Bavarians

“ In the parlor were seated a dozen Bavarians, quarrelling with as many Prussians seated round the deal tables. They had laid their helmets on the window-seats, and were enjoying themselves away from their officers; no doubt on their return from some marauding expedition.
A Bavarian was exclaiming: "We are always put in the front, we are. The victory of Woerth is ours; but for us you would have been beaten. And it is we who have just taken the Emperor and all his army. You other fellows, you do nothing but wait in the rear for the honor and glory, and the profit, too!" ”

“ Then the contrast of the people to the Bavarians is as great as that of the countries. The latter seem to live the easiest, laziest life of all nations, in their rich low flats, which the women are quite aide to cultivate, while the men drink beer and otherwise disport themselves. But in the part of the Tyrol next Bavaria it is all grim earnest: “Ernst is das Leben” must be their motto if they are to get in their crops at all, and keep their little patches of valley and hanging fields cultivated—and it does seem to be their motto. ”

“ The Isar is essentially the national stream of the Bavarians. It has belonged from the earliest times to the Bavarian people and traverses the finest corn land in the kingdom. On its banks lie the cities of Munich and Landshut, and the venerable episcopal see of Freising, and the inhabitants of the district it waters are reckoned the core of the Bavarian race. ”

“ The defection of the Bavarians considerably augmented the difficulties which assailed the wreck of the army that had escaped from Leipsic. The Bavarians had got before us to Hanau, a town four leagues distant from Frankfort; there they established themselves, with the view of cutting off our retreat; but French valour was roused, the little town was speedily carried, and the Bavarians were repulsed with considerable loss. The French army arrived at Mayence; if, indeed, one may give the name of army to a few masses of men destitute, dispirited, and exhausted by fatigue and privation. ”

“ And wherever they came, they met with willing assistance at the hands of the citizens; in every street which they entered, the windows opened, and shots were fired from them at the Bavarian troops; every house became a fortress, every tower a citadel. A frightful scene ensued: the Bavarians in some places surrendered and begged for quarter; in others they continued the combat with undaunted resolution; and in the melee several bloody deeds were committed, which, in their cooler moments, the Tyrolese would have been the first to condemn. ”

“ The Bavarians, too, are very industrious, and take great pains to bring their army organisation up to our standard, in spite of certain hostile elements whose aim it is to frustrate this object, and who have succeeded in preventing Prussian instructors from being sent there, and Bavarian soldiers from coming to us to learn their work, which Württemberg has done for the last eight years. ”

“ Thanks to the hatred of the Germans against their German brethren, thanks to the hatred of the Bavarians against the Austrians, this proclamation had been received with joyful acclamations throughout the whole state, and Bavaria felt proud and happy that she should fight under the Emperor of the French, her “natural ally,” against the Emperor of Germany. ”

“ Bavaria is, however, still Bavaria, and if beer attract, the brown brau is as good as ever. The Bavarians were the only Germans who did not Gott-strafe England, America, and the rest, and they are quite pleasant neighbors. The Germans themselves are good walkers, love rucksacks, and the tramp will attract no unpleasant curiosity as in Spain. Switzerland may best be enjoyed afoot. It is common ground for the walkers of all nationalities—a League of Nations center for those who love God’s handiwork in Nature. ”

“ But they gave way only by inches. The Bavarians still fought with the utmost tenacity, defending every foot of ground, until at last, completely weakened and shot to pieces, they succumbed to the fire of the Prussian infantry. ”

“ The Bavarians have naturally done their very best to equal and even to surpass the Prussians. They do not choose to be esteemed any longer as mere beer-drinkers, heavy, and somewhat dense. I wonder if this exceedingly severe drill, so effective on parade, is of use on a battle-field of the present day, where it is usual to disperse to attack. ”

“ A Bavarian patriotism would never grow in the Palatinate. When the Bavarian government sent “Old-Bavarian” officers into the Palatinate to help govern its people, the attitude toward one another became still more unfriendly, as the hungry “Old-Bavarians,” it was said, were sent to the rich Palatinate to grow fat. Their relations were much like those that existed between the Prussian province on the Rhine and old Prussia. ”

“ They dressed the salle a manger at the Kurhaus with boughs of trees; the Governor dined at our table, and gave a toast, “the Queen;” while the band (we always have music at dinner) played our National Air, which the Bavarians claim for their own. The ceremony of dining was thus longer and more tiresome than usual. There was an illumination in the evening; and the canopy to the mineral springs looked pretty, picked out in lamps.
192July 13th. The King of Bavaria came over this morning. He is popular as a good king and a clever man, fond of the arts ”

“ There is not a Province in the Empire where Provisions are cheaper, and in the mean time there's a vast Home-Consumption; for besides that the Bavarians love good Eating and Drinking, the Country is very populous; and 'tis computed that the Inhabitants of Munich alone are above 40,000.
Of all the Sovereigns in Europe, next to the King of France, the Elector of Bavaria has the finest Pleasure-Houses, for which he may thank the Elector his Father who had a wonderful good Fancy and Judgment. ”

“ The church looks like a Swiss cheese from shell-holes. Its steeple was bound to be an observation post, reasoned the Germans; so they poured shells into it. But the brewery had a tall chimney which was an even better lookout, and the brewery is the one building unharmed in the town. The Bavarians knew that they would need that for their commissariat. For a Bavarian will not fight without his beer. The land was littered with barrels after they had gone. I saw some in trenches occupied by Bavarian reserves not far back of where their firing-line had been. ”

“ Then the arch-enemies of the Franks, the Saxons, mixed freely with Slavonic races which extended well into the Hanover country and all over Mecklenburg at one time, so that those who are now called Saxons are, next to the Prussians, more thoroughly mixed with Slavs than any other Germans. The Bavarians, again, must have in them a good deal of the persistent Celtic element which they inherited from the Boievari who at one time left Bohemia for Bavaria. The amusing thing is that those who most loudly declaim on the subject of Deutschland über Alles are the most thoroughly mixed of the lot. ”

“ I asked Frederick. “Do you believe that of the gentle Bavarians?”
“It is quite possible. Bavarian or Turco, German, French, or Indian, the warrior who is defending his own life, and lifting up his arm to kill another, has ceased for the time to be ‘human’. What has been awakened in him and stirred up with all possible force is nothing else than bestiality.”
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Metz fallen! The news resounded in the city like some strange and overpowering cry of terror. ”

“ Of this kind there's more here than in the other Towns of Germany; but more still among the Foreigners that are in the Elector's Service than among the Bavarians; for these are generally proud, tho' 'tis certainly more owing to their Opinion that it gives them a good Air to be so than to their Temper; and they actually become more sociable when they are made sensible that their grand Airs are not astonishing.
The Title of Count is as common here as at Vienna, and the Bavarian Counts have no greater Privileges than those of Austria, for they are as much Subjects as the meanest Gentlemen. ”

“ Swabians, Franconians, and Rheinlanders are our true sanguineans; and the last altogether our German-French, who dance through life like their Rhine-gnats.
The Bavarian is straight-forward, frank but dry, blunt, and he has hitherto been ruder, more ignorant, more fond of quarrel and drinking, more given up to superstition and old things than others; for his land was the home of priestcraft and monkery. You may ever distinguish the national Bavarian by his nervous squat body, small round head, and beer-belly, immediately beneath which the trousers begin ”

“ The Alps are not confined to Switzerland. They fill that little country full and overflow in all directions, into Austria, Italy, Germany, and France. Beautiful everywhere, these mountains are nowhere more charming than in Southern Bavaria. Grass-carpeted valleys, lakes as blue as the sky above them, dark slopes of pine and fir, over-topped by crags of gray limestone dashed by perpetual snow, the Bavarian Oberland is one of the most delightful regions in all Europe. When Attila and the Huns invaded Germany fifteen centuries ago, it is said that their cry was, "On to Bavaria—on to Bavaria! ”

“ The western parts of Bavaria, on the Wurtemburg frontier, perhaps as Slavonic as the valley of the Naab, differ, in their subsequent history, by having witnessed displacements from the south and west, from the Helvetians of Switzerland, and the Boii of Gaul, rather than from the Germans on the north. The later changes are the same in both cases.
The north-western parts of Bavaria were probably German from the beginning.
South of the Danube the ethnology changes. In the first place the Roman elements increase; since Vindelicia was a Roman Province. What, however, was the original basis? ”

“ There is a strange, clear beauty of form about the men of the Bavarian highlands, about both men and women. They are large and clear and handsome in form, with blue eyes very keen, the pupil small, tightened, the iris keen, like sharp light shining on blue ice. ”

“ If you don’t drink beer at all, the Bavarian does not think you are merely odd, but he thinks you are in danger in mind and body.
Munich was rebuilt after the great fire, and extended by Emperor Ludwig, the Bavarian. Indeed, the rulers of Bavaria have spared neither pains nor expense to make their capital beautiful and attractive. Artistic buildings and monuments are distributed everywhere. ”

“ I had been for a stroll after dinner with Dutrex, Durupt, and Foch. A typical Bavarian day: a moist sky softening the harsh outlines of the landscape; a half light, uncertain and dreamy, as if longing for the rich azure of Piedmont and Provence; a piercing little wind which, even in the sunshine, continues to suggest melting snow and cold, almost a bise, whose very caresses sting. ”

“ I too was in quest of a crown, but not for myself.
[Pg 355]
The country is cut and slashed with heights called Bohemian mountains: paps whose tip is marked by pine-trees and whose swelling outlined by the green of the harvests.
And leave Bavaria.
The villages are scarce. A few fortresses, hungering for prisoners, roost on the rocks like old vultures. Between Zditz and Beraun, the mountains on the right become bald. One goes through a village: the roads are spacious, the posts well equipped; all points to a monarchy that imitates Old France. ”

“ That great European movement in the direction of the secularization of thought to which the expressive term, the Aufklärung or Enlightenment, has been applied, and which reached its apogee in the latter half of the eighteenth century, encountered a stubborn opposition in southern Germany in the electorate of Bavaria. The pivot of Bavarian politics, particularly from the beginning of the sixteenth century, had been the alliance which had been effected between the clerical party and the civil power. ”

“ This part of the country, although it boasts beautiful scenery, is seldom visited by tourists, probably for the reason that the charms of the region are little known even in Germany. This part of Bavaria has been in many ways untouched by civilization, and owing 518 to its seclusion from the outer world some very strange customs are still in vogue, strongly reminding one of the Middle Ages. One of these strange customs, strictly observed by the population, is the way in which they keep alive the memory of their dead by the erection of what are called “totenbretter,” or “death-boards.” ”

“ He had had an uncle killed in the Bayerischenwald by the Bavarian forest guards, when in the excitement of hunting a black bear he had overpassed the limits of the Tyrol frontier.
That fate of his kinsman, a gallant young chamois-hunter who had taught him to handle a trigger and load a muzzle, made the very name of Bavaria a terror to August.
"It is Bavaria! It is Bavaria!" he sobbed to the stove; but the stove said nothing to him; it had no fire in it. A stove can no more speak without fire than a man can see without light. ”

“ We have climbed up inside 'The Bavaria,' the enormous bronze statue which towers above the city, and through the eyes of which six people are able to see before them the sweep of land extending to the mountains of the Tyrol. We have visited the hall of the portraits of beautiful women of the country, where one imagines oneself in a sort of Montyon Gallery of love, and where, if her nose be of an heroic cast, the daughter of a shoemaker may find herself side by side with the daughter of a princess. ”