Grunewald

You shall seek in vain upon the map of Europe for the bygone state of Grunewald [german, "Green Forest"]. An independent principality, an infinitesimal member of the German Empire, she played, for several centuries, her part in the discord of Europe; and, at last, in the ripeness of time and at the spiriting of several bald diplomatists, vanished like a morning ghost. Less fortunate than Poland, she left not a regret behind her; and the very memory of her boundaries has faded.

It was a patch of hilly country covered with thick wood. Many streams took their beginning in the glens of Grunewald, turning mills for the inhabitants. There was one town, Mittwalden, and many brown, wooden hamlets, climbing roof above roof, along the steep bottom of dells, and communicating by covered bridges over the larger of the torrents. The hum of watermills, the splash of running water, the clean odor of pine sawdust, the sound and the smell of the pleasant wind among the innumerable army of the mountain pine, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull stroke of the wood-axe, intolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the clean bare chamber of an inn: birds and the music of the village - be the recollections of the Grunewald.

North and east the foothills of with varying profile into vast sides many small states bordered the prinipality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the number. On the south it marched with the comparatively powerful kingdom of Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain bears, and inhabited by a people of singular simplicity and tenderness of heart. Several intermarriages had, in the course of centuries, united the crowned families of Grunewald and maritime Bohemia; and the last Prince of Grunewald drew his descent through Perdita, the only daughter of King Florizel the First of Bohemia. That these intermarriages had in some degree mitigated the rough, manly stock of the first Grunewalds, was an opinion widely held within the borders of the principality. The charcoal burner, the mountain sawyer, the wielder of the axe among the congregated pines of Grtlnewald, proud of their hard hands, proud of their shrewd ignorance and almost savage lore, looked with an unfeigned contempt on the soft character and manners of the sovereign race.

The borders of Grunewald descend somewhat steeply, here and there breaking into crags; and this shaggy and trackless country stands in a bold contrast to the cultivated plain below. It was traversed at that period by two roads alone; one, the imperial highway, bound to Brandenau in Gerolstein, descended the slope obliquely and by the easiest gradients. The other ran like a fillet across the very forehead of the hills, dipping into savage gorges, and wetted by the spray of tiny waterfalls. Once it passed beside a certain tower or castle, built sheer upon the margin of a formidable cliff, and commanding a vast prospect of the skirts of Grunewald and the busy plains of Gerolstein. The Felsenburg (so this tower was called) served now as a prison, now as a hunting-seat; and for all it stood so lonesome to the naked eye, with the aid of a good glass the burghers of Brandenau could count its windows from the lime-tree terrace where they walked at night.

The reigning Prince, Otto Johann Friedrich, a young man of imperfect education, questionable valor, and no scintilla of capacity, had fallen into entire public contempt. He was frequently absent from a court where his presence was unheeded, and where his only role was to be a cloak for the amours of his wife. His address was excellent, and he could express himself with point. But to pierce below these externals is to come on a vacuity of any sterling quality, a deliquescence of the moral nature, a frivolity and inconsequence of purpose that marked the nearly perfect fruit of a decadent age. He had a worthless smattering of many subjects, but a grasp of none. The results of his dilettanteism were to be seen in every field; he was a bad fencer, a second-rate horseman, dancer, shot; he sang like a child; he wrote intolerable verses in more than doubtful French; as an actor he was like the common amateur; and in short there was no end to the number of the things that he did, and did badly. The last Merovingians may have looked not otherwise.

Gondremark, the true ruler of this unfortunate country, is a more complex study. His position in Grunewald, to which he was a foreigner, was eminently false; and that he should maintain it as he did, a very miracle of impudence and dexterity. He pursues a policy of arbitrary power and territorial aggrandizement. He called out the whole capable male population of the state to military service; he bought cannon; he tempted away promising officers from foreign armies; and began in his international relations, to assume the swaggering port and the vague threatful language of a bully.

The idea of extending Grunewald may appear absurd, but the little state is advantageously placed, its neighbors are all defenceless; and if at any moment the jealousies of the greater courts should neutralize each other, an active policy might double the principality both in population and extent. Certainly at least the scheme is entertained in the court of Mittwalden; nor do I myself regard it as entirely desperate. The Margravate of Brandenburg has grown from as small beginnings to a formidable power; and though it is late in the day to try adventurous policies, and the age of war seems ended, Fortune, we must not forget, still blindly turns her wheel for men and nations. Concurrently with, and tributary to, these warlike preparations, crushing taxes have been levied, journals have been suppressed, and the country, which had been prosperous and happy, stagnated in a forced inaction, gold had become a curiosity, and the mills stood idle on the mountain streams.

In his second capacity of popular tribune, Gondremark was the incarnation of the free lodges, and sat at the center of an organized conspiracy against the state. At one such meeting the details of a republican Constitution were minutely debated and arranged; and I may add that Gondremark was throughout referred to by the speakers as their captain in action and the arbiter of their disputes. This singular man had been treading the mazes for five years, and his favor at court and his popularity among the lodges still endured unbroken.

The chief source of information concerning Grünewald was a biography of Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson – a Scotsman who critics said made so many blunders that his book had little historical value. For example, he wrote of Grünewald as now absorbed, along with Gerolstein, in the German Empire. There was no place in German history of a record of such a transaction. As a matter of fact, Grünewald had absorbed Gerolstein, though it kept the name and boundaries of the Grand Duchy which had the honor of producing General Boum.

By the eve of the Great War, the Grand Duchess, married King Otto III and was Queen of Grünewald. There was a revolt against Otto I, and in Stevenson’s book, which ended with the success of this revolt, the reader was led to infer that the republic then established lasted until Grünewald became German; but this was not the case. Otto’s reconciliation with his beautiful and extremely clever wife soon won back the hearts of his people.

The country remained as Stevenson describes it – in part a shaggy and trackless region, in part a highly cultivated and fertile plan. Critics doubted, however, that he ever saw it, or he would have noted many singular resemblances to Scotland, and not only in the matter of Highlanders and Lowlanders. The Grünewalders had a great love of controversy and an excessive race pride. Stevenson attributed to a Borderer in Gersolstein, the assertion that ‘a man of Grünewald will swing me an axe over his head that many a man of Gerolstein could hardly lift.’ – a plain bit of brag.

Grünewald had some military strength, and a fairly well disciplined army; though if the Grünewalders ever fought a battle, they would probably immediately resort to pillage, like the Scottish Highlanders in the Forty-five, and take their booty home without striking another blow. Of the size of this army, the War Department refused to give any information. The Felsenburg, once a military prison, had been made one of the strongest fortresses in Europe. Otto III had the advantage of a German training and was accounted a very skilful commander. But for the strategic position of Graustark, there was no doubt that at this juncture Grünewald would join with Axphain and Corinthia in crushing Illyria and Ruritania in turn.