Chapter 27: The February Revolution

  Chapter 27 The February Revolution

Not only Austria had this problem, but European countries including Prussia, France, England, and Russia were dominated by aristocratic officers.

This situation continued until after the world wars, after the baptism of the world wars, the aristocratic officers lost a lot, did not have enough reserves to replenish, and finally lost their dominance in the army.

In contrast, Austria was fortunate in that it was dominated by the German nobility, most of whom possessed good military qualities because of their traditions.

These aristocratic officers, who were rare and highly intellectual in this era, still had no problem serving as basic officers if someone held a whip behind them to force them to work hard.

For the future of Austria, for the happiness of the people of Europe, for the development of all mankind, Franz then felt the manifest destiny, no here should be the will of God.

Anyway, the big task of transforming the next generation of the Austrian nobility, he has decided to take over, and now is just the beginning.

……

The wheel of history rolls on, Sicily after the outbreak of the January Revolution, soon spread to Northern Italy, in order to defend the security of Lombardy and Venice, the Vienna government also sent additional reinforcements to the local, the situation was temporarily stabilized.

Before the outbreak of the Revolution, the working class in Europe was in dire straits, take France as an example:

The wage level of workers was very low, about 2 francs per day for men and 1 franc per day for women, and child laborers between the ages of 13 and 16 were paid only 75 centimes, and those between the ages of 8 and 12 were paid only 45 centimes.

At that time, the cheapest black bread cost more than 30 centimes per kilogram, and the working class could barely make ends meet.

(Data from 1840)

On the surface, it seems that the treatment of male workers was just fine, and the treatment of female and child workers was very low.

In reality, the capitalists were not fools, they would maximize their profits, the money was exchanged for lives, and male workers were required to take on heavier physical labor.

Almost they work up to 15 or 16 hours a day, more work naturally consumes their physical strength faster, and of course they need to replenish their energy.

This can be seen from the life expectancy, heavy labor, so that the average life expectancy of workers is less than 40 years old, and even many heavy manual labor industry is still below 35 years old.

In 1846, heat and drought caused wheat and bean harvests to fail, and France’s staple foodstuffs were thus seriously threatened, causing grain prices to skyrocket.

In 1845, the price of 100 liters of wheat was 17.15 francs, but by 1847 it had risen to 43 francs, soaring to 49.5 francs in the Haut-Rhin department and exceeding 50 francs in some areas.

Especially in the north and north-east of France, the price of cereals generally rose by 100 to 150 per cent, and the price of bread quadrupled.

Everything went up but wages, and the working class naturally had a hard time.

In 1847, the economic crisis in England spread to France.

The rise in the price of food had nothing to do with the peasants at all, they were only suffering from a substantial fall in income due to lower food production and a decline in France’s internal purchasing power.

Against this background, cheap industrial goods from Britain rushed in, and French industry and commerce were immediately dealt a blow.

The industrial output of Paris in 1847 was 1,463 million francs, and by the beginning of 1848 it had fallen to 677 million francs.

After the waist cut and also a discount of 90%, just look at this figure to know that the French industry and commerce has been wailing, just one year, France has thousands of enterprises closed down.

Behind the frantic closure of enterprises, naturally, the birth of an army of unemployed, France’s social contradictions are becoming increasingly acute.

In this context, the July Dynasty not only did not come up with any effective measures, but also corruption, scandal after scandal.

The Austrian government’s “Labor Protection Act” reached Paris and quickly caused a stir within the working class.

It was too late for the Parisian government to block the news, but of course they did not have the power to enforce it.

Massive labor strikes broke out in Paris and quickly spread to France and other parts of Europe.

At the same time as the workers’ strike, the peasantry also broke out against hunger, and from 1847 7, the peasants, who were bankrupt because of the grain harvest and debt crisis, started a food grabbing trend.

They destroyed landowners’ estates, forcibly occupied grain stores and killed grain speculators. The movement also spread to the cities and was joined by unemployed workers who could not bear the hunger, and is known as the “Bread Riot.”

The continuous breakdown of social order also aroused the discontent of the bourgeoisie with the government.

The bourgeoisie had lost a lot of money in the economic crisis and was just about to make a profit on food to make up for their broken hearts.

As a result, it turned out that the French peasants were too fierce, and the fighting power of the working class was also quite strong, people could not afford to buy it, so they directly made a move to rob it, which still let the capitalists live?

At this time, the French bourgeoisie was also divided, in addition to some of the vested interests, most of them were opponents of the July Dynasty.

These included the dynastic opposition and the republican faction, of which the republican faction was divided into: the Nationalist and the Reformist. Although the political views of each faction were different, they had temporarily stood together in order to oppose the July Dynasty.

The incompetence of the Quizzo government is evident in the fact that the opposition launched 70 banquets throughout the country, many of which openly chanted revolutionary slogans, and were not suppressed.

The incompetence of the government allowed the revolutionaries to see their weaknesses and start preparing for an armed uprising.

Demonstrations were as commonplace to the people of Paris, who took to the streets on February 22, 1848, in protest against the government’s ban on the banqueting movement.

Exactly what happened is not clear to Franz. Anyway, history seems to have changed slightly, and that night the Parisians revolted and the February Revolution broke out.

After the outbreak of the uprising, the revolutionary opposition expanded dramatically, with students, workers, citizens, and capitalists all participating, though of course very few capitalists took up arms and went to war; they all supported it from behind the scenes.

The government of Guizot, awakened by the revolution, rushed to deploy troops to suppress the revolution, but unfortunately they underestimated the French people and the army.

Even in the army there was no lack of supporters of the revolution, most of the National Guard refused to carry out the government’s revolution, and some of the army directly turned against the government.

The latter thing, Franz will have to rely on the brain, more detailed information, has not been so easy to obtain.

Anyway, on the afternoon of February 23, 1848, King Louis-Philippe of France, in an attempt to ease the situation, dismissed the Quizot government and appointed the liberal Mollet to form a cabinet in an attempt to calm the anger of the bourgeoisie.

(End of chapter)