One never can understand fully how atrocious the tyranny of Napoleon must have been in Germany, until he has visited that country and seen something of its inhabitants; then only can one compute what must the hurricane have been that convulsed the waters of such a landlocked bay. Never was there a people so little disposed to compete with their rulers, never was obedience more thoroughly an instinct. The whole philosophy of the German’s mind teaches him to look within rather than without; his own resources are more his object in life than the enjoyment of state privileges, and to his peaceful temper endurance is a pleasanter remedy than resistance. Almost a Turk in his love of tranquillity, he has no sympathy with revolutions or public disturbances of any kind, and the provocation must indeed be great when he arouses himself to resist it. That when he is thus called on he can act with energy and vigour, the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 abundantly testify. Twice the French armies had to experience the heavy retribution on unjust invasion. Both Spain and Germany repaid the injuries they had endured, but with a characteristic difference of spirit. In the one case it was the desultory attacks of savage guerillas, animated by the love of plunder as much as by patriotism; in the other, the rising of a great people to defend their homes and altars, presented the glorious spectacle of a nation going forth to the fight. The wild notes of the Basque bugle rang not out with such soul-stirring effects as the beautiful songs of Körner, heard beside the watch-fire or at the peasant’s hearth. The conduct of their own princes might have debased the national spirit of any other people; but the German’s attachment to Fatherland is not a thing of courtly rule nor conventional agreement. He loves the land and the literature of his fathers; he is proud of the good faith and honesty which are the acknowledged traits of Saxon character; he holds to the ‘sittliche Leben,’ the orderly domestic habits of his country; and as he wages not a war of aggression on others, he resists the spoliation of an enemy on the fields of his native country.
When the French revolution fire broke out, the students were amongst its most ardent admirers; the destruction of the Bastile was celebrated among the secret festivals of the Burschenschaft; and although the fever was a brief one, and never extended among the more thinking portion of the nation, to that same enthusiasm for liberty was owing the great burst of national energy which in 1813 convulsed the land from the Baltic to the Tyrol, and made Leipsic the compensation for Jena.
With all his grandeur of intellect, Napoleon never understood the national character—perhaps he may have despised it. One of his most fatal errors, undoubtedly, was the little importance he attached to the traits which distinguish one country from another, and the seeming indifference with which he propounded notions of government diametrically opposed to all the traditions and prejudices of those for whom they were intended. The great desire for centralisation; the ambition to make France the heart of Europe, through whose impulse the life-blood should circulate over the entire Continent; to merge all distinctions of race and origin, and make Frenchmen of one quarter of the globe—was a stupendous idea, and if nations were enrolled in armies, might not be impossible. The effort to effect it, however, cost him the greatest throne of Christendom.
The French rule in Spain, in Italy, and in Holland, so far from conciliating the good-will and affection of the people, has sown the seeds of that hatred to France in each of these countries that a century will not eradicate; while no greater evidence of Napoleon’s ignorance of national character need be adduced than in the expectations he indulged in the event of his landing an army in England. His calculation on support from any part of the British people—no matter how opposed to the ministry of the day, or how extreme in their wishes for extended liberties—was the most chimerical thought that ever entered the brain of man. Very little knowledge of our country might have taught him that the differences of party spirit never survive the mere threat of foreign invasion; that however Englishmen may oppose one another, they reserve a very different spirit of resistance for the stranger who should attack their common country; and that party, however it may array men in opposite ranks, is itself but the evidence of patriotism, seeking different paths for its development.
It was at the close of a little reverie to this purpose that I found myself sitting with one other guest at the long table of the Speisesaal; the rest had dropped off one by one, leaving him in the calm enjoyment of his meerschaum and his cup of black coffee. There was something striking in the air and appearance of this man, and I could not help regarding him closely; he was about fifty years of age, but with a carriage as erect and a step as firm as any man of twenty. A large white moustache met his whiskers of the same colour, and hung in heavy curl over his upper lip; his forehead was high and narrow, and his eyes, deeply set, were of a greenish hue, and shaded by large eyebrows that met when he frowned. His dress was a black frock, braided in Prussian taste and decorated by a single cordon, which hung not over the breast, but on an empty sleeve of his coat, for I now perceived that he had lost his right arm near the shoulder. That he was a soldier and had seen service, the most careless observer could have detected; his very look and bearing bespoke the militaire. He never spoke to any one during supper, and from that circumstance, as well as his dissimilarity to the others, I judged him to be a traveller. There are times when one is more than usually disposed to let Fancy take the bit in her mouth and run off with them; and so I suffered myself to weave a story, or rather a dozen stories, for my companion, and did not perceive that while I was inventing a history for him he had most ungratefully decamped, leaving me in a cloud of tobacco-smoke and difficult conjectures.
When I descended to the Saal the next morning I found him there before me; he was seated at breakfast before one of the windows, which commanded a view over the platz and the distant mountains. And here let me ask, Have you ever been in Hesse-Cassel? The chances are, not. It is the highroad—nowhere. You neither pass it going to Berlin or Dresden. There is no wonder of scenery or art to attract strangers to it; and yet if accident should bring you thither, and plant you in the ‘König von Preussen,’ with no pressing necessity urging you onward, there are many less pleasant things you could do than spend a week there. The hotel stands on one side of a great platz, or square, at either side of which the theatre and a museum form the other two wings; the fourth being left free of building, is occupied by a massive railing of most laboured tracery, which opens to a wide gate in a broad flight of steps, descending about seventy feet into a spacious park. The tall elms and beech-trees can be seen waving their tops over the grille above, and seeming, from the platz, like young timber; beyond, and many miles away, can be seen the bold chain of the Taunus Mountains stretching to the clouds, forming altogether a view which for extent and splendour I know no city that can present the equal. I could scarce restrain my admiration; and as I stood actually riveted to the spot, I was totally inattentive to the second summons of the waiter, informing me that my breakfast awaited me in another part of the room.
‘What, yonder?’ said I, in some disappointment at being so far removed from all chance of the prospect.
‘Perhaps you would join me here, sir,’ said the officer, rising, and with a most affable air saluting me.
‘If not an intrusion——’
‘By no means,’ said he. ‘I am a passionate admirer of that view myself. I have known it many years, and I always feel happy when a stranger participates in my enjoyment of it.’