Discuss The Role Of Politics During The French Revolution

Lester B. Pearson once said, “Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.” Politics were a very important part during the 19th century, not only did they help some but they also hurt others economically and socially. Politics gave people opportunities with new acts or laws that gave them the stability that allowed them to live with some peace in mind, but it also hurt others that would have to give something up so that others could live peacefully. The French Revolution and Napoleonic wars caused political and social instability that affected Europe because there were many issues between the public, the government, and other countries. During the first part of the 19th century there were economic movements that came to be known as the Industrial
King Louis XVI angered the third estate when he over taxed them in order to fix the financial problems that he and his wife, Marie Antoinette, caused by their extravagant lifestyle. Louis did not have any morals, he did not care about his people or about what happened to them all he cared about was himself and his money. The problems in France continued with the Napoleonic wars that were a series of wars led by Napoleon and were fought between France, Russia, Great Britain, Austria, Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Naples . Many patterns were seen, when one war was over, another one soon followed, this pattern continued until the final battle where Napoleon was defeated. Napoleon was defeated by Germany at the battle of Waterloo, consequently in order to keep conservative order in Europe the Concert of Europe was created, and it kept one nation from having too much power over another . After these series of wars, there was political instability that affected the conservative order, it was called nationalism. Napoleon introduced the idea of Nationalism when he united his country and fought for it, so that they were all considered equal under the law. Nationalism caused trouble for countries that had control over others, for example, in the document, “The German Confederation Issues The Carlsbad Decrees” on
The wars of 1848 caused social unrest throughout the continent and it took the unifications of Germany and Italy to begin to fix it. In the document on page 528 titled, “Mark Twain Describes the Austrian Parliament” , it states in the introduction “The specific content of the debate did not interest Twain, but he was very taken with the way it illustrated the paralysis of the Austrian parliament”. Mark Twain did not care about the debate, but rather more about the problems that Austria was facing against Hungary, and how the government was doing a terrible job at keeping the peace. The problems with Austria continued with Italy, Italy consisted of many small states that were not part of one single state. Italians hoped to free themselves from Austrian domination, but did not want to create a republic in the process . They achieved the goal of creating a nation-state,with the help of Count Camillo Cavour, whose idea was to combine their army with other countries’ armies. Cavour created an alliance with Napoleon III, who was very impressed with Cavour’s tactics to unite Italy. The alliance with France allowed Italy to drive out some of Austria, but they were later betrayed by Napoleon III. By March 1861 Italian Unification was achieved, which made many Italians joyful, but on the other hand other states like Austria that were dominated and forced to become