CCLXIX. The Revolution in Brunswick, Saxony, Hesse, etc.

THE Belgian revolution spread into Germany. Liege infected her neighbour, Aix-la-Chapelle, where, on the 30th of August, 1830, the workmen belonging to the manufactories raised a senseless tumult which was a few days afterwards repeated by their fellow-workmen at Elberfeld, Wetzlar, and even by the populace of Berlin and Breslau, but which solely took a serious character in Brunswick, Saxony, Hanover, and Hesse.

Charles, duke of Brunswick, was at Paris, squandering the revenue derived from his territories, on the outburst of the July revolution, which drove him back to his native country, where he behaved with increased insolence. His obstinate refusal to abolish the heavy taxes, to refrain from disgraceful sales, to recommence the erection of public buildings, and to recognise the provincial Estates, added to his threat to fire upon the people and his boast that he knew how to defend his throne better than Charles X. of France, so maddened the excitable blood of his subjects that, after throwing stones at the duke's carriage and at an actress on whom he publicly bestowed his favours, they stormed his palace and set fire to it over his head, Sept. 7th, 1830. Charles escaped through the garden. His brother, William, supported by Hanover and Prussia, replaced him, recognised the provincial Estates, granted a new constitution, built a new palace, and re-established tranquillity. The conduct of the expelled duke, who, from his asylum in the Harzgebirge, made a futile attempt to regain possession of Brunswick by means of popular agitation and by the proclamation of democratical opinions, added to the contempt with which he treated the admonitions of his superiors, induced the federal diet to recognise his brother's authority. The ex-duke has, since this period, wandered over England, France, and Spain, sometimes engaged in intrigues with Carlists, at others with republicans. In 1836, he accompanied a celebrated female aeronaut in one of her excursions from London. The balloon accidentally upset and the duke and his companion fell to the ground. He was, however, as in his other adventures, more frightened than hurt.

In Saxony, the progress of enlightenment had long rendered the people sensible of the errors committed by the

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old and etiquettish aristocracy of the court and diet. As early as 1829, all the grievances had been recapitulated in an anonymous printed address, and, in the beginning of 1830, on the venerable king, Antony, (brother to Frederick Augustus, deceased, A. D. 1827,) declaring invalid the settlement of his affairs by the Estates, which evinced a more liberal spirit than they had hitherto done, and on the prohibition of the festivities on the 25th of June, the anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, by the town-council of Dresden and by the government commissioner of the university of Leipzig from devotion to the Catholic court, a popular tumult ensued in both cities, which was quelled but to be, a few weeks later, after the revolution of July, more disastrously renewed. The tumult commenced at Leipzig on the 2nd of September and lasted several days, and, during the night of the 9th, Dresden was stormed from without by two immense crowds of populace, by whom the police buildings and the town-house were ransacked and set on fire. Disturbances of a similar nature broke out at Chemnitz and Bautzen. The king, upon this, nominated his nephew, Prince Frederick, who was greatly beloved by the people, co-regent: the civic guard restored tranquillity, the most crying abuses, particularly those in the city administration, were abolished, and the constitution was revised. The popular minister, Lindenau, replaced Einsiedel, who had excited universal detestation.

In the electorate of Hesse, the period of terror occasioned by the threatening letters addressed to the elector was succeeded by the agitation characteristic of the times. On the 6th of September, 1830, a tumultuous rising took place at Cassel; on the 24th, the people of Hanau destroyed every custom-house stationed on the frontier. The public was so unanimous and decided in opinion that the elector not only agreed to abolish the abuses, to convoke the Estates, and to grant a new constitution, but even placed the reins of government provisionally in the hands of his son, Prince William, in order to follow the Countess Reichenbach, who had been driven from Cassel by the insults of the populace. Prince William was however as little as his father inclined to make concessions; and violent collisions speedily ensued. He wedded Madame Lehmann, the wife of a Prussian officer, under the name of the Countess von Schaumburg, and closed the theatre

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against his mother, the electress, for refusing to place herself at her side in public. The citizens sided with the electress, and when, after some time had elapsed, she again ventured to visit the theatre, the doors were no longer closed against her, and, on her entrance, she found the house completely filled. On the close of the evening's entertainment, however, whilst the audience were peaceably dispersing, they were charged by a troop of cavalry who cut down the defenceless multitude without distinction of age or sex, December the 7th, 1830. The Estates, headed by Professor Jordan, vainly demanded redress; Giesler, the head of the police, was alone designated as the criminal; the scrutiny was drawn to an interminable length and produced no other result than Giesler's decoration with an order by the prince.

In Hesse-Darmstadt, where the poll-tax amounted to 6 fls. 12 krs. (10s. 4d.) a head, the Estates ventured, even prior to the revolution of July, to refuse to vote 2,000,000 Als. (£166,666 13s. 4d.) to the new grand-duke, Louis II., (who had just succeeded his aged father, the patron of the arts,) for the defrayment of debts contracted by him before his accession to the ducal chair. In September, the peasantry of Upper Hesse rose en masse on account of the imposition of the sum of 100,000fls. (£8333 6s. 8d.) upon the poverty-stricken communes in order to meet the outlay occasioned by the festivities given in the grandduke's honour on his route through the country; the burthens laid upon the peasantry in the mediatized principalities, more particularly in that of Ysenburg, had also become unbearable. The insurgents took Büdingen by storm and were guilty of some excesses towards the public officers and the foresters, but deprived no one of life. Ere long convinced of their utter impotence, they dispersed before the arrival of Prince Emilius at the head of a body of military, who, blinded by rage, unfortunately killed a number of persons in the village of Södel, whom they mistook for insurgents owing to the circumstance of their being armed, but who had in reality been assembled by a forester for the purpose of keeping the insurgents in check.

In this month, September, 1830, popular disturbances, but of minor import, broke out also at Jena and Kahla, Altenburg, and Gera.

In Hanover, the first symptoms of revolution appeared in

January, 1831. Dr. König was at that time at the head of the university of Osterode, Dr. Rauschenplatt of that of Göttingen. The abolition of the glaring ancient abuses and the removal of the minister, Count Münster, the sole object of whose policy appeared to be the eternalization of every administrative and juridical antiquity in the state, were demanded. The petty insurrections were quelled by the military. König was taken prisoner; most of the other demagogues escaped to France. The Duke of Cambridge, the king's brother, mediated. Count Münster was dismissed, and Hanover received a new and more liberal constitution.

Whilst these events were passing in Germany, the Poles carried on a contest against the whole power of Russia as glorious and as unfortunate as their former one under their leader, Kosciusko. Louis Philippe, king of the French, in the hope of gaining favour with the northern powers by the abandonment of the Polish cause, dealt not a stroke in their aid. Austria, notwithstanding her natural rivalry to Russia, beheld the Polish revolution merely through the veil of legitimacy and refused her aid to rebels. An Hungarian address in favour of Poland produced no result. Prussia was closely united by family ties to Russia. The Poles were consequently left without external aid, and their spirit was internally damped by diplomatic arts. Aid was promised by France, if they would wait. They accordingly waited: and in the interim, after the failure of Diebitsch's attempt upon Warsaw and his sudden death, Paskewitch, the Russian general, unexpectedly crossed the Vistula close to the Prussian fortress of Thorn and seized the city of Warsaw whilst each party was still in a state of indecision. Immense masses of fugitive Polish soldiery sought shelter in Austria and Prussia. The officers and a few thousand private soldiers were permitted to pass onwards to France: they found a warm welcome in Southern Germany, whence they had during the campaign been supplied with surgeons and every necessary for the supply of the hospitals. The rest were compelled to return to Russia.

The Russian troops drawn from the distant provinces,

Also the unfortunate Dr. Plath, to whom science is indebted for an excellent historical work upon China. He became implicated in this affair and remained in confinement until 1836, when he was sentenced to fifteen years' further imprisonment.

the same that had been employed in the war with Persia, overran Poland as far as the Prussian frontier, bringing with them a fearful pestilence, Asiatic cholera. This dire malady, which had, since 1817, crept steadily onwards from the banks of the Ganges, reached Russia in 1830, and, in the autumn of 1831, spread across the frontiers of Germany. It chiefly visited populous cities and generally spared districts less densely populated, passing from one great city to another whither infection could not have been communicated. Cordons de santé and quarantine regulations were of no avail. The pestilence appeared to spread like miasma through the air and to kindle like gas wherever the assemblage of numbers disposed the atmosphere to its reception. The patients were seized with vomiting and diarrhoea, accompanied with violent convulsions, and often expired instantaneously or after an agony of a few hours' duration. Medicinal art was power

less against this disease, and, as in the 14th century, the ignorant populace ascribed its prevalence to poison. Suspicion fell this time upon the physicians and the public authorities and spread in the most incredible manner from St. Petersburg to Paris. The idea that the physicians had been charged to poison the people en masse occasioned dreadful tumults, in which numbers of physicians fell victims and every drug used in medicine was destroyed as poisonous. Similar scenes occurred in Russia and in Hungary. In the latter country a great insurrection of the peasants took place, in August, 1831, in which not only the physicians but also numbers of the nobility and public officers who had provided themselves with drugs fell victims, and the most inhuman atrocities were perpetrated. In Vienna, where the cholera raged with extreme virulence, the people behaved more reasonably.

In Prussia, the cholera occasioned several disturbances at Koenigsberg, Stettin, and Breslau. At Koenigsberg the movement was not occasioned by the disease being attributed to poison. The strict quarantine regulations enforced by the government had produced a complete commercial stagnation, notwithstanding which permission had been given to the Russian troops, when hard pushed by the insurgent Poles, to provide themselves with provisions and ammunition from Prussia, so that not only Russian agents and commissaries, but