Passage through Austria;--1812.
In this manner, after ten years of continually increasing
persecutions, first sent away from Paris, then banished into
Switzerland, afterwards confined to my own chateau, and at last
condemned to the dreadful punishment of never seeing my friends, and
of being the cause of their banishment: in this manner was I obliged
to quit, as a fugitive, two countries, France and Switzerland, by
order of a man less French than myself: for I was born on the
borders of that Seine where his tyranny alone naturalizes him. The
air of this fine country is not a native air to him: can he then
comprehend the pain of being banished from it, he who considers this
fertile country only as the instrument of his victories? Where is
his country? it is the earth which is subject to him. His fellow
citizens? they are the slaves who obey his orders. He complained one
day of not having had under his command, like Tamerlane, nations to
whom reasoning was unknown. I imagine that by this time he is
satisfied with Europeans: their manners, like their armies, now bear
a sufficient resemblance to those of Tartars.
I had nothing to fear in Switzerland, as
I could always prove that I had a right to be there; but to leave
it, I had only a foreign passport: I must go through one of the
confederated states, and if any French agent had required the
government of Bavaria to hinder me from passing, who does not know
with what regret, but at the same time, with what obedience it would
have executed the orders thus received? I entered into the Tyrol
with a great respect for that country, which had fought from
attachment to its ancient masters, but with a great contempt for
such of the Austrian ministers as had advised the abandonment of men
compromised by their attachment to their sovereign. It is said that
a subaltern diplomatist, head of the spy department in Austria,
thought proper one day, during the war, to maintain at the emperor's
table, that the Tyrolese should be abandoned: M. de H., a gentleman
of the Tyrol, counsellor of state in the Austrian service, who in
his actions and writings has exhibited the courage of a warrior, and
the talents of an historian, replied to these unworthy observations
with the contempt they deserved: the emperor signified his entire
approbation to M. de H., and showed by that at least that his
private feelings were strangers to the political conduct which he
was made to adopt. Thus it is that the greater part of the European
sovereigns, at the moment of Bonaparte making himself master of
France, who were extremely upright persons as individuals, were
already become mere cyphers as kings, as the government of their
states was entirely committed to circumstances and to their
ministers.
The aspect of the Tyrol reminds one of Switzerland: there is not,
however, so much vigour and originality in the landscape, nor have
the villages the same appearance of plenty; it is in short a fine
country, which has been wisely governed, but never been free; and it
is only as a mountaineer people, that it has shown itself capable of
resistance. Very few instances of remarkable men can be mentioned
from the Tyrol: first, the Austrian government is scarcely fit to
develope genius; and, besides, the Tyrol, by its manners as well as
by its geographical position, should have formed a part of the Swiss
confederation: its incorporation with the Austrian monarchy not
being conformable to its nature, it has only developed by that union
the noble qualities of mountaineers, courage and fidelity.
The postilion who drove us showed us a rock on which the emperor
Maximilian, grandfather of Charles the Fifth, had nearly perished:
the ardor of the chace had stimulated him to such a degree, that he
had followed the chamois to heights from which it was impossible to
descend. This tradition is still popular in the country, so
necessary to nations is the admiration of the past. The memory of
the last war was still quite alive in the bosoms of the people; the
peasants showed us the summits of mountains on which they had
entrenched themselves: their imagination delighted in retracing the
effect of their fine warlike music, when it echoed from the tops of
the hills into the vallies. When we were shown the palace of the
prince-royal of Bavaria, at Inspruck, they told us that Hofer, the
courageous peasant and head of the insurrection, had lived there;
they gave us an instance of the intrepidity shown by a female, when
the French entered into her chateau: in short, every thing displayed
in them the desire of being a nation, much more than personal
attachment to the house of Austria.
In one of the churches at Inspruck is the famous tomb of Maximilian.
I went to see it, flattering myself with the certainty of not being
recognized by any person, in a place remote from the capitals where
the French agents reside. The figure of Maximilian in bronze, is
kneeling upon a sarcophagus, in the body of the church, and thirty
statues of the same metal ranged on each side of the sanctuary
represent the relations and ancestors of the emperor. So much past
grandeur, so much of the ambition formidable in its day, collected
in a family meeting round a tomb, formed a spectacle which led one
to profound reflection: there you saw Philip the Good, Charles the
Rash, and Mary of Bergundy; and in the midst of these historical
personages Dietrich of Berne, a fabulous hero: the closed visor
concealed the countenances of the knights, but when this visor was
lifted up a brazen countenance appeared under a helmet of brass, and
the features of the knight were of bronze, like his armour. The
visor of Dietrich of Berne is the only one which cannot be lifted
up, the artist meaning in that manner to signify the mysterious veil
which covers the history of this warrior,
From Inspruck I had to pass by Saltzburg, from thence to reach the
Austrian frontiers.
It seemed as if all my anxieties would be at an end, when I was once
entered on the territory of that monarchy which I had known so
secure and so good. But the moment which I most dreaded was the
passage from Bavaria to Austria, for it was there that a courier
might have preceded me, to forbid my being allowed to pass. In spite
of this apprehension, I had not been very expeditious, for my
health, which had been seriously injured by all I had suffered, did
not allow me to travel by night. I have often felt, during this
journey, that the greatest terror cannot overcome a sort of physical
depression, which makes one dread fatigue more than death. I
flattered myself, however, with arriving without any obstacle, and
already my fear was dissipated on approaching the object which I
thought secured, when on our entrance into the inn at Saltzburg, a
man came up to Mr. Schlegel who accompanied me, and told him in
German, that a French courier had been to inquire after a carriage
coming from Inspruck with a lady and a young girl, and that he had
left word he would return to get intelligence of them. I lost not a
word of what the innkeeper mentioned, and became pale with terror.
Mr. Schlegel also was alarmed on my account: he made some farther
inquiries, all of which made it certain, that this was a French
courier, that he came from Munich, that he had been as far as the
Austrian frontier to wait for me, and not finding me there, that he
had returned to meet me. Nothing appeared more clear: this was just
what I had dreaded before my departure, and during the journey. It
was impossible for me now to escape, as this courier, who it was
said was already at the post-house, would necessarily overtake me.
I determined on the spur of the moment to leave my carriage, my
daughter, and Mr. Schlegel at the inn, and to go alone and on foot
into the streets of the town, and take the chance' of entering the
first house whose master or mistress had a physiognomy that pleased
me. I would obtain of them an asylum for a few days; during this
time, my daughter and Mr. Schlegel might say that they were going to
rejoin me in Austria, and I should leave Salzburg afterwards in the
disguise of a country woman. Hazardous in the extreme as this
resource appeared, no other remained to me, and I was preparing for
the task, in fear and trembling, when who should enter my apartment
but this so much dreaded courier, who was no other than Mr. Rocca.
After having accompanied me the first day of my journey, he returned
to Geneva to terminate some business, and now came to rejoin me;
he had passed himself off as a French courier, in order to take
advantage of the terror which the name inspires, particularly to the
allies of France, and to obtain horses more quickly. He had taken
the Munich road, and had hurried on as far as the Austrian frontier,
to make himself sure that no one had preceded or announced me. He
returned to meet me, to tell me that I had nothing to fear, and to
get upon the box of my carriage as we passed that frontier, which
appeared to me the most dreadful, but also the last of my dangers.
In this manner my cruel apprehension was changed into a most
pleasing sentiment of gratefulness and security.
We walked about the town of Salzburg, which contains many noble
edifices, but like the greater part of the ecclesiastical
principalities of Germany, now presents a most dreary aspect. The
tranquil resources of that kind of government have terminated with
it. The convents also were preservers; one is struck with the number
of establishments and edifices which have been erected by bachelor
masters in their residence: all these peaceable sovereigns have
benefited their people. An archbishop of Salzburg in the last
century has cut a road which is prolonged for several hundred paces
under a mountain, like the grotto of Pausilippo at Naples: on the
front of the entrance gate there is a bust of the archbishop, under
which is an inscription: Tesaxa loquuntur. (The stones speak of
thee). There is a degree of grandeur in this inscription.
I entered at last into that Austria, which four years before I had
seen so happy; already I was struck by a sensible change, produced
by the depreciation of paper-money, and the variations of every kind
which the uncertainty of the financial measures had introduced into
its value. Nothing demoralizes a people so much as these continual
fluctuations which make every man a broker, and hold out to the
working classes a means of getting money by sharping, instead of by
their labour. I no longer found in the people the same probity which
had struck me four years before: this paper-money sets the
imagination at work with the hope of rapid and easy gains; and the
hazardous chances overturn the gradual and certain existence which
is the basis of the honesty of the middling classes. During my
residence in Austria, a man was hanged for forging notes at the very
moment when the government had reduced the value of the old ones; he
called out, on his way to execution that it was not he who had
robbed, but the state. And, in truth, it is impossible to make the
common people comprehend that it is just to punish them for having
speculated in their own affairs, in the same way as the government
had done in its own. But this government was the ally of the French
government, and doubly its ally, as its monarch was the very patient
father-in-law of a very terrible son-in-law. What resources therefore
could remain to him? The marriage of his daughter had been the means
of liberating him from two millions of contributions-at most; the
rest had been required with the kind of justice of which the other
is so easily capable, and which consists in treating his friends and
his enemies alike: from this proceeded the penury of the treasury.
Another misfortune also resulted from the last war, and especially
from the last peace: the inutility of the generous feeling which had
illustrated the Austrian arms in the battles of Essling and Wagram,
had cooled the national attachment to the sovereign, which had
formerly been very strong. The same thing has happened to all the
sovereigns who have treated with the emperor Napoleon; he has made
use of them as receivers to levy imposts on his account; he has
forced them to squeeze their subjects to pay him the taxes he
demanded; and when it has suited him to dethrone these sovereigns,
the people, previously alienated from them by the very wrongs they
had committed in obedience to the emperor, have not raised an arm to
defend them against him. The emperor Napoleon has the art of making
countries said to be at peace, so singularly miserable that any
change is agreeable to them, and having been once compelled to give
men and money to France, they scarcely feel the inconvenience of
being wholly united to it. They are wrong, however, for any thing is
better than to lose the name of a nation, and as the miseries of
Europe are caused by one man, care should be taken to preserve what
may be restored when he is no more.
Before I reached Vienna, as I waited for my second son, who was to
rejoin me with my servants and baggage, I stopped a day at Molk,
that celebrated abbey, placed upon an eminence, from which Napoleon
had contemplated the various windings of the Danube, and praised the
beauty of the country upon which he was going to pounce with his
armies. He frequently amuses himself in this manner in making
poetical pieces on the beauties of nature, which he is about to
ravage, and upon the effects of war, with which he is going to
overwhelm mankind. After all, he is in the right to amuse himself in
all ways, at the expense of the human race, which tolerates his
existence. Man is only arrested in the career of evil by obstacles
or remorse; no one has yet opposed to Napoleon the one, and he has
very easily rid himself of the other. For me, who, solitary,
followed his footsteps on the terrace from which the country could
be seen to a great distance, I admired its fertility, and felt
astonished at seeing how soon the bounty of heaven repairs the
disasters occasioned by man. It is only moral riches which disappear
altogether, or are at least lost for centuries.