If by this name we are to understand every kind of covered carriage
in which one can with convenience travel, there is no doubt that some
of them were known to the ancients. The _arcera_, of which mention is
made in the twelve tables, was a covered carriage used by sick and
infirm persons[150]. It appears to have been employed earlier than the
soft _lectica_, and by it to have been brought into disuse. A later
invention is the _carpentum_, the form of which may be seen on antique
coins, where it is represented as a two-wheeled car with an arched
covering, and which was sometimes hung with costly cloth[151]. Still
later were introduced the _carrucæ_, first mentioned by Pliny; but so
little is known of them, that antiquaries are uncertain whether they
had only one wheel, like our wheelbarrows, or, as is more probable,
four wheels. This much, however, is known, that they were first-rate
vehicles, ornamented with gold and precious stones, and that the Romans
considered it as an honour to ride in those that were remarkably
high[152]. In the Theodosian code the use of them is not only allowed
to civil and military officers of the first rank, but commanded as a
mark of their dignity[153].
After this, covered carriages seem more and more to have become
appendages of Roman pomp and magnificence; but the manner of thinking
which prevailed under the feudal system banished the use of them for
some time. As it was of the greatest importance to the feudal lords
that their vassals should be always able to serve them on horseback,
they could not think of indulging them with elegant carriages. They
foresaw that by such luxury the nobility would give over riding on
horseback, and become much more indolent and less fit for military
service. Masters and servants, husbands and wives, clergy and laity,
all rode upon horses or mules, and sometimes women and monks upon
she-asses, which they found more convenient. The minister rode to
court, and the horse, without any conductor, returned alone to his
stable, till a servant carried him back to court to fetch his master.
In this manner the magistrates of the imperial cities rode to council
in the beginning of the sixteenth century; so that in the year
1502 steps to assist in mounting were erected by the Roman gate at
Frankfort[154]. The members of the council who, at the diet and on
other occasions, were employed as ambassadors, were on this account
called _Rittmeister_; and even at present the expression _riding
servant_ is preserved in some of the imperial cities. The public entry
of great lords into any place, or their departure from it, was never in
a carriage, but on horseback; and in all the works which speak of the
papal ceremonies there is no mention of a state coach or body coachmen,
but of state horses or state mules. It was necessary that a horse for
his holiness should be of a gray colour; not mettlesome however, but a
quiet, tractable nag; that a stool with three steps should be brought
to assist him to mount, and the emperor and kings, if present, were
obliged to hold his stirrup and to lead the horse[155], &c. Bishops
made their public entrance on horses or asses richly decorated[156].
At the coronation of the emperor, the electors and principal officers
of the empire were ordered to make their entrance on horses, and to
perform their service on horseback[157]. Formerly it was requisite
that those who received an investiture should make their appearance on
horseback: the vassal was obliged to ride with two attendants to his
lord’s court, where, having dismounted from his horse, he received his
fief.
Covered carriages were known in the beginning of the sixteenth century;
but they were used only by women of the first rank, for the men thought
it disgraceful to ride in them. At that period, when the electors and
princes did not choose to be present at the meetings of the states,
they excused themselves by informing the emperor that their health
would not permit them to ride on horseback; and it was considered as
an established point, that it was unbecoming for them to ride like
women[158]. What, according to the then prevailing ideas, was not
allowed to princes, was much less permitted to their servants. In the
year 1544, when Count Wolf of Barby was summoned by John Frederic,
elector of Saxony, to go to Spires to attend the convention of the
states assembled there, he requested leave, on account of his ill
state of health, to make use of a close carriage with four horses.
When the counts and nobility were invited to the marriage solemnity
of the elector’s half brother, duke John Ernest, the invitation was
accompanied with a memorandum, that such dresses of ceremony as they
might be desirous of taking with them should be transported in a small
waggon[159]. Had they been expected in coaches, such a memorandum would
have been superfluous. The use of covered carriages was for a long
time forbidden even to women. In the year 1545 the wife of a certain
duke obtained from him, with great difficulty, permission to use a
covered carriage in a journey to the baths, in which however much pomp
was displayed, but with this express stipulation, that her attendants
should not have the same indulgence[160]. It is nevertheless certain,
that the emperor, kings and princes, about the end of the fifteenth
century, began to employ covered carriages on journeys, and afterwards
on public solemnities.
In the year 1474 the emperor Frederic III. came to Frankfort in a close
carriage; and as he remained in it on account of the wetness of the
weather, the inhabitants had no occasion to support the canopy which
was held over him, but while he went to the council-house, and again
returned. In the year following the emperor visited the same city in a
very magnificent covered carriage. In the description of the splendid
tournament held by Joachim, elector of Brandenburg, at Ruppin, in 1509,
we read of a carriage gilt all over, which belonged to the electress;
of twelve other coaches ornamented with crimson, and of another of
the duchess of Mecklenburg, which was hung with red satin. At the
coronation of the emperor Maximilian, in the year 1562, the elector
of Cologne had twelve carriages. In 1594, when the margrave John
Sigismund did homage at Warsaw on account of Prussia, he had in his
train thirty-six coaches with six horses each[161]. Count Kevenhiller,
speaking of the marriage of the emperor Ferdinand II. with a princess
of Bavaria, says, “The bride rode with her sisters in a splendid
carriage studded with gold; her maids of honour in carriages hung with
black satin, and the rest of the ladies in neat leather carriages.” The
same author mentions the entrance of Cardinal Dietrichstein into Vienna
in 1611, and tells us that forty carriages went to meet him[162]. At
the election of the emperor Matthias, the ambassador of Brandenburg had
three coaches[163]. When the consort of that emperor made her public
entrance, on her marriage in 1611, she rode in a carriage covered
with perfumed leather. Mary, infanta of Spain, spouse of the emperor
Ferdinand III., rode, in Carinthia, in 1631, in a glass carriage in
which no more than two persons could sit. The wedding carriage of the
first wife of the emperor Leopold, who was also a Spanish princess,
cost together with the harness 38,000 florins[164]. The coaches used
by that emperor are thus described by Rink:--“In the imperial coaches
no great magnificence was to be seen: they were covered over with red
cloth and black nails. The harness was black, and in the whole work
there was no gold. The pannels were of glass, and on this account
they were called the imperial glass coaches. On festivals the harness
was ornamented with red silk fringes. The imperial coaches were
distinguished only by their having leather traces; but the ladies
in the imperial suite were obliged to be contented with carriages
the traces of which were made of ropes.” At the magnificent court of
duke Ernest Augustus at Hanover, there were, in the year 1681, fifty
gilt coaches with six horses each[165]. So early did Hanover begin to
surpass other cities in the number of its carriages. The first time
that ambassadors appeared in coaches on a public solemnity was at the
imperial commission held at Erfurth in 1613, respecting the affair of
Juliers[166].
The great lords at first imagined that they could suppress the use of
coaches by prohibitions. In the archives of the county of Mark there
is still preserved an edict, in which the feudal nobility and vassals
are forbid the use of coaches, under pain of incurring the punishment
of felony. In the year 1588, duke Julius of Brunswick published an
order, couched in very expressive terms, by which his vassals were
forbid to ride in carriages. This curious document is in substance
as follows:--“As we know from ancient historians, from the annals of
heroic, honourable and glorious achievements, and even by our own
experience, that the respectable, steady, courageous and spirited
Germans were heretofore so much celebrated among all nations on account
of their manly virtue, sincerity, boldness, honesty and resolution,
that their assistance was courted in war, and that in particular the
people of this land, by their discipline and intrepidity, both within
and without the kingdom, acquired so much celebrity, that foreign
nations readily united with them; we have for some time past found,
with great pain and uneasiness, that their useful discipline and
skill in riding, in our electorate, county and lordship, have not
only visibly declined, but have been almost lost (and no doubt other
electors and princes have experienced the same among their nobility);
and as the principal cause of this is that our vassals, servants
and kinsmen, without distinction, young and old, have dared to give
themselves up to indolence and to riding in coaches, and that few of
them provide themselves with well-equipped riding horses and with
skilful experienced servants, and boys acquainted with the roads: not
being able to suffer any longer this neglect, and being desirous to
revive the ancient Brunswick mode of riding, handed down and bequeathed
to us by our forefathers, we hereby will and command, that all and each
of our before-mentioned vassals, servants and kinsmen, of whatever rank
or condition, shall always keep in readiness as many riding-horses
as they are obliged to serve us with by their fief or alliance; and
shall have in their service able, experienced servants, acquainted
with the roads; and that they shall have as many horses as possible
with polished steel harness and with saddles proper for carrying the
necessary arms and accoutrements, so that they may appear with them
when necessity requires. We also will and command our before-mentioned
vassals and servants to take notice, that when we order them to
assemble, either altogether or in part, in times of turbulence or to
receive their fiefs, or when on other occasions they visit our court,
they shall not travel or appear in coaches, but on their riding-horses,
&c.”[167] Philip II., duke of Pomerania-Stettin, reminded his vassals
also, in 1608, that they ought not to make so much use of carriages as
of horses[168]. All these orders and admonitions however were of no
avail, and coaches became common all over Germany.
It would be difficult to give an exact description of these carriages
without a figure, and drawings or paintings of them do not seem to be
common.
In the month of October 1785, when I visited the senate-house at
Bremen, I saw in the tax-chamber a view of the city, painted on the
wall in oil colours, by John Landwehr, in 1661. On the left side of
the fore-ground I observed a long quadrangular carriage, which did not
appear to be suspended by leather straps. It was covered with a canopy
supported by four pillars, but had no curtains, so that one could see
all the persons who were in it. In the side there was a small door, and
before there seemed to be a low seat, or perhaps a box. The coachman
sat upon the horses. It was evident, from their dress, that the persons
in it were burgomasters.
In the history of France we find many proofs that at Paris, in the
fourteenth, fifteenth, and even sixteenth centuries, the French
monarchs rode commonly on horses, the servants of the court on mules,
and the princesses, together with the principal ladies, sometimes on
asses. Persons of the first rank frequently sat behind their equerry,
and the horse was often led by servants. When Charles VI. wished to see
incognito the entrance of the queen, he placed himself on horseback
behind Savoisy, who was his confidant, with whom, however, he was
much incommoded in the crowd[169]. When Louis, duke of Orleans, that
prince’s brother, was assassinated in 1407, the two _ecuyers_ who
accompanied him rode both upon the same horse[170]. In the year 1534,
queen Eleonora and the princesses rode on white horses (_des haquenées
blanches_) during a sacred festival. That private persons also, such as
physicians, for example, used no carriages in the fifteenth century,
is proved by the principal entrance to their public school, which was
built in 1472, being so narrow that a carriage could not pass through
it, though it was one of the widest at that period. In Paris also, at
all the palaces and public buildings, there were steps for mounting on
horseback, such as those which the parliament caused to be erected in
1599; and Sauval says on this occasion, that though many of these steps
in latter periods had been taken away, there still remained several of
them in his time at old buildings.
Carriages, however, appear to have been used very early in France. An
ordinance of Philip the Fair, issued in 1294, for suppressing luxury,
and in which the citizens’ wives are forbid to use carriages (_cars_),
is still preserved[171]. Under Francis I., or about 1550, somewhat
later, there were at Paris, for the first time, only three coaches,
one of which belonged to the queen, another to Diana de Poictiers,
the mistress of two kings, Francis I. and Henry II., by the latter of
whom she was created duchess of Valentinois, and the third to René
de Laval, lord of Bois-dauphin. The last was a corpulent unwieldy
nobleman, who was not able to ride on horseback. Others say, that the
first three coaches belonged to Catherine de Medici; Diana, duchess
of Angoulême, the natural daughter of Henry II., who died in 1619, in
the eightieth year of her age; and Christopher de Thou, first president
of the parliament. The last was excused by the gout; but the rest
of the ministers of state soon followed his example[172]. Henry IV.
was assassinated in a coach; but he usually rode through the streets
of Paris on horseback, and to provide against rain, carried a large
cloak behind him. For himself and his queen he had only one coach; as
appears by a letter still preserved, in which he writes to a friend, “I
cannot wait upon you today, because my wife is using my coach[173].”
We, however, find two coaches at the public solemnity on the arrival
of the Spanish ambassador, Don Peter de Toledo, under Henry IV.[174]
This contradiction is not worth further research; but it shows that
all writers do not speak of the same kind of carriages or coaches, and
that every improvement has formed as it were an epoch in the history of
them, which perhaps would be best elucidated by figures or engravings.
Roubo, in his costly Treatise on joiners’ work[175], has given three
figures of such (_chars_) carriages as were used under Henry IV., from
drawings preserved in the king’s library. By these it is seen that
those coaches were not suspended by straps, that they had a canopy
supported by ornamented pillars, and that the whole body was surrounded
by curtains of stuff or leather, which could be drawn up. The coach
in which Louis XIV. made his public entrance, about the middle of the
seventeenth century, appears, from a drawing in the king’s library, to
have been a suspended carriage.
The oldest carriages used by the ladies in England were known under
the now-forgotten name of _whirlicotes_. When Richard II., towards
the end of the fourteenth century, was obliged to fly before his
rebellious subjects, he and all his followers were on horseback; his
mother only, who was indisposed, rode in a carriage. This, however,
became afterwards somewhat unfashionable, when that monarch’s queen,
Ann, the daughter of the emperor Charles IV., showed the English
ladies how gracefully and conveniently she could ride on a side-saddle.
Whirlicotes therefore were disused, except at coronations and other
public solemnities[176]. Coaches were first known in England about
the year 1580, and, as Stow says, were introduced from Germany by
Fitz-allen, earl of Arundel[177]. In the year 1598, when the English
ambassador came to Scotland, he had a coach with him[178]. Anderson
places the period when coaches began to be in common use, about the
year 1605. The celebrated duke of Buckingham, the unworthy favourite of
two kings, was the first person who rode with a coach and six horses,
in 1619. To ridicule this new pomp, the earl of Northumberland put
eight horses to his carriage.
Towards the end of the thirteenth century, when Charles of Anjou made
his entrance into Naples, the queen rode in a carriage, called by
historians _caretta_, the outside and inside of which were covered with
sky-blue velvet, interspersed with golden lilies, a magnificence never
before seen by the Neapolitans. At the entrance of Frederic II. into
Padua, in the year 1239, it appears that there were no carriages, for
the most elegantly dressed ladies who came to meet him were on palfreys
ornamented with trappings (_sedentes in phaleratis et ambulantibus
palafredis_). It is well known that the luxury of carriages spread from
Naples all over Italy.
Coaches were seen for the first time in Spain in the year 1546. Such at
least is the account of Twiss, who, according to his usual custom, says
so without giving his authority[179].
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, John of Finland, on his
return from England, among other articles of luxury, brought with him
to Sweden the first coach[180]. Before that period, the greatest lords
in Sweden, when they travelled by land, carried their wives with them
on horseback. The princesses even travelled in that manner, and, when
it rained, took with them a mantle of wax-cloth.
It appears that there were elegant coaches in the capital of Russia so
early as the beginning of the seventeenth century[181].
But to what nation ought we to ascribe the invention of coaches? If
under this name we comprehend covered carriages, these are so old as
not to admit of any dispute respecting the question. To the following,
however, one might expect an answer, Who first fell on the idea of
suspending the body of the carriage from elastic springs, by which the
whole machine has undoubtedly been much improved? To this question,
however, I can find no answer, except the information before-mentioned,
that suspended carriages were known in the time of Louis XIV.
As the name coach is now adopted, with a little variation, in all the
European languages, some have thought to determine the country of
this invention from the etymology of the word[182]. But even allowing
that one could fix the origin of the word, it would by no means be
ascertained what kind of a carriage we ought properly to understand
by it. M. Cornides[183] has lately endeavoured to prove that the word
_coach_ is of Hungarian extraction, and that it had its rise from a
village in the province of Wieselburg, which at present is called
_Kitsee_, but was known formerly by the name of _Kotsee_, and that this
travelling machine was even there first invented. However this may
be, the grounds on which he supports his assertion deserve to be here
quoted, as they seem at least to prove that in the sixteenth century,
or even earlier, a kind of covered carriages was known, under the name
of Hungarian carriages[184]. As the word _Gutschi_, and not _Gutsche_,
was used at first in Germany, the last syllable gives us reason to
conjecture that it is rather of Hungarian than German extraction. As
Hortleder[185] tells us that Charles V., because he had the gout, laid
himself to sleep in an Hungarian _Gutsche_, one might almost conclude
that the peculiarity of these carriages consisted in their being so
constructed as to admit people to sleep in them. This conjecture
is supported by the meaning of the word _Gutsche_, which formerly
signified a couch or sofa[186]. As the writers quoted by Cornides call
the Hungarian coaches sometimes (_leves_) light, sometimes (_veloces_)
swift, they ought rather to be considered as a particular kind of
carriages for travelling with expedition. It is, however, still more
worthy of remark, that, so early as the year 1457, the ambassador of
Ladislaus V., king of Hungary and Bohemia, brought with him to the
queen of France, besides other presents, a carriage which excited great
wonder at Paris, and which, as an old historian says, was _branlant et
moult riche_[187]. Does not the first word of this expression seem to
indicate that the carriage was suspended?
A peculiar kind of coach has been introduced in latter times under the
name of Berlin. The name indicates the place which gave birth to the
invention, as the French themselves acknowledge; though some, with very
little probability, wish to derive it from the Italian[188]. Philip de
Chiese, a native of Piedmont, and descended from the Italian family
of Chiesa, was a colonel and quarter-master-general in the service of
Frederic William, elector of Brandenburg, by whom he was much esteemed
on account of his knowledge in architecture. Being once sent to France
on his master’s business, he caused to be built, on purpose for this
journey, a carriage capable of containing two persons; which, in France
and everywhere else, was much approved, and called a berline. This
Philip de Chiese died at Berlin in 1673[189].
Coaches have given rise to a profession which in large cities affords
maintenance to a great number of people, and which is attended with
much convenience; I mean that of letting out coaches for hire, known
under the name of _fiacres_, hackney-coaches[190]. This originated in
France; for about the year 1650 one Nicholas Sauvage first thought of
keeping horses and carriages ready to be let out to those who might
have occasion for them. The Parisians approved of and patronised this
plan; and as Sauvage lived in the street St. Martin, in a house called
the _hôtel St. Fiacre_, the coaches, coachmen and proprietor, were
called _fiacres_. In a little time this undertaking was improved by
others, who obtained a license for their new institutions on paying a
certain sum of money[191]. Some kept coaches ready in certain places
of the streets, and let them out as long as was required, to go from
one part of the city to another. These alone, at length, retained the
name of _fiacre_, which at first was common to every kind of hired
carriage without distinction. Others kept carriages at their houses,
which they let out for a half or a whole day, a week, or a month:
these coaches were known by the name of _carosses de remise_. Others
kept carriages which at a certain stated time went from one quarter of
the city to another, like a kind of stages, and took up such passengers
as presented themselves; and in the year 1662 some persons set up
carriages with four horses, for the purpose of conveying people to
the different palaces at which the court might be; these were called
_voitures pour la suite de la cour_. The proprietors often quarreled
respecting the boundaries prescribed to them by their licenses; and on
this account they were sometimes united into one company, and sometimes
separated. The police established useful regulations, by which the
safety and cleanliness of these carriages were promoted; marks were
affixed to them, by which they might be known; and young persons and
women of the town were forbidden to use them[192], &c.
A particular kind of hackney carriage, peculiar to the Parisians, in
the opinion of some does no great honour to their urbanity. I mean
the _brouettes_, called sometimes _roulettes_, and by way of derision
_vinaigrettes_. The body of these is almost like that of our sedans,
but rolls upon two low wheels, and is dragged forwards by men. An
attempt was made to introduce such machines under Louis XIII.; but the
proprietors of the sedans prevented it, as they apprehended the ruin of
their business. In the year 1669 they were however permitted, and came
into common use in 1671, but were employed only by the common people.
Dupin, the inventor of these _brouettes_, found means to contrive them
so that they did not jolt so much as might have been expected; and he
was able to conceal this art so well, that for a long time he was the
only person who could make them[193]. The number of all the coaches at
Paris is by some said to be fifteen thousand; the author of Tableau de
Paris reckons the number of the hackney coaches to amount to eighteen
hundred, and asserts that more than a hundred foot passengers lose
their lives by them every year.
Coaches to be let for hire were first established at London in 1625. At
that time there were only twenty, which did not stand in the streets,
but at the principal inns. Ten years after, however, they were become
so numerous, that king Charles I. found it necessary to issue an order
for limiting their number. In the year 1637 there were in London and
Westminster fifty hackney coaches, for each of which no more than
twelve horses were to be kept. In the year 1652 their number had
increased to two hundred; in 1654 there were three hundred, for which
six hundred horses were employed; in 1694 they were limited to seven
hundred, and in 1715 to eight hundred[194].
Hackney coaches were first established in Edinburgh in 1673. Their
number was twenty; but as the situation of the city was unfavourable
for carriages, it fell in 1752 to fourteen, and in 1778 to nine, and
the number of sedans increased.
_Fiacres_ were introduced at Warsaw, for the first time, in 1778. In
Copenhagen there are a hundred hackney coaches[195].
In Madrid there are from four to five thousand gentlemen’s
carriages[196]; in Vienna three thousand, and two hundred hackney
coaches.
At Amsterdam coaches with wheels were in the year 1663 forbidden, in
order to save the expensive pavement of the streets; for coaches there,
even in summer, are placed upon sledges, as those at Petersburgh are in
winter. The tax upon carriages in Holland has from time to time been
raised, yet the number has increased; and some years ago the coach
horses in the Seven United Provinces amounted to twenty-five thousand.
When Prince Repnin made his entrance into Constantinople in 1775, he
had with him eighty coaches, and two hundred livery servants.
[Since the former edition of this work, published in 1814, public
conveyances have undergone considerable changes. Stage-coaches, which
in this country had arrived at such a degree of perfection, and
which, till within a few years, passed through and connected almost
every small town in the United Kingdom, have now nearly disappeared
in consequence of the introduction of railroads. It is also rare in
London to meet with a solitary hackney coach, this class of vehicles
being almost entirely superseded by the lighter one-horsed cabriolets
which were first introduced as public conveyances in the year 1823. The
number of hackney coaches and cabriolets now plying for hire in the
streets of London amounts to 2650, of which probably not more than 250
are two-horsed coaches.
That very useful form of public conveyance, the omnibus, which is at
present met with in nearly every large town in Europe, originated in
Paris in 1827. In the latter part of 1831 and the beginning of 1832,
omnibuses began to ply in the streets of London. Those running from
Paddington to the Bank were the earliest. Carriages, however, of a
similar form were used in England as Long Stages more than forty years
ago, but were discontinued as they were not found profitable. They were
in most request at holiday time, by schoolmasters in the neighbourhood
of London; and some even of the present generation will remember their
joyous pranks on journeying home in these capacious machines.
There are now about 900 omnibuses running in London and its
immediate vicinity. The line from Paddington to the Bank is served
by two companies, the London Conveyance Company, and the Paddington
Association, which have mutually agreed to run forty omnibuses each. An
idea of the utility of these conveyances may be formed from the fact
that the receipts of each of the eighty carriages on the above line
averages 1000_l._ per annum, in sixpences.