"Thus passed the years from 1782 to 1786. In the beginning of 1787, my brother, still not fourteen years old, was put into a counting-house at Chemnitz. Inexpressibly sorrowful was our parting. We loved each other as brothers, and if we had small quarrels, in which I was more to blame than he, we never let the sun set without being reconciled. But now follows an important chapter in my juvenile life.
"The picture of a perfect tutor is indeed charming. More than father and mother can do, can be effected by a noble, pious teacher, of simple life, full of judgment and moral power; only that scarcely one out of a hundred can be found to realise this ideal.'
"A heavy load was lifted from my breast when I felt myself free from this tutor's discipline! A feeling I had never experienced before stirred in me! I was already half-grown up! Was it an impulse to unrestrained roving? or a longing for dissipation? or youthful presumption which fancied it needed no guide? In truth no thoughts of this kind entered my mind! It was the pure consciousness of having suffered injustice; it was the honest feeling that I was not so bad, as he in his frantic humour had often said I was; it was the glad prospect of being able to strive independently; it was the desire to show that I no longer needed leading-strings. Still do I remember the evening of the 5th of April, 1787,—Maunday Thursday,—how beautiful the sunset was, and I spoke with open heart to my playfellows of the new life that was opening to me.
"My father put me under the teaching of the Conrector Müller, and his old friend the Subrector Jary, and in this he did well.
"To the Conrector Müller I owe most thanks. I passed from tyrannical oppression to his liberal intellectual sway. His kindliness and his noble open countenance, speaking of pure goodness of heart, attracted me to him when first we spoke together. He understood how to elevate my feeling for learning. He knew everything thoroughly. He was strong in Latin, not unversed in Greek; the history of the German Empire, and political history—but above all, literary history,—together with geography, were his favourite studies. He had not one enemy.
"Jary was not born to be a teacher, but he was not without knowledge, which he had acquired by industry. His method was defective, but he meant to deal faithfully by his scholars, and looked after them. His religious opinions were strictly orthodox; and I wept when he expressed doubts as to the eternal happiness of Cicero! Yet I owe him also thanks; he treated me with earnest kindness, and when he dismissed me in 1791, the old man said weeping: 'Fare you well! I shall not see you again; fare you well, you are almost the only one who has not vexed me!'
"In August, 1788, I partook for the first time of the Lord's Supper. I looked up fervently and repeated to myself Kretzschmar's ode: 'Let us rejoicing fill the holy vaults of thy temple with hymns of praise. Invisibly though perceptibly, does God's grace hover round us!' Joyfully, with heaven in my heart, did I approach the altar! Nevertheless, when in the afternoon I examined myself during a solitary walk, I was dissatisfied with myself. What I had been taught concerning the merits of Christ, appeared to me unintelligible; my groping in the dark about this, weakened the impression of that day. I worried myself with the idea of the atonement by death, and no ray of light entered my soul. Besides I loved the old heathens, Cicero, Pliny, Socrates, &c., more than many Christians, together with the Apostles, more than all the Jews of the Old Testament, as the people of God did not particularly please me. And yet it was doubtful whether God would receive Socrates as a child of light. How in the world, I thought, could my poor Socrates help not having been born later, not having lived in Judea?
"Thus I troubled myself, and was more sorrowful than cheerful.
"At Michaelmas, 1788, my father took me with him to Leipzig, where my brother also was to come. Oh, the pleasure of meeting again! No language can describe it! My brother's Principal allowed him leave every afternoon and also many mornings; so we could have plenty of talk. I soon became aware that my brother had read many freethinking works upon religion, especially many of Bahrdt's. His own inquiries led him still further. This occasioned me much sorrow, for Jary's strict orthodoxy had laid hold of me. But I was the happiest. Soon after, I attained to clear views in a scientific way, while my brother, left to himself, wavered to and fro, which was still perceptible, even in his old age. The insoluble question—why reason was reason?—gave unspeakable suffering to my poor brother. Undoubtedly my lighter tone of mind, my fancy, which gave me a poetic feeling, and especially my disposition to give up groping over difficult passages, were a help to me. With my brother reason prevailed too much.
"We passed three blessed weeks. To me the Academy was to some extent a great pleasure; the Zittauer students took pains to make my residence agreeable to me. The theatre we visited assiduously, we loved plays passionately, and when the actors were at Zittau, we had learnt under the guidance of the last tutor, to criticise with judgment Don Carlos was given, Agnes Bernaner, and Kaspar der Thorringer; deep was the impression left upon me, and I confessed secretly to myself, that I should not find it disagreeable to be an actor. Even in this the idea of public speaking exercised its charm upon me. A hundred times, perhaps, did we act plays in that year, frequently extempore. It was singular that the oldrôles, as we called them, were particularly suitable to me. But comic parts I could not manage, which, strange as it may appear, my brother frequently chose, although he had qualifications for the more serious ones, and, according to my judgment, he often failed in the comic parts. A friend played the militaryrôles, to which I had a great aversion.
"How great the advantage of public instruction! It may sometimes have its defects, and unfortunately schools are often laboratories of temptation. But how true are Quintilian's words, that children often carry to school faults from home! Great is the advantage that public institutions are open to inspection, and that freedom of mind prospers there more than in private education, and emulation awakens and nourishes the power of self-exertion.
"These hours of enjoyment with my brother came to an end. On the Monday afteroculiI was introduced, after a successful examination, by Director Sintenis. I became immediately 'sixth form boy' at the third table. This excited great envy and caused me many bitter hours. I, who without falsehood and malice, meant well by every one, did not understand what many of the seniors meant. Finally, however, my good behaviour got the better of them, I remained just the same, and bore much with patience. It was long before I could conceive what envy was, for I had no touch of it in my disposition. My more acute brother, to whom I made my lamentations, wrote to me, 'Read Gustav Lindau, or, the man who can bear no envy,' by Meissner. He was right, and yet it was not till I was thirty-five, that I saw it in its true light.
"When this period of envy had passed away, and Müller said, 'You sit in the place that is due to you, but mind you maintain your place,' a succession of happier days opened to me.
"Easter drew near; I examined myself and found that I had been very industrious. With Müller especially, I had in the last year done much. I was behindhand only in Greek, as almost all were; yet I could get on. In the Imperial and Saxon history I was well up, and in the knowledge of literature very strong for one who was not seventeen. In the geography of countries beyond Europe I was deficient. Latin I knew best. The most ready amongst us could translate whole pages off hand, without a fault, in two or three minutes; it was here and there improved in elegance and then read aloud. I owe to these exercises my facility in speaking Latin, which I was obliged to acquire at the University.
"The time for my departure from the academy was come.
"With all my liveliness, I had also many serious, even melancholy hours. The separation from my sisters, whom I dearly loved, disposed me often to be sorrowful; I especially loved the youngest, Friederike, who clung to me. Especially the last winter we were inseparable, it was as if she anticipated that we should soon be parted for ever.
"My heart was pure, untouched by the allurements to which I well knew my fellow scholars yielded. I had already determined to continue in the same course; this I may affirm now at the end of thirty years. My chief fault was hasty anger, which even led me to the verge of giving blows; and violent passion is still the dark side of my character! Besides this, I was bitter in my censure of the faults of others. Faithful self-examination told me all this and more; but I was always forgiving, and any feeling of revenge would have been impossible to me.
"My heart glowed with friendship; ingratitude appeared to me, as it still does, a black vice. Finally, I must say one word of my feelings as a youth; to maiden charms I was very sensitive, but never did a faithless word pass my lips. The loves of the scholars were repugnant to me, but I will not deny having entertained secretly a hope that some female heart might be gracious to me; but pale and thin as I was, I often seriously doubted the possibility of it.
"The expression of quiet melancholy in the eyes of L. v. D. attracted me early; I had the greatest pleasure in talking to her, and she was the only one of my sisters' playfellows with whom I walked, when we rambled about the garden. But she left Zittau soon, and never did a word escape my lips—and how could it? In 1788, I saw her again once; after that time never again.
"My first school occupations drove away all such thoughts, although I was teased as well as others, when I had danced more with one maiden than another at the school balls. Sometimes undoubtedly there were moments, when from braggadocio, I made it appear as if there was something in question, where certainly there was nothing.
"But shortly before my departure—at a school ball—I met with Lorchen L., who was destined by my stars, to be the companion of my life, and entered into conversation with her. Even then I was much charmed with her! and danced oftener and with greater pleasure, than with any other maiden. It made me uneasy to feel that in some months I should be away. The impression upon me was not concealed from my class, and they bantered me; and I looked gloomy. Even during more than six years' absence, her image ever rose before me. If there are inward voices, this was one for me!
"The day dawned on which I was to take leave of Zittau, and my sister was to accompany me to Leipzig. With tears I parted from Müller, and with emotion from all the teachers. In the evening I took a lonely walk in the open air, the evening sky shone bright, the reflection fell on my mother's grave. Tears burst from me: 'Yes, mother! I vowed that I would be good!' With hasty steps I went home. 'Now we shall never more,' said my brother, 'never more,' wander together, he would have said, but tears choked his voice.
"We slept little, talking almost the whole night, and early, about four o'clock, our travelling carriage rolled out of Zittau."
Thus does a sensible man of the time of our fathers and grandfathers, relate the boy-life in a citizen's family, honourable and serious, of strict morality, and no common strength of intellect. Still, with depth of feeling is united a sentimentality which will perhaps excite a smile, perhaps touch the heart. It is the secluded life of a wealthy family, but how earnest is the feeling of the child, how laboriously he spends his days! The greatest enjoyment of the young boy is in learning; he finds an inexhaustible source of elevation and enthusiasm in the knowledge that he imbibes.
The narrator seeks his happiness in family life, in the duties of his office, and in science and art. He forms an elevated and profound conception of everything. Politics only disturb him. It was not till the next generation that man's feelings were excited, their powers awakened, and new qualities developed by the idea of a Fatherland.
Again did evil arise from France, and again did a new life spring from the struggle against the enemy.
It was not the first time that that country had inflicted deep wounds on German national strength, and had unintentionally awakened a new power which victoriously arrested her progress. The policy of Richelieu had been the most dangerous opponent of the German Empire, but at the same time it had been obliged to support the Protestant party there, in which lay the source of all later renovation. After him French literature ruled the German mind for a century, and for a long time it appeared as if the Academy of Paris and the classical drama were to govern our taste, as did the tailors and peruke makers of the Seine. But indignation and shame produced, in opposition to French art, a poetry and science which, in spite of its cosmopolitan tendency, was genuinely national. Now the heir of the French revolution brought violent destruction on the declining empire, and gave his commands on its ruins like a tyrannical ruler, till at last the Germans resolved to drive him away, in order to take their affairs into their own hands.
Defenceless was the frontier against the invading stranger. Only on the lower Rhine there was the Prussian realm, but along the other part of the stream were the domains of ecclesiastical princes, and small territories without any power of resistance. It was the four western circles of the empire, the Upper Rhine, Suabia, Franconia, and Bavaria, which the North Germans mockingly called the Empire.
Even in the Empire, the ecclesiastical territories and Bavaria were very much behindhand, in comparison with Baden and Suabia. The example of Frederic II. in Prussia, and the philosophic enlightenment of this period, had reformed most of the Protestant courts, as also Electoral Saxony, since the Seven Years' War. Greater economy, household order, and earnest solicitude for the good of the subject became visible. Many governments were models of good administration, like Weimar and Gotha, and in the family of one of the great ladies of the eighteenth century, the Duchess Caroline of Hesse, as well as in Darmstadt and Baden, there was economical mild rule. Even indeed in the court of Duke Karl of Wurtemburg there was improvement. He who had dug lakes on the hills, and employed his serfs to fill them with water, who had lighted the woods with Bengal lights, and caused half-naked Fauns and Satyrs to dance there, had learnt a lesson since 1778, and on his fiftieth birthday, had promised his people to become economical, and had since that been transformed into a careful landlord, under whom the country flourished. Even the ecclesiastical courts had experienced somewhat of this philosophical tendency, though undoubtedly the activity of an enlightened ruler of Würzburg or Munster was much limited by the inevitable supremacy of an ecclesiastical aristocracy, and the increasing priestly rule.
But the Imperial cities of the south were, with the exception of Frankfort, in a state of decadence; they were deeply in debt, and a rotten patrician rule prevented modern industry from flourishing. The councils still continued to issue high-sounding decrees, but theSenatus populusque, Bopfingensis, orNordlingensisas they called themselves in heroic style, appeared only a caricature to their neighbours. The renowned Ulm, the southern capital of Suabia, once the mistress of Italian agency business, had sunk so low that it was supposed that she must sell her domain to preserve herself from bankruptcy; Augsburg also was only the shadow of its former greatness, its princely merchants had become weak commission agents and small money-changers: it was said that the city only contained six firms that could raise more than 200,000 gulden. The Academy of Arts of the city was nothing but a school for artisans. The famous engravers made bad pictures of saints for the village trade; the old hatred of confessions still raged among the inhabitants, for its famed Senate was divided into two factions, and nowhere did the parties of Frederic and Maria Theresa contend so bitterly. Even Nuremberg, once the flower and the pride of Germany, had been severely injured in the old bad time; its 30,000 inhabitants were hardly the fifth of that community which, 300 years earlier, had mustered in fearful battle array; but the city was still in the way to gain a modest position in the German markets, no longer by the artistic articles of old Nuremberg, but by an extended trade in small wares of wood and metal, in which some of the old artistic feeling might still be perceived.
It was no better along the Rhine,—the great ecclesiastical street of the Empire,—there lay, down the stream, the residences of three ecclesiastical Electors in succession. In the Electorate of Mainz, which, from olden times, had frequently maintained a great independence within the church, two intellectual rulers had undoubtedly given an enlightened aspect to a part of their clergy, and to the new portions of their city; but in the old city and trades, little of the new time was to be perceived, and the prebendaries who read Voltaire and Rousseau were by no means an unqualified gain, at least for the morality of the citizen. But the great Cologne was in the worst repute; the dung-heaps lay all day in the streets, which were not lighted, the pavement was miserable, and on dark evenings the necks and limbs of passengers were in great danger, the roads also were insecure, filled with idling ragamuffins. The beggars formed a great guild, counting 5000 heads; till noon they sat and lay at the church doors in rows, many on chairs, the possession of one of which was considered as a secure rent, and assigned as dowry to the beggar's children; when they left their places, they went to the houses to demand food for dinner; they were a coarse, wicked set.[32]On the whole, it is known that the ecclesiastical rulers treated the citizens and peasants with comparative mildness, and the military compulsion was less burdensome, but they did little for the industry or cultivation of the people.
After them, in this respect, Bavaria was in worst repute, and no other people since that has made such great progress; but about 1790 it was said to be most behindhand in wealth and morals; the cities, with the exception of Munich, looked decayed, and were poorly populated: idleness and beggary spread everywhere; except brewers, bakers, and innkeepers, there were no wealthy people. Even in Munich, countless beggars loitered about, mixed with numbers of modish, dandified officials; there was no national industry, only some manufactures of articles of luxury favoured by the government. Not long ago it was maintained by a Bavarian monthly journal, that manufacturing activity and the like were not very practicable for Bavarians, because the great river of the country flowed to Austria, and a competition with the Imperial hereditary States was not possible. The most flourishing countries in Germany, next to the small territories on the North Sea, were then Electoral Saxony and the country of the Lower Rhine, up to the Westphalian county of Mark; and this is little altered.
To those who dwelt in the Empire the inhabitants of the North were a remote people, but they were in the habit of considering Prussia and Austria also as foreign powers.
Of the people in Austria the citizens of the Empire knew little. Even the Bavarian, before whose eyes his Danube flowed to Vienna, desired no intercourse with these neighbours; he preferred looking over the mountains to the Tyrol, for the hatred which so readily divides frontier people was there in full force. The Saxon had important trade with the Germans in Northern Bohemia; it mattered little to him what lay beyond; it was a foreign race, in evil repute, from the old war. To other Germans the "Bohemian Mountains" and an unknown land signified the same thing. The nations which dwelt along the Danube, amongst them Czechs, Moravians, Italians, Slovenes, Magyars, and Slovaks, were a vigorous, powerful race, of ancient German blood; the Thirty Years' War had little injured their stately carriage and personal beauty, but their own rulers had estranged them from Germany. By persecution, not only the heretics, but also the activity and culture of those who remained, had been frightened away; but a life of enjoyment and pleasure still pulsated in the great capital. Any one who wished to enjoy himself went there—Hungarians, Bohemians, and nobles from the Empire. Germany lay outside the Vienna world, and they thought little of it.
Undoubtedly the ruler of Austria was also the Emperor of Germany. The double eagle hung against all the post-houses in the Empire, and when the Emperor died, according to old custom, the church bells tolled. Any one who sought for armorial bearings, or quarrelled about privileges, went to the Imperial court; otherwise the Empire knew nothing of the Emperor or his supremacy. When the soldiers of the Princes of the Empire came together with the Austrians and Prussians, they were derided as good-for-nothing people; the "Kostbeutel"[33]and the "Schwabische Kragen" hated each other intensely; when the Austrian received a blow, no one was better pleased than the contingent from the Empire.
Even among themselves the subjects of the small rulers did not live in peace; insulting language and blows were common; the Mainzers attacked the inhabitants of the Palatinate, and when the French occupied Electoral Mainz, the inhabitants of the Palatinate and Darmstadt rejoiced in the sufferings of their neighbours.[34]
The mass of the people in the Empire lived quietly to themselves. The peasant performed his service, and the citizen worked; both had been worse off than now, but there was no difficulty in earning a livelihood. If they had a mild ruler, they served him willingly; the citizens clung to the city and province whose dialect they spoke; they frequently bore great attachment to their little State, which enclosed almost all that they knew, and whose helplessness they only imperfectly understood. When it became a cipher, they did not the more know what they were, and asked one another with anxious curiosity what they should now become. It was an old, quiet misery!
The new ideas that came from France undoubtedly somewhat disquieted them; things were better there than with them; they listened complacently to foreign emissaries; they put their heads together, and determined, sometimes in the evening perhaps, to abolish what annoyed them; they also sent petitions to their worthy rulers. The peasants here and there became more difficult to manage; but as long as the French did not come, the movement was a mere curl of the waves; and when the French Custine gained Mainz, he called the Guild together, and each one was to give in a project of a constitution. This took place. The peruke-makers produced one: "We wish to be diminished to five-and-thirty, and the Crab (thus a master was called) shall be our president of the council." The hackney-coachmen declared, "We will pay no more bridge tolls; then, as far as we are concerned, any one may be our Elector who wishes!" No Guild thought of a republic and constitution. This was the condition of the small States of the Empire in the century of enlightenment.
The people of the Imperial States knew well that the larger ones held them in contempt for their want of military capacity; and it was natural that in these small States no martial spirit should exist. Unwillingly did they form regiments from five, ten, or more contemptible contingents; soldiers and officers in the same regiment often quarrelled; the uniforms were scarcely the same colour, nor the word of command. The citizens despised their soldiers; it was told jeeringly that the Mainz soldiers at their post cut pegs for the shoemakers; that the guard at Gmünd presented arms to every well-dressed foot-passenger, and then stretched out their hats and begged for a donation; that a man in uniform was despised and excluded from every society; that the wives and mistresses of the officers took the field with children and ninepins; that the weapons and discipline were miserable, and all the material of war imperfect. This was undoubtedly a great misfortune, and apparent to everybody. The worst troops in the world were to be found in the Imperial regiments, but there were some better companies among them, and some officers of capacity. Even out of this bad material a foreign conqueror was able afterwards to make good soldiers; for the Germans have always fought bravely when they have been well led. Besides the Prussians, there were some other smallcorps d'armée, in well-deserved estimation—the Saxon, Brunswick, Hanoverian, and Hessian.
On the whole, then, the military power of Germany was not altogether unsatisfactory; it could well bear some occasional bad elements, and still, in point of number and valour, cope with any army in the world. The cause of decay in the army was not the composition of the army itself, but discord and bad leading.
After 1790, destruction burst upon the Empire—wave upon wave broke over it from west to east.
First came into the country the white Petrels of the Bourbons, precursors of the storm—the emigrants. There were many valiant men among them, but the larger number, who gave character and repute to the whole, were worthless, reckless rabble. Like a pestilence, they corrupted the morals of the cities in which they located themselves, and the courts of small, simple Sovereigns, who felt themselves honoured by receiving these distinguished adventurers. Coblentz, the seat of government of Electoral Treves, was their head-quarters, and that city was the first where their immorality brought ruin into families, and disunion into the State, They were fugitives enjoying the hospitality of a foreign country, but with knavish impudence, wherever they were the strongest, they ill-treated the German citizens and peasants, as well as the foolish nobleman who honoured in them polite Paris. When Veit Weber, the valiant author of "Sagen der Vorzeit," whilst travelling in a Rhine boat, was humming a French song upon contentment, of which the refrain was, "Vive la Liberté," some emigrants, who were travelling with him, drew their swords upon him and his unarmed companion, misused them with the flat blade, bound them with cords round their necks, and so dragged them to Coblentz, where they robbed them of their money and passports, and, thus wounded, they were imprisoned without examination till the Prussians arrived and freed them.[35]Besides brutal violence, the emigrants also introduced into the circles which admitted them vices hitherto unknown to the people, loathsome diseases, and meannesses of every kind. In the whole of the Rhine valley a feeling of hatred and disgust was excited by their presence; nothing worked so favourably for the French republican party; the feeling became general among the people, that a struggle which was to rid France of such evil deeds and abominations must be just. They were equally despised by the more powerful States—Prussia and Austria. The troops that they hired were composed of the worst rabble; even the poor people of the Imperial States looked with repugnance on the bands of emigrants.
After the corrupt nobles came the speeches of the National Assembly, and the decrees of the Convention; but few of the educated men were entirely uninfluenced by them. They were the same ideas and wishes that the Germans had. More than one enthusiastic spirit was so attracted by them as to give up their Fatherland and go to the west, to their own destruction. Not the last of such men was George Foster, whom Germans should pity, and not extol. And yet these monstrous events, and excitable minds, produced only a slight intoxication. There was great sympathy, but it was only a kindly participation in a foreign concern; for, hopeless as was the political condition of Germany—imperfect and oppressive as was the administration of the greater States—yet there was a widespread feeling that social reforms were progressing, which, in contrast to the French, would spread peaceably by teaching and good example. There were bitter complaints of the perverseness and incapacity of many of the princes, but, on the whole, it could not be doubted that there was much good-will in the governments. Germany, also, had no such aristocracy as France. The lesser nobles, in spite of their prejudices and errors, lived, on the whole, in a homely way in the midst of the people; and just at this time they counted in their ranks many leaders of the enlightenment. What most oppressed the cultivated minds of Germany was not so much the vices of the old feudal state as their own political insignificance, the clumsiness of the constitution of the Empire, the feeling that the Germans, by this much-divided rule, had becomePhilisters.
It was then, also, far from Paris to Germany; the characters which there contended against each other, the ultimate aim of parties, the evil and the good, were much less known than would be the case in our time. The larger newspapers only appeared three times a week; they gave dry notices, seldom a long correspondence, still less often an independent judgment. The flying sheets alone were active; even their judgment was moderate; they wished well to the movement, but were bolder in the discussion of home matters.
Therefore, though in Paris there were massacres in the streets, and the guillotine was incessantly at work, in Germany the French revolution had no effect in banding political parties against one another. And when the account came that the King had been imprisoned, ill-treated, and executed, forebodings, even among the least timid, became general.
Thus it was possible that German officers, even thegardes du corpsat Potsdam, good-humouredly allowed theça irato be played, whilst the street boys sang to it a rude translation of the text. The ladies of the German aristocracy wore tricolour ribbons, and head dressesà la carmagnole. Curiosity collected the people in a circle round some patriot prisoners of war—dismal tattered figures—whilst they danced their wild dances, and accompanied them by pantomime, which expressed washing their hands in the blood of the aristocrats; and some innocently bought from them the playthings which they had made on the march, little wooden guillotines. But it was a morbid simplicity in the educated.
There is another thing which appears still stranger to us. Whilst the storm raged convulsively in France, and the flood rolled its waves more wildly every year over Germany; the eyes and hearts of all men of intellect were fixed on a little Principality in the middle of Germany, where, amid the deepest tranquillity, the great poet of the nation, by the wonderful creations of his mind in prose and verse, dispelled all dark forebodings. King and Queen were guillotined, and "Reineke Fuchs" made into a poem; there came, together with Robespierre and the reign of terror, letters on the æsthetic training of men; with the battles of Lodi and Arcole, "Wilhelm Meister," "Horen," and "Xenien"; with the French acquisition of Belgium, "Hermann and Dorothea"; with the French conquest of Switzerland and the States of the Pope, "Wallenstein"; with the French seizure of the left bank of the Rhine, the "Bastard of Orleans"; with the occupation of Hanover by Napoleon, the "Bride of Messina"; with Napoleon Emperor, "Wilhelm Tell." The ten years in which Schiller and Goethe lived in close friendship—the ten great years of German poetry, on which the German will look back in distant centuries with emotion and sentimental tenderness—are the same years in which a loud cry of woe was heard through the air; in which the demons of destruction drew together from all sides, with clothes dipped in blood, and scorpion scourges in their hands, in order to make an end of the unnatural life of a nation without a State. Only sixty years have since passed, yet the period in which our fathers grew up is as strange to us in many respects as the period in which, according to tradition, Archimedes calculated geometrical problems, whilst the Romans were storming his city. The movement of this time worked differently on the Prussian State. It was no longer the Prussia of Frederic II. In the interior, indeed, his regulations had been faithfully preserved; his followers mitigated everywhere some severities of the old system, but the great reforms which the time urgently required were scarcely begun.
But in the eighteenth century, up to the war of 1806, the external boundary of the State increased on a gigantic scale. Frederic had still left behind him a little kingdom; a few years after, Prussia might be reckoned as one of the great realms of Europe. In the rapidity of this growth, there was something unnatural. By the two last divisions of Poland, about 1772 square miles of Sclavonic country were added. Shortly before, the Principalities of the Franconian Hohenzollerns, Anspach and Baireuth, were gained, another 115 square miles. Besides this, after the peace of Luneville, forty-seven square miles of the Upper Rhine district of Cleves were exchanged for 222 square miles of German territory; parts of Thuringia, including Erfurt, half Munster, also Hildesheim and Paderborn; finally, Anspach was again exchanged for Hanover. After that, Prussia for some months comprised a territory of 6047 square miles, almost double its extent in 1786, and about a sixth more than it at present contains. In this year, Prussia might almost have been called Germany; its eagles hovered over the countries from Old Saxony up to the North Sea; also over the main territory of Old Franconia and in the heart of Thuringia; it ruled the mouths of the Elbe; it surrounded Bohemia on two sides, and could, after a short day's march, make its war horses drink in the Danube. In the east it extended itself far into the valley of the Vistula and to the Bug; and its officials governed in the capital of departed Poland. This rapid increase, even in peaceful times, might not have been without disadvantage, for the amount of constructive power which Prussia could employ for the assimilation to itself of such various acquisitions was perhaps not great enough.
And yet the excellent Prussian officials, of the old school just then greatly distinguished themselves. Organisation was carried on everywhere with great zeal and success; brilliant talents, and great powers were developed in this work. There were certainly many half measures and false steps, but on the whole, when we consider the work, the integrity, the intelligence, and the vigorous will which the Prussians then showed in Germany, it fills us with respect, especially when we compare it with the later French rule, which indeed carried on reforms thoroughly and dexterously, but at the same time brought a chaos of coarseness and rough tyranny into the country.
The acquisition of Poland was in itself a great gain for Germany, for it afforded it a protection against the enormous increase of Russia; the east frontier of Prussia gained military security. If it was hard for the Poles, it was necessary for the Germans. The desolate condition of the half-wild provinces required a proportionate exertion, if they were to be made useful, that is to say, if they were to be transformed into a German Empire. It was not a time for quiet colonisation; but even of this there was not a little.
But another circumstance was ominous. All these extensions were not the result of the impulses of a strong national power: they were partly forced on Prussia after inglorious campaigns by a too powerful enemy. And Germany showed the remarkable phenomena of Prussia being enlarged under continued humiliations and diplomatic defeats; and that its increase of territory went hand-in-hand with the decrease of its consideration in Europe. Thus this diffuse State had at last too much the appearance of a group of islands congregated together, which the next hurricane would bury under the waves.
The surface of ground was so great, and the life and interests of its citizens had become so various, that the power of one individual could no longer arbitrarily guide the enormous machine in the old way. And yet there was no lack of the great aid—the ultimate regulator both of princes and officials—public opinion, which incessantly, honestly, and bravely accompanied the doings of rulers, examined their public acts, gave expression to the wishes of the people, and felt their needs. The daily press was anxiously controlled, accidental flying sheets wounded deeply, and were violently suppressed.
The King was a man of strict uprightness and moderation, but he was no General, nor a great politician; so he remained all his life too much averse to decided and energetic resolves. He was then young and diffident of his own powers, and he felt vividly that he superintended too little the details of business; the intrigues of greedy courtiers put him out of humour, without his knowing how to stop them; his endeavours to preserve his own independence, and guard himself from preponderating influence, put him in danger of preferring insignificant and pliant characters to firm ones. The State had clearly then come into a position when the spontaneous action of the people and the beginning of constitutional life could no longer be dispensed with. But again it seemed so little possible, that the most discontented scarcely ventured to whisper it. All the material for it was wanting; the old States of Prussia had been thoroughly set aside; the communities were governed by officials; even an interest in politics and the life of the State was almost confined to them. What the King had seen arise under the co-operation of the people in a foreign country, national assemblies and conventions, had given him so deep a repugnance to every such participation of his Prussians in the work of the State, that, to the misfortune of his people and successors, he never, as long as he lived, could overcome this feeling. Before 1806, he thought of nothing of the kind.
Very strongly did he feel that it was impossible for him to continue to govern in the old method of Frederic II. This great King, in spite of all his immense power of work and knowledge of minute particulars, had only been able to keep the whole in vigorous movement by sacrificing to his arbitrary power, even the innocent, in case of need. As he was in the position to decide everything himself, and quickly, it frequently happened that his decision depended on his humour and accidental subordinate considerations. He did not, therefore, hesitate to break an officer for a mere oversight, or discharge councillors of the supreme court who had only done their duty. And if he discovered that he had done an injustice, though he was passionately desirous of doing justice, he never once acknowledged the fact; for it was necessary to preserve his faith in himself, as well as the obedience and pliancy of his officials, and the implicit trust of his people in his final decisions. It was not only one of his peculiar characteristics, but also his policy, to retract nothing, neither overhaste nor mistake; and not to make amends even for obvious injustice, except occasionally and secretly. That powerful and wise Prince could venture upon this; his successor justly feared to rule in such a way. The grandson of that Prince of Prussia, whom Frederic II. angrily removed from the command in the middle of the war, felt deeply the severity of this hasty decision.
He was therefore obliged to do like his predecessors, to seek to control his officials by themselves. Thus began in Prussia the reign of the bureaucracy. The number of offices became greater, useless intermediate authorities were introduced, and the transaction of all business became circuitous. It was the first consequence of the endeavour to proceed justly, thoroughly, and securely, and to remodel the strict despotism of the olden time. But to the people this appeared a loss. As long as there was no press, and no tribunal to help the oppressed to their rights, petitions had quite a different signification to what they have now; for now the most insignificant can gain the sympathy of a whole country by inserting a few lines in a newspaper, and set ministers and representatives of the people in commotion for days. Frederic II. had received every petition, and generally disposed of them himself, and thus, undoubtedly, his kingly despotism came to light Frederic William could not bear to have petitions presented to himself; he sent them immediately to the courts. This was according to rule. But, as the magistrates were not yet obliged to take care that these complaints of individuals should be made public, they were only too frequently thrown on one side, and the poor people exclaimed that there was no longer any help against the encroachments of the Landräthe,[36]or against the corruption of excisemen. Even the King suffered from it; not his good will, but his power was doubted to give help against the officials.
To this evil was added another. The officials of the administration had become more numerous, but not more powerful. Life was more luxurious, prices had increased enormously, and their salaries, always scanty even in the olden time, had not risen in proportion. In the cities, justice and administration were not yet separated; a kind of tutelage was exercised even in the merest trifles; the spontaneous activity of the citizen was failing; the "Directors" of the city were royal officials, frequently discharged auditors and quartermasters of regiments. In 1740 this had been a great advance; in 1806 the education and professional knowledge of such men was insufficient. Into the war and territorial departments, however, which are now called government departments, the young nobility already sought for admittance; among them not a few were men of note, who later were reckoned the greatest names in Prussia; and most of them, without much exertion, quickly made their fortunes. It was complained that in some of the offices almost all the work was done by the secretaries. But that, in truth, was only the case in Silesia, which had its own minister. After the great Polish acquisition, Count Hoym, in Silesia, had for some years the chief administration of the Polish province. It was a bad measure to give a subject unlimited power over that vast territory; it was a misfortune for him and the State. He lived at Breslau as king, and he kept spies at the court of his Sovereign, who were to keep himau faitof the state of things. The poor nobles of Silesia thronged around him, and he gave his favourites office, landed properties, and wealth. The uprightness of the officials in the new province was injured by this unfit condition of things. Government domains were sold at low prices, and Generals and privy councillors were thus enabled to acquire large landed properties for little money.
It is curious that the first open resistance to this arose among the officials themselves, and that the opposition was carried on, for the first time, in Prussia, through the modern weapon of the press. The most violent complainant was the chief custom-house officer, Von Held; he accused Count Hoym, Chancellor Goldbeck, General Rüchel, and many others, of fraud, and compared the present state of Prussia with the just time of Frederic II. The case made an immense sensation. Investigations were commenced against him and his friends; they were prosecuted as members of a secret society, and as demagogues. Held's writings were confiscated; and he himself imprisoned and condemned, but at last set at liberty. In his imprisonment the irritated and embittered man attacked the King himself:[37]he accused him of too great economy—which we consider the first virtue of a King of Prussia; of hardness—which was unfounded; and of playing at soldiering—this, unfortunately, with good grounds. He complained: "When the Prince will no longer hear truth, when he throws upright men and true patriots into prison, and appoints those who have been accused of fraud to be directors of the commission appointed to try them, then must the honest, calm, but not the less warm, friends of their Fatherland sigh." Meanwhile he did not satisfy himself with sighing, but became satirical.
From this dispute, which only turns on an individuals circumstances, we learn how bold and reckless was the language of political critics in old Prussia; and how low and helpless the position of its princes against such attacks. As the King took the whole government upon his own shoulders, he bore also the whole responsibility, as he alone guided the machine of the State; so every attack on the particular acts of the administration, and upon the officials of the State, was a personal attack upon him. Wherever there was an error the King bore the blame, either because he had neglected something or because he had not punished the guilty. Every peasant woman who had her eggs crushed by the excise officers at the city gates felt the harshness of the King; and if a new tax irritated the city people, the boys in the streets cried out and jeered behind the King's horse, and it was even possible that a handful of mud might be thrown at his noble head. Again broke forth a quiet war betwixt the King of Prussia and the foreign press. Even Frederic William I. had, in his "Tabakacollegium," exercised his powers of imagination in composing a short article against the Dutch newspaper writers who had annoyed him; his great son, also, was irritated by their pens, but he knew how to pay them in like coin. Quite a volley of scorn and spite was fired in innumerable novels, satires, and pasquinades against his successor. Of what avail against this was violence, the opening of letters and secret investigations? What use was confiscation? The forbidden writings were still read, and the coarse lies were believed. Of what use was it if the King caused himself to be defended by loyal pens, if in a well considered reply the public were informed that Frederic William III. had shown no harshness to the Countess of Lichtenau; that he was a very good husband[38]and father, an upright man who had the best intentions? The people might, or might not, believe it; at all events they had made themselves judges of the life of their Prince in a manner which, as we view it, was highly derogatory to the majesty of the Crown.
Yet the times were quiet, and the culture and mind of the nation was not occupied by politics. What would happen if the people were roused to political excitement? The monarchy, in this inferior position, would be entirely ruined, however good might be the intentions of the Hohenzollerns. For they were no longer, as they had been in the eighteenth century, and were still in the time of Frederic II., great landed proprietors on unpopulated territory; they were, in fact, kings of an important nation; they were no longer in the position of obtaining the knowledge of every perversity of the great host of officials and of ruling over the great administration personally. Now, the administration was carried on by officials; if it went right it was a matter of course, but every mistake fell upon the King's head. How this was to be remedied before 1806 no one, not even the best, knew. But discontent and a feeling of insecurity increased among the people.
Such a condition of things, in a transition time, from the old despotic state to a new one, gave a helpless aspect to the Prussian commonwealth. It was however, in truth, no symptom of fatal weakness, as was shortly after shown by zealous Prussians.
For, besides the strength and capacity of self-sacrifice, which was still slumbering in the people, a fresh hopeful vigour was already visible in a distinguished circle. Again it was to be found among the Prussian officials. The supreme court of judicature had maintained itself in the high consideration it had gained since the organisation of the last King. It was a numerous body; it included the flower of Prussian intelligence, the greatest strength of the citizens, and the highest culture of the nobles. The elder were trained under Cocceji, and the younger under Carmer—judicious, upright, firm men, of great capacity for work, of proud patriotism and independence of character, who were not led astray by any ministerial rescript. The courtcoteriesdid not yet venture to assail these unpliable men; and it is a merit in the King that he held a protecting hand over their integrity. They belonged partly to citizens' families, which for many generations had sent their sons to the lecture-rooms of the professors of law; in the East to Frankfort and Königsberg, in the West to Halle and Göttingen. Their families formed an almost hereditary aristocracy of officials. United with them as fellow-students and friends, and like-minded, were the best talents of the administration; also foreigners who had entered the Prussian civil service. From this circle had been produced all the officials, who, after the prostration of Prussia, were active in the renovation of the State, Stein, Schön, Vinke, Grolmann, Sack, Merkel, and many others, presidents of the administration, and heads of the courts of justice after 1815.
It is a pleasure in this time of insecurity to direct our attention to the quiet labours of these trustworthy men. Many of them were strictly trained bureaucrats, with limited ideas and feelings; on the green table of the Board lay the ambition and labour of their whole lives. But they, the chief judges, the administrators of the Province, maintained faithfully and lastingly through difficult times their consciousness of being Prussians; each of them imparted to those about him something of the tenacious perseverance and the confident judgment which distinguished them. Even when they were severed from the body of their State, and were obliged to declare the law under foreign rule, they worked on in their sphere unchanged, in the old way; accustomed to calm self-control, they concealed in the depths of their souls the fiery longing after their hereditary ruler, and perhaps quiet plans for a better time.
Whoever will compare these men with some of the powerful talents of the official class which were developed at this time in the territories of South Germany, will perceive an essential difference. There, even in the best, there are frequently traits that are displeasing to us; arbitrariness in their political points of view; indifference as to whom or for what they served; a secret irony with which they consider the petty relations of their country. They all suffer from the want of a State which merits the love of a man. This want gives their judgment, acute as it may be, something uncertain, unfinished, and peevish; one does not doubt their integrity, but one feels strongly that there is a moral instability in them which makes them like adventurers, though learned and highly cultivated men. Undoubtedly, however, if a Prussian once lost his love of Fatherland, he became weaker than them. Karl Heinrich Lang is deficient in what Freidrich Gentz once had, and lost by moral weakness.
Conscientious officials have admitted at this time the confusion of every country, especially the North; but the Prussians may justly claim this pre-eminence, that in the circle of their middle order, not the most refined, but the soundest culture of that time was to be found, not occasionally, but as a rule.
The Prussian army suffered from the same deficiencies as the politics and administration of the state. Here also there was improvement in many particulars, but much that was old was carefully preserved; what once had been progress was now mischievous. This bad condition is acknowledged; none have condemned it more strongly than the Prussian military writers since the year 1815.
The treatment of the soldiers was still too severe; there was unworthy parsimony in their scanty uniforms and small rations, endless was the drilling, endless the parades, the ineradicable suffering of the Prussian army; the manœuvres had become useless "spectacle," in which every movement was arranged and studied beforehand; incapable officers were retained to the extreme of old age. Hardly anything had been done to adapt the old Prussian system to the changed method of carrying on war which had arisen in the Revolution.
The officers were still an exclusive caste, which was almost entirely filled by the nobility; only a few not noble were in the Fusilier Battalions of Infantry and some among the Hussars. Under Frederic II., during the deficiency of men in the Seven Years' War, young volunteers of citizen origin were made officers. Then they were, at least in their pay, and frequently in the regimental lists, represented as noble; but after the peace, however great their capacity, they were almost always kept out of the privileged battalions. This did not improve under the later Kings. Only in the Artillery, in 1806, were the greater number of officers commoners, but on that account they were not considered as equals. It was a bitter irony that a French artillery officer should be the person, as Emperor of the French, to think of shattering the Prussian army and its State into pieces, at the same time in which they were contending in Prussia as to whether an officer of artillery should be received upon the general staff, and that the citizen Lieutenant-Colonel Schamhorst should be envied this privilege.[39]It was natural that all the failings of a privileged order should appear in full measure in the Prussian corps of officers. Pride towards the citizens, roughness to those under them, a deficiency in cultivation and good morals, and in the privileged regiments an unbridled insolence. It is a common complaint of contemporaries, that in the streets and societies of Berlin people were not secure from the insults of thegens d'armes, who were theéliteof the young nobility. Already did these arrogant men, at the beginning of the reign of Frederic William III., begin to be ashamed of wearing their old-fashioned uniform in society, and where they dared, lounged in with protruding white neck-ties, top-boots, and sword-sick.
In spite of these deficiencies, there was still in the Prussian army much of the capacity and strength of the olden time. The stout race of old subaltern officers had not died out, men who had shed bitter tears over the death of their great General in 1786; and still did the common soldiers, in spite of the diminished confidence in their leaders, feel pride in their well-tried war-like capacity. Many characteristic traits have been preserved to us, which give us a pleasing picture of the disposition of the army. When, in the campaign of 1792, a Prussian and Austrian, as good comrades and malcontents, were complaining to one another, and the Prussian did not speak in praise of his King, he yet stopped the other, who was repeating his words, with a box on the ear, saying: "You shall not speak so of my King;" and on the angry Austrian reproaching him with having said the same, the aggressor replied: "I may say that, but not you, for I am a Prussian." Such was the feeling in most of the regiments. The disgraceful prostration of Prussia was not owing to the bad material of the army, nor especially to the obsolete tactics. Nay, in the struggle it was shown how great was the capacity of both the men and officers who were so shamefully sacrificed. Amidst the lawlessness, coarseness, and rapacity which inevitably come to light among a demoralised soldiery, we rejoice in finding the most worthy soldier-like feeling often amongst the meanest of them. One of the many unworthy proceedings of the stupid campaign of 1806, was the surrender of Hameln. How the betrayed garrison behaved has been related in the letter of an officer. The narrator was the son of an emigrant, a Frenchman by birth, but he had become an inestimable German, of whom our people are proud; he had done his duty as a Prussian officer, but at every free moment he devoted himself to German literature and science; he had no satisfaction in carrying on war against the land of his birth, and had sometimes wished himself away from the ill-conducted campaign; but when a bad commander betrayed his brave troops, the full anger of an old Prussian was kindled in the breast of the adopted child of the German people, he assembled his comrades, and urged them to a general rising against their incapable commander; all the juniors were as indignant as himself; but in vain. They were deceived, and the fortress, in spite of their resistance, delivered over to the French. Fearful was the despair of the soldiers; they fired their cartridges into the windows of the cowardly commander; they shot one another in rage and drunkenness; they dashed their weapons on the stones, that they might not be carried with more renown by strangers, and the old Brandenburgers wept when they took leave of their officers. In the company of Captain von Britzke, regiment von Haack, were two brothers, Warnawa, sons of soldiers; they mutually placed their muskets to each other's breast, drew the triggers at the same time, and fell into each other's arms, that they might not survive the disgrace.[40]
But those who were the leaders, but not men, who were they? Experienced Generals from the school of the great King, men of high birth, loyal and true to their King, grown old in honours. But were they too old? They undoubtedly were grey-headed and weary. They had come into the army as boys, perhaps from the teaching of the cadet colleges, where they had been trained; they had marched and presented arms at the word of command; had kept line and distance in countless parades; afterwards they had kept a sharp look-out, that others might keep line and distance, that the buttons were cleaned, and that the pig-tail was the right length. In order to gain promotion, they had taken pains to learn at Berlin whether Rüchel or Hohenlohe was in favour. This had been their life. They knew little more than the spiritless routine of the army, and that they were a wheel in the great machine. Now their army was beaten, and the shattered remains in rapid retreat to the east. What remained now, what was left of any value to them?
But it was not cowardice that made them such pitiful creatures. They had formerly been brave soldiers, and most of them were not old enough to be in their dotage. It was something else: they had lost all confidence in their State; it appeared to them useless, hopeless to defend themselves any longer—a fruitless slaughter of men. Thus did these unfortunate ones feel. They had been all their life mediocre men—not better nor worse than others; this mediocrity now prevailed, as far as their narrow point of view reached, everywhere in the State. Where was there anything great or strong? where any fresh life to give enthusiasm and warmth? They themselves had been the delight, the society of the Hohenzollerns—the first in the State, the salt of the country; they were accustomed to look down upon citizens and officials. Besides their Prince and the army itself, what had they in Prussia to honour? Now the King was away—they knew not where—they were alone within the walls of their fortress; and they found little in themselves either to shun or to honour; they felt at best that they were weak. Thus, in the hour of trial they became bad and mean, because they had all their lives been placed higher than their merits. A fearful lesson may be learnt from this; may Prussians always think of it. The officers, as a privileged class, socially exclusive, with the feeling of a privileged position in the State, were in constant danger of fluctuating between arrogance and weakness. Only the officer who, besides his honour as a soldier and his fidelity to his sovereign, had a full participation in all that ennobled and elevated a citizen of his time, could in a moment of difficulty find certain strength in his own breast.
A period of intellectual poverty and mediocrity brought Prussia to the verge of destruction; political passion raised it again.
But here an account shall be given of the feelings of a German citizen on the fall of his State. He belonged to that circle of Prussian jurists of whom we have just spoken. What he imparts is already known from other records, yet his honest description will find sympathy from its judicial clearness and simplicity:—
Cristoph Wilhelm Heinrich Sethe, born 1767, deceased 1855. "Wirklicher Geheimer Rath," and chief president of the Rhenish court of appeal, descended from a great legal family in the dukedom of Cleves; his grandfather and father had been distinguished officials of the government; his mother was a Grolmann. The boy grew up in the enjoyment of wealth in his father's town; at sixteen years of age his father sent him to the university of Duisburg, and then to Halle and Göttingen; on his return he went through the Prussian grades of service in the government of Cleve-Mark, an excellent school. These western provinces—-not of very great extent—comprised a good portion of the strength of the Prussian State. This firm, vigorous population clung with warm fidelity to the house of their Princes; there was in the cities and among the peasants, who lived as freemen on their land, much wealth, and the High Court of Justice was one of the best in Prussia Sethe was "Geheimer Rath," happily married, with his whole heart in his home, when a gloom was thrown over his native city and his own life by the sound of war, the march and quartering of troops, exciting reports, and, finally, the occupation of the town by the French, who, as it is well known, allowed the sovereignty of Prussia to continue for some years, till the Peace of Amiens took away the last vestige of Prussian possession. Then Sethe severed himself from his home, and established himself in the Prussian administration of the newly-acquired portion of Münster.
He shall now relate himself what he experienced.[41]
"You can easily imagine, my dear children, that the departure from Cleve was very distressing to us. It was a bitter feeling to wander in this way from home, and leave one's native city under foreign laws and the dominion of a foreign people.
"On 3rd October, 1803, we left. We went from Cleve to Münster in three days; the journey from Emmerick was extremely difficult and tedious; it was over corduroy roads, with loose stones thrown on them."[42]
"In the beginning of our life at Münster we also encountered many annoyances. From the number of officials who had removed there, and the numerous military, our accommodation was very restricted. Then we arrived there towards winter, and provisions were very deficient; in Münster there was no regular market, and the women from Cleve were in despair, because they could get nothing. This, however, came right, and afterwards they got on very well.
"On a friendly reception and courtesy to us intruding strangers we had never reckoned, because we knew how much the people of Münster clung to their constitution—with what steadfastness a great portion of them still relied on their elected bishop, Victor Anton, and how unwillingly they endured the new rule of Prussia. I have never blamed them for this; it was a praiseworthy trait in their character that they should be unwilling to separate from a government under which they had felt happy; but others took this much amiss of them, and expected that they would receive the Prussians with open arms, and immediately become Prussians in heart and soul, which could only be expected from a fickle people who had groaned under the fetters of a harsh government.
"Therefore, there was already division and separation between the new comers of old Prussia and the people of Münster before our arrival. Thus, much took place which was not likely to promote intimacy, or to awaken a friendly feeling in the inhabitants.
"By the disbanding of the Münster military, the greater number of the officers were dismissed with pensions, and thrown out of their course of life. This first consequence of the Prussian occupation not only deeply wounded the feelings of those dismissed, but was generally considered as unjust; and the more so as among the Münster officers there was much culture and scientific knowledge, and the general run of Prussian officers could not stand comparison with them.
"The introduction of conscription increased the discontent; but still more general indignation was excited by the ill-treatment which the enlisted sons of citizens and country people had to bear from the non-commissioned officers. I myself was eyewitness of the way in which a non-commissioned officer dealt abusive language, blows, and kicks to a recruit, and struck him on the shins with his cane, so that tears of sorrow coursed down the cheeks of the poor man. The spirit, also, which prevailed among the greater number of the Prussian officers, and their consequent behaviour, was not calculated to excite a favourable feeling in a new country towards the new government. Blücher, indeed, who was commandant of Münster, won real esteem and liking by his popular manner, his open and upright character, and his justice; and General von Wobeser, commander of a dragoon regiment, a very sensible, cultivated, moderate man, did so likewise; but the good effect of their conduct was spoilt by that of the others, namely, the general body of the subaltern officers.
"Once there arose a dispute betwixt some citizens and the guard at the Mauritz-gate; the citizens were said to have gone amongst the arms and hustled the guard. Blücher was at that time at Pyrmont. There appeared then a proclamation, under the signature of a General von Ernest, but from another pen, by which every sentry who was touched by a citizen should be authorised to strike him down. This irrational order, which gave every sentinel power over the lives of the citizens, who, by touching them even accidentally, were exposed to their bayonets, excited indignation.
"In addition to this, there now happened a disagreeable affair between three officers and three prebendaries.[43]There existed at Münster a so-called noble ladies' club, which admitted both men and ladies. Immediately after the first possession of the place, from political motives. Generals Blücher and Wobeser, the President Von Stein, and other Prussian officers were admitted, also Blücher's son Franz. In balloting for the admittance of another Prussian officer, he was blackballed. Indisputably this showed an objection, either to him as a Prussian, or to the admittance of more officers, for against the individual nothing could be said. This could not fail to increase the bad feeling, and it wounded especially the sensitive vanity of the young officers. Moreover, the ballot was at first declared to be favourable, and it was only upon a revision of the balls that the black ball was discovered; that is to say, the lady president of the club, the widowed Frau von Droste-Vischering, a very worthy and good-humoured lady, either by mistake or from the well-meant intention of preventing the disagreeable consequences of blackballing, had counted a white ball too much. It was remarked by one of the prebendaries present, that the whole number of balls did not agree with the number of votes. On counting them again accurately, it was found that the candidate was not received. Undoubtedly the younger prebendaries might have co-operated in the exclusion.
"The impetuous Lieutenant Franz von Blücher gave vent to his feelings concerning this to one of the young prebendaries, and some words ensued between them. The following day Franz Blücher challenged this prebendary by letter; and two other officers, one of whom was the rejected one, challenged two other young prebendaries in the same way. Both these, who had not had the slightest hostile communication with the challengers, wrote to express their surprise. One of them received for answer, that he had laughed at the altercation between Lieutenant von Blücher and the other prebendary, and therefore he, the challenger, felt himself injured in the person of his friend Blücher. The other challenger would not even give such an excuse, he only wrote that he felt himself aggrieved, and that was enough.
"The prebendaries, who, on account of their spiritual order, could not accept the challenge, informed the King immediately of the occurrence. The result was, the appointment of a mixed commission of inquiry under the presidency of General von Wobeser, and our President of Administration, Von Sobbe, into which I also was introduced, together with the quartermaster of the regiment, Ribbentrop. The prebendaries were acquitted by the court of justice before which the case was brought, and the officers were sentenced by a court-martial to three weeks' arrest, which they spent at the guard-house in the society of their companions, and promenading before it.
"But the three prebendaries were also wounded in their most sensitive feelings by a malicious trick which was played them. Before this commission of inquiry was appointed, they were invited, through a livery servant, to a great evening party at General Blücher's without his knowledge. They were all startled, suspected some mistake, and were doubtful about going. But as they were all three invited through a servant of the General's, they decided there could be no mistake, and also their relations and friends, who thought this invitation was a step towards the accommodation of the affair, advised them to go. General Blücher, who had never thought of inviting them, was naturally very irate at seeing the three prebendaries enter. Being much prejudiced against them by his son Franz, who had then much influence over his father, and perhaps irritated by invidious remarks from the originator of the intrigue, upon their boldness in appearing, he gave them to understand that they had not been invited, and might go. They indignantly left the party, and not only they, but also their families; the ladies hastened home on foot, so deeply did they feel the mortification. This concerted deliberate affront excited general ill-will, and contributed very much to increase the bad feeling.
"But what more than all increased the bitterness was the exercise of 'Cabinet justice'[44]in the suit of the firm of Herren von der Beck, against the Herren von Landesberg and Von Böselager. By a 'Cabinet order' of the 5th September, 1805, obtained by Von der Reck, the suit between the two parties pending in the Imperial Aulic Council was declared to be legally decided, and a commission of execution was appointed to eject the Herren von Landesberg and Von Böselager from their property, and to place the Herren von der Reck in possession of it.
"This unfortunate business, in a country which had as yet no Prussian feeling, revolted all minds. In public writings this violent inroad on the course of law was vehemently attacked, and an odious stain was inflicted on our Prussian justice, of which we had talked so loudly.
"It was a mistake not to introduce the whole Prussian constitution at the outset, there would then have been only one source of discontent instead of constantly recurring irritation. Some, of the new things that were introduced piecemeal were peculiarly disagreeable to the people of Münster, who were quite unaccustomed to them, such as the stamp duty, conscription, and the salt monopoly. Also the well-known excise was impending. Already were the toll-houses built, and it was to have been introduced in 1807, but was prevented by the events of the year 1806. But the expectation gave a disagreeable foretaste, and through it new fuel was added to the hatred. At last, but much too late, as the unhappy war had begun, the chapter was dissolved.
"Under such circumstances, residence in Münster was not agreeable to us old Prussians. I indeed felt this less than others; after I had made myself, to a certain extent, at home, I got on well with the people there; we won many true friends, and experienced from them much love and friendship. As in my office, so in social intercourse, I took pains to judge justly.
"But the year 1806 came, and one sorrow followed upon another. First the three Rhine portions of the Duchy of Cleve, which remained to the Prussians, surrendered to Napoleon; he established himself on this side of the Rhine, and came into possession of the fortress Wesel, which was only too near to the present Prussian frontier. His brother-in-law Joachim Murat became duke of the old hereditary possessions of the King's family. No one could conceal from himself that our State, which spread so wide from east to west, was in a very critical position. Our grief was increased by the insolence with which the newly created duke carried on his encroachments even as far as Münster.
"New clouds rose darkly over us. Letters from Berlin breathed war against Napoleon, Blücher left us, and we expected the French occupation of Münster. It is true that General Lecoq had entered it with a small corps, but this gave us little comfort, for he appeared to wish to abandon the city, with its moats and ramparts, to the evil results of a useless defence. When he had felled down a beautiful plantation in front of the Egidien gate, and after the appearance of our war manifesto, the city was terrified one night by sudden alarm signals, in order, as he said, to prove the watchfulness of his soldiers; in the middle of October he suddenly withdrew and left us to our fate.