Germany from the Earliest Period Part 7

[Footnote 5: Ma.s.senbach published an anonymous charge against Blucher, which that general publicly refuted.]

[Footnote 6: While the unfortunate Henry von Bulow, whose wise counsels had been despised, was torn from his prison to be delivered to the Russians, whose behavior at Austerlitz he had blamed. On his route he was maliciously represented as a friend to the French and exposed to the insults of the rabble, who bespattered him with mud, and to such brutal treatment from the Cossacks that he died of his wounds at Riga. Never had a prophet a more ungrateful country. He was delivered by his fellow-citizens to an ignominious death for attempting their salvation, for pointing out the means by which alone their safety could be insured, and for exposing the wretches by whom they were betrayed.]

[Footnote 7: In the "Trumpet of the Holy War," he had summoned the nation to take up arms against the heathens (the French). He breathed war and flames. In his address to the king, he said, "The idle parade of the ruler during a long peace has never maintained a state!" He excited the hatred of the people against the French, telling them to harbor "such hatred against the enemy, like men who knew how to hate!"

After thus aiding to kindle the flames of war, he went over to the French and wrote the letter to Bignon which that author has inserted in his History of France: "Like Ganymede to the seat of the G.o.ds, have I been borne by the eagle to Fontainebleau, there to serve a G.o.d."]

[Footnote 8: The conduct of these deserters, how, decorated with the French c.o.c.kade, they treated the German population with unheard-of insolence, is given in detail by Seume.]

[Footnote 9: Courbiere, Herrmann, and Neumann of Cosel were bourgeois: the commandants of the other fortresses, so disgracefully ceded, were, without exception, n.o.bles.]

[Footnote 10: Bignon remarks that the queen, Louisa, who left no means untried in order to save as much as possible of Prussia, came somewhat too late, when Napoleon had already entered into an agreement with Russia. Hence Napoleon's inflexibility, which was the more insulting owing to the apparently yielding silence with which, from a feeling of politeness, he sometimes received the personal pet.i.tions of the queen, to which he would afterward send a written refusal. The part played in this affair by Alexander was far from honorable, and Bignon says with great justice, "The emperor of Russia must at that time have had but little judgement, if he imagined that taking Prussia in such a manner under his protection would be honorable to the protector." With a view of appeasing public opinion in Germany and influencing it in favor of the alliance between France and Russia, Zschokke, who was at that time in Napoleon's pay, published a mean-spirited pamphlet, ent.i.tled, "Will the human race gain by the present political changes?"]

[Footnote 11: The elector, William, who had solicited permission to remain neutral, having made great military preparations and received the Prussians with open arms, was, in Napoleon's twenty-seventh bulletin, deposed with expressions of the deepest contempt. "The house of Hesse-Ca.s.sel has for many years past sold its subjects to England, and by this means has the elector collected his immense wealth. May this mean and avaricious conduct prove the ruin of his house."--Louis, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, was threatened with similar danger for inclining on the side of Prussia, but perceived his peril in time to save himself from destruction.]

[Footnote 12: Marshal Lefebvre, who had taken the city, was created duke of Dantzig. The city, however, did not belong to him, but became a republic; notwithstanding which it was at first compelled to pay a contribution, amounting to twenty million francs, to Napoleon, to maintain a strong French garrison at its expense, and was fleeced in every imaginable way. A stop was consequently put to trade, the wealthiest merchants became bankrupt, and Napoleon's satraps established their harems and celebrated their orgies in their magnificent houses and gardens, and, by their unbridled license, demoralized to an almost incredible degree the staid manners of the quondam pious Lutheran citizens. Vide Blech, The Miseries of Dantzig, 1815.]

[Footnote 13: One of the handsomest men of his time and the Adonis of many a princely dame.]

CCLV. The Rhenish Confederation

The whole of western Europe bent in lowly submission before the genius of Napoleon; Russia was bound by the silken chains of flattery; England, Turkey, Sweden, and Portugal, alone bade him defiance.

England, whose fleets ruled the European seas, who lent her aid to his enemies, and instigated their opposition, was his most dangerous foe.

By a gigantic measure, known as the continental system, he sought to undermine her power. The whole of the continent of Europe, as far as his influence was felt, was, by an edict, published at Berlin on the 21st of November, 1806, closed against British trade; nay, he went so far as to lay an embargo on all English goods lying in store and to make prisoners of war of all the English at that time on the continent. All intercourse between England and the rest of Europe was prohibited. But Napoleon's attempt to ruin the commerce of England was merely productive of injury to himself; the promotion of every branch of industry on the continent could not replace the loss of its foreign trade; the products of Europe no longer found their way to the more distant parts of the globe, to be exchanged for colonial luxuries, which, with the great majority of the people, more particularly with the better cla.s.ses, had become necessaries, and numbers who had but lately lauded Napoleon to the skies regarded him with bitter rage on being compelled to relinquish their wonted coffee and sugar.

Napoleon, meanwhile, undeterred by opposition, enforced his continental system. Russia, actuated by jealousy of England and flattered by the idea, with which Napoleon had, at Tilsit, inspired the emperor Alexander, of sharing with him the empire of a world, aided his projects. The first step was to secure to themselves possession of the Baltic; the king of Sweden, Napoleon's most implacable foe, was to be dethroned, and Sweden to be promised to Frederick, prince-regent of Denmark, in order to draw him into the interests of the allied powers of France and Russia. The scheme, however, transpired in time to be frustrated. An English fleet, with an army, among which was the German Legion, composed of Hanoverian refugees, on board, attacked, and, after a fearful bombardment, took Copenhagen, and either destroyed or carried off the whole of the Danish fleet, September, 1807.[1] The British fleet, on its triumphant return through the Sound, was saluted at Helsingfors by the king of Sweden, who invited the admirals to breakfast. The island of Heligoland, which belonged to Holstein and consequently formed part of the possessions of Denmark, and which carried on a great smuggling trade between that country and the continent, was at that time also seized by the British.

Napoleon revenged himself by a bold stroke in Spain. He proposed the part.i.tion of Portugal to that power, and, under that pretext, sent troops across the Pyrenees. The licentious queen of Spain, Maria Louisa Theresa of Parma, and her paramour, G.o.doy, who had, on account of the treaty between France and Spain, received the t.i.tle of Prince of Peace, reigned at that time in the name of the imbecile king, Charles IV. His son, Ferdinand, placed himself at the head of the democratic faction, by which G.o.doy was regarded with the most deadly hatred. Both parties, however, conscious of their want of power, sought aid from Napoleon, who flattered each in turn, with a view of rendering the one a tool for the destruction of the other. The Prince of Peace was overthrown by a popular tumult; Ferdinand VII. was proclaimed king, and his father, Charles IV., was compelled to abdicate. These events were apparently countenanced by Napoleon, who invited the youthful sovereign to an interview; Ferdinand, accordingly, went to Bayonne and was--taken prisoner. The Prince of Peace, on the eve of flying from Spain, where his life was no longer safe, with his treasures and with the queen, persuaded the old king, Charles, also to go to Bayonne, where his person was instantly seized.

Both he and his son were compelled to renounce their right to the throne of Spain and to abdicate in favor of Joseph, Napoleon's brother, the 5th of May, 1808. The elevation of Joseph to the Spanish throne was followed by that of Murat to the throne of Naples. The haughty Spaniard, however, refused to be trampled under foot, and his proud spirit disdained to accept a king imposed upon him by such unparalleled treachery. Napoleon's victorious troops were, for the first time, routed by peasants, an entire army was taken prisoner at Baylen, and another, in Portugal, was compelled to retreat. Napoleon's veterans were scattered by monks and peasants, a proof, to the eternal disgrace of every subject people, that the invincibility of a nation depends but upon its will.

Napoleon did not conduct the war in Spain in person during the first campaign; the tranquillity of the North had first to be secured. For this purpose, he held a personal conference, in October, 1808, with the emperor Alexander at Erfurt, whither the princes of Germany hastened to pay their devoirs, humbly as their ancestors of yore to conquering Attila. The company of actors brought in Napoleon's train from Paris boasted of gaining the plaudits of a royal parterre, and a French sentinel happening to call to the watch to present arms to one of the kings there dancing attendance was reproved by his officer with the observation, "Ce n'est qu un roi."[2] Both emperors, for the purpose of offering a marked insult to Prussia, attended a great harehunt on the battlefield of Jena. It was during this conference that Napoleon and Alexander divided between themselves the sovereignty of Europe, Russia undertaking the subjugation of Sweden and the seizure of Finland, France the conquest of Spain and Portugal.

The period immediately subsequent to the fall of the ancient empire forms the blackest page in the history of Germany. The whole of the left bank of the Rhine was annexed to France. The people, notwithstanding the improvement that took place in the administration under Bon Jean St. Andre, groaned beneath the exorbitant taxes and the conscription. The commerce on the Rhine had almost entirely ceased.[3]--The grandduchy of Berg was, until 1808, governed with great mildness by Avar, the French minister.--Holland had, since 1801, remained under the administration of her benevolent governor, Schimmelpenninck, but had been continually drained by the imposition of additional income taxes, which, in 1804, amounted to six per cent on the capital in the country. Commerce had entirely ceased, smuggling alone excepted. In 1806, the Dutch were commanded to entreat Napoleon to grant them a king in the person of his brother Louis, who fixed his residence in the venerable council-house at Amsterdam, and, it must be confessed, endeavored to promote the real interests of his new subjects.[4]

The Swiss, with characteristic servility, testified the greatest zeal on every occasion for the emperor Napoleon, celebrated his fete-day, and boasted of his protection,[5] and of the freedom they were still permitted to enjoy. Freedom of thought was expressly prohibited.

Sycophants, in the pay of the foreign ruler, as, for instance, Zschokke, alone guided public opinion. In Zug, any person who ventured to speak disparagingly of the Swiss in the service of France was declared an enemy to his country and exposed to severe punishment.[6]

The Swiss shed their blood in each and all of Napoleon's campaigns, and aided him to reduce their kindred nations to abject slavery.[7]

The Rhenish confederation shared the advantages of French influence to the same degree in which it, in common with the old states on the left bank of the Rhine, was subject to ecclesiastical corruption or to the upstart vanity incidental to petty states. Wherever enlightenment and liberty had formerly existed, as in Protestant and const.i.tutional Wurtemberg, the violation of the ancient rights of the people was deeply felt, and the new aristocracy, modelled on that of France, appeared as unbearable to the older inhabitants of Wurtemberg as did the loss of their ancient independence to the mediatized princes and lordlings. King Frederick, notwithstanding his refusal to send troops into Spain, was compelled to furnish an enormous contingent for the wars in eastern Europe; the conscription and taxes were heavily felt, and the peasant was vexed by the great hunts, celebrated by Matthisson, the court-poet, as festivals of Diana.[8] In Bavaria, the administration of Maximilian Joseph and of his minister, Montgelas, although arbitrary in its measures, promoted, like that of Frederick II. and Joseph II., the advance of enlightenment and true liberty. The monasteries were closed, the punishment of the rack was abolished, unity was introduced in the administration of the state; the schools, the police, and the roads were improved, toleration was established; in a word, the dreams of the Illuminati, thirty years before this period, were, in almost every respect, realized. But, on the other hand, patriotism was here more unknown than in any other part of Germany. Christopher von Aretin set himself up as an apparitor to the French police, and, in 1810, published a work against the few German patriots still remaining, whom he denounced, in the fourteenth number of the Literary Gazette of Upper Germany, as "Preachers of Germanism, criminals and traitors, by whom the Rhenish confederation was polluted." The crown prince of Bavaria, who deeply lamented the rule of France and the miseries of Germany, offers a contrary example. A const.i.tution, naturally a mere tool in the hand of the ministry, was bestowed, in 1808, upon Bavaria.

The government of Charles von Dalberg, the prince primate and grandduke of Frankfort, was one of the most despicable of those composing the Rhenish confederation. Equally insensible to the duties attached to his high name and station,[9] he flattered the foreign tyrant to an extent unsurpa.s.sed by any of the other base sycophants at that time abounding in the empire; with folded hands would he at all times invoke the blessing of the Most High on the head of the almighty ruler of the earth, and celebrate each of his victories with hymns of grat.i.tude and joy, while his ministers misruled and tyrannized over the country,[10] whose freedom they loudly vaunted.[11]--In Wurzburg, the French amba.s.sador reigned with the despotism of an Eastern satrap.[12] Saxe-Coburg[13] and Anhalt-Gotha,[14] where the native tyrant was sheltered beneath the wing of Napoleon, were in the most lamentable state.--In Saxony, the government remained unaltered.

Frederick Augustus, filled with grat.i.tude for the lenity with which he had been treated after the war and for the grant of the royal dignity, remained steadily faithful to Napoleon, but introduced no internal innovations into the government. The adhesion of Saxe-Weimar to the Rhenish confederation was of deplorable consequence to Germany, the great poets a.s.sembled there by the deceased d.u.c.h.ess Amalia also scattering incense around Napoleon.

The kingdom of Westphalia was doomed to taste to the dregs the bitter cup of humiliation. The new king, Jerome, who declared, "Je veux qu'on respecte la dignite de l'homme et du citoyen," bestowed, it is true, many and great benefits upon his subjects; the system of flogging, so degrading to the soldier, was abolished, the judicature was improved, the administration simplified, and the German in authority, notwithstanding his traditionary gruffness, became remarkable for urbanity toward the citizens and peasants. But Napoleon's despotic rule ever demanded fresh sacrifices of men and money and increased severity on the part of the police, in order to quell the spirit of revolt. Jerome, conscious of being merely his brother's representative, consoled himself for his want of independence in his gay court at Ca.s.sel.[15] He had received but a middling education, and had, at one period, held a situation in the marine at Baltimore in North America. While still extremely young, placed unexpectedly upon a throne, more as a splendid puppet than as an independent sovereign, he gave way to excesses, natural, and, under the circ.u.mstances, almost excusable. It would be ungenerous to repeat the sarcasms showered upon him on his expulsion. The execrations heaped, at a later period, upon his head, ought with far greater justice to have fallen upon those of the Germans themselves, and more particularly upon those of that portion of the aristocracy that vied with the French in enriching the chronique scandaleuse of Ca.s.sel, and upon those of the citizens who, under Bongars, the head of the French police, acted the part of spies upon and secret informers against their wretched countrymen.--The farcical donation of a free const.i.tution to the people put a climax to their degradation. On the 2d of July, 1808, Jerome summoned the Westphalian Estates to Ca.s.sel and opened the servile a.s.sembly, thus arbitrarily convoked, with extreme pomp. The unfortunate deputies, who had, on the conclusion of the lengthy ceremonial, received an invitation _a.s.sister au repas_ at the palace and had repaired thither, their imaginations, whetted by hunger, revelling in visions of gastronomic delight, were sorely discomfited on discovering that they were simply expected "to look on while the sovereign feasted." The result of this a.s.sembly was, naturally, a unanimous tribute of admiration and an invocation of blessings on the head of the foreign ruler, the princ.i.p.al part in which was played by John Muller, who attempted to convince his fellow countrymen that by means of the French usurpation they had first received the boon of true liberty.

This cheaply-bought apostate said, in his usual hyperbolical style, "It is a marked peculiarity of the northern nations, more especially of those of German descent, that, whenever G.o.d has, in His wisdom, resolved to bestow upon them a new kind or a higher degree of civilization, the impulse has ever been given from without. This impulse was given to us by Napoleon, by him before whom the earth is silent, G.o.d having given the whole world into his hand, nor can Germany at the present period have a wish ungratified, Napoleon having reorganized her as the nursery of European civilization. Too sublime to condescend to every-day polity, he has given durability to Germany!

Happy nation! what an interminable vista of glory opens to thy view!"

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.