Chapter III: The Devastation of the Palatinate

Death of the Elector Philip Wilhelm.--Louis XIV. seeks the
Electorate for His Sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orleans.--He
invades the Palatinate.--Louvois the King’s Secretary of
War.--His atrocious Order.--Burning of a Score of Cities
and Towns in the Palatinate.--The Palatinate overrun and
Devastated by the French.--William III. of England succors the
Palatines.--Imperial Germany also acts.--Persecutions By Louvois,
Tesse, and Duras.--Heidelberg sacked and Burned.--Its Inhabitants
expelled.--Peace and the Treaty of Ryswick.--The War of the Spanish
Succession.--German Emigration to America begins.--Causes of German
Emigration.

We have now reached a period in the history of the Palatinate, when a recital of the events which transpired there, will show the chief reasons for the large emigration of the Palatines to America, of whom the province of Pennsylvania received by far the larger number.

Upon the death of the Elector Philip Wilhelm, in 1688, John Wilhelm, his eldest son, became the lawful successor to the Electorate. Louis XIV. of France undertook to usurp the Electorate for his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orleans.

In the autumn of 1688, there began a chapter in the history of the Palatinate which has no parallel in the history of the world, for savage brutality, and the atrocities perpetrated by the French soldiers, with the approbation, and under the direction of the French monarch. The invasion of the Palatinate was attended by such monstrous crimes, that a belief in them taxes the credulity of mankind, notwithstanding the barbarities of the Turks in these later days. No war was ever waged with such ferocity, as characterized the French attempt to subjugate the Palatinate.

In September, 1688, Louis entered on his campaign of invasion, and in less than two months from that time, the whole of the Palatinate was overrun by his soldiers, under Louvois, Bouffiers, and Marshal de Duras. The whole country was pillaged, and made desolate; towns and cities were laid in ashes, and more than one hundred thousand of the inhabitants murdered. The descent of the French troops into the Palatinate came unexpectedly, and was made with such suddenness, as to give no chance to arrest the progress of the invaders. After Louis had set up the claims of the Duchess of Orleans, and promised to sustain her pretensions by force of arms, the German government determined to sustain the lawful elector’s just claim. But the imperial government was weak, without being prepared to come speedily to the aid of the lawful prince, while the Palatines were able to make but feeble resistance against the invaders, who soon overwhelmed the people, and more than a score of beautiful cities and towns, fell into the hands of Louis’ ferocious soldiers, to which they applied the torch, and the sword to the inhabitants, none of whom were spared,--not even the women and children.

The spirit which controlled the soldiers of the French king can be judged, by the order which Louvois made to his subordinates in command: to “seek people in the country capable of setting fire to houses at night, in order that places too remote to be reached by troops, might nevertheless submit through fear, to the levy of contributions.”

While the work of destruction was going on, the crafty Louis succeeded in involving the imperial government, under an incompetent prince in a war with Austria. To still further make the German government impotent to succor the Palatines, Louis succeeded in creating a war feeling against the German ruler, on the part of the Hungarians and the Turks, who threatened to invade the very heart of Germany. Those conditions compelled the imperial government to devote its attentions to the threatenings of Hungary and Austria, while the Palatines were left to take care of themselves. Being too weak to resist the overwhelming power of the French soldiers, they fell an easy prey to their ferocity, notwithstanding they made a heroic struggle in defence of their homes and firesides.

While the Palatines on both sides of the Rhine, had thus fallen under the cruel yoke of the French sovereign and his brutal tyranny, and those who still remained for victims of the fury of the French soldiers, were ready to surrender in hopeless despair, there came a ray of shining hope from England, which promised relief to the Palatines who had escaped death at the hands of the brutal minions of Louis XIV.

James II. of England had just then abdicated the English throne and fled the country, when William of Orange was made king of England. Soon after his accession, this generous prince began to turn his attention, to the suffering and persecuted people of the Palatinate. His first step towards their relief was a declaration of war against Louis. William soon found his efforts seconded, by the greater part of Europe entering into a league against the French king. When the Palatines learned what the English king intended doing for their relief, their rejoicings were unbounded, and they gathered new hope, and new courage in their efforts to break the French power. At the same time there were many happenings in Europe, which caused fresh complications; all of which operated against Louis. England, Holland, Spain and the Scandinavian states all combined against him. With such an array of force united against the French tyrant, the imperial government of Germany was aroused to new action, in defence of the Palatinate, and it began to look as if Louis was doomed. He was undaunted, however, and prepared to enter on several new campaigns with renewed vigor. Notwithstanding his crimes in the Palatinate, he was able to raise large accessions to his army in Germany. The threatening attitude of the European powers, made Louis more cautious in his future movements, and he decided on a defensive war in the Palatinate thenceforth, while he in order to head off the English king in his determination to relieve the Palatines, hastened to take steps to invade Ireland, as the best means by which to embarrass William. In this new enterprise Louis found that he needed more troops than he had at his disposal; for a large portion of his troops were required to garrison the places in the Palatinate which had already fallen into the hands of his soldiers. But the cruel genius of so great a monster as Louis, did not require much deliberation to find a way out of the difficulty. The scheme entered upon by Louis and his generals, has been characterized by an eminent French historian, as one which has “sullied with an ineffaceable stain the reign of Louis the Great.”

For an account of the atrocities perpetrated in the execution of the scheme determined upon, we will here let the French historian, Henri Martin, tell the story:

It was impossible to furnish garrisons to all places recently
conquered, or rather invaded, without renewing with more dangerous
consequences, the mistake of 1672. The advanced posts of Wurtemberg
had already been abandoned--somewhat precipitately in January, 1689.
Louvois counselled the king, utterly to destroy the cities that
could not be held, so that the posts from which the king’s troops
should retire might henceforth serve no one. Louis after some
hesitation, gave his signature to this expedient, worthy of Tartar
conquerors. They began with the trans-Rhenish Palatinate. Laudenberg
and Heidelberg were burned, after the inhabitants had been warned
to leave with their families, their cattle and their furniture. The
castle of Heidelberg, the residence of the Elector-Palatine, was
sapped and blown up; its beautiful ruins are still to posterity a
living testimony of Louvois’ fury. The mills, the bridges, all the
public buildings, were torn down; the whole city was set on fire.
Tesse, the executioner of this infernal work (he was nevertheless
one of the leaders of the dragonades) had not the heart to see
more, or drive the unfortunate inhabitants from among the ruins of
their city. He left with his soldiers. The citizens extinguished
the conflagration behind him, and called to their aid the German
troops, who fortified themselves in the ruins of the castle. On the
news of this, Louvois became furious that Heidelberg had not been
entirely burned and destroyed, ordered that Mannheim should not
only be burned, but that not one stone should be left on another,
(March, 1689). Of the new conquests beyond the Rhine, Philippsburg
alone was preserved. As to the countries on the left bank, the
French contended themselves at first with dismantling the cities and
blowing up the fortifications belonging to the Palatinate, and the
electorates of Mayence and Treves, save Mayence which was made an
important stronghold. But when the hostile forces began to threaten
Mayence, the chief of the French army of the Rhine, Marshal Duras,
proposed to the king and the minster a frightful resolution, namely,
to destroy, not only the burghs and villages which might facilitate
an attack on Mayence, but all the towns in the neighborhood of the
Rhine between Mayence and Philippsburg. The fatal word given, Duras
became terrified at it himself, and wished to recede from what he had
proposed. Louvois did not allow his prey to be thus snatched from
him! He caused the king to order the Marshal to consummate the deed!
Speyer, Worms, Oppenheim, Bingen Frankenthal were condemned to the
flames. Franchises and privileges were offered to the magistrates
for such as would be willing to emigrate to Lorraine, Alsace,
Franche-Comte, with means of transport for their household goods.
Those who should refuse might transport their goods to fortified
towns belonging to the king, but not among enemies. Thus even the
consolation of taking refuge among their countrymen was refused
them. This was monstrous; its exaction worse. It is only too easy to
conceive all the license and rapacity of the soldiers must have added
to those of desolation.

It had been desired that the celebrated cathedrals of Worms and
Speyer, as well as the episcopal palaces, and the effects that the
inhabitants had not been able to carry away, but had been collected
there be saved, but the fire reached the churches, and burned
whatever could be burned (end of May, beginning of June). This
beautiful country which the middle ages had adorned with so many
religious and military monuments, presented only a mass of smoking
ruins, as if a new Attila had passed over Gaul and Germany. One
hundred thousand unfortunates driven from their homes, in flames,
demanded vengeance from all Germany, from all Europe, and raised
against the great king an indignation, still more general than that
which had been raised against the French refugees. The people of the
Rhine whom nature has attached by so many ties to France, vowed a
long and implacable resentment against its government, which was to
be extinguished only with the monarchy of Louis XIV. in the presence
of a new France.

One other historian in speaking of the cruelties perpetrated by the French soldiers says: “The elector beheld from his castle at Mannheim two cities and twenty-five towns in flames, where lust and rapine walked hand in hand with fire and sword.” Another records that while the burning of cities and towns was in progress, and the country was being turned into a desert, the defenceless inhabitants begging for mercy on their bended knees, were stripped naked and driven into the fields in mid-winter, where they perished in the snow from hunger and cold.

The atrocities here recounted raised the indignation of all the rulers of Europe to the highest pitch, and resolved on an offensive and defensive treaty against the French, and determined that they would not lay down their arms until the French king was humbled, and all his conquests taken from him. Affairs in Europe favored the scheme of the princes now allied against Louis, because the latter was beginning to have much more on hand than he was able to attend to. He had the war of the Spanish succession on hand; he was bent on restoring James II. to the throne of England, all of which enterprises weakened him in the Palatinate, because many of his troops had to be withdrawn from there, because they were needed elsewhere, while the German princes entered with renewed vigor on the work of expelling the French armies from German soil. Such were the conditions in the fall of 1689. The German troops wintered in the Palatinate, although that country had been made almost inhabitable by the ravages of the French armies. The French remained in Alsace and Lorraine during the winter. When spring opened the war in the Palatinate was renewed with still greater ferocity on the part of the French. Here let the impartial French chronicler again tell the story:

Louvois was not yet satiated with devastation. After the loss of
Mayence, he would have gladly inflicted the fate of Worms and
Speyer on a much more illustrious city. He proposed to the king to
burn Treves. Louis when the question had arisen of annihilating
the towns on the Rhine, was at first fascinated by the kind of
terrible grandeur that such a destruction of power manifests; but
the remorse was not slow to awaken in his soul; he recoiled before
the new outrage. Louvois warmly repulsed, returned to the charge.
Some days afterwards he audaciously declared to Louis, that he had
taken the responsibility on himself and had sent the order. The king
transported with rage, raised his hand against the minister. Madame
Maintenon threw herself between the two; Louis commanded Louvois to
hasten to countermand the order, or his head should answer for a
single house burned. The order had not gone; Louvois had sought to
compel assent of the king by announcing the thing done.

It would seem therefore that the enormity of the crimes committed by his soldiers was at last beginning to make an impression on his cruel heart. The following year, in 1690, the war along the Rhine was renewed, and carried on with varying success. The ravages of the French soldiers continued, wherever there was anything left to ravage and destroy. New horrors continued to be enacted. Heidelberg was again sacked in 1693, and once more given up to the flames. This time the entire population was expelled, and the people left without clothing or provisions. There was no letting up of these outrages by the French until the year 1697, when peace came with the Treaty of Ryswick in September of that year, to which France, England, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany were parties.

From this time on, the Palatinate ceased to be the special object of vengeance of the French, but it continued to be the battlefield of other European wars. It will be seen how difficult it was for the Palatines to repair the ruin wrought by the soldiers of Louis XIV. The Palatines despaired of being ever freed from the horrors of war, or the tramp of invading armies. They began to look for homes elsewhere. Many of them had scattered to other parts of Germany; some went beyond, and sought homes in Holland, and in other parts of Europe. The new province of William Penn was brought to the attention of the troubled Palatines, and it was not long before the exodus across the sea began. The wars which still continued to ravage the Palatinate, stimulated the emigration to America.

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The war of the Spanish succession broke out in 1701, and continued until the peace of Utrecht in 1713. During the continuance of that war the Palatinate was repeatedly overrun by hostile armies, and the land laid waste. It was during those years, that the emigration from the Palatinate to Penn’s province began in earnest, and by the end of the war many thousands had found new homes in Pennsylvania, who formed a nucleus around which many thousands more gathered in the coming years.

In 1715 Louis XIV. died. Frenchmen have embalmed the memory of this great butcher as “Le Grande Monarch,” but the rest of the world execrates his memory, for the crimes of his soldiers in the Palatinate, perpetrated by his approval. He was succeeded by Louis XV., who in turn plunged France into a new war with Saxony, Russia and Austria. In 1740 a general European war began, which involved the Austrian succession. It continued for eight years, when it came to an end with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1750 war broke out between Prussia and Austria, which involved England and France. During all these wars, the Palatinate furnished their camping grounds and battlefields. No sooner had the people started to repair the ruin made by hostile armies, than their fields were again laid waste by a new war.

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We now understand what the causes were which led to the great exodus of German Palatines to America. Life in their own country became intolerable and Penn’s province offered them an asylum.