 |
Mayence was, during the first six months of this year, besieged by the main body of the Prussian army under the command of Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick. The Austrians, when on their way past Mayence to Valenciennes with a quantity of heavy artillery destined for the reduction of the latter place (which they afterward compelled to do homage to the emperor), refusing the request of the king of Prussia for its use en passant for the reduction of Mayence, greatly displeased that monarch, who clearly perceived the common intention of England and Austria to conquer the north of France to the exclusion of Prussia, and consequently revenged himself by privately partitioning Poland with Russia, and refusing his assistance to General Wurmser in the Vosges country. The dissensions between the allies again rendered their successes null. The Prussians, after the conquest of Mayence, A.D. 1793, advanced and beat the fresh masses led against them by Moreau at Pirmasens, but Frederick William, disgusted with Austria and secretly far from disinclined to peace with France, quitted the army (which he maintained in the field, merely from motives of honor, but allowed to remain in a state of inactivity), in order to visit his newly acquired territory in Poland.
The gallant old Wurmser was a native of Alsace, where he had some property, and fought meritoriously for the German cause, while so many of his countrymen at that time ranged themselves on the side of the French.[5] His position on the celebrated Weissenburg line was, owing to the non-assistance of the Prussians, replete with danger, and he consequently endeavored to supply his want of strength by striking his opponents with terror. His Croats, the notorious Rothmantler, are charged with the commission of fearful deeds of cruelty. Owing to his system of paying a piece of gold for every Frenchman's head, they would rush, when no legitimate enemy could be encountered, into the first large village at hand, knock at the windows and strike off the heads of the inhabitants as they peeped out. The petty principalities on the German side of the Rhine also complained of the treatment they received from the Austrians. But how could it be otherwise? The empire slothfully cast the whole burden of the war upon Austria. Many of the princes were terror-stricken by the French, while others meditated an alliance with that power, like that formerly concluded between them and Louis XIV. against the empire. Bavaria alone was, but with great difficulty, induced to furnish a contingent. The weak imperial free towns met with most unceremonious treatment at the hands of Austria. They were deprived of their artillery and treated with the utmost contempt. It often happened that the aristocratic magistracy, as, for instance, at Ulm, sided with the soldiery against the citizens. The slothful bishops and abbots of the empire were, on the other hand, treated with the utmost respect by the Catholic soldiery. The infringement of the law of nations by the arrest of Semonville, the French ambassador to Constantinople, and of Maret, the French ambassador to Naples, and the seizure of their papers on neutral ground, in the Valtelline, by Austria, created a far greater sensation.
The duke of Brunswick, who had received no orders to retreat, was compelled, bongre-malgre, to hazard another engagement with the French, who rushed to the attack. He was once more victorious, at Kaiserslautern, over Hoche, whose untrained masses were unable to withstand the superior discipline of the Prussian troops. Wurmser took advantage of the moment when success seemed to restore the good humor of the allies to coalesce with the Prussians, dragging the unwilling Bavarians in his train. This junction, however, merely had the effect of disclosing the jealousy rankling on every side. The greatest military blunders were committed and each blamed the other. Landau ought to and might have been rescued from the French, but this step was procrastinated until the convention had charged Generals Hoche and Pichegru, "Landau or death." These two generals brought a fresh and numerous army into the field, and, in the very first engagements, at Worth and Froschweiler, the Bavarians ran away and the Austrians and Prussians were signally defeated. The retreat of Wurmser, in high displeasure, across the Rhine afforded a welcome pretext to the duke of Brunswick to follow his example and even to resign the command of the army to Mollendorf. In this shameful manner was the left bank of the Rhine lost to Germany.
In the spring of the ensuing year, 1794, the emperor Francis II. visited the Netherlands in person, with the intent of pushing straight upon Paris. This project, practicable enough during the preceding campaign, was, however, now utterly out of the question, the more so on account of the retreat of the Prussians. The French observed on this occasion with well-merited scorn: "The allies are ever an idea, a year and an army behindhand." The Austrians, nevertheless, attacked the whole French line in March and were at first victorious on every side, at Catillon, where Kray and Wernek distinguished themselves, and at Landrecis, where the Archduke Charles made a brilliant charge at the head of the cavalry. Landrecis was taken. But this was all. Clairfait, whose example might have animated the inactive duke of York, being left unsupported by the British, was attacked singly at Courtray by Pichegru and forced to yield to superior numbers. Coburg fought an extremely bloody but indecisive battle at Doornik (Tournay), where Pichegru ever opposed fresh masses to the Austrian artillery. Twenty thousand dead strewed the field. The youthful emperor, discouraged by the coldness displayed by the Dutch, whom he had expected to rise en masse in his cause, returned to Vienna. His departure and the inactivity of the British commander completely dispirited the Austrian troops, and on the 26th of June, 1794,[6] the duke of Coburg was defeated at Fleurus by Jourdan, the general of the republic. This success was immediately followed by that of Pichegru, not far from Breda, over the inefficient English general,[7] who consequently evacuated the Netherlands, which were instantly overrun by the pillaging French. And thus had the German powers, notwithstanding their well-disciplined armies and their great plans, not only forfeited their military honor, but also drawn the enemy, and, in his train, anarchy with its concomitant horrors, into the empire. The Austrians had rendered themselves universally unpopular by their arbitrary measures, and each province remained stupidly indifferent to the threatened pillage of its neighbor by the victorious French. Jourdan but slowly tracked the retreating forces of Coburg, whom he again beat at Sprimont, where he drove him from the Maese, and at Aldenhoven, where he drove him from the Roer. Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, capitulated at Maestricht, with ten thousand men, to Kleber; and the Austrians, with the exception of a small corps under the Count von Erbach, stationed at Duesseldorf, completely abandoned the Lower Rhine.
The disasters suffered by the Austrians seem at that time to have flattered the ambition of the Prussians, for Mollendorf suddenly recrossed the Rhine and gained an advantage at Kaiserslautern, but was, in July, 1794, again repulsed at Trippstadt, notwithstanding which he once more crossed the Rhine in September, and a battle was won by the Prince von Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen at Fischbach, but, on the junction of Jourdan with Hoche, who had until then singly opposed him, Mollendorf again, and for the last time, retreated across the Rhine. The whole of the left bank of the Rhine, Luxemburg and Mayence alone excepted, were now in the hands of the French. Resius, the Hessian general, abandoned the Rheinfels with the whole garrison, without striking a blow in its defence. He was, in reward, condemned to perpetual imprisonment.[8] Jourdan converted the fortress into a ruined heap. The whole of the fortifications on the Rhine were yielded for the sake of saving Mannheim from bombardment.
In the Austrian Netherlands, the old government had already been abolished, and the whole country been transformed into a Belgian republic by Dumouriez. The reform of all the ancient evils, so vainly attempted but a few years before by the noble-spirited emperor, Joseph II., was successfully executed by this insolent Frenchman, who also abolished with them all that was good in the ancient system. The city deputies, it is true, made an energetic but futile resistance.[9] After the flight of Dumouriez, fresh depredations were, with every fresh success, committed by the French. Liege was reduced to the most deplorable state of desolation, the cathedral and thirty splendid churches were levelled with the ground by the ancient enemies of the bishop. Treves was also mercilessly sacked and converted into a French fortress.
[Footnote 1: Prussia chiefly coveted the possession of Dantzig, which the Poles refused to give or the English to grant to him, and which he could only seize by the aid of Russia.]
[Footnote 2: After having been long retained in prison, ill fed and ill clothed, after supporting, with unbending dignity, the unmanly insults of the republican mob before whose tribunal she was dragged. The young dauphin expired under the ill-treatment he received from his guardian, a shoemaker. His sister, the present Duchess d'Angouleme, was spared.]
[Footnote 3: Where the peasantry, infuriated at the depredations of the French, cast the wounded and the dead indiscriminately into a trench.—Benzenberg's Letters. ]
[Footnote 4: The Hanoverian general, Hammerstein, and his adjutant Scharnhorst, who afterward became so noted, made a gallant defence. When the city became no longer tenable, they boldly sallied forth at the head of the garrison and escaped.]
[Footnote 5: Rewbel, one of the five directors of the great French republic, and several of the most celebrated French generals, Germany's unwearied foes, were natives of Alsace, as, for instance, the gallant Westermann, one of the first leaders of the republican armies; the intrepid Kellermann, the soldiers' father; the immortal Kleber, generalissimo of the French forces in Egypt, who fell by the dagger of a fanatical Mussulman; and the undaunted Rapp, the hero of Dantzig. The lion-hearted Ney, justly designated by the French as the bravest of the brave, was a native of Lorraine. These were, one and all, men of tried metal, but whose German names induce the demand, "Why did they fight for France?" Wurmser belonged to the same old Strasburg family which had given birth to Wurmser, the celebrated court-painter of the emperor, Charles IV. ]
[Footnote 6: The Austrian generals Beaulieu, Quosdanowich, and the Archduke Charles, who, at that period, laid the foundation to his future fame, had pushed victoriously forward and taken Fleurus, when the ill-tuned orders, as they are deemed, of the generalissimo Coburg compelled them to retreat. Quosdanowich dashed his sabre furiously on the ground and exclaimed, "The army is betrayed, the victory is ours, and yet we must resign it. Adieu, thou glorious land, thou garden of Europe, the house of Austria bids thee eternally adieu!" The French had, before and during the action, made use of a balloon for the purpose of watching the movements of the enemy.]
[Footnote 7: The worst spirit prevailed among the British troops; the officers were wealthy young men, who had purchased their posts and were, in the highest degree, licentious. Vide Dietfurth's Hessian Campaigns.]
[Footnote 8: Peter Hammer, in his "Description of the Imperial Army," published, A.D. 1796, at Cologne, graphically depictures the sad state of the empire. The imperial troops consisted of the dregs of the populace, so variously arranged as to justify the remark of Colonel Sandberg of Baden that the only thing wanting was their regular equipment as jack-puddings. A monastery furnished two men; a petty barony, the ensign; a city, the captain. The arms of each man differed in calibre. No patriotic spirit animated these defenders of the empire. An anonymous author remarks: "For love of one's country to be felt, there must, first of all, be a country; but Germany is split into petty useless monarchies, chiefly characterized by their oppression of their subjects, by pride, slavery, and unutterable weakness. Formerly, when Germany was attacked, each of her sons made ready for battle, her princes were patriotic and brave. Now, may Heaven have pity on the land; the princes, the counts, and nobles march hence and leave their country to its fate. The Margrave of Baden—I do not speak of the prince bishop of Spires and of other spiritual lords whose profession forbids their laying hand to sword—the Landgrave of Darmstadt and other nobles fled on the mere report of an intended visit from the French, by which they plainly intimated that they merely held sovereign rule for the purpose of being fattened by their subjects in time of peace. Danger no sooner appears than the miserable subject is left to his own resources. Germany is divided into too many petty states. How can an elector of the Pfalz, or indeed any of the still lesser nobility, protect the country? Unity, moreover, is utterly wanting. The Bavarian regards the Hessian as a stranger, not as his countryman. Each petty territory has a different tariff, administration, and laws. The subject of one petty state cannot travel half a mile into a neighboring one without leaving behind him great part of his property. The bishop of Spires strictly forbids his subjects to intermarry with those of any other state. And patriotism is expected to result from these measures! The subject of a despot, whose revenues exceed those of his neighbors by a few thousand florins, looks down with contempt on the slave of a poorer prince. Hence the boundless hatred between the German courts and their petty brethren, hence the malicious joy caused by the mishaps of a neighboring dynasty." Hence the wretchedness of the troops. "With the exception of the troops belonging to the circle there were none to defend the frontiers of the empire. Grandes battues, balls, operas, and mistresses, swallowed up the revenue, not a farthing remained for the erection of fortresses, the want of which was so deeply felt for the defence of the frontiers."]
[Footnote 9: "How can France, with her solemn assurances of liberty, arbitrarily interfere with the government of a country already possessing a representative elected by the people? How can she proclaim us as a free nation, and, at the same moment, deprive us of our liberty? Will she establish a new mythology of nations, and divide the different peoples on the face of the earth, according to their strength, into nations and demi-nations?"—Protest of the Provisional Council of the City of Brussels. The President, Theodore Dotrenge. "Every free nation gives to itself laws, does not receive them from another."—Protest of the City of Antwerp, President of the Council, Van Dun. "You confiscate alike public and private property. That have even our former tyrants never ventured to do when declaring us rebels, and you say that you bring to us liberty."—Protest of the Hennegau. The most copious account of the revolutionizing of the Netherlands is contained in Rau's History of the Germans in France, and of the French in Germany. Frankfort on the Maine, 1794 and 1795.]
CCXLIX. The Defection of Prussia—The Archduke Charles
Frederick William's advisers, who imagined the violation of every principle of justice and truth an indubitable proof of instinctive and consummate prudence, unwittingly played a high and hazardous game. Their diplomatic absurdity, which weighed the fate of nations against a dinner, found a confusion of all the solid principles on which states rest as stimulating as the piquant ragouts of the great Ude. Lucchesini, under his almost intolerable airs of sapience, as artfully veiled his incapacity in the cabinet as Ferdinand of Brunswick did his in the field, and to this may be ascribed the measures which but momentarily and seemingly aggrandized Prussia and prepared her deeper fall. Each petty advantage gained by Prussia but served to raise against her some powerful foe, and finally, when placed by her policy at enmity with every sovereign of Europe, she was induced to trust to the shallow friendship of the French republic.
The Poles, taken unawares by the second partition of their country, speedily recovered from their surprise and collected all their strength for an energetic opposition. Kosciuszko, who had, together with Lafayette, fought in North America in the cause of liberty, armed his countrymen with scythes, put every Russian who fell into his hands to death, and attempted the restoration of ancient Poland. How easily might not Prussia, backed by the enthusiasm of the patriotic Poles, have repelled the Russian colossus, already threatening Europe! But the Berlin diplomatists had yet to learn the homely truth, that "honesty is the best policy." They aided in the aggrandizement of Russia, drew down a nation's curse upon their heads for the sake of an addition to the territory of Prussia, the maintenance of which cost more than its revenue, and violated the Divine commands during a period of storm and convulsion, when the aid of Heaven was indeed required. The ministers of Frederick William II. were externally religious, but those of Frederick William I., by whom the Polish question had been so justly decided, were so in reality.
The king led his troops in person into Poland. In June, 1794, he defeated Kosciuszko's scythemen at Szczekociny, but met with such strenuous opposition in his attack upon Warsaw as to be compelled to retire in September.[1] On the retreat of the Prussian troops, the Russians, who had purposely awaited their departure in order to secure the triumph for themselves, invaded the country in great force under their bold general, Suwarow, who defeated Kosciuszko, took him prisoner, and besieged Warsaw, which he carried by storm. On this occasion, termed by Reichardt "a peaceful and merciful entry of the clement victor," eighteen thousand of the inhabitants of every age and sex were cruelly put to the sword. The result of this success was the third partition or utter annihilation of Poland. Russia took possession of the whole of Lithuania and Volhynia, as far as the Riemen and the Bug; Prussia, of the whole country west of the Riemen, including Warsaw; Austria, of the whole country south of the Bug, A.D. 1795. An army of German officials, who earned for themselves not the best of reputations, settled in the Prussian division: they were ignorant of the language of the country, and enriched themselves by tyranny and oppression. Von Treibenfeld, the counsellor to the forest-board, one of Bischofswerder's friends, bestowed a number of confiscated lands upon his adherents.
The ancient Polish feof of Courland was, in consequence of the annihilation of Poland, incorporated with the Russian empire, Peter, the last duke, the son of Biron, being compelled to abdicate, A.D. 1795.
Pichegru invaded Holland late in the autumn of 1794. The duke of York had already returned to England. A line of defence was, nevertheless, taken up by the British under Wallmoden, by the Dutch under their hereditary stadtholder, William V. of Orange, and by an Austrian corps under Alvinzi; the Dutch were, however, panic-struck, and negotiated a separate treaty with Pichegru,[2] who, at that moment, solely aimed at separating the Dutch from their allies; but when, in December, all the rivers and canals were suddenly frozen, and nature no longer threw insurmountable obstacles in his path, regardless of the negotiations then pending in Paris, he unexpectedly took up arms, marched across the icebound waters, and carried Holland by storm. With him marched the anti-Orangemen, the exiled Dutch patriots, under General Daendels and Admiral de Winter, with the pretended view of restoring ancient republican liberty to Holland and of expelling the tyrannical Orange dynasty.
The British (and some Hessian troops) were defeated at Thiel on the Waal; Alvinzi met with a similar fate at Pondern, and was compelled to retreat into Westphalia. Some English ships, which lay frozen up in the harbor, were captured by the French hussars. A most manly resistance was made; but no aid was sent from any quarter. Prussia, who so shortly before had ranged herself on the side of the stadtholder against the people, was now an indifferent spectator. William V. was compelled to flee to England. Holland was transformed into a Batavian republic. Hahn, Hoof, etc., were the first furious Jacobins by whom everything was there formed upon the French model. The Dutch were compelled to cede Maestricht, Venloo, and Vliessingen; to pay a hundred millions to France, and, moreover, to allow their country to be plundered, to be stripped of all the splendid works of art, pictures, etc. (as was also the case in the Netherlands and on the Rhine), and even of the valuable museum of natural curiosities collected by them with such assiduity in every quarter of the globe. These depredations were succeeded by a more systematic mode of plunder. Holland was mercilessly drained of her enormous wealth. All the gold and silver bullion was first of all collected; this was followed by the imposition of an income-tax of six per cent, which was afterward repeated, and was succeeded by an income-tax on a sliding scale from three to thirty per cent. The British, at the same time, destroyed the Dutch fleet in the Texel commanded by de Winter, in order to prevent its capture by the French, and seized all the Dutch colonies, Java alone excepted. The flag of Holland had vanished from the seas.
In August, 1794, the reign of terror in France reached its close. The moderate party which came into power gave hopes of a general peace, and Frederick William II without loss of time negotiated a separate treaty, suddenly abandoned the monarchical cause which he had formerly so zealously upheld, and offered his friendship to the revolutionary nation, against which he had so lately hurled a violent manifesto. The French, with equal inconsistency on their part, abandoned the popular cause, and, after having murdered their own sovereign and threatened every European throne with destruction, accepted the alliance of a foreign king. Both parties, notwithstanding the contrariety of their principles and their mutual animosity, were conciliated by their political interest. The French, solely bent upon conquest, cared not for the liberty of other nations; Prussia, intent upon self- aggrandizement, was indifferent to the fate of her brother sovereigns. Peace was concluded between France and Prussia at Basel, April 5, 1795. By a secret article of this treaty, Prussia confirmed the French republic in the possession of the whole of the left bank of the Rhine, while France in return richly indemnified Prussia at the expense of the petty German states. This peace, notwithstanding its manifest disadvantages, was also acceded to by Austria, which, on this occasion, received the unfortunate daughter of Louis XVI. in exchange for Semonville and Maret, the captive ambassadors of the republic, and the members of the Convention seized by Dumouriez. Hanover[3] and Hesse-Cassel participated in the treaty and were included within the line of demarcation, which France, on her side, bound herself not to transgress.
The countries lying beyond this line of demarcation, the Netherlands, Holland, and Pfalz-Juliers, were now abandoned to France, and Austria, kept in check on the Upper Rhine, was powerless in their defence. In this manner fell Luxemburg and Duesseldorf. All the Lower Rhenish provinces were systematically plundered by the French under pretext of establishing liberty and equality.[4] The Batavian republic was permitted to subsist, but dependent upon France; Belgium was annexed to France, A.D. 1795.
On the retreat of the Prussians, Mannheim was surrendered without a blow by the electoral minister, Oberndorf, to the French. Wurmser arrived too late to the relief of the city. Quosdanowich, his lieutenant-general, nevertheless, succeeded in saving Heidelberg by sheltering himself behind a great abatis at Handschuchsheion, whence he repulsed the enemy, who were afterward almost entirely cut to pieces by General Klenau, whom he sent in pursuit with the light cavalry. General Boros led another Austrian corps across Nassau to Ehrenbreitstein, at that time besieged by the French under their youthful general, Marceau, who instantly retired. Wurmser no sooner arrived in person than, attacking the French before Mannheim, he completely put them to the rout and took General Oudinot prisoner. Clairfait, at the same time, advanced unperceived upon Mayence, and unexpectedly attacking the besieging French force, carried off one hundred and thirty-eight pieces of heavy artillery. Pichegru, who had been called from Holland to take the command on the Upper Rhine, was driven back to the Vosges. Jourdan advanced to his aid from the Lower Rhine, but his vanguard under Marceau was defeated at Kreuznach and again at Meissenheim. Mannheim also capitulated to the Austrians. The winter was now far advanced; both sides were weary of the campaign, and an armistice was concluded. Austria, notwithstanding her late success, was, owing to the desertion of Prussia, in a critical position. The imperial troops also refused to act. The princes of Southern Germany longed for peace. Even Spain followed the example of Prussia and concluded a treaty with the French republic.
The consequent dissolution of the coalition between the German powers had at least the effect of preventing the formation of a coalition of nations against them by the French. Had the alliance between the sovereigns continued, the French would, from political motives, have used their utmost endeavors to revolutionize Germany; this project was rendered needless by the treaty of Basel, which broke up the coalition and confirmed France in the undisturbed possession of her liberties; and thus it happened that Prussia unwittingly aided the monarchical cause by involuntarily preventing the promulgation of the revolutionary principles of France.
Austria remained unshaken, and refused either to betray the monarchical cause by the recognition of a revolutionary democratical government, or to cede the frontiers of the empire to the youthful and insolent generals of the republic. Conscious of the righteousness of the cause she upheld, she intrepidly stood her ground and ventured her single strength in the mighty contest, which the campaign of 1796 was to decide. The Austrian forces in Germany were commanded by the emperor's brother, the Archduke Charles; those in Italy, by Beaulieu. The French, on the other hand, sent Jourdan to the Lower Rhine, Moreau to the Upper Rhine, Bonaparte to Italy, and commenced the attack on every point with their wonted impetuosity.
The Austrians had again extended their lines as far as the Lower Rhine. A corps under Prince Ferdinand of Wuertemberg was stationed in the Bergland, in the narrow corner still left between the Rhine and the Prussian line of demarcation. Marceau forced him to retire as far as Altenkirchen, but the Archduke Charles hastening to his assistance encountered Jourdan's entire force on the Lahn near Kloster Altenberg, and, after a short contest, compelled it to give way. A great part of the Austrian army of the Rhine under Wurmser having been, meanwhile, drawn off and sent into Italy, the archduke was compelled to turn hastily from Jourdan against Moreau, who had just despatched General Ferino across the Lake of Constance, while he advanced upon Strasburg. A small Swabian corps under Colonel Raglowich made an extraordinary defence in Kehl (the first instance of extreme bravery given by the imperial troops at that time), but was forced to yield to numbers. The Austrian general, Sztarray, was, notwithstanding the gallantry displayed on the occasion, also repulsed at Sasbach; the Wurtemberg battalion was also driven from the steep pass of the Kniebes,[5] across which Moreau penetrated through the Black Forest into the heart of Swabia, and had already reached Freudenstadt, when the Austrian general, Latour, marched up the Murg. He was, however, also repulsed. The Archduke Charles now arrived in person in the country around Pforzheim (on the skirts of the Black Forest), and sent forward his columns to attack the French in the mountains, but in vain; the French were victorious at Rothensol and at Wildbad. The archduke retired behind the Neckar to Cannstadt; his rearguard was pursued through the city of Stuttgard by the vanguard of the French. After a short cannonade, the archduke also abandoned his position at Cannstadt. The whole of the Swabian circle submitted to the French. Wurtemberg was now compelled to make a formal cession of Mumpelgard, which had been for some time garrisoned by the French,[6] and, moreover, to pay a contribution of four million livres; Baden was also mulcted two millions, the other states of the Swabian circle twelve millions, the clergy seven millions, altogether twenty-five million livres, without reckoning the enormous requisition of provisions, horses, clothes, etc. The archduke, in the meantime, deprived the troops belonging to the Swabian circle of their arms at Biberach, on account of the peace concluded by their princes with the French, and retired behind the Danube by Donauwoerth. Ferino had, meanwhile, also advanced from Huningen into the Breisgau and to the Lake of Constance, had beaten the small corps under General Frohlick at Herbolsheim and the remnant of the French emigrants under Oonde at Mindelheim,[7] and joined Moreau in pursuit of the archduke. His troops committed great havoc wherever they appeared.[8]
Jourdan had also again pushed forward. The archduke had merely been able to oppose to him on the Lower Rhine thirty thousand men under the Count von Wartensleben, who, owing to Jourdan's numerical superiority, had been repulsed across both the Lahn and Maine. Jourdan took Frankfort by bombardment and imposed upon that city a contribution of six millions. The Franconian circle also submitted and paid sixteen millions, without reckoning the requisition of natural productions and the merciless pillage.[9]
The Archduke Charles, too weak singly to encounter the armies of Moreau and Jourdan, had, meanwhile, boldly resolved to keep his opponents as long as possible separate, and, on the first favorable opportunity, to attack one with the whole of his forces, while he kept the other at bay with a small division of his army. In pursuance of this plan, he sent Wartensleben against Jourdan, and, meanwhile, drew Moreau after him into Bavaria, where, leaving General Latour with a small corps to keep him in check at Rain on the Lech, he recrossed the Danube at Ingolstadt with the flower of his army and hastily advanced against Jourdan, who was thus taken unawares. At Teiningen, he surprised the French avant-garde under Bernadotte, which he compelled to retire. At Amberg, he encountered Jourdan, whom he completely routed, A.D. 1796. The French retreated through the city, on the other side of which they formed an immense square against the imperial cavalry under Wernek; it was broken on the third charge, and a terrible slaughter took place, three thousand of the French being killed and one thousand taken prisoner. The peasantry had already flown to arms, and assisted in cutting down the fugitives. Jourdan again made a stand at Wurzburg, where Wernek stormed his batteries at the head of his grenadiers and a complete rout ensued, September 3. The French lost six thousand dead and two thousand prisoners. The peasantry rose en masse, and hunted down the fugitives.[10] On the Upper Rhone, Dr. Roeder placed himself at the head of the peasantry, but, encountering a superior French corps at Mellrichstadt, was defeated and killed. The French suffered most in the Spessart, called by them, on that account, La petite Vendee. The peasantry were here headed by an aged forester named Philip Witt, and, protected by their forests, exterminated numbers of the flying foe. The imperial troops were also unremitting in their pursuit, again defeated Bernadotte at Aschaffenburg and chased Jourdan through Nassau across the Rhine. Marceau, who had vainly besieged Mayence, again made stand at Allerheim, where he was defeated and killed.[11]
Moreau, completely deceived by the archduke, had, meanwhile, remained in Bavaria. After defeating General Latour at Lechhausen, instead of setting off in pursuit of the archduke and to Jourdan's aid, he was, as the archduke had foreseen, attracted by the prospect of gaining a rich booty, in an opposite direction, toward Munich. Bavaria submitted to the French, paid ten millions, and ceded twenty of the most valuable pictures belonging to the Dusseldorf and Munich galleries. The news of Jourdan's defeat now compelled Moreau to beat a rapid retreat in order to avoid being cut off by the victorious archduke. Latour set off vigorously in pursuit, came up with him at Ulm and again at Ravensberg, but was both times repulsed, owing to his numerical inferiority. A similar fate awaited the still smaller imperial corps led against the French by Nauendorf at Rothweil and by Petrosch at Villingen, and Moreau led the main body of his army in safety through the deep narrow gorges of the Hollenthal in the Black Forest to Freiburg in the Breisgau, where he came upon the archduke, who, amid the acclamations of the armed peasantry (by whom the retreating French[12] were, as in the Spessart, continually harassed in their passage through the Black Forest), had hurried, but too late, to his encounter. Moreau had already sent two divisions of his army, under Ferino and Desaix, across the Rhine at Huningen and Breisach, and covered their retreat with the third by taking up a strong position at Schliesgen, not far from Freiburg, whence, after braving a first attack, he escaped during the night to Huningen. This retreat, in which he had saved his army with comparatively little loss, excited general admiration, but in Italy there was a young man who scornfully exclaimed, "It was, after all, merely a retreat!"
[Footnote 1: The following trait proves the complete stagnation of chivalric feeling in the army. Szekuli, colonel of the Prussian hussars, condemned several patriotic ladies, belonging to the highest Polish families at Znawrazlaw, to be placed beneath the gallows, in momentary expectation of death, until it, at length, pleased him to grant a reprieve, couched in the most offensive and indecent terms.]
[Footnote 2: A most disgraceful treaty. William's enemies, the fugitive patriots, had promised the French, in return for their aid, sixty million florins of the spoil of their country. William, upon this, promised to pay to France a subsidy of eighty millions, in order to guarantee the security of his frontier, but was instantly outbid by the base and self-denominated patriots, who offered to France a hundred million florins in order to induce her to invade their country.]
[Footnote 3: Von Berlepsch, the councillor of administration, proposed to the Calemberg diet to declare their neutrality in defiance of England, and, in case of necessity, to place "the Calemberg Nation" under the protection of France.—Havemomn.]
[Footnote 4: "Wherever these locusts appear, everything, men, cattle, food, property, etc., is carried off. These thieves seize everything convertible into money. Nothing is safe from them. At Cologne, they filled a church with coffee and sugar. At Aix-la-Chapelle, they carried off the finest pictures of Rubens and Van Dyck, the pillars from the altar, and the marble-slab from the tomb of Charlemagne, all of which they sold to some Dutch Jews."—Posselt's Annals of 1796. At Cologne, the nuns were instantly emancipated from their vows, and one of the youngest and most beautiful afterward gained great notoriety as a barmaid at an inn. This scandalous story is related by Klebe in his Travels on the Rhine. In Bonn, Gleich, a man who had formerly been a priest, placed himself at the head of the French rabble and planted trees of liberty. He also gave to the world a decade, as he termed his publication.—Mueller, History of Bonn. "The French proclaimed war against the palaces and peace to the huts, but no hut was too mean to escape the rapacity of these birds of prey. The first-fruits of liberty was the pillage of every corner."— Schwaben's History of Siegburg. The brothers Boisseree'e afterward collected a good many of the church pictures, at that period carried away from Cologne and more particularly from the Lower Rhine. They now adorn Munich and form the best collection of old German paintings now existing.]
[Footnote 5: "Had Wuertemberg possessed but six thousand well-organized troops, the position on the Roszbuhl might have been maintained, and the country have been saved. The millions since paid by Wuertemberg, and which she may still have to pay, would have been spared."— Appendix to the History of the Campaign of 1796.]
[Footnote 6: The duke, Charles, had, in 1791, visited Paris, donned the national cockade, and bribed Mirabeau with a large sum of money to induce the French government to purchase Muempelgard from him. The French, however, were quite as well aware as the duke that they would ere long possess it gratis.]
[Footnote 7: Moreau generously allowed all his prisoners, who, as ex-nobles, were destined to the guillotine, to escape.]
[Footnote 8: Armbruster's "Register of French Crime" contains as follows: "Here and there, in the neighboring towns, there were certainly symptoms of an extremely favorable disposition toward the French, which would ill deserve a place in the annals of German patriotism and of German good sense. This disposition was fortunately far from general. The appearance of the French in their real character, and the barbarous excesses and heavy contributions by which they rendered the people sensible of their presence, speedily effected their conversion." The French, it is true, neither murdered the inhabitants nor burned the villages as they had during the previous century in the Pfalz, but they pillaged the country to a greater extent, shamefully abused the women, and desecrated the churches. Their license and the art with which they extorted the last penny from the wretched people surpassed all belief. "Not satisfied with robbing the churches, they especially gloried in giving utterance to the most fearful blasphemies, in destroying and profaning the altars, in overthrowing the statues of saints, in treading the host beneath their feet or casting it to dogs.—At the village of Berg in Weingarten, they set up in the holy of holies the image of the devil, which they had taken from the representation of the temptation of the Saviour in the wilderness. In the village of Boos, they roasted a crucifix before a fire."—Vide Hurter's Memorabilia, concerning the French allies in Swabia, who attempted to found an Alemannic Republic. Schaffhausen, 1840. Moreau reduced them to silence by declaring, "I have no need of a revolution to the rear of my army."]
[Footnote 9: Notwithstanding Jourdan's proclamation, promising protection to all private property, Wuerzburg, Schweinfurt, Bamberg, etc., were completely pillaged. The young girls fled in hundreds to the woods. The churches were shamelessly desecrated. When mercy in God's name was demanded, the plunderers replied, "God! we are God!" They would dance at night-time around a bowl of burning brandy, whose blue flames they called their etre supreme.—The French in Franconia, by Count Soden.]
[Footnote 10: "They deemed the assassination of a foreigner a meritorious work."—Ephemeridae of 1797. "The peasantry, roused to fury by the disorderly and cruel French, whose excesses exceeded all belief, did not even extend mercy to the wounded; and the French, with equal barbarity, set whole villages on fire."—Appendix to the Campaign of 1796].
[Footnote 11: When scarcely in his twenty-seventh year. He was one of the most distinguished heroes of the Revolution, and as remarkable for his generosity to his weaker foes as for his moral and chivalric principles. The Archduke Charles sent his private physicians to attend upon him, and, on the occasion of his burial, fired a salvo simultaneously with that of the French stationed on the opposite bank of the Rhine.—Mussinan.]
[Footnote 12: The peasants of the Artenau and the Kinzigthal were commanded by a wealthy farmer, named John Baader. Besides several French generals, Hausmann, the commissary of the government, who accompanied Moreau's army, was taken prisoner.—Mussinan, History of the French War of 1796 etc. A decree, published on the 18th of September by Frederick Eugene, Duke of Wuertemberg, in which he prohibited his subjects from taking part in the pursuit of the French, is worthy of remark.]
CCL. Bonaparte
This youth was Napoleon Bonaparte, the son of a lawyer in the island of Corsica, a man of military genius, who, when a mere lieutenant, had raised the siege of Toulon, had afterward served the Directory by dispersing the old Jacobins with his artillery in the streets of Paris, and had been intrusted with the command of the army in Italy. Talents, that under a monarchy would have been doomed to obscurity, were, under the French republic, called into notice, and men of decided genius could, amid the general competition, alone attain to power or retain the reins of government.
Bonaparte was the first to take the field. In the April of 1796, he pushed across the Alps and attacked the Austrians. Beaulieu, a good general, but too old for service (he was then seventy-two, Napoleon but twenty-seven), had incautiously extended his lines too far, in order to preserve a communication with the English fleet in the Mediterranean. Bonaparte defeated his scattered forces at Montenotte and Millesimo, between the 10th and 15th of April, and, turning sharply upon the equally scattered Sardinian force, beat it in several engagements, the principal of which took place at Mondovi, between the 19th and 22d of April. An armistice was concluded with Sardinia, and Beaulieu, who vainly attempted to defend the Po, was defeated on the 7th and 8th of May, at Fombio. The bridge over the Adda at Lodi, three hundred paces in length, extremely narrow and to all appearance impregnable, defended by his lieutenant Sebottendorf, was carried by storm, and, on the 15th of May, Bonaparte entered Milan. Beaulieu took up a position behind the Mincio, notwithstanding which, Bonaparte carried the again ill-defended bridge at Borghetto by storm. While in this part of the country, he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by a party of skirmishers, and was compelled to fly half-naked, with but one foot booted, from his night quarters at St. Georgio.
Beaulieu now withdrew into the Tyrol. Sardinia made peace, and terms were offered by the pope and by Naples. Leghorn was garrisoned with French troops; all the English goods lying in this harbor, to the value of twelve million pounds, were confiscated. The strongly fortified city of Mantua, defended by the Austrians under their gallant leader, Canto d'Irles, was besieged by Bonaparte. A fresh body of Austrian troops under Wurmser crossed the mountains to their relief; but Wurmser, instead of advancing with his whole force, incautiously pressed forward with thirty-two thousand men through the valley of the Adige, while Quosdanowich led eighteen thousand along the western shore of the Lake of Garda. Bonaparte instantly perceived his advantage, and, attacking the latter, defeated him on the 3d of August, at Lonato. Wurmser had entered Mantua unopposed on the 1st, but, setting out in search of the enemy, was unexpectedly attacked, on the 5th of August, by the whole of Bonaparte's forces at Castiglione, and compelled, like Quosdanowich, to seek shelter in the Tyrol. This senseless mode of attack had been planned by Weirotter, a colonel belonging to the general staff. Wurmser now received reinforcements, and Laner, the general of the engineers, was intrusted with the projection of a better plan. He again weakened the army by dividing his forces. In the beginning of September, Davidowich penetrated with twenty thousand men through the valley of the Adige and was defeated at Roveredo, and Wurmser, who had, meanwhile, advanced with an army of twenty-six thousand men through the valley of the Brenta, met with a similar fate at Bassano. He, nevertheless, escaped the pursuit of the victorious French by making a circuit, and threw himself by a forced march into Mantua, where he was, however, unable to make a lengthy resistance, the city being over-populated and provisions scarce. A fresh army of twenty-eight thousand men, under Alvinzi, sent to his relief[1] through the valley of the Brenta, was attacked in a strong position at Arcole, on the river Alpon. Two dams protected the bank and a narrow bridge, which was, on the 15th of November, vainly stormed by the French, although General Augereau and Bonaparte, with the colors in his hand, led the attack. On the following day, Alvinzi foolishly crossed the bridge and took up an exposed position, in which he was beaten, and, on the third day, he retreated. Davidowich, meanwhile, again advanced from the Tyrol and gained an advantage at Rivoli, but was also forced to retreat before Bonaparte. Wurmser, when too late, made a sally, which was, consequently, useless. The campaign was, nevertheless, for the fifth time, renewed. Alvinzi collected reinforcements and again pushed forward into the valley of the Adige, but speedily lost courage and suffered a fearful defeat, in which twenty thousand of his men were taken prisoners, on the 14th and 15th of January, A.D. 1797, at Rivoli. Provera, on whom he had relied for assistance from Padua, was cut off and taken prisoner with his entire corps. Wurmser capitulated at Mantua with twenty-one thousand men.
The spring of 1797 had scarcely commenced when Bonaparte was already pushing across the Alps toward Vienna. Hoche, at the same time, again attacked the Lower and Moreau the Upper Rhine. Bonaparte, the nearest and most dangerous foe, was opposed by the archduke, whose army, composed of the remains of Alvinzi's disbanded and discouraged troops, called forth the observation from Bonaparte, "Hitherto I have defeated armies without generals, now I am about to attack a general without an army!" A battle took place at Tarvis, amid the highest mountains, whence it was afterward known as "the battle above the clouds." The archduke, with a handful of Hungarian hussars, valiantly defended the pass against sixteen thousand French under Massena, nor turned to fly until eight only of his men remained. Generals Bayalich and Ocskay, instead of supporting him, had yielded. The archduke again collected five thousand men around him at Glogau and opposed the advance of the immensely superior French force until two hundred and fifty of his men alone remained. The conqueror of Italy rapidly advanced through Styria upon Vienna. Another French corps under Joubert had penetrated into the Tyrol, but had been so vigorously assailed at Spinges by the brave peasantry[2] as to be forced to retire upon Bonaparte's main body, with which he came up at Villach, after losing between six and eight thousand men during his retreat through the Pusterthal. The rashness with which Bonaparte, leaving the Alps to his rear and regardless of his distance from France, penetrated into the enemy's country, had placed him in a position affording every facility for the Austrians, by a bold and vigorous stroke, to cut him off and take him prisoner. They had garrisoned Trieste and Fiume on the Adriatic and formed an alliance with the republic of Venice, at that time well supplied with men, arms, and gold. A great insurrection of the peasantry, infuriated by the pillage of the French troops, had broken out at Bergamo. The gallant Tyrolese, headed by Count Lehrbach, and the Hungarians, had risen en masse. The victorious troops of the Archduke Charles were en route from the Rhine, and Mack had armed the Viennese and the inhabitants of the thickly-populated neighborhood of the metropolis. Bonaparte was lost should the archduke's plan of operations meet with the approbation of the Viennese cabinet, and, perfectly aware of the fact, he made proposals of peace under pretence of sparing unnecessary bloodshed. The imperial court, stupefied by the late discomfiture in Italy, instead of regarding the proposals of the wily Frenchman as a confession of embarrassment, and of assailing him with redoubled vigor, acceded to them, and, on the 18th of April, Count Cobenzl, Thugut's successor, concluded the preliminaries of peace at Leoben, by which the French, besides being liberated from their dangerous position, were recognized as victors. The negotiations of peace were continued at the chateau of Campo Formio, where the Austrians somewhat regained courage, and Count Cobenzl[3] even ventured to refuse some of the articles proposed. Bonaparte, irritated by opposition, dashed a valuable cup, the gift of the Russian empress, violently to the ground, exclaiming, "You wish for war? Well! you shall have it, and your monarchy shall be shattered like that cup." The armistice was not interrupted. Hostilities were even suspended on the Rhine. The archduke had, before quitting that river, gained the tetes de pont of Strasburg (Kehl) and of Huningen, besides completely clearing the right bank of the Rhine of the enemy. The whole of these advantages were again lost on his recall to take the field against Napoleon. The Saxon troops, which had, up to this period, steadily sided with Austria, were recalled by the elector. Swabia, Franconia, and Bavaria were intent upon making peace with France. Baron von Fahnenberg, the imperial envoy at Ratisbon, bitterly reproached the Protestant estates for their evident inclination to follow the example of Prussia by siding with the French and betraying their fatherland to their common foe, but, on applying more particularly for aid to the spiritual princes, who were exposed to the greatest danger, he found them equally lukewarm. Each and all refused to furnish troops or to pay a war tax. The imperial troops were, consequently, compelled to enforce their maintenance, and naturally became the objects of popular hatred. In this wretched manner was the empire defended! The petty imperial corps on the Rhine were, meanwhile, compelled to retreat before an enemy vastly their superior in number. Wernek, attempting with merely twenty-two thousand men to obstruct the advance of an army of sixty-five thousand French under Hoche, was defeated at Neuwied and deprived of his command.[4] Sztarray, who charged seven times at the head of his men, was also beaten by Moreau at Kehl and Diersheim. At this conjuncture, the armistice of Leoben was published.
A peace, based on the terms proposed at Leoben, was formally concluded at Campo Formio, October 17, 1797. The triumph of the French republic was confirmed, and ancient Europe received a new form. The object for which the sovereigns of France had for centuries vainly striven was won by the monarchless nation; France gained the preponderance in Europe. Italy and the whole of the left bank of the Rhine were abandoned to her arbitrary rule, and this fearful loss, far from acting as a warning to Germany and promoting her unity, merely increased her internal dissensions and offered to the French republic an opportunity for intervention, of which it took advantage for purposes of gain and pillage.
The principal object of the policy of Bonaparte and of the French Directory, at that period, was, by rousing the ancient feelings of enmity between Austria and Prussia, to eternalize the disunion between those two monarchies. Bonaparte, after effectuating the peace by means of terror, loaded Austria with flattery. He flattered her religious feelings by the moderation of his conduct in Italy toward the pope, notwithstanding the disapprobation manifested by the genuine French republicans, and her interests by the offer of Venice in compensation for the loss of the Netherlands, and, making a slight side-movement against that once powerful and still wealthy republic, reduced it at the first blow, nay, by mere threats, to submission; so deeply was the ancient aristocracy here also fallen. The cession of Venice to the emperor was displeasing to the French republicans. They were, however, pacified by the delivery of Lafayette, who had been still detained a prisoner in Austria after the treaty of Basel. Napoleon said in vindication of his policy, "I have merely lent Venice to the emperor, he will not keep her long." He, moreover, gratified Austria by the extension of her western frontier, so long the object of her ambition, by the possession of the archbishopric of Salzburg and of a part of Bavaria with the town of Wasserburg.[5] The sole object of these concessions was provisionally to dispose Austria in favor of France,[6] and to render Prussia's ancient jealousy of Austria implacable.[7] Hence the secret articles of peace by which France and Austria bound themselves not to grant any compensation to Prussia. Prussia was on her part, however, resolved not to be the loser, and, in the summer of 1797, took forcible possession of the imperial free town of Nuremberg, notwithstanding her declaration made just three years previously through Count Soden to the Franconian circle, "that the king had never harbored the design of seeking a compensation at the expense of the empire, whose constitution had ever been sacred in his eyes!" and to the empire, "He deemed it beneath his dignity to refute the reports concerning Prussia's schemes of aggrandizement, oppression, and secularization." Prussia also extended her possessions in Franconia[8] and Westphalia, and Hesse-Cassel imitated her example by the seizure of a part of Schaumburg-Lippe. The diet energetically remonstrated, but in vain. Pamphlets spoke of the Prussian reunion- chambers opened by Hardenberg in Franconia. An attempt was, however, made to console the circle of Franconia by depicturing the far worse sufferings of that of Swabia under the imperial contributions. The petty Estates of the empire stumbled, under these circumstances, upon the unfortunate idea "that the intercession of the Russian court should be requested for the maintenance of the integrity of the German empire and for that of her constitution"; the intercession of the Russian court, which had so lately annihilated Poland!
Shortly after this, A.D. 1797, Frederick William II., who had, on his accession to the throne, found seventy-two millions of dollars in the treasury, expired, leaving twenty-eight millions of debts. His son, Frederick William III., placed the Countess Lichtenau under arrest, banished Wollner, and abolished the unpopular monopoly in tobacco, but retained his father's ministers and continued the alliance, so pregnant with mischief, with France.—This monarch, well-meaning and destined to the severest trials, educated by a peevish valetudinarian and ignorant of affairs, was first taught by bitter experience the utter incapacity of the men at that time at the head of the government, and after, as will be seen, completely reforming the court, the government, and the army, surrounded himself with men, who gloriously delivered Prussia and Germany from all the miseries and avenged all the disgrace, which it is the historian's sad office to record.
Austria, as Prussia had already done by the treaty of Basel, also sacrificed, by the peace of Campo Formio, the whole of the left bank of the Rhine and abandoned it to France, the loss thereby suffered by the Estates of the empire being indemnified by the secularization of the ecclesiastical property in the interior of Germany and by the prospect of the seizure of the imperial free towns. Mayence was ceded without a blow to France. Holland was forgotten. The English, under pretext of opposing France, destroyed, A.D. 1797, the last Dutch fleet, in the Texel, though not without a heroic and determined resistance on the part of the admirals de Winter and Reintjes, both of whom were severely wounded, and the latter died in captivity in England. Holland was formed into a Batavian, Genoa into a Ligurian, Milan with the Valtelline (from which the Grisons was severed) into a Cisalpine, republic. Intrigues were, moreover, set on foot for the formation of a Roman and Neapolitan republic in Italy and of a Rhenish and Swabian one in Germany, all of which were to be subordinate to the mother republic in France. The proclamation of a still-born Cisrhenish republic (it not having as yet been constituted when it was swallowed up in the great French republic), in the masterless Lower Rhenish provinces in the territory of Treves, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Cologne, under the influence of the French Jacobins and soldiery, was, however, all that could at first be done openly.
The hauteur with which Bonaparte, backed by his devoted soldiery, had treated the republicans, and the contempt manifested by him toward the citizens, had not failed to rouse the jealous suspicions of the Directory, the envy of the less successful generals, and the hatred of the old friends of liberty, by whom he was already designated as a tyrant. The republican party was still possessed of considerable power, and the majority of the French troops under Moreau, Jourdan, Bernadotte, etc., were still ready to shed their blood in the cause of liberty. Bonaparte, compelled to veil his ambitious projects, judged it more politic, after sowing the seed of discord at Campo Formio, to withdraw a while, in order to await the ripening of the plot and to return to reap the result. He, accordingly, went meantime, A.D. 1798, with a small but well-picked army to Egypt, for the ostensible purpose of opening a route overland to India, the sea-passage having been closed against France by the British, but, in reality, for the purpose of awaiting there a turn in continental affairs, and, moreover, by his victories over the Turks in the ancient land of fable to add to the wonder it was ever his object to inspire. On his way thither he seized the island of Malta and compelled Baron Hompesch, the grand-master of the order of the Knights of Malta, to resign his dignity, the fortress being betrayed into his hands by the French knights.
At Rastadt, near Baden, where the compensation mentioned in the treaty of Campo Formio was to be taken into consideration, the terrified Estates of the empire assembled for the purpose of suing the French ambassadors for the lenity they had not met with at the hands of Austria and Prussia.—The events that took place at Rastadt are of a description little calculated to flatter the patriotic feelings of the German historian. The soul of the congress was Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Perigord, at one time a bishop, at the present period minister of the French republic. His colloquy with the German ambassadors resembled that of the fox with the geese, and he attuned their discords with truly diabolical art. While holding Austria and Prussia apart, instigating them one against the other, flattering both with the friendship of the republic and with the prospect of a rich booty by the secularization of the ecclesiastical lands, he encouraged some of the petty states with the hope of aggrandizement by an alliance with France,[9] and, with cruel contempt, allowed others a while to gasp for life before consigning them to destruction. The petty princes, moreover, who had been deprived of their territory on the other side of the Rhine, demanded lands on this side in compensation; all the petty princes on this side consequently trembled lest they should be called upon to make compensation, and each endeavored, by bribing the members of the congress, Talleyrand in particular, to render himself an exception. The French minister was bribed not by gold alone; a considerable number of ladies gained great notoriety by their liaison with the insolent republican, from whom they received nothing, the object for which they sued being sold by him sometimes even two or three times. Momus, a satirical production of this period, relates numerous instances of crime and folly that are perfectly incredible. The avarice manifested by the French throughout the whole of the negotiations was only surpassed by the brutality of their language and behavior. Roberjot, Bonnier, and Jean de Bry, the dregs of the French nation, treated the whole of the German empire on this occasion en canaille, and, while picking the pockets of the Germans, were studiously coarse and brutal; still the trifling opposition they encountered, and the total want of spirit in the representatives of the great German empire, whom it must, in fact, have struck them as ridiculous to see thus humbled at their feet, forms an ample excuse for their demeanor.
Gustavus Adolphus IV., who mounted the throne of Sweden in 1796, distinguished himself at that time among the Estates of the empire, when Duke of Pomerania and Prince of Rugen, by his solemn protest against the depredations committed by France, and by his summons to every member of the German empire to take the field against their common foe. Hesse-Cassel was also remarkable for the warlike demeanor and decidedly anti-Gallic feeling of her population; and Wurtemberg, for being the first of the German states that gave the example of making concessions more in accordance with the spirit of the times. By the abolition of ancient abuses alone could the princes meet the threats used on every occasion by the French at Rastadt to revolutionize the people unless their demands were fully complied with. In Wurtemberg, the duke, Charles, had been succeeded, A.D. 1793, by his brother, Louis Eugene, who banished license from his court, but, a foe to enlightenment, closed the Charles college, placed monks around his person, was extremely bigoted, and a zealous but impotent friend to France. He expired, A.D. 1795, and was succeeded by the third brother, Frederick Eugene, who had been during his youth a canon at Salzburg, but afterward became a general in the Prussian service, married a princess of Brandenburg, and educated his children in the Protestant faith in order to assimilate the religion of the reigning family with that of the people. His mild government terminated in 1797. Frederick, his talented son and successor, mainly frustrated the projected establishment of a Swabian republic, which was strongly supported by the French, by his treatment of the provincial Estates, the modification of the rights of chase, etc., on which occasion he took the following oath: "I repeat the solemn vow, ever to hold the constitution of this country sacred and to make the weal of my subjects the aim of my life." He nevertheless appears, by the magnificent fetes, masquerades, and pastoral festivals given by him, as if in a time of the deepest peace, at Hohenheim, to have trusted more to his connection with England, by his marriage with the princess royal, Matilda,[10] with Russia, and with Austria (the emperor Paul, Catherine's successor, having married the princess Maria of Wurtemberg, and the emperor Francis II., her sister Elisabeth), than to the constitution, which he afterward annihilated.
The weakness displayed by the empire and the increasing disunion between Austria and Prussia encouraged the French to further insolence. Not satisfied with garrisoning every fortification on the left bank of the Rhine, they boldly attacked, starved to submission, and razed to the ground, during peace time, the once impregnable fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, on the right bank of the Rhine, opposite Coblentz.[11] Not content with laying the Netherlands and Holland completely waste, they compelled the Hanse towns to grant them a loan of eighteen million livres. Lubeck refused, but Hamburg and Bremen, more nearly threatened and hopeless of aid from Prussia, were constrained to satisfy the demands of the French brigands. In the Netherlands, the German faction once more rose in open insurrection; in 1798, the young men, infuriated by the conscription and by their enrolment into French regiments, flew to arms, and torrents of blood were shed in the struggle, in which they were unaided by their German brethren, before they were again reduced to submission. The English also landed at Ostend, but for the sole purpose of destroying the sluices of the canal at Bruges.
The French divided the beautiful Rhenish provinces, yielded to them almost without a blow by Germany, into four departments: First, Roer, capital Aix-la-Chapelle; besides Cologne and Cleves. Secondly, Donnersberg, capital Mayence; besides Spires and Zweibrucken. Thirdly, Saar, capital Treves. Fourthly, Rhine and Moselle, capital Coblentz; besides Bonn. Each department was subdivided into cantons, each canton into communes. The department was governed by a perfect, the canton by a sub-prefect, the commune by a mayor. All distinction of rank, nobility, and all feudal rights were abolished. Each individual was a citizen, free and equal. All ecclesiastical establishments were abandoned to plunder, the churches alone excepted, they being still granted as places of worship to believers, notwithstanding the contempt and ridicule into which the clergy had fallen. The monasteries were closed. The peasantry, more particularly in Treves, nevertheless, still manifested great attachment to Popery. Guilds and corporations were also abolished. The introduction of the ancient German oral law formerly in use throughout the empire, the institution of trial by jury, which, to the disgrace of Germany, the Rhenish princes, after the lapse of a thousand years, learned from their Gallic foe, was a great and signal benefit.
Liberty, equality, and justice were, at that period, in all other respects, mere fictions. The most arbitrary rule in reality existed, and the new provinces were systematically drained by taxes of every description, as, for instance, register, stamp, patent, window, door, and land taxes: there was also a tax upon furniture and upon luxuries of every sort; a poll-tax, a percentage on the whole assessment, etc.; besides extortion, confiscation, and forced sales. And woe to the new citizen of the great French republic if he failed in paying more servile homage to its officers, from the prefect down to the lowest underling, than had ever been exacted by the princes![12] Such was the liberty bestowed by republican France! Thus were her promises fulfilled! The German Illuminati were fearfully undeceived, particularly on perceiving how completely their hopes of universally revolutionizing Germany were frustrated by the treaty of Basel. The French, who had proclaimed liberty to all the nations of the earth, now offered it for sale. The French character was in every respect the same as during the reign of Louis XIV. The only principle to which they remained ever faithful was that of robbery.—Switzerland was now, in her turn, attacked, and vengeance thus overtook every province that had severed itself from the empire, and every part of the once magnificent empire of Germany was miserably punished for its want of unity.
[Footnote 1: Clausewitz demands, with great justice, why the Austrians so greatly divided their forces on this occasion for the sake of saving Italy, as they had only to follow up their successes vigorously on the Rhine in order to gain, in that quarter, far more than they could lose on the Po.]
[Footnote 2: At Absom, in the valley of the Inn, a peasant girl had, at that time, discovered a figure of the Virgin in one of the panes of glass in her chamber window. This appearance being deemed miraculous by the simple peasantry, the authorities of the place investigated the matter, had the glass cleaned and scraped, etc., and at length pronounced the indelible figure to be simply the outline of an old colored painting. The peasantry, however, excited by the appearance of the infidel French, persisted in giving credence to the miracle and set up the piece of glass in a church, which was afterward annually visited by thousands of pilgrims. In 1407, the celebrated pilgrimage to Waldrast, in the Tyrol, had been founded in a similar manner by the discovery of a portrait of the Virgin which had been grown up in a tree, by two shepherd lads.]
[Footnote 3: Cobenzl was a favorite of Kaunitz and a thorough courtier. At an earlier period, when ambassador at Petersburg, he wrote French comedies, which were performed at the Hermitage in the presence of the empress Catherine. The arrival of an unpleasant despatch being ever followed by the production of some amusing piece as an antidote to care, the empress jestingly observed, "that he was no doubt keeping his best piece until the news arrived of the French being in Vienna." He expired in the February of 1809, a year pregnant with fate for Austria.]
[Footnote 4: He indignantly refused the stipend offered to him on this occasion and protested against the injustice of his condemnation.]
[Footnote 5: Bavaria regarded these forced concessions as a bad reward for her fidelity to Austria. Napoleon appears to have calculated upon relighting by this means the flames of discord, whence he well knew how to draw an advantage, between Bavaria and Austria.]
[Footnote 6: "Thus the emperor also now abandoned the empire by merely bargaining with the enemy to quit his territories, and leaving the wretched provinces of the empire a prey to war and pillage. And if the assurances of friendship, of confidence, and of affection between Austria and Venice are but recalled to mind, the contrast was indeed laughable when the emperor was pleased to allow that loyal city to be ceded to him. The best friend was in this case the cloth from which the emperor cut himself an equivalent."—Huergelmer.]
[Footnote 7: A curious private memoir of Talleyrand says: "J'ai la certitude que Berlin est le lieu, ou le traite du 26 Vendemiaire (the reconciliation of Austria with France at Campo Formio), aura jette le plus d'etonnement, d'embarras et de orainte." He then explains that, now that the Netherlands no longer belong to Austria, and that Austria and France no longer come into collision, both powers would be transformed from natural foes into natural friends and would have an equal interest in weakening Prussia. Should Russia stir, the Poles could be roused to insurrection, etc.]
[Footnote 8: "Exactly at this period, when the empire's common foe was plundering the Franconian circle, when deeds of blood and horror, when misery and want had reached a fearful height, the troops of the Elector of Brandenburg overran the cities and villages. The inhabitants were constrained to take the oath of fealty, the public officers, who refused, were dragged away captive, etc. Ellingen, Stopfenheim, Absperg, Eschenbach, Nueremberg, Postbaur, Virnsperg, Oettingen, Dinkelspuehl, Ritzenhausen, Gelchsheim, were scenes of brutal outrage."—The History of the Usurpation of Brandenburg, A.D. 1797, with the original Documents, published by the Teutonic Order.]
[Footnote 9: His secret memoirs, even at that period, designate Baden, Wuertemberg, and Darmstadt as states securely within the grasp of France.]
[Footnote 10: He fled on Moreau's invasion to England, where he formed this alliance. There was at one time a project of creating him elector of Hanover and of partitioning Wuertemberg between Bavaria and Baden.]
[Footnote 11: The commandant, Faber, defended the place for fourteen months with a garrison of 2,000 men. During the siege, the badly-disciplined French soldiery secretly sold provisions at an exorbitant price to the starving garrison.]
[Footnote 12: Klebe gave an extremely detailed account of the French government: "It is, for instance, well known that a pastry cook was nominated lord high warden of the forest! over a whole department, and a jeweller was raised to the same office in another.—The documents proving the cheating and underselling carried on by Pioc, the lord high warden of the forests, and by his assistant, Gauthier, in all the forests in the department of the Rhine and Moselle, are detailed at full length in 'Ruebezahl,' a sort of monthly magazine. It is astonishing to see with what boundless impudence these people have robbed the country.—Still greater rascalities were carried on on the right bank of the Rhine. Gauthier robbed from Coblentz down to the Prussian frontiers." These allegations are confirmed by Goerres in a pamphlet, "Results of my Mission to Paris," in which he says, "The Directory had treated the four departments like so many Paschalics, which it abandoned to its Janissaries and colonized with its favorites. Every petition sent by the inhabitants was thrown aside with revolting contempt; everything was done that could most deeply wound their feelings in regard to themselves or to their country." "The secret history of the government of the country between the Rhine and the Moselle," sums up as follows: "All cheated, all thieved, all robbed. The cheating, thieving, and robbing were perfectly terrible, and not one of the cheats, thieves, or robbers seemed to have an idea that this country formed, by the decree of union, a part of France." A naive confession! The French, at all events, acted as if conscious that the land was not theirs. The Rhenish Jews, who, as early as the times of Louis XIV., had aided the French in plundering Germany, again acted as their bloodhounds, and, by accepting bills in exchange for their real or supposed loans, at double the amount, on wealthy proprietors, speedily placed themselves in possession of the finest estates. Vide Reichardt's Letters from Paris.]
CCLI. The Pillage of Switzerland
Peace had reigned throughout Switzerland since the battle of Villmergen, A.D. 1712, which had given to Zurich and Berne the ascendency in the confederation. The popular discontent caused by the increasing despotism of the aristocracy had merely displayed itself in petty conspiracies, as, for instance, that of Henzi, in 1749, and in partial insurrections. In all the cantons, even in those in which the democratic spirit was most prevalent, the chief authority had been seized by the wealthier and more ancient families. All the offices were in their hands, the higher posts in the Swiss regiments raised for the service of France were monopolized by the younger sons of the more powerful families, who introduced the social vices of France into their own country, where they formed a strange medley in conjunction with the pedantry of the ancient oligarchical form of government. In the great canton of Berne, the council of two hundred, which had unlimited sway, was solely composed of seventy-six reigning families. In Zurich, the one thousand nine hundred townsmen had unlimited power over the country. For one hundred and fifty years no citizen had been enrolled among them, and no son of a peasant had been allowed to study for, or been nominated to, any office, even to that of preacher. In Solothurn, but one-half of the eight hundred townsmen were able to carry on the government. Lucerne was governed by a council of one hundred, so completely monopolized by the more powerful families that boys of twenty succeeded their fathers as councillors. Basel was governed by a council of two hundred and eighty, which was entirely formed out of seventy wealthy mercantile families. Seventy-one families had usurped the authority at Freiburg: similar oligarchical government prevailed at St. Gall and Schaffhausen. The Junker, in the latter place, rendered themselves especially ridiculous by the innumerable offices and chambers in which they transacted their useless and prolix affairs. In all these aristocratic cantons, the peasantry were cruelly harassed, oppressed, and, in some parts, kept in servitude, by the provincial governors. The wealthy provincial governments were monopolized by the great aristocratic families.[1] Even in the pure democracies, the provincial communes were governed by powerful peasant families, as, for instance, in Glarus, and the tyranny exercised by these peasants over the territory beneath their sway far exceeded that of the aristocratic burgesses in their provincial governments. The Italian valleys groaned beneath the yoke of the original cantons, particularly under that of Uri,[2] the seven provincial governments in Unterwallis under that of Oberwallis, the countship of Werdenberg under that of the Glarner, the Valtelline under that of the Grisons.[3] The princely abbot of St. Gall was unlimited sovereign over his territory. Separate monasteries, for instance, Engelberg, had feudal sway over their vassals.
Enlightenment and liberal opinions spread also gradually over Switzerland, and twenty years after Henzi's melancholy death, a disposition was again shown to oppose the tyranny of the oligarchies. In 1792, Lavater and Fuszli were banished Zurich for venturing to complain of the arbitrary conduct of one of the provincial governors;[4] in 1779, a curate named Waser, a man of talent and a foe to the aristocracy, was beheaded on a false charge of falsifying the archives;[5] in 1794, the oppressed peasantry of Lucerne revolted against the aristocracy; in the same year, the peasantry in Schwyz, roused by the insolence of the French recruiting officers, revolted, and, in the public provincial assembly, enforced the recall of all the people of Schwyz in the French service, besides imposing a heavy fine upon General Reding on his return. In 1781, a revolt of the Freiburg peasantry, occasioned by the tyranny of the aristocracy, was quelled with the aid of Berne; in 1784, Suter, the noble-spirited Landammann of Appenzell, fell a sacrifice to envy. His mental and moral superiority to the rest of his countrymen inspired his rival, Geiger, with the most deadly hatred, and he persecuted him with the utmost rancor. He was accused of being a freethinker; documents and protocols were falsified; the stupid populace was excited against him, and, after having been exposed on the pillory, publicly whipped, and tortured on the rack, he was beheaded, and all intercession on his behalf was prohibited under pain of death. Solothurn, on the other hand, was freed from feudal servitude in 1785. The popular feeling at that time prevalent throughout Switzerland was, however, of far greater import than these petty events. The oligarchies had everywhere suppressed public opinion; the long peace had slackened the martial ardor of the people; the ridiculous affectation of ancient heroic language brought into vogue by John Muller rendered the contrast yet more striking, and, on the outburst of the French Revolution, the tyrannized Swiss peasantry naturally threw themselves into the arms of the French, the aristocracy into those of the Austrians.
The oppressed peasantry revolted as early as 1790 against the ruling cities, the vassal against the aristocrat, in Schaffhausen, on account of the tithes; in Lower Valais, on account of the tyranny of one of the provincial governors. These petty outbreaks and an attempt made by Laharpe to render the Vaud independent of Berne[6] were suppressed, A.D. 1791. The people remained, nevertheless, in a high state of fermentation. The new French republic at first quarrelled with the ancient confederation for having, unmindful of their origin, descended to servility. The Swiss guard had, on the 16th of August, 1792, courageously defended the palace of the unfortunate French king and been cut to pieces by the Parisian mob. At a later period, the Austrians had seized the ambassadors of the French republic, Semonville and Maret, in the Valtelline, in the territory of the Grisons. The Swiss patriots, as they were called, however, gradually fomented an insurrection against the aristocrats and called the French to their aid. In 1793, the vassals of the bishop of Basel at Pruntrut had already planted trees of liberty and placed the bishopric, under the name of a Rauracian republic, under the protection of France, chiefly at the instigation of Gobel, who was, in reward, appointed bishop of Paris, and whose nephew, Rengger, shortly afterward became a member of the revolutionary government in Berne. In Geneva, during the preceding year, the French faction had gained the upper hand. The fickleness of the war kept the rest of the patriots in a state of suspense, but, on the seizure of the left bank of the Rhine by the French, the movements in Switzerland assumed a more serious character. The abbot, Beda, of St. Gall, 1795, pacified his subjects by concessions, which his successor, Pancras, refusing to recognize, he was, in consequence, expelled. The unrelenting aristocracy of Zurich, upon this, took the field against the restless peasantry, surrounded the patriots in Staefa, threw the venerable Bodmer and a number of his adherents into prison, and inflicted upon them heavy fines or severe corporeal chastisement.
The campaign of 1796 had fully disclosed to Bonaparte the advantage of occupying Switzerland with his troops, whose passage to Italy or Germany would be thereby facilitated, while the line of communication would be secured, and the danger to which he and Moreau had been exposed through want of co-operation would at once be remedied. He first of all took advantage of the dissensions in the Grisons to deprive that republic of the beautiful Valtelline,[7] and, even at that time, demanded permission from the people of Valais to build the road across the Simplon, which he was, however, only able to execute at a later period. On his return to Paris from the Italian expedition, he passed through Basel,[8] where he was met by Talleyrand. Peter Ochs, the chief master of the corporation, was, on this occasion, as he himself relates in his History of Basel, won over, as the acknowledged chief of the patriots, to revolutionize Switzerland and to enter into a close alliance with France. The base characters, at that time the tools of the French Directory, merely acceded to the political plans of Bonaparte and Talleyrand in the hope of reaping a rich harvest by the plunder of the federal cantons, and the Swiss expedition was, consequently, determined upon. The people of Valais, whose state of oppression served as a pretext for interference, revolted, under Laharpe, against Berne, 1798, and demanded the intervention of the French republic, as heir to the dukes of Savoy, on the strength of an ancient treaty, which had, for that purpose, been raked up from the ashes of the past. Nothing could exceed the miserable conduct of the diet at that conjuncture. After having already conceded to France her demand for the expulsion of the emigrants and having exposed its weakness by this open violation of the rights of hospitality, it discussed the number of troops to be furnished by each of the cantons, when the enemy was already in this country. Even the once haughty Bernese, who had set an army, thirty thousand strong, on foot, withdrew, under General Wysz, from Valais to their metropolis, where they awaited the attack of the enemy. There was neither plan[9] nor order; the patriots rose in every quarter and struck terror into the aristocrats, most of whom were now rather inclined to yield and impeded by their indecision the measures of the more spirited party. In Basel, Ochs deposed the oligarchy; in Zurich, the government was induced, by intimidation, to restore Bodmer and his fellow-prisoners to liberty. In Freiburg, Lucerne, Schaffhausen, and St. Gall the oligarchies resigned their authority; Constance asserted its independence.
Within Berne itself, tranquillity was with difficulty preserved by Steiger, the venerable mayor, a man of extreme firmness of character. A French force under Brune had already overrun Vaud, which, under pretext of being delivered from oppression, was laid under a heavy contribution; the ancient charnel-house at Murten was also destroyed, because the French had formerly been beaten on this spot by the Germans. But few of the Swiss marched to the aid of Berne; two hundred of the people of Uri, arrayed in the armor of their ancestors, some of the peasantry of Glarus, St. Gall, and Freiburg.[10] A second French force under Schauenburg entered Switzerland by Basel, defeated the small troops of Bernese sent to oppose it at Dornach and Langnau, and took Solothurn, where it liberated one hundred and eighty self-styled patriots imprisoned in that place. The patriots, at this conjuncture, also rose in open insurrection in Berne, threw everything into confusion, deposed the old council, formed a provisional government, and checked all the preparations for defence. The brave peasantry, basely betrayed by the cities, were roused to fury. Colonels Ryhiner, Stettler, Crusy, and Goumores were murdered by them upon mere suspicion (their innocence was afterward proved), and boldly following their leader, Grafenried, against the French, they defeated and repulsed the whole of Brune's army and captured eighteen guns at the bridge of Neuenegg. But a smaller Bernese corps, which, under Steiger, the mayor, opposed the army of Schauenburg in the Grauen Holz, was routed after a bloody struggle, and, before Erlach, the newly- nominated generalissimo, could hurry back to Berne with the victors of Neuenegg, the patriots, who had long been in the pay of France, threw wide the gates to Schauenburg. All was now lost. Erlach fled to Thun, in order to place himself at the head of the people of the Oberland, who descended in thick masses from the mountains; but, on his addressing the brave Senn peasantry in French, according to the malpractice of the Bernese, they mistook him for a French spy and struck him dead in his carriage. The loss of Berne greatly dispirited them and they desisted from further and futile opposition. Steiger escaped. Hotze, a gallant Austrian general, who, mindful of his Swiss origin, had attempted to place himself at the head of his countrymen, was compelled to retrace his steps. In Berne, the French meanwhile pillaged the treasures of the republic.[11] Besides the treasury and the arsenal, estimated at twenty-nine million livres, they levied a contribution of sixteen million. Bruno planted a tree of liberty, and Frisching, the president of the provisional government, had the folly to say, "Here it stands! may it bear good fruit! Amen!"
Further bloodshed was prevented by the intervention of the patriots. The whole of Switzerland, Schwyz, Upper Valais, and Unterwalden alone excepted, submitted, and, on the 12th of April, the federal diet at Aarau established, in the stead of the ancient federative and oligarchical government, a single and indivisible Helvetian republic, in a strictly democratic form, with five directors, on the French model. Four new cantons, Aargau, Leman (Vaud), the Bernese Oberland, and Constance, were annexed to the ancient ones. Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, and Zug were, on the other hand, to form but one canton. Rapinat, a bold bad man, Rewbel's brother-in-law, who was at that time absolute in Switzerland, seized everything that had escaped the pillage of the soldiery in Berne and Zurich, sacked Solothurn, Lucerne, Freiburg, etc., and hunted out the hidden treasures of the confederation, which he sent to France. The protestations of the directors, Bay and Pfyffer, were unheeded; Rapinat deposed them by virtue of a French warrant and nominated Ochs and Dolder in their stead. The patriotic feelings of the Swiss revolted at this tyranny; Schwyz rose in open insurrection; the peasantry, headed by Aloys Reding, seized and garrisoned Lucerne and called the whole country to arms against the French invader. The peasantry of the free cantons also marched against Aarau, but were defeated by Schauenburg at Haecklingen; two hundred of their number fell, among others a priest bearing the colors. Schauenburg then attacked the people of Schwyz at Richtenschwyl, where, after a desperate combat that lasted a whole day, he at length compelled them to give way. They, nevertheless, speedily rallied, and two engagements of equal obstinacy took place on the Schindeleggy and on the mountain of Etzel. The flight of Herzog, the pastor of Einsiedeln, was the sole cause of the discomfiture of the Swiss. Reding, however, reassembling his forces at the Red Tower, in the vicinity of the old battlefield of Morgarten, the French, unable to withstand their fury, were repulsed with immense loss. They also suffered a second defeat at Arth, at the foot of the Rigi. The Swiss, on their part, on numbering their forces after the battle, found their strength so terribly reduced that, although victors, they were unable to continue the contest, and voluntarily recognized the Helvetian republic. The rich monastery of Einsiedeln was plundered and burned; the miraculous picture of the Virgin was, however, preserved. Upper Valais also submitted, after Sion and the whole of the valley had been plundered and laid waste. The peasantry defended themselves here for several weeks at the precipice of the Dala. Unterwalden offered the most obstinate resistance. The peasantry of this canton were headed by Luessi. The French invaded the country simultaneously on different sides, by water, across the lake of the four cantons, and across the Bruenig from the Haslithal; in the Kernwald they were victorious over the masses of peasantry, but a body of three or four thousand French, which had penetrated further down the vale, was picked off by the peasantry concealed in the woods and behind the rocks. A rifleman, stationed upon a projecting rock, shot more than a hundred of the enemy one after another, his wife and children, meanwhile, loading his guns. Both of the French corps coalesced at Stanz, but met with such obstinate resistance from the old men, women and girls left there, that, after butchering four hundred of them, they set the place in flames.[12] The sturdy mountaineers, although numerically weak, proved themselves worthy of their ancient fame.—The four Waldstaette were thrown into one canton, Waldstaetten; Glarus and Toggenburg into another, Linth; Appenzell and St. Gall into that of Saentis. The old Italian prefectures, with the exception of the Valtelline, were formed into two cantons, Lugano and Bellinzona (afterward the canton of Tessin). The canton of Vaud also finally acceded to this arrangement, but was shortly afterward, as well as the former bishopric of Basel, Pruntrut,[13] and the city and republic of Genoa, incorporated with France.
The levy of eighteen thousand men (the Helvetlers, Galloschwyzers or eighteen batzmen) for the service of the Helvetian republic occasioned fresh disturbances in the beginning of 1799. The opposition was so great that the recruits were carried in chains to Berne. The Bernese Oberland, the peasantry of Basel, Solothurn, Toggenburg, Appenzell, and Glarus rose in open insurrection, but were again reduced to submission by the military. The spirit of the mountaineers was, however, less easily tamed. In April, 1799, the people of Schwyz took four hundred French prisoners; those of Uri, under their leader, Vincenz Schmid, stormed and burned Altorf, the seat of the French and their adherents; those of Valais, under the youthful Count Courten, drove the French from their valleys, and those of the Grisons surprised and cut to pieces a French squadron at Dissentis. General Soult took the field with a strong force against them in May and reduced them one after the other, but with great loss on his side, to submission. Twelve hundred French fell in Valais, which was completely laid waste by fire and sword; in Uri, stones and rocks were hurled upon them by the infuriated peasantry as they defiled through the narrow gorges; Schmid was, however, taken and shot; Schwyz was also reduced to obedience; in the Grisons, upward of a thousand French fell in a bloody engagement at Coire, and the magnificent monastery of Dissentis was, in revenge, burned to the ground. The beautiful Bergland was reduced to an indescribable state of misery. The villages lay in ashes; the people, who had escaped the general massacre, fell victims to famine. In this extremity, Zschokke, at that time Helvetic governor of the Waldstatte, proposed the complete expulsion of the ancient inhabitants and the settlement of French colonists in the fatherland of William Tell.[14] |
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