A tour through Holland

An excursion to the beautiful and elegant little sovereign town of Offenbach, about five English miles from Francfort, enabled me to admire the great progress which the Germans have made in the tasteful art of carriage-building. In a very large depot of carriages there, I saw several which would have been distinguished for their lightness and beauty in London. There are several other fabrics, viz. of jewellery, pocket-books, tobacco, toys, &c. The society of this place, where the prince who bears its name has a little court, is very refined and accomplished. The suburbs of Francfort are formed of beautiful and romantic walks and vineyards, enlivened by handsome country-houses. On the road near the entrance to the west, adjoining the splendid chateau of Mr. Beatham, the celebrated banker, at whose town house the present King of Prussia became enamoured with his Queen, is a monument, composed of a helmet, a lion’s skin, and emblems of war, in bronze, made out of the cannon taken by the King of Prussia from the French at Mayence, mounted upon a stone pedestal, rising from an artificial rock, upon which are inscriptions commemorative of its having been raised by Prince Williamstadt to the memory of the gallant Prince of Hesse-Phillipsthal and three hundred brave Hessians, who perished on this spot, when the French were obliged to evacuate the town in the year 1792. The French had taken quiet possession of it a few months before, under the command of General Neuwinger and Colonel Houchard, when they levied two millions of florins upon pain of military execution on the opulent classes of the inhabitants. The most distinguished personage in Francfort was Mareschal Augerau, whom I frequently met. The heroic valour and skill which he displayed in the campaigns of Italy, particularly at the battle of Arcole and before Mantua, and afterwards in Germany, will render his name illustrious in the military annals of France: he is a highly polished and accomplished gentleman, and was equally admired and esteemed by the inhabitants of Francfort; he lived in a style becoming his dignity, without ostentation, and was upon all occasions very accessible.

Linglebach, the celebrated painter, was born here in 1625. His subjects were fairs, mountebanks, sea prospects, naval engagements, and landscapes, in which he eminently excelled. In company with my two friends from whom I parted at Rotterdam, and who rejoined me here, I set off for Darmstadt, about eighteen English miles from Francfort. We crossed a noble bridge over the Maine, and passed through a considerable, and fortified town, called Saxenhausen. Our road, which was sandy, was for a considerable way lined with luxuriant nursery-grounds and vineyards. About four miles from Francfort we passed a plain oaken post, about six feet high, upon which, under a painted star and crown, was written (in German), “Sovereign Territory of the Prince Primate of the Rhenish confederation.” Upon this road I saw, for the first time, a great number of little posts, painted white and numbered; they are called minute-posts, by which the pedestrian traveller is enabled to ascertain with great exactness the progress he makes in his journey. A very handsome avenue of stately poplars, of nearly two English miles, forms the approach to the city, which is nearly surrounded by a lofty wall, not capable of affording much protection against an enemy. The suburbs contain some handsome houses, in which, as the principal hotel in the city was full, we took up our quarters at the post-house, a very excellent inn.

For a capital, Darmstadt is small, and its palace infinitely too large: of the latter the Emperor Joseph sarcastically observed, that it was big enough to accommodate himself and the nine electors. However, very little of the internal part is finished, and most of the windows are boarded up. The Grand Duke and his family reside in a part of a new palace, projecting from the old one, looking towards the gardens. That immense structure is built in imitation of the Thuilleries, and surrounded by a broad deep dry ditch. The hereditary Prince, who married the youngest daughter of the House of Baden, and whose sisters share the thrones of Russia and Sweden, has a large and handsome house at a little distance from the old palace; exclusive of this prince, his Royal Highness the Grand Duke, Louis the Tenth, has several other children. He is turned of fifty years of age, is an enlightened, brave, and amiable prince, and a celebrated engineer. He was the last of the German princes who in the last war sheathed the sword he had drawn against the French; a power which the preservation of his dignity and his dominion compelled him to coalesce with. Bonaparte, when he was digesting the Rhenish Confederation, wished to invest him with the kingly dignity, but the Grand Duke declined the offer. Darmstadt has produced many valiant and distinguished officers. At the parade I had the pleasure of seeing General Von Werner, the governor of the city, who at the head of the chevaux legers, or light horse, performed prodigies of valour in the Netherlands in the last war, where in one battle he was surrounded by seven French chasseurs, from whom he received the most desperate wounds in various parts of his body before he surrendered. The late General Von Düring, a name, on account of the heroic courage of the person to whom it belonged, for ever embalmed in the memory of the English who served in the last war in the Low Countries, in the years 1793, 4, 5, was born in this dutchy. The troops were good looking men, and presented a very soldier-like appearance: the uniform of the officers of the infantry is a blue coat faced with scarlet, a large cocked hat, richly trimmed with deep silver lace, and has a very handsome appearance. The dragoons wear a casket, a light green jacket, and are well mounted. The pay of a soldier is about the value of twopence a day. Several captains in the army are princes (princes appanages), or princes of a distant branch, who have but little property.

The principal object to attract the attention of a traveller is the Exercierhaus, or house for manœuvering the troops in the winter: it forms one side of the space of ground allotted for the parade, is three hundred and fourteen feet long, and one hundred and fifty-two broad, and has been erected about thirty-five years.

The ceiling of this enormous room is self-supported by a vast and most ingenious wooden frame-work, without the assistance of either pillar or arch below. Above this ceiling are a great number of apartments. In a part of the room below, the artillery of the Grand Duke is deposited, which is kept in high military order. About four thousand troops can be manœuvred in this room with ease. The gardens adjoining to the exercise-house are laid out in the English style, are very spacious, and would be very beautiful if the ground undulated a little more; much taste has been displayed in their arrangement, and the house of the chief gardener is very pretty. These gardens are liberally opened to the public, form the principal promenade, and were embellished on the day I visited them with several lovely and elegantly dressed women. In one part is a neat but simple mausoleum, erected by the order of Frederic the Great to the memory of one of the landgravines of Darmstadt, a princess remarkable for the powers of her mind and the beauty of her person: upon which is the following elegant inscription, composed by that great Prince:

A short distance from the garden is a park in which wild boars are kept for hunting. The religion of the dutchy is Lutheran. The affairs of the state are conducted by a court of regency, and other courts, composed of counsellors and a president, who regulate the military, administer the laws, digest the finance, and superintend all matters that relate to religion. Those who complain of “the law’s delay” in England, would be speedily reconciled to the tardity of its progress were they to commence a suit in Germany, where it excited considerable surprise that the procrastination of Mr. Hastings’ trial, which lasted seven years and three months, should have caused any murmurs amongst us, that period being thought a moderate one by almost every German. Living in this dutchy is very cheap: a bachelor can keep a horse, dine at the first table d’hôte, and drink a bottle of wine a day, and mingle in the best circles, upon one hundred pounds per annum. The society in Darmstadt is very agreeable. As the minds of the men and women are so highly cultivated and accomplished in Germany, every party presents some mode or other, equally delightful and blameless, to make Time smile, and to strew over his passage with flowers. The country round Darmstadt is very beautiful, and abounds with corn and various sorts of fruit-trees, which are frequently unprotected by any fence, and the common path winds through avenues of them. Amongst other delicious fruit, there is a red plumb called zwetschen, peculiar to the south of Germany, which grows in great richness and luxuriance in this dutchy. As a proof of the profusion in which it grows, in one of my rambles with some friends, I met a boy laden with a basket full of them, who sold us 130 for some little pieces, amounting to a penny English; and the little rogue looked back with an arch smile as we separated, as if he had made a highly profitable bargain. As I was walking in the principal street with a friend of mine, I was struck with the following expression: “Look at that officer; would you believe it that with so fine a person, and a mind to correspond with it, he has received two baskets?” My surprise at the expression was dissolved by being informed, that when a lady refuses an offer of love, she sends the luckless lover a little basket as a token of her disinclination to receive his addresses.

The French interest is powerful in Darmstadt, although amongst all the princes of the Rhenish confederation, no one has displayed more energy and spirit than the Grand Duke. A striking instance of this occurred to one of my companions: in this dutchy, and I believe in other parts of Germany, there is a law that renders it penal to drive off the road upon the grass, but the postillion who drove him, having, to spare his horses, offended against the law, archly turned round to him and said, “Pray, Sir, in case I should be prosecuted, say you are a Frenchman, and then they will not make me pay the penalty.”

The antipathy between the natives of Darmstadt and their neighbours of Hesse Cassel, is as inveterate as that between the English and French. As I was preparing to set off for Heidelburg, we heard that the troops of Darmstadt were expected to march at a moment’s notice to seize upon Hanau, a town belonging to Hesse Cassel, which has afforded frequent subject of broil between the two countries; but upon inquiry, we were privately informed, that Bonaparte was expected to call upon the Grand Duke to march his contingent to the field of battle against the Prussians, with whom immediate hostilities were thought to be inevitable. I much regretted that this approaching storm, which began to spread a deep shade over the political horizon, prevented me from extending my excursion further into Germany, a country to which Nature has been very bountiful, where the women unite refined accomplishments to the charms of person, and where the men are distinguished for their genius, probity, and indefatigable industry, and both for an unaffected urbanity of manners.

Upon my return to Francfort, part of the French army rushed in like a torrent, on its way to give the Prussians battle. It had rained very hard all the day on which the advance guard entered; but every soldier, although covered with mud, and wet to the skin, went, or rather danced, singing merrily all the way, to the house where he was to be quartered. This city has been dreadfully drained at various times, by the immense number of French troops which have been billeted upon the inhabitants: at one time they had fifty thousand to support, and to supply with various articles of clothing for six months. Every house had a certain number billeted upon them, according to its size and the opulence of the family. Upon their march the French are as little encumbered as possible; in their way they compel the farmer, butcher, baker, &c. to furnish them with what they want, for which notes are given by the proper officers, if they have no cash, to the seller, according to the price agreed upon, which is generally a very fair one, and which the paymaster in the rear of the army discharges upon coming up.

As the gathering tempest prevented me from penetrating into the south of Germany beyond Darmstadt, I applied to M. Bacher, the French minister, for permission to return pour changer to Rotterdam, by the way of Brussels, Antwerp, &c. but the old, shrewd politician, in a very crabbed manner refused, and ordered me to keep on the right bank of the Rhine. Thus was I obliged to retrace my steps; however, it enabled me again to contemplate the sublime and beautiful scenes of the Rhine, which I did in a boat, the cabin and roof of which were crammed with passengers to various cities on different sides of the river: the wind was against us, but the stream was strong, of which our boatmen availed themselves by placing the vessel transversely, and, without rowing or towing, in two days and a half we bade adieu to our voyageurs, a little before we reached Cologne, where we landed at Duitz, and retrod our steps, which enabled me here and there to correct errors and supply omissions. At Wesel we arrived at half past six o’clock in the evening, and found the gates shut, which compelled us to sleep upon straw at a little inn in the suburbs. At six the next morning, we beheld a sad massacre perpetrating by the engineers and soldiers of the garrison, upon all the trees in the neighbourhood that could conceal or assist an enemy in approaching the town, and for a similar reason several houses in the suburbs were marked for destruction. Such is the commencement of the horrors of war! The Prussians were expected to lay siege to this strongly fortified town in a few days, which induced the Grand Duke of Berg, who was in the citadel at the time, to have recourse to these severe preparations.

After pursuing our route through Amsterdam, where the great fair was holding, during which the Dutch character became absolutely lively, through Leyden and Rotterdam, at the last of which we were sadly annoyed about our necessary passports of departure, which require the signature of the King’s secretary at the Hague, and the countersign of a Dutch commissioner, appointed, during my absence, for such purpose at Rotterdam, in consequence of the French ambassador’s power over such matters having been withdrawn, we at length, like hunted hares, arrived at the spot from whence we started, viz. Maesland-sluys, where, after undergoing the vexation of more forms and ceremonies before our old friend the commodore, on board of his guard-ship, we embarked in the identical dismal galliot which brought us to Holland, and after expecting every moment an order of embargo, we got out to sea, where we endured no common misery for six days and nights, after which I landed again upon my beloved native country: