Revolutions - 7.24- The Turn of The Tide

Episode Date: January 31, 2018

In the summer of 1848, the forces of counter-revolution began to get the upper hand in central Europe. 

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 7.24, The Turn of the Tide. Last time, we launched the Italian War of Independence, and then watched it advance, stall, and retreat. Yes, Venice still held out, but with Charles Albert in retreat, a successful counter-revolution down in Naples, and the anti-revolutionary allocution from the Pope, the cause of Italian-Lewartian, liberation and unification was floundering. Field Marshal Radetsky's victory in Italy would be a critical turning point in the whole process of the revolutions of 1848 because it took enormous pressure off the Habsburgs and allowed them to move with a freer and more confident hand to restore

the old imperial order. But Italy was not actually the site of the first counter-revolutionary victory for the Habsburgs. That distinction goes to Bohemia. So today, we're going to begin in in Bohemia with the failed Prague uprising of June 1848, and then hop over to Hungary to address their continuing problems with the minority nationalities inside the Hungarian crownlands, problems that would be eminently exploitable for the Austrians once they felt the western half of their empire was stabilized. If the Habsburg successes in Bohemia and Italy meant anything, it meant big trouble for Hungary. So we brought Bohemia onto the board two episodes, back. And remember, it was one of the most ancient components of the Holy Roman Empire and had been

attached to the Habsburg since the 1500s. It was majority Czech, but with a strong German presence, especially among the political and economic elite. We left Bohemia behind on April the 11th, 1848, with the publication of Frantyshech-Polotsky's famous letter to the Frankfurt Parliament. They had invited him to participate in the parliament as a step towards integrating Bohemia with Germany, and Polotsky had stated unequivocally that he was actually a proud Czech, a proud sloth, and they could take their plan to bring Bohemia into Germany and shove it right up there. Well, okay, he was a bit more eloquent than that.

But this assertion of Czech nationalism slated Bohemia for a multi-way tug of war between, first, German liberal nationalists who wanted the kingdom to join their new unified Germany. Second, the Habsburg Imperial Court, who was not about to let that happen. Third, Czech nationalists who wanted greater independence for Bohemia, whether that was inside or outside of the empire, was still to be determined. And then finally, grand dreamers who thought that Bohemia might possibly be the epicenter for a larger Pan-Slavic movement to match and counter the Germans. The viability of this last option was very suspect.

But to keep up the momentum of asserting Slavic dignity and identity, Polotsky helped organize the first ever Slavic Congress that would meet in Prague and establish a counterweight to the German Congress that was meeting in Frankfurt. This rising Slavic nationalism inside Bohemia created a rift between the German and Czech populations inside the capital city of Prague. With the Czech's now joining in the springtime of the peoples, the imperial ministry had to figure out how to respond. Italy had now launched a war of independence.

Hungary had steamrolled their way to reform, and now Bohemia was trying to get on the action. But rather than make concessions, the ministry resolved here to stand firm, and actually more than stand firm, they resolved to do something downright provocative. They appointed as the new military governor of Bohemia, field marshal Alfred Vindischgratz.

Vindischgrotz was the sion of an old noble family and a lifelong soldier. He joined the Austrian army way back in 1804 and had served with distinction all through the Napoleonic Wars and then continued to rise up the ranks during the peacetime years under Metternich's system. A system Vindischrots was a firm supporter of. He was a rock-ribbed conservative and made no distinction whatsoever between the most cautious liberal reformer and the most fanatical revolutionary. They were all the same to him. Vindischgrat was livid about the concessions the emperor had made to the rabble back in March,

rights in a constitution. Bah humbug. He was positively itching to go crack skulls and get these mobs back into line. News of Vindishgrat's appointment sent ominous ripples through Prague, mostly because this was not going to be Vindishgrat's first tour of duty in Bohemia. He had actually been military governor there once before, starting in 1840, and when Prague workers went into revolt in 1844, Vindischrots had mercilessly suppressed them. So the very mention of his name was enough to provoke the workers and the radicals in Prague to angry teeth gnashing, and the liberals didn't like it much better. Vindishgrats meant that the court was not thinking about working with them, but rather beating them back into line.

So far, as we've seen, events in Prague have been peaceful and guided by the liberal reformers. The arrival of Vindischgrats almost instantly sowed the seeds of a violent confrontation. And when he arrived in Prague, Vindishgrats did absolutely nothing to reassure anyone. More soldiers were transferred in from other areas to beef up the garrison in Prague. The number of patrols were doubled. And then, most troubling of all, he moved artillery pieces to the heights overlooking the city. Now, though this was provocative, Vindusgratz had already done some cold, hard math. His informants told him that the radicals, workers, and more militant companies of the Prague Civic Guard

controlled between them perhaps 3,000 rifles. Meanwhile, Vindisgratz commanded a garrison that was 10,000 strong, and that did not even include the Civic Guard companies who could be counted on to stand with the forces of order against the forces of anarchy when the time came. and he was further bolstered by the increasing split between the German and Czech populations of the city. German leaders had formed their own coordinating committee and their own companies of Civic Guard, which would surely side with Vindjskrots if and when it became necessary to do so. The arrival of Vindischgrats in Prague nearly coincided with the arrival of delegates to the Slavic Congress of June 1848.

Letters of invitation had been sent from Prague to other sources. Slavic leaders and intellectuals, mostly from the Hapsburg realms, but a few beyond the firm frontiers of the empire. Though it had been agreed to keep those invitations to a minimum, because that was a very dangerous game to be playing. If they asked the subjects of, say, the Sultan or the Tsar to come join them, well, the Tsar and the Sultan might not take too kindly to that. To say nothing of the fact that if there were too many Russians at the Slavic Congress, the whole thing might come off looking like a czarist plot to either undermine the Austrian Empire or mobilize a force willing to go attack the Germans. So in early June, 385 delegates representing a wide variety of Slavic nations converged in Prague,

Czech, Slovak, Croat, Polish. They held their first session in the Czech National Museum on June the 2nd, under the presidency of Polotsky. But though the Slavic Congress was supposed to plant the seeds of greater Slavic solidarity, It was very difficult to come to a consensus about anything. There wasn't much binding them together except a shared ethno-linguistic heritage. The Slavic nations were spread out all over central and eastern Europe, and then often internally divided from each other by invisible lines drawn by the stronger powers. No one could even say what the ultimate goal of the Congress was.

Are we looking to unify? If so, are we talking about just the Slav groups inside the Habsburg Empire? empire? Or do we touch the live wire and try to include those living under Ottoman or Russian or German rule? Is such a unification even desirable? Or do we want to be more like a mutual assistance society where we support each other's own aspirations without everyone needing to merge into one mass whole? And are we looking for independence from the Habsburgs, stronger recognition from them as a group, as individual nations? What? And then each individual nation had their own perspective on the world. Like, for example, the Czechs saw German nationalism as the biggest

threat going. Meanwhile, the Croats thought that it was Hungarian nationalism, and they were already moving towards a closer alliance with the Austro-Germans. The polls, meanwhile, supported the Hungarians because they saw the Hungarians as the greatest possible protector against encroachment by the Germans and Russians. The Slovak saw the Hungarians as their greatest oppressors, and were joined in solidarity by their cousins, the Czechs. after a few days of sessions, the Slavic Congress was not really going anywhere. But even if it had been going somewhere, it was probably never going to get there, because on June the 12th, 1848, Prague exploded into violence, and the Congress was unceremoniously shuttered. Ever since the arrival of

Marshall Vindigrots, Prague had been on edge, especially the students, radicals, and more militant Czech nationalists who found Vienna's appointment so offensive that they insisted that they insisted that the marshal be recalled. On June the 12th, a mass held in front of the Statue of St. Vensislaus was followed by a protest march. Demonstrators paraded down to Vindigrots' headquarters and sent in a delegation to demand his resignation. But this delegation bumped into representatives of the German committee, who were there not to protest Vindigrots, but to pledge to him their support. This chance encounter led to bickering, then shouting, then pushing and shoving out in the streets. Both Czech and German companies of the Civic Guard crowded into the area,

as did units of the regular army. There was a tense multi-way standoff between civilians and soldiers and then different ethnic civic guard companies, each with their own loyalties. With violence breaking out, the radicals knew exactly what to do next. They fell back into the narrow streets of the old city center and constructed as many barricades as they could, because that's what you did these days. But unfortunately, for these more militant elements, this was not the cue for the whole population to rise up as one. Not only did the Germans stay out of it, but so too did both conservative and liberal checks, even ones who were strongly nationalistic. So while the insurgents managed to hastily construct more than 400 barricades in the city center and then pulled out for days,

it was in many ways doomed from the get-go. With the insurrectionaries outgunned and out-manned, Vindischrots was able to get the regular army to clear the main thoroughfares of the city that kept the key civil and military points linked, which defeated the whole purpose of an urban barricade, which is to cut off the ability of the enemy to coordinate and communicate with itself. By the end of the first day, Vindishgrats had a pretty good grip on the main arteries of Prague, Deeply and permanently suspicious that Slavic nationalist meeting in the Slavic Congress were to blame for all of this, Vindischgrats ordered the Czech National Museum raided and all the delegates arrested. But when his men got there, they found the museum deserted except for one single librarian.

The delegates to the Congress were not actually some revolutionary vanguard. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a complete coincidence. Not that Vindischrots was ever going to believe. leave it. So the insurgents, of course, had demands. But given the momentous step they had just taken, taking up arms against the imperial government, their ultimate demands were pretty conservative. All they wanted was Vindischgrats removed, the army withdrawn from Prague, and the recognition of a provisional government. But the marshal had zero interest in negotiating. He was already predisposed

to stomp rather than talk, but he was also wrestling now with a personal truble. tragedy. On the first night of the insurrection, his wife had been hit by a stray bullet and killed. So the really amazing thing here is just how long Vindischgratz waited before he started bombing Prague into submission. But his patience finally ran out on June the 15th. Vindishgrat said, You want me to remove the army? Fine. I will remove the army. And then he pulled all his men back from the skirmish lines around the barricades. Now, you might think, that this would be good news for the insurgents, but there was no further white flag or negotiations. The troops just formed up and marched away. And the insurgents soon discovered why.

Indifferent now to random casualties or destruction of property, Vindischrots decided to literally bomb prog into submission. The shelling started on the night of June the 15th, and then continued off and on for the next two days, until finally the beleaguered insurgents could take no more, and they surrendered on June the 17th. Vindischgrat's declared martial law, cleared the barricades, and that was the end of the Prague uprising of June 1848. There would be no more revolutionary activity from the Bohemians. The suppression of the Prague uprising was the first counter-revolutionary victory for the Habsburgs after months of being forced to back down again and again. Still convinced, though, that the Slavic Congress was behind all this. Vindischgris,

opened up an inquiry to investigate them all. The inquiry tracked down most of the leaders, arrested the ringleaders, and then ordered the rest to clear out and go home. But the inquiry could never find any evidence that the Slavic Congress was behind the uprising, even as Vindischgrats insisted that their presence in Prague could not simply be a coincidence. So the inquiry continued all through the summer. But by then, the Slavs were generally coming around to the notion that working with the Austrians was their best chance of success, and Vindischgrat's commission became an embarrassment. One of the big lessons that Czech liberals and nationalists and bohemia took as a result of the disaster in Prague was that the best shot they had of achieving their ends

was to work with the empire, not against it. This was a conclusion also being drawn by many people in the crown lands of Hungary, specifically the non-Majar population. As we saw two episodes ago, the triumph of Lyosh Koshut in the Hungarian diet meant that Hungary now had a moderately liberal constitution, but it also meant that majorization was now official state policy. So we talked specifically about how this brought Budapest into conflict with the Kingdom of Croatia, but that was just the biggest example. The Hungarians were now also dealing with the national aspirations of, for example, the Serbs and the Slovaks. Both these Slavic groups pushed Budapest for recognition of their language and their national identity, but they were rebuked. So many of their leaders wound up over in the Slavic Congress in Prague, arguing that the Hungarians were the greatest threat to the Slavs around, and that they'd be happy to work with the Habsburgs and the Austro-Germans if it meant they could get a little relief from Majar Chauvinism. But the most complicated issue by far was caused by the plan Reunion of Hungary and Transylvania.

If you remember way back from our introduction to the history of Hungary, you will remember that Transylvania had broken away from the Hungarian crown and become its own thing in the wake of the Battle of Mahatch. And that even after a series of treaties reestablished its formal reincorporation into the Hungarian crown lands, Transylvania was mostly allowed to keep to itself, and it had established its own sense of autonomy. Transylvania had its own separate diet, imperial governor, and a chancellery back in Vienna. So aside from their list of liberal political reforms, Hungarian nationalists put full reunion with Transylvania at the very top of their wish list for 1848. But there was a bit of a problem. There's no such thing as Transylvanians. The population was mostly divided between Majjar noble landowners and two and a half million Romanians.

There were also some old Saxon Germans thrown in there, but mostly the dynamic is Majar versus Romanian. And while the Madjar elite liked the idea of reunion with Hungary, the common Romanian population did not, at least not without some guarantees. Now, I am guaranteeing you that I am oversimplifying this, but it's a very tricky issue to unpack. So ethnic Romanians were spread out over four major territories. There were those who lived in Hungary proper, those who lived in Transylvania, and then beyond the frontiers of the Habsburg Empire in the provinces of Volokia and Moldavia, which, just to make this even more complicated, were technically under Turkish sovereignty, but were really under the thumb of the Russians.

Religiously, the Romanians were split between Catholics and Orthodox, The former answered to Hungarian bishops, the latter to Serbian patriarchs. With the springtime of the people's blooming, the Romanians got the first whiff of spring, and they had a couple of options available to them, not all of them particularly pleasant. Transylvania could reunite with Hungary, majorization could take full effect, and Romanian culture would be suppressed. Transylvania could reunite with Hungary, but the Romanians could get laws protecting their religion and culture, and give them greater control over their own lives.

The Romanians inside the empire could resist Hungary. They could organize and get themselves recognized as an independent state within the Austrian Empire. And then finally, and most audaciously, they could go get their cousins in Vlachia and Moldavia and form a new Pan-Romanian kingdom that some were calling Dacia after the old Roman province. So there are lots of moving parts

and cross loyalties and potential outcomes. Ah, 1848, I do love you so very, very much. But with the Majar nobility, who controlled the Transylvania Diet, clearly moving towards reunion with Hungary, Romanian nationalists gathered and drew up a national petition to demand some reforms and protections. They wanted serfdom abolished. They wanted civil rights. They wanted Romanian representation in the diet. Hopefully, a separate Romanian parliament and militia, and education services. Then from May the 15th to May the 17th, 40,000 Transylvanian Romanians attended a great Congress where they ratified these demands and then planned to present them to the Transylvanian Diet and the Emperor. But pointedly, they did not plan to present it to the

government in Budapest, who they did not yet recognize. The Transylvanian Diet was not interested in these demands, though, and on May the 30th, they blew off the Romanians and voted in favor of union with Hungary. Meanwhile, the imperial court was intrigued by the possibility of turning the Romanians against the Hungarians, but did not yet feel powerful enough to risk provoking the Hungarians. So on June the 10th, the emperor succumbed to heavy Hungarian lobbying and signed off on the Union. So, reluctantly, the Transylvanian Romanians took their demands to Budapest, where they met with a similar reply that the Croats and Slovaks and Serbs had all received. Look, the April laws mean that we're all free and equal citizens together, so what's the problem?

You don't need a national identity. You have all the rights of free citizens. Congratulations. But for some reason, no one else seemed to be celebrating. While all of this was going on, the elections for the first national Hungarian parliament were underway, and the result would only further cement the power of the Batonji government and leading acolytes of liberalism and majorization like Lyoskosh. shoot. There had been some hope among the radicals in Budapest that the elections would be their opportunity to push the revolution further than the April laws, but with the restrictions on suffrage, this was a long shot. And when the returns came back in, there were just over 400 delegates elected, 75% of whom were nobles of the educated and land-owning variety. The rest were

the wealthy bourgeoisie. So when they convened in July of 1848, it was practically the same guys who would run the national diet. The radicals had been almost entirely shut out. Shandor Potofi, the author of the National Song and the Twelve Demands, well, his political star had fallen so far that he couldn't even get himself elected, tainted as he was now, by a call for a republic that had not stood the test of time. Now more firmly convinced that liberal Hungary was the future. Its leaders in Budapest now turn their attention to reconciling with Vienna. rather than continuing to antagonize the Austrians. It was consolidation time, so much so that one of the first orders of business that the Hungarian

parliament took up was a request from their king, that is, the emperor of Austria, to provide soldiers for the war effort in Italy. This was a controversial request, but no less than Lyosha Chosut took it up on July the 11th and recommended providing 40,000 more Hungarian soldiers. That was in addition to the Hungarians who were already there. This was a shocking betrayal to many, as it flew in the face of Khashute's previous public declaration that Hungarian soldiers would not be used to oppress other nationalities. The sudden about face was driven by two considerations. First, the Parliament did not want an open breach with Vienna.

They wanted to prove that Hungary was as dependable, hell, more dependable than the Kingdom of Croatia. And second, planting 40,000 more Hungarians in Lumberty, Venetia would be a formidable force to wheel around and attack Croatia's underbelly if it should come to that. And it sure seemed like it might be coming to that. But still, out in the streets of Budapest, Koshut's betrayal did not sit well. And though events would overtake everyone and the troops would never be sent, Koshut would later have to backtrack once it became obvious that Vienna had never really been interested in working with them. and that they were, in fact, turning everyone else in the kingdom of Hungary against the Majjar. Positioning himself as the leader of the anti-Majjar forces was the now former ban of Croatia, Yosep Yelachichich.

Now, when he had been the ban of Croatia, Yelichich had ran an intentional campaign of non-compliance with the authorities in Budapest. His provocations took him too far, though, and after convening a separate Croatian diet in defiance of Budapest, Hungarian representatives at the Habsburg court got the emperor to dismiss Yelichich from his role as ban. That was on June the 10th. The same day the emperor signed off on Union with Transylvania. That was a banner day for the Hungarians.

Now, when I previously talked about him being fired as ban, I said that Yelichich had been kept on as governor of the military border. But that was not right. That was bad information. I'm sorry about that. He was in fact removed from both posts. Now, one of the reasons I screwed that up, though, is because despite being removed as ban and governor of the military border, Yelichich just kind of ignored all those orders, and no one else in or around Croatia was strong enough to stop him.

War in Italy was raging. The Hungarians were not yet mobilized enough to do anything about it. Prague had just gone into revolt. So when Yelichich got the news that he had been forced, fired, he just kind of ignored it. He kept giving orders, and he had so many friends and allies inside of Croatia that they kept obeying those orders. And he also had plenty of allies at the imperial court who were trying to get him reinstated. Hopefully, it would just be a matter of time before the easily swayable Emperor of Austria was swayed back in Yelichich's direction.

I mean, none of the other ministers had even co-signed on the dismissal. In fact, far from rebuking Yelichich's light treason, the war minister actually sent along money to help him fund the imperial garrisons on the military border, because Koshut and the Hungarians were refusing to send any of their money until they could be assured that it would not be used against them. So this was all leading in a direction that the Hungarians did not want to admit it was leading to, but they were becoming increasingly resigned to the fact that if the kingdom of Croatia found it so intolerable to live under Hungarian rule, then maybe it would be best if they were allowed to go their own way. Koschut himself supported the idea, as long as they could extract a promise from Yelichichich

that he would not act as an agent of counter-revolution. But of course, that was a promise Yelichich could not make, and he would not make, because that's exactly what he wanted to be. He wanted to be an agent of counter-revolution. He saw Croatian national interests running right alongside the return of Habsburg supremacy. During one heated confrontation with Prime Minister Batania, Yelichich made the not inaccurate point that he wasn't the rebel in all this, that it was the Hungarians who were trying to break away and change everything.

Yelichich was simply being a loyal subject of the empire. And if the Hungarians had a problem with that, then swords were available to decide the matter. While all of this unfolded, the imperial court was still not in Vienna. But by late July, the capital seemed to be. to be turning in a more conservative direction. The recurring victories of the students and radicals had pushed many property-owning liberals to conclude

that maybe the old regime was the lesser of the two evils. Social and political unrest had only continued through June and early July in the lead-up to that single chamber democratically elected assembly that the radicals had forced the ministry to agree to after their uprising on May the 26th. The workers were getting increasingly agitated as the judges General recession in the factories continued, and now the artisan classes were feeling the pinch, too. Many of the wealthier citizens had decamped Vienna for their outer estates to avoid the revolution,

and so there was an acute shortage of liquid cash running through the city, and artisans who specialized in luxury goods found no buyers for their wares. And that was to say nothing of the court itself staying away. So business was bad, and there was very little relief in sight. There was not no relief. The government had cancelled some taxes on food to ease their burdens and implemented some public works projects, not unlike the national workshops over in France, but wages were bad and actual jobs few. So there were routine demonstrations calling for assistance, and most especially the reduction or outright abolition of rent, all of which only further pushed

liberal property owners away from the radicals and towards conservatives. The other thing now splitting the liberals from the radicals in Vienna was the issue of German nationalism and the goings on over at the Frankfurt Parliament, which will be the subject of our next episode. The radicals in Vienna were embracing a more forward desire for Austro-Germans to join the German state and truly unified Germany, even if it meant shedding the empire. I mean, hell, shed the empire. or what do we care? Let the Hungarians be Hungarians. Let the Italians be Italians. We want to be Germans. The liberals were scandalized by this talk. Yes, they supported constitutional government and civil rights, but not the disillusion of the empire. I mean, imagine the Austrian Empire without Austria. It was

unthinkable. So it was against this backdrop that the elections for the first Austrian parliament were held. Now, just as the radicals had insisted, this was a generally demonstrative. democratic process and was feeding into a single chamber. But most of those who took the time to vote appear to have been convinced that this was all moving way too fast. So when the parliament convened on July the 22nd, 1848, the vast majority of delegates were either moderate liberals or outright conservatives. And their overriding goal would be putting the brakes on all of this, consolidating the few modest gains that they approved of, and then reconciling with the emperor before this all got out of hand. I mean, hell, it was already out of hand. With this parliament looking

far more submissive than originally feared, with Bohemia well in hand, and then with news of the rather spectacular victory in Italy, the imperial court decided it might be high time to return to Vienna. On August the 12th, the family came back to the Capitol, and they were greeted by grateful and happy cheering. In response, the workers and students and radicals held a mass meeting of 10,000. people and declared themselves in solidarity not with the emperor, but with the left wing of the Frankfurt Parliament. Well, again, we'll talk about that next week. On August the 21st, a series of increasingly active worker demonstration spilled out of the suburbs and into the city center. And then, on August the 23rd, the Civic Guard mobilized and put an end to it. The liberal members

of the Civic Guard pushed back against the workers. Fighting ensued, and though nothing more came of it. It was now clear that the liberals were defenders of order and property, and they were willing to use force against the men and women who they had joined with back in March. August the 23rd, 1848 marks the end of their alliance. In the wake of this incident, the Civic Guard agreed to officially put itself under the command of the Ministry of the Interior and take orders from the Minister of the Interior. Then on August the 25th, the liberal members of that security committee, that all-important security committee that had been set up to coordinate action between the various revolutionary sides back in March, they voted to disband. So the alliance of liberals, radicals, students, and workers was now kaput.

The situation rapidly stabilizing, both in the capital and beyond, the imperial ministry finally felt able to take a tougher line against the Hungarians. The forces at court who had supported Yosep Yalachicchich against Hungary now renewed their efforts to rehabilitate him. Croatian forces were allowed to return home from Italy now that the armistice was in effect, and by the first week of September, Yelachichich had close to 50,000 troops at his disposal. Now, though the Austrians were officially trying to maintain the peace between the Croats and Hungarians, they were obviously now encouraging Yelichich to go to war. and many then and now have suspected that the real policy of the Austrians was to get Croatia and Hungary to fight themselves to exhaustion, and then swoop back in and take control of both.

But the emperor, now listening to anti-Majar advisors, issued a declaration that a Hungarian kingdom separate from the Austrian Empire was impossible. So this was never going to wind up two separate realms linked by only a shared sovereign, which is clear. what the Hungarians had been aiming for. Prime Minister Batanyi was actually in Vienna when the tide suddenly shifted. On September 4th, the emperor reinstated Yelichichich as ban of Croatia.

Eager for action, Yelichichich took all of this as proof that he had the emperor's support to invade Hungary on behalf of the empire. And on September 11th, 1848, he led his troops across the Drava River into Hungary. The war

of Hungarian independence had now begun. But we will come back to that war, because next week we need to catch up with events in Germany. The Frankfurt Parliament, the first best hope of German unification, was in full swing by the summer of 1848, but it would become increasingly paralyzed in the face of conservative foot-dragging and radical challenges to the ascendant liberals that would culminate at the end of September 1848 with a second revolution in Baden and the proclamation of a Republic.