Blum was as successful with his colleagues as with the crowd; and the Town Council now demanded from the King the dismissal of his ministers, the meeting of the Assembly, and freedom of the press.  The King tried to resist the last of these three proposals, pleading his duty to the Bund.  But even the Bundestag had felt the spirit of the times, and on March 1st had passed a resolution giving leave to every government to abolish the censorship of the press.  The King seemed to yield, and promised to fulfil all that was wished; but the reactionary party in Dresden had become alarmed at the action of the men of Leipsic; and so, on March 11th, when the men of Leipsic supposed that all was granted, General von Carlowitz entered their city at the head of a strong force, and demanded that the Town Council should abstain from exciting speeches; that the Elocution Union should give up all political discussion; that the processions of people should cease; and above all, that the march from Leipsic to Dresden, which was believed to be then intended, should be given up.

These demands were met by Blum with an indignant protest.  “Five men,” said he, “who manage the army cannot understand that, though their bullets may kill men, they cannot make a single hole in the idea that rules the world.”  The town councillors of Leipsic were equally firm.  Carlowitz abandoned his attempt as hopeless; and on March 13th the King summoned a Liberal Ministry which abolished press censorship, granted publicity of legal proceedings, trial by jury, and a wider basis for the Saxon Parliament, and promised to assist in the reform of the Bund.

In the mean time the success of the French revolution had awakened new hopes in Vienna.  Soon after the arrival of the news, a placard appeared on one of the city gates bearing the words:  “In a month Prince Metternich will be overthrown!  Long live Constitutional Austria!” Metternich himself was greatly alarmed, and began to listen to proposals for extending the power of the Lower Austrian Estates.  Yet he still hoped by talking over and discussing these matters to delay the execution of reforms till a more favorable turn in affairs should render them either harmless or unnecessary.

But great as was the alarm caused by the South German risings, and great as were the hopes which they kindled in the Viennese, the word that was to give definiteness and importance to the impulses that were stirring in Vienna could not come from Bavaria or Saxony.  Much as they might wish to connect themselves with a German movement, the Viennese could not get rid of the fact that they were, for the present, bound up with a different political system.  Nor was it wholly clear that the German movement was as yet completely successful.  The King of Prussia seemed to be meditating a reactionary policy and had even threatened to despatch troops to put down the Saxon Liberals; and the King of Hanover also was disposed to resist the movement for a German Parliament.  It was from a country more closely bound up with the Viennese Government, and yet enjoying traditions of more deeply rooted liberty, that the utterance was to come which was eventually to rouse the Viennese to action.