In 1799, there was the menace of another war, and the inhabitants were most zealous in strengthening the fortresses. An official of the Lower Rhine wrote in his report on the subject of the Alsatians: "They will, like the Rhine, always be the impregnable bulwark of the Republic" (G. Weil). The assimilation of France and Alsace was made complete during the Revolution. Fustel de Coulanges well summed up this truth when he wrote in 1870: "Do you know what has made Alsace French? It is not Louis XIV., but it is our revolution of 1789. From that moment Alsace has followed our fortunes; she has lived our life; she thinks as we think; she feels as we feel; our glories and our faults, our joys and our sorrows." The wars of the Empire gave to the Alsatians a chance to display their military aptitude which they rendered the more generously to the service of the country, as promotion was given to each according to his merits; each soldier carried in his knapsack the baton of a Maréchal de France! The generals of Alsace and of Lorraine who distinguished themselves in the army of the Republic and with Napoleon are numerous. Among the best known are Kléber, Kellermann, Rapp, Lefévre, Ney, Mouton, Lasalle, Shérer, Westermann, and Schramm. The names of twenty-eight Alsatian generals are engraved upon the Arc de Triomphe at Paris. * * * * * Many able Alsatians devoted themselves to the administration of the German countries that were at that time under the French Government. Their knowledge of German helped them in their task. After the disasters in Russia and in Leipzig, in 1813, the Alsatians showed exemplary devotion in their preparations for defence and sacrifices for the army. In his _Mémoires_, Ségur says on this subject: "There were no better, braver, more generous Frenchmen in all France." Never, during all these trying days, did they remember that their forebears had been subjects of the Holy Empire. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after the fall of Napoleon, the pan-Germans made a campaign for the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in launching the slogan: _Der Rhein, Deutschlands Strom nicht Deutschlands Grenze_ (The Rhine is a German river and not Germany's boundary). This found no echo in Alsace, which forced from the poet, Rückert, the heartfelt cry of indignation which fell from the lips of the German soldiers, who were obliged to evacuate Alsace: "And thou Alsace! Degermanized race, thou too dost jeer at us, oh, deepest infamy!" The Alsatian poet, Ehrenfried Stoeber, whom the Germans readily invoked on account of his dialect, said that if his harp was German his sword was French. Referring to the Revolution he said: "If we speak of the wars of the Revolution in which we fought for our independence and the protection of the indefeasible rights of man, it is because we are proud of our fervent ardour and enthusiasm."