Ten Years' Exile / Memoirs of That Interesting Period of the Life of the Baroness De Stael-Holstein, Written by Herself, during the Years 1810, 1811, 1812, and 1813, and Now First Published from the Original Manuscript, by Her Son.

by Madame de Staël

CHAPTER 6.

Passage through Austria;—1812.

In this manner, after ten years of continually increasing persecutions, first sent away from Paris, then banished into Switzerland, afterwards confined to my own chateau, and at last condemned to the dreadful punishment of never seeing my friends, and of being the cause of their banishment: in this manner was I obliged to quit, as a fugitive, two countries, France and Switzerland, by order of a man less French than myself: for I was born on the borders of that Seine where his tyranny alone naturalizes him. The air of this fine country is not a native air to him: can he then comprehend the pain of being banished from it, he who considers this fertile country only as the instrument of his victories? Where is his country? it is the earth which is subject to him. His fellow citizens? they are the slaves who obey his orders. He complained one day of not having had under his command, like Tamerlane, nations to whom reasoning was unknown. I imagine that by this time he is satisfied with Europeans: their manners, like their armies, now bear a sufficient resemblance to those of Tartars.

I had nothing to fear in Switzerland, as I could always prove that I had a right to be there; but to leave it, I had only a foreign passport: I must go through one of the confederated states, and if any French agent had required the government of Bavaria to hinder me from passing, who does not know with what regret, but at the same time, with what obedience it would have executed the orders thus received? I entered into the Tyrol with a great respect for that country, which had fought from attachment to its ancient masters, but with a great contempt for such of the Austrian ministers as had advised the abandonment of men compromised by their attachment to their sovereign. It is said that a subaltern diplomatist, head of the spy department in Austria, thought proper one day, during the war, to maintain at the emperor's table, that the Tyrolese should be abandoned: M. de H., a gentleman of the Tyrol, counsellor of state in the Austrian service, who in his actions and writings has exhibited the courage of a warrior, and the talents of an historian, replied to these unworthy observations with the contempt they deserved: the emperor signified his entire approbation to M. de H., and showed by that at least that his private feelings were strangers to the political conduct which he was made to adopt. Thus it is that the greater part of the European sovereigns, at the moment of Bonaparte making himself master of France, who were extremely upright persons as individuals, were already become mere cyphers as kings, as the government of their states was entirely committed to circumstances and to their ministers.

The aspect of the Tyrol reminds one of Switzerland: there is not, however, so much vigour and originality in the landscape, nor have the villages the same appearance of plenty; it is in short a fine country, which has been wisely governed, but never been free; and it is only as a mountaineer people, that it has shown itself capable of resistance. Very few instances of remarkable men can be mentioned from the Tyrol: first, the Austrian government is scarcely fit to develope genius; and, besides, the Tyrol, by its manners as well as by its geographical position, should have formed a part of the Swiss confederation: its incorporation with the Austrian monarchy not being conformable to its nature, it has only developed by that union the noble qualities of mountaineers, courage and fidelity.

The postilion who drove us showed us a rock on which the emperor Maximilian, grandfather of Charles the Fifth, had nearly perished: the ardor of the chace had stimulated him to such a degree, that he had followed the chamois to heights from which it was impossible to descend. This tradition is still popular in the country, so necessary to nations is the admiration of the past. The memory of the last war was still quite alive in the bosoms of the people; the peasants showed us the summits of mountains on which they had entrenched themselves: their imagination delighted in retracing the effect of their fine warlike music, when it echoed from the tops of the hills into the vallies. When we were shown the palace of the prince-royal of Bavaria, at Inspruck, they told us that Hofer, the courageous peasant and head of the insurrection, had lived there; they gave us an instance of the intrepidity shown by a female, when the French entered into her chateau: in short, every thing displayed in them the desire of being a nation, much more than personal attachment to the house of Austria.

In one of the churches at Inspruck is the famous tomb of Maximilian. I went to see it, flattering myself with the certainty of not being recognized by any person, in a place remote from the capitals where the French agents reside. The figure of Maximilian in bronze, is kneeling upon a sarcophagus, in the body of the church, and thirty statues of the same metal ranged on each side of the sanctuary represent the relations and ancestors of the emperor. So much past grandeur, so much of the ambition formidable in its day, collected in a family meeting round a tomb, formed a spectacle which led one to profound reflection: there you saw Philip the Good, Charles the Rash, and Mary of Bergundy; and in the midst of these historical personages Dietrich of Berne, a fabulous hero: the closed visor concealed the countenances of the knights, but when this visor was lifted up a brazen countenance appeared under a helmet of brass, and the features of the knight were of bronze, like his armour. The visor of Dietrich of Berne is the only one which cannot be lifted up, the artist meaning in that manner to signify the mysterious veil which covers the history of this warrior,

From Inspruck I had to pass by Saltzburg, from thence to reach the
Austrian frontiers.

It seemed as if all my anxieties would be at an end, when I was once entered on the territory of that monarchy which I had known so secure and so good. But the moment which I most dreaded was the passage from Bavaria to Austria, for it was there that a courier might have preceded me, to forbid my being allowed to pass. In spite of this apprehension, I had not been very expeditious, for my health, which had been seriously injured by all I had suffered, did not allow me to travel by night. I have often felt, during this journey, that the greatest terror cannot overcome a sort of physical depression, which makes one dread fatigue more than death. I flattered myself, however, with arriving without any obstacle, and already my fear was dissipated on approaching the object which I thought secured, when on our entrance into the inn at Saltzburg, a man came up to Mr. Schlegel who accompanied me, and told him in German, that a French courier had been to inquire after a carriage coming from Inspruck with a lady and a young girl, and that he had left word he would return to get intelligence of them. I lost not a word of what the innkeeper mentioned, and became pale with terror. Mr. Schlegel also was alarmed on my account: he made some farther inquiries, all of which made it certain, that this was a French courier, that he came from Munich, that he had been as far as the Austrian frontier to wait for me, and not finding me there, that he had returned to meet me. Nothing appeared more clear: this was just what I had dreaded before my departure, and during the journey. It was impossible for me now to escape, as this courier, who it was said was already at the post-house, would necessarily overtake me. I determined on the spur of the moment to leave my carriage, my daughter, and Mr. Schlegel at the inn, and to go alone and on foot into the streets of the town, and take the chance' of entering the first house whose master or mistress had a physiognomy that pleased me. I would obtain of them an asylum for a few days; during this time, my daughter and Mr. Schlegel might say that they were going to rejoin me in Austria, and I should leave Salzburg afterwards in the disguise of a country woman. Hazardous in the extreme as this resource appeared, no other remained to me, and I was preparing for the task, in fear and trembling, when who should enter my apartment but this so much dreaded courier, who was no other than Mr. Rocca. After having accompanied me the first day of my journey, he returned to Geneva to terminate some business, and now came to rejoin me; he had passed himself off as a French courier, in order to take advantage of the terror which the name inspires, particularly to the allies of France, and to obtain horses more quickly. He had taken the Munich road, and had hurried on as far as the Austrian frontier, to make himself sure that no one had preceded or announced me. He returned to meet me, to tell me that I had nothing to fear, and to get upon the box of my carriage as we passed that frontier, which appeared to me the most dreadful, but also the last of my dangers. In this manner my cruel apprehension was changed into a most pleasing sentiment of gratefulness and security.

We walked about the town of Salzburg, which contains many noble edifices, but like the greater part of the ecclesiastical principalities of Germany, now presents a most dreary aspect. The tranquil resources of that kind of government have terminated with it. The convents also were preservers; one is struck with the number of establishments and edifices which have been erected by bachelor masters in their residence: all these peaceable sovereigns have benefited their people. An archbishop of Salzburg in the last century has cut a road which is prolonged for several hundred paces under a mountain, like the grotto of Pausilippo at Naples: on the front of the entrance gate there is a bust of the archbishop, under which is an inscription: Tesaxa loquuntur. (The stones speak of thee). There is a degree of grandeur in this inscription.

I entered at last into that Austria, which four years before I had seen so happy; already I was struck by a sensible change, produced by the depreciation of paper-money, and the variations of every kind which the uncertainty of the financial measures had introduced into its value. Nothing demoralizes a people so much as these continual fluctuations which make every man a broker, and hold out to the working classes a means of getting money by sharping, instead of by their labour. I no longer found in the people the same probity which had struck me four years before: this paper-money sets the imagination at work with the hope of rapid and easy gains; and the hazardous chances overturn the gradual and certain existence which is the basis of the honesty of the middling classes. During my residence in Austria, a man was hanged for forging notes at the very moment when the government had reduced the value of the old ones; he called out, on his way to execution that it was not he who had robbed, but the state. And, in truth, it is impossible to make the common people comprehend that it is just to punish them for having speculated in their own affairs, in the same way as the government had done in its own. But this government was the ally of the French government, and doubly its ally, as its monarch was the very patient father-in-law of a very terrible son-in-law. What resources therefore could remain to him? The marriage of his daughter had been the means of liberating him from two millions of contributions-at most; the rest had been required with the kind of justice of which the other is so easily capable, and which consists in treating his friends and his enemies alike: from this proceeded the penury of the treasury. Another misfortune also resulted from the last war, and especially from the last peace: the inutility of the generous feeling which had illustrated the Austrian arms in the battles of Essling and Wagram, had cooled the national attachment to the sovereign, which had formerly been very strong. The same thing has happened to all the sovereigns who have treated with the emperor Napoleon; he has made use of them as receivers to levy imposts on his account; he has forced them to squeeze their subjects to pay him the taxes he demanded; and when it has suited him to dethrone these sovereigns, the people, previously alienated from them by the very wrongs they had committed in obedience to the emperor, have not raised an arm to defend them against him. The emperor Napoleon has the art of making countries said to be at peace, so singularly miserable that any change is agreeable to them, and having been once compelled to give men and money to France, they scarcely feel the inconvenience of being wholly united to it. They are wrong, however, for any thing is better than to lose the name of a nation, and as the miseries of Europe are caused by one man, care should be taken to preserve what may be restored when he is no more.

Before I reached Vienna, as I waited for my second son, who was to rejoin me with my servants and baggage, I stopped a day at Molk, that celebrated abbey, placed upon an eminence, from which Napoleon had contemplated the various windings of the Danube, and praised the beauty of the country upon which he was going to pounce with his armies. He frequently amuses himself in this manner in making poetical pieces on the beauties of nature, which he is about to ravage, and upon the effects of war, with which he is going to overwhelm mankind. After all, he is in the right to amuse himself in all ways, at the expense of the human race, which tolerates his existence. Man is only arrested in the career of evil by obstacles or remorse; no one has yet opposed to Napoleon the one, and he has very easily rid himself of the other. For me, who, solitary, followed his footsteps on the terrace from which the country could be seen to a great distance, I admired its fertility, and felt astonished at seeing how soon the bounty of heaven repairs the disasters occasioned by man. It is only moral riches which disappear altogether, or are at least lost for centuries.