William Tyler
1848: The Year of National Awakening
William Tyler - 1848: The Year of National Awakening
- They used to say on a radio programme for children in the 1940s, when I was a small child, we called sitting. It’s called Listening with Mother. Are you sitting comfortably? Well, I’m now sitting comfortably and I hope all of you are. Now, my talk today begins with France, rather than with Germany, and ends with the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, Austria, and the rise of German nationalism. So quite a lot of us for us to think about and get through. The key figure for today is again a French one, although more accurately the most famous Corsican of all, Napoleon Bonaparte. The year I begin my story is in 1792, not with Bonaparte, but with France. In 1792, the first alliance against the French, a revolution began, led by the Duke of Brunswick, supported by exiled royalists, French Royalists, and by Prussia and by Austria. It invaded northern France and Paris was its goal and Parisians panic and quite remarkably given that the Bastille and the French Revolution itself had only happened three years previously in 1789 at the Battle of Valmy, V A L M Y in 1792, the French Revolution saved itself by defeating this allied army heading towards Paris, and thus began a series of wars with Republican and then subsequently Imperial France, right through until Waterloo in 1815 Of the Battle of Valmy, Gerta, who was a soldier in the Prussian army, said this, and this is a quotation of Gerta, “From this place and from this day commences a new era in world history and you can all say you were present at its birth.” Now, it’s not entirely clear what he was referring to, but I’m interpreting it, to me, that from that day forward, the antagonism, the enmity between the two nations of France and Germany was written solidly from Valmy right the way through until the defeat of Germany in 1945.
It is an extraordinary story, that story from 1792 to 1945, the rivalry between France and Germany that caused, well in the end, caused the world so many problems. Before 1945 and the end of World War Two, the Germans talked of this period from 1792 through to 1815 as the French period. In other words, the period of French domination within Europe. In the later 19th century, it took another unpleasant twist. In addition to using the phrase the French period, the Germans began to add the phrase hereditary enmity. In other words, they had inherited from their forebears back in the 1790s enmity towards France. And that of course came to be in the Franco Russian War of 1870, 71, which we will reach in due course. In the post World War Two Europe, Germany no younger uses the phrase the French period and certainly no longer uses the phrase hereditary enmity, but it doesn’t use the phrase the French period to describe 1792 to 1815. Instead, it refers to those periods exactly in the same way as we do in England, which is to say the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. That’s how we refer to them. That’s how modern Germans refer to them. And look at any modern German history book and you’ll find no reference to a French period. Look at an old German history book from as late as the 1930s and you’ll see the phrase French period being used. So then pick up this story three years on from The Battle of Valm, in other words, in 1795. France had been pressing into what we call modern Germany, but Prussia remained outside of that.
Prussia’s main hold, land holdings, were in the north, and although it held lands in the Rhineland, it’s in the north, the heart of Prussia lies Berlin and Codexburg. And the Prussians decided that they would do a deal with the French, and the French decided that this would suit them. They wanted the southern parts of Germany. Of course the northern parts were not of so much interest to them, but at this stage in 1795, they were prepared to do a deal. Now, Jeremy Black in his History of Germany, writes this, “Under the peace of Basel, Basel in Switzerland of 1795, Prussia accepted French occupation of the Rhineland.” And that had been the sticking point because part of the Rhineland had been Prussian for a number of years. It had previously been Brandenburger and we know from earlier talks, that Brandenburg and Prussia merge and the new is Prussia, all of that, none of that really matters. What it matters is that Prussia is prepared to withdraw Norfolks, in order to protect its independence against a domineering in France. So it’s prepared to let the Rhinelands go. Anyhow, so the Prussians, they’re all Catholics, whereas Prussia itself, of course is Protestant. Under The Peace of Basel then in 1795, Prussia accepted French occupation of Rhineland, where often very violent French exploitation, but already generated resistance as well as much disruption. In return, France promised gains for Prussia on the right bank of the Rhine, and accepted a Prussian led neutrality in Northern Germany. Prussia gained peace. Well for nearly, well just over in fact, a decade. It wasn’t until 1806 that fighting resumed between France, now Napoleonic France, and Prussia. So there’s two early things that we’ll talk about.
One is The Battle of Valmy in which the Austrian German alliance would push backwards, including the Russians, followed by the French occupation of Southern, of Southern Germany. But still, Prussia remained inviolate in the north. That arrangement in 1795 is undermined, and there is a sort of a, well, there is an agreement at Basel between the two countries and it was a neutrality for Prussia. Well, it’s not to last. You don’t do deals with people like Napoleon. You don’t do deals with people like Starling. You don’t do deals with people like Hitler. You don’t do deals with people like Putin. And the Prussians were to learn that you don’t deal deals with the French. So let’s go to 1806 then when war resumes and it resumes with a vengeance. Prussia, not an ally force, but Prussia itself is defeated by Bonaparte at The Great Battle of Jena, J E N A, in 1806, worse befell Prussia. Napoleon entered Paris, sorry, Napoleon entered Berlin. He could go to Paris anytime. Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph entering by The Brandenburg Gate, which I’m sure many of you have visited. We don’t think of Napoleon as advancing through that, but he did in 1806. And the humiliation for Prussia was immense. Let me just fill in a few details. First of all, the battle itself, which is an important battle because it’s the French defeat of Prussia, and many people start this German French rivalry story with the Battle of Jena and with Prussia, stroke later Germany, wishing for revenge.
This is a book on the battle by David Chandler, who’s recently died, was one of our greatest British military historians, and Chandler wrote, “Napoleon had blown with his breath and Prussian military might was no more. After the battle in the space of just 33 days, Napoleon’s Grande Armee had won two decisive battles, killed 20,000 Prussians, taken 140,000 prisoners of war, 800 pieces of artillery, and 250 colours and standards. This was indeed blitzkrieg warfare with a vengeance.” And the Prussians can’t pick up the phone and phone the White House and say, “Please supply more weapons.” They’ve got to rebuild from a very unpleasant defeat, a humiliating defeat. A contemporary German historian writes about Napoleon’s entry into Berlin at the end of October, 1806. In this way, he writes, “Although the French occupation,” he writes, “was relatively peaceful and met with little resistance.” Why? Because the poor, the ordinary people, the working class people, what have they just might have something to gain, might they? From the French with their ideas of democracy, of liberty, equality, and egality. And so this were, they weren’t welcomed, you know, ecstatically, but they weren’t, in any way as it were, booed rather than cheered. But Napoleon exacted reparations on Prussia. Taxes, money to pay for France’s war against them, war reparations.
Now who pays? The poor pay. “Within a year, The French went” I read, “from being the bringers of hope, to financial oppressors. They burdened the kingdom of Prussia with enormous debt and inflation rose rapidly and prices for everyday necessities, like grain for bread, skyrocketed. It was a miserable situation for the population, and a lot of people starved.” And then the French never learned anything, because they do it all over again at Versailles in 1919, which today is thought to have been one of the major planks for the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933. The war reparations placed on Germany in 1919, and Germans starved in 1918, 1919, as they did in 1806. As Churchill said, “One must be magnanimous in peace.” But Churchill wasn’t there to influence things in 1918, 19, but in 1945, he was, part of 1945. It’s interesting how people, nations, politicians, generals, don’t learn from history. We always talk about learning the lessons of history, but it’s not learning the lessons from history that seem to be, seem to bedevil humanity. And this is an example of that. You can’t go on humiliating people, you can’t starve them after a war. It just makes the resentment build against you. And again, you can say that that is one of the causes of the enmity as the Germans called it, the enmity between Germany and France. Meanwhile, the king of Prussia had retired to the very north of his kingdom, north of Berlin, up around Codexsburg, and he refused to make peace with France, as I said, withdrawing to the North. Now, David Chandler had an interesting sentence which I wanted to share because I thought it was a very good sentence.
“The power of the sword had not led to peace. The power of the had not led to peace.” Well, that certainly is something that we’ve met in more recent times in terms of the Iraqi war. We went into the war, but did we have any policies for the subsequent peace? Now that is a question the West has to answer in terms of Ukraine, let alone in terms of Russia at the end of the Russian Ukrainian war, the power of the sword had not led to peace. It’s something to think about. If any of you Americans are going to be dining one weekend with President Biden, you might remind him that he needs a policy for peace in both Russia and Ukraine, a policy for democracy in Ukraine. And the same applies if you’re British and you are dining with Rishi Sunak, assuming he’s still prime minister. And in France, if you’re dining with Macron. Hopefully they do have plans, but I’d rather suspect they don’t or that their plans are not the sort of plans that will in the end survive the facts of the situation when the war, as it must, as all wars do, end. Napoleon, now totally in charge of Germany, with the exception of the small Prussian resistance in the north, sets about reorganising the political map of Germany. And he did so by dissolving the old Holy Roman Empire. Well, in reality, the Holy Roman Empire died in a long time before, but it’s still there.
The emperor, a Habsburg living in Vienna, was technically the ruler of the independent states and state nets of Germany, including the Brandenburg part of Prussia. The northern part of Prussia was, you remember, linked with Poland, but, and this is really important, he got rid of the Holy Roman Empire, but he put it in its place, the confederation of the Rhine. So those German states, minus Prussia, were all part of now not the Holy Roman Empire dominated by Austria, well, in the past, dominated by Austria, and now part of the confederation of the Rhine, very definitely dominated by France and by Napoleon, the story of the end of the Holy Roman Empire is rather typical. Napoleon has a grand plan, what he’s going to do, and he basically put a gun to the head of the emperor in Vienna. If you don’t abdicate as Holy Roman Empire Emperor, France will invade you again. And the Austrians were in no position to resist the French. And so Francis the second, the Holy Roman emperor, abdicated. He abdicated as holy emperor. In other words, he abdicated any possible control he might have over Germany and proclaimed himself emperor of Austria instead. Later, of course, that’s to become emperor of Austria-Hungary, and that empire is to go on until the end of the first World War, staggeringly so. One would’ve thought it would’ve fallen at the same time as the Holy Roman Empire fell in the year 1806, but it didn’t. It continued on right the way through to the end of the first World War. But it was a significant moment in relationship to Germany. Why?
Because Austria was no longer involved. Now, when Germans, later in my talk now, today, when Germans look at the future, they look at unification. But there are two ways of looking at unification. There’s Bismarck’s way, which is often referred to as a lesser Germany, that is to say what we know by Germany, but not including Austria. But there is also a greater Germany, which does include Austria, which is exactly what Hitler did. You remember after the Anschluss, it was a merger, Austria ceased to exist, it became German. So there were two views of what Germany was, and they were argued over in the period we’re looking at, which is basically the first half of the 19th century. But the break that Napoleon placed upon it is the one that was maintained and lasted. What was the confederation of the Rhine about? I said, it’s all those states by the end, that at its maximum size, it was all the states in what we call Germany minus Prussia. It was a huge and significant player. France wanted a bullwhip against, well, not just Prussia, but against Russia beyond. So it’s a buffer state. Same sort of argument that Putin is using against NATO. He doesn’t want NATO on its borders, the French didn’t want Prussia on its borders, it wanted a German state that was entirely under the control of France. It’s no different than Russia’s policy under Putin, none at all. But France demanded more than that. France demanded resources from all of Germany except Russia. France demanded military help.
It even expected the states in that area and to send troops to help the French. It wanted German arms, it wanted German money. So it was squeezing Germany like a lemon to get what it could. You can begin to see this enmity between the two states. It’s difficult in England because we have never been subjected in modern times to that sort of invasion and that sort of defeat, but Germany was, and of course we know that France was, cause we’re coming up to 1815. Slowly but surely, the confederation reached its height of how many states belong to it in 1808, but it was dead four years later after the retreat from Moscow. Napoleon’s ill advised 1812 March on Russia and on Moscow ending in complete defeat and the loss of so many men, so many regiments that Napoleon really was not in a position to survive. And from 1813 on his arrival back, the second time that Napoleon had deserted a French army, he deserted it in Egypt, he deserted it again in Russia. It was a disastrous campaign, was the Moscow campaign. You can ask reasonably why Hitler didn’t learn from that. The same things happened. Russia, the same thing has happened today in terms of Putin sending endless numbers of Russian young men to die and Russian young women to die. How does he sleep at night? I really don’t know. But Napoleon was the first to try. If you exclude Charles the 12th of Sweden, Napoleon was the first to really try. He did take Moscow only to find that he’d been burnt by the retreating Russians. And as he came back, as you might say, as wounded beyond belief, he was forced into battle by an alliance of all the European countries in 1813, in the October of 1813, at the Battle of Leipzig in Germany.
Sometimes it’s referred to, and I learnt that at school, rather than calling it the Battle of Leipzig, I learned it is called the Battle of the Nations. And it certainly was a battle of the nations without Britain, without Britain being present. Why? Because Wellington and the British Army were were forcing their way up through the Iberian Peninsula, into southern France. And when eventually after Leipzig, Napoleon abdicated for the first time in 1814, Wellington and the British Army were firmly in France at Toulouse where they were welcomed, because Toulouse had been royalist, it was anti Bonaparte, but he was in Toulouse. So if in 1814, Napoleon had somehow gone fighting on, he would’ve found Prussia and Russia and Austria and German states pressing down on him from the north and Wellington and the British and Spanish auxiliary forces pressing northwards from the south. But instead the allies exile Napoleon to the Mediterranean island of Elba. But Wellington isn’t going to be deprived of the fight with Bonaparte who he’s yet to meet in battle. And nor are the Prussians going to be denied the final victory. In June, 1815, after Napoleon had escaped from Melbourne, begun on the hundred days, just a small point, I guess most of you know, Sheshgar de Stack was a huge scholar of Napoleon’s hundred days. I always sat uneasily with his view of a European presidency, which he obviously thought was going to be a French presidency. We’ll leave that. So quite literally, Napoleon met his Waterloo, but, but as Wellington himself said, after the battle, “It was a damn close run thing.”
He might have said without the arrival of Marshal Blucher and the Prussian forces, it was likely to have turned into a French and not a British victory. The Prussians arrived just in the nick of time, cutting off the reserves that the podium was seeking to throw into the battle and then taking some of the brunt of the last attempt by Napoleon to win at Waterloo. If you are British and my age, the reference to Prussia in the battle was pretty minimal. It was Britain that won Waterloo. In fact, it was said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eden, but it wasn’t. If it was won anywhere, it was won in the bierkellers of Prussia. The victory wouldn’t have been without Prussia but we airbrushed Prussia out of historian group. In fact, a rather appalling story took place that Blucher was mad at the time of the battle and that he believed that he was pregnant and pregnant by an elephant. I know that sounds ridiculous, but some of you may have been taught that as fact. It isn’t, it was a simple German phrase at the time, and it was nothing to do with him believing he was pregnant by an elephant. No, he wasn’t mad. He was perfectly sound, in limb and in mind. There is a quotation here, which is from a German historian, “Forwards, forwards!”
Blucher is quoted as saying, “I hear you say this is impossible, but it has to be done!” Says Blucher. “It has to be done! I have given my promise to Wellington and you surely don’t want me to break it!” He says to his officers, “Push yourselves my children and we’ll have victory!” The historian goes on to say, “It’s not, it’s impossible not to like Blucher. he was an an elderly man, given the time. He was 74 years old, he was in pain and discomfort, and he drank heavily. They say he smelt of schnapps and rhubarb litement they rubbed rhubarb on wounds. "Yet he’s all enthusiasm and energy,” I read. “If Napoleon domina that day was one of sullen disdain for an enemy, he underestimated,” But remember Napoleon himself is suffering from piles. “and Wellington’s cold calculating calmness that hid concern, then Blucher is all passion.” Not something necessarily filling the stereotypes of the Germans. Blucher is immensely important to European history, as Wellington and as Napoleon, but it’s Napoleon that’s defeated at Waterloo. And so we have to ask the question, what were the legacies of Napoleon to Germany? By Germany I mean all these states. The states now reform as a German confederation, not a confederation of the Rhinettes, a confederation of Germans of Germany plus Prussia, always plus Prussia. First of all, Napoleon introduced secularisation in Germany. Bishops and archbishops of the Catholic and indeed Protestant churches, had their land seized and taken away and given to secular rulers. Usually the the people turned out were Catholic and the rulers who were given land by Napoleon were Protestant.
This move by Napoleon was to benefit German Protestants. In other words, Prussia in the years to come. Secondly, Germany, and this was a major problem in the 19th century and we will return to this, Germany had a myriad of different weights, measures, coins, everything and laws, and laws. And Napoleon introduced what we call the Napoleonic code, both civil and criminal. And it’s the Napoleonic code, which is arguably the greatest thing that Napoleon left Europe. It also is the reason why when Britain was part of the European Union, it felt uneasy with the rest of the EU because they had the code Napoleon and we had the common law. And it, the two are difficult to deal together. And that’s why Churchill once said, “If we were only further away in the Atlantic, if we could pull the island closer to America, then we would be able to join with America.” And one of the things that would’ve bound us would’ve been the common law as it does with Canada and Australia, with France, it was so difficult. When I read Lord Oxford in the 19, early 1960s, I cannot remember ever quoting a, or asked to read, a European courts decision, never. But we were asked to read American court decisions, Canadian court decisions, and specifically at the time Australian court decisions, Australia was very innovative at the time in its common law. So we were looking at countries very far away. So hardly a surprise to lawyers of my generation that we found the EU difficult.
And although we established departments in European law, in universities in Britain, I don’t think that really changed the view. And I suppose it’s an arrogant view that the British would assume their law was superior. It has cost us dear, for those of us who believe in European Union, it’s cost us membership of the EU. But that’s an argument for other places. But I mention it because it’s, I believe it’s important and it meant that Germany became in that sense more European, more French if you like, and certainly not more English, which it might have done in given different circumstances. Napoleon made everybody citizens, rather like the Romans, Civis Romanus sum I am a Roman citizen. Civius Romanus sum. Civis Germanicus sum, I am a German citizen. And that meant that Jews, rather than just being tolerated, were now legally the equal of other Germans in terms of the law, in terms of holding positions. So that again is something really, really important. One historian has written this, “In 1800, the Jews had been Jews who happened to be German. By 1900, they were Germans who happened to be Jewish.” He goes on to say, “That is a further layer of tragedy of the holocaust. That the Jews of Germany had become patriotic Germans.” And as many of you know, had fought patriotically for Germany during the first World War. Economically, France because it was united, one country, and France was able to jumpstart the German industrial revolution. Germany had been behind and it began, especially in the textile industry, which in Britain cotton and wool hadn’t had, as it were fueled our industrial revolution. So did it in France.
And the French introduced that into Germany. There were no border tariffs, something being debated between Britain and the EU about Northern Ireland at this very moment. This is pre EU. That’s important as well. It puts up a marker for the future, in French German relations post 1945. Aristocrats in France had been killed or had fled or had simply merged into the greater population. Here in Germany, the aristocrats were still very feudal, very feudal. And they now begin to be challenged by what in Britain had happened back in the 16th century, let alone the nineties. The rise of the middle classes and the rise of the middle classes in Germany is linked to having liberal views, liberal views, democratic views. If you’re going to have a revolution of any sort, you really need in this day and age to have it led by the middle class, the aristocracy no longer count. The middle classes count and the working class are used by middle classes as canon fodder. Whether we’re talking about the Russian Revolution of 1917 or whatever, the rise of the middle classes is important. What is the sad story of Germany is that the educated middle classes, middle class is demand education, that’s one of the things that’s common to a middle class. That middle classes in Germany, highly educated compared to the rest of Europe by the end of the 19th century, nevertheless fall for the appalling doctrines of Hitler. That is one of the surprises of Germany in modern times. The middle classes in terms of the Weimar Republic to look as though they had finally won but they hadn’t, they simply hadn’t.
All of this German history that I’m talking about today is so intriguing for the knock ons that you can think of, not only in terms of Germany but in Germany’s relationship with other countries. However, the economy in Germany suffered because again, Napoleon, as he had in Prussia, places enormous taxes, war reparation taxes, upon Germans. One of the results of the industrial revolution kickstarted by Napoleon is the basically the final collapse of the Hanseatic League. Germany looks south now, not north. Germany looks for the markets of central and southern Europe, not to the markets northwards, which are small, the markets of the Scandinavian countries. The more that Germany becomes a modern organism, it’s not united till 1871, we know that, but it’s becoming more together as we shall see in a moment. Then it’s beginning to look elsewhere for trade opportunities. The confederation of the Rhine had gone and in its place we have the German confederation, but we also have Prussia after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and now Prussia with the laurels of Waterloo resting on Bluchers brow. We have a Prussia that is an equal in negotiations with Russia, with Austria, with post Napoleonic France and with Britain and of course with Britain it has links.
It has links because the British are still electors of Hanover. In fact, George the fourth actually visited Hanover in 1821 speaking fluent German and being wildly popular in Hanover and the Prussians are careful in dealing with Britain because of Hanover. I think I may have mentioned before, there is a Hanoverian legion that fights at Waterloo, not as part of the Prussian army, but as part of the British Army, King George’s army. Now there are steps now, post 1815 towards German unification, slow steps until we get to 1871. But there’s two important things I need to mention and I will read from Black so it short circuits my time a little. “The major effort at stent directed change post Waterloo originated in an attempt to cope with economic problems by organising a custom free zone.” Now France is gone and it’s hegemony over Germany, has gone, they need to establish a custom free zone in Germany. “By organising a custom free zone that will overcome toll barriers and enable Germany to protect itself against British industrialization.” So if you had been an industrialist in Saxony and you were dealing with Wesenberg, well it’s exactly the same as Britain dealing with the EU today. What you’ve got all these forms to fill in unsolved, you’ve filled in page 57 incorrectly, Mr. Tyler, you’ll have to start all over again. And it seemed nonsensical in a country that was coming together in some form or another as a nation. “Surprise, surprise, Prussia played a key role with a customs union, but the endeavour succeeded in large part due to comparable interest by many other states. Vertenberg in the southwest saw a zone as an opportunity to develop a union of states that neither looked to Austria nor Prussia.” So Prussia is building a customs union in the north.
Wilson Vertenberg is building a customs union in the south. “And in 1828, Vertenberg founded the South German Customs Union in conjunction with Bavaria, a central German union focused on Saxony, Hanover, and Hessen was similarly established. However, as exemplifying aspect of the failure, both economic and political of the other states, the Prussian based union proved more successful.” Then after a series of accessions Prussia pulled the other two customs unions in. Now Prussia controls the trade of Germany! The decisions are made not in Munich, not in Carl’s Row, in Bardon, not anywhere. Those decisions are made solely in Berlin. Only two cities, well two hentiatic cities, Brennan and sorry, Brennan and Hamburg stood outside the union. But this is a major step forward as indeed in terms of the EU politically, that customs union is important. We’re finding that out now in Britain. We’re finding that out in a major way, and some of us have said, “Well, we told you so.” And others say, “Well, it’s worth the price of sovereignty.” Your choice. I noticed Biden used the word sovereignty in a speech yesterday. I wish they would stop using the word sovereignty, which as a lawyer, I have no idea what they mean when they say sovereignty other than sort of banging a nationalistic drum.
I would’ve thought someone in the White House would’ve said to Biden, “That’s not the sort of word you should be using.” Anyhow, be that as it may. So we move then forward, and I’m going to quote from, this is the revolutions of 1848 published by Charles Rivers, and it begins with a quotation from a French politician, after Waterloo. “We have been beaten and humiliated, scattered, imprisoned, disarmed and damned. The fate of European democracy has slipped from our hands.” True because after Waterloo, the old powers, Austria, Russia, Prussia, not Britain, tried to pull back from the revolutionary ideas of France to turn the plot back to 1797 before the French Revolution, sorry, 1788, before 1789 Revolution, in 1788 to put the plot back. And it doesn’t work. Time doesn’t go backwards, time goes forwards. Sometimes if we’re older we would like the clock perhaps to go backwards, but we can’t. It doesn’t work like that. Younger generations have to find their own way through the problems. They may have guidance from the past and take it. They may simply turn their back on the past, but it’s going forward that matters. And the French Revolution, and Napoleon in particular, let the cat out of the bag, that is to say the ideas of democracy. And moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the idea of state nationalism. The genie was out of the bottle. And putting Louis the 16th younger brother, Louis the 18th on the throne of France, makes not a heap of a difference. There is trouble across Europe in the 1820s, 1821, particularly in Italy, which itself is fighting towards unification in 1830, 31, but most importantly in the year of European revolutions of 1848.
It started in the Neapolitan city in Sicily or Paloma, but it soon reached Paris and Louis Felipe who’d become not king of France, but king of the French, important difference, Louis Felipe, a junior, a member of the junior branch of the Bourbon family, who had risen to path having forced the abdication of Charles the 10th in 1830, himself was forced from path in 1848 and the second republic was proclaimed with Napoleon’s nephew, Louie Napoleon, as president. Later he’s to become Napoleon the third and figure in German history. But for now, in 1848, it goes out, the message of revolution spreads across Europe. It spreads in Italy, in Greece, in Austria, where the Hapsburgs have to flee their own capital. In Hungary, which remained independent for a period of two years, In France of course, but also in Germany, these revolutions are liberal. Middle class revolutions aren’t Marxist revolutions, middle class revolutions seeking to curb the power of the aristocracy to introduce legislatures with free elections of men only, not of women at this stage. Before anyone asked German women finally get to vote. There were instances in some of the states of some women having votes at various times before that, but women get the vote in Germany at the same time as women got the vote in Britain. That is say 1918, 1919 is when the vote, when women get the vote. 1944 In France, in Germany, it began in Bardon, the revolution. Bardon? Bardon was the most peaceful of the states. Bardon was arguably the most liberal and democratic of the states. It’s true that in 1811, a liberal constitution was introduced in Bardon, which was destroyed in 1825, but in 1830, the grand Duke of Bardon, a man called Leopold, introduced liberal reforms into the constitution in civil and criminal law in education.
Remember my link, middle class in education? It was decidedly liberal and yet it had people rebelling, demanding more, demanding more than they were prepared to give. They met on the 27th of February, 1848 in Manheim and assembled the people who gathered as a people’s assembly and they demanded a bill of rights, think America. And from Bardon, the revolution in Germany spread until it captured it. It caught the whole of Germany in a revolutionary fervour, a liberal fevor, a demand for a constitution, a demand for liberal policies, and a demand for German unification. If we take Saxony as another example and it’s capital at Dresden, interestingly, they rose also against the King of Saxon, a man called Frederick Augustus in March of 1848 and it’s March, 1848 that is the high watermark of revolutionary fervour in Germany. One of the people supporting the revolution, inverted commerce in Saxony was the composer Richard Wagner. They were arguing for a republic. There’s lots of arguments going on. This is a time of fervour, think of a university in the 1960s when many of us were in university. There were all sorts of clubs and societies and they were looking at political things from arch conservative to arch Marxists and all points in between. And that’s what’s going on in Saxon, all these arguments. And indeed they took to the barricades in Dresden in May of 49 in a major up uprising. But it was eventually, as happened across Germany, put down by the military who remained loyal to the established rulers.
Now, if you ever lead a revolution in whatever country you live in, promise me that before you start, you either get the arm police on your side or the army and you, all you want money from America to do is to pay the army, double their pay, double their numbers, and you’re in business. And that’s exactly what the German rulers did in 1848, 49, plus they made conciliatory noises. Now, if you are on the opposite side facing a revolution, you are a prime minister or president facing revolution, then my advice is to offer concessions. You don’t believe in them? No one’s telling you to believe them, but just offer them and wait a time until you can strike. And that’s what they did as well, they bided their time. Many of the revolutionaries in Saxony actually fled. And all my American friends listening tonight will tell me where they went to. Texas, the German Texan community, they went and they farmed in Texas. They never came back to Europe. Inevitably, I have to turn to Prussia. In March of 1848, crowds gathered in Berlin and they had written an address to the King, Frederick William the fourth. He was rather taken by surprise, shocked by it and he did the sensible thing. He agreed to everything they asked for, including parliamentary elections for men only, a constitution, freedom of the press, and he also promised very interestingly quote. This is Frederick Williams speaking, “Prussia is to be merged forth with into Germany.” But he then struck back on the 13th of March, fortnight after it all kicked off in Berlin, he sent the police in against public demonstrations.
He sent the army in against public demonstrations. And a group of people returning from a meeting in the Tiergarten, were simply attacked by the army, leaving many dead and wounded. And the situation got worse. When a funeral was held for the victims of this attack, Frederick William himself went, went to the funeral, attended the funeral of the civilian victims of the uprising, putting himself on the side of the rioters. He’s a cunning man. He’s well advised, I have to say by his chief of staff and by his wife. I’m not sure he was particularly clever himself, but that’s what they did. And they’re playing a clever game, the Prussians. He set up a Berlin assembly, the steps towards a parliament. It was called eventually the Prussian National Assembly. It’s members were liberals, middle class in the man, professors, academics. But by late 1848, the Prussian aristocracy and the royal family with the support of the army crushed everything, opposition in Berlin and elsewhere. The king dissolved the assembly. He introduced a new constitution which maintained the ultimate authority of the king, but set up a parliament of a upper house and a lower house chosen by universal male suffrage.
Although there was a three class system in depending on how much you were worth, you had more votes. You had more MPs or in modern language to elect. There was also a national assembly that had been set up in Frankfurt and that national assembly in April, 1849 offered Fredrick William of Prussia the crown of Germany. And he rejected it. Why? Because he thought it wasn’t done properly. He thought that those states that had previously elected a Holy Roman emperor, if they were going to have an emperor of Germany, he should be elected by the old electors of the Holy Roman Empire. Don’t ask why he had that very conservative view, but he did. But what he wrote to a British relative, he wrote him a letter, the British relative, “I’m insulted by an offer to crown from the gutter. I am disgraced by the stink of revolution, defiled with dirt and mud.” The fight back has been won in 1848. The aristocracy are backing control with the proviso that there are now elected assemblies, parliaments, whatever you call them, across Germany. They went further in many of the states to abolish some of the basic rights that have been gained. Many left now for America, for a new world and new opportunities exactly as the English had done, although centuries before to escape from Charles the first autocracy. They now leave Germany, but very importantly, German middle class educated and liberal, and now in control of German industry, which is growing rapidly, are there. The revolution may have been crushed but not, not exterminated. It’s there ready to rise once again. We’re going to have to see how Bismarck, the great German of the latter 19th century, deals with all of these problems as he manoeuvres Prussia into unifying Germany, properly unifying Germany.
And with the king of Prussia becoming emperor. But 1848 marks, it’s almost as though it marks an interval. The curtain has come down on the stage or 1848 and you go and get your drinks at the bar and think they’ve lost, all’s lost. But it isn’t. It isn’t because Germany, Germans are still there and Bismarck is the man of the hour to come and he is to create the unification as regards to democracy, that has to wait until after the first World War. And the Republic and the Weimar Republic, short-lived though it was, Germany’s story should have led on at some point earlier than the 1920s to a democracy. But it didn’t because it was put on a war footing in 1914 and the war drums were beating on before that. And thus democracy comes haltingly to Germany in 1920s, but it came, but it couldn’t be sustained. That’s a story for a long time to come. I’m leaving you with one different story, which I take from Simon Sebag Montefiore’s book, The World: A Family History. I couldn’t think, to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t get a conclusion for today’s call until I was reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s chapter about the 1848 Revolution. And he wrote something I think rather important, and it goes like this. “Frederick Engles, the son of the German industrialist who earned, who owned textile factories in Manchester,” Links between Britain and Germany, again textile links. “had met a fellow radical, Karl Marx in Paris in 1844 when they were aged 23 and 26. And together they developed the idea that the working class, which they called the proletariat, would become the engine of world revolution.”
In January of 1948, before Bardon, the first German state revolted in the February. “In January, 1848, they wrote their communist manifesto developing a critical theory that explained an interconnected world. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point they wrote is to change it. They argued the history of all hither to existing society in the history of class struggles, the history of all hither to existing society is the history of class struggles. Weeks later, Europe was in revolution. The two threw themselves into the tumour, Engles transporting rifles, Marx using an inheritance to arm Belgium workers.” And no one in 1848 realised that the revolution was not crushed. That revolutions in Europe weren’t crushed. They would rise again in 1917, in Russia, 1918 in Austria and Hungary, in the Ottoman Empire in 1918 and to some extent before that revolution. And in Germany in the 1920s, well in 1918, 1919, 1920, there’s civil war in Germany. So revolution is in the air and the Marxists are part of that new thinking. So we began with Napoleon and the thinking of the French enlightenment and liberalism and we end with the thinking of German Marxism. But they’re right, Marx and Engles, things are interconnected and the way that many of us were taught history at school was not interconnected. And I want to share that thought with you as my final thought. The interconnections are fascinating and important to understand because they impact on where we are today. Putin, a member of the KGB, he once said, “Once KGB always KGB.” Is that what he is today? Is he simply just mad? Does he still believe in Marx and Engles or does he believe in the autocracy? Does he believe in the autocracy of the Czars? All interconnected, very much. Thanks for listening. I’m sure lots of you have got lots of things to say because I guess lots of you have some German ancestry. Let’s, let me see, it always comes up. I dunno why it always comes up, the number 34. It it must be a sort of a default titin.
Q&A and Comments:
Oh yes, I always pronounced things wrong, Maria, I’m not German. That’s how I learned it.
And Martin says it’s different in France, yes.
Q: What did Napoleon want?
A: World conquest, that’s why he was in Egypt before, he wants to dominate the world. He said, “I want to enter India like Alexander on the back of an elephant.” We have a cosy view of Napoleon. The French did a wonderful job on airbrushing out the unpleasantness of Napoleon and giving us a figure that we admire. Although today he’s probably more admired in Britain than he is in France, but it’s, he’s an extraordinary story. And of course he’s admired because later we get the Kaiser and then of course we get the horror of Hitler and Stalin. So Napoleon is miles away from that but he wanted to conquer the world.
I would like to remind us all that the sword doesn’t always win the war. “E g, Israel and Palestinian.” says Carol. Exactly my point. Exactly my point.
I like your comment, Simon, “How does Putin sleep at night? Years of practise.” Well done, I think that’s good.
Hannah, now that’s an extraordinary thing! Is that true, he has the same make of bed as Asack or are you just pulling my leg? I, well it’s a good comment.
Michael, no, of course my Quebec’s different, exactly, because Quebec has his French, its civil laws based on the Napoleonic code. We certainly didn’t, when I read law, refer to any cases from Quebec I can tell you.
And Stewart adds some, “To some extent the state of Louisiana and some of the former Spanish colonists that attend states like California and Mexico also attends some of the civil law, especially in domestic relations.” Yeah, you’re all right about that.
“Very similar to what Trump tried to promote in the US.” Says Susan. I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I’m sorry, I, it’s my fault, but I’ve missed the point.
Q: John, are there any prehistoric creatures found in Europe?
A: I’m not sure what question that is either. I’m not doing well, you are all being very noic tonight.
Q: “Why do you think Germany was right for a dictator like Hitler?”
A: We’ll get there, we’ll get there, we’ll get there, Romaine, but I’ll read your question in four.
Q: “Why do you think Germany was right for a dictator like Hitler? And what parallels, if any, do you see with modern USA stroke, modern Britain as well?”
A: Some, I’d simply say that some people believe we’re seeing the death of liberal democracy. I don’t think you can say that. I think liberal democracy is too strong, but it will depend upon some, it depends upon the quality of the next president in the United States. And I would argue that some of you in the States would say, “That’s nonsense.” I know that, I would say the same. It depends upon the quality of the next prime minister in Britain, and some of you will say, “That’s nonsense.” as well. We are very divided in the liberal west.
Oh, John, what an interesting fact! “An Englishman from Halifax in Yorkshire brought up to date springing, brought up to date spinning shoes to Arken in the 1840s. So found in the Arken rusted industry in Arken.” Now John, that’s a really good point and emphasises not only the growth of textiles, but the links between Britain and Germany. Britain was the powerhouse for industrial machinery in 1840s, but we are losing gradually by the end of the 19th century to the rise of America and to the rise of Germany in terms of industrial power. Darwin popularised survival of it in Hitlers Germany. Oh, wait, sorry, I know you are all interested in that and we will get there. Thank you Arlene.
Q: “Did the Prussians blame the Jews and the Polish for making them citizens with the economic problems course?” Did the Prussians blame the Jews?
A: No, I don’t think that, I don’t think they did, Shelly. I stand to be corrected, but not to my knowledge.
Yes, Hilton says “France and Germany still rivals nasty EU members.” I don’t think I would use the word nasty, but it’s still a, what shall we say, an unholy alliance in the top of the EU between France and Germany, which is one of the reasons I was unhappy that Britain led. Cause if you’ve got three instead of two, you are better off. I think it’s very, when my college was privatised by the Torres in the 1990s, I ensured that there were, there were actually, we were two teams. There was an administrator, senior administrator, a college secretary, cause we were privatised, and a principal and vice principal. And I made sure that everyone knew everything and saw all the papers on the grounds that if anyone should at, and I trusted all my colleagues obviously, that in the future, if anyone went off peace as it were, there were at least two people around who would blow the whistle, and I made sure that they had, they could, they could brief the governor’s irrespective of going to me principal. Me, I felt that was very important in terms of democracy and adult education’s all about democracy. If you don’t, you don’t actually do it in practise, what’s it worth preaching about?
Q: Why were there no, Louis the 17th?
A: There was a Louis the 17th and there was a Napoleon the second. Napoleon the second died as a young, as a young man, teenager I think. Louis the 17th also died young, nothing untoward in their deaths, they simply died, but they were recognised by royalists, in Louis the 17th’s case and by Bonepartes in Napoleon the second’s case.
Irene, oh hello Irene. “I find it very reassuring, while revolution is breaking out all over Europe and Britain, we were concerned with petitions.” Of course, Irene, you’re absolutely right. The charters presented a petition, I love it. They had a committee, not very British, who walked up to Downing Street, no gates in those days, knocked on the door of number 10 and said, “Excuse me, may we hand in this petition?” And it was handed in and they all went away and presumably had a cup of tea in some nice cafe in London. And that was it. It was reassuring we didn’t have a revolution, arguably, because our revolution had been a long time before.
Ava says, oh, that’s right, you don’t need me. That you are communicating between yourselves.
Joyce says, “Gold discovers in California 1849, attracting many a German.” And those are German miners, a lot of mining in Germany. We’ll come to Bismarck, we’ll come to Bismarck. Bismarck has to feature largely.
Thank you for the people. Thank you, that’s nice of you. I know I will never satisfy all of you, but if I satisfy at least some of you, and at least some of the time, I don’t expect to satisfy everybody all the time. But then that’s not the purpose. The purpose is you are convinced I’m wrong, but you don’t know why. So you’ll look it up and find out for yourself. And you might find out I was actually right, or you might find out I was wrong, but it’s, this is a start. It, I’m trying to be as accurate as I can. Now, forgive my pronunciation. I’m very good in English, I’m not very, I’m not too bad for Americans to understand or Canadian or Australians or Israelis, but I’m, once you get me onto other languages, I have Churchill’s approach to foreign languages, although he put it on a bit.
Q: Oh, now that’s a good question. “Were the 1919 reparations by the allies on Germany, really a lot more than the Bismarck 1871 reparations?”
A: I will deal with that. That needs a further explanation. I’ll talk about the 1871 reparations in due course and subsequently the 1919 ones in more detail.
Oh, Michael, “My family, obviously German due to Napoleon, took on a surname. In 1648, a member of my family was jailed as being against the monarchy.” 1648, that’s totally early, Michael. Oh, sorry, he’s putting there in 1848. Oh, good. I couldn’t quite reconcile 1648. Michael, you might put up for me what your family were obviously educated people. Most Jews in Germany were educated. What, can you tell me what they did, what job they did, what profession they followed, and what surname they took? And if you know why they took that, did they take the name Maya as yours is, is that the name they chose? Why did they choose it? That’s really interesting.
Sorry, Harriet says, oh, the book, the book is called hang on, hang on, I’ve got it here. I’m doing the interview with Jacob tomorrow, the author. I’m doing it at half past one GMT. It’s called Goodbye Eastern Europe. Goodbye Eastern Europe by Jacob Mikanowski, but the, if you are on the Jewish book, we interview that I’m conducting with Jacob. They’re going to put all the details on the screen for everyone. He can’t sign the book, it’s not out yet. He’s not in Britain, he’s in Oregon. I hope the snow doesn’t cause him pro- I did get an email this morning, he seemed all right.
Ed, the Spanish took much longer to experience a middle class working class revolution we’re so far behind you up until the 1950s. Well, that is right, now we haven’t done any Spanish history. The Spanish history is different. If you draw a line through the middle of France, say southern France, southwards, Portugal and Spain, then go eastward Italy, Greece, and into the Balkans, you are talking about peasant societies that survived longer than in western and northern Europe. France in the middle is a divide. Province was very peasant still, and Spain was extremely peasant. One of the problems with Spain was the Catholic church remained very mediaeval and very conservative, varied, and it never experienced the counter reformation in Spain, and the church had a lot to answer for. I think I’m right in saying that now, Spain is, a Spaniard told me this, I guess it’s correct, that Spain is one of the least Catholic countries in Europe today.
Oh the, Alan oh, it’s all the people of the enlightenment. People like Voltaire, Rousseau, and so on that inspired the French Revolution.
Michael, oh thank you, Michael. “The name Mayor came from a great-great-grandfather whose name was Mayor David. His son changed it to David Mayor. They were teachers and Hebrew teachers.” Well, I could have guessed something like that in terms of profession, but the change of name of changing a first name to a second name and a second name to a, that’s really very interesting. I’m not, I don’t know that you are going to tell me all of you, but that’s a very common thing in the Jewish world. I, in terms of British Jews, they turned into, British Jews that came from Germany or from Russia or Poland tended to either shorten the name to something that looked English or translate it into an English name. There was a German baker in World War one in North London, and he changed his name, translated his name into Mr. Baker because there were accusations that Germans were, he would be active sending coded messages by light from North London to Berlin. I mean, people believe the most ridiculous things. It’s the same time when a pub called the Marshall Blucher in the English town of Romford changed its name to something like The Horse and Cart or whatever. But it was called the Marshall Blucher, and they changed its name. It’s why Dachshands in Britain joined the First World War, become sausage dogs. We now say Dachshands like everybody else, but when I was a child, you very seldom heard the word Dachshund. People talk about sausage dogs because they, Dachschund was too German.
I think I’ve come to the end actually, Judy, and I’ll see you all, God willing, next Monday. Same place, same time. See you then.