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It would not be long before the situation exploded. On January 4, a riot erupted after a citizen had tried to knock a cigar out of the hand of a particularly obnoxious soldier. Six civilians were killed. By the end of the month, similar eruptions would take place in the south, where "the Sicilian countryside was literally in flames as peasants joined the revolution, torching tax records and land registers in village halls."

Before the year was out, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Venice would see their own revolts. As tempting as it might be to describe the revolutions as spreading across Europe, however, it's important to note that the early riots in Italy didn't exactly cause the later riots elsewhere. Rapport emphasizes both that there was something in the air, across Europe, ready to explode, and that each local rebellion had its own particular causes.

In the end, unable to relieve the food shortages, economic downturns, increased populations, and political stagnation, local rulers were forced to loosen their reins and entertain the idea of such liberal reforms as constitutions and universal male suffrage. The impact of all this was immediate and profound: "In three short days," exclaimed the poet Georg Herwegh in Paris, "you have broken with the past and raised the banner for all the people of the earth." German liberals declared a Völkerfrühling—the Springtime of Peoples—a name, as Rapport notes, "pregnant with the liberating hopes of the revolutions, when national aspirations suddenly seemed possible."

The enthusiasm created by these early uprisings, however, would not last long. For the initial political victories won by rioters and revolutionaries to bear fruit, liberals needed to be united against the conservative governments that, although weakened, still held power. Unity, however, is exactly what the liberals failed to achieve. Some in the middle class, for example, encouraged moderate forms of rebellion, hoping to loosen the grip of absolutist rule in their countries. Working-class radicals, however, tried to fan the small fires of local revolts into continent-wide revolution, hoping to turn 1848 into another 1789.

Split in two, the liberals ended up helping the conservatives. Radicals and "the threat of social revolution and working-class disorder allowed conservatives to feed on the widespread public fear of social disintegration. Anyone who had anything to lose from further chaos was drawn progressively away from the political center to support the forces of law and order." Eventually, the conservatives would use these techniques to regain popular support, but, from the beginning, they were able to survive by keeping their strength united.

One figure who capitalized on liberal infighting was Otto von Bismarck. Distressed at the fall of the old absolutism, the newly elected representative to the Prussian parliament worked hard to brand liberalism as "the ideology solely of the propertied, urban middle class—a narrow social group." Peasants, artisans, and retailers, Bismarck argued, were betraying their own best social and economic interests when they rallied around liberalism. The strategy worked, and in the end, popular support became, as Rapport notes, "enrolled behind the traditional elites, an alliance that would be invincible against liberalism and radicalism."

Although many of the reforms sought by revolutionaries would not be achieved until the next century, the struggles of 1848 did bring the abolition of serfdom, compulsory labor, and dues for the peasantry, as well as a limited expansion of male suffrage. The lessons of 1848, however, are larger than a list of established rights and abolished injustices. As Rapport rightly contends, the revolutions of 1848 focus our attention on a problem that still confronts modern societies today: how to reconcile social justice with individual liberty. It was this tension that shattered the fragile unity of the revolutions' first supporters. Liberals and radicals squabbled over individual liberty and social justice, while the peasants, once their immediate situation improved, sided again with the traditional authority.

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