THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
Palatinate, the provisional governments insisted upon remaining within the boundaries of their own little countries and thus to await the attack.
On the day after my arrival in Kaiserslautern I would have enlisted as a private soldier in one of the volunteer battalions then being organized, had not Anneke not advised me not to be in too much of a hurry, but to permit him to find a fit position for me. He had been made chief of artillery in the Palatinate, and said he could employ me on his staff. Two days afterwards he brought me an appointment as lieutenant, signed by the provisional government, and made me his aide-de-camp. Kinkel found employment as one of the secretaries of the provisional government. The artillery of the Palatinate consisted, at that time, of only the four little guns of the corps commanded by Zitz, of half a dozen small cannon, of which it was said they might be of much use in mountain warfare, and of a battery of six pounders obtained from the provisional government of Baden. The field of activity of the artillery chief and of his staff was therefore a limited one; and I was not displeased when I was told that until the beginning of active hostilities I might also be employed in political affairs.
I was now and then sent to popular meetings which were held to warm the patriotic zeal of the masses; and once I received an order to effect the arrest of a priest who used his influence in his parish—a large village of about three thousand inhabitants—to keep the young men from enlisting in the military organizations then forming. This was regarded as a sort of high treason against the new order of things; and the priest being looked upon as a desperate person who might possibly offer resistance, a little body of fifty men was to accompany me in order to aid me in the execution of my
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