prefecture. The soldiers posted before it refused to admit him, and
threatened to shoot him, believing that he had escaped from prison, and
he was obliged to take refuge in an adjoining house. Laborde, who about
noon came there, was arrested by the soldiers, and conducted by them as
a prisoner to the État-Major-Gênéral, to deliver him over to General
Mallet; and it was with difficulty that they could be persuaded that
they had been deceived, and that Mallet was himself, at that moment, in
irons.
Savary, released from La Force, had Mallet and the rest of the
conspirators brought before him. Soulier also, for having given too
ready a credence to the forged orders, was also placed under arrest, to
be tried along with the organisers and carriers out of the plot.
Mallet confessed with great composure that he had planned the whole, but
he peremptorily refused to say whether he had aiders or sympathisers
elsewhere.
Lahorie could not deny that he had taken an active part, but declared
that it was against his will, his whole intention being to make a run
for the United States, there to spend the rest of his days in
tranquillity. He asserted that he had really believed that the Emperor
was dead.
Guidal tried to pass the whole off as a joke; but when he saw that he
was being tried for his life, he became greatly and abjectly alarmed.
Next day the generals and those in the army who were under charge were
brought before a military commission. Saulnier had an interesting
interview with Mallet that day. He passed through the hall where Mallet
was dining, when the prisoner complained that he was not allowed the use
of a knife. Saulnier at once ordered that he might be permitted one; and
this consideration seems to have touched Mallet, for he spoke with more
frankness to Saulnier than he did before his judges. When the General
Secretary of Police asked him how he could dream of success attending
such a mad enterprise, Mallet replied, "I had already three regiments of
infantry on my side. Very shortly I would have been surrounded by the
thousands who are weary of the Napoleonic yoke, and are longing for a
change of order. Now, I was convinced that the moment the news of my
success in Paris reached him, Napoleon would leave his army and fly
home, I would have been prepared for him at Mayence, and have had him
shot there. If it had not been for the cowardice of Guidal and Lahorie,
my plot would have succeeded. I had resolved to collect 50,000 men at
Chalons sur Marne to cover Paris. The promise I would have made to send
all the conscripts to their homes, the moment the crisis was over, would
have rallied all the soldiers to my side."
On October 23, the prisoners to the number of twenty-four were tried,
and fourteen were condemned to be shot, among these, Mallet, Guidai,
Lahorie, and the unfortunate Soulier. Mallet at the trial behaved with
great intrepidity. "Who are your accomplices?" asked the President. "The
whole of France," answered Mallet, "and if I had succeeded, you yourself
at their head. One who openly attacks a government by force, if he
fails, expects to die." When he was asked to make his defence,
"Monsieur," he said, "a man who has constituted himself defender of the
rights of his Fatherland, needs no defence."
Soulier put in as an apology, that the news of the death of the Emperor
had produced such a sudorific effect on him, that he had been obliged to
change his shirt four times in a quarter of an hour. This was not
considered sufficient to establish his attachment to the Imperial
government.
In the afternoon of the same day the fourteen were conveyed to the plain
of Grenelle to be shot, when pardon was accorded by the Empress Regent
to two of the condemned, the Corporal Rateau, and Colonel Rabbe. When
the procession passed through the Rue Grenelle, Mallet saw a group of
students looking on; "Young men," he called to them, "remember the 23rd
October." Arrived on the place of execution, some of the condemned cried
out, "Vive l'empereur!" only a few "Vive la République."
Mallet requested that his eyes might not be bandaged, and maintained the
utmost coolness. He received permission, at his own desire, to give the
requisite orders to the soldiers drawn up to shoot him and his party.
"Peloton! Present!" The soldiers, moved by the tragic catastrophe,
obeyed, but not promptly. "That is bad!" called Mallet, "imagine you are
before the foe. Once again--Attention!--Present!" This time it was
better. "Not so bad this time, but still not well," said the General;
"now pay attention, and mind, when I say Fire, that all your guns are
discharged as one. It is a good lesson for you to see how brave men die.
Now then, again, Attention!" For a quarter of an hour he put the men
through their drill, till he observed that his comrades were in the most
deplorable condition. Some had fainted, some were in convulsions. Then
he gave the command: Fire! the guns rattled and the ten fell to the
ground, never to rise again. Mallet alone reeled, for a moment or two
maintaining his feet, and then he also fell over, without a sound, and
was dead.
"But for the singular accident," says Savary, "which caused the arrest
of the Minister of War to fail, Mallet, in a few moments, would have
been master of almost everything; and in a country so much influenced by
the contagion of example, there is no saying where his success would
have stopped. He would have had possession of the treasury, then
extremely rich; the post office, the telegraph, and the command of the
hundred cohorts of the National Guard. He would soon have learned the
alarming situation in Russia; and nothing could have prevented him from
making prisoner of the Emperor himself if he returned alone, or from
marching to meet him, if he had come at the head of his shattered
forces."
As Alison says, "When the news reached Napoleon, one only idea took
possession of his imagination--that in this crisis the succession of his
son was, by common consent, set aside; one only truth was ever present
to his mind--that the Imperial Crown rested on himself alone. The fatal
truth was brought home to him that the Revolution had destroyed the
foundations of hereditary succession; and that the greatest achievements
by him who wore the diadem afforded no security that it would descend to
his progeny. These reflections, which seem to have burst on Napoleon all
at once, when the news of this extraordinary affair reached him in
Russia, weighed him down more than all the disasters of the Moscow
retreat."
Schweinichen's Memoirs.
Memoirs, says Addison, in the Tatler, are so untrustworthy, so stuffed
with lies, that, "I do hereby give notice to all booksellers and
translators whatsoever, that the word _memoir_ is French for a novel;
and to require of them, that they sell and translate it accordingly."
There are, however, some memoirs that are trustworthy and dull, and
others, again, that are conspicuously trustworthy, and yet are as
entertaining as a novel, and to this latter category belong the memoirs
of Hans von Schweinichen, the Silesian Knight, Marshal and Chamberlain
to the Dukes of Liegnitz and Brieg at the close of the 16th century.
Scherr, a well known writer on German Culture, and a scrupulous observer
and annotator of all that is ugly and unseemly in the past, says of the
diary of Schweinichen: "It carries us into a noble family at the end of
the 16th century and reveals boorish meanness, coarseness and lack of
culture." That is, in a measure, true, but, as is invariably the case
with Scherr, he leaves out of sight all the redeeming elements, and
there are many, that this transparently sincere diarist discloses.
The MS. was first discovered and published in 1823, by Büsching; it was
republished in 1878 at Breslau by Oesterley. The diary extends to the
year 1602, and Schweinichen begins with an account of his birth in 1552,
and his childish years. But we are wrong in saying that he begins with
his birth--characteristic of the protestant theological spirit of his
times, he begins with a confession of his faith.
As a picture of the manners and customs of the highest classes in the
age just after the Reformation it is unrivalled for its minuteness, and
for its interest. The writer, who had not an idea that his diary would
be printed, wrote for his own amusement, and, without intending it, drew
a perfect portraiture of himself, without exaggeration of his virtues
and observation of his faults; indeed the virtues we admire in him, he
hardly recognised as virtues, and scarcely considered as serious the
faults we deplore. In reading his truthful record we are angry with him,
and yet, he makes us love and respect him, and acknowledge what sterling
goodness, integrity, fidelity and honour were in the man.
Hans was son of George, Knight of Schweinichen and Mertschütz, and was
born in the Castle of Gröditzberg belonging to the Dukes of Silesia, of
which his father was castellan, and warden of the Ducal Estates
thereabouts. The Schweinichens were a very ancient noble Silesian
family, and Hans could prove his purity of blood through the sixteen
descents, eight paternal and eight maternal.
In 1559, Duke Frederick III. was summoned before the Emperor Ferdinand
I. at Breslau, to answer the accusations of extravagance and oppression
brought against him by the Silesian Estates, and was deposed,
imprisoned, and his son Henry XI. given the Ducal crown instead. The
deposition of the Duke obliged the father of our hero to leave
Gröditzberg and retire to his own estates, where Hans was given the
village notary as teacher in reading and writing for a couple of years,
and was then sent, young noble though he was, to keep the geese for the
family. However, as he played tricks with the geese, put spills into
their beaks, pegging them open, the flock was then withdrawn from his
charge. This reminds us of Grettir the Strong, the Icelandic hero, who
also as a boy was sent to drive the family geese to pasture, and who
maltreated his charge.
His father sent Hans to be page to the imprisoned Duke Frederick at
Liegnitz, where also he was to study with the Duke's younger son,
afterwards Frederick IV. Hans tells us he did not get as many whippings
as his companion, because he slipped his money-allowance into the
tutor's palm, and so his delinquencies were passed over. As page, he had
to serve the Duke at table. A certain measure of wine was allowed the
imprisoned Duke daily by his son, the reigning Duke; what he did not
drink every day, Hans was required to empty into a cask, and when the
cask was full, the Duke invited some good topers to him, and they sat
and drank the cask out, then rolled over on the floor. All night Hans
had to sit or lie on the floor and watch the drunken Duke.
Duke Frederick took a dislike to the chaplain, and scribbled a lampoon
on him, which may be thus rendered, without injustice to the original:--
"All the mischief ever done
Twixt the old Duke and his son,
Comes from that curs't snuffy one
Franconian Parson Cut-and-run."
The Duke ordered Hans to pin this to the pulpit cushion, and he did so.
When the pastor ascended the pulpit he saw the paper, and instead of a
text read it out. The reigning Duke Henry was very angry, and Hans was
made the scape-goat, and sent home in disgrace to his father.
In 1564, Hans attended his father, himself as page, his father as
Marshal, when Duke Henry and his Duchess visited Stuttgard and Dresden.
Pages were not then allowed to sit astride a horse, they stood in a sort
of stirrup slung to the pommel, to which they held. At Dresden old
Schweinichen ran a tilt in a tournament with the elector Augustus and
unhorsed him, but had sufficient courtesy to at once throw himself off
his own horse, as though he also had been cast by the elector. This so
gratified the latter, that he sent old Schweinichen a gold chain, and a
double florin worth about 4 shillings to the young one.
When Hans was fifteen, he went to the marriage of Duke Wenceslas of
Teschen with the daughter of Duke Franz of Saxony, and received from his
father a present of a sword, which, he tells us, cost his father a
little under a pound. One of the interesting features of this diary is
that Hans enters the value of everything. For instance, we are given the
price of wheat, barley, rye, oats, meat, &c., in 1562, and we learn from
this that all kinds of grain cost one fifth or one sixth of what it
costs now, and that meat--mutton, was one eighteenth or one twentieth
the present cost. For a thaler, 3 shillings, in 1562 as much food could
be purchased as would now cost from 25 to 30 shillings. Hans tells us
what pocket money he received from his parents; he put a value on every
present he was given, and tells what everything cost him which he give
away.
In the early spring of 1569 Duke Henry XI. went to Lublin in Poland to a
diet. King Sigismund was old, and the Duke hoped to get elected to the
kingdom of Poland on his death. This was a costly expedition, as the
Duke had to make many presents, and to go in great state. Hans went with
him, and gives an infinitely droll account of their reception, the
miserable housing, his own dress, one leg black, the other yellow, and
how many ells of ribbon went to make the bows on his jacket. His father
and he, and a nobleman called Zedlitz and his son were put in a garret
under the tiles in bitter frost--and "faith," says Hans, "our pigs at
home are warmer in their styes."
This expedition which led to no such result as the Duke hoped, exhausted
his treasury, and exasperated the Silesian Estates. All the nobles had
to stand surety for their Duke, Schweinichen and the rest to the amount
of--in modern money £100,000.
When Hans was aged eighteen he was drunk for the first time in his life,
so drunk that he lay like a dead man for two days and two nights, and
his life was in danger.
Portia characterised the German as a drunkard, she liked him "very
vilely in the morning, when he is sober; and most vilely in the
afternoon, when he is drunk. Set a deep glass of Rhenish wine on the
contrary casket: for, if the devil be within, and that temptation
without, I know he will choose it. I will do anything, Nerissa, ere I
will be married to a sponge."
How true this characterisation was of the old German noble,
Schweinichen's memoirs show; it is a record of drunken bouts at small
intervals. There was no escape, he who would live at court must drink
and get drunken.
At the age of nineteen old Schweinichen made his son keep the accounts
at home, and look after the mill; he had the charge of the fish-ponds,
and attended to the thrashing of the corn, and the feeding of the horses
and cattle.
Once Hans was invited to a wedding, and met at it four sisters from
Glogau, two were widows and two unmarried. Their maiden name was Von
Schaben. Hans, aged twenty, danced with the youngest a good deal, and
before leaving invited the four sisters to pay his father and him a
visit. A friend of his called Eicholz galloped ahead to forewarn old
Schweinichen. Some hours later up drove Hans in a waggon with the four
sisters; but he did not dare to bring them in till he had seen his
father, so he went into the house, and was at once saluted with a burst
of laughter, and the shout, "Here comes the bridegroom," and Eicholz
sang at the top of his voice an improvised verse:
"Rosie von Schaben
Hans er will haben."
"Where are the ladies?" asked the old knight.
"In the waggon outside," answered Hans.
"Send for the fiddlers, bring them in. We will eat, drink, dance and be
merry," said the old man.
But Hans was offended at being boisterously saluted as bridegroom, and
he now kept Rosie at a distance. Somewhat later, the Duke tried to get
him to marry a charming young heiress called Hese von Promnitz, and very
amusing is Hans' account of how he kept himself clear of engagement.
When he first met her at court she was aged fourteen, and was
passionately fond of sugar. Hans says he spent as much as £3 in our
modern money on sweets for her, but he would make no proposal, because,
as he concluded, she was too young to be able "to cook a bowl of soup."
Two years passed, and then an old fellow called Geisler, "looking more
like a Jew than a gentleman," who offered Hese a box of sweets every
day, proposed for her. Hese would not answer till she knew the
intentions of Hans, and she frankly asked him whether he meant to
propose for her hand or not. "My heart's best love, Hese," answered
Schweinichen, "at the right time, and when God wills I shall marry, but
I do not think I can do that for three years. So follow your own
desires, take the old Jew, or wait, as you like."
Hese said she would wait any number of years for Hans. This made Hans
the colder. The Duke determined that the matter should be settled one
way or other at once, so he sent a crown of gold roses to Hans, and said
it was to be Hese's bridal wreath, if he desired that she should wear it
for him, he was to lay hold of it; Hans thereupon put his hands behind
his back. Then he went to his Schweinichen coat-of-arms and painted
under it the motto, "I bide my time, when the old man dies, I'll get the
prize." This Geisler read, and--says Hans, didn't like.
Hans was now installed as gentleman-in-waiting to the Duke, and was
henceforth always about his person. He got for his service free bed and
board, a gala coat that cost in our modern money about £36, and an every
day livery costing £18. His father made him a small allowance, but pay
in addition to liveries and keep he got none. The Duke's great amusement
consisted in mumming. For a whole year he rambled about every evening in
masquerade, dropping in on the burghers unexpectedly. Some were, we are
told, pleased to see and entertain him, others objected to these
impromptu visits. The special costume in which the Duke delighted to run
about the town making these visits was that of a Nun. Hans admits that
this was very distasteful to him, but he could not help himself, he was
obliged to accommodate himself to the whims of his master. He made an
effort to free himself from the service of the Duke, so as to go out of
the country to some other court--he felt intuitively that this
association would be fatal to his best interests, but the Duke at once
took him by his better side, pleaded with him to remain and be faithful
to him, his proper master and sovereign, and Hans with misgivings at
heart consented.
There was at Court an old lady, Frau von Kittlitz, who acted as
stewardess, and exercised great influence over the Duke, whom she had
known from a boy. The Duchess resented her managing ways, and
interference, and was jealous of her influence. One day in 1575 she
refused to come down from her room and dine with the Duke unless the old
Kittlitz were sent to sit at the table below the dais. This led to
words and hot blood on both sides. The Duchess used a gross expression
in reference to the stewardess, and the Duke who had already some wine
under his belt, struck the Duchess in the face, saying, "I'll teach you
not to call people names they do not deserve." Hans, who was present,
threw himself between the angry couple; the Duke stormed and struck
about. Hans entreated the Duchess to retire, and then he stood in her
door and prevented the Duke following, though he shouted, "She is my
wife, I can serve her as I like. Who are you to poke yourself in between
married folk?"
As soon as the Duchess had locked herself in, Hans escaped and fled; but
an hour after the Duke sent for him, and stormed at him again for his
meddlesomeness. Hans entreated the Duke to be quiet and get reconciled
to the Duchess, but he would not hear of it, and dismissed Schweinichen.
A quarter of an hour later another messenger came from his master, and
Hans returned to him, to find him in a better mood. "Hans," said his
Highness, "try if you can't get my wife to come round and come down to
table--all fun is at an end with this."
Hans went up and was admitted. The Duchess, in a towering rage, had
already written a letter to her brother the Margrave of Anspach, telling
him how her husband had struck her in the face and given her a black
eye, and she had already dispatched a messenger with the letter. After
much arguing, Hans wrung from her her consent to come down, on two
conditions, one that the Duke should visit her at once and beg her
pardon, the other that the old Kittlitz should sit at the table with
the pages. The Duke was now in a yielding mood and ate his leek humbly.
The Duchess consented to tell the Court that she had got her black eye
from striking her face against a lamp, and the Duke ordered ten
trumpeters and a kettledrum to make all the noise they could to
celebrate the reconciliation.
The Duchess in an aside to Schweinichen admitted that she had been rash
and unjust, and regretted having sent off that letter. An unlucky
letter--says our author--for it cost the duchy untold gold and years of
trouble.
The Duke had made several visits to Poland, chasing that Jack o'
lantern--the Polish crown, and it had cost him so much money that he had
quarrelled with his Estates, bullied and oppressed his subjects to
extort money, and at last the Estates appealed to the Emperor against
him, as they had against his father; and the Emperor summoned him to
Prague. The Duke had great difficulty in scraping together money enough
to convey him so far; and on reaching Prague, he begged permission of
the Kaiser to be allowed to visit the Electors and the Free Cities, and
see whether he could not obtain from them some relief from his
embarrassments, and money wherewith to pacify the angry Estates of the
Silesian Duchy. The consent required was given, and then the Duke with
his faithful Schweinichen, and several other retainers, started on a
grand begging and borrowing round of the Empire. Hans was constituted
treasurer, and he had in his purse about £400. The Duke took with him
five squires, two pages, three serving men, a cook, and several kitchen
boys, one carriage drawn by six horses, another by four. And not only
was this train to make the round of the Empire, but also to visit
Italy--and all on £400.
The first visit was paid, three days' journey from Prague, at Theusing
to a half-sister of the Duchess. She received him coolly, and lectured
him on his conduct to his wife. When the Duke asked her to lend him
money, she answered that she would pay his expenses home, if he chose to
go back to Liegnitz, but not one penny otherwise should he have. Not
content with this refusal, the Duke went on to Nurnberg, where he sent
Hans to the town council to invite them to lend him money; he asked for
4,000 florins. The council declined the honour. The two daughters of the
Duke were in the charge of the Margrave of Anspach, their mother's
brother. The Duke sent Hans to Anspach to urge the Margrave to send the
little girls to him, or invite him to visit Anspach to see them. He was
shy of visiting his brother-in-law uninvited, because of the box in the
ear and the black eye. He confided to Hans that if he got his children
at Nurnberg, he would not return them to their uncle, without a loan or
a honorarium.
This shabby transaction was not to Schweinichen's taste, but he was
obliged to undertake it. It proved unsuccessful, the Margrave refused to
give up the children till the Duke returned to his wife and duchy and
set a better example.
Whilst Hans was away, the Duke won a large sum of money at play, enough
to pay his own bill, but instead of doing this with it, he had it melted
up and made into silver cups. When he came to leave Nurnberg he was
unable to pay his inn bill, and obliged to leave in pawn with the
taverner a valuable jewel. Then he and his suite went to Augsburg and
settled into an inn till the town council could agree to lend him money.