23rd August, Thun.
Left the Couronne with its discomfort and dirty stables. A steep descent leads to the bridge, beyond which run at right angles the two roads, one leading hither, the other to Zurich, beneath noble avenues. We had a lovely day and ride through a happy looking country, wood, pasture and mountain, and passed through a village, where the laugh of all the lookers-on from the windows saluted me as I rode Fanny in and through a clear pond, far deeper than I thought, but out of which we got to our honour.
Approaching Thun, the country is romantic and most beautiful. It was a warm fine evening, and the old dark castle, now a prison, on the height, with its peaked roof and four towers flanking it, and the church by its side, stood out from a bright sky.
The Aar, which issues from the lake about a mile further, winds below, rapid and blue as the Rhone. We crossed it on a covered wooden bridge, and skirted the town, passing ancient gates and massive towers, and the once fortified wall, to arrive hither.
The Pension Baumgarten stands on higher ground than the Hôtel Bellevue, backed by wooded heights, to the foot of which its park extends; and the rooms opening on flower-gardens look on the Aar, winding through rich meadows, with scattered houses, and a grey feudal tower on the near shore; and the Stockhorn, with its strange sharp peak projecting above; and the massive pyramid of the Neisen beyond; the wreaths of vapour floating along the side of the first serving its forests for pedestal or canopy. On the right rose the castle; and to the left, far away in the opening, the Jungfrau and her attendants, looking with the blush of that sweet evening on them, I thought even lovelier than Mont Blanc.
The rights of “bourgeoisie” attached to Thun make poverty almost impossible, and its inhabitants are therefore less laborious than in other parts of Switzerland; each citizen possessing a right of pasture, building timber, and firewood, besides a yearly sum of money drawn from the surplus revenues of their flourishing and unexpensive country. By a strangely egotistical rule of the law-makers, these advantages attach exclusively to the males, so that a female orphan left unmarried, or a widow without a son, might find herself suddenly destitute, and dependent on strangers’ charity.
The service of the English church is performed every Sunday by an English clergyman in the Swiss church. No prospect can be more beautiful than that from the churchyard of Thun. The wall is built on the very edge of the precipitous hill it half circles; round and along it, from distance to distance, are what elsewhere I should call summer-houses, open stone edifices, on whose benches the inhabitants of Thun sit in the shade, enjoying the glorious and varied views over each side of the valley. A winding road, passing beneath an ancient gateway and a stair of irregular steps, leads up the height on which the church stands. The castle is but a few paces from it, on the platform of the same hill: among its annals is written a bloody tale of family feud.
When the last duke of Zæringen, who had refused to become an emperor, was interred in 1218 at St. Pierre in the Black Forest, his large possessions were divided. Ulric of Kibourg, his brother-in-law, inherited those situated in Burgundy; Berne and Zurich solicited and obtained from the Emperor Frederic the Second the title of free towns; and when the news, so long desired, reached Lausanne of the failing of the line of Zæringen, (the fall of the founder of Berne twenty-five years after its foundation,) the Bishop Berthhold of Neuchâtel convoked together the chapter, knights, and citizens in the court of the church of Notre Dame, and, solemnly cursing the memory of the deceased duke, who had once made war against him, he gave (solemnly also) the advowson of the bishopric into the hands of the Mother of God for ever!!
In the year 1332, Hartmann, count of Kibourg, possessed, with the lordship of Thun itself, that of various villages surrounding it, as well on the mountains as on the green plains through which flows the Aar. Among these were Berthoud, Landshut, and other property of allodial tenure. Thun and Berthoud, governed according to the sage customs of their territory, had extended their limits by reason of their increasing population. The avoyers of the count pronounced judgment in accordance with a municipal code which even himself respected. The richest and most ancient of the nobility thronged his court and were his brothers in arms. When Hartmann of Kibourg died, his widow, the countess Elizabeth, allowed an overweening influence to Senn of Münsigen, a nobleman whose domains lay in the neighbourhood, and who through her favour had become director of her councils. Her sons, Hartmann, heir of Kibourg, and Eberard, were youths, and the eldest, who hated his brother, used every means to conciliate Münsigen’s favour to himself, and to prejudice him against Eberard, at that period studying at Bologna, the cradle of all science then existing, at an expense of sixteen marks yearly. Owing to his brother’s influence, this remained undefrayed; and, having vainly besought its payment, Eberard returned to his paternal castle to claim the portion left him by his father.
His relatives treated his demands with derision, and himself as a young man who might indeed possess rights but who knew not how to uphold them. One night, after a hunting or hawking party, the brothers had arrived at the castle of Landshut, which is some leagues from Berthoud, and Eberard, fatigued with exertion, slept by Hartmann’s side too soundly to be at first aware of his treason. Hartmann bound him as he lay, and sent him, thus secured and half naked, under a strong guard, to Rochefort in Neuchâtel, Comte Rodolph of Neuchâtel being his wife’s father. Arrived at his destination, Eberard accepted, perforce, for arbitrator between their differences Duke Leopold of Austria. Leopold pronounced that Hartmann should remain sole lord of the entire patrimony; that Eberard should inhabit the castle of Thun, and of the two hundred marks he received from his benefices as canon of Strasburg and Cologne yield three parts to his brother to defray the debts of their house. To this sentence the prisoner was obliged to subscribe, and all the nobility of the lordship of Kibourg assembled by invitation in the castle of Thun to celebrate the reconciliation of the brothers. As the defrauded young man sate with them at the banquet, Count Hartmann and the favourite, Senn of Münsigen, applauded each other unconstrainedly on the success of their schemes: “Belike,” said the former, alluding to Eberard’s inexperience and easiness of belief, “my brother may need a tutor to teach him to sign our peace.”