The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 54

"The Army of the Sambre and Meuse to its Commander-in-Chief Hoche."

This is all, and as it should be. Hoche was esteemed among the first of France's earlier generals, before Buonaparte monopolised her triumphs.

He was the destined commander of the invading army of Ireland.

[The tomb of Francois Severin Desgravins Marceau (1769-1796, general of the French Republic) bears the following epitaph and inscription:--

"'Hic cineres, ubique nomen.'

"Ici repose Marceau, ne a Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, soldat a seize ans, general a vingtdeux ans. Il mourut en combattant pour sa patrie, le dernier jour de l'an iv. de la Republique francaise. Qui que tu sois, ami ou ennemi de ce jeune heros, respecte ces cendres."

A bronze statue at Versailles, raised to the memory of General Hoche (1768-1797) bears a very similar record--

"A Lazare Hoche, ne a Versailles le 24 juin, 1768, sergent a seize ans, general en chef a vingt-cinq, mort a vingt-neuf, pacificateur de la Vendee."]

12.

Here Ehrenbreitstein with her shattered wall.

Stanza lviii. line 1.

Ehrenbreitstein, i.e. "the broad stone of honour," one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, was dismantled and blown up by the French at the truce of Leoben. It had been, and could only be, reduced by famine or treachery. It yielded to the former, aided by surprise. After having seen the fortifications of Gibraltar and Malta, it did not much strike by comparison; but the situation is commanding. General Marceau besieged it in vain for some time, and I slept in a room where I was shown a window at which he is said to have been standing observing the progress of the siege by moonlight, when a ball struck immediately below it.

[Ehrenbreitstein, which had resisted the French under Marshal Boufflers in 1680, and held out against Marceau (1795-96), finally capitulated to the French after a prolonged siege in 1799. The fortifications were dismantled when the French evacuated the fortress after the Treaty of Luneville in 1801. The Treaty of Leoben was signed April 18, 1797.]

13.

Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each wandering ghost.

Stanza lxiii. line 9.

The chapel is destroyed, and the pyramid of bones diminished to a small number by the Burgundian Legion in the service of France; who anxiously effaced this record of their ancestors' less successful invasions. A few still remain, notwithstanding the pains taken by the Burgundians for ages (all who pa.s.sed that way removing a bone to their own country), and the less justifiable larcenies of the Swiss postilions, who carried them off to sell for knife-handles; a purpose for which the whiteness imbibed by the bleaching of years had rendered them in great request. Of these relics I ventured to bring away as much as may have made a quarter of a hero, for which the sole excuse is, that if I had not, the next pa.s.ser-by might have perverted them to worse uses than the careful preservation which I intend for them.

[Charles the Bold was defeated by the Swiss at the Battle of Morat, June 22, 1476. It has been computed that more than twenty thousand Burgundians fell in the battle. At first, to avoid the outbreak of a pestilence, the bodies were thrown into pits. "Nine years later ... the mouldering remains were unearthed, and deposited in a building ... on the sh.o.r.e of the lake, near the village of Meyriez.... During three succeeding centuries this depository was several times rebuilt.... But the ill-starred relics were not destined even yet to remain undisturbed.

At the close of the last century, when the armies of the French Republic were occupying Switzerland, a regiment consisting mainly of Burgundians, under the notion of effacing an insult to their ancestors, tore down the 'bone-house' at Morat, covered the contents with earth, and planted on the mound 'a tree of liberty.' But the tree had no roots; the rains washed away the earth; again the remains were exposed to view, and lay bleaching in the sun for a quarter of a century. Travellers stopped to gaze, to moralize, and to pilfer; postilions and poets sc.r.a.ped off skulls and thigh-bones.... At last, in 1822, the vestiges were swept together and resepulchred, and a simple obelisk of marble was erected, to commemorate a victory well deserving of its fame as a military exploit, but all unworthy to be ranked with earlier triumphs, won by hands pure as well as strong, defending freedom and the right."--_History of Charles the Bold_, by J. F. Kirk, 1868, iii. 404, 405.

Mr. Murray still has in his possession the parcel of bones--the "quarter of a hero"--which Byron sent home from the field of Morat.]

14.

Levelled Aventic.u.m, hath strewed her subject lands.

Stanza lxv. line 9.

Aventic.u.m, near Morat, was the Roman capital of Helvetia, where Avenches now stands.

[Avenches (Wiflisburg) lies due south of the Lake of Morat, and about five miles east of the Lake of Neuchatel. As a Roman colony it bore the name of _Pia Flavia Constans Emerita_, and circ. 70 A.D. contained a population of sixty thousand inhabitants. It was destroyed first by the Alemanni and, afterwards, by Attila. "The Emperor Vespasian--son of the banker of the town," says Suetonius (lib. viii. i)--"surrounded the city by ma.s.sive walls, defended it by semicircular towers, adorned it with a capitol, a theatre, a forum, and granted it jurisdiction over the outlying dependencies....

"To-day plantations of tobacco cover the forgotten streets of Avenches, and a single Corinthian column ['the lonelier column,' the so-called _Cicognier_], with its crumbling arcade, remains to tell of former grandeur."--_Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne, and Savoy_, by General Meredith Read, 1897, i. 16.]

15.

And held within their urn one mind--one heart--one dust.

Stanza lxvi. line 9.

Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain endeavour to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Caecina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago;--it is thus:--"Julia Alpinula: Hic jaceo. Infelicis patris, infelix proles. Deae Aventiae Sacerdos. Exorare patris necem non potui: Male mori in fatis ille erat.

Vixi annos XXIII."--I know of no human composition so affecting as this, nor a history of deeper interest. These are the names and actions which ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy tenderness, from the wretched and glittering detail of a confused ma.s.s of conquests and battles, with which the mind is roused for a time to a false and feverish sympathy, from whence it recurs at length with all the nausea consequent on such intoxication.

[A mutinous outbreak among the Helvetii, which had been provoked by the dishonest rapacity of the twenty-first legion, was speedily quelled by the Roman general Aulus Caecina. Aventic.u.m surrendered (A.D. 69), but Julius Alpinus, a chieftain and supposed ring-leader, was singled out for punishment and put to death. "The rest," says Tacitus, "were left to the ruth or ruthlessness of Vitellius" (_Histor_., i. 67, 68). Julia Alpinula and her epitaph were the happy inventions of a sixteenth-century scholar. "It appears," writes Lord Stanhope, "that this inscription was given by one Paul Wilhelm, a noted forger (_falsarius_), to Lipsius, and by Lipsius handed over to Gruterus.

n.o.body, either before or since Wilhelm, has even pretended to have seen the stone ... as to any son or daughter of Julius Alpinus, history is wholly silent" (_Quarterly Review_, June, 1846, vol. lviii. p. 61; _Historical Essays_, by Lord Mahon, 1849, pp. 297, 298).]

16.

In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow.

Stanza lxvii. line 8.

This is written in the eye of Mont Blanc (June 3rd, 1816), which even at this distance dazzles mine.--(July 20th.) I this day observed for some time the distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentiere in the calm of the lake, which I was crossing in my boat; the distance of these mountains from their mirror is sixty miles.

[The first lines of the note dated June 3, 1816, were written at "Dejean's Hotel de l'Angleterre, at Secheron, a small suburb of Geneva, on the northern side of the lake." On the 10th of June Byron removed to the Campagne Diodati, about two miles from Geneva, on the south sh.o.r.e of the lake (_Life of Sh.e.l.ley_, by Edward Dowden, 1896, pp. 307-309).]

17.

By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone.

Stanza lxxi. line 3.

The colour of the Rhone at Geneva is blue, to a depth of tint which I have never seen equalled in water, salt or fresh, except in the Mediterranean and Archipelago.

[The blueness of the Rhone, which has been attributed to various causes, is due to the comparative purity of the water. The yellow and muddy stream, during its pa.s.sage through the lake, is enabled to purge itself to a very great extent of the solid matter held in suspension--the glacial and other detritus---and so, on leaving its vast natural filtering-bed, it flows out clear and blue: it has regained the proper colour of pure water.]

18.

This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss.

Stanza lxxix. line 3.

This refers to the account, in his _Confessions_, of his pa.s.sion for the Comtesse d'Houdetot (the mistress of St. Lambert), and his long walk every morning, for the sake of the single kiss which was the common salutation of French acquaintance. Rousseau's description of his feelings on this occasion may be considered as the most pa.s.sionate, yet not impure, description and expression of love that ever kindled into words; which, after all, must be felt, from their very force, to be inadequate to the delineation; a painting can give no sufficient idea of the ocean.

[Here is Rousseau's "pa.s.sionate, yet not impure," description of his sensations: "J'ai dit qu'il y avoit loin de l'Hermitage a Eaubonne; je pa.s.sois par les coteaux d'Andilly qui sont charmans. Je revois en marchant a celle que j'allois voir, a l'accueil caressant qu'elle me feroit, au baiser qui m'attendoit a mon arrivee. Ce seul baiser, ce baiser funeste avant meme de le recevoir, m'embrasoit le sang a tel point, que ma tete se troubloit, un eblouiss.e.m.e.nt m'aveugloit, mes genoux tremblants ne pouroient me soutenir; j'etois force de m'arreter, de m'a.s.seoir; toute ma machine etoit dans un desordre inconcevable; j'etois pret a m'evanouir.... A l'instant que je la voyois, tout etoit repare; je ne sentois plus aupres d'elle que l'importunite d'une vigueur inepuisable et toujours inutile."--_Les Confessions_, Partie II. livre ix.; _Oeuvres Completes de J.J. Rousseau_, 1837, i. 233.

Byron's mother "would have it" that her son was like Rousseau, but he disclaimed the honour ant.i.thetically and with needless particularity (see his letter to Mrs. Byron, and a quotation from his _Detached Thoughts, Letters_, 1898, i. 192, note). There was another point of unlikeness, which he does not mention. Byron, on the pa.s.sion of love, does not "make for morality," but he eschews nastiness. The loves of Don Juan and Haidee are chaste as snow compared with the unspeakable philanderings of the elderly Jean Jacques and the "mistress of St.

Lambert."

Nevertheless, his mother was right. There was a resemblance, and consequently an affinity, between Childe Burun and the "visionary of Geneva"--delineated by another seer or visionary as "the dreamer of love-sick tales, and the spinner of speculative cobwebs; shy of light as the mole, but as quick-eared too for every whisper of the public opinion; the teacher of Stoic pride in his principles, yet the victim of morbid vanity in his feelings and conduct."--_The Friend_; _Works_ of S.

T. Coleridge, 1853, ii. 124.]

19.

Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take.

Stanza xci. line 3.

It is to be recollected, that the most beautiful and impressive doctrines of the divine Founder of Christianity were delivered, not in the _Temple_, but on the _Mount_. To waive the question of devotion, and turn to human eloquence,--the most effectual and splendid specimens were not p.r.o.nounced within walls. Demosthenes addressed the public and popular a.s.semblies. Cicero spoke in the forum. That this added to their effect on the mind of both orator and hearers, may be conceived from the difference between what we read of the emotions then and there produced, and those we ourselves experience in the perusal in the closet. It is one thing to read the _Iliad_ at Sigaeum and on the tumuli, or by the springs with Mount Ida above, and the plain and rivers and Archipelago around you; and another to trim your taper over it in a snug library--_this_ I know. Were the early and rapid progress of what is called Methodism to be attributed to any cause beyond the enthusiasm excited by its vehement faith and doctrines (the truth or error of which I presume neither to canva.s.s nor to question), I should venture to ascribe it to the practice of preaching in the _fields_, and the unstudied and extemporaneous effusions of its teachers. The Mussulmans, whose erroneous devotion (at least in the lower orders) is most sincere, and therefore impressive, are accustomed to repeat their prescribed orisons and prayers, wherever they may be, at the stated hours--of course, frequently in the open air, kneeling upon a light mat (which they carry for the purpose of a bed or cushion as required); the ceremony lasts some minutes, during which they are totally absorbed, and only living in their supplication: nothing can disturb them. On me the simple and entire sincerity of these men, and the spirit which appeared to be within and upon them, made a far greater impression than any general rite which was ever performed in places of worship, of which I have seen those of almost every persuasion under the sun; including most of our own sectaries, and the Greek, the Catholic, the Armenian, the Lutheran, the Jewish, and the Mahometan. Many of the negroes, of whom there are numbers in the Turkish empire, are idolaters, and have free exercise of their belief and its rites; some of these I had a distant view of at Patras; and, from what I could make out of them, they appeared to be of a truly Pagan description, and not very agreeable to a spectator.

[For this profession of "natural piety," compare Rousseau's _Confessions_, Partie II. livre xii. (_Oeuvres Completes_, 1837, i.

341)--