Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"A strong figure soon emerged in Austria. It was not another revolutionary and not another Metternich but Sophie of Bavaria. She gave the lead that culminated in the restoration of imperial power in Italy, Prague, and Hungary, as well as Vienna itself. She had her son crowned as Emperor Franz Joseph in December 1848. Yet the dynastic Habsburg Empire, a source of stability in Metternich's heyday, was to be a cause of conflict in European affairs up to the outbreak of World War I." [Furtado: 1001 Days] "Despite the widespread spirit of independence in Europe, there was an equally fierce reaction against self-rule by conservative-minded states, above all the authoritarian Austro-Hungarian empire. These conflicting ideologies clashed brutally in 1848 when Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians rose against their Austrian rulers, engulfing central and eastern Europe in revolution. [DK Timelines, p. 342] "East of the Rhine the situation remained superficially as before 1830, for all the revolutions were suppressed, the German and Italian risings by or with the support of the Austrians, the Polish rising, much the most serious, by the Russians." [Hobsbawm: Revolution, p. 117]