Leighton S. James,Witnessing the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in German Central Europe

Reviewed by: Michael Rowe, King's College London, UK

Given the volume of literature on the Napoleonic Wars in general, it is surprising how little is known about the everyday experience of ordinary people caught up in the conflict in the key theatre, Germany. Leighton James seeks to fill this gap with this volume, the latest in Palgrave's excellent War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850 series. He does so using the letters, diaries and memoirs written by Germans during the wars or shortly after.

What comes across from James's study is the sheer diversity of the German experience. This makes generalization difficult. How Germans experienced and recorded war depended on a variety of factors, including gender, social status, region, religion, political orientation, and, not least, chance. James points to several conclusions, including the relative absence of patriotism and nationalism, and instead the persistence of older views of warfare, predating the Revolutionary-Napoleonic period. Collective memories of the Thirty Years’ War still cast their shadow. Nor do the sources James employs suggest any visceral Franco-phobia amongst ordinary Germans, whose opinion of their western neighbours was generally more positive than views about barbaric Russians, dirty Poles, and savage Spaniards. Germans in France, even as occupiers, generally concurred that it was part of what they conceived of as civilization. The same was not true of either eastern or southern Europe. Opinions expressed about ‘abroad’ were inevitably shaped in part by existing travel literature, just as literary conventions and tastes shaped how they reflected upon their own experiences, hopes and fears.

Letters, diaries and memoirs penned in 1815, when Napoleon's demise looked assured, were far more likely to marry the experience of war with patriotic rhetoric than those written in 1813, when for most of the year French defeat looked anything but certain. At this stage, and earlier, accounts written by Germans reflected above all the imminence of the threat posed by the war to life and property. The everyday concerns of survival rather than abstract political concepts predominated. James provides examples of how this shift from these concerns in 1813 to something more patriotic in tone in 1815 can be followed in the diaries of individuals. James does not go so far as to assert that there was a total disconnect between the sources he has consulted and the more ‘highbrow’ writings of romantic-nationalist intellectuals. However, it does not take much convincing to understand why a humble burgher or peasant was hardly likely to appreciate soldiers as paragons of martial masculinity, even in those cases when they were fighting against rather than for the French. Nationalists writing later in the nineteenth century celebrated the volunteers of 1813 as representing the German national spirit that supposedly defeated Napoleon, highlighting their role at the expense of the regular soldiers. However, during the wars themselves, many ordinary civilians regarded the volunteers with contempt, on account of their questionable military contribution and poor discipline. Professional soldiers, who identified with the military and its associated value-system centred on honour, rather than with the nation, similarly looked down on the volunteers as being overrated militarily.

The apparent lack of nationalism on the part of ordinary Germans is hardly ascribable to ignorance of the wider world, according to James. Censorship, be it French-imposed or German might have been relatively tight, but news trickled down nonetheless. People were well aware of events beyond the parish pump. News of the insurrection that broke out in Spain in 1808 against Napoleonic domination, for example, made a big impact in Germany. This rising in turn provoked the events of 1809, when Austria's war against Napoleonic France was accompanied by nationalist appeals from Vienna and several freelance risings including the most famous led by the Prussian major, Schill. Like the other attempts of 1809, Schill's came to grief and he, along with other ringleaders, was executed. According to James, Schill's fate elicited some sympathy, but nothing in the way of support. People kept their heads down, and survived. The lack of fellow-feeling and understanding between ordinary German-speakers is better reflected in the interesting sources left by the Bavarian artisan, Mathias Weigl, who moved to the Tyrol just in time for the insurrection of 1809. Not surprisingly, given the rising was directed at Munich as much as Paris, Weigl's experience was not a happy one.

In its assessment of the marginal role played by nationalism, this study offers few surprises. Where it does offer new insights is in its identification of older collective memories that helped shape responses to the Napoleonic Wars. Also, it makes an important distinction between writing at the height of the struggle, when ordinary people were most concerned with survival, and later, when it was clear that Napoleonic hegemony was coming to an end. The impression left by this book is that patriotism was something of a luxury, only to be indulged in when the worst of the storm had passed. In the round, this is a stimulating book, not least for bringing to the fore the voices of ordinary people, rather than those of statesmen and intellectuals.