A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins. Johann Beckmann

      COACHES.

       Table of Contents

If by this name we are to understand every kind of covered carriage in which one can with convenience travel, there is no doubt that some of them were known to the ancients. The arcera, of which mention is made in the twelve tables, was a covered carriage used by sick and infirm persons150. It appears to have been employed earlier than the soft lectica, and by it to have been brought into disuse. A later invention is the carpentum, the form of which may be seen on antique coins, where it is represented as a two-wheeled car with an arched covering, and which was sometimes hung with costly cloth151. Still later were introduced the carrucæ, first mentioned by Pliny; but so little is known of them, that antiquaries are uncertain whether they had only one wheel, like our wheelbarrows, or, as is more probable, four wheels. This much, however, is known, that they were first-rate vehicles, ornamented with gold and precious stones, and that the Romans considered it as an honour to ride in those that were remarkably high152. In the Theodosian code the use of them is not only allowed to civil and military officers of the first rank, but commanded as a mark of their dignity153.

After this, covered carriages seem more and more to have become appendages of Roman pomp and magnificence; but the manner of thinking which prevailed under the feudal system banished the use of them for some time. As it was of the greatest importance to the feudal lords that their vassals should be always able to serve them on horseback, they could not think of indulging them with elegant carriages. They foresaw that by such luxury the nobility would give over riding on horseback, and become much more indolent and less fit for military service. Masters and servants, husbands and wives, clergy and laity, all rode upon horses or mules, and sometimes women and monks upon she-asses, which they found more convenient. The minister rode to court, and the horse, without any conductor, returned alone to his stable, till a servant carried him back to court to fetch his master. In this manner the magistrates of the imperial cities rode to council in the beginning of the sixteenth century; so that in the year 1502 steps to assist in mounting were erected by the Roman gate at Frankfort154. The members of the council who, at the diet and on other occasions, were employed as ambassadors, were on this account called Rittmeister; and even at present the expression riding servant is preserved in some of the imperial cities. The public entry of great lords into any place, or their departure from it, was never in a carriage, but on horseback; and in all the works which speak of the papal ceremonies there is no mention of a state coach or body coachmen, but of state horses or state mules. It was necessary that a horse for his holiness should be of a gray colour; not mettlesome however, but a quiet, tractable nag; that a stool with three steps should be brought to assist him to mount, and the emperor and kings, if present, were obliged to hold his stirrup and to lead the horse155, &c. Bishops made their public entrance on horses or asses richly decorated156. At the coronation of the emperor, the electors and principal officers of the empire were ordered to make their entrance on horses, and to perform their service on horseback157. Formerly it was requisite that those who received an investiture should make their appearance on horseback: the vassal was obliged to ride with two attendants to his lord’s court, where, having dismounted from his horse, he received his fief.

Covered carriages were known in the beginning of the sixteenth century; but they were used only by women of the first rank, for the men thought it disgraceful to ride in them. At that period, when the electors and princes did not choose to be present at the meetings of the states, they excused themselves by informing the emperor that their health would not permit them to ride on horseback; and it was considered as an established point, that it was unbecoming for them to ride like women158. What, according to the then prevailing ideas, was not allowed to princes, was much less permitted to their servants. In the year 1544, when Count Wolf of Barby was summoned by John Frederic, elector of Saxony, to go to Spires to attend the convention of the states assembled there, he requested leave, on account of his ill state of health, to make use of a close carriage with four horses. When the counts and nobility were invited to the marriage solemnity of the elector’s half brother, duke John Ernest, the invitation was accompanied with a memorandum, that such dresses of ceremony as they might be desirous of taking with them should be transported in a small waggon159. Had they been expected in coaches, such a memorandum would have been superfluous. The use of covered carriages was for a long time forbidden even to women. In the year 1545 the wife of a certain duke obtained from him, with great difficulty, permission to use a covered carriage in a journey to the baths, in which however much pomp was displayed, but with this express stipulation, that her attendants should not have the same indulgence160. It is nevertheless certain, that the emperor, kings and princes, about the end of the fifteenth century, began to employ covered carriages on journeys, and afterwards on public solemnities.

In the year 1474 the emperor Frederic III. came to Frankfort in a close carriage; and as he remained in it on account of the wetness of the weather, the inhabitants had no occasion to support the canopy which was held over him, but while he went to the council-house, and again returned. In the year following the emperor visited the same city in a very magnificent covered carriage. In the description of the splendid tournament held by Joachim, elector of Brandenburg, at Ruppin, in 1509, we read of a carriage gilt all over, which belonged to the electress; of twelve other coaches ornamented with crimson, and of another of the duchess of Mecklenburg, which was hung with red satin. At the coronation of the emperor Maximilian, in the year 1562, the elector of Cologne had twelve carriages. In 1594, when the margrave John Sigismund did homage at Warsaw on account of Prussia, he had in his train thirty-six coaches with six horses each161. Count Kevenhiller, speaking of the marriage of the emperor Ferdinand II. with a princess of Bavaria, says, “The bride rode with her sisters in a splendid carriage studded with gold; her maids of honour in carriages hung with black satin, and the rest of the ladies in neat leather carriages.” The same author mentions the entrance of Cardinal Dietrichstein into Vienna in 1611, and tells us that forty carriages went to meet him162. At the election of the emperor Matthias, the ambassador of Brandenburg had three coaches163. When the consort of that emperor made her public entrance, on her marriage in 1611, she rode in a carriage covered with perfumed leather. Mary, infanta of Spain, spouse of the emperor Ferdinand III., rode, in Carinthia, in 1631, in a glass carriage in which no more than two persons could sit. The wedding carriage of the first wife of the emperor Leopold, who was also a Spanish princess, cost together with the harness 38,000 florins164. The coaches used by that emperor are thus described by Rink:—“In the imperial coaches no great magnificence was to be seen: they were covered over with red cloth and black nails. The harness was black, and in the whole work there was no gold. The pannels were of glass, and on this account they were called the imperial glass coaches. On festivals the harness was ornamented with red silk fringes. The imperial coaches were distinguished only by their