THE TRUE STORY OF 
 ALSACE - LORRAINE 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST ALFRED VIZETELLY 
 
 (LB PETIT HOMMB ROUGB) 
 
 WITH A MAP 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
-.>. ^ 
 
 h 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
 
A MES AMIS DE FRANCE 
 1870-1918 
 
 POST TENEBRAS SPERO LUCEM 
 
 E. A. V. 
 
TWENTY CBNTUBIES AGO 
 
 " Right and wrong being confounded, many are the 
 wars and many the instances of wickedness throughout 
 the world. Unpaid is the honour due to the plough, 
 forsaken lie the fields, their husbandmen have been taken 
 away, and the curved sickle is forged into the unbending 
 sword. Strife is roused on one side by Euphrates, on the 
 other by Germany. Neighbouring communities, having 
 broken their treaties, bear arms one against the other, 
 and Mars, to whom nothing is sacred, rages over all the 
 world." 
 
 VIBGIL, Georgics, Bk. I 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE idea of writing this book occurred to me when I found, 
 both by conversing with friends and acquaintances and by 
 listening at odd moments to remarks passed by " men in 
 the street," how very little is known about Alsace-Lorraine 
 in Great Britain. The general ignorance appeared to me to 
 be the more regrettable as my acquaintance with all the more 
 important German utterances and writings on this subject 
 since 1871 convinced me, already at the outset of the Great 
 War, that whatever conditions the Allies might resolve to 
 exact of Germany, the one which, more than any other, she 
 would resist to her utmost would be the restitution of Alsace- 
 Lorraine to France. Nevertheless, it was absurd for Baron 
 von Kiihlmann to assert, as he did shortly after his appoint- 
 ment as German Minister for Foreign Affairs, that the sole 
 obstacle to peace was the question of Alsace-Lorraine. As 
 our Foreign Secretary, Mr. Balfour, replied virtually re- 
 peating the utterances of our successive Prime Ministers, 
 Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George we undoubtedly desire 
 to see Alsace-Lorraine restored to France ; but it is ridiculous 
 to imagine that this one question " stands out solitary, pre- 
 eminent, unconnected with any other of the objects of the 
 war." " We are fighting," as Mr. Balfour said, " in order, in 
 the first place, that Europe may be freed from the perpetual 
 menace of the military party in Germany " ; and, assuredly, 
 if that object is to be attained, questions affecting quite a 
 number of countries will require solution. 
 
 It is true that at one moment certain doubts arose in 
 France as to how far her Allies might be with her in her 
 legitimate desire to recover the territory lost in 1871 ; but, 
 assuredly, those doubts have been dispelled by the important 
 pronouncements which have emanated from Mr. Lloyd George 
 
 vii 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 and President Wilson of the United States whilst this volume 
 has been passing through the press. France, it may be 
 pointed out, claims the unconditional restoration of the lands 
 wrenched from her by Germany ; but in Great Britain and 
 elsewhere there has been considerable talk of consulting the 
 present inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine by means of a ple- 
 biscitum. Quitting, for a moment, the lofty standpoint of 
 our French friends, and taking an independent and, I trust, 
 practical view of the matter, I have discussed this question 
 of a plebiscitum in the concluding chapter of the present 
 volume. As the reader will find, the conclusion at which 
 I have arrived is that, owing to the changes which have 
 occurred since 1871, a genuine plebiscitum is impossible. 
 Thus, even from a lower standpoint than that of the French 
 government, unconditional restoration seems to me to be 
 imperative. 
 
 In the course of my work I have sketched the history of 
 Alsace and Lorraine down to the time of the Great War. 
 Some readers may think that I have given too much space 
 to ancient history, but I have dealt with it at some length 
 precisely because it is largely on ancient history that the 
 Germans have based their claims to the territory annexed by 
 them. For a similar reason I have touched on racial and 
 linguistic questions, on which, indeed, I might have said a 
 great deal more had I wished to produce a scientific treatise. 
 What I have written respecting these matters will, I think, 
 suffice to give the reader an adequate idea of the rival con- 
 tentions of the Germans and the French. 
 
 In the historical part of my narrative I have made no 
 attempt to conceal the fact that at the time of the Old 
 Regime in France the government of Alsace and Lorraine 
 was often very bad. But the reader must remember that 
 bad government then prevailed throughout the kingdom, 
 and was in no wise peculiar to the eastern provinces. That 
 widespread misrule was, indeed, the raison d'etre of the 
 Great Revolution. But whatever occurred during the last 
 century of the old monarchy's existence, the attachment of 
 the Alsatians and the Lorrainers to France itself remained 
 as steadfast as that of the folk of Picardy, Burgundy, Gascony 
 or any other part of the country, and was exemplified in the 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 most striking manner throughout the wars both of the 
 Revolution and of the First and also the Second Empire. 
 I may add that at an early stage in the present gigantic 
 struggle, though more than forty years had elapsed since the 
 severance of 1871, it was officially estimated that 30,000 
 Alsatians were already serving with the French colours and 
 that a score of French general officers were connected by 
 parentage with the lost territory. 
 
 With respect to the union of Strasburg with France at the 
 time of Louis XIV, I would direct the reader's attention to 
 the historic document of which I give a verbatim translation 
 in the Appendices to this volume. This document shows how 
 the magistrates of the Alsatian capital, before accepting 
 French sovereignty, laid down a number of specific conditions, 
 nearly all of which were immediately accepted by the Marquis 
 de Louvois on behalf of Louis XIV. The convention which 
 was entered into thoroughly disproves the often-repeated 
 German assertions respecting the " forcible seizure " of 
 Strasburg in 1681. Elsewhere in my pages, I also relate 
 how the little Republic of Mulhouse elected to become a part 
 of the Republic of France. Further, I have touched on the 
 appropriation of parts of the Sarre valley by Prussia and 
 Bavaria in 1815, the districts in question having previously 
 pertained to Alsace and Lorraine. Certain French aspirations 
 with respect to those districts have been construed by some 
 ignorant British politicians as signifying on the part of France 
 a resolve to annex a great stretch of absolutely German 
 territory. I can in no wise claim to speak for France on 
 such a matter, but I take it that, even if some flight recti- 
 fication of frontier in the Sarre valley should for security's 
 sake appear advisable, the Republic's one essential claim is 
 the restoration of the territory torn from her by Bismarck 
 at the end of the Franco-German War. 
 
 In the map serving as a frontispiece to this volume the 
 names of localities are given in the German forms which have 
 been current during the last forty-seven years. Many 
 localities never had German names before 1871. Throughout 
 my narrative I have generally used the French ones, which 
 are more familiar to me, and I have therefore appended to 
 my work two alphabetical lists, which, in cases of doubt, will 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 help the reader to identify a number of places. With respect 
 to the Alsatian capital I have used neither the French 
 spelling of its name Strasbourg nor the German spelling 
 Strassburg but have adhered to the old English practice 
 of writing Strasburg, just as we write Brussels instead of 
 Bruxelles, Florence instead of Firenze, and Vienna instead of 
 Wien. 
 
 E. A. V. 
 
 LONDON, January 1918 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY : CHARACTERISTICS AND RESOURCES 
 
 OF ALSACE-LORRAINE 1 
 
 II. CITIES, TOWNS, AND NOTED SPOTS 25 
 
 III. ALSATIAN HISTORY TO THE TREATY OF 
 
 WESTPHALIA 55 
 
 IV. ALSATIAN HISTORY TO THE WAR OF 1870 91 
 
 V. THE STORY OF LORRAINE TO THE LAST NATIVE 
 
 DUKES 142 
 
 VI. THE STORY OF LORRAINE FROM THE TIME OF 
 
 STANISLAS TO 1870 172 
 
 VII. ALSATIANS AND LORRAINERS 198 
 
 VIII. THE WAR OF 1870-71 228 
 
 IX. UNDER GERMAN RULE 267 
 
 APPENDICES 
 A. PLACE-NAMES DIFFERING IN FRENCH AND GERMAN 293 
 
 B. STRASBURG UNITED TO FRANCE 
 
 297 
 
 INDEX 
 
 301 
 
"We mean to stand by the French democracy to the 
 death in the demand they make for a reconsideration of - 
 the great wrong of 1871, when, without any regard to the 
 wishes of the population, two French provinces were torn 
 from the side of France and incorporated in the German 
 Empire. This sore has poisoned the peace of Europe for 
 half a century, and, until it is cured, healthy conditions 
 will not have been restored." 
 
 MB. LLOYD GEORGE to the delegates of the Trade 
 
 Unions, January 5, 1918. 
 
 " All French territory should be freed, and the invaded 
 portions restored, and the wrong done to France by 
 Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which 
 has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, 
 should be righted, in order that peace may once more be 
 made secure in the interest of all." 
 
 PRESIDENT WILSON to Congress, January 8, 1918. 
 
I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY : CHARACTERISTICS AND 
 RESOURCES OF ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 Territories and Nationalities : Napoleon III and the Principle of 
 Nationalities : Great Britain's Position in 1870 : Bismarck, Napoleon, 
 and Belgium : Gladstone's Championship of Belgium : The special 
 Treaty guaranteeing Belgian Independence : Why Britain did not 
 support France in 1870-71 : The Cession of Alsace-Lorraine to 
 Germany : Configuration, Characteristics, and Resources of the 
 annexed Territory : Its Extent and its Frontiers : Its chief Water- 
 ways : Its many Railways : The Mountainous Zone of the Vosgea : 
 Chief Mountains and Forest-lands : The Zone of the Slopes : Orchards, 
 Vineyards, and Wines : The Zone of the Plain : Characteristics of 
 Lorraine : Chief Crops of the Reichsland : Beer : Live Stock : Salt, 
 Coal, and Iron : Sundry Manufactures : The Alsatian Cotton Industry : 
 Other Textiles. 
 
 SMALL States or communities have generally found it 
 difficult, if not impossible, to prevent the encroach- 
 ments of powerful neighbours. History has again 
 and again exemplified the truth of the saying that 
 they shall take who have the power and they shall 
 keep who can. Broadly speaking, it was only in the 
 nineteenth century that the principle of the inde- 
 pendence of individual nationalities made any head- 
 way, and that mainly as a matter of theory, not one 
 of practice. The twentieth century, however, has set 
 itself the task, or, perhaps one ought to say, the task 
 has been imposed upon it, of settling territorial ques- 
 tions according to the desires of the different popula- 
 tions. Real national unity has always been a plant of 
 slow growth. Monarchs have repeatedly combined 
 several States under their sway, but without achieving 
 
2 THETHUESTORYOF 
 
 homogeneity. Perhaps we in England were the first 
 in Europe to attain to something of the kind in spite 
 of the many diverse elements of our population. The 
 English part of our island became, broadly speaking, 
 united long before France had developed into any- 
 thing like the State that she is to-day. 
 
 Joan of Arc did not merely drive us from France, 
 she laid (in my opinion) the first foundations of 
 French unity and patriotism. In her time, however, 
 even when we had been constrained to abandon our 
 conquests, " the gentle King " whom she led to 
 Reims to be crowned and anointed in that city's then 
 splendid fane, only exercised direct sway over a 
 portion of the land which now constitutes the French 
 State. The royal dominions were built up by slow 
 degrees, either before Joan's time or afterwards, and 
 largely with the help of matrimonial alliances, but 
 sometimes also by conquest and cession, until at last 
 Brittany, Burgundy, Normandy, Dauphine, Gascony, 
 Provence, Poitou, Languedoc, Auvergne, Navarre, 
 Foix, Picardy, Artois, French Flanders, Lorraine, 
 Alsace, and other provinces all at one time indepen- 
 dent or quasi-independent States became part and 
 parcel of the Kingdom of France. All that was the 
 work of centuries, whereas in our island, after the 
 subjugation of Wales, there remained but two rulers, 
 two crowns, those of England and Scotland. 
 
 On the other hand, Germany, down even to our 
 own times, remained a conglomeration of many 
 States, often in conflict one with another and having 
 different ambitions, different outlooks upon life. 
 Spain, although its crowns were united by Ferdinand 
 and Isabella, w r ould seem, in spite of political entity, 
 to have resisted all attempts to weld its people 
 properly together. There are still more points of 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 3 
 
 difference between, for instance, the Catalan, the 
 Castillian, and the Andalusian, than between the 
 Northumbrian and the man of Wessex, or between 
 the Picard and the French southerner. Italy, we 
 know, remained for long centuries a land of inter- 
 necine conflict under the oppressive sway of foreign 
 or native tyrants. Austria, peopled by hostile races, 
 has never been much more than a geographical 
 expression, and although held together until our 
 period by stern personal rule, seems fated, at some 
 time or other, to fall to pieces. We English, however, 
 with our friends the Scots and the Welsh, and, one 
 may add, at least a very large proportion of the Irish, 
 have become to all intents and purposes one com- 
 munity, and although the stress of twentieth-century 
 life may demand certain devolutions of authority, 
 there can be no real question of sundering us one from 
 another. 
 
 During the nineteenth century the foremost cham- 
 pion of the principle of nationalities was the French 
 Emperor Napoleon III. In certain respects he de- 
 serves to be judged severely, and I do not desire to 
 withdraw or to qualify anything which I have written 
 about him in former volumes of mine, but it must be 
 put to his credit that he freed at least a part of Italy 
 from Austrian tyranny, that he desired to free the 
 Poles when they attempted their last great rising 
 against the Russian autocracy, and that he also 
 wished to intervene on behalf of Denmark against 
 Prussia and Austria. But in regard neither to the 
 Danes nor to the Poles could he obtain any effective 
 support from the British Government. 
 
 Our rulers were unwilling to embark on any policy 
 that suggested adventure. During the earlier sixties 
 Great Britain, in the heyday of the Free Trade policy, 
 
4 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 was waxing richer and richer. Her middle classes 
 were growing fat, sleek, smug, and egotistical. More- 
 over, the German sympathies of the sovereign were 
 notorious. Although, by reason of her sex, Queen 
 Victoria could not reign in Hanover, she had inherited 
 Hanoverian traditions, and was influenced far too 
 much by her German family-connexions and interests. 
 Our present generation is now harvesting the bitter 
 fruit of some of the tendencies, prejudices, and 
 mistakes of her reign. 
 
 A short time after the Franco-German War of 
 1870-71 the late Lord Kitchener, then quite a young 
 man, remarked to a friend that if only 10,000 British 
 troops had been landed in Normandy, France would 
 not have been defeated so grievously as became the 
 case. Kitchener's view was that British action would 
 have had a powerful moral effect, and have encouraged 
 the other chief Powers Italy, Austria, and Russia 
 to intervene and stop the struggle. It is, however, 
 not at all unlikely that the course which Kitchener 
 suggested would have had a very different effect, and 
 have proved the signal for a general European War, 
 particularly as the Russian Tsar (Alexander II) was 
 at that period much more inclined in favour of 
 Germany than in favour of France. 
 
 One thing is quite certain : we were in no position 
 to give any really effective help to the French. In 
 1870 we were suffering from commercial depression. 
 Cotton was " up," owing to the shortage of supplies. 
 Trade unions were agitating. Many joint-stock enter- 
 prises had fallen into discredit. Agrarian crime was 
 rife in Ireland, where reform of the land laws was 
 being planned. In England the question of elemen- 
 tary education had come to the front. Our naval 
 estimates for that year voted before the war broke 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 5 
 
 ou t_ W ere lower by 1,700,000 than those of 1868-9, 
 and lower by 750,000 than those of 1869-70. Since 
 1859 never had they been so low. The staffs at 
 Woolwich, Sheerness, Portsmouth, etc., had all been 
 reduced. We had only 28 broadside ships afloat, 
 and we could only have mustered 40 vessels of all 
 categories, mounting altogether 550 guns. As it 
 happened, the w r ar proved essentially a land war, and 
 our army estimates amounted to merely some 13 
 millions sterling, Cardwell, then Secretary for War, 
 pluming himself on the fact that he had reduced those 
 of the previous year by 1,136,000. Our total avail- 
 able forces amounted to 22 regiments of cavalry and 
 75 battalions of infantry, with some artillery and 
 engineers. It is true that the militia establishment 
 represented 111,000 men, and that we had 300,000 
 breech-loaders in store. There was also the Volunteer 
 Force, but virtually the whole of our military organiza- 
 tion was in the melting-pot, the abolition of the 
 purchase of commissions and other reforms devised 
 by Cardwell being in progress. Briefly, when war 
 broke out between France and Germany in July 1870 
 we were even less ready for participation in a European 
 conflict than we were when the present war began in 
 August 1914. 
 
 At the outset it seemed that if we should side with 
 either belligerent it would be with Germany rather 
 than with France ; and curiously enough this will 
 show that history does repeat itself it was the 
 question of Belgium which led our statesmen to take 
 that view. Both Gladstone and Disraeli were in 
 agreement on the subject, which came to the front 
 owing to Bismarck's statements that Napoleon III 
 had been hankering for the possession of Belgium ever 
 since 1862. The truth appears to be that when the 
 
6 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 German statesman prevailed on the French Emperor 
 to remain neutral in the conflict between Prussia and 
 Austria in 1866 he hinted that France might, with 
 Prussia's assent, even assistance, find compensation 
 in the direction of Belgium. Unfortunately Napo- 
 leon's ambassador, Benedetti, blundered badly, and 
 Bismarck possessed himself of a memorandum or 
 draft treaty on the subject which Benedetti drew up, 
 this document being disclosed when war broke out 
 in 1870. 
 
 Great Britain naturally became alarmed. States- 
 men of all parties demanded that the neutrality of 
 Belgium should be respected. On the last day of the 
 parliamentary session Gladstone expressed himself in 
 these vigorous terms : 
 
 If Belgium should be absorbed to satisfy any 
 greedy appetite for aggrandizement, come whence 
 it may, the day that witnesses that absorption will 
 hear the knell of public right and public law in 
 Europe. Can this country quietly stand by and 
 witness the perpetration of the direst crime staining 
 the pages of history, and thus become a participator 
 in the sin ? 
 
 Great Britain answered that question in 1914, and 
 is answering it still. In 1870 the King of Prussia was 
 more reasonable and sensible than is his grandson the 
 German ruler of to-day. A treaty was signed between 
 Great Britain, France, and Prussia, covenanting to 
 maintain Belgian independence and neutrality intact. 
 And it was stipulated that if either belligerent should 
 violate the treaty, Great Britain would combine with 
 the other to ensure observance of it. It was further 
 set down that this treaty should remain in force for 
 one year after the cessation of hostilities, after which 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 7 
 
 the signatories should revert to the Quintuple Treaty 
 of 1839. 
 
 Thus, at a time when our naval and military 
 power was at its lowest, we contrived to save Belgium. 
 None can say, however, what might have happened 
 if France or Germany or both of them had refused to 
 listen to reason. The case against Napoleon III was 
 not in reality so black as Bismarck's artful diplomacy 
 made it appear to be, but, naturally, the affair created 
 no little prejudice against the French Emperor at the 
 outset of the Franco-German War. What ! The so- 
 called Champion of Nationalities was himself harbour- 
 ing evil designs against a small, weak, and inoffensive 
 nation ? It seemed monstrous ! Napoleon cannot 
 be held blameless in the matter. He had allowed 
 himself to be ensnared by Bismarck when the latter 
 baited him with the promise of an accession of territory 
 at the expense of Belgium. 
 
 All who participated in the affair carried with 
 them to their graves the real truth respecting the 
 negotiation. But, remembering Bismarck's repeated 
 trickery, including the falsification of the Ems tele- 
 gram, the conviction deepens that Benedetti's " draft 
 treaty " was virtually dictated by the Prussian 
 statesman, and that the idea of the conquest of 
 Belgium (in which Prussia was to have assisted 
 France " with all her military and naval forces ") 
 and the contemplated purchase of the Grand Duchy 
 of Luxemburg from the King of the Netherlands, 
 originated in the Wilhelmstrasse and not at the 
 Tuileries, and had as its sole object the desire to 
 keep France quiet whilst Prussia was prosecuting 
 her designs. Benedetti's error was to commit 
 Bismarck's suggestions to writing, and to leave that 
 writing with him. 
 
8 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Whatever the truth may have been, it is at least 
 certain that apart from Napoleon III and a few 
 members of his immediate entourage nobody in France 
 entertained the slightest desire to annex Belgium. 
 Both sides respected the treaty which they signed 
 with Great Britain, and although the Sedan disaster 
 might have been averted had Marshal MacMahon's 
 army crossed the Belgian frontier, this was not 
 attempted those French troops who, amidst the 
 debacle, passed into neutral territory being only 
 fugitives, who laid down their arms. 
 
 After the fall of the Empire, British sympathy 
 with France became aroused, and it increased steadily 
 during the seven months of resistance in which 
 Gambetta figured so conspicuously. Various abortive 
 diplomatic endeavours, in which Great Britain par- 
 ticipated, were made to bring about an armistice, but 
 no Power attempted to succour France by force of 
 arms. Bismarck, who was well acquainted with the 
 state of our military organization, laughed at the idea 
 of actual intervention on our part. It is a question 
 whether we should have been capable at that time of 
 a really great effort proportionate to that which we 
 have been making since 1914. Circumstances, more- 
 over, were at least on the surface very different 
 from those prevailing at the outset of the present war. 
 There was not the same incentive to participation in 
 a great struggle, particularly as the Belgian question 
 had been settled. Prussia was striding onward, 
 undoubtedly. For the third time in six years she 
 had embarked on war, but in 1870 it was not generally 
 imagined that she would become a perpetual menace 
 to the peace and the liberties of Europe. Only a few 
 men of foresight really apprehended the far-reaching 
 consequences of her triumph over France. The British 
 

 ALSACE -LORRAINE d 
 
 nation generally was opposed to participation in any 
 foreign entanglements. The sovereign, who then 
 undoubtedly exercised great influence on our foreign 
 policy, was, by reason of her relationships, decidedly 
 pro-German. Further, as I said before, young 
 Kitchener's suggestion of trying the moral effect of 
 landing a few thousand men in Normandy might 
 well have resulted very differently from what he 
 anticipated. 
 
 Thus the struggle between Germany and France 
 continued. Gallant, desperate, but almost vain were 
 the efforts of the French National Defence Govern- 
 ment to stem the tide of invasion. Bazaine sur- 
 rendered to the enemy the flower of the forces of 
 France, and the chief stronghold of his native Lorraine ; 
 the Loire armies were driven back ; Paris was con- 
 strained to capitulate by lack of food, and the victors 
 imposed upon the vanquished, not only the payment 
 of what then appeared to be a huge war indemnity 
 (200 millions sterling), but also the cession of 5600 
 square miles of territory, inhabited by 1,200,000 
 souls. That territory was turned by the Germans 
 into the Reichsland of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 
 I propose to recount in other chapters of this 
 volume the earlier history of the annexed country, 
 the circumstances attending and immediately follow- 
 ing the annexation, and the chief incidents of the 
 German rule from 1871 to 1914. In the first place, 
 however, I wish to give the reader some idea of 
 the configuration, characteristics, and resources of the 
 so-called Reichsland, such as they were at the time of 
 the annexation, and such as they had become when 
 war broke out in 1914. 
 
 During French rule Alsace was divided into two 
 
10 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 departments called Upper and Lower Rhine Haut- 
 Rhin and Bas-Rhin. Both of these departments 
 passed to Germany with the exception of the fortified 
 town of Belfort (Haut-Rhin) and an adjacent strip of 
 territory comprising about a hundred small communes. 
 Lorraine in the ninth century a kingdom stretching 
 from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, between 
 the Rhine, the Vosges, the Jura, and the Alps on the 
 east, and the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Saone, and the 
 Cevennes mountains on the west, in such wise as to 
 include several regions which afterwards became 
 known by other names had gradually dwindled in 
 old regime days to the status of a duchy, and its name 
 applied only to four departments of modern France, 
 those of the Meuse, the Meurthe, the Moselle, and the 
 Vosges. Of these the Germans of 1870-71 annexed 
 portions of the Moselle and the Meurthe (646 com- 
 munes, or from a fifth to a quarter of the former 
 duchy), so that the French were left in possession of 
 the Meuse, the Vosges (less eighteen communes cover- 
 ing some 50,000 acres), and fragments of the other 
 two departments, which they amalgamated under the 
 name of Meurthe-et-Moselle. 
 
 The north-western frontier, that affecting Lorraine, 
 was traced in a very arbitrary fashion, in order to 
 give the Germans possession of important strategical 
 positions and localities which for one or another reason 
 they particularly coveted. For the southern half of 
 the western frontier a more natural boundary that 
 of the Vosges Mountains was found, these heights 
 remaining mainly in the hands of the French, though 
 the Germans possessed themselves of certain important 
 summits, slopes, and spurs. South of Belfort, how- 
 ever, and as far as the Swiss frontier, an arbitrary 
 line was drawn across the famous Trouee or Gap, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 11 
 
 which had always been a vulnerable point of Eastern 
 France. 
 
 Such, then, became on the western or French side 
 the frontier of the Reichsland of Elsass-Lothringen, 
 otherwise Alsace-Lorraine. In other respects the 
 annexed territory retained its previous boundaries, 
 extending on the north to (1) the Grand Duchy of 
 Luxemburg, (2) that part of Rhenish Prussia which is 
 known as the Sarre or Saar Valley (niched from 
 France by Prussia in 1815), and (3) the Bavarian 
 Palatinate, in like way extended in that year. On 
 the east the boundary remained the Rhine, skirted 
 on the right by the Grand Duchy of Baden. On the 
 south the short strip of frontier facing Swiss terri- 
 tory remained unaltered. The Germans followed the 
 French system with respect to the chief administrative 
 divisions of their new acquisition. The former Haut- 
 Rhin department became Oberelsass (Upper Alsace), 
 the Bas-Rhin Unterelsass (Lower Alsace), whilst the 
 Meurthe and the Moselle lands were joined together 
 and called Lothringen or Lorraine. The respective 
 areas of the three divisions (Bezirke in German) were 
 as follows : Upper Alsace, 1354 square miles ; Lower 
 Alsace, 1848 square miles ; Lorraine, 2403 square 
 miles. Altogether the annexed territory is rather 
 more than 120 miles in length. Its least breadth, in 
 the south, is about 22 miles ; its greatest 105 miles, in 
 the north. 
 
 Bordered on the east by the Rhine, Alsace, or 
 rather most of it, is traversed by that river's tributary 
 the 111, from which it is supposed by certain writers 
 to have derived its name, some decomposing the 
 latter as follows : Ell or Ele = 111 ; sass = inhabi- 
 tants ; these two forming the word Elsass. Others 
 trace the name back to Alsa, which was applied to the 
 
12 THE TRUE STORY OP 
 
 111 in certain Latin documents of the tenth century. 
 In the seventh-century Merovingian chronicle ascribed 
 to Fredegarius the Scholastic, the land is for the first 
 time called Alesatia, and its inhabitants are referred 
 to as Alesaciones. In the eighth century one finds 
 the names Elisacia and Alsazas ; in the ninth, Elsazo 
 and Elisazo are occasionally met with ; in the thir- 
 teenth one comes upon Elsaz, equivalent to the 
 modern German Elsass, whilst three hundred years 
 later a variant, Edelsaz, appears. Briefly, the etymo- 
 logy of the name is obscure, but it may well have been 
 derived from the river known in modern times as 
 the 111. 
 
 This river is the most important of the Rhine's 
 Alsatian tributaries, and has for many miles an 
 almost parallel course. It is joined by such streams 
 as the Bruche (Bruch, Breusch), the Doller, the 
 Thur, the Lauch, the Fecht, the Weiss, the Andlau, 
 etc. The Moselle carries other rivers notably the 
 Saar or Sarre to the Rhine. North of the 111, 
 moreover, the Rhine receives first the Moder, with 
 the latter 's tributary the Zorn, and afterwards the 
 Lauter, which separates Alsace from the Bavarian 
 Palatinate. Of the above-mentioned rivers only the 
 Rhine and the 111 the latter from Colmar to its 
 junction with the Rhine are navigable, but the 
 minor streams tend to enhance the land's fertility 
 and to assist its industries. 
 
 Moreover, the country is crossed by navigable 
 canals, dating from the French regime, which created 
 a great network of artificial waterways connecting all 
 parts of French territory. One of these canals, that 
 from the Rhone to the Rhine, crosses Alsace between 
 the 111 and the Rhine (taking the same direction as 
 those rivers) from the vicinity of Belfort to Strasburg. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 13 
 
 The other canal, that from the Marne to the Rhine, 
 comes from French Lorraine, and also runs to Stras- 
 burg, passing Saverne (turned into Zabern by the 
 Germans) on its way. There is a northern offshoot 
 of this canal extending to Saaralben. 
 
 Of course these waterways are not the only means 
 of communication. Roads and railways have been 
 multiplied by the Germans since the days of the 
 annexation. Most of the railways were constructed 
 for strategical purposes, but they have also added to 
 the Reichsland's material prosperity. The main line 
 from Paris to Strasburg, by way of Avricourt, meets 
 at Strasburg a line which follows the left bank of the 
 Rhine northward from Basle. Another links Stras- 
 burg to Wissembourg (Weissenburg). Another runs to 
 Rothau by way of Molsheim. Another joins Haguenau 
 to Sarreguemines, now Saargemund. Saverne is 
 connected by rail with Schlestadt (Schlettstadt) ; 
 Schlestadt with Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines (Markirch) ; 
 Colmar with Brisach (Breisach) and Miinster ; Sulz 
 with Gueb wilier, Mulhouse with Mullheim in Baden, 
 as well as with Cernay (now called Sennheim) and 
 Wesserling. Nor have the French been idle in the 
 little part of Alsace remaining to them the Belfort 
 territory for since 1871 Belfort has been linked by 
 rail with Giromagny, Montbeliard, and Delle. 
 
 As in Alsace, so on the annexed plateau of Lorraine. 
 You find direct rail from Metz to Strasburg via 
 Saverne, rail to Metz from Kaiserslautern and Neun- 
 kirchen by the alternate routes of Saarloiiis, Saar- 
 briicken, and Saargemund, the first via Boulay (Bol- 
 chen), the second and the third via Beningen, Falken- 
 berg, and Courcelles ; whilst other lines run from 
 Thionville (Diedenhofen) to Saargemund, and thence 
 to Haguenau in Alsace, besides which many short 
 
14 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 cross-lines cover the country in virtually every direc- 
 tion, so that troops and materiel may be hurried 
 northward, southward, westward, eastward as occasion 
 may require. All those railways, extending to every 
 possible point of the Reichsland (in 1914 there were 
 1269 miles of normal and 50 of narrow gauge), form, 
 as it were, a great spider's web, or, as some may say, 
 suggest the tentacles of a formidable predatory 
 monster. At the same time, as was previously men- 
 tioned, the country has benefited by them in time of 
 peace. 
 
 Geographers have agreed to divide Alsace into 
 three zones : that of the Mountains the Vosges ; that 
 of the Slopes the last Jura and Vosgian spurs ; and 
 that of the Plain near the Rhine. The chain of the 
 Vosges starts from the vicinity of Belfort, and extends 
 northward to Rhenish Bavaria. Generally speaking, 
 its altitude decreases as it goes northward. Geologists 
 divide the chain (whose total length is about 120 
 miles) into two sections of different formation- 
 southward the " Crystalline " and northward th<> 
 "Limestone" Vosges. The highest mountain, the 
 Ballon de Guebwiller or Soulz, which is in the annexed 
 territory, has an altitude of about 4630 feet. Next 
 in altitude come the Hohneck (4440 feet), the Rothen- 
 bach or Rheinkopf the French and German Staff 
 maps differ (about 4290 feet), and the Ballon d' Alsace 
 (4062 feet). The name of ballon is given to several 
 of these heights on account of their rounded summits. 
 All of the above-named belong to the southern section 
 that is, to the Crystalline Vosges. Among the Lime- 
 stone heights the highest summit is that of Mount 
 Donon (about 8292 feet). 
 
 The three principal passes are those of the Col de 
 Bussang, affording communication between Mulhouse 
 

 ALSACE-LORRAINE 15 
 
 and Epinal ; the Col du Bonhomme, by which you may 
 go from Colmar to Epinal ; and that of Sainte-Marie- 
 aux-Mines, between Schlestadt and Saint-Die. The 
 Schlucht, Saales, and Saverne passes also have their 
 importance. Of all the Vosges mountains the one 
 whose name became the best known to British readers 
 during the earlier period of the Great War was the 
 Hartmannsweiler Peak, which is the last height of 
 consequence among the Vosgian spurs in the direction 
 of Mulhouse. There was fierce contention between 
 the French and Germans for possession of the summit 
 (3107 feet above sea-level), but it was eventually 
 captured by the Chasseurs Alpins, and gave the 
 French command of four roads and several miles of 
 railway lines. The exploit was the more meritorious 
 as the mountain sides are extremely abrupt and the 
 German defences were formidable. 
 
 North of Mount Donon and between Alsace and 
 the annexed part of Lorraine, the Vosgian chain 
 declines rapidly to altitudes of 1700 and 1600 feet. 
 Near Saverne it is intersected by the valley of the 
 Zorn, beyond which it becomes a succession of slopes 
 and rounded summits which never exceed an elevation 
 of 1300 feet. Generally speaking, along the whole 
 length of the chain, the steepest acclivities are on the 
 Alsatian side. Here you find dark ravines overlooked 
 by picturesque feudal ruins, such as are seldom seen 
 on the French side, together with wild or charming 
 valleys, watered by rivulets the Doller, the Thur, the 
 Lauch, the Lieprette, the Bruche, and so on, whose 
 names the valleys take. The species of trees with which 
 the mountains are so largely planted vary according 
 to the altitude. The loftier parts are clothed with 
 conifers of several kinds, and on the lower parts you 
 find beech, oak, ash, birch, larch, hornbeam, chestnut, 
 
16 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 and elm. There is good mountain pasture on many 
 points, but the forest lands, though they diminished 
 by 10 per cent, or so between the French Revolution 
 and the German annexation, are still of great extent. 
 In 1870 it was estimated that the Alsatian forests 
 (not only in the Vosges, but in other parts also) 
 covered nearly 730,000 acres. A return made to- 
 wards the beginning of the present century showed 
 an area of 685,000 acres in Alsace and of 412,000 
 acres in the annexed part of Lorraine. Since then 
 large clearings would appear to have been effected. 
 
 The wild cherry (merisier) is grown extensively in 
 the vicinity of the Vosges, its fruit being used (as in 
 the Black Forest) for making Kirsch. Alsace, gene- 
 rally, is a land of fruits. The late oblong plum 
 (Prunus sebastica) called Quetsche and Zwetsche in 
 German, predominates in all parts of the Reichsland, 
 there being, perhaps, some three million trees of this 
 kind. There are also more than a million apple-trees, 
 three-quarters of a million pear-trees (about half in 
 Lorraine) ; virtually the same number of cherry-trees, 
 nearly half a million walnut-trees, and between 30,000 
 and 40,000 chestnuts. 
 
 In Alsace these trees thrive mostly in what is called 
 the Zone of the Slopes, which also includes most of 
 the vineyard land. 
 
 Before the annexation the Alsatian vineyards 
 covered between 60,000 and 62,000 acres, and 20,000 
 families were more or less interested in viticulture. 
 To-day (return of 1913) more than 67,000 acres in 
 the whole Reichsland (which of course includes 
 Lorraine) are under vines. The vintage of 1913 (a bad 
 year) yielded, however, less than 4,000,000 gallons of 
 wine. The growths of the annexed part of Lorraine 
 are of less importance than those of Alsace. It was 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 17 
 
 the Emperor Probus who, in the latter part of the 
 third century, first ordered the plantation of vines in 
 the Rhenish region, in which Alsace was included. 
 Most of the vineyards are on the slopes below the 
 Vosges, between Thann and Miitzig. There are vines 
 also in the Sundgau, at Kochersberg, and along the 
 slopes of Lower Alsace as far as Wissembourg, and 
 others again near the 111 in the neighbourhood of 
 Colmar, and in the plain near Ochsenfeld. The best 
 wines are those of Ribeauville, Riquewihr, Guebwiller, 
 and Thann, followed by those of Neuweiler and Wolks- 
 heim, all in Upper Alsace. White wines predominate, 
 but red are made also. In the vicinity of Colmar 
 some vine-growers prepare what is called a vin de paille 
 or " straw- wine," from the circumstance that the 
 grapes are dried and ripened upon straw for several 
 weeks before they are committed to the wine-press. 
 This Colmar straw- wine enjoys considerable repute. 
 It is on record that in the earlier part of the fourteenth 
 century quantities of Alsatian wine were sent to 
 England. Later there was a flourishing wine-trade 
 with Holland. Of more recent times the Germans 
 have either sent us Alsatian wines in their natural 
 state as Rhenish or Moselle, or have blended them 
 with their own growths. 
 
 The Alsatian " Slope Zone " is well populated and 
 very fertile. In the Upper section vines and fruit- 
 trees are abundant, whilst in the part pertaining to 
 Lower Alsace the cultivation of cereals is more 
 extensive. In the Zone of the Plain the subsoil near 
 the Rhine is often gravel, but the land becomes more 
 and more fertile in character as you gradually recede 
 from the river. The Rhine bed is said to have 
 formerly had a width of from 330 to as many as 
 1100 yards, but it has been gradually reduced by 
 
18 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 dykes and drainage to 260 yards or thereabouts. 
 There are still many marshy meadows and peat-beds 
 on the Alsatian side of the river. Most of the large 
 Alsatian towns are in the Zone of the Plain, and here 
 the density of the population is often twice as great 
 as in the Mountainous Zone. Cereal crops predomi- 
 nate, but vegetables are grown extensively, notably 
 potatoes and cabbages, the latter being sent largely 
 into Germany to be transformed there into Sauerkraut. 
 Hops are also grown in this Zone, and tobacco is 
 cultivated there. 
 
 The Lothringen or Lorraine section of the Reichs- 
 land offers from the agricultural standpoint less 
 interesting features than Alsace. Most of this Lor- 
 raine land is a plateau, the highest ground being that 
 nearest to the Vosges. In the valley of the Moselle 
 the fruit-trees flower a fortnight earlier than on the 
 plateau. The vine cannot be cultivated above an 
 altitude of 1100 feet, or corn above 2600 feet, whereas 
 in the Vosges it is grown at a height of 3000 feet and 
 more. Thus the annexed part of Lorraine is more 
 noted for its iron mines, smelting furnaces, metallur- 
 gical manufactures, salt pits, potteries, etc. It is 
 watered on the west by the Moselle, which passes 
 Metz and Thionville before entering Rhenish Prussia, 
 and towards the east by the Sarre or Saar (Saravius), 
 which takes its rise in the Vosges and flows northward 
 past Sarrebourg and Sarreguemines before inclining 
 to the north-east in order to unite with the Moselle. 
 Across the frontier of Rhenish Prussia it is joined by 
 the Nied, which waters the more central part of the 
 annexed Lorraine. Another river, the Seille, takes its 
 rise in the southern part of the annexed districts, 
 winds for a short distance through French territory, 
 and ultimately joins the Moselle at Metz. The valleys 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 19 
 
 and slopes near these various rivers are the most 
 fertile parts of the Lothringen division of the annexed 
 country. 
 
 The following tables supply some particulars 
 respecting the crops raised in the entire Reichsland : 
 
 ACREAGE UNDER CULTIVATION 
 
 Crops 
 
 1900 
 
 1913 
 
 Hay and other fodder. 
 
 462,154 
 
 485,755 
 
 Wheat ..... 
 
 385,394 
 
 342,695 
 
 Oats 
 
 274,656 
 
 282,165 
 
 Rye 
 
 116,445 
 
 138,632 
 
 Barley ..... 
 
 132,105 
 
 122,727 
 
 Potatoes ..... 
 
 224,345 
 
 226,790 
 
 Vines ..... 
 
 
 
 67,090 
 
 Hops ..... 
 
 9,796 
 
 10,462 
 
 Tobacco ..... 
 
 2,810 
 
 3,842 
 
 PRODUCE IN METRIC TONS OF 2204 LB. 
 
 Crops 
 
 1900 
 
 1913 
 
 Hay and other fodder. 
 
 630,715 
 
 137,786 * 
 
 Wheat . . . 
 
 228,529 
 
 238,048 
 
 Oats 
 
 155,301 
 
 209,963 
 
 Rye 
 
 68,674 
 
 92,889 
 
 Barley 
 
 92,518 
 
 108,678 
 
 Potatoes ..... 
 
 1,135,474 
 
 1,226,463 
 
 Wine (gallons) . 
 
 9,173,912 f 
 
 3,934,442 
 
 Hops ..... 
 
 38,346 
 
 15,950 
 
 Tobacco ..... 
 
 2,897 
 
 4,878 
 
 A little supplementary information may be added 
 to those tables. Lucern and clover figure among the 
 crops cultivated for fodder. Industrial plants, such 
 as colza, cameline, poppies, hemp, and flax, are grown 
 
 * Hay only. t I n 1897, 
 
20 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 in various parts. The Alsatian-Lorrainer being a 
 beer- as well as a wine-drinker, large quantities of the 
 former beverage are brewed. Indeed, if one may 
 trust certain returns, the beer produced in the Reichs- 
 land in 1913 exceeded 31 million gallons. The 
 quantity seems a large one, but it sinks almost to 
 insignificance when one finds it stated that Bavaria 
 brewed no less than 418 million gallons of beer in the 
 same year. What a paradise that indicates for the 
 devotees of Gambrinus ! Thirteen years previously 
 (1900) it is recorded that 77 breweries in Alsace- 
 Lorraine had an output of nearly 25 million gallons, 
 representing a value of over 1,824,000 marks or 
 approximately 90,000. I have found no figures 
 respecting the quantity of spirits distilled, but it was 
 valued in 1900 at rather more than 80,000. 
 
 The cattle in Alsace-Lorraine belong largely to the 
 Swiss and Jura breeds. The cheese of Minister near 
 the Vosges has a reputation, but when it is placed 
 upon the market it is usually too odoriferous and of 
 too high a flavour to suit a palate with any pretensions 
 to delicacy. Other cheeses are made at the many 
 chalets a fromage among the high Vosgian pastures, 
 the total output being perhaps 200 tons annually. 
 The horses common to the Reichsland are said to be 
 descended from an Asiatic breed. They are usually 
 small. Formerly very hardy and vigorous in spite of 
 their size, they appear to have been spoilt by inju- 
 dicious crossings. The pigs, in which Celtic, Iberian, 
 and English breeds are supposed to be combined, 
 have big heads and narrow bodies. Geese are abun- 
 dant in Alsace, particularly in the Rhenish districts. 
 Virtually everybody has heard of Strasburg pates de 
 foie gras. 
 
 There are half a dozen salt mines in the Reichsland, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 21 
 
 the principal being those of Dieuze, Chateau- Salins, 
 and Forbach. The annual output of common salt 
 ranges from 70,000 to 77,000 metric tons, valued at a 
 trifle less than 1 per ton. Sodium sulphate is also 
 worked to the extent of about 8000 tons per annum. 
 Alum is also met with. Since the annexation a mine 
 of potassium alkaline has been found in Alsace, and 
 has been acquired by the Prussian Government. It 
 is estimated to be worth several millions of money. 
 The production of sulphuric acid and other chemicals 
 is very considerable. Petroleum wells exist at Lam- 
 pertsloch, Schwabwiller, and Pechelbronn, but their 
 output is extremely small. 
 
 There are few coal and iron mines in Alsace. The 
 latter are much more numerous in the annexed part 
 of Lorraine. Large quantities of coal and ore are 
 imported, but the statistics for 1913 give apparently 
 as the Reichsland's own output 21,136,265 metric 
 tons of iron ore (valued at over 2,736,000), and 
 3,795,932 tons of coal (value about 2,256,000). These 
 figures are far in excess of those for 1900, when the 
 output of coal was stated to be little more than a 
 million tons, whilst the iron ore did not amount to 
 quite seven millions. It is possible that the figures 
 for 1913 include imported coal and iron. Limestone 
 and gypsum are quarried very extensively, and 
 according to the returns for 1913 no fewer than 
 38,500 persons were then employed in the mines and 
 quarries. The metallurgical industries predominate 
 in Lorraine. There are important forges at Ars-sur- 
 Moselle. In Alsace one finds several works for the 
 construction of machinery, notably at Mulhouse, 
 Guebwiller, and Thann. 
 
 Paper is made on the He Napoleon near Mulhouse. 
 Rixheim specializes in wall-papers. Faience as well 
 
22 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 as other pottery is produced at Sarreguemines, Sierck, 
 and Niedwiller. Glass is manufactured in the vicinity 
 of Sarreguemines and Sarrebourg. The Munzthal 
 crystal works take the first rank. Further, the 
 chemical works of Bouxwiller are important. One 
 other establishment may be mentioned before passing 
 to the textile industries that is the famous Piscicul- 
 tural School of Huninguen on the left bank of the 
 Rhine in Upper Alsace. Millions of salmon fry have 
 been provided by this establishment founded under 
 the French regime in 1852 for the rivers of Germany, 
 France, Sweden, and other countries. 
 
 Textiles represent in importance and value fully a 
 third of the Reichsland industries. The cotton manu- 
 factures are the most important in the whole German 
 Empire. Virtually all the cotton goods imported by 
 France from Germany prior to the Great War came 
 from Alsace, and represented, on an average, a value 
 of about 1,120,000 annually. The first cotton- 
 printing works to be established at Mulhouse was 
 founded by Samuel Kcechlin in 1746, but cotton- 
 spinning did not begin in Alsace until 1810 (in the 
 midst of the Napoleonic wars) when mills were built 
 at Wesserling. The calico produced at Mulhouse 
 under the First French Empire cost from three to 
 four francs per metre ; the price of the printed 
 cottons or indiennes being from six to seven francs. 
 These printed goods became famous by reason of the 
 variety and tastefulness of their patterns and the 
 fastness of their excellent colours. Establishments 
 sprang up in other localities, and in 1828 the Haut- 
 Rhin (otherwise Upper Alsace) turned out 19,500,000 
 yards of these textiles. In 1870, just prior to the war 
 which led to the annexation, the output was nearly 
 three times as large. In 1828 the business done by 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 23 
 
 the cotton-spinners represented 600,000, which before 
 the annexation became 3,600,000 ; whilst the printing 
 trade increased from 1,120,000 to 2,000,000. At 
 the outbreak of the Great War the figures were very 
 much larger, although after the annexation in 1871 
 the trade suffered severely some manufacturers re- 
 moving their works to France, and others, whilst 
 retaining their Alsatian establishments, founding 
 additional ones on French territory. 
 
 One of the descendants of the Kcechlin whom 
 I previously mentioned took two partners named 
 Schmalzer and Dollfus. The last-named became a 
 distinguished economist and did much to improve the 
 circumstances of his workmen. In 1853 he founded 
 at Mulhouse a Workers' Dwelling Society, and within 
 the next twenty years a thousand houses had been 
 erected, and for the most part completely paid for 
 by the workmen who bought them. They were of 
 various styles and sizes, and far superior to anything 
 else of the kind which then existed in France. The 
 average price of these houses (freehold) was 140, 
 and the purchaser was required to pay 10 down and 
 the balance by instalments in fourteen years. Carried 
 out with integrity and great solicitude for the workers, 
 the scheme proved so successful that similar societies 
 were established at Colmar and Guebwiller. 
 
 The Alsatian woollen manufactures are less con- 
 siderable than the cotton ones, but there are woollen 
 as well as cotton mills at Mulhouse, which with its 
 suburb of Dornach had a population of 105,488 
 inhabitants at the census of 1910. Different kinds of 
 machinery and various chemicals are made there. 
 Textiles and textile machinery are also produced at 
 Guebwiller. Textiles are made also at Colmar, Tiirk- 
 heim, Winzenheim, Miinster, and Logelbach. Cloth is 
 
24 ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 bleached, dyed, and finished in the valley of the Thur. 
 Wesserling, Cernay, Thann, Wilier, Moosch, and Saint- 
 Amarin manufacture yarn and cloth as well as 
 machines and chemicals. In the valley of the 
 Lieprette, at Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and neighbouring 
 localities, cotton and woollen mixtures are produced. 
 Again, there are textile manufactures at Erstein and 
 Schlestadt ; whilst at Massevaux and various villages 
 in the valley of the Doller the manufacture of yarn 
 and cloth is supplemented by that of chemicals and 
 the preparation of leather. 
 
II 
 
 CITIES, TOWNS, AND NOTED SPOTS 
 
 The Divisions of Alsace-Lorraine : Strasburg Old and New : The 
 Cathedral and the Squares : The " Marseillaise " : Mementoes of 
 French Rule : Haguenau and some Battlefields : Saverne and its 
 Palace : Bouxwiller, Marmoutier, Wasselonne, and Molsheim : The 
 Ban de la Roche and Pastor Oberlin : St. Odilia, Patroness of Alsace : 
 The Pagan Walls : Barr and Andlau : The Legend of the Empress 
 Ricardis : Erstein and Schlestadt : Upper Alsace : Colmar : Ribeau- 
 vil!6 and the King of the Musicians : Sundry small Towns : Baths for 
 Lunatics : Marshal Lefebvre on Ancestry : Guebwiller and its Wine : 
 Ensisheim, Thann, and Kleber : Little Towns in the Thur Valley : 
 Democratic Mulhouse and the Chatterer's Stone : Massevaux and 
 Catherine the Great : Altkirch and Ferrette : In annexed Lorraine : 
 Metz Old and New : The Kaiser as Daniel : Adjacent Battlefields : 
 Thionville : The Towns on the Sarre : Forbach and Spicheren : 
 Niederbronn and its Waters : Brave Bitche and Phalsburg : Dieuze 
 and Chateau-Salins. 
 
 IT has previously been mentioned that after the war 
 of 1870-71 the Germans allowed the chief administra- 
 tive divisions of the annexed territory to remain 
 much as they had been under the French rule, that is 
 to say, the authorities of the new Reichsland consti- 
 tuted three Bezirke, two of them corresponding with 
 the former Alsatian departments of the Bas-Rhin and 
 the Haut-Rhin which, indeed, represented in essential 
 respects the so-called Nordgau and Sundgau of early 
 times and the third embracing the annexed parts of 
 the Meurthe and Moselle departments of Lorraine. 
 Each Bezirk was subdivided into several so-called 
 Kreise or circles, suggestive of French arrondissements, 
 the result being as follows : First Bezirk : Lower 
 Alsace. Capital : Strasburg, which also became the 
 
 25 
 
2(5 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 seat of government for the whole Reichsland. 
 Kreise : Strasburg City and Strasburg Country, Wis- 
 sembourg, Haguenau, Saverne, Molsheirn, Erstein, 
 and Schlestadt. Second Bezirk: Upper Alsace. 
 Capital : Colmar. Kreise : Colmar, Ribeauville, 
 Guebwiller, Thann, Mulhouse, and Altkirch. Third 
 Bezirk : Lothringen or Lorraine. Capital : Metz. 
 Kreise: Metz City and Metz Country, Thionville, 
 Sarrebourg, Chateau-Salins, Boulay, Sarreguemines, 
 and Forbach. 
 
 Strasburg, whose population increased from 70,000 
 to 84,000 between 1840 and 1870, was in 1910 the 
 year of the last census a city of 179,000 inhabitants, 
 rather more than half of these being Catholics and the 
 others Protestants, Freethinkers, and Jews, the last- 
 named numbering some 5000. It would have been 
 impossible to crowd so many people within the limits 
 of the city's former fortifications, designed by the 
 famous French engineer Vauban, and during the 
 earlier years of the annexation these defences, with 
 the exception of the southern ramparts and the 
 citadel, were demolished by the Germans, and re- 
 placed by a new enceinte which doubled the city's 
 perimeter, most of the land thus enclosed within the 
 municipal limits lying to the north and north-east of 
 ancient Strasburg. The new fortifications were pro- 
 vided with twelve gates ; such of Vauban's work, 
 including the citadel, that was allowed to remain, 
 was more or less modernized, and fourteen outlying 
 detached forts were erected, eleven of them being 
 west of the River 111 and three on the east. The 111, 
 forming two principal and various smaller arms, inter- 
 sects the city. Below the latter it is joined by the 
 Marne to Rhine Canal, and above it by the Rhine and 
 Rhone Canal, as well as by a tributary, the Bruch, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 27 
 
 which is partially canalized. Further, the principal 
 canals are united by a subsidiary canal de ceinture. 
 The Rhine, into which the 111 flows, is about two and 
 a half miles distant from the Place Kleber in the 
 central part of old Strasburg. More than once, in 
 the long ago, I crossed the great river which, in its 
 course between Germany and Alsace, bears almost 
 countless little islands upon its bosom by one or 
 another of the bridges conducting to the town of Kehl 
 in the Grand Duchy of Baden. 
 
 The new part of Strasburg is full of public edifices 
 and private mansions erected by the Germans. Here 
 are found the so-called Imperial Palace, the Palace of 
 the Delegations, the German University, and the 
 great central railway station. Some of these buildings 
 are not displeasing to the eye. The German archi- 
 tects adopted the style of the French Renaissance for 
 the principal university building, erected between 
 1878 and 1884, and that of the Florentine Renaissance 
 for the Imperial Palace (1883-88). At the railway 
 station an attempt is made to impress the traveller 
 with a sense of the German domination by means of 
 two large crude frescoes one depicting Frederick 
 Barbarossa entering Haguenau in the twelfth century, 
 and the other the present Kaiser's grandfather entering 
 Strasburg in 1879. 
 
 The pomposity of the new German town contrasts 
 strongly with the picturesqueness of the ancient city, 
 where high-gabled houses line narrow streets and 
 cluster round little squares, whilst from the centre the 
 spire of the renowned cathedral rises to a height of 
 almost exactly 466 feet above the pavement.* It 
 
 * I find old accounts saying 474 feet, but this may have been a miscal- 
 culation, for I do not think that the spire was shortened during the many 
 repairs which the cathedral underwent after the fiendish German bombardment 
 of 1870. 
 
28 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 thus soars to an altitude of 132 feet above the summit 
 of Saint Paul's, and is sixteen feet higher than the 
 principal Egyptian Pyramid. The first church raised 
 on this site was one of clay and timber set up by the 
 Frankish ruler Clovis. A better edifice was founded 
 by Charlemagne, but was struck by lightning early in 
 the eleventh century, when the present cathedral was 
 begun. Thus a little is Romanesque though most is 
 of the ogival style. The greater part, perhaps, dates 
 from the thirteenth century, but only in the fifteenth 
 were the towers, one of which bears the famous spire, 
 erected. Long years ago I climbed to the lantern, 
 thence to the crown, and thence to the rosette, and 
 looked down upon the old faded tiled roofs of the city, 
 and thence over the wonderful panorama of surround- 
 ing country the Vosges on the west, the Rhine and 
 the Black Forest on the east. Most of the cathedral's 
 beautiful stained-glass windows were shattered by 
 the bombardment of 1870 ; much of the general 
 masonry and the sculpture -work which were de- 
 stroyed or defaced, first during the French Revolution 
 and later by the bombardment I have mentioned, 
 are quite modern, as is also the roof, which the 
 German shells perforated in many places ; but, on 
 the whole, the work of restoration has been well 
 performed. 
 
 One of the cathedral's curiosities is a remarkable 
 astronomical clock, the present mechanism of which 
 dates from 1838-42, having been reconstructed in 
 order to replace similar works of the sixteenth century, 
 which after nearly 250 years of service absolutely 
 refused to do any further duty. The mechanism sets 
 quite a number of allegorical figures in motion such, 
 for instance, as Father Time, the Four Ages of Life, 
 the Seven Days of the Week ? the Apostles and the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 29 
 
 Christ. At noon every day the twelve Apostles pass 
 before Christ, bowing to Him as they go, whilst He 
 blesses them with upraised hand, and a cock crows 
 thrice and claps its wings. This clock luckily escaped 
 destruction in 1870. 
 
 Another interesting church at Strasburg is that 
 dedicated to Saint Thomas, where you may see the 
 masterpiece of the great French sculptor Pigalle 
 that is, the mausoleum of Marshal Saxe, who, German 
 though he was, entered the service of France and 
 gained victories for her at Raucoux, Lawfeld, and 
 Fontenoy. Pigalle, who gave five and twenty years 
 of his life to this work, portrayed the marshal expiring 
 serenely, whilst France, personified by a beautiful 
 figure, strove to detain him and to ward off the 
 threatening approach of death. 
 
 The largest of the city's squares before the annexa- 
 tion was the Place Kleber, where stands a bronze 
 statue of the famous general of that name a native 
 of Strasburg, son of a stone-mason there, and in early 
 life an architect who enlisted in the armies of the 
 first French Republic, distinguished himself in the 
 siege of Mayence, decided the defeat of the Austrians 
 at Fleurus, and fought against us in Egypt, where he 
 was assassinated in the year 1800. As the sequel of 
 this narrative will show, Kleber was only one of many 
 Alsatians who became glorious in the service of the 
 France they loved. In 1838 his remains were de- 
 posited in a vault under his statue, and they still lie 
 there to-day. Another of the city's squares, the 
 Place Gutenberg, is adorned with a statue of the 
 famous printer, who worked at his inventions at 
 Strasburg before perfecting them at Mayence. This 
 fine monument, due to the French sculptor David 
 d' Angers, depicts Gutenberg holding a " proof " which 
 
30 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 he has just taken from his press, and which bears the 
 words : " And there was light." * 
 
 In the sixteenth-century building where the Stras- 
 burg Chamber of Commerce meets another interesting 
 statue may be found, one of Alsace, by Bartholdi, 
 the Alsatian sculptor to whom France ow r es her Lion 
 of Belfort and America her Liberty lighting the 
 World. Further, in a garden on one of the Rhine 
 islands the He des Epis a couple of miles south of 
 the city, there is a monumental cenotaph to the 
 memory of the valiant Desaix, who defended the 
 passage of the river against the Austrians in 1796, 
 helped Napoleon to gain the Battle of the Pyramids 
 in 1798, and two years later fell on the field of 
 Marengo at the very moment when victory was being 
 achieved. The monument on the He des Epis bears in 
 French the inscription, " To General Desaix, the Army 
 of the Rhine, 1801," and is adorned with bas-reliefs 
 and a medallion portrait of this famous French 
 soldier. The Germans have done their best to dese- 
 crate this tribute to his memory by capping it with 
 an abominable helmet. Fortunately the remains of 
 Desaix do not lie beneath any Teutonic symbol. 
 They were interred on the Great Saint-Bernard. 
 
 No. 4 on the Place de Broglie at Strasburg a 
 square laid out in 1740 by the French Marshal of that 
 name, who distinguished himself in the Seven Years' 
 War is quite an historic house, for there in 1792 
 dwelt Baron Dietrich, Mayor of Strasburg, and there 
 in Dietrich's drawing-room, towards the end of April 
 that year, was sung for the first time that immortal 
 hymn of defiance, the " Marseillaise," f which Rouget 
 de 1'Isle, then a young officer of engineers, composed 
 
 * " And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." Genesis, i, 3- 
 
 f The aged Madame Aimable Tastu, a Lorrainer by birth (she came 
 
 into the world at Metz in 1798) and a family connexion of Rouget de 1'Isle, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 31 
 
 for his comrades of the Army of the Rhine, and which 
 was directed essentially against the Prussian and 
 Austrian invaders of French territory. As it hap- 
 pened, when the revolutionaries of Marseilles marched 
 on Paris they appropriated Rouget de 1' Isle's stirring 
 words and notes, which had been carried southward 
 by soldiers sent to defend Toulon ; and as they, the 
 Marseillais, were the first to make the glorious hymn 
 known in the capital, the Parisians called it the 
 1C Marseillaise," a name it has ever since retained. It 
 was dedicated by Rouget de 1'Isle to the septua- 
 genarian Marshal Luckner, whom the Robespierrists 
 guillotined two years afterwards for lack of energy in 
 his old age. 
 
 There is great uncertainty respecting the quarters 
 which De 1'Isle occupied at Strasburg when he com- 
 posed the "Marseillaise." Claims have been put 
 forth on behalf of several houses, but none appears to 
 be authentic. Many, however, are the quaint or 
 interesting dwellings that one finds in the old city, 
 some of them dating back to the latter part of the 
 Middle Ages. In addition to the mementoes of the 
 French rule to which I have referred, mention may 
 be made of the Promenade de Contades, laid out by 
 the Marshal Duke of that name in 1764, and of the 
 Orangery, which owes its origin to Napoleon's first 
 wife, the Empress Josephine. The university, re- 
 established in new buildings by the Germans, sprang 
 from a Protestant school founded in the first half of 
 
 whom she well remembered (he died at Choisy-le-Roi, near Paris, in 1830, 
 when seventy-six years old), told me in her last years that De 1'Isle was 
 composing by way of pastime sundry little pastoral and love pieces when 
 the " Marseillaise " suddenly exploded from his brain. This statement is 
 borne out by an early edition of his collected verses, which are mostly dated, 
 and a copy of which exists in the British Museum library. Mme. Tastu 
 herself wrote some very fair poetry, but was best known by her many work* 
 in prose for youthful reeding. She died in 1885. 
 
32 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the sixteenth century. About a hundred years later 
 this school became a university, and in 1772 Goethe 
 took his degree as Doctor of Laws there. The Revo- 
 lution suppressed the foundation, but under the last 
 Bourbons it was revived as an Academic royale. I 
 shall refer more particularly to the new institutions 
 when dealing in another chapter with the efforts to 
 Germanize Alsace since the annexation. As for the 
 city's public library, the building and its contents 
 were largely destroyed by the Germans in 1870. 
 Many precious manuscripts and incunabula were then 
 annihilated among the former being the famous 
 " Hortus Deliciarum " of the Abbess Herrade of 
 Hohenberg, which was richly decorated with illumina- 
 tions and miniatures of Byzantine style. As with the 
 fathers, so with the sons, as witness the fate of the 
 library of Lou vain. 
 
 I have written at some length respecting Strasburg, 
 because it is the capital of Alsace. The chief towns 
 of the other Kreise directly attached to Strasburg 
 under the German administrative system may be 
 referred to more briefly. North of the capital city is 
 Haguenau, a town of nearly 19,000 inhabitants, on 
 the Moder. It was fortified by the Emperor Frederick 
 Barbarossa, and there is a story that our Richard 
 Cceur de Lion appeared there before a gathering of 
 princes while he was a prisoner of Frederick's son and 
 successor, Henry the Cruel, to whom he had been 
 handed over by Leopold of Austria. Haguenau's 
 most notable building is the church of Saint- George, 
 dating principally from the thirteenth century. Pro- 
 ceeding from this point in the direction of Wissem- 
 bourg (Weissenburg), whose Kreis or circle is the most 
 northern of Lower Alsace, one could visit, prior to 
 the Great War, the scenes of some of the earliest 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 33 
 
 encounters between the French and Germans in 1870. 
 Here, for instance, are Worth, Froeseh wilier, and 
 Reichshoffen, all associated with the unfortunate 
 defeat of MacMahon's army, which was the first really 
 severe blow that France received. Reichshoffen, 
 whose name recalls the famous desperate charge of 
 the French cuirassiers,* is the largest of these localities, 
 having 3000 inhabitants, whereas Worth (which for 
 us, as for the Germans, has given its name to the 
 battle) counts but 1000, and Froeschwiiler only 600. 
 It is, however, in the church of the last-named locality 
 that one finds the chief memorials to the men of the 
 contending armies who fell in the great fight an 
 altar of black marble dedicated to the French, and 
 one of red sandstone to the Germans. 
 
 Wissembourg, associated with the earlier defeat of 
 Abel Douay in the same war, stands on the Lauter, at 
 the extreme northern limit of Lower Alsace. It is a 
 place of some 6800 souls, and possesses a fine church, 
 which comprises a twelfth-century Romanesque tower, 
 but is in other respects an example of early Gothic. 
 Here in 1704-6 Marshal Villars established some 
 famous lines which saved this part of France from 
 invasion. 
 
 North-west of Strasburg will be found the Kreis 
 or circle of Saverne, called Zabern by the Germans. 
 This town one of 9000 people was the Tres Tabernae 
 of the Roman itineraries. It passed in the course of 
 time to the Duchy of Lorraine, and in 1525 was 
 seized by a multitude of rebellious peasantry, known 
 
 * The charge really took place in the vicinity of Morsbronn, which is 
 about five and a half miles distant from Reichshoffen. A monument erected 
 at Morsbronn in 1873 is inscribed, " Aux Cuirassiers dits de Reichshoffen." 
 At Reichshoffen itself there is an obelisk to the memory of the heroic French 
 troopers. The ironworks of this town were first established by Baron Dietrich, 
 to whom I referred in connexion with the " Marseillaise." See p. 30, ante. 
 
 C 
 
34 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 as the Rustauds or Rustics. Duke Anthony of 
 Lorraine having besieged them, they capitulated on 
 the understanding that their lives should be spared 
 provided they gave up their weapons. But no sooner 
 was this effected than the hireling German lansquenets 
 in the Duke's pay attacked them, and cut thousands 
 of them down whilst they attempted to escape. The 
 Duke himself could not restrain his ferocious soldiery. 
 Later, Saverne (which often suffered during the 
 Thirty Years' War) passed as a lordship to the Bishops 
 of Strasburg, who retained possession until the French 
 Revolution. One of these prelates, Cardinal Louis 
 de Rohan, erected here a considerable part of an 
 imposing chateau or palace with monumental facades 
 and beautiful grounds. The work was carried on by 
 his successor, the notorious Cardinal Edouard de 
 Rohan, who was duped and swindled by the intriguing 
 Countess de la Motte in the affair of the famous 
 Diamond Necklace. To-day the once sumptuous 
 palace of Saverne is but a German barrack. The 
 town stands at an elevation of some 600 feet above 
 the Zorn and the Marne and Rhine Canal, on the 
 verge of the Alsatian Plain. Behind it rise some fine 
 wooded heights, and by reason of its beautiful situa- 
 tion Saverne was the favourite place of sojourn of 
 that well-known writer, Edmond About, who was by 
 birth a Lorrainer. Comprised within the Kreis of 
 Saverne is the town of Bouxwiller (Buchsweiler), 
 which is situated just under the Bassberg, one of 
 the heights of the Lower Vosges. The little place 
 derives some importance from the sulphate of 
 iron and lignite deposits which are worked in its 
 vicinity. 
 
 Skirting the Vosges southward from Saverne, one 
 passes Marmoutier (Germanized as Maursmiinster), a 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 35 
 
 town of 3600 people, deriving its name from an abbey 
 which, founded originally by a disciple of the Irish 
 Saint Colomban, subsequently pertained to the Con- 
 gregation de Saint-Maur. Farther southward is 
 Wasselonne (now Wasselnheim), a locality of much 
 the same size, with several quarries whence the stone 
 for building Strasburg Cathedral was extracted. Yet 
 more to the south and on the left bank of the Bruch, 
 between the Alsatian vine slopes and the plain, stands 
 Molsheim, a picturesque place of 3000 souls with 
 a fourteenth- to sixteenth-century church, and a 
 charming old town hall faced by a square where 
 stands an obelisk bearing in French the inscription : 
 "To the Children of the Town who died for 
 the Country, 1870-71." * One needs no further 
 evidence that the folk of Molsheim were attached 
 to France. 
 
 On ascending the Bruch towards its source in the 
 Vosges there will be found a picturesque and interest- 
 ing little region known as the Ban de la Roche or 
 Steintal, the former name being derived from an 
 ancient castle called the Chateau de la Roche. This 
 district was desolated during the Thirty Years' War, 
 and in the eighteenth century the inhabitants of its 
 eight poor villages or hamlets were plunged in the 
 greatest ignorance and deepest misery. In 1767, 
 however, a Protestant pastor named Jean Frederic 
 Oberlin, a native of Strasburg and the younger brother 
 of a distinguished Alsatian philosopher and scholar 
 (Jeremie Jacques Oberlin), was appointed minister 
 at the village of Waldersbach in the Roche region. 
 Distressed by the sight of so much misery one 
 knows how terrible was the condition of the peasantry 
 throughout France during the last years of the old 
 
 * " Aux Enfants de la Ville morts pour la Patrie." 
 
36 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 regime Oberlin set himself to work to remedy it. 
 Assisted by his wife, his sons, his daughters, and a 
 dependent, who was really more a friend than a 
 servant, he helped the peasants to make roads, 
 bridged the Bruch between Foil day and Rothau with 
 his own hands, opened schools, gave instruction in 
 weaving, procured fruit-trees and potatoes for plant- 
 ing, in fact raised the inhabitants to a degree of 
 cheerful comfort such as had never previously been 
 known to them, nor, indeed, to their fathers either. 
 Oberlin died in 1826, being then eighty-six years old. 
 In the churchyard at Fouday (now called Urbach by 
 the Germans) there is a stone bearing his name, and, 
 in French, the words : " He was for Sixty Years the 
 Father of this Canton. The Memory of the Righteous 
 shall be Blessed." According to some accounts 
 Oberlin's remains are not buried here, but rest beside 
 those of his wife at Waldersbach, where he had his 
 parsonage, and where, we believe, many mementoes 
 of this most worthy man are still preserved. 
 
 From the Ban de la Roche another interesting spot 
 may be reached, the Hohwald and the famous con- 
 vent of Saint Odilia, who is regarded as the Patroness 
 of Alsace. She was ' the daughter of the seventh- 
 century Alsatian Duke Adalric the Cruel, and was 
 born blind, for which reason her father would have 
 had her killed had not her nurse fled with her to a 
 Burgundian convent. There, according to the legend, 
 on being baptized, the sense of sight was miraculously 
 bestowed on her. Her unnatural father repented, 
 and in course of time, finding her unwilling to marry, 
 gave her the Castle of Hohenburg in order that she 
 might transform it into a convent. The spot is 
 famous throughout Alsace, and is the scene every 
 Whitsuntide of a great Catholic pilgrimage. The 
 

 ALSACE-LORRAINE 37 
 
 scenery, with its crags and forests, is very striking. 
 There is a spring whither people repair when they are 
 afflicted with complaints of the eyesight, and in the 
 vicinity one finds some remains of a so-called Heiden- 
 mauer or Pagans' Wall, composed of unhewn stones 
 heaped together without cement, the whole averag- 
 ing from eight to ten feet in height. Similar walls are 
 found on the Taennichel, Frankenburg, Guerbaden, 
 Ochsen stein, and Heiligenberg heights. Some writers 
 have claimed that these structures date from abso- 
 lutely prehistoric times, others have ascribed them to 
 the Gauls or the Romans. There is reason to believe 
 that they existed prior to the Roman dominion and 
 were raised by the native Celts as barriers against the 
 Germanic hordes which repeatedly poured across the 
 Rhine, bent, like their descendants of to-day, upon 
 overrunning Gaul. In some instances the more or 
 less circular character of the structures indicates that 
 they formed camps of refuge from the invaders. 
 The Romans, doubtless, made use of them after Julius 
 Caesar had vanquished the Swabian Germans of 
 Ariovistus, and Alsace came under the protecting 
 Roman rule. 
 
 In normal times the town of Barr which is not 
 far from Saint Odilia's convent, and where there are 
 some mineral springs used to be extensively patron- 
 ized for the excursions which may be made from it, 
 not only to Sainte-Odile, but to other interesting spots, 
 such as the castle and the town of Andlau, associated 
 with the counts of that name. The last member of 
 this family that we ever heard of was General Count 
 d'Andlau, a Senator of France, who, after powerfully 
 contributing to expose the conduct of Marshal Bazaine 
 at Metz, became implicated, unhappily, in a great 
 scandal respecting the sale of the Legion of Honour 
 
38 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 in President Grevy's time, and thereupon fled to 
 South America. Barr is associated with a singular 
 legend respecting Ricardis, the repudiated wife of 
 Charles the Fat, Emperor of Germany and Italy, and 
 King of France. Ricardis, it is said,* was entreating 
 Heaven to designate to her some suitable place of 
 asylum when an angel appeared and told her to 
 select a spot where she would see something remark- 
 able. Soon afterwards, in her wanderings, she per- 
 ceived a she-bear who, with the help of her cubs, was 
 scratching the ground and throwing up a kind of 
 enceinte. Ricardis took this as a sign from Heaven, 
 and founded a famous abbey on the spot. I have 
 given this legend, as I gave that of Saint Odilia, 
 simply by way of exemplifying the many curious ones 
 which are current in Alsace. 
 
 East of the region at which I have just glanced, 
 and on the River 111, south of Strasburg, will be 
 found the old fortified town of Erstein (6000 inhabi- 
 tants) which is the centre of another Kreis of Lower 
 Alsace. Yet another is that of Schlestadt (Schlett- 
 stadt), a town situated still more to the south and not 
 far from the 111. Very ancient, the residence of some 
 of the Frankish kings, and possessing in its church of 
 Sainte-Foi (Saint Fides) one of the finest Romanesque 
 fanes in the Reichsland, Schlestadt ranked under the 
 French as a fourth- class fortress, but was dismantled 
 by the Germans in 1872. At the last census the 
 town had a population of 10,600. 
 
 We now enter the Bezirk of Upper Alsace, whose 
 chief town is Colmar. Situated in the Alsatian Plain, 
 
 * She was the daughter of a Count of Nordgau, and was accused of adultery 
 with a Lord of Verceil, against which charge she protested. She married 
 Charles in 877 and was afterwards crowned with him at Rome by Pope 
 John VIII. She died in 911 at the Alsatian monastery which she had 
 founded. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 39 
 
 it is watered by the Ill's tributary, the Lauch, and the 
 Logelbach Canal coming from the Fecht. An arti- 
 ficial waterway also connects it with the Rhone and 
 Rhine Canal. The central part of Colmar is a typical 
 old Alsatian town with irregular streets, wooden 
 bridges over the Logelbach, and houses of far-away 
 days, sometimes with painted fronts, sometimes with 
 ornate gables, sometimes yet more elaborate in the 
 Renaissance style, the whole contrasting strongly 
 with what may be seen in the modern outskirts. In 
 a word, there is much to interest the antiquarian and 
 the artist in the older part of Colmar. Bartholdi, the 
 sculptor,* was a native of the town, which displays 
 with pride several examples of his work among 
 others a statue of Jean Rapp, Napoleon's valiant 
 general who, being besieged in Dantzig, defended 
 it for a whole year in fact, to the last extremity; 
 secondly, a statue of Admiral Bruat, who commanded 
 the French Black Sea fleet in the Crimean War. 
 Both of these, like Bartholdi himself, belonged to 
 Colmar. Another example of the great sculptor's 
 powers will be found in the cemetery. It is a monu- 
 ment to the Colmarians who fell while fighting the 
 Germans at the engagement of Horburg on September 
 14, 1870. 
 
 France first acquired Colmar from the Swedes at 
 the time of the Thirty Years' War, but the union 
 severed in 1871 may be said to have dated more 
 precisely from January 1675, when Turenrie, after 
 crossing the snowbound Vosges, routed the Germans 
 on the plain between Colmar and Tiirkheim and threw 
 them out of Alsace. The Alsatian Sovereign Council, 
 which under the sway of the Hapsburgs had been 
 accustomed to meet at Ensisheim, then removed to 
 
 * See p. 30, ante. 
 
40 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Colmar. Since 1871 the Germans have made the 
 little city the seat of the Alsatian Oberlandesgericht 
 or Supreme Court. At the census of 1910 Colmar 
 counted nearly 44,000 inhabitants. 
 
 Ribeauville, the centre of the most northern 
 Colmarian circle, and called Rappoltsweiler by the 
 Germans, is very picturesquely situated below some 
 spurs of the Vosges where several old castles may be 
 seen, and where some of the best wine of Alsace is 
 vintaged. The town, now one of 6000 souls, pertained 
 anciently to the Lords of Ribeaupierre (Rappoltstein), 
 who were accounted kings of all itinerant musicians 
 and minstrels. There is an ancient house at Ribeau- 
 ville where the corporation of these tuneful wanderers 
 was wont to assemble, particularly on Pipers' Day, 
 September 8. When the last Lord of Ribeaupierre 
 and Ribeauville died, Louis XIV bestowed the seignory 
 on a Duke of Zwei-Brucken-Birkenfeld, who was a 
 general in his service. At the same time this duke 
 belonged to the House of Bavaria (Zwei-Briicken is 
 in the Rhenish Palatinate), and from him the present 
 Bavarian king is descended. The action of Louis XIV 
 in bestowing an Alsatian lordship on a foreigner 
 added yet another and a quite uncalled-for complica- 
 tion to the many in which Alsatian history was then 
 already entangled. 
 
 Not far from Ribeauville, but more among the 
 Vosges, is a little place long known as La Poultroie 
 but rechristened Schmerlach by the Germans, who in 
 like fashion have given the name of Diedolshausen to 
 the village of Le Bonhomme near the Vosgian pass of 
 that name. In the same way Orbey, in the Ribeau- 
 ville (or Rappoltsweiler) Kreis, has become Urbeis. It 
 is a place of 4500 souls, and possesses some silk and 
 cotton mills. Near it in the mountains are two 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 41 
 
 lonely sheets of water known respectively as the 
 White and the Black Lakes. 
 
 Munster, a manufacturing town of 6000 souls, but 
 noted more particularly, as was mentioned in my first 
 chapter, for its odoriferous cheese,* stands in the 
 narrow valley of the Fecht, not far from the Schlucht 
 Pass of the Vosges, and about fifteen miles from 
 Colmar. In the Munster Valley, but nearer Colmar, 
 is Soultz (Sulzbad, 4800 inhabitants), noted for its 
 acidulous mineral waters, which in French days were 
 often called the baths for lunatics (bains des fous) as 
 they were held to be beneficial in restoring the mind 
 to equilibrium, particularly in cases of hysteria, 
 hypochondria, and so forth. On the south-east of 
 Colmar, beside the Rhone and Rhine Canal, and a 
 couple of miles or so from the last-named river, stands 
 Neuf-Brisach (Neu Breisach), built in Louis XIV's 
 time by Vauban as a means of keeping the predatory 
 Germans on their own side of the Rhenish waters. In 
 this same part of Upper Alsace will be found a little 
 place called Eguisheim, which prides itself less on its 
 conspicuous towered castle than on the fact that no 
 less a personage than a Pope was born there this 
 being Leo IX, who occupied the chair of St. Peter 
 from 1048 to 1054. It was at the time of this Alsatian 
 Pontiff that the severance of the Greek and the 
 Latin Churches was finally consummated. Ruffach 
 (3800 inhabitants), midway between Munster and 
 Neuf-Brisach, gave birth to another notable character, 
 Marshal Lefebvre, Duke of Dantzig, the blunt gallant 
 fellow who married his washerwoman, styled 
 " Madame Sans-Gene " by playwrights, though the 
 real Sans-Gene happens to have been quite a different 
 person. It was Lefebvre who, when a Prussian 
 
 * See p. 20, ante. 
 
42 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 officer of the Junker strain sneered at Napoleon's 
 commanders, asking who were their ancestors, retorted 
 with well- justified pride : " Ancestors ? We are our 
 own ancestors ! " 
 
 Gueb wilier (Gebweiler) lies south of Ruffach, and 
 is a busy town of 13,000 people engaged chiefly in one 
 or another branch of the textile industries, though 
 some are concerned in viticulture, the produce of the 
 neighbouring vineyards, notably the wine known as 
 Kitterle, being very good growths. There are some 
 interesting ancient churches here, and on the south 
 side of the Ballon de Guebwiller, the highest mountain 
 in the Vosges, and near the Bussang Pass, one finds, 
 in the valley of Saint- Amarin, the ruins of the Abbey 
 of Murbach, dating from Charlemagne's time. Ensis- 
 heim, to which I previously referred,* stands on the 
 111 and the Bale to Strasburg railway line, but, though 
 it was once the capital of the Alsatian possessions of 
 the Hapsburgs and still displays an imposing town 
 hall and several other Renaissance edifices, it is now 
 decayed, and counts only 2500 inhabitants. 
 
 Thann, occupied by the French in the earlier part 
 of the Great War and still held by them at the time 
 I write as I hope will be permanently the case 
 ranked under the Germans as the centre of a Kreis 
 of Upper Alsace. Inhabited before the war by some 
 7500 people, it is placed in the valley of the River 
 Thur, among the Vosgian spurs, and is overlooked by 
 the ruins of the Castle of Engelburg, which Turenne 
 blew up in 1674, when the upper part of one of the 
 towers fell in a solid mass, and lies below the other 
 ruins like a huge barrel staved in at both ends, in 
 such wise that you may look through it as through 
 a telescope. The good folk of Thann call it " the 
 
 * See p. 39, ante. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 43 
 
 sorceress's eye." The town, which existed already in 
 the tenth century, contains a fine ogival church, sculp- 
 tured profusely. The chief portal is* particularly 
 remarkable for its statues and carvings depicting 
 the story of Jesus and the Virgin, and there is a 
 fine spire of delicate open work rising to a height of 
 300 feet. Two towers of the old fortifications of 
 Thann still remain, and the town hall is interesting, 
 for it was designed by General Kleber, who also 
 superintended the building work, he being at the 
 time " architect of civil edifices " in Upper Alsace. 
 Before the present war Thann was noted for its 
 printed textiles, and particularly its chemical pro- 
 ducts. On the north-west is the bourg of Wesserling 
 (Hiisseren), also a little industrial locality, and in 
 peaceful times a centre for various excursions among 
 the mountains above the Thur Valley. Wesserling 
 itself is of interest, as it is built round a castle-capped 
 moraine of blocks of stone and gravel that fell from 
 a glacier at some far-away period. Cernay (Sennheim), 
 an old and formerly fortified town, now engaged in 
 the textile industries, lies slightly south-west of Thann 
 on the left bank of the Thur and at the foot of the 
 Vosges. Between it and Guebwiller on the north 
 rises the famous Hartmannsweiler Peak.f 
 
 From Cernay one may reach Mulhouse (Mtilhausen), 
 of whose industries some account was given in the 
 previous chapter. J Although, combined with its 
 industrial suburb Dornach, it is, in regard to popula- 
 tion, the second city of Alsace (105,500 inhabitants), 
 and at the same time the largest manufacturing centre 
 in the whole Reichsland, it yields administratively 
 
 * I don't know whether the church has suffered during the present war. 
 Possibly instead of " is " I ought to have written " was." 
 
 f See p. 15, ante. J See p. 22 ante. 
 
44 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the pas to Colmar. It came at an early date under 
 the sway of the Bishops of Strasburg, and later under 
 that of the Hapsburgs, but joined the Decapole 
 League in the thirteenth century, drove out all nobles, 
 and became a free democratic city allied with the 
 Swiss of Basle, Soleure, and Berne already in 1466. 
 Mulhouse was never conquered by the French. At 
 the peace of Westphalia it was included among the 
 Swiss cantons, but in 1798 it quitted the Confedera- 
 tion and gave itself voluntarily to France. Watered 
 by the 111 and the Rhone and Rhine Canal, on which 
 there is a port, the town spreads out at the southern 
 end of the great Alsatian plain. Its prosperity even 
 in the days of French rule testified to the energy and 
 industry of its democratic citizens, for the raw cotton 
 for its manufactures had to be conveyed all the way 
 from Havre and Marseilles, whilst the coals it needed 
 were brought chiefly by canal from Saint-Etienne and 
 Rive-de-Gier, in the southern part of France. 
 
 The museum contains some good paintings and 
 objects of archaeological interest, but the only old 
 edifice of real account is the town hall, which was 
 built in 1552 and combines features of the Gothic 
 and the Renaissance styles. Inside there are some 
 curious mural paintings by a sixteenth-century Colmar 
 artist, and the council chamber has some windows of 
 stained glass, recalling Mulhouse's alliances with the 
 Swiss cantons and France. On the south-west front 
 used to hang a stone carved so as to represent a 
 human head and known as the Klapperstein or Pierre 
 des Bavards, otherwise the Chatterers' Stone. Folk 
 who were convicted of slander or picking quarrels 
 were compelled to carry this stone, hanging from 
 their necks, round the town on the market or fair 
 day following their sentence. This punishment for 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 45 
 
 unbridled loquacity was last inflicted on February 28, 
 1781. 
 
 Due west of Mulhouse, but in the Vosges near the 
 French frontier, and separated by only a few heights 
 from Thann, is Massevaux, otherwise Masmiinstex, 
 a town of between three and four thousand people, 
 which owes its name to a conventual establishment 
 founded in 720 by a certain Mason who was related to 
 Saint Odilia. It is called Coenobium Masonvillae in 
 ancient deeds, and a list of its abbesses from its 
 foundation until 1790 is extant. Occupied at one 
 time by Benedictine nuns it eventually became a 
 Chapter of Noble Dames, and there it was that 
 Catherine of Anhalt-Zerbst, afterwards famous as 
 Catherine the Great and the " Semiramis of the 
 North," received her education. Her career seems to 
 indicate that whatever accomplishments she may 
 have acquired among the noble dames of Massevaux, 
 no principles of morality were instilled into her. 
 
 South-west of Mulhouse and on the way towards 
 Belfort, Altkirch, the centre of the southernmost 
 Kreis of Upper Alsace, rises in terraced fashion on 
 an eminence above the right bank of the 111. Mulhouse 
 is generally accounted the capital of the so-called 
 Sundgau of Alsace, but in former times the term 
 applied more exactly to Altkirch that is, after its 
 southern neighbour Ferrette or Pfirt had declined. 
 Nowadays, however, Altkirch has barely 3500 inhabi- 
 tants. Its castle, where the archdukes of Austria 
 generally resided when they visited their Alsatian 
 possessions, has long been in ruins. The one existing 
 building of Altkirch that presents features of interest 
 is its old court of justice. The town is noted for the 
 fine glazed red bricks made in its vicinity. 
 
 Ferrette (Ferreta and Phirretum in old Latin 
 
40 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 deeds) stands on a northern spur of the Jura Moun- 
 tains, which hereabouts form the frontier of Alsace 
 and Switzerland. I shall have occasion to speak of 
 it more particularly in my next chapter in connexion 
 with the early history of Alsace. Here it need only 
 be said that Ferrette, after serving as a Roman post 
 of observation, was ruled for some centuries by a line 
 of independent counts springing from the house of 
 Montbeliard, who acquired several other towns and 
 lordships in this part of Alsace. In 1324 these 
 possessions were conveyed by their heiress, Joan, to a 
 member of the house of Austria whom she married. 
 At a subsequent date they were mortgaged to Charles 
 the Rash of Burgundy, but reverted to the Hapsburgs 
 when Charles's only child and heiress, Marie, married 
 the Emperor Maximilian I. Finally they were ceded 
 to France, with virtually all the Sundgau and Upper 
 Alsace, by the Treaty of Westphalia, otherwise 
 Munster (1648), which was confirmed eleven years 
 later by the Treaty of the Pyrenees. 
 
 We have now reached the southern limits of Alsace, 
 and must retrace our steps northward in order to 
 glance at the other division of the Reichsland, the 
 north-eastern part of Lorraine which the Germans 
 annexed in 1871. The famous fortified city of Metz 
 is its capital, subordinate, however, to Strasburg. In 
 ancient days Metz was the chief town of the Gallic 
 tribe of the Mediomatrici, and was known for a time 
 as Divodurum. However, the Romans themselves 
 subsequently called the place Metis and Metlis, after 
 its original inhabitants. Already in the fourth cen- 
 tury of our era Metz was a bishop's see, and between 
 511 and 843 it became the capital of the Frankish 
 kingdom of Austrasia (Eastern Gaul) where the Carlo- 
 vingian dynasty arose. At the partition of Charle- 
 
I 
 
 ALSACE-LORRAINE 47 
 
 magne's empire (Verdun, 843) a kingdom was formed 
 in favour of his great-grandson, Lothair II, whose 
 father, Lothair I, sometime " Emperor of the West," 
 had been vanquished at Fontenoy by his brothers, 
 Charles the Bald and Louis, otherwise Ludwig, the 
 Germanic. The new kingdom was called Lotharingia 
 after its sovereign, this being the only example of the 
 kind known in French history, other regions having 
 derived their names from the folk who dwelt in them, 
 as witness Brittany, Burgundy, Normandy, Gascony, 
 and Auvergne ; or, as in the case of Champagne, 
 Alsace, and the Ile-de-France, from physical circum- 
 stances ; or, again, from the presence of some city in 
 their midst, as is shown by Touraine (Tours), Anjou 
 (Angers), Forez (Feurs). Dauphine certainly took its 
 appellation from the title of its rulers, but only 
 Lorraine's came from an individual. 
 
 Metz afterwards passed to sundry German rulers, 
 but at the time of the Emperor Otho II (tenth century) 
 it became a free city of the Empire under its bishop. 
 Although it was situated in Lorraine, its bishops, who 
 were Princes of the Empire, never did homage to the 
 Dukes of Lorraine, the situation being the same at 
 Verdun and Toul, whose prelates also enjoyed a 
 quasi-independence, being subject only to the Diet 
 of the so-called Holy Roman Empire an institution 
 which differed greatly from the German Empire of 
 to-day. At last in 1552 the Three Bishoprics of 
 Lorraine were annexed by Henri II, son of Francis I 
 of France, and although 365 years have elapsed since 
 then Toul and Verdun have never since been torn 
 from French territory. Nor was Metz wrung from 
 France until 1871, when she had belonged to her for 
 more than three centuries. It is true that the 
 Emperor Charles V was extremely wrathful when he 
 
48 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 heard of what Henri II had done, and that he besieged 
 Metz with an army of 100,000 men. But the defence 
 had been entrusted to the young and famous Franois 
 de Guise, who, six years later, to the great chagrin of 
 our first Mary, recovered Calais for the French crown. 
 Guise, who belonged to the ducal house of Lorraine, 
 inspired the burghers of Metz with confidence and 
 energy, and after efforts of two months' duration the 
 Emperor, having lost 30,000 of his men, was obliged 
 to raise the siege. " Fortune is a woman," said he 
 bitterly, " she favours only the young ! " 
 
 Metz stands at the confluence of the Seille and the 
 Moselle, which here throws out several arms. At the 
 census of 1910 the city had a population of over 
 79,000. It has changed greatly since the fateful 
 months of 1870 when Marshal Bazaine was invested 
 within its lines and, w r hen listening to the voice of his 
 personal ambition, he " failed," as the judgment 
 pronounced upon him recorded, "to do what duty 
 and honour required." Beguiled by Prince Frederick 
 Charles of Prussia and Bismarck, he ended by 
 capitulating without having made a single really 
 strenuous effort to break through the German lines. 
 I shall have occasion to refer to him again. Here it 
 is merely en passant that I allude to his guilt. Metz, 
 I have said, has greatly altered since his time. Its 
 inner walls are now demolished, and new quarters 
 have sprung up, extending on the east beyond the 
 Seille to Plantieres and Queuleu, and on the south to 
 Montigny and Sablons. Further, many new buildings 
 have been erected in the older part of the city, though 
 this still retains a number of interesting houses, 
 including some which date from the thirteenth cen- 
 tury. The outskirts are studded with new German 
 forts, some of which are six miles or so from the city 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 49 
 
 limits. Many of these forts are named after German 
 princes and commanders. For instance, there is 
 Kronprinz Fort, Prinz August von Wurttemberg Fort, 
 Graf Haeseler Fort, and so on. There is likewise a 
 so-called Bismarck Tower. 
 
 The huge central railway station, designed by a 
 Berlinese architect in the Romanesque style, dates 
 from 1908. Virtually all the French names of streets 
 have been Germanized. The old Place Royale has 
 become Kaiser Wilhelm Platz. The names of Marshal 
 Fabert and Marshal Belle-Isle, however, have been 
 suffered to remain, and the Germans have at least 
 had the decency to spare the statues of Ney and 
 Fabert, contenting themselves with setting up, by 
 way of counterpoise, some effigies of the present 
 Kaiser's " illustrious grandfather " and of Frederick 
 Charles, who so successfully bamboozled Bazaine. 
 The cathedral, a stately Gothic edifice dating partly 
 from the thirteenth, but only finished in the sixteenth 
 century, has been renovated in various ways. It was 
 reroofed with copper and iron in 1877, and at the 
 same period other restorations were begun. Much of 
 the new sculpture is ridiculous, however. For instance, 
 the Gothic portal of the south-west front has been 
 decorated with statues, one of which, set up in or 
 about 1896, represents the present German Emperor 
 the features are unmistakable and the fact is 
 explicitly acknowledged by the German guide-books 
 to Metz in the guise of the Prophet Daniel ! The 
 first thought that arises in this connexion is that 
 German idiocy could not well go further. Yet per- 
 haps the sculptor of this effigy had some imperfect 
 inkling of what time might bring to pass. He may, 
 forsooth, have dimly foreseen another Daniel coming 
 to judgment, another Daniel in the lions' den, another 
 
50 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Daniel reading the writing on the wall. But the end 
 of the story was not disclosed to him ; he knew not 
 that the fate of the Daniel he portrayed would differ 
 greatly from that of the Hebrew prophet that he 
 would give no heed to the writing, that judgment 
 would be pronounced against him, and that he would 
 not be spared by the lions. 
 
 In addition to the cathedral there are various 
 interesting buildings at Metz, such as the former 
 church of Notre Dame de la Ronde, which belonged 
 to the Knights Templars, the eighteenth-century 
 Hotel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the fine public 
 library, and the municipal museum, where many 
 remains of the Gallo-Roman era have been preserved. 
 At no great distance from the city extend some of the 
 most famous battlefields of the Franco-German War 
 on the east Borny and Courcelles, and on the w r est 
 Saint-Privat, Mars-la-Tour, Gravelotte, Vionville, and 
 Rezonville. On an island cemetery, north of Metz, 
 are two monuments erected by the townsfolk in 
 1871, one to the French soldiers who died in the city 
 during the siege, and a smaller one to the officers who 
 fell in the outskirts. At the other localities I have 
 mentioned there are several memorials both to French 
 and to German combatants, as well as sundry tablets 
 ad majorem gloriam of William I, Moltke, and Bis- 
 marck. Another place of interest is the chateau of 
 Frescati, where the capitulation of Metz was signed on 
 October 27, 1870. Near it, prior to the present war, 
 stood some large sheds for German airships. I believe 
 that they have since been bombed. 
 
 Following the Moselle northward from Metz one 
 passes Maizieres (now Ueckingen), a little town 
 with some blast-furnaces, before reaching Thionville 
 (Diedenhofen, over 14,000 inhabitants), which is the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 51 
 
 chief centre of metallurgical industry in the annexed 
 part of Lorraine, and also an extremely important rail- 
 way junction, whither lines converge from Metz, 
 Treves, Luxemburg, and Longuyon. Vauban fortified 
 Thionville, which in his time was accounted quite a 
 strong place, but in 1903 his works were razed by the 
 Germans, who have demolished many other anti- 
 quated fortifications elsewhere. However, Sarrebourg 
 or Saarburg on the Saar not the town of that name 
 across the frontier of Rhenish Prussia, but one in the 
 south of the annexed part of Lorraine still retains 
 its old gates and ramparts. There is some contention 
 that this place, now a town of 10,000 people, was the 
 Pons Saravi of the Antoninian itinerary, though 
 Saarbriicken, a Prussian possession, where the hos- 
 tilities of 1870 virtually began,* also claims the 
 classical name. In the Middle Ages, when Saarburg 
 belonged to the Bishops of Metz, some Lombards 
 settled there, and the town became a noted place for 
 commercial intercourse between France and Germany. 
 The Bishops afterwards ceded this possession to the 
 Duchy of Lorraine, whence it passed, also by cession, 
 to France in 1661. The town was then partially 
 rebuilt by Louis XIV. 
 
 Several other localities derive their names from 
 the River Saar on which they stand. For instance, 
 there is Saarlouis, the birthplace of Marshal Ney, 
 which Prussia wrung from France after Waterloo, 
 and added to her Rhenish province. Just within the 
 Lorraine frontier stands Sarreguemines (Saargemund), 
 a town of over 15,000 inhabitants with important 
 brass foundries as well as factories making faience and 
 porcelain. At the railway station here some German 
 
 * Napoleon Ill's young son, the Prince Imperial, received on that occasion 
 the " baptism of fire." 
 
52 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 railways are linked to those of the Reichsland system 
 in such wise as to make the place particularly impor- 
 tant in war-time. South of Sarreguemines or Saarge- 
 mund one finds the little towns of Saaralben and 
 Saarunion, each inhabited by some 3000 or 4000 
 people, whilst, more southward still, going towards 
 Saarburg, is Fenestrange (Finstingen), a yet smaller 
 but an ancient place with the remains of two feudal 
 castles. 
 
 North-w r est of Sarreguemines stands Forbach 
 (10,000 inhabitants), where large papier-mache works 
 used to exist. On a height rising above the town are 
 the ruins of its feudal castle ; and in the distance one 
 can see the Spicheren or Spichererberg, a steep and 
 sparsely wooded acclivity where the French under 
 General Frossard entrenched themselves in August 
 1870. They were dislodged, however, by the Germans, 
 this being one of the first reverses suffered by the 
 French at the outset of the war. 
 
 The last slopes of the Vosges, separating Lorraine 
 from Alsace, extend in a north-easterly direction. 
 Hereabouts, just within Alsace and at the entry of 
 the pleasant valley of Falkenstein, will be found 
 Niederbronn, which I ought to have mentioned 
 sooner. It is one of the ten or twelve spas of the 
 Reichsland, and its waters are prescribed for com- 
 plaints of the liver as well as for scrofula and lymphatic 
 affections. In the eighteenth century the lordship of 
 Niederbronn belonged to Baron Dietrich, Mayor of 
 Strasburg, to whom I have previously referred. On 
 the Lorraine side of the Vosgian slopes, and near the 
 German frontier, stands Bitche (Bitsch), which has 
 twice had the honour of keeping the Prussians at bay 
 first, in 1793 when an inhabitant gave warning of 
 their approach by setting his house on fire ; and, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 53 
 
 secondly, in 1870 when, like Belfort, Bitche held out 
 until the end of the war. Only the annexation gave 
 this gallant little place, now one of 4000 souls, to 
 Germany, and some years ago the Germans revenged 
 themselves in a peculiarly characteristic fashion for 
 the resistance offered to their arms. Bitche rejoiced 
 in a statue of Lorraine's most glorious child, the 
 immortal Maid, Joan of Arc. One morning, however, 
 it was taken down and carted away, and in its place 
 was raised a statue of William I, German Kaiser by 
 the grace of Bismarck ! 
 
 Some miles south of Bitche, in a well- wooded part 
 of the Vosgian spurs on the Lorraine side, is Petite- 
 Pierre (rechristened Liitzelstein), which was formerly 
 fortified. It possessed little or no garrison in 1870, 
 and therefore had to surrender. The Germans after- 
 wards demolished its defences. More southward yet, 
 and on a barren, rocky plateau, stands another 
 fortress of the old Lorraine Phalsbourg (now Pfalz- 
 burg), the scene of one of Erckmann-Chatrian's 
 famous stories. Twice was it besieged in the time of 
 Napoleon, first in 1814, and next in the following 
 year ; and on each occasion it offered a desperate 
 resistance. Nor did Phalsbourg belie its reputation in 
 1870, but held out right doughtily for four months, in 
 spite of bombardment and conflagration. Nowadays, 
 no doubt, Vauban's fortifications could not have 
 offered anything like the same resistance. At the 
 present time Phalsbourg is a town of about 3700 
 people. 
 
 On the south-western side of the annexed part of 
 Lorraine that is, near the French frontier in the direc- 
 tion of Nancy will be found the towns of Chateau- 
 Salins (Salzburg) and Dieuze, both of which are 
 associated with salt. The salt deposits of this district 
 
54 ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 have certainly been worked since the eleventh century, 
 and it has been held that they were known to the 
 Romans. Chateau- Salins counted in 1910 less than 
 2500 inhabitants, but Dieuze had nearly 6000, having 
 progressed whilst its neighbour was declining. Both 
 towns are situated in the Valley of the Seille, which 
 emerges from a great mere called the Etang de Lindre. 
 The water covers at times an expanse of over 1600 
 acres, and has an average depth of about ten feet. 
 Every three years, however, a part of the land is 
 drained and cultivated with remarkable results. 
 
Ill 
 
 ALSATIAN HISTORY 
 
 (FROM EARLY TIMES TO THE TREATY OF WESTPHALIA) 
 
 Primitive Man in Alsace : The Celts of Caesar's Time : Early German 
 Incursions : Caesar and Ariovistus : Roman Defences of Alsace : The 
 Alemanni : Rome and the German Invaders : Alsace abandoned by 
 the Empire : Vandal, Burgundian, and Hunnish Invasions : Alsace 
 under the Merovingian and Carlovingian Franks : The Disruption of 
 Charlemagne's Empire : Alsace under German Rule : Dukes, Land- 
 graves, and Landvogts : The Robber Knights : The Free Cities and 
 the Decapolis League : Enguerrand de Coucy in Alsace : The Rhenish 
 Confederation : The Hapsburgs and Alsace : The Thirty Years' War : 
 The Swedes abandon Alsace to France : The Province ceded to 
 Louis XIV by Austria : Assent of the Alsatians. 
 
 THE history of Alsace begins with the advent of the 
 Romans in that region, but it is held by scientists 
 that the country was inhabited already during the 
 latter part of the pleistocene or quaternian age. 
 Rather more than half a century ago portions of a 
 human skull of the dolichocephalic type, recalling the 
 skulls of the Emps grotto and the Neanderthal, were 
 found at Eguisheim, near Colmar, and on the same 
 spot at the same time were discovered a tooth of the 
 Elephas primogenius, otherwise the mammoth, to- 
 gether with a knife and an arrow-head of silex. 
 These discoveries were made in a bed of the clay, 
 usually called loess, deposited by glaciers of Alpino- 
 Rhenish origin ; and the conclusion at which the 
 learned men of the time arrived was that the human 
 species existed in Alsace at the diluvian period follow- 
 ing the glacial age, and was contemporaneous with 
 
 55 
 
56 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the aforesaid Elephas primogenius, the Rhinoceros 
 tichorhinus, the Ursus spelceus, and the Felis spelcea 
 bones and teeth of all those animals having been 
 discovered in Alsace in soil of the same character. 
 Hundreds of objects in shivered or split and also 
 polished stone have likewise been found in one or 
 another part of the region, showing that its inhabi- 
 tants passed through a stone age, and, judging by 
 the spots where most discoveries were made, that 
 these inhabitants dwelt preferentially on slopes over- 
 looking rivers and meres. Deposits of loess are 
 found in various parts of Alsace, notably in districts 
 extending from the River Bruch on the south to 
 Niederbronn on the north, and again towards the 
 Swiss frontier on the south. In the real mountain 
 and plain regions, however, only few split or polished 
 flints have been discovered. The lower ground at 
 the period referred to was indeed still under water, 
 and therefore uninhabited. The waters did not 
 subside until the bronze and iron ages, and only 
 then did man begin to spread through this part of 
 the country. As for Lorraine, or at least the part 
 of it annexed by Germany, it would not seem to have 
 been inhabited at as early a period as Alsace. 
 
 Whatever may have been the origin of the so- 
 called Pagans' Walls and Castles, there are certainly 
 a number of dolmen, peulven, cromlechs, etc., in the 
 Vosgian districts, indicating the presence there of a 
 Celtic population at an early date. Livy and Csesar 
 are the first to mention the inhabitants of the region, 
 the former asserting that as far back as the Roman 
 year 163 that is, about 591 B.C. large bands of them 
 made their way across the Rhine and through the 
 Black Forest to the Danube, on whose banks they 
 established themselves. That is more or less legen- 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 57 
 
 dary, and may have little if any foundation in fact. 
 Caesar, on the other hand, when he first became 
 acquainted with Alsace, found it inhabited by Celtic 
 tribes, which included, in the north (Metz and most 
 of the Moselle country), the Mediomatrici and the_ 
 Treviri, after whom the city of Treves is named. 
 Southward dwelt the Rauraci and the Sequani. 
 Along the Rhine, in parts of Upper Alsace, there 
 was also a Helvetian tribe, called the Tulingi. At 
 this period the first century before Christ many 
 of the Mediomatrici Celts were constantly assailed 
 by a Germanic people called the Tribocci, who flocked 
 across the Rhine, compelled in a measure to quit 
 their own lands by the constant incursions and, con- 
 quests of another German tribe, the Suevi, from 
 w^hom Swabia has derived its name, though the 
 Suevi would appear to have had a more northern 
 habitat at an earlier date. Some of the Mediomatrici 
 Celts were gradually compelled to retreat before the 
 Tribocci as far even as the Vosgian slopes. 
 
 Now at last it happened that war broke out 
 between the Sequanian Celts and the ^Edui another 
 tribe of Gallia Celtica, dwelling in a region which is 
 now represented by the departments of the Cote- 
 d'Or, the Nievre, the Saone-et-Loire, and the Rhone. 
 The jEduans were a powerful race, and the Sequanians 
 and the Averni (of Auvergne), with whom they were 
 allied, finding themselves hard pressed, eventually 
 called in the foreigner to help them. The foreigner 
 in question was a certain Ariovistus, otherwise, it is 
 said, Ehrenvest a compound German word signify- 
 ing " firm in honour " and he was the chieftain of 
 various Germanic hordes, principally, it is asserted, 
 Suevi or Swabians. According to Caesar, Ariovistus 
 began by providing 15,000 men, but ultimately 
 
58 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 120,000 poured down upon the ^Eduans, attracted 
 by the abundance which was found in Gaul and the 
 prospect of appropriating its rich lands in which 
 respect they did not differ from their descendants, 
 the Germans of to-day. 
 
 They certainly defeated the ^Edui, who lost, 
 Caesar tells us, all their nobles and councillors in the 
 struggle, and had their cavalry annihilated. But 
 the invaders also ravaged and pillaged Upper Alsace, 
 through which they passed, and after claiming a 
 third part of the Sequanian lands as recompense for 
 their services, their appetite increased and they 
 demanded a second third. Thereupon the Sequanians, 
 tardily repenting of their folly in soliciting the help 
 of the unscrupulous Germans, became reconciled to 
 the uEdui, and Caesar's assistance was solicited. 
 Before taking action the Roman general sent a mes- 
 sage to Ariovistus requesting him to designate a 
 suitable spot for an interview. The German chieftain 
 replied that if he had needed anything of Caesar he 
 would have gone to him, and that it was for Caesar 
 to come to him if he desired anything of him. Ario- 
 vistus's next proceeding was to descend on Vesontio, 
 now Besanon, and attempt its capture. Foiled in 
 that endeavour, he consented to an interview with 
 Caesar, and when it took place his speech was every 
 whit as bombastic and as mendacious as any of the 
 orations or proclamations that have emanated from 
 the present Kaiser. Tall and full-bodied, the leader 
 of the great hordes from across the Rhine seems to 
 have regarded with contempt the short and slender 
 Roman and his far from numerous legions. It was 
 an early illustration of that Teutonic conceit which 
 prompted Germany's twentieth-century War Lord to 
 refer to the contemptible little British Army. The 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 59 
 
 sequel taught Ariovistus his mistake. He had to 
 retire before Caesar's advance, and at last, after he 
 had fixed his camp at Colmar, a great battle was 
 fought on the plain between that town and Ensis- 
 heim a tradition says near Rougemont, on the 
 little River Saint Nicholas and the Germanic hordes 
 were cut to pieces, 90,000 dead or dying being left 
 upon the field. The remainder fled precipitately 
 across the Rhine, and Ariovistus and his two wives 
 were either drowned in that river or perished during 
 the previous fighting. 
 
 For a time this victory, achieved in the year 
 58 B.C., annihilated all Germanic power in Alsace, 
 which became a dependency of Rome and a bulwark 
 against the German barbarians. In the following 
 year the whole territory, which had belonged to the 
 Mediomatrici Celts before the irruptions of the 
 Tribocci, was annexed, and Caesar placed Labienus 
 (father or grandfather of the famous orator and 
 historian of that name) in charge of it. Nevertheless, 
 from time to time bands of Germans still crossed the 
 Rhine, and the Romans endeavoured to civilize them. 
 Under Augustus certain lands were assigned to the 
 Tribocci, who ended by clustering around Strasburg. 
 A little later, during the same sovereign's reign 
 (A.D. 9), occurred the memorable defeat of Varus by 
 the ambitious German chieftain Arminius or Her- 
 mann. Subsequently that defeat was partially avenged 
 by Tiberius and Germanicus, and Hermann, having 
 aspired to autocratic sway, was ultimately assas- 
 sinated by some of his own countrymen. Later still, 
 in Vespasian's time (A.D. 70), came the rebellion of 
 the Batavian leader Civilis against Rome, and some 
 of the Alsatian tribes participated in this affair. But 
 the Sequanians remained faithful to the Empire, 
 
60 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 and after Cerealis had defeated Civilis, fire and sword 
 were carried through the rebellious districts of 
 Alsace. 
 
 Under the sovereignty of the Roman Emperors, 
 the region, as we now know it, was divided between 
 two provinces, Germania prima (capital, Mayence), 
 in which Lower Alsace was included, and Maxima 
 Sequanorum (capital, Besan9on), to which Upper 
 Alsace was attached. In order to restrain the constant 
 incursions of the Germans the Empire's frontier was 
 fortified from the Danube and along the Schwarz- 
 wald chain to the Ochsenwald. The Rhine front 
 was protected by numerous castella and castra, such 
 a,s those of Augusta Rauraeorum (now the village of 
 Augst), near Basle, Mons Brisaci (Vieux-Brisach), 
 Argentoraria (Horburg, near Colmar), Helvetus (near 
 Benfeld), Brocomagus (Brumath), and Saletis (Seltz). 
 Farther away from the river there was Tres Tabernae 
 (Saverne). Winter camps and quarters were numerous. 
 Strasburg, then called Argentoratum, was strongly 
 fortified and garrisoned by the second, fourth, and 
 eighth legions. It enjoyed at the time a reputation 
 for the manufacture of weapons of war, and may be 
 regarded as the chief Roman arsenal in this part of 
 Gaul. The great road which passed from Italy 
 through Switzerland was extended all along the 
 Rhine, thus connecting the river fortresses which 
 have been enumerated, arid from it diverged two 
 western roads, one running towards Montbeliard, and 
 the other crossing the Vosges by the Col Bonhomme. 
 La Poultroie in this neighbourhood derived its name 
 from Petrosa via. Further, the Theodosian Table 
 shows that there was a great road running from 
 Strasburg to Metz by way of Saverne, Sarrebourg, 
 and Dieuze. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 61 
 
 As time elapsed Alsace became more and more 
 civilized, and its legendary lore seems to indicate 
 that Christianity spread to this part of Gaul already 
 in the third century. Nevertheless the German 
 attempts upon the province were constantly repeated. 
 In the century we have mentioned trouble began 
 with a confederation of Germanic tribes located 
 principally between the Upper Rhine and the Neckar, 
 though some of them, it seems, pertained to the 
 Danubian region. These people became known in 
 Gaul as the Alemanni, an appellation derived from 
 the German words Alle Manner (all men). Trans- 
 mitted through the ages this name has always served 
 among the French, in the forms Allemagne and Alle- 
 mand, to designate Germany and the German people. 
 The Italians, moreover, call Germany Alemagna. 
 Very numerous and warlike, the Alemanni repeatedly 
 attempted to seize Alsace, and again and again the 
 Roman Emperors or their lieutenants had to drive 
 them back across the Rhine. For instance, in the 
 year 217 Caracalla had to discharge that duty, in 
 237 it was the turn of Maximinus, in 265 that of 
 Posthumus, a little later that of Aurelian, and in 281 
 that of Probus to do so. The last-named did not 
 mince matters, and even as to-day in rural France 
 each person who brings proof that he has killed a 
 wolf is entitled to a pecuniary reward from his munici- 
 pality, so this Roman Emperor ordained that every 
 man who brought in the head of a German invader 
 should receive a piece of gold. 
 
 Yet still the German attempts continued. In 
 287 the intruders were beaten back by Maximianus 
 Hercules, in 301 by Constantius Chlorus, and in 304 
 by Constantine, aftenvaids the Great. At the time 
 of his son, Constans II, the barbarians at last secured 
 
62 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 an opportunity to seize Alsace, for after the defeat 
 of the usurper Magnentius the Emperor utilized them 
 to attack Decentius, one of Magnentius' s kinsmen. 
 Thereupon a German host under a certain Chnodomir 
 crossed the Rhine, and after routing Decentius, 
 captured and pillaged forty-five flourishing localities, 
 including the towns of Strasburg, Brumath, Seltz, 
 and Saverne. Thus in the years 353-4 they virtually 
 made themselves masters of Alsace. As they refused 
 to depart Constans dispatched the future Emperor 
 Julian against them, and the Battle of Strasburg, 
 fought in 357, compelled them to flee across the 
 Rhine. To prevent, or at least to delay, future 
 incursions Julian invaded their territory and again 
 punished them severely. Ten years of comparative 
 quietude then ensued, but during the winter of 367 
 that is, in the first Valentinian's time they crossed 
 over the ice-bound Rhine, fell upon the Roman 
 garrisons and defeated them. Once more they were 
 expelled, and the river fortresses were rebuilt or 
 repaired by Valentinian's orders. In 378, however, 
 they came yet again, but were soundly beaten by 
 Gratian near Colmar. Thus things continued until 
 in or about the year 403, at the time of Honorius, 
 Rome abandoned Alsace to its fate. 
 
 This retirement has been related in conflicting 
 ways. According to one account Stilicho, Honorius's 
 general and also his father-in-law, wilfully withdrew 
 from Alsace, dismantling all its fortresses, in order to 
 give free admission to the Vandals, the Alans, and 
 the Suevi or Swabians. Stilicho, be it noted, was 
 of Vandal origin. The other account is more in 
 keeping both with the eulogium of Stilicho, penned 
 by Claudian of Alexandria, and with ascertained 
 historical facts. It is that the general was constrained 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 63 
 
 to withdraw the legions from Alsace in order to 
 contend as he very ably did against Alaric and 
 the Visigoths in Italy. On the other hand, the 
 Vandals and the Alans certainly availed themselves 
 of the departure of the Roman soldiers. In 406 
 they overran Alsace, sacked and burnt its towns, 
 demolished the Roman fortresses and monuments, 
 and virtually destroyed all industry, commerce, and 
 agriculture, in such wise that within a twelvemonth 
 the province had become a waste. 
 
 About the same time as the Vandals and the 
 Alans other invaders appeared the' Burgundians, 
 who, according to Pliny, were akin to the Vandals 
 and the Goths. Other writers, Ammianus Marcel- 
 linus and Orosius, claim, however, that they sprang 
 from a Roman colony established in Central Ger- 
 many some centuries previously; but, on the other 
 hand, the Island of Riigen, in the Baltic, was once 
 called Burgundaland and is known to have been 
 inhabited by a Slavonic race. There may be some 
 connexion between those facts. In any case, what- 
 ever their origin was, the Burgundians gradually 
 approached the Rhine, and at one time Valentinian 
 urged them to attack and dispossess the Alemanni 
 settled there. In 407 they at last crossed the river 
 and appeared in Alsace, but were subsequently 
 defeated both by the Huns and by Aetius (Attila's 
 victorious antagonist), whereupon, going southward, 
 they entered Savoy, and then spread westward to 
 the region of the Rhone. 
 
 Since the departure of the Roman legions Alsace 
 had become, as it were, an open door by which any 
 barbarian race might penetrate into Gaul. The Huns 
 naturally availed themselves of this facility for in- 
 vasion on setting out, during the first half of the 
 
64 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 fifth century, to overrun the Gallo-Roman provinces. 
 When in 451 Attila's innumerable host was at last 
 defeated on the plain of Chalons-sur-Marne it was 
 confronted by three forces, one of Gallo-Romans 
 commanded by Aetius, one of Visigoths under their 
 King Theodoric, and one of Franks, said to have been 
 led by Merovius, from whom the Merovingian dynasty 
 derived its name. These Franks had previously 
 descended upon Gaul, and Aetius, though glad of 
 their help on the Campi Catalaunici, repeatedly con- 
 tended against them. They were divided into two 
 branches, the Salic or Salian branch, which had come, 
 it is said, from the vicinity of the Yssel, an arm of 
 the Rhine flowing into the Zuider Zee, and another, 
 the Ripuarian branch, located near the Rhine itself. 
 There has been much speculation as to the origin of 
 this people. They were one of the Germanic races, 
 but it seems probable that they were more akin to 
 the Batavians (or, as we should now say, the Dutch) 
 than to the other German tribes, whom they certainly 
 did not love, as was shown by frequent wars. 
 
 Fierce and barbarous as these Franks first were, 
 they gradually assimilated what yet remained of 
 Gallo-Roman civilization, and after becoming pre- 
 ponderant in Gaul, endeavoured, in spite of frequent 
 contests among themselves, to keep out all German 
 and other invaders. In 496 Clovis defeated the 
 Alemanni on the Rhine somewhere in the vicinity 
 of Tolbiac, now Zulpich, near Cologne but the 
 struggle appears to have continued intermittently 
 until 536, when the Alemanni had to acknowledge 
 Prankish supremacy and evacuate all Gallic territory 
 north of the wooded Eifel plateau, now in Rhenish 
 Prussia. Exceptions were made at the time in favour 
 of a few who were allowed to remain between the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 65 
 
 Eifel and the Forest of Haguenau upon undertaking 
 to pay a tax. Others dwelt, comparatively free, in 
 the southern dioceses of Strasburg, Basle, and Con- 
 stance. Frankish immigrants settled among the 
 Alemanni and the remnants of the Celtic and Gallo- 
 Roman population, and some measure of law and 
 order slowly began to prevail. 
 
 It was the Frankish custom for a father to divide 
 his possessions among his children, and thus, under 
 the Merovingian dynasty, the Gallic territory was 
 repeatedly split up into various kingdoms. Alsace 
 followed the fortunes of that of Austrasia (the eastern 
 kingdom), which was constantly at war with that 
 of Neustria. In or about 630 there sprang up a line 
 of Dukes of Alsace, but the dukedom was only a 
 benefice and not hereditary, successive Kings of the 
 Merovingian race appointing at their pleasure a new 
 duke whenever any holder of the dignity died. Accord- 
 ing to some accounts it was Charles Martel, mayor of 
 the palace at the time of Clothaire IV, who, becoming 
 alarmed by the increasing power of the Alsatian 
 dukes, suppressed them and instituted in their place 
 two counts, one for Upper and the other for Lower 
 Alsace. Another version asserts that this change 
 was effected by Pepin, the first of the Carlovingians. 
 But it appears certain that there were already such 
 counts or landgraves at the time of the early dukes, 
 and that they acted as deputy*governors under the 
 latter. When the dukes were abolished the land- 
 graves became direct officials of the King, and were 
 charged with the administration of justice, the collec- 
 tion of the royal revenues, and the supervision of 
 churches and conventual establishments. 
 
 Alsace is said to have continued prosperous until 
 the death of Charlemagne. Agiiculturejextgnded, and 
 
66 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 there was Considerable jtrad~ in ...timhex-and wine. 
 The Romanized Celts, dispossessed of most of their 
 former "lands, dwelt chiefly in the valleys of the 
 Vosges and among the hill-side pasturages. Even 
 to-day a Romanesque dialect will be found in these 
 parts. The rest of the province was peopled by 
 Franks and Germans, and even as a Prankish dialect 
 prevailed in Lower Alsace so an Alemanian one 
 predominated in the Upper districts. 
 
 It w r as on the Ochsenfeld, in Alsace, that in 810 
 Charlemagne's son, Louis le Debonnaire, was dethroned 
 by his rebellious children with the connivance of the 
 crafty Pope Gregory IV, who, though described in 
 the histories of the Church as a learned and pious 
 man, did not shrink from abetting the enterprise to 
 dethrone and despoil Charlemagne's heir and suc- 
 cessor. For a moment Louis' son Lothair succeeded 
 him, but Lothair's brothers rebelled, and after Lothair 
 had been defeated at Fontenoy-en-Puisaye (841) 
 Louis was momentarily reinstated. Two years later 
 Charlemagne's empire was dismembered by the famous 
 Treaty of Verdun. By this convention Louis le 
 Debonnaire's son Louis took all Germany as far as 
 the Rhine, on which account he became known 
 historically as Louis the Germanic. His brother 
 Charles, afterwards known as the Bald, secured 
 France within limits formed by the Scheldt, the 
 Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone ; whilst Eastern 
 France, inclusive of Alsace, and some Italian posses- 
 sions were assigned to the son of the previously 
 defeated Lothair. Shortly before the latter died in 
 855 at a monastery at Treves, Lothair II assumed the 
 title of King of Lotharingia or Lorraine, as I have 
 already explained.* 
 
 * See pp. 10, 47, ante. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 67 
 
 In 867 this Lothair bestowed the title of Duke of 
 Alsace on a natural son of his, called Hugh ; but 
 two years later he died, and in 870 a Franco-German 
 treaty was signed at Mersen, by which Alsace was 
 transferred to Louis the Germanic. Hugh was there- 
 upon debarred from exercising authority, but after 
 Louis' death in 876 he regained it for a short time. 
 Louis' son and successor, Charles the Fat, thereupon 
 seized him, had his eyes put out, and shut him up 
 in the Abbey of St. Gall. 
 
 Further contestations arose. Charles the Fat 
 ended, however, by uniting for a few years the Carlo- 
 vingian possessions France, Germany, and Italy 
 under his sway. Then the French deposed him, and 
 Eudes (not Hugh) Capet reigned over them in his 
 stead. In Germany Charles the Fat was followed by 
 Arnulf, who was crowned as Emperor in 896. He 
 had bestowed the kingdom of Lorraine, which again 
 included Alsace, on a natural son called Swentibold,* 
 who when a conspiracy broke out to reinstate the 
 blinded Hugh committed him again to durance, and, 
 in accordance with the Frankish custom, caused his 
 head to be shaved, as one unworthy of reigning. In 
 Alsace-Lorraine Swentibold' s exactions and cruelty 
 were so great that after his father's death the people 
 rose against him and recognized another of Arnulf's 
 sons, Louis the Child, as sovereign. Swentibold was 
 killed in some fighting in Westphalia in the year 900, 
 and Louis the Child died eleven years later, whereupon 
 Charles the Simple of France took possession of 
 Alsace-Lorraine and came thither to be recognized 
 as sovereign. From the standpoint of heredity his 
 claim was indisputable, for he was descended from 
 Charlemagne, and the death of Louis the Child had 
 
 * Latinized both as Zventibuchus and as Centiboldus in ancient deeds. 
 
68 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 extinguished the Carlovingian line in Germany, where 
 other houses now arose to the chief power. The 
 first of the new sovereigns in that country was 
 Conrad I, previously Duke of Franconia, and he 
 within a few months wrested Alsace-Lorraine from 
 Charles the Simple. But the inhabitants drove him 
 out and in 913 reinstated the French King. In 
 fact, it was only after the French had deposed Charles 
 the Simple in 923 he perished in captivity at Peronne 
 six years later and at the time of the Emperor Henry 
 the Fowler, that Alsace passed once more under German 
 sway. 
 
 Under earlier German rulers the province had 
 been administered by certain fiscal agents termed 
 nuntii camerce, whose exactions made them extremely 
 unpopular. Conrad, during his brief spell of authority 
 there, had appointed a Swabian lord as Duke, in 
 order that the country might be better governed. 
 Henry the Fowler followed this example, but it was 
 only in 1080, at the time of the Emperor Henry IV 
 (the adversary of the famous Hildebrand, otherwise 
 Pope Gregory VII), that the dukedom of Alsace 
 became a hereditary appanage of the house of 
 Hohenstaufen, and continued as such until the last 
 representative of that race, Conradin, suffered death 
 on the scaffold at Naples in 1268. Under the Hohen- 
 staufen Dukes of Alsace there were hereditary land- 
 graves of the Upper and Lower Divisions, the first 
 being appointed in 1138. These landgraves had no 
 territorial status, their functions were chiefly judicial, 
 and their courts of pleas were held in the open air 
 until a so-called " regency " was established at 
 Ensisheim. In Lower Alsace the landgraviate functions 
 were exercised by several successive Counts of Wcerth, 
 but in 1359 that county and the lordship of Erstein 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 69 
 
 were purchased by John of Lichtenberg, Bishop of 
 Strasburg, for 32,000 gold florins. Previously he 
 had become Imperial Landvogt, or high bailiff, in 
 Upper Alsace, and after his death one finds the 
 Bishops of Strasburg styling themselves Landgraves 
 of Alsace, and convoking and presiding the States of 
 Lower Alsace down to the time when German rule 
 ceased there. Before the Strasburg prelates acquired 
 the landgraviate dignity its holders included, apart 
 from the Counts of Wcerth, a number of other petty 
 nobles, and also some high and puissant personages. 
 Among the sons of the early dukes who were often 
 invested with the functions was a certain Erchanger, 
 or Erchangarius, who became the father of the 
 Empress Ricardis, the repudiated wife of Charles 
 the Fat, a legend respecting whom I related in a 
 previous chapter.* In L^pper Alsace the first land- 
 grave appears to have been Wernher of Hapsburg 
 (1168), and several other members of his line took 
 that title after abandoning the one of Count of 
 Nordgau, which was last used, apparently, by the 
 Emperor Henry IV of the Saxon line. Our Cceur de 
 Lion's gaoler, Henry VI of the Hohenstaufen house 
 called the Cruel, or the Sharp styled himself Land- 
 gravius Alsatiae in a deed of 1192. The German 
 term Landgrafschaft having no equivalent in French, 
 Charles the Rash of Burgundy, who for a short time 
 held the province, substituted the word vicomte, and 
 even gave Alsace the name of Auxois. 
 
 Of lesser rank than the landgraves were the 
 officials known by the name of Landvogt. They 
 appear to have been high bailiffs, or stewards, acting 
 on behalf of the landgraves, more particularly when 
 the latter were also Holy Roman Emperors. Among 
 
 * See p. 38, ante. 
 
70 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 these Landvogts were some Bishops of Strasburg, some 
 Counts of Ferrette and Hohenberg, some Bavarian 
 dukes, and Austrian dukes and archdukes, as well 
 as sundry Burgraves of Magdeburg. After Alsace 
 passed to France in the time of Louis XIV, that 
 sovereign took to himself the title of Landgrave of 
 Alsace, and at first conferred the landvogtei, or bail- 
 liage, on Henri Count d'Harcourt of the house of 
 Lorraine. A little later Cardinal Mazarin and his 
 nephew-in-law, La Meilleraye Duke Mazarin and 
 husband of Hortense Mancini, became Landvogts. 
 Some members of the house of Chatillon followed 
 them, and finally, just before the great Revolution, 
 the famous Duke de Choiseul held this dignity. 
 
 From the foregoing it will be seen that Alsace 
 was ruled at various periods by dukes, counts, land- 
 graves, or chief justices, and Landvogts, otherwise 
 high stewards or bailiffs. The authority of these 
 personages was often more nominal than real in early 
 times. Soon after the feudaj_jystem originated quite 
 a number of counts, barons, and so forth, many from 
 across the Rhine, sprang up, some of them having 
 extensive domains, and others owning little beyond 
 the stone walls of their hill-side towers. Whilst the 
 former were prosperous and afforded protection to 
 their respective vassals and serfs, the latter subsisted 
 by sheer robbery. Such was long the case all over 
 the so-called Holy Roman Empire, throughout whose 
 former Teutonic territory may still be found linger- 
 ing many a legend of the old-time robber knights, 
 the Landschaden the " Banes of the Land " as 
 they became called. Commerce was throttled by 
 these predatory " nobles " who " lived from the 
 saddle," and who, as in the case of Eberhard of 
 Wiirttemberg, entitled themselves " friends of God 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 71 
 
 and enemies of all." Few roads were safe in their 
 days. Travelling merchants went their way in fear 
 and trembling, constantly repeating in their prayers : 
 
 " From Kockeritze and Ltideritze, 
 From Krocker, Kracht, and Itzenplitze, 
 Good Lord deliver us ! " 
 
 It was for purposes of self-defence against the 
 enterprises of these plundering castellans, from whom 
 many high and mighty folk of present-day Germany 
 are descended, that several towns freed themselves 
 and banded themselves together in confederations. 
 Nowhere else were the so-called robber knights more 
 plentiful than in Alsace, where they throve particu- 
 larly by intercepting trade between Germany and 
 France, and contrived, often for years, to secure 
 impunity among their Vosgian fastnesses to which 
 circumstance may be traced the origin of the term 
 " Alsatia," given by us originally to the lawbreakers' 
 sanctuary of Whitefriars in London, and afterwards 
 employed as a generic name to designate any rookery 
 of dishonest and unscrupulous folk. 
 
 In 1255 the chief Alsatian centres joined the 
 so-called Confederation of the Rhine, which included 
 some three -score cities or towns allied together for 
 purposes of self-defence. Already in the latter half 
 of the previous century the Emperor Frederick 
 Barbarossa, one of whose favourite places of residence 
 was Haguenau, in Alsace, had made various Alsatian 
 townships " free imperial cities," and granted them 
 a number of privileges. Strasburg became a "free 
 city of the Empire " (freie Reichstadt), and in July 
 1205 (one account says 1201) the Emperor Philip 
 (of Swabia) advanced Strasburg by diploma to the 
 rank of an immediate city of the Empire unmittelbare 
 Reichstadt. Under Frederick II that is, about 1219 
 
72 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the city's privileges were increased by another charter. 
 Thus it was gradually freed from the tyrannical rule 
 of the officials appointed by its bishops, and secured, 
 in addition to municipal autonomy, rights of high 
 and low justice within its territory. The city's 
 last-mentioned charter sanctioned a senate of twelve 
 members, partly nobles and partly burgesses. 
 
 This state of affairs was by no means pleasing to 
 the Strasburgian prelates, and one of them, Walter 
 of Geroldseck, amidst the confusion which prevailed 
 about the time of the last Hohenstaufen,* endeavoured 
 to destroy the city's autonomy and extinguish its 
 rights. The better to accomplish his design he ex- 
 communicated the inhabitants ; nevertheless they 
 resisted him, chose the famous Rudolph of Hapsburg 
 to command them, and at a battle fought at Ober- 
 hausbergen on March 8, 1262, signally defeated the 
 episcopal forces the bishop's brother with seventy 
 knights and ninety others of noble rank being taken 
 
 * That is, Conradin, who in endeavouring to reconquer the Kingdom of 
 the Two Sicilies was vanquished at Tagliacozzo and, although only sixteen 
 years of age, was sent to the scaffold by Charles of Anjou, brother of the 
 French King, Saint Louis. The Sicilian kingdom had come to the Hohen- 
 staufen emperors by the marriage of Conradin's grandfather, the Emperor 
 Henry VI, with the Princess Constantia of the Sicilian Norm;;n dynasty 
 which followed the Saracen lule. Henry, however, in order to assert his 
 '* rights," had to conquer Calabria and Sicily by force, and, as Gibbon put 
 it, " against the unanimous wish of a free people." What the Sicilians 
 thought of the irruption of the Germans is shown by the writings of Hugo 
 Falcandus, the " Tacitus of the Middle Ages " : " Constantia, the daughter 
 of Sicily," said he, " nursed from her cradle in the pleasures and plenty, 
 and educated in the art* and manners of this fortunate island, departed long 
 since to enrich the Barbarians with our treasures, and she now returns with 
 her savage allies to contaminate the beauties of her ancient parental land. 
 Already do I behold the swarms of angry Barbarians ! Our opulent cities, 
 places flourishing after a long peace, arc shaken with fear, desolated by 
 slaughter, consumed by rapine, and polluted by intemperance and lust. 
 I see our citizens massacred or reduced to bondage, and our virgins and 
 our matrons raped." Had Falcandus lived eight centuries later he could 
 not have written differently of the Germans in Belgium and Northern 
 France and other lands also. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 73 
 
 prisoners by the burghers. Eleven years later, when 
 Rudolph of Hapsburg became Emperor, he confirmed 
 all Strasburg's rights and privileges. 
 
 A long period of contention between the city's 
 old patrician families and its burgesses and artisans 
 ensued ; but the Strasburgian Government assumed 
 by degrees a more and more democratic, in fact a 
 republican, character, which culminated at last in 
 1482 at the time of Frederick the Pacific in a 
 famous charter called the Schwcerbrief. It took this 
 name from the provision it contained that once every 
 year one and all should swear obedience to it. The 
 constitution confirmed by this charter subsisted with 
 very few changes down to the time of the French 
 Revolution, for it was respected by even so imperious 
 a monarch as Louis XIV. The municipal Senate 
 consisted at first of forty-seven members that is, 
 eight nobles, fourteen burgesses, and twenty-five 
 artisans the full number afterwards being reduced 
 to thirty members, ten nobles, and twenty representa- 
 tives of the guilds or corporations. At the head of 
 the administration were two Stettmeister (joint mayors, 
 so to say) and an Ammeistcr, or chief officer of the 
 guilds. The number of guilds was limited to twenty, 
 each of which chose fifteen representatives known as 
 echevins. These (300 altogether) formed a Grand 
 Council. One may take the Senate as an Upper 
 House or Court of Aldermen, and the Grand Council 
 as a Lower House or Common Council. The executive 
 was composed of three Chambers or Committees known 
 respectively as the Thirteen, the Fifteen, and the 
 Twenty-one. The members appear to have been 
 named for life, one-third of them being nobles, and 
 two-thirds belonging to the other classes. The Thir- 
 teen had charge of the city's Foreign Policy, the 
 
74 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Fifteen dealt with Home Affairs, and the Twenty-one 
 were in charge of religious and judicial matters. The 
 organization may seem to have been somewhat intri- 
 cate, but it was regarded in the old days as a master- 
 piece of political wisdom, and Erasmus remarked 
 that the little Republic of Stiasburg was the ideal 
 of its kind. 
 
 I have written at some length on this subject in 
 view of some of the latter-day pretensions of Germany 
 respecting Strasburg. The city emerged from the 
 Middle Ages essentially as a Republic, acknowledging 
 no personal rule w r hether on the part of its Bishop, 
 or any Alsatian Landgrave, or any German Emperor, 
 or, later, any King of France. If its constitution 
 was somewhat complicated, this was devised precisely 
 to prevent any one man from attempting despotic 
 rule. It may be added that the constitution of 
 Strasburg served as a model for several other .cities 
 in the region of the Rhine. 
 
 It is now necessary to revert to earlier times. 
 During the interregnum which elapsed between the 
 death of Rudolph of Hapsburg and the accession of 
 Adolphus of Nassau (1291-92) the Alsatians clergy, 
 nobles, and burgesses made an attempt to sever 
 their connexion with the Empire and secure absolute 
 independence. They were not sufficiently powerful, 
 however, to effect their object ; but in 1354, with 
 the assent of the Emperor Charles IV (of the house 
 of Luxemburg), ten of the free towns Colmar, 
 Haguenau, Kayserberg, Mulhouse, Miinster, Obernai, 
 Rosheim, Schlestadt, Turkheim, and Weissenburg 
 formed for mutual support a league known as the 
 Decapolis. Unfortunately the contracting parties 
 constituting this Confederation were often remiss in 
 fulfilling their obligations notably in regard to Mul- 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 75 
 
 house, which, being coveted by some of the Haps- 
 burgs and others, vainly appealed to its allies for 
 assistance on two principal occasions during the 
 fifteenth century. Mulhouse ultimately turned for 
 help to the Swiss, and, in gratitude to them, joined 
 their Confederation in 1513, in such wise that it 
 afterwards took no part in Alsatian affairs, and even 
 escaped annexation by Louis XIV. Indeed, only 
 in 1798 did this democratic little State, for such it 
 was, sever of its own free wdll its connexion with 
 Switzerland and give itself over to the French Republic. 
 The withdrawal of Mulhouse from the Decapolis 
 League (into which, by the way, Strasburg, satisfied 
 with its own independence, never entered) led to 
 the League's decline and demise in the course of the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 The famous Black Plague, of which Boccaccio has 
 left us such a vivid account in the " Decameron " 
 in Italy alone during seven months of the year 1348 
 it carried off 120,000 persons, including Boccaccio's 
 Fiammetta soon spread to France, passed through 
 the Rhone region, where Petrarch's Laura succumbed 
 to it, and, in the following year, made its appearance 
 as far north as Alsace. Strasburg did not escape 
 infection, 16,000 of its inhabitants perished, and the 
 survivors, blindly accusing the Jews who dwelt 
 among them of being the authors of this pestilence, 
 fell upon them and are said to have put 2000 to death, 
 a number of these being burnt at the stake. Seven- 
 teen years later (1365) came a so-called " English 
 Invasion " of Alsace. The invaders were, however, 
 really mercenaries of all nations, desperadoes of some 
 of the so-called Great Companies at one time employed 
 by Edward III and the Black Prince, but dismissed 
 after the Peace of Bretigny. They ravaged the 
 
76 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Alsatian rural districts, and several towns found it 
 difficult to keep them at bay. For some years bands 
 of these soldiery roamed about the country, and in 
 1375 a large force of them, or others of a similar 
 stamp, was gathered together by a French noble 
 who suddenly laid claim to Alsace, Aargau, and Brisgau 
 the last named now a district of Baden. 
 
 The reader may remember that during the present 
 Great War the Germans wantonly destroyed, in the 
 vicinity of Soissons, one of the finest ruined feudal 
 castles of France, that of Coucy, the admiration of 
 archaeologists in modern times. Erected in the thir- 
 teenth century by Enguerrand III, Sire de Coucy, 
 this castle was partly blown up by Mazarin during 
 the second Fronde rebellion in 1652, and forty years 
 later its majestic circular keep (187 feet in height and 
 325 feet in circumference) was cleft from top to 
 bottom (though its walls were 34 feet thick) by the 
 shock of a great earthquake. Since then, until the 
 German barbarians came, Coucy had been but an 
 imposing picturesque ruin, without military import- 
 ance, but highly interesting as a memorial of feudal 
 times. I have recalled those facts because the noble 
 who laid claim to Alsace in 1375 was Enguerrand VII, 
 the last of the old Sires de Coucy. It will give an 
 idea of the position to which that house attained if 
 I mention that the mother of Enguerrand VII was 
 a sister of Duke Leopold of Austria, a granddaughter 
 of the Emperor Albert I, and a great-granddaughter 
 of the famous Rudolph of Hapsburg. It was by 
 virtue of this descent that Enguerrand laid claim to 
 the Hapsburg domains and rights in Alsace and other 
 parts. Enguerrand, moreover, had a Scottish grand- 
 mother, a daughter or sister of the first of the Baliols, 
 and, further, whilst he was residing in England as 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 77 
 
 a hostage for King John of France, Edward III gave 
 him his daughter Isabella in marriage and conferred 
 on him the barony of Bedford and other lordships. 
 
 Such was the international grand seigneur who 
 suddenly descended upon Alsace with a number of 
 soldiers of fortune to enforce his claim to " his 
 mother's rights." His uncle, the Landgrave Duke 
 Leopold of Austria, was taken by surprise, but he 
 obtained assistance from the Swiss, and Enguerrand's 
 motley bands of mercenaries were worsted in various 
 encounters, with the result that the Pretender aban- 
 doned his claims upon being granted the lordships of 
 Baren and Nidau as fiches de consolation. Subse- 
 quently, the King of France being his suzerain, 
 Enguerrand fought (somewhat unwillingly) against 
 the English in various parts. He died, leaving two 
 daughters, one of whom conveyed the lordship of 
 Coucy to the house of Bar, whence it passed to 
 that of Luxemburg and ultimately to the French 
 crown. 
 
 I have had occasion more than once to refer to 
 the Hapsburg connexion with Alsace, and before 
 going further it is as well to explain matters rather 
 more clearly, particularly as it was the Austrian 
 house which ultimately ceded Alsace to France. It 
 may be said then that whilst the Hapsburg power in 
 the province began (as was mentioned on p. 69) 
 with the appointment of sundry members of the 
 family as landgraves under the emperors, it was 
 chiefly by the acquisition of the county of Ferrette 
 a locality situated in the extreme south of Alsace * 
 that this power was consolidated. Ferrette was first 
 held by a line of nobles originating with a certain 
 Frederick, son of Thierry or Theodoric I, Count of 
 
 * Seep. 45, ante. 
 
78 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Bar, Mousson, and Montbeliard. Originally the county 
 of Ferrette included, besides that locality, both 
 Altkirch and Thann, and some villages now in Switzer- 
 land. In the thirteenth century the lordships of 
 Florimond and Rougemont were added to Ferrette, 
 and subsequently both Delle and Belfort passed to 
 the same house. The fourth of its counts, a certain 
 Ulrich, became involved in hostilities with one of 
 the Bishops of Strasburg, to whom he ended by 
 ceding Thann and a few other localities. The cession 
 was witnessed by Albert I of Austria, who, under 
 his father, the famous Emperor Rudolph, acted at 
 the time as Landgrave of Alsace, where the family 
 possessed some little lordships. Ultimately Albert I 
 also became Holy Roman Emperor. Now in 1275 
 Ulrich of Ferrette was succeeded by his son Theobald, 
 and in 1310 by his grandson Ulrich II, who at his 
 death was followed by his only child, a daughter 
 named Joan. She was married to another Albert of 
 Austria (who did not reign as Emperor), and to him, 
 in March 1324, she conveyed her inheritance, he 
 afterwards styling himself, " Dei Gratia Dux Austrise, 
 Landgravius Alsatiae, nee non Comes Phirretarum." 
 Joan's marriage was a scandalous affair, for her 
 husband was notoriously impotent. She favoured 
 several lovers, by one or another of whom she had 
 three sons, named respectively Rudolph, Albert, and 
 Leopold. In this wise she transmitted through the 
 centuries a strain of bastardy to the Austrian Imperial 
 House. Joan was also privy, in 1347, to the poison- 
 ing of the Emperor Louis (or Ludwig) V of the 
 Bavarian line. She died in 1351, her husband surviv- 
 ing her for seven years, whereupon Ferrette devolved 
 upon her son Rudolph. At his death in August 1365 
 the county was inherited conjointly by his brothers, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 79 
 
 and from them it passed with its dependent lordships 
 Cernay and Massevaux had been added to them 
 to others of the house of Austria. 
 
 During the interregnum which followed the death 
 of the Emperor Albert II, Alsace was raided by bands 
 of soldiery who had previously been in the pay of 
 the Count d'Armagnac during his struggle with the 
 house of Burgundy. Called Armagnacs in France, 
 these impecunious mercenaries became known to 
 the Alsatian peasantry as the Arme Gecken, or " Poor 
 Scamps." In 1444 five years after their first irrup- 
 tion they returned under the orders of the French 
 Dauphin (afterwards Louis XI), who had engaged in 
 hostilities with some of the Swiss. When the latter 
 had been worsted at Saint-Jacques, it occurred to 
 Louis' soldiers to pillage Alsace, the Emperor of the 
 time, a certain Frederick the Pacific, being virtually 
 powerless. But the confederate Alsatian towns rose 
 up against the Arme Gecken, and in 1445 compelled 
 them to evacuate the province. 
 
 Twenty-two years later Charles the Rash * ascended 
 the ducal throne of Burgundy, and in 1469 Sigismund, 
 a Duke of Austria, and a needy one, sold to him the 
 Landgraviate of Upper Alsace, together with all 
 proprietary rights over the Sundgau, Brisgau (on the 
 right bank of the Rhine), the county of Ferrette and 
 its dependencies, for the sum of 80,000 florins in gold, 
 it being stipulated that the inhabitants should retain 
 all existing rights and privileges, and, further, that 
 Sigismund or his heirs should be entitled to repurchase 
 the lordships which were thus ceded. Charles, how- 
 ever, conceived the brilliant idea of immediately 
 
 * Most English writers call this prince Charles the Bold ; but Bash is 
 by far the better term, for it accords more closely i oth with the French 
 appellation Temeraire and with the iacts of Charles's career. 
 
80 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 recouping himself for his outlay by emptying the 
 pockets of his new subjects, and the exactions of his 
 deputy, a certain Peter von Hagenbach, were terrible. 
 Strasburg, Colmar, Schlestadt, and Basle at last 
 offered to raise enough money to buy out Charles 
 and his rights. But the Burgundian ruler rejected 
 the offer, preferring to retain his hold on Alsace and, 
 at the same time, bleed its people. 
 
 His envoy Hagenbach, to rid himself of the 
 notables who resisted his oppression, endeavoured to 
 have them murdered, but his plot being discovered 
 his person was seized, and trial and sentence to 
 decapitation followed ; whereupon Charles in the 
 first place dispatched Hagenbach's brother to Alsace 
 to avenge him, and afterwards proceeded thither in 
 person. Some thirty localities, small towns and 
 villages, were pillaged and set on fire, but when 
 Charles turned upon the Swiss allies of the Alsatians, 
 their memorable victories over him at Morat and 
 Grandson (1476) gave him full cause to regret his 
 impetuous rashness. It is said that Duke Sigismund 
 recovered his Alsatian lordships after Charles's death 
 at the Battle of Nancy, but this is by no means clear. 
 The preferable account seems to be that Charles's 
 only daughter and heiress Marie of Burgundy brought 
 these Alsatian possessions, together with the Free 
 County of Burgundy (Franche-Comte), to her husband 
 Maximilian of Austria, afterwards the Emperor Maxi- 
 milian I. 
 
 In those old days Alsace did not suffer only from 
 the exactions of princes and the irruptions of dis- 
 orderly soldiery ; its own peasant folk, at times no 
 doubt with good reason, repeatedly rose against their 
 lords. One rebellion of the kind occurred in 1403, 
 and was followed by others in 1503, 1513, and 1525. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 81 
 
 This last, the most serious of all, was largely of a 
 religious character, being connected with the Ana- 
 baptist movement which spread to Northern Alsace 
 rom Westphalia and the Netherlands. Townships, 
 villages, castles, and convents were attacked, taken, 
 and pillaged, and Duke Anthony of Lorraine had to 
 intervene in order to suppress the rebellion. The 
 upshot was the Saverne affair referred to in a previous 
 chapter * : the peasantry surrendering, giving up 
 their weapons, and then being massacred without 
 any regard for the conditions arrived at by the 
 Duke's bloodthirsty German mercenaries. 
 
 The Reformation was received with favour in 
 many parts of Alsace. The Lutheran zealots of 
 Strasburg at first failed, however, in their endeavour 
 to prohibit the celebration of Mass at the cathedral 
 and other Catholic churches, though, generally speak- 
 ing, they gained the mastery in the city. On the 
 other hand, in the Sundgau or Upper Alsace, over 
 which the Hapsburgs held direct sway, the Emperor 
 Charles V caused the Reformation to be put down 
 most mercilessly. It is said that no fewer than six 
 hundred converts to the new doctrines were burnt 
 at the stake. Strasburg, however, defied the Emperor, 
 and went so far as to join the famous Protestant 
 League of Smalkalde, which for political reasons was 
 aided and abetted by Catholic France, where Francis I 
 was reigning. In 1547 the League was defeated at 
 Mlihlberg, but another eight years elapsed before the 
 Religious Peace of Augsburg re-established some 
 degree of tranquillity. About half a century later 
 trouble arose over the Bishopric of Strasburg, two 
 would-be administrators of the see, which was vacant, 
 contending with one another for the office by force 
 
 * See pp. 33, 34, ante. 
 
 V 
 
82 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 of arms. On the one side was John George of Hohen- 
 zollern, Elector of Brandenburg, and on the other 
 Cardinal Charles of Lorraine. The so-called Bishop 
 War bischofliche Krieg lasted for eight months, 
 during which several Alsatian towns and villages were 
 once again sacked and fired. Finally, on November 26, 
 1604, a treaty was signed at Haguenau by which the 
 Hohenzollern desisted from his claims in return for 
 the payment of a lump sum of money as " indemnity," 
 and an annual allowance for life out of the revenues 
 of the see. He was a Lutheran, but, like the Hohen- 
 zollern he also was, he did not object to pocketing 
 Catholic gold. 
 
 At last came the famous Thirty Years' War (1618- 
 1648), due in part to the antagonism of Protestants 
 and Catholics, and in part to the overweening ambition 
 of the house of Austria and the apprehensions which 
 this excited. It was for the second reason that 
 France, although governed by a Prince of the Church, 
 Cardinal Richelieu, took part in the struggle, at first 
 more or less covertly by supporting the Swedish 
 King Gustavus Adolphus, but afterwards by direct 
 intervention. At one and another period of the 
 contest Alsace became one of the chief battlefields 
 where all the participants committed the issue to the 
 decision of arms. Nearly all the Alsatian nobility 
 declared for the Protestant cause, but the province 
 generally was very divided, and horrible excesses 
 ensued on the part of the rival combatants. One of 
 the first commanders on the German Protestant side, 
 Count Mansfeld, levied heavy contributions of war 
 on many towns, slaughtered the inhabitants of 
 Rosheim, and afterwards destroyed the place. In 
 1632 a Swedish army under Count Gustavus Horn, 
 after overruning a large part of Lorraine, penetrated 
 
A r L S A C E - L O R R A I N E 83 
 
 into Alsace where the Duke of Lorraine was holding 
 the town of Saverne. The Lorrainers, however, could 
 not stop the Swedes, who took town after town, and 
 entering the Catholic Sundgau butchered many (one 
 account says 2000) of its peasantry. At last the 
 Catholic or Imperial forces retained little beyond a 
 portion of Lower Alsace, including the town of 
 Haguenau. In 1634 the Imperialists were beaten by 
 the Swedes at Wattwiller, and in the same year 
 Bernard of Saxe-Weimar defeated Duke Charles of 
 Lorraine at the Champ-des-Boeufs, otherwise Ochsen- 
 feld, and afterwards occupied Thann. In the same 
 year, however, the Swedes and the German Protestants 
 under Horn and Bernard of Weimar suffered a severe 
 reverse at Nordlingen in Bavaria, where the Impe- 
 rialists were commanded by the future Emperor 
 Ferdinand III and Cardinal Don Fernando, an Infant 
 of Spain. 
 
 After this engagement the Swedes found it impos- 
 sible to retain possession of the towns they held in 
 Alsace. They ceded them,* therefore, temporarily 
 to France, by a treaty which was signed in Paris 
 that same year, and which provided that France 
 should transfer the towns in question to Bernard of 
 Weimar whenever peace should ensue. It would 
 appear that Bernard was acknowledged by France 
 as Duke of Alsace, but as he died at Huningen in 
 1639 the country was never actually under his full 
 control, though it is true that after he had taken 
 Brisach in 1637, and defeated the Imperialists at 
 Wittenwihr and the Lorrainers at Cemay, he occupied 
 virtually all the territory excepting the towns which 
 Richelieu had garrisoned with French troops. Among 
 
 * That is, with the exception of Benfeld, which the Swedes subsequently 
 transferred to the Bishop of Strasburg. 
 
84 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 these towns was Saverne, which a force under Cardinal 
 de Lavalette (prelates had no scruples about fighting 
 in those days) captured in 1636. 
 
 Hostilities were prolonged for some nine years 
 after the death of Bernard of Weimar. France took 
 a more and more prominent part in the great struggle 
 in order to prevent the establishment of Austrian 
 hegemony over Europe. The Emperor Ferdinand II, 
 whose ambition and hatred of Protestantism had 
 first lighted the torches of war, was dead, and his 
 son Ferdinand III reigned in his place. Gustavus 
 Adolphus had long since fallen on the field of Liitzen ; 
 Wallenstein, his greatest adversary, had been assas- 
 sinated with the connivance of his jealous sovereign ; 
 Horn was still alive, but Baner, the most terrible of 
 the Swedish commanders, had preceded both Richelieu 
 and Louis XIII to the grave. Louis XIV was but a 
 young lad, reigning under the regency of his mother, 
 Anne of Austria, who, in all probability, was secretly 
 married to her principal Minister, Cardinal Mazarin. 
 Yet, though many high and mighty personages had 
 joined the majority and been replaced by others, 
 though millions of combatants and non-combat- 
 ants had been slain, though scores of towns and 
 many hundreds of villages had been sacked and 
 at times set on fire, though countless acres of 
 fertile land lay waste, though burgesses starved 
 beside their empty larders and hinds in their 
 wretched huts, the Great War, which was to decide 
 whether the Hapsburg (like the Hohenzollern to-day) 
 should or should not be the Master of Europe, still 
 continued. 
 
 In Alsace, by reason of the conspicuous and, one 
 may add, sanguinary share of the Swedes in the 
 struggle there, the war became known particularly 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 85 
 
 as the Schwedenkrieg, and so terrible was the deso- 
 lation it brought with it, so many and so ghastly 
 were the tales of horror and infamy handed down 
 in later days from father to son, through successive 
 generations, that the memory of it was still often 
 evoked in towns and in villages, on the Rhenish 
 plain and on the Vosgian slopes, beside the rivulets 
 coursing through the sequestered valleys, and in the 
 dim depths of the great forest lands, even until the 
 times in which we ourselves live. The Revolutionary 
 and Napoleonic Wars left no such deep impression 
 on the bulk of the Alsatians, though they shared the 
 sufferings of that period ; it needed the Deutschenkrieg 
 of 1870 and all which then occurred to bedim the 
 fireside traditions lingering from the days of the great 
 Swedish- Austrian contest. 
 
 At last the victories of Freiburg and Nordlingen 
 gained by Conde and Turenne over the Imperialists 
 under Count Mercy, who fell in the last-mentioned 
 battle, prepared the way for peace, though this was 
 only finally concluded in 1648, after years of confer- 
 ence and discussion at Osnabriick. The Treaty of 
 Westphalia or Minister, as it is diversely called (it 
 was signed in the old town hall of Miinster), provided 
 for the enlargement of the territories of the North 
 German princes, gave them and their subjects liberty 
 of religion, and the right to enter into alliances with 
 foreign States. Austrian domination in Germany 
 thus received a very severe check. With respect to 
 France, the Emperor Ferdinand III ceded to King 
 Louis XIV (then ten years of age) the town and 
 fortress of Breisach,* the Landgraviate of Upper and 
 Lower Alsace, the Sundgau, inclusive of the county 
 of Ferrette, all prefectoral rights over ten Imperial 
 
 * See p. 41, ante. 
 
86 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 towns, and likewise transferred to him all authority 
 in respect to the Bishops of Strasburg and Basle, the 
 Abbots of Lure, Andlau, Munster, etc., the Counts of 
 Fleckenstein and Lichtenberg, and all others of the 
 nobility who had been immediate vassals of the 
 Empire. Briefly, the entire Hapsburg suzerainty over 
 Alsace passed to the Crown of France, the historic 
 rights and customs of the inhabitants being at the 
 same time confirmed to them. Strasburg was excepted 
 from the treaty (apart from the transfer of authority 
 over the Bishop) and remained a Free City of the 
 Empire with its Republican constitution. Further, 
 Mulhouse was not included, as it had become part of 
 the Swiss Confederation. 
 
 Several clauses of the treaty were very vaguely 
 worded, and led to contestation. Somewhat later, 
 therefore, an instrument was signed at Osnabriick 
 by which the old Treaties of Passau (1552) and Augs- 
 burg (1555) were confirmed, in order that there might 
 be full liberty of conscience in Alsace. With respect 
 to ecclesiastical property it was decided that each 
 party (Catholic and Protestant) should retain what 
 it had possessed at the beginning of the year 1624. 
 Such then were the conditions under which Alsace, 
 excepting Strasburg and Mulhouse, became a province 
 of France. 
 
 Nevertheless, the settlement was not definitive. 
 The next of the Germanic Emperors, Leopold I, en- 
 deavoured to upset it, and Alsace was invaded by 
 Imperialist forces. They were expelled by Turenne 
 after his victory at Tiirkheim on January 5, 1675, 
 and four years later the Treaty of Nimeguen con- 
 firmed France in her possession of Alsace. This was 
 again confirmed by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, 
 and yet again by the Treaty of Rastadt in 1714, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 87 
 
 Charles VI, the father of the famous Maria Theresa, 
 then having become Emperor. The Ryswick Treaty, 
 by the way, expressly confirmed the annexation of 
 Strasburg to France, which had taken place in 1681 
 under circumstances which I shall soon narrate. 
 With regard to the county of Ferrette, the real source 
 of the Austrian dominion in Alsace, the Bishop of 
 Basle raised a preposterous claim to this lordship, 
 but in December 1659, after the Treaty of the Pyrenees, 
 Louis XIV bestowed it, with Belfort, Thann, Alt- 
 kirch, and Isenheim, on Cardinal Mazarin, reserving 
 to himself only rights of sovereignty. From Mazarin 
 the seigneuries in question passed to his niece, Hortense 
 Mancini, and her husband, on whose death in 1713 
 they reverted to the French Crown. 
 
 Yet another matter of interest and not without 
 importance must be mentioned here. At the time 
 of the Treaty of Westphalia the actual Landgrave 
 of Alsace under the Emperor Ferdinand III was an 
 Austrian Archduke named Ferdinand Charles, a young 
 man of twenty or thereabouts at the date of the 
 treaty. In order to compensate him for the rights 
 which this instrument extinguished, Louis XIV, or 
 rather his Minister, Mazarin, offered to pay him the 
 sum of three million limes tournois, which, as a lime 
 tournois was equivalent to about three-quarters of a 
 lime parisis* must have represented about 100,000 
 of our money a large sum in those days. When in 
 1659 the Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed between 
 France and Spain, Philip IV, sovereign of the latter 
 country and a Hapsburg by his descent from the 
 Emperor Charles V, renounced for himself and his 
 successors all contingent claims on Alsace proper, 
 the Sundgau, and Ferrette, and that point being 
 
 * Livres of Tours and livres of Paris. 
 
88 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 settled Mazarin, on behalf of Louis XIV, promised to 
 pay the 100,000 to Archduke Ferdinand Charles in 
 five instalments to be spread over a period of three 
 years. The Archduke died, however, at Innsbruck, 
 in the Tyrol, on December 30, 1662, leaving no issue 
 by his wife Anne, daughter of Cosmo II de' Medici, 
 Grand Duke of Tuscany * ; and at that date at 
 least the bulk of the money due to him from France 
 had not yet been paid. In December the following 
 year, however, it was remitted to his brother and 
 heir, Archduke Sigismund Francis, who had been a 
 party to the covenant ; and receipts for the three 
 million lime s tournois are still preserved in the National 
 Archives of France. Thus all claims of any descrip- 
 tion which might have been urged in respect to 
 Alsace by any member of the Imperial Family were 
 extinguished, and no prince of that family ever after- 
 wards assumed any Alsatian title. 
 
 It is true, however, that the Bishop of Strasburg 
 protested against the clause of the Treaty of West- 
 phalia which virtually transferred his see from 
 Germany to France. The motive of this protest may 
 be easily fathomed. The prelate was a member of 
 the Imperial family a certain Leopold William of 
 Austria. These Hapsburgs were a very proud set 
 of men, particularly vain of their lineage and the 
 rank to w r hich they had risen. Their descent cannot 
 be traced back w r ith exactitude farther than the 
 time of Albert the Rich, who was favoured by Frederick 
 Barbarossa in the twelfth century ; but although 
 several spurious genealogies of the house have been 
 concocted at various periods some forgers connect- 
 
 * The mother of Ferdinand Charles was also a Medici, married to Archduke 
 Leopold V. The Austrian pretensions to Tuscany originated in some of these 
 matrimonial alliances. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 89 
 
 ing it with the first house of Lorraine, others with 
 Etichon, the early Duke of Alsace, others with the 
 Zaeringen line, yet others with the Pierleoni, and one 
 with the Scipios of ancient Rome they are known 
 to have existed about the year 1000, when, indeed, 
 a scion of the family, a certain Wernher, became 
 Bishop of Strasburg.* 
 
 In the course of centuries that see became an 
 important one. Those who held it were Prince- 
 Bishop-Electors of the Empire, and in the general 
 Diet occupied the tenth place (between the Bishops 
 of Speyer and Constance) in the first row of seats 
 allotted to the College of Princes. It follows that 
 Leopold William, Bishop of Strasburg at the time of 
 the Peace of Westphalia, was by no means inclined 
 to become a subject of the French Crown. Thus he 
 protested loudly against the transfer of his benefice, 
 and was not pacified until His Most Christian but 
 very youthful Majesty Louis XIV who, throughout 
 his long career, showed a great respect for bishops 
 unless they presumptuously endeavoured to thwart 
 his personal passions graciously signified that he 
 would renounce this particular stipulation in the 
 Treaty of Minister, and leave Leopold William in his 
 dignity as a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. 
 Thus, for the time being, was the matter settled. It 
 should, by the by, be noted that the Cathedral of 
 Strasburg had been turned long previously into a 
 Protestant church in spite of the protests of successive 
 prelates, and that the town of Molsheim had become 
 de facto the seat of the episcopal see. 
 
 * The reader may be reminded that the historic ruined castle of Hapsburg, 
 which would appear to be of a much later date than the family's origin, 
 stands on the Walpelsberg above Schinznach, in the canton of Argovia, 
 Switzerland. 
 
90 ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 There remains still one important matter to be 
 mentioned in connexion with the Treaty of Westphalia, 
 one conveniently overlooked by many German writers. 
 Alsace, with the exception of the Republics of Strasburg 
 and Mulhouse, became a party to this treaty. The 
 Emperor Ferdinand vainly tried to prevent what he 
 regarded as an act of presumption. His opposition was 
 disregarded. The imperial suzerainty over Alsace had 
 long been only nominal. Thus a certain Dr. Mark Otton 
 (or Otto) was dispatched to Miinster as Alsatian envoy, 
 and signed the conventions. This fact clearly indicates! 
 the willingness of the bulk of the Alsatians to become} 
 definitely united to France. I shall soon show that in \ 
 course of time Strasburg and, subsequently, Mulhouse \ 
 followed the example of the rest of the province. 
 
IV 
 ALSATIAN HISTORY 
 
 (FROM THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA TO THE WAR OF 1870) 
 
 Strasburg united to France : Dietrich the Ammeister : The Curious 
 Mission of the Count de Chamilly : The Convention between France 
 and the Strasburg Authorities : The Edict of Nantes and the Persecu- 
 tion of Dietrich : The Condition of Alsace under the Old Regime : 
 The Great Revolution in Alsace : Schneider the Franciscan : Commis- 
 saries Saint- Just and Lebas : Mul house chooses French Nationality : 
 The Napoleonic Era in Alsace : The Bourbon Restoration : The 
 Conspiracy of Belfort : The Reign of Louis Philippe : The future 
 Napoleon III at Strasburg : Austrian Threats to seize Alsace : The 
 Coup d'Etat and the Second Empire : Prussia and Neufchatel : 
 Bismarck's Threat to Alsace : Last Years of the Second Empire. 
 
 IN 1672 Germany and Spain, alarmed by the successes 
 of Louis XIV in his war with Holland, invaded Upper 
 Alsace and took up winter quarters there. The 
 " Republic of Strasburg " resolved to preserve neu- 
 trality, but according to the French this was not 
 scrupulously observed, the citizens, it was said, allowing 
 the Imperialists to make use of the bridge across the 
 Rhine. Turenne, therefore, in the course of his 
 operations endeavoured to seize a redoubt constituting 
 a tete de pont, but the burghers defended themselves 
 so vigorously that the French abandoned the enter- 
 prise, and Turenne afterwards promised to respect 
 the town's neutrality. He eventually drove the Im- 
 perialists out of Alsace by his victories at Tiirkheim 
 and Ensisheim, but was killed on July 27 that same 
 year 1675 by a cannon-ball at Salzbach. Montecu- 
 culli, the Imperialist commander, afterwards inflicted 
 
 91 
 
92 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 some reverses on the French, and the German forces, 
 returning to Alsace, besieged Saverne and Haguenau. 
 The great Conde at last threw them across the Rhine 
 again, but before that was accomplished he attempted 
 some negotiations with Strasburg, dispatching thither 
 as his envoy a certain Marquis de Laloubere, who 
 endeavoured to induce the burgesses to transfer the 
 tele de pout to the French, in order to prevent any 
 further irruption of the enemy from across the Rhine 
 at this point. 
 
 The town's Ammeister chief of the guilds and 
 magistrate was then Dominic Dietrich, a Lorrainer 
 by origin, whom the religious intolerance of the times 
 (he was a convinced Protestant) had driven from 
 his native town of Saint-Nicolas near Nancy. He 
 listened to Laloubere's suggestions, but, realizing 
 that the transfer of the tete de pout to the French 
 might well compromise the independence of Strasburg, 
 he would not consent to it, but assumed command of 
 the redoubt in person. Subsequently, however, when 
 Marshal de Crequi had succeeded Conde, one of his 
 lieutenants, the Baron de Montclar, captured the 
 redoubt at Kehl facing Strasburg on- the other side 
 of the Rhine and set the bridge on fire this being 
 done to prevent the Imperialists from again using the 
 bridge and to punish Strasburg for its alleged breaches 
 of neutrality in that respect. At the same time fresh 
 endeavours were made to win the authorities of the 
 town over to the French cause. The war fluctuated 
 for some while longer, but eventually, in 1678, the 
 peace of Nimeguen was signed, and Strasburg thought 
 its cherished independence secured. 
 
 Two years later Louis XIV instituted some special 
 chambers (chambres de reunion) of the parlements of 
 Metz, Brisach, and Besanon, and commissioned them 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 93 
 
 to inquire into the status of the fiefs, townships, 
 and landed estates of Alsace, the Three Bishoprics, 
 Franche-Comte, and French Flanders provinces ceded 
 to his crown in recent years, but where a certain 
 number of nobles, municipalities, and others still 
 claimed to be attached in one or another way to the 
 Holy Roman Empire. An end was put to these 
 anomalies in numerous instances, but the question of 
 Strasburg remained. The town, with the neighbour- 
 ing lands which it owned, claimed to be independent, 
 yet still acknowledged the suzerainty of the Emperor. 
 However, a certain Frischmann was appointed French 
 Resident there, and gradually won the Bishop and the 
 Grand Chapter over to the side of France. There 
 can be no doubt that one of the chief inducements 
 held out to these ecclesiastics was the restoration of 
 the cathedral to the Catholic see. This Leopold 
 William of Austria having died in 1662 was now held 
 by Franz Egon von Fiirstenberg, who, in order to 
 regain possession of property belonging to his Church, 
 proved much more accommodating than his prede- 
 cessor. Moreover, Frischmann, who installed a chapel 
 in his house, gained over certain prominent Protestants 
 of Strasburg and even induced them to abjure their 
 religion. Among these folk were a certain Gauzer or 
 Giinzer, secretary of the Senate, and a man named 
 Obrecht, whose father, having committed some crime 
 or other, is said to have suffered the extreme penalty, 
 on which account the son detested the Ammeister 
 Dietrich. The last named had repeatedly given proof 
 of his desire to preserve the town's independence 
 unimpaired, but he at last entered into the views of 
 those who favoured union with France. 
 
 Secret negotiations proceeded, and meantime, 
 ostensibly for the purpose of enforcing certain de- 
 
94 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 cisions of the previously mentioned chambres de 
 reunion, Louvois, who had become Louis XIV's 
 Secretary of State, strongly reinforced the troops 
 which were garrisoned in Alsace under the command 
 of that same General de Montclar who some years 
 previously had fired the bridge of Kehl. It may be 
 taken, I think, that the reinforcement of Montclar's 
 troops was designed more to provide for eventualities 
 should war ensue with Germany than to impose 
 surrender on Strasburg, for there are many indications 
 that Louvois (however imperious his nature may have 
 been) did not desire to use force against the town, 
 but wished to win it over by negotiation. 
 
 There is a romantic, in some respects perhaps 
 fabulous, but in any case interesting story respecting 
 the negotiations, which may be repeated here. Among 
 the French generals of the time there was a certain 
 Noel Bouton, Comte de Chamilly, who had fought 
 bravely and successfully in several campaigns. He 
 was a tall, handsome, well-built man, and being at 
 one time in Portugal he there attracted the attention 
 of a beautiful young nun, who addressed to him some 
 of the most ardently passionate letters existing in the 
 epistolary literature of any nation. Chamilly replied 
 to the young person in an equally fervid strain, but as 
 he was recalled to France the correspondence was not 
 of long duration. He appears to have boasted about 
 his adventure on his return home, and to have shown 
 his inamorata's effusions to his friends. Such was the 
 origin of the famous " Lettres Portuguaises " trans- 
 lated into English, I believe, as the " Letters of a 
 Portuguese Nun " a few of them being held quite 
 authentic, whilst others are regarded as concoctions. 
 Chamilly may well be censured for circulating his 
 billets-doux, but according to the memoirs of that 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 95 
 
 venomous prig, the self -admiring Duke de Saint- 
 Simon, he was so grossly stupid and so ponderously 
 beefy that it was incredible any woman should ever 
 have loved him, or that he should have had any 
 talent at all for warfare. The Duke asserts that 
 Chamilly's wife accompanied him wherever he went 
 in order to assist him with her brains, but it is quite as 
 likely that she was extremely jealous of him, and did 
 not wish him to succumb to the fascinations of any 
 other woman, Portuguese nun or otherwise. How- 
 ever that may be, one day in 1684, when Chamilly 
 was without a command, Louvois sent for him, and 
 said that he wished him to go to Basle at once. The 
 journey would take three days, and on the fourth, at 
 two o'clock in the afternoon, he was to repair to the 
 bridge spanning the Rhine, and carefully note in 
 writing every incident he might observe there, how- 
 ever insignificant this incident might be. At four 
 o'clock he was to take his coach again, and return to 
 Versailles with the utmost dispatch. At whatever 
 hour he might arrive Louvois would be ready to 
 receive him. 
 
 Without asking any questions, for he well knew 
 the Minister's disposition, Chamilly went his way and 
 installed himself on the bridge at Basle. The first 
 person whom he saw crossing it was a woman carrying 
 some baskets of fruit. Next a horseman rode by. 
 Afterwards some ragged peasants passed. Then came 
 some heavily laden porters, and at last, at 3 p.m. or 
 thereabouts, a man in yellow coat and breeches 
 appeared, and, approaching the parapet near the 
 centre of the bridge, gazed for some minutes at the 
 water. At last, suddenly stepping back, he rapped the 
 masonry three times with a stout stick, and then 
 walked away. Later, other people, men and women 
 
96 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 of all sorts and conditions, passed over the bridge, 
 but at four o'clock Chamilly's coach drove up and he 
 sprang into it and was soon rolling away from Basle. 
 He had noted down all that he had seen, but could not 
 imagine how any such trivial incidents could possibly 
 interest Louvois. To his thinking either the Minister 
 had made a fool of him, or else something which it was 
 thought he would witness had not occurred. 
 
 Nevertheless he carried out all his instructions. 
 It was nearly midnight on the third day when he 
 reached Versailles, but he at once waited upon Louvois, 
 who received him eagerly, and without asking any 
 questions hastily perused the notes which had been 
 jotted down on the bridge. When the Minister came 
 to the account of the man in yellow he raised an 
 exclamation of delight, and although the King had 
 retired some time previously he went to his apartments, 
 caused him to be awakened, and told him that the 
 authorities of Strasburg were willing to come under 
 his rule, but wished it to appear that they surrendered 
 to force. 
 
 One is led to infer from this story, not altogether 
 unworthy of the great Dumas, that the man in yellow 
 was Gauzer or Giinzer, the secretary of the Senate of 
 Strasburg, who is known to have quitted the town 
 about this time on a so-called " mysterious journey." 
 Apprehensive of the many German spies in Alsace, he 
 was unwilling to have any interview there with a 
 French emissary, and therefore proceeded to Basle to 
 signify in an indirect but prearranged manner that 
 the principle of French sovereignty was accepted. 
 For the rest, the town laid down its ow r n terms, which 
 with certain reserves, none of great importance, were 
 accepted by France. In Appendix B to this volume 
 will be found the full text of the " Articles proposed by 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 97 
 
 the Praetors, Consuls, and Magistrate of the Town of 
 Strasburg," with the annotations and reserves of the 
 French plenipotentiaries, who were Louvois and General 
 de Montclar. 
 
 The former, in order to conduct the final negotia- 
 tions, repaired in all haste to Alsace, and installed 
 himself at Hlkirch, a few miles south of Strasburg, 
 in an old pargeted, high-roofed house, with peaked 
 corner turrets, which, I believe, still exists. Some 
 points of interest in connexion with the historical 
 document given in the Appendix may be discussed 
 here. A certain discrepancy in dates will be observed. 
 At the outset the t<k articles " are said to have been 
 proposed on September 30, 1681. That is not so. 
 September 30 was the date when the final ratifica- 
 tion by Louis XIV was signified, the date when 
 the convention became really binding; and it was 
 doubtless for this reason that it was prefixed to the 
 text I give. But the Proposals were made by the 
 authorities of Strasburg twenty days previously. 
 Above the signatures appear the words : " Done at 
 Illkirch, September 10, 1681." In the preamble 
 Louvois and Montclar promise the royal ratification 
 within ten days' time, but it must have been delayed, 
 as it seems to have been formally announced only on 
 the 30th. 
 
 Another point is this : If the authorities of Stras- 
 burg desired the French to make a show of force it was 
 to save their faces in various respects. There was, 
 first, the fear of drawing upon the town the resent- 
 ment of Germany, for, although, as I have shown, 
 Strasburg had possessed for three centuries and more 
 a constitution which practically made it independent, 
 it still ranked as a Free City of the Empire, and held, 
 municipally as well as ecclesiastically, certain lands 
 
98 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 on the right bank of the Rhine that is, in what may 
 be well called German territory. One could hardly ex- 
 pect, then, that the Emperor (at that time Leopold I) 
 would view with equanimity Strasburg's incor- 
 poration with France. He might even declare war, 
 and, as I previously remarked, if Montclar had a 
 strong force of troops at his disposal it was largely 
 to enable that eventuality to be met. A great army 
 was not required for the sole purpose of blockading 
 Strasburg. 
 
 Further, the authorities of the town desired to 
 save their faces in respect to those of their own com- 
 patriots who did not wish to sever the German con- 
 nexion. It is certain that many people were per- 
 plexed respecting the best course to pursue. Ques- 
 tions of race, manners and customs, and religion 
 tended to divide opinion. In the first respect it 
 should be said that the Alsatians, generally, never 
 identified themselves with the Germans dwelling across 
 the Rhine. They applied to the latter the same 
 contemptuous appellation of Schwab which one finds 
 prevailing still to-day among the Magyars of Hungary. 
 They, the Alsatians, were a mixed breed in which 
 Celtic, Roman, and other elements were blended with a 
 Germanic one. In the last named, moreover, there 
 existed a Frankish strain, differing in various respects 
 from other German strains. It may be said of the 
 Dutch and the Flemings that they belong more or less 
 to the Germanic family of races, yet are not Germans, 
 and, indeed, generally resent being likened to them. 
 Much the same remark may be applied to the Alsatians, 
 whose affinities, particularly in Upper Alsace, linked 
 them more to the German elements of the Swiss 
 population than to the people of Germany proper. 
 German invasions and German domination had 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 99 
 
 undoubtedly left their mark upon Alsace, but its 
 inhabitants retained distinct characteristics of their 
 own. I shall have something to say about their 
 various dialects in another chapter, here I need only 
 mention that Alsatian German was by no means 
 readily understood across the Rhine. 
 
 With respect to the position at the time of the 
 incorporation of Strasburg with France there is 
 reason to think that what most tended to divide 
 public opinion was religion, on which subject, both 
 among Catholics and among Protestants, much in- 
 tolerance prevailed. The question of uniformity of 
 religion was then still largely regarded by communities 
 as being more important than that of nationality, a 
 man's nationality often being determined by his creed. 
 It is well known that many French Protestants left 
 their country and became foreigners long before the 
 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Now both the 
 Emperor and the King of France were Catholics, but 
 whilst there were several powerful Protestant Princes 
 in Germany, there was none in France, where, more- 
 over, the rights and privileges conferred on Protestants 
 by the Edict of Nantes, that act of wisdom emanating 
 from Henri IV, had been gradually, but steadily, 
 curtailed by his grandson Louis XIV. That must 
 have appeared ominous to the Alsatian Protestants, 
 but although since the Peace of Westphalia prose- 
 lytism had been practised in their midst, in an in- 
 creasing degree, by the Catholic clergy and others, 
 and although the favours of Louis XIV's officials went 
 generally to Catholics, there does not appear to have 
 been so far any governmental interference with religious 
 liberty in Alsace. Protected as they were by the 
 solemn treaties of Minister and Osnabriick,the Alsatian 
 Protestants can hardly have imagined that before 
 
100 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 long their right to worship as they pleased would be 
 very seriously threatened. 
 
 Yet, on the whole, from the religious standpoint the 
 question whether Strasburg should belong to France 
 or to Germany was a perplexing one for many of its 
 burghers. The officials who negotiated with Louvois 
 must have realized that in any case the French would 
 desire to restore the cathedral to the Catholic clergy. 
 It will be observed that in Clause III of the town's Pro- 
 posals this edifice is not specifically mentioned among 
 the ecclesiastical buildings of which the Protestants 
 wished to retain possession. Louvois' annotation to 
 this clause is designed to make the question of the 
 cathedral's future quite clear. 
 
 Whilst Strasburg at that time contained partisans 
 of France and partisans of Germany, there were also 
 many folk who wished the town to retain its indepen- 
 dence unimpaired. Dietrich, the Ammeister, had long 
 been one of them, but the recent wars had shown 
 how very difficult it was for such a comparatively 
 small community to ensure respect for its neutrality 
 amidst the contentions of great powers. In that 
 connexion one cannot help thinking of Belgium 
 and all her cruel misfortunes. 
 
 I have said enough to show the reader that all 
 sorts of reasons the fear of German enmity and of 
 possible protests on the part of citizens influenced by 
 considerations of religion and independence com- 
 bined to induce the Strasburg authorities to require 
 on the French side a show of force, which would make 
 it appear that they yielded to sheer necessity. For 
 the rest, the Proposals of the town's representatives 
 prove how jealously they provided for the maintenance 
 of the old constitution, religious liberty, the old 
 privileges, rights, and revenues. At no moment was 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 101 
 
 there any question of an unconditional sitfrencler, 
 and historians have again and again misrepresented 
 the facts by asserting that Strasburg was seized in 
 an arbitrary fashion and in defiance of all right. 
 
 The proposals of Illkirch having been submitted on 
 September 10, and sent with Louvois' annotations to 
 Louis XIV for ratification, matters remained virtually 
 in stain quo until the night of the 27th, by which time, 
 probably, the ratification had arrived. In any case 
 it was then that various detachments of Montclar's 
 troops invested that part of Strasburg' s fortifications 
 a redoubt which was nearest to the Rhine, and seized 
 the tele de pont. On the following day, apparently, 
 some of the soldiers entered the town. There w r ere 
 cannon on the ramparts, but no attempt was, or could 
 be, made to use them, for the authorities had carefully 
 kept the gunpowder under lock and key, in order to 
 prevent any impulsive burghers from endeavouring to 
 resist the entry of the French. Finally, on September 
 30, the royal ratification of the Illkirch Proposals was 
 delivered to the town officials. Thus Strasburg passed 
 to the Crown of France. 
 
 Louis XIV is said to have arrived there on the 
 ensuing October 23, when, it would appear, the cathe- 
 dral was handed over to the Bishop* ; but Edouard 
 Siebecker, a prominent Alsatian writer of the last 
 generation, tells us that the King only saw the town 
 from the outside, being unwilling to enter it on account 
 of the religious stipulations contained in the conven- 
 tion. If that be correct, the King's attitude already 
 foreshadowed future trouble. The municipality of 
 course continued in office, but a royal military governor 
 was appointed, the post being assigned to the M. de 
 
 * Franz Egon von Fiirstenberg, who was succeeded in 1685 by his 
 brother Wilhelm. 
 
102 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Chamilly whose more or less authentic expedition to 
 Basle the reader will remember. About the same 
 time the genius of Vauban was requisitioned to 
 strengthen and increase the city's fortifications. 
 Those then existing they were the work of a skilful 
 local engineer named Daniel Speckle were already 
 considerable, but Vauban added to them and built 
 the citadel. There is a story that some time after- 
 wards a German spy came to Strasburg to ascertain 
 what the new defences might be like. Chamilly is 
 said to have guessed his mission, and to have shown 
 him over every bastion and casemate, after which he 
 wished him a bon voyage, saying : " Now, monsieur, 
 on your return to your master, the Emperor, you will 
 be able to tell him that Strasburg is henceforth 
 impregnable ! " 
 
 It may well have been so in those days. What- 
 ever we may think of Vauban' s many fortifications 
 now, when the art of warfare has undergone such 
 vast changes, they were the most perfect of their 
 kind in the age to which this man of genius belonged, 
 and, indeed, they rendered good service for a long 
 time afterwards. To Vauban was allotted the great 
 task of making all the frontiers of France secure, and 
 according to his scheme Lille, Metz, and Strasburg 
 became three mainstays of the country's defence. 
 He built the fortresses of Huningen and Belfort to 
 check any invasion coming from the direction of 
 Basle ; Phalsbourg was designed to close the northern 
 defiles of the Vosges ; the works of Landau, then a 
 French possession, were an answer to those of Philipps- 
 burg; whilst those of Ney's birthplace, Sarrelouis 
 filched by the Prussians in 1815 protected the gap 
 in the frontier between the Vosges and the Moselle. 
 Central Europe became alarmed by Vauban's activity, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 103 
 
 rumours of war again arose, particularly as the Em- 
 peror felt extremely sore on the subject of Strasburg; 
 but a truce was patched up at Ratisbon, and was 
 to have lasted for twenty years, during which the 
 Empire agreed to leave the capital of Alsace in the 
 possession of France. As we shall see, however, the 
 truce was only a brief one. 
 
 In 1685 Louis, yielding to the combined influence 
 of his wife La Maintenon, whom he had married 
 secretly the previous year, his reverend father con- 
 fessor, and his Chancellor, Louvois' father, capped 
 all the previous mistakes of his reign by a more 
 stupendous one. To the lasting detriment of the 
 French nation he revoked the Edict of Nantes. The 
 Alsatian Protestants still imagined themselves pro- 
 tected by the covenants of Minister and Osnabriick, 
 but the royal intendant, a man named La Grange, as 
 fanatically bigoted as was his master, did his utmost 
 to extirpate " heresy." Moreover, shoals of Jesuits 
 and Capuchins descended on the province, scoured 
 the countrysides, and frightened whole villages into 
 abjuration, in such wise that before very long the 
 proportion of Protestants in Alsace dwindled from 
 two-thirds to a quarter of the population. Many 
 folk emigrated to Switzerland and some even to 
 Germany. 
 
 At the time of the Revocation, Dietrich, the 
 Ammeister of Strasburg, was summoned to Versailles. 
 It was known that he had contributed powerfully to 
 the town's incorporation with France. His example, 
 in giving up the idea of independence, had then 
 exercised the greatest influence on many of his fellow- 
 citizens. But he was a sturdy Protestant, and if 
 Versailles so particularly desired that he should 
 abjure his religious faith it was in the hope that his 
 
104 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 example in this respect would again influence the 
 people of Strasburg to follow in his steps. Promises 
 were made to him, and when promises failed threats 
 were tried, but nothing moved him. At last the 
 exasperated, bigoted King caused him to be interned 
 at Gueret (Creuse department), and there, in physical 
 and mental suffering, he spent four weary years. 
 When he was allowed to return to Strasburg it was 
 only on the strict condition that he should not stir 
 from his house, and that he should see nobody except- 
 ing the members of his own family. In this seclusion 
 he had to remain until 1692, at which time he was 
 seventy-two years old. More liberty was then allowed 
 him, but on March 9, 1694, he passed away. In such 
 wise were old-time fanatical and tyrannical kings only 
 too apt to treat those to whom they were indebted for 
 signal services. 
 
 By revoking the Edict of Nantes, however, 
 Louis XIV had once more lighted the torch of war. 
 In 1686, at the instigation of our Dutch William, 
 the famous Augsburg League was formed. Many 
 German Princes entered it as well as the Empire and 
 Spain and Sweden. Hostilities did not begin until 
 two years later, but they were only terminated in 
 1697 by the Treaty of Ryswick, which instrument, by 
 the way, confirmed the French King in the possession 
 of Strasburg as well as the other parts of Alsace 
 Mulhouse still excepted. Later, during the same 
 reign, came the war of the Spanish Succession (1701- 
 1714), during which the Imperialists again penetrated 
 into some parts of Alsace, besieged and took Haguenau, 
 and levied heavy contributions until they were ex- 
 pelled by Marshal Villars. 
 
 In spite of wars and religious persecutions the 
 material prosperity of Alsace increased in Louis XIV's 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 105 
 
 time.* Commerce expanded considerably during the 
 ten years which elapsed between the Dutch and the 
 Augsburg wars, and among the aristocracy, the 
 upper bourgeoisie, and people of the educated classes 
 generally, when these were Catholics, French ideas, 
 tastes, and customs became more and more diffused, 
 the literature of the grand siecle being particularly 
 in great request. Only the narrow, bigoted policy of 
 the King prevented a similar movement among the 
 Alsatian Protestants. In the circumstances they were 
 constrained to remain apart, and in their semi-seclu- 
 sion the use of Germanic dialects and the practice of 
 more or less Germanic customs persisted. 
 
 With respect to religious matters Louis XV's reign 
 brought only one change of any importance, and that 
 was more of a political character than anything else. 
 By the Peace of Ryswick the see of Strasburg had 
 been separated from the Empire, the Bishop ceasing 
 to exercise any jurisdiction over the see's tempor- 
 alities on the right bank of the Rhine ; but in 1724, 
 when the Duke of Bourbon was chief Minister in 
 France, an arrangement was arrived at with the 
 Empire by which the prelate was re-established in the 
 aforesaid jurisdiction, with the right to sit and vote 
 in the Diet by virtue of his German possessions. An 
 extraordinary state of affairs again ensued. On the 
 one hand the Bishop was and remained a member of 
 the French Episcopacy, on the other he was at the 
 same time a Prince-Bishop-Elector of the Empire. 
 The anomaly was increased by the fact that since 1704 
 
 * At an early period of his reign Louis XIV substituted for the archducal 
 regency of Ensisheim a royal Council at Brisach, whose judgments were 
 sovereign. In 1698 this Council was transferred to Colmar. Its decrees 
 began as follows : " We, the Governors and Councillors of the Council of 
 Alsace and the Lands dependent thereon, as established by His Most Christian 
 Majesty the King of France and Navarre, hereby signify and decree," etc. 
 
106 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the Bishop of Strasburg had been Armand Gaston of 
 Rohan-Soubise, who by birth and lineage had no 
 connexion whatever with Germany. Until the French 
 Revolution the Strasburg bishopric became, as it were, 
 a family fief of the Rohans, for three more of them 
 followed Armand Gaston, the last being the Cardinal 
 who was involved in the Diamond Necklace scandal. 
 Thus four members of this famous Breton house 
 became ex-officio Electors of the Empire. 
 
 The year 1741 brought with it the war of the 
 Austrian Succession and an irruption of wild Hun- 
 garian cavalry into Alsace. The " Pandour alarm " 
 (Pandurenldrm) scared many of the villagers, but 
 when Menzel, who commanded these barbaric horse- 
 men, issued a manifesto peremptorily summoning the 
 Alsatians to return to their allegiance to the Empire 
 they stoutly refused to do anything of the kind. On 
 the contrary, when, in 1744, Marie de Mailly-Nesle, 
 Duchess of Chateauroux the one worthy woman 
 among the many mistresses of Louis XV prevailed 
 on him to bestir himself and assume the command of 
 his armies, he was received in Alsace as in Lorraine 
 with the utmost enthusiasm. The sufferings and the 
 discontent brought about by the religious policy of the 
 Crown were at once forgotten, and all combined in 
 wishing success to France. In those days, even when 
 no war was being waged, a considerable garrison was 
 kept in Alsace on account of its situation as a frontier 
 province liable to attack. The presence of many 
 French troops, their intercourse with the inhabitants, 
 and the frequency with which young Alsatians en- 
 listed preferably in cavalry regiments, for although 
 the region was never noted for its horses its men 
 evinced great proficiency in horsemanship all tended 
 to the diffusion of French ideas and promoted assimila- 
 

 ALSACE-LORRAINE 107 
 
 tion. The troops were under the command of a 
 governor-general who resided at Strasburg, and was 
 generally a Marshal of France. Marshal Saxe held 
 the position for a number of years, and was succeeded 
 by such men as Contades, Broglie, Stainville, and 
 Rochambeau, the last named Lafayette's associate 
 in the American War of Independence. 
 
 Under the old regime the French peasantry suffered 
 terribly throughout the whole kingdom, the middle 
 class, or Third Estate, was also heavily taxed, and 
 possessed few if any rights, these being reserved for 
 the nobles and the clergy. Favouritism, corruption, 
 shameful abuses, denials of justice flourished on all 
 sides, and Alsace did not escape the common lot. 
 But its people were a hard-working, thrifty, energetic 
 race, and contrived to endure their burdens better 
 than the folk of some other provinces. Under an 
 official named Klinglin, Strasburg prospered exceed- 
 ingly in industry and commerce during several years 
 of the eighteenth century, but somebody discovered 
 one day that this admired praetor, to whom the 
 flourishing state of the municipal finances was attri- 
 buted, had embezzled large sums of money, which he 
 was alleged to have shared with one of the powerful 
 D' Argensons, who were Ministers of State at that time. 
 I am uncertain as to the identity of the particular 
 statesman involved in Klinglin's affair, but in any 
 case he was beyond the reach of the irate burgesses of 
 Strasburg. They were, however, able to arrest the 
 less fortunate praetor, who was cast into prison and 
 eventually executed by strangulation. 
 
 Now and again, at this period, Strasburg became 
 the scene of sundry fetes and rejoicings. In 1747 it 
 welcomed to France the Dauphiness Marie Josephe of 
 Saxony, who became the mother of Louis XVI, and 
 
108 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 in like way in 1770 it received that future monarch's 
 bride, Marie Antoinette. After the accession of the 
 last King of the old regime the greater equity and 
 tolerance shown to the Alsatian Protestants an edict 
 restored their civil rights in 1787 tended to increase 
 the province's prosperity. At the Peace of West- 
 phalia, which, it will be remembered, followed the 
 Thirty Years' War, only 250,000 inhabitants were left 
 in Alsace and the sum total yielded by the Crown taxes 
 was but 48,000, paid with the greatest difficulty after 
 incessant toiling and moiling. A hundred and forty 
 years later that is, in 1789 on the eve of the Revolution 
 notwithstanding all the losses caused by many more 
 wars and much religious persecution, the population 
 had doubled, and, according to Spach, one of the 
 Alsatian historians, the people were able to pay 
 360,000 in taxation annually, " not," be it said, 
 " without complaining, but at least without being 
 absolutely crushed by the burden." The amount 
 mentioned represented in a time of great general cost- 
 liness and penury fully l per head for every man, 
 woman, and child of the classes subject to Crown 
 taxation nobles, clergy, and others, including certain 
 municipalities, like that of Strasburg, being exempted 
 from such payment.* 
 
 As was the case in other parts of France, the heavy 
 taxation, and the exactions and immunities of the 
 privileged classes, constituted a very bitter grievance 
 among the lower orders, and it is not surprising, 
 therefore, to find that when the States General of 
 1789 were convoked, the cahiers of the Alsatian Third 
 Estate embodied a suggestion that Alsace should be 
 restored to full independence. Throughout the pro- 
 vince generally as in Lorraine the first events of 
 
 * See Clause VI of the Proposals of Ulkirch in Appendix B. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 109 
 
 the Revolution were enthusiastically received by the 
 masses. But various disorders occurred. When the 
 news of the taking of the Bastille reached Strasburg 
 a mob invaded the town hall and pillaged it. One 
 must acknowledge that the old constitution of the 
 town, so highly praised by Erasmus, was one of a very 
 exclusive kind, under which the so-called " common 
 people " had hardly any rights at all, and it was this 
 undoubtedly which fomented rioting and pillage. 
 Much satisfaction was evinced when Jean Frangois 
 Rewbell, one of the Alsatian representatives in the 
 States General, demanded the suppression of feudal 
 and ecclesiastical privileges ; and after the " Night 
 of August 4," when the States, gathered together 
 as a Constituent Assembly, abolished those privi- 
 leges, the old semi-feudal, semi-aristocratic corpo- 
 ration of Strasburg realized that its time was up, 
 and resigned office. A temporary administration was 
 then installed, and a force of National Guards, that 
 all but inevitable accompaniment to Revolution, 
 established. 
 
 Nevertheless extremist passions did not yet pre- 
 vail. Early in 1790 came municipal elections, which 
 resulted in the selection of Baron Philippe Frederic de 
 Dietrich, Count of the Ban de la Roche, as mayor. 
 He was probably a kinsman, if not a descendant, of the 
 Dominique Dietrich of Louis XIVs time. An expert 
 in mineralogy, he had previously acted as a Royal 
 Commissary for mines, smelting-works, and forests. 
 I had occasion to mention him in connexion with 
 Rouget de 1'Isle and the "Marseillaise."* Die- 
 trich was a friend of Lafayette and Bailly, mayor of 
 Paris, and like them he favoured a Constitutional 
 Monarchy, his opinions in which respect brought him 
 
 * See p. 30, ante. 
 
110 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 eventually to the scaffold in spite of the considerable 
 services which he rendered in Alsace. 
 
 In June 1790 he presided at a great fete held to 
 inaugurate the so-called Federation of the Rhine, 
 when 20,000 armed men assembled at Strasburg, and 
 when all the authorities took a solemn oath to be 
 faithful to the Nation, the Law, and the King, and 
 to defend the new Constitution which had been set 
 up. Later the National Assembly's decree ordering 
 the sequestration of all ecclesiastical property led to 
 great unrest among the Alsatian Catholics, and matters 
 became worse when the prelates, priests, and others 
 who refused to take the oath to the so-called Civil 
 Constitution of the Clergy were deprived of their 
 benefices. The Cardinal de Rohan, Bishop of Stras- 
 burg, fled across the Rhine to Ettenheim, a German 
 dependency of his diocese, and afterwards busied 
 himself there in collecting recruits for the army of 
 emigres who proposed to put down the Revolution.* 
 At Strasburg Rohan was replaced by a certain Abbe 
 Brendel, who took the oath of obedience, and became 
 indirectly responsible for many horrible things which 
 afterwards occurred in the town. 
 
 There was a dearth of priests willing to accept the 
 Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and it occurred to 
 Brendel to import a number from Germany. Among 
 those who came was a certain Eulogius Schneider, 
 born in the vicinity of Wiirzburg, then an ecclesiastical 
 principality and now in the Bavarian dominions. 
 Schneider had originally been a Franciscan, and was 
 endowed with a gift of fiery eloquence. Before long, 
 however, he threw off the mask of religion and became 
 a leader of the extremists. 
 
 Different elections of those times show that a 
 
 * Rohan died at Ettenheim in 1803. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 111 
 
 moderate Constitutionalism was largely favoured in 
 Alsace, and particularly in its capital. At the same 
 time there was no lack of patriotism, and when on 
 April 20, 1792, war was declared on Austria, Dietrich 
 at once set to work to organize defensive measures 
 against any possible attack on the Alsatian capital. 
 But events occurred which he and others would not 
 countenance. Immediately after the Parisian insur- 
 rection of August 10, which led to the imprisonment 
 of Louis XVI and his family, the municipality of 
 Strasburg voted an address to the Government, 
 demanding that the King's person should be regarded 
 as inviolable. A few days later four commissaries 
 arrived, suspended the audacious municipality from 
 office, and ordered the arrest of Dietrich. He, how- 
 ever, contrived to escape to Basle, where he remained 
 for a time in safety.* 
 
 Finding Constitutionalism so much in favour at 
 Strasburg, the Government transferred the elections 
 for the National Convention to Haguenau. The pace 
 of the Revolution was then accelerated, and for a 
 time the foreign menace became serious. In July 
 1793 the Prussians and Austrians under Brunswick 
 and Wiirmser, after retaking Mayence from the 
 French, entered Alsace. The forces under Custine 
 and Beauharnais (Josephine's first husband) had to 
 retreat. The famous lines of Wissembourg, which had 
 once saved France from invasion, were abandoned, 
 and the enemy drove the defeated troops within 
 gunshot of Strasburg. Great became the alarm there. 
 
 * He subsequently returned to France, and on being arraigned before 
 the Tribunal of Besan9on as an emigre, was acquitted. His enemies, however, 
 contrived to have him removed to Paris, where he was sentenced to death 
 by the Revolutionary Tribunal and executed on December 29, 1793. After 
 Robespierre's fall seven months later, the National Assembly rehabilitated 
 his memory. 
 
112 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 It was alleged that the Germans had confederates in 
 the town, and it is certainly true that at this time a 
 number of emigre noblemen returned to Alsace and 
 welcomed the invaders as deliverers. 
 
 Elogius Schneider, the ex-Franciscan whom I pre- 
 viously mentioned, now served as Public Prosecutor 
 (Accusateur public) at the local Revolutionary Tribunal, 
 and played on the smaller stage of Strasburg much 
 the same part as Fouquier-Tinville played on the 
 larger one of Paris. He had previously become the 
 leader of a German Jacobin gang which had selected 
 Alsace as a suitable field for its exploits. Besides 
 perorating at the Jacobin clubs, Schneider founded 
 a news-sheet entitled the Argus, and, allying himself 
 for a while with a Savoyard Jacobin named Monet 
 and a French one known as Laveau, who edited a 
 paper called the Courrier Fran$ais, he steadily 
 undermined the authority of Dietrich even before the 
 affair of the address calling for royal inviolability. As 
 Public Prosecutor Schneider cast off all restraint, 
 demanding and obtaining whatever banishments, im- 
 prisonments, and executions he desired, but even as 
 he sent others to the guillotine, so was he himself at 
 last committed to the swift offices of that busy 
 instrument. 
 
 Soon after the " suppression of Christianity " and 
 the pompous celebration at Strasburg of the Feast of 
 Robespierre's " Goddess Reason " (November 20, 
 1793) that masquerade, be it remembered, was by no 
 means confined to Paris a split occurred between 
 the French and the German Jacobins. The latter 
 were alleged to be in collusion with emigre nobles, and 
 judging by what is known of the German character, 
 even in the case of pseudo-Socialists, it is quite 
 possible that the charge was true. Now at this time 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 113 
 
 two Commissaries attached by the Convention to the 
 Army of the Rhine arrived at Strasburg. They were 
 zealous partisans and particular friends of Robespierre, 
 one being the famous Louis de Saint-Just, who 
 perished by the guillotine, and the other Joseph 
 Lebas, who only escaped a similar fate by shooting 
 himself. In order to provide some money for arrears 
 of pay due to the Rhine army and for putting Stras- 
 burg in a better state of defence, they levied nine 
 million limes approximately 360,000 on the richer 
 inhabitants, who had to provide the amount within 
 four and twenty hours ; and at the same time they 
 ordered, at Schneider's instigation, the arrest of about 
 forty persons. 
 
 However, Monet, the Savoyard, now mayor of the 
 town, intervened, and nearly half of the arrested 
 people were released, whilst Schneider, whom Monet 
 and others denounced, was committed to prison. 
 Various Alsatian writers praise Saint- Just for what he 
 did in these matters. It was decided to send Schneider 
 to Paris, but before his departure he underwent what 
 was termed exposition on the scaffold, being pinioned 
 to a stake, affixed to which, above his head, was a 
 placard stating that he had " dishonoured the Revolu- 
 tion." On being tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal 
 in the capital, he was charged with having made 
 excessive use of the guillotine besides evincing aris- 
 tocratic tastes and tendencies. He was ultimately 
 executed on April 1, 1794. 
 
 At Strasburg a new Tribunal, in w r hich French 
 Jacobins became prominent, was instituted. Its 
 methods differed little from those of its predecessor. 
 Monet became all-powerful, and waged war on Ger- 
 man Jacobins. The recall of Saint- Just and Lebas, 
 and later the fall of Robespierre, altered the situation. 
 
114 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Foussedoire, the next Government representative, 
 released many prisoners. Monet was removed from 
 the mayoralty and replaced by Bernard of Tiirkheim. 
 Reaction followed a period of excesses, and in 1795 
 the Jacobin party was defeated at the elections for the 
 new legislature that is, the Conseil des Anciens and 
 the Conseil des Cinq-Cents all the members for the 
 Lower Rhine being moderate Republicans, whilst the 
 Upper Rhine department returned former Conven- 
 tionnels who had voted against Robespierre. Thus 
 does the world go round, though, notwithstanding all 
 the teachings of the past, the extremists of to-day 
 appear to be unaware of it. 
 
 Rewbell the Alsatian was elected a member of 
 the Directory entrusted with the government of 
 France, and contended in favour of democratic, but 
 not extremist, principles. He was a party to the 
 coup d'etat of the Eighteenth Fructidor (September 4, 
 1797) directed against the more reactionary members 
 of the Councils, and became, with Barras and Lare- 
 velliere-Lepeaux, one of the Triumvirate which after- 
 wards exercised supreme power. But the regime 
 proved deplorable. The French arms suffered nume- 
 rous reverses, and the State was reduced to bank- 
 ruptcy. In Alsace the period was marked by one 
 notable event Mulhouse at last severed the ties 
 which linked her to Switzerland and joined the 
 French Republic. 
 
 For many centuries the little town had formed, 
 with some adjacent territory, a self-governing repub- 
 lican State, sometimes in close alliance with, sometimes 
 virtually incorporated in, the Swiss Confederation ; 
 and, generally speaking, it had only taken part in 
 Alsatian affairs when its own interests were in ques- 
 tion. Its commercial intercourse with France, though 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 115 
 
 small, was constant, and its relations with the French 
 authorities were generally satisfactory. Its inhabi- 
 tants cordially detested the Germanic Empire, and 
 in 1744, when Louis XV was besieging Freiburg im 
 Breisgau, they dispatched a deputation to the castle 
 of Miinzingen, then his head-quarters, in order to 
 compliment him. In like way they sent deputations 
 to Strasburg to compliment the Dauphinesses 
 Marie Joseph e and Marie Antoinette on their arrival 
 in French territory, and in 1777, three years after 
 the accession of Louis XVI, they concluded a de- 
 fensive military alliance with France and Switzer- 
 land. 
 
 In 1785, however, trouble arose. The empirical 
 Calonne became Controller of French Finances, and 
 projecting the formation of a new Compagnie des 
 Indes, he prohibited the importation of foreign cotton 
 goods. This threatened to nip, almost in their 
 infancy, the cotton manufactures of Mulhouse, which 
 since the establishment of the Koechlin, Schmalzer, 
 and Dollfus works in 1746 had been gradually expand- 
 ing. The negotiations with the French authorities 
 did not prove satisfactory, and Mulhouse again drew 
 closer to Switzerland. Local restlessness and im- 
 poverishment followed the outbreak of the French 
 Revolution. In 1789, by reason of severe frosts, the 
 wine crop failed throughout Alsace. In the following 
 year the harvest failed, and grain and flour could 
 scarcely be obtained by the citizens of Mulhouse, for 
 the Alsatian roads became unsafe, and wagons 
 conveying cereals were often pillaged by famished 
 peasants. The French authorities, moreover, alarmed 
 by the shortage in their own territory, drew a cordon 
 of barriers round about the little republic, and in one 
 way or another subjected it to various vexations, so 
 
116 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 that it seemed at last as if nothing could either come 
 in or go out. 
 
 Mulhouse appealed to her Swiss friends, through 
 whose offices some negotiations ensued, the upshot 
 being a draft treaty by which she was to be allowed 
 free communication with Alsace on condition that all 
 stipulated duties should be paid on the goods which 
 she might send into French territory. This draft or 
 preliminary treaty was signed on September 22, 1791. 
 But events were moving rapidly in France, urgent 
 matters were crowding one upon another, the sorely 
 shaken monarchy was tumbling faster and faster to 
 its doom, and so the little affair of Mulhouse was 
 neglected, virtually forgotten. Briefly, the treaty was 
 never ratified. On the contrary, indeed, barely six 
 weeks after the proclamation of the French Republic 
 (September 21, 1792) Mulhouse was declared foreign 
 territory, in such wise that no foodstuffs could be 
 obtained from France without payment of heavy 
 export duties. 
 
 Matters went from bad to worse. There was great 
 scarcity in most parts of Europe. Virtually every 
 nation had to husband its resources. In 1794 the 
 people of Mulhouse had to pay seventy limes per 
 viertel perhaps one might say 66s. per quarter 
 for wheat. That may not seem so very high a price 
 judged by present standards, but account must be 
 taken of the purchasing power of money and its 
 scarcity in those days. At last Mulhouse succeeded 
 in obtaining some grain from Swabia, by way of 
 Switzerland, but its inhabitants lived in constant 
 anxiety, hoping vainly for better times. Further 
 efforts were made to negotiate a satisfactory com- 
 mercial treaty with France, but the Directory did not 
 prove responsive. Yet matters could not remain as 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 117 
 
 they were ; something had to be done if Mulhouse 
 was to be extricated from its extremely difficult 
 position. 
 
 The State Syndic at that time was Josue Hofer, 
 and the Burgomaster his relation Johannes Hofer, and 
 these two and a few others appear to have put their 
 heads together and to have come to the conclusion 
 that it would be best to take the same course as 
 Strasburg had taken a hundred and seventeen years 
 previously, and exchange independence for union with 
 France. France had long been their chief customer, 
 and from France they had derived most of their 
 supplies, and all the barriers which had since arisen 
 in those respects would necessarily disappear should 
 Mulhouse become French territory. She could not 
 claim to retain her ancient organization, as Strasburg 
 had retained hers for a hundred years or so ; for times 
 had changed, and the French Republic had cast most 
 ancient things to the winds. It would therefore be 
 necessary to come under her new administrative 
 methods. For the older men it was doubtless painful 
 to relinquish the independence and the somewhat 
 narrow social system transmitted to them by their 
 forefathers, and to which they themselves had been 
 accustomed all their lives. On the other hand, the 
 change would mean reunion with all their fellow- 
 Alsatians who had adopted a like course ; and to the 
 younger ones this change signified emancipation, 
 extension of opportunity, a general broadening of life, 
 participation in the destinies of a great nation which 
 in despite of many blunders, many acts of folly, 
 even of madness and occasionally of savagery had 
 sowed in the course of its Revolution and was still 
 sowing, however much its rulers might flounder, 
 precious seeds, which, in days to come, would yield a 
 
118 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 real increase of liberty and a vast improvement of 
 social conditions in many lands. 
 
 The general Council and the Committee of Forty 
 presiding over the destinies of the little republic were 
 assembled, and the advisability of becoming united to 
 France was discussed. The only conditions specified 
 appear to have been exemption from the conscription, 
 then newly established by the Directory,* from 
 requisitions, and from the obligation of billeting troops 
 until after the next general peace. On those terms 
 97 members of the assembly voted for union with 
 France, only 5 votes being recorded against it. On 
 the morrow (January 4, 1798) the decision was 
 confirmed by a general assembly of burgesses at the 
 Church of Saint-Etienne, when 591 pronounced in its 
 favour and 15 against it. An Alsatian of Colmar 
 afterwards came to Mulhouse as French Commissary 
 to assist in adapting the local municipal arrangements 
 to the French system. The formal ceremony of 
 annexation took place on March 10, and in the 
 historical museum of the town there was formerly 
 preserved a tricolour hanging used on this occasion 
 and bearing the inscription : " The Republic of 
 Mulhouse reposes on the bosom of the French 
 Republic." 
 
 At that time, says an Alsatian writer, the town 
 had 38 streets, 800 houses, and 6000 inhabitants. If 
 material prosperity be proof of the wisdom of such an 
 action as the incorporation of Mulhouse with France, 
 then that action was a wise one. Less than fifty 
 years afterwards the town had so expanded that it 
 
 * The Directory's Conscription Law was very unpopular throughout 
 France, where voluntary enlistment had previously prevailed, and, in con- 
 junction with the forced Loan and the military reverses of the time, facilitated 
 the overthrow of the regime by Napoleon on his return from Egypt. Those 
 who hoped, however, that he might abolish conscription were soon undeceived. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 119 
 
 counted over 20,000 inhabitants, and every day some 
 7000 working folk repaired to it from neighbouring 
 villages.* 
 
 The accession of Napoleon to the Consulate was 
 welcomed in Alsace. The re-establishment of religion 
 pleased both the Catholic and the Protestant elements. 
 The Concordat with Pius VII was signed in 1801, and 
 the Protestant Church was recognized by a law passed/ 
 early in the following year, its ministers being at first 
 trained in a kind of seminary, though later a faculty 
 of Protestant theology was established at Strasburg. 
 Laws extending and regulating primary and secondary 
 education proved very beneficial. Great services were 
 rendered in educational matters by the Marquis de 
 Lezay-Marnezia, a native of Savoy, who became 
 Prefect of the Lower Rhine department. He began 
 life in the diplomatic service of the old regime, and 
 after contriving to survive the Reign of Terror became 
 a protege of Josephine, who ultimately brought him to 
 Napoleon's notice. Possessed of literary gifts, Lezay- 
 Marnezia wrote on a number of political questions, 
 translated Schiller's " Don Carlos," and edited a 
 volume of apophthegms and epigrams extracted from 
 the writings of Cardinal de Retz. Apart from those 
 matters, he took, like the many-sided man he was, a 
 keen interest in agriculture and industry. He intro- 
 duced the cultivation of sugar-beet into Lower Alsace, 
 as well as improved methods for cultivating and 
 treating tobacco, from which Strasburg derived much 
 benefit. He was also a great road-builder, and he 
 widely encouraged the planting of fruit-trees. He was 
 one of the best functionaries of his class that served 
 Napoleon, and certainly the administration of Lower 
 Alsace was never in better hands. I am uncertain 
 
 * See also pp. 22, 23, 43, 44, ante. 
 
120 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 whether the first Restoration confirmed him in his 
 post, but he died at Strasburg from the effects of a 
 carriage accident in October 1814, when Napoleon 
 was at Elba. 
 
 The Great Captain's victories inspired no little 
 enthusiasm among the Alsatians. Many of his lieu- 
 tenants came from that province and the adjacent one 
 
 f Lorraine. The names of Ney, Lefebvre, Victor, 
 eber, Lasalle, Drouot, Rapp, Kellermann, Lobau, 
 hramm, live in history, and there were numerous 
 
 thers, equally brave and devoted, and sometimes 
 almost as able although less renowned. When after 
 the Battle of Leipzig the Austrians, Prussians, 
 Bavarians, and Russians crossed the Rhine and in- 
 vaded France, several of the Alsatian and Lorrainer 
 fortresses staunchly resisted the enemy, and none 
 more desperately than Huningen, defended by the 
 heroic Barban^gre. But the star of the Emperor set, 
 and even at his first downfall in 1814 greedy Prussia, 
 who had never had any connexion with Alsace, 
 impudently laid claim to the province as the price of 
 her services. It is interesting to note that Great 
 Britain and Russia combined to resist Prussia's 
 covetous demands and defeated them. In 1815, 
 however, the predatory Hohenzollerns contrived to 
 secure a part of the Saar valley, and Landau passed 
 to Rhenish Bavaria. 
 
 Apart from those losses the Bourbons came to 
 their own again. The first years of the Restoration 
 were unhappy ones in Alsace. Foreign troops occu- 
 pied most of the province. The harvests of 1816 and 
 1817 were scanty ones. Many food-stuffs and other 
 necessaries reached exorbitant prices. Moreover, the 
 Alsatians, with their liberal ideas, had little liking for 
 the Bourbons, who during the years of their eclipse 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 121 
 
 had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Besides, 
 now that the King was restored, many members of 
 the Catholic clergy became unduly arrogant, imagin- 
 ing that they might henceforth do as they pleased. 
 The Protestants were not exactly persecuted, but 
 they were snubbed and cold-shouldered, particularly 
 in the time of the bigoted Charles X, by a zealous 
 officialdom. The trend of public opinion during the 
 Restoration is shown by the election of one of the 
 chief Liberal leaders of the period, Benjamin Constant, 
 as deputy for Strasburg, and by the boundless 
 enthusiasm with which another one, General Foy, was 
 received when he visited Alsace. 
 
 Other circumstances tended to confirm the Alsa- 
 tians in their Liberal views, which, it would be idle 
 to deny it, were sometimes tinged with Bonapartism, 
 kept alive by the numerous half-pay officers of 
 Napoleon's armies who had been virtually exiled to 
 the province. In those days Belfort was included in 
 the Upper Rhine department. It belonged, indeed, 
 to Alsace, and if so far I have only occasionally 
 referred to it in this narrative, it is because I prefer 
 to reserve a fuller account until I relate in a sub- 
 sequent chapter the circumstances under which this 
 fortress town was retained by France at the annexa- 
 tion of 1871. Here, however, it may be stated that 
 in 1821, Louis XVIII reigning, Belfort became the 
 chief scene of a conspiracy which had ramifications at 
 Mulhouse, Neuf-Brisach, Huningen, and other places. 
 The movement, directed against the Bourbons, was 
 both of a semi-Liberal and a semi-Bonapartist cha- 
 racter. Members of the wealthy Kcechlin family of 
 Mulhouse were concerned in it and assisted it finan- 
 cially. Various Liberal parliamentary leaders, such 
 as Manuel and Dupont de FEure, the famous jour- 
 
122 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 nalist Armand Carrel, the brothers Scheffer, the 
 painters, and General de Lafayette were likewise 
 privy to the affair ; but in other respects the contem- 
 plated rising was prepared chiefly by former officers 
 of Napoleon. Scores of them, in all parts of Alsace, 
 made ready during the last months of 1821 to join 
 the rising, and a large number of soldiers, belonging 
 notably to the garrisons of Neuf-Brisach and Belfort 5 
 could be relied upon for support. 
 
 Some of the forces were to seize and hold the 
 passes of the Vosges, and others were to march on 
 Colmar, then the capital of the Upper Rhine, arrest 
 the royal authorities there, and use the town as a 
 centre for future action. Now on the evening when 
 the rising was to take place a number of the half-pay 
 officers concerned in the affair dined together at 
 Belfort. Many of the soldiers of the garrison knew 
 or guessed that something was coming off that very 
 night, and some of them even got ready to co-operate 
 with the leaders of the plot. But a non-commissioned 
 officer blundered badly by going to inform a royalist 
 captain, who was not in the secret, that the men were 
 ready. The captain was momentarily puzzled, but 
 ended by divining the truth, and then hurried off to 
 inform the Commandant de place, who, after a short 
 delay, ordered the town gates to be closed. Mean- 
 time, however, the chief conspirators realized that the 
 plot was discovered and took to flight. Lafayette, 
 Armand Carrel, Henry Scheffer, the painter, and others 
 were expected to reach Belfort that night, and some 
 of those who escaped from the town hastened to 
 intercept them, and warn them to turn back. This 
 was done, Lafayette, who was met at Lure, making 
 the return journey to Paris with the utmost speed in 
 order that it might appear as if he had never left the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 123 
 
 city. Briefly, all the real leaders escaped, and the 
 Commandant of Belfort could only lay hands on two 
 officers and two civilians, each of whom was sentenced 
 to five years' imprisonment. It has been said that 
 the failure of the conspiracy was due largely to the 
 dilatoriness of Lafayette, who ought to have reached 
 Belfort sooner. 
 
 The affair had a tragic sequel. In 1820 one of 
 Napoleon's former officers, who had quitted the army, 
 but was still known as Colonel Caron, had been 
 acquitted on a charge of conspiracy tried by the 
 Chamber of Peers, and had then retired to Colmar, 
 where, after the collapse of the Belfort plot, he 
 devised a scheme for delivering the prisoners. He 
 was denounced, however, arrested and sent to Stras- 
 burg. His connexion with the army had been severed, 
 nevertheless he was court-martialled and sentenced to 
 be shot. This sentence was carried into effect on 
 October 1, 1822, and Caron's remains were interred 
 in the Strasburg cemetery of Saint-Urbain, outside 
 the former Porte d'Austerlitz, where, after the fall of 
 the elder Bourbon line, a stone was set up bearing 
 the inscription : " Here lies Lieutenant-Colonel Caron 
 who died for Liberty." * Both the method of his 
 trial and his execution had a bad effect on public 
 opinion. It was held strongly that he ought to have 
 been arraigned before a civil court, which would have 
 shown more leniency. Briefly, although there were 
 no disturbances, the general dislike of the Bourbon 
 regime was accentuated by this affair. 
 
 Charles X was even less popular than his brother 
 Louis XVIII. Nevertheless, when he visited Stras- 
 
 * His Christian names were Augustin Joseph, and he was forty-eight years 
 old at the time of his death. He had fought in several engagements, but his 
 military career was somewhat obscure. 
 
124 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 burg, Colmar, and Mulhouse in September 1828, he 
 had quite apart from the official celebrations a 
 very good reception, which was due, perhaps, to the 
 circumstance that eighty-four years had elapsed since 
 a King of France had shown himself in Alsace, though 
 Napoleon, of course, had often passed that way. 
 Charles X seldom if ever did the right thing when 
 great issues were at stake, but in small matters he 
 not infrequently showed to advantage. Thus, on 
 being warned that he would find Mulhouse a hotbed 
 of Republicanism, he replied : "In that case I must 
 not take a military escort with me." And he abstained 
 from doing so. The incident pleased the people of 
 Mulhouse, who, after cheering the monarch, remarked 
 to one another that, all considered, he was, perhaps, 
 less black than he had been painted. 
 
 The Revolution of 1830 and the accession of 
 Louis Philippe seemed to promise a genuinely liberal 
 regime, and so the new King was well received when 
 he visited Alsace the following year. But discontent 
 was soon rife, and was fostered by the heavy taxation 
 of the times. Not only were there frequent demon- 
 strations in favour of the more democratic leaders, 
 but Strasburg became the scene of more than one 
 little conspiracy. It was probably a recollection of 
 the military Imperialist plots of Restoration days 
 that, in the autumn of 1836, prompted young Prince 
 Louis Napoleon subsequently Napoleon III to 
 choose the Alsatian capital for an attempt to proclaim 
 the Empire with the help of the garrison. The affair 
 proved a fiasco, and was dealt with so promptly by 
 the authorities that, according to the diary of a 
 Strasburg citizen now before me, the general public 
 knew nothing about it until three days afterwards, 
 when it was reported that Louis Napoleon, Colonel 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 125 
 
 Vaudrey of the 4th Artillery, and a few other persons, 
 including the Prince's mistress, Mme. Gordon, were 
 under arrest in the local house of detention. Some 
 of the confederates, including Fialin, afterwards Duke 
 de Persigny, managed to escape. The Prince, says 
 the diarist I have mentioned, lodged in the Rue des 
 Orphelins, next door to the Brasserie des Quatre- 
 Vents, and a search made in his rooms resulted in the 
 discovery of powder, cartridges, and uniforms, as well 
 as a pair of general's epaulets. Mme. Gordon's 
 lodging was at No. 17 Rue Fontaine, where she 
 passed under the name of Brown.* The only officer 
 who openly sided with the Prince was Vaudrey, 
 whom I have mentioned, but it was five o'clock on 
 a bleak morning when Louis Napoleon harangued the 
 artillerymen at their barracks, and thus, apart from 
 the colonel, who was privy to the affair, the officers 
 were still lying snugly in bed. Some of the soldiers 
 cheered, but others wavered, and the linesmen of the 
 26th Regiment would not join the movement, so that 
 the attempt collapsed. Louis Napoleon was pardoned 
 by Louis Philippe on consenting to go to America 
 (where he remained for as short a time as possible), 
 and the eleven days' trial of his accomplices in the 
 ensuing month of January resulted in their acquittal. 
 They were defended by some notable Parisian advo- 
 cates, in whose honour, I observe, a banquet was 
 given by a number of the leading people of Strasburg. 
 This shows that Bonapartism was by no means 
 there. 
 
 The system of elementary education in Alsace was 
 again improved in 1837, and the French language 
 spread more and more widely. This period was also 
 
 * I have given various particulars about this woman in my book, " The 
 Court of the Tuileries, 1852-70." (Chatto and Windus.) 
 
126 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 one of many improvements in means of communica- 
 tion. The first Alsatian railway line that from 
 Thann to Mulhouse was opened in 1839. Two years 
 later came one from Strasburg to Basle, and at the 
 same time the line from Paris to Strasburg was 
 begun. In 1834 the Rhone and Rhine Canal was 
 inaugurated, being soon followed by that of the 
 Marne and the Rhine and a branch canal connecting 
 the Rhone waterway with the 111. Meantime there 
 was still a certain amount of unrest and some un- 
 pleasant bickering between Alsatian Catholics and 
 Protestants. A writer named Busch was prosecuted 
 for producing a book which the Jesuits regarded as 
 libellous, but a Strasburg jury acquitted him. 
 
 In 1846 the question of Russian Poland came to 
 the front in several countries, considerable feeling 
 being displayed, particularly in France, respecting 
 the deportation of many Poles to Siberia. Prince 
 Metternich, then seventy-three years old, was still 
 governing the various races of Austria with stubborn 
 despotism, and Galicia being part of Poland, he 
 thought fit to intervene apropos of the agitation 
 which was taking place in France. He commissioned 
 Count Apponyi, Austrian Ambassador in Paris, to 
 inform Guizot, then Louis Philippe's chief Minister, 
 that if this agitation did not cease, Austria would 
 forcibly reannex Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. 
 Metternich's threats, being divulged, provoked violent 
 protests from Strasburg and the other Alsatian towns. 
 Nevertheless, the Austrian, German, and Russian 
 Press embarked on a campaign of calumny, declaring 
 that the French were not entitled to raise any Polish 
 question as they treated the Alsatian people with 
 abominable cruelty ! There was not one word of 
 truth in that assertion ; and towards the end of 1846 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 127 
 
 a German writer named Biedermann, a professor at 
 Leipzig University, published a book on Alsace, which 
 he had repeatedly visited, and had the fairness and 
 courage to declare that no cruelty whatever was 
 shown to the inhabitants, whom he had found 
 perfectly satisfied with their French nationality. 
 
 Considerable discontent undoubtedly prevailed, 
 but it was common to all France. There was a great 
 scarcity of cereals, the price of which became early 
 in 1847 as high as it had been some thirty years 
 previously, when two successive harvests failed. But 
 this state of affairs was not peculiar to France. We 
 ourselves had our " Hungry Forties " and our Corn 
 Law agitation. As for Alsace, the municipalities did 
 their utmost to provide for the public needs by 
 buying grain and flour wherever possible, and fixing 
 the price of bread at such a figure as to place the 
 staff of life within reach even of poor consumers. The 
 various transactions resulted in considerable losses to 
 the municipalities, and these losses had to be met by 
 increased taxation on the wealthier folk of the com- 
 munity. The poorer ones, however, were at least 
 able to obtain bread. The municipality of Strasburg 
 also started relief works an empirical remedy, no 
 doubt, but one which, for the time being, certainly 
 provided a considerable number of people with the 
 means of subsistence. 
 
 The cause of the general discontent among the 
 masses, and also in part of the distress which arose in 
 many parts of France, lay in the political system of 
 the time. There was an extremely restricted fran- 
 chise, in such wise that the bulk of the nation had 
 no voice in its government. And yet less than half 
 a century had elapsed since the dawn of the French 
 Revolution. All the Liberal elements in France 
 
128 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 embarked, then, on a great campaign for Reform, 
 and Alsace took a notable part in it. The agitation 
 increased when various cases of corruption and 
 jobbery in high places were brought to light. Many 
 more were suspected, and not without good reason. 
 /In the result, on February 24, 1848, Louis Philippe 
 lost his throne, and the Second French Republic was 
 proclaimed. 
 
 Once again Alsace became all enthusiasm. That 
 same year was the bicentenary of the Treaty of 
 Westphalia, which had acknowledged Alsace (Stras- 
 burg and Mulhouse excepted) as part of France. 
 The Alsatians resolved to celebrate this memorable 
 event by a number of great festivals. Whatever the 
 historical circumstances might be, Strasburg and 
 Mulhouse eagerly participated in these rejoicings. 
 There were fetes also at Colmar, Minister, Cernay, 
 Thann, Wesserling, Schlestadt, Saverne, Barr, and 
 other places. In a word, the whole province gave 
 itself up to festivity. Thousands of National Guards 
 assembled at Strasburg. Deputations poured in from 
 Lorraine and other adjacent parts of France. Flags 
 waved, music sounded, banquets were given, speeches 
 delivered, and houses illuminated in the evening, when 
 the lads and the girls, and older folk also, footed it 
 merrily in the squares and cross ways. Two symbolic 
 groups figured in the great afternoon procession one 
 showing France and Alsace embracing, and the other 
 Alsace, as warden of the frontier, proudly defending 
 France. . . . Alas ! 
 
 But the Second Republic reposed on no bed of 
 roses. It was face to face with a most difficult 
 situation, the outcome of all the mismanagement 
 of Louis Philippe's time, and its Government un- 
 doubtedly made some deplorable mistakes. When 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 129 
 
 120,000 men of the National Workshops in Paris 
 were cast adrift without means of subsistence, a fierce 
 insurrection burst forth.* For four days the city 
 was given over to bloodshed. General Brea and his 
 aide-de-camp were assassinated ; Mgr. Affre, the 
 Archbishop, was struck down on a barricade whilst 
 exhorting the combatants to cease the fratricidal 
 struggle. Cavaignac at last put down the rebellion, 
 and became Chief of the Executive, with virtually 
 dictatorial powers. Nevertheless there was ebullition 
 in other parts of the country, Alsace included. 
 
 When Prince Louis Napoleon came forward as a 
 candidate for the Presidency of the Republic he 
 found numerous Alsatian supporters. His foolish 
 enterprise at Strasburg in 1836 and his equally 
 foolish descent on Boulogne in 1840 were overlooked, 
 condoned. At this time only forty-four years had 
 elapsed since the foundation of the First Empire, 
 only thirty-three since its final overthrow, only 
 twenty-seven since Napoleon's death at St. Helena, 
 and only eight since his remains had been brought 
 back to Paris, and deposited, with much pomp and 
 ceremony, under the dome of the Invalides. Thus 
 the Proud Legend was still a living one, a halo still 
 surrounded the Great Captain's name, many men 
 whom he had led to victory were still living, time had 
 only suffused his deeds and theirs with a glamour of 
 phenomenal glory, and so France, in part carried 
 away by the memory of mighty achievements, and 
 in part tired of the sterile strife of parties and appre- 
 hensive of the wild enterprises of extremists, elected 
 the heir of the Bonapartes as her President by 
 
 * Let our rulers profit by the lessons of history and be careful how, when 
 the Great War ends, they treat the millions of workers now in Government 
 or controlled establishments. 
 
130 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 5,434,226 votes. Few of those voters imagined at 
 the time that they were not giving themselves to 
 another Napoleon the Great, but to a Napoleon the 
 Little. 
 
 When the oath of fidelity to the Constitution was 
 administered to the new Chief of the State, he 
 answered, " I swear it." " I ask God to witness the 
 oath which has just been taken," said the President 
 of the Assembly. Then Louis Napoleon addressed 
 the deputies, his first words being : "I should regard 
 as enemies of the country all those who by illegal 
 means should attempt to alter the form of Govern- 
 ment which you have established." Yet in December 
 1851 came the coup d'etat, and in December the 
 following year the establishment of a Second Empire, 
 which collapsed in the disaster of Sedan, leaving 
 France to fight on as best she could in the hope of 
 being able to save Alsace-Lorraine, which Bismarck 
 bluntly told Jules Favre at Ferrieres, soon after the 
 Empire's fall, would be part of the price that must 
 be paid for peace. 
 
 The policy pursued during Louis Napoleon's pre- 
 sidency indisposed many Alsatian Republicans, who 
 participated in various little plots. From time to 
 time there were perquisitions, arrests, and trials, 
 which last, owing to the Liberalism of Alsatian judges 
 and juries, generally ended in acquittals. In the 
 summer of 1849 cholera raged in Alsace, where it 
 carried off 20,000 people. In August the following 
 year Louis Napoleon visited the province. He had 
 just been badly received in Franche-Comte, Besanon 
 positively hooting him. The Alsatians were more 
 circumspect, and at Mulhouse, Colmar, and Strasburg 
 contented themselves with crying " Vive la Repub- 
 lique 1 " They associated the Republican regime 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 131 
 
 with peace, and feared lest the re-establishment of 
 the Empire should signify war the consequences of 
 which they, inhabiting a frontier province, would be 
 the first to feel. It stirred the imagination to talk of 
 the glories of the former Napoleonic period, but 
 practical Alsatians, who remembered days of invasion, 
 desired a peaceful regime. That view, indeed, was 
 held in most parts of France, and Louis Napoleon 
 knew it, and for that very reason delivered himself at 
 Bordeaux of the famous apophthegm : L* Empire, c'est 
 la paix (" The Empire will mean peace "). 
 
 Although the Prince-President was already break- 
 ing his solemn oath to the Constitution, millions of 
 people believed in the promise of Bordeaux. It 
 quieted a thousand apprehensions and won over a 
 mass of hesitating opinion. Moreover, there was a 
 most reactionary majority in the National Assembly, 
 and this inclined many Liberal people to support the 
 President against the legislature. After the coup 
 d'etat, however, several Republican Alsatian deputies, 
 including Kestner of Mulhouse and Edmond Valentin, 
 who became Prefect of Strasburg during the memor- 
 able siege of 1870, as well as other prominent men, 
 were arrested and exiled or deported. Other Repub- 
 licans were able to escape into Swiss territory. 
 Strenuous Government pressure was then exercised 
 on every side. All kinds of promises, all kinds of 
 threats were employed, in such wise that the plebi- 
 scitum taken to ratify the coup d'etat resulted in 
 favour of Louis Napoleon. In the whole province 
 only 15,414 votes were officially recorded against 
 him. I say officially, because in Alsace, as elsewhere, 
 the ballot-boxes were tampered with in many localities. 
 During the ensuing month of December the citadel of 
 Strasburg thundered forth a salute of 101 guns in 
 
132 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 honour of the proclamation of an Empire, which was 
 to bring the direst misfortune upon all Alsace. 
 
 The rule of Napoleon III was never really popular 
 in the Alsatian towns, but, as is well known, the 
 Emperor laid himself out in all sorts of ways to 
 please the peasantry throughout France, and in this 
 matter he succeeded, in Alsace as in other provinces. 
 The Strasburg municipality being, however, none to 
 his liking, he arbitrarily revoked it in 1854 and 
 appointed a commission to control the affairs of the 
 town. Two years later the young Archduke Maxi- 
 milian of Austria made a short stay in the Alsatian 
 capital, having come to France on his first visit to 
 Napoleon. The intercourse which ensued proved 
 fatal to the Austrian prince, who, eight years later, 
 was persuaded to become Emperor of Mexico, and 
 in 1867, having been abandoned by his patron, was 
 shot at Queretaro. Scarcely had he quitted Alsace 
 in 1856 w r hen a latent agitation became acute there. 
 It was caused by a conflict which had arisen between 
 the Swiss Confederation and the King of Prussia, 
 then Frederick William IV, the monarch who was 
 addicted to Clicquot champagne, and who, losing 
 control of the little brains he possessed Virchow 
 averred that he had none at all contracted the nasty 
 habit of washing his face with his soup.* 
 
 In 1856 this monarch's fixed idea was to exercise 
 his sovereign rights over the Swiss canton of Neuf- 
 chatel, which in 1815, with the county of Valengin, 
 had been assigned as a principality to Frederick 
 William III. However, during the great year of 
 revolutions and insurrections, 1848, the Switzers of 
 
 * He died in 1861, when he was succeeded by his younger brother, the 
 future Emperor William I (grandfather of the present Kaiser), who since 
 1857 had acted as Regent of Prussia. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 133 
 
 Neufchatel rose against their harsh Prussian masters, 
 drove them out of the canton, and joined the Con- 
 federation. Frederick William IV was beset by so 
 much trouble at home at this juncture that for the 
 time he had to resign himself to the loss ; but in 1853, 
 resolving to assert himself, he once more seized the 
 town with the help of sundry partisans, and set up 
 the Prussian flag. But again were the Prussians and 
 their adherents attacked by the Swiss of the rural 
 districts, and whilst fifteen of them w r ere killed and 
 thirty wounded, three hundred were taken prisoners. 
 Thereupon Frederick William threatened the Federal 
 authorities, who refused, however, to recognize his 
 claims. 
 
 The dispute became more and more embittered, 
 and at last the infuriated Prussian king requested 
 Baden, Bavaria, and Wiirttemberg to allow him to 
 march an army of 135,000 men through their territory 
 for the purpose of invading Switzerland. This created 
 great agitation, even alarm, in Alsace, for it was 
 known that France would not tolerate such an 
 invasion. Thus war with Prussia might well ensue. 
 The matter attracted some attention at the Peace 
 Conference in Paris at the close of the Crimean War. 
 Meantime the Swiss fortified their frontiers and 
 assembled troops under the orders of General Dufour, 
 the only general, I believe, that Switzerland has had 
 in modern times at least the highest rank in her 
 army nowadays is that of colonel. The assistance of 
 France having been solicited by the Swiss authorities, 
 the Prussian monarch contented himself for the nonce 
 with demanding the release of the prisoners held by 
 the people of Neufchatel. The latter refused the 
 release unless Frederick William would renounce his 
 pretensions. By French advice, however, the pri- 
 
134 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 soners were set free unconditionally, and a conference 
 of the Great Powers ensued in Paris in May 1857. 
 Frederick William then demanded a large indemnity 
 from Switzerland in return for the surrender of his 
 rights. But Napoleon III, through his representative 
 and illegitimate cousin, Count Walewski, hinted at a 
 declaration of war, and as Prussia was not then 
 prepared to encounter France in the field, the King 
 gave way, and on the understanding that Switzerland 
 should pay for the damage done to Prussian property 
 during the insurrection, renounced his sovereignty 
 over Neufchatel. 
 
 A glance at a map will show how dangerous it 
 would have been for France to have had such a 
 Power as Prussia * installed on her Jurassian frontier, 
 with easy access to Basle and Upper Alsace. It was 
 therefore incumbent on her, in her own interest, to 
 support the people of Neufchatel and the Swiss 
 generally. This affair, however, was one of the 
 indirect causes of the war of 1870. As Bismarck 
 said long afterwards : " Napoleon III would not let 
 us have Neufchatel. Well, we have taken Alsace, 
 quid pro quo." 
 
 However sinister may have been the beginning 
 and however tragical the end of the Second Empire, 
 the intervening period was certainly one of steadily 
 
 * It is true that the principality of Neufchatel was only a personal appanage 
 and had nothing to do with the Prussian State ; but enough has been said 
 to show that Frederick William was prepared to employ all the resources of 
 his kingdom, even to the point of seizing and holding this strip of Switzerland 
 by force of arms. Thus the Swiss, even those of Germanic origin, have never 
 had any liking for Prussia. The present Kaiser has shown himself so unscru- 
 pulous that should the Great War end in his favour (which Heaven forbid !) 
 he would be quite the man to revive a claim to Neufchatel, on the ground 
 that no predecessor of his had a right to alienate a part of his inheritance. 
 Louis XIV's " War of Devolution " was based on that theory, a very conve- 
 nient one for those who regard solemn covenants as scraps of paper. Great 
 Britain was a party to the cession of Neufchatel in 1857. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 135 
 
 increasing material prosperity. In 1852, the first 
 year after the coup d'etat, the various imports into 
 France represented a value of 55,780,000. In 1869, 
 the year before the Franco-German War, their value 
 was 160,000,000. In the same period the exports 
 rose from 67,200,000 to 159,760,000, this being the 
 third year that their value was slightly inferior to 
 that of the imports. The latter were only exceeded 
 again in 1872, after the Franco-German War and the 
 Commune, and the denunciation of the treaties of 
 commerce. All kinds of industries and branches of 
 commerce made great progress during the imperial 
 period. For instance, whereas in 1852 the French 
 pits only produced 4,904,000 metric tons of coal, in 
 1869 their output, in response to the ever-increasing 
 demands of industry, had risen to 13,464,000 metric 
 tons. The iron ore which was raised and smelted 
 doubled in quantity between the years I have men- 
 tioned. In 1869 the output in metallurgical industry 
 was valued at nearly nineteen millions sterling, or 
 about 7,700,000 more than in 1852. There were 
 great increases in other industries. 
 
 I find also that w r hereas in 1853 the total length 
 of the French railway lines was but 2568 miles, it 
 had become 10,750 miles in 1869. As for the postal 
 receipts, a good test of a nation's commercial activity, 
 these increased from 1,861,000 in 1852 to more than 
 3,785,000 in 1869. Take another test: French 
 manufacturers and tradesfolk pay a fixed tax called 
 a patente, a licence as it were. In 1852 this tax 
 produced 1,485,000, and in the last full year of the 
 Empire 2,581,000. Finally, in 1869 the nation was 
 able to pay more than 23 millions sterling in direct 
 State taxation, against 16| millions paid at the 
 advent of the Empire ; and the total receipts of the 
 
136 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 French Treasury exceeded 78,472,000, whereas seven- 
 teen years previously they had been rather less than 
 59,494,000. 
 
 The foregoing paragraph may appear irrelevant 
 to my subject. But I would point out that Alsace 
 participated largely in France's increased prosperity. 
 In this connexion some account was given in a former 
 chapter of the development of trade at Mulhouse. 
 Moreover, I have quoted the foregoing figures because 
 whilst censuring the Second French Empire from the 
 standpoint of political morality, it is only fair that I 
 should make some mention of its one redeeming 
 feature. But a nation's material prosperity is not 
 everything in its life. Great was our prosperity 
 before the present war began, and some folk wished 
 us to rest content with clinging to it and " capturing 
 German trade," instead of joining in the immortal 
 fray for the world's freedom. We preferred, however, 
 to cast our prosperity and our resources, as well as 
 our arms, into the Scales of Justice, and in doing so 
 we took the only course befitting men of honour. 
 
 I frankly admit, then, the great material prosperity 
 of France under her Second Empire. The figures I 
 have given, and which are extracted from various 
 issues of the official Annuaire statistique de la France, 
 may seem small at the present day, but they have to 
 be considered in connexion with the general wealth 
 and requirements of the period to which they apply. 
 From time to time there were, naturally enough, 
 various set-backs. Financial scandals and heavy 
 failures occurred, and in 1863 Alsace suffered from 
 the collapse of some important houses. Three years 
 later there was unrest, anxiety, even alarm, in con- 
 nexion with the war between Prussia and Austria, 
 which, although a brief one it is known as the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 13? 
 
 Seven Weeks' War quite transformed the condition 
 of affairs in Germany, making Prussia its predominant 
 Power. Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie were 
 to have visited Strasburg that year, but the threaten- 
 ing situation kept them in Paris. 
 
 Two years later a notable personage, mentioned in 
 connexion with the Neufchatel affair, passed away at 
 the Hotel de la Ville de Paris in the Alsatian capital. 
 This was Count Walewski, who had succeeded the 
 Duke de Morny, Napoleon Ill's illegitimate half- 
 brother, as President of the Corps Legislatif . Walew T ski 
 himself was an illegitimate son of Napoleon I, and if 
 ever the modern Conqueror stamped his likeness upon 
 any child of his, he did so in Walewski's case. The 
 resemblance was striking both in face and in figure. 
 Had it been possible to imagine Napoleon in " mufti," 
 you would have said on seeing Walewski : " There he 
 is ! " Prince Napoleon Jerome certainly had the 
 Napoleonic face, but he was a much bigger man than 
 the Emperor. At the same time Walewski differed 
 from his father in disposition and in manners. These 
 he derived from his mother, the beautiful Polish 
 countess who was one of the few women that really 
 loved Napoleon. In a word, the son was urbane, 
 soft-spoken, a perfect gentleman in his ways. After 
 serving for a short time in a regiment of hussars he 
 had entered the diplomatic service during the reign of 
 Louis Philippe. Had he lived longer he might pos- 
 sibly have arrested the Empire on the downward 
 course which it took after his death. 
 
 From 1866 omvard Alsace ranged itself largely 
 on the side of the parliamentary Opposition to the 
 Empire. In a comparatively recent book of mine, 
 ic In Seven Lands," * I mentioned a few incidents in 
 
 * Chatto and Windus, 1916. 
 
138 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the Alsatian history of this period, and it may be 
 allowable for me to refer to them again here. After 
 the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, a zealous propa- 
 ganda in furtherance of German claims on Alsace- 
 Lorraine was carried on in Germany by means of 
 geographies and histories, which designated Alsace, 
 particularly, as a lost land which it was the duty of 
 every patriotic German to recover and redeem. No 
 regard was shown for real history or for former 
 treaties, covenants, and cessions. The circumstances 
 under which Strasburg became French territory were 
 absolutely falsified, whilst those attending Mulhouse's 
 union with France were conveniently ignored. The 
 theory started in the forties, that the Alsatians were 
 persecuted by the French, was revived. " Yonder, 
 near the Vosges," wrote a German versifier, " a lost 
 treasure lies. There must German blood be freed 
 from hellish sway." A man named Richard Boeck 
 particularly distinguished himself by his ardour in 
 claiming Alsace for Germany. In the province itself, 
 one must admit it would be absurd to shirk facts 
 that there existed a small party of clericals, both 
 Catholic and Protestant, who without daring to go so 
 far as to advocate annexation to Germany, did their 
 utmost to resist the further diffusion of the French 
 language.* A Strasburg cure named Cazeaux and a 
 pastor called Baum based their objections to French 
 on religious and moral grounds. It had been, said 
 they, the language of the infidel Voltaire, and it was 
 that of the Parisians, who were steeped in vice and 
 corruption. 
 
 The French capital certainly offered numerous 
 scenes of folly and depravity. But people dwelling 
 at a distance, and trippers bent on having a " good 
 
 * These matters are dealt with more fully in my seventh chapter. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 139 
 
 time " in the midst of coarse pleasures, have long 
 misjudged the great city. To them Paris has meant 
 the Boulevards, the caboulots of Montmartre, the 
 brasseries of the Quartier Latin, the Moulin Rouge, 
 the Chat Noir, the Bal Bullier, and so on. For them, 
 those places and similar ones, and the phases of life 
 to be observed there, have signified everything. It 
 is as though London were judged by the standard 
 of Piccadilly and Coventry Street, Giro's and other 
 swagger dens. In the case of Paris, those who in a 
 spirit of Puritanical fanaticism have denounced it as 
 the modern Babylon have overlooked the fact that it 
 is far more a city of strenuous work, a city of many 
 manufactures, of learning, art, invention, and dis- 
 covery, contributing powerfully to the advancement 
 of mankind. The sectarian Alsatians to whom I have 
 referred made a similar mistake. In their denuncia- 
 tions of Paris, whatever solicitude they may have 
 affected for their respective flocks, they were helping 
 on the designs of Germany, and it is quite possible 
 that they were incited to the course they took by 
 German gold. There is not a shadow of a doubt that 
 directly Bismarck had settled accounts with Austria 
 he prepared for a war with France for the express 
 purpose of seizing Alsace-Lorraine. 
 
 Whilst attempts were being made to create a 
 current of pro-German opinion in Alsace two famous 
 authors were conjointly producing a series of works 
 which, whilst picturing Alsatian manners and customs 
 in former times, gave vivid glimpses of the sufferings 
 caused by warfare even when it was waged with 
 success as well as when it became invasion on the part 
 of a ruthless enemy. These authors were Emile 
 Erckmann, a native of Phalsbourg, and Alexandre 
 Chatrian, born at Soldatenthal, localities situated on 
 
140 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the confines of Alsace and Lorraine. The works of 
 Erckmann-Chatrian, notably the series called " Les 
 Romans Nationaux," breathed a spirit of attachment 
 to France. Written in French, they were translated 
 into many languages, and sold widely all the world 
 over. I find that in some instances editions in 
 German were prepared expressly for circulation in 
 those rural districts of Alsace where the knowledge of 
 French was more or less restricted. In that con- 
 nexion it may be mentioned that in 1870 considerably 
 more than a third of the population of Alsace was as 
 conversant with French as w r ith German, reading and 
 writing both languages, and that the former one was 
 making more and more headway every day among 
 the younger generations. In such a matter the 
 Imperial Government ought to have let well alone ; 
 but at one period it made the mistake of trying to 
 force French upon the inhabitants of little out-of-the- 
 way hamlets to the absolute exclusion of the Germanic 
 dialects to which they were accustomed. 
 
 At last came the war of 1870. In another chapter 
 I shall say something respecting the engagements 
 which were fought and the sieges which occurred 
 in Alsace and Lorraine, and also respecting the 
 conduct of the German commanders and soldiers 
 there, and the attitude of the invaded population. 
 Here I will only add a few remarks. When the 
 question of declaring war arose in the French Corps 
 Legislatif all the Alsatian deputies, excepting two, 
 voted for it, though they represented various shades 
 of political opinion. As a matter of fact, owing to 
 the machinations of Bismarck, war could not, at that 
 moment, have been averted, unless, indeed, France 
 had been prepared to grovel in the very dust at the 
 feet of Prussia. That she could not, would not, do. 
 

 ALSACE-LORRAINE 141 
 
 The small minority which voted against the war did 
 so mainly to mark their opposition to the Empire, 
 their distrust of its policy, at the same time well 
 knowing that their votes could not even delay hos- 
 tilities for a moment. The Alsatian deputies, by 
 ranging themselves on the side of the majority, at 
 least proclaimed their solidarity with the bulk of the 
 legislature and the antipathy with which they regarded 
 Prussia. Very few and far between, moreover, were 
 those Frenchmen who then feared that their armies 
 might incur reverses. Not one in ten thousand 
 imagined that there was anything seriously amiss 
 with the Empire's military organization. Thiers had 
 some misgivings, but Gambetta declared adversary 
 of the Empire though he was confidently anticipated 
 victories, which, welcome as they would prove to 
 French patriotism, would at the same time unfortu- 
 nately consolidate the regime born of the coup d'etat. 
 As we all know, the sequel was very different. 
 
THE STORY OF LORRAINE 
 
 (FROM EARLY TIMES TO THE LAST NATIVE DUKES) 
 
 Early period : Extent of the Kingdom of Lotharingia : Beneficiary 
 and Hereditary Dukes : Disruption of the Kingdom : Suzerainty of 
 the Emperors : Union of Bar and Lorraine : The House of Anjou : 
 Evolution towards France : The Three Bishoprics Metz, Verdun, 
 and Toul : French Occupation of Lorraine : Vicissitudes of 
 Charles IV : The Last Dukes : The Metz Jews : Offences and 
 Penalties : Taxation and Industry : Duke Leopold's Rule : 
 Francis HI exchanges Lorraine for Tuscany. 
 
 IT is unnecessary for me to sketch the history of 
 Lorraine as fully as I have sketched that of Alsace, for 
 whereas the Germans annexed the whole of the latter 
 province in 1871, they took only a portion of Lorraine, 
 such as it had become in modern times, and their 
 motives for this appropriation were not the same as 
 those which they alleged in the case of Alsace. In 
 regard to Lorraine, indeed, they were more mindful 
 of strategical and industrial considerations than of 
 the various ethnographical grounds set forth as 
 reasons for annexation by the pedantic professors of 
 their universities. According to the Pan-Germanists 
 there is hardly a country in the world to which their 
 nation cannot assert some kind of claim. As certain 
 Saxons settled in our country long ago, England 
 ought to be an appanage of Germany. As a Germanic 
 race called the Franks overran Gaul, modern France 
 ought also to be a German dependency. Hitherto, 
 however, instead of claiming the country in its en- 
 tirety the Germans have been considerate enough to 
 
 142 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 143 
 
 nibble at it, just appropriating frontier parts at con- 
 venient opportunities. The Pan-Germanic claims in 
 regard to Lorraine, or rather the old kingdom of 
 Lotharingia, would provide a pretext for seizing a 
 great deal of territory forming not only part of France 
 but of other countries also. When in 855, six days 
 before his father's death, Lothair II came into pos- 
 session of the Lotharingian kingdom which had been 
 carved out of parts of Charlemagne's Empire, he 
 found himself in the possession of the following lands, 
 of which, in order to facilitate identification, I give 
 the modern names : In Switzerland, the Valais and 
 the Genevois, the cantons of Freiburg, Soleure, and 
 Berne, and the diocese of Basle. In the Netherlands, 
 Liege, Limburg, Brabant, Guelders, Namur, Hainault, 
 Utrecht, and Zeeland. In Germany itself, the Pala- 
 tinate west of the Rhine, with Treves and Cologne. 
 Next Luxemburg and Alsace ; and in modern France, 
 Bar, Lorraine, and Franche-Comte. Moreover, in the 
 year 863, on the death of his younger brother Charles, 
 Lothair inherited Provence, the Lyonnais, the Vien- 
 nois, the Vivarais and the Pays d'Uzes. In later 
 times one finds some of the Germanic Emperors 
 styling themselves Kings of Provence and Kings of 
 Aries, and some of the original Dauphins acknow- 
 ledged the Imperial suzerainty. Thus the zealous 
 Pan-German, bravely defying ridicule, asserts : " This, 
 that, and the other ought to be ours. They belonged 
 to us not long after the Year One ; I can prove it by 
 ancient Chronicles ! " 
 
 When Lothair II a somewhat disreputable prince 
 who put away his wife in order to live in dalliance 
 with a mistress, on which account he was excommuni- 
 cated by one of the Popes died in 869, his dominions 
 were appropriated by his uncle Charles the Bald. 
 
144 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Charles's brother, Louis the Germanic, compelled 
 him, however, to divide the territory. Afterwards, 
 Louis dying, Charles seized all his States, but had to 
 share them with Louis' son called "the Saxon." 
 Later, a certain Hugh, Duke of Alsace,* and the 
 illegitimate offspring of Lothair II by his mistress 
 Waldreda, claimed the Lotharingian kingdom, but 
 was defeated and had his eyes put out. Henry of 
 Franconia had then become by imperial appointment 
 Duke of Lorraine. After Charles the Fat had been 
 deposed in 887 this State, like Alsace and Germany, 
 passed to his nephew Arnoul or Arnulf, and then to the 
 latter' s natural son Swentibold, of whom I previously 
 gave some account. *j* On Swentibold 's downfall the 
 Lorrainers virtually handed themselves over to Charles 
 the Simple, King of France. Thus there were many 
 fluctuations. Loth air's former kingdom had few 
 natural frontiers and no ethnical basis, peopled as 
 it was by a variety of races. In the lands, however, 
 to which the name of Lorraine became applied in 
 more modern times it may be taken that the Celto- 
 Gallic element prevailed over that of the Germanic 
 intruders. Scientists .claim that a brachycephalic 
 type of skull, which was that of the ancient Gauls, 
 has always predominated among the Lorrainers. J 
 On the other hand, the country became at an 
 early date a source of much contention and strife 
 between France and Germany. Both claimed control 
 over it, but undoubtedly the first sovereigns of 
 the so-called Holy Roman Empire appointed the 
 Dukes by whom the territory was governed, and 
 these Dukes became the only effective rulers. 
 
 In the ninth and tenth centuries, however, there 
 
 * See p. 67, ante. f See p. 67, ante. 
 
 | This matter is dealt with more fully in chapter viL 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 145 
 
 were several invasions. Attila's hordes had overrun 
 the country at the close of the Gallo-Roman period, 
 and on seizing Metz had destroyed nearly all its 
 Roman edifices of any note. The years 910, 917, 
 926, and 927 witnessed the irruption of other bar- 
 barians, who are also called Huns by some of the old 
 chroniclers. Thus the nobles who attempted to rule 
 Lorraine enjoyed no easy times. At last the Em- 
 peror Otho the Great, after appointing, first, Henry 
 Duke of Saxony, and, secondly, Conrad the Red, Duke 
 of Rhenish France, to govern the territory, removed 
 the latter and bestowed the dignity on his own brother 
 Bruno, who was then Archbishop of Cologne. Bruno 
 divided the different regions into Upper and Lower 
 Lorraine, and ranking as a kind of Archduke, ap- 
 pointed various subordinate dukes to administer 
 different parts. He created, for instance, a Duke of 
 Brabant and a Duke of Liege, and placed Frederic 
 or Ferry I, Count of Bar, son of a count or mayor of 
 the palace of the time of Charles the Simple, at the 
 head of Upper, otherwise French, Lorraine. Bar, be 
 it said, comprised most of the Meuse country between 
 French Lorraine and Champagne, and Ferry had 
 married Beatrix, sister of Hugh Capet, the founder of 
 the French Capetian dynasty. 
 
 The dukedoms which I have mentioned were simply 
 benefices held only for life or during good behaviour ; 
 but in later times the fact that a member of one or 
 another house had been placed at some period or 
 other at the head of some particular duchy gave rise 
 to all sorts of claims, which not unfrequently were 
 fought out on the battlefield. Moreover, according to 
 the relative power of the French or the German rulers 
 one or the other exercised the right of appointment 
 to these dukedoms, and at some moments great con- 
 
146 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 fusion prevailed as to who might really be the rightful 
 duke. 
 
 When Bruno divided Upper from Lower Lorraine 
 the former included all French Lorraine and some 
 additional territory. The second comprised most, if 
 not all, of modern Belgium, together with the Moselle 
 and part of the Rhenish country. Most of Lower 
 Lorraine became known later as the Duchy of Brabant, 
 which in 1089 the Emperor Henry IV bestowed on the 
 famous Godefroy de Bouillon, of the First Crusade. 
 Brabant afterwards became a hereditary duchy, and 
 ultimately passed to the Burgundian house. The 
 position was complicated, however, by the fact that 
 the chief bishops of Lower Lorraine those of Utrecht, 
 Treves, Cologne, Metz, Liege, Verdun, etc. gradually 
 became more and more independent and increased the 
 territorial possessions of their sees. Like the Dukes 
 themselves they were immediate feudatories of the 
 Empire, though the Archbishops of Treves endea- 
 voured to exercise temporal as well as spiritual 
 jurisdiction over other prelates. 
 
 Hugh Capet, on coming to the front in France, 
 had considerable trouble in asserting his supremacy 
 there, and therefore gave little attention to the fate 
 of either Upper or Lower Lorraine. It would seem, 
 however, that a grand-nephew of his, called Albert of 
 Alsace, was appointed Duke of Upper Lorraine by the 
 Emperor Henry III in 1046. From Albert's time, or 
 rather that of his son Gerard, styled Count in, not of, 
 Alsace, the duchy became hereditary. Gerard appears 
 to have owned several lordships in Upper Lorraine and 
 these gave him some sort of claim to succeed his 
 father in the ducal dignity, but according to one ac- 
 count he did not do so by right of birth, but assembled 
 the Lorraine nobles to confirm him in the position. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 147 
 
 Gerard died in 1070, and from that time until the 
 earlier part of the fifteenth century his heirs in tail 
 male continued to rule Upper Lorraine. Charles, called 
 the Bold, who succeeded in 1391, lost both his sons 
 while they were still young. He had, however, two 
 daughters, named respectively Isabella and Catherine. 
 The latter married a Margrave of Baden, and Charles 
 selected Isabella as heiress of Lorraine. To carry this 
 plan into effect he convoked the chivalry of the 
 duchy, and on December 13, 1425, the eighty-four 
 nobles who attended the gathering signed a covenant 
 declaring that in default of direct heirs male the 
 duchy should pass to the nearest female member of the 
 reigning house. Isabella took as her husband Rene 
 of Anjou, who at this time held the adjacent duchy of 
 Bar. 
 
 Bar also was a State in which female succession 
 was acknowledged. This had occurred as far back 
 as 1027 when a Duchess Sophia exercised governing 
 rights there under French suzerainty. She married a 
 Count of Mousson and Montbeliard of the same stock 
 as the early Counts of Ferrette, who were mentioned 
 in my sketch of Alsatian history.* Sophia's line 
 lasted until the early years of the fifteenth century, 
 when Bar (raised from the rank of a county to that 
 of a duchy by John of France in 1355) was held 
 by a certain Duke Robert. He was followed by his 
 brother Louis, Cardinal Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne, 
 who surrendered the duchy to his grand-nephew 
 Rene of Anjou, husband of Isabella of Lorraine. 
 Anjou had undergone many vicissitudes since the days 
 when John Lackland lost it. From the French 
 crown it had passed, with Maine, to Charles, the 
 younger brother of Saint Louis. Later, a son of 
 
 * See pp. 77, 78, ante. 
 
148 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Philip the Hardy of France had married the heiress. 
 Afterwards had come a son of John of France, 
 named Louis, whose eldest grandson, Louis III, died 
 without posterity, whereupon his younger brother 
 Rene succeeded both to Anjou and to Maine, as 
 well as to the county of Provence and the 
 claims of the Angevin line to the kingdom of 
 Naples. The last named he never secured, never- 
 theless he lives in historical romance as the good 
 King Rene. 
 
 As I have shown, he was by descent a prince of the 
 House of France, and indeed from the time of Albert 
 and Gerard of Alsace, who were Capetians, down to the 
 reign of King Stanislas the territory now known as 
 Lorraine was always ruled by French Princes. Before 
 Rene's time, in fact as far back as the eleventh century, 
 Bar and Lorraine had often been at variance, the 
 rulers of these duchies generally being quarrelsome, 
 pugnacious men. The union of the two little States 
 seemed to offer promise of a better future. Isabella 
 and Rene had to contend, however, in regard to 
 Lorraine, against a junior branch of that duchy's 
 house, represented by the Count of Vaudemont, who 
 attempted to assert his claims by force of arms, but 
 failed in his endeavour. The Angevin dynasty resided 
 little in Lorraine. It took less interest in this tangible 
 possession than in its claims on Naples and Sicily. 
 Whilst, however, its members were fighting abroad 
 they confided the authority in Lorraine to various 
 regents, whose administration was generally meri- 
 torious. There had previously been a period when 
 the Lorraine communes had asserted themselves and 
 ended by securing a considerable degree of autonomy. 
 Powerful corporations had also sprung up, to the 
 great advantage of the Third Estate. By a charter 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 149 
 
 which Rene" granted in 1448, the glass- workers of 
 Lorraine were assimilated to the nobility. 
 
 In 1453 Rene surrendered Lorraine and Bar to his 
 eldest son John, who married Marie de Bourbon, and 
 left the duchies to their son Nicholas. A junior 
 branch afterwards succeeded, its first Duke, Rene II, 
 becoming historically famous as the adversary of 
 Charles the Rash of Burgundy, who made a wild 
 attempt to reconstitute some such kingdom of Lothar- 
 ingia as that which had been formed at the dismem- 
 berment of Charlemagne's empire. Charles at first 
 overran the greater part of Lorraine and even seized 
 the town of Nancy, but in February 1477 he was 
 slain in a memorable battle fought outside the town 
 walls. Rene II afterwards endeavoured to assert the 
 Italian claims of his house, but failing in that enter- 
 prise he virtually renounced warfare and set himself 
 to consolidate the States he had inherited. 
 
 I mentioned previously that at quite an early 
 date many bishoprics of the original Lorraine had 
 made themselves virtually independent. Two of 
 these sees, Metz and Toul, were enclaves in Rene's 
 territory. A third, Verdun, was on its confines. The 
 Duke contrived to get control of these dioceses by 
 securing that of Toul for one of his uncles, and those 
 of Metz and Verdun for his third and fourth sons. In 
 one way and another he extended his sway consider- 
 ably, and to increase the influence of his house abroad 
 he ordered that all younger sons should only 
 inherit or acquire fiefs outside the duchies. He 
 also showed great prudence in his relations with 
 France and Germany ; and at last in 1542 a conven- 
 tion was signed at Nuremberg between his son and 
 successor, Anthony, and the Emperor Charles V, by 
 which the latter acknowledged the independence 
 
150 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 of the duchy of Lorraine, the imperial suzerainty 
 being limited to the marquisates of Pont-a-Mousson 
 and Hattonchatel, the counties of Blamont and 
 Nomeny, and the so-called garde of Toul and avouerie 
 of Remiremont. 
 
 At this period the whole tendency of Lorraine 
 policy was to shake off as far as possible all connexion 
 with Germany. After Duke Anthony's son Francis, 
 who reigned only a year, came in 1545 his grandson 
 Charles III, known to Lorrainers as the Great. As a 
 child he was taken to France, where Henri II married 
 him to his daughter Claude. Charles had several 
 relatives in France. His predecessor, Rene II, had 
 held numerous lordships there, and in pursuance of 
 his policy to have his younger sons provided for outside 
 Lorraine and Bar, he left the counties of Guise, 
 Aumale, Joinville, Mayenne, and Elbceuf to his fifth 
 son Claude of Lorraine, who was afterwards raised to 
 the rank of Duke of Guise, and became the progenitor of 
 that famous house. In 1552, at the time of Charles III 
 of Lorraine, Henri II of France contrived to secure 
 possession of the Three Bishoprics Metz, Toul, and 
 Verdun as I mentioned in an earlier chapter.* It 
 was the famous Marshal Anne de Montmorency who 
 obtained possession of the city of Metz, the Catholic 
 elements of its population, headed by the Bishop 
 himself, Mgr. de Lenoncourt, assisting in the enter- 
 prise. It may be added that Henri II had pre- 
 viously signed a treaty with Maurice of Saxony 
 authorizing him to establish himself in the towns 
 which " anciently belonged to the Empire, but which 
 were not of Germanic speech." Henri II made a 
 solemn entry into Metz in April 1552 ; but the Em- 
 peror Charles V was not unnaturally furious, and in 
 
 * See p. 47, ante. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 151 
 
 the following month of October he besieged the city 
 with a great army. As I related in my account 
 of Metz* he had to withdraw, after suffering great 
 losses, on the ensuing first of January. Henri II 
 contented himself with assuming the title of Protector- 
 at Metz, Verdun, and Toul, but his third son and 
 successor, Henri III, entitled himself Sovereign Lord 
 of those towns. It must be admitted that whilst 
 France continued to exercise effective sway in the 
 Bishoprics her right to do so was not formally acknow- 
 ledged by the Germanic Empire until the Peace of 
 Westphalia in 1648, when it was agreed that Metz, 
 Toul, and Verdun should remain possessions of the 
 French Crown. The Duchy of Lorraine not having 
 then been united to France, the Bishoprics, although 
 separated from one another by intervening strips of 
 territory, were incorporated as a French province, 
 that of " Les Trois-Eveches." 
 
 In all probability if the Guises had not been so 
 powerful, and Henri III of France so extremely weak, 
 all Lorraine would have been joined to France in the 
 sixteenth century. Duke Charles sided with his 
 relatives the Guises and the famous Catholic League 
 against the effete Henri III. Adherents of the League 
 garrisoned Metz, Verdun, Mezieres, Toul, and other 
 towns. There was no war declared with the Em- 
 pire, but German Protestants allied themselves with 
 some of the Protestants of Lorraine, and the duchy 
 became the scene of hostilities. The great struggle of 
 that period was semi-religious and semi-political. On 
 the one hand the Leaguers wished to stamp out 
 the Protestant religion, on the other there was con- 
 tention for the crown of France. Duke Charles of 
 Lorraine wished to obtain that crown for his son 
 
 * See p. 48, ante. 
 
152 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Henri, and if by virtue of descent the claims of the 
 House of Lorraine could be regarded as superior to 
 those of the House of Bourbon (represented by Henry 
 of Navarre), the senior representative of Lorraine was 
 assuredly more entitled to the reversion of Henri Ill's 
 crown than any junior representative, such as Henri 
 Duke de Guise. The latter, however, aspired to 
 become King of France, and in conjunction with his 
 immediate kinsmen he opposed Charles's pretensions. 
 Guise was assassinated at Blois in 1588 and Henri III 
 at Saint-Cloud in the following year. War still 
 continued, however, between France and Lorraine 
 until in 1595 Duke Charles signed a treaty of 
 peace with the Navarrese Henri IV at Folembray. 
 During the hostilities the Duke of Lorraine had 
 taken the towns of Stenay and Dun-sur-Meuse, 
 and their possession was confirmed to him at the 
 peace. 
 
 Charles's son, Henri II of Lorraine, at one time 
 the parental candidate for the throne of France, had 
 to content himself with marrying the new King of 
 France's sister, Catherine of Bourbon, with whom he 
 did not live on particularly good terms, for he was a 
 Catholic and she a very zealous Huguenot one who 
 boldly told her brother that she w^ould not abjure her 
 faith for any kingdom in the world. In spite, how- 
 ever, of matrimonial bickerings, she bore her husband 
 two daughters, one of whom, named Nicole, was 
 married to a nephew of her husband named Charles. 
 By his will Henri II of Lorraine specified that Nicole 
 and her husband should reign over the duchy con- 
 jointly this arrangement being similar to that arrived 
 at in Great Britain, at a later period, in the case of 
 our William and Mary, the last named being Queen 
 Regnant and not merely Queen Consort. In the case 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 153 
 
 of Lorraine, however, a kind of comedy was acted in 
 order to upset the will of Henri II. His nephew 
 Charles abdicated in favour of his own father, Francis 
 of Lorraine, who thereupon took possession of the 
 ducal throne. Francis occupied himself in paying off 
 some huge debts left by his predecessors, notably his 
 father Charles the Great, and then in his turn abdicated 
 in favour of his son. In this way Nicole was frus- 
 trated of her sovereign rights. 
 
 Trouble ensued with France over this matter, 
 particularly as Charles repudiated Nicole, and more- 
 over he aided and abetted the rebellion of Gaston of 
 Orleans against Louis XIII. He not only supplied 
 Gaston with an asylum, but gave him his sister Mar- 
 guerite in marriage. Later he openly allied himself 
 with the German and Spanish enemies of France. War 
 ensued, and Louis XIII besieged and took Nancy, 
 which offered very little resistance to his forces. 
 Louis, however, regarded his exploit as a glorious one, 
 and requested Jacques Callot, the famous artist, to 
 depict the surrender in an engraving. But Callot, 
 who was a native of Nancy, boldly replied : '" I would 
 rather cut off my thumb than do so." In 1632 Duke 
 Charles was at last constrained to sign a peace with 
 France, by which he covenanted to allow French 
 forces free passage across the duchy, and to renounce 
 all alliance with her enemies.. But he did not keep his 
 word, and before long fresh trouble arose in such wise 
 that in 1634 he abdicated in favour of his brother, 
 Cardinal Nicholas Francis of Lorraine, whom France, 
 however, declined to recognize. As Nicholas, though a 
 Cardinal, was not a priest, he married Claude, the sister 
 of the discarded Nicole, in the hope of thereby forti- 
 fying his authority. But Richelieu instructed the 
 Duke de La Force, who commanded in Lorraine for 
 
154 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 France, to arrest the newly married pair, and they 
 were shut up in the ducal palace at Nancy, whence, 
 however, they managed to escape under dramatic and 
 picturesque circumstances. 
 
 They joined Duke Charles, who had fled to Ger- 
 many, and Richelieu was left master of Lorraine. He 
 appointed French governors in the place of the officials 
 of Duke Charles, garrisoned the towns with French 
 soldiery, and instituted at Nancy a Sovereign Court of 
 Lorraine, which many of the native nobility willingly 
 entered, as Charles by his foreign alliances had made 
 himself extremely unpopular among them. His wife 
 Nicole, whom he had repudiated in 1637, sought a 
 refuge in Paris. He himself experienced many further 
 vicissitudes. Until 1642 he continued waging war as 
 best he could. In that year, however, he signed a 
 treaty acknowledging as Due-client the patronage of 
 France. Afterwards he disputed this arrangement 
 and again quitted Lorraine, whereupon France, 
 showing less reserve than previously, appointed an 
 intendant to administer the duchy. The capture of 
 the fortresses of La Mothe and Longwy finally made 
 the French supreme masters there. Charles, who 
 fell out with his allies the Spaniards, was arrested by 
 them and detained for five years at Antwerp. He was 
 not included in the Treaty of Westphalia, but by that 
 of the Pyrenees he was restored to a part of his States. 
 France retained the Clermontois in the Argonne, 
 Stenay, Dun, and Jametz, and also for a time the 
 Duchy of Bar, which was ultimately returned to 
 Charles by a convention signed at Vincennes. In 
 1663, however, Charles had to hand Marsal over to 
 Louis XIV. Moreover, when the latter declared war 
 on Holland, being by no means sure of the neutrality 
 of Lorraine, he again occupied the duchy, and his 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 155 
 
 distrust was justified by the immediate departure of 
 Charles to join the enemies of France. 
 
 I have mentioned that this Duke of Lorraine had 
 repudiated his wife Nicole. He did so in order to 
 marry a beautiful young woman named Beatrix de 
 Cusance, widow of the Prince de Cantecroix, and he 
 took this course with the approval of a Jesuit Father 
 named Cheminot, who held that his marriage with 
 Nicole was null and void as he had been " constrained 
 to it " by the will of his uncle, the bride's father. But 
 in 1639 Pope Urban VIII annulled Charles's marriage 
 with the Princess de Cantecroix, and declared their 
 children a son and a daughter to be illegitimate. 
 Nevertheless, Beatrix clung to Charles, and shared his 
 adventurous life, invariably accompanying him to the 
 wars, and thereby becoming known as his femme de 
 campagne. Later, the Duke (Nicole having died) 
 married Beatrix by deputy, as she lay on her death- 
 bed. But he was already carrying on an intrigue 
 with the young Countess de Ludres, a canoness of the 
 Abbey of Poussay, who subsequently became, for a 
 short time, one of the mistresses of Louis XIV. 
 Charles promised to marry the Countess, but never 
 did so. Constrained in later years to live in Paris, 
 he there became infatuated with a certain Marianne 
 Pajot, an apothecary's daughter, and with this girl he 
 actually went through a form of marriage. But the 
 union was dissolved by the Parliament of Paris in 
 consequence of the united protests of the Houses of 
 Bourbon and Lorraine. Ultimately, a mere child, 
 Louise Marguerite, daughter of the Count d'Apre- 
 mont-Nanteuil, was thrown in the amorous old Duke's 
 way, and in July 1665 (he then being sixty-two years 
 of age) he ,was married to this girl who was just 
 entering her teens. No children were born of the 
 
156 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 union.* This particular Charles of Lorraine was a 
 singular compound of energy and weakness. He was 
 an extremely brave man, but possessed no stability 
 of character, and by his constant changes of policy he 
 contributed more than any other prince of his line to 
 destroy the independence of his States. 
 
 He was succeeded in 1675 by his nephew Charles V, 
 son of Cardinal Nicholas Francis and Claude. This 
 duke, a very handsome man, also had several love 
 affairs, notably with Marie Mancini, the Princess Mar- 
 guerite Louise of Orleans, and the Grande Made- 
 moiselle de Montpensier. The French still occupied 
 Lorraine, and as Charles V would not subscribe to the 
 Treaty of the Pyrenees or that of Nimeguen, or give 
 up his claims to Longwy or sanction military roads 
 through Lorraine for French purposes, he was never 
 much more than titular Duke. Brave like most of his 
 forerunners, and a very capable soldier praised in 
 that respect by the great Duke of Berwick he sided 
 with the Germanic Empire against France, and married 
 Eleanor, sister of the Emperor Leopold I. In 1690 
 he was followed by his son, also called Leopold, who 
 by the Treaty of Ryswick was placed, in consequence 
 of the military reverses of France, in possession of his 
 ancestral dominions. Nevertheless, he had to leave 
 Longwy and Sarrelouis to Louis XIV, and grant a 
 right of passage through his States to French troops. 
 
 Seventy years of warfare and frequent foreign occu- 
 pation had proved disastrous to Lorraine. Until the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century, in spite of the 
 frequency of hostilities, the duchy had been a progres- 
 sive State. At the period just mentioned it had 400,000 
 inhabitants. Even its mountainous and forest re- 
 
 * I have extracted some of the above particulars from a previous book 
 of mine, " The Favourites of Louis XIV." (Chatto and Windus.) 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 157 
 
 gions were becoming populated, and commerce and 
 industry were increasing. Great fairs were held in 
 one and another town, and attracted traders from 
 many parts of Europe. In the wake of the Reforma- 
 tion, which came chiefly from Alsace, a democratic 
 movement set in, but was thrown back by excesses, 
 such as attended the rising of the Rustauds.* On the 
 other hand, the advent of the Reformation led to the 
 reform of some of the religious orders, notably the 
 Benedictines and Premonstratensians. Further, in 
 1572 Charles the Great founded the first university 
 of Lorraine at Pont-a-Mousson. But the subsequent 
 age of incessant turmoil brought misery with it. 
 There were pestilences, famines, ever-increasing im- 
 posts, incessant marchings and counter-marchings of 
 plundering soldiery. Good government became im- 
 possible. It is acknowledged that the French officials 
 who were appointed by Louis XIII and Louis XIV 
 did what they could to alleviate the sufferings of the 
 inhabitants, but the task devolving on them was 
 really beyond their powers. 
 
 Though Duke Leopold had an Austrian mother he 
 took a French wife, Elizabeth Charlotte of Orleans, 
 and in endeavouring to replace the administration of 
 his States on an orderly basis he followed French 
 examples. They, perhaps, were scarcely the best 
 guides, for in spite of Colbert, Vauban, and others, 
 the age of Louis XIV was too often one of sheer 
 oppression. The laws introduced by Leopold were 
 mainly copied from the ordonnances of the French 
 monarch. Native traditions were disregarded, in 
 such wise that the assimilation of Lorraine to 
 France steadily increased. The financial systems be- 
 came almost identical. In spite, however, of various 
 
 * See pp. 33, 34, 81, ante. 
 
158 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 errors, Leopold certainly improved the condition of 
 his people. He also patronized art and letters, and 
 built a great deal. About the time of his accession 
 Nancy had less than 8000 inhabitants. Eleven 
 years later it counted nearly 15,000, who in 1734 had 
 increased to nearly 20,000. At that time, it is re- 
 corded, an octroi service for the collection of municipal 
 dues on provisions and other commodities coming 
 into the town had been established, and the streets 
 were lighted with lanterns. 
 
 For a while Nancy had felt the evil effects of the 
 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (October 22, 1685), 
 though in a less degree than Metz, which is said to have 
 lost two-thirds of its population at that time. There 
 were dragonnades and other persecutions in various 
 parts of Lorraine. The Jews, who were not disturbed, 
 profited by the emigration of the Protestants. They 
 had been expelled from the Three Bishoprics in the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but during the 
 sixteenth a few were allowed to remain for a short 
 time at Metz. Their number was at last reduced to 
 four families, who obtained permission to continue 
 residing in the town on paying 200 crowns apiece to 
 the Bishop and an annual sum of 200 limes for the 
 benefit of the poor. They were to receive no foreign 
 Jews, to take no weapons (unless by express permission) 
 as security for loans, and to levy no higher weekly 
 interest than one denier (the twelfth part of a sou) for 
 every lime they lent. In less than forty years those 
 four families had become twenty-five. In 1614 there 
 were 58 families ; in 1624, 76 ; in 1657, 96 ; and in 
 1674, 119, comprising 665 males and females, all 
 descended from the original four families of 1556. 
 This increase continued afterwards. In 1681 there 
 were no fewer than 1422 Jews of both sexes at Metz. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 159 
 
 In 1689, 32 refugees from the Palatinate obtained 
 permission to settle in the town, where in 1739 there 
 were altogether 530 Jewish households, representing 
 2213 persons, all of whom resided in the same street, 
 virtually a Ghetto, where exorbitant rents were 
 paid as Jews might not possess house property. In 
 order to remain undisturbed they handed large sums, 
 virtually bribes, to members of the corporation and 
 the nobility. Besides being subjected to very heavy 
 taxation they were only allowed to deal in certain 
 specified commodities. Louis XV granted his mistress, 
 the Duchess de Chateauroux, a rente on the Jews of 
 Metz in order to increase her income. She was 
 parted, however, from the King not long afterward 
 and succumbed to poison administered by somebody 
 jealous of her influence. It was about this period 
 that the Jews were exempted from the obligation of 
 having to wear yellow hats to distinguish them from 
 all good, and likewise bad, Christians. In connexion 
 with the war of the Austrian Succession (1741-1748) 
 the Lorraine Jews rendered considerable services by 
 bringing horses for the French cavalry from Germany 
 and also by importing grain. They are said to have 
 sacrificed 30,000 limes in these matters, and it was 
 probably as a reward for their behaviour that the 
 stigma of the yellow hat was removed. 
 
 As an ecclesiastical see Metz remained under the 
 archiepiscopal jurisdiction of Treves until in the early 
 period of the great Revolution it came under the 
 Archbishopric of Reims. When, however, Napoleon 
 restored religion he placed the Bishop of Metz under 
 the Archbishop of Besanon, and this continued to 
 be the position until the annexation by Germany. In 
 ancient times the city figured somewhat prominently 
 in ecclesiastical history, eight Church Councils being 
 
160 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 held there. At one of these it was enacted that no 
 priest should have more than one church or benefice, 
 a regulation which would have horrified many a fat 
 pluralist of later days. The same sixth-century 
 council also decreed that no woman whatsoever 
 should dwell in a priest's house, even though she were 
 his mother or his sister. As time elapsed the regula- 
 tions became less and less stringent in this respect. 
 Nevertheless, during Duke Leopold's reign (1690- 
 1729) we find bishops ordaining that no priest should 
 keep a housekeeper aged less than forty years. The 
 Bishop of Toul even decreed that the priests and 
 curates in his diocese should not visit girls' schools. 
 In 1715 a priest convicted of adultery with a notary's 
 wife was ordered to pay a fine equivalent to 100, 
 and, if worth more than that amount, to have all his 
 property confiscated. He, however, at least retained 
 his liberty whereas his paramour was sentenced to 
 imprisonment for life. Some years later another 
 priest, convicted of ignoble offences, suffered the 
 death penalty. 
 
 Immorality was usually punished severely. In 
 one case an unfaithful wife was hanged and her lover 
 broken on the wheel. The wife of a locksmith of 
 Nancy was likewise sentenced to death, but we read 
 that her husband, compassionating her fate, offered to 
 take her back, and thereby saved her life. In another 
 town a girl found in a barracks was sentenced to 
 perpetual banishment. On the other hand unfaithful 
 husbands escaped with fines of twenty livres or there- 
 abouts. Another typical case was that of a count who, 
 having a son by his wife's maid, was sentenced to 
 bring up the child at his own expense and in due time 
 to have him taught a trade. There were horrible 
 penalties for some offences. A drunken man entered 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 161 
 
 a church and attempted to take the Communion. He 
 had not confessed, and, moreover, instead of praying 
 he began to swear. The sentence in his case was that 
 his tongue should be pierced with a red-hot iron, and 
 that he should afterwards be banished from the 
 duchy. The clerk of a court of justice escaped a 
 similar penalty for a curious reason. He was con- 
 victed of having used, whilst in his cups, blasphemous 
 language about the Pope, the priesthood, and the 
 Duke. He was pardoned, however, on it being urged 
 in his favour that whenever he tippled too freely he 
 invariably became quarrelsome and offensive, instead 
 of merry like other people. 
 
 After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes the 
 enactments against Protestants were particularly 
 severe, for although only the Three Bishoprics and 
 a few other districts really belonged to France, the 
 forces of Louis XIV were to be found all over the 
 duchy. In the case of Catholics who lapsed from 
 their religion into Protestantism there was but one 
 penalty death by hanging. From time to time 
 there were still some trials for sorcery, and unhappy 
 victims were burnt at the stake ; but these cases were 
 far less numerous than during the Thirty Years' War, 
 when Protestants as well as Catholics freely put so- 
 called witches to death. 
 
 I have mentioned that priests were forbidden to 
 enter girls' schools, and may add that in most localities 
 schoolmasters and mistresses were elected by the 
 burgesses or other parishioners. In the first instance, 
 however, all candidates were examined respecting 
 their orthodoxy and attainments by ecclesiastical 
 authorities, and only those regarded fit for the posts 
 to which they aspired were eligible for election. One 
 of the Bishops of Toul took a wise course by ordering 
 
162 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 that whilst children should first say their prayers in 
 Latin, according to the usage of the Church, they 
 should afterwards repeat them in French in order that 
 they might know the nature of their prayer. This 
 appears to have been decreed in order to meet the 
 frequent objection of the Protestants, that the folk 
 who said their prayers in Latin had no notion what 
 they meant. 
 
 Some proof of the increasing prosperity of Lorraine 
 under Duke Leopold and his successors is supplied 
 by the following figures. In 1700, ten years after 
 Leopold's accession, the taxes brought 680,000 limes 
 to the ducal exchequer, but in 1729, the last year of his 
 reign, they yielded 1,915,620 limes. In 1737, soon 
 after the accession of Stanislas Leczinski, it was found 
 that there were 125,768 households liable to payment 
 of taxes ; and M. Ravold, one of the historians of 
 Lorraine, estimates that allowing for the large number 
 of people who were exempt from taxation, and also for 
 the indigent class, the above figures would imply that 
 the population of the duchy was then approximately 
 760,000. There is plenty of evidence respecting the 
 steady growth of industry and trade. In textiles, 
 linen and cotton goods and lace were to the fore. 
 The mines were worked more thoroughly than pre- 
 viously. Tin alone gave employment to 2000 hands. 
 There were numerous smelting- works, foundries, and 
 forges. The glass-works, notably at Baccarat, had 
 become extremely important. The paper-mills em- 
 ployed some 500 hands, and produced about 80,000 
 reams annually. 
 
 It has been mentioned that French troops occupied 
 various parts of Lorraine in Duke Leopold's time. In 
 1702 Louis XIV, fearing invasion, garrisoned Nancy, 
 where his forces remained until almost the end of his 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 163 
 
 reign. Leopold lodged a mild kind of protest and 
 then settled at Luneville, which remained the usual 
 residence of the ducal court until Lorraine was united 
 to France. In 1707 Leopold's conciliatory policy 
 induced Louis to hand over the town of Commercy, 
 which he had been arbitrarily detaining. Further, 
 under the regency of the Duke of Orleans, the French 
 restored the prevote of Longwy, that is, apart from the 
 actual town and fortress (the latter Vauban's work), 
 which Louis XIV had styled the " Iron Gate of 
 France." As some compensation for the retention of 
 the stronghold, Rambervillers and its dependencies 
 were restored to the Duke of Lorraine. His sover- 
 eignty was also recognized over Saint-Hippolyte, 
 Nomeny, Saint- Avoid, and the Abbey of Rieval. In 
 1728, near the close of his reign, a treaty was signed 
 with France by which Lorraine was declared to be 
 neutral territory. In a secret clause, however, Leo- 
 pold covenanted to allow French troops the right of 
 passage through the duchy " in case of absolute 
 necessity, as happens in nearly all wars." One cannot 
 read those last words without thinking of what hap- 
 pened to Belgium in 1914. 
 
 There is no doubt that Leopold's rule was an auto- 
 cratic one, based on the system which sprang up in 
 France under Louis XIV. The old constitutional 
 methods observed by earlier Dukes were ignored, and 
 when some of the Lorraine nobles protested against 
 the change they were silenced in the most peremptory 
 fashion.* It was Leopold who gave an asylum in 
 Lorraine to the Young Pretender, greatly to the 
 
 * Many of them disliked Leopold because, apart from levying fees on 
 new creations, he ordered that all families ennobled by the Bishops of Metz, 
 Verdun, and Toul, and by the Lords of Commercy since 1616, should pay 
 6000 Uvrea apiece, with additional sealing duties, for confirmation of their 
 rank. 
 
164 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 disgust of our Hanoverian sovereign. Some time 
 afterwards the Duke had occasion to send the Marquis 
 de Lambertye as envoy to England, but George II 
 refused to receive him, and the only result, a not 
 unimportant one, of the Marquis's journey was that 
 he brought back with him a quantity of English 
 seed potatoes which were of a much superior quality 
 to those introduced by the Swedes about 1665 during 
 the Thirty Years' War. Hitherto, moreover, the 
 cultivation of potatoes had been restricted, as the 
 tubers were said to exhaust the soil, but from Leo- 
 pold's time it spread greatly, and became so re- 
 munerative that under the French regime a special 
 tax was levied on potato crops. 
 
 Leopold's wife, Elizabeth Charlotte of Orleans, 
 whom he married in 1699, presented him with four 
 children, two sons and two daughters. One of the 
 girls married Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, King of 
 Sardinia, and the other became Abbess of Remiremont. 
 The younger son, Charles of Lorraine, entered the 
 Austrian service, was appointed Governor of the 
 Netherlands, and married one of the Hapsburg arch- 
 duchesses. The elder ^on, Francis Stephen, succeeded 
 his father as Duke of Lorraine and Bar. Now the 
 policy of Duke Leopold had been to conciliate both the 
 kingdom of France and its almost constant enemy, 
 the Germanic Empire. Placed between those power- 
 ful rivals, Leopold had generally striven to avoid 
 entanglements and to preserve the independence of 
 Lorraine. Thus, whilst improving his relations with 
 France, he willingly allowed his eldest son, when 
 fourteen years of age, to proceed to Vienna and com- 
 plete his education there. There was nothing par- 
 ticularly out of the way in this, as the Duke's mother 
 had been the Austrian Archduchess Eleanor, sister 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 165 
 
 of the Emperor Leopold I. At the time when Francis 
 Stephen went to Vienna, that is, in or about 1715, the 
 imperial throne was occupied by his uncle Charles VI. 
 The young fellow grew up at the latter's Court, 
 accustoming himself to its vain, semi-Spanish cere- 
 monial, and the haughty, supercilious manners of the 
 Princes of the Imperial Blood. When his father died 
 in 1729 he was twenty-one years old, and the Emperor, 
 who had created him Palatine of Hungary, already 
 intended to give him his daughter, Maria Theresa, in 
 marriage. 
 
 On hearing, however, of his father's death, Francis 
 Stephen returned to Lorraine, where his mother had 
 already proclaimed him as Francis III, and assumed, 
 as Regent, the duties of Government. She had also 
 begun to levy the usual dons de joyeux av&nement the 
 " joyful accession gifts " in both Lorraine and Bar, 
 the contribution of the former duchy being fixed at 
 380,610 limes, and of the latter at 174,710 limes. 
 This was one of the few occasions when in those times 
 nobles and ecclesiastics had to draw on the money in 
 their coffers, as though they were merely common 
 taxable folk. Francis remained in Lorraine until 
 April 1731, when after confirming his mother in the 
 regency he again departed to Vienna, never again to 
 set eyes on his ancestral possessions. His subjects 
 had welcomed him because he was their Duke, and 
 they had always been attached to the ducal house. 
 Never, indeed, were there more loyal folk than the 
 Lorrainers generally. However bad any particular 
 Duke might be, the bulk of his subjects rallied round 
 him, or sympathized with him, or found excuses for 
 his errors of policy, or his extravagance or his breaches 
 of the ordinary laws. On their side the Dukes, 
 besides invariably being brave men, had also been 
 
166 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 affable ones who could unbend and consort with their 
 subjects from time to time. But this Francis III 
 was very different. He had become essentially a 
 German, and particularly a Hapsburg. 
 
 Both of his grandmothers, by the way, were 
 Germans, one, as \ve have seen, being a Hapsburg 
 Archduchess, and the other that famous Charlotte 
 Elizabeth of Bavaria, commonly called the Princess 
 Palatine, whose correspondence is so valuable for the 
 history of her times. Married to Philip I, Duke of 
 Orleans, brother of Louis XIV, she became by him 
 mother of the Regent of France as well as of Elizabeth 
 Charlotte, the consort of Leopold of Lorraine. 
 
 As will presently be shown, Elizabeth Charlotte was 
 intensely French in her sentiments, and it is possible 
 that if her son Francis III had not been removed to 
 Vienna at the very time when a youth's character is 
 beginning to develop, she might, perhaps, have made 
 him less of a German, less of a Hapsburg than he 
 became in the confined atmosphere of the Viennese 
 Hofburg, which seized hold of him and stifled any 
 generous sentiments originally existing in his nature. 
 From his grandmother, the Archduchess Eleanor, he 
 had inherited by reason of that curious prepotency 
 of the Hapsburgs, female as well as male, in sexual 
 relations some of the distinguishing physical features 
 and mental characteristics of the imperial breed. 
 These had been developed by his life at Vienna. The 
 contemptuous haughtiness which this young man 
 barely in the twenties displayed towards his subjects 
 of Lorraine, checked the affection which they would 
 otherwise have showered on him ; and thus when he 
 left the duchy though nobody imagined that he 
 would never again return there were few if any who 
 regretted his departure. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 167 
 
 His mother the Regent was much liked, and the 
 hearty loyalty which he rejected was transferred to 
 her. She freely refers to him in her correspondence 
 as her " German son," and complains of the shameful 
 manner in which he bled Lorraine, extracting from 
 the duchy every lime he could, and spending it 
 at Vienna. In a word, he merely regarded Lorraine 
 as a milch-cow. The Duchess-Regent tells us that 
 his annual revenues amounted to 5,960,000 livres, 
 made up as follows : From the farmers-general, 
 2,600,000 ; from the subsidy, otherwise the taille 
 (that is, income and land tax), 2,000,000 ; from the 
 ducal domains and the forests, 910,000 ; and from 
 casual sources, minting, and other rights, 450,000 
 livres. Of this amount he expended in Lorraine only 
 about 1,200,000 livres on salaries, the upkeep of the 
 ducal stables and hunt, and allowances to his 
 mother, his sisters, and his younger brother Charles. 
 Moreover, he only paid interest on the debts left 
 by his father (between eight and nine million 
 livres), without reducing the principal by a single 
 copper. 
 
 Now in 1733 Augustus II or the Strong, Elector 
 of Saxony and King of Poland, died, and his son 
 Augustus III, the only legitimate one among some 
 three hundred, expected to be elected in his turn to the 
 Polish throne. But he was opposed by a Nationalist 
 party which, assembling at Warsaw in September that 
 same year, chose a compatriot, Stanislas Leczinski,* 
 for the regal dignity. His daughter Marie having 
 become the wife of Louis XV of France, that sovereign 
 supported his claims. On the other hand the Emperor 
 Charles VI upheld those of Augustus of Saxony, who 
 
 * There are various spellings of this name. I have preferred to use the 
 least complicated. 
 
168 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 had married one of his daughters, the elder sister of 
 Maria Theresa. The Emperor was the more influenced 
 in this matter as, having no male heir, he desired to 
 leave all his possessions to Maria Theresa, in whose 
 favour was issued the famous deed known as the 
 Pragmatic Sanction. This set aside the legitimate 
 rights of the daughters of the Emperor's deceased 
 brother, Joseph I, and also those of Maria Theresa's 
 elder sister, whose husband, Augustus of Saxony, 
 expecting the crown of Poland, assented to this course. 
 In return the Emperor undertook to place Augustus 
 on the Polish throne, and the Russian Empress, Anna 
 Ivanovna, niece of Peter the Great, was a party to 
 this determination, the more particularly as Stanislas 
 Leczinski had been a companion in arms and in 
 captivity of Russia's enemy, Charles XII of Sweden. 
 Charles VI and Anna therefore intervened by force of 
 arms, and Leczinski was driven from Poland. France 
 having declared war gained some victories over the 
 Austrians, but was ultimately obliged to recognize 
 Augustus as Polish sovereign. 
 
 One must now pass to another matter. At this 
 same period the Grand Duke of Tuscany was John 
 Gaston de' Medici, son of Cosmo III by Marguerite 
 Louise, daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother 
 of Louis XIII. John Gaston had married a Bavarian 
 princess by whom he had no children, and his nearest 
 relation was the Duke of Parma, who was also childless. 
 In 1725 therefore ten years before the war for the 
 Polish Succession France, the Empire, and Spain 
 entered into a treaty by which it was agreed that the 
 two duchies of Tuscany and Parma (with which was 
 included Piacenza) should pass on the death of their 
 respective sovereigns to the Infant Don Carlos, later 
 King of Naples. At the conclusion of the Polish war, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 160 
 
 however, this arrangement was cancelled inasmuch 
 as it concerned Tuscany, it being decided by pre- 
 liminaries signed at Vienna on Octover 3, 1735, that 
 the Grand Duchy should go to Maria Theresa's des- 
 tined husband, Francis III of Lorraine and Bar, he 
 on his side relinquishing those States in favour of 
 Stanislas Leczinski to compensate the last named for 
 the loss of the Polish crown. It was further stipulated 
 that, on the death of Stanislas, Lorraine and Bar 
 should be united to France. Other arrangements 
 were that the lordship of Falkenstein belonging to 
 Francis III should go to Austria, that the nobles 
 of Lorraine should retain the right to sit in the 
 Imperial Diet, and that, as Francis would not 
 come into possession of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany 
 until the death of John Gaston, France should 
 pay him in the interval, as a kind of pension, a 
 sum of 4,500,000 livres, and also discharge the 
 debts left by his father to the amount of 8,711,726 
 livres. 
 
 These various covenants supply a remarkable 
 illustration of the manner in which high and mighty 
 princes then disposed not only of territories but also 
 of their inhabitants, whose wishes were deemed too 
 contemptible to be consulted. We see a Lorrainer, 
 descended from the old house of France, set on the 
 Italian throne of Tuscany, a Spaniard placed in pos- 
 session of the Two Sicilies and Parma, a German 
 Elector of Saxony made King of Poland, and a Pole 
 made Duke of Lorraine and Bar. Napoleon did some 
 extraordinary things as a Kingmaker, but he was more 
 consistent in his methods, uniformly conferring the 
 regal dignity, as in the case of Spain, Holland, Naples, 
 and Westphalia, on his own kinsfolk, or, as in the case 
 of Saxony, Bavaria, and Wiirttemberg, allowing native 
 
170 THETRUESTORYOF 
 
 princes of inferior status to assume the kingly 
 title.* 
 
 Bleeding his subjects of Lorraine and pocketing 
 remittances from Louis XV, Duke Francis III indulged 
 himself at Vienna in gratifying his expensive tastes. 
 He was a tailor's man with a passion for fine clothes, 
 and history has preserved a record of a coat that 
 cost him 300,000 florins, or approximately 25,000, 
 precious stones being sprinkled plentifully about the 
 embroidery. Tucked out in this fashion Francis 
 paid his court to the Archduchess Maria Theresa, 
 whom he married on February 12, 1736, he then being 
 twenty-eight and she nineteen years of age. Among 
 the children afterwards born to them were the 
 Emperors Joseph II and Leopold II, and Marie 
 Antoinette, who died upon the scaffold. 
 
 John Gaston de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 
 an affable and cultured prince with a hatred of bigotry 
 and an inclination towards philosophic doubt, passed 
 away at Florence on July 9, 1737. Ten days later 
 the Tuscan Senate took the oath to Francis of Lorraine. 
 Owing to his grasping nature a dispute arose respect- 
 ing John Gaston's personal property and effects, to 
 which Don Carlos of Naples and the deceased's sister, 
 the Electress Palatine,f had better claims. Francis, 
 however, set hands on everything he could. There 
 was only one fly in his ointment. On being placed in 
 possession of Tuscany his French pension ceased, and 
 as yet. instead of 4,500,000 livres, he had only received 
 
 * There were no kings except the titular King of the Romans in the old 
 Holy Roman Germanic Empire. The highest dignities were those of elector 
 and duke. Prussia did not form part of the Empire, where its king was only 
 Elector of Brandenburg. The old emperors would not allow any ruler of 
 lands subject to the imperial suzerainty to assume the title of king. 
 
 | The reigning branch of the famous house of the Medici became extinct 
 at her death, which occurred on February 18, 1743. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 171 
 
 1,300,193 and 14 sous (sic). Nothing more was paid 
 to him personally by the French government, though 
 certain agreed allowances to members or connexions 
 of the old house of Lorraine were continued until the 
 Revolutionary period (1793). 
 
 Although a few Lorraine nobles followed the for- 
 tunes of their former Duke and betook themselves to 
 Vienna, while others joined his younger brother 
 Charles at Brussels, the people generally were grief- 
 stricken at finding themselves sold like a herd of 
 cattle by the degenerate descendant of their native 
 dynasty. The town and county of Commercy were 
 by agreement assigned to the Duchess-Regent, Eliza- 
 beth Charlotte, and when she and her retainers 
 quitted Luneville, the seat of the ducal court, people 
 lined the roads, knelt before her, and wept, whilst 
 begging that she would not forsake them. Her opinion 
 of her son's conduct is shown by a letter which she 
 w r rote at this period. She bluntly denounced him in 
 it as a degenerate, and after refusing to join her 
 younger son, the Governor of the Austrian Nether- 
 lands, she added : "I greatly love Lorraine and the 
 Lorrainers. They do not dislike me, and so I will 
 remain with them until the end of my days. As for 
 the Emperor (Charles VI) I would rather die at this 
 moment than come under his domination. I will 
 live my own life, and stay here unless I go to Paris 
 should the King (Louis XV) so will it. He is the head 
 of my house, and I will always obey him and no other 
 power ; and if he allows me to stay here, it is here I 
 hope that I shall end my days (Luneville, June 
 1736)."* 
 
 * She succumbed to an attack of apoplexy at Commercy on December 23, 
 1744, and was much regretted by the Lorrainers. 
 
VI 
 THE STORY OF LORRAINE 
 
 (FROM THE TIME OF STANISLAS TO 1870) 
 
 Stanislas Leczinski : His Disposition and Personal Popularity : The 
 Intendant La Galaiziere : Bad Seasons in Lorraine : Excessive Taxa- 
 tion : War of the Austrian Succession : Louis XV at Metz : More 
 Taxation and Increasing Unpopularity of La Galaiziere : The 
 Amours of Stanislas : His French Friends : His Tragic Death : 
 Lorraine under the Old French Regime : Industrial Prosperity : 
 Church Abuses : Crimes and Punishments : The Revolution : The 
 Switzers at Nancy : Patriotism of Lorraine : Lorraine under Napo- 
 leon : The last Bourbon Rule : The People of the Sarre and Prussia : 
 Napoleon III and the Coup tfEtat : Last Years of the Second 
 Empire. 
 
 THE Duchy of Bar was formally transferred to Stanislas 
 Leczinski on February 8, 1737, and that of Lorraine 
 on March 21 in the same year. One of his com- 
 patriots, a certain Baron Mechec, took possession of 
 the States in his name. Born at Lemberg, the capital 
 of Galicia, Stanislas was at this time sixty years of 
 age. His early career had been most adventurous. 
 Apart from his attempt to secure the kingdom of 
 Poland, in which he was supported by his more 
 patriotic countrymen, he had distinguished himself 
 in one of the great sieges of Dantzig, and as a close 
 friend of both the famous Charles XII of Sweden 
 and Mazeppa, the renowned Hetman of the Cossacks, 
 he had fought at that Battle of Pultava on losing 
 which Charles had sought a refuge in Turkey, whither 
 Stanislas accompanied him. But those wild days 
 were past, and in time the Polish prince had become 
 
 172 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 173 
 
 corpulent and somewhat indolent also, as happens 
 with a good many men who expend their vitality too 
 freely in their early days. His one great desire was 
 to be regarded as a king, and when the transfer of 
 Lorraine was arranged he bethought himself of 
 Merovingian times and wished his new State to be 
 called the Kingdom of Austrasia. But France, having 
 the reversion of the duchy, would not listen to his 
 suggestion. On the other hand, although Poland 
 was for ever lost to him he had certainly been elected 
 to its throne, and on that account was always known 
 as King Stanislas, even among the Lorrainers, who 
 possibly thought this a good way to distinguish him 
 from their native dukes. 
 
 Simple in his habits, personally frugal, Stanislas 
 was affable and good-natured within the limits which 
 his peculiar circumstances allowed. In one respect 
 his character was contradictory. Whilst he remained 
 throughout his life a practising Catholic, friendly 
 also towards the Jesuits, he dabbled in the philo- 
 sophical ideas of the eighteenth century, and attracted 
 some of the foremost French philosophers to his 
 little court. In another respect also he was quite 
 a man of his times, having a strong inclination 
 towards galanterie. That may well account for 
 the bitter tongue ascribed to his wife, Catherine 
 Opalinska, who often had good cause for jealousy. 
 Withal, Stanislas became as popular among the 
 Lorrainers, notably those of Luneville and Nancy, 
 as was possible for a foreign prince thrust upon a 
 people who had never expressed any desire to be 
 ruled by him. 
 
 Stanislas's popularity was, however, strictly per- 
 sonal. It in no wise extended to the government 
 which was imposed upon him by France. In every 
 
174 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 direction, throughout the whole eighteenth century 
 until the Revolution burst forth, the old French 
 regime did its utmost to destroy itself. It listened 
 to no remonstrances, it gave no heed to any warnings. 
 Slowly at first, but at a gradually quickening pace, it 
 steadily pursued the path leading to the precipice, 
 as if suicide were its set purpose, its fixed idea. It 
 had two mottoes, one emanating from the King, 
 Louis XV, who, when warned of the rottenness of 
 the whole fabric, remarked : "It will last as long as 
 I shall " ; and the other attributed to his mistress, 
 La Du Barry : " After us the deluge ! " The deluge, 
 one of blood, came, however, whilst she was yet 
 living, and it overtook her. 
 
 Now, before the time of Stanislas, Lorraine had 
 more than once had experience of French methods of 
 administration. They were revived under the Polish 
 Duke, who was put in leading-strings. Under the 
 pretext of relieving him of several of the cares of 
 government it was arranged that France should take 
 charge of financial matters, military affairs, the 
 appointment of officials, the control of the great 
 forests and other branches of the administrative 
 system. In return Stanislas was to be allowed 
 1,500,000, afterwards increased to 2,000,000, limes 
 per annum, equivalent, it is estimated, at the present 
 time to about 240,000. The result was as follows : 
 The French and Lorrainer military forces were placed 
 under the command of the Duke de Fleury, who 
 received the title of Governor of the Duchies, whilst 
 all civil affairs were committed to the charge of a 
 certain Antoine Martin Chaumont de La Galaiziere, 
 hitherto Intendant at Soissons, and brother-in-law of 
 Jean Orry, previously Comptroller-General of Finances 
 in France. In Lorraine and Bar, La Galaiziere took 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 175 
 
 the titles of Chancellor, Keeper of the Seals, and 
 Intendant. 
 
 He appears to have been a clever man and an 
 honest one, but he soon became extremely unpopular 
 by reason of his incessant exactions. As Intendant 
 he covered the duchies with officials, so-called delegates 
 and sub-delegates, who spent their time, morning, 
 noon, and night, in wringing money out of townsfolk 
 and villagers. Men shrank at last from accepting 
 the once honourable office of syndic, or mayor, of 
 a commune. Those who occupied this position were 
 made responsible for the commune's taxes, and Mon- 
 seigneur 1' Intendant and Monsieur le Delegue or 
 Sous-Delegue were never disposed to accept any 
 excuses. The taxes had to be paid in full and punctu- 
 ally on a certain date, or woe to the unfortunate 
 syndic who was not ready with the money. To 
 avoid unpleasant consequences, syndics possessed of 
 means sometimes paid the amount demanded out 
 of their own pockets, and had to wait perhaps a 
 couple of years before recovering from their 
 parishioners the money which they thus advanced. 
 This kind of thing often happened in rural districts. 
 Severe frosts, great storms, floods, spells of excessively 
 hot weather were frequent in Lorraine during the 
 eighteenth century. One year there were earth- 
 quakes ; at another time came a plague of locusts. 
 Stanislas reigned from February 1737 to February 
 1766, and I find that in fourteen of those nine and 
 twenty years there was one or another calamity 
 which led either to a scanty harvest or to some other 
 cause of widespread distress. The year 1754 was 
 known particularly as the " year of misery." Never- 
 theless, come flood, come storm, withering heat, 
 earthquake, or plague of insects, Monseigneur 1'Inten- 
 
176 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 dant expected all taxes to be paid as if nothing 
 whatever had happened.* 
 
 Arthur Young records in his famous survey of 
 France (1787-1789) that the plains of Lorraine were 
 among the worst cultivated in the whole country. 
 He would have understood the cause better had he 
 known that since the union of the duchy with France, 
 after the death of Stanislas that is, a period of 
 little more than twenty years there had again been 
 no fewer than nine bad years, some indeed when all 
 the crops had suffered. Like 1754, 1771 was a year 
 of the greatest distress ; and about the time when 
 Young was writing his work, the winter (1788- 
 1789) in Lorraine proved so extremely severe that 
 many walnut-trees as well as vines perished. Apart 
 from those visitations of nature, the peasantry, 
 bowed down by many burdens, were destitute 
 of the pecuniary resources required for really good 
 husbandry. 
 
 The two terrible winters of 1739 and 1740 led to 
 very great scarcity in J:he following year, and riots 
 broke out at Luneville, Vezelise, Dieuze, Enville, and 
 other places. Some severe sentences ensued, but 
 Stanislas, who had retained the prerogative of 
 clemency, granted a number of pardons. Matters 
 had scarcely improved when the War of the Austrian 
 Succession broke out. France joined Prussia in 
 supporting the cause of the Elector of Bavaria 
 (proclaimed as Emperor Charles VII) against that 
 of Maria Theresa. The Lorraine militia was con- 
 sidered barely sufficient to defend the duchy, and 
 accordingly six battalions, each of 600 men, were 
 
 * The French farmers-general now had a finger in the pie and paid 
 3,300,000 livres per annum for their privilege. The tax called the subvention 
 or faille was fixed in 1738 at 1,800,000 livres, a considerable increase on 
 previous years. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 177 
 
 immediately raised and taken into the French service, 
 into which the Lorraine Guards had been already 
 drafted. A little later three bodies of cavalry were 
 recruited.* A sum of twenty-one limes per man was 
 levied on each commune supplying recruits, in order 
 that the latter might be provided with suitable cloth- 
 ing, and, in addition, Marshal Belle-Isle requisitioned 
 250,000 allowances of hay, straw, and wood. 
 
 Maria Theresa's partisan leader, Menzel of the 
 Pandours, invaded the Sarre region and was joined by 
 some of the people there. Next, Prince Charles of 
 Lorraine crossed the Rhine in command of regular 
 Austrian forces. The greatest scarcity then prevailed 
 throughout the duchy, corn being almost unprocurable. 
 Semi-starvation set in, and matters had scarcely 
 improved when the defeat of the French by the 
 troops commanded by George II of Great Britain at 
 Dettingen (July 27, 1743) caused general dismay. 
 Somewhat later Prince Charles captured Wissem- 
 bourg and was joined by various malcontent nobles. 
 Stanislas thereupon took shelter in Metz, at the same 
 time sending his wife to Versailles with all her jewel- 
 lery. Bitche, Fenestrange, Bouquenom, Sarregue- 
 mines, and Sarrelouis had been garrisoned and pro- 
 visioned in order to resist the invaders. There was 
 a moment of serious alarm, particularly as Maria 
 Theresa issued a manifesto calling upon the duchy to 
 rise against Stanislas, and declaring that her husband 
 (the man who had sold Lorraine) would speedily repair 
 thither to place himself at the head of all who would 
 join him. Nobody rose, however, and La Galaizire 
 faced the situation in a very determined way. 
 
 * The infantry battalions were known as Nancy, Bar, Sarregueminea, 
 Etain, Epinal, and Neuf chateau. The cavalry were called Polignac, Marain- 
 ville, and Lacroix, after their commanders. 
 
178 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Some French successes at last brought about a 
 change, whereupon Louis XV, yielding to the exhorta- 
 tions of the Duchess de Chateauroux, arrived at 
 Metz to place himself at the head of his forces. Then 
 for a brief space all became festivity in the old 
 Lorraine city, which had not seen a king of France 
 since the time of Henri II's great triumphal entry 
 nearly two hundred years previously, though it had 
 been the original capital of the early warlike, hard- 
 riding Dukes, who did not transfer their government 
 to Nancy until the middle of the twelfth century. 
 To Metz with the King had come Madame de Chateau- 
 roux, much to the scandal of all " right-thinking " 
 folk ; nevertheless people from other parts of Lor- 
 raine poured into the city to see the King and join 
 in the fetes which followed his arrival. But Louis 
 suddenly fell very ill, prayers were offered up for 
 his recovery, the clergy exhorted him to dismiss the 
 " scarlet woman " whom he had brought with him, 
 and after she had narrowly escaped being murdered 
 by the populace he weakly assented, whereupon, of 
 course, Heaven promptly cured him, and joy was 
 displayed on every side. " I did not know I was so 
 much loved," he is said to have remarked ; and those 
 words probably inspired the appellation of " the Well- 
 beloved" bestowed on him at this time, and often 
 repeated in later years in a sense quite foreign to 
 that which had been originally intended. 
 
 Hostilities lasted until the Treaty of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle in 1748, when, although owing to floods and 
 storms there was still great scarcity in Lorraine, its 
 people breathed again. But in 1756, after much more 
 distress, the Seven Years' War began, bringing with it 
 yet fresh anxiety and suffering. Never had La Galai- 
 ziere, who was still at the head of affairs, shown him- 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 179 
 
 self more exacting. Two super- taxes (" twentieths ") 
 had already been imposed, when in 1760 the Inten- 
 dant decided to levy a third one, which would have 
 meant a total increase of 60 per cent, above the 
 rate paid before the war. Lorraine and Bar had in 
 this way already supplied 3,790,971 limes ; husband- 
 men (laboureurs) paying 80 livres 9 and common 
 labourers (manoeuvriers) 20 livres apiece. In the 
 state to which the country was reduced the idea of 
 yet heavier taxation aroused general protests. When 
 La Galaiziere summoned the Sovereign Court to 
 attend at Luneville to register the edict, the nobles 
 who answered the call protested that the farmers 
 were being ruined, and could no longer pay any 
 rents either in money or in kind. The dispute became 
 so violent that the French authorities at Versailles 
 were alarmed, and a compromise was effected, La 
 Galaiziere, much to his chagrin, having to obey the 
 orders he received. Briefly, the edict was registered, 
 but the third "twentieth" was not levied. 
 
 In lieu thereof La Galaiziere imposed on the clergy 
 a " gift to the Crown," whereby he secured some 
 200,000 livres. Other sums were levied in a similar 
 way on certain towns. At this period the cost of the 
 administration had become excessive, for since the 
 accession of Stanislas, La Galaiziere had added no 
 fewer than 1300 officials to those previously existing, 
 in such wise that on its bureaucracy alone the little 
 State expended more than five million livres a year. 
 One improvement was effected by the Intendant. 
 During the terrible " year of misery," 1754 though 
 not before free trade in grain was established between 
 Bar, Lorraine, and France. This measure enabled 
 the distressed duchies to secure some supplies which 
 were desperately needed. 
 
180 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 La Galaiziere's unpopularity did not arise solely 
 from the excessive taxation. He showed no regard 
 for some of the feelings of the inhabitants. They had 
 been much attached to their former dynasty and 
 cherished many stirring historical memories. But 
 the Intendant decided that all such nonsense must 
 be stamped out. He forbade at Nancy the famous 
 time-honoured procession in commemoration of Duke 
 Rene's victory over Charles the Rash of Burgundy. 
 He caused busts and portraits of the old Dukes to 
 be removed often destroyed. He demolished several 
 historic castles, abbeys, and churches. He prevailed 
 on Stanislas to abolish the Marshals of Lorraine and 
 the office of Grand Seneschal. It mattered not to 
 him that the former dynasty had sprung from the 
 House of France. He foolishly endeavoured to oblite- 
 rate all traces of it. It was for this reason that he 
 willingly aided Stanislas in his well-meant enterprise 
 to improve and embellish Nancy. The city was 
 virtually transformed, and much of the architectural 
 work done there was in its way quite excellent. But 
 what most pleased La Galaiziere was the demolition 
 of the older buildings, the original ducal palace and 
 gate especially. Stanislas founded or enlarged several 
 hospitals, endowed the Order of Saint John of Jerusa- 
 lem in his duchies, encouraged education, establishing 
 burses at the University of Pont-a-Mousson, building 
 a College of Medicine and setting up a Society of 
 Sciences and Belles-Lettres at Nancy the last named 
 afterwards taking the name of Academic Stanislas. 
 In his time also Saint-Die, largely destroyed by fire, 
 was rebuilt, and Plombieres, famous for its waters, 
 was much improved. It is commonly held that 
 Stanislas paid for all the work, all the foundations 
 here mentioned ; but this appears to be incorrect. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 181 
 
 During his reign of nine and twenty years he certainly 
 laid out in this manner some 8,500,000 livres, but the 
 Lorrainers themselves had to defray the greater part 
 of the expenditure which was incurred. It has been 
 remarked that although Nancy took rank as one of 
 the finest cities in France, it was also one of the very 
 poorest, so heavily was it taxed to pay for its improve- 
 ments. Some of its new embellishments it by no 
 means appreciated. When in 1755 a statue of Louis 
 the Well-beloved was inaugurated on the Place 
 Royale, the inhabitants hooted the effigy of the 
 licentious monarch. 
 
 Stanislas was almost as amorously inclined as his 
 son-in-law, and kept several mistresses, the most 
 notorious of them being the Marchioness de Boufflers, 
 nee de Beauvau, on whom, according to some accounts, 
 he spent 2,000,000 livres, though others state that 
 he allowed her barely sufficient money to pay for 
 her skirts. Several Polish women of title are also 
 said to have been his favourites at various periods, 
 among them being the Duchess Ossolinska and the 
 Countess Jablonowska, the last of whom became one 
 of the mistresses of the Young Pretender. On the 
 whole, there were only a few Poles of both sexes at 
 the little Court of Luneville. Members of the French 
 and the Lorrainer nobility predominated. Stanislas 
 appears to have been on good terms with the ancient 
 houses of Haraucourt, Lenoncourt, Ligneville, and 
 du Chatelet the four " Grands Chevaux de Lor- 
 raine," or leaders of the duchy's ancient chivalry. 
 Other members of the noblesse who attached them- 
 selves to Stanislas were the Nettancourts, the Haus- 
 sonvilles, the Lambertyes, the Tornielles, and the 
 Serinchamps. The Countess de Choiseul and the 
 Countess de Raigecourt were ladies of the palace 
 
182 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 under the Marchioness de Boufflers. To Luneville 
 also came the beautiful, witty, and accomplished 
 Marquise du Chatelet, accompanied by her lover 
 Voltaire, who wrote his famous story " Zadig " to 
 entertain the Court of Stanislas. It first appeared 
 in print at Luneville. Voltaire was not the only 
 great writer attracted to Lorraine. Thither also 
 came Montesquieu. There were others of lesser note, 
 including Palissot de Montenoy, then quite a young 
 man, and not as yet high pontiff of the so-called 
 " theophilanthropical " sect. Other familiars of the 
 circle which Stanislas gathered around him were the 
 Viscount de Rohan and the Count de Tressan. 
 
 I mentioned previously that whilst dabbling in 
 philosophy he favoured the Jesuits, whose dispersion 
 in 1762 by order of the Parliament of Paris greatly 
 affected him. He also protected the Jews, who soon 
 after his death were persecuted by the French authori- 
 ties.* His wife, Catherine Opalinska, died suddenly 
 in 1747, when sixty-six years old. They had been 
 married more than half a century. At this time 
 Stanislas himself was eighty. Nevertheless, four years 
 later, there was an attempt to marry him to Christina 
 of Saxony, sister of the Dauphiness who became the 
 mother of Louis XVI. Christina was fifty-five years 
 younger than Stanislas, and the French Court would 
 not hear of the match not, however, on account of 
 disparity in age, but from a fear lest the princess 
 should present the old Lothario with offspring, 
 thereby causing complications at his death. 
 
 He became very feeble in his last days. Many of 
 
 * By an edict of April 1766 only twelve Jewish families were allowed at 
 Nancy, four at MalzevUle, and two at LuneVille. Moreover, they were only 
 tolerated in those towns on the condition they should have no children ! 
 Most of the Lorrainer Jews had to reside at Sarreguemines, Boulay, Dieuze, 
 and adjacent places. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 183 
 
 his old cronies predeceased him, and at times he 
 invited some of the bourgeois of Luneville to visit 
 him and join in a game of tric-trac, his favourite 
 pastime. His death was a tragical affair. He had 
 returned to Luneville from a trip to Nancy, where 
 according to one account he had received " Lady 
 Mary Churchill, daughter of Robert Walpole, and 
 her husband," * and at about six o'clock on the 
 following morning, February 4, 1766, he was sitting 
 by the fireside in his bedroom, wearing a fur-lined 
 dressing-gown which his daughter, the Queen of 
 France, had sent him to keep out the cold. One 
 account says that he had been smoking his pipe, and 
 that on wishing to place it on the mantelpiece his 
 dressing-gown caught fire. Another version is that 
 he wished to see the time by a watch or a clock on 
 the mantelpiece, and that owing to the feebleness of 
 his eyesight he drew too close to the fire. At all 
 events his dressing-gown was speedily alight, and he 
 fell on the floor shrieking. 
 
 A maid-servant heard him, and called one of 
 the Bodyguard, who rushed to the bedroom. A gust 
 of air which followed the sudden opening of the door 
 fanned the flames, but they were extinguished by 
 wrapping Stanislas in blankets after he had been 
 deposited on his bed. All the injuries appear to 
 have been on the left side, and the flesh of the left 
 hand is said to have been quite burnt away. Every- 
 thing was done to save the old man, and, in fact, 
 after a few days' treatment the sores seemed to be 
 healing, and he spoke of his accident almost lightly, 
 saying : " My daughter warned me against catching 
 cold, she should have warned me against getting too 
 hot." But his time was nearly spent. He had con- 
 
 * I have failed to identify the lady in question. 
 
184 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 fessed to Cardinal de Choiseul, Primate of Lorraine, 
 and received the Sacrament, when on February 21 
 he sank gradually into a comatose state and three 
 days later expired. 
 
 By the care of his daughter, the consort of Louis 
 XV, Stanislas was honoured with stately obsequies, 
 his remains being deposited beside those of his wife 
 in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Good Help, originally 
 erected by Duke Rene* to commemorate the defeat 
 of Charles the Rash at Nancy, but rebuilt by the 
 Polish prince. Even whilst the latter was being 
 buried, his arms were struck off all public buildings 
 by the eager officials of Louis XV.* Six hundred and 
 eighty-eight years had elapsed since Gerard of Alsace, 
 according to tradition, had become hereditary Duke 
 of Lorraine. Now, by virtue of the diplomatic con- 
 ventions, the duchy ceased to be independent, and 
 the eaglets of its armorial bearings had to give place 
 to the fleurs-de-lis of France. 
 
 For a moment the Lorrainers derived some comfort 
 from the fact that, immediately after the death of 
 Stanislas, the obnoxious Chancellor and Intendant, 
 La Galaizi^re, resigned his office, and, repairing to 
 Versailles, was there appointed a member of the 
 Conseil du Roi. He was succeeded in Lorraine, how- 
 ever, by his son, who pursued much the same policy. 
 In regard to taxation f and other abuses, matters 
 did not improve under Thiroux de Crosne and La 
 
 * His wardrobe was sold by auction on one of the public squares of 
 Lun6ville. 
 
 f One little place in Lorraine was exempt from all taxation. This was 
 Domremy on the Meuse, in the present department of the Vosges, arrondisse- 
 ment of Neufchateau. The exemption dated from the time of Joan of Arc, 
 who was born at Domremy in 1412. In the old taxation registers of Lorraine, 
 against the name of the village there is written, instead of any amount, 
 " Neant, a cause de la Pucelle " (Nothing, on account of the Maid). The 
 privilege remained in force until the time of the Revolution. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 185 
 
 Porte de Meslay, who followed La Galaiziere fits. 
 The old regime treated Lorraine and Bar as a state 
 dependency divided into thirty-six bailliages, or juris- 
 dictions. The three bishoprics of Metz, Verdun, and 
 Toul, and their territories still constituted a separate 
 intendance, or generalite, in the midst, as it were, of 
 the intendance of Lorraine. Simplification of admini- 
 strative work was not favoured by the authorities of 
 those times. A complicated state of affairs implied 
 a multiplicity of officials and better opportunities for 
 robbing both the people and the State. Nevertheless 
 certain changes took place in Lorraine. For instance, 
 the Sovereign Court of Nancy was transformed into 
 a parlement, and given supreme jurisdiction even 
 over the bishoprics, the parlement of Metz being 
 suppressed so long as Louis XV remained king. 
 Further, the University of Pont-a-Mousson was trans- 
 ferred to Nancy (1768), and eight or nine years after- 
 wards Nancy and Saint-Die" became ecclesiastical 
 sees. Down to the time of the Revolution there 
 remained only one military governorship, which was 
 located at Nancy. Probably the most distinguished 
 soldier who held this post in the eighteenth century 
 was Marshal de Choiseul- Stain ville. 
 
 Under Stanislas and the succeeding French ad- 
 ministration the population of Lorraine increased 
 considerably,* but there was a steady diminution of 
 the number of people engaged in agriculture. This 
 was largely due to the frequent recurrence of bad 
 seasons and the better livelihood provided by industrial 
 occupations. Although, curiously enough, there was 
 no free trade (except in grain) with the rest of France, 
 industry and commerce expanded. Nancy grew apace, 
 largely by reason of its manufactures. Among the 
 
 * In 1778 the figure was 94,275, and in 1789, 934,860. 
 
186 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 many kinds of goods made there and in neighbouring 
 towns during the latter part of the eighteenth century 
 were carpets, tapestry, plush, cloth, ribbons, hosiery, 
 and candles. Other branches of industry were a 
 special kind of embroidery, organ-building, wood-carv- 
 ing, marquetry, and terra-cotta work. Beer appears 
 to have been brewed only at Nancy and Dieulouard. 
 There were spirit, liqueur, and syrup distilleries at 
 Luneville and elsewhere. A special kind of vulne- 
 raire, into which iron or steel entered, was made in 
 Lorraine and supplied largely to French soldiers in 
 the field for the treatment of wounds. Perfumery 
 and vinegar works were also to be found. There were 
 tanneries all over the province. Drugget and coarse 
 cloth were largely manufactured. Among the adepts 
 in arts and crafts one finds many painters, engravers, 
 sculptors, woodcarvers, faience-workers, embroiderers, 
 and gilders. Cutlers, toolmakers, and locksmiths w r ere 
 also numerous. The salt industry, which supplied 
 the old regime with an important source of revenue, 
 likewise expanded, the salines of Moyenvic, Dieuze, 
 and Chateau- Salins being largely worked. The salt- 
 water spring of Rosieres was destroyed, however, by 
 somebody tampering with it. The glass-works of 
 Baccarat were yet more and more developed. Metal- 
 lurgical industry increased ; and there was much 
 basket-making in the region around Verdun, many 
 osier beds existing beside the Meuse. 
 
 Nevertheless beggars are said to have abounded, 
 and the nobility, whether of sword or of gown, was 
 more numerous than ever. The late Cardinal Mathieu, 
 a native of Lorraine, admits in one of his works that 
 gross abuses prevailed among the clergy, particularly 
 the regulars. The exactions of the numerous abbeys 
 and convents were very great. The Carthusian Order 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 187 
 
 was the only one cited for its charity. The Chapters 
 of Noble Ladies, established at Remiremont, Poussay, 
 Epinal, Romaric, Bouxieres, etc., seldom proved 
 benevolent, but usually acted in a very grasping 
 manner towards their tenantry. These foundations, 
 however, declined considerably during the twenty 
 years preceding the Revolution. In 1789 the Chapter 
 of Remiremont still counted fifty-two members, 
 but Epinal had only twenty-two, Poussay seventeen, 
 and Bouxieres a baker's dozen. With regard to 
 crime it is stated that between 1737 and 1790 there 
 were 203 sentences to the galleys for life, and 
 274 to the galleys for various periods. Robbery 
 was the offence most usually visited with these 
 punishments. Only some fifty cases of crimes of 
 violence are recorded in the lists, together with 
 fourteen cases of forgery, three of incest, and forty- 
 eight of common debauchery. I find no exact figures 
 respecting the number of people executed, either by 
 hanging or by strangulation. There was a case of 
 profaning an historic chapel, for which the offenders 
 suffered death, after first having their right hands 
 burnt off ; and another of pillaging a house near 
 Phalsbourg, for which seven peasants underwent capital 
 punishment, it being afterwards discovered that all 
 of them were innocent ! 
 
 In 1788 Louis XVI's Minister, Lomenie de Brienne, 
 attempted a general reorganization of Lorraine. The 
 parlement of Metz,* restored after the previous King's 
 
 * The parlements of the old French regime were not parliaments as we 
 understand them nowadays, but more particularly high courts of justice. 
 Their chief administrative duties were to register the edicts emanating from 
 the throne, which, on being registered, acquired force of law. Their chief 
 political right was that of remonstrating when they regarded some edict 
 as being unduly harsh, but their refusals to register and their remonstrances 
 were generally overruled in one or another way. 
 
188 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 death, was again deposed by Maupeou, the Royal 
 Chancellor, and Lomenie, deciding to form a provincial 
 assembly in its stead, caused edicts to that effect to 
 be registered at Nancy. The Lorrainers, attached 
 to their ancient methods and customs, however 
 out of date they might be, protested against the 
 innovation, denounced the Minister as a partisan of 
 despotism, and demanded the restoration of the 
 old parlement. The authorities eventually had to 
 give way in this matter, and the councillors were 
 reinstated. They then imagined themselves secure 
 in their seats, but at that very moment the 
 Revolution, by which all antiquated forms of 
 jurisdiction were swept away, was on the point of 
 exploding. 
 
 When the States General were convoked in 1789 
 Lorraine was allotted thirty-six members nine of 
 the clergy, nine of the nobility, and eighteen of the 
 third estate. The nobles, over whom presided the 
 amorous poet-soldier, the Chevalier de Boufflers, made 
 very liberal proposals to the third estate, who were 
 largely intent on securing one or another privilege 
 for their respective towns. The hard-pressed peasantry 
 did not rise, and although it was at Varennes in the 
 Argonne, on the confines of Lorraine, that Louis XVI 
 and his family were stopped when attempting to flee 
 the country, large numbers of people of rank and 
 position opposed to the Revolution were able to 
 cross the province without let or hindrance and make 
 their way into Germany. In August 1790 a san- 
 guinary affray occurred at Nancy. The ill-paid 
 soldiers of the garrison mutinied and seized the regi- 
 mental chests, whereupon the Marquis de Bouille, 
 who commanded the forces at Metz, received orders 
 to put down the rebellion. His troops almost anni- 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 189 
 
 hilated the Swiss Chateauvieux regiment, with which 
 the poorer folk of Nancy sided the more willingly 
 as, at the taking of the Bastille in the previous year, 
 these same Switzers had refused to fire on the Parisians. 
 According to the generally received account no fewer 
 than 3000 people were killed in the contest at Nancy, 
 and Bouille left on the glorious name he had inherited 
 a stain which was only effaced by the heroism of his 
 descendants, several of whom gave their lives for 
 France in the dark, desperate days of 1870. Of the 
 few mutineer-soldiers who were not struck down in 
 the fighting, Bouille caused one to be broken on the 
 wheel, although all forms of torture were abolished by 
 law. Twenty-one he hanged, and forty-one he sent to 
 the galleys, from which, however, the Revolution as it 
 progressed delivered them. 
 
 Lorraine rose when the Prussians and Austrians 
 invaded France. Her people were essentially warlike 
 and all classes contributed to the armies of the 
 Republic. When Epinal was asked for a hundred 
 volunteers more than double that number came 
 forward in one day. On the department of the 
 Vosges, after contributing five battalions of soldiers, 
 being asked to raise another 2600 men, it supplied 
 6400 within a week. Appeals were also made for 
 money, and the district of Neufchateau at once 
 furnished 200,000 limes > though it was already paying 
 120,000 in taxation. Twice did the National Conven- 
 tion decree that the department of the Vosges had 
 " deserved well of the country." In March 1793, 
 after providing fifteen battalions of troops, it con- 
 tributed yet another one to the national defence. 
 There were similar efforts in all parts of Lorraine. 
 Church bells were taken down and sent to the foundries 
 to be cast into cannon. Although many townships 
 
190 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 were on the verge of starvation, corn, flour, and oats 
 were poured into the strongholds of Metz, Strasburg, 
 Sarrelouis, and Landau to provide for their garrisons. 
 Cereals were even dispatched to other parts of France 
 w r here the distress was particularly great. Many of 
 the soldiers of the Lorrainer and Alsatian regiments 
 became distinguished men. It was said of Phalsbourg 
 that it not only gave France a marshal Lobau 
 but that one out of every six of its inhabitants became 
 a general, and that each of its houses supplied either 
 a colonel or two battalion commanders. The popula- 
 tion of the eastern provinces was animated with feel- 
 ings of detestation for the invaders from across the 
 Rhine. Neither Lorrainer nor Alsatian had been 
 well treated by the old French regime, but in the 
 great hurly-burly of the Revolution they showed 
 how French their sentiments had become. Their 
 blood was mingled freely with that of the other 
 defenders of the country, as though from the 
 very dawn of history they had always been her 
 sons. 
 
 The most conspicuous representative of Lorraine 
 in the National Convention was that democratic 
 Gallican, the Abbe Gregoire, a native of Veho in the 
 Meurthe, and parish priest of Embermenil. He acted 
 for a time as Constitutional Bishop of Blois, and 
 under the Consulate became a member of the Senate. 
 He and Carnot, who was a member of the Tribunat, 
 were the only two representatives who protested 
 against Napoleon's assumption of the Imperial dignity. 
 There were few revolutionary excesses in Lorraine. 
 Even when hatred of Austria, whose Emperor was 
 descended from the old ducal house, prompted the 
 Revolutionists of Nancy to remove the coffins of 
 some of his ancestors from the Church of the Cor- 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 191 
 
 deliers, the remains were not burnt or east to the 
 winds according to the general practice of those times, 
 but were simply consigned to one of the public ceme- 
 teries. As for the Revolutionary Tribunal, which 
 sat at Mirecourt, it was probably the most humane 
 and lenient in all France. According to one of the 
 province's historians it sent in all only nine persons 
 to the guillotine. 
 
 The patriotic fervour continued unabated under 
 Napoleon, w T ho, as historians have recorded, derived 
 some of his most eminent captains as well as his best 
 regiments from Alsace-Lorraine. Metz resisted the 
 Allies victoriously both in 1814 and 1815. Francs- 
 tireurs roamed the woodlands and the hill- sides, ever 
 on the alert to pounce upon small parties of the 
 invaders. The Emperor's first fall brought depression, 
 but elation supervened when he returned from Elba. 
 The Hundred Days ended, however, with the crash 
 of Waterloo, and Prussia then greedily tried to lay 
 her hands on at least a part of Lorraine as well as 
 the whole of Alsace. Seventy-two communes cover- 
 ing over 153,000 acres of territory and counting 
 40,000 inhabitants were wrested from France by the 
 treaty of November 20, 1815, the greater part going 
 to Rhenish Prussia and the rest to the Bavarian 
 Palatinate. I have already mentioned, I think, that 
 among the towns secured by Prussia was Sarrelouis, 
 the birthplace of Marshal Ney. Dupin aine, who 
 defended Ney when he was tried for high treason 
 to Louis XVIII, wished to argue that Sarrelouis and 
 its people having been transferred to a foreign Power, 
 the Marshal was not amenable to a French court 
 on the specific charge brought against him, as he 
 owned no allegiance to the French Crown. Ney, 
 however, interrupted his counsel violently : " No, 
 
192 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 no ! " he exclaimed, " I accept none of that. I am 
 a Frenchman, and I will die one ! " * 
 
 A most reactionary policy followed the second 
 Restoration of the Bourbons. Clericalism became 
 rampant in the Legislature, and Lorraine, once 
 favourably known to the clergy for its Catholic senti- 
 ments, was at an early date the scene of an attempted 
 " Revival," originated by the Bishop of Nancy, 
 Charles Auguste de Forbin-Janson, who ended by 
 organizing missions which travelled hither and thither 
 through France, endeavouring to promote a return 
 to religious observances. Against that, in itself, 
 there is nothing to be said, but the Church, in its 
 zeal for its own interests and those of the restored 
 monarchy, endeavoured to capture all political in- 
 fluence, invariably weighing upon the electorate in 
 favour of its own candidates and opposing the appoint- 
 ment even to trifling offices of any who did not 
 subscribe to its authority. This degenerated into 
 a more or less direct persecution of all who were 
 inclined to liberal ideas in politics or to freedom of 
 thought in religious matters. At one moment all 
 the deputies for Lorraine and virtually all the function- 
 aries of its four departments belonged to the Clericalist 
 party. 
 
 Aided so powerfully by the clergy throughout 
 France, the Bourbon Government doubtless imagined 
 itself to be secure. But a change gradually set in, 
 and various liberal and democratic candidates were 
 returned by the electors of Lorraine in 1827. The 
 Liberal Lorrainers in the last legislature of the Restora- 
 tion included some distinguished soldiers for instance, 
 
 * Dupin's argument was highly fallacious, Ney's offence having been 
 committed whilst Sarrelouia was French territory and under the rule of 
 Louis 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 193 
 
 Marshal Count Lobau, a native of Phalsbourg, and 
 Colonel Jacqueminot, whose name has been per- 
 petuated by a famous rose. Another eminent Lor- 
 rainer inclined to Liberalism was Baron Louis, born 
 at Toul, and an expert in finance. At the head of 
 the democratic party were MM. Marchal and Thou- 
 venel, the latter of whom afterwards went over to 
 Napoleon III, and became for a time his Minister 
 for Foreign Affairs being indeed the best man who 
 held that post under the Second Empire. 
 
 The Revolution of 1830 which set Louis Philippe 
 on the throne was attended by trouble on the Prussian 
 frontier. The inhabitants of those districts of the 
 department of the Moselle which had been wrested 
 from France in 1815 and consigned to Prussian 
 domination, began to agitate for their return to 
 France. Now that a more liberal regime seemed to 
 be impending in that country they wished to escape 
 from the Prussian thraldom which they had endured 
 for fifteen years. The movement was particularly 
 pronounced at Sarrelouis, Saint- Wendel, and Hem- 
 bach. But the Prussian authorities promptly inter- 
 vened, and many people were arrested and sent to 
 prison for indefinite periods, without being allowed 
 any form of trial. Louis Philippe's Government soon 
 found itself beset with difficulties at home, and was 
 never at any time strong enough to attempt the 
 recovery of the territory lost by the treaty which 
 followed Napoleon's downfall. It is as well to mention 
 that the agitation to which I have referred appears 
 to have been confined at this time almost exclusively 
 to the districts annexed to Rhenish Prussia. There 
 was not the same degree of bitter discontent among 
 the folk whose lands had been transferred to the 
 Bavarian Palatinate. French historians of Lorraine 
 
 N 
 
194 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 admit that the Bavarian rule was far less harsh than 
 the Prussian rule, and that, under the former, the 
 educational system was a liberal one. 
 
 Like other parts of France, Lorraine became the 
 scene of a strenuous democratic struggle which con- 
 tinued throughout the reign of Louis Philippe. The 
 province's foremost parliamentary champion at this 
 period was Henri Boulay de la Meurthe, a native of 
 Nancy, who, after Louis Philippe's fall, became Vice- 
 President of the Republic. He was the son of Antoine 
 Boulay born at Chamousey in the Vosges who, in 
 conjunction with Portalis, framed a large part of 
 that division of the so-called Code Napoleon which 
 is known as the Code civil. In addition to the demo- 
 cratic agitation there were a few plots in Lorraine 
 during Louis Philippe's reign. One was started at 
 Luneville by some dragoon officers and " non-coms.," 
 with the object of restoring the Empire, but no legal 
 proofs against those who were implicated in this 
 affair could be produced. At last came the wide- 
 spread demand for parliamentary Reform, with all 
 its banqueting and oratory, which in 1848 culminated 
 in the dethronement of the House of Orleans. Amidst 
 all the dramatic events of that year of vain efforts 
 to gain liberty when even the Germans tried to 
 free themselves the people of the Sarre valley, 
 separated from France since 1815, once more sought 
 reunion, and this time those who were Bavarian as 
 well as those who were Prussian subjects desired to 
 become citizens of the new-born French Republic. 
 With that object a great demonstration took place 
 at Saarbriicken (November 1848), when French, 
 Prussian, and Bavarian Republicans fraternized. 
 But the revolutionary movements in Germany were 
 put down. The Bavarian and Prussian authorities 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 195 
 
 asserted their power, and the folk of the Sarre valley 
 had to remain as they were. 
 
 At the election for the presidency of the French 
 Republic the clergy of Lorraine vigorously supported 
 Prince Louis Napoleon against General Cavaignac. 
 Nevertheless the proportion of the votes which the 
 last named secured was higher than in most other 
 parts of France. The number of electors who voted 
 for him in the four departments of the Meurthe, the 
 Meuse, the Moselle, and the Vosges was 67,065. 
 But, on the other hand, no fewer than 287,525 votes 
 were polled by the man whose policy in later years 
 led to the loss of Metz and other parts of North- 
 Eastern Lorraine. As I remarked when writing of 
 Alsace, the name of Napoleon was still one to conjure 
 with in 1848. After the coup d?6tat ninety-two 
 Lorrainer Republicans suffered proscription in one 
 or another form, and fifty-seven of these belonged 
 to the department of the Meurthe, in which Nancy, 
 LuneVille, Toul, and Briey were situated. From this 
 one may infer that the Meurthe was the region in 
 which Republicanism was most numerously repre- 
 sented. In the Vosges twenty-one persons were 
 proscribed. In the Moselle (capital, Metz) the number 
 fell to twelve, and in the Meuse to three.* Later, 
 in 1858, after the life of Napoleon III had been 
 attempted by Felix Orsini, and by virtue of a tyran- 
 nical Law of Public Safety imposed upon the French 
 Legislature, and against which Marshal MacMahon, 
 
 * In" the Meurthe two persons were deported to Cayenne and fifteen to 
 Algeria ; whilst thirteen were banished, nineteen interned, and eight placed 
 under police surveillance, with fixed residences from which they might not 
 remove. In the Vosges three were sent to Cayenne and seven to Algeria, 
 eight were banished, and three interned. In the Moselle seven were exiled, 
 one was interned, and four were placed under surveillance. The three Meuse 
 cases were deportations to Algeria, that is, to Lambessa, a penal station of 
 infamous memory. 
 
196 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 in the Senate, alone had the moral courage to protest, 
 a number of leading Lorrainers were arbitrarily 
 arrested and consigned to the Algerian inferno of 
 Lambessa. Not one of them, in fact no Frenchman 
 in the whole length and breadth of the Empire, had 
 in any way participated in Orsini's attempt. Their 
 sole offence was %hat they had expressed their detesta- 
 tion of the tyranny of the Imperial rule. That 
 tyranny had abated when in 1866 Lorraine celebrated 
 the centenary of its union with France. The material 
 prosperity which the Empire undoubtedly brought 
 with it, as I showed when writing of Alsace, was then 
 in its zenith, and people readily gave themselves up 
 to festivity. There was at the moment no appre- 
 hension of war. The sudden brief struggle between 
 Prussia and Austria did not occur until some months 
 later. Bismarck and his master had not yet begun 
 to cut up Germany, or shown that their ravenous 
 appetites would not be sufficiently glutted unless, in 
 addition to Hanover, Brunswick, Nassau, and divers 
 smaller States, they were also able to secure a succu- 
 lent slice of France. Besides, whatever might be 
 thought of Napoleon III, there was every confidence 
 in the French army, which was supposed to be of 
 full strength, most powerfully organized, and admir- 
 ably equipped. Every year, just beyond the western 
 confines of Lorraine, and on the very plain which 
 had witnessed the defeat of Attila and his Huns, 
 there was displayed the superb pageantry of the 
 Camp of Chalons, that great gathering of Grenadiers, 
 Voltigeurs, Zouaves, Turcos, Cuirassiers, Dragoons, 
 Lancers, and other soldiery, all spick ""and span in 
 vivid uniforms, and drilled to perfection. Sham 
 fights were lost and won, camp-fires blazed, salutes 
 thundered, drums rolled, trumpets blared, and the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 19T 
 
 winds from the west carried the martial sounds across 
 the plateau of Lorraine, instilling complete confidence 
 in all who heard them. Who indeed could then have 
 foreseen a Worth, a Gravelotte, a Sedan, a Metz ? 
 Lorraine, the land of Joan of Arc, deemed herself 
 well guarded from invasion. None of her sons or 
 her daughters imagined that in a few brief years a 
 day would dawn when the foe would be upon them, 
 and that they would call in vain upon the Maid of 
 Domremy to free them as she had once freed France. 
 
VII 
 ALSATIANS AND LORRAINERS 
 
 Physical Characteristics of the Alsatians : Their former picturesque 
 Costumes : The Lorrainer Race : The Language Question and the 
 German Claims to the Provinces : A Specimen of Lorraine Dialect : 
 Early German Annexationist Propaganda : Linguistic Limits and 
 Place- Names : More Specimens of Dialects : Variations of Speech 
 in Alsace : Famous and Eminent Men given by the Provinces to 
 France : Soldiers, Statesmen, Scientists, Authors, Artists, and 
 others : The Chivalry of Lorraine : The Storks of Alsace. 
 
 IT has been indicated already that a great diversity 
 of physical characteristics will be found among the 
 Alsatians. They differ from one another according to 
 the part of the country which they inhabit the 
 Rhine bank, the plain, the lower slopes, and the 
 mountains. The folk of the plain, who are the most 
 numerous, are vigorous, of average height, and well 
 proportioned, with strong bones, pronounced features, 
 and fresh, often quite ruddy, complexions. Some of 
 them have fair hair, others hair of varying shades of 
 brown, others hair of an almost flaring red, but black 
 hair is very seldom found among them. Both blue 
 and brown eyes are seen. The women are generally 
 well developed and make first-rate nurses. They 
 have remarkably good teeth. In the southern part 
 of the plain the men are taller than elsewhere, quick 
 in their movements, with sanguine temperaments 
 and a bearing suggestive of innate pride. In the 
 centre of the plain darker hair than in the south is 
 observed, and the people are more phlegmatic. In 
 the north, where hair of extreme fairness predominates, 
 
 198 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 199 
 
 the inhabitants are generally inclined to a more 
 slender build, and display great suppleness of motion. 
 The girls with their fresh complexions are often 
 charming, but hard work ages them rapidly. To- 
 wards the Rhine a pale and lymphatic type is found, 
 and cases of goitre may often be observed. 
 
 The folk seen on the lower spurs of the Vosges 
 are fairly robust, but inclined to be pale and lean. It 
 is hereabouts that red hair is most often noticed, 
 though light brown is the prevailing colour. A cer- 
 tain sickliness used to be found in the narrow valleys, 
 where the dwelling-places were often unhealthy and 
 the food poor the people subsisting on bread com- 
 pounded of rye, barley, and buckwheat, potatoes, a 
 little salt bacon, and curdled milk. As for the folk of 
 the Vosges highlands, they differ from other Alsatians, 
 and approximate more to the Lorraine and Franche- 
 Comte* types. The men are tall and very strong, the 
 women also tall and fresh-coloured. They dwell (I 
 refer, of course, to pre-war days) on isolated farms 
 among what are called the hautes chaumes (high 
 stubbles), and cattle-raising and cheese-making are 
 their principal avocations. The farms are known as 
 marcairies * and the people as marcaires. 
 
 The differences in the physique of the Alsatians 
 arise from a variety of causes, such as local habitat, 
 occupation, and the preponderance of one or another 
 racial element, the country, as was explained in my 
 previous chapters, having been overrun by many 
 ancient tribes and later by the soldiery of numerous 
 contending nations. A long ancestry stretching 
 through centuries of warfare has made the Alsatian, 
 generally, a very courageous man. In old days 
 voluntary enlistments were very numerous. The 
 
 * The forms marcairerie and marquairerie are also sometimes used. 
 
200 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 average Alsatian has always proved an efficient non- 
 commissioned officer. His great predilection for the 
 cavalry service is combined with genuine solicitude 
 for his mount. In civil life he is a good and orderly 
 worker, clean and methodical in his habits. There is 
 some variation in his disposition according to his 
 religion, the Catholic being perhaps more inclined to 
 gaiety than the Protestant. Rectitude is one of the 
 Alsatian's strong points, and he is almost invariably 
 hospitable to strangers and charitable to those of his 
 neighbours who may meet with misfortune. The 
 gaiety to which I have referred seeks satisfaction in 
 somewhat noisy pleasures. The Alsatian sings his 
 loudest, perhaps in order to show the power of his 
 lungs. Both lads and girls are born dancers, and 
 trip it freely, as do also the older folk, on festive 
 occasions. 
 
 One of the intendants of Alsace under the old 
 regime endeavoured to compel the inhabitants to 
 abandon their picturesque costumes, derived in part 
 from Switzerland and in part from Southern Germany. 
 This attempt failed, and during the Revolution 
 Saint- Just and Lebas, whilst acting as Commissaries 
 of the Republic at Strasburg, made a similar effort, 
 saying to the women of the Alsatian capital that as 
 their hearts were French they ought to follow the 
 fashions of France. The old costumes were still 
 favoured, however, in the rural districts down to our 
 own times. In winter men would be seen wearing 
 round fur caps, in summer broad felt hats, the brims 
 of which were raised at the sides but lowered in front 
 so as to shade the eyes from the sun. On work-days 
 Alsatian villagers would go about in short jackets 
 somewhat like those of Eton boys, but on high days 
 and holidays they donned long, black, high-collared 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 201 
 
 frock-coats, under which were seen red waistcoats 
 decorated with an abundance of silver buttons. The 
 men did not take kindly to trousers, but preferred 
 breeches, with stockings, or gaiters, or boots of soft 
 leather reaching to the knees. The women, parti- 
 cularly the younger ones, often looked as if they had 
 just stepped from a stage where some operetta had 
 been performed. Their serge skirts, usually green in 
 colour, were embellished in the lower part with broad 
 bands of scarlet or crimson. Under their black, 
 sleeveless bodices, embroidered in front with bright 
 silk, and further adorned with ribbons, you saw 
 chemisettes, whose ample sleeves of the bouffant pattern, 
 were daintily pleated. If the weather necessitated a 
 little protection, fichus or small shawls were cast over 
 their shoulders. On gala days coloured stockings and 
 buckled shoes were worn ; whilst the almost invariable 
 headgear surmounting the braided tresses was a tiny 
 cap with a huge black "butterfly" bow, or, as the 
 French put it, a bow aux ailes de pigeon. In the 
 Vosgian district of Orbey (Urbeis), where the country 
 girls were often of a slender and refined type, with 
 supple figures and a graceful carriage, they wore 
 light-coloured cornettes bordered with black velvet 
 and decked with ribbons ; and bright pink fichus were 
 often crossed over their dark bodices. 
 
 In more recent times the men of Alsace have 
 dressed like other citizens, artisans or peasants of the 
 nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The women also 
 have generally cast aside the national costumes. 
 Only quite young girls still wear the large black 
 butterfly bows, which were once as characteristic of 
 the Alsacienne as the mantilla was of the Sevillana. 
 Paris fashions have much to answer for at the bar of 
 the Picturesque. They have relegated such garb as I 
 
202 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 have been describing to the regions of " auld lang 
 syne " : 
 
 Add, add, add, those times have passed away, 
 
 Yet the blue Alsatian mountains t> ey watch and wait alway. 
 
 I previously indicated that minute investigations 
 in all parts of Lorraine have shown its people possess- 
 ing, both in the past and in the present, skulls of the 
 brachycephalic type rounded at the summit a usual 
 characteristic of the French Gaelic race. In the many 
 tumuli and ancient ossuaries that had been searched 
 in one or another part of the province down to the 
 year 1862, nearly every skull that was examined was 
 of the aforementioned type.* In 1886 Dr. Collignon 
 wrote in his " Anthropologie de la Lorraine " : 
 " Whether you content yourself with looking at the 
 country-folk as you pass them, or whether, turning to 
 the dead, you search the ossuaries and the most 
 ancient burial-places of the whole country, the result 
 remains the same, be the districts those which are 
 reputed Germanic or those which are known to be 
 French. The great majority of the skulls, and in 
 some places all of them, are brachycephalic." There 
 is considerable resemblance to the Auvergnat type ; 
 and it is held that although the Lorrainer is not a pure 
 Celt he has great affinity with that race. Two 
 eminent scientists, Broca and Topinard, classed him, 
 by reason of his stature and other characteristics, 
 among the tall, fair, but long-headed Kymri. Various 
 discoveries support the view that at the time of the 
 Germanic irruptions many of the original Celts took 
 refuge in the mountainous districts, leaving the 
 invaders in the valleys, where they appear to have 
 mingled with the older races. According to a map 
 
 * " Etude ethnologique BUT 1'Origine des Populations Lorraines Memoires 
 de 1'Academie de Stanislas." 1862. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 203 
 
 given by Dr. Collignon there was a mixed zone cover- 
 ing the whole basin of the Moselle, but surrounded by 
 a Celtic zone which included the Thionville, Sarregue- 
 mines, and Vosgian districts. In a sense, then, there 
 existed two Lorraines, whose borders often varied 
 according to the vicissitudes of the times, and whose 
 people were distinguished from one another by their 
 speech. The various irruptions and conflicts which 
 occurred resulted from the country's situation. Geo- 
 graphically it is part of the basin of Paris, but it 
 is also linked to the Rhenish system, and ethno- 
 logically, historically, and socially has always borne 
 the impress of its twofold geographical position. 
 
 Language is by no means an indisputable proof of 
 race. In this country of ours there are many folk 
 who speak only the English language, yet are English 
 only in a legal and not in a racial sense. Every child 
 that is born in Britain is accounted a British subject, 
 although not even a drachm of the blood of any of 
 the British races may flow in its veins. Take one 
 instance out of many. Large numbers of Italians of 
 both sexes come to this country. They marry here, 
 or are married before their arrival, and children are 
 born to them here. These children go to English 
 schools, where they acquire our language, and I know 
 of numerous instances in which they are conversant 
 with only a few words of the parental tongue. Never- 
 theless, in spite of their English speech they are not 
 English racially. Again, conquerors have at times 
 imposed their language on the conquered. In these 
 later years the Prussians have particularly striven to 
 do so. They have all but stamped out the ancient 
 Wendish speech, and they have exerted themselves to 
 impose German on their Polish subjects to the exclu- 
 sion of the latter' s national language. Although, as 
 
204 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 scientists show, there has been a Germanic element in 
 Lorraine, or rather in its north-eastern part, for many 
 centuries, and the people in that particular region 
 have taken to the German speech, it by no means 
 follows that the bulk of them are of the German race. 
 It was pointed out at the time of the annexation of 
 North-Eastern Lorraine in 1871 that no German was 
 then spoken at Metz, Thionville, Boulay, Saint- Avoid, 
 Chateau-Salins, or Dieuze, where French had always 
 prevailed from at least the sixteenth century. 
 
 By French I do not mean pure French of the 
 literary description. The provinces of old France had 
 their particular, vaiying idioms. That of the Picards 
 was probably the one which most contributed to the 
 French language as we know it to-day. With regard 
 to the Lorraine dialects one finds that in the earlier 
 part of the eighteenth century they were formed 
 mostly of old French mingled with corrupt Celtic and 
 Latin words. Going back to distant times it may be 
 pointed out that when the kingdom of Lotharingia 
 was formed, Lothair took the famous "Oath of 
 Strasburg " in words compounded of very ancient 
 French and lower Latin, whereas his uncle Louis 
 the Germanic repeated the same formula in early 
 German. 
 
 In a book of mine entitled " In Seven Lands," I 
 supplied a specimen of Lorraine dialect as it was 
 some fifty years ago, and I will quote it here : 
 
 Quand j' dansions chus 1'orme 
 J'eun motins point d' c6 grands chepe 
 Qu'etaient si bin enjolivet, 
 Que develint pus bas qu'eul net. 
 
 J'eun motins ni bouff' ni bouffants 
 Et ni eeintur' de b6 rubans. 
 Nos cotillons et nos corsets 
 Sont co pus b6 que ces affiquets. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 205 
 
 The German claims to North-Eastern Lorraine and 
 the whole of Alsace were based largely on linguistic 
 considerations. These claims were brought forward 
 as early as 1856 by a Hanoverian professor named 
 Nabert, who wrote a pamphlet on the " mission " of 
 the German nation to subject to their laws and 
 institutions the whole of those " territories of the 
 Scheldt and the Rhine where their language was 
 spoken." It will be noted that the professor cast his 
 net widely, including in it not only Alsace-Lorraine, 
 but also the Netherlands whose people, the Dutch 
 and the Flemings, he regarded as Germans by reason 
 of their speech. Only by annexing those lands, said 
 Nabert, could Germany deliver herself from constant 
 warfare with her western neighbours. 
 
 Kiepert, the geographer, afterwards addressed him- 
 self to this subject, but with reference more par- 
 ticularly to Alsace-Lorraine, which he visited before 
 producing in 1867 the first edition of a map on which 
 he indicated what districts Germany ought to claim. 
 This map * was again reissued in 1871, 1875, and 
 1888 by way of " fortifying " the German right to the 
 annexed provinces ; and in conjunction with the Pan- 
 German Richard Boeck, Kiepert also produced, during 
 the war of 1870, a so-called " Historische Karte von 
 Elsass-Lothringen." In the previous year Boeck, 
 who was one of the most zealous partisans of the 
 annexation of all so-called " lost lands " wherever 
 they might be, had published at Berlin a work 
 entitled " Der Deutschen Volkzahl und Sprachgebiet 
 in den Europseischen Staaten." In the middle of the 
 war, moreover, a certain Petermann issued a book on 
 Alsace accompanied by exaggerated language maps. 
 
 * " Special-Karte der deutsch-franzoeichen Grenzlander, mit Auegabe 
 der Sprachgrenze." (Berlin : Resmer.) 
 
206 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Bismarck knew these maps and writings well. He may 
 have inspired them. At all events they were at his 
 elbow, and at Moltke's also, when in 1871 the pre- 
 liminaries of peace with France were negotiated with 
 Thiers and Jules Favre. 
 
 Boeck accused the French Government of all sorts 
 of high crimes and misdemeanours in regard to its 
 so-called " German " subjects ; and with respect to 
 the language question, he found, as I previously re- 
 lated, some supporters among the Alsatian clergy, 
 notably Pastor Baum and a Catholic priest of 
 Strasburg bearing the French name of Cazeaux. That 
 the French Government was justified in endeavouring 
 to diffuse among the Alsatian peasantry a wider 
 knowledge of French, such as prevailed among the 
 better-educated classes of the towns, goes without 
 saying ; but the prefects of the Second Empire were 
 often overzealous, and did much harm by interfering 
 in matters which they had better have left alone. 
 Thus a great mistake was made when in certain rural 
 districts of Alsace a fine of a sou was imposed on all 
 school-children who were heard conversing together in 
 German dialect. Whatever the sentiments of the 
 Alsatians might be they had again and again proved 
 their patriotic devotion to France the old-time 
 Germanic speech was dear to many of them. It was 
 the same as with the Bretons. None fought in 
 1870-71 more bravely for France than did the Celts 
 of the Armorican peninsula. But they were strongly 
 attached to their national speech, and many knew no 
 other. I can remember instances in which the word 
 of command given in French was immediately after- 
 wards repeated in Breton, for there were many Breton 
 battalions in the Second Loire Army to which I was 
 attached. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 207 
 
 At the time of Louis XIV the knowledge of 
 French was certainly more restricted in Alsace than it 
 afterwards became, and it is not surprising that when 
 that monarch gave orders to draft all legal judgments 
 and public notifications in French it was found 
 impossible to carry out his instructions, particularly 
 in several of the rural districts where French was 
 quite unknown. Some years ago M. Charles Pfister, 
 a native of the annexed provinces, and a Professor of 
 the Faculty of Letters at Nancy, endeavoured to draw 
 a line of demarcation between the French-speaking 
 and German-speaking districts.* His labours tended 
 to show the great complexity of the question. Al- 
 though, here and there, a linguistic limit could be 
 traced with comparative ease over a distance of 
 several miles, in other parts one was constantly 
 confronted by little French or German enclaves locked, 
 as it were, in the midst of a district where the other 
 language was spoken. In these later years the 
 Reichsland authorities have exerted themselves more 
 and more strenuously to Germanize the whole of the 
 annexed territory, imposing their language on the 
 people by methods which virtually absolute French 
 rulers, such as Louis XIV and Napoleon III, shrank 
 from adopting. It follows that some of M. Pfister's 
 facts may now be out of date, nevertheless his brochure 
 is instructive, for it shows what was the position some 
 twenty-seven years ago that is, a score of years after 
 the German annexation. 
 
 In Southern Alsace, towards the Swiss frontier, a 
 line of demarcation was supplied by a streamlet 
 called the Lucelle, on one side of which were two 
 
 * " La Limits de la Langue frar^aise en Alsace-Lorraine." (Paris, 18^0.) 
 This pamphlet of forty pages is probably the beet refutation of certain Gennem 
 claims, 
 
208 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 villages, Levoncourt and Courtavon (renamed Luffen- 
 dorf and Ottendorf by the Germans), where French 
 was spoken almost exclusively. The same language 
 was used at the village of Lucelle and at that of 
 Oberlarg in the vicinity, though in the last-named 
 locality the Alsatian Germanic dialect predominated. 
 More to the west, the frontier traced in 1871 took no 
 account of linguistic considerations. Although Thiers 
 succeeded in saving the cantons of Giromagny and 
 Delle, besides Belfort, for France, he was obliged to 
 surrender a number of exclusively French villages to 
 the Germans. These places, anciently dependencies 
 of the lordship of Montreux, had afterwards formed 
 part of the French cantons of Dannemarie and Fon- 
 taine. They included, first, in addition to Dannemarie 
 itself, Magny, Romagny (Willern), Latran, Valdieu 
 (Gottestal), Montreux -Vieux, Montreux- Jeune, and 
 Chavannes-sur-1'Etang ; and, secondly, Saint-Cosme, 
 Belmagny (Bernetzweiler), Eteimbes (Welschenstein- 
 bach) and Bretten, in the upper valley of the 
 Traubach, a tributary of the Largue. No linguistic 
 reason could be assigned for the annexation of any 
 one of those localities, nevertheless Bismarck insisted 
 on appropriating them. 
 
 To the north of Eteimbes the heights separating 
 the valley of Saint-Nicolas from that of Massevaux, 
 and the basin of the Rhone from that of the Rhine, 
 constituted a linguistic line of separation, and became 
 in 1871 the political frontier. Going northward, the 
 Vosgian crests supplied roughly a linguistic as well as 
 a political boundary. Among the people dwelling in 
 the valleys of the Doller, the Thur, the Lauch, and the 
 Fecht, the Alsatian dialect has always predominated, 
 but in the valley of the Weiss, a tributary of the 
 Fecht, and not far from Munster, there is a district 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 209 
 
 where, before the annexation of 1871, no German was 
 currently spoken, though here and there it might 
 be understood. Even German philologists formerly 
 admitted that the communes of Orbey, Le Bonhomme, 
 and Freland (now Urbach), dependent on La Poultroie, 
 as well as the little Baroche or Zell side valley, whose 
 houses are scattered below the castle of Hohneck, 
 were entirely Welsch. As I may have to use this 
 word Welsch again, it is as well, perhaps, to explain 
 that the Germans derive it from Gallicus, and apply 
 it in contemptuous fashion to folk of the Gallic race. 
 In the little district to which I have been referring, 
 the people differ from the more Germanic race located 
 in the plain. Pfister says that on market days at 
 Kaysersberg it was easy to distinguish the Welsch 
 mountain-folk from the people dwelling in the lower 
 wine-growing villages. 
 
 With the enclave which has just been mentioned 
 one may connect Aubure (Altweier) in the district of 
 Ribeauville (otherwise Rappoltsweiler). Aubure is a 
 composite locality, one part of it being Catholic and 
 the other Protestant. In the former French used to 
 be spoken exclusively, whilst in the latter the German 
 dialect predominated. Going farther north, the valley 
 of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines (Markirch) was divided 
 linguistically in similar fashion. Half of the popula- 
 tion of the town itself spoke French and the other 
 half German. This peculiarity may have arisen from 
 the fact that the left side of the valley formerly 
 belonged to the duchy of Lorraine and the other side 
 to the Alsatian lordship of Ribeaupierre (Rappolt- 
 stein) ; but it would be a mistake to regard this 
 particular instance as a general rule. French patois 
 has certainly prevailed in some lonely hamlets on the 
 Lorraine side of the valley, but on following the 
 
210 THE TRUE STORY O^F 
 
 Saint-Croix streamlet it will be found that nearly all 
 the localities are of the German-speaking variety 
 until at Livre (Leberau), on the same side, French 
 speech once more prevails. 
 
 The River Lievre drains the valley of Sainte- 
 Marie and joins the Giessen, which flows into the 111 
 to the north of Schlestadt. The upper valley of the 
 Giessen is (or was) linguistically French. Both lan- 
 guages were spoken at Breitenau, but French was the 
 speech of Fouday. In a secondary valley, north of 
 the Giessen, Steige was a Welsch village in spite of 
 its Germanic name, but, near at hand, Meisengott 
 favoured the German dialect. 
 
 In the frontier part of Alsace near France the 
 most extensive French-speaking district used to be 
 the upper valley of the Bruch, which formerly belonged 
 to the Vosges department. German geographers 
 claimed, however, that it was, by natural configura- 
 tion, a part of Alsace, and Bismarck adopted their 
 view. Nevertheless the towns of Saales and Schirmeck 
 and all the villages intervening between them were 
 absolutely Welsch. Hereabouts, in two secondary 
 valleys, is the so-called Ban de la Roche,* a district 
 of about eight villages, four of which belonged to the 
 Vosges department. These villages were exclusively 
 French, there being no Germanic element whatever in 
 their population. As a result of the labours of the 
 famous Pastor Oberlin these little places have long 
 been Protestant communities, and are indeed the only 
 French villages professing Protestantism in this part 
 of Alsace. Jer^mie Jacques Oberlin, the pastor's 
 eminent brother, one of the first scholars to recognize 
 the importance of dialects in connexion with philology, 
 made a special study of the French patois of the Ban 
 
 * See p. 35, ante. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 211 
 
 de la Roche. Natzwiller, in much the same district, 
 has retained, however, the Catholic faith and also the 
 Germanic dialect, this arising, probably, from the fact 
 that the commune was formerly a domain of the 
 Bishops of Strasburg. In some hamlets near Schir- 
 meck Salm, Quevelles, and Malplaquet Pfister noted 
 the presence of a Germanic Anabaptist population. 
 These places were little enclaves, so to say, in the 
 midst of a Gallic district. Below Schirmeck on the 
 Bruch, Pfister found that Wisch was quite French 
 but that Muhlbach was entirely German. Again, 
 Netzenbach was French. At Lutzelburg (more to the 
 north, in the canton of Molsheim) both languages 
 were spoken. Haslach was German and Steinbach 
 also ; but Russ, in the immediate neighbourhood, 
 was a French-speaking locality. 
 
 The examples already given will have shown how 
 impossible it would be to divide Alsace between 
 France and Germany should any such preposterous 
 idea ever enter the head of an insane politician in 
 accordance with strict linguistic principles. The 
 baffling problem which has confronted generations of 
 statesmen in the Balkan peninsula would be found on 
 a smaller scale in Alsace. In the Balkans, of course, 
 matters are complicated by the fact that not only 
 differences of race and language have to be considered, 
 but long - existing racial rivalry, antagonism, and 
 ambition also. Formerly such elements of contention 
 scarcely existed among the Alsatians proper, religious 
 differences being the only ones of any importance ; 
 but circumstances have changed under the German 
 domination of the last forty-seven years, which has 
 planted thousands of people from across the Rhine 
 on the lands taken from France. As for the Alsatians 
 themselves, whether they belong linguistically or 
 
212 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 racially to the Germanic group or the Gallic group, 
 very few indeed have wavered in their affection for 
 the land from which they were separated by force in 
 1871. 
 
 Let us now pass from Alsace to Lorraine, proceed- 
 ing from Netzenbach towards Mount Donon and then 
 entering the Lotharingian district of Dabo. The little 
 River Zorn flows through the Vosgian gorges in a 
 region where only the Alsatian dialect is heard. All 
 the villages on the Bievre are linguistically Germanic 
 ones. But the upper valleys of both the Red and the 
 White Sarre are French. Pfister found that German 
 was not even understood either at Aboeschwiller, 
 Turquestein or Lorquin the birthplace of the famous 
 explorer Crevaux. After the two Sarres have met, 
 their waters flow in unison through territory which 
 linguistically is largely French. Pfister noted that 
 language at Nitting, Hermelange, Imling, and Bebing. 
 At Sarrebourg both French and German were spoken. 
 In the canton of Fenestrange German prevailed, but 
 even here there were two French-speaking communes 
 Angviller and Bisping. The old Lorrainer districts 
 of Dieuze, Delme, Vic, and Chateau-Salins never used 
 any other language than French, to which, of course, 
 the old patois of Lorraine belongs. More to the north, 
 however, eleven German-speaking and eight French- 
 speaking localities were found in the district of 
 Albestroff. A similar state of affairs existed in the 
 annexed portion of the former Moselle department. 
 The people dwelling near the so-called French Nied 
 spoke French, while those near the German Nied 
 used both languages, which practice existed also in the 
 districts of Thionville, Briey, and Longwy. 
 
 Many of the geographical names applied to rivers, 
 towns, villages, etc., in Alsace-Lorraine are un- 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 213 
 
 doubtedly of Celtic origin. The very name of the 
 river of which the Germans are so inordinately proud 
 the Rhine is Celtic, signifying a mass of water. 
 The name of the Rhone has the same origin, and 
 there is, by the way, a streamlet called the Rhone 
 south-west of Metz. The Orne, a tributary of the 
 Meuse, bears, like the larger Orne in Normandy, a 
 name of Celtic derivation. The Meuse (Mosa) and the 
 Moselle (Mosella) owe their appellations to the same 
 source. The Bievre takes its name from bebros, which 
 signified beaver in Gallic speech. 
 
 Verdun (Virodunum) and Liverdun (Liverdunum) 
 were, as their names attest, strong places of the Celts. 
 The Romans, it will be remembered, first called Metz 
 Divodurum, " the fortress of the gods," after its 
 Celtic name. Mouzon was known in Roman times as 
 Mosomagus, " the field of the Meuse." Another 
 example of the terminal magus is supplied by the 
 Alsatian town of Brumath, originally Brigamagus. 
 " Briga," like " dun," signified fortress, and thus we 
 have Vindobriga (the fortress of Vindos), now the 
 village of Vandceuvre near Nancy, and Danobriga 
 (the fortress of Danos), now Denoeuvre near Baccarat. 
 From condate, a confluence, comes Conde ; from 
 Novientum is derived Noveant in Lorraine, besides 
 all the many Nogents scattered throughout France. 
 Tullum was the original name of Toul, as well as of 
 Tulle in the Limousin. Even Saletio, the early name 
 of Seltz, is held to be of Celtic origin. The terminal 
 acus occurred in many of the Gallo-Roman place- 
 names of Alsace-Lorraine, Nancy, for instance, being 
 Nantiacus, the property of Nantius. Roman genti- 
 litial forms appear in many of the older names, but 
 sometimes a pure Celtic word sufficed, as in the 
 case of nant, brave, warlike ; whence one derives 
 
214 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 both Nant-le-Grand and Nant-le-Petit on the 
 Meuse. 
 
 Several years ago a German writer named Ludwig 
 Bossier tried to prove that the place-names of Alsace- 
 Lorraine were Urdeutsch, that is, original or primitive 
 German ; but it is distinctly a question whether the 
 many more or less Germanic appellations existing 
 before the war of 1870-71 it is not worth while 
 troubling about those devised since then by the 
 German authorities were really original names or 
 whether they were merely superposed in such wise as 
 to cover and conceal earlier Celtic or Roman ones. 
 It may be accepted that the Celtic substratum, so to 
 say, of the Alsatian people was overspread with Latin 
 and German strata. Something similar would seem 
 to have occurred with respect to place-names. 
 
 Pfister points out that the rock bearing the town 
 of Alt-Breisach in Baden stood on the left or Alsatian 
 side of the Rhine before that river changed its course, 
 and that the Romans called it Mons Brisiacus, a 
 name evidently derived from the Celtic. It is, in 
 Pfister's opinion, an error to think that the Germaniza- 
 tion of Alsace dates from the time of Ariovistus,* and 
 that all the Celts were then thrown back to the 
 Vosges, where they are represented by the so-called 
 Welsch of nowadays. Ariovistus was only fourteen 
 years in the region ; but, on the other hand, the 
 Tribocci certainly remained in Northern Alsace, and 
 the Mediomatrici of that region were at last compelled 
 to withdraw to the west of the Vosges. Now the 
 Romans succeeded in some matters in which other 
 nations have failed. They induced the peoples whom 
 they subdued to accept and adopt their language. 
 There is evidence that Latin became extensively 
 
 * See p. 57 et sc^., ante. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 215 
 
 known in Alsace-Lorraine, and that, indeed, from 
 A.D. 100 to A.D. 350 or thereabouts it was the dominant, 
 though one cannot say the exclusive, language of the 
 country. There are numerous localities whose names 
 are derived directly from Latin. This appears par- 
 ticularly in the case of places called after particular 
 kinds of trees. Aulnois-sur-Seille derives its name 
 from alnetum, a spot planted with alders ; Malroy 
 comes from malaretum, an apple orchard ; the various 
 Norroys in Lorraine derived their appellation from 
 nogaretum, being spots where walnuts abounded. 
 Again, Preny and Pournoy originated in prunidum ; 
 the different localities called Bouxieres and also 
 Bouxwiller were wooded places, bussarice. Plantires 
 near Metz was so called from plantarice, whilst Cham- 
 bieres, now the site of the Metz cemetery, took its 
 name from canabarice being anciently a place where 
 hemp was grown. Boulay, called by the Germans 
 Bolchen, is a corruption of betuletum, the land being 
 planted with birches. The origin of such names as 
 Fontenoy and Fontoy is obvious. So is that of 
 Porcelette (or Porselt), near Saint- Avoid, though it 
 may be unpleasant to have one's village, perhaps 
 one's native spot, called the pigsty or piggery. 
 
 The terminals ville, wihr, and wilier (Germanized 
 as weiler) which are observed in so many place-names 
 of Alsace-Lorraine are all corruptions of the Latin 
 suffixes villare and villa. Such names as Magny and 
 Mesnils are derived from mansio and mansionile ; 
 Maizeroy, Maizery, and Mezieres come from maceries. 
 Lungenfeld is a German distortion of longavilla ; 
 Kestenholz a mere translation of castanetum. Colmar 
 is an abbreviated adaptation of columbarium ; whilst 
 Zabern, which at first sight might appear to be a 
 peculiarly German name, is but a cloak thrown over 
 
216 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the original tabernce of the Roman legions. There is 
 a place known as Domfessel in the vicinity of Saar- 
 union. It was originally Domus vassalorum. Keskastel, 
 in the same district, was Ccesaris castellum ; whilst 
 Singrist, in the neighbourhood of Marmoutier, was 
 Signwn Christi, dating evidently from the Christian 
 era. In the earlier period of the Roman rule in 
 Alsace, Strasburg bore the name of Argentoratum. 
 The first time its modern name appears that is, in 
 Gregory of Tours, sixth century it takes the form of 
 Strateburgum. A somewhat later writer says that 
 this designation was only employed by the vulgar. 
 However that may be, Strata-burgus the fortress on 
 the road (from Germany to Gaul) was, as Pfister 
 points out, as good Latin as Augusto-burgus, the 
 Roman name of Augsburg. In the case of the 
 Alsatian capital, the German spelling, Strassburg, 
 fully conveys the meaning of the earlier Latin appella- 
 tion. 
 
 The foregoing summary will have shown that the 
 Roman like the Celtic dominion left its mark on the 
 place-names of Alsace-Lorraine, in such wise as to 
 dispose largely of the Urdeutsch theories of Herr 
 Ludwig Bossier. In the fourth century of our era, 
 however, the German idiom began to spread through 
 the region. Rome, besides taking many German 
 barbarians into her service, settled many colonists, 
 Iceti, in vacant territories. I showed in a previous 
 chapter that the many Germanic invasions of the 
 fourth century were repulsed, but it may be assumed 
 that a certain number of the invaders often remained 
 in a more or less subject state on the western side of 
 the Rhine, and that in this wise the Germanic element 
 increased, until in the sixth century it became the 
 largest. Nevertheless a Latinized population survived 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 217 
 
 in the Vosgian parts of Alsace, where its speech 
 became transformed into the romanesque dialect 
 which is still current there. Here are a few proverbs 
 of this region with their equivalents in French : 
 
 Pu qu' lo lou e, pu qu'il vu evou (Plus le loup a, plus il veut avoir). 
 
 Faire lo dchin pou avou 1'ouse (Faire le chien pour avoir 1'os). 
 
 Quo lo pouo a grae il caisse Id ran (Quand le pore est gras il casse le ran 
 
 (etable) ). 
 II lieie lo dale que n'e mi ma (II lie le doigt qui n'a pas mal). 
 
 Here is another specimen of the Vosgian vernacular. 
 It shows a man complaining of the weather : 
 
 Que to ! j'ai tu aujeduye moyi jusqu'es osse. J'ai tu pou bochi ; j'voyezor 
 bie enne nouache to nar, ma j'creyezo que ce n' serd rie, et qu' lo gran vo lo 
 vir6 pu Ion. Ma il o crov6 quan i n'etaizor pu to pou r'veni. J'a bi& mettu 
 du chesse seu mi, ma ce n'eimpechezo mi qu' j'a tu moyi bi6-u a poi. 
 
 (Quel temps ! J'ai et6 aujourd'hui mouil!6 jusqu'aux os. J'ai ete pour 
 becher, je voyais bien un nuage tout noir, mais je croyais que ce ne serait 
 rien, et que le grand vent le pousserait plus loin. Mais il est erevd, quand il 
 n'etait plus temps de revenir. J'ai bien mis deux sacs sur moi, mais 9a 
 n'empechait pas que j'ai etc mouilld bien a point.) 
 
 Further, here is a child's song, formerly sung in 
 the Ban de la Roche,* annexed by the Germans and 
 called by them Steintal. This specimen shows even 
 a closer resemblance to ordinary French : 
 
 
 Foare, foare mo dchva, 
 Pou demain al!6 au sa ; 
 Foare, foare mo polain, 
 Pou d' main alle au bian pan ! 
 Lo pai, lo pai, lo trot, lo trot, 
 Lo gailop, Lo gailop ! 
 
 (Ferre, ferre mon cheval, 
 Pour aller demain au sel ; 
 Ferre, ferre inon poulain, 
 Pour aller demain au blanc pain ! 
 Le pas, le pas, le trot, le trot, 
 Le galop, le galop !) 
 
 A writer named Fallot, who in 1828 produced at 
 Montbeliard a little book on the patois of Franche- 
 
 * See p. 36, ante, 
 
218 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Comte*, Lorraine, and Alsace, showing the great 
 similarity between them, pointed out that a large 
 number of the words used by the peasantry differed 
 essentially from Latin, French, and German. As the 
 present volume is not a dictionary I will content 
 myself with quoting just a few of the examples which 
 Fallot gave : 
 
 Latin French German Patois 
 
 Anas Canard Ente Bourrai 
 
 Hortus Jardin Garten Quetchi 
 
 Templum Eglise Kirch Motie 
 
 Cimex Punaise Wantze Teufion 
 
 Whilst the Germanic speech was spreading in 
 Alsace, it also penetrated into parts of Lorraine. But 
 the stronghold of Metz, under whose walls the Celto- 
 Roman inhabitants sought protection, served as a 
 barrier against both the Tribocci and the Ripuarian 
 Franks. When in the fifth century Metz succumbed 
 beneath the onslaughts of Attila and the Huns the 
 flood-tide of the Germanic invasions had abated. In 
 496, by the so-called victory of Tolbiac, Clovis destroyed 
 the power of the Alemanni, and even imposed his 
 rule on the Ripuarians. Meantime, though Metz and 
 Toul were swayed by a Prankish chief they retained 
 their Gallo-Roman language. The patois of Metz 
 has always differed somewhat from the other dialects 
 of Lorraine, and I therefore append a few specimens. 
 The first is taken from a seventeenth-century trimazo 
 a spring-time song, such songs having been current 
 in Lorraine since druidical times : 
 
 J'a vu trabeun (beaucoup) de beis gueichons 
 Fliambet d'in coup pe let quenons (canons), 
 J'a vu zous (leurs) belles desalayes 
 Treus mois epres tot's consolayes. 
 trimazo ! 
 
 S'at (c'est) lo maye, 6 mi maye, 
 
 S'at lo jali mois de maye, 
 
 S'at lo trimazo ! 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 219 
 
 Here are the opening verses of a vintage song, 
 formerly familiar in the Pays Messin : 
 
 Queu pliaji (plaisir) d'etre en vendome (vendange), 
 
 Quand lo s'lat (soleil) dour (dore) les coteaux, 
 On e'en beille (donne), Dieu sait comme, 
 
 En oorant pe monts, pe vaux. 
 
 Les gueichons (garons) prach' (pres) des bacelles (filles) 
 Sont gueuilrets (guillerets) com' des mochats (fauvettes), 
 
 Aux peutes (laides) tot com' aux belles 
 Y font bet (battre) des enteurchats. 
 
 Finally the following comes from a comedy written 
 in the old patois of Metz and entitled " Lo Meriege 
 des Brauves " (" Le Mariage des Braves "). 
 
 Scene premire. Suzon, 6rangeant let chambe et 1'erazant (le balayant) ; 
 Charle, Joseph, en hebits de militares, lo preumin (le premier) eva 1'epaye 
 (1'epee) en bandoliere ; lo s'gond eva in sabe (sabre) de meme, et ch6quin 
 des mosteches et in ptiat beton e let main. 
 
 < Joseph. Boinjo, let bele afant, v' feyeus mou bei cheuz vos. 
 
 Suzon. Vat' servante. . . . Qu'as' qu'il y et po vat' service ? 
 
 Joseph. Je v'nans v' demandet e sopet et in boin lit. 
 
 CharU. Que j' vos priera d' bien baisnet (bassiner), s' let fat done bien 
 quand on at hade (fatigue). 
 
 Suzon. J'mattra, si v' volens, in pou d' seuq (sucre) dans les baisneure 
 (bassinoire), si s'let v' fat pliaji (plaisir). 
 
 Certain words, such as boin (bon), in (un), let (la), 
 ^ and et (a and a), remain the same in the different 
 Lorraine dialects. This is shown by the opening 
 stanza of an old Noel sung at Nancy and Epinal : 
 
 Enne (une) jeune baisselle (bacelle, bachelle) 
 
 De boin paran, 
 Que fut toujou pucelle 
 
 En sa viquant, 
 
 Dehant in jou 
 
 See patenot (paten6tres) et set chambe, 
 Vit in eindg (ange) deshante (descendre) 
 De let pai (la part) de not Cheignou (Seigneur). 
 
 With respect to place-names, changes occurred in 
 North-Eastern Lorraine in much the same way as they 
 occurred in Alsace, Amidst the many vicissitudes of 
 
220 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 early days such changes were bound to happen. In 
 Merovingian times vacant, abandoned, or confiscated 
 lands took the names of their new owners, to which 
 some such suffix as villare was often added. Yet the 
 Roman remains bricks, tiles, vases, medals, coins, and 
 so forth found on these spots tell of days long 
 previous to the Merovingian era. Such names as 
 Rambervillers, Badonviller, Gerbeviller, Gondreville, 
 and Remiremont come from Ramberti- villare, Bo- 
 donis- villare, Gerberti-villare, Gundulfi-villa, and Ro- 
 marici-mons. Bodon was a seventh-century Bishop 
 of Toul, Romaric is known to have founded the Abbey 
 of Remiremont about the same period. In none of 
 the five places I have enumerated has German ever 
 been the current idiom. If Rambert, Gerbert, and 
 the others were Franks they speedily accommodated 
 themselves to the vernacular of their Gallo-Roman 
 hinds and neighbours. 
 
 In the part of Lorraine most peopled by Germanic 
 folk villare was usually changed into wihr, as was often 
 the case also in Alsace., Other suffixes introduced by 
 the invaders were heim (house), dorf and troff (village), 
 and ingen, an equivalent of the Celtic acus. Most of 
 the names ending in ingen will be found in German 
 Lorraine, where the French in some instances after- 
 wards altered it to ange, as in the case of Finstingen, 
 Fenestrange. In one of the oldest documents respect- 
 ing Alsace (673) one reads of Monesensisheim and 
 Onenheim, names which subsequently underwent still 
 further Germanization, becoming Munzenheim and 
 Ohnenheim. Those examples indicate the kind of 
 process which occurred. 
 
 Christianity tended to alter many old place-names, 
 besides providing names for the new villages which 
 sprang up. A parish whose church or chapel was 
 
ALSACE-LO R R A I N E 221 
 
 dedicated to some particular saint often took his 
 name. That of Dannemarie (altered by the Germans 
 to Dammerkirch) comes from Donna Maria. More- 
 over, sanctus (sankt, saint) gradually replaced domnus. 
 Briefly, in the sixth century German and Latin com- 
 peted for pre-eminence, the latter, however, taking in 
 an increasing degree the romane form. 
 
 Apart from the early irruptions, the wars of more 
 modern times brought many Germans into Alsace. 
 Some were refugees fleeing from religious struggles. 
 In the sixteenth century, moreover, a number of 
 Saxon colonists were attracted to the region by the 
 silver-mines of Sainte-Marie. Other miners came on 
 various occasions in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries both to Sainte-Marie and Sainte-Croix. At 
 an earlier date, however, in the vicinity of Schirmeck 
 there was an influx of French Switzers from Porrentruy 
 and Delemont. 
 
 There are considerable differences between the 
 Germanic dialects of Alsace. In the Sundgau the 
 vernacular is akin to the German of the neighbouring 
 parts of Switzerland. In the north the idiom 
 resembles that of the Palatinate. The people of 
 Colmar speak differently from those of Strasburg. 
 In fact different pronunciations will be found in 
 neighbouring communes, and corrupt words derived 
 from French are of frequent occurrence. Before 
 the annexation of 1871 the dialects of some dis- 
 tricts were almost incomprehensible to the Badeners 
 dwelling just across the Rhine. Now and again, 
 by fits and starts, the Government of the old regime 
 wished to impose the French language on the people, 
 but it never did anything to encourage a knowledge 
 of it. Pfister declares that not a word of French was 
 taught in the schools of Alsace and the Germanic part 
 
222 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 of Lorraine until the Revolution of 1789. The chil- 
 dren, says he, did not even learn to use Roman 
 letters when writing. In the signatures which figure 
 in the old registers, German Gothic is invariably 
 employed. The knowledge of French was long con- 
 fined to the upper classes and to the townsfolk of 
 the middle class. They did not acquire it, however, 
 at the University of Strasburg, for all the teaching 
 there was in Latin. They picked it up chiefly by 
 journeys through France, sojourns in Paris, or inter- 
 course with French functionaries and military folk. 
 At the time of the Revolution the National Conven- 
 tion was desirous of remedying this state of affairs, 
 and even voted a credit of 600,000 francs to that 
 effect. But the wars, the disorderly state of the 
 country, the general unrest, prevented the realization 
 of such a project, and it was only at the time of 
 Lezay-Marnezia's prefectship,* and again during 
 Louis Philippe's reign that the Alsatian schools under- 
 went real improvements. 
 
 Since 1871 the German rulers have done their 
 utmost to extirpate the French language. They 
 speedily made their own speech obligatory for all 
 public bodies. In 1888 they imposed it on the petty 
 law-courts of the so-called Welsch districts. They 
 even forbade parents to give French Christian names 
 to their children. Ren6 had been a very popular 
 name in the annexed part of Lorraine it recalled the 
 duke who defeated Charles the Rash of Burgundy 
 but the Germans would not suffer its bestowal on 
 any infant. Some little trouble ensued, but finally 
 the Latin form Renatus was accepted. 
 
 Not a word of French has been taught in the 
 elementary schools of Alsace since the annexation. 
 
 * See p. 119, ante. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 223 
 
 In that connexion I remember the refrain of a song, 
 supposed to be sung by an old Alsatian schoolmaster : 
 
 La patrouille allemande passe, 
 
 Baissez la voix, mes chers petits, 
 
 Parler fran^ais n'est pins pennis 
 Aux petits enfanta de F Alsace ! 
 
 Even the use of such words as merci, bonjour, and 
 mademoiselle (when addressing a school-teacher) was 
 forbidden the village children. In the secondary 
 schools a little French was allowed, but the hours 
 given to its study were as far as possible curtailed. 
 The efforts to banish the French language were 
 particularly great in the Welsch districts, notably 
 those of Lorraine such as Chateau-Salins, whose 
 French race was subjected to the most odious Ger- 
 manization. Metz, moreover, was largely transformed 
 by the influx of thousands of Teutons, who imposed 
 their guttural speech upon its population. 
 
 Although ethnology and language help one to 
 determine nationality, they can only be relied upon 
 within reasonable limits. Let nobody imagine that 
 identity of idiom necessarily implies identity of 
 opinions, sentiments, or aspirations. Not only among 
 the so-called Welsch of Alsace, but also among the 
 Germanic section of the people, the neighbouring 
 Germans^ were always unpopular. They were con- 
 temptuously designated as Schwabs, and there were 
 many Alsatian legends and tales turning them to 
 ridicule. One may well ask, also, what distinguished 
 men were ever given by Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. 
 At long intervals in the old days a soldier, a scholar 
 of some degree of eminence, arose, to whom Germany 
 might lay claim, though the former was usually a 
 mere soldier of fortune ready to serve the master who 
 paid him best, and the latter, a writer who did not 
 
224 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 pen his treatises in a tongue suitable for horses as, I 
 think, Francis I once put it but in Latin, the then 
 universal language of the learned. On the other 
 hand the distinguished men given by Alsace and 
 Lorraine to France have been strikingly numerous. I 
 have mentioned several in the course of these pages, 
 It would take me too long to compile a complete list, 
 and I should not have sufficient space to include it in 
 this volume, but here is a partial one jotted down 
 au courant de la plume : 
 
 Soldiers Marshals and Generals : Fabert, Ney, Victor, Custines, Oudinot, 
 Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, Gerard, Kellermann, Kleber, Lefebvre, Lobau, Molitor, 
 Duroc, Lasalle, Rapp, Drouot, Scherer, Thiebault, Chavert, Schramm, 
 Exelmans, Richepanse, Uhrich, Paixhans, Sigisbert Hugo,* Margueritte, 
 Poncelet, De Reiset, Virgile Schneider, Haxo, Jacqueminot, Houchard, 
 Lallemand, Courtot, Eble, D'Andlau, Athalin, Vescot, Barbier, Bechot, 
 Braun, Conrad, Denzel, Gelb, Klinger, Klcecker, Menjaud, Reibell, De 
 Reinach, Span, Scherb, Wehrl6, Freytag, Scholt, several Berckheims, 
 Dettlingens, Montjoyes, Rosens, Wurmsers,t and Waldners. Also the Gayets, 
 intendants generaux des armees, Morel and the Lorentzes, father and eon, 
 chirurgiens en chef des armees, and Wolf Wagner, the daring guerilla-leader in 
 the Vosges in 1814. A hundred others might be added to the foregoing. 
 
 The names of two admirals also occur to me : Bruat, who commanded in 
 the Black Sea during the Crimean War, and De Rigny, who commanded the 
 French squadron at Navarino. 
 
 Statesmen, diplomatists, politicians, high functionaries, etc. : Jules Ferry, 
 Raymond Poincare, President of the Republic, Baron Louis, the Gerards, 
 the Dietrichs, Bouchotte, Count Roederer, Marbois, Merlin de Thionville, 
 Boulay de la Meurthe, Thouvenel, Buffet, Eugene Schneider, Ktiss, some of 
 the Montjoyes and Rosens, Schirmer, Keller, the Kcechlins, Scheurer-Kestner, 
 Marechal, Edmond Valentin, Schneegans, Ketle, Bamberger, Humbert, 
 Grosjean, and many others. 
 
 Ecclesiastics : Cardinal Mathieu, Cardinal Louis (not Edouard) de Rohan, 
 De Lenoncourt (Bishop of Metz),J Gobel (the " constitutional " Bishop of 
 Paris), Pastor Oberlin the philanthropist, Abbe Gregoire, Abb6 Wetterle, 
 etc. 
 
 Scientists : Jules-Henri, I^eon and Lucien Poincare, Bartholdi, Barrel, 
 Crevaux, Pilatre de Rozier, Maurice Levy, Mathieu de Dombasle, Pariset, 
 
 * His son Victor Hugo was born at Besa^on, but the family belonged 
 to the Xanthois district of Lorraine, between Remiremont and Pont-Saint- 
 Victor. 
 
 j- Apart from the one, a native of Strasburg, who entered the Austrian 
 service and was defeated by Napoleon at Castiglione. 
 
 J Ke promoted the union of Metz with France in 1552. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 225 
 
 Sonnini, several Dollfuses, etc. Pasteur was at one time prominently connected 
 with the University of Strasburg. 
 
 Writers and Scholars : J. Le Duchat, the brothers Lacretelle, Saint- 
 Lambert, Gilbert, Grimoard, Arbois de Jurainville, Xavier Marmier, Edmond 
 About, Andre Theuriet, Erckmann-Chatrian, Maimbourg, F. B. Hoffmann, 
 J. J. Oberlin, Jean Mace, P. J. Stahl, J. J. Weiss, Scherer, Nefftzer, Siebecker, 
 Chevalier de Boufflers, J. G. Eckhard, the Engelhardts, Jung, Renouard de 
 Bussiere, Andrieu, Arnold, the Pfisters, Maurice Barres, Louis Ratisbonne, 
 Paul Verlaine, Ardouin-Dumazet, Buchoz, the Ancillons, Alfred Mezieres, 
 Pixerecourt, Eugene de Mirecourt, Mme. de Graffigny, Mme. Aimable Tastu, 
 etc. Edmond de Goncourt, moreover, was born at Nancy. 
 
 Artists, -including painters, sculptors, engravers, musicians, etc. : Claude 
 Lorrain, Clodion, Ligier-Richier, Jacques Callot, Sebastien Leclerc, Baron 
 Gerard,* Isabey, Bastien-Lepage, Henner, the Drouins, Bartholdi, the Drol- 
 lings, Jean Lamour, Leprince, Adolphe Yvon, the four Gu6rins, Gustave Dore, 
 Nocret, Theodore Jung, Sigisbert Adam, Chassel, the Dietterlins, Corti, 
 Bugard, Henriet, the Levraults, Bauer, Spierre, F. Dauphin, Jundt, Grand- 
 ville, Hansi, Legrand, Jacquot, Marechal, Ambroise Thomas, Monvel and 
 his daughter Mile. Mars, Mme. Arnould-Plessy, etc. 
 
 Although those lists are very rough and imperfect 
 they will at least give some idea of what Alsace and 
 Lorraine have contributed to France's fame and 
 culture. Some of the old Lorrainer dukes, sprung 
 from the House of France, were able as well as valiant 
 princes. The Guises, who, whatever their policy may 
 have been, were remarkable scions of the ducal line, 
 belong essentially to French history. Many of the 
 other nobility whom I have not mentioned were men 
 of distinction, sometimes of high merit. The four 
 grands chevaux of Lorraine the Haraucourts, the 
 Lenoncourts, the Du Chatelets, and the Lignevilles 
 (the last-named house alone now existing) were not 
 merely grands seigneurs, but often also skilful captains 
 and expert counsellors. The same may be said of 
 the so-called petits chevaux, among whom, besides 
 Bassompierre and the Haussonvilles, whom I have 
 mentioned, there were some of the Choiseuls, the 
 Hunolsteins, the Lambertyes, the Oberkirchs, the 
 
 * Though born at Rome he was a Lorrainer. A similar remark applies 
 to others in the above lists. Blood comei before birthplace. 
 
226 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Nettancourts, the Beauvaus and the Rougemonts. 
 Men eminent in industry were numerous in both 
 provinces. The artisans were often famed for their 
 work, and one and all, whatever their station or 
 calling, have constituted an essential part of the 
 great heritage of France, in which Germany can 
 claim no share. 
 
 As I have said before, both Lorrainers and Alsatians 
 long loved their independence. But when, situated 
 as they were between two strong Powers, it became a 
 question of uniting themselves with one or the other, 
 they preferred France to Germany. Certainly the old 
 Bourbon regime was a bad one, but in common with 
 all the rest of France for it was the same throughout 
 the country Alsace and Lorraine endured it without 
 seeking separation. When the great Revolution came 
 and brought invasion in its train, none were more 
 eager to throw back the aggressors from across the 
 Rhine. The " lost brothers," as the Germans called 
 them, were by no means anxious to join their reputed 
 kindred. As I shall show in my next chapter the 
 provinces were of precisely the same mind in 1870-71, 
 and a cry of grief and protest went up when the evil 
 day of annexation dawned. The majority were con- 
 strained by circumstances to remain and become 
 German subjects, but thousands fled and have been 
 fleeing ever since, as I shall ^presently establish. 
 Never, indeed, has there been a cessation of the 
 exodus to escape the odious Prussian rule. Even the 
 storks, those familiars of the old Alsatian villages, 
 come thither, it is said, in far smaller numbers than 
 they used to do. It was held in the long ago that 
 these birds would only dwell in lands of freedom. At 
 all events those which come to Alsace in the fair 
 reason nowadays, seem to distinguish between the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 227 
 
 genuine old inhabitants and the many settlers imported 
 from across the Rhine and planted throughout the 
 province. One might think these feathered visitors 
 possessed of sufficient sagacity to discriminate between 
 liberty's friends and her open or covert enemies. 
 
VIII 
 THE WAR OF 187O-71 
 
 A Glance at the Causes of the Struggle : The first French Defeats 
 Wissembourg, Worth, Forbach : The Occupation of Nancy : The 
 Battles near Metz : The March on Sedan : General Pajol and Napo- 
 leon III : The Siege of Strasburg : Edmond Valentin's remarkable 
 Adventures : German Exactions at Strasburg : The Sieges of Phah- 
 bourg, Schlestadt, Neuf-Brisach, Verdun, Metz, Longwy, Bitche, and 
 Belfort : German Excesses and Oppression in Alsace-Lorraine : The 
 Preliminaries of Peace : Protests of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 
 IN former books of mine I discussed the causes of the 
 war which broke out between France and Germany in 
 1870 * ; and desiring in the present volume to confine 
 myself as much as possible to Alsace and Lorraine, I 
 do not propose to deal with general matters at any 
 length. The reader may be reminded, however, that 
 both Bismarck and Napoleon III w r ere bent upon 
 war. The former, who already contemplated the 
 creation of a new r German Empire for Prussia's benefit, 
 realized that this would only be possible if the power 
 of France were diminished, and the better to effect 
 that purpose he resolved from the very outset to 
 deprive the French of their strip of frontier on the 
 Bhine by annexing the province of Alsace. The 
 seizure of a part of Lorraine w r as an after-thought 
 inspired by the great successes of the German armies. 
 In September 1870, after Sedan, but whilst Bazaine 
 was still holding out at Metz, Bismarck told Jules 
 Favre, the Foreign Minister of the National Defence, 
 
 * See " The Court of th Tuileries, 1852-1870 " ; " My Days of Adventure : 
 the Fall of France, 1870-71 " ; and " Republican Franca, 1870-1912." 
 
 228 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 229 
 
 that the price of peace at that moment would be Alsace 
 and an indemnity of two milliards of francs, but that 
 if the war were prolonged he should also demand a 
 part of Lorraine and a much larger indemnity. Little 
 if anything was said about Lorraine at the outset of 
 the w r ar, but the question of annexing Alsace at once 
 came to the front in Germany. As I have previously 
 stated, geographers and others had prepared the way 
 for such a demand, but, curiously enough, though the 
 Prussian Press supported it, far more eagerness on the 
 subject was displayed in Southern Germany Baden, 
 Wiirttemberg and Bavaria where quite a clamour 
 arose in favour of annexation. 
 
 I have said that Napoleon III was, like Bismarck, 
 bent on war. Elsewhere I have explained that 
 dynastic considerations in view of the Republican 
 propaganda carried on in France, resentment on 
 account of the diplomatic victories which Bismarck 
 had gained over him, and, quite reasonably, appre- 
 hension inspired by the excessive aggrandizement of 
 Prussia, conjointly inclined the Emperor to commit 
 his fortunes to the arbitrament of the sword. His 
 home policy had been ratified by a plebiscitum not 
 long previously, and his secret correspondence with 
 certain German princes and statesmen since the war 
 of 1866, which had so largely modified the German 
 map, led him to think that although Baden might 
 support Prussia, neither Bavaria, nor Wiirttemberg, 
 nor Hesse would do so. Saxony, moreover, might 
 well be on his side. The correspondence on which 
 Napoleon based those hopes was discovered at the 
 chateau of Ceray* during the war, and utilized by 
 Bismarck to compel the implicated governments to 
 
 * The country residence of Eugene Rouher, the statesman whom the 
 Emperor most trusted. 
 
230 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 assent to the foundation of an empire for Prussia's 
 benefit. But Napoleon also relied on the support of 
 Austria and Italy. The former had absolutely 
 entered into a covenant with him, but she was not 
 ready, and it was arranged that the war should only 
 take place in 1871. Some Hungarian politicians 
 betrayed everything to Bismarck, who, resolving that 
 he would not wait for Napoleon's convenience, forced 
 his hand by means of the Hohenzollern candidature 
 to the Spanish throne. Thus events were precipitated. 
 Forgery and the suppression of facts brought Bavaria 
 and Wurttemberg to the side of Prussia, the offer of 
 papal Rome to Italy prevented her intervention, 
 Austria with the Hungarians supporting the Prussian 
 cause could do nothing, and so, in July 1870, came 
 the war which Napoleon and the Archduke Albert 
 had planned for the ensuing spring. 
 
 There were undoubtedly moments when the Em- 
 peror felt that he was entering upon a very hazardous 
 course, but he was largely influenced by a military 
 coterie which, whilst full of patriotism, was deplorably 
 ignorant of the deficiencies of the French army, and 
 the superiority in many respects of its destined 
 antagonists. The country generally did not desire 
 war. This is shown by the large number of telegrams 
 in which prefects and other provincial functionaries 
 gave expression to the hopes and opinions of the 
 people inhabiting their respective departments. A 
 strong desire for the preservation of peace was ex- 
 pressed in almost every instance, but, as I indicated 
 in the first chapter of this volume, Bismarck so 
 managed affairs that only by absolute subservience 
 to Prussia could France have avoided the great 
 struggle. 
 
 Napoleon assumed the command of his armies, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 231 
 
 and main head-quarters being established at Metz, he 
 arrived there on July 27. Six days later there was a 
 little engagement at Saarbriicken, where the Prussians 
 were attacked by some of the troops commanded by 
 General Frossard, who had previously been governor 
 to the young Imperial Prince. It was at the Saar- 
 briicken affair that this lad received the so-called 
 Baptism of Fire. Next, the Prussian Army com- 
 manded by the Crown Prince (afterwards Emperor) 
 Frederick crossed the Lauter, and on August 4 General 
 Abel Douay, who had some 9000 men with him, was 
 surprised at Wissembourg by two Prussian Army 
 Corps and a large Bavarian contingent. Douay's 
 Turcos put up a gallant fight, but were hopelessly 
 outnumbered. Douay himself was killed in the en- 
 gagement, and Pelle, who commanded the Turcos, 
 took his place, and placing the colours in the centre 
 of his column succeeded in retreating in good order 
 upon Soultz. The French had suffered severe losses, 
 but they left only one gun in the enemy's hands. It 
 appears that the sub-prefect of Wissembourg sent a 
 warning to Marshal MacMahon at the very outset of 
 the affair, but it was impossible to dispatch assistance 
 to Douay in time to prevent a defeat. 
 
 Two days later, the 6th, MacMahon himself was 
 attacked by the victorious Prussians, whom he had not 
 expected to encounter before August 8. He had 
 requested that an army corps under the orders of 
 General de Failly, a former aide-de-camp of the 
 Emperor's, might be placed at his disposal, and he 
 expected its arrival. It has been stated that de 
 Failly was instructed to move on Lembach near Worth, 
 but by some mistake went towards Lemberg near 
 Bitche. On the day of the battle he certainly was near 
 Bitche, but no attempt was made to telegraph to him 
 
232 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 there, and only by a chance telegram sent by a railway 
 stationmaster did he learn, too late, of the desperate 
 straits in which the Marshal found himself. One of 
 de Failly's divisions (commanded by Guyot de Lespart) 
 reached Niederbronn merely in time to assist in 
 covering to some extent the retreat of MacMahon's 
 forces. That was after the valiant but unavailing 
 charge of the Cuirassiers at Morsbronn. The enemy 
 paid a stiff price for his victory, losing 489 officers and 
 over 10,000 men in killed and wounded, the losses 
 of the French, who were grievously outnumbered, 
 amounting to about 6000. Unfortunately, in the 
 debacle with which the battle ended, the Germans took 
 9000 prisoners. Some 2500 fugitives of the 5th 
 Corps made their way to Bitche, others threw them- 
 selves into Phalsbourg, whilst others managed to reach 
 Strasburg. Among the last was a detachment of 
 naval men under Rear- Admiral Exelmans and Captain 
 Dupetit-Thouars. At a later period of the war the 
 navy contributed many officers and men to the French 
 armies, but the contingent under Exelmans had been 
 provided in view of the contemplated passage of the 
 Rhine by MacMahon's forces. 
 
 On the day of the Marshal's unfortunate reverse 
 Frossard's troops also were defeated at Forbach. 
 Bazaine was then at Metz or in its vicinity with the 
 bulk of the French army, but in vain did Frossard 
 telegraph to him for help. Not a man was dispatched. 
 It must be said that great jealousy prevailed among 
 some of the French commanders of the time. When, 
 directly war was declared, Generals de Failly and 
 Frossard received important commands, it was com- 
 monly said that they owed their appointments solely 
 to the fact that they were favourites of the Emperor, 
 and in order that each might have an opportunity to 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 233 
 
 win the baton of a Marshal of France. De Failly was 
 undoubtedly a better courtier than commander, but 
 Frossard was really possessed of military ability. 
 Bazaine, however, arrogant, churlish, and grasping, 
 was never inclined to propitiate the fortunes of others. 
 " Let hirn win his baton himself ! " he growled when 
 he received Frossard's entreaty for assistance. 
 
 The Germans pressed onward. They occupied 
 Forbach, Haguenau, Sarreguemines, and Saint- Avoid. 
 There was extreme agitation in Paris. The Republi- 
 can party demanded that the Emperor should surren- 
 der the chief command to Bazaine, in whom, despite 
 his Mexican record, they foolishly placed their trust. 
 Napoleon had to give way and Bazaine assumed sole 
 control of the so-called Army of the Rhine. But 
 matters went from bad to worse. On August 9 
 Phalsbourg was invested and the little fort of La 
 Petite-Pierre, now called Liitzelstein, evacuated. On 
 the 10th the Germans gathered round Strasburg, and 
 two days later the enemy entered Nancy, which apart 
 from its virtually untrained National Guards had no 
 garrison or means of resistance at its disposal. Much 
 was made of this incident at the time. The capital 
 of Lorraine had surrendered to six Uhlans, it was said. 
 It is true that a few of the Prussian scouting cavalry 
 rode into the town to inspect it, but this happened 
 after the municipality, left defenceless by the military 
 authorities, had agreed to surrender to a large force 
 in the immediate neighbourhood. Such odium as 
 attached to this unfortunate episode should have 
 fallen by rights on the army leaders and not on the 
 unlucky inhabitants. The National Guards were 
 quite ready to do their duty, but Nancy, then abso- 
 lutely an open town, was not given a chance to prove 
 her mettle. 
 
234 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 At this time the Bavarian forces were streaming 
 through the undefended passes of the Vosges. Mac- 
 Mahon had fallen hack on Chalons, where the rem- 
 nants of the troops which had fought under him at 
 Worth were reinforced, partly by regulars but also 
 partly by raw Mobile Guards on whom little reliance 
 could be placed. Meanwhile, a great struggle began 
 in the vicinity of Metz. On August 14, 16, and 18 
 were fought the desperate battles on which the respec- 
 tive combatants bestowed the diverse names of 
 Borny, Courcelles, Panges, Vionville, Mars-la-Tour, 
 Gravelotte, Rezonville, and Saint-Privat. In this 
 series of memorable engagements the French, under 
 the supreme command of Bazaine, were opposed both 
 by the army of the Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia 
 and that of his cousin Prince Frederick Charles. 
 There was much stubborn fighting with heavy losses 
 on both sides, and French and Germans alike must 
 be credited with many deeds of great gallantry. But 
 Bazaine was either a much less competent man than 
 was generally supposed, or else was wilfully foolish 
 and jealous of certain commanders under him. 
 
 As I wrote in " Republican France," " he was 
 largely responsible for the French failure at Rezonville 
 (otherwise Gravelotte) when he retreated before 
 inferior forces at a moment when he might have 
 crushed them a decisive blunder which influenced 
 the wiiole of the war. Again, at Saint-Privat he 
 abandoned Marshal Canrobert and the 6th Army Corps 
 to the 300 guns and 100,000 rifles of the Germans, 
 when, at a word from him, the whole French Imperial 
 Guard, with ten regiments of cavalry and a powerful 
 artillery force, might have hastened to Canrobert 's 
 support and modified the issue of the battle." In 
 the result Bazaine's army was driven back under 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 235 
 
 Metz, and the siege of that stronghold then virtually 
 began. 
 
 At a council held at Chalons, where Napoleon III 
 now found himself with MacMahon, it was at first 
 decided to retreat on Paris and cover the capital, but 
 General Count de Palikao, Minister of War, telegraphed 
 that if Bazaine were abandoned a Revolution would 
 break out in Paris. Thereupon it was resolved to try 
 to join Bazaine's army by going at first northward 
 and then descending upon Metz from that direction. 
 Thus began the memorable march which terminated 
 at Sedan. I have been perusing recently a rare 
 pamphlet which is a reprint of a letter addressed in 
 July 1871 to the "Moniteur Universel " by General 
 Count Pajol, who was senior aide-de-camp to Napoleon 
 at the time of the Sedan disaster.* A strictly honour- 
 able man, evincing no extreme partisan feelings, 
 Pajol states in this letter that the Emperor was in 110 
 w r ise responsible for the march on Sedan. He did not 
 in any degree weigh on MacMahon' s plans, he took no 
 initiative and offered no opposition to any of the 
 movements of the army, although (so Pajol had reason 
 to believe) he did not approve of all of them. Having 
 surrendered the chief command, however, he remained 
 merely a spectator of what ensued until, by his orders, 
 the white flag was at last hoisted at Sedan. He had 
 nothing whatever to do, says Pajol, " with the strate- 
 gical dispositions which took the army to Mouzon and 
 from Mouzon to Sedan. . . . The Marshal (Mac- 
 Mahon) was free to move whither he chose. The 
 Emperor was fatally included in the shipwreck of our 
 
 * " Lettre de M. le General Pajol sur la Bataille et la Capitulation de 
 Sedan," Paris, Typographic A. Pougin, 1871. The general was the son of 
 General Claude Pajol, who contributed powerfully to the success of the 
 French at Montereau in February 1814 the last but not the least of the 
 many victories achieved by the genius of Napoleon I. 
 
236 THE TRUE STORY OP 
 
 army and all he could do was to try to save the crew 
 of the vessel whose captain he no longer was. This he 
 did by giving orders at three o'clock (Sedan, Sep- 
 tember 1) to hoist the white flag. Half an hour later 
 it would have been hoisted by the order of one or 
 another general, but meanwhile thousands more of 
 our soldiers would have been killed." The position 
 was, indeed, a hopeless one at that moment. 
 
 Pajol pays a tribute to the Emperor's courage. 
 He rode about the field of battle exposed during five 
 hours to a cross-fire of shot and shell. After General de 
 Courson and Captain deTrecesson had been wounded 
 near him he ordered most of his escort to take cover and 
 was then attended only by Pajol, equerry Davilliers, 
 Dr. Baron Corvisart, and Captain d'Heudicourt, an 
 orderly who was unfortunately killed. I mention those 
 facts because it would be a great mistake to imagine 
 that Napoleon III was a coward. Moreover, whilst im- 
 puting to him much responsibility for the war, I quite 
 agree that he was not responsible for the fatal march 
 which ended so disastrously. That desperate step 
 was inspired by the Council of Regency in Paris 
 dominated by fear of a Revolution. 
 
 There are two other matters which I may mention 
 here one, to which I referred in my first chapter, is 
 that the French might have saved themselves had 
 they chosen to violate Belgian neutrality. However, 
 neither MacMahon nor Ducrot nor Wimpffen (who 
 in turn succeeded the Marshal after he had been 
 wounded) was willing to do so. The second point is 
 that the French were caught and cornered at Sedan by 
 the much superior marching powers of the Germans, 
 who in order to intercept their antagonists had to 
 cover a longer distance in shorter time.. In those 
 days, be it noted, the French infantry wore no socks, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 237 
 
 and their boots, generally inferior to those of the Ger- 
 mans, were often absolutely vile. If an infantryman 
 is to give of his best, care must be taken of his feet, and 
 he must be well and comfortably shod. 
 
 On September 4, three days after the disaster of 
 Sedan, Paris overthrew the imperial regime, and the 
 provinces followed the capital's example. It had 
 become virtually impossible to relieve Bazaine, who 
 was invested around Metz by the army of Prince 
 Frederick Charles, whilst that of the Prussian Crown 
 Prince, victorious at Sedan, marched towards Paris, 
 which was soon to be besieged. Besides Metz several 
 other strong places of Alsace-Lorraine were now 
 beleaguered. I have already mentioned that the 
 Germans gathered around Strasburg on August 10. 
 Before the war the troops there had been commanded 
 for a considerable time by General Ducrot, who 
 repeatedly sent important warnings to the Tuileries 
 respecting German military affairs, and w r ho afterwards 
 played a conspicuous part in the defence of Paris. 
 At Strasburg he had been succeeded by General 
 Alexis Uhrich, a native of Phalsbourg and in 1870 
 sixty-eight years of age. The forces at Uhrich's dis- 
 posal consisted of 6000 infantry, partly fugitives from 
 Worth, 600 artillerymen, 100 naval men, a few batta- 
 lions of the Mobile Guard, and about 7000 National 
 Guards provided by the town itself. There were no 
 engineers at all. The total number of the defenders 
 was roughly about 20,000. At first the besieging 
 army was limited to a force of Badeners commanded 
 by the Grand Duchy's War Minister, General von 
 Beyer. He fell ill, however, and was replaced by 
 General von Werder, who had a very large body of 
 troops under him, including 2200 engineers and 7000 
 artillerymen, with about 250 guns. 
 
238 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 The Germans marched on the city to the strains 
 of a song specially composed for the occasion, and 
 beginning : 
 
 Strasburg, Strasburg, most beauteous city, 
 
 Where there are so many soldiers, 
 And where, as thou canst scarce remember, 
 My glory and my pride have been imprisoned 
 
 For more than a hundred years ! 
 Yes, daughter of my heart, for more than a century 
 Hast thou wasted away in the arms of a Welsch brigand ! 
 
 But soon shall thy grief take end ! 
 O Strasburg, Strasburg, city of my heart, 
 
 Awake from thy dismal dreams ! 
 Thou shalt be saved, the hour has sounded, 
 
 Thy brothers haste to thee in crowds ! 
 
 We shall soon see what treatment these loving 
 brothers reserved for the city of their hearts. 
 
 On August 13 Uhrich made an ineffectual attempt 
 to prevent the investment. That same day the first 
 shell was fired at the town and fell on a house in the 
 part known as the Marais Vert. On the morrow 
 Werder arrived, and established his head-quarters at 
 Mundolsheim. Under him were Decker, commanding 
 the artillery, and Mertens, commanding the engineers. 
 The last named had directed the operations against 
 the Danish entrenchments of Diippel in the Schleswig- 
 Holstein war.* His presence before Strasburg indi- 
 cated the importance which was attached to the 
 taking of the city, which Bismarck, by the way, called 
 " the key of the house." 
 
 The actual bombardment began on August 15, 
 the feast of the Assumption and also the " Fete Na- 
 poleon," whilst Uhrich and others, officers and func- 
 tionaries, were attending high mass at the cathedral. 
 
 * Had we only combined with France to support Denmark in 1864 Prussia 
 would never have possessed the Kiel Canal, which was originally a Danish 
 scheme. We are paying a heavy price for the sad folly of our Mid- Victorian 
 policy. Verily, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 239 
 
 On the night of the 19th the enemy's cannonade 
 became more violent, and on the morrow Uhrich 
 responded by bombarding Kehl across the Rhine. 
 This the Germans stationed at Kehl impudently de- 
 nounced as a crime, the town being an open one. 
 However, Uhrich' s cannonade did comparatively little 
 damage, the inferiority of his guns to those possessed 
 by the Germans being manifest. On August 24 the 
 enemy's bombardment became terrific and that day, 
 the anniversary of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, 
 the city's precious library was set on fire. A younger 
 generation has expressed its horror at* the destruction 
 of the library of Louvain, to which some writers have 
 referred as though there had been nothing in history 
 like it since the loss of the famous Alexandrian library. 
 But although there were no submarines, nor aircraft, 
 nor poisonous gases in 1870-71, the methods of the 
 Germans in respect to other matters were precisely 
 such as one has witnessed in recent times. 
 
 Forty-seven years ago British people, not being 
 directly affected, refused, for the most part, to believe 
 in the many reports of German atrocities in France, 
 and afterwards took the Germans to their hearts and 
 allowed them the free run of our country. But 
 survivors of the Annee terrible, those who were then 
 in France, myself included, can bear solemn testimony 
 that there then occurred deeds every whit as foul as 
 any that have disgraced the German name since 1914. 
 To me the wonder has always been that our people 
 should so long and so grossly have misunderstood the 
 German character. It is false to say that Prussianism 
 has been the growth of more recent years. It was 
 already rampant under the present Kaiser's " illus- 
 trious grandfather," who bequeathed it to his descen- 
 (lants. It was not then, perhaps, quite so widespread 
 
240 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 throughout Germany as it is to-day, but where it 
 existed it was quite as unscrupulous, quite as contemp- 
 tuous of every common principle of humanity. Yet 
 to this did our nation long close its eyes ! 
 
 The Strasburg library contained 150,000 books 
 and 1539 manuscripts, among which were many 
 Greek ones of the greatest value. There was also the 
 Abbess of Saint-Odile's " Hortus Deliciarum," written 
 in 1180 and embellished with Byzantine designs ; there 
 was a Carlo vingian missal with silver lettering on 
 purple parchment ; there was the missal of Louis XII 
 of France ; there was a collection of the Canonical 
 Laws of 788, another of the ancient laws and regula- 
 tions of Strasburg, a great number of documents 
 relating to Gutenberg, his lawsuits, and the early 
 period of the art of printing, together with very many 
 choice incunabula. All perished in the flames, and 
 when Werder a somewhat singular character who 
 combined the hypocrisy of a pietist with the affectation 
 of a coxcomb heard of it, his only reply was : " The 
 ruin of Strasburg lies on her own head ! Why did she 
 not surrender ? As for those books, why were they 
 not removed to cellars ? " 
 
 At the same time as the library was destroyed, the 
 so-called Aublette building, occupying one side of the 
 Place Kleber and containing the Museum of Paintings, 
 was set on fire. No attempt to extinguish the flames 
 was possible. From eight o'clock in the evening 
 until eight the following morning, projectiles rained 
 upon the devoted city, the enemy largely concentrat- 
 ing his fire upon the conflagrations he had kindled. 
 On the following night the cathedral was bombarded, 
 and set on fire by means of incendiary shells, the roof 
 being perforated and the leaping flames licking and 
 damaging the lofty tower. Four of the finest old 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 241 
 
 mansions of the city were at the same time reduced to 
 ruins, and even the hospital was shelled. 
 
 On August 27 Uhrich contrived to send a messenger 
 to the Minister of War in Paris to say that Strasburg 
 was doomed unless assistance could be sent. No help 
 was possible, however, At night on the 29th the 
 enemy opened his first parallel. On September 1 the 
 garrison essayed a sortie and inflicted somewhat severe 
 losses on the Germans. But the bombardment con- 
 tinued unabated, again and again igniting fresh con- 
 flagrations and battering and shattering the stone 
 ornaments of the unfortunate cathedral. The enemy's 
 second parallel was opened on September 6, and his 
 third on the night of the llth. At this moment the 
 International Red Cross Society of Geneva sent some 
 delegates to the German general asking him, in the 
 name of humanity, to allow children, women, and aged 
 men to leave the city. He replied that women, 
 children, and old folk constituted an element of weak- 
 ness among the defenders of a besieged place, and that 
 he would suffer none to depart. At last, however, 
 after repeated requests he authorized the departure 
 of 800 persons, the town then containing, with its 
 garrison, 82,000 ! 
 
 News of the fall of the Empire had reached Stras- 
 burg, and the Imperial Prefect, Baron Pron, had been 
 deposed. Kiiss, the energetic and popular Mayor, 
 did his utmost to succour the unfortunate townsfolk, 
 repeatedly risking his life whilst going on his many 
 errands of mercy. On September 20, and under very 
 dramatic circumstances, a new official appeared upon 
 the scene, this being Edmond Valentin, whom the 
 National Defence Government had appointed Prefect 
 in the place of Baron Pron. Son of a hospital inspec- 
 tor and born at Strasburg in 1823, Valentin had origi- 
 
242 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 nally been an officer in the foot Chasseurs, or light 
 infantry, and had become a deputy at the time of the 
 Second Republic. When war broke out in 1870 he was 
 acting as a professor at the Royal Military Academy of 
 Woolwich. His services were declined by the Im- 
 perial Government but the National Defence at once 
 accepted them, whereupon, starting for Strasburg, he 
 managed to penetrate the enemy's lines at Barr on 
 September 8. Failing to get through the advanced 
 posts he made for the Rhone and Rhine Canal, but 
 was arrested on the 10th by a German reconnoitring 
 party, who kept him a prisoner for fifteen hours. He 
 was released, however, as an American passport had 
 been provided him, and his knowledge of our language 
 enabled him to pass himself off as a citizen of the 
 U.S.A. At last he got to Marten in front of Strasburg 
 citadel, and was about to swim the canal when a 
 German settler denounced him as a " suspect " and he 
 was again arrested and carried to Kehl. On being 
 released he was ordered to quit the zone of operations 
 within twelve hours, and thereupon followed the Rhine 
 as far as Maximilianau, whence, by way of Landau, 
 he contrived to reach Wissembourg. 
 
 Some of his Alsatian compatriots befriended him, 
 and having been suitably disguised he again repaired 
 to the German lines. He spent two days at Schillig- 
 heim (called by the Alsatians Schillick) a village close 
 to Strasburg, and was there hidden by friends in the 
 very house where Werder and his staff took their 
 meals. Though fellow-Alsatians often recognized 
 Valentin none betrayed him, but on the contrary they 
 all endeavoured to assist him in his enterprise. At 
 last, on the evening of September 19, he hid himself 
 between two German batteries, and crawled on his 
 hands and knees through sundry maize and potato 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 248 
 
 fields until at the expiration of three-quarters of an 
 hour he reached the bank of the Aar. There he was 
 observed both by the besiegers and the besieged, who 
 both opened fire upon him. He plunged into the 
 water, but on reaching a swamp was forced to go back 
 and swim again until he came to a damaged covered 
 way. Several times he fell into craters caused by the 
 bombardment, but he eventually reached the moat of 
 Lunette 57, where for half an hour he tried to attract 
 the notice of some sentinel. He could see nobody, 
 however, and, although his teeth were chattering with 
 the cold, he again took to the water until perceiving 
 some men on the rampart he called to them des- 
 perately : " France ! France ! " 
 
 Half a dozen shots replied to him, but a corporal 
 of the 78th of the Line, named Fauchard, seeing that 
 he was alone, stopped the firing and took him prisoner. 
 He asked to be conducted to Uhrich, but it was too 
 late to do so and he was therefore shut up for the night 
 in a pavilion in the Lippsgarten. In the morning, 
 at six o'clock, he was brought before the Commander, 
 to whom he at once made himself known, taking from 
 his sleeve, in which it had been sewn, the decree, 
 signed by Gambetta, appointing him Prefect of the 
 department. Unfortunately Valentin's heroism and 
 devotion were of no avail. Eight days later Stras- 
 burg capitulated, and the Germans outrageously 
 punished him for his alleged impudence in daring to 
 pass through their lines. 
 
 On September 10 the bombardment had fired and 
 destroyed the theatre of Strasburg. By the 26th 
 several of the advanced works were in the enemy's 
 possession, there were two breaches in the bastions, 
 and virtually every building on the west side of the 
 town was in ruins. Under these circumstances a 
 
244 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Council of War was held on the 27th, and decided that 
 everything had been done that military honour 
 demanded, and that although the enemy had not yet 
 attempted an assault, it was necessary to surrender. 
 The Germans insisted that the rank and file except- 
 ing the National Guards, who were merely to be 
 disarmed should be prisoners of war, but offered to 
 allow Uhrich and the other officers to retire into 
 France on condition that they would not serve again 
 during the war. Seventy-five officers preferred, how- 
 ever, to share the captivity of their men. The roll 
 of the capitulation includes 451 officers, 17,111 men 
 (including the National Guards), plus 2100 sick and 
 wounded, 1843 horses, and 1070 pieces of artillery, 
 most of which were quite obsolete. There were also 
 stores of munitions, clothing, and camping materiel, 
 and the Germans also appropriated over 400,000 
 found at the local branch of the Bank of France as 
 well as a quantity of silver at the Mint, with which 
 they struck one-franc, two-franc, and five-franc pieces 
 stamped with the effigy of the ex- sovereign Napoleon 
 III ! Yet even this was not sufficient for German 
 greed. The city was fined for its resistance, every 
 householder whose home had not been destroyed 
 having to pay a sum of money averaging about 30 a 
 head ! One reason given for this abominable pro- 
 ceeding was the municipality's staunch refusal to 
 send an address of congratulation to the King of 
 Prussia on the success of his valiant troops ! 
 
 The Germans greeted the hoisting of the white 
 flag with loud hurrahs. Their dear lost brothers 
 were delivered ! Poor lost brothers, bombed, 
 slaughtered, and despoiled ! Werder exhibited his 
 piety by going in state first to offer up a thanksgiving 
 at the Catholic cathedral and then another at the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 245 
 
 Protestant church of Saint Thomas. Meanwhile, 
 Edmond Valentin was arrested and carried off to the 
 fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, where he remained in close 
 durance until the conclusion of peace. Before that 
 occurred every adult inhabitant of Strasburg was 
 fined l for daring to elect to the French National 
 Assembly deputies opposed to the cession of Alsace to 
 Germany. 
 
 In 1872 a French Court of Inquiry presided over 
 by old Marshal Baragney d'Hilliers reported un- 
 favourably on Uhrich's defence and capitulation. 
 The chief grounds for the court's censure were 
 dereliction of duty in failing to improve the for- 
 tifications by means of stockades for which there 
 was ample material, in proposing surrender to the 
 Council of Defence, in capitulating before assault had 
 taken place, in omitting to burn the regimental 
 colours, spike the guns, and destroy the munitions, 
 in not asking for the honours of war and permission 
 for the officers to retain their swords, and the rank and 
 file their private effects. Uhrich was also blamed for 
 giving his parole and allowing his officers to give 
 theirs. That judgment was in accordance with the 
 French Army Regulations, but some may consider it 
 unduly severe. The town had stood a siege and bom- 
 bardment of more than forty days. The inhabitants 
 had endured great sufferings. Some 8000 of them 
 were without shelter, hundreds of houses having been 
 destroyed. Further, 300 civilians had been killed and 
 1700 injured by the bombardment. Including the 
 military, the total number of deaths was 961, and of 
 injuries and cases of severe illness, 3800. A fairly 
 impartial German writer of the time, Colonel Borb- 
 staedt, held that the defence was not brilliant, for it 
 was deficient in initiative ; but he considered that 
 
246 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 surrender without waiting for assault was justified 
 owing to the great numerical superiority of the 
 German forces, and the absolute impossibility of 
 successfully defending at least one of the breaches 
 in the bastions. 
 
 Let us now glance at the defence offered by some 
 of the other Alsatian fortresses. Phalsbourg, having 
 been invested on August 9, was bombarded on the 
 14th, after which most of the besiegers departed, 
 leaving for a while only two battalions of Landwehr 
 near the town. The garrison was commanded by 
 Major Taillant and consisted of about 1900 men 
 (including 200 wounded), who had figured in the defeat 
 of Worth. There were sixty-seven guns on the 
 fortifications. The inhabitants were full of patriotic 
 ardour and did their utmost to assist the military. 
 The enemy having been strongly reinforced, the bom- 
 bardment began afresh on August 31 and a good deal 
 of the little town was absolutely shattered by it. In 
 the middle of September the cannonade became 
 terrific, but the garrison still made a stout resistance. 
 At last the siege turned into a blockade, with only 
 intermittent bombardment, as had been the case in 
 1814,* when Phalsbourg was beleaguered from January 
 6 to April 16. In 1870 its resistance lasted for four 
 months, and it then succumbed solely because not a 
 scrap of food remained for the garrison or the inhabi- 
 tants or a single shell for the defence. This birthplace 
 
 * The siege of 1814 formed the subject of Erckmann-Chatrian's story 
 " Le Blocus " a work which, whilst including several patriotic incidents, 
 was largely inspired by the author's dislike of Napoleonism and militarism. 
 The story is supposed to be told by an old Alsatian Jew, who, amidst his 
 perpetual fears, occasionally does a brave thing, and atones in some measure 
 for his habitual covetousness by several acts of kindness and generosity. 
 The commingling of patriotism and hatred of war, which these authors 
 displayed in so many of their stories, appears to have been largely prompted 
 by their antagonism to the regime of Napoleon III, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 247 
 
 of so many valiant French generals entered into no 
 capitulation. When Commandant Taillant found he 
 could hold out no longer, he spiked his guns, had 
 their carriages sawn into pieces, burnt his colours, 
 ordered every one of the 12,000 rifles in his possession 
 to be broken, poured water on his remaining powder, 
 and finally, on December 12, sent word to the German 
 commander that the gates of Phalsbourg were open. 
 Three -fourths of the town were in ruins. 
 
 The enemy came down upon Colmar towards the 
 middle of September. The only forces there were 
 some Mobile Guards belonging to Paris and Lyons, 
 and some local National Guards. These men put up a 
 gallant fight at the bridge of Horburg, but as they had 
 not a single piece of artillery with them they had to 
 fall back in the direction of the Vosgcs. With them 
 went an Alsatian heroine, Antoinette Lix, a post- 
 mistress, who, trained by her father, an old soldier of 
 Napoleon's, had fought as a man in the last great 
 Polish insurrection, and who, after the retreat from 
 Colmar, became a franc-tireur and ultimately served 
 with the Garibaldians. Having occupied Colmar on 
 September 14, the Germans descended upon Mulhouse, 
 which they also entered. But Schlestadt was not 
 disposed to surrender. It had 122 guns (none, how- 
 ever, rifled) and a garrison composed of half a battery 
 of regular artillery, four batteries of the Mobile Guard 
 artillery, 1200 men of that same guard, and a detach- 
 ment of 280 Lancers, the whole being under the orders 
 of Commandant de Reinach, a member of a w r ell-known 
 Alsatian family. On October 10 General von Schme- 
 ling, who commanded the besiegers, demanded a 
 surrender, which was refused. The town was then 
 subjected to a severe bombardment, and by the 23rd 
 the whole of its south-western portion was in flames. 
 
248 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 On the morrow Reinach was constrained by circum- 
 stances to capitulate. Schmeling next invested Neuf- 
 Brisach, where Lieut. -Colonel de Kerhor, a Breton 
 judging by his name, had some 5000 men, including 
 1000 regulars, with thirty-eight rifled guns and others. 
 On his refusal to surrender, the enemy bombarded him 
 from the vicinity of Alt-Breisach across the Rhine, 
 and when Kerhor retaliated by cannonading the Ger- 
 man town, Schmeling had the audacity to protest, 
 declaring that Alt-Breisach was an open town and 
 that, if it were again bombarded, he would render 
 Kerhor personally responsible for the outrage ! Ker- 
 hor was weak enough to act on Schmeling' s injunction, 
 and after the destruction of Fort Mortier, one of his 
 advanced works, he capitulated (November 10). 
 Before doing so he at least rendered his guns useless, 
 and effectually damped his powder. 
 
 If we leave Belfort aside for a little while, this was 
 the last resistance offered by a fortress in Upper 
 Alsace, but the Vosges were swarming with francs- 
 tireurs, and at Bitche in Northern or Lower Alsace, 
 and in various parts of Lorraine a determined struggle 
 still continued. The defence of Bitche, though far 
 less widely known than that of Belfort, was a very 
 gallant one. Indeed this little stronghold held out 
 even longer than Belfort. When General de Failly 
 quitted it after the battle of Worth, he left considerable 
 provisions behind him. The original garrison was one 
 of only 800 men, who were increased to 2500 by the 
 arrival of fugitives from Worth. The governor was 
 Lieut. -Colonel Tessier, and the defences mounted 
 fifty-eight guns. At the outset, when the municipal 
 council assembled, the mayor, a man of Bavarian 
 origin named Lauthenslager, wished to surrender, 
 but was overruled and dismissed by his colleagues. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 249 
 
 He went over to the enemy, as might have been 
 expected, and after the annexation the Germans, the 
 better to oppress their dear delivered brethren, re- 
 appointed him to the mayoralty. However, although 
 the enemy added several large siege guns to his artillery 
 and by September 22 half Bitche had been destroyed, 
 there was still no surrender. Thus a blockade ensued, 
 and lasted until March 23, 1871, that is, for twenty- 
 two days subsequent to the ratification of the prelimi- 
 naries of peace by the French National Assembly at 
 Bordeaux, and even then it was only on express orders 
 from their own Government that Tessier and his men 
 evacuated Bitche. The besieging force was one of 
 Bavarians. Tessier contemptuously refused their 
 offer of the honours of war, and declared that he would 
 only depart provided that the enemy kept out of sight 
 and did not enter until the last French soldier had left. 
 The Germans, unwillingly rendering homage to such 
 stalwartness, agreed to those stipulations, and only 
 then, with their colours flying, their band playing, 
 their fourteen field-guns and their train of munitions, 
 did Tessier and his gallant troops march away from 
 the little fortress which the Germans had failed to 
 take but which was, unhappily, to be surrendered to 
 them by the terms of the treaty of peace. Episodes, 
 such as that of the resistance of Bitche, help to con- 
 sole one for much that happened during the Franco- 
 German War.* 
 
 Take also the case of little Longwy, known in 
 Louis XIV's time as the Iron Gate of France, but now- 
 adays a place of small importance. Defended by 
 rather more than 4000 men, with a couple of hundred 
 guns, it held out until Janaury 25, 1871 surrendering 
 
 * Tessier was afterwards promoted and appointed to the command of the 
 fort of Vincennes, near Paris. 
 
250 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 only three days before Paris capitulated, and it was 
 in ruins when the Germans entered. Montmedy was, 
 for a time, neglected by the enemy, not being abso- 
 lutely invested until the first fortnight in November, 
 when, without warning, it was suddenly bombarded. 
 About a month later (December 14) it had to surrender. 
 Thionville, north of Metz and known nowadays by the 
 silly German name of Diedenhof en, was also bombarded 
 without warning, and at one time subjected to a rain 
 of incendiary bombs, each containing about a gallon 
 of inflammable liquid, for fifty-four consecutive hours. 
 The Germans were asked to allow the women and 
 children to depart. Not they ! So the massacre of 
 the innocents continued. All of that, of course, was 
 long ago, but the thought of it still makes my blood 
 boil. Our German " friends " of the later seventies, 
 the eighties, the nineties, and the earlier years of the 
 twentieth century have done little worse even during 
 the present war. Like father, like son : fiendish- 
 ness has always lurked in the German blood. 
 
 Let me now mention Verdun, which in 1870 de- 
 cisively wiped away the stigma attaching to its 
 lamentable surrender during the Revolutionary War. 
 Invested on August 24, it was savagely bombarded by 
 the Germans in mid-October, and afterwards inter- 
 mittently for some weeks. Baron Guerin de Walders- 
 bach commanded the defenders, who on October 28 
 made a vigorous sortie in which they destroyed 
 several of the German batteries. Early in the follow- 
 ing month, how r ever, news arrived that Bazaine had 
 surrendered Metz on October 27. Discouragement 
 then overtook the defenders of Verdun. Nevertheless 
 they were able to demand honourable conditions. The 
 regular troops were to be prisoners of war, but they 
 were to retain their knapsacks and private effects. The 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 251 
 
 Mobile Guards, born at Verdun, were to go free, the 
 Gendarmes also, and to retain their horses. No war 
 contribution or indemnity was to be levied on the 
 town. The enemy troops were not to be billeted on 
 the inhabitants, but lodged in the barracks and other 
 military buildings. The town itself and all the war 
 materiel which it contained were to be restored to 
 France at the conclusion of peace. Those conditions 
 having been accepted by the Germans, they entered 
 Verdun on November 9. 
 
 We will now turn to Toul, w r hose defence of about 
 five weeks' duration was a kind of revanche for the 
 prompt surrender of Nancy, the latter 's young men 
 having thrown themselves into this fortress directly 
 the defence of their native city was abandoned. The 
 commander of the garrison was a cavalry major (chef 
 d'escadron) bearing the Alsatian name of Huck. He 
 had with him altogether 2296 men, including 130 of 
 the 4th Regiment of Cuirassiers (whose depot was 
 at Toul, and to which Huck himself belonged), 25 
 artillerymen, 500 linesmen, and 30 gendarmes, the 
 remainder being Gardes Mobiles of the department, 
 untrained, undisciplined, and mostly without uni- 
 forms. There were about 200 pieces of artillery. 
 It is recorded that the mayor and the municipal 
 council wished to surrender, but were overruled. 
 Having so few trained troops Huck was obliged to 
 abandon some outer works, a sign of weakness which 
 encouraged the enemy to attempt an assault on 
 August 16. This was vigorously repulsed, however, 
 and a siege on the old lines ensued. After bombard- 
 ment came a second assault which also was defeated, 
 and the Government of National Defence in Paris, 
 on hearing of this stout resistance, decreed : " The 
 town of Toul has deserved well of the country," 
 
252 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 During the latter part of September several large 
 siege guns were brought to bear on three sides of 
 the town, and the ensuing destruction was so great 
 that on the 23rd Huck put up the white flag. The 
 Germans were particularly furious with the defenders 
 on account of their praiseworthy achievement in 
 intercepting the direct road to Paris during five 
 weeks. Nevertheless, after the war, a Court of 
 Inquiry blamed Huck for having surrendered before 
 the fortifications were breached, and for having 
 failed to destroy his guns and his munitions. At 
 the same time it praised him for having prolonged 
 the resistance in spite of the urgent requests of the 
 municipality and the enemy's insidious offers. 
 
 According to the army regulations of France, and 
 those of most other countries, there has to be an 
 inquiry into every capitulation that takes place. It 
 was this circumstance which led to the court-martial- 
 ling of Bazaine. Owing to the unrest that prevailed 
 in France after the war, the division of the electorate 
 into sharply antagonistic parties, the large number 
 of Bonapartist officers' still in the service, and the 
 recent tragic rebellion of the Paris Commune, Thiers 
 did not wish to put Bazaine on his trial, for fear lest 
 the stirring up of a prodigious quantity of mud 
 should lead to another national convulsion. But the 
 President's hand was forced by the military regula- 
 tions, and thus when, in August 1872, the Court of 
 Inquiry, presided over by old one-eyed Marshal 
 Baraguey d'Hilliers, a relic of Napoleon's days, 
 reported that Bazaine had " caused the loss of an 
 army of 150,000 men and the stronghold of Metz, 
 that the entire responsibility was his, that as Com- 
 mander-in-Chief he had not done what military duty 
 prescribed, that, on the contrary, he had held with 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 253 
 
 the enemy an intercourse unexampled in history, 
 and that he had delivered to the enemy the colours 
 which he ought to have destroyed, thereby inflicting 
 a crowning humiliation on brave men whose honour it 
 was his duty to defend " when, I say, those findings 
 had been recorded, the Marshal's trial could not 
 be prevented. Moreover, he himself was constrained 
 by those findings to apply for a court martial. 
 
 It is quite impossible for me to give in the pages 
 remaining at my disposal a full account of what 
 happened at Metz after Bazaine and his forces were 
 invested there. Many books have been written on 
 the subject, one of the latest and best (issued during 
 the present war) being " Metz en 1870," by M. 
 Felicien Champsaur. Here I have only enough space 
 to mention a few matters connected with Bazaine' s 
 betrayal of his country's highest interests. A few 
 sorties certainly took place, including some provision- 
 ing raids, but no real military effort commensurate 
 with the situation was made. Moreover, Bazaine 
 did not attempt to avail himself of certain means of 
 communication with the rest of France which were 
 known to exist. He preferred to correspond secretly 
 with Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, and even 
 to ask him for information, a proceeding absolutely 
 forbidden by the provisions of the Military Code. 
 The Marshal was largely influenced by a scoundrel 
 named Regnier, whom the Germans allowed to pass 
 through their lines, and who falsely pretended to be 
 an authorized emissary from the Empress Eugenie. 
 After a time Bazaine sent General Boyer to the 
 German head-quarters at Versailles to negotiate with 
 Bismarck on his behalf. Boyer, on returning to 
 Metz, repeated a pack of German lies respecting the 
 state of France and its inability to continue the war, 
 
254 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 though he well knew what great efforts the National 
 Defence was making. In corresponding with Frede- 
 rick Charles, Bazaine frequently referred to his even- 
 tual " surrender " ; he confided to Regnier, whom he 
 ought to have distrusted, that he had only sufficient 
 provisions to last until mid-October ; he refused to 
 attempt a coup de main on Thionville, which was 
 only a few miles distant and was still holding out in 
 order to prevent the great quantities of provisions 
 stored there from falling into the enemy's hands. 
 Further, Bazaine persistently concealed facts or 
 falsified them in his intercourse with his fellow- 
 marshals, Canrobert and Leboeuf, and the other 
 principal commanders who were with him at Metz ; 
 and, briefly, he left undone many things which 
 military honour required him to do, and did others 
 which military honour and duty forbade. He sacrificed 
 his country's interests to his personal ambition, wish- 
 ing to induce the Germans to allow him and his 
 troops to march out of Metz and restore the fallen 
 Empire, with, however, the young Imperial Prince 
 on the throne, and he, Bazaine, as High Constable 
 and Protector of France ! That is the explanation 
 of his treachery. He was not bribed. Ambition 
 turned him from the path of duty. 
 
 But the Germans played with him, and when 
 his provisions were exhausted he was constrained to 
 surrender at discretion giving up to the enemy the 
 strongest fortress of France and an army of 170,000 
 men (including sick and wounded), with 53 eagles,* 
 1665 guns, 278,280 rifles and muskets, 22,984,000 
 
 * In defiance of the Marshal's orders many colours \rere burnt by indignant 
 officers. Like Kiiss at Strasburg, Mar6chal, the Mayor of Metz, did much 
 to alleviate the sufferings of the civilian population. Both of these devoted 
 men died virtually of grief not long after the war. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 255 
 
 cartridges, 3,239,225 projectiles, and 412,734 tons of 
 powder. Bazaine's trial began on October 6 and 
 ended on December 10, 1873. He was convicted and 
 sentenced to death, but the capital penalty was 
 altered by his old comrade MacMahon, who had become 
 President of the Republic, to one of imprisonment 
 for life. With the help of his wife, however, and the 
 connivance of sundry officials, Bazaine escaped from 
 the fort of the He Sainte-Marguerite, off the coast of 
 Provence, in August 1874. He afterwards led a 
 miserable life in Spain, where he died in 1888. 
 
 In striking contrast with the defence of Metz was 
 that of the little fortress of Belfort. Standing on an 
 eminence in a gap between the Vosges and the Jura 
 Mountains, at the edge, as it were, of the Alsatian 
 alluvial plain, and at a point where the Alsatian, 
 Lorrainer, and Jurassian races may be said to mingle, 
 Belfort once belonged to the Counts of Montbeliard, 
 who erected its original castle in the twelfth century. 
 It passed to the Counts of Ferrette, and through them 
 to the House of Austria, from which it was wrested 
 by the French during the Thirty Years' War. Bestowed 
 as an appanage on Mazarin the lordship remained in 
 the possession of his heirs until they became extinct. 
 Inhabited in 1840 by about 6000 people, and in 1870 
 by about 8500, the town now has a population 
 of nearly 40,000 many Alsatians having migrated 
 thither in order to escape German rule. The sur- 
 rounding district, which since 1871 has formed the 
 so-called Territoire de Belfort, returning one senator 
 and two deputies to the French Legislature, comprises 
 106 communes, and, inclusive of Belfort itself, there 
 were at the last census more than 100,000 inhabitants. 
 Owing to the lack of coal and minerals the region 
 was formerly of an almost exclusively agricultural 
 
256 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 character, but since the Franco-German War numerous 
 textile works, rope-walks, clock- and watch-making 
 establishments, distilleries, forges, machine and wire 
 works have sprung up there, all testifying to Alsatian 
 industry and enterprise. 
 
 Besieged in 1813-14 by Austrian and Bavarian 
 forces, Belfort, defended by Major Legrand and 
 3000 men, did not surrender until after Napoleon's 
 abdication at Fontainebleau. In the following year, 
 when the famous General Lecourbe commanded the 
 garrison, it put up an equally able defence against 
 the Allies. In 1870 the town was commanded by an 
 engineer chef de bataillon, later Colonel, Denfert-Roche- 
 reau, a native of Saint-Maixent, famous for its military 
 school. At that time Belfort, although fortified, was 
 by no means the strong place which it has since 
 become, but Denfert-Rochereau's technical knowledge 
 enabled him to improvise additional defences, particu- 
 larly as the enemy did not advance upon this corner 
 of Alsace until the end of October. The garrison 
 consisted of 17,000 men, of whom 3500 were regulars 
 of the 45th and 84th Regiments of the Line. There 
 were a few artillerymen, but the bulk of the defenders 
 belonged to the Mobile Guard, some of them being 
 Alsatians and Vosgians, others coming from the 
 Garonne country, others from the Lyonnais and 
 adjacent districts. There were also some mobilized 
 National Guards, and a detachment of douaniers 
 (customs officers) from the Jura region. The defenders 
 had 374 guns, with a stock of 75,000 shells and 80,000 
 round shot, and enough fresh or salt meat and flour 
 to last them for 145 days. Numerous departures 
 had reduced the civilian population to 4000, to feed 
 whom the municipality had sufficient meat for 142 
 days. The siege began on November 3 and lasted 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 257 
 
 for 103 days, 73 of which were days of bombardment, 
 during which the Germans vainly rained 98,000 shells 
 on the gallant little stronghold. No such bombard- 
 ment had been previously recorded in history. 
 
 The investing army was commanded by General von 
 Treskow, a typical German officer. When (as in the 
 case of Strasburg) the Swiss asked him to allow the 
 departure of the women and children still remaining 
 in the town, offering to send them to Porrentruy, he 
 peremptorily refused the application, declaring that 
 the women of Belfort were perfect fiends who cut 
 off the noses, tore off the ears, and put out the eyes 
 of all German prisoners who fell into the hands of 
 the garrison. When the Swiss delegates requested 
 permission to enter the town to inquire into that 
 monstrous and I may add, preposterous charge, 
 Treskow replied that he would not allow them to 
 pass through his lines, and that if they should attempt 
 to do so he would have them shot. 
 
 The hospital was bombarded, though it flew the 
 Red Cross flag, and many sick and wounded were 
 killed in their beds. But that mattered little to 
 General von Treskow. At eight o'clock on the morn- 
 ing of February 13 Belfort fired its last cannon-shot. 
 Denfert-Rochereau had just received orders from the 
 National Defence Government to surrender the town 
 in accordance with the terms of the armistice con- 
 cluded with Germany. The garrison was to receive 
 the honours of war and retire to the interior of France. 
 The evacuation took place a few days later, the com- 
 mander withdrawing with 340 officers and 12,582 
 men. He had lost 32 officers and 4713 men during 
 the siege, nearly a thousand of these having been 
 killed. More than that number were in hospital at 
 the time of the capitulation, and the remainder had 
 
258 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 been taken prisoners whilst defending some of the 
 outlying works. The Germans entered Belfort on 
 February 18,* and remained there until August 2, 
 1873. 
 
 Bartholdi, the able Alsatian sculptor, commemo- 
 rated the defence of Belfort by designing the famous 
 Lion, which still looks down on the gallant town, to 
 which Antonin Mercie contributed the almost equally 
 famous monument which shows an Alsacienne support- 
 ing a dying Mobile Guard. The town and its territory 
 all that remained to France of Alsace from 1871 
 to the advent of the present war was saved to her 
 by the patriotism of Thiers. Bismarck hankered for 
 this strip of ground. He well knew that possession 
 of the Gap of Belfort would greatly facilitate any 
 future German invasion of France. But Thiers was 
 no fool, and when Bismarck offered, in return for 
 Belfort, to forgo the German entry into Paris, the 
 French statesman did not hesitate. He preferred 
 that his country should suffer a few days of humilia- 
 tion rather than incur irremediable detriment. Thus 
 was Belfort saved. 
 
 In Lorraine, south-west of Nancy and Luneville, 
 there is a little town called Rambervillers. On 
 October 9, 1870, it was attacked by 2000 Germans, 
 and vigorously defended by a couple of hundred 
 National Guards, good marksmen all, who kept the 
 enemy at bay for several hours and inflicted many 
 casualties on him before retreating. Twenty-one 
 wounded Guards fell into the hands of the Germans, 
 who immediately put them to death. Appended to 
 the arms of Rambervillers is the Cross of the Legion 
 of Honour conferred upon the town for the gallant 
 
 * Not a drop of wine nor a crust of bread then remained in the town, 
 and the generous Swiss had to succour the inhabitants. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 259 
 
 effort which it made. During the siege of Strasburg 
 the neighbouring bourg of Robertsau was burnt to 
 the ground by the Germans for harbouring enemies. 
 The invaders seized all the tobacco in the Alsatian 
 depots and sold it for 24,000. At Erstein, a little 
 tobacco-growing locality, they demanded the delivery 
 of 6000 cigars in three days. In the canton of Barr, 
 inhabited by some 19,000 people, they sent out 
 requisitions for 54,000 kilogrammes of bread, 72,000 
 kilogrammes of meat, 18,000 kilogrammes of rice, 
 1800 kilogrammes of salt, the same weight of roasted 
 and 2400 kilogrammes of unroasted coffee, 50,000 
 litres of wine, and vast quantities of oats, hay, and 
 straw. They continued to seize goods even during 
 the armistice, and great sales of plunder often took 
 place in the German frontier towns. 
 
 To such a point were the dear Alsatian brothers 
 and sisters despoiled that the articles offered at 
 those sales comprised sheets, table-cloths, curtains, 
 wearing apparel, including aprons and women's caps, 
 clocks, and even children's toys. Plunder was some- 
 times conveyed to Switzerland and sold there. The 
 Easier Nackrichten announced in January 1871 a sale 
 of articles of furniture from La Malmaison, formerly 
 belonging to the Empress Josephine, also of tables, 
 secretaires, and consoles which had belonged to 
 Mme. de Pompadour, Louis XV, and Louis XVI, 
 a painting by Baron Gerard depicting some children 
 carried off by an eagle, another by Gerome represent- 
 ing some young Greeks inciting cocks to fight, and 
 described as having secured a first prize at the Paris 
 Salon of 1847, together with a number of sketches by 
 Delacroix. Other lots included monumental clocks, 
 fine porcelain and glass, and a great variety of tools 
 filched from Alsatian factories and workshops. 
 
260 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 But to return to the German exactions and out- 
 rages, a levy of 40,000 was made on the little Alsatian 
 town of Haguenau, which was further required to 
 lodge a division of Badeners. Nancy was on one 
 occasion fined 4000 because a shot which injured 
 nobody was fired in one of its streets. A telegraph 
 wire having been broken near a little village the 
 inhabitants had to pay 80. Three carts were 
 requisitioned at a hamlet near Baccarat, but one 
 could not come as the horse had fallen lame. There- 
 upon, money being scarce among the peasantry, 
 they were ordered to provide 50 litres of brandy 
 under penalty of being shot. When Prince Frederick 
 Charles stayed at Nancy, 40 fowls, 25 Ib. of butter, 
 and 100 eggs had to be provided for his table every 
 day. His staff also requisitioned 1500 bottles of cham- 
 pagne. Several inhabitants of Nancy were murdered. 
 There were many outrages at Briey, Arrancy, Flavigny, 
 and other places. In fact, robbery and debauchery 
 became rampant and continued even during the armis- 
 tice. Prisoners of war were often treated infamously. 
 There was the case of a train on its way through 
 Lorraine to Germany, in which French soldiers were 
 kept without a scrap of food for eighty- seven hours 
 in the depth of winter. Many were frozen, and were 
 pulled out dead. Yet people talk of present-war 
 outrages as if they were absolutely unparalleled in 
 modern times. 
 
 A certain Herr von Bonnin had been appointed 
 Governor of Lorraine, and a certain Count Renard 
 became Prefect of Nancy. Both of these men were 
 of French ancestry, but they ruled in the very best 
 Prussian style. In January 1871 a party of francs- 
 tireurs stole into the little village of Fontenoy, near 
 Toul, and destroyed a bridge there. The Germans 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 261 
 
 immediately set fire to Fontenoy without allowing 
 its inhabitants to remove a scrap of furniture from 
 their houses, or even their few remaining cattle from 
 their sheds. Further, Herr von Bonnin imposed on 
 the province of Lorraine a special fine of 400,000.* 
 Next, Count Renard requisitioned 500 men to rebuild 
 the bridge. None being forthcoming he declared that 
 he would render all master-men responsible. Finally 
 he issued an order stating that if the necessary men 
 were not at the railway station within twenty-four 
 hours, he would have a certain number arrested and 
 immediately shot. That was one of the customary 
 forms of terrorism. In the industrial towns of 
 Alsace-Lorraine men and women were constantly 
 requisitioned to work for the Germans, even as 
 Belgians, French folk, and others have been requisi- 
 tioned during the Great War. In some instances, 
 when sufficient labour could not be procured, machi- 
 nery was taken to pieces and removed to Germany 
 so that it might be utilized there. This course was 
 taken with respect to some of the works at Ars-sur- 
 Moselle, near Metz. 
 
 In spite of the German occupation many Alsatians 
 and Lorrainers managed to get away and join the 
 armies which Gambetta improvised. The idea that 
 their dear delivered brethren should flee from their 
 rule and fight against them particularly incensed the 
 
 * Bonnin's decree ran as follows: "In the name of His Majesty the 
 King of Prussia. Whereas the bridge of Fontenoy, to the east of Toul, has 
 been destroyed, it is edicted that the circumscription under the general 
 government of Lorraine shall pay an extraordinary tax of ten millions of 
 francs as a fine for this offence. Notice thereof is hereby given to the public, 
 with this remark, that the apportionment of the fine will be subsequently 
 determined and that payment thereof will be enforced with the greatest 
 severity. The village of Fontenoy was immediately set on fire, with the ex- 
 ception of a few buildings reserved for the occupation of the troops. Done at 
 Nancy, January 23, 1871. The Governor-General of Lorraine : VON 
 
262 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 invaders, and the following decree was eventually 
 issued : 
 
 WE, Wilhelm, King of Prussia, etc. etc., hereby make the following order 
 for the General Governments of Alsace and Lorraine : 
 
 I. Whosoever shall join the French forces shall be punished with the 
 confiscation of all his present and inheritable property and be banished for 
 a period of ten years. 
 
 II. Sentence shall be pronounced by a judgment of our General Govern- 
 ments, and, three days after its publication in the official part of a journal 
 issued in either Government, shall enter into force and be carried into effect 
 by our civil and military authorities. 
 
 III. All payments due at any later date to the condemned shall be 
 accounted null and void. 
 
 IV. All deeds of gift or bequests made by the condemned out of his 
 fortune after the publication of this decree shall be null and void. 
 
 V. Whosoever desires to quit his place of residence must request per- 
 mission to do so from the [German] Prefect, stating, in writing, the cause 
 and object of his departure. Whosoever absents himself for more than one 
 week without permission to do so shall be held legally to have joined the 
 French forces. 
 
 VI. The Prefects shall prepare and control presence-lists of all male 
 inhabitants. 
 
 VII. The money accruing from all confiscations shall be paid into the 
 treasuries of the General Governments. 
 
 VIII. Return from banishment shall entail the penalty specified by Clause 
 33 of the Penal Code. 
 
 IX. This decree shall enter into force on the day of its publication. 
 Done at Head-quarters at Versailles, this 16th December, 1870. 
 
 WILHELM. 
 v. Bismarck, 
 v. Roon. 
 
 However, the Alsatians and Lorrainers paid no 
 heed to that decree. When an old veteran of the 
 Crimea, Magenta, and Solferino, named Bischer, 
 belonging to Mulhouse, was arrested and cast into 
 prison by the Germans for recruiting young Alsatians 
 for the French army, he replied to every question 
 put to him by his captors, " I did my duty." He 
 was shot for his so-called offence, but this did not 
 prevent nearly 20,000 Alsatians from acting as he 
 and others suggested. I have said that the Vosges 
 mountains swarmed with francs-tireurs. These men 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 263 
 
 carried on an unremitting partisan warfare against 
 the smaller German detachments. The enemy was 
 also quite infuriated by the daring exploits of some 
 bands operating between Colmar and Belfort. 
 
 The instances which I have given of German 
 greed and oppression might be multiplied many times 
 over. Were I to recount all that occurred the story 
 would be as long and as gruesome as those attaching 
 nowadays to Belgium, Northern France, Poland, 
 Russia, Serbia, and Rumania. There are, of course, 
 categories and degrees of infamy. Generally speak- 
 ing, the Prussians distinguished themselves by their 
 innate passion for plundering. They were the thieves 
 of the invading armies. The Southern Germans were 
 more particularly the sensualists : the Bavarians 
 excelled in crimes of lust. Brutality was rampant 
 among one and all. Even as has been the case in 
 these later times the words Krieg ist Krieg (War is 
 war) were ever on the lips of the invaders, like a 
 kind of refrain, as if its incessant repetition would 
 serve to justify their innumerable crimes. 
 
 Whilst Alsace and Lorraine and other parts of 
 France were under the German boot, Paris was 
 beleaguered, and the tide of war spread on one hand 
 to Picardy, Artois, and Normandy, then more south- 
 ward to the Orleanais and Touraine, and thence more 
 westward to Maine and the confines of Anjou. East- 
 ward it rolled from Lorraine and Champagne into 
 Burgundy and Franche-Comte. Gambetta made 
 stupendous efforts to save his country. Faidherbe 
 wrestled with the Germans in North- Western France, 
 Chanzy contended with them in the west-central 
 provinces, Bourbaki and Garibaldi struggled to stem 
 the invasion in the east. But might triumphed over 
 right, and when starving Paris fell on January 28, 
 
264 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 1871, an armistice ensued as a preliminary to peace. 
 It was arranged that a French National Assembly 
 should be elected to decide upon the German peace 
 terms. Alsace-Lorraine, already doomed the Prussian 
 sovereign's decree set out on a previous page shows 
 that in December he already regarded the coveted 
 territory as a German possession and its inhabitants 
 as his subjects replied to the cruelty of fate by a 
 defiant vote. To the intense anger of the Germans, 
 only candidates opposed to severance from France 
 were elected by the two provinces.* Kiiss, the 
 popular Mayor of Strasburg, polled most votes in 
 the Bas-Rhin (Lower Alsace), securing more than 
 98,000 suffrages. In the Haut-Rhin (Upper Alsace) 
 Keller-Haas headed the poll with 67,725. Denfert- 
 Rochereau secured 54,911 ; whilst Gambetta, whose 
 name implied the rejection of the peace terms, was 
 elected by both departments, polling in the first 
 named 56,721 votes, and in the second, 51,957. He 
 was returned by seven other departments of France, 
 including the Seine (Paris), but he resolved to sit 
 for the Strasburg division of Alsace. 
 
 Directly the wretched terms of peace became 
 known the representatives of Alsace-Lorraine signed 
 a strong protest, which was deposited with the officials 
 of the new Assembly. It claimed for the territories 
 whose annexation was proposed, the right to refuse 
 to be separated from France. It recited that the 
 provinces had constantly sacrificed themselves for 
 the country's grandeur, and had sealed with their 
 
 * Their names were Fr. Andre, Albrecht, Bardon, Boersch, Boell-Titot, 
 Ed. Bamberger, S. Chauffeur, Denfert-Rochereau, Domes, Deschange, 
 Gambetta, Jules Grosjean, F. Hartmann, Humbert, Kabl6, E. Keller-Haas, 
 A. Koechlin, Kiiss, Melsheim, Th. Noblot, Ostermann, V. Rehm, Rencker, 
 A. Saglio, A. Scheurer-Kestner, Schneegans, A. Tachard, E. Teutsch, etc. 
 All the foregoing signed the protest against annexation by Germany. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 265 
 
 blood the indissoluble bond which united them to 
 France. It protested that France could not consent 
 to the cession to Germany, that, although the Assembly 
 had been elected by universal suffrage, it had no 
 right to ratify an agreement destructive of the national 
 integrity. It urged (unhappily in vain) that modern 
 Europe could not afford to ratify the surrender of the 
 provinces, allow a people to be seized like a herd of 
 cattle, and remain deaf to the repeated protests of 
 the threatened populations. Surely, for the sake 
 of her own preservation, Europe could not sanction 
 such an abuse of force. The peace proposed would 
 constitute a mere truce, and prove a permanent incite- 
 ment to war. Finally, the protest said : 
 
 We take our compatriots of France and the Governments and nations of 
 the whole world to witness that we shall regard as null and void any decrees 
 or treaties, votes or plebiscites, which may consent to the surrender in favour 
 of a foreign country of all or part of our territories of Alsace and Lorraine. 
 We hereby proclaim that the right of the Alsatians and the Lorrainers to 
 remain members of the French nation is and shall remain inviolable, and 
 we swear, not only for ourselves but for our constituents, our children and 
 their descendants also, that this right shall be for ever claimed by all ways 
 and means, and against all usurpers. 
 
 On February 17, 1871, this declaration was read 
 to the Assembly by deputy Keller, who had com- 
 manded the francs-tireurs of the Upper Rhine. But 
 events unhappily took their course, and on March 1 
 the Assembly was called upon to ratify the prelimi- 
 naries of peace. After speeches against the treaty 
 had been delivered by Victor Hugo, Louis Blanc, 
 Edgard Quinet, and Keller, Grosjean, previously 
 Prefect of the Upper Rhine under the National 
 Defence, read a final protest on behalf of Alsace- 
 Lorraine. It ran as follows : 
 
 Before the peace negotiations began, the representatives of Alsace and 
 Lorraine deposited with the bureau of the Assembly a declaration setting 
 forth on behalf of those provinces in the most positive manner their deter- 
 
266 ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 mination and their right to remain French. Handed over, in defiance of 
 all justice and by an odious abuse of force, to the domination of foreigners, 
 we have a last duty to discharge. We yet once again declare that a covenant 
 which disposes of us without our consent is null and void. The liberty to 
 claim our rights remains open to one and all in such manner and degree as 
 our consciences may dictate. At the moment of leaving this hall, where 
 feelings of dignity prevent us from staying any longer, the supreme thought 
 in the depths of our hearts, despite the bitterness of our grief, is one of grati- 
 tude to those who for six months past have not ceased to defend us, and of 
 unchangeable attachment to the country from which we are torn by violence. 
 All our wishes will follow you, and we shall wait, with firm confidence in 
 the future, for the time when regenerated France will resume control of her 
 great destiny. Your brothers of Alsace and Lorraine, separated at this 
 moment from the common family, will retain a filial affection for France in 
 her absence from their hearths until the day arrives when she will resume 
 her place there once more. 
 
 When the vote on the preliminaries of peace was 
 taken, 546 members of the Assembly voted in favour 
 of their ratification, whilst 107 deputies pronounced 
 against them, these including a number of men who 
 were then already, or became subsequently, con- 
 spicuous figures in France. Among the names I find 
 those of Gambetta, Clemenceau, Victor Hugo, Louis 
 Blanc, Edgard Quinet, Henri Brisson, Emmanuel 
 Arago, Edmond Adam, Arnaud de FAriege, Floquet, 
 Dorian, Edouard Lockroy, Duclerc, Ranc, Scheurer- 
 Kestner, Felix Pyat, and Generals Chanzy, Billot, 
 and Mazure. Of the whole band which thus rejected 
 the conditions imposed on France by Germany, 
 Clemenceau, I believe, is now the only survivor. 
 If he still be Prime Minister of France on the 
 hastening day of a Victorious Peace he will know 
 how to redeem the promise implied by the vote he 
 gave on March 1, 1871. The definitive treaty imposed 
 by Bismarck was signed at Frankfort on May 10, and 
 ratified by the French Assembly eight days after- 
 wards. 
 
IX 
 UNDER GERMAN RULE 
 
 Bismarck and Alsace-Lorraine : Why the Provinces were not annexed 
 to Prussia : French Money as Compensation for German Frightful- 
 ness : The Option between French and German Nationality : The 
 Exodus and the continued Emigration : Population of the Provinces 
 in various Years : The Impossibility of a Plebiscitum : Education 
 and Germanization : Officialdom in the Provinces : Dr. von Moeller's 
 Regime : Bishop Raess's great Betrayal : Some Quotations from 
 Bismarck : Episodes in later History War Scares, the Schnsebele and 
 Zabern Affairs, etc. : The Constitution of 1911 : The Head Func- 
 tionaries and the Chambers : The Garrison early in 1914 : Concluding 
 Remarks. 
 
 IN addressing the first Reichstag of the newly con- 
 stituted German Empire in August 1871, Prince 
 Bismarck, whilst declaring that it had been necessary 
 to incorporate Alsace-Lorraine with the territory of 
 Germany " in order to ensure the peace of Europe," 
 candidly admitted that the aversion of the people 
 was an obstacle. " We shall strive, however," said 
 he, " to win back to us this population by means of 
 Teutonic patience and affection (!). We shall, in 
 particular, grant communal liberties." On a second 
 occasion he stated that it was better Alsace-Lorraine 
 should hold the position of a province of the Empire 
 than be annexed to Prussia (which had been his 
 original intention), because he had found that the 
 inhabitants had greater sympathy with Germany 
 generally than with the Prussian State. He expressed 
 his belief in two influences, the material well-being of 
 the existing generation and the educational training 
 
 267 
 
268 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 of the next. It was in furtherance of the first object, 
 he said, that he had accepted a part of the war 
 indemnity payable by the French in notes of the 
 Bank of France, so that he might at once have some 
 funds to supply the needs of the population to whom 
 those notes were familiar. As regards the other part 
 of his programme, as he had been given a free hand 
 to deal with the provinces until the early part of 
 1873, he issued an edict enforcing compulsory educa- 
 tion after the German pattern on every child above 
 six years of age. Much was made of the fact that a 
 sum of nearly 2,000,000 was given to Strasburg in 
 compensation for its bombardment, but this money 
 came out of the indemnity of 200 millions which 
 France had covenanted to pay to Germany. It is, of 
 course, easy to be generous with other people's money. 
 One curious little circumstance may be mentioned in 
 connexion with the rebuilding of Strasburg. Vauban's 
 old citadel had been very badly battered by the 
 bombardment, and the Germans, extremely proud of 
 this achievement, invited people to come and inspect 
 their work of destruction, setting up a notice-board 
 and a turnstile, and charging each visitor a franc as 
 admission fee. Even Barnum might have shrunk 
 from such a proceeding. 
 
 In connexion with the mode of payment of the 
 French w r ar indemnity, the provinces suffered from 
 the curtailment of some privileges which had been 
 previously agreed upon. There was to have been 
 free trade between them and France until the middle 
 of 1873, but, in return for Bismarck's assent to 
 modifications in the French payments, it was agreed 
 that the free-trade period should cease at the end of 
 1872. Moreover, the right of the inhabitants to 
 choose individually either French or German nation- 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 269 
 
 ality was in like manner curtailed, the period during 
 which this might be done being finally limited to 
 about fifteen months after the signing of the Treaty 
 of Frankfort, in such wise as to expire on September 
 30, 1872. Staehling, an Alsatian writer, contrasts 
 this limitation with the delay granted in 1815 to the 
 inhabitants of the Sarre region, annexed to Prussia 
 and Bavaria, who were allowed six years to determine 
 their nationality. Thiers was rightly anxious to free 
 France from the German occupation and for that pur- 
 pose to expedite the payment of the war indemnity; 
 but Pouyer-Quertier, his Minister of Finances, was a 
 Norman cotton-spinner, jealous of the Alsatian textile 
 manufactures, and though he smoothed away certain 
 financial difficulties, he calmly sacrificed the interests 
 of the Alsatians and Lorrainers. 
 
 At the outset, vast numbers of the people declared 
 for French nationality. Many thousands flocked 
 right eagerly into France, the population of such 
 towns as Nancy, Luneville, Saint-Die, Belfort, etc., 
 going up by leaps and bounds. Many important 
 businesses were likewise transferred to French terri- 
 tory. But when the Germans made it known that all 
 persons electing to remain French citizens must leave 
 Alsace-Lorraine, thousands found themselves in posi- 
 tions of the greatest difficulty. Many were tied to 
 the soil which furnished their only means of sub- 
 sistence, and discovered that if they decided for 
 French nationality they must part with their little 
 all. Thus the number of options in favour of France 
 dwindled as time went on. There was at first no 
 great influx of German agricultural settlers, willing to 
 buy the land, though directly peace had been signed 
 thousands of German workmen poured into the 
 annexed territory to take the places of the Alsatian 
 
270 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 workmen, who, not being linked to the soil like the 
 peasantry, had speedily removed to France, where 
 they well knew that their nationality, their industry, 
 and their skill would make them welcome. 
 
 At the same time the provinces became a dumping- 
 ground for German officials. In the very midst of 
 the war Bismarck had received 6000 applications for 
 official posts in Alsace-Lorraine, and the annexation 
 brought swarms of would-be functionaries ^n the 
 train of the hordes of tobacconists and vendors of 
 indecent photographs by whom the provinces were 
 overrun. On the other hand, as the option period 
 drew to a close, a woeful exodus of Alsatians and 
 Lorrainers set in. For the reasons I have mentioned, 
 this exodus was not so great as it might have been ; 
 but in the last days of September 1872, between 
 sixty and seventy thousand people crossed the new 
 frontier into France, accompanied at times by little 
 carts in which their few household goods were piled, 
 or carrying packs on their shoulders, or trudging 
 along with wheelbarrows containing bundles, crockery, 
 pans, and pots. Our Annual Register for 1872 grossly 
 underestimates the number of Alsatians and Lor- 
 rainers who left their homes. Thousands never for- 
 mally signed any declaration of option, but simply 
 fled. The same publication is in error in stating that 
 when the German army conscription lists were opened 
 more young men presented themselves for service 
 than could be received into the ranks. That is simply 
 a piece of bunkum derived from some German source. 
 From 1872 to the present time there has always been 
 a shortage of conscripts, notwithstanding the plant- 
 ing of thousands of Germans in the provinces. In 
 1878 the territory was liable to contribute 40,833 
 conscripts, but only 4822 came forward willingly, and 
 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 271 
 
 3981 were sentenced, in their absence, to imprisonment 
 for having emigrated without permission to France, 
 Luxemburg, and Switzerland. Further, in 1884, among 
 38,872 who were liable there were as many as 9854 
 defaulters. Even German official statistics have testi- 
 fied year after year to the reluctance of young 
 Alsatians and Lorrainers to enter the army. 
 
 As for the German emigration statistics they apply 
 only to open, authorized emigrations from Alsace- 
 Lorraine to distant parts of the world. To France 
 emigration has never been officially authorized. The 
 returns merely mention 517 emigrations from the 
 provinces in 1913, and 249 during the pre-war period 
 of the following year. Equally recent French figures 
 respecting the number of Alsatians and Lorrainers 
 naturalized in France are not available, but I find 
 that as late as 1911 there were 1990 such naturaliza- 
 tions. An examination of the successive issues of the 
 Annuaire statistique de la France from 1873 to the 
 above-mentioned date would show that, in spite of 
 all prohibitions and obstacles, at least 1,000,000 people 
 have come into the old country in order to escape from 
 German rule. 
 
 The population of Alsace-Lorraine has undoubtedly 
 increased since the annexation, when it was approxi- 
 mately 1,200,000. In 1885 it stood at 1,564,355, in 
 1890 at 1,603,107, in 1900 at 1,717,451, and on 
 December 1, 1910 (the last census), at 1,874,014, 
 representing a density of 333*9 inhabitants per square 
 mile. There was then a majority of males 965,625 
 against 908,389 females. The increase which has 
 taken place in spite of so much emigration has been 
 due to the fact that both the Alsatians and the 
 German settlers are very prolific races. 
 
 The facts which I have recited will, I trust, make 
 
272 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 it clear that any referendum to the population of the 
 present time would be absolutely misleading unless 
 the German settlers and their offspring were absolutely 
 debarred from voting. Moreover, even if the principle 
 of a referendum were accepted all sorts of difficulties 
 would arise. When Savoy and the county of Nice 
 were united to France in 1860 the population remained 
 undisturbed. Its voting was not influenced by the 
 presence of any foreign element. It only knew that 
 the Italian Government was willing to assent to the 
 cession, provided the inhabitants agreed to it. In 
 the case of Alsace-Lorraine it is very different, and 
 not only would it be right to eliminate the German 
 element from the voting, but, on the other hand, 
 equity would require that the scattered Alsatian- 
 Lorrainers should be consulted. 
 
 There are large numbers in France, many thousands 
 also in Algeria, where grants of land were made to 
 them by the French Government. Thousands have 
 also settled in Switzerland, and, further, thousands 
 have gone to North and South America and other 
 lands beyond the seas. There is even a considerable 
 number in Great Britain, whose interests are in the 
 hands of the Ligue patriotique des Alsaciens-Lorrains, 
 of which Lord Balfour of Burleigh is the honorary 
 president, the acting president being M. E. Roudolphi.* 
 Now in eight out of every ten cases the emigration 
 from Alsace-Lorraine has not been voluntary. These 
 people were attached to their native land, and in all 
 probability under French rule an immense majority 
 of them would have remained at home. Excepting 
 in the four years 1872, 1888, 1889, and 1890, when the 
 proportion of emigrants from French territory to 
 countries beyond the sea was 27, 61, 82, and 54 per 
 
 * The offices are at 18 Green Street, Leicester Square, London. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 273 
 
 100,000 of the population, the average since 1871 has 
 never exceeded 20 per 100,000, and has often been 
 considerably less.* It may be taken that even the 
 total emigration from France, which would include 
 that to continental States, has been less than that 
 from any other country in Europe the emigration 
 from the United Kingdom almost invariably supplying 
 the highest figures. 
 
 The great bulk of the Alsatian emigrants left their 
 territory on account of the German rule. If a 
 plebiscitum were taken it would be necessary to 
 include in it all the elements of the people dispersed 
 in one and another land. Is such a thing possible, 
 thinkable even ? But the French Government 
 through the President of the Republic, successive 
 Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries has abso- 
 lutely repudiated the idea of any plebiscitum at all.f 
 Alsace-Lorraine was torn from France by force, and 
 must be unconditionally returned. What of the 
 German settlers ? I may be asked. I answer that 
 sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander also ; but 
 I will add that the French Republican Government 
 has always been more equitable, more generous, 
 than that of the German Empire, and I am quite 
 sure that when Alsace-Lorraine is restored to 
 France the German settlers will be allowed far 
 more time and freedom to decide on what course 
 they will take than were granted to the inhabitants 
 in 1871-72. 
 
 An important point in Bismarck's programme was 
 the diffusion of education on German lines. A new 
 university for Strasburg was nominally inaugurated 
 on May 1, 1872. The building in which that university 
 
 * Annuaire statistigue de la France, 1913. 
 
 " f An important letter on the subject, written by M. Roudolphi, appeared 
 in the Daily ^Telegraph on August 30, 1917. 
 
 8 
 
274 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 is now installed had not then been erected. A 
 certain Professor Briich was placed at the head of the 
 new institution, which was afterwards endowed by 
 the Reichstag, and attended at first almost ex- 
 clusively by a couple of hundred young Germans 
 deliberately imported into the province. Just before 
 the present war, however, this university, which 
 includes faculties of theology, law, medicine, philo- 
 sophy, mathematics, and natural science, had 178 
 professors with an annual attendance of about 1100 
 students. I am not at all inclined to dispute the 
 fact that the German rulers have greatly increased the 
 number of schools in Alsace-Lorraine. In 1911 there 
 were 2974 of all categories with 3123 male and 2586 
 female teachers. The curriculum in these schools 
 may well be a good one in respect to all ordinary 
 matters, but the great purpose of the schools has 
 been to ensure domination and Germanization. To 
 influence the children, to make them forget that 
 their land was ever a French province, has been the 
 supreme object of the German authorities. 
 
 I referred in a another chapter * to the obstacles 
 placed in the way of pupils desirous of learning the 
 French language. Many parents, however, steadily 
 strive to undermine the Teutonic influence. Although 
 French may not be spoken currently it is often taught 
 and used secretly at home, where, in the lamplight 
 during the long winter evenings, tales of the days 
 when Alsace-Lorraine was part of France are often 
 told. One must therefore only accept with several 
 grains of salt the official statistics, which state that in 
 1910 1,634,260 persons spoke German exclusively, 
 and that the French-speaking population was limited 
 to 204,262. Many more would have spoken French 
 openly had they only dared. So zealous have the 
 
 * See p. 222, ante. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 275 
 
 authorities always been to promote Germanization by 
 educational means that more than half of the customs 
 revenue and of the proceeds of other indirect taxes 
 has been assigned to the schools. 
 
 The names of the officials of one and another 
 category fill page after page of the Staatshandbuch for 
 1914. There is almost no end to them, and un- 
 doubtedly many are not only officials but spies as 
 well, who watch sedulously for any signs of dis- 
 affection. Mr. H. J. Cowell, of the Social and Political 
 Education League, mentioned in an interesting lecture 
 delivered by him during the present war, and after- 
 wards printed in pamphlet form,* that Germany had 
 done everything to keep Alsace-Lorraine in remem- 
 brance that she was a conquered country ; and he 
 quoted the following pertinent remarks emanating 
 from an Alsatian : "I went to the tribunal for some 
 matters in which I was concerned. My judges hail 
 from the Palatinate. I afterwards went to the 
 registrar, the custom-house, and the railway station. 
 The registrar is a Pomeranian, at the custom-house 
 there is a Wiirttemberger, and at the station a Saxon. 
 I buy a stamp for a letter. Who is behind the little 
 window at the post office ? A Prussian. I should 
 like to complain about these Germans occupying all 
 our positions. But what would be the use ? The 
 editor of the local newspaper is a Westphalian. 
 These people not only occupy the best positions, but 
 dispose, in their own way, of all the vacancies in a 
 country where I was born and bred, and where my 
 family has lived for many centuries." 
 
 At the outset the German rulers had an extremely 
 difficult time of it, on which account they biiilt no 
 fewer than seventy-six new prisons for the accommo- 
 
 * Published, with an introduction by M. Roudolphi, by the Ligue patrio- 
 des Aleaciens-Lorrains, 18 Green Street, W.C. 
 
276 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 dation of malcontents. As was previously stated, the 
 administration was originally in the hands of Prince 
 Bismarck, the first fundamental laws regulating 
 the conditions of Government being voted by the 
 Reichstag in June 1871, June 1872, and June 1873. 
 The German Chancellor at first placed his kinsman, 
 Bismarck-Bohlen, and afterwards a certain Dr. von 
 Moeller, in charge of the immediate executive ; con- 
 cerning himself mainly with questions of policy and 
 leaving matters of detail to his delegates. The first 
 municipal councils elected under the German regime 
 were altogether pro-French in their tendencies. One 
 day M. Lauth, who was elected Mayor of Strasburg, 
 remarked to the German Prefect, a man named 
 Ernsthausen, that he hoped he would ultimately 
 become French again. Ernsthausen naturally re- 
 peated those imprudent words to Moeller, who at 
 once dismissed Lauth from his office and appointed 
 Herr Bach, director of the German police, to discharge 
 the mayoral duties. In September 1872 the Order of 
 Freemasons was suppressed throughout the annexed 
 territory, on the ground that it might favour inter- 
 course and conspiracy with France. Moeller treated 
 the inhabitants, not as equals nor even as vassals, but 
 absolutely as serfs. When some people, imagining 
 that a comparatively short sojourn in France would 
 settle the question of their nationality, ventured to 
 return to their native land, they were promptly 
 arrested, cast into prison, and declared nolens volens 
 to be German subjects. The whole judicial system 
 was altered, German enactments replacing the French 
 Code. However, though the German language at 
 once became obligatory for all such public bodies as 
 municipal councils, French was tolerated on the part 
 of advocates in the law courts until 1888. On the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 277 
 
 mark being substituted for the franc as the current 
 standard, the price of virtually everything was 
 increased by 20 per cent. The territory was handed 
 over by France free of all indebtedness, but eight 
 years later there was a debt equivalent to 2 per head 
 of the population. 
 
 The Constitution of the German Empire was 
 introduced into Alsace-Lorraine in January 1874, 
 and the inhabitants were privileged to elect fifteen 
 deputies to the Reichstag. Differences of opinion 
 on the great question of the day then unfortu- 
 nately declared themselves. Bishop Raess of Stras- 
 burg, whose bombarded cathedral had been repaired 
 at a cost of over 20,000 derived from the 
 French indemnity, virtually went over to the Ger- 
 mans, and his secession entailed that of a number 
 of the Catholic clergy, whose influence over their 
 parishioners was very great. Raess, in his zeal 
 for his Church, unwittingly served Bismarck's pur- 
 poses. The attitude assumed by him and his clergy 
 prevented the Alsatian-Lorrainers from showing a 
 united front at the first elections. Roman Catholic, 
 or rather Ultramontane, influence triumphed in several 
 electoral divisions, and the very first time the new 
 deputies attended the Reichstag their differences 
 became painfully manifest. The opponents of Bishop 
 Raess submitted a motion to the effect that the 
 Treaty of Frankfort having been concluded without 
 the sanction of the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, the 
 opinions of the latter ought to be ascertained. The 
 same deputies also moved that they should be allowed 
 to address the assembly in the French tongue, as 
 several of them knew no German. Bismarck replied 
 that in the German Parliament he knew no other 
 language than German, whereupon a Protestant 
 
278 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Alsatian deputy named Teutsch delivered a speech in 
 that vernacular. He was, of course, violently inter- 
 rupted when in regard to the annexation he accused 
 Germany of having overstepped the limits by which a 
 civilized nation should have been bound, and Forcken- 
 beck, the President, called him to order. Nevertheless 
 he succeeded in expressing his feelings of devotion to 
 France. Bishop Raess spoke next, and referring to 
 the treaty of Frankfort declared for himself and his 
 Alsatian and Lorrainer coreligionists that they did 
 not question the treaty's validity. 
 
 It was a pitiful exhibition. The real motive of 
 the Bishop's unpatriotic attitude must be sought in 
 the position of the Papacy at that time. It had lost 
 its territorial sovereignty by the Italian occupation 
 of Rome, and the zealots of the Roman Catholic 
 world were in a great state of indignation. The 
 French Clericalists wished to force France to make 
 war on Italy in order to restore the Temporal Power. 
 There was also unrest on this question in Catholic 
 parts of Germany, whilst the Protestants there 
 denounced many Catholic institutions and religious 
 orders for their subserviency to the Pope, who, in an 
 allocution to the College of Cardinals in 1872, had 
 personally charged the Emperor and his Government 
 with " savage persecutions and secret machinations 
 against the Church." All this led up to the Falk 
 laws and the great Kulturkampf between the Vatican 
 and the German Chancellor ; and Raess, who was a 
 prelate of an extremely Ultramontane type, showed 
 far more concern about the interests of his Church 
 than about those of his native land. In fact it is not 
 too much to say that he sacrificed the interests of 
 Alsace-Lorraine in order that he might the more 
 easily join hands with the German Clericalists. The 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 279 
 
 Bishop, however, did not have everything his own 
 way. On the day after his declaration respecting the 
 Frankfort treaty, a Catholic, though not an Ultra- 
 montane, deputy of the annexed provinces, named 
 Pouget, who had been unable to attend the first 
 debate, rose in the Reichstag and said : "I am told 
 that in recognizing the validity of the Treaty of 
 Frankfort, Bishop Raess yesterday took upon himself 
 to speak in the name of his coreligionists of Alsace 
 and Lorraine. If he really did so I am constrained 
 to say that the Bishop spoke in his own name, and 
 not in that of other Roman Catholic deputies for 
 Alsace-Lorraine." The Bishop was greatly mortified 
 by that well- deserved rebuke. 
 
 At that period the Reichstag debates respecting 
 the annexed provinces were often full of interest. 
 The motions which the Alsatian and Lorrainer 
 deputies submitted were invariably rejected, securing 
 as a rule only the support of the Danish, the Polish, 
 and some of the Socialist representatives. Bismarck 
 often intervened in the discussions, and, stung by the 
 remarks of those who spoke for the populations 
 brought under his domination, he did not hesitate to 
 jeer and sneer at them. On one occasion, while 
 referring to the Franco- German War, he reproached 
 them for " having taken part in the infamous and 
 sinful attack upon Germany." At another moment 
 he congratulated them on having escaped from French 
 rule and from " the agreeable prospect of taking 
 voyages to the penal settlements of Lambessa and 
 New Caledonia." He also remarked that as the 
 Alsatians had always supplied the French army with 
 a disproportionately large quota of soldiers and non- 
 commissioned officers, it followed that in the many 
 wars between the two countries the Germans had 
 
280 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 been obliged to fight them as well as the other subjects 
 of the Paris Government. " But," he added, " we 
 are now glad to have these good soldiers on our side, 
 and we shall certainly do all in our power to keep 
 them there." At another time, in a debate on the 
 endowment of the University of Strasburg (November 
 1874) the Chancellor expressed himself as follows : 
 
 The question before us concerns the interests of the Empire. It is not 
 a question of Alsace-Lorraine. The university is to serve Imperial purposes. 
 In the well-fought war, in which we had to defend our existence, we conquered 
 the provinces for the Empire. It was not for the interests of Alsace-Lorraine 
 that our soldiers shed their blood. We take our stand upon the interests 
 of the Empire and the Imperial policy. Upon those grounds Alsace-Lorraine 
 was annexed, and not for the sake of Alsace-Lorraine's ecclesiastical interests.* 
 In the Empire we act from other motives than those of the gentlemen whose 
 past would lead them back to Paris and whose present conducts them to 
 Rome. We ^ave to think of the Empire. . . . My first views respecting an 
 Alsace-Lorraine parliament were too sanguine. . . . They have been modified 
 by what I have seen of the attitude of the Alsatian-Lorrainer deputies here. 
 Such a parliament would lead to constant agitation and perhaps endanger 
 the maintenance of peace. 
 
 Did ever statesman acknowledge more candidly, 
 more bluntly, more brutally, that he did not care a 
 rap for the interests or aspirations of those whom he 
 had enthralled ? 
 
 The representative institutions which were after- 
 wards set up in the annexed provinces were mere 
 shams and mockeries destitute of all authority. 
 Nothing approaching the real nature of a Parliament 
 existed before the Constitution granted in 1911, and 
 I will presently explain how extremely limited were 
 the powers which that Constitution conferred on the 
 Alsatians and Lorrainers. Bismarck, in the speech 
 which I have just quoted, referred to the maintenance 
 of peace. This was often endangered during ensuing 
 
 * The reference to " ecclesiastical interests," and the ensuing sentence 
 also, were thrusts at Bishop Raess. The latter, by the way, was opposed 
 to the university, fearing that by the instruction imparted at it many sheep 
 might escape from his fold. He at least wished to prevent a large endowment. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 281 
 
 years. For a long time the spirit of revanche was 
 undoubtedly strong in France, but on various occasions 
 it was not this but the German Chancellor's provoca- 
 tive policy and the agitations engineered in Germany 
 by his reptile Press that seemed likely to bring about 
 another war. Whilst the Ultramontane agitation in 
 France in favour of the restoration of the Temporal 
 Power was certainly of a nature to lead to hostilities 
 against Italy, and through Italy against the German 
 Empire, the war scare of 1875 was absolutely Bis- 
 marck's work. He was amazed at the rapid recovery 
 of France from her disasters, and fearing lest, in time, 
 she should endeavour to win back Alsace-Lorraine, 
 he resolved to crush her yet once more. 
 
 He took as his pretext the reorganization of the 
 French army, which included the division of each 
 infantry regiment into four instead of three battalions. 
 As a matter of fact there was no increase in the 
 effective beyond the appointment of such regimental 
 officers as were necessary for an additional battalion. 
 The total strength of each regiment remained the 
 same as before. But Bismarck and Moltke professed 
 to be much alarmed and began to prepare for another 
 war, after which, anticipating " victory as usual," 
 they intended to demand a further cession of territory 
 (notably Belfort) and an indemnity of 400 millions 
 sterling. The plot fortunately came to the knowledge 
 of Marshal MacMahon's Government, and General 
 Le Flo, then French Ambassador at Petrograd, laid 
 everything before the Russian Emperor, Alexander II. 
 At the same time M. Gavard, charge d'affaires in 
 London, submitted the facts to our Foreign Secretary, 
 the Lord Derby of those days. In the result, whatever 
 pro-German proclivities then existed in Great Britain, 
 Derby took up the French cause, and our Government 
 
282 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 and that of Russia made it known that on France 
 declaring her peaceful intentions they would con- 
 jointly interfere to prevent the contemplated war. 
 This was Bismarck's first serious defeat in the sphere 
 of foreign politics, and he revenged himself for it by 
 precipitating the Russo-Turkish War, and by siding 
 against Russia at the famous Congress of Berlin. 
 
 On the other hand, at a somewhat later period, the 
 maintenance of peace certainly incurred some danger 
 from the periodical demonstrations of the French 
 League of Patriots, founded by the French Kipling, 
 the soldier-poet, Paul Deroulede. This league was 
 undoubtedly imbued with the revanche spirit, and 
 acted at times in open defiance of Gambetta's wise 
 advice on that subject: "Keep it always in mind, 
 but never speak of it " (Pensez y toujours, mais n'en 
 parlez jamais). When one recalls, however, the 
 manner in which Alsace-Lorraine was torn from 
 France, and the many episodes of the time when it 
 was French territory, one can well understand not 
 only the memory of the loss surviving, but also the 
 difficulty of restraining oneself from speaking of it. 
 It is related that after Stanley found Livingstone, the 
 latter inquired what had happened in Europe of 
 recent years. Stanley told him of the Franco-German 
 War, the indemnity paid by France, and the loss 
 of Alsace-Lorraine. " Ah ! '' Livingstone replied, 
 " France will soon cease mourning over the five 
 milliards of money, but she will never forget those 
 two provinces ! '' 
 
 In 1887, when General Boulanger was French 
 Minister of War, a serious crisis in the relations of 
 France and Germany occurred. Boulanger made 
 various imprudent speeches and lent himself to some 
 of the demonstrations of the League of Patriots, 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 283 
 
 Thereupon the German Press denounced him as a 
 danger to peace, and the Imperial Government began 
 to move troops hither and thither in Alsace-Lorraine, 
 doing this with so much fuss and publicity that it 
 seemed as if a direct warning to France were intended. 
 The French Prime Minister was then M. Rene Goblet, 
 a Radical politician, and the Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs was M. Leopold Flourens. Both were sin- 
 cerely desirous of maintaining peace. Nevertheless 
 there was a panic on the Paris Bourse and a very sharp 
 drop in the quotations for Rentes. The Chambers 
 voted considerable additional credits for the army 
 and the navy, and Goblet refused to make a pacific 
 declaration, a refusal which was perhaps a mistake 
 on his part. However, he took up the position that 
 his opinions were perfectly well known, and that no 
 declaration was necessary. Yet at the same time 
 he told Boulanger not to dispatch any additional 
 troops to the frontier, as the general wished to do, 
 by way of answering the German military movements 
 in Alsace. Moreover, Ferdinand de Lesseps, of Suez 
 Canal fame, went on a semi-official mission to Berlin, 
 and the atmosphere appeared to clear. But a frontier 
 incident fraught with serious possibilities suddenly 
 occurred. The German authorities suspected a French 
 commissary of police named Schnaebele, attached to 
 the railway station of Pagny-sur-Moselle, of inter- 
 course with some Lorrainer malcontents, and resolved 
 to arrest him should he ever cross the frontier. He 
 did so in response to a request from a German police 
 official named Gautsch, who pretended that he wished 
 to confer with him respecting some of the frontier 
 regulations. Nevertheless, on April 20, 1887, Schnae- 
 bele was arrested and conveyed to Metz. 
 
 As a result of this German act of provocation the 
 
284 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 question of war or peace came to the front once more. 
 Boulanger and some of his colleagues wished to demand 
 an apology in a dispatch tantamount to an ultimatum. 
 But M. Flourens, like a true diplomatist, scouted the 
 suggestion, holding that Schnaebele's arrest under such 
 circumstances could not possibly be maintained by 
 any known principle of law. In spite of this, Bou- 
 langer, swayed by personal ambition or incited by 
 enthusiastic and unthinking firebrands, tried to pre- 
 cipitate events by sending as secretly as possible, and 
 in defiance of Goblet's instructions, a number of 
 troops towards the frontier. Nor was that all, for he 
 also wrote to the Tsar, then Alexander III, or to his 
 War Minister, soliciting Russian help. No sooner had 
 he done so than he boasted of his letter, and on the 
 matter becoming known to M. Flourens the missive 
 was intercepted. Further, as it seemed probable that 
 the affair would leak out, Flourens hastened to ac- 
 quaint the German ambassador in France with all the 
 facts, pointing out that Boulanger alone was respon- 
 sible, and virtually throwing him over. Finally, 
 Police Commissary Schnsebele was released, Bismarck 
 stating to M. Herbette, French ambassador at Berlin, 
 that the arrest had been justified by the proofs he 
 held of Schnaebele's connivance with an Alsatian 
 " traitor," but that as he had ventured on German soil 
 at the invitation of a German official, that invitation 
 was equivalent to a safe-conduct and would be re- 
 spected. In this wise was war between France and 
 Germany averted. Whether Schnaebele actually en- 
 gaged in any plotting is a moot point. One cannot 
 take Bismarck's word on such a matter. It is a fact, 
 however, that at the time in question, as during most 
 other periods, there was considerable unrest in Alsace- 
 Lorraine. A few months after the Schnaebele affair 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 285 
 
 eight Alsatians were tried at Leipzig for high treason. 
 The chief charge against them was that in order to 
 facilitate the reunion of Alsace-Lorraine with France, 
 they had secretly become members of Deroulede's 
 League of Patriots. Some were acquitted, but one 
 was sentenced to two, another to five, and another to 
 six years' imprisonment. A little later another war 
 scare, caused by a German forest-keeper shooting a 
 French sportsman dead, and wounding another one, 
 in the Vosges, subsided on the German Government 
 paying some compensation. At a much later date 
 trouble, even affrays, occurred at Nancy owing to the 
 arrogance of some of the Germans settled in that town. 
 From time to time, indeed, little " incidents " arose 
 which might have led to hostilities but which were 
 adjusted. During the years more immediately pre- 
 ceding the Great War the chief dangers to the mainten- 
 ance of peace between France and Germany arose in 
 connexion with the Dreyfus case, the German inter- 
 ference in the question of Morocco, the Congo and 
 Cameroons frontiers, and, incidentally, the Bagdad 
 railway. Into those matters it is unnecessary to 
 enter here, for they had no connexion with the 
 question of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 
 Under the German rule there have been frequent 
 scandals in the annexed provinces. Oppression, 
 corruption, and debauchery have gone hand in hand 
 among the official and military classes. Many in- 
 stances are mentioned in two books " Les Scandales 
 allemandes en Alsace-Lorraine " (1906) and " Les 
 Coulisses de 1' Alsace-Lorraine " (1908) written by a 
 former police commissary in the German service 
 named Stephany. Although the evidence of an 
 official who has parted from his masters may be open 
 to some suspicion, such precise and explicit particulars 
 
286 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 are given in Stephany's writings that, even if they be 
 somewhat highly coloured, they convey an impression 
 that there must be a great amount of absolute truth 
 in what he says the more so as many incidents 
 mentioned by him are of a similar nature to others 
 known to have occurred in Germany. Stephany's 
 instances of debauchery among the military caste, 
 from such petty " royalties " as the Prince of Schaum- 
 burg-Lippe down to junior lieutenants, correspond 
 with certain episodes of the present war. 
 
 Let me now recapitulate the chief features of the 
 Zabern or Saverne affair which in 1913 attracted 
 attention throughout the world. The town of Saverne 
 was garrisoned by two battalions of the 91st Infantry 
 Regiment, commanded by Colonel von Reuter, and 
 including among its officers a certain Lieutenant 
 Forstner, who scornfully applied the name of 
 46 Wackes " or " Square-heads " to the Alsatian re- 
 cruits under him. In an address which he delivered 
 to them wiiilst warning them against deserting and 
 joining the French Foreign Legion, he also spoke very 
 offensively about the French, with whom many of the 
 recruits had strong sympathies. For calling his men 
 by the opprobrious name of " Wackes,' 5 Fortsner 
 underwent some slight punishment, but the affair 
 became generally known, and created much excitement 
 throughout the provinces. On some demonstrations 
 ensuing, Colonel von Reuter requested the head of the 
 local administration, an Alsatian named Mahler, to 
 restore order, and on Mahler declaring that he knew 
 of no reason for interfering with law-abiding people, 
 Reuter himself took action. On November 29 a 
 crowd having assembled before the barracks the 
 former palace of the Rohan Cardinals he ordered a 
 certain Lieutenant Sehad, who that day commanded 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 287 
 
 the Guard, to disperse the assemblage. Schad's men 
 did so with great brutality, at the same time arresting 
 several people, among whom were some legal officials 
 who had just left the court-house. These were 
 released, but the others were detained in the cellars of 
 the barracks. The public excitement increased, dis- 
 affection becoming so manifest that the position was 
 submitted to the Emperor, who was then staying at 
 Donauschingen with Prince von Fiirstenberg. In the 
 result, the Alsatian Statthalter or Viceroy, Count von 
 Wedel, and his Secretary of State and Minister of the 
 Interior, Von Zorn-Bulach, a member of an Alsatian 
 family which had " ratted " to Germany, tendered 
 their resignations, feeling that the military party, by 
 overriding the civil authorities, was responsible for the 
 serious trouble which had arisen in many parts of the 
 provinces. The Kaiser, however, induced them to 
 withdraw their resignations ; a general was sent 
 to Saverne to inquire into what had occurred there, 
 and Reuter and Schad were afterwards court- 
 martialled for ordering troops to move against the 
 civilian population. They were ultimately acquitted 
 on the ground that they had kept within the pro- 
 visions of a Prussian law of 1820, which empowered 
 the military authorities to act if the civil administra- 
 tion should neglect to enforce order. 
 
 [ Meantime, however, another incident had occurred. 
 In the course of some field service near Saverne, 
 Lieutenant Forstner, while passing through a village, 
 cut down a lame shoemaker with whom he had a brief 
 altercation. This act of brutality aroused fresh 
 resentment. Forstner was certainly tried for hitting 
 and wounding a civilian, but although he was at first 
 sentenced to a year's imprisonment, he secured an 
 acquittal on appealing to a higher jurisdiction, the 
 
288 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 pretext being that he had acted in " supposed self- 
 defence " a perfectly ridiculous plea in the circum- 
 stances, for the injured shoemaker was as inoffensive as 
 he was lame. Debates ensued in the Reichstag, where 
 Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor, declared that the 
 regiment commanded by Reuter had been removed 
 from Saverne and that the law of 1820 had been 
 abolished for Alsace-Lorraine. Nevertheless, the 
 Reichstag passed a vote of censure by no fewer than 
 293 to 54 votes taking that course as it rightly 
 apprehended that the marked .disaffection in the 
 provinces could only be quieted by reproving the 
 military element, to whose overbearing attitude, not 
 only at Saverne but in many other localities also, 
 the popular resentment was largely due. The German 
 Socialists afterwards took up some of the grievances 
 of the Alsatians and Lorrainers, but on a motion to 
 reduce the Chancellor's salary they naturally incurred 
 defeat. However, Herren Wedel and Zorn-Bulach 
 again resigned their offices and were replaced, the 
 former as Statthalter by Dr. von Dallwitz, and the 
 second as Secretary of State and Minister of the 
 Interior by Count von Rcedern. 
 
 By a constitution which came into force in 1911 
 Alsace-Lorraine was granted the privilege of sending 
 three representatives to the German Federal Council. 
 Sovereign rights remained vested in the Emperor, 
 who was to appoint and recall, at pleasure, a Statt- 
 halter or Viceroy. All local laws were to emanate 
 from the Crown exclusively, but were to secure the 
 assent of a Diet or Landtag formed of two chambers. 
 The Upper Chamber was to be composed of five rep- 
 resentatives of the religious communities, the pre- 
 siding judge of the Supreme Court of Colmar, a 
 representative of Strasburg University, four members 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 289 
 
 representing the towns of Metz, Strasburg, Colmar, 
 and Mulhouse, various representatives of Chambers of 
 Commerce and Agricultural Councils, etc., but, in 
 addition to the foregoing, and in order to ensure a 
 permanent government majority, a score of members 
 were to be nominated by the Kaiser. One and all 
 were to retain their positions for five years. The 
 Lower Chamber was to be elected by direct suffrage, 
 and on first assembling in 1911 it comprised twenty 
 members of the Roman Catholic party, thirteen 
 particularist Lorrainers, ten Liberal Democrats, and 
 eleven Socialists. In the Staatshandbuch for 1914 
 I find a dozen French names among the members 
 of these Chambers. For instance, the second Vice- 
 President of the upper one was Dr. Gregoire, and the 
 first Vice-President of the lower one, M. Labroise. 
 But a good many members with Germanic names 
 were undoubtedly sound patriots. As the initiative 
 of law-making rested with the Statthalter, acting for 
 the Emperor, the powers of the so-called Landtag 
 of Alsace-Lorraine were necessarily very limited, and 
 it is quite impossible to describe such a regime as one 
 of self-government. 
 
 The administration set up by the new Constitution 
 comprised four principal departments, the Interior ; 
 Justice and Religion ; Finance, Commerce, and Im- 
 perial Domains ; and Agriculture and Labour. In 
 1914 the Kaiserlicher Statthalter was still Dr. von 
 Dallwitz,* and Count von Roedern was Secretary of 
 State and Minister of the Interior. During the year 
 ending March 31, 1917, the total revenue of the 
 
 * Before him the successive Governors of Alsace-Lorraine were Field- 
 Marshal von Manteuffel (October 1879), Prince Clovis von Hohenlohe (1885), 
 Prince von Hohenlohe-Langenburg (October 1894), and the Count von Wedel 
 mentioned in connexion with the Saverne affair. 
 
 T 
 
290 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 provinces was 4,126,615. At the last census 
 (1910) the population included 1,428,343 Catholics, 
 408,274 Protestants, 3868 members of other Christian 
 denominations, and 30,483 Jews. When the present 
 Great War began the garrison was composed of over 
 80,000 men. It included Badeners, Saxons, Silesians, 
 and Alsatian detachments of the 14th and 15th Army 
 Corps, under General von Deimling, whose chief of 
 staff was Count von Waldersee. At Metz there was 
 the 16th Army Corps under General von Mudra, and 
 there were also some men of the 21st Corps at Sarre- 
 bruck and Sarrebourg. Apart from the last named, 
 the garrison included nine brigades of infantry, five 
 brigades of cavalry, and seven artillery regiments. 
 Thus a strong force (double that of 1880) was kept 
 in the provinces, far less from any fear of sudden 
 French aggression than in order to impose the German 
 will on a people which obeyed it with regret. 
 
 A mock constitution and a formidable garrison, 
 such before this war was the final German answer to 
 all the bitter discontent so long prevailing in Alsace- 
 Lorraine. M. Roudolphi. in a letter to which I have 
 directed attention,* rightly stated that "in 1887, 
 after sixteen years of the new regime, the progress of 
 the conquerors having been absolutely negative, a 
 reign of terror began, which has not its equal in the 
 annals of the nineteenth century. Every society, 
 artistic, sporting, and even scientific, suspected of 
 French leanings was dissolved, prosecutions for high 
 treason and similar offences were as numerous as the 
 pebbles on the shore, and communication with France 
 was rendered practically impossible. This era, the 
 so-called c stillness of the dead,' when every voice 
 
 * See foot-note on p. 273, ante. 
 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 291 
 
 was silenced, and every movement watched by the 
 secret police, lasted for fifteen long years." 
 
 I will add little to this long narrative in which I 
 have endeavoured to give a sketch of many topo- 
 graphical, historical, racial, linguistic, and other 
 matters pertaining to Alsace-Lorraine. The country 
 is virtually terra incognita to most British readers, 
 and I shall feel amply rewarded for my labours if I 
 succeed in making more than its name known to them. 
 During the present war the French have won back a 
 small portion of the annexed land by force of arms, 
 but it must be restored to them in its entirety. That 
 is the desire of virtually all the inhabitants of the old 
 stock, arid of their kith and kin w r ho live far away in 
 exile. There can be no compromise with Germany 
 on this question. France will accept none. Un- 
 happily a small number of people among us still seem 
 desirous of accepting an inconclusive peace. Selfishly 
 thinking only of themselves, they are ready to sacrifice 
 the highest interests of posterity, and those, also, 
 of our comrades in arms. There are some people who, 
 whilst admitting that the German occupation of 
 Belgium is a pistol pointed at the head of Britain, 
 fail, apparently, to realize that the German occupation 
 of Alsace-Lorraine has been a pistol pointed at the 
 head of France for nearly half a century. Further, 
 there are even those it cannot be gainsaid who 
 would callously leave France in the lurch with respect 
 to her most important, her paramount claim. This 
 must not be. Should Great Britain desert her noble 
 and valiant ally the direst consequences would follow. 
 I, for one, am fully convinced that she will never do so, 
 but will continue fighting until Alsace-Lorraine, like 
 other lands, shall have been finally and fully delivered 
 from the odious yoke of the modern Hun. 
 

APPENDIX A 
 
 PLACE-NAMES DIFFERING IN FRENCH 
 AND GERMAN 
 
 BELOW will be found two lists of Alsatian and Lorrainer place- 
 names which have been changed since the annexation in 1871. 
 In some instances the alterations have been slight, but in some 
 others the difference is great. The French terminals vilU and 
 wilier (from the Latin villa and villare) have become weiler in 
 German. Bourg also has, not unnaturally, been changed to 
 burg. It is not claimed that the following lists are complete, 
 nevertheless they may prove useful for the identification of some 
 of the localities mentioned. In the first list the French and 
 in the second the German names are given in the first column 
 alphabetically, their equivalents appearing in the second one. 
 
 French German 
 
 Alsace Elsass 
 
 Aubure Altweier 
 
 Ban de la Roche Steinthal 
 
 Belmagny Bernetzweiler 
 
 Bischwiller Bitschweiler 
 
 Bitche Bitsch 
 
 Bonhomme, Le Diedolshausen 
 
 Boulay Bolchen 
 
 Bouxwiller Buchsweiler 
 
 Broque, La Vorbriick 
 
 Cernay Sennheim 
 
 Chateau-Salins Salzburg 
 
 Chatenois Kestenholz 
 
 Chavannes-sur-1'Etang Schaffnat-am-Weiher 
 
 Courtavon Ottendorf 
 
 Dabo Dagsburg 
 
 Eteimbes Welschensteinbach 
 
 Faulquemont Falkenberg 
 
 293 
 
294 
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 French 
 Fenestrange 
 Ferrette 
 Fouday 
 Guebwiller 
 Haguenau 
 Huningue 
 Levoncourt 
 Liepvre and Lievre 
 Longueville 
 Lorquin 
 Lorraine 
 
 Main-du-Prince, La 
 Marmoutier 
 Massevaux 
 Montreux 
 Mulhouse 
 Neubois 
 Neuf-Brisach 
 Obernai 
 Orbey 
 
 Petite-Pierre, La 
 Phalsbourg 
 Porcelette 
 Poultroie, La 
 Ribeaupierre 
 Ribeauville 
 Riquewihr 
 Romagny 
 Rouffach 
 Saint-Hippolyte 
 Saint-Louis 
 
 Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines 
 Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines 
 Sainte-Odile 
 Sarralbe 
 Sarreguemines 
 Sarre, the 
 Saverne 
 Schlestadt 
 Soultz-les-Bains 
 Soultz-sous-Forets 
 Thionville 
 
 German 
 Finstingen 
 Pfirt 
 Urbach 
 Gebweiler 
 Hagenau 
 Huningen 
 Luffendorf 
 Leberau 
 Longeville 
 Lorehingen 
 Lothringen 
 Herzogshand 
 Maursmiinster 
 Masmtinster 
 Miinsterol 
 Miilhausen 
 Gereuth 
 Neu Breisach 
 Oberehnheim 
 Urbeis 
 Liitzelstein 
 Pfalzburg 
 Porselt 
 Schmerlach 
 Rappoltstein 
 Rappoltsweiler * 
 Reichenweier 
 Willern 
 
 Rufach and Ruffach 
 Sankt Pilt 
 Sankt Ludwig 
 Sankt Kreuz im Leberthal 
 Markirch 
 Odilienberg 
 Saaralben 
 Saargemtind 
 Saar 
 Zabern 
 Schlettstadt 
 Sulzbad 
 
 Sulz-untenn-Walde 
 Diedenhofen 
 
 Rapperschweir in the local dialect. 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 295 
 
 French 
 
 Trois-Fontaines 
 Val-de-Ville 
 Valdieu 
 Vancelle, La 
 Ville 
 
 Vosges, the 
 Wasselonne 
 Wesserling 
 Wihr-au-Val 
 Wissembourg 
 Xouaxange 
 
 German 
 Dreibrunnen 
 Weilerthal 
 Gottesthal 
 Wanzel 
 Wciler 
 
 Wasigen and Wasgenwald 
 Wasselnheim 
 Hiisseren 
 Weier im Thai 
 Weissenburg 
 Schweizingen 
 
 II 
 
 German 
 Altweier 
 Bcrnctzweiler 
 Bitsch 
 Bitschweiler 
 Bolchen 
 Buchsweiler 
 Dagsburg 
 Diedenhofen 
 Diedolshausen 
 Dreibrunnen 
 Elsass 
 Falkenberg 
 Finstingen 
 Gebweiler 
 Gereuth 
 Gottesthal 
 Hagcnau 
 Herzogshand 
 Huningen 
 Hiisseren 
 Kestenholz 
 Leberau 
 Lorchingen 
 Lothringen 
 Luffendorf 
 Liitzclstein 
 Markirch 
 
 French 
 
 Aubure 
 
 Belmagny 
 
 Bitche 
 
 Bischwiller 
 
 Boulay 
 
 Bouxwiller 
 
 Dabo 
 
 Thionville 
 
 Le Bonhomme 
 
 Trois-Fontaines 
 
 Alsace 
 
 Faulquemont 
 
 Fenestrange 
 
 Guebwiller 
 
 Neubois 
 
 Valdieu 
 
 Haguenau 
 
 La Main-du-Prince 
 
 Huningue 
 
 Wesserling 
 
 Chatenois 
 
 Liepvre and Lievre 
 
 Lorquin 
 
 Lorraine 
 
 Levoncourt 
 
 La Petite-Pierre 
 
 Saint e-Marie-aux-Min es 
 
296 
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 German 
 Masmflnster 
 Maursmiinster 
 Miilhausen 
 Miinstcrol 
 Neu Breisach 
 Obercnheim 
 Odilienberg 
 Ottendorf 
 Pfalzburg 
 Pfirt 
 Porselt 
 Rappoltstein 
 Rappoltsweiler 
 Reichenweier 
 Rufach and Ruffach 
 Saar 
 
 Saargemiind 
 Salzburg 
 
 Sankt Kreuz im Leberthal 
 Sankt Ludwig 
 Sankt Pilt 
 
 Schaffnat-am-Weiher 
 Schlettstadt 
 Schmerlach 
 Schweizingen 
 Sennheim 
 Stcinthal 
 Sulzbad 
 
 Sulz-unterm-Walde 
 Urbach 
 Urbeis 
 Vorbruck 
 Wanzel 
 
 Wasigen and Wasgenwald 
 Wasselnheim 
 Weier im Thai 
 Weilerthal 
 Weissenburg 
 Welschensteinbach 
 Willern 
 Zabern 
 
 French 
 Massevaux 
 Marmoutier 
 Mulhouse 
 Montreux 
 Neuf-Brisach 
 Obernai 
 Sainte-Odile 
 Courtavon 
 Phalsbourg 
 Ferrette 
 Porbelette 
 Ribeaupierre 
 Ribeauville 
 Riquewihr 
 Rouffach 
 Sarre 
 
 Sarreguemines 
 Chateau-Sal ins 
 Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines 
 Saint-Louis 
 Saint-Hippolyte 
 Chavannes-sur-1'Etang 
 Schlestadt 
 La Poultroie 
 Xouaxange 
 Cernay 
 
 Ban de la Roche 
 Soultz-les-Bains 
 Soultz-sous-Forets 
 Fouday 
 Orbey 
 La Broque 
 Varicelle 
 Vosges, the 
 Wasselonne 
 Wihr-au-Val 
 Val-de-Ville 
 Wissembourg 
 Eteimbes 
 Romagny 
 Saverne 
 
APPENDIX B 
 
 STRASBURG UNITED TO FRANCE 
 
 Articles proposed by the Prcetors, Consuls, and Magistrate of the 
 Town of Strasburg, the SOth September, 1681.* 
 
 WE, Franois Michel de [sic] Tellier, Marquis of Louvois, 
 Secretary of State and of his Majesty's Commandments, and 
 Joseph de Fonts, Baron of Montclar, Lieutenant-General in the 
 Armies of the King, commanding for his Majesty in Alsace, by 
 virtue of the power conferred upon vis by his Majesty to receive 
 the town of Strasburg into obedience under him, have set down 
 the annotations [apostittes] inscribed below, whereof we promise 
 to supply his Majesty's Ratification, and to hand it to the Magis- 
 trate of Strasburg, between now and ten days' time. 
 
 I. The town of Strasburg, following the example of Mr. 
 [sic] the Bishop of Strasburg, the Count of Hanau, the Lord of 
 Fleckenstein, and the nobility of Lower Alsace, recognizes his 
 Most Christian Majesty as its Sovereign Lord and Protector. 
 
 Annotation. The King receives the town and all its depen- 
 dencies under his Royal protection. 
 
 II. His Majesty shall confirm all the ancient privileges, 
 rights, statutes, and customs of the town of Strasburg, ecclesias- 
 tical as well as political, conformably with the Treaty of Peace 
 of Westphalia, confirmed by that of Nimeguen. 
 
 Annotation. Granted. 
 
 III. His Majesty shall allow the free exercise of Religion, 
 as has been the case from the year 1624 until now, with possession 
 of all churches and schools, and will not allow anybody what- 
 soever to raise any pretensions either to ecclesiastical property 
 or to any foundations or convents that is to say, the Abbey of 
 Saint-Etienne, the Chapter of Saint-Thomas, Saint-Marc, Saint- 
 Guillaume, the Tous-Saints, and all others included or not 
 
 * " Articles proposez par les Preteurs, Consuls et Magistrat de la Ville de 
 Strasbourg, le 30 Septembre, 1681." A Paris, au Bureau d'Adresse, aux 
 Galeriea du Louvre. MDCLXXXF. Avec Privilege du Roy. 
 
 297 
 
298 APPENDIX B 
 
 included [within the town ?.], but shall for all time preserve them 
 to the town and its inhabitants. 
 
 Annotation. Granted in respect to the enjoyment of all that 
 pertains to ecclesiastical property, in accordance with the stipu- 
 lations of the Treaty of Miinster, with this reserve, that the 
 fabric of the Church of Our Lady, formerly called the Dom 
 (cathedral), shall be restored to the Catholics ; notwithstanding 
 which his Majesty approves that they [the Protestants] shall 
 make use of the bells of the said church for all purposes heretofore 
 customary, except only that of ringing them to prayers. 
 
 IV. His Majesty shall leave the Magistrature in its present 
 state, with all its rights, including the free election of its colleges, 
 namely, that of the Thirteen, that of the Fifteen, and that of the 
 Twenty-One, together with the Large and Small Senates, the 
 Echevins, the officers of the town and the Chancellery, the eccle- 
 siastical convents, the University with all its doctors, professors, 
 and students of whatever category they be, the [trade or pro- 
 fessional] college, classifications, and masterships all as they 
 are now, together with the [present] Civil and Criminal Juris- 
 dictions. 
 
 Annotation. Granted, with the reserve that in all lawsuits 
 in which the capital amount [sued for] shall exceed one thousand 
 livres of France [dr. 40] an appeal to the Council of Brisach 
 shall be allowed, without, however, the appeal suspending the 
 execution of the judgment 'which may have been delivered by 
 the Magistrate [of Strasburg] should no sum exceeding two 
 thousand livres of France [dr. 80] be in question. 
 
 V. His Majesty also grants to the town that all its revenues, 
 taxes, [land] tolls, bridge-tolls, commercial rights, and customs 
 [douane] shall be preserved to it, with all liberty to enjoy the 
 same as heretofore, together with the free disposal of the Pfen- 
 ningthurn and the Mint, and the magazines [stores] of cannon, 
 munitions, and weapons, both those which are in the Arsenal and 
 those which are on the ramparts and in the houses of burgesses, 
 together with the magazines [stores] of grain, timber, coal, tallow, 
 and all others, the bells [of the town], and also the Archives 
 with the documents and papers of whatever nature they be. 
 
 Annotation. Granted, with the reserve that the cannon, 
 munitions of war, and arms in the public stores shall be placed 
 in the power of his Majesty's officers, and as regards the weapons 
 belonging to private people, that they shall be deposited at 
 the town hall in a room whereof the Magistrate shall keep the 
 kev. 
 
APPENDIX B 299 
 
 VI. All the burgesses shall remain exempt from all taxes and 
 other payments. His Majesty shall leave all imposts, ordinary 
 or extraordinary, to the town for its maintenance. 
 
 Annotation. Granted. 
 
 VII. His Majesty shall leave to the town and citizens of 
 Strasburg the free enjoyment of the bridge over the Rhine and 
 of all the towns, bourgs, villages, and lands that belong to them, 
 and will graciously grant the town Letters of Respite against all 
 creditors, whether in the Empire or elsewhere. 
 
 Annotation. Granted. 
 
 VIII. His Majesty also grants an Amnesty for all the past, 
 both to public and to private persons without any exception, 
 and will include in it the Prince Palatine de Veldence [sic\ 9 the 
 Count of Nassau, the Resident of his Imperial Majesty, all the 
 Hostels [sic], the Brudcrhoff, with their officers, houses, and 
 iippurtenances. 
 
 Annotation. Granted. 
 
 IX. It shall be allowable for the town to erect barracks to 
 lodge the troops which may be in garrison. 
 Annotation. Granted. 
 
 X. The King's troops shall enter the town to-day, September 
 30, 1681, at four o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 Done at Illkirch, this 10 September 1681. 
 
 Signed : De Louvois, 
 
 Joseph de Ponts, Baron de Montclar. 
 
 Jean George de Zedlitz, Esquire and Praetor 
 Dominique Dietrich Johann Leonard Froreisen 
 Johann Philippe Schmidt Daniel Richshoffer Jonas 
 Storr J. Joachim Franz Christoffle Giinzer. 
 
 Various points arising out of the above convention have been 
 discussed in an earlier part of this volume (pp. 96 to 98, ante), 
 and little need be added here. The description of Louvois in 
 the preamble as de Tellier is perhaps merely a slip. His real 
 patronymic was Le Tellier, but he may have substituted de for 
 le, or a secretary may have done so on the ground that de was 
 the customary particle among members of the nobility. The 
 German Count of Hanau and the Lord of Flecker) stein referred to 
 in Clause I probably held fiefs in Alsace. The Pfenningthurn 
 which is mentioned in Clause V may possibly have been some 
 
800 APPENDIX B 
 
 tower where certain dues or tolls were levied. Some parts of 
 Clause VIII are rather obscure. The " Prince Palatine de Vel- 
 dence " may have been the Palatine of the Rhine of that period, 
 but the words de Veldence are puzzling. There is, however, a 
 small place called Veldenz, near Berncastel in the Moselle wine 
 country, and some Palatine may have been known by the name 
 of the Veldenz lordship. According to "L'Art de verifier les 
 Dates" there certainly was an independent House of Veldenz 
 in early times. The Count of Nassau who is mentioned may 
 well have been William of Orange, afterwards our William III. 
 He was a confirmed enemy of Louis XIV, and may have urged 
 Strasburg to maintain its independence and even have promised 
 assistance to that effect. The Bruderhoff was possibly an associa- 
 tion. It is more difficult to suggest an explanation of the ex- 
 pression "all the Hostels." Hostels, however, must have 
 signified mansions (hotels), not asylums or inns, and the reference 
 was possibly to all the nobles dwelling in abodes of this descrip- 
 tion. Clause IX may be explained by the town's desire to 
 prevent the garrison from being billeted on the inhabitants. 
 In Clause X will be found the words, " to-day, September 30," 
 whereas immediately afterwards one reads, " Done at Illkirch 
 this 10 September." This seeming contradiction may be ac- 
 counted for by assuming that the date on which the French 
 troops were to enter Strasburg was left blank when the Proposals 
 were originally drafted, and inserted in the document when 
 everything had been finally agreed upon. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Note. In the following references the annexed territory of Alsace- 
 Lorraine is generally designated by the initials A.-L. Place-names 
 are usually given in their French forms, as in the body of the book, 
 but the German forms will be found in Appendix A. Gallo- 
 Roman names of localities, which changed at different periods 
 (for instance, Brigainagus became Brocomagus) are not indexed, 
 but many of them will be found in chapter vii, where place-names 
 are discussed. 
 
 ABOUT, EDMOND, 34 
 
 Acad6mie Stanislas, 180 
 
 Accession gifts in Lorraine, 165 
 
 Adalric, D. of Alsace, 36 
 
 Adolphus of Nassau, Emp., 74 
 
 Adultery, penalties for, 160 
 
 Aetius, 64 
 
 Agriculture in Lorraine, 176. See 
 also Scarcity 
 
 Alans, the, 62, 63 
 
 Albert I, Emp., 78 ; of Alsace, D. of 
 Lorraine, 146; Archduke, 230; 
 the Rich, 88 
 
 Alemanni, the, 61 et seq., 64, 65 
 
 Alexander II of Russia, 281 ; III, 284 
 
 Alsace, Albert and Gerard of, 146, 
 147 ; dukes of, 65, 83, 89 
 
 Alsace, generally, 9, 10 et seq. ; towns 
 and noted spots in, 25 et seq. ; its 
 history to the Treaty of West- 
 phalia, 55 et seq. ; abandoned by 
 the Romans, 62 ; from Treaty of 
 Westphalia onward, 91 et seq. 
 See also Bourbons, Caesar, 
 Cholera, Council, Fruit, Germans, 
 Hapsburgs, Latin, Man, Minstrels, 
 Pagans, Plague, Protestants, Rail- 
 ways, Rebellions, Reformation, 
 Rivers, Roads, Russia, Scarcity, 
 Storks, Vosges, Wines 
 
 Alsace-Lorraine (annexed territory) 
 area, 9 ; divisions of, 10, 25, 26 ; 
 elections in, 264 ; emigration from, 
 268 et seq. ; German garrison in, 
 290 ; German officials in, 270, 275 ; 
 population, 9, 271, 290; protests 
 against annexation, 264 et seq. ; 
 religions in, 290 ; revenue of, 290 ; 
 under the Germans generally, 267 
 et seq. See also Beer, Canals, 
 Catholic, Celts, Coal, Conscrip- 
 tion, Constitution, Crops, Deputies, 
 Dialects, Education, Emigration, 
 Forests, Freemasons, French, Fruit, 
 Germans, Industries, Iron, Jews, 
 Landtag, Language, Latin, Live 
 stock, Manufactures, Place-names, 
 Prisons, Railways, Rivers, Sieges, 
 Textiles, Tobacco, Vosges, Welsch, 
 Zones 
 
 Alsatia, Whitefriars, 71 
 
 Alsatians, the, their characteristics, 
 98, 106, 107, 198 et seq. ; cos- 
 tumes, 200; famous men, 224 et 
 seq. ; their attachment to France, 
 226 ; penalized for joining the 
 French army, 262; as German 
 conscripts, 270, 271 ; their first 
 deputies in the Reichstag, 277 
 et seq. 
 
 301 
 
302 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Alt Breisach, 60, 214, 248 
 
 Altkirch, 45 
 
 Andlau, 37 
 
 Anjou, its rulers, 147, 148 
 
 Anna Ivanovna, Empress, 168 
 
 Annexation of A.-L., 205, 229, 264 
 
 Anthony, D. of Lorraine, 34, 81, 149 
 
 Apponyi, Ct., 126 
 
 Apremont, Mile, d', 155 
 
 Argensons, the d', 107 
 
 Ariovistus, 57 et seq., 214 
 
 Armagnacs in Alsace, 79 
 
 Arminius, 59 
 
 Army recruits in Lorraine, 177, 189 
 
 Arnoul or Arnulf, Emp., 144 
 
 Ars-sur-Moselle, 21, 261 
 
 Articles for the union of Strasburg, 
 
 96 et seq., 297 et seq. 
 Attila, 64, 145, 218 
 Augsburg League, 104. See also 
 
 Treaties 
 
 Augustus, Emp., 59 
 Augustus II of Saxony, 167 ; III, 
 
 167, 168 
 
 Aurelian, Emp., 61 
 Austrasia, 65, 173 
 Austria threatens to seize Alsace, 
 
 126; in '70, 230 
 
 BACCARAT, glass-works, 162, 186, 260 
 
 Bach, Herr, 276 
 
 Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, 272 
 
 Ballons of the Vosges, 14 
 
 Ban de la Roche, 35, 36, 109 
 
 Baner, Gl. J. G., 84 
 
 Bar, county, later duchy, 145, 147, 172 
 
 Baraguey d'Hilliers, Ml., 244, 252 
 
 Barr, town, 37, 38, 259 
 
 Barras, Paul de, 114 
 
 Bartholdi, F. A., 30, 39, 258 
 
 Basle, 13, 60, 80, 95, 96, 111, 134 
 
 Baum, pastor, 138 
 
 Bavaria annexes Landau region, 191, 
 
 193, 194 
 Bazaine, Achille, Ml., 48, 234, 235, 
 
 252 to 255 
 
 Beauharnais, Gl. Alex, de, 111 
 Beer in A.-L. and Bavaria, 20 
 
 Belfort, 10, 13, 121 et seq., 208, 255, 
 
 269; sieges of , 256 to 258 
 Belgium, the neutrality of, 5 to 8, 
 
 236, 291 
 
 Belle-Isle, Ml. de, 49 
 Benedetti, Ct., 6, 7 
 Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, 83 
 Besanyon, 58, 111 
 Bethmann-Hollweg, Dr. v., 288 
 Beyer, Gl. v., 237 
 Bicentenary of Alsatian union with 
 
 France, 128 
 
 Biedermann, Prof., 127 
 Bischer, a veteran, 262 
 Bishops, of Lower Lorraine, 146. 
 
 See also Metz and Strasburg 
 Bishoprics,the Three, 47, 149, 151, 163 
 Bismarck, Pr. v., 5 to 8, 130, 134, 
 
 196, 206, 210, 228 to 230, 238, 
 
 252, 258, 267 et seq., 276, 277, 279 
 
 to 282, 284 
 
 Bismarck-Bohlen, Ct. v., 276 
 Bitche, 52, 53, 177, 231, 232; its 
 
 siege in '70, 248 et seq. 
 Blanc, Louis, 265, 266 
 Blasphemy, penalties for, 160, 161 
 Boeck, R., 138, 205, 206 
 Bonhomme, Le, 40 
 Bonnin, Herr v., 260, 261 
 Bossier, L., 214 
 Boufflers, Chev. de, 188; Marq. de, 
 
 181 
 
 Bouille, Marq. de, 188, 189 
 Boulanger, GL, 282 to 284 
 Boulay de la Meurthe, A. and H., 194 
 Bourbaki, Gl., 263 
 Bourbons, Catherine de, 152 ; D. de, 
 
 105 ; unpopular in Alsace, 120, 121 
 Bouxieres, chapter of, 187 
 Bouxwiller, 34 
 Boyer, Gl., 253 
 Brabant, duchy of, 145 
 Brachycephalic skulls, 144, 202 
 Breisach, Brisach, see Alt and Neuf 
 Brendel, Bp. of Strasburg, 110 
 Brignon affair, 285 
 Broglie, Ml. de, 107 
 Bruat, Adm., 39, 224 
 Brumath, 60, 213 
 
INDEX 
 
 303 
 
 Bruno, Abp., 145, 146 
 Brunswick, D. of, 111 
 Burgundians, the, 63 
 Burgundy, D. of, see Charles the Rash 
 
 JULIUS, in Alsace, 57 et seq. 
 Callot, Jacques, 153 
 Calonne, C. A. de, 115 
 Canals in A.-L., 12, 13, 126 
 Canrobert, Ml., 234 
 Cantecroix, Beatrix de, 155 
 Capet, Beatrix, 145 ; Eudes, 67 ; 
 
 Hugh, 145, 146 
 Caracalla, Emp., 61 
 Carlos, K. of Naples, 168, 170 
 Carnot, Lazare, 190 
 Caron, Col., 123 
 Carrel, Armand, 121 
 Catherine the Great, 45 
 Catholic clergy in A.-L., 99, 103, 121, 
 
 126, 157, 160, 161, 186, 192, 277 
 Catholic League, 151 
 Cavaignac, Gl., 129, 195 
 Cazeaux, Abbe, 138, 206 
 Celts in A.-L., 56 et seq., 65, 66 213, 
 
 214 
 
 Cer^ay documents, 229 
 Cernay, 43, 83 
 
 Chalons, battle, 64 ; camp, 196 
 Chambres de Reunion, 92, 93 
 Chamilly, Ct. de, 94 et seq., 102 
 Chanzy, Gl., 263 
 Chapters of noble ladies, 187 
 Charlemagne, his empire, 28, 46, 47, 
 
 65,66 
 
 Charles of Anjou, 147 
 Charles the Bald, Emp., 47, 66 ; the 
 
 Fat, 38, 67 ; IV, 74 ; V, 47, 48, 81, 
 
 149, 150, 151 ; VI, 87, 165, 167, 
 
 168, 171 ; VII, 176 
 Charles the Bold of Lorraine, 147 ; 
 
 the Great or III, 150, 151, 152, 157 ; 
 
 IV, 153, 154 et seq. ; V, 156 ; 
 
 Cardinal, 82 ; Prince, 164, 167, 176 
 Charles the Rash of Burgundy, 46, 
 
 79, 80, 149 
 Charles the Simple of France, 67, 68, 
 
 144 ; X, 123, 124 
 Charles XII of Sweden, 168, 172 
 
 Charles Edward, see Pretender 
 Charles Martel, 65 
 Chateauroux, Dss. de, 106, 159, 178 
 Chateau-Salins, 53, 54, 186, 223 
 Chateau vieux Switzers, 189 
 Chatelet, Mme. du, 182 
 Chatterers' Stone, 44 
 Cheese of Miinster, etc., 20 
 Chevaux, grands, see Chivalry 
 Chivalry of Lorraine, 147, 181, 225, 
 
 226 
 
 Chnodomir, 62 
 Choiseul, D. de, 70 
 Choiseul-Stainville, Ml. de, 107, 185 
 Cholera in Alsace, 130 
 Christina of Saxony, 182 
 Church Councils at Metz, 159, 160 
 Cities, free, see Free 
 Civilis, his rebellion, 59 
 Claude of Lorraine, 153, 154, 156 
 Clemenceau, George, 266 
 Clergy, see Catholic 
 Clothaire, 65 
 Clovis, 28, 64, 218 
 Coal in A.-L., 21, 44 
 Colmar, 17, 23, 38, 39, 40, 122, 247 
 Commercy, 163, 171 
 Conde, Louis II, Pr. de, 85, 91 
 Confederation, Rhenish, 71 
 Conrad I, K. of Germany, 68; the 
 
 Red, 145 
 
 Conradin (Conrad V), 72 
 Conscription in A.-L., 270, 271 ; in 
 
 France, 118 
 
 Constans II, Emp., 61, 62 
 Constant, Benj., 121 
 Constantia, Pr., 72 
 Constantino, Chlorus, 61 ; the Great, 
 
 61 
 
 Constitution of A.-L., 288, 289 
 Contades, Ml. de, 31, 107 
 Cosmo III of Tuscany, 168 
 Coucy, Enguerrand VII de, 76, 77 ; 
 
 castle, 76 
 
 Council of Alsace, 105. See Church 
 Coup d'Etat, Louis Napoleon's, 130, 
 
 131, 195 
 
 Court, see Sovereign 
 Cowell, H. J., 275 
 
304 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Crimea and penalties in Lorraine, 160, 
 
 161, 187 
 Crops in A.-L., 19, 20. See also 
 
 Scarcity 
 
 DALLWITZ, Dr. v., 288, 289 
 Daniel, William I as, 49, 50 
 Decapolis League, 74, 75 
 Decentius, 62 
 Decker, Gl. v., 238 
 Deimling, Gl. v., 290 
 Denfert-Rochereau, Col., 256, 257, 
 
 264 
 Deputies of A.-L. in '71, 264; at 
 
 Reichstag in '74, 277, 279 
 Derby, Earl of, 281 
 Deroulede, Paul, 282 
 Desaix, Gl., 30 
 Dettingen, battle, 177 
 Dialects: Picard, 204; in Alsace, 
 
 208 et seq., 217, 218, 221; in 
 
 Lorraine, 204, 218, 219 
 Dietrich. Dominique, 92 et seq., 100, 
 
 103, 104, 299 ; Philippe de, Baron, 
 
 30,33,52,109,110,111 
 Dieuze, 53, 54, 176, 212 
 Disraeli, B., 5 
 Dolichocephalic skull, 144 
 Dolmen in the Vosges, 56 
 Domremy, 184 
 Doraach, 43 
 Douay, Gl. Abel, 231 
 Dubarry, Mme., 174 
 Ducrot, GL, 236 
 Dufour, Gl., 133 
 Dupont de 1'Eure, 121 
 Dukes of Alsace, 67, 68 ; of Lorraine, 
 
 145, 146, 147. See also their 
 
 respective names 
 
 EDUCATION in A.-L., 157, 161, 180, 
 185, 221 to 223, 268, 273, 274, 280 
 
 Edict of Nantes, 99, 103 
 
 Edward III of England, 77 
 
 Eguisheim, 41, 55 
 
 Ehrenvest, see Ariovistus 
 
 Eleanor, Dss. of Lorraine, 164, 166 
 
 Elizabeth-Charlotte, Dss. of Lorraine, 
 157, 164 to 167, 171 
 
 Emigration, see Alsace-Lorraine 
 Emigres, French, 110, 112, 188 
 Empire, Holy Roman, dignities in, 
 
 170 
 
 Engelburg castle, 42 
 English invaders of A.-L., alleged, 
 
 75,76 
 
 Ensisheim, 39, 42, 91, 105 
 Epinal, 189 
 Erasmus, 74 
 
 Erekmann-Chatrian, 139, 140, 246 
 Ernsthausen, Prefect, 276 
 Erstein, 38, 259 
 Exelmans, Adm., 232 
 
 FABERT, Ml., 49 
 Faidherbe, Gl., 263 
 Failly, Gl. de, 231, 232, 248 
 Falcandus quoted, 72 
 Favre, Jules, 130, 206, 228 
 Federation of the Rhine, 110. See 
 
 also Confederation 
 Fenestrange, 52, 212 
 Ferdinand II, Emp., 84 ; III, 83, 84, 
 
 85, 87, 90 
 
 Ferdinand Charles, Landgrave, 87, 88 
 Ferrette, 45, 46, 87 ; counts of, 77, 
 
 78, 147, 255 
 
 Ferry I of Bar and Lorraine, 145 
 Fleury, D. de, 174 
 Flourens, Leopold, 283, 284 
 Fontenoy village, 261 
 Forbach engagement, 232 
 Forbin-Janson, Bp., 192 
 Force, D. de La, 153 
 Forests, Alsatian, 15, 16 
 Forstner, Lieut., 287, 288 
 Fortresses by Vauban, 26, 51, 53, 102 
 Foy, GL, 121 
 France, Alsatian attachment to, 226 ; 
 
 building up of, 2 ; emigration from, 
 
 272, 273 ; in the Thirty Years' War, 
 . 82 et seq. ; material prosperity of, 
 
 134 to 136. See also French 
 Francis I of Lorraine, 150 ; II, 153 ; 
 
 III, 165, 166 et seq., 169, 170, 171 
 Francis Stephen, see Francis III 
 Francs-tireurs, 247, 248, 260, 262, 265 
 Franks, the, 64, 65, 67 
 
INDEX 
 
 805 
 
 Frederick I (Barbarossa) Emp., 71, 
 
 88; 11,71 
 
 Frederick, Cr. Pr. of Prussia, 231, 234 
 Frederick Charles of Prussia, Pr., 234, 
 
 253, 260 
 Frederick William III of Prussia, 132 ; 
 
 IV, 132 et seq. 
 Free cities, 71, 74, 79, 98 
 Freemasons of A.-L., 276 
 French language in A.-L., 105, 106, 
 
 125, 140, 221 to 223, 274, 276 
 Frischmann, envoy, 93 
 Frossard, GL, 52, 231, 232 
 Fruit in Alsace, 16 
 Fiirstenberg, F. E. v., Bp., 93, 101 ; 
 
 Wilhelm, Bp., 101 
 
 GALAIZIEBE, Chaumont de La, 174 
 to 180, 184 
 
 Gambetta, Leon, 141, 263, 264, 266 
 
 Garibaldi, 263 
 
 Gauzer, see Giinzer 
 
 Gavard, M., 281 
 
 George II of Grt.-Brit., 164, 176 
 
 Gerard of Alsace, 146 
 
 Germanicus, 59 
 
 Germans : their claims to A.-L., 138, 
 139, 205 ; their early invasions of 
 A.-L., 57 i seq., 214, 216, 218, 220, 
 221 ; their exactions, thefts, out- 
 rages, tyranny, etc., in A.-L., 259, 
 260, 261, 263, 290 ; their language 
 in A.-L., 105, 274 ; hated in A.-L., 
 223, 226 ; their officials in A.-L., 
 270, 275; planted in A.-L., 269 
 et seq., 275 
 
 Geroldseck, W. of, Bp., 72 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 56 
 
 Glass-workers of Lorraine, 149 
 
 Goblet, Rene, 283 
 
 Goddess Reason, 112 
 
 Gordon, Mme., 125 
 
 Gratian, Emp., 62 
 
 Gravelotte battle, 234 
 
 Great Britain and Alsace (1814), 120 ; 
 and Belgium (1870), 5, 6 ; and war 
 of 1870-71, 4 to 8 
 
 Gregoire, Abbe, 190 
 
 Gregory IV, Pope, 66 
 
 Grosjean, J., 264, 265 
 Guebwiller, 14, 23, 42 
 Guises, the, 48, 151, 152, 225 
 Guizot, 126 
 Giinzer, 93, 96, 299 
 Gustavus Adolphus, 82 
 Gutenberg, 29, 240 
 
 HAGENBACH, P. v., 80 
 Haguenau, 32, 71, 111, 260 
 Hanau, Ct. of, 299 
 Hapsburgs and Alsace, 69, 77, 78, 86 ; 
 
 their lineage, 88, 89. See also 
 
 names of Emperors 
 Harcourt, Henri, Ct. d', 70 
 Hartmannsweiler Peak, 15, 43 
 Helvetus, 60 
 Henri II of France, 47, 150, 151 ; 
 
 III, 151, 152 ; IV, 152 
 Henry I (the Fowler), Emp., 68 ; IV, 
 
 68 ; VI, 69, 72 
 Herbette, M., 284 
 Hermann (Arminius), 59 
 Herrade, Abbess, 32 
 Hohenlohe, Pr. C. v., 289 ; Langen- 
 
 burg, 289 
 
 Hohenstaufens, the, 68, 72 
 Hohenburg Abbey, 32 
 Hohenzollern, John George of, 82 
 Honorius, Emp., 62 
 Horburg fight, 60, 247 
 Horn, Ct. Gustavus, 82, 83 
 Huck, Comt., 251 
 Hugh, D. of Alsace, 67, 144 
 Hugo, GL Sigisbert, and Victor, 224, 
 
 265, 266 
 
 Huninge'n (Huningue), 22 
 Huns, the, 63, 64, 145, 218 
 
 ILL, river, 11, 12 
 
 Illkirch, 97 
 
 Industries, modern, in A.-L., 18, 21, 
 
 22 
 
 Iron and other ores in A.-L., 21 
 Isabella, Dss. of Lorraine, 147, 148 
 Italy in '70, 230 
 
 JABLONOWSKA, Ctss., 181 
 Jacqueminot, Col., 193 
 
 U 
 
306 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jews in A.-L., 290 ; in Lorraine 
 formerly, 182 ; at Metz, 158, 159 ; 
 at Strasburg, 75 
 Joan of Arc, 53, 184, 197 
 Joan of Ferrette, 78 
 John, D. of Lorraine, 149 
 John Gaston de' Medici, 168, 170 
 John George of Hoheuzollem, 82 
 Joseph II, Emp., 170 
 Josephine, Empress, 31, 111 
 Julian, Emp., 62 
 
 KBHL (Baden), 27, 92, 239, 242 
 Keller-Haas, deputy, 264, 265 
 Kerhor, Col. de, 248 
 Kestner, deputy, 131 
 Kiel Canal, 238 
 Kiepert, Heinrich, 205 
 Kitchener, Lord. 4 
 Klapperstein, the, 44 
 Kleber, Gl., 29, 43 
 Koechlins, the, 22, 23, 115, 121 
 Kiiss, M., 254, 264 
 
 LAFAYETTE, Gl. de, 122, 123 
 
 Laloubere, Marq. de, 92 
 
 Lambertye, Marq. de, 164 
 
 Lambessa, 195, 196 
 
 Landau, 190 
 
 Landgraves of Alsace, 68, 69, 70 
 
 Landtag of A.-L., 288, 289 
 
 Landvogts of Alsace, 69, 70 
 
 Language in A.-L., 203 et seq., 212 et 
 seq. 
 
 Larevelliere-Lepeaux, 114 
 
 Latin language in A.-L., 213 to 218 
 
 Lauth, M., 276 
 
 Lavalette, Card, de, 84 
 
 Laveau, Jacobin, 112 
 
 Leagues : of Augsburg, 104 ; French 
 Catholic, 151 ; French League of 
 Patriots, 282, 285; Patriotic 
 League of Alsatian-Lorrainers, 272. 
 See also Confederation, Decapolis, 
 and Federation 
 
 Lebas, Joseph, 113 
 
 Lecourbe, GL, 256 
 
 Leczinski, see Stanislas 
 
 Leczinska, Marie, Q. of France, 167, 
 183, 184 
 
 Lefebvre, Ml., 41 
 
 Le Flo, GL, 281 
 
 Legrand, Major, 256 
 
 Leo IX, Pope, 41 
 
 Leopold I, Emp., 86, 98, 156, 165 ; 
 II, 170 
 
 Leopold of Austria, Landgrave of 
 Alsace, 77 
 
 Leopold, D. of Lorraine, 156, 157, 
 158, 163, 164 
 
 Leopold William of Austria, Bp. of 
 Strasburg, 88, 89, 93 
 
 "Lettres Portugaises," 94 
 
 Lezay-Marnezia, M. de, 119, 120 
 
 Lichtenberg, John of, Bp., 69 
 
 Liege, duchy of, 145 
 
 Lion of Belfort, 258 
 
 L'Isle, see Rouget 
 
 Live stock in A.-L., 20 
 
 Livingstone, Dr., 282 
 
 Lix, Antoinette, 247 
 
 Lobau, ML, 193 
 
 Lomenie de Brienne, 187 
 
 Longwy, 154, 156, 163 ; siege in '70, 
 249, 250 
 
 Lorraine : its name, 47 ; kingdom of, 
 10, 66, 67, 143, 144 ; duchy of, 145, 
 146, 150 ; Lower, 146 ; geographi- 
 cally, 10, 11, 18, 203; old-time 
 economic conditions in, 156, 162 ; 
 assimilated to France, 157 ; bar- 
 tered for Tuscany, 169 ; ducal 
 revenues in, 167, 174 ; accession 
 of Stanislas in, 172 ; united to 
 France, 184, 185. See also Army, 
 Chivalry, Crimes, Dialects, Manu- 
 factures, Nobility, Population, 
 Potatoes, Republicanism, Revo- 
 lution, Rivers, Scarcity, Sovereign 
 Court, Taxation, Witches 
 
 Lorrainers, physically, 202 ; famous, 
 224 et seq. ; attached to their 
 dukes, 165, 166, 171 ; penalized 
 for joining the French Army, 262 
 
 Lothair I, Emp. of the West, 47, 66 
 
 Lothair II, King of Lotharingia, 47, 
 66, 143, 144 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 307 
 
 Louis I (le Debonnaire), Emp., 66 ; 
 
 (the Germanic), 47, 66, 67, 143, 
 
 144 ; IV (the Child), 67 
 Louis XI of France, 79 ; XIII, 153 ; 
 
 XIV, 40, 70, 84, 85, 87, 88, 97, 99, 
 101, 103, 104, 105, 155, 156, 162 ; 
 
 XV, 115, 159, 167, 170, 171, 174, 
 178, 181 ; XVI, 107, 108, 111, 188 
 
 Louis Philippe, K. of the French, 124, 
 
 125, 128, 193, 194 
 Louis of Anjou, 148 
 Louis, Card, and D. of Bar, 147 
 Louis, Baron, 193, 194 
 Louvois, Marq. de, 94 to 97, 100, 101, 
 
 297 et seq. 
 Luckner, Ml., 31 
 Ludres, Ctss. de, 155 
 Ludwig, see Louis 
 
 Luneville, 163, 173, 181, 182, 186, 269 
 Luxemburg, duchy, 7 
 
 MACMAHON, Ml. de, 195, 231, 232, 
 
 234 to 236, 255, 281 
 Maintenon, Mme. de, 103 
 Maizidres, 50 
 
 Man, prehistoric, in Alsace, 55, 56 
 Mancini, Hortense, 70, 87 ; Marie, 
 
 156 
 
 Mansfeld, Ct., 82 
 Manteuffel, Ml. v., 289 
 Manuel, E., 121 
 Manufactures in A.-L., 21 et seq., 43, 
 
 44, 50, 51, 63, 54; in Lorraine 
 
 formerly, 162, 186i 
 Marechal, M., 254 
 Maria Theresa, Empress, 87, 168, 170, 
 
 176, 177 
 
 Marie, heiress of Burgundy, 80 
 Marie Antoinette, Q., 107, 115, 170 
 Marie Josephe, Dauphiness, 107, 115 
 Marmoutier, 34 
 " Marseillaise," the, 30, 31 
 Masseraux, 45 
 
 Maximianus Hercules, Emp., 61 
 Maximilian I, Emp., 80 
 Maximilian of Mexico, 132 
 Maximinus, Emp., 61 
 Mazarin, Card., 70, 87, 88 ; Duke, 70 
 Mazeppa, 172 
 
 Medici, last of the, 170 
 
 Menzel the Pandour, 106, 177 
 
 Mercie, A., 258 
 
 Mercy, Ct., 85 
 
 Merovius, 64 
 
 Mertens, Gl. v., 238 
 
 Metternich, Prince, 126 
 
 Metz, 46, 149 to 151, 159, 177, 178, 
 
 185, 187, 190, 213, 218, 223; 
 
 Jews at, 158, 159 ; patois of, 218, 
 
 219; siege of, in 1552, 48; in 
 
 1870, 235, 237, 252 et seq. 
 M6zieres, 151 
 
 Minstrels and musicians, 40 
 Mirecourt, 191 
 Moeller, Dr. v., 276 
 Molsheim, 35 
 Moltke, Ct. v., 206 
 Monet, Jacobin, 112 to 114 
 Montbeliard, Counts of, 147 
 Montclar, Gl. de, 92, 94, 101, 297 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 Montecuculli, 91 
 Montmedy, 250 
 Montpensier, Mile, de, 156 
 Morsbronn, 232 
 Moselle, the, 12, 18 
 Mudra, Gl. v., 290 
 Mulhouse, 22, 23, 43 to 45, 74, 75, 
 
 86, 115, 118, 119, 124, 247 ; united 
 
 to France, 114 et seq. 
 Munster in Alsace, 20, 41 
 Munster in Westphalia, 85 ; see also 
 
 Treaties 
 Murbach Abbey, 42 
 
 NABERT, Prof., 205 
 
 Names, see Place 
 
 Nancy, 149, 154, 162, 180, 185, 186, 
 188, 213 ; during war of 1870, 233, 
 260, 269 
 
 Nantes, edict of, 99, 103, 158, 161 
 
 Napoleon I, 118, 119, 120, 129, 137, 
 159, 169, 190, 191 ; III, 3 to 8, 
 124, 125, 129 et seq., 132, 134, 137, 
 195, 196, 228 to 231, 233, 235, 236 
 
 Napoleon Jerome, Pr., 137 
 
 Nationalities, principle of, 1 et seq., 1 
 
 Neuf-Brisach, 41, 105, 121, 248 
 
308 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Neufchateau (Vosges), 189 
 
 Neufchatel (Switzerland), 132 to 134 
 
 Ney, Ml., 49, 191, 192 
 
 Nicholas, D. of Lorraine, 149 
 
 Nicholas Francis, Card., D. of Lor- 
 raine, 153, 154, 156 
 
 Nicole, Dss. of Lorraine, 152 to 155 
 
 Niederbronn, 52 
 
 Nimeguen, see Treaties 
 
 Nobility fees in Lorraine, 163. See 
 also Chivalry 
 
 Ndrdlingen, 83, 85 
 
 OBEELIN, J. F., pastor, 35, 36 ; J. J., 
 scholar, 35, 210 
 
 Ochsenfeld, 17, 66, 83 
 
 Old Regime in France, 107, 174, 185 
 
 Opalinska, Catherine, 173, 177, 183 
 
 Option, see Alsace-Lorraine, emi- 
 gration 
 
 Orbey, 40, 209 
 
 Orleans, Gaston, D. of, 153 ; Philip I, 
 D. of, 166 
 
 Osnabriick, 85, 86 
 
 Ossolinska, Dss., 185 
 
 Otto I (the Great), Emp., 145; 
 11,47 
 
 Otton, Dr. Mark, 90 
 
 PAGANS' Walls, 37, 56 
 
 Pajol, GL, 235, 236 
 
 Pajot, Marianne, 155 
 
 Palatine, Princess, 166 
 
 Palikao, Gl. Ct. de, 235 
 
 Palissot de Montenoy, 182 
 
 Pandours, 106, 177 
 
 Pan-Germanists, 142, 143 
 
 Paris libelled, 138, 139 ; fall of, 263 
 
 Parlements of Metz, Nancy, etc., 185, 
 
 187 
 
 Pasteur, L., 225 
 Peace of 1871, 9, 264 to 266 
 Pelle, Gl., 231 
 Pepin the Short, K., 65 
 Persigny, D. de, 125 
 Petermann, Herr, 205 
 Petite-Pierre, La, 53, 233 
 Pfister, C., on language in A.-L., 207 
 
 et seq. 
 
 Phalsbourg, 53, 190 ; siege of, in 1870, 
 
 232, 233, 246 
 
 Philip I of Swabia, Emp., 71 
 Philip IV, of Spain, 87 
 Pius VII, Pope, 119 ; IX, 278 
 Place-names in A.-L., 60, 212 etseq., 
 
 219, 220, 293 to 296 
 Plague, the black, 75 
 Plebiscitum impossible in A.-L., 271 
 
 to 273 
 
 Plombieres, 180 
 Plunder, German, 259 
 Poland, 126, 167, 168, 169 
 Pont-a-Mousson university, 157, 180, 
 
 185 
 Population of A.-L., 9, 271, 274, 290 ; 
 
 of Lorraine in old times, 156, 162, 
 
 185 
 
 Posthumus, Emp., 61 
 Potatoes in Lorraine, 164 
 Pouget, M., deputy, 279 
 Poultroie, La, 40, 60 
 Poussay Abbey, 155, 187 
 Pouyer-Quertier, 269 
 Prehistoric man, see Man 
 Pretender, the young, 163, 181 
 Prisons, new German, in A.-L., 275 
 Probus, Emp., 61 
 Pron, Baron, 241 
 Protest of A.-L. against German 
 
 annexation, 264 et seq. 
 Protestants in Alsace, 81, 82, 84, 86, 
 
 93, 99, 100, 103, 105, 108, 119, 121 
 Prussia, in relation to Belgium, 5 to 
 
 7; claims Alsace (1814), 120; 
 
 annexes Sarre valley, 191 ; seizes 
 
 German States, 196 ; her claims on 
 
 Neufchatel, 132 et seq. 
 Prussianism, growth of, 239 
 Public Safety Law, French, 195 
 Pultava battle, 172 
 
 QUINET, E., 265, 266 
 
 RACE and Language, 203 et seq. 
 Raess, Bp. of Strasburg, 277 to 280 
 Railways in A.-L., 13, 14 ; first ones 
 
 in Alsace, 126 
 Rambervillers, 220, 258 
 
INDEX 
 
 309 
 
 Rapp, Gl. Ct., 39 
 
 Rastadt, see Treaties 
 
 Rebellions in Alsace, 33, 34, 80, 81 
 
 Reformation in Alsace, 81 
 
 Regnier, 253 
 
 Reichstag, German, 267 et seq., 277 
 
 to 280, 288 
 
 Reinach, Comt. de, 247, 248 
 Remiremont Abbey, 187, 220 
 Renard, Ct., 260, 261 
 Rene I (the "good king"), D. of 
 
 Lorraine, 147 to 149 ; II, 149, 180, 
 
 184 
 
 Republic, second French, 128 to 130 
 Republicanism in Lorraine, 195 
 Renter, Col. v., 286, 287 
 Revenues of A.-L., 289, 290 ; ducal, 
 
 in Lorraine, 167, 174 
 Revolution, first French, in Alsace, 
 
 108 et seq. ; in Lorraine, 188 et seq. ; 
 
 of 1848, 128 
 Revolutionary Tribunal at Strasburg, 
 
 112, 113; at Mirecourt, 191; in 
 
 Paris, 111, 112, 113 
 Rewbell, J. F., 109, 114 
 Rhine, the, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18; 
 
 Roman fortresses on, 60 
 Ribeaupierre, lords of, 40 
 Ribeauville, 40 
 Ricardis, Empress, 38 
 Richard Coeur de Lion, 32, 69 
 Richelieu, Card., 82 to 84, 153, 154 
 Rigny, Adm. de, 224 
 Rivers of Alsace, 11, 12, 15 ; of 
 
 Lorraine, 18 
 
 Roads, Roman, in Alsace, 60 
 Robert, D. of Bar, 147 
 Robertsau, 259 
 Robespierre, 113 
 Robber knights, 70 
 Rochambeau, Ml. Ct. de, 107 
 Roche, see Ban 
 Rcedern, Ct. v., 288, 289 
 Rohan, Cardinals de, 34, 106, 110 
 Romans in Alsace, 56 et seq. ; their 
 
 forts and roads, 60 
 Roudolphi, M. E., 272, 290 
 Rouffach, 41 
 Rouget de lisle, 30, 31 
 
 Rougemont, 59 
 
 Rudolph of Hapsburg, 72 to 74 
 
 Ruffach, 41 
 
 Russia opposes Prussian demand for 
 Alsace (1814), 120; supports 
 France against Bismarck (1875), 
 282 
 
 Rustauds, their rebellion, 33, 34, 81 
 
 SAINT-DIE, 180, 185, 269 
 
 Saint- Just, L. de, 113 
 
 Saint-Louis, 147 
 
 Saint Odilia, 36, 37 
 
 Saint-Privat, 234 
 
 Saint-Simon, D. de, 95 
 
 Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines, 221 
 
 Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, 209, 221 
 
 Salt in A.-L., 20, 21, 186 
 
 Sans-Gene, Mme., 41 
 
 Sarre river, and its valley, 11, 12, 18, 
 
 191, 193, 194, 212, 269 
 Sarrealben, 51 
 Sarrebourg, 51 
 Sarrebruck, 51, 231 
 Sarreguemines, 51 
 Sarrelouis, 51, 156, 190 to 193 
 Sarreunion, 52 
 Saverne, 33, 34, 60, 81, 83, 215; 
 
 affair at, 286 et seq. 
 Saxe, Ml., 29, 107 
 Saxe- Weimar, Bernard of, 83 
 Scarcity in Alsace, 115, 116, 120, 127 ; 
 
 in Lorraine, 175, 176, 178, 179 
 Schad, Lieut., 286, 287 
 Scheffer, Ary and Henry, 122 
 Schlestadt, 38 ; siege in '70, 247 
 Schmeling, Gl. v., 247, 248 
 Schnsebele affair, 283 
 Schneider, Eulogius, 110, 112, 113 
 Schools in A.-L., see Education 
 Schwabs, 98 
 
 Schwcerbrief Constitution, 73 
 Seasons, bad, see Scarcity 
 Second French Empire founded, 130 
 
 et seq. 
 
 Sedan battle, 8, 235, 236 
 Seille, river, 18 
 Seltz, 60, 213 
 Sicily, Germans in, 72 
 
310 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sieges in 1870-71, see, Belfort, Bitche, 
 Longwy, Metz, Montmedy, Neuf- 
 Brisach, Phalsbourg, Schlestadt, 
 Strasburg, Thionville, Toul 
 
 Sigismund of Hapsburg, Landgrave, 
 79, 80 
 
 Sigismund Francis, Archduke, 88 
 
 Smalkalde League, 81 
 
 Sophia of Bar, 147 
 
 Soultz, 41 
 
 Sovereign Court of Lorraine, 154, 179, 
 185 
 
 Speckle, D., 102 
 
 Spicheren. the, 52 
 
 Stanislas, King, D. of Lorraine, 167, 
 168, 169, 172 et seq. ; his benefac- 
 tions, 180; his mistresses and Court, 
 181 ; his tragic death, 183, 184 
 
 Stanley, Sir H. M., 282 
 
 States General, of 1780, 108, 188 
 
 Stephany on the Germans in A.-L., 
 285, 286 
 
 Stilicho, 62, 63 
 
 Stipulations of Strasburg' s union 
 with France, 297 et seq. 
 
 Storks in Alsace, 226 
 
 Strasburg, 25 to 32, 59, 60, 71 et seq., 
 75, 93, 126, 128, 190, 216 ; -battle 
 of, 62 ; bishops of, 69, 72, 81, 82, 
 86, 88, 89, 93, 105, 106 ; cathedral 
 of, 27, 28, 240, 241, 298 ; church 
 of St. Thomas at, 29 ; constitution 
 of, 73, 74, 109 ; library of, 32, 240 ; 
 siege of (1870), 233, 237 et seq., 
 244, 245, 268 ; united to France, 
 91 et seq., 97, 99, 100, 297 et seq. ; 
 university of, 27, 31, 32, 222, 225, 
 273, 274, 280 
 
 Swabians, the, 57 
 
 Swedes in Alsace, 82 to 85 
 
 Swentibold, 67, 144 
 
 Switzerland and the Swiss, 11, 44, 
 46, 75, 80, 89, 114, 115, 133, 134, 
 189, 241, 257 
 
 TAILLANT, Com., 246, 247 
 Tastu, Mme., 30, 31 
 Taxation in Alsace, 108 ; in Lorraine 
 and Bar, 162, 175, 176, 179, 184 
 
 Tessier, Col., 248, 249 
 
 Teutsch, M., deputy, 278 
 
 Textiles in A.-L., 22 to 24 
 
 Thann, 42, 43 
 
 Thiers, Adolphe, 141, 206, 208, 252, 
 258, 269 
 
 Thionville, 50, 51, 204, 212 ; siege in 
 '70, 250, 254 
 
 Thirty Years' War, 82 et seq. 
 
 Thouvenel, M., 193 
 
 Three Bishoprics, see Bishoprics 
 
 Tiberius, Emp., 59 
 
 Tobacco in A.-L., 18, 19, 119, 259 
 
 Tolbiac battle, 64 
 
 Toul, 47, 149 to 151, 160 ; siege in 
 '70, 251, 252 
 
 Treaties : Augsburg, 81, 86 ; Mersen, 
 67 ; Minister, see Westphalia ; 
 Nimeguen, 86, 92, 297 ; Osna- 
 briick, 86; Passau, 86; the 
 Pyrenees, 87, 154, 156 ; Rastadt, 
 86 ; Ratisbon (truce), 103 ; Rys- 
 wick, 86, 87, 104, 105, 156; 
 Verdun, 66 ; Westphalia (Minister), 
 85 et seq., 151, 154, 297 
 
 Treves, Archbps. of, 146, 159 
 
 Treskow, Gl. v., 257 
 
 Tribocci Germans, 57, 59, 214 
 
 Turenne, ML, 39, 85, 86, 91 
 
 Turkheim, 86, 91 
 
 Tuscany, 88, 168 to 170 
 
 UHBICH, GL, 237 et seq. 
 Urban VIII, Pope, 155 
 
 VALENTIN, Edmond, 131, 241 to 243, 
 
 245 
 
 Valentinian I, Emp., 62, 63 
 Vandals, the, 62, 63 
 Vauban, Ml., 26, 51, 53, 102 
 Vaudrey, Col., 125 
 Veldence or Veldenz, Palatin de, 299, 
 
 300 
 Verdun, 47, 66, 146, 149 to 151, 186 ; 
 
 siege in '70, 250, 251 
 Victoria, Queen, 3, 4 
 Villars, Ml., 104 
 Vineyards, in A.-L., 16 to 19 
 Visigoths, the, 63, 64 
 
INDEX 
 
 311 
 
 Voltaire, 182 
 
 mountains, 
 volunteers, 189 
 
 10, 14, 15 ; 
 
 WAGNER, Wolf, 224 
 
 Waldersbach, Gl. de, 250 
 
 Waldreda, 144 
 
 Walewski, Ct., 134, 137 
 
 Wallenstein, 84 
 
 Wars : Augsburg, 104 ; Austrian 
 succession, 106, 159, 176; Polish 
 succession, 168 ; Spanish succes- 
 sion, 104 ; Seven Years', 178 ; 
 Thirty Years', 82 et seq. ; Revolu- 
 tionary, 109, 111, 113 ; Napoleonic, 
 120; Franco-German (1870-71), 
 4, 5 et seq., 50, 52, 53, 85, 140, 141, 
 228 to 266 
 
 War scares (1875-87), 281 et seq. 
 
 Wasselonne, 35 
 
 Wedel, Ct. v., 287, 288 
 
 Welsch villages in A.-L., 209 et seq. 
 
 Werder, Gl. v., 237 et seq., 240 to 242, 
 
 244 
 
 Wesserling, 43 
 William I., Germ. Emp., 132, 262; 
 
 II, 49, 58 
 
 William of Orange, 104, 300 
 Wimpffen, Gl. de, 236 
 Wines of Alsace, 17, 40 
 Wissembourg, 32, 33, 111 ; battle, 
 
 231 
 
 Witches in Lorraine, 161 
 W5rth, battle, 33, 231, 232 ; counts 
 
 of, 68, 69 
 Wurmser, Ml., 111,224 
 
 YOUNG, Arthur, 176 
 
 ZABERN, see Saverne 
 " Zadig," Voltaire's, 182 
 Zones of Alsace, 14 et seq. 
 Zorn-Bulach, v., 287, 288 
 Zwei-Brticken, D. of, 40 
 
 FEINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS 
 
 WEST NORWOOD 
 
 LONDON 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 TO* 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405 
 
 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation 
 
 Desk 
 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date 
 
 -OWE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 DEC 81978 
 
 
 I 
 
 RFC r C1R. DEC 3 
 
 1978 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 FORM NO. DD6, 40m, 3/78 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
 HW&SSKV^B^^^^HflBHft 
 
re 37748