the estrangement of the two classes, or
of otherwise comprehending the necessities of the situation. There was
confusion in the public mind, confusion in the ruling councils. The
remnant of the German Diet deputies, and a few Slavonians, acting the
part of spies for their friends at Olmuetz, besides a few of the more
revolutionary Polish deputies, sat in permanency; but instead of
taking part resolutely, they lost all their time in idle debates upon
the possibility of resisting the imperial army without overstepping
the bounds of constitutional conventionalities. The committee of
safety, composed of deputies from almost all the popular bodies of
Vienna, although resolved to resist, was yet dominated by a majority
of burghers and petty tradesmen, who never allowed it to follow up any
determined, energetic line of action. The council of the Academic
Legion passed heroic resolutions, but was in no way able to take the
lead. The working classes, distrusted, disarmed, disorganized, hardly
emerging from the intellectual bondage of the old _regime_, hardly
awaking, not to a knowledge, but to a mere instinct of their social
position and proper political line of action, could only make
themselves heard by loud demonstrations, and could not be expected to
be up to the difficulties of the moment. But they were ready--as they
ever were in Germany during the revolution--to fight to the last, as
soon as they obtained arms.

That was the state of things in Vienna. Outside, the reorganized
Austrian army flushed with the victories of Radetzky in Italy; sixty
or seventy thousand men well armed, well organized, and if not well
commanded at least possessing commanders. Inside, confusion, class
division, disorganization; a national guard part of which was resolved
not to fight at all, part irresolute, and only the smallest part ready
to act; a proletarian mass, powerful by numbers but without leaders,
without any political education, subject to panic as well as to fits
of fury almost without cause, a prey to every false rumor spread
about, quite ready to fight, but unarmed, at least in the beginning,
and incompletely armed, and barely organized when at last they were
led to battle; a helpless Diet, discussing theoretical quibbles while
the roof over their heads was almost burning; a leading committee
without impulse or energy. Everything was changed from the days of
March and May, when, in the counter-revolutionary camp, all was
confusion,