ABSTRACT
The publicist F. Forster, who exercised a profound influence on the minds of the Rhineland population, writes in 1788: ‘Idleness and pleasure filled the lives of the insolent classes whose coarse sensuality, indolence and profound ignorance set a most disastrous example. Monarchy or republic little mattered to them provided that their domination, as a result of public credulity, could be peacefully established on the ruins. There remained the local broadsheets which confined themselves to petty incidents of interest to a restricted public. After the arrival of the New Age and the creation of a semi-independent press, it became impossible to muzzle public opinion. Prince August, brother of the reigning Duke of Saxe-Gotha, encouraged the publication of a revolutionary almanac and raised his glass ‘to the health of Liberty’; the Duchess of Gotha flaunted the new ideas. Certain princes compounded with the Revolution from fear rather than from sincere conviction.
