We left Huy by the bridge, which here carries the road from the right to the left bank of the river; and continued its descent towards Liege.
The view, on looking back at this hardy old town, is remarkably striking—its citadel almost by nature a fortress, independently of engineering; and, at its foot, the antique cathedral, founded by Peter the Hermit. The banks of the Meuse, and the Vesdre, have been prolific in great names; Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the first crusade, was born at Poisy, on the borders of Namur; Tilly, one of the great military adventurers of the Thirty Years, came from a village still nearer the Meuse; Hersthal, the birth-place of Pepin, “the Mayor of the Palace,” and the founder of the kings of the second race in France, lies a mile below Liege; and at Herve, between it and Verviers, Lebrun, the minister of France, who died on the scaffold, in 1794, was employed as the editor of a provincial newspaper.
The scenery, on either side of the river, improves in richness, but loses in grandeur, as we approach Liege. The ravine through which it rolls, between Huy and Namur, widens out into a fertile valley towards Seraing, still enclosed, however, by precipitous cliffs, on which castles, châteaux, and monasteries are perched, in positions that seem, from below, at least, to be all but inaccessible. Two, in particular, are most strikingly picturesque—the châteaux of Aigremont, between Flaune and Engis, and another above the village of Chokier, at present occupied by a Russian nobleman, whose visitors would certainly require a balloon and a parachute “to drop in upon him.”
On driving round a projecting angle of the cliff, at a turn in the course of the river, we came in view of the vast buildings and innumerable chimneys of the great iron works at Seraing. These enormous works are certainly one of the wonders of Belgium; and Europe, in point of extent, possesses nothing to compare with them. Nor can one regard this vast temple to the genius of Fulton and Watt, without emotions of amazement, at the lightning speed with which their discoveries have revolutionized the whole aspect of European industry, and created wants and expedients which, half a century ago, were unfelt and unknown; but the pressure of which, at the present day, has forced into existence such a gigantic establishment as Seraing. Compared with the largest manufactories in England, Seraing is as a mammoth to an ant-hill. The quantity of actual creative power which it engenders and pours forth, year by year, is, perhaps, equal to that of a whole generation of artizans, in the best days of Flemish prosperity; and a river, of ordinary current, flowing through a country of manufactures scarcely communicates a greater impetus to the production of the necessaries, or the comforts of life, than the steam engines which Seraing is capable of sending forth in the compass of a single year.
The circuit of its own walls encompasses everything essential to the completion of the most ponderous engine;—two coal mines are worked within them—the iron ore is raised, washed, and smelted on the spot; canals and railroads, all within its gase, convey those cumbrous materials from process to process, from furnace to forge, till the crude mineral which, issued from the earth in its ore, is carried from the ware-room in the form of all but intelligent machines.
Seraing was many years in attaining its present singular development. It was commenced in 1817, by the sons of the ingenious individual, whom I have already mentioned as entering Verviers an impoverished mechanic, and finally contributing, by the impulse of his single mind, to advance the march of manufacturing improvement in Belgium by, at least, half a century. The buildings in which, or rather, around which its multifarious works are now congregated, was formerly the magnificent palace of the Prince Bishops of Liege, on whose abolition it became the property the crown. The brothers, Charles James, and John Cockerill, whose father had already established extensive manufactories of machinery at Liege and transmitted them to his children, conceived the idea of transfering their industry to Seraing, struck with its commanding advantages, the presence of coal and iron, and its facilities of water communication in every direction, by means of the river which flowed below its walls. To occupy all its space, one wing was fitted up for the spinning of linen yarn, and was so employed till 1822, when the extension of their business in the other branches, required the rooms which it engrossed. In 1819, they commenced raising their own coal; and in 1824, they were enabled to work iron, the produce of their own mines and furnaces. The extraordinary encouragement given to every species of manufacture requiring machinery, under the régime of Holland, was a source of continued prosperity; and even the unhealthy plethora of speculation, which has existed in Belgium since the revolution, however disastrous to others, afforded constant employment to the workmen of Seraing, and contributed to expand it to its present unexampled extent.
At the little village of Jemeppe, which is on the same side of the river with the high road, we left the carriage, and crossed over in a ferry boat to the works, over which we were obligingly conducted by one of the superintendants. The outward edifices are all in the same condition as when occupied by the Prince Bishop, and one wing is still the residence of Mr. Cockerill’s family. It consists of three squares, or courtyards, opening one into the other by noble archways, the first of which is still surmounted by the arms of the prelate, with his motto—“je maintiendrai.” The grand front contained the apartments of the Prince himself, the second court that of his officers and suite, and the third was appropriated for the household and stables, and now forms, with the floors on the second story, four apartments, each two hundred feet in length! The whole building, with its noble façade, and the remains of fine timber which surround it, still retains an air of magnificence suitable to its former fortune. The gardens in the rear are now all covered over with workshops, forges, furnaces, and store-houses; and behind these, still further retiring to the river, are the coal fields and iron mines; the whole forming literally a town within itself, daily animated by upwards of 2,000 workmen, in all the various branches of its comprehensive system.
Externally, except from the smoke of its chimneys at a distance, one would scarcely discern the nature of the vast operations going on within; but before the grand entrance on the bank of the river there lay a huge specimen of its productions,—a gigantic cylinder, for a steam-engine to be sent to Prussia, of two hundred and fifty horse power, and of such dimensions, that this one limb of it alone was seven feet in diameter, and weighed upwards of twelve tons. Besides two huge furnaces for smelting the raw ore, there are upwards of thirty others for the washing, puddling, and treatment of the iron in its various stages; eighty forges, two iron founderies, and one of copper; one vast hall for the construction of boilers, another for fly-wheels, and all the portions of steam-engines, and a third for locomotives; besides innumerable apartments for every other species of heavy machinery, rooms for designers and magazines of models. (The spinning, and other light machinery, is manufactured at another establishment at Liege.) The whole is set in motion by seventeen steam-engines, whose united power exceeds nine hundred horses, and the consumption of coals for these and the furnaces is four hundred tons a day, the cost of raising which, we were told, was fifteen francs a ton. Its productions comprehend the whole range of English machinery for every department of industry, and its produce is exported to every manufacturing country to which it has a commodious communication—to Russia, to Prussia, to Germany, Spain, Italy and France and even to South America. Every new invention which succeeds in Great Britain has been re-produced at Seraing, within a short time of its appearance with us.
The rooms and vast halls, from the ample construction of the building, present an appearance quite startling to a stranger, who may not be prepared for the unusual spectacle of a single chamber fitted up with five hundred vices along the sides, and all alive with the rush of wheels and the din of machines of every description, in action in the centre. The workmen are all Belgians, not a single English mechanic being now employed. Their tools, however, were chiefly from Manchester, and in reply to a remark, that at Ghent the Phœnix made its own; the superintendant observed, that they had tried the experiment and found that they could be had both cheaper and better from England. So many as 2,800 workmen have been at one time employed at Seraing, at wages varying from three francs a day to five or six, but would average about four francs round, exclusive of designers, whose gains are more considerable. The establishment has been latterly less regularly employed, owing to a damp upon speculation in general, and the completion of the contracts for the various railroads, and not above 2000 hands are now engaged. The whole concern is, likewise, at present in confusion, owing to the recent death of the proprietor, which will occasion the entire to be disposed of for the settlement of his affairs. The extent of his speculations in every branch of industry, and almost in every country of Europe, is almost incredible. He was concerned in no less than fifty different mines, and factories for spinning and weaving cotton, woollens, and linen, for the manufacture of paper and printed calicoes, for grinding flour, making carding machines, and in short, every promising branch of industry in Belgium, France, and Germany. His property at Seraing has been estimated (I cannot answer for how correctly) at 10,000,000[13] of francs, and his factory for spinning machinery at Liege 3,000,000, his paper mills and buildings at Andennes 2,900,000, his flour mills at Cottbus, in Silesia, 500,000, his woollen factory at St. Denis 500,000, his card machinery at Spa 400,000, and his shares in various other manufactories in Belgium and elsewhere 25,000,000. In Belgium, in fact, there has been a mania for joint-stock speculation, scarcely equalled by the bubbles of 1825 in Great Britain, and attended with equally ruinous results. Mr. Cockerill’s encouragement and participation in these adventures to such an extent, is one source of the activity and astonishing development of Seraing; the funds of these adventurers and his own, along with the rest, being vested in the purchase of machinery manufactured by himself. In the event of their success, the speculation might have been a wise one, but followed as they have been in most instances by disappointment, the result to the proprietor of Seraing, at least, can have been little more than keeping his forges employed out of his own capital.
Still whoever may have been the individual sufferer, Seraing is a stupendous example of enterprize and skill, and if placed upon a suitable financial basis, with its singular facilities of fuel and iron, cannot fail, under almost any circumstances, to be a vigorous concern. The quality of its iron is excellent: this ore yields from twenty-five to seventy-five, and some veins so much as eighty-five per cent.; though that of Belgium in general does not exceed thirty per cent.; and except for some very fine purposes. Seraing is perfectly independent of any importation beyond its own walls. For copper and brass it is, however, dependent upon England and Sweden, none whatever being produced in Belgium, so far as I could learn. One invaluable benefit it has already rendered to Belgium, it has served as a vast college for the education of mechanics; and in the course of twenty years, it has produced thousands of artizans who have branched off into the other provinces, and formed the rival establishments of Ghent, Brussels, Charleroi, Mons, Namur and Tournai. “The Belgians,” says M. Briavionne, “have a natural taste for mechanics, and combine the two essentials to success—perseverance and enterprize. But these qualities would never have been called into action, nor their own resources developed had England, from the first, permitted the free export of her machinery, or Belgium imposed any restrictions upon its import.”[14] The importations of machinery from England, notwithstanding native enterprize have been very considerable more especially of those half-animated engines know by the inappropriate, and ill-understood term of “tools,” which seem to be the very life and sustenance of the rival manufacture of Belgium. In 1830, the Belgian official returns exhibit an import to the value of only 46,372fr., in 1835 it had risen to 464,377fr., in 1836 to 3,291,275fr., in 1837 it was 2,851,451fr., and in 1838, 4,708,237fr.