1848: The Springtime of Peoples

EPILOGUE · 1848–1849 · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

Watch the map light up, because nothing like it had ever happened: revolution as continental weather. Palermo rises in January; Paris in February (three days, a fallen monarchy, a Second Republic decreeing universal male suffrage — the electorate jumps from 250,000 to nine million); and then, at telegraph-and-railway speed, the wave the markers trace — Vienna (Metternich flees in a laundry cart, 13 March), Budapest (the 15th), Berlin (the 18th), Milan’s Five Days (18th–22nd), Venice, Prague, fifty German and Italian cities. The red zones show the deepest risings: the liberal Rhineland and sout

The turn: Paris, 22–24 February 1848.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.