Revolutions - 7.30- The Crown From the Gutter

Episode Date: March 11, 2018

Wherein the King of Prussia is offered a dog's collar.   ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 7.30, The Crown from the gutter. As we approach the end of the series on 1848, we will head back to Germany to attract Prussia's great turn against the revolution. This turn mirrored the turn that we've been following in Austria, and with the two great German powers rejecting the liberal national revolution that had begun in the spring of 1848, the Frankfurt Parliament, was on the verge of becoming super irrelevant. In fact, by the end of today's episode, the delegates in Frankfurt will be hit full in the face by a bucket of ice water, waking them up from the fantasy that they were on the cusp of creating a united liberal
Starting point is 00:00:52 German empire. With the king of Prussia and the emperor of Austria turning against that united liberal German empire, the delegates realized that if they wanted to keep going with German unification, they were going to have to fight for it. This would prove to be an exhausting and dispiriting proposition. We still have a few episodes left, so obviously there is still some gas in the tank of the Revolution of 1848, but by the spring of 1849, plenty of German liberals decided it was high time to get their passports in order. I hear that Milwaukee is lovely this time of year.
Starting point is 00:01:27 But before we get to the fate of the Frankfurt Parliament, we must begin today with events in Prussia. Now, just to remember where we're at, after the revolutionary upheavals of March 1840, King Friedrich Wilhelm had convened a national diet to approve a new constitution. When the diet convened in May, the king attempted to have them simply ratify a draft of a constitution his ministers had prepared. But the diet rejected this attempt and instead took up the task of drafting a constitution for themselves. By the end of July, they had cranked out a version that was shockingly liberal. This was followed up in early August by that impetuous demand that the Prussian army swear an oath of law. loyalty to the Constitution rather than to the king alone. This demand in particular was galling to
Starting point is 00:02:14 Friedrich Wilhelm, because he was the king of Prussia by the grace of God. And being king of Prussia by the grace of God meant that by God, the Prussian army swore an oath to him, not to some stack of papers a bunch of liberal meddlers had written. The king was not the only one who thought the diet was overreaching, and the ministers that he had appointed back in March resigned rather than try to force the army to swear such an oath. So Ernst von Fuld, a liberal Prussian general, was elevated to be prime minister, and he would attempt to mediate between the diet and the king and the army, but it was getting to the point where the sides no longer trusted each other,
Starting point is 00:02:50 if they ever really had. The liberals in the diet still felt like the winds of 1848 were at their back, and that the people would soon rule Prussia, not the king. Meanwhile, the frustrated king was listening to his conservative advisors, and contemplating counter-revolution. The conservatives plotting reactionary counter-revolution were divided into two camps. There was an old guard that wanted things to just go back the way that they had always been, and then a younger cohort who believed that while the liberal gains of 1848 must be rolled back,
Starting point is 00:03:24 that everyone must swim in the new waters that they found themselves. The object of both groups was fundamentally the same. Get rid of the liberal national diet and return power to the king and the king, the traditional estates. But the tactics of the younger group were more dynamic and modern. And that group was increasingly influential with the king, and they were led by the young Otto von Bismarck, who advised courting public opinion rather than pretending that public opinion didn't exist. The conservative association of King and Fatherland was started up in the summer, and then they also launched conservative newspapers to make their case. Bismarck himself was a frequent
Starting point is 00:04:03 contributed to these papers, generally dissecting the liberals with his Assyrhic wit. But though conservatives did not really believe the people had any business running the kingdom, Bismarck and his allies had a couple of popular cards to play. One was exploiting the broad Prussian nationalism found in all classes of society, but especially among the peasants. So the conservatives harped on the message that the German nationalism espoused by the liberals meant that Prussia would lose its proud identity. Conservatives made it clear that when they said King and Fatherland,
Starting point is 00:04:39 that by Fatherland they meant Prussia, not some vague and nebulous liberal academic fantasy called Germany. The other thing they could exploit were the religious fears of the Protestant population about being integrated with Catholics, especially Austrian Catholics who had been their enemy for so long. So the conservatives were able to paint liberal German nationalism as a backdoor for the reintroduction of popery. Conservatives were also able to gain traction
Starting point is 00:05:07 among the artisan classes who had manned the barricades back in March. Those artisans were not enthused by the free market policies of the liberals, and conservatives were quick to promise the reintroduction of many of the traditional guild rules. So by the time the national diet took up its debate of the draft constitution in October, the idea that the liberals were the, quote,
Starting point is 00:05:29 voice of the people, was very much being challenged from the right. And at the same time, the liberals were being challenged from the left by radicals and socialists, betraying the same divide that we've seen open up in Paris and Vienna and Rome and Frankfurt. Wary of this challenge from the streets, the liberal national diet took steps to protect itself. Now, since the March uprising in Berlin, there had been few checks on the spread of firearms in the capital. So, in addition to the National Guard that had been formerly organized, there were a plethora of political organizations that could count on its members being armed. With news of the riots in Frankfurt in September, and then yet another uprising in Vienna in early October, the National Diet passed a law on
Starting point is 00:06:15 October the 13th that said that only the National Guard would be allowed to go around armed in Berlin. Then just a few days later, canal workers protesting the installation of new steam pumps got out of hand, and their demonstration turned into a bit of a riot. So the National Guard came down, confronted the crowd, and in the midst of that confrontation, opened fire and killed 11 demonstrators. The bitter and now bloody conflict between liberals and radicals then escalated again two weeks later. On October the 31st, fully 100,000 protesters marched on a meeting of the national diet. They were going to present the diet a petition, but the diet refused. to welcome the delegation this crowd sent inside. So when the delegation emerged from the building
Starting point is 00:07:02 and reported their treatment, the situation deteriorated. A few of the delegates in the diet attempted to leave out the front door, but they were harassed, and one was attacked by a torch-bearing protester. He was beaten with a torch. So justifiably afraid for their lives, the rest of the delegates streamed outside doors and ground floor windows. When the crowd noticed this secret exodus, they mobbed the whole building. And the National Guard arrived on the scene to confront all of this, and a brawl broke out. Now, this brawl was broken up with clubs, and nobody was killed in all of this, but there were a lot of injuries. The biggest casualty by far was the death of any remaining solidarity between liberals and radicals.
Starting point is 00:07:46 And as was so often the case in 1848, these two groups were now locked in a cycle of animosity that left them vulnerable to their real enemy, the forces of reaction. the forces of reactionary counter-revolution. After this latest violence in the Capitol, the oh-so recently elevated Prime Minister Ernst von Fuel threw up his hands and said, I cannot work with any of these people, I quit. With the prime ministership once again vacant, the king was expected to find the most conservative liberal he could
Starting point is 00:08:15 and just try to muddy along. But instead, he took the advice of Otto von Bismarck, who reckoned now that the liberals and radicals were so hopelessly, at each other's throats that the king need not bother with finding a conservative liberal, he could just go find a conservative. And so the king appointed his uncle, Count von Brandenburg. Brandenburg was one of the old-style conservative absolutists, and his appointment shocked the liberals in the national diet and the radicals in the street.
Starting point is 00:08:46 The appointment of Brandenburg meant that the king was totally blowing off the whole spirit of 1848. So a delegation from the Diet paid a call on the king to protest, but just as they had refused to meet with the radical protesters, the king refused to meet with the liberal protesters. Meanwhile, the radicals took back to the streets, but suddenly the conservatives were dominating the tenor of political debate, and they decried the constant anarchy and begged the king publicly to do something. This is no way to run a kingdom. then came the sensational news that Vienna had fallen to Marshall Vindichgratz. Only too late did both the liberals and the radicals in Berlin realize that central Europe was not in the midst of revolution, but counter-revolution. On November 3rd, 1848, the king made a decisive move. Count Brandenburg went to the diet and read a royal decree.
Starting point is 00:09:41 It said that for the diet's own protection, that the diet would recess for one month and then reconcerned, outside of Berlin in the city of Brandenburg. So, yes, just to confuse future listeners of a podcast about revolutions, Brandenberg is telling the diet to reconvene in Brandenburg. Angry at what they believed was the unjust and possibly illegal order to go into recess, the national diet refused to budge. That decision was backed by the commander of the National Guard, who proclaimed that he would not use the guard to disperse the diet by force.
Starting point is 00:10:15 Now, on the one hand, this was good because it would have been bad had the guard turned against the diet, but unfortunately it was also bad because it gave Brandenburg the excuse he needed to call in the regular army. Over the summer, the king had positioned upwards of 40,000 regular army troops in and around Berlin. He had also put an arch-conservative general named Friedrich von Rangel in charge of them. When the diet refused to disperse and the National Guard abetting their disobedience, Count Brandenburg ordered von Rangel to lead 13,000 troops into Berlin on November the 10th. The delegates inside the diet well knew the fate of Prague and Vienna, and they knew that they were now walking on a very dangerous path.
Starting point is 00:10:59 But while they didn't want to provoke a full military siege of the city, they also didn't want to just tuck tail and run. So as the National Guard deployed itself around the building within which the diet met, the army marched in, and the two sides stared. each other down. Neither wanted to provoke a battle, but neither wanted to back down either. Inside the diet, the delegates proceeded with their business, pretending like nothing was going on, running through routine bills and debating fairly mundane state affairs. After a few hours of this dull pageantry, the leaders of the diet sent out a fairly cheeky note to General von Rangel.
Starting point is 00:11:39 The note asked when the general planned on leaving, because the diet had not requested his presence and they didn't require anything of him, so he was free to leave whenever he wanted. Von Rangel was not amused, and he said, I do not recognize the authority of the diet. You have 15 minutes to adjourn, or I am coming in and adjourning you myself. Since he was obviously dead serious
Starting point is 00:12:01 and was literally leading the Prussian army, the dull pageantry gave way to sharp fear. The national diet caved. The members disbanded, the National Guard surrendered their weapons, and the few radical protesters who had gathered beat a hasty retreat. But this time, they would not retreat to erect barricades. There would be no fighting.
Starting point is 00:12:24 After getting kicked around for six months, the conservatives were back. In the days that followed, the conservatives continued what was now becoming a full-blown royal coup. On November the 12th, Count Brandenburg declared martial law in Berlin, and cannons were put in place on the high ground outside the capital. pointing at the city. Liberal and radical newspapers were shut down. Their clubs were invaded and closed. More soldiers came into the city and occupied all key public buildings.
Starting point is 00:12:55 They went out on routine patrols. They closed streets. They performed house searches looking for weapons and seditious material. Basically, the people of Berlin were underarmed occupation. Some of the delegates of the National Diet reconvened at a private club, and they called for a tax strike until the king allowed them to officially reassemble, but unfortunately this idea went nowhere. Unlike during, say, the English Civil Wars or the American Revolution, where the principal taxpayers had been the one leading the charge for representative government, in Prussia, all the principal taxpayers were wealthy,
Starting point is 00:13:30 noble landowners, and they were on the side of conservative absolutism. For them, the disbanding of the diet wasn't a cause for alarm, it was a cause for celebration. And far from wanting to go on a tax strike, they probably passed the hat to make sure that the king had the resources he needed to crush these liberal upstarts once and for all. With the diet-inforced recess and Berlin under occupation, King Friedrich Wilhelm completed the coup he had been dreaming about since he had been forced to crawl on his belly out of Berlin back in March. Count Brandenburg recommended the king just assert that things were now back the way they had been before 1848. But the king's other advice, but the king's other advice,
Starting point is 00:14:11 were concerned that being that obvious about it would lead to new rounds of unrest and revolution. So the younger guard of conservatives, Bismarck among them, said, let the people have a constitution if they want one so bad, but let it be drafted by us, not them. So as much as he hated even the idea of a constitution, Frederick Wilhelm did not want to risk crawling on his belly a second time. And so he agreed. On December the 1st, the king proclaimed a new constitution for Prussia. It did not look anything like what had been produced by the national diet, and instead looked a lot like France's charter of government from the days of the bourbon restoration. First, this constitution was being handed down from above. From God, to the king, to you, my happy
Starting point is 00:14:59 and loyal subjects. It included a two-house legislature, and even mostly democratic elections for the lower house, but nearly all real power would be concentrated in the hands of the king and his ministers. In terms of its immediate practical effect, the new constitution meant that the national diet was no longer in recess. It was just abolished. It had been pushed into the dustbin of history by Otto von Bismarck and a reflourishing forest bayonets. Elections for a new parliament were scheduled for January. So, though the revolution in Prussia had not taken its final breath, it was on life support, and the plug was about to be polled. And the funny thing is, And down in Frankfurt, plenty of delegates to the Frankfurt Parliament were not outraged by the events in Berlin and actually applauded the king for taking prudent steps to restore order.
Starting point is 00:15:52 Remember, these guys were just coming off a major riot in Frankfurt in September that had left 60 dead, and led directly to Gustav Stroves' uprising down in Baden. Then in October, they had read news of the uprising in Vienna and further clashes in the streets of Berlin. So while the left wing of the Frankfurt Parliament was appalled by the counter-revolution in Prussia, a healthy contingent of delegates from the center and the right nodded along and said, yes, that was all fine and good and proper. The very thin thread they clung to was that the king of Prussia had accepted the principle of constitutional government, that there were limits to his authority. These guys wanted to put the happiest face on the coup in Berlin,
Starting point is 00:16:36 in part because most of them still wanted Prussia to lead the United German state they were in the process of constructing. The argument over whether the new United Germany would be a monarchy or a republic was by now decisively settled in favor of a monarchy, and the argument about whether it would be a unitary state or a confederal system built from the existing German states had been mostly settled in the favor of a confederal system. But the big question, the biggest question of all, still lurked out there. who would be in and who would be out of what they were now styling the German Empire. So we've touched on this question before, as we talked about the Duchy of Posen and the Kingdom of Bohemia, to say nothing of the intractable problem that was Schleswig-Holstein.
Starting point is 00:17:23 But those were problematic areas because of their ethnically mixed populations. The real question, though, was not what to do with the peripheral territories, but what to do with a country that was at the heart of Germany. Austria. The Austrian problem broke the Frankfurt Parliament into multiple camps, where one side supported what we called the Greater German Solution and the other supporting the smaller German solution. And what's so interesting about these camps
Starting point is 00:17:51 is that they did not break down on standard lines of economic class or political ideology. And thanks to the scrambling of familiar coalitions inside the Frankfurt Parliament, neither solution was able to command an outright majority, which meant that it was going to be up to events to determine which solution would win out. And events would ultimately decide, yes, let me see here it is, the no German solution. So as you might guess from the name, supporters of the greater German solution wanted all Germans included in the German Empire, and that for sure meant bringing in the Austrians. But, this being a German empire built on the premise of national heritage and ties and history,
Starting point is 00:18:37 these guys did not want Austria's multinational constituent subject states coming along for the ride. So what supporters of the Greater German solution were proposing was the end of the Austrian empire as anyone knew it. Austria proper would join the new German empire and the ruling Habsburgs would just have to figure out how to respond. And like I said, those who supported the greater German solution included conservative Catholics who wanted Austria in Germany to act as a check on the aggressive domination of the Prussian Protestants, but it also included the kind of heathen atheist radicals who were also committed nationalists. Those radicals didn't want to leave any of their German brothers and sisters behind, certainly not to continue to suffer under
Starting point is 00:19:24 the backward yoke of the weird-headed Habsburgs. And while we're here, I should also mention that, though they took no part in any of this, the leadership in Hungary was super supportive of the greater German solution, because if the rug was pulled out from under the Habsburgs in Austria, the most logical result would be the Habsburgs moving to Budapest, making Hungary the new seat of imperial power. Now on the other side, the smaller German solution proponents were mostly made up of pragmatists. They said, yes, it would be amazing to bring together all Germans. in theory. But in practice, taking Austria out of the Austrian Empire would be like trying to get oil out of water. The Habsburgs would not just give in without a fight, so why not skip that
Starting point is 00:20:14 fight and settle for something that isn't ideal but is solid and peaceful and wouldn't require a war with Austria to achieve? These pragmatists were also concerned that even if they won the day, and Austria entered the German Empire, that it would destabilize Central Europe in unpredictable ways. It wasn't all risk and no reward, but the risks certainly seemed to outweigh the rewards. The smaller German solution was also supported by those northern Prussian Protestants, because as much as the Southern Catholics feared Protestant Prussian domination, Protestant Prussians were obviously in favor of Protestant Prussian domination. The smaller German solution looked a lot.
Starting point is 00:20:56 like Prussia just getting to acquire a bunch of new territory while the other powers of Europe stood still. Bringing in Austria would just mess all that up. So those were the two big proposals out there, but there was actually a third option that abandoned the idea of basing the German empire on ethnic German purity. This proposal was called Middle Europa, or the Middle Europe plan. Initially, it was formulated and propagated by delegates at the Frankfurt Parliament from places like Bohemia, where Germans were an old and stable part of the population, but still a minority part of the population. And they were afraid that if push came to shove, they would get left out of the German Empire. So they said, why don't we ditch the idea that everyone has to be a German,
Starting point is 00:21:45 and let's just mash everything together? To not only bring in Austria proper, but the whole Austrian empire to make this a multi-ethnic super state of like a hundred million people sprawling all of, well, middle Europe. Now, this flew in the face of the whole emotional and intellectual appeal of German unification. This was supposed to be about getting the Germans together. And now you've got a German empire with Italians and Hungarians and every variety of Slav. That's crazy. But the rejoinder was that the Germans would be the dominant force inside this great middle European state, it would still be a German empire. All of the Germans would be unified. It would just also include a lot of other people. But no big deal, because those people would be
Starting point is 00:22:32 dominated by that German population. So suddenly, instead of being limited to the confines of the old fatherland, German influence, culture, and authority would spread from the Rhine to the Black Sea. So these various solutions were debated into late October 1848, and it really seemed like the greater German solution was getting the upper hand. The Parliament approved the first three articles of their new constitution, which said, first, the German Empire will consist of lands in the old German Confederation. Second, no part of the empire may form a state of non-German lands. and third, heads of state for multiple countries must hold those claims as personal unions only. So, this was clearly setting up an attempt to absorb Austria, since it had been a part of the old German Confederation, but not the other constituent parts of the Habsburg's empire, since they were non-German lands.
Starting point is 00:23:34 But just as these articles were being approved, what is happening down in Austria? Correct. The crushing of the Vienna uprising and the arrival of a neo-absolutus cabal led by Prime Minister Schwarzenberg, Field Marshal Vindigrots, and Archduchess Sophie. And that crew was well on their way to restoring central imperial authority over the Habsburg dominions, once they got a new emperor, that is. So to detour very briefly back to Austria, because this is important. This neo-absolutus cabal came to power with a pretty clear plan of action. They were going to reverse all the trends that had been kicked off in March of 1848. After the upheavals of that spring, it looked like the Austrian Empire would be forever changed
Starting point is 00:24:23 in the following ways. First, more authority, dignity, and self-determination for the minority nationalities against previous Austro-German domination. Second, a decentralized empire made of nearly autonomous constituent parts, united only by a shared Habsburg sovereign, and then third, those Habsburg sovereigns constrained by liberal reforms, constitutions, elected assemblies, and individual civil rights. Meanwhile, Schwarzenberg's three principal goals were first, restore Habsburg authority, second, centralized power, and third, increased German authority inside the empire. But since this is neo-absolutism rather than just plain old traditional absolutism,
Starting point is 00:25:10 they plan to co-opt many of the forms and functions and language of the liberal revolutionaries and bend them right back around on themselves. So on November the 27th, in part in response to calls from the Frankfurt Parliament to get on board with the Greater German solution, Schwarzenberg announced that the Austrian Empire was in fact a single unitary state, that it was free, indivisible, indissoluble, that it was a constitutional hereditary monarchy. It was not a confederation. There would be no dividing it. There would be no shared sovereign with a Habsburg ruler holding things in personal union. Borrowing liberal language, he also said that all Habsburg subjects enjoyed equality before the law. But rather than this language being
Starting point is 00:25:57 deployed towards liberal ends, it was now deployed to destroy claims for now. national autonomy, rights, and privileges. We'll talk a bit more about this next week when we talk about the new constitution for the Austrian Empire, but for the moment, this was all meant most especially to shut down any attempt by the Frankfurt Parliament to take Austria out of the Austrian Empire. So, just as they were settling on the Greater German solution, the Greater German solution was taken off the table. So setting aside that big question for the moment, the Frankfurt Parliament instead tried to establish that whatever form the United Germany took, that it would be based on liberal civil rights. So on December 1st, they rolled out what's known as the 50 articles.
Starting point is 00:26:45 Those articles included equality before the law, freedom of worship, freedom of the press, an end to discrimination due to class, habeas corpus, free movement, no death penalty, the abolition of noble privilege, secular education, and strong private property rights. And in keeping with the liberal worldview of the Frankfurt Parliament, the 50 articles almost uniformly address the political question and left the social question unaddressed. There would not be a right to work in the Frankfurt Constitution. The only things that really addressed the social side of the question were guarantees of liberal economic principles like freedom of movement, freedom of employment, freedom of trade, and those strong private property rights. I think the general consensus was that liberating the economy from its futile shackles would create enough general prosperity that the social questions would just sort of resolve themselves. Now, this is not a surprising attitude, and certainly German radicals and socialists were not surprised.
Starting point is 00:27:50 Most of them had long since given up on Frankfurt. Some had gone into exile. Some had risen up with the likes of Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve. Others had long since set themselves up as a permanent. left-wing opposition, hopefully, laying the groundwork for some future day when they could capture power from the hated liberals. But it was the promulgation of the 50 articles that revealed to the world that the liberals in Frankfurt didn't actually have any power. The 50 articles were meant to apply to all Germans everywhere, and while the governments of a few of the middle-sized
Starting point is 00:28:26 German states accepted them, the biggest powers did not. After the royal coup and Prussia and the Neo-absolutus coup in Austria, the Frankfurt Parliament was no longer speaking for Germany. It was just talking to itself. So to wrap up today's episode, we're going to zoom forward a couple of months. As we discussed last time, the winter campaign was underway in Hungary in the first few months of 1849. And as we will discuss next week, Italy was about to be dealing with the revival of the Roman Republic. But this week, I want to get to the climate. But this week, I want to get to the climax, or rather the severe anti-climax, of the Frankfurt Parliament. With Austria rejecting the greater German solution, the fate of United Germany rested on
Starting point is 00:29:14 Prussia accepting the smaller German solution. By the end of March, the Frankfurt Parliament was finished debating its constitution, and they had settled finally on a mixed federal system of unification defined by a two-chambered legislature. It would have a lower House of the People that would be elected along generally Democratic lines, and then an upper House of States, whose members would be appointed by the monarchs and princes and assemblies of the various constituent German states. The Frankfurt Parliament also now voted decisively in favor of an executive emperor who would be a hereditary monarch, rejecting once and for all the other proposition that it might be an elected monarchy, and certainly rejecting the idea
Starting point is 00:29:59 that the German Empire would be a republic. On March the 27th, 1849, the Frankfurt Parliament voted in favor of the final draft of what history has dubbed the Frankfurt Constitution. The next day, the Parliament gathered to elect an emperor, with everyone knowing that it had to be King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia. But many delegates were still not thrilled by that idea. So the vote was very close.
Starting point is 00:30:27 it was 267 to 263, with the majority simply abstaining rather than marking down the king's name. And in the days and weeks that followed, 28 of the German states accepted the Frankfurt Constitution. But just as had happened with the 50 articles, the largest and most powerful German states did not. Hanover, Bavaria, and Saxony all rejected it, at least until they could figure out what Prussia was going to do. So is Prussia going to accept the Frankfurt Constitution? In the first week of April, the king met with a delegation from the Frankfurt Parliament, formally inviting him to become Emperor of the Germans. Now, you or I might think, wow, that sounds like a pretty amazing job offer.
Starting point is 00:31:18 I mean, as much as we might aspire to in life, I doubt Emperor of the Germans is something we can reasonably put on the list. And here's a delegation straight up offering King Friedrich Wilhelm this amazing once-in-a-lifetime job. But he hated the very idea of it. He hated the Frankfurt Parliament. He hated the Frankfurt Constitution. He hated that they were trying to drag him into their gross and sordid liberal fantasy world. He called this imperial crown offered up to him by men, rather than handed down to him by God, a crown from the gutter. He said it would be a dog's collar.
Starting point is 00:31:56 He wasn't even going to be emperor of Germany. He was going to be emperor of the Germans. I mean, what was he? French? Ew. But plenty of his advisors, even the conservative ones, saw enormous advantages to the king of Prussia also being emperor of the Germans, especially with the Habsburgs on the outside looking in.
Starting point is 00:32:18 Again, this was practically an offer for the rest of Germany to like annex itself into Prussia. So joining in the chorus of those advocating for the king to become emperor was that new Prussian parliament that had convened under the new constitution the king had promulgated back in December. Though this parliament was supposed to be more quiescent, on April the 21st, both houses voted in favor of accepting the Frankfurt constitution and making the king emperor. The king was furious, and this was the last straw. He dissolved the parliament and then announced that he rejected the offer of an imperial crown. He would not take this crown from the gutter. He would not wear a dog's collar. Now, this was all bad, bad, bad news for the Frankfurt Parliament. But then
Starting point is 00:33:04 the king went one step further. He promised military aid to any German state that chose to reject the Frankfurt Constitution. The king's repudiation shocked the Frankfurt Parliament. They thought they were on the verge of wrapping things up, putting a bow on the liberal revolution of 1848, and celebrating a glorious new era of German unity. Now they were being tossed back into the revolutionary cockpit. The crown heads of Europe were not getting on board. So were they going to have to go back to the barricades? And who would join them there? By the spring of 1849, the Frankfurt Parliament had the support of an incredibly narrow and continuously shrinking segment of the German population. And they sensed that what this all meant is not that they were going to be
Starting point is 00:33:53 considered the founding fathers of Germany, but rather participants in an obscure footnote in history. Next week will be the penultimate episode of our series on 1848. And though it feels like the revolutions are already over, there is still some fight left out there. In Hungary, the retreats of the winter campaign would give way to the advances of the spring campaign. In Italy, Venice still held out against the Austrians. Rome is about to declare itself a republic, and King Charles Albert will resume the First War of Italian Independence. And here in Germany, the last remaining Germans with the spirit of 48 in their veins will retreat to Baden for one last glorious stand.

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