LOUVAIN--WATERLOO AND NAMUR.
Scenery around Louvain--_The Belgian railroad system_--Peculiar
adaptation of the country--Policy of Government interference
in their construction--The average cost per mile--Causes of
the difference in outlay between Belgium and England--Cheap
rates of travelling in Belgium--_Accidents_--Success not yet
decided--Louvain--Its extent--THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN--Its
former fame--Its present condition--The bierre de Louvain--_The
great brewery_--Its processes--Amazing consumption of beer in
Belgium--Its different characters--_The Hôtel de Ville_--Its
pictures--Gallery of M. Vanderschreick--The collegiate church
of St. Pierre--_Legend of Saint Margaret of Louvain_--Tomb
of Justus Lipsius--Flight of the “brave Belges,” at Louvain
in 1832--Singular change in the character of the people for
courage--The present soldiery--_Terveuren_--The park and palace
of the Prince of Orange--_The Forest of Soigné_--WATERLOO--The
Belgic Lion--Its injury to the field--Irish anecdote--Bravery of
the Irish troops at Waterloo--_Hougemont_--The orchard--Relics
of the fight--The Duke of Wellington’s estate--No monument
to him on the field--The Duke of Marlborough--La Belle
Alliance--_Quatre Bras_--The woods cut down--Beautiful scenery
of the Meuse and the Sambre--NAMUR--My Uncle Toby--The
citadel--Don John of Austria--The cathedral--_The church of
St. Loup_--The trade in cutlery--THE DESCENT OF THE MEUSE--Its
beauty and its wealth--Andennes--_History of Mr. Cockerill_--His
influence on the manufactures of Belgium--_His print-works at
Andennes_--Ruined by the revolution--_The manufacture of paper in
Belgium_--Huy.
THE route from Mechlin to Louvain, which we passed this morning, is the
first of the line of railroads on which we have perceived any striking
inequality of surface; numerous cuttings and embankments occurring as
it approaches the latter town. Beyond it the alluvial and sandy plains
disappear, and the country assumes the usual hilly and diversified
appearance, so much so, that before arriving at Tirlemont, it passes
under a tunnel of nearly a thousand yards in length. The scenery, too,
along the banks of the Dyle, is most rich and diversified, Louvain,
itself, being seated on the skirts of a forest, which has evidently
been a portion of that of Soigné, at some distant period. Fuel must
be here pretty abundant, not only wood being plentiful, and coal at no
great distance, but, in the sunk land, I observed a stratum of turf,
under the sandy surface, which had been worked in large quantities, and
stacked along the side of the road.
Belgium, from its geographical position, not less than the
extraordinary adaptation of the nature of the surface, seems to have
invited the experiment of supplanting the old modes of conveyance, by
an uniform and comprehensive system of railroads. The project was taken
up by the government in 1833, and the plan finally executed, was that
of taking one point, in the centre of the kingdom, and issuing from
it--north, west, east, and south--lines, to maintain a communication
with the sea-ports of Ostend and Antwerp, and the great commercial
outlets of France and Prussia. It is expected, that on reaching the
frontier of these two states, at Limbourg and Couvin, in the Bois de la
Thierache, the enterprize would be taken up by private speculators,
who would continue the chain to Cologne, on the east, and, on the
south, in the direction of Paris. The whole project is in direct
opposition to the _laissez faire_ principle of the English government,
whose maxim is, to leave everything to private enterprize, that private
capital is calculated to grapple with. But Belgium has been so long
accustomed, both under France and Holland, to “government interference”
in the minutest concerns of the nation, even to the prejudice or
supersession of individual speculation, that the habitual policy of the
country may have rendered its intervention indispensible. And as the
entire extent of all the lines projected, in progress, and open, will
not exceed three hundred miles, and these can be completed, at a cost
infinitely lower than anything that has yet been attempted in Great
Britain, the undertaking is not so very gigantic as at first sight it
might appear. One advantage which arises from this undertaking, is that
its benefits will thus be extended equally to every portion of the
kingdom; had it been left solely to private enterprise, those lines
alone would have been selected, which promised to be the most prolific
in profits; and other districts, less inviting, would never have been
traversed by a railroad at all. But the government, by combining the
entire into one comprehensive system, is enabled to apply the excess of
gain on one section, to repair the possible loss upon another, and thus
extend its facilities alike to all. But private enterprise is by no
means prohibited, and in addition to the government works, applications
from capitalists have been already granted, to construct branches in
the mining districts of Hainault.
The average cost of those already completed scarcely exceeds £8,500
a mile,[8] including carriages and buildings. The most expensive
line was that from Louvain to Tirlemont, which, including the tunnel
I have mentioned, cost £11,661 a mile, and the cheapest, that from
Dendermonde to Mechlin, which, as the level surface of the ground had
barely to be disturbed for laying down the rails, cost only £4,583.
This, however, is for single lines of rails; that alone from Brussels
to Antwerp being yet laid with double, though all have been constructed
with a view to their ultimate adoption. The line now in progress from
Liege to Verviers, passing, as it does, through a most unequal and
hilly country in the vicinity of the Vesdre, will, I imagine, from the
numerous embankments and cuttings through rocks, be the most costly
yet attempted. The natural facility of the ground, and the consequent
simplicity of the work, led to one result very different from our
experience in England;--the actual costs of the works, even on the most
difficult sections, have not exceeded the estimates by more than eight
per cent.
In England, the least expensive line yet opened has cost £10,000 a
mile, (in Ireland one has been completed, from Belfast to Lisburn,
for less than £7000), but others have cost upwards of £40,000; and the
average of forty-five lines, for which bills were passed in 1836 and
1837, was upwards of £17,500 a mile _on the estimate_, which may have
fallen much below the actual outlay subsequently. But, besides the mere
facilities of the country; other causes have contributed to render
the expenses in Belgium infinitely lower than those of Great Britain;
in the former, there were no committees of the House of Commons to
enable the solicitors’ bills to mount to 70 and £80,000 for expenses of
obtaining an act, as was the case on the instances of the London and
Birmingham line, and that of the Great Western; nor were there rich
demesnes and parks to be preserved, whose proprietors were to receive
the _prætium affectionis_ in compensation for the damages; nor towns
to be entered in search of termini, where whole streets of houses and
acres of building ground were to be purchased up, at an expense that
would prove ruinous to any but the joint-stock capital of a railroad.
Their engineers too were enabled to avoid the expense, whilst they
profited by the success of the experiments in every stage which were
making in England--experiments which were even more costly when they
failed.
The fares by the Belgian trains are, from all these circumstances,
reducible to a sum much below the cheapest rate of railroad travelling
in England; in their first-class conveyances “Berlins” (which
were equivalent to the “mail carriages” on our lines, but are now
withdrawn), the fare from Antwerp to Brussels was only _two shillings
and eleven-pence_, whilst for the same distance, thirty miles, it was
_six shillings and six-pence_ from Manchester to Liverpool. In their
present, most expensive carriages, the “diligences,” the charge is
_two shillings and six-pence_, whilst those in England are _five and
six-pence_--and in their “chars-a-banc” or second-class, _one shilling
and eight-pence_, whilst ours are _four shillings_--they have also an
inferior trainstill, “the waggons” for which we have no equivalent,
that carry passengers for _a shilling_. As these rates are something
about one-half the old fares by the conveyances which railroads
have superseded, the increase of intercourse has been augmented in
a ratio that almost exceeds credibility. The number of passengers
between Antwerp and Brussels before 1836, was estimated at about 8000
annually, but since the opening of the road throughout, in that year,
they amounted in 1837 to 781,250, and though the numbers diminished,
as the attraction of novelty wore off, in 1838 they still exhibited
an increase of from five to six hundred per cent over the old mode of
travelling.
The rate of travelling does not exceed twenty-six miles an hour, and
in general does not average more than twenty; and by the statement of
M. Nothomb, the minister for public works, of the number of accidents
there appears to have been but one man wounded in 1835, one in 1836,
five in 1837, twelve in 1838, and seven in the six months to June 1839,
when the return was made up. All of these catastrophes are ascribed
by the minister to the wilfulness or imprudence of the parties
themselves, “no possible blame being attachable to any officer of
the company.” One man was drunk, and another was deaf, a third would
persist in riding on the balustrade of the waggon, and a fourth stood
upright in passing a viaduct, several were killed in looking after
their hats; and one formidable accident alone admits of censure upon
the officials, when a train returning at night, after leaving King
Leopold at Ostend, went by accident into the Lys, near Ghent, the
guardian of a drawbridge, which had been opened to allow a lighter to
pass, having gone to drink in an adjoining cabaret, without taking
the trouble to close it! The engine actually cleared the gulf by its
velocity, but was dragged back into the river by the weight of the
train, and the engineer and his assistant killed upon the spot.”
As yet M. Briavionne remarks in his work, “_De l’Industrie en
Belgique_,” the receipts of the railroads are below the calculations
of these projectors; but this is hoped to be remedied in time by a
diminished expenditure in management and repairs; and, perhaps, by
an increase in the tarif of fares, which are felt to be lower than
is equitable to the interests of the undertaking. Sixty-eight out of
every one hundred passengers availing themselves of the very cheapest
conveyance, the “_waggons_,” instead of a fair proportion, as had
been anticipated, travelling by the first and second class carriages.
The enterprise, he conceives to have been unwisely expanded into the
present stupendous system, when the original idea of effecting a rapid
communication with Germany across Belgium, independent of Holland,
would have achieved the grand object aimed at, with a less expense.
This was a sacrifice of solid advantages to ostentation, and has been
followed by financial disappointment; but it arose in some degree, from
the national desire to give independent Belgium an important prestige
in the eyes of Europe. “The _Chemin de Fer_ is then the more popular in
Belgium, adds M. B., because the people can see the intimate connexion
between its construction and the events of 1830; _without the
revolution, we should have had no railroad, and without the railroad we
should have been better without the revolution_.”[9]
Louvain, the Oxford, or rather the _Maynooth_ of Belgium is a
miserable, dilapidated old town, with narrow streets and an air of
dirt and desolation. Four hundred years ago, it was a place of wealth
and importance, the capital of the ancient duchy of Brabant, and the
residence of its sovereigns before its incorporation with the territory
of Burgundy. Justus Lipsius, himself a citizen of Louvain, and born
in a little hamlet between it and Brussels, records, on the authority
of some old tradition, that in 1360 there were within the walls from
3,000 to 4,000 cloth workers, who gave employment to 150,000 artizans,
(an evident exaggeration in amount, that attests, however, the fame of
its past prosperity), and the story adds, that at the hours of meals,
the great bell of St. Peter’s was sounded to warn parents to keep
their children within doors, lest they should be crushed and trampled
by the crowds who were passing from their workshops to their homes!
At present, its manufactures are at an end, with the exception of its
beer, whose fame is known throughout the Netherlands, its population
is dwindled to 25,000, and even within the circuit of the walls,
large spaces covered with buildings are now converted into fields or
cultivated as market gardens for the supply of the citizens.
In later times, the name of Louvain was familiar throughout the Roman
Catholic world, from the renown of its university, which had existed
since the year 1426, and was long one of the most eminent seminaries
of theological learning in the west of Europe. It contained in the
last century no less than forty-three colleges, distributed over the
various quarters of the city, and was frequented by upwards of 8,000
students in humanity and divinity, who obtained, at various times,
from the emperors extraordinary privileges, exemption from taxes,
freedom from arrest, freedom of the city and presentation to the most
valuable livings. The bishops of the Pays Bas were ordinarily chosen
from the fellows of Louvain; numbers of its members attained the
dignity of a cardinal’s hat, and one the Pontificate itself, under
the title of Adrian VI. Charles V and his sisters were educated at
Louvain. The power and the influence which it enjoyed, however, were
not tempered by due discretion, and its houses assuming a right of
political interference in opposition to the government, were suppressed
and dispersed by the Emperor Joseph II. Under the dominion of France,
the university was never restored, as its funds were required for
other purposes, but in 1816, the King of Holland, as a measure of
conciliation to his Roman Catholic subjects, revived its charter and
re-opened its schools.
The principal building, “the Halle” of the university, is situated
behind the Hôtel de Ville in the rue de Namur. Some of the minor
colleges have been thrown down or converted into hotels, warehouses,
hospitals and barracks. Others are still used as the lecture rooms
and theatres of the revived university. The _Collège des Prédicateurs
Irlandais_, founded in 1697 by Cardinal Howard, is no longer in
existence. Since the revolution of 1830, the University of Louvain has
been again remodelled, and its name altered to that of _l’Université
Catholique_, to distinguish it from that of Brussels, which is known as
_l’Université Libre_.
“La bière de Louvain,” is to be found in every hotel and estaminet in
Belgium. We went over one of the largest breweries, that of Messrs.
Renier, Hambrouk and Co., the Barclay and Perkins of Belgium. It is but
recently built, and being an entirely new building from the foundation,
its arrangements are the most commodious and compact imaginable; it is
calculated to brew two hundred barrels a-day, and is now in full work;
its usual stock is 14,000 barrels. The machinery had been constructed
by Sir John Rennie, of London, but has since been increased. I found
here the same preference for high pressure steam engines which seems
so universal in Belgium, the one erected was a low pressure one, very
much to the regret of one of the proprietors, M. Behr, who conducted us
over the establishment. The apparatus exhibited all the recent English
improvements, but what is, I think, considered dangerous in England,
they had a large copper cooler in use. Their boilers were constructed
with one cylinder within another, to avoid burning in the process, a
precaution which is rendered necessary from the quantity of wheat flour
used for their favourite and peculiar “white beer.”
The malt which was on the floors had been allowed to germinate much
longer than in England, in fact, till a shoot of half an inch to an
inch long had issued from each grain. By this means, the saccharine
matter is intentionally so exhausted, that the beer has but little
or no flavour of it. The name of their ordinary beer is Peetermans,
(from an ancient military corps of Louvain, which had existed since
the thirteenth century), and the finer is the _bière blanche_, which
is consumed at a distance in large quantities. An Englishman would not
let either enter his lips, they are both as thin as water and as sour
as verjuice, and yet the quantities consumed everywhere in Belgium is
quite surprising. The annual consumption, calculated upon the excise
duty paid upon beer, which is upwards of seven millions of francs per
annum, and is collected in the proportion of one franc and a half
for every hectolitre, or twenty-six gallons, amounts to 5,400,000
hectolitres, or something above four millions of barrels, _being about
thirty-five gallons per annum for every individual of the population_!
A small quantity only, not exceeding 40,000 gallons, is for foreign
export. The usual price is about twelve francs a hectolitre, from which
some idea may be formed of the “thin potations” in which the Belgian
peasant delights.
The operation of making this light beer is amazingly quick, the
malt is mashed one day, brewed and cooled the next, fermented for
forty-eight hours, and drunk the fourth morning. That for immediate use
is fermented in the barrel _on its end_, a practice unusual in this
country, but which M. Behr conceived advantageous. A chime, rather
deeper than usual, served to retain on the top, the barm and the
liquid forced up by the expansion of the fermentation, which, as the
process declined, retired again to its place, thus keeping constantly
an ascending and descending current, which facilitated the operation,
beside being more cleanly and costing less labour. Every different
district in Belgium produces a different kind of beer, which, curiously
enough, cannot be successfully imitated by the others, thus the brewers
of Brussels have not succeeded in producing the _uytzet_ of Ghent, nor
those of Ghent the yellow _faro_ which is the favourite beverage of
Brussels, whilst both have failed to rival the “white beer” of Louvain.
The great lion of Louvain is its Town Hall, which is certainly the most
surprisingly rich specimen of gothic architecture in the world. It
is literally covered with most elaborate and intricate carvings from
the foundation to the roof. Charles V spoke of placing the Cathedral
of Antwerp under a glass shade, but actually one is inclined to wish
for something of the kind to keep the dust from discolouring the
florid tracery of the Hôtel de Ville at Louvain. It is situated in a
little ancient square in which Marshal Villeroy held a council of war
by torch-light on the night of the Battle of Ramilies, in 1706. The
building itself, which is of the fifteenth century, is small, but its
proportions and ornaments are of the most delicate elegance. It has no
tower, but the heaviness of its lofty roof is relieved by turrets at
the corners. The whole front is covered with bas-reliefs, representing
the history of and the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, with
more fidelity than is reconcileable to modern taste. The whole has
for many years been undergoing a thorough restoration, which is now
complete, every decayed piece of stone being accurately replaced by a
fac-simile of the original carved work. The interior is not suitable to
the beauty of the outside, and an old hall on the third story is fitted
up as a gallery, with a wretched collection of pictures, which are
libellously ascribed to the old masters. There is, however, a gallery
in Louvain of high repute, that of M. Vanderschreick, which contains
a number of superb paintings of the Dutch school, Rubens, Teniers,
Vandyke, Rembrandt, and, in short, a specimen of all its best masters.
It is accessible to strangers, and since the dispersion of M. Schamp’s
pictures at Ghent, is, perhaps, the best collection in Belgium.
The churches in Louvain, notwithstanding the long presence of so
many luminaries of the establishment, are not eminent for either
their riches or their beauty. The Collegiate Church of St. Pierre,
which is the principal one, has a superbly carved pulpit by Berger of
great height--a rock crowned with trees, and at its foot, St. Peter
on one side denying Christ, and at the other, Saul struck from his
horse on his way to persecute the Christians of Damascus. A little
chapel at the back of the altar is dedicated to St. Margaret, the
saint of maid-servants, and is connected with a curious little legend
illustrative of the times. _Margrietje_ was the domestic of an old
couple, who kept an hostelry for pilgrims in the year 1225, at Louvain.
Her master and his wife had resolved to retire from the world, and had
converted all their property into money, with which they were about to
retire into the monastery of St. Bernard. On the eve of their putting
this plan into execution, however, some miscreants formed a conspiracy
to assassinate them, and, disguising themselves as pilgrims, came late
in the evening to seek for shelter at the accustomed inn. The good
old people anxious to perform their last act of charity, sent Margaret
to bring wine in a wooden bottle, still preserved in the church. The
pretended pilgrims then strangled their hosts, and on Margaret’s
return, she shared a similar fate. Her body, however, which they
carried out and precipitated into the Dyle, instead of sinking in the
river, floated back against the stream crowned with an aureole, and
the ripple of the water making sweet music as it bore her along. The
Duke and Duchess of Brabant astonished at the miracle, caused a chapel
to be built for her remains at the back of the great church of St.
Pierre, where her body was embalmed and enclosed in a gilded shrine.
The fame and the fidelity of the interesting saint attracted crowds of
devotees to her tomb, and in time the door upon the street was closed,
and another opened from the church, where the chapel and the altar of
Margrietje are still the favourite resort of the serving maidens of
Brabant.
The church of Saint Michel, which once belonged to the order of the
Jesuits, was one of the most sumptuous in the city: it has, however,
been dismantled of all its ornaments, and its superbly carved pulpit
was removed by Maria Theresa to the Church of St. Gudule at Brussels.
During the reign of the French republic, St. Michel’s was converted
into the Temple of Reason for the district, and the statue of the
Saviour was removed from the altar to make room for the Goddess of
Liberty. The tomb of Justus Lipsius in the old ruined convent of the
Recollets, with its sententious inscription written by himself, is a
curious illustration of “the pride that apes humility.”
“Quis his sepultus, quæris, ipse edisseram
Nuper locutus et stylo et linguâ fui
Nunc alteri licebit. _Ego sum Lipsius_
_Cui litteræ dant nomen et tuus favor_;
Sed nomen, ipse abivi, abibit hoc quoque;
Et nihil his orbis quod perennet possidet.
Vis altiori voce me tecum loqui?
Humana cuncta fumus, umbra, vanitas
Et scenæ imago, et, verbo ut absolvam, NIHIL
Extremum hoc te alloquor
Æternum ut gaudeam tu apprecare.”
Lipsius, as a scholar, was the rival of Scaliger; he was successively
a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, and a reformed Protestant, and after
publishing an exhortation to persecution, died in 1606, in the bosom of
Rome with “_ure et seca!_” upon his lips. Strange that the same spirit
which could prescribe fire and faggots for its fellow-men, should have
lavished all its fondness upon flowers and favourite dogs, whom Lipsius
has immortalized in his odes and epitaphs! Rubens has introduced the
portrait of Lipsius into his picture of the philosophers along with
that of Hugo Grotius, Rubens himself and his brother, with his faithful
Saphir fawning at his knee, and behind him a _tulip_, emblematic of his
love for flowers, placed beside a bust of Cicero; his comments upon
whom, written at the age of nineteen, introduced Lipsius to the notice
and patronage of the Cardinal Granvelle.
It was at Louvain that the Belgian troops, under their new King,
achieved, in 1832, their ludicrous flight before the Prince of Orange,
which fully vindicated for them the soubriquet of the “Braves Belges,”
which they had acquired years before by their cowardly pusillanimity
at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. A few days before the affair at Louvain,
they had made a similar pitiful exhibition at Hasselt, where they fled
in terror on the approach of the Dutch, and yet two years before,
the Dutch were utterly unable to make head against the Belgians,
either at Brussels, Ghent, or Antwerp! The bravery of the Belgians
is, indeed, become a past tradition. Cæsar accords them credit of
being the most gallant soldiers, whom he encountered in Gaul, “_horum
omnium fortissimi sunt Belgæ_,” and Florus ascribes to them the honour
of turning the fortune of the day at Pharsalia. These titles they
have long since, however, resigned; the last fire of their gallantry
seems to have burned out under the Arteveldes and John Hyoens, in
the wars of the “Fullers and Weavers;” for in the troubles of the
Spanish persecution, the military renown of the patriots belongs
almost exclusively to the soldiers of “Father William,” as the Prince
of Orange is still affectionately styled. The Flemings were anxious
enough, in the first instance, to fly to arms when the Duke of Alva
was wringing from them his iniquitous taxes, but so soon as these were
repealed, they were quite contented to leave the Dutch all the glory
of their liberation. Years of repose and peace under Austria, and an
addiction to agriculture and commerce, appear to have effaced even
the recollection of their former valour; they were utterly incapable,
even if they had been inclined to resist the progress of the French in
1794; and the whole series of the exploits of the Belgian soldiers from
Quatre Bras to Hasselt and Louvain, with the single exception of the
affair of 1830 at Brussels, is but a succession of laughable scampers,
almost before coming within the range of a shot.
In appearance, the soldiery, whom we saw at Ghent, Brussels, and
elsewhere, are awkward and diminutive little fellows, such as
one could hardly see cased in uniform, on which the tailors have
evidently worked by guess, without creating a smile, even without
the inseparable association of the _braves Belges_, which recurs to
one’s mind every time they pass. The officers, who are always lounging
about the railroad stations, are much the same, and with their savage
mustachios, fierce black locks, and breasts padded out till they look
like pouter pigeons, they strongly remind us of the military air of the
riding-master at Astley’s.
Heavens! how unlike their Belgian sires of old,
Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold,
War in each eye and freedom in each brow,
How much unlike the sons of Belgium now!
Having come by the railroad to Louvain, we hired a calèche to return
across the country to Brussels by Terveuren. The drive is a very
beautiful one, running along the slope of the gentle, wooded hills, at
the foot of one of which Louvain is situated. Terveuren is a pretty
village built down the glen between two hills, with a picturesque old
church on the summit of one of them. It was formerly the seat of some
manufactures, and in 1759, Prince Charles of Lorraine established
in it works for printing calico, and took the utmost pains to bring
artists from Switzerland and Alsace, but it has long since been utterly
abandoned. The park, on the verge of which the village is built, has
been for centuries the vice-regal residence for the Austrian governors
of the Netherlands. It is beautifully wooded, and the irregularity of
the grounds afford some exquisite landscapes. The present palace was
erected by the nation, and presented along with that at Brussels to
the Prince of Orange, as a recognition of his services at Waterloo.
Like it, it has been waiting the fate of the final treaty of partition,
and its gorgeous furniture, which has been undisturbed since 1830, is
now in process of removal to the Hague. The building has no external
beauty, a heavy solid edifice without decorations of any kind, and
its grand charms, its paintings, and garniture, it derives from the
truly princely taste of its owner. We drove home through the Forest of
Soigné, and through the village of Ixelles to Brussels.
* * * * *
We left Brussels this morning for Namur through the forest of Soigné
and across the field of Waterloo. The forest is thick with young
straight trees; and any thing but picturesque. The timber is chiefly
beech with oak and elm intermixed, and the trees are very densely
planted, with a view, we were told, to render the wood loose and moist
being withdrawn from the hardy action of the air, in order that when
felled and cut into lengths it may the more readily split, which the
beech does almost spontaneously. The foresters live in huts dispersed
throughout the forest; and along the edge of the road were long piles
of cleft wood ready for transport to Brussels. On the road we passed
several waggons laden with coals from Charleroi, and after emerging
from the forest we reached the village of Waterloo, which is situated
almost upon its outskirts. We visited the church with its numerous
monuments to the “unreturning brave,” and were solicited by some
ecclesiastical official for a contribution to the fund _for keeping
them in order_. At Mont St. Jean we had a most comfortable breakfast
at the little inn, and being waited on by Sergeant Cotton of the 7th
Hussars, the guide who seems to have most successfully taken the place
of Da Costa, we walked with him to the various positions on the field.
One has really no patience with the great hulking mountain of sand on
which the Iron Lion is raised as a trophy of the valour of the “Braves
Belges!” Some one has observed that the pretension of the monuments
at Waterloo are precisely in the inverse ratio of the importance of
the services they commemorate; the English have none, the Prussians a
modest record, and the Belgians a pyramid! on which, as the Brussels
guide book magniloquently points out “the Lion of Belgian proudly paws
the bolt of war, with his head turned towards vanquished France, as
if to menace her with vengeance and teach her the homage which is
due to valour!” But it is not the gasconade of this ambitious trophy
that irritates one so much as the fact, that in order to scrape the
earth together, out of which it is heaped up, the whole surface of the
field has been disturbed and its identity destroyed; and that, at the
most interesting spot, where the British guards made their immoveable
and immortal stand “from day-break till set of sun” against all the
chivalry of France. The mischievous vanity, which has thus destroyed
what it pretends to commemorate, has something very _Irish_ in it, and
is not altogether without a parallel. Some years since a remnant of a
very ancient castle of the chiefs of the clan O’Neil, which stood upon
the summit of the hill of Castlereagh in the estate of the late Marquis
of Downshire, was fast crumbling away, owing to the injury which
it received from the cattle who browsed about it, and his Lordship
directed that a wall should be built round it to save it from utter
destruction. The labourers, however, who were sent for the purpose,
thinking it a pity to be at the trouble of drawing stones up to the
top of such a mountain, where there were abundance close at hand, very
naïvely pulled down what remained of the castle and built the wall
round its site with its own materials!
By the way, whilst all justice has been done to the bravery of the
English at Waterloo, and all the credit to which they were entitled,
_at least_, claimed for the Scotch regiments--it is a fact that speaks,
whole bulletins and gazettes for the gallantry of the Irish, that the
regiment which had the greatest number _killed_ of any on the field was
the 27th foot, the Enniskillens, which lost one hundred and three men
besides three hundred and sixty wounded.
The Château of Hougemont is undergoing a similar change, the wood
which surrounded it has been all cut down, new buildings are erecting
and the old ones fast passing into dust--the gate, however, still
hangs upon its hinges with remnants of the old leaves that witnessed
the great day, perforated by ten thousand bullets--the little chapel
stands almost roofless in the ruinous court--and the guide points out
“with bated breath,” the walls of the barn which was set on fire by the
artillery and consumed the wounded and the dying who had been carried
into it for shelter. Crossing the farm-yard a little postern leads to
the
Copse where once the garden smiled
And still where many a garden flower grows wild.
The ruinous alcoves and grass grown walks serve to show what it had
once been--and by its side is the orchard, the possession of which
on that memorable day was to decide the freedom or the subjection of
Europe. It was then piled with carnage, and strewn with “garments
rolled in blood”--it is now encumbered with a bending crop of fruit,
and one solitary grave over an English officer, who was buried where
he fell, is the only memento of that fearful morning. In the field
around it, three thousand French were slain by the well directed fire
from within; we walked over it as it had been newly ploughed, and in
the course of a few minutes picked up a handful of bullets, some
fragments of shells and grape-shot, and a musket flint still clasped in
its leaden envelope--what an iron shower must have rained upon it, that
after so many years, the plough should still furrow up its deposits!
The Duke of Wellington has his estate between Nivelles and Quatre Bras.
Why did not the King of Holland confer on him the field itself? Above
all, why are there so many monuments to all the subalterns, and none
to the great Captain? It would have been surely more just, as well as
wiser, to have reared that vast pyramid to mark the spot where the
conqueror stood, than to provoke the remembrance that those who intrude
themselves upon our notice by it, _four times turned to flight_. It is
even said that a party of the “braves Belges,” notwithstanding all the
terror in which they were scampering back to Brussels, under the panic
that the day was lost, overtook the Duke of Wellington’s baggage near
the forest of Soigné, and coolly took time to plunder it--rather than
let it fall into the hands of the enemy.
Lord Byron mentions his impression that Waterloo, as a plain, seems
marked out for the scene of some great action. This is, of course,
association in the imagination of the poet; but it is a curious
coincidence that, in 1707, the Duke of Marlborough selected it as a
desirable spot on which to encounter the French, and actually encamped,
for many days, on the verge of the forest, in the hope of seducing
Vendome to give him battle there.
At the little cabaret of La Belle Alliance, to which we had sent our
carriage on from Mont St. Jean, to await our arrival from Hougemont,
we got some excellent light wine: at Marengo, some years ago, I got
an equally refreshing draught, after a sultry walk over the field of
battle. Houses are building at this little spot; and, in short, in
every direction trees are felled, ground levelled, walls fallen, and
cottages constructed; so that in a few years the individual features of
the scene will be changed; but that which even time cannot efface--its
deathless renown--will still, like Marathon,
Preserve alike its bounds and boundless fame.
We took the usual route by Jemappe and Quatre Bras, through the
Waloon country. The flax crop was abundantly spread over the fields,
undergoing the process of “dew rating,” or dew riping, in which the
operation of detaching the cuticle from the wood and pith, is performed
by merely exposing it on the grass without steeping. At Quatre Bras
the wood has been cut down from which the British, under the Duke of
Wellington, repulsed Marshal Ney in the affair of the 16th of June,
in which the gallant Duke of Brunswick fell. The hill is now a naked
height, which is seen on the right of the road to Sombreffe.
The country, as we approach the banks of the Meuse and the Sambre,
becomes at every step more and more picturesque, and the dull
monotonous plains of Brabant are exchanged for the woody hills and
precipitous valleys of Namur. I never saw a more charming prospect,
nor one which is so truly refreshing to an eye ennuied with the
tiresome monotony of Flemish scenery, than the first view which is
obtained of the old town and fortress of Namur, from the heights
above the Sambre, in coming from Temploux--a wide and winding valley,
with the rapid river toiling below between towering cliffs of rugged
rock upon the one hand, and steep banks covered with foliage, and
occasionally crowned with old chateaux, upon the other; and in the
distance, the bridges, towers, and steeples of the warlike old city,
with its renowned, and once thought impregnable fortress, rising
terrace upon terrace, and bristling with artillery above it.
We drove down the steep hill to the river under a glowing sunset,
and having crossed the hollow drawbridge and traversed the tortuous
passages that lead from the outward fortifications to the heart of the
city, we took up our quarters for the night, at the Hotel de Harscamp,
in a starved little square, that seemed to have been grudgingly crimped
off the already pinched and narrowed streets. It was still light
enough for a stroll round the fortifications, but we soon discovered
that it required the acumen of some future Sir William Gell or
Claudius Rich, to determine the precise spot, which we were in search
of--namely, that at which my Uncle Toby received his memorable wound,
in the attack made by the Dutch and English, “upon the point of the
advanced counterscarp before the gate of St. Nicholas, which enclosed
the great sluice or water-stop,” and which he himself declares to have
been, “in one of the traverses about thirty toises from the returning
angle of the trench opposite to the salient angle of the demi-bastion
of Saint Roche.”
The citadel which stands directly above the town is constructed upon
the shelves of a stupendous rocky escarpment, that rises almost
perpendicularly from the banks of the river, and looks like the
Gibraltar of the Meuse. It was accurately restored, and its works in
some places extended, by the King of Holland, some few years before the
revolution, but when that event arrived, Namur was amongst the first
places that hoisted the standard of revolt. There seems, in fact, to
have been something between treason and cowardice in the conduct of
the garrisons, who occupied every fortress in Belgium, and who, with
the single exception, I think, of Antwerp, surrendered them to the
“patrioterie” without lighting a match.
In public buildings, Namur, has nothing to exhibit, except two moderate
churches: one of them, the Cathedral, contains some paintings, and the
tomb of the gallant Don John of Austria, the natural son of Charles
V, Barbara Blomberg of Ratisbon, who assumed the credit of being his
mother, in order, it is said, to conceal a more illustrious parentage.
Don John, who, as the grand admiral at Lepanto, combined, in his own
person, the functions of a naval as well as a military commander,
added to both the genius of a diplomatist, and was invested with the
government of the Low Countries after the pacification of Ghent. He, in
person, obtained possession of the citadel of Namur, by going thither
under pretence of visiting the Queen of Navarre, Margaret of Valois,
who was enjoying the gaiety of Spa, and being permitted to walk on
the glacis, and finally to view the interior, by the young son of the
governor, in the absence of his father, he took the opportunity to
entrench his immediate guard as a garrison in the name of his brother
of Spain, who the next year rewarded his bravery, by causing him to be
poisoned, to avoid a marriage, which he apprehended between the hero of
Lepanto and Queen Elizabeth of England. He died at the camp of Bongy, a
short distance from Namur, in 1578, when only thirty-three years of age.
The other church, that of St. Loup, is overlaid with a profusion of
decorations of all descriptions, paintings, carved confessionals and
gilded altars, its floor is of variegated marble, the columns which
sustain the vaults of the roof are polished porphyry or red granite,
with square plinths, interposed between each tambour in the shaft, and
the ceiling which is of solid white stone, is laboriously chased from
end to end in a multitude of florid devices, so accurately raised out
and under cut, that the whole looks like a Chinese sculpture in ivory.
Tradition says, the carving of the entire roof, was the work of one
individual monk of the Jesuits, by whom the church was erected.
The town itself has nothing else to shew, except its tall gaunt-looking
old houses, crowded into narrow lanes and passages, the dullness of
which is only relieved by the showy windows of its shops, shining with
cutlery and polished brass work, the staple trade of Namur. It divides
this manufacture with Gembloux, a little town, a few miles to the
north, which is as famous for the coarser articles of “Sheffield ware,”
as Namur is for the finer. The prosperity of the trade, however, has
been declining ever since 1814, when Belgium not only lost the French
market, but the protection of the French douaniers to protect her own
from being invaded by the English; her decline was consummated by
losing, in addition, the supply of the Dutch colonies, by the events of
“the glorious days” of September 1830, and the entire of the workmen
now engaged at Namur, do not exceed one thousand. Cheapness is of
course their grand aim, and some penknives which we bought surprisingly
low, we speedily discovered, like Peter Pindar’s cutlery to be “made
_for sale_.”
The Athenæum of Namur has attained some celebrity by the chair of
geology, which was established by the King of Holland, and for the
study of which, the rocky ravines and valleys of the environs present
abundant opportunities.
The Hotel de Harscamp is excellent, and after a most comfortable night,
disturbed only by the thundering moans of a most inopportune réveille,
rung, from the bells of the church hard by, every night at _eleven_,
and every morning at _four_ o’clock; we started, before breakfast the
following morning for Huy and Liege, along the descent of the Meuse.
The same delightful scenery accompanied us, which we had overtaken
the evening before on descending to Namur. On either side, high,
beetling cliffs of limestone and basalt, in every crevice of which,
spring the hardy roots of the little mountain ash, now covered with
its ruby berries, and from every crag, luxuriant creepers hung down
their “lush of leaves,” which the early frost was already beginning to
tinge with crimson. Every spot that could afford soil for the roots of
a tree, was covered with waving foliage, and into the rich recesses of
the cliffs ran up little velvety meadows from the verge of the river,
in which were nestled some of the most beautiful and romantic villas
and chateaux. Occasionally, on the summit of the steep ravine, in the
distance, were perched the buildings of a suppressed convent, or the
ruins of some feudal castle; and the very limestone rock itself, worn
into fantastic shapes by the weather, not unfrequently presented all
the features of a fortress, jutting out over the river below it. The
road ran along a broad, rich plain, intersected by the river, with
fruit-trees planted along the hedge-rows, and yellow crops of corn
which had not yet been severed. The boats were already on the river,
and innumerable cars and waggons were toiling along the road, laden
with produce for Namur--it was precisely the scene and the season
described in Wordsworth’s sonnet:
The morn that now along the silver Meuse,
Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the swains
To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,
Or strip the bough, whose mellow fruit bestrews
The ripening corn beneath.
But the beauty of the Meuse is its least recommendation to the
affection of the Belgians; and, like the vale of Avoca, and the banks
of some other equally exquisite streams, which are “_sacred_ only in
song,” its picturesque attractions, are, at every spot, most rudely
torn away by the very matter-of-fact speculators of the neighbourhood,
in the search of the mineral treasures which they conceal. Rocks of
black marble are rolled down to the edge of the road, and left ready
for transport to the river; limestone is tumbled from the cliffs,
and numerous manufactories of alum are constructed between Namur and
Schlayen. These and the other riches of the Meuse, its floors of coal
and beds of iron render this rugged defile the most important and
valuable possession of the crown.
At Andennes we passed the first of those vast manufactories, the
establishment of which has made the name of one Englishman more
renowned in Belgium than those of all its native speculators
combined--Mr. William Cockerill. Every district of the kingdom exhibits
some memorial of his enterprise, and there is scarcely a branch of
the national industry which, if it does not owe its introduction to
his suggestion, is not indebted to his genius for its improvement.
He came to Verviers in 1798, an humble mechanic, in search of
employment, returning with a numerous family from Stockholm, where
he had been to erect some apparatus for spinning wool. He obtained
an engagement with a house there to construct for them machinery for
the same purpose, similar to that in use in England, and by dint of
singular talents, unwearied industry, and energies almost unparalleled,
he speedily elevated himself to wealth and importance; mines were
sounded at his suggestion, iron-works constructed, cotton-mills
built, woollen-machinery erected, in short, every department of
Belgian art received a new impulse under his all-grasping and
comprehensive superintendence, aided by the munificence of Napoleon,
and, subsequently, by the equally ardent co-operation of King William
of Holland, who seemed to place the national funds for the promotion
of industry, almost at his disposal. Under the powerful influence
of France, and even afterwards with access to the extensive markets
and colonies of Holland, the vastness of his speculations were not
disproportionate to the wants and commercial connexions of the kingdom.
But the simile of a tub for a whale is no actual exaggeration to
represent the incompatibility of his Leviathan establishments, to
the puny resources of the new and independent kingdom, within which
they were suddenly walled up by the revolution of 1830. The gross of
green spectacles which Moses brought home from the fair, were not more
utterly disproportionate to the wants of the family of the Vicar of
Wakefield.
The establishment of Andennes had been originally constructed by the
act of the government and the King of Holland, for the printing of
calicoes in the style, and with a view to out-rival the English--every
process was borrowed from them, the machinery, the workmen, the
designs, were all brought from England, and, for a time, the concern
seemed to be prosperous. But the events of 1830 soon put a stop to
that; it was useless to print calicoes while there was no stranger
to buy, and no one at home to wear them, and in the course of a few
years, the works were sold by order of the government to pay off their
advances, and bought by their original promoter, who converted them
into a paper-mill.
This trade is now one of the most prosperous in Belgium. She formerly
imported her paper from France at from twenty to five-and-twenty per
cent. dearer than she can now produce it for herself, thanks to the
ingenuity and enterprise of Mr. Cockerill, which gave the manufacture
a new character by the introduction of the machines for producing the
entire contents of the vat in one continuous sheet. Since that period,
the manufacture has advanced with a rapidity that is quite surprising.
In 1836 there were _seven_ machines on the same construction in use in
Belgium; in 1839 _nineteen_, but of these _six_ have now been attached
to Holland by her acquisitions in Luxembourg and Limbourg. The value
of their produce is upwards of nine millions of francs per annum, and
their success has communicated an impulse to the production of books at
Brussels, that has rendered it likewise one of the most important and
promising branches of the national industry.
A few miles from Andennes, after passing a romantic old ruin of the
castle of the Dukes of Beaufort near Bien, we stopped to breakfast at
the foot of the romantic fortress of Huy, which was long considered
as the portal of the Meuse, till its inefficiency was demonstrated by
Marlborough and Marshal Villeroy in “King William’s wars,” who took and
retook it four times within as many years, almost without a struggle.