From the bears we walked to the cathedral, which stands on the terrace above the Aar, looking down on the range of aristocratic buildings which skirt it, their possessors’ coats of arms sculptured over their portals, and their gardens sloping to the water, and on the range of Bernese Alps, rising grandly in the distance, but half hidden to-day by the heavy clouds.
This shady platform is raised one hundred and eight feet above the Aar, yet into its wall was inserted a marble slab, recalling a singular accident on the 25th of July, 1654. A young student, amusing himself with his companions, vaulted on a horse which was quietly feeding under the trees, and being a spirited animal, started violently away, and, terrified by the shouts of Weinzapfli’s comrades, sprang with him over the low parapet. The horse was killed on the spot, but the student, who fell in soft garden ground, and only broke his arms and legs, recovered, and became a pastor.
The minster is a fine Gothic building, and was commenced, in 1420, by the son of the architect who built the famous tower of Strasburg.
The monument, surrounded by gaudy armorial bearings, was raised by the town to Duke Berthhold the Fifth, in 1600. He was the last of the line of Zæringen, for he had been left a widower early, with two young sons, and contracted a second marriage with a countess of Kibourg. Either to ensure the inheritance to her own future offspring, or won by the jealous nobles to be their accomplice, this fury in human shape poisoned the two children of her husband. Her guilt once proved to him, neither the tenderness he had once felt for her, nor the thought that by accusing one so nearly allied he tarnished the glory of his house, could arrest the outburst of his paternal agony. In the year 1217 she perished by the hands of the executioner; and Duke Berthhold, unwilling to form another alliance after one so fatal, felt it a consolation that in his person would close the misfortunes of his house.
Occupying a place in the aisle opposite that which contains Duke Berthhold’s monument, is a long catalogue of names inscribed on marble tablets; those of the brave men who fell in 1798, vainly resisting foreign invasion.
The saddest fate was that of Charles Louis of Erlach, a man who, like his ancestors, had deserved the esteem and love of his fellow-citizens. Before the revolution he had served France, and was named field-marshal at the moment of the French invasion in 1798. He had hurried to his native town, and, like his great predecessor, been named by acclamation general of the forces; but the then existing government was timid and irresolute. Accompanied by eighty of his officers, like himself members of the council, he presented himself before it the 24th of February, and, by his energy and arguments, revived its hopes and raised its courage. He was endowed with full powers to act as he should see fit as soon as the yet unconcluded truce should expire. He left the city to decide on the measures to be taken, but, even as the moment for their execution arrived, received the order to suspend hostilities. The government had abdicated its powers. Marshal Brune’s policy had sown division in the senate as well as among the troops. Berne yielded almost without resistance; and Erlach’s soldiers, blinded by suspicions artfully instilled, and maddened by despair, massacred him in the village of Wichdorff.
The treasure of the republic, accumulated through so many generations, was seized on by Marshal Brune without even the formality of an inventory taken. The Directory, informed of the omission, and in a case of this sort placing little confidence in its general, despatched a courier extraordinary with positive orders that it should be repaired.
A kind of list was in consequence hastily made by the marshal s command, and himself wrote to the Directory—
“Vous verrez par l’état, dont je vous envoie copie, que les sommes trouvées dans le trésor cadrent à peu près avec les régistres.”
The most moderate calculation, for into it private losses and depredations cannot enter, computes the losses of Berne (city and canton) at forty-two millions of francs. It was asserted that of this Brune had appropriated to himself the golden medals of the Hôtel de Ville, twenty-two carriages, and above three hundred thousand francs in specie!! This treatment of Berne followed close on assurances of support and amity, for while the marshal’s forces were yet unassembled, and before Schaumbourg’s reinforcement had arrived, France, through her commissary, declared that she desired her neighbour’s freedom and happiness only, and that, as soon as a government sufficiently democratic should be established, the independence of Berne would be respected, and the French army withdrawn.