4 o * ^ A , «• ' » * "^ or , e « o e5^r, -^IBI?* A>*^. oWW* V^ ^r •<$> 0*0 °^ ,M ^ .. ^ * 1 1 0* .•-•.% >*\o^/V c°V^> °o ^-* *£>. a* * H < ^^ .v^sia:- <-„& yd&f^z. "^o* • "bV 0° * * o /\ Portrait of Henry II xxix -■ Carved Wooden Door from Massevaux, Mul- house Museum 12 v The Hotel de Ville, Ensisheim . . . 19 v Turckheim 20 The Abbey of Murbach 31 The " Virgin in a Thicket of Roses " . . . 39 v Ammerschwihr .50 Kaysersberg (in full color) 52 Vineyards near Riquewihr 54^ A Street in Riquewihr 56 ' Portraits of Voltaire (photogravure) ... 58 Portrait of Frederick the Great .... 60 Castle of Hohkoenigsbourg (in full color) . 66 y The Garden of Hohkoenigsbourg . . . 68 v The Walls of Obernai 75 *. A Well at Obernai 76 - Portrait of Louis XVI 80 Portrait of Stanislas Leszczynski .... 107 " Portrait of Marie Leszczynska (photogravure) . Ill* Portrait of Louis XV 114 Old Farm at Bueswiller 124 Court of the Alsatian Museum, Strasburg . . 128 * South Door of the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Rosheim 130 An Ancient House, Rosheim 134 * vii viii List of Illustrations PAGE A Fourteenth Century Gate, Boersch . . 136 "' Eguisheim 166 v Portrait of Alfieri 170 ^ Portrait of the Countess of Albany . . .173 Portrait of Robespierre 187 u "Sometimes we behold the enormous mass of an old castle" (in full color) . . . .189 Portrait of Schiller 190' Choir of Saint Nicholas, Haguenau . . . 200 *' Portrait of Hoche 216 The Chateau of Reichshoffen . . . . 221 Portrait of Cardinal Armand Gaston de Rohan- Soubise 233 Strasburg Cathedral . . . . . . 236 Portrait of Robert de Cotte 242 Portrait of Robert Le Lorrain .... 250 Portrait of Napoleon 254 The Chateau of Saverne 265 Interior of the Church of Guebwiller . . 269 Portrait of Goethe 279 Portrait of Marie Antoinette .... 280 Hohkoenigsbourg (restored) . . . . . . 295 Old ruined castles, witnesses of feudal /llsace (See page 230) R Otttvderd JDurddieiinM N >M iW#S& yiTLLE. 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WkjaSBSS feimmuwiirLm^ 3 r^jjj. eloniie ^iknJols, 'fe^ SchBti STRASBQ i«? aio &/i , Saionviller '•ayong. .Jonon v^==7/3raK7 — er O Oberi] iangkf Banrberrffle: ce^j^e^^JBarr Jndlau^oSciioft Prorencheres' \^~f^^L^^ambxk SEtiesenhem JSrouvefiparesz PEPINAL' " ^ o Ottenlwfki *^§ ffeiab'urg" ■ '> OppEna f im3MifdA "^nptenwerg- ■■ ttf. «lir\\f..n.X Weinach ZeU eber&ch. ■lepvre rarie^fe^- "K^ Cfiateiwisb *CtwxsCHLE& Iffaslao ^ffghhaimnmnsfer Hausac yfmr m Eberq umzingen IS --Twmgm^A. Gerardms: jptr'Dareny^z, - - cdetiSmtrtx' jftzS-ai £ornntiont- ± ijfwndmsfem Kovdlacli^l .. Jautenbach • WaJcburch RET 'XjBrisach \SehaJtetadt J0*7R« Weusladl T*-i Llon 2^- r Sitschn AlsacelSeiA >>Je^i m O.l ,R E l<<9§, Feldberg Todtnaq/ MAP OF ALSACE AND THE SURROUNDING TERRITORY M7; HaUi" eJ7e ^'JL ] MsndovJ r*\ ) 'embf { 'lew.) en. ■:,; 3 Se3wp3'eim\ pnianfl rzbacjfi hahe/, ..^•eruheasefi ncoUrh Vop?aiiruf^ \m£&Z$fo — 'iauTsn •pGothariL INTRODUCTION Aftee almost half a century of alien domination, t?he lost provinces of France, ravished from her by Germany in 1871, have again been occupied by French troops and administered by French officials. Whatever else may be the terms of the Treaty of Peace which will officially end the Great War, there is no doubt in any man's mind that the territory Germany took in 1871 will remain French. No plebiscite will be taken, for none is necessary. The fortune of war has returned what the fortune of war took, and those Germans who immigrated into Alsace to exploit the conquered province will have the choice of returning whence they came or remaining on the soil of France. In this year of reunion there are doubtless many Americans who will find M. Hallays' book valuable as a recent and faithful description of the feelings of the people of Alsace. I hope it may be the means of enlightening some of the doubters as to the justice of giving the lost provinces back to France, and also that its charming descriptions of the picturesque scenery and architecture of Alsace may be the means of interesting many an ix Introduction American tourist, in years to come, in a visit to this pleasant region. It was my good fortune to spend a considerable part of the summer of 1913 in the country between the Vosges and the Rhine, and I know no countryside in Europe which con- tains more to charm and interest the visitor who desires to get away from the beaten tracks of travel. As a study of the character of the people, as a description of the lovely landscapes, as an ap- preciation of the Renaissance architecture of Alsace, nothing could surpass the pages of M. Hallays, a fluent and polished writer, in full sym- pathy with his subject. He gives no space to Strasburg, but Strasburg is well known and ade- quately described by the guide books. Besides, the spell of a country rarely lies in great cities, where commerce and industry tend to submerge racial characteristics and render one cosmopolitan population like any other. Perhaps in his keen appreciation of French architecture he lacks some- what in sympathy for the older aspects of Alsace, and the lover of the medieval will find in the two provinces most charming pictures in the walls and watchtowers of many a free imperial city and in the hundreds of robber castles whose picturesque ruins crown so many of the outlying peaks and ridges of the Vosges chain. In spite of these Introduction xi small gaps however, M. Hallays has drawn a most sympathetic account of the life and land of the Alsatians. Writing as a Frenchman, he has felt that his readers were fully familiar with the history of the lost provinces. American readers may find that this is not fully treated in the works of reference at their command, and I therefore propose to briefly summarize Alsatian history, and also add a few paragraphs on what happened in Alsace during and at the end of the war. Both additions will be helpful in showing how events, both past and present, support our author's thesis throughout the book, that Alsace has been and is French at heart. The country that is now Alsace first appears in historical documents in a book which becomes so familiar to most of us in our school days that we never want to see it again, and hence do not realize how interesting it really is. This book is Caesar's Commentaries, almost at the very beginning of which we read of his difficulties with Ariovistus. This German chieftain had crossed the Rhine at the invitation of one of the Gallic tribes, to help it fight its battles. At first, 15,000 Germans crossed the Rhine, but instead of returning when the fighting was over, they took a third of the land of the Sequani and continued to come until xii Introduction 120,000 had settled there. 'By this time they wanted more land and not only took it from the Sequani but threatened the iEdui, who, being allies of the Romans, appealed to Caesar for as- sistance. The Roman general took possession of Vesontio (nowBesangon), forestalling Ariovistus, and then had a conference with the German chief- tain, in or near his camp at what is now Colmar in Alsace. Caesar's troops were frankly afraid of the terrible Germans, but their leader brought back their courage by a martial speech, and as his conference with Ariovistus did not persuade the latter to return across the Rhine, he broke this off summarily, attacked the Germans, and drove them across the Rhine in disorder. Ninety thousand German dead were left upon the field, and Ariovistus and his two wives were either killed or drowned. The Gallic tribes were thus freed from the German menace, but passed under Roman domi- nation, and for more than four hundred years Alsace was part of the Roman Empire. We do not find there many Roman buildings, but temple foundations, roads, and forts have been located in considerable numbers, and the land was well settled and prosperous under the Roman rule. The Germans still coveted it, and their attempts to cross the Rhine as the Empire became weaker Introduction xiii were continuous. In the third century at least seven invasions in force were repelled. In 353-4 the barriers fell, and the German flood swept over Alsace, no less than forty-five towns having been destroyed. In 357 they were driven out, but in 367 the Rhine was frozen and the Germans came across on the ice. Each time they entered it be- came harder to drive them out, and when in 403 Honorius withdrew the Roman Legions to fight the Vandals in Italy, this was the beginning of the end. In 406 the Vandals and the Alans com- pletely overran Alsace, and in twelve months every trace of the Roman civilization had been completely destroyed. The next year came the Burgundians, and after them the Huns, and until these latter were defeated at Chalons in 451, and Attila was driven across the Rhine for the last time, Alsace remained a waste. The Celtic population of Alsace was never en- tirely dispossessed or enslaved. Here as else- where, they abandoned the plains and retreated to the fastnesses of the high valleys and the moun- tain tops. In the following centuries they grad- ually came down again and mingled with the German tribes. The names, both personal and place, became Teutonic, but the population, as is evident by the contents of graves and especially the characteristics of the skulls, remained Celtic xiv Introduction in character, and this strain is strongly marked in the population to the present time. The three elements, Celtic, Frankish, and Teutonic, have lived continuously in Alsace, and this tripartite character of the population explains the medieval proverb : Drey Schlosser auff einem Berge, Drey Kirchen auff einem Kirchoffe, Drey Statte in einem Thai, 1st das ganze Elsass uberall. Three castles on one mountain, Three churches in one churchyard, Three cities in one valley, Such is Alsace everywhere. After the defeat of Attila the Frankish rulers of Gaul gradually asserted their sovereignty over Alsace. In 496 Clovis defeated the Allemanni on the Rhine, and in 536 the latter evacuated all Gallic territory, although a few, as individuals, re- mained in Alsace and became taxpayers. Alsace was erected into a dukedom by the Frankish sovereigns, and the most famous of these dukes was Ettich or Attic as, whose greatest renown is due to the well-known legend of his daughter Odilie, who was born blind and miraculously cured Introduction xv by the water of baptism. This miracle led to the Christianizing of Alsace. We do not hear further of dukes of Alsace, and the next landmark in Alsatian history is the Treaty of Verdun in 843, by which the grandsons of Charlemagne divided his empire. Charles the Bald received France, Louis the German the territory from the Rhine to the 111, and Lothaire, the eldest, became emperor and received Lotha- ringia, the middle region extending from Lorraine to Italy and including Alsace. In 867 Lothaire's son, Lothaire II, made his natural son Hugh Duke of Alsace, but the Treaty of Mersen in 870, which deprived Lothaire II of all of his territory north of the Alps, turned Alsace over to Louis the German. When the latter died in 876, Hugh again assumed his dukedom, but Charles the Fat blinded and imprisoned him and became ruler of France, Germany, and Italy. It is interesting to note that Germany has counted the year 843 as her national birthday, and in 1843 the millennium of the German empire was celebrated. This empire ended in 1806. It is amusing to note that Alsace was not a part of it either at its beginning or its end. What was the attitude of this bit of territory toward the sovereigns of Germany during the Middle Ages? It was that of feudal allegiance. xvi Introduction The idea of national sovereignty existed in no man's mind. The man of strength among the Gallic and German tribes became a leader because of his personal prowess, and acquired possessions by personal valor as the spoils of war. He gath- ered about him followers whose homes and lands he protected by his might, and who gradually became bound to render him service in war. Thus arose the feudal system, and as the peasant swore allegiance and gave military support to the knight or petty lord who protected his home, this knight in turn gave allegiance and owed military service to a baron, whose territory comprised the estates of several or many knights. The baron in turn was feudally dependent on another, sometimes the king direct, sometimes a count or duke, and thus step by step the feudal structure was built up. The theory was that the oath of homage was inviolable and the feudal obligation permanent. This obligation, however, was mutual ; the vassal owed allegiance, but the suzerain was bound to furnish protection, and if this was not given the vassal could theoretically and often did prac- tically renounce his allegiance, and transfer it to another overlord better able to fulfill his feudal duties. The question of allegiance in border lands was not always easy to solve, and the nobles of Introduction xvii Alsace sometimes gave allegiance to French over- lords and sometimes to German. In fact, many a lord of the marches was a vassal of the French king and a member of the Circle of the Empire. Territories as far south as Provence remained fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire (which as Bryce says, "was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire") until late in the Middle Ages. We are thus justified in considering that the tie which bound Alsace to any German sovereign for many centuries was wholly a personal one, and in no sense national, so when Charles the Simple of France acquired Alsace and Lorraine in 911, and when he was deposed in 923 and Henry the Fowler, the German Emperor, took possession, the people of Alsace knew only of the change in a remote overlord, and were probably hardly con- scious of any difference in their condition, or in the rights and duties which were the rule of their existence. During the eleventh century the dukedom of Alsace passed to the house of Hohenstauffen, of which it remained an appanage until the last of that line, the ill-fated Conradin, died on the scaffold at Naples in 1268. In 1168 Werner of Hapsburg became the first landgrave of the Sundgau, the more southerly of the two gaus or regions into which Alsace was divided. This race of Haps- XV111 burg, a violent and masterful strain, first rose to historical note in the eleventh century, when a wild hunter named Hadbod, said to be a descendant of Duke Ettich, built a robber castle in a wild and picturesque spot on the river Aar. It is said that he found this fastness while hunting by following a hawk (habicht in German), whi h led him to a wild and unknown region. Hence he named his castle Habichtsburg, which became corrupted to Habsburg or Hapsburg. From the time when Werner became the Land- grave of Sundgau, the Hapsburgs retained posses- sion of this territory, and their right, at first that of appointment, soon became hereditary, for the German emperors were in no position to assert claims of proprietorship in such a remote region of the Empire. The Hapsburgs themselves were not able to hold the whole land for their own. The Nordgau was dependent on the See of Strasburg, and the cities of Alsace acquired wealth, asserted their independence of any overlord, and became free cities of the Empire. By 1475 the Decapolis, or League of Ten Cities, although governed by a hereditary prefect of the Hapsburg clan, were all members of the Empire in their own right, with an appeal to the Diet. Mulhouse did not even submit to a prefect. Strasburg was the dominant see of the Nordgau, and its archbishop was the Introduction xix feudal overlord of numerous abbeys, lordships and villages throughout northern Alsace, the city it- self very early becoming a free city of the Empire. In July, 1205, it became an " immediate" city of the Empire. In 1219 it obtained a new charter, still more favorable, and in 1482, by the famous document known as the Schworbrief, it became an absolutely free republic, subject to no domina- tion or taxation of any sort from outside sources. Its burghers annually renewed their oath of al- legiance to their own council, and so solid was the foundation of their liberty that even that im- perious despot, Louis XIV, did not attempt to infringe upon their rights and independence. By the latter half of the fifteenth century, though the Emperor was theoretically freely elected, the Empire had become almost Hapsburg, and the cadet branch of this house, in the person of the Archduke Sigismund, owned Tyrol as well as the Landgraviate of the Sundgau, the County of Ferrette and other Alsatian possessions. Sigis- mund claimed also territorial rights in Switzer- land, and as a result was constantly at war with the hardy mountaineers. He finally was so hard pressed by the Swiss that he decided to buy peace from them, and offered to sell his Alsatian pos- sessions to Louis XI of France. This monarch refused to buy, so he then turned to Charles the xx Introduction Bold of Burgundy, who had a great ambition to unite his provinces in the Netherlands with the County and Duchy of Burgundy, and thus re- vive the Middle Kingdom of Lothaire. By the Treaty of Saint Omer, signed May 9, 1460, Charles bought from Sigismund his seigniorial rights in the Landgraviate of Alsace, the County of Ferrette, and certain Rhine towns. For this he paid ten thousand florins on the spot, and seventy thousand more to be delivered before September 24. Sigismund reserved the right of redemption on condition that he should repay at Besangon the whole sum at one time, plus any outlay made by Charles. Knowing the impe- cunious character of Sigismund, the Burgundian sovereign thought he was safe in assuming that the claim would never be paid off. By this trans- action Charles became the sovereign of Alsace and a landgrave of the Empire, with the right to a seat in its Diet, even though he was a peer of France. This right he neither exercised nor desired, but proceeded to appoint commissioners to investigate exactly what he had bought. Their report showed a confusion of rights, charters, mortgages, and other obligations of title, so in- volved and intricate that human ingenuity would despair of ever disentangling the complication. As a matter of fact, the tangle was never straight- Introduction xxi ened out until the French Revolution summarily ended all feudal claims and privileges. Sigismund shortly repented of his bargain, and with the help of his friends in the Empire raised enough money, and offered the stipulated repay- ment in a single sum. Charles refused to receive it, and the money was apparently never returned to Burgundy. His ambitious project neverthe- less died. He sent into Alsace a "landvogt" who tried to reduce the free city of Mulhouse to the state of a vassal of Burgundy. The Mulhousians responded by placing him on trial for life and executing him. The troops of Charles came into conflict with the Swiss, were defeated and almost exterminated, and Charles himself lost his life on the bloody field of Nancy. Then Sundgau and Ferrette again became Austrian, with the tangle of debts and mortgages still unraveled. During the sixteenth century Alsace was dev- astated by the Peasants' War and Protestant risings. The Mass at Strasburg was peaceably abolished by the vote of the burghers on Febru- ary 20, 1529. The process was not so peaceable in the territories of the Hapsburgs, and there was much persecution. The struggle continued throughout the century, and until the Thirty Years War, during which Alsace was overrun and harassed by Swedes, Austrians, and French. The xxii Introduction cities were taken and retaken, one having been sacked ten times. After the death of Gustavus Adolphus, Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, who took command of the Protestant forces at Liitzen, signed an alliance with Catholic France, in the person of Cardinal Richelieu. He dreamed of founding an Alsatian kingdom, under imperial sovereignty, but died at the age of thirty-five in 1639, and his troops passed into the hands of Richelieu, under a stipulation that the Protestant religion was to be freely exercised and the garrison to be half French and half German. With France thus in possession, the Peace of Westphalia transferred Alsace to French sovereignty, and Gaul secured its natural frontier, the Rhine. The Holy Roman Empire was only a loose federation. It was not German, for it at various times comprised territory in the Low Countries, France, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, as well as Germany. The Peace of West- phalia broke the last nominal link which bound the empire as a whole to Rome. It was after- ward only an association of German states, com- prising no less than 343 political units. What did the Treaty of Munster provide in regard to Alsace, and was this forcibly reft from the German Empire ? As far as Alsace itself was con- cerned, it was, with the exception of the republics of Strasburg and Mulhouse, a willing party to the Introduction xxiii treaty. Despite the opposition of the Emperor Ferdinand, Doctor Mark Otto sat as the Alsatian envoy in the negotiations and signed the conven- tions for Alsace. The treaty itself was formal and definite. Article 75 provided as follows : "The Emperor, in his own behalf and in that of the most serene House of Austria, cedes the rights, domains, possessions, and jurisdictions which hitherto belonged to him, to the Empire, and to the House of Austria, in the city of Breisach, the landgraviates of Upper and Lower Alsace, the Sundgau, the prefecture general of the ten im- perial cities situated in Alsace . . . and all the countries and other rights of whatever nature, which are comprised within the prefecture, — by transferring all and each to the very Christian King and to the realm of France." Article 76 provided "that the cession was made for all time, without reservation, with plenary jurisdiction and superiority and sovereignty, forever ... so that no Emperor and no prince of the House of Austria could or ought ever at any time to make pretentions to, or usurp any right and puissance over the said lands." Article 79 provided "that the Emperor, the Empire, and the Archduke Ferdinand Charles should discharge all officials in the ceded territory from their oaths of fealty toward themselves." xxiv Introduction The intent of this article was to release all of Alsace to France, but the complexity of tenure of suzerainty and of property rights was not fully realized. So far the terms of the treaty were clear enough, but article 89 introduced a doubt. By this it was provided that the subordinate units in Alsace were still "immediate of the Holy Roman Empire, and that the King of France should have no royal supremacy over them, and should suc- ceed only to the rights of the archduke." This contradicts the previous articles, but is itself im- mediately weakened by a further declaration that this provision shall be "no prejudice of sovereign rights previously accorded." The best explanation of these contradictions is that each party succeeded in inserting provisions to save its pride, and that each obtained in words what he held out for, though France received the territory in fact, and the Archduke was to receive as compensation the sum of three million livres tournois, which would be about three-quarters as much in livres parisis, or about $500,000 of our money. It has been claimed by German his- torians that this payment was never made, and that this rendered the cession null and void. The facts are that the Treaty of the Pyrenees, in 1659, again stipulated that this sum should be paid within three years, in five installments, to the Introduction xxv Archduke Ferdinand Charles. He died Decem- ber 30, 1662, without having received it, and it was paid to his brother and heir, the Archduke Sigismund Francis, in December, 1663, and the receipt still exists in the national archives of France. Louis XIV never claimed any rights as a member of the German empire which he might have ac- quired under the Treaty of Munster, but pro- ceeded to extend French sovereignty over Alsace as rapidly as seemed feasible. At first the cus- toms frontier ran between Alsace and France, and there was resistance in some quarters, and even occasionally a resort to arms, before the Alsatian towns recognized French sovereignty. Even after this had been formally accepted, the towns of the Decapolis still sent representatives to the Imperial Diet. Mulhouse had joined the Swiss League, and was neither French nor Im- perial, and Strasburg still remained autonomous. The French on the whole, however, pursued a con- ciliatory policy without putting innovations in force against the will of the people, and each of the wars of Louis XIV left the position of France in Alsace a little firmer. In 1679 the Peace of Nimwegen was signed, and by this the Emperor formally turned over to France the possession of Wissembourg and Landau, xxvi Introduction while Louis XIV retained possession of the other cities of the Decapolis, which had been garrisoned by France. All the cities then took the oath of allegiance to the King of France, and the Sovereign Council of Alsace was formed as a local parliament. The king was anxious to extend his influence over Strasburg, because of its important military situation guarding the Rhine. A treaty was executed, and Louis took possession of the city in 1681. The terms of the treaty provided that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes should not be valid for Strasburg, but nevertheless, the Catholic influence remained strong in the city. The king entered the city with great pomp on October 23, and thereafter there was no question of imperial influence in the capital of Alsace. At the Peace of Ryswick in 1695, Strasburg was formally and perpetually joined to the French crown. After this long series of treaties it might be assumed that Alsace had become completely French, but the feudal ties of obligation were so complex and difficult of abolition, that it was an almost impossible task to destroy theoretical imperial sovereignty, even though it practically did not exist. In 1648 France acquired from the House of Hapsburg 284 communities; in 1679 from the Empire 313 ; in the next sixteen years PORTRAIT OF LOUIS XIV Introduction xxvii 202. But even after 1695 there were almost fifty feudal units which still owed suzerainty to German overlords. Another century was required for the extinction of these rights, and it required no less a catastrophe than the French Revolution to abolish feudalism. In February, 1790, various princes, orders, and knights of the Holy Roman Empire protested to the French government against the confiscation of their properties or the abolition of their feudal rights. In October of the same year the Assembly decided to uphold French sovereignty, and to ask the king to pay suitable indemnity. This the princes declined, and took their grievances to the Imperial Diet. Futile effort ! The march of events was inex- orable. First Louis XIV, and then the Empire itself, disappeared. Alsace remained wholly French, and the owners of the feudal rights re- ceived no compensation. Another treaty, that of Bale, in 1795, between France and Prussia, recognized the facts, and gave France a free hand on the left bank of the Rhine, a condition which was not altered by the Congress of Vienna, but which remained undisputed until 1870. This short survey of the history of Alsace re- veals that Alsace as a border land has passed from owner to owner, with little regard to the rights of the people, and it is not surprising under these xxviii Introduction conditions that during a great part of its history no such thing as national sentiment did or could exist. The people of Alsace looked to their im- mediate superiors for help and protection, and were more or less indifferent to the dynasties which theoretically ruled them. During the period when the unified nations of today were reaching their modern form, the predominant influence in Alsace was French. It was never harsh or arbitrary. There was never any attempt to force customs, laws, or language on an unwilling people. Con- sequently German sentiment and German speech almost disappeared from the provinces, and the patois of the common people, though basically Teutonic, became almost incomprehensible to educated Germans. There is nothing which unifies national sentiment like the prosecution of a pro- tracted and successful war, and the Napoleonic Wars delivered Alsace to France in heart and soul. In spite, therefore, of the false arguments which have been set up by German writers in the last half century as to the historic bonds uniting Alsace with Germany, the taking of Alsace in 1870 was a purely selfish proceeding, designed for the military and economic aggrandizement of, primarily, Prussia, and secondarily, . the German Empire, and the Prussian authors of the treaty of peace had neither illusions nor scruples on the PORTRAIT OF HENRY II Introduction xxix point that Alsace was French, and was forcibly and without moral justification annexed to Ger- many. Of the French province of Lorraine but a small fraction was taken by Germany. Lorraine was essentially French throughout the Middle Ages, though portions of it at various times owed al- legiance to the Empire, but the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun were taken by Henry II of France from Charles III, Duke of Lorraine, a minor, in 1552, without bloodshed, and were French thereafter, both de facto, and from 1559, when no reference was made to them in the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis, dejure. Germany took part of the province in 1870 for its economic value, and would have taken more had she then realized the full value of the refractory iron ores of the Briey Basin. What happened to Alsace during the war ? We all know that the French made a considerable advance into Alsace at the beginning of the war in 1914, even occupying Mulhouse, but Germany's plunge through Belgium shortly nullified this ad- vance, and the French lines were withdrawn to defensible positions on the slopes of the Vosges, which were retained with little change in spite of the periods of sanguinary fighting, especially about xxx Introduction Hartmannsweilerkopf, the dominating crest of the Vosges, until practically the close of the war. A certain number of Alsatian communes were ad- ministered by the French throughout the war; the greater portion remained within the German lines. The front on the whole passed through mountainous territory, and with the exception of the town of Thann, which was very heavily bom- barded and almost half destroyed, the Alsatian settlements suffered very little devastation, as compared with wide districts of northern France. Whatever may have been the opinion, professed or real, of German writers as to the Germanization of Alsace, the German military authorities were under no illusions as to their task at the beginning of the war. They knew that Alsace was French at heart, that its men would not willingly serve in the German armies, that its women, children, and old men ardently desired French victory. So from the very beginning of the war, they treated it as if it were still French and not German territory. There is abundant and incontrovertible testi- mony that numerous units of the German army, before entering Alsace-Lorraine, were formally notified by their commanding officers that they were entering hostile territory, and that it would be necessary for them to act accordingly. A lawyer of Colmar, Paul Albert Helmer, has pub- Introduction xxxi lished much information in regard to this, and even his voluminous record is probably incom- plete. "Load your rifles/' said Captain Fischer, of the Fortieth Territorial Infantry, "we are now in the enemy's territory (Hier sind wir in Feindesland) . " "Be prudent, " advised one of the lieutenants of the same regiment, "you are now in the enemy's country. If, in your billets, the inhabitants give you anything to drink, make them drink first." "In case you hear a Lorrainer speak French," said Feldwebel Barkentien of the Second Company of the Sanitary Service of the XXIst Corps, "hang him by the feet till he dies miserably (Dass er langsam krepiert). We are here, gen- erally speaking, in the enemy's country, for these 'Shangels' (Lorrainers) are more to be feared than our enemies." The German soldiers were only too eager to obey orders which so thoroughly satisfied their instinctive brutality. They not only made requi- sitions arbitrarily and extortionately, but they robbed, burned, and murdered on the flimsiest pretext, consoling their consciences by repeating among themselves, "Here we are in the enemy's country." The Germans had no intention of ever allowing xxxii Introduction the French to recover a prosperous land if the fortune of war should restore to them Alsace. The Kaiser said, "If ever we give Alsace-Lorraine back, we will return it bald." Happily circum- stances beyond the boaster's control forbade the execution of this threat. But the German troops were so exasperated at being obliged to retreat during the early French advance, that they im- mediately began to show what their Emperor had in mind when he made this assertion. They burned many farms, among them that of a pe sant whose name was recorded only as B in the account written while the Germans were still in control. When the farmhouse was in flames they tied B to a tree trunk and shot him. His daughter, a girl of fifteen, was wantonly mur- dered by an officer, who passed his sword through her body. They took with them a boy of fourteen, and did not give him time to put on his shoes. His felt slippers were soon worn out, and when his feet began to bleed he begged his captors to let him rest. Instead they stood him against a tree and shot him, leaving his body for the peasants to find and bury. The mother went insane, there remaining only a babe in arms of her happy family. When the Germans returned to the villages which the French had temporarily occupied, they wreaked their vengeance on all the inhabitants who were Introduction xxxiii reported by tale-bearing compatriots to have re- ceived the French with hospitality. An old man who was reported to have carried a written message for a French officer was forced to dig a grave and lie down in it to be shot. In a village where the French had bought provisions, they ordered the inhabitants to deliver without compensation every- thing that was left, and they shot an old man for failing to surrender four eggs. Bourtzwiller, near Mulhouse, was occupied by the French for a short time, a fact which so ex- asperated the Germans that when they returned they burned fifty-six houses. As further punish- ment, they shot in the presence of their families, Benjamin Schott, the father of five children, and whose wife was then pregnant, Schott's seventeen- year-old son, and one of his farm hands ; Ignace Nieck, and his son Paul; Jean Baptiste Biehler, an octogenarian, and Fritsch Kuneyel. They also arrested, beat, bound, and carried off half naked to Mulhouse, seventy-eight of the inhabitants. Note the names of these persons, and wonder whether their sympathies were French or German. Dalheim, near Chateau-Salins, received even worse treatment. Forty houses and a church were burned, with their contents, including the bed- ridden ex-mayor, Louis Sommer, and the live stock. The troops shot the half-crazed animals xxxiv Introduction which were able to escape from the burning build- ings. They murdered several of the inhabitants, including children and old men. Sixty-five able- bodied males were assembled by means of kicks and blows from the butts of rifles, were marched to Morhange, and were obliged to lie down, with their faces in the mud, for more than twelve hours. If one of these poor devils, half suffocated, raised his head to get a breath of fresh air, a heavy blow on the skull from a gunstock drove it back into place. Two died, and one lies paralyzed. The remainder were sent to Deux-Ponts, where they were kept in prison for six weeks, living on bread and water, and sleeping on rotten straw. A few more died ; then part were liberated and the rest transferred to the Palatinate, where they were imprisoned sixteen months longer. After the men of Dalheim were removed, the women and children were stripped naked, and turned over to the mercy of the German soldiers, who hunted their game through the vineyards all night. The German official documents relating to these two affairs were captured in the town hall at Mulhouse by the lawyer Helmer, when the French occupied the city for the second time. The attitude of the Alsatians in regard to mili- tary service in the German army was what might have been expected from M. Hallays' account of Introduction xxxv their feelings before the war. Tens of thousands escaped before they were summoned ; others de- serted before being sent to the front, and others would probably have done so had they not been promised (often falsely), that they would not be required to serve against the French. In a single day eighty territorials from the regions surrounding Strasburg were arraigned be- fore a special military court in that city for de- sertion and treason. On a single day the public prosecutor of Mulhouse ordered the arrest of seven hundred and seventy-three men of a single class, that of 1892, to answer the charge of deser- tion, and also confiscated the property of a number of other men charged with desertion and treason. Hundreds, yes thousands, of other cases are re- ported in German papers which were collected by the French military authorities; all classes, all trades, and all professions are represented in these lists, a veritable Alsatian Roll of Honor, which by themselves are sufficient to prove the persistence of French sentiment after half a century of German occupation. The Alsatians who were sent to the front against the French often refused to fire on men whom they regarded as their brothers in blood, and of course this infraction of German discipline cost them their lives. The Abbe Wetterle has told of a young xxxvi Introduction Alsatian from Colmar who was incorporated in a Saxon regiment. During the battle of the Marne his lieutenant observed that he was firing too low. Though warned, he persisted. "Ah! I under- stand," cried the officer, "you Alsatian dogs are all traitors. It is high time to make an example." He emptied his revolver into the sergeant's brain, and said to his men, "This is what happens to the friends of the French." Soon after the boy's father received this letter : "Monsieur, your son died because of his love for France. Seriously wounded by an officer who accused him of sparing the French opposite us, he survived only a few hours. It was in my arms he breathed his last, after the consolations of re- ligion. Before closing his eyes, he charged me with his mission. 'Please write my father,' he said, 'that I was faithful to my vow. Not a drop of French blood has stained my hands, and I have the joy, before dying, of seeing the French army rebound.' He paused an instant, a smile ap- peared on his lips and, gathering together all his strength, he cried, 'Vive la France!'" Thus the Alsatian soldiers were a dead weight in the German armies, at least on the western front. Even if they did not desert in the face of the enemy, knowing that they had not one chance in ten of getting across No Man's Land alive, Introduction xxxvii and that they were abandoning wives and children, fathers and mothers, to the brutal German venge- ance, they were regarded by the Germans as po- tential traitors. Numerous official orders for- bidding their employment in responsible positions, either in the line or the rear, sufficiently prove where their sympathies were. The Alsatian civilians who remained at home were no less suspected and oppressed by the Germans than those in the zone of warfare and in the army. Brutality, espionage, convictions on false or insufficient evidence, imprisonment, confiscation, and death were everyday affairs. The least suspicion of French sentiment involved persecution. Ten years of hard labor for waving a white handkerchief at the sight of a distant French patrol; four months for singing the Marseillaise ; and imprisonment for selling goods bearing French labels, even though these were furnished by German manufacturers, are only samples of thousands of punishments imposed by the Germans. Even the women were pun- ished for singing French songs, for writing letters to their friends in France, and for throwing kisses to French prisoners. "If the 'schwobs' are victorious/ ' said Valerie Fichter, saleswoman in a Mulhouse store, "their necks will stretch so with pride that they will be xxxviii Introduction able to look into the gutters of the houses." This pleasantry cost her a number of months in prison. Bismarck, in 1871, was asked how he would denationalize Alsace. He said, "We will take the Alsatian children and educate them in the German schools; we will take their young men and submit them to the discipline of our great German army." The result was exactly the opposite of what he had anticipated. Neither school nor barrack could transform a real Alsatian into a German. We have seen what happened to those who went into the army. The school children, as well as the soldiers, were haled before the courts-martial because of their pro-French or anti-German sentiments. Their youth would have given a reasonable judge warrant for leniency, but even the irresponsibility of a child did not prevent him from receiving pitiless punishment. Four months of prison for schoolboy tricks; a year in jail for singing the "Marseillaise" ; a fatal bayonet stab for crying "Vive la France," were some of the punishments. And a boy, Th6ophile Jaegly, was executed for high treason because he declared that his village was free from French soldiers, although he knew perfectly well that a French detachment was ambushed there. The Imperial military authorities published in the newspapers the proceedings of the courts- Introduction xxxix martial in Alsace, with the usual German inability to understand the psychology of a free and noble race. They expected thus to intimidate and terrorize the subject population. Eventually they perceived that this publicity was having exactly the opposite effect upon the Alsatians, and that they were giving their own case away by proving that Alsace was not as thoroughly German as they had always asserted. The publication was discontinued and the punishments continued to be inflicted in secrecy. Too late, the records stand ! ******* A bill has been introduced into the French Chamber of Deputies proposing the institution of a Medal of French Fidelity, "To be bestowed upon every Alsatian or Lorrainer, who, between 1870 and 1918, was fined, imprisoned or exiled, for words or deeds denoting attachment to France." It is also proposed that the name of every inhabitant of these provinces who was executed by the Germans shall be placed upon the Roll of Honor of the French army, and that his family shall be given the pension to which he would have been entitled if he had been a French citizen and had died at the front. It is but justice. ******* xl Introduction After this what question can there be of a plebiscite ? The Peace Conference will find none ; the question will not be raised. Alsace has spoken, not only by the voice of its representatives, but louder yet by the voice of the people themselves. The date was November 22, eleven days after the armistice was signed, the day when Strasburg saw her hopes fulfilled, her waiting of half a century rewarded. Let an eye-witness, Lieutenant Emory Pottle, writing in the New York Times, tell of it. " There is but one splendor in war. Out of all the reek and sweat and blood and horror and hell of it there is but one surpassing, tragically beau- tiful instant. The instant of triumph. Stras- burg awaited the entry of the French. And the French awaited — what did they not await ! Struggle ended, victory accomplished, sacrifice consecrated, they awaited fulfillment. After fifty bitter years the French were coming back, the conquerors, to their own, to Alsace. . . . "At 9.30, over all the rush and surge and shout of innumerable masses, there rang a high, clear, brazen fanfare. Trumpets at the gate of entry! They're here I The French I " Down the dense expectant lanes of people gone mad with enthusiasm, with joy, with hope come true, they rode, the French, in the fine panoply Introduction xli of victory. Gouraud, the beloved General Gouraud five times wounded, his right arm gone, at their head ; Gouraud who became a soldier in his youth because of an Alsace and Lorraine lost ; Gouraud who is a beautiful, tattered, consecrated, victorious, worshiped battle-flag of France. Be- hind him his soldiers — his enfants, he calls them — his Moroccans, his poilus, his rugged old terri- torials. Faded khaki, faded blue, stained with war and beautiful with triumph. Heads high, eyes shining through tears, faces gentle and kind and childlike. The famous soldiers of France. "Regiment on regiment they come on with the rattle and rumble of artillery, with the almost unbearable crash and cry and flaunt of martial music — Sambre et Meuse, and over their heads the hum and whir of the airplanes. The human hedges brilliant with banners broke at sight of them. The men and women and children who but a day or two ago had seen with unspeakable relief the sullen, shamed lines of Germans defile through these very streets to cross, God grant forever, their cherished Rhine, threw themselves upon their liberators ; arm in arm girls marched on deliriously with the troopers; old women kissed their hands, their cheeks; men with sobs in their throats threw their arms about them as might fathers embrace sons come home. Stras- xlii Introduction burg was abloom with flung flowers ; the bright morning was a wonderful wind-tossed flag; the world a sudden heart-breaking glory. " The French had come . . . ! "They march on, then, the French, to the statue of Kleber in the Place Kleber. Every city has its traditional center. Strasburg's is there. A fine free space with a great bronze of Napoleon's Gen- eral Kleber in its heart (Kleber was tolerated here by the Germans who chose, as they so insolently choose with many things, to call him one of them) , and set about with charming buildings, old Alsa- tian, the grace of Louis Quinze in their wall lines and sharp-pitched roofs. Here General Gouraud halted. There was an instant of rich silence as the soldier raised his sword to the salute. Then cheers, and cheers, and cheers ! It was the shout of flood- tide, of seas washing up to immemorial heights. A poem of Browning's — I have forgotten the flow of the lines — comes into my mind as I write. Some- thing of roses all the way and the air a mist of swaying bells. It was like that, Strasburg. The air was a mist of bells and fine flags, and shouts and tears and smiles and hearts long repressed at last open. Gouraud rode away, but Strasburg danced when he had gone at the foot of Kleber's statue, and Kleber in martial bronze, wreathed and flowered, seemed to live again and smile. Introduction xliii "How Strasburg danced and cheered at every turn. We dined and lunched with unknown hosts, suddenly become friends. We were kissed and hugged by old and young. The dignified streets broke into song. The ' Marseillaise ' ! Every- where the ' Marseillaise.' Once they had the tune it was enough. The words seemed to come instinctively. Le jour de gloire est arrive! Lads chirped it, whistled it. Girls screamed it at top- lung. Old men, old women shouted it piously. The day of glory had arrived at last. There stands in the heart of Strasburg an old unassuming house that bears a garlanded word of recall to those who passing glance above its door : 'La "Marseillaise" jut chantee pour la premiere fois dans cette maison par Rouget de VIsle, le 25 Avril, 1792.' Small wonder, then, that the immortal air comes famil- iarly and full from the Strasburgers' throats in the city where first it was sung, 'Qu'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons.' . . . " The wild, dancing, wonderful day turned into night. Rosy globes of paper lanterns shone' in windows. Yellow light, rich and smiling, flooded over the charming, sauntering crowds, lit the forests of beautiful flags. And all night long xliv Introduction Strasburg sang the ' Marseillaise.' Sang it? Was it, so it seemed to me." ■ * ***** * It is over. The waiting, the griefs, the disappointed hopes, broken lives, destroyed families, ruined enter- prises, decaying towns and cities, all have been suffered ; the terrors, the tortures, the sacrifices of war have been gone through; the time of re- union has come. Alsace, Lorraine, are wrecked and bleeding ; France has suffered from the hor- rors of war as no nation has suffered in modern times, but the Lost Provinces are restored. The Valley of the Sarre also comes back to France, for half a generation at least, forever if the pleb- iscite shall then decide it so. The left bank of the Rhine is to be neutral and occupied, forever a bulwark against new German invasion. Here is some balm for French wounds. Let us hope that France and Alsace may henceforth receive naught from the east but peace ! Frank Roy Fraprie. AUTHOR'S PREFACE In my trips across Alsace I had stopped only for a passing glance at the cathedral of Strasburg and the museum of Colmar. A species of apprehension had always prevented me from making any stay. The Germans continually announced that their conquest was definitely Germanized, and certain French travelers, after a brief sojourn beyond the Vosges, brought us the same news. I feared the bitter sadness of such a spectacle. It is grievous to feel oneself a foreigner in a land which was once French, more grievous still to meet as foreigners the sons of those who once were Frenchmen. But, one day, Les Oberle of M. Rene Bazin brought us the assurance that the moral annexation was not yet complete, that the Alsatian youth remained faithful to the memory of the former fatherland. Then I resolved to know Alsace. The Industrial Society of Mulhouse gave me the opportunity, by inviting me to deliver a lecture before it. Under its sponsorship, I found the Alsatians ready to guide me and to guard me against the illusions and mistakes to which one is exposed in a country where everything is complicated and embroiled by a diversity of religions, of parties, and of interests. Since 1903, I have made several trips in Alsace, xlv xlvi Author's Preface and each time I have published the haphazard notes which I made in my journeys. I reproduce them today in the form and order in which they originally appeared. I could not dream of turn- ing them into a description of Alsace : it would have presented too many gaps. I have also thought that the reader would follow me more willingly if I treated him as a traveling companion and made him the associate of my emotions and of my discoveries. I beg the Alsatians who were my guides and who became my friends to find here the expression of my deep gratitude. They revealed to me the treasures of their towns, the charm of their coun- trysides, and especially the beauty of the Alsatian character. I have written, so to speak, at their dictation, and I hope that they will recognize themselves in the mirror of my little book. Per- haps these Alsatians will find that I have failed to mention their most glorious masterpieces, and that, worthily to celebrate their province, I should have omitted neither the cathedral of Strasburg, nor the church of Thann, nor the castles whose ruins crown the summits of the Vosges. Let them suspend judgment : I will re- turn among them. I have emphasized, this time, all which, in the Alsace of the past, has seemed most suitable to explain that of today. Author's Preface xlvii A few days ago, on the platform of the railway station at Strasburg, a young Alsatian, who with charming kindness had volunteered to guide me among the men and things of his country, said to me at the moment of separation: "If you speak of Alsace, the essential point is not to tell what we are thinking and what we are doing. It is more important to make Frenchmen desire to cross the Vosges more often, and to give us the joy of their presence among us. Our Alsace is admirable, with its great forests, its immense horizons, its fruitful countrysides, its beautiful churches, its ancient houses, its innumerable treasures of art : you have seen them. Why not choose it more often for your travels and your vacations? In what country will you be better received than here?" I would like to follow this recommendation. Yet I cannot evade the great question, inevitably presented to whomsoever shall return from the annexed provinces. I will answer it as well as I can by relating what I have seen and what I have heard in my travels. THE SPELL OF ALSACE MULHOUSE THERE are towns which at first sight im- part to the passerby the secret of their destiny. The aspect of their streets, of their houses, of their monuments, the colors with which they are painted, the plan on which they are laid out, tell clearly the lives, the customs, and the souls of the men who built them and of the men who inhabit them. But manufacturing cities are more close-mouthed. The smoke-wreaths which trail across their skies give things a dull and melancholy aspect. The necessities of industry, alike in all countries, efface the particular characteristics of these towns, which, at the first glance, appear almost alike. To discover their originality, one must go below appearances, question men, and consult history. Mulhouse is one of the most original cities which exist in Europe, original in its temperament, 1 2 The Spell of Alsace its history, and in the proud and laborious spirit of its citizens. All this, however, does not appear at first glance to the traveler, who, Baedeker in hand, visits Mulhouse between two trains. It is a great city, active but sad. Like an im- perceptible but incessant rain, the soot of its factories drops upon its roofs of dull tiles, upon the pavements of its streets, upon the little vege- table patches of the workmen's homes, upon the magnificent flower-beds which decorate the gar- dens of its burghers. It is a very ancient city, but one which has pre- served few traces of its past : a few towers ; several bits of its fourteenth-century ramparts ; a few crooked and irregular streets ; a few palaces of the eighteenth century, like that beautiful Loewenfels house, with such a perfect front, with its admirable window gratings. . . . This would be all, if something of ancient Mulhouse did not still live in the Place de la Reunion. The ca- pricious design of this square has been respected. The Renaissance Hotel de Ville has been pre- served, with its high roof and its charming stair- case, clinging to the fagade under a tiled portico. A Munich " professor," a man of great knowledge, but whose taste was perhaps too Bavarian, has restored the exterior frescos. Unfortunately, half a century ago, the old church of Saint Etienne, Mulhouse which stood on one side of the square, was de- molished, and in its place has been built a new temple, in a terribly massive Gothic style. Even today they are destroying old gabled houses to replace them by modern buildings. To have that vision of the past, without which we can comprehend nothing of the present, we must enter the Council Hall of the Hotel de Ville. It is a low room, embellished with a magnificent coffered ceiling. Wide windows open on the square and their old stained glass commemorates the alliances of Mulhouse with Berne, Bale, and Soleure, and later with France. On one of the walls are painted the escutcheons of the cantons of Switzerland and the arms of the burgomasters of the town from 1347 to 1870. On the opposite wall are placed the portraits of the last Alsatian mayors of Mulhouse : they are all decorated with the Legion of Honor. At the far end of the hall, the bust of Wilhelm II. On the table, the record of the sessions, drawn up in German since 1887. (Note 1.) These armorial bearings, these images, these portraits, these registers, disclose in a short epitome the whole history of Mulhouse, a free city of the Empire, a Swiss canton, a French city, a German city. This history is affecting, because, through so The Spell of Alsace many vicissitudes, Mulhouse has remained faith- ful to its love of independence. The town was born republican, and never has denied its tradition, in good or in evil fortune, in poverty or in wealth. Too weak to defend alone its own existence, it has never consented to an alliance which might jeop- ardize its liberty. I cannot relate the whole story of Mulhouse ; a few traits, collected from different periods of its history, will suffice to define Mulhousian character. In 1293, Adolph of Nassau, successor of Rudolph of Hapsburg, who had declared Mulhouse a free city of the Empire, granted the city a charter, in which are enumerated all its franchises and all its privileges. One of the articles of this charter formally guarantees the inviolability of the domi- cile : a citizen, even if he is accused of murder, may quietly lock himself in his own house and answer through the window the questions of the judge seated in the street; if he is found guilty, he may set his affairs in order and leave the town without hindrance, provided, however, that he succeeds in escaping the private vengeance of the friends or relations of his victim. . . . Such were the first institutions of Mulhouse. At the end of the sixteenth century Montaigne travels to Italy ; he crosses the Vosges and passes Mulhouse through Mulhouse : a century before, the town had concluded a perpetual alliance with the Swiss cantons; it has become Protestant, like Bale, its neighbor. Montaigne's secretary makes this entry in his journal : "Mulhouse. — A beautiful little town of Switzerland, canton of Bale. M. de Montaigne went to see the church ; for they are not Catholics here. He found it, as everywhere in this country, in good order ; for there has been almost nothing changed, save the altars and images which have been, but without mutilation. He took an infinite pleasure in seeing the liberty and good policing of this nation, and in noticing his host of the ' Bunch of Grapes' (Note 2) return from the Council of the aforesaid town, and from a magnif- icent gilded palace, where he had presided, to serve his guests at table; and a man without following and without authority, who served drinks, had led four ensigncies of infantry to the service of the King under the Casemir (Jean Casimir, son of Louis, Elector and Count Palatine) in France, and been a pensioner of the King at three hundred crowns a year, for more than twenty years. The which lord recited to him at table, without ambition or affectation, his present condi- tion and his past life : he said, among other things, that they find no difficulty, because of 6 The Spell of Alsace their religion, in serving the King, even against the Huguenots ; which several others told us also on our way; and that at our siege of La Fere there were more than fifty from this city; that they marry indifferently women of our religion before the priest, and do not force them to change. . . ." Every word should be emphasized, in these few lines, which truly paint the Mulhousian of afore- time and of today, his love of liberty, as well as of good order, his simple manners, " without ambition and without affectation, " his horror of fanaticism, his taste for tolerance. It is necessary to add to these qualities a deep religious sentiment, which gives to actions an air of seriousness and to words an accent of gravity. In 1776, business on a large scale commenced to develop at Mulhouse. It was in the following terms that four merchants then concluded an agreement of association to found a factory of calico spinning, weaving, and printing : "In the Name of God, Amen, "May our beginning, our middle, and our end occur in the name of the Creator of all things, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to whose mercy we recommend ourselves. May the Most High bless our enterprises, for his glory, in order that they may succeed to our advantage, Mulhouse according to his holy and wise views for time and for eternity. Amen. "A friendly association is created between Paul Huguenin junior, Jean Mantz, Nicolas Moser and Daniel Jelensperger, under the firm name deter- mined by drawing by lot, of Huguenin, Mantz et Cie., for twenty consecutive years, commencing with the grace of God, January 1st, 1777, and end- ing January 1st, expected of God, in the year 1797, for the exploitation of a factory of printed calicos, of a cloth weaveshop, and of a spinning factory, and that under the following conditions : " 1. When the funds of each partner shall have reached 30,000 French livres, he shall not be per- mitted to reduce them below this amount. "2. The profits, expected of God, shall be di- vided into four equal parts, and the capital of each partner shall receive a sum equal to that of the others. "3. On the contrary, and may God prevent! if there is a loss in place of a gain, each shall sup- port a part of it equal to that of the others. "4. At the end of December of each year, an exact inventory shall be made, and in the case of a possible profit, one shall proceed according to § 2, or for a loss, according to § 3. . . . "Each of us must bring all his abilities to the enterprise, and, according to his means, apply 8 The Spell of Alsace himself to make it prosper and endeavor to pre- sent losses, sustain the other in his affairs, and, to this end, communicate to him faithfully that of which he is ignorant, and conceal nothing from him, of whatever nature it may be." Mulhouse, a former republic, remained repub- lican when joined to France. Of the persistence of this tradition I will cite only one example : at the plebiscite of December 20-21, 1851, while France ratified the coup oVetat by a vote of 7,439,216 Yes, against 640,737 No, the vote at Mulhouse was 1800 No, against 1683 Yes. It seems to me that from these few items we can reconstruct the characteristics of a small popu- lation, very pious, very laborious, very republican, and very much attached to its franchises. Gifted with these hereditary qualities, the most talented of its manufacturers brought enormous prosperity to Mulhouse. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, the only industry by which Mulhouse lived was that of broadcloth weaving. But, in 1745, J. J. Schmaltzer proposed to the merchant Samuel Koechlin and to the painter Jean Henri Dollfus to associate themselves with him to found at Mulhouse an establishment for manufacturing printed calicos. In the following year the firm of Mulhouse 9 Koechlin, Schmaltzer et Cie. was founded. This was the dawn of the great industry of Mulhouse. To protect the production of wool, Louis XIV had forbidden the manufacture and sale of cotton cloth. England and Prussia had followed this example. The principal factories of printed calicos had then been established in Switzerland and were most frequently managed by French Protestants who had exiled themselves in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Schmaltzer had studied the processes of this manufacture at Bied, near Neuchatel, in one of the factories started by Jacques de Luze, a Huguenot who had emigrated from Saintonge. The firm of Koechlin, Schmaltzer et Cie. made great profits. Other Mulhousians followed the example set by their three compatriots. The bankers of Bale furnished the capital. Skilled and inventive designers gave a great renown to the calicos of Mulhouse. The first printings had been made on cloth imported from Switzerland or by the Compagnie des Indes, but weave-sheds were soon established in Mulhouse. Meanwhile the old prohibitions had been elim- inated in France, Prussia, and England. French factories, particularly that of Oberkampf at Jouy, commenced to give the factories in Mul- house severe competition. Strangled by the 10 The Spell of Alsace French customs duties, these could no longer find a market. In 1798, to save its manufacturing, Mulhouse sought annexation to France. This was a prodigious success. The wars of the First Empire opened to the Mulhousians all the markets of Europe, while the blockade of the continent delivered them from English compe- tition. Spinning, weaving, and printing mills multiplied. To the spinning of print cloths was soon added the production of muslins. The im- pulse given under the Empire continued even under the Restoration. But, about 1825, the manufacturers of Mulhouse began to recognize that this fabulous prosperity could not endure in a new Europe unless they worked with energy to perfect their machinery and their processes. The position of their town was unfavorable : it was distant from the harbors through which were imported its raw materials; distant from Paris, the principal market for its products; distant from the coal fields, which furnished it fuel. The Rhone-Rhine canal was not finished; railroads did not exist; trans- portation was tedious and expensive. It became impossible to compete with Rouen and Man- chester. It was then that a score of manufacturers joined in founding the Industrial Society of Mul- house. They held their first meetings in 1826. Mulhouse 11 The society was recognized as "of public utility" in 1832. At first they intended only to collect all the scientific, commercial, and statistical information which would aid in the progress of manufacturing or agriculture. But the society was not slow in enlarging the field of its activities; it founded schools, museums, and clubs, opened laboratories, instituted researches and publications. It has given Mulhouse almost all the establishments and institutions which are its glory. It has created a school of design and a pro- fessional art school, endowed a school of chemistry, fostered a school of weaving and a school of spinning. It has founded a museum of natural history, geological collections, a technological museum, where are collected the raw material of different trades, and an industrial museum, where are exhibited specimens of printed calico, some coming from the Indies, others from different Alsatian factories as far back as the first attempts in 1746. This last collection, arranged in chrono- logical order, is not only a mine of materials for the designers, but what a collection for study for those who desire to follow the changes and revivals of taste and fashion! What best reveals the great intelligence of these rich manufacturers is that they have not been 12 The Spell of Alsace content with schools or museums of direct and immediate usefulness in the development of their industry. Looking higher and farther, they have taken care to form popular taste, and have opened a museum of fine arts which from year to year becomes more valuable, and which already con- tains some admirable masterpieces by Henner. They have, above all, understood that civic pride is a great source of energy, and that nothing is better fitted to awaken such feelings than knowl- edge of the past and the sight of its relics. They have made archeological collections ; they have founded a historical museum, where they have collected furniture, arms, flags, portraits, play- things, wood carvings, medals, porcelains, glass, costumes, all the adornments of the public and private life of aforetime : a museum where, as in the old Council Hall of the Hotel de Ville, one feels the throbbing of the ancient heart of the little republic. Here, fragments of bunting, dis- colored banners, bring back the past ; here are the banner given by Julius II to Oswald de Gams- hart, Deputy from Mulhouse in 1512, which gave plenary indulgence to the soldiers who fought beneath its folds; the banner of the city, made for the celebration of the union of Mulhouse with France on March 15, 1798; the banner of the Gymnastic Society "V Union," founded June CARVED WOODEN DOOR FROM MASSEVAUX, MULHOUSE MUSEUM Mulhouse 13 1, 1869, and dissolved July 1, 1878, which still bears the crape which displeased the German authorities and caused the suppression of the society. The people of Mulhouse, who have such lively and deep feeling for the interests of their industry, are, at the same time worthy men, human, gen- erous, conscious of their responsibilities. They have created numerous institutions of helpfulness and foresight for the working people of their factories. It was at Mulhouse that there was conceived and realized for the first time the idea of workmen's suburbs; Jean Dollfus, in 1852, built the first quarters of this kind. I traversed the immense section to the north of the city, occupied by the workmen's suburbs, in the center of which are placed the schools, the baths, the wash-house, the bakery, and the com- munity ovens. This quarter covers thirty-two hectares and contains 1,243 houses, each with its little garden. As today almost all manufacturing towns possess workmen's quarters, everybody knows these great collections of little uniform houses. At Mulhouse, however, their aspect is strikingly less dull and less monotonous than usual. The plan of this artificial quarter has a monotonous regularity, but the streets have an air of life, an 14 The Spell of Alsace appearance of diversity, which I have never seen in the towns of Northern France. There the long rows of brick cottages pitilessly aligned, the scattered gardens, where washing hangs above the cabbage patches, express an infinite sadness and an almost tragic ennui. Here the gardens, estab- lished for a generation, are well furnished with plants, the shrubs have grown, the fruit trees are in full bearing, the leaves spread out above the fences over the streets. Then the houses are generally painted ; every owner has colored his home to his own taste; there are red houses, blue houses, green houses. Some of the tones conflict, in a most inartistic manner. But this difference in coloring serves to individualize the home and to break the monotony of the little house-fronts. Nevertheless, if we are to believe various writers the type of workmen's suburb which Jean Dollfus imagined must soon be abandoned. This sort of housing was invented with the idea that the work- man, by paying a little higher rent, might become the proprietor of his cottage and its little garden. This idea was at first successful. But the land on which this suburb was built fifty years ago has today become extremely valuable : many of the houses no longer belong to the workmen, but have passed into the hands of retail shopkeepers ; Mulhouse 15 they have been raised a story, and are rented for profit. On the other hand, it has become evident that many workmen have no taste for gardening, and that others are insensible to the joys of ownership. Finally it has been asked if it is to the best interests of society thus to isolate all the workmen in a single quarter, apart from the commerce and wealth of the town. As soon as these doubts were raised, — here is a characteristic example of the ways of Mulhouse, — there appeared a man of property, M. Lalance, who advanced to the Industrial Society the neces- sary sum to try an experiment and create a new type of workmen's dwellings. A piece of land in the center of the town was purchased, and there, under the direction of M. de Glehn, was built a structure of three brick wings, each three stories high, surrounding a large common court. Each floor contains one or two small apartments, simply arranged, but light and airy, hygienically planned and rented at low prices. These apartments were immediately leased. If I mention these facts, it is not because I desire to exhaust a subject on which I possess little information, and I must refer economists to the report presented by M. de Glehn to the Industrial Society on June 24, 1903. But I desire to demon- strate by a recent example that Mulhouse is still 16 The Spell of Alsace animated by the old-time spirit of enterprise and generosity. It was these men, jealous of their past, jealous of their independence, jealous of their industrial supremacy, jealous of the institutions which they had created, whom Germany has treated for thirty-three years like a captive tribe. If German sovereignty continues to be odious to all the people of Alsace, it is not surprising that it should be particularly intolerable to those of Mulhouse. In 1798, they had voluntarily given themselves to France ; they had freely chosen the country which, in their belief, was most sympathetic to the tradi- tional ideals of their free city. So, nowhere was the protestation more ardent and more persistent than at Mulhouse. Even today nothing is changed. Every heart is still faithful to the Republic. For long years the manufactures of Mulhouse exhausted their resources in heroic sacrifices to avoid commercial relations with Germany. But one must live. "One must live " ; with what accents of poignant melancholy have I heard these words repeated everywhere in Alsace ! One must live : the French market was insufficient, and between were a frontier and custom houses. They resigned themselves to seek trade in Ger- Mulhouse 17 many. But the industry remained Mulhousian in its directors, its workmen, and its capital. The entire population remains attached to the traditions of centuries. Each year, on the Four- teenth of July, the railway station at Mulhouse sells the same number of return-tickets for Belfort. When one talks with old men in Mulhouse, one finds among them no trace of weariness or dis- couragement ; they do not doubt the fidelity of the younger generations. What worries them in the future of their town is not the fear of seeing courage weaken. But too many Mulhousians, and those among the best, have left Alsace, and have voluntarily shut themselves out of their country. Are men, then, going to be lacking to keep up the work of the ancestors? Those who have stayed do not blame those who have left; perhaps they envy them. But they think sadly of the dangers which the old city undergoes with a decimated population. II ENSISHEIM. — ROUFFACH. — ISSENHEIM. GUEBWILLER. — MURBACH ENSISHEIM. — From the Rhine to the foothills of the Vosges stretches the great plain of Alsace, furrowed and fertilized by the tributaries of the 111. Endless rows of trees, silhouetted against the horizon, show the location of the highways. The lazy waters of the canals glide between low and grassy banks. Through the meadows, bright with poppies and cornflowers, the storks slowly promenade like sentinels. In the east and the west, through the summer haze, are faintly visible the ghosts of mountains. Ensisheim is a little town in the midst of this fertile plain, between Mulhouse and Colmar. The moats and walls of former days have disappeared. It is now surrounded with orchards and woods, around which ripple the waves of the ripening grain. It smiles the silent smile of tiny cities, old and rich, which possess memories, gardens, and well-cultivated fields. It has fine carvings on the doors of its mansions. Before its charming 18 W m P H