"Who are these ministers? They are not the Government of Austria!
Austria is now nowhere but in my camp; I and my army, we are Austria;
and when we shall have beaten the Italians we shall reconquer the
Empire for the Emperor!" And old Radetzky was right--but the imbecile
"responsible" ministers at Vienna heeded him not.

LONDON, February, 1852.

X.

THE PARIS RISING--THE FRANKFORT ASSEMBLY.

MARCH 18th, 1852.

As early as the beginning of April, 1848, the revolutionary torrent
had found itself stemmed all over the Continent of Europe by the
league which those classes of society that had profited by the first
victory immediately formed with the vanquished. In France, the petty
trading class and the Republican faction of the bourgeoisie had
combined with the Monarchist bourgeoisie against the proletarians; in
Germany and Italy, the victorious bourgeoisie had eagerly courted the
support of the feudal nobility, the official bureaucracy, and the
army, against the mass of the people and the petty traders. Very soon
the united Conservative and Counter-Revolutionary parties again
regained the ascendant. In England, an untimely and ill-prepared
popular demonstration (April 10th) turned out a complete and decisive
defeat of the popular party. In France, two similar movements (16th
April and 15th May) were equally defeated. In Italy, King Bomba
regained his authority by a single stroke on the 15th May. In Germany,
the different new bourgeois Governments and their respective
constituent Assemblies consolidated themselves, and if the eventful
15th of May gave rise, in Vienna, to a popular victory, this was an
event of merely secondary importance, and may be considered the last
successful flash of popular energy. In Hungary the movement appeared
to turn into the quiet channel of perfect legality, and the Polish
movement, as we have seen in our last, was stifled in the bud by
Prussian bayonets. But as yet nothing was decided as to the eventual
turn which things would take, and every inch of ground lost by the
Revolutionary parties in the different countries only tended to close
their ranks more and more for the decisive action.

The decisive action drew near. It could be fought in France only; for
France, as long as England took no part in the revolutionary strife,
or as Germany remained divided, was, by its national independence,
civilization, and centralization, the only coun