A tour through Holland

Our entrance into an avenue of nearly a mile and a half in length, thickly lined with walnut, apple, pear, and plum trees, loaded with fruit, announced our approach to Biberich, the superb palace of the Prince of Nassau Usingen. As I made a drawing of this palace and the adjacent town when I descended the Rhine, and the boat was in a central part of the river, it will be unnecessary to describe it. I had no time to view the apartments, but my laquais informed me, that they were grand, and furnished in a princely manner: the town is modern, small, and very handsome. As we skirted Ingelheim, we were informed that the illustrious Charlemagne, the great prototype of Bonaparte, selected this place for his favourite residence, where he built a magnificent palace, which was supported by a hundred columns of Italian marble, and had an immense number of apartments, in which synods and the most important councils of state were held: that his son Louis le Debonnaire died broken-hearted here, in consequence of the rebellions of his sons Lotharius and Louis.

Not a vestige remains of this celebrated pile to prove that it once existed: but in the life of Louis le Debonnaire, Nigellus thus consecrates this building:

No doubt is entertained that that august pile once embellished this spot. Charlemagne could not have chosen a place more advantageous with regard to his political relations, or more beautiful in richness and variety of scenery, where Nature every where saluted him with wine, with fruit, and every desirable production of a genial soil, fit to make glad the soul of an emperor.

In less than an hour after quitting Ingelheim we reached Cassel, immediately opposite Mayence, to which it communicates by an amazing long bridge, formed of a moveable platform, placed upon fifty-six lighters, two or three of which draw out at pleasure by means of ropes and pullies, to open a passage for vessels ascending or descending the Rhine, and is 3830 feet long; one very similar to this was built by order of Charlemagne at the same place: here our voyage terminated. On account of the search of the custom-house officers being very severe on the French side, the passengers prefer being landed at Cassel: where all the bustle of a populous city, and a great military station, presented itself. The bridge was crowded with beautiful and elegantly dressed women, French officers, soldiers, and various other persons, in carriages and on foot, going to or returning from Mayence, which, with its venerable cathedral and splendid buildings, extending themselves along the river, had a very grand effect. Our luggage was searched by a German custom-house officer, who behaved very politely; and I proceeded to a good hotel in Cassel, and sat down with several French officers to some excellent refreshments.

In my description of the Rhine as I ascended it, I have, from the desire of not fatiguing my reader, only noticed the principal towns and objects, some of which I visited then, and others on my return. I felt myself abundantly rewarded by the unparalleled beauty and grandeur of those scenes, which so often excited my admiration and amazement, for any little inconvenience, and perhaps some little hazard, to which I was occasionally exposed, and I regret that I can only convey a very imperfect impression of them to those who have never had the good fortune to form their personal opinion of them.

Having been previously warned not to attempt to enter Mayence, which, as it is now incorporated with France, I shall call by that name, on account of the unusual rigour exercised by the police towards strangers, in consequence of the city being the great military depot of the French on the Rhine, and the greatest skill of their engineers having been lavished on its fortifications, I was content to view it from Cassel, and to receive some little account of it from a very intelligent German, who had resided there some years, as we looked upon the city from our hotel window. The electoral palace, of red brick, by the side of which the Rhine flows, where Bonaparte resided during his stay in Mayence, in 1804, presented a very noble appearance. The dome or cathedral, which rose with awful dignity before us, is a vast gothic pile, having four unequal towers: it had once a lofty spire, but a thunder-storm, many years since, beat it down with lightning, and burnt a considerable part of the edifice. Few cities have suffered more than this by the ravages of war; most of its civil and sacred buildings have been at one period or another damaged or destroyed by cannon, the ruins of which still remain. My intelligent friend informed me that this city was celebrated for the great beauty of its female inhabitants, and that before the French took possession of it the electoral court threw a brilliant lustre over the place, which was unrivalled by any city on the Rhine for its gaiety, elegance, and splendor; characteristics which have been impaired, but far from annihilated. It contains colleges, lyceums, a theatre, and ball and concert rooms, all of which continue to be well attended.

Mayence, from its having been always considered as one of the great bulwarks of Germany, suffered most dreadfully in the last war. In October, 1792, General Custine compelled it to surrender after a slight bombardment, and under his administration the majority of the inhabitants who did not fly entered cordially into the views of the French revolutionists: he augmented the fortifications of the city, and placed a strong garrison in the suburbs of Cassel, which has always been considered as a place of great importance, and raised a number of redoubts and batteries there. In July, 1793, the Prussians, after seizing on Costheim, and defeating an army under General Houchard, which was marching to succour the garrison of Mayence, reduced both that city and Cassel, the miserable inhabitants of which endured the greatest horrors, and many of the finest and most venerable buildings of the former were fired, and nearly destroyed, during the siege. Merlin, who acted as one of the commissioners to the French army during the siege, stated to the convention, that such was the scarcity of provisions, a pound of horse-flesh had been sold at two, and a dead cat at six livres, and that five thousand men had perished in defence of the place. Although Custine had no choice left but to capitulate, Barrere, by his report of the siege, led to his being denounced and decapitated. During this siege the palace of the provosts suffered terribly; the celebrated electoral palace called La Favorite, and seven churches, were totally destroyed; and scarce a house escaped without being pierced with cannon balls. Mutton sold for sixty sols a pound, and beef one hundred sols; and at last bell-metal and paper money were used: the following was the superscription of the latter:

And, what an epicure will perhaps more regret, the whole vineyard of Hockheim was destroyed.

The French were highly indignant at the loss of so important a place, and resolved upon attempting the recovery of it from its victors, as soon as the mighty objects which claimed on all sides the activity and energy of their rulers and generals, were accomplished; and accordingly, in June 1795, the French army again blockaded this devoted city, during which it sustained a renewal of its suffering, from which it again was relieved by the successful operations of Mareschal Clairfayt, at the head of the Austrians against the revolutionary troops, who were attacked and routed upon the heights of Mornbach, when the Mareschal appeared before Mayence, attacked and carried the entrenched camp of the enemy, upon which the skill of their ablest engineers had been exerted for eleven months to render it invulnerable. General Schaal, who occupied this strong position, on the retreat of Jourdan, with fifty-two battalions of infantry and five regiments of cavalry, was obliged to retire with great loss in cannon, ammunition and men. In this bombardment some Tyrol sharp-shooters displayed their wonted skill in an amazing manner, by killing, from the banks of Cassel, several French officers with their rifle-pieces, who were walking on the ramparts on the opposite side of the river, the breadth of which I have already ascertained by the length of the floating bridge. In the beginning of the year 1797 a better destiny smiled upon the French arms in this region, and Moreau and Hoche made both sides of the Rhine resound with their victories, when the troops which garrisoned Mayence, to prevent the entire and unavailing demolition of the city, relinquished its possession, and the French remained masters of it.

Volumes have been written upon the superior pretension of Mayence to the original invention of the art of printing, and to transfer the honours of the discovery from Lawrence Coster of Haarlem to John Guttenburg, a citizen of this place. A vast deal of special pleading has been displayed on both sides; and, to use a jockey phrase, these racers for the merited gratitude and admiration of all who followed them, reached the goal almost “neck and neck,” but the majority of judgments given appropriate the glory to Coster: his mode was the simplest, and therefore thought to be the earliest; his moulds were made of wood and immoveable, and he stamped the paper only on one side: Guttenburg printed on both sides of the leaf with moveable metal types.

The extremity of the bridge towards Cassel, and all the ramparts and redoubts of the town, which are very strongly fortified, were occupied by French soldiers. With two German gentlemen and a Dutch officer, I set off for Francfort, distant eight stunder or hours, or four German miles, under a scorching sun, which did not seem to have any effect upon a large party of monks and priests, and followers, bearing the host, who were walking bare headed in procession to a monastery which we had just passed, near which I left the carriage to make a sketch of Mayence, upon a projecting bank of the river Maine, where I bade adieu to the Rhine. Our road lay through an avenue of walnut, apple, and pear trees, loaded with fruit, to which passengers helped themselves whenever inclination disposed them to do so; and part of the Hockheim hills, covered with the renowned vineyards, which produce what in England is called old hock. As many a saint, high in superstitious veneration, must have had at least ten skulls and one hundred toe nails, as if no illusion has been practised by those who have exhibited them to the credulous in different eras and various regions, so nothing short of the power of transmuting water into wine, could produce from these vineyards the immense quantity of wine which passes under the title of hock. Certain it is, that the greater quantity of wine honoured with that name, is from the grapes of both sides of the lower part of the Rhine. In the district where it is produced, very old genuine Hockheim wine is sold at the rate of three, and sometimes five, shillings a bottle.

At the first stage we stopped at a village where there is a noble building upon an eminence, commanding a beautiful prospect, which I at first took for a palace, but it proved to be a tobacco manufactory, warehouses, and the residence of the proprietor and his family; the front is five hundred feet long, and the whole exterior infinitely more princely than Buckingham-house. After passing this place the road became level, and the country presented corn-fields, pasture, and orchards in great abundance. For many miles round, this country had been often the theatre of hostilities; and though Nature had long since effaced their melancholy impressions from her fields by reviving verdure, yet prostrate cottages and battered convents displayed the march and ravages of the demon War! Happy, thrice happy my own country, where the sound of cannon is never heard but to announce a victory, or to augment the gaiety of some festive occasion!

The suburbs of Francfort are very delightful, and after passing over a draw-bridge, and through a deep, gateway, we entered the city, the streets of which are crowded and full of gaiety and bustle, in consequence of the great autumnal fair which was holding there. All the best inns were brimful, and with great difficulty the Dutch officer and myself procured a miserable double-bedded room, at an inferior inn, filled with petty merchants and their families, whom the spirit of traffic had led to this celebrated mart, and was half choked up with cases and boxes containing their merchandize. This town swarms with French soldiers, about thirty of whom slept in rooms adjoining to ours, where they deported themselves with great order. My companion had just returned from the Cape, in consequence of its surrender to the British arms. He spoke with liberal rapture of gallantry of the English troops. In Germany, as in Holland, time is taken by the forelock, and at six o’clock the stiefelputzer, or boot-cleaner, knocked at the door, followed by the chambermaid with a composition of frankincense and other gums of a pyramidal shape, and about an inch high, much used in Germany, called a Räucher-kerz, for perfuming rooms, which she placed upon our candlestick and left smoking. My Dutch companion annoyed me at this hour, first by begging that I would hear him read one book of Milton’s Paradise Lost, a little English edition of which he had in his pocket, which he achieved in an incongruous mêlange of various languages; and secondly, by begging me to lend him my tooth-brush for a few minutes, observing, that he preferred an English tooth-brush to any other, and at the same moment applying it to his teeth with equal alacrity and gratification. After he had paid such a compliment to English tooth-brushes, and had done me the honour of using mine, the least I could do was to beg that he would favour me with keeping it for my sake, with which he was much pleased, and accordingly introduced it to a party of combs and razors in his shaving-case. In all other respects he was an agreeable man, and I am sure a liberal-minded soldier. This city, which was till lately imperial, is one of the most ancient towns in Germany, and has several handsome streets and noble buildings: it is particularly celebrated for the splendor of its hotels, which are reported to be the most magnificent in Europe, particularly those called the Rothen Haus or Red House, and the Rörniskchen Kaiser or Roman emperor, where the King of Prussia lodged when he visited this town; and the Darmstadter Hof, in which Mareschal Augerau and his suite resided whilst I was at Francfort: so crowded was the city, that it was with great difficulty and some interest I procured apartments at the Weiden-hof, or Willow-Court, a second rate inn, but of great magnitude. Our table d’hote, at which between two and three hundred persons of respectability sat down every day, was held in a noble room; it was splendidly served, and an excellent band seated in an elevated gallery, performed during dinner. The principal houses are built of red and white stone: the cassino, to which I was admitted by a card of introduction from one of the principal bankers, is very elegant. There are also several other clubs and assembly rooms. The theatre is spacious and very handsome, the performers were good, and the band is large and select. Opposite to the theatre is a mall, formed by several rows of trees, which in the evening is much frequented, where many a lover may exclaim with Moore,

Before the Rhenish confederation the town was split into two religious sects, the Lutherans and Calvinists, which are now blended in perfect harmony by the liberal influence of toleration. A grand discharge of cannon one morning announced the ceremony of the members of the senate and the colleges being about to assemble in the Römer, or town-hall, to complete the investing the Prince Primate with the sovereignty of the city, the keys having been delivered up before to the representative of the prince, under a similar discharge of artillery, agreeable to certain provisions contained in the act of the Rhenish confederation.

Curiosity induced me to visit the place of this meeting, which is a very large and ancient gothic pile, situated in a narrow street. In this building are several chambers, which have been applied to memorable purposes; one in particular, which before the late revolution in the German empire, was used by the Electors upon the august occasion of making choice of a new Emperor: there are some good paintings in some of these apartments. The ceremony of the installation of the Prince Primate was over in a very short time; the mob, which was a small one, soon dispersed; and scarcely any one mentioned the matter three days afterwards.

The cathedral church of St. Bartholomew, which belongs to the catholics, is another venerable relic of antiquity: it is reported to have been built by Pepin, king of France, in 756, enriched by Charlemagne, and plundered by Lewis of Bavaria, on account of its chapter adhering to the Pope. Strange to relate, although the coronation of the Emperor used to take place in it, there is not one object within its walls, either of sacred splendor, or monumental celebrity, worthy of notice. In the year 1792, when the French entered this city as conquerors, their commanding officers went with great military pomp to this cathedral; where, being attended by the senators, the commander in chief closed an address by exclaiming, “Under the roof of this venerable temple have not many of you witnessed the coronation of the Emperor of the Romans?” to which no answer was given. “I demand a reply to my question,” exclaimed the general with some warmth; “Yes” was faintly answered; “Then,” replied he, “you will never see him more in this place.” This prophecy issued from an oracle which possessed the means of consummating its prediction.

I was pleased with the fair, although it fell far short of my expectation; the principal booths which were erected near the Römer, and also parallel with the river Maine, formed a very agreeable and sprightly street, entirely covered with canvass awnings: here all sorts of goods, the productions of various parts of the globe, were exposed to sale; and here were also several booksellers’ stalls, where the most eminent works are sold folded in sheets, for the purchase of lesser merchants in the trade. No press in the world is so prolific as the German: the number of ingenious works which it annually yields, amongst which are many able productions, are astonishing. I was informed that the fair had wasted almost to nothing, in consequence of the various injuries it has sustained from the war, and the severe policy of Bonaparte respecting the introduction of English manufacture, very little of which was to be found at this mart. In the printers’ stalls, which used to be well supplied from the English school of engraving, were very few prints worthy of attention. I saw several execrable imitations of some from the exquisite pencil of Westall. At the end of the principal street of the fair, close to the river, were rows of immense tubs, in which, like Diogenes, many poor German tradesmen and their families very sagaciously eat and slept, for want of a better habitation.