THE DANUBE
[Illustration: WEITENEGG CASTLE FROM THE WEITENBACH]
THE DANUBE
BY
WALTER JERROLD
WITH THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY
LOUIS WEIRTER, R.B.A.
OF WHICH TWELVE ARE IN COLOUR
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1911_
PREFACE
The Rhine appears to have been one of the earliest of Continental
“playgrounds” for British tourists--to have been such, indeed, long
before Switzerland had been exploited. In the days of our grandfathers
“everybody” went to the Rhine--it had become as it were the last relic
of the grand tour which to earlier generations had been regarded as
a necessary finishing off to every gentleman’s education. The past
popularity of the Rhine is emphasized by the fact that the great
river was utilized by both Thackeray and Hood as scenic background
for literary purposes. What the Rhine was, the greater, the more
beautiful, the grander and more fascinating Danube should become in
these days of improved means of communication. Probably in the past its
difficulty of access made the enthusiasm of travellers less effective
in attracting English visitors to the Danube. As early as 1827, J. R.
Planché, poet, dramatist, and historian of costume, made a _Descent of
the Danube from Ratisbon to Vienna_, and duly published an account of
the journey in the following year. Twenty years later another writer,
who had “scribbled successfully for the stage,” John Palgrave Simpson,
published _Letters from the Danube_, describing a journey by steamer
from Ratisbon to Budapest. Then, in 1853, “two briefless barristers
and a Cambridge undergraduate” journeyed in a Thames rowing-boat
from Kelheim to Budapest, and one of their number, R. B. Mansfield,
chronicled their adventures in _The Water Lily on the Danube: being a
brief account of a Pair-Oar during a voyage from Lambeth to Pesth_.
Some years earlier William Beattie had gathered various legends of the
Danube to accompany Bartlett’s series of engravings of _The Beauties of
the Danube_. Thus it will be seen that in days when the river was more
distant than it is now it was not wanting panegyrists. In later years
it has been curiously neglected, except in the way of casual references
and the compact compilations of guide-books. This, however, may be
said, so far as I have been able to ascertain, nobody who has journeyed
along both the Rhine and the Danube--if we except the pardonable
partiality of those who have a patriotic regard for the former--but
finds the Danube almost incomparably the more variously fascinating
stream.
From the time of the Romans onwards, from the time when our authentic
chronicles begin, this mighty river has along its many hundreds of
miles been the scene of so much history-making that to present the full
story of the Danube would be to re-tell a large part of the history
of the Continent during two thousand years. Such, it need scarcely be
said, is not my aim or intention. To bring within the compass of a
single volume some indication of the manifold beauties of the river,
some hint of the romance that attaches to its castled crags, its
villages, towns and cities, some suggestion of the great happenings of
the past, some hint of the fascination of the present, is all that I
can hope to do. And even so I am primarily concerned with presenting
something of the story of the “scenic” Danube--that great stretch of
the river which runs from near Ratisbon in Bavaria to the Iron Gate
between Rumania and Servia, the stretch of which, from voyaging in
steamers, from tramping along the river-side roads, and from journeying
along it by railway, I have a personal knowledge. In applying the word
“scenic” to this greater part of the great river, it is not intended
to suggest that the upper waters above Kelheim and the lower waters
below the Iron Gate have not also much to offer the traveller, but the
portion indicated is that which comprises the most famously picturesque
parts of the Danube. It includes the beautiful mountainous stretches
above and below Passau in Bavaria and Austria, where the river runs at
the foot of the southern slopes of the Böhmer Wald; it includes the
wonderful Wachau of Lower Austria, and the finely varied extent of the
Hungarian Danube, with the grand Kazan defile, where the river forms
a natural barrier between Hungary and Servia. Along the greater part
of the great extent which lies between the limits named, comfortable
passenger steamers run all through the summer season, and in these
steamers the traveller may continue through Rumania and Bulgaria down
to the Black Sea, and all the colour and glamour of the Orient. In the
upper parts of the river, before we can get afloat on it, the Danube is
as it were but an incident in the scenery, but, when once we reach the
parts navigable by passenger steamers, the scenery becomes the setting
or framework for the mighty stream.
The fact that the Danube is known to empty itself into the Black Sea
makes many people regard it as a river at so great a distance as not to
come within the range of a practical holiday policy; and if we give the
Black Sea its ancient name of the Euxine, we make it seem more distant
still. Yet the fact is that much of the beauty of the Upper Danube may
be explored by the holiday-maker who has but a fortnight or three weeks
to spend, for the river has a length of nearly two thousand miles from
where it rises in the duchy of Baden to where it joins the Black Sea,
crossing or bordering in its course the States of Bavaria, Würtemburg,
Austria, Hungary, Servia, Rumania and Bulgaria, and touching at the
northernmost of its various mouths the vast territory of the Russian
Empire. In parts the river is of course familiar to many people: those
who go to Vienna, for example, see one of the least attractive bits
it has to show; those who go to Budapest see it at its city best;
while those who go to Ulm, Ratisbon, and other Bavarian towns know it
in part. But I hope to show that it is by no means the best of the
river that is seen by sojourners in any of the larger towns. It is
to the visitor who likes to linger in out-of-the-way places that the
Danube has most to offer, and in the hundreds of miles of beauties
that it has to show there is little fear of places being overrun. That
a goodly number of British visitors have “discovered” the river I
learned from the captain of one of the steamers, who told me that “some
seasons there are many English, but as a rule more Americans.” Yet
the artist and I, on our journey down by boat, and on our river-side
wanderings coming back, came across none of our compatriots, or of our
transatlantic cousins, except in Vienna.
My thanks are due to numerous friends, known and unknown, who afforded
me cordial assistance during a journey made yet more memorable by the
many kindnesses shown to a travelling stranger. Special thanks, too,
must be accorded to my friend Mr. James Baker, F.R.G.S., whose _John
Westacott_ might be described as a romance of the Danube, for it was he
who first inspired me with the wish to journey down the great river,
who brought home to me the fact, which this volume seeks to enforce,
that the Danube is not only an easily accessible but a well-nigh
inexhaustibly delightful holiday ground.
A word or two should, perhaps, be said as to the spelling of place
names adopted. Generally speaking, I have sought to use the names, and
the spellings, used in the countries to which the places belong. In
bilingual Hungary most places have two names, Magyar and German, in
which cases I give the national name, followed by its German equivalent
in parentheses. Where there are recognized English names, such as
Vienna and Ratisbon, I have used these, as it would in such cases be
the merest pedantry to render them Wien and Regensburg.
WALTER JERROLD
HAMPTON-ON-THAMES
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
I
THE UPPER DANUBE
CHAP.
I. FROM DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUWÖRTH 3
II. DONAUWÖRTH TO RATISBON 17
III. RATISBON TO PASSAU 49
II
THE AUSTRIAN DANUBE
IV. PASSAU TO LINZ 75
V. LINZ TO THE WACHAU 99
VI. THE WACHAU 129
VII. THE WACHAU TO DÉVÉNY 159
III
THE HUNGARIAN DANUBE
VIII. FROM THE OLD CAPITAL TO THE NEW 185
IX. THE HUNGARIAN CAPITAL 204
X. BUDAPEST TO BELGRADE 222
XI. BELGRADE TO ORSOVA 243
IV
THE LOWER DANUBE
XII. THE IRON GATE TO RUSTZUK 269
XIII. RUSTZUK TO THE BLACK SEA 288
INDEX 309
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
WEITENEGG CASTLE FROM THE WEITENBACH (_in colour_)
_Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
RATISBON 28
THE WALHALLA (_in colour_) 42
OBERHAUS AND NIEDERHAUS, PASSAU 76
THE STRUDEL (_in colour_) 110
ST. NIKOLA 120
SARMINGSTEIN 122
PERSENBEUG 126
MÖLK (_in colour_) 130
AGGSTEIN (_in colour_) 134
THE DEVIL’S WALL 138
SPITZ VINEYARDS 140
WEISSENKIRSCHEN 142
DÜRRENSTEIN 148
DÜRRENSTEIN CASTLE 152
STEIN 154
THE MARKET PLACE, KREMS (_in colour_) 156
VIENNA FROM LEOPOLDSBERG (_in colour_) 174
THE CATHEDRAL, POZSONY 188
GRAN (_in colour_) 200
THE PALACE, BUDAPEST (_in colour_) 216
BOATS FROM SZEGEDIN 230
BELGRADE 240
OLD TURKISH FORT, SEMENDRIA (_in colour_) 244
BÁZIÁS 246
RAMA CASTLE (_in colour_) 250
THE KAZAN (_in colour_) 256
THE CROWN CHAPEL, ORSOVA 260
A CAFÉ IN ADA KALEH 262
THE IRON GATE 272
“The Danuby, the river sometimes of our merry passage”
SIR HENRY WOTTON
I
THE UPPER DANUBE
THE DANUBE
CHAPTER I
FROM DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUWÖRTH
... the Hercynian forest where the boar
Roamed and the tribes withstood the swords of Rome
There springs a little stream that grown doth pour
Through mountains dark, and plains, the herdsman’s home,
In swirling volume to the far Euxine Sea.
_From the German_
If it cannot be said of the Danube as it was said of the Thames that it
is “strong without rage, without o’erflowing full,” it can certainly be
said that, like the Thames, two separate places claim to be the source
of the river. These two places are St. Georgen and Donaueschingen--both
of them in the Duchy of Baden, both of them in the district of the
Black Forest (part of the great Hercynian forest, which in the time
of Cæsar stretched from the neighbourhood of Basle into the boundless
regions of the north), and both of them claiming that they are situated
at the very place where the mighty river starts upon its long journey.
Unfortunately for the claims of the former place, the stream that runs
thence to Donaueschingen is named the Brigach; and it is only when that
river joins with the Breg, which also rises not far from St. Georgen,
that the name Donau or Danube is used. Geographically perhaps, the
source of a river being supposed to be that one of its streams which
starts at the point furthest from its mouth, St. Georgen might be
entitled to the honour, but custom and sentiment have long since
granted it to Donaueschingen; and as that place embodies the river’s
name, it is likely long to hold the honour--even as Thames Head will
continue in the view of most people to have a better title to being
considered the actual source of the Thames than Seven Springs.
The rivalry has not unjustly been described by one writer as a matter
of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, for when the opposing advocates seek
classical support the St. Georgenites can put Tacitus into the witness
box, while the Donaueschingites can subpœna Strabo. It is a pretty
little quarrel, and we may leave it at that. Another point that need
not trouble us over its conflict of testimony is that of the derivation
of the name, though it may be noted in passing that it has been
variously derived from “Donner,” thunder; from “Tanne,” a fir tree; and
from Celtic words “Do Na.” The last suggestion was surely put forward
by an ingenious Donaueschingite, for once admit it, and the claims of
St. Georgen are reduced to the ridiculous.
It is at the point where the Brigach and the Breg join that the Danube
begins, and there at Donaueschingen is where our story of the river on
its journey to the sea may also best begin. An old distich runs--
“Brigach und Breg
Bringen die Donau zu weg,”
which may be Englished--
“Brigach and Breg
Set the Danube on its way.”
At the town in which is the “source” is a beautiful estate belonging
to Prince Fürstenberg, a park which has been described as more like
an English park than any other on the Continent, and on the lake are
many and various waterfowl including, says one veracious chronicler,
swans which are the lineal descendants of the first ever introduced
into Germany, it is supposed from Cyprus at the time of the Crusades.
This is a curious statement seeing that swans are indigenous over
the greater part of Europe. Museum, picture galleries and library
are here, but for our present purpose the centre of interest is the
spring or source, which has been enclosed, decorated with flowers and
ornamented with allegorical statuary representing the Baar--the name
of the parish--holding the young Danube in her arms “and whispering
instructions for her journey.” Here, too, is an inscription recording
the length of the river and the height of the source above the
sea-level--
“To the sea, 2840 kilometres” (= 1775 miles).
“Above the sea, 678 metres” (= about 2250 feet).
Steps lead down to the water, and there in accordance with an ancient
custom the visitor is expected to drink of the Danube, though he is no
longer expected to follow the mediæval plans either of leaping into
the stream or pouring into it a cup of wine as an oblation or charm.
From the source “the water, which is pure and limpid” is carried by a
conduit to the Brigach, and at the point of junction the word “Donau”
is inscribed--to remove any lingering doubts from the minds of those
inclined to favour the St. Georgen heresy.
At Donaueschingen the ill-starred Austrian Princess Marie Antoinette, a
child of fourteen, rested on her journey from Vienna to Paris--marriage
and the guillotine.
Of the many hamlets, villages and small towns that the Danube passes,
it will not be possible to say much, except where we pause to learn
some ancient legend, some scrap of history, or to indicate things of
special beauty or interest that are to be seen. In its first few miles
the course of the river takes us, as Mr. C. E. Hughes puts it, through
“part of the Hegau, the land of towering, castle-crowned peaks, the
land of legends and traditions innumerable;”[1] through Pfohren, with
its Duck Castle, so named because it was built in the water, now fallen
from its castle dignity, in a field near the river, and Geissingen
with its old covered bridge. Most of the way from Donaueschingen to
Ulm the railway closely follows the course of the river. Next comes
Immendingen--whence the railway branches south through the mountains
of the volcanic Hegau which forms the dividing watershed between the
Danube and the Rhine where the two rivers most nearly neighbour each
other.
A few miles below Immendingen is Möhringen, where some of the water
of the Danube is supposed to percolate through the earth and reappear
some distance to the south as the Aach, which flows into Lake Constance
and so becomes part of the Rhine. Below Möhringen is Tuttlingen at the
foot of the ruin-crowned Homberg, a prosperous town, and a good centre
for excursions, but as an incident on the Danube, chiefly notable
for a monument forming yet one more connexion with the Rhine; for
here is to be seen a statue, erected nearly twenty years ago to Max
Schneckenburger, author of the German national song _Wacht am Rhein_.
Schneckenburger was born in 1819 at Thalheim, a village some miles to
the west, and there he was buried thirty years later. From Tuttlingen
the river follows a winding course to Mühlheim, on high ground to
the right with a ruined pilgrimage church of Mariahilf beyond, and
then, more tortuously still, crossed and recrossed by the railway to
Fridingen. Beuron, the next place of any importance, is notable for its
monastery of Benedictines which was originally founded in the eleventh
century by the Augustines, was suppressed at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, and made over to the Benedictines about fifty years
ago. On a height to the south of Beuron is a notable château, and also
within easy reach of the village is a large grotto known as Peter’s
Cavern.
Through a narrow and beautiful valley the river goes on by wooded hills
and pleasant, picturesque villages, with ruined castles now and again
standing boldly on the rocky heights. Near Gutenstein are the towering
rocks of Rabenfels and Heidenfels. The river, winding to and fro among
the hills, is more or less closely neighboured, as has been said, by
the railway; while from Tuttlingen to Sigmaringen the course of the
stream may be followed by the pedestrian who has leisure--and to him
alone is it given to enjoy all the beauties of this picturesque stretch
of the Danube. Sigmaringen itself is a town on the right bank that
affords a fine centre for exploring the river up or down-stream, and
among the things of interest to be seen here is Prince Hohenzollern’s
Schloss, situated on a precipitous rock immediately above the Danube,
with pleasant hills on the further side of the river. In the Schloss
is an admirable museum and picture gallery. On the high Brenzkofer
Berg, on the left side of the river, is a monument to the Hohenzollerns
killed in the war of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War and from it is to
be had a good and extensive view.
After Sigmaringen is left behind the valley is less narrow, and the
river goes on past small villages and old towns, each of which has no
doubt its interest for the leisurely pedestrian. Beyond Reidlingen
on the left bank is seen on the right the isolated hill of Bussen,
from the summit of which is to be had a view embracing the whole
of Upper Swabia and much of the Alps. On the hill is a pilgrimage
church and a ruined castle The ruined castles are so numerous along
parts of the river that is not possible to pause at all; for it
would appear as though in the good old times the population largely
consisted of castle-dwelling barons. Zweifaltendorf has a stalactite
cave; Rechtenstein, with another ruined castle, is a notably beautiful
spot; Ober-Marchtal has a grand old Premonstratensian monastery; while
Munderkirchen, built upon a rock islanded by the forking river, has a
new stone bridge with an arch span of one hundred and sixty-four feet.
Beyond this the valley is wider. At the village of Ehingen, the railway
turns northward from the river, which between here and Ulm receives
several affluents from the south, including just before Ulm the Iller,
while at Ulm itself, the river Blau comes in from a delightfully wooded
and rocky valley on the left.
Ulm, the frontier town of Würtemburg, is important in the story
of the Danube for a variety of reasons. In the first place, it is
here, fourteen hundred feet above sea-level, that the river becomes
effectively navigable for flat-bottomed boats of about a hundred tons,
and thus it is the centre of a brisk trade. Then it is a picturesque
old city, with many ancient houses still to show, and it was long
regarded as a strategic point of great importance, and, therefore, was
maintained as a fortress of first rank. It was said, some years ago,
that it was capable of sheltering within its fortifications a force of
a hundred thousand men. Latterly, it has developed as an industrial and
commercial centre, and the ramparts have been acquired by the town for
peaceful purposes.
Among all that the city has to show the visitor, the ancient Gothic
cathedral--the many striking features of which call for a guide-book’s
help and cannot be touched upon in this gossiping chronicle--stands out
most prominently. “Long before reaching Ulm the old cathedral, with its
massive but unfinished towers, attracts the attention of the traveller
as seen from the road, and the first view of the dark rolling Danube
which is obtained before reaching Ulm, is at first sight a grand and
imposing object”--thus, in dubious English, wrote a traveller arriving
from Augsburg some years ago. Since that was written, the beautiful
great tower on the western side with its wonderful sculptured doorway,
and wealth of figures has been completed in accordance with the
fifteenth century design left by the last of the original architects.
This work of completion occupied thirteen years (1877-1890) and now
the tower, 528 feet in height, has the distinction of being one of
the loftiest in the world--thirteen feet higher than that of Cologne
cathedral and twenty-seven feet lower than the Washington Monument.
From the tower is to be had an extensive view, said to take in the
historic battleground of Blenheim, past which the Danube flows some
thirty miles away. Writing seventy years ago, a visitor declared that
if the tower could be completed, it would be one of the finest in
Europe, and such it is now acknowledged to be. The cathedral itself is
the second largest in the German Empire, being exceeded only by that
at Cologne, and it is supposed to be capable of containing as many as
thirty thousand persons.
As is fitting in a place regarded as of great military importance,
Ulm figures in the annals of war. It was hence that the Elector of
Bavaria set out for the famous battlefield of Blenheim some distance
down the river, and it was here that the Austrian General Mack shut
himself up with a force of over thirty thousand men to stay Napoleon’s
rapid advance on Vienna in 1805. Despite the importance of Ulm,
despite the formidable army he had with him--with ample provisions and
ammunition--Mack surrendered the town almost without striking a blow;
“yet somehow he was suffered to escape the punishment of which he was
thought to be richly deserving.”
If, thanks to the action of one man, the military annals of Ulm
are thus in part inglorious, it has the distinction of remarkable
association with one of the oldest of the arts of peace. It was here
that the “Meistersänger” lingered longest, “preserving without text and
without notes the traditional love of their craft.” It is true that
the Meistersänger lacked on the whole the freshness and fascination
of their forerunners the “Minnesänger,” but their story forms an
interesting chapter in the history of the literature of their land,
though a German historian of German literature has sneered at them as
“chiefly burghers of towns ... prudent though uninspired votaries of
the Muse,” and has declared that in their work “the real soul of Poetry
was wanting.” It is, however, interesting to know that for nearly five
centuries there were burghers to keep the idea of poetry alive if no
more, and to know that here in Ulm there remained in 1830 a dozen of
the Meistersänger. Nine years later there were but four, and they in
1839 formally made over their insignia and other guild property to a
modern singing society. The last formal meeting of the Meistersänger
had taken place in 1770.
Ancient Ulm was on the left bank of the Danube--the old city wall along
the river front affords a pleasant walk--but now it may be said to
include Neu Ulm on the right bank; indeed for military purposes the two
were some years ago made one, though the old town is in Würtemburg and
the new one in Bavaria.
It was at Elchingen, just below Ulm, that Marshal Ney won the victory
that caused General Mack to surrender the city and gained for the
victor, Napoleon’s _brave des braves_, the grand eagle of the Legion
of Honour and the title of Duke of Elchingen. Beyond the scene of the
battle of October 14, 1805, the river traverses for many miles the
extensive marshlands of Donaumoos and Donauriet, closely neighboured
by the railway. About fifteen miles below Ulm, picturesquely situated
on the right bank on a hill overlooking the extensive Donaumoos on
the further side, is Gunzburg, on the site of the old Roman station
of Guntia. This place should be additionally interesting to English
visitors as having long possessed a nunnery, founded here, it is
supposed after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, by an English woman named
Maria Ward. Lauingen and Dillingen are small, attractive old towns. The
first was the birthplace of Albertus Magnus--a celebrated scholar whom
we shall meet again on our downward journey along the river--of whom a
bronze statue is to be seen in the market place.
The next places, Höchstäd and Blindheim, on the left bank, though
small, loom large in history as the scenes of decisive battles. As
long ago as the eleventh century two battles were fought here between
the Emperor Henry IV., and the Bavarian Guelph I., when the latter was
defeated and lost his dukedom. Then, in 1703, the Elector of Bavaria
and Marshal Villars defeated the Austrians, and but a short interval
elapsed before the Danube villages found themselves, in August,
1704, once more, thanks to the great military genius of the Duke of
Marlborough, the scene of one of the “fifteen decisive battles of the
world,” a battle on which, according to one historian, the fate, not
only of Europe, but of progressive civilization depended. The village
of Blindheim or Blenheim was strongly occupied by the French, and the
French-Bavarian army occupied the ground on the north to beyond the
village of Lutzingen, while on the eastern side of the slight valley of
the Nebel, the little stream which runs into the Danube at Blenheim,
were the allies under Marlborough. It is not necessary here to tell the
story. Is it not told in all the history books, and at length in the
biographies of the great commander, and in Creasy’s “Fifteen Decisive
Battles of the World”? It may, however, be well to recall the words in
which Alison in his “Life of Marlborough” emphasizes the decisiveness
of the battle.
“Had the French triumphed,” he says, “the Protestants might have been
driven, like the Pagan heathens of old by the sons of Pepin, beyond the
Elbe; the Stuart race, and with them Romish ascendancy, might have been
re-established in England; the fire lighted by Latimer and Ridley might
have been extinguished in blood; and the energy breathed by religious
freedom into the Anglo-Saxon race might have expired. The destinies
of the world would have been changed. Europe, instead of a variety
of independent states whose mutual hostility kept alive courage,
while their national rivalry stimulated talent, would have sunk into
the slumber attendant on universal dominion. The Colonial Empire of
England would have withered away and perished, as that of Spain has
done in the grasp of the Inquisition. The Anglo-Saxon race would have
been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it.
The centralized despotism of the Roman Empire would have been renewed
on Continental Europe; the chains of Romish tyranny, and with them
the general infidelity of France before the Revolution, would have
extinguished or perverted thought in the British islands.” Voltaire
summed up the battle of Blenheim which “dissipated for ever Louis the
Fourteenth’s once proud visions of almost universal conquest” in the
following words: “Such was the celebrated battle which the French call
the battle of Hochstet (Höchstäd), the Germans Plentheim (Blindheim),
and the English Blenheim. The conquerors had about five thousand
killed, and eight thousand wounded, the greater part being on the side
of Prince Eugene. The French army was almost entirely destroyed: of
sixty thousand men, so long victorious, there never reassembled more
than twenty thousand effective. About twelve thousand killed, fourteen
thousand prisoners, all the cannon, a prodigious number of colours
and standards, all the tents and equipages, the general of the army,
and one thousand two hundred officers of mark in the power of the
conqueror, signalized that day.”
Recalling the effect of the great battle we may also call to mind the
passage in which Addison describes it in his poem in laudation of
Marlborough:--
“The rout begins, the Gallic squadrons run
Compelled in crowds to meet the fate they shun.
Thousands of fiery steeds with wounds transfixed
Floating in gore, with their dead masters mixed,
’Midst heaps of spears and standards driv’n around,
Lie in the Danube’s bloody whirlpools drowned.
Troops of bold youths, born on the distant Saone,
Or sounding borders of the rapid Rhone,
Or where the Seine her flow’ry fields divides,
Or where the Loire through winding vineyards glides,
In heaps the rolling billows sweep away,
And into Scythian seas their bloated corps convey.
From Blenheim’s tow’rs the Gaul with wild affright,
Beholds the various havoc of the fight....
With floods of gore that from the vanquished fell
The marshes stagnate, and the rivers swell.
Mountains of slain lie heaped upon the ground,
Or midst the roarings of the Danube drowned.”
The correct periods, the conventional epithets of the author of “The
Campaign” somehow leave us less moved than does the simple episode
presented by a later poet, for it must have been of the little Nebel
stream that Southey was thinking when he wrote his simple satire on
military glory in “The Battle of Blenheim”:--
“And everybody praised the Duke,
Who this great fight did win.’
‘But what good came of it at last?’
Quoth little Peterkin.
‘Why that I cannot tell,’ said he,
‘But ’twas a famous victory.’”
The poet’s “Old Kaspar” had not had the advantage of studying history
in the light of Alison, and his satire has, it is to be feared,
had little effect on war. Indeed, two years after the ballad was
first published, further fighting was to take place in this very
neighbourhood, when in 1800 Moreau cut off the Austrians’ routes into
Italy, and so facilitated Napoleon’s Italian campaign.
At Donauwörth, on the left bank, we still have news of battle, for
this old “free city” was stormed by Gustavus Adolphus in 1632 and
was captured by King Ferdinand two years later, while it also played
an important part in the preliminaries that led up to the battle of
Blenheim, seeing that it was in this neighbourhood that Marlborough
defeated the Bavarians and cut them off from their French allies.
His own account of the engagement was sent to the States-General in the
following terms:
“HIGH AND MIGHTY LORDS.--
“Upon our arrival at Onderingen, on Tuesday, I understood that the
Elector of Bavaria had despatched the best of the foot to guard the
post of Schellenburg, where he had been casting up entrenchments for
some days, because it was of great importance; I therefore resolved
to attack him there; and marched yesterday morning by three o’clock,
at the head of a detachment of six thousand foot and thirty squadrons
of our troops, and three battalions of Imperial grenadiers; whereupon
the army begun their march to follow us; but the way being very long
and bad, we could not get to the river Wertz till about noon, and
’twas full three o’clock before we could lay bridges for our troops
and cannon, so that all things being ready, we attacked them about six
in the evening. The attack lasted a full hour: the enemies defended
themselves very vigorously, and were very strongly intrenched, but at
last were obliged to retire by the valour of our men, and the good
God has given us a complete victory. We have taken fifteen pieces of
cannon, with all their tents and baggage. The Count D’Arco, and the
other generals that commanded them, were obliged to save themselves
by swimming over the Danube. I heartily wish your High Mightinesses
good success from this happy beginning, which is so glorious for
the arms of the allies, and from which I hope, by the assistance of
heaven, we may reap many advantages. We have lost very many brave
officers, and we cannot enough bewail the loss of the Sieurs Goor
and Beinheim, who were killed in the action. The Prince of Baden and
General Thungen are slightly wounded; Count Stirum has received a
wound across his body, but it is hoped he will recover; the Hereditary
Prince of Hesse-Cassel, Count Horn, Lieutenant-General, and the
Major-Generals Wood and Pallandt are also wounded. A little before
the attack begun, the Baron of Moltenburg, Adjutant-General to Prince
Eugene, was sent to me by his Highness, with advice that the Marshals
of Villeroy and Tallard were marched to Strasburg, having promised a
great reinforcement to the Elector of Bavaria, by way of the Black
Forest, and I had advice, by another hand, that they designed to send
him fifty battalions and sixty squadrons of their best troops. Since
I was witness how much the Sieur Mortagne distinguished himself in
this whole action, I could not omit doing him the justice to recommend
him to your High Mightinesses to make up to him the loss of his
general; wherefore I have pitched upon him to bring this to your High
Mightinesses, and to inform you of the particulars.
“MARLBOROUGH”
Donauwörth grew to be a place of such importance that it was for a time
the seat of the Dukes of Upper Bavaria, until Duke Louis the Severe,
who in 1256 had his wife beheaded on an unfounded charge of infidelity,
removed his capital to Munich. It is suggested that the change of
capital was dictated by the duke’s guilty conscience. In the church
attached to the suppressed Benedictine Abbey of the Holy Cross here,
is to be seen the sarcophagus of the unhappy, Desdemona-like Duchess
Mary. The story runs that no sooner had the deed been perpetrated than
incontestable evidence of the duchess’s innocence was forthcoming, and
the conscience-stricken husband became grey in a single night:--
“And still that mangled form so fair
Was present to his mind;
His cheek grew haggard with despair--
No refuge could he find.
The furrows deepened on his brow,
All sleep forsook his eye!
His gait so proud to earth was bowed,
But still he could not die!
A deadly weight, a dreary fate,
A voice that said ‘Live on!
Each wretched breast may hope for rest,
But thou canst hope for none.’”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “The Black Forest,” p. 276 (Methuen).