Revolutions - 7.20- Where Do You Draw The Line?

Episode Date: December 25, 2017

With German unification on the way, the question became who exactly was going to be unified anyway? Give a Gift Get A Gift: www.hachettebookgroup.com/stormbeforethestorm  

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 7.20, where do you draw the line? After spending the last two episodes in France, we are now going to head back east to Central Europe. And while we make the move, we should take note of the fact that in terms of political development, it is fair to say that Germany was one solid notch behind France. In France, the February Revolution, had seen the successful overthrow of a liberal monarchy by radical Democrats, and then the June days had seen those same radical Democrats suppress a left-wing socialist insurrection.

While in Germany, they did not yet have a liberal monarchy. That's what they were trying to achieve. So the events of March 1848 saw the overthrow of conservative absolutism and the installation of liberal governments, who today will begin the process of suppressing the radical Democrats. So the Germans would not be far enough along to turn to the social question in any meaningful way. But for the Germans, the Revolution of 1848 was a political project, whose aim was fundamentally national unification rather than class conflict. Practically everyone agreed that a politically unified Germany was the goal. But now that the rubber was meeting the road, what did a politically unified Germany even look like? It was one thing to give romance,

speeches about the fatherland, quite another to break out a map and a pen and start drawing lines. So as I just mentioned, we left off in Germany in episode 7.16, and we were in the last week of March 1848 with the general triumph of liberal reformers throughout the territories of the German Confederation. Hoping to use reform to stave off revolution, most of the various princes and dukes and kings of Germany had fired their conservative ministries and repatriates. place them with liberals. Even King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia had been forced to make concessions, and though he stopped short of outright declaring a constitution, in the face of a massive uprising in Berlin, he had promised his people a national diet who would soon convene and discuss liberal

reforms for Prussia. But the newly elevated liberal leaders of Germany were not interested in mere local reform, because almost to a man, they shared the dream of German unification. And even Prussia was now promoting the program of unification, even if the king was pretty transparently trying to change the subject away from demands that Prussia get a written constitution. So for the last generation or more, liberals in Germany had been dreaming about and discussing and debating the unification of Germany. And now their time was at hand. So how was it going to work in practice. Well, they were lucky in that a lot of the groundwork had already been laid. They were knitted together culturally, obviously. That free trade zone, the sulfurine, knitted them together

economically, and the existing federal diet of the German Confederation knitted them together politically. So with those pieces in place, you can really just get everyone together, knock out a few votes on merging, and you're done, right? Well, not quite. The main obstacle was that no liberal worth his salt trusted the federal diet of the German Confederation. Remember, it was composed of representatives of the crowned heads of Germany, not the people of Germany. And over the past 30 years, the federal diet had been a tool of tyranny and repression, an apparatus that took its marching orders from Metternich, most strikingly with the oppressive Carlsbad decrees. So to create a truly legitimate pan-German state, they would need to start

with a new pan-German parliament, one that did represent the people. To move toward legitimate unification, the liberals of Germany had to begin with a bit of nakedly illegitimate meetings. Back on March the 5th, a group of liberal leaders met in Heidelberg to discuss how to create some kind of truly representative assembly that would hopefully supersede the existing federal diet. The men assembled in Heidelberg decided that the best course would be to gather the most prestigious liberal figures from across Germany and have them hammer out the specific form and function of the new pan-German parliament. How the elections would work when and where this parliament would meet, what the scope of its activities would be, all that good stuff. The conclusion of this Heidelberg group

was that before there could be a German parliament, there had to be a German pre-parliament. So based on a very inexact set of criteria, whether it be official standing in local governments, individual reputation or suggestions by some of these spontaneous people's committees, 574 men were invited to the free city of Frankfurt to take part in this initial pre-parliament. The two questions before this pre-parliament, and the two questions that will define the whole rest of today's episode were, what will be the form of government for this new unified German state, and then who will be included in this new unified German state? Still uneasy about provoking greater revolutionary upheaval, the heads of state of Germany did not make a fuss about the meeting of this pre-parliament that had no sovereign or legal authority and was just sort of convening of its own volition to openly work on the project of German unification.

The pre-parlimate held its first session in Frankfurt on March the 31st, 1848. Giving it a nice boost of legitimacy, the Great Power Prussia sent fully 114 delegates with the blessed. of the king, who was clearly hoping to steer all of this in a pro-Prussian direction. But from the south, the far more progressively radical men of the Duchy of Baden also wanted to control events, and they wound up sending 72 men. Among them, the two big-name radicals I introduced in episode 7.16, Friedrich Hekhar and Gustav Strava. Among the most aggressive Democratic Republicans in all of Germany, Hekhar and Strouva and their fellow radicals, wanted to stake out the position right away that what Germany needed was to

wipe the slate clean and declare itself a single unitary republic. Struva gave a speech to that effect on the very first day of the pre-parliament. But though his speech was cheered in a few corners of the room, the vast majority of the delegates shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Something like 80% of the attendees at the pre-parliament were some brand of constitutional monarchist. They certainly thought it mad to sweep aside the old political lines, as if that would not trigger some kind of huge conservative reaction, probably a violent conservative reaction. So rising to counter the radicals was a Hessian liberal noble named Heinrich von Goggren. Emerging right away as the leader of the liberals in Frankfurt, von Goghren delivered a much

better received speech, where he said that the best option for Germany would be some sort of federal union of all the states, a list of guaranteed rights for all German citizens, and then the election of a hereditary emperor to rule them all, within constitutional limits, of course, all of which sounded very reasonable to the liberal delegates. So with this general thrust agreed upon, the pre-parliament then turned to the specifics of how to hold elections. And though most of the delegates were more conservative than guys like Hekhar and Shrova, that did not mean they were Gizzo-style conservatives who essentially believed in an aristocracy of wealth as opposed to an aristocracy of blood. So without too much debate, the pre-parliament approved near universal

suffrage for the coming election. The specific formulation had it that all, quote, independent males would be allowed to vote. Now, once the election actually started, there would be some debate over the meaning of the word independent. Could you vote if you were a servant, if you took some kind of government assistance? What if you didn't pay taxes. Each state had to decide for itself what the criteria would be. But even with some governments viewing the meaning of independent as restrictively as possible, it is estimated that somewhere north of 80% of German adult males would have the right to vote in the election. So Germany was following France's leap into the great Democratic unknown. Hekhar and Strava and the hundred or so

radicals who stood with them spent the next few days fighting for a unitary republic rather than a federal monarchy, but their appeals fell on deaf ears. And further demonstrating that the leading liberals were not going to let the radicals take the ball and run, as the pre-parliament wrapped up its meeting on April the 3rd, they decided to appoint a 50-man committee to remain in Frankfurt as caretakers of the process until the real parliament could convene, which was now scheduled for mid-May. Both Hekhar and Strava tried to get on this committee of 50, but they were shut out. All the radicals were shut out.

With constitutional monarchists firmly in the driver's seat, the radicals stormed out. Hekhar and Strova went back to Baden, with Hekhar bitterly saying that nothing can be done in Frankfurt. And with revolution truly in the air, the radicals did not feel like they had to just accept the dictates of some randomly self-declared liberal assembly. This was 1848, a year when you could always go with option C, revolution. We'll come back to the radicals of Baden, though, because while the coming Hekhar uprising was focused on answering the question of what form of government the new unified German state will have, that other great question, who will be included in the new unified German state, was causing major upheavals on the periphery of the fatherland. And two areas in particular are already, as we speak, exploding into violence. The first were the duchies of Schleswig Holstein that bordered the kingdom of Denmark.

The other was, you guessed it, Poland. Now, for fans of the history of mid-19th century European diplomacy, and I mean, who isn't, the Schleswig Holstein question is infamous for its sticky intractability. The British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, would later remark in the 1860s that only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig Holstein business, the Prince Consort who is dead, a German professor who has gone mad, and I who have forgotten all about it. So with that said, I will now attempt to make some sense of the basic background of the issue, because even before the pre-parliament met Frankfurt, the first Schleswig-Holstein

war had already begun. Okay, so, close. Climbing into the Wayback Machine, we will set our controls to land at some random point in the Middle Ages. We find sitting at the base of the Jutland Peninsula, the Duchy of Schleswig, and the county of Holstein. They are two pieces of the incredibly intricate mosaic of medieval political geography. They sat on top of each other in between the Kingdom of Denmark and the rest of Germany. The residents of the northernmost Duchy of Schleswig were primarily Danes, while the southern county of Holstein were mostly German. So far, so good.

Well, in 1459 or thereabouts, both territories came under the dynastic claim of King Christian I of Denmark. But in order to secure his peaceful acquisition of these territories, Christian had to make a few promises. First, he would not annex them directly into his own crown lands of Denmark. Instead, he would hold them in personal union, taking the title Duke of Schleswig and Count of Holstein. Still with me? Good.

King Christian then further conceded that if he or his heirs try to annex Schleswig Holstein directly into the kingdom of Denmark, that the local nobles would have the right to go into revolt. But none of that is what is going to make this interesting. What is going to make this interesting is that the question of national identity is still 400 years in the future, and the nobility of Schleshevig and Holstein, whether they were quote-unquote German or quote-unquote Danish, were pretty well integrated with each other. They saw strength in their continued connection, and so did not ever want to be separated from each other in some future dynastic buffet. So in 1460, everyone got together and signed the Treaty of Reeb, which declared that Schleswig and Holstein would be, and I quote, forever undivided.

Okay, fast forward 400 years and you can see that this is going to be a big problem as nationalism is beginning to supplant feudalism as the basis of political sovereignty. What do you do when Europe wants to start organizing along national lines with Danes in one bucket and Germans in another? But at the same time, dealing with the fact that Danish Schleswig and German Holstein are legally inseparable. That is going to be a big problem. And that's not all, because adding to the brewing political crisis was a succession crisis. By the late 1840s, it was clear to everyone that the heir to the Danish throne was never going to have children, and that the dynasty's male line was on the road to extinction. Now, this was no problem in Denmark proper because the throne could be inherited through the female line.

But it was a problem in Schleswig Holstein, because they still held fast to old Selig-Lorchstein. that said only the male line could inherit the throne. So that meant that for the first time in 400 years, Schleswig Holstein was in line to be removed from its personal union with the kings of Denmark. It would be transferred to a cadet branch of that royal family, a cadet branch that happened to be fully German. Now, adding unnecessary fuel to this fire, very unnecessary fuel, very bad timing. The old king died in January of 1848.

and his 40-year-old son ascended to the throne as King Frederick the 7th of Denmark. Now, whenever King Frederick died, Schleswig Holstein would be lost to the Danes. Staring down this loss of territory and dignity, and themselves awakened by the rising tide of European nationalism, Danish leaders found this prospect intolerable. Meanwhile, the Germans are not about to allow the German inhabitants of Holstein to be kept outside of their project of German unification. And then meanwhile even further, the residents of Schleswig Holstein

planned to hold fast to their sacred unity. Wherever one went, so too would go the other. And oh yeah, just to add one last pretty critical wrinkle, over the past few centuries, German migration into Schleswig meant that most of the southern third of the quote-unquote Danish duchy of Schleswig was actually German. So even if by some miracle, Schleswig and Holstein were allowed to part ways that would still leave a considerable German population outside of United Germany. So the March

to the first Schleswig-Holstein War started on March the 11th, 1848. On that day, a group of Danish liberal nationalists met in Copenhagen. These guys were the same brand of liberal nationalists that we've seen all over this year. They wanted a liberal constitutional government at home and the integration of all Danes everywhere under a shared national union. Specifically, they demanded Denmark to the Ider, the Ider being the river that divided Schleswig and Holstein. In response to this on March the 18th, there was a meeting of the local Schleswig-Holstein nobles, and they pledged to resist any attempt at annexation, as was their right. They sent a delegation to Copenhagen demanding an independent constitution for Schlisheg Holstein.

So the Danish liberals met again on March the 20th and resolved to oppose this delegation and impress upon the king that he must embrace their Denmark to the Ider policy. The next day, they successfully forced the king to submit to all their demands, the sacking of conservative ministers, the promulgation of a written constitution, and a commitment to keeping Schleswig in Danish hands. and the representatives from Schleswig Holstein arrived, and the king told them, look, I have no issue with losing my claim to Holstein.

You guys can go join the German Confederation. I don't mind at all. But I am not giving up Schleswig. I can't do it. So on March the 24th, the leaders in Schlaesvig Holstein declared a provisional government for the duchies that was founded on three principles.

We will be independent, we will be united, and we will orient ourselves towards Germany. With both sides absolutely unwilling to back down, war was now the only solution. Now, as I said, most of southern Schleswig was German, and so when the provisional government declared itself in existence, most of Southern Schleswig recognized its authority.

And certainly, when a force of about 7,000 men composing a new Schleswig-Holstein army attacked the key fortress at Rendsburg, which was technically in Schleswig, they found the doors open and everything unlocked. So taking the fortress without a fight, the new Schleswig-Holstein army loaded up on money, equipment, guns, and ammunition. So the first military action of the war now in the rearview mirror, on March the 28th, the provisional government sent envoys to both the federal diet of the German Confederation

and to individual member states to beg for aid, specifically to beg price. Russia to intervene. Now, the King of Prussia did not want to go to war with Denmark over Schleswig Holstein, but he had just been driven out of Berlin by a liberal insurrection and was feeling hemmed in by the German nationalists, and so he warned the Danes that if they crossed an army into Schleswig, there would be war with Prussia. Unfortunately, his counterpart, King Frederick of Denmark, was under the same nationalist pressures and so he decided to call the Prussian bluff. launching his navy out into the Baltic Sea, the king ordered a Danish army to cross the border into Schlaeswig. So on April the 2nd, Prussia notified the German Confederation that Prussia was going to undertake a defense of Schleswig Holstein.

And on April the 4th, the Confederation approved this plan. Within days, the Prussian army had crossed the border into Holstein pushing north, while the Danes drove south towards the Ider River. So now we've got ourselves a full-blown international crisis, because a long. alarm bells are ringing all over England and Russia about the balance of power in the Baltic. I mean, you can't have Prussia grabbing land in Denmark, but this started to become a very real possibility. When the Danes and the Prussians ran into each other at the end of April, the superior Prussian army forced the Danes into a fighting retreat. So both the British and the Russians warned Prussia that they had better not think about crossing the border into Denmark,

or there would be trouble. But though the king himself agreed, the commanders he put in the the field did not. They were there to win the war and to force Danish capitulation. So in early May, the Prussian army crossed the Danish frontier. And when King Friedrich Wilhelm ordered the commander-in-chief of the army to withdraw, the commander-in-chief said that his mandate came from the German confederation, not from the King of Prussia. So it's really up to them to order me out. And by then, the Frankfurt Parliament was preparing to convene and make a play at superseding the authority of the federal diet of the German Confederation. So it really wasn't clear to anyone who was in charge of anything by May of 1848.

But that's just one side of Germany's problems on their periphery. Because simultaneously, everything happened simultaneously in 1848, the eastern borderlands were blowing up too because the polls had heard the news that it was springtime of the peoples. And they said, hey, we're a people, and specifically a people with incredible. recent grievances, and so we'd like to get in on this springtime of the people's business. So let us now turn our attention to Poland. And as we discussed during the run of episodes on the French Revolution, the Kingdom of Poland was gradually wiped off the map of Europe by Prussia, Austria, Austria, during the three great partitions of Poland. Now, Napoleon had temporarily

reversed a lot of this when he created the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807. But after, after, Waterloo, the Congress of Vienna more or less reparsal the Poles back out among the Prussians and Austrians and Russians as they had been before. The Prussians received the region known historically as Greater Poland, but now legally incorporated as the Duchy of Posen, which was technically separate from, but held in personal union with, the Prussian crown. But though this was traditionally Polish land, ever since Prussia first gave, a foothold way back during the reign of Frederick the Great, the Prussians had begun a program to encourage German migration into the region, and to ensure that all government and administrative

posts were held by Germans. By 1848, the Duchy of Posen was 60% Polish, 35% German, and about 5% Jewish, which is exactly the kind of demographic mix bag that was going to make it almost impossible to answer the question of national unification peacefully. I mean, is the Duchy of Posen Polish? Well, yeah, by a majority it is. But what about the 35% that are German? What about the 5% that are Jewish? Who do they go with?

Let's find out. So the Polish population in the Duchy of Posen was as excited as anyone about the news of revolution in France. But they were even more excited about the news from Berlin. because on March the 19th, the king announced that he was opening the door to liberal reform, and as a show of benevolence, the king amnestied political prisoners. And for the polls, that meant he was releasing patriotic rebels who had attempted an uprising back in 1846, an uprising that was exposed and crushed before it had a chance to get going. And probably the most important of these prisoners, at least for our purposes here on the Revolution's podcast,

was a man named Ludwig Miroslowski. Miroslowski had been born in France in 1814. His father had been a Polish colonel in the employee of the French army, and his mother was a French woman. So little Ludovic spent his first six years in France, and, critically, I might add, held French citizenship. But in 1820, his family moved back to the region called Congress Poland, which was the part of Poland that had been given over to the Russians.

A precocious and patriotic young man, Miroslowski joined the failed November uprising against Russia that ran its course from 1830 to 1831. When the uprising failed, Miroslowski went into exile in Paris and became one of the leading lights of the Polish emigre community. He wrote a history of the November uprising and lectured on the general history of the Slavic people

and also on military strategy and tactics. His standing among these exiles was such that when the 1846 uprising was being planned, he was asked to come home and lead it. He agreed, but almost as soon as he arrived in February 1846, he was arrested and the whole planned rebellion fell apart. He then spent nearly two years languishing in a Prussian jail before he was finally sentenced to death in December of 1847. So, very lucky for him that the Revolution of 1840,

1848 came along, and in a great show of liberal benevolence, the king amnestied everyone and let them go free. When the Polish prisoners were amnestyed, they immediately formed a Polish militia in Berlin and marched back to their homes in the Duchy of Posen. Now at first, this was all with the blessing and the goodwill of the Prussians, because with the revolution spreading across Germany, what they all feared most of all was Russia deciding to act as the great hammer of conservatism and that they would come roaring out of the east. So it was better to encourage the Poles to arm themselves so that they could act as a buffer. Meanwhile, way off in Paris, that community of exiled Poles were similarly being encouraged to return home and take up the

cause of Polish liberty. As we saw last week, the plight of the Poles had long been a passion of the French left wing, but in the estimation of Alphonse de la Martín, then currently serving as the foreign minister and the provisional government, the great fear was that all the old conservative powers, Prussia, Austria, Austria, would join forces to invade France. So the Poles would give them all something else to focus on. So the French government gave these Polish exiles money and encouragement and also like literally train tickets that they could use to get home. Meanwhile, back in the Duchy of Posen, local Polish leaders formed the Polish National Committee, but pointedly, they did not allow any German or Jewish

representatives to join them. Initially, they planned to use this committee to demand outright independence, but then they moderated that demand to merely, quote-unquote, national reorganization. Basically, the Poles wanted a far greater share of political and administrative jobs in the duchy, and they wanted the Prussian army to remove its garrisons. This was all with an eye on eventually achieving autonomy and self-rule. The committee also started organizing volunteers for a defense force, though it must be stressed here that at the moment they assumed that this force would be fighting the Russians, who were no doubt already mobilizing to come to the defense of conservative Central Europe. With these armed forces now being raised, on March the 28th, they gave Miroslowski command of the forces, which soon numbered about seven,

thousand. Now, this all might seem very provocative, but with the liberal revolt in Berlin, the Poles actually thought that the Prussians were going to be supportive of these nationalist ambitions, and Miroslowski assumed that his Polish forces would soon be fighting with the Prussians against the Russians. And when a delegation from the Polish National Committee met with the King on March the 23rd, they found themselves further encouraged. He listened to them. He approved the request for a national reorganization, and he sent them on their way believing that the Duchy of Posen would soon be autonomous and ruled by the Poles. But as soon as they were out the door, the king told his generals to draw plans for an invasion. So at this point, we now have to

remember that 35% of the population of the Duchy of Posen was German, to say nothing of the 5% who were Jewish. They all liked things just how they were. So on March the 23rd, to counter the Poles, a German National Committee was founded to block the rush to Polish autonomy. They were able to point to acts of anti-German harassment and theft, vandalism, and violence, as proof that the Poles were crazed with vengeful bloodlust and that the German minority population would not be safe if the polls were just handed the keys to the Duchy. So the German Committee petitioned the federal diet of the German Confederation, and they made the argument that if national reorganization is going to be a,

thing, that the German majority counties have to be broken off entirely and allowed to join the coming unified German state. Then, just as the polls were doing, the Germans raised their own militias to protect themselves and their property. Or so they said. In the first week of April, the king sent a royal civil commissioner to help pick through the weeds in the Duchy of Pozen, and he only further convinced the polls that this was all going to turn out their way. and he arranged a deal whereby the Dutchie would be allowed greater autonomy within the Prussian Empire, but not if they had more than 3,000 men under arms. So the polls were mighty encouraged by all of this,

and the Germans were very pissed off about it. But as April progressed, and it became clear that Russia was not in fact planning to rush off into war, the whole German outlook on the polls, liberals and conservatives alike, pretty much turned on a dime. Before the Poles knew what hit them, they were getting hit from all sides. First, the king issued a decree that he was planning to exempt a few of the German majority counties and the Duchy from this national reorganization he had promised. Then to that list, he added a few more, and a few more, even counties with a majority Polish population. And pretty soon, it became clear that only about a third of the Duchy of Posen would be granted any kind of reform at all.

But even that rump third of the duchy wasn't really going to get any reform at all. They were instead going to be conquered. Satisfied that Russia was not going to interfere, the Prussian army attacked the Polish military camps on April the 29th, 1848. The Polish National Committee was shocked, having been led to believe that they had successfully talked their way through the danger. Miroslowski told them we have to fight back, but they were unwilling to give that order. and instead decided to resign and disband the committee, leaving Miroslowski to fight on. The next day, Miroslowski led his troops to a surprising victory at Miloslav, but the fight sat the Polish strength to the point where they could not pursue the fleeing Prussians. And this was really the only high point of what became known as the greater Polish uprising.

Everywhere else, the Prussian army had the numerical, technological, and professional advantage over the local Polish militias. and they rolled through the Duchy of Posen like a bulldozer. In less than a week, it was clear that the Poles could not win. Miroslowski resigned his post rather than surrender, leaving it to his successor to capitulate on May the 9th. And that ended the Greater Polish Uprising. It also ended any hope that the Poles might get something out of the springtime of the peoples. In the aftermath of the uprising, the Duchy of Posen would be erased from the map

and reformed as merely the province of Posen, annexed now directly into Prussia. So recently believing that they were on their way to autonomous independence, the polls now found themselves more shackled than ever. Before we move on, though, I should mention that that run of defeats in the first week of May is what led directly to the massive demonstration in Paris that we talked about last week that helped set up the June days. So we're making all the connections all over the place here. So while the first Schleswig-Holstein war continued in the north,

and the greater Polish uprising got going in the east, it's time now to head south and join the radicals in Baden for what history has dubbed the Hekhar Uprising. After storming out of Frankfurt at the beginning of April 1848, Hekhar and Shrews returned to Baden, convinced that they were going to have to launch a revolutionary insurrection if Germany was to have the unitary republic that they deemed essential for German liberty. So they hatched a plan to start an insurrection in the foothills of the Alps,

and then come snowballing down the Rhine, leading a mass popular march that would demonstrate to Frankfurt beyond a shadow of a doubt what the will of the people truly was. Except they were both about to discover that their imaginations had kind of gotten away from them. And in point of fact, they did not really represent. the will of the people at all. Now, it was true that southwestern Germany was generally more radical than their brothers and sisters and other parts of the fatherland, but not so much that these people were itching to rise up in mass popular revolution. Most everyone else, if they had an opinion, were actually just fine with a big liberal constitutional monarchy. It sounded pretty good.

So after leaving Frankfurt, Hecker and Strova reconvened at the small city of Constance on the western shores of Lake Constance, the great lake of the Upper Rhine. Now, the local peasantry there still lived under the thumb of great, rich, landed nobles, and so the promise that Heccar and Struve made to erase all vestiges of feudalism and create a Democratic Republic did sound pretty good, but that didn't mean they were ready for armed insurrection. And even when Hekhar presented himself to a local committee of radicals and started talking armed uprising, even his supposed Comrades were like, dude, you're crazy. There's no way this is going to work. We are going to get crushed. You are going to set us back. So recruitment for the uprising didn't stall so much as it

never really got going in the first place. Meanwhile, the government in Baden, the newly created liberal government of Baden, had gotten intelligence that these known radicals were openly talking rebellion, and so they appealed to the German Confederation for support. So on April the Fourth, the same day the federal diet approved Prussia's intervention into Schleswig Holstein, they also approved sending a coalition of German troops to reinforce the Baden army. Hekhar and Shroove were now a bit out over their skis, but when they found out that one of their closest comrades had been arrested, they decided it was either launched the revolt anyway,

or be dragged pitifully off into prison. So according to the legends that surround the Hekhar uprising, On April the 12th, Hecker delivered a stirring speech to a local assembly in Constance while dressed in what became his signature look, a simple blue work shirt, pistol shoved into his belt, and a broad and jaunty black hat on his head, a style that later became known as the Hekhar hat. He allegedly then proclaimed a republic, but so far as I can tell, it is very much in dispute whether he actually proclaimed a republic at all, or whether that was just a story that circulated. after the fact. Whichever it was, though, the response to his stirring speech was positively anemic. The next morning, everyone was supposed to assemble to march down along the Rhine, but only about 60 people showed up.

Undeterred, Hecard led this very tiny snowball out of Constance, and over the next few days they marched along, picking up new recruits as they went, mostly disaffected apprentices and the occasional peasant farmhand. After about a week of this, Hekhar had accumulated somewhere between 800 and 1,000 men. His initial plan had assumed that he would be leading something like 70,000. So this is not going very well. But luckily, Hekhar was not the only piece on the board.

A community of expatriate German radicals who had moved across the border into Switzerland started forming a militia of their own to go support Hekhar's uprising, and then word of the rebellion reached France, where another community of expatriate German radicals were living. From this community, the exiled poet Georg Hervig and his life Emma started assembling a legion that would soon grow to over a thousand men. But the real hope of the uprising lay in the work being done by a guy named Franz Siegel, who had a strong enough local reputation in Baden to recruit a militia that eventually grew to some 3,000.

Now, if all these forces could combine, the Hekhar uprising might have gotten somewhere. But they did not, and so it did not. The Swiss army threw up barriers to present the expatriate Germans from crossing the border. The French Legion then sat across the border in France, just on the other side of Offenburg, but only got vague responses from Hekhar about where to link up, because Hekhar had become worried about all of this being portrayed as the work of French revolutionary invaders, which was still a very potent image in Germany to be avoided at all costs. Meanwhile, Hekhar and Struva themselves were unable to link with Siegel

before they ran into the government's forces. So those government forces had been put into the hands of Friedrich von Goggren. And if that name sounds familiar, it's because he is the brother of Heinrich von Goghren, the leading liberal politician in Frankfurt I just told you about. himself a committed liberal, Friedrich von Goghren opted to wear civilian dress when he took the field to establish that he was a citizen general leading the defense of a liberal government against a bunch of criminal insurgents. On April the 20th, von Goghren was leading a force of about 2,200 soldiers when they ran into Hekhar's band near the village of Condorne.

A fierce firefight erupted, and von Goghren himself was among the first hit and killed. But though they took out the enemies general, it did not take long for the outnumbered and outclassed radicals to be defeated and scattered. Hekhar and Shruva had no choice but to high-tail it out of there, running the 10 miles or so across the Swiss border, where they hoped to regroup and start again. But there wasn't going to be much they could do. Franz Siegel's much larger force was surrounded by another wing of the coalition army a few days later, and also defeated and scattered. Then Georg and Emma Hervig led about six or seven hundred men across the border from France on April the 24th. But as soon as they entered the country, they got word, Hekhar had been defeated, and that he had fled to Switzerland. So they resolved to follow him, but while traversing the Black Forest on April the 27th, they were ambushed and, you guessed it, defeated and scattered.

Georg and Emma were protected by some friendly peasants, and then they too crossed the border into Switzerland. But lasting not quite two weeks, the Hekhar uprising was a complete disaster. Now, this was not 100% the end of the road for the radicals, but it did demoralize them, and many blamed Hekkar for tilting at windmills when he should have been helping them in the elections for the coming Frankfurt Parliament. Ironically enough, though, Hekhar was actually one of those elected to serve in the parliament, but he would be barred from taking his seat on the not inaccurate charge that he had just committed treason against the government of Baden. So instead, he and his men were forced to remain in Switzerland. But elsewhere, the elections unfolded over April without too much of a hitch.

And on May the 18th, 1848, the Frankfurt Parliament met for their first session. This was the first assembly of the people of Germany in the whole history of Germany. But just like the Second French Republic, despite holding a uniquely democratic mandate, the legitimacy of the Frankfurt Parliament was soon going to be challenged by everyone, and they will, spoiler alert, go down in history as an ignoble failure. But we are going to leave Germany there, though, in May of 1848, and turn our attention next time to further events in the Habsburg realms, because there is going to be yet another uprising in Vienna,

and I also need to introduce events in Bohemia because it is now time to shoehorn Prague into all of this. But I do say next time because Saturnalia is once again upon us and I will be taking next week off. Now if you're looking for something to do with all those gift cards you might have lying around, by all means, the storm before the storm is out there. I'm just saying I'll see everyone next year.