From Seraing to Liege, a distance of three or four miles, the drive is exceedingly beautiful, the valley of the Meuse here expands into broad and luxuriant meadows, and the steep cliffs which accompanied us from Namur, lean back into rich and verdant hills whose summits are covered with timber, and their base studded with white and cheerful villas. In the midst of this picturesque scenery, the old town of Liege bursts upon us at a sudden turn of the road, built at the foot of the steep hill of St. Walberg which is covered with its churches and palaces, and spreading down to the Meuse which sweeps round its base to meet the waters of the Ourthe and the Vesdre which unite within it.
Liege is certainly the least interesting of all the great towns of the Netherlands, not that the events of its ancient times are less stirring, but the character of their prominent actions is less engaging and their quarrels less chivalrous; in its modern state, it possesses scarcely a single attractive remnant of antiquity—no paintings, no statues, no architectural beauties or remains. Its streets are narrow, irregular and dirty, and the houses devoid of any thing venerable or characteristic. Still the old chronicles of Monstrelet and Philip de Comines, and the quaint tradition of the “wild boar of Ardennes” and the feuds of the Dukes of Brabant and Burgundy, with the insolent burghers, and the alternate ascendancies and indignities of the Prince Bishops, and the rude and savage deeds of the inhuman Louis XI, are all full of historic interest, though of a repulsive and painful kind.
Liege had been the See of a Bishop for fourteen hundred years, when the annexation of Belgium to France put a close to the dynasty of its sovereign prelates. Its rank was such amongst ecclesiastical cities, that it was visited by the Popes and the Emperors; and its citizens intoxicated, at once, with affluence and arrogance became the most turbulent and insubordinate faction that ever “strangled the prosperity” of a community. M. Ferrier in an historical résumé, prefixed to his “Description de Liège,” thus sums up the condition of the burghers in the 12th century. “The morals and manners of the citizens became corrupted, at once, by the acquisition of extraordinary wealth, and the extortion of inordinate privileges from the Prince Bishops who were their ecclesiastical sovereigns. The artisans accustomed to extravagant gains, gave but a portion of their time to industry, and devoted the rest to the discussion of affairs of state, in the places of public resort. The Prelate Albert de Cuyck, unable to subdue their murmuring and disquieted spirit, retreated behind concession after concession, till in 1198, he confirmed to them a Charter, which invested the men of Liege with privileges such as were unheard of in the age in which they lived. But these concessions so far from tranquillizing, seemed but to excite them to fresh demands—the more ample the favours yielded, the more exorbitant became their further requirements—till in the end, their restless ambition embroiled the city in contests of blood such as have tinged the page of their history from century to century. The clergy, at first, made common cause with the people against the power of the haute noblesse, who enjoyed at once all military and magisterial authority in the state; till the multitude disturbed from the pursuits of peaceful industry, became, at length, the sport of ungovernable impulses, sometimes generous in their origin, but which were too often degraded into brutalized ferocity for the mere gratification of revenge. The nobles were the first sacrifice to the popular demands, and the clergy who succeeded to their power, became in turn their fellow victims.” The whole story of their contests is, in fact, one succession of revolts, not for the redress of wrongs or the assertion of liberty, but for the lust of licentious and uncontrolled democracy. Occasionally, too, in the long succession of its Prince Bishops, there occurred some whose authority, instead of being exerted to control, was but employed to exasperate the fury of the populace, and to such an air of arrogance did some of these kingly prelates assume, that one of them, John Louis d’Elderen, presumed, single-handed, to declare war against Louis XIV in 1686! who rewarded his temerity by directing Marshal Boufflers to beat down the fortification of Liege about his ears, an instruction which he duly attended to.
In later times, Liege was a fief of the empire, and the Prince Bishop, the elector, had a vote as representing a portion of the circle of Westphalia. In 1830, its inhabitants, with a true hereditary taste for turmoil, were the first to take up arms on the intelligence of the revolution, and a band of patriots, mustered and marshalled by M. Rogier, marched from Liege to Brussels to aid in expelling the house of Nassau, but with the intention of merely transfering the kingdom from that dynasty to France, a project which was overruled by the clergy and the northern insurgents. With that frightful impulse which in popular, not less than individual frenzy, drives its victims into the violence of hatred of all that they ought to cherish, and has sometimes forced maniacs to eat their own flesh;—the first fury of the patriots was directed against the manufacturing establishments, whence they drew their bread; and nothing but the firm affection of the workmen at Seraing to their master, and the resolution to protect his property, saved that magnificent temple of industry from being itself committed to the flames, by the worshippers of the rival goddess of liberty.
With less of elegance and attraction, there is an equal air of business-like energy and bustling activity in the streets of Liege, as at Ghent. The Meuse is navigable from the city to the sea, and its quays are frequented by the craft, which convey its produce to the various cities along its course, Ruremonde and Venloo to Gorcum, Dordrecht and the Rhine. Its streets are crowded with an incessant stream of waggons, carriages and carts, and in the better streets and squares, the shops are as gay and attractive as those of the Rue Montagne de la Cour at Brussels.
Coupled with its ancient fiery and quarrelsome disposition, its chief manufacture is a characteristic one, being that of cannon and fire-arms, which it at one time, exported to Spain, Portugal, Holland and America. Under France, the imperial factory of arms furnished annually, twenty-seven thousand muskets for the imperial army. A story is told that the rest of the trade, anxious to share in the profits of the monopoly, besought Napoleon to admit them to a share of the supply, and presented him with a finely-finished piece as a specimen of their talents. But as, either by accident or malice, the bore of the barrell was too narrow to admit the ramrod, the Emperor gave no other answer than a frown to their ill-supported petition. Under Holland in 1829, the production of Liege amounted to no less than 190,660 stand of arms; in 1836, it rose to nearly double that quantity, but it is at present, fallen much below one half, and the trade is still in a state of decline. The manufacture is carried on at the homes of the workmen, who, nevertheless, established a perfect division of labour in producing the various parts, and can furnish the entire at a lower rate than either Birmingham or France, a double-barrelled gun can be had for thirty or even twenty francs. The percussion lock has not yet been substituted in the Belgian army for the flint. The cannon foundery is calculated to produce 300 pieces a year; and in 1837, the most flourishing period of the trade, it even exceeded that number.
There is a flax-spinning mill at Liege with 10,000 spindles, the property of a joint-stock company, of whom Mr. Cockerill was the chief proprietor. Its works are now languid, owing to a want of consumption, and a gentleman acquainted with its affairs, spoke very despondingly of its prospects. Coals, though found in the immediate neighbourhood, are dear, as they lie deep, and we saw them generally mixed into balls with clay for the use of the stoves in the hotels and private houses, an indication that their price is a stimulant to economy.
As might be anticipated from its having so long been the residence of the most eminent prelate in the Low Countries, Liege abounds in churches, there being some eighteen or twenty for a population of 50,000 inhabitants. They are, however, destitute of all attractions, except that of St. Jacques, which is a very excellent example of florid got his architecture. The others are common-place structures, devoid of all valuable decorations of any kind, except a few indifferent statues by Delcour the sculptor, who was himself a native of the city. The Palais de Justice was formerly the residence of the Prince Bishops, and in its ample arcades, supported by truncated columns, exhibits traces of its former magnificence. The University, which has some eminent professors, especially of natural philosophy, was another foundation of the King of Holland, and besides a library of some seventy or eighty thousand volumes, contains Museums of Natural History, and Minerals of unusual value. But every thing connected with modern Liege is common-place and uninteresting; its only charm is its exquisite situation at the juncture of the three beautiful valleys of the Meuse, the Ourthe and the Vesdre, and a very brief sojourn is sufficient to satisfy the stranger in pursuit of “fresh fields and pastures new.”
We left Liege before breakfast for Verviers through the exquisite valley of the Vesdre, which, as it is narrower and more tortuous than the descent of the Meuse, excels it in picturesque beauty, though inferior in the grandeur of its general effect. The entire line of the road was through richly wooded glens and ravines, where the river had forced a passage between the fantastic cliffs which time had wrought into shapes like fortresses or the battlements of ruined strongholds. Below, the Vesdre itself, too shallow to be navigated, twists round each sweep of the winding cliffs, now shining in the sunlight, and again scarcely visible under the dark shadows of the trees and rocks. The lover of the picturesque will shudder to be told, that it is through this charming valley that the railroad is to be carried to connect Liege with Verviers on its way to Cologne, and even now the engineers are at work levelling, blasting, and uprooting to make way for it, cutting off a projecting cliff here, and filling up a useless ravine there, and flinging lofty embankments across the entrance of the sweetest recesses of the valley, into which you are only admitted to have a peep through the archway on which the train is to traverse the highway.