Germany from the Earliest Period Part 15

The festival solemnized on the Wartburg was speedily succeeded by others. The _Turner_, more particularly at Berlin and Breslau, rendered themselves conspicuous not only by their dress but by their insolence, boys even of the tenderest years putting themselves forward as reformers of the government and of society, and singing the most bloodthirsty songs of liberty. The Prussian government interfered, and the gymnastic exercises, so well suited to the subjects of a warlike state, were once more prohibited.

At the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, Stourdza, the Russian councillor of state, a Wallachian by birth, presented a memorial in which the spirit of the German universities was described as revolutionary. The _Burschenschaft_ of Jena sent him a challenge. Kotzebue, the Russian councillor of state and celebrated dramatist, at length published a weekly paper in which he turned every indication of German patriotism to ridicule, and exercised his wit upon the individual eccentricities of the students affecting the old German costume, of precocious boys and doting professors. The rage of the galled universities rose to a still higher pitch on the discovery, made and incontestably proved by Luden, that Kotzebue sent secret bulletins, filled with invective and suspicion, to St. Petersburg. To execrate Kotzebue had become so habitual at the universities that a young man, Sand from Wunsiedel, a theological student of Jena, noted for piety and industry, took the fanatical resolution to free, or at least to wipe off a blot from his country, by the a.s.sa.s.sination of an enemy whose importance he, in the delusion of hatred, vastly overrated; and he accordingly went, in 1819, to Mannheim, plunged his dagger into Kotzebue's heart, and then attempted his own life, but only succeeded in inflicting a slight wound. He was beheaded in the ensuing year. Loning, the apothecary, probably excited by Sand's example, also attempted the life of the president of Na.s.sau, Ibell, who, however, seized him, and he committed suicide in prison. These events occasioned a congress at Carlsbad in 1819, which took the state of Germany into deliberation, placed each of the universities under the supervision of a government officer, suppressed the _Burschenschaft_, prohibited their colors, and fixed a central board of scrutiny at Mayence,[13] which acted on the presupposition of the existence of a secret and general conspiracy for the purposes of a.s.sa.s.sination and revolution, and of Sand's having acted not from personal fanaticism and religious aberration, but as the agent of some unknown superiors in some new and mysterious tribunal. This inquisition was carried on for years and a crowd of students peopled the prisons; conspiracies perilous to the state were, however, nowhere discovered, but simply a great deal of ideal enthusiasm. The elder men in the universities, who, either in their capacity as tutors or authors, had fed the enthusiasm of the youthful students, were also removed from their situations. Jahn was arrested, Arndt was suspended at Bonn and Fries at Jena; Gorres, who had perseveringly published the most violent pamphlets, was compelled to take refuge in Switzerland, which also offered an asylum to Dewette, the Berlin professor of theology, who had been deprived of his chair on account of a letter addressed by him to Sand's mother. Oken, the great naturalist, who refused to give up "Isis," a periodical publication, also withdrew to Switzerland. Numbers of the younger professors went to America.[14] The solemnization of the October festival was also prohibited, and the triumphal monument on the field of Leipzig was demolished.

[Footnote 1: William V., the expelled hereditary stadtholder, died in obscurity at Brunswick in 1806. His son, William, had, in 1802, received Fulda in compensation, but afterward served Prussia, was, in 1806, taken prisoner with Mollendorf at Erfurt and afterward set at liberty, served again, in 1809, under Austria, and then retired to England, whence he returned on the expulsion of the French to receive a crown, which he accepted with a good deal of a.s.surance, complaining, at the same time, of the loss of his former possession, Fulda, a circ.u.mstance strongly commented upon by Stein in his letters to Gagern. William, in return for his elevation to a throne by the arms of Germany, closed the mouths of the Rhine against her.]

[Footnote 2: Zurich, Berne, Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Glarus, Zug, Freiburg, Solothurn, Basel, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, St. Gall, the Grisons, Aargau, Constance, Tessin, the Vaud, Valais, Neuenburg (Neufchatel), Geneva. The nineteen cantons of 1805 remained _in statu quo_, only those of Valais, Neufchatel, and Geneva were confederated with them, and Pruntrut with the ancient bishopric of Basel were restored to Berne.]

[Footnote 3: The deed of possession of the 26th June, 1814, runs as follows: "Not by an arbitrary, despotic encroachment upon the order of things, but by the hands of the Providence that blessed the arms of your emperor and of the allied princes and by a holy alliance are you restored to the house of Austria."]

[Footnote 4: Tuscany fell to Ferdinand, the former grandduke of Wurzburg; Modena to Francis, son of the deceased duke, Ferdinand; Parms and Placantia to Maria Louisa, the wife and widow of Napoleon.]

[Footnote 5: Not long before, in the treaty of Kiel, there had been question of bestowing Swedish-Pomerania upon Denmark; to this Prussia refused to accede and Denmark agreed to take 2,600,000 dollars in compensation. Prussia was also compelled to pay 3,500,500 dollars to Sweden.]

[Footnote 6: Rehfues, the director of the circle, a Wurtemberg Protestant, published a circular at Bonn, in which he promised full religious security to the Catholic inhabitants, whom he reminded of Prussia's having been "the last supporter of the order of Jesus."--_Allgemeine Zeitung of 1814, No. 234._]

[Footnote 7: Holstein alone, not Schleswig, was enumerated as belonging to the German confederation, although both duchies were long ago closely united by the _nexus socialis_, more particularly in the representation at the diet.]

[Footnote 8: The Reusses, formerly imperial governors of Plauen, diverged into so many branches that, as early as 1664, they agreed to distinguish themselves by numbers, which at first amounted to thirty, but at a later period to a hundred, afterward recommencing at number one. The family took the name of Reuss from the Russian wife of its founder, in the beginning of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 9: Hamburg had vainly pet.i.tioned for the rest.i.tution of her bank, of which she had been deprived by Davoust. She received merely a small portion of the general war tax levied upon France.]

[Footnote 10: Austria and Prussia contain forty-two million inhabitants; the rest of Germany merely twelve million; the power of the two former stands consequently in proportion to that of the rest of Germany as forty-two to twelve or seven to two, while their votes in the diet stood not contrariwise, as two to seven, but as two to seventeen in the plenary a.s.sembly, and as two to fifteen in the lesser one.]

[Footnote 11: Aretin, who, at the time of the Rhenish confederation, insolently mocked and had denounced every indication of German patriotism, ventured to say in his "Alemannia," in the beginning of 1817, "'The patriotic colors,' 'the voice of the people,'

'nationality,' 'the extirpation of foreign influence,' are words now forgotten, magic sounds that have lost their power."]

[Footnote 12: By Sack, the government commissary, who even confiscated the Rhenish Mercury, an earlier and unprohibited paper, and arrested the printer, against which Gorres violently protested in a letter addressed to Sack. Gorres made a triumphant defence before the tribunal at Treves, and observed, "Strange that the most violent enemy to France should seek the protection of French courts!"]

[Footnote 13: The names of these inquisitors were Schwarz, Grano, Hormann, Bar, Pfister, Preusschen, Moussel.]

[Footnote 14: Charles Follen, brother to the poet Louis Adolphus Follen, private teacher of law at Jena, a young man of great spirit and talent, who at that period exercised great influence over the youth of Germany, was wrecked, in 1840, in a steamer in North America and drowned.]

CCLXV. The New Const.i.tutions

Germany had, notwithstanding her triumph, regained neither her ancient unity nor her former power, but still continued to be merely a confederation of states, bound together by no firm tie and regarded with contempt by their more powerful neighbors. The German confederation did not even include the whole of the provinces whose population was distinguished as German by the use of the German language. Several of the provinces of Germany were still beneath a foreign sceptre; Switzerland and the Netherlands had declared themselves distinct from the rest of Germany, which, hitherto submissive to France, was in danger of falling beneath the influence of Russia, who ceaselessly sought to entangle her by diplomatic wiles.

There were still, however, men existing in Germany who hoped to compensate the loss of the external power of their country by the internal freedom that had been so lavishly promised to the people on the general summons to the field. The proclamation of Calisch and the German federative act guaranteed the grant of const.i.tutions. The former Rhenish confederated princes, nevertheless, alone found it to their interest to carry this promise into effect, and, in a manner, formed a second alliance with France by their imitation of the newly introduced French code and by the establishment, in their own territories, of two chambers, one of peers, the other of deputies, similar to those of France; measures by which, at that period of popular excitement, they also regained the popularity deservedly lost by them at an earlier period throughout the rest of Germany, the more so, the less the inclination manifested by Austria and Prussia to grant the promised const.i.tutions. Enslaved Illuminatism characterizes this new zeal in favor of internal liberty and const.i.tutional governments, to denote which the novel term of Liberalism was borrowed from France. Liberty was ever on the tongues--of the most devoted servants of the state. The ancient church and the n.o.bility were attacked with incredible mettle--in order to suit the purposes of ministerial caprice. Prussia and Austria were loudly blamed for not keeping pace with the times--with the intent of favorably contrasting the ancient policy of the Rhenish confederation. None, at that period, surpa.s.sed the ministers belonging to the old school of Illuminatism and Napoleonism in liberalism, but no sooner did the deputies of the people attempt to realize their liberal ideas than they started back in dismay.

The first example of this kind was given by Frederick Augustus, duke of Na.s.sau, as early as the September of 1814. Ibell, the president, who reigned with unlimited power over Na.s.sau, drew up a const.i.tution which has been termed a model of "despotism under a const.i.tutional form." The whole of the property of the state still continuing to be the private property of the duke, and his right arbitrarily to increase the number of members belonging to the first chamber, and by their votes to annul every resolution pa.s.sed by the second chamber, rendered the whole const.i.tution illusory. Trombetta, one of the deputies, voluntarily renounced his seat, an example that was followed by several others.--The second const.i.tution granted was that bestowed upon the Netherlands in 1815, by King William, who established such an unequal representation in the chambers between the Belgians and Dutch as to create great dissatisfaction among the former, who, in revenge, again affected the French party. This was succeeded, in 1816, by the petty const.i.tutions of Waldeck, Weimar, and Frankfort on the Maine.-- Maximilian, king of Bavaria, seemed, in 1817, to announce another system by the dismissal of his minister, Montgelas, and, in 1818, bestowed a new const.i.tution upon Bavaria; but the old abuses in the administration remained uneradicated; a civil and military state unproportioned to the revenue, the petty despotism of government officers and heavy imposts, still weighed upon the people, and the const.i.tution itself was quickly proved illusory, the veto of the first chamber annulling the first resolution pa.s.sed by the second chamber.

Professor Behr of Wurzburg, upon this, energetically protested against the first chamber, and, on the refusal of the second chamber to vote for the maintenance of the army on so high a footing, unless the soldiery were obliged to take the oath on the const.i.tution, it was speedily dissolved.--In Baden, the Grandduke Charles expired, in 1818, after having caused a const.i.tution to be drawn up, which Louis, his uncle and successor, carried into effect. Louis having, however, previously, and without the consent of the people, entered into a stipulation with the n.o.bility, to whom he had granted an edict extremely favorable to their interests, Winter, the Heidelberg bookseller, a member of the second chamber, demanded its abrogation.

The answer was, the dissolution of the chamber, personal inquisition and intimidation, and the publication of an extremely severe edict of censure, against which, in 1820, Professor von Rotteck of Freiburg, supported by the poet Hebel and by the Freiherr von Wessenberg, administrator of the bishopric of Constance, protested, but in vain.--At the same time, that is, in 1818, Hildburghausen, and even the petty princ.i.p.ality of Lichtenstein, which merely contains two square miles and a population amounting to five thousand souls, also received a const.i.tution, which not a little contributed to turn the whole affair into ridicule.--To these succeeded, in 1819, the const.i.tutions of Hanover and Lippe-Detmold, the former as aristocratic as possible, completely in the spirit of olden times, solely dictated and carried into effect by the n.o.bility and government officers. The sittings of the chambers, consequently, continued to be held in secret.--The dukes of Mecklenburg abolished feudal servitude, which existed in no other part of Germany, in 1820.--In Darmstadt, the const.i.tution was granted by the good-natured, venerable Grandduke Louis (whose attention was chiefly devoted to the opera), after the impatient advocates, who had collected subscriptions in the Odenwald to pet.i.tions praying for the speedy bestowal of the promised const.i.tution, had been arrested, and an insurrection that consequently ensued among the peasantry had been quelled by force.--Petty const.i.tutions were, moreover, granted, in 1821, to Coburg, and, in 1829, to Meiningen. The Gotha-Altenburg branch of the ducal house of Saxony became extinct in 1825 in the person of Frederick, the last duke, the brother of Duke Augustus Emilius, a great patron of the arts and sciences, deceased 1822. Gotha, consequently, lapsed to Coburg, Altenburg to Hildburghausen, and Hildburghausen to Meiningen.

In Wurtemberg, the dissatisfaction produced by the ancient despotism of the government was also to be speedily appeased by the grant of a const.i.tutional charter. The king, Frederick, convoked the Estates, to whom he, on the 15th of March, 1815, solemnly delivered the newly enacted const.i.tution. But here, as elsewhere, was the government inclined to grant a mere illusory boon. The Estates rejected the const.i.tution, without reference to its contents, simply owing to the formal reason of its being bestowed by the prince and being consequently binding on one side alone, instead of being a stipulation between the prince and the people, and moreover because the ancient const.i.tution of Wurtemberg, which had been abrogated by force and in direct opposition to the will of the Estates, was still in legal force. The old Wurtemberg party alone could naturally take their footing upon their ancient rights, but the new Wurtemberg party, the mediatized princes of the empire, the counts and barons of the empire, and the imperial free towns, nay, even the Agnati of the reigning house,[1] all of whom had suffered more or less under Napoleon's iron rule, ranged themselves on their side. The deputy, Zahn of Calw, drew a masterly picture of the state of affairs at that period, in which he pitilessly disclosed every reigning abuse. The king, thus vigorously and unanimously opposed, was constrained to yield, and the most prolix negotiations, in which the citizen deputies, headed by the advocate, Weisshaar, were supported by the n.o.bility against the government, commenced.

The affair was, it may be designedly, dragged on _ad infinitum_ until the death of the king in 1816, when his son and successor, William, who had gained a high reputation as a military commander and had rendered himself extremely popular, zealously began the work of conciliation. He not only instantly abolished the abuses of the former government, as, for instance, in the game law,[2] but, in 1817, delivered a new const.i.tution to the Estates. Article 337 was somewhat artfully drawn up, but in every point the const.i.tution was as liberal as a const.i.tutional charter could possibly be. But the Estates refused to accept of liberty as a boon, and rejected this const.i.tution on the same formal grounds upon which they had rejected the preceding one.

The Estates were again upheld by a grateful public, and the few deputies, more particularly Cotta and Griesinger, who had defended the new const.i.tution on account of its liberality and who regarded form as immaterial, became the objects of public animadversion. The populace broke the windows of the house inhabited by the liberal-minded minister, von w.a.n.genheim. The poet Uhland greatly distinguished himself as a warm upholder of the ancient rights of the people.[3] The king instantly dissolved the Estates, but at the same time declared his intention to guarantee to the people, without a const.i.tution, the rights he had intended const.i.tutionally to confer upon them; to establish an equal system of taxation, and "to eradicate bureaucracy, that curse upon the country." The good-will displayed on both sides led to fresh negotiations, and a third const.i.tution was at length drawn up by a committee, composed partly of members of the government, partly of members belonging to the Estates, and, in 1819, was taken into deliberation and pa.s.sed by the rea.s.sembled Estates. This const.i.tution, nevertheless, fell far below the mark to which it had been raised by public expectation, partly on account of the retention, owing to ancient prejudice, of the permanent committee and its oligarchical influence, party on account of the too great and permanent concessions made to the n.o.bility in return for their momentary aid,[4] partly on account of the extreme haste that marked the concluding deliberations of the Estates, occasioned by their partly unfounded dread of interference on the part of the congress then a.s.sembled at Carlsbad.

In Wurtemberg, however, as elsewhere, the policy of the government was deeply imbued with the general characteristics of the time.

Notwithstanding the const.i.tution, notwithstanding the guarantee given by the federative act, liberty of the press did not exist. List, the deputy from Reutlingen, was, for having ventured to collect subscriptions to pet.i.tions, brought before the criminal court, expelled the chamber by his intimidated brother deputies, took refuge in Switzerland, whence he returned to be imprisoned for some time in the fortress of Asberg, and was finally permitted to emigrate to North America, whence he returned at a later period, 1825, in the capacity of consul. Liesching, the editor of the German Guardian, whose liberty of speech was silenced by command of the German confederation, also became an inmate of the fortress of Asberg.

In Hesse and Brunswick, all the old abuses practiced in the petty courts in the eighteenth century were revived. William of Hesse-Ca.s.sel returned, on the fall of Napoleon, to his domains. True to his whimsical saying, "I have slept during the last seven years," he insisted upon replacing everything in Hesse exactly on its former footing. In one particular alone was his vanity inconsistent: notwithstanding his hatred toward Napoleon, he retained the t.i.tle of Prince Elector, bestowed upon him by Napoleon's favor, although it had lost all significance, there being no longer any emperor to elect.[5]

He turned the hand of time back seven years, degraded the councillors raised to that dignity by Jerome to their former station as clerks, captains to lieutenants, etc., all, in fact, to the station they had formerly occupied, even reintroduced into the army the fas.h.i.+on of wearing powder and queues, prohibited all those not bearing an official t.i.tle to be addressed as "Herr," and re-established the socage dues abolished by Jerome. This attachment to old abuses was a.s.sociated with the most insatiable avarice. He reduced the government bonds to one-third, retook possession of the lands sold during Jerome's reign, without granting any compensation to the holders, compelled the country to pay his son's debts to the amount of two hundred thousand rix-dollars, lowered the amount of pay to such a degree that a lieutenant received but five rix-dollars per mensem, and offered to sell a new const.i.tution to the Estates at the low price of four million rix-dollars, which he afterward lowered to two millions and a tax for ten years upon liquors. This shameful bargain being rejected by the Estates, the const.i.tution fell to the ground, and the prince elector practiced the most unlimited despotism. Discontent was stifled by imprisonment. Two officers, Huth and Rotsmann, who had got up a pet.i.tion in favor of their cla.s.s, and the Herr von Gohr, who by chance gave a private fete while the prince was suffering from a sudden attack of illness, were among the victims. The purchasers of the crown lands vainly appealed to the federative a.s.sembly for redress, for the prince elector "refused the mediation of the federative a.s.sembly until it had been authorized by an organic law drawn up with the co-operation of the prince elector himself."--This prince expired in 1821, and was succeeded by his son, William II., who abolished the use of hair-powder and queues, but none of the existing abuses, and demonstrated no inclination to grant a const.i.tution. He was, moreover, the slave of his mistress, Countess Reichenbach, and on ill terms with his consort, a sister of the king of Prussia, and with his son. Anonymous and threatening letters being addressed to this prince with a view of inducing him to favor the designs of the writer, he had recourse to the severest measures for the discovery of the guilty party; numbers of persons were arrested, and travellers instinctively avoided Ca.s.sel. It was at length discovered that Manger, the head of the police, a court favorite, was the author of the letters.

Similar abuses were revived by the house of Brunswick. It is unhappily impossible to leave unmentioned the conduct of Caroline, princess of Brunswick, consort to the Prince of Wales, afterward George IV., king of England. Although this German princess had the good fortune to be protected by the Whig party and by the people against the king and the Tory ministry, she proved a disgrace to her supporters by the scandalous familiarity in which she lived in Italy with her chamberlain, the Italian, Pergami. The sympathy with which she was treated at the time of the congress was designedly exaggerated by the Whigs for the purpose of giving the greatest possible publicity to the errors of the monarch. Caroline of Brunswick was declared innocent and expired shortly after her trial, in 1821.

Charles, the hereditary duke of Brunswick, son to the duke who had so gallantly fallen at Quatrebras, was under the guardians.h.i.+p of the king of England. A const.i.tution was bestowed in 1820 upon this petty territory, which was governed by the minister, Von Schmidt-Phiseldek.

The youthful duke took the reins of government in his nineteenth year.

Of a rash and violent disposition and misled by evil a.s.sociates, he imagined that he had been too long restricted from a.s.suming the government, accused his well-deserving minister of having attempted to prolong his minority, posted handbills for his apprehension as a common delinquent, denied all his good offices, and subverted the const.i.tution. He was surrounded by base intriguers in the person of Bosse, the councillor of state, formerly the servile tool of Napoleon's despotism, of Frike, the Aulic councillor, "whose pliant quill was equal to any task when injustice had to be glossed over," of the adventurer, Klindworth, and of Bitter, the head of the chancery, who conducted the financial speculations. Frike, in contempt of justice, tore up the judgment pa.s.sed by the court of justice in favor of the venerable Herr von Sierstorff, whom he had accused of high treason. Herr von Cramm, by whom Frike was, in the name of the Estates, accused of this misdemeanor before the federative a.s.sembly, was banished, a surgeon, who attended him, was put upon his defence, and an accoucheur, named Grimm, who had basely refused to attend upon Cramm's wife, was presented with a hundred dollars. Haberlin, the novelist, who had been justly condemned to twenty years' imprisonment with hard labor for his civil misdemeanors, was, on the other hand, liberated for publis.h.i.+ng something in the duke's favor. Bitter conducted himself with the most open profligacy, sold all the demesnes, appropriated the sum destined for the redemption of the public debt, and at the same time levied the heavy imposts with unrelenting severity. The federative a.s.sembly pa.s.sed judgment against the duke solely in reference to his attacks upon the king of England.

[Footnote 1: The king bitterly reproached his brother Henry, to whom he said, "You have accused me to my peasantry."--_Pfister History of the Const.i.tution of Wurtemberg._]

[Footnote 2: Pfister mentions in his History of the Const.i.tution of Wurtemberg that merely in the superior bailiwick of Heidenheim the game duties amounted, in 1814, to twenty thousand florins, and five thousand two hundred and ninety-three acres of taxed ground lay uncultivated on account of the damage done by the game, and that in March, 1815, one bailiwick was obliged to furnish twenty-one thousand five hundred and eighty-four men and three thousand two hundred and thirty-seven horses for a single hunt.]

[Footnote 3: Colonel von Ma.s.senbach, of the Prussian service, who has so miserably described the battle of Jena and the surrender of Prentzlow in which he acted so miserable a part, and who had in his native Wurtemberg embraced the aristocratic party, was delivered by the free town of Frankfort, within whose walls he resided, up to the Prussian government, which he threatened to compromise by the publication of some letters. He died within the fortress of Custrin.]

[Footnote 4: The mediatized princes and counts of the empire sat in the first chamber, the barons of the empire in the second. The prelates, once so powerful, lost, on the other hand, together with the church property, in the possession of which they were not reinstated, also most of their influence. Instead of the fourteen aristocratic and independent prelates, six only were appointed by the monarch to seats in the second chamber. Government officers were also eligible in this chamber, which ere long fell entirely under their influence.]

[Footnote 5: He endeavored, but in vain, to persuade the allied powers to bestow upon him the royal dignity.]

CCLXVI. The European Congress--The German Customs' Union

The great political drama enacting in Europe excited at this time the deepest attention throughout Germany. In almost every country a struggle commenced between liberalism and the measures introduced on the fall of Napoleon. In France more particularly it systematically and gradually undermined the government of the Bourbons, and the cry of liberty that resounded throughout France once more found an echo in Germany.

The terrible war was forgotten. The French again became the objects of the admiration and sympathy of the radical party in Germany, and the spirit of opposition, here and there demonstrated in the German chambers, gave rise, notwithstanding its impotence, to precautionary measures on the part of the federative governments. In the winter of 1819, a German federative congress, of which Prince Metternich was the grand motor, a.s.sembled at Vienna for the purpose, after the utter annihilation of the patriots, of finally checking the future movements of the liberals, princ.i.p.ally in the provincial diets. The Viennese Act of 1820 contains closer definitions of the Federative Act, of which the more essential object was the exclusion of the various provincial diets from all positive interference in the general affairs of Germany, and the increase of the power of the different princes vis-a-vis to their provincial diets by a guarantee of aid on the part of the confederates.

During the sitting of this congress, on New Year's Day, 1820, the liberal party in Spain revolted against their ungrateful sovereign, Ferdinand VII., who exercised the most fearful tyranny over the nation that had so unhesitatingly shed its blood in defence of his throne.

This example was shortly afterward followed by the Neapolitans, who were also dissatisfied with the conduct of their sovereign. Prince Metternich instantly brought about a congress at Troppau. The czar, Alexander, who had views upon the East and was no stranger to the heterarchical party which, under the guidance of Prince Ypsilanti, prepared a revolution in Greece (which actually broke out) against the Turks, was at first unwilling to give his a.s.sent unconditionally to the interference of Austria, but on being, in 1821, to his great surprise, informed by Prince Metternich of the existence of a revolutionary spirit in one of the regiments of the Russian guard, freely a.s.sented to all the measures proposed by that minister.[1] The new congress held at Laibach, in 1821, was followed by the entrance of the Austrians under Frimont into Italy. The cowardly Neapolitans fled without firing a shot, and the Piedmontese, who unexpectedly revolted to Frimont's rear, were, after a short encounter with the Austrians under Bubna at Novara, defeated and reduced to submission. The Greeks, whom Russia now no longer ventured openly to uphold, had, in the meantime, also risen in open insurrection. The affairs of Spain were still in an unsettled state. The new congress held at Verona, in 1822, however, decided the fate of both these countries. Prince Hardenberg, the Prussian minister, expired at Genoa on his return home, and Lord Castlereagh, the English amba.s.sador, cut his throat with his penknife, in a fit of frenzy, supposed to have been induced by the sense of his heavy responsibility. At this congress the principle of legitimacy was maintained with such strictness that even the revolt of the Greeks against the long and cruel tyranny of the Turks was, notwithstanding the _Christian spirit of the Holy Alliance_ and the political advantage secured to Russia and Austria by the subversion of the Turkish empire, treated as rebellion against the legitimate authority of the Porte and strongly discouraged. A French army was, on the same grounds, despatched with the consent of the Bourbon into Spain, and Ferdinand was reinstated in his legitimate tyranny in 1823. Russia, in a note addressed to the whole of the confederated states of Germany, demanded at the same time a declaration on their parts to the effect that the late proceedings of the great European powers at Verona "were in accordance with the well-understood interests of the people." Every member of the federative a.s.sembly at Frankfort gave his a.s.sent, with the exception of the Freiherr von w.a.n.genheim, the envoy from Wurtemberg, who declaring that his instructions did not warrant his voting upon the question, the amba.s.sadors from the two Hesses made a similar declaration. This occasioned the dismissal of the Freiherr von w.a.n.genheim; and the illegal publication of a Wurtemberg despatch, in which the non-partic.i.p.ation of the German confederation in the resolutions pa.s.sed by the congresses, to which their a.s.sent was afterward demanded, was treated of, occasioned a second dismissal, that of Count Winzingerode, the Wurtemberg minister. In the July of 1824, the federal diet resolved to give its support to the monarchical principle in the const.i.tutional states, and to maintain the Carlsbad resolutions referring to censors.h.i.+p and to the universities. The Mayence committee remained sitting until 1828.

On the sudden decease of Alexander, the czar of all the Russias, amid the southern steppes, a revolution induced by the n.o.bility broke out at Petersburg, but was suppressed by Alexander's brother and successor, the emperor Nicholas I. Nicholas had wedded Charlotte, the eldest daughter of the king of Prussia. This energetic sovereign instantly invaded Persia and rendered that country dependent upon his empire without any attempt being made by the Tory party in England and Austria to hinder the aggrandizement of Russia, every attack directed against her being regarded as an encouragement to liberalism. Russia consequently seized this opportunity to turn her arms against Turkey, and, in the ensuing year, a Russian force under Count Diebitsch, a Silesian, crossed the Balkan (Haemus) and penetrated as far as Adrianople; while another corps d'armee under Count Paskiewicz, advanced from the Caucasus into Asia Minor and took Erzerum. The fall of Constantinople seemed near at hand, when Austria and England for the first time intervened and declared that, notwithstanding their sympathy with the absolute principles on which Russia rested, they would not permit the seizure of Constantinople. France expressed her readiness to unite with Russia and to fall upon the Austrian rear in case troops were sent against the Russians.[2] Prussia, however, intervened, and General m.u.f.fling was dispatched to Adrianople, where, in 1829, a treaty was concluded, by which Russia, although for the time compelled to restore the booty already acc.u.mulated, gained several considerable advantages, being granted possession of the most important mountain strongholds and pa.s.ses of Asia Minor, a right to occupy and fortify the mouths of the Danube so important to Austria, and to extend her aegis over Moldavia and Wallachia.

In the midst of this wretched period, which brought fame to Russia and deep dishonor upon Germany, there still gleamed one ray of hope; the Customs' Union was proposed by some of the German princes for the more intimate union of German interests.

Maximilian of Bavaria, a prince whose amiable manners and character rendered him universally beloved, expired in 1825. His son, Louis, the foe to French despotism, a German patriot and a zealous patron of the arts, declared himself, on his coronation, the warm and sincere upholder of the const.i.tutional principle and excited general enthusiasm. His first measures on a.s.suming the government were the reduction of the royal household and of the army with a view to the relief of the country from the heavy imposts, the removal of the university of Landshut to Munich, and the enrichment on an extensive scale of the inst.i.tutions of art. The union of the galleries of Dusseldorf and Mannheim with that of Munich, the collection of valuable antiques and pictures, for instance, that of the old German paintings collected by the brothers Boisseree in Cologne during the French usurpation, the academy of painting under the direction of the celebrated Cornelius, the new public buildings raised by Klenze, among which the Glyptothek, the Pinakothek, the great Konigsbau or royal residence, the Ludwigschurch, the Auerchurch, the Arcades, etc., may be more particularly designated, rendered Munich the centre of German art. This sovereign also founded at Ratisbon the Walhalla, a building destined for the reception of the busts of all the celebrated men to whom Germany has given birth. The predilection of this royal amateur for cla.s.sic antiquity excited within his bosom the warmest sympathy with the fate of the modern Greeks, then in open insurrection against their Turkish oppressors, and whom he alone, among all the princes of Germany, aided in the hour of their extremest need.--With the same spirit that dictated his poems, in which he so repeatedly lamented the want of unity in Germany, he was the first to propose the union of her material interests. Germany unhappily resembled, and indeed immediately after the war of liberation, as De Pradt, the French writer, maliciously observed, even in a mercantile point of view, a menagerie whose inhabitants watched each other through a grating.

Vainly had the commercial cla.s.s of Frankfort on the Maine presented a pet.i.tion, in 1819, to the confederation, praying for free trade, for the fulfilment of the nineteenth article of the federal act. Their well-grounded complaint remained unheard. The non-fulfilment of the treaty relating to the free navigation of the Rhine to the sea was most deeply felt. In the first treaty concluded at Paris, the royal dignity and the extension of the Dutch territory had been generously granted to the king of the Netherlands under the express proviso of the free navigation of the Rhine to the sea. The papers relating to this transaction had been drawn up in French, and the ungrateful Dutch perfidiously gave the words "jusqu' a la mer" their most literal construction, merely "as far as the sea," and as the French, moreover, possessed a voice in the matter on account of the Upper Rhine, and the German federal states were unable to give a unanimous verdict, innumerable committees were held and acts were drawn up without producing any result favorable to the trade of Germany.

Affairs stood thus, when, shortly after Louis's accession to the throne of Bavaria, negotiations having for object the settlement of a commercial treaty took place between him and William, king of Wurtemberg. This example was imitated by Prussia, which at first merely formed a union with Darmstadt; afterward by Hesse, Hanover, Saxony, etc., by which a central German union was projected. This union was, however, unable to stand between that of Wurtemberg and Bavaria, and that of Prussia and Darmstadt. The German Customs' Union was carried into effect in 1888. An annual meeting of German naturalists had at that time been arranged under the auspices of Oken, the great naturalist, and at the meeting held at Berlin, in 1888, the Freiherr von Cotta, by whom the moral and material interests of Germany have been greatly promoted, drew up the first plan for a junction of the commercial union of Southern Germany with that of the North, as the first step to the future liberation of Germany from all internal commercial restrictions. The zeal with which he carried this great plan into effect gained the confidence of the different governments, and he not only succeeded in combining the two older unions, but also in gradually embodying with them the rest of the German states.

The attachment of King Louis to ancient Catholicism was extremely remarkable. He began to restore some of the monasteries, and several professors inclined to Ultramontanism and to Catholic mysticism, the most distinguished among whom was Gorres, the Prussian exile, a.s.sembled at the new university at Munich. Here and there appeared a pious enthusiast. Shortly after the restoration, a peasant from the Pfalz named Adam Muller began to prophesy, and Madame von Krudener, a Hanoverian, to preach the necessity of public penance; both these persons gained the ear of exalted personages, and Madame von Krudener more particularly is said not a little to have conduced to the piety displayed by the emperor Alexander during the latter years of his life. At Bamberg, Prince Alexander von Hohenlohe, then a young man, had the folly to attempt the performance of miracles, until the police interfered, and he received a high ecclesiastical office in Hungary.

In Austria, the Ligorians, followers in the footsteps of the Jesuits, haunted the vicinity of the throne. The conversion of Count s...o...b..rg and of the Swiss, Von Haller, to the Catholic church, created the greatest sensation. The former, a celebrated poet, simple and amiable, in no way merited the shameless outbursts of rage of his old friend, Voss; Haller, on the other hand, brought forward in his "Restoration of Political Science" such a decided theory in favor of secession as to inspire a sentiment of dread at his consistency. The conversion of Ferdinand, prince of Anhalt-Kothen, to the Catholic church, in 1825, excited far less attention.

In France, where the Bourbons were completely guided by the Jesuits, by whose aid they could alone hope to suppress the revolutionary spirit of their subjects, the reaction in favor of Catholicism had a.s.sumed a more decided character than in Germany. Louis XVIII. was succeeded by his brother, the Count d'Artois, under the name of Charles X., a venerable man seventy years of age, who, notwithstanding his great reverses, had "neither learned nor forgotten anything."