Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 408, January 1849

It was with almost prophetic spirit that we, last year, spoke of the unhappy duchy of Baden, which had then, as since, the least cause of complaint of any of the several subdivisions of Germany. "Nothing," it was then said, "can be more uneasy and disquieting than its appearance. In this part of Germany, the revolutionary fermentation appears far more active, and is more visible in the manner, attitude, and language of the lower classes, than even in those (at that time) hotbeds of revolutionary movement, Austria and Prussia. To this state of things the confinity with agitated France, and consequently a more active affinity with its ideas, caught like a fever from a next-door neighbour's house, the agency of the emissaries from the ultra-republican Parisian clubs, who find an easier access across the frontiers, and the fact also that the unhappy duchy has been, if not the native country, at least the scene of action of the republican insurgents, Hecker and Struve, have all combined to contribute." "It is impossible to enter the duchy, and converse with the peasant population, formerly and proverbially so peacefully disposed in patriarchal Germany – formerly so smiling, so ready, so civil, perhaps only too obsequious in their signs of respect, now so insolent and rude – without finding the poison of those various influences gathering and festering in all their ideas, words, and actions."

Such were the views written last year; and this state of things has since continued to increase, as regards popular fermentation, and disposition to insurrection. Demagogic agitators swarmed in the land, instilling poison wherever they went, and rejoicing as they saw the virus do its work in the breaking out of festering sores. The tactics of this party, in all lands, has been to try their experiments upon the military; but it has only been in Baden, thus demoralised, and disorganised by weakness of sufferance, and a vain spirit of concession and looked-for conciliation, that these subjects were found fitting for the efforts of the experimentalisers. The virus had already done its work among them, to the utmost hopes of the poisoning crew, when the New Frankfort Constitution – the rejection of which was to be the signal for a quasi legal insurrection – was accepted by the Grand-duke of Baden. But the agitators were not to be thus baffled. A pretence, however shallow and false, was easily found in the well-prepared fermentation of men's minds; and the military, summoned by demagogic leaders to tumultuous meetings, were easily persuaded that a false, or at least a defective draught of the new boasted constitution had been read to them and proclaimed – that, in the real constitution, an enactment provided that the soldiers were to choose and elect their own officers – that this paragraph had been carefully suppressed; and that the military had been thus deprived and cheated of their rights. Easily detected as might have been the falsehood, it nevertheless succeeded in its purposes. The military insurrection, in which the tumultuous and evil-disposed of the lower classes, and a great portion of the disaffected peasantry joined, broke out on the very evening of one of these great meetings; and, by means of a well-prepared and actively organised concentration of measures, in various parts of the duchy at the same time. Thus was the very acceptance of the revolutionary constitution made in Baden a pretext to stir the land to insurrection.

After the full account already published in these pages, it is needless to enter into detail, with regard to the events which marked the progress and suppression of this great insurrection. It is only to show the insensate state of mind to which revolutionary agents, left to do their will, were able to work up the military; the confused ideas and purposes, with which these would-be revolutionising German heads were filled; the ignorance that was displayed among these men, said to be enlightened by "patriots," and their want of all comprehension of the very rights for which they pretended to clamour – in fact, the utter absence of any experience gained by the lower classes, and especially the military portion of them, after more than a year's revolutionising, that we briefly recapitulate some of the leading events of the outbreak. It was with a perfect headlong frenzy that the garrison of the fortress of Rastadt first revolted; it was with just as much appearance of madness that the mutiny broke out simultaneously in the other garrison towns. There was every evidence of rabid mania in the deplorable scenes which followed, when superior officers in vain attempted with zeal and courage to stem the torrent, and, in many instances, lost their lives at the hands of the infuriated soldiery; when others were cruelly and disgracefully mis-handled, and two or three, unable to contend with the sense of dishonour and degradation which overwhelmed them as military men, rushed, maddened also, into suicide, to have their very corpses mutilated by the men whom they had treated, as it happened, with kindness and concession; when others again, who had escaped over the frontiers, were, by a violation of the Wurtemberg territory, captured, led back prisoners, and immured, under every circumstances of cruelty and ignominy, in the fortress they had in vain attempted loyally to guard. There was madness in all this; and then we learn, to complete the deplorable picture, from a very accurate account of all the circumstances, lately published by a Baden officer, as well as from another pamphlet, more circumscribed in detail, but fully as conclusive as regards narration of feeling, in almost every page, that when the insurgent soldiers were asked by their officers what they wanted, they could only answer, "Our rights and those of the people;" and, when questioned further, "What are those rights?" either held their tongues and shook their heads in ignorance, or replied with the strangest naïveté, "That you ought to know better than we." Still more strikingly characteristic of the insensate nature of the struggle are the examples where the infatuated soldiers parted from their officers with tears in their eyes, then, driven on by their agitators, hunted them to the death; and then, again, with eyes opened at last to their delusion, sobbed forth the bitterest repentance for their blindness.

It has been already seen how the Grand-duke fled the land, how Baden was given up, in a state of utter anarchy, to a Provisional government, that existed but long enough to be utterly rent and torn by the very instruments which its members had contributed to set in movement; and to a disorganised, tumultuous army, prepared to domineer and tyrannise in its newly-acquired self-power; how the insurrection was suppressed, after an unwilling appeal to Prussia by the Grand-duke – how the insurgent troops were dispersed by means of a Prussian army – and how Rastadt was finally surrendered by the revolutionary leaders. As these events have already been detailed, and as it is our purpose to ask in general, "What has revolutionising Germany attained?" we need do no more on this head, than ask, "What, by its late movement, has revolutionising Baden attained?" "What then is the present position, and the present aspect of the country, after the armed suppression?"

What, indeed! Poor old Father Rhine, although still, in these revolutionary days, somewhat depressed in spirits, does not now, however, exhibit that aspect of utter melancholy and despair which we last year pictured; he has even contrived to reassume something of that conceited air which we have so often witnessed in his old face. Foreign tourists, if not in the pleasure-seeking shoals of aforetime, at least in very decent sprinklings, return again to pay him visits; and the hotels upon his banks give evidence that his courts are not wholly deserted. Ems, from various causes independent of its natural beauties – the principal one of which has been the pilgrimage of French Legitimists to the heir of the fallen Bourbons, during his short residence in that sweet bathing-place – has overflowed with "guests." Homburg has had scarcely a bed to offer to the wanderer on his arrival. Rhenish Prussia, then, has profited, by its comparative state of quiet, somewhat to redeem its losses of last year. But the poor duchy of Baden still hangs its head mournfully; and Baden-Baden, the fairest queen of German watering-places, finds itself utterly deprived of its well-deserved crown of supremacy, and seems to have covered itself, in shame, with a veil of sadness. Although all now wears again a smiling face of peaceful quiet, and Prussian uniforms, which at least have the merit of studding with colour the gay scene, give warrant for peace by the force of the bayonet, yet tourists seem to avoid the scene of the late fearful convulsions, as they would a house in which the plague has raged, although now declared wholly disinfected. A few wandering "guests" only come and go, and tell the world of foreign wanderers with dismal faces, "Baden-Baden is empty!" Travellers seem to hurry through the country, as swiftly as the railroad can whirl them across it, towards Strasburg and Bâle – ay! rather to republican France, or fermenting Switzerland: they appear unwilling to turn aside and seek rest among the beautiful hills of a country where the reek of blood, or the vapour of the cannon-smoke, may be still upon the air. In Baden-Baden bankrupt hotels are closed; and the lower classes, who have been accustomed to amass comparative wealth by the annual influx of foreigners, either by their produce, or in the various different occupations of attending upon visitors, wear the most evident expression of disappointment, listlessness, and want. Baden pays the bitter penalty of insurrection, by being utterly crippled in one of the branches of its most material interests. It bears as quiet an aspect outwardly, however, as if it were sitting, in humiliation and shame, upon the stool of repentance. There is nothing (if they go not beyond the surface) to prevent foreign pleasure or health seekers from finding their pleasure or repose in this sweet country; and in what has been simply, but correctly, termed "one of the loveliest spots upon God's earth," as of yore; but they are evidently shy, and look askance upon it. Baden pays its penalty.

Although nature smiles, however, upon mountain and valley, and romantic village, as cheerily as before, and there is gaiety still in every sunbeam, yet traces of the horrors lately enacted in the land are still left, which cannot fail to strike the eye of the most listless, mere outward observer, as he whisks along, the country – sometimes in the trampled plain, on which nature has not been as yet able to throw her all-covering veil again, and which shows where has been the battle-field, which should have been the harvest-field, and was not – sometimes in the shattered wall or ruined house – sometimes in the wood cut down or burned. At every step the traveller may be shown, by his guide, the spots on which battles or skirmishes have taken place, where the cannon has lately roared, where blood has been shed, where men have fallen in civil contest. Here he may be conveyed over the noble railway-bridge of the Neckar, and see the broken parapet, and hear how the insurgents had commenced their work of destruction upon the edifice, but were arrested in its accomplishment by the rapid advance of the Prussian troops. Here again he may mark the late repairs of the railroad, where it has been cut up into trenches, to prevent the speedy conveyance of the war-material of the enemy. If he lingers on his way, he may seek in vain in the capital, or other "residence towns" of Baden, where ducal palaces stand, for the treasures of antiquity which were their boast. Pillage has done its work: insurgents have appropriated these objects of value to themselves, in the name of the people; and the costly and bejewelled trappings of the East, the rich gold inlaid armour, and the valuable arms, brought in triumph home by the Margrave Louis of Baden, after his Turkish campaigns, are now dispersed, none knows where, after having fed the greed of some French red-republican or Polish democrat. But it is more particularly in the neighbourhood of the fortress town of Rastadt, where the insurgents last held out, that the strongest traces of the late convulsions may be found. Marks of devastation are everywhere perceptible in the country around; the remains of the temporary defences of the besiegers still lie scattered in newly dug trenches; and the blackened walls of a railway station-house, by the road-side, tell him how it was bombarded from the town by the besieged insurgents, and then burned to the ground, lest it should afford shelter to the besiegers. These are, however, after all, but slight evidences of what the duchy of Baden has attained by its late revolution. If we go below the surface, the dark spots are darker and far more frequent still.

It is impossible to enter into conversation with persons of any class, without discovering, either directly or indirectly, how deeply rooted still remains the demoralisation of the country. The bitterness of feeling, and the revolutionary mania of revolutionising, to obtain no one can tell what, may have been crushed down and overawed; but they evidently still smoulder below the surface and ferment. The volcano-mouth has been filled with a mass of Prussian bayonets; but it still burns below: it is clogged, not extinct. The democratic spirit has been too deeply infused to be drugged out of the mass of the people by the dose of military force. Fearful experience seems to have taught the sufferers little or nothing; and although, here and there, may be found evidences of bitter repentance, consequent upon personal loss of property, or family suffering, yet even below that may be constantly found a profound bitterness, and an eager rancour, against unknown and visionary enemies. Talk to that poor old woman, who sits with pale face upon a stile on the mountain-side. She will weep for the son she has lost among the insurgents, and deplore, with bitter tears, his error and his delusion; and yet, if you gain her confidence, she will raise her head, and, with some fire in her sunken eye, tell you that she has still a son at home, a boy, her last-born, who bides but his time to take up the musket against "those, accursed enemies of the people and the people's rights!" Enter into conversation with that shopkeeper behind his counter, or that hotel-keeper in his palace hotel – both are "well to do" in the world, or have been so, until revolutions shattered the commerce of the one, or deprived the other of wealthy visitors – you may expect to find in them a feeling, taught them at least by experience, against any further convulsion. No such thing; they are as ripe for further revolution as the lower classes, and as eager to avenge their losses – not upon those who have occasioned them, but upon those who would have averted them. Even in the upper classes you will find that craving for the idol, "United Germany," to which we have before alluded, and which seems to invite revolutions, rather than to fear them. Of course exceptions may be found, and many, to the examples here given; but in putting these figures into the foreground of the picture to be painted of the state of Baden, (if not of Germany in general,) we firmly believe we have given characteristic types of the prevailing feelings of the country. German heads, once let loose into the regions of ideal fantasy, be it political or philosophical, or the strange and unpractical mixture of both, seem as if they were not to be recalled to the earth and the realms of palpable truth by the lessons of experience, however strongly, and even terribly, inculcated.

The prevailing feeling, however, at the present time in Baden, among the lower classes, seems the hatred of the occupation of the Prussian army, which has saved the land from utter anarchy. The very men who have been taught by their demagogues to clamour for "German Unity" as a pretext for insurrection, look on the Prussian military as usurping aliens and foreign oppressors. Military occupation is certainly the prevailing feature of the country. Prussian troops are everywhere – in every town, in every village, in every house, in every hovel. Whichever way you turn your eyes, there are soldiers – soldiers – soldiers – horse and foot. The military seem to form by far the greater half of the population; and, much disposed as many may have been to greet the return of the Grand-duke to his states, as the symbol of the cause of order, yet, in spite of birthday fêtes, and banners, and garlands, and loyal devices in flowers, which have bedecked the road of the traveller in the land not long since, these same men will grumble to you of those "accursed Prussian soldiers," who alone were able to restore him to his country, when the Baden army, as troops to support their sovereign, existed no longer – when those who composed it fought at the head of the insurgents. The very shadow of a Baden army, even, is not now to be found. And it is this fact, and the evidences that an insurrectionary spirit is still widely spread abroad, which are given as the excuse of a continued Prussian occupation. It is difficult, certainly, for a traveller in a land so lately convulsed, and still placed in circumstances so peculiar, to arrive at truth. Prussian officers will tell him how, on the arrival of the Prussian army in the country, and the dispersion of the insurgents, flowers were strewn along its path by the populations, who thus seemingly hailed the Prussian soldiers as their deliverers; and in the next breath they will inform him that this was only done from fear, and that, were it not for this salutary fear, the insurrection would break forth again. He may suspect that this account is given as the pretext for a continued occupation of the land. But Baden officials will tell him that such is the case – that Prussian troops alone keep, down a further rising; and if he still suspects his source, he will certainly find among the people, at all events, both the hatred and the fear. Meanwhile the Prussian officers seem to think that both these feelings are necessary for the pacification of the land; and, upon their own showing, or rather boasting, they inculcate them by flogging insolent peasants across the cannon, by shooting down insurgent prisoners, who spit upon them from prison windows, without any other form of trial, and by other autocratic repressive measures of a similar stamp. Meanwhile, also, they seem, by all their words as well as actions, to look upon Baden as a conquered province, acquired to Prussia, and openly and loudly vaunt their conquest. Let it not be supposed that this is exaggeration. It is the general tone of Prussian officers – ay, and even of the common Prussian soldiers occupying the duchy of Baden – with a super-addition of true Prussian conceit in manner, indescribable by words. In spite of what we may read in late newspaper reports, then, of conciliation between the two great powers of Northern and Southern Germany, we may well ask, What will rival Austria say to this? Where is the prospect here of a great United Germany? And, after this resumé of the present position of Baden as a part, we may well ask, also, What has revolutionising Germany attained as a whole?

We have seen that the main object, and at all events the chief pretext of the revolution, the establishment of a great United Germany, is still further from the grasp of the revolutionising country than ever – although it remains still the clamour and the cry. Prussia may point in irony to its advances, by the occupation of the duchy of Baden and of Hamburg, and by its acquisition of the principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and smile while it says that it has effected thus much towards a union of Germany under one head. Or, in more serious mood, it may put forward its projected alliance of the three northern German potentates. But, with regard to the former, what, in spite of the reports we hear of conciliation, will be the conduct of jealous Austria, now at last unshackled in its dealings? The latter only shows still more the cleft that divides the northern portion of the would-be united country from the southern. "United Germany" only remains, then, a plaything in the hands of dreamers and democrats – a pretty toy, about which they may build up airy castles to the one – an instrument blunted and notched, for the present, to the other. What has revolutionising Germany attained here?

What declared last year the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, and leading member of the cabinet of the newly established central power – put forward, as it was, as the programme of the new government for all Germany? It denounced "jealousies between the individual states, and revilings of the northern by the southern parts of the empire," as "criminal absurdities;" and yet went on to say that "if the old spirit of discord and separation were still too powerfully at work – if the jealousy between race and race, between north and south, were still too strongly felt – the nation must convince itself of the fact, and return to the old feudal system." It declared, however, in the same breath as it were, that "to retrograde to a confederation of states would only be to create a mournful period of transition to fresh catastrophes, and new revolutions." Failing of the realisation of the great union, to which the revolution was supposed to tend, the manifesto then placed revolutionising Germany between the alternative of returning to a part, which it declared impossible, or further convulsions and civil wars. It put Germany, in fact, into a cleft stick. Has a year's revolution tended to extricate it from this position? The alternative, remains the same – Germany sticks in the cleft stick as much as ever. Revolutionising Germany, with all its throes and all its efforts, has attained nothing to relieve it from this position. Without accepting the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, either as necessarily prophetic, or as a political dictum, from which there is no evasion or escape, it is yet impossible to look back upon it, while trying to discover what revolutionising Germany has attained, without sad presentiments, without looking with much mournful apprehension upon the future fate of the country. To return, however to the present state of Germany – for the investigation of that is our purpose, and not speculation upon the future, although none may look upon the present without asking with a sigh, "What is to become of Germany?"

We find the revolutionary spirit crushed by the events of the last year, but not subdued; writhing, but not avowing itself vanquished. The fermentation is as great as heretofore: experience seems to have taught the German children in politics no useful lesson. Now that the great object, for which the revolution appeared to struggle, has received so notable a check, the confusion of purposes, (if German political rhapsodies may be called such;) of projects, (if, indeed, in such visionary schemes there be any,) and pretexts, (of a nature so evidently false,) is greater than ever – the confusion not only exists, but ferments, and generates foul air, which must find vent somewhere, be it even in imagination. Of the revolutionary spirits whom we sketched last year in Germany, the students alone seem somewhat to have learned a lesson of experience and tactics. Although many may have been found in the ranks of insurgents, yet the general mass has sadly sobered down, and, it may be hoped, acquired more reason and method. The Jews – we cannot again now inquire into the strange whys and wherefores – still remain the restless, gnawing, cankering, agitating agents of revolutionary movement. The insolence and coarseness of the lower classes increases into bitter rancour, and has been in no way amended by concession and a show of good-will. Among the middle-lower classes, the most restless and reckless spirits, it appears from well-drawn statistical accounts, are the village schoolmasters, (as in France) – to exemplify that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" – the barbers, and the tailors. Had we time, it might form the subject of curious speculation to attempt to discover why these two latter occupations, (and especially the last one) induce, more than all others, heated brains and revolutionary habits; but we cannot stop on our way to play with such curious questions. Over all the relations of social, as well as public life, hover politics like a deleterious atmosphere, blighting all that is bright and fair, withering art in all its branches, science, and social intercourse. And, good heavens, what politics! – the politics of a bedlamite philosopher in his ravings. In the late festivities, given in honour of Goethe at Frankfort, the city of his birth, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of that event, when it might have been supposed that all men might have, for once, united to do homage to the memory of one whom Germans considered their greatest spirit, politics again interfered to thwart, and oppose, and spoil. The democratic party endeavoured to prevent the supplies offered to be given by the town for the festivities, because they saw the names of those they called the "aristocrats," among the list of the committee, even although men of all classes were invited to join it; and, when a serenade was given before the house in which the poet was born, the musicians were driven away, and their torches extinguished, by a band of so-called "patriots," who insisted upon singing, in the place of the appointed cantato composed for the occasion, the revolutionary chorus in honour of the republican Hecker – the now famous song of the revolutionary battle-field, the Hecker-Lied. And such an example of this fermentation of politics in all the circumstances of life, however far from political intents, is not singular: it is only characteristic of the everyday doings of the times. Among the upper classes, those feelings which we last year summed up in the characteristic words, "the dulness of doubt and the stupor of apprehension," have only increased in intensity. None see an issue out of the troubled passage of the revolution. Their eyes are blinded by a mist, and they stumble on their way, dreading a precipice at every step. This impression depicts more especially the feelings of the so-called moderates and liberal conservatives who had their representatives among the best elements of the Frankfort parliament, and who, with the vision of a united Germany before their eyes, laboured to reach that visionary goal, at the same time that they endeavoured to stem the ever-invading torrent of ultra-revolution and red-republicanism. "The dulness of doubt, and the stupor of apprehension," seem indeed to have fallen upon them since the last vain meeting of the heads of their party in Gotha. They let their hands fall upon their laps, and sit shaking their heads. Gagern, the boldest spirit, and one of the best hearts that represents their cause and has struggled for its maintenance, is represented as wholly prostrate in spirit, unstrung —missgestimmt, as the Germans have it. He has retired entirely into private life, to await events with aching heart. If any feeling is still expressed by the moderate liberals, it has been, of late, sympathy in the fate of Hungary, which the Prussians put forward visibly only out of opposition to Austria, at the same time that, with but little consistency, they condemn all the agents of the Hungarian struggle.