LVIII. 1809. 19. To complete the picture of this highly interesting CHAP. people, it is only necessary to observe, that they are all frugal and industrious, that domestic manufactures are to be found in many of their cottages, and valuable saltAstonishing mines at Hall, on the lower Inn; but that the great industry of reliance of the people is on the resources of agriculture. the people. The wonderful effect of a general diffusion of property in stimulating the efforts of individual industry, is nowhere more conspicuous. The grass which grows on the sides of declivities too steep for pasture, is carefully cut for the cattle: the atmospheric action on rocks is rendered serviceable by conveying their debris to cultivated fields; and the stranger sometimes observes with astonishment a Tyrolese peasant, with a basket in his hand, descending inaccessible rocks, by means of a rope, in order that he may gain a few feet of land at the bottom, and devote it to agriculture. All the family labour at the little paternal estate; the daughters tend the cows, or bring in the grass; the sons work with the father in the field, or carry on some species of manufacture within doors. Notwithstanding this universal industry, however, the country is too sterile to maintain, from its own resources, its numerous inhabitants. A large proportion of it is covered with forest, a still larger is desert rock or snow, tenanted only by the chamois and the marmot; and a considerable Hofer, 21. portion of the people are yearly induced to seek the vii. 514, 515. means of bettering their condition in neighbouring and Barth. Krieg richer countries, from whence such of them as prosper 78. return, after many years of absence, to purchase a little domain in their beloved valleys.1 1 Gesch. A. Malte Brun, von 1809, 74, 20. contrivances The Tyrolese are of a singularly mechanical turn. Necessity has driven them to the useful arts as a means of supplying the deficiencies of nature; and the numerous Mechanical mountain streams and cascades, with which the country in the Tyrol. abounds, afford ample opportunity of obtaining, at no expense, an external power capable of setting in motion their simple machinery. Conducted into the fields, the houses, and mills, by little wooden troughs, in the course of their precipitous descent, the mountain torrents perform the most important functions of domestic economy. The irrigation of meadows, the grinding of corn, the making of oil, the fabrication of tools, are all performed by these LVIII. 1809. CHAP. streams, or the mills which they set in motion. In many places each peasant has his mill, which is applied to almost every purpose of life-even the rocking of a cradle is sometimes performed by means of a water-wheel. Nor are the most minute arts overlooked by this industrious people; and numbers of families earn a not contemptible livelihood by rearing canary birds, which are sold in all the cities of Europe.* 1 Malte Brun, vii. 549-551. 21. under the Bavarian government. To a people of such a character, and enjoying such advantages under the paternal government of their ancient Discontent princes, their forcible transference to the rule of Bavaria of the people by the treaty of Presburg had been the subject of inextinguishable aversion. The cabinet of Munich, little acquainted with the character of the inhabitants, ignorant of the delicacy requisite in the management of freeborn mountaineers, and relying on the powerful military aid of France and the Rhenish confederacy, adopted the dangerous policy, without attempting to remedy their grievances, of coercing their discontents by force. Though all their privileges were solemnly guaranteed by Bavaria in the treaty of Presburg, 1805,† yet no sooner were the Bavarian authorities established in the country, than all these stipulations were basely violated. The court of Munich seemed intent only on making the utmost of their new acquisition, as if under a presentiment that their tenure of it was not destined to be of very long duration. The constitution, which had subsisted for ages, was overthrown by a royal edict: the representative estates were suppressed, and the provincial funds seized. No less than eight new and oppressive *The following are some of the more important statistical facts connected with the population of the Tyrol, viz. The people are all Roman Catholics. The great proportion of the country in forest and rock is very remarkable, and sufficiently explains its romantic character. See MALTE BRUN, vii. 549, 551. + " 'The above-mentioned countries (the Tyrol and Vorarlberg) shall be enjoyed by his Majesty the King of Bavaria in the same manner, and with the same rights and prerogatives as the Emperor of Germany and Austria, and the princes of his House, enjoyed them, and no otherwise."-Treaty of Presburg, Dec. 26, 1805, Art. 8; MARTEN's Sup. iv. 215. taxes were imposed, and levied with the utmost rigour: the country, after the model of revolutionary France, was divided into the departments of the Inn, the Etch, and the Eisach the dramatised legends which formed so large a part of the amusement of the people, were prohibited: all pilgrimages to chapels or places of extraordinary sanctity forbidden. The convents and monasteries were confiscated, and their estates sold; the church plate and holy vessels melted down and disposed of; the royal property was all brought into the market; even the ancient castle of the Tyrol in the Passeyrthal was not spared. New imposts were daily exacted without any consultation with the estates of the people; specie became scarce, from the quantity of it which was drawn off to the royal treasury; the Austrian notes were reduced to half their CHAP. 1809. Gesch. 671. value; and the feelings of the people were irritated almost to madness by the compulsory levy of men to serve in the 1 Muller's ranks of their oppressors. It was even attempted to Gesch. A. change the very name of the country, and incorporate it Hofer, 17. with the Bavarian provinces; and the use of their Barth. 24, 32. mother tongue was only to be permitted to the southern provinces for a few years.1* The existence and wide diffusion of these discontents were well known to the Austrian government, by whom Introd. 22. of Austria to a constant correspondence with the disaffected leaders had Preparations been maintained in secret, ever since that valuable province take advanhad been reft from their dominion. Sensible of the im- tage of this discontent. mense error committed in 1805, in stripping the country of regular troops, at the very time when the advance of the French to Vienna rendered it of the last importance that this great natural fortress should be strengthened on their flank, the cabinet of Vienna resolved not to fall a second time into the same mistake, and made every preparation for turning to the best account the martial qualities and excited feelings of the people. The Archduke *Beauharnais, by an order dated Moscow, September 24, 1812, only permitted to some of the southern districts the use of their mother-tongue for six years longer.-Quarterly Review, xvii. 351. The date is singular and ominous. Napoleon afterwards was well aware how much the Tyrolese revolt was owing to the mismanagement of the Bavarians, and said to Count Bubna, "The Bavarians did not know how to govern the Tyrolese, and were unworthy to rule that noble country."-Gesch. AND. HOFER, 16. In truth, however, it was the magnitude and weight of his own exactions, in men and money, from that subject power, which drove the cabinet of Munich to the severe measures which had so powerful an effect in bringing about the insurrection. LVIII. 1809. CHAP. John, who commanded the army destined for the Italian campaign, then stationed at Villach and Klagenfurth, had made frequent excursions in former years through the Tyrol; and in the course of his rambles had become as much attached to these spirited mountaineers as they had acquired confidence in his patriotism and ardour. An active correspondence was carried on between the Archduke and the Tyrolese leaders, from the moment that war had been resolved on by the cabinet of Vienna, till it actually broke out. But although that accomplished prince was thus in a great degree instrumental in producing the general insurrection in the province which afterwards took place, yet he was fated never to return to Tyrol, ii. 163, it till the contest was over, nor to take part in a struggle 52, 54. in which he would willingly have risked his fortune and his life.1 1 Gesch. A. Hofer, 19. 164. Barth. 23. Military description of the country. The The Tyrol, notwithstanding its rugged aspect, is, in a military or strategetical point of view, a very simple country. There are very few practicable roads. great chain of mountains which forms the southern barrier of the valley of the Inn, and which, beginning with the snowy peaks of the Orteler-Spitz, stretches through the Gefrorn to the huge mass of the Gross Glockner, is traversed only by one road, which from time immemorial has formed the chief means of communication between Germany and Italy. Setting out from Munich, it crosses the northern barrier of the Innthal by the gorge of Scharnitz; descends to Innspruck, and after crossing the southern bulwarks of the valley by the pass of the Brenner, descends the course of the Eisach to Sterzing, Brixen, Botzen, Trent, and Roveredo, below which it emerges at Verona into the Italian plains. From Trent branch two lateral roads: the first, after surmounting an inconsiderable ridge, descends by the waters of the Brenta, through the romantic defiles of the Val Sugana, to Primolano, and loses itself in the plains of Verona at Bassano; the second, after crossing the river Sarca, winds down by Chiesa and the lake of Idro, to the Brescian fields. From Botzen, or Bolsano, a great road ascends the whole course of the Adige, called, in its upper or German parts, the Etch, and penetrates into the cold and cheerless pastures of the Engadine, in Switzerland, at Nauders. CHAP. LVIII. 1809. From Brixen branches off the great road to Carinthia and Klagenfurth, through the Pusterthal and down the valley of the Drave; and the route communicates with Salzburg by a cross-road which surmounts the great central ridge by St Michel and Tauern, till it reaches Rastadt and the waters of the Salza. Another great road crosses the Tyrol in its whole breadth, along the valley of the Inn; communicating on the west with Switzerland by Feldkirch and Bregentz; on the east passing by Rattenberg to Salzburg, Enns, and Vienna. The Brenner is thus by far the most important position in Tyrol, because whoever has the command of it, is the master of the only communication from Germany and the northern, to Italy and the southern Tyrol, and of the bridge of Laditch, at the junction of roads leading to Innspruck, Carinthia, and Verona. Rude fortifications were erected on the principal passes leading into the province on all sides from the adjoining states; but they were of no great strength, and incapable of holding out against a numerous and enterprising enemy. The true defence of the Tyrol consisted in its rugged and inaccessible surface, which rendered it 1 Pel. iii. for the most part wholly impassable for cavalry; in the 375, 382; number of woods and defensible positions which it con- Observation. tains; and, above all, in the indomitable spirit of its inhabitants.1 and Personal birth and descent. When the peasantry of the Tyrol, at the summons of Austria, took up arms, they had no fixed or authorised 24. leaders; but several persons had acquired such conside- Hofer: His ration among them as naturally placed them at the head of affairs. The first of these was ANDREW HOFER, a native of St Leonard, in the valley of Passeyr; a name, like that of Tell and Wallace, now become immortal in the history of the world. Like his ancestors for many generations, he carried on the business of an innkeeper on his paternal property on the banks of the Adige; a profession which is one of the most respectable among that simple people, from the intercourse with strangers and the wealth with which it is commonly attended. He was born on the 22d November 1767, so that he was in the forty-second year of his age when the insurrection broke out. His frame was herculean, his shoulders broad, his strength surpassing; but, like most persons |