It  was  thus  perfectly  natural,  when  the  proceedings
were  instituted  against  the  ill-fated  Louis  the  Sixteenth,
that  Schiller  should  take  the  part  of  the  accused. The
fierce  determination  of  the  French  democracy  to  exact
a  reckoning  from  their  sovereign,  not  so  much  for  what
he  had  done  as  for  ages  of  accumulated  wrong,  appeared
to  him  the  very  madness  of  injustice. In  December,
1792,  he  planned  to  write  a  book  or  a  pamphlet  in
defence  of  the  king,  and  have  it  translated  into  French


Schiller  and  the  Revolution  259

for  the  purpose  of  influencing  public  opinion  in  Paris.'
He  seems  actually  to  have  begun  the  work,  but  the  fate
of  the  unlucky  Bourbon  was  swifter  than  the  pen  of  his
German  defender. Schiller's  horror  of  the  regicide
knew  no  bounds. '  These  two  weeks  past ',  he  wrote
on  February  8,  1793,  'I  can  read  no  more  French
papers,  so  disgusted  am  I  with  these  wretched  execu-
tioners. '  The  ensuing  events  of  the  Terror  intensified
this  feeling. In  speaking  of  the  year  1793,  Karoline
von  Wolzogen  has  this  to  say  of  her  brother-in-law :

He  regarded  the  French  Revolution  as  the  effect  of  passion
and  not  as  a  work  of  wisdom,  which  alone  could  produce  true
freedom. He  admitted,  indeed,  that  many  ideas  which  had  pre-
viously been  found  only  in  books  and  in  the  heads  of  enlightened
men,  were  now  matters  of  public  discussion  ;  but,  he  said,  the
real  principles  which  must  underlie  a  truly  happy  civil  constitu-
tion are  not  yet  so  common  among  men  ;  they  are  found  (point-
ing to  a  copy  of  Kant's  '  Critique '  that  lay  on  the  table)  nowhere
else  but  here. The  French  Republic  will  cease  as  quickly  as  it
■has  come  into  being. The  republican  constitution  will  give  rise
to  a  state  of  anarchy,  and  sooner  or  later  a  capable  strong  man
will  appear  from  some  quarter  and  make  himself  master  not
only  of  France  but  also,  perhaps,  of  a  large  part  of  Europe.'

If  this  remarkable  prediction  of  Napoleon  is  rightly
reported  and  rightly  dated  by  the  Baroness  von
Wolzogen,  one  can  hardly  suppose  that  Schiller  was
very  much  elated  when  he  read  in  a  paper,  towards  the
close  of  the  year  1792,  that  he  had  been  made  an
honorary  citizen  of  the  French  Republic. 