Revolutions - 7.31- The Assembly of the Damned

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

As the walls close in on the Revolutions of 1848, the final loose ends will be ground up by millstones, but still stamp the future with fertile soil to grow new liberty trees. 

Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Episode 7.31, The Assembly of the Damned. Welcome to the penultimate episode of our series on 1848. It is, of course, ridiculous that we are now past 30 episodes and have managed to cover just 15 months worth of events. But that's why you come to the Revolutions podcast, right? You want to know what happened, I want to tell you what happened, and my goodness, did a lot happen in 1848. but it's now time to move into the endgame and tie up all the final loose ends into very bitter knots. By the spring of 1849, the counter-revolutionary turn was crushing the revolutions of 1848 like so many grains of wheat.

But there were a few handfuls of wheat left in Italy, hungry in Germany, that had yet avoided the reactionary millstones. But even as those areas held out, there was a distinct sense setting in that they were not fighting for the present, but for the future. They were fighting to stamp a new memory of old concepts like liberty, inequality, and fraternity as the walls closed in, that from the ashes of the extinguished volcano, they could create fertile soil for the next generation to plant new trees of liberty. So, just to make sure that we've mixed these metaphors properly, as the walls are closing in, the final loose ends will be ground up by millstones, but hopefully stamp the future with fertile soil to grow new liberty trees.

Writing is fun. We begin today in Italy, where at least on paper the revolution was still going strong. Yes, Naples was now firmly counter-revolutionary, but Sicily remained free. Venice remained undefeated. Rome had driven out the Pope and was preparing to declare republic. Tuscany was about to drive out their Grand Duke and similarly declare a republic. And up in Piedmont, King Charles Albert was preparing to relaunch the war with Austria. But unlike in the spring of 1848, when all the Italian revolutionary forces of liberation and unification were pushing in the same direction, one year later, they were really super not.

And we can point to two major cleavages that undermined Italian unity. The first was the political split between monarchists and Republicans. The defeat of Piedmont in the summer of 1848, and King Charles Albert's general demeanor during that failed campaign, convinced most of the Italian Republicans that the king had voided his claim to be the leader of Risorgimento, and they now aggressively pursued not the kingdom of Italy, but the Republic of Italy. As for the monarchists, one of the reasons Charles Albert planned to relaunch the war with Austria was that if he didn't, Italy would fall into the hands of madmen like Giuseppe Matzini. The other cleavage was ancient parochial rivalries.

Despite the flowery rhetoric and red, white, and green tricolour flags, the Italian peninsula was still made up of Romans and Florentines and Venetians and Genoese and Neapolitans. There was not really an Italian anywhere to be found. So, as we're about to see with the papal states in Tuscany, they're both about to declare themselves republics and then fail to unify even with each other. No unity, no unification. No unification, no liberation. In Rome, we left things off at the end of December 1848. The self-exiled pope had ordered the Romans to stop organizing their new assembly,

and when they ignored him, he promised excommunication for anyone who participated. The threat of excommunication did not stop the election. but it did significantly alter its outcome. Fearing for their souls, all conservatives and most moderate liberals stayed away from the polls, leaving the election dominated by committed radical Republicans. Now what bums me out here is that though history is often very good at slapping poetic and evocative names on things, so far as I can tell, nobody calls the Roman Assembly elected in January of 1849, the Assembly of the Damned, which I think is a huge missed operation.

opportunity. So, from here on out, you should all call the Roman Assembly that was elected in January of 1849, the Assembly of the Damned. And until someone shows me otherwise, I'm going to go ahead and take credit for coining the term. The Assembly of the Damned convened on February the 5th, and despite pleas from moderates to please not depose the Pope, on February 9th, they voted to depose the Pope, which meant that they also declared themselves a republic. and not just any republic, they announced that they would be, quote, a pure democracy that will take the glorious name of the Roman Republic. Those are pretty big shoes to fill.

The original Roman Republic lasted 500 years. This new Roman Republic would last not quite 100 days. Among those elected to the Assembly of the Damned were Garibaldi and Giuseppe Matzini. Neither were Roman, but both were exactly the sort of men needed to restore the Roman. Republic to life. Garibaldi had been wandering around Italy for the past few months and now found a home in Rome. Meanwhile, Matzini was in Switzerland when he got the news of the declaration of a republic and his election to the Assembly of the Damned. He hustled down into Italy, and on his way to Rome, he passed through Florence. Now, ever since the summer of 1848, just after the defeat at the Battle of

Costosa, a radical democratic ministry had been running the show in Tuscany. And though the they weren't wild about the idea, this ministry had allowed a special election in Florence in late January to send Tuscan delegates to the Assembly of the Damned in Rome, possibly as a precursor to declaring a unified Italian Republic. That election had been the moment that the Grand Duke of Tuscany decided he was out of here. Sensing that the general counter-revolutionary turn was diverging from the radical turn in his own capital, the Grand Duke decided to wash his hand to the whole thing. On the night of January the 31st, he slipped out of Florence. He then bounced around for two weeks before accepting an invitation to join the Pope in his exile in Gaeta.

With the Grand Duke having skipped town, the radical government in Florence took what seemed to them to be the next logical step. On February the 18th, they declared themselves a free and independent republic. But when Matzini passed through town on his way from Switzerland to Rome, they refused to take what he thought should be the next logical step, which was fusion with Rome. Thanks in part to those ancient regional rivalries I just mentioned, the Florentines were not thrilled at the idea of union with the Romans. They said it was because the Romans were too radical and were going too far. But let's face it, Rome had always tried to lord it over the rest of Italy, and Florence was not eager to make itself subservient to the eternal city. So, despite all Matzini's patriotic pleading, the leaders of now Republican

in Florence, resisted joining Republican Rome. So Matzini moved on. I think probably already suspicious that the writing was on the wall. And if that writing wasn't on the wall just yet, it sure was about to be. It would be written about three weeks later by the Austrian army at the town of Novara, which was just about 20 miles west of Milan. As we've discussed, King Charles Albert had spent the winter of 1848, 1849, being pressured. to go back to war with the Austrians. Fearing both for his own crown and for the fate of Italy, should it fall into the hands of the frothing radical Republicans, Charles Albert spent the winter conscripting a new army, and he resolved to resume the war come the spring. And so, on March

12, 1849, citing technical violations of the armistice he had signed with Field Marshal Radetsky back in August, Charles Albert renounced the peace. Now to their credit, Those frothing radicals down in Rome offered 15,000 troops to support the king's war against Austria. But now convinced that this was as much about saving the prospects for a kingdom of Italy as anything else, Charles Albert stubbornly refused their help. Now, I'm not sure if those 15,000 troops would have made a difference. But probably not, because it's unlikely they would have even gotten there in time to help. Because Piedmont's second invasion of Lumberty lasted not quite a week and a half.

King Charles once again led an army of about 50,000 men, but most of them were new recruits, neither experienced in war nor particularly well trained. And they faced an Austrian army occupying Lumberty Venetia to the tune of 70,000 men. It took exactly one battle to decide the war. The two sides met on the morning of March the 22nd at Novara, which, as I said, was about 20 miles west of Milan. They fought all day and into the night, but the Piedmontees were outmatched. and they just couldn't catch any breaks. Routed on multiple fronts, the Piedmont War Council

concluded on the dawn of March the 23rd that they had not only lost the battle, but they could not even continue the war. A new armistice would have to be signed. Having been oh so recently reignited, the first war of Italian independence was now over. The most dramatic immediate consequence of the defeat at Novara was the abdication of King Charles Albert. He had had a very important. He had now taken two big bites at the apple and choked on it both times. He concluded, not unreasonably, that the only way to save the Savoy monarchy in Piedmont and get decent terms from the Austrians was to abdicate in favor of his 29-year-old son, Victor Immanuel. Worried about fanning the flames of Democratic Revolution and worried about accidentally provoking French intervention in

Italy, the victorious field marshal Radetsky struck a deal with the new King Victor Emmanuel. As long as the king renounced territory outside the established kingdom of Piedmont Sardinia, he could keep what had been granted to his family at the Congress of Vienna. The Piedmontese would have to pay an indemnity of 75 million lira, which wasn't too bad considering that the previous Austrian demand had been north of 200 million. Redetsky also promised a blanket amnesty for everyone except a list of about 100 of the most rebellious rebels from Lombardy, Venetia. So though the Battle of Novara was a disaster, it was not a permanent disaster, and it left the door open for a second War of Italian Independence, maybe even a third war of Italian independence. Because to help forestall democratic revolution in Piedmont, Victor Emanuel pledged to uphold the Constitution and continue to proudly fly the green, white, and red tricolor.

The dream of liberation and unification was not dead. It was just being put on hold for a generation. And though King Charles Albert, now headed into permanent exile, would never become the King of Italy as he had dreamed. His son would. News of the disaster at Novara raced down the peninsula. In the Kingdom of the two Sicilies, the reactionary King Ferdinand celebrated by launching a decisive effort to reconquer Sicily. The Sicilians had thrown off Neapolitan rule just about a year ago, and the only thing that had held off their reconquest was an armistice that had been forced on Naples by the British and French back in October. But with the wheel of counter-revolution turning and Austria back on top, King Ferdinand felt free to make a play at forcing Sicily back into the kingdom of the two Sicilies. When the armistice expired on March the 29th, he launched an invasion of the island. A raid against the tens of thousands of Neapolitan soldiers sent by the king

were just about 7,000 Sicilians led by the most ubiquitous supporting actor in the revolutions of 1848, Ludvik Miroslowski. Now, you probably don't even remember him at this point, but Miroslowski was a Polish revolutionary who had led the ill-fated armies during the greater Polish uprising. Having fled into exile, he wound up offering his services to the Sicilians, and they put him in charge of their defenses, even though he didn't speak a lick of Italian. So, Miroslowski got the opportunity to lead his second ill-fated army of the Revolution of 1848. The Neapolitan simply stormed their way down the east coast of Sicily with ease,

and within days the road to Palermo lay wide open. Recognizing that they were basically helpless, moderates in Palermo attempted to negotiate, but it was too late for that. On April the 26th, the Neapolitan fleet arrived in the harbor of Palermo. Surrounded, radicals inside the city started throwing up barricades to resist, but the red flags of socialism flying over those barricades spooked the moderate liberals in Palermo as much as the Neapolitan gunships did. So they negotiated the peaceful surrender of the city, and by extension, the peaceful surrender of independent Sicily. Radicals were disgusted that the moderates seemed to fear the people more than the bourbons,

but they'd be able to gripe about that in exile. And just so you know, Miroslowski would join them in exile, and next week we'll get the opportunity to lead his third ill-fated army of the Revolution of 1848. So for 16 months, the Sicilians had been able to maintain their independence. That period of independence was now over. The revolution in Sicily was over. Soon, the revolutions everywhere would be over. Meanwhile, up in Tuscany, the defeat at Novara meant that Florence immediately regretted having declared itself a republic.

Adopting a policy of ha-ha-just-kitting, the now self-proclaimed Republic of Tuscany tried to open negotiations to bring back the Grand Duke. This was in an effort to head off both an invasion by the Austrian army and a reactionary uprising being led by conservative landlords and clergymen who were stirring up the peasants to fight the atheist devils who had sided with the persecutors of the Pope. On April the 11th, Florence was rocked by an invasion of these conservative peasants, a popular uprising, but this one in favor not of revolution, but counter-revolution. With the government on the brink of collapse, a royalist provisional government declared itself in effect. They were also hoping to negotiate the return of the Grand Duke without him feeling like he had to turn to the Austrians, but they failed. On April the 26th, 15,000

Austrian troops crossed the border to secure the Grand Duchy of Tuscany for its rightful master, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. So the Grand Duke came back, and when he did, the Austrians stayed. In fact, they would continue to occupy the Grand Duchy of Tuscany until 1855. So strike another one from the board. The revolution in Tuscany is over. The Roman Republic, though, still held its ground. Giuseppe Mazzini arrived in early March and took his seat in the Assembly of the Damned. The Assembly focused its attention on fusion with Tuscany and trying to join Charles Albert's new war against Austria.

But the abrupt news of his defeated Novara changed everything. Rome no longer had the luxury of doing anything but prepare for the inevitable attack of the conservative powers of Europe. In the crisis atmosphere, the Assembly appointed a triumvirate of the Republic. men to see them through. Matzini was one of those triumvers and its most relentless driving force. Now, I think there's a good case to be made that Matzini's main object here was not necessarily the survival of the Roman Republic. That was a pretty long shot. But rather, the survival of the idea that a republic was a good thing. If they were facing inevitable defeat, and they probably were,

then it was important for future generations to remember this sojourn with Republican government as an era of goodness and justice and competence. Both conservatives and liberal monarchists in Italy had always tried to paint Matzini as an Italian robespierre who would proclaim his republic on top of a hundred thousand severed heads. But the hundred days Matzini spent in power in Rome turned out to be moderate and focused mostly on principal good government and the defense of the city. He rejected any attempt to de-Christianize Rome, and made sure that the principle of religious toleration meant that Catholic worship would never be interfered with. For many Italians, a major hang-up with the Republicans was the assumption that they would abolish traditional Catholicism

as soon as they got powers. So Matzini and his allies scrupulously maintained that though the Pope had lost his temporal authority, his spiritual authority was well beyond any of their jurisdictions. The Pope was still the Pope, even if he wasn't the ruler of the papal states anymore. And then when more murderously inclined radicals murdered their enemies in Rome, Matini at least tried to have them arrested for murder. He also tried to direct what limited resources the Republic had towards alleviating the plight of workers and artisans who had been hard hit by the Pope's flight, because when the Pope fled, he took with him much of the economic underpinnings of daily Roman life. Matini did all this. Because if and when the end did come for the Roman Republic, he did not want the specter of the

Republic to hang over Italy the way the specter of the first French Republic had always hung over France. Speaking of France, the second French Republic that had successfully established itself was now in the throes of debating what to do about all these events in Italy. The French had been debating what to do about Italy ever since the Pope had bolted from Rome. But news of the Austrian victory at the Battle of Novara scared the bejesus out of the new government of President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Louis Napoleon had been on the verge of ordering an intervention into Piedmont to stop the Austrians from annexing the kingdom, which would have led to the removal of an all-important buffer between France and Austria, but he was stopped by Field Marshal Radetsky's lenient peace with King

Victor Emmanuel. So, French attention turned to Rome. Wanting to stop further Austrian aggrandizement in Italy, the French National Assembly approved a 6,000-man expeditionary forced sail for Rome to defend the recently declared Roman Republic from Austrian attack. At least, that's what they thought they approved. This expedition landed on the west coast of Italy in late April, and was officially told to only go to Rome if they were sure that the Romans were friendly. But Prince President Bonaparte, fancying his himself the heir of his uncle, gave to the commander of this expedition secret instructions.

Crush the Roman Republic, so France can get credit for reinstalling the Pope, and also remind the Austrians that there's more than one great Catholic power in the world. But these secret instructions paved the way for an embarrassing debacle. The French expedition marched on Rome, but when they reached the Eternal City on April the 30th, they were met by 9,000 committed Roman fighters, led by, among others Garibaldi. The French were driven off after suffering nearly 500 casualties. It was an embarrassing first step for Prince President Bonaparte, who thought that a reinvigorated, re-Napolionic French army was the key to his political fortunes. The debacle also exposed that the expedition the Assembly thought it had approved was a sham, and that this was really about

conquering Rome, not defending it. But Prince President Bonaparte blew off their concerns, believing, not incorrectly, that Catholic France backed his attempt to assert French power in Rome. With Spain gathering a navy to go to the relief of the Pope, the Kingdom of Naples now massing an army on its border with the Papal States and Austria moving into Tuscany, it seemed that a race had begun to conquer Rome and get credit for reinstalling the Pope. The Catholic powers converging on Rome helped President Bonaparte continue to sell the military campaign as a defense of Rome against the evil reactionary powers of Europe. And so it was with broad public support that the French government ramped up their efforts. Soon, the 6,000 man force in

Italy would be jacked up to 30,000. But the last stand of the revolution in Italy must wait until next week, because I also need to set up the last stand of the revolution in Germany. So let's now hop back north through the Alps into Germany, where liberal Germans are themselves trying to fight for the last remaining embers of their own revolution. Last time, of course, we saw a furious King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia reject an offer to become the emperor of the Germans, and then he encouraged the other crown heads of Germany to repudiate the Frankfurt Constitution. The Frankfurt Parliament tried to fight the tide of counter-revolution, and they issued a proclamation

on May the 2nd demanding the governments of Germany except the Constitution that they had written. The Parliament of Professors also said that if the King of Prussia refused to be emperor of the Germans, fine, they would just go find another emperor. And while the political and moral authority of the Frankfurt Parliament had been wobbly for months, the King of Prussia's abrupt rejection of the Constitution, jump-started an extinction burst of German liberal nationalism, called the May Rebellions. So as I've said, the Frankfurt Parliament was mostly talking to. talking to itself by the spring of 1848. And this is mostly true. Conservatives gloried in Frankfurt's humiliation, and well, so did left-wing radicals and socialists. But some people still cared. The forces that had driven the convening of the Frankfurt Parliament in the first place did still exist out there. And indeed, since the summer of 1848, these liberal nationalists had

form political clubs across the fatherland called the Central March Association that was put in place to defend the liberal nationalist gains of March 1848 against threats from both the right and the left. By 1849, they claimed fully a half million members. When the word went out from Berlin for the crowned heads to reject the Frankfurt Constitution, the members of the Central March Association were animated to action in a way that they had not been since, well, March. When the King of Saxony refused to accept the Constitution after being promised military aid by Prussia, he was met by an uprising in Dresden on May the 3rd, an uprising which is famous in the world of music, because among the insurgents was the composer and committed liberal German nationalist,

Ricard Wagner. But on May the 5th, the King of Prussia made good his promise, and the Prussian army marched into Dresden. Four days of intense fighting followed with the city suffering heavy, damage, and the insurgents slowly and methodically crushed. By May the 9th, the insurrection was suppressed for good, with 250 insurgents killed, another 400 wounded, and 800 or more arrested. But about 2,000 managed to get away, racing mostly for Switzerland, and that mob included Wagner. He would spend the next 15 years in exile. But though the uprising in Dresden rose and fell quickly. Southwest Germany and the Rhineland went into a more sustained rebellion.

If you remember from way back at the beginning of the series, the Rhineland was the region that had hosted many of the initial events of budding German liberal nationalism. They had supported the Frankfurt Parliament and were now furious that it was just getting blown off. So after the Parliament issued their proclamation to ratify the Constitution, the region went into general revolt in favor of that cause. Spontaneous assemblies were held in Cologne, which was at that point to part of Prussia, demanding that the king become emperor of the Germans. They boldly declared that they themselves were not Prussians. They were Germans. There were also demonstrations in cities up and down the river, which were mostly demonstrative, but involved just enough mutinies by army companies

and National Guard companies to make this a serious rebellion. Liberals and Democrats and Elberfeld, Zollinger and Dusseldorf erected barricades. And while the barricades in Dusseldorf were blasted to pieces by a quick and ruthless regional commander of the Prussian army, Elberfeld and Zollingan held out. Down in the Bavarian palatinate, that is, the upper Rhineland, all land west of the Rhine was in revolutionary hands by May the 17th. But there was a difference now than there had been in March of 1848, because the left-wing radicals and workers, artists, and socialists actively encouraged their people to stay away. The Frankfurt Parliament had made it very clear that they were not the allies of the left, and so to go back to the barricades for a second time for these people would be madness. So the word went out. Don't die for those ungrateful idiots. Let us bide our time so that we can at least die for idiots who share our own political and social principles. And I don't really think that they were wrong, because when the king of Prussia made bland promises about national peace and unity, the barricades in Elberfeld and Solingen

were peacefully deconstructed. I mean, these liberals weren't even committed to their own program. How could they possibly be committed to socialist revolution? They weren't. They never would be. But the real final action would be in the ever-rebellious Duchy of Baden. Having already hosted the uprisings of Hecker and Stroove, Bodden revolutionaries got back to work in in May 1849. Joined by mutinous companies of the Baden army in Restadt and Freiburg, these undaunted revolutionaries sprung Gustav Straub and his imprisoned allies from the fortress at Rstadt, and then issued a proclamation from Offenberg on May the 13th,

demanding the unconditional recognition of the Frankfurt Constitution and the formation of a new liberal government for Baden. as they swore new recruits into a patriotic revolutionary militia, the Grand Duke of Baden finally decided he had had enough of all this. On the night of May the 13th, he fled from his residence in the capital. The flight of the Grand Duke made it clear that whatever reprisals, the conservative powers of Germany, wished to visit upon his rebellious subjects, was just fine by him. But with these rebellions erupting in defense of the Frankfurt Parliament, the Frankfurt Parliament itself, was disintegrating. Back in April, Vienna had ordered what few Austrian delegates remained in the

Parliament to come home, and then on May the 14th, Prussia officially recalled its delegation. On May the 20th, the president of the parliament, Heinrich von Gagern, who you might dimly recall from our episodes on the formation of the Frankfurt Parliament, he was one of the leading German liberals, while he announced to the Parliament that continuing to insist on their Constitution would only lead to civil war. So instead of leading a new revolutionary charge, he led 60 of his closest friends and allies out of the Parliament altogether. The collapse then continued with both Hanover and Saxony recalling their delegates. So now a full-blown exodus is underway. And by May the 30th, 1849, only 104 delegates remained in the Parliament.

most of them of the left-wing variety. This rump of the Frankfurt Parliament decided that they were too easily menaced by the Prussian army, and they voted to remove themselves to Stuttgart in Baden, where the Parliament had always enjoyed popular support. There, they would reconvene and carry on the fight. But the last stand of the revolution in Germany must wait until next week, because I also need to set up the last stand of the revolution in Hungary. We left the Hungarian revolutionaries, having been driven out of Budapest and trying desperately to raise a levee en masse from their new headquarters in Debrison.

But for a moment, it seemed like it would be too little too late. Wary of the political loyalties of General Artur Gerge, who had let Budapest fall, Lyos Koshut brought in a Polish general named Heinrich Dimbinski to take overall command of the Hungarian Revolutionary Army. But Dambinsky proved to be a poor fit, clashing with the Hungarian officers and refusing to listen to their advice. The result was that the major battle of Kaplona fought on February the 26th and 27th, 36,000 Hungarian forces were defeated by just 30,000 Austrians under Field Marshal Vindischgrats. So far undefeated in the revolutions of 1848 and confident of final victory, Vindischgrantz sent a report back to Vienna that said, I have crushed the rebel hordes and will soon be in Debrison. Back in Vienna, this led Prime Minister

Schwarzenberg to issue a new constitution for the Austrian Empire on March the 5th, 1849. This being neo-absolutism, rather than just absolutism, a constitution for the empire would be fine, as long as it was written and promulgated by the emperor. By far the biggest change to the Austrian constitution was that it eliminated all national distinctions and declared universal equality before the law. This is part of the process of neo-absolutism using the language of liberalism to its own ends. And remember, the point here is to reverse the course of 1848. The assumption had long been that the restored Austrian empire would be heavily decentralized with lots of power for constituent nationalities.

But Schwarzenberg's constitution promised the opposite. it promised centralized rule over a single unitary state. All the ancient rights and privileges of the various nationalities were abolished, and this was obviously aimed primarily at the Hungarians, who had spent the last year thinking that they were on the brink of being a self-governing kingdom. And this was a bit of an ironic result of the Revolution of 1848, because the Hungarians now faced the same legal evaporation of their rights that Magyarization had promised to the minority nationalities in Hungary.

But back in Hungary, the rebel hordes had not, in fact, been crushed yet, and Vindischgrat was not about to be in Debrison. As General Gorghier had predicted, the Austrians faced difficulties pushing further into Hungary beyond Budapest. In part, this was because they had not yet captured the fortress at Comoram, which lay further up river. With this strong point in his rear, Vindichgratz could not risk over extension. Plus, he was having a lot of difficulty with intelligence, in that he didn't have any.

The next six weeks would be defined by an Austrian blindness about where the Hungarian forces were and how many of them there were out there. And this is a good time for me to footnote that when I say Hungarians and Austrians, neither army was made up of some pure national character. The Austrians had 55,000 men that obviously had major components of Croatians and other Slavic groups. While the Hungarian forces numbered about 47,000, they were divided up into four cores that included volunteer Polish legions, revolutionary Italians, Sax and Germans, and even plenty of Slovaks and Romanians who chose loyalty to the Majjar crown. So it's just for simplicity's sake that I'm saying Austrians and Hungarians. Anyway, after his victory at the end of February, field-martial Vindischgrat spent all of March standing still, just unwilling to plunge deeper into Hungary. Meanwhile, Lyoskchkchut was forced to finally recognize that Gerge was the best man for the job, if the job was now simply to beat the Austrians.

But that was a month's worth of confusion about the chain of command, so it was not until April of 1849 that both sides were actually ready to do battle for the fate. of the Kingdom of Hungary. The spring campaign of the War of Hungarian Independence played out in three phases. In the first phase, General Gerge took advantage of Vindigrots' blindness and tried to secretly encircle the main body of the Austrian army and cut off their secure line back to Budapest. This operation depended on moving stealthily and was almost blown when one subordinate Hungarian general attacked and drove off an Austrian corps led by Ban Yosep.

Yellichich. But rather than sounding the alarm, the embarrassed Yelichichich reported victory back to Vindich Grots, and he was ordered to pursue the rebels and run them to ground. Instead, mostly out of nowhere, the Hungarians converged on Vindischgrat's very spread out lines on April the 6th, and they decisively won the Battle of Isazeg. With the Austrians knocked back on their heels, the Hungarians pushed forward, opening the second phase of the campaign, which was aimed at relieving the besieged fortune. of Comoram. Opening this phase with a victory at the First Battle of Vak on April the 10th, Vienna suddenly decided that Field Marshal Vindichgratz is now six weeks of inert defeat,

meant that though he may excel at repressing rebellious cities, a full-blown field campaign was not exactly his forte. So on April the 12th, Vindichgratz was unceremoniously removed from his command and ordered to return to Vienna. Meanwhile, the surging Hungarians took this as an opportunity to make a major political statement. On April the 14th, 1848, Lyoskoshchut read a declaration of independence to the Hungarian parliament. Now, this declaration of independence was obviously going to rankle General Gerge and his fellow officers, who were, remember, still fighting for a negotiated settlement on the basis of the April laws. But at least everyone could agree that driving the Austrian army out of Hungary was a prerequisite for both of their aims, and so they would fight on together.

Gerge brought the second phase of the campaign to a speedy and successful conclusion, blocking an Austrian attempt to reinforce the siege of Qomaram on April the 19th. This not only opened Qomaran to Hungarian relief, but made holding Budapest untenable for the Austrians. So, leaving 5,000 men behind in the fortified castle of the city, the Austrians evacuated. at the capital of Hungary. Comeron was then duly relieved after a pitch battle on April the 26th. So far from crushing the rebels, the Austrian army was now in full retreat. By the end of April, they had pulled back all the way to the very western fringes of Hungary. So Koshute and General Gurghry now had a decision to make. Keep pushing forward and fight their way like all the way

to Vienna until Austria sued for peace, or turn their attention to the holdouts in. in the Budapest Castle. Koschut wanted to retake Budapest, while Gerge initially advocated marching west, but he was eventually persuaded by his own officers that this was not a good idea. So Gerge got on board with pulling up short and focusing Hungarian attention on recapturing Budapest Castle. Now, this is often described as a major mistake for the Hungarians. They gave up the momentum.

But I can understand the logic here. Marching on Vienna might have forced the Austrians to the negotiating table, but it might also have been Hungarian suicide. The capital was heavily defended, boasted probably 70,000 men in the area, and had already once before been the site of a major Hungarian defeat. Plus, rumors were already swirling that the emperor was going to invite the Russians into the war. So all the empire would have to do is hold out long enough for the Russians to come pouring in from the east. So instead, on May the 4th, Gerge ordered 40,000 troops to surround the Budapest

castle. This siege would continue for the next two weeks, and while it did so, Emperor Franz Josef paid a visit to the city of Warsaw, where he met with Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. The rumors were true, admitting that he did not believe the Austrian army could subdue Hungary without help. The emperor invited the Russian army to intervene. The Tsar agreed to come to the Emperor's aid, believing that when he did, that Russia would get full credit for finally ending these interminable revolutions. So, please join me next week as the Russians march into Hungary, the French march on Rome, and the Prussians march into the Duchy of Baden to end once and for all these interminable revolutions.

You know,