THE ELBE—SAXON SWITZERLAND. TEPLITZ TO TETCHEN.
CULM.
On leaving Teplitz, we pass through a highly picturesque country, full of mountain scenery, but not of that Alpine grandeur which excludes fertility, cultivation, and beauty, till we come to the Thermopylæ of Bohemia—the battle-field of Culm—whose history, though “Ære perennius,” is yet commemorated by three monuments—the Russian and Prussian dedicated to the memory of those heroes who fell in the combat—the Austrian, to the general who turned the fortune of the day—and changed a doubtful and sanguinary battle into a splendid and decided victory.[84] The three monuments are of very different stature and dimensions. The first we come to is the Russian, a Gothic pyramid of cast iron, of great height, bearing on its summit the figure of Fame. The portrait of the hero Osterman, who, with 8000 Russians, checked Vandamme and 40,000 Frenchmen, is sculptured on one side. This monument is like Russia itself, infinitely more colossal than either of the others. The Prussian, like its kingdom, is the smallest of all—while the Austrian, is next in dimensions to the Russian, and dedicated, as was observed, to the hero who conquered, and not to those who fell in the battle. After all, this was perhaps the wisest plan. The living hero would feel pride and pleasure in contemplating the monuments; but, alas!
“Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion draw the fleeting breath?
Can honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?”
No! the blood of the brave has, no doubt, fertilized the soil of this beautiful valley, while the bodies of heroes, who drew their natal breath on the banks of the Gneiper and the Vistula—the Elbe and the Danube—the Rhine and the Rhone—the Seine and the Tiber, have served to fatten the birds and beasts of prey, as well as the mould of mother-earth—migrating into myriads of new existences, and completing the mysterious circle of the Samian Sage!
When we glance at this infinitessimal speck of human consciousness and identity, surrounded and swallowed up by the countless cycles of other and ephemeral modes of existence, we may well marvel that man—reasoning man—should be the only creature on this globe who wages eternal war—against his own species! One would think that the span of human life was narrow enough, without abridging or annihilating it by fire, famine, and the sword! War indeed is a game which—
——were their subjects wise,
Kings could not play at.
It is rather singular that, in our days, at least, though monarchs occasionally lose their crowns in these games of hazard, they rarely part with their heads at the same time.
Three Emperors and a King played one of those fearful games of hazard in the valley of Culm. From the summit of the Schlossberg the royal Eagles of Austria, Russia, and Prussia beheld, with astonishment, if not dismay, the sudden and unexpected descent through a gorge in the Erzebirge mountains, the fierce, the rapacious, and the ferocious Vandamme, at the head of forty thousand Frenchmen, flushed with the victory of Dresden (27th August, 1813) and pouncing on the scattered troops of the allies in the valley, quite unprepared for such an unexpected onslaught! The “Cock of the North,” and he of the Danube, “immediately retired.” Not so the regal bird, with two heads, from the Elbe and the Oder. He clapped his sable wings, as he snuffed the sulphurous fumes from the roaring cannon—directed several movements of the allies below—and presented a wall of steel, to a cloud of cossacks, flying before the enemy—thus compelling them to face their foes.
Meanwhile, Osterman and his eight thousand Russians slowly and doggedly retreated (fighting) before Vandamme and his forty thousand French, till within two miles of Teplitz, when the Gallic general considered the crowned heads as inevitably within his grasp! Here the Muscovites stopped short—wheeled round—and crossed the narrow valley, like an avenue of knotted oaks that might be borne down or torn up by the furious storm or lightning’s flash, but never would bend. It was in vain that the “ferocious” Vandamme brought up line after line of his men against the northern phalanx. They were repulsed, one after the other, as the basaltic columns of Staffa repel the onsets of the Atlantic surge! As individuals fell in the Russian ranks, the lines instantly closed again, as if by a vital and instinctive movement of the whole body! When the last column of Vandamme had failed to break the Russian phalanx, the furious and disconcerted Frank retreated in his turn, and encamped on the field of Culm for the night. This gave time for the panic-stricken and disordered allies to collect, combine, and arrange for the grand struggle of the coming day. The dawn (30th August) had not yet unveiled the peaks of the surrounding mountains, when all were ready and panting for the sanguinary conflict.
By torch and trumpet soon array’d,
Each horseman drew his battle-blade,
And furious every charger neigh’d,
To join the dreadful revelry.
Then flew the steed, to battle driv’n—
Then shook the hills, with thunder riven—
And louder than the bolts of heaven,
Far flash’d the red artillery!
The allies under Schwartzenburg may now have outnumbered the French under Vandamme, but their morale was depressed by the recent disasters at Dresden, and their physique exhausted by their almost superhuman exertions in dragging their cannon, baggage, and ammunition over the rugged summits of the Bohemian mountains. On the other hand, the French were elated beyond measure by the recent and successive victories of Lutzen, Botzen, and Dresden—but still more by the star of Napoleon, which was now rising, like a Phœnix from the ashes of Moscow, and approaching its second zenith on the banks of the Elbe. Daylight, however, had scarcely enabled the armies to distinguish friend from foe, when they rushed simultaneously into mortal conflict. Vandamme lay between a great crescent of the allies on the West, and the towery ridge of Erzeberg in his rear, and from which he had descended the preceding morning. The “fiery Frank” fought like a tiger encompassed and goaded by hunters—while the “furious hun” successfully repelled his repeated efforts to break the line of the allies, and even drove him nearer and nearer to the mountain behind. The pass of the Erzeberg, through which Vandamme descended into the valley, now presented the only opening by which he could effect his egress out of it. The order for retreat was given; but what was the surprize of the French on entering the defile from below, when they beheld a body of Prussians enter it from above! The surprize and consternation, however, were mutual. Kleist, who, with five or six thousand Prussians, had been wandering among the mountains since the disaster of Dresden, and who was now hurrying to Teplitz to join the allies, was thunderstruck to see the French scrambling up the defile to meet him, and considered his retreat as cut off. Vandamme looked upon himself as in precisely the same predicament. Kleist knew that the French columns were pressing onward in his rear—Vandamme knew full well that the Austro-Prusso-Russian army was close at his heels. The object of each corps in the defile was therefore to cut through its opponent, and escape in the direction of its friends. Under these impressions, they rushed into tumultuous combat, and were soon mingled in inextricable confusion. The officers of one corps were sometimes in the midst of the soldiery of the other, and vice versa—all fighting pell-mell like two hostile mobs, without order or command—individually rather than collectively—often wresting the arms from their opponents, and fighting with the weapons of their enemies! So desperate a struggle on such a precipitous pass, was never, perhaps, witnessed since the days of Leonidas in the Straits of Thermopylæ! The Prussians had the vantage ground, inasmuch as their own weight gave them an increased momentum in rushing down the declivity—the French had greatly the advantage in numbers, both in horse and foot; but Kleist prevailed, and Vandamme and his army were hurled back into the valley below, when the allies closed round them and the Gallic Eagles surrendered!
On the field of Culm the sable wing of destiny threw a shade over the star of Napoleon, which never afterwards regained its splendour, or stayed its downward course, till it sunk in the far Atlantic. On the plains of Marne and Waterloo, indeed,[85] that star emitted some vivid corruscations; but they only tended to exhaust its fire and accelerate its fall!
TETCHEN.
Full of ruminations on the vicissitudes of human life—the vanity of man’s hopes—and the nothingness of his works—we drove through a highly picturesque valley, at the foot of the last range of the Bohemian mountains, till we suddenly debouched on the silvery Elbe, at the bustling and boating little town of Tetchen. The first object which arrested our attention was a huge pile of white buildings standing on a bold and jutting promontory some seven or eight hundred feet above the right bank of the river, with thrice as many windows in its walls as there were eyes in the head of Argus. Various were our conjectures as to whether the edifice before us was an immense barrack, an overgrown convent, where half the daughters of Bohemia might prepare for another world, or a great factory? Even the oracular authority of the “red-book” could not persuade us that it was a palace. The river at this place is always crowded with boats of all shapes and sizes laden with merchandize—chiefly hewn stone from the rocky banks, and timber from the pine-clad mountains. We had some difficulty in getting the carriage along between a precipice on the left, and the stream on our right, but at length got safely housed in the Josephsbad Hotel—“in one of the most romantic situations which the banks of the river Elbe afford.”—Murray. Here we learnt that the great pile of building was actually the palace or castle of Count Thun, and crossing the ferry we scrambled up through a straggling town to the rear of the castle, and then climbed up a road of rock that led to the chateau, and which was steep enough for goats, though the tracks of wheels, worn in the smooth and precipitous stone, shewed that less agile animals than the ibex had dragged their weary way to the summit. The view from the castle is remarkably picturesque, though rather hemmed in by hills, rocks, and mountains—the winding Elbe soon disappearing in the dark ravines of Saxon Switzerland. Count Thun’s library is, I believe, the great lion of the castle; but as I never could derive much amusement or information from a survey of the backs of books, we returned to our eagle’s nest, the Josephsbad, and slept sound over the murmuring Elbe. There is a chalybeate spring here of some local reputation, and certainly an invalid could not easily select a more romantic spot for the restoration of health than Tetchen.
We embarked in a gondola early in the morning, and immediately entered “Saxon Switzerland,” a tract of country extending from Tetchen to the neighbourhood of Dresden, and perfectly unique in character, bearing little or no resemblance to Switzerland, or to any other country in the world through which I have passed. It has none of the snowy solitudes, the sparkling glaciers, or the majestic altitude of the Alps; but it has a geographical and geological physiognomy, of which there is “nil simile aut secundum” on this globe. The river runs through a gorge, which is, in fact, a gigantic excavation—a huge crevasse—a profound chasm, in the rocky bed of an antediluvian ocean, disclosing glimpses of “the world before the flood,” and letting out some of the “secrets of the prison-house.” Whether this ocean-bed was raised from its dark abyss by the agency of subterranean fire, or was left uncovered by the subsidence of the superincumbent sea, may admit of question; but no doubt can be entertained as to the formation of those rocky walls that now rise a thousand feet high on each side of the stream. They are piled, layer over layer, in strata of different thickness and different density—but all as horizontal as the ocean under which they once lay. They were all, therefore, depositions from the sea, and considering that most of these strata are hard enough to form millstones, imagination is lost in the vain attempt to estimate the countless ages that must have rolled away during the deposition and consolidation of even a single stratum—how many millions of years, then, must it have required to form layer over layer, of this immense crust, at the bottom of the ocean, leaving aside the unknown intervals that must have elapsed between the various deposits!! Again, the elevation of the earth, or the subsidence of the waters, so as to produce the complete denudation of this rocky district, could not but occupy ages of ages. In whatever way this long chain of stratifications took place, it is quite evident that it was long subjected to powerful currents. The layers are all grooved and furrowed horizontally, in the line of the river, and not perpendicularly, as by rains descending along their sides. It is true they are often split perpendicularly and irregularly; but this is quite the work of time and decay—not at all like the horizontal smoothing, the consequence of long-continued watery friction. Some travellers have supposed that the river Elbe has hewn its way through these rocks and formed the huge ravine on the principle—
“Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed sæpe cadendo.”
But as the very summits of the rock (800 feet high) shew the same proofs of horizontal “wear and tear” as the lowest strata, what must have been the state of the surrounding country, when the Elbe was 800 feet above its present level? It was covered with water, and the grooves in the rocks were the effects of currents, not rivers—in other words, they are diluvial and not fluvial phenomena. But the banks of this stream are not the only places here which exhibit proofs and records of a deluge. The neighbouring country, especially on the right bank, and where no rivers exist, is studded with “fragments of an earlier world,” all bearing the same marks of watery attrition, from their highest to their lowest strata. Although many of these “splinter’d pinnacles,” are columnar in shape, they are tabular in construction—all shewing horizontal strata (where they have not tumbled down), and all evincing a greater wear and tear of the interstitial materials between the layers, than of the layers themselves—another proof of the lateral and not perpendicular action of the waters by which they were worn smooth.
We descended slowly in our gondola, the day being splendidly clear, and the wind blowing fresh against us, which retarded our progress, but favoured our examination of the infinitely varied scenery in this romantic gorge. At Neidergrund, on the left bank, we were stopped by the last Austrian Douane, for examination of passports; and then continued our descent. At this place, however, there is a huge fragment of rock which must have rolled from the adjacent cliff, at some remote period, but which is now perfectly smooth in every part of its surface, from the friction of the floods. In this stone, there is also a polished excavation, with a narrow door, in which, it is said, a pious hermit once resided. Hence its name—“Monchenstein.” It is worth examining while the tardy Douanier is poring over your passport, and filling unmeaning columns in his musty journals.
A league farther on, where the right bank rises like a wall to a stupendous height, and demonstrating the stratifications with peculiar distinctness, we come to a huge pile of buildings, overhung by massive crags of rocks, and forming a douane, police-station, and hotel. Here we encounter the Saxon Custom-house, where our trunks were opened and examined—an operation which was never once performed by Prussian, Bavarian, or Austrian, during our whole journey. And here I must do the Austrians, who are represented as so very austere in their police and douanes, the justice to say that, in no part of their dominions did we ever experience the slightest interruption or inconvenience in respect to passports; nor did they ever ask us for the key of a trunk on entering, travelling through, or quitting their territories.
From this place (Herrnskretchen), excursions are often made, by people who have plenty of time on their hands, to the summit of the “Winterberg,” where a very extensive prospect of Saxon Switzerland and the Bohemian ranges is obtained. The mountain prospect is hardly worth the toil of the mountain journey. Better prospects are obtained from two points to be presently noticed, where the view, though not quite so wide, is infinitely more distinct and striking, and where the points themselves possess the highest degree of interest, which the summit of the Winterberg does not. The Preberchthor, however, a league and a half from Herrnskretchen, is worth seeing. It is a gigantic natural arch of rock, exhibiting well the stratified formation, and looking like the portal of some enchanted castle, being 60 ells (French) in height, the same in breadth, and 30 in depth. The arch itself is 1400 feet and more above the level of the sea. The summit, or key-stone of the arch forms a kind of narrow slanting platform, 30 or 40 feet in length, from which a romantic prospect opens on the view.
The Kuhstall (or cow-house) is another natural arch, where the strata of rock appear to be somewhat bent as they stride over the aperture below. Various other “disjecta membra” of an antediluvian world are scattered about between the Winterberg and Schandau.
We remained but a short time at Schandau; and, after dinner, hired a gondola, where a female rowed manfully against the breeze, assisted by her husband and brother, and in a couple of hours we reached
KŒNIGSTEIN.
This is one of the lions of Saxon Switzerland—a kind of jung-frau fortress that has never yielded to shot, shell, or escalade. It is situated on the left bank of the river, near the town of Kœnigstein, from whence we ascended by a long and steep road that required full an hour before we arrived at the gate of this impregnable fortress. The Saxon war minister being governor of Kœnigstein, our passports procured us admission, with an orderly to shew us round. One of the most prominent features of this country is, the projection from its surface of numerous truncated cones of the same kind of stratified rock which compose the banks of the Elbe. They rise almost perpendicularly from plain or hill, to various heights of one hundred to seven or eight hundred feet, with a flat surface on the top, like a sugar-loaf with its upper third cut off. Kœnigstein is one of the largest of these natural forts, and the strongest. It springs from an elevated ground, and is at least fifteen hundred feet above the level of the Elbe that flows at its base. The walls are not columnar, but masses of horizontal strata piled upon one another, precisely like those composing the banks of the river, the highest as well as lowest layers presenting the same horizontal “wear and tear,” produced by the action of long-continued currents of water. The plateau on the summit of this antediluvian citadel occupies a space of two or three acres, which, considering the locality, supports a good deal of vegetation, trees, and fruit. Excavations in the rock serve as bomb-proofs for provisions, ammunition, and military barracks, if assailed. The plateau is encircled by a coronet of cannon and mortars, and in the spaces between the embrasures, immense heaps of stones are piled up, to be hurled on the heads of those who ventured to approach the rocky ramparts of this aerial fortress. Down through the centre of the rock a well is bored to the depth of 1800 feet, and from this source an abundant supply of excellent water is drawn up by a wheel, like a tread-mill, worked, or rather walked, by half a dozen soldiers. In the centre of the plateau there is a circus, where the governor with one of his aide-de-camps was galloping round, for air and exercise.
We made the entire circuit of the ramparts, and from these the most extensive views are taken in every direction, embracing scenery so strange, romantic, and beautiful, that no language can do it justice—nor pencil neither! At its eastern base flows the winding Elbe, and directly opposite, on the other side of the stream, rises Lilienstein, about three miles distant from Kœnigstein, and of a precisely similar shape and composition. A German prince, who was also a Polish king, had the courage and dexterity to scale the Lilienstein, and was so proud of the exploit, that he commemorated it by an inscription near the place of ascent. Napoleon, in one of his German forays, succeeded, with incredible labour and difficulty, to elevate some guns to the summit of this gigantic rock, in order to batter Kœnigstein, but his labour was lost, for the shot fell short of the sister fortress. But Kœnigstein might have laughed at Bonaparte even if his cannon could have swept the houses from the plateau of the Saxon strong-hold. It would have remained as impregnable as ever. The view from this spot takes in the whole or nearly the whole of Saxon Switzerland, and extends to thirty or forty miles in every direction—from the Winterberg to Dresden, the towers of which are plainly visible. All the peculiar rocks in the shape of truncated cones, as well as those masses of pillars and cliffs about the Bastei, are distinctly seen from Kœnigstein. Mr. Russell has the following passage in his work on Germany.
“The striking feature is, that in the bosom of this amphitheatre, a plain of the most varied beauty, huge columnar hills start up at once from the ground, at great distances from each other, overlooking in lonely and solemn grandeur, each its own portion of the domain. They are monuments which the Elbe has left standing to commemorate his triumph over their less hardy kindred. The most remarkable among them are the Lilienstein and Kœnigstein, which tower, nearly in the centre of the plain, to a height of above 1200 feet above the Elbe.”
I have marked a sentence, in italics, because it conveys an erroneous idea. It may be poetical; but it is not philosophical. If the Elbe was the Deluge, or the Deluge was the Elbe, all well. But I think Mr. Russell would hardly contend for this identity. The fact is, that the Deluge wore away the softer parts from around Kœnigstein, Lilienstein, and all the other Steins, ten thousand, or, more likely, ten million of years before the Elbe was born! The diminutive stream of the river merely conducted its rills from the mountains through the bottom of the chasm hollowed out by the mighty currents of an antediluvian ocean.
It required two hours to visit the cloud-capt towers and frowning battlements of this impregnable citadel, whose walls were not built by human hands, but constructed beneath the waters of some mighty deep. The magnificent and singular scenery which everywhere bursts on the astonished eye from the cannon-crown’d crest of Kœnigstein, can never be erased from the memory.
We descended from the fortress to the town, tired, hunger’d, but highly gratified by the excursion. Fickle Fortune is not always profuse of her gifts. The feast of the eye this day was purchased by a fast of the stomach. Notwithstanding the care we had taken to order the “huhn gebraten,” the “schinken,” the “kartoflen,” and other little matters for dinner, all of which were civilly promised, with a hearty “ja wohl mynheer,” into the bargain; yet, to our mortification, up came the infernal or at least the eternal dish—mutton-chops, composed of old meat pounded into a paste, squeezed into a mould, fried with butter, covered with flour, and pierced with the ribs of some “schaf” that might have been slaughtered the preceding year! Remonstrance was vain, and complaint was unavailing. Dish after dish was returned untouched—and dish after dish of the same materials, came back again, in other forms! With a sorrowful heart and an empty stomach, I called to mind the first line of Ovid’s Metamorphoses—
“In nova, fert animus, mutatas dicere formas,
Corpora.”
As a forlorn hope, we requested some cheese; when, lo, after a quarter of an hour’s expectation, in came a wedge exhaling such a complication of all horrible and unutterable odours, that we were glad to launch it out of the window among the pigs—and even they scampered off in all directions at the sight, sound, and smell of this unexpected and apparently unwelcome visitor! Good comes out of evil. This last consummation of our miseries fortunately obliterated our appetites as effectually as a fit of sea-sickness in a gale of wind. The beds were as bad as the board, and the smell of the cheese seemed to have called forth myriads of the most minute, agile, and animated beings, who appeared to leap and skip with joy, over our beds and round our dormitory—but whether in search of the savoury “kase,” or bent on more sanguinary depredations, I will not pretend to decide. This I know, that the frolicksome gambols of these black and saltant imps conduced but very little to sleep, notwithstanding the lightness of our supper. Mr. Murray says that the Inn at Kœnigstein is “tolerable.” It may be so, but the inmates are intolerable! I do not think that Horace spent a worse night in the Pontine fens, when he was assailed, on one side by the “mali culices,” and on the other, by the “ranæ palustres.” We had not the “mali culices,” it is true—but we had far worse customers, the mali pulices!! In fine, it was the “frogs and flies” of Treponti in Italy, versus the “fleas and cheese” of Kœnigstein in Germany. I would pit the latter against the former any Summer’s night of the year!