THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
the Napoleonic wars, had assigned the Palatinate to the king of Bavaria, but as that province was not contiguous to the rest of the kingdom, it had not the feeling of really belonging to it. A Bavarian patriotism would never grow in the Palatinate. When the Bavarian government sent “Old-Bavarian” officers into the Palatinate to help govern its people, the attitude toward one another became still more unfriendly, as the hungry “Old-Bavarians,” it was said, were sent to the rich Palatinate to grow fat. Their relations were much like those that existed between the Prussian province on the Rhine and old Prussia. The Pfaelzers were therefore in almost constant opposition to Old-Bavaria, and this opposition would have been sufficient to drive them into the ranks of the liberals had not liberal ways of thinking and feeling been natural to this vivacious and enlightened population. That this liberalism bore a decided German-national character was a matter of course. In fact, one of the most famous national demonstrations at the beginning of the thirties, the celebrated “Hambacher Fest,” had taken place in the Palatinate, and among the leaders of the national movement there were always Pfaelzers in the foremost ranks.
When the king of Bavaria refused to recognize the national constitution made by the Frankfurt Parliament, the general indignation in the Palatinate broke out in furious flame. It was a natural sentiment with the Pfaelzers that if the king of Bavaria would not be German, the Palatinate must cease to be Bavarian. On the 2d of May an immense mass-meeting was held at Kaiserslautern in which all the liberal clubs of the Palatinate were represented. This meeting elected a “Committee for the Defense of the Country,” which, according to the resolutions adopted, was to take the government of the province into its hands and to organize an
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