The liberal revolutions of 1848 in Italy, Galicia, Bohemia and Hungary rock the Habsburg Empire, and in Vienna itself, the revolutionists drive out Metternich and gain from Emperor Ferdinand a liberal constitution, which a constituent assembly soon replaces with a more democratic one.

After a new outbreak Vienna is bombarded by imperial forces, and absolutism is gradually but steadily restored in Austria.

Before two decades pass, however, the Habsburgs will lose Lombardy and Venetia to a unified Italy and will be forced by Hungarian moderate nationalists to create a dual state known as the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, an anachronism in an increasingly nationalistic age.

The failure of the German-Magyar minority to provide a satisfactory status for the other nationalities, notably the Slavs, plays a major role in bringing about the Great War.