Various - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 371, May 23, 1829

At the commencement of the French Revolution, and for some time after, the two banks of the Rhine were the theatre of continual wars. Commerce was interrupted, industry destroyed, the fields ravaged, and the barns and cottages plundered; farmers and merchants became bankrupts, and journeymen and labourers thieves. Robbery was the only mechanical art which was worth pursuing, and the only exercises followed were assault and battery. These enterprises were carried on at first by individuals trading on their own capital of skill and courage; but when the French laws came into more active operation in the seat of their exploits, the desperadoes formed themselves, for mutual protection, into copartnerships, which were the terror of the country. Men soon arose among them whose talents, or prowess, attracted the confidence of their comrades, and chiefs were elected, and laws and institutions established. Different places of settlement were chosen by different societies; the famous Pickard carried his band into Belgium and Holland; while on the confines of Germany, where the wild provinces of Kirn, Simmerm, and Birkenfield offered a congenial field, the banditti were concentrated, whose last and most celebrated chief, the redoubted Schinderhannes, is the subject of this brief notice.

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The nightly expenses of Drury Lane and Covent Garden Theatres in these days, are upwards of 200 l .