Volume 4 / Part 23 — PART XXIII

THE LATEST TIMES

CCLXIV. The German Confederation

Thus terminated the terrible storms that, not without benefit, had convulsed Europe. Every description of political crime had been fearfully avenged and presumption had been chastised by the unerring hand of Providence. At that solemn period, the sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia concluded a treaty by which they bound themselves to follow, not the ruinous policy they had hitherto pursued, but the undoubted will of the King of kings, and, as the viceroys of God upon the earth, to maintain peace, to uphold virtue and justice. This Holy Alliance was concluded on the 26th of September, 1815. All the European powers took part in it; England, who excused herself, the pope, and the sultan, whose accession was not demanded, alone excepted.

The new partition of Europe, nevertheless, retained almost all the unnatural conditions introduced by the more ancient and godless policy of Louis XIV. and of Catherine II. Germany, Poland, and Italy remained partitioned among rulers partly foreign. Everywhere were countries exchanged or freshly partitioned and rendered subject to foreign rule. England retained possession of Hanover, which was elevated into a German kingdom, of the Ionian islands, and of Malta in the Mediterranean. Russia received the grandduchy of Warsaw, which was raised to a kingdom of Poland, but was not united with Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine, the ancient provinces of Poland standing beneath the sovereignty of Russia, and Finland, for which Sweden received in exchange Norway, of which Denmark was forcibly dispossessed. Holland was annexed to the old Austrian Netherlands and elevated to a kingdom under William of Orange.[1] Switzerland remained a confederation of twenty-two cantons,[2] externally independent and neutral, internally somewhat aristocratic in tendency, the ancient oligarchy everywhere regaining their power. The Jesuits were reinstated by the pope. In Spain, Portugal, and Naples, the form of government prior to the Revolution was reestablished by the ancient sovereigns on their restoration to their thrones.

Alsace and Lorraine, Switzerland and the new kingdom of the Netherlands, the provinces of Luxemburg excepted, were no longer regarded as forming part of Germany. Austria received Milan and Venice under the title of a Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, the Illyrian provinces also as a kingdom, Venetian Dalmatia, the Tyrol,[3] Vorarlberg, Salzburg, the Inn, and Hausruckviertel, and the part of Galicia ceded by her at an earlier period. The grandduchy of Tuscany and the duchies of Modena, Parma, and Placentia were, moreover, restored to the collateral branches of the house of Habsburg.[4]—Prussia received half of Saxony, the grand-duchy of Posen, Swedish-Pomerania,[5] a great portion of Westphalia, and almost the whole of the Lower Rhine from Mayence as far as Aix-la-Chapelle.[6] Since this period Prussia is that one which, among all the states of Germany, possesses the greatest number of German subjects, Austria, although more considerable in extent, containing a population of which by far the greater proportion is not German. Bavaria, in exchange for the provinces again ceded by her to Austria, received the province of Wurzburg together with Aschaffenburg and the Upper Rhenish Pfalz under the title of Rhenish-Bavaria. Hanover received East Friesland, which had hitherto been dependent upon Prussia. Out of this important province, which opened the North Sea to Prussia, was Hardenberg cajoled by the wily English. The electorates of Hesse, Brunswick, and Oldenburg were restored. Everything else was allowed to subsist as at the time of the Rhenish confederation. All the petty princes and counts, then mediatized, continued to be so.

The ancient empire, instead of being re-established, was, on the 8th of June, 1815, replaced by a German confederation, composed of the thirty-nine German states that had escaped the general ruin; Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Wurtemberg, Baden, electoral Hesse, Darmstadt, Denmark on account of Holstein,[7] the Netherlands on account of Luxemburg, Brunswick, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Nassau, Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Gotha (where the reigning dynasty became extinct, and the duchy was partitioned among the other Saxon houses of the Ernestine line), Saxe-Coburg, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Hildburghausen, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Holstein-Oldenburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt- Bernburg, Anhalt-Kothen, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Schwarzburg- Rudolstadt, Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Lichtenstein, Hohenzollern- Sigmaringen, Waldeck, Reuss the elder, and Reuss the younger branch,[8] Schaumburg-Lippe, Lippe-Detmold, Hesse-Homburg: finally, the free towns, Lubeck, Frankfort on the Maine, Bremen, and Hamburg.[9] At Frankfort on the Maine a permanent diet, consisting of plenipotentiaries from the thirty-nine states, was to hold its session. The votes were, however, so regulated that the eleven states of first rank alone held a full vote, the secondary states merely holding a half or a fourth part of a vote, as, for instance, all the Saxon duchies collectively, one vote; Brunswick and Nassau, one; the two Mecklenburgs, one; Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Schwarzburg, one; the petty princes of Hohenzollern, Lichtenstein, Reuss, Lippe, and Waldeck, one; all the free towns, one; forming altogether in the diet seventeen votes. In constitutional questions relating to regulations of the confederation the plenum was to be allowed, that is, the six states of the highest rank were to have each four votes, the next five states each three, Brunswick, Schwerin, and Nassau, each two, and all the remaining princes without distinction, each one vote.[10]—Austria held the permanent presidency. In all resolutions relating to the fundamental laws, the organic regulations of the confederation, the jura singulorum and matters of religion, unanimity was required. All the members of the confederation bound themselves neither to enter into war nor into any foreign alliance against the confederation or any of its members. The thirteenth article declared, "Each of the confederated states will grant a constitution to the people." The sixteenth placed all Christian sects throughout the German confederation on an equality. The eighteenth granted freedom of settlement within the limits of the confederation, and promised "uniformity of regulation concerning the liberty of the press." The fortresses of Luxemburg, Mayence, and Landau were declared the common property of the confederation and occupied in common by their troops. A fourth fortress was to have been raised on the Upper Rhine with twenty millions of the French contribution money. It has not yet been erected.

This was the new constitution given to Germany. According to the treaty of Paris it could not be otherwise modelled, and it is explained by the foreign influence that then prevailed. The diet assembled at Frankfort on the Maine, and was opened by Count Buol-Schauenstein with a solemn address, which excited no enthusiasm. An orator in the American assembly at that time observed, "The non-development of the seed contained in Germany appears to be the common aim of a resolute policy."

All now united for the complete suppression of the German patriotic party. In the former Rhenish confederated states, it had been treated with open contempt[11] ever since Gentz had given the signal for persecution in Austria. Prussia, however, also drove all those who had most faithfully served her in her hour of need from her bosom. Stein was compelled to withdraw to Kappenberg, his country estate. Gruner was removed from office and sent as ambassador to Switzerland, where he died. The Rhenish Mercury, that had performed such great services to Prussia, was prohibited, and Gorres was threatened with the house of correction.[12] All other papers of a patriotic tendency were also suppressed. In Jena, Oken and Luden, in Weimar, Wieland the younger, alone ventured for some time to give utterance to their liberal opinions, which were finally also reduced to silence.

Patriotic enthusiasm was, however, not so speedily suppressed amid the youthful students in the academies and universities. Jahn's gymnastic schools (Turnschulen), the members of which were distinguished by the German costume, a short black frock coat, a black cap, linen trousers, a bare neck with turned-over shirt-collar, extended far and wide and were in close connection with the Burschenschaften of the universities. The prescribed object of these Turnschulen was the promotion of Christian, moral, German manners, the universal fraternization of all German students, the complete eradication of the provincialism and license inherent in the various associations formed at the universities. They wore Jahn's German costume and always acted publicly, until their suppression, when the remaining members formed secret associations. On the 18th of October, 1817, the students of Jena, Halle, and Leipzig, and those of some of the more distant universities, assembled in order to solemnize the jubilee on the three hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, on the Wartburg, where, in imitation of Luther, they committed a number of servile works, inimical to the German cause, to the flames, as Görres at that time said, "filled with anger that the same reformation required of the church by Luther should be sanctioned, but at the same time refused, by the state." The black, red, and yellow tricolor was hoisted for the first time on this occasion. These were in reality the ancient colors of the empire and were regarded as such by the patriotic students, but were purposely looked upon by the French and their adherents in Germany as an imitation of the tricolored flag of the French republic. The festival solemnized on the Wartburg was speedily succeeded by others. The Turner, more particularly at Berlin and Breslau, rendered themselves conspicuous not only by their dress but by their insolence, boys even of the tenderest years putting themselves forward as reformers of the government and of society, and singing the most bloodthirsty songs of liberty. The Prussian government interfered, and the gymnastic exercises, so well suited to the subjects of a warlike state, were once more prohibited.

At the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, Stourdza, the Russian councillor of state, a Wallachian by birth, presented a memorial in which the spirit of the German universities was described as revolutionary. The Burschenschaft of Jena sent him a challenge. Kotzebue, the Russian councillor of state and celebrated dramatist, at length published a weekly paper in which he turned every indication of German patriotism to ridicule, and exercised his wit upon the individual eccentricities of the students affecting the old German costume, of precocious boys and doting professors. The rage of the galled universities rose to a still higher pitch on the discovery, made and incontestably proved by Luden, that Kotzebue sent secret bulletins, filled with invective and suspicion, to St. Petersburg. To execrate Kotzebue had become so habitual at the universities that a young man, Sand from Wunsiedel, a theological student of Jena, noted for piety and industry, took the fanatical resolution to free, or at least to wipe off a blot from his country, by the assassination of an enemy whose importance he, in the delusion of hatred, vastly overrated; and he accordingly went, in 1819, to Mannheim, plunged his dagger into Kotzebue's heart, and then attempted his own life, but only succeeded in inflicting a slight wound. He was beheaded in the ensuing year. Loning, the apothecary, probably excited by Sand's example, also attempted the life of the president of Nassau, Ibell, who, however, seized him, and he committed suicide in prison. These events occasioned a congress at Carlsbad in 1819, which took the state of Germany into deliberation, placed each of the universities under the supervision of a government officer, suppressed the Burschenschaft, prohibited their colors, and fixed a central board of scrutiny at Mayence,[13] which acted on the presupposition of the existence of a secret and general conspiracy for the purposes of assassination and revolution, and of Sand's having acted not from personal fanaticism and religious aberration, but as the agent of some unknown superiors in some new and mysterious tribunal. This inquisition was carried on for years and a crowd of students peopled the prisons; conspiracies perilous to the state were, however, nowhere discovered, but simply a great deal of ideal enthusiasm. The elder men in the universities, who, either in their capacity as tutors or authors, had fed the enthusiasm of the youthful students, were also removed from their situations. Jahn was arrested, Arndt was suspended at Bonn and Fries at Jena; Gorres, who had perseveringly published the most violent pamphlets, was compelled to take refuge in Switzerland, which also offered an asylum to Dewette, the Berlin professor of theology, who had been deprived of his chair on account of a letter addressed by him to Sand's mother. Oken, the great naturalist, who refused to give up "Isis," a periodical publication, also withdrew to Switzerland. Numbers of the younger professors went to America.[14] The solemnization of the October festival was also prohibited, and the triumphal monument on the field of Leipzig was demolished.

[Footnote 1: William V., the expelled hereditary stadtholder, died in obscurity at Brunswick in 1806. His son, William, had, in 1802, received Fulda in compensation, but afterward served Prussia, was, in 1806, taken prisoner with Möllendorf at Erfurt and afterward set at liberty, served again, in 1809, under Austria, and then retired to England, whence he returned on the expulsion of the French to receive a crown, which he accepted with a good deal of assurance, complaining, at the same time, of the loss of his former possession, Fulda, a circumstance strongly commented upon by Stein in his letters to Gagern. William, in return for his elevation to a throne by the arms of Germany, closed the mouths of the Rhine against her.]

[Footnote 2: Zurich, Berne, Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Glarus, Zug, Freiburg, Solothurn, Basel, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, St. Gall, the Grisons, Aargau, Constance, Tessin, the Vaud, Valais, Neuenburg (Neufchatel), Geneva. The nineteen cantons of 1805 remained in statu quo, only those of Valais, Neufchatel, and Geneva were confederated with them, and Pruntrut with the ancient bishopric of Basel were restored to Berne.]

[Footnote 3: The deed of possession of the 26th June, 1814, runs as follows: "Not by an arbitrary, despotic encroachment upon the order of things, but by the hands of the Providence that blessed the arms of your emperor and of the allied princes and by a holy alliance are you restored to the house of Austria."]

[Footnote 4: Tuscany fell to Ferdinand, the former grandduke of Wurzburg; Modena to Francis, son of the deceased duke, Ferdinand; Parms and Placantia to Maria Louisa, the wife and widow of Napoleon.]

[Footnote 5: Not long before, in the treaty of Kiel, there had been question of bestowing Swedish-Pomerania upon Denmark; to this Prussia refused to accede and Denmark agreed to take 2,600,000 dollars in compensation. Prussia was also compelled to pay 3,500,500 dollars to Sweden.]

[Footnote 6: Rehfues, the director of the circle, a Wurtemberg Protestant, published a circular at Bonn, in which he promised full religious security to the Catholic inhabitants, whom he reminded of Prussia's having been "the last supporter of the order of Jesus."—Allgemeine Zeitung of 1814, No. 234.]

[Footnote 7: Holstein alone, not Schleswig, was enumerated as belonging to the German confederation, although both duchies were long ago closely united by the nexus socialis, more particularly in the representation at the diet.]

[Footnote 8: The Reusses, formerly imperial governors of Plauen, diverged into so many branches that, as early as 1664, they agreed to distinguish themselves by numbers, which at first amounted to thirty, but at a later period to a hundred, afterward recommencing at number one. The family took the name of Reuss from the Russian wife of its founder, in the beginning of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 9: Hamburg had vainly petitioned for the restitution of her bank, of which she had been deprived by Davoust. She received merely a small portion of the general war tax levied upon France.]

[Footnote 10: Austria and Prussia contain forty-two million inhabitants; the rest of Germany merely twelve million; the power of the two former stands consequently in proportion to that of the rest of Germany as forty-two to twelve or seven to two, while their votes in the diet stood not contrariwise, as two to seven, but as two to seventeen in the plenary assembly, and as two to fifteen in the lesser one.]

[Footnote 11: Aretin, who, at the time of the Rhenish confederation, insolently mocked and had denounced every indication of German patriotism, ventured to say in his "Alemannia," in the beginning of 1817, "'The patriotic colors,' 'the voice of the people,' 'nationality,' 'the extirpation of foreign influence,' are words now forgotten, magic sounds that have lost their power."]

[Footnote 12: By Sack, the government commissary, who even confiscated the Rhenish Mercury, an earlier and unprohibited paper, and arrested the printer, against which Görres violently protested in a letter addressed to Sack. Görres made a triumphant defence before the tribunal at Treves, and observed, "Strange that the most violent enemy to France should seek the protection of French courts!"]

[Footnote 13: The names of these inquisitors were Schwarz, Grano, Hörmann, Bar, Pfister, Preusschen, Moussel.]

[Footnote 14: Charles Follen, brother to the poet Louis Adolphus Follen, private teacher of law at Jena, a young man of great spirit and talent, who at that period exercised great influence over the youth of Germany, was wrecked, in 1840, in a steamer in North America and drowned.]

CCLXV. The New Constitutions

Germany had, notwithstanding her triumph, regained neither her ancient unity nor her former power, but still continued to be merely a confederation of states, bound together by no firm tie and regarded with contempt by their more powerful neighbors. The German confederation did not even include the whole of the provinces whose population was distinguished as German by the use of the German language. Several of the provinces of Germany were still beneath a foreign sceptre; Switzerland and the Netherlands had declared themselves distinct from the rest of Germany, which, hitherto submissive to France, was in danger of falling beneath the influence of Russia, who ceaselessly sought to entangle her by diplomatic wiles.

There were still, however, men existing in Germany who hoped to compensate the loss of the external power of their country by the internal freedom that had been so lavishly promised to the people on the general summons to the field. The proclamation of Calisch and the German federative act guaranteed the grant of constitutions. The former Rhenish confederated princes, nevertheless, alone found it to their interest to carry this promise into effect, and, in a manner, formed a second alliance with France by their imitation of the newly introduced French code and by the establishment, in their own territories, of two chambers, one of peers, the other of deputies, similar to those of France; measures by which, at that period of popular excitement, they also regained the popularity deservedly lost by them at an earlier period throughout the rest of Germany, the more so, the less the inclination manifested by Austria and Prussia to grant the promised constitutions. Enslaved Illuminatism characterizes this new zeal in favor of internal liberty and constitutional governments, to denote which the novel term of Liberalism was borrowed from France. Liberty was ever on the tongues—of the most devoted servants of the state. The ancient church and the nobility were attacked with incredible mettle—in order to suit the purposes of ministerial caprice. Prussia and Austria were loudly blamed for not keeping pace with the times—with the intent of favorably contrasting the ancient policy of the Rhenish confederation. None, at that period, surpassed the ministers belonging to the old school of Illuminatism and Napoleonism in liberalism, but no sooner did the deputies of the people attempt to realize their liberal ideas than they started back in dismay.

The first example of this kind was given by Frederick Augustus, duke of Nassau, as early as the September of 1814. Ibell, the president, who reigned with unlimited power over Nassau, drew up a constitution which has been termed a model of "despotism under a constitutional form." The whole of the property of the state still continuing to be the private property of the duke, and his right arbitrarily to increase the number of members belonging to the first chamber, and by their votes to annul every resolution passed by the second chamber, rendered the whole constitution illusory. Trombetta, one of the deputies, voluntarily renounced his seat, an example that was followed by several others.—The second constitution granted was that bestowed upon the Netherlands in 1815, by King William, who established such an unequal representation in the chambers between the Belgians and Dutch as to create great dissatisfaction among the former, who, in revenge, again affected the French party. This was succeeded, in 1816, by the petty constitutions of Waldeck, Weimar, and Frankfort on the Maine.— Maximilian, king of Bavaria, seemed, in 1817, to announce another system by the dismissal of his minister, Montgelas, and, in 1818, bestowed a new constitution upon Bavaria; but the old abuses in the administration remained uneradicated; a civil and military state unproportioned to the revenue, the petty despotism of government officers and heavy imposts, still weighed upon the people, and the constitution itself was quickly proved illusory, the veto of the first chamber annulling the first resolution passed by the second chamber. Professor Behr of Wurzburg, upon this, energetically protested against the first chamber, and, on the refusal of the second chamber to vote for the maintenance of the army on so high a footing, unless the soldiery were obliged to take the oath on the constitution, it was speedily dissolved.—In Baden, the Grandduke Charles expired, in 1818, after having caused a constitution to be drawn up, which Louis, his uncle and successor, carried into effect. Louis having, however, previously, and without the consent of the people, entered into a stipulation with the nobility, to whom he had granted an edict extremely favorable to their interests, Winter, the Heidelberg bookseller, a member of the second chamber, demanded its abrogation. The answer was, the dissolution of the chamber, personal inquisition and intimidation, and the publication of an extremely severe edict of censure, against which, in 1820, Professor von Rotteck of Freiburg, supported by the poet Hebel and by the Freiherr von Wessenberg, administrator of the bishopric of Constance, protested, but in vain.—At the same time, that is, in 1818, Hildburghausen, and even the petty principality of Lichtenstein, which merely contains two square miles and a population amounting to five thousand souls, also received a constitution, which not a little contributed to turn the whole affair into ridicule.—To these succeeded, in 1819, the constitutions of Hanover and Lippe-Detmold, the former as aristocratic as possible, completely in the spirit of olden times, solely dictated and carried into effect by the nobility and government officers. The sittings of the chambers, consequently, continued to be held in secret.—The dukes of Mecklenburg abolished feudal servitude, which existed in no other part of Germany, in 1820.—In Darmstadt, the constitution was granted by the good-natured, venerable Grandduke Louis (whose attention was chiefly devoted to the opera), after the impatient advocates, who had collected subscriptions in the Odenwald to petitions praying for the speedy bestowal of the promised constitution, had been arrested, and an insurrection that consequently ensued among the peasantry had been quelled by force.—Petty constitutions were, moreover, granted, in 1821, to Coburg, and, in 1829, to Meiningen. The Gotha-Altenburg branch of the ducal house of Saxony became extinct in 1825 in the person of Frederick, the last duke, the brother of Duke Augustus Emilius, a great patron of the arts and sciences, deceased 1822. Gotha, consequently, lapsed to Coburg, Altenburg to Hildburghausen, and Hildburghausen to Meiningen.

In Wurtemberg, the dissatisfaction produced by the ancient despotism of the government was also to be speedily appeased by the grant of a constitutional charter. The king, Frederick, convoked the Estates, to whom he, on the 15th of March, 1815, solemnly delivered the newly enacted constitution. But here, as elsewhere, was the government inclined to grant a mere illusory boon. The Estates rejected the constitution, without reference to its contents, simply owing to the formal reason of its being bestowed by the prince and being consequently binding on one side alone, instead of being a stipulation between the prince and the people, and moreover because the ancient constitution of Wurtemberg, which had been abrogated by force and in direct opposition to the will of the Estates, was still in legal force. The old Wurtemberg party alone could naturally take their footing upon their ancient rights, but the new Wurtemberg party, the mediatized princes of the empire, the counts and barons of the empire, and the imperial free towns, nay, even the Agnati of the reigning house,[1] all of whom had suffered more or less under Napoleon's iron rule, ranged themselves on their side. The deputy, Zahn of Calw, drew a masterly picture of the state of affairs at that period, in which he pitilessly disclosed every reigning abuse. The king, thus vigorously and unanimously opposed, was constrained to yield, and the most prolix negotiations, in which the citizen deputies, headed by the advocate, Weisshaar, were supported by the nobility against the government, commenced.

The affair was, it may be designedly, dragged on ad infinitum until the death of the king in 1816, when his son and successor, William, who had gained a high reputation as a military commander and had rendered himself extremely popular, zealously began the work of conciliation. He not only instantly abolished the abuses of the former government, as, for instance, in the game law,[2] but, in 1817, delivered a new constitution to the Estates. Article 337 was somewhat artfully drawn up, but in every point the constitution was as liberal as a constitutional charter could possibly be. But the Estates refused to accept of liberty as a boon, and rejected this constitution on the same formal grounds upon which they had rejected the preceding one. The Estates were again upheld by a grateful public, and the few deputies, more particularly Cotta and Griesinger, who had defended the new constitution on account of its liberality and who regarded form as immaterial, became the objects of public animadversion. The populace broke the windows of the house inhabited by the liberal-minded minister, von Wangenheim. The poet Uhland greatly distinguished himself as a warm upholder of the ancient rights of the people.[3] The king instantly dissolved the Estates, but at the same time declared his intention to guarantee to the people, without a constitution, the rights he had intended constitutionally to confer upon them; to establish an equal system of taxation, and "to eradicate bureaucracy, that curse upon the country." The good-will displayed on both sides led to fresh negotiations, and a third constitution was at length drawn up by a committee, composed partly of members of the government, partly of members belonging to the Estates, and, in 1819, was taken into deliberation and passed by the reassembled Estates. This constitution, nevertheless, fell far below the mark to which it had been raised by public expectation, partly on account of the retention, owing to ancient prejudice, of the permanent committee and its oligarchical influence, party on account of the too great and permanent concessions made to the nobility in return for their momentary aid,[4] partly on account of the extreme haste that marked the concluding deliberations of the Estates, occasioned by their partly unfounded dread of interference on the part of the congress then assembled at Carlsbad.

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.

Belgium, annexed to this secondary state instead of being incorporated with great and liberal Germany, necessarily remained a stranger to any influence calculated to excite her sympathy with the general interests of Germany. Cut off, as heretofore, from German influence, she retained, in opposition to the Dutch, a preponderance of the old Spanish and modern French element in her population. Priests and liberals, belonging to the French school, formed an opposition party against the king, who, on his side, rested his sole support upon the Dutch, whom he favored in every respect. Count Broglio, archbishop of Ghent, first began the contest by refusing to take the oath on the constitution. Violence was resorted to and he fled the country. The impolicy of the government in affixing his name to the pillory merely served to increase the exasperation of the Catholics. Hence their acquiescence with the designs of the Jesuits, their opposition to the foundation of a philosophical academy, independent of the clergy, at Louvain. The fact of the population of Belgium being to that of Holland as three to two and the number of its representatives in the states-general being as four to seven, of few, if any, Belgians being allowed to enter the service of the state, the army, or the navy, still further added to the popular discontent. The gross manners of the minister, Van Maanen, also increased the evil. As early as January, 1830, eight liberal Belgian deputies were deprived of their offices, and De Potter, with some others, who had ventured to defend them by means of the press, were banished the kingdom under a charge of high treason.

The Dutch majority in the states-general, notwithstanding its devotion to the king, rejected the ten years' budget on the ground of its affording too long a respite to ministerial responsibility, and protested against the levy of Swiss troops. Slave-trade in the colonies was also abolished in 1818.

The position of the Netherlands, which, Luxemburg excepted, did not appertain to the German confederation, continually exposed her, on account of Belgium, to be attacked on the land side by France, on that of the sea by her ancient commercial foe, England, and had induced the king to form a close alliance with Russia. His son, William of Orange, married a sister of the emperor Alexander.

The colonies did not regain their former prosperity. The Dutch settlement at Batavia with difficulty defended itself against the rebellious natives of Sumatra and Java.

The revolution in Paris had an electric effect upon the irritated Belgians. On the 25th of August, 1830, Auber's opera, "The Dumb Girl of Portici," the revolt of Masaniello in Naples, was performed at the Brussels theatre and inflamed the passions of the audience to such a degree, that, on quitting the theatre, they proceeded to the house of Libry, the servile newspaper editor, and entirely destroyed it: the palace of the minister, Van Maanen, shared the same fate. The citizens placed themselves under arms, and sent a deputation to The Hague to lay their grievances before the king. The entire population meanwhile rose in open insurrection, and the whole of the fortresses, Maestricht and the citadel of Antwerp alone excepted, fell into their hands. William of Orange, the crown prince, ventured unattended among the insurgents at Brussels and proposed, as a medium of peace, the separation of Belgium from Holland in a legislative and administrative sense. The king also made an apparent concession to the wishes of the people by the dismissal of Van Maanen, but shortly afterward declared his intention not to yield, disavowed the step taken by his son, and allowed some Belgian deputies to be insulted at The Hague. A fanatical commotion instantly took place at Brussels; the moderate party in the civic guard was disarmed, and the populace made preparations for desperate resistance. On the 25th of September, Prince Frederick, second son to the king of Holland, entered Brussels with a large body of troops, but encountered barricades and a heavy fire in the Park, the Place Royal, and along the Boulevards. An immense crowd, chiefly composed of the people of Liege and of peasants dressed in the blue smock of the country, had assembled for the purpose of aiding in the defence of the city. The contest, accompanied by destruction of the dwelling-houses and by pillage, lasted five days. The Dutch were accused of practicing the most horrid cruelties upon the defenceless inhabitants and of thereby heightening the popular exasperation. At length, on the 27th of September, the prince was compelled to abandon the city. On the 5th of October, Belgium declared herself independent. De Potter returned and placed himself at the head of the provisional government. The Prince of Orange recognized the absolute separation of Belgium from Holland in a proclamation published at Antwerp, but was, nevertheless, constrained to quit the country. Antwerp fell into the hands of the insurgents; the citadel, however, refused to surrender, and Chassé, the Dutch commandant, caused the magnificent city to be bombarded, and the well-stored entrepot, the arsenal, and about sixty or seventy houses, to be set on fire, during the night of the 27th of October, 1830.[2] The cruelties perpetrated by the Dutch were bitterly retaliated upon them by the Belgian populace. On the 10th of November, however, a national Belgian congress met, in which the moderate party gained the upper hand, principally owing to the influence of the clergy. De Potter's plan for the formation of a Belgian commonwealth fell to the ground. The congress decided in favor of the maintenance of the kingdom, drew up a new constitution, and offered the crown to the Prince de Nemours, second son of the king of the French. It was, however, refused by Louis Philippe in the name of his son, in order to avoid war with the other great European powers. Surlet de Chokier, the leader of the liberal party, hereupon undertook the provisional government of the country, and negotiations were entered into with Prince Leopold of Coburg.

On the 4th of November, a congress, composed of the ministers of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, met at London for the purpose of settling the Belgian question without disturbing the peace of Europe, and it was decided that Prince Leopold of Coburg, the widower of the princess royal of England, a man entirely under British influence, and who had refused the throne of Greece, should accept that of Belgium. Eighteen articles favorable to Belgium were granted to him by the London congress. Scarcely, however, had he reached Brussels, on the 31st July, 1831, than the fetes given upon that occasion were disturbed by the unexpected invasion of Belgium by a numerous and powerful Dutch force. At Hasselt, the Prince of Orange defeated the Belgians under General Daine, and, immediately advancing against Leopold, utterly routed him at Tirlemont, on the 12th August. The threats of France and England, and the appearance of a French army in Belgium, saved Brussels and compelled the Dutch to withdraw. The eighteen articles in favor of Belgium were, on the other hand, replaced by twenty-four others, more favorable to the Dutch, which Leopold was compelled to accept. The king of Holland, however, refusing to accept these twenty-four articles, with which, notwithstanding the concessions therein contained, he was dissatisfied, the Belgian government took advantage of the undecided state of the question not to undertake, for the time being, half of the public debt of Holland, which, by the twenty-four articles, was laid upon Belgium.

Negotiations dragged on their weary length, and protocol after protocol followed in endless succession from London. In 1832, Leopold espoused Louisa, one of the daughters of the king of the French, and was not only finally recognized by the northern powers, but, by means of the intervention of England, being backed by a fleet, and by means of that of France, being backed by an army, compelled Holland to accept of terms of peace. The French troops under Gerard, unassisted by the Belgians and watched by a Prussian army stationed on the Meuse, regularly besieged and took the citadel of Antwerp, on Christmas eve, 1832, gave it up to the Belgians as pertaining to their territory, and evacuated the country. King William, however, again rejecting the twenty-four articles, all the other points, the division of the public debt, the navigation of the Scheldt, and, more than all, the future destiny of the province of Luxemburg, which formed part of the confederated states of Germany, had been declared hereditary in the house of Nassau-Orange, and which, by its geographical position and the character of its inhabitants, was more nearly connected with Belgium, remained for the present unsettled. In 1839, Holland was induced by a fresh demonstration on the part of the great powers to accept the twenty-four articles, against which Belgium in her turn protested on the ground of the procrastination on the part of Holland having rendered her earlier accession to these terms null and void. Belgium was, however, also compelled to yield. By this fresh agreement it was settled that the western part of Luxemburg, which had in the interim fallen away from the German confederation, should be annexed to Belgium, and that Holland (and the German confederation) should receive the eastern part of Limburg in indemnity; and that Belgium, instead of taking upon herself one-half of the public debt of the Netherlands, should annually pay the sum of five million Dutch guldens toward defraying the interest of that debt.

The period of the independence of Belgium, brief as it was, was made use of, particularly under the Nothomb ministry, for the development of great industrial activity, and, more especially, for the creation of a system of railroads, until now without its parallel on the continent. Unfortunately but little was done in favor of the interests of Germany. The French language had already become so prevalent throughout Belgium that, in 1840, the provincial councillors of Ghent were constrained to pass a resolution to the effect that the offices dependent upon them should, at all events, solely be intrusted to persons acquainted with the Flemish dialect, and that their rescripts should be drawn up in that language.—Holland immensely increased her public debt in consequence of her extraordinary exertions. In 1841, the king, William I., voluntarily abdicated the throne and retired into private life, in the enjoyment of an enormous revenue, with a Catholic countess whom he had wedded. He was succeeded by his son, William II.

[Footnote 1: "The Netherlands formed, nevertheless, but a weak bulwark to Germany. Internal disunion, superfluous fortresses, a weak army. On the one side, a witless, wealthy, haughty aristocracy, an influential and ignorant clergy; on the other, civic pride, capelocratic pettiness, Calvinistic brusquerie. The policy pursued by the king was inimical to Germany."—Stein's Letters.]

[Footnote 2: So bitter was the enmity existing between the Belgians and the Dutch that the Dutch lieutenant, Van Speyk, when driven by a storm before Antwerp, blew up his gunboat in the middle of the Scheldt rather than allow it to fall into the hands of the Belgians.]

CCLXVIII. The Swiss Revolution

The restoration of 1814 had replaced the ancient aristocracy more or less on their former footing throughout Switzerland. In this country the greatest tranquillity prevailed; the oppression of the aristocracy was felt, but not so heavily as to be insupportable. Many benefits, as, for instance, the draining of the swampy Linththal by Escher of Zurich, were, moreover, conferred upon the country. Mercenaries were also continually furnished to the king of France, to the pope, and, for some time, to the king of the Netherlands. France, nevertheless, imposed such heavy commercial duties that several of the cantons leagued together for the purpose of taking reprisals. This misunderstanding between Switzerland and France unfortunately did not teach wisdom to the states belonging to the German confederation, and the Rhine was also barricaded with custom-houses, those graves of commerce. The Jesuits settled at Freiburg in the Uechtland, where they founded a large seminary and whence they finally succeeded in expelling Peter Girard, a man of high merit, noted for the liberality of his views on education.[1]

The Paris revolution of July also gave rise to a democratic reaction throughout Switzerland. Berne, by a circular, published September 22, 1830, called upon the other Swiss governments to suppress the revolutionary spirit by force, and, by so doing, fired the train. The government of Zurich wisely opposed the circular and made a voluntary reform. In all the other cantons popular societies sprang up, and, either by violence or by threats, subverted the ancient governments. New constitutions were everywhere granted. The immense majority of the people was in favor of reform, and the aristocracy offered but faint resistance. Little towns or villages became the centre of the movements against the capitals. Fischer, an innkeeper from Merischwanden, seized the city of Aarau; the village of Burgdorf revolutionized the canton of Berne, the village of Murten the canton of Freiburg, the village of Weinfelden the canton of Constance; this example was followed by the peasantry of Solothurn and Vaud; the government of St. Gall imitated that of Zurich.

Basel was also attempted to be revolutionized by Liestal, but the wealthy and haughty citizens, principally at the instigation of the family of Wieland, made head against the peasantry, who were led by one Gutzwyler. The contest that had taken place in Belgium was here reacted on a smaller scale. A dispute concerning privileges commencing between the citizens and the peasantry, bloody excesses ensued and a complete separation was the result. The peasantry, superior in number, asserted their right to send a greater number of deputies to the great council than the cities, and the latter, dreading the danger to which their civic interests would be thereby exposed, obstinately refused to comply. Party rage ran high; the Baselese insulted some of the deputies sent by the peasantry, and the latter, in retaliation, began to blockade the town. Colonel Wieland made some sallies; the federal diet interfered, and the peasantry, being dispersed by the federal troops, revenged themselves during their retreat by plundering the vale of Reigoldswyler, which had remained true to Basel. In Schwyz, the Old-Schwyzers and the inhabitants of the outer circles, who, although for centuries in possession of the rights of citizenship, were still regarded by the former as their vassals, also fell at variance, and the latter demanded equal rights or complete separation. In Neufchatel, Bourguin attempted a revolution against the Prussian party and took the city, but succumbed to the vigorous measures adopted by General Pfuel, 1831.

The conduct of the federal diet, which followed in the footsteps of European policy, and which, by winking at the opposing party and checking that in favor of progression, sought to preserve the balance, but served to increase party spirit. In September, 1831, the Radicals founded at Langenthal, the Schutzverein or protective union, which embraced all the liberal clubs throughout Switzerland and was intended to counteract the impending aristocratic counterrevolution. Men like Schnell of Berne, Troxler the philosopher, etc., stood at its head. They demanded the abolition of the constitution of 1815 as too aristocratic and federal, and the foundation of a new one in a democratic and independent sense for the increase of the external power and unity of Switzerland, and for her internal security from petty aristocratic and local views and intrigues. In March, 1832, Lucerne, Zurich, Berne, Solothurn, St. Gall, Aargau, and Constance formed a Concordat for the mutual maintenance of their democratic constitutions until the completion of the revisal of the confederation. The aristocratic party, Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden (actuated by ancient pride and led by the clergy), Basel, and Neufchatel meanwhile formed the Sarner confederation. In August, the deposed Bernese aristocracy, headed by Major Fischer, made a futile attempt to produce a counter-revolution. In the federal diet, the envoys of the Concordat and the threatening language of the clubs compelled the members to bring a new federal constitution under deliberation, but opinions were too divided, and the constitution projected in 1833 fell to the ground for want of sufficient support. At the moment of this defeat of the liberal party, Alt-Schwyz, led by Abyberg, took up arms, took possession of Küssnacht, and threatened the Concordat, the Baselese at the same time taking the field with one thousand two hundred men and fourteen pieces of ordnance. The people were, however, inimical to their cause; Abyberg fled; the Baselese were encountered by the peasantry in the Hartwald and repulsed with considerable loss. The federal diet demonstrated the greatest energy in order to prevent the Concordat and the Schutzverein from acting in its stead. Schwyz and Basel were occupied with soldiery; the former was compelled to accept a new constitution drawn up with a view of pacifying both parties, the latter to accede to a complete separation between the town and country. The Sarner confederation was dissolved, and all discontented cantons were compelled, under pain of the infliction of martial law, to send envoys to the federal diet. Intrigues, having for object the alienation of the city of Basel, of Neufchatel, and Valais from the confederation, were discovered and frustrated by the diet, not without the approbation of France, the Valais and the road over the Simplon being thereby prevented from falling beneath the influence of Austria.

In 1833, five hundred Polish refugees, suspected of supporting the Frankfort attempt in Germany, quitted France for Switzerland, and soon afterward unsuccessfully invaded Savoy in conjunction with some Italian refugees. Crowds of refugees from every quarter joined them and formed a central association, Young Europe, whence branched others, Young France, Young Poland, Young Germany, and Young Italy. The principal object of this association was to draw the German journeymen apprentices (Handwerks-bursche) into its interests, and for this purpose a banquet was given by it to these apprentices in the Steinbrölzle near Berne. These intrigues produced serious threats on the side of the great powers, and Switzerland yielded. The greater part of the refugees were compelled to emigrate through France to England and America. Napoleon's nephew was, at a later period, also expelled Switzerland. His mother, Queen Hortense, consort to Louis, ex-king of Holland, daughter to Josephine Beauharnais, consequently both stepdaughter and sister-in-law to Napoleon, possessed the beautiful estate of Arenenberg on the Lake of Constance. On her death it was inherited by her son, Louis, who, during his residence there, occupied himself with intrigues directed against the throne of Louis Philippe. In concert with a couple of military madmen, he introduced himself into Strasburg, where, with a little hat, in imitation of that worn by Napoleon, on his head, he proclaimed himself emperor in the open streets. He was easily arrested. This act was generously viewed by Louis Philippe as that of a senseless boy, and he was restored to liberty upon condition of emigrating to America. No sooner, however, was he once more free, than, returning to Switzerland, he set fresh intrigues on foot. Louis Philippe, upon this, demanded his expulsion. Constance would willingly have extended to him the protection due to one of her citizens, but how were the claims of a Swiss citizen to be rendered compatible with those of a pretender to the throne of France? French troops already threatened the frontiers of Switzerland, where, as in 1793, the people, instead of making preparations for defence, were at strife among themselves. Louis at length voluntarily abandoned the country in 1838.

In the beginning of 1839, Dr. Strauss, who, in 1835, had, in his work entitled "The Life of Jesus," declared the Gospels a cleverly devised fable, and had, at great pains, sought to refute the historical proofs of the truth of Christianity, was, on that account, appointed, by the council of education and of government at Zurich, professor of divinity to the new Zurich academy. Burgomaster Hirzel (nicknamed "the tree of liberty" on account of his uncommon height) stood at the head of the enthusiastic government party by which this extraordinary appointment had been effected; the people, however, rose en masse, the great council was compelled to meet, and the anti-Christian party suffered a most disgraceful defeat. Strauss, who had not ventured to appear in person on the scene of action, was offered and accepted a pension. The Christian party, concentrated into a committee of faith, under the presidency of Hurliman, behaved with extreme moderation, although greatly superior in number to their opponents. The radical government, ashamed and perplexed, committed blunder after blunder, and at length threatened violence. Upon this, Hirzel, the youthful priest of Pfäffikon, rang the alarm from his parish church, and, on the 6th of September, 1839, led his parishioners into the city of Zurich. This example was imitated by another crowd of peasantry, headed by a physician named Rahn. The government troops attacked the people and killed nine men. On the fall of the tenth, Hegetschwiler, the councillor of state, a distinguished savant and physician, while attempting to restore harmony between the contending parties, the civic guard turned against the troops and dispersed them. The radical government and the Strauss faction also fled. Immense masses of peasantry from around the lake entered the city. A provisional government, headed by Hiesz and Muralt, and a fresh election, insured tranquillity.

In the canton of Schwyz, a lengthy dispute, similar to that between the Vettkoper and Schieringer in Friesland, was carried on between the Horn and Hoof-men (the wealthy in possession of cattle and the poor who only possessed a cow or two) concerning their privileges. In 1839, a violent opposition, similar in nature, was made by the people of Vaud against the oligarchical power assumed by a few families.

The closing of the monasteries in the Aargau in 1840 gave rise to a dispute of such importance as to disturb the whole of the confederation. In the Aargau the church and state had long and strenuously battled, when the monastery of Muri was suddenly invested as the seat of a conspiracy, and, on symptoms of uneasiness becoming perceptible among the Catholic population, the whole country was flooded with twenty thousand militia raised on the spur of the moment, and the closing of the monastery of Muri and of all the monasteries in the Aargau was proclaimed and carried into execution. The rest of the Catholic cantons and Rome vehemently protested against this measure, and even some of the Reformed cantons, for the sake of peace, voted at the diet for the maintenance of the monasteries: the Aargau, nevertheless, steadily refused compliance.

[Footnote 1: In Lucerne, the disorderly trial of a numerous band of robbers, which had been headed by an extremely beautiful and talented girl, named Clara Wendel, made the more noise on account of its bringing the bandit-like murder of Keller, the aged mayor, and intrigues, in which the name of the nuncio was mixed up, before the public. 1825.]

CCLXIX. The Revolution in Brunswick, Saxony, Hesse, Etc.

The Belgian revolution spread into Germany. Liege infected her neighbor, Aix-la-Chapelle, where, on the 30th of August, 1830, the workmen belonging to the manufactories raised a senseless tumult which was a few days afterward repeated by their fellow-workmen at Elberfeld, Wetzlar, and even by the populace of Berlin and Breslau, but which solely took a serious character in Brunswick, Saxony, Hanover, and Hesse.

Charles, duke of Brunswick, was at Paris, squandering the revenue derived from his territories, on the outburst of the July revolution, which drove him back to his native country, where he behaved with increased insolence. His obstinate refusal to abolish the heavy taxes, to refrain from disgraceful sales, to recommence the erection of public buildings, and to recognize the provincial Estates, added to his threat to fire upon the people and his boast that he knew how to defend his throne better than Charles X. of France, so maddened the excitable blood of his subjects that, after throwing stones at the duke's carriage and at an actress on whom he publicly bestowed his favors, they stormed his palace and set fire to it over his head, September 7, 1830. Charles escaped through the garden. His brother, William, supported by Hanover and Prussia, replaced him, recognized the provincial Estates, granted a new constitution, built a new palace, and re-established tranquillity. The conduct of the expelled duke, who, from his asylum in the Harzgebirge, made a futile attempt to regain possession of Brunswick by means of popular agitation and by the proclamation of democratical opinions, added to the contempt with which he treated the admonitions of his superiors, induced the federal diet to recognize his brother's authority. The ex-duke has, since this period, wandered over England, France, and Spain, sometimes engaged in intrigues with Carlists, at others with republicans. In 1836, he accompanied a celebrated female aeronaut in one of her excursions from London. The balloon accidentally upset and the duke and his companion fell to the ground. He was, however, as in his other adventures, more frightened than hurt.

In Saxony, the progress of enlightenment had long rendered the people sensible of the errors committed by the old and etiquettish aristocracy of the court and diet. As early as 1829, all the grievances had been recapitulated in an anonymous printed address, and, in the beginning of 1830, on the venerable king, Antony (brother to Frederick Augustus, deceased 1827), declaring invalid the settlement of his affairs by the Estates, which evinced a more liberal spirit than they had hitherto done, and on the prohibition of the festivities on the 25th of June, the anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, by the town council of Dresden and by the government commissioner of the university of Leipzig from devotion to the Catholic court, a popular tumult ensued in both cities, which was quelled but to be, a few weeks later, after the revolution of July, more disastrously renewed. The tumult commenced at Leipzig on the 2d of September and lasted several days, and, during the night of the 9th, Dresden was stormed from without by two immense crowds of populace, by whom the police buildings and the town-house were ransacked and set on fire. Disturbances of a similar nature broke out at Chemnitz and Bautzen. The king, upon this, nominated his nephew, Prince Frederick, who was greatly beloved by the people, co-regent; the civic guard restored tranquillity, the most crying abuses, particularly those in the city administration, were abolished, and the constitution was revised. The popular minister, Lindenan, replaced Einsiedel, who had excited universal detestation.

In the electorate of Hesse, the period of terror occasioned by the threatening letters addressed to the elector was succeeded by the agitation characteristic of the times. On the 6th of September, 1830, a tumultuous rising took place at Cassel; on the 24th, the people of Hanau destroyed every custom-house stationed on the frontier. The public was so unanimous and decided in opinion that the elector not only agreed to abolish the abuses, to convoke the Estates, and to grant a new constitution, but even placed the reins of government provisionally in the hands of his son, Prince William, in order to follow the Countess Reichenbach, who had been driven from Cassel by the insults of the populace. Prince William was, however, as little as his father inclined to make concessions; and violent collisions speedily ensued. He wedded Madame Lehmann, the wife of a Prussian officer, under the name of the Countess von Schaumburg, and closed the theatre against his mother, the electress, for refusing to place herself at her side in public. The citizens sided with the electress, and when, after some time had elapsed, she again ventured to visit the theatre, the doors were no longer closed against her, and, on her entrance, she found the house completely filled. On the close of the evening's entertainment, however, while the audience were peaceably dispersing, they were charged by a troop of cavalry, who cut down the defenceless multitude without distinction of age or sex, December 7, 1830. The Estates, headed by Professor Jordan, vainly demanded redress; Giesler, the head of the police, was alone designated as the criminal; the scrutiny was drawn to an interminable length and produced no other result than Giesler's decoration with an order by the prince.

In Hesse-Darmstadt, where the poll-tax amounted to 6_fls_. 12_krs_. (10_s_. 4_d_.) a head, the Estates ventured, even prior to the revolution of July, to refuse to vote 2,000,000_fls_. (£166,666 13_s_. 4_d_.) to the new grandduke, Louis II. (who had just succeeded his aged father, the patron of the arts), for the defrayment of debts contracted by him before his accession to the ducal chair. In September, the peasantry of Upper Hesse rose en masse on account of the imposition of the sum of 100,000_fls_. (£8,333 6_s_. 8_d_.) upon the poverty-stricken communes in order to meet the outlay occasioned by the festivities given in the grandduke's honor on his route through the country; the burdens laid upon the peasantry in the mediatized principalities, more particularly in that of Ysenburg, had also become unbearable. The insurgents took Budingen by storm and were guilty of some excesses toward the public officers and the foresters, but deprived no one of life. Ere long convinced of their utter impotence, they dispersed before the arrival of Prince Emilius at the head of a body of military, who, blinded by rage, unfortunately killed a number of persons in the village of Södel, whom they mistook for insurgents owing to the circumstance of their being armed, but who had in reality been assembled by a forester for the purpose of keeping the insurgents in check.

In this month, September, 1830, popular disturbances, but of minor import, broke out also at Jena and Kahla, Altenburg, and Gera.

In Hanover, the first symptoms of revolution appeared in January, 1831. Dr. König was at that time at the head of the university of Osterode, Dr. Rauschenplatt of that of Göttingen.[1] The abolition of the glaring ancient abuses and the removal of the minister, Count Munster, the sole object of whose policy appeared to be the eternalization of every administrative and juridical antiquity in the state, were demanded. The petty insurrections were quelled by the military. König was taken prisoner; most of the other demagogues escaped to France. The Duke of Cambridge, the king's brother, mediated. Count Munster was dismissed, and Hanover received a new and more liberal constitution.

While these events were passing in Germany, the Poles carried on a contest against the whole power of Russia as glorious and as unfortunate as their former one under their leader, Kosciuszko. Louis Philippe, king of the French, in the hope of gaining favor with the northern powers by the abandonment of the Polish cause, dealt not a stroke in their aid. Austria, notwithstanding her natural rivalry to Russia, beheld the Polish revolution merely through the veil of legitimacy and refused her aid to rebels. A Hungarian address in favor of Poland produced no result. Prussia was closely united by family ties to Russia. The Poles were consequently left without external aid, and their spirit was internally damped by diplomatic arts. Aid was promised by France, if they would wait. They accordingly waited: and in the interim, after the failure of Diebitsch's attempt upon Warsaw and his sudden death, Paskewitch, the Russian general, unexpectedly crossed the Vistula close to the Prussian fortress of Thorn and seized the city of Warsaw while each party was still in a state of indecision. Immense masses of fugitive Polish soldiery sought shelter in Austria and Prussia. The officers and a few thousand private soldiers were permitted to pass onward to France: they found a warm welcome in Southern Germany, whence they had during the campaign been supplied with surgeons and every necessary for the supply of the hospitals. The rest were compelled to return to Russia.

The Russian troops drawn from the distant provinces, the same that had been employed in the war with Persia, overran Poland as far as the Prussian frontier, bringing with them a fearful pestilence, Asiatic cholera. This dire malady, which had, since 1817, crept steadily onward from the banks of the Ganges, reached Russia in 1830, and, in the autumn of 1831, spread across the frontiers of Germany. It chiefly visited populous cities and generally spared districts less densely populated, passing from one great city to another whither infection could not have been communicated. Cordons de santé and quarantine regulations were of no avail. The pestilence appeared to spread like miasma through the air and to kindle like gas wherever the assemblage of numbers disposed the atmosphere to its reception. The patients were seized with vomiting and diarrhoea, accompanied with violent convulsions, and often expired instantaneously or after an agony of a few hours' duration. Medicinal art was powerless against this disease, and, as in the 14th century, the ignorant populace ascribed its prevalence to poison. Suspicion fell this time upon the physicians and the public authorities and spread in the most incredible manner from St. Petersburg to Paris. The idea that the physicians had been charged to poison the people en masse occasioned dreadful tumults, in which numbers of physicians fell victims and every drug used in medicine was destroyed as poisonous. Similar scenes occurred in Russia and in Hungary. In the latter country a great insurrection of the peasants took place, in August, 1831, in which not only the physicians, but also numbers of the nobility and public officers who had provided themselves with drugs fell victims, and the most inhuman atrocities were perpetrated. In Vienna, where the cholera raged with extreme virulence, the people behaved more reasonably.

In Prussia, the cholera occasioned several disturbances at Koenigsberg, Stettin, and Breslau. At Koenigsberg the movement was not occasioned by the disease being attributed to poison. The strict quarantine regulations enforced by the government had produced a complete commercial stagnation, notwithstanding which permission had been given to the Russian troops, when hard pushed by the insurgent Poles, to provide themselves with provisions and ammunition from Prussia, so that not only Russian agents and commissaries, but whole convoys from Russia crossed the Prussian frontier. The appearance of cholera was ascribed to this circumstance, and the public discontent was evinced both by a popular outbreak and in an address from the chief magistrate of Koenigsberg to the throne. The Prussian army, under the command of Field-Marshal Gneisenau, stationed in Posen for the purpose of watching the movements of the Poles, was also attacked by the cholera, to which the field-marshal fell victim. It speedily reached Berlin, spread through the north of Germany to France, England, and North America, returned thence to the south of Europe, and, in 1836, crept steadily on from Italy through the Tyrol to Bavaria.

The veil had been torn from many an old and deep-rooted evil by the disturbances of 1830. The press now emulated the provincial diets and some of the governments that sought to meet the demands of the age in exposing to public view all the political wants of Germany. Party spirit, however, still ran too high, and the moderate constitutionalists, who aimed at the gradual introduction of reforms by legal means, found themselves ere long outflanked by two extreme parties. While Gentz at Vienna, Jarcke at Berlin, etc., refused to make the slightest concession and in that spirit conducted the press, Rotteck's petty constitutional reforms in Baden were treated with contempt by Wirth and Siebenpfeiffer, by whom a German republic was with tolerable publicity proclaimed in Rhenish Bavaria. Nor were attempts at mediation wanting. In Darmstadt, Schulz proposed the retention of the present distribution of the states of Germany and the association of a second chamber, composed of deputies elected by the people from every part of the German confederation, with the federal assembly at Frankfort.

The Tribune, edited by Dr. Wirth, and the Westboten, edited by Dr. Siebenpfeiffer, were prohibited by the federal diet, March 2, 1832. Schuler, Savoie, and Geib opposed this measure by the foundation of a club in Rhenish Bavaria for the promotion of liberty of the press, ramifications of which were intended by the founders to be extended throughout Germany. The approaching celebration of the festival in commemoration of the Bavarian constitution afforded the malcontents a long-wished-for opportunity for the convocation of a monster meeting at the ancient castle of Hambach, on the 27th of May. Although the black, red and gold flag waved on this occasion high above the rest, the tendency to French liberalism predominated over that to German patriotism. Numbers of French being also present, Dr. Wirth deemed himself called upon to observe that the festival they had met to celebrate was intrinsically German, that he despised liberty as a French boon, and that the patriot's first thoughts were for his country, his second for liberty. These observations greatly displeased the numerous advocates for French republicanism among his audience, and one Rey, a Strasburg citizen, read him a severe lecture in the Mayence style of 1793.[2] There were also a number of Poles present, toward whom no demonstrations of jealousy were evinced. This meeting peaceably dissolved, but no means were for the future neglected for the purpose of crushing the spirit manifested by it. Marshal Wrede occupied Spires, Landau, Neustadt, etc., with Bavarian troops; the clubs for the promotion of liberty of the press were strictly prohibited, their original founders, as well as the orators of Hambach and the boldest of the newspaper editors, were either arrested or compelled to quit the country. Siebenpfeiffer took refuge in Switzerland; Wirth might have effected his escape, but refused. Some provocations in Neustadt, on the anniversary of the Hambach festival in 1833, were brought by the military to a tragical close. Some newspaper editors, printers, etc., were also arrested at Munich, Wurzburg, Augsburg, etc. The most celebrated among the accused was Professor Behr, court-councillor of Wurzburg, the burgomaster and former deputy of that city, who at the time of the meeting at Hambach made a public speech at Gaibach. On account of the revolutionary tendency manifested in it he was arrested, and, in 1886, sentenced to ask pardon on his knees before the king's portrait and to imprisonment, a punishment to which the greater part of the political offenders were condemned.

The federal diet had for some time been occupied with measures for the internal tranquillity of Germany. The Hambach festival both brought them to a conclusion and increased their severity. Under the date of the 28th of June, 1832, the resolutions of the federal assembly, by which first of all the provincial Estates, then the popular clubs, and finally the press, were to be deprived of every means of opposing in any the slightest degree the joint will of the princes, were published. The governments were bound not to tolerate within their jurisdiction aught contrary to the resolutions passed by the federal assembly, and to call the whole power of the confederation to their aid if unable to enforce obedience; nay, in cases of urgency, the confederation reserved to itself the right of armed intervention, undemanded by the governments. Taxes, to meet the expenses of the confederation, were to be voted submissively by the provincial Estates. Finally, all popular associations and assemblies were also prohibited, and all newspapers, still remaining, of a liberal tendency, were suppressed.

The youthful revolutionists, principally students, assembled secretly at Frankfort on the Maine, during the night of the 3d of April, 1833, attacked the town-watch for the purpose of liberating some political prisoners, and possibly intended to have carried the federal assembly by a coup-de-main had they not been dispersed. These excesses had merely the effect of increasing the severity of the scrutiny and of crowding the prisons with suspected persons.

[Footnote 1: Also the unfortunate Dr. Plath, to whom science is indebted for an excellent historical work upon China. He became implicated in this affair and remained in confinement until 1836, when he was sentenced to fifteen years' further imprisonment.]

[Footnote 2: All national distinctions must cease and be fused in universal liberty and equality; this was the sole aim of the noble French people, and for this cause should we meet them with a fraternal embrace, etc. Paul Pfizer well observed in a pamphlet on German liberalism, published at that period, "What epithet would the majority of the French people bestow upon a liberty which a part of their nation would purchase by placing themselves beneath the protection of a foreign and superior power, called to their aid against their fellow-citizens? If the cause of German liberalism is to remain pure and unspotted, we must not, like Coriolanus, arm the foreign foe against our country. The egotistical tendency of the age is, unhappily, too much inclined (by a coalition with France) to prefer personal liberty and independence to the liberty and independence (thereby infallibly forfeited) of the whole community. The supposed fellowship with France would be subjection to her. France will support the German liberals as Richelien did the German Protestants."]

CCLXX. The Struggles of the Provincial Diets

The Estates of the different constitutional states sought for constitutional reform by legal means and separated themselves from the revolutionists. But, during periods of great political agitation, it is difficult to draw a distinctive line, and any opposition, however moderate, appears as dangerous as the most intemperate rebellion. It was, consequently, impossible for the governments and the Estates to come to an understanding during these stormy times. The result of the deliberations, whenever the opposition was in the majority, was protestations on both sides in defence of right; and, whenever the opposition was or fell in the minority, the chambers were the mere echo of the minister.

In Bavaria, in 1831, the second chamber raised a violent storm against the minister, von Schenk, principally on account of the restoration of some monasteries and of the enormous expense attending the erection of the splendid public buildings at Munich. A law of censorship had, moreover, been published, and a number of civil officers elected by the people been refused permission to take their seats in the chamber. Schwindel, von Closen, Cullmann, Seyffert, etc., were the leaders of the opposition. Schenk resigned office; the law of censorship was repealed, and the Estates struck two millions from the civil list. The first chamber, however, refused its assent to these resolutions, the law of censorship was retained, and the saving in the expenditure of the crown was reduced to an extremely insignificant amount. In the autumn of 1832, Prince Otto, the king's second son, was, with the consent of the sultan, elected king of Greece by the great maritime powers intrusted with the decision of the Greek question, and Count Armansperg, formerly minister of Bavaria, was placed at the head of the regency during the minority of the youthful monarch. Steps having to be taken for the levy of troops for the Greek service, some regiments were sent into Greece in order to carry the new regulations into effect. The Bavarian chambers were at a later period almost entirely purged from the opposition and granted every demand made by the government. The appearance of the Bavarians in ancient Greece forms one of the most interesting episodes in modern history. The jealousy of the great powers explains the election of a sovereign independent of them all: the noble sympathy displayed for the Grecian cause by King Louis, who, shortly after the congress of Verona, sent considerable sums of money and Colonel von Heideck to the aid of the Greeks, and, it may be, also the wish to bring the first among the second-rate powers of Germany into closer connection with the common interests of the first-rate powers, more particularly explains that of the youthful Otto.[1] The task of organizing a nation, noble, indeed, but debased by long slavery and still reeking with the blood of late rebellion, under the influence of a powerful and mutually jealous diplomacy, on a European and German footing, was, however, extremely difficult. Hence the opposite views entertained by the regency, the resignation of the councillors of state, von Maurer and von Abel, who were more inclined to administrate, and the retention of office by Count Armansperg, who was more inclined to diplomatize. Hence the ceaseless intrigues of party, the daily increasing contumacy, and the revolts, sometimes quenched in blood, of the wild mountain tribes and ancient robber-chiefs, to whom European institutions were still an insupportable yoke. King Otto received, on his accession to the throne, in 1835, a visit from his royal parent; and, in the ensuing year, conducted the Princess of Oldenburg to Athens as his bride.