Vienna October Uprising in 1848
The Vienna October Uprising of 1848 , often also called the “ Vienna October Revolution ”, was the last uprising of the Austrian Revolution of 1848/49 .
procedure
The October 6 uprising
When Austrian imperial troops were to march from Vienna against rebellious Hungary on October 6, 1848 , the Viennese workers, students and rebel troops who sympathized with the Hungarians tried to prevent the march. The beginning of the Vienna October Revolution was marked by the mutiny of a grenadier regiment in the workers' suburb of Gumpendorf , which ignored the order to move out and damaged the facilities of its own barracks . The Academic Legion and parts of the bourgeois National Guard joined the revolting forces. Major General Hugo von Bredy was charged with leading an imperial resistance. His attempt to have the arches of the damaged Tabor Bridge, which had been used by the rebels to erect barricades, repaired by pioneers and thus enable the troops to march to Hungary failed: Bredy lost his being in a battle with the rebels Leben and the regular troops were forced to withdraw in the face of the numerical superiority of the opposing party. In the following there was extensive street fighting in the inner city of Vienna, with people even perishing in St. Stephen's Cathedral .
War Minister Count Baillet von Latour , who had ordered the troops to march, was lynched by the angry crowd . After the rebels succeeded in conquering the rich Imperial Armory in Renngasse, the imperial military left the city so that Vienna was in the hands of the revolutionaries.
Emperor Ferdinand and his court fled to Olomouc on October 7th with the new railway , the train driver was the first German-speaking train driver of the Danube Monarchy , the Danzig migrant Carl Grundmann .
Backlash from the Imperialists
The Croats, who, under their Banus Joseph Jelačić von Bužim, were advancing to help the imperial family in Vienna, had reached Hungarian Altenburg on October 6 and received news of the murder of the Minister of War. On the orders of the commanding general in Prague, Prince Alfred I zu Windisch-Graetz , two corps moved from Bohemia to Vienna to put down the revolt there. It concerned the II. Corps under Field Marshal Lieutenant (FML) Laszlo Wrbna and a newly established reserve corps under Count Serbelloni. By October 9th, Windisch-Graetz had got the railway line between Prague and Lundenburg in his hands and thereby secured the transport and supplies of his troops. On October 10th the Croatian outposts reached the Laaer Berge from the east, on the 12th they were united with the regular troops of Vienna under FML Prince Maximilian von Auersperg .
On October 15, Prince Windisch-Graetz was appointed field marshal and supreme commander of all imperial and royal troops outside Italy . On October 19, he moved his headquarters from Olmütz to Lundenburg , and three days later to Stammersdorf , where his army gathered. Other troops had crossed the Danube near Krems and arrived in Vienna from the west.
The Reichstag was moved to Kremsier on October 22nd . On the same day the encirclement of Vienna was completed, the I. Corps of the Croats, under the Banus, was set up from Kaiser-Ebersdorf to Himberg in order to close off the St. Marx line . Prince Windisch-Graetz arrived at his headquarters in Hetzendorf on October 24th . The Banus now received all further orders directly from him. Brigittenau was occupied on October 24th , and by the 27th the troops of the FML Ramberg division had advanced from the Au towards the Prater .
General storm of the imperial
On October 26th, Prince Windisch-Graetz ordered the bombardment of Vienna. The defenders were led by the Polish general Josef Bem , who had been in the city since October 14th. On October 28, the bombardment continued; Prince Windisch-Graetz commanded the attack on the inner city districts from the Laaerberg . Jelačić's corps attacked the suburbs of Landstrasse , Erdberg and Weißgerber . A division under FML Hartlieb stepped up from the Walltor and stormed eleven barricades one after the other , until around 7 p.m., after an eight-hour battle, the entire Jägerzeile up to the Danube Canal had been taken. General Csorich commanded the troops loyal to the emperor in Leopoldstadt and later took over command of the units that enclosed the inner city. His units advanced against the Matzleinsdorf line and against the Vienna- Gloggnitz train station .
All parts of the II Corps under FML von Auersperg used against Vienna remained in their positions, only the Grammont Brigade was withdrawn from Leopoldstadt to oppose the Hungarians reported from the east. The Parrot Brigade occupied the Nussdorf line without a fight and advanced to the Alserbach and disarmed the civil forces there.
Battle of Schwechat
In the meantime the army of the Hungarian insurgents had passed the Leitha on October 28th and Fischa on the 29th . Towards the evening of October 29, the imperial side saw the Hungarian columns under the command of General János Móga on both sides of the road leading from Schwadorf to Schwechat , where they took up a line-up on the heights. On October 30th at around 9 a.m. the Hungarians had reached the positions of the Banus near Mannswörth and opened the fight with heavy gunfire. The strength of the Hungarians in the following battle near Schwechat was about 23,500 men and 71 guns. It was only towards evening that the Banus was able to repel the enemy attack through the intervention of a brigade under General Zeisberg .
When the insurgents in the city reported an alleged victory for the Hungarians, the commander-in-chief of the revolting National Guard, Messenhauser , broke the ceasefire and reopened the hostilities. Windisch-Graetz's answer was a heavy bombardment of the suburbs of Mariahilf , Gumpendorf and Wieden , which brought him completely into possession of the capital on October 31. Windisch-Graetz had meanwhile increased his force to 33 battalions, 52 squadrons and 198 artillery pieces. After the imperial troops had regained control of the capital Vienna by October 31, the main army was sent to Hungary to eliminate the last threat to the empire.
consequences
The imperial troops also recaptured the inner city on October 31 . Wenzel Messenhauser, the most important leader of the rebels, the journalists Alfred Julius Becher and Hermann Jellinek and Robert Blum , a member of the left wing of the Liberals (Democrats) in the Frankfurt National Assembly , were executed in the following days.
Blum's execution on November 9, 1848, against which Prince Windisch-Graetz had spoken out, was a clear political signal from the Austrian Prime Minister Felix Fürst zu Schwarzenberg to the German National Assembly and once again reflected the political powerlessness of the Paulskirche Assembly: Blum, who as a member of parliament de jure had parliamentary immunity, was de facto executed without the consent of the National Assembly, even without questioning it. A total of around 2000 people were killed in the fighting.
Most of the achievements of the March Revolution were lost and Austria entered the phase of neo-absolutism . The peasant liberation and the democratization of local government remained important results of the revolution.
The success of the imperial troops in Vienna also gave a boost to the reaction in Prussia. A few days after the October Uprising in Vienna was suppressed, on November 10th, General Wrangel marched into Berlin, blew up the Prussian National Assembly in the Schauspielhaus and declared the state of siege on November 12th and, finally, martial law on the Prussian capital on November 14th .
See also
- March Revolution , sub-article Austria
- Revolution of 1848/49 in the Austrian Empire
literature
- Peter Enne: A document of the fear of death - Latour's offer of resignation from October 6, 1848 , in: Viribus Unitis , Annual Report 2010 of the Army History Museum . Vienna 2011, pp. 92–99, ISBN 978-3-902551-19-1 .
- Wolfgang Häusler : From mass poverty to the labor movement. Democracy and social issues in the Viennese revolution of 1848. Youth and people, Vienna / Munich 1979, ISBN 3-7141-6550-9 (publisher's edition of the habilitation thesis).
- Wolfgang Häusler, Ernst Violand (ed.): The social history of the revolution in Austria 1848. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-215-05479-5 .
- Wolfgang Häusler, Ernst Bruckmüller (Ed.): 1848. Revolution in Austria. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-215-13631-7 .
- Wolfgang Häusler: The battle near Schwechat on October 30, 1848. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1977.
- Rudolf Kiszling : The revolution in the Austrian Empire. (Two volumes), Universum Verlag, Vienna 1948/49.
- Herbert Steiner : Karl Marx in Vienna. The labor movement between revolution and restoration 1848 . Europaverlag, Vienna Munich Zurich 1978.
Web links
- Friedrich Engels. Revolution and counter-revolution in Germany . Chapter XI: The October Uprising in Vienna and the successor Chapter XII: The Storming of Vienna - The betrayal of Vienna
- Entry on the Vienna October Uprising of 1848 in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )