Chapter 22

In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the suppressed emotions that had constantly bubbled for three decades finally erupted. The nations of Europe spent their energies on unification or reform or on both; and the results affected Western development for the next century.

The dreams of Napoleonic greatness, which had haunted France for four decades, saw fulfillment with first the election as president and then the proclamation as emperor of Napoleon’s nephew, who took the grand title Emperor Napoleon III. From 1852 until 1870, Napoleon III made and unmade policy across the continent and even meddled in the affairs of the New World. The dreams of Mazzini were fulfilled when Cavour and Garibaldi, working sometimes at odds, succeeded in unifying Italy for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire. Under the guidance of Bismarck, Prussia maneuvered and fought its way, using the arts of realpolitik to the head of a unified German Empire. The Russian tsar and the American president proclaimed serfs and slaves to be free, and both died at the hands of assassins. In Queen Victoria’s Britain the pressures of industrialization led to reforms that strengthened democracy.

Science continued to make discoveries and to change life both socially and personally. Yet while health care greatly improved with discoveries about bacteria and infection, more and more workers fell into what Marx called the "wage slavery" of the industrial market. While political leaders like Disraeli and Gladstone believed that justice could be achieved through political reform, Marx held that only a revolution of, by, and for the workers would bring about a classless society. Both the realpolitik of nations and the realities of industrial life affected the arts, ushering in a new era of Realism. Novelists such as Flaubert and Dickens, painters such as Courbet and Millet showed readers and observers a stark world, without glamour. The world was often brutal and grim, and they portrayed it with pitiless accuracy.