This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
When we rose the next morning the firing was over. It was said that allwas quiet, and we had the well-known proclamation, "To my dear people ofBerlin." The horrors of the past night appeared, indeed, to have beenthe result of an unfortunate mistake. The king himself explained thatthe two shots by the troops, which had been taken for the signal toattack the people, were from muskets which had gone off by some unluckyaccident—"thank God, without injuring any one."
He closed with the words: "Listen to the paternal voice of your king,residents of my loyal and beautiful Berlin; forget what has occurred,as I will forget it with all my heart, for the sake of the great futurewhich, by the blessing of God, will dawn for Prussia, and, throughPrussia, for Germany. Your affectionate queen and faithful mother, whois very ill, joins her heart-felt and tearful entreaties to mine."
The king also pledged his royal word that the troops would be withdrawnas soon as the Berlin people were ready for peace and removed thebarricades.
So peace seemed restored, for there had been no fighting for hours, andwe heard that the troops were already withdrawing.
Our departure for Dresden was out of the question—railway communicationhad ceased. The bells which had sounded the tocsin all night with theirbrazen tongues seemed, after such furious exertion, to have no strengthfor summoning worshippers to church. All the houses of God were closedthat Sunday.
Our longing to get out of doors grew to impatience, which was destined tobe satisfied, for our mother had a violent headache, and we were sent toget her usual medicine. We reached the Ring pharmacy—a little house inthe Potsdam Platz occupied by the well-known writer, Max Ring—in a veryfew minutes. We performed our errand with the utmost care, gave themedicine to the cook on our return, and hurried off into the city.
When we had left the Mauer- and Friedrichstrasse behind, our hearts beganto beat faster, and what we saw on the rest of the way through thelongest street of Berlin as far as the Linden was of such a nature thatthe mere thought of it awakens in me to this day an ardent hope that Imay never witness such sights again.
Rage, hate, and destruction had celebrated the maddest orgies on ourpath, and Death, with passionate vehemence, had swung his sharpestscythe. Wild savagery and merciless destruction had blended with theshrewdest deliberation and skillful knowledge in constructing the barswhich the German, avoiding his own good familiar word, called barricades.An elderly gentleman who was explaining their construction, pointed outto us the ingenuity with which some of the barricades had beenstrengthened for defence on the one side, and left comparatively weak onthe other. Every trench dug where the paving was torn up had its object,and each heap of stones its particular design.
But the ordinary spectator needed a guide to recognize this. At thefirst sight, his attention was claimed by the confused medley and themany heart-rending signs of the horrors practised by man on man.
Here was a pool of