o matter how or when, but Berlin seemed to me too small for all
the trash that was dragged out of the houses in that March night.

Bloody and terrible pictures rose before our minds, and perhaps there
was no need of Assessor Geppert's calling to us sternly, "Off home with
you, boys!" to turn our feet in that direction.

So home we ran, but stopped once, for at a fountain, either in
Leipzigstrasse or Potsdamstrasse, a ball from the artillery had struck
in the wood-work, and around it a firm hand had written with chalk in
a semicircle, "TO MY DEAR PEOPLE OF BERLIN." On the lower part of the
fountain the king's proclamation to the citizens, with the same heading,
was posted up.

What a criticism upon it!

The address set forth that a band of miscreants, principally foreigners,
had by patent falsehood turned the affair in the Schlossplatz to the
furtherance of their evil designs, and filled the heated minds of his
dear and faithful people of Berlin with thoughts of vengeance for
blood which was supposed to have been spilled. Thus they had become the
abominable authors of actual bloodshed.

The king really believed in this "band of miscreants," and attributed
the revolution, which he called a 'coup monte' (premeditated affair), to
those wretches. His letters to Bunsen are proof of it.

Among those who read his address, "To my Dear People of Berlin," there
were many who were wiser. There had really been no need of foreign
agitators to make them take up arms.

On the morning of the 18th their rejoicing and cheering came from full
hearts, but when they saw or learned that the crowd had been fired into
on the Schlossplatz, their already heated blood boiled over; the people
so long cheated of their rights, who had been put off when half the rest
of Germany had their demands fulfilled, could bear it no longer.

I must remind myself again that I am not writing a history of the Berlin
revolution. Nor would my own youthful impressions justify me in forming
an independent opinion as to the motives of that remarkable and somewhat
incomprehensible event; but, with the assistance of friends more
intimately acquainted with the circumstances, I have of late obtained
a not wholly superficial knowledge of them, which, with my own
recollections, leads me to adopt the opinion of Heinrich von Sybel
concerning the much discussed and still unanswered question, whether the
Berlin revolution was the result of a long-prepared conspiracy or t