CHAPTER LVIII. WAR IN THE TYROL, NORTHERN GERMANY, AND POLAND. 1809. 1. nary interest of the Tyrolese war. It is neither on the greatest fields of battle, nor the CHAP. places where the most calamitous bloodshed has taken LVIII. place, that the recollection of future ages is chiefly riveted. The vast theatres of Asiatic conflict are forgotten; the Extraordi- slaughtered myriads of Timour and Genghis Khan lie in undistinguished graves; hardly a pilgrim visits the scenes where, on the fields of Chalons and Tours, the destinies of civilisation and Christendom were fixed by the skill of Aëtius and the valour of Charles Martel. It is moral grandeur which produces a durable impression; it is patriotic heroism which permanently attracts the admiration of mankind. The pass of Thermopyla, the graves of Marathon, will warm the hearts of men through every succeeding age: the chapel of Tell, the field of Morgarten, still attract the generous and brave from every civilised state: the name of Wallace, the plain of Bannockburn, have rendered Scottish story immortal in the annals of the world. The time may come when the vast and desolating wars of the French Revolution shall be dimmed in the obscurity of evolving years; when the great name of Napoleon is recollected only as a shadow of ancient days, and the fields of his fame are buried in the waves of succeeding change; but even then, the siege of Saragossa will stand forth in undecaying lustre from amid the gloom of ages; and the war in the Tyrol, the strife of la Vendée, survive unshaken above the floods of time. LVIII. 1809. 2. Atlas, Plate 24. The country now immortalised under the name of the Tyrol, the land of Hofer and Spechbacher, lies on the Description of the Tyrol. southern frontier of Germany, and is composed of the mountains which, stretching eastward from the Alps of Switzerland, are interposed between the Bavarian plains and the fields of Italy. Less elevated than those of the Helvetian cantons, without the awful sublimity of the Alps of the Oberland, or the savage wildness of the Aiguilles of Chamouny, the mountains of the Tyrol are still more romantic, from the singular and imposing character which they in general bear, and the matchless beauty of the narrow valleys, or rather clefts, which are interspersed around their feet. Their summits, though in one or two cases little inferior in height to the Jungfrau or the Titlis, are more rugged than those of Switzerland, from being in general somewhat lower, and in consequence less charged with snow, and exhibiting their various strata, ravines, and peaks in more undisguised grandeur than where a silver mantle has been for ever thrown over the higher regions. The general level of the country is less elevated than the central parts of Helvetia, and hence it is often more beautiful the pine and larch do not appear in such monotonous masses: but noble forests of beech and oak clothe the mountain sides to a greater height than that of any hills in Britain, and a dark zone of pine separates observation. their brilliant hues from the gray piles of rock, or snow- vii. 510, besprinkled peaks, which repose in undisturbed serenity Tyrol, 1.241. on the azure firmament.1 1 Personal Malte-Brun, 511. Inglis's 3. character of The northern and southern slopes of the Alps exhibit here, as elsewhere on the sides of the great stony girdle Opposite of the globe, the same remarkable difference in the pro- the northern ductions of nature, the character of the landscape, and and southern the disposition of the human species. To the north of mountains. the central chain of the Brenner, everything wears a frigid aspect. Vast forests of pine and fir clothe the sides of the LVIII. 1809. CHAP. middle regions of the mountains; naked rock or masses. of snow compose their highest peaks; extensive pastures afford nourishment to numerous flocks and herds; barley and oats constitute the principal food of the inhabitants, and Indian corn is cultivated only in the rich and sheltered vale of the Inn. The inhabitants, like all those of Germanic descent, are brave, impetuous, and honest; tenacious of custom, fearless of danger, addicted to intemperance. But to the south of the range, these rigid features insensibly melt away under the increasing warmth of a more genial climate. Maize and wheat are reared with assiduous care in the few level spots which are interpersed among the rocks; walnut and cherry trees next give token of the approach of a milder atmosphere; beech and sweet chestnut succeed to the sable pine in the woody region above; the vine and the mulberry are found in the sheltered bosoms of the valleys; and at length the olive and the pomegranate nestle in the sunny nooks, where, on the margin of the lake of Garda, the blasts of winter are averted by a leafy screen of almost perpetual verdure. But if the gifts of nature improve as the traveller descends to the plains of Lombardy, the character of man declines: with the sweet accents of the Italian tongue, the vices of civilisation, the craft of the south, have sensibly spread. The cities are more opulent, the churches more costly, the edifices more sumptuous; but the native virtues of the German population are no longer conspicuous: the love of freedom, the obligation of truth, the sanctity of an oath, are more faintly discerned; iron bars on the windows of the poor tell but too clearly that the fearless security of general virtue is no longer felt; observation, and the multiplication of criminals and police bespeaks at once the vices and necessities of a corrupted society.1 1* 1 Inglis's Tyrol, ii. 240, 290. Personal * Out of eighty prisoners in Innspruck jail in 1832, fifty-five were from the Italian Tyrol, though its population is only one hundred and sixty-three thousand, while that of the German portion is five hundred and ninety-eight thousand. INGLIS'S Tyrol, i. 185; and MALTE-BRUN, vii. 550. LVIII. 1809. Switzerland contains some spacious and fertile plains, CHAP. and extensive lakes diversify the generally rugged aspect of nature; but the Tyrol is a country of mountains, intersected only by a few long and spacious valleys. Of these, Description those of the Inn, the Eisach, the Adige, and the Pusterthal, valleys and 4. of the great rivers of are the most considerable. The first is formed by the the Tyrol. river Inn, commencing on the eastern slope of the mountains of the Grisons it extends nearly a hundred miles almost in a straight line in a north-easterly direction, and under the successive names of the Engadine, the Upper and the Lower Innthal, extends from Finstermunz, on the frontiers of Switzerland, to Kufstein at the opening of the Bavarian plains. It is at first a cold and desolate pastoral glen, gradually opening into a cultivated vale, shut in by pine-clad hills of savage character; and for the last fifty miles expands into a spacious valley, varying from two to six miles in breadth, whose fertile bottom, perfectly flat, shut in on either side by precipitous mountains seven or eight thousand feet in height, is adorned with numerous villages, churches, and towns, and maintains a dense and industrious population. The valley of the Eisach, formed by the confluence at Brixen of the torrents which descend from the snowy summits of the Brenner and the Gross Terner on the one side, and the mountains of the Pusterthal on the other, descends beside an impetuous stream, through the narrow passes and chestnut-clad steeps between Brixen and Bolsano. It is at length lost, at the latter place, in the larger valley of the Adige, which, stretching out to the south in a wide expanse between piles of fir-clad mountains to Trent and Roveredo, 1 Malte gradually warms under the Italian sun, till, after passing 511. Perthe frightful gorge of the Italian Chiusa,* it opens into the vation. smiling hills and vine-clad slopes of Verona.1 * This noble scene, one of the most striking gorges in the Alps, has been immortalised in the lines of Dante: "Era lo loco ove a scender la riva, Venimmo Alpestro, e per quel ch' ivi er' anco Tal ch' ogni vista ne sarebbe schiva. Brun, vii. sonal obser CHAP. 1809. 5. Valley of the Adige, and its rapid. The valley of the Etch, or Adige, descending from the cold and shivering Alps of Glurns, widens into the Passeyrthal, the original seat of the Counts of the Tyrol, still containing their venerable castle, and which has been immortalised as containing the birthplace of Hofer. It is distinguished by an awful rapid, which, more nearly than anything in Europe, resembles those of the great American rivers, equalling even the fall of Schaffhausen in sublimity and terror; * after descending this foaming declivity, and forcing its way through stupendous rocks, the Adige joins the vale of the Eisach at Bolsano. These are the principal valleys of the Tyrol, but the upper parts of several others belong to the same country; in particular, those of the Drave, the Salza, and the Brenta. The two first, descending from opposite sides of the Gross Glockner, find their way into the open country, through long defiles of matchless beauty: the former, after washing the battlements of Klagenfurth, to the Hungarian plains; the latter, beneath the towers 1 Personal of Salzburg, to the waters of the Danube; while the Brenta, after struggling through the narrow clefts and romantic peaks of the Val Sugana, emerges in still serenity into the Italian fields under the mouldering walls of Bassano.1 observation. Inglis's Tyrol, i. 289, 290. Malte Brun, vii. 511. 6. With the exception of the Grisons, Switzerland conCastles of tains few ruined castles. The moral earthquake which the Tyrol. five centuries ago overthrew the feudal power of Austria in the Forest Cantons, cast down in its subsequent shocks Qual è quella ruina che nel fianco Ch' alcuna via darebbe a chi su fosse." DANTE, Inferno, Canto xii. 1-9. * This remarkable rapid, the only one which conveys to a European traveller an idea of this striking feature of Transatlantic scenery, is thus described with graphic power and perfect fidelity by a distinguished traveller now no more :-" At this spot the river Adige presents one of the most magnificent |