Part 7 (2/2)
Thus spoke John Muller. Thousands of Germans had been converted into abject slaves, but none other than he was there ever found, with sentimental phrases to gild the chains of his countrymen, to vaunt servility as liberty and dishonor as glory.[16] John Muller's unprincipled address formed, as it were, the turning-point of German affairs. Self-degradation could go no further. The spirit of the sons of Germany henceforward rose, and, with manly courage, they sought, by their future actions, to wipe off the deep stain of their former guilt and dishonor.
[Footnote 1: See accounts of this affair in the Recollections of a Legionary, Hanover, 1826, and in Beamisch's History of the Legion.]
[Footnote 2: A graphic description of these times is to be met with in Joanna Schopenhauer's Tour on the Lower Rhine. The kings of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Westphalia, Saxony, the prince primate, the hereditary prince of Baden and of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the duke of Weimar, the princes of Hobenzollern, Hesse-Rotenburg, and Hesse-Philippsthal, were present. No one belonging to the house of Austria was there: of that of Prussia there was Prince William, the king's brother. The Allgemeine Zeitung of that day wrote: ”The fact of Napoleon's sending for the privy-councillor, Von Goethe, into his cabinet, and conversing with him for upward of an hour, appears to us well worthy of mention.
What German would not rejoice that the great emperor should have entered into such deep conversation with such a fitting representative of our n.o.blest, and now, alas, sole remaining national possession, our art and learning, by whose preservation alone can our nationality be saved from utter annihilation.” Notwithstanding which the company of actors belonging to the theatre at Weimar, which was close at hand and had been under Goethe's instruction, was not once allowed to perform on the Erfurt stage, which Napoleon had supplied with actors from Paris. Wieland was also compelled to remain standing for an hour in Napoleon's presence, and when, at length, unable, owing to the weakness of old age, to continue in that position, he ventured to ask permission to retire, Napoleon is said to have considered the request an unwarrantable liberty. The literary heroes of Weimar took no interest in the country from which they had received so deep a tribute of admiration. Not a patriotic sentiment escaped their lips. At the time when the deepest wound was inflicted on the Tyrol, Goethe gave to the world his frivolous ”Wahlverwandschaften,” which was followed by a poem in praise of Napoleon, of whom he says:
”Doubts, that have baffled thousands, _he_ has solved; Ideas, o'er which centuries have brooded, _His_ giant mind intuitively compa.s.sed.”]
[Footnote 3: The great and dangerous robber bands of the notorious Damian Hessel, and of Schinderhannes, afford abundant proof of the demoralized condition of the people.]
[Footnote 4: On the 12th of January, 1807, a s.h.i.+p laden with four hundred quintals of gunpowder blew up in the middle of the city of Leyden, part of which was thereby reduced to ruins, and one hundred and fifty persons, among others the celebrated professors Luzac and Kleit, were killed.]
[Footnote 5: On the opening of the federal diet in 1806, the Landammann lauded ”the omnipotent benevolence of the gracious mediator.” In earlier times, the Swiss would, on the contrary, have boasted of their affording protection to, not of receiving protection from, France.]
[Footnote 6: In order to prove of what importance they considered the benevolent protection of Napoleon the Great.--_Attgemeine Zeitung of 1810, No_. 90.]
[Footnote 7: Their general, Von der Wied, who was taken prisoner at Talavera in Spain and died shortly afterward of a pestilential disease, had done signal service to France, in 1798 in Switzerland, in 1792 in Italy, in 1805 in Austria, in 1806 in Prussia, and finally in Spain.--_Allgemeine Zeitung of 1811, No_. 46.]
[Footnote 8: Personal freedom was restricted by innumerable decrees.
Freedom of speech, formerly great in Wurtemberg, was strictly repressed; all social confidence was annihilated. A swarm of informers ensnared those whom the secret police were unable to entrap. The secrecy of letters was violated. Trials in criminal cases were no longer allowed to be public. The sentence pa.s.sed upon the accused was, particularly in cases of the highest import, not delivered by the judge as dictated by the law, but by the despot's caprice.--The conscription was enforced with increased severity and tyranny.--The natural right of emigration was abolished.--The people were disarmed, and not even the inhabitants of solitary farms and hamlets were allowed to possess arms in order to defend themselves against wolves and robbers. A man was punished for killing a mad dog, because the gun used for that purpose had been illegally secreted. Pa.s.s-tickets were given to and returned by all desirous of pa.s.sing the gates of the pettiest town. The members of the higher aristocracy were compelled, under pain of being deprived of the third of their income, to spend three months in the year at court.--The citizen was oppressed by a variety of fresh taxes, by the newly-created monopolies of tobacco, salt, etc., and colonial imposts, by the tenfold rise of the excise and custom-house dues, etc. Vide Zahn in the Wurtemberg Annual.
Zschokke, meanwhile, in his pamphlet already mentioned, ”Will the human race gain,” etc., advocated republican equality and liberty under a monarchical const.i.tution.]
[Footnote 9: The Von Dalbergs of Franconia were the first hereditary barons of the Holy Roman Empire, and one of their race was dubbed knight at each imperial coronation. Hence the demand of the imperial herald, ”Is no Dalberg here?” And a Dalberg it was, who, in Napoleon's name, declared to the German emperor that he no longer recognized an emperor of Germany.--In 1797, Dalberg had, at the diet, and again in 1805, expressed himself with great zeal against France; on the present occasion he was Napoleon's first satrap.]
[Footnote 10: They sold the demesnes of Hanau and Fulda and received the sums produced by the sale in gift from the grandduke.--_Gorres's Rhenish Mercury, A.D. 1814, No. 168._]
[Footnote 11: They were barefaced enough to bestow a const.i.tution, and, in 1810, to open a diet at Hanau, although all the newspapers had, five days previously, been suppressed, and orders had been issued that the editor of the only newspaper permitted for the future was to be appointed by the police.--_Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 294._]
[Footnote 12: Count Montholon-Semonville sold justice and mercy. Vide Brockhaus's Deutsche Blatter, 1814, No. 101.]
[Footnote 13: The duke, Francis, allowed the country to be mercilessly drained and impoverished by the minister, Von Kretschmann. He lived on extremely bad terms with his uncle, Frederick Josias, duke of Coburg, the celebrated Austrian general. Francis died in 1806. Ernest, his son and successor, delivered the country, in 1809, from Kretschmann's tyranny, and, in 1811, bestowed upon it a const.i.tution, which was, nevertheless, merely an imitation of that of Westphalia.]
[Footnote 14: The prince, Augustus Christian Frederick, contracted debts to an enormous amount, completely drained his petty territory, and even seized bail-money. Military amus.e.m.e.nts, drunkenness and other gross excesses, the preservation of enormous herds of deer which destroyed the fields of the peasantry, formed the pleasures of this prince.--_Stenzel's History of Anhalt._]
[Footnote 15: Napoleon nicknamed him _roi de coulisses_, and gave him a guardian in his amba.s.sador, Reinhard, a person of celebrity during the Revolution. Jerome's first ministers were friends of his youth; the Creole, Le Camus, who was created Count Purstenstein, and Malchus, whose office it was to fill a bottomless treasury. Vide Hormayr, Archive 5, 458, and the Secret History of the Court of Westphalia, 1814.]
[Footnote 16: Vide Strombeck's Life and the Allgemeine Zeitung of September, 1808. Besides John Muller and Aretin, mention may, with equal justice, be made of Orome of Geissen and Zschokke, a native of Magdeburg naturalized in Switzerland, who, in 1807, ventured to declare in public that Napoleon had done more for Swiss independence than William Tell five hundred years ago; who, paid by Napoleon, defamed the n.o.ble-spirited Spaniards and Tyrolese in 1815, decried the enthusiastic spirit animating Germany, and afterward whitewashed himself by his liberal tirades. With these may also be a.s.sociated Murhard, the publisher of the _Moniteur Westphalien_, K.J. Schutz, the author of a work upon Napoleon, the Berlinese Jew, Saul Asher, the author of a scandalous work, ent.i.tled ”Germanomanie,” and of a slanderous article in Zschokke's Miscellanies against Prussia, Kosegarten the poet, who, in 1809, delivered a speech in eulogy of Napoleon, far surpa.s.sing all in bombast and mean adulation. Benturini, at that time, also termed Napoleon the emanation of the universal Spirit, a second incarnation of the Deity, a second savior of the world. In Posselt's European Annals of 1807, a work by a certain W.
upon the political interests of Germany appeared, and concluded as follows: ”Let us raise to him (Napoleon) a national monument, worthy of the first and only benefactor of the nations of Germany. Let his name be engraved in gigantic letters of s.h.i.+ning gold on Germany's highest and steepest pinnacle, whence, lighted by the effulgent rays of morn, it may be visible far over the plains on which he bestowed a happier futurity!” This writer also drew a comparison between Napoleon and Charlemagne, in which he designated the latter a barbarous despot and the former the new savior of the world. He says, ”Napoleon first solved the enigma of equality and liberty--his chief aim was the prevention of despotism--his chief desire, to eternalize the dominion of virtue.” In the course of 1808, it was said in the essay, ”On the Regeneration of Germany,” that the Germans were still children whom it was solely possible for the French to educate: ”Our language is also not logical like French--if we intend to attain unity, we must adhere with heart and soul to him who has smoothed the path to it, to him, our securest support, to him, whose name outs.h.i.+nes that of Charlemagne--foreign princes in German countries are no proof of subjection, they, on the contrary, most surely warrant our continued existence as a nation.” In France sixty authors dedicated their works, within the s.p.a.ce of a year, to the emperor Napoleon--in Germany, ninety.]
CCLVI. Resuscitation of Patriotism Throughout Germany--Austria's Demonstration
The general slavery, although most severely felt in Eastern Germany, bore there a less disgraceful character. Austria and Prussia had been conquered, pillaged, reduced in strength and political importance, while the Rhenish states, forgetful that it is ever less disgraceful to yield to an overpowering enemy than voluntarily to lend him aid, had shared in and profited by the triumph of the empire's foe. Austria and Prussia suffered to a greater extent than the Rhenish confederation, but they preserved a higher degree of independence.
Prussia, although almost annihilated by her late disasters,[1] still dreamed of future liberation. Austria had, notwithstanding her successive and numerous defeats, retained the greater share of independence, but her subjection, although to a lesser degree, was the more disgraceful on account of her former military glory and her preponderance as a political power in Germany. With steady perseverance and unfaltering courage she opposed the attacks of the foreign tyrant against the empire, and, France's first and last antagonist, the most faithful champion of the honor of Germany, she rose, with redoubled vigor, after each successive defeat, to renew the unequal struggle.
Prussia had been overcome, because, instead of uniting with the other states of Germany, she had first abandoned them to be afterward deserted by them in her turn, and because, instead of arming her warlike people against every foreign foe, she had habituated her citizens to unarmed effeminacy and had rested her sole support on a mercenary army, an artificial and spiritless automaton, separated from and unsympathizing with the people. The idea that the salvation of Prussia could now alone be found in her reconciliation with the neighboring powers of Germany, in a general confederation, in the patriotism of her armed citizens, had already arisen. But, in order to inspire the citizen with enthusiasm, he must first, by the secure and free possession of his rights and by his partic.i.p.ation in the public weal, be deeply imbued with a consciousness of freedom. The slave has no country; the freeman alone will lay down his life in its defence.
In those times of Germany's deepest degradation and suffering, men for the first time again heard speak of a great and common fatherland, of national fame and honor; and liberty, that glorious name, was uttered not only by those who groaned beneath the rule of the despotic foreigner, but even by those who deplored the loss of the internal liberty of their country, the gradual subjection of the proud and free-spirited German to native tyranny. The king of Prussia, not content with morally reorganizing his army, also bestowed wise laws, which restored the citizen and the peasant to their rights, to their dignity as men, of which they had for so long been deprived by the n.o.bility, the monopolizers of every privilege. The emanc.i.p.ation of the peasant essentially consisted in the abolition of feudal servitude and forced labor; that of the citizen, in the donation of a free munic.i.p.al const.i.tution, of self-administration, and freedom of election. The n.o.bility were, at the same time, despoiled of the exclusive appointment to the higher civil and military posts and of the exclusive possession of landed property. Each citizen possessed the right, hitherto strictly prohibited, of purchasing baronial estates, and the n.o.bility were, on their part, permitted to exercise trades, which a miserable prejudice had hitherto deemed incompatible with n.o.ble birth. These new inst.i.tutions date from 1808 and are due to the energy of the minister, Stein.
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