lifting up their voices in one great chorus--the voices of thinkers
and of poets blending in unison--the youth of the country, as soon as
they awakened to intellectual life, were impelled to join that chorus;
from the boy on the school-bench to the oldest student, their minds
were re-attuned, attuned to the key of revolution. Now they suddenly
began not only to imbibe a revolutionary spirit from the works of the
revolutionary writers of the day, but to read one into the writings of
approved neutral and conservative authors long since dead. At a given
moment it became their persuasion that all literature called to arms,
even that old classic literature which was living its immortal life in
handsome bindings on the bookshelves. A certain frame of mind is the
result of our reading of all books.
What had he been, that Schiller whose writings had been put into their
hands when they were children? What but a revolutionary, the motto of
whose first book was the famous saying that what medicines cannot cure,
cold steel cures, and what cold steel cannot cure, fire cures. Did
the spirit of his works in any single point harmonise with the royal
Prussian or the Austrian imperial spirit? What had Goethe's youthful
attitude been but one of Titanic defiance? Did not even the work of his
old age, the second part of _Faust_, end with the wish that he could
see a free people on free soil? He had loathed the Berlin of Frederick
II., would not his detestation of the Berlin of Frederick William IV.
be greater still? From the writings of Hegel, who had begun life as a
revolutionary and ended it as an ultra-conservative, they drew all the
conclusions which he himself had left undrawn. Feuerbach had declared
that he would have nothing to do with politics, nevertheless they
transposed his philosophic decapitation of the historical state into
the region of practical politics.
Yes, the clouds were gathering. In place of the swallows, the heraldic
eagles of Prussia and Austria were flying low. The monarchs attempted
in vain to exorcise the tempest. Frederick William IV. convened a
general Landtag (Parliament) in April 1847. With his convictions he
could not do otherwise than open it with a speech in which, in spite of
all concessions, real and apparent, he made it clear that he was not
prepared to take the decisive step which his people demanded of him.
"No power on earth," he cried, "will make me consent to the exchange of
the natural relation between a king and his people for a conventional,
constitutional relation; never with my will shall a written paper
interfere between Almighty God and this country, rule us with its
paragraphs, and supercede ancient, sacred loyalty."[7]
The time had come. The assembly demanded annual Parliaments and
complete fulfilment of the promises made in 1815 and 1829. Jacoby,
Heinrich Simon, Gervinus, and others criticised the king's proposals
and rejected them.
Then the storm broke--first in Switzerland, where in November 1847
the Liberal cantons armed and suppressed the Jesuitical _Sonderbund_
(league of the Catholic cantons), then with overpowering force in
Paris, then in all the German and many of the other European capitals.
As thunder in a mountainous country echoes from hill to hill, so the
thunder of the revolution echoed from one European country to another
in the mad and holy year, 1848.
[1] Ye knights who have made ready to take part in the great battle
of the day, lift your visors and speak clearly: On which side are you
fighting? Either--or!
Is it for the power of the sovereign or the rights of the people?
For spiritual light or priestly superstition? Are you republicans or
thralls? No evasion! Answer plainly! Either--or!
[2] _Cf_. Moritz Hartmann: _Reimchronik des Pfaffen Mauritius_. Chap.
v. "Apostel und Apostaten."
[3] I, who am of the land of the Hussites, believe that I have drunk
the blood of God; love has been poured into my heart; love is God's
blood, my heart his _chalice_.
I, who am of the land of the Hussites, believe in the word made flesh,
believe that thoughts become armed cohorts, that every song is a holy
_sword_.
[4] The traitorous friend had tracked me down, the minions of the law
had come; my mother turned pale and trembled, my sister's eyes were
bathed in tears. But I said: "Dry these foolish tears; my time has
come and I must go; the flames of danger hiss around me--I become a
salamander in their fiery glow."
I was born for danger; dangers, thick and dark, beset my path, yet I
know no fear; are they not my destiny? They love me as the lion loves
his tamer; 'tis I who have conjured them up, and they serve me as
spirits do the magician.
[5] Moritz Hartmann: _Gesammelte Werke_, x. p. 16, &c.
[6] Alfred Marchand: _Les poètes lyriques de l'Autriche_. Hartmann:
_Gesammelte Werke_, x. p. 23, &c.
[7] Keiner Macht der Erde soll es gelingen, das natürliche Verhältnis
zwischen Fürst und Volk in ein conventionelles, constitutionelles zu
verwandeln, und nun und nimmermehr werde ich es zugeben, dass zwischen
unserm Herrgott im Himmel und dieses Land ein geschriebenes Blatt sich
eindrängt, um uns mit seinen Paragraphen zu regieren und die alte
heilige Treue zu ersetzen.
XXIX
THE REVOLUTION
"Im Hochland fiel der erste Schuss--
Im Hochland wider die Pfaffen!
Da kam, die fallen wird und muss,
Ja, die Lawine kam in Schuss--
Drei Länder in den Waffen!
Schon kann die Schweiz von Siegen ruhn:
Das Urgebirg und die Nagelfluhn
Zittern vor Lust bis zum Kerne!
Drauf ging der Tanz in Welschland los--
Die Scyllen und Charybden,
Vesuv und Aetna brachen los:
Ausbruch auf Ausbruch, Stoss auf Stoss!
--'Sehr bedenklich, Euer Liebden!'
Also schallt's von Berlin nach Wien
Und von Wien zurück nach Berlin--
Sogar dem Nickel graut es! (Nickel, _i.e._ Czar Nicholas.)
Und nun ist denn auch abermals
Das Pflaster aufgerissen,
Auf dem die Freiheit, nackten Stahls
Aus der lumpigen Pracht des Königssaals
Zwei Könige schon geschmissen."[1]
Thus sang Freiligrath in February 1848, a few days after the revolution
in Paris. A long shudder, of pain and at the same time of relief,
passed through the whole of Germany. It was as if a window had been
opened, and air had reached the lungs of Europe. Example, the one power
that can do miracles, was forcing the German people to action. They
were also impelled by the fear that absolutism would now venture its
last move, would declare Germany to be endangered by the revolution in
France, and compel the people of Prussia and Austria to take up arms
against the French republic.
In Austria intolerance had gone as far as it could go. In 1846
Metternich's government had actually placed the _Herzensergüsse_ of
the Emperor Joseph II., collected and published by a banished patriot,
on the list of contraband books. And now the disturbances in the
Austro-Italian provinces, which were endangering the credit of the
state and the industries of the country, brought dissatisfaction with
Metternichs rule to a climax. The decisive defeat he had met with in
Switzerland, namely, the collapse of that Jesuitical "Sonderbund" which
with all his might he had supported against the Radicals, had given the
last blow to men's faith in his invincibility. In one of the provinces
of Prussia, Silesia, bureaucratic misgovernment had just produced
terrible consequences. Typhus, the result of starvation, had raged for
months among the miserably poor industrial population before those in
power had made any attempt to remedy the state of matters. Hundreds
of dead and dying lay by the roadsides. In the cold of January, poor,
solitary wretches starved in their hovels, and naked children pined to
death beside the corpses of their parents; no one came to their aid,
for the ignorant local authorities had, in order to prevent the spread
of infection, made it a punishable offence to enter any infected house.
All this time the government officials only appeared to collect the
taxes, which they did with harsh regardlessness of circumstances; and
when the Governor was attacked because no remedial measures had been
taken from August 1847 to the end of January 1848, he answered that no
formal appeal for assistance had been made.
In such circumstances the political leaders of the middle classes found
it an easy matter to rouse their own class to action, and the working
classes, hoping to improve their position, and exasperated by arbitrary
police regulations, everywhere followed in the footsteps of the middle
classes.
It is difficult for the present generation to enter into the feelings
of the men of 1848. The frame of mind which prevailed in Denmark
at that time cannot be regarded as typical. There, as elsewhere,
it undoubtedly was the instinct of national self-preservation and
pride that asserted itself. But whereas the other countries rose in
revolt against hereditary rule and coercion, in Denmark a revolt was
suppressed by the power of the hereditary monarchy and of insulted
national feeling. There was no thought of revolution in the minds of
the Danes; it was for old rights they fought, not for new ideas.
Everywhere else in Europe the oppressed peoples revolted. It was
long since anything but evil had fallen to their lot, since they
had witnessed the triumph of anything but wrong, use-and-wont, and
falsehood. Actual and detestable had with them come to be almost
synonymous terms. But they had a faith that could remove mountains
and a hope that could shake the earth. Liberty, Parliament, national
unity, liberty of the press, republic, were to them magic words, at the
very sound of which their hearts leaped like the heart of a youth who
suddenly sees his beloved.
The aspiring spirits of the generation of to-day do not feel thus.
They know that stupidity is a ferocious animal, and the hardest of all
to kill--that cowardice, the agile slave that stands at the beck of
power, is as strong as courage itself when there is any question of
defending ancient privilege--that what is known by the name of progress
is a feeble snail. The simpleton in the fable bought a raven that he
might see for himself if it was true that ravens live for two hundred
years. The friends of progress in our days know beforehand that all the
raven-black lies and raven-trickeries of all the privilege-rookeries,
great and small, will outlive them--for how many hundred years they
cannot tell. At a rare time they have seen good victorious, but never
have they heard it acknowledged that it is _their_ good which has
triumphed. They have always seen truth first abused, then if possible
killed--if that proved impossible, maimed and recognised. Therefore
they have little hope. Many of them, indeed, have killed hope in their
own breasts, as we kill a nerve that gives us too much pain. They have
been disappointed too often.
The men of 1848 had never relinquished their hope in the future. They
had been oppressed, and they had suffered so long that they had grown
accustomed to see brute force and hypocrisy triumphant, accustomed
to live in a sort of spiritual twilight. But they believed in the
coming day. And now, suddenly, they saw it. First a gleam, then a ray,
then a flame, then the whole horizon, as far as the eye could reach,
a sea of light. For the first time they heard loud, ringing voices
proclaim liberty to be the right of the people, without a voice raised
in opposition; and for the first time, with wondering eyes, they saw
power, that hitherto immovable mass, the giant bearer of oppression and
falsehood, begin to stir like some gigantic elephant, writhe and turn
and shake itself, throw off its riders, and move ponderously in the
direction of the high-spirited, ardent friends of liberty, the men of
the new day, who stood ready to fling themselves on its back and force
it to trample down all the ancient abuses.
For the younger men especially it was a moment without compare, a sight
that intoxicated them, that drove them wild. They shouted, they sang,
they rejoiced, and in their wild exultation they felt it a necessity to
act, to risk all, to give their lives if need be--anything, everything,
except be behindhand in greeting and ushering in the dawning day of
liberty.
True it is that democratic illusions held high revelry; true it is
that there prevailed a touchingly naïve belief in the infallibility
of popular instincts; and true it is that the ability of theorists to
settle practical difficulties was greatly overestimated. But the first
impulse was irresistible, the original instinct was correct. Those who
really possessed capacity became leaders, took the command without
any fuss or parade, and were obeyed, not because of their outward
authority, but because their real superiority was felt by all.
The score of students who commanded on the barricades in Berlin may be
given as an instance. Many a so-called very ordinary man for a few days
of his life showed himself to be a hero. During the first months some
of the finest qualities of humanity displayed themselves and shone with
astonishing lustre.
It was in Austria that the revolutionary movement began, immediately
after the arrival of the news of the Revolution of February in Paris.
A speech made by Kossuth in the Hungarian Parliament on the 3rd of
March, demanding constitutional government for all the provinces of the
Empire, inaugurated the revolution both in Buda-Pesth and Vienna. On
the 11th of March a similar demand was made by the Czechs in Prague,
and before this, on the 6th of March, the Austrian Industrial Union
had presented a petition to Archduke Franz Karl, the presumptive heir
to the throne, requesting Metternich's dismissal, and also demanding
liberty of the press, the right of voting supplies, of taking part in
legislation, &c.
On this followed what has been called the petition storm. Every day,
every hour new petitions to the Emperor poured in. On the 12th of
March the students held a great meeting at the University, the result
of which was also a petition to the Emperor, demanding liberty of the
press, religious liberty, and liberty of instruction. The Emperor
received the deputation the following day, but gave an undecided
answer. In these unforeseen circumstances the 13th of March, the
opening day of the Lower Austrian Convention of the Estates, arrived
and found the Government unprepared. The populace crowded into the
enclosure of the assembly hall, where Kossuth's speech was read aloud
amidst excited rejoicings and shouts of "Hurrah for the constitution!"
A party forced their way into the hall and began to smash the furniture
and throw it out on to the heads of the soldiers; even Archduke
Albrecht, who was in command, was struck by a block of wood. Then the
order was given to fire, and the first Revolution of Vienna broke out.
The Italian troops fired, but the Austrians unscrewed their bayonets
amidst the joyful shouts of the crowd. At the Castle the gunners,
instead of shooting, placed themselves in front of their guns--as
we read in one of the poems of the day, Rick's _Das Lied vom braven
Kanonier_:
"Vor der Burg in glühender Front,
Des blutgen Befehls gewärtig,
Vor der Burg in glühender Front,
Da stehn die Kanonen fertig.
Schon zittern die Thore, sie brechen schier,
Jetzt gilt's, du braver Kanonier!
Und du trittst vor die Mündung hin,
Als wolltest du fesseln den Würger--
Und du rufst mit begeistertem Sinn:
Erst mich! dann den wehrlosen Bürger!--
Dann schweigt das Commando, beschämt vor dir.
Hab Dank, du braver Kanonier!"[2]
Towards evening it became clear to Metternich that no concessions
would now avail. He who for forty years had led the policy of Austria
hurriedly gave in his resignation and made his escape in disguise
in the imperial laundry cart. At nine o'clock the same evening the
troops were withdrawn from Vienna (exactly a week before the same
thing happened in Berlin), and citizens and students mounted guard
everywhere. The arsenal was opened, and in one day arms were served out
to 25,000 men.
There was some severe fighting in the outskirts of the town. So
fiercely resolute were the populace that, all unarmed, they pressed in
upon and disarmed two companies of grenadiers who were defending the
entrance to Metternichs villa. Those who resisted were trampled under
foot.
That same evening the abolition of the censorship and liberty of the
press were publicly announced. The intimation produced a feeling of
intense relief--it was as if a gag had been removed from the mouth of
the nation.
The newspapers, as a matter of course, instantaneously began to give
expression to the popular political ideas. It had hitherto been
impossible to treat even in poetic form any subject with a social or
political tendency; Austria had resembled a forest where the voices of
the birds were silent. Now suddenly pipe and call, whistle and song,
were heard from every bush and tree, a mighty and confused chorus.[3]
Poems of liberty were published in all the languages of Austria--German
and Czech, Slavonian and Croatian, Hungarian, Polish, and Italian. So
eager were men to make use of their new liberty that a whole bevy of
poems, superscribed _Erstes censurfreies Gedicht_ ("First poem printed
after the abolition of the censure"), appeared simultaneously.
The one generally accepted as the first is Frankl's _Die Universität_.
During the night between the 14th and 15th of March, one of the
professors, fearing an outbreak of the prisoners, requested the armed
students to despatch a guard to one of the prisons. Twenty students
were at once sent, under the command of Ludwig August Frankl. Whilst he
stood on guard that young man gave expression to the feelings of the
day in the song:
"Was kommt heran mit kühnem Gange?
Die Waffe blinkt, die Fahne weht,
Es naht mit hellem Trommelklange
Die Universität.
. . . . . . . . . .
Das freie Wort, das sie gefangen,
Seit Joseph arg verhöhnt, verschmäht,
Vorkämpfend sprengte seine Spangen
Die Universität."
In 1890, on his eightieth birthday, Frankl published a large volume of
able poetry; during his long life he has been an unusually productive
poet and writer of biography; he has been presented with the freedom of
Vienna and of three other European and Asiatic towns; but this song,
of which in course of time at least a hundred thousand copies were
printed, was what founded his reputation.
It was not, however, really the first poem printed after the abolition
of the censorship, for on the previous night Castelli had written his
song of the _Garde-National._ In the German language alone there are
three or four poems which lay claim to the same distinction. One of
these is the song of the Vienna student brigade,_ Erwacht, erwacht o
Brüder! Ein grosser Morgen tagt_ ("Awake, awake, O brothers! a great
morning is dawning"), and another is Fr. Gerhard's _Die freie Presse_,
which begins:
"Die Presse frei! Die Glocken lasst ertönen
Und läutet Jubel überall!
Und ruft's hinaus zu Deutschlands fernsten Söhnen
Die Presse frei, erstürmt der Freiheit Wall![4]
Simultaneously with these poems, which express such an innocent,
exuberant delight at being able to speak and write without restraint,
there appeared others full of the most childish gratitude to the
weak-minded Emperor. In them he is "the good Emperor," "our good
Ferdinand," &c, &c. People were ready to forget immediately that every
single concession had been, not granted, but forcibly extorted, or
else they believed naïvely that this was the way to make their late
oppressors forget it. In one of the many songs in praise of the Emperor
we read:
"Heil dir, mein Kaiser! in all der Lust
Zu der sich dein Volk ermannt hat,
Sei Dir vor Allen ein Heil gebracht,
Den es immer als edel erkannt hat."[5]
On the 16th of March the Hungarian deputation, 150 magnates with
Kossuth at their head, rode into Vienna, through the Prater, welcomed
with deafening cheers and showers of flowers. That day the number of
armed citizens had risen to 60,000. In the afternoon a herald appeared
on the balcony of the Castle and read the following proclamation: "We,
Ferdinand the First, by the grace of God Emperor of Austria and King
of Hungary and Bohemia, of Lombardy and Venice, of Dalmatia, Croatia,
Slavonia, Galicia, Illyria, &c, have now, in agreement with the wishes
of our faithful people, decided to take certain steps." On this
introduction follows the announcement of the liberty of the press, the
formation of the National Guard, and the convention of an assembly of
deputies for the purpose of drafting "that constitution which we have
determined to bestow on our country."
Saphir sang:
"Schwert aus der Scheid, aus dem Herzen das Lied!
Stimmt an das Lied der Lieder!
Jauchzend ertön' es durch Reihe und Glied,
Jauchzend durch jubelnde Brüder!
Blank wie die Waffe und hell wie der Stahl
Klinge das Lied von der Garde-National."[6]
Even the mocking-birds, we see, on this occasion ceased from mocking
and found voice to join in the universal chorus. In the persistent
employment of the French word, _Garde Nationale_, we have an example
of the importation and imitation which so largely characterised the
movement.
In turning over the pages of a collection of the German political
poems, several thousand in number, which were published in 1848 in
Vienna alone, we come upon many unknown names, but also upon almost
all that were well known at that time and on many that were destined
to become famous. We are struck by a poem of Bauernfeld's, _Wien an
die Provinzen_, weak from a literary point of view, but significant
from its indication of the first sign of reaction, namely, an attempt
made in the provinces to shake off what was called the tyranny of the
capital; in other words, to counteract the influence of the example set
by victorious, free Vienna. Friedrich Uhl, at a later period editor of
the _Wiener Abendpost_, the official organ of the Government, writes a
lament for the fallen revolutionary heroes:
"Das schwarze Band, den schwarzen Flor
Lasst in den Lüften wallen,
Den Todten singt ein Klagelied,
Die für die Freiheit gefallen."[7]
There are poems to Lenau, the most popular of living Austrian poets,
bewailing that the singer of liberty is now insane and silent, his ears
deaf to the victors' joyful shouts. Richard Wagner, as yet unknown to
fame, sends a "Greeting from Saxony to Vienna":
"Ihr habt der Freiheit Art erkannt;
Nicht halb wird sie gewonnen;
Ist uns ihr kleinstes Glied entwandt,
Schnell ist sie ganz zeronnen.
Dies kleinste Glied ist unsre Ehre,
Ehrlos ist, wer es lässt,
Mit hellen Waffen, guter Wehre,
Drum hieltet Ihr es fest."[8]
Amongst the writers of serious poems we find names like Grillparzer
and Hebbel; Saphir and Dingelstedt write mock-heroic elegies on the
last of the censors, both of them parodies of Schiller's _Nadowessische
Todesklage_; and there are no end of satiric thrusts at the King of
Prussia, who, curiously enough, was considered to have acted heretofore
in a more reactionary spirit, and now to be granting concessions more
unwillingly than the Austrian Emperor.
Since the beginning of March Berlin had been in a state of the
wildest excitement. Directly after the Revolution of February the
_Kreuzzeitung_ published an article advocating war with France. It
awakened extreme anxiety; people asked each other if long-suffering
Prussia was actually to be compelled to take up arms against the French
Republic. It was in these days that all Germany began to deck itself
in black, red, and gold, the colours symbolising unity and liberty.
Freiligrath wrote of them:
"In Kümmerniss und Dunkelheit
Da mussten wir sie bergen,
Nun haben wir sie doch befreit,
Befreit aus ihren Särgen;
Ha, wie das blitzt und rauscht und rollt!
Hurrah, du Schwarz, du Roth, du Gold!
Pulver ist schwarz,
Blut ist roth,
Golden flackert die Flamme!"[9]