696 Chapter XXIX
In March 1793 Forster assembled at Mainz a gathering of patriots from other
clubs in the neighborhood, the “Rhenish- German National Convention.” It de-
clared the independence of a new state, which could not be otherwise described
than as the “region from Landau to Bingen.” This area, which had no identity
whatsoever, reached from the Alsatian border about fifty miles north to the bend
in the Rhine. The only sovereign was declared to be das freie Volk. In the abolition
of former sovereignties it was necessary to specify no less than twenty- three juris-
dictions, not including the imperial knights nor all the church bodies and free
cities which had territorial powers. Three days later the Convention declared for
incorporation in the French Republic. At a time when language and culture were
not felt to be divisive, the “free people” of the new phantom state, or at least their
spokesmen, expected to enjoy more freedom in the great Republic than outside it.^25
The tide of war turned at this very moment with Dumouriez’ defeat at Neer-
winden. The Coalition reoccupied Mainz and the zone around it. But the French
returned in a few years, and by 1797 another movement of revolutionary character
developed. It took the form of demands for a Cisrhenane Republic. The leadership
included the former Mainz Jacobins, Wedekind, Dorsch, A. J. Hoffmann, and Pro-
fessor Metternich (Forster had died), but was now amplified by other groups, by
men who had been in trouble during the imperial restoration, those who had
formed habits of working with the French occupation authorities, and still others,
often disinterested patriots and progressives, who were excited by the spread of
revolution since 1793, as now manifested in the Batavian and the Cisalpine Re-
publics. The most famous was Joseph Görres, now a youth in his early twenties,
later famous as a Catholic social thinker. But the Cisrhenanes seem never to have
numbered more than two or three thousand.
“Citizens!” cried the Cisrhenanes at Bonn to their city council. “Italy is ahead of
us; it has proclaimed the Rights of Man and become a free and independent state.
We wish valiantly to follow their lofty example. The power of France protects us,
so that the revolution of humanity that has become necessary for us will cost no
tears.”^26 Dutch, Swiss, and Italians had all used this same argument. All hoped to
have a peaceable revolution in which the French army would be the substitute for
“tears,” or mob violence and civil discord.
In newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, and meetings there was demand for a Cis-
rhenane Republic, to embrace the whole area from Alsace to Holland. The French
general Hoche favored the idea. In later generations, in the heyday of nationalism,
it was argued by many Germans, including those of radical outlook, that the Cis-
rhenanes had been good German patriots, warmly insistent on a Rhineland Re-
public, who had accepted annexation to France only under French pressure. It has
more recently been shown by Jacques Droz that the Cisrhenanes were at least
ambivalent on this matter, and that, far from demanding a formal independence,
many of them really preferred, like the Mainz Jacobins, annexation to France from
the beginning.^27 In any event, the Directory decided against a Cisrhenane Republic
25 Hansen, Quellen, II, 798–801.
26 Hansen, IV, 67; Venedey, 292.
27 Droz, Cisrhenans, 17–19. Venedey, Deutsche Republikaner, 308, writing as a “radical” in 1870,
insists upon the anti- French national patriotism of the German republicans of the 1790’s. Of the