161st anniversaries don’t really have the ring of major significance. But there’s still a certain added interest in reading about events which happened ‘on this day in history’, and that has been my experience during the last weeks, looking at documents from late October 1848. Those days marked the end of the revolution in Vienna. Following a violent attempt to overthrow the government earlier in the month, the Emperor and his court had fled, leaving the city governed by an uneasy alliance of the Reichstag, Security Committee, National and Civil Guards, and students. In reprisal, Imperial forces beseiged the city, finally forcing its surrender on 31 October.
In a world of 24 hour rolling news and almost inescapable communications technology, it’s hard to appreciate the importance to both besieged and besiegers of printed placards and flyers. But the sense of urgency conveyed by many of them gives an insight, as well as being a stark reminder of both the limitations and advances of contemporary technology. For example, a printed dispatch From the tower of St Stephen’s describes the approach of troops, but explains that the fog makes it impossible to identify them. Peering through the fog from a cathedral tower may have been the only way to see what was happening outside the city, but at least the latest printing technology meant that the limited information available could be made known as quickly and widely as possible. More immediate still is a small, unsigned and undated flyer declaring the intention not to be moved “until the military retreats from Vienna for ever”. Was it made to distribute to fellow-citizens to show the defenders’ morale, or to be smuggled or thrown over the walls to the besieging army?
In their official proclamations, the remaining city authorities were obviously keen to present an image of order, unity and courage, counteracting the besiegers’ claims that Vienna was in the hands of anarchists and terrorists. In fact such extremists were officially disapproved of within the city too; one placard warns of them rather than reactionaries as the enemy within. But political radicals certainly were among those governing the city, and extreme language was used: the Student Committee proclaimed that “the skulls of our murdering and ravaging foes will shatter” on the barricades, while the Commander of the National Guard, Wenzel Messenhauser, called Windischgrätz “the enemy of the whole human race”.
Eventually the majority of the city authorities were forced to accept the bitter truth that the defending forces were simply too weak and ill-supplied to resist the Imperial army if it came to pitched battle. After days of encouraging heroic defence, the Guard command issued a proclamation telling the Viennese, “You have fought like heroes; accept the inevitable like men.” The inevitable, however, would be hard to accept: vicious reprisals and a loss of the freedoms gained in March 1848. All of it 161 years ago this November.
[SR]
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