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




The French divided the beautiful Rhenish provinces, yielded to them
almost without a blow by Germany, into four departments: First, Roer,
capital Aix-la-Chapelle; besides Cologne and Cleves. Secondly,
Donnersberg, capital Mayence; besides Spires and Zweibrucken. Thirdly,
Saar, capital Treves. Fourthly, Rhine and Moselle, capital Coblentz;
besides Bonn. Each department was subdivided into cantons, each canton
into communes. The department was governed by a perfect, the canton by
a sub-prefect, the commune by a mayor. All distinction of rank,
nobility, and all feudal rights were abolished. Each individual was a
citizen, free and equal. All ecclesiastical establishments were
abandoned to plunder, the churches alone excepted, they being still
granted as places of worship to believers, notwithstanding the
contempt and ridicule into which the clergy had fallen. The
monasteries were closed. The peasantry, more particularly in Treves,
nevertheless, still manifested great attachment to Popery. Guilds and
corporations were also abolished. The introduction of the ancient
German oral law formerly in use throughout the empire, the institution
of trial by jury, which, to the disgrace of Germany, the Rhenish
princes, after the lapse of a thousand years, learned from their
Gallic foe, was a great and signal benefit.

Liberty, equality, and justice were, at that period, in all other
respects, mere fictions. The most arbitrary rule in reality existed,
and the new provinces were systematically drained by taxes of every
description, as, for instance, register, stamp, patent, window, door,
and land taxes: there was also a tax upon furniture and upon luxuries
of every sort; a poll-tax, a percentage on the whole assessment, etc.;
besides extortion, confiscation, and forced sales. And woe to the new
citizen of the great French republic if he failed in paying more
servile homage to its officers, from the prefect down to the lowest
underling, than had ever been exacted by the princes![12] Such was the
liberty bestowed by republican France! Thus were her promises
fulfilled! The German Illuminati were fearfully undeceived,
particularly on perceiving how completely their hopes of universally
revolutionizing Germany were frustrated by the treaty of Basel. The
French, who had proclaimed liberty to all the nations of the earth,
now offered it for sale. The French character was in every respect the
same as during the reign of Louis XIV. The only principle to which
they remained ever faithful was that of robbery.--Switzerland was now,
in her turn, attacked, and vengeance thus overtook every province that
had severed itself from the empire, and every part of the once
magnificent empire of Germany was miserably punished for its want of
unity.


[Footnote 1: Clausewitz demands, with great justice, why the Austrians
so greatly divided their forces on this occasion for the sake of
saving Italy, as they had only to follow up their successes vigorously
on the Rhine in order to gain, in that quarter, far more than they
could lose on the Po.]

[Footnote 2: At Absom, in the valley of the Inn, a peasant girl had,
at that time, discovered a figure of the Virgin in one of the panes of
glass in her chamber window. This appearance being deemed miraculous
by the simple peasantry, the authorities of the place investigated the
matter, had the glass cleaned and scraped, etc., and at length
pronounced the indelible figure to be simply the outline of an old
colored painting. The peasantry, however, excited by the appearance of
the infidel French, persisted in giving credence to the miracle and
set up the piece of glass in a church, which was afterward annually
visited by thousands of pilgrims. In 1407, the celebrated pilgrimage
to Waldrast, in the Tyrol, had been founded in a similar manner by the
discovery of a portrait of the Virgin which had been grown up in a
tree, by two shepherd lads.]

[Footnote 3: Cobenzl was a favorite of Kaunitz and a thorough
courtier. At an earlier period, when ambassador at Petersburg, he
wrote French comedies, which were performed at the Hermitage in the
presence of the empress Catherine. The arrival of an unpleasant
despatch being ever followed by the production of some amusing piece
as an antidote to care, the empress jestingly observed, "that he was
no doubt keeping his best piece until the news arrived of the French
being in Vienna." He expired in the February of 1809, a year pregnant
with fate for Austria.]

[Footnote 4: He indignantly refused the stipend offered to him on this
occasion and protested against the injustice of his condemnation.]

[Footnote 5: Bavaria regarded these forced concessions as a bad reward
for her fidelity to Austria. Napoleon appears to have calculated upon
relighting by this means the flames of discord, whence he well knew
how to draw an advantage, between Bavaria and Austria.]

[Footnote 6: "Thus the emperor also now abandoned the empire by merely
bargaining with the enemy to quit his territories, and leaving the
wretched provinces of the empire a prey to war and pillage. And if the
assurances of friendship, of confidence, and of affection between
Austria and Venice are but recalled to mind, the contrast was indeed
laughable when the emperor was pleased to allow that loyal city to be
ceded to him. The best friend was in this case the cloth from which
the emperor cut himself an equivalent."--_Huergelmer_.]

[Footnote 7: A curious private memoir of Talleyrand says: "J'ai la
certitude que Berlin est le lieu, où le traité du 26 Vendémiaire (the
reconciliation of Austria with France at Campo Formio), aura jetté le
plus d'etonnement, d'embarras et de orainte." He then explains that,
now that the Netherlands no longer belong to Austria, and that Austria
and France no longer come into collision, both powers would be
transformed from natural foes into natural friends and would have an
equal interest in weakening Prussia. Should Russia stir, the Poles
could be roused to insurrection, etc.]

[Footnote 8: "Exactly at this period, when the empire's common foe was
plundering the Franconian circle, when deeds of blood and horror, when
misery and want had reached a fearful height, the troops of the
Elector of Brandenburg overran the cities and villages. The
inhabitants were constrained to take the oath of fealty, the public
officers, who refused, were dragged away captive, etc. Ellingen,
Stopfenheim, Absperg, Eschenbach, Nüremberg, Postbaur, Virnsperg,
Oettingen, Dinkelspühl, Ritzenhausen, Gelchsheim, were scenes of
brutal outrage."--_The History of the Usurpation of Brandenburg, A.D.
1797_, with the original Documents, published by the Teutonic Order.]

[Footnote 9: His secret memoirs, even at that period, designate Baden,
Würtemberg, and Darmstadt as states securely within the grasp of
France.]

[Footnote 10: He fled on Moreau's invasion to England, where he formed
this alliance. There was at one time a project of creating him elector
of Hanover and of partitioning Würtemberg between Bavaria and Baden.]

[Footnote 11: The commandant, Faber, defended the place for fourteen
months with a garrison of 2,000 men. During the siege, the
badly-disciplined French soldiery secretly sold provisions at an
exorbitant price to the starving garrison.]

[Footnote 12: Klebe gave an extremely detailed account of the French
government: "It is, for instance, well known that a pastry cook was
nominated lord high warden of the forest! over a whole department, and
a jeweller was raised to the same office in another.--The documents
proving the cheating and underselling carried on by Pioc, the lord
high warden of the forests, and by his assistant, Gauthier, in all the
forests in the department of the Rhine and Moselle, are detailed at
full length in 'Rübezahl,' a sort of monthly magazine. It is
astonishing to see with what boundless impudence these people have
robbed the country.--Still greater rascalities were carried on on the
right bank of the Rhine. Gauthier robbed from Coblentz down to the
Prussian frontiers." These allegations are confirmed by Görres in a
pamphlet, "Results of my Mission to Paris," in which he says, "The
Directory had treated the four departments like so many Paschalics,
which it abandoned to its Janissaries and colonized with its
favorites. Every petition sent by the inhabitants was thrown aside
with revolting contempt; everything was done that could most deeply
wound their feelings in regard to themselves or to their country."
"The secret history of the government of the country between the Rhine
and the Moselle," sums up as follows: "All cheated, all thieved, all
robbed. The cheating, thieving, and robbing were perfectly terrible,
and not one of the cheats, thieves, or robbers seemed to have an idea
that this country formed, by the decree of union, a part of France." A
naïve confession! The French, at all events, acted as if conscious
that the land was not theirs. The Rhenish Jews, who, as early as the
times of Louis XIV., had aided the French in plundering Germany, again
acted as their bloodhounds, and, by accepting bills in exchange for
their real or supposed loans, at double the amount, on wealthy
proprietors, speedily placed themselves in possession of the finest
estates. Vide Reichardt's Letters from Paris.]



CCLI. The Pillage of Switzerland


Peace had reigned throughout Switzerland since the battle of
Villmergen, A.D. 1712, which had given to Zurich and Berne the
ascendency in the confederation. The popular discontent caused by the
increasing despotism of the aristocracy had merely displayed itself in
petty conspiracies, as, for instance, that of Henzi, in 1749, and in
partial insurrections. In all the cantons, even in those in which the
democratic spirit was most prevalent, the chief authority had been
seized by the wealthier and more ancient families. All the offices
were in their hands, the higher posts in the Swiss regiments raised
for the service of France were monopolized by the younger sons of the
more powerful families, who introduced the social vices of France into
their own country, where they formed a strange medley in conjunction
with the pedantry of the ancient oligarchical form of government. In
the great canton of Berne, the council of two hundred, which had
unlimited sway, was solely composed of seventy-six reigning families.
In Zurich, the one thousand nine hundred townsmen had unlimited power
over the country. For one hundred and fifty years no citizen had been
enrolled among them, and no son of a peasant had been allowed to study
for, or been nominated to, any office, even to that of preacher. In
Solothurn, but one-half of the eight hundred townsmen were able to
carry on the government. Lucerne was governed by a council of one
hundred, so completely monopolized by the more powerful families that
boys of twenty succeeded their fathers as councillors. Basel was
governed by a council of two hundred and eighty, which was entirely
formed out of seventy wealthy mercantile families. Seventy-one
families had usurped the authority at Freiburg: similar oligarchical
government prevailed at St. Gall and Schaffhausen. The _Junker_, in
the latter place, rendered themselves especially ridiculous by the
innumerable offices and chambers in which they transacted their
useless and prolix affairs. In all these aristocratic cantons, the
peasantry were cruelly harassed, oppressed, and, in some parts, kept
in servitude, by the provincial governors. The wealthy provincial
governments were monopolized by the great aristocratic families.[1]
Even in the pure democracies, the provincial communes were governed by
powerful peasant families, as, for instance, in Glarus, and the
tyranny exercised by these peasants over the territory beneath their
sway far exceeded that of the aristocratic burgesses in their
provincial governments. The Italian valleys groaned beneath the yoke
of the original cantons, particularly under that of Uri,[2] the seven
provincial governments in Unterwallis under that of Oberwallis, the
countship of Werdenberg under that of the Glarner, the Valtelline
under that of the Grisons.[3] The princely abbot of St. Gall was
unlimited sovereign over his territory. Separate monasteries, for
instance, Engelberg, had feudal sway over their vassals.

Enlightenment and liberal opinions spread also gradually over
Switzerland, and twenty years after Henzi's melancholy death, a
disposition was again shown to oppose the tyranny of the oligarchies.
In 1792, Lavater and Fuszli were banished Zurich for venturing to
complain of the arbitrary conduct of one of the provincial
governors;[4] in 1779, a curate named Waser, a man of talent and a foe
to the aristocracy, was beheaded on a false charge of falsifying the
archives;[5] in 1794, the oppressed peasantry of Lucerne revolted
against the aristocracy; in the same year, the peasantry in Schwyz,
roused by the insolence of the French recruiting officers, revolted,
and, in the public provincial assembly, enforced the recall of all the
people of Schwyz in the French service, besides imposing a heavy fine
upon General Reding on his return. In 1781, a revolt of the Freiburg
peasantry, occasioned by the tyranny of the aristocracy, was quelled
with the aid of Berne; in 1784, Suter, the noble-spirited _Landammann_
of Appenzell, fell a sacrifice to envy. His mental and moral
superiority to the rest of his countrymen inspired his rival, Geiger,
with the most deadly hatred, and he persecuted him with the utmost
rancor. He was accused of being a freethinker; documents and protocols
were falsified; the stupid populace was excited against him, and,
after having been exposed on the pillory, publicly whipped, and
tortured on the rack, he was beheaded, and all intercession on his
behalf was prohibited under pain of death. Solothurn, on the other
hand, was freed from feudal servitude in 1785. The popular feeling at
that time prevalent throughout Switzerland was, however, of far
greater import than these petty events. The oligarchies had everywhere
suppressed public opinion; the long peace had slackened the martial
ardor of the people; the ridiculous affectation of ancient heroic
language brought into vogue by John Muller rendered the contrast yet
more striking, and, on the outburst of the French Revolution, the
tyrannized Swiss peasantry naturally threw themselves into the arms of
the French, the aristocracy into those of the Austrians.

The oppressed peasantry revolted as early as 1790 against the ruling
cities, the vassal against the aristocrat, in Schaffhausen, on account
of the tithes; in Lower Valais, on account of the tyranny of one of
the provincial governors. These petty outbreaks and an attempt made by
Laharpe to render the Vaud independent of Berne[6] were suppressed,
A.D. 1791. The people remained, nevertheless, in a high state of
fermentation. The new French republic at first quarrelled with the
ancient confederation for having, unmindful of their origin, descended
to servility. The Swiss guard had, on the 16th of August, 1792,
courageously defended the palace of the unfortunate French king and
been cut to pieces by the Parisian mob. At a later period, the
Austrians had seized the ambassadors of the French republic,
Semonville and Maret, in the Valtelline, in the territory of the
Grisons. The Swiss patriots, as they were called, however, gradually
fomented an insurrection against the aristocrats and called the French
to their aid. In 1793, the vassals of the bishop of Basel at Pruntrut
had already planted trees of liberty and placed the bishopric, under
the name of a Rauracian republic, under the protection of France,
chiefly at the instigation of Gobel, who was, in reward, appointed
bishop of Paris, and whose nephew, Rengger, shortly afterward became a
member of the revolutionary government in Berne. In Geneva, during the
preceding year, the French faction had gained the upper hand. The
fickleness of the war kept the rest of the patriots in a state of
suspense, but, on the seizure of the left bank of the Rhine by the
French, the movements in Switzerland assumed a more serious character.
The abbot, Beda, of St. Gall, 1795, pacified his subjects by
concessions, which his successor, Pancras, refusing to recognize, he
was, in consequence, expelled. The unrelenting aristocracy of Zurich,
upon this, took the field against the restless peasantry, surrounded
the patriots in Stäfa, threw the venerable Bodmer and a number of his
adherents into prison, and inflicted upon them heavy fines or severe
corporeal chastisement.

The campaign of 1796 had fully disclosed to Bonaparte the advantage of
occupying Switzerland with his troops, whose passage to Italy or
Germany would be thereby facilitated, while the line of communication
would be secured, and the danger to which he and Moreau had been
exposed through want of co-operation would at once be remedied. He
first of all took advantage of the dissensions in the Grisons to
deprive that republic of the beautiful Valtelline,[7] and, even at
that time, demanded permission from the people of Valais to build the
road across the Simplon, which he was, however, only able to execute
at a later period. On his return to Paris from the Italian expedition,
he passed through Basel,[8] where he was met by Talleyrand. Peter
Ochs, the chief master of the corporation, was, on this occasion, as
he himself relates in his History of Basel, won over, as the
acknowledged chief of the patriots, to revolutionize Switzerland and
to enter into a close alliance with France. The base characters, at
that time the tools of the French Directory, merely acceded to the
political plans of Bonaparte and Talleyrand in the hope of reaping a
rich harvest by the plunder of the federal cantons, and the Swiss
expedition was, consequently, determined upon. The people of Valais,
whose state of oppression served as a pretext for interference,
revolted, under Laharpe, against Berne, 1798, and demanded the
intervention of the French republic, as heir to the dukes of Savoy, on
the strength of an ancient treaty, which had, for that purpose, been
raked up from the ashes of the past. Nothing could exceed the
miserable conduct of the diet at that conjuncture. After having
already conceded to France her demand for the expulsion of the
emigrants and having exposed its weakness by this open violation of
the rights of hospitality, it discussed the number of troops to be
furnished by each of the cantons, when the enemy was already in this
country. Even the once haughty Bernese, who had set an army, thirty
thousand strong, on foot, withdrew, under General Wysz, from Valais to
their metropolis, where they awaited the attack of the enemy. There
was neither plan[9] nor order; the patriots rose in every quarter and
struck terror into the aristocrats, most of whom were now rather
inclined to yield and impeded by their indecision the measures of the
more spirited party. In Basel, Ochs deposed the oligarchy; in Zurich,
the government was induced, by intimidation, to restore Bodmer and his
fellow-prisoners to liberty. In Freiburg, Lucerne, Schaffhausen, and
St. Gall the oligarchies resigned their authority; Constance asserted
its independence.

Within Berne itself, tranquillity was with difficulty preserved by
Steiger, the venerable mayor, a man of extreme firmness of character.
A French force under Brune had already overrun Vaud, which, under
pretext of being delivered from oppression, was laid under a heavy
contribution; the ancient charnel-house at Murten was also destroyed,
because the French had formerly been beaten on this spot by the
Germans. But few of the Swiss marched to the aid of Berne; two hundred
of the people of Uri, arrayed in the armor of their ancestors, some of
the peasantry of Glarus, St. Gall, and Freiburg.[10] A second French
force under Schauenburg entered Switzerland by Basel, defeated the
small troops of Bernese sent to oppose it at Dornach and Langnau, and
took Solothurn, where it liberated one hundred and eighty self-styled
patriots imprisoned in that place. The patriots, at this conjuncture,
also rose in open insurrection in Berne, threw everything into
confusion, deposed the old council, formed a provisional government,
and checked all the preparations for defence. The brave peasantry,
basely betrayed by the cities, were roused to fury. Colonels Ryhiner,
Stettler, Crusy, and Goumores were murdered by them upon mere
suspicion (their innocence was afterward proved), and boldly following
their leader, Grafenried, against the French, they defeated and
repulsed the whole of Brune's army and captured eighteen guns at the
bridge of Neuenegg. But a smaller Bernese corps, which, under Steiger,
the mayor, opposed the army of Schauenburg in the _Grauen Holz_, was
routed after a bloody struggle, and, before Erlach, the newly-
nominated generalissimo, could hurry back to Berne with the victors of
Neuenegg, the patriots, who had long been in the pay of France, threw
wide the gates to Schauenburg. All was now lost. Erlach fled to Thun,
in order to place himself at the head of the people of the Oberland,
who descended in thick masses from the mountains; but, on his
addressing the brave Senn peasantry in French, according to the
malpractice of the Bernese, they mistook him for a French spy and
struck him dead in his carriage. The loss of Berne greatly dispirited
them and they desisted from further and futile opposition. Steiger
escaped. Hotze, a gallant Austrian general, who, mindful of his Swiss
origin, had attempted to place himself at the head of his countrymen,
was compelled to retrace his steps. In Berne, the French meanwhile
pillaged the treasures of the republic.[11] Besides the treasury and
the arsenal, estimated at twenty-nine million livres, they levied a
contribution of sixteen million. Bruno planted a tree of liberty, and
Frisching, the president of the provisional government, had the folly
to say, "Here it stands! may it bear good fruit! Amen!"

Further bloodshed was prevented by the intervention of the patriots.
The whole of Switzerland, Schwyz, Upper Valais, and Unterwalden alone
excepted, submitted, and, on the 12th of April, the federal diet at
Aarau established, in the stead of the ancient federative and
oligarchical government, a single and indivisible Helvetian republic,
in a strictly democratic form, with five directors, on the French
model. Four new cantons, Aargau, Leman (Vaud), the Bernese Oberland,
and Constance, were annexed to the ancient ones. Schwyz, Uri,
Unterwalden, and Zug were, on the other hand, to form but one canton.
Rapinat, a bold bad man, Rewbel's brother-in-law, who was at that time
absolute in Switzerland, seized everything that had escaped the
pillage of the soldiery in Berne and Zurich, sacked Solothurn,
Lucerne, Freiburg, etc., and hunted out the hidden treasures of the
confederation, which he sent to France. The protestations of the
directors, Bay and Pfyffer, were unheeded; Rapinat deposed them by
virtue of a French warrant and nominated Ochs and Dolder in their
stead. The patriotic feelings of the Swiss revolted at this tyranny;
Schwyz rose in open insurrection; the peasantry, headed by Aloys
Reding, seized and garrisoned Lucerne and called the whole country to
arms against the French invader. The peasantry of the free cantons
also marched against Aarau, but were defeated by Schauenburg at
Häcklingen; two hundred of their number fell, among others a priest
bearing the colors. Schauenburg then attacked the people of Schwyz at
Richtenschwyl, where, after a desperate combat that lasted a whole
day, he at length compelled them to give way. They, nevertheless,
speedily rallied, and two engagements of equal obstinacy took place on
the Schindeleggy and on the mountain of Etzel. The flight of Herzog,
the pastor of Einsiedeln, was the sole cause of the discomfiture of
the Swiss. Reding, however, reassembling his forces at the Red Tower,
in the vicinity of the old battlefield of Morgarten, the French,
unable to withstand their fury, were repulsed with immense loss. They
also suffered a second defeat at Arth, at the foot of the Rigi. The
Swiss, on their part, on numbering their forces after the battle,
found their strength so terribly reduced that, although victors, they
were unable to continue the contest, and voluntarily recognized the
Helvetian republic. The rich monastery of Einsiedeln was plundered and
burned; the miraculous picture of the Virgin was, however, preserved.
Upper Valais also submitted, after Sion and the whole of the valley
had been plundered and laid waste. The peasantry defended themselves
here for several weeks at the precipice of the Dala. Unterwalden
offered the most obstinate resistance. The peasantry of this canton
were headed by Lüssi. The French invaded the country simultaneously on
different sides, by water, across the lake of the four cantons, and
across the Brünig from the Haslithal; in the Kernwald they were
victorious over the masses of peasantry, but a body of three or four
thousand French, which had penetrated further down the vale, was
picked off by the peasantry concealed in the woods and behind the
rocks. A rifleman, stationed upon a projecting rock, shot more than a
hundred of the enemy one after another, his wife and children,
meanwhile, loading his guns. Both of the French corps coalesced at
Stanz, but met with such obstinate resistance from the old men, women
and girls left there, that, after butchering four hundred of them,
they set the place in flames.[12] The sturdy mountaineers, although
numerically weak, proved themselves worthy of their ancient fame.--The
four _Waldstätte_ were thrown into one canton, Waldstätten; Glarus and
Toggenburg into another, Linth; Appenzell and St. Gall into that of
Säntis. The old Italian prefectures, with the exception of the
Valtelline, were formed into two cantons, Lugano and Bellinzona
(afterward the canton of Tessin). The canton of Vaud also finally
acceded to this arrangement, but was shortly afterward, as well as the
former bishopric of Basel, Pruntrut,[13] and the city and republic of
Genoa, incorporated with France.

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