Into these peaceful haunts of culture and parochialism Napoleon, with the armies and the ideas of Revolutionary France, swept like a whirlwind, breaking up the old settled comfortable life of the cities and countryside. One of the greatest of German writers, the Jew Heine, has described in a wonderful passage what the coming of Napoleon meant to the inhabitants of a little German Principality. It is worth transcribing at some length, for it gives the whole colour and atmosphere of the old local life in Western Germany, which has not even yet entirely passed away. The speaker is an old soldier giving reminiscences of his boyhood:
"Our Elector was a fine gentleman, a great lover of the arts, and himself very clever with his fingers. He founded the picture gallery at Düsseldorf, and in the Observatory in that city they still show a very artistic set of wooden boxes, one inside the other, made by himself in his leisure hours, of which he had twenty-four every day.
"In those days the Princes were not overworked mortals as they are to-day. Their crowns sat very firmly on their heads, and at night they just drew their nightcaps over them, and slept in peace, while peacefully at their feet slept their peoples; and when these woke up in the morning they said, 'Good morning, Father,' and the Princes replied, 'Good morning, dear children.'
"But suddenly there came a change. One morning when we woke up in Düsseldorf and wanted to say, 'Good morning, Father,' we found our Father gone, and a kind of stupefaction over the whole city. Everybody felt as though they were going to a funeral, and people crept silently to the market-place and read a long proclamation on the door of the City Hall. It was grey weather, and yet thin old tailor Kilian stood in his alpaca coat, which he kept for indoor use only, and his blue woollen stockings hung down so that his miserable little bare legs were visible above them and his thin lips were trembling, while he murmured the words of the proclamation. A veteran soldier at his side read somewhat louder, and at every few words a tear trickled down into his honest white beard. I Stood by him and cried too, and asked him why we were crying. And then he told me: 'The Elector expresses you his gratitude'—then he went on reading, and at the words 'for your loyal and trusted obedience, and releases you from your duties,' his tears broke out afresh…. While we were reading, the Elector's arms were being taken down from the City Hall, the whole place became as terrifyingly quiet as though there were going to be an eclipse of the sun, and all the City Councillors went about hanging their heads as though no one had any more use for them…
"When I woke up next morning, the sun was shining as usual, drums were beating in the streets, and when I came down to breakfast and said good-morning to my father I heard how the barber had whispered to him while he was shaving him that the new Grand Duke Joachim was to receive the homage of his subjects at the City Hall to-day, that he came of a very good family and had been given the Emperor Napoleon's sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and I went and stood outside the door and watched the French troops marching in, those glorious happy Frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and shining sabres, the gay firm-set faces of the Grenadiers, the bear-skins, the tricolour cockades, the gleaming bayonets, the merry skilful horsemen, and the huge great drum-major with his silver-embroidered uniform, who could throw his drum-stick with its gilt button up to the first floor, and his eyes up even to the girls in the second floor windows. I was pleased that we were to have soldiers billeted on us—my mother was not—and I hurried to the market-place. There everything was quite different now. The world looked as if it had had a new coat of paint. A new coat-of-arms was hanging on the City Hall, the iron railings on the balcony were covered with tapestry hangings, French Grenadiers were standing sentry, the old City Councillors had put on new faces, and were wearing Sunday clothes, and looked at one another in French and said 'Bon jour,' ladies were looking out of all the windows, curious bystanders and smart soldiers thronged the square, and I and the other boys climbed on to the big horse of the Elector's statue and looked down on the gay crowd."[1]
[Footnote 1: Heine, Collected Works, i. 228 (Book Le Grand).]
Napoleon and his French soldiers, "marching through the world with songs and shining sabres," brought the Germans more than this happy thrill of excitement and a supply of new and more elegant princes. They brought them that which gave strength to their own right arm—the spirit of Nationality. "The soul of the German people," says a recent German writer, "has always lain very deep down, and has seldom come to the surface to become the spirit of the time and to inspire the movements of the world. Hardly ever except in times of the deepest adversity has it come to the surface: but then it has claimed its rights, or rather, discovered its duties."[1] Napoleon, by humiliating her, laid bare the soul of Germany, as Germany herself has laid bare the soul of Belgium to-day. His arrogant pretensions roused the Germans as they had never been roused since the days of the Reformation; while at the same time his attempts to secure the support of the bigger German principalities by enlarging them at the expense of the smaller, simplified the map and laid the foundations of a United Germany. The thinkers and dreamers of Germany, stung at last into a sense of political reality, awoke from their dreams of cosmopolitanism and devoted their powers to the needs of the German nation.
[Footnote 1: Daab's Preface to Paul de Lagarde, German Faith, German
Fatherland, German Culture, p. vi. (Jena, 1913).]
The years between 1806 and 1813, between the disastrous battle of Jena and the overwhelming victory of Leipzig, are the greatest years in German history. Shaking off the torpor and the prejudices of centuries the German nation arose and vanquished its oppressors.
But with the twilight of that glorious day the bats returned. The defeat of Napoleon was not only the defeat of French domination but the defeat of the French Revolution, and of the principles of Democracy and Nationality which inspired it. The unity of spirit which the Germans had achieved on the battlefield they were unable to transform after the victory into a unity of government or institutions. The Congress of Vienna, which redrew the map of Europe after the Revolutionary wars, did so, not in accordance with the principle of nationality or the wishes of the peoples of Europe but according to what was called "legitimacy," that is to say, the interests of the princes. There was only one idealist at the Conference, the Russian Emperor Alexander, and he was put off with empty phrases.