Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 408, January 1849
If in this respect it has attained nothing which it can show, after more than a year's revolution, for the avowed or pretended purpose of obtaining some result to this very end, it cannot be said, however, that nothing remains to Germany of its dream of unity. Spite of sad experience – spite of the uselessness of every effort – spite of sacrifices made and sorrows suffered – Germany still pursues its phantom with as much ardour as before. Like the prince in the fairy-tale, who, panting, breathless, half-dead with exhaustion and fatigue, still hunted without rest for the imaginary original of the fair portrait placed in his hands – untired and unyielding, after the repeated disappointments of lifting veil after veil from forms which he thought might be that of the beloved one – still driven on by an incurable longing – still yearning despairingly, and with false hope, – so does Germany, after lifting veil after veil only to find delusive spectres beneath, still yearn and long for the object of its adoration. It is impossible to travel, even partially, through the country, without discovering, from every conversation with all classes, that the intense craving for this object – this great blessing of a grand and powerful United Germany – is as strong as ever – far stronger than ever! For what was not very long ago only the watchword of the fancied liberal student, in his play of would-be conspirator – what was but the pretext of really conspiring and subversive democrats – what grew only by degrees into the cry of the people, who clamoured, not knowing what they clamoured for – has taken evidently the strongest root throughout the whole mass of German nationality, and grows– grows in despite of the rottenness of the branches it has as yet sent forth – grows in despite of the lopping, breaking, and burning of its first offshoots – grows in despite of the atmosphere of contention, rather than of union, that becomes thicker and more deleterious to its growth, around it, and of the blight it daily receives from the seemingly undispersable mildew of hatred, suspicion, and total want of sympathy between Southern and Northern Germany, which formerly arose only from uncongeniality of temperament, mixed up more or less with difference of religious creed, but now is generated by a thousand causes. This intense craving for the possession of the phantom – increasing, it would seem, in proportion as the phantom flies farther and farther from the grasp – is no longer expressed by the student, the democrat, and the man of the people: it pervades all classes from below to above; it is in the mouth of the man of caution and of sense, as in that of the wild and poetico-political enthusiast; it becomes more and more universal, and it amounts to a mania. Ask of whom you will, "Whither tends German hope?" and the answer will still and ever be the same – "German unity." But ask no more; for if you inquire, as last year, into the "how," the "when," the "where," the answer will in most cases be given in the same strain of incomprehensible and still more impracticable rhapsody – visionary, poetical, noble sometimes, but purposeless as before; or men will shrug their shoulders, shake their heads, and sigh, but still dream on the dream of German unity – still clamour for it loudly. And well may they shake their heads and groan, if such be the end and aim of all German aspirations! for where, indeed, is the pith that leads to it? That which Germany is itself following up, leads (for the present at least) visibly from it, and not towards it. Prussia has promulgated its constitution, – and we may ask, par parenthèse, whether that is to be put forward as the great end which revolutionising Germany has attained, after more than a year's revolution? Prussia has called upon all Germany to join with it, hand in hand, in this constitution, granted and given, but not accepted, at the hands of a Frankfort parliament. In answer to its call, it has found the cleft between Northern and Southern Germany – the cleft, of envy and jealousy, suspicion and mistrust – growing wider and wider to oppose it. It has attempted to form a partial union of Northern Germany – between the more northern states of Prussia, Hanover, and Saxony; but even in this union has been disunion – reticence, and suspicion, and doubt, and indecision, among the proposed allies themselves; while Austria, Bavaria, and even Wurtemberg, have held aloof to sulk and scoff, and have seemed to bide that time when Austria should be less shackled, and could better oppose the supremacy of Northern German influence. Coalitions even now are talked of, to which, if Prussia be not a stranger, it is to be admitted only as a humbled ally. With these feelings, which exist not only between powers, but in the people, the cry of United Germany is but a jest – the longing a green-sickness. Certainly revolutionising Germany has not thus far attained any step in its progress towards the great desideratum of its nationality. The only semblance of progress has been, in the advances of Prussia towards supremacy, in the cession of the principality of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen to its territory, (an example which other small German principalities may follow,) in its present occupation of the free town of Hamburg, in its military occupation of the duchy of Baden, of which more further on. But if these be steps towards a united Germany, tell it to Southern Germany, and hear what it will say!
If so little, then, has been attained by revolutionising Germany, in its progress towards its most loudly clamoured desire, let us see what else it has attained. After a year's labour, which was not without its throes, revolutionising Germany, as represented by its central parliament, brought forth its constitution – a rickety child, but fully expected by its fond, and in many respects infatuated parents, to grow into a giant, and flourish under the edifice of a United German Empire. The implicit adoption of this bantling by the several German states, as their heir and future master, was declared by revolutionisers to be the sine quâ non of their sufferance still to exist at all, under the will of the people. Unhappy bantling, decked out with all sorts of promised gifts for the future weal of mankind by its would-be fairy godmothers! it proved but a changeling – or rather an imp, provided with every curse, instead of every blessing; as if the gifts it was intended to bestow had been reversed by a wicked fairy among the godmothers, who had more power than the rest. And, of a truth, there was such a one among them: and her name was Anarchy or Subversion, although the title she gave herself was Red Republic, and the beast on which she rode was Self-interest. The consequence was, that the very contrary occurred to that which revolutionisers had prophesied or rather menaced. Prussia, and the other states, which refused to adopt the bantling, thus menacingly thrown into their arms, have gone on, we cannot say the "even," but uneven "tenor of their way" – no matter now by what means, for we speak only of the strange destinies of the much-laboured, long-expected, loudly-vaunted Frankfort constitution. Almost the only one – at least of the larger states the only one – that seemingly accepted the adoption forced upon it, with frankness, willingness, and openness, has been convulsed by the most terrible of civil wars. In Baden, the acceptance of the Frankfort constitution, and not its rejection, by a well-meaning, mild, but perhaps weak ruler, was eagerly seized upon as a pretext for disaffection, armed insurrection, civil war; while Wurtemberg, where it was received by the king, although with evident unwillingness, or, as he himself expressed it, in a somewhat overstrained tone of pathos, "with bleeding and broken heart," narrowly escaped being involved in the same fearful issue. The process by which this result was attained in Baden was curious enough, although fully in accordance with the usual manœuvres of the anarchical leaders of the day, who, while denouncing Jesuitism, in many parts of the world, as the great evil and anti-popular influence against which they have most to contend, evidently adopt the supposed and most denounced principle of Jesuitism – that "the ends justify the means" – as their own peculiar line of conduct; and use every species of treachery, deceit, falsehood, and delusion, as holy and righteous weapons in the sacred cause of liberty, or of that idol of their worship which they choose to nickname liberty. In showing what revolutionising Germany has, or rather perhaps has not, as yet, attained, we must briefly, then, revert once more to that insurrection and its suppression, that has so fearfully devastated the duchy of Baden, and its neighbouring province of the Palatinate, which, although belonging to Bavaria, is so distant and divided from that kingdom as to be included, without further distinction, in the same designation.
It was with almost prophetic spirit that we, last year, spoke of the unhappy duchy of Baden, which had then, as since, the least cause of complaint of any of the several subdivisions of Germany. "Nothing," it was then said, "can be more uneasy and disquieting than its appearance. In this part of Germany, the revolutionary fermentation appears far more active, and is more visible in the manner, attitude, and language of the lower classes, than even in those (at that time) hotbeds of revolutionary movement, Austria and Prussia. To this state of things the confinity with agitated France, and consequently a more active affinity with its ideas, caught like a fever from a next-door neighbour's house, the agency of the emissaries from the ultra-republican Parisian clubs, who find an easier access across the frontiers, and the fact also that the unhappy duchy has been, if not the native country, at least the scene of action of the republican insurgents, Hecker and Struve, have all combined to contribute." "It is impossible to enter the duchy, and converse with the peasant population, formerly and proverbially so peacefully disposed in patriarchal Germany – formerly so smiling, so ready, so civil, perhaps only too obsequious in their signs of respect, now so insolent and rude – without finding the poison of those various influences gathering and festering in all their ideas, words, and actions."
Such were the views written last year; and this state of things has since continued to increase, as regards popular fermentation, and disposition to insurrection. Demagogic agitators swarmed in the land, instilling poison wherever they went, and rejoicing as they saw the virus do its work in the breaking out of festering sores. The tactics of this party, in all lands, has been to try their experiments upon the military; but it has only been in Baden, thus demoralised, and disorganised by weakness of sufferance, and a vain spirit of concession and looked-for conciliation, that these subjects were found fitting for the efforts of the experimentalisers. The virus had already done its work among them, to the utmost hopes of the poisoning crew, when the New Frankfort Constitution – the rejection of which was to be the signal for a quasi legal insurrection – was accepted by the Grand-duke of Baden. But the agitators were not to be thus baffled. A pretence, however shallow and false, was easily found in the well-prepared fermentation of men's minds; and the military, summoned by demagogic leaders to tumultuous meetings, were easily persuaded that a false, or at least a defective draught of the new boasted constitution had been read to them and proclaimed – that, in the real constitution, an enactment provided that the soldiers were to choose and elect their own officers – that this paragraph had been carefully suppressed; and that the military had been thus deprived and cheated of their rights. Easily detected as might have been the falsehood, it nevertheless succeeded in its purposes. The military insurrection, in which the tumultuous and evil-disposed of the lower classes, and a great portion of the disaffected peasantry joined, broke out on the very evening of one of these great meetings; and, by means of a well-prepared and actively organised concentration of measures, in various parts of the duchy at the same time. Thus was the very acceptance of the revolutionary constitution made in Baden a pretext to stir the land to insurrection.
After the full account already published in these pages, it is needless to enter into detail, with regard to the events which marked the progress and suppression of this great insurrection. It is only to show the insensate state of mind to which revolutionary agents, left to do their will, were able to work up the military; the confused ideas and purposes, with which these would-be revolutionising German heads were filled; the ignorance that was displayed among these men, said to be enlightened by "patriots," and their want of all comprehension of the very rights for which they pretended to clamour – in fact, the utter absence of any experience gained by the lower classes, and especially the military portion of them, after more than a year's revolutionising, that we briefly recapitulate some of the leading events of the outbreak. It was with a perfect headlong frenzy that the garrison of the fortress of Rastadt first revolted; it was with just as much appearance of madness that the mutiny broke out simultaneously in the other garrison towns. There was every evidence of rabid mania in the deplorable scenes which followed, when superior officers in vain attempted with zeal and courage to stem the torrent, and, in many instances, lost their lives at the hands of the infuriated soldiery; when others were cruelly and disgracefully mis-handled, and two or three, unable to contend with the sense of dishonour and degradation which overwhelmed them as military men, rushed, maddened also, into suicide, to have their very corpses mutilated by the men whom they had treated, as it happened, with kindness and concession; when others again, who had escaped over the frontiers, were, by a violation of the Wurtemberg territory, captured, led back prisoners, and immured, under every circumstances of cruelty and ignominy, in the fortress they had in vain attempted loyally to guard. There was madness in all this; and then we learn, to complete the deplorable picture, from a very accurate account of all the circumstances, lately published by a Baden officer, as well as from another pamphlet, more circumscribed in detail, but fully as conclusive as regards narration of feeling, in almost every page, that when the insurgent soldiers were asked by their officers what they wanted, they could only answer, "Our rights and those of the people;" and, when questioned further, "What are those rights?" either held their tongues and shook their heads in ignorance, or replied with the strangest naïveté, "That you ought to know better than we." Still more strikingly characteristic of the insensate nature of the struggle are the examples where the infatuated soldiers parted from their officers with tears in their eyes, then, driven on by their agitators, hunted them to the death; and then, again, with eyes opened at last to their delusion, sobbed forth the bitterest repentance for their blindness.
It has been already seen how the Grand-duke fled the land, how Baden was given up, in a state of utter anarchy, to a Provisional government, that existed but long enough to be utterly rent and torn by the very instruments which its members had contributed to set in movement; and to a disorganised, tumultuous army, prepared to domineer and tyrannise in its newly-acquired self-power; how the insurrection was suppressed, after an unwilling appeal to Prussia by the Grand-duke – how the insurgent troops were dispersed by means of a Prussian army – and how Rastadt was finally surrendered by the revolutionary leaders. As these events have already been detailed, and as it is our purpose to ask in general, "What has revolutionising Germany attained?" we need do no more on this head, than ask, "What, by its late movement, has revolutionising Baden attained?" "What then is the present position, and the present aspect of the country, after the armed suppression?"
What, indeed! Poor old Father Rhine, although still, in these revolutionary days, somewhat depressed in spirits, does not now, however, exhibit that aspect of utter melancholy and despair which we last year pictured; he has even contrived to reassume something of that conceited air which we have so often witnessed in his old face. Foreign tourists, if not in the pleasure-seeking shoals of aforetime, at least in very decent sprinklings, return again to pay him visits; and the hotels upon his banks give evidence that his courts are not wholly deserted. Ems, from various causes independent of its natural beauties – the principal one of which has been the pilgrimage of French Legitimists to the heir of the fallen Bourbons, during his short residence in that sweet bathing-place – has overflowed with "guests." Homburg has had scarcely a bed to offer to the wanderer on his arrival. Rhenish Prussia, then, has profited, by its comparative state of quiet, somewhat to redeem its losses of last year. But the poor duchy of Baden still hangs its head mournfully; and Baden-Baden, the fairest queen of German watering-places, finds itself utterly deprived of its well-deserved crown of supremacy, and seems to have covered itself, in shame, with a veil of sadness. Although all now wears again a smiling face of peaceful quiet, and Prussian uniforms, which at least have the merit of studding with colour the gay scene, give warrant for peace by the force of the bayonet, yet tourists seem to avoid the scene of the late fearful convulsions, as they would a house in which the plague has raged, although now declared wholly disinfected. A few wandering "guests" only come and go, and tell the world of foreign wanderers with dismal faces, "Baden-Baden is empty!" Travellers seem to hurry through the country, as swiftly as the railroad can whirl them across it, towards Strasburg and Bâle – ay! rather to republican France, or fermenting Switzerland: they appear unwilling to turn aside and seek rest among the beautiful hills of a country where the reek of blood, or the vapour of the cannon-smoke, may be still upon the air. In Baden-Baden bankrupt hotels are closed; and the lower classes, who have been accustomed to amass comparative wealth by the annual influx of foreigners, either by their produce, or in the various different occupations of attending upon visitors, wear the most evident expression of disappointment, listlessness, and want. Baden pays the bitter penalty of insurrection, by being utterly crippled in one of the branches of its most material interests. It bears as quiet an aspect outwardly, however, as if it were sitting, in humiliation and shame, upon the stool of repentance. There is nothing (if they go not beyond the surface) to prevent foreign pleasure or health seekers from finding their pleasure or repose in this sweet country; and in what has been simply, but correctly, termed "one of the loveliest spots upon God's earth," as of yore; but they are evidently shy, and look askance upon it. Baden pays its penalty.
Although nature smiles, however, upon mountain and valley, and romantic village, as cheerily as before, and there is gaiety still in every sunbeam, yet traces of the horrors lately enacted in the land are still left, which cannot fail to strike the eye of the most listless, mere outward observer, as he whisks along, the country – sometimes in the trampled plain, on which nature has not been as yet able to throw her all-covering veil again, and which shows where has been the battle-field, which should have been the harvest-field, and was not – sometimes in the shattered wall or ruined house – sometimes in the wood cut down or burned. At every step the traveller may be shown, by his guide, the spots on which battles or skirmishes have taken place, where the cannon has lately roared, where blood has been shed, where men have fallen in civil contest. Here he may be conveyed over the noble railway-bridge of the Neckar, and see the broken parapet, and hear how the insurgents had commenced their work of destruction upon the edifice, but were arrested in its accomplishment by the rapid advance of the Prussian troops. Here again he may mark the late repairs of the railroad, where it has been cut up into trenches, to prevent the speedy conveyance of the war-material of the enemy. If he lingers on his way, he may seek in vain in the capital, or other "residence towns" of Baden, where ducal palaces stand, for the treasures of antiquity which were their boast. Pillage has done its work: insurgents have appropriated these objects of value to themselves, in the name of the people; and the costly and bejewelled trappings of the East, the rich gold inlaid armour, and the valuable arms, brought in triumph home by the Margrave Louis of Baden, after his Turkish campaigns, are now dispersed, none knows where, after having fed the greed of some French red-republican or Polish democrat. But it is more particularly in the neighbourhood of the fortress town of Rastadt, where the insurgents last held out, that the strongest traces of the late convulsions may be found. Marks of devastation are everywhere perceptible in the country around; the remains of the temporary defences of the besiegers still lie scattered in newly dug trenches; and the blackened walls of a railway station-house, by the road-side, tell him how it was bombarded from the town by the besieged insurgents, and then burned to the ground, lest it should afford shelter to the besiegers. These are, however, after all, but slight evidences of what the duchy of Baden has attained by its late revolution. If we go below the surface, the dark spots are darker and far more frequent still.
It is impossible to enter into conversation with persons of any class, without discovering, either directly or indirectly, how deeply rooted still remains the demoralisation of the country. The bitterness of feeling, and the revolutionary mania of revolutionising, to obtain no one can tell what, may have been crushed down and overawed; but they evidently still smoulder below the surface and ferment. The volcano-mouth has been filled with a mass of Prussian bayonets; but it still burns below: it is clogged, not extinct. The democratic spirit has been too deeply infused to be drugged out of the mass of the people by the dose of military force. Fearful experience seems to have taught the sufferers little or nothing; and although, here and there, may be found evidences of bitter repentance, consequent upon personal loss of property, or family suffering, yet even below that may be constantly found a profound bitterness, and an eager rancour, against unknown and visionary enemies. Talk to that poor old woman, who sits with pale face upon a stile on the mountain-side. She will weep for the son she has lost among the insurgents, and deplore, with bitter tears, his error and his delusion; and yet, if you gain her confidence, she will raise her head, and, with some fire in her sunken eye, tell you that she has still a son at home, a boy, her last-born, who bides but his time to take up the musket against "those, accursed enemies of the people and the people's rights!" Enter into conversation with that shopkeeper behind his counter, or that hotel-keeper in his palace hotel – both are "well to do" in the world, or have been so, until revolutions shattered the commerce of the one, or deprived the other of wealthy visitors – you may expect to find in them a feeling, taught them at least by experience, against any further convulsion. No such thing; they are as ripe for further revolution as the lower classes, and as eager to avenge their losses – not upon those who have occasioned them, but upon those who would have averted them. Even in the upper classes you will find that craving for the idol, "United Germany," to which we have before alluded, and which seems to invite revolutions, rather than to fear them. Of course exceptions may be found, and many, to the examples here given; but in putting these figures into the foreground of the picture to be painted of the state of Baden, (if not of Germany in general,) we firmly believe we have given characteristic types of the prevailing feelings of the country. German heads, once let loose into the regions of ideal fantasy, be it political or philosophical, or the strange and unpractical mixture of both, seem as if they were not to be recalled to the earth and the realms of palpable truth by the lessons of experience, however strongly, and even terribly, inculcated.
The prevailing feeling, however, at the present time in Baden, among the lower classes, seems the hatred of the occupation of the Prussian army, which has saved the land from utter anarchy. The very men who have been taught by their demagogues to clamour for "German Unity" as a pretext for insurrection, look on the Prussian military as usurping aliens and foreign oppressors. Military occupation is certainly the prevailing feature of the country. Prussian troops are everywhere – in every town, in every village, in every house, in every hovel. Whichever way you turn your eyes, there are soldiers – soldiers – soldiers – horse and foot. The military seem to form by far the greater half of the population; and, much disposed as many may have been to greet the return of the Grand-duke to his states, as the symbol of the cause of order, yet, in spite of birthday fêtes, and banners, and garlands, and loyal devices in flowers, which have bedecked the road of the traveller in the land not long since, these same men will grumble to you of those "accursed Prussian soldiers," who alone were able to restore him to his country, when the Baden army, as troops to support their sovereign, existed no longer – when those who composed it fought at the head of the insurgents. The very shadow of a Baden army, even, is not now to be found. And it is this fact, and the evidences that an insurrectionary spirit is still widely spread abroad, which are given as the excuse of a continued Prussian occupation. It is difficult, certainly, for a traveller in a land so lately convulsed, and still placed in circumstances so peculiar, to arrive at truth. Prussian officers will tell him how, on the arrival of the Prussian army in the country, and the dispersion of the insurgents, flowers were strewn along its path by the populations, who thus seemingly hailed the Prussian soldiers as their deliverers; and in the next breath they will inform him that this was only done from fear, and that, were it not for this salutary fear, the insurrection would break forth again. He may suspect that this account is given as the pretext for a continued occupation of the land. But Baden officials will tell him that such is the case – that Prussian troops alone keep, down a further rising; and if he still suspects his source, he will certainly find among the people, at all events, both the hatred and the fear. Meanwhile the Prussian officers seem to think that both these feelings are necessary for the pacification of the land; and, upon their own showing, or rather boasting, they inculcate them by flogging insolent peasants across the cannon, by shooting down insurgent prisoners, who spit upon them from prison windows, without any other form of trial, and by other autocratic repressive measures of a similar stamp. Meanwhile, also, they seem, by all their words as well as actions, to look upon Baden as a conquered province, acquired to Prussia, and openly and loudly vaunt their conquest. Let it not be supposed that this is exaggeration. It is the general tone of Prussian officers – ay, and even of the common Prussian soldiers occupying the duchy of Baden – with a super-addition of true Prussian conceit in manner, indescribable by words. In spite of what we may read in late newspaper reports, then, of conciliation between the two great powers of Northern and Southern Germany, we may well ask, What will rival Austria say to this? Where is the prospect here of a great United Germany? And, after this resumé of the present position of Baden as a part, we may well ask, also, What has revolutionising Germany attained as a whole?
We have seen that the main object, and at all events the chief pretext of the revolution, the establishment of a great United Germany, is still further from the grasp of the revolutionising country than ever – although it remains still the clamour and the cry. Prussia may point in irony to its advances, by the occupation of the duchy of Baden and of Hamburg, and by its acquisition of the principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and smile while it says that it has effected thus much towards a union of Germany under one head. Or, in more serious mood, it may put forward its projected alliance of the three northern German potentates. But, with regard to the former, what, in spite of the reports we hear of conciliation, will be the conduct of jealous Austria, now at last unshackled in its dealings? The latter only shows still more the cleft that divides the northern portion of the would-be united country from the southern. "United Germany" only remains, then, a plaything in the hands of dreamers and democrats – a pretty toy, about which they may build up airy castles to the one – an instrument blunted and notched, for the present, to the other. What has revolutionising Germany attained here?
What declared last year the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, and leading member of the cabinet of the newly established central power – put forward, as it was, as the programme of the new government for all Germany? It denounced "jealousies between the individual states, and revilings of the northern by the southern parts of the empire," as "criminal absurdities;" and yet went on to say that "if the old spirit of discord and separation were still too powerfully at work – if the jealousy between race and race, between north and south, were still too strongly felt – the nation must convince itself of the fact, and return to the old feudal system." It declared, however, in the same breath as it were, that "to retrograde to a confederation of states would only be to create a mournful period of transition to fresh catastrophes, and new revolutions." Failing of the realisation of the great union, to which the revolution was supposed to tend, the manifesto then placed revolutionising Germany between the alternative of returning to a part, which it declared impossible, or further convulsions and civil wars. It put Germany, in fact, into a cleft stick. Has a year's revolution tended to extricate it from this position? The alternative, remains the same – Germany sticks in the cleft stick as much as ever. Revolutionising Germany, with all its throes and all its efforts, has attained nothing to relieve it from this position. Without accepting the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, either as necessarily prophetic, or as a political dictum, from which there is no evasion or escape, it is yet impossible to look back upon it, while trying to discover what revolutionising Germany has attained, without sad presentiments, without looking with much mournful apprehension upon the future fate of the country. To return, however to the present state of Germany – for the investigation of that is our purpose, and not speculation upon the future, although none may look upon the present without asking with a sigh, "What is to become of Germany?"