Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4Menzel, Wolfgang
History
Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4
Menzel, Wolfgang
Germany -- History
[Footnote 10: He fled on Moreau's invasion to England, where he formed
this alliance. There was at one time a project of creating him elector
of Hanover and of partitioning Würtemberg between Bavaria and Baden.]
[Footnote 11: The commandant, Faber, defended the place for fourteen
months with a garrison of 2,000 men. During the siege, the
badly-disciplined French soldiery secretly sold provisions at an
exorbitant price to the starving garrison.]
[Footnote 12: Klebe gave an extremely detailed account of the French
government: "It is, for instance, well known that a pastry cook was
nominated lord high warden of the forest! over a whole department, and
a jeweller was raised to the same office in another.--The documents
proving the cheating and underselling carried on by Pioc, the lord
high warden of the forests, and by his assistant, Gauthier, in all the
forests in the department of the Rhine and Moselle, are detailed at
full length in 'Rübezahl,' a sort of monthly magazine. It is
astonishing to see with what boundless impudence these people have
robbed the country.--Still greater rascalities were carried on on the
right bank of the Rhine. Gauthier robbed from Coblentz down to the
Prussian frontiers." These allegations are confirmed by Görres in a
pamphlet, "Results of my Mission to Paris," in which he says, "The
Directory had treated the four departments like so many Paschalics,
which it abandoned to its Janissaries and colonized with its
favorites. Every petition sent by the inhabitants was thrown aside
with revolting contempt; everything was done that could most deeply
wound their feelings in regard to themselves or to their country."
"The secret history of the government of the country between the Rhine
and the Moselle," sums up as follows: "All cheated, all thieved, all
robbed. The cheating, thieving, and robbing were perfectly terrible,
and not one of the cheats, thieves, or robbers seemed to have an idea
that this country formed, by the decree of union, a part of France." A
naïve confession! The French, at all events, acted as if conscious
that the land was not theirs. The Rhenish Jews, who, as early as the
times of Louis XIV., had aided the French in plundering Germany, again
acted as their bloodhounds, and, by accepting bills in exchange for
their real or supposed loans, at double the amount, on wealthy
proprietors, speedily placed themselves in possession of the finest
estates. Vide Reichardt's Letters from Paris.]
CCLI. The Pillage of Switzerland
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