Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire Catholicism and between members of different confessions. These conflicts were often mixed with conflict with the state. Important for the revolutionaries were state conflicts including the armed forces and collection of taxes. As 1848 approached, the revolutions the Empire crushed to maintain longstanding conservative minister Klemens Wenzel von Metternich's Concert of Europe left the empire nearly bankrupt and in continual need of soldiers. Draft commissions led to brawls between soldiers and civilians. All of this further agitated the peasantry, who resented their remaining feudal obligations. Despite lack of freedom of the press and association, there was a flourishing liberal German
The Gate of the Year The Gate of the Year "The Gate of the Year" is the popular name given to a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins. The title given to it by the author was "God Knows". She studied and then taught at the London School of Economics in the first half of the twentieth century. The poem, written in 1908 and privately published in 1912, was part of a collection titled "The Desert". It caught the public attention and the popular imagination when King George VI quoted it in his 1939 Christmas broadcast to the British Empire. The poem was brought to his