A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4

W >> Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks >> Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4




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

In Hesse and Brunswick, all the old abuses practiced in the petty
courts in the eighteenth century were revived. William of Hesse-Cassel
returned, on the fall of Napoleon, to his domains. True to his
whimsical saying, "I have slept during the last seven years," he
insisted upon replacing everything in Hesse exactly on its former
footing. In one particular alone was his vanity inconsistent:
notwithstanding his hatred toward Napoleon, he retained the title of
Prince Elector, bestowed upon him by Napoleon's favor, although it had
lost all significance, there being no longer any emperor to elect.[5]
He turned the hand of time back seven years, degraded the councillors
raised to that dignity by Jerome to their former station as clerks,
captains to lieutenants, etc., all, in fact, to the station they had
formerly occupied, even reintroduced into the army the fashion of
wearing powder and queues, prohibited all those not bearing an
official title to be addressed as "Herr," and re-established the
socage dues abolished by Jerome. This attachment to old abuses was
associated with the most insatiable avarice. He reduced the government
bonds to one-third, retook possession of the lands sold during
Jerome's reign, without granting any compensation to the holders,
compelled the country to pay his son's debts to the amount of two
hundred thousand rix-dollars, lowered the amount of pay to such a
degree that a lieutenant received but five rix-dollars per mensem, and
offered to sell a new constitution to the Estates at the low price of
four million rix-dollars, which he afterward lowered to two millions
and a tax for ten years upon liquors. This shameful bargain being
rejected by the Estates, the constitution fell to the ground, and the
prince elector practiced the most unlimited despotism. Discontent was
stifled by imprisonment. Two officers, Huth and Rotsmann, who had got
up a petition in favor of their class, and the Herr von Gohr, who by
chance gave a private fete while the prince was suffering from a
sudden attack of illness, were among the victims. The purchasers of
the crown lands vainly appealed to the federative assembly for
redress, for the prince elector "refused the mediation of the
federative assembly until it had been authorized by an organic law
drawn up with the co-operation of the prince elector himself."--This
prince expired in 1821, and was succeeded by his son, William II., who
abolished the use of hair-powder and queues, but none of the existing
abuses, and demonstrated no inclination to grant a constitution. He
was, moreover, the slave of his mistress, Countess Reichenbach, and on
ill terms with his consort, a sister of the king of Prussia, and with
his son. Anonymous and threatening letters being addressed to this
prince with a view of inducing him to favor the designs of the writer,
he had recourse to the severest measures for the discovery of the
guilty party; numbers of persons were arrested, and travellers
instinctively avoided Cassel. It was at length discovered that Manger,
the head of the police, a court favorite, was the author of the
letters.

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

Charles, the hereditary duke of Brunswick, son to the duke who had so
gallantly fallen at Quatrebras, was under the guardianship of the king
of England. A constitution was bestowed in 1820 upon this petty
territory, which was governed by the minister, Von Schmidt-Phiseldek.
The youthful duke took the reins of government in his nineteenth year.
Of a rash and violent disposition and misled by evil associates, he
imagined that he had been too long restricted from assuming the
government, accused his well-deserving minister of having attempted to
prolong his minority, posted handbills for his apprehension as a
common delinquent, denied all his good offices, and subverted the
constitution. He was surrounded by base intriguers in the person of
Bosse, the councillor of state, formerly the servile tool of
Napoleon's despotism, of Frike, the Aulic councillor, "whose pliant
quill was equal to any task when injustice had to be glossed over," of
the adventurer, Klindworth, and of Bitter, the head of the chancery,
who conducted the financial speculations. Frike, in contempt of
justice, tore up the judgment passed by the court of justice in favor
of the venerable Herr von Sierstorff, whom he had accused of high
treason. Herr von Cramm, by whom Frike was, in the name of the
Estates, accused of this misdemeanor before the federative assembly,
was banished, a surgeon, who attended him, was put upon his defence,
and an accoucheur, named Grimm, who had basely refused to attend upon
Cramm's wife, was presented with a hundred dollars. Häberlin, the
novelist, who had been justly condemned to twenty years' imprisonment
with hard labor for his civil misdemeanors, was, on the other hand,
liberated for publishing something in the duke's favor. Bitter
conducted himself with the most open profligacy, sold all the
demesnes, appropriated the sum destined for the redemption of the
public debt, and at the same time levied the heavy imposts with
unrelenting severity. The federative assembly passed judgment against
the duke solely in reference to his attacks upon the king of England.


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

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

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

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

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



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


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

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

During the sitting of this congress, on New Year's Day, 1820, the
liberal party in Spain revolted against their ungrateful sovereign,
Ferdinand VII., who exercised the most fearful tyranny over the nation
that had so unhesitatingly shed its blood in defence of his throne.
This example was shortly afterward followed by the Neapolitans, who
were also dissatisfied with the conduct of their sovereign. Prince
Metternich instantly brought about a congress at Troppau. The czar,
Alexander, who had views upon the East and was no stranger to the
heterarchical party which, under the guidance of Prince Ypsilanti,
prepared a revolution in Greece (which actually broke out) against the
Turks, was at first unwilling to give his assent unconditionally to
the interference of Austria, but on being, in 1821, to his great
surprise, informed by Prince Metternich of the existence of a
revolutionary spirit in one of the regiments of the Russian guard,
freely assented to all the measures proposed by that minister.[1] The
new congress held at Laibach, in 1821, was followed by the entrance of
the Austrians under Frimont into Italy. The cowardly Neapolitans fled
without firing a shot, and the Piedmontese, who unexpectedly revolted
to Frimont's rear, were, after a short encounter with the Austrians
under Bubna at Novara, defeated and reduced to submission. The Greeks,
whom Russia now no longer ventured openly to uphold, had, in the
meantime, also risen in open insurrection. The affairs of Spain were
still in an unsettled state. The new congress held at Verona, in 1822,
however, decided the fate of both these countries. Prince Hardenberg,
the Prussian minister, expired at Genoa on his return home, and Lord
Castlereagh, the English ambassador, cut his throat with his penknife,
in a fit of frenzy, supposed to have been induced by the sense of his
heavy responsibility. At this congress the principle of legitimacy was
maintained with such strictness that even the revolt of the Greeks
against the long and cruel tyranny of the Turks was, notwithstanding
the _Christian spirit of the Holy Alliance_ and the political
advantage secured to Russia and Austria by the subversion of the
Turkish empire, treated as rebellion against the legitimate authority
of the Porte and strongly discouraged. A French army was, on the same
grounds, despatched with the consent of the Bourbon into Spain, and
Ferdinand was reinstated in his legitimate tyranny in 1823. Russia, in
a note addressed to the whole of the confederated states of Germany,
demanded at the same time a declaration on their parts to the effect
that the late proceedings of the great European powers at Verona "were
in accordance with the well-understood interests of the people." Every
member of the federative assembly at Frankfort gave his assent, with
the exception of the Freiherr von Wangenheim, the envoy from
Wurtemberg, who declaring that his instructions did not warrant his
voting upon the question, the ambassadors from the two Hesses made a
similar declaration. This occasioned the dismissal of the Freiherr von
Wangenheim; and the illegal publication of a Wurtemberg despatch, in
which the non-participation of the German confederation in the
resolutions passed by the congresses, to which their assent was
afterward demanded, was treated of, occasioned a second dismissal,
that of Count Winzingerode, the Wurtemberg minister. In the July of
1824, the federal diet resolved to give its support to the monarchical
principle in the constitutional states, and to maintain the Carlsbad
resolutions referring to censorship and to the universities. The
Mayence committee remained sitting until 1828.

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

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

Maximilian of Bavaria, a prince whose amiable manners and character
rendered him universally beloved, expired in 1825. His son, Louis, the
foe to French despotism, a German patriot and a zealous patron of the
arts, declared himself, on his coronation, the warm and sincere
upholder of the constitutional principle and excited general
enthusiasm. His first measures on assuming the government were the
reduction of the royal household and of the army with a view to the
relief of the country from the heavy imposts, the removal of the
university of Landshut to Munich, and the enrichment on an extensive
scale of the institutions of art. The union of the galleries of
Düsseldorf and Mannheim with that of Munich, the collection of
valuable antiques and pictures, for instance, that of the old German
paintings collected by the brothers Boisserée in Cologne during the
French usurpation, the academy of painting under the direction of the
celebrated Cornelius, the new public buildings raised by Klenze, among
which the Glyptothek, the Pinakothek, the great Königsbau or royal
residence, the Ludwigschurch, the Auerchurch, the Arcades, etc., may
be more particularly designated, rendered Munich the centre of German
art. This sovereign also founded at Ratisbon the Walhalla, a building
destined for the reception of the busts of all the celebrated men to
whom Germany has given birth. The predilection of this royal amateur
for classic antiquity excited within his bosom the warmest sympathy
with the fate of the modern Greeks, then in open insurrection against
their Turkish oppressors, and whom he alone, among all the princes of
Germany, aided in the hour of their extremest need.--With the same
spirit that dictated his poems, in which he so repeatedly lamented the
want of unity in Germany, he was the first to propose the union of her
material interests. Germany unhappily resembled, and indeed
immediately after the war of liberation, as De Pradt, the French
writer, maliciously observed, even in a mercantile point of view, a
menagerie whose inhabitants watched each other through a grating.
Vainly had the commercial class of Frankfort on the Maine presented a
petition, in 1819, to the confederation, praying for free trade, for
the fulfilment of the nineteenth article of the federal act. Their
well-grounded complaint remained unheard. The non-fulfilment of the
treaty relating to the free navigation of the Rhine to the sea was
most deeply felt. In the first treaty concluded at Paris, the royal
dignity and the extension of the Dutch territory had been generously
granted to the king of the Netherlands under the express proviso of
the free navigation of the Rhine to the sea. The papers relating to
this transaction had been drawn up in French, and the ungrateful Dutch
perfidiously gave the words "jusqu' à la mer" their most literal
construction, merely "as far as the sea," and as the French, moreover,
possessed a voice in the matter on account of the Upper Rhine, and the
German federal states were unable to give a unanimous verdict,
innumerable committees were held and acts were drawn up without
producing any result favorable to the trade of Germany.

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

The attachment of King Louis to ancient Catholicism was extremely
remarkable. He began to restore some of the monasteries, and several
professors inclined to Ultramontanism and to Catholic mysticism, the
most distinguished among whom was Görres, the Prussian exile,
assembled at the new university at Munich. Here and there appeared a
pious enthusiast. Shortly after the restoration, a peasant from the
Pfalz named Adam Müller began to prophesy, and Madame von Krudener, a
Hanoverian, to preach the necessity of public penance; both these
persons gained the ear of exalted personages, and Madame von Krudener
more particularly is said not a little to have conduced to the piety
displayed by the emperor Alexander during the latter years of his
life. At Bamberg, Prince Alexander von Hohenlohe, then a young man,
had the folly to attempt the performance of miracles, until the police
interfered, and he received a high ecclesiastical office in Hungary.
In Austria, the Ligorians, followers in the footsteps of the Jesuits,
haunted the vicinity of the throne. The conversion of Count Stolberg
and of the Swiss, Von Haller, to the Catholic church, created the
greatest sensation. The former, a celebrated poet, simple and amiable,
in no way merited the shameless outbursts of rage of his old friend,
Voss; Haller, on the other hand, brought forward in his "Restoration
of Political Science" such a decided theory in favor of secession as
to inspire a sentiment of dread at his consistency. The conversion of
Ferdinand, prince of Anhalt-Köthen, to the Catholic church, in 1825,
excited far less attention.

In France, where the Bourbons were completely guided by the Jesuits,
by whose aid they could alone hope to suppress the revolutionary
spirit of their subjects, the reaction in favor of Catholicism had
assumed a more decided character than in Germany. Louis XVIII. was
succeeded by his brother, the Count d'Artois, under the name of
Charles X., a venerable man seventy years of age, who, notwithstanding
his great reverses, had "neither learned nor forgotten anything."
Polignac, his incapable and imperious minister, the tool of the
Jesuits, had, since 1829, impugned every national right, and, at
length, ventured by the ordinances of the 25th July, 1830, to subvert
the constitution. During three days, from the 27th to the 30th of
July, the greatest confusion reigned in Paris; the people rose in
thousands; murderous conflicts took place in the streets between them
and the royal troops, who were driven from every quarter, and the king
was expelled. The chambers met, declared the elder branch of the house
of Bourbon (Charles X., his son, the Dauphin, Duke d'Angouleme, and
his grandson, the youthful Duke de Bordeaux, the son of the murdered
Duke de Berri) to have forfeited the throne, but at the same time
allowed them unopposed to seek an asylum in England, and elected Louis
Philippe, Duke of Orleans, the son of the notorious Jacobin, the head
of the younger line of the house of Bourbon and the grand-master of
the society of Freemasons, king of the French. The rights of the
chambers and of the people were also extended by an appendix to the
charta signed by Louis XVIII.

The revolution of July was the signal for all discontented subjects
throughout Europe to gain, either by force or by legal opposition,
their lost or sighed-for rights. In October, the constitutional party
in Spain attempted to overturn the despotic rule of Ferdinand VII. In
November, the prime minister of England, the renowned Duke of
Wellington, was compelled by the people to yield his seat to Earl
Grey, a man of more liberal principles, who commenced the great work
of reform in the constitution and administration of Great Britain.
During this month, a general insurrection took place in Poland: the
grandduke, Constantine, was driven out of Warsaw, and Poland declared
herself independent. A great part of Germany was also convulsed: and a
part of the ill-raised fabric, erected by the statesmen of 1815, fell
tottering to the ground.


[Footnote 1: Vide Binder's Prince Metternich.]

[Footnote 2: Official report of the Russian ambassador, Count Pozzo di
Borgo, from Paris, of the 14th of December, 1828.]



CCLXVII. The Belgian Revolution


A nation's self-forgetfulness is ever productive of national disgrace.
The Netherlands were torn from the empire and placed partly beneath
the tyranny of Spain, partly beneath the aegis of France; the dominion
of Austria, at a later period, merely served to rouse their provincial
spirit, and, during their subsequent annexation to France, the French
element decidedly gained the ascendency among the population. When, in
1815, these provinces fell under the rule of Holland, it was hoped
that the German element would again rise. But Holland is not Germany.
Estranged provinces are alone to be regained by means of their
incorporation with an empire imbued with one distinct national spirit;
the subordination of one province to another but increases national
antipathy and estrangement. Holland, by an ungrateful, inimical
policy, unfortunately strove to separate herself from Germany.[1] And
yet Holland owes her whole prosperity to Germany. There is her market;
thence does she draw her immense wealth; the loss of that market for
her colonial productions would prove her irredeemable ruin. Her
sovereign, driven into distant exile, was restored to her by the arms
of Germany and generously endowed with royalty. Holland, in return for
all these benefits, deceitfully deprived Germany of the free
navigation of the Rhine to the sea guaranteed to her by the federal
act and assumed the right of fixing the price of all goods, whether
imported to or exported from Germany. The whole of Germany was, in
this unprecedented manner, rendered doubly tributary to the petty
state of Holland.

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