Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/333

CANTO III.] 12.

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 Lunéville in 1801. The Treaty of Leoben was signed April 18, 1797.]

13.

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 passed 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 passer-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