In the centre of the square, or parade upon the top, was formerly mounted the celebrated cannon, called “the Griffon,” as well known to the Germans as that called “Queen Anne’s pocket-piece” is to the English. The former merits the national pride which it has excited. It was cast at Francfort by the order of the Elector, Richard Greifenklau, weighed thirty thousand pounds, and was capable of projecting a ball of one hundred and eighty pounds, to a distance of sixteen miles. Close to the touch-hole there was the following inscription: “Vogel Grief heis ich, meinem gnädigen herrn von Trier dien ich, wo er mich heist gewanten, da will ich Thoren und mauren Zerspalten. Simon gos mich, 1528.” In English—“Griffon is my name, I serve my gracious master of Treves, I shatter gates and walls, whenever he commands me to exert my force. Simon cast me, 1528.” This rock was supplied with water from a well 280 feet deep, which occupied three years in digging, in the year 1481, and has a subterranean communication with Coblentz, dug out of the solid rock: the fortress was justly deemed, when properly garrisoned, impregnable. In the time of the Swedish war, the attacks of eighty thousand French troops on the southern side of it, and of forty thousand on the northern, could make no impression upon it; however, still maintaining its invulnerable character, it was destined to bend to a foe, before which all local advantage is useless, and all enterprise unavailing: after bravely sustaining a blockade for a whole year, by the troops of the French republic, the garrison having endured with the greatest fortitude almost every description of privation and misery, were obliged to surrender to _famine_, and capitulated on the 28th January, 1799; soon after which the French covered this mighty rock with the ruins of those wonderful fortifications, which had employed the skill of the ablest engineer to complete, and which, but for the want of food, would have defied the force of her assailing enemy to the end of time. The thal, or valley below, is justly celebrated for its fertility and romantic beauty.