At Krems, already the valley of the Danube has again widened out very considerably, especially on the north; and for the greater part of the journey thence to Vienna the river flows through a broad flat tract of country, only approaching the hills closely at one point, where it washes the northern end of the Wiener Wald, which is soon seen rising darkly ahead of us, many miles away. A number of small branches of the river cut the low, willow-grown land into many islands again here, and these islands cut off the view on either side for some distance. When the solitary church of Wetterkreutz, on a hill, and the small town of Hollenburg are passed, the right bank, too, becomes scenically uninteresting. The ruined castle of Bertholdstein above Hollenburg, is said to have been the stronghold of a couple more of the fifteenth century river robbers—a pair of worthies named Frohnauer and Wettau. These two seem at last to have aroused their neighbours to retaliation, for when the robbers were engaged in seeking to stop a barge that they might secure what they wished of its cargo, their castle was set on fire. The story is a little reminiscent of one of those told of Aggstein:

Shortly beyond Hollenburg, also on the right, the river Traisen flows in, and not far from its mouth, but invisible as we pass down the Danube, stands the ancient town of Traisenmauer, the home of Helka the first queen of Etzel, and the last stopping place of Kriemhilda on her journey from the Rhine to her marriage with Etzel and to her long-nursed revenge. We have remarked the splendid cavalcade as it touched points of the river, and may here recall the stanzas describing its arrival at this penultimate stage of the long journey:—

From Traisen the cavalcade went on to Tulln, where the King of the Huns awaited his new bride, and whence he bore her to Vienna for the marriage, according to the legendary lay. As the Danube winds through the close-grown willow banks, the hills of the Wiener Wald are seen ahead and to the right, but while we are yet some miles from the northern spur of them we reach, on the same bank, one of the oldest of the Danube towns, the Tulln which has just been mentioned.

The flat plain in which it is situated—the Tullner Feld—has been the gathering place of great armies, and the town itself has seen much of battle. Though the legend of the “Nibelungen Lied” makes it the meeting place of Kriemhilda with Etzel or Attila, history associates it with one of the King of the Huns’ most disastrous battles, when he is said not only to have been defeated, but to have had forty thousand of his warriors slain. This, too, may be legend, but certain it is that, as Comagenæ, the town was an important Roman station, and that at the beginning of the ninth century Charlemagne presented it to Passau, whose bishops once owned territory of royal extent.

When, in 1683, Vienna was closely invested by the Turks, it was in the Tullner Feld that the armies of John Sobieski, King of Poland, and the Duke of Lorraine united and marched to the relief of the Austrian capital. Vienna was in imminent danger when the Emperor Leopold implored Sobieski to hasten to his assistance, even without an army: “My troops are now assembling. The bridge over the Danube is already constructed at Tulln, to afford you a passage. Place yourself at their head, however inferior in numbers, your name alone, so terrible to the enemy, will ensure a victory!” Sobieski could not resist this flattery and “at the head of thirty one thousand horse, traversed Silesia and Moravia with the rapidity of a Tartar horde, but on his arrival at Tulln, found the bridge unfinished, and no troops except a corps under the Duke of Lorraine. “Does the Emperor consider me as an adventurer,” exclaimed the disappointed monarch. “I quitted my army to command his. It is not for myself, but for him, that I fight.” Pacified, however, by the representations of the Duke of Lorraine, he awaited the arrival of his own army, which reached the Danube on the 5th September, and the junction of the German succours was completed on the 7th. The bridge was ready—presumably a bridge of boats—and Sobieski at length set forth at the head of an army of between sixty and seventy thousand men, and on the morning of the 12th the hard-pressed garrison and citizens of Vienna, “descried with rapture the Christian standards floating on the summit of the Kahlenberg.”

An old castle in Tulln was at one time the haunt of a couple of ghosts. The one that of a fair but frail lady who had been killed by her husband on discovering her faithlessness, the other that of her attendant maid. This ghostly couple, ran the tradition, only made their appearance on Mondays at midnight—presumably it was on a Monday that the tragedy happened; but a “barefooted monk” succeeded in exorcising the ghost of the maid, though the mistress refused to be amenable to the ghost-laying ritual. According to Planché, quoting an unnamed “prudent antiquary,” “the whole history” is to be found in the archives of a certain noble house; but as it would redound to the prejudice of the descendants, should the name be made known, it has been passed over in silence. Some time ago an attempt was made to pull down the building, but the indignant phantom raised such a racket that the workmen beat a retreat, and the project was abandoned!

A little beyond Tulln we pass the villages of Ober and Unter Aigen, or the village Langenlebarn, for straggling along the river bank, the two places seem sometimes to be given one name. This point is interesting as being that of old gold-seeking attempts. The sands of the Danube have yielded gold, and those hereabouts seemingly most successfully. The local quidnuncs accounted for this by saying that when in the year 926 a certain Bishop Draculf was drowned near this spot, he was carrying secured in his girdle about forty pounds’ weight of gold, which he had smuggled out of a monastery that he had been visiting! The legend is one that might well have inspired Ingoldsby. Another small village further along on the same side of the river is Zeiselmauer, the old Roman Cetium, and birthplace of that St. Florian of whom we learned something a little below Linz.

After leaving Tulln, as we near the northernmost “bergs” of the Wiener Wald, the scenery becomes once more beautiful; on the left are still the low lands through which a number of small branches of the river find their way, but on the right, the wooded hillsides that we are approaching lend a fresh variety to the landscape. Soon is seen ahead of us on a rocky knoll the square tower of the ruined castle of Greifenstein sometimes described as having been the prison in which Duke Leopold kept Richard Cœur de Lion captive in an iron cage. The claims of Dürrenstein, and Trifels are more strongly upheld, and are accepted by the historians; in the case of Greifenstein the matter rests on nothing firmer than the “they say” of tradition.

This castle is also said to owe its name—“Greif-an-den-Stein”—to the fact that the hill on which it stands was at one time the haunt of a griffin, the marks of the talons of which can still be found in the rocks by those who regard seeing as necessary to believing. But the griffin is not the only tradition of this beautifully situated place, for it has the great distinction of being doubly haunted—by an “old white woman” and by one of the first of the lords of Greifenstein who, early in the eleventh century, “sware a dreadful oath.” The story of the first of these ghosts haunting the castle is told by Planché, who says that it arose owing to the fact that a châtelaine of the place, the Lady Bountiful of the neighbourhood, was given to devoting herself to the cure of the sick, and was so generally successful that the very people whom she had benefited at length suspected her of possessing an unholy supernatural power, and so on her death, having received all the good they could at her hands, the peasants accused her posthumously of witchcraft, and declared that her ghost haunted the place of demoniacally inspired benefactions!

The second ghost story about this castle on the edge of the Wiener Wald is a long one, but deserves remembering for its romantic elements, and may best be given here in the words of Planché:

“As early as the eleventh century the lords of Greifenstein were famed and feared throughout Germany. One of the first knights who bore that name, lost his lady soon after she had presented him with a daughter, who received the name of Etelina. The dying mother painfully aware how little attention would be paid to the education of a female by a rude and reckless father, half knight, half freebooter, however fond he might be of his child, had recommended her infant, with her last breath, to the care of a kind and pious monk, the chaplain of the castle; and under his affectionate guidance, the pretty playful girl gradually ripened into the beautiful and accomplished woman. Sir Reinhard of Greifenstein, though stern, turbulent, and unlettered himself, was, nevertheless, sensible to the charms and intelligence of his daughter; and often as he parted her fair hair and kissed her ivory forehead, before he mounted the steed or entered the bark, that waited to bear him to the hunt or the battle, a feeling of which he was both proud and ashamed would moisten his eye and subdue a voice naturally harsh and grating, into a tone almost of tenderness. On his return, weary and sullen, from a fruitless chase or a baffled enterprise, the song of Etelina could banish the frown from his brow, when even the wine-cup had been thrust untasted away, and the favourite hound beaten for a mistimed gambol. So fair a flower, even in the solitary castle of Greifenstein, was not likely to bloom unknown or unsought. The fame of Etelina’s beauty spread throughout the land. Many a noble knight shouted her name as his bright sword flashed from the scabbard, and many a gentle squire fought less for his gilt spurs, than for the smile of Etelina. The minstrel who sang her praises had aye the richest largess, and the little footpage who could tell where she might be met with in the summer’s twilight, clinging to the arm of the silver-haired chaplain, might reckon on a link of his master’s chain of gold for every word he uttered. But the powerful and the wealthy sighed at her feet in vain—she did not scorn them, for so harsh a feeling was unknown to the gentle Etelina. Nay, she even wept over the blighted hopes of some, whose fervent passion deserved a better fate; but her heart was no longer hers to give. She had fixed her affections upon the poor but noble Rudolph and the lovers awaited impatiently some turn of fortune which would enable them to proclaim their attachment without fear of the anger and opposition of Sir Reinhard, who was considerably annoyed by Etelina’s rejection of many of the richest Counts and Barons of Germany.

“Business of importance summoned the old Knight to the Court of the Emperor. His absence, prolonged from month to month, afforded frequent opportunities of meeting to the lovers; and the venerable monk, on whom the entire charge of the castle and its inhabitants had devolved at Sir Reinhard’s departure, was one evening struck dumb with terror, by the confession which circumstances at length extorted from the lips of Etelina! Recovered from the first shock, however, his affection for his darling pupil seemed only increased, by the peril into which passion had plunged her. In the chapel of the castle, he secretly bestowed the nuptial benediction upon the imprudent pair, and counselled their immediate flight, and concealment, till his prayers and tears should wring forgiveness and consent from Sir Reinhard, who was now on his return home, accompanied by a wealthy nobleman, on whom he had determined to bestow the hand of his daughter. Scarcely had Rudolph and Etelina reached the cavern in the neighbouring wilderness, selected for their retreat by the devoted old man, who had furnished them with provisions, a lamp and some oil, promising to supply them from time to time with the means of existence, as occasions should present themselves, when the rocks of the Danube rang with the well known blast of Sir Reinhard’s trumpet, and a broad banner lazily unfolding itself to the morning breeze, displayed to the sight of the wakeful warden the two red griffins rampant in a field vert, the blazon of the far feared Lords of Greifenstein. In a few moments the old Knight was galloping over the drawbridge, followed by his intended son-in-law.

“The clatter of their horses’ hoofs struck upon the heart of the conscious chaplain, as though the animals themselves were trampling on his bosom; but he summoned up his resolution, and relying on his sacred character, met his master with a firm step and a calm eye, in the hall of the castle. Evading a direct answer to the first enquiry for Etelina, he gradually and cautiously informed Sir Reinhard of her love, her marriage, and her flight. Astonishment for a short space held the old warrior spell-bound, but when his gathered fury at last found vent, the wrath of the whirlwind was less terrible. He seized the poor old monk by the throat, and upon his firm refusal to reveal the retreat of the culprits, dashed him to the earth, had him bound hand and foot, and flung into a pit beneath an iron grating in the floor of the donjon or keep of the castle. Tearing, like an infuriated Pasha, ‘his very beard for ire,’ he called down curses on Etelina and her husband, and prayed that, if ever he forgave them, a dreadful and sudden death might overtake him on the spot where he should revoke the malediction he now uttered! Upwards of a year had elapsed when, one winter day, the Knight of Greifenstein, pursuing the chase, lost his way in the mazes of a wilderness on the banks of the Danube. A savage-looking being, half clothed in skins, conducted him to a cavern, in which a woman similarly attired was seated on the ground, with an infant on her knees, and greedily gnawing the bones of a wolf—Sir Reinhard recognised in the squalid form before him his once beautiful Etelina. Shocked to the soul at the sight of the misery to which his severity had reduced her, he silently motioned to the huntsmen, who came straggling in upon his track to remove the wretched pair and their poor little offspring to the castle. Moved by the smiles of his innocent and unconscious grandchild he clasped his repentant daughter to his bosom, as she recrossed the threshold, bore her up into the banquet hall, and consigning her to the arms of her faithful Rudolph, hastened down again to release with his own hands the true-hearted monk, who still languished in captivity. In descending the steep staircase his foot slipped, and he was precipitated to the bottom—his fall was unseen—his cry was unheard—dying, he dragged himself a few paces along the pavement, and expired upon the very spot where he had just embraced and forgiven his daughter. Rudolph, now Lord of Greifenstein, restored the chaplain to liberty, and lived long and happily with his beloved Etelina; but the spirit of Sir Reinhard to this day wanders about the ruins of his ancestral castle, and will continue so to do till the stone whereon he expired shall be worn in twain. ‘Alas! poor ghost!’ the very slight hollow which is at present perceivable in it, affords you little hope of its division by fair means previously to the general ‘crack of doom.’”

Such is the romantic story attaching to this square-towered old ruin picturesquely set on the summit of a tree-grown hill. The view from the storied place is a peculiarly beautiful one—over the extensive Tullner Feld, up the broad Danube, and across the archipelago of islands formed by the branching of the river. But a short journey from Vienna, it is small wonder that this is a popular point for holiday makers to seek. Beyond Greifenstein the river sweeps in a southerly curve round the hills, and inland on the left, on a hill, but hidden by trees is the interesting castle of Kreuzenstein—a place which was destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War, but which has been fully restored by a modern owner, and filled with old furniture and weapons, so that it appears handsomely suggestive of what the many castle ruins we see in a journey down the river must have looked like in the days of their prosperity. Crenellated and machicolated this renewed old castle, with its towers and its great walls shows to us how great must have been the strength of such places, well provisioned, in days when bows and pikes were the principal weapons of warfare.

Beyond, almost opposite each other, we reach Korneuburg and Klosterneuburg. Korneuburg on the left, with a handsome old fifteenth century tower, is near the foot of the Bisamberg—the hills here nearing the river on this bank, too, for a brief time. The name of the vine-grown hill is accounted for thus: “Am Bisamberg floss in allers Zeiten de Donau Vorbei, daher sei der Name—Bis am Berg.”

Korneuburg, like Krems and Deggendorf, was the scene of a massacre of the Jews in the fourteenth century, and like so many of the towns we glance at as we come down the Danube, saw much of siege and battle in the good old days; being twice besieged by the conquering Matthias Corvinus, and in the Thirty Years’ War being captured and garrisoned by the Swedes. Here, in 1462, the Emperor Frederick the Fourth met his rescuer, the great Bohemian King George Podiebrad, after the latter monarch had brought an army to his assistance. And that that help came only just in time may be gathered from the fact that the Emperor was closely besieged in the citadel of Vienna with only two hundred men.

Klosterneuburg, on the right bank backed by the Kahlenberg, owes its name to the great Augustine monastery, rebuilt in the seventeenth century, the oldest and wealthiest of the monasteries belonging to this Order in Austria. This Kloster is standing evidence in stone of the truth that great events from small occasions spring, for its establishment on this spot is said to have been the result of a mere puff of wind. In the chronicles of the monks themselves the story of the origin of the place is thus presented: The Margrave, Leopold the Fourth—or Leopold the Holy—having erected a new family fortress, on the summit of Mons Cetius (now the Leopoldsberg), was sitting one evening at the window of his hall, musing on the passing events of his time—on the fate of the old emperor whom he had abandoned—and visited, perhaps, with compunctious feelings as he bethought him of his own sinful course. At his side sat his beloved spouse, the Margravine Agnes; and while they were talking over the religious topics of the day—the endowment of monasteries, the purchase of masses, and the powerful efficacy of good works in quieting the upbraidings of conscience, Leopold expressed an earnest desire to promote the glory of God by raising a sumptuous altar, and surrounding it by holy men, who should there serve Him night and day. But among the number of inviting spots which there met the eye, he could not decide which was the most eligible for the building in contemplation. Thus perplexed in his choice, he appealed to his wife; and just as she leant forward to take a more minute survey of the adjacent country, a gentle breeze, suddenly rising, fluttered for an instant amidst her flowing ringlets, and then, lifting her veil, carried it away—no one knew whither. For some days subsequent to this incident, strict search was made for the veil, but without effect. It could neither be recovered by threats of punishment nor promises of reward.

During the three months ensuing, affairs of state diverted the mind of Leopold from his pious purpose. But one day, while engaged in his favourite pastime of boar hunting, he entered a thicket of alder trees on the verge of the river, and there, to his astonishment, his steed would not take one step further, but, defying both whip and spur, dropped upon his haunches, and lastly falling upon his knees, brought his noble rider to the ground. Starting to his feet in a princely passion, and winding the small horn that hung at his belt, Leopold would have dealt very summarily with the obstinate quadruped; but, turning round to address his retainers, who now rushed forward to their chief, he suddenly observed the identical veil of his wife, which had been so mysteriously carried off three months before! Leopold had always been a very piously given prince—but now that the finger of Providence was so clearly manifested his devotion became intense; and the same day it was determined that the tree on which the veil had been deposited by angelic hands, should be enclosed in a magnificent temple. Faithful to his vow, a spacious area was soon cleared, and in the course of three years, the monastery and monks of Klosterneuburg became the admiration of architects, and the theme of pious exaltation among all the faithful. The alder tree which had preserved the mysterious veil, was cased in gold and consigned to precious immortality; and in their religious processions branches of that sacred tree were usually carried in triumph, or woven into trophies and suspended over the altar. The fair Margravine, not to be outdone even by her husband in acts of piety, founded a nunnery at a commodious distance from the monastery, so that, by occasional intercourse, these holy friars and maidens might, without scandal or inconvenience, promote each other’s spiritual welfare, and leave a bright example of mortification and self-denial—“under the veil.”[11]

The founder of this monastery became the tutelary saint of Austria—despite the sinfulness of his course more than hinted at in the monkish legend—and it was in the chapel of St. Leopold here that his body was laid; while the princely state of the saint was duly shown by the placing of a huge ducal hat of bronze or iron on the summit of one of the monastery’s domes while another of the domes is surmounted by the Imperial crown. Within the monastery is kept the actual ducal hat, which is used at the ceremony of swearing allegiance to a new ruler.

In the chapel of St. Leopold is a famous altar, known as the Altar of Verdun from the name of its maker, Nicholas of Verdun. This was at one time regarded as the earliest example of “niello” work, and Nicholas of Verdun was credited with being the inventor of that art; but now niello is traced back to the Roman craftsmen. The niello work on this altar consists of a series of nearly sixty plaques of gilded bronze representing Biblical scenes. As in the other big monasteries still occupied, the library is here an important feature; in it are more than forty thousand volumes and about thirteen thousand MSS.

Opposite the church is a richly carved Gothic pillar—“The Everlasting Light”—which was erected in 1381 to commemorate the fact that a terrible plague visitation had come to an end. The name it has is in consequence of a votive lamp “which was kept burning before it many ages.” Near the church too, is a house in which is kept a gigantic cask which holds 18,000 gallons and is regarded as a rival of the “great tun of Heidelberg.” On 15 November—Leopold’s Day—Viennese holiday makers come in large numbers to drink the wine and to join in the traditional custom of “Fasselrutchen,” or sliding on the great barrel, mention of which may well call to mind that on the slopes of the Kablenberg are cultivated some vineyards celebrated for the quality of their wines, and that among the wines that of Klosterneuburg is specially notable.

Immediately opposite Klosterneuburg is the village of Lang-Enzersdorf, at the foot of the vine-grown Bisamberg, and as we pass below Leopoldsberg towards Vienna we see yet more vineyards on the slopes of this hill. At Nussdorf—the port of Vienna, as it has been termed—we are near the capital, the towers and roofs of which are to be seen away to the right across the level land; for turning the corner, so to speak, as the Danube rounds the end of the Kahlenberg, we find that the river goes on through a wide valley. Bridges barring the way down the stream indicate that we are in the neighbourhood of a big city, though the Danube approach to Vienna may well seem disappointing. The grand buildings, the bright streets which we associate with the name must be sought at a distance from the main stream, the buildings along which are mainly wharves and offices connected with the river trade, dominating them being the great warehouses and passenger hall of the Donau Dampfschiffahrts Gesellschaft, whence the fine steamers set out up-stream to Passau and down to Budapest, Belgrade, and the Black Sea.

Near Nussdorf a branch of the river to the right—the Danube Canal—goes off to the city and rejoins the main stream some distance below it. But before following its course and getting a glimpse of Vienna we may go up the winding stony paths, among varied shrubbery by which the summit of the Leopoldsberg is to be attained. As we rise we get ever wider views, until from the summit, about the ruins of the old castle or from the low wall by the church we are given a splendid view across the valley. Wooded slopes and a smiling valley forming a pleasant foreground to Vienna, with the beautiful tall spire of St. Stephen’s church standing boldly out above the many spires and domes of the wide-spreading city, merging as we see it from this point into the beautiful country and backed by the semicircle of the hills of the Wiener Wald. To the left the broad Danube sweeps in a great curve, with beyond it the extensive flatness of the Marchfeld, scene of momentous fighting, and the lake-like expanse of the Alte Donau. From the western side of the Leopoldsberg the view up-stream is even more beautiful, with the Klosterneuburg almost immediately below and the islanded river backed by the vine-grown hills that we have recently passed.

This lovely spot is also a favourite place of excursion with the Viennese on Sundays and holidays, sharing at once its charms and its popularity with the neighbouring height of the Kahlenberg. The old-time castle from which Leopold the Holy saw his wife’s veil disappear westwards has long since gone, and the château which followed on the same site is now a place of refreshment for visitors—the group of buildings and the small church being nearly surrounded by walls. On a Sunday afternoon the dark restaurant room with its many animated visitors forms a remarkable “interior.”

By a beautiful woodland path we may pass in a quiet walk of less than half an hour to the Kahlenberg, from the summit of which, 1404 feet above sea-level or about twenty feet higher than the Leopoldsberg, are to be had further extensive views. From the Stefanie tower a clear day affords a view eastwards across the valley of Vienna to the Lesser Carpathians and southwards to the Styrian Alps. There is quite a small village about the church and hotel on this hill, standing above a mass of oak and other trees, which has been made more easily accessible from Vienna by means of a mountain railway which comes from the city through vineyards and woods to the hill-top. It is, however, but a little more than a three miles’ walk from the city along the Beethoven Path—so named from having been a favourite resort of the composer.

Of Vienna itself it is not necessary here to say much beyond the recognition of the fact that socially, historically, and geographically it may be regarded as the centre of the Danube. The city, historically or descriptively, would call for a volume to itself. Here it has to be treated as but an incident in a necessarily hurried summary of the story and scenery of the whole river; and again for ten English people who know any large stretch of the Danube there are probably a hundred who know the Austrian capital.