At Rastadt, near Baden, where the compensation mentioned in the treaty of Campo Formio was to be taken into consideration, the terrified Estates of the empire assembled for the purpose of suing the French ambassadors for the lenity they had not met with at the hands of Austria and Prussia.—The events that took place at Rastadt are of a description little calculated to flatter the patriotic feelings of the German historian. The soul of the congress was Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Perigord, at one time a bishop, at the present period minister of the French republic. His colloquy with the German ambassadors resembled that of the fox with the geese, and he attuned their discords with truly diabolical art. While holding Austria and Prussia apart, instigating them one against the other, flattering both with the friendship of the republic and with the prospect of a rich booty by the secularization of the ecclesiastical lands, he encouraged some of the petty states with the hope of aggrandizement by an alliance with France,[9] and, with cruel contempt, allowed others a while to gasp for life before consigning them to destruction. The petty princes, moreover, who had been deprived of their territory on the other side of the Rhine, demanded lands on this side in compensation; all the petty princes on this side consequently trembled lest they should be called upon to make compensation, and each endeavored, by bribing the members of the congress, Talleyrand in particular, to render himself an exception. The French minister was bribed not by gold alone; a considerable number of ladies gained great notoriety by their liaison with the insolent republican, from whom they received nothing, the object for which they sued being sold by him sometimes even two or three times. Momus, a satirical production of this period, relates numerous instances of crime and folly that are perfectly incredible. The avarice manifested by the French throughout the whole of the negotiations was only surpassed by the brutality of their language and behavior. Roberjot, Bonnier, and Jean de Bry, the dregs of the French nation, treated the whole of the German empire on this occasion en canaille, and, while picking the pockets of the Germans, were studiously coarse and brutal; still the trifling opposition they encountered, and the total want of spirit in the representatives of the great German empire, whom it must, in fact, have struck them as ridiculous to see thus humbled at their feet, forms an ample excuse for their demeanor.
Gustavus Adolphus IV., who mounted the throne of Sweden in 1796, distinguished himself at that time among the Estates of the empire, when Duke of Pomerania and Prince of Rugen, by his solemn protest against the depredations committed by France, and by his summons to every member of the German empire to take the field against their common foe. Hesse-Cassel was also remarkable for the warlike demeanor and decidedly anti-Gallic feeling of her population; and Wurtemberg, for being the first of the German states that gave the example of making concessions more in accordance with the spirit of the times. By the abolition of ancient abuses alone could the princes meet the threats used on every occasion by the French at Rastadt to revolutionize the people unless their demands were fully complied with. In Wurtemberg, the duke, Charles, had been succeeded, A.D. 1793, by his brother, Louis Eugène, who banished license from his court, but, a foe to enlightenment, closed the Charles college, placed monks around his person, was extremely bigoted, and a zealous but impotent friend to France. He expired, A.D. 1795, and was succeeded by the third brother, Frederick Eugène, who had been during his youth a canon at Salzburg, but afterward became a general in the Prussian service, married a princess of Brandenburg, and educated his children in the Protestant faith in order to assimilate the religion of the reigning family with that of the people. His mild government terminated in 1797. Frederick, his talented son and successor, mainly frustrated the projected establishment of a Swabian republic, which was strongly supported by the French, by his treatment of the provincial Estates, the modification of the rights of chase, etc., on which occasion he took the following oath: "I repeat the solemn vow, ever to hold the constitution of this country sacred and to make the weal of my subjects the aim of my life." He nevertheless appears, by the magnificent fetes, masquerades, and pastoral festivals given by him, as if in a time of the deepest peace, at Hohenheim, to have trusted more to his connection with England, by his marriage with the princess royal, Matilda,[10] with Russia, and with Austria (the emperor Paul, Catherine's successor, having married the princess Maria of Wurtemberg, and the emperor Francis II., her sister Elisabeth), than to the constitution, which he afterward annihilated.
The weakness displayed by the empire and the increasing disunion between Austria and Prussia encouraged the French to further insolence. Not satisfied with garrisoning every fortification on the left bank of the Rhine, they boldly attacked, starved to submission, and razed to the ground, during peace time, the once impregnable fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, on the right bank of the Rhine, opposite Coblentz.[11] Not content with laying the Netherlands and Holland completely waste, they compelled the Hanse towns to grant them a loan of eighteen million livres. Lubeck refused, but Hamburg and Bremen, more nearly threatened and hopeless of aid from Prussia, were constrained to satisfy the demands of the French brigands. In the Netherlands, the German faction once more rose in open insurrection; in 1798, the young men, infuriated by the conscription and by their enrolment into French regiments, flew to arms, and torrents of blood were shed in the struggle, in which they were unaided by their German brethren, before they were again reduced to submission. The English also landed at Ostend, but for the sole purpose of destroying the sluices of the canal at Bruges.
The French divided the beautiful Rhenish provinces, yielded to them almost without a blow by Germany, into four departments: First, Roer, capital Aix-la-Chapelle; besides Cologne and Cleves. Secondly, Donnersberg, capital Mayence; besides Spires and Zweibrucken. Thirdly, Saar, capital Treves. Fourthly, Rhine and Moselle, capital Coblentz; besides Bonn. Each department was subdivided into cantons, each canton into communes. The department was governed by a perfect, the canton by a sub-prefect, the commune by a mayor. All distinction of rank, nobility, and all feudal rights were abolished. Each individual was a citizen, free and equal. All ecclesiastical establishments were abandoned to plunder, the churches alone excepted, they being still granted as places of worship to believers, notwithstanding the contempt and ridicule into which the clergy had fallen. The monasteries were closed. The peasantry, more particularly in Treves, nevertheless, still manifested great attachment to Popery. Guilds and corporations were also abolished. The introduction of the ancient German oral law formerly in use throughout the empire, the institution of trial by jury, which, to the disgrace of Germany, the Rhenish princes, after the lapse of a thousand years, learned from their Gallic foe, was a great and signal benefit.
Liberty, equality, and justice were, at that period, in all other respects, mere fictions. The most arbitrary rule in reality existed, and the new provinces were systematically drained by taxes of every description, as, for instance, register, stamp, patent, window, door, and land taxes: there was also a tax upon furniture and upon luxuries of every sort; a poll-tax, a percentage on the whole assessment, etc.; besides extortion, confiscation, and forced sales. And woe to the new citizen of the great French republic if he failed in paying more servile homage to its officers, from the prefect down to the lowest underling, than had ever been exacted by the princes![12] Such was the liberty bestowed by republican France! Thus were her promises fulfilled! The German Illuminati were fearfully undeceived, particularly on perceiving how completely their hopes of universally revolutionizing Germany were frustrated by the treaty of Basel. The French, who had proclaimed liberty to all the nations of the earth, now offered it for sale. The French character was in every respect the same as during the reign of Louis XIV. The only principle to which they remained ever faithful was that of robbery.—Switzerland was now, in her turn, attacked, and vengeance thus overtook every province that had severed itself from the empire, and every part of the once magnificent empire of Germany was miserably punished for its want of unity.
[Footnote 1: Clausewitz demands, with great justice, why the Austrians so greatly divided their forces on this occasion for the sake of saving Italy, as they had only to follow up their successes vigorously on the Rhine in order to gain, in that quarter, far more than they could lose on the Po.]
[Footnote 2: At Absom, in the valley of the Inn, a peasant girl had, at that time, discovered a figure of the Virgin in one of the panes of glass in her chamber window. This appearance being deemed miraculous by the simple peasantry, the authorities of the place investigated the matter, had the glass cleaned and scraped, etc., and at length pronounced the indelible figure to be simply the outline of an old colored painting. The peasantry, however, excited by the appearance of the infidel French, persisted in giving credence to the miracle and set up the piece of glass in a church, which was afterward annually visited by thousands of pilgrims. In 1407, the celebrated pilgrimage to Waldrast, in the Tyrol, had been founded in a similar manner by the discovery of a portrait of the Virgin which had been grown up in a tree, by two shepherd lads.]
[Footnote 3: Cobenzl was a favorite of Kaunitz and a thorough courtier. At an earlier period, when ambassador at Petersburg, he wrote French comedies, which were performed at the Hermitage in the presence of the empress Catherine. The arrival of an unpleasant despatch being ever followed by the production of some amusing piece as an antidote to care, the empress jestingly observed, "that he was no doubt keeping his best piece until the news arrived of the French being in Vienna." He expired in the February of 1809, a year pregnant with fate for Austria.]
[Footnote 4: He indignantly refused the stipend offered to him on this occasion and protested against the injustice of his condemnation.]
[Footnote 5: Bavaria regarded these forced concessions as a bad reward for her fidelity to Austria. Napoleon appears to have calculated upon relighting by this means the flames of discord, whence he well knew how to draw an advantage, between Bavaria and Austria.]