky, arrived and retreated his forces to the Quadrilatero, a group of fortresses halfway between Milan and Venice. Charles Albert, seeing how the retreat of the Hungarian regiments had fatally weakened Radetzky’s forces, decided to pursue a quick victory as he outnumbered his enemy right now, before more Austrian troops could be brought to bear once the Hungarian Revolution had been put down by the Habsburgs. The Italian forces under Charles Albert achieved a victory at Custoza and continued to pursue the Austrians, taking Verona, Mantova, Legnano and Peschiera. Radetzky didn’t have the forces he needed to combat the Italian armies effectively and could only retreat from one defensive line to the next although he made the Italians pay with blood for every victory and stopped them on the Piave river. Vienna agreed to peace with the northern Italian states who had now unified under the banner of Sardinia, establishing the border of the nascent Kingdom of Italy on the Piave river, thereby surrendering the coveted doge city Venice to the House of Savoy. The Italian speaking regions of South Tyrol and Trentino were also awarded to the Kingdom of Italy that at this time only unified the northern Italian states of Sardinia, Lombardy-Venetia (minus the territory east of the Piave river), the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the duchies of Parma, Luca and Modena. Victory over Austria had been achieved by 1849, but Italy still wasn’t fully unified. Pope Pius IX, seeing the enormous success of Sardinia in unifying northern Italy, recalled his troops and suddenly didn’t want to become part of a unified Italian nation state any more while the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies hadn’t supported the unification process in the first place, much to the outrage of Italian nationalists who wanted to include the state on the south of the Italian boot in the new Kingdom of Italy. Revolutionaries swept the countryside which forced King Ferdinand II to flee abroad. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was easily incorporated into the north which for now had Turin as its provisional capital although the intention was to take Rome and establish the eternal city as the Italian capital. In 1848, papal rule was temporarily interrupted by a republican revolution. The Italian armies swept into the papal states and reduced the domains of Pius IX to just Rome by the time French forces sent by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte arrived to reinforce the papal armies. He turned from a liberal pope to a narrow-minded conservative one since his relative liberalism hadn’t brought him any good. Only French military might kept him in charge over Rome which was the only part that remained of the Papal States. The Italian capital was moved to Florence, northern Italy. By the start of 1850, Italian unification had nearly been achieved.
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