1848: Europe's Year of Revolutions - Historian Reaction

Check out the VTH Podcast

#reaction #history

[deathgrimes]

You are genuinely the only reactor that I can sit and watch the entirety of a 1 hour long video.

[richeybaumann]

Fun thing about Marshal Radetzky: not only was he 81 when he led the war against Italy, that was actually his return to glory. He had been forced to retire due to his forward-thinking ideas about modernizing and professionalizing the Austrian army. If Austria had listened to him, maybe they could've stood up to Prussia 40 years later.

He is widely considered one of Austria's greatest marshals ever, and one of the greatest of the era, alongside Napoleon, Wellington, Davout, and the others.

[antonwerderitsch]

Crazy how much impact the napoleonic wars had on the world, it really made the most powerful emperors of europe scared and for the first time really trying to cooperate with other powers to have stability

[serfranke]

Hey Chris, as far as I understand, you're an expert on the American Civil War. Ever since this video came out, I wondered if you would react to it and, if you did, if you would recognize that student named Carl Schurz (17:30). As far as I know, it actually IS this man, who emigrated to the US after the failed revolution (as did so many other "48er" like Sigel or Schimmelpfennig) and led Union troops into battle during the Civil War. Greetings from Germany!

[victornunes]

Fun fact. Of those 85, 000 extra constables that the British government hired were a certain Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who would later go on to find gainful employment in France, and one Sir Robert Peel.

[coachgoltzbizpro]

Most people at 81: *Retired and inactive

Radetzky at 81: Screw this, I'm going to beat an Italian state into a truce!!

[blindtherapper]

The reason Jelacic was so loyal to the emperor was because he (the emperor) promised that Croatia will get more autonomy if he fights on his side. When everything was done, the emperor "forgot" that promise.

[cavscout]

I'm a big fan of Radetezky. The 1848 campaign was great but the 1849 campaign when Carlo Alberto decided to try again was masterful. It lasted 100 hours and Radetezky crushed the Piedmont army and their allies like a hammer against a marble. He was the best military leader Austria had since Arch Duke Charles (who beat Napoleon at Aspern-Essling). At 81 he traveled with the army on horseback encouraged the troops and spoke with them in the informal. He remained on active service until nealy 90 years of age. At a time when the average life expectancy was 60 or so. What men the world used to produce.

[griffinhunt]

Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast has a great season about 1848! The first episode opens with the full speech from Tocqueville mentioning 'the volcano' Europe was sleeping on.

[SomeYank]

This is a section of history that I don’t know a lot about so this should be fun.

[samrevlej]

Thank you for tackling this topic. It’s a fundamental part of European history often glossed over or covered briefly, glad for Epic History TV’s video and your commentary.

Would you ever consider reacting to foreign-language history videos with English subtitles tackling your topics of interest? Because I may have some recommendations.

[panzerwafflez]

Hey Chris. Just double-checked at 17:35 that is the same Karl Schurz who fought in the US Civil War. He was a German university student who took part in an uprising against the Prussian Army and later immigrated to the US after the 1848 revolutions were put down.

[untruelie]

The most tragic aspect of the failure of the 1848 revolutions in Germany in Italy was that although the unification process was now inevitable, it wouldn't be finished by popular forces, but in the form of top-down, authoritarian conquest. The Kingdom of Italy was little more than an enlarged Piemont-Sardinia, creating the north-south divide that lasts until the day, and the German Empire was in all practical terms a prussian hegemony. In both countries, the nationalists would turn away from their liberal ideas and unite with the political right. I think it is no conicidence that it was Italy and Germany who fell to right-wing dictatorships in the 20th century, despite having been on opposite sides during WW1. And who knows if WW1 would've ever happened if there had been a democratic, liberal Germany instead of a militaristic, expansionist one. 1848 was one of the biggest missed chances in european history.

[kadenjames]

This is a pretty cool time for history as my I think fifth great grandpa, or something he immigrated from Mecklenburg to America around the time 1842 so I thought this was pretty cool to share with everybody. He also served in the US during the American Civil War. I could not find what side he was on but he did live through the war

[timvlaar]

Not very related, but Napoleon III's father, brother of Napoleon Bonaparte was also called Louis Napoleon. Napoleon made him King of Holland in 1806 (though he ruled all of the Netherlands, not just Holland).
Napoleon overthrew his brother in 1810 and incorporated the Netherlands into his empire, because Napoleon only wanted to control the Netherlands to be better protected from the British, while Louis tried to be a genuinely good king to the Dutch people and even learned some Dutch.
When he visited the Netherlands under a false name in 1840, some people found out he was in the country and gathered outside his hotel room to cheer for him.

[CristinaMarshal]

Europe: the throbbing heart whose pulse triggered by excitement and shocks, ripples outwardly to the entire Earth.

[ubiergo]

Just to clarify, Milan was not the only city that had its "5 days", several cities in Italy had similar uprisings, and yes, several cities were able to resist only a week before the Austrians reacted by force.

[francescododan]

Random fact, the Constitution conceded by King Carlo Alberto of Piedmont-Sardinia was one of the very few if not the only one to not be revoked during this period. It became the Consitution of Italy as an united state and remained into force up until 1948

[apolloniapythia]

FM count Radetzky had been the chief of staff of FM prince Schwarzenberg in the wars of liberation 1813/14 and had been one of the masters of the plans for the battle of Leipzig.

[stischer]

It is important to put the number of people killed in the reactions by the royalist forces into context. In 1842, the population of Vienna was 231, 050. So, if that many students were killed, that's about 1% of the total population. Think 78, 000 in New York City today to get a perspective of the impact.