Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume V Part 1

Seeing Europe with Famous Authors.

Volume V.

by Various.

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES V AND VI

Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland

The tourist's direct route to Germany is by s.h.i.+ps that go to the two great German ports--Bremen and Hamburg, whence fast steamer trains proceed to Berlin and other interior cities. One may also land at Antwerp or Rotterdam, and proceed thence by fast train into Germany.

Either of these routes continued takes one to Austria. s.h.i.+ps by the Mediterranean route landing at Genoa or Trieste, provide another way for reaching either country. In order to reach Switzerland, the tourist has many well-worn routes available.

As with England and France, so with Germany--our earliest information comes from a Roman writer, Julius Caesar; but in the case of Germany, this information has been greatly amplified by a later and n.o.ble treatise from the pen of Tacitus. Tacitus paints a splendid picture of the domestic virtues and personal valor of these tribes, holding them up as examples that might well be useful to his countrymen. Caesar found many Teutonic tribes, not only in the Rhine Valley, but well established in lands further west and already Gallic.

By the third century, German tribes had formed themselves into federations--the Franks, Alemanni, Frisians and Saxons. The Rhine Valley, after long subjection to the Romans, had acquired houses, temples, fortresses and roads such as the Romans always built. Caesar had found many evidences of an advanced state of society. Antiquarians of our day, exploring German graves, discover signs of it in splendid weapons of war and domestic utensils buried with the dead. Monolithic sarcophagi have been found which give eloquent testimony of the absorption by them of Roman culture. Western Germany, in fact, had become, in the third century, a well-ordered and civilized land.

Christianity was well established there. In general the country compared favorably with Roman England, but it was less advanced than Roman Gaul.

Centers of that Romanized German civilization, that were destined ever afterward to remain important centers of German life, are Augsburg, Strasburg, Worms, Speyer, Bonn and Cologne.

It was after the formation of the tribal federations that the great migratory movement from Germany set in. This gave to Gaul a powerful race in the Franks, from whom came Clovis and the other Merovingians; to Gaul also it gave Burgundians, and to England perhaps the strongest element in her future stock of men--the Saxons. Further east soon set in another world-famous migration, which threatened at times to dominate all Teutonic people--the Goths, Huns and Vandals of the Black and Caspian Sea regions. Thence they prest on to Italy and Spain, where the Goths founded and long maintained new and thriving states on the ruins of the old.

Surviving these migrations, and serving to restore something like order to Central Europe, there now rose into power in France, under Clovis and Charlemagne, and spread their sway far across the Rhine, the great Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties. Charlemagne's empire came to embrace in central Europe a region extending east of the Rhine as far as Hungary, and from north to south from the German ocean to the Alps. When Charlemagne, in 800, received from the Pope that imperial crown, which was to pa.s.s in continuous line to his successors for a thousand years, Germany and France were component parts of the same state, a condition never again to exist, except in part, and briefly, under Napoleon.

The tangled and attenuated thread of German history from Charlemagne's time until now can not be unfolded here, but it makes one of the great chronicles in human history, with its Conrads and Henrys, its Maximilian, its Barbarossa, its Charles V., its Thirty Years' War, its great Frederick of Prussia, its struggle with Napoleon, its rise through Prussia under Bismarck, its war of 1870 with France, its new Empire, different alike in structure and in reality from the one called Holy and called Roman, and the wonderful commercial and industrial progress of our century.

Out of Charlemagne's empire came the empire of Austria. Before his time, the history of the Austro-Hungarian lands is one of early tribal life, followed by conquest under the later Roman emperors, and then the migratory movements of its own people and of other people across its territory, between the days of Attila and the Merovingians. Its very name (Oesterreich) indicates its origin as a frontier territory, an outpost in the east for the great empire Charlemagne had built up. Not until the sixteenth century did Austria become a power of first rank in Europe. Hapsburgs had long ruled it, as they still do, and as they have done for more than six centuries, but the greatest of all their additions to power and dominion came through Mary of Burgundy, who, seeking refuge from Louis XI. of France, after her father's death, married Maximilian of Austria. Out of that marriage came, in two generations, possession by Austria of the Netherlands, through Mary's grandson, Charles V., Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain. For years afterward, the Hapsburgs remained the most ill.u.s.trious house in Europe.

The empire's later fortunes are a story of grim struggle with Protestants, Frederick the Great, the Ottoman Turks, Napoleon, the revolutionists of 1848, and Prussia.

The story of Switzerland in its beginnings is not unlike that of other European lands north of Italy. The Romans civilized the country--built houses, fortresses and roads. Roman roads crossed the Alps, one of them going, as it still goes, over the Great St. Bernard. Then came the invaders--Burgundians, Alemanni, Ostrogoths and Huns. North Switzerland became the permanent home of Alemanni, or Germans, whose descendants still survive there, around Zurich. Burgundians settled in the western part which still remains French in speech, and a part of it French politically, including Chamouni and half of Mont Blanc. Ostrogoths founded homes in the southern parts, and descendants of theirs still remain there, speaking Italian, or a sort of surviving Latin called Romansch.

After these immigrations most parts of the country were subdued by the Merovingian Franks, by whom Christianity was introduced and monasteries founded. With the break-up of Charlemagne's empire, a part of Switzerland was added to a German duchy, and another part to Burgundy.

Its later history is a long and moving record of grim struggles by a brave and valiant people. In our day the Swiss have become industrially one of the world's successful races, and their country the one in which wealth is probably more equally distributed than anywhere else in Europe, if not in America.

F.W.H.

I

THE RHINE VALLEY

IN HISTORY AND ROMANCE[A]

BY VICTOR HUGO

Of all rivers, I prefer the Rhine. It is now a year, when pa.s.sing the bridge of boats at Kehl, since I first saw it. I remember that I felt a certain respect, a sort of adoration, for this old, this cla.s.sic stream.

I never think of rivers--those great works of Nature, which are also great in History--without emotion.

I remember the Rhone at Valserine; I saw it in 1825, in a pleasant excursion to Switzerland, which is one of the sweet, happy recollections of my early life. I remember with what noise, with what ferocious bellowing, the Rhone precipitated itself into the gulf while the frail bridge upon which I was standing was shaking beneath my feet. Ah well!

since that time, the Rhone brings to my mind the idea of a tiger--the Rhine, that of a lion.

The evening on which I saw the Rhine for the first time, I was imprest with the same idea. For several minutes I stood contemplating this proud and n.o.ble river--violent, but not furious; wild, but still majestic. It was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was was.h.i.+ng with its yellow mane, or, as Boileau says, its "slimy beard," the bridge of boats. Its two banks were lost in the twilight, and tho its roaring was loud, still there was tranquillity.

The Rhine is unique: it combines the qualities of every river. Like the Rhone, it is rapid; broad like the Loire; encased, like the Meuse; serpentine, like the Seine; limpid and green, like the Somme; historical, like the Tiber; royal like the Danube; mysterious, like the Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and like a river of Asia, abounding with fantoms and fables.

From historical records we find that the first people who took possession of the banks of the Rhine were the half-savage Celts, who were afterward named Gauls by the Romans. When Rome was in its glory, Caesar crossed the Rhine, and shortly afterward the whole of the river was under the jurisdiction of his empire. When the Twenty-second Legion returned from the siege of Jerusalem, t.i.tus sent it to the banks of the Rhine, where it continued the work of Martius Agrippa. After Trajan and Hadrian came Julian, who erected a fortress upon the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle; then Valentinian, who built a number of castles.

Thus, in a few centuries, Roman colonies, like an immense chain, linked the whole of the Rhine.

At length the time arrived when Rome was to a.s.sume another aspect. The incursions of the northern hordes were eventually too frequent and too powerful for Rome; so, about the sixth century, the banks of the Rhine were strewed with Roman ruins, as at present with feudal ones.

Charlemagne cleared away the rubbish, built fortresses, and opposed the German hordes; but, notwithstanding all that he did, notwithstanding his desire to do more, Rome died, and the physiognomy of the Rhine was changed.

The sixteenth century approached; in the fourteenth the Rhine witnessed the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at Stra.s.sburg, a printing-office was first established. In 1400 the famous cannon, fourteen feet in length, was cast at Cologne; and in 1472 Vindelin de Spire printed his Bible. A new world was making its appearance; and, strange to say, it was upon the banks of the Rhine that those two mysterious tools with which G.o.d unceasingly works out the civilization of man--the catapult and the book--war and thought--took a new form.

The Rhine, in the destinies of Europe, has a sort of providential signification. It is the great moat which divides the north from the south. The Rhine for thirty ages, has seen the forms and reflected the shadows of almost all the warriors who tilled the old continent with that share which they call sword. Caesar crossed the Rhine in going from the south; Attila crossed it when descending from the north. It was here that Clovis gained the battle of Tolbiac; and that Charlemagne and Napoleon figured. Frederick Barbarossa, Rudolph of Hapsburg, and Frederick the First, were great, victorious, and formidable when here.

For the thinker, who is conversant with history, two great eagles are perpetually hovering ever the Rhine--that of the Roman legions, and the eagle of the French regiments.

The Rhine--that n.o.ble flood, which the Romans named "Superb," bore at one time upon its surface bridges of boats, over which the armies of Italy, Spain, and France poured into Germany, and which, at a later date, were made use of by the hordes of barbarians when rus.h.i.+ng into the ancient Roman world; at another, on its surface it floated peaceably the fir-trees of Murg and of Saint Gall, the porphyry and the marble of Bale, the salt of Karlshall, the leather of Stromberg, the quicksilver of Lansberg, the wine of Johannisberg, the slates of Coab, the cloth and earthenware of Wallendar, the silks and linens of Cologne. It majestically performs its double function of flood of war and flood of peace, having, without interruption, upon the ranges of hills which embank the most notable portion of its course, oak-trees on one side and vine-trees on the other--signifying strength and joy.

[Footnote A: From "The Rhine." Translated by D.M. Aird.]

FROM BONN TO MAYENCE[A]

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

I was glad when we were really in motion on the swift Rhine, and nearing the chain of mountains that rose up before us. We pa.s.sed G.o.desberg on the right, while on our left was the group of the seven mountains which extend back from the Drachenfels to the Wolkenberg, or "Castle of the Clouds." Here we begin to enter the enchanted land. The Rhine sweeps around the foot of the Drachenfels, while, opposite, the precipitous rock of Rolandseck, crowned with the castle of the faithful knight, looks down upon the beautiful island of Nonnenwerth, the white walls of the convent still gleaming through the trees as they did when the warrior's weary eyes looked upon them for the last time. I shall never forget the enthusiasm with which I saw this scene in the bright, warm sunlight, the rough crags softened in the haze which filled the atmosphere, and the wild mountains springing up in the midst of vineyards and crowned with crumbling towers filled with the memories of a thousand years.

After pa.s.sing Andernach we saw in the distance the highlands of the middle Rhine--which rise above Coblentz, guarding the entrance to its scenery--and the mountains of the Moselle. They parted as we approached; from the foot shot up the spires of Coblentz, and the battlements of Ehrenbreitstein, crowning the mountain opposite, grew larger and broader. The air was slightly hazy, and the clouds seemed laboring among the distant mountains to raise a storm. As we came opposite the mouth of the Moselle and under the shadow of the mighty fortress, I gazed up with awe at its ma.s.sive walls. Apart from its magnitude and almost impregnable situation on a perpendicular rock, it is filled with the recollections of history and hallowed by the voice of poetry. The scene went past like a panorama, the bridge of boats opened, the city glided behind us, and we entered the highlands again.

Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force. I sat upon the deck the whole afternoon as mountains, towns and castles pa.s.sed by on either side, watching them with a feeling of the most enthusiastic enjoyment.

Every place was familiar to me in memory, and they seemed like friends I had long communed with in spirit and now met face to face. The English tourists with whom the deck was covered seemed interested too, but in a different manner. With Murray's Handbook open in their hands, they sat and read about the very towns and towers they were pa.s.sing, scarcely lifting their eyes to the real scenes, except now and then to observe that it was "very nice."

As we pa.s.sed Boppart, I sought out the inn of the "Star," mentioned in "Hyperion;" there was a maiden sitting on the steps who might have been Paul Flemming's fair boat-woman. The clouds which had here gathered among the hills now came over the river, and the rain cleared the deck of its crowd of admiring tourists. As we were approaching Lorelei Berg, I did not go below, and so enjoyed some of the finest scenery on the Rhine alone. The mountains approach each other at this point, and the Lorelei rock rises up for four hundred and forty feet from the water.

This is the haunt of the water nymph Lorelei, whose song charmed the ear of the boatman while his bark was dashed to pieces on the rocks below.

It is also celebrated for its remarkable echo. As we pa.s.sed between the rocks, a guard, who has a little house on the roadside, blew a flourish on his bugle, which was instantly answered by a blast from the rocky battlements of Lorelei.

The sun came out of the clouds as we pa.s.sed Oberwesel, with its tall round tower, and the light s.h.i.+ning through the ruined arches of Schonberg castle made broad bars of light and shade in the still misty air. A rainbow sprang up out of the Rhine and lay brightly on the mountain-side, coloring vineyard and crag in the most singular beauty, while its second reflection faintly arched like a glory above the high summits in the bed of the river were the seven countesses of Schonberg turned into seven rocks for their cruelty and hard-heartedness toward the knights whom their beauty had made captive. In front, at a little distance, was the castle of Pfalz, in the middle of the river, and from the heights above Caub frowned the crumbling citadel of Gutenfels.

Imagine all this, and tell me if it is not a picture whose memory should last a lifetime.

We came at last to Bingen, the southern gate of the highlands. Here, on an island in the middle of the stream, is the old mouse-tower where Bishop Hatto of Mayence was eaten up by the rats for his wicked deeds.

Pa.s.sing Rudesheim and Geisenheim--celebrated for their wines--at sunset, we watched the varied sh.o.r.e in the growing darkness, till like a line of stars across the water we saw before us the bridge of Mayence.