For me the word “freedom” has not the value of a starting-point, but rather that of an actual point of arrival. The word “order” denotes the starting-point. Only on the concept of order can that of freedom rest. Without the foundation of order, the call for freedom is nothing more than the striving of some party after an envisaged end. In its actual use, the call inevitably expresses itself as tyranny. Whilst I have at all times and in all situations ever been a man of order, my striving was addressed to true and not deceptive freedom. In my eyes, tyranny of any kind has only the value of absolute nonsense. As a means to an end, I mark it as the most vapid that time and circumstance is able to place at the disposal of rulers.¹—Clemens Wenzell von Metternich (1773–1859)

Gentlemen, one must not fall prey to anachronism; it is the most dangerous thing, when it comes to governing. There was a time, without any doubt glorious, in which the conquest of social and political rights was the nation’s prevailing concern. That was achieved and now there are others to achieve. You wish to continue advancing, to achieve things that your parents did not. You’re right. Set aside for the moment the winning of political rights. Now it is time to exercise them. Establish your government, consolidate your institutions, educate yourselves, prosper, improve the moral and material condition of France.²—François Guizot (1787–1874)

The greatest concern of a good government should be to gradually accustom its citizens to do without it.³—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

The indirect powers… seized the legislative arm of parliament and the law state and thought they had placed the Leviathan in a harness. Their ascendancy was facilitated by a constitutional system that enshrined a catalogue of individual rights. The “private” sphere was, thus, withdrawn from the state and handed over to the “free”, that is, uncontrolled and invisible forces of society.⁴—Carl Schmitt (1888–1985)

By ‘nationalism’ I mean, first of all, the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ But secondly – and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality…⁵—George Orwell (1903–1950)

16.1 From Absolutism to Liberalism

Under absolute monarchy, the state became the great protagonist of western constitutional history, as the uncontested power of the king proved extremely effective at consolidating a set of very powerful states in Europe. First, by establishing a solid order during the period of Classic Absolutism, and completely transforming this order through the reforms of Enlightened Absolutism.

Absolute control of the state by the king, however, crumbled in the wake of the American and French Revolutions, replaced by the ascendant power of assemblies aspiring to control the state in the name of the people. This system, however, proved ineffectual when not furnished with a strong executive power. Hence, a system with dominant assemblies gave way in the United States to a presidential regime featuring a strong executive, while in France power was concentrated in the hands of Napoleon, who effectively ruled as a monarch, and ultimately a presidential republic was established.

Following the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire, absolute monarchy was restored in the rest of Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century, though with some exceptions. In the UK, the model of a monarchy with a powerful Parliamentary counterbalance (parliamentary system) was clearly consolidated after the British defeat in the American War of Independence and the insanity of George III, the last British king who sought to wield uncontested monarchical power. In the rest of Europe, the constitutional model according to which the state was controlled by the assembly on behalf of the nation became an alternative to the restoration of absolute monarchy, and was a formula pursued by successive liberal revolutions in 1820, 1830 and, finally, 1848. In reality, the new ruling parliamentary assemblies did not represent the common people of these nations, but rather their ruling classes: the English “gentry” or its equivalent in the different European nation-states. These oligarchies ultimately ended up controlling the state through censitary suffrage, which granted political rights exclusively to property owners, industrialists, bankers and businessmen. State policy henceforth centered on promoting and amassing national wealth by favoring the interests and aims of the economic elite, who were spared aggressive intervention by the public authorities; this was the essence of the “liberal model”.

This liberal regime was, in any case, extremely effective and the different European nation-states became extremely wealthy through expansive colonial policies, with the result that almost the whole world was controlled by the European nation-states by 1900. Besides the fact that this model generated pronounced and dreadful social differences—an issue that we will address in the next chapter—the major drawback and danger inherent to this model was that the nation-states were engaged in a state of perpetual competition as they struggled to impose their hegemony on their rivals. The trend which had produced a series of wars, dating back to 1648, was taken to new levels by France in its revolutionary wars, during which mass conscription dramatically increased the number of soldiers fighting for the nation, and ultimately left huge numbers of dead soldiers, from nations all across Europe, on the battlefields of the Napoleonic wars. After Napoleon’s defeat and the reorganization of Europe through the Congress of Vienna, the nation-states struggled to forge and maintain a status quo through the Metternich System, which endured until being strained by the revolutions of 1848. The struggle for hegemony flared up again and reached a new peak when Prussia’s Bismarck successively defeated Austria and France. The rise of Prussia as a world power triggered the growing tensions of the “armed peace”, which prompted the formation of a series of defensive alliances between European nation-states. This network would constitute a tinderbox that exploded in the form of World War I, which marked the demise of the liberal model of the state and spawned a profound crisis in western history.

16.2 The Europe of the Restoration (1815–1848)

Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo (June 18, 1815) marked the dawn of a period during which the European monarchies did all they could to restore absolutism, that is, the order which had prevailed prior to the outbreak of the French Revolution, thereby giving rise to what is known as the “Restoration”. To achieve this aim, the powers which had vanquished Napoleon convened a general congress in Vienna which, in addition to politically reorganizing Europe, established a concerted system of armed interventions designed to abort any revolutionary outbreak endangering the restoration of the traditional order (Zamoyski 2007).

16.2.1 The Congress of Vienna

The representatives of the states that had won the war over Napoleon: the United Kingdom, Austria, Prussia and Russia (later joined by France under Louis XVIII, represented by the very adept Talleyrand),⁶ hosted by Austrian Chancellor Clemens von Metternich, convened in Vienna, for almost 7 months to reorganize Europe’s political order, which since 1792 had seen important transformations introduced by French imperialism, first revolutionary and later Napoleonic.

Although the term “congress” was used to designate these meetings, as in the United States of America, in Europe its meaning was substantially different, where the states were represented by sovereigns rather than delegates elected by the citizens.⁷

The outcome of the lengthy Congress of Vienna (November 1814–June 1815), was that the representatives of the victorious powers, the “Big Four” (King 2008, 44–52), restructured Europe, redefining borders and restoring to the throne most of the absolute monarchs who had been toppled by Napoleon, in what was called Metternich’s Europe (Walker 1968). Still pending was the implementation of the mechanisms necessary to prevent new “revolutionary” outbreaks which could upset the reinstated order.

16.2.2 The Holy Alliance or the Return of Divine Legitimacy

The first step in this direction was taken by establishing the “Holy Alliance” (Jarrett 2013, 173–177), an initiative of Tsar Alexander I Russia, who considered himself Europe’s savior since his victory over Napoleon in 1812. Beyond its mystical aspects, the Holy Alliance represented an attempt to rescue and affirm the legitimacy of the Ancien Régime and to eradicate the principles upon which the bourgeois revolution was based: that it is the citizens rather than the monarch who constitute a “nation”, it falls upon the people to create the constitutional framework governing the actions of the state, and that it is the nation which should govern, through its duly elected representatives. This constitutional model, termed the “nation-state”, clashed head-on with the traditional model of absolute monarchy. Thus, it was necessary to consolidate what had been agreed to in Vienna with a new ideology justifying a political system in which sovereignty, that is, the power of the state, was wrested from the nation and placed back in the hands of sovereigns.

On September 14, 1815, 3 months after the close of the Congress of Vienna, the Tsar of Russia, the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria joined in a “Holy Alliance”. This unique pact was based, as its name suggests, on the Christian religion professed by the three monarchs. In this way, it marked a resurfacing of the age-old principle that the established order had been determined by God, and that men could not alter it without endangering peace and justice:

In the name of the Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity: Their Majesties the Emperor of Austria, the King of Prussia, and the Emperor of Russia, having, in consequence of the great events which have marked the course of the three last years in Europe, and especially of the blessings which it has pleased Divine Providence to shower down upon those States which place their confidence and their hope on it alone, acquired the intimate conviction of the necessity of settling the rules to be observed by the Powers, in their reciprocal relations, upon the sublime truths which the Holy Religion of our Saviour teaches. They solemnly declare that the present Act has no other object than to publish, in the face of the whole world, their fixed resolution, both in the administration of their respective States and in their political relations with every other Government, to take for their sole guide the precepts of that Holy Religion, namely, the precepts of justice, Christian Charity, and Peace, which, far from being applicable only to private concerns, must have an immediate influence on the councils of princes, and guide all their steps, as being the only means of consolidating human institutions and remedying their imperfections.

To maintain this divine order, the signees agreed to provide each other aid and mutual support in the event anyone should attempt to alter it. The tone of the first article of the Holy Alliance is quite indicative of the spirit infusing the agreement:

Conformably to the words of the Holy Scriptures, which command all men to consider each other as brethren, the three contracting Monarchs will remain united by the bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity, and, considering each other as fellow-countrymen, they will, on all occasions and in all places, lend each other aid and assistance; and, regarding themselves towards their subjects and armies as fathers of families, they will lead them, in the same spirit of fraternity with which they are animated, to protect Religion, Peace, and justice.⁸

16.2.3 Metternich and the Counterrevolutionary Principle of Legitimate Intervention

Ironically, it was the pragmatic Metternich, the promoter of the Congress of Vienna, initially harboring a cynical disdain for the Holy Alliance (Ingle 1976, 14), who ultimately managed to most fully exploit its possibilities. Months after its establishment he realized the great utility of legitimizing the principle that the signatory powers could intervene to abort any revolutionary outbreaks. It was thus agreed that if a state broke Europe’s established order, morally or materially, it was the duty and the right of other rulers to reestablish the stability which had been disturbed. Thus, this provision set the stage for concerted efforts by the powers to maintain the Old Regime.

16.2.4 An Exception to the Principle of Nation-State Confrontation: The Metternich System as a Forerunner of European Integration

At Metternich’s initiative, on November 20, 1815 the four victorious powers which had defeated Napoleon—England, Austria, Russia and Prussia—signed a Grand Alliance in France to maintain a “protectorate” over the country which would legitimize the occupation of French territory (Jarrett 2013, 183–186). In response to a proposal by the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, a clause (the sixth) was introduced in the pact according to which the signing powers pledged to meet regularly to discuss issues of common interest and to ensure the preservation of order and peace (Bew 2012, 409–418).

The Quadruple Alliance was forged to prevent any revolutionary movement from surfacing in France. Thus, when the monarchy under Louis XVIII seemed to be well established, the allies, meeting in Aachen in 1818, agreed to withdraw their troops from France, which was admitted into the Alliance. In an additional secret protocol Metternich succeeded in adding to the principle of legitimate intervention to prevent revolutionary disorders a call for regular “congresses” by which the powers were to examine the situation in Europe and make decisions, depending upon circumstances, regarding the adoption of appropriate measures to address them (Schroeder 1992, 683–706). The fear of revolution was the guiding principle of all monarchies after 1815 and not only of the Austria of Metternich (Sked 2008).

In the years that followed Napoleon’s fall, through 1823, the European powers acted jointly and in concert, though not to maintain a common economic policy, but to preserve the order established at the Congress of Vienna (Sked 1979, 98–121),⁹ an action they had been forced to take to counter liberals from all over Europe anxious to promote the nation-state; this came to be called the “Metternich System”, which can be considered a kind of early attempt at European integration (Alison 2013).¹⁰

16.2.5 The Impossibility of Restoring Absolutism

The French Revolution and its Napoleonic aftermath ultimately failed to transform Europe, as after 1815 the entire Continent, save for England, reverted to absolute monarchy. Nevertheless, this reestablishment of the Old Order was, in reality, not as absolute as it might seem at first. In France, Louis XVIII laid down the foundations for a parliamentary regime with the 1814 Charte. Although this was a unilateral concession, it is certainly telling that this astute monarch realized that a return to the outright, unrestrained monarchy of the era preceding the events of 1789 was simply not viable, as the privileged classes of the Ancien Régime, the nobility and clergy, had been supplanted by the ascendant bourgeoisie of businessmen and bankers. Since the Thermidorian Reaction, the most eminent members of the former “Third Estate” had become (from 1794) the dominant social power in France.

Thus, Louis XVIII accepted that, following the model already firmly established in the United Kingdom, monarchies in the post-Napoleonic era were destined to function more as arbiters and intercessors, leaving political action in the hands of representative assemblies (parliaments). By no means was power to be given to the masses, as democracy based on universal suffrage was still unthinkable at this point. However, through censitary and indirect suffrage, the high bourgeoisie was able to monopolize representation of the “nation” in parliaments, thereby controlling states.

This said, the liberal bourgeoisie faced a tough task, having to tenaciously fight to impose its new model of the state, with waves of revolutionary struggle in 1820, 1830, and, above all, 1848, to spread the new order in countries with traditional monarchies, such as France and Spain, and in the new states spawned by the liberal revolution in Belgium, Italy and Prussia. The result was that, one by one, all the European states adopted constitutions and representative assemblies. Even tsarist Russia implemented a parliamentary system following the Revolution of 1905.

The consequence was that over the course of the nineteenth century, a new model of state came to prevail throughout the Continent in which power was clearly delimitated by written constitutions generally guaranteeing citizens’ fundamental rights and liberties—hence the term which came to describe these regimes: liberal. In them, government institutions’ scopes of power and authority were to be defined and limited, while the nation, through its elected representatives, set the course of public policy.¹¹

16.3 The Liberal Alternative: A State with Limited Powers and Controlled by an Economic Elite

The social classes wielding political power during the revolutionary period were unwilling to accept any return to the situation which had prevailed under the Ancien Régime. Despite the efforts being made by leaders to restore the traditional order of the absolute monarchy, economic power in the western states no longer rested in the hands of the old aristocratic and privileged classes, who had been superseded as the ruling classes by a new bourgeois financial and industrial oligarchy. This new elite would not settle for just economic hegemony, but would also strive to obtain political power to secure governments serving their interests. Hence, they endeavored to exclude the lower classes from the political arena (Wallerstein 2011, 24),¹² and did their utmost to prevent the restoration of monarchical authority and to impose a new regime in which the liberty of individuals (understood as the powerful individuals now atop the social pyramid), would be spared from state interference and control.

16.3.1 Legal Limits on State Power: Constitutions and Fundamental Rights

The instigators of the political revolutions of the nineteenth century (1820, 1830, 1848), sought to limit monarchical power, at the very least by placing legal or customary checks upon it. The restraint of power through the application of legal mechanisms was nothing new. As we have seen, in the Middle Ages there arose texts curbing the king’s power, such as England’s Magna Carta in 1215, or the privilegios of the kingdoms under the Crown of Aragon. We have also seen how even during the apogee of absolute monarchy, kings were bound to respect unwritten rules such as “fundamental laws”. Under the Ancien Régime power was restrained, to varying degrees, by law through fundamental, unwritten rules, which in some instances continue to form today the basis of constitutional order, as is still the case in the United Kingdom.

Legal restrictions on power, however, took on a new dimension after the American and French revolutions, as they advanced the idea rooted in Natural Law of a social contract between government and the people that legitimized state power, a principle reflected in the adoption and ratification of written constitutions (King 2013, 75–77). The drafting of these foundational documents was the result of processes expressly undertaken to this end, with France drawing up documents in 1791, 1793, 1795, 1830, 1848 and 1875; the United States in 1787; and Spain in 1808 (Statute of Bayonne), 1812, 1837, 1845, 1869 and 1876.

There were also cases in which constitutions were granted by the state whereby monarchs accepted and placed limitations on their own power. Such was the dynamic when France’s Louis XVIII issued a charte in 1814,¹³ Regent María Cristina of Spain signed a Royal Statute in 1834 (Villarroya 1985, 11–15), Frederick William IV endorsed a Prussian Constitution in 1850,¹⁴ and Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian constitution of 1906.¹⁵

In addition to these two constitutional patterns there was the Napoleonic model of a constitution drafted by the executive power and submitted to a plebiscite (as in the case of the French constitutions of 1799, 1802 and 1804)¹⁶

Aside from the limits set down by the constitution, in some states there appeared formal declarations of fundamental rights drafted and promulgated so that those in power would be compelled to respect them. Some of these texts were included in constitutions and actually represent legally binding documents, such as the 1791 U.S. Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the federal constitution), in which case, legal recourse may be pursued when they are violated. Others, however, even if they were meant to be universal, were not legally binding, but rather mere intellectual manifestos, such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, advanced during the French Revolution in 1789.

16.3.2 The Politicization of the Term “Nation”

Another important feature of the new model of state that the liberals fought for was the idea that political power must be legitimized by the “nation”.

As we have seen, some contemporary historians, prompted by nationalistic enthusiasm, maintain that the term “nation” actually dates far back in European history, at least for European nations such as France, England and Germany, which trace their names back to the Germanic peoples—or “nations”—that settled on the Continent after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In fact it was much later, during the Middle Ages and even into the modern era, that the term “nation” was used to designate a people united by their linguistic affinity or geographic proximity. Thus, for example, the kingdom of the Franks was transformed under Philip II into the kingdom of “France”, and its inhabitants came to be called “French”. It was not, however, until the last third of the eighteenth century when the term acquired a manifest political meaning, in the contexts of the American and French revolutions, whose leaders, acting to form, devise and uphold the principles of their respective “nations”, claimed that national sovereignty lay with the citizens, not with the monarch, as Machiavelli, and above all, Bodin had contended.

It was not until the triumph of the Romantic ideal, however, that, as a reaction to the Enlightenment, liberals defended the idea of “nationality”, just as the twentieth century would spawn “nationalism”.¹⁷ Thus, peoples’ right to politically and legally organize themselves in accordance with the precepts of Enlightenment revolutions was followed by the flourishing of national sentiments within European groups united by their linguistic, cultural and historic ties. This is what Smith (2009, 61) considers the forming of the “core doctrine” of ideological nationalism.¹⁸

As a result of this movement, European historians began to search for the origins of their peoples’ national identities, with scholars such as the brothers Grimm¹⁹ that besides gathering and publishing traditional legends and tales encouraged the work of these early “germanists” (Ziolkowski 1992, 108). This trend impacted the legal organization of nations, thanks to the rise of the German Historical School of law, advanced by jurist Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779–1861), who rejected the adoption of Napoleonic legal codes, arguing that jurists ought to discover and apply, through historical research, the nation’s own, unique law, which was to be rooted in the spirit of the people (Volksgeist) (Reimann 1990, 851–858).²⁰ Thus did linguists, historians and jurists forerun politicians by conceiving of and envisioning a Europe of nationalities, which in some cases contributed to the formation of new states, while causing the disintegration of others, as with the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, regionalist sentiments intensified in Spain—principally in Catalonia and the Basque Country (Conversi 1997)—as well as in Ireland. In both cases this development led to separatist movements, successful in the latter case, an ongoing struggle in the former (Hall 1993, 1–28).

16.3.3 From Absolute Monarchy to Liberal Oligarchy: The Era of Censitary Suffrage

The seizure of power by the wealthy bourgeoisie was achieved by imposing representative, parliamentary-based regimes which replaced (as in the case of the French Republic) or at least restricted royal prerogative. In theory, legitimate power lay in the “nation”, that is, the citizens as a whole. Though having embraced some democratic and egalitarian notions and values, it ought to be noted that most of the liberal states in nineteenth-century Europe featured constitutional systems dominated by a wealthy, liberal bourgeoisie.

In fact, these regimes only represented the affluent, as delegates were elected through a system of censitary suffrage under which citizens were required to have a certain level of income or property to vote,²¹ and even higher levels to stand for office—a practice which ensured that representative assemblies were controlled by the new oligarchic ruling classes.²² In this way, the financial and commercial bourgeoisie managed to control the state apparatus, enforcing its rules and policies.²³ This meant that the new public power restricted itself to maintaining order, leaving everything else in the hands of the new ruling class, especially economic policy.²⁴ It was the “liberal” principle of laissez faire which developed a specific constitutional model that allowed the new European nation-states to achieve impressive levels of economic development.²⁵

Under the model of the liberal state, at least initially, the middle class wielded barely any clout, and the poor were effectively non-existent in political terms. It was, thus, the high bourgeoisie (gentry) who controlled the nation-states, via censitary, indirect and weighted electoral systems, which assured their ascendency. Even in those cases in which universal male suffrage theoretically existed, the representative system was designed to exclude the middle classes and the most disadvantaged citizens. Such was the case, for example, with the Prussian Constitution of 1850.²⁶

The wealthy bourgeoisie’s political stranglehold on power in the liberal state, however, would be threatened by the momentous social changes which the liberal revolution had triggered in Europe, leading, on the one hand, to the growth of a significant middle class which clamored for political representation; and, on the other, to the advent of a new social group: the “proletariat”, the poorest and most numerous portion of society. The European nation-states’ extraordinary economic expansion over the course of the nineteenth century would be jeopardized by the unfair distribution of wealth within them, which bred festering social tensions.

This “social question” would precipitate a crisis of the liberal state model and bring about the resurgence of strong public power—already portended by the model of state conceived by Bismarck for the Second Reich, called upon to play a decisive role to restore social balance. These changes were the direct consequence of the mounting conflicts which pitted European nation-states against each other during the era of colonialism and brought on World War I, a turning point in Western constitutional history. We shall analyze these essential constitutional changes in the next chapter.

16.4 The Liberal Revolution

Over the course of the nineteenth century, one by one all the European countries would become “nation-states”, according to the aforementioned new liberal model, with the exception of tsarist Russia, where the autocratic model of absolute monarchy would endure until the Revolution of 1905. This process of political transformation and its important economic and social consequences, is what has been called the “Liberal Revolution” (Wallerstein 2011, 66).

Of course, this phenomenon unfolded in a different way in each different country. In England, for example, although the monarchical principle was respected, the liberal model clearly triumphed, as the parliamentary regime was firmly entrenched, with the monarch reigning but not ruling. In other countries Liberalism’s triumph was more tempered because, despite the appearance of representative assemblies, the government remained in the hands of the king. Such was the case in Spain, with its system in which the Cortes shared sovereignty with the king, and in Prussia, where government was entirely entrusted to the monarch, with the representative assembly limited to legislative and budgetary functions. Finally, in other states the triumph of the liberal regime marked a definitive rejection of monarchy, as in France, which in 1875 definitively shifted to a republic featuring a powerful representative assembly and a weak executive—though the system functioned thanks to the existence of the all-powerful administrative state established by Napoleon.

The lack of a single approach when it came to carrying out the bourgeois revolution was because of the fact that European liberals were divided into two camps: those who tried to move gradually towards the limitation of monarchical power, from within the system (doctrinaire or moderate liberalism) and another, more extremist class whose members sought a radical break with the Ancien Régime and monarchy itself (Revolutionary Liberalism).

16.4.1 Moderate Liberalism

The liberal state model was vigorously advanced in England because of the consolidation of a parliamentary system which effectively limited royal prerogative. However, it was in France during the era of the Restoration, however, where liberal thinkers, without endorsing the extremism of the revolutionaries, advocated a model of the state under which power was limited, as citizens were afforded greater freedom and capacity for initiative.

These liberals, who viewed the monarchy as compatible with the establishment of a constitutional regime, were called “doctrinaires” (Craiutu 2003), and in France were led by Pierre Paul Royer-Collard (1763–1845). The most eminent of these political thinkers, however, was Benjamin Constant (1767–1830), who in a famous speech in 1819, openly called for individual liberty vis-à-vis the state and the establishment of a regime characterized by civil and political freedom and based on adequate education.²⁷ In response to the influence exercised by these moderate liberals, the French King Louis XVIII, despite not having renounced the principle of absolute, divine right monarchy, in 1814 granted a Charte which, among other things, instituted the election of a legislative assembly. Although government formally remained the king’s exclusive purview, the “parliamentary system” has triumphed ever since, although voting would be censitary until 1848.²⁸

The “constitutional” principle embraced by France since 1814, also affected the German territories, despite the fact that after the Congress of Vienna, most of the German sovereigns had restored absolute monarchy. Thus, for example, the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, following the example of Louis XVIII, also granted his subjects a “constitution”, an action applauded by the Burschenschaft, an association of university professors and students which had begun to spread liberal principles in Germany under the slogan of “freedom, honor and homeland” (Boime 2004, 179). The initiative had an undeniable impact, as the rulers of Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg soon granted constitutions in their respective states (1818–1819) as well.²⁹

These decisions, however, perturbed Metternich, who convened the German princes in Carlsbad (Bohemia) and managed for the Burschenschaft to be abolished (Spevack 1997, 88). He was unable, however, to persuade the southern German states to eliminate their constitutional regimes, which set an important precedent in the Germanic-speaking territories.

16.4.2 “Revolutionary Liberalism”

Going further than the doctrinaire liberals, there continued to be radical revolutionaries in Europe who called for the re-establishment of Jacobin principles, arguing that sovereignty lay not with the king but in the nation, and that nations, through their representatives, should adopt constitutions setting down national principles and regulating the functioning of the state.

These reformers, dedicated to establishing the nation-state at all costs, were persecuted by the Restoration monarchs’ police,³⁰ as they struggled to spread their ideas by way of revolutionary activities. The best known of these were the Masonic Lodges which emerged in the eighteenth century, and saw spectacular growth in the nineteenth.³¹ Not to be overlooked are Italy’s Carbonari; Germany’s Tugendbund, born of the patriotic uprising against Napoleonic rule; and the Society of Prosperity, founded in Russia in 1816, by liberal groups within the army. In Spain the Freemasons, who began their activities under the reign of Ferdinand VI and became well entrenched under Charles IV, were already well organized into secret societies during the reign of Ferdinand VII. The ultimate aim of revolutionary liberals, however, was to seize power through a military coup, generally organized by Masonic lodges (Hamnett 1984, 222–237), a practice which initially spread in Spain after the end of the Peninsular War and which came to be termed a pronunciamiento.³² Spain will become initially the reference for revolutionary rivals thanks to the Riego’s uprising.

16.4.3 Spain, Spearheading the Liberal Revolution: Riego’s Revolt (1820)

In 1814, General Elío, Captain General of Valencia, had defied the Spanish National assembly, the Cortes (Parliament), and placed his troops at the service of Ferdinand VII, who openly restored absolutism in May of that year. Following this precedent, 6 years later a revolt by Spanish liberals was led by Major Rafael del Riego, a prominent Mason, who in early 1820 managed to orchestrate a rebellion at Cabezas de San Juan (Seville) by the troops that Ferdinand VII intended to send to America to subjugate pro-independence rebels (Stites 2014, 28–121). Fernando VII ended up capitulating and restored the 1812 constitution, not so much due to the force of the revolt as the weakness of his own government (Payne 1967, 19).

16.4.3.1 Revolution Extends to Italy

The triumph of the “Spanish Revolution” had important repercussions. Firstly, it prevented the deployment of reinforcements to Spanish America, thereby ensuring the rebels’ victory there. Most important was that Riego inspired European radical liberals to undertake the same defiance of their absolute monarchs (Mirkine-Guetzevitch 1938, 211–215). Three months after Riego’s success, a liberal revolution broke out in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies when troops occupying Naples also revolted (Stites 2014, 121–185).

It should be noted that for the first time, Italy had extricated itself from the structures of the Ancien Régime as a result of a campaign which allowed Napoleon to wrest almost all of Italy from Austria (1796–1797). This shift led to the formation of the first independent Italian republics: in Lombardy, the Cisalpine Republic (which, in 1804, came be called the Kingdom of Italy); in Genoa, the Ligurian Republic; and in Naples, the Parthenopean Republic. Following Napoleon’s fall, the ensuing Congress of Vienna reinstalled the respective sovereigns of the different Italian states (Meriggi 2000, 49–64). Thus, in 1815, Italy continued to be nothing more than, as Metternich termed it, a “geographical expression” (Clark 2006, 1). Nevertheless, as we have seen, patriotic and nationalist sentiment had not subsided, as the movement of 1820 would make clear.

16.4.3.2 Revolts in Greece and Russia

In 1822, the Greeks rose up against the Ottoman Empire, and in December of 1825, taking advantage of the death of Alexander I and the accession to the throne of Nicholas I, a group of progressive Russian officials managed to lead a rebellion backed by 3,000 soldiers against the tsar in what was called the Decembrist Uprising (Taylor 2003, 42–46).

16.4.3.3 Metternich Reacts: Congresses and Interventions in Italy and Spain

These revolutionary outbreaks troubled the leaders of the European powers, who were quick to set the machinery of the Metternich system into motion. Representatives of the rulers of Austria, Prussia, Russia, England and France met at the Congresses of Troppau (1820), and Laibach (1821). Despite the formal protest by Britain’s Foreign Minister, Lord Castlereagh, Metternich ultimately convinced the delegates to accept his proposal for foreign intervention in Italy, to put an end to the revolutionary upheaval there.

Intervention was entrusted to Austria, the power which had occupied the greater part of Italy, since the Peace of Utrecht (1713). In March of 1821, an Austrian army entered Naples, defeated the liberal troops, and restored absolutism there. That same army then moved on to the Piedmont, where another military uprising had broken out, and put it down as well. The occupation was followed by a relentless crackdown on any form of rebellion or dissent.

After the subjugation of Italy the powers met again in 1822, this time in Verona, where the conservative powers agreed to send a French army to Spain to “liberate” Fernando VII from his submission to the Cortes. In Verona, however, the unity of the alliance began to crumble. The tsar wished to intervene both in the Iberian Peninsula and in Spanish America, while England, where the liberal Canning had replaced the conservative Robert Jenkinson, supported intervention only in Spain—in reality because the government of his Gracious Majesty believed that the independence of Spain’s overseas territories favored Britain’s colonial interests.

In the end, thanks to the pressure exerted on the representatives by writer François René de Chateaubriand, then France’s Foreign Minister, it was agreed to intervene in Spain. In April of 1823, the Duke of Angoulême crossed the Spanish border under the command of “The 100,000 Sons of St. Louis”. The campaign was a military cakewalk and, after taking Cádiz, where the Cortes had once again sought refuge, the French expedition did away with the “Liberal Triennium” (Jarrett 2013, 338–343). The intervention in Spain was the last military operation inspired by the Metternich System and unanimously backed by its powers, as Britain’s withholding of support prevented the restoration of the Ancien Régime in Spanish America and in Greece.

16.4.3.4 The Metternich System Falters: The Independence of Spanish America

Britain’s opposition prevented the powers from getting involved in Spanish America to suppress the uprisings which had begun in 1808, after the outbreak of the Peninsular War. The rebellions initially took the Spanish by surprise, and the authorities quickly lost control of all their territories in the Americas, except for Peru. However, after the restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1814, Spain was able to recover the control it held in America before 1808, with the exception of Argentina (McFarlane 2014, 111–144).

Spain’s hold on the new continent, however, would soon weaken, as the rebels received support from the English (who dispatched military commanders they no longer needed on the Continent after the end of the Napoleonic wars) and from the Americans (who sent weapons).³³ The turning point, however, came, as has been mentioned, with the rebellion led by Colonel Rafael de Riego (a member of the same Masonic Lodge as Colonel San Martín), who in 1820, prevented Spanish reinforcements from reaching the country’s American colonies. The refusal of the powers gathered at Verona to intervene in Spanish America was pivotal, ending more than 300 years of Spanish rule over its overseas territories.

In 1821, Iturbide proclaimed the independence of Mexico (Iguala Plan). In Argentina, San Martín formed a small army with which he crossed the Andes and was able to dominate Chile and Peru between 1817 and 1821, while Simón Bolívar occupied Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. Finally, in 1824 Bolívar’s subordinate, General Sucre, defeated the last regular Spanish army at Ayacucho (Peru). At that point Spain, which had just sold Florida to the United States, only maintained an overseas presence in Cuba and the Philippines. Bolivar envisioned bringing the new states together into a “federal union”, modeled on the United States. To this end in 1826, he convened delegates from all the new Spanish American countries, and also from the U.S. The Congress of Panama was a failure, however, and Spanish America ended up fracturing into 15 independent republics.³⁴ The sole “kingdom” remaining in the Americas was Brazil, where in 1822, Emperor Don Pedro, a son of the Portuguese king, had been proclaimed a constitutional emperor.³⁵

The English, who had supported the revolt in the hopes of taking advantage of the Spanish Empire’s demise, saw their hopes dashed when in 1823, U.S. President James Monroe declared his determination to prevent any European intervention in the Americas (Gleijeses 1992, 481–605), though this did not stop Napoleon III from seeking to conquer Mexico (1862–1867), seizing upon the outbreak of the American Civil War to do so (Hanna and Hanna 1971). This enterprise, however, led to a complete debacle, with the execution of Emperor Maximilian I in Querétaro on June 19, 1867.

16.4.3.5 The Independence of Greece: A Fatal Blow to the Metternich System

Having suffered a severe setback from the emancipation of Spanish America, the Metternich System was finally dealt a definitive blow when the Greeks revolted against the Ottoman Empire in 1822. The Turks managed to regain control of Greece in 1827, despite the separatist sympathies harbored by European intellectuals, such as Lord Byron (1788–1824). However, the Greeks ultimately won their independence, in the end thanks to Russia: in 1825, Tsar Alexander I died and Nicholas I rose to the Russian throne. Determined to augment Russia’s influence in the Mediterranean, the new tsar declared war on Ottoman Turkey (Crawley 2014, 43–62). The Russians went on to win their campaign and in the ensuing Treaty of Andrinopolis (1829) the Ottoman Empire recognized, among other concessions, Greece’s independence.³⁶

16.4.4 France Comes to Lead the Liberal Revolution (1830)

The model of the liberal revolution based on a military uprising, inspired by the coup led by Colonel Riego, was succeeded by another approach: the “popular revolution” through which in July of 1830, the people of Paris took to the streets to overthrow the absolutist Charles X and impose a constituent assembly, from which emerged a new regime: the constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe of Orléans, also known as the “July Monarchy” (Pilbeam 2002, 37–40).

Its triumph triggered a new revolutionary wave across Europe. The rebellions in Italy, the German territories and Poland, however, would fail, as the reactionary powers, essentially Austria and Russia, were fierce in their stamping out of subversive activities. Liberalism, however, prevailed in the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Switzerland. It also had major repercussions in England, where it inspired historic electoral reform in 1832.

16.4.4.1 The Birth of the Belgian State

The powers gathered at the Congress of Vienna agreed that the United Provinces of the North (Protestant), and the lands to the south (Catholic), would be unified into one single State: the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Beginning in 1815, however, the Catholics of the southern provinces entered into perpetual conflict with King William I (1815–1840). Seizing upon the triumph of parliamentary monarchy in France, in 1830 the southern provinces rebelled and created a new state: the Kingdom of Belgium (van Berlo 2005, 43–45). In 1831, the corresponding constitutional assembly approved a liberal constitution “installing” a parliamentary monarchy under King Leopold I (1831–1865). Two legislative chambers were also created, whose members were elected by a very restricted censitary suffrage system which guaranteed that the government would remain in the hands of the high bourgeoisie.³⁷ The Catholic Church was separated from the State, but received all its traditional privileges. Belgium established itself as a nation-state because its two major parties, liberal and Catholic, which only diverged on the issue of public education, forged a ruling coalition until 1847 (Goldstein 2010, 177), after which they would grapple for power.

16.4.4.2 The Triumph of the Liberals in Spain and Portugal

Liberalism also triumphed in Spain and Portugal, although this had less to do with the French Revolution of 1830, than it did with two civil wars.

In Spain, the death of Fernando VII (1833), who left no male heir, sparked the dynastic conflict known as the “Carlist Wars”. When the absolutists endorsed the dynastic rights advanced by Carlos María Isidro,³⁸ a brother of the deceased king to place her daughter Isabella II on the throne, regent María Cristina had no choice but to ally with the liberals. After an attempt to grant a royal charter (the Estatuto Real of 1834), a rebellious group of Royal Guard sergeants, in 1836, in what was called the Mutiny at La Granja, forced the restoration of the 1812 Constitution. At the end, the Constitution of 1837 was ultimately approved, clearly inspired by the Belgian Constitution of 1831,³⁹ definitively consolidating the constitutional principle in Spain. With the rise of the conservatives to power in 1843, however, the principle of the constitutional state would be replaced by a Napoleon-inspired administrative state (Esdaile 2000, 65–82), a system which would endure all the way down to 1923, with the constitutions of Narváez in 1845 and Cánovas in 1876 (save for the “Revolutionary Sexennial” from 1868 to 1874).⁴⁰

In Portugal, the support of traditionalist forces for a separate candidate, the second son of João VI, D. Miguel, crystallized more rapidly, as Portuguese miguelismo emerged a couple years before Spanish carlismo (Payne 1994, 513–558). After 1834, the political struggle pitted moderates, defenders of the Constitution of 1824, against “Septembrists”, or progressives, supporters of the Constitution of 1822. The latter group managed to seize power thanks to a September 1836 coup, although they were removed in 1842 by the Count of Tomar, who established a much more authoritarian regime than that introduced by Narváez in Spain, which led his political opponents to ally and triggered several dramatic overthrow attempts, such as the Oporto Revolt (1846). Tomar was eventually forced to step down, although he would return to power from 1849 to 1851.⁴¹

16.4.4.3 England and the Electoral Reform Act of 1832

Finally, mention must be made of England, where there was no revolution but a major law introducing electoral reform, approved by Parliament on June 4, 1832, thanks to the endorsement and leadership of Lord Grey.⁴² The Electoral Reform Act introduced a sweeping redistribution of electoral districts. Through it 165 rotten boroughs were eliminated, while new industrial cities such as Manchester and Glasgow acquired Parliamentary representation for the first time, while the income requirement to vote was also lowered. This expansion of the right to vote essentially favored the urban bourgeoisie, altering the English political landscape in just a question of years. Although universal suffrage would not be introduced until after the First World War, the Electoral Reform Act of 1832 was a decisive step towards the democratization of Britain’s parliamentary regime.⁴³

16.5 The Revolution of 1848 as the Key to the Spread of the Liberal State in Europe

With the exception of the aforementioned countries, in the wake of the Revolution of 1830, the reactionary absolutism which had characterized the Ancien Régime became the prevailing trend in Europe once again. Such was the case in Austria, Russia, the various German states, and the different Italian kingdoms, all territories in which the Metternich doctrine was firmly applied.

The situation remained more or less stable until a series of revolutions broke out in Italy, France, the German states and Austria. As we know, in France the February Revolution ushered in the short-lived Second Republic, which would disappear 3 years later as a result of the coup d’état led by Louis Napoleon, who established the Second Empire. In Spain, this new wave of liberal revolutions was stifled when General Narváez, who headed up the government, managed for Parliament to temporarily grant him full powers.⁴⁴ Narváez acted effectively, thereby staving off a liberal revolution in Spain for 20 years, which would finally come about under General Prim in 1868. The 1848 revolution would have, nevertheless, more decisive consequences in Italy, Austria and Prussia.⁴⁵

16.5.1 Another Italian Liberal Revolution

16.5.1.1 Revolution Breaks Out in Sicily

Italy had revolted against Austrian absolutism in 1820 and 1830, but in every case the liberal rebellions were crushed by Austrian armies.⁴⁶ Revolution broke out again in 1848, and this time took hold in one of the Italian states: the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (Broers 2000, 151–166).

While the most important revolutionary movement took place in France in February, the first revolutionary act of 1848 would come in Italy, on January 12, in Palermo (Sicily), where rebels forced King Ferdinand II (1830–1859) to grant a constitution. This liberal success gave a prompt boost to the revolt, especially after the outbreak of the February Revolution in Paris, which spurred various Italian monarchs to promulgate constitutions in their kingdoms, such as the Grand Duke of Tuscany, King Charles Albert of Sardinia, and even Pope Pius IX. The rebellion also spread to the regions occupied by Austria: Lombardy and Veneto, where “patriots” revolted in March upon hearing the news that Metternich had fled from Vienna. After a bloody 5-day battle, the Austrians were driven from Milan. Revolution also triumphed in the duchies of Parma and Modena, whose dukes opted to abandon their states as well.

16.5.1.2 The Advent of “National Wars”: Royal Defeat and Republican Triumph

The Italian revolution gave way to a national war when Lombardy, Veneto, and the duchies of Parma and Modena, joined with the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont under the leadership of King Charles Albert, who henceforth adopted the tricolor flag as a symbol of “Italian unity”.

Charles Albert, however, was defeated by an Austrian army commanded by General Radetzky at Custoza (July 1848), allowing Austria to regain control over northern Italy. When the monarchy failed to ensure Italian unity and independence, the most extreme liberals, led by Giuseppe Mazzini, proclaimed a republic in Rome (Hearder 2006, 113–128) and in Florence, forcing the pope to flee and take refuge in Gaeta, where he was welcomed by the King of the two Sicilies.⁴⁷ After the triumph of republican liberalism the Piedmontese, the Romans and the Florentines forced Charles Albert to break the armistice signed with the Austrians (March 20, 1849). Three days later, however, the Italian army was again thrashed by Radetzky at Novara (Sked 2011, 154).

16.5.1.3 Italy Subjugated

Charles Albert abdicated in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel II. The Austrians agreed to sign a new cease-fire in exchange for their occupation of part of the Piedmont, with Radetzky’s troops taking Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and the northern Papal states. Rome, meanwhile, was occupied by a French expeditionary force which, after defeating Garibaldi and abolishing the Roman Republic, allowed the Pope to return to his states. Venice soon fell. The Italian patriots’ military defeat led to the reestablishment of an absolutist regime and the harsh repression of the liberals, but not without the important consequence that, as a result of the revolts, the King of Piedmont-Sardinia became a compelling symbol of national unity.

16.5.1.4 The Piedmont Exception

The only Italian territory in which liberal principles survived was in the Piedmont, where Victor Emmanuel II refused to abolish the constitution granted by his father: the Albertine Statute (Ghisalberti 2006, 35). Hence, Italian patriots took refuge in Turin, which became the “capital” of liberal Italy. Victor Emmanuel, however, realized that Italians alone could not overcome Austrian power, prompting him to seek aid from Napoleon III, at the initiative of his first minister the Count of Cavour.

16.5.2 The Revolution of 1848 in the German Territories

The 1848 revolution also had a major impact on Austria and Prussia, two of the leading European powers since 1816. As both kingdoms aspired to lead the “German nation”, it is important to examine the origins of German nationalism to understand what happened in both states in 1848.

16.5.2.1 The French Origins of the German “Nation”: Napoleon and Prussia

German unity proceeded from nationalist sentiment reflecting, as occurred in Spain, a backlash against the Napoleonic invasion (Aguilera-Barchet 2008, 123–132). Napoleon had restructured the German territories on two occasions: in 1803 at Regensburg, he substantially reduced the number of German states.⁴⁸ After his victory at Austerlitz (December 1805), the Emperor of the French created the Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund),⁴⁹ which replaced the old Holy German-Roman Empire, dating back to the year 962.⁵⁰ Prussia attempted to counter the French threat (Simms 2002, 291–295), but Napoleon’s victories over Frederick William III (1797–1840), led to the dismemberment of the Empire on August 6, 1806, carried out through a set of agreements between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I through the Treaties of Tilsitt (1807).

The reduction of the Kingdom of Prussia to half its former size was a humiliating blow, engendering a wave of nationalist fervor (Breuilly 2009, 256–284). This was initially seized upon by the aristocrats Stein and Hardenberg, who championed an elite-led movement for Prussian regeneration.⁵¹ This “Prussian protonationalism” would be consolidated thanks to the military reform of General Scharnhorst and the influence of eminent intellectuals like Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), and Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), founder of the University of Berlin, the leaders of a movement of enlightened nationalism that transformed Prussian political culture (Levinger 2002).

This “nationalist” feeling was decisive in making Prussia one of the forces which would ultimately vanquish Napoleon in 1813, as Prussia rose to become a leading European power during the Restoration period (Simms 2000, 97–114).

16.5.2.2 Austria Heads up the “Germanic Confederation”

The Congress of Vienna (1815) replaced the Napoleonic “Confederation of the Rhine” with a Germanic Confederation (Deutscher Bund) of 39 states, once again under an Emperor of Austria, which represented a reversion to the structure of the Holy German-Roman Empire, abolished in 1806 (John 2000, 83–96). As such, it was a weak union in which the states maintained their total independence, only meeting sporadically in assemblies (diets) that represented the sovereigns of their respective states, and not their inhabitants.⁵²

16.5.2.3 The Zollverein or the Prussian Way Towards German Integration

The Kingdom of Prussia reacted to this state of things in 1818 by undertaking a momentous initiative: the establishment of a customs union (Zollverein).⁵³ Thanks to it the interior customs services between the states controlled by the Hohenzollern disappeared, while the tariffs paid by those not belonging to the Zollverein increased. With its initiative, Prussia managed to favor commerce within the scope of the “union”, bringing about a considerable increase in economic activity. The success of this tariff policy was so great that all the German states ended up forming part of this free economic space which may, without any doubt, be considered a precursor of the current process of European integration. By 1834, all the states of the Germanic Confederation had been incorporated into the Zollverein.⁵⁴

The balance between Austria and Prussia, however, would be broken by the 1848 revolution and a group of intellectuals who hoped to bring about a strong, unified Germany, accompanied by political reforms in the individual German states (Pogge von Strandmann 2002, 107).⁵⁵

16.5.3 The Austrian Empire and the Revolution

16.5.3.1 The Fall of Metternich

Immediately after news spread of the triumph of the revolution in Paris, rebellion broke out in Budapest (Hungary), and Prague (Bohemia). On March 13 the revolutionaries, headed by university students (Robertson 1980, 206–236), took over Vienna, forcing Metternich to flee.⁵⁶ Overwhelmed, the Austrian government accepted all the rebels’ demands and pledged to convene a constitutional assembly.

16.5.3.2 A Military Backlash and the Crushing of the Rebels

The army, however, remained loyal to the monarchy. Austrian troops counterattacked, first prevailing in Bohemia (June 1848). Four months later they occupied Vienna (October 31). The government soon fell into the hands of the Prince of Schwarzenberg, who suggested to Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria that he abdicate in favor of his nephew, the young Franz Joseph (1848–1916), who dissolved the constitutional assembly and promulgated a constitution which was ultimately suspended (March 1849).

To subjugate the Hungarians, Austria had to ally with Russia, with the Austro-Russian Coalition quelling a rebellion in August of 1848, through a harsh campaign of repression. Hungary lost the broad autonomy it had enjoyed before, and was divided into provinces ruled by Austrian officials who did not even know the Hungarian language (Magyar), and only spoke German.⁵⁷

The 1848 revolution had failed in the Austrian Empire, but not in the other German territories. It had a particularly decisive impact on one of them: Prussia, whose sovereign aspired to secure independence from Austria.

16.5.4 Prussia vs. Austria: The Fight for German Supremacy

In 1848, the German-speaking population lived in a multitude of states still formally ruled over by the Emperor of Austria. However, as the revolution initially spread to Vienna that year, King Frederick William IV of Prussia (1840–1861) moved to supplant the Austrian Emperor and establish himself as the new champion of all the German-speaking peoples (Pan-Germanism), thereby seeking an integration of all Germans “from the top down”.⁵⁸

There soon emerged, however, other, more grassroots attempts to unite the German peoples. Circumstances were favorable to the restructuring of the German states, as the revolutionary triumphs scored across Europe in 1848, advanced the idea of a German nation. In fact, throughout the German territories nationalist agitation had begun in 1847. Just after the triumph of the revolution in France, a group of German patriots in Heidelberg managed to convoke an assembly (diet), composed of members of the various assemblies of the German states (including the Austrian Empire). This body resolved to convene a constitutional parliament, to be elected by universal suffrage amongst all the citizens forming part of the Germanic confederation, including all the German states not forming part of the Austrian Empire (Rapport 2009, 59).

16.5.4.1 The Political Consequences of the Berlin Rebellion

Prussia was soon enveloped in a revolutionary whirlwind. On March 18, 1848 revolution broke out in Berlin. In response to the turmoil, King Frederick William IV (1840–1861), agreed to convene a National Assembly to be elected by universal suffrage. The resulting parliament, a revolutionary successor to the old German Confederation, a loose body of 39 German states formed at the Congress of Vienna and dominated by Austria (Thackeray 2004, 5), was constituted in May of 1848 in Frankfurt, as a constitutional assembly charged with drafting a Prussian constitution.⁵⁹

16.5.4.2 Testing the “Bottom Up” Approach to German Integration: The Frankfurt Parliament

The Parliament thus chosen was constituted on May 18, 1848 and established a provisional federal government led by a liberal Austrian archduke.⁶⁰ It also drafted a “Constitution for Germany”, which became a federal state presided over by an emperor. The former states endured, but above them a government was created consisting of an emperor (Kaiser) and an elected parliament. The federal government was assigned powers over some areas of joint concern (diplomacy, army, customs duties) while other authorities were retained by the different states. Finally, the Frankfurt Parliament discussed whether the federal state should include Austria to form a Großdeutsche Lösung or Austria should be excluded, thereby creating a Kleindeutsche Lösung,⁶¹ the latter option being that which prevailed. In March of 1849, the Austrian representatives abandoned the Frankfurt Parliament (Merkl 1993, 32).

The Frankfurt Parliament, however, failed to achieve its objectives because Frederick William IV, upon learning that revolution had been suppressed in Austria–Hungary, rejected the crown offered him by the representatives, as this would have meant being appointed by an elected assembly and renouncing his dynastic legitimacy. Neither would he accept the constitution adopted by the members of the parliament, which led to its dissolution (Thackeray 2004, 17). German integration “from the bottom up” had failed.

16.5.4.3 From the Erfurt Union to the Punctation of Olmütz: Austria’s Victory Over Prussia

Despite having rejected the federal constitution proposed by the Frankfurt Parliament, Frederick William did not give up on the unification of all Germans, but rather acted to carry out an integration spearheaded by the Prussian monarchy. Firstly, he moved to head up a German Union consisting of the Austrian Empire and a new “German Empire”.

The King of Prussia’s proposal, however, was only accepted by small states. Thus arose a limited union which elected a parliament that would meet in Erfurt, and adopt a constitution presented by the King of Prussia (April 1850). This restricted union failed to take shape, however, because of the firm opposition of Austria, which once again enjoyed a position of strength, after having subjugated its rebels. The Austrian government, supported by Tsar Nicholas I, sent an ultimatum to the King of Prussia, and Frederick William ended up accepting all of Austria’s conditions in the Punctation of Olmütz, or Olmützer Punktation, of November 1850 (Winkler 2007, 112–113). Thus was the restricted union (Erfurt Union) dissolved, with the Austrian Empire once again ruling over the German states. In short, the situation reverted to that existing prior to 1848.⁶²

16.5.5 Prussia Becomes a Constitutional Kingdom

Frederick William IV not only rejected the Crown offered by the Frankfurt Parliament, but also the constitution adopted by it.⁶³ He did not, however, simply restore absolutism, but rather established another constitution (January, 1850), unilaterally endorsed by him. What the king wished to make clear was that the establishment of a constitutional regime was the prerogative of the king and not that of the “nation” (Kolkey 1995, 82–83). In this regard he was successful, as the constitutional system instituted by Frederick William IV would remain in force in Prussia until 1918.

The new Prussian Constitution created a bicameral legislature with two chambers: an upper house (Herrenhaus), made up of members of the landowning nobility (junkers ⁶⁴), appointed by the king; and a lower house of representatives (Landtag) chosen by universal, indirect and weighted suffrage. This legislature, however, was hardly democratic, as it favored the representation of the wealthy. Thus, the middle class was not yet able to exercise real political influence, and Prussian society maintained its rigid class divisions.⁶⁵

The Prussian Constitution of 1850 also failed to establish a parliamentary regime. In theory, the chambers of the legislature voted on the laws, but the king could legislate via ordonnances, executive orders, when the legislature was not in session. The parliament also approved taxes, provided that they were new, as all traditional ones were maintained until rescinded by law. The appointment of ministers was the exclusive purview of the king, who could also dismiss them freely. In summary, in Prussia the monarchy retained sovereignty.⁶⁶

16.5.6 Relative Calm in Europe by 1850

By the end of 1850, it seemed that the revolutionary earthquakes which had shaken Europe 2 years earlier had been in vain. The nationalist movements had failed, and the liberals had only obtained tangible results in the form of two constitutional texts: the Albertine Statute of 1848, which continued to be the constitution of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia; and the Prussian Constitution of 1850. Austria had managed to regain hegemony in Italy and Germany and to consolidate its brand of strict imperial centralism.

This tranquility, however, was misleading, as within 20 years the Austrian Empire would suffer the loss of Italy (which became an independent, unified state) and be defeated by the Kingdom of Prussia, which finally became the core and primary force driving the German integration process. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, nevertheless, would remain a great power until the end of the First World War.

16.6 The Unification of Italy

Austria’s victory in 1850 did not prevent Italian and German patriots from carrying on with their struggle to found their own nation-states. The Italians would ultimately prevail thanks to the efforts of Victor Emmanuel II’s first minister, Camillo Benso, better known as the Count of Cavour. Italian unification constitutes the paradigm of the consolidation of the nation-state principle in the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe.

16.6.1 Il Risorgimento

As we have seen, on March 4, 1848 the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, Charles Albert, promulgated a liberal constitution which, in his honor, came to be called the Albertine Statute.⁶⁷ This constitutional text, despite the revolution’s failure, persisted as a symbol of a free Italy, as it was not abolished, despite the Austrian reoccupation. After being defeated by the Austrians, Charles Albert abdicated and ceded the throne to his son, Victor Emmanuel II, who, was wise enough to appoint as his first minister Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (1810–1861), a patriot determined to bring about a united Italy.⁶⁸ This period during which the Italians managed to integrate and form a single nation-state is known as Il Risorgimento (The Resurgence), because it aimed to transform Italy into one of the great European powers.⁶⁹

16.6.2 French Support for the Italian Cause

Cavour came to power in 1852, and spent 7 years at the head of the Piedmontese Government, during which time he converted the Kingdom of Sardinia into a strong state, and secured support from France to oust Austria from Italy through an alliance with Napoleon III (Blumberg 1990, 17). By virtue of the Plombières Agreement of 1858, the French received Nice and Savoy in exchange for providing the Piedmontese with military assistance to free Italy from Austrian occupation. Once signed, Cavour provoked Vienna into declaring war on Victor Emmanuel II. The ensuing conflict was brief (May–July 1859), as two bloody battles (Magenta and Solferino) led to the Austrians’ defeat.⁷⁰

16.6.3 A Democratic Integration

Despite the fact that France had signed a truce with Austria (Armistice of Villafranca), the army of the Italian patriots continued military operations, annexing the Kingdom of Sardinia and central Italy after the Piedmontese army’s occupation of Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and part of the Papal States. The conquest of these territories was legally formalized through the convocation of the corresponding constitutional assemblies which, once elected, approved their incorporation into the Sardinian Kingdom (August–September 1859). The procedure was concluded by a referendum in which the people were asked whether they accepted their integration into the new Italian Kingdom (Ghisalberti 2006, 97–100). One should bear in mind that the new state was based on the constitutional regime of Piedmont-Sardinia, which since 1848, had been grounded on the Albertine Statute, based on the principle of national sovereignty. In this way “Italian unity” was legitimized by the free consent of its people (the “Italian nation”).

16.6.4 Garibaldi and the Annexation of the South

The next step was the annexation of the south, carried out by Garibaldi and his army of “red shirts”. Taking advantage of an insurrection against Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, Garibaldi landed in Sicily (May 11, 1860), in command of 1,000 volunteers. After conquering Sicily, the camicie rosse proceeded to the mainland, where they took the Kingdom of Naples before moving on to the Papal States. To prevent the Kingdom of the two Sicilies and the Papal States from becoming independent republics, as was Garibaldi’s aspiration, in September of 1860, Cavour ordered Victor Emmanuel II’s troops to cross the Papal States and enter Naples.⁷¹ As a result, the people of the former King of the Two Sicilies approved their annexation into the Kingdom of Sardinia via successive referendums, and by overwhelming majorities.

16.6.5 The Kingdom of Italy Is Founded (March 14, 1861)

By way of successive additions the small Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, which in July of 1859 had a population of just 5 million, 2 years later boasted over 22 million. The next constitutional step was to convene an Italian Parliament. Meeting in Turin, this body proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy “by the grace of God and the will of the nation” (March 17, 1861),⁷² with the new Italian State promptly adopting its tricolor flag.

Three months later (June 1861), Cavour died, but not before he had realized his objective of Italian unification. As Venice and Rome were still yet to be integrated, Florence served as the capital of Italy (1864).

16.6.6 The “Roman Question”

Venice would be incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy in October of 1866 via plebiscite,⁷³ but Rome was still a holdout, posing a difficult situation as the Pope was simultaneously the spiritual head of the Catholic Church and the political head of the Papal States, making governments and Catholic sovereigns, including Victor Emmanuel II himself, reticent to occupy his territory.⁷⁴

Only gold members can continue reading. Log In or Register to continue

Fastest Law Search Engine

The Golden Era of Liberalism and the Apogee of the Nation-State