Here he became "attached to their General Staff", wrote a further two parts of his dramatic cycle The People , and made the acquaintance of Mazzini in Geneva. The whole band of fire-eaters consisting of Polish, French, German, Italian and Swiss adventurers under the command of the noble Ramorino then made their famous attack on Savoy. [49] In this campaign our Harro "discovered the value of his life and strength".
But as the other freedom fighters felt "the value of their lives" no less than Harro and no doubt had just as few illusions about their "strength"the exploit ended badly and they returned to Switzerland beaten, dishevelled and in disarray.
This campaign was all that was needed to give our band of emigrant knights a complete insight into the terror they inspired in the tyrants.
As long as the aftermath of the July Revolution could still be felt in isolated insurrections in France, Germany or Italy, as long as they felt someone or other standing behind them our émigré heroes felt themselves to be but atoms in the seething masses -- more or less privileged, prominent atoms, to be sure, but in the last analysis they were still atoms. But as these insurrections gradually grew feebler, as the great mass of "lackeys", of the "half-hearted" and the "men of little faith" retired from the putschist swindles and as our knights felt increasingly lonely, so did their self-esteem grow in proportion. If the whole of Europe became craven, stupid and selfish, how could our trusty heroes fail to grow in their own estimation, for were they not the priests who kept the sacred fires of hatred for all tyrants burning in their breasts and who maintained the traditions of virtue and love of freedom for a more vigorous generation yet to come! If they too deserted the flag the tyrants would be safe for ever. So like the democrats of 1848 they saw in every defeat a guarantee of future victory and they gradually transformed themselves more and more into itinerant Don Quixotes with dubious sources of income.
Once arrived at this point they could plan their greatest act of heroism, the foundation of "Young Europe" whose Charter of Brotherhood was drawn up by Mazzini and signed in Berne on 15 April 1834. Harro appears in it as "initiator of the Central Committee, adoptive member of Young Germany and Young Italy and also as representative of the Scandinavian branch"which he "still represents today".
The date of the Charter of Brotherhood marks for Harro the great epoch from which calculations are made forwards and backwards, thus replacing the birth of Christ. It is the highpoint of his life. He was co-dictator of Europe in partibus and although the world knew nothing of him he was one of the most dangerous men alive. No one stood behind him but his many unpublished works, a few German artisans in Switzerland and a dozen political speculators who had seen better days -- but for that very reason he could claim that all the people of the world were on his side. For it is the fate of all great men not to be recognised by their own age whereas the future belongs to them. And Harro had taken care of the future -- he had it in black and white in his bag in the form of the Charter of Brotherhood.
But now began Harro's decline. His first sorrow was that "Young Germany split off from Young Europe in 1836". But Germany was duly punished for that. Because of the split "nothing had been prepared for a national movement in Germany early in 1848" and this is why everything ended so miserably.
But a much greater sorrow for Harro was the growth of communism.
We learn from him that the founder of communism was none other than "the cynic Johannes Müller from Berlin, the author of a very interesting pamphlet on Prussian policy, Altenburg 1831". Müller went to England where "the only available opening for him was in Smith field Market where he had to tend swine at the crack of dawn".
