The King immediately gave effect to Lola's threat. On 9th February he signed a decree closing the University, and ordered all students not natives of the city to leave it within twenty-four hours. The edict threw all Munich into consternation. The departure of upwards of a thousand young men, many of them wealthy and well-connected, meant a serious blow to trade and a rending of innumerable social ties. The students marched, singing songs of adieu, to present a valedictory address to the Rector. The citizens bestirred themselves, and to the number of two thousand signed a petition, imploring His Majesty to reconsider the decision. Louis inclined a favourable ear to their prayers, and announced on 10th February that the University would remain closed only for the summer term.
This act of weakness cost Louis I. his mistress and his crown.
The revolutionary party perceived that this was the moment to strike. The King had yielded; the students were exultant and conscious of their strength; the townsfolk were weary of this ceaseless conflict between the Countess and her foes. Your good, old-fashioned burgher cares nothing for the rights and wrongs of a public dispute; he wishes to be left in peace to turn a penny into three half-pence, and to achieve that end is as ready to sacrifice the innocent as the guilty. Jacob Vennedey, a publicist and Radical famous in his day, writing from Frankfort, did his utmost to fan the flame of revolution.
"The King of Bavaria," so ran an article, "wastes the sweat of the poor country on mistresses and their followers. Everybody knows that the jewellery which Lola wore lately at the theatre cost 60,000 guldens; that her house in the Barerstrasse is a fairy palace; that the Cabinet, the Council of State, and the whole civil service are at her beck and call; that the _gendarmerie_ and military are her particular escort; that the best Catholic professors at the University have been dismissed at her caprice. For the people nothing is done."
The last statement was untrue. If, too, the sixty thousand guldens had come out of the people's pockets, Lola had well earned them by her services in emancipating the country from its clerical oppressors.
Louis's concession came too late--if it should have been made at all. On the morning of 11th February, Munich was in insurrection. Students and citizens flew to arms, and mustered in dense masses before the palace, and in the squares, loudly demanding the expulsion of the Countess of Landsfeld and the immediate reopening of the University. The situation, ministers thought, was critical. The King summoned a Cabinet Council, and was prevailed upon to accede to the demands of his insurgent subjects. He who had sworn before all the world that he would never give up Lola, now signed a decree for her banishment from Munich. To save his crown he broke all the solemn pledges he had given her. It was a base capitulation. But Louis of Bavaria was an old man, sixty-two years of age. His vows had been those of a young lover; but he wanted the youthful strength of will and hand that should have defended his mistress against an armed nation. Peace--peace--is ever the craving, the last and strongest passion of age.