Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/94

 of Songs” was to me an indescribable revelry. Then I read the pictures of travel, the various political poems, and “Atta Troll,” with its acrid political satire, the wit of which did not do good to the heart, but sharply turned one's thoughts upon the condition of the fatherland. I read also with my friends the poems of such revolutionary stormers as Herwegh, Hoffmann von Fallersleben and others, most of which we possessed and circulated among us only in written copies.

The revolutionary passions expressed in many of those poems were in fact foreign to us, but their attacks upon the existing governments, especially upon the Prussian, struck a responsive chord which easily reverberated in the breast of every Rhinelander. Our Rhine country, with its gay, light-hearted people, had, within a comparatively short period, passed through a series of multi-colored experiences. Before the time of the French Revolution it had been under the easy-going, loose rule of the Archbishop Electors; then, conquered and seized by the French, it belonged for a time to the French Republic and the Empire. At last, after the French wars, it was annexed to Prussia. Of these three rulerships, following one another in too rapid succession for any sentiments of allegiance to take firm root, the Rhine folk liked the Prussian rule the least, although it was undoubtedly the best. The abrupt, stiff, exacting character of Prussian officialdom, with its rigid conceptions of duty and order, was uncongenial to the careless and somewhat too pleasure-loving Rhenish people. Besides, the population was throughout Roman Catholic, and the word Prussian was synonymous with Protestantism. Prussian officers in considerable numbers came to help govern the Rhine people, which of course created bad blood. All these things made Prussian rule on the Rhine appear like a sort of foreign rule, which was very repugnant to the feelings of the