The government of Charles von Dalberg, the prince primate and grandduke of Frankfort, was one of the most despicable of those composing the Rhenish confederation. Equally insensible to the duties attached to his high name and station,[9] he flattered the foreign tyrant to an extent unsurpassed by any of the other base sycophants at that time abounding in the empire; with folded hands would he at all times invoke the blessing of the Most High on the head of the almighty ruler of the earth, and celebrate each of his victories with hymns of gratitude and joy, while his ministers misruled and tyrannized over the country,[10] whose freedom they loudly vaunted.[11]—In Würzburg, the French ambassador reigned with the despotism of an Eastern satrap.[12] Saxe-Coburg[13] and Anhalt-Gotha,[14] where the native tyrant was sheltered beneath the wing of Napoleon, were in the most lamentable state.—In Saxony, the government remained unaltered. Frederick Augustus, filled with gratitude for the lenity with which he had been treated after the war and for the grant of the royal dignity, remained steadily faithful to Napoleon, but introduced no internal innovations into the government. The adhesion of Saxe-Weimar to the Rhenish confederation was of deplorable consequence to Germany, the great poets assembled there by the deceased Duchess Amalia also scattering incense around Napoleon.
The kingdom of Westphalia was doomed to taste to the dregs the bitter cup of humiliation. The new king, Jerome, who declared, "Je veux qu'on respecte la dignite de l'homme et du citoyen," bestowed, it is true, many and great benefits upon his subjects; the system of flogging, so degrading to the soldier, was abolished, the judicature was improved, the administration simplified, and the German in authority, notwithstanding his traditionary gruffness, became remarkable for urbanity toward the citizens and peasants. But Napoleon's despotic rule ever demanded fresh sacrifices of men and money and increased severity on the part of the police, in order to quell the spirit of revolt. Jerome, conscious of being merely his brother's representative, consoled himself for his want of independence in his gay court at Cassel.[15] He had received but a middling education, and had, at one period, held a situation in the marine at Baltimore in North America. While still extremely young, placed unexpectedly upon a throne, more as a splendid puppet than as an independent sovereign, he gave way to excesses, natural, and, under the circumstances, almost excusable. It would be ungenerous to repeat the sarcasms showered upon him on his expulsion. The execrations heaped, at a later period, upon his head, ought with far greater justice to have fallen upon those of the Germans themselves, and more particularly upon those of that portion of the aristocracy that vied with the French in enriching the chronique scandaleuse of Cassel, and upon those of the citizens who, under Bongars, the head of the French police, acted the part of spies upon and secret informers against their wretched countrymen.—The farcical donation of a free constitution to the people put a climax to their degradation. On the 2d of July, 1808, Jerome summoned the Westphalian Estates to Cassel and opened the servile assembly, thus arbitrarily convoked, with extreme pomp. The unfortunate deputies, who had, on the conclusion of the lengthy ceremonial, received an invitation assister au répas at the palace and had repaired thither, their imaginations, whetted by hunger, revelling in visions of gastronomic delight, were sorely discomfited on discovering that they were simply expected "to look on while the sovereign feasted." The result of this assembly was, naturally, a unanimous tribute of admiration and an invocation of blessings on the head of the foreign ruler, the principal part in which was played by John Müller, who attempted to convince his fellow countrymen that by means of the French usurpation they had first received the boon of true liberty. This cheaply-bought apostate said, in his usual hyperbolical style, "It is a marked peculiarity of the northern nations, more especially of those of German descent, that, whenever God has, in His wisdom, resolved to bestow upon them a new kind or a higher degree of civilization, the impulse has ever been given from without. This impulse was given to us by Napoleon, by him before whom the earth is silent, God having given the whole world into his hand, nor can Germany at the present period have a wish ungratified, Napoleon having reorganized her as the nursery of European civilization. Too sublime to condescend to every-day polity, he has given durability to Germany! Happy nation! what an interminable vista of glory opens to thy view!" Thus spoke John Müller. Thousands of Germans had been converted into abject slaves, but none other than he was there ever found, with sentimental phrases to gild the chains of his countrymen, to vaunt servility as liberty and dishonor as glory.[16] John Müller's unprincipled address formed, as it were, the turning-point of German affairs. Self-degradation could go no further. The spirit of the sons of Germany henceforward rose, and, with manly courage, they sought, by their future actions, to wipe off the deep stain of their former guilt and dishonor.
[Footnote 1: See accounts of this affair in the Recollections of a
Legionary, Hanover, 1826, and in Beamisch's History of the Legion.]
[Footnote 2: A graphic description of these times is to be met with in Joanna Schopenhauer's Tour on the Lower Rhine. The kings of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Westphalia, Saxony, the prince primate, the hereditary prince of Baden and of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the duke of Weimar, the princes of Hobenzollern, Hesse-Rotenburg, and Hesse-Philippsthal, were present. No one belonging to the house of Austria was there: of that of Prussia there was Prince William, the king's brother. The Allgemeine Zeitung of that day wrote: "The fact of Napoleon's sending for the privy-councillor, Von Goethe, into his cabinet, and conversing with him for upward of an hour, appears to us well worthy of mention. What German would not rejoice that the great emperor should have entered into such deep conversation with such a fitting representative of our noblest, and now, alas, sole remaining national possession, our art and learning, by whose preservation alone can our nationality be saved from utter annihilation." Notwithstanding which the company of actors belonging to the theatre at Weimar, which was close at hand and had been under Goethe's instruction, was not once allowed to perform on the Erfurt stage, which Napoleon had supplied with actors from Paris. Wieland was also compelled to remain standing for an hour in Napoleon's presence, and when, at length, unable, owing to the weakness of old age, to continue in that position, he ventured to ask permission to retire, Napoleon is said to have considered the request an unwarrantable liberty. The literary heroes of Weimar took no interest in the country from which they had received so deep a tribute of admiration. Not a patriotic sentiment escaped their lips. At the time when the deepest wound was inflicted on the Tyrol, Goethe gave to the world his frivolous "Wahlverwandschaften," which was followed by a poem in praise of Napoleon, of whom he says:
"Doubts, that have baffled thousands, he has solved;
Ideas, o'er which centuries have brooded,
His giant mind intuitively compassed.">[
[Footnote 3: The great and dangerous robber bands of the notorious Damian Hessel, and of Schinderhannes, afford abundant proof of the demoralized condition of the people.]
[Footnote 4: On the 12th of January, 1807, a ship laden with four hundred quintals of gunpowder blew up in the middle of the city of Leyden, part of which was thereby reduced to ruins, and one hundred and fifty persons, among others the celebrated professors Luzac and Kleit, were killed.]
[Footnote 5: On the opening of the federal diet in 1806, the Landammann lauded "the omnipotent benevolence of the gracious mediator." In earlier times, the Swiss would, on the contrary, have boasted of their affording protection to, not of receiving protection from, France.]
[Footnote 6: In order to prove of what importance they considered the benevolent protection of Napoleon the Great.—Attgemeine Zeitung of 1810, No. 90.]
[Footnote 7: Their general, Von der Wied, who was taken prisoner at Talavera in Spain and died shortly afterward of a pestilential disease, had done signal service to France, in 1798 in Switzerland, in 1792 in Italy, in 1805 in Austria, in 1806 in Prussia, and finally in Spain.—Allgemeine Zeitung of 1811, No. 46.]