A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 1 (of 2)Beckmann, Johann
History
A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 1 (of 2)
Beckmann, Johann
Inventions -- History
avail, and coaches became common all over Germany.
It would be difficult to give an exact description of these carriages
without a figure, and drawings or paintings of them do not seem to be
common.
In the month of October 1785, when I visited the senate-house at
Bremen, I saw in the tax-chamber a view of the city, painted on the
wall in oil colours, by John Landwehr, in 1661. On the left side of
the fore-ground I observed a long quadrangular carriage, which did not
appear to be suspended by leather straps. It was covered with a canopy
supported by four pillars, but had no curtains, so that one could see
all the persons who were in it. In the side there was a small door, and
before there seemed to be a low seat, or perhaps a box. The coachman
sat upon the horses. It was evident, from their dress, that the persons
in it were burgomasters.
In the history of France we find many proofs that at Paris, in the
fourteenth, fifteenth, and even sixteenth centuries, the French
monarchs rode commonly on horses, the servants of the court on mules,
and the princesses, together with the principal ladies, sometimes on
asses. Persons of the first rank frequently sat behind their equerry,
and the horse was often led by servants. When Charles VI. wished to see
incognito the entrance of the queen, he placed himself on horseback
behind Savoisy, who was his confidant, with whom, however, he was
much incommoded in the crowd[169]. When Louis, duke of Orleans, that
prince’s brother, was assassinated in 1407, the two _ecuyers_ who
accompanied him rode both upon the same horse[170]. In the year 1534,
queen Eleonora and the princesses rode on white horses (_des haquenées
blanches_) during a sacred festival. That private persons also, such as
physicians, for example, used no carriages in the fifteenth century,
is proved by the principal entrance to their public school, which was
built in 1472, being so narrow that a carriage could not pass through
it, though it was one of the widest at that period. In Paris also, at
all the palaces and public buildings, there were steps for mounting on
horseback, such as those which the parliament caused to be erected in
1599; and Sauval says on this occasion, that though many of these steps
in latter periods had been taken away, there still remained several of
them in his time at old buildings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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