On the other side of the Rhine, opposite Mannheim, one finds Bavaria again, as a result of the odious slashings and jobbings of the Treaties of Paris, Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle. Every one cut out his share with scissors, without any regard for reason, humanity or justice, without troubling about the slice of population that fell into a pair of royal chops.
The Palatinate.
Driving through the Cisrhenan Palatinate, I reflected how this country had once formed a department of France, how white Gaul was girt about by the Rhine, the "blue sash" of Germany. Napoleon and the Republic before him had realized the dream of several of our kings, above all of Louis XIV. So long as we do not occupy our natural frontiers, there will be war in Europe, because the interest of self-preservation drives France to seize the boundaries necessary to her national independence. Here we have planted trophies to claim back in due season.
The plain between the Rhine and the Monts Tonnerre looks sad; earth and men seem to say that their fate is not settled, that they belong to no people; they appear to be expecting new invasions, as it were new river-floods. The Germans of Tacitus devastated great spaces on their frontiers and left them empty between these and their enemies. Woe to the border populations that till the battlefields on which the nations are to meet!
As I approached ——, I saw a sad sight: a wood of young fir-trees, five or six feet high, felled and bound into faggots, a forest mown like grass. I have spoken of the cemetery of Lucerne, where the children's burials throng on one side. I never felt more keenly the need to end my wanderings, to die under the protection of a friendly hand laid upon my heart to interrogate it, when they shall say:
"It has stopped beating."
From the edge of my tomb I would like to be able to cast back a glance of satisfaction over my many years, just as a pontiff, on reaching the sanctuary, blesses the long line of the priests who have served as his retinue.
Louvois[32] burnt down the Palatinate; unfortunately it was Turenne's hand that held the torch. The Revolution laid waste the same country, the witness and victim by turns of our aristocratic and plebeian struggles. It is enough to name the warriors to judge of the difference of the times: on the one side, Condé, Turenne, Créqui[33], Luxembourg, La Force[34], Villars[35]; on the other, Kellermann, Hoche, Pichegru, Moreau. Let us deny none of our victories; military glories especially have known only enemies of France and held only one opinion: on the battle-field, honour and danger level all ranks. Our fathers called the blood that flowed from a non-mortal wound "volatile blood:" a phrase typical of the contempt for death natural to Frenchmen in every century. Institutions can alter nothing in this national genius. The soldiers who, after the death of Turenne[36], said, "Let the Pie loose, we shall encamp where she stops," would have been quite as good as Napoleon's grenadiers.
On the heights of Dunkheim, the first rampart of the Gauls on that side, one discovers the seats of camps and military positions to-day empty of soldiers: Burgundians, Franks, Goths, Huns, Suevi, so many waves of the Barbarian deluge, have by turns assailed those heights.
Not far from Dunkheim, one sees the remains of a monastery. The monks enclosed within that retreat had seen many armies passing round at their feet; they had shown hospitality to many warriors; there some crusader had ended his life, changed his helm for the frock; there were passions which called for silence and rest before the last rest and the last silence. Did they find what they sought? Those ruins will not tell.