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XXIV.

CHAP. to accede to a convention, by which a suspension of hostilities was agreed to, on condition of the city remaining in their hands, and the citadel, arsenal, and squadron in those of General Chassé.

1830.

81.

State of political feeling in

It was not to be expected that GERMANY, the land of ardent feelings, heroic courage, and lofty aspirations, as the tone of its contemporary literature and the deeds of Germany. its gallant sons demonstrate, was to escape the influence of the electric shock of the French Revolution. It was felt there, accordingly, and only with the more vehemence that the people were unaccustomed to the exercise of political rights, and that to them the land of freedom was the fairy region of imagination, not the theatre of actual experience or observation. The feelings of a large portion of the people had been deeply wounded by the failure on the part of the greater powers to perform the promises which, under the pressure of danger in the war of liberation, they had made to give representative institutions to their people. This theme, so vast and important, will form the subject of an ample disquisition in a future chapter, when Germany comes prominently forward, and the causes which led to the general outbreak of its inhabitants in 1848 require to be recounted. At present, as the disturbances which occurred were only partial, and of ephemeral duration, though not ephemeral consequences, it is sufficient to observe, that though representative institutions had been established in Wirtemberg, Baden, and several of the lesser states, subsequent to 1814, yet they were either wholly awanting, or existing only in form, in Austria and Prussia, and that a deep though smothered feeling of indignation pervaded the middle class over all Germany, at what they justly regarded as a deliberate breach of faith on the part of their governments in this vital particular. When men's minds were in this indignant and agitated state, a spark was sufficient to produce an explosion; and the French Revolution was too important an event not at once to induce it.

XXIV.

1830.

82.

ances in

pelle and

The train took fire first in the great commercial and CHAP. manufacturing towns, the centres, in all ages and countries, of independent thought and united action. No sooner did the disturbances, accordingly, break out in Brussels, Disturbthan they extended to Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne, in Aix-la-Chaboth of which cities the workmen assembled in tumultuous Cologne. crowds, and began to pillage shops, break machines, attack Aug. 30. manufactories, and deliver prisoners from jail in order to swell the ranks of the disaffected. These disorders excited the utmost alarm all along the Rhine, in all the principal cities on which river symptoms of agitation appeared; and it was only by the general turning out and firm countenance of the burgher militia that they were prevented from breaking out into open insurrection. Greatly alarmed, the Prussian government in haste moved forward several veteran regiments of Old Prussia into the Rhenish provinces; and Prince William of Prussia, on September 9th, addressed a letter to the authorities there, expressing his resolution not to interfere with the internal affairs of France, or the form of its government, but to defend the Prussian dominions from attack, and maintain the provinces on the Rhine to the 630. last extremity.1*

1

Cap. iii. Ann. Hist. xiii. 629,

92, 93;

in all the

From the banks of the Rhine the agitation was com- 83. municated like an electric shock through all the cities of Convulsions the north of Germany, though the success which attended north of the attempts at insurrection was very various, according to the vigilance and strength of the Government in different. places, and the fidelity which the troops evinced when

* "Le roi m'a chargé de témoigner à ses sujets des provinces Rhénanes combien il regrettait de ne pouvoir se rendre au milieu d'eux. Les évènemens survenus en France nécessitent sa présence dans sa capitale. Cependant le roi est fermement résolu de ne s'immiscer en rien dans les affaires de ce pays, et de laisser le volcan se consumer dans son intérieur. Mais si les Français attaquaient nos frontières, alors le roi rassemblerait toutes ses forces pour les combattre. Les travaux qui ont été exécutés à Coblentz et qui en font un boulevard puissant de la monarchie, prouvent l'importance que sa majesté attache à la possession des provinces Rhénanes, et sa ferme résolution de les défendre à toute extrémité.-GUILLAUME. Coblentz, 9 Septembre 1830."-Ann. Hist., xiii. 93, note.

VOL. IV.

2 I

Germany.

1830.

CHAP. brought into contact with the people. Enough, however, XXIV. appeared to indicate what the events of 1848 so fully confirmed, that the stability of existing institutions in Germany rested entirely upon the strength and fidelity of the armed force; that in the midst of feudal manners, institutions, and traditions, though repressed by an enormous military establishment, there existed a deep and widespread spirit of discontent in the industrious and highly-educated middle classes; and that, if the time should come when the regular troops were no longer, as in France, to be relied on in a conflict with the Ann. Hist. people, or were openly to espouse the popular side, society would be shaken to its centre, and the most dreadful convulsions might be anticipated.1

1 Cap. iii. 93, 95;

xiii. 626,

629.

84.

Leipsic, and

In all the cities where the Teutonic race was predomiIn Dresden, nant, even the military capital of Bavaria, and the distant Brunswick. metropolis of Denmark, disturbances or symptoms of disorder appeared on intelligence being received of the events in Brussels; but they assumed the most formidable aspect in Leipsic, Dresden, Brunswick, and Hesse-Cassel. In the first of these cities, extensive mercantile transactions, a great spread of knowledge, and the vast concourse of strangers during the fair, had greatly strengthened the desire for popular institutions. In the second, in addition to the general desire for freedom, there was united the discontent of a population generally Protestant at a royal family still Catholic. In Leipsic, the disturbances, which originated with the students of the university, were repressed without any serious consequences at the end of two days; but at Dresden the populace for a time gained the ascendant. The Hôtel de Ville and the Hôtel de la Police were both burned, and the King was obliged to fly from his capital, and take refuge in the impregnable fortress of Königstein, so celebrated in the wars of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. At Hesse-Cassel-where the people, in addition to the other causes of German discontent, were irritated by the absence of the Elector, who

Sept. 7.

Sept. 9.

XXIV.

lived, apart from the Electress, a scandalous life at his CHAP. palace of Wilhelmshohe, in which his presence was sig- 1830. nalised only by arbitrary decrees or acts of oppression 1 Ann. Hist. against his subjects-the disorders were not less serious, xiii. 634, and were only put down by four thousand of the Burgher iii. 96. Guard and four hundred regular troops.1

640; Cap.

Still more alarming were the disturbances in Bruns- 85.

Brunswick.

wick. On the 6th the populace rose, and, disregard- And in ing sixteen pieces of cannon placed around the palace Sept. 6. of the reigning sovereign, but which were never discharged, surrounded the ducal residence, which was soon committed to the flames. The whole pictures and furniture were broken to pieces, or thrown out of the windows, and the superb pile reduced to ashes. The Duke fled in disguise during the darkness of the night, and escaped to London, where he was coldly received by the English government, which was aware of the indiscretions and faults on his part which had occasioned so violent an explosion. Meanwhile, the Estates of the duchy conferred the government, provisionally, on his brother Prince William, in the character of regent, and as a matter of necessity he was recognised by the courts of London, Berlin, and Vienna. Even the distant capital of Vienna felt the shock. Assemblages were formed in the streets which defied the whole power of the police, and were dispersed only by the appearance of the cuirassiers; and 634, 637; the dawn of that spirit already appeared, destined at no 96; Monidistant period to threaten with dissolution the whole 12, 1830. Austrian monarchy.2

2 Ann. Hist.

631,

Cap. iii.

teur, Sept.

contests in

land.

SWITZERLAND did not escape the general contagion; 86. and though the shepherds of the valleys, in possession of Political full democratic privileges, remained tranquil, the burghers Switzerof its cities, who were not equally endowed, were violently agitated. The Federal Diet was sitting at Berne in perfect tranquillity when the news arrived of the revolution of July in Paris; and the excitement immediately became so violent that it was evident the demand for more

XXIV.

1830.

Nov. 27.

CHAP. popular institutions could no longer be withstood. Wisely resolving to yield to a storm which they could not resist, the cantons in which aristocratic institutions still existed, themselves took the lead in making the changes which were demanded. Zurich was the first which did so. On the 27th November the local legislature of that city passed a resolution fixing the representation of the Council at 212 members, of whom a third were to be returned by the city, and two-thirds by the landward part of the canton, fixing the qualification for representatives at twenty-nine years of age, and a fortune of 5000 francs (£200). This Council was to appoint a smaller body, which was to form a constitution, the basis of which was to be popular sovereignty, and an equal division of the public burdens. Similar organic changes, in effect like the Reform Bill in England, amounting to revolution, were brought about in Lucerne, Soleure, Argovia, St Gall, and Turgovia, not without, in some, serious popular disorders which disgraced the land and cause of freedom. Berne itself, the most aristocratic of all the cantons, underwent its revolution. The petitions praying for reform and an extension of popular rights, presented to its Council of State, were so numerous that at length they could no longer be resisted, and in the beginning of December a meeting of the great Council, which consisted of 217 members, was held, at which it was unanimously resolved to put the whole militia of the country on a war footing, and to appoint a committee of eleven to revise the constitution. So great, however, was the public agitation, that these measures would not suffice, and the central committee of government accordingly convoked a general assembly of the representatives of all the cantons to meet at Berne on the 23d December. It decreed the levy of sixty thousand men, to cause the external independence of the confedera1 Ann. Hist. tion to be respected; but wisely abstained from interfering with the internal constitutions of the cantons, which were left to their separate legislatures.1

Dec. 23.

xiii. 674,

678.

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