Adonis Diaries

Why popular uprisings start at dawn of Spring? A few consequences

Posted on: June 1, 2011

Why popular uprisings start at dawn of Spring?

I suggest that writing down wish lists for the next year be shifted to first of March: People feel upbeat and with rejuvenated energy to carry through many of their fresh wishes.  I would say that my prefered season is Spring, early months of Spring, simply because people get on the march.

The year 1848 was the Spring of the people throughout Europe:  The people demanded constitutional monarchies, everywhere absolute monarchies could not be changed.  France got its Republic back. 

It was contagious:  A single conflagration in a city spread like wild-fire to the entire country.  Barricades were the tactics of choice and communicating with the soldiers.  For example, the kids sitting by the soldiers would talk to soldiers: “You will not open fire before warning us. Okay?” and the soldiers to reply: “Do not worry, we have no orders yet”.

Spring in 1848 started on February 22 in Paris.  The night before the call for gathering, the organizers decided to call-off the demonstration, but it was too late.  On Feb. 23, the people demands the resignation of the Prime minister Guizot and shout “Long life reforms”. 

The monarch Louis Philippe accepts the resignation of his PM.  The guards at the Tuileries open fire on the demonstrators.  The people carry the dead bodies on carriages and exhibit them below the balcony of the monarch, shouting: “Vengeance, vengeance, they are slaughtering our kids”.  The marchers then attack the Tuileries in many directions and chased out the guards.  On Feb. 25, the King abdicates.

Russia monarch, Nicolas I, is preparing a war against the new French Republic proclaiming that the war is in the name of “God’s justice and for the sacred principles of the hereditary order” that the convention of Vienna in 1815 had laid down among all monarchs in Europe.

On March 3rd, the Hungarian lawyer Louis Kossuth demands the creation of a parliamentary regime, and head a delegation toward Vienna, Capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Prince Metternich resigns (designer of the Vienna new political arrangement in 1815) and comte Battyany is named Prime Minister of Hungaria.

On March 17, the people in Milan set up barricades.  Lombardi in Italy is in insurrection. Five days of uprising convinced Marechal Radetzky to retire his troops from the region of Milan.

In Berlin on March 17, King Frederic-Guillaume 4 bow down temporarily and accord freedom of the press and convoke the Diet.  The people march below the windows of the king; the troops open fire.  The king announces conceding to a Constitutional democracy and move his residence to Potsdam, far from the Capital.

The king of Munich abdicates.  The insurrection spread to Leipzig, Hanover, Wurttemberg.  Poland is agitating.  Monarchs and soldiers believed that killing a few demonstrators will quickly establish Law and Order:  The victims were paraded as martyrs below kings’ windows.

The year 1848 ended in massive counterattacks by all European monarchies and the year-round revolts are tamed for a while.

The “Arab Spring” revolts are overflowing to southern European States (Spain, Potugal, Greece…)and spreading to other European States.  Youth sit-ins in major squares in the various Capitals are demanding that they share in the political decisons concerning their future.

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adonis49

adonis49

adonis49

June 2011
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