Chapter VI: The Wachau

“’Mid castled crags and swirling stream,
’Mid green-clad vineyard hills,
Where History and Legend dream,
My heart with beauty thrills.”

_From the German_

The Wachau has come to be regarded as one of the show places of the Danube, and very beautiful it is, with its narrow gorge through which the great river finds its way, its wooded mountains, its crag-perched ruins, its quaint old towns and villages, and its numerous vineyards lining the rocky mountain sides. It was “discovered” not many years since by one Augustin Weigl, and its accessibility from Vienna has served to make it the most popular portion of the beautiful river. Many as are its attractions, there are stretches further up the river--notably that from Grein to Persenbeug--that can vie with it in attractiveness, and there are moods in which the last portion of the river in Hungary may be far more impressive. Such comparisons are, however, invidious, and those who explore the “schöne, herrliche Wachau” can easily extend their explorings, either afoot or by the new railway, to the Grein district.

The ruins that show boldly on a cliff indicate how well the builders of these old strongholds selected their sites. For Weitenegg was built on a point of the rocky hills where the broad Danube runs along one side, and the Weitenbach runs parallel with it before joining it at the end of the narrow strip on the highest point of which the castle is situated. Thus the old-time owners of the place, in the days when every noble was liable at any time to find himself at enmity with his neighbours, were more or less secure from attack except from the narrow neck joining their narrow hill on to the high one on the west. Now there is little to suggest those days of old-time struggle, and climbing about the ruins we look down on the village, little more than a single row of houses at the foot of the cliff, with wooded “rolling” ground on the further side of the river backed by distant mountains. Behind us are the beautiful hills from which the Weitenbach comes down; hills about which we may find, even in the autumn, many of the flowers of our gardens growing wild--sweet-williams, Michaelmas daisies, and campanulas, while the cyclamen and Virgin Mary’s cowslip plants suggest that earlier in the year this must also be a delightful district for the lover of flowers.

From the road up the hill immediately behind the ruins is to be had a beautiful glimpse across the valley opening and over the Danube to the handsome buildings of the magnificent monastery of Mölk, a little further down the river. The Castle of Weitenegg must have been a fairly extensive place at one time, having presumably been added to considerably since it was originally erected, as it is supposed, by that Rüdeger of whom we hear so much in the story of Pöchlarn. Judging by the extent of the remains that are left, the size of the rooms and halls, now weed-grown skeletons, it must have been very large; and despite the tradition as to its age, there appear to have been considerable additions in more modern times. Many of the window spaces form a modern “note,” suggesting that they were added no earlier than the late seventeenth century. The lower portions are largely of stone, the native rock largely worked into it, though there is also a goodly proportion of seemingly more or less modern red brick.

But for its ruins and its lovely inland walks, the little village of Weitenegg has nothing to attract the visitor. A short distance further down-stream a cable ferry connects this left bank with the right, and so takes us to Mölk, largely hidden by a tree-grown island. The small town of Mölk is at the foot of the abrupt rock on which the grand monastery buildings have been erected with a fine eye to effect. The steamer landing place is a little below the monastery which, seen from the river, might be a magnificent palace. This splendid “Kloster” has been described by Dibdin as “one of the noblest edifices in the world.” The Bibliographical Tourist went on, indeed, to declare that, “Christ Church College at Oxford, and Trinity College at Cambridge shall hardly together eclipse it; while no single portion of either can bear the least comparison with its cupola-crowned church, and the sweeping range of chambers which runs parallel with the town.”

Though on the site of an older establishment, the place, which arouses every visitor to enthusiasm--“the Escurial of Germany” it has been named--was designed and erected in the eighteenth century--that period so often decried for its architectural achievements. It was built during the first third of that century by an architect named Prandauer. Not much of the early history of the place is known, though tradition tells of the burial at Mölk of a Scottish saint who, bound on a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1012 was mistaken for a spy when passing through this neighbourhood and promptly hanged. Presumably his saintliness was revealed (as in so many instances) posthumously.

In the seventeenth century Mölk was twice besieged, once by the Turks when they swept through a large part of Austria. It was, however, an earlier building that was thus put to warlike uses; possibly it was in consequence of damage done by the besieging Turks in 1684 that the monastery was rebuilt in the early part of the following century. Here in 1805 Napoleon made a short stay in his victorious advance on Vienna and here he stayed also in 1809. In one of the apartments a mark on the floor used to be shown as having been made by the Emperor in a moment of passion.

The two centres of greatest interest in this most magnificent of the Benedictine foundations along the Danube are the church and the library. The former is a lofty and richly decorated building “the very perfection of ecclesiastical Roman architecture,” with a wonderful wealth of gold in its decoration. The library, which is noted for containing a large number of biblical and manuscript rarities, is a grand lofty room about a hundred feet in length, with a handsomely painted ceiling, and also no small measure of gilding in its scheme of decoration. Of the great wine “caves” or cellars, which apparently formed one of the features on which the old-time monks prided themselves, it is said that in some of them a carriage might be turned with ease. A French writer a few years after the campaign of 1805 said “in order to have an idea of the abundance which reigns here, it may be sufficient merely to observe, that for four successive days, during the march of the French troops through Mölk towards Vienna, there were delivered to them not less than from fifty to sixty thousand pints of wine per day--and yet scarcely one-half of the stock was exhausted. The French generals were lodged here on that momentous occasion and no doubt found it “snug lying in the abbey.”

Splendid as the monastery appears when seen from the water and from the left bank, its situation was well chosen for the views it affords of the wooded heights across the river and for the beautiful prospect to be had from its gallery over the tree-grown islets up the river to where Weitenegg stands on its rocky promontory backed by the green woodlands of the higher hills, with the mountains in the distance.

A little below Mölk on the left bank is the small town of Emmersdorf, another one-time robber stronghold, and on the opposite side where the river Bielach comes in is, I believe, technically the beginning of the Wachau--the gorge through which the Danube finds its way to the plain on which Vienna stands. The whole of this tract is said to have been given by Charlemagne to the Bishop of Passau. There is much to delight the visitor who has time to linger about this vineyard district of the river, much variety in the way of mountain and rocky scenery, many fascinating old villages, towns and ruins.

For the most part the places of chief importance, the places most promising as centres in which to stay, are on the left bank--though, as will be seen, there are exceptions. Indeed, the very first object that arrests attention is on the right, where the rocky hills are once more close to the water-side. This is the castle of Schönbühel--a white-towered building standing on a massy rock at the very point where the valley narrows between the hills. Schönbühel, unlike so many of the Danubian castles, is still inhabited. The slender tower gives a singular appearance to the rock-perched group of buildings, and it is without surprise that we learn that this romantically placed château has its ghost, and even--according to one story--a more sinister visitant in the person of Lucifer himself.

The ghost--I am not quite clear whether of the murderer or of the murdered--haunts the place in consequence of a horrid crime said to have been perpetrated by an old-time owner of the place who, believing his wife to be guilty of some offence, killed her, apparently without any inquiry into the matter of her supposed crime. The story has been rendered into ballad form, and the following stanzas indicate the nature of the tragedy:

“The blood still reddens the mouldering oak,
Where, clasping the blessèd rood,
And bowing her neck to the headsman’s stroke,
Fair Cunigonda stood.

‘I know not the crime for which I die,
My cruel lord,’ said she,
‘But my cause I leave to God on high--
My untimely death to thee!’

Down fell the axe--the life-blood streamed:
But long ere morning prime,
Through the baron’s hall a maniac screamed--
‘She was guiltless of the crime!’”

Beyond the chapel--with its model of Bethlehem--are the mountain sides, close-grown with maple, oak and other trees. All through the Wachau, roads may be followed close neighbouring the river along either bank--that on the left offering the greatest variety of places to be visited, that on the right passing for the most part through wilder scenery, but both affording ever-changing picturesque views.

Entering the narrowed valley, we soon see ahead of us, high on the rocky cliff and backed by dark trees, another of those common objects of this great river--a ruined castle. Shortly before reaching it, however, we have on the left the small market town of Aggsbach. A little place, more picturesque from the river than when entered in the dusk after long walking on a day of heavy rain, when its narrow ways are deep in mud and an eligible gasthaus seems difficult to find. Though a market town by description, it is to appearance but a small, quiet village. A river-side inn with external steps and deep stone balcony has quite an Oriental appearance. Klein Aggsbach, on the right bank shows that, comparatively, this town is not to be regarded as small. A place of call for the steamers, Aggsbach is the port of debarkation for those who would visit the dominating ruins ahead, which may be reached by ferry from a point somewhat further down-stream.

The dominating ruins are those of Aggstein--once a dreaded name on the Danube, for the lordly owners of this castle were famous, even among the many robber knights of the river, for their pertinacity in preying upon travellers. Approached from either down or up-stream, Aggstein, perched on the summit of a thickly wooded hill about six hundred feet above the water, and backed by higher hills, also densely timbered, is strikingly impressive, while from its extensive ruins is to be obtained a view that for beauty will vie with any of those we have seen.

The ruins, which are attained by paths up through the wood, form--and justly--one of the most celebrated bits on the river; and it is only fitting that to such a place should be attached romantic and grim stories. The place must have been veritably impregnable in the days when its owners lorded it over this stretch of the Danube and took their toll of all passing boats. If all the strongholds of robber knights were “flourishing” contemporaneously, it is wonderful how any boat ever completed its journey.

Two at least of the lords of Aggstein seem to have come to a well-deserved end. One of these, Schreckenwald, who flourished in the fifteenth century is proverbially immortalized in an Austrian saying which describes those who are in a hopeless plight as being “in Schreckenwald’s rose-garden.”

The worthy whose name is thus remembered is said to have been not only the most expert but also the most unscrupulous robber-knight of his day, and to have been the terror of the surrounding country. When he had despoiled his prisoners of all that they possessed he would have them brought into his presence and dropped through a trap-door into what he playfully termed his “rose garden.” This was a dungeon, or enclosed ravine in the rock on which the castle was built, and those who were not killed by the fall were left to die of starvation or cold. How many victims he thus murdered is not recorded, but they are said to have been many--and of the number dropped into the “rose garden” but one escaped. A youthful knight of the neighbourhood, having been dismounted in a skirmish with some of Schreckenwald’s henchmen, was borne to the castle before the robber tyrant. It is said that to Schreckenwald’s enmity towards any captive was, in this case, added jealousy, for the knight had won favour in the eyes of a lady who had rejected the baron’s advances; the young man was therefore promptly sentenced to the “rose garden,” and the sentence as promptly carried out.

Conscious of a good deed accomplished in the removal of a rival, and grateful to his retainers, the baron gave up that day and the next to an orgy. At the close of the second day the inhabitants of the castle, deeming themselves in their usual state of security, retired to rest that they might be ready to start on some fresh foray in the morning. They little knew that retribution was nigh. Suddenly the blaring of bugles and the clashing of arms sounded, and the astonished baron found himself confronted in the torchlight by what he imagined must be the apparition of his latest victim. For a moment he was dumbfounded, but only for a moment; rushing forward sword in hand he shouted. “Wert thou the Archfiend himself, Schreckenwald shall still be lord of Aggstein.” The ferocity of despair availed him not; he was disarmed and promptly hanged in his own entrance hall, while his robber band of retainers was destroyed, some of the men being killed in the fighting and others driven over the battlements to destruction on the rocks below.

Another baron, seemingly a worthy predecessor of Schreckenwald, was Hadmar the “Hound of Kuenring,” who in the early part of the thirteenth century was lord of Aggstein (and of Durrenstein also). This robber-chief, in alliance with his brother, made Aggstein terrible, ravaging the country round, and being in all ways a law unto themselves. They became known as “The Hounds,” and long successfully defied all efforts to subdue them. At length, in 1231, a merchant who had already suffered much at the hands of the robbers, proposed to the Emperor that he should be permitted to employ a trick. “I will freight,” said he, “a vessel at Ratisbon, laden with the most costly merchandise: the tidings will soon reach the robbers at Aggstein. Thirty stout knights shall lie concealed in the vessel, and when Hadmar rushes down from his castle, and boards us with a few of his vassals, thinking to plunder some peaceable merchants, the knights shall rush out upon, and overpower him, while I push off from the shore.” Force having failed, the Emperor was quite willing that the stratagem should be tried, and the merchant duly set out as arranged. “Long before he had passed the Strudel, however, the welcome news of a very rich prize being on the water was told in the castle of Aggstein; and no sooner was the barge in sight, than the tower-bell, as usual, proclaimed the approach of booty. The baron, attended by a few choice vassals, pounced at once upon the expected prey, and was received on board with tokens of the most abject submission. ‘What is thy cargo, knave?’ said he to the merchant. ‘Silk, brocade, and wine,’ answered the merchant--‘with,’ but here he hesitated. ‘With what?’ interposed the baron sternly; ‘speak on thy life!’ ‘With a cask or two of specie for the Duke’s treasury,’ said the merchant in a half whisper. ‘_Specie!_ the very thing we want,’ roared the baron. ‘Hand up the metal, instantly.’ ‘The _metal_ for the baron--instantly!’ cried the merchant, and suddenly throwing back the canvas, thirty glittering lances were levelled at the baron’s breast. ‘There is thy metal, Herr Baron,’ said the skipper, pointing to the thirty mailed warriors who instantly surrounded him and his suite. The surprise and consternation of the tyrant may be imagined, but cannot be described. He was immediately secured and committed to the hold; and never did barge anchor under the walls of Vienna with more welcome news than when it was noised abroad that the Robber-Chief, Hadmar of Aggstein, was a prisoner on board.”

From the lofty ruins with their sinister memories we pass on through the continuously beautiful Wachau with its steep, wooded mountains on the right, its lower hills on the left, on the sides of which many vineyards soon become familiar. Several small villages are passed, and beyond Schwallenbach on the left we see an extraordinary piece of rocky formation running in wall-like fashion down the face of a hillside to the river. Softer rock has been worn away until the ridge remains very much like a roughly made wall built of irregular-sized blocks of stone--like one of our west-country stone field-walls exaggerated to a gigantic extent. It is little wonder that local lore has ascribed to this ridge a demoniac origin. It is known as the Teufelsmauer, or Devil’s Wall, but why the Devil concerned himself in erecting it I have not been able to ascertain further than the suggestion that he had taken it into his head to block up the Danube at this spot, but by some special intervention of Providence was stopped before the undertaking had got beyond the building of this wall. Where, for the new railway, a path has been blasted along the rock here, the lower end of the wall has been left intact by tunnelling through it. The first stopping place for the steamer after leaving Aggsbach is Spitz, a small town lying about the foot of a conical hill, scored to the top with vineyard lines, with vineyards extending also up the neighbouring hills, while on the mountain-side above it are the picturesque ruins of an old castle.

Spitz is regarded as the most important centre of the Wachau wine district, and so closely is every available piece of ground utilized, that a local saying has it that the town is one in which the wine grows in the market place. The grape is not the only fruit grown here, for there are also many peach orchards, and quantities of this fruit are taken aboard before the boat continues its journey Vienna-wards. All along here the vineyards offer many pleasant pictures to the pedestrian who loiters about in October when the grape harvest is being gathered. From the narrow terraces on which the vines are grown along the steep hillsides barefooted men and women, boys and girls, are to be seen descending with long pottle-shaped wooden baskets on their backs, piled high with fruit. Many times, too, great vats stand by the road-side at the foot of the vineyard, into which the grapes are turned, and where they are pounded and squashed with great wooden clubs. Then a couple of oxen will come slowly along drawing a large barrel on a cart frame, and into this barrel a man “spoons” the juice from the great tub, much as our farm hands in country districts fill their water-carts from a pond.

Spitz is a beautifully situated little town, with a pleasant market place dominated by a square church tower with steep wedge-shaped roof of many-coloured tiles. On the opposite side of the river is one of the Arnsdorfs--a cluster of houses about a steep-roofed church--half a dozen striking poplars and the wooded hills beyond. The Spitz castle ruins upon the bare dark rock are among the most picturesque of those we see, and represent an ancient place that belonged at one time to those great territorial magnates the bishops of Passau and at another time to some of those robber knights whose fastnesses were dotted with what must have been disquieting frequency along the course of the Danube.

Beyond Spitz--about which it has opened out somewhat--the valley again contracts, and the road on the left is cut through rugged rock, which in places almost overhangs the way. Looking back we have a beautiful view of Spitz, the light green of its surrounding vineyards contrasting strikingly with the rock, the mountains and forests and the broad sweep of the green Danube, as seen under a cloudy sky with brilliant sunshine following on a heavy shower. A little beyond and we reach the small village of St. Michael with its old church, along the roof ridge of which are placed seven hares, to commemorate--so the local story runs--a time when the snowfall in the neighbourhood had been so heavy that the hares were seen playing on the church roof! The animal figures are as like deer, cows or horses as they are to hares! The open-topped square tower of this old Gothic church is notable as being quite unlike any other that we see in the neighbourhood.

Another story of this district, and of only little more than a hundred years ago, seems rather an incident of the Middle Ages than of the closing years of the eighteenth century. It is said that a poor lonely old woman had got the reputation among her neighbours of being a witch and, therefore, when she was feeding her goat upon a hillside she was shot with a glass bullet; a severe thunderstorm which had arisen having been caused by her, according to the belief of her superstitious murderers.

The next point of special interest along this lovely bit of the river is Weissenkirchen, the villages of Wösendorf and Joching, with their orchards and vineyards, being pleasant little places without any special feature to call for a halt. Weissenkirchen, however, is a place that certainly does call for a halt owing to that which it has to show in itself and as being situated where the valley has widened somewhat at one of the most beautiful points in the Wachau.

Here, too, the vineyards penetrate close to the town, even further into it than they do at Spitz, for a low-sunk patch lies between the street by which the town is entered from the east and the railway station, the narrow paths or flights of steps that lead up from between the houses here and there lead us, too, inevitably into vineyards. On one side of the town the steep shingle-covered roofs of the houses are close to the vineyard terraces above. The large church which stands on the rock above the houses--its entrance on a level with their roofs--is approached by a long covered-in flight of steps from the corner of the market place. Near the foot of this stairway is a quaint figure of St. John, with a red painted metal canopy like a great umbrella close over the figure’s head.

The characteristic wedge-roofed tower with its clock-faces near the south-west angle forms a strikingly picturesque object as seen from many points, especially from some of the narrow by-ways. Then, too, there are glimpses to be had into cellars, with their great wine presses with oak beams that, it is said, have done duty for three or four hundred years, and some wonderful old court-yards--the finest being the old tilting-yard at the north-western corner of the market place--entering which we are at once taken to a past of centuries ago. It is a quadrangle of old buildings with deep, arched embrasures on the ground floor, and above, with smaller arches, a balcony, from which presumably “in days of old when knights were bold and barons held the sway” fair ladies looked down and encouraged the contestants below. Now more or less used as a store-yard for fuel and other things the “Turnierhof” or Tilting-yard is yet a place to be visited; and if it be as a German writer has it, that Weissenkirchen is a Mecca for artists, then we may well believe that this yard is for many of them the central shrine.

There are many delightful places within easy reach of the little town, and from the vineyards above a bird’s-eye view of the whole is to be had that is likely to be unforgettable if seen as I first saw it when, looking across it to the great river, the white mists of morning were clearing off and stretching like a silver girdle about the mountains on the further side.

Beyond Weissenkirchen, the Danube takes a southerly turn round abrupt, bare and sometimes precipitous rocks. On the right is soon seen a flat valley with the roofs of Rossatz; and directly ahead stands, from the sheer escarpment of the rock as it were, one of the places which most nearly in its traditions touches our English history, though even its name may not be known to any large proportion of those familiar with some details of the story it has to tell. This is Dürnstein or Dürrenstein, a small town between the face of the rocky cliffs and the river, with above it, striking from any point of view, the time-battered ruins of the castle in which it is said Richard Cœur de Lion passed fifteen months of weary imprisonment during the years 1192-4.

Seen as we approach Dürrenstein down the river, the view is singularly fine. To the left of the town is a sheer mass of precipitous rock of all tones of yellow, where the cliff has been split away to cut the railroad. The crows wheeling about its jagged edge “show scarce so gross as beetles.” From the group of old red-and-white buildings other jagged lines of rock and wall slant upwards, leading the eye to the ruined castle where they meet. At the back of the town, even within these “walls” are seen the narrow vineyard terraces, sometimes on scraps of ground that seem scarcely accessible to the cultivator.

A traveller of many years ago said: “Of all the strongholds yet noticed in our passage from Ulm, it takes undisputed precedence; and he who can pass with indifference the many feudal and monastic ruins which overlook the course of the Danube, will pause with uplifted eye and awakened imagination, as the rock-built towers of Dürrenstein flash upon his view. Its massive walls, embattled precipices and iron towers that survive the lapse of centuries, were of themselves amply sufficient to arrest attention and engage the stranger to pass a day within their gates; but when he recollects that yonder donjon tower was the prison of Cœur de Lion, a new chord is touched in his heart--more especially in that of an Englishman--and as he passes under its ponderous gateway and muses in its grass-grown and deserted courts, he feels as if acted upon by some mysterious influence--as if an invisible conductor beckoned him forward--as if the old kingly crusader himself accosted him with ‘Quhat tydings from England?’”

If I cannot claim to have felt the spirit of the place in that fashion, it may be because seventy years have reduced the ruins to a yet more ruinous state, and so the illusion that the king might still be here anxious for “tydings” is little likely to arise. Though the little town itself is attractive, it is of course the ruined fortress that makes the strongest appeal, historically and sentimentally, to the British visitor. Whether approached by way of the scattered rocks on the eastern side, or by the pathway which leads from near within the “ponderous gateway” (to the town, not to the castle) up to the ruins, we find ourselves on the conical summit of rugged rock standing out at the end of a mountain spur among the sadly battered remains of the old castle. Here and there are great pieces of wall still standing, but the whole is in a time-battered, broken state which makes it difficult to recall the plan of the place. One tall piece of wall looks afar off curiously like a gigantic figure, and near at hand but little imagination is necessary to see in it the figure of the great crusader himself!

The view from the castle ruins up the river towards Weissenkirchen across to the mountain-surrounded level on which Rossatz stands and down-stream across a hemmed-in vine-grown battlefield towards Vienna, with the great monastery of Gottweih on a conical hill in the distance, is a most attractive one; while between the ruins and the mountains is a narrow gorge, with beyond it the jagged edge of the extraordinary rock mass where a large part of it was blasted to make the railway which now runs though the hill on which Dürrenstein Castle stands. In the centre of the ruins is a gigantic, more or less roughly cubic, mass of granite out of which a windowless chamber has been roughly hewn, and here, says tradition, is the veritable prison in which Richard was confined by his implacable enemy, Duke Leopold of Austria.

It was when returning from crusading in the east that Richard, travelling disguised through Austria--the Duke of which he had offended at Ascalon--was recognized and so fell into the hands of his enemy and came to be imprisoned in this powerful castle, under the charge of Hadmar, the father of that Hadmar the Hound of Kuenring, of whom we learned at Aggstein. The romantic story runs, that the place of Richard’s imprisonment being unknown, his faithful minstrel Blondel de Nesle set out, wandering all over Europe to learn if he could the fate or whereabouts of the King of England. Accidentally he learned that in Dürrenstein Castle some distinguished person was confined and guarded with unusual vigilance. Not unnaturally he thought that this mysterious prisoner must be the royal master whom he sought. He reached Dürrenstein, but could get no news as to who the prisoner was, and the gates of the castle were shut against him. Blondel then bethought him of a _chanson_ which he and King Richard had composed together, and getting as near within hearing of the prisoner’s place of concealment as he could, he sang his own part of the song:

“Your beauty, lady fair,
None view without delight,
But still as cold as air,
No passion you excite;
Yet this I patient see,
While all are shunned by me.”

The minstrel paused, and at once came the second part of the _chanson_ sung from within and proving beyond doubt the identity of the prisoner with the king of whom the minstrel was in search:

“No nymph my heart can wound,
If favours she divide,
And smile on all around,
Unwilling to decide;
I’d rather hatred bear,
Than love with others share.”

The wonderful metrical romance dealing with the life of Richard Cœur de Lion does not--judging by so much of it as was given by Sir Henry Ellis--refer to the place of the king’s incarceration by name; therefore we may place here the wonderful incident of his wooing by Margery the daughter of the King of Almain--who should presumably be Duke of Austria--and of the way in which he won his nickname. Richard the prisoner and the King of Almain’s son had had a buffeting duel. Richard received the first blow which made him stagger, but when he gave his blow in return the prince’s “cheek bone was crushed ... he sank to the ground and instantly expired.”

“The offended monarch now sent in haste for his great council--

“Earls, barons and wise clerks,
To tell of these woeful werks--

and explained to them his reasons for desiring the death of Richard, requesting them, if possible, to set aside the general law of Europe by which the persons of Kings were declared inviolable, and to order the immediate punishment of the traitor. The council took the matter into their serious consideration, debating during three days, and concluded by declaring themselves incompetent to pass judgment: but one of them complaisantly recommended to the king a certain judge named Sir Eldrys, whose ingenuity in condemning prisoners was thought to be unparalleled, and who would probably suggest to his majesty the means of vengeance.

“Sir Eldrys, recollecting that he had seen in the royal menagerie a lion of prodigious size and fierceness, advised that the animal should be kept during some days without food, and then introduced to the prisoner, whom he would be very likely to devour; so that his majesty, who could not be suspected of a secret intelligence with the lion, would obtain the gratification of his just revenge, without having infringed the law by passing sentence on a free and independent sovereign. This equitable project was of course adopted by the King; and immediate orders were issued for carrying it into execution.

“Margery, who had her spies in the council, being apprised of what had passed, instantly sent for her lover; warned him of his danger; proposed to him the means of escape from her father’s territories; and offered to accompany him in his flight,

“With gold and silver, and great tresore,
Enough to have for evermore.
Richard said, ‘I understand
That were again the law of the land,
Away to wend withouten leave:
The King ne will I nought so grieve.
Of the lion ne give I nought;
Him to slay now have I thought.
By prime, on the third day,
I give thee his heart to prey.’

“He then directed her to repair to the prison, with forty handkerchiefs of white silk, on the evening before the combat; to order her supper in his cell; to invite his two friends and the jailor to the entertainment, and afterwards to pass the night with him: and the princess, without staying to enquire how far this conduct was compatible with that scrupulous regard for her father’s peace of mind by which Richard professed to be actuated, punctually obeyed all his directions.

“In the morning, the tender Margery, ever trembling for her lover’s safety and always fearless for her own, was with great difficulty persuaded to tear herself from the prison; but having at length returned to her apartment, Richard bound round his arm the silken handkerchiefs, and recommending himself to God, calmly awaited the arrival of the lion.

“The animal, attended by two keepers, and followed by the jailor, was then led in; and, as soon as he was loosed, sprang forwards to seize his prey. Richard, starting aside, evaded the attack, and at the same time gave the monster such a blow on the breast with his fist as nearly felled him to the ground. The lion, lashing himself with his tail, and extending his dreadful paws, now uttered a most hideous roar, and prepared for a more violent assault; but the hero, seizing his opportunity when the monster’s jaws were extended, suddenly darted on him, drove his arm down the throat, and, grasping the heart, forcibly tore it out through the mouth together with a part of the entrails. Then, after piously returning thanks to Heaven for his miraculous victory, he snatched up the bleeding heart, and without meeting with any obstacle, marched with his trophy into the great hall of the palace.

“The king at meat sat on des,
With dukes and earls proud in press.
The saler on the table stood:
Richard pressed out all the blood,
And wet the heart in the salt;
(The king and all his men behalt)
Withouten bread the heart he ate.
The king wonder’d, and said skeet:
‘Y-wis, as I understand can,
This is a devil and no man,
That has my strong lion y-slawe,
The heart out of his body drawe,
And has it eaten with good will!
He may be callèd, by right skill
King y-christened of most renown
Strong Richard Cœur de Lion!’”

If Richard was incarcerated in the chamber hollowed out of the great mass of granite, and that was at the time, as it was later, enclosed within walls, it is a little difficult to realize how the minstrel’s voice ever penetrated the monarch’s prison; but the legend is so pleasant a one that it would perhaps be a more gracious task to find out how it might have been true, rather than to show how it is probably a fiction. The theme is one that has inspired poets, painters, and musicians. When Gretry’s opera on the subject of “Richard Cœur de Lion,” was produced in Paris early in the nineteenth century, an artist was sent to Dürnstein to sketch the castle that the scenery might be true. Mrs. Hemans wrote a narrative poem on the subject of Blondel’s search for his captive master, and described the position of the king’s prison as though she had visited it:

“He hath reached a mountain hung with vine....
The feudal towers that crest its height
Frown in unconquerable might;
Dark is their aspect of sullen state,
No helmet hangs o’er the massy gate,
To bid the wearied pilgrim rest,
At the chieftain’s board a welcome guest;
Vainly rich evening’s parting smile
Would chase the gloom of the haughty pile,
That midst bright sunshine lowers on high,
Like a thunder cloud in a summer sky....
Lingering he gazed--the rocks around
Sublime in savage grandeur frowned;
Proud guardians of the regal flood,
In giant strength the mountains stood;
By torrents cleft, by tempests riven,
Yet mingling still with the calm blue heaven.”

The story of Blondel is merely legendary, and it was probably only a sordid matter of ransom by which Richard Cœur de Lion won to freedom, and not owing to the devotion of his faithful minstrel. When Planché visited Dürrenstein he described the castle keep as being “not unlike the fine ruin at Rochester.” Either his memory did scant justice to Rochester, or else the ruins of Dürrenstein have become greatly damaged during the past seventy years, for to-day there is nothing to suggest a comparison between the great grim Norman keep on low ground near the Medway at Rochester, and the battered ruin which seems, as it were, to grow out of the jagged pinnacled rocks high above the Danube.

From the neighbourhood of the castle run broken cliff edges south-easterly and south-westerly towards the Danube; these have at some period been built up into actual walls for defence, and in olden pre-artillery times must have rendered the town which they enclose on two sides--the third being formed by the Danube--a very formidable place. So formidable indeed that, even after the introduction of artillery, it is said that the citizens were able to give a good account of themselves. For, in 1741, a party of French and Bavarian cavalry having got across the Danube, thought to surprise Dürrenstein and make it an easy prey, believing it to be undefended. The citizens of the place were equal to the occasion, having prepared themselves for such an emergency. They barred up their gates as well as they could, laid bored logs of timber with their edges blackened, on the walls, in imitation of cannon, chalked the rims of their hats, to give them the appearance of being bound with white lace, according to the uniform of their troops at that time, and parading up and down the ramparts--taking care that their hats only should be seen above the walls--with much blowing of trumpets and beating of drums, absolutely induced the enemy to believe that the place was strongly garrisoned; and they accordingly wheeled to the right-about without firing a shot, to the infinite joy and amusement of the cunning inhabitants, who certainly well deserved their escape.

The small town, with its irregular white houses, its glimpses into great wine-pressing cellars, its thick-walled, low-arched, crypt-like inns, its men with long pipes ever pendant from their mouths, its generous archways--wide as the street itself--giving on to yards in which are seen great barrels, and the carts on which such barrels are carried, is quite an old-world place. Of the extent to which it is given over to wine I had an illustration during my stay, when I saw boys busy digging a large circular hole close to the footway at a point where the main street is widened by one house being set some distance back. The following morning I saw a great wine-pressing tub half sunk in the hole and presumably already filled with grapes, as its great cover was pressed down by a variety of heavy articles. Sometimes these wayside vats are not covered in at all, for I have seen them when heavy rain was adding its share of liquid to the juice of the grape. Possibly the fact that it was a very bad grape harvest may excuse the wine-growers’ winking at Nature’s attempt to make up the deficit!

Above the tunnel-like gateway on the east side of the town is a tiny cemetery with the remains of the old parish church, and a charnel-house with thousands of human skulls piled up in orderly array--a grim memento mori like that of the church at Hythe and some other places. The old abbey ruins, the ornate church near the river-side, and the modern château now apparently degenerated into tenements--are the most conspicuous buildings in this little town, the narrow main street of which has quite a mediæval appearance. On the front of one of the gasthauses is painted up the inscription:--

“So lang im glas noch blinkt der Wein
Brüder lasst uns fröhlich sein.”
(“So long as in the glass a drop of wine
Brothers let us happy be.”)

Frequently within a gasthaus we may see humorous wall paintings, or convivial and other inscriptions. In one that I recall there was on one wall a representation of an attenuated traveller (very like a distinguished English dramatist, paradox-monger, and Socialist), being welcomed by a portly Boniface; on another a couple, “with most expressive eyes,” in national costume dancing to the music of a remarkable quartet; while in the corner was a wife with a broom dragging home a drunken husband. Among the inscriptions I noted some to the following effect:--

“Hail, pretty fellows!”
“A German can drink
An ocean I think.”
“Waidmanns Heil!”[10]

A little to the south-east of Dürrenstein, on a rugged base at the foot of which the railway now runs, is a large stone pillar erected to the memory of all the brave soldiers, French, Austrian, and Russian, who fell here during a stern battle on 11 November, 1805. When Napoleon had reached Linz on his march to Vienna he sent Marshal Mortier with a force to take possession of Krems, but in this little plain the French came in touch with the Austrians and Russians under Kutusof and Schmidt. And here, as on another occasion sung by Byron--

“Kutusof, he who afterwards beat back
(With some assistance from the frost and snow)
Napoleon on his bold and bloody track,
It happened was himself beat back just now.”

The French drove the allies back to the gates of Stein, but the tables were turned on them, even, as it seemed, in the moment of victory. A hunter, familiar with the passes among the neighbouring heights, had guided a large body of Russian troops and enabled them to fall upon the French rear, and a murderous battle took place in this little plain. “Mortier had no remedy but to cut his way, if possible, through the column in his rear, and so effect a junction with Dupont, to whom he had, fortunately for himself, sent orders to quicken his march. Major Henriod, at the head of the 100th Regiment, charged the Russians, and a horrible carnage ensued in the narrow defiles, crowded with infuriated soldiery. Two pieces of artillery, which Mortier had with him, decided the issue of the combat in his favour, his adversaries being destitute of cannon. The brave Austrian, Schmidt, fell at the first discharge, and Doctorof, endeavouring to withdraw his troops from the ravine, was suddenly attacked in the rear by the division of Dupont, and thus found himself, in his turn, between two fires. With much difficulty he effected his retreat over the mountain he had just descended; and the desperate troops of Mortier, rushing into the defile, as they imagined, on the bayonets of their enemies, found themselves, before they were aware, in the arms of their friends and countrymen. From twelve to fifteen hundred men were lost on each side, and the allies received a terrible blow in the death of General Schmidt, the friend and companion-in-arms of the Archduke Charles.” Mortier, himself wounded in the desperate fight, succeeded in getting the remnant of his troops across the Danube by a bridge of boats at Spitz.

The monument commemorating the inconsequent contest is simply inscribed:--

“To You
Valiant Warriors
French, Austrian, Russian,
11 Nov.
MDCCCV”

Now the battlefield is largely covered with vineyards, in which the little villages of Ober Loiben and Unter Loiben seem to drowse peacefully without any memory of the struggle of which on that terrible day they formed the storm centre.

As we go on down the river, ahead of us on a hill-top is seen a massive building--long, indeed, a feature of any wide view taken from this part of the country. This is another great monastery lying some miles from the right bank of the Danube. An easterly turn of the river again brings us to a widened part of the valley, with a bridge ahead connecting Mautern on the right bank with Stein on the left.

Mautern is a small old town with little to show of its antiquity, thanks to the frequency with which it has been the scene of battle. To mention but the chief occasions: it was here that Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, defeated the Austrians in 1484. Here, in 1805, the Russian General Kutusof was forced to retreat before the French under Murat, and having crossed the Danube, promptly burnt the bridge. Four years later when Napoleon was making his second advance on Vienna the Austrians themselves destroyed the bridge.

About three miles inland from Mautern, its bulk showing, as has been said, clearly against the sky from the summit of an isolated hill, is the great Benedictine monastery of Gottweih. Less splendid than Mölk, it is yet more strikingly situated. Though founded in the eleventh century the present edifice dates from the eighteenth. It is notable for its grand library of old books and manuscripts, and thus drew the attention of the Rev. Thomas Dibdin when making his celebrated “Bibliographical, Picturesque and Antiquarian Tour in France and Germany” about ninety years ago. The abbot of Gottweih, whom Dibdin interviewed, had been there during the Napoleonic wars, and his words seem to make more real for us the time when this stretch of the Danube was again and again the scene of fierce fighting. It was probably at the windows of the great library that the abbot stood with his bibliographical visitor when he said: “Look at the prospect around you--it is unbounded. On yonder wooded heights, on the opposite shore of the Danube, we all saw, from these very windows, the fire and smoke of the advanced guard of the French army, in contest with the Austrians in their first advance to Vienna. The Emperor Buonaparte himself took possession of this monastery. He slept here, and the next day we entertained him with the best _déjeuner à la fourchette_ which we could afford. He seemed well satisfied with his reception--but I own that I was glad when he left us. Strangers to arms in this tranquil retreat, and visited only as you may now visit us, for the purpose of peaceful hospitality, it agitated us extremely to come in contact with warriors and chieftains. Observe yonder, that castle, so tradition reports, once held your Richard the First, when detained prisoner by the Duke of Austria.”

Though some distance from the river, the monastery forms so striking an object in the scenery that there are few visitors with the time at their command but will wish to journey out to it, and see the grand buildings, the fine church, the library, and the magnificent prospect afforded from the splendidly situated place.

Returning to the Danube, and crossing the bridge of iron laid upon stone piers we come to Stein. The most notable features that first take the eye are the two churches, the one red cupola spired, with steep red-tiled roof, the other with a massive white tower showing clearly against the vineyard terraces which lie closely at the back of the narrow town, and a curious old tower with crooked tiled roof near the water-side. The ancient towered, Dutch-like church stands on the Frauenberg immediately above the newer one, and is reached by a long flight of steps. Near it are scraps of old ruins--stone walls and arches, worked largely into cottages and garden walls, while further west, with modern cottages built among them, are the ruins of an old castle destroyed by Matthias Corvinus in 1486--for Stein, too, has seen its share of fighting. From the neighbourhood of the ruins we get a good view of Gottweih on its rounded hill to the south.

Stein is practically linked with Krems, though each retains its gateway. The buildings--military and other--between the two towns, really form a third place named Und which has occasioned the pleasantry that “Krems Und Stein are three places.” Possibly Krems and Stein being such close neighbours that they were frequently referred to as Krems und Stein led to the name Und being fastened upon the connecting link which consisted at one time of nothing but the Capuchin monastery of Und. As we leave Stein there is to be noticed, painted up at the gateway, the words:--

“An Gottes Segen ist alles gelegen.”
(“By God’s blessing all have their opportunity.”)

It seemed rather a suggestive motto to be blazoned in the eyes of the convicts who were engaged in building close by at the time that I was there. By a short promenade under trees we reach the tall picturesque gateway of Krems, the eastern-most end of the wonderful Wachau.

Krems is a delightful old town--the largest on the Danube between Linz and Vienna. It is particularly attractive when seen in a state of animation consequent upon the arrival of a force of new recruits, welcomed by all the townspeople, and by the cheering bands of their more experienced comrades, or when the Pfarr Platz is crowded with a motley throng of people on market day, when the Platz is filled with stalls, largely extemporized from a couple of the quaint, bowed, legless barrows on which the peasants trundle their wares to market. Bread and meat, vegetables, fowls and dairy produce, and quantities of beautiful white wood utensils are the chief things for sale; and among them moves an ever-changing crowd of kerchiefed women. Above the throng rises the great grey church with massive tower.

To the north of this fifteenth century parish church, is another church, on the Frauenberg, and leaving the busy market by the beautiful corner of the Sängerhof, up a long flight of roofed-in steps (the Piarristen Stiege), we reach this old edifice, the most remarkable feature of which is the extraordinary series of sculptured figures with painted backgrounds, representing scenes in the life of Christ, between the external piers.

There are many old-world bits about the town, which appears to combine picturesque age with modern prosperity, while tragedy and romance are both revealed when we inquire into the story of Krems. One of the earliest mentions made of it is in connexion with one of those fanatical outbursts which ever and again stain the page of history. We saw at Deggendorf how a wild story of sacrilege led to a horrible slaughter of the Jews in that place, and in 1347 there was a similar outbreak here, when it is said the streets ran with blood. It may be surmised that the wealth the Jews had acquired moved the cupidity of their fellow-townsfolk. The pretext chosen was, however, that the Jews had poisoned the town wells, but that the other motive was regarded as the real one by the persecuted, may be gathered from the fact that many of the Hebrews “made their despair minister to their vengeance, and barring up themselves, their family and their riches together, set fire to the building and perished exultingly in the flames that anticipated the spoiler.”

In the following century the town was twice besieged by the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus, and that brave prince only succeeded in the second attempt. The people of Krems seem to have become inured to warfare, for when the town was attacked in 1619, on the Bohemian Protestants invading Austria, even the women won martial glory. It is recorded that the garrison having sallied forth to give battle to the foe, they were cut off, and the Bohemians, who had got in their rear, at once sought to scale the seemingly undefended walls, “but the women, with one consent, seizing the first weapons they could find, rushed to the ramparts, and fought with such steady bravery that the enemy were at length obliged to abandon the attempt.”

Krems is the easterly termination of the Wachau--the beautiful extent of the scenic Danube most readily reached by rail or boat from Vienna. Though when I was there in September and October there were not many holiday-making folk about the villages or the quiet river-side roads, it is evidently much frequented in the summer time, judging by the advertisements of “trips” to be seen in Vienna. The “discoverer” of the attractions of this lovely bit of country was, during my stay in Dürrenstein, honoured by the unveiling (9 October, 1910) of a memorial in that village. The memorial takes the form of a large, square, brass medallion portrait let into the river-side face of the rock on which the church stands. The simple inscription runs:--

“AUGUSTIN WEIGL
Die Dankbare Wachau
1910”

FOOTNOTES:

[10] This presumably as a salutation to the workmen employed at a large ultramarine factory in the neighbourhood.