Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4Menzel, Wolfgang
History
Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4
Menzel, Wolfgang
Germany -- History
[Footnote 8: Armbruster's "Register of French Crime" contains as
follows: "Here and there, in the neighboring towns, there were
certainly symptoms of an extremely favorable disposition toward the
French, which would ill deserve a place in the annals of German
patriotism and of German good sense. This disposition was fortunately
far from general. The appearance of the French in their real
character, and the barbarous excesses and heavy contributions by which
they rendered the people sensible of their presence, speedily effected
their conversion." The French, it is true, neither murdered the
inhabitants nor burned the villages as they had during the previous
century in the Pfalz, but they pillaged the country to a greater
extent, shamefully abused the women, and desecrated the churches.
Their license and the art with which they extorted the last penny from
the wretched people surpassed all belief. "Not satisfied with robbing
the churches, they especially gloried in giving utterance to the most
fearful blasphemies, in destroying and profaning the altars, in
overthrowing the statues of saints, in treading the host beneath their
feet or casting it to dogs.--At the village of Berg in Weingarten,
they set up in the holy of holies the image of the devil, which they
had taken from the representation of the temptation of the Saviour in
the wilderness. In the village of Boos, they roasted a crucifix before
a fire."--_Vide Hurter's Memorabilia, concerning the French allies in
Swabia, who attempted to found an Alemannic Republic. Schaffhausen,
1840_. Moreau reduced them to silence by declaring, "I have no need of
a revolution to the rear of my army."]
[Footnote 9: Notwithstanding Jourdan's proclamation, promising
protection to all private property, Würzburg, Schweinfurt, Bamberg,
etc., were completely pillaged. The young girls fled in hundreds to
the woods. The churches were shamelessly desecrated. When mercy in
God's name was demanded, the plunderers replied, "God! we are God!"
They would dance at night-time around a bowl of burning brandy, whose
blue flames they called their être suprème.--_The French in Franconia,
by Count Soden._]
[Footnote 10: "They deemed the assassination of a foreigner a
meritorious work."--_Ephemeridae of 1797._ "The peasantry, roused to
fury by the disorderly and cruel French, whose excesses exceeded all
belief, did not even extend mercy to the wounded; and the French, with
equal barbarity, set whole villages on fire."--_Appendix to the
Campaign of 1796_].
[Footnote 11: When scarcely in his twenty-seventh year. He was one of
the most distinguished heroes of the Revolution, and as remarkable for
his generosity to his weaker foes as for his moral and chivalric
principles. The Archduke Charles sent his private physicians to attend
upon him, and, on the occasion of his burial, fired a salvo
simultaneously with that of the French stationed on the opposite bank
of the Rhine.--_Mussinan_.]
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