Romanticism 4

1. Louis Napoleon rose to power in France due to three factors. First, he had the name of his great uncle, whom romantics had transformed into a demigod as they created a Na-poleonic legend after 1820. Second, middle-class and peasant property owners feared the socialist urban workers and wanted a tough ruler to provide protection. Third, Louis Napoleon had a program for France in late 1848 that was to guide him through most of his reign. He believed in democracy and that government should try to help people eco-nomically. He did not believe in parliaments or political parties because they represented special-interest groups and neglected the poor. Thus, he wanted a strong, authoritarian national leader, like Napoleon, who would serve all the people. Louis Na-poleon envisioned a leader who would be linked to the people by direct democracy without politicians and legislative bodies. Instead of doing nothing or providing only temporary relief, the state had the duty to provide jobs and stimulate the economy. Af-ter his attempt to change the constitution so he could run for a second term failed, he began to conspire with key army officers in 1851. On December 2, 1851, he illegally dismissed the Assembly and seized power in a coup d'état. The army crushed the armed resistance in Paris and insurrections in the countryside. He restored universal male suf-frage and got 92% of the vote to make him president for ten years and, a year later, 97% of the vote to make him hereditary emperor.

2. After Louis Napoleon was crowned emperor, political power remained in his hands. He chose his ministers, and they had great freedom of action. Napoleon III restricted the Assembly, as members were elected every six years. Napoleon and his government tried to entice notable people to strengthen the regime. The government used its officials and appointed mayor as propaganda to fixing roads and other local concerns and getting tax rebates. In the 1860s, after there were problems in Italy and the rising threat of Prussia, Catholic and nationalist supporters criticized the government. Middle-class liberals denounced his rule as authoritarian. Because of the public outcries, Napoleon pro-gressively liberalized the empire in the 1860s by giving the Assembly greater powers and the opposition candidates greater freedom. In 1870, Napoleon granted a new constitution, which called for a parliamentary regime with a hereditary emperor, which passed by a 5 to 1 ratio.

b.
1. Reorganized in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, the northern provinces of Lombardy and Venetia were taken by Austria, Sardinia and Piedmont were ruled by an Italian monarch, Tuscany shared north-central Italy with several smaller states, central Italy and Rome were ruled by the papacy, and Naples and Sicily were ruled by a branch of the Bourbons. Between 1815 and 1848, unification captured the imaginations of many Italians. First, idealistic patriot Giuseppe Mazzini had a radical program that called for a centralized democratic republic based on universal male suffrage. Second, Catholic priest Vincenzo Gioberti called for a federation of existing states under the pope. Third, the autocratic kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont would lead the unification. Mazzini’s failed attempt at republicanism in 1848 had convinced the middle-class elite and the liberal aristocracy to distrust democratic republicanism as it might lead to renewed upheaval, social revolution, and intervention by France or Austria. Sardinian monarch Victor Emmanuel kept his liberal constitution after 1848 and became a symbol of a liberal, progressive state ideally suited to achieve the goal of national unification. Pope Pius IX was resolutely opposed to national unification and modern trends and denounced rational-ism, socialism, separation of church and state, and religious liberty.

2. Count Camillo Benso di Cavour was the statesman of Sardinia who dominated the Sardi-nian government from 1850 to 1864. Coming from a noble family, Cavour embraced the economic doctrines and business activities of the middle class. Before 1859, he sought unity only for the states of northern and perhaps central Italy in an expanded kingdom of Sardinia. In the 1850s, Cavour worked to consolidate Sardinia as a liberal constitu-tional state capable of leading northern Italy. His program of highways and railroads, civil liberties, and opposition to clerical privilege increased support for Sardinia in northern Italy. Cavour signed a secret diplomatic alliance with Napoleon III against Austria. In July 1858, he goaded Austria into attacking Sardinia in 1859. Napoleon came to Sardinia’s defense and the combined forces won. However, Napoleon changed his mind and, fearing Sardinia’s strength, compromised with the Austrians in July 1859 that would give Sardinia only Lombardy. Cavour resigned in rage.

3. After Cavour returned to office in 1860, he made a deal with Napoleon III that stated that Sardinia had to cede Savoy and Nice to France in exchange for Napoleon to drop his objections. The people of central Italy voted greatly to join Sardinia, unifying northern Italy. Superpatriots like Giuseppe Garibaldi saw the job as half done. In the 1860s, he devised a plan to use a private army of patriotic volunteers to liberate the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Cavour opposed the invasion, but did not stop it due to Garibaldi’s enormous popular support. He left Genoa and landed on Sicily in May 1860. With his thousand Red Shirts, he moved the Sicilian peasantry to fight for him. He conquered Si-cily by outwitting the twenty-thousand-man royal army and winning battles, gaining vo-lunteers, and taking Palermo. He crossed to the mainland and marched toward Naples. Cavour expected and hoped that Garibaldi would fail, but after he was victorious, Ca-vour sent Sardinia forces to occupy the Papal States, except for Rome, and to intercept Garibaldi. Cavour was afraid that an attack on Rome would bring about war with France as well as Garibaldi’s radicalism that had introduced free education, tentative social re-forms, and had disbanded the Jesuits and nationalized their property in Naples and Sici-ly. Cavour organized a plebiscite in the conquered territories, and they voting for the complete unification of Italy. The new kingdom gained Venice in 1866 and Rome in 1870 and was a parliamentary monarchy under Victor Emmanuel. However, only a small mi-nority of males could vote, and there was a great gap between the progressive, indu-strializing north and the stagnant, agrarian south. Administrators from Sardinia canceled Garibaldi’s reforms.

4. After Austria had blocked Frederick William IV of Prussia’s attempts to unify Germany, Austria and Prussia began to block the other within the German Confederation, leading to a political stalemate. Stalemate then occurred in the domestic politics of the individ-ual states as they entered a period of reaction and immobility in the 1850s. The German customs union, the Zollverein, became the most rapidly industrializing industry in Eu-rope. The Zollverein’s tariff duties were greatly reduced so that Austria’s highly pro-tected industry could not bear to join. Austria then tried to destroy it by inducing the south German states to leave it, but that failed. By the end of 1853, all the German states except Austria had joined the union, unifying Germany economically. The growing economic integration of the states within the Zollverein gave Prussia an advantage over Austria in German political affairs. William I of Prussia, crowned in 1861, wanted to double the size of the regular army and reduce the importance of the reserve militia. However, these meant a bigger defense budget and higher taxes. After 1848, Prussia had become parliamentary, which was controlled by the liberal middle class by 1859. However, they were greatly overrepresented by the Prussian electoral system, wanted society to be less militaristic, and wanted the army to be responsible to Prussia; elected representatives. Thus, the parliament rejected the military budget in 1862 and liberals triumphed completely in new elections. However, William called on Count Otto von Bismarck to head a new ministry and defy the parliament.

5. Otto von Bismarck was born into the Prussian landowning aristocracy, who was wild, tempestuous, dueled, and drank. He was proud of his Junker heritage and devoted to Prussian sovereign, but he had a strong personality and desire for power. In his drive for power for himself and Prussia, he was flexible and pragmatic and often pursued one policy and then switched but always had his goal in mind. He was an ultraconservative in the Prussian assembly in 1848, fought against Austria as the Prussian ambassador to the German Confederation from 1851 to 1859, and worked up to 1862 building up Prussia’s strength and consolidating its Great Power status. To achieve his goal he had three paths. First was to work with Austria to divide up the smaller German states. Second was to combine with foreign powers against Austria. Third, and the one he took, was to ally with the forces of German nationalism to defeat and expel Austria from German affairs. Bismarck’s appointment was strong but unfavorable. He argued that the great question of the day will be decided by blood and iron, causing him to be denounced. He had the Prussian bureaucracy collect taxes even though the parliament refused the budget. He reorganized the army and ignored the complaints of the large liberal majorities of the parliament.

6. After the Prussian and Austrian victory over Denmark, Bismarck maneuvered Prussia in-to position to force Austria out of the German Confederation by war, if necessary. Bis-marck had gained Alexander II of Russia’s gratitude by supporting Russia’s repression of a Polish uprising in 1863. Napoleon III was told that he would gain more territory along the Rhine. When Austria was unwilling to give up its role in German affairs, Bismarck engaged in a war of his own making. The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 lasted only seven weeks, as Prussia was able to utilize railroads to mass troops and the breechloading needle gun to achieve maximum firepower. The Prussian army overran northern Ger-many and defeated Austria at the Battle of Sadowa in Bohemia. Bismarck offered Aus-tria realistic, generous peace terms that caused them to pay no reparation and lose no territory to Prussia except Venice to Italy. Austria withdrew from German affairs, the states north of the Main River were grouped in the new North German Confederation that was led by Prussia, and the mainly Catholic states of the south remained indepen-dent but formed alliances with Prussia.

7. Bismarck reconciled with the conservative anti-nationalists and the liberal nationalists by showing them how nationalism was not necessarily hostile to conservative, authori-tarian government and that the middle class could prefer the reality of national unity under conservative leadership to a long, uncertain battle for truly liberal institutions. He delayed his goal during the struggle over army reform and parliamentary authority and identified Prussia’s fate with the national development of Germany. After the war, he created a federal constitution for the North German Confederation where each state kept its own local government, but the king of Prussia was president and the chancellor was responsible only to the president. The federal government controlled the army and foreign affairs and a bicameral legislature would make laws. Delegates of the upper house would be appointed by the different states, but members of the lower house would be appointed by universal, single-class, male suffrage. Bismarck asked the parlia-ment to pass a special indemnity bill to approve all the government’s spending from when Bismarck was appointed.


1. Garibaldi was so famous and popular because of his wild adventures and extraordinary achievements. He led a guerrilla band in Uruguay’s struggle for independence from Argentina and was known as a fearless freedom fighter. He had never drawn any personal profit from his exploits and was a simple man. He did not accept Victor Emmanuel’s land grants and denounced the government as betraying the dream of unification with its ruthless rule in the south.

2. Garibaldi fit into nationalism because he believed in the national identity of the Italians. He worked for freedom and human dignity by treating runaway slaves as equals in Latin Ameri-ca, advocating the emancipation of women, introducing social reforms in the south of Italy, and pressing for free education and broader suffrage in Italy.