Foreword
The present history of Fort-Louis is the fruit of many years’ work on the subject. Fortunately, the parish registers of the municipal and military parish survive. The municipal archive, although unorganized, also contains abundant material from the nineteenth century. The archives in Paris, Strasbourg, Haguenau, and Karlsruhe provided valuable information as well. I therefore believe that a reliable picture of our little town has emerged.
I could make no use of literature on the subject, because none exists. Gabriel Hanotaux indeed laments (Histoire de la Nation française, vol. I, Paris, 1920, p. XVII) that French military history has received no account since the days of Fr. Griffet. Fortunately, in his works on the Revolutionary Wars, the military historian A. Chuquet occasionally treated Fort-Louis directly from the records, which proved very useful to me. Moreover, I felt it bitterly that not a single community in the surrounding area possesses a printed history—not even Rœschwoog, Soufflenheim, or Drusenheim. Along the entire stretch of the Rhine between Strasbourg and Lauterbourg, the sole honorable exception is Munchhausen, which found in its pastor, A. Postina, a historian as conscientious as he was reliable. This work therefore breaks new ground in every respect.
In writing it, I received assistance of many kinds, which I am glad to acknowledge publicly and gratefully. First and foremost, I am indebted to Joseph Brauner, Director of the Municipal Archive and Municipal Library of Strasbourg, who followed my work with interest throughout the years more than anyone else. The organization of the material, one of the work’s principal merits, is due to him.
Special thanks are also due to the Alsace-Lorraine Scientific Society of Strasbourg, which accepted the work into its publication series and thereby made its printing possible. In Paris I found an unfailingly helpful friend and adviser in M. Tuetey, former archivist-librarian of the Ministry of War. MM. Callet, Engineer of Bridges and Roads in the Navigation Service; Lechten, Inspector of Historic Monuments; and J. Leicher, Architect for Historic Monuments, all of Strasbourg, as well as Dr. G. Gromer, Curator of the Municipal Archive of Haguenau, also rendered special service to the work.
Fort-Louis, on the Feast of St. Louis, 25 August 1934.
Fr. Archangelus von Altdorf, Ord. Cap.
Introduction
The title of this work might suggest that its material is divided into three principal parts. That, however, is not the case. The heading was chosen solely for practical reasons: to tell the reader at a glance that all the historical material concerning Fort-Louis has been considered and incorporated.
In writing the work, however, I refrained from any such schematic treatment. Otherwise, the reader might too readily have formed the impression that the garrison and the townspeople had little in common in the eighteenth century, and that after the fall of the fortress and the evacuation of the town there arose a village—“the Alsatian farming village”—that was akin to the former garrison town neither by ancestry nor by outlook.
That impression had to be avoided. In the eighteenth century the garrison and the townspeople were closely connected and grew together into a community of shared spirit, thought, and conviction. Readers will see this for themselves. Nor should one look here for “the Alsatian farming village.” We still live here in a garrison town—admittedly without soldiers or barracks, but with a magnificent church, well-preserved ruins, and orderly streets that still bear royal names. “Fort-Louis is a town through and through,” as the local saying goes.
The following incidents from the time of greatest poverty and distress are quite telling of this outlook. Most inhabitants, it is true, had no bed and scarcely enough straw for a night’s rest; on Sundays they might perhaps manage a “Geissenrahmsuppe” (goat’s-cream soup). Nevertheless, the municipal council preferred the expression “The Town of Fort-Louis.” Deputy Krafft believed that conditions were right for the cantonal administration to be transferred back here and for the annual fairs and weekly markets to resume. Mayor Batiston applied to three ministries—none would acknowledge responsibility—to obtain a picture of Louisa from the royal museums for the parish church. He even asked the Minister of Worship to raise the standing of the local parish post. And yet this “town pastor” occupied a few rooms in a rented dwelling.
Historically and legally, then, there is no village of this name; we know only “the Town of Fort-Louis,” founded by Louis XIV and still in existence today.
Local conditions were unique. Until 1850, Fort-Louis was an island in the Rhine, inhabited initially by 4,000 people in all, later by 1,400, and finally by 350.
The questions inevitably arise: How could so many people live in the middle of the Rhine? How did they make their living? Did the fortress at least fulfill its purpose, so that the many sacrifices made by the garrison and townspeople were offset by evident strategic advantages?
The present work examines these questions on the basis of unimpeachable sources. It recounts in detail the construction of the fortress, wars, and sieges; it affords insight into small-town government and the struggle for municipal freedom, pastoral care and schooling, customs, and family history. It discusses the fall of the fortress, the evacuation of the site, and the difficult transition to agriculture. It treats the interesting question of the dual boundary along the Rhine, which occupied diplomats at three peace conferences. Finally, it tells of the great undertaking of regulating the Rhine, a benefit of the highest order for Fort-Louis.
In general, it seems, a heavy weight lies upon this little community, like the banks of fog that cover the Rhine in autumn and winter and that the sun penetrates only faintly.
Admittedly, A. Babeau¹ rightly warns against judging the eighteenth century too hastily. It was not a golden age, he argues, but neither was it a time of exceptional distress. One should not allow partisan political prejudice to influence one’s view of that era. For under the ancien régime, alongside times of war, plague, and famine, there were also long years of peaceful, vigorous development. Health and well-being were the rule for individuals and corporate bodies alike, not misfortune, unless an inherited affliction or an incurable mishap was present. The only difficulty, he adds, is that health is hard to portray, precisely because it is the normal state and makes itself felt less keenly than illness.
It is precisely this exceptional case that confronts us here. Fort-Louis suffered, it seems, from a root or principal evil inherent in the very choice of its site: a chronic condition that disappeared only with the regulation of the Rhine around 1850. A garrison town should not have been founded in such a watery hollow, as the high mortality among both the military and the civilian population soon showed. At the very least, building the town on the island should have been avoided; at least the townspeople should have been settled on the mainland, toward Rœschwoog or Auenheim, five hundred meters away, as the regulations required. I studied the records without any preconception; only gradually did this conviction form. Thus we read in a report from 1756:
On a bien reconnu de tout temps l’origine du mal, mais comme il n’est pas possible de changer la position du Fort-Louis, on n’a pu détruire l’origine des maladies qui y règnent.
The source of the evilb has long been recognized, but because it is impossible to change the location of Fort-Louis, it has not been possible to eradicate the source of the diseases prevalent there.
Since the location of the fortress could no longer be changed, the garrison was withdrawn around 1780. Only one hundred men were left to keep guard, and they were relieved every month.
Is that not a clear indication of an underlying evil? And after the Austrians removed the population in 1794, did not a French commander declare: “The enemy has therefore carried out what our own laws prescribe, for no small town should lie in the immediate vicinity of a fortress”?
After 1800, individual inhabitants could not as readily as the troops bundle up their belongings and seek a new home elsewhere. Many did so, it is true, but not all. Those who remained then endured a long period of extreme hardship and deprivation. That era is no less tragic and instructive than the eighteenth century.
After these observations, every friend of historical research will agree with us that local conditions were unique and amply justify a detailed account.
Sources
- A. Babeau, La ville sous l’ancien régime, vol. 1, Paris, 1884, pp. 4–6. ↩
Translator’s notes
- The German says only ‘a picture of Louis’ (Ludwigsbild); the parish church being dedicated to St. Louis, a devotional painting of the saint is at least as likely as a portrait of Louis XIV. ↩
- Eighteenth-century medicine blamed fevers on the “bad air” (miasma) of damp ground, long before mosquito-borne malaria was understood; the report’s “source of the evil” is thus the island site itself. ↩