Chapter 25 Chapter 1 Development Chapter 6 Revolution 2

2 Unlike the revolutions of the late eighteenth century, those of the post-Napoleonic period were deliberate and even well-planned.The most important legacy of the French Revolution itself is that it established a set of models and paradigms for political upheavals that have been adopted by insurgents everywhere. The revolution of 1815-1848 was not the work of a few disaffected demagogues, as spies and policemen (the fully employed class) reported to their superiors.Revolutions arose because the political institutions imposed on Europe were profoundly unsuitable to the political conditions of the Continent and became increasingly inappropriate in a period of rapid social change; revolutions arose because economic and social discontent So acute that a series of revolutionary outbreaks was practically inevitable.But the political model created by the Revolution of 1789 tended to provide the disaffected with a specific goal of turning an insurrection into a revolution, and first uniting all of Europe into a single subversive movement or tide.

These models, although all derived from the French experience between 1789 and 1799, present several different paradigms.They correspond to the three main currents of the opposition after 1815: the Moderate Liberals (or factions of the upper middle class and the liberal aristocracy), the Radical Democrats (or the lower middle classes, some emerging manufacturers, Intellectuals and disaffected squires), and the socialists (or factions of the "working poor" or emerging industrial working class).By the way, etymologically, these nouns all reflect the internationality of the period: "liberal" is French-Spanish in origin, "radical" is English in origin, and "socialist" is English-French in origin. . "Conservative" is also partly French in origin, another testament to the close links between British and continental European politics during the Reform Act period.The motivating force of the first trend was the Revolution of 1789-1791, whose political ideal resembled that of a quasi-English constitutional monarchy with property qualifications, and thus oligarchic representation, adopted by the French constitution of 1791 and, as As we have seen before, it became the standard type of French, British and Belgian constitutions after 1830-1832.The driving force of the second trend can be represented by the revolution of 1792-1793, and its political ideal: a democratic republic with a tendency to "welfare state" and a certain hatred of the rich, is the same as the ideal of Jacobin in 1793. consistent with the Constitution.But just as social groups advocating radical democracy are a vaguely defined and complex group, so it is difficult to affix an accurate label to this model of the French Revolution. What was known as Girondism, Jacobinism, and even Sansculottism in 1792-93 were all combined, although perhaps Jacobinism was strongest in the Constitution of 1793.The driving force of the third trend is the Revolution of the Year 2 and the post-Thermidorian uprising, the most important of which is Babeuf's Equals (Equals) conspiracy, which is an important part of the Jacobin extremes and early communists. The uprising, the latter marking the birth of the modern communist political tradition.A third current is the offspring of sansculotism and left-wing Robespierreism, although it has inherited little from the former except a fierce hatred of the middle class and the rich.In politics, the revolutionary model of Babeufism was embedded in the traditions of Robespierre and Saint-Just.

From the point of view of an absolutist government, all of these movements are equally disruptors of stability and good order, though some seem more conscious than others to sow chaos, and some seem more dangerous than others , because it is more likely to incite the ignorant and impoverished masses. (Thus Metternich's secret police in the 1830s seem today to have given too much weight to the publication of Lamennais's Words of a Believer [Paroles d'un Croyant, 1834], because of the apolitical It is only possible to appeal to subjects unaffected by openly atheist propaganda, in the sexist Catholic language.) In fact, however, the opposition movements were only united by their common abhorrence of the regime of 1815, and by All those who, for whatever reason, opposed the despot, the church, and the nobility had a tradition of forming a common front.However, the history of 1815-1848 is the history of the disintegration of this united front.