Meanwhile, renewed trouble had broken out in Vienna, where the radical populace was in conflict alike with the government and with the Slav majority of the Reichsrath. The German democrats appealed for aid to the Hungarian government; but the Magyar passion for constitutional legality led to delay, and before the Hungarian advance could be made effective, it was too late. On the 7th of October the emperor Ferdinand had fled from Schönbrunn to Olmütz, a Slav district, whence he issued a proclamation inviting whoever loved "Austria and freedom" to rally round the throne. On the 11th Windischgrätz proclaimed his intention of marching against rebellious Vienna, and on the 16th an imperial rescript appointed him a field-marshal and commander-in-chief of all the Austrian armies except that of Italy. Meanwhile, of the Reichsrath, the members of the Right and the Slav majority had left Vienna and announced a meeting of the diet at Brünn for the 20th of October; all that remained in the capital was a rump of German radicals, impotent in the hands of the proletariat and the students. The defence of the city was hastily organized under Bern, an ex-officer of Napoleon; but in the absence of help from Hungary it was futile. On the 28th of October Windischgrätz began his attack; on the 1st of November he was master of the city.
The fall of revolutionary Vienna practically involved that of the revolution in Frankfort and in Pest. From Italy the congratulations of Radetzky's victorious army came to Windischgrätz, from Russia the even more significant commendations of the emperor Nicholas. The moral of the victory was painted for all the world by the military execution of Robert Blum, whose person, as a deputy of the German parliament, should have been sacrosanct. The time had, indeed, not yet come to attempt any conspicuous breach with the constitutional principle; but the new ministry was such as the imperial sentiment would approve, inimical to the German ideals of Frankfort, devoted to the traditions of the Habsburg monarchy. At its head was Prince Felix Schwarzenberg (_q.v._), the "army-diplomat," a statesman at once strong and unscrupulous. On the 27th of November a proclamation announced that the continuation of Austria as a united state was necessary both for Germany and for Europe. [Sidenote: Accession of Francis Joseph, 1848] On the 2nd of December the emperor Ferdinand, bound by too many personal obligations to the revolutionary parties to serve as a useful instrument for the new policy, abdicated, and his nephew Francis Joseph ascended the throne. The proclamation of the new emperor was a gage of defiance thrown down to Magyars and German unionists alike: "Firmly determined to preserve undimmed the lustre of our crown," it ran, "but prepared to share our rights with the representatives of our peoples, we trust that with God's aid and in common with our peoples we shall succeed in uniting all the countries and races of the monarchy in one great body politic."