Failure or Success?

 Many revolutions started taking place in the nineteenth century following the French Revolution. In school, my class took a look at this quote by Alexis de Tocqueville, "We are sleeping on a volcano. Do you not see that the Earth trembles anew. A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon. We took some time to look at this quote and figure out what it means. We said that liberals and nationalists are the sleeping volcano, the winds are the ideas of liberalism and nationalism that are spreading among the people in Europe who are unhappy, the storm on the horizon is the actual revolution that is about to come, and the Earth is trembling anew because the countries are unstable. Next, we were given our essential question for the lesson which is as follows, "Were  the  revolutions  of 1830 and 1848 really failures as historians have concluded?" A second quote we looked at to get started was one that said that if France sneezes, all of Europe catches a cold, and this could be true because we already saw that with Napoleon causing Europe. The class then divided into groups and we made timelines bout successes and failures. Mine is below.

  The timeline starts all the way at the left with complete failure and ends at the right with complete success. In the middle is not really a success or failure and the others are partial failure and partial success. 

Now to get started learning about the actual revolutions. we were again put into groups and each group was assigned a revolution. My group had the Decembrist Revolt. The Decembrist revolt took place in Russia in 1825. The Decembrists were liberals and the poor working class who were fighting to put someone like Constantine back in power to make constitutional reforms like they were promised but never given before. However, Constantine did not want to take the throne, so it was given to Tzar Nicholas I who was not prepared for the position. The Decembrist feared that he would be much like  Tzar Alexander who they did not like. They fought against his rule and for constitutional changes, but Nicholas would not give in to anything. He had people killed that fought against him to try and keep everything under control. The Decembrist Revolt was ultimately a lure because nothing changed as a result and many people were killed. 

After learning about our revolution, we made a survey monkey on it for the rest of the class to take. The results were great and we could tell that a lot of people were learning about our revolution. Most of the class got everything right! Below is a screenshot of part of our quiz. 

 

 The Frankfurt Assembly in 1848 wasn't a complete failure like the Decembrists Revolt, but it could still be considered a partial  failure because although they were able to organize and come up with ideas, they weren't able to put them into place. The German states wanted to create a constitutional monarchy and unify all of the states under it, but eventually the Parliament at Frankfurt was accused of treason and destroyed, and the revolt wasn't a successful. The French Revolution of 1830 is hard to call it either a success or failure. It was successful for the reasons of Charles X fleeing and Louis Philippe takes the throne and gives a constitutional monarchy and more voting rights to the wealthy. However, radical liberals were still upset because they wanted a republic. Another example that wasn't a failure or success would be like the events that took place in Hungary in 1848. A revolt breaks out and Metternich flees. Then, the nationalists in Budapest wanted an independent government, an end to serfdom, and a written constitution to protect their basic rights. The Austrian government was overwhelmed and agreed, but only temporarily. Once they gained control again with Russia's help, many were imprisoned, exiled, or executed.

I learned about the above revolts by taking my classmates quizzes on the revolutions that they made!

All in all, I think that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were not failures like historians have said. I think that the only one I would call a failure is the Decembrists Revolt. The others were not successes, but definitely were not complete failures. The people were able to put up a fight against their government and see changes although the changes still didn't satisfy everyone. Even if the change didn't last long, the people were still able to get what they wanted across to the government in order for them to make a change. The people of this time were able to make their voices heard.