Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire city's coffeehouses, salons, and even stages, but prior to 1848 their demands had not even extended to constitutionalism or freedom of assembly, let alone republicanism. They had merely advocated relaxed censorship, freedom of religion, economic freedoms, and, above all, a more competent administration. They were opposed to outright popular sovereignty and the universal franchise. More to the left was a radicalized, impoverished intelligentsia. Educational opportunities in 1840s Austria had far outstripped employment opportunities for the educated. In 1846 there had been an uprising of Polish nobility in Austrian Galicia, which was only countered when peasants, in turn, rose up against
History of the Catholic Church in Germany various states within the Empire to increase their power and the Emperor's attempt to achieve the religious and political unity of the Empire. The immediate occasion for the war was the uprising of the Protestant nobility of Bohemia against the emperor (Defenestration of Prague), but the conflict was widened into a European War by the intervention of King Christian IV of Denmark (1625–29), Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1630–48), and France under Cardinal Richelieu, the regent of the young Louis XIV (1635–48). Germany became the main theatre of war and the scene of the final conflict between France and the Habsburgs