A tour through Holland : $b along the right and left banks of the Rhine, to the south of Germany, in the summer and autumn of 1806Carr, John, Sir
History
A tour through Holland : $b along the right and left banks of the Rhine, to the south of Germany, in the summer and autumn of 1806
Carr, John, Sir
Netherlands -- Description and travel; Rhine River Valley -- Description and travel
Netherlands in the last war, where in one battle he was surrounded by
seven French chasseurs, from whom he received the most desperate wounds
in various parts of his body before he surrendered. The late General Von
Düring, a name, on account of the heroic courage of the person to whom
it belonged, for ever embalmed in the memory of the English who served
in the last war in the Low Countries, in the years 1793, 4, 5, was born
in this dutchy. The troops were good looking men, and presented a very
soldier-like appearance: the uniform of the officers of the infantry is
a blue coat faced with scarlet, a large cocked hat, richly trimmed with
deep silver lace, and has a very handsome appearance. The dragoons wear
a casket, a light green jacket, and are well mounted. The pay of a
soldier is about the value of twopence a day. Several captains in the
army are princes (princes appanages), or princes of a distant branch,
who have but little property.
The principal object to attract the attention of a traveller is the
Exercierhaus, or house for manœuvering the troops in the winter: it
forms one side of the space of ground allotted for the parade, is three
hundred and fourteen feet long, and one hundred and fifty-two broad, and
has been erected about thirty-five years.
The ceiling of this enormous room is self-supported by a vast and most
ingenious wooden frame-work, without the assistance of either pillar or
arch below. Above this ceiling are a great number of apartments. In a
part of the room below, the artillery of the Grand Duke is deposited,
which is kept in high military order. About four thousand troops can be
manœuvred in this room with ease. The gardens adjoining to the
exercise-house are laid out in the English style, are very spacious, and
would be very beautiful if the ground undulated a little more; much
taste has been displayed in their arrangement, and the house of the
chief gardener is very pretty. These gardens are liberally opened to the
public, form the principal promenade, and were embellished on the day I
visited them with several lovely and elegantly dressed women. In one
part is a neat but simple mausoleum, erected by the order of Frederic
the Great to the memory of one of the landgravines of Darmstadt, a
princess remarkable for the powers of her mind and the beauty of her
person: upon which is the following elegant inscription, composed by
that great Prince:
“Hic jacet Ludovica Henricæ, Landgrafia Hessiæ,
“sexu fœmina, ingenio vir.”
“Here lies Louisa Henrietta, Landgravine of Hesse,
“a woman in form, in mind a man.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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