A series of revolutions inspired by a vision of social equality and universal brotherhood swept through Europe in 1848. Their failure has many parallels to what, in hindsight, is the wishfully misnamed (by mostly Western commentators) Arab Spring. Beginning in Sicily in January of 1848 and cascading throughout much of Europe by March and April, from Denmark to the borders of Russia, the revolutions spread through social networks and word of mouth even more widely and rapidly than did the Arab Spring through social and commercial media. Like the secular forces leading the Arab Spring, those of the 1848 revolutions showed little political unity or practical knowledge about how to create a new moral order, upon which the survival and success of every revolution depends.