A period of intellectual poverty and mediocrity brought Prussia to the verge of destruction; political passion raised it again.
But here an account shall be given of the feelings of a German citizen on the fall of his State. He belonged to that circle of Prussian jurists of whom we have just spoken. What he imparts is already known from other records, yet his honest description will find sympathy from its judicial clearness and simplicity:--
Cristoph Wilhelm Heinrich Sethe, born 1767, deceased 1855. "_Wirklicher Geheimer Rath_," and chief president of the Rhenish court of appeal, descended from a great legal family in the dukedom of Cleves; his grandfather and father had been distinguished officials of the government; his mother was a Grolmann. The boy grew up in the enjoyment of wealth in his father's town; at sixteen years of age his father sent him to the university of Duisburg, and then to Halle and Göttingen; on his return he went through the Prussian grades of service in the government of Cleve-Mark, an excellent school. These western provinces---not of very great extent--comprised a good portion of the strength of the Prussian State. This firm, vigorous population clung with warm fidelity to the house of their Princes; there was in the cities and among the peasants, who lived as freemen on their land, much wealth, and the High Court of Justice was one of the best in Prussia Sethe was "_Geheimer Rath_," happily married, with his whole heart in his home, when a gloom was thrown over his native city and his own life by the sound of war, the march and quartering of troops, exciting reports, and, finally, the occupation of the town by the French, who, as it is well known, allowed the sovereignty of Prussia to continue for some years, till the Peace of Amiens took away the last vestige of Prussian possession. Then Sethe severed himself from his home, and established himself in the Prussian administration of the newly-acquired portion of Münster.
He shall now relate himself what he experienced.[41]
"You can easily imagine, my dear children, that the departure from Cleve was very distressing to us. It was a bitter feeling to wander in this way from home, and leave one's native city under foreign laws and the dominion of a foreign people.