Conflict at Field Place( 1847—1850)

Abstract Whatever Claire’s financial misjudgements, she was safe in London, where she took up her new life during 1847, before the year of revolutions on the Continent. The riots, which began in Sicily during January 1848, spread to the streets of Paris during February. In March the poet Lamartine issued a revolutionary declaration to the nations of Europe which threw Mary Shelley into trembling alarm. France, she wrote to Claire, was spreading ‘wicked and desolating principles among the nations’. The Days of June in Paris, 23-25June 1848, brought the bloodiest fighting its streets had ever seen, as the army fought its way from the west through barricades to the headquarters of the revolutionary forces in the Place de la Bastille. Had Claire remained in Clichy, she might have been trapped between the two. Revolution kindled in Central Europe. The emperor of Austria abdicated, Metternich’s government fell and with it his repressive system. Charles was at risk, since he went three times a week to the Schonbrunn Palace to give English lessons to the two younger brothers of the emperor.