6.6 Reactions and Revolutions

• Spain, Naples, Piedmont and Portugal (1820–1821): liberal army officers forced kings to accept constitutions. Austria crushed the Italian revolts in 1821 and a French army restored royal power in Spain in 1823.
• Greek War of Independence (1821–1830): Greeks rebelled against the Ottoman Empire. European Romantics, including the poet Lord Byron, who died there in 1824, rallied to the cause, seeing Greece as the birthplace of European civilization. Britain, France and Russia destroyed an Ottoman-Egyptian fleet at Navarino (1827), and Greece was recognized as independent in 1830. Conservative powers backed a nationalist revolt here because it weakened the Ottomans and involved Christians against a Muslim empire.
• Decembrist Revolt (December 1825): when Tsar Alexander I died, liberal-minded army officers, many of whom had seen western Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, demanded a constitution. Nicholas I crushed them in a day, executed five leaders and exiled others to Siberia.

In July 1830 France's Charles X issued ordinances that dissolved the newly elected Chamber, tightened censorship and cut the number of voters. Paris rose in three days of street fighting (the July Revolution). Charles fled and his cousin Louis-Philippe became the citizen king of a more liberal July Monarchy. The vote was widened only slightly, to wealthy property owners, so it was a victory for the upper middle class rather than for democracy.

The news sparked revolts elsewhere. Belgium broke away from the Netherlands (1830), and the powers recognized it as an independent, neutral kingdom. A Polish uprising against Russian rule (1830–1831) was crushed, and Nicholas I abolished Poland's constitution.

Causes: crop failures and potato blight (1845–1847) drove up food prices, an economic slump threw people out of work, and liberals, nationalists and socialists were all frustrated by governments that refused reform. Revolutions broke out across Europe within weeks of each other.

The revolutionaries split. Middle-class liberals wanted constitutions and property rights, while workers wanted jobs and social reform, and after the June Days many liberals sided with order. Nationalists clashed with each other: Germans in Frankfurt debated whether to include Austria's lands (a big Germany) or leave them out (a small Germany led by Prussia), and Hungarians denied other groups the rights they demanded for themselves. Meanwhile the old regimes still controlled the armies, and peasants, once freed from labor dues, lost interest. Lasting results: universal male suffrage in France, the end of serfdom in the Austrian lands, a constitution in Prussia and Piedmont, and the breakdown of the Concert of Europe's cooperation. A new generation learned that idealism alone would not unify nations (7.1).

Defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856) showed how far Russia lagged. Alexander II issued the Emancipation Manifesto in 1861, freeing more than 20 million privately owned serfs. Peasants got land, but they had to pay for it over 49 years, and the land usually went to the village commune (mir), which limited their freedom to move. He also created elected local councils called zemstvos (1864), reformed the courts and shortened military service.

Reform raised hopes it could not satisfy. Radical groups grew, and one called the People's Will assassinated Alexander II in 1881. His son Alexander III returned to repression and Russification. In January 1905, while Russia was losing a war with Japan (1904–1905), troops fired on peaceful marchers on Bloody Sunday, strikes spread, and Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto promising civil rights and an elected Duma. Two ministers pushed modernization from above: Sergei Witte drove rapid railway and industrial growth in the 1890s, and Peter Stolypin, prime minister from 1906 until his assassination in 1911, let peasants leave the commune and own private farms while harshly repressing revolutionaries. The Duma had limited power, so tensions remained that exploded in 1917 (8.3).