SIEGE OF THURON.
The Knight Zorn commanded for the Count Palatine in his strong castle of Thuron, when the Archbishop of Trèves advanced and laid siege to it. The commander of the castle, who was supported by a brave garrison, amply provisioned, laughed the besiegers to scorn.
Finding they made no progress, the Archbishop’s Commander sent to the Archbishop of Cologne for assistance. This was willingly granted, and the united armies blockaded the castle. Zorn expected daily that they would deliver an assault, but to his surprise, day after day and night after night went by, and no movement took place in the camps of his enemies; eating and drinking seemed their sole occupation.
Every house in the neighbourhood was ransacked by the troops of the Church, and every cellar was emptied; carts also arrived in long strings, bringing great butts of wine. Thus they went on drinking and singing, while Zorn from above looked on astonished at these most unusual proceedings.
Occasionally a herald arrived, and summoned Zorn to surrender; but no assault was delivered.
The empty casks of the Church were piled up in heaps, and at the end of two years they formed a mass which looked like a great fortress; and a message was sent to the castle, that if the garrison did not surrender they would continue to drink till the whole country was dry, and the empty casks sufficient to form a fortress larger and stronger than Thuron.
Zorn now agreed to capitulate, and at length it was settled, that he and his garrison should retire unmolested, that the soldiers of Cologne should at once leave the country, and that the castle should be dismantled.
One unlucky personage appears to have been excluded from this pacific arrangement: this was a village magistrate, who had acted as spy for the besieged. He was taken by the conquerors, and a rope having been stretched over the ravine, between the castle and the hill of Bleiden, he was suspended at an immense height from the ground.
Another version of this story makes the magistrate-spy to walk across ropes so stretched over the valley; and it is added, that he accomplished the feat, and in gratitude built the chapel which we see (now in ruins) on the hill to the right of the castle.
The views from Thuron are very extensive, a long reach of the river leads the eye back to the villages and cliffs we have past; undisturbed by those infesters of the Rhine, who turn every place of interest on that river into a tea-garden, we can here enjoy our meditations without hindrance, and muse our fill.
THE BIRD AND THE RUIN.
I gazed on an ancient keep;
Its hoary turrets high,
And its gloomy dungeons deep,
Its mould’ring cistern dry,
All seemed to me to say,
“Behold in our decay
“An emblem of mortality!”
Whilst thus I mused and gazed,
A little bird upsprang,
To heaven its voice it raised,
And thus it sweetly sang:
“On earth all creatures die,
“But in the holy sky
“Is love and immortality.”
