thousand men, most of them Prussians, were
sent to suppress it.

When Mannheim was attacked, General
M— repulsed the Hessians from the Neckar
side, near Käferthal, while I defended the
Rhine side against the Prussians. The
Hessians retired directly; but the fight with the
Prussians lasted, with intervals of course,
for three days and three nights. Though in
this we had the upper hand, other events of the
struggle forced us to quit Mannheim, and fall
back upon the important fortress, then
unfinished, of Rastadt. My regiment, which had
been chiefly composed of the inhabitants of
Mannheim, disbanded itself on our departure
from that town, and I had nothing to do in
Rastadt but make myself generally useful,
until, when I was at the gate departing from
the fortress, I was detained by the soldiers,
and appointed by them chief of the general
staff; which position burdened me with the
defence of the place against the Prussians.
To a public fresh from reading about Sebastopol,
I shall say nothing of our little siege
of Rastadt. We made sallies, and endured
bombardments; but it was unreasonable that
six thousand men should be left to their fate,
without proper provisions, in an unfinished
fortress, for the defence of which even twenty
thousand would not have been force enough.
Our little army was, moreover, disorganised,
and the relief promised us in a fortnight,
was thought about no more. We did all
that was possible; and, after a siege of
four weeks, when the commander-in-chief
of the Prussians, General Count G—,
summoned the fortress to surrender, and
assured us that our case was hopeless, for
that there was no sign whatever of an effort
for our rescue, we asked leave, before giving
him an answer, to send out beyond his lines
persons who might see what hope the
garrison could think itself entitled to maintain.
This leave was given, and I went, accompanied
by a Prussian officer, Count S—, and an
old woman of a major of our own. We
travelled through Baden to Constance, and
assured ourselves that the garrison of Rastadt
had been, a fortnight ago, left to its fate by
the revolutionary army. The garrison, therefore,
empowered me, after my return, to
surrender on the best conditions I could get; but
on some conditions, be they what they might,
to surrender before nightfall. Many of the
soldiers had become as unruly and as selfish
as the meaner sort of men become on board
a sinking ship. The stores had been all day
ravaged by plunderers. At night, nobody
could say whether, by some desperate wretch,
the Prussians might not be let in, and the
defenders of the fortress treated, not as the
garrison of a surrendered town, but of a town
taken by storm. All lost by this. The
Prussian General had not been unwilling
to accede to my suggestion that we should
negotiate for our capitulation with the Grand
Duke of Baden, a more merciful man than
the Prince of Prussia was supposed to be.
The necessity for an immediate surrender
made the surrender almost unconditional.
Some favourable points were, however,
conceded in the few conditions written by the
General Count G— himself; namely, that we
should be treated as prisoners of war; that
martial law should not be used against us;
and that "only a few of the ringleaders
should be submitted to an examination."
The general promised to use his personal
influence with the grand duke, in a way
favourable to the garrison, and said he would
remember me especially, if I caused the
surrender to be effected throughout, without
conflict or disturbance. In all that he said,
and afterwards in all that he did, I believe
Count G— meant well, and felt well, as an
honest gentleman.

All having been arranged, the general,
after he had written down the terms of
the capitulation, rode away, as I was told,
to the Prince of Prussia. He did not
return; but there came, instead of him, a
major of his staff, who said that he had
powers to sign on his behalf. Knowing
that there was much work to be done by a
commander who had to organise among troops
widely scattered, the prompt occupation of a
town, I did not mistrust this substitution.
Now, I believe, that it was meant to save
the general from pledging his name to
promises which it was thought inconvenient to
fulfil. In the afternoon, therefore, we marched
out to lay down our arms. Means of escape were
offered to me by a friendly family. But flight
at such a moment would of course have been an
act of baseness. Yet, had I fled, I might have
been fit for the friendship of a knot of men
living by revolutions, and most careful not
to die by them, who said that I had received
a million of florins as the price of Rastadt, and
that I was living at ease in Spain. I being,
when they said this, at Bruchsal pining in a
solitary prison.

On our way to the gates, I rode across
the Rastadt market-place, and could not
help laughing at sight of the town-hall
decked out with the grand duke's colours,
and the mayor and corporation on the
balcony all ready to repeat, with a few
modifications, the same speeches they had made
but a few months ago to the victorious people.
"Good bye, comrades," I cried to them;
"the wind is changing, but your sails
are admirably trimmed." A battalion of
militia surrounded me with words of hearty
sympathy, as if I were already going to be
shot; for that fate was to be expected for us
ringleaders.

Arrived at the last barrier of the fortress,
I found, contrary to stipulation, the Prussian
troops already upon the glacis. I cried out
against this, and turned my horse. A Prussian
lieutenant-colonel shouted to me, "You
shall not return; stay here." "I go," I said,
"to ensure order;" and rode back, followed