Conditions were not improved under the rule of the next King,--the said

Adolphus Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, who ascended the throne in 1751.

The new King had married the younger sister of Frederick the Great of

Prussia, but he had so little influence on the direction of the public

policy of Sweden, both at home and abroad, that in the great European

war which Frederick had to wage against the other powers, Sweden took

sides against him by the dictation of the Reichsrath. In fact, the

Reichsrath became more aggressive and arrogant from year to year. It

interfered in the education of the royal princes. It presumed to attach

the King’s signature to public documents after he had refused twice to

sign them. The “caps” made an effort to strengthen the King’s authority

by amending the constitution, but it failed, and resulted in a complete

victory for the “hats.” The “hats” had it all their own way for a while.

Under orders from the French government, and also out of hatred and

contempt for the King, they declared war on the King of Prussia, and

Sweden was, without any cause or provocation, drawn into the terrible

Seven Years’ War, which resulted in the victory of Frederick the Great

over all his enemies.

This disastrous result of the war caused the temporary overthrow of the

“hats.” But the Russian faction, as soon as they had got control of the

government, established a tyranny worse than that of their predecessors,

so that the King, provoked to the utmost, threatened to resign and

appeal to the people, unless a popular Diet should be called to

establish the rights of the crown on a firm and more dignified basis.

Under the strong pressure of public indignation the Diet was called; it

restored to the crown part of the rights and prerogatives annulled by

the Reichsrath and dismissed a number of those officials most hostile

and objectionable to the King; but a proposition of the young, ingenious

and ambitious Crown Prince--to change the constitution thoroughly, to

reëstablish autocratic government in Sweden in order to renew an era of

glory and prosperity for the unfortunate country--failed through the

irresoluteness of the King. In 1771 the King died, and the Crown Prince

ascended the throne under the name of Gustavus the Third.

The Crown Prince was at Paris, where he was paying the court a visit,

when his father died. His presence in the French capital and his

conversations with Choiseul, the able prime minister of Louis the

Fifteenth, had strengthened and confirmed his own personal views about

the necessity for a change in the government of Sweden and for a return

to an absolutistic régime. He formally renewed the secret alliance

between Sweden and France, receiving the promise of liberal subsidies

from the French treasury in order to enable him to carry out his plans.

He took with him to Sweden a large sum of money, which was, so to speak,

the first instalment of the new subsidy. Moreover, Choiseul gave the

young King, on his return trip to Sweden, an experienced and sagacious

companion and adviser in the person of Count de Vergennes, who nominally

was to take charge of the French embassy at Stockholm, but who in

reality was to guide and assist Gustavus in his attempt to overthrow the

constitution of the monarchy and to restore the absolute _régime_ of

former days. The personality of Gustavus the Third was peculiarly fitted

for the _rôle_ which he was to play in the great drama of a political

revolution. He was young, enthusiastic, talented, eloquent, bold and

chivalrous; he was a poet of considerable ability, and his political

ideal was Louis the Fourteenth of France, whose majestic declaration:

“The state? I am the state!” struck a sympathetic chord in his heart.

Choiseul had found it an easy task to change the vague aspirations and

dreams in the young King’s mind into a fixed determination to put an end

to the oligarchic _régime_ of the nobility and to reëstablish absolute

monarchy in its pristine glory. The art of dissimulation, of which he

was a consummate master, and which he had practised with great success

as Crown Prince in order to throw his instructors, who were mere tools

of the Reichsrath, off their guard, served him admirably in perfecting

the initiatory steps, and finally, when the proper time had come, for

the successful execution of his _coup d’état_.

When Gustavus arrived at Stockholm, he found the Swedish Reichstag (the

Diet) in session. It had recognized him, during his absence, as King,

but the members were busily engaged in the discussion of a new

constitution, which they insisted would be necessary for protecting the

rights of the nobility against the usurpation of the King. The rights of

the people and the prerogatives of the King were hardly thought of in

this discussion, and the people were disgusted with the whole

proceeding. So was the King, but he had shrewdness and self-control

enough not to interfere with the work of the Diet; and when, after a

hard-fought battle of eight months’ duration between the contending

factions of the “hats” and the “caps,” the new constitution was finally

completed and submitted to him for his signature, he readily signed it,

without reading it, explaining his extraordinary readiness with the

words “I have confidence enough in the patriotism and wisdom of the

Reichstag to believe that they all have worked for the welfare of the

state, and that my own rights were safe in their hands.”

In order to make this rather strange indifference on his part appear

quite natural, he had lived most of the time at his country-seat, at

some distance from Stockholm, surrounded by a few literary friends and

writing comedies and poems, without paying the least attention to the

political work going on at the capital. He came but rarely to Stockholm,

but whenever he went, he took good care to insinuate himself into the

good graces of the people. His natural eloquence and the fact that he

was born in Sweden and spoke the Swedish language correctly, as well as

his pleasant and affable manners, made him immensely popular with the

common people, while at the same time his friends lost no opportunity to

incite the people, and also the soldiery, against the nobility, whom

they charged with having caused all the miseries from which the State,

and especially the rural population, were suffering. Poor crops and

great financial distress added to the popular dissatisfaction, and the

royalist party did not fail to attribute these public calamities to the

aristocracy’s injudicious administration; thus the people were

thoroughly aroused for the impending battle between King and nobility.

In the Reichsrath the faction of the “caps” had succeeded in utterly

defeating the faction of the “hats,” and driving all their adherents out

of the public offices. The official slaughter and persecution of the

“hats” was carried on so recklessly and injudiciously by the “caps” that

even the Russian ambassador protested against their imprudence, which,

he was afraid, might lead to a revolution that would overthrow both

factions and place absolute power in the hands of the monarch. But the

“caps,” in the intoxication of their victory, were too blind to see the

danger; moreover, they felt absolutely safe because the King had sworn

to obey and uphold the constitution, and the constitution deprived him

of all power of action. Gustavus had so fully duped them that not even a

suspicion of foul play arose in their minds. With masterly dissimulation

and with marvellous strength of mind he waited in apparent indifference

until the proper moment for action had come. His friends, however, had

been very busy. They had won one hundred and fifty of the higher

officers of the Stockholm garrison over to the King’s cause, and this

acquisition placed practically the entire military power of the capital

under his orders.

It had been arranged, however, that the first outbreak should not occur

at Stockholm, but in another city. In compliance with this programme

Captain Hellichius, a devoted friend of the King, and Commandant of the

garrison of Christianstadt, on the twelfth of August, 1772, issued a

manifesto, in which he fiercely denounced the pernicious administration

of the Reichsrath, and called upon the inhabitants of Sweden to shake

off the tyranny of the oligarchy which held both the King and the people

in bondage. It had also been arranged that Prince Charles, the King’s

brother, Commander of the troops in Scania, should immediately march,

with the army under his command, toward Christianstadt, ostensibly for

the purpose of suppressing the revolt, but really for the purpose of

swelling the ranks of the malcontents. When this news reached Stockholm,

some of the members of the Reichsrath suspected that the King was

implicated, but he feigned absolute ignorance of the matter, and

deceived his enemies so well that they left him alone. Prompt action on

their part, in arresting and guarding the person of the King, would very

likely have quelled the revolt at the very outset. But the King was so

powerless that he preferred to wait for news from Christianstadt

announcing the success of the movement before resorting to active

measures which might have caused the failure of the whole plan.

Only when the Reichsrath ordered the troops of the whole country to be

concentrated at the capital, and also ordered Prince Charles to turn

over his command to a general who was strictly in sympathy with the

existing condition of things, the King thought the time for him to act

had come, and he hesitated no longer. It was the nineteenth of August,

1772, and Gustavus knew that that day was to decide not only the success

or failure of his intended _coup d’état_, but very likely also his life

or death, his honor or disgrace. In taking the offensive so promptly,

the King showed great personal bravery and courage, and made good his

claim to be a God-given leader of men. At an early hour he went to the

Assembly Room, where the Reichsrath was already in session. At a glance

he saw that the prevailing sentiment was hostile to him. No sooner had

he taken his seat than one of the members in a rather insolent tone

asked him whether he had not received a letter during the night from

Christianstadt, and on receiving an affirmative answer, demanded that

the King should communicate the letter to the Reichsrath. The King

refused to deliver the letter, stating that it was private, and

expressed indignation at the disrespectful request. A general murmur

arose among the members, and voices were heard saying that it might be

advisable to arrest the King. He hurriedly arose from his seat, and

placing his hand on the hilt of his sword, as if ready to kill the first

one who should stand in his way, he passed through the seats of the

Senators with head erect and haughty mien.

None dared oppose him, and he proceeded directly to the armory, where

two regiments of the Royal Guard were drawn up in line under the command

of officers devoted to him. He addressed them in an eloquent speech,

promising to restore the kingdom to its previous proud position among

the nations and make the army again a source of honor to the Swedes and

of terror to its enemies, such as it had been in the great days of

Gustavus Adolphus. The officers and the men cheered him

enthusiastically, and declared they would follow him to death or

wherever he would lead them. Not only the soldiers in the city, but

thousands of armed citizens gathered around him shouting, “Down with the

nobility! Down with the Reichsrath! Long live the King!” He mounted his

horse and at the head of this enthusiastic army proceeded to the State

House, where the Reichsrath was still in session, devising means to

bring the King to terms. The troops were so placed as to make it

impossible for the members of the Reichsrath to leave the building. The

King, flushed with the excitement of victory, with his flashing sword

drawn, and surrounded by a few of the most popular officers and

citizens, rode through the streets, harangued the people on the public

squares, and carried them away by his eloquence and chivalrous

appearance. It was a personal triumph, which he relished to its fullest

extent, and which gave assurance of the complete success of his plans

for constitutional reform.

The revolution which Gustavus the Third had inaugurated so boldly at

Stockholm proved a complete success. The common people flocked to him in

great numbers; the women and girls offered him flowers and bouquets, and

threw kisses to him; the men knelt down and, with tears of joy in their

eyes, kissed his boots or his hands, blessing him as the savior of his

country, and calling the blessings of Heaven down upon his head.

Surrounded by thousands of enthusiastic adherents, he rode to the City

Hall, where the municipal authorities were already assembled, and

received from them the assurance of their unconditional allegiance and

loyalty. The same ovation and enthusiastic demonstration greeted him at

the palace of the Board of Admiralty. Not a shot was fired, not a sword

was drawn, not a drop of human blood was shed to overcome opposition to

the royal plan of changing the government and to end the rule of the

nobility. Never before in history had a revolution been so quickly, so

successfully accomplished; never before had a government in the full

possession of all public powers been so suddenly and so successfully

overthrown as in this instance. The _coup d’état_ was a masterstroke of

public policy which gave Gustavus a wonderful prestige throughout

Europe. Even the English and Russian ambassadors, who were most

interested in the contemplated change of government, and who might have

raised obstacles to the King’s autocratic action, were disarmed entirely

by a courteous invitation to the royal palace, where they were

entertained in the most pleasant manner until the whole excitement was

over and Gustavus the Third in complete possession of the government. On

the day following, the war department and all the high state officials

made haste to swear obedience to the King. The citizens of the capital

were called together on the public square and the King addressed them

again, this time in the full splendor of triumphant royalty and

surrounded by all the high dignitaries of the kingdom, telling them,

amid their enthusiastic shouts and applause, that he considered it his

greatest glory to be the first citizen of a free nation. He then took

out of his pocket the new constitution prepared by him and read it to

them in his clear and melodious voice. Renewed shouts and boisterous

applause rewarded him when he had concluded.

But the part most difficult for him remained to be done,--to get the

assent of the States. They were convened for the next day, August 21,

and in ordering them to appear, the King had added that any member not

appearing in his seat on that day would be treated as a traitor. During

the night preceding the meeting of the States a strong detachment of

soldiers and artillery was placed in a position commanding the State

House. When the King appeared and sat down on the throne his eye looked

upon a hall well filled. The most profound silence reigned when he got

up and read the constitution in a clear and firm voice. He supplemented

the reading with a very eloquent and patriotic speech, in which he

referred to the degradation and contempt to which the monarchy had been

reduced by the incapacity, venality and corruption of the government and

of the nobility. He painted this government and the disgrace it had

brought upon Sweden in the darkest colors, and then added, in a voice

trembling with emotion: “If there is any one among you who thinks that I

am misstating facts or exaggerating the disgraceful condition of our

public affairs, I challenge him to contradict me, and to state here in

the presence of all in what respect I have misrepresented the

administration of the Reichsrath. I vow to God Almighty that I shall

devote all my energy to the task of restoring the welfare of my beloved

country and the happiness of its inhabitants, and I know of no other way

to accomplish these results than by the change of the constitution as I

have read it to you.” Then turning to the members individually, he asked

whether they were in favor of sanctioning the proposed change. They all

answered in the affirmative and swore the oath of allegiance. Thereupon

the King drew from his pocket a hymn-book, and removing the crown from

his head, he began to sing the “Te Deum Laudamus,” in which they all

joined him. Gustavus had won again in the most perilous stage of the

dangerous game he was playing.

The new constitution which had been adopted reinstated the King in all

those rights and prerogatives which his ancestors had possessed up to

the death of Charles the Twelfth. He was the commander of the army and

navy; the revenues of the state were to be under his exclusive care; he

disposed arbitrarily of all offices, civil and military; he alone had

the right to negotiate treaties and alliances; he had unlimited power to

conduct a war of defence, but for foreign wars he needed the consent of

the States; he alone had the right to convene the Congress, and the

Congress was not to transact other business than was submitted to it by

the crown; the Reichsrath was subordinate to the King; it became merely

an advisory board, and its decisions were not of binding force. It was a

constitution which the Emperor of Russia might have subscribed to.

While Gustavus had, by his boldness and eloquence, secured the success

of his _coup d’état_ at Stockholm, his brothers travelled through the

different provinces, promulgated the new constitution, and were

everywhere welcomed enthusiastically. Gustavus himself made during the

winter months of the same year the traditional tour of the old kings

through the kingdom even to the farthest borders of Norway--the old

riksgata--and exactly in the same manner as the old kings had done--on

horseback. Wherever he went he was only escorted by the inhabitants of

the neighborhood, whom he delighted by his affability, his nobility of

soul and his eloquence. He seemed to have no enemies and needed no

soldiers to protect him. These were the golden days of his reign. The

two parties which had so bitterly fought for supremacy had been wiped

out by his victory. The “hats” and the “caps” were heard of no more, and

Sweden seemed to be in a fair way of entering upon a new era of

greatness and prosperity.

Tempting as the task may be for the historian to go into the details of

the life of the extraordinary man who, endowed by nature with talents of

a high order, rose to the heights of human glory and then abruptly fell

by reason of his own folly, we must forego this pleasure and confine

ourselves to a rapid sketch of the events which led Gustavus the Third

slowly to the terrible tragedy of his assassination. It would seem

almost incredible that a prince so popular and so idolized by his people

as Gustavus was on the morning of his _coup d’état_ could in the course

of a few years so utterly lose the confidence of his people and forfeit

their love as to make the execution of the conspiracy against his life

even possible. But it must be admitted that this loss of popularity and

esteem was, in part at least, caused by grave faults of the King, which,

with reckless audacity, he committed again and again, while the general

loss of royal prestige and authority throughout Europe as a consequence

of the French Revolution of 1789 had also a great deal to do with it.

During the first years after the _coup d’état_ general satisfaction

seemed to prevail throughout the country; the common people felt

relieved of many unnecessary burdens, while the nobility, who had been

so utterly routed, kept silent in the consciousness of their weakness.

Many measures of reform, calculated to promote the national prosperity,

were initiated by the personal agency of the King. The currency, which

was in a deplorable condition, was put on a sounder basis; many

benevolent institutions--hospitals, orphan asylums, poor-houses,

etc.--were established; the public highways were improved; large canals

connecting with the seacoast the mines of the kingdom (which were among

its most important industries) were constructed; trade and industry were

assisted according to the prevailing theories of those times; free

trade, both at home and with foreign countries, was established;

privileges and franchises which oppressed the people at large for the

benefit of the few were abolished; both the criminal and the civil code

of laws were revised and improved; strict impartiality in the

application of laws and in the punishment of criminals was insisted

upon; the torture, which up to that time had played an important part in

criminal trials, was done away with, and a more humane treatment of

convicts was introduced in prisons and penitentiaries. Gustavus was in

this respect a disciple of Montesquieu and Beccaria. His great ambition

was also to renew the ties of friendship and brotherhood between Finland

and Sweden, and in order to do so, he personally visited Finland, and

established there a number of valuable reforms which are gratefully

remembered by that unfortunate country to the present day.

But highly commendable and worthy of admiration as the young King’s

action was in these and many other respects, the defects of his

character soon appeared, and gave his enemies an opportunity to

undermine his work and his popularity. He lacked steadiness and firmness

of purpose. He wanted to see and enjoy immediately the beneficent

results of his reforms. Many of them were therefore abandoned before

they had had time for full development; many very costly undertakings

were discontinued because the King had either changed his mind or was

tired of waiting. And then, he was extravagant in his personal expenses

and in arranging grand court entertainments fashioned on the brilliant

festivities of the French court at Versailles, which remained his model

in all matters of court etiquette and royal display. Like Frederick the

Great, to whom Gustavus the Third bears in many respects a striking

resemblance, although he lacked the great Prussian’s military genius and

wise frugality, he was fond of French literature and art, and made

strenuous efforts to give them a supreme place in the educational

institutions of the kingdom. The national genius of the Swedish people

and language were consequently relegated to a secondary place. To make

up for the unpopularity and protests which these efforts caused among

the people, he devised a national costume for all the inhabitants; but

in this attempt he failed entirely. The costume he had devised was

copied from an ancient Spanish one, and utterly unsuitable for a

northern country of short summers and severe winters. The King’s

ordinances introducing these Spanish garments were openly disobeyed and

laughed at. People began to look on him as a dreamer, and lost their

respect for him.

But that which more than anything else hurt his popularity was the way

in which he treated the liquor question. The mass of the Swedish people

were strongly addicted to the excessive use of intoxicating liquors. The

vice had assumed such proportions that measures of reform were urgently

called for. But, with the usual impracticability of temperance

reformers, Gustavus managed the matter so unskilfully that, instead of

correcting the abuse, he made himself highly unpopular and aroused the

most stubborn resistance to his reform policy. He had issued an edict

prohibiting the manufacture and use of distilled liquors, but he found

it impossible to enforce the edict: the peasants and farmers, who had

been distilling their own whiskey, simply ignored it, while in a number

of cities where distilleries were maintained for the manufacture and

sale of the liquor, regular battles were fought between the police

trying to suppress them, and the inhabitants enraged at the attempt to

close them. Gustavus then repealed the edict and introduced a new

system, which he hoped would at once diminish the vice of drunkenness

and replenish his treasury, which was in a chronic state of exhaustion.

He made the right of manufacturing and selling alcoholic liquors a crown

monopoly, and established agencies for the sale of these liquors in all

large and small cities and towns of the kingdom. But the peasants were

not satisfied with this arrangement either. The whiskey they were to buy

at the agencies was much dearer than their own home-distilled beverage;

moreover, the towns and cities, at that time only thinly scattered over

Sweden, were often so remote from the farms, and the roads leading to

them were often in such an impassable condition that the purchase of

whiskey was a difficult matter for the rural population. The clandestine

and illicit manufacture of the beverage was carried on therefore as it

had been before. But the very name of the King became odious to the

people. They contemptuously called him “a crank, a visionary and a

poet.” Writing poetry, in which Gustavus excelled, was in their eyes a

symptom of folly and madness.

The hostility of the nobles and their rebellious spirit, which had been

overawed and silenced for some years by the great personal popularity of

the King, reappeared and gained ground with the disaffection of the

people, and especially of the rural population. For a King like Gustavus

the Third, ambitious and high-spirited, military glory had a tempting

attraction, and he had commenced soon after his successful _coup d’état_

to prepare for winning it. The army was in a really deplorable condition

at the time of his accession to the throne, being entirely without

artillery and deficient in equipment. Gustavus lost no time in remedying

these defects. He modelled the Swedish army after the Prussian army as

reorganized by Frederick the Great, which was then considered the finest

and best equipped in Europe, and within two years he had made it, with

its splendid personnel and its modern material, a formidable machine of

war, which, under the leadership of a military genius, might have

renewed the great days of Gustavus Adolphus or Charles the Twelfth. But

it was the ambition of Gustavus the Third to command the army himself,

and he was not a military genius. He declared war upon Russia, with the

intention of recovering the lost provinces of Finland, and proceeded to

Finland himself in order to take command of the invading army.

It was there that the first misfortune overtook him. After a few

engagements,--rather skirmishes than battles,--in which the Swedes were

victorious, the King decided to invest or take by assault the small

fortress of Frederickshamm. It would have been better for him if he had

marched directly upon Petersburg, which was not in a condition to resist

an immediate attack of a superior army. If he had done so, very likely

the Esths, first cousins of the Finns, and anxious to shake off the yoke

of Russia, would have joined him and would have placed him in possession

of the Russian borderland; but Gustavus frittered away the time and by

his inactivity enabled the commanders of his own regiments (generally

appointed from the ranks of the high nobility) to organize a conspiracy

against him and virtually drive him from the field. Very likely bribed

with Russian gold, they jointly issued a manifesto that Gustavus had

violated the constitution of Sweden by declaring war upon Russia

without the consent of the Reichsrath, and they were therefore not bound

to obey him in this criminal undertaking. They also used their influence

on the other officers and on the soldiers of their regiments, and made

them rebellious against the King’s commands. In vain Gustavus implored

them not to abandon him and the cause of their country; but they were

deaf to his prayers and to his threats, and he left the army as a

humiliated and disgraced commander.

Upon his return to Stockholm, he made a journey through Dalecarlia, the

province in which his ancestor Gustavus Vasa had found the followers who

raised him to the throne; he used his extraordinary eloquence so

successfully that the people again rallied round him. They swore to

stand by him in his struggle against Russia, and not to lay down arms

until a peace honorable to Sweden could be secured. Gustavus then

convened the Reichstag for the twenty-sixth of January, 1789, in order

to get authority to continue the war and restore his kingly

prerogatives, which by the revolt of the army had been so signally

impaired. The nobility at last openly threw off the mask; but they were

overpowered by the three other estates, who would rather strengthen the

King’s authority than return to their former condition of bondage under

the _régime_ of a corrupt and arrogant nobility. The Reichstag therefore

fully sustained the King’s action, taking the view that the offensive

war against Russia was really a war of defence.

Sufficient appropriations were made to carry on the war to a successful

end, and thirty prominent members of the nobility were indicted for

treason and _lèse majesté_, and punished severely. At the same time an

important revision of the constitution was made in the interest of the

King, and, in spite of the violent protests of the nobility, his

prerogatives were largely extended. The Reichsrath was entirely

abolished, and the King authorized to declare war on other countries

whenever war was deemed advisable to protect the interests of the

country. He also obtained the absolute right to appoint all military and

civil officers, while formerly many of these appointments had to be

confirmed by the Reichsrath. After having thus secured the rights of the

crown at home, Gustavus departed again for the seat of war, with new

regiments and new commanders. Russia had also strengthened herself, and

what might at first have been an easy undertaking, and might have led to

a brilliant success, was now a very serious one, and one of very

uncertain chances of success. It soon became evident that the results of

the war would depend on the naval supremacy of either of the two powers,

and all efforts were therefore directed on both sides toward

strengthening their navies.

Several big naval battles were fought, and in all of them the King, who

personally commanded his fleet, performed wonders of valor. The last of

these battles was that of Swenskasund on the ninth of July, 1790; and

the King, who fought with the bravery of despair because the fleet of

the Russians was considerably superior in numbers to his own, won a

brilliant victory. No less than fifty-nine Russian warships, carrying

altogether six hundred and forty-three guns, fell into the hands of the

Swedes. But even more than this great material success was the prestige

which Gustavus derived from the victory. He was tired of the war, and

he could now as a victorious hero offer terms of peace, honorable and

advantageous to his country, instead of humbly accepting terms from

Russia. On the fourteenth of August, 1790, a treaty of peace was

concluded by which, while Sweden did not receive any territorial

indemnity, she secured rights and trade privileges in the Baltic Sea

which Russia until then had denied her. The honors of the war were

therefore on Sweden’s side, and the King personally, for his

unquestioned heroism, was entitled to a liberal share of them.

On the other hand, the results of the war were disastrous for the

country, and the King was by his enemies, the nobility (who were more

bitterly opposed to him than ever), held responsible for these

disasters. The heavy expenditures for the war had necessitated

extraordinary tax levies which were burdensome to the whole people, rich

as well as poor, and these could not be abolished immediately on the

termination of the war. The brilliant festivities, balls and

entertainments, which greeted the King on his return to his capital,

could not fully conceal the great distress and poverty of the people;

but with that levity which was a conspicuous feature of his character

and which gave him such a mental resemblance to Marie Antoinette, whom

he greatly admired, he tried to forget in the intoxication of incessant

amusements and pleasures the personal privations he had suffered during

the war and the sorrows and wants of the nation. That this conduct,

which he did not care to conceal from the public eye, irritated the

people and filled many of those who had been his admirers with disgust

and hatred may easily be imagined. But that by which he gave the

greatest blow to his popularity was his active and over-zealous

sympathy in the misfortunes of Louis the Sixteenth and his Queen, Marie

Antoinette, and his efforts to release them from captivity and save them

from death.

Gustavus showed his lack of political sagacity in estranging the very

element upon which he had founded his autocratic power,--the great mass

of the people. Their devotion had made it possible for him, not only to

continue the war against Russia, but also to be more than a mere

figure-head in the government of his kingdom. The support of the

nobility he had lost beyond redemption. They hated him, and only hoped

for opportunities to humiliate him. All efforts on his part to reconcile

them failed. His true policy should have been to ingratiate himself

still more with the people, relieve their burdens, make the laws and

institutions more liberal, and carry out the promise he had made to

them, that he wanted to be clothed with supreme power in order to make

the nation more happy and the country more prosperous. But his character

did not permit him to pursue this policy dictated by common-sense. The

French Revolution had broken out, and the misfortunes of the French King

and Queen enlisted his profound sympathy. He watched the progress of the

revolution with eager interest, and when it became apparent that Louis

could not master it, he formed the adventurous and fantastic plan of

placing himself at the head of a large army, composed of contingents of

all the European powers, and restoring absolute monarchy in France, as

he had restored absolute monarchy in Sweden. In order to realize that

dream which corresponded so well to his visionary, chivalrous, poetical

temperament, he opened negotiations with Russia, Prussia, Austria, and

especially with the French _émigrés_. These men had assembled in Germany

and other countries waiting for an opportunity to return to France under

the standards of some friendly power coming to the rescue of Louis the

Sixteenth and monarchical institutions. Gustavus had tried his best to

assist the French King in his flight from Paris. It was a Swedish

carriage, with Swedish attendants, which was to convey Louis the

Sixteenth and the royal family beyond the borders of France, and which

was so abruptly stopped at Varennes. After this attempt at flight had

failed, Gustavus saw no other means of saving the monarchy--not only in

France, but throughout Europe--than by making war upon the Jacobins,

stamping out the Revolution in the blood of its adherents, and seating

Louis the Sixteenth in the full glory of absolutism once more on the

throne. The execution of this plan, he imagined, would immortalize him,

and would make him in effect the dictator of Europe.

The Reichstag of Gefle, which was opened January 25, 1792, had already

greatly disappointed and incensed him, because it had unanimously

rejected his demand for an appropriation of ten million dollars which he

needed for his new undertaking. The utter disregard of his wishes and

the contempt with which his urgent appeals were ignored by the lower

order, which had so firmly stood by him in the Reichstag of 1789, showed

also his great unpopularity; and the nobility thought that the time had

come for striking a bold blow not only to get rid of him, but also to

reinstate themselves in power. As we have seen, the moment was very

opportune. The public debt was enormous; the distress was general; vague

rumors of another war, not against an enemy, but against the rights of

the people, were in the air. Then the conspiracy was formed. There were

five principal conspirators; and they all belonged to the highest

nobility. While some of them had personal grievances, not one of them

would have thought of raising his hand against the King, unless a much

more important object had been in view. These five were Ankarström, who

had already been among the rebellious officers in Finland, Count

Ribbing, Count Horn, Count Liliehorn and Baron Pechlin.

The mainspring of the conspiracy was the hope of overthrowing the

autocratic system of government, and reinstating the nobility in all its

prerogatives. At first the conspirators did not want to resort to

murder, but they hoped to be able to abduct the King, compel him to

resign, and then to extort from his successor the recognition of those

rights and privileges of which Gustavus the Third had deprived them.

Having made two or three attempts in that direction, they changed their

plan, and concluded that the easiest and safest way to accomplish their

aim would be to assassinate the King.

Ankarström volunteered to shoot the King at one of the popular masked

balls, which he was in the habit of visiting, and at which he freely

mingled with the other visitors. Twice he failed to recognize Gustavus.

But the last masquerade of the season at Stockholm was to come off on

Friday, March 16, 1792, and Ankarström resolved to make a last effort to

strike his victim. And he did, although Gustavus was warned that very

evening by one of the conspirators (Count Liliehorn) that it would be

dangerous for him to go to the ball, for an attempt would be made on his

life. The ball was to come off at the Grand Opera House, and an immense

crowd was expected. Four of the conspirators--Pechlin, Ankarström, Horn

and Ribbing--took supper together, and afterwards went to the theatre.

They wore black dominoes of a uniform pattern, to be able to recognize

each other easily. On the other hand, Gustavus had taken supper with one

of his closest friends, Count Essen, in a little private room arranged

for his use at the theatre itself. During this supper, at ten o’clock in

the evening, an anonymous letter was handed to him, written in French

and with a lead pencil. The author revealed the whole plot, which, as he

asserted, he had learned only during the afternoon. He implored the King

not to go to the ball, and to change his conduct and his policy if he

wanted to escape assassination. He confessed having opposed the King’s

autocratic measures and his _coup d’état_, which he considered illegal

and unconstitutional. But, being a man of honor, as he said, the very

idea of murder was horrid to him, and he therefore again implored the

King to keep away from the ball. This note came from Count Liliehorn.

Gustavus read it twice very attentively; but he did not say a word about

its contents. He quietly completed his supper and then, accompanied by

Count Essen, he proceeded to his box, where he was plainly to be seen by

all. It was then only that he showed the note to his companion, who also

implored him not to go on the floor among the dancers. Gustavus said he

would hereafter put on a coat of mail before going to such places of

amusement, but he insisted on going on the floor. They thereupon left

the box, put on light dominoes and descended to the floor, which was

crowded with a throng of brilliant, gay and grotesque masks.

The King had taken Essen’s arm, and while passing through the stage

scenery said to him: “Now let us see whether they’ll dare attack me!”

Although he wore a face-mask, the dancers whispered to each other:

“There is the King!” Gustavus made the tour of the ball-room without

stopping; then he stepped into the green-room in order to rest a moment;

but on leaving, he found himself surrounded by a group of black

dominoes, one of whom (it was Count Horn) laid his hand on the King’s

shoulder, saying: “Good-evening, my beautiful masquerader!” These words

were the signal. At the same moment Ankarström fired a shot from his

pistol, which had been wrapped up in raw wool in order to weaken the

detonation, and the shot was heard by but a few persons. Gustavus

exclaimed in a loud voice: “I am wounded! Arrest the assassin!” At the

same time loud cries: “Fire! Fire! Leave the hall!” resounded from

different parts of the building, and a great confusion followed. In the

panic there was a general rush toward the doors, and all the

conspirators would have escaped, but for the presence of mind of Count

Armfeld, who ordered the doors to be closed, and assuring the tumultuous

crowd that there was no fire, but that a great crime had been committed,

ordered all the dancers and visitors to take off their masks. The

conspirators nevertheless managed to escape immediate discovery by their

very audacity, although they attracted attention and suspicion. As he

passed through the door, Ankarström with a haughty smile said to the

officer: “I hope you do not suspect me?” “On the contrary,” replied the

officer, “I am sure you are the assassin!” but before he could stop him,

Ankarström had passed out. He was, however, arrested the next morning,

and also Liliehorn, who had sent the anonymous note to the King. Counts

Horn and Ribbing were arrested a few days later, and Baron Pechlin some

time afterwards.

Gustavus the Third was the only one who had kept his presence of mind

during the tremendous confusion. Essen, covered with the King’s blood,

had rather carried than conducted him first to one of the private boxes

and thence to a small adjoining parlor with a sofa, where he could lie

down. The King was the one who directed what measures were to be taken

in the grave situation. He ordered the gates of the city to be closed

and the Duke of Sodermanland to be sent for. As soon as the surgeons had

applied the necessary bandages, he was conveyed to the royal palace, and

issued, with perfect self-command, orders for the appointment of those

officials who during his illness should conduct the affairs of the

kingdom. The King himself ascribed the assault to the influence of the

Jacobins of Paris, and the murderers eagerly circulated this rumor, in

order to mislead public opinion. However, after Ankarström had been

arrested and made a confession, there could no longer be any doubt as to

the motives which were at the bottom of the conspiracy. Public opinion

took the cue immediately.

From the very moment of the assassination the people of Stockholm seemed

to be delirious with grief. During the thirteen days of his agony all

the King’s mistakes and faults, which quite recently had been magnified

into crimes and atrocities, were forgotten; there was but one voice of

sympathy and affection for him and of condemnation for his assassins.

All the good and chivalrous qualities of Gustavus reappeared during the

illness preceding his death. When the public indignation threatened the

families of the conspirators, he immediately began to plead eloquently

for them and wished them to be protected. When delegations of the

municipalities of Stockholm and other cities were admitted to his

presence to assure him of the unfaltering loyalty of their cities to him

and the royal family, he shed tears of gratitude, and told them that

such proofs of loyalty were not too dearly purchased at the price of a

serious and possibly fatal wound. When old Count Brahe, one of the

leaders of the opposition in the Reichstag, knelt down at his bedside

and swore to him that he was a stranger to the conspiracy and condemned

it with horror, Gustavus raised him to his feet and embraced him, weak

as he was, and told him with tearful eyes that he blessed his wound,

because it had reconciled him with a friend so valued and noble-hearted.

When his brother showed him a list of all those who had been ferreted

out as accessories to the crime, he refused to look at it, and implored

his brother to destroy it so that no further bloodshed might result.

When some one in his presence swore bloody vengeance on the

conspirators, he interfered in their behalf, adding: “If Ankarström is

to die, then let there be mercy at least for the others! One victim is

enough!” At first it looked as though he would get well. His

conversation, fluent and logical, at times even brilliant and eloquent,

was taken as proof that his vitality had not been exhausted, and that

his excellent constitution would carry him safely through this terrible

ordeal. But late on the twelfth day after the assault, he grew worse,

and began to sink rapidly. The change came so suddenly that even the

physicians were surprised, and suspected foul play. But nothing has

ever come to light to give confirmation to that suspicion.

Thus ended, most sadly and prematurely, one of the most brilliant

careers of the eighteenth century,--that of a man of splendid

attainments, who lacked perhaps depth, and certainly application, to

become one of the greatest men of his age and century; a man of noble,

chivalrous character, who had placed his ideals of human greatness

unfortunately in the splendid and brilliant outside of things instead of

their solid, substantial and imperishable worth.

CHAPTER XVIII

JEAN PAUL MARAT

[Illustration: JEAN PAUL MARAT]

CHAPTER XVIII

ASSASSINATION OF JEAN PAUL MARAT

(July 13, 1793)

IN the letter of farewell which Charlotte Corday, from her prison cell

as a doomed murderess, addressed to her father, she used the phrase (the

French words are a well-known verse from a famous tragedy):

“’Tis not the scaffold, but the crime, that brings disgrace”;

for she still adhered to the belief that in killing Marat she had not

committed a crime, but an act of patriotic devotion for which posterity

would honor her, and history would place her name among the benefactors

of mankind. In this belief she was more than half right, for in the long

list of political crimes and assassinations there is not one which has

been so willingly condoned by the world, so eloquently defended by

historians, so enthusiastically immortalized by poets, and so leniently

criticised even by moralists as that of Charlotte Corday. In her defence

the law of heredity has been invoked, for it has been maintained that

Charlotte Corday, who was a great-grandniece of the great Corneille, had

inherited those sublime patriotic and republican sentiments which the

great tragic poet so often and so eloquently expresses in his dramatic

poems. In fact everything has been done to surround her crime with the

halo of martyrdom, and to secure for her the glory of a national

heroine.

It was in the middle of the year 1793. The French Revolution had reached

that turning-point when the Revolutionists had almost exhausted their

fury against the Royalists, and engaged in factional fights among

themselves, always ending in the execution of the members of the

vanquished party. The National Assembly--transformed into the National

Convention--was under the absolute control of the Jacobins, and Marat,

Danton and Robespierre were the absolute rulers of Paris and

consequently of France. The King had been guillotined, the Queen and the

other members of the royal family were imprisoned, and their execution

was only a question of time. An insane craving for blood seemed to have

taken possession of the men who were guiding the destinies of France.

Danton, by far the most gifted of these Jacobins, had forever sullied

his name as the author of the “September Massacres”; but far more odious

was Marat, “the friend of the people,” the blood-thirsty demon of the

Revolution, who quite seriously demanded, in the paper of which he was

the editor and publisher, that two hundred thousand persons should be

guillotined to purify the aristocratic atmosphere of France.

The powerful party of the Girondists, who were distinguished by a

certain degree of moderation and had been a sort of counterpoise in the

Convention to the Jacobins, had not only been defeated, but had been

actually driven out of the Convention and been branded as traitors and

enemies to the Republic. With Marat, Robespierre and Danton in the

absolute and unrestrained possession of power, the destruction and

execution of the Girondists was therefore only a question of time,--of

months, weeks, perhaps only of days,--and most of them fled from Paris,

seeking refuge in those parts of France which were known to be strongly

attached to the moderate views of the defeated party. Normandy was one

of these provinces, and in its ancient towns and villages quite a number

of the proscribed leaders of the Girondist party--Buzot, Pétion,

Barbaroux, Louvet and others--appeared with the outspoken intention of

arousing the population and inducing them to march against Paris. There

had been great excitement before their arrival. The enemies of the

Terrorists were in a large majority, and had been active in organizing,

equipping, and drilling an army, and General Wimpfen, the commandant at

Cherbourg, was bold and imprudent enough to announce that he would march

upon Paris with an army of sixty thousand men.

At that time there lived at Caen in Normandy a young girl of noble

descent, very beautiful and ingenious, but poor. Her name was Charlotte

Corday, or rather Marie Anna Charlotte Corday; she lived at Caen in the

house of her aunt, Madame de Bretteville. Charlotte was the daughter of

Monsieur de Corday d’Armans, and a great-grandniece of Pierre Corneille,

the greatest of the tragic poets of France. The statement that she was

the great-granddaughter of the poet is erroneous. She was the

great-granddaughter of Marie Corneille, the only sister of Pierre

Corneille, whose daughter married Adrian Corday, Baron of Cauvigny. This

lineage makes the claim of heredity for Charlotte’s sublime character,

which is so often insisted on, rather fanciful, especially since no

other members of the great poet’s family have manifested these

characteristics. Charlotte had a sister and two brothers, who had left

their father’s house after he married his second wife. Her two brothers

went to Germany to take service in the army of the Prince of Condé in

his campaign against the French Revolutionists.

Charlotte had been placed in a convent at Caen when only twelve years of

age, and being naturally contemplative, the retirement and silence of

the convent made her even more so. She abandoned herself entirely to

those vague dreams and exaltations which so often fill the minds and

souls of young girls on the threshold of womanhood. Especially the

proud, exalted, grandiose heroines, whom her great-granduncle had

immortalized in his tragedies, Cinna, Horace, Polyeucte, Le Cid, made a

profound impression upon her, and she learned the most beautiful

passages by heart. Her very education seemed to prepare her for the

great historic _rôle_ which she was to play some ten or twelve years

later. At the age of seventeen or eighteen she left the convent and was

kindly received in the house of Madame de Bretteville. Her mind was

filled with the exalted sentiments of Corneille and Plutarch, whom she

read and reread with great delight. Her soul was restless at the sight

of the increasing agitation against the corruption of the aristocratic

classes and of the profound misery and degradation of the poor. The

house of Madame de Bretteville was one of those sombre, sad-looking,

narrow residences which are still found occasionally in the silent and

sleepy streets of old Norman towns, and well adapted to the stern and

dreamy character of Charlotte. In the rear of the house there was a

garden, surrounded by high walls, and this garden became the favorite

spot of Charlotte in her readings and studies. Her extraordinary beauty,

which consisted as much in the classical cast of her features, her

dazzling complexion, her magnificent eyes, as in the intellectual

expression of her countenance and her queenlike bearing, had fully

unfolded itself in the quietude of her home.

Those who have found in books the greatest joys and pleasures of their

lives know what an immense enthusiasm, what an ardent and insatiable

curiosity fills the soul when circumstances permit them to explore the

vast field of human thought and inspiration and to dive into its

treasury. Madame de Bretteville’s library was well filled with

translations of the great classics of Greece and Rome, and also with the

works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and other modern writers. These

became the favorite study of Charlotte. One of her greatest favorites

was Raynal, whose famous History of the two Indies had just appeared and

filled Europe with admiration. Very likely that which appealed so

strongly to Charlotte’s heart was the sympathy which the author felt for

the oppressed races, and especially for the black slaves. With untiring

zeal and passion she devoured everything in her aunt’s library,--novels,

history, philosophy,--and these studies finally led her to politics,

which engaged at that time the minds of the foremost writers of France

and became the favorite subject of public and private discussion. In

this way two parallel currents of ideas had formed themselves in

Charlotte’s mind,--on the one hand, a powerful desire for greater

liberty and the elevation of the oppressed and degraded; on the other

hand, a profound admiration for those who devote and sacrifice

themselves to the great cause of humanity, and a vague but ardent desire

to adorn her name with the halo of heroism and immortality. Left

entirely to the instincts and aspirations of her own nature, the young

royalist (for her entire family was strictly royalistic) had become a

republican, but a republican in the sense of Plutarch and Tacitus,

nourished by the sentiments of Corneille and Rousseau. Nothing in her

appearance indicated her enthusiastic and soul-devouring ambition to

make herself the deliverer of her country from the terrible calamities

which had recently befallen it. Her political studies had filled her,

republican though she was, with extreme disgust and hatred for the

Terrorists, and especially for Marat, who seemed to be their inspiring

genius. This was the general situation and also the personal frame of

mind of Charlotte Corday at the time the Girondists who had escaped from

Paris came to Caen to organize armed resistance to the terrorism of the

“Mountain.”

Charlotte Corday had zealously followed the reports in the newspapers

she could get hold of concerning the situation at Paris, and her heart

beat warmly for the cause of the Girondists. Like all others in the city

she lived in, she believed that Marat was the secret spring that kept

the entire machinery of the Revolution in motion, that he was the head

and soul of the anarchists and murderers, that he was the centre of all

conspiracies, the originator of all crimes, and that, with him out of

the way, peace and liberty would soon regain the ascendency, and a

freer, nobler, greater France would arise from the ruins. With such

convictions in her mind she attended the meetings of the Girondists,

where appeals were made to the citizens of Caen and all Normandy to

enroll themselves in the service of their country, of liberty, of

humanity, against the tyrants at Paris. The impression which these

meetings made upon her soul can hardly be described. For the first time

she saw and heard the men she had read so much about, and whose

patriotic utterances had so often found a loud echo in her own heart;

they were there, young, beautiful, enthusiastic, made doubly interesting

by the ban of proscription which had exiled them from Paris; they were

there with their inspiring eloquence and patriotic appeals, and in the

tumultuous audience there was no one more fully enchanted and carried

away than the young girl, the disciple of Plutarch and Rousseau. The

words: “Country!” “Duty!” “Public Welfare!” repeated again and again by

the orators, were deeply engraved upon her impressionable heart. An

extraordinary exaltation took possession of Charlotte’s soul; she

aspired to a part as grand as that of these orators; she longed for a

chance to devote herself to the holy cause of liberty and to suffer for

it.

These projects and aspirations remained mere vague dreams, until an

event occurred which gave them definite shape. On the seventh of July

the volunteers who were to march on Paris assembled on a large plain in

the immediate vicinity of Caen. The plain was large enough to hold one

hundred thousand men; but only thirty volunteers appeared. General

disappointment was visible among the spectators; but no one was more

deeply affected than Charlotte Corday, who was also present. It seems

that from that very sorrow there sprang up within her mind a project

both heroic and terrible,--to assassinate Marat, whose words had been

most influential in expelling and proscribing the Girondists. To

Charlotte’s mind the cause of the Girondists was identical with that of

liberty, country, and justice. And how often in the past had a pure and

blameless life sacrificed for a great cause appeased the wrath of

Destiny! She went home and requested an interview with the Girondist

deputies.

Charlotte Corday was then twenty-four years old, but looked much

younger. She was tall, and of beautiful proportions; her complexion was

of dazzling whiteness, her hair was blond, her luminous eyes of charming

sweetness, her nose finely cut, and her chin indicated firmness and

determination. Her face was a perfect oval, and the total impression was

that of perfect beauty. Both her smile and her voice were of angelic

sweetness. Charlotte made a profound impression upon the deputies; but

they were not inclined to take her seriously. One day Pétion came in

while she was in conversation with Barbaroux. “Ah, ah,” said he, “there

is the beautiful young aristocrat paying a visit to the Republicans.”

“You judge me wrongly,” she replied, “but some day you will know who I

am.”

The question has often been asked whether the Girondists put the dagger

in Charlotte Corday’s hand to assassinate Marat. The enemies of the

Girondists persistently asserted this, but there is no evidence to that

effect. Possibly in her two conversations with Barbaroux her

determination to assassinate Marat, and not Danton or Robespierre,

became confirmed by the intensity of hatred and contempt manifested for

him by the famous Girondist leader. At all events, after these

interviews she made her preparations to go to Paris with great

circumspection, and great tranquillity of mind. A little dressing-case,

a night-gown and a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, with some money, was all

her baggage. But before going to Paris she proceeded to Argentan to bid

her family farewell. Her father and her sister were living there, and

she told them that she intended to go to England, and would remain there

until the storm of the Revolution had blown over. She bade them farewell

without showing an excess of emotion, but also without faintness, and

then departed for Paris in the public stage-coach.

* * * * *

During the journey, which at that period lasted two days, she appeared

serene and happy; no preoccupation seemed to disturb the tranquillity of

her mind. Her fellow-travellers all fell in love with her and treated

her with distinguished courtesy. One of them offered to marry her.

Charlotte smiled, but refused politely. Moreover they were all radical

revolutionists, and swore by Danton, Robespierre and Marat.

At Caen nobody had any idea of her plan. She had told her aunt she would

go to Argentan and thence to England. She had always concealed her

political views so carefully that nobody could have suspected her.

She arrived at Paris on the forenoon of the eleventh of July, and put up

at the Providence Hotel. Tired out by the long and tedious journey, she

went to bed early in the afternoon and slept well till the next morning.

No conscientious scruples disturbed her. Her mind was fully made up, and

she did not for a minute hesitate to execute her project. The next

morning she went to the Palais Royal, purchased a strong and sharp steel

knife, and carefully hid it in her bosom. She then asked herself when

and where she was to use her weapon. She would have preferred to give

her act a certain solemnity. At Caen, while brooding over her purpose,

she had conceived the plan to assassinate Marat on the Champ de Mars, on

the fourteenth of July, during the celebration of the anniversary of the

destruction of the Bastile and the overthrow of the monarchy. She hoped

to slay this king of anarchy, surrounded as he would then be by

thousands of his murderous followers; but when the celebration was

postponed, she planned to assassinate him at one of the sessions of the

Convention, the scene of his crimes and proscriptions. When she learned

that Marat was ill and did not attend the sessions of the Convention,

there seemed no way left for her except to go to his residence and meet

him there. She addressed a letter to him asking for a private interview.

The letter remained unanswered. She sent a second letter, more urgent

than the first, in which she requested an immediate interview for the

purpose of communicating to him a secret of great importance. Moreover

she represented herself as unhappy, as a victim of political persecution

and appealed to his protection. After this appeal she hoped to be

admitted.

At about seven o’clock in the evening of July 13 she left her hotel,

took a cab and proceeded to the residence of Marat, a dismal old

building, No. 20 in the Rue des Cordeliers. There Marat lived, and there

also he had the office and the press and composing-rooms of his

newspaper, “The Friend of the People.” Marat’s living apartments, which

were furnished with a certain elegance strangely contrasting with the

general appearance of the building, were situated on the second floor

and were shared by his mistress, or rather his wife, who loved him

passionately, and who watched over him with the fidelity of a dog.

Knowing the great peril to which the idol of her heart might be exposed

from foreign visitors, she subjected each of them, before admitting him,

to a careful scrutiny and painstaking examination.

When Charlotte Corday had ascended the stairway leading to Marat’s

office, she suddenly found herself in the presence of Catherine

Evrard--she continued to call herself by that name, although afterwards

it appeared that she had been married to Marat. Catherine was surprised

at the strange visitor, who, with a firm and melodious voice, inquired

for the citizen Marat and desired to see him. With great attention

Catherine scanned the young woman, who was dressed with great modesty

and looked like a lady from the provinces, and demanded the object of

her visit, and as Charlotte either refused to give her that information

or failed to impress her favorably, she declined to admit her to Marat’s

room, who, she said, was just taking a bath and could not be seen. At

this moment Marat’s voice was heard from a room whose door was not

tightly closed, and he told Catherine to admit the young stranger. He

thought it was the young woman who had written to him, and who had

announced her visit for that evening. Thus invited, Charlotte entered

the room, much against the wish of Catherine. It was a small and dark

room. A bath-tub stood in the centre, and Marat was taking a bath,

covered up to the neck, except his right arm and shoulder, for he was in

the act of writing an editorial for his newspaper. A board had been

placed across the tub, and in this way a table had been formed to hold

his manuscript. As she stepped up to him he began to ask her concerning

the important news from Normandy she had promised in her letter. He also

inquired about the Girondists who had gone there, and wanted to know

what they were doing. She told him. “It is all right,” he said, while

marking down their names. “Within a week they will all be guillotined.”

If anything had been needed to confirm her resolution and to stir her up

to speedy action, it was this announcement. She quickly drew the dagger

from her bosom and plunged it into Marat’s breast up to the handle. This

thrust, aimed from above, and executed with wonderful force and

firmness, pierced the lungs, and severed the main arteries, from which a

stream of blood rushed forth.

“Ah, this to me, my dear friend?” exclaimed the wounded man. It was all

he could say. A moment later he was dead.

The assassination of Marat created a rage, a frenzy among the lowest

classes of the population of Paris which it is impossible to describe.

That the courageous young woman who had slain the demon of blood was not

torn to pieces is a wonder. Charlotte, in thinking of the fate which

might befall her after her task was performed, had not forgotten the

possibility or even probability of falling a victim to the fury of the

people, but even this terrible prospect did not deter her. She received

what may be called a fair trial and she had the benefit of an official

defender. Since she did not deny the act of assassination and readily

admitted that it was an act of premeditation and careful preparation,

any painstaking investigation might have been deemed unnecessary but

for the hope which the Terrorists entertained, of connecting the

Girondist party, and especially the Girondists assembled at Caen, with

her crime,--a hope in which they were utterly disappointed. She was

therefore arraigned before the Revolutionary Tribunal and subjected to a

rigorous examination as to her accomplices.

“Who filled your mind with so much hatred for Marat?” asked the judge.

“I did not need the hatred of others,” she replied; “my own was

sufficient.”

“But somebody must have instigated you to commit this deed?”

“We do but poorly what others tell us to do.”

“What did you hate him for?”

“For the enormity of his crimes.”

“What do you mean by his crimes?”

“His crimes against France and humanity.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“In order to give back peace to my country.”

“Do you believe you have killed all the Marats of France?”

“His death may frighten the others.”

“Do you regret and repent your deed?”

“I rejoice that it was successful.”

Only once during this trial her heart failed her. It was when Catherine

Evrard, Marat’s mistress, took the stand to testify against her, and in

a voice choked with tears told the story of her visit to Marat’s house.

Looking at the woman who through her deed had lost him whom she loved,

the tears burst from her own eyes, and she exclaimed: “No more! No more!

I implore you. It is I who killed him; I do not deny it!”

Again she was deeply moved when the dagger with which she killed Marat

was presented to her. “Do you recognize this instrument?” She turned

away her face and exclaimed: “I do! I do!” The public prosecutor called

attention to the fact that she had plunged the dagger into the breast of

her victim from above, that it was a difficult thrust, and that she must

have practised it before she acquired so much skill.

She listened attentively to what he said, and exclaimed with unfeigned

indignation, “Shame! Shame! The wretch wants to brand me as an

assassin!”

Her words caused a sensation. The audience and even the judges were

struck with admiration, so much energy and patriotic devotion were

expressed in her answers. She stood before them like an antique heroine,

not trembling for her life, but provoking death and inviting it by her

justification of the crime she had committed to save her country. The

trial resulted in her conviction. She received her sentence of death

without showing any emotion; was it not the crown of immortality to

which she had aspired? Her official defender, Chauveau Lagarde,--the

same who three months later so nobly defended Marie Antoinette,--might

have saved her by pleading insanity, but he comprehended her nobility of

soul and would not offend her by such a plea. “She refuses to be

defended,” he said; “she pleads guilty and is beyond the fear of death!”

After the death sentence had been pronounced, she stepped up to her

defender, and with a smile of angelic sweetness thanked him for his

noble-minded, graceful and kind defence. “You understood me,” she said,

“and your esteem consoles me for the contempt of the ignorant masses.”

One thing remarkable about this trial was the respect, not to say the

admiration, with which this young woman, who had killed their idol, was

looked upon by the spectators. They seemed to feel instinctively that a

divine inspiration, a heaven-born principle of humanity and patriotism,

had prompted her to commit an act which human law condemned and

punished, but which posterity would forgive, if not glorify.

From the very hour of her conviction, she became a national heroine. The

wild Maratists clamored against her, but there were thousands and

thousands even among the Revolutionists who sympathized with her and

admired her. Brutus ceased to be the patron saint of patriotic

assassins; his place in the hearts of enemies of tyranny and despotism

was taken by the young girl who had so heroically thrown life and beauty

away to redeem her country. Poets and authors immediately celebrated her

in song and prose; it may be said that her immortality commenced even

before her beautiful head fell under the knife of the guillotine. She

died on the evening of the nineteenth of July.

When she was taken to the place of execution in the costume of the

condemned victims--a scarlet shirt--the sun was setting. His last rays

sent a farewell greeting to the young heroine, who seemed to be bathed

in a halo of glory, as she ascended the steps of the scaffold with firm

step and serene countenance. A shudder passed through the multitude as

her head fell into the basket.

She was not insane; she was an exalted, enthusiastic dreamer, who looked

upon her crime as an act of justice demanded by the necessities of the

times,--an act inspired by a higher Power which had guided her in her

design and helped her in its execution. Thinking of Jeanne d’Arc, who

had saved France and immortalized herself by her self-sacrificing

devotion, she felt convinced that God often chooses woman as his

instrument for interposition in the history of nations. If she deceived

herself in the nature of the act by which she hoped to restore the

happiness of France and to terminate the era of bloody hecatombs

sacrificed to the fury of sanguinary monsters, is it the duty of the

historian to judge her severely? Should he not rather, while pointing

out the error of her judgment, be willing to bestow on her the

laurel-wreath of a patriotic heroine, which has been accorded to her by

poets, by her grateful countrymen, and by the whole world?

CHAPTER XIX

PAUL THE FIRST OF RUSSIA

[Illustration: PAUL I.]

CHAPTER XIX

ASSASSINATION OF PAUL THE FIRST OF RUSSIA

(March 24, 1801)

Those who have followed the preceding chapters will remember that

Catherine the Second of Russia got possession of the throne by the

murder of her husband, fortified that possession by the murder of

another Czar imprisoned in the fortress of Schlüsselburg (the

weak-minded Ivan the Sixth), and finally, haunted by the constant fear

of being dethroned by some new pretender, sacrificed all those whose

claims might become dangerous to her security. History, which is filled

with the crimes of remorseless rulers, furnishes, however, abundant

proof that such crimes, although successful at first, are frequently

visited upon their authors or their authors’ children, and that blood

cruelly and unjustly shed will blossom forth in a new crop of crime and

bloodshed. It was so in the case of the murders committed by Catherine

the Second; and while she, very likely, personally suffered from a

mental agony which made her life on the throne miserable in the extreme,

it was her son who finally paid the penalty.

The life of this unfortunate son had been full of disappointment and

sorrow, almost from the moment of his birth. Born as the son of Peter

the Third, he was almost openly repudiated by his reputed father as a

bastard. Quite often Peter the Third had declared in the presence of

gentlemen and ladies of the court that the little Grand-Duke Paul was

not his son, but either Alexis or Gregor Orloff’s, and that he had no

right to the succession. Catherine, however, insisted that Paul was

Peter’s son, and as the boy grew up, his many peculiarities of mind

showed such a remarkable similarity to those of Peter the Third, that

the legitimacy of his birth could hardly be doubted. It was really the

manifestation of these peculiarities that filled the mind of the mother

with that insuperable aversion, not to say hatred, for the son, which

would have been incomprehensible but for the remorseful recollections

which the traits of the father necessarily awakened in her mind. The boy

could not fail to notice this aversion and hostility on the part of his

mother, especially since the courtiers, modelling their conduct toward

him on the sentiments of the Czarina, treated him with the same coldness

and contempt. His whole education was carefully arranged on a

premeditated plan to keep him as much as possible in ignorance of those

very things which might be useful to him as a ruler, while his character

was rendered distrustful and suspicious to such a degree that he became

a misanthropist of the blackest hue. Not a day passed but he discovered

espionage, treachery, ingratitude and intentional hostility among those

whom the Empress had placed near his person as his tutors, teachers and

confidants. They shamelessly deceived him, betrayed him, and lied about

him. They cautiously instilled into his mind the story of the

assassination of his father and of his mother’s knowledge of the crime,

and when the young man, horror-struck at this disclosure, clenched his

fists and gnashed his teeth, they reported to their imperial mistress

that the young Grand Duke had manifested dangerous symptoms of

impatience and independence, which would require even greater care and

watchfulness on the part of his tutors and a more severe isolation of

the young prince. Their only intention was, of course, to show their

indefatigable zeal in the task entrusted to them and to make themselves

absolutely indispensable to their imperial employer or her favorites;

but the effect on his mind was most disastrous. Burdened with the

suspicion that his own mother was a murderess, and with the evidence

afforded by thousands of little occurrences of her hatred toward

himself, and of the treachery of his attendants, in constant fear of

impending assassination,--is it not almost wonderful that his mind, not

naturally strong, did not absolutely give way?

When Paul had grown up to manhood, he was married to a lovely young

German princess; but since his mother had selected this wife for him, he

regarded her with constant suspicion. She died without having succeeded

in overcoming his distrust. A second marriage, which he was compelled to

contract, had no happier results, although his wife bore him four sons.

By special order of the Empress these sons were taken away from him and

educated under the special supervision of Catherine herself, while Paul

was ordered to proceed to Gatschina, a country-seat near St. Petersburg,

where he amused himself with drilling a battalion of soldiers and

arranging sham battles, just as Peter the Third, his father, had done

before his elevation to the throne. But rarely was he permitted to

receive his children, and when they came to see him, he was always

afraid that some secret danger might surprise him.

In this manner thirty-five years had elapsed since the death of Peter

the Third. During these thirty-five years the name of Peter had hardly

ever been heard at the court, or at least not in the presence of the

Empress. Then Catherine herself falls a prey to the grim destroyer; and

Paul inherits the crown. His mother’s body is laid out in state on a

catafalque, by whose side stands another coffin, magnificently

ornamented and with an imperial crown on its top. It is the coffin of

Peter the Third, whose remains had been deposited in a vault of the

Alexander Nevski Monastery. It was one of Paul’s first official acts to

proceed to this convent, to open the vault and the coffin containing his

father’s mortal remains. One of the gloves of Peter the Third was still

well preserved. Paul took it out of the coffin, knelt down in the

presence of the whole court and reverently kissed it. Then he ordered

the coffin to be carried to the imperial palace where the body of his

mother lay in state, and an imperial crown to be placed on it. It was,

perhaps, the most unique coronation which ever took place in history.

But Paul wanted not only to honor his father’s memory; he wanted also to

punish and to hand over to public contempt his murderer. He therefore

ordered Alexis Orloff, who had planned the assassination of Peter the

Third, to act as chief mourner at the funeral. Orloff obeyed: but

immediately after the obsequies, during which he was the target of the

contemptuous eyes of the whole people, he was thrown into a kibitka and

sent into exile. Such was the opening of Paul’s reign.

In his physical make-up Paul bore not the slightest resemblance to

Peter the Third, and this circumstance seemed to give confirmation to

the circulating rumors that he was not Peter’s son. But if, as a great

historian has pointed out, Catherine’s intense hatred of her son could

have left any doubt in that respect, Paul’s personal acts of government,

almost from the very first day after the funeral of his mother,

absolutely removed it. For, intellectually and morally, never a son bore

a greater resemblance to his father than Paul the First did to Peter the

Third. Paul had good qualities, and with proper education and

assistance, he would very likely have made a good ruler; but without

both, his well-meant but ill-timed plans of reform failed to do the

people any good, while they created untold enemies for him. Exactly like

Peter the Third, he had prepared a number of plans of reform, which he

immediately promulgated without consulting with any one about their

opportuneness or advisability. Like Peter’s reform plans, Paul’s turned

mostly on trivialities,--on the style of hats or coats or military

uniforms,--and by strenuously trying to enforce these edicts he made

himself odious. He hated anything that might remind him of the French

Revolution, and would not permit a Frenchman to enter the Russian Empire

without a passport signed by one of the French Bourbon princes (then

living in exile); like his father he idolized the Prussians and wanted

Prussian military regulations, uniforms and equipment introduced into

the Russian army; in these efforts he was strongly opposed by the

Russian officers and soldiers. They made fun of the imperial ordinances

and (admitting then that he was Peter’s son) said that he had inherited

Peter’s Prussomania and insanity. Citizens and peasants were equally

indignant at Paul’s arbitrary interference with their personal rights

and liberties. He also tried to introduce church reforms, which

irritated the clergy and caused angry protests throughout the Empire. In

attempting to introduce these “reforms” he sometimes manifested symptoms

of real insanity. He declared war upon round hats, which he considered

revolutionary and hostile to the government. He carried this war to such

an extent that he ordered the police and even the soldiery to confiscate

the obnoxious hats and arrest the owners, even while the latter were

promenading in the streets, and without any regard to the weather. In

this manner it was not long before he had estranged the good feelings of

the aristocracy, the army, the clergy and the people at large. They

began to regard him as a trifler and maniac, who was imbued with an

excessive idea of his own authority, who defied national sentiment and

prejudice, and who would not counsel with anybody because he distrusted

everybody.

In his foreign policy he was selfish and vacillating. He subordinated

the national interests of Russia entirely to his own personal whims and

prejudices. He formed alliances and cancelled them without cause, and

thus made enemies of all foreign powers. The most prominent statesmen

and generals became convinced that Russia, which under Catherine’s rule

had won a commanding position among the powers of Europe, would lose all

prestige if forced into a state of political isolation by the foolish

policy of Paul the First.

Plots and conspiracies were formed, of which the most prominent court

officials in immediate attendance on the Emperor became members. Some of

these men he hated because they had been favorites and counsellors of

his mother; others he had in his sudden fits of passion abused and

insulted. Most prominent among these were Count Pahlen, the brothers

Zubow, and Count Talizin, commander of the Imperial Guards. They added

their personal grievances to the public dissatisfaction, and joined

hands in bringing about Paul’s dethronement. They commenced working on

the Grand Dukes, Paul’s sons, and especially upon the oldest of them,

Alexander, whom Count Pahlen convinced that the Emperor held in

readiness an order for the arrest of the Grand Dukes, with the exception

of Nicholas, his third son, whom he had designated for the succession to

the crown. Alexander was of a sentimental turn of mind. For a while he

resisted the tempting offers of the conspirators, but when the reports

of his impending arrest and transfer to Schlüsselburg were confirmed by

others, he finally consented to the arrest of the Emperor and to the

demand for his forced abdication. This he did with tears and

heart-rending supplications not to harm his father and to treat him with

becoming respect. Having received this consent, the conspirators

proceeded to work with great promptness and energy. The time was

propitious for the immediate execution of their conspiracy; for they

knew very well that what originally had been planned only as

dethronement by abdication might easily lead to the assassination of the

Czar, and they had taken precautions and measures tending towards such a

result.

It was during the Masnaliza, the Russian Carnival, that the conspirators

resolved to carry their plot into execution. The whole population was in

a state of frenzy, drunkenness, and wild excesses. The conspirators

knew that during these days they could meet and make all necessary

arrangements without attracting the least attention. Paul the First

resided in the palace of St. Michael, which he claimed to have built on

a direct order of St. Michael himself. He had entirely isolated himself;

his most faithful servant, Count Rostopchin, and his wife, whom he had

really loved, had been banished from his apartments. It was this

Rostopchin who twelve years afterwards burned the city of Moscow. He

distrusted them as well as all others. His only confidante (and, as is

asserted, his mistress at the same time) was an ugly old cook, who

prepared his meals in a kitchen adjoining his bedroom, that he might be

secure against poison. The Empress Maria, distinguished by the

gentleness and tenderness of her sentiments, who had given him

innumerable proofs of her affection and devotion, was in his eyes a

traitress who he supposed was plotting with his enemies against his

life. He had therefore ordered the doors leading from his own apartments

to hers to be walled up.

The assassination itself presents some points of resemblance to that of

Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland. On the evening of March 23, 1801,

General Talizin, chief of the Imperial Guards, gave a brilliant party,

to which only gentlemen of great intrepidity and resoluteness, all of

whom were known to be personal enemies of the Emperor, had been invited.

When the guests were heated with wine and in a condition of

semi-intoxication, Count Pahlen entered the _salon_ in which the guests

were assembled; he referred in a few impressive words to the despotism

and tyranny of the Emperor, to the widespread spirit of rebellion, to

the dissatisfaction prevailing among officers, people, and clergy, to

the public disorders and disturbances breaking out on all sides, and

closed his inflammatory harangue by appealing to his hearers to make an

end of these intolerable conditions. He knew his speech would be

enthusiastically received, and for several minutes there was perfect

bedlam among the guests. Some of them hurled chairs above their heads,

others grasped their knives or swords, and swore that they would kill

the insane fool who had already too long disgraced the imperial throne.

The plan according to which the conspirators proceeded had been

carefully projected. Pahlen, who was Governor-General of St. Petersburg,

left the palace in the general confusion, but returned soon with a

detachment of cavalry and guarded the one side of the Winter Palace.

Talizin marched up from the other side with a regiment of grenadiers.

When these soldiers marched through the botanical garden of the palace,

their loud and heavy steps frightened away many thousand crows, which

were sleeping upon the high lime-trees of the garden. The loud croaking

of this immense army of black birds ought to have aroused Paul from his

sleep and warned him of his impending danger. But he slept on.

After the palace was fully surrounded, the conspirators crossed the

ditch on the ice. A battalion of soldiers, who were not in the secret,

and who were on guard on the outposts, offered some resistance, but were

easily overpowered and disarmed. Not a shot had been fired. After having

passed the gates of the palace, the conspirators were joined by Colonel

Marin, the Commandant of the palace, who conducted the riotous throng,

among whom were hardly any sober persons, over winding-stairs up to the

door of the Emperor’s bedroom. On the threshold of the door the guard

was asleep, and when aroused and trying to resist, was very rudely

handled and barely escaped alive. He ran down the stairs and called the

guards to arms. They demanded to be taken to the Emperor’s rooms, but

Marin interfered. He made them present arms, and in this position no

Russian soldier dares move a limb or speak a word.

The crowd entered the bedroom. Prince Zubow and General Benningsen--the

latter a Hanoverian by birth, but of great authority in the army on

account of his energy and reckless audacity--stepped up to the bed of

the Czar, brandishing their swords. “Sire,” said Benningsen, “you are my

prisoner!” The Emperor stared at them in speechless surprise. “Sire,”

continued Benningsen, “it is a question of life or death for you! Yield

to circumstances and sign this act of abdication!” The room was becoming

filled up with drunken conspirators, all of whom wanted to see what was

going on, and tried to get in. In a moment of confusion caused by this

pushing and crowding in, which others tried to prevent, the Emperor

sprang from his bed and took refuge behind the screen of a stove, where

he staggered over some obstacle and fell to the ground. “Sire,”

exclaimed Benningsen once more, “submit to the inevitable! Your life is

at stake!” At this moment a new noise was heard from the anteroom, and

Benningsen, who so far had been the only protector of Paul’s life,

turned to the door, to see whether the new-comers were friends or

enemies. Paul was, for the moment, alone with his assailants. His

courage returned. He ran up to a table upon which lay several pistols.

He reached for them, but some of the conspirators had watched the

motion of his hand; one of them almost severed it from his arm by a

stroke of his sword. Agonized with pain the Czar rushed upon his

enemies. A short struggle, a heavy fall, and it was all over.

The murder of Peter the Third was brought about by the use of a napkin;

his son, Paul the First, was strangled with an officer’s sash. There is

another point of resemblance in the assassination of the two Czars,

father and son. Alexis Orloff and Nicholas Zubow, the murderers of the

two Czars, had both taken dinner with their victims on the day of the

murder.

When the death of their father was reported to the Grand Dukes,

Alexander especially, the heir to the crown, was almost overcome with

emotion and terror. The details of the murder were carefully concealed

from him; on the contrary, he was made to believe that a fit of apoplexy

brought on by the excitement of the scene had caused the Czar’s death.

After much lamentation he was finally persuaded to address a

proclamation to the Russian people in which apoplexy was given as the

cause of the sudden and unexpected death of Czar Paul the First during

the night of the twenty-third of March. Quite early next day this

proclamation was promulgated throughout the city of Petersburg by

military heralds. But the people were not deceived by these official

lies. Everybody knew in what manner Paul the First had died. The news of

the murder in all its details had spread with lightning-like rapidity

through the streets and alleys to the remotest corners of the city.

The conspirators, far from denying their guilt, boasted of the crime as

of an act of heroism and patriotism. Many officers who were at the time

miles away from the palace of St. Michael claimed to have been witnesses

of the tragedy and to have lent a helping hand in slaying “the tyrant.”

It is recorded that Count Münster, the Prussian ambassador at the court

of St. Petersburg, a short time after Paul’s assassination, spoke with

horror and indignation of the catastrophe at a dinner party at which a

number of the most prominent army officers and state officials were

present; one of these officers quite unconcernedly defended the crime,

saying: “Count, you should not blame us for defending ourselves! Our

Magna Charta is tyranny, or if you prefer to call it so, absolutism,

tempered by assassination, and our rulers should regulate their conduct

accordingly!” And this state of affairs has existed in Russia to the

present day.

CHAPTER XX

AUGUST VON KOTZEBUE

[Illustration: AUGUST VON KOTZEBUE]

CHAPTER XX

ASSASSINATION OF AUGUST VON KOTZEBUE

(March 23, 1819)

After the downfall of Napoleon the monarchs of Europe had a very

difficult task to perform. Not only were the domestic institutions of

their states, which had been overthrown by the French conquest and in

many cases altered by French decrees, to be regulated anew or reinstated

on a firm footing, but the relations between governments and subjects

were to be reorganized on a new basis, in conformity with the liberal

principles which had spread from France and been adopted readily by the

intelligent and educated classes in Germany. Solemn promises had been

made by the German princes to their peoples in order to enlist their

sympathies in their final efforts against Napoleon, and after the

Corsican had been dethroned, they were expected to carry out these

promises. Especially was this true of Prussia and the smaller German

states, whose inhabitants had been promised a system of representative

government and a constitution limiting the powers of the executive. Such

promises were very inconvenient to some of these governments, and they

were rather inclined to forget and abandon them than to carry them out

in good faith. Moreover Russia and Austria, the representatives of

autocratic power in Europe, exerted their influence on the German

governments in a direction opposite to the popular aspirations, and

encouraged them to ignore their pledges given under the stress of

invasion. It should be remembered that the Holy Alliance, of which

Metternich was the inspiring genius, had been formed not only against

Napoleon, but also against the freedom and the popular rights of the

nations of Europe. In spite of its high-sounding and sanctimonious

title, the Holy Alliance was the curse of nations, and it would have

extended its nefarious influence even beyond the Atlantic Ocean, and

would have crushed the national aspirations for independence and

self-government in the states of Central and South America but for the

timely issue of the Monroe Doctrine, which saved the Western hemisphere

from “Holy Alliance” interference.

It was only after the united efforts of the nations culminated in the

final dethronement of Napoleon, and after the Vienna Congress had

apportioned the heritage of the Empire among the victorious monarchs

that the nations became aware that the liberal promises they had

received while these monarchs were in distress were either not to be

redeemed at all, or redeemed only in part. The sagacity of the statesmen

of continental Europe was bent on defrauding the people of those civil

and political rights which had been held out to them as part of the

reward to be won by repelling the attacks of Napoleon, and the

sovereigns were only too willing to assist them in carrying out this

deception.

Unfortunately some of these sovereigns were of inferior mental calibre

and not at all fitted for the great work of reconstructing their

shattered monarchies after the tremendous convulsions of the preceding

twenty years, and they were perfectly dwarfed by a comparison with the

colossus who had moulded Europe so long solely according to the

inspirations of his genius or ambition. Alexander of Russia had the

reputation of being a man of ability; but this reputation was without

solid foundation. At the period immediately following the overthrow of

Napoleon he was entirely under the influence of Madame Krüdener, a

religious enthusiast and visionary, who skilfully concealed her

immorality under pietistic propagandism. She filled Alexander’s mind

with vague and mystic ideas of his divine mission as a ruler, in which

the human rights of his subjects had no place. Frederick William the

Third, King of Prussia, was a weakling of the worst sort. He had

actually been forced into the anti-Napoleonic movement by the enthusiasm

of his people, and after national independence had been accomplished he

trembled lest anything might occur to endanger the public order and

tranquillity so dearly purchased. It was therefore comparatively easy

for the reactionary elements to get full control of the Prussian

government and to prevent any bold reform in a democratic direction. All

they had to do was to fill the mind of the timid King with a vague fear

that the scenes of the French Revolution might be renewed by inviting

the people to coöperation in the government. Even less reliable was the

Emperor of Austria, Francis the First, a man naturally distrustful and

suspicious, who knew how to conceal his cunning and his antagonism to

liberal ideas under the appearance of great personal kindness and

_bonhomie_. These were the three men of whom Europe expected a great

political reform, and never perhaps, in political history, were hopes

and expectations so woefully misplaced and doomed to more cruel

disappointment than in this case.

It would be unjust to assert that the great mass of the German people

felt a deep interest in the introduction of those measures of political

reform which the sovereigns had promised when they appealed to the

patriotism of their subjects. Most of the Germans, even those belonging

to the educated classes, had up to that time paid but little attention

to politics, and their political indifference had survived the war for

national independence. The nobility, with a few noble exceptions, were

not at all anxious to see measures of political reform introduced,

because they knew that such measures would curtail their aristocratic

privileges and prerogatives.

But there was one class of citizens which had hailed the promises of the

sovereigns with unbounded enthusiasm, for they had hoped from their

realization a political renaissance for the whole Fatherland and a new

era of greatness and world-wide influence recalling the days of the

Hohenstaufen,--the glorious days when the German Empire was the first

power in the world, and when all civilized nations from the Baltic Sea

to the southern shores of the Mediterranean bowed their necks in

obedience to the demands of its rulers. This class was the students of

the many German universities, scattered over Prussia, Austria, Bavaria,

and the smaller German states. Inspired by Schiller, Körner, Arndt, and

other poets, these young men had flocked to the standards of Blücher,

Scharnhorst, York, and Bülow, and had fought with the courage of lions

on the battle-fields of Germany and France for the holy cause of German

independence. The hope and dream of another Germany, greater, nobler,

more progressive and worthier of being the leader of nations than they

had known it before the war, had fanned their enthusiasm into a flame

which nothing could extinguish, and which after their return from the

war burst forth, here and there, in great patriotic demonstrations.

Dreamers and idealists though they were, they began to transform some of

their dreams into reality. They formed a great association embracing the

students of all the German universities, north and south,--the German

Burschenschaft, in whose organization they embodied the noblest

principles of manhood, patriotism, and civic devotion. The ancient

German colors, black, red and gold, were revived to adorn their banners,

their caps, their sashes and badges. Quite a literature of patriotic and

students’ songs suddenly sprang into existence, in which the dream of a

great united Germany appeared in the mind’s eye as a living reality.

Many of the professors of the universities, who had also been volunteers

in the war and had shared the enthusiasm of the students, joined them in

their patriotic devotion and lent the authority of their names and

writings to their aspirations of national political revival. Arndt’s

famous national song, “Where is the German’s Fatherland?” with the

reply, that the German fatherland embraces all the countries in which

the German tongue is heard and in which German song rises heavenward, is

the typical expression of that most enthusiastic period of German

student-life.

The Burschenschaft became an organization of national importance. It had

its admirers, but it had also its enemies; and unfortunately the latter

were mostly to be found among the nobility. The feeling prevailing

against the Burschenschaft in the government circles of the different

German states was therefore decidedly hostile, and waited only for an

opportunity to show that hostility. This opportunity soon presented

itself and, it must be admitted, was brought about by the reckless

audacity of the members of the association. In the year 1817 the

tercentenary of the great German Reformation was to be celebrated with

unusual splendor, and the Burschenschaft profited by this occasion to

make a public demonstration in behalf of its patriotic principles. It

selected as the place of its convention the Wartburg, where Martin

Luther resided upon his return from the Diet of Worms and, to make the

convention especially noteworthy and solemn, had chosen the eighteenth

of October, the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic, as the principal

day for the celebration.

An immense number of visitors from all parts of Germany came to

Eisenach, situated at the foot of the Wartburg, and delegations of

students from all German universities, adorned with their German colors

and carrying black, red and gold banners with patriotic inscriptions,

assembled on the historic ground and participated in the festivities,

for which an elaborate programme had been arranged. The greatest

enthusiasm prevailed, and for the time being all those petty jealousies

which had so often disturbed the cordial fellowship of the inhabitants

of different German states had disappeared, and all those present

revelled in the exuberance of patriotic sentiment; they were all the

children of one great fatherland, a great united nation! The songs and

the speeches repeated and echoed this one thought. It lived uppermost in

the hearts of those young enthusiasts, but presented itself to their

minds rather as a vague poetic ideal than as a stern political reality.

Among the thousands of visitors there was, perhaps, not one who had

seriously thought of the political realization of the dream. Imprudent

as these too boisterous demonstrations had been during the day, there

was enacted late in the evening, when most of the guests had already

left the famous castle, a sort of theatrical performance, which

irritated the conservative and reactionary classes exceedingly and

resulted disastrously for the Burschenschaft. This performance was

gotten up in imitation of a famous scene in Luther’s life--the burning

of the papal bull. Massmann, a student of the university of Jena,

represented the Luther of the nineteenth century. A large bonfire was

built, and amidst boundless enthusiasm a number of books and other

materials, odious to the students, were thrown into the flames and

destroyed. Among the books was Kotzebue’s “History of the German

Empire,” Haller’s “Restoration of Political Science,” Section 13 of the

Federal Constitution, etc. Besides the books, a corset such as used to

be worn by the officers of the Prussian guards, a Hessian queue, and an

Austrian corporal’s mace were also thrown into the fire.

The Wartburg celebration produced tremendous excitement throughout

Germany. The reactionary elements were wild with indignation. They

accused not only the managers of the festivity and the Burschenschaft of

revolutionary tendencies, but they included in this charge all the young

men of the Empire, averring that they had grown up under the influence

of the pernicious doctrines of the French Revolution and French armies

of occupation, and wanted now to apply those doctrines to the

reorganization of German institutions. They also demanded that the

organizers of the Wartburg celebration should be prosecuted and punished

as traitors. All the conservative and government papers opened a regular

war upon the seditious and revolutionary tendencies of the universities,

and the agitation reached its climax by the publication of a memorandum

addressed by Baron Stourdza, a Russian councillor of state, to the

Emperor Alexander, in which he predicted that a bloody revolution would

result unless these seditious tendencies were speedily repressed. The

Stourdza memorandum had originally been intended for the use of the

governments only. The Czar had sent a copy to each European government,

but one copy of it had found its way to the office of a Paris newspaper

and had been published. The excitement among the German students rose to

the boiling-point, and their wrath was concentrated against Russia. It

was only too well known that Russia had in her employ a number of spies

scattered throughout the German states, who kept her government well

posted on the political and social currents. The most prominent of these

spies was August von Kotzebue, a man of great literary talent and

distinguished as the author of many comedies and dramas, but politically

of extreme conservative views. The attacks of the liberal press were

therefore mainly directed against Kotzebue, whose reports to the Russian

government were supposed to have inspired Stourdza’s memorandum.

At that time there was at Jena a student of the University, of

irreproachable character, excellent conduct, not especially

distinguished by eminent ability or talent, but inclined to religious

and patriotic exaltation. His name was Carl Ludwig Sand; he came from

Wunsiedel, the birthplace of the famous German humorist, Jean Paul

Friedrich Richter. He had been a volunteer in the war against France and

had embraced the doctrines of the Burschenschaft with the greatest

enthusiasm. The denunciations of the German students in Stourdza’s

memorandum filled him with profound indignation, especially against

Kotzebue, whom he blamed as the principal sinner. Moreover the

frivolous, half indecent character of many of Kotzebue’s plays had often

revolted Sand’s moral sentiment. He considered him a source of

corruption for the young men and women of the nation, and when to this

wrong the charge of political treason and espionage was added, Sand

thought that nothing but death was an adequate punishment for Kotzebue.

He considered also that it was not only a moral, but a patriotic duty to

inflict upon him that punishment. He knew that the act would cost him

his life, but that consideration did not for a moment deter him from

undertaking it. He did not consult with anybody about it, but he

conceived, planned, and executed it all alone.

On the ninth of March, 1819, Sand left Jena and proceeded to Mannheim,

where Kotzebue lived. Two weeks later, on the twenty-third of March,

1819, a young stranger appeared at the Kotzebue residence, and said that

he wished to see the councillor in order to hand him personally a letter

of introduction. The servant delivered the message, and after a few

minutes Kotzebue himself appeared in the hall and invited Sand--for it

was he--to come in. Sand handed him the letter; but no sooner had

Kotzebue opened it and begun to read it than Sand plunged a long

dirk-knife into his breast with the words, “Take this as your reward,

traitor to your country!” And he stabbed him again and again with fatal

effect. Thereupon he thrust the knife into his own breast, but had

strength enough to run out into the hall, where he handed the astounded

servant a sealed document containing a well-written justification of his

murderous act, and inscribed: “Death Punishment for August von Kotzebue

in the name of virtue.” Running out into the street, where a crowd of

people assembled, attracted by the screams of the servant, he called out

in a loud voice: “Long live my German fatherland!” and kneeling down he

forcibly plunged the knife into his breast once more, exclaiming: “Great

God, I thank thee for this victory.”

Sand’s wound was serious, but a skilful operation saved his life. On the

twentieth of May, 1820, he was executed at Mannheim, after a lengthy

trial and a painstaking investigation, in the course of which the German

and the Russian police made great efforts to discover accessories to his

crime. All these efforts failed, however, and the murder of Kotzebue

could be accounted only an individual act of patriotic exaltation. The

result of Sand’s self-sacrifice was very different from what he had

expected. In fact, Kotzebue’s assassination proved disastrous to the

liberal movement throughout Germany; it furnished a welcome pretext for

the most repressive measures against the press, against the

universities, against the Burschenschaft, against liberty in whatever

shape or form it might manifest itself. That long era of political

reaction was inaugurated against which the German people rebelled with

only partial success in 1848 and 1849, and from which only the ejection

of Austria and the reorganization of a new German Empire on a more

liberal basis in 1871 gave them permanent relief.

CHAPTER XXI

DUC DE BERRY

[Illustration: DUC DE BERRY]

CHAPTER XXI

ASSASSINATION OF THE DUC DE BERRY

(February 13, 1820)

The political situation in France, after the overthrow of Napoleon and

the restoration of the Bourbons, was even more difficult and more

precarious for the governing classes than it was in Germany. The French

nation, proud in the consciousness of having occupied the first place in

Europe for twenty years, chafed at the idea of living under a king whom

foreign rulers and foreign armies had imposed on France, and who, in

consequence, had to act in blind obedience to the dictates of these

foreigners. The danger of a new violent outbreak against the Bourbon

government was therefore ever present not only to the French mind, but

to the mind of Europe, and to guard against it the foreign powers had

made it one of the terms of peace with France that a foreign army of

occupation should hold possession of the northern and northeastern

provinces of France until the entire war indemnity exacted from the

vanquished country had been paid. While the foreign occupation was

ostensibly a financial measure, it was in reality a military measure

giving to the foreign powers the keys to the interior of France and to

Paris, in case a new invasion should become necessary. Not only was the

position of the King rendered difficult by his political opponents, the

Imperialists and the Republicans, but its hardships and difficulties

were materially aggravated by the senseless and extravagant demands of

the Royalists, who had in large number returned to France with the

foreign armies. These Royalists, many of whom had been absent from

France for twenty years or more, on their return from their voluntary

exile, found their estates and manors, which had been confiscated under

the Revolution, in the possession of strangers; all the superior offices

in the civil service and the higher positions in the army, which they

claimed as their own by right of birth, were filled by men of low

extraction. They therefore turned to the King and demanded of him the

restoration of their lost estates of their aristocratic privileges.

The King, Louis the Eighteenth, was perhaps the most intelligent of all

the monarchs of Europe, but he lacked force of character, and, moreover,

his long life in exile, with its pleasures and enjoyments as a sybarite

and epicurean, had but poorly qualified him for his suddenly imposed

tasks. He was expected by Europe to hold his own in a population the

majority of whom were opposed to him, and who had learned that a king

could be easily got rid of, if the people did not want him. Although

Louis the Eighteenth, with his penetrating sagacity, clearly saw the

instability of his throne, he honestly wished to make the best of the

chance the fortune of war had given him. He was willing to give the

French people a liberal government, provided it could be done without

endangering the throne, and without violating the pledges given to the

monarchs who had reinstated him. He might have even more energetically

opposed the reactionary demands of the ultra-Royalists, who recognized

his younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, as their leader, if his

experiences, especially during the “Hundred Days,” had not filled him

with disgust and suspicion toward the Imperialists. While Napoleon was

in Elba, Louis the Eighteenth kept all the Bonapartist generals and high

officials in office, relying on their promises and assurances of

fidelity; but on Napoleon’s return they all betrayed him, and either

flocked to the standards of the Emperor or declared their adhesion to

his cause as soon as he had set foot on French soil.

Perhaps the man who had sinned most in this respect was Marshal Ney, who

in a personal interview asked of the King as a personal favor to be

placed in command of an army corps and to be sent against the Emperor,

pledging himself to bring Napoleon in chains before his throne. Louis

granted the Marshal’s request, but instead of capturing the Emperor, Ney

went over to him with his entire army corps and fought at Waterloo again

as the “bravest of the brave” in the imperial army. In vain he sought

death on the field, when he saw that the battle was lost; it was

reserved for him to die by French bullets in the Luxembourg garden of

Paris, fired by royalist officers, disguised as common soldiers. From

party hatred, these men had volunteered to act as executioners of one of

the greatest military heroes of revolutionary France. Labédoyère and

other famous generals who were traitors to Louis were executed; others

saved their lives by flight. The great Carnot and other Imperialists

were banished from France.

The impression made upon the ultra-Royalists by these severe measures

against men who had shed lustre upon France, was in the highest degree

deplorable. These fanatics supposed that the Bonapartists and

Republicans of the whole kingdom were utterly at their mercy. They

secretly organized a special government, under the presidency of the

Comte d’Artois, at the Pavilion Marsan for the purpose of bringing to

justice all those who had participated in the Napoleonic _coup d’état_

or in the Revolution of 1789. A new era of terrorism was organized by

these “white Jacobins,” as they were significantly called, and the most

cruel excesses were committed in the provinces. La Vendée, which had

fought so heroically for the Bourbon dynasty, treated the Imperialists

and Republicans generously; but in the South, where religious fanaticism

added fuel to the flame of political hatred, the most atrocious excesses

and murders were committed. Avignon, Nîmes, Montpellier, Toulouse and

other cities of the South were disgraced by the butchery of hundreds of

Protestants; in some of them the victims of religious and political

persecution died at the stake. At Avignon the famous Marshal Brune was

assassinated; at Toulouse, General Ramel; at Nîmes, Count de la Garde.

Wholesale assassinations and butcheries were organized; armed bands,

fanaticized by the priests, roamed through the country, and butchered

the Protestants _en masse_. Ten thousand of the unfortunates fled to the

mountain recesses of the Cevennes, choosing rather to die from hunger

and cold than to be tortured to death. Juries composed of the most

intolerant Royalists lent their aid to these outrages, by condemning the

Protestants to death and acquitting the assassins. The veterans of

Napoleon’s army and forty thousand officers, many of whom had served

with distinction under the imperial eagles, were driven from their homes

and wandered from village to village begging for bread and shelter. The

northern provinces were spared these outrages, but the one hundred and

fifty thousand foreign soldiers stationed in their towns and fortresses

were terrible reminders of the humiliation and shame which the

restoration of the Bourbons had brought upon France.

The French Chambers were entirely under the control of the extreme

Royalists. They enacted laws which reduced the political conditions of

France to those which had existed prior to 1789. They looked upon the

Revolutionary era and the Empire as upon a lawless interregnum which

should be ignored by the government, and they demanded that all the old

institutions of the kingdom should be revived. They were so bold and so

insolent that they overawed the government for a while. Very reluctantly

the King consented to several tyrannical laws,--for instance, the law

referring all political crimes to special courts, composed of one

officer and four judges, from whose decision no appeal could be taken.

But the King saw to his regret that his acquiescence in these immoderate

demands had no other effect than to make the ultra-Royalists bolder and

more arrogant. They demanded a curtailment of the right of suffrage, a

reënactment of the right of primogeniture and other feudal measures.

The King’s patience was exhausted; he refused to sanction any of these

laws and dissolved the Chambers. In their impotent rage the disappointed

ultra-Royalists applied to the foreign powers, asking their intervention

in behalf of absolute royalty, and imploring them to compel the King to

desist from his pernicious protection of Jacobins and regicides.

Metternich sent this strange petition to the French government. But

neither the King nor his favorite minister, M. Decazes, was scared by

such foolhardy steps. They coolly ignored them and courageously

inaugurated a series of political reforms in order to reassure public

opinion. Instead of reducing the number of electors (as the ultras

demanded), they largely increased it. To the periodical press and the

daily newspapers was given greater liberty; the censorship, which had

been exceedingly annoying, was abolished. At the same time, by the able

financial management of the Duc de Richelieu, the 1,600,000,000 francs

war indemnity was reduced to 502,000,000 francs and a large number of

the foreign troops were withdrawn from the northern provinces. These

liberal and patriotic measures followed one another in quick succession

and made a very favorable impression upon the people. The liberal

parties were willing to coöperate with the government in its endeavor to

restore the prosperity of the country, to relieve the distress of the

masses, and to free France from foreign occupation. The Chambers of 1818

and 1819 also coöperated with the government, and the liberal party was

represented in them by a small number of illustrious men,--such men as

Lafayette, General Foy, Benjamin Constant,--men who were more patriots

than partisans. In fact, everything indicated a return of speedy

prosperity, when an event occurred which at one blow crushed the hopes

of the patriots, paralyzed the hand of the government, and reinstated

the extremists in power. This event was the assassination of the Duc de

Berry, the hope of the Bourbon dynasty.

On its return from exile the royal family of France consisted of:

The King, formerly Comte de Provence.

The King’s brother, the Comte d’Artois, and his two sons:

The Duc d’Angoulême, and

The Duc de Berry.