The head of the Rhine police, conscious, no doubt, of the ferment in his own province, remonstrated with the Duke of Weimar on permitting such disturbances.
This opposition increased the movement which it was designed to check. Jahn, who had founded the gymnastic schools which had speedily become places of military exercise for patriotic Germans during the war, now came forward to organize a Burschenschaft, a society which was to include all the patriotic students of Germany. Metternich and his friends had become thoroughly alarmed at the progress of the opposition, but again events seemed to work for him; and the enthusiasm of the students, ill-regulated, and ill-guided, was soon to give an excuse for the blow which would secure the victory for a time to the champions of absolutism.
The desire for liberty seems always to connect itself with love of symbolism; and the movement for reform, naturally led to the revival of sympathy with earlier reformers. Actuated by these feelings, the students of Leipzig and other German Universities gathered at the Wartburg, in 1817, to revive the memory of Luther's testimony for liberty of thought; and they seized the opportunity for protesting against the tyranny of their own time.
Apparently the enthusiasm for the Emperor of Austria had not extended to Saxony; for an Austrian corporal's staff was one of the first objects cast into the bonfire, which was lighted by the students; while the dislike to Prussia was symbolized by the burning of a pair of Prussian military stays, and the hatred of the tyranny which prevailed in the smaller States, found vent in the burning of a Hessian pig-tail. The demonstration excited much disapproval among the stricter followers of Metternich; but Stein and others protested against any attempt to hinder the students in their meeting.
In the following year the Burschenschaft, which Jahn desired to form, began to take shape, and to increase the alarm of the lovers of peace at all costs. Metternich rose to the occasion; and boasted that he had become a moral power in Europe, which would leave a void when it disappeared. In March, 1819, the event took place which at last gave this "moral power" a success that seemed for the moment likely to be lasting.
Ludwig Sand, a young man who had studied first at Erlangen and afterwards at Jena, went, on March 23rd, 1819, to the house of Kotzebue at Mannheim, and stabbed him to the heart.
It was said, truly or falsely, that a paper was found with Sand, declaring that he acted with the authority of the University of ——. It was said also that Sand had played a prominent part in the Wartburg celebration. With the logic usual with panic-mongers, Metternich was easily able to deduce from these facts the conclusion that the Universities must, if left to themselves, become schools of sedition and murder.
The Duke of Weimar, with more courage, perhaps, than tact, had anticipated the designs of Metternich by a proclamation in favour of freedom of thought and teaching at the Universities, as the best security for attaining truth.
This proclamation strengthened still further the hands of Metternich. Abandoning the position which he had assumed at the Congress of Vienna, of champion of the smaller States of Germany, he appealed to the King of Prussia for help to coerce the Duke of Weimar, and the German Universities.
Frederick William, in spite of his support of Schmalz, was still troubled by some scruples of conscience. In May, 1815, he had made a public promise of a Constitution to Prussia; Stein and Humboldt were eager that he should fulfil this promise, and even the less scrupulous Hardenberg held that it ought to be fulfilled sooner or later.