MEMOIRS

OF

THE BARONESS D'OBERKIRCH.

CHAPTER I.

Introduction- My birth-My grandfathers and grandmothers - Malhause-My father-My mother dies young-My uncles-The Bouillon regiment-King Dagobert-The castle of Schweighausen-My education-My godmother-The Waldners-The Berekheim-The Glaubitz-Montbéliard-Arrival of the Prince Eugene.

THE pages which I present to my reader are not memoirs, they are rather recollections. I have never had the slightest pretension to be a bel esprit, or to occupy a niche in the temple of Fame. I write that I may pass over in my mind the principal events of my life; they are deeply interesting to me, nor will they be less so to my daughter. I know not in what light they may appear to others. I speak little of what concerns myself personally; just as much as is necessary to make me known, and to prove that I have seen what I relate. My

VOL. I.

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thoughts and my reflections are exclusively my own, I am not accountable to any person for them. My recollections are dear to me because I alone have a right to them. To divulge them would be to diminish the happiness they afford me. These pages, then, are but as a casket in which I place them, whence I may draw them forth in my old age.

I write these pages in 1789, in my thirty-fifth year. I kept, in '82, a journal in which I minutely detailed my travels, with Madame la comtesse du Nord, to Paris, and from thence, through Brittany, Normandy, Picardy, Holland, and the Electoral States.

I observed the same practice in '84 and '86, during two visits I made to Paris, whither I was drawn by the kindness with which H.S.H. Madame la duchesse de Bourbon deigned to honour me. I combine these journals and these notes to form the history of the first thirty-five years of my life. I speak in it of those that I have known; of facts of which I have been the witness; of the remarkable personages of this century with whom I have been intimately or distantly acquainted, or with whom I have had either personal or family connections. I add some of the letters which have been written to me by H.I.H. Madame la grande-duchesse Maria. Fœderowna. This august princess, spite of her abode in a foreign.

land, still entertains for me the deep and tender affection which sprung up in our infancy, and is good enough to write to me sometimes. My respectful devotedness to this amiable princess is one of the most profound sentiments of my heart. As these memoirs may one day meet the eye of the careless or the cold, I would scruple to interweave in them that part of our correspondence which is solely confidential; I cannot, however, resist the desire of making my daughter and her children, if she ever have any, acquainted with this noble mind, this tender heart, and this pure and lofty imagination, which the highest degree of worldly honours has never for a moment been able to corrupt, and which unconsciously reveal themselves in this correspondence.

The description of some of our ruined castles of Alsace leads me naturally to speak of the nobility of this country, of its local government, and the habits of its people-recitals which will, I fear, a few years hence, become matters of curious inquiry, for the tempest threatens the ancient social edifice, and God only knows how far His anger may pursue this perverse and abandoned generation.

I shall often be obliged to relate things alike repugnant to my feelings and my principles, but which portray the epoch in which we live. I will, however, avoid low gossip, not possessing a

talent for that style of writing which gives such things currency. I record facts either more or less serious, and I will have at least the merit of an exact adherence to truth. I must, however, observe, that the spirit of the times often found vent in certain expressions which, though far from elegant, I shall be obliged to record, believing them to be characteristic of the period. Must not the painter use the tint which will best portray his subject?

Now that I have warned my readers, if I should have any, of what they are to expect in these pages, I hasten to commence my subject, having always detested long prefaces.

I was born on the 5th of June 1754, in the castle of Schweighausen, in Upper Alsace.

I am the daughter of Francis Lewis, baron de Waldner de Freundstein, who became count on the death of his brother, and of Wilhelmina Augusta Elenora Sophia de Berekheim, of the branch of Ribécauville.*

My maternal grandmother was still alive at the time of my birth. My other grand-parents had died before that event. This lady was a Berekheim of the branch of Jebsheim, and had married her cousin Philip-Frederick, baron de Berckheim

* Ribécauville, or Rapolsweger, a lordship belonging originally to the house of Rapolstein or Ribeaupierre.

Ribécauville. Thus my mother united in her own person the two branches of this house, one of the most illustrious of the province.

My grandfather de Waldner had married a Wurmser of the branch of Yenderheim-Sonderhausen, who died at Malhause in 1743. Her husband had died at the same place in 1735. I was baptized on the 7th of June 1754, in the parish church of Malhause, in the holy evangelical Protestant faith. My godfathers were Louis Anstatt de Waldner and Christian Louis Berekheim, my maternal uncle; my godmothers, the comtesse de Waldner, née de Vologer, wife of my uncle Dagobert. This uncle was afterwards lieutenant-general in the royal army, and Eve de Wurmser, cousin-german to my father. I was baptized Henrietta Louisa.

Malhause was an important city allied to Switzerland, and in which the Waldners had enjoyed at all times the honorary right of citizenship. This prerogative gives the right of serving in the Helvetic troops, amongst which the Waldners have a regiment. In order to preserve this privilege, the sons of our family were always baptized at Malhause, and the worthy citizens seemed highly flattered by this piece of politeness. Their territory is surrounded on all sides by France. The aristocratic government is composed of seventyeight members, and of three burgomasters, each