Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in FranceBrandes, Georg
History
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in France
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Naturalism in literature; Romanticism
The last years of Madame de Krüdener's life present no events of
historical interest. She became ever more sincerely and fanatically
religious, and her desire to display her faith in deeds became ever
more ardent. It was now the one desire of her heart and object of her
life to help the poor and the sick. She preached to the poor, founded
churches, and proclaimed the advent of the kingdom of God. But from the
moment when her Christianity took a practical form the character of
her position changed. The royal personages, the authorities, all the
great, who as long as she remained the court lady had smiled upon her,
instinctively divined an enemy in her as soon as she began to address
herself to the people. On one occasion she traversed Switzerland from
frontier to frontier in a sort of mad religious triumphal procession;
the next time she visited that country she was driven out of one town
after the other. At Basle, where she distributed tracts among the
soldiers and according to her own account converted half the garrison,
the infuriated clergy succeeded in having her expelled from the town.
In Baden, where her charities during a famine were truly munificent,
her house was surrounded by gendarmes, and the people who had sought
refuge with her were dispersed. She was expelled from Lucerne by the
police authorities. When she tried to make her way into France through
Alsace, she was turned back, and was at the same time forbidden to
return to Baden. She was finally conducted under police escort to the
Russian frontier, being passed on by the Würtemberg to the Bavarian,
by the Bavarian to the Saxon, by the Saxon to the Prussian police,
and by these last handed over to the authorities of her own country.
She had lost Alexander's favour for ever, partly because she had been
much too communicative about the origin of the Holy Alliance, partly
because of the mixed and often bad company in which she travelled
about. The accounts which she gave in her religious periodicals and
pamphlets of social evils, of the boundless distress of the poor and
the unjust oppressions of their rulers, were denounced as socialism and
communism. Christianity as she understood it could not but be obnoxious
to the authorities. She was, moreover, foolish enough to express her
enthusiastic sympathy with the Greek war of independence in a very
incautious manner, and presumptuous enough to declare openly that the
Emperor, as founder of the Holy Alliance, was in duty bound to place
himself in the forefront of a crusade against Turkey. Cast off by
Alexander, she left St. Petersburg, and from this time onwards lived,
as a missionary, a life of self-inflicted penance. She underwent all
kinds of hardships, suffering voluntarily herself, and alleviating the
sufferings of others whenever it was possible. She died in 1824 while
on a missionary expedition in the Crimea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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