"The first onslaught of the Revolutionary Army led by Custine in 1792 messed up Southwest Germany’s whole "Kleinstaaterei"" and introduced the "destruction of the small powers that were incapable of living as a state". Apart from the already "fascistoid" mode of expression, these sentences are worth noting because it seems that the renowned constitutional historian Fritz Hartung (1883-1967) appears utterly to overlook that most of these "small powers that were incapable of living as a state" – for example Fürfeld – had by the time of their "destruction" existed for several centuries, a duration that has thus far not been matched by any stately body on German soil since that time. The political philosopher and representative purveyor of Revolutionary ideology, Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself (1712-1778) had in a lighter moment (1761) written that no other polity could match the German in wisdom. For the former Imperial knightly self-governing political body that Fürfeld hitherto had been, the Revolutionary French annexation of the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank marked a new phase in history, one in which it still finds itself today, for the imposition of a new administrative system on the French model made the village into an incorporated municipality unencumbered by any feudal lord.