Chapter XII: Part XXIII: The Latest Times (1)

CCLXIV. The German Confederation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CCLXV. The New Constitutions

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

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

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

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

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

In Wurtemberg, however, as elsewhere, the policy of the government was deeply imbued with the general characteristics of the time. Notwithstanding the constitution, notwithstanding the guarantee given by the federative act, liberty of the press did not exist. List, the deputy from Reutlingen, was, for having ventured to collect subscriptions to petitions, brought before the criminal court, expelled the chamber by his intimidated brother deputies, took refuge in Switzerland, whence he returned to be imprisoned for some time in the fortress of Asberg, and was finally permitted to emigrate to North America, whence he returned at a later period, 1825, in the capacity of consul. Liesching, the editor of the German Guardian, whose liberty of speech was silenced by command of the German confederation, also became an inmate of the fortress of Asberg.

In Hesse and Brunswick, all the old abuses practiced in the petty courts in the eighteenth century were revived. William of Hesse-Cassel returned, on the fall of Napoleon, to his domains. True to his whimsical saying, "I have slept during the last seven years," he insisted upon replacing everything in Hesse exactly on its former footing. In one particular alone was his vanity inconsistent: notwithstanding his hatred toward Napoleon, he retained the title of Prince Elector, bestowed upon him by Napoleon's favor, although it had lost all significance, there being no longer any emperor to elect.[5] He turned the hand of time back seven years, degraded the councillors raised to that dignity by Jerome to their former station as clerks, captains to lieutenants, etc., all, in fact, to the station they had formerly occupied, even reintroduced into the army the fashion of wearing powder and queues, prohibited all those not bearing an official title to be addressed as "Herr," and re-established the socage dues abolished by Jerome. This attachment to old abuses was associated with the most insatiable avarice. He reduced the government bonds to one-third, retook possession of the lands sold during Jerome's reign, without granting any compensation to the holders, compelled the country to pay his son's debts to the amount of two hundred thousand rix-dollars, lowered the amount of pay to such a degree that a lieutenant received but five rix-dollars per mensem, and offered to sell a new constitution to the Estates at the low price of four million rix-dollars, which he afterward lowered to two millions and a tax for ten years upon liquors. This shameful bargain being rejected by the Estates, the constitution fell to the ground, and the prince elector practiced the most unlimited despotism. Discontent was stifled by imprisonment. Two officers, Huth and Rotsmann, who had got up a petition in favor of their class, and the Herr von Gohr, who by chance gave a private fete while the prince was suffering from a sudden attack of illness, were among the victims. The purchasers of the crown lands vainly appealed to the federative assembly for redress, for the prince elector "refused the mediation of the federative assembly until it had been authorized by an organic law drawn up with the co-operation of the prince elector himself."--This prince expired in 1821, and was succeeded by his son, William II., who abolished the use of hair-powder and queues, but none of the existing abuses, and demonstrated no inclination to grant a constitution. He was, moreover, the slave of his mistress, Countess Reichenbach, and on ill terms with his consort, a sister of the king of Prussia, and with his son. Anonymous and threatening letters being addressed to this prince with a view of inducing him to favor the designs of the writer, he had recourse to the severest measures for the discovery of the guilty party; numbers of persons were arrested, and travellers instinctively avoided Cassel. It was at length discovered that Manger, the head of the police, a court favorite, was the author of the letters.

Similar abuses were revived by the house of Brunswick. It is unhappily impossible to leave unmentioned the conduct of Caroline, princess of Brunswick, consort to the Prince of Wales, afterward George IV., king of England. Although this German princess had the good fortune to be protected by the Whig party and by the people against the king and the Tory ministry, she proved a disgrace to her supporters by the scandalous familiarity in which she lived in Italy with her chamberlain, the Italian, Pergami. The sympathy with which she was treated at the time of the congress was designedly exaggerated by the Whigs for the purpose of giving the greatest possible publicity to the errors of the monarch. Caroline of Brunswick was declared innocent and expired shortly after her trial, in 1821.

Charles, the hereditary duke of Brunswick, son to the duke who had so gallantly fallen at Quatrebras, was under the guardianship of the king of England. A constitution was bestowed in 1820 upon this petty territory, which was governed by the minister, Von Schmidt-Phiseldek. The youthful duke took the reins of government in his nineteenth year. Of a rash and violent disposition and misled by evil associates, he imagined that he had been too long restricted from assuming the government, accused his well-deserving minister of having attempted to prolong his minority, posted handbills for his apprehension as a common delinquent, denied all his good offices, and subverted the constitution. He was surrounded by base intriguers in the person of Bosse, the councillor of state, formerly the servile tool of Napoleon's despotism, of Frike, the Aulic councillor, "whose pliant quill was equal to any task when injustice had to be glossed over," of the adventurer, Klindworth, and of Bitter, the head of the chancery, who conducted the financial speculations. Frike, in contempt of justice, tore up the judgment passed by the court of justice in favor of the venerable Herr von Sierstorff, whom he had accused of high treason. Herr von Cramm, by whom Frike was, in the name of the Estates, accused of this misdemeanor before the federative assembly, was banished, a surgeon, who attended him, was put upon his defence, and an accoucheur, named Grimm, who had basely refused to attend upon Cramm's wife, was presented with a hundred dollars. Häberlin, the novelist, who had been justly condemned to twenty years' imprisonment with hard labor for his civil misdemeanors, was, on the other hand, liberated for publishing something in the duke's favor. Bitter conducted himself with the most open profligacy, sold all the demesnes, appropriated the sum destined for the redemption of the public debt, and at the same time levied the heavy imposts with unrelenting severity. The federative assembly passed judgment against the duke solely in reference to his attacks upon the king of England.

[Footnote 1: The king bitterly reproached his brother Henry, to whom he said, "You have accused me to my peasantry."--_Pfister History of the Constitution of Würtemberg._]

[Footnote 2: Pfister mentions in his History of the Constitution of Wurtemberg that merely in the superior bailiwick of Heidenheim the game duties amounted, in 1814, to twenty thousand florins, and five thousand two hundred and ninety-three acres of taxed ground lay uncultivated on account of the damage done by the game, and that in March, 1815, one bailiwick was obliged to furnish twenty-one thousand five hundred and eighty-four men and three thousand two hundred and thirty-seven horses for a single hunt.]

[Footnote 3: Colonel von Massenbach, of the Prussian service, who has so miserably described the battle of Jena and the surrender of Prentzlow in which he acted so miserable a part, and who had in his native Würtemberg embraced the aristocratic party, was delivered by the free town of Frankfort, within whose walls he resided, up to the Prussian government, which he threatened to compromise by the publication of some letters. He died within the fortress of Cüstrin.]

[Footnote 4: The mediatized princes and counts of the empire sat in the first chamber, the barons of the empire in the second. The prelates, once so powerful, lost, on the other hand, together with the church property, in the possession of which they were not reinstated, also most of their influence. Instead of the fourteen aristocratic and independent prelates, six only were appointed by the monarch to seats in the second chamber. Government officers were also eligible in this chamber, which ere long fell entirely under their influence.]

[Footnote 5: He endeavored, but in vain, to persuade the allied powers to bestow upon him the royal dignity.]

CCLXVI. The European Congress--The German Customs' Union

The great political drama enacting in Europe excited at this time the deepest attention throughout Germany. In almost every country a struggle commenced between liberalism and the measures introduced on the fall of Napoleon. In France more particularly it systematically and gradually undermined the government of the Bourbons, and the cry of liberty that resounded throughout France once more found an echo in Germany.

The terrible war was forgotten. The French again became the objects of the admiration and sympathy of the radical party in Germany, and the spirit of opposition, here and there demonstrated in the German chambers, gave rise, notwithstanding its impotence, to precautionary measures on the part of the federative governments. In the winter of 1819, a German federative congress, of which Prince Metternich was the grand motor, assembled at Vienna for the purpose, after the utter annihilation of the patriots, of finally checking the future movements of the liberals, principally in the provincial diets. The Viennese Act of 1820 contains closer definitions of the Federative Act, of which the more essential object was the exclusion of the various provincial diets from all positive interference in the general affairs of Germany, and the increase of the power of the different princes vis-à-vis to their provincial diets by a guarantee of aid on the part of the confederates.

During the sitting of this congress, on New Year's Day, 1820, the liberal party in Spain revolted against their ungrateful sovereign, Ferdinand VII., who exercised the most fearful tyranny over the nation that had so unhesitatingly shed its blood in defence of his throne. This example was shortly afterward followed by the Neapolitans, who were also dissatisfied with the conduct of their sovereign. Prince Metternich instantly brought about a congress at Troppau. The czar, Alexander, who had views upon the East and was no stranger to the heterarchical party which, under the guidance of Prince Ypsilanti, prepared a revolution in Greece (which actually broke out) against the Turks, was at first unwilling to give his assent unconditionally to the interference of Austria, but on being, in 1821, to his great surprise, informed by Prince Metternich of the existence of a revolutionary spirit in one of the regiments of the Russian guard, freely assented to all the measures proposed by that minister.[1] The new congress held at Laibach, in 1821, was followed by the entrance of the Austrians under Frimont into Italy. The cowardly Neapolitans fled without firing a shot, and the Piedmontese, who unexpectedly revolted to Frimont's rear, were, after a short encounter with the Austrians under Bubna at Novara, defeated and reduced to submission. The Greeks, whom Russia now no longer ventured openly to uphold, had, in the meantime, also risen in open insurrection. The affairs of Spain were still in an unsettled state. The new congress held at Verona, in 1822, however, decided the fate of both these countries. Prince Hardenberg, the Prussian minister, expired at Genoa on his return home, and Lord Castlereagh, the English ambassador, cut his throat with his penknife, in a fit of frenzy, supposed to have been induced by the sense of his heavy responsibility. At this congress the principle of legitimacy was maintained with such strictness that even the revolt of the Greeks against the long and cruel tyranny of the Turks was, notwithstanding the _Christian spirit of the Holy Alliance_ and the political advantage secured to Russia and Austria by the subversion of the Turkish empire, treated as rebellion against the legitimate authority of the Porte and strongly discouraged. A French army was, on the same grounds, despatched with the consent of the Bourbon into Spain, and Ferdinand was reinstated in his legitimate tyranny in 1823. Russia, in a note addressed to the whole of the confederated states of Germany, demanded at the same time a declaration on their parts to the effect that the late proceedings of the great European powers at Verona "were in accordance with the well-understood interests of the people." Every member of the federative assembly at Frankfort gave his assent, with the exception of the Freiherr von Wangenheim, the envoy from Wurtemberg, who declaring that his instructions did not warrant his voting upon the question, the ambassadors from the two Hesses made a similar declaration. This occasioned the dismissal of the Freiherr von Wangenheim; and the illegal publication of a Wurtemberg despatch, in which the non-participation of the German confederation in the resolutions passed by the congresses, to which their assent was afterward demanded, was treated of, occasioned a second dismissal, that of Count Winzingerode, the Wurtemberg minister. In the July of 1824, the federal diet resolved to give its support to the monarchical principle in the constitutional states, and to maintain the Carlsbad resolutions referring to censorship and to the universities. The Mayence committee remained sitting until 1828.

On the sudden decease of Alexander, the czar of all the Russias, amid the southern steppes, a revolution induced by the nobility broke out at Petersburg, but was suppressed by Alexander's brother and successor, the emperor Nicholas I. Nicholas had wedded Charlotte, the eldest daughter of the king of Prussia. This energetic sovereign instantly invaded Persia and rendered that country dependent upon his empire without any attempt being made by the Tory party in England and Austria to hinder the aggrandizement of Russia, every attack directed against her being regarded as an encouragement to liberalism. Russia consequently seized this opportunity to turn her arms against Turkey, and, in the ensuing year, a Russian force under Count Diebitsch, a Silesian, crossed the Balkan (Haemus) and penetrated as far as Adrianople; while another corps d'armée under Count Paskiewicz, advanced from the Caucasus into Asia Minor and took Erzerum. The fall of Constantinople seemed near at hand, when Austria and England for the first time intervened and declared that, notwithstanding their sympathy with the absolute principles on which Russia rested, they would not permit the seizure of Constantinople. France expressed her readiness to unite with Russia and to fall upon the Austrian rear in case troops were sent against the Russians.[2] Prussia, however, intervened, and General Muffling was dispatched to Adrianople, where, in 1829, a treaty was concluded, by which Russia, although for the time compelled to restore the booty already accumulated, gained several considerable advantages, being granted possession of the most important mountain strongholds and passes of Asia Minor, a right to occupy and fortify the mouths of the Danube so important to Austria, and to extend her aegis over Moldavia and Wallachia.

In the midst of this wretched period, which brought fame to Russia and deep dishonor upon Germany, there still gleamed one ray of hope; the Customs' Union was proposed by some of the German princes for the more intimate union of German interests.

Maximilian of Bavaria, a prince whose amiable manners and character rendered him universally beloved, expired in 1825. His son, Louis, the foe to French despotism, a German patriot and a zealous patron of the arts, declared himself, on his coronation, the warm and sincere upholder of the constitutional principle and excited general enthusiasm. His first measures on assuming the government were the reduction of the royal household and of the army with a view to the relief of the country from the heavy imposts, the removal of the university of Landshut to Munich, and the enrichment on an extensive scale of the institutions of art. The union of the galleries of Düsseldorf and Mannheim with that of Munich, the collection of valuable antiques and pictures, for instance, that of the old German paintings collected by the brothers Boisserée in Cologne during the French usurpation, the academy of painting under the direction of the celebrated Cornelius, the new public buildings raised by Klenze, among which the Glyptothek, the Pinakothek, the great Königsbau or royal residence, the Ludwigschurch, the Auerchurch, the Arcades, etc., may be more particularly designated, rendered Munich the centre of German art. This sovereign also founded at Ratisbon the Walhalla, a building destined for the reception of the busts of all the celebrated men to whom Germany has given birth. The predilection of this royal amateur for classic antiquity excited within his bosom the warmest sympathy with the fate of the modern Greeks, then in open insurrection against their Turkish oppressors, and whom he alone, among all the princes of Germany, aided in the hour of their extremest need.--With the same spirit that dictated his poems, in which he so repeatedly lamented the want of unity in Germany, he was the first to propose the union of her material interests. Germany unhappily resembled, and indeed immediately after the war of liberation, as De Pradt, the French writer, maliciously observed, even in a mercantile point of view, a menagerie whose inhabitants watched each other through a grating. Vainly had the commercial class of Frankfort on the Maine presented a petition, in 1819, to the confederation, praying for free trade, for the fulfilment of the nineteenth article of the federal act. Their well-grounded complaint remained unheard. The non-fulfilment of the treaty relating to the free navigation of the Rhine to the sea was most deeply felt. In the first treaty concluded at Paris, the royal dignity and the extension of the Dutch territory had been generously granted to the king of the Netherlands under the express proviso of the free navigation of the Rhine to the sea. The papers relating to this transaction had been drawn up in French, and the ungrateful Dutch perfidiously gave the words "jusqu' à la mer" their most literal construction, merely "as far as the sea," and as the French, moreover, possessed a voice in the matter on account of the Upper Rhine, and the German federal states were unable to give a unanimous verdict, innumerable committees were held and acts were drawn up without producing any result favorable to the trade of Germany.

Affairs stood thus, when, shortly after Louis's accession to the throne of Bavaria, negotiations having for object the settlement of a commercial treaty took place between him and William, king of Wurtemberg. This example was imitated by Prussia, which at first merely formed a union with Darmstadt; afterward by Hesse, Hanover, Saxony, etc., by which a central German union was projected. This union was, however, unable to stand between that of Wurtemberg and Bavaria, and that of Prussia and Darmstadt. The German Customs' Union was carried into effect in 1888. An annual meeting of German naturalists had at that time been arranged under the auspices of Oken, the great naturalist, and at the meeting held at Berlin, in 1888, the Freiherr von Cotta, by whom the moral and material interests of Germany have been greatly promoted, drew up the first plan for a junction of the commercial union of Southern Germany with that of the North, as the first step to the future liberation of Germany from all internal commercial restrictions. The zeal with which he carried this great plan into effect gained the confidence of the different governments, and he not only succeeded in combining the two older unions, but also in gradually embodying with them the rest of the German states.

The attachment of King Louis to ancient Catholicism was extremely remarkable. He began to restore some of the monasteries, and several professors inclined to Ultramontanism and to Catholic mysticism, the most distinguished among whom was Görres, the Prussian exile, assembled at the new university at Munich. Here and there appeared a pious enthusiast. Shortly after the restoration, a peasant from the Pfalz named Adam Müller began to prophesy, and Madame von Krudener, a Hanoverian, to preach the necessity of public penance; both these persons gained the ear of exalted personages, and Madame von Krudener more particularly is said not a little to have conduced to the piety displayed by the emperor Alexander during the latter years of his life. At Bamberg, Prince Alexander von Hohenlohe, then a young man, had the folly to attempt the performance of miracles, until the police interfered, and he received a high ecclesiastical office in Hungary. In Austria, the Ligorians, followers in the footsteps of the Jesuits, haunted the vicinity of the throne. The conversion of Count Stolberg and of the Swiss, Von Haller, to the Catholic church, created the greatest sensation. The former, a celebrated poet, simple and amiable, in no way merited the shameless outbursts of rage of his old friend, Voss; Haller, on the other hand, brought forward in his "Restoration of Political Science" such a decided theory in favor of secession as to inspire a sentiment of dread at his consistency. The conversion of Ferdinand, prince of Anhalt-Köthen, to the Catholic church, in 1825, excited far less attention.

In France, where the Bourbons were completely guided by the Jesuits, by whose aid they could alone hope to suppress the revolutionary spirit of their subjects, the reaction in favor of Catholicism had assumed a more decided character than in Germany. Louis XVIII. was succeeded by his brother, the Count d'Artois, under the name of Charles X., a venerable man seventy years of age, who, notwithstanding his great reverses, had "neither learned nor forgotten anything." Polignac, his incapable and imperious minister, the tool of the Jesuits, had, since 1829, impugned every national right, and, at length, ventured by the ordinances of the 25th July, 1830, to subvert the constitution. During three days, from the 27th to the 30th of July, the greatest confusion reigned in Paris; the people rose in thousands; murderous conflicts took place in the streets between them and the royal troops, who were driven from every quarter, and the king was expelled. The chambers met, declared the elder branch of the house of Bourbon (Charles X., his son, the Dauphin, Duke d'Angouleme, and his grandson, the youthful Duke de Bordeaux, the son of the murdered Duke de Berri) to have forfeited the throne, but at the same time allowed them unopposed to seek an asylum in England, and elected Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, the son of the notorious Jacobin, the head of the younger line of the house of Bourbon and the grand-master of the society of Freemasons, king of the French. The rights of the chambers and of the people were also extended by an appendix to the charta signed by Louis XVIII.

The revolution of July was the signal for all discontented subjects throughout Europe to gain, either by force or by legal opposition, their lost or sighed-for rights. In October, the constitutional party in Spain attempted to overturn the despotic rule of Ferdinand VII. In November, the prime minister of England, the renowned Duke of Wellington, was compelled by the people to yield his seat to Earl Grey, a man of more liberal principles, who commenced the great work of reform in the constitution and administration of Great Britain. During this month, a general insurrection took place in Poland: the grandduke, Constantine, was driven out of Warsaw, and Poland declared herself independent. A great part of Germany was also convulsed: and a part of the ill-raised fabric, erected by the statesmen of 1815, fell tottering to the ground.

[Footnote 1: Vide Binder's Prince Metternich.]

[Footnote 2: Official report of the Russian ambassador, Count Pozzo di Borgo, from Paris, of the 14th of December, 1828.]

CCLXVII. The Belgian Revolution

A nation's self-forgetfulness is ever productive of national disgrace. The Netherlands were torn from the empire and placed partly beneath the tyranny of Spain, partly beneath the aegis of France; the dominion of Austria, at a later period, merely served to rouse their provincial spirit, and, during their subsequent annexation to France, the French element decidedly gained the ascendency among the population. When, in 1815, these provinces fell under the rule of Holland, it was hoped that the German element would again rise. But Holland is not Germany. Estranged provinces are alone to be regained by means of their incorporation with an empire imbued with one distinct national spirit; the subordination of one province to another but increases national antipathy and estrangement. Holland, by an ungrateful, inimical policy, unfortunately strove to separate herself from Germany.[1] And yet Holland owes her whole prosperity to Germany. There is her market; thence does she draw her immense wealth; the loss of that market for her colonial productions would prove her irredeemable ruin. Her sovereign, driven into distant exile, was restored to her by the arms of Germany and generously endowed with royalty. Holland, in return for all these benefits, deceitfully deprived Germany of the free navigation of the Rhine to the sea guaranteed to her by the federal act and assumed the right of fixing the price of all goods, whether imported to or exported from Germany. The whole of Germany was, in this unprecedented manner, rendered doubly tributary to the petty state of Holland.

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