# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 09 18_S14
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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military union with Baden. For in Baden, where the Grand Duke together with his ministry had been among the first not only to recognize the Imperial Constitution and to declare for the election of the King of Prussia, but also to yield to the demand that the military too be sworn to the constitution, a military and popular insurrection had broken out for — the introduction of the Imperial Constitution! — I have not made a slip of the pen; the nonsense is a fact. And so furiously did the revolt break out, and so suddenly, that the Grand Duke, who saw himself forsaken by all, took flight by night with his ministry and betook himself to Germersheim, then to Frankfurt, and at last to Mainz. Dragoons and artillerymen who had remained faithful were hunted through the land together with the Margrave of Baden, and when the scattered and dead-weary men at length reached Rottweil in Würtemberg, they were received in the most inhospitable manner by the noble "People" there, and sheltered only through the efforts of better citizens, while the cannon they had brought with them were handed over to the free-corps men who had hurried after them. A provisional government was formed in Baden (Brentano, Fickler, Blind and others), Struve was taken out of his confinement in Rastatt, the whole garrison of Rastatt went over "to the People," the ministers were deposed by the provisional government because they had — fled before the insurrection and, so far as lay in them, had abandoned the land to anarchy. The shameful faithlessness of the Baden military is ascribed to the many concessions which had been made to it and whereby all discipline had been undermined, and then chiefly to the fact that they had been in such haste to abolish the system of substitutes, whereby old non-commissioned officers were deprived of the prospect of a future livelihood, their hearts were estranged from the government, and the main pillar of the military spirit in the army was removed from among them. In Baden a "cosy anarchy" now flourished. The land was excellently provided for. A former lieutenant became Minister of War, a candidate who had failed his examination received another ministry, etc.; the officers were driven away by their soldiers, who chose their new leaders from among their corporals, whose orders they did not heed any further than it happened to please them; a deputation was dispatched to Paris to beg French help for carrying through the German constitution, an appeal for the spreading of the revolution was issued to the German people, with the name of Raveaux, the Cologne cigar dealer and deputy to the Imperial Diet, at its head, Hecker was called back from America, but otherwise everyone did what seemed good to him, and nobody rightly knew who was cook or waiter. From Dresden, moreover, there had streamed into Baden and the Palatinate the free-corps men driven out there, the Poles, Frenchmen, and, from Italy, the Swiss adventurers and Italian mercenaries who had become superfluous in Sicily (which had surrendered again to the King of Naples) and in Piedmont, to help make the two little countries happy and bless them. Wherever these carrion vultures came, they ate up everything, root and branch; the fathers of families had to look on hungering, the poor had to dig their last potatoes out of the hiding pit and let them be snatched mercilessly from their famished mouths; the rich were harassed with forced loans which often took half of their property, and citizen and countryman longed for deliverance from this republican bliss. They had to wait rather a long time; whoever was not yet sober could become so in the meantime. In the meantime Landau was hard pressed by the free corps. Against these it was able to hold out, but against an external enemy it would have had to fall in a short time. But the noble embassy that sought help in Paris found no hearing, as indeed the French soldiers who met with the perjured soldiery from Baden at the frontier reproached the latter with their baseness so openly and emphatically that they stood there as if annihilated. But when the intervention of the imperial troops continued to be awaited in vain, the Willich corps gathered before Landau, and dammed the little river that flows through the town, so that this was almost entirely put under water. At last the Prussians came, partly from Worms, partly from the Saar, were received with loud rejoicing by the country people, who had already in several places driven off the free-corps men with scythes, and scattered the Willich corps before Landau with slight trouble, for their needle-guns, from which the pointed bullets whizzed a thousand paces, before one yet saw the men advancing in the wood, instilled such respect into the heroes that they ran away and carried their first charge still unspent in their guns as far as Heidelberg in Baden. Thereupon the Prussians marched into Speyer, where the civic guard presented arms before them, and now the whole Palatinate is almost without a battle in their hands, except for the Hardt mountains, in whose gorges the Polish General Schneider has thrown himself with his bands. The report goes that he was murdered there. A part of the Prussians then took Ludwigshafen on the Rhine (formerly called the Rhine Redoubt), opposite Mannheim. There, however, lay the Polish General Mieroslawsky, the commander-in-chief of the whole Baden military force; he had the bridge barricaded with cotton bales and Ludwigshafen shot into flames. The Prussians had as yet no cannon there. Mieroslawsky, however, in spite of all the entreaties of the citizens of Mannheim, had the beautiful chain bridge and the Neckar bridge undermined, and declared that he would leave Mannheim only as a heap of rubble. When the two mines spring, three millions of gulden spring into the air. The Prussians, however, it seems, wish to spare the town. Another of their detachments has occupied Germersheim and the bridgehead there, which the Badeners had hitherto sought in vain to take. While this was happening, the Hessians and Mecklenburgers made an incursion from the north at Weinheim, ventured somewhat too far forward, and received a considerable drubbing at Grosssachsen. The Bavarians are expected from the west, and on their arrival the operations will probably be begun with united force and energy, in order to make an end of the matter with a single blow. From the south the Austrians are on the march.

During these events the Rump Parliament, since the Central Power left all its resolutions unheeded, had moved to Stuttgart, without so much as inquiring there. Here it deposed the Imperial Regent, set up an Imperial Regency of five of its members (Raveaux, Vogt, Schüler of Zweibrücken, Heinrich Simon, and Becher, member of the Würtemberg Chamber of Estates), this sends to General Peucker in Frankfurt the order to suspend his operations against Baden and the Palatinate, deposes the Würtemberg General Miller, who had not recognized its orders, commands the Prussian General Prittwitz in Holstein to conduct the war more energetically, issues an appeal to the German people to insurrection, demands from the Würtemberg government money and men for the defence of Baden and the Palatinate, opens a credit of three millions, which is to be covered by matricular contributions to be levied on the German governments — none of which recognizes this Rump Parliament with its Regency — never tires thus of making itself ridiculous, of behaving like madmen, and of stirring up the Würtemberg people, until the Würtemberg ministry, with the consent of the chambers, banishes the whole gang from Stuttgart, and, since they nevertheless wish to hold their session the same afternoon, drives them asunder by cavalry charges, has their protestations and addresses to the people drowned by the roll of drums, and brings them to the resolution — to remove to Karlsruhe.

But where do we stand now? Prussia has offered a new point for union and agreement by a constitution drawn up in common with Hanover and Saxony, in which the Frankfurt one is laid as the foundation, and indeed in such a way that it is really the same, altered only in the points of the question of the head of the Reich, of the veto, and of the electoral law, together with several other unessential ones. Earlier already Prussia had invited to a common consultation upon this constitution. The 29 governments which had already recognized the Frankfurt Constitution took no part in the consultation, but Bavaria and Austria did. The latter, however, soon withdrew again dissatisfied, the former could not yet declare its assent for this reason, that by this constitution too Austria was excluded or its accession made impossible, and in particular the industrial interest of Bavaria also was not sufficiently safeguarded, indeed actually endangered in the highest degree. So the three kingdoms named stepped forth alone with the new constitution, because the time