第48章

"Tell it to him, and if he refuses to listen, we will tie him hand and foot, and compel him to hear what you say.""Well, Mr. Tax-collector," said Wallner, with mock politeness, "Iwill tell you, then, how you Bavarians have treated us for four years past, and only when you know all our grievances will we settle our accounts. Listen, then, to what you have done to us, and what we complain of. You have behaved toward us as perjured liars and scoundrels, and I will prove it to you. In the first place, then, in 1805, when, to our intense grief and regret, our emperor was obliged to cede the Tyrol to Bavaria, the King of Bavaria, in a letter which he wrote to us, solemnly guaranteed our constitution and our ancient privileges and liberties. That is what your king promised in 1805.

To be sure, we did not put much confidence in what he said, for we well knew that when the big cat wants to devour the little mouse, it treats the victim at first with great kindness and throws a small bit of bacon to it; but no sooner does the mouse take it than the cat pounces upon its unsuspecting victim and devours it. And such was our fate too; the cat Bavaria wanted to swallow the little mouse Tyrol; not even our name was to be left to us, and we were to be called Southern Bavarians instead of Tyrolese. Besides, our ancient Castle of Tyrol, the sacred symbol of our country, was dismantled and destroyed. You thought probably we would forget the past and the history of the Tyrol, and all that we are, if we no longer saw the Castle of Tyrol, where the dear Margaret Maultasch solemnly guaranteed to her Tyrolese their liberties, great privileges, and independence, for all time to come. But all was written in our hearts, and your infamous conduct engraved it only the more lastingly thereon. You took from us not only our name, but also our constitution, which all Tyrolese love as their most precious treasure. The representative estates were suppressed, and the provincial funds seized. No less than eight new and oppressive taxes were imposed, and levied with the utmost rigor; the very name of the country, as I said before, was abolished; and, after the model of revolutionary France, the Tyrol was divided into the departments of the Inn, the Adige, and the Eisach; the passion plays, which formed so large a part of the amusements of our people, were prohibited;all pilgrimages to chapels or places of extraordinary sanctity were forbidden. The convents and monasteries were confiscated, and their estates sold; the church plate and holy vessels were melted down and disposed of; the royal property was all brought into the market. New imposts were daily exacted without any consultation with the estates of our people; specie became scarce from the quantity of it which was drawn off to the royal treasury; the Austrian notes were reduced to half their value, and the feelings of our people irritated almost to madness by the compulsory levy of our young men to serve in the ranks of your army. In this manner you tried to crush us to earth.

But I tell you, we shall rise again, the whole Tyrol will rise and no longer allow itself to be trampled under foot. You say the king does not want any Tyrolese as subjects. He shall not have any, for the Tyrolese want to become again subjects of their dear Emperor Francis of Austria. Men of the Tyrol, from Pusterthal, Teffereck, and Virgenthal, you wish to become again subjects of the Emperor Francis, do you not?""We do, we do!" shouted the men, uttering deafening cheers. "Our dear Francis is to become again our lord and emperor! Long live the Emperor Francis!""Silence!" cried the tax-collector, pale with rage and dismay;"silence, or I shall send for the soldiers and have every one of you arrested, and--""Be silent yourself!" said Anthony Wallner, seizing him violently by the arm. "Sir, you are our prisoner, and so are the two bailiffs yonder. Seize them, my friends, and if they shout or resist, shoot them down. And if you utter a cry or a word, Mr. Tax-collector, so help me God if I do not kill you for a Boafok, as you are! Keep quiet, therefore, be a sensible man, and deliver your funds to us.

Come, men, we will accompany this gentleman to the tax-collector's office; and now let us sing a good Tyrolese song:""D'Schoergen and d'Schreiber and d'Richter allsammt, Sind'n Teufel auskomma, druck'n ueberall auf's Land, Und schinden Bauern, es is kam zum sog'n, Es waer ja koan Wunder, wir thaeten's allsammt erschlog'n."[Footnote: Song of the Tyrolese in 1809.--See Mayr, "Joseph Spechbacher," p. 22.

"The pushing--the writers, and magistrates all, Possessed by the devil, our country enthrall, And grind the poor peasants; alas, 'tis a shame!

No wonder if we too share ruin the same."]

He concluded with a long and joyous Jodler, and shouted triumphantly: "Dear brethren, Andreas Hofer sends you his greetings, and informs you that the Austrians have invaded the Tyrol. Hurrah, 'tis time!""Yes, 'tis time," murmured Anna Maria, Anthony Wallner's wife, to herself; "'tis time for me to give Lizzie the signal, for the insurrection has broken out." She hastened into the house, took her husband's old rifle from the chamber, ran with it out of the back-door of the house, and fired the signal for her daughter.

"There," she said, returning quietly into the house, "she will have heard the report, and there is time yet to save him. I will do now what Tony asked me to do. When he sings the song, I shall take the paper-balls from the table-drawer in the back-room, give a package to each of the two boys and two servant-girls, and tell them to go with it into the mountains and circulate the paper-balls everywhere, that the inhabitants of the whole Pusterthal, from one end to the other, from the Gross-Glockner to the Venediger and Krimler Tauern, may learn this very day that it is time, and that the Boafoks are to be expelled from the country. Halloo, boys, come here! Halloo, girls, your mistress wants to speak to you!"