[Footnote 8: Personal freedom was restricted by innumerable decrees. Freedom of speech, formerly great in Würtemberg, was strictly repressed; all social confidence was annihilated. A swarm of informers ensnared those whom the secret police were unable to entrap. The secrecy of letters was violated. Trials in criminal cases were no longer allowed to be public. The sentence passed upon the accused was, particularly in cases of the highest import, not delivered by the judge as dictated by the law, but by the despot's caprice.—The conscription was enforced with increased severity and tyranny.—The natural right of emigration was abolished.—The people were disarmed, and not even the inhabitants of solitary farms and hamlets were allowed to possess arms in order to defend themselves against wolves and robbers. A man was punished for killing a mad dog, because the gun used for that purpose had been illegally secreted. Pass-tickets were given to and returned by all desirous of passing the gates of the pettiest town. The members of the higher aristocracy were compelled, under pain of being deprived of the third of their income, to spend three months in the year at court.—The citizen was oppressed by a variety of fresh taxes, by the newly-created monopolies of tobacco, salt, etc., and colonial imposts, by the tenfold rise of the excise and custom-house dues, etc. Vide Zahn in the Würtemberg Annual. Zschokke, meanwhile, in his pamphlet already mentioned, "Will the human race gain," etc., advocated republican equality and liberty under a monarchical constitution.]
[Footnote 9: The Von Dalbergs of Franconia were the first hereditary barons of the Holy Roman Empire, and one of their race was dubbed knight at each imperial coronation. Hence the demand of the imperial herald, "Is no Dalberg here?" And a Dalberg it was, who, in Napoleon's name, declared to the German emperor that he no longer recognized an emperor of Germany.—In 1797, Dalberg had, at the diet, and again in 1805, expressed himself with great zeal against France; on the present occasion he was Napoleon's first satrap.]
[Footnote 10: They sold the demesnes of Hanau and Fulda and received the sums produced by the sale in gift from the grandduke.—Görres's Rhenish Mercury, A.D. 1814, No. 168.]
[Footnote 11: They were barefaced enough to bestow a constitution, and, in 1810, to open a diet at Hanau, although all the newspapers had, five days previously, been suppressed, and orders had been issued that the editor of the only newspaper permitted for the future was to be appointed by the police.—Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 294.]
[Footnote 12: Count Montholon-Semonville sold justice and mercy. Vide
Brockhaus's Deutsche Blätter, 1814, No. 101.]
[Footnote 13: The duke, Francis, allowed the country to be mercilessly drained and impoverished by the minister, Von Kretschmann. He lived on extremely bad terms with his uncle, Frederick Josias, duke of Coburg, the celebrated Austrian general. Francis died in 1806. Ernest, his son and successor, delivered the country, in 1809, from Kretschmann's tyranny, and, in 1811, bestowed upon it a constitution, which was, nevertheless, merely an imitation of that of Westphalia.]
[Footnote 14: The prince, Augustus Christian Frederick, contracted debts to an enormous amount, completely drained his petty territory, and even seized bail-money. Military amusements, drunkenness and other gross excesses, the preservation of enormous herds of deer which destroyed the fields of the peasantry, formed the pleasures of this prince.—Stenzel's History of Anhalt.]
[Footnote 15: Napoleon nicknamed him roi de coulisses, and gave him a guardian in his ambassador, Reinhard, a person of celebrity during the Revolution. Jerome's first ministers were friends of his youth; the Creole, Le Camus, who was created Count Pürstenstein, and Malchus, whose office it was to fill a bottomless treasury. Vide Hormayr, Archive 5, 458, and the Secret History of the Court of Westphalia, 1814.]
[Footnote 16: Vide Strombeck's Life and the Allgemeine Zeitung of September, 1808. Besides John Müller and Aretin, mention may, with equal justice, be made of Orome of Geissen and Zschokke, a native of Magdeburg naturalized in Switzerland, who, in 1807, ventured to declare in public that Napoleon had done more for Swiss independence than William Tell five hundred years ago; who, paid by Napoleon, defamed the noble-spirited Spaniards and Tyrolese in 1815, decried the enthusiastic spirit animating Germany, and afterward whitewashed himself by his liberal tirades. With these may also be associated Murhard, the publisher of the Moniteur Westphalien, K.J. Schütz, the author of a work upon Napoleon, the Berlinese Jew, Saul Asher, the author of a scandalous work, entitled "Germanomanie," and of a slanderous article in Zschokke's Miscellanies against Prussia, Kosegarten the poet, who, in 1809, delivered a speech in eulogy of Napoleon, far surpassing all in bombast and mean adulation. Benturini, at that time, also termed Napoleon the emanation of the universal Spirit, a second incarnation of the Deity, a second savior of the world. In Posselt's European Annals of 1807, a work by a certain W. upon the political interests of Germany appeared, and concluded as follows: "Let us raise to him (Napoleon) a national monument, worthy of the first and only benefactor of the nations of Germany. Let his name be engraved in gigantic letters of shining gold on Germany's highest and steepest pinnacle, whence, lighted by the effulgent rays of morn, it may be visible far over the plains on which he bestowed a happier futurity!" This writer also drew a comparison between Napoleon and Charlemagne, in which he designated the latter a barbarous despot and the former the new savior of the world. He says, "Napoleon first solved the enigma of equality and liberty—his chief aim was the prevention of despotism—his chief desire, to eternalize the dominion of virtue." In the course of 1808, it was said in the essay, "On the Regeneration of Germany," that the Germans were still children whom it was solely possible for the French to educate: "Our language is also not logical like French—if we intend to attain unity, we must adhere with heart and soul to him who has smoothed the path to it, to him, our securest support, to him, whose name outshines that of Charlemagne—foreign princes in German countries are no proof of subjection, they, on the contrary, most surely warrant our continued existence as a nation." In France sixty authors dedicated their works, within the space of a year, to the emperor Napoleon—in Germany, ninety.]
CCLVI. Resuscitation of Patriotism Throughout Germany—Austria's
Demonstration