The Revolutions of 1848

In 1848 nationalist and liberal revolutions swept Europe, starting in France and spreading to the German states, Italian states, Austria, and Hungary. The revolutionaries demanded constitutions, national unification, and end of feudal remnants. Almost all the revolutions failed, crushed by conservative regimes within a year. But they marked a generation of revolutionaries (including Karl Marx, who published the Communist Manifesto in 1848) and set the stage for the successful unifications of the 1860s and 1870s.