ng the
labour required for their possession, commenced a general system of
plunder down the Rhine. He easily organized a band, composed, I believe,
of deserters from the French and Austrian troops, who preferred
wholesale robbery to being shot in either service at the rate of
threepence a-day; and for a while nothing could be more prosperous than
their proceedings. Their leader, with all his daring, was politic,
professing himself the friend of the poor, standing on the best terms
with the peasantry, scattering his money in all directions with the
lavishness of a prince, and professing to make war only on the nobility,
the rich clergy, and the Jew merchants especially--the German Jews being
always supposed by the people to be the grand depositories of the
national wealth. But this favouritism among the peasantry was of the
highest service to his enterprizes. It gave him information, it rescued
him from difficulties, and it recruited his troop, which was said to
amount to several hundreds, and to be in the highest state of
discipline. After laying the country under contribution from Mayence to
Coblentz, he crossed the river into Franconia, and commenced a period of
enterprize there. But no man's luck lasts for ever. It was his habit to
acquire information for himself by travelling about in various
disguises. One day, in entering one of the little Franconian towns in
the habit of a pedlar, and driving a cart with wares before him, he was
recognized by one of the passers-by, whose sagacity was probably
sharpened by having been plundered by him. An investigation followed,
in which the disguised pedlar declared himself an Austrian subject, and
an Austrian soldier. In consequence, he was ordered to the Austrian
depot at Frankfort, where he met another recognition still more
formidable. A comrade with whom he had probably quarrelled; for this
part of the story is not yet clear, denounced him to the police; and, to
the astonishment of the honest Frankforters, it was announced that the
robber king, the bandit hero, was in their hands. As his exploits had
been chiefly performed on the left bank of the Rhine, and his revenues
had been raised out of French property in the manner of a forced loan,
the Republic, conceiving him to be an interloper on their monopoly,
immediately demanded him from the German authorities. In the old
war-loving times, the Frankforters would probably have blown the trumpet
and insisted on their privilege of