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In-Depth Information
Napoleon, Revolution & Empire
The French Revolution of 1789-99 was a political explosion that ushered in a new age of
republicanism in Europe and challenged surviving feudalistic undertakings like the Holy
Roman Empire. It also led to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), Europe's di-
minutive moderniser. His code of law, the Napoleonic Code, was the backbone of modern
laws and was anathema to precisely those privileges of rank and birth that had allowed the
Habsburgs to rule and govern for so long.
Austria played a role in virtually all the Napoleonic wars from 1803 to 1815, the year
Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo. He occupied Vienna twice (in 1805 and 1809)
and in April 1809, during occupation of Austrian regions, Tyrol - which had fallen into
the hands of Bavaria - was the scene of discontent when innkeeper Andreas Hofer
(1767-1810) led a rebellion for independence. For his troubles, Hofer was put on trial and
executed at Napoleon's behest. His body is entombed in Innsbruck's Hofkirche.
Despite ultimately being defeated, Napoleon's ventures triggered the collapse of the
Holy Roman Empire. Its ruler Franz II reinvented himself as Franz I of Austria, and the
man he appointed to help draw up a post-Napoleon Europe, the chief minister Klemenz
von Metternich, rose to dominate Europe's biggest diplomatic party, the Congress of Vi-
enna, held in 1814-15 to reshape the continent. The Habsburgs survived all this and in the
post-Napoleon Vormärz (Pre-March) years, they dominated a loose Deutscher Bund (Ger-
man Alliance) comprising hundreds of small 'states' cobbled together in an oppressive
period of modest cultural flourish and reactionary politics called the Biedermeier period.
Revolutions of 1848
With citizens being kept on a short leash by their political masters in the first half of the
19th century, it's not surprising that they began to seek new freedoms. Klemenz von Met-
ternich, who had become court and state chancellor, believed in absolute monarchy and his
police took a ferocious approach to liberals and Austrian nationalists who demanded their
freedom. Meanwhile, nationalism - one of the best chances of liberalising Austrian society
at that time - was threatening to chip away the delicate edges of the Habsburg empire. On
top of this, atrocious industrial conditions added fuel to the fires of discontent.
The sparks of the Paris revolution in February 1848 ignited Vienna in March 1848. Re-
flecting the city-country divide, however, the uprising failed to take hold elsewhere in
Austria except in Styria. A similar revolution in Germany meant that some Austrian re-
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