ABSTRACT
The various reasons advanced to explain the failure of the 1848 Revolutions one seems to escape general notice. To succeed, revolutions need more than resolute revolutionaries—and not all the 1848 revolutionaries were very resolute. The 1848 Revolutions failed because after the first shock, the governments concerned still wanted to survive and retained the means to do so. The Prussian army failed to suppress the revolt in Berlin when it began solely because of the temporary mental paralysis of Frederick William IV, who, like Pius IX, had briefly lost faith in the old order and flirted instead with the new. The 1848 Revolutions failed because after the first shock, the governments concerned still wanted to survive and retained the means to do so. One problem which was neither Liberal nor National, but related solely to power politics, was also raised in 1848.
