Revolutions Changing Europe Slowly but Surely

          In class this time we learned about revolutions that were occurring around Europe and how the leaders of the countries and empires who had to face the revolutions reacted to and how they solved, if they solved the issues. The class was broken up into groups and each group was given a certain revolution. Each group then read and analyzed multiple sources about their revolution and then using the sources we decided whether the revolution was a failure or success based on a scale of one to five (five being a success). Also each group made a survey on survey monkey and all of the other groups took the surveys once all groups were done. The question we were all trying to answer was, were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really failures as many historians have concluded?

          The revolution my group was given was the Hungarian Revolution. It began when Hungarian people wanted independence from the Austrian empire and become their own country. The revolutions became so serious that the ruler of the Austrian empire at that time, Metternich, was so afraid that he fled Austria and the Hungarian revolutionist, led by Louis Kossuth controlled Austrian cities like Prague, Vienna and Budapest. Hungarians were winning the revolution and they created a national anthem and in it they stated "We truly swear, the tyrant's yoke no more to bear". This meant they were done with the Austrian empire. Sadly in the end the Russian army came in and finally repressed the Hungarian revolts. In a piece of manifesto you see the Russian Czar and the Austrian emperor defeating the revolutionists.

From: Eva March Tappan, ed., The World's Story: A History of the World in Story, Song and Art, (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1914), Vol. VI: Russia, Austria-Hungary, The Balkan States, and Turkey, pp. 408-410.

Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton. The text has been modernized by Prof. Arkenberg.

The Revolution was a mostly a failure because they were  unable to get independence from Austria but they were able to get rid of the emperor that they disliked greatly.At the bottom are results from the survey we made about the revolution. The pictures show that our other students learned about the Hungarian Revolution and they understood the sources. Also below will be a link to the survey so you can take it as well. Now we will look at other revolutions.

          The other revolutions happening in Europe were all somehow successful. The one that wasn't successful was the Decembrist Revolution. in this revolution Russians believed their Tzar Alexander would create and constitutional monarchy, but instead he did almost the complete opposite of that which enraged the Russians. Also on top of that instead if giving Russia a constitution he gave a country under Russia's control, Poland one. A revolution that was somewhat successful was the French Revolution of 1830 because the French people were able to get rid of their king, Charles X, but they did get Louis Philippe as their new king and they would have issues with him in 18 years. Those issues led to the French Revolution of 1848. In this revolution there was failure and success because they were able to get rid of King Philippe, but a republic of radicals, liberals, and socialists took over. So for the question,  were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really failures as many historians have concluded, the answer would be no because all but one revolution had some success.