Trade Dispute

Four or five hundred people had already gathered on Wisgen Street in Munich, most of them workshop owners, craftsmen, and workers from Munich, along with a small number of shopkeepers.

They held up wooden placards reading things like "French Goods, Get Out" and "Raise the Tariff," as well as straw effigies bearing the name "Cajetan Dietrich."

Dietrich was the diplomatic official who had signed the Rhine-Seine River Treaty on Bavaria's behalf.

Brandt and his sons joined the crowd, shouting slogans protesting French Goods together with the people around them.

Before long, a Bugle Call sounded from the front of the procession. Gabriel, a senior council member of the Munich Chamber of Commerce, stood atop a carriage and waved forcefully as he shouted:

"Everyone, follow me to that damned mall!"

He had come in a personal capacity, but an anti-protest movement on this scale could never have been organized without the participation of the Munich Chamber of Commerce.

The crowd erupted in shouts and surged after Gabriel in a vast procession toward the French department store.

Three black carriages passed alongside the protest march. The window of the middle carriage suddenly opened, and Lord Grenville, the United Kingdom's Minister of Foreign Affairs, leaned out, studying the words on the placards with great interest.

Just then, Brandt came over holding up a straw effigy. Grenville hurriedly waved at him and asked:

"Sir, may I ask what you are protesting?"

It took the latter considerable effort to understand his Low German before he answered in a rough voice:

"Our shops are going bankrupt, sir. Those damned officials set the tariffs absurdly low just to curry favor with the French. Everyone is buying French Goods. We cannot allow this situation to continue."

He had apparently forgotten that when the Rhine-Seine River Treaty had first