THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
country communes, which almost unanimously demanded the recognition of the national constitution and threatened the defection of the Rhineland from the Prussian monarchy in case of non-compliance. But the Prussian government had long ceased to be frightened by mere mass-meetings or by high-sounding phrases, when there was not a strong revolutionary force behind them.
Clearly, to save the national constitution, quick action was absolutely needed. Again the Rhenish people turned their eyes upon their capital, Cologne; but such masses of troops had been concentrated there that a rising would not have had the slightest prospect of success. In the manufacturing districts on the right bank of the Rhine the revolt really broke out. The immediate occasion was an order issued by the Prussian government to mobilize the army-corps of the Rhine province for the purpose of sending it against the defenders of the national constitution in the Bavarian Palatinate and in Baden, where provisional governments had been set up by the revolutionists. To this end the “Landwehr” (military reserve) in the Rhineland and in Westphalia was called into active service. The members of the Landwehr were at that time, as they are now, men between twenty-five and thirty-five, peasants, tradesmen, artisans, merchants or professional men, many of them fathers of young families. To interrupt their daily work and to leave their wives and children involved to most of them a heavy sacrifice. This sacrifice was all the heavier when they were called upon to help beat down those who in Baden and in the Palatinate had risen for the unity of the fatherland and the liberty of the people, and with whom many, if not a large majority, of the members of the Landwehr warmly sympathized. So it happened that numerous meetings of the Landwehr men were held for the purpose of declaring that they would not obey the
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