‘We are standing at a turning point in Europe’s fortunes,” warned the Prussian diplomat Joseph von Radowitz in February 1848. He was speaking of the year in which revolution spread through Europe at startling speed. In January, Sicily erupted in revolt against the Bourbon king Ferdinand II. Six weeks later, an insurrection in Paris overthrew the French king Louis-Philippe. By March, the flames of revolution were engulfing cities from Milan to Vienna, from Berlin to Budapest.
The 1848 revolutions occupy a strange place in European historiography. Most historians acknowledge their significance as