200th Anniversary of the Kingdom of Westphalia and Jerome Bonaparte Exhibit

(Submitted by Wolfgang St. Johanser)

 

Chapter 2

 

 

Painting of Landgraf Wilhelm IX. of Hessen-Kassel who bought his Electorship for 200,000 Livres in 1803 and became through this the Elector Wilhelm I. He also would have paid 2,000,000 Livres to get parts of the territories of Hannover and Hessen-Darmstadt, but this request was denied.

In 1806 he offered Napoleon 34,000 Francs and 12,000 soldiers to keep his throne. He even promised to join the Rheinbund if he could get in turn a considerable amount of new territories, especially the rich German port cities of the "(Hanseatic) Hanse Federation". To keep his Prussian Fieldmarshalat was also very important to him. Needless to say that his offer was rejected.

The Landgraf was in many ways the prototype of the 18th century German absolotistic ruler. Self-righteous, ignorant, greedy to the extreme and convinced that he ruled through the will of God and that he could do with his subjects and his country whatever he pleased in order to make him more richer and more powerful. In his opinion the clergy in the pulpit should teach his subjects how to obey and rest of the job would be done by a corporal with his cane on the parade field.

As a dedicated enemy of the principles of the French Revolution, he had started in 1794 an initiative to unify the Emperor and the other monarchs of the "Holy Roman Empire" to take concerted countermeasures against the French Republic and their sympathizers in their own countries.

 

A French cartoon: The Landgraf of Hessen-Kassel offers his soldiers to the King of England. He got very rich off of selling his subjects as soldiers to foreign powers. It also seems that Kurhessian officers were usually not paid according to their rank. Many of them claimed that they had only received their officer candidate pay, and that many years after they became lieutenants or captains. After 1813 the Westphalian Officers were usually allowed to rejoin the Electors army. But they had to start one rank lower as the one they had in the Westphalian Army. Wilhelm I tried desperately to get his country back to the conditions previous the year 1806. For example in the army the old-fashioned powdered whig was reintroduced.

 

 

In 1806 the Elector Wilhelm I of Hessen-Cassel had to flee his country and entrusted the state treasury to the Rothschild Bank at Frankfurt/Main. The Elector became one of the richest people in Europe in selling his subjects as soldiers to foreign powers for 4 to 8 Dukaten per men. Most famous are the Hessian troops of the American War of Independence, who served in the British Army. In return the Rothschilds became one of the most powerful banking houses of the 19th century.

The loss of that money had terrible consequences for Jerome and and financial situation of his Kingdom of Westphalia. And all that because the French Military Gouvernour General Lagrange was bribed in 1806 and gave the henchmen of the Elector the possibility to bring the whole fortune out of the country.

 

 

A painting: The bee-like nightmare monsters in the background disturbing the sleep of the Princess Augusta. The bee was the heraldic symbol of Napoleon.

 

 

French drawings of the French Revolution: The clergy & the nobility resting on the shoulders of the impoverished common people.

 

 

French drawings of the French Revolution: The clergy & the nobility resting on the shoulders of the impoverished common people.