Part 4 (1/2)

At Rastadt, near Baden, where the compensation mentioned in the treaty of Campo Formio was to be taken into consideration, the terrified Estates of the empire a.s.sembled for the purpose of suing the French amba.s.sadors for the lenity they had not met with at the hands of Austria and Prussia.--The events that took place at Rastadt are of a description little calculated to flatter the patriotic feelings of the German historian. The soul of the congress was Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Perigord, at one time a bishop, at the present period minister of the French republic. His colloquy with the German amba.s.sadors resembled that of the fox with the geese, and he attuned their discords with truly diabolical art. While holding Austria and Prussia apart, instigating them one against the other, flattering both with the friends.h.i.+p of the republic and with the prospect of a rich booty by the secularization of the ecclesiastical lands, he encouraged some of the petty states with the hope of aggrandizement by an alliance with France,[9] and, with cruel contempt, allowed others a while to gasp for life before consigning them to destruction. The petty princes, moreover, who had been deprived of their territory on the other side of the Rhine, demanded lands on this side in compensation; all the petty princes on this side consequently trembled lest they should be called upon to make compensation, and each endeavored, by bribing the members of the congress, Talleyrand in particular, to render himself an exception. The French minister was bribed not by gold alone; a considerable number of ladies gained great notoriety by their liaison with the insolent republican, from whom they received nothing, the object for which they sued being sold by him sometimes even two or three times. Momus, a satirical production of this period, relates numerous instances of crime and folly that are perfectly incredible. The avarice manifested by the French throughout the whole of the negotiations was only surpa.s.sed by the brutality of their language and behavior. Roberjot, Bonnier, and Jean de Bry, the dregs of the French nation, treated the whole of the German empire on this occasion _en canaille_, and, while picking the pockets of the Germans, were studiously coa.r.s.e and brutal; still the trifling opposition they encountered, and the total want of spirit in the representatives of the great German empire, whom it must, in fact, have struck them as ridiculous to see thus humbled at their feet, forms an ample excuse for their demeanor.

Gustavus Adolphus IV., who mounted the throne of Sweden in 1796, distinguished himself at that time among the Estates of the empire, when Duke of Pomerania and Prince of Rugen, by his solemn protest against the depredations committed by France, and by his summons to every member of the German empire to take the field against their common foe. Hesse-Ca.s.sel was also remarkable for the warlike demeanor and decidedly anti-Gallic feeling of her population; and Wurtemberg, for being the first of the German states that gave the example of making concessions more in accordance with the spirit of the times. By the abolition of ancient abuses alone could the princes meet the threats used on every occasion by the French at Rastadt to revolutionize the people unless their demands were fully complied with. In Wurtemberg, the duke, Charles, had been succeeded, A.D. 1793, by his brother, Louis Eugene, who banished license from his court, but, a foe to enlightenment, closed the Charles college, placed monks around his person, was extremely bigoted, and a zealous but impotent friend to France. He expired, A.D. 1795, and was succeeded by the third brother, Frederick Eugene, who had been during his youth a canon at Salzburg, but afterward became a general in the Prussian service, married a princess of Brandenburg, and educated his children in the Protestant faith in order to a.s.similate the religion of the reigning family with that of the people. His mild government terminated in 1797. Frederick, his talented son and successor, mainly frustrated the projected establishment of a Swabian republic, which was strongly supported by the French, by his treatment of the provincial Estates, the modification of the rights of chase, etc., on which occasion he took the following oath: ”I repeat the solemn vow, ever to hold the const.i.tution of this country sacred and to make the weal of my subjects the aim of my life.” He nevertheless appears, by the magnificent fetes, masquerades, and pastoral festivals given by him, as if in a time of the deepest peace, at Hohenheim, to have trusted more to his connection with England, by his marriage with the princess royal, Matilda,[10] with Russia, and with Austria (the emperor Paul, Catherine's successor, having married the princess Maria of Wurtemberg, and the emperor Francis II., her sister Elisabeth), than to the const.i.tution, which he afterward annihilated.

The weakness displayed by the empire and the increasing disunion between Austria and Prussia encouraged the French to further insolence. Not satisfied with garrisoning every fortification on the left bank of the Rhine, they boldly attacked, starved to submission, and razed to the ground, during peace time, the once impregnable fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, on the right bank of the Rhine, opposite Coblentz.[11] Not content with laying the Netherlands and Holland completely waste, they compelled the Hanse towns to grant them a loan of eighteen million livres. Lubeck refused, but Hamburg and Bremen, more nearly threatened and hopeless of aid from Prussia, were constrained to satisfy the demands of the French brigands. In the Netherlands, the German faction once more rose in open insurrection; in 1798, the young men, infuriated by the conscription and by their enrolment into French regiments, flew to arms, and torrents of blood were shed in the struggle, in which they were unaided by their German brethren, before they were again reduced to submission. The English also landed at Ostend, but for the sole purpose of destroying the sluices of the ca.n.a.l at Bruges.

The French divided the beautiful Rhenish provinces, yielded to them almost without a blow by Germany, into four departments: First, Roer, capital Aix-la-Chapelle; besides Cologne and Cleves. Secondly, Donnersberg, capital Mayence; besides Spires and Zweibrucken. Thirdly, Saar, capital Treves. Fourthly, Rhine and Moselle, capital Coblentz; besides Bonn. Each department was subdivided into cantons, each canton into communes. The department was governed by a perfect, the canton by a sub-prefect, the commune by a mayor. All distinction of rank, n.o.bility, and all feudal rights were abolished. Each individual was a citizen, free and equal. All ecclesiastical establishments were abandoned to plunder, the churches alone excepted, they being still granted as places of wors.h.i.+p to believers, notwithstanding the contempt and ridicule into which the clergy had fallen. The monasteries were closed. The peasantry, more particularly in Treves, nevertheless, still manifested great attachment to Popery. Guilds and corporations were also abolished. The introduction of the ancient German oral law formerly in use throughout the empire, the inst.i.tution of trial by jury, which, to the disgrace of Germany, the Rhenish princes, after the lapse of a thousand years, learned from their Gallic foe, was a great and signal benefit.

Liberty, equality, and justice were, at that period, in all other respects, mere fictions. The most arbitrary rule in reality existed, and the new provinces were systematically drained by taxes of every description, as, for instance, register, stamp, patent, window, door, and land taxes: there was also a tax upon furniture and upon luxuries of every sort; a poll-tax, a percentage on the whole a.s.sessment, etc.; besides extortion, confiscation, and forced sales. And woe to the new citizen of the great French republic if he failed in paying more servile homage to its officers, from the prefect down to the lowest underling, than had ever been exacted by the princes![12] Such was the liberty bestowed by republican France! Thus were her promises fulfilled! The German Illuminati were fearfully undeceived, particularly on perceiving how completely their hopes of universally revolutionizing Germany were frustrated by the treaty of Basel. The French, who had proclaimed liberty to all the nations of the earth, now offered it for sale. The French character was in every respect the same as during the reign of Louis XIV. The only principle to which they remained ever faithful was that of robbery.--Switzerland was now, in her turn, attacked, and vengeance thus overtook every province that had severed itself from the empire, and every part of the once magnificent empire of Germany was miserably punished for its want of unity.

[Footnote 1: Clausewitz demands, with great justice, why the Austrians so greatly divided their forces on this occasion for the sake of saving Italy, as they had only to follow up their successes vigorously on the Rhine in order to gain, in that quarter, far more than they could lose on the Po.]

[Footnote 2: At Absom, in the valley of the Inn, a peasant girl had, at that time, discovered a figure of the Virgin in one of the panes of gla.s.s in her chamber window. This appearance being deemed miraculous by the simple peasantry, the authorities of the place investigated the matter, had the gla.s.s cleaned and sc.r.a.ped, etc., and at length p.r.o.nounced the indelible figure to be simply the outline of an old colored painting. The peasantry, however, excited by the appearance of the infidel French, persisted in giving credence to the miracle and set up the piece of gla.s.s in a church, which was afterward annually visited by thousands of pilgrims. In 1407, the celebrated pilgrimage to Waldrast, in the Tyrol, had been founded in a similar manner by the discovery of a portrait of the Virgin which had been grown up in a tree, by two shepherd lads.]

[Footnote 3: Cobenzl was a favorite of Kaunitz and a thorough courtier. At an earlier period, when amba.s.sador at Petersburg, he wrote French comedies, which were performed at the Hermitage in the presence of the empress Catherine. The arrival of an unpleasant despatch being ever followed by the production of some amusing piece as an antidote to care, the empress jestingly observed, ”that he was no doubt keeping his best piece until the news arrived of the French being in Vienna.” He expired in the February of 1809, a year pregnant with fate for Austria.]

[Footnote 4: He indignantly refused the stipend offered to him on this occasion and protested against the injustice of his condemnation.]

[Footnote 5: Bavaria regarded these forced concessions as a bad reward for her fidelity to Austria. Napoleon appears to have calculated upon relighting by this means the flames of discord, whence he well knew how to draw an advantage, between Bavaria and Austria.]

[Footnote 6: ”Thus the emperor also now abandoned the empire by merely bargaining with the enemy to quit his territories, and leaving the wretched provinces of the empire a prey to war and pillage. And if the a.s.surances of friends.h.i.+p, of confidence, and of affection between Austria and Venice are but recalled to mind, the contrast was indeed laughable when the emperor was pleased to allow that loyal city to be ceded to him. The best friend was in this case the cloth from which the emperor cut himself an equivalent.”--_Huergelmer_.]

[Footnote 7: A curious private memoir of Talleyrand says: ”J'ai la cert.i.tude que Berlin est le lieu, ou le traite du 26 Vendemiaire (the reconciliation of Austria with France at Campo Formio), aura jette le plus d'etonnement, d'embarras et de orainte.” He then explains that, now that the Netherlands no longer belong to Austria, and that Austria and France no longer come into collision, both powers would be transformed from natural foes into natural friends and would have an equal interest in weakening Prussia. Should Russia stir, the Poles could be roused to insurrection, etc.]

[Footnote 8: ”Exactly at this period, when the empire's common foe was plundering the Franconian circle, when deeds of blood and horror, when misery and want had reached a fearful height, the troops of the Elector of Brandenburg overran the cities and villages. The inhabitants were constrained to take the oath of fealty, the public officers, who refused, were dragged away captive, etc. Ellingen, Stopfenheim, Absperg, Eschenbach, Nuremberg, Postbaur, Virnsperg, Oettingen, d.i.n.kelspuhl, Ritzenhausen, Gelchsheim, were scenes of brutal outrage.”--_The History of the Usurpation of Brandenburg, A.D.

1797_, with the original Doc.u.ments, published by the Teutonic Order.]

[Footnote 9: His secret memoirs, even at that period, designate Baden, Wurtemberg, and Darmstadt as states securely within the grasp of France.]

[Footnote 10: He fled on Moreau's invasion to England, where he formed this alliance. There was at one time a project of creating him elector of Hanover and of part.i.tioning Wurtemberg between Bavaria and Baden.]

[Footnote 11: The commandant, Faber, defended the place for fourteen months with a garrison of 2,000 men. During the siege, the badly-disciplined French soldiery secretly sold provisions at an exorbitant price to the starving garrison.]

[Footnote 12: Klebe gave an extremely detailed account of the French government: ”It is, for instance, well known that a pastry cook was nominated lord high warden of the forest! over a whole department, and a jeweller was raised to the same office in another.--The doc.u.ments proving the cheating and underselling carried on by Pioc, the lord high warden of the forests, and by his a.s.sistant, Gauthier, in all the forests in the department of the Rhine and Moselle, are detailed at full length in 'Rubezahl,' a sort of monthly magazine. It is astonis.h.i.+ng to see with what boundless impudence these people have robbed the country.--Still greater rascalities were carried on on the right bank of the Rhine. Gauthier robbed from Coblentz down to the Prussian frontiers.” These allegations are confirmed by Gorres in a pamphlet, ”Results of my Mission to Paris,” in which he says, ”The Directory had treated the four departments like so many Paschalics, which it abandoned to its Janissaries and colonized with its favorites. Every pet.i.tion sent by the inhabitants was thrown aside with revolting contempt; everything was done that could most deeply wound their feelings in regard to themselves or to their country.”

”The secret history of the government of the country between the Rhine and the Moselle,” sums up as follows: ”All cheated, all thieved, all robbed. The cheating, thieving, and robbing were perfectly terrible, and not one of the cheats, thieves, or robbers seemed to have an idea that this country formed, by the decree of union, a part of France.” A nave confession! The French, at all events, acted as if conscious that the land was not theirs. The Rhenish Jews, who, as early as the times of Louis XIV., had aided the French in plundering Germany, again acted as their bloodhounds, and, by accepting bills in exchange for their real or supposed loans, at double the amount, on wealthy proprietors, speedily placed themselves in possession of the finest estates. Vide Reichardt's Letters from Paris.]

CCLI. The Pillage of Switzerland

Peace had reigned throughout Switzerland since the battle of Villmergen, A.D. 1712, which had given to Zurich and Berne the ascendency in the confederation. The popular discontent caused by the increasing despotism of the aristocracy had merely displayed itself in petty conspiracies, as, for instance, that of Henzi, in 1749, and in partial insurrections. In all the cantons, even in those in which the democratic spirit was most prevalent, the chief authority had been seized by the wealthier and more ancient families. All the offices were in their hands, the higher posts in the Swiss regiments raised for the service of France were monopolized by the younger sons of the more powerful families, who introduced the social vices of France into their own country, where they formed a strange medley in conjunction with the pedantry of the ancient oligarchical form of government. In the great canton of Berne, the council of two hundred, which had unlimited sway, was solely composed of seventy-six reigning families.

In Zurich, the one thousand nine hundred townsmen had unlimited power over the country. For one hundred and fifty years no citizen had been enrolled among them, and no son of a peasant had been allowed to study for, or been nominated to, any office, even to that of preacher. In Solothurn, but one-half of the eight hundred townsmen were able to carry on the government. Lucerne was governed by a council of one hundred, so completely monopolized by the more powerful families that boys of twenty succeeded their fathers as councillors. Basel was governed by a council of two hundred and eighty, which was entirely formed out of seventy wealthy mercantile families. Seventy-one families had usurped the authority at Freiburg: similar oligarchical government prevailed at St. Gall and Schaffhausen. The _Junker_, in the latter place, rendered themselves especially ridiculous by the innumerable offices and chambers in which they transacted their useless and prolix affairs. In all these aristocratic cantons, the peasantry were cruelly hara.s.sed, oppressed, and, in some parts, kept in servitude, by the provincial governors. The wealthy provincial governments were monopolized by the great aristocratic families.[1]

Even in the pure democracies, the provincial communes were governed by powerful peasant families, as, for instance, in Glarus, and the tyranny exercised by these peasants over the territory beneath their sway far exceeded that of the aristocratic burgesses in their provincial governments. The Italian valleys groaned beneath the yoke of the original cantons, particularly under that of Uri,[2] the seven provincial governments in Unterwallis under that of Oberwallis, the counts.h.i.+p of Werdenberg under that of the Glarner, the Valtelline under that of the Grisons.[3] The princely abbot of St. Gall was unlimited sovereign over his territory. Separate monasteries, for instance, Engelberg, had feudal sway over their va.s.sals.

Enlightenment and liberal opinions spread also gradually over Switzerland, and twenty years after Henzi's melancholy death, a disposition was again shown to oppose the tyranny of the oligarchies.

In 1792, Lavater and Fuszli were banished Zurich for venturing to complain of the arbitrary conduct of one of the provincial governors;[4] in 1779, a curate named Waser, a man of talent and a foe to the aristocracy, was beheaded on a false charge of falsifying the archives;[5] in 1794, the oppressed peasantry of Lucerne revolted against the aristocracy; in the same year, the peasantry in Schwyz, roused by the insolence of the French recruiting officers, revolted, and, in the public provincial a.s.sembly, enforced the recall of all the people of Schwyz in the French service, besides imposing a heavy fine upon General Reding on his return. In 1781, a revolt of the Freiburg peasantry, occasioned by the tyranny of the aristocracy, was quelled with the aid of Berne; in 1784, Suter, the n.o.ble-spirited _Landammann_ of Appenzell, fell a sacrifice to envy. His mental and moral superiority to the rest of his countrymen inspired his rival, Geiger, with the most deadly hatred, and he persecuted him with the utmost rancor. He was accused of being a freethinker; doc.u.ments and protocols were falsified; the stupid populace was excited against him, and, after having been exposed on the pillory, publicly whipped, and tortured on the rack, he was beheaded, and all intercession on his behalf was prohibited under pain of death. Solothurn, on the other hand, was freed from feudal servitude in 1785. The popular feeling at that time prevalent throughout Switzerland was, however, of far greater import than these petty events. The oligarchies had everywhere suppressed public opinion; the long peace had slackened the martial ardor of the people; the ridiculous affectation of ancient heroic language brought into vogue by John Muller rendered the contrast yet more striking, and, on the outburst of the French Revolution, the tyrannized Swiss peasantry naturally threw themselves into the arms of the French, the aristocracy into those of the Austrians.

The oppressed peasantry revolted as early as 1790 against the ruling cities, the va.s.sal against the aristocrat, in Schaffhausen, on account of the t.i.thes; in Lower Valais, on account of the tyranny of one of the provincial governors. These petty outbreaks and an attempt made by Laharpe to render the Vaud independent of Berne[6] were suppressed, A.D. 1791. The people remained, nevertheless, in a high state of fermentation. The new French republic at first quarrelled with the ancient confederation for having, unmindful of their origin, descended to servility. The Swiss guard had, on the 16th of August, 1792, courageously defended the palace of the unfortunate French king and been cut to pieces by the Parisian mob. At a later period, the Austrians had seized the amba.s.sadors of the French republic, Semonville and Maret, in the Valtelline, in the territory of the Grisons. The Swiss patriots, as they were called, however, gradually fomented an insurrection against the aristocrats and called the French to their aid. In 1793, the va.s.sals of the bishop of Basel at Pruntrut had already planted trees of liberty and placed the bishopric, under the name of a Rauracian republic, under the protection of France, chiefly at the instigation of Gobel, who was, in reward, appointed bishop of Paris, and whose nephew, Rengger, shortly afterward became a member of the revolutionary government in Berne. In Geneva, during the preceding year, the French faction had gained the upper hand. The fickleness of the war kept the rest of the patriots in a state of suspense, but, on the seizure of the left bank of the Rhine by the French, the movements in Switzerland a.s.sumed a more serious character.

The abbot, Beda, of St. Gall, 1795, pacified his subjects by concessions, which his successor, Pancras, refusing to recognize, he was, in consequence, expelled. The unrelenting aristocracy of Zurich, upon this, took the field against the restless peasantry, surrounded the patriots in Stafa, threw the venerable Bodmer and a number of his adherents into prison, and inflicted upon them heavy fines or severe corporeal chastis.e.m.e.nt.