Again the leaders of the crowd repeated, in slightly altered form, the demands originally formulated by Fischhof.  At last, after considerable discussion, Montecuccoli was preparing to start for the Castle at the head of the Estates when a regiment of soldiers arrived, but they were unable to make their way through the crowd, and were even pressed back out of the Herren Gasse.

The desire now arose for better protection for the people; and a deputation tried to persuade the burgomaster of Vienna to call out the City Guard.  Czapka, the burgomaster, was, however, a mere tool of the Government; and he declared that the Archduke Albert, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, had alone the power of calling out the guard.  The Archduke Albert was, perhaps next to Louis, the most unpopular of the royal house.  He indignantly refused to listen to any demands of the people, and, hastening to the spot, rallied the soldiers and led them to the open space at the corner of the Herren Gasse, which is known as the “Freyung.”  The inner circle of Vienna was at this time surrounded with walls, outside of which were the large suburbs in which chiefly workmen lived.

The students seem already to have gained some sympathy with the workmen; and for the previous two years the discontent caused by the sufferings of the poorer classes had been taking a more directly political turn.  Several of the workmen had pressed in with the students in the morning into the inner town, and some big men, with rough darned coats and dirty caps over their ears, were seen clenching their fists for the fight.  The news quickly spread to the suburbs that the soldiers were about to attack the people.  Seizing long poles and any iron tools which came to hand, the workmen rushed forward to the gates of the inner town.  In one district they found the town gates closed against them, and cannon placed on the bastion near; but in others the authorities were unprepared; and the workmen burst into the inner town, tearing down stones and plaster to throw at the soldiers.

In the mean time the representatives of the Estates had reached the Castle, and were trying to persuade the authorities to yield to the demands of the people.  Metternich persisted in believing that the whole affair was moved by foreign influence, and particularly by Italians and Swiss; and he desired that the soldiers should gather in the Castle, and that Prince Windischgraetz should be appointed commandant of the city.  Alfred Windischgraetz was a Bohemian nobleman who had previously been known chiefly for his strong aristocratic feeling, which he was said to have embodied in the expression “Human beings begin at barons.”  But he had been marked out by Metternich as a man of vigor and decision who might be trusted to act in an emergency.