[Footnote 3: Von Berlepsch, the councillor of administration, proposed to the Calemberg diet to declare their neutrality in defiance of England, and, in case of necessity, to place "the Calemberg Nation" under the protection of France.—Havemomn.]
[Footnote 4: "Wherever these locusts appear, everything, men, cattle, food, property, etc., is carried off. These thieves seize everything convertible into money. Nothing is safe from them. At Cologne, they filled a church with coffee and sugar. At Aix-la-Chapelle, they carried off the finest pictures of Rubens and Van Dyck, the pillars from the altar, and the marble-slab from the tomb of Charlemagne, all of which they sold to some Dutch Jews."—Posselt's Annals of 1796. At Cologne, the nuns were instantly emancipated from their vows, and one of the youngest and most beautiful afterward gained great notoriety as a barmaid at an inn. This scandalous story is related by Klebe in his Travels on the Rhine. In Bonn, Gleich, a man who had formerly been a priest, placed himself at the head of the French rabble and planted trees of liberty. He also gave to the world a decade, as he termed his publication.—Müller, History of Bonn. "The French proclaimed war against the palaces and peace to the huts, but no hut was too mean to escape the rapacity of these birds of prey. The first-fruits of liberty was the pillage of every corner."— Schwaben's History of Siegburg. The brothers Boisserée'e afterward collected a good many of the church pictures, at that period carried away from Cologne and more particularly from the Lower Rhine. They now adorn Munich and form the best collection of old German paintings now existing.]
[Footnote 5: "Had Würtemberg possessed but six thousand well-organized troops, the position on the Roszbuhl might have been maintained, and the country have been saved. The millions since paid by Würtemberg, and which she may still have to pay, would have been spared."— Appendix to the History of the Campaign of 1796.]
[Footnote 6: The duke, Charles, had, in 1791, visited Paris, donned the national cockade, and bribed Mirabeau with a large sum of money to induce the French government to purchase Mümpelgard from him. The French, however, were quite as well aware as the duke that they would ere long possess it gratis.]
[Footnote 7: Moreau generously allowed all his prisoners, who, as ex-nobles, were destined to the guillotine, to escape.]
[Footnote 8: Armbruster's "Register of French Crime" contains as follows: "Here and there, in the neighboring towns, there were certainly symptoms of an extremely favorable disposition toward the French, which would ill deserve a place in the annals of German patriotism and of German good sense. This disposition was fortunately far from general. The appearance of the French in their real character, and the barbarous excesses and heavy contributions by which they rendered the people sensible of their presence, speedily effected their conversion." The French, it is true, neither murdered the inhabitants nor burned the villages as they had during the previous century in the Pfalz, but they pillaged the country to a greater extent, shamefully abused the women, and desecrated the churches. Their license and the art with which they extorted the last penny from the wretched people surpassed all belief. "Not satisfied with robbing the churches, they especially gloried in giving utterance to the most fearful blasphemies, in destroying and profaning the altars, in overthrowing the statues of saints, in treading the host beneath their feet or casting it to dogs.—At the village of Berg in Weingarten, they set up in the holy of holies the image of the devil, which they had taken from the representation of the temptation of the Saviour in the wilderness. In the village of Boos, they roasted a crucifix before a fire."—Vide Hurter's Memorabilia, concerning the French allies in Swabia, who attempted to found an Alemannic Republic. Schaffhausen, 1840. Moreau reduced them to silence by declaring, "I have no need of a revolution to the rear of my army.">[
[Footnote 9: Notwithstanding Jourdan's proclamation, promising protection to all private property, Würzburg, Schweinfurt, Bamberg, etc., were completely pillaged. The young girls fled in hundreds to the woods. The churches were shamelessly desecrated. When mercy in God's name was demanded, the plunderers replied, "God! we are God!" They would dance at night-time around a bowl of burning brandy, whose blue flames they called their être suprème.—The French in Franconia, by Count Soden.]
[Footnote 10: "They deemed the assassination of a foreigner a meritorious work."—Ephemeridae of 1797. "The peasantry, roused to fury by the disorderly and cruel French, whose excesses exceeded all belief, did not even extend mercy to the wounded; and the French, with equal barbarity, set whole villages on fire."—Appendix to the Campaign of 1796].
[Footnote 11: When scarcely in his twenty-seventh year. He was one of the most distinguished heroes of the Revolution, and as remarkable for his generosity to his weaker foes as for his moral and chivalric principles. The Archduke Charles sent his private physicians to attend upon him, and, on the occasion of his burial, fired a salvo simultaneously with that of the French stationed on the opposite bank of the Rhine.—Mussinan.]
[Footnote 12: The peasants of the Artenau and the Kinzigthal were commanded by a wealthy farmer, named John Baader. Besides several French generals, Hausmann, the commissary of the government, who accompanied Moreau's army, was taken prisoner.—Mussinan, History of the French War of 1796 etc. A decree, published on the 18th of September by Frederick Eugene, Duke of Würtemberg, in which he prohibited his subjects from taking part in the pursuit of the French, is worthy of remark.]