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At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, it seemed initially that the old order would be restored. Exhausted after 25 years of warfare, many people looked to their kings and emperors as symbols of unity and peace, and it was not in the interests of landowners to support movements that targeted their dispossession. The Bourbons returned to France under Louis XVIII and to Spain under Ferdinand VII. Austria and Prussia, the two largest states in a newly formed German Federation, were equally keen that the new forces of nationalism and liberalism be kept at bay. Tsar Alexander suggested that Russia, Austria and Prussia even come together in a Holy Alliance, ostensibly to promote Christianity. In reality, the objective was to suppress any outbreaks of rebellion, including any liberal ideas of change to the existing system.
However, through the introduction of reforms, and by encouraging nationalist aspirations, Napoleon had unleashed forces of change that would become increasingly difficult to suppress. In Western Europe, industrialisation was beginning to enrich a growing middle class increasingly interested in the democratic ideas of the revolution, and less and less prepared to put up with a secret police, arbitrary arrests, press censorship, and autocracy. Among other things, this class sought freedom of speech, the right to vote, a representative government and a free economy; after all, the French and American revolutions had shown that the status quo could be challenged.
In addition to the development of liberal thought there was a new nationalistic agenda – predominantly in eastern and central Europe – of ethnic groups that lived under the yoke of the Austrian, Ottoman and Russian empires. The ruling classes reasoned that these empires would disintegrate if the nationalist agenda were given any room to breathe. Their attempts to stifle it would ultimately lead to war.
Spain and Greece were the first to break out in revolt in the 1820s. While the revolt in Spain was put down with difficulty, a Greek independence movement succeeded in throwing off Ottoman domination in 1832.
France was next. Unhappy with press censorship, attempts to control parliament, and the general illiberal tendencies of the French king, Charles X, who had inherited the crown from his brother, Louis XVIII, the Parisians rebelled. In 1830 Charles was forced to abdicate and promptly fled to England, while his more moderate cousin, Louis-Philippe, who was descended from the brother of Louis XIV, was made king. That year revolution spread throughout Europe, but while it failed to gain any real momentum, the old order failed to crush the new political ideologies entirely.
In 1848 uprisings took place throughout Europe once again and this time gained more traction. The Hungarians, keen to throw off their Habsburg masters, rebelled and were crushed. The Czechs demanded their own government and the Austrians were driven out of northern Italy. In France, Louis-Philippe was driven out of France and the Second Republic was proclaimed. Napoleon’s nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, was elected president by popular vote. When he realised that he was forbidden by the constitution to stand for election twice, he undertook a coup, dissolved the Second Republic, and became a dictator. A year later, in 1852, he declared himself to be Emperor Napoleon III of the Second French Empire – a position he would hold with some success until 1871, when France was defeated by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian war. Louis-Napoleon ended up retiring to England, where he died during an operation.
Britain narrowly managed to avoid revolution by making some last-minute concessions to the working class. Russia would wait its turn.