Leave Thun—Zweizemmen—The wrong road—Château d’Œx—Gruyères—The
Préfet’s ball—Anniversary of the Virgin’s leaving school—Vevay—The
patient Griselda’s obstinacy—The exploit—Villeneuve—The Valley of
the Rhone—St. Maurice—The Theban legion—The Valais—The village
buried—The Rhone overflowed—Former inundation—The old villager
saved—St. Bernard—Story of its founder—Martigny—Riddes—Sion—The
prelate’s murder—The family of the Rarons—The Mazza—Raron
persecuted—Demands the aid of Duke Amedée—His castle burned—His
wife driven forth—His revenge—The cretins of Sierre.
Left Thun the 9th, at eleven, as we waited till the morning fogs, which
have now grown dense and cold, rolled up from the valley. The last bad
weather, which to us brought rain, laid a light covering of snow on the
mountain summits, which the natives say is a favourable sign. Madame
Rufenacht remains a desolate widow. Madame R. and Mrs. H—— left
(wisely) some hours before us, as the mist no sooner rises than the
heat becomes intense. The road was for some distance that we had ridden
towards Interlaken; it turns off where the river Kander comes dashing
along its stony defile, and beneath its covered wooden bridge, to the
lake. Our route skirted its precipices, and is very lovely where, at
the entrance of the valley of the Simmenthal, the wooded base of the
Niesen and the Stockhorn’sr crags leave barely space for the road and
the torrent, which a one arched bridge spans. We found at Erlenbachr
Mr. ——, who was to be our companion on this day’s journey, and, to
our regret, this day’s only; as he is light-hearted and light-footed,
all annoyance, and most fatigue, finding him invulnerable. Near the
village was an extensive horse and cattle fair, through which, without
the assistance of his mountain pole and his hand on her rein, it would
have been difficult to guide Fanny unharmed, particularly as, when they
stood “betwixt the wind and her nobility,” she took a sly opportunity
of biting two four-footed plebeians. Weissenburg is picturesquely
situated beside the torrent. We crossed it a few steps further on a
wooden bridge, where horses pay a toll of a batz each, which the
receiver, in her fly cap, ran after us to levy. The path to the baths
winds up the hill on the right hand.
Further on, the river forms a pretty cascade, boiling and bounding over
its stones below the precipitous road. Stopped at Zweizemmen,
twenty-seven miles from Thun, a village of wooden houses with a wooden
inn, and nothing to eat. It was unfortunately too late to go further,
as the horses were the only individuals passably lodged and in any
degree fed. With the exception of a damp, limp loaf and a plate of
nuts, our supper presented an uneatable variety, and I was obliged to
confess that I had left comfort behind when I preferred the romantic
route of the Simmenthal to that by Berne and Fribourg. A quantity of
wearing apparel, very far from new, hung round my bed-room, which the
servant, with German phlegm, said “could not derange me as I lay in
bed,” and I had some trouble to get removed in consequence. These
wooden mansions are like a sounding board, for, while I was dressing
this morning, I heard distinctly, as if she had been in the room, a
lady in the next admonishing her daughter, and D—— and Mr. ——
conversing at breakfast below; forming a tower of Babel colloquy. We
had such coffee as the French call _eau trouble_, its few grounds
floating to the top; and dismissed the unborn chickens presented for
eggs. Our acquaintance parted from us here, hiring a car as far as
Château d’Œx, whence he was to take the footpath to Vevay across the
Dent de Jaman. We started after him, and on the wrong road, no one
belonging to the Wooden Crown attempting to set us right. Over blocks
of stone, and by a way which grew steep and narrow as a mule-path, we
toiled debating whether we had mistaken, or this was indeed what the
natives called a passable bridle-road. I asked a peasant at a cottage
window, “Is this the road to Saanen?” “Ya,” said the dame composedly,
pointing her hand with the stocking dangling from it to the sharp
ascent scattered over with lumps of crag large enough to break a
horse’s leg.
Looking down in despair, we could distinguish another road far away on
the other side of the torrent and the valley. “Is that the road to
Saanen?” I shrieked to a man who was driving a goat.
“Ya, ya.”
“And this we are going?”
“Ya.” So seeing no further information likely, we led the horses down
this stone ladder in search of the new road, returning to the village
which it skirts without entering; leaving me a hope that its completion
will in no way serve the abominable Wooden Crown of Zweizemmen. It is a
grand work, a broad splendid causeway for a long distance cut along the
face of the rock several hundred yards above the torrent, but without
the semblance of a parapet, a circumstance of which Fanny’s starts
often reminded me. It crosses the stream a dozen times over handsome
bridges built of stone. One of the principal of these is yet in
progress, and a young German at work on the road pointed to the steep
sheep-track which dips suddenly down to the torrent’s edge, and a
narrow path which followed its windings. Not much liking the itinerary,
we asked whether horses might not pass over, but the German, who spoke
a little English, saying, “Peoples, only peoples,” down obediently we
went, passing under the bridge, and pausing in the loveliest ravine in
the world, with its clear rushing water and mountain sides covered with
pines, those near us brilliant in light and black in shadow; and the
faint mist shedding a blue tinge over the further and higher forests;
the bold arch flung over at a considerable elevation, still surrounded
by its wooden framework, and all the workmen, variously and
picturesquely attired, crowding to the edge to look down on the
apparition of Fanny pawing in the water. Continuing to follow its
banks, there being neither guide nor finger-post, we crossed a wooden
bridge, without rails, broad enough for one horse at a time, and high
enough to break our necks perfectly. The glen and the path grew
narrower, till at last we came on a party of workmen, whose cart, laden
with stones, completely blocked our passage, and the horses, which we
tried to force into the water, refused to stir, inasmuch as they did
not know its depth, and the crags it foamed over were visible.
The cart, from which the horses had been taken, was immoveable, despite
the united efforts of the civil Germans—rather a fortunate
circumstance, as, on asking the question, we found we were not likely
to arrive that way at Saanen. One of the men left his work to conduct
us back to the bridge without parapets, and up a narrow, slippery, and
perpendicular road, ranging over the admired ravine, which happily
brought us to a level with the new bridge, and beyond it on the way to
Saanen, to which unpicturesque place we arrived by a short cut, for
once successful.
At the next village, we left the Canton Berne for the Canton Vaud.
Before entering the latter at Rougemont, from another stone bridge, we
saw a lovely assemblage of torrent and mountain—one range all snow,
the rest with a robe of green pastures and a crown of pine forests. Fed
the horses at Château d’Œx, a commanding feudal situation when it
belonged to the lords of Gruyères, perched on an eminence in the plain,
backed by wild crag and mountain.
The road crosses the Saane and enters a narrow pass called Latine.
Montbovon, the village which Lord Byron mentions, is here in the Canton
Fribourg, and from it ascends the mule-path to the Dent de Jaman. Our
own road was far from safe, and at present almost impassable for
post-carriages, as for a considerable distance between the rock and
precipice there would be no room to pass. We fortunately met only two
carts, and had some trouble in leading our horses by, as there is no
protection on the side of the precipice; the road rises and falls
continually, cut through the rock and the pines, and high over the
torrent. It continues thus for some miles, the stream and valley then
widen, and grow calmer in their beauty. No one along these new roads,
undivided by league-stones, has an idea of distance. We were told two
leagues for the last fifteen miles, and we were weary and the sun low
when we came in sight of Gruyères, and admired its old castle and town
high on the hill, below which we wound. On the authority of the
Baumgarten, having reckoned on twenty-five miles, we found we had
ridden forty-two. As the last faint light was disappearing, we crossed
the last stream with its border of pines, and near the watch-tower of
Trême, built on a rock, with an arch by its side and dirty habitations
round, and, to my extreme satisfaction, arrived at the Cheval Blanc;
and little Fanny, recollecting her bed of a month ago, walked straight
to the stable-door.
We had our old room opposite the castle, and the inn yclept hôtel de
_la Mort_, a most ill-omened name.
Three of the castle windows were feebly lighted, and I heard, on
inquiry, that the préfet gave a ball; but not choosing to pay the fine
levied here, as well as at Geneva, on entertainments during undue
hours, the six young ladies and fifteen gentlemen who formed the
company were invited to dance from five to ten!
It was fête at Bulle, and everybody tipsy in honour of it. I heard it
was the anniversary of the Virgin Mary’s quitting the convent in which
she had been educated, to marry St. Joseph.
Wednesday, September 11.
Arrived at Vevay, the day having been as burning as that on which we
left it a month ago. The horses gave a strange proof of memory,
insisting on stopping at a fir wood, where we then rested them in the
shade. Persecuted by the small vineyard flies and musquitoes, of which
we were free in the mountains, wearied by the horses kicking the whole
length of the steep paved hills, we were glad to reach the Trois
Couronnes, where we found our Thun acquaintances and the letters we
expected, but must wait for the baggage.
16th September.
We intended leaving Vevay last Friday in company with Mr. and Mrs.
H——, but Griselda the patient having with great reluctance allowed
the putting on of three shoes, so positively insisted on kicking the
farrier and his assistant from the off hind leg, that having called her
_rosse_ and _démon_, and sworn considerably, they gave up the idea,
leaving her with three new shoes and a hoof with none. This was an
impediment to the journey quite unlooked for, and rather disturbed our
equanimity. Saturday, D—— bribed the farriers back, and after
breakfast and goûter they returned to look at her and to talk, and at
four o’clock the business seemed still far from completion, when one
bethought him of tweaking her nose. This operation, with the aid of two
pushing her side, one holding her leg, and the fifth shoeing, proved
successful. Little Fanny, seeing her comrade surrounded to be
sacrificed, shrieked a melancholy neigh, as she was tied in the corner.
The gold was drunk merrily, and the exploit of the five has been so
exaggerated by dint of telling it, that I should think the conquest of
the grey horse would remain, for all future travellers’ advantage,
inscribed among the “fastes” of Vevay.
The rain has fallen in torrents during three days; this morning was
fine, and the road enchanting; we passed again old Blonay, and
Chastellar on his hill, and Clarens with her foot in the water, and the
peak of Jaman above the spire of Montreux, the mountains not like those
of the Simmenthal, everywhere dark with evergreen pine, but their sides
feathered with summer leaves, and the spiral fir-forests, only far
above, pointing against the blue sky.
Arrived at the narrowed road, and the high grey crag opposite Chillon,
Fanny walked to the drawbridge, and but for the mist in the valley of
the Rhone rising gradually and threatening, we should have paid it one
visit more. The view of the castle is far grander from the shore than
lake, as its uniformity is broken by the three massive towers and the
keep which surmounts them, and it wears the sober grey which should be
the livery of a feudal castle. We suspect the wall towards the lake of
having been lately whitewashed, and the republicans have daubed thereon
an enormous device, inscribed Liberté and Patrie.
As we wound along the road towards Villeneuve, beneath the old walnut
trees, we turned to see it and the prisoners’ isle, till D——, who
accuses me of always admiring scenery backwards, cricked his neck. The
tiny habitation has no business on the island; the mountain breeze
should only blow over the three tall trees and the flowers of gentle
hue.
Villeneuve is an abominable hole: its inns of the Croix Blanche and
Lion d’Or looking equally uninviting. Bidding here good-bye to the
lake, we enter the valley of the Rhone, wild and muddy, with his
eighty-four tributary streams, already received in his passage through
the mountains. L’Aigle is a charming village, hid in the hills. Bex is
not, in my opinion, situated quite so prettily, but the inn has a
prepossessing appearance.
A peasant pointed out the way to the Salines, which lie in the mountain
behind, but of them you must ask descriptions elsewhere, for it just
then began to rain heavily, and we put on our cloaks, bound for
Martigny. St. Maurice stands, its castle on the crag, above the road
from Geneva, where a fine bridge crosses the wild Rhone, its one arch
flung from the Dent de Morcles on the further side, to the Dent du Midi
on ours. Before us was a little fort, thrown up by the Swiss in 1832,
to defend this already well closed pass. I thought it one of the most
striking spots I had seen in Switzerland. You know the legend, that
here in the year 302, the Theban legion was massacred by command of the
Emperor Maximilian, and the place called St. Maurice, from the name of
the chief of these martyrs, who refused to abjure Christianity. When we
had crossed the bridge, the grandeur and the beauty merged in the muddy
street of this most filthy town; the contrast between the Vaud we had
left and the Valais we had just entered, marvellous, considering that
the separation is a bridge seventy feet long. Manure heaps before the
doors, and pigs revelling in them once more; and the hideous goitre,
and more hideous cretin, telling at every step their tale of
unwholesome filth and misery. One passed us with the usual vacant grin
and dead eye, and uttered a yell which startled the horses; the
wretched object wore a petticoat, and we could not tell whether it were
male or female.
Leaving the Rhone to our right, and now again passing numerous crosses
and chapels, and votive offerings, which deprecate its fury, we came at
no great distance to a most desolate spot, where the road for a
considerable way crosses a tract covered only with gravel and crags, in
melancholy disorder. Among the rubbish is a roofless cottage, almost
buried. We were told that the bursting of a glacier in 1835 caused this
desolation; a torrent of mud descended from the Dent du Midi, floating
on its surface the blocks of stone which ruined the valley, sacrificing
no lives, as its progress was slow, but overwhelming fields, orchards,
and houses. It skirts the road for the length of nine hundred feet, and
is the saddest sight imaginable; we were glad to exchange it even for
the low barberry bushes which, with their pendent fruit, like coral
branches, cover a soil which seems to produce little beside.
Shortly before reaching the waterfall of the Sallenche, we found that
the Rhone had broken his usual bounds, and overflowed the narrow
valley, more muddy in his rapid course than ever. The rain had ceased
falling, but the mists lingered and deepened, and the clouds lay
ominously low on the dark bare mountains. The fall is the finest I have
seen, from the volume of its foaming water, and the violence with which
it leaps from crag to crag through the ravine it has hollowed till it
makes its last bound of one hundred and twenty feet, and from the basin
which receives it, the spray mounts like steam. As, excepting the
elevated causeway on which we stood, the whole expanse was here
inundated, the broad sheet of water under it, and blackness of the
crags surrounding, with a rare tuft of green here and there, but mostly
naked and shattered, added to the grand melancholy of the scene, the
vale of the Rhone might form a fit picture of the valley of the shadow
of death.
Farther on a covered bridge, we crossed the Trient, a narrow but wild
torrent, descending from the Tête Noire, and issuing from the black
mouth of the stony gorge which opens barely enough to vomit it forth.
The rain recommenced, and we saw through the mist the round tower of
the castle of La Batie, once a stronghold of the bishops of Sion, built
on the summit of a solitary rock, not far from Martigny; between it and
the town we crossed the Dranse, where it flows to swell the Rhone.
Arrived at the hotel de la Poste we were kept waiting a long time for
the worst of all meals, served up in a picturesque vaulted hall, where
fire and candles only made darkness visible. We cut up the doubtful
meat only in mercy to the next comers. I imagine this has been a
convent, from the open pillared galleries which run round the old
house, and the corridors and private stairs, and rooms like cells.
A black line drawn along the outer wall of several houses in Martigny
recalls the height to which the waters rose in the inundation of 1818,
when the masses fallen from the glaciers of Getroz into the valley
first formed an obstacle, behind which the waters of the Dranse,
stopped in their flow, accumulated to a lake, and at last yielding to
the mighty pressure, gave passage to the scourge, which in an hour and
a half had swept over the eight leagues which divided it from Martigny,
having borne away all that stood in its path; the bridge of Mauvoisin,
ninety feet above its ordinary course, three hundred habitations, and a
forest.
It is wonderful that its column rushed, without touching, past the
village of Bauvernier, emitting a vapour like the smoke of a
conflagration. It went on to tear from their foundations eighty houses
at Martigny; its surface covered with the bodies of drowned cattle, and
human beings, despite their warning, taken unawares.
One wondrous instance of preservation occurred in the person of an old
man, aged a hundred years: there was a high mound, formed of the wrecks
cast there by the former inundation of 1595. He would have been too
feeble to climb it for safety; he stood there by chance when the
roaring destroyer rushed by, circling round, without wetting the sole
of his foot, as if it respected the monument of its former power.
This morning, 17th of September, started early as we conveniently
could, the innkeeper having told us, for our comfort, that the overflow
of the Rhone has cut the road between Sion and Sierre, and stopped the
diligence. The monks of St. Bernard have a convent here, and when the
climate has undermined the health of their brothers on the mountain,
they are relieved from hence.
The monastery of the Great St. Bernard is distant but a ten hours’
journey; we intended going thither, but feared to over-fatigue our
horses, yet I wished it much, from admiration of these self-made
martyrs, and also from the romantic story of the founder. The castle of
Menthon, for I must tell you this story, is built on the height which
overlooks the lake of Annecy, in Savoy. An heir was born to its noble
possessors on the 15th of June, 923. From early boyhood his taste and
studies were unsuited to close intercourse with the world; and grown to
a man, he resisted gently but firmly, the will of his family, who had
chosen for his wife the heiress of the house of Dwingt.
As he was the only hope of their line, the sole seedling of their
falling tree, his parents entreated and pressed him earnestly, and the
youth consented at last, unable to deny them longer. The marriage
morning came, the fair young bride was adorned, and the guests
assembled, for there was to be feasting at the castle of Menthon. As
the hour for the ceremony drew nigh, it became matter of marvel that
the bridegroom should so long remain absent. His chamber, where he had
not slept, and the domains of Menthon, were searched vainly; Bernard
had fled. The wedding guests, one by one and whispering, departed, and
the maiden, ere yet she was a wife, was left a widow.
Years went by; the heiress was no longer at Menthon, she had probably
formed a more auspicious alliance, and the desolate father and mother
had no son seated beside them near the hearth of their hall. They had
called up hope till despair came in its place, and believing him dead
at last, they set forth on a pilgrimage, not to the shrine of a saint,
but the feet of a living man, whose self abnegation and holy life had
become the discourse of Christendom.
Travelling by slow journeys, they arrived through the snows at the
summit of the mountain, where the solitary lived in the hospital he had
founded, compassionating the dangers which awaited travellers from
France and Germany to Italy. They found a man old before age, worn with
fatigues and hardships, and knelt before him to ask his blessing, and
to beg he would say masses for the peace of their son’s soul. The monk
knew them, for their old age had altered less than his youth: and while
he blessed them tremulously, they knew his voice, and started from his
feet to fall on his neck and bless him also.
He had fled from the wedding feast to the city of Aosta, where he
received holy orders and became archdeacon of the cathedral. He had
preached at the peril of his life, in the heathen Alpine valleys, and
rooted out idolatry; thrown down the statue of Jupiter still worshipped
on the mount Jou, the little St. Bernard, and founded hospitals on each
of the mountains which now bear his name, instituting for each one a
congregation of monks. He told his past life and his vocation to the
parents who had found him; they wept together, and then they parted, as
was his will, they to return to their lone castle of Menthon, to pray
for its exiled heir; he to bury himself once more in the tomb he had
selected, and forget if he could that he had seen forms and re-awakened
affections which drew him back to the world.
St. Bernard preached in the Alpine valleys forty-two years, and
afterwards in Lombardy, whence he travelled to Rome; he died at Novara
and was canonized.
It is not surprising that the country about Martigny should be
unhealthy; the road from this to Riddes, two posts and a half, is
raised along the centre of a marsh, now overflowed by the Rhone; the
valley produces here only rushes and rank-grass, which feed the thin
cattle scantily, and stunted birch trees, and unprofitable barberry
bushes, and a kind of furze with a red berry. It seems a fitting
habitation only for the frogs, which croaked and jumped by myriads from
the wet bank to the muddy stream as we rode along. The unfortunate
peasants scarce look like human beings. I did not see two with throats
undeformed by enormous goitres. Cretins abound in the valley, and those
not belonging to the idiot tribe have an expression of abjectness and
misery not much higher in the scale. They are mostly of dwarfish
stature, and the women wear the small straw hat with turned-up brim,
ornamented with brilliant ribands of gold and silver tissue, which show
off in all their ugliness their unwholesome complexions and ill-formed
features. At Riddes the Indian corn is cultivated again, and near
Riddes to the right is a fine view of chasm and torrent, a castle above
and hamlet beside, breaking the sadness of the drear valley and barren
mountains. Farther on are pretty villages, surrounded by fine old
walnut-trees and pastures, green as those of the Simmenthal. In a field
we rode by were hay-makers busy; a woman called to desire I would
approach and show my strange figure. I answered, at a like pitch of
voice, that I had not time, and we left merriment behind us.
It would be difficult to fancy a finer grouping of crag, river, and
valley than approaching Sion. The Rhone to the right; the peaked
mountains rising before two crowned with castles; to the left, highest
and grandest, Tourbillon; on the right, Valerie. The first ruined, but
nobly; turret and tower and battlement standing as in the fine old age
which succeeds a strong manhood. Below, as we approached the fortified
wall, which, flanked by its look-out towers, surrounds the city, we saw
the third castle of Majorie, once the residence of the governors of the
Valais. Behind the town, on another and almost inaccessible crag, is
the ruin of the castle of Seyon, of which time, and siege, and fire
have left small remains.
In the year 1375, Wischard of Tawell was bishop of Sion, and had
governed the republic of the Upper Valais, under circumstances of
difficulty, during thirty-three years. This prelate had so well merited
the affection of the people, and the confidence of the neighbouring
districts, that he was named the Count of Savoy’s lieutenant-general in
the Lower Valais. He had attained extreme old age, when one day while
celebrating mass in his castle of Seyon, arrived with his suite his
nephew Baron Anthony of Thurn Gestelenbourg,—whom his high alliance
and extensive domains rendered one of the most important of the nobles.
He had some difference with his uncle respecting the hereditary fief of
the mayoralty of Sion, purchased by the bishop, and to whose rights and
revenues he put forth claims which the old man would not acknowledge.
The dispute grew warm and loud: whether the baron of Thurn was, in his
own person, guilty of what followed, is a fact disputed. Those who
excuse him assert that his furious vassals, uninstigated by his
example, laid violent hands upon the bishop: even while he held his
breviary, despite his feeble resistance and prayers for mercy, he was
thrust forth to the abyss from a window of his rock-founded castle. His
subjects, who loved, rose to avenge him at the news of his murder.
Peter, baron of Raron, his brother and other nobles, either did not
partake in the general opinion of Anthony’s guilt, or allowed party
spirit to deafen them to the claims of country and the cry of nature.
Brieg, Leuk, Sierre and Sion vowed to avenge their lost lord; and,
first taking several castles, met the assembled nobles near the bridge
of St. Leonard, and gained a signal victory. The baron of Thurn vainly
sold to Savoy his domain of Gestelenbourg. The Valaisans became its
masters. The baron of Brandis, a powerful noble of the Simmenthal,
through his mother, who was a Weissembourg, marched his vassals to aid
Anthony. His ill-placed friendship cost him his life, and his dispersed
troops sped homeward by the mountain passes. It was then that the
village of An der Leuk, in the upper Simmenthal, left without defence,
as its men had marched to battle, was entered by a detachment of the
Valaisans, who threatened pillage. The mountain women, bred to
hardships and danger, having their children and their children’s
property to guard, seized on what arms had been left behind, and with
the energy of roused lionesses rushed forth and drove back the enemy.
Anthony of Thurn, forced to quit the country, lived the remainder of
his days at the court of Savoy. About the year 1416, the Valaisans
complained that no account had been rendered of his male fiefs, (he
died without heirs in 1404), and expressed fears that these also would
fall into the hands of the all-grasping Rarons. These barons of Raron,
as the nobles of most ancient date and largest possessions, were the
sole persons whose power counterbalanced that of the bishops of Sion,
till the heir of the house was named to the bishopric at the time his
father held a post of importance, and the opposition ceased to exist as
soon as its cessation placed the whole authority in the hands of son
and father.
The jealousy thus excited was increased by Raron’s character and the
personal dislike it roused. By no means a hard or bad man, his chief
offence towards his country seems to have been his contempt for their
coarse habits and lack of culture, and a predilection for the house of
Savoy. What these habits were may be inferred from a list of laws
passed by the nobles, magistrates, and citizens in council, when his
power was at its zenith. They commanded “that men should be stationed
to enforce the cleansing of the sewers, to prevent their overflow; that
no foul linen should thenceforth be washed in water destined for the
town’s consumption, nor manure allowed to accumulate before the
habitations, and that the high street should be swept at least once a
week.”
The dislike to Raron increased from a report which spread, that, after
the invasion and conquest of the valley of Ossola by the Swiss troops,
the baron had been heard to say, that “had he been opposed to them
there, not one would have returned.”
Offended by this speech, they dispatched to Berne, of which city he was
burgess, the landamman of Unterwald, to demand full satisfaction for
words which, as they affected their honour, could not be passed by
unnoticed. Berne replied, that since she had vainly demanded the baron
of Baron’s aid in an expedition to Oltingen, she had abandoned him to
his own guidance.
The resentment of the Valais gave henceforth its own colouring to every
action of the Raron family, and in particular to its alliance with
Savoy. On a day when the inhabitants of Brieg had assembled, to give
loose to their ever-increasing discontent, a few Savoyard soldiers
arrived in the village from the Simplon pass. They seized their arms,
maltreated and drove them forth, exclaiming that their presence would
be no longer borne with in the Valais.
The authors of this outrage, for their own protection, raised the
country by means of an expedient derived perhaps from some gone-by
custom. Assembling friends and comrades, they bare at evening a large
log to a place where grew a young birch tree which they rooted up. They
carved the stump into the rude semblance of a human figure, and placed
it in the centre of the branches, entangling them with thorns and
brambles, to represent suffering justice encompassed by the trammels of
tyranny; and in proof of their determination to free her, each drove a
nail deep into the stem of the birch tree. They bound the figure, thus
encircled, to a tree on the high road (it was called La Mazza), and
lingered near the spot to mark what might follow. Those who came that
way at dawn stopped also, and there soon gathered a multitude, as yet
in expectant silence and passive. At last one advanced and unbound the
“Mazza,” and placed himself at its side in the centre of the crowd.
Several voices next apostrophized her, demanding what injuries brought
her thither, and treating her silence as the effect of fear caused by
an unjust power.
“If,” they said, “there be in this assembly one man who loves his
country sufficiently to be the Mazza’s questioner, let him advance!”
An instigator of the scene stepped forth:—
“Mazza,” he said, “they are sworn to aid thee: whom dost thou dread? Is
he of the race of Silinen; of the houses of Henn or Asperling?”
The figure, and the man who had stood beside her from the first,
remained motionless; and the speaker continued to enumerate the noble
names of the Valais with as little success as before.
“Is it,” he said at last, “the baron of Raron?”
The wooden figure was bent low to the ground in signal of assent.
“You mark her complaint,” rejoined the orator; “you who will succour
her raise the right hand.”
A large majority obeyed; a near day was appointed; and the news was
sent from village to village, “that the Mazza was about to visit the
captain-general, the bishop, and all the partizans of the Raron.”
The plot succeeded throughout; neither the lustre of their ancient
name, nor the favour of a foreign prince, nor the first dignities of
the land united on their heads, prevented the various districts of the
Valais from planting on the appointed day, and by unanimous consent,
the ill-omened Mazza before all the unfortified castles of Raron and
his partizans. The multitude forced a way, and pillaged from vault to
battlement. Had Raron remained in the country, he too, doubtless, would
have fallen sacrifice to the Mazza. He had gone to Berne, there to
renew his treaty of co-citizenship, and obtained, on the conditions of
resigning his place of captain-general, and leaving Bishop William to
his own resources, a promise from the Valaisans to persecute him no
farther.
He believed that (his foes appeased) time might restore to him the
power he had exercised in days past; but there was nothing which those
enemies so dreaded, and they worked on the passions of the
already-excited people, till rising again they marched on and destroyed
his castle at Sierre,—took a fortress, held by the bishop, at
Leuk,—and besieged Beauregard, which, built on a rock, had long seen
beneath its sway and protection the valley of Ennfisch, whose fertile
meadows stretch to the very foot of the Alps of Aosta.
Raron returned to Berne; but Berne was occupied wholly with the affairs
of Frederic of Austria, and feeling that to the bishop and himself
hesitation might be fatal, he demanded for both the aid of Savoy.
Amedée the Eighth, created duke by Sigismund, charmed to find a pretext
for interference, commanded Amedée of Challant, then in Chablais, to
leave it with sufficient force, and take under his own protection and
out of the bishop’s hands, the castles of Majorie and Tourbillon. On
his side the baron of Raron victualled his strong hold of Seyon,
conducted within its walls his wife and children, the Bishop William,
and all the aged and infant members of his house, charging with its
defence his most tried and brave vassals. A numerous and staunch
garrison held Beauregard, and the heat of that burning summer aided its
efforts by paralyzing those of the besiegers, till at last conquered by
famine and forced to open their gates, the soldiers as they marched
forth saw lighted behind them the flames, which, consuming the castle,
illuminated the entire valley. The insurrection became so serious, that
Amedée of Challant, fearing for Chablais, concluded a truce, which
peace soon followed; but although the baron of Raron had placed sole
confidence in the duke of Savoy, the latter, when renewing his ancient
treaties, made no stipulations in his favour, delivered to the bishop
neither Tourbillon nor Majorie, ceding both for a sum of money to the
chapter. The Valaisans pillaged and destroyed them: Seyon remained
alone; the riches of the Rarons were plundered; their power had
departed. His courage only remaining to support him, the baron again
entered Berne, and appeared in its assembly with none of the splendour,
but more than the dignity of past years: he was received as its citizen
once more. Meanwhile the forces of the Valais besieged Sion, determined
on the total ruin of Wischard of Raron. The negociations between Berne
and the Valais grew stormy: the latter insisting on the surrender of
the castle, but consenting to let all within it go free. The lady of
Raron, profiting by the permission, came trembling forth,—slowly
treading the steep way, followed by the Bishop William, her younger
children, and a long train of menials. It was then that Seyon fell. The
multitude thronged thither, bearing torches, and its noble halls were
sacked and fired.
Sion had abjured all respect towards this illustrious family, and the
unhappy lady, who, born in luxury, had long been the spouse of these
countries’ most powerful lord, descending the heights of the Valais,
and traversing the Pays de Vaud in the haste of fear with her
melancholy train, repaired to Berne. Her husband, listening to his
angry passions only, while the debate concerning his cause was still
pending, sought the Oberland, and gathering round his banner all the
brave youth of Frutigen, the Simmenthal, and Saanen, marched at
nightfall from the latter village, and along a narrow valley, which
bears the name of Gsteig. The dawn was hardly red on the mountains when
they climbed the steep paths of the Sanetsch, near the great cataracts;
and appearing before Sion at the dinner hour of its inhabitants,
mastered their resistance easily. In the course of some hours Sion was
reduced to a few streets, the remaining space it had occupied a mass of
smoke and flame, and the troop, when it had ravaged the surrounding
lands three days, returned by the way it came, having hardly lost a man.
The negociations between Berne and the Valais were succeeded by war; to
put a stop to which, the neutral cantons interfered, and at last,
through the mediation of the duke of Savoy, it was decided that
Wischard of Raron should be reinstated in his lordships, and receive as
indemnity for his losses the sum of 10,000 florins. Yet,
notwithstanding this, Wischard of Raron died far from his own land; his
opulence, his noble name, his chivalrous virtues availed nothing to one
who had neglected to conciliate the affection of his countrymen, and
their caprice cast down an authority which rose no more.
Entering the town, a dirty street leads to an inn of unprepossessing
appearance. We passed on to the left, winding half round the base of
the crag on which stands Tourbillon. We passed a picturesque monk in
his robe of brown serge, with a fine face and shaven crown; and a
squinting specimen of the same species, who, I think, chose the cowl
that it might serve for veil at need, he drew it so closely over his
face when I asked him a question.
As we slowly descended the road which skirts the Rhone, we could long
look back on this romantic castle, dark on its shadowed crag, while the
sun made a sheet of silver of the swollen river, which spread beyond
its natural shores, forming islets and peninsulas innumerable, circling
round the peaked mounds, which, varying in height from fifty to two
hundred feet, their crags gay with vegetation, crowd the valley,—first
created, Ebel says, by the violent Rhone cutting a deep passage among
the rubbish and ruins cast in his bed by the earth—avalanches of the
mountains; and increased by that driven along at each succeeding flood.
They look as if a portion of chaos had been left when the rest was
softened into a world.
Riding without shade under the craggy hill and over the river, we
followed vineyards for some distance, and as the branches hang within
reach, and we were hot and thirsty, I did not keep my hands from
picking and stealing, and we went on, refreshed by roguery, till we had
nearly met with merited retribution: for at a place whence the Rhone
had just retired, his slime left on the road made such perilous footing
for some hundred yards, that our horses had several times almost
brought us down with themselves, which there would have been
unpleasant, as we should infallibly have rolled into the river. At the
entrance of Sierre we passed the ruin of its demolished castle, one of
those belonging to the ill-fated Raron. Found the Soleil infinitely
better than the Poste at Martigny, and cleaner than report describes
the inn at Sion. The number of cretins at this place is fearful, and
you must see them to feel their degradation, and ours, that beings, so
below brutes, should indeed belong to our species—large heads and old
faces on the frail bodies of children, and with the weak limbs of a
cripple,—goitres, of an enormous size, swelling the throat and hanging
over the strangely-formed chests, and sometimes all the faculties
wanting—the ear deaf; the tongue dumb; the eye having no “speculation”
in its glare; and the enjoyment to lie rolling in filth, or basking in
the sun, like some unclean animal. As I stood at the inn window, three
of these wretched creatures appeared in the place below; they were
attracted by a part of my dress, and staid grinning at me, demanding
it, after their manner, with signs and inarticulate sounds. I could
have ascribed to their colourless and withered countenances neither sex
nor age. The peasants treat and speak to them kindly; but I doubt their
considering now, as in darker times, the presence of one of them in
their families a blessing; and such as are free from the curse ascribe
it to the extreme dirt, if not of the present, of past generations. The
water of Sierre is unwholesome, and drunk cold produces instant
hoarseness.
The diet of the Upper Valais is sitting here; the diet of the Lower
Valais at Sion: it is curious that the two districts divide the
possession of the latter town.