Chapter 21: The exile in Jena

 

War at the frontiers

Since the beginning of the year, the most diverse and sometimes contradictory news would come from the political situation in France. The speculation would reach its climax as in March 1792, the news that the partisans of King Louis XVI was making significant gains in the French provinces. Many people in Jena, however, did not quite believe these news. For them, if a battle or a victory should be decisive, it has to be led in the center of the French power, in Paris. What worried many observers outside France was the persistent rumors about numerous outright murders and hasty deadly condemnations which took place in many different locations without people knowing exactly which side was responsible for them. 

In Jena, as spring started to show timidly its nose all over the gardens and surrounding forests, the members of the academic community was divided about the position to be held vis a vis the French revolutionaries. The number of people who were, only a few months ago, proposing to join the French revolutionaries were now expressing their fervor for this enlightened event with a lot more reserve. Those who were deploring the lack of support of the European courts for Louis XVI were, to the contrary, even more outraged by the guilty idleness of the European Monarchs.

-        “If they don't do anything, the civil war in France will be soon stretching into the German nations! They must do something!” was the usual outcry heard here and there in the offices and salons of Jena.

However, all of them were expressing the same fear: that the warring factions, unable to control the populace and the bands of robbers, would soon spread the state of lawlessness well into the German nations. This fear was indeed fueled rightfully with the urgency of the Prussian military situation on the northern and eastern fronts with Russia and Poland. Should any military activity be signaled at the frontiers with France, then Prussia would be left vulnerable, as the bulk of its armies and resources were now already concentrated on the war for the further division of Poland.

On the other side, people could not really think about recruiting further soldiers with the farmers, especially in Saxony. The ongoing war, which now has lasted 5 years, has already taken so many sons and husbands from the Saxon families, not counting the numerous mercenaries that Saxony had to pay from the neighboring states and particularly from Thuringia, and no one could really how two intensive wars could be lead at the same time. Saxony and the other German nations were now all facing a direct threat from the French revolutionaries, if the other European courts were not doing anything to remedy the situation.

Images of wild criminality and lawlessness were filling the minds of this good society, and people almost forgot that the situation in France should above all be considered as an ideological one. The people of Jena were having frights at the thoughts of all these revolutionaries invading their ordered city and wreaking havoc everywhere.

It was in this already tense and speculative atmosphere that another incredible news would break out in the morning, brought over from Weimar with the morning post.

-        “Frederick Schiller has been awarded a honorary citizenship from the French revolutionaries!”

-        “Schiller? A French citizen?”

No one could believe the news.

            - “Why on earth would the French revolutionaries honor our Frederick Schiller?”