Not A Failure But Not A Success

The essential question from the lesson was, “were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really a failure as historians have said?” After the congress of Vienna the nationalist and liberals revolted against the government; however not all the revolts were very successful. During an activator in class we were introduced to Alexis de Tocqueville, a liberal French political thinker and historian. He said, “we are sleeping on a volcano. Do you not see that the earth trembles anew? A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.” We talked about what this quote meant and concluded it meant that liberals and nationalist are the sleeping volcano, and the conservatives are on top, and the liberals and nationalists are slowly building up to explode into a revolution. After we discussed the metaphor, we split up into groups and our teacher gave us a topic. Each group could have been chosen as a Decembrists revolt, France 1830, France 1848, Frankfort assembly 1848, or 1848 Hungary. We had to find the date, goals, opponent, and outcome about your assigned group that would later help create a survey monkey.

My groups revolution was Decembrists revolt. The Decembrists were liberals and wanted Constantine to rule; however he did not want to so the power went Tsar Alexander. The people hoped Tsar Alexander would make a constitutional monarchy, give Russia a constitution, and end serfdom. Alexander was not a good leader, he abused his power. He treated lower class like they were nothing. He gave Poland a constitution instead of Russia. This enraged many people of Russia, and they began to revolt. Our survey monkey consisted of multiple choice questions and open response. It was fun creating the survey monkey and it allowed me and my fellow classmates to learn more about the Decembrist topic.

There was only one great failure, and that was the Decembrist, the rest of the groups were mostly successful. The Decembrists revolt was a failure because nothing went right. Constantine did not want to take the throne, which left the power to Tsar Alexander. He abused the power and did not abolish surfs or create a constitutional monarchy. France in 1830 was another revolt. Charles X believed in absolutism and the people of French did not like. They set up barricades which causes Charles X to flee to England. The people of France were very happy about this. The historians were correct that none of the revolts were completely successful; however they weren’t all failures.