“My Good Mother,—If this letter reaches you, it will be because I am dead or dangerously wounded. I shall exchange shots to-morrow with pistols. It is a necessity of my position, and I accept it as a man of courage. If anything could have induced me to decline the challenge, it would have been the grief which the blow would cause you, were I struck. But the law of honour is imperative, and if you must weep, dear mother, I would rather it be for a son worthy of you than for a coward. Let this thought assuage your grief: my last thought will have been of you. I shall go to the encounter to-morrow calm and sure of myself. Right is on my side. I embrace you, dear mother, with all the warmth of my heart.“Dujarier.”
“My Good Mother,—If this letter reaches you, it will be because I am dead or dangerously wounded. I shall exchange shots to-morrow with pistols. It is a necessity of my position, and I accept it as a man of courage. If anything could have induced me to decline the challenge, it would have been the grief which the blow would cause you, were I struck. But the law of honour is imperative, and if you must weep, dear mother, I would rather it be for a son worthy of you than for a coward. Let this thought assuage your grief: my last thought will have been of you. I shall go to the encounter to-morrow calm and sure of myself. Right is on my side. I embrace you, dear mother, with all the warmth of my heart.
“Dujarier.”
There was nothing more to be done or to be said. Only a few hours of the night remained. The experienced duellist would have steadied his nerves by as long a sleep as possible. But Dujarier regarded himself as doomed. He mentally contrasted his miserable performances at the shooting gallery with the wonderful things De Beauvallon was reported to have done with the pistol in Cuba. The stories might be inventions. He tried to snatch a few hours’ sleep.[9]
THE DUEL
The morning of the 11th March dawned. The ground was white with snow. Dujarier was taking his light French breakfast when Lola’s maid brought him a message. She wished to see him. He promised to come at once, and the servant took her leave. Dujarier hastily scribbled these lines:—
“My Dear Lola,—I am going out to fight a duel with pistols. This will explain why I wished to pass the night alone, and why I have not gone to see you this morning. I need all the composure at my command and you would have excited in me too much emotion. I will be with you at two o’clock, unless——Good-bye, my dear little Lola, the dear little girl I love.D.”
“My Dear Lola,—I am going out to fight a duel with pistols. This will explain why I wished to pass the night alone, and why I have not gone to see you this morning. I need all the composure at my command and you would have excited in me too much emotion. I will be with you at two o’clock, unless——Good-bye, my dear little Lola, the dear little girl I love.
D.”
It was seven o’clock. He told his servant to deliver the letter about nine. He then rose and walked to De Boigne’s house in the Rue Pinon. There he found the four seconds in consultation. He saluted them, and thanked De Boigne for his notice of Lola. The conditions of the encounter were then signed and read. The combatants were to be placed at thirty paces distance, and could make five forward before firing, but each was to step after the other had fired. One was to fireimmediately after the other. A coin was spun to determine who should provide the pistols; but it was understood that the weapons were not to have been used before by the combatants. The coin decided in favour of De Beauvallon. D’Ecquevillez then produced a pair of pistols, which he gave the other seconds to understand were his personal property. He and De Flers then went in search of their principal. Dujarier and his friends returned to the Rue Laffitte, where they picked up the doctor, Monsieur de Guise, and drove off, all four, to the Bois de Boulogne.
The rendezvous was a secluded spot near the Restaurant de Madrid. There is, and probably was then, atir aux pigeonsclose by. The morning was intensely cold, and no one was about. A few snowflakes were falling as the party arrived. There was no sign of De Beauvallon and his seconds, though it was now ten o’clock. The four men impatiently paced up and down, Bertrand and De Boigne conversing in low tones as to the probable result of the encounter, while Dujarier talked with the doctor on matters in general. De Guise, however, could not refrain from questioning him as to the cause of the affair. The journalist related the episodes at the Frères Provençaux, from his own point of view, and said that D’Ecquevillez had told him that De Beauvallon intended to fight him “because he did not like him.” “I naturally replied,” continued Dujarier, “that many people might not like me, and I could not be supposed on that account to fight them. D’Ecquevillez retorted that his principal would force me to fight by a blow and an insult. This threat was in itself an insult. I accepted the challenge.”
The doctor observed the journalist closely. He wasshivering with the cold, and the nervous excitement, which Dumas had remarked in him always at this hour, was manifesting itself. The seconds drew near, and De Guise gave it as his professional opinion that Dujarier was not in a condition to fight. Bertrand and De Boigne joined their entreaties to his, and argued that having waited an hour for the other party, they could in all honour retire from the field. Dujarier refused to do any such thing. Before all things, like most nervous men, he dreaded the imputation of cowardice. The cold and the excitement made him tremble. His friends would suspect him of fear; therefore, at all hazards, he must give them proof of his courage.
Finding his persuasions futile, De Guise resigned himself to listen to a long and minute account of the quarrel with De Beauvoir. The recital was finished when the sound of carriage wheels was heard. Dujarier’s heart must have given a big leap! A shabby cab drove up and out of it jumped De Beauvallon and his seconds. De Boigne accosted the Creole with some asperity. He remarked that it was confoundedly cold, and that he and his principal had been kept waiting for an hour and a half. D’Ecquevillez, who seems to have done most of the talking throughout the whole affair, turned to Bertrand, and explained that they had been delayed by the necessity of purchasing ammunition and by the slowness of the cab horse.
De Boigne now addressed himself to De Beauvallon, and made a final effort to arrange the dispute. “I speak to you,” he said, “as one who has had experience of these affairs. There is nothing to fight about. Your friends have put it into your head that an insult was intended.”
“Sir,” replied De Beauvallon coldly, “you say there is no motive for this duel. I think differently, since I am here with my seconds. You don’t suggest any other course. The position is the same as yesterday, when it was settled that we should fight. Besides, an affair of this sort is not to be arranged on the field.”
De Boigne shrugged his shoulders. He had done his utmost for his friend. He and De Flers selected the ground, and with the consent of the other, he measured forty-three paces, diminishing the distance originally agreed to. D’Ecquevillez, meanwhile, had produced his pistols, recognisable by their blue barrels. Bertrand was about to charge one, when he introduced his finger into the muzzle, and withdrew it, black to the depth of the finger-nail. He looked at the other. “These pistols have been tried,” he said.
“On my honour,” declared D’Ecquevillez, “we have only tried them with powder. Monsieur de Beauvallon has never handled them before.”
With this positive assurance Bertrand had to be content. The pistols were again tried with caps. With grave misgivings, he and De Boigne placed their man. De Beauvallon also took up position. Dujarier took his pistol from his second so clumsily that he moved the trigger and nearly blew De Boigne’s head off.
The signal was given. Dujarier fired instantly. His ball flew wide of the mark. He let drop his pistol, and faced his adversary.
De Beauvallon very deliberately raised his arms and covered his opponent. The spectators held their breath. “Fire, damn you! fire!” cried De Boigne, exasperated by his slowness. The Creole pulled the trigger. For an instant Dujarier stood erect. The next,he fell, huddled up on to the ground. The doctor rushed towards him. His practised eye told him that the wound was mortal. The bullet had entered near the bridge of the nose, and broken the occipital bone, so as to produce a concussion of the spine. De Guise assured Dujarier the wound was not serious and told him to spit. He tried in vain to do so. Bertrand summoned the carriage to approach. De Boigne leant over his friend, and asked him if he suffered much pain. Dujarier, already inarticulate, nodded; his eyelids dropped, and he fell back in the physician’s arms. He was dead.
D’Ecquevillez, seeing Dujarier fall, offered Bertrand his assistance. He was rebuffed, told to gather up his pistols, and to go. He hurried off with the other second and his principal, who murmured: “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” as he passed his late adversary. “How have I conducted myself?” he asked his second.
“I hope I shall always act in similar circumstances as you did,” was the reassuring reply.
Meanwhile, Dumas had gone, full of anxiety, to the Rue Laffitte, to find that his friend had left the house, with what object he guessed. He noticed as a sinister omen that there was blood on the banister. He went away, sad at heart, to await the result of the combat.
Lola, on the receipt of her lover’s note, hurried at once to his house. She burst into his bedroom and saw two pistols—Alexandre’s, no doubt—lying upon the quilt. Gabriel, Dujarier’s servant, who had followed her, shook his head sadly, and said, “My master knows very well he will not return.” In an instant Lola was again outside the house, driving to her good friend, Dumas’s. The novelist told her that it was with DeBeauvallon, not with De Beauvoir, that their friend had gone to exchange shots. “My God!” she cried, “then he is a dead man!”
She rushed back to the Rue Laffitte. She spent half an hour in agony of mind, when the sound of a carriage stopping fell upon her ears. She flew into the street, and opened the carriage door. A heavy body lurched against her bosom. It was her dead lover.
THE RECKONING
It was not in fair fight that Dujarier had fallen. Before even he had been carried to his grave, with Balzac, Méry, Dumas, and De Girardin as his pall-bearers, the suspicions of all his friends had been aroused. At Dr. Vérons, the morning of his death, Bertrand showed Dumas his finger-tip still blackened by the barrel of De Beauvallon’s pistol. Would a pistol which had not been charged with ball leave such a stain? Experts present said no. The suspicion that De Beauvallon had made doubly sure of killing his adversary by trying his weapon beforehand ripened in the minds of many into conviction. How, too, had the Creole spent the early part of the morning? Why did he not come with his seconds to the Rue Pinon. What was he doing while Dujarier was awaiting him in the Bois? The affair began to wear a very sinister complexion. Representations were made to the police. Enquiries were set on foot, and De Beauvallon and D’Ecquevillez promptly retired across the Spanish frontier.
Lola had sustained a staggering blow. She was sincerely attached to Dujarier, who had been more to her than any other man had been. The memory of her husband was hateful. Liszt had flashed suddenlyacross her path, to disappear a few weeks later. Besides, he had given her up of his own accord. But this man had shared her life for months, had loved her to the last, had cared for her both as a lover and a husband. In his will he left her eighteen shares in the Palais Royal Theatre, representing twenty thousand francs. She referred, years after, and no doubt sincerely, to his death as a loss that could never be made up to her.
The luxury of grief is allowed in scant measure to those who minister to the public’s amusement. They must dry their tears quickly. Three weeks after the fatal duel, Lola made her appearance at the Porte-St.-Martin Theatre, inLa Biche au Bois. The audience was no less critical than at the Opera. She was hissed, and with her usual audacity, she exasperated the public still more by expressing her contempt for them upon the stage. So ended her career as adanseusein the French capital.
She lingered on in Paris, notwithstanding, frequenting the society of her dead lover’s friends in accordance with his last wishes. The legacy had relieved her for the moment of the necessity of earning her living. She longed to see retribution overtake the man who had robbed her of all that life held dear. Justice seemed for a time to pursue the slayer with leaden feet. In July the Royal Court of Paris practically exonerated the seconds, and De Beauvallon thought it safe to surrender voluntarily. The explanations he gave as to his movements on the 10th and 11th March did not, as he had hoped they would, satisfy the authorities. The Court of Cassation quashed the decision of the lower court, and sent the accused for trial, on the charge of murder, before the Assize Court of Rouen.
The case is one of the most celebrated in the annals of French justice. It all turned on the article in the code of honour that forbids a duellist to make use of arms which he has already tried, and with which he is proficient. All the witnesses—among whom were professed experts—agreed that this rule was absolute. The case, which raised many other nice points of law, was heard before the President of the Tribunal, Monsieur Letendre de Tourville. The prosecution was conducted by the King’s Procurator (General Salveton), the Advocate-General, and two very able counsel, Maîtres Léon Duval and Romiguière. But the defence had a tower of strength in the great advocate Berryer, the defender of Ney, Lamennais, Châteaubriand, and Louis Napoléon—the greatest pleader and, after Mirabeau, the greatest orator his country has produced.
A trial whereat Alexandre Dumas and Lola Montez, to say nothing of the lesser lights of the literary and theatrical world, appeared as witnesses, excited immense interest. Dumas produced a sensation which must have rejoiced his heart on entering the witness-box. He was asked his name and profession. “Alexandre Dumas, Marquis Davy de la Pailleterie,” he replied with evident complacency; “and I should call myself a dramatist if I were not in the country of Corneille.”
“There are degrees in everything,” replied the learned President.
Claudin, who heard these oft-quoted words, gives it as his opinion that Dumas expressed himself thus from a genuine sense of modesty, and that the judge did not succeed in being funny.
The great Alexandre was in very good form throughout the whole trial, which lasted from the 26th to the30th March 1846, inclusive. He expounded the laws and principles of the duel, with copious commentaries. He quoted an authoritative work on the subject, drawn up by a body of noblemen and gentlemen—a work which the judge dryly observed he did not intend to add to his library. At the conclusion of the first part of his evidence (the gist of which we know) he solicited leave to return to Paris, to assist at the representation of one of his dramas in five acts. Dumas never lost an opportunity of advertising himself. He managed also to drag his son into the box, though the latter had really nothing to say.
The frail, fair ladies of the supper-party also had to run the gauntlet of examination and cross-examination. The virtuous ladies of Rouen, anxious to hear the most scandalous details of the case, filled the space reserved for the public, and having feasted their eyes on thedemi-mondaines, obstinately refused to let these find seats among them. Mademoiselle Liévenne appeared in a charming toilette of blue velvet, with a red Cashmere shawl, and a pearl-grey satin hood. Lola, as befitted the melancholy occasion, wore the garb of mourning, and never, perhaps, showed to more advantage than in her close-fitting black satin costume and flowing shawl. She was the cynosure of all eyes. Though a year had passed since the event now being discussed, her utterance was choked with sobs, and the reading of Dujarier’s last note caused her to shed floods of tears. She declared that had she known it was De Beauvallon with whom her lover intended to fight, she would have communicated with the police and prevented the duel. “I would have gone to the rendezvous myself,” she cried with characteristic spirit.In her Memoirs, she adds that she would have fought De Beauvallon herself, and her life-story testifies that this was no empty gasconade.
That Dujarier’s death had been premeditated by his antagonist was abundantly proved at the trial. The pistols which the dead man’s seconds had been led to believe belonged to D’Ecquevillez were now admitted to be the property of the accused’s brother-in-law, Monsieur Granier de Cassagnac. They had been in the possession of De Beauvallon since the eve of the encounter. Circumstantial evidence went to show that he was familiar with the weapons, and had practised with them on the fatal morning. But the testimony of the witnesses, the facts themselves, the skilful pleading of Duval, prevailed not against the eloquence of Berryer. His magical powers of oratory brought the jury round to his point of view, and De Beauvallon was acquitted of the charge of murder, though cast in damages of twenty thousand francs towards the mother and the sister of his victim.
The affair did not end there. The friends of Dujarier refused to be diverted from the trail of vengeance. Fresh and conclusive evidence came to light, and De Beauvallon and D’Ecquevillez were placed on their trial for perjury during the first hearing. As regarded D’Ecquevillez, it was established that he was no viscount, but abourgeoisof doubtful antecedents named Vincent, that his rank in the Spanish service was merely that of a militia captain, and that his evidence, in general, was worthless. It was proved that De Beauvallon had tried the pistols the very morning of the duel in a garden at Chaillot, taking aim with them not once, but a dozen times. Dujarier had been the victimof a deliberate conspiracy. Both the accused were found guilty and condemned (9th October 1847) to eight years’ imprisonment. Both escaped from prison during the Revolution of the following year. The principal criminal returned to his native isle, where his liberation was judicially sanctioned. His subsequent appeal to obtain a reversal of his sentence was rejected by the Court of Cassation in 1855.
Lola had left France long before the assassin of her lover was finally brought to justice.
“In another six months,” writes “the Englishman in Paris,” “her name was almost forgotten by all of us, except by Alexandre Dumas, who now and then alluded to her. Though far from superstitious, Dumas, who had been as much smitten with her as most of her admirers, avowed that he was glad that she had disappeared. ‘She has the evil eye,’ he said, ‘and is sure to bring bad luck to any one who closely links his destiny with hers, for however short a time. You see what has occurred to Dujarier? If ever she is heard of again, it will be in connection with some terrible calamity that has befallen a lover of hers.’ We all laughed at him, except Dr. Véron, who could have given odds to Solomon Eagle himself at prophesying. For once in a way, however, Alexandre Dumas proved correct. When we did hear again of Lola Montés, it was in connection with the disturbances at Munich, and the abdication of her Royal lover, Louis I. of Bavaria.”
IN QUEST OF A PRINCE
“The moment I get a nice, round, lump sum of money, I am going to try to hook a prince.” In these words Lola is said to have announced her ambition to “the Englishman in Paris.” That gossipy exile, whoever he was in this particular instance, was no friend of hers, and took care, no doubt, to render her expressions as brutally as possible. I do not doubt that he has interpreted her meaning truthfully enough. It is clear that Lola was an inordinately ambitious woman, eager to play a leading part in great affairs. Her association with Dujarier and other active politicians, the glimpses she had so often obtained of courts and thrones, stimulated this longing for power. She felt within her the capacity to rule men, and the ability to surmount great obstacles. A personal courage was hers, such as would have earned its possessor, if a man, the cross of honour. She feared not the bright face of danger, dreading only that circumstance might put the things she coveted beyond her reach. Valour alone, she knew, is seldom rewarded in a woman. It is considered by the women, and more particularly the men, who do not possess it, unwomanly. Intellect, again, she had; but its development had been checked,its faculties neglected, under the Early Victorian system of women’s education. Besides, the most superficial observer could not have failed to see, that while learning in a man was accounted a qualification for responsibilities and honours, in a woman it was regarded as a not altogether enviable peculiarity—like an aquiline nose, or the gift of sword-swallowing. In the five years Lola had passed in the various capitals of Europe, it had become very plain to her that what men supremely prize in women is physical beauty. The governing sex attached no rewards (or, at any rate, the meagrest) to courage and wisdom. They asked woman only to be beautiful. Some insisted that she should also be virtuous, by which they meant she should bestow herself upon one of them exclusively. In other words, they allowed women to influence them only through the senses; and by the means they had themselves selected, the ambitious woman had no choice but to attack them.
Over the grave of Dujarier Lola may well have exclaimed, “Farewell, love!” Every one of her attachments had ended unhappily—the first ingloriously, the last tragically. Under such blows, her nature hardened. Ambition revived as sentiment waned. There was something worth living for still. At Rouen she heard the murderer of her lover acquitted. Bitter and disillusioned, she turned her steps towards Germany. Thanks to Dujarier, she had now “the round, lump sum of money” necessary to the execution of her project; and in Germany, with its thirty-six sovereigns, she could hardly fail to encounter a prince. She travelled about from watering-place to watering-place, from Wiesbaden to Homburg, from Homburg toBaden-Baden, “punting in a small way, not settling down anywhere, and almost deliberately avoiding both Frenchmen and Englishmen.” At Baden it was rumoured that the Prince of Orange (probably an old friend of her Simla days) was among her admirers. There also she met that puissant prince, Henry LXXII. of Reuss, who straightway fell in love with her. He invited her to pay a visit to his exiguous dominions, and she went, probably feeling that she was playing the part of sparrow-hawk. At the Court of Reuss she suffered agonies of boredom. The etiquette was as strict as in the palace of the Most Catholic King, and the deference exacted by Henry LXXII. as profound as though he had been Czar of all the Russias. True, in his territory, only half as large again as the county of Middlesex, he wielded a power as absolute as that autocrat’s. Of this pettiness the beautiful stranger soon showed her impatience. Her infirmity of temper betrayed itself. She infringed His Highness’s prerogative by chastising his subjects—still, this could be overlooked by an indulgent prince. But when Henry one morning beheld Lola walking straight across his flower-beds, he felt that it was time to vindicate the outraged majesty of the throne. With his own august hands he wrote and signed an order, expelling Mademoiselle Montez from the principality. To this decree effect was only given when His Highness had satisfied to the last pfennig a tremendously long bill for expenses, presented to him by the audacious offender.
As it is hardly possible to take a long walk without overstepping the limits of the principality, not many hours elapsed before Lola was beyond the reach of Henry’s wrath. She had the choice of various retreats.The neighbouring duchy of Saxe-Altenburg she, no doubt, contemptuously dismissed. To the north lay Prussia; but she could expect no welcome there. Frederick William, after her memorable adventure at the review, had given her to understand that his police could be better employed than in teaching her manners. She avoided Weimar, where her old lover, Liszt, had established himself in company with the Princess Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. She may have lingered awhile in these pretty, petty Thuringian states, with their charming capitals set in the forest glades; and perhaps have made a pilgrimage to the Venusberg, near Eisenach, where her prototype ensnared Tannhäuser. The spirit of that oldminnesängerwas not altogether dead. Something of it glowed in the heart of the grey-haired man who reigned over Bavaria. Deliberately or aimlessly, Lola Montez, the Venus of her generation, journeyed south towards Munich.
THE KING OF BAVARIA
At that time Louis I., who wore the Bavarian crown, was a man sixty-one years old. He, “the most German of the Germans,” as he had been styled, was by an odd freak of fortune born in France. His father, Max Joseph, though brother of the Duke of Pfalz-Zweibrücken, commanded a regiment in the French service, and it was at Strasbourg that the child was born in 1786. His father’s grenadiers shaved off their moustaches to stuff his pillow with. The name bestowed on him in baptism was that of his godfather, the ill-fated King of France. But the Revolution soon drove him with his family across the Rhine, to Mannheim and to Rohrbach. Death quickly cleared the boy a path to the throne. His father presently succeeded his brother as Duke, and a few years later upon the extinction of the elder line of the Wittelsbachs, became Elector of Bavaria.
Even in the stormy first decade of the nineteenth century princes had to be educated, and in the year 1803 we find Louis at Göttingen, sitting at the feet of Johannes Müller, who infused him with a lively sense of nationality and a reverence for all things German. This was to stand the Prince in good stead in the darkdays that followed. Those were years of profound humiliation for Germany, of poignant suffering for her people. Even in the ’forties few Germans took pride in the name, some of them settled in London and Paris, deeming it almost a reproach. In his country’s blackest night the Bavarian prince loudly proclaimed his faith in a glorious dawn. He exulted in the name of German. He was “teutsch” (as he always wrote the word) to the very core.
He was German not least in his passion for the South. Italy was his first, last, and best-beloved mistress. In her bosom he was inspired with that love for the arts which was stronger even than his patriotism. Returning to Germany, he saw with disgust his father embrace the alliance of Napoleon and turn his arms against Austria—German fighting German. At Strasbourg, on hearing the news of the capitulation at Ulm, he dared to say to the Empress Josephine: “The greatest victory for me will be when this, my native city, is united to Germany.” He accompanied Max Joseph to the Emperor’s headquarters at Linz in 1805, when Bavaria was erected by the conqueror’s decree into a kingdom. The new Crown Prince made no secret of his antipathies. Anxious to win him over, Napoleon carried him off to Paris, and only succeeded in disgusting him by his irreverence during divine worship. Louis was a devout and sincere Catholic. From the Tuileries he intrigued for the overthrow of his host and gaoler with Czar Alexander. His father got wind of these negotiations and recalled him to Munich. Thence he was sent to join the Bavarian army in Prussia. With unspeakable bitterness he heard that the victory of Jena was celebrated at his father’s capital with aTeDeumand public rejoicings. In January 1807, in the train of the conquering army, he reached Berlin. There his first act was to unveil a bust of Frederick the Great!
LOUIS OF BAVARIA. WHEN ELECTORAL PRINCE.
At the beginning of the campaign against Russia, at Napoleon’s request, which was practically a command, Louis took the head of the Bavarian army. Years after, he refused to sanction the publication of a work on his military achievements at this time. With the war-weary veteran of De Vigny’s tale, he might have said: “J’ai appris à detester la guerre, en la faisant avec énergie.” For he was no carpet knight. Though compelled to draw the sword against men of his own race and their allies, he wielded it well. Under a hot fire he led his troops across the Narew, and at Pultusk won the Grand Cross of the Order of Max Joseph. Such services could not blind Napoleon to his lieutenant’s real sympathies. In his indignation against what he considered the ingratitude and treachery of his ally’s son, he is reported to have exclaimed: “Quoi m’empêche de fusilier ce prince?” He dared not go to such desperate lengths. Instead, he superseded Louis in the command of the Bavarian army, at the beginning of the campaign of 1809, by one of his own marshals, Lefebvre, Duke of Danzig. To the Prince was assigned simply the command of a division. He fought well at Abensberg, where themot d’ordrewasBravoure et Bavière. “It is to Germans that the Emperor owes this victory over Germans,” he boasted bitterly.
In the revolt of the Tyrolese against the Bavarian yoke imposed on them by the French, his heart went out to the gallant insurgents. He pensioned a son of the patriot Speckbacher, and condoled with Hofer’swife on the execution of her husband. Napoleon’s indignation knew no bounds. “This prince,” he declared, “shall never reign in Bavaria!” He destined the crown for Eugène Beauharnais, or one of his children.
But it was Louis’s policy that triumphed in 1813. With delight he beheld his father desert the sinking ship of France, and from Salzburg (then belonging to Bavaria) he issued a proclamation, urging all the German people to rise against the common oppressor. Wrede, with a Bavarian army, threw himself across the path of the retreating French at Hanau, to find that the wounded eagle’s talons could still snatch a bloody victory. In the campaigns of 1814 and 1815, Louis took no active part. His father dreaded that he might fall into the hands of Napoleon, who regarded him with intense hatred. The Prince had to be content with the part of Tyrtaeus, and in odes, not deficient in merit, stirred the patriotic feelings of his countrymen.
After Waterloo he sheathed the sword that he had wielded reluctantly, but not ingloriously. “I was never a general,” he said, “but a soldier, yes—with all my heart.” He was now free to devote himself to matters which more strongly, perhaps, appealed to him. At Vienna and London he watched over the interests of the arts. He pleaded (and not unsuccessfully) for the restitution of the artistic treasures Napoleon had carried off, and wrote on the subject of the Elgin marbles with judgment and critical acumen. He sought the acquaintance of the brilliant and the learned, presiding over acôterieof painters, sculptors, andliterati. The winters of 1817-8 and 1820-1 he spent in the Eternal City, residing at the Bavarian Embassy or at the Villa Malta on the Pincio. He knew Canova andThorwaldsen, and laid the foundations of his firm and life-long intimacy with the sculptor, Wagner. On the Neue Pinakothek at Munich is a picture by Catel, representing one of those joyous and scholarlyréunionsin which Louis delighted. He is shown seated at a table in a humbleosteriaon the Ripa Grande, in the company of Thorwaldsen, Wagner, the artists Veit, Von Schnorr, and Catel himself, the architect Von Klenze, Professor Ringseis, Count Seinsheim, and Colonel von Gumppenberg. It was in such company, and beneath the blue sky of Italy, that “the most German of the Germans” was happiest. His æsthetic faculties were altogether exotic. His style of literary composition is compared by an English writer to a dislocation of all the limbs of a human body.
“Nothing can be more un-German, more opposed to the genius of the language, than this extraordinary style, the like of which is not to be found in the whole range of German literature.[10]It is an aberration of which we have an English example in ‘Carlylese.’”
Louis succeeded his father as King of Bavaria in October 1825. He was then in his fortieth year. A shrewd connoisseur, he had devoted nearly all his income as Prince to the acquisition of objects of art. It was his ambition to make his capital a new Florence, and to carry out this design the strictest economy was introduced into all departments of the state. The Munich we know was mainly his creation. To him we owe the Glyptothek, of which he had conceived the idea at least as far back as 1805; the beautiful Au Church, theRoyal Chapel, the Ludwigskirche, the Church of St. Boniface, the splendid throne-room, the bronze monument to the Bavarian soldiers who fell in the Russian campaigns. The quaint old German city was completely transformed. Unfortunately, the royal Mæcenas failed to recognise the worth of native models, such as were to be found in Nuremberg. All his buildings were duplicates, or close imitations, of others on the south side of the Alps. The Triumphal Arch in Ludwigstrasse, with its bronze car drawn by lions, was obviously suggested by the well-known models of Paris and Rome. To Louis’s zeal we are indebted also for the Pinakothek and the colossal statue of Bavaria. Finally, in 1830, on the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig, the King laid the foundation-stone of the Walhalla, the temple of German greatness, thus accomplishing a design he had formed twenty-five years before. Lofty as was the execution, the conception was loftier. It took place
“just after the Emperor Francis II. had uncrowned himself, declaring that the Holy Roman Empire—the empire of a thousand years—was at an end. It was at such a time, when the fabric that had stood for ten centuries had crumbled into dust; when the tramp of the conqueror threatened to efface all ancient institutions; when every existing dynasty of the continent of Europe was trembling for its existence; when principalities were being moulded into kingdoms, kingdoms dismembered or destroyed, God’s very barriers trampled down and passed; when works of art, the heirlooms of a nation, were torn from the land that had produced them to deck the capital of the conqueror; when victory followed victory—Marengo, Hohenlinden, Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland; when king’s crowns and mitres, like withered leaves, lay strewnupon the ground, and when it might well be feared that in that ancient land soon nothing would be left of its former self to recognise its identity—at such a moment was it, when devastation threatened to put out the lights which had been shining for ages, that the Prince Royal of Bavaria, then twenty-three years of age, resolved to build a monument to the glory of his country.”[11]
There were the elements of greatness in Louis of Bavaria. In magnanimity of soul he was very far the superior of those sovereigns to whom historians have accorded the title of “the great.” Nor was he lacking, as we have seen, in the will and capacity to give to his loftiest conceptions practical shape.
“Throughout life,” says the writer just quoted, “King Louis ordered his expenses with the exactness of a debtor and creditor account in a banker’s ledger. The necessary monies for certain undertakings were assigned beforehand for each coming year. Every separate expenditure was provided for from specified sources, and each rubric had a corresponding one belonging to it, whence its expenses were to be defrayed.”
No Bond Street dealer could be a shrewder judge of the value of a work of art than the Bavarian prince; he was no wastefuldilettante, but brought to bear on the embellishment of his capital the keenest business instincts. He watched with unflagging attention the fluctuations in the prices of the treasures he coveted. We find him comparing Thorwaldsen’s and Canova’s estimates of the value of the Barberini Faun, and refusing to pay an extra scudo for the carriage of astatue. Yet he was not a niggard. Those he honoured with his friendship he never left to want. A sick or indigent artist had only to bring his need to the King’s notice, to receive liberal relief. He was a warm-hearted and constant friend. His last letter to Wagner is as affectionate in tone as the first he addressed to him forty-eight years before. The permanency of his friendships was in a great degree due to his good sense in making them. His associates were men, not only of genius and learning, but of sterling worth and character. They were not the kind of men to flatter his vanity, or to humour his foibles. Returning to Rome after his accession, Louis announced his intention of continuing the course of life he had pursued as Prince, but thought he ought to assume some little outward state. Wagner replied: “The King of Spain certainly used to drive about in a coach and six, with footmen in grand liveries; but, notwithstanding, I never heard that any one had the least respect for him. Simplicity is most consistent with dignity: and the course you formerly pursued, sire, will be the best to pursue in the future.”
To this artist-king Germany owes its first railway. A short but very important line was constructed by his command from Nuremberg to Fürth in 1835, and was followed up by lines connecting Munich with Augsburg and Nuremberg with Bamberg. In these projects may be traced the inception of the whole German railway system. Thanks also to Louis, the steamboat first ploughed German waters, a service being inaugurated under his auspices on the Bodensee. The important canal connecting the Danube with the Main, and affording thereby direct water communication betweenthe North Sea and the Black Sea, bears the King’s name, and was executed at his order. The idealist, the man whom some writers in their ignorance dismiss as half-minnesänger, half-virtuoso, was keenly alive to the material needs of his subjects. The commercial treaties concluded with Würtemberg in 1827 and with Prussia in 1833 laid the foundations of the Zollverein, itself the basis of the political unity of all Germany. The empire owes much to Louis I. Had he been the monarch of a more powerful state, the imperial crown might have been his. “Were such a dignity offered to him,” his brother-in-law, Frederick William, is reported to have said, “the King of Bavaria would accept it for the sake of the picturesque costume!” The sneer evinced a knowledge of the weaker side of a noble character, but it is still open to question whether a Wittelsbach would not have more worthily filled the imperial throne than a Hohenzollern. Humanity and the arts would surely have been gainers.
REACTION IN BAVARIA
All generous ideals took root and blossomed in the heart of the Bavarian prince. He loved his country, he loved the arts, he venerated the Catholic faith, and (oddest of all in a German prince) he loved liberty. The beginning of his reign was marked by the most liberal administration. Extensive reforms were carried out in every department of state. Many old feudal institutions and privileges which had survived the Napoleonic deluge were swept away, including a multitude of archaic courts and jurisdictions. The powers of the censorship of the Press were considerably curtailed and recognition extended to the Protestants in the departments of public worship and instruction. Retrenchment and economy were enforced upon Louis by his great expenditure on public works. A million florins were saved in the army estimates, and official salaries were seriously cut down. An economy, not so commendable, was also effected by reducing the pensions to retired civil servants and their widows, whose complaints were distinctly heard above the chorus of approbation that greeted the administration of the Liberal King. Looking, perhaps, too, to the rapid development of the railway system, he suffered the roads of Bavaria to fall into a deplorable state of neglect.
Louis was not a Liberal of the Manchester School. His sympathy with freedom and progress was genuine, and he loyally observed the provisions of a not very democratic constitution. But there can be no doubt that he believed rather in government for the people than by the people. In the particular instance he was abundantly justified, for in general enlightenment he was several centuries ahead of his subjects. Five years after his succession to the throne, his good resolutions were rudely shattered by the Revolution of July. Why that event should have arrested him in the path of progress it is not easy to divine, for Charles X. lost his crown through obstinately opposing, not by stimulating, Liberal tendencies. In the Revolution the reactionary or Ultramontane party of Bavaria saw their chance, however, and gained the King’s ear. They dwelt on the natural alliance of throne and altar, and the identity of liberalism in religion with liberalism in politics. Only in a religious people, they argued, could a king place his trust. Secure of royal protection and encouragement, friars, nuns, and ecclesiastics of all kinds came flocking into Bavaria. Monasteries, convents, and church schools threatened to become as numerous as they are now in England. Some made light of this black-robed invasion, and attributed it to the King’s well-known fondness for the mediæval and the picturesque. But a real change had come over Louis. Germany was seething with discontent, and revolution was in the air. The King remembered the fate of his godfather, and decided to take the side of reaction. The censorship of the Press was again enforced. Those who were found guilty oflèse-majestéwere condemned to make a public apology to the King’sportrait or statue—an almost Gilbertian penalty. Soldiers, Protestants and Catholic, were alike ordered to kneel when the Host was carried past. Repressive laws were enacted against the Lutherans and Calvinists, and Germany seemed on the point of passing once more under the sway of Rome. Louis had lost his head. A few clod-hoppers brawling over their beer appeared to him an attempt at revolution. It justified him in closing the university and calling out the reserves. He established a star-chamber at Landshut, where anonymous accusations were entertained and every accusation entailed conviction. The Jesuits were supposed to have inspired this policy. The rumour was probably true in substance. The children of Loyala are not allowed to do evil that good may come, or to indulge in verbal equivocations, as their enemies allege; but it is their aim to bring the whole world into real and sincere submission to the Roman Church, and to achieve that end they have certainly not hesitated to sacrifice political and social ideals dear to all the rest of mankind. The Jesuit is a Christian produced to his utmost logical extremity. Naturally, the order is very unpopular with people who like to profess Christianity without any intention of bringing their views and conduct into line with it.
A true son of the Church was Carl Abel, a politician of some repute, to whom Louis handed the portfolio of the Interior in April 1858. He was, it is interesting to note, one of those Bavarian ministers who had accompanied the King’s son, Otho, to Greece in the ’twenties, and assisted in schooling the renascent nation in its new political status. He it was who enacted the “knee-bending” order to which allusionhas been made; he again who substituted the word “subjects” for “citizens” in the royal decrees and proclamations. His policy was frankly Ultramontane. The publication of Strauss’s “Life of Jesus,” three years before, had given a powerful stimulus to rationalistic tendencies, and these the Bavarian Government determined at all costs to eradicate. It was in the world of thought and education that they saw the struggle must be waged, and they wisely strove to bring the schools entirely within their control. To prevent the spread of dangerous opinions it was decreed that all the books used in the universities and schools, even in those of the lowest grade, must be purchased from the official Government depôt. A bad time followed for the booksellers and for every one suspected of liberal opinions. The editor of the Bernstorff papers speaks of Abel’s administration as a scandal to all Europe. It was not considered such by the majority of the Bavarian people, who were probably more in sympathy with their ruler’s present mood than with his earlier aspirations towards a Grecian polity and culture. The Jesuits reigned supreme, but it was not without certain faint misgivings that their chiefs heard the news of Lola’s arrival in Munich. The dauntless adventuress was a factor that had to be reckoned with.
THE ENTHRALMENT OF THE KING
The Court Theatre of Munich, thanks to the King’s critical faculty and liberal patronage, had a very high reputation throughout Europe, and seemed to Lola a very proper place for the display of her charms and accomplishments. She applied accordingly to the Director, who upon an exhibition of her powers, announced that they did not come up to his standard. This was probably true; but had Lola danced like Taglioni, she would no doubt have been rejected all the same by an official of this strictly clerical Government. Full of wit and resource, she saw in her rebuff the very opportunity she sought of bringing herself to the notice of a sovereign. She had made a few friends among thejeunesse doréeof the Bavarian capital, and through one of these, Count Rechberg, a royal aide-de-camp, she craved an audience of His Majesty. Louis was indisposed to grant it, despite his usually gracious bearing towards foreignartistes. “Am I expected to see every strolling dancer?” he asked pettishly. “Your pardon, sire,” said Rechberg, “but this one is well worth seeing.” The King hesitated. While he did so Lola Montez stood before him. Tired of waiting in the antechamber, and anticipating a refusal, she had coollyfollowed an aide-de-camp into the royal presence. Now she stood before the astonished King, dazzlingly beautiful, with downcast eyes, a suppliant mien, and a smile of triumph at the corners of her mouth.
To a passionate admirer of beauty like Louis her loveliness was an all-sufficient excuse for her amazing audacity. His aide-de-camp was right. The woman was well worth seeing. As he gazed upon her youth glowed anew in his sixty-year-old frame, the blood coursed as fiercely as in the time long gone by. Those who saw Lola knew a second spring. Collecting his faculties, the King granted the dancer’s prayer—she received his command to appear at the Court Theatre; but he was in no haste to dismiss the suppliant. Lola, says one writer, came, saw, and conquered. The King yielded to her at the first shot. Lola’s detractors relate that, glancing at her magnificent bust, he asked in wonder if such charms could be of nature’s making, whereupon the lady, there and then ripping up her corsage, dispelled his doubts. They can believe the story who like to; it sounds in the highest degree improbable. But from this first interview dated the enthralment of the King.
Not only grey-headed rulers but tiny school-girls felt the power of the enchantress. Louise von Kobell tells us how, when a child, she saw Lola Montez.[12]