From this place to Soestdyke, one of the two country palaces of the king

allowed by the constitution, the roads are very sandy, and we were

obliged to take four horses. In the neighbourhood of Naarden the country

is covered with buckwheat; which, after we had advanced about four

English miles, began to undulated, and present a very beautiful

appearance. The many spires and chimnies of villages peeping above the

trees in all directions, the small divisions of land, the neat and

numerous little farm houses which abounded on all sides of us, presented

a picture of industry and prosperity seldom seen in any other country.

The sound wisdom displayed by the Dutch in preventing the overgrowth and

consolidation of farms, cannot fail to strike the observation of the

traveller, and particularly an English one. By this admirable policy,

Holland is enabled to maintain its comparatively immense population,

under the great disadvantage of a soil far from being genial; hence it

is but little burthened with paupers, and hence the abundance of its

provision. In England, on the contrary, the farmers, grown opulent by

availing themselves of the calamities of unproductive seasons, and

consequent scarcity, have for many years past omitted no opportunity, by

grasping at every purchase, to enlarge their estates, and hence a

portion of land which, if separated into small allotments, would give

food and a moderate profit, to _many_ families, is now monopolized by

_one_; and those who ought to be farmers on a small scale, are now

obliged to toil as labourers in the fields of their employer, at wages

that are not sufficient, if their families are numerous, to prevent the

necessity of their applying for parochial aid. If some legislative

provision could be effected to restrain this monstrous and growing evil,

by that ardent and cordial lover of his country, and particularly of the

lower classes of society, Mr. Whitbread, who has laudably in parliament

applied his enlightened mind to ameliorate the condition of the poor, it

would be one of the most beneficial measures that ever received the fiat

of the British senate. I do not repine to see the farmers, or any other

respectable class of men, receive and enjoy the honest fruits of their

own enterprize and industry: I could see with less regret all those

decent and frugal habits of the farm which once characterized the

yeomanry of England superseded by the folly and fashion of the gay and

dissipated; the farmer drinking his bottle of port instead of some cheap

salubrious ale; his daughter, no longer brought up in the dairy,

returning from a boarding-school, to mingle the sounds of her harp with

the lowing of cows, or reluctantly going to the market of the adjoining

town, tricked out in awkward, misplaced finery, with a goose in one hand

and a parasol in the other, did not the poor classes of society become

poorer, and the humble more humiliated, by the cause of this marvellous

metamorphosis in rural economy. In Holland, I was well informed, there

is not a farm that exceeds fifty acres, and very few of that extent.

There the economy observed in and about the “peasant’s nest,” is truly

gratifying: the farmer, his wife, and a numerous progeny, exhibit faces

of health and happiness; their dwelling is remarkable for its neatness

and order throughout; in the orchard behind, abounding with all sorts of

delicious fruits, the pigs and sheep fatten; three or four sleeky cows

feed in a luxuriant adjoining meadow; the corn land is covered with

turkies and fowls, and the ponds with ducks and geese. Such is the

picture of a Dutch farm.

Notwithstanding the enormous tax upon land, and a tax upon cattle per

head, an imposition unknown to any other country, the expense of

contributing to the support of the dykes, the duty on salt, and a

variety of other charges, amounting to more than fifty per cent. on the

value of their land, the beneficial effects arising from small farms and

the simplicity, diligence, and economy of the Dutch farmer, enable him

to discharge those expenses, and his rent, with punctuality, and with

the surplus of his profit to support his family in great comfort. To

these causes alone can be attributed the astonishing supplies which are

sent to the different markets. North Holland, so celebrated for its

cheese, supplies Enkuysen, upon an average, with two hundred and fifty

thousand pounds weight of that valuable article of life, and Alkmaar

with three hundred thousand, per week. In a very small space in the isle

of Amak, within about two English miles of Copenhagen, no less than four

thousand people, descendants of a colony from East Friesland, invited

over by one of the kings of Denmark to supply the city with milk,

cheese, butter, and vegetables, are enabled to live and flourish, and

continue to supply that city with these articles. I remember being

highly delighted with seeing their dwellings and little luxuriant

gardens; nor did I ever see so many persons living within so small a

space, except in an encampment. An experienced English agriculturist who

had visited Holland, informed me that he thought the Dutch farmers did

not sufficiently dress their land. The vegetable soil is in general so

thin, that trees in exposed situations are usually topped, to prevent

their being thrown down by the wind. In that part of Holland which I am

describing, on account of its being well sheltered, there is a large

growth of wood. Upon leaving the romantic and exquisitely picturesque

village of Baren, we entered the royal chace, which occupies a vast

track of ground in this forest. The trees are generally poor and thin,

but I saw some fine beeches among them. On the borders of this chace are

two country villas, in the shape of pagodas, belonging to a private

gentleman, the novelty and gaudy colouring of which served to animate

the sombre appearance of the forest behind.

In the evening we reached the principal inn at Soestdyke, lying at the

end of a very long avenue in the forest, chiefly filled with young oaks,

a little fatigued with the tedium produced by the heavy roads through

which we had waded; however, after some refreshing tea taken under the

trees, near the house, we proceeded to view the palace, formerly a

favourite sporting chateau of the Orange family. A tolerable plain brick

house on the left of the entrance, composed the lodge, and after passing

through a large court, we ascended by a flight of steps to the principal

entrance of this palace, if palace it may be called, for a residence

more unworthy of a prince I have never seen. The only part of the house

in any degree deserving of notice was the hall, the sides of which were

decorated with the emblems of rural recreation, the implements of

husbandry, and all the apparatus of hunting, fishing, and shooting,

tolerably well executed. The rooms were principally white-washed, and

destitute of furniture: the windows were large, and the panes of glass

very small, fastened with lead, such as are used in cottages: in short,

the whole palace presented the appearance of a country mansion in

England of the date of Charles the First, deserted by the family to whom

it belonged, and left to the care of the tenants who rent the estate to

which it belongs. Nothing could be more dreary and desolate. The king

and queen partook of a cold collation here a short time before I visited

it, provided by the family who rented the place of the state, and

occupied it when we visited it. I was not surprised to hear that the

royal family staid only one hour, during which they scarcely ventured

out of a large naked room at the back part of the house, called the

grand saloon: one of the young princes gave a son of the gentleman who

occupied the premises, an elegant watch set round with brilliants. I

could not help reflecting a little upon the disgust this visit must have

given to the queen, who had just arrived from Paris, and from all the

voluptuous and tasteful magnificence of the new imperial court. The

palace is surrounded by a ditch half filled with green stagnant water,

the dulness of which was only relieved by the croaking of a legion of

undisturbed frogs. The gardens and grounds, which abounded with hares,

are very formally disposed into dull, unshaded, geometrical walks. After

supper, a brilliant moon and cloudless night, attracted us into one of

the most beautiful and majestic avenues of beeches I ever saw,

immediately opposite the palace: as we sat upon a bench, looking through

an opening upon the bright bespangled heavens, the description of our

divine bard stole upon my mind:

—Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patterns of bright gold!

There’s not the smallest orb, which thou behold’st,

But in its motion like an angel sings.

_Merchant of Venice_, Act I. Sc. 1.

In this wood are several genteel country-houses, many of which were

formerly occupied by those who belonged to the Orange court. The inn

here is much frequented, the accommodations of which are good, by the

people of Amsterdam, who frequently make parties to it; and it is the

great resort of those married couples fresh from the altar, until the

honey-moon is in her wane.

In the morning about five o’clock we set off for Zeyst, or Ziest, and

passed through a large tract of champagne country, interspersed with

short brushwood, the dull monotony of which was at last relieved by a

vast pyramid, erected by the French troops who were encamped in the

immense open space in which it stands, amounting to 30,000 men, under

the command of Gen. Marmont. On the four sides are the following

inscriptions:

INSCRIPTION ON THE GRAND FRONT.

“This pyramid was raised to the august Emperor of the French, Napoleon

the First, by the troops encamped in the plain of Zeyst, being a part

of the French and Batavian array, commanded by the Commander in Chief,

Marmont.”

INSCRIPTION ON THE SECOND FRONT.

_Battles gained by the Emperor._

“The battles of Montenotte, de Dego, and Millesimo, of Mondovi, the

passage of the Po, the battle of Lodi, the engagement of Berguetto,

the passage of the Mincio, the battles of Lonato, of Castiglione, of

the Brenta, of St Georges, of Arcola, of la Favourite, of Chebreis, of

Sediman, of Montabor, of _Aboukir_, of Marengo.

Wherever he fought he was victorious.

Through him the empire of France was enlarged by one third.

He filled the world with his glory.”

INSCRIPTION ON THE THIRD FRONT.

“He terminated the civil war; he destroyed all cabals, and caused a

wise liberty to succeed to anarchy; he re-established religious

worship, he restored the public credit, he enriched the public

treasury, he repaired the roads and constructed new ones, he made

harbours and canals, he caused the arts and sciences to prosper, he

ameliorated the condition of the soldiers, the general peace was his

work.”

ON THE FOURTH FRONT.

“The troops encamped in the plains of Zeyst, making part of the French

and Batavian army, commanded by the General in Chief Marmont, and

under his orders, by the Generals of division, Grouchy, Boudet,

Vignolle, the Batavian Lieutenant, General Dumonceau, the Generals of

Brigade, Soyez, &c. [here follows a long list of the names of the

other officers, too tedious to enumerate; also a very long list of the

different divisions of the regiments to which the above officers

belonged,] have erected this monument to the glory of the emperor of

the French, Napoleon the First, at the epoch of his ascending the

throne, and as a token of admiration and love, generals, officers, and

soldiers, have all co-operated with equal ardour: it was commenced the

_24th Fructidor_, 12 ann, and finished in _thirty-two days_.”

The whole was designed by the chief of the battalion of engineers. The

total height of this stupendous monument is about 36 metres, or 110

French feet; that of the obelisk, exclusive of the _socle_, is about 13

metres, or 42 French feet. One end of the base of the pyramid is 48

metres, or 148 feet. From the summit of the obelisk the eye ranges over

a vast extent of country, Utrecht, Amersfort, Amsterdam, Haarlem, the

Hague, Dordrecht, Leyden, Gorcum, Breda, Arnheim, Nimeguen, Bois le Duc,

Cleves, Zutphen, Dewenter, Swol, and a great part of the Zuyder Zee, may

be distinctly seen on a fine clear day.

Upon this spot it is in contemplation immediately to erect a new city,

the building of which, and the cutting of a canal to be connected with

the adjoining navigation, have already commenced. Zeyst is a very

handsome town, or rather an assemblage of country-houses, it abounds

with agreeable plantations and pleasant woods, and is much frequented in

the summer by the middling classes of wealthy merchants from Amsterdam,

who sit under the trees and smoke with profound gravity, occasionally

looking at those who pass, without feeling any inclination to move

themselves: what an enviable state of indifference to all the bustle and

broil of this world! upon which they seem to gaze as if they were sent

into it to be spectators and not actors. Who, upon reflection and sober

comparison, would not prefer this “even tenour” to the peril of the

chace and the fever of dog-day balls!

The principal hotel here is upon a noble scale, the politest attentions

are paid to strangers, and the charges are far from being extravagant.

The only striking object of curiosity in the town is a very spacious

building, formerly belonging to Count Zinzendorf, and now to a

fraternity of ingenious and industrious Germans, amounting to eighty

persons, who have formed themselves into a rational and liberal society,

called the Herrenhuthers, or Moravians. This immense house, in its

object, though not in its appearance, resembles our Exeter ’Change, but

infinitely more the splendid depot of goods of every description, kept

by a very wealthy and highly respectable Englishman of the name of Hoy

at Petersburgh. Upon ringing at the principal entrance, we were received

with politeness by one of the brotherhood, in the dress of a layman, who

unlocked it and conducted us into ten good sized rooms, each containing

every article of those trades most useful, such as watchmakers,

silversmiths, saddlers, milliners, grocers, &c. Many of these articles

are manufactured by the brethren who have been tutored in England, or

have been imported from our country. The artificers work upon the

basement story, at the back of the house, and no sound of trade is

heard; on the contrary, the tranquillity of a monastery pervades the

whole.

After inspecting the different shop-rooms, it will repay the trouble of

the traveller to make interest to see the other part of the premises,

shown only upon particular application. The refectory is a large room,

kept with great cleanliness; and the meals of the fraternity, if I may

judge by so much of the dinner as was placed upon the table, are very

far from partaking of the simple fare of conventual austerity. A _bon

vivant_ would have risen from their table without a murmur. In this room

were several music-stands, used every other evening at a concert; the

vocal and instrumental music of which is supplied by certain members of

the brotherhood, who I was told excelled in that elegant accomplishment.

In the chapel, which was remarkably neat, there was an organ, and on the

wall was a very energetic address from one of the society upon his

retiring from it, handsomely framed and glazed. The dormitory upon the

top of the house partook of the same spirit of cleanliness and order.

Never was any sectarian association formed upon more liberal and

comfortable principles. In short, it is a society of amiable,

industrious, and agreeable men, who form a coalition of ingenuity and

diligence for their support, and benevolently remit the surplus of their

income, after defraying their own expenses, to their brethren

established in the East and West Indies, and other parts of the world.

They marry whenever they please; but those who taste of this blissful

state are not permitted to have chambers in the house, although they may

contribute their labours, and receive their quota of subsistence from

it.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE MALL OF UTRECHT ... A GASCONADE ... THE RHINE ... CONQUEST OF

UTRECHT ... THE CATHEDRAL ... BEAUTIFUL LINES ... ANECDOTES OF

DISTINGUISHED PERSONS BORN AT UTRECHT ... THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS ... A

DIRECTION ... THE CITY OF ARNHEIM ... ANECDOTE OF BECK ... DUTCHY OF

BERG ... CLEVES ... ANECDOTE OF FLINK ... A TEDIOUS FORM ... ANECDOTE OF

BROWN BREAD ... THE CONTRAST ... THE RECEPTION ... BONAPARTE’S HATRED OF

ENGLISH.

After we had amused ourselves with roving about this agreeable place, we

set off for Utrecht. I have before mentioned the manner in which the

Dutch compute distances, and although I had for some time been

accustomed to hear hours substituted for miles, yet as I was no longer

on the canals, it sounded somewhat strange to hear a charming lady of

our party observe, which she did with perfect Dutch propriety, when we

were speaking of the probable time in which we should arrive at Utrecht:

“Surely our horses must be poor indeed if they cannot go six hours in

_three_.” Our road lay through a very rich and beautiful country, well

drained, abounding with neat compact little farms, orchards, wood

plantations, the lofty and venerable towers of Utrecht appearing full in

our view all the way. We passed by the mall, which has a handsome stone

entrance, is upwards of a mile in length, and is bordered with a triple

row of trees, with a carriage-road on each side. When this city

surrendered to the arms of Louis the Fourteenth in 1672, he was

uncommonly delighted with this walk, yet, from knowing that it was

equally admired by the citizens, he threatened to have every tree felled

to the ground, unless they raised a very large contribution, which was

immediately produced, and the mall preserved. If the menace of the

conqueror was sincere, which I can scarcely believe, he united the

tasteless barbarism of a Vandal to the ferocious rapacity of a tyrant.

Louis overran this province, and the greatest part of Guelderland,

Overyssel, and Holland, at the head of one hundred thousand men, in less

than a month, a rapidity of victory almost incredible, though infinitely

surpassed by the arms of France in the present times. The progress of

the French king was celebrated in the following gasconade:

Una dies Lotharos, Burgundos hebdomas una,

Una domat Batavos luna, quid annus erit?

I think Utrecht one of the most beautiful cities in Holland, next to the

Hague, which it is said to exceed in size. The streets are wide, and the

buildings handsome, amongst which the hand of the Spanish architect is

frequently to be traced. The canals are about twenty feet below the

street; and the access to them for the servants of the adjoining houses

is by a subterranean passage. These canals are very much neglected, and

were covered in all directions with cabbage-stalks, leaves, and other

vegetable substances, left to putrefy upon the surface. There I first

beheld a branch of the Rhine unmingled with other waters. This mighty

river has partaken of the mutability to which every thing sublunary is

subjected. Near the village of Cooten, about twelve miles from Utrecht,

the traveller may contemplate corn waiving and cattle depasturing where

once it rolled its broad majestic waters, now diminished to a little

streamlet: its division into the two great copious and navigable streams

takes place a little above Nimeguen: the right branch retains the name

of the Rhine; the left is called the Waal, a word expressive of a

defensive boundary, which separated the ancient Batavians from their

hostile neighbours on the southern border: the former, during its

superabundance, produced a small branch called the Lack, which ran near

the little city of Wyk, by Deurstede, directed its course towards

Utrecht, upon which it bestowed the name of _Ultra trajectum_, passed

through Woerden Leyden, and disembogued itself into the German Ocean at

Catwyk: the latter branch in rolling its waters toward the sea,

incorporated with the Maas, and their united streams were called the New

Maas, under which name they flow by Dort, Rotterdam, and other cities,

into the sea. Had rivers tongues, as poets feign they have, this

much-injured branch of the Rhine might have exclaimed with Wolsey, I now

am left

——to the mercy

Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.

Upon the subsiding of a great inundation, the frequent terror of the Low

countries, it was found that the Rhine had changed its channels, and

flowed into that of the Lack, to which it had given birth, in

consequence of its channel having been amazingly deepened by the watery

irruption. This branch, in consequence of the power of its waters not

being able to bear down the obstructions opposed to it, is not able to

force its way to the sea, and is stopped in its course near the village

of Catwyk by mountains of accumulated sand, and being compelled to

regurgitate, is distributed over, and lost in the neighbouring canals.

The French, under Louis the Fourteenth, retained possession of Utrecht

for little more than a year, during which the magnificent monarch was so

delighted with the place, that he held his court here in great gaiety

and splendor; but the Dutch were heartily rejoiced to be relieved of

this honour, and hailed with exultation the hour in which with his

troops he retired from the country; this movement however, was preceded

by the demolition of their fortifications, raising heavy contributions,

and exercising many wanton acts of cruelty and oppression, which excited

such disgust, that nearly all the inhabitants of the province resolved

upon transporting themselves to Batavia. Although by this conquest the

French had left an indelible impression of disgust behind them, and the

regular forces of the town amounted to seven thousand men, and the

inhabitants breathed nothing but vengeance against the Prince of Orange,

this city surrendered to the arms of Prussia, who espoused his cause, in

the year 1787. The rhyngrave of Salm, who had the command of the troops,

covered himself with great disgrace, by this unresisting, cowardly, and,

as it was generally believed, treacherous surrender of the place. In

1795, when the French troops once more approached the town, its gates

were again thrown open, and they were received more as brethren than as

conquerors; but the inhabitants very soon repented of this second visit,

for the impositions they levied were extremely severe, and the French

officers selected the best rooms in the best houses for their quarters,

to the great inconvenience of families so oppressed. Upon two or three

doors of very elegant mansions I saw little boards fastened, with the

names and rank of the French officers who had taken up their lodgings

within. The cathedral must once have been an enormous and magnificent

structure, if I may judge by the doom or tower, the only part which

remains perfect. The ruins present a fine specimen of the Gothic, some

of the ornaments of which were in high preservation, and very beautiful.

In the cloisters there is an arch, the pillars of which are apparently

fastened with ropes, which upon examination prove to be done in stone,

and admirably executed. The tower is of the astonishing height of 464

feet, and from the top, on a clear day, no less than fifty-one walled

cities and towns may be seen; and the pyramid erected in honour of

Napoleon at Zeyst presents a noble appearance in this expanded view.

About midway in our ascent, we entered a vast vaulted chamber with

galleries in it, in which two old women reside, who, if they require it,

supply the visitors with schidam and biscuits to refresh themselves in

their ascension, which are presented to them in a little room, the

windows of which are scarcely visible to the beholder on the outside,

commanding a very wide and agreeable prospect. Upon top of the tower

there is a very numerous and fine-toned set of chimes. The ramparts are

about four miles round the tower, and afford a very agreeable and

picturesque walk. Utrecht was once a rich and powerful see, the bishops

of which were sovereign princes, who laying the crosier aside, and

assuming the sword, frequently waged bloody warfare with their rivals

the prince bishops of Leyden.

The same causes which have thinned the number of students of Leyden,

have reduced those of Utrecht, which do not exceed 360, most of whom are

the sons of the inhabitants of the city. Two-thirds of the merchants of

this place have connexions with London. There are several endowments of

a charitable nature, which do honour to the city, many of which were

originally instituted, and principally supported by English families

resident here before the revolution. A botanic garden has lately been

formed near the dome of the cathedral; it is upon a small scale, but

appeared to be well arranged. In one of the gardens close to the city,

was a naked little statue of Cupid, without arrows or wings, with the

following beautiful inscription under it:

N’ offrant qu’un cœur à la beauté,

Nud comme la vérité,

Sans armes comme l’Innocence,

Sans aîles comme la Constance,

Tel fut l’Amour dans le siecle d’or,

On ne le trouve plus, quoiqu’ on le cherche encore.

To Beauty give your heart, your sighs,

No other offering will she prize;

As Truth should unadorn’d appear

Behold! the God is naked here.

Like Innocence, he has no arms

But those of sweet, of native charms;

No wish or power has he to fly,

Like thy pure spirit, Constancy!

Such in the golden age was Love!

But now, oh! whither does he rove! J. C.

In the gardens of Chantilly, the little god appears in the same manner,

and is celebrated in the same exquisite lines.

A traveller can scarcely enter a town in Holland which has not given

birth to some genius, whose fame reflects lustre upon his country.

Utrecht enrols amongst those illustrious sages who resided, or were born

within its walls, and who have bestowed upon it immortal celebrity, the

learned Gronovius, the critic; Grævius, his pupil, one of the most

profound writers of the middle of the sixteenth century, so well known

for his Thesaurus Antiquitatum et Historiarum Italiæ, in thirteen folio

volumes, and the two erudite Burmans. Doctor Johnson thus speaks of

Peter Burman, and Gronovius, and Grævius, “One of the qualities which

contributed eminently to qualify Grævius for an instructor of youth, was

the sagacity by which he readily discovered the predominant faculty of

each pupil, and the peculiar designation by which nature has allotted

him to any species of literature and by which he was soon able to

determine that Peter Burman was remarkably adapted to classical studies,

and to predict the great advance he would make by industriously pursuing

the direction of his genius. On the other hand, animated by the

encouragement of a tutor so celebrated as Grævius, Peter Burman, by

continuing the vigour of his application, fulfilled his master’s

prophecy; and it has been asserted, that he passed honourably and fairly

through the classes, and was admitted into the university at the age of

thirteen.

“His biographer allows this to have been so stupendous a progress as to

surpass the limits of all probability; of which indeed every man must be

sensible, who considers that it is not uncommon for the highest genius

in our country, to be entangled for ten years in those thorny paths of

literature, which Burman is represented to have passed in less than two.

But this prodigy has been cleared up very satisfactorily by the

following observation. In the universities of foreign countries, they

have professors of philology or humanity, whose employment is to

instruct the younger classes in grammar, rhetoric, and languages; nor do

they engage in the study of philosophy, till they have passed through a

course of philological lectures and exercises, to which in some places

two years are commonly allotted: whereas the English scheme of

education, which, with regard to academical studies, is more rigorous,

and sets literary honours at a higher price than that of any other

country, exacts from the youth who are initiated in our colleges a

degree of philological knowledge sufficient to qualify them for lectures

on philosophy, which are read to them in Latin, and to enable them to

proceed in other studies without assistance; so that it may be

conjectured that Burman, at his entrance into the university of Leyden,

had no such skill in languages, nor such ability of composition, as are

frequently to be met with in the higher classes of an English school;

nor was perhaps, at that time, more than moderately skilled in Latin,

and taught the first rudiments of Greek.”

At Utrecht was also born, in 1459, pope Adrian VI. to whom the emperor

Maximilian entrusted the education of his son, Charles the Fifth, and

who afterwards filled the pontifical throne with piety and learning,

with dignity and mildness: this distinguished personage, after having

acquired his classical knowledge at the university of this city, and his

philosophical at the college of Louvain, received the degree of doctor

in divinity in 1491, the expense of which he was unable to sustain, and

which was defrayed by Margaret, sister to Edward IV. of England. I was

informed that the house he resided in, a fine Gothic building, was still

standing, and that it was adorned with several curious basso-relievos,

but time would not permit me to visit the venerable remains. This city

had also the honour of producing the Chevalier Antonio More, who was

born here in 1519, where he studied under John Schoorel, with whom,

having made considerable progress, he improved himself in design at

Rome, and in the true principles of colouring at Venice: one of his

historical compositions, from the subject of the Resurrection, was in

such high estimation as to be publicly exhibited at the fair at St.

Germains, before it was purchased by the prince of Condé. More has the

reputation of having imitated nature very closely and happily; his

manner is strong, just, and bold, and in his portraits there is great

character and life. He was much esteemed by the emperor Charles V. and

was by him sent to Portugal to paint the portraits of the king, the

queen, who was the sister of the emperor, and their daughter, afterwards

the queen of Spain. For these portraits he received six hundred ducats,

and many valuable presents; and to show their admiration of his talents,

the Portuguese nobility presented him, in the name of that order, with a

chain of gold valued at a thousand ducats. He was employed by most of

the princes of Europe, and at every court his paintings excited

universal applause. Queen Mary the First of England, presented him with

a chain of gold and a pension. Upon his quitting London and settling in

Spain, a singular circumstance befel him: one day as the king, who was

very fond of him, and his great patron, was talking to him in a very

familiar manner, he gave More in jocularity a sharp tap on the arm,

which the irritable painter mistaking for indignity, instead of an act

of good humour and condescension, resented by striking the king with his

maulstick: a folly which had nearly in its consequence proved fatal to

him, and which compelled him to quit the country with all possible

celerity. His last work was the Circumcision, intended for the cathedral

church at Antwerp, but which he did not live to finish.

Cornelius Poelemburg, another artist of high distinction, was born at

Utrecht in 1586. He first studied under Abraham Bloemart, and

afterwards, upon going to Rome, became enamoured with the works of that

divine artist, Raphael, whose exquisite grace in the nude figure he

endeavoured to imitate. His style was entirely new, and he surpassed all

his contemporaries in the delicacy of his touch, in the sweetness of his

colouring, and in the selection of fortunate objects and situations. His

skies are clear, light, and transparent; and his female figures, which

are generally represented naked, are equally elegant and beautiful. The

Italians were highly delighted with his works, and some of the cardinals

of Rome, of the finest taste, frequently attended his painting-room, to

observe his extraordinary and happy manner of working. Upon his leaving

Rome, the grand duke of Florence paid him great honours, and he was

received with distinction in every city through which he passed. It is

recorded to the honour of Rubens, that after paying him a friendly

visit, and expressing the greatest pleasure from examining the works of

Poelemburg, he purchased and bespoke several of his pictures, for his

own cabinet; this noble conduct at once gave the stamp of currency to

the works of the latter, and advanced his reputation and his fortune

together. Our refined and munificent Charles the First invited him to

his court, and nobly recompensed him for his labors, but he vainly

endeavoured, by his princely encouragement, to prevail upon him to

settle in England; the indelible love of his country prevailed over

every other consideration, and he returned to his native country, where

he lived in affluence and esteem, and where he continued to paint to the

last day of his life, which was in the year 1660, at the great age of

seventy-four.

Utrecht seems to have the fairest pretensions to have given birth to

Anthony Waterloo, before slightly mentioned; an honour disputed with

much ardor of rivalship by Amsterdam and other cities. The landscapes of

this admirable artist are in the highest estimation, and are the closet

copies of nature, without the aid of meretricious decoration. His

favourite subjects were woody scenes, embellished with water, and

figures and cattle added by Weenix and other artists: the variety in the

verdure of his trees and grounds, the very tint of which illustrates the

hour of the day and the season of the year in which they were taken, and

the wonderful transparency of his water, remain unrivalled. Although the

works of this great artist produced high prices, he expired in great

penury in the hospital of St. Job, near Utrecht. John Glauber, called

Polidore, another eminent artist, was born here in 1656: he was a

disciple of the admirable Berghem, but a passion for travelling induced

him to quit his master, to contemplate the sublime objects of nature in

Italy. In his way he remained at Paris one year with Picart, a flower

painter, and at Lyons two years with Adrian Vander Cabel, with whom he

intended to have staid longer, had he not been attracted by a great

number of people who were going to the jubilee, to proceed direct to

Rome, where he continued for two years, indefatigably pursuing the means

of improving himself in his art, and from thence he went to Venice. Upon

his return to Holland he settled at Amsterdam, where he lodged with

Gerard Lairesse, in whose house an academy of arts was established.

These distinguished artists were united together by the same passion for

their art, and the same elevation of mind, improved by their having

travelled through the same countries: by this friendship the beautiful

landscapes of Glauber became enriched by the graceful figures of

Lairesse. Glauber ranks amongst the finest landscape painters of the

Flemish school. The most frequent subjects of his pencil he derived from

the neighbourhood of Rome and the Alps, and his style resembles that of

Gaspar Poussin; his colouring is warm and true, his invention very

luxuriant; and although his pictures are exquisitely finished, they

appear as if they had been produced with perfect facility; his touch is

so peculiarly just and natural, that every distinct species of trees or

plants may be distinguished by the characteristic exactness of the

leafing. The two brothers, John and Andrew Bott, were born in this city

in the beginning of the sixteenth century; the former a landscape

painter, and the latter a painter of figures: they both resided many

years in Italy. John made Claude Lorraine his model, whose style he

imitated with uncommon success, as did Andrew that of Bamboccio. They

were much attached to each other, and painted in conjunction: their

united efforts seem to be the happy result of one masterly hand. Andrew

was unfortunately drowned in one of the canals of Venice whilst with his

brother, in 1650, who returned to Utrecht overwhelmed with grief, which

he consoled by an unabated pursuit of the art he adored. The works of

John are of inestimable value, and eagerly sought after by connoisseurs.

Gallantry forbids my passing over the name of Anna Maria Schurman, born

here in 1607: she was profoundly versed in languages, displayed great

skill and taste in painting, as well as in every other branch of the

graphic and elegant arts: she was honoured with a visit from Christina,

queen of Sweden, who pronounced the most enthusiastic encomiums on her

elegant attainments. This celebrated woman died at the age of

seventy-one. There are other artists who do honour to this their native

city, but I have mentioned those of the first order, in number and

reputation perfectly sufficient to establish the pretensions of Utrecht

to high rank in the roll of renowned cities. I quitted this beautiful

place, the prosperity of which has suffered much by the war with

England, about four o’clock on a beautiful autumnal morning, and

proceeded to Arnheim, which and Nimeguen, are the capital cities of

Guelderland. This beautiful and valuable province contains twenty-two

considerable towns, and upwards of three hundred villages. The Menopii

Gugerni, Usipetes, and Secambri, mentioned in Cæsar’s Commentaries, are

supposed to have been its ancient inhabitants. Guelderland, remarkable

for the salubrity of its climate and the fertility of its soil, abounds

with the most romantic variety of scenery, mountain and valley, and is

well stocked in every direction with fine cattle, and abounds with game.

All the way to Arnheim the eye was gladdened by some of the most

delightful objects descriptive of the amenity of nature. In this country

I generally travelled in post-chaises, or as it is called, extra-post;

but perhaps, as the following information respecting the route from

Amsterdam to Cologne may be serviceable to those who travel by the

diligence or post-waggon, I shall insert it:

From Amsterdam to Utrecht by water eight hours.

to Arnheim by the diligence, which one long day.

sets off every day from Utrecht

to Wesel ditto every Monday and one very long day.

Thursday

to Dusseldorf one day.

to Cologne one day.

We were serenaded all the way by nightingales, which are very numerous

in every part of this province. Arnheim or Arnhem, is a very large and

elegant city, partly watered by a branch of the Naas, over which are

several draw-bridges, from which there are many agreeable views. The

houses are in general well built, and, what is remarkable for a Dutch

town, very few of them out of the perpendicular. The entrances, called

St. Jan’s Poort and Sabel’s Poort, are picturesque. St. John’s church is

a vast edifice of brick, with two spires, and a fine set of carillons;

but with exception to its magnitude, there is little in or about it

worthy of observation; the same may be said of the church of St.

Nicholas. The church near Walburges Plain, the name of which I have

forgotten, is a prodigious massy pile; and beheld from the surrounding

scenery has a very noble effect. The market-place is capacious, and

abundantly supplied with every species of provision, which are here much

cheaper than in the other parts of Holland. The streets of this city are

enlivened by several handsome equipages, and throughout the place there

is a considerable appearance of refinement and opulence. Here the Dutch

language begins to lose itself in the German, a circumstance made

manifest by a friend of mine, a native of Germany, who accompanied me on

my return from that country to Holland, finding considerable difficulty

in understanding the lower people in Arnheim. The inns here are in

general very good. This city gave birth to the celebrated David Beck in

1621, a disciple of Vandyke, from whom he imbibed that exquisite style

of colouring and penciling which belong to his school. King Charles the

First was so astonished at the freedom of his hand, he one day said, “I

do believe, Beck, you could paint if you were riding post.” The person

of this artist was remarkably handsome, and his manners perfectly well

bred: these qualities, accompanied with such talents in his art,

recommended him to the attention of queen Christina of Sweden, who

appointed him her portrait painter and chamberlain; and under her

patronage he painted most of the illustrious persons of Europe. The

following singular event occurred to this artist in his tour through

Germany. At an inn where he stopped for the night, he was suddenly taken

violently ill, to appearance expired, and was accordingly laid out for a

corpse. His valets, who were much attached to him, sat by his bed-side,

deeply lamenting the loss of so good a master; and, like the Irish upon

such occasion, sought consolation in the bottle, which was put about

very briskly; at length one of them, who was greatly intoxicated, said

to his companions, “Come, my friends, our poor dear master used to be

very fond of his glass when alive, suppose, out of gratitude, we give

him a bumper now he is dead.” To this jovial recommendation the rest of

the servants consented. They accordingly raised his head, and the mover

of the measure poured some of the wine into his mouth; this produced the

immediate effect of forcing him to open his eyes, which, from the

excessive drunkenness of the fellow, did not surprise him, and he

continued pouring the wine down his master’s throat until the glass was

emptied, which at last completely recovered him; and by this accidental

circumstance he was saved from a premature interment. However, he

escaped death in this violent shape only to meet it in another, for it

was generally suspected that his final fate was effected by poison

administered by some miscreant, hired for the purpose by queen

Christina, at the Hague, in revenge for his having quitted her to visit

his friends in Holland, with a determination never more to visit Sweden.

The works of this master are justly held in very high estimation, and he

became the favoured object of the most unbounded marks of distinction

and honour.

With an exception to large churches, and handsome streets, and some

pretty and well-dressed women, there is little, at least as far as I

could learn, to detain a traveller in this city, so I set off for Wesel

with all due expedition, impatient to move upon the bosom of the Rhine.

On the road, which was agreeably diversified, we met several milk-maids,

bearing their milk home in large copper vessels, shining very bright,

slung to their backs, which had a picturesque effect. About four miles

from Arnheim, just after passing a bridge of boats at Sevenhal, I

entered a small town, at the end of which is the first barrier of the

new territories of prince Joachim, grand admiral of France and duke of

Berg, a piece of history which I first learned from a new ordinance or

law, in German and French, to regulate the safe delivery of letters,

pasted upon one of the gates of the town. In this dutchy most of the

peasants are catholics, who make a public avowal of their faith by

pointing a large white cross on the outside of their houses. On the

left, within a short distance of the frontier of prince Joachim’s

territory, upon the summit of a mountain, are two large religious houses

for monks and nuns. A little indisposition, in addition to the heat of a

very sultry day, prevented me from quitting the carriage to visit the

holy fraternity and sisterhood, of whom, I was informed, very few

members remain, and those far advanced in life. The revolution of

France, and the progress of the French arms, have at least the merit of

having prevented the immolation of many a lovely young creature,

possessed of every personal and mental charm to gladden this chequered

life of ours.

Thrice blessed they that master so their blood

To undergo such maiden pilgrimage:

But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d,

Than that, which withering on the virgin thorn,

Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.

_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act I. Scene 1.

The approach to these convents from the town is by a pleasant avenue of

trees, their situation must be very agreeable, from the extensive

prospect which they command. On our right the spires of the city of

Cleves, on the French side of the Rhine appeared, and produced a very

pleasing effect. Upon turning the base of the hill on which the monastic

mansions stand, we entered upon a deep sandy road, and a very flat and

uninteresting country, in which very few objects occurred to afford any

gratification to the eye. The Rhine occasionally appeared, but not to

much advantage: the majesty of its breadth is obscured by the great

number of islands upon it in this stage of its descent. Flink, whom I

have mentioned in describing the Stadt-house at Amsterdam, was born at

Cleves in 1616. This able artist was destined, like our celebrated

Garrick, for the bureau of a compting-house; but his genius and passion

for painting overcame all the impediments placed in their way by

paternal authority, and the persuasions of friends, and he renounced the

prospect of accumulating immense riches by commerce, for the glory of

the art. He made great progress under Rembrandt, whose style he imitated

to perfection; he soon rose to distinguished reputation, and was

employed to paint the portraits of princes and illustrious personages of

the times in which he flourished; he died very young and much regretted.

After a tedious and unpleasant journey I reached Wesel, a large, gloomy,

and very strongly fortified town: as the gates had been closed at eight

o’clock, and it struck eleven as I passed the last draw-bridge, it was

with some difficulty and delay that I was admitted. Only persons

travelling extra-post and in the post-waggon, or diligence, are admitted

after the gates are once shut. This place presents a disgusting contrast

to the neatness and cleanliness of the towns in Holland. The moment I

passed the gates, a most offensive _mauvais odeur_ assailed my nose on

all sides. There is only one tolerable inn in the whole place, and that

is generally very crowded. If the traveller cannot be accommodated

there, he will be marched, as I was, to a pig-stye, or a house of ease

to the former, where he may meditate at leisure on the sapient poetical

advice of Shakspeare:

Cease to lament for what thou canst not help.

Here, according to a regulation which prevails in every part of Germany,

I was annoyed by being presented with a printed paper, containing

several columns, titled as follow:

_Nahme_ Your name.

_Karakter_ Profession.

_Wohnort_ Residence.

_Kommendvon_ Where came you from.

_Gehendnach_ Where going to.

_Auffenthalt_ How long you intend to stay.

All of which I duly answered in writing, except the last interrogatory

but one, namely, “where are you going?” under which I peevishly wrote,

“to sleep,” consolidated into one word, in large close letters. To an

Englishman unaccustomed to such examinations, which after all are little

more than formal, although every innkeeper by law is obliged to make

such report of every traveller on his arrival, they are very liable to

excite an inverted blessing upon the heads of those who trouble him in

this manner.

Wesel is an abominable dunghill, very strongly fortified. In the course

of my perambulations through the town, the objects which I met with were

infinitely more offensive to the sense of smelling than gratifying to

that of seeing, and doubly disgusting from the contrast of exquisite

cleanliness which the country I had just quitted, exhibited. This part

of Westphalia is very flat, barren, sandy, and dreary, presenting little

more than thin patches of buckwheat. The roads are very heavy, and with

an exception to an oratory in a little grove, and three wooden effigies

as large as life, representing the crucifixion, not one enlivening or

interesting object presented itself. I mention the following travelling

anecdote by way of caution to my reader, should he select this route. At

Dinslaken, one of the post towns between Wesel and Dusseldorf, the

post-master told me that two horses would not be sufficient in such

roads for the carriage, and declared his determination, that unless I

took three, I should have none. If I had submitted to this imposition

here, I must have done so throughout; I was therefore obliged to

compound with this extortioner in office, by paying half of a third

horse, which sum went into his pocket, and pursued my route with a

couple, who conducted me in very good style to the next post town. In

every part of Germany the postmasters are appointed by, and are under

the control of the reigning prince of Turn and Saxis, the hereditary

director and post-master general of the roads in that part of Europe. My

driver stopped to give his horses some wretched hard bread, used by the

peasantry in Westphalia, composed of straw and oats, called

_bonpournikel_ from the following circumstance. Many years since a

Frenchman, travelling in this country, called for bread for himself, and

upon this sort being presented, he exclaimed, _C’est bon pour Nikel_

(the name of his horse); upon which the old woman who had brought it in

ran about the village in a great pet relating the story.

As I was proceeding by moon-light, a German gentleman who had travelled

some way with me was observing, that throughout Westphalia a robbery

upon the highway had not been known for many years, and that a traveller

was as safe in the night as in the day; and at the moment when he had

just finished an animated eulogium upon the invincible honesty of the

people, I happened to observe the shadow of a man behind the cabriolet,

the head of which was raised, apparently very busy in endeavouring to

cut off our trunks, which, upon our jumping out, proved to be the case;

the fellow was much alarmed by our appearance, fell upon his knees, and

declared that he belonged to Dusseldorf, and poverty had prompted him to

quit that city, and try his fortune on the highway. Nothing could exceed

the indignation of the German the moment he knew that our prisoner was a

Westphalian; had he fortunately announced himself as a native of any

other country, I believe he would have rather relieved the fellow’s

distress, than pierced his ears, and perhaps his heart, with the bitter

reproaches he heaped upon him: however, as the affair furnished me with

a hearty laugh, I prevailed upon my companion to forgive the poor

wretch, whose face and clothes indicated extreme wretchedness, and

permit him to depart in peace; and we proceeded without further

interruption to within a short stage of Dusseldorf, where we slept.

The appearance of Dusseldorf at a little distance is very handsome,

particularly from the _Grand ducal road_, as it was styled. Upon my

driving up to the principal inn, the maitre d’hotel with great pomp came

out, and informed me in bad French that his house was then nearly full;

that the grand Dutchess from Paris was expected every day; that his

bed-rooms would be wanted for those belonging to the court who could not

be accommodated at the palace, and, finally, that he could not receive

me. As I immediately guessed his object, I told him that I intended to

stay some days at Dusseldorf. “Oh, very well,” said he, archly adding,

“you are an Englishman I perceive.” “No, sir, an American.” “Oh,”

replied he, “never mind, it is the same thing: walk in, sir, and we will

see what we can do for you.” This inn, the only eminent one in town, is

spacious and handsome, and the table d’hote excellently supplied with a

great variety of dishes, both at dinner and supper, perfectly well

dressed. During my stay I was known by no other name than that of

Monsieur Anglois, an appellation not very gratifying to me, upon

reflecting that I was a sojourner in the territory of a brother-in-law

of Napoleon, who, knowing that he is no favourite with the English,

dislikes England and every thing that can remind him of it, to such a

degree, that an English gentleman and lady, whom I knew, who had been

detained prisoners of war in France, but were afterwards liberated, upon

their route from Verdun to Holland to embark for their country, were one

day overtaken by a _gen-d’arme_ dispatched express from the last post

town, to order them to turn out of the high road on which they were

travelling, and to take another route which he pointed out, by which

they were compelled to make a deviation of seventy miles. In consequence

of the French Emperor being expected to pass that road in the course of

the day, this messenger had been despatched to overtake and order them

out of the way as fast as possible.

CHAPTER XX.

DUSSELDORF DESCRIBED ... ITS INHABITANTS ... THE GRAND DUCAL COURT ...

ANECDOTE OF MURAT ... A DOUBLE ENTENDRE ... THE FLYING BRIDGE ...

COLOGNE ... A CONTRABAND PEEP ... THE CATHEDRAL ... A COLLECTION OF

GODS ... A BON MOT ... PRIESTLY MUMMERY ... ANECDOTE OF AN ARCHBISHOP OF

COLOGNE ... ANECDOTE OF REUBENS AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED PERSONS ...

PRESENT STATE OF COLOGNE.

Dusseldorf, so called from the little river Dussel that waters its

southern side, and Dhorpf which means village, is now the capital of the

imperial dutchy of Berg, under the new dynasty of the Bonaparte family:

it formerly belonged to the German empire, and afterwards to the elector

Palatine, who at one period made it his residence; this city owed the

prosperity which it long enjoyed, to the sagacity and liberality of the

elector Joseph William, who enlarged it in 1709, by nobly offering its

freedom, and an exemption from all taxes for thirty years, to every one

who would build a house within its walls, and took every judicious

advantage of its local adaptation to trade, and established universal

toleration in religion; the benefit of measures so worthy of the

Christian and the ruler was speedily felt, and Dusseldorf, from a petty

village, soon became a flourishing city, and contained a population of

18,000 inhabitants.

Few towns have suffered more from the calamities of war than this: its

streets, squares, and houses, denote its former consequence; it now

resembles a mausoleum half in ruins. Early in the year 1795, the army of

the Sambre and the Meuse suddenly crossed the Rhine, and summoned the

city to surrender, which it refused to do; in consequence of which the

French bombarded it, and set fire to one of its most beautiful churches,

which was burnt to the ground; and the city palace, which contained many

noble apartments, very nearly experienced the same fate; naked walls

blackened with smoke, are all that remain of this splendid pile, except

that part of it which contained the celebrated gallery of paintings,

which were removed to Munich under a Prussian escort. The French at

length took the city by assault, the Austrians who were garrisoned

within it having previously retired. I was surprised to find that the

French had spared the statue erected as a mark of public gratitude, in

the centre of the court of the gallery, to the honour of the elector

John William, who was its founder. He commenced it in the year 1710; but

dying in 1716, the completion of this princely and public-spirited

design was totally neglected by his successor Charles Phillip, who

employed part of his treasure, and the whole of his taste, in improving

the city of Manheim. Charles Theodore, his successor, finished this

institution, established an academy of drawing and painting in

Dusseldorf, and also erected a public gallery of paintings at Manheim,

which were open to every one, and every artist had permission to study

and copy them.

The ruins of the palace have a melancholy appearance from the water, on

which I made a sketch of the city, when I saw for the first time one of

the Rhenish flying bridges, the description of which I shall reserve for

a few pages following, as I did not go on board of it. That famous

gallery, which attracted men of taste from distant parts of Europe,

occupied that part of the palace which stood close to the junction of

the Rhine and the Dussel, and was divided into five very large and

spacious apartments, one of which was wholly devoted to one picture of

Gerard Douw, esteemed inestimable, and one of the finest he ever

painted; the subject of it is uncommonly complicated, yet every figure

in it is so exquisitely finished, that it will bear the closest

inspection. Descriptions of paintings are seldom very interesting; but

the subject of this renowned picture deserves to be recorded. It

represented a quack-doctor at a fair, upon his stage covered with a

Turkey carpet, set out with vials and gallipots, a shaving bason, an

umbrella, and a monkey: the doctor, in the most whimsical dress, is

haranguing with uncommon humour and cunning in his countenance, the

motley crowd below; amongst whom, a gardener wheeling a barrow filled

with vegetables, a countryman with a hare hanging over his shoulders, a

woman with a child at the breast, baking little cakes for the fair;

another woman listening with ardent credulity, whilst a sharper is

picking her pocket, are penciled in a wonderful manner. Douw has

represented himself looking out of the window of a public house, and

drawing the several objects. The second chamber contained the

productions of the Italian school; a third those of the Flemish: a

fourth was dedicated to Vanderwerff; and the fifth to Rubens.

The only part of the city which presented any appearance of animation

was the market-place, which abounded with fine vegetables, and exquisite

fruit. The market-women, and the female peasants, wear a large

handkerchief depending from the top of the head, which has a picturesque

effect. Fruit is so abundant that for the value of 3_d._ I purchased a

pound and a half of the most luscious grapes. In this square, part of

the scaffolding used for illuminating the hotel de ville, on the grand

duke making his first entry into the city, remained. About a mile from

the town is a country palace of the prince, separated from a garden, in

front of it, by the great road to Cologne. The palace is large, and very

elegantly furnished; the gardens are spacious, well kept, and open to

well-dressed persons. The view of the city from these walks is very

beautiful. The ramparts, which are levelling as fast as the pickaxe and

spade can lay them low, in many places present a very agreeable walk.

All religions are tolerated, but that most followed is Roman Catholic,

for the celebration of which there are three large churches; before one

of them, raised and railed off, is a group as large as life, in wood,

painted white, representing our Saviour crucified between the two

thieves, and Mary Magdalen, kneeling; several persons were praying very

devoutly before those images. The dead are wisely buried out of the

city. In one of the streets at the extremity of the town, is a

prodigious pile of buildings for barracks. The soldiers of the grand

duke, principally Germans, and a few French, had a very military

appearance. The manufactures are at a pause; the population is reduced

to about eight thousand persons, the greater portion of whom are in very

abject circumstances. How different must this place be to its former

period of prosperity, before the last war, when a gay old Prussian

officer who resided there, told me, that it was enlivened with clubs,

casinos, and balls, when every family of common respectability could

regale its friends with the choicest Johannis-Berg Hockein-Rheideshein

wine. The princes of Germany differ very much from those of our own

country, in the plain and unostentatious manner in which they move

about. One morning, when I was crossing the court of my inn to go to

breakfast, I saw a little boy fencing with a stick with one of the

ostlers: as I was pleased with his appearance, I asked him if he was the

son of the maitre d’hotel, to which he replied, “No sir, I am the

hereditary prince Von Salm.” The prince and princess, his father and

aunt, were at the same hotel, having come to Dusseldorf to pay their

respects to Prince Murat. The grand ducal court was, as I was informed,

kept up with considerable splendor, in the circle of which the grand

dutchess, one of the sisters of Napoleon, had not yet made her

appearance. It was generally believed, notwithstanding the use my worthy

host made of her approaching entry, that no great attachment existed

between the grand ducal pair; and that the gaiety of the imperial court

of Paris possessed more prevailing attractions to the grand Dutchess

than her own. Murat, grand Duke of Berg, is an instance of the

astonishing results of great ability and good fortune. His origin was so

very obscure, that very little of it is known. The following anecdote

will, however, throw some light upon the extreme humility of his early

condition in life. After his elevation to the rank of a prince of the

French empire, he halted, in the close of the last war, at a small town

in Germany, where he stayed for two or three days; and on finding the

bread prepared for his table of an inferior kind, he despatched one of

his suite to order the best baker in the town to attend him, to receive

from him his directions respecting this precious article of life. A

baker who had been long established in the place was selected for this

purpose; and upon the aide-de-camp ordering him to wait upon the prince

immediately, he observed, to the no little surprise of the officer—“It

is useless my going, the prince will never employ me.” Upon being

pressed to state his reasons, he declined assigning any; but as the

order of the messenger was peremptory, he followed him, and was

immediately admitted to Murat, with whom he stayed about ten minutes,

and then retired. As he quitted the house in which the prince lodged, he

observed to the aide-de-camp, “I told you the prince would not employ

me—he has dismissed me with this,” displaying a purse of ducats. Upon

being again pressed to explain the reason of this singular conduct, he

replied, “The Prince Murat, when a boy, was apprenticed to a biscuit

baker in the south of France, at the time I was a journeyman to him, and

I have often threshed him for being idle; the moment he saw me just now,

he instantly remembered me, and without entering into the subject of our

ancient acquaintance, or of that which led me to his presence, he

hastily took his purse of ducats from the drawer of the table where he

sat, gave it to me, and ordered me to retire.”

The heroic courage which Murat displayed in the campaign of 1797, when

in conjunction with Duphoz, at the head of their respective divisions,

they plunged into the deep and impetuous stream of Tagliamento, gained

the opposite banks, and drove the Austrians, headed by their able and

amiable general, the Archduke Charles, as far as the confines of

Carnithia and Carniola; and the numerous battles in which he

distinguished himself in Egypt, and afterwards at Montebello and

Marengo, where at the head of his cavalry, he successfully supported the

brilliant and eventful movement of Dessaix, will rank him in the page of

history amongst the most illustrious of those consummate generals, which

the fermentation of the French revolution has elevated from the depths

of obscurity. In Egypt he was high in the confidence of Napoleon, whom

he accompanied with Lasnes, Andreossi, Bessieres, and several members of

the Egyptian Institute, when Bonaparte effected his memorable passage

from his army to Frejus, in August 1799. Upon the death of General Le

Clerc, who was united to a sister of Napoleon, Murat paid his addresses

to, and espoused his widow,[3] with the entire approbation of his great

comrade in arms, by whom he was, upon his elevation to the imperial

throne, created a prince of the empire, and at length raised to the rank

of a sovereign. He is reserved and unostentatious, and is seldom visible

to his people. Some of the Westphalians, who are attached to the ancient

order of things, have a joke amongst themselves at the expense of their

new prince, whose christian name being _Joachim_, they pronounce it with

an accompanying laugh, _Jachim_, which means “_drive him away_;” and

there is very little difference in the pronunciation.

Footnote 3:

This is a mistake of the author. Prince Murat married Napoleon’s

youngest sister, who had not been previously married. Le Clerc’s widow

is married to Prince Borghese.

_Amer. Editor._

As Dusseldorf had infinitely less charms for me than it had for the

grand Dutchess, I was as well pleased to quit it, as she was disinclined

to enter it; so mounting my cabriolet, for which I was obliged to make

the best bargain I could with the post-master, I set off for Cologne,

the road to which is far more pleasant than any other part of the dutchy

which I saw, though the whole is very flat. About six miles from

Dusseldorf, I passed a beautiful country palace of the grand Duke,

called Benrad, composed of a range of semicircular buildings detached

from each other, standing upon the summit of a gentle slope, at the

bottom of which is a large circular piece of water. The grand Duke makes

this place his principal residence, and very seldom goes to that in the

neighbourhood of the city more than twice in the week, to give audience

and transact affairs of state, which, as the government is entirely

despotic, are managed with ease and despatch. The appearance of the

body-guard at the entrance announced that the prince was at this place

when I passed it: the grounds and gardens, seen from the road, appear to

be tastefully arranged. Although the road is sandy, yet it is infinitely

preferable, I was informed, to crossing the ferry at Dusseldorf, and

proceeding by that route to Cologne. After passing Muhlheim, a very neat

town, the suburbs of which are adorned with some handsome

country-houses, I entered, about a mile further, the village of Deutz,

and beheld the venerable city of Cologne, separated by the Rhine,

immediately before me. At one end of the village is a large convent of

Carmelites, and on the day of my arrival a religious fête was

celebrating, at which nearly all the population of the place and

neighbourhood assisted, and the streets were enlivened with little

booths, in which crosses and ornaments of gold lace and beads were

tastefully exposed to the eye.

The bell of the flying bridge summoned me on board, and in about five

minutes I found myself in the French empire, attended by French

custom-house officers in green costume, who conducted me to the Douane.

This ferry cannot fail to impress the mind and excite the curiosity of a

stranger: it is formed of a broad platform resting upon two large

barges, like our coal lighters; from this platform a vast wooden frame

in the shape of a gallows is erected, which is fastened to the former by

strong chains of iron, whilst from the centre cross piece, a chain of

the same metal of great length, is fixed to the top of an upright pole

standing in each of a long line of boats, the remotest of which is at

anchor; by this machinery a powerful pressure is obtained; to each of

the barges a rudder is affixed, which, upon being placed in an oblique

direction, produces a lateral motion upon the stream, which acts as a

force from above; so that by changing the rudder to the right or left,

the bridge is forced on one side or the other of the river, with equal

certainty and celerity. Fifteen hundred persons can with perfect ease be

transported at the same time upon these bridges, and carriages and

horses are driven upon them without any stoppage, from the banks, to

which they are lashed, until put in motion. The Germans call this

machine the Fliegende Schiffs-Brücke, or the volant bridge of boats; the

Dutch geer burg, or the bridge in shackles, in allusion to its chains;

and the French le pont volant, or the flying bridge.

The search made by the custom-house officers amongst my

fellow-passengers, most of whom had only just crossed and recrossed the

river, was very rigorous; the females were marched up to a small house,

where, as I discovered by accidentally opening the door, and offending

as the elders did when they took a lawless peep at Susanna, to the no

small delight of those who were lounging without, and of embarrassment

to those within, they underwent a private examination by two matrons,

appointed for the purpose.

At this place I expected some difficulty; but upon my declaring myself

an American, and showing my pass, and just opening my trunk, the

officers, with great politeness, called a porter to carry my luggage

into the city, and pulling off their hats, recommended me to La Cour

Imperiale, one of the best hotels, where I arrived just in time to sit

down to a splendid table d’hôte, at which several beautiful and

well-dressed ladies, German noblemen, and French officers, were present.

This city was formerly celebrated for the number of its devotees and

prostitutes, which the French police has very much reduced. The first

object I visited, was the cathedral, which, from the water appears like

a stupendous fragment, that had withstood the shock of war, or some

convulsion of nature, by which the rest of the pile had been prostrated;

but upon inquiry, I found that it owed its mutilated appearance to no

such event, but to the obstacles which have occurred for ages in

completing it, according to its original design. In the year 1248,

Conrad, the elector and bishop of Hocksteden, in the pride and

exultation of holy enthusiasm, resolved to erect a temple to God, which

should have no equal in size and magnificence; it was intended that the

two western towers should have been five hundred feet in elevation, and

the nave or body of the church in proportion, and every external stone

which the eye could perceive, decorated with the most exquisite ornament

of pure gothic architecture. The successors of the prince bishop, who

resembled in the splendor of his spirit the emperor who so elegantly

wished to leave the town _stone_, which he had found _brick_, continued

the building for two centuries and a half; but owing to their resources

being insufficient, they were obliged to leave it in a very imperfect

state, but capable of being used for religious purposes. There is no

building of the kind to compare with it, but the Duomo at Milan. One of

the western towers, which I ascended, is about two hundred and fifty

feet high, from which there is a fine view of the city, the Rhine, and

the surrounding country; the other tower is not above forty feet high.

The roof of the greater part of the body of the church is temporary and

low; but so spacious is the area which it covers, that one hundred massy

pillars, arranged in four rows, present a light and airy appearance upon

it. My guide, who was a good humoured intelligent man, with many

significant shrugs of regret, informed me, that the moveable decorations

of the church and altar were once worthy of a stranger’s attention; but

that the generals of the French armies, during the revolution, had

pillaged this holy sanctuary of its richest ornaments; however, the

grand altar in the choir was not sufficiently portable for their

rapacious hands, and remains to show the magnificent scale upon which

every part of the cathedral was originally designed. This altar is

formed of one solid block, of the finest sable marble, sixteen feet long

and eight broad, placed upon the summit of a flight of steps.

The treasury, or as it is called the golden chamber, contains the robes

of the priests, which are very magnificent, arranged with great care and

order in several ward-robes; and busts of saints and holy utensils in

gold and silver, many of which were once encrusted with the most

precious stones, but which had been removed by the French, and their

places supplied by paste. Amongst the still costly contents of this

chamber, I noticed a small tomb of a priest in solid gold and silver,

and a skull of St. Peter, of the same precious metal. In this room were

several ladies, who appeared to be under the strongest influence of

Roman Catholic enthusiasm; not a robe or a relic was exhibited, which

did not draw forth some fervidly pious exclamation.

I was shewn, as a marvelous curiosity, the mausoleum of the Three Kings,

behind the grand altar towards the east, where the bodies of these

personages, and those of the martyrs, Gregory of Spoleto, and Felix

Nabor, repose. The bones of the three kings are said to have been

brought away by the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, when he sacked Milan,

and presented to the archbishop Bernauld of Dassalde, who attended him

in his military exploits, and who deposited them near Bonn, from whence

they were transferred to the spot where their mausoleum was afterwards

erected, before the building of the present cathedral in the year 1170:

the bones of these personages, of course, performed all sorts of

prodigies; the blind by touching them, became astronomers, and the lame,

dancing masters. This tomb, before the last war, was uncommonly rich and

magnificent; but the French, who have displayed no great respect for

living kings, could not be expected to pay much to three dead ones, and

accordingly they have stripped their shrine of most of the jewelry, and

precious ornaments. The sacrilege committed upon three holy kings, who

were transported so far from their native country, reminds me of an

anecdote, in which the playful wit of Mr. Hastings, formerly

governor-general of India, was eminently displayed. An antiquary having

collected in India a considerable number of Hindoo gods, had them well

packed up for the purpose of being sent to England, and on the top of

the case wrote in large characters “Gods—_please to keep these

uppermost_;” the governor-general calling one morning on the collector,

observed the package in his library, and remarking the superscription,

said, “your direction is a wise one, for when you transport gods into a

foreign country, it is ten to one but that they are _overturned_.”

Every street reminds the stranger of the former prevalence of the

priesthood. Before the war, the clergy in this city, were divided into

eleven chapters, nineteen parishes, nineteen convents for men, and

thirty-nine convents for women, besides forty-nine chapels, institutions

which supported between two and three thousand persons in useless

voluptuousness and sloth.

As the other churches have been stripped of their finery, and were not

embellished by any striking work of the statuary, I merely took a

cursory view of their exterior: the principal are the Jesuits’ church,

the collegiate church of St. Gerion, that of the Maccabees, and the

abbey church of St. Pantaleon: all these and a number of other sacred

buildings useless to name, abounded with saints and shrines incrusted

with a profusion of jewellery, and all the mummery and mockery of

cunning and credulity. With respect to the chapel of St. Ursula, a

whimsical circumstance occurred some years since: in this depositary,

for a great length of time, have reposed the bones of the immaculate St.

Ursula, and eleven thousand virgins her companions, who came from

England in a little boat in the year 640, to convert the Huns who had

taken possession of this city, who instead of being moved by their sweet

eloquence and cherub-like looks, put an end to their argument by putting

them all to death. Some doubts arose many years since whether any

country could have spared so many virgins, and a surgeon, somewhat of a

wag, upon examining the consecrated bones, declared that most of them

were the bones of full grown female mastiffs, for which discovery he was

expelled the city. The convents and monasteries are converted into

garrisons for the French troops quartered in the city. It is in

contemplation to pull down about two-thirds of the churches.

On account of its numerous religious houses Cologne was called the Holy

city. Bigotry, beggary, and ignorance disfigured the place in spite of

its once flourishing trade and university. When the French seized upon

this city, in 1794, they soon removed the rubbish of ages; three-fourths

of the priests had the choice of retiring or entering the army, and when

withdrawn, the weak minds over which they had exercised sovereign

influence recovered their tone, and lived to hail the hour of their

delivery from fanatical bondage, and the sturdy beggars were formed into

conscripts. One of the most illustrious of the archbishops of Cologne

was Theodoric, who was much celebrated in his time for his talents,

erudition and morals. An anecdote is related of him, that upon the

emperor Sigismund one day asking him how to obtain happiness hereafter,

as the possession of it seemed impossible, Theodoric replied, “You must

act virtuously, that is, you should always pursue that plan of conduct

which you promise to do whilst you are labouring under a fit of the

gravel, gout, or stone.”

When the Devil was sick

The Devil a Monk would be;

When the Devil was well

The Devil a Monk was he.

This city is celebrated for having given birth to Agrippina the mother

of Nero, but it has derived more lustre from the immortal Rubens having

been born here in 1640: the house in which he resided is still preserved

and exhibited with great pride to strangers. This illustrious man was no

less a scholar than a painter, and hence his allegorical works are more

purely classical than those of any other master: of this the gallery of

the Luxembourg and the banqueting-room at Whitehall bear ample

testimony. Whilst he painted he used to recite the poems of Homer and

Virgil, which he knew by heart, by which he infused the divine spirit of

poetry into the productions of his pencil. After having studied a few

years in Italy, his renown as an artist spread through Europe, whilst

his learning, amenity of manners, elegant accomplishments, and amiable

mind, secured to him the esteem and regard of all whom he approached. He

was particularly cherished by the kings of England, Spain, and other

monarchs: he was even employed upon a very delicate occasion to

communicate proposals from the cabinet of Spain to that of London, and

Charles I. was so delighted with his various talents, that he conferred

upon him the honour of knighthood. The number of his paintings is

prodigious. Sir Joshua Reynolds said that the most grand, as well as the

most perfect piece of composition in the world, was that of Rubens’s

picture of the Fall of the Damned, formerly in the gallery of

Dusseldorf; that it combined such a varied, heterogeneous and horrible

subject, in such a wonderful manner, that he scarcely knew which most to

admire, the invention or the composition of the master. The last of

Rubens’s paintings was the Crucifixion of St. Peter, with his head

downward, which he presented to St. Peter’s church in this city one day

after taking a copy of the register of his birth from its archives: the

tasteless and mercenary heads of the church received this invaluable

present with little expressions of gratitude, and were disappointed that

the donor had not given them money in lieu: when Rubens heard of their

dissatisfaction, he offered them 28,000 crowns for the picture, which,

merely in consequence of the offer, they considered to be worth

infinitely more, and therefore refused to sell him the work of his own

hands, and it was preserved with great veneration in the church, where

it continued till Cologne became one of the cities of the French empire.

Rubens, to the powers and graces before ascribed to him, united the

virtue of a christian: from motives of piety and benevolence he adorned

many churches and convents with his matchless productions; which, as if

the hallowed purpose to which they were devoted had inspired him, whilst

he painted, were generally the most masterly efforts of his pencil.

Thomas à Kempis, so celebrated for his extraordinary piety, was born in

the neighbourhood of this city in 1380. The last edition of his works is

that of Cologne 1660, 3 vols. folio; his most celebrated work was

entitled ‘De Imitatione Christi;’ which, on account of its great piety

and merit, has been translated into almost every living language. This

work has been attempted to be ascribed to an abbot of the name of

Gerson, of the order of St. Benedict, which for many years produced

severe controversies between the canons of St. Augustine, to which

Thomas à Kempis belonged, and the Benedictines.

The celebrated William Caxton opened his printing office here in 1471,

and printed the work of Le Fevre, which was three years afterwards

published in London, where he had the honour of being the first to

introduce the invaluable art of printing. Adam Schule the mathematician,

who died at Pekin, was a calendar here. Vondel the Dutch Virgil was born

here, as was the wonderful Maria Schurman, who was well versed in twelve

languages, and wrote five classically, besides excelling in every

accomplishment then known. Excess of genius and learning made her

melancholy mad, and she died from an inordinate debauch in eating

spiders.

The Town House is a very ancient edifice, and contains the only specimen

of Grecian architecture in the city. There were three ecclesiastical

electorates in Germany, viz. Cologne, Mayence, and Treves, which have

been abolished by Napoleon. The revenues of the elector of Cologne

amounted to upwards of two hundred thousand pounds. Cologne must have

been declining for some centuries, for in the year 1200 it was capable

of furnishing thirty thousand men for the field, a number which its

present population is said not to exceed. The whole of the trade of this

town was extensive before the last war, and at one period, in spite of

its bigotted rulers, it was one of the richest and most flourishing

cities in Germany: its traders carry outward annually large quantities

of salted provisions from Westphalia, iron from the forges of Nassau,

wood from the Upper Rhine and the Neckar, wine, hemp, tobacco, brass,

tufo stone, tobacco-pipe clay, millet, gins, dried fruits, potash,

copper, ribbands, stockings, and lace: and they purchase of the Dutch

paper, oil, cottons, groceries, spices, medicinal drugs, also for

dyeing, and English lead and tin.

The policy of the French government since it has assumed a settled form,

has very much directed its attention to the depressed state of the

manufactures of Cologne, which formerly employed eleven thousand

children, and under its auspices there are several fabrics in a very

flourishing condition, particularly those for manufacturing stuffs and

ribbands, and a great deal of iron is now wrought in this city. The

university is at a very low ebb, in consequence of so many young men

having embraced the profession of arms. This university was once very

celebrated, and was the most ancient in Germany, having been founded in

1380. Pope Urban the Sixth paid it the following compliment, in allusion

to its having given birth to the college of Louvain:

Matre pulchra filia pulchrior.

This maternal university was divided into theology, law, medicine, and

philosophy; but has not the only celebrity of having sent into the world

many enlightened men.

In the department of Cologne the vineyards began first to appear. The

vines in the garden grounds of the city are said to have yielded seven

hundred and fourteen thousand gallons of wine. The wines are not

attempted to be cultivated higher north.

During my stay at Cologne I visited the French parades every morning and

evening. As the parades in France used to be confined to the morning, it

was natural to conjecture that some new and great political storm was

collecting, for which the French emperor was preparing by redoubled

activity and energy. At these parades the conscripts, after having

undergone a brief drilling, were incorporated with the veteran troops:

to wheel, to form close column, to load, fire, and charge with the

bayonet, seemed to be all the motions which were attended to. Instead of

forming the line, as with us, with exquisite nicety, but little

attention was paid to it, for a more slovenly one I never witnessed; but

by thus simplifying the manœuvres, and confining the attention of the

soldier only to the useful part of his duty, a conscript is qualified to

march to the field of battle with the rest of the troops in five days.

But little attention was paid to the dress of the men, who wore uniform

only in a short blue coat with white or red facings, and appeared to be

left at full liberty to consult their own taste or finances in every

other article, for some wore breeches, some pantaloons, some appeared

with gaiters, some without, some had shoes, and others half-boots.

CHAPTER XXI.

REMARKS ON THE FRENCH ARMY ... ORIGIN OF THE CONSCRIPTION ...

ROBESPIERRE ... FRENCH SOLDIERS ... POLICY OF THE GENERALS ... MILITARY

VANITY ... BULLETINS ... MODE OF ATTACK ... RHENISH CONFEDERATION ...

ACT OF IMPERIAL ABDICATION.

As I gazed upon these men, whose appearance was slovenly, I was lost in

amazement, by reflecting that they were part of that military force

which had made itself terrible to so large a portion of Europe, which in

its first organization was composed of men, many of whom had never had a

musket in their hands, and commanded by generals who had never witnessed

a military manœuvre; many of the most shining of whom had undergone an

immediate transition from the most peaceful, and even the most

subordinate occupations in life, to conduct armies to the field of

battle, to confront and rout some of the prime, veteran troops of

nations, long renowned for their eminence and military character.

Robespierre may be considered as having laid the foundation of all the

military glory of France, and by the unexampled energy and prospective

acuteness of his measures, to have accomplished a system by which France

has achieved so many brilliant victories. No one but a tyrant, who to a

sanguinary soul united profound penetration, could have accomplished

what he did. He swept away in a deep and impetuous stream of blood the

immediate branches of the royal family, the court, its valuable and its

obnoxious appendages, and made a clear arena to act upon. In the name of

Liberty he invoked those who were favourably disposed to her cause, and

by terror he forced the reluctant to sustain the miseries and perils of

a camp. Glory or the guillotine were eternally before the eyes of the

republican commanders, who thus stimulated, never revolted at a profuse

expenditure of life, nor considered any victory dearly obtained, so that

it was obtained: the soldiers were all young men, amongst many of whom

high ardour and a passion for heroic enterprize, characteristic of that

season of life, prevailed, which soon spread with electric influence

upon the more considerate, prudent, and even timid part of the body.

Thus impelled, they pushed on, and soon felt their enthusiasm redouble,

upon beholding the brilliant impression which they made upon troops

inured to war and led by distinguished commanders, who receded before

them, from a conviction that they could only hope to repel the attack by

an assimilation of tactics and a lavish waste of blood, a consideration

which frequently forced the followers of the old school to meditate when

they ought to have acted.

It is a remark in frequent use, that the efficiency of an army may be

measured by the skill of the general; but the French soldiers have

expanded the observation, and have exhibited the wonderful spectacle of

skilful soldiers fighting under, and frequently enlarging the views and

combinations of able generals. The animal organization of Frenchmen

befits them for soldiers; their supple muscular form and height seldom

exceeding five feet five or six inches, admit of great activity of

movement, and the support of great fatigue: their minds quick, volatile,

inquisitive, and fertile in expedients, enable them to see the

intentions of their commanding officers in a movement, which, to the

soldiers of many other countries would only be known by results. The

French commanders knew how to gratify that national cast of intellect so

useful to their operations, by frequently imparting to a soldier of a

company, for the purpose of wider communication, the principal movements

in contemplation previous to their engaging. The vanity of a French

soldier is also another most valuable quality in his composition: he

takes the deepest interest in the execution of every order, because he

thoroughly believes that he is acquainted with all its objects; and upon

the achievement of a victory, there is scarcely a French drummer who

would hesitate endeavouring to make his hearer believe, that the fortune

of the day was owing to some judicious idea of his own: to this vanity

the military bulletins which announce successes in all the pomp of

language, or convert a disaster into a retrograde victory, are

addressed; for a Frenchman, even more than an Englishman, almost always

believes what he is told, and is ever the last to confess a defeat. It

is a rule with the French officers to give their troops as little

trouble as possible when not actually in service, and to keep them

perpetually upon the alert when the campaign has commenced; by this

measure their troops, contrary to a received opposite notion, are

generally fresher than other troops; and as they are mostly composed of

young men, are capable of marching more rapidly and longer than soldiers

of mixed seasons of life. The French have another great advantage in

their plan of combat, which resembles the mode of engaging at sea,

practised so gloriously by the late immortal Nelson, that of beating

against the centre of an enemy’s line until they penetrate it; this they

have several times successfully effected, by that almost endless

reinforcement which the arbitrary levies furnish, and which in a moment

supply the vacancy made by the bullet and the bayonet. To prevent any

ill consequences from the impetuous temerity which might attend the

first attack, a considerable corps of reserve is always formed of the

more experienced troops, who are able to support their comrades in the

front, when too severely pressed, or of forcing them to rally, should

they discover any disposition to fly. To their flying artillery, which

are served by their best soldiers, wherever the ground will best admit,

they are also eminently indebted for their success: yet, with all those

advantages, striking and eminent as they are, and the negative

assistance which she derived from the frequently imbecile conduct of the

enemy, France would perhaps never have been crowned with the success

which has marked her march, had not her population been enormous, and

had not the stupendous idea of placing a great portion of that

population, by the novelty of a conscription, at the disposal of her

ruler, been developed by the mighty monster[4] whose name I have before

mentioned. If she had had twenty thousand men on the plains of Maida,

she would have been spared the disgrace of seeing 7,000 of her chosen

soldiers fly before 4,795 of the British arms under the gallant Stuart.

Footnote 4:

For this sanguinary tyrant the following epitaph was well penned.

Passant, ne pleure point son sort;

Car, s’il vivait, tu serais mort.

Ye who pass by his grave, need not weep that he’s gone,

Had he liv’d, ye would now be as cold as this stone.

To comprehend the present political state of those cities on the right

and left banks of the Rhine, which I visited in my way to the south of

Germany, it is necessary to lay before the reader the following

memorable document, and letter of abdication, by which the Germanic

empire is annihilated, and Bonaparte is raised to be imperial chief of a

mighty _feudatory_ confederation, in the organization of which new

sovereign dignities have been conferred, and new dominions allotted, for

securing his conquests in Germany.

_Ratisbon, August 2._

Whereas, his Majesty the Emperor of the French, and their Majesties

the Kings of Bavaria and Wirtemberg, their Electoral Highnesses the

Arch-chancellor and the Elector of Baden, his Imperial Highness the

Duke of Berg, and their Highnesses the Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt,

the Princes of Nassau Weilburg and Nassau Usingen, of

Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Siegmaringen, Salm-Salm, and Salm-Kyrburg,

Isenburg, Birstein, and Lichtenstein; the Duke of Ahremberg, and the

Count of Leyen; being desirous to secure, through proper stipulations,

the internal and external peace of southern Germany, which, as

experience for a long period and recently has shown, can derive no

kind of guarantee from the existing German constitution, have

appointed to be their plenipotentiaries to this effect; namely, his

Majesty the Emperor of the French, Charles Maurice Talleyrand, Prince

of Benevento, minister of his foreign affairs; his Majesty, the King

of Bavaria, his minister plenipotentiary, A. Von Cetto; his Majesty,

the King of Wirtemberg, his state-minister the Count of Wintzingerode;

the Elector Arch-chancellor, his ambassador extraordinary the count of

Beust; the Elector of Baden, his cabinet minister the Baron of

Reitzenstein; his Imperial Highness the Duke of Berg, Baron Von

Schele; the Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt, his ambassador extraordinary

Baron Von Pappenheim; the Princes of Nassau, Weilburg, and Usingen,

Baron Von Gagern; the Princes of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and

Siegmaringen, Major Von Fischer; the Prince of Isenburg-Birtsein, his

privy-counsellor M. Von Gretzen; the Duke of Ahremberg, and the Count

of Leyen, Mr. Durand St. André, who have agreed upon the following

articles:

Art. 1. The states of the contracting princes (enumerated as in the

preamble) shall be for ever separated from the Germanic body, and

united by a particular confederation, under the designation of “_The

confederated States of the Empire_.”

2. All the laws of the empire, by which they have been hitherto bound,

shall be in future null and without force, with the exception of the

statutes relative to debts, determined in the recess of the deputation

of 1803, and in the paragraph upon the navigation to be funded upon

the shipping tolls, which statutes shall remain in full vigour and

execution.

3. Each of the contracting princes renounces such of his titles as

refer to his connexion with the German empire; and they will, on the

1st of August, declare their entire separation from it.

4. The Elector Arch-chancellor shall take the title of Prince Primate

and Most Eminent Highness, which title shall convey no prerogative

derogatory to the entire sovereignty which every one of the

contracting princes shall enjoy.

5. The Elector of Baden, the Duke of Berg, and the Landgrave of Hesse

Darmstadt, shall take the titles of grand Dukes, and enjoy the rights,

honours, and prerogatives belonging to the kingly dignity. Their rank

and precedence shall be in the same order as mentioned in Article I.

The chief of the houses of Nassau shall take the title of Duke, and

the Count of Leyen that of Prince.

6. The affairs of the confederation shall be discussed in a congress

of the union (Diète), whose place of sitting shall be in Francfort,

and the congress shall be divided into two colleges, the kings and the

princes.

7. The members of the league must be independent of every foreign

power. They cannot, in any wise, enter into any other service, but

that of the states of the confederation, and its allies. Those who

have been hitherto in the service of a foreign power, and choose to

adhere to it, shall abdicate their principality in favour of one of

their children.

8. Should any of the said princes be disposed to alienate the whole or

any part of his sovereignty, he can only do it in favour of the

confederates.

9. All disputes, which may arise among the members of the league,

shall be settled in the assembly at Francfort.

10. In this the Prince Primate shall preside, and when it shall

happen, that the two colleges have to deliberate upon any subject, he

shall then preside in the college of Kings, and the Duke of Nassau in

that of the Princes.

11. The time, when the congress of the league, or either of the

colleges, shall have particularly to assemble, the manner of the

convocation, the subjects upon which they may have to deliberate, the

manner of forming their conclusions, and putting them in execution,

shall be determined in a fundamental statute, which the Prince Primate

shall give in proposition, within a month after the notification

presented at Ratisbon. This statute shall be approved of by the

confederated states; this statute shall also regulate the respective

rank of the members of the college of princes.

12. The Emperor shall be proclaimed protector of the confederation. On

the demise of the Primate, he shall, in such quality, as often name

the successor.

13. His Majesty the King of Bavaria cedes to the King of Wirtemberg,

the Lordship of Wisensteig, and renounces the rights which he might

have upon Weiblingen, on account of Burgan.

14. His Majesty the King of Wirtemberg makes over to the Grand Duke of

Berg, the country of Bondorff, Brenlingen, and Villingen, the part of

the territory of the latter city which lies on the right bank of the

Brigoetz, and the city of Tuttlingen, with the manor of the same name

belonging to it, on the right bank of the Danube.

15. The grand Duke of Baden cedes to the King of Wirtemberg, the city

and territory of Biebrach, with their dependencies.

16. The Duke of Nassau cedes to the grand Duke of Berg, the city of

Deutz and its territory.

17. His Majesty the King of Bavaria shall unite to his states the city

and territory of Nuremberg, and the Teutonic comitials of Rohr and

Waldstetten.

18. His Majesty the King of Wirtemberg shall receive the Lordship of

Wisensteig, the city and territory of Biebrach, with their

dependencies, the cities of Waldsee and Schettingen, the comitial

lands of Karpfenburg, Lancheim, and Alchausen, with the exceptions of

the Lordship of Hohenfeld, and the abbey of Weiblingen.

19. The grand Duke of Baden shall receive the Lordship of Bonndorff,

the cities of Vrenlingen, Villingen, and Tuttlingen, the parts of

their territories which are given to him in Article 14; and along with

these the comitials of Bolken and Freyburg.

20. The grand Duke of Berg shall receive the city and territory of

Deutz, the city and manor of Koningswinter, and the manor of Wistich,

as ceded by the Duke of Nassau.

21. The grand Duke of Darmstadt shall unite to his states the

burgraviat of Freidberg, taking to himself the sovereignty only during

the lifetime of the present possessor, and the whole at his death.

22. The prince Primate shall take possession of the city of Francfort

on the Maine, and its territory, as his sovereign property.

23. The Prince of Hohenzollern Seigmaringen shall receive as his

sovereign property the lordships of Aschberg and Hohenfels, depending

on the comitial of Alchausen, the convents of Klosterwald and

Haltzthal, and the sovereignty over the imperial equestrian estates

that lie in his dominions, and in the territory to the north of the

Danube, wherever his sovereignty extends; namely, the lordships of

Gamerdingen and Hottingen.

24. The members of the confederation shall exercise all the rights of

sovereignty henceforward as follow:

His Majesty the King of Bavaria, over the principality of

Schwartzenberg, the county of Castell, the lordships of Speinfeld and

Wissenheid, the dependencies of the principality of Hohenlohe, which

are included in the margraviate of Anspach, and the territory of

Rothenburg, namely, the great manors of Schillings furstand Kirchberg,

the county of Sternstein, the principality of Oettingen, the

possessions of the Prince of La Tour to the north of the principality

of Neuberg, the county of Edelstetten, the possessions of the Prince

and of the Count of Fugger, the burgraviat of Winteriedden; lastly,

the lordships of Buxheim and Tannhansein, and over the entire of the

highway from Memmingen to Lindau.

His Majesty the King of Wirtemberg, over the possessions of the Prince

and Count of Truchess Waldberg, the counties of Baindt Egloff

Guttenzell, Hechbach, Ysuy, Koenigsek Aullendorff, Ochenhausen, Roth,

Schussenried, and Weissenau, the lordships of Mietingen and Sunningen,

New Ravensburg, Thanheim, Warthausen, and Weingarten, with the

exception of the lordship of Haguenau, the possessions of the Prince

of Thurn, with the exception of those not mentioned above; the

lordship of Strasburg, and the manor of Ostraiz, the lordships of

Gundelfingen and Neussen, the parts of the country of Limburg

Gaildorf, which his Majesty does not possess, all the unalienated

possessions of the princes of Hohenlohe, and over a part of the manor

formerly belonging to Mentz, Krautheim, on the left bank of the Jaxt.

The Grand Duke of Baden over the principality of Furstenberg, with the

exception of the lordships of Gundelfingen and Neussen; also over

Trochtelfingen, Jungenau, and part of the manor of Moeskirch, which

lies on the left bank of the Danube, over the lordship of Hagenau,

county of Thuengen, landgraviate of Klettgau, manors of Neidenau and

Billigheim, principality of Leiningen, the possessions of Lowenstein

Wertheim, upon the left bank of the Maine (with the exceptions of the

country of Lowenstein), and the lordships of Hailack, Bonnberg, and

Habitzheim; and lastly, over the possessions of the Princes of

Salm-Reiser-scheid Krantheim, to the north of the Jaxt.

The grand Duke of Berg over the lordships of Lymburg-Styrum, Brugg,

Hardenberg, Gimborn, and Neustadt, Wildenberg; the counties of

Homburg, Bentheim, Steinfurt, and Horstmarn, the possessions of the

Duke of Looz; the counties of Siegen, Dillenburg (the manors of

Werheim and Burgach excepted) over Stadamar, the lordships

Westerburgh, Schadeck, and Beilstein, and the properly so called, part

of Runkel, on the right bank of the Lahn. In order to establish a

communication between Cleves and the above-named possessions, the

grand Duke shall have a free passage through the states of the Prince

of Salm. His Highness the grand Duke of Darmstadt over the lordships

of Brenberg, Haibach, the manor of Habizheim, county of Erbach,

lordship of Illenstadt, a part of the county of Kodigsheim, which is

possessed by the Prince of Stolberg Gedern; over the possessions of

the Baron of Riedefel, that are included in, or lie contiguous to his

estates, namely, the jurisdictions of Lauserbach, Stockhausen, Mort,

and Truenstern, the possessions of the Princes and Counts of Solms, in

Weterrau, exclusive of the manors of Hohen Solms, Braunsels, and

Grietenstein; lastly, the counties of Wittgenstein, and Berleberg, and

the manor of Hessen-Homburg, which is in possession of the line of

that name.

His most serene Eminence the Prince Primate, over the possessions of

the Princes and Counts of Lowenstein Wertheim, on the right bank of

the Maine, and over the county of Rheneck.

Nassau Usingen, and Nassau Weilburg, over the manors of Diersdorf,

Alteneveid Neursburgh, and the part of the county of Bassenburg, which

belongs to the Prince of Wied-Runkel, over the counties of Neuweid,

and Holzappel, the lordship of Schomburg, the county of Deiz and its

dependencies; over that part of the village of Metzselden, which

appertains to the Prince of Nassau Fulda, the manors of Werhem and

Balbach, that part of the lordship of Runkel, situate on the left bank

of the Lahn, over the knightdoms of Kransburg; and lastly over the

manors of Solms, Braunsels, Hohen Solms, and Griesenstein.

The Prince of Hohenzollern-Siegmaringen, over Trochtelfingen,

Jungenan, Strasburg, Manor Ostrach, and the part of the lordship of

Moeskirch which lies on the left bank of the Danube.

Salm Kyrberg, over the lordship of Gehmen.

Isenburg-Burstein, over the possessions of the Counts of Isenburg,

Budingen, Wechtersbach, and Mehrholz, without any pretensions on the

part of the branch in the present possession being urged against him.

Ahremberg, over the county of Dulmen.

25. The members of the confederation shall take the sovereignty of the

imperial knightdoms included within their boundaries. Such of the

lands as are between the states of two of the confederates, shall be

with respect to the sovereignty, partitioned as exactly as possible

between them, that no misunderstanding with respect to the sovereignty

may arise.

26. The rights of sovereignty consist in exercising the legislation,

superior jurisdiction, administration of justice, military

conscription, or recruiting, and levying taxes.

27. The present reigning Princes or Counts, shall enjoy as patrimonial

or private property all the domains they at present occupy, as well as

all the rights of manor and entail, that do not essentially appertain

to the sovereignty; namely, the right of superior and inferior

administration of justice, in common and criminal cases, tenths,

patronage, and other rights, with the revenues therefrom accruing.

Their domains and chattels, as far as relates to the taxes, shall be

annexed to the Prince of that house under whose sovereignty they come;

or if no Prince of the house be in possession of immoveable property,

in that case they shall be put upon an equality with the domains of

Princes of the most privileged class. These domains cannot be sold or

given to any Prince out of the confederation, without being first

offered to the Prince under whose sovereignty they are placed.

28. In penal cases, the now reigning Princes and Counts, and their

heirs, shall preserve their present privileges of trial. They shall be

tried by their peers. Their fortune shall not in any event be

confiscated, but the revenues may, during the life time of the

criminal, be sequestrated.

29. The confederate states shall contribute to the payment of the

debts of their circle, as well for their old as their new possessions.

The debts of the circle of Suabia, shall be put to the account of the

Kings of Bavaria and Wirtemberg, the grand Duke of Baden, the Princes

of Hohenzollern, Hechingen, and Siegmaringen, the Prince of

Lichtenstein, and Prince of Leyen, in proportion to their respective

possessions in Suabia.

30. The proper debts of a Prince or Count who falls under the

sovereignty of another state, shall be defrayed by the said state

conjointly with the new reigning Prince, in the proportion of the

revenues which that state shall require, and of the part which by the

present treaty is allotted to attach to the attributes of the present

sovereigns.

31. The present reigning Princes or Counts may determine the place of

their residence where they will. Where they reside in the dominions of

a member or ally of the confederation, or in any of the possessions

which they hold out of the territory of the confederation, they may

draw their rents or capitals without paying any tax whatever upon

them.

32. Those persons who hold places in the administration of the

countries, which hereby come under the sovereignty of the

confederates, and who shall not be retained by the new sovereign,

shall receive a pension according to the situation they have held.

33. The numbers of military or religious orders who shall lose their

incomes, or whose common property shall be secularised, shall receive

during life a yearly stipend proportioned to their former income,

their dignity, and their age, and which shall be secured upon the

goods of the revenues of which they were in the enjoyment.

34. The confederates renounce reciprocally, for themselves and their

posterity, all claims which they might have upon the possessions of

other members of the confederation, the eventual right of succession

alone excepted, and this only in the event of the family having died

out, which now is in possession of the territories and objects to

which such a right might be advanced.

35. Between the Emperor of the French and the Confederated States,

federatively and individually, there shall be an alliance, by virtue

of which, every continental war in which one or either parties shall

be engaged, shall be common to all.

36. In the event of any foreign or neighbouring power making

preparations for war, the contracting parties, in order to prevent

surprise, shall, upon the requisition of the minister of one of them

at the assembly of the league at Francfort, arm also. And as the

contingent of the allies is subdivided into four parts, the assembly

shall decide how many of those shall be called into activity. The

armament, however, shall only take place upon the summons of the

Emperor, to each of the contracting parties.

37. His Majesty the King of Bavaria, binds himself to fortify Augsburg

and Lindau; in the first of these places to form and maintain

artillery establishments, and in the second to keep a quantity of

muskets and ammunition, sufficient for a reserve, as well as a baking

establishment at Augsburg, sufficient to supply the armies without

delay, in the event of war.

38. The contingent of each is determined as follows:

France 200,000

Bavaria 30,000

Wirtemberg 12,000

Baden 8,000

Berg 5,000

Darmstadt 4,000

Nassau, Hohenzollern, and others 4,000

39. The contracting parties will admit of the accession of other

German princes and states in all cases where the union with the

confederation may be found consistent with the general interest.

40. The ratification of the present treaty shall be exchanged between

the contracting parties, on the 25th of July at Munich.

Done at Paris, July 12, 1806.

The resignation of the high office of Emperor of Germany, by Francis,

Emperor of Austria.

_Vienna, August 7._

We, Francis Second, &c.