station with a vision of the ‘Gepäck’ which had puzzled him so immensely the day before.
CHAPTER II.
NORTH-TIROL – UNTERINNTHAL (RIGHT-INN BANK).
KUFSTEIN TO ROTTENBURG
… ‘Peasant of the Alps,
Thy humble virtues, hospitable home,
And spirit patient, pious, proud, and free;
Thy self-respect, grafted on innocent thoughts;
Thy days of health, thy nights of sleep, thy toil
By danger dignified, yet guiltless; hopes
Of cheerful old age, and then a quiet grave
With cross and garland over its green turf,
And thy grandchildren’s love for epitaph,
This do I see!..’
When, after our forced détour, we next penetrated into Tirol, it was by the way of Kufstein. Ruffled as we had been in the meantime by Bavarian ‘Rohheit,’ we were glad to find ourselves again in the hands of the gentle Tirolese.
Kufstein, however, is not gentle in appearance. Its vast fortress seems to shed a stifling gloom over the whole place; it looks so hard and selfish and tyrannical, that you long to get away from its influence. Noble hearts from honest Hungary have pined away within its cold strong grasp; and many a time, as my sketch-book has been turned over by Magyar friends, the page which depicted its outline – for it wears a grand and gallant form, such as the pencil cannot resist – has raised a deep sigh over the ‘trauriges Andenken’ it served to call up.46
When Margaretha Maultasch ceded the country she found herself unable to govern, to Austria at the earnest request of her people, in 1363, it was stipulated that Kufstein, Kitzbühel, and Rattenberg, which had been added to it by her marriage with Louis of Bradenburg, should revert to Bavaria. These three dependencies were recovered by the Emperor Maximilian in 1504, the two latter accepting his allegiance gladly, the former holding out stoutly against him. The story of the reduction of this stronghold is almost a stain on his otherwise prudent and prosperous reign.
Pienzenau, its commander, who was in the Bavarian interest, had particularly excited his ire by setting his men to sweep away with brooms the traces of the small damage which had been effected by his cannon, placed at too great a distance to do more than graze the massive walls. Philip von Recenau, Regent of Innsbruck, meantime cast two enormous field-pieces, which received the names of Weckauf and Purlepaus. These entirely turned the tide of affairs. Chronicles of the time do not mention their calibre, but declare that their missiles not only pierced the ‘fourteen feet-thick wall’ through and through, but entered a foot and a half into the living rock. Pienzenau’s heart misgave him when he saw the work of these destructive engines, and hastened to send in his submission to the Emperor; but it was too late. ‘So he is in a hurry to throw away his brooms at last, is he?’ cried Maximilian. ‘But he should have done it before. He has allowed the wall of this noble castle to be so disgracefully shattered, that he can make no amends but by giving up his own carcass to the same fate.’
No entreaty could move the Emperor from carrying out this chastisement, and some five-and-twenty of the principal men who had held out against him were condemned to be beheaded on the spot. When eleven had fallen before the headsman’s sword, Erich, Duke of Brunswick, sickening at the scene of blood, pleaded so earnestly with the Emperor, that he obtained the pardon of the rest. The eleven were buried by the pious country-people in a common grave; and who will may yet tread the ground where their remains rest in a little chapel built over their grave at Ainliff (dialectic for eleven), on the other side of the river Inn.
Its situation near the frontier has made it the scene of other sieges, of which none is more endeared to Tiroleans than that of 1809, when the patriot Speckbacher distinguished himself by many a dauntless deed.
If Kufstein has long had a truce to these stirring memories, many a fantastic story has floated out of it concerning the prisoners harboured there, even of late years. The Hungarian patriot brigand, Rocsla Sandor (Andrew Roshla), who won by his unscrupulous daring quite a legendary place in popular story, was long confined here. He was finally tried and condemned (but I think not executed) at Szeghedin, in July 1870; 454 other persons were included in the same trial, of whom 234 under homicidal charges; 100 homicides were laid to his charge alone, but there is no doubt that his services to the popular cause, at the same time that they condoned some of his excesses, in the popular judgment may have disposed the authorities to exaggerate the charges against him. The whole story is fantastic, and even in Kufstein, where he was almost an alien, there was admiration and sympathy underlying the shudder with which the people spoke of him. A much more interesting and no less romantic narrative, was told me of a Hungarian political prisoner, who formed the solitary instance of an escape from the stony walls of the fortress. His lady-love – and she was a lady by birth – with the heroic instincts of a Hungarian maiden, having with infinite difficulty made out where he was confined, followed him hither in peasant disguise, and with invincible perseverance succeeded, first in engaging herself as servant to the governor and then in conveying every day to her lover, in his soup, a hank of hemp. With this he twisted a rope and got safely away; and this occurred not more than six or seven years ago.
St. Louis’s day fell while we were at Kufstein – the name-day of the King of Bavaria; and being the border town, the polite Tiroleans make a complimentary fête of it. There was a grand musical Mass, which the officers from the Bavarian frontier attended, and a modest banquet was offered them after it. The peasants put on their holiday attire – passable enough as far as the men are concerned, but consisting mainly on the women’s behalf in an ugly black cloth square-waisted dress, and a black felt broad-brimmed hat, with large gold tassels lying on the brim. After Mass the Bavarian national hymn was sung to the familiar strains of our own.
All seemed gay and glad without. I returned to the primitive rambling inn; everyone was gone to take his or her part in the Kufstein idea of a holiday. There were three entrances, and three staircases; I took a wrong one, and in trying to retrace my steps passed a room through the half-open door of which I heard a sound of moaning, which arrested me. I could not find it in my heart to pass on. I pushed the door gently aside, and discovered a grey-haired old man lying comfortlessly on the bed in a state of torpor. I laid him back in a posture in which he could breathe more freely, opened his collar and gave him air, and with the aid of one or two simple means soon brought him back to consciousness. The room was barely furnished; his luggage was a small bundle tied in a handkerchief, his clothes betokened that he belonged to the respectable of the lower class. I was too desirous to converse with a genuine Tirolean peasant to refuse his invitation to sit down by his side. I had soon learnt his tale, which he seemed not a little pleased to find had an interest for a foreigner.
His lot had been marked by severe trials. In early youth he had been called to lose his parents; in later life, the dear wife who had for a season clothed his home again with brightness and hope. In old age he had had a heavier trial still. His only child, the son whom he had reared in the hope that he would have been the staff of his declining years, whom he had brought up in innocence in childhood, and shielded from knowledge of evil in early youth, had gone from him, and he knew not where to find him. The boy had always had a fancy for a roving adventurous life, but it had been his hope to have kept him always near him, free from the contamination of great cities.
I asked if it was not the custom in these parts for young men to go abroad and seek employment where it was more highly paid, and come
The frontispiece to this volume (very much improved by the artist who has drawn it on the wood).
