ion of the different classes was, in
Vienna, after the victory of 12th March. We have also seen how the
movement of German-Austria was entangled with and impeded by the
events in the non-German provinces of Austria. It only remains for us,
then, briefly to survey the causes which led to this last and most
formidable rising of German-Austria.

The high aristocracy and the stock-jobbing bourgeoisie, which had
formed the principal non-official supports of the Metternichian
Government, were enabled, even after the events of March, to maintain
a predominating influence with the Government, not only by the Court,
the army and the bureaucracy, but still more by the horror of
"anarchy," which rapidly spread among the middle classes. They very
soon ventured a few feelers in the shape of a Press Law, a nondescript
Aristocratic Constitution, and an Electoral Law based upon the old
division of "estates." The so-called Constitutional ministry,
consisting of half Liberal, timid, incapable bureaucrats, on the 14th
of May, even ventured a direct attack upon the revolutionary
organizations of the masses by dissolving the Central Committee of
Delegates of the National Guard and Academic Legion; a body formed for
the express purpose of controlling the Government, and calling out
against it, in case of need, the popular forces. But this act only
provoked the insurrection of the 15th May, by which the Government was
forced to acknowledge the Committee, to repeal the Constitution and
the Electoral Law and to grant the power of framing a new Fundamental
Law to a Constitutional Diet, elected by universal suffrage. All this
was confirmed on the following day by an Imperial proclamation. But
the reactionary party, which also had its representatives in the
ministry, soon got their "Liberal" colleagues to undertake a new
attack upon the popular conquests. The Academic Legion, the stronghold
of the movement party, the centre of continuous agitation, had, on
this very account, become obnoxious to the more moderate burghers of
Vienna; on the 26th a ministerial decree dissolved it. Perhaps this
blow might have succeeded, if it had been carried out by a part of the
National Guard only, but the Government, not trusting them either,
brought the military forward, and at once the National Guard turned
round, united with the Academic Legion, and thus frustrated the
ministerial project.

In the meantime, however, the Emperor and his Court had, on the 16th