Counter-revolution

Abstract

With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to see that a conservative reaction against revolutionary change was inevitable, and that it enjoyed every prospect of success. In the first place, in Austria and Prussia, while leading to the appointment of new ministers, revolution had left existing monarchs with considerable executive power, involving in each case control over the bureaucracy and army. Friedrich Wilhelm IV and, on his accession in December, Franz Joseph were committed to eventual reaction, and encouraged in this by their aristocratic advisers. In Prussia men such as the adjutant-general, Leopold von Gerlach, and Junker nobles such as Kleist-Retzau, von Below or the young Bismarck, were all ferociously anti-liberal, inspired by a pietistic religious faith and a soldier’s sense of loyalty[98]. Even in France much of the old bureaucracy and especially the army officer corps had remained in place. The June insurrection in Paris had then frightened the democratically elected Constituent Assembly into appointing the conservative republican General Cavaignac as head of government, to be followed in December by the election of the Bonapartist pretender, Louis-Napoleon, as President of the Republic[49, 67].