WI/AHC: Germany united in 1848

Eh, not really. What basically happened was that the revolutionaries, after effectively seizing power during the first half of 1848, began to turn on each other due to differences between the democratic republicans and the liberal monarchists. The results of the conflict between the German Democratic Congress and the Prussian National Diet in Berlin on 31 October 1848 are really telling; the Congress demanded that the Diet mobilize the Prussian army to send to Vienna to help the revolutionary Viennese there fight against the Hapsburg counter-revolution, which was besieging the city. The Diet refused, and so a thousand-man mob of democrats stormed the Diet's parliamentary building, and soon the liberals' civic guard and the democrats' 'mobile associations' turned on each other.

By the end of the Nov. the Hohenzollerns had complete control in Berlin by using this wedge to drive their opponents further apart and reassert their absolutist power. Then to placate the liberals Frederick William 'granted' a new constitution, which was largely modeled on the liberals own Charte, though with much more extensive executive powers.

That, TBH, that's only half the story, but you get my point.



All very interesting, but it all rather misses the main point.

At no time did the Prussian army ever stop obeying the King, and as long as that was so, FP and Landtag alike had as much authority in Prussia as the King chose to allow, and he could withdraw it at any time. For a few months in 1848 he was unnerved, and the revolutionaries were allowed to play at being some sort of government. By the end of the year he had got over his panic attack, and was no longer afraid to say no to them. After that, it was only a question of how long before the curtain was rung down
 
My point was that the FP, having no military forces save a few poorly armed college students, could not "include" or "exclude" anybody.

So "including" Prussia in a Germany run by Austria meant nothing unless either the King voluntarily accepted, or someone could raise an army to coerce him. Ditto of course for including the other princes in a Germany run by Prussia. That had a better chance, with the Prussian army as enforcer, but if Austria dissented and Russia backed her up, could still lead to war.

No, but hannover, bavaria, the various hessian states, etc., do.

Unless you think the parliament was in no way representative of the people who elected them, and THAT would a strange statement, then your statement above is almost meaningless...
 
At no time did the Prussian army ever stop obeying the King

Except when portions of it did, in March 1848 and May 1849.

Edit: Remember, armies are made up of people too, and if the people rise up then at least some portion of the army is going to clamor for revolutionary aims as well. This was especially true in the Prussian Rhineland.
 
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Except when portions of it did, in March 1848 and May 1849.

Edit: Remember, armies are made up of people too, and if the people rise up then at least some portion of the army is going to clamor for revolutionary aims as well. This was especially true in the Prussian Rhineland.


What specific incidents do you mean? Where did the mutinies occur, and how many troops were involved?

The armies of 1848 were made up largely of peasants, whose interest in politics was pretty much limited to being freed from feudal dues. Having got that, they don't seem to have shown much interest in the revolutionaries' political aims.bIirc in later 1848 the Prussian army chased the FP out of fRankfurt without showing any reluctance to obey its officers.
 
No, but hannover, bavaria, the various hessian states, etc., do.

Unless you think the parliament was in no way representative of the people who elected them, and THAT would a strange statement, then your statement above is almost meaningless...


Would the Kings of Hanover, Bavaria et al have ordered their armies to fight Prussia on behalf of the FP?

Even if they did, about how long could their scattered forces have stood against the Prussians? Two weeks? Or could they have managed four?
 
What specific incidents do you mean? Where did the mutinies occur, and how many troops were involved?

When the Rhenish Landwehr rose up against Frederick William's decision to both a) reject the Paulskirchenverfassung and the offered German crown, and b), and perhaps more seriously, dissolve both chambers of the brand new, Bismarkian, Prussian parliament after it accepted the constitution and urged their monarch to do the same, the Prussian garrisons in the area they were mobilized against the uprising instead turned against the Hohenzollerns. Major cities like Düsseldorf, Iserlohn, Solingen, Bonn, Trier, Prüm, etc., were in the revolutionaries control throughout most of 1849.

Once again however the liberals separated themselves from the uprising after worker unrest became a central plank in the movement with the Central March Association being dominated by workers in the much more industrial Rhenish region.

The armies of 1848 were made up largely of peasants, whose interest in politics was pretty much limited to being freed from feudal dues. Having got that, they don't seem to have shown much interest in the revolutionaries' political aims.bIirc in later 1848 the Prussian army chased the FP out of fRankfurt without showing any reluctance to obey its officers.

Firstly, while the 1848 uprisings were mostly led by peasants, they were far from being disinterested in politics, and

Secondly, in 1848 it was the Hessians, Austrians, and Prussians who marched into Frankfurt to quell an democratic, proletarian, uprising there - at the behest of the liberal dominated Frankfurt Assembly. Later in 1849 the few conservative members of the assembly left when summoned back home by their respective monarchs as the reactionary backlash reached its zenith, and soon thereafter the liberals walked out as they no longer had the conservative opposition to unite them with the democrats, and so the two groups fell into a petty ideological conflict. The rump congress, controlled by the left, withdrew to Stuttgart, and ultimately dissolved itself after the Bavarians put down the left of the leftist uprisings in the Palatine.
 
When the Rhenish Landwehr rose up against Frederick William's decision to both a) reject the Paulskirchenverfassung and the offered German crown, and b), and perhaps more seriously, dissolve both chambers of the brand new, Bismarkian, Prussian parliament after it accepted the constitution and urged their monarch to do the same, the Prussian garrisons in the area they were mobilized against the uprising instead turned against the Hohenzollerns. Major cities like Düsseldorf, Iserlohn, Solingen, Bonn, Trier, Prüm, etc., were in the revolutionaries control throughout most of 1849.


I wouldn't mind a source for this. James J Sheehan (Germany, 1770 -1866) has it as follows

"Most of the northern states - Hanover, Oldenburg, Brunswick - were able to weather the storm without serious disorder. Except for a serious rising in Breslau, the Prussian east was also quiet. Berlin remained tightly sealed by Wrangel's troops. where regional loyalties joined with social discontnent and political ambitions, were there pitched battles bettween regular troops and mutinous landwehr units or rebellious workers. But the ability of the Prussian state to defend itself was never in doubt; even the most serious conflicts were immediately isolated and easily repressed. - - -

On 30 April [1849] King Frederick Augustus II, confident that Prussia would come to his aid, defied the opposition and closed the [Saxon] Landtag - - - Full scale rebellion broke out when soldiers fired upon a crowd - - - But the Saxon army remained loyal, and - -The arrival of Prussian troops decided the issue - -Dresden was recaptured."

That doesn't sound as if Prussian regular troops, or indeed those of the northern states in general, were particularly rebellious or unreliable.
 
Rapport's 1848: Year of Revolutions has this;

Across Germany a wide spectrum of liberal and radical opinion at last rallied to the defence of the 1848 revolution in the shape of the half-million-strong Central March Association. This organisation gathered support for what became known as the ‘campaign’ or ‘civil war’ for the constitution. One of the boiling cauldrons of this movement was the Rhineland. In Cologne five different provincial congresses were held in a matter of three to four days from 6 May, two of them liberal, three of them democratic. Some democratic and workers’ organisations seem to have been preparing for a fullblown insurrection in the Rhineland and the spark came when the Prussian government called out the Landwehr, the citizens’ militia, in readiness for the anticipated uprising. The plethora of Rhenish political clubs and congresses appealed to the troops not to use force. When delegates from over three hundred town and village councils in the Prussian Rhineland met at one of the liberal congresses in Cologne on 8 May, they demanded that Frederick William accept the constitution, rescind the call to arms and dismiss the conservative Prussian ministry – or face the break-up of the Kingdom of Prussia as it then existed. When asked whether they were ‘German’ or ‘Prussian’, the councillors had only one answer: ‘German! German! Secession from Prussia!’

This seemed to be a real possibility, since the obedience of the local Landwehr to the government was doubtful. Carl Schurz witnessed a day-long protest of its members in Bonn, hearing calls to disobey the Prussian government and seeing its numbers swelling by the hour as militiamen from the surrounding countryside arrived. A mass meeting of the Landwehr at Elberfeld on 3 May proclaimed its support for the constitution. The democrats also hoped, however, that by rising up they would be able to enforce those aspects of their programme that had been rejected by the Frankfurt parliament.

[...]

Nevertheless, there were outbreaks of revolutionary violence in the Rhineland: militia around Elberfeld, Düsseldorf and Solingen all mutinied. A thousand of them gathered in an armed camp overlooking Elberfeld on 8 May before barricading the centre of the city itself, successfully resisting an attack by regular troops the following day. In Solingen the revolutionaries included red-scarved women wielding revolvers and daggers. Democrats built barricades in Düsseldorf, but these were blown to smithereens by mobile artillery. The uprising spread to the countryside, where village democrats had agreed to ring the church bells as a prearranged signal for an uprising. On 10 May, several thousand armed peasants marched on Düsseldorf to help the beleaguered democrats, only to find that they had already been repressed. While the insurgents melted away and returned home, the uprising had stretched the capabilities of the local authorities to keep order to breaking point. First Elberfeld, then Solingen fell into the hands of the democrats, who established ‘committees of safety’ to direct the insurrection. These committees tried to maintain as wide a consensus as possible, cooperating with the liberal, constitutional monarchists. When Marx’s close collaborator Friedrich Engels joined the insurgents at Elberfeld, he was soon expelled because he was accused of trying to convert the revolution from a movement of the ‘black–red–gold’ (the constitution) into a purely ‘red’ (social, republican) uprising.
 
Rapport's 1848: Year of Revolutions has this;


It doesn't seem to suggest any defections from the regular army - just some mutinous militia units (in an area with long standing separatist leanings) which the army scotched with no particular difficulty. Afterwards, of course, that same army went on to restore order across other parts of Germany.

Nothing to indicate either that any significant part of the regular army was disloyal or that it was in any particular danger of being defeated.
 
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