The Revolutions of 1848

The February revolution in France is undeniably the great bonfire that sent revolutionary sparks showering down across Europe and lighting everything on fire from the scent to the Danube. By the time the barricades were going up in Paris, the Italian peninsula was already a good seven or eight weeks into revolutionary upheaval. Italy had been a hot bed of revolutionary activity since the Congress of Vienna. Despite a brief flirtation with liberalism in his early 20s, Charles Albert had spent most of the last 25 years as a zealous reactionary conservative.