182G.] Slauenhach, the Sharpshooter. 599 



commandant instantly ordered a meeting of the authorities, and in this 

 civic and military council his Majesty of the Mountains was declared a 

 public enemy, and a reward of the adequate number of tlialers was 

 offered for him, dead or alive. This was probably an unwilling measure 

 on the part of the grave burghers of Carniola, but they laiew the acti- 

 vity of Napoleon's vengeance too well to talk of hesitation ; with the 

 populace it was altogether a different affair, and their rejoicing at the 

 defiance was all but treason to the supremacy of the conqueror. The 

 «' King of the Mountains" was an effective name, and the habitual taste 

 of the German for forest wonders found its supreme indulgence in 

 inventing attributes and adventures for this mysterious monarch. 



War, and of all its kinds insurrectionary war, is fitted to take hold 

 upon the popular imagination. Its secrecy, its sudden explosions — its 

 sudden extinctions in one quarter, to spring up like a conflagration in 

 another^-even the personal intrepidity, intelligence, and dexterity 

 required in its solitary and hazardous enterprizes, throw a romantic and 

 superstitious interest about it, that gives a powerful impulse to the 

 imagination. The " King of the Mountains" had none of the established 

 indolence of the throne ; he seemed even to have the facultj' of being 

 every where at once. The arrival of couriers soon ceased totally, or 

 occurred only by permission of his invisible majesty: and then the letters 

 were generally open, and accompanied by remarks, sometimes burlesque 

 and sarcastic, and sometimes conveying intelligence of the most disas- 

 trous nature from France. The peasants brought provisions to the city 

 only under the passport of his majesty ; the traders and travellers were 

 compelled to advertise in the Laybach Zeitung before they set out, their 

 route, with a declaration that they were not going to France ; in short, 

 his majesty's determination to extinguish all intercourse with the land 

 of tyranny, was expressed with the most undiplomatic distinctness and 

 absence of ceremony. 



The French authorities, however, now set themselves actively td 

 resist the public feeling ; and, as their first step, ordered the printer of 

 the Zeitung to jail, with a declaration, that the first merchant or 

 traveller suspected of compromizing with " the banditti," should follow 

 the printer. This had its effect for a few days, and the advertisements 

 were stopped. But a Bolognese jeweller who had come to the fair of 

 Idria, and after lingering impatiently for some weeks in the city, was 

 anxious to realize his produce on the other side of the Tyrol, had 

 not left Laybach half a German mile, when he was met by a party of 

 armed " peasantry," who ordered him back. They took nothing from 

 him, and when he offered them money, refused it, stating that they 

 were paid by their own " sovereign ;" and ordered merely to prevent 

 any man's going through his territory without his passport. Some other 

 attempts had the same result ; until at length the French commandant 

 determined to take the field against the unseen usurper. He gathered 

 about five hundred troops of different arms, and called out the Burgher- 

 guard to make up his army. But the citizens had long since settled 

 their minds upon the point, and they, one and all, discovered so many 

 personal reasons for objecting to a mountain campaign, that M. le 

 Colonel de Talmont was, at last, with infinite indignation, obliged 

 to compromise the affair, and leave the whole of the gallant Burgher- 

 guard for the defence of the gates and ditches. 



The Colonel was a bold fellow, a vieux mouttache, who had served from 



