the long-oppressed people. On the 10th of July, 1789, the peasants
destroyed the park of the bishop, Rohan, at Zabern, and killed immense
quantities of game. The chateaux and monasteries throughout the
country were afterward reduced to heaps of ruins, and, in Suntgau, the
peasants took especial vengeance on the Jews, who had, in that place,
long lived on the fat of the land. Mulhausen received a democratic
constitution and a Jacobin club. In Strasburg, the town-house was
assailed by the populace,[1] notwithstanding which, order was
maintained by the mayor, Dietrich. The unpopular bishop, Rohan, was
replaced by Brendel, against whom the people of Colmar revolted, and
even assaulted him in the church for having taken the oath imposed by
the French republic, and which was rejected by all good Catholics.
Dietrich, aided by the great majority of the citizens of Strasburg,
long succeeded in keeping the _sans culottes_ at bay, but was at
length overcome, deprived of his office, and guillotined at Paris,
while Eulogius Schneider, who had formerly been a professor at Bonn,
then court preacher to the Catholic duke, Charles of Wurtemberg,[2]
became the tyrant of Strasburg, and, in the character of public
accuser before the revolutionary tribunal, conducted the executions.
The national convention at Paris nominated as his colleague Monet, a
man twenty-four years of age, totally ignorant of the German language,
and who merely made himself remarkable for his open rapacity.[3] This
was, however, a mere prelude to far greater horrors. Two members of
the convention, St. Just and Lebas, unexpectedly appeared at
Strasburg, declared that nothing had as yet been done, ordered the
executions to take place on a larger scale, and, A.D. 1793, imposed a
fine of nine million livres on the already plundered city. The German
costume and mode of writing were also prohibited; every sign, written
in German, affixed to the houses, was taken down, and, finally, the
whole of the city council and all the officers of the national guard