The King Of Saxony Is Perplexed In What Manner To Act, So As To
Ensure To His Subjects That Protection
Which was ever uppermost in his
thoughts; feeling however with his usual sagacity that every thing would
ultimately depend on
The dispositions of Austria, he repairs himself to
Prague, in order to have an interview with one of the Austrian ministers,
and to sound that Cabinet. Austria however still vacillates and declines
stating what her intentions are. Napoleon returns from Paris, defeats the
Prussians and Russians at Bautzen and re-occupies all Saxony. He then
writes to the King of Saxony to desire him to return immediately to his
dominions and to fulfil his engagements. What was the King to do? Austria
still refusing to declare herself, was he to sacrifice his crown and
dominions uselessly to the vengeance of Napoleon, to please the Emperor of
Russia and King of Prussia, who for aught he knew might patch up a peace
the next day? and this was the more probable from their having been beaten
at Bautzen, which circumstance also might with equal probability induce
Austria to coalesce with, instead of against France. All the other members
of the Confederation of the Rhine remained staunch to Napoleon and poured
their contingents into Saxony; was he to be the only unfaithful ally and
towards a Monarch who had always treated him with the strongest marks of
attachment and regard? and when neither Russia nor Prussia were likely to
give him the least assistance? He therefore returned to Dresden; and
Napoleon took up his grand position the whole length of the Elbe, from the
mountains of Bohemia to Hamburgh, thus covering the whole of Saxony with
his army. Austria however at last comes forward to join the coalition.
Fortune changes; the Saxon troops, tired of beholding their country the
perpetual theatre of war and trusting to the generosity of the Allies, go
over to them in the middle of a battle, and decide, thereby, the fate of
the day at Leipzig. The King of Saxony is made a prisoner, and then he is
punished for what he could not help. Why was he to be punished more than
any other member of the Confederation of the Rhine? One would think that
the seasonable defection of his troops at Leipzig should have induced the
Allies to treat him with moderation. The other States of the Confederation
did not abandon Napoleon until after he was completely beaten at Leipzig;
and Austria refused to accede to the coalition until a carte blanche was
given her to help herself in Italy.
Let every impartial man therefore review the whole of this proceeding and
then say whether the King of Saxony, so proverbial for his probity, so
adored by his subjects, deserved to be insulted by such an unfeeling letter
as that of Castlereagh. No! the King of Saxony better deserves to reign
than any King of them all. Would they had even a small share of his
virtues! Another proof and a still stronger one of the great integrity and
honor of this excellent Prince, is, that when Napoleon offered to mediatize
in his favor the various ducal Houses in Saxony, such as Weimar, Gotha,
Cobourg, etc., and to annex these countries to his dominions, he declined
the offer. Would Prussia, Austria, or Hanover have been so scrupulous?
The young ladies here, tho' well versed and delighting in various branches
of litterature, cannot overcome that strong national propensity to tales
and romances wherein the terrific and supernatural abounds; in all their
romances accordingly this taste prevails strongly; nay, even in some of the
romances, where the scene is laid in later times, there is some such
anachronism as the story of a spectre.
I recollect reading a novel, the scene of which is laid in Italy about the
time of the battle of Marengo, wherein a ghost is introduced who
contributes mainly to the unravelling of the piece. A young lady here of
considerable talent and of general information confessed to me, when I
asked her, what subjects pleased her most in the way of reading, that
nothing gave her so much delight as "Geistergeschichten." Lewis' romance
of "The Monk" is a great favorite in Germany.[128] By the bye, his
poetical tale of Alonzo and Imogen is evidently taken from a similar
subject in the Volks-maehrchen.
The weather has set in very cold and the Elbe is nearly frozen over. It is
impossible to go out of the house without a Pelz or cloak lined with fur;
for otherwise, on leaving a room heated by a stove, the effect of the cold
is almost instantaneous and brings on an ague fit. This I attribute to the
excessive heat kept up in the rooms and houses by the stoves. As smoking is
so prevalent here, this contributes much also to keeping the body in a
praeternatural heat and rendering it still more obnoxious to cold on
removal from a room to the open air. It has been remarked by a medical
author, in the Russian campaign in 1812, that the soldiers of the southern
nations and provinces, viz., Provencaux, Gascons, Italians, Spaniards, and
Portuguese, endured the cold much better and suffered less from it than the
Germans and Hollanders. The reason is sufficiently obvious: the former live
in the open air even in the middle of winter and seldom make use of a fire
to warm themselves; whereas the Germans and Dutch live in an atmosphere of
stove-heat and smoke and seldom like to stir abroad in the open air during
winter, unless necessity obliges them. Hence they become half-baked, as it
were; their nerves are unstrung, their flesh flabby and they become so
chilly, as to suffer from the smallest exposure to the atmosphere. In the
houses in Germany, on account of the stoves, the cold is never felt,
whereas it is very severely in Italy and Spain where many of the houses
have no fireplaces.
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