GERMAN LIBRARY. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOR Received. - - . ^%t ______ / 88 88 > Accessions No. Shelf No. WAR SONGS. Edinburgh : Printed by Thomas and A rchibald Constable, FOR EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND CO. GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE. WAR SONGS OF THE GERMANS THE LIBERATION WAR AND THE RHINE BOUNDARY QUESTION BY JOHN STUART BLACKIE PROFESSOR OF GREEK EDINBURGH EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS i 870. \Ai. TO THOMAS CARLYLE, ESQ. MY OLD AND ESTEEMED FRIEND, You and I have had many stiff battles about not a few things ; but in two points I have always felt that we are at one in a stern love of justice, and a hearty detestation of all sickly sentiment. From these two fundamental in- stincts it has no doubt arisen, that on the subject of the political relations between France and Germany for the last four hundred years, we have arrived, by independent roads, at precisely the same conclusion. It was therefore with peculiar pleasure that I received your kind permission to grace with your name the three chapters in prose and verse which I here put forth on this important theme. They consist of two articles on the great German Liberation War in 1813, originally published in Taifs Magazine thirty years ago, and an additional article on the important question of the Rhine Boundary, on the history of which all educated men at the present moment ought to" be well informed. These articles are mere frag- vi Dedication. ments of a work on the Liberation War, for which I had collected large materials, at a time when Provi- dence had not yet marked out for me a less genial, but more useful sphere of action. Fragmentary as they are, however, I am confident they will not be found superficial ; and I trust also they may prove such as not to be altogether unworthy of a kindly approval from a man who, more, perhaps, than any one now living, knows what honest work means. May you long continue to hold forth in your life and writings, to all English-speaking men, a noble example of that manly independence, lofty fervour, and un- bribed truthfulness, without which the greatest lite- rary successes are mere painted flowers, and the honours which vulgar ambition covets a dress which smothers the frame that it should adorn. Believe me, MY DEAR CARLYLE, Yours, with sincere esteem, JOHN STUART BLACKIE. 24 HILL STREET, EDINBURGH, November 23, 1870. CONTENTS. PAGE I.SONGS OF THE LIBERATION WAR, . I 1. Es zoo AUS BERLIN BIN TAPFERER HELD, 25 2. WAS IST DES DEUTSCHEN VATERLAND ? . 30 3. WAS BLASEN DIE TROMPETEN ? . . 51 II. A NICHE FOR KORNER, .... 58 4. WAS GLAENZT DORT VOM WALDE ? . . 72 5. VATER, ICH RUFE DICH ! .... 78 6. DU SCHWERT AN MEINER LlNKEN, . . 80 III. THE RHINE BOUNDARY, ... 85 7. SlE SOLLEN IHN NIGHT HABEN, . ' . 125 8. DIE WACHT AM RHEIN, . . . .128 9. AM RHEIN, AM RHEIN, DA WACHSEN UNSRE REBEN, 132 APPENDIX OF GERMAN WORDS TO THE MELODIES, 136 WAR SONGS. i. SONGS OF THE LIBERATION WAR. Was wir gehort, gelesen Tritt wirklich in die Zeit, Gewinne jetzt ein Wesen Auch du Gelehrsamkeit ! SCHENKENDORF. Ecce quam bonum, Bonum et jucundum, Ceciderunt hostes, Hostes sunt fusi ! BURSCHEN SONG. Quoi ! les Prussians a Paris ? BER ANGER. NAPOLEON was driven out of Germany, in the year 1813, mainly by three things : first, he was unhorsed by Boreas in the north ; and, though he was ready to reply to the eager questioning of Europe, like a cer- tain Modern Athenian, on occasion of a similar mis- chance ' Hurt ! Oh no, QUITE THE CONTRARY, my Lord ! ' yet the fact is that he was hurt, and that seriously, in more ways than one. The least of his misfortunes was, that he was obliged to borrow a clean shirt from the King of Saxony when he came A 2 Songs of tJie Liberation War. to Dresden ; the greatest, that he was shorn of glory, robbed of the prestige of victory. The ' On ne peut pas /' that limits the successes of common humanity, was now publicly declared valid, in certain cases, against Napoleon also. Wagram had blotted out the memory of Aspern ; but here was something worse than Aspern something more ominous than a sullen retreat into a small island of the Danube (a mishap which sappers and pontoons might repair and did repair) ; here was rout, flight, total overthrow, anti- cipated annihilation. Besides, the wings of the French eagle actually were terribly mangled in that rude conflict; and, though they grew again, and looked very fair, with a rapidity and a lustihood which showed that the genius of a magician was still there, yet they were not so strong as the old ones. Conscripts could never be veterans ; the ' cochons du lail] as Marshal Ney knew, might ' fight like devils ; ' but they could neither create cavalry for the Emperor nor food for themselves. In the second place, these things happened in the face say rather at the feet of Prussia; and the Prussia of 1813 was neither the Prussia of 1806 nor the Prussia of 1809. The Count- ess de Voss, first lady of honour to her Prussian Majesty, in the year 1808, received from an English officer, who had been in the West Indies, a most beautiful parrot, which amused the royal family Songs of the L iberation War. 3 greatly, by repeating, fifty times a day, as if to pre- vent mistake, GOD DAMN NAPOLEON. (' Oh, the charming parrot!' says the Countess. 1 ) But this was all the length that Frederick William's patriotism was willing or able to go at that time. In 1813, howeVer, Europe was to be taught at last that the Prussian eagle was indeed an eagle, a legitimate con- sanguinean of the other imperial birds ; Bliicher, Gneisenau, and Scharnhorst had been nursing hate and brewing thunder for seven indignant years : with them, also, the whole Prussian people were aflame ; a PEOPLE verily (thanks to Stein and Hardenberg), not an ARMY merely, as in Frederick's days. This was what Napoleon did not calculate upon ; and this, much more than the Russian robbing of the prestige, was the cause of the victories of Katzbach, Gross Beeren, Dennewitz, Culm, and Wartenburg, without which it is quite certain that Leipzig never could have been fought. The third thing that dam- aged Napoleon in 1813 hemming him round, as it were, with certain destruction was the accession of Austria to the Russo-Prussian alliance, after the ar- mistice of Poischwitz. This armistice the conqueror had been forced to enter into, as into that of Znaym, in 1809, by the determined resistance which he had 1 Anecdotes of Foreign Courts (London, 1827), vol. i. p. 264. 4 Songs of the L iberation War. met with from his enemies in two successive battles of fearful carnage and no plunder. Liitzen and Baut- zen were as honourable to the Prussians as Aspern and Wagram were to the Austrians. Napoleon beat his adversaries^)*? the ground in both cases ; but his loss was equal to theirs his gain merely nominal ; the spirit of the adversary unsubdued ; and the fruits to be gathered depending altogether upon the general pacific or warlike policy of the party with whom he had to deal. The Prussians, in 1813, were not in a temper to be either cozened or bullied. It does not appear that they were strong enough to have con- quered the great god of battles without the Austrians : with the Austrians their victory was certain; and, whatever the thorough-going advocates of Napoleon may say, it does not seem in anywise unreasonable that the gigantic genius of war, overstriding the world in thunder, should be opposed by the only might which common mortals can bring against such daemonian manifestations superiority in the quality of moral enthusiasm, and in the quantity of cannon- balls. It is really a pitiful thing to observe how bio- graphers of great men, like the preachers of sectarian gospels, are not content that their hero be gigantic, un- less they prove also that every other body is a dwarf. Songs of the Liberation War. 5 So Hazlitt metamorphoses the gallant Bliicher (whom even Napoleon could afford to call an ' invincible old devil ') into a ' wary adventurer ; ' and the generous ardour of the 'lyre and sword' young soldiers of Prussia into a < brain-sick, pseudo-p&triotism.' We were astonished to meet with such expressions, even in Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon. We hope we shall never be so unlucky as to stumble upon anything of the kind elsewhere. The man who can sympathize with the gospel of liberty in France only, and that gospel preached by NAPOLEON, has no heart to understand, consequently no pen to write, history. But there is another false view of German patriot- ism which we are compelled to notice. Mr. Alison, in his great historical work (vol. vii.), eulogizing, as well he might, the noble stand which Austria, single- handed, made against Napoleon, in the campaign of 1809, finds the whole philosophy of this fact in the stability of aristocratic Governments. Aristocratic governments possess an element of stability, no doubt, which does not belong to the seething restlessness of pure democracy ; but whether this element manifests itself in the persistence of a soulless tradition, or the inheritance of a lofty patriotism, is a matter that de- pends always on the quality of the aristocrats, which, as human affairs go, is as likely to be bad as good. As for 6 Songs of the Liberation War. Austria, we think it was not Metternich, but the free mountain air, that inspired Hofer; and to have the steeple of St. Stephen's, and the coffee-houses of the Prater, besides fathers, and mothers, and brothers, and sisters before their eyes, was surely motive enough (without calling in the miracle of aristocracy) for the Austrians to drive Napoleon into the Danube at Aspern, and to make Macdonald pay sharply for his Marshal's baton at Wagram. The serfs of a despotic Government have a fatherland, on vital occasions, as much as the citizens of a free nation. Ride them on the back, and they will kick : bravely done ; but it had been more brave, if they had never allowed the rider to get on. Here indeed lies the mystery. How did it hap- pen that France over-rode Austria so bravely from Jemappes to the battle of Leipzig, and paralysed Prussia, in 1806, by a single stroke, as if her very touch had been electricity ? Was it the genius of the redingote gris, and the three-cornered hat, and the olive-complexioned face, and the eye, (what an eye !) and the mouth that could smile how kindly, and how deceitfully, that conquered Germany ; or was it that certainly in part, but something else also 1 We think it was something else also, and mainly. Napoleon was the incarnated Siva of victory. This cannot be denied. But the assiduous plying of multitudinous Songs of the Liberation War. 7 cannon, despite of all tactical superiority, beat him back into Leipzig, and over the Rhine in 1813 ; why did it not do so in 1806 ? Not because the gun- powder was not there, but because there was no SOUL OF A GERMAN PEOPLE there to serve the guns, be- cause Germany was beridden by aristocracy ; that aristocracy being a mere gilded outside, prankt with all manner of vain gaudery; hence there was no in- dependence, no. freedom in Germany; no thoughts, no words, no SONGS of freemen, which are the alone proper fathers of heroic deeds. But in 1813 the tables were turned. It was good for aristocratic Prussia that she had been afflicted. In the hour of need (a cheap piety), Majesty falls suppliant to the supreme god the People. 1 In the consciousness of omnipotence, the People lift Majesty out of the bog, generously bear him on their shoulders, and transport him, with whoop, and halloo, and patriotic jubilee, to Paris. Majesty responds eagerly to the popular cry. Majesty did not then profess to fight for < legi- macy,' as Talleyrand afterwards phrased it. Majesty was fighting for the liberty and independence of all 1 The King, whose courage and prudence shone forth in a manner worthy of the descendant of the great Frederick, had been rescued, by the affectionate loyalty of his PEOPLE and ARMY, from the thraldom prepared for him. Marquis of Lon- donderry's War in Germany, p. 13. 8 Songs of the Liberation War. European peoples. Even about freedom cf the press and representative constitutions, mystical words were thrown out intended to remain mystical. Abso- lutism sailed over Europe, floated upon a sea of democracy. Strange phenomenon ! and yet true ; recorded in many histories and chronicles of bloody battles, found in many voluminous archives of state protocols and proclamations, and eternized also to our taste more pleasantly in many songs of the Ger- man fatherland, composed and sung by jovial Bur- schen, of whom every one could say, while he sung triumphantly ET QUORUM PARS MAGNA FUI ! The Reformation in France, we read, was fanned by Marot's chansons; and Martin Luther in Ger- many combated the Devil very valiantly with an inkhorn (as the people in Eisenach show you), but more valiantly also, as he himself has left on record, by divine song. Had there not been music in Luther's soul, the Reformation for a year and a day at least might have gone back ; for, in the hard conflict with that perfect impersonation of consistent Toryism, the Roman Pope, he required a comforter and familiar spirit to mellow him back to healthy humanity, after bathing in the theological vinegar of those days ; and we know that he kept a sweet- singing bird in the inner chamber of his soul, more serviceable to those good Christians who know how Songs of the L ibe ration War. to value it, than any heathen Sat/^wi/ ever was to Socrates. Blessed be thou, Germany, fatherland of song ! for Napoleon also, the invincible Caesar, and the stern bridge-destroying Davoust, and Vandamme the ' blood-hound/ mob-hooted into Siberia, were conquered by the power of SONGS, whose name was LEGION. The songs of the German Liberation War were the utterance of a soul instinct with fire far fiercer than the cannon's. There are who delight to contrast poetry and fact. Shallow ! All history that is worth reading is written in poetry; and he who does not write it poetically does not write it truly. The historian is merely a more modern name for the Epopoeist. If he cannot make an epos of the stuff before him, he has mistaken his subject or cannot handle his pen. He who sits down, with a most perverse erudition, to write a history of political bandboxes, and recite, most solemnly (like the Marquis of Londonderry in his Tour in the North), how many times the ladies of the Czarina change their dress in a day, proves his own relation- ship to the theme which he handles, not the barren- ness of the luxuriant world in matters more pertinent. There is no lack of genuine epos of great and good men, and great and good actions in that much abused thing called modern history ; for, despite of the vain pompous parading in court-dresses ; despite io Songs of the Liberation War. the many-folioed accumulation of protocols, procla- mations, despatches, reports, and what not, the mere mappery and paper projection of what has had, or may have, some relation to a deed ; despite of espionage and ' necessary corruption ' (as Frederick the Great would have it), intrigue, management, finesse, ruse, and the whole mysterious diplomatic craft of using words adroitly for the purpose of expressing what men do not mean to say ; despite of all this lacing up of the soul scientifically, with the packthread of political deceit ; despite of all these odious appurtenances, belonging, as we are told by some, without remedy, to the < dignity ' of modern history, men, greatly honest, will still live and act truly in the world honest hearts will sing out their honest faith, their triumphant conviction ; * For the soul triumphs with itself in words. ' And wherever these things are, in ancient or in modern times, you have poetry and reality in one epos or ode, we care not which, sung or written, it does not affect the substance. Carlyle has written a glorious epos on the French Revolution. Of the Liberation War also an epos may be written, with fewer sublime horrors, indeed, of a Dantesque Hell to paint, but with more of the sacred flame from heaven to inspire. But hitherto the poetry of the Songs of the Liberation War. 1 1 Liberation War has been principally developed in the lyrical shape. We have a broad billowy sea of national songs before us ; too loud and strong, too lusty and vigorous, perhaps, to be welcomed by all who delight itj the atmosphere of effeminate arti- ficiality which envelops our fashionable saloons ; but not the less true, not the less substantial, not the less precious to any man with whom poetry is some- thing more than the lace on a lady's gown, and divine music a thing more serious than the wanton play of arabesques curiously tickling the ear-chambers of a fool. Blessed be God ! for a sturdy poetic swimmer in these piping times there is still one masculine enjoyment left plunging with a full, fear- less, outspreading of the whole man into the broad, strong-surging ocean of national song. There we make a dash to-day, into the bracing war-element of a substantial, bona fide, hard-fought battle, for the first right of man and the last INDEPENDENCE. We hope many brave hearts are ready to join us. So pleasurable, indeed, is the fight of liberty to a generous mind, that if the old devil of despotism were killed outright to-day, one might almost wish him to come alive again to-morrow, that we might enjoy the triumph of conquering him a second time. And it is certainly not the most unphilosophical explication of the origin of evil, to say that vice exists only that 12 Songs of the Liberation War. virtue may have something to do ; misery, to give benevolent men the pleasure of creating happiness ; despotism, that there may be patriotism ; a French Napoleon, that there may be a Liberation War in Germany ; a feeble Government of paper and red- tape, that there may be a strong government by the brawn of a man's arm, and the mellow roar of an honest heart; Haugwitz, that there may be Hardenberg; Brunswick, 1 that there may be Blucher. On the i yth day of March 1813 next after 1789, the most eventful year in recent history the King of Prussia declared war against France. The pro- clamation which he issued to his people on that occasion brings vividly before us the cause and character of the great national struggle which fol- lowed ; a sort of royal imprimatur, as it were, to that Bible of patriotic songs, in which the history of the time is written. It may be serviceable to translate it : 1 Not the hero of Quatre Bras, of course, but the Manifesto- maker of 1792, and the prating old man (nothing like Blucher) who held councils of war when he should have been fighting at Jena. ' Us se tromperont furieusement ces perruques ! ' said Napoleon in 1806 before that famous blow ; and they did deceive themselves furiously indeed, even as much as the Emi- grants, who sent multitudinous blusters into France in 1792, but were singularly weak and ineffective in their blows. f Songs of the Liberation W 'TO MY PEOPLE. 1 For my true people, and for all Germans, ' no necessity of a formal exposition of the causes of the present war : they lie bare to the eyes of Europe. 6 We lay prostrate beneath the superior power of France. The peace which robbed me of one-half of my subjects, brought with it no blessings to com- pensate for so great a loss. Its wounds were deeper than those of the war. The marrow of the land was dried up ; the principal fortresses remained in the possession of the enemy ; agriculture was lamed ; the industry of our cities paralysed. The freedom of trade was annihilated, and thereby the fountain of our prosperity sealed. The whole land was in a state of pauperism. * By the most conscientious discharge of my obliga- tions, I endeavoured to convince the French Em- peror that it was his interest, as well as mine, to let Prussia resume her independence. But my sincerest attempts in the way of conciliation were nullified by arrogance and faithlessness ; and we saw now, too plainly, that the Emperor's treaties, even more surely than his wars, aimed at our complete annihila- tion. The moment is now arrived when all illusions as to our real condition must cease. ' Brandenburgers, Prussians, Silesians, Pomeranians, 14 Songs of tlie Liberation War. Lithuanians ! you know what you have suffered for the last seven years. 1 You know what gloomy prospects are yours, if the struggle which we now begin be not gloriously ended. Think on your ancestors ; think on the great Elector, 2 the great Frederick ; think on the blessings which you enjoy as the fruits of what the swords of our ancestors gained under his captainship freedom of conscience, honour, independence, commerce, manufactures, science. Think on the noble example of our power- ful allies, the Russians ; think on the Spaniards, of the Portuguese. Nations, less numerous than we, have marched into the field against a superior army, and have come off victorious. Think of the Swiss ; think of the States. ' Great sacrifices will be demanded of all classes ; for the struggle is great, and not small are the resources of our foe. You will be more ready to 1 Davoust's cruelties in Hamburg, and the tender mercies of Vandamme in Bremen, were famous over all Europe. To all the supplications of the poor Hanseatists, the stern bridge- destroyer coolly replied * Votes rfavez rien enpropre rebelles que z-ous ties ! votre peau mhne appartient a VEmpereurl' 1 Sketches of Germany and the Germans^ by an Englishman (London, 1836). 2 Frederick William the Great, who kept France in check, and beat the Swedes at Fehrbellin in 1675. From this name the modern history of Prussia, so far as important European interests are concerned, may be dated. Songs of the Liberation War. 15 make these sacrifices for your fatherland and for your own king, than for a foreign governor, who, as so much sad experience has taught, offers your sons and substance up as victims upon altars where the worship is not yours. Trust in God, perseverance, courage, and the powerful assistance of our allies, will crown our efforts with certain success. 1 But whatever sacrifices we may be called upon to make, they are nothing when set in the balance against the holy rights for which we must contend ; unless, indeed, we shall cease to be Prussians and Germans even in name. ' It is the last decisive struggle that we maintain for our wellbeing, our independence, our existence. There is no choice ; between an honourable peace or a glorious destruction there is no medium. But even destruction you will face cheerfully for the sake of honour; for without honour a Prussian and a German will not live. But we have cause to hope with confidence, that God and our good-will will secure our just cause the victory ; and with victory a glorious peace and the return of our national pros- perity. 6 FREDERICK WILLIAM. 1 4 BRESLAU, i^jth March 1813.' 1 Geschichte des Deutschen Freiheitskrieges, vom 1813 15, von Dr. Frederick Richter (Berlin, 1838), vol. i. p. 49. 1 6 Songs of the Liberation War. This is a king's speech worth reading. There is honesty and pith in it ; and, what is still more wonderful in royal orations, it strikes the very chord of popular opinion, and opens the gushing rivers of national poetry. But Necessity, that mighty mother (not of the world, as Shelley will have it, but of many things in the world), has done greater wonders than this : making absolute monarchs to understand (for a season) the genuine democratic principle of governing by public opinion. How the people replied to these noble words by nobler we shall hear anon in our songs ; how they replied by deeds, the following extract, from the historical work just quoted, will best inform us : 6 From this moment the preparations for war were carried on with unexampled energy and enthusi- asm. Thousands hastened from the workshops, from the comptoirs, from the halls of justice ; the whole College of Government, at Breslau, offered itself to the King for the war service ; but the King, honouring, as he could not but do, the spirit that animated these individuals, caused the Chancellor to issue a proclamation, prohibiting the public officers, in any of the great departments of State,' from joining themselves to any volunteer Jager corps. ' The universities and the upper classes of the gymnasia dissolved themselves by instinctive consent; Songs of the Liberation War. 17 and the teachers were often the first to set the students an example of patriotic devotion to the national cause. 1 In vain was all protest on the part of the French Ambassador and the Commander of the French army in the Mark. All who were capable of bearing arms came thronging over the Oder, directing themselves either to Silesia or Col- berg, where they were mustered and put under arms. 6 The enthusiasm, indeed, went so far, that even women and maidens, giving the lie to their sex, went out and shared the hardest service with the men. Everything lived and worked only for war. The long restrained voice of indignation with which the Prussian people had for seven years borne the loss of liberty and honour, now burst into a flame ; but honest love for king and country, and a faith not to be shaken in the Divine aid, elevated the strong motives of revenge to the noblest feelings of duty, 1 Among the Gymnasiarchs, Jahn and Steffens boast the greatest celebrity (Varnhagen, v. 113). They were both in Liitzow's volunteer corps, with Korner. Jahn was a most ori- ginal character ; a very apostle of ' Deutschthum ' and nation- ality ; a patriarch and prophet of the Liberation War. Men of this description were very serviceable to the King of Prussia before the battles were fought : they were the very soul by which he gained his vicfories. After the peace they were looked on as madmen, and treated as traitors. Not a few of them saw the inside of Spandau. 1 8 Songs of the L ibc ration War. and to the firm determination to regain their lost character by the surrender of everything that they held dearest and best in life. To attain this end, no sacrifice was esteemed too great. Those who could not personally join in the great struggle gave, the poorest, his mite in the shape of contributions for the outfit of volunteers. The farmer, in many cases, gave up his last horse, that his only son might ride into the battle against the oppressor of his fatherland. Women brought their jewels, children and beggars their spare pennies, to the national purse. In Silesia, a young girl, with a beautiful growth of hair, sold it for two dollars, and sent the money to swell the national fund. In Berlin, under the direction of the Princess Wilhelm, the ladies formed themselves into societies for the tend- ing of the wounded and others, who should suffer by the calamities of war. This good example was immediately followed almost in every city and town of the monarchy. Every family and social circle became a furnishing establishment for the great national arsenal ; the iron work of the men, and the most slim fabrics of female skilfulness, \vere applied equally to the one great purpose. The very children in the schools occupied the vacation, and the hours of relaxation, in making charpie for the wounds ; and little boys, spelling Nepos, ran after the army, with Songs of the Liberation War. 19 tears in their eyes, impatient now, at length, to be the heroes of whom they had so often read.' 1 Such was the practical poetry of the Prussians in 1813 ; and if men, whose every word was at the same time a deed (as all true words ought to be), flung stirring songs, by the hundred, out of their honest German breasts, instead of twirling pretty verses upon their ringer ends, as had been done by nice punctilious rhymers in more quiet times, Goethe's aristocratic nerves might be a little shaken in his artistical chamber; but poetry was poetry still, and strength was strength, and reality more powerful than fiction. Nay, and if here and there, and in all directions, the generous enthusiasm of regenerated nationality seemed to run wild in a real ' Berserker rage ' of unchastened bellicosity the madness of old Teutonic valour, that threw itself naked upon the sword of a foe, with a hurrah ! were not the French mad, too, with the old wine of the Revolution in their veins ? and was not Napoleon a very AAIM12N of battle, who could only be opposed by a power as transcendental as himself? ' May God fill you with hatred to the Pope ! ' said Martin Luther to his friends, when he left Smalkald. ' May God fill you with hatred to the French !' was what the Prussians 1 Richter, p. 53 ; and Narrative of an Eye- Witness in Odelebeifs Saxon Campaign, vol. ii. p. 114. 2O Songs of the Liberation War. read in every motion, in every look of gallant old Bliicher ; and it was this spirit of thorough-going Germanism that made the veteran of the Katzbach to Napoleon the most obstinate ' Old Devil ' that he ever had to contend with, and to the Germans the very Achilles and impersonated ideal of the war- epos of an age when every poet (except Goethe) was a soldier, and every soldier, by virtue of his cause, was a poet. The patriotism of the Prussians broke forth with the greater might on this occasion, because it was a smothered flame. Not all the Prussians, perhaps not the majority, approved of the timid policy of the monarch in 1809. There was, and from 1806 had been, in the north of Germany a strong war-party, who could not be at all times as easily silenced as the Countess de Voss's parrot. The whole country was in a dark ferment of slow-gathering revenge. Napoleon might gag the tongues of men and birds, but he could not prevent the formation of secret societies and ( leagues of virtue,' where the seed was sown in the hearts of thousands, that merely waited for a word to start up into a host of armed men in- vincible. In connection with the Tugendbund or ' league of virtue ' we make the following extract from Menzel : 6 The Tugendbund owed its existence to the Minis- Songs of the Liberation War, 21 ter von Stein; but he having committed himself by a letter, the King, to please Napoleon, was obliged to dismiss him. Hardenberg, however, who succeeded to the office, was animated by the same spirit. The Tugendbund flourished in secret, numbering among its members many of the greatest statesmen, officers, and literati of the day. Among these latter, the two most distinguished were Arndt, by his power as a popular writer, and Jahn, by his influence as a trainer of youth. This man introduced the long-neglected gymnastic exercises into the curriculum of juvenile education ; knowing well that weak and brawnless bodies are never without a fatal reaction on the moral qualities of the mind. He used to walk with his tiros under the Linden in Berlin, and, when they came to the Brandenburger gate, he used to say to each freshman 1 " Well, my lad, what are you thinking on now T' and if the boy was stupid enough not to give a ready answer, he gave him a box on the ear, adding 4 " What should you be thinking on here but this, how the four horses that once stood on that gate, and were taken to Paris by the French, may be brought back here again, and placed where they were?'" 1 1 Menzel's Geschichte der Deutschen^ cap. 469. 22 Songs of tJie Liberation War. A course of most instructive articles might be written on the regenerative process which Prussia went through, from the Battle of Jena to the Declara- tion of War in 1813 ; but we are no further concerned with the matter at present than to show, as briefly as possible, the soul out of which the patriotic and warlike melodies arose. We cannot, there- fore, afford to enter into that most interesting history of RADICAL REFORMS, which preceded the great national uprising; but one short and tragic story in the previous history, an ominous flash of the slumbering volcano, is too closely interwoven with the living facts of patriotic poetry to be passed over in silence. We allude to the story of Schill. The English reader will find it at considerable length in the seventh volume of Mr. Alison. We take the following short notice from Menzel (c. 470 and 476), which extract, with Arndt's ballad, the words and music of which we have given below, No. I., will, we hope, be sufficient to command the sympathies of the reader. 4 Austria, in the gallant stand she made for German liberty in 1809, was deceived in more points than one. She deceived herself in her own Landwehr (militia), numerous indeed and valiant; but wanting that which alone can make a trite soldier, the feeling of personal worth ; subject to be flogged like serfs. No Songs of the Liberation War. 23 less was Austria deceived in respect of Germany. Prussia was as yet too weak ; all her fortresses in the hands of the French, and the new-born confidence in her old enemy Austria as yet not confirmed ; and the members of the Rhenish confederation were still base enough to enjoy self-aggrandizement at the ex- pense of Austria, even though they had to pay for this paltry gain with the loss of German independence, and servile submission to a man who was invincible so long only as German princes could not vanquish their selfishness. 6 We must not suppose, however, that because Prussia could not afford formally to declare war against France in 1809, the hearts of the Prussians were therefore cold to the sacred cause. Many hearts burned in secret. The fiery Schill could not contain his enthusiasm, and rode at his own charge with a regiment of hussars from Berlin, amid general applause, though a decree of a court-martial imme- diately condemned his conduct. At the same time Dornberg rose in Hessia ; and the plan was to raise the whole north of Germany. But Schill committed the fatal error of marching right north ; and having thus separated himself from the Hessian and West- phalian patriots, he fell into the hands of the Danes, whose general, Ewald, without any order to that effect, out of sheer servility joined himself to the 24 Songs of the Liberation War. Dutch, and, with an overwhelming number, shut up the rash hero in Stralsund. Schill fell in a bloody battle in the streets of that place, true to his own maxim BESSER EIN ENDE MIT SCHRECKEN, ALS EIN SCHRECKEN OHNE ENDE. 1 ' The Dutch cut off his head, put it into spirit of wine, and exhibited it publicly in the University of Leyden, where it was still seen a few years ago. No- body claimed it. But herein lies the grand beauty of the German heroes of those days, of Schill, Hofer, Speckbacher they fought without a fee.' 2 The ballad which follows is a simple historical nar- rative in the old style, without any attempt at poetical adornment. Arndt was not an elegant and finished poet like Korner. He spoke to the people in the most common phrase of the people. So much the better ; for the romances of real life which he sings are beauties that require no paint. 1 Better an end with terror, than terror without an end. 2 In the year 1835, the inhabitants of Stralsund erected a stone to the memory of Schill ; and, about the same time, a monument was erected in Brunswick to twenty-five of S chill's officers, fourteen of whom had been shot in that town, and eleven in Wesel. Schill's head was redeemed by the Dutch, and laid to rest with the bones of the companions in arms of this distinguished German patriot. DR. KOMBST. Songs of the L iberation War. ES ZOG AUS BERLIN EIN MUTHIGER HELD. MELODY I. N THE BRAVE SCHILL. THERE went from Berlin a soldier stout, Juchhe ! Six hundred Ritter with him went out, Juchhe ! Six hundred Ritter all German and good, And thirsting all for the Frantzmann's blood. Juchhe ! Juchhe ! Juchhee ! O Schill, thy sabre smites sore ! 26 Songs of the Liberation War. He rode along in gallant trim, Juchhe ! And a hundred footmen marched with him, Juchhe ! God bless your guns, brave footmen all, And with every shot may a Frantzmann fall ! Juchhe, etc. So marched the gallant stout-hearted Schill, Juchhe ! The Frantzmann, where he may come, shall feel, Juchhe ! No warrior, no king gave him command He was sent by freedom, by fatherland ! Juchhe, etc. At Dodendorf fatly the sandy soil, Juchhe ! Was fed with the blood of the Frantzmann vile, Juchhe ! Ten thousand that stood were hacked and hewed, The remnant fled where the brave pursued. Juchhe, etc. At Domitz they stormed each strong redoubt, Juchhe ! And drove the villanous Frantzmann out, Juchhe ! To Pommerland now they come, they come, And the Frantzmann's keen qui vive is dumb. Juchhe, etc. Now bravely to Stralsund they ride, they ride, Juchhe ! Like the billowy swell of the Baltic tide, Juchhe ! O Frantzmann, Frantzmann ! God lend thee wings ! 'Tis Schill ! 'tis Schill ! and death he brings ! Juchhe, etc. Songs of the Liberation War. 27 Like thunder they tramp through the ancient town, Juchhe ! Which saw, without flinching, dark Wallenstein's frown, Juchhe ! Which sheltered the travel- worn Charles from the foe ; O how are thy walls now, proud Stralsund, laid low ! Juchhe, etc. God save ye now, Frantzmenn ! the sword of the free. Juchhe ! For blood of the tyrant thirsts eagerly, Juchhe ! With blood of the Frantzmann gallantly gored, Is brandished in triumph the German sword. Juchhe, etc. O Schill ! O Schill ! thou soldier stout, O, weh ! They have hedged and snared thee round about, O, weh ! Many come from the land, and his coils from the sea, The Dane, the snake, hath gathered for thee ! O, weh ! O, weh ! O, weh ! O Schill, thy sabre smote sore \ O Schill ! O Schill ! thou soldier stout, O, weh ! O, why wilt thou not to the fields ride out ? O, weh ! Shall walls imprison a heart so brave ? In Stralsund shalt thou find thy grave ? O, weh ! etc. O Stralsund, a sorrowful city art thou ! O, weh ! A sorrowful sight thou lookest on now ! O, weh ! 28 Songs of the Liberation War. Through the heart of the gallant the death-shot came ; The base with the noble make pitiless game. O. weh ! etc. A Frantzmann cried, with a butcher-cry, O, weh ! 1 The death of a dog the dog shall die ! ' O, weh ! May rooks and ravens batten on him, Like a thief that dies on the gallows grim ! O, weh ! etc. They carried him forth, and all are dumb ; O, weh ! No fife to play ; no beat of the drum ; O, weh ! No cannon salute ; no greet of the gun, To tell that the race of a soldier was run. O, weh ! etc. With cruel sword they severed his head ; Q, weh ! In an honourless pit his body they laid ; O, weh ! And there he sleeps, in the cool, cool grave, Till God to honour shall wake the brave ! Juchhe ! Juchhe ! Juchhe ! O Schill, thy sabre smote sore ! In this translation we have thought it our duty to give the whole local details of the story, which the historian, and those intimately acquainted with the geography of Schill's march, would not willingly see omitted ; but those who wish to make this song tell, will confine themselves to Stralsund, omitting verses 2, 4, and 5. It is needless to say, that the sudden change from cheerful to sad, which takes place in Songs of the Liberation War. 29 the course of this ballad, affords a fine opportunity for a display of feeling and dramatic power on the part of the singer. Our readers will have seen from the slight histori- cal glance we have been able to cast, that, as the prostration of Germany proceeded from its division, so its rise was essentially connected with at least a temporary UNITY. Many dreamed in those days of Henry the Hun-hunter, Barbarossa, and the Hohen- stauffen ; political* Puseyites, stamping reality with their pleasant whim : but a unity of soul for a great patriotic occasion, though not for permanent political action, was possible ; even this, however, took place only partially. Mecklenburg, among German states, claims the high honour of having been the first to welcome Tettenborn and his Cossacks in the north ; but Saxony, as is well known, the heart and centre of Deutschland, remained constant to Napoleon through the whole war, thus planting the strong nimble Frenchman in a position at Dresden, whence, as the Marquis of Londonderry very well expresses it, like a snake, ' he could twist and turn himself every way.' Bavaria also remained French during the greater part of the war. How much need, there- fore, was there that, in the beginning of the year 1813, Arndt should send forth the famous song of the German's fatherland, which follows : Songs of the Liberation War. WAS 1ST DES DEUTSCHEN VATERLAND ? With-warmth. MELODY II. Where is the Ger - man's fa - ther - land? The I f Prus - sian land ? the S\va - bian land ? Where Rhine the vine - clad p-i & & j =J_3_^_- i^ :p JL _|? ! mountain laves ? Where skims the gull the Bal - tic waves ? O "" no ! O no ! O no ! O no! He owns a wi-der fa- ther-land. BE Songs of the Libe ratio, WHERE is the German's fatherland ? The Prussian land ? the Swabian land ? Where Rhine the vine-clad mountain laves ? Where skims the gull the Baltic waves ? O no ! O no ! O no ! O no ! He owns a wider fatherland. Where is the German's fatherland ? Bavarian land ? or Styrian land ? Where sturdy peasants plough the plain ? Where mountain-sons bright metal gain ? O no ! etc. Where is the German's fatherland ? The Saxon hills ? the Zuyder strand ? Where sweep wild winds the sandy shores ? Where loud the rolling Danube roars ? O no ! etc. Where is the German's fatherland ? Then name, then name the mighty land ! The Austrian land in fight renowned ? The Kaiser's land with honours crowned ? O no ! O no ! O no ! O no ! 'Tis not the German's fatherland. Where is the German's fatherland ? Then name, then name the mighty land ! The land of Hofer ? land of Tell ? This land I know, and love it well ; But no ! etc. 32 Songs of the Liberation War. Where is the German's fatherland ? Is his the pieced and parcelled land Where pirate-princes rule ? A gem Torn from the empire's diadem ? O no ! O no ! O no ! O no ! Such is no German's fatherland. Where is the German's fatherland ? Then name, oh, name the mighty land ! Where'er is heard the German tongue, And German hymns to God are sung ! This is the land, thy Hermann's land ; This, German, is thy fatherland. This is the German's fatherland, Where faith is in the plighted hand, Where truth lives in each eye of blue, And every heart is staunch and true : This is the land, the honest land, The honest German's fatherland. This is the German's fatherland, Which scorns the stranger's proud command ; Whose friend is every good and brave, Whose foe is every traitor knave : This is the land, the one true land, The German's one true fatherland. This is the land, the one true land, O God, to aid be thou at hand ! Songs of the Liberation War. 33 And fire each heart, and nerve each arm, To shield our German homes from harm, To shield the land, the one true land, One Deutschland and one fatherland. We now plunge in medias res of the campaign with Marshal Bliicher's March, a war-song full of fire, vigour, and truth, in which the ' hero of the Germans, the old man with a young heart,' 1 is enshrined in hallowing poetry, to live, we hope, as long as those of whom it was and is sung 'Ez> fj,tiprov K\a5l TO %ios TrepaiuQev e/c rrjs oiKeias oi. Strabo, iv. 193, c. The Rhine Boundary. 93 quently and much more readily on the water than on the land. The land on both sides of a river like Tweeddale or Strathtay is generally part of a natural district, which the river connects, not disjoins. A race of people who had settled on the east side of a fertile river plain would be altogether blind if they did not see that to ferry themselves over to the west section of the same territory is the plainest sequence of a natural right to be where they are. It is not rivers that separate diverse races of men, but mountains, as the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Car- pathians, and the Grampians sufficiently indicate ; and it is, independently of all historical testimony, as improbable that the Rhine should have separated the Gauls from the Germans in the days of the Caesars, as that the river Forth should mark the boundary between the Celtic and the Lowland population of Scotland at the present day. Not the Forth, or even the Tay, but the ' Mons Grampius,' at whose foot Galgacus fought, marks the boundary which nature and history have fixed between the Celtic and Teutonic races in Scotland ; so in Alsatia not the Rhine, but the Vosges, is at once the natural and the historical boundary of France ; or, if this is not the natural boundary, then certainly before they can find another equally natural, the French must go beyond the Rhine and occupy all the plain that 94 The Rhine Boundary. lies to the east of that noble river, and the highlands of Swabia and the Schwarzwald. But obvious as all this is, that lust of conquest which is the besetting sin of all strong governments, led the French, even before the first scenes of what is commonly called modern history, to lay claim to the Rhine as the natural boundary of their country, and to make its acquisition the aim of a perfidious and rapacious policy continued during the space of four centuries. No sooner, in fact, did Charles vn., by the truce of Tours in 1444, find himself relieved from the con- stant fret of the English wars in the west of his dominions, than he set himself to put the wedge into the first gap that he could find in the huge broad- side of the German Empire, as a means for the appropriation of Alsace and Lorraine, and the other German territories that lay beyond the natural boundary of France, and between that boundary and the Rhine. An opportunity for this was soon pre- sented by the quarrels which were at that time run- ning their fretful course between Frederick in. the Austrian Emperor, and the stout mountaineers of the Swiss rural cantons. Frederick, too weak to combat these stalwart peasants with the means at his own disposal, sent his secretary ^Eneas Sylvius with an urgent request to Charles to send him some of his recently disbanded soldiers, to help The RJiine Boundary. 95 him to put down the Swiss. With this request the French monarch complied with an eagerness beyond the expectation and the wish of the Em- peror. It was the old story of the horse asking the man to help it, with which the man com- plied by mounting on the animal's back and refusing to be unseated. Two armies were accordingly sent to the Rhine, one commanded by the King, the other by the Dauphin with the success or failure of which, on the present occasion, we have nothing to do ; but what concerns us to note is the language in which this proceeding is mentioned by Martin, a re- cent and well accredited historian of France : ( On disait hautement autour de Charles vn. qu'il fallait profiter des circonstances, four revendiquer les anciens droits de la couronne de France sur tous les fays situ'es en defa du Rhin. Ainsi la France reprenait dejk son eternelle tendance vers les limites de la Gaule? 1 This single passage is the key to the whole history of France through Louis xiv. up to the great Napoleon, and the present astonishing explosion of national ignor- ance, arrogance, and conceit. French ambition wishes to occupy the Rhine ; therefore it believes the lie that this river is its natural boundary; and its whole 1 Histoire de /a France, par Henri Martin (Paris, 1855), torn. vi. p. 414. The exact words of yEneas Sylvius, Epist. 87, are quoted by the modern historian. 96 The Rhine Boundary. policy, which shall make its Richelieus, and Louises, and Napoleons famous, is 'to profit by circumstances,' for the purpose of getting hold of what does not be- long to it. It is the old Hebrew Ahab with a new name, determined to attach Naboth's vineyard, by fair means if possible, and if not, by foul. This is an overture to a military-diplomatic opera of four centuries, so significant and so prophetic, that the whole of the drama which follows, as in the plays of Euripides, can be spelt out from the prologue. You see the foot of Hercules here fully displayed, and you may gather surely from this what a neck the oaf has, and what a gorge. Let us see how the play goes on. The great wars of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century were religious in their origin, and political only by the necessary admixture of politics with every movement that stirs great masses of men, and asserts large social claims. The Protestant Reformation caused more innocent blood to be shed in Europe than the ambition of many kings. So it must ever be. The devil is a strong man, and will not yield without a struggle. ' I come not to sendpeace, but a sword. ' And so it was that the flaming words of mighty truth, flung into the heart of Germany by the volcanic indignation of honest Martin Luther, gained a victory for the truth indeed over the most vigorous and progressive part of The Rhine Boundary. 97 Europe ; but did so only at the expense of a recur- rent civil war, which not only divided the German Empire against itself, but exposed it a defenceless prey to the intrigues, the fraud, and the rapacity of its neighbours. The first act of the great drama of dismemberment took place in the year 1552, when the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which formed part of the German Empire, were ap- propriated by France. The occasion of this robbery was the imperial obstinacy of Charles v., which led him to force a palliated Popery down the throats of the Germans, and thus raise up an enemy among those of his own household, who was more than a match for his master in all those arts of dissimulation, by the exercise of which weakness has so often con- trived to gain a victory over strength. Maurice of Saxony was a man who knew how to use that wisdom of the ancient Greeks, which taught them ' when the lion's hide would not do, to put on the fox's skin ; ' but, though he was superior to Charles by a mastery in such wiles, he was not strong enough to strike a decisive blow alone. He had therefore recourse to France ; and brought in Henry n. to checkmate the Emperor and to ' profit by circumstances ' for the attainment of the coveted Rhine boundary. No- thing could possibly have sounded more pious and virtuous, patriotic and philanthropic, than the mani- G 98 T7/6 7 Rliinc Boundary. festo with which. Henry entered on this war. To have made an honest bargain, that as the reward of his services against the Emperor he should be in- vested with the sovereignty of the three bishoprics, would not have suited his purpose. Maurice was too good a German to have connived at this ; and, be- sides, he had no power to grant it. He only agreed to the French stipulation, that if it were found neces- sary to elect a new emperor, such a person should be nominated as would be agreeable to the king of France. 1 The manifesto accordingly sounded the note of war in the most noble and disinterested key. The king of France came on the stage as the pro- tector of the liberties of Germany, and of its captive princes ; and the symbol of a cap between two dag- gers showed visibly to the Teutonic people that not for the subjugation or spoliation of the fatherland, but only for the chastisement of Austro-Spanish in- solence, had chivalrous France unsheathed the sword. As for religion, that was wisely not mentioned. That the head of the Church in a Catholic country, who persecuted Protestantism at home, should have undertaken a war for the purpose of protecting Pro- testantism abroad, was enough to show the essential hollowness and selfishness of the alliance ; but those 1 Robertson's Charles V., ch. x. anno 1551. The Rhine Boundary. 99 who made war had at least the grace not to profess in words a zeal for that religion whose interests they were practically disregarding. The whole transaction was political ; and the transparent motive of it was not the defence of Protestant liberties in Germany, but the weakening of the German Empire by dissen- sion, and the advance to the coveted Rhine boundary by a well-calculated combination of diplomatic fraud and military violence. The movement was success- ful. Metz was taken by what a grave historian has not scrupled to designate as a 'fraudulent stratagem/ 1 and from that hour to the present, when the aveng- ing Nemesis has come down upon them in the shape of von Moltke, they have never loosed their grip from this dishonourable capture. The foreign policy of France in the brilliant epochs which followed during the next three centuries, was merely a repetition on a grander scale of the system of aggression just characterized. It was like the re- current eruptions of a volcano, which, after slacken- ing a certain time, is sure to break out again, and which, when it does break out, always sends the devastating lava-stream in the same favourite direc- 1 Robertson, as above, anno 1552. The details will be found in Ehass und Lothringen; nachweis wie diese Provinzen dem Deutschen Reiche verloren gingen, von Professor Adolf Schmidt. Dritte Auflage (Leipzig, 1870). A valuable sketch. IOO The RJiine Boundary. tion. The first, and upon the whole the most re- putable, of those Gallic eruptions, took place in the middle of the seventeenth century, under the administration of Cardinal Richelieu a great man certainly, if, as in the case of the great Napoleon, mere intellectual and volitional force can be justly looked upon as constituting human greatness ; but, if moral considerations also must come into the reckoning, one of the smallest. The most terrible and fearfully unhuman of all creatures is a monster, half-tiger, half-fox, under the cassock of a Christian priest ; and, bating his high intellect and lofty will, this is just the combination which the character of Richelieu seems to present to the student of political ethics. For what is called conscience in normally constituted men, it is vain to look among persons of this type, in whom the passion for political power has absorbed every feeling that teaches a man to weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice. Of himself, Napoleon said truly, 'I love not wine, I love not women, I love not dice ; I am altogether a political animal ;'* and in the same spirit, when Richelieu was on his deathbed, and asked by the attendant priest to forgive his enemies, he answered firmly, ' Richelieu has no enemies but 1 Memoirs of Lord Holland. The R h ine BOIL nda ry. I o I those of the state ;'* which, being interpreted into com- mon language, merely meant that whatever crimes he might have committed, which in private men would have been condemned as revenge and murder, were in his case to be praised as patriotism, for they were all committed for the preservation of his power a power in his estimate identical with the salvation, or at least the aggrandizement, of his country. The moral attitude of Richelieu towards Protestant Ger- many was the same as that of Henry in. ; it pre- sented the monstrous spectacle of a Christian priest of the highest dignity spending magazines of money and shedding oceans of blood for the protection of that faith abroad which he persecuted, and as a con- sistent Romanist was bound to persecute, at home. Such indeed was the utter hollowness, systematic mendacity, and organized duplicity of the policy of France in those days, that the great Richelieu is found coolly subsidizing the Protestant king of Sweden and the Catholic duke of Bavaria, fighting on opposite sides, in the same year. 2 But however abhorrent to every instinct of a healthy humanity the spirit of such a policy might be, and however impure the motives which induced Richelieu to follow out the hereditary aggressive policy of his country in the direction of 1 Crowe, History of France, vol. iii. p. 540. 2 Ibid. vol. iii. p. 505. IO2 The Rhine Boundary. Germany during the \voful period of the Thirty Years' War, it must at the same time be honestly admitted, that if the Cardinal's wars and intrigues ended^ in making Lorraine and Alsace virtually, though not yet in all respects legally and rightfully, a part of the French Empire, the Germans, on the other hand, certainly have no reason to complain that they did not get on that occasion a quid pro quo sufficient to absolve the Cardinal from the charge of open rapa- city and unblushing perfidy which attaches to the name of Louis xiv. For in the progress of that long-drawn chain of civil miseries it became pain- fully apparent, that without calling in foreign aid, Protestant Germany was not strong enough to con- tend against the Catholic imperialism of the south ; and, as the war went on, it seemed morally certain that the rights of conscience would speedily be stamped out in Saxony and Brandenburg, just as they had been in Bohemia. To avert this terrible calamity, the Swedes and the French were called in ; and if the one paid themselves at the peace of West- phalia by settling in Pomerania, and the other by occupying Alsace, it seemed the necessary price of their assistance. No nation can afford to spend blood and treasure for another out of pure generosity. So far, therefore, the German people seem to stand under a plain obligation to Richelieu ; and for the The RJiine Boundary. 1 03 loss of Alsace at that period they have to blame the blindness of their own Emperor as much as the rapacity of the French minister. But the case alters altogether when we pass on to the next famous epoch of Gallic aggrandizement, the age of Louis xiv. Here we have a scene presented to our view more like the wild outburst of some Asiatic scheme of con- quest than the reign of law which we are accustomed to praise in civilized European monarchies. The idea of combined brute force and vulpine cunning which had incarnated itself in the Christian priest Richelieu, now found its more natural and more magnificent avatar in the person of an absolute secular monarch, with whom from the beginning law meant nothing but will, and will nothing but vain- glory and rapacity. Historians have brought to light the extremely significant little educational fact, that when this magnificent Louis was being taught writing, the copy placed before him under the letter R was ( Les Rois font tout ce qitils veulent y' 1 and from the germ of such early precept to such a pupil what but the most gigantic and all-grasping selfish- ness could be the growth 1 A mighty monarch was launched upon the stage of Christian Europe, who coolly considered that he had a right to whatever he 1 Crowe, iii. p. 647. IO4 The Rhine Boundary. wished to take, and who in his public transactions with Christian peoples never scrupled at any promise that it was convenient for him to make to-day and profit- able to break to-morrow. The extraordinary pre- tensions which, after the death of the smooth and subtle Mazarin, grew up in the breast of this spoiled prince, like splendid scarlet fungi out of rank rotten- ness, are to our sober and moral view of things with difficulty conceivable. In regard to Germany, the favourite dream of the Rhine boundary to the imagination of young Louis presented an object altogether unworthy of his ambition : Richelieu, who was only a minister and a churchman, not a mighty monarch, had already almost secured that ; the advocates of Louis boldly claimed for him all that had belonged eight hundred years before to the Franco-Ger- man empire of Charlemagne : the French monarchs, who at that period had their seat of power westward of the Rhine, always extended their sway beyond that river ; France had, in fact, a right of sovereignty over all German countries ; and the acquisitions of Alsace and Lorraine were, in this view, not conquests from the empire, but a just restitution to the ancient crown of France I 1 These were not the views of mere rhetorical partisans lawyers, priests, courtiers, diplo- 1 Crowe, iii. p. 658. The Rhine Boundary. 105 matists, or by whatsoever title the servile crew, ready worshippers of the rising sun, might happen to be named ; they were the actual principles on which this brilliant robber acted, and of which his whole life (called by historians ' glorious ') is an exposition. Fortunately, however, for Germany, Flanders presented a more open field for nefarious appropriation. Here too he found a more specious excuse for his robbery. His Spanish wife's dowry had not been fully paid, and he could seize Spanish Flanders as a compensation for that deficit ; or he would bribe lawyers to prove that the lady was the rightful heir of that part of the Spanish dominions ; and when monarchical knaveries require to be com- mitted, lawyers and priests have always been at hand to give a respectable authority and a sacred sanction to fraud. So the thunder of the Zeus Olympius of Versailles burst principally on Flanders, and there- after on Holland ; brilliantly enough at first, no doubt, but with comparatively small profit in the end ; for in Europe, as Heeren justly remarks, 1 there was no room for such an Asiatic swoop of the sword ; and, like Napoleon afterwards, the omnipotent Louis, crossed and thwarted by a thousand petty combina- tions, might have frequent cause to lament that he 1 Staaten -system. Staatshandel in Europe, 1661-1700, t. i. io6 The RJdne Boundary. had missed his destiny in not being born a Tamer- lane or a Genghis Khan. Holland escaped, and Bel- gium was only partially scathed ; but a final nail required to be driven into the somewhat loose joint- work by which the greater part of Lorraine and Alsace had been incorporated with France ; and Louis was just the man to do it. For this purpose, by way of novelty, or because wars were too expen- sive, he hired lawyers, and created ' chambers of re- union' to prove, by the refurbishing of fusty old papers, and the application of all sorts of unreal fictions, that certain places which were at" that time legally part of the German empire had been forfeited to France. This was the same card which had been so dexterously played by the English king Edward i. to prove that Scotland was a rightful fief of the English crown ; a claim which met with the only proper answer from Bruce at Bannockburn, but which, when made by Louis xiv. against the German Empire, was allowed to pass, not, of course, because anybody felt that it was right, but because Germany, fallen already into two opposite camps, instead of a king to fight its battles, had only a philosopher to teach its duties. This philosopher was Leibnitz, who in the month of August 1670, at Swalbach, declared himself as follows : * Germany, like Greece once, and Italy later, is the great apple of contention with the world. The Rhine Boundary. It is the ball for those who play at monarchy, and the battle-field for those who contest it. The first duty of patriotism is to rescue the common father- land from being made either the plaything of diplomacy or the field of the war-struggle. The princes have but to unite in order to render Germany invincible' 1 But these wise words could be of no avail so long as the head of the German empire was a monarch whose position and interests led him rather to cultivate Popish friendship in the south, and to fear Turkish aggression in the east, than to defend the Protestant interest in north-western Germany against the ambition of the French monarchs. Louis accordingly, a few years afterwards, seized a favour- able moment to appropriate Strasburg ; an act of pure robbery, for which scarcely the most cunning lawyers sitting in royal ' chambers of reunion ' might be able to forge a vindication. Louis in fact for himself required no vindication ; it was only the foolish honest world for whom vindications required to be trumped up. A king is a person who does whatever he pleases ; and it pleased this modern Ahab of the Seine on this occasion to take hold of the vineyard of the German Naboth, which looked so like as if it naturally ought to belong to him. 1 Leibnitz, Bedenken de securitate publica ; apud Crowe's France, iii. p. 675. io8 The Rhine Boundary. This was in the year 1681 ; and two years afterwards, when the Turk, with whom the most Christian monarch warmly sympathized, was closely pressing Vienna, this brilliant robber was looking down across the Rhine, like a vulture, eager to pounce on his expected victim ; for, had the Turks prevailed and Poland not sent forth an unexpected champion in the person of John Sobieski, it was his Majesty's royal intention either to have partitioned the Empire or claimed the German crown for the Dauphin ! I wonder if Bossuet, and the other court-preachers of that time, ever told Louis that robbery was incon- sistent with Christianity. If they did not, they were poor creatures compared with the old Hebrew pro- phets, who never feared to rebuke a crowned sinner to his face ; and the Christianity which they preached as an engine of social reform proved itself vastly in- ferior to the Judaism which it had supplanted. It is not necessary for the readers of these sketches to enter into any detail of the German policy of the great Napoleon. That may be presumed to be fresh in the memory of every educated reader; and the Titanic commotions with which it was attended are even now felt coursing the veins and thrilling the nerves of every man who takes an interest in the history of his kind. One sees here only a repetition of the ambitious schemes of Louis, starting from a The Rhine Boundary. 109 different basis, inspired by a different idea, and spreading over a much ampler space. It was the fashion, no doubt, for the Liberal party in this country, when they were in opposition and obliged to contradict the Tory ministry in all matters, to assert that there would have been no French invasion of Europe, as a consequence of the great revolution of 1789, had the Whig principle of non-intervention been acted upon by England and the other European powers ; but no impartial student of history, looking back on these times calmly from the present hour, can for a moment deceive himself into an illusion of this kind. True, it may be that the convention of Pilnitz, the germ of the Prussian invasion of France in 1792, of which poet Goethe has left a record, was a measure calculated to warn France that they had enemies on the east side of the Rhine against whom it were wise to be on their guard ; but no man who considers the general vehemence of the French counsels (if such volcanic explosions could be called counsels) at the time, and specially the policy and the practice revealed in the seizure of Savoy, can entertain any reasonable doubt that the French policy, from 1792 downwards, whether under the first genuine democrats or under Napoleon, the masked champion of absolutism, was essentially a policy of aggression and encroachment. How, we 1 10 TJic Rhine Boundary. may rather ask, could it be otherwise ? The French nation at that time was mad (if indeed they are not always suffering under a chronic madness) ; and madness, when it is not fatuity, but what the lawyers call furiosity, is always aggressive. Another thing also is sufficiently plain : the country which suffered most from this twenty years' system of aggression was Germany. The changes in the internal govern- ment of the French people made not the slightest change in the hereditary ambitious schemes which dictated their foreign policy; and the fatherland suffered equally in the body and in the members, whether from the overboiling of the democratic cal- dron, stirred by the iron ladle of Napoleon, or from the vainglorious dreams of the magnificent Louis, par- tially realized by the craft of a a despotic churchman and the sword of an unscrupulous soldier. In the summer of the year 1812, as the grand fruit of this gigantic system of European robbery, Germany lay at the feet of Napoleon, and the dreams of Louis xiv. seemed on the point of being realized. In the autumn of 1813, in virtue of a three days' thunder on the plains of Leipzig, matters were reversed ; the whole of this mighty structure of Gallic ambition had fallen to the ground like a castle of cards ; Germany, inspired by a new patriotic soul, and united by a new spiritual bond, with one strong TJic Rhine Boundary. 1 1 1 Titanic upheaval rolled Gallic pretension from its imperial seat ; and Europe for a space breathed free. But another terrible struggle remained. It was, however, only the last convulsive shock of a depart- ing earthquake ; the demon of unrest in the breast of the despotic Corsican and of the foolish French people brought on a final conflict, in which, as might have been prophesied, the frenzied outburst of an unsanctified ambition could not prevail against the grand combination of Celtic chivalry, Scottish persistency, English pluck, and Prussian fervour presented at Waterloo. The combat was now fought out ; the volcano was spent ; the sword had done its perfect work ; and the province of the tongue and the pen commenced. On the 1 5th July 1815 the diplomatists met at Paris a place of meeting ominous of evil to Germany, and very favourable to French intrigue and, as often happens, these heroes of the bureau did not perform their part in the way that seemed the natural sequence of the military scenes which had preceded. It was by the counsels of Stein mainly, and the swords of Bliicher and Gneisenau, that the victories had been gained ; but it was not their swords that dictated the peace. The claims of the Germans were the main thing which occupied the deliberations of the Congress; and unquestionably, after what they had suffered 1 1 2 TJie Rhine Boundary. from French aggression, and what they had achieved by persistent valour, their claims ought to have found favourable ears at that board. But it was quite the reverse : France was the favoured party at the Con- gress; and if any man had cause to boast of the conditions of that peace, it was neither Hardenberg the Prussian minister, nor Metternich, nor even Wel- lington and Castlereagh, but that bland old deceiver and arch-juggler, Talleyrand. The members who composed this Congress were only four Russia, Prussia, England, and France. Here was a gross injustice to the fatherland in the very constitution of the board ; there should have been a representa- tive of Bavaria and the other German powers, who had taken part in the war, and suffered most from the depredations of the French hordes of civilized aggressors. The fate of Germany was to be decided ; but the voice of Germany was not taken. A board consisting of two foreign members England and Russia (with Talleyrand and Louis xvm. at their back) was sitting in Paris, for the shortest space possible (for Castlereagh told them to be quick) ; and these, along with Prussia to represent Prussian interests, and Austria to represent Austrian interests, were to decide upon the fate of Germany, whose songs -had been sung, and whose blood had been poured out like rivers, not certainly to achieve a The Rhine Boundary. 113 diplomatic victory to Talleyrand and the Bourbon. The issue was, what was only too easy to anticipate : 'Diplomatists,' as Capo d'Istria with singular honesty said, * are not the best sort of men ; ' and in fact they often have a sort of work to do, in the adjustment of selfish interests, and the dressing-up of deceitful speciosities, which the best sort of men would scorn to soil their fingers with. The only hope for Ger- many in a council so composed was, that Prussia and Austria, as they had fought together at Leipzig for the common Teutonic liberty, so they should now take counsel together for the common Teutonic right; for that England and Russia would stand forward with any forwardness for the rights of Germany was more than could be expected from human or diplomatic nature. Russia had not lost any territory by French aggression, and so had nothing to revin- dicate; England had been threatened, and a little frightened, but was never attacked ; safe in their re- mote strongholds, the one of these powerful States, defended by a cincture of winter frosts, and the other by a girdle of briny waves, could sit at the green table with a lofty unconcern, and dispense what might appear justice to all but the party who had a serious grievance to redress. The justice of the case plainly required, not that the wings of the French eagle should be allowed to spread themselves out in un- H 1 14 The Rhine Boundary. pruned insolence; but that the people who for more than three hundred years had been systematically plun- dered should force the rapacious bird to disgorge. Why was this not done ? Why were not Alsace and Lorraine, original provinces of the German Empire, wrested from them by the united fraud and force of French governments, and now, by the right of con- quest in the hands of the Germans, not allowed to remain in their hands? I have already indicated where the magnet lay that disturbed the polarity of the needle of justice in this case. England and Rus- sia were indifferent to German interests, but they were not indifferent to Louis xvm. The word ' Le- gitimacy/ blazoned by Talleyrand, was admirably calculated to divert the representatives of crowned heads from the real points at issue. These points were justice to Germany and safety to Europe ; but in- stead of this, legitimacy meant unmerited courtesy to the Bourbons and unwise deference to French feelings. That Alexander's judgment was warped by this false point of view is possible enough; but over and above this, he had no interest to see a strong Germany, or a strong Prussia, and so opened the proceedings of the Congress by putting in a pleading for France. It was currently believed also at the time, that a certain lady, Madame von Kriidener, very beautiful and very good, had helped the imperial 77/6' Rhine Boundary. 1 1 5 Muscovite to varnish with a pious gloss his indiffer- ence to German interests ; and if so, it is not the first occasion on which fair and saintly women, with a magic peculiarly their own, interfering in the stern business of public life, have worked great mischief. Alexander's negative attitude is therefore explained. But what of England ? We had spent much money, lost not a little blood, and made a splendid reputa- tion by opposing the aggressions of France ; and what did we mean by it 1 Was it to make a strong France and a weak Germany ? or should it not rather have been to make a strong Germany and a weak France ? Why, after conquering the robber, did we not treat him as robbers are rightfully treated, by forcing him to return his unjust gains, and making him taste a little of that cup of wrongs which he had so largely administered to others 1 The words of Castlereagh, as they stand before all Europe in the public acts of the Congress, and the known charac- ter of the ministry whom he represented, do, 1 am afraid, sufficiently explain the feebleness and ineffec- tiveness of our policy on that occasion. It had got into the head of the gentleman who conducted the English negotiations for peace, that we had been fight- ing, not for the restoration of the balance of power, destroyed by centuries of French encroachment, but for the restoration of the Bourbons ! Therefore not 1 1 6 The Rhine Boundary. the rights of the German people, as victors at Leip- zig, but the dignity of our ally Louis xvm. as legiti- mate lord of France, one and indivisible, was the main thing to be considered. Never was a more transparent sophism. What the Tory ministry as a mere English party had been fighting for they best knew, but what the Congress of Paris had to perform, as executors of the legacy of Leipzig and Waterloo, was to redeem the wrongs of Germany in the first place, and, in the second place, to provide real and not illusory guarantees against future aggressions on the part of France. However, Castlereagh, I suspect, was not statesman enough to see this he was only a Tory ; and a great international question of European concern seems to have been treated by him as an affair of dynasty and family feeling. Eng- land was thus gained over diplomatically to the interests of that France which she had conquered in the field ; and with this cunning bond of Bourbon legitimacy between the two powers who ought to have been impartial, the case of Germany was lost. For the combined action of Austria and Prussia, which alone could have turned the tables, was no longer there ; the bloody cement of Leipzig gradually melted away in the diplomatic atmosphere of the Hotel Borghese ; the old jealousies showed them- selves, or worked wickedly in the background ; if it The Rhine Boundary. 1 17 was at one time agreed that Alsace should be re- stored, it was found out soon that it was difficult to agree whether Baden should get it, or Wurtemberg, or mighty Austria ; indecision of counsels produced feebleness of action ; and so it was at last resolved to trump up a hasty conclusion, and leave Germany altogether out of the question. Prussian patriots, of course, felt sorely aggrieved at this ; the practical sagacity of von Stein, the fervid patriotism of Arndt, and the far-sighted wisdom of William von Hum- boldt, protested loudly against the blunder ; but it was too late : Prussia might console herself by being allowed to swallow half of her elder sister, German Saxony, whose crime was weakness, not ambition ; while the materials ready for her compensation, the robbed provinces of the German Empire, were allowed to remain in the hands of the victorious vanquished I 1 Europe, now only half pleased with a hasty and partial peace, but heartily sick of a generation of devastating wars, assumed for a long period the atti- tude of political repose ; and Germany retired from her hard-fought fields, with only two guarantees for her future safety against a repetition of her past 1 The materials for forming a sound judgment on the second peace of Paris will be found in Geschichte des Zweiten Pariser- Friedens, von Schaumann (Gottingen, 1824), and in Schmidt's work, quoted as above. 1 1 8 The Rhine Boundary. dangers from the west the guarantee of the favoured Bourbon dynasty, and the possibility that the French people, while still in possession of Strasburg, might depart at length from their cherished dream of the Rhine boundary ! Alas for poor Germany ! these 1 moral guarantees,' of which Capo d'Istria loved to talk, proved the one a broken reed, and the other (if any one ever believed in it) a deceitful mirage. The Bourbons went out, and the Orleanists came in, and the Napoleons came back, and Germany was again face to face with an ambitious France, and a people eager mainly to wipe off the disgrace of Waterloo, but not at all grateful'for the Anglo-Russian modera- tion displayed in the second treaty of Paris, and dreaming hot day-dreams, as before, about the Rhine boundary and the right of France to dictate a policy to Europe at the point of the bayonet ! How uni- versally the Gallic mind was possessed by these over- weening pretensions Germany knew always, and Europe knows now ; but to those who are not fami- liar with the persistency of popular imaginations of national glory, and their indissoluble connection with robbery, the following extract from the school-book of geography officially authorized by France in the government of Louis Philippe may prove instructive : 1 France does not possess its natural boundaries ; it does not possess the whole region which properly is part of The Rhine Boundary. 119 France. Regions are represented by races and languages . The French region really comprehends Nice, Savoy, Switzerland, Rhenish Bavaria, Rhenish Prussia, and Belgium. The natural boundaries of our country are the Rhine from its source to its mouth' 1 After such precocious* indoctrination how could the hopeful scholars of the Polytechnic and other schools of the great nation avoid carrying in their brain-boxes so much gunpowder, ready to explode at the first spark of real or imaginary affront that might be offered to their conceit? And the instructions of the school- books have been only too promptly obeyed. War was declared by France against Prussia for the possession of the Rhine boundary, and for no other purpose ; and does any one doubt, if France had been as mighty in the fight as she was forward in the challenge, that she would have hesitated to appro- priate the long-coveted territory and who could have hindered her? Either she would thus gloriously, as she phrases it, have consummated her long career of splendid robberies, or there must have been a European war. Let then Justice be even-handed. If, as the clear-sighted Duke of Wellington plainly saw, the French revolution and the treaty of Paris 1 From Dussieux, Geographic hist, de la France { Paris, 1843), in Schmidt, p. 5 ; and for another testimony to the same effect see Edinburgh Review, October 1870, p. 570. 1 20 The RJiine Boundary. left France in too great strength for the rest of Europe, 1 and if, notwithstanding this admission, he saw himself constrained by circumstances, as he thought, not to curtail that strength then, let it by all means be done now ; let retribution wait on the guilty. In such matters there is and can be no pre- scription ; certainly none between parties whose political relation has been so fixed as that between France and Germany for the last three hundred years ; and if Europe would have allowed victorious France to appropriate the whole western skirts of Ger- many, which naturally do not belong to her, let her not express a partial indignation, or exhibit a perverted sympathy, if by the same fortune of war a righteous Providence shall now at length have thrown into the hands of the German people part of that territory which does naturally belong to them. Surely a bloody experience may at length have taught us, that a strong Germany in the centre of Europe is the one keystone that can keep the arch of power steady at once from the slow encroachments of Russia on the east, and the explosive aggressions of France on the west. 2 1 Despatches, Paris, nth August 1815. 2 In revising these words, I find that I have omitted only one point which has a direct practical bearing on the terms of peace, which Bismarck, if he should end as well as he has begun, is wisely entitled to dictate to France. It is said to be The Rhine Boundary. \ 2 1 This rapid sketch of the French ' tendency towards the Rhine ' will, we hope, be sufficient to show the reader from what a deep root of fact the Rhine songs have grown. It is only, indeed, when they spring out of such a strong reality that poetry and music possess that most excellent virtue in national educa- a monstrous thing in these times violently to transfer a people from one ruler to another without their consent. My answer to this is twofold. Supposing, what this objection implies, that the people of Alsace, or a majority of them, is really strongly opposed to reunion with Germany, it is quite plain to me that, as to the effect of such a transference, the people of the coun- try are no adequate judges. What they can judge of is their own momentary inconvenience, arising from the disturbance of certain habits and associations. Human laziness will always be averse to all changes for reasons of this kind ; but the mere numerical majority of the Alsatians cannot possibly have any reasonable ground for imagining that the future prosperity of their country would be better insured by joining themselves to the decadent fortunes of France, than to the rising strength of their native Germany. But more than this : the transference of the German provinces of France to their original rulers is really not a provincial and local, but a European question; it is to put a final stop to the ambitious dreams of France with regard to the Rhine boundary, that the restoration to Ger- many of its natural boundary is demanded. Where such large interests are concerned, the likings or dislikings of the inhabit- ants of a small district are of no consideration. They must make up their minds in a little matter to do what it is for the good of the whole political body that they should do. It is neither the convenience of Alsace nor even the rights of Ger- many that are to be considered in the matter, so much as the safety of Europe and the stability of the international structure. 122 The Rhine Boundary. tion, which was attributed to them with such prac- tical sagacity by Plato, Aristotle, and all the wise Greeks. A music divorced from historical fact, and from popular life, however curiously it may entertain the ear, can do nothing to fortify the will, to form the character, or to train the reason ; rather, as we have sometimes seen, it may prove the dainty nurse of feebleness and the sweet solace of slavery. Of the three songs which follow, the first was com- posed by Niklas Becker, about thirty years ago, on oc- casion of the alarm given to Europe, and specially to Germany, by the bellicose preparations and menaces of M. Thiers. 1 The second, the celebrated ' Wacht am Rhein,' came to life under the same Gallic pro- vocation ; and with regard to its authorship, as well as that of the music to which it is sung, we borrow the following account from the Athenaiim : 4 It has now been clearly ascertained, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that " The Watch on the Rhine " was written in November 1840, a few months later than the famous "Rhine-Song," by Nicolaus Becker; and its author, who up to this time could not be named with any certainty, is Max Schneckenburger, a native of Thalheim, Wiirtemburg, who, as a young man of twenty or twenty-one, was then living at 1 Quarterly Review, October 1870, p. 501. TJie RJtine Boundary. 123 Berne, and who, as has now been attested by the evidence of Professor Hundeshagen of Bonn, first read the verses, soon after they had been written, to a circle of German friends (Professor Hundeshagen being one of the number), then assembling occasion- ally at Burgdorf, near Berne. The song has been set to music several times (first in the " Chorlieder- sammlung fur Schulen," by Erck and Greef), but only one tune the one now universally adopted, and ringing through Germany and France, from the coast- fires on the Baltic to the bivouacs of the Crown Prince of Prussia beyond Chalons has become popular. It owes its origin to Carl Wilhelm, for- merly Capellmeister at Crefeld, Rhenish Prussia, and dates as far back as some years before 1850. It was first made known by those celebrated part-singers the four brothers Steinhaus of Elberfeld, who sang it before the present King (then Prince) of Prussia, on the occasion of a fete champetre given to him on the 6th July 1856, by the city of Elberfeld. Since then the song has become more and more a favourite with the choral unions of Germany, until, at the outbreak of the war, it suddenly became the favourite patriotic song, in fact, the song of the whole German nation, superseding even the old national hymn of E. M. Arndt, " Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland ?" Carl Wilhelm, the composer of the song, now a man of about 1 24 The Rhine Boundary. fifty years, is still living (although sick and in poverty), to earn the 'fruits of the sudden popularity of his tune. His name is on every tongue, the illustrated papers give his portrait, public subscriptions in his favour are successfully going on, and the Queen of Prussia has sent him a golden medal in acknowledgment of his merits. She had intended to confer the same honour on the poet, but poor Schneckenburger died young in 1851. His widow, who has corroborated Professor Hundeshagen's evidence by producing the original draft of the song in her late husband's hand- writing, is still leading a quiet and retired life at Thalheim. His son is at present in the field, with the Wiirtemberg Jagers, in the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia.' The third Rhine song, with which we conclude, is a popular air well known in this country, and gener- ally sung to words instinct with the graceful beauty which belonged to the pen of Felicia Hemans ; but for our present purpose it is more suitable to give a free translation of the original German words by Claudius. The Rhine Boundary. 12$ SIE SOLLEN IHN NIGHT HABEN. MELODY VII. Moderate. G. KUNZE. w^, * ^~ No! no! we'll keep our ri - ver, Our own, ourGer-man Rhine; These foul-beaked ra - vens ne - ver Shall seize 4- - - 126 Sq The Rhine Boundary. mf 3rfSfefel=E our glo - ri - ous Rhine. While, with broad bo - som I 1- -J G" heav - ing, His man - tie green he wears, And while his bil - lows cleav - ing, The Ger - man boatman fares. | D. C. al Fine. The Rhine Boundary. 127 No ! no ! we'll keep our river, Our own, our German Rhine ; These foul-beaked ravens never Shall seize our glorious Rhine. While, with broad bosom heaving, His mantle green he wears, And while, his billows cleaving, The German boatman fares. No ! no ! no Frankish master Shall hold our German Rhine, While German hearts beat faster From his strong-hearted wine ! While mount is his, and meadow, And castle's rocky pride, And mighty minster's shadow Floats on his ample tide. No ! no ! they'll hold it never, While German staunch and true Upon his German river A German maid shall woo ! While speckled fish is swimming His mighty flood below, And German songs full-brimming From minstrel's mouth shall flow. No ! no ! the sons of Hermann Will hold their own dear Rhine, Until the last true German Lies buried 'neath the Rhine ! 128 TJie Rhine Boundary. WACHT AM RHEIN. MELODY VIII. C. WlLHELM. Allegro marcato. 8 /3 *' A loud cry swells like thunder's peal, Like roar - ing wave, like I cresc. I ? f f clash - ing steel; The Rhine, the Rhine, the Ger-man Rhine ! Who'll SP 1 The Rhine Boundary. I2C) come to watch the Ger - man Rhine ? Dear fa - ther - land, no EF= fear be thine, dear fa - ther-land, no fear be thine, --^-. Brave hearts and true shall watch, shall watch the Rhine, 1 1- > ff 130 The Rhine Boundary. Brave hearts and true shall watch, shall watch the Rhine. A loud cry swells like thunder's peal, Like roaring wave, like clashing steel : The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine ! Who '11 come to watch the German Rhine ? Dear fatherland, no fear be thine, Brave hearts and true shall watch the Rhine. From heart to heart the quick thrill flies, And lightning leaps from countless eyes, Where each true German, sword in hand, Guards the old border of the land. Dear fatherland, etc. And though with Death he make his bed, No stranger foot thy bank shall tread ; Rich, as in waves thy regal flood, Is Deutschland in true hero-blood. Dear fatherland, etc. TJic RJiine Boundary. 1 3 1 He lifts his eye to Heaven's high crown, Whence his high-hearted sires look down, And swears an oath to keep thy flood As German as his true heart's blood. Dear fatherland, etc. Till the last drop shall drain our veins, While in one arm one blade remains, And while one fuming shot is sped, No Frankish foot thy bank shall tread. Dear fatherland, etc. The oath flies forth, the billows flow, The forward banners flout the foe ! The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine, True Germans all, we watch the Rhine ! Dear fatherland, no fear be thine, We watch, true Germans all, the Rhine ! 132 The Rhine Boundary. AM RHEIN, AM RHEIN, DA WACHSEN UNSRE REBEN. MELODY IX. Kraftig. ifcfcoz: W-^ J. ANDRE. Come, crown your cups with leaves, your brow with gar - lands, And quaff the glow - ing wine ! And quaff the glow - ing wine ! No The Rhine Boundary. 133 fa - mous stream that rolls in near or far lands Gives bless - ings like the Rhine ! Gives bless - ings like the Rhine ! Gives blessings like the Rhine ! Gives blessings like the Rhine ! . 1 34 The Rhine Boundary. Come, crown your cups with leaves, your brows with garlands, And quaff the glowing wine ! No famous stream that rolls in near or far lands Gives blessings like the Rhine ! Not every vale of fruitful Deutschland bears it, The nectar-yielding vine ; On sunny slopes old Father Rhine prepares it, And yields this glowing wine. The Brocken huge in shaggy length reclining Doth bear the giant pine, Gives precious ore, gives berries bright and shining, But not this glowing wine. True German wine we drink, not French or Spanish, When hand in hand we join, And make our blood rich with the generous Rhenish Brewed. by our German Rhine. This noble wine it is both strong and mellow, And fires with strength divine : Thus mild and strong be each true German fellow That loves our glorious Rhine ! God bless thy flood, thou regal-rolling river ! We quaff thy glowing wine, And, while we quaff, the Gaul shall claim thee never, Our own, our German Rhine ! The Rhine Boundary. 135 So be it ! and may the songs which have been thus sung, and the blood which has been spilt, and the invasions which have been so manfully repelled, tend to produce in the British mind a lasting respect for that people to whose intellectual labours Europe has been under such great obligations, and whom we now at length, in insular Britain, see so much cause to admire, as our emulators and rivals in the world of policy and of action. APPENDIX OF GERMAN WORDS TO THE MELODIES. 1. 3 jog cw3 33erttn em tapferer & ^og au SBetlin ein tctyfeter etb, j @r fii^rte fec^S^unbert better trt^ Selb, i ^e^g^unbert belter mtt tebltcfyem @ie biitfteten aHe D <5fyU, betn (SaBel t^ut tue^ ! ^ogen mit Olettern unb Oloffen tut taufenb bet tatferjien S^ft^en mit c^u^en, ott fegne eu^ ieglid)en @ noeld;en ein Stangmann ertlaffen , etc. German Words to the Melodies. 137 er mit ben Sran^ofen ftcfy fcfylagen unit ; 3^)n fenbet fetn Jlaifer, fein Jfcnig au, 3^)n fenbet bte ffteif)eit, ba^ 93aterlanb au e, etc, SBet !Dobenborf fdrBten bte banner gut fette anb mit gran^ftf^em 33Iut, et taufenb jer^teBen bie t me^r fcfyrei'n. )e ; etc. (Stratfitnb ftiirmte ber teiftge 3wg ), Jran^ofen, ^crftitnbet t^)r 95ogelflug ! D, tuuc^fen eu^> gebern unb Slitgel gefc^tx)inb ! & naf)et ber @(^ttt unb er teitet n;ie SBtnb. e, etc. rcitet trie ^Better ^tnein in bie tabt, o ber SBattenftein weilanb ^ertegen ftc^ 138 Appendix of German Words 2Bo ber jtrolfte Jiarotug tm t)ore djlief ; 3e|t liegen il)re Styurme unb 2Jtaueru tief. 3ud)l;e, etc, D, tx>ef) eud), gtanjofen ! me ma^t bet ^ob $Bte fatten bte better bte <8aM rot^ ! 3)ie belter, fie fit^Ien bag beutfc^e SBlut, Sran^ofen jn tobten, bag baud)t i^nen gut, 3ud)t)e, etc, D, wl)e bir, c^ttl ! 5)u ta^ferer ftnb btr fur MBtfc^e SRefee geftettt ! ^en ju anbe, eg fcfyteid)et 2)er >a'ne, bie tiicftf^e 3urt;i)e, etc, D c^itt ! D c^tU, bu ta^ferer f^rengejl bu titc^t mtt ben Oteitern tn'g fc^tie^t bu in Sftauetn bie Sa^ferf eit eiu ? 35et tralfunb fottfi bu BegraBen fein ! 3ucl$e, etc, D tralfunb ! D traurigeg tralcfunb ! 3n btr ge^t bag ta^ferfte *erj ju runb ; (ine t^ugel burd^Bo^ret bag reblid;fte llnb SBuBen, fte treiSen mit ^elben Sud^e, etc, to the Melodies. 1 39 fcfyreit eiu freezer Sranjofenmunb : foft il;n fcegraften wie einen art> fein 6tein gum eba'cfytnifi geftettt ; Soc^ Jjjat er gleid? feinen (S^renftein, etn SRante tuirb nimmer i?ergeffen fein. 3ud$e, etc. Senn (attelt ein SReiter fein fc^nette^ $ferb, Unb fdjn/tnget ein Oieiter fein @o rufet er jornig, ^err d;itt ! Set; an ben Sranjofen eud) rdd;en e f etc. 140 Appendix of German Words tft be3 2>eutfdjjen SSaterianb ? ift be3 >eutfd?en SSaterlanb? 3ji'8 $xeu enlanb ? tft'g djwaBenlanb ? 3fi'8 n;o am 0lein bie OleBe Blu^t ? 3fi'8 n>o am fficlt bie 3^i?t>e gtefit ! O netn ! item ! netn ! @ein 33aterranb mu^ grower fetn, 33atetlanb mu^ grower fetn. SBa8 ift beS Deutf^cn 3SaterIanb? 3 ji'8 SBatettanb ? tft^ teierlanb ? eu?ij5 e iji ba^ Defterret^, 5(n a f^njur er Beim (tfen gar ^ornig unb Ijart, 2)em Sran^mann gn n?etfen bie beutfdje ^(rt. l;ei raffaffa ! etc. at er getjalten, alg ^IrtegSruf erllang, a Brac^ er ben jjranjofen in drummer Iu(f unb S)a lagen fie fo ftd)er nac^ lefetem ^arten Satt, 2)a J^arb ber alte SBIudjer etn gfclbmarf^aH. ^)et raffaffa ! etc. 5)rum Blafet, i^r $rometert, u alter ta^f rer 3)egen, in granfreicfy l^inein ! ei raffaffa ! etc. 4. 2Ba$ gtcinjt bort om SBatbe ? glanjt bort i?om SBalbe tm onnenf^etn ? nd^er unb nd^jer Braufen. fid) tyerunter in biifteren 9flei^)'n Unb geftenbe Corner erfc^atten barein, (yrfuflen bie ^eele mtt raufen. Unb ttenn i^)r bie fd;trarjen efetten fragt : ifi, bag ijl 8u^on3 ; 3 wilbe t)ern;egene 3agb ! 144 Appendix of German Words SBa3 gie^t bort rafdj biwfj ben fmjiern QMb, Unb ftreifet fcon SBergen $u SSergen ? (g legt ftc() in nddjtlidjen '8 n^tlbe tertregene 3agb ! 5Bo bie O^eBen bort gluten, bort Braufl ber SR^ei Ser 2But^}ticfy geBorgen ftc^) meinte ; 3)a nal)t eg ft^nett mit etwtterfcfyein llnb wcirft ftc^ mit tiiftigen Slrmen ^)inein, llnb fpringet an'g Ufer ber getnbe, llnb trenn i^)r bie fc^trar^en c^roimmer fragt : Sag ift bag ift itott'g n^ilbe i?ern:egene Sagb ! Braufi bort int $$ale bie txnlbe fc^Iagen bie @c^n?erter gufammen ? e Oteiter fc^Iagen bie ^lac^t, llnb ber nn!e ber Srei^eit ifl glii^enb Unb lobert in Hittigen Sl^nimen ! llnb trenn il;r bie fd)tx>aren 9f!eiter fragt : Sag ift Su|otx)'g nnlbe i)ewegene Sagb ! fd)eibet bort roc^elnb i?om onnenlid^t, Unter njinfelnbe Seinbe geBettet ? to the Melodies. 145 ber $ob auf bem Sod; bie ttacfern itbe r t)ern;egene 3agb ! 5> 2Sater, tc| rufe SSater, ic^ rufe bid) ! SBruKcub uinteollt mic^ ber Sam^f ber @^rut)enb um^ucfen mid; raffetnbe S5li|e en!er ber 6^lad;ten, ic^ rufe bid;, SSater, bu fii^re mic^ ! SSater, bu fii^re ie bu nriKft, fo fiifyre 1 ott, id; erfenne b K 146 Appendix of German Words ott, id) etlenne bid? ! @o im ^et6ftlid)en 0taufd)en bet flatter, 5llg im @d;lad)tenbonnetn:ettet Ittqueft bet nabe, etfenn' id) bid) ! 33atet, bu fecjne mid). SSatet, bu fegne mic^ ! 3n beine ^anb Befell' ify mein Men ! )u fannfi eg ne^men, bu ^ajl eg gegeBen - } Sum e6en, jum (stetBen fegne SSater, id) preife btd^ ! r id) preife tft ia fein ^am^f fur bie uter bet drbe ^eiltgfte f^u|en rxstr mit bent )'tum, faUenb unb flecjenb, ^preif i , bit ott, bit etgefr id) mid) ! 28enn mid? bie Sonnet beg $obeg Begtitfien, 2Benn meine 2lbetn geoffnet flie^en : Sit, mein ott, bit etgefr ic^ mid) ! SSatet, ic^ tufe bid) ! 6. S)u @c^U)ett an nteinev Sinfen. Su ^erjtnnig, QII3 trdrfl bu mtr getraut, 2113 eine lieBe SBraut. urrat)! etc. 2)ir ^aB' tc^'3 {a ergeBen, 9?^ein li^te^ tfenteBen. 2ld), t^dren n?ir getrant ! SBann ^olft bu betne SBraut? ;; etc. 2Benn bie ^anonen fc^ret'n, oF icf) bag ^teBc^en ein. etc* 148 Appendix of German Words lf D feltgeS itmfangen ! 3d) Ijarre mtt 23etlangen. u, SBrdut'gam, Ijofe mid), SWein Jtran^en Heifct fur bid). 1 ' etc. flirrji bu in bet c^eibe, ijelle (Sifenfreube, ift, fo fd;lac^tenfro^ x)a^ flirrft bu fo? ! etc. SBo^l Hirr' i^ in ber 3^ fe^ne mid) gum treite, Olec^t n^itb unb fc^Iad)tenfro Sruui meiter, !lirr ; id; fo. j; ! etc. eiB' bod) im engen wiKjl bit l^ier, mein SBteiB ftitt im Jtammerlein ; 35leiB, Balb ^joF M) bic^ ein. etc. lange wrten D fc^oner ^iebe^garten, 33ott ffiSSlein Wutigrot^ Unb aufgeilu^tem ^ob. ;; ! etc. to the Melodies. ' 149 @o !omm benn au8 bet @d)eibe, >u, ^letters Slugenweibe. *erau, twin (scfyvw - gu^r' bid) tn'3 SSatertyauS. n nt @ie fotten i^n nt^t JjaBen, ben freten beutfc^en St^etn, D6 fte trie gter'ge 0laBen fid) Differ barnac^ fc^rein ; @o lang' er tu^ig txsatCenb fetn grimed ^leib noc^ tra'gt, @o Tang' ein Oluber fc^attenb an feine 2Bogen fd^Iagt ie [often i$n ni^t ^)aBen, ben freten beutf^en 9R^)ein, o lang' fid) etjen laBen an feinem geuetwin ; o lang' in feinem trome no^ fefl bie Selfen fie^n, o lang' fi^ ^o^e 3)ome in feinem Spiegel fe^n. @ie fotlen il)n ni^t ^aBen, ben freien bentfd^en Ol^ein, etn. dg fcrauffc etn 0luf wte iDonner^att, SBie ^n^ertgeflirr unb SBogen^ratl : Sum 3%in, gum 0l^)ein, gum beutfd)en 9l^etn, SBer n^ill beg tromeg filter fetn ! ^aterlanb, magfl ru^)ig fein, $atettanb, magft tu^)tg fetn ; ' Seft fte^)t unb treu bie SBadjt, bie SBac^t am Seft jie^t unb treu bie SBadjt, bie SBa^t am *unberttaufenb jutft Unb 5Wer 5tugen Bli^en t;etl, fcieber, fromm unb ftar!, bie tyll'ge SSaterlanb, etc. r Blicft ^)inauf in 5)a *elben*33ater nieber[d)au'n, Unb fcfyttort mit jloljer u ^ein BleiBft beutfc^ trie meine SSrufi ! ' ief> 33aterlanb, etc* 152 German Words to the Melodies. So Icing em rofen 95tut nod) gtitljt, ttod; cine gfauji ben Degen jie^t, llnb nod) ein 5ltm bte 23ttd)fe fyannt, SSetritt letn Setnb $ter beinen @tranb ! 23aterlanb, etc. Der @(^tt>ur erfc^attt, bie SSogen rtnnt, Die JJa^nen pattern ^)oc^ tm 5Btnb, 5tm Ol^etn, am Ot^ein, ant beutfc^en atle ticoKen fitter fein ! 95atertanb, etc. 9^ 2lm Sl^etn, am SJ^efn, ba tt>a$fetu 9lm Olt^etn, am OH;ein, ba tra^fen unfre OleBen, efcgnct fet ber Sttyein, gcfegnet fei ber Ol^etn ! Da trac^fen fie am lifer l)tn unb geBen biefen aBe^ein, un0 btefen fiaBenjetn, btefen ^a6et^etn, un3 biefen trinft ! fo trinft ! nnb lafi t un^ attetxsege freu'n unb frot)Itc^ fein, un^ freu'n unb fro^tid^ fetn, llnb nwfiten tvir, n?o Semanb traurig la'ge, 2Bir gaten i^m ben 28etn, t^ir ga'Ben i^m ben SBein, 2Btr ga'Ben i^m ben $Betn, tuir gaben i^>m ben 28ein. -^ OF THB D BY THOMA- EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY THOMAS AND ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY. THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $T.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. FED 13 1S4| M APR 12 1943