In something more than three hours, we reached Rheinberg, distant about
nine miles; a place often mentioned in the military history of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which we had supposed would
at least gratify us by the shew of magnificent ruins, together with
some remains of its former importance. It is a wretched place of one
dirty street, and three or four hundred mean houses, surrounded by a
decayed wall that never was grand, and half filled by inhabitants,
whose indolence, while it is probably more to be pitied than blamed,
accounts for the sullenness and wretchedness of their appearance. Not
one symptom of labour, or comfort, was to be perceived in the whole
town. The men seemed, for the most part, to be standing at their doors,
in unbuckled shoes and woollen caps. What few women we saw were brown,
without the appearance of health, which their leanness and dirtiness
prevented. Some small shops of hucksters' wares were the only signs of
trade.
The inn, that seemed to be the best, was such as might be expected in a
remote village, in a cross road in England. The landlord was standing
before the door in his cap, and remained there some time after we
had found the way into a sitting room, and from thence, for want of
attendance, into a kitchen; where two women, without stockings, were
watching over some sort of cookery in earthen jugs. We were supplied,
at length, with bread, butter and sour wine, and did not suffer
ourselves to consider this as any specimen of German towns, because
Rheinberg was not a station of the post; a delusion, the spirit of
which continued through several weeks, for we were always finding
reasons to believe, that the wretchedness of present places and persons
was produced by some circumstances, which would not operate in other
districts.
This is the condition of a town, which, in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, was thought important enough to be five times
attacked by large armies. FARNESE, the Spanish commander, was diverted
from his attempt upon it, by the necessity of relieving Zutphen, then
besieged by the Earl of Leicester: in 1589, the Marquis of Varambon
invested it, for the Spaniards, by order of the Prince of Parma;
but it was relieved by our Colonel Vere, who, after a long battle,
completely defeated the Spanish army. In 1599, when it was attacked
by Mendoza, a magazine caught fire. The governor, his family, and a
part of the garrison were buried in the ruins of a tower, and the
explosion sunk several vessels in the Rhine; after which, the remainder
of the garrison surrendered the place. The Prince of Orange retook it
in 1633. Four years afterwards, the Spaniards attempted to surprise it
in the night; but the Deputy Governor and others, who perceived that
the garrison could not be immediately collected, passed the walls,
and, pretending to be deserters, mingled with the enemy, whom they
persuaded to delay the attack for a few minutes. The troops within
were in the mean time prepared for their defence, and succeeded in
it; but the Governor, with two officers and fifteen soldiers who had
accompanied him, being discovered, were killed. All these contests were
for a place not belonging to either party, being in the electorate of
Cologne, but which was valuable to both, for its neighbourhood to their
frontiers.
Beyond Rheinberg, our prospects were extensive, but not so woody, or
so rich as those of the day before, and few villages enlivened the
landscape. Open corn lands, intermixed with fields of turnips, spread
to a considerable distance, on both sides; on the east, the high ridges
of the Westphalian mountains shut up the scene. The Rhine, which
frequently swept near the road, shewed a broad surface, though shrunk
within its sandy shores by the dryness of the season. Not a single
vessel animated its current, which was here tame and smooth, though
often interrupted by sands, that rose above its level.