Alsace, alone, had never been a state. This is how the learned professor of the University of Caen, Georges Weil, describes in his remarkable book, French Alsace from 1789 to 1871, the period after the reunion of Alsace with France: "It was a strange mosaic of different freeholds, of principalities both lay and ecclesiastical, of free cities or those almost autonomous. Among these freeholds many belonged to German princes. A sixth part of Alsace was owned by foreigners." The Emperor's authority had been only nominal. On his visits, which were few and far between, he was received with courtesy, money was freely given to him, but the people always rejoiced when they saw him leave. The Alsatians received but little assistance from the Empire; Alsace secured no help when menaced or invaded by foreign armies. The ten ancient cities flourished under an almost autonomous rule. Even before the reunion with France, cultivated society was filled with the French spirit. After the Thirty Years' War, the country felt the benefit of the protection of a powerful State with a well-ordered government which respected its habits and customs and which administered justice. So their sympathies were quickly given to their new political country with which, by reason of their democratic ideals, they were already politically in sympathy. That which rapidly attached the people to the new régime was, on the one hand, the friendly and intelligent interest of the royal intendants who protected the subjects from arbitrary lords and other local authorities, and on the other hand, the sovereign Council of Alsace, sitting at Colmar, which was to simplify, and, if possible, to unify, the customs that were in force in different parts of the country and also insure a sound administration of justice. The success was complete. A German, François d'Ichterscheim, was obliged to acknowledge, in a work published in 1710, that the Sovereign Council "rules with strict justice, law-suits are not too lengthy, expenses are not too heavy, and above all, no favour is shown to either litigant, the subject often winning his suit against the sovereign,—the poor against the rich, the layman against the clergy, the Christian against the Jew, and vice-versa."
The people were contented and satisfied. The Alsatian has always had a pronounced taste for the military career. Many young peasants enlisted in French regiments and were well received. The nobility furnished a number of officers to the French army. Alsatian gentlemen enjoyed taking part in the gay social life of the French aristocracy. Alsatian scholars kept in constant touch with Paris, where they received every encouragement and were much appreciated. It is not astonishing then, that Monsieur Schmettan, Ambassador of Russia to the King of France, should write in 1709: "It is well-known that the Alsatians are more French than the Parisians themselves."
The holding in common of the same ideas and feelings was even more accentuated at the time of the Revolution, and no part of France was better prepared by her past history for the coming of a rule of Democracy and Equality. In 1787, Alsace was called upon for the first time to elect a Provincial Assembly which would represent the interests of a large number of domains, princely seignorial, and municipal, the commission chosen to make a report to the Assembly declared: "That which tends to feudalism carries a mark of servitude not to be tolerated in a well-constituted society." In the elections for the États Généraux, the little bourgeoisie won in all the cities against the oligarchy which desired to retain the control. Reubell, who played an important rôle in the Revolution, and who was a member of the Directory, was elected at Colmar. The peasants hailed with enthusiasm the decree of August 4, 1789, which marked the end of the feudal régime. The suppression of the custom-house duties between Alsace and the rest of France sealed the economic union between the new and the old countries so that the creation of the departments of the Upper and the Lower Rhine was effected without any difficulty.
After the proclamation of the equality of the French people, the right to levy on the feudal rents in France, which the German princes who owned property in Alsace had exercised, could no longer exist. The Germans protested and the conflict which followed, in 1792, was the first war against the French Republic.
In the report which the well-known civilian, Merlin de Douai, made to the Constituante, October 28, 1790, is the following passage, very characteristic of the bonds which unite Alsace to France: "The Alsatian people have united themselves to France because they wish so to do; it is their own desire, therefore, and not the treaty of Münster which has legalized the union."
In February, 1790, Dietrich was elected mayor of Strasbourg against the conservative candidate, and in June, 1790, the partisans of the Constituante celebrated amid great pomp and with the co-operation of the clergy of different denominations, the fêtes of the Federation of the Rhine.
The Alsatian National Guard set up in the middle of a bridge over the Rhine, a tri-coloured flag which bore the inscription: "Here the Land of Liberty begins."
It was on the night following the day that it was known at Strasbourg (April 25, 1792), that war had been declared, that Captain Rouget de l'Isle composed "the War Song for the Army of the Rhine," which under the name of La Marseillaise became the national hymn of France.
Kléber, who at that time commanded a battalion from the Upper Rhine, writes, November 15, 1792, in reference to the warlike enthusiasm of the Alsatian volunteers, "not one of them ever dreams of deserting his flag; the wounded, yes, and even the sick have implored me for mercy's sake, to keep them with the battalion."
In 1799, there was the menace of another war, and the inhabitants were most zealous in strengthening the fortresses. An official of the Lower Rhine wrote in his report on the subject of the Alsatians: "They will, like the Rhine, always be the impregnable bulwark of the Republic" (G. Weil).