After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 Part 12

--Trans. W.S. ROSE.

TURIN, 14 August.

Turin is a large, extremely fine and regular city, with all the streets built at right angles. The shops are very brilliant; the two _Places_, the _Piazza del Castello_ and the _Piazza di San Carlo_, are very s.p.a.cious and striking, and there are arcades on each side of the quadrangle formed by them. The _Contrada del Po_ (for in Turin the streets are called _Contrade_) leads down to the Po, and is one of the best streets in Turin.

Over the Po is a superb bridge built by Napoleon. In the centre of the _Piazza del Castello_ stands the Royal Palace, and on one side of the _Piazza_ the Grand Opera house. The streets in Turin are kept clean by sluices. The favorite promenades are, during the day, under the arcades of the _Piazza del Castello_ and those of the _Contrada del Po_; and in the evening round the ramparts of the city, or rather on the site where the ramparts stood. The French, on blowing up the ramparts, laid out the s.p.a.ce occupied by them in walks aligned by trees. The fortifications of the citadel were likewise destroyed.

In the Cathedral Church here the most remarkable thing is the _Chapelle du Saint Suaire_ (holy winding sheet). It is of a circular form, is inlaid with black marble and admits scarce any light; so that it has more the appearance of a Mausoleum than of a Chapel. It reminded me of the _Palace of Tears_ in the Arabian Nights.

In the environs of Turin, the most remarkable buildings are a villa belonging to the King called _La Venezia_, and the _Superga_, a magnificent church built on an eminence, five miles distant from Turin. In the Royal Palace, on the _Piazza del Castello_, there is some superb furniture, but the exterior is simple enough. The country environing Turin forms a plain with gentle undulations, increasing in elevation towards the Alps, which are forty miles distant, and is so stocked with villas, gardens and orchards as to form a very agreeable landscape. From the steeple of the _Superga_ the view is very fine.

In the University of Turin is a very good _Cabinet d'Histoire naturelle_, containing a great variety of beasts, birds and fishes stuffed and preserved; there is also a Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy, and various imitations in wax of anatomical dissections. Among the antiquities, of which there is a most valuable collection, are two very remarkable ones: the one a beautiful bronze shield, found in the Po, called the shield of Marius; it represents, in figures in bas-relief, the history of the Jugurthine war.[76] This shield is of the most exquisite workmanship. The other is a table of the most beautiful black marble incrusted and inlaid with figures and hieroglyphics of silver. It is called the _Table of Isis_, was brought from Egypt and is supposed to be of the most remote antiquity.

It is always kept polished. Among the many valuable pieces of sculpture to be met with here is a most lovely Cupid in Parian marble. He is represented sleeping on a lion's skin. It is the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have ever seen next to the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus dei Medici; it appears alive, and as if the least noise would awake it.[77]

Turin used to be in the olden time one of the most brilliant Courts and cities in Europe, and the most abounding in splendid equipages; now very few are to be seen. When Piedmont was torn from the domination of the House of Savoy and annexed to France, Turin, ceasing to be the capital of a Kingdom, necessarily decayed in splendor, nor did its being made the _Chef lieu_ of a _Prefecture_ of the French Empire make amends for what it once was. The Restoration arrived, but has not been able to reanimate it; an air of dullness pervades the whole city. Obscurantism and anti-liberal ideas are the order of the day.

I witnessed a military review at which the King of Sardinia a.s.sisted. The troops made a very brilliant appearance and manoeuvred well. His Majesty has a very good seat on horseback and a distinguished military air. He is a man of honor tho' he has rather too high notions of the royal dignity and authority, and is too much of a bigot in religion; but his word can be depended on, a great point in a King; there are so many of them that break theirs and falsify all their promises. He will not hear of a const.i.tution, and endeavors to abolish or discountenance all that has been effected during his absence. The priests are caressed and restored to their privileges, so that the inhabitants of Piedmont are exposed to a double despotism, a military and a sacerdotal one; the last is ten times more ruinous and fatal to liberty and improvement than the former.

I have put up in Turin in the _Pension Suisse_, where for seven franks per diem I have breakfast, dinner, supper and a princely bed room. The houses are in general lofty, s.p.a.cious and on a grand scale.

[67] Francois Lamarque, born 1756, a member of the Convention, amba.s.sador in Sweden, prefect of the Tarn and member of the Cour de Ca.s.sation (1804). He was exiled in 1816.--ED.

[68] Major Frye (who wrote the name Despina.s.sy) certainly means Antoine-Joseph Marie Espina.s.sy de Fontanelle's (1787-1829), who was a member of the Convention, voted the King's death and served in the Republican army of the Alps. In 1816, he was banished and went to Lausanne, where he died 1829.--ED.

[69] Pardoux Bordas (1748-1842) was a member of the Convention. Though he had not voted the death of Louis XVI, he was banished from France in 1816 and did not return there before 1828.--ED.

[70] Antoine Francis Gauthier des Orcieres (1752-1838) was elected to the Etats Generaux in 1789, and, in 1792, to the Convention, where he voted the death of Louis XVI. Later on, he was member of the Conseil des Anoiena, juge au tribunal de la Seine and conseiller a la cour imperiale de Paris (1815). Banished in 1816, he returned to France in 1828.

[71] Jean Baptists Michaud, a member of the Directoire du departement du Doubs, and a member of the National Convention, voted the death of Louis XVI and against the proposed appeal to the people.--ED.

[72] Jean Daniel Paul Etienne Levade (1750-1834), Protestant minister first in England, then in Amsterdam, finally minister at Lausanne and professor of theology at the _Academie_ of the same town.--ED.

[73] Countess de Boigne, in her interesting _Memoirs_ (of which there is an English translation) abstained from describing her husband's career in India; this lends additional interest to the information collected by Major Frye,--ED.

[74] The ma.n.u.script has _Sennar_, a name quite unknown at Suza.--ED.

[75] Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_, iv, 13, 5.--ED.

[76] This shield, now at the _Armoria Reale_, is not antique, but is ascribed to Benvenuto Cellini.--ED.

[77] This statue of Cupid is not antique, and has been recently ascribed to Michelangelo (Knapp, _Michelangelo_, p. 155.)--ED.

CHAPTER VIII

Journey from Turin to Bologna--Asti--Schiller and Alfieri--Italian _cuisine_--The _vetturini_--Marengo--Piacenza--The Trebbia--Parma--The Empress Maria Louisa--Modena--Bologna--The University--The Marescalchi Gallery--Character of the Bolognese.

August ---- 1816

'Twas on a fine morning the 16th August that I took my departure from Turin with a _vetturino_ bound to Bologna. I agreed to pay him sixty francs for my place in the coach, supper and bed. When this stipulation for supper and bed is included in the price fixed for your place with the _vetturino_, you are said to be _spesato_, and then you have nothing extra to pay for but your breakfast. There were two other travellers in the _vettura_, both Frenchmen; the one about forty years of age was a Captain of cavalry _en retraite_, married to a Hungarian lady and settled at Florence, to which place he was returning; the other, a young man of very agreeable manners, settled likewise at Florence, as chief of a manufactory there, returning from Lyons, his native city, whither he had been to see his relations. I never in my life met with two characters so diametrically opposite. The Captain was quite a _bourru_ in his manners, yet he had a sort of dry, sarcastic, satirical humour that was very diverting to those who escaped his lash. Whether he really felt the sentiments he professed, or whether he a.s.sumed them for the purpose of chiming in with the times, I cannot say, but he said he rejoiced at the fall of Napoleon. My other companion, however, expressed great regret as his downfall, not so much from a regard for the person of Napoleon, as for the concomitant degradation and conquest of his country, and he spoke of the affairs of France with a great deal of feeling and patriotism.

The Captain seemed to have little or no feeling for anybody but himself; indeed, he laughed at all sentiment and said he did not believe in virtue or disinterestedness. When, among other topics of conversation, the loss the French Army sustained at Waterloo was brought on the _tapis_, he said, "_Eh bien! qu 'importe? dans une seule nuit a Paris on en fabriquera a.s.sez pour les remplacer!_" A similar sentiment has been attributed to the great Conde.[78] We had a variety of amusing arguments and disputes on the road; the Captain railed at merchants, and said that he did not believe that honor or virtue existed among mercantile people (no compliment, by the bye, to the young fabricant, who bore it, however, with great good humour, contenting himself with now and then giving a few slaps at the military for their rapacity, which mercantile people on the Continent have now and then felt, before the French Revolution, as well as after). The whole road from Turin to Alexandria della Paglia is a fine broad _chausee_. The first day's journey brought us to Asti. A rich plain on each side of the road, the horizon on our right bounded by the Appennines, on our left by the Alps, both diverging, formed the landscape. Asti is an ancient, well and solidly built city, but rather gloomy in its appearance. It is remarkable for being the birthplace of Vittorio Alfieri, the celebrated tragic poet, who has excelled all other dramatic poets in the general _denouement_ of his pieces, except, perhaps, Voltaire alone. I do not speak of Alfleri so much as a poet as a _dramaturgus_. I may be mistaken, and it is, perhaps, presumptuous in me to attempt to judge, but it has always appeared to me that Voltaire and Alfieri have managed dramatic effect and the intrigue and catastrophe of their tragedies better than any other authors. Shakespeare, G.o.d as he is in genius, is in this particular very deficient. Schiller, too, the greatest modern poetic genius perhaps and the Shakespeare of Germany, has here failed also, and nothing can be more correct than the estimate of Alfieri made by Forsyth[79] when, after speaking of his defects, he says: "Yet where lives the tragic poet equal to Alfieri?

Schiller (then living also) may perhaps excel him in those peals of terror which flash thro' his gloomy and tempestuous scene, but he is far inferior in the mechanism of his drama."

To return to my first day's journey from Turin. It was a very long day's work, and we did not arrive at Asti till very late, after having performed the last hour, half in the dark, on a road which is by no means in good repute. The character of the lower cla.s.s of Piedmontese is not good. They are ferocious, vindictive and great marauders. They make excellent soldiers during war and they not unfrequently, on being disbanded after peace, by way of keeping their hand in practise and of having the image of war before their eyes, ease the traveller of his coin and sometimes of his life. Our conversation partook of these reminiscences, and during the latter part of our journey turned entirely on bandits "force and guile," so that we were quite rejoiced at seeing the smoke and light of the town of Asti and hearing the dogs bark, which reminded me of Ariosto's lines:

Non molto va che dalle vie supreme De' tetti uscir vede il vapor del fuoco Sente cani abbajar, muggire armento, Viene alla villa, e piglia alloggiamenti.[80]

Nor far the warrior had pursued his best, Ere, eddying from a roof, he saw the smoke, Heard noise of dog and kine, a farm espied, And thitherward in quest of lodging hied.

--_Trans_. W.S. ROSE.

We met on alighting at the door of a large s.p.a.cious inn, two ladies who had very much the appearance of the two damsels at the inn where Don Quixote alighted and received his order of knighthood; but, in spite of their amorous glances and a decided leer of invitation, I had like Sacripante's steed more need of "_riposo e d'esca che di nuova giostra_." The usual Italian supper was put before us, and very good it was, viz., _Imprimis: A minestra_ (soup), generally made of beef or veal with vermicelli or macaroni in it and its never failing accompaniment in Italy, grated Parmesan cheese. Then a _lesso_ (bouilli) of beef, veal or mutton, or all three; next an _umido_ (frica.s.see) of c.o.c.ks' combs and livers, a favourite Italian dish; then a _frittura_ of chickens' livers, fish or vegetables fried. Then an _umido_ or ragout of veal, fish with sauce; and lastly, an arrosto (roast) of fowls, veal, game, or all three. The _arrosto_ is generally very dry and done to cinders almost. Vegetables are served up With the _umidi_, but plain boiled, leaving it optional to you to use melted b.u.t.ter or oil with them. A salad is a constant concomitant of the _arrosto_. A desert or fruit concludes the repast. Wine is drank at discretion. The wine of Lombardy is light and not ill flavored; it is far weaker than any wine I know of, but it has an excellent quality, that of facilitating digestion. A cup of strong coffee is generally made for you in the morning, for which you pay three or four _soldi_ (sous), and in giving five or six _soldi_ to the waiter, all your expenses are paid supposing you are _spesato_, i.e., that the _vetturino_ pays for your supper and bed; if not, your charges are left to the conscience of the aubergiste, which in Italy is in general of prodigious width. I therefore advise every traveller who goes with a _vetturino_ to be a spesato, otherwise he will have to pay four or five times as much and not be a whit better regaled. The _vetturini_ generally pay from three to three and a half francs for the supper and bed of their pa.s.sengers. As the _vetturini_ invariably make a halt of an hour and half or two hours at mid-day in some town or village, this halt enables you to take your _dejeuner a la fourchette_, which you pay for yourself, unless you stipulate for the payment of that also with the _vetturino_ by paying something more, say one a half franc per diem for that. In this part, and indeed in the whole of the north of Italy not a female servant is to be seen at the inns and men make the beds. It is otherwise, I understand, in Tuscany.

The whole appearance of the country from Asti to Alexandria presents an immense plain extremely fertile, but the crops of corn being off the ground, the landscape would not be pleasing to the eye, were it not relieved by the frequency of mulberry trees and the vines hung in festoons from tree to tree. The villages and farmhouses on this road are extremely solid and well built. We arrived at Alexandria about twelve o'clock, and after breakfast I hired a horse to visit the field of battle of Marengo, which is in the neighbourhood of this city, Marengo itself being a village five miles distant from Alexandria. Arrived on the plain, I was conducted to the spot where the first Consul stood at the time that he perceived the approach of Desaix's division. I figured to myself the first Consul on his white charger, halting his army, then in some confusion, riding along the line exposed to a heavy fire from the Austrians, who cannonaded the whole length of the line; aides-de-camp and orderlies falling around him, himself calm and collected, "spying 'vantage," and observing that the Austrian deployment was too extended, and their centre thereby weakened, suddenly profiting of this circ.u.mstance to order Desaix's division to advance and lead the charge which decided the victory on that memorable day, which, according to Mascheroni:

_splende Nell' abisso de' secoli, qual Sole_.

The whole field of battle is an extensive plain, with but few trees, and to use Campbell's lines:

every turf beneath the feet Marks out a soldier's sepulchre.

The Column, erected to commemorate this glorious victory, has been thrown down by order of the Austrian government--a poor piece of puerile spite, but worthy of legitimacy. Alexandria is, or rather _was_, for the fortifications no longer exist, more remarkable for being an important military post than for the beauty of the city itself. There is, however, a fine and s.p.a.cious _Place_, which serves as a parade for the garrison, and being planted with trees by the French when they held it, forms an agreeable promenade. The fortifications were blown up by the Austrians before the place was given over to the Sardinian authorities, a flagrant breach of faith and contract, since by the treaty of 1814 they were bound to give up all the fortified places that were restored or ceded to the King of Sardinia in the same state in which they were found when the French evacuated them, and the Austrians took possession provisorily. The French regarding (and with reason) this fortress as the key of Lombardy always kept the fortifications in good repair and well provided with cannon. But the Austrian government, knowing itself to be unpopular in Italy and trembling for the safety of her dominions, being always fearful that the Piedmontese Government might one day be induced to favour an insurrectionary or national movement in the north of Italy, determined, finding that it could not keep the fortress for itself, which it strove hard to do under divers pretexts, to render it of as little use as they possibly could do to the King of Sardinia; so they blew up the fortifications and carried off the cannon, leaving the King without a single fortified place in the whole of his Italian dominions to defend himself, in case of attack, against an Austrian invasion.

On the morning of the 15th August we pa.s.sed thro' Tortona, now no longer a fortress of consequence. All this country may be considered as cla.s.sic ground, immortalized by the campaigns of Napoleon, when commander in chief of the army of the French Republic in Italy, a far greater and more ill.u.s.trious _role_ than when he a.s.sumed the Imperial bauble and condescended to mix with the vulgar herd of Kings.

We arrived at Voghera to breakfast and at Casteggio at night. The country is much the same as that which we have already pa.s.sed thro', being a plain, with a rich alluvial soil, mulberry trees and a number of solidly built stone farmhouses. The next morning at eleven o'clock we arrived at Piacenza on the Po, and were detained a quarter of an hour at the _Douane_ of Her Majesty the Archd.u.c.h.ess, as Maria Louisa, the present d.u.c.h.ess of Parma, is stiled, we being now arrived in her dominions. We drove to the _Hotel di San Marco_, which is close to the _Piazza Grande_, and alighted there. On the Piazza stands the _Hotel de Ville_, and in front of it are two equestrian statues in bronze of the Princes Farnesi; the statues, however, of the riders appear much too small in proportion with the horses, and they resemble two little boys mounted on Lincolnshire carthorses.

I did not visit the churches and palaces in this city from not having time and, besides, I did not feel myself inclined or _bound_ (as some travellers think themselves) to visit every church and every town in Italy. I really believe the _ciceroni_ think that we _Ultramontani_ live in mud hovels in our own country, and that we have never seen a stone edifice, till our arrival in Italy, for every town house which is not a shop is termed a _palazzo_, and they would conduct you to see all of them if you would be guided by them. I had an opportunity, during the two hours we halted here, of walking over the greater part of the city, after a hasty breakfast.

Piacenza is a large handsome city; among the females that I saw in the streets the Spanish costume seems very prevalent, no doubt from being so long governed by a Spanish family.

On leaving Piacenza we pa.s.sed thro' a rich meadow country and met with an immense quant.i.ty of cattle grazing. The road is a fine broad _chaussee_ considerably elevated above the level of the fields and is lined with poplars. Where this land is not in pasture, cornfields and mulberry trees, with vines in festoons, vary the landscape, which is additionally enlivened by frequent _maisons de plaisance_ and excellently built farmhouses. We pa.s.sed thro' Firenzuola, a long well-built village, or rather _bourg_, and we brought to the night at Borgo San Donino. At this place I found the first bad inn I have met with in Italy, that is, the house, tho' large, was so out of repair as to be almost a _masure_; we however met with tolerably good fare for supper. We fell in with a traveller at Borgo San Donino, who related to us an account of an extraordinary robbery that had been committed a few months before near this place, in which the _then_ host was implicated, or rather was the author and planner of the robbery. It happened as follows. A Swiss merchant, one of those men who cannot keep their own counsel, a _bavard_ in short, was travelling from Milan to Bologna with his cabriolet, horse and a large portmanteau. He put up at this inn. At supper he entered into conversation with mine host, and asked if there was any danger of robbers on the road, for that he should be sorry (he said) to fall into their hands, inasmuch as he had with him in his portmanteau 24,000 franks in gold and several valuable articles of jewellery. Mine host a.s.sured him that there was not the slightest danger.

The merchant went to bed, directing that he should be awakened at daybreak in order to proceed on his journey. Mine host, however, took care to have him called full an hour and half before daybreak, a.s.suring him that light would soon dawn. The merchant set out, but he had hardly journeyed two miles when a shot from behind a hedge by the road side brought his horse to the ground. Four men in masks rushed up, seized him and bound him to a tree; they then rifled his portmanteau, took out his money and jewels and wished him good morning.

Before we arrived at Borgo San Donino we crossed the Trebbia, one of the many tributary streams of the Po, and which is famous for two celebrated battles, one in ancient, the other in modern tunes (and probably many others which I do not recollect); but here it was that Hannibal gained his second victory over the Romans; and here, in 1799, the Russians under Souvoroff defeated the French under Macdonald after an obstinate and sanguinary conflict; but they could not prevent Macdonald from effecting his junction with Ma.s.sena, to hinder which was Souvoroff's object. In fact, in this country, to what reflections doth every spot of ground we pa.s.s, over, give rise! Every field, every river has been the theatre of some battle or other memorable event either in ancient or modern times.

_Quis gurges aut quae flumina lugubris Ignara belli?[81]_

We started from Borgo San Donino next morning; about ten miles further on the right hand side of the road stands an ancient Gothic fortress called Castel Guelfo. Between this place and Parma there is a very troublesome river to pa.s.s called the Taro, which at times is nearly dry and at other times, so deep as to render it hazardous for a carriage to pa.s.s, and it is at all times requisite to send on a man to ford and sound it before a carriage pa.s.ses. This river fills a variety of separate beds, as it meanders very much, and it extends to such a breadth in its _debordements_, as to render it impossible to construct a bridge long enough to be of any use.

This, however, being the dry season, we pa.s.sed it without difficulty. Two or three other streams on this route, _seguaci del Po_, are crossed in the same manner.

The road to Parma, after pa.s.sing the Taro, lies nearly in a right line and is bordered with poplars. If I am not mistaken, it was somewhere in this neighbourhood that the Carthaginians under Hannibal suffered a great loss in elephants, who died from cold, being incamped during the winter. I am told there is not a colder country in Europe than Lombardy during the winter season, which arises no doubt from its vicinity to the Alps.