hiii........i need help plz?

Question

explain the effect of conservatism in 1848.

Answer 1

this should be ine the homework help section

Answer 2

In 1814, the victors over Napoleon gathered at Vienna to create a balance of power in Europe to their favor. The gathering was called the Congress of Vienna. Alexander I , the tsar of Russia, of the Orthodox faith, also wanted an international order based on Christianity, and he talked the emperor of Prussia , a Protestant, and the emperor of Austria, a Roman Catholic, into joining him in what was called a Holy Alliance. Austria and Prussia did not want to offend Alexander, so they joined their kingdoms to Alexander's creation, agreeing with Alexander that the "sublime truths" of Christianity ought to guide relations between nations and guide the domestic affairs of nations. Strong religious conviction, they held, was necessary for maintaining upright and loyal subjects. The rulers of Russia, Austria and Prussia agreed that challenges to their authoritarian rule by liberalism and revolution ought to remain suppressed. Britain, the most liberal of the powers, did not join the Holy Alliance. Viscount Castlereagh, foreign minister of Britain - the most scientific and liberal of the four powers - dismissed the Holy Alliance as mystical nonsense and thought Alexander to be unbalanced.

The Congress of Vienna was the response to the Napoleonic wars, and for conservatives a response to the godless French Revolution. According to Austria's foreign minister, Prince Metternich, the people of Europe wanted peace rather than liberty. And peace was what Metternich wished to provide them, within a context of what he saw as legitimate rule. Prevailing at the Congress of Vienna was the conservative view of what was legitimate. Authoritarian monarchies were legitimate. Metternich wanted to restore to the continent the old aristocratic and monarchical order, and empire.

Asserting what they believed to be their authority, the men at the Congress of Vienna redrew the map of Europe. Belgium was taken from Napoleonic France and combined with the United Netherlands. Austria was given authority in Germany again, except for areas taken from France and given to Prussia - a junior partner in the new coalition at the Congress. Genoa, Sardinia, Piedmont and Savoy were to be ruled by the House of Savoy, as was the city of Nice. Lombardy (around Milan) and Venetia, in northern Italy, were given to Austria. To compensate Austria for its loss of Polish territory, it was given Slavic territory along the Dalmatian Coast (along the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea, formerly possessed by Venice).

The four powers that met at the Congress of Vienna gave the defeated power, France, a generous settlement of the war. They occupied France until 1818 and restored the monarchy in France - in the person of Louis XVIII of the royal Bourbon family. Then, in 1818, France joined the victorious nations over Napoleon, making the alliance of four an alliance of five.

In 1815, people across Europe were sick of war and longing for peace. Disdain for upheaval put conservatism in fashion, and people were reviving their religious devotions. The conservative philosopher, Joseph de Maistre (1754-1821), wrote his most popular work, The Pope, in 1817. And Walter Scott (1771-1832), was popular with his writings that celebrated the age of faith and chivalry.

But conservatism was not extensive enough to eliminate disturbances. Subversive liberalism remained on the minds of many. The United States was a nation of liberal repute, and various peoples - Italians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Poles, Romanians and others - dreamed of independence of their own, and freedom from rule by foreigners. Metternich, the primary architect of the Vienna Accords, realized the threat to his conservative order, and he believed that repression was necessary to hold the enemies of his order in check. He viewed editors, newspapermen and university teachers with suspicion and students with hostility. "Liberty of the press" he described as a scourge.

Relatively liberal Britain also felt pressures. In the city of Manchester people were working fifteen hours a day. There, in 1819, when 60,000 gathered in St. Peter's Fields, listening to a call for universal suffrage, a local magistrate sent a force to arrest the main speaker, Henry Hunt. A melee followed in which eleven of the crowd were killed and others injured. And, in the wake of this, the movement for reform gathered strength.

Trouble came to Spain in 1820. Spain was fighting wars against independence in Latin America. King Ferdinand VII, in Madrid, was not paying his army. Soldiers assembled for embarkation to the Americas revolted, and various groups in Spain joined the revolt. Some in Spain wanted a constitutional monarchy, some wanted a republic, and many were interested in the liberalism of the Enlightenment. Half-starved and illiterate men who hated priests began burning down churches. Liberals gained power, and in Naples a copy-cat rising occurred, with demands for a liberal constitution. Metternich was indignant. He feared that the revolt would spread elsewhere and called a meeting of the Holy Alliance, and with its approval he sent an army to Naples, which put down the insurrection and restored full powers to the king of Naples-Sicily, Ferdinand I (1751-1825).