Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849

by Christopher Clark

Ein Weberaufstand.

across

Everything and everyone was in motion. Perhaps this is always true. But there are periods whose signature is stabilization, when previously unstable formations cohere and coalesce and boundaries swim into sharper focus: the ‘Carolingian Renaissance’,

What happened was something more inchoate, multifocal, socially deep, something anchored not in seditious conspiracy, but in the waning of respect and trust and in the emergence, unexpectedly, of a cause – the right to assemble – capable of bringing together heterogeneous disaffected elements, at least temporarily. The most important legacy of the conspiratorial insurrectionists was thus to have distracted the attention of the authorities from the real task at hand, which was to recalibrate the processes of government in such a way as to meet and channel the expectations of an increasingly politicized and critically aware society.

Barricades sprang up across Berlin, improvised from materials to hand. If these closely resembled their counterparts in Paris and elsewhere,

‘we instinctively found out the right way to do it’. As in Palermo, and Paris, every conceivable material was put to use, including carriages, which provided an excellent core for fortified walls. Footmen quickly got wise to this, and throughout that year carriages could be seen prudently hurtling out of the city centre whenever a crowd gathered.[150]

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