In February 1848 violent demonstrations in Paris forced Louis Philippe to abdicate and flee to England, while a republic was proclaimed in France. By mid-March, the Pope and the rulers of Naples, Tuscany and Piedmont-Sardinia had all granted constitutions, and agitation in Vienna had forced the fall of Metternich. In Lombardy and Venice there were risings against Austrian rule, while Hungary achieved virtual independence. Berlin was in ferment and talk of German unification under a liberal constitution was rife. The events of spring 1848 ushered in a year of great drama in continental Europe, which initially galvanised the forces of liberalism and nationalism but ended in their large-scale defeat. Liberation for Lombardy, Venetia and Hungary proved impossible to sustain, while, after a brief experiment with socialism, Paris turned to Louis Napoleon to restore order. By the early 1850s, especially after Louis Napoleon's coup d'état in 1851, it seemed to most British observers of continental events that several years of turbulence, violence and bloodshed had generally ended in the restoration of autocratic regimes.

As chapter I showed, the absence of a revolution in Britain encouraged in retrospect the myth that it had been blessed with a unique degree of political harmony and stability, owing to a combination of its liberal constitution and the nature of the English character. In 1858 Earl Grey maintained that Parliamentary government had not worked anywhere else – except, very recently, in the British-protected regimes in Belgium and Piedmont.