“The King of Bavaria,” so ran an article, “wastes the sweat of the poor country on mistresses and their followers. Everybody knows that the jewellery which Lola wore lately at the theatre cost 60,000 guldens; that her house in the Barerstrasse is a fairy palace; that the Cabinet, the Council of State, and the whole civil service are at her beck and call; that the gendarmerie and military are her particular escort; that the best Catholic professors at the University have been dismissed at her caprice. For the people nothing is done.”
The last statement was untrue. If, too, the sixty thousand guldens had come out of the people’s pockets, Lola had well earned them by her services in emancipating the country from its clerical oppressors.
Louis’s concession came too late—if it should have been made at all. On the morning of 11th February, Munich was in insurrection. Students and citizens flew to arms, and mustered in dense masses before the palace, and in the squares, loudly demanding the expulsion of the Countess of Landsfeld and the immediate reopening of the University. The situation, ministers thought, was critical. The King summoned a Cabinet Council, and was prevailed upon to accede to the demands of his insurgent subjects. He who had sworn before all the world that he would never give up Lola, now signed a decree for her banishment from Munich. To save his crown he broke all the solemn pledges he had given her. It was a base capitulation. But Louis of Bavaria was an old man, sixty-two years of age. His vows had been those of a young lover; but he wanted the youthful strength of will and hand that should have defended his mistress against an armed nation. Peace—peace—is ever the craving, the last and strongest passion of age.
The King’s surrender to their demands was made known at midday to the angry crowds before the Rathaus. The silly mob hailed with delight the downfall of the woman who had set them free to keep their own consciences, and speak their minds. The King’s decision was communicated to Lola by an aide-de-camp. She was commanded to withdraw at once from the capital. The intrepid woman could with difficulty be persuaded to credit the officer’s words. Such pusillanimity was incomprehensible to her. She could not believe that the King would abandon her without drawing the sword. Lieutenant Nüssbaum, at the outbreak of the disturbance, had been locked by a friend in an upper storey room to keep him out of danger, but at the risk of breaking his neck, the young officer had jumped from the window and hastened to offer his sword to the defenceless woman; but the King of Bavaria had surrendered without striking a blow. His own signature at last satisfied Lola of this. She looked up and down the street. No—there was not a single soldier or gendarme to protect her. Not for an instant did her nerve forsake her. With a smiling face she quitted the house where she had for nearly a year directed the fortunes of a kingdom. She took the Augsburg train, as if en route for Lindau; but alighted at a wayside station and drove to Blutenburg, a few miles from Munich, three of her faithful Alemannen—Peisner, Hertheim, and Laibinger—escorting her.
The rabble, who feared her manlike valour, did not attempt to molest her in her retreat, but having made sure that she was gone, they broke into her house, pillaging and wrecking. A curious, unaccountable impulse drew the King to the spot, where he must have passed many of the happiest hours of his life. With strange emotions he must have watched the human swine routing in this bower of Venus. He stood there, a pathetic figure—an old man surveying the wreckage of his last and supreme passion. Unheeded and seemingly unrecognised, he was suddenly dealt a violent blow on the head, probably by a revolutionary agent, and tottered back to his palace, bruised and dazed.
The next night, disguised in man’s clothes, Lola the intrepid slipped back into Munich, and took refuge in the house of her loyal partisan, Berks. She sent a secret message to the King, confident that if she could see him, she could regain her power. Those must have been anxious moments, while she was awaiting the reply. It came at last, in the form of a letter brought by two police commissaries, Weber and Dichtl. The King refused to see her, and wished that he had come to that decision before. She turned to the officials. They read an order for her expulsion from Bavaria. Lola tore the document to pieces and threw them in their faces. Not till they presented their pistols at her bosom did she consent to accompany them. It was reported that she had been sent to Lindau on the Bodensee, thence to be conducted into Switzerland. In reality, Louis had selected for her the oddest and most fantastic place of seclusion. The mental crisis through which he had passed seems to have weakened his understanding, and he actually was persuaded by his new clerical friends that Lola’s power over him was due to witchcraft. These enlightened Ultramontanes repeated some ridiculous yarn about a great black bird that visited her room by night. At a place called Weinsberg lived a man named Justinus Kerner, who exercised the profession of an exorcist or expeller of devils. To this person’s custody was Lola confided on 17th February, as was first learnt from the charlatan’s letters, published some ten or fifteen years ago.[17] In one of these he says:—
“Lola Montez arrived here the day before yesterday, accompanied by three Alemannen. It is vexatious that the King should have sent her to me, but they have told him that she is possessed. Before treating her with magic and magnetism, I am trying the hunger cure. I allow her only thirteen drops of raspberry water, and the quarter of a wafer. Tell no one about this—burn this letter.”
To another correspondent Kerner writes:—
“Lola has grown astonishingly thin. My son, Theobald, has mesmerised her, and I let her drink asses’ milk.”
That the fiery, man-compelling Countess should have submitted to this disagreeable tomfoolery, certainly seems to suggest hypnotic influence. It is not unlikely that from the strain of the preceding few days a nervous breakdown had resulted. Or, again, she may have lingered on at Kerner’s, in the hope that the King’s love for her would revive. But before the month of February was over she had shaken off for ever the dust of Bavaria, and was safe in free Switzerland. Peisner, Hertheim, and Laibinger followed her into exile. Lieutenant Nüssbaum, dismissed from the Bavarian army because of his devotion to her, found a soldier’s grave before the redoubts of Düppel.