CHAPTER II.
Cantonof Berne—Village where the Swiss troops obtained a victory over the French force in ’98—Berne—Bears in all forms—Their revenues diminished—Their new baptism—Foundation of Berne—Rodolph ofErlach—Laupen—Rodolph chosen guardian of orphans of the Count of Nidau—Murdered by his own son-in-law—Cathedral—Monument to Duke Berthhold—His wife’s execution—Charles Louis ofErlachmassacred by his own soldiers during French invasion—Treatment of Berne by the French—Thun—Privileges—Castle of Thun—The brothers—The banquet—The murder—The “pension”—An acquaintance—The sketcher in haste—A Marseilles story—Spietz—The golden manor—Adrian ofBubenberg—His savingMorat—His embassy—His return as a minstrel—Unterseen—Unspunnenonce the property of theEschenbachfamily—Walter ofEschenbach—Confidant of the parricide Duke John—Murder of the Emperor Albert—Vengeance of Queen Agnes—Walter’s son spared—Walter a shepherd—Lauterbrunnen—The cascade—Grindelwald—A buried chapel in the glacier—The Harder—The grave of an only son—Return to Thun.
21st August.
Left Fribourg for Berne, and was disappointed in the road, which presents a long series of endless hills, and (as heavy clouds, which brought us several hail-storms, hid thewhite mountains) less interesting than those hitherto travelled.
At the limit of the cantons of Berne and Fribourg, where the river Sense separates them, the country is wooded and beautiful, but of a mild character and resembling England. The name of the village isNeunneck;and here, on the 5th of March, 1798, the same day on which Berne surrendered to another column of the French army, two thousand Swiss, commanded by Colonel deGrafenried,defeated the French, drove them across the Sense, killed or wounded fifteen hundred of their men, and took eighteen pieces of cannon. They made no prisoners, but marched up the mountain with fixed bayonets, and forced the enemy from all his positions. They lost themselves 173 soldiers, and great numbers were wounded.
We exchanged here the seeming poverty of the canton Fribourg for the air of happiness and riches peculiar to this. The peasantry appear a civil and kindly race. The females wear dark dresses and black velvet caps, whose broad wired lace worn far back from their sunburnt faces looks like the outspread wings of a hornet. The entrance to Berne is not on this side (that of the plain) striking. A long avenue leads to a handsome gate flanked by two modern bears; for the bear isomnipresent. Armed cap-a-pie on the column of one fountain, on another standing as esquire beside the figure of Duke Berthhold, forming a procession on the clock-tower, which in his time guarded the outer wall, marking in effigy the butler at the inn, and inpropria personainhabiting the town ditch outside theAarberggate, where four of the fraternity live on (alas!) diminished revenues, for the property bequeathed them towards the close of the last century by a bear-loving old lady, and which, it is said, had accumulated to 70 millions of francs, was seized by the French in ’98, and with the remainder of the town-treasure, and the bears themselves led away captives, were transported to Paris. In insult to the conquered, the animals received fresh names, and the new one of each was inscribed on his travelling caravan, being that of amagistrateof Berne!
It was in 1191, when the great barons of the Alps and the most powerful lords of Burgundy leagued their forces against Berthhold the Fifth, lieutenant of the empire, either, historians say, in hatred of his equitable administration, or in jealousy of his still increasing sway, that he inclosed as small towns various villages for his own and his vassals’ security; and seeking out another spot under the protection of the imperial franchise, equallydistant from all his enemies, and unsuspected by his partizans, he chose a hamlet called Berne, built on a peninsula formed by the rapid Aar, when it rushes from the lake of Thun; and, about a month after he had defeated the leagued lords in one of the high valleys, surrounded it with a ditch and walls. Many knights and nobles took up their residence there; among the rest, Rodolph ofErlach,of an ancient Burgundian house, and whose descendants have seven times given chiefs to the republic, and twice saved Berne from ruin. The laws were similar to those of Fribourg.
In 1338, the year in which the emperor Louis of Bavaria convoked the diet of Frankfort to discuss the affair of his excommunication, 147 years after the foundation of Berne, when she had no protector and few allies, the counts and barons ofŒchtland, Aargau,and Burgundy, urged on by the emperor, projected her destruction. The lords of the house ofNeuchâtel,the counts of Kibourg, andPierre of Gruyèresand others, assembled in the castle of Nidau, whither, notwithstanding her alliance with Berne, came ambassadors from Fribourg, to say that the injuries they all suffered had a common origin, that Berne strove to level the nobles to the condition of the populace, and it being vain to essay bypartial attacks to set bounds to her audacity, it would be well that united forces should raze her city to the ground.
Berne acted nobly and calmly—she besought no foreign protection, but said, in a conference which took place between her delegates and the feudal lords, that “to peace she would sacrifice all save justice.” She summoned Fribourg to a diet held atBlamatt,reckoning on the memory of their common founder and long friendship; but her deputies received no token of peace or amity, and Berne felt she was abandoned. During this time, 700 lords with the coronet on theircasques,1200 armed knights, 3000 horsemen, and more than 15,000 foot, were gathering against Berne.
Laupen,which is also on the Sense, four miles lower down thanNeunneck,besieged by the allies, had demanded and obtained succour from Berne. The Bernese were themselves embarrassed in the choice of a general; of the brave knights and citizens who surrounded the avoyer ofBubenberg, none esteeming himself capable of a command on which depended the fate and liberty of their descendants; and while they still sate irresolute in council, Rodolph, knight andcastellanofErlach,son of Ulrich, under whose command many still living had conquered the leaguednobles atDonnerbuhelforty years before, rode armed into Berne.
He was at the same time guardian of the young count of Nidau and citizen of Berne. To conciliate his will with the fidelity he owed his suzerain, he represented to his ward, that to serve the cause of the nobles against his fellow-citizens would injure his interests beyond reparation; and the young count, as in reply he scornfully bade him join the ranks of his peers, said, “With two hundred coronetedcasques,and a hundred and forty knights devoted to my banner, it is indifferent to me to lose a man.”
Erlachreplied coldly, “You have called me a man, Sir Count; I will prove to you that I am one.”
When he had dismounted and appeared before the senate, the sight of him reviving the memory ofDonnerbuheland his father, he was named general by acclamation, and the avoyer placed the banner of the republic in his hand.
As he stood holding it, he addressed the citizens:
“I have fought with you,” he said, “in six battles, where our numbers were always inferior, and always victorious. Discipline is a sure means of conquest, and without it courageis of no avail. You, artisans, who are freemen, and obey unwillingly, you can remain free only by learning obedience to those to whom it is due; without absolute authority I will not be your general. I do not fear the foe; with God’s aid and yours we will drive him back, as when you were led by my father.”
The people ofUnderwaldand ofSoleurewere the sole allies of Berne. Alms were distributed, solemn vows and processions made, during the brief time which intervened. One night, by the light of the moon, the general gave the troops the signal to depart. They were in all about six thousand. The women and children, who remained on the summit of the walls to watch and to pray, followed them with their eyes till they could distinguish them no longer, over the unequal ground and in the doubtful light. Descending thence they sought, the poor the churches, their superiors the private oratories of their mansions, and remained the livelong day in prayer; while the avoyer ofBubenberg, and others of the senate’s oldest members, remained sitting in council, to provide at all events for the city’s safety.
Rodolph ofErlachled on his troops in the most perfect order, taking up his position, about mid-day, at a short distance fromLaupenon a height, and flanked by a forest. Several of the knights of the opposing army, which was encamped in sight, rode forth from the ranks to survey the Bernese, and kept up a conversation of mingled raillery and bravado.
The young count of Nidau augured differently of the result: “I shall lose land and life to-day,” he said, “but I will sell them dearly.” In the attack, the rear guard of the Bernese, composed of inexperienced troops, was seized with panic, and fled.Erlach, to whom the news came, said gaily, “Victory is ours, friends; we have lost the clog of cowards!” and dashing forward, heading the young men he had assembled round his own person, the flower of Berne, he broke through the masses of the enemy’s infantry. Thenceforth the fortune of the day was no longer doubtful. The young count of Nidau fell one of the first, and the Bernese army, returned from the pursuit, kneeled down to offer up thanksgiving on the field where it had conquered, and according to custom passed the night there; the following morning saw its triumphal return to Berne.
Diebold Baselwind,the priest who had harangued them before the battle, marched first; behind them were borne the banners andarms of the fallen, and Rodolph ofErlach, contented with reviving his father’s fame in his own, deposed his sovereign authority.
The count of Nidau had left two young children; and their relatives of the house ofNeuchâtel,too feeble themselves to defend the lordship, feared with reason to confide it to a foreign prince. Their conduct speaks the highest praise of the knight ofErlach. They employed the mediation of the bishop of Basle to pray that he, “whose integrity was as well known as his valour, would receive as his charge the orphan boys and the lordship of Nidau.” He accepted the trust; a peace was concluded between Nidau and Berne, and the dead count’s sons, Rodolph and Jacques, enjoyed undisturbed the inheritance of their brave father.
Time had gone on, and thecastellanofErlach, grown an aged man, lived atReichenbach, a solitary spot on the shores of the Aar, which had also been his father’s residence. He had two sons, and a daughter married to the esquire ofRudenz.
One day of the year 1360, when he had employed, as was his wont, his domestics in his fields and gardens, and sate in his halls with no company save his dogs couched on the floor, and his sword of the battle ofLaupensuspended from the wall, his son-in-law came toseek him. He was a dissipated and reckless man, and as they conversed together, high words ensued on the subject of Margaret’s marriage portion. The knight was white-headed and feeble; and as he reprimandedRudenzwith dignity and gravity, his son-in-law started from his seat, seized the sword which hung near him, and plunged it into the old man’s heart.
The howling dogs pursued him to the forest, whither he fled, and when the news got wind, there was neither noble nor citizen who did not rise in arms to pursue the parricide. He died shortly, but in what manner is not known.
This is a long digression, but the ride through the sombre streets of the old town calls to mind the man who was named its irreproachable hero. The date of the most ancient mansions now standing is of 1405, as in that year the entire city then existing was destroyed by fire, saving, however, the three massive towers, that of Duke Berthhold, the prison, and Christopher’s tower, in the principal street of Berne.
The town has a gloomy aspect, with its low arcades resting on heavy masonry. The streets have a deep dangerousruisseauflowing down their centre, bound by stone. I feared that my starting Fanny might break a leg, byslipping down. We rode to theFaucon,which has, I believe deservedly, the reputation of being one of the best inns in Switzerland; but we had left Fribourg late, and lingered on the way, and consequently found it full. TheCouronnewas a bad substitute; the house is three hundred years old, and has objections attendant on its worm-eaten wood and dirty old age, which I advise you to avoid; the more so as its master is the first Swiss I have seen who unites incivility with high charges. We paid the strangers’ homage to the citizen bears, who are comfortably lodged without theAarberggate. The largest received our visit in his bath, a stone bason, into which he waddled on our approach, and remained while we stayed, staring hungrily at us, up to his neck in water.
From the bears we walked to the cathedral, which stands on the terrace above the Aar, looking down on the range of aristocratic buildings which skirt it, their possessors’ coats of arms sculptured over their portals, and their gardens sloping to the water, and on the range of Bernese Alps, rising grandly in the distance, but half hidden to-day by the heavy clouds.
This shady platform is raised one hundred and eight feet above the Aar, yetinto its wall was inserted a marble slab, recalling a singular accident on the 25th of July, 1654. A young student, amusing himself with his companions, vaulted on a horse which was quietly feeding under the trees, and being a spirited animal, started violently away, and, terrified by the shouts of Weinzapfli’s comrades, sprang with him over the low parapet. The horse was killed on the spot, but the student, who fell in soft garden ground, and only broke his arms and legs, recovered, and became a pastor.
The minster is a fine Gothic building, and was commenced, in 1420, by the son of the architect who built the famous tower ofStrasburg.
The monument, surrounded by gaudy armorial bearings, was raised by the town to Duke Berthhold the Fifth, in 1600. He was the last of the line ofZæringen,for he had been left a widower early, with two young sons, and contracted a second marriage with a countess of Kibourg. Either to ensure the inheritance to her own future offspring, or won by the jealous nobles to be their accomplice, this fury in human shape poisoned the two children of her husband. Her guilt once proved to him, neither the tenderness he had once felt for her, nor the thought that byaccusing one so nearly allied he tarnished the glory of his house, could arrest the outburst of his paternal agony. In the year 1217 she perished by the hands of the executioner; and Duke Berthhold, unwilling to form another alliance after one so fatal, felt it a consolation that in his person would close the misfortunes of his house.
Occupying a place in the aisle opposite that which contains Duke Berthhold’s monument, is a long catalogue of names inscribed on marble tablets; those of the brave men who fell in 1798, vainly resisting foreign invasion.
The saddest fate was that of Charles Louis ofErlach, a man who, like his ancestors, had deserved the esteem and love of his fellow-citizens. Before the revolution he had served France, and was named field-marshal at the moment of the French invasion in 1798. He had hurried to his native town, and, like his great predecessor, been named by acclamation general of the forces; but the then existing government was timid and irresolute. Accompanied by eighty of his officers, like himself members of the council, he presented himself before it the 24th of February, and, by his energy and arguments, revived its hopes and raised its courage. He was endowed with full powers to act as he should see fit as soon asthe yet unconcluded truce should expire. He left the city to decide on the measures to be taken, but, even as the moment for their execution arrived, received the order to suspend hostilities. The government had abdicated its powers. MarshalBrune’spolicy had sown division in the senate as well as among the troops. Berne yielded almost without resistance; andErlach’ssoldiers, blinded by suspicions artfully instilled, and maddened by despair, massacred him in the village ofWichdorff.
The treasure of the republic, accumulated through so many generations, was seized on by MarshalBrunewithout even the formality of an inventory taken. The Directory, informed of the omission, and in a case of this sort placing little confidence in its general, despatched a courier extraordinary with positive orders that it should be repaired.
A kind of list was in consequence hastily made by the marshal s command, and himself wrote to the Directory—
“Vous verrez par l’état, dont je vous envoie copie, que les sommes trouvées dans le trésor cadrentà peu prèsavec les régistres.”
The most moderate calculation, for into it private losses and depredations cannot enter, computes the losses of Berne (city and canton) at forty-two millions of francs. It was assertedthat of thisBrunehad appropriated to himself the golden medals of theHôtel de Ville,twenty-two carriages, and above three hundred thousand francs in specie!! This treatment of Berne followed close on assurances of support and amity, for while the marshal’s forces were yet unassembled, and beforeSchaumbourg’sreinforcement had arrived, France, through her commissary, declared that she desired her neighbour’s freedom and happiness only, and that, as soon as a government sufficiently democratic should be established, the independence of Berne would be respected, and the French army withdrawn.
23rd August, Thun.
Left theCouronnewith its discomfort and dirty stables. A steep descent leads to the bridge, beyond which run at right angles the two roads, one leading hither, the other to Zurich, beneath noble avenues. We had a lovely day and ride through a happy looking country, wood, pasture and mountain, and passed through a village, where the laugh of all the lookers-on from the windows saluted me as I rode Fanny in and through a clear pond, far deeper than I thought, but out of which we got to our honour.
Approaching Thun, the country is romantic and most beautiful. It was a warm fine evening,and the old dark castle, now a prison, on the height, with its peaked roof and four towers flanking it, and the church by its side, stood out from a bright sky.
The Aar, which issues from the lake about a mile further, winds below, rapid and blue as the Rhone. We crossed it on a covered wooden bridge, and skirted the town, passing ancient gates and massive towers, and the once fortified wall, to arrive hither.
The PensionBaumgartenstands on higher ground than theHôtel Bellevue,backed by wooded heights, to the foot of which its park extends; and the rooms opening on flower-gardens look on the Aar, winding through rich meadows, with scattered houses, and a grey feudal tower on the near shore; and the Stockhorn, with its strange sharp peak projecting above; and the massive pyramid of the Neisen beyond; the wreaths of vapour floating along the side of the first serving its forests for pedestal or canopy. On the right rose the castle; and to the left, far away in the opening, theJungfrauand her attendants, looking with the blush of that sweet evening on them, I thought even lovelier than Mont Blanc.
The rights of “bourgeoisie” attached to Thun make poverty almost impossible, and its inhabitants are therefore less laborious thanin other parts of Switzerland; each citizen possessing a right of pasture, building timber, and firewood, besides a yearly sum of money drawn from the surplus revenues of their flourishing and unexpensive country. By a strangely egotistical rule of the law-makers, these advantages attach exclusively to the males, so that a female orphan left unmarried, or a widow without a son, might find herself suddenly destitute, and dependent on strangers’ charity.
The service of the English church is performed every Sunday by an English clergyman in the Swiss church. No prospect can be more beautiful than that from the churchyard of Thun. The wall is built on the very edge of the precipitous hill it half circles; round and along it, from distance to distance, are what elsewhere I should call summer-houses, open stone edifices, on whose benches the inhabitants of Thun sit in the shade, enjoying the glorious and varied views over each side of the valley. A winding road, passing beneath an ancient gateway and a stair of irregular steps, leads up the height on which the church stands. The castle is but a few paces from it, on the platform of the same hill: among its annals is written a bloody tale of family feud.
When the last duke ofZæringen,who hadrefused to become an emperor, was interred in 1218 at St. Pierre in the Black Forest, his large possessions were divided. Ulric of Kibourg, his brother-in-law, inherited those situated in Burgundy; Berne and Zurich solicited and obtained from the Emperor Frederic the Second the title of free towns; and when the news, so long desired, reached Lausanne of the failing of the line ofZæringen,(the fall of the founder of Berne twenty-five years after its foundation,) the Bishop Berthhold ofNeuchâtelconvoked together the chapter, knights, and citizens in the court of the church of Notre Dame, and, solemnly cursing the memory of the deceased duke, who had once made war against him, he gave (solemnly also) the advowson of the bishopric into the hands of the Mother of God for ever!!
In the year 1332,Hartmann, count of Kibourg, possessed, with the lordship of Thun itself, that of various villages surrounding it, as well on the mountains as on the green plains through which flows the Aar. Among these wereBerthoud,Landshut, and other property of allodial tenure. Thun andBerthoud, governed according to the sage customs of their territory, had extended their limits by reason of their increasing population. The avoyers of the count pronounced judgment in accordance with a municipal code which evenhimself respected. The richest and most ancient of the nobility thronged his court and were his brothers in arms. WhenHartmannof Kibourg died, his widow, the countess Elizabeth, allowed an overweening influence to Senn ofMünsigen, a nobleman whose domains lay in the neighbourhood, and who through her favour had become director of her councils. Her sons,Hartmann, heir of Kibourg, and Eberard, were youths, and the eldest, who hated his brother, used every means to conciliateMünsigen’sfavour to himself, and to prejudice him against Eberard, at that period studying atBologna, the cradle of all science then existing, at an expense of sixteen marks yearly. Owing to his brother’s influence, this remained undefrayed; and, having vainly besought its payment, Eberard returned to his paternal castle to claim the portion left him by his father.
His relatives treated his demands with derision, and himself as a young man who might indeed possess rights but who knew not how to uphold them. One night, after a hunting or hawking party, the brothers had arrived at the castle ofLandshut, which is some leagues fromBerthoud, and Eberard, fatigued with exertion, slept by Hartmann’s side too soundly to be at first aware of his treason.Hartmannbound him as he lay, and sent him,thus secured and half naked, under a strong guard, toRochefortinNeuchâtel,Comte Rodolph ofNeuchâtelbeing his wife’s father. Arrived at his destination, Eberard accepted, perforce, for arbitrator between their differences Duke Leopold of Austria. Leopold pronounced thatHartmannshould remain sole lord of the entire patrimony; that Eberard should inhabit the castle of Thun, and of the two hundred marks he received from his benefices as canon ofStrasburgand Cologne yield three parts to his brother to defray the debts of their house. To this sentence the prisoner was obliged to subscribe, and all the nobility of the lordship of Kibourg assembled by invitation in the castle of Thun to celebrate the reconciliation of the brothers. As the defrauded young man sate with them at the banquet, CountHartmannand the favourite, Senn ofMünsigen, applauded each other unconstrainedly on the success of their schemes: “Belike,” said the former, alluding to Eberard’s inexperience and easiness of belief, “my brother may need a tutor to teach him to sign our peace.”
Eberard had many friends among the guests, and this and other sarcasms, which reached their ears, raised their choler, long restrained,—and some started from the banquet and drew their swords. A fearful tumult arose instantly. The furious guests, dividing themselves into twoparties, rushed madly at each other, andHartmannwas killed by chance and in the obscurity on the steps of the tower stair. It was unknown whether the instrument of this involuntary murder was Eberard in person; but at the moment when the citizens of Thun, who, attracted by the extraordinary noise, had armed in haste, rushed up the hill to the castle to know its cause, the body of CountHartmann, flung by some violent hand from a window of the castle, made them an awful reply. The greater number at once turned and fled; the few who lingered were taken prisoners as a measure of precaution; and Eberard, giving orders to close the gates, sent ambassadors to Berne, offering to become, himself and those of his house, citizens of her city for ever, and to cede to her, with a portion of his remaining possessions, the fief of Thun. The Bernese marched thither without loss of time, took possession with little difficulty, and confirmed the count in the place of power occupied by his ancestors, on condition of his paying them a contribution of one mark yearly.
August.
We have of late borne with some days of Swiss rain, unintermitting from morning to night. Apensionhas one disadvantage: for its inmates depend not on their ownresources, but on the forced companions of its breakfast, early dinner, and long evening. We are fortunate in an agreeable party, particularly so in the acquaintance of an English clergyman and his charming young wife, who, with her rosy children round her, forms the prettiest picture imaginable. Thevie de pensionconsists in breakfasting, in irregular order, between eight and twelve; dining at three, which interferes sadly with excursions or occupations; drinking tea at eight; talking till ten; and going to bed to re-commence on the morrow. This is bearable during sunshine; but when we are shut up in bad weather, and deprived of our home occupations, with torrents falling all day, and the moon shining at night in the valley on so dense and white a fog that I at first took it for the lake, which is a mile off, as has been the case the last few days, we form in groups, and have recourse to aleetlescandal (as I once saw it written), which commences in the kitchen among the scourges thither imported by the victims, their masters, and steals by degrees among ourselves, where it sometimes finds somebody
“To point a moral or adorn a tale.”
And should we all be good naturedly-minded and charitable to our neighbours, we pounce upon the cookery, and wonder thatMadameRufenachtshould be so niggardly an old personage, and how long will last her dynasties of hard ducks and bony pigeons. An addition to our circle, and an improving one, arrived to-day, in the persons of a gentleman and lady from Marseilles, and whose conversation induced us to let the poultry die and be served up in peace. I was amused by his account of their passage on board the steamer, from Geneva to Lausanne. Of the party was a lady speaking French imperfectly, and sketching with remarkable assiduity, as she went along, notwithstanding the velocity of the boat’s motion. Monsieur R——, though not professionally so, is really an artist; the lady was a sketcher,—like one who described to me that he never made more than two perpendicular and three horizontal lines for any view, filling up the vacuum after; or like another who, having sketched the falls of the Rhine, showed them to a lady, who exclaimed—“Oh! that is the beautiful field we just now walked through, and the stile we jumped over.”
This lady had united to a very faint idea of their geographical position a strong desire of bearing away in her album drawings of all the mountains in Switzerland; and the young French gentleman could not resist the opportunity for amusement: he had been her interpreter already.Mont Blanc,she heard allvoices echo, and used her pencil in haste. TheBuet, with its white round head, was in sight also, and the lady said in an interrogatory tone, “Mont Cenis, Monsieur?”
“Oui, Madame,” said her deceiver gravely, and she hurried to mark down the shape of the mountain, and write under it “Mont Cenis,”—extract the leaf from her book, and with due care lay it in her portfolio. She looked about again.
“Mont Pilatre, Monsieur?” said she, forgetting that Lucerne was not there; and pointing to theVoiron,—
“Bien loin, Madame; bien haut,” said the artist, and a cloud above theVoironwas again marked down, and inscribedMont Pilatre.The steamer was passingCoppet,and Monsieur R—— pointed out the château, giving it its proper name.
“Ha!” said the lady, cutting her pencil, “Coppet château, Madame Staël.”
“Oui, Madame, voilà;” but alas! for the sketcher; below the château on the lake shore is a square house, with a chimney at each end of its ignoble roof, and three prosaic-looking windows. It was this she believed to be Corinne’s cradle. The drawing was completed in a minute: two upright lines for walls; two ears for chimneys; three blacker strokes for windows; and under all,Château Coppet.Youshould have heard him describe the complacency with which she drew a bit of theSalèveforMonterosa,and the gratitude with which she parted from him who had shown her
“More things in heaven and earth,Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”
“More things in heaven and earth,Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”
“More things in heaven and earth,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”
An anecdote Monsieur R—— repeated last evening, of a member of the national guard ofMarseilles,was too amusing to avoid telling you in my turn:—
Just after the revolution of 1830, troops disembarked from Algiers, bringing with them a large treasure, destined for Paris; it was to leave Marseilles under an escort of the national guard, as the lower orders were still in a state of excitement, which might render its passage hazardous.
The person who commanded the escort had our acquaintance under his orders, and Monsieur R—— was rather surprised, on entering the suburbs, to hear himself and his comrades ordered to the rear, while the waggon with its load of specie went, pioneer fashion, first. He asked the reason:—
“You see,” said the commandant, (a stout peaceable man,) “that our charge being at some distance from us, in case of its being attacked we shall have notice of it before the offenders reach ourselves.”
“Therefore we had better ride to the front, and be ready to meet them.”
“Not at all; we should be deprived of discretionary power, being only six; by remaining behind, we can best judge whether the attacking force matches our own, or is too strong; and may, at our choice, advance or retreat for reinforcement.”
The escort staid in the rear and the convoy travelled in safety.
Monday.
Notwithstanding the assurances of the wholepension, that all cascades are alike,—that wood, water, and mountain may grow familiar to weariness; notwithstanding melancholy prognostics of misfortunes, which may happen to the horses,—and fine weather, which may not last for our journey to Italy, I have insisted on seeing theStaubbach; and toInterlaken, or rather towardsInterlaken, we rode last Wednesday, for we were hardly a mile away when the mist closed around us, obscuring the view from the higher ground over the lake and towards Thun, which is so lovely in sunshine. D—— proposed turning back, but we were averse to seeing the whole contents ofBaumgartenshake their heads at our discomfiture, as they had done when foretelling it ere we started. We took refuge insteadunder a pear tree in an old woman’s garden, an agreeable situation, in which we remained an hour, watching the torrents which concealed everything else a dozen paces from us: and as the bad weather did not set in as violently as it sometimes does in the mountains, took advantage of each clearer half hour to proceed, and of the shelter the road afforded when the rain returned.
In this manner we arrived, not very promptly, oppositeSpietz,whose old castle is romantically placed on a promontory, near the road and on the lake shore. It belonged to the lords ofBubenberg,and went by the name of the Golden Manor. One of its most noted possessors was Adrian ofBubenberg.In the year 1470 he had been deputed to the court of Duke Charles of Burgundy, and received by him with esteem and affection. On his return he remained attached to the Burgundian party, inasmuch as he believed a continued peace with Burgundy beneficial to Berne.Hagenbach,however, had been seized and executed; and Charles’s fury venting itself not merely in menaces against Switzerland, he named his officer’s brother to fill his vacant place, with orders to cover the county ofFerrette(the part of Alsace which joins Switzerland) with flames and blood. This fresh violence restored to NicholasDiesbach,the zealous partizan ofFrance, the credit he had lost with his countrymen. He sought to renew the treaty of alliance with Louis the Eleventh; but aware that Adrian ofBubenberg’sinfluence would be exercised on the opposing side, found means to exclude him from the council, and taught the people rather to take umbrage at his pride of birth and dignity of bearing, than to remember the part he had acted.
Under various pretexts he was exiled to his Golden Manor ofSpietz;but when, in 1476, Charles of Burgundy advanced, determined to commence the campaign by the conquest ofMorat, at the head of sixty thousand men, the Bernese recollected their banished avoyer, and, recalling him to their councils, implored that he would take the command of the force destined to garrisonMorat. The senator, who had ever sought to avoid a perilous war, did not hesitate to draw his sword in one become inevitable. He demanded only implicit obedience, and seeing that the greater portion of the inhabitants were ill disposed, he proclaimed that the first who showed fear or irresolution would be punished with death! He also adopted measures which had been already, on other occasions, successful, separating friends and relations; placing some within the town, and of others forming part of the force destined to repulse the besiegers. Wise, active, and courageous,calm amidst danger,Bubenberg’sconduct and skill savedMorat, to whose fate seemed bound that of all Switzerland, and to him chiefly did Louis the Eleventh of France attribute the victory. Twelve Swiss deputies, Adrian ofBubenbergat their head, were despatched to the French court, and received with royal magnificence. The following year the conqueror ofMoratreturned on a mission connected with the succession to the throne of Burgundy. The object of his embassy had altered gratitude to coldness—esteem to hatred; faithful to his own high character, firm and incorruptible, when Adrian ofBubenbergsaw his colleagues won and wavering, he disguised himself as a minstrel, and returned alone to Berne; this was in 1478. He died there the following year.
The barony ofSpietzafterwards belonged to the family ofErlach, which counts among its members Rodolph, conqueror ofLaupen, murdered by his son-in-law, and Charles Louis, massacred by his misled soldiers when he came to defend Berne.
FromSpietzthe road lately made skirts the lake almost the whole way, and rather nervously, as there are neither barriers towards the water nor retreat towards the rock, which has been blasted to leave a passage, and round whose base it winds. As Fanny’s habit of starting rendered the meeting of cart orcarriage perilous, we cantered along while the way was free, and to distract her attention from the rivulets and small cascades dashing down to her feet. Arrived at the extremity of the lake, the rain fell in earnest; despite our cloaks it threatened drowning: the mists were sufficiently opaque for Ossian to rest his heroes on; and the dim grey water which stretched below, melting into and confounded with them, looked mysterious and beautiful, as a single gleam of pale sunshine struggling through the vapour just touched the Neisen and descended to rest on the surface.Unterseenwas ten minutes nearer thanInterlaken, and, though we had heard the hôtel called a bad one, the dripping manes and drooping tails of our horses prayed movingly for the nearest shelter. We took the road along the bottom of the lake, and arrived among the dark wooden houses, some of which bear date of two hundred years ago. The accommodation at the inn was better than I had expected; but, considering we had come thither for pleasure, our object was not altogether accomplished, as we sat alone at supper, faintly lighted by two candles at the end of the large gloomy room, the storm beating against the windows and the wind whistling under the doors. Our bed-room looked on the church, backed as it is by the steep sides of the Harder, to which the clouds clung,—threateningan inauspicious close to our explorings; and the most musical of German watchmen woke us every hour during the night chanting them and an appropriate rhyme in his fine deep voice. Called as we desired, and the car ready, the state of the weather, as we breakfasted shivering in the same large room, looked by no means promising, and the barometer had continued sinking pertinaciously. Not choosing, however, to ride back to Thun, as we had ridden from it, in rain and fog, and our object unaccomplished, we preferred driving in their company toLauterbrunnen; and leaving our horses with strict charges to the stable servants, we started rather silent and rather sad in that chill morning at seven, over the four picturesque bridges, which, crossing the Aar, divideUnterseenfromInterlaken. From one of these there is visible between the nearer mountains a view of theJungfrau, splendid in fine weather. She looked mournfully through the wreaths of heavy vapour like a captive through her prison bars: by degrees the mist rolled away, and we could admireInterlaken, where you know D—— was prevented passing part of his summer by the unfavourable description given by ——. I should prefer it even to Thun, for its green plain nestles more closely under the hills. Thepensionsare built on the same line, but apart;with a mountain back and mountain view, their gardens surrounding them, and a noble avenue of old walnut-trees extending the whole length they occupy. The road toLauterbrunnenwinds through shady lanes and crosses meadows of Swissverdure,and then lies beneath wooded hills, on the summit of one of which risesUnspunnen,the castle of Byron’s Manfred; a square and a round tower, from the top of one of which spring two slight trees, being all remaining. The marriage of the baroness Ida ofUnspunnenwithEschenbachofWadischwylbare to the latter’s house her father’s lands ofUnspunnen,she being his only child, andOberhofenher maternal inheritance.
An illustrious ancestor of thisEschenbach, but more as poet than warrior, though for his military exploits he was armed knight by Count Poppo ofHenneberg,was Wolfram; the year of whose birth is not known with certainty, but who lived when the emperors of the house of Swabia had roused in Germany a love for poetry, which had grown to passion: and the verse of its votaries had a depth and brilliancy which in no way foretold the coming barbarism of the fourteenth century. His life passed in the wanderings of a troubadour from court to court, admired and honoured, as he retired to the home of his forefathers but a brief time ere he died. A zealous patron of letters andhis friend was the LandgraveHermannofThuringe,at whose court ofWartbourg(the most romantic of mountain castles) congregated the wisest and wittiest of their time. In the year 1207 six noble minnesingers entered the poetical lists there;Hermannand his fair wife distributing the prizes, while NicholasKlingsor, famed for his love ditties, as well as his knowledge of necromancy and astrology, presided as judge, summoned for that purpose from Hungary. The general voice hailed Wolfram conqueror; butKlingsor, whom he had unwittingly offended, in vengeance adjudged the palm to his friend Henry ofOfterdingen.His superiority was, however, fully acknowledged by the poets of Swabia, with all of whom he was on terms of intimacy, and who styled him sage and master. His genius was varied,—for he was called the Homer and the Ariosto of his day. Among the works his astonishing fertility left to found his fame on, is a species of drama, entitled the Combat ofWartbourg,containing the six pieces recited by himself and his five troubadour companions in 1207 at the court ofThuringe.
A hundred years later lived Walter ofEschenbach, comrade and confidant of the parricide Duke John of Swabia.
When the latter’s father, Duke Rodolph, died, leaving him a boy, the Emperor Albertsent for him to court, and held his patrimony in his own hands as the orphan’s guardian. The minor, become of age, demanded his birthright, which Albert, under various pretexts, refused; and the young man, exasperated by each succeeding subterfuge, urged on by the mockery of his partisans, who nicknamed him Duke sans duchy, and the fear that his uncle might intend his utter spoliation, employed as mediator the bishop ofStrasburg.
He begged that the emperor would at least yield to his nephew some castles with their domains, belonging to his paternal inheritance; but Albert once more evaded a direct reply, speaking of giving Duke John a command in his meditated expedition against Bohemia, and of satisfaction when the wars were done.
The bishop returned from his embassy, the young man heard its issue in silence, breaking it only to observe, “the hand which grasps my birthright menaces my life.” Quitting his reverend adviser, he sought without further delay the companions of his pleasures, who in more serious moments were his counsellors also: these were Ulric of Palm, Rodolph of Wart, and Walter ofEschenbach.
The 1st of May, 1308, there was held an imperial banquet at Stein, at which Albert’s sons and Duke John sate. By the emperor’scommand wreaths of flowers were brought, with which the children and disinherited prince were alike crowned. There was some allusion, some remark made, as to these diadems being sufficiently weighty for the brows which sustained them, to which John listened gloomily. The banquet concluded, the emperor mounted on horseback to proceed toRhinsfeld,whither the empress had gone some days before. His suite was composed of the unpopular favourites,LandenbergandWaldsee,his cousin the count ofHohenberg,and others of his nobles and vassals. Pretexting a fear of overloading the boat, arrived at the river Reuss, John and his party found means to separate Albert from his followers.
He rode slowly and a little in advance across the broad ploughed lands which stretch beneath the hill and castle ofHabsburg,the territory of his ancestors, conversing with the knight of Castelen.
Suddenly riding up to his side, Duke John exclaimed, “Receive the wages of fraud,” and plunged his lance into his throat; at the same moment Balm ran him through the body, and Walter ofEschenbachclove his skull in twain with a back stroke of his sword.
Rodolph of Wart stood motionless, and Castelen fled. Duke John and his friends, terrified as by some unexpected crime, gazed at eachother for the last time, and rushed in various directions from the scene of their murder; Albert had fallen bathed in his blood, and insensible. His suite, congregated on the opposite shore of the river, witnessed the assassination, and fled in fear from their dying master. A poor young woman passing by saw and ran to raise him from the ground; he breathed the last sigh in her arms: twice he essayed to open his eyes, and at the third effort to do so, died.
Duke John took refuge in the solitudes of the Alps, and wandered some days in the forests which surround the abbey ofEinsilden.Disguised as a monk, he travelled thence to Italy, where he threw himself at the pope’s feet, and as a favour obtained from him permission to hide beneath the cowl his remorse and friendlessness. The remainder of his days passed in obscurity as an unknown monk, it was believed in the convent of the Augustines at Pisa; and the blind man who sat begging in the market-place of Vienna, was, it is thought, as he asserted himself to be, son of John the parricide.
Rodolph of Wart, accomplice but not actor in this tragedy, had sought protection with a relative, theComte de Blamont,who, for a sum of money, betrayed him to Albert’s survivors. He was married to a noble lady ofthe house of Balm, who was fondly attached to him. Having implored his pardon vainly on her knees, before the Empress Elizabeth and her daughter Queen Agnes, she determined on affording him the consolation of her presence when condemned to be broken on the wheel: his sentence was executed. His torments, ere they ended his existence, lasted three days and three nights, during which his unhappy wife remained kneeling near him in tears and prayer, taking neither food nor drink.
It was said by some that he had been wholly innocent, and even unaware of the meditated murder; he solemnly asserted it while his broken limbs were stretched on the wheel. When he had expired, his widow rose, travelled on foot to Bale, and died. Ere yet Rodolph was taken, Duke Leopold had entered his domains in arms, put all his domestics to the sword, and razed the castle of Wart to the level of the ground. Jaques of Wart, his innocent brother, reduced to beggary, lived the remainder of his days in a poor cabin ofNeflenbach,a village founded by his ancestors.
Farwangen,the chief among the castles of the lords of Balm, capitulated; but Duke Leopold and his sister Agnes, queen of Hungary, widow of King Andrew, caused sixty-three nobles and many other warriors tobe conducted to the forest, and beheaded there in her presence. It was then that Agnes, as their blood streamed round her, said, “I am bathing in the dews of a May morning.”
When the castle of the house ofEschenbach(whose name has induced me to linger so long on this story) was taken, and all the vassals of Walter had been massacred, the soldiers of Agnes, and herself also, were attracted by the faint cries of an infant in its cradle, whom the shouts and shrieks of the assailants and their victims had fearfully roused. The boy was so beautiful as to interest even Agnes, hard and cruel as she was, till she discovered he was Walter’s son, when she commanded that he should be put to death also; and her officers had much ado to shield this one life from the fury which had exterminated before all those who protected it. Yielding at last, she commanded that he should renounce the name ofEschenbach, and be calledSchwartzenberg.It is probable that the child did not grow to manhood, for his father was last of his line.
Walter ofEschenbachsent to his wife the deeds of the property she had brought him as her marriage portion, became a shepherd, and lived as one, in the county ofWürtemberg,thirty-five years. He made himself knownonly when at the point of death, and was interred with the pomp due to the dignity of the ancient family which in his person closed. On the spot where the emperor was murdered, the Empress Elizabeth and Queen Agnes founded the monastery ofKœnigsfeldenthe high altar being built on the very place where he expired.
No one crime was ever succeeded by so many in pretended expiation. All who bore the same name with any of the guilty; all who had ever had connexion with them; all found within the prescribed domains, were sacrificed without pity. The accomplices not taken were put to the ban of the empire, their marriage vows dissolved, their friends commanded to avoid their presence, their enemies permitted to free themselves of their lives, their lands adjudged to the empire.
Agnes having founded the convent, ever averse to communion with the world, hard, cold, and cruel, though only six-and-twenty, enclosed herself within its walls, distributing alms, practising fast and penance, and performing the most humble offices. It was in vain however that she strove to attract toKœnigsfeldenthe old brother Berthold ofOfftringen,who had been a knight and warrior, and lived as a hermit on the mountain: “Woman,” he said, “you serve God ill whileshedding innocent blood, and founding monasteries with the fruit of your rapine; only on goodness and mercy doth he look with favouring eye.”
The road having passedUnspunnen,skirts a wild stream in an enchanting glen, the WhiteLutschine,which waters the valley ofLauterbrunnen. On entering the village ofZweylustchinenrthe mountains open to leave a way toGrindelwald, and through the chasm rushes the sister torrent, the BlackLutschine,a picturesque bridge crossing the place where meet these troubled waters.
Our road lay straight before, made beautiful by the varied forms and tints of the bold rocks which are the belt of the WhiteLutschine,and the dark and vivid green of pines and beech, which rise among the crevices, or from the strangely shattered summits of these crags, stained brown and grey, like genius springing from and brightening poverty.
Somewhere hereabouts, where there is barely room left for the car between rock and river, one of the former, projecting over the path sombre and sternly, once shadowed a fratricide. Of the tradition I heard only that the murderer was a powerful noble, who after his crime left in remorse his castle to ruin, and his lands to the first invader, and died in his wanderings.
The valley continued to narrow till we had surmounted the ascent to the first houses ofLauterbrunnen. On the left was the rock ofHunenflue,having the form and regularity of a bastion. Before us we saw theJungfrau, who had dropped her veil, demanding I suppose the sun’s homage on her maiden brow, which he yielded soon after, but not until we had seen theStaubbach,—alas! without its iris.
The fall is on the right hand, about a quarter of a mile from the Capricorn, where we left our conveyance. The new hotel, which bears its name, and is built closer to it, commands the best view, saving that from the mound beneath it, which, in its deceitful neighbourhood, appears a hillock, but whose steep side I climbed with difficulty, and was puzzled to descend with sober step. We offered due reverence to the cascade, arriving ancle deep in the rivulet, from the plank made slippery by its spray; receiving a bath on the before-named mound, where the voice of the water was so loud we could not hear our own; but certainly not aware that in its spring of eight hundred feet it sometimes brings down stones to break its admirers’ reveries. The late rains had increased its volume and grandeur, and therefore perhaps lessened its resemblance to the tail of a white horse in thewind. In the winter it forms a colonnade of ice.
Along the wall of cliff which bounds this side of the valley, are other falls of equal beauty, though less fame. TheJungfrauandWetterhornclose its extremity, and up the mountains, on the stream’s opposite shore, the green pastures stretch nearly to the summit, dotted with chalets to receive cattle and herdsmen, some seeming too high for human foot to rest on. These and the poorer houses of the village, which is scattered over the valley, are built of whole pine trunks, rudely mortised at the corners, a hole left for door and window, and the heavy stones laid on their roofs of bark, that the wind may not whirl them away.
The more aristocratic dwellings have the sawn planks which form their walls carved and ornamented, the open balconies of elaborate workmanship, and below the jutting roof inscriptions graven to recall the name of the owner, and the year and day in which the work was done, and generally some blessing, in quaint rhyme, on building and builder.
We had not intended a visit to the glaciers ofGrindelwald, but the day growing fine and the road thither tempting us as we approached the bridge, our resolution altered. The narrow road winds along precipices, high abovethe BlackLutschine,and till it brought us within sight of the glaciers, with the domes and spires of snow which shoot up above them, I thought less interesting than the way toLauterbrunnen. The two glaciers are well seen from the inn windows and its garden. TheMettenbergseparates them, theWetterhornforming the boundary of that nearestLauterbrunnen.
The places occupied by these seas of ice were once, according to tradition, fertile valleys, for in one of them was discovered a buried chapel and a bell, bearing the date 1044. From the arch of an ice cavern in this upper glacier issues the BlackLutschine;green pastures, with wild flowers and strawberries growing at their edge, are here on a level with the masses of ice ever encroaching, like death advancing to grasp childhood.
In 1790, the innkeeper ofGrindelwald, crossing the glacier while driving a few sheep home from the mountains, slipped down a crevice, and found himself laid, with a broken arm only, beneath a vault of ice, and beside the torrent. Guided by the dim light which crept through the fissures, he followed along its edge, and issued through the arch into the world; he was still living when Ebel wrote.
The clergyman who in 1821 explored the glacier between theMettenbergandEigher,met with a similar accident, but which ended fatally. He fell to a depth of seven hundred feet, and his body, recovered after twelve days of vain attempts, lies buried in the cemetery ofGrindelwald.
We dined in company of a most hungry and silent young German, and returned toUnterseen;the drive back lovelier than you can conceive, for in the place of mist we had sun and shadow; the torrent sparkling, and the distant snow blending gold with rose colour.
The horses were found in safety, Grizzle demanding oats with the impatience and attitudes of a wild beast. It is mournful to shut oneself within a lonely room in a strange inn. I walked, while the light remained, up the flight of steps which, just opposite our hotel, lead to the church, whose grey tower has the Harder for background. In the churchyard was something sadder than solitude,—the tomb of an only son, who perished, aged twenty-two, in the precipices of the Harder; rose trees were cultivated on the turf, and a bench placed opposite, where sits his mother, who, for the last ten years, has every summer made a six weeks’ pilgrimage from her far home to his grave.
We drank tea at one table of the enormous room, while a noisy Parisian party from the Rue St. Martin, or thereabouts, supped at theother, a young man of the family throwing cakes in the air and catching them in his mouth after the manner, he said himself, of the bears of Berne; there are various modes of seeking instruction when travelling: and a lady, large and red-faced, informed her companions, for our benefit, “how thedouaniershad complimented her on her black eyes, and how they said they were a rarity in Switzerland!”
Rising early, we leftUnterseenby the old road, which passes throughInterlakenand along the rocky bank of the river. In admiration of the lake all the way, and having enjoyed a lovely ride, and seen, without a cloud to shroud them, the whole range of snow peaks with romantic names which surround the Blummis Alp andJungfrau, we reachedBaumgartenearly, and rejoiced in exchanging the solitude of the dark old inn for the society of Mr. ——, his pretty wife, and her gay children.