At the commencement of the French Revolution, and for some time after,
the two banks of the Rhine were the theatre of continual wars. Commerce
was interrupted, industry destroyed, the fields ravaged, and the barns
and cottages plundered; farmers and merchants became bankrupts, and
journeymen and labourers thieves. Robbery was the only mechanical art
which was worth pursuing, and the only exercises followed were assault
and battery. These enterprises were carried on at first by individuals
trading on their own capital of skill and courage; but when the French
laws came into more active operation in the seat of their exploits,
the desperadoes formed themselves, for mutual protection, into
copartnerships, which were the terror of the country. Men soon arose
among them whose talents, or prowess, attracted the confidence of
their comrades, and chiefs were elected, and laws and institutions
established. Different places of settlement were chosen by different
societies; the famous Pickard carried his band into Belgium and Holland;
while on the confines of Germany, where the wild provinces of Kirn,
Simmerm, and Birkenfield offered a congenial field, the banditti were
concentrated, whose last and most celebrated chief, the redoubted
Schinderhannes, is the subject of this brief notice.
His predecessors, indeed, Finck, Peter the Black, Zughetto, and Seibert
were long before renowned among those who square their conduct by the
good old rule of clubs; they were brave men, and stout and pitiless
robbers. But Schinderhannes, the boldest of the bold, young, active
and subtle, converted the obscure exploits of banditti into the
comparatively magnificent ravages of "the outlaw and his men;" and
sometimes marched at the head of sixty or eighty of his troop to the
attack of whole villages. Devoted to pleasure, no fear ever crossed him
in its pursuit; he walked publicly with his mistress, a beautiful girl
of nineteen, in the very place which the evening before had been the
scene of one of his criminal exploits; he frequented the fairs and
taverns, which were crowded with his victims; and such was the terror
he had inspired, that these audacious exposures were made with perfect
impunity. Free, generous, handsome, and jovial, it may even be conceived
that sometime he gained the protection from love which could not have
been extorted by force.
It is scarcely a wonder that with the admirable regulations of the
robbers, they should have succeeded even to so great an extent as they
did in that unsettled country. Not more than two or three of them were
allowed to reside in the same town or village; they were scattered over
the whole face of the district, and apparently connected with each other
only by some mysterious free-masonry of their craft. When a blow was
to be struck, a messenger was sent round by the chief to warn his
followers; and at the mustering place the united band rose up, like the
clan of Roderick Dhu from the heather, to disappear as suddenly again
in darkness when the object was accomplished. Their clothing, names and
nations were changed perpetually; a Jew broker at Cologne would figure
some days after at Aix-la-Chapelle or Spa as a German baron, or a Dutch
merchant, keeping open table, and playing a high game; and the next week
he might be met with in a forest at the head of his troop. Young and
beautiful women were always in their suite, who, particularly in the
task of obtaining or falsifying passports, did more by their address
than their lovers could have effected by their courage. Spies,
principally Jews, were employed throughout the whole country, to give
notice where a booty might be obtained. Spring and autumn were the
principal seasons of their harvest; in winter the roads were almost
impassable, and in summer the days were too long; the light of the moon,
in particular, was always avoided, and so were the betraying foot prints
in the snow. They seldom marched in a body to the place of attack, but
went thither two or three in a party, some on foot, some on horseback,
and some even in carriages. As soon as they had entered a village, their
first care was to muffle the church bell, so as to prevent an alarm
being rung; or to commence a heavy fire, to give the inhabitants an
exaggerated idea of their numbers, and impress them with the feeling
that it would be more prudent to stay at home than to venture out into
the fray.
John Buckler, _alias_ Schinderhannes, the worthy whose youthful arm
wielded with such force a power constituted in this manner, was the son
of a currier, and born at Muhlen, near Nastoeten, on the right bank of
the Rhine. The family intended to emigrate to Poland, but on the way the
father entered the Imperial service at Olmutz, in Moravia. He deserted,
and his wife and child followed him to the frontiers of Prussia, and
subsequently the travellers took up their abode again in the environs
of the Rhine.
At the age of fifteen, Schinderhannes commenced his career of crime by
spending a louis, with which he had been entrusted, in a tavern. Afraid
to return home, he wandered about the fields till hunger compelled him
to steal a horse, which he sold. Sheep stealing was his next vocation,
but in this he was caught and transferred to prison. He made his escape,
however, the first night, and returned in a very business-like manner to
receive two crowns which were due to him on account of the sheep he had
stolen. After being associated with the band as their chief, he went to
buy a piece of linen, but thinking, from the situation of the premises,
that it might be obtained without any exchange of coin on his part, he
returned the same evening, and stealing a ladder in the neighbourhood,
placed it at a window of the warehouse, and got in. A man was writing in
the interior, but the robber looked at him steadily, and shouldering his
booty, withdrew. He was taken a second time, but escaped as before on
the same night.
His third escape was from a dark and damp vault in the prison of
Schneppenbach, where, having succeeded in penetrating to the kitchen,
he tore an iron bar from the window by main force, and leaped out at
hazard. He broke his leg in the fall, but finding a stick, managed
to drag himself along, in the course of three nights, to Birkenmuhl,
without a morsel of food, but on the contrary, having left some ounces
of skin and flesh of his own on the road.
Marianne Schoeffer was the first avowed mistress of Schinderhannes.
She was a young girl of fourteen, of ravishing beauty, and always
"se mettait avec une élégance extreme." Blacken Klos, one of the band,
an unsuccessful suitor of the lady, one day, after meeting with a
repulse, out of revenge carried off her clothes. When the outrage was
communicated to Schinderhannes, he followed the ruffian to a cave where
he had concealed himself, and slew him. It was Julia Blaesius, however,
who became the permanent companion of the young chief. The account
given by her of the manner in which she was united to the destiny of the
robber is altogether improbable. A person came to her, she said, and
mentioned that somebody wished to speak to her in the forest of Dolbach;
she kept the assignation, and found there a handsome young man who told
her that she must follow him--an invitation which she was obliged at
length by threats to accede to. It appears sufficiently evident,
however, that the personal attractions of Schinderhannes, who was then
not twenty-two, had been sufficient of themselves to tempt poor Julia
to her fate, and that of her own accord
"She fled to the forest to hear a love tale."
It may be, indeed, as she affirmed, that she was at first ignorant of
the profession of her mysterious lover, who might address her somewhat
in the words of the Scottish free-booter--
"A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien--
A bonnet of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green,
'Twas all of me you knew."
But it is known that afterwards she even accompanied him personally in
some of his adventures dressed in men's clothes.
The robberies of this noted chief became more audacious and extensive
every day, and at last he established a kind of "black mail" among the
Jews, at their own request. Accompanied one day by only two of his
comrades, he did not hesitate to attack a cavalcade of forty-five Jews
and five Christian peasants. The booty taken was only two bundles of
tobacco, the robbers returning some provisions on a remonstrance from
one of the Jews, who pleaded poverty. Schinderhannes then ordered them
to take off their shoes and stockings, which he threw into a heap,
leaving to every one the care of finding his own property. The affray
that ensued was tremendous; the forty-five Jews who had patiently
allowed themselves to be robbed by three men, fought furiously with each
other about their old shoes; and the robber, in contempt of their
cowardice, gave his carbine to one of them to hold while he looked on.
His daring career at length drew to a close, and he and his companions
were arrested by the French authorities, and brought to trial. The
chief, with nineteen others, were condemned to death in November, 1803,
and Julia Blaesius to two years' imprisonment. The former met his fate
with characteristic intrepidity, occupied to the last moment with his
cares about Julia and his father.--_From the Foreign Quarterly
Review.--An excellent work_.
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