Part 2 (1/2)
[Footnote 7: Forster was so blinded at that time by his enthusiasm that he wrote, ”all of those among us who refuse the citizens.h.i.+p of France are to be expelled the city, even if complete depopulation should be the result.” He relates: ”I summoned, at Grunstadt, the Counts von Leiningen to acknowledge themselves citizens of France.
They protested against it, caballed, instigated the citizens peasantry to revolt; one of my soldiers was attacked and wounded. I demanded a reinforcement, took possession of both the castles, and placed the counts under guard. To-day I sent them with an escort to Landau. This has been a disagreeable duty, but we must reduce every opponent of the good cause to obedience.”]
[Footnote 8: Where the weak garrison left by the French was disarmed by the workmen.]
[Footnote 9: Either the Prussian minister who afterward gained such celebrity or one of his relations.]
[Footnote 10: Here Skekuly forced the German clubbists, with the lash, to cut down the tree of liberty.]
[Footnote 11: Forster wrote from Paris, ”Suspicion hangs over every foreigner, and the essential distinctions which ought to be made in this respect are of no avail.” Thus did nature, by whom nations are eternally separated, avenge herself on the fools who had dreamed of universal equality.]
[Footnote 12: Cloots had incessantly preached war, threatened all the kings of the earth with destruction, and, in his vanity, had even set a price upon the head of the Prussian monarch. His object was the union of the whole of mankind, the abolition of nationality. The French were to receive a new name, that of ”Universel.” He preached in the convention: ”I have struggled during the whole of my existence against the powers of heaven and earth. There is but one G.o.d, Nature, and but one sovereign, mankind, the people, united by reason in one universal republic. Religion is the last obstacle, but the time has arrived for its destruction. J'occupe la tribune de l'univers. Je le repete, le genre humain est Dieu, le _Peuple Dieu_. Quiconque a la debilite de croire en Dieu ne sauroit avoir la sagacite de connaitre le genre humain, le souverain unique,” etc.--_Moniteur of_ 1793, No.
120. He also subscribed himself the ”personal enemy of Jeus of Nazareth.”]
[Footnote 13: Whose nephew, the celebrated traveller, Rengger, was, with Bonpland, so long imprisoned in Paraguay.]
[Footnote 14: He had been already imprisoned and was ordered to the guillotine, but not being able to find his boots quickly enough, his execution was put off until the morrow. During the night, Robespierre fell, and his life was saved. He continued to reside at Paris, where he never quitted his apartment, cherished his beard, and a.s.sociated solely with ecclesiastics.]
[Footnote 15: After an interview with his wife, Theresa (daughter to the great philologist, Heyne of Grottingen), on the French frontier, he returned to Paris and killed himself by drinking aquafortis. Vide Crome's Autobiography. Theresa entered into a.s.sociation with Huber, the journalist, whom she shortly afterward married. She gained great celebrity by her numerous romances.]
[Footnote 16: The popular work ”Huergelmer” relates, among other things, the conduct of the Margrave of Baden toward Lauchsenring, his private physician, whom he, on account of the liberality of his opinions, delivered over to the Austrian general, who sentenced him to the bastinado.]
[Footnote 17: Schnelter says: ”The first great conspiracy was formed in the vicinity of the throne, A.D. 1793. The chief conspirator was Hebenstreit, the commandant, who held, by his office, the keys to the a.r.s.enal, and had every place of importance in his power. His fellow conspirators were Prandstatter, the magistrate and poet, who, by his superior talents, led the whole of the magistracy, and possessed great influence in the metropolis, Professor Riedl, who possessed the confidence of the court, which he frequented for the purpose of instructing some of the princ.i.p.al personages, and Hackel, the merchant, who had the management of its pecuniary affairs. The rest of the conspirators belonged to every cla.s.s of society and were spread throughout every province of the empire. The plan consisted in the establishment of a democratic const.i.tution, the first step to which appears to have been an attempt against the life of the imperial family. The signal for insurrection was to be given by firing the immense wood-yards. The hearts of the people were to be gained by the destruction of the government accounts. The discovery was made through a conspiracy formed in Denmark. The chief conspirator was seized and sent to the gallows. The rest were exiled to Munkatch, where several of them had succ.u.mbed to the severity of their treatment and of the climate when their release was effected by Bonaparte by the peace of Campo Formio, which gave rise to the supposition that the Hebenstreit conspiracy was connected with the French republicans and Jacobins. The second conspiracy was laid in Hungary, by the bishop and abbot, Josephus Ignatius Martinowits, a man whom the emperors Joseph, Leopold, and Francis had, on account of his talent and energy, loaded with favors. The plan was an _actionalis conspiratio_, for the purpose of contriving an attempt against the sacred person of his Majesty the king, the destruction of the power of the privileged cla.s.ses in Hungary, the subversion of the administration, and the establishment of a democracy. The means for the execution of this project were furnished by two secret societies.” Huergelmer relates: ”A certain Dr.
Plank somewhat thoughtlessly ridiculed the inst.i.tution of the jubilee; in order to convince him of its utility, he was sent as a recruit to the Italian army, an act that was highly praised by the newspapers.”
On the 22d of July, 1795, a Baron von Riedel was placed in the pillory at Vienna for some political crime, and was afterward consigned to the oblivion of a dungeon; the same fate, some days later, befell Brand-Btetter, Fellesneck, Billeck, Ruschitiski (Ephemeridae of 1796).
A Baron Taufner was hanged at Vienna as a traitor to his country (E.
of 1796).]
[Footnote 18: ”The increase of crime occasioned by the artifices of the police, who thereby gained their livelihood, rendered an especial statute, prohibitory of such measures, necessary in the new legislature. Even the pa.s.sing stranger perceived the disastrous effect of their intrigues upon the open, honest character and the social habits of the Viennese. The police began gradually to be considered as a necessary part of the machine of government, a counterbalance to or a remedy for the faults committed by other branches of the administration. Large sums, the want of which was heavily felt in the national education and in the army, were expended on this a.r.s.enal of poisoned weapons.”--_Hormayr's Pocket-Book_, 1832. Thugut is described as a diminutive, hunchbacked old man, with a face resembling the mask of a fawn and with an almost satanic expression.]
CCXLVIII. Loss of the Left Bank of the Rhine
The object of the Prussian king was either to extend his conquests westward or, at all events, to prevent the advance of Austria. The war with France claimed his utmost attention, and, in order to guard his rear, he again attempted to convert Poland into a bulwark against Russia.
His amba.s.sador, Lucchesini, drove Stackelberg, the Russian envoy, out of Warsaw, and promised mountains of gold to the Poles, who dissolved the perpetual council a.s.sociated by Russia with the sovereign, freed themselves from the Russian guarantee; aided by Prussia, compelled the Russian troops to evacuate the country; devised a const.i.tution, which they laid before the cabinets of London and Berlin; concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia on the 29th of March, 1790, and, on the 3d of May, 1791, carried into effect the new const.i.tution ratified by England and Prussia, and approved of by the emperor Leopold. During the conference, held at Pilnitz, the indivisibility of Poland was expressly mentioned. The const.i.tution was monarchical. Poland was, for the future, to be a hereditary instead of an elective monarchy, and, on the death of Poniatowsky, the crown was to fall to Saxony. The modification of the peasants' dues and the power conceded to the serf of making a private agreement with his lord also gave the monarchy a support against the aristocracy.
Catherine of Russia, however, no sooner beheld Prussia and Austria engaged in a war with France, than she commenced her operations against Poland, declared the new Polish const.i.tution French and Jacobinical, notwithstanding its abolition of the _liberum veto_ and its extension of the prerogatives of the crown, and, taking advantage of the king's absence from Prussia, speedily regained possession of the country. What was Frederick William's policy in this dilemma? He was strongly advised to make peace with France, to throw himself at the head of the whole of his forces into Poland, and to set a limit to the insolence of the autocrat; but--he feared, should he abandon the Rhine, the extension of the power of Austria in that quarter, and-- calculating that Catherine, in order to retain his friends.h.i.+p, would cede to him a portion of her booty,[1] unhesitatingly broke the faith he had just plighted with the Poles, suddenly took up Catherine's tone, declared the const.i.tution he had so lately ratified Jacobinical, and despatched a force under Mollendorf into Poland in order to secure possession of his stipulated prey. By the second part.i.tion of Poland, which took place as rapidly, as violently, and, on account of the a.s.surances of the Prussian monarch, far more unexpectedly than the first, Russia received the whole of Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine, and Prussia, Thorn and Dantzig, besides Southern Prussia (Posen and Calisch). Austria, at that time fully occupied with France, had no partic.i.p.ation in this robbery, which was, as it were, committed behind her back.
Affairs had worn a remarkably worse aspect since the campaign of 1792.
The French had armed themselves with all the terrors of offended nationalism and of unbounded, intoxicating liberty. All the enemies of the Revolution within the French territory were mercilessly exterminated, and hundreds of thousands were sacrificed by the guillotine, a machine invented for the purpose of accelerating the mode of execution. The king was beheaded in this manner in the January of 1793, and the queen shared a similar fate in the ensuing October.[2] While Robespierre directed the executions, Carnot undertook to make preparations for war, and, in the very midst of this immense fermentation, calmly converted France into an enormous camp, and more than a million Frenchmen, as if summoned by magic from the clod, were placed under arms.
The sovereigns of Europe also prepared for war, and, A.D. 1793, formed the first great coalition, at whose head stood England, intent upon the destruction of the French navy. The English, aided by a large portion of the French population devoted to the ancient monarchy, attacked France by sea, and made a simultaneous descent on the northern and southern coasts. The Spanish and Portuguese troops crossed the Pyrenees; the Italian princes invaded the Alpine boundary; Austria, Prussia, Holland, and the German empire threatened the Rhenish frontier, while Sweden and Russia stood frowning in the background. The whole of Christian Europe took up arms against France, and enormous armies hovered, like vultures, around their prey.
The duke of Coburg commanded the main body of the Austrians in the Netherlands, where he was at first merely opposed by the old French army, whose general, Dumouriez, after unsuccessfully grasping at the supreme power, entered into a secret agreement with the coalition, allowed himself to be defeated at Aldenhovenl[3] and Neerwinden, and finally deserted to the Austrians. At this moment, when the French army was dispirited by defeat and without a leader, Coburg, who had been reinforced by the English and Dutch under the duke of York, might, by a hasty advance, have taken Paris by surprise, but both the English and Austrian generals solely owed the command, for which they were totally unfit, to their high birth, and Colonel Mack, the most prominent character among the officers of the staff, was a mere theoretician, who could cleverly enough conduct a campaign--upon paper. Clairfait, the Austrian general, beat the disbanded French army under Dampiere at Famars, but temporized instead of following up his victory. Coburg, in the hope of the triumph of the moderate party, the Girondins, published an extremely mild and peaceable proclamation, which, on the fall of the Gironde, was instantly succeeded by one of a more threatening character, which his want of energy and decision in action merely rendered ridiculous. No vigorous attack was made, nor was even a vigorous defence calculated upon, not one of the frontier forts in the Netherlands, demolished by Joseph II., having been rebuilt. The coalition foolishly trusted that the French would be annihilated by their inward convulsions, while they were in reality seizing the opportunity granted by the tardiness of their foes to levy raw recruits and exercise them in arms. The princ.i.p.al error, however, lay in the system of conquest pursued by both Austria and England.
Conde, Valenciennes, and all towns within the French territory taken by Coburg, were compelled to take a formal oath of allegiance to Austria, and England made, as the condition of her aid, that of the Austrians for the conquest of Dunkirk. The siege of this place, which was merely of importance to England in a mercantile point of view, retained the armies of Coburg and York, and the French were consequently enabled, in the meantime, to concentrate their scattered forces and to act on the offensive. Ere long, Houchard and Jourdan pushed forward with their wild ma.s.ses, which, at first undisciplined and unsteady, were merely able to screen themselves from the rapid and sustained fire of the British by acting as tirailleurs (a mode of warfare successfully practiced by the North Americans against the serried ranks of the English), became gradually bolder, and finally, by their numerical strength and republican fury, gained a complete triumph. Houchard, in this manner, defeated the English at Hondscoten (September 8th), and Jourdan drove the Austrians off the field at Wattignies on the 16th of October, the day on which the French queen was beheaded. Coburg, although the Austrians had maintained their ground on every other point, resolved to retreat, notwithstanding the urgent remonstrances of the youthful archduke, Charles, who had greatly distinguished himself. During the retreat, an unimportant victory was gained at Menin by Beaulieu, the imperial general.[4] His colleague, Wurmser, nevertheless maintained with extreme difficulty the line extending from Basel to Luxemburg, which formed the Prussian outposts. A French troop under Delange advanced as far as Aix-la-Chapelle, where they crowned the statue of Charlemagne with a bonnet rouge.
Mayence was, during the first six months of this year, besieged by the main body of the Prussian army under the command of Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick. The Austrians, when on their way past Mayence to Valenciennes with a quant.i.ty of heavy artillery destined for the reduction of the latter place (which they afterward compelled to do homage to the emperor), refusing the request of the king of Prussia for its use _en pa.s.sant_ for the reduction of Mayence, greatly displeased that monarch, who clearly perceived the common intention of England and Austria to conquer the north of France to the exclusion of Prussia, and consequently revenged himself by privately part.i.tioning Poland with Russia, and refusing his a.s.sistance to General Wurmser in the Vosges country. The dissensions between the allies again rendered their successes null. The Prussians, after the conquest of Mayence, A.D. 1793, advanced and beat the fresh ma.s.ses led against them by Moreau at Pirmasens, but Frederick William, disgusted with Austria and secretly far from disinclined to peace with France, quitted the army (which he maintained in the field, merely from motives of honor, but allowed to remain in a state of inactivity), in order to visit his newly acquired territory in Poland.
The gallant old Wurmser was a native of Alsace, where he had some property, and fought meritoriously for the German cause, while so many of his countrymen at that time ranged themselves on the side of the French.[5] His position on the celebrated Weissenburg line was, owing to the non-a.s.sistance of the Prussians, replete with danger, and he consequently endeavored to supply his want of strength by striking his opponents with terror. His Croats, the notorious _Rothmantler_, are charged with the commission of fearful deeds of cruelty. Owing to his system of paying a piece of gold for every Frenchman's head, they would rush, when no legitimate enemy could be encountered, into the first large village at hand, knock at the windows and strike off the heads of the inhabitants as they peeped out. The petty princ.i.p.alities on the German side of the Rhine also complained of the treatment they received from the Austrians. But how could it be otherwise? The empire slothfully cast the whole burden of the war upon Austria. Many of the princes were terror-stricken by the French, while others meditated an alliance with that power, like that formerly concluded between them and Louis XIV. against the empire. Bavaria alone was, but with great difficulty, induced to furnish a contingent. The weak imperial free towns met with most unceremonious treatment at the hands of Austria.