Luxembourg

“ The Luxembourg Gardens have always retained their hold over my imagination. I never visit Paris without spending several hours there, sometimes in the bright morning light, sometimes in the late afternoon, when the military band plays dolent tunes, usually by Massenet, sometimes a spectator at one of the guignols and, very often in the autumn, when the leaves are falling, I sit silently on a bench before the Medici fountain, entirely unconscious of the passing of time. The Luxembourg Gardens always envelop me in a sentimental mood. ”

“ When France was governed by Louis Phillippe, the Palace Luxembourg was occupied by the Chamber of Peers, and it is now occupied by the Senate. It is a fine old building, and the impression it makes upon the stranger is an agreeable one. There is nothing in its history of particular interest, though its architecture is ancient.
I was better pleased with the Luxembourg gardens than with the palace. They are more beautiful than the Tuileries gardens and are much more democratic. Trees, plants, and flowers seemed to me to abound in them to a greater extent than in any other garden in Paris. ”

“ VON RIBBENTROP: Luxembourg was in much the same situation as Belgium and Holland. It is a very small country, and obviously in a war on the scale of this one the armies cannot suddenly bypass one particular country. But I would like to point out just one thing in connection with Luxembourg: The summer before, that is during the summer of 1939, we had started negotiations with France and Luxembourg with a view to making perfectly definite pacts of neutrality to be established by treaties. ”

“ CAMILLE. Lucile is right: we must make the effort. It is our business to direct the Revolution which we have started. This voice of mine has not yet lost its power over the crowd. It has sent fanatics to the guillotine. We were never so strong as today; let us follow up our success: the Luxembourg is no more difficult to take than the Bastille. We laid low nine centuries of monarchy, and we can easily deal with a handful of vagabonds, who derive their power from us, and who use it in order to run the Convention and France in their own way. ”

“ The existence and status of Luxembourg in Europe before the war are not universally understood in America, and it may be useful to say a few words about it. The grand duchy is a tiny independent country, about 1,000 square miles of lovely hills and dales and table-lands, clothed with noble woods, watered by clear streams, and inhabited by about 250,000 people of undoubted German-Keltic stock and of equally undoubted French sympathies. The land lies in the form of a northward-pointing triangle between Germany, Belgium, and France. ”

“ No: but what is there above the sun? God.
On June 6, 1832, at about eleven in the forenoon, the Luxembourg, solitary and depopulated, was delicious. The quincunxes and flower-beds sent balm and dazzlement into the light, and the branches, wild in the brilliancy of midday, seemed trying to embrace one another. There was in the sycamores a twittering of linnets, the sparrows were triumphal, and the woodpeckers crept along the chestnut, gently tapping holes in the bark. The beds accepted the legitimate royalty of the lilies, for the most august of perfumes is that which issues from whiteness. ”

“ All the burden of marches, of orders of subsistence, fell upon a subordinate. Nothing could be more exact than the coup d'oeil of M. de Luxembourg— nobody could be more brilliant, more sagacious, more penetrating than he before the enemy or in battle, and this, too, with an audacity, an ease, and at the same time a coolness, which allowed him to see all and foresee all under the hottest fire, and in the most imminent danger: It was at such times that he was great. ”

“ ART. LXVIII. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg shall consist of all the territory situated between the kingdom, of the Netherlands, as it has been designated by Art. LXVI, France, the Moselle, as far as the mouth of the Sure, the course of the Sure, as far as the junction of the Our, course of this last river, as far as the limits of the former French canton of St. Vith, which shall not belong to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
ART. LXIX. His Majesty the King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, shall possess in perpetuity, for himself and his successors, the full and entire sovereignty ”

“ Quite near, is the Luxembourg, both palace and prison, the Luxembourg, where Marie de Medici gave such magnificent fêtes, where Gaston d'Orléans yawned so much, and where the Grande Mademoiselle sulked, sighing for the handsome Lauzun; where also the Count de Provence so cleverly prepared, with Monsieur d'Avaray, his escape from France, on the same evening that Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette made such bad arrangements for the lugubrious journey that was to lead them to Varennes; the Luxembourg, whose courtyard was used as a promenade by such prisoners as the Terror crowded there ”

“ It is singular with what fatality everything I could say and do seemed of a nature to displease Madam de Luxembourg, even when I had it most at heart to preserve her friendship. The repeated afflictions which fell upon M. de Luxembourg still attached me to him the more, and consequently to Madam de Luxembourg; for they always seemed to me to be so sincerely united, that the sentiments in favor of the one necessarily extended to the other. The marechal grew old. ”

“ I was now heading northwest and I thought that by keeping that course I would get out of Luxembourg and into Belgium, where I expected to be a little better off, because the people in Luxembourg were practically the same as Germans.
One of the experiences I had in Luxembourg which I shall never forget occurred the first day that I spent there. I had traveled all night and I was feeling very weak. I came to a small wood with plenty of low underbrush, and I picked out a thick clump of bushes which was not in line with any paths, crawled in, and lay down to spend the day. ”

“ The surprise of the Marechal de Luxembourg was without bounds. He represented the facility with which the Prince of Orange might now be beaten with one army and pursued by another; and how important it was to draw off detachments of the Imperial forces from Germany into Flanders, and how, by sending an army into Flanders instead of Germany, the whole of the Low Countries would be in our power. But the King would not change his plans, although M. de Luxembourg went down on his knees and begged him not to allow such a glorious opportunity to escape. ”

“ On February 24 the Duke and Duchess Decazes were literally driven from the Luxembourg. And by whom? By the very denizens of the palace, all employés of the Chamber of Peers, all appointed by the grand referendary. A rumour was circulated in the quarter that during the night the peers would commit some anti-revolutionary act, publish a proclamation, etc. The entire Faubourg Saint Jacques prepared to march against the Luxembourg. Hence, great terror. First the Duke and Duchess were begged, then pressed, then constrained to leave the palace. ”

“ Visited the gallery of the Luxembourg, which is appropriated for paintings and sculpture by living artists. It was a rich treat. See catalogue. The garden of the Luxembourg is a beautiful promenade, but not equal to that of the Tuilleries. Nothing can exceed the gayety and brilliancy of the scene in these gardens at sunset, and early in the evening, when the thousands are enjoying the cool refreshing air, or admiring the fountains and statues. In the Tuilleries, a sculpture in bronze has been lately put up, representing a lion crushing a viper or serpent. ”

“ He was still more pitiless towards a man more formidable and less subordinate, both in character and origin, than Cardinal Balue. Louis of Luxembourg, Count of St. Pol, had been from his youth up engaged in the wars and intrigues of the sovereigns and great feudal lords of Western Europe—France, England, Germany, Burgundy, Brittany, and Lorraine. ”

“ Rebecca Mary's eyes crinkled. "There always has been a close relation between Luxembourg and Germany," he went on, and a frown chased the smile from his face. "Before our present grand duchess came to the throne German influence was supreme, most of our trade was with Germany, our railroads were developed with German money and by Germans, but in our hearts we had no love for Germany. And then came the day when the German army would have marched through the duchy and our grand duchess, brave little Marie Louise Adelheid, motored out to forbid them to use her country as a thoroughfare. ”

“ Luxembourg failed to follow up his victory, or all would have been lost. The French behaved as did the Southrons after Bull Run: they gave their formidable foe time to rally, and to recover from the effect of the panic that had covered the country with fugitives; and time was all that was necessary for either the English King or the American General to prevent defeat from being extended into conquest. ”

“ Luxembourg has a customs union with Belgium under which foreign trade is recorded jointly for the two countries; Luxembourg's principal exports are iron and steel products, principal imports are coal and consumer goods ”

“ About six miles from Trèves, on the Luxembourg road, is a village called Igel. Here is preserved a very curious stone obelisk, covered with carvings of figures and inscriptions: as usual, there is a considerable [98] dispute as to its origin and purpose, but it undoubtedly is a very curious relic of bygone days, and is not without beauty in design and execution.
Luxembourg is a very strong place, so scientifically fortified that it is most difficult for an uninitiated person to find his way into it ”

“ Martin, that we mind them no more than General Lobau himself: nevertheless, it is deemed proper, trumpery as the cause may be, to prevent anything like a gathering together of the mob in the vicinity of the Luxembourg, lest the same hundred-tongued lady who constantly magnifies the hootings of a few idle mechanics into an émeute should spread a report throughout France that the Luxembourg was besieged by the people. ”

“ Around these great families, who had gradually, by marriage and military encroachments, attained their supremacy, the others of all degrees rallied as vassals, seeking protection and contributing strength. The house of Bavaria, reigning over that powerful kingdom and in possession of the imperial throne, ranked first. Then came the house of Luxembourg, possessing the wide-spread and opulent realms of Bohemia. ”

“ In this sense Flanders, Brabant, and Luxembourg are the three princes to whom was given the defence of the patrimony that has been theirs from the ancient times of the earliest beginnings of the house amongst the Gallic and Germanic tribes of the Rhine valley, the meadows{39} and uplands of the Scheldt and the Meuse and the Sambre, and in the Forest of Ardennes. ”

“ This quickness of perception exempts them from the necessity of devoting much of the time and study which the English or Germans employ in forming opinions, but it also precludes their being able to reason as justly or as gravely on those they form.
Walked in the gardens of the Tuileries to-day. What a contrast their frequenters offer to those of the Luxembourg! In the Tuileries, the promenaders look as if they only walked there to display their tasteful dresses and pretty persons. ”

“ Germany west of the Rhine, together with all of Belgium except Flanders, Luxembourg, and a strip of territory along the northeast frontier of France. Westward to the Seine the land was divided into many feudal holdings, Flanders, which then comprised not only northern Belgium but the present French departments of Nord and Pas de Calais; Champagne, Amiens, Vermandois, Laon, Reims, Châlons. During the Middle Ages Lower Lorraine became the duchy of Brabant and the county of Hainault. Upper Lorraine, Luxembourg and Bar, southern Flanders, Artois. ”

“ Gabrielle also is very pretty, but she is a young and innocent creature, and her education, especially her music, not so far advanced.”
The garden of the Luxembourg comes next. It contains near a hundred acres, and lies in the midst of this classical district. It is not so gaily ornamented as the Tuileries, but is rich in picturesque and rural scenery. It has, indeed, two very beautiful ornaments. At the north end, the noble edifice, constructed by Marie de Medicis, the palace of the Luxembourg, which contains a gallery of paintings, the chamber of Peers, and other curiosities ”

“ It requested the trades to nominate their several deputies, and set the operative parliament to adjust all its rival pretensions at the Luxembourg. Then there came deputations of women, of students, of pawnbrokers’ tickets, of bankers, of bread-eaters, of bread-makers, of cabmen, of ’bussmen, of sailors, of porters, of every thing that had, or had not, an office and a name. France, of course, has had the precedence, having, in a manner, the first start; but the nations of the earth are beginning to find room in the endless procession. All the world will run into it in time. ”

“ Language: Luxembourgish, German, French; most educated Luxembourgers also speak English
Literacy: 98%
Labor force: (1977) 147,300; one-third of labor force is foreign, comprised mostly of workers from Portugal, Italy, France, Belgium, and West Germany (1977) ; unemployment 0.9% (1981)
GOVERNMENT Official name: Grand Duchy of Luxembourg
Type: constitutional monarchy
Capital: Luxembourg
Political subdivisions: unitary state, but for administrative purposes has 3 districts (Luxembourg, Diekirch, Grevenmacher) and 12 cantons
Legal system: based on civil law system; constitution adopted 1868 ”

“ Expedition to the Luxembourg.—No admittance for Females.—Portraits of "Henri."—Republican Costume.—Quai Voltaire.—Mural Inscriptions.—Anecdote of Marshal Lobau.—Arrest.
Ever since the trials at the Luxembourg commenced, we have intended to make an excursion thither, in order to look at the encampment in the garden, at the military array around the palace, and, in short, to see all that is visible for female eyes in the general aspect of the place, so interesting at the present moment from the important business going on there. ”