Germany 693
the peasantry, probably inspired by Kosciuszko’s proclamation at Polaniec, that the
new Prussian code would abolish forced labor on the lords’ estates.^19 The rumor
was of course false, and order was restored. The French had had nothing to do with
the Saxon and Silesian agitations, except by the power of their example.
At the other extreme was the free city of Hamburg, the chief overseas port of
Germany, a very bourgeois community where the merchant class ruled and no
nobles existed, and of all the cities of Germany the most well- disposed to the
French Revolution.^20 It was estimated to have no less than forty- one millionaires.
Leader of the Francophile group was Heinrich Sieveking, one of the wealthiest
and most active commercial magnates. His house became virtually a political club,
in which French, Dutch, German, Irish, and American patriots often assembled.
Such a mixed group, for example, celebrated American independence on July 4,
1796, at Sieveking’s home. A. G. F. Rebmann, the most significant German expo-
nent at this time of advanced revolutionary ideas, was also admired and befriended
in these circles when he passed through Hamburg. In 1797 a few Batavian and
Hamburg patriots founded a new association, the Philanthropic Society, which
worked to promote Theophilanthropy and republicanism. It sent congratulations
to Peter Ochs on the Swiss revolution, and it attracted the attention of an investi-
gating committee of the British House of Commons.^21 On the whole, however, the
Hamburg republicans had no idea that much change was needed in Hamburg, or
even in Germany. For France they simply had a warm fellow- feeling, reinforced by
a general belief that the principles of the Revolution were a good thing for the
world.
As in Holland, Switzerland, and Italy, so in Germany it took the actual arrival of
the French army to precipitate local democrats into open defiance. This happened
in the Rhineland beginning in 1792.
The Left Bank of the Rhine was the most microscopically pulverized region in
the Holy Roman Empire. Between Alsace and the Dutch frontier there were
about a hundred and fifty states. Some of the largest of these were church- states,
where the bishop governed as temporal prince. The large bishopric of Liège has
already been mentioned in connection with Belgium. There were also the three
great archiepiscopal sees, Mainz, Trier, and Cologne. The three cities so named,
together with others in the archbishoprics, such as Coblenz and Bonn, were far
from being cities on the order of Hamburg. Commercial development in the
Rhineland had long been at a standstill. The towns were cathedral towns, or uni-
19 Donath and Markov, Kampf um Freiheit, 26–27; Valjavec, 201. Here again, the idea that the
French of the Directory had lost their appeal to the working classes must be classified, in some mea-
sure, as a popular fallacy, or rather a learned cliché. A shoemaker at Giessen was reported to say in
1798 that the rich were “so harsh with the poor people hereabouts that it would be no wonder if they
threw the gates open to the French, if they came this far.” Valjavec, 227.
20 P. Rudolf, Frankreich im Urteil der Hamburger Zeitschriften in den Jahren 1789–1810 (Hamburg,
1933); Droz, Allemagne, 135–54; P. Schramm, Hamburg, Deutschland und die Welt (Munich, 1943),
25–29; Beneke’s diary in Valjavec, 437–54.
21 Korrespondenz des Peter Ochs, 3 vols. (Basel, 1927–1937), II, 360; Gt. Brit., Parliament, House
of Commons, Report of the Committee of Secrecy (London, 1799), XLI. Droz, Allemagne, 143, says that
the Philanthropic Society was closed in November 1798, before the Parliamentary committee pub-
lished its apprehensions.