February Revolution

It was not only Austria that faced this problem; European nations including Prussia, France, the United Kingdom, and Russia were all dominated by aristocratic officers.

This situation persisted until after the World War. Having been baptized by the fires of the Great War, the aristocratic officer corps suffered heavy losses, and without sufficient reserves to replenish their ranks, they ultimately lost their dominance within the military.

By comparison, Austria was relatively fortunate. The dominant force was the German aristocracy, who, due to tradition, generally possessed decent military literacy.

In this era, these aristocratic officers were rare intellectuals. As long as someone stood behind them with a whip to force them to work hard, they were perfectly capable of serving as junior officers.

For the future of Austria, for the happiness of the people of Europe, and for the development of all mankind, Franz felt a sense of Manifest Destiny—no, in this case, it should be the will of God.

Regardless, he had decided to take on the great task of reforming the next generation of the Austrian aristocracy, and the beginning was already underway.

The wheels of history rolled forward. After the January Revolution broke out in Sicily, it quickly spread to Northern Italy. To safeguard the security of Lombardy and Venice, the Vienna government dispatched reinforcements to the region, and the situation was temporarily stabilized.

Before the outbreak of the Great Revolution, the European working class lived in dire misery. Taking France as an example:

Wage levels for workers were extremely low. Male workers earned about 2 Francs per day, female workers about 1 Franc, while child laborers aged 13 to 16 earned only 75 centimes, and those aged 8 to 12 earned a mere 45 centimes.

At the time, the cheapest black bread cost over 30 centimes per kilogram, meaning the income of the working class could barely sustain their survival.

(Data from 1840)

On the surface, it might seem that the treatment of male workers was passable, while that of women and children was very low.

In reality, capitalists were not fools; they maximized their profits by extracting every ounce of life from their workers, and male workers were forced to shoulder the most grueling physical labor.

They worked nearly fifteen to sixteen hours a day. Naturally, the more they worked, the faster their physical strength was depleted, and the energy they needed to replenish was substantial.

This could be seen in their life expectancy. The heavy labor kept the average lifespan of workers under 40 years, and in many industries involving intense physical labor, it was even lower than 35.

In 1846, heat and drought caused a poor harvest of wheat and beans. France's staple food supply was severely threatened, causing grain prices to skyrocket.

In 1845, the price of 100 liters of wheat was 17.15 Francs, but by 1847, it had risen to 43 Francs. In the Upper Rhine Department, it soared to 49.5 Francs, and in some areas, it even exceeded 50 Francs.

Grain prices rose generally by 100% to 150% in northern and northeastern France, and the price of bread tripled.

Everything was rising except for wages, so life for the working class was naturally becoming unbearable.

To make matters worse, the British economic crisis of 1847 spilled over into France.

The rise in grain prices had nothing to do with the farmers; they simply suffered a sharp decline in income due to lower yields, leading to a drop in France's internal purchasing power.

Against this backdrop, cheap industrial goods from the United Kingdom flooded in, dealing a heavy blow to French industry and commerce.

In 1847, the industrial output of Paris was 1.463 billion Francs; by early 1848, it had plummeted to 677 million Francs.

After being cut in half and then discounted by another ten percent, one could see from these figures alone that French industry and commerce were in agony. In just one year, thousands of French enterprises went bankrupt.

Behind the wave of bankruptcies, the birth of a massive army of the unemployed was inevitable, and social contradictions in France grew increasingly acute.

In this context, the July Monarchy not only failed to produce any effective measures but was instead rife with corruption and endless scandals.

When the Labor Protection Act formulated by the Austrian government reached Paris, it quickly caused a sensation among the working class.

The slow-witted Paris government wanted to block the news, but it was already too late—and, of course, they lacked the executive capacity to do so anyway.

Large-scale worker strikes began in Paris and spread rapidly across France, eventually affecting other parts of Europe as well.

Simultaneously with the general strikes, the peasantry erupted in anti-hunger movements. Starting in July 1847, farmers bankrupted by poor harvests and debt crises launched a wave of grain seizures.

They destroyed landlord estates, forcibly occupied grain shops, and killed grain speculators. This movement spread to the cities, where unemployed workers, unable to bear their hunger any longer, joined in. This became known in history as the "Bread Riots."

The constant collapse of social order also fueled the bourgeoisie's dissatisfaction with the government.

Everyone had already suffered heavy losses in the economic crisis and had just been preparing to make a profit on grain to soothe their wounded spirits.

Instead, they found the French peasantry too fierce and the working class's fighting power quite formidable; if people couldn't afford to buy, they simply took it by force. How were the capitalists supposed to survive?

At this point, the French bourgeoisie also split. Aside from a few who benefited from the status quo, the majority were opponents of the July Monarchy.

This included the dynastic opposition and the republicans, with the latter further divided into the National Party and the Reform Party. Although their political agendas differed, they stood together temporarily to oppose the July Monarchy.

The incompetence of the Guizot government was evident. The opposition launched 70 banquets of various sizes across the country, and in many places, revolutionary slogans were openly shouted without being suppressed.

The government's incompetence allowed the revolutionaries to see through their facade, and they began preparing for an armed uprising.

For the people of Paris, street protests were as common as daily meals. On February 22, 1848, dissatisfied with the government's ban on the Banquet Campaign, the people of Paris took to the streets to protest.

Franz did not know exactly what happened. In any case, history seemed to have changed slightly; that very evening, the people of Paris rose up, and the February Revolution broke out.

After the uprising began, the ranks of the revolution expanded rapidly. Students, workers, citizens, and capitalists all participated—though, of course, few capitalists picked up weapons to fight; they provided support from behind the scenes.

Awakened by the revolution, the Guizot government hurriedly mobilized the army to suppress it, but unfortunately, they underestimated the bond between the French military and the people.

Even within the army, there was no shortage of revolutionary supporters. Most of the National Guard refused to carry out the government's orders, and some units even defected directly.

Franz could only rely on his imagination for what happened next; more detailed intelligence was no longer so easy to obtain.

In short, on the afternoon of February 23, 1848, in an attempt to ease the situation, King Louis-Philippe of France dismissed the Guizot government and appointed the liberal Molé to form a cabinet, hoping to quell the anger of the bourgeoisie.