Rastatt

“ In short, the garrison of Rastatt was entirely forsaken, and could not hope for any relief; and finally, Corvin added, he had been informed at Prussian headquarters that the commander of the besieging army would insist upon a surrender of the fortress at discretion, without conditions of any kind.
Deep silence followed this speech. Every one of the hearers felt that Corvin had told the truth. Finally, somebody—I do not remember who—asked to be allowed to put some questions. Then there was a confusion of voices in which some hotheads talked of “dying to the last man” ”

“ After a labor of six weeks the Palatinate had not more than seven to eight thousand men, most of whom were very badly armed, and all of whom were indifferently disciplined.
In the neighboring grand duchy of Baden things looked much more favorable; the whole infantry and artillery, as well as the largest part of the cavalry of the state, had come over to the popular side and presented a well-equipped army corps of about fifteen thousand men. Moreover, the fortress of Rastatt had fallen into the hands of the insurrectionists, with all its stores of arms, ammunition and equipments. ”

“ Davoust, whose services were conspicuous on this occasion, was created Prince of Eckmuhl.
On the 23d, the Austrians made an attempt to cover the retreat of their army, by defending Ratisbon. Six regiments occupied the town, and seemed determined upon a vigorous defence. The Emperor himself came up to order the attack. Ratisbon is situated on the Upper Danube, across which it communicates with its suburb Stadt-an-Hop, by a bridge a thousand German feet in length. It is one of the oldest towns in Germany, and has an antique aspect. ”

“ Even in Ratisbon there was not a handsomer, wider street than this Altstadt, with its stately gable-roofed houses, and certainly not in Munich, where her uncle had once taken her, and the Bavarian dukes now resided.
But where, in Heaven’s name, would she be borne?
The sedan chair was now swaying past the place where the “short cut” for pedestrians led up to the Trausnitzburg, the proud citadel of the dukes of Bavarian Landshut. She leaned forward again to look up at it as it towered far above her head on the opposite side of the way ”

“ Beside the baths and the Gorge and its ways of pleasantness in general, Ragatz has many pretty walks along the hills between houses and gardens, and up steep, zigzag forest-paths to the ruins of Freudenberg and Wartenstein. A broad, sunny landscape lies before you,—the valley of the Rhine, Falknis in the background, green pastures and still waters. Blessed are the eyes that see what we see. ”

“ Our tainted nature’s solitary boast?
From Dresden I went to Ratisbon which, according to a venerable tradition, occupies the site of a town founded by the Celts long centuries before the Christian era and which subsequently became known as Castra Regina, an outpost of the Roman empire on its long northern frontier. In few places of Germany is there more to engage the lovers of historic and legendary lore than this ancient city. ”

“ We travelled also through part of the elector Palatine's country, and then returned to Bavaria; but though the country be good and well cultivated, and populous, the inhabitants are not at their ease. The late miserable wars have no doubt hurt them much. Ratisbon is a catholic republic situated on the banks of the Danube. The houses and buildings, and aspect of the people, are well enough, though not comparable to those of Nuremberg. 'Tis pretended that the difference is always sensible betwixt a Protestant and Catholic country, throughout all Germany ”

“ The eastern shore is more abrupt, still bearing on its points some antient buildings, till, opposite to Coblentz, it shoots up into that enormous mass, which sustains the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein.
Having passed a Benedictine convent, seated on the island of Oberworth, we reached Coblentz as the moon began to tint the rugged Ehrenbreitstein, whose towers and pointed angles caught the light. Part of the rock below, shaded by projecting cliffs, was dark and awful, but the Rhine, expanding at its feet, trembled with radiance. ”

“ It's the Herr Rathsherr," cried Fritz Sahlmann.
Mamsell Westphalen stood there like Lot's wife--only that she was perhaps stouter--and looked at the Rathsherr as if he were Sodom and Gomorrah.
"Merciful heavens! We are all wandering in the dark," she said in a feeble voice.
"It's very well for you to talk of wandering in the dark," sputtered my uncle Herse. ”

“ No little fish thrown back again into the water, no fly unimprisoned from a child's hand, could more buoyantly enjoy its element, than I this clean and peaceful house, with this lovely view of the town, groves, and lake of Ratzeburg, from the window at which I am writing. My spirits certainly, and my health I fancied, were beginning to sink under the noise, dirt, and unwholesome air of our Hamburg hotel. I left it on Sunday, Sept. 23rd. with a letter of introduction from the poet Klopstock, to the Amtmann of Ratzeburg. ”

“ The first inhabitants of Switzerland, according to tradition, were fugitives from Italy, who had been driven by the Gauls from the country where now flourish the cities of Genoa and Florence, and who, 600 B.C., found an asylum in the recesses and wilderness of the valleys above which the Rhine has its source. They were known as the Rhetians, from the name of their hero Rhetus; hence the country about the source of the Rhine, embracing the Grisons, is even now called by some, Rhetia. ”

“ Immediately after the inquiry305 began, several Jews of Ratisbon had betaken themselves to Bohemia and to the emperor, and tried by every means to save their unhappy brethren. They knew that to explain their righteous cause gold, and plenty of it, would be above all things necessary. For this reason several Bavarian rabbis assembled in a synod at Nuremberg, and decided that the Bavarian communities and every individual not absolutely impoverished should contribute a quota to make up the amount necessary to free the accused Jews of Ratisbon. ”

“ The news of the child-murder in Trent spread like wildfire through the Christian countries, and became the source of new sufferings to Jews. Nowhere were these sufferings so severe as in the free city of Ratisbon, containing one of the oldest Jewish communities in South Germany. It was held to be not only very pious but of distinguished morality, and it was considered a high honor to intermarry with the Jews of Ratisbon. Within the memory of man no native Jew had been brought before the tribunal for any moral lapse. ”

“ In 1530 he wrote, in defence of the Roman doctrine of Purgatory, A New Boke of Purgatory (1530) , dialogues on the subject between “Comyngs and Almayn a Christen man, and one Gyngemyn a Turke.” This was answered by John Frith in A Disputacion of Purgatorie, Rastell replied with an Apology against John Fryth, also answered by the latter. Rastell had married Elizabeth, sister of Sir Thomas More, with whose Catholic theology and political views he was in sympathy. ”

“ Think of being used as an exercise-book!
It is here at Rolandseck that the romance of the Rhine, as well as its world-renowned scenery, commences. Across the river is the Drachenfels—the crag upon which the remains of a castle may still be seen, where, "in the most ancient time," dwelt Hildegund, a maiden beautiful as those of all stories, and beloved by Roland, a nephew of Charlemagne. When he went away to the wars, she waited and watched at home—as other maidens have done; but alas! instead of her lover, came after a time only the news of his death. ”

“ In Ratisbon and the Golden Cross, on the contrary, the noise and bustle constantly increased. On the twenty-eighth of May, King Ferdinand arrived with his family to visit his brother Charles. The Reichstag would be opened on the fifth of June, and attracted to the Danube many princes and nobles, but neither the Elector John of Saxony nor the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the heads of the Smalcald league. King Ferdinand’s two daughters were to be married the first of July, and many a distinguished guest came to Ratisbon in June. ”

“ If you should happen to remain in Switzerland till after that, I shall visit you in the late autumn. Otherwise I shall see you at Carlsruhe or Paris.
Remember me cordially to Draseke. I am very glad you have taken a liking to him. He is a splendid fellow. In our small circle of most intimate friends he is called the "hero." Has he shown you his ballad, "Konig Helge?" It is a glorious thing.
Be good enough to tell him that I INVITE HIM SPECIALLY to stay with me on his return journey, and that I should think it very shabby of him if he played me the trick of flying past me under my very nose. ”

“ There was street fighting, and there were killed and wounded. The patriots were many; the garrison was small; Charles Albert was known to be coming. Radetzky had no choice but to withdraw his troops within the famous Quadrilateral of Fortresses, leaving the provisional government set up by the revolutionists in possession. [37] It seemed to the sapient Hübner a case of black ingratitude towards the admirable Austrian police.
But Austria was not, this time, to be beaten. Within the Quadrilateral Radetzky was safe; and, in due course, he marched out and defeated Charles Albert at Custozza. ”

“ When a man shows these symptoms for the first time an experienced ratsen is called in to diagnose the case. If he proclaim it to be genuine he strangles a cock, from the head of which he is believed to extract a small stone called ratse’ha. This stone he gives to the budding ratsen, who is supposed to keep it inside his head, and occasionally even show it to very intimate friends. It is said that a few years ago ’Ntengo of Lungsachung was foolish enough to show his stone to a rival ratsen called Khumeshiyo of the same village, who grabbed it and managed to retain possession of it. ”

“ A German geographer and traveler, born at Karlsruhe, and educated in science at Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Jena, Berlin, and elsewhere. As correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung he traveled in 1869 in Italy, Sicily, and Southern France, and in 1872-75 in the United States, Mexico, and Cuba. In 1876 he became professor of geography at the Polytechnic School of Munich, and in 1886 was appointed to a similar position at the University of Leipzig. Among his printed works are: Sein und Werden der organischen Welt (1868) ”

“ My uncle Herse was now forthwith arrested, and pulled down off the cart; and, what with his uniform and his keeping on crying out that he was "conseiller d'état"--for he could not at the moment find any better word for a Stemhagen Rathsherr--the French thought they must have made a good catch, and that they had now got the head of the conspiracy to rob them of their waggons and teams.
The colonel of artillery cursed and swore in the most unchristian French; he would make an example of the Rathsherr; four men should take him between them. ”

“ In northern Italy, the veteran Radetzky was upholding the black and yellow flag of Austria against a host of insurgents; in Bohemia, the Slavs, bent on founding a great Slav nation, were suppressed with difficulty by the Austrian general, Prince Windischgratz; my own gallant land of Hungary had drawn the sword to win back the ancient rights of which it had been deprived by the Viennese government; while here at Vienna, in the very heart of the empire, thousands of men were working their hardest to overthrow their own Kaiser. ”

“ One has not the same freedom in travelling by diligence, and besides it goes on night and day, and passes through the best of the scenery in the dark.
Ragatz lies a little beyond the range of the usual tourists’ track, and we had not ourselves visited it before. It is very charmingly situated, at the entrance of the Gorge of Pfäffers, in a valley up from that of the Rhine flow, and hemmed in by high, bold mountains, which, from the Ragatz side, look like immense walls, on whose higher slopes some patches of snow were then visible. ”

“ Thus the two hostile camps that were destined to rend the empire for so long a period became daily more distinct.
CHAPTER VI.
Persecution—Gaspard Tauber—A Bookseller—Cruelties in Wurtemberg, Salzburg, and Bavaria—Pomerania—Henry of Zuphten.
The Roman party was not satisfied with this. The alliance of Ratisbon was not to be a mere form; it must be sealed with blood. Ferdinand and Campeggio descended the Danube together from Ratisbon to Vienna, and during their journey bound each other by cruel promises. The persecution immediately broke out in the Austrian states. ”

“ The same evening, all Lausanne knew who I was, but what is remarkable, no one seemed to know, not even the good Perrotet, who (notwithstanding what had happened) continued to lodge and board me.
I led a melancholy life here; the consequences of such an essay had not rendered Lausanne a very agreeable residence. Scholars did not present themselves in crowds, not a single female, and not a person of the city. I had only two or three great dunces, as stupid as I was ignorant, who fatigued me to death, and in my hands were not likely to edify much. ”

“ All those ambassadors, counts, barons, bishops, and diplomatists seemed to have assembled at Rastadt for the sole purpose of giving banquets, tea-parties, and balls; no one thought of attending to business, and all more serious ideas seemed to have been utterly banished, while every one spoke of the gorgeous decorations of the ball-rooms and of the magnificence of the state dinners, where the most enthusiastic toasts were drunk in honor of the victorious French general; and the people seemed most anxious entirely to forget poor, suffering, and patient Germany. ”