Undoubtedly the ruler of Austria was also the Emperor of Germany. The double eagle hung against all the post-houses in the Empire, and when the Emperor died, according to old custom, the church bells tolled. Any one who sought for armorial bearings, or quarrelled about privileges, went to the Imperial court; otherwise the Empire knew nothing of the Emperor or his supremacy. When the soldiers of the Princes of the Empire came together with the Austrians and Prussians, they were derided as good-for-nothing people; the "Kostbeutel"[[33]] and the "Schwabische Kragen" hated each other intensely; when the Austrian received a blow, no one was better pleased than the contingent from the Empire.
Even among themselves the subjects of the small rulers did not live in peace; insulting language and blows were common; the Mainzers attacked the inhabitants of the Palatinate, and when the French occupied Electoral Mainz, the inhabitants of the Palatinate and Darmstadt rejoiced in the sufferings of their neighbours.[[34]]
The mass of the people in the Empire lived quietly to themselves. The peasant performed his service, and the citizen worked; both had been worse off than now, but there was no difficulty in earning a livelihood. If they had a mild ruler, they served him willingly; the citizens clung to the city and province whose dialect they spoke; they frequently bore great attachment to their little State, which enclosed almost all that they knew, and whose helplessness they only imperfectly understood. When it became a cipher, they did not the more know what they were, and asked one another with anxious curiosity what they should now become. It was an old, quiet misery!
The new ideas that came from France undoubtedly somewhat disquieted them; things were better there than with them; they listened complacently to foreign emissaries; they put their heads together, and determined, sometimes in the evening perhaps, to abolish what annoyed them; they also sent petitions to their worthy rulers. The peasants here and there became more difficult to manage; but as long as the French did not come, the movement was a mere curl of the waves; and when the French Custine gained Mainz, he called the Guild together, and each one was to give in a project of a constitution. This took place. The peruke-makers produced one: "We wish to be diminished to five-and-thirty, and the Crab (thus a master was called) shall be our president of the council." The hackney-coachmen declared, "We will pay no more bridge tolls; then, as far as we are concerned, any one may be our Elector who wishes!" No Guild thought of a republic and constitution. This was the condition of the small States of the Empire in the century of enlightenment.
The people of the Imperial States knew well that the larger ones held them in contempt for their want of military capacity; and it was natural that in these small States no martial spirit should exist. Unwillingly did they form regiments from five, ten, or more contemptible contingents; soldiers and officers in the same regiment often quarrelled; the uniforms were scarcely the same colour, nor the word of command. The citizens despised their soldiers; it was told jeeringly that the Mainz soldiers at their post cut pegs for the shoemakers; that the guard at Gmünd presented arms to every well-dressed foot-passenger, and then stretched out their hats and begged for a donation; that a man in uniform was despised and excluded from every society; that the wives and mistresses of the officers took the field with children and ninepins; that the weapons and discipline were miserable, and all the material of war imperfect. This was undoubtedly a great misfortune, and apparent to everybody. The worst troops in the world were to be found in the Imperial regiments, but there were some better companies among them, and some officers of capacity. Even out of this bad material a foreign conqueror was able afterwards to make good soldiers; for the Germans have always fought bravely when they have been well led. Besides the Prussians, there were some other small corps d'armée, in well-deserved estimation—the Saxon, Brunswick, Hanoverian, and Hessian.
On the whole, then, the military power of Germany was not altogether unsatisfactory; it could well bear some occasional bad elements, and still, in point of number and valour, cope with any army in the world. The cause of decay in the army was not the composition of the army itself, but discord and bad leading.
After 1790, destruction burst upon the Empire—wave upon wave broke over it from west to east.
First came into the country the white Petrels of the Bourbons, precursors of the storm—the emigrants. There were many valiant men among them, but the larger number, who gave character and repute to the whole, were worthless, reckless rabble. Like a pestilence, they corrupted the morals of the cities in which they located themselves, and the courts of small, simple Sovereigns, who felt themselves honoured by receiving these distinguished adventurers. Coblentz, the seat of government of Electoral Treves, was their head-quarters, and that city was the first where their immorality brought ruin into families, and disunion into the State, They were fugitives enjoying the hospitality of a foreign country, but with knavish impudence, wherever they were the strongest, they ill-treated the German citizens and peasants, as well as the foolish nobleman who honoured in them polite Paris. When Veit Weber, the valiant author of "Sagen der Vorzeit," whilst travelling in a Rhine boat, was humming a French song upon contentment, of which the refrain was, "Vive la Liberté," some emigrants, who were travelling with him, drew their swords upon him and his unarmed companion, misused them with the flat blade, bound them with cords round their necks, and so dragged them to Coblentz, where they robbed them of their money and passports, and, thus wounded, they were imprisoned without examination till the Prussians arrived and freed them.[[35]] Besides brutal violence, the emigrants also introduced into the circles which admitted them vices hitherto unknown to the people, loathsome diseases, and meannesses of every kind. In the whole of the Rhine valley a feeling of hatred and disgust was excited by their presence; nothing worked so favourably for the French republican party; the feeling became general among the people, that a struggle which was to rid France of such evil deeds and abominations must be just. They were equally despised by the more powerful States—Prussia and Austria. The troops that they hired were composed of the worst rabble; even the poor people of the Imperial States looked with repugnance on the bands of emigrants.
After the corrupt nobles came the speeches of the National Assembly, and the decrees of the Convention; but few of the educated men were entirely uninfluenced by them. They were the same ideas and wishes that the Germans had. More than one enthusiastic spirit was so attracted by them as to give up their Fatherland and go to the west, to their own destruction. Not the last of such men was George Foster, whom Germans should pity, and not extol. And yet these monstrous events, and excitable minds, produced only a slight intoxication. There was great sympathy, but it was only a kindly participation in a foreign concern; for, hopeless as was the political condition of Germany—imperfect and oppressive as was the administration of the greater States—yet there was a widespread feeling that social reforms were progressing, which, in contrast to the French, would spread peaceably by teaching and good example. There were bitter complaints of the perverseness and incapacity of many of the princes, but, on the whole, it could not be doubted that there was much good-will in the governments. Germany, also, had no such aristocracy as France. The lesser nobles, in spite of their prejudices and errors, lived, on the whole, in a homely way in the midst of the people; and just at this time they counted in their ranks many leaders of the enlightenment. What most oppressed the cultivated minds of Germany was not so much the vices of the old feudal state as their own political insignificance, the clumsiness of the constitution of the Empire, the feeling that the Germans, by this much-divided rule, had become Philisters.
It was then, also, far from Paris to Germany; the characters which there contended against each other, the ultimate aim of parties, the evil and the good, were much less known than would be the case in our time. The larger newspapers only appeared three times a week; they gave dry notices, seldom a long correspondence, still less often an independent judgment. The flying sheets alone were active; even their judgment was moderate; they wished well to the movement, but were bolder in the discussion of home matters.