The essential question for this unit was "were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really failures as many historians have concluded?" In order to truly be able to answer this question, we focused on five different, crucial revolutions between 1830 and 1848, the Decembrist Revolt, the French Revolution of 1830, the French Revolution of 1848, the Frankfurt Assembly, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. In order to really understand what the essential question was asking of us, and to ensure that we would answer the essential question accurately, we outlined in small groups what a scale of success would look like. Our group's scale included five benchmarks- nothing changes at all based on the revolution (complete failure), the fighting leads to destruction and small governmental change (partial failure), only half of the country is satisfied with the changes (neutral), the majority of the country is happy with the changes (partial success), and the government changes for the better and all the people of the country in general are happy (complete success). Creating this scale allowed us to be able to more clearly define which revolutions were successful and which were not, answering the essential question. We then broke up into different, smaller groups, each group receiving one revolution to learn all information about our specific revolution. Each group then took notes based on articles that we received about each revolution. We defined the basics of the revolution first, which country it took place in, when it took place, what the goals were, who the opponent was, what the outcome was, and the reasons for success or failure. We then categorized each source as goals, opponent, or outcome, determined where our revolution fit on the scale of success, and then created a SurveyMonkey survey for the rest of the class to take after reading the documents provided about each revolution.
Our group's revolution was the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. This revolution took place in Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic in approximately 1848. The revolution began in Austria, causing Metternich to flee, and spread to Hungary where Louis Koussouth led the HUngarian nationalist movement wanting an independent government, an end to serfdom, and a written constitution. The Czechs made similar demands as the Hungarian nationalists in Prague. According to the intro document, "Overwhelmed by events, the Austrian government agreed to the reforms. The gains were temporary." The document also states, "Austrian troops soon regained control of Vienna and Prague. With Russian help, Austrian forces also smashed the rebels in Budapest. Many were imprisoned, executed, or forced into exile." One final loss of the revolutionaries was that many of the revolutionary leaders fled, specifically Koussouth. Using this information, as well as other information from the other primary sources, we created our SurveyMonkey:
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| One question about the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 included in our SurveyMonkey |
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| Another example of a question included in our SurveyMonkey survey |
I think that historians are wrong, and that in general the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were more successes than they were failures. The only true failure was the Decembrist Revolt in which the rebels got nowhere, and many were killed and jailed, as declared by Nicholas I, "“The leaders and the instigators of the conspiracy will be dealt with without pity, without mercy. The law demands retribution and, in their cases, I will not use my power to grant mercy. I will be unbending; it is my duty to give this lesson to Russia and to Europe,” (Decembrist Revolt Document). However, all of the other revolutions involved some element of success, even if not completely successful or permanent, there was still a small change, and most importantly, the possibility for change to occur again in the future. For example, the Hungarian Revolution was not very successful, the revolutionary leaders fled, and many rebels were jailed or killed, but at one point in time they were able to dissolve the Diet, "We dissolve the Diet by this our Decree; so that after the publication of our present Sovereign Rescript, the Diet has immediately to close its Session," (Hungarian Revolution Document- Imperial Manifesto Appointing Baron Joseph Jellachich Royal Lieutenant and Civil and Military Commissary of Hungary). Another example of a partially successful revolution was the French Revolution of 1848. Although their new president Louis Napoleon I ended up not doing a good job in leading the country, the road that the French took to get there by getting Louis Phillipe to abdicate his throne, and "... the National Assembly, dominated by members who wanted to restore order, issued a constitution for the Second Republic. It created a strong president and a one-house legislature. But it also gave the vote to all adult men, the widest suffrage in the world at the time. Nine million Frenchmen now could vote, compared with only 200,000 who had that right before," (French Revolution of 1848 document). Although none of the revolutions were complete successes, they allowed for some small changes to occur, which helped ignite the spark for more successful revolutions in years to come.
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