izing them to
protest against the unparalleled surprise to which France had been
subjected. The fugitive King made no protest. His sons quietly followed
him into exile. Those who were serving France abroad learned at the same
time the news of their fall and the rise of a new power, and thought it
their duty to bow to the national will, resolving that not a single drop
of French blood should be shed in their cause.

(1848) REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN GERMANY, C. Edmund Maurice

Popular demonstrations in various parts of Germany in the great
revolutionary year 1848 were no doubt partly due to the outbreaks in
France and elsewhere, but it is also apparent that discontent at home
had been long turning the people toward revolt. The agitation that began
in March--the month following the "February Revolution" and the
declaration of a republic in France--was the work of a patriotic party
that cherished not only aspirations for extending popular rights in the
several States, but also a prophetic desire for German unity.

The Congress of Vienna (1815) attempted to adjust the balance of power
in Europe. Some sort of union for the States was imperatively required
by the general situation, but there was fear of making Germany too
strong. The Congress created the German Confederation, constituted by a
union of independent States, under the hegemony or political headship of
Austria. This confederation (_bund_) lacked strength in the Central
Government, and although it reduced the number of States from more than
three hundred to thirty-nine, it still perpetuated elements of
unwieldiness and discord. At the head of the Austrian Government, as
chief minister of the Emperor Ferdinand I, was Metternich, who for many
years had been the great reactionary leader of Europe. He was compelled
now to face conditions such as, in his long and varied career of
statecraft and diplomacy, he never had confronted. Ferdinand himself,
always a weak ruler, succumbed to the revolution provoked by his
minister, whose downfall was followed by the Emperor's abdication
(December 2, 1848) in favor of his nephew, Francis Joseph, the present
ruler of Austria.

The most interesting of the German struggles of 1848 was that in Saxony.
Robert Blum [Footnote: Blum, born at Cologne in 1807, was a writer and
an agitator, leader of the Liberal party in Saxony. He was executed in
November, 1848.--ED.] was present at a ball in Leipsic when the news
arrived of the