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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

In Hesse-Darmstadt, where the poll-tax amounted to 6fls. 12krs. (10s. 4d.) a head, the Estates ventured, even prior to the revolution of July, to refuse to vote 2,000,000fls. (L166,666 13s. 4d.) to the new grandduke, Louis II. (who had just succeeded his aged father, the patron of the arts), for the defrayment of debts contracted by him before his accession to the ducal chair. In September, the peasantry of Upper Hesse rose en masse on account of the imposition of the sum of 100,000fls. (L8,333 6s. 8d.) upon the poverty-stricken communes in order to meet the outlay occasioned by the festivities given in the grandduke's honor on his route through the country; the burdens laid upon the peasantry in the mediatized principalities, more particularly in that of Ysenburg, had also become unbearable. The insurgents took Budingen by storm and were guilty of some excesses toward the public officers and the foresters, but deprived no one of life. Ere long convinced of their utter impotence, they dispersed before the arrival of Prince Emilius at the head of a body of military, who, blinded by rage, unfortunately killed a number of persons in the village of Soedel, whom they mistook for insurgents owing to the circumstance of their being armed, but who had in reality been assembled by a forester for the purpose of keeping the insurgents in check.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CCLXX. The Struggles of the Provincial Diets

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

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

In Wurtemberg, the chambers first met in 1833, and were, two months later, again dissolved on account of the refusal of the second chamber to reject "with indignation" Pfizer's protestation against the resolutions of the confederation. In the newly-elected second chamber, the opposition, at whose head stood the celebrated poet, Uhland, brought forward numerous propositions for reform, but remained in the minority, and it was not until the new diet, held in 1836, that the aristocratic first chamber was induced to diminish socage service and other feudal dues twenty-two and one-half per cent in amount. The literary piracy that had hitherto continued to exist solely in Wurtemberg was also provisionally abolished, the system of national education was improved, and several other useful projects were carried into execution or prepared. A new criminal code, published in 1838, again bore traces of political caution. The old opposition lost power.

In Baden, the venerable grandduke, Louis, expired in 1830, and was succeeded by Leopold, a descendant of the collateral branch of the counts of Hochberg. Bavaria had, at an earlier period, stipulated, in case of the extinction of the elder and legitimate line, for the restoration of the Pfalz (Heidelberg and Mannheim), which had, in 1816, been secured to her by a treaty with Austria. The grandduke, Louis, had protested against this measure and had, in 1817, declared Baden indivisible. Bavaria finally relinquished her claims on the payment of two million florins (L166,666 13s. 4d.) and the cession of the bailiwick of Steinfeld, to which Austria moreover added the county of Geroldseck. The new grandduke, who was surnamed "the citizen's friend," behaved with extreme liberality and consequently went hand in hand with the first chamber, of which Wessenberg and Prince von Furstenberg were active members, and with the second, at the head of which stood Professors Rotteck, Welcker, and von Itzstein. Rotteck proposed and carried through the abolition of capital punishment as alone worthy of feudal times, and, on Welcker's motion, censorship was abolished and a law for the press was passed. The federal assembly, however, speedily checked these reforms. The grandduke was compelled to repeal the law for the press, the Freiburg university was for some time closed, Professors Rotteck and Welcker were suspended, and their newspaper, the "Freisinnige" or liberal, was suppressed in 1832. Rotteck was, notwithstanding, at feud with the Hambachers, and had raised the Baden flag above that of Germany at a national fete at Badenweiler. This extremely popular deputy, who had been presented with thirteen silver cups in testimony of the affection with which he was regarded by the people, afterward protested against the resolutions of the confederation, but his motion was violently suppressed by the minister, Winter. The Baden chamber, nevertheless, still retained a good deal of energy, and, after the death of Rotteck, in 1841, a violent contest was carried on concerning the rights of election.

In Hesse-Darmstadt, the Estates again met in 1832; the liberal majority in the second chamber, led by von Gagern, E. E. Hoffmann, Hallwachs, etc., protested against the resolutions of the confederation, and the chamber was dissolved. A fresh election took place, notwithstanding which the chamber was again dissolved in 1834, on account of the government being charged with party spirit by von Gagern and the refusal of the chamber to call him to order. The people afterward elected a majority of submissive members.

In Hesse-Cassel the popular demonstrations were instantly followed by the convocation of the Estates and the proposal of a new and stipulated constitution, which received the sanction of the chambers as early as January, 1831; but, amid the continual disturbances, and on account of the disinclination of the prince co-regent to the liberal reforms, the chamber, of which the talented professor, Jordan of Marburg, was the most distinguished member, yielded, notwithstanding its perseverance, after two rapidly successive dissolutions, in 1832 and 1833, to the influence of the (once liberal) minister, Hassenpflug, and Jordan quitted the scene of contest. Hassenpflug's tyrannical behavior and the lapse of Hesse-Rotenburg (the mediatized collateral line, which became extinct with the Landgrave Victor in 1834), the revenues of which were appropriated as personal property by the prince elector instead of being declared state property, fed the opposition in the chambers, which was, notwithstanding the menaces of the prince elector, carried on until 1838. Hassenpflug threw up office.

In Nassau, the duke, William, fell into a violent dispute with the Estates. The second chamber, after vainly soliciting the restitution of the rich demesnes, appropriated by the duke as private property, on the ground of their being state property, and the application of their revenue to the payment of the state debts, refused, in the autumn of 1831, to vote the taxes. The first chamber, in which the duke had the power of raising at will a majority in his favor by the creation of fresh members, protested against the conduct of the second, which in return protested against that of the first and suspended its proceedings until their constitutional rights should have received full recognition; five of the deputies, however, again protested against the suspension of the proceedings of the chamber and voted the taxes during the absence of the majority. The majority again protested, but became entangled in a political lawsuit, and Herber, the gray-headed president, was confined in the fortress of Marxburg.

In Brunswick, a good understanding prevailed between William the new duke, and the Estates, which were, however, accused of having an aristocratic tendency by the democratic party. Their sittings continued to be held in secret.

In Saxony, the long-wished-for reforms, above all, the grant of a new constitution, were realized, owing to the influence of the popular co-regent, added to that of Lindenau, the highly-esteemed minister, and of the newly-elected Estates, in 1831. The law of censorship, nevertheless, continued to be enforced with extreme severity, which also marked the treatment of the political prisoners. Count Hohenthal and Baron Watzdorf, who seized every opportunity to put in protestations, even against the resolutions of the confederation, evinced the most liberal spirit. On the demise of the aged king, Antony, in 1835, and the accession of the co-regent, Frederick, to the throne, the political movements totally ceased.

Holstein and Schleswig had also, as early as 1823, solicited the restitution of their ancient constitutional rights, which the king, Frederick IV., delayed to grant. Lornsen, the councillor of chancery, was arrested in 1830, for attempting to agitate the people. Separate provincial diets were, notwithstanding, decreed, in 1831, for Holstein and Schleswig, although both provinces urgently demanded their union. Frederick IV. expired in 1839 and was succeeded by his cousin, Christian.

Immediately after the revolution of July, the princes of Oldenburg, Altenburg, Coburg, Meiningen, and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen made a public appeal to the confidence of their subjects, whom they called upon to lay before them their grievances, etc. Augustus, duke of Oldenburg, who had assumed the title of grandduke, proclaimed a constitution, but shortly afterward withdrew his promise and strictly forbade his subjects to annoy him by recalling it to his remembrance. The prince von Sondershausen also refused the hoped-for constitution. In Sigmaringen, Altenburg, and Meiningen the constitutional movement was, on the contrary, countenanced and encouraged by the princes. Pauline, the liberal-minded princess of Lippe-Detmold, had already drawn up a constitution for her petty territory with her own hand, when the nobility rose against it, and, aided by the federal assembly, compelled her to withdraw it.

In the autumn of 1833, the emperor of Russia held a conference with the king of Prussia at Munchen-Gratz, whither the emperor of Austria also repaired. A German ministerial congress assembled immediately afterward at Vienna, and the first of its resolutions was made public late in the autumn of 1834. It announced the establishment of a court of arbitration, empowered, as the highest court of appeal, to decide all disputes between the governments and their provincial Estates. The whole of the members of this court were to be nominated by the governments, but the disputing parties were free to select their arbitrators from among the number.

A fresh and violent constitutional battle was, notwithstanding these precautions, fought in Hanover, where Adolphus Frederick, duke of Cambridge, had, in the name of his brother, William IV., king of England, established a new constitution, which had received many ameliorations notwithstanding the inefficiency of the liberals, Christiani, Luntzel, etc., to counteract the overpowering influence of the monarchical and aristocratic party. William IV., king of England and Hanover, expired in 1837, and was succeeded on the throne of Great Britain by Victoria Alexandrina, the daughter of his younger and deceased brother, Edward, duke of Kent, and of the Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg; and on that of Hanover, which was solely heritable in the male line, by his second brother, Ernest, duke of Cumberland, the leader of the Tory party in England. No sooner had this new sovereign set his foot on German soil[2] than he repealed the constitution granted to Hanover in 1833 and ordained the restoration of the former one of 1819, drawn up in a less liberal but more monarchical and aristocratic spirit. Among the protestations made against this coup d'etat, that of the seven Goettingen professors, the two brothers, Grimm, to whom the German language and antiquarian research are so deeply indebted, Dahlmann, Gervinus, Ewald, Weber, and Albrecht, is most worthy of record. Their instant dismission produced an insurrection among the students, which was, after a good deal of bloodshed, quelled by the military. In the beginning of 1838, the Estates were convoked according to the articles of the constitution of 1819 for the purpose of taking a constitution, drawn up under the dictation of the king, under deliberation. Many of the towns refused to elect deputies, and some of those elected were not permitted to take their seats. The city of Osnabruck protested in the federal assembly. Notwithstanding this, the Estates meanwhile assembled, but declared themselves incompetent, regarding themselves simply in the light of an arbitrative committee, and, as such, threw out the constitution presented by the king, June, 1838. The federal assembly remained passive.[3] In 1839, Schele, the minister, finally succeeded, by means of menaces and bribery, and by arbitrarily calling into the chamber the ministerial candidates who had received the minority of votes during the elections, in collecting so many deputies devoted to his party as were requisite in order to form the chamber and to pass resolutions. The city of Hanover hereupon brought before the federal assembly a petition for redress and a list of grievances in which Schele's chamber was described as "unworthy of the name of a constitutional representative assembly, void of confidence, unpossessed of the public esteem, and unrecognized by the country." The king instantly divested Rumann, the city director, of his office, but so far yielded to the magistrate, to whom he gave audience in the palace and who was followed by crowds of the populace, as to revoke the nomination, already declared illegal, of Rumann's successor, and to promise that the matter at issue should be brought before the common tribunal instead of the council of state, July 17th. Numerous other cities, corporations of landed proprietors, etc., also followed the example set by Hanover and laid their complaints before the federal assembly, which hereupon declared that, according to the laws of the confederation, it found no cause for interference, but at the same time advised the king to come to an understanding consistent with the rights of the crown and of the Estates, with the "present" Estates (unrecognized by the democratic party), concerning the form of the constitution. In the federal assembly, Wurtemberg and Bavaria, most particularly, voted in favor of the Hanoverians. Professor Ewald was appointed to the university of Tubingen; Albrecht, at a later period, to that of Leipzig; the brothers Grimm, to that of Berlin; Dahlmann, to that of Bonn. Among the assembled Estates, those of Baden, Wurtemberg, and Saxony most warmly espoused the cause of the people of Hanover, but, as was natural, without result.[4]

In 1840, the king convoked a fresh diet. The people refused to elect members, and it was solely by means of intrigue that a small number of deputies (not half the number fixed by law) were assembled, creatures of the minister, Schele, who were disowned by the people in addresses couched in the most energetic terms (the address presented by the citizens of Osnabruck was the most remarkable) and their proceedings were protested against. This petty assembly, nevertheless, took under deliberation and passed a new constitution, against which the cities and the country again protested. The king also declared his only son, George, who was afflicted with blindness, capable of governing and of succeeding to the throne.

[Footnote 1: Thiersch, the Bavarian court-councillor, one of the most distinguished connoisseurs of Grecian antiquity, who visited Greece shortly after Heideck and before the arrival of the king, was received by the modern Greeks with touching demonstrations of delight. No nation has so deeply studied, so deeply become imbued with Grecian lore, as that of Germany, and the close connection formed, on the accession of the Bavarian Otto to the throne of Greece, between her sons and the children of that classic land, justifies the proudest expectations.]

[Footnote 2: He did not restore the whole of the crown property that had, at an earlier period, been carried away to England. A considerable portion of the crown jewels had been taken away by George I., and when, in 1802, the French occupied Hanover, the whole of the movable crown property, even the great stud, was sent to England. On the demise of George III., the crown jewels were divided among the princes of the English house.—Copied from the Courier of August, 1838.]

[Footnote 3: The Darmstadt government declared to the second chamber, on its bringing forward a motion for the intercession of Darmstadt with the federal assembly in favor of the legality of the ancient constitution then in force in Hanover, that the grandduke would never tolerate any cooperation on the part of the Estates with his vote in the federal assembly.]

[Footnote 4: "This defeat is, however, not to be lamented: the battle for the separate constitutions has not been fought in vain if German nationality spring from the wreck of German separatism, if we are taught that without a liberal federal constitution liberal provincial constitutions are impossible in Germany."—Pfizer.]



CCLXXI. Austria and Prince Mettenich

Austria might, on the fall of Napoleon, have maintained Alsace, Lorraine, the Breisgau, and the whole of the territory of the Upper Rhine in the same manner in which Prussia had maintained that of the Lower Rhine, had she not preferred the preservation of her rule in Italy and rendered her position in Germany subordinate to her station as a European power. This policy is explained by the peculiar circumstances of the Austrian state, which had for centuries comprised within itself nations of the most distinct character, and the population of whose provinces were by far the greater part Slavonian, Hungarian, and Italian, the great minority German. By this policy she lost, as the Prussian Customs' Union has also again proved, much of her influence over Germany, while, on the other hand, she secured it the more firmly in Southern and Eastern Europe. Austria has long made a gradual and almost unperceived advance from the northwest in a southeasterly direction. In Germany she has continually lost ground. Switzerland, the Netherlands, Alsace, Lorraine, the Swabian counties, Lusatia, Silesia, have one by one been severed from her, while her non-German possessions have as continually been increased, by the addition of Hungary, Transylvania, Galicia, Dalmatia, and Upper Italy.

The contest carried on between Austria, the French Revolution, and Napoleon, has at all events left deep and still visible traces; the characters of the emperor Francis and of his chancellor of state, Prince Metternich, that perfect representative of the aristocracy of Europe, sympathize also as closely with the Austrian system as the character of the emperor Joseph was antipathetical to it. This system dates, however, earlier than those revolutionary struggles, and has already outlived at least one of its supporters.

Austria is the only great state in Europe that comprises so many diverse but well-poised nationalities within its bosom; in all the other great states, one nation bears the preponderance. To this circumstance may be ascribed her peaceful policy, every great war threatening her with the revolt of some one of the foreign nations subordinate to her sceptre. To this may, moreover, be ascribed the tenacity with which she upholds the principle of legitimacy. The historical hereditary right of the reigning dynasty forms the sole but ideal tie by which the diverse and naturally inimical nations beneath her rule are linked together. For the same reason, the concentration of talent in the government contrasts, in Austria, more violently with the obscurantism of the provinces than in any other state. Not only does the overpowering intelligence of the chancery of state awe the nations beneath its rule, but the proverbial good nature and patriarchal cordiality of the imperial family win every heart. The army is a mere machine in the hands of the government; a standing army, in which the soldier serves for life or for the period of twenty years, during which he necessarily loses all sympathy with his fellow-citizens, and which is solely reintegrated from militia whom this privilege renders still more devoted to the government. The pretorian spirit usually prevalent in standing armies has been guarded against in Austria by there being no guards, and all sympathy between the military and the citizens of the various provinces whence they were drawn is at once prevented by the Hungarian troops being sent into Italy, the Italian troops into Galicia, etc., etc. The nationality of the private soldier is checked by the Germanism of the subalterns and by the Austrianism of the staff. Besides the power thus everywhere visible, there exists another partially invisible, that of the police, in connection with a censorship of the severest description, which keeps a guard over the inadvertencies of the tongue as well as over those of the press. The people are, on the other hand, closely bound up with the government and interested in the maintenance of the existing state of affairs by the paper currency, on the value of which the welfare of every subject in the state depends.

To a government thus strong in concentrated power and intelligence stands opposed the mass of nations subject to the Austrian sceptre whose natural antipathies have been artfully fostered and strengthened. In Austria the distinctions of class, characteristic of the Middle Ages, are still preserved. The aristocracy and the clergy possess an influence almost unknown in Germany, but solely over the people, not over the government. As corporative bodies they still are, as in the days of Charles VI., convoked for the purpose of holding postulate diets, whose power, with the exception of that of the Hungarian diet, is merely nominal. The nobility, even in Hungary, as everywhere else throughout the Austrian states (more particularly since the Spanish system adopted by Ferdinand II.), is split into two inimical classes, those of the higher and lower aristocracy. Even in Galicia, where the Polish nobility formed, at an earlier period and according to earlier usage, but one body, the distinction of a higher and lower class has been introduced since the occupation of that country by Austria. The high aristocracy are either bound by favors, coincident with their origin, to the court, the great majority among them consisting of families on whom nobility was conferred by Ferdinand II., or they are, if families belonging to the more powerful and more ancient national aristocracy, as, for instance, that of Esterhazy in Hungary, brought by the bestowal of fresh favors into closer affinity with the court and drawn within its sphere. The greater proportion of the aristocracy consequently reside at Vienna. The lower nobility make their way chiefly by talent and perseverance in the army and the civil offices, and are therefore naturally devoted to the government, on which all their hopes in life depend. The clergy, although permitted to retain the whole of their ancient pomp and their influence over the minds of the people, have been rendered dependent upon the government, a point easily gained, the pope being principally protected by Austria.

The care of the government for the material welfare of the people cannot be denied; it is, however, frustrated by two obstacles raised by its own system. The maintenance of the high aristocracy is, for instance, antipathetic to the welfare of the subject, and, although comfort and plenty abound in the immediate vicinity of Vienna, the population on the enormous estates of the magnates in the provinces often present a lamentable contrast. The Austrian government moreover prohibits all free intercourse with foreign parts, and the old- fashioned system of taxation, senseless as many other existing regulations, entirely puts a stop to all free trade between Hungary and Austria. Consequently, the new and grand modes of communication, the Franzen Canal, that unites the Danube and the Thiess, the Louisenstrasse, between Carlstadt and Fiume, the magnificent road to Trieste, the admirable road across the rocks of the Stilfser Jock, and, more than all, the steam navigation as far as the mouths of the Danube and the railroads, will be unavailing to scatter the blessings of commerce and industry so long as these wretched prohibitions continue to be enforced.

Austria has, in regard to her foreign policy, left the increasing influence of Russia in Poland, Persia, and Turkey unopposed, and even allowed the mouths of the Danube to be guarded by Russian fortresses, while she has, on the other hand, energetically repelled the interference of France in the affairs of Italy. The July revolution induced a popular insurrection in the dominions of the Church, and the French threw a garrison into the citadel of Ancona; the Austrians, however, instantly entered the country and enforced the restoration of the ancien regime. In Lombardy, many ameliorations were introduced and the prosperity of the country promoted by the Austrian administration, notwithstanding the national jealousy of the inhabitants. Venice, with her choked-up harbor, could, it is true, no longer compete with Trieste. The German element has gained ground in Galicia by means of the public authorities and the immigration of agriculturists and artificers. The Hungarians endeavored to render their language the common medium throughout Hungary, and to expel the German element, but their apprehension of the numerous Slavonian population of Hungary, whom religious sympathy renders subject to Russian influence, has speedily reconciled them with the Germans. Slavonism has, on the other hand, also gained ground in Bohemia.

The emperor, Francis I., expired in 1835, and was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand I., without a change taking place in the system of the government, of which Prince Metternich continued to be the directing principle.

The decease of some of the heads of foreign royal families and the marriages of their successors again placed several German princes on foreign thrones. The last of the Guelphs on the throne of Great Britain expired with William IV., whose niece and successor, Victoria Alexandrina, wedded, 1840, Albert of Saxe-Coburg, second son of Ernest, the reigning duke. That the descendant of the steadfast elector should, after such adverse fortune, be thus destined to occupy the highest position in the reformed world, is of itself remarkable. One of this prince's uncles, Leopold, is seated on the throne of Belgium, and one of his cousins, Ferdinand, on that of Portugal, in right of his consort, Donna Maria da Gloria, the daughter of Dom Pedro, king of Portugal and emperor of the Brazils, to whom, on the expulsion of the usurper, Dom Miguel, he was wedded in 1835. These princes of Coburg are remarkable for manly beauty.

The antipathy with which the new dynasty on the throne of France was generally viewed rendered Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe's eldest son, for some time an unsuccessful suitor for the hand of a German princess; he at length conducted Helena, princess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, although against the consent of her stepfather, Paul Frederick, the reigning duke, to Paris in 1837, as future queen of the French. He was killed in 1842, by a fall from his carriage, and left two infant sons, the Count of Paris and the Duke of Chartres. The Czarowitz, Alexander, espoused Maria, Princess of Darmstadt.

The French chambers and journals have reassumed toward Germany the tone formerly affected by Napoleon, and, with incessant cries for war, in which, in 1840, the voice of the prime minister Thiers joined, demand the restoration of the left bank of the Rhine. Thiers was, however, compelled to resign office, and the close alliance between Austria, Prussia, and the whole of the confederated princes, as well as the feeling universally displayed throughout Germany, demonstrated the energy with which an attack on the side of France would be repelled. The erection of the long-forgotten federal fortresses on the Upper Rhine was also taken at length under consideration, and it was resolved to fortify both Rastadt and Ulm without further delay.

Nor have the statesmen of France failed to threaten Germany with a Russo-Gallic alliance in the spirit of the Erfurt congress of 1808; while Russia perseveres in the prohibitory system so prejudicial to German commerce, attempts to suppress every spark of German nationality in Livonia, Courland, and Esthonia, and fosters Panslavism, or the union of all the Slavonic nations for the subjection of the world, among the Slavonian subjects of Austria in Hungaria and Bohemia. The extension of the Greek church is also connected with this idea. "The European Pentarchy," a work that attracted much attention in 1839, insolently boasts how Russia, in defiance of Austria, has seized the mouths of the Danube, has wedged herself, as it were, by means of Poland, between Austria and Prussia, in a position equally threatening to both, recommends the minor states of Germany to seek the protection of Russia, and darkly hints at the alliance between that power and France.

Nor are the prospects of Germany alone threatened by France and Russia; disturbances, like a fantastic renewal of the horrors of the Middle Age, are ready to burst forth on the other side of the Alps, as though, according to the ancient saga of Germany, the dead were about to rise in order to mingle in the last great contest between the gods and mankind.



CCLXXII. Prussia and Rome

While Austria remains stationary, Prussia progresses. While Austria relies for support upon the aristocracy of the Estates, Prussia relies for hers upon the people, that is to say, upon the public officers taken from the mass of the population, upon the citizens emancipated by the city regulation, upon the peasantry emancipated by the abolition of servitude, of all the other agricultural imposts, and by the division of property, and upon the enrolment of both classes in the Landwehr. While Austria, in fine, renders her German policy subordinate to her European diplomacy, the influence exercised by Prussia upon Europe depends, on the contrary, solely upon that possessed by her in Germany.

Prussia's leading principle appears to be, "All for the people, nothing through the people!" Hence the greatest solicitude for the instruction of the people, whether in the meanest schools or the universities, but under strict political control, under the severest censorship; hence the emancipation of the peasantry, civic self- administration, freedom of trade, the general arming of the people, and, with all these, mere nameless provincial diets, the most complete popular liberty on the widest basis without a representation worthy of the name; hence, finally, the greatest solicitude for the promotion of trade on a grand scale, for the revival of the commerce of Germany, which has lain prostrate since the great wars of the Reformation, for the mercantile unity of Germany, while it is exactly in Prussia that political Unitarians are the most severely punished.

The great measures were commenced in Prussia immediately after the disaster of 1806: first, the reorganization of the army and the abolition of the privileges of the aristocracy in respect to appointments and the possession of landed property; these were, in 1808, succeeded by the celebrated civic regulation which placed the civic administration in the hands of the city deputies freely elected by the citizens; in 1810, by freedom of trade and by the foundation of the new universities of Berlin (instead of Halle), of Breslau (instead of Frankfort on the Oder), and, in 1819, of Bonn, by which means the libraries, museums, and scientific institutions of every description were centralized; in 1814, by the common duty imposed upon every individual of every class, without exception, to bear arms and to do service in the Landwehr up to his thirty-ninth year; in 1821, by the regulation for the division of communes; and, in 1822, by the extra post.

In respect to the popular representation guaranteed by the federal act, Prussia announced, on the 22d of May, 1815, her intention to form provincial diets, from among whose members the general representation or imperial diet, which was to be held at Berlin, was to be elected. When the Rhenish provinces urged the fulfilment of this promise in the Coblentz address of 1817, the reply was, "Those who admonish the king are guilty of doubting the inviolability of his word." Prussia afterward declared that the new regulations would be in readiness by the February of 1819. On the 20th of January, 1820, an edict was published by the government, the first paragraph of which fixed the public debt at $180,091,720,[1] and the second one rendered the contraction of every fresh debt dependent upon the will of the future imperial diet.[2] The definitive regulations in respect to the provincial Estates were finally published on the 5th of June, 1823, but the convocation of a general diet was passed over in silence.

The prosperity of the nations of Germany, wrecked by the great wars of the Reformation, must and will gradually return. Prussia has inherited all the claims upon, and consequently all the duties owing to Germany. Still the general position of Germany is not sufficiently favorable to render the renovation of her ancient Hanseatic commerce possible.[3] It is to be deplored that the attachment of the Prussian cabinet to Russian policy has not at all events modified the commercial restrictions along the whole of the eastern frontier of Prussia,[4] and that Prussia has not been able to effect more with Holland in regard to the question concerning the free navigation of the Rhine.[5] Prussia has, on the other hand, deserved the gratitude of Germany for the zeal with which she promoted the settlement of the Customs' Union, which has, at least in the interior of Germany, removed the greater part of the restrictions upon commercial intercourse, and has a tendency to spread still further. Throughout the last transactions, partly of the Customs' Union, partly of Prussia alone, with England and Holland, a vain struggle against those maritime powers is perceptible. England trades with Germany from every harbor and in every kind of commodity, while German vessels are restricted to home produce and are only free to trade with England from their own ports. Holland finds a market for her colonial wares in Germany, and, instead of taking German manufactured goods in exchange, provides herself from England, throws English goods into Germany, and, in lieu of being, as she ought to be, the great emporium of Germany, is content to remain a mere huge English factory. The Hanse towns have also been converted into mercantile depots for English goods on German soil.

The misery consequent on the great wars, and the powerful reaction against Gallicism throughout Germany, once more caused despised religion to be reverenced in the age of philosophy. Prussia deemed herself called upon, as the inheritor of the Reformation brought about by Luther, as the principal Protestant power of Germany, to assume a prominent position in the religious movement of the time. Frederick William III., a sovereign distinguished for piety, appears, immediately after the great wars, to have deemed the conciliation of the various sects of Christians within his kingdom feasible. He, nevertheless, merely succeeded in effecting a union between the Lutherans and Calvinists. He also bestowed a new liturgy upon this united church, which was censured as partial, as proceeding too directly from the cabinet without being sanctioned by the concurrence of the assembled clergy and of the people. Some Lutherans, who refused compliance, were treated with extreme severity and compelled to emigrate; the utility of a union which, two centuries earlier, would have saved Germany from ruin, was, however, generally acknowledged. It nevertheless was not productive of unity in the Protestant world. In the universities and among the clergy, two parties, the Rationalists and the Supernaturalists, stood opposed to one another. The former, the disciples of the old Neologians, still followed the philosophy of Kant, merely regarded Christianity as a code of moral philosophy, denominated Christ a wise teacher, and explained away his miracles by means of physics. The latter, the followers of the old orthodox Lutherans, sought to confirm the truths of the gospel also by philosophical means, and were denominated Supernaturalists, as believers in a mystery surpassing the reasoning powers of man. The celebrated Schleiermacher of Berlin mediated for some time between both parties. But it was in Prussia more particularly that both parties stood more rigidly opposed to one another and fell into the greatest extremes.

The Rationalists were supplanted by the Pantheists, the disciples of Hegel, the Berlin philosopher, who at length formally declared war against Christianity; the Supernaturalists were here and there outdone by the Pietists, whose enthusiasm degenerated into licentiousness.[6] The king had, notwithstanding his piety, been led to believe that Hegel merely taught the students unconditional obedience to the state, and that Pantheist was consequently permitted to spread, under the protection of Prussia, his senseless doctrine of deified humanity, the same formerly proclaimed by Anacharsis Cloote in the French Convention. When too late, the gross deception practiced by this sophist was perceived: his disciples threw off their troublesome mask, with Dr. Strauss, who had been implicated in the Zurich disturbances, at their head, openly renounced Christianity, and, at Halle, led by Ruge, the journalist, embraced the social revolutionary ideas of "Young France," to which almost the whole of the younger journalists of literary "Young Germany" acceded; nor was this Gallic reaction, this retrogression toward the philosophical ideas of the foregoing century, without its cause, German patriotism, which, from 1815 to 1819, had predominated in every university throughout Prussia, having been forcibly suppressed. Hegel, on his appearance in Berlin, was generally regarded as the man on whom the task of diverting the enthusiasm of the rising generation for Germany into another channel devolved.[7] Everything German had been treated with ridicule.[8] French fashions and French ideas had once more come into vogue.

While Protestant Germany was thus torn, weakened, and degraded by schism, the religious movement throughout Catholic Germany insensibly increased in strength and unity. The adverse fate of the pope had, on his deliverance from the hands of Napoleon, excited a feeling of sympathy and reverence so universal as to be participated in by even the Protestant powers of Europe. He had, as early as 1814, reinstated the Jesuits without a remonstrance on the part of the sovereigns by whom they had formerly been condemned. The ancient spirit of the Romish church had revived. A new edifice was to be raised on the thick-strewn ruins of the past. In 1817, Bavaria concluded a concordat with the pope for the foundation of the archbishopric of Munich with the three bishoprics of Augsburg, Passau, and Ratisbon, and of the archbishopric of Bamberg with the three bishoprics of Wurzburg, Eichstadt, and Spires. The king retained the right of presentation. In 1821, Prussia concluded a treaty by which the archbishopric of Cologne with the three bishoprics of Treves, Munster, and Paderborn, the archbishopric of Posen with Culm, and two independent bishoprics in Breslau and Ermeland were established. The bishoprics of Hildesheim and Osnabruck were re-established in 1824 by the concordat with Hanover. In southwestern Germany, the archbishopric of Freiburg in the Breisgau with the bishoprics of Rotenburg on the Neckar, Limburg on the Lahn, Mayence, and Fulda arose. In Switzerland there remained four bishoprics, Freiburg in the Uechtland, Solothurn, Coire, and St. Gall; in Alsace, Strasburg and Colmar. In the Netherlands, the archbishopric of Malines with the bishoprics of Ghent, Liege, and Namur. In Holland, three Jansenist bishoprics, Utrecht, Deventer, and Haarlem, are remarkable for having retained their independence of Rome.

The renovated body of the church was inspired with fresh energy. On the fall of the Jesuits, the other extreme, Illuminatism, had raised its head, but had been compelled to yield before a higher power and before the moral force of Germany. The majority of the German Catholics now clung to the idea that the regeneration of the abused and despised church was best to be attained by the practice of evangelical simplicity and morality, that Jesuitism and Illuminatism were, consequently, to be equally avoided, and the better disposed among the Protestants to be imitated. Sailer, the great teacher of the German clergy, and Wessenberg, whom Rome on this account refused to raise to the bishopric of Constance, acted upon this idea. In Silesia, a number of youthful priests, headed by Theimer, impatient for the realization of the union, apparently approaching, of this moderate party with the equally moderately disposed party among the Protestants into one great German church, took, in 1825, the bold step of renouncing celibacy. This party was however instantly suppressed by force by the king of Prussia. Theimer, in revenge, turned Jesuit and wrote against Prussia. Professors inclined to Ultramontanism were, meanwhile, installed in the universities, more particularly at Bonn, Munster and Tubingen, by the Protestant as well as the Catholic governments; by them the clerical students were industriously taught that they were not Germans but subjects of Rome, and were flattered with the hope of one day participating in the supremacy about to be regained by the pontiff. Every priest inspired with patriotic sentiments, or evincing any degree of tolerance toward his Protestant fellow citizens, was regarded as guilty of betraying the interests of the church to the state and the tenets of the only true church to heretics. Gorres, once Germany's most spirited champion against France, now appeared as the champion of Rome in Germany. The scandalous schisms in the Protestant church and the no less scandalous controversies carried on in the Protestant literary world rendered both contemptible, and, as in the commencement of the seventeenth century, appeared to offer a favorable opportunity for an attack on the part of the Catholics.

A long-forgotten point in dispute was suddenly revived. Marriages between Catholics and Protestants had hitherto been unhesitatingly sanctioned by the Catholic priesthood. The Prussian ordinance of 1803, by which the father was empowered to decide the faith in which the children were to be brought up, had, on account of its conformity with nature and reason, never been disputed. Numberless mixed marriages had taken place among all classes from the highest to the lowest without the slightest suspicion of wrong attaching thereto. A papal brief of 1830 now called to mind that the church tolerated, it was true, although she disapproved of mixed marriages, which she permitted to take place solely on condition of the children being brought up in the Catholic faith. Prussia had acted with little foresight. Instead of, in 1814, on taking possession of the Rhenish provinces and of Westphalia, concluding a treaty with the then newly-restored pope, Hardenberg had, as late as 1820, during a visit to Borne, merely entered upon a transient agreement, by which Rome was bound to no concessions. The war openly declared by Rome was now attempted to be turned aside by means of petty and secret artifices. Several bishops, in imitation of the precedent given by Count von Spiegel, the peace-loving archbishop of Cologne, secretly bound themselves to interpret the brief in the sense of the government and to adhere to the ordinance of 1803. On Spiegel's decease in 1835, his successor, the Baron Clement Augustus Droste, promised at Vischering, prior to his presentation, strictly to adhere to this secret compact; but, scarcely had he mounted the archiepiscopal seat, than his conscience forbade the fulfilment of his oath; God was to be obeyed rather than man! He prohibited the solemnization of mixed marriages within his diocese without the primary assurance of the education of the children in the Catholic faith, compelled his clergy strictly to obey the commands of Rome in points under dispute, and suppressed the Hermesian doctrine in the university of Bonn. The warnings secretly given by the government proved unavailing, and he was, in consequence, unexpectedly deprived of his office in the November of 1837, arrested, and imprisoned in the fortress of Minden. This arbitrary measure caused great excitement among the Catholic population; and the ancient dislike of the Rhenish provinces to the rule of Prussia, and the discontent of the Westphalian nobility on account of the emancipation of the peasantry, again broke forth on this occasion. Gorres, in Munich, industriously fed the flame by means of his pamphlet, "Athanasius." Dunin, archbishop of Gnesen and bishop of Thorn, followed the example of his brother of Cologne, was openly upheld by Prussian Poland, was cited to Berlin, fled thence, was recaptured and detained for some time within the fortress of Colberg, in 1839.—The pope, Gregory XVI., solemnly declared his approbation of the conduct of these archbishops and rejected every offer of negotiation until their reinstallation in their dioceses. A crowd of hastily established journals, more especially in Bavaria, maintained their cause, and were opposed by numberless Protestant publications, which generally proved injurious to the cause they strove to uphold, being chiefly remarkable for base servility, frivolity, and infidelity.

On the demise of Frederick William III., on the 7th of June, 1840, and the succession of his son, Frederick William IV., the church question was momentarily cast into the shade by that relating to the constitution. Constitutional Germany demanded from the new sovereign the convocation of the imperial diet promised by his father. The Catholic party, however, conscious that it would merely form the minority in the diet, did not participate in the demand.[9] The constitution was solely demanded by Protestant Eastern Prussia; but the king declared, during the ceremony of fealty at Koenigsberg, that "he would never do homage to the idea of a general popular representation and would pursue a course based upon historical progression, suitable to German nationality." The provincial Estates were shortly afterward instituted, and separate diets were opened in each of the provinces. This attracted little attention, and the dispute with the church once more became the sole subject of interest. It terminated in the complete triumph of the Catholic party. In consequence of an agreement with the pope, the brief of 1820 remained in force, Dunin was reinstated, Droste received personal satisfaction by a public royal letter and a representative in Cologne in von Geissel, hitherto bishop of Spires. The disputed election of the bishop of Treves was also decided in favor of Arnoldi, the ultramontane candidate.

Late in the autumn of 1842, the king of Prussia for the first time convoked the deputies selected from the provincial diets to Berlin. He had, but a short time before, laid the foundation-stone to the completion of the Cologne cathedral, and on that occasion, moreover, spoken words of deep import to the people, admonitory of unity to the whole of Germany.

[Footnote 1: L26,263,375 16s. 8d.]

[Footnote 2: The Maritime Commercial Company, meanwhile, entered into a contract.]

[Footnote 3: "We have long since lost all our maritime power. The only guns now fired by us at sea are as signals of distress. Who now remembers that it was the German Hansa that first made use of cannons at sea, that it was from Germans that the English learned to build men-of-war?"—John's Nationality.]

[Footnote 4: Prussia, of late, greatly contributed toward the aggrandizement of the power of Russia by solemnly declaring in 1828, when Russia extended her influence over Turkey, that she would not on that account prevent Russia from asserting her "just claims," a declaration that elicited bitter complaints from the British government; and again in 1831, by countenancing the entry of the Russians into Poland, at that time in a state of insurrection.]

[Footnote 5: The reason of the backwardness displayed from the commencement by Prussia to act as the bulwark of Germany on the Lower Rhine is explained by Stein in his letters: "Hanoverian jealousy, by which the narrow-minded Castlereagh was guided, and, generally speaking, jealousy of the German ministerial clauses, as if the existence of a Mecklenburg were of greater importance to Germany than that of a powerful warlike population, alike famous in time of peace or war, presided over the settlement of the relation in which Belgium was to stand to Prussia."]

[Footnote 6: At Koenigsberg, in Prussia, a secret society was discovered which was partly composed of people of rank, who, under pretence of meeting for the exercise of religious duties, gave way to the most wanton license.]

[Footnote 7: The police, while attempting to lead science, was unwittingly led by it. The students were driven in crowds into Hegel's colleges, his pupils were preferred to all appointments, etc., and every measure was taken to render that otherwise almost unnoted sophist as dangerous as possible.]

[Footnote 8: In this the Jews essentially aided: Borne more in an anti-German, Heine more in an anti-Christian, spirit, and were highly applauded by the simple and infatuated German youth.]

[Footnote 9: Goerres even advised against it, although, in 1817, he had acted the principal part on the presentation of the Cologne address.]



CCLXXIII. The Progress of Science, Art, and Practical Knowledge in Germany

In the midst of the misery entailed by war and amid the passions roused by party strife the sciences had attained to a height hitherto unknown. The schools had never been neglected, and immense improvements, equally affecting the lowest of the popular schools and the colleges, had been constantly introduced. Pestalozzi chiefly encouraged the proper education of the lower classes and improved the method of instruction. The humanism of the learned academies (the study of the dead languages) went hand in hand with the realism of the professional institutions. The universities, although often subjected to an overrigid system of surveillance and compelled to adopt a partial, servile bias, were, nevertheless, generally free from a political tendency and incredibly promoted the study of all the sciences. The mass of celebrated savants and of their works is too great to permit of more than a sketch of the principal features of modern German science.

The study of the classics, predominant since the time of the Reformation, has been cast into the shade by the German studies, by the deeper investigation of the language, the law, the history of our forefathers and of the romantic Middle Age, by the great Catholic reaction, and, at the same time, by the immense advance made in natural history, geography, and universal history. The human mind, hitherto enclosed within a narrow sphere, has burst its trammels to revel in immeasurable space. The philosophy and empty speculations of the foregoing century have also disappeared before the mass of practical knowledge, and arrogant man, convinced by science, once more bends his reasoning faculties in humble adoration of their Creator.

The aristocracy of talent and learned professional pride have been overbalanced by a democratic press. The whole nation writes, and the individual writer is either swallowed up in the mass or gains but ephemeral fame. Every writer, almost without exception, affects a popular style. But, in this rich literary field, all springs up freely without connection or guidance. No party is concentrated or represented by any reigning journal, but each individual writes for himself, and the immense number of journals published destroy each other's efficiency. Many questions of paramount importance are consequently lost in heaps of paper, and the interest they at first excited speedily becomes weakened by endless recurrence.

Theology shared in the movement above mentioned in the church. The Rationalists were most profuse in their publications, Paulus at Heidelberg, and, more particularly, the Saxon authors, Tschirner, Bretschneider, etc. Ancient Lutheran vigor degenerated to shallow subtleties and a sort of coquettish tattling upon morality, in which Zschokke's "Hours of Devotion" carried away the palm. Neander, Gieseler, Gfroerer and others greatly promoted the study of the history of the church. The propounders of the Gospels, however, snatched them, after a lamentable fashion, out of each other's hands, now doubting the authenticity of the whole, now that of most or of some of the chapters, and were unable to agree upon the number that ought to be retained. They, at the same time, outvied one another in political servility, while the Lutherans who, true to their ancient faith, protested against the Prussian liturgy, were too few in number for remark. This frivolous class of theologians at length entirely rejected the Gospels, embraced the doctrine of Hegel and Judaism, and renounced Christianity. Still, although the Supernaturalists, the orthodox party, and the Pietists triumphantly repelled these attacks, and the majority of the elder Rationalists timidly seceded from the anti-christian party, the Protestant literary world was reduced to a state of enervation and confusion, affording but too good occasion for an energetic demonstration on the part of the Catholics.

Philosophy also assumed the character of the age. Fichte of Berlin still upheld, in 1814, the passion for liberty and right in their nobler sense that had been roused by the French Revolution, but, as he went yet further than Kant in setting limits to the sources of perception and denied the existence of conscience, his system proved merely of short duration. To him succeeded Schelling, with whom the return of philosophy to religion and that of abstract studies to nature and history commenced, and in whom the renovated spirit of the nineteenth century became manifest. His pupils were partly natural philosophers, who, like Oken, sought to comprehend all nature, her breathing unity, her hidden mysteries, in religion; partly mystics, who, like Eschenmaier, Schubert, Steffens, in a Protestant spirit, or, like Gorres and Baader, in a Catholic one, sought also to comprehend everything bearing reference to both nature and history in religion. It was a revival of the ancient mysticism of Hugo de St. Victoire, of Honorius, and of Rupert in another and a scientific age; nor was it unopposed: in the place of the foreign scholasticism formerly so repugnant to its doctrines, those of Schelling were opposed by a reaction of the superficial mock-enlightenment and sophistical scepticism predominant in the foregoing century, more particularly of the sympathy with France, which had been rendered more than ever powerful in Germany by the forcible suppression of patriotism. Abstract philosophy, despising nature and history, mocking Christianity, once more revived and set itself up as an absolute principle in Hegel. None of the other philosophers attained the notoriety gained by Schelling and Hegel, the representatives of the antitheses of the age.

An incredible advance, of which we shall merely record the most important facts, took place in the study of the physical sciences. Three new planets were discovered, Pallas, in 1802, and Vesta, in 1807, by Gibers; Juno, in 1824, by Harding. Enke and Biela first fixed the regular return and brief revolution of the two comets named after them. Schroeter and Maedler minutely examined the moon and planets; Struve, the fixed stars. Fraunhofer improved the telescope. Chladni first investigated the nature of fiery meteors and brought the study of acoustics to perfection. Alexander von Humboldt immensely promoted the observation of the changes of the atmosphere and the general knowledge of the nature of the earth. Werner and Leopold von Buch also distinguished themselves among the investigators of the construction of the earth and mountains. Scheele, Gmelin, Liebig, etc., were noted chemists. Oken, upon the whole, chiefly promoted the study of natural history, and numberless researches were made separately in mineralogy, the study of fossils, botany, and zoology by the most celebrated scientific men of the day. While travellers visited every quarter of the globe in search of plants and animals as yet unknown and regulated them by classes, other men of science were engaged at home in the investigation of their internal construction, their uses and habits, in which they were greatly assisted by the improved microscope, by means of which Ehrenberg discovered a completely new class of animalculae. The discoveries of science were also zealously applied for practical uses. Agriculture, cattle-breeding, manufactures received a fresh impulse and immense improvements as knowledge advanced. Commerce by water and by land experienced a thorough revolution on the discovery of the properties of steam, by the use of steamers and railroads. Medical science also progressed, notwithstanding the number of contradictory and extravagant theories. The medical practitioners of Germany took precedence throughout Europe. Animal magnetism was practiced by Eschenmaier, Kieser, and Justin Kerner, by means of whose female seer, von Prevorst, the seeing of visions and the belief in ghosts were once more brought forward. Hahnemann excited the greatest opposition by his system of homoeopathy, which cured diseases by the administration of homogeneous substances in the minutest doses. He was superseded by the cold-water cure. During the last twenty years the naturalists and medical men of Germany have held an annual meeting in one or other of their native cities.

The philologists and savants have for some years past also been in the habit of holding a similar meeting. The classics no longer form the predominant study among philologists. Even literati, whose tastes, like that of Creuzer, are decidedly classic, have acknowledged that the knowledge of the Oriental tongues is requisite for the attainment of a thorough acquaintance with classic antiquity. A great school for the study of the Eastern languages has been especially established under the precedence of the brothers Schlegel, Bopp, and others. The study of the ancient language of Germany and of her venerable monuments has, finally, been promoted by Jacob Grimm and by his widely diffused school.

The study of history became more profound and was extended over a wider field. A mass of archives hitherto secret were rendered public and spread new light on many of the remarkable characters and events in the history of Germany. Historians also learned to compile with less party spirit and on more solid grounds. History, at first compiled in a Protestant spirit, afterward inclined as partially to Catholicism, and the majority of the higher order of historical writers were consequently rendered the more careful in their search after truth. Among the universal historians, Rotteck gained the greatest popularity on account of the extreme liberality of his opinions, and Heeren and Schlosser acquired great note for depth of learning. Von Hammer, who rendered us acquainted with the history of the Mahometan East, takes precedence among the historical writers upon foreign nations. Niebuhr's Roman History, Wilken's History of the Crusades, Leo's History of Italy, Ranke's History of the Popes, etc., have attained well-merited fame.—The history of Germany as a whole, which Germany neither was nor is, was little studied, but an immense mass of facts connected with or referring to Germany was furnished by the numberless and excellent single histories and biographies that poured through the press. All the more ancient collections of script. rerum were, according to the plan of Stein, the celebrated Prussian minister, to be surpassed by a critical work on the sources of German history, conducted by Pertz, which could, however, be but slowly carried out. Grimm, Mone, and Barth threw immense light upon German heathen antiquity, Zeusz upon the genealogy of nations. The best account of the Ostrogoths was written by Manso, of the Visigoths by Aschbach, of the Anglo-Saxons by Lappenberg, of the more ancient Franks by Mannert, Pertz, and Loebell, of Charlemagne by Diebold and Ideler, of Louis the Pious by Funk, of the Saxon emperors by Ranke and his friends, Wachter and Leutsch, of the Salic emperors by Stenzel, of the German popes of those times by Hoefler, of the Hohenstaufen by Raumer, Kortum, and Hurter, of the emperor Richard by Gebauer, of Henry VII. of Luxemburg by Barthold, of King John by Lenz, of Charles IV. by Pelzel and Schottky, of Wenzel by Pelzel, of Sigismund by Aschbach, of the Habsburgs by Kurz, Prince Lichnowsky, and Hormayr, of Louis the Bavarian by Mannert, of Ferdinand I. by Buchholz, of the Reformation by C. A. Menzel and Ranke, of the Peasant War by Sartorius, Oechsle, and Bensen, of the Thirty Years' War by Barthold, of Gustavus Adolphus by Gfroerer, of Wallenstein by Foerster, of Bernhard of Weimar by Roese, of George of Lueneburg by von der Decken. Of the ensuing period by Foerster and Guhrauer, of the Eighteenth Century by Schlosser, of the Wars with France by Clausewitz, of Modern Times by Hormayr.