History 23.3

In 1850 Austria was still the dominant power on the Italian Peninsula.

After the failure of the revolution of 1848, people began to look to the northern Italian state of Piedmont for leadership in achieving the unification of Italy. The royal house of Savoy ruled the Kingdom of Piedmont. Included in the kingdom were Piedmont, the island of Sardinia, Nice, and Savoy. The ruler of the kingdom, beginning in 1849, was King Victor Emmanuel II.

The government of Napoleon III was clearly authoritarian.

As chief of state, Napoleon III controlled the armed forces, police, and civil service. Only he could introduce legislation and declare war. The Legislative Corps gave an appearance of representative government, because the members of the group were elected by universal male suffrage for six-year terms. However, they could neither initiate legislation nor affect the budget.

The king named Camillo di Cavour his prime minister in 1852.

As prime minister, Cavour pursued a policy of economic growth in order to equip a large army. Cavour, however, knew that Piedmont's army was not strong enough to defeat the Austrians. So he made an alliance with the French emperor Louis-Napoleon. Cavour then provoked the Austrians into declaring war in 1859.

The effect of the Crimean War was to destroy the Concert of Europe

Austria and Russia, the chief powers maintaining the status quo before the 1850s, were now enemies. Austria, with its own interests in the Balkans, had refused to support Russia in the Crimean War. A defeated and humiliated Russia withdrew from European affairs for the next 20 years. Austria was now without friends among the great powers. This situation opened the door to the unification of Italy and Germany.

After the Hapsburg rulers crushed the revolutions of 1848 and 1849, they restored centralized, autocratic government to the empire.

Austria's defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1866, however, forced the Austrians to make concessions to the fiercely nationalistic Hungarians. The result was the Compromise of 1867, which created the dual monarchy of Austria- Hungary. Each of these two components of the empire now had its own constitution, its own legislature, its own government bureaucracy, and its own capital (Vienna for Austria and Budapest for Hungary). Holding the two states together were a single monarch—Francis Joseph was emperor of Austria and king of Hungary—and a common army, foreign policy, and system of finances.

Bismarck has often been seen as the foremost nineteenth-century practitioner of realpolitik—the "politics of reality," a politics based on practical matters rather than on ethics.

Bismarck openly voiced his strong dislike for anyone who opposed him. After his appointment, Bismarck ignored the legislative opposition to the military reforms. He proceeded to collect taxes and strengthen the army. From 1862 to 1866, Bismarck governed Prussia without approval of the parliament. In the meantime, he followed an active foreign policy, which soon led to war.

After defeating Denmark with Austrian help in 1864, Prussia gained control of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein

Bismarck then goaded the Austrians into a war on June 14, 1866. The Austrians, no match for the well-disciplined Prussian army, were defeated on July 3.

By the mid-nineteenth century, slavery had become a threat to American unity

Four million enslaved African Americans were in the South by 1860, compared with one million in 1800.

In France, events after the revolution of 1848 moved toward the restoration of the monarchy.

Four years after his election as president in 1848, Louis-Napoleon returned to the people to ask for the restoration of the empire. In this plebiscite, or popular vote, 97 percent responded with a yes vote. On December 2, 1852, Louis-Napoleon assumed the title of Emperor Napoleon III (Napoleon II was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte, but he never ruled France). The Second Empire had begun.

Meanwhile, in southern Italy, a new Italian leader had arisen

Giuseppe Garibaldi, a dedicated patriot, raised an army of a thousand volunteers. A branch of the Bourbon dynasty ruled the Two Sicilies (Sicily and Naples), and a revolt had broken out in Sicily against the king. Garibaldi's forces landed in Sicily and, by the end of July 1860, controlled most of the island. In August, Garibaldi's forces crossed over to the mainland and began a victorious march up the Italian Peninsula. The entire Kingdom of the Two Sicilies fell in early September.

Great Britain managed to avoid the revolutionary upheavals of the first half of the nineteenth century

In 1815 aristocratic landowning classes, which dominated both houses of Parliament, governed Great Britain. In 1832 Parliament passed a bill that increased the number of male voters. The new voters were chiefly members of the industrial middle class. By giving the industrial middle class an interest in ruling, Britain avoided revolution in 1848. In the 1850s and 1860s, Parliament made social and political reforms that helped the country remain stable. Another reason for Britain's stability was its continuing economic growth. By 1850, industrialization had brought prosperity to the British middle class. After 1850, real wages of workers also rose significantly.

Prussia now dominated all of northern Germany, and the growing power and military might of Prussia worried France

In 1870 Prussia and France became embroiled in a dispute over the candidacy of a relative of the Prussian king for the throne of Spain. Taking advantage of the situation, Bismarck pushed the French into declaring war on Prussia on July 19, 1870—a conflict called the Franco-Prussian War.

The Italians gained control of Venetia as a result of supporting Prussia in a war between Austria and Prussia

In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, French troops withdrew from Rome. Their withdrawal enabled the Italian army to annex Rome on September 20, 1870. Rome became the capital of the new European state.

In the 1860s, opposition to some of Napoleon's economic and governmental policies arose

In response, Napoleon III began to liberalize his regime. For example, he gave the legislature more power. After the French were defeated in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, however, the Second Empire fell.

After the Frankfurt Assembly failed to achieve German unification in 1848 and 1849, Germans looked to Prussia for leadership in the cause of German unification.

In the course of the nineteenth century, Prussia had become a strong, prosperous, and authoritarian state. The Prussian king had firm control over the government and the army. Prussia was also known for its militarism, or reliance on military strength.

The American Civil War (1861-1865) was a bloody struggle

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared most of the nation's enslaved people "forever free." The Confederate forces surrendered on April 9, 1865. The United States remained united, "one nation, indivisible."

Following that conflict, a peace settlement gave Nice and Savoy to the French.

Lombardy, which had been under Austrian control, was given to Piedmont. Austria retained control of Venetia. Cavour's success caused nationalists in other Italian states (Parma, Modena, and Tuscany) to overthrow their governments and join their states to Piedmont.

Even before the war had ended, the southern German states had agreed to enter the North German Confederation.

On January 18, 1871, Bismarck and 600 German princes, nobles, and generals filled the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of Versailles, 12 miles (19.3 km) outside Paris. William I of Prussia was proclaimed kaiser, or emperor, of the Second German Empire (the first was the medieval Holy Roman Empire).

Garibaldi chose to turn over his conquests to Piedmont.

On March 17, 1861, a new state of Italy was proclaimed under King Victor Emmanuel II. The task of unification was not yet complete, however. Austria still held Venetia in the north; and Rome was under the control of the pope, supported by French troops.

Serfdom was the largest problem in czarist Russia.

On March 3, 1861, Alexander issued an emancipation edict, which freed the serfs. Peasants could now own property. The government provided land for the peasants by buying it from the landlords. The new land system, however, was not very helpful to the peasants. The landowners often kept the best lands for themselves. The Russian peasants had little good land to support themselves. Emancipation, then, led not to a free, landowning peasantry but to an unhappy, land-starved peasantry that followed old ways of farming.

Prussian armies advanced into France. At Sedan, on September 2, 1870, an entire French army and the French ruler, Napoleon III, were captured.

Paris finally surrendered on January 28, 1871. An official peace treaty was signed in May. France had to pay 5 billion francs (about $1 billion) and give up the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the new German state. The loss of these territories left the French burning for revenge.

Alexander II attempted other reforms as well, but he could please no one.

Reformers wanted more changes, but conservatives thought that the czar was destroying Russia's basic institutions. When radicals assassinated Alexander II in 1881, his son, Alexander III, turned against reform and returned to the old methods of repression.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Russia was still rural, agricultural, and autocratic.

The Russian czar was regarded as a divine-right monarch with unlimited power. In 1856, however, the Russians suffered a humiliating defeat in the Crimean War. Even conservatives realized that Russia was falling hopelessly behind the western European states. Czar Alexander II decided to make some reforms.

The South's economy was based on growing cotton on plantations, chiefly by slave labor

The South was determined to maintain the cotton-economy and plantation-based slavery. Abolitionism, a movement to end slavery, arose in the North and challenged the Southern way of life. As opinions over slavery grew more divided, compromise became less possible. Abraham Lincoln said in a speech in 1858 that "this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." When Lincoln was elected president in November 1860, war became certain. In April, fighting erupted between North and South—the Union and the Confederacy.

The Prussian monarchy and the Prussian army had achieved German unity

The authoritarian and militaristic values of Prussia were triumphant in the new German state. With its industrial resources and military might, Germany had become the strongest power in Europe.

In the midst of this economic expansion, Napoleon III also carried out a vast rebuilding of the city of Paris.

The old Paris of narrow streets and walls was replaced by a modern Paris of broad boulevards, spacious buildings, public squares, an underground sewage system, a new public water supply system, and gaslights.

Prussia now organized the German states north of the Main River into the North German Confederation.

The southern German states, which were largely Catholic, feared Protestant Prussia. However, they also feared France, their western neighbor. As a result, they agreed to sign military alliances with Prussia for protection against France.

Russia was especially interested in expanding its power into Ottoman lands in the Balkans.

This expansion would allow Russian ships to sail through the Dardanelles, the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. If Russia could achieve this goal, it would become the major power in eastern Europe and challenge British naval control of the eastern Mediterranean. Other European nations feared Russian ambition and had their own interest in the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Napoleon III completely controlled the government and limited civil liberties.

To distract the public from their loss of political freedom, he focused on expanding the economy. Government subsidies helped foster the rapid construction of railroads, harbors, roads, and canals.

In the 1860s, King William I tried to enlarge the Prussian army.

When the Prussian legislature refused to levy new taxes for the proposed changes, William I appointed a new prime minister, Count Otto von Bismarck.

The U.S. Constitution committed the nation to liberalism and nationalism.

Yet unity did not come easily. Two factions fought bitterly about the division of power in the new government. The Federalists favored a strong central government. The Republicans wanted the federal government to be subordinate to the state governments.

In 1853 the Russians invaded the Turkish Balkan provinces of Moldavia and Walachia.

n response, the Ottoman Turks declared war on Russia. Great Britain and France, fearful of Russian gains in this war, declared war on Russia the following year. This conflict came to be called the Crimean War. The Crimean War was poorly planned and poorly fought. Eventually, heavy losses caused the Russians to seek peace. By the Treaty of Paris, signed in March 1856, Russia agreed to allow Moldavia and Walachia to be placed under the protection of all the great powers.

The Crimean War

was the result of a long-term struggle between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire had long controlled most of the Balkans in southeastern Europe. By 1800, however, the Ottoman Empire was in decline.

Queen Victoria,

whose reign from 1837 to 1901 was the longest in English history, reflected perfectly the national pride of the British. Her sense of duty and moral respectability greatly influenced the values and attitudes of her age, which was later called the Victorian Age.