the assent of the government
to a petition based on the catch-words of the Revolution. [Sidenote: Fall
of Metternich, March 13, 1848.] The authorities, taken by surprise, were
forced to temporize and agreed to lay the petition before the emperor.
Meanwhile round the hall of the diet a riot had broken out; the soldiers
intervened and blood was shed. The middle classes now joined the rebels;
and the riots had become a revolution. Threatened by the violence of the
mob, Metternich, on the evening of the 13th of March, escaped from the
Hofburg and passed into exile in England.

The fall of Metternich was the signal for the outburst of the storm, not in
Austria only, but throughout central Europe. In Hungary, on the 31st of
March, the government was forced to consent to a new constitution which
virtually erected Hungary into an independent state. On the 8th of April a
separate constitution was promised to Bohemia; and if the petition of the
Croats for a similar concession was rejected, this was due to the armed mob
of Vienna, which was in close alliance with Kossuth and the Magyars. The
impotence of the Austrian government in this crisis was due to the
necessity of keeping the bulk of the Austrian forces in Italy, where the
news of Metternich's fall had also led to a concerted rising against the
Habsburg rule (see ITALY). Upon the fortunes of war in the peninsula
depended the ultimate issue of the revolutions so far as Austria was
concerned.

The army and the prestige of the imperial tradition were, in fact, the two
sheet-anchors that enabled the Habsburg monarchy to weather the storm. For
the time the latter was the only one available; but it proved invaluable,
especially in Germany, in preventing any settlement, until Radetzky's
victory of Novara had set free the army, and thus once more enabled Austria
to back her policy by force. The Austrian government, in no position to
refuse, had consented to send delegates from its German provinces to the
parliament of united Germany, which met at Frankfort on the 18th of May
1848. The question at [v.03 p.0015] once arose of the place of the Austrian
monarchy in united Germany. Were only its German provinces to be included?
Or was it to be incorporated whole? As to the first, the Austrian
government would not listen to the suggestion of a settlement which would
have split the monarchy in half and subjected it to a double allegiance. As
to the second, German patriots could not stomac