Canton of 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 of
Erlach—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 of Erlach massacred 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 of
Bubenberg—His saving Morat—His embassy—His return as a
minstrel—Unterseen—Unspunnen once the property of the Eschenbach
family—Walter of Eschenbach—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 the white 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 is
Neunneck; 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 de Grafenried, 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 is omnipresent.
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 in _propria persona_ inhabiting the
town ditch outside the Aarberg gate, 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 a
_magistrate_ of 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, equally distant 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 of
Erlach, 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 of Œchtland, Aargau, and Burgundy, urged
on by the emperor, projected her destruction. The lords of the house of
Neuchâtel, the counts of Kibourg, and Pierre of Gruyères and 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 by
partial 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 at Blamatt, 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 their casques, 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 than
Neunneck, 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 of
Bubenberg, 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 and castellan of
Erlach, son of Ulrich, under whose command many still living had
conquered the leagued nobles at Donnerbuhel forty 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 coroneted casques,
and a hundred and forty knights devoted to my banner, it is indifferent
to me to lose a man.”
Erlach replied 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 of Donnerbuhel and 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 courage is 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 of Underwald and of Soleure were 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 of Bubenberg, and others
of the senate’s oldest members, remained sitting in council, to provide
at all events for the city’s safety.
Rodolph of Erlach led on his troops in the most perfect order, taking
up his position, about mid-day, at a short distance from Laupen on 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 and arms of the
fallen, and Rodolph of Erlach, 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 of Neuchâtel, 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 of Erlach. 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 the castellan of Erlach, grown an aged man, lived
at Reichenbach, 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 of Rudenz.
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
of Laupen suspended from the wall, his son-in-law came to seek 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 reprimanded Rudenz with 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 dangerous ruisseau flowing down their
centre, bound by stone. I feared that my starting Fanny might break a
leg, by slipping down. We rode to the Faucon, 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. The Couronne was 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 the Aarberg gate. 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,
yet into 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 of Strasburg.
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
of Zæringen, 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
by accusing 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 of Erlach, 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 as the 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. Marshal Brune’s policy had sown
division in the senate as well as among the troops. Berne yielded
almost without resistance; and Erlach’s soldiers, blinded by suspicions
artfully instilled, and maddened by despair, massacred him in the
village of Wichdorff.
The treasure of the republic, accumulated through so many generations,
was seized on by Marshal Brune without 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 cadrent _à peu près_ avec 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 asserted that of this
Brune had appropriated to himself the golden medals of the Hôtel 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 before Schaumbourg’s reinforcement 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 the Couronne with 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 Pension Baumgarten stands on higher ground than the Hôtel 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, the Jungfrau and 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 than in
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 of Zæringen, who had refused 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 of Zæringen, (the fall of the founder of Berne twenty-five
years after its foundation,) the Bishop Berthhold of Neuchâtel convoked
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 were Berthoud, Landshut, and other property of
allodial tenure. Thun and Berthoud, 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 even himself
respected. The richest and most ancient of the nobility thronged his
court and were his brothers in arms. When Hartmann of Kibourg died, his
widow, the countess Elizabeth, allowed an overweening influence to Senn
of Münsigen, 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 conciliate Münsigen’s favour
to himself, and to prejudice him against Eberard, at that period
studying at Bologna, 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 of Landshut, which is some leagues from Berthoud,
and Eberard, fatigued with exertion, slept by Hartmann’s side too
soundly to be at first aware of his treason. Hartmann bound him as he
lay, and sent him, thus secured and half naked, under a strong guard,
to Rochefort in Neuchâtel, Comte Rodolph of Neuchâtel being his wife’s
father. Arrived at his destination, Eberard accepted, perforce, for
arbitrator between their differences Duke Leopold of Austria. Leopold
pronounced that Hartmann should 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 of Strasburg
and 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, Count
Hartmann and the favourite, Senn of Münsigen, 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 two
parties, rushed madly at each other, and Hartmann was 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 Count Hartmann, 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. A _pension_ has one disadvantage: for its inmates
depend not on their own resources, 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. The _vie de pension_
consists 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 a _leetle_ scandal (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 that Madame
Rufenacht should 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 all voices echo, and used her pencil in
haste. The Buet, 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 the Voiron,—
“Bien loin, Madame; bien haut,” said the artist, and a cloud above the
Voiron was again marked down, and inscribed Mont Pilatre. The steamer
was passing Coppet, 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. You should have
heard him describe the complacency with which she drew a bit of the
Salève for Monterosa, 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.”
An anecdote Monsieur R—— repeated last evening, of a member of the
national guard of Marseilles, 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 whole pension, 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 the Staubbach; and to
Interlaken, or rather towards Interlaken, 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 of Baumgarten shake their heads at
our discomfiture, as they had done when foretelling it ere we started.
We took refuge instead under 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, opposite Spietz, whose
old castle is romantically placed on a promontory, near the road and on
the lake shore. It belonged to the lords of Bubenberg, and went by the
name of the Golden Manor. One of its most noted possessors was Adrian
of Bubenberg. 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 of Ferrette (the part of Alsace which joins Switzerland) with
flames and blood. This fresh violence restored to Nicholas Diesbach,
the zealous partizan of France, the credit he had lost with his
countrymen. He sought to renew the treaty of alliance with Louis the
Eleventh; but aware that Adrian of Bubenberg’s influence 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 of Spietz; but
when, in 1476, Charles of Burgundy advanced, determined to commence the
campaign by the conquest of Morat, 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 garrison Morat. 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’s conduct and skill saved Morat, 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
of Bubenberg at their head, were despatched to the French court, and
received with royal magnificence. The following year the conqueror of
Morat returned 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 of Bubenberg saw 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 of Spietz afterwards belonged to the family of Erlach, which
counts among its members Rodolph, conqueror of Laupen, murdered by his
son-in-law, and Charles Louis, massacred by his misled soldiers when he
came to defend Berne.
From Spietz the 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 or carriage 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. Unterseen was ten minutes
nearer than Interlaken, 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,—threatening an
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 to Lauterbrunnen;
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, divide
Unterseen from Interlaken. From one of these there is visible between
the nearer mountains a view of the Jungfrau, 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 admire Interlaken, 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. The pensions are 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 to Lauterbrunnen winds through shady lanes and crosses
meadows of Swiss verdure, and then lies beneath wooded hills, on the
summit of one of which rises Unspunnen, 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 of
Unspunnen with Eschenbach of Wadischwyl bare to the latter’s house her
father’s lands of Unspunnen, she being his only child, and Oberhofen
her maternal inheritance.
An illustrious ancestor of this Eschenbach, but more as poet than
warrior, though for his military exploits he was armed knight by Count
Poppo of Henneberg, 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 and his friend was the
Landgrave Hermann of Thuringe, at whose court of Wartbourg (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; Hermann and his fair wife distributing the
prizes, while Nicholas Klingsor, 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; but Klingsor, whom he had unwittingly offended, in vengeance
adjudged the palm to his friend Henry of Ofterdingen. 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 of Wartbourg,
containing the six pieces recited by himself and his five troubadour
companions in 1207 at the court of Thuringe.
A hundred years later lived Walter of Eschenbach, comrade and confidant
of the parricide Duke John of Swabia.
When the latter’s father, Duke Rodolph, died, leaving him a boy, the
Emperor Albert sent 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 of Strasburg.
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 of Eschenbach.
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’s command
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 to
Rhinsfeld, whither the empress had gone some days before. His suite was
composed of the unpopular favourites, Landenberg and Waldsee, his
cousin the count of Hohenberg, 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 of Habsburg, 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 of Eschenbach clove 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 each other 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 of Einsilden. 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, the Comte de Blamont, who, for a sum of
money, betrayed him to Albert’s survivors. He was married to a noble
lady of the 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 of Neflenbach, 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
to be 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 of Eschenbach (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 of Eschenbach, and be called
Schwartzenberg. It is probable that the child did not grow to manhood,
for his father was last of his line.
Walter of Eschenbach sent 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 of Würtemberg, thirty-five years. He made himself
known only 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 of Kœnigsfelden the 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 to Kœnigsfelden the old brother Berthold of
Offtringen, who had been a knight and warrior, and lived as a hermit on
the mountain: “Woman,” he said, “you serve God ill while shedding
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 passed Unspunnen, skirts a wild stream in an enchanting
glen, the White Lutschine, which waters the valley of Lauterbrunnen. On
entering the village of Zweylustchinenr the mountains open to leave a
way to Grindelwald, and through the chasm rushes the sister torrent,
the Black Lutschine, 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 White Lutschine, 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 of Lauterbrunnen. On the left was the rock of Hunenflue,
having the form and regularity of a bastion. Before us we saw the
Jungfrau, 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 the Staubbach,—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 the wind. 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. The Jungfrau and Wetterhorn
close 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 of Grindelwald, 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 above the Black Lutschine, 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 to Lauterbrunnen. The two
glaciers are well seen from the inn windows and its garden. The
Mettenberg separates them, the Wetterhorn forming the boundary of that
nearest Lauterbrunnen.
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 Black Lutschine; 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 of Grindelwald, 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 the Mettenberg
and Eigher, 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 of
Grindelwald.
We dined in company of a most hungry and silent young German, and
returned to Unterseen; 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 the other, 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 the douaniers had complimented her on her black eyes, and how they
said they were a rarity in Switzerland!”
Rising early, we left Unterseen by the old road, which passes through
Interlaken and 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 and Jungfrau, we reached Baumgarten
early, and rejoiced in exchanging the solitude of the dark old inn for
the society of Mr. ——, his pretty wife, and her gay children.