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Fredrick William III of Prussia
Frederick William III was king of Prussia from 1797 to 1840. He ruled Prussia during the difficult times of the Napoleonic Wars and the end of the Holy Roman Empire. He was King of Prussia during the Congress of Vienna which assembled to settle the political questions arising from the new, post-Napoleonic order in Europe. He was determined to unify the Protestant churches. The long-term goal was to have fully centralized royal control of all the Protestant churches in the Prussian Union. -
Tsar Alexander I
Alexander I reigned as Emperor of Russia, Russian King of Poland, and Russian Grand Duke of Finland. He ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars. The tsar's greatest triumph came in 1812 as Napoleon's invasion of Russia proved a total disaster for the French. -
Germanic Confederation Established
The German Confederation was an association of 39 German states in Central Europe, created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries and to replace the former Holy Roman Empire. Most historians have judged the Confederation to have been weak and ineffective, as well as an obstacle to the creation of a German nation-state. -
Union of Netherlands and Belgium
The Dutch overthrew Napoleonic rule in 1813 and, after the British-Dutch Treaty of 1814, named their state the "United Provinces of the Netherlands". After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna created a kingdom for the House of Orange-Nassau, thus combining the United Provinces of the Netherlands with the former Austrian Netherlands in order to create a strong buffer state north of France. -
Peterloo Massacre
On 16 August 1819, Cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000 who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. -
Tsar Nicolas I
Nicholas I was the Emperor of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland. He is best known as a political conservative whose reign was marked by geographical expansion, repression of dissent, economic stagnation, poor administrative policies, a corrupt bureaucracy, and frequent wars that culminated in Russia's disastrous defeat in the Crimean War of 1853–56. -
Belgian Independence
in 1830 riots erupted in Brussels against King William I's rule, which was viewed as despotic. Shops were looted, and theatre goers who had just watched a nationalistic romanticist opera joined the mob. Uprisings followed elsewhere in the country. Factories were occupied and machinery destroyed.The 1830 London Conference of major European powers recognized Belgian independence. -
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, was the Second French Revolution. It saw to the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans. -
Poor Law
The Poor Law was designed to reduce the cost of looking after the poor and stopped government aid except in exceptional circumstances. Now if people wanted help they had to go into a workhouse to get it. -
Emperor Ferdinand I
Ferdinand I was Emperor of Austria, President of the German Confederation, King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia, as well as associated dominions from the death of his father until his abdication after the Revolutions of 1848. Ferdinand was incapable of ruling his empire because of his mental deficiency, so before his father died, he drafted a will stating that Ferdinand consult Archduke Louis on every aspect of internal policy. -
Frederick William IV of Prussia
Frederick William IV, the eldest son and successor of Frederick William III of Prussia, reigned as King of Prussia from 1840 to 1861. Also referred to as the "romanticist on the throne", he is best remembered for the many buildings he had constructed in Berlin and Potsdam, as well as for the completion of the Gothic Cologne cathedral. In politics, he was a conservative, and rejected the title of Emperor of the Germans offered by the Frankfurt Parliament. -
Revolution in Germany
The revolution of 1848 in the German states were initially part of the Revolutions that broke out in many European countries. They were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation. The revolutions demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional and largely autocratic political structure of the thirty-nine independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire. -
Francis Joseph I
Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and President of the German Confederation. In 1848, Emperor Ferdinand abdicated the throne to end the Revolutions in Hungary. This gave Ferdinand's nephew Franz Joseph the throne. On 28 June 1914, the assassination of his nephew Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo resulted in Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia. This activated a system of alliances which resulted in World War I. -
Abdication of Louis-Phillippe
After another revolution in 1848, Louis-Philippe was abdicated from the throne on February 24, fleeing to England as "Mr. Smith." Louis-Philippe was the country's last king. -
Revolt in Austrian Empire; Metternich Dismissed
A set of revolutions took place in the Austrian Empire in 1848. The Empire, ruled from Vienna, included ethnic Germans, Hungarians, Slovenes, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Romanians, Croats, Venetians and Serbs; all of whom attempted to achieve autonomy. Austrian Parliament demanded the resignation of Prince Metternich, the conservative State Chancellor and Foreign Minister. With no forces rallying to Metternich's defense, he resigned on 13 March and fled to London. -
Frankfurt Assembly
The Frankfurt Parliament was the result of revolution in the states of the German Confederation. After long and controversial debates, the assembly produced The Frankfurt Constitution which proclaimed a German Empire.This constitution fulfilled the main demands of the liberal and nationalist movements and provided a foundation of basic rights.The parliament also proposed a constitutional monarchy headed by a hereditary emperor (Kaiser). -
Austrian Forces Under General Windischgratz
While Austrian officials made concessions to appease revolutionaries, they also awaited the opportunity to reestablish their firm control. Their first success came when general Alfred Windischgratz ruthlessly suppressed Czech rebels in Prague. -
June Days
The June Days uprisings were in response to the closer of the National Workshops, created by the Second Republic in order to provide work and a source of income for the unemployed; however, only low pay, dead-end jobs were provided, which barely provided enough money to survive. Protests did not go peacefully, and over 10,000 people were either killed or injured. -
Establishment of the Second Republic
The French Second Republic was the republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and abdication of Louis-Philippe and the 1851 coup by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte which initiated the Second Empire. -
Election of Louis-Napoleon as French President
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was the only President of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor of the Second French Empire. He was blocked by the Constitution and Parliament from running for a second term, so he organized a coup d'état in 1851 and then took the throne as Napoleon III in 1852. He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution.
