Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

It was subsequently ascertained that, at this period, Alexander had proposed to Constantine the resignation of his right to the throne; either as the price of his consent to the divorce, or from the common conviction of both, that the succession would only bring evil on Constantine and the empire. That Alexander was perfectly disinterested, is only consonant to his manly nature, and that Constantine had come to a wise decision, is equally probable. He knew his own failings, the haste of his temper, his unpopularity, and the offence which he was in the habit of giving to all classes. He probably, also, had a sufficient dread of the fate of his father, whom, as he resembled in every thing else, he might also resemble in his death. His present position fulfilled all the wishes of a man who loved power without responsibility, and enjoyed occupation without relinquishing his ease. The transaction was complete, and Alexander was tranquillised for the fate of Russia.

When the intelligence of the emperor’s death reached St Petersburg, Nicholas attended the meeting of the Senate, to take the oath of allegiance to Constantine. But they determined that their first act should be the reading of a packet, which had been placed in their hands by Alexander, with orders to be opened immediately on his decease. The president broke the seal, and found documents dated in 1822 and 1823, from Constantine, resigning the right of succession, and from Alexander accepting the resignation. Constantine’s letter stated thus: “Conscious that I do not possess the genius, the talents, or the strength, necessary to fit me for the dignity of sovereign, to which my birth would give me a right, I entreat your imperial majesty to transfer that right to him to whom it belongs, after me; and thus assure for ever the stability of the empire.

“As to myself, I shall add, by this renunciation, a new guarantee and a new force to the engagement which I spontaneously and solemnly contracted on the occasion of my divorce from my first wife. All the circumstances in which I find myself strengthen my determination to adhere to this resolution, which will prove to the empire and to the whole world the sincerity of my sentiments.”

Another of those documents appointed Nicholas as the heir to the throne. The Senate now declared that Nicholas was emperor. But he refused the title, until he had the acknowledgment from Constantine himself, that he had resigned. The suspense continued three weeks. At length the formal renunciation of Constantine was received, Nicholas was emperor, and the day was appointed to receive the oath of allegiance of the great functionaries of the army and of the people. The emperor dated his accession from the day of the death of Alexander, December the 1st, 1825.

The interregnum was honourable to both the brothers; but it had nearly proved fatal to Russia: it unsettled the national feelings, it perplexed the army, and it gave sudden hopes to the conspirators against the throne.

The heads of the conspiracy in St Petersburg were, Sergius, Prince Troubetskoi; Eugene, Prince Obalenskoi, and Conrad Ryleieff. The first was highly connected and highly employed, colonel of the Etat Major, and military governor of Kief. The second was a lieutenant in the imperial guard, poor, but a man of talent and ambition. In Russia all the sons of a prince are princes, which often leaves their rental bare. The third was simply a noble, educated in the corps of cadets, but who had left the army, and had taken the secretaryship of the American company. He was a man of letters, had written some popular poems, and was an enthusiastic republican. Connected with those were some general officers and colonels, whose revolutionary spirit might chiefly be traced to their expulsion from employment, military disgrace, or disappointed ambition. The Russian campaigns in France, and the residence of the army of occupation, under the command of the great English general, had naturally given the Russian troops an insight into principles of national government, which they could not have acquired within the Russian frontier. The pretext of the conspirators was a constitutional government, which the talkers of St Petersburg seemed to regard as the inevitable pouring of sudden prosperity of all kinds into the empire. The old illusion of all the advocates of change is, that every thing depends on government, and that government can do every thing. There cannot be a greater folly, or a more glaring fiction. Government can do nothing more than prevent the existence of obstacles to public wealth. It cannot give wealth, it cannot create commerce, it cannot fertilise the soil, it cannot put in action any of those great instruments by which a nation rises superior to its contemporaries. Those means must be in the people themselves, they cannot be the work of cabinets; governments can do no more than give them their free course, protect them from false legislation, and leave the rest to Providence.

The Russian conspirators called themselves patriots, and professed to desire a bloodless revolution. But to overthrow a government at the head of five hundred thousand men, must be a sanguinary effort; and there could be no doubt that the establishment of a revolutionary government in Russia would have been the signal for a universal war.

On the 24th and 25th of December, the conspirators met in St Petersburg, and as Nicholas was to be proclaimed on the next day, they determined to lead the battalions to which they respectively belonged, into the great square, seize on the emperor, and establish a provisional government. They were then to raise a national guard, establish two legislative chambers, and proclaim liberty to Russia. The question next arose, what was to be done with the members of the imperial family after victory. It was answered significantly, that “circumstances must decide.” At this anxious moment one of the members told them that information had been given to the emperor. “Comrades,” said he, “you will find that we are betrayed, the court are in possession of much information; but they do not know our entire plans, and our strength is quite sufficient.” A voice exclaimed, “the scabbards are broken, we can no longer hide our sabres.”

Reports of various kinds now came crowding on them. An officer arrived to say that, in one of the armies, one hundred thousand men were ready to join them. A member of the Senate came to tell them that the council of the empire was to meet at seven o’clock the next morning, to take the oath to the emperor. The time for action was now fixed. The officers of the guard were directed to join their regiments, and persuade them to refuse the oath. Then all kinds of desperate measures were proposed. It was suggested that they should force open the spirit shops and taverns, in order to make the soldiery and populace drunk, then begin a general pillage, carry off banners from the churches, and rush upon the winter palace. This, the most mischievous of all the measures, was also the most feasible, for the number of unemployed peasants and idlers of all kinds was computed at seventy thousand and upwards, and from their poverty and profligacy together, there could be little doubt that, between drunkenness and the prospect of pillage, they would be ready for any atrocity. “When the Russians break their chains,” says Schiller, “it will not be before the freeman, but before the slave, that the community must tremble.”

It must be acknowledged that some were not equally ferocious. But when a military revolt has once begun, who shall limit it to works of wisdom, moderation, or security? If the revolt had succeeded, St Petersburg must have been a scene of massacre.

We shrink from all details on this painful subject. The conspirators remained in deliberation all night. As the morning dawned, they went to the barracks of their regiments, and told the soldiers that Constantine was really their emperor, that he was marching to the capital at the head of the army from Poland, and that to take the oath to Nicholas would consequently be treason. In several instances they succeeded, and collected a considerable body of troops in the Great Izaak Square. But there they seem to have lost their senses. An insurrection which stands still, is an insurrection ruined. They were rapidly surrounded by the garrison. Terms were offered, which they neither accepted nor refused. The gallant Milarodowitch, the hero of the Russian pursuit of the French, advancing to parley with them, was brutally shot. When all hope of submission was at an end, when the day was declining, and alarm was excited for the condition of the capital during the night, artillery was brought to bear upon them; and, after some firing on both sides, the mutineers dispersed. The police were then let loose, and numerous arrests were made.

In five months after, a high court was constituted for the trial of the leaders. A hundred and twenty-one were named in the act of accusation, many of them belonging to the first families, and in the highest ranks of civil and military employment. But the sentence was the reverse of sanguinary. Only five were put to death in St Petersburg, the remainder were chiefly sent to Siberia. But Siberia is now by no means the place of horrors which it once was. It is now tolerably peopled, it has been partially civilised; the soil is fertile; towns have sprung up; and, though the winter is severe, the climate is healthy. Many of the families of the exiles were suffered to accompany them; and probably, on the whole, the exchange was not a calamitous one, from the anxieties of Russian life, the pressure of narrow circumstances in Europe, and the common disappointments to which all competitors for distinction, or even for a livelihood, are exposed in the crowded and struggling population of the west, to the undisturbed existence and sufficient provision, which were to be found in the east of this almost boundless empire.

Among the anecdotical parts of these volumes, is a slight account of the appearance of the Duke of Wellington as ambassador to Russia, in the beginning of the new reign. Count Nesselrode, on the accession of the Czar, had sent a circular to the European courts, stating his wishes for amicable relations with them all. But England dreaded to see a collision with Turkey, and Canning selected the Duke as the most important authority on the part of England. The Duke took with him Lord Fitzroy Somerset as his secretary. On his arrival at Berlin, he was treated with great distinction by Frederic William. Gneisenau, at the head of the Prussian general officers, paid him a visit in his hotel; and he was fêted in all directions. General officers were sent from St Petersburg to meet him on the Russian frontier. The emperor appointed a mansion for him, beside the palace of the Hermitage, paid him all the honours of a Russian field-marshal, (he was then the _only_ one in the service,) placed him on a footing with the princes of the imperial family, and was frequently in his society. The people were boundless in their marks of respect.

But the Duke is evidently not a favourite with the Frenchman—and we do not much wonder at this feeling in a Frenchman, poor as it is. Without giving any opinion of his own, he inserts a little sneer from the work of Lacretelle on the “Consulate and the Empire.” On this authority, Wellington is “a general of excellent understanding, _phlegmatic_ and _tenacious_, proceeding not by _enthusiasm_, but by _order_, _discipline_, and _slow_ combinations, trusting but little _to chance_, and employing about him all the popular and vindictive passions, from which he himself is _exempt_.” By all which, M. Lacretelle means, that the Duke is a dull dog, without a particle of genius; simply a plodding, positive man, who, by mere toil and time, gained his objects, which any Dutchman could have gained as well, and which any Frenchman would have scorned to gain. With this French folly we have not sufficient time, nor have we sufficient respect for the national _failing_, to argue.

But the true view of Wellington’s character as a soldier would be, _brilliancy_ of conception. What more brilliant conception than his first great battle, Assaye, which finished the Indian war? What more brilliant conception than his capture of Badajoz and Ciudad in the face of the two armies of Masséna and Soult advancing on him from the south and north, and each equal to his own force; while he thus snatched away the prize in the actual presence of each, and left the two French generals the mortification of having marched three hundred miles a-piece, only to be lookers-on? What more brilliant conception than his march of four hundred miles, without a stop, from Portugal to Vittoria; where he crushed the French army, captured one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and sent the French king and all his courtiers flying over the Pyrenees? What, again, more brilliant conception, than his storming the Pyrenees, and being the first of the European generals to enter France? and, finally, his massacre of the French army, with Soult, Ney, and Napoleon at their head, on the crowning day of Waterloo?

But all this was mere “pugnacity and _tenacity_,” and sulkiness and stupidity, because it was not done with a theatrical programme, and with the air of an opera-dancer. Yet M. Lacretelle’s sketch, invidious as he intends it to be, gives, involuntarily, the very highest rank of generalship to its object. For, what higher qualities can a general have, than trusting nothing to chance, being superior to enthusiasm—which, in the French vocabulary, means extravagance and giddiness—and acting by deep and effective combinations, which, as every man knows, are the most profound problems and the most brilliant triumphs of military genius? Let it be remembered, too, that in the seven years’ war of the Peninsula, Wellington never had twenty-five thousand English bayonets in the field; that the Spanish armies were almost wholly disorganised, and that the Portuguese were raw troops; while the French had nearly two hundred thousand men constantly recruited and supplied from France:—Yet, that Wellington never was beaten, that he met either six or seven of the French field-marshals and beat them all; and that at Waterloo, with a motley army of recruits, of whom but thirty thousand were English—and those new troops—and ten thousand German, he beat Napoleon at the head of seventy-two thousand Frenchmen, all veterans; trampled his army in the field, hunted him to Paris, took every fortress on the road, captured Paris, destroyed his dynasty, dissolved the remnants of the French army on the Loire; and sent Napoleon himself to expiate his guilt and finish his career, under an English guard, in St Helena.

We need not envy the Frenchman his taste for “enthusiasm,” his scorn of “science,” his disdain of “profound combinations,” and his passion for winning battles by the magic of a village conjuror.

M. Schnitzler disapproves even of the physiognomy of the Duke. “His nose was too aquiline, and stood out too prominently on his sunburnt countenance, and his features, all strongly marked, were not devoid of an air of pretension.” He objects to his appearing “without a splendid military costume, to _improve his appearance_!” And yet, all this foolery is the wisdom of foreigners. No man, however renowned, must forget “the _imposing_.” Hannibal, or Alexander the Great, would have been nothing in their eyes, except in the uniform of the “Legion of Honour.” His walking, and walking without attendants, through the streets, was a horror, rendered worse and worse by his “wearing a black frock-coat and round hat.” Even when he appeared in uniform on state occasions, “he was equally luckless;” for the _costume_ of a Russian field-marshal, which had been given to him by Alexander, did not fit him, and was too large for his thinness. On the whole, the Duke _failed_, as we are told, to “gain any remarkable success in the Russian salons.” The countesses could make nothing of him; the princesses smiled on without his returning the smile; the courtiers told him _bons mots_ without much effect; and the politicians were of opinion that a Duke so taciturn had no tongue.

Still the emperor’s attentions to him continued; and, on the day of distributing medals to the army, he gave Wellington the regiment of Smolensk, formed by Peter the Great, and of high reputation in the service.

But he succeeded in his chief object, which referred to Greece; and which ultimately, in giving independence to a nation, the classic honours of whose forefathers covered the shame of their descendants,—and by a succession of diplomatic blunders, has turned a Turkish province into a European pensioner, enfeebling Turkey without benefiting Europe, and merely making a new source of contention between France, Russia, and England.

The career of Nicholas has been peaceable; and the empire has been undisturbed but by the guilty Circassian war, which yet seems to be carried on rather as a field of exercise for the Russian armies, than for purposes of conquest.

But all nations now require something to occupy the public mind; and an impression appears to be rising in Russia, that the residence of the sovereign should be transferred to Moscow. Nothing could be more likely to produce a national convulsion, and operate a total change on the European policy of Russia, and the relations of the northern courts. Yet it is by no means improbable, that the singular avidity of the Russian court to make Poland not merely a dependency, but an integral part of the empire, by the suppression of its very name, the change of its language, and the transfer of large portions of its people to other lands, may have for its especial purpose the greater security of Russia on the West, while she fixes her whole interest on a vigorous progress in the South.

There are some problems which still perplex historians, and will probably perplex them for many an age; and among those are, the good or evil predominant in the Crusades, the use of a Pope in Italy, (where he obviously offers, and must _always_ offer, the strongest obstacle to the _union_ of the Italian States into a national government,) the true character of Peter the Great, and the true policy of placing the capital of Russia in the northern extremity of the empire.

It appears to be now at least approaching to a public question,—Whether Peter showed more of good sense, or of savage determination, in building a magnificent city in a swamp, where man had never before built any thing but a fisherman’s hut; and in condemning his posterity for ever to live in the most repulsive climate of Europe? Some pages in these volumes are given to the inquiry into the wisdom of deserting an ancient, natural, and superb seat of empire in the South, for a new, unnatural, and decaying seat of sovereignty in the vicinage of the Arctic circle; of retarding the progress of civilisation by the insuperable difficulties of a climate, where the sea is frozen up for six months in the year, and the rivers and land are frozen up for nine! The question now is, Whether Peter had not equally frozen up the Russian energies, impeded the natural prosperity of the empire, and flung the people back into the age of Ivan I.?

Of course, no one doubts that the Russian empire is of vast extent and substantial power; but its chief power is in its central provinces, and in its faculty of expansion into the south. Its northern provinces defy improvement, and can be sustained only by the toil of government.

The probable view of the case is, that Peter was deluded by his passion for naval supremacy. He had seen the fleets of Western Europe trained in their boisterous but ever-open seas; and he determined to have a fleet in a sea which, throughout the winter, is a sheet of ice, and where the ships are imbedded as if they were on dry ground. He had then no Black Sea for his field of exercise, and no Sebastopol for his dockyard. He touched upon no sea but the Baltic; and, under the infatuation of being a naval power, he threw the Russian government as far as he could towards the North Pole.

Moscow should have remained the Russian capital. With an admirable climate, at once keen enough to keep the human frame in its vigour, and with the warm summer of the south, to supply all the vegetable products of Europe; its position commanding the finest provinces of Western Asia, Russia would have been mistress of the Black Sea a century earlier, had probably been in possession of Asia Minor, and have fixed a Viceroy in the city of the Sultans.

The policy of Catherine II., evidently took this direction; she made no _northern_ conquests; she withdrew her armies on the first opportunity from the Prussian war, in which Russia had been involved by the blunders of her foolish husband; and though she engaged in that desperate act by which Poland was partitioned—an act which, though perfidious, was originally pacific—the whole force of her empire was thrown into southern war.

This policy is still partially maintained. The war of the Caucasus, an unfortunate and unjustifiable war, now exhibits the only hostilities on which Russia expends any portion of her power. The success of that war would evidently put the eastern, as well as the northern shore of the Black Sea, in her possession. The southern shore could then make no resistance, if it were the will of Russia to cast an eye of ambition on the land of the Turk. We by no means infer that such _is_ her will; we hope that higher motives, and a sense of national justice, will rescue her reputation from an act of such atrocity. But Asia Minor, on the first crash of war, would be open to the squadrons of the Scythian. This policy was interrupted in the reign of Alexander only by the French war. When the providential time was come for the destruction of Napoleon, his rage of conquest acted the part for him which the false prophets were accustomed to act for the kings of Judah and Israel. It urged him headlong to his ruin, and all his distinguishing qualities were turned to his overthrow. His ardour in the field became precipitancy; his sagacity became a fierce self-dependence; the old tactic which had led him to strike the first blow at the capitals of Europe, urged him into the heart of the wilderness; his diplomatic confidence there exposed him to be baffled by the plain sense of Russia, and his daring reliance on his fortune stripped him of an army and a throne.

But, when Russia had recovered from this invasion, her first efforts were pointed in the old direction. She recommenced the Turkish war, seized Moldavia and Wallachia, crossed the Balkan, threatened Constantinople, and, with the city of Constantine in her grasp, retired only on the remonstrances of the European powers.

M. Schnitzler imagines that the direction of Russian conquest will be towards Germany, and contemplates the all-swallowing gluttony which is to absorb all the states from the Vistula to the Rhine. We wholly differ from those views. The condition of Europe must be totally changed before the policy of Russia will attempt to make vassals of these iron tribes. It would have too many battles to fight, and too little to gain by them. To attempt the absorption of any one leading German power would produce a universal war. Poland is still a thorn in its side; and it would take a century to convert its intense hostility into cordial obedience. Prussia and Austria are the political “Pillars of Hercules” which no invader _can_ pass; and if Germany can but secure herself from the restless and insatiable ambition of France, she need never shrink from the terrors of a Tartar war.

If war should inflame the Continent again, the Russian trumpets will be heard, _not_ on the Elbe, but on the shores of the Propontis. Asia Minor and Syria will be a lovelier and a more lucrative prey; while probably Egypt will be the prize which will draw to the waters of the Mediterranean, the maritime force of the world.

On the whole, the volumes of this Franco-German are intelligent, and may be studied with advantage by all who desire to comprehend the actual condition of an empire, which extends from the Baltic to the Sea of Kamtschatka, which contains seven millions of square miles, nearly sixty millions of souls, is capable of containing ten times the number, and which is evidently intended to exercise a most important influence on the globe.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A GERMAN HEADSMAN.

(_Das Grosse Malefizbuch._ HERAUSGEGEBEN VON WILHELM V. CHEZY. Landshut: 1847.)

The peculiar and powerful interest attaching to narratives of remarkable crimes, and of their judicial investigation, is abundantly evidenced by the avidity with which that class of literature is invariably pounced upon by the public. Independently of the romance incidental to the subject, of the doubts and intricacies and conflicting circumstances of extraordinary criminal trials, well calculated to captivate the imagination of the vulgar, and rivet attention on their recital,—such cases possess a psychological interest, making itself felt by the least intelligent of readers, appealing with almost equal force to the scantily educated and to the scholar, to inexperienced youth and thoughtful age. By the former, it is true, the exact process by which such narratives lay hold upon the feelings and imagination, may not be easily detected, but the charm, if unseen, is not the less potent. The great success and enduring reputation of books of this kind, are the best proof of their strong and universal fascination. Whilst the legal works of GAYOT DE PITAVAL are long since shelved and forgotten, the title of his _Causes Célébres_[1] continues as familiar to our ear as those of the most notable literary productions of our own century; the book itself—of frequent reference, and found in every library of importance—has obtained the honours of repeated translation, and of reproduction in numerous forms. Those twenty volumes, it might be thought, were an ample supply of this species of reading, sufficient to stock the world and blunt the public appetite for such records. But the varieties of the subject are inexhaustible, as much so as the infinite shades and capricious directions of human passions, the unceasing diversity and perverse ingenuity of human crime. And Richer’s continuation of what Pitaval began, found as eager readers as its compiler could reasonably desire. In later times, two Germans, Messrs Hitzig and Häring, have edited with considerable success a work of a similar nature.[2] Others doubtless will appear. There can be no lack of materials. Each successive half-century yields matter for a new and lengthy series. Meanwhile, and although civilisation, impotent wholly to check crime, is also unable to strip its annals of novelty and pungency, the remarkable criminal records of ruder ages are frequently recurred to and reproduced, as wilder and more romantic in their nature than those of a recent day. Alexander Dumas has collected from various quarters a voluminous work of this nature; and, although its greater portion was already a thrice-told tale, the book is one of the most popular of his multifarious productions. Feuerbach the celebrated jurist, the impartial narrator and critic of the extraordinary history of Caspar Hauser, the indefatigable labourer in the arid vineyard of the law, whose lightest literary pastime would to most men have been toil,[3] deemed it not unworthy his learned pen to collate and comment two volumes of trials,[4]—volumes familiarised to the English reader by a recent translation. His well-stored mind and skilful handling imparted new depth and value to the subject, and doubtless the book would not so long have awaited a transfer into our language, but for the warlike circumstances and interrupted Continental communication of the period at which its first edition appeared. The interest of such narratives is no way diminished from their scene being in a foreign land; indeed, it is most engrossing when exotic, since the illustrations of the peculiar laws and characteristics of other nations is then superadded to that of the eccentricities of crime. And, perhaps, the most fertile field at the disposal of the curious in such matters, is afforded by that wide country, claiming to include in its bond of brotherhood every land wherein the German tongue resounds. The variety of the laws by which the kingdoms and provinces of Germany have at different times been governed, tends greatly to diversify its criminal calendar. And, doubtless, in many old libraries, private and public, in the dusty and rarely-opened book-cases of provincial barons and _Freiherrn_, on the shelves of museums, and in municipal collections (scarce less neglected and unread) of ancient books and manuscripts, much curious reading of this description, well worthy of publicity, lies buried and forgotten.

Footnote 1:

_Causes Célébres et Intéressantes_, by FRANÇOIS GAYOT DE PITAVAL.
Paris: 1734.

Footnote 2:

_Neuer Pitaval._ Leipzig: 1842-6.

Footnote 3:

He beguiled his leisure by a metrical translation of, and commentary
on, the Indian poem, _Gita Gowinda_.

Footnote 4:

_Merkwürdige Criminalrechtsfälle._ ERFURT, 1808-11. A third edition
appeared in 1839, under the title of _Merkwürdige Verbrechen_.

It is from a literary lumber-room of this kind, we suspect, that Mr Chézy has extracted the contents of the three curious volumes now before us, containing, as their old French name implies, details of crimes and malefactors. “What we,” he tells us in his preface, “are wont to call criminal archives, were in many places styled by our forefathers ‘Malefice-books,’ records kept partly by the public executioner, who, in his capacity of torturer, had frequent occasion to share in criminal investigations.” From this passage, and from the expression _herausgegeben_ (edited) in the title-page, we understand that the “_Grosse Malefizbuch_” is not to be viewed as an original composition, which the word _verfasser_, (author) employed in the preface, might have led us to believe. This makes a certain difference in the critical view to be taken of the book. Were it a mere fiction, intended as an imitation of the probable style of the headsman, inditing, chiefly as matter of duty, but yet not without a certain rude feeling and interest in the task, the crimes and circumstances his sanguinary profession brought under his notice, we should admit some skill in the tone adopted. But, as an editor, Mr Chézy has performed his part in a lazy and slovenly fashion. He appears to have contented himself with merely modernising the orthography, and (slightly) the language. With excellent stuff to work upon, he had it in his power to make a very complete and remarkable book: he has been contented to put forward a meagre and deficient one. We would not have had him greatly alter the text. Here and there a little curtailment might have been advantageously practised, or a paragraph judiciously interpolated. But the volumes should have been richly garnished with notes and commentaries, instead of being wholly without them. From the first page to the last not a line appears—at the end of each volume we vainly seek an appendix—explanatory of the singular usages so frequently referred to; referred to usually in as cursory and off-hand a way as if they were matters of present custom, to which all men were still habituated, and concerning which none needed enlightenment. Mr Chézy seems conscious of his fault, for he tells us, in a half apologetic tone, to bear in mind that he is a poet, and not a scholar. No great depth of scholarship was essential for what we would have had him do. A very moderate amount of study and patience would have put him in possession of the necessary information. Its want is wofully felt as we wander through his bald pages, at whose foot not the smallest fragment of a note attracts the reader’s eye, and removes the tantalised feeling with which he encounters distant and unexplained allusions, and is compelled to guess their purport. “This work,” says Mr Chézy, “intended to represent men and circumstances as they once may have been, is not confined within the limits of the documental authority. The Malefizbuch may be styled a poetical Pitaval.” In view of this professed design of poetising his materials, and of conveying, through a romantic medium, information concerning old times and obsolete customs, we can but repeat that the author’s performance has fallen short of his project. But the subject was too good to be wholly spoiled, even by the clumsiest treatment, with which, however, it would hardly be fair to charge Mr Chézy, whose faults are rather of omission than commission. And the anathemas we are tempted, in our progress through his pages, to invoke upon his head, are frequently checked by the occurrence of interesting passages and striking incidents.

The three volumes of the Malefizbuch are various in the form and nature of their contents, although all bear reference to the same subject, and illustrate, in different points of view, the criminal laws and customs of a rude, cruel, and superstitious period. Besides the absence of notes, the author is guilty of the common German carelessness about dates and places, and is often very vague in his indication of both. This is especially the case with his first volume, which many readers will consider the best, by reason of a certain melancholy interest running through it. We are appealed to for our sympathy with the misfortunes of an executioner’s son, who, after absenting himself from his country, and obtaining an education superior to his station, is compelled to accept the loathsome inheritance of his father, and wield axe and work rack in obedience to the law’s stern dictates. This volume (each volume has a special title, independently of the general one) is called “Ten Narratives from Master Hammerling’s Life and Memoirs.” They are chapters rather than detached narratives, for a connecting thread runs through them, and they in fact form a complete history of the childhood and youth of _Meister Hämmerling_, the German Jack Ketch. The name of the latter personage upon an English title-page, would be suggestive of little beyond the drop at Newgate, and penny tracts sold at street corners. But none who have any acquaintance with the German headsman of the middle ages, will be so unjust as to class him with the vulgar and prosaic official who executes in England the last sentence of the law. Formerly, by the laws of the empire, the SCHARFRICHTER was held _ehrbar_ or of honourable repute. The broad bright sword was the only instrument of death he condescended to touch, and consequently his dealings were with men of gentle blood, for whom decapitation was especially reserved. Infamous chastisements were inflicted by the dishonouring hands of the _Henker_ or common hangman, who was considered _anrüchig_ or infamous. Gradually, the two offices were blended in one, the headsman’s privileges were abridged or became totally obsolete; and the grim romance attaching to the stern saturnine man who, on days of notable executions, appeared on the scaffold in bright scarlet mantle, and peaked hat with sable feather, and with one flashing sweep of his terrible blade severed heads from shoulders of well-born criminals, was dissipated and forgotten. Still, on the crowded and diversified canvass of the middle ages, the strange figure stands prominently forth, recalling, by its associations, many a dark deed and wild legend. But the change is great since then. “The executioner now-a-days,” says Mr Chézy, “is a citizen like any body else, an elector and eligible; if he possess enough property, he may be sent as deputy to the second Chamber, and perhaps give his vote against capital punishment. The headsman of former centuries has faded into a tradition; and a poet may therefore be allowed to sketch his portrait once more, perhaps for the last time, in all its different aspects and mysterious horrors.” And without further prelude, we are introduced to the last minister of the law, a meek and melancholy man, who remembers, one still Sabbath morning, that it is his bounden duty to keep up the record in the Malefizbuch, begun by his great-grandfather, the first of his race who could write. Whilst pondering over this necessity, he incidentally recapitulates some of his privileges and advantages; how he is of as good descent after his kind as the best nobleman in the holy Roman empire, tracing back his genealogy to the days of Henry the First of Germany, surnamed the Fowler, who nominated his ancestor to the office of executioner, since when the family has held house and ground, goods and profits, in fief of the crown. And how he is no way subject to the authorities of the land, further than that he is bound to serve them with sword, axe, wheel and cord, with ladder, screws and tongs, pitch, sulphur and rods, either in his own person or by his assistants, as his letter of privileges dictates. Neither is he infamous, like those of his men who remove dead beasts and do such like unclean work; and, whoever addresses him with contemptuous speech, shall be fined according to law of the empire, as if he had insulted a lord of the council. Finally, when the number of unfortunates slain by his hand shall exceed five hundred, the headsman has a right, if it so please him, to abandon his charge, and mix once more upon equal terms with his fellow-citizens. After this recapitulation, Master Hammerling takes up his own history from the day of his birth, when he was laid in his father’s arms as he returned from burning an old witch upon the market-place. This he finds set down in his father’s hand-writing, and also how he was christened by the name of Berthold, on the very day on which Black Hannah, the child-murderess, was executed; whilst her accomplice, long Heinz, was compelled to look on at the execution, and was then flogged out of the town and district. The latter would have been hung, had not the executioner saved him, in virtue of an old privilege, which he exercised less out of love for Heinz than for fear of its becoming annulled by disuse. Had a daughter instead of a son been born to him, he had a right to save the poor girl who had fallen victim to a base seducer. So was it set forth in the headsman’s charter.

Berthold Benz traces back his recollections to a very early period of his childhood, and in his manner of narrating them there is a quaint sad simplicity, by no means unattractive. “My mother, God help her!” he says, “right well do I remember her; and though I should live a hundred and many hundred years, I still shall ever have her before me, with her kindly blue eyes and her ringlets of the same colour as the flax which she drew from the distaff with her slender white fingers, and sent whirling round the spindle. We were always alone; my father went about his affairs, and of the servants none came near us in our apartment, or in our little flower-garden—parted by hedge and fence from the rest of the court—save and except fat Grethel, a sturdy broad-footed Swabian girl, my mother’s cousin, and taken in by her for the love of God.” And Berthold was happy at his mother’s knee, and in his childish fancy deemed the headsman’s hereditary dwelling, with its high surrounding wall, to be little short of a fortress, and held the vaulted sitting-room, with its three narrow windows, at least equal to any hall in the proud castle that towered upon the cliff beyond the stream. But his tranquil happiness lasted not long; the troubles of the doomster’s son had an early beginning. “On a sudden, my dearest mother wept more than she smiled, grew pale and yet paler, weak and still more weak, until at last she was unable to lead me out into the garden. At the same time I ceased to see my father. Neither at meals, nor as formerly, in the chamber, of a morning, was he visible, and however early I got up, the answer to my questions always was that he had already gone out. And one day, Heaven only knows how it happened, dear mother was gone, and when I screamed and wept for her, Swabian Grethel beat me, and said that ‘_she_ was my mother now.’” From this day, Berthold’s sufferings began. Hated by his stepmother, neglected by his father, who was infatuated with his young wife,—he was left to run wild with the executioner’s assistants. After a while, a brother was born, and then his lot became still harder. He was sent to sleep amongst the hay in the loft; and the sole notice he obtained from his father was when the latter instructed him in the duties of his office. But old Benz was a harsh teacher, and the child preferred to receive his lessons from Arnulph, the chief assistant, who took him with him to the town and on rambles in the forest; taught him to sever cabbage-heads at a single stroke, and told him, as they sat together upon the top of the lonely gallows-tree, wonderful tales and strange anecdotes of their craft and its professors. These Berthold drank in with greedy ear; and, although terrified at first by the sight of the grim black gallows, of the mouldering skeletons depending from it, and the ill-omened birds that croaked and hovered around its summit, he soon got used to his ”father’s workshop,“ gladly climbed the ladder to his lofty perch, and enjoyed the terror of the passing horseman whom an unexpected greeting in Arnulph’s harsh voice caused to spur his steed in terror, and hasten on his road. “The Thief’s Thumb,” one of the narratives of this practical joker and hangman, is not without its wild interest, but we cannot dwell upon episodes; our object being rather to exhibit the headsman’s social position and peculiar privileges. One of the latter—and not the least curious—is shown in the chapter headed “Vom Rosenthal,”—from the Valley of Roses—in which Berthold’s adventures may properly be said to begin.

“Regularly each Saturday evening after vespers, my father (now in heaven) went into the town, turned from the market-place into the alley known as the Rosenthal, which winds, narrow and dark, in the direction of the prison and behind St Kummerniss, and struck, at regular intervals, three heavy blows upon the door of a great dark house, bearing the sign of the Elephant. Thereupon, an old woman gave him entrance, ushered him into a spacious arched hall, and placed a wooden stoup of wine and a loaf of bread upon the table. Whilst he ate and drank, a number of young women entered the room, every one of whom handed him a silver coin, sometimes exchanged a word with him, and then walked away in silence. Almost all these women had a strange look, the lustre of their staring eyes was quenched, their features were drawn, their cheeks pale, and their clothes hung loosely upon them; they looked shyly at my father, but kindly at me, as though they would gladly have kissed and caressed me. This, however, as I afterwards found, was strictly forbidden them; and once, when a young girl extended her hand to pat my cheek, my father exclaimed, ‘Away with you, hussy!’ and struck her upon the face. Whereupon the poor girl slunk from the room, bleeding at mouth and nose, and pursued by the laughter of her companions.”

At times, Benz would leave his son in the lower room, whilst he searched the house to see that no strangers were there at that forbidden hour. Then Berthold often heard screams and sounds of quarrel; and one evening that the uproar was greater than usual, he crept in alarm from the apartment, and found his way through the back door into a court, where a few trees grew, and at whose further end was a grass-plot, on which linen lay bleaching. “On the grass, near the fountain, sat a pretty child, keeping the geese and fowls and grunting swine from the bleaching-place, with a long stick, and when she saw me, she smiled kindly at me. I went up to her, took the little maid’s hand, and asked her name.

“‘I am called Elizabeth. And you?’

“‘They call me Benz,’ I replied, and, although Arnulph had constantly warned me never to say who I was, unless asked, I thoughtlessly added: ‘and I am the headsman’s boy.’

“I shuddered at the words as I spoke them, and expected Elizabeth to shrink from me with disgust. Instead of that she said, quite friendly,

“‘Sit down by me, Benz, and help me to watch the linen.’

“I thought myself in heaven; since dear mother had left me, I had never known the joy of a smile from a sweet face. In a moment we two children were the best of friends, sat hand in hand beside each other, laughed and chattered unceasingly, and forgot the whole world besides. I asked little Elizabeth who were her parents. She looked at me in amazement with her great black eyes, knew not what I meant, and was only the more bewildered by my attempted explanation. At last I heard my father’s whistle; kissed my new friend, and ran into the house. On my way home, I told my father what had happened, and he said the little maid was an orphan, whose mother had died in the house, and whom old Sarah had taken charge of. A father, however, she had never had, at least to his knowledge. Thenceforward, I went nowhere so willingly as to the town. I no longer cared that the passengers avoided us, and that boys pursued us with scoff and insult. I knew that a kind greeting and a loving kiss awaited me, and little Elizabeth was soon as dear to me as my blessed mother; so that, in my dreams, their two figures blended into one. It was very different afterwards, when the heavenly purity, in whose full glory my mother had departed, had left Elizabeth for ever.

“Thus, I came to the age of twelve, and grew a tall strong lad, skilful and active; already I was so expert with the sword that with a horizontal cut I sent the blade between blocks piled on each other, and without in the least injuring them. I also tied a noose with a dexterity that filled Arnulph with proud joy, and he declared me fully qualified to officiate upon the scaffold. It happened one day that my father, plagued with the gout, ordered me to go alone to the town, and to fetch the tribute from the well-known house of the Elephant. He made me promise not to let the women caress me, and to lose none of the bright pfennings they had to give me. I obeyed his orders, and brought him home the full amount. But I did not tell him what had happened to me by the way. When the boys, who usually ran after us, saw that I was alone, they ventured much nearer than formerly; and amongst them I particularly remarked a fair-haired lad, who had always been the most spiteful and violent of them all, and whom his companions sometimes called Engolf, sometimes by the nickname of Bully-bird. He was the son of a patrician, of the noble Herr Hahn of Baumgarten, and was somewhat older than myself. This time he followed me to the very threshold of the house, and just as the door was opened he struck at me. I warded his blow, and returned it with one upon the nose, which knocked him down, and gave me time to enter the house.”

Berthold’s persecutors awaited his exit to take their revenge, but he provided himself with a stick for defence, and, moreover, Elizabeth showed him an opening in the garden wall, choked with bushes and rubbish, and leading into a timber-yard, through which he passed unseen, and of which he thenceforward availed himself on his frequent visits to his playfellow. Engolf, however, watched him, and at last, on a certain afternoon, as he turned into the timber-yard, he heard a shout of “Huzza! the hangman’s boy!” and was set upon by a number of lads, from whom he escaped with difficulty, and severely beaten, by the help of Elizabeth, who dragged him into the garden as he fell senseless from a blow on the head. In the house of the Elephant he lay for some time, too ill for removal, carefully tended by his child-mistress, and by the wretched but kind-hearted women. About that period, however, the “Lutheran heresy” had begun to take root in the town, and a certain Dr Neander preached furiously against gambling and drunkenness, and against such establishments as that in which Berthold was confined by his wounds; “against all those things, in short, which, according to old usage and to the emperor’s statutes, paid tribute to the headsman. This pleased the women beyond measure; with yellow envy they had long seen their husbands, lovers, and sons, wager away their fair white _groschen_ at skittles and dice and cards; the headsman‘s daughters in the Rosenthal were a yet sharper thorn in their eyes; and now, supported by the preacher‘s frantic harangues, they raised such an infernal outcry that a noble councillor trod our rights under foot for the sake of peace, forbade all games of chance, and sent his officers to seize the loose women at the Elephant, and put them across the frontier. This occurred just at the time I lay ill in the Rosenthal.” Berthold was carried home to his stepmother, who would not receive him, and Arnulph made him a bed in the hounds’ kennel, for which piece of humanity his violent mistress beat him, and procured his dismissal. And throughout the book we hear no more of the rough but well-meaning journeyman hangman. Berthold’s father came to visit his son and dress his wounds, but the henpecked headsman dared not take him into his house. The poor boy lay suffering and hungry, tormenting himself on account of Elizabeth, whom the authorities had removed from the Rosenthal, and given in charge to people of better repute than those who had had care of her infancy; but who those people were, and where he should seek his little friend, Berthold knew not. And when he recovered, his stepmother and her son ill-treated him, and drove him from their presence; and, Arnulph having left, he had no friend or companion but the shaggy hounds with which he slept.