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Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4

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






CCXLVII. German Jacobins


In Lorraine and Alsace, the Revolution had been hailed with delight by
the long-oppressed people. On the 10th of July, 1789, the peasants
destroyed the park of the bishop, Rohan, at Zabern, and killed immense
quantities of game. The chateaux and monasteries throughout the
country were afterward reduced to heaps of ruins, and, in Suntgau, the
peasants took especial vengeance on the Jews, who had, in that place,
long lived on the fat of the land. Mulhausen received a democratic
constitution and a Jacobin club. In Strasburg, the town-house was
assailed by the populace,[1] notwithstanding which, order was
maintained by the mayor, Dietrich. The unpopular bishop, Rohan, was
replaced by Brendel, against whom the people of Colmar revolted, and
even assaulted him in the church for having taken the oath imposed by
the French republic, and which was rejected by all good Catholics.
Dietrich, aided by the great majority of the citizens of Strasburg,
long succeeded in keeping the _sans culottes_ at bay, but was at
length overcome, deprived of his office, and guillotined at Paris,
while Eulogius Schneider, who had formerly been a professor at Bonn,
then court preacher to the Catholic duke, Charles of Wurtemberg,[2]
became the tyrant of Strasburg, and, in the character of public
accuser before the revolutionary tribunal, conducted the executions.
The national convention at Paris nominated as his colleague Monet, a
man twenty-four years of age, totally ignorant of the German language,
and who merely made himself remarkable for his open rapacity.[3] This
was, however, a mere prelude to far greater horrors. Two members of
the convention, St. Just and Lebas, unexpectedly appeared at
Strasburg, declared that nothing had as yet been done, ordered the
executions to take place on a larger scale, and, A.D. 1793, imposed a
fine of nine million livres on the already plundered city. The German
costume and mode of writing were also prohibited; every sign, written
in German, affixed to the houses, was taken down, and, finally, the
whole of the city council and all the officers of the national guard
were arrested and either exiled or guillotined, notwithstanding their
zealous advocacy of revolutionary principles, on the charge of an
understanding with Austria, without proof, on a mere groundless
suspicion, without being permitted to defend themselves, for the sole
purpose of removing them out of the way in order to replace them with
trueborn Frenchmen, a Parisian mob, who established themselves in the
desolate houses. Schneider and Brendel continued to retain their
places by means of the basest adulation. On the 21st of November, a
great festival was solemnized in the Minster, which had been converted
into a temple of Reason. The bust of Marat, the most loathsome of all
the monsters engendered by the Revolution, was borne in solemn
procession to the cathedral, before whose portals an immense fire was
fed with pictures and images of the saints, crucifixes, priests'
garments, and sacred vessels, among which Brendel hurled his mitre.
Within the cathedral walls, Schneider delivered a discourse in
controversion of the Christian religion, which he concluded by
solemnly renouncing; a number of Catholic ecclesiastics followed his
example. All the statues and ecclesiastical symbols were piled in a
rude heap at the foot of the great tower, which it was also attempted
to pull down for the promotion of universal equality, an attempt which
the extraordinary strength of the building and the short reign of
revolutionary madness fortunately frustrated. All the more wealthy
citizens had, meanwhile, been consigned either to the guillotine or to
prison, and their houses filled with French bandits, who revelled in
their wealth and dishonored their wives and daughters. Eulogius
Schneider was compelled to seek at midnight for a wife, suspicion
having already attached to him on account of his former profession. It
was, however, too late. On the following morning, he was seized and
sent to Paris, where he was guillotined. All ecclesiastics, all
schoolmasters, even the historian, Friese, were, without exception,
declared suspected and dragged to the prisons of Besançon, where they
suffered the harshest treatment at the hands of the commandant, Prince
Charles of Hesse. In Strasburg, Neumann, who had succeeded Schneider
as public accuser, raged with redoubled fury. The guillotine was ever
at work, was illuminated during the night time, and was the scene of
the orgies of the drunken bandits. On the advance of the French armies
to the frontiers, the whole country was pillaged.[4]

In other places, where the plundering habits of the French had not
cooled the popular enthusiasm, it still rose high, more particularly
at Mayence. This city, which had been rendered a seat of the Muses by
the elector, Frederick Charles, was in a state of complete
demoralization. On the loss of Strasburg, Mayence, although the only
remaining bulwark of Germany, was entirely overlooked. The war had
already burst forth; no imperial army had as yet been levied, and the
fortifications of Mayence were in the most shameful state of neglect.
Magazines had been established by the imperial troops on the left bank
of the Rhine, seemingly for the mere purpose of letting them fall into
the hands of Custine: but eight hundred Austrians garrisoned Mayence;
the Hessians, although numerically weak, were alone sincere in their
efforts for the defence of Germany. Custine's advanced guard no sooner
came in sight than the elector and all the higher functionaries fled
to Aschaffenburg. Von Gymnich, the commandant of Mayence, called a
council of war and surrendered the city, which was unanimously
declared untenable by all present with the exception of Eikenmaier,
who, notwithstanding, went forthwith over to the French, and of
Andujar, the commander of the eight hundred Austrians, with whom he
instantly evacuated the place. The Illuminati, who were here in great
number, triumphantly opened the gates to the French, A.D. 1792. The
most extraordinary scenes were enacted. A society, the members of
which preached the doctrines of liberty and equality, and at whose
head stood the professors Blau, Wedekind, Metternich, Hoffmann,
Forster, the eminent navigator, the doctors Böhmer and Stamm, Dorsch
of Strasburg, etc., chiefly men who had formerly been Illuminati, was
formed in imitation of the revolutionary Jacobin club at Paris.[5]
These people committed unheard-of follies. At first, notwithstanding
their doctrine of equality, they were distinguished by a particular
ribbon; the women, insensible to shame, wore girdles with long ends,
on which the word "liberty" was worked in front, and the word
"equality" behind. Women, girt with sabres, danced franticly around
tall trees of liberty, in imitation of those of France, and fired off
pistols. The men wore monstrous mustaches in imitation of those of
Custine, whom, notwithstanding their republican notions, they loaded
with servile flattery. As a means of gaining over the lower orders
among the citizens, who with plain good sense opposed their apish
tricks, the clubbists demolished a large stone, by which the
Archbishop Adolphus had formerly sworn, "You, citizens of Mayence,
shall not regain your privileges until this stone shall melt." This,
however, proved as little effective as did the production of a large
book, in which every citizen, desirous of transforming the electorate
of Mayence into a republic, was requested to inscribe his name.
Notwithstanding the threat of being treated, in case of refusal, as
slaves, the citizens and peasantry, plainly foreseeing that, instead
of receiving the promised boon of liberty, they would but expose
themselves to Custine's brutal tyranny, withheld their signatures, and
the clubbists finally established a republic under the protection of
France without the consent of the people, removed all the old
authorities, and, at the close of 1792, elected Dorsch, a remarkably
diminutive, ill-favored man, who had formerly been a priest,
president.

The manner in which Custine levied contributions in Frankfort on the
Maine,[6] was still less calculated to render the French popular in
Germany. Cowardly as this general was, he, nevertheless, told the
citizens of Frankfort a truth that time has, up to the present period,
confirmed. "You have beheld the coronation of the emperor of Germany?
Well! you will not see another."

Two Germans, natives of Colmar in Alsace, Rewbel and Hausmann, and a
Frenchman, Merlin, all three members of the national convention, came
to Mayence for the purpose of conducting the defence of that city.
They burned symbolically all the crowns, mitres, and escutcheons of
the German empire, but were unable to induce the citizens of Mayence
to declare in favor of the republic. Rewbel, infuriated at their
opposition, exclaimed that he would level the city to the ground, that
he should deem himself dishonored were he to waste another word on
such slaves. A number of refractory persons were expelled from the
city,[7] and, on the 17th of March, 1793, although three hundred and
seventy of the citizens alone voted in its favor, a Teuto-Rhenish
national convention, under the presidency of Hoffmann, was opened at
Mayence and instantly declared in favor of the union of the new
republic with France. Forster, in other respects a man of great
elevation of mind, forgetful, in his enthusiasm, of all national
pride, personally carried to Paris the scandalous documents in which
the French were humbly entreated to accept of a province of the German
empire. The Prussians, who had remained in Luxemburg (without aiding
the Austrians), meanwhile advanced to the Rhine, took Coblentz, which
Custine had neglected to garrison (a neglect for which he afterward
lost his head), repulsed a French force under Bournonville, when on
the point of forming a junction with Custine, at Treves, expelled
Custine from Frankfort,[8] and closely besieged Mayence, which, after
making a valiant defence, was compelled to capitulate in July.

Numbers of the clubbists fled, or were saved by the French, when
evacuating the city, in the disguise of soldiers. Others were arrested
and treated with extreme cruelty. Every clubbist, or any person
suspected of being one, received five and twenty lashes in the
presence of Kalkreuth, the Prussian general. Metternich was, together
with numerous others, carried off, chained fast between the horses of
the hussars, and, whenever he sank from weariness, spurred on at the
sabre point. Blau had his ears boxed by the Prussian minister,
Stein.[9] A similar reaction took place at Worms,[10] Spires, etc.

The German Jacobins suffered the punishment amply deserved by all
those who look for salvation from the foreigner. Those who had barely
escaped the vengeance of the Prussian on the Rhine were beheaded by
their pretended good friends in France. Robespierre, an advocate, who,
at that period, governed the convention, sent every foreigner who had
enrolled himself as a member of the Jacobin club to the guillotine, as
a suspicious person, a bloody but instructive lesson to all
unpatriotic German Gallomanists.[11]

The victims who fell on this occasion were, a prince of Salm-Kyrburg,
who had voluntarily republicanized his petty territory, Anacharsis
Cloots,[12] and the venerable Trenk, who had so long pined in
Frederick's prisons. Adam Lux, a friend of George Forster, was also
beheaded for expressing his admiration of Charlotte Corday, the
murderess of Marat. Marat was a Prussian subject, being a native of
Neufchâtel. Göbel von Bruntrut, uncle to Rengger,[13] a celebrated
character in the subsequent Swiss revolution, vicar-general of Basel,
a furious revolutionist, who had on that account been appointed bishop
of Paris, presented himself on the 6th of November, 1793, at the bar
of the convention as an associate of Cloots, Hebert, Chaumette, etc.,
cast his mitre and other insignia of office to the ground, and placing
the bonnet rouge on his head, solemnly renounced the Christian faith
and proclaimed that of "liberty and equality." The rest of the
ecclesiastics were compelled to imitate his example; the Christian
religion was formally abolished and the worship of Reason was
established in its stead. Half-naked women were placed upon the altars
of the desecrated churches and worshipped as "goddesses of Reason."
Göbel's friend, Pache, a native of Freiburg, a creature abject as
himself, was particularly zealous, as was also Proli, a natural son of
the Austrian minister, Kaunitz. Prince Charles of Hesse, known among
the Jacobins as Charles Hesse, fortunately escaped. Schlaberndorf,[14]
a Silesian count, who appears to have been a mere spectator, and
Oelsner, a distinguished author, were equally fortunate. These two
latter remained in Paris. Reinhard, a native of Wurtemberg, secretary
to the celebrated Girondin, Vergniaud, whom he is said to have aided
in the composition of his eloquent speeches, remained in the service
of France, was afterward ennobled and raised to the ministry. Felix
von Wimpfen, whom the faction of the Gironde (the moderates who
opposed the savage Jacobins) elected their general, and who,
attempting to lead a small force from Normandy against Paris, was
defeated and compelled to seek safety by flight. The venerable Lukner,
the associate of Lafayette, who had termed the great Revolution merely
"a little occurrence in Paris," was beheaded. The unfortunate George
Forster perceived his error and died of sorrow.[15] Among the other
Rhenish Germans of distinction, who had at that time formed a
connection with France, Joseph Görres brought himself, notwithstanding
his extreme youth, into great note at Coblentz by his superior
talents. He went to Paris as deputy of Treves and speedily became
known by his works (Rubezahl and the Red Leaf). He also speedily
discovered the immense mistake made by the Germans in resting their
hopes upon France. It was indeed a strange delusion to suppose the
vain and greedy Frenchman capable of being inspired with disinterested
love for all mankind, and it was indeed a severe irony, that, after
such repeated and cruel experience, after having for centuries seen
the French ever in the guise of robbers and pillagers, and after
breathing such loud complaints against the princes who had sold
Germany to France, that the warmest friends of the people should on
this occasion be guilty of similar treachery, and, like selecting the
goat for a gardener, entrust the weal of their country to the French.

The people in Germany too little understood the real motives and
object of the French Revolution, and were too soon provoked by the
predatory incursions of the French troops, to be infected with
revolutionary principles. These merely fermented among the literati;
the Utopian idea of universal fraternization was spread by
Freemasonry; numbers at first cherished a hope that the Revolution
would preserve a pure moral character, and were not a little
astonished on beholding the monstrous crimes to which it gave birth.
Others merely rejoiced at the fall of the old and insupportable
system, and numerous anonymous pamphlets in this spirit appeared in
the Rhenish provinces. Fichte, the philosopher, also published an
anonymous work in favor of the Revolution. Others again, as, for
instance, Reichard, Girtanner, Schirach, and Hoffmann, set themselves
up as informers, and denounced every liberal-minded man to the princes
as a dangerous Jacobin. A search was made for Crypto-Jacobins, and
every honest man was exposed to the calumny of the servile newspaper
editors. French republicanism was denounced as criminal,
notwithstanding the favor in which the French language and French
ideas were held at all the courts of Germany. Liberal opinions were
denounced as criminal, notwithstanding the example first set by the
courts in ridiculing religion, in mocking all that was venerable and
sacred. Nor was this reaction by any means occasioned by a burst of
German patriotism against the tyranny of France, for the treaty of
Basel speedily reconciled the self-same newspaper editors with France.
It was mere servility; and the hatred which, it may easily be
conceived, was naturally excited against the French as a nation, was
vented in this mode upon the patient Germans,[16] who were,
unfortunately, ever doomed, whenever their neighbors were visited with
some political chronic convulsion, to taste the bitter remedy. But few
of the writers of the day took a historical view of the Revolution and
weighed its irremediable results in regard to Germany, besides Gentz,
Rehberg, and the Baron von Gagern, who published an "Address to his
Countrymen," in which he started the painful question, "Why are we
Germans disunited?" The whole of these contending opinions of the
learned were, however, equally erroneous. It was as little possible to
preserve the Revolution from blood and immorality, and to extend the
boon of liberty to the whole world, as it was to suppress it by force,
and, as far as Germany was concerned, her affairs were too complicated
and her interests too scattered for any attempt of the kind to
succeed. A Doctor Faust, at Buckeburg, sent a learned treatise upon
the origin of trousers to the national convention at Paris, by which
Sansculottism had been introduced; an incident alone sufficient to
show the state of feeling in Germany at that time.

The revolutionary principles of France merely infected the people in
those parts of Germany where their sufferings had ever been the
greatest, as, for instance, in Saxony, where the peasantry, oppressed
by the game laws and the rights of the nobility, rose, after a dry
summer by which their misery had been greatly increased, to the number
of eighteen thousand, and sent one of their class to lay their
complaints before the elector, A.D. 1790. The unfortunate messenger
was instantly consigned to a madhouse, where he remained until 1809,
and the peasantry were dispersed by the military. A similar revolt of
the peasantry against the tyrannical nuns of Wormelen, in Westphalia,
merely deserves mention as being characteristic of the times. A revolt
of the peasantry, of equal unimportance, also took place in Buckeburg,
on account of the expulsion of three revolutionary priests, Froriep,
Meyer, and Rauschenbusch. In Breslau, a great émeute, which was put
down by means of artillery, was occasioned by the expulsion of a
tailor's apprentice, A.D. 1793.

In Austria, one Hebenstreit formed a conspiracy, which brought him to
the gallows, A.D. 1793. That formed by Martinowits, for the
establishment of the sovereignty of the people in Hungary and for the
expulsion of the magnates, was of a more dangerous character.
Martinowits was beheaded, A.D. 1793, with four of his associates.[17]
These attempts so greatly excited the apprehensions of the government
that the reaction, already begun on the death of Joseph II., was
brought at once to a climax; Thugut, the minister, established an
extremely active secret police and a system of surveillance, which
spread terror throughout Austria and was utterly uncalled for, no one,
with the exception of a few crack-brained individuals, being in the
slightest degree infected with the revolutionary mania.[18]

It may be recorded as a matter of curiosity that, during the
bloodstained year of 1793, the petty prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt
held, as though in the most undisturbed time of peace, a magnificent
tournament, and the fetes customary on such an occasion.


[Footnote 1: Oberlin, the celebrated philologist, an ornament to
German learning, a professor at Strasburg, rescued, at the risk of his
life, a great portion of the ancient city archives, which had been
thrown out of the windows, by re-collecting the documents with the aid
of the students. On account of this sample of old German pedantry he
pined, until 1793, in durance vile at Metz, and narrowly escaped being
guillotined.]

[Footnote 2: At Bonn he had the impudence to say to the elector, "I
cannot pay you a higher compliment than by asserting you to be no
Catholic."--_Van Alpen_, _History of Rhenish Franconia_.]

[Footnote 3: He mulcted the brewers to the amount of 255,000 livres,
"on account of their well-known avarice," the bakers and millers to
that of 314,000, a publican to that of 40,000, a baker to that of
30,000, "because he was an enemy of mankind," etc.--_Vide Friese's
History of Strasburg_.]

[Footnote 4: It was asserted that the Jacobins had formed a plan to
depopulate the whole of Alsace, and to partition the country among the
bravest soldiers belonging to the republican armies.]

[Footnote 5: John Müller played a remarkable part. This thoroughly
deceptive person had, by his commendation of the ancient Swiss in his
affectedly written History of Switzerland, gained the favor of the
friends of liberty, and, at the same time, that of the nobility by his
encomium on the degenerate Swiss aristocracy. While with sentimental
phrases and fine words he pretended to be one of the noblest of
mankind, he was addicted to the lowest and most monstrous vices. His
immorality brought him into trouble in Switzerland, and the man, who
had been, apparently, solely inspired with the love of republican
liberty, now paid court, for the sake of gain, to foreign princes; the
adulation that had succeeded so well with all the lordlings of
Switzerland was poured into the ears of all the potentates of Europe.
He even rose to great favor at Rome by his flattery of the pope in a
work entitled "The Travels of the Popes." He published the most
virulent sophisms against the beneficial reforms of the emperor
Joseph, and cried up the League, for which he was well paid. He
contrived, at the same time, to creep into favor with the Illuminati.
He was employed by the elector of Mayence to carry on negotiations
with Dumouriez, got into office under the French republic, and
afterward revisited Mayence for the express purpose of calling upon
the citizens, at that time highly dissatisfied with the conduct of the
French, to unite themselves with France. Vide Forster's
Correspondence. Dumouriez shortly afterward went over to the
Austrians, and Müller suddenly appeared at Vienna, adorned with a
title and in the character of an Aulic councillor.]

[Footnote 6: While in his proclamations he swore by all that was
sacred (what was so to a Frenchman?) to respect the property of the
citizens and that France coveted no extension of territory.]

[Footnote 7: Forster was so blinded at that time by his enthusiasm
that he wrote, "all of those among us who refuse the citizenship of
France are to be expelled the city, even if complete depopulation
should be the result." He relates: "I summoned, at Grunstadt, the
Counts von Leiningen to acknowledge themselves citizens of France.
They protested against it, caballed, instigated the citizens peasantry
to revolt; one of my soldiers was attacked and wounded. I demanded a
reinforcement, took possession of both the castles, and placed the
counts under guard. To-day I sent them with an escort to Landau. This
has been a disagreeable duty, but we must reduce every opponent of the
good cause to obedience."]

[Footnote 8: Where the weak garrison left by the French was disarmed
by the workmen.]

[Footnote 9: Either the Prussian minister who afterward gained such
celebrity or one of his relations.]

[Footnote 10: Here Skekuly forced the German clubbists, with the lash,
to cut down the tree of liberty.]

[Footnote 11: Forster wrote from Paris, "Suspicion hangs over every
foreigner, and the essential distinctions which ought to be made in
this respect are of no avail." Thus did nature, by whom nations are
eternally separated, avenge herself on the fools who had dreamed of
universal equality.]

[Footnote 12: Cloots had incessantly preached war, threatened all the
kings of the earth with destruction, and, in his vanity, had even set
a price upon the head of the Prussian monarch. His object was the
union of the whole of mankind, the abolition of nationality. The
French were to receive a new name, that of "Universel." He preached in
the convention: "I have struggled during the whole of my existence
against the powers of heaven and earth. There is but one God, Nature,
and but one sovereign, mankind, the people, united by reason in one
universal republic. Religion is the last obstacle, but the time has
arrived for its destruction. J'occupe la tribune de l'univers. Je le
repète, le genre humain est Dieu, le _Peuple Dieu_. Quiconque a la
débilité de croire en Dieu ne sauroit avoir la sagacité de connaitre
le genre humain, le souverain unique," etc.--_Moniteur of_ 1793, No.
120. He also subscribed himself the "personal enemy of Je«us of
Nazareth."]

[Footnote 13: Whose nephew, the celebrated traveller, Rengger, was,
with Bonpland, so long imprisoned in Paraguay.]

[Footnote 14: He had been already imprisoned and was ordered to the
guillotine, but not being able to find his boots quickly enough, his
execution was put off until the morrow. During the night, Robespierre
fell, and his life was saved. He continued to reside at Paris, where
he never quitted his apartment, cherished his beard, and associated
solely with ecclesiastics.]

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