Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire a common enemy. Previously, national identity allowed Habsburg forces to conquer revolutionary governments by playing them off one another. New democratic initiatives in Italy in the spring of 1848 led to a renewed conflict with Austrian forces in the provinces of Lombardy and Venetia. At the very first anniversary of the first barricades in Vienna, German and Czech democrats in Bohemia agreed to put mutual hostilities aside and work together on revolutionary planning. Hungarians faced the greatest challenge of overcoming the divisions of the previous year, as the fighting there had been the most bitter. Despite this, the Hungarian government
Revolutions of 1848 of the peasants. European middle classes made political and economic gains over the next 20 years; France retained universal male suffrage. Russia would later free the serfs on February 19, 1861. The Habsburgs finally had to give the Hungarians more self-determination in the "Ausgleich" of 1867. The revolutions inspired lasting reform in Denmark, as well as the Netherlands. The Texas Hill Country was settled by German intellectuals fleeing the reactionary purges (German Texans). More widely, many disillusioned and persecuted revolutionaries, in particular (though not exclusively) those from Germany and the Austrian Empire, left their homelands for foreign exile in the