Revolution of 1848 in Luxembourg

After being annexed by the French in the Napoleonic Wars, Luxembourg was elevated to a Grand Duchy and awarded to the Dutch King by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. While it was supposed to be ruled by him in personal union, rather than as part of his kingdom, the King-Grand Duke William I treated it merely as a province of the Netherlands. (At the time, modern Belgium was part of the Netherlands, so Luxembourg was not separated from Dutch territory.) The Grand Duchy would also be part of the German Confederation (the successor to the Holy Roman Empire), and its fortress was therefore garrisoned by Confederation troops.

Luxembourg was profoundly affected by the Belgian Revolution of 1830. Many in Luxembourg supported the Belgian secessionists, and indeed most of the country was de facto annexed by the new Belgian state, while only the capital Luxembourg City remained loyal to the Dutch King, as it was garrisoned by Prussian troops. The situation was only resolved in 1839, when the Dutch King consented to the partition of Luxembourg. In the Treaty of London of 1839, the French-speaking parts of Luxembourg were carved off to form part of Belgium, while the remaining German-speaking part made up the rump Grand-Duchy, and would continue to be ruled by the Dutch King-Grand Duke, even though it was now territorially separated from the Netherlands. It would also remain in the German Confederation.

In 1841, William II authorised the first constitution of Luxembourg.[1] This document left all meaningful power in the hands of the sovereign. The legislature provided by the Constitution, the Assembly of Estates, was little more than a shadow parliament. It was elected indirectly, the ballots were not secret, and the vast majority of the population were excluded from political life by a system of census suffrage, requiring the payment of 10 florins per year in tax. At the elections of 1845, in the canton of Luxembourg, only 956 out of 28,477 inhabitants were eligible to vote.[2]^: 22 The Assembly's sessions were held in private, and its assent was required only for penal and fiscal laws, the civil list, and the extraordinary budget. In 1841, this constitution was generally welcomed, but over the years, voices started to be raised in the Assembly of Estates, demanding a return to the civil liberties which had applied under the Belgian annexation of 1830-1839. Various other issues were a cause for discontent, such as the muzzling of the press, the ban on associations, the exorbitant expenses of the civil list, and lack of judicial and educational reforms.[1]^: 31

There were several famines in the 1840s, of which the poor were the worst affected. Little was done by the authorities to deal with the consequences of these crises, at least in the eyes of the people. Furthermore, unpopular taxes caused widespread discontent. Complaints were also raised about the annual payment of 150,000 guilders to the sovereign, which weighed heavily on the state's budget. In the 1840s the government additionally restricted traditional rights of pasture and gathering firewood; the rural poor saw this as an unfair attack on their ancient rights. The 1845 law forbidding straw roofs in houses, introduced after several destructive fires, likewise burdened the poor, who could scarcely afford the required renovations.[2]^: 21

On top of all this, unemployment and price increases turned the economic problems into a social crisis. More and more frequently, vagabonds and beggars appeared in whole groups, demanding charity from property owners.[2]^: 21

Dissatisfaction had built up over several years, and was only waiting for a trigger. The February revolution of 1848 in Paris created a revolutionary dynamic across the continent, which threatened the monarchic and absolutist order.

Amongst other things, the protest took the form of sending petitions to the authorities. Petitions, far from being a recent invention, were an old right. What was unusual was their extent, as 70 petitions were sent to the government around March, which had been more or less spontaneously drafted and signed in over 60 localities.

View of Ettelbruck, the centre of the uprising, in 1944

At the same time, a broad protest movement started. The centre of the uprising was Ettelbruck, in the north of the country. On 11 March, several discontented people declared a republic and sang the Marseillaise. The gathered people blocked the way of the gendarmes who appeared on the scene, and tried to provoke them into using their guns. Fearing an extension of the uprising, the government sent further gendarmes to Ettelbruck, as a market was to take place there on 14 March.[2]^: 22

On that day, the police tried to arrest several of the ringleaders, which threatened to escalate the situation. An angry crowd gathered outside the gendarmerie station, and started throwing stones and breaking windows.[2]^: 22 A gallows was erected outside the house of the local head of the gendarmerie.[2]^: 23 The people's anger was also felt by other representatives of the authorities: a crowd attacked the house of the local tax collector. In other localities, the popular disdain for the government likewise made itself felt, and its representatives had to deal with various humiliations and insults.

In the capital, a crowd gathered on 16 March. Workers from the suburbs assembled in front of the house of the mayor, Fernand Pescatore, who was suspected of wheat speculation: again, it took the gendarmerie and the Prussian military to prevent any violence.[2]^: 23

The unrest spread from Ettelbruck to the surrounding villages, and the government feared it might spread even further.[2]^: 23 "Revolutionary" flags such as the French, Belgian, black-red-gold (German) and red flags were carried during processions or put up in visible places. These flags were not so much a sign of separatism, as a symbol of solidarity with the revolutionary movements in these other countries.[2]^: 24

The Revolution ended about as quickly as it had begun, but lasted the longest in Ettelbruck, where anarchy reigned for about a week. Unrest still flared up in various areas for several weeks, but the government acted decisively to restore order, by gathering gendarmes, forestry and customs officers, and federal German troops, who were sent to the affected areas on 23 March to take down the revolutionary flags and restore order. This unusually large presence of armed forces served as a clear signal to the insurgents, but also to those who were uninvolved. Similarly, on 19 March, a pastoral letter from the Apostolic Vicar of Luxembourg, Jean-Théodore Laurent, was read out in all churches, appealing for calm and reminded the Catholic population of their loyalty to the throne.[2]^: 24

On 20 March, the government issued a proclamation, announcing changes to the constitution and the abolition of censorship.[2]^: 24 Acting on the advice of the government, William II had had to agree to reforms. These promises meant that most citizens and supporters of "law and order" finally went over to the government's side and distanced themselves from any further revolutionary acts. The government also agreed to employ part of the discontented poor on state construction sites, in order to take them off the streets.[2]^: 24

William II, King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg at the time of the Revolution

The 1848 revolution in Luxembourg has been mostly neglected by academic historiography and by history as taught in schools. Works inspired by Orangist historiography sought to downplay the events of 1848 as much as possible. Arthur Herchen's history textbook, published in 1918, was still in use in secondary schools up to the 1970s in a revised edition. It portrayed the world before 1848 as a carefree one. While admitting that there was a "certain nervousness" in the country in 1848, it goes on to claim that the Luxembourgish people were able to obtain in a peaceful manner the rights and freedoms which elsewhere were won with bloodshed, and that this was due to the great wisdom and generous initiative of the Grand-Duke.[5]

The primary function of Orangist historiography was the legitimation of the Orange-Nassau dynasty. It therefore saw Luxembourgish history through a dynastic lens, in order to link the currently reigning family to the founding myth of the country. This dynastic world view ignored the wider population as an agent of history, or any mention of social or popular history: the people only appeared in narratives when they endangered the dynastic order through revolt. This brings out Orangist historiography's other characteristic: its anti-revolutionary nature. It therefore always denied that there was a revolution in Luxembourg in 1848.[5]

This changed in 1957 when Albert Calmes published the 5th volume of the Histoire Contemporaine du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, with the unambiguous title La Révolution de 1848 au Luxembourg. Calmes had no qualms in describing the events of 1848 as a revolution, as there was a sudden and profound social and political change.[5]^: 52 He noted that the views of traditional historiography on 1848 belonged more to the realm of myth or of a softening presentation of the facts, as it only reproduced the official statements of those in power, in an attempt to justify the policy of the King-Grand Duke and his Orangist supporters.[5] Calmes' work was troubling to many historians at the time: his vast publication, founded on work in the archives of the Hague and of the Luxembourgish government, undermined traditional historiography, and he criticised the works of neo-Orangists such as Prosper Mullendorff, Jules Mersch, Auguste Collart, and Paul Weber, while attacking what he saw as the "Orangist legend".[5]^: 53 This may explain why his book was mostly ignored by the press and review journals such as Hémecht and Cahiers Luxembourgeois; likewise, the historians Nicolas Margue and Joseph Meyers did not take account of Calmes' ground-breaking work in their 1969 revised edition of Herchen's textbook.[5]^: 52–53

• Constituent Assembly of Luxembourg

• Calmes, Albert. Histoire contemporaine du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, Vol. 5: La révolution de 1848 au Luxembourg. Luxembourg, Imprimere Saint-Paul, 1982. (2nd edition)
• Scuto, Denis. "1848 - Die erste Revolution des industriellen Zeitalters: Zum Geburtsakt der Luxemburger Arbeiterbewegung". In: forum, No. 185 (July 1998), p. 42- 47