talents. He went to Paris as deputy of Treves and speedily became
known by his works (Rubezahl and the Red Leaf). He also speedily
discovered the immense mistake made by the Germans in resting their
hopes upon France. It was indeed a strange delusion to suppose the
vain and greedy Frenchman capable of being inspired with disinterested
love for all mankind, and it was indeed a severe irony, that, after
such repeated and cruel experience, after having for centuries seen
the French ever in the guise of robbers and pillagers, and after
breathing such loud complaints against the princes who had sold
Germany to France, that the warmest friends of the people should on
this occasion be guilty of similar treachery, and, like selecting the
goat for a gardener, entrust the weal of their country to the French.

The people in Germany too little understood the real motives and
object of the French Revolution, and were too soon provoked by the
predatory incursions of the French troops, to be infected with
revolutionary principles. These merely fermented among the literati;
the Utopian idea of universal fraternization was spread by
Freemasonry; numbers at first cherished a hope that the Revolution
would preserve a pure moral character, and were not a little
astonished on beholding the monstrous crimes to which it gave birth.
Others merely rejoiced at the fall of the old and insupportable
system, and numerous anonymous pamphlets in this spirit appeared in
the Rhenish provinces. Fichte, the philosopher, also published an
anonymous work in favor of the Revolution. Others again, as, for
instance, Reichard, Girtanner, Schirach, and Hoffmann, set themselves
up as informers, and denounced every liberal-minded man to the princes
as a dangerous Jacobin. A search was made for Crypto-Jacobins, and
every honest man was exposed to the calumny of the servile newspaper
editors. French republicanism was denounced as criminal,