"Here Ehrenbreitstein with her shattered wall,
Black with the miner's blast upon her height,
Yet shows of what she was when shell and ball
Rebounding lightly on her strength did light."
"A tower of victory" it is indeed, for it has only twice been taken by an enemy during the best part of a thousand years—once by stratagem, and once being reduced by famine.
We crossed the bridge of boats, which is fourteen hundred and ten feet long, got tickets of admission to the fortress in the little town of Ehrenbreitstein the other side, mounted with labor up the steep ascent, and as we came within view of these tremendous works, upon which money and engineering skill seem to have been expended without stint, we did not wonder at their impregnability, or that they excite so much admiration among the military engineers of the world. From the ramparts we enjoyed a magnificent view of the whole river and the country between Andernach and Stolzenfels. Below us was triangular-shaped Coblentz, and its row of handsome buildings facing the River Rhine, the bridge of boats and never-ending moving diorama sort of scene, while at the right of the town glided the blue Moselle, its azure waters moving unmixed as they flowed along with the Rhine, and the railroad bridge spanning the stream with its graceful arches; beyond that the fortifications of Fort Franz, commanding the river and vicinity; and far off to the right of that a fertile plain towards Andernach, the scene of Cæsar's first passage of the Rhine, B. C. 55, and of the sieges of the thirty years war, in 1631 to 1660, and the bloody campaigns of Louis XIV.
Farther to our left, and near the junction of the two rivers, we observed the Church of St. Castor, built in 1208; and it was in a small square near this church, in one of our walks about the town, that we came to a little monument, raised by a French official at the commencement of the campaign against Russia, bearing this inscription:—
"Made memorable by the campaign against the Russians, under the prefecturate of Jules Doazan, 1812."
When the Russian general entered the town, he added these words, which still remain:—
"Seen and approved by the Russian commander of the city of Coblentz, January 1, 1814."