Revolutions - 7.21- Cracking Down and Backing Down

Episode Date: January 8, 2018

The Austrian Imperial Ministry had a habit of cracking down, but then backing down.

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 7.21, Cracking down and backing down. Last time, we migrated over to Germany and discussed the explosive chain reaction set off by the March revolutions. This chain reaction included a war in Schleswig Holstein, a major uprising of the Poles, and the organization of a pan-German parliament as the first step towards German unification. All of these reactions came back to the basic question of who would be in and who would be out of the German Union. And today, we will see what happens when we try to bring Bohemia into the mix. Because Bohemia was a territory that most every German nationalist figured, of course, would be included.

And it would come as quite a shock when the Bohemians said, actually, we're not German, we're Czech, and we don't want to join your damn German Union. The question of Bohemia and Czech nationalism would pose enormous problems for the German nationalists, as well as for the imperial ministry in Vienna, now rocked from all sides by the springtime of the peoples, to say nothing of the rebellious peoples inside the capital itself. But before we can get to Bohemia, we need to return to that capital and deal with the fallout in Vienna from their great March revolutions, which we wrapped up on March the 15th, 1848. That was when the students and workers had toppled Metternich, and then extracted a promise from the emperor that he would convene a pan-imperial diet to draft a written constitution. After this was all accomplished, the tension and violence that had surrounded the past few days dissipated, and life kind of returned to normal.

But below the surface, new tensions would be growing among the victors of March, between the more conservative Viennese liberals. Those are the guys who had spent the last few years writing Aero-Den. tracks on how to reform the empire, and the students and workers who could successfully claim credit for manning the barricades of the March Revolution, and who now wanted their just rewards. In keeping with the basic plot lines of 1848, a rift would soon emerge between these two groups as the Austrian Empire moved into the heretofore unknown universe of constitutional government. But that said, in the final weeks of March, everyone seemed to be moving in the same positive direction. First, the fall of Mernich had led to an overhaul of the imperial ministry

with a bunch of quote-unquote liberals being brought into the mix. Finance Minister Kolarot, long seen as one of the most powerful anti-Meternic voices in government, was elevated to president of the ministry, while Baron Franz von Pillarstorff was brought in as Minister of the Interior. Pillersdorf was an old veteran of the upper rungs of the bureaucracy, and he had a well-earned reputation for talented administration and a willingness to push for reform. He had rubbed many conservatives the wrong way during his career, but that was exactly the sort of man that the times now required. Other quote-unquote liberals were brought in as well, but I won't bother you with their names, because mostly I just want to make the point that I keep saying, quote,

unquote, liberal because most of them weren't. What recommended them for these jobs is that they had been rivals of Metternich, which, by the 1840s, had become something of an erroneous synonym for liberal. But they weren't actually liberal in any sense of the word, as Vienna would soon discover. But they were at this point willing to take popular reforms to stabilize the government and satisfy the oh so recently insurrectionary population of the capital. For example, the ministry undertook a general dismantling of Metternich's oppressive secret police apparatus. Colerot had long clashed with Metternich over the secret police, but not from any great love of free speech. Mostly on fiscal grounds, he thought it was all way too expensive.

And in fact, Colerot was about to learn just how little stomach he had for free speech. Accompanying this dismantling note, the ministry also announced a general amnesty on March the 20th. So in the streets of Vienna, this all looked like a great couple of first steps. So out in the streets, they took a couple of more steps. While the new ministry was taking shape, the newly created Civic Guard and Academic Legion remained under arms and now undertook efforts to further organize and recruit. The students in Vienna in particular took enormous pride in their role in the recent insurrection, and membership in the Academic Legion was a huge badge of honor, so membership swelled.

Meanwhile, the Civic Guard adjusted to its new role as the guarantior of law and order and property, which meant that they lacked some of the romantic enthusiasm that was surrounding the Academic Legion. Yes, the Civic Guard had played a major role in the overthrow of Matternik and conservative absolutism, but now their principal focus was on halting any further slide to social revolution. They wanted to keep the workers in the suburban slums and away from the property of the middle and upper classes. And they had to keep a sharp eye out, because it's not like the lot of the workers had been improved one iota by the March Revolution. It had in fact hurt them. All that rioting and factory smashing had stalled business even further, so jobs were in short supply, wages were way

down, and anger was boiling over. Now to try to ensure that the forces that had fought side by side during the March Revolution, all remained on the same page after the March Revolution, two public committees self-organized themselves. The first was called the Administrative Committee and was principally tasked with the logistics of the various new citizen militias, coordinating patrols and weapons, supplies, rotations, that kind of thing, and that is the last time I will ever mention the Administrative Committee because they are super boring. But not boring at all, and far more important, was the Senate.

Central Committee of Citizens, Students, and National Guards. Shorthanded as the Central Committee, it became the general forum for discussions of political topics of the day and the tactics and strategy that ought to be used to respond. And as we've seen before, these sorts of committees often draw the most active, committed, and passionate members of any given movement. And in the case of Vienna, that meant that it became a hotbed for the younger student radicals as opposed to the more stayed liberals. So, as the Central Committee took a leading role in the brand new world of public politics, the radicals on that committee seized the initiative and found themselves backed by the armed and enthusiastic youth of the Academic Legion. Helping to define this new world

of public politics was also an explosion of new newspapers, pamphlets, periodicals, and broadsheets. Now, fights over just how free the free press could be would be a staple of the next couple of months. But for sure, you could now say, write, and print things that literally would have landed you in a dank prison just a week earlier. So the number of new outlets for once-forbidden political commentary flourished, and all of them were eager to line up former sacred cows against the wall and rhetorically shoot them one by one. few were immune. The aristocrats, the bureaucrats, employers, the rich, reactionary conservatives, weak-need liberals, the clergy, and of course, above all, the imperial ministry. For the first time, ministers of state felt the sting of having their every move recorded, analyzed, and criticized, and none of them cared for it. On March the 31st, they tried to put a few rules in place, copying the press law of Baden that forced papers, to put up cash bonds to guarantee good behavior and threatened jail time for those who went against

the sovereign. These new restrictions caused an uproar out in the streets. And afraid of another insurrection, the ministry put out a statement the next day that said, and I kid you not, please pay no attention to that decree. It was someone's idea of an April Fool's joke. The new ministry really had no idea how to handle this new world of revolt and revolution, and they will have a very bad habit of proving weak and irresolute about everything. Cracking down and then backing down. With war and revolution exploding everywhere, the ministry was basically quick to capitulate to the radicals in Vienna

if it meant ensuring that at least the capital was not burned to the ground. Now, one of the big questions circling in the newly freed press and also debated in the central committee was the question of German unification. Everything we're talking about right now is unfolding at the same time that the German pre-parliament we talked about last week's meeting, and they were all trying to figure out who would be invited to the coming Frankfurt Parliament. If all Germans were going to be united, then surely that included the Austrian Germans, right? But boy, does that ever open a can of worms, because obviously you want to bring in the Austrians, but not their subjects, the Italians, the Hungarians and whatnot.

So the very likely outcome of Austrian Germans unifying with their cousins to the north was the end of the Austrian Empire. Now, many younger radicals in Vienna were just fine with the idea, and the red, black, and gold colors of German nationalism started appearing in Vienna. I mean, if we're here to usher in a new age, let's usher in a new age. We're not here to defend some archaic empire. But remember, all those liberal reformers and intellectuals absolutely were committed to keeping the empire alive. They just wanted it to run better. And on a more practical

level, remember, Austria is still outside the sulfurine, that pan-German trade union, and many Austrian leaders, absolutists and liberals alike, believe that closer union with Germany would bring the backward Austrian economy to ruin. And then politically, they feared being dominated by Prussia. As the head of a multinational empire, Austria was powerful. stripped of that empire, they were just another relatively weak German state slated to become a mere province of Prussia. So the question of whether or not the Austrians would join the German Union was a big deal. And the question of which of their subject peoples, if any, would come with them, was an even bigger deal. But what no one debated in Germany or in Austria was that the old

crown lands of Bohemia would of course be included in the German Union. Bohemia was one of the mainstays of the old Holy Roman Empire, which many German nationalists were using as a basic guide to tell them who should be included in the new German state. So the assumption was that, of course, Bohemia would join. But this came as a rude shock to the inhabitants of Bohemia who were not German at all. They were Czech.

So let's talk a little bit about Bohemia. Now, I've very briefly touched on Bohemia, in episodes 2.3 and 2.5 when I was discussing the development of the Habsburg monarchy and the Kingdom of Hungary. Bohemia was a territory in central Europe that was populated mostly by Czechs, a Western Slavic group that meant that in the ethno-linguistic divisions now popping up everywhere, they are with the Poles and the Slovaks and the Serbs and Slovenians, not the Germans. A strong constituent part of the Holy Roman Empire, though, the Bohemian crown lands wound up including three territories, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia.

Based out of their capital in Prague, the kings of Bohemia remained an independent rival of the Hapsburg dynasty and managed to produce a few Holy Roman emperors themselves before the Hapsburgs grabbed a hold of the thing and never let it go. The Bohemian crown itself eventually fell under Hapsburg domination at the same time the Hungarian crown. did, thanks to that all-important Battle of Mohatch in 1526. What had happened is that thanks to convoluted marriage and inheritance treaties, in 1590, the Kings of Bohemia briefly acquired personal title to the Kingdom of Hungary. But that claim was extinguished just 36 years later, when the Ottomans came along, defeated the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohatch, and killed King Louis.

So another set of convoluted marriage and inheritance treaties led the Hungarians to declare Ferdinand the first their king, and at the same time led the Bohemians to do the same. So the Habsburgs came into possession of the crown lands of both Bohemia and Hungary all at once all at the same time. Battle of Mohatch, 1526, very important. But this is all happening just as the Protestant Reformation is unfolding, and not quite a hundred-year later, there was a big push among the native Czech bohemians to break away from the Catholic Habsburgs. But unfortunately, they suffered a major defeat at the Battle of White Mountain in 1618, which simultaneously ended the chances of Bohemian independence and started 30 years' war.

But we are not going to fall into that particular quagmire. Now, in the wake of the Battle of White Mountain, many native bohemian nobles were stripped of their lands, and all of that land was redistributed amongst the German allies of the Habsburgs. Now, this is not to say that all the landowners across the Bohemian crown lands were German, but it did lead to a dynamic where a majority of the native Czech population had foreign German landlords. So fast forward passed a bunch more history in the Prussian acquisition of Silesia, etc., etc. And Bohemia is still a constituent part of the Austrian Empire. Not counting those noble German landlords, the vast majority of the population was Czech,

except for a very specific ring of territory to the far north, west, and south, where Bohemia neighbored Germany proper. Now, no one called it this yet at the time, but in case you're wondering, yes, this ring is the infamous Sudaten land that became so important in the 1930s as a precursor to World War II. another quagmire we're not going to fall into. But though the vast majority of the population was Czech, German was the official language of law, administration, business, and education. Germans made up the majority of the land-owning nobility.

Germans owned what few factories existed. Germans were the bureaucrats running the show on behalf of Vienna. Germans filled out the ranks of the clergy. So the German liberal nationalist meeting in Frankfurt were not even going to think twice about extending an invitation for Bohemia to join the unification of Germany. But this is the springtime of the peoples, and the Czechs are not going to be super interested

about unifying with the Germans. Now, though they are going to reject union with Germany, it's not like the Czechs were super thrilled about their position inside the Austrian Empire. Slavs were generally treated as inferior to Germans, and the Czech language and culture was treated as the language and culture of the poor and uneducated. But as had happened across Europe in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, an intellectual

movement inside Bohemia promoting Czech national consciousness had flourished in the 1820s and 1830s and 1840s. Its aim was to foster a sense of pride in the Czech identity, but also pride in the Slavic identity generally, as they were basically mistreated everywhere they lived. Now, of course, because the Czechs are living in the Habsburg Empire, this project had to be mostly cultural. It focused on language and music and the arts because they couldn't broach political topics too openly. But as was happening over in, say, Hungary, it's clear that the promotion of Czech nationalism was setting the stage for later political action. When the economy took a nosedive in the mid-1840s, there was more action. Secret political clubs organized,

and they started passing around banned pamphlets. This new generation of political activists wanted to be ready should an opportunity arise. And a rise it did in March of 1848, when the news came in that Paris had overthrown the July monarchy. But that was just a mere prelude announcement. The more electrifying news was the arrival of the speech by Lyoskoshchut, delivered in the Hungarian diet on March the 3rd. That so-called opening address of the revolution got the political activists in Prague up and moving. The opportunity had arisen.

So events in Prague unfolded much as events did in other areas, but with one major difference. For the moment, Prague was peaceful. There were no armed demonstrations, there was no uprising, no barricades, not yet, which is why the armed uprisings in Paris, Vienna, Buddha, Nepal, Milan, Venice, and Berlin have thus far overshadowed events in Prague. Within days of the arrival of Koshute's speech, though, a public meeting was arranged for March the 11th, with plans to draft a petition of grievances and demands that they could then deliver to the emperor. Now, at first, though, there was consciously no hint of Czech nationalism

being the driving factor. There were plenty of ethnically German radicals and liberals who lived in and for the moment the Czechs didn't want to alienate them, not if there were concessions they could ring from the imperial government together. The most important demand was the now standard call for the end of censorship and the creation of a citizen national guard. The local twist, though, was that they also demanded the administrative reunion of Bohemia and Moravia, which had been kept separate for quite a while. They also wanted the elevation of the Czech language to equality with German, and that above all,

They wanted the convening of a new bohemian diet. Now, technically, a bohemian diet existed. It was their equivalent of the estates general, but it was toothless and dominated by German landlords. What they wanted now was a genuinely representative assembly that genuinely represented all the old bohemian crown lands. So this was all hammered out at a large public meeting on March the 11th, at the end of which, a committee of about 20 men was appointed to draft

an official version of the petition. But unlike in Vienna, where the radicals got a hold of the Central Committee, the committee in Prague wound up dominated by liberals. Soon dubbed the St. Votsloff Committee, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right, they intentionally kept radical voices out, and then started striking and revising a number of demands. They dropped a call to aid workers and changed abolish serfdom with reform the status of the peasants.

They also inserted statements about ensuring private property rights and changed the call for a parliament to the renewal of the estates to avoid concerns in Vienna that they were trying to break away from the empire. Though technically only appointed to draft the petition, the St. Votslough Committee was on its way to becoming something of a quasi-official government in Prague once the imperial governor lost his grip first on events and then on power. So when did the governor start losing his grip? Well, at the same moment the governors in Budapest, Milan, and Venice started losing their grips. On March the 15th, word reached Prague of the uprising

in Vienna and the fall of Chancellor Matternick. After that, all bets were off. And this just so happened to also be the day that the final petition was published and posted across the city for signatures. And suddenly, the words constitution and liberty were in the air everywhere. But once radicals read the contents of the revised position, they got mighty rile up, and they stormed into the St. Botslov Committee and demanded a return to the language agreed on at the March 11 meeting. Now, the committee reluctantly agreed rather than sparking an insurrection, but this would not be the last time that the St. Botslaw's Committee would attempt to turn the Bohemian Revolution in a liberal direction and not a radical direction. On March the 22nd, a delegation from Prague arrived in Vienna, and they delivered their petition to the new ministry. Everyone had high hopes about all this, and they were dismayed by the rather curt and evasive response they got. With bad news coming in from all over the empire, it appears that the new liberal ministry, quote-unquote liberal ministry, was not interested in granting every concession to every delegation that came walking through the door.

But of course, this little attempt to show some backbone is going to backfire mightily. When the delegation got back to Prague, the St. Votslav Committee was incensed by the dismissal. So they came back with an even stiffer and more confident petition saying, no, we want the unity of all Czech lands. We want free elections to a bohemian parliament that shall not, repeat not, bear any resemblance to the old feudal diet. then they sent a second delegation back up to Vienna, and this time they got a slightly better response, but still not very satisfying. On April the 8th, the ministry offered a few concessions. They said that the Czech language would be elevated to equal status with German. A bohemian diet would be called, but it rejected the call for the unification of the old Czech crown lands, probably internally, worried that this would be a step towards independence. and this was as far as the government was willing to go.

These unsatisfying answers from Vienna started to further emboldened more strident Czech nationalists in Prague. Dropping any pretense, political clubs started forming composed of Czech's pushing Czech goals. The Germans were kept out. This increasingly pro-check anti-German movement got a major shot in the arm on April the 11th, When a patriotic historian turned politician named Frontysheck Polotsky, and I'm really hoping I got that one, right, published his famous letter to Frankfurt. Polotsky was a well-known and well-respected liberal intellectual, and he was invited to the Frankfurt pre-parliament to join them as a delegate, and it frankly did not occur to them that he would decline. But not only did he decline, he did so publicly and stridently. The gist of his letter was,

Are you kidding me? I am a Czech, a Slav, and a very proud one. We Czechs take no interest in German affairs, and we have no intention of Bohemia unifying with Germany. So, what do you think about that? The letter to Frankfurt is a hugely important founding document in the history of Czech nationalism, and it threw down a pretty sizable gauntlet,

because inside Bohemia, there were rich and influential Germans who absolutely wanted to join the new, German Union. With not a little bit of racism underpinning their attitude, many German liberals and radicals in Frankfurt and Vienna took these Slavic assertions of national dignity as an obnoxious and uncalled for hindrance to the glorious unification of Germany. And therein would lay the seeds of an interesting twist, whereby the Slavic nations of the Habsburg Empire would soon be rallying to its defense. But that is all for later, and only after Prague does go into

revolt and is bombed into submission. For now, though, we have to head back to Vienna, where the bohemian question was far from anyone's mind. What was on everyone's mind in Vienna in April of 1848 was, hey, where is that pan-imperial diet we were promised? And where the heck is our constitution? In this new age of radical journalism, the papers were flying off the presses, and the ministry was coming under heavy criticism for dragging their feet. Suddenly, Under very public fire, President Minister Kohlerot did not even last a month in office before saying, I cannot work like this, and he resigned his post on April the 19th. This would kickstart a revolving door of ministers at all positions, as no one who was brought in seemed able to satisfy both the imperial family and the people of Vienna, and usually pleasing one meant enraging the other.

But it's not like the radical papers were wrong in this case. The ministry had been slow walking the convening of that pan-imperial diet, hoping, just hoping to stall long enough that they wouldn't ever have to face the arrival of Gasp, constitutional government. But this is 1848, so fat chance of never having to face it. On April the 14th, a mass meeting organized by the Central Committee was held at the Odeon Theater, where a radical petition was read out demanding a constitution. It's been a month.

have heard nothing. This drumbeat for a constitution then merged with a drumbeat out in the working class quarters over looming rent payments. You see, in Vienna, you had to pay your rent in advance every three months, and at this moment in April of 1848, the rent is coming due. But obviously, work and wages have been awful lately. And nobody could afford to pay their rent, and so a movement got going demanding that the government provides some relief. If not outright canceling the rent, then at least lower it. So on April the 17th, another mass meeting, again organized by the Central Committee, issued a demand to the ministry that rent in the city should be reduced by 25%. This slip into social revolution started making the Viennese liberals uneasy. Rent is, after all, a sacred and

inalienable right of the property holder to determine, and they started to regret that maybe things had gotten out of hand since March. Who knew where things were now headed? To try to head things off, the ministry decided to rush out a constitution to answer the political question, to hopefully avoid answering the social question. Led by Interior Minister Pillarstorff, a group of ministry officials got together and cobbled together a constitution using bits and pieces from other European constitutions, principally from Baden and Belgium. The result was kind of a mess that would leave no one satisfied. First, the constitution was now being handed down by the benevolent emperor rather than growing up from the sacred sovereignty of the people. So right away we've got a big problem. Then,

the details did not really point to popular government at all. There would be two houses of Parliament, a lower house elected by the people, but then also an upper house, composed of men either appointed by the emperor or elected by the wealthiest landowners, and it wasn't yet clear which. These two houses would then have to agree on any new law. And even if they did agree, the emperor wielded an absolute veto and reserved the right to dismiss parliament whenever he wished. Now, it was written in that no imperial decree could be legal unless co-signed by the ministry,

but then you scan down and see, oh, right, the emperor has the right to appoint his own ministers. Parliament will have nothing to do with it. So the Constitution is looking like it'll shape up to be the same old imperial absolutism, except screened by the thinnest veneer of parliamentary pageantry. But wait, it's not like the old conservatives are happy about this Constitution, because accompanying it was a long bill of rights that checked off every liberal box. Freedom of speech, assembly, freedom of the press, equality before the law, there were rules against arbitrary imprisonment, the works, the whole liberal grab bag.

And in that sense, the Pillarsdorf Constitution was one of the most liberal in Europe. But when it was promulgated, everyone focused on what they did not like rather than what they did. The Pillarsdorf Constitution was promulgated on April the 25th, 1848. And though its arrival was initially cheered, it soon came in for heavy criticism, especially from the members of the Central Committee and the rank and file of the Academic Legion. Their biggest complaint was that rather than calling a popular assembly to draft the Constitution, as they had been promised, the ministry had just gone and written one, violating the very principle of popular sovereignty. More specifically, they wanted truly democratic elections with no property requirement, and they wanted just one single house of parliament.

They did not like the idea of the people's voice being muted by rich imperial lackeys in the upper house. So in the first week of May, nightly demonstrations started up that took the form of mobs walking the streets and arriving at the various residences of the ministers and then singing satirical songs and heckling them from the streets. This had the effect of leading most of the ministers to resign on May the 4th, and Pillarsdorf being elevated to president-minister. Now, this seemed like a promising development to the men of the Central Committee. Pillersdorf seemed like a man who could be reasoned with. But when they petitioned Pillarsdorf to make alterations to the Constitution, and more importantly, call for a democratically elected unicameral parliament, they were rebuffed. Pillar Storff's star, so recently ascendant, plummeted. Meanwhile, all this activity was alienating the conservative liberal leaders who really had just wanted an assembly of property holders to have some voice in government and check imperial absolutism, not, you know, democratic anarchy.

So these guys collaborated with the ministry to get rid of the troublesome central committee. This plan was approved of by the commander of the civil. civic guard, who posted a new order for his men on the morning of May the 14th. It said that political activity was incompatible with service in the civic guard, and that all guardsmen must immediately cease participating in the activities of the unconstitutional Central Committee. Thinking that this might cause something of a stir, the ministry then ordered the regular army to go out and occupy key points in the city.

Now, the point of all this had been to cleave the bourgeois liberal, who made up the Civic Guard, from the radical students who made up the Academic Legion, but really what they did is make everyone mad and reinforce their sense of revolutionary solidarity. On the morning of May the 15th, the Central Committee convened for a large session. They voted that they were too constitutional, and then took three demands to the ministry. First, you must rescind this order about the Guard in politics. Second, you must withdraw the army from Vienna and allow the citizens. civic guard to patrol the city and keep security. Third, you can only ever call in the army

if the civic guard requests it. The ministry accepted these demands and said, yeah, we'll talk it over. But as they talked, 10,000 workers streamed into the city and surrounded the palace. And they were still angry. Nobody had done anything to help them. By dusk on May the 15th, the palace was under virtual siege and demands were moving from the narrow confines of the issue over whether or not guardsmen could participate in politics to calls for a democratic parliament and reform of the Pillarstorff Constitution and then maybe stuff for the workers. In the face of this latest near insurrection, the ministry caved completely. They tried to crack down and then they backed down. That's what they do. They agreed to all three demands and then they said

that to further calm things in Vienna, we will hold democratic elections for a single chamber parliament who will debate, amend, and approve the Pillarstorff Constitution. And this, let me tell you, was a huge and very unexpected victory for the student radicals of the Central Committee. With this latest very public uprising and very public embarrassment, the imperial family decided that they had had quite enough of Vienna. On May the 17th, The emperor and his wife set out for a customary afternoon carriage right out in the country, and they just kept going. Then a few hours later, the rest of the extended imperial family, the cousins and the aunts and

the uncles, themselves slipped into carriages and rode away. The next day Vienna woke up and discovered that the imperial family had flown the coop, and they did not, in fact, stop flying until they reached Innsbruck, some 300 miles away. Now settled at the safety of their palace in Innsbruck, the emperor issued a proclamation on May the 20th, blaming a small faction of anarchists for all the trouble since March, and stating that the imperial family could not in good conscience return to Vienna until this element had been purged. News of the flight of the imperial family angered radicals and conservatives alike. Conservative residents of Vienna were mad that the emperor had more or less abandoned them to the those radical anarchists. But the student radicals, those radical anarchists, were convinced that they

were on the right side of history. They believed that the emperor had ratified their demands, and now they felt betrayed. With his feeble-mindedness, something of an open secret, it was believed that he had been kidnapped by reactionary members of his family. They also suspected that this was a coordinated prelude to a crackdown. And indeed it was. The day out, after the emperor and his family fled to Innsbruck, the ministry posted a proclamation stating that the Central Committee was an unconstitutional assembly and needed to disband immediately. They further said that with the university term set to expire that the Academic Legion would now need to hand back their weapons. And frankly, with everything now settled so nicely,

what with the Constitution and all, there would be no need to ever recall the Academic Legion. Now, this did create a small rift among the students. Many of them were legitimately afraid that things were getting out of hand, that they had all gotten kind of ahead of themselves, and they were risking a major blowback. So they said that they were willing to hand in their weapons if they could get them back when the next term began in October. And further, if the ministry swore to abide by the promises that they had made on May the 15th.

Now, had the ministry not been quite so inept, this compromise may have been secured, and peace would have reigned in the capital. But instead, they bungled it. They issued a heavy-handed decree on May the 24th, saying that the university was now closed. It was locked, and it was unavailable for any future public meeting. The students need to go home. A few of the leaders in the Academic Legion did encourage their rank and file to disband, but now Ryle's up, the Legion held a meeting that night and said, no, we won't disband, not now, not ever. So on the morning of May the 26th, the ministry posted a further decree stating bluntly that the Academic Legion was hereby disbanded.

But to enforce this decree, they really didn't have a concrete plan. And what plan they did have, they had not really thought through. Basically, what the Imperial Ministry did was decide to go whack a hornet's nest, wearing nothing but a speedo. The biggest mistake they made was tapping the regular army to enforce the decree of May the 26th. Now, granted, it may have been difficult to trust the civic guard to do it, but the ministry didn't even ask them. Instead, orders went to the infantry to march down to the university and order the Academic Legion to disband and order the students to go home. But the ministry had promised on May the 15th to only ever call in the regular army at the civil. civic guard's request. So just ordering in the army, not only ginned up sympathy for the students,

it aggravated the honor of the civic guard, to say nothing of betraying the fundamental dishonesty of the ministry, who were clearly making promises under duress that they had no intention of keeping. So with the infantry on the way, the students barricaded themselves inside the university and sent out calls for help. It is estimated that between the Academic Legion, the civic guardsmen, and armed workers, that they could rally close to 40,000 men. Meanwhile, between the army garrison and some police forces and a few civic guardsmen who did rally to the government, the ministry could command barely 15,000. I mean, the ministry was dealt a bad hand here, but that doesn't mean they didn't also play it badly. By 10 a.m. on the morning of May the 26th,

1848, barricades were going up all over Vienna, and the city was back in armed insurrection. So, keeping with the theme of today's episode, the next few hours were the backdown that always followed the crackdown. In the face of so much armed resistance, the infantry was ordered to withdraw. By one in the afternoon, the ministry announced that it was canceling the order for the Academic Legion to disband, and went ahead and formally recognized the central committees right to assembly. Then an hour later, they re-promised to abide by the May 15 promises and keep the army in its barracks. And this was even before the Central Committee issued their ultimatums, which were that the barricades would not come down until the army evacuated Vienna,

the Academic Legion and Civic Guard given total control of security in Vienna, a unicameral democratically elected parliament convened, and this time we want hostages to guarantee good behavior. And then for good measure, they did not wait for those demands to be met. They sent out detachments to identify and arrest the men they thought responsible for the troubles of May 26 and held them as hostages. So that night, the ministry further agreed to all those demands, and this time it would stick. For now. For the time being, there would be no more crackdowns and no more backdowns, planning for a parliament to convene in-jolns. July was launched. The radicals in Vienna were utterly and completely victorious. So the student

radicals of Vienna had risen very high, very fast, probably far further than they had ever dreamed possible. But in spite of their victory and in spite of the ministry's repeated bunglings, this would be their high watermark. May 26th would be their high watermark. It would unfortunately be all backwards from here. But we will return to Vienna later, because next week, we need to pick up the thread in Hungary, where the movement towards de facto independence was well underway. The Hungarians didn't care whether or not Pillarsdorf had a constitution or not, because they were going to have a constitution and they were going to write it themselves. They were willing to share a sovereign with the Austrians, but nothing else.