MEDIEVAL HUNTING.
THE author of one of the earliest books on hunting appended to it a treatise on the plague, and bridged over the hiatus by an argument that as good hunters could withstand the seven deadly sins, which were very much on people's consciences just then, much more easily than could other people, they were much better able to take the chances of ending this mortal life with equanimity. But the Emperor Maximilian, the " last knight of chivalry," whose private game-book forms the subject of a delightful article by Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman in the February number of the Monthly Review, does not fall back on any spiritual excuses for writing at length on sporting subjects. He thought they were among the things which made life worth living, and seems to have projected a kind of "Badminton Series" em- bodying his own views on hunting, shooting, hawking, and fish- ing, carefully illustrated by leading artists. One of these is the " Theuerdank," another the "Secret Book of Sport," from his own hand, and a third that which forms the subject of the article and illustrations in the Monthly Review. Maxi- milian seems to have been the counterpart of the present German Emperor in many respects, among these being his ceaseless energy, his power of driving half-a-dozen carts at once, and a passion for seeing himself in print and being " photographed" in all his activities in appropriate costume; only as photography was not invented, Maximilian had to be content with absolutely literal pictures taken on the spot. But the whole series so resembles the spirit of the photographs of the Kaiser shooting, boar-hunting, whale-hunting, and yachting sold in Berlin, that it is difli- cult not to feel a little uncertain which has been doing what, after comparing the two, as the writer recently did.
The subject of Mr. Baillie-Grohman's paper is a work written for the Emperor by his master of the game, Carl von Spam-, in the years 1499 and 1500. A transcript of it has been for some time in the archives at Innsbruck, but the original had disappeared from Austria, and was supposed to be lost. Like most objects of real value, it was not lost. Mr. Baillie-Grohman had the industry to search the Burgundian Library at Brussels, and there he found the original, with its delightful illustrations, which are now reproduced. Both this book and a most attractive work of Maximilian's on fishing, written four years later, and illustrated by the same artist, now one of the treasures of the Court Library at Vienna, can be seen and ordered at Messrs. Sampson Low and Marston's in London. Three of the illustrations now given are from . this fishing-book, and we are not sure that they are not the best of the series. They show hunting, hawking, ibex and chamois driving, fishing, and outdoor luncheon parties, with the ladies par- taking of boiled trout, and Maximilian signing a cheque for the Court Jew, who is wanted to provide a little change for the expenses of the trip. They are, in fact, a full and sufficient history in themselves. Maximilian much despised the gun for shooting game, and in only one picture does he appear as using one, to shoot a chamois. He mentions that after one of his men had missed a chamois with his " fire- tube," he killed it with a crossbow at two hundred yards. He used a strong steel crossbow in summer, and for winter shoot- ing, when the frost made steel brittle, carried one in which the bow was made of horn. But this and much else will be found by the reader of Mr. Grohman's pages. We will turn to the pictures and read them in our own fashion.
The sport was thoroughly well done in all departments. The long mountain lake, the Achensee, was a great centre of various branches of the art. By the shore was built a pretty timber
hunting lodge, with a nice gallery for the ladies to sit and look out over the lake and have " tea " in. Both Maximilian's Consorts, like the late martyred Empress, were devoted to these hunting trips; and if they had not been they would probably have had to come all the same. Apparently the Emperor had to keep the road in order beside the lake; for he put up a " pike " in front of the lodge with a man to look after it, and a rail sticking out into the water so that people should not squeeze round it. He wore a hunting cap, much like the "field cap" worn by Lord Roberts, which he could button under his chin on cold days, and a purple coat. In the lake he fished with a draw-net from a punt, rowing to the shore when the boat was full, holding the biggest fish in his hands. One indeed is so large that the Emperor is cuddling it in his arms, like Mr. Briggs saving the celebrated salmon. The other trout were put in tubs, carried round to the house, and made into what in Scotland is called a "kettle of fish" on the spot. The lake was also a factor in deer and chamois hunts. These were hunted down from the mountains and took to the water. This gave a chance to shoot them with the crossbow, and once a chamois was caught in the fishing-nets. It will be remembered that for many reigns, from Edward I. to Henry VII., our Kings were no great hunters. Falconry was their chief and most prized sport. Maximilian had a few falcons at this place, and flew them at wild ducks, to amuse the Turkish Ambassador. But he very rightly preferred big-. game hunting. The deer were generally hunted till they "took soil" in a river or lake, when they were shot or speared. But the Imperial ibex-hunting and chamois-driving compel the admiration of the most ardent mountaineer. It is difficult enough to climb these peaks and precipices with a short rifle, and then to stalk the game among ice and snow. But this astonishing Emperor had them driven to him by men over peak and glacier, and then either shot them with his crossbow or speared them as they ran. To get any chance at these active creatures he used spears thirty-five feet long ! Sometimes a chamois was cornered against a wall of rock, and so speared or shot.
Mediasvalism still survives so vigorously in German sentiment that we should naturally expect to find something of the spirit and form of Maximilian's hunting enthusiasm both at the Austrian and Prussian Courts. They do survive in both, and with just the difference which we should expect between sport as pursued by the descendant of the great Hapsburg and of the Brandenburg Hohenzollern. The present Emperor of Austria is the keenest sportsman; and the German Emperor has the most ceremonious and magnificent hunting.
The present Austrian Emperor follows the example of Maximilian, who was evidently as keen a sportsman, for pure love and enthusiasm, as ever fired at a stag or caught a fish, astonishingly active, clever, and vigilant, both in organising his " shoots " and in the actual pursuit of the game. He employed all the staff necessary to ensure success, yet he liked his ladies to come to luncheon and see the fun, and at the same time had plenty of " special messengers " to take des- patches and bring news at any time in the day. But he did not make a Court function of his sport. It was the real thing, done on a great scale, and by a great Monarch with no time to lose. So he would "put in" half-an-hour's fishing with the nets in the lake while waiting for a deer drive, and then jump out of the boat and have his long fishing-boots pulled off and his ice-shoes put on, pick up a crossbow, and gallop off to his stand 2,000 ft. up the mountain side, in time for a shot at an ibex. He took just that personal trouble about his sport which ensures success. When fighting in the Netherlands, and greatly occupied, " he writes letters to a peasant woman in a remote valley in Tyrol about a young ibex buck they were keeping for him." Poaching gave him no end of trouble, especially the use of " devilish hand guns " by peasants. But he used politic arts. Instead of putting the husbands into jail, he wrote auto- graph letters to the wives of the worst offenders, pro- mising each of them a silk gown as a reward if they would prevent their husbands killing ibexes. The present Emperor, Francis Joseph, may not be quite so personally identified with the management of his sport, but when he can he goes into these same mountains, dresses exactly like an elderly Tyrolese farmer, except that he has a rather worse coat or, and :limbs and shoots like a young man. It is interesting, too, to learn from Mr. Baillie-Grohman that the numbers of some kinds of game in these mountains have greatly increased, though those in the forests have diminished. Maximilian's foresters knew the numbers of chamois, deer, and ibex on each mountain and in every valley, and these were carefully entered in the private hunting:book. Comparing these 'entries with the numbers known to be on the same ground at the present day, it appears that there are now three, and even four, times as many chamois, though the red- deer have almost disappeared.
The German Emperor, on the other hand, though not devoted to mountain sport, rejoices in the possession of the finest deer forests in the world. They are scattered over the whole Empire. Some are full of red-deer, others of fallow-deer, and in most there are, in addition, quantities of roebuck and wild boars. All the deer are as wild as forest stags ever are, though the boars are artificially fed with maize and turnips in winter to mitigate the damage done in their nightly foraging excursions. But the hunting is practically a great Court function, thoroughly German, and mechanised, so losing all the essential charm of sport. The chief huntsman is a great Court officer, the guns are placed with reference to precedence, and the Order of St. Hubert is worn with Court hunting dress. In some of the forests, partly to secure the killing off of the animals, partly to make things easy and distribute the shoot- ing, the boars are driven till they come to the month of a V of split larch rails. Then they are moved on till they.run down " funnels " to different rows of guns. Whether these are so arranged as to distribute different-sized pigs to officials of differing magnitudes the writer knows not. But it may be doubted if Maximilian would have approved of this form of venerie.
May we suggest to Mr. Baillie-Grohman that in his next excursus into the realms of Imperial sport he should choose Napoleon I. as his central figure ? It would prove a mar- vellous record of human energy, if not of good hunting. It is said that when the Emperor shot he liked to have his Marshals round him ; but he was so wild a " gun " that they had deep shelter trenches dug behind the place where he took up his stand, and at the moment of danger jumped into them and disappeared like so many Boers.
Previous page
