The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century/Chapter 4

by William Edward Mead

CHAPTER IV

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ROADS

I

The modern tourist who bowls along in his private motor-car over highways smooth as a floor through almost every part of Europe, or the sight-seer of modest means who employs the more plebeian means of transport, can little appreciate what land travel meant a century and a half ago. The Romans, with their keen practical sense and unsurpassed administrative ability, had constructed a wonderful system of paved roads radiating from the capital to all parts of the Empire.^[1] It is not too much to say that in the time of the Roman Empire one could travel with more expedition and less discomfort than was the case, in the eighteenth century, throughout the greater part of Europe. With the overthrow of the imperial power the old Roman roads had fallen into decay. What had once been unbroken lines of easy communication^[2] between the capital and the remotest provincial towns had often become rude and almost undistinguishable paths. Except in portions of France and of the Low Countries, the roads throughout most of Europe in the eighteenth century were a disgrace to civilized countries. One might reasonably expect that where the highways were the chief, and in many cases the only, means of communication, they would be brought to the highest perfection, but such was by no means the rule. Even in England, which was not lacking in wealth and some degree of splendor, the roads in the seventeenth century presented almost insuperable difficulties, which Macaulay depicts with his usual vigor.^[3] In the eighteenth century the overturning or miring of a coach in the immediate neighborhood of London was one of the commonest of incidents.^[4] In wet weather there was in London a veritable slough between Kensington Palace and St. James's Palace.

 

II

France

The roads of France are generally praised by eighteenth-century travelers.^[5] It is, moreover, unquestionably true that on the whole no part of Europe in the last quarter of the century, except some portions of the Low Countries, had roads so good as France,^[6] but in the seventeenth century even the French roads left much to be desired, and in some cases they could hardly have failed to improve if they had remained passable at all. When Lippomano was in France in the sixteenth century he found the roads frightfully miry. Only the highway from Paris to Orléans was paved. In Poitou he could make but four leagues a day.^[7] As late as the middle of the seventeenth century the roads were often ill-defined and passed through fords so deep as to let the water into the carriage through the sides.^[8] Before 1700, and in many regions after that date, travel at night was deemed inadvisable.^[9] Not until the reign of Louis XVI had the corvées so improved the highways that diligences ventured on the roads after dark.^[10] More than one of the roads remained bad to a late date. The keen-eyed Abbé Barthélemy went to Italy in 1755, and he remarks:^[11] "Some of our journeys have been very tiresome. The one from Auxerre to Dijon, which is two and thirty leagues, was most intolerable. The road passes through a very fine country, but in itself it is the worst I have ever seen."

The well-known traveler Breval had trouble in reaching Auxerre from the other side: "Auxerre made us some Amends for three Days very dismally spent in getting thither from Gien, thro' a barren ill-peopled Country, and impassable almost for Wheel-Carriages."^[12] The distance in our time by railway is only fifty-seven miles.

Foreign tourists had little occasion to traverse the extreme west of France, — Brittany and La Vendée, — but there, too, the condition of the roads was extremely primitive. John Can- in going back to England from his tour in France passed through Caen in Normandy. "After we left Caen," says he, "the roads became very bad. Our ponderous machine [diligence] frequently rolled from one side to the other, and with many alarming crackings, threatened us with a heavy and perilous overthrow."^[13]

Many highways, especially in the remoter provinces, were without question sadly out of repair. But notwithstanding bad roads, such as one too often finds in America to-day, the quality of the French roads in general was excellent. The chief alleged defect was the heavy pavement,^[14] which ill-adapted them for the passage of light carriages.^[15] The anonymous author of "A View of Paris" (1701), though fond of satirical comment, says nevertheless of the road from Paris to Versailles that it "is pav'd exceeding even, as indeed are most roads in France."^[16] Lady Mary Montagu was not given to overpraise, but in 1739 she writes: "France is so much improved, it would not be known to be the same country we passed through, twenty years ago … the roads are all mended, and the greater part of them paved as well as the streets of Paris, planted on both sides like the roads in Holland; and such good care taken against robbers, that you may cross the country with your purse in your hand."^[17]

The road between Calais and Saint-Omer, says Jones,^[18] "seems equal to any of the best turnpike roads we have in England," being about forty feet wide and planted with willows, poplars, and elms. So good was the road between Mons and Paris that the masters of the diligences assured their patrons that on the third day after leaving Brussels one could dine at Paris.^[19] And Dr. Rigby says, in 1789: "We were told to expect nothing but rough paved roads. They are paved in some places, but in others as good as English roads."^[20]

III

Italy

We occasionally detect in the tourist in Italy an apparent lack of interest in notable places only a short distance off the beaten track. As a partial explanation we must observe that large districts in Italy had either no roads at all or at best mere tracks that in wet weather were sloughs and in dry weather were troughs of dust. The best roads were bad enough. In Piedmont, says Tivaroni,^[21] "travel was difficult for all. On going out from many towns and from many villages one was compelled to proceed on foot or to ride on asses, mules, or horses along narrow roads that were in wretched repair or crossed by streams of water lacking bridges.… The bad state of the roads was and remained one of the greatest obstacles to the progress of internal commerce, the maintenance of the thoroughfares — even the royal highways — being entrusted to the communes."

This general statement about the roads of Piedmont may easily be paralleled for the greater part of Italy^[22] in contemporary books of travel dating from the beginning to the end of the century, Most significant are the accounts of those travelers who write late in the eighteenth century or early in the nineteenth, for one has a right by that time to expect some improvement.

We may single out a few specimen comments, beginning with the northern districts. James Edward Smith said that the country about Genoa was so extremely hilly that the only way of traveling into the interior parts was in sedan chairs.^[23] Writing in May of 1766, Sharp notes: "We are arrived at Turin; but the journey from Alexandria has been unpleasant; one night's rain has made the road almost impassable, so muddy and clayey is the soil."^[24]

An earlier traveler, very fair-minded, says that the journey of ninety miles between San Remo and Genoa requires three days on muleback. The road is "either very good or very bad, but much the most of the latter; generally along the brinks of vast high mountains, the path very narrow and very rugged."^[25]

Some friends of Smollett were "exposed to a variety of disagreeable adventures from the impracticability of the road. The coach had been several times in the most imminent hazard of being lost with all our baggage; and at two different places it was necessary to hire a dozen of oxen and as many men, to disengage it from the holes into which it had run."^[26]

A little off the main routes one might expect almost anything. Here is an account of a drive to Petrarch's last home — Arqua Petrarcha: "A little beyond the village of Cataio, we turned off from the high road, and alighting from the carriage on account of the swampiness of the country, we walked and rowed occasionally through lines of willows, or over tracts of marshy land, for two or three miles, till we began to ascend the mountain. …^[27] We passed through the village and descended the hill. Though overturned by a blunder of the drivers, and for some time suspended over the canal with imminent danger of being precipitated into it, yet as the night was bright and warm, and all the party in high spirits, the excursion was extremely pleasant."^[28]

As for Tuscany, Bishop Burnet had remarked before the close of the seventeenth century, "All the ways of Tuscany are very rugged, except on the sides of the Arno; but the uneasiness of the road is much qualified by the great care that is had of the highways, which are all in very good case."^[29] De La Lande agrees with Burnet: "One travels agreeably in Tuscany, the roads being in general fine, with the exception of those between Siena and the boundary of the Grand Duchy."^[30]

But of the much-traveled way between Bologna and Florence Addison says: "The way … runs over several ranges of mountains, and is the worst road, I believe, of any over the Apennines, for this was my third time of crossing them."^[31] In more detail Nugent comments: "This road is so incommodious for wheel-carriages that those who travel between Bologna and Florence choose either litters or mules, because of being obliged so often to alight and walk a-foot, rather than calashes, in which they travel in the plain country. The litters from Bologna to Florence usually cost two pistoles and a half, or three pistoles, the horses eighteen or twenty julios, according to the season."^[32]

Roads crossing the Apennines might be expected to offer some difficulty, but even the great highways connecting the North and the South were little better. The road from Siena to Rome, one of the most traveled in Italy, had an evil reputation. Says De Brosses, "It was more than enough to dishearten travellers without mentioning broken shafts or axles, somersaults, and other little incidents of the trip."^[33]

Worst of all were the roads throughout the South. In traveling in the Kingdom of Naples everything, says Tivaroni, had to be carried on the backs of mules. "It was difficult or dangerous to go on horseback in Calabria, and little less in the Abruzzi."^[34] "Up to the time of Charles III, the Kingdom [of Naples] had no roads except that to Rome and perhaps in part that to Foggia. Every other trace of passable roads was lacking. 'It is impossible,' remarked Gorani, who was later at Naples, when already the roads had increased in number, 'to travel in this kingdom. The roads are extremely neglected and dangerous; because there is no police, they offer none of the conveniences that are found in the greater part of the countries of Europe. Most journeys are made on horseback, with horses or mules following for carrying baggage and provisions.'"^[35]

De La Lande confirms Tivaroni by saying of the road between Rome and Naples that it was so bad in winter that one ran great risk of being swallowed up in the mud-holes.^[36] "Charles III opened roads for wheeled carriages from Naples as far as Capua, Caserta, Persano, Venafro, and Bovino. They led to the kings' hunting grounds."^[37] From 1778 to 1793, Ferdinand opened various carriage roads for traffic between province and province and from the interior to the sea. But these were only main thoroughfares. In fact, throughout all the rest of the kingdom cross-roads and means of intercommunication were lacking almost everywhere.

Sicily was, if possible, even worse provided with means of communication: "There were, in 1852, just 750 miles of carriage-road in the whole island. Even the two chief cities, Palermo and Messina, were not linked by any continuous highway, for the middle part of the connexion was 'a mule track 42 miles long.' Travellers, therefore, went from the east to the west of the island by sea, except a few of the richer and more adventurous English tourists, who rode over the rough tracks, taking their own tents and provisions, for the food and lodging that could be obtained from the natives appear to have been more intolerable than they are to-day."^[38]

The state of the roads in Sicily may be judged by a single significant fact. In 1734, Charles of Bourbon had occasion to go from the mainland to Palermo, but he proceeded all the way by sea, "as the proposal of a land journey was frustrated by the rugged nature of the country, which was wild and almost uninhabited."^[39] Obviously, the average eighteenth-century tourist could not hope to travel more easily than a prince in his own dominions.

 

IV

Germany

The roads of Germany were notoriously bad. Complaints about them were incessant; and although much labor was spent upon them in the later years of the eighteenth century,^[40] there was so much to be done that the comments of tourists were justly severe.^[41] In the eighteenth century, as in our time, Germany had great and splendid cities, but not until 1753 was the first scientifically constructed road built. Misson found the roads between Cologne and Mainz so bad that he went by the Rhine "notwithstanding the extreme slowness of the passage."^[42] In speaking of the road between Augsburg and Munich he says: "The country is extremely rough for coaches, by the straight road; they are very apt to overturn, and the passengers are often constrain'd to alight, by reason of the continual ascending and descending among the mountains."^[43] From Nuremberg the roads were "very bad and woody till you come towards Ingolstadt." "Our journey along the Rhine," says Breval, "thro' the extreme badness of the ways, tho' in the midst of Summer, took us up two whole days between Shaffhouse and Augst."^[44]

In the same tenor Nugent cautions travelers: "The roads in general are very indifferent, which makes it downright misery to travel in bad weather."^[45] Post-wagons, he says, do not make over eighteen miles a day. The fastidious Duke of Hamilton traveled in company with Dr. Moore, who wrote an account of their journeys. In going from Frankfort to Cassel they arrived at midnight of the second day. "As the ground is quite covered with snow, the roads bad, and the posts long, we were obliged to take six horses for each chaise, which, after all, in some places, moved no faster than a couple of hearses." Moore interjects a word of comment on "the phlegm and obstinacy of German postillions, of which one who has not travelled in the extremity of the winter, and when the roads are covered with snow, through this country, can form no idea."^[46]

Another tourist says that ten hours were required to go the thirty-six miles from Limburg to Frankfort-on-the-Main.^[47] As late as 1826 the Englishman Russell pronounced some portions of the road from Magdeburg to Berlin "the worst in Europe," — an "unceasing pull through loose dry sand, which rises to the very nave of the wheel."^[48] The same conditions obtained about Hanover. "Scarcely out of the gates of Hanover, and the wheels already drowned in sand up to the axle-tree."^[49]

The roads in Austria were, in some districts, better than in regions farther west, but a tourist seeking an impassable highway could safely count on finding one. In going, as late as 1798, from Lobositz to Aussig, writes Mariana Starke, "the lightest vehicle can scarcely escape over-turning, unless held up by men. … Two persons who went in carriages at the same time with us broke blood-vessels, while others were over-turned, and nearly killed with fatigue."^[50]

After this recital, which could be indefinitely extended, of the difficulties attending travel on German roads, we may with little hesitation agree with a tourist in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century that "the manner of travelling … is more inconvenient than in any other part of Europe equally civilized. Intercommunication is therefore greatly impeded and in the winter months totally interrupted."^[51]

 

V

The Low Countries

In the Low Countries, particularly in Flanders, the roads appear to have been very good except in some of the less frequented parts.^[52] The slight elevation of the land offered small obstacles to the building of thoroughfares that went with undeviating directness from one town to another. In multitudes of instances the road ran beside the canal and served both as a towpath and a highway for general traffic. Very commonly, as we may see in the pictures of Hobbema, the roads were planted with two rows of trees and maintained in excellent condition. James Essex, who toured in France and the Low Countries in 1773, went from Antwerp by way of Mechlin to Brussels and notes in his "Journal": "The Roads are worth the notice of a Traveler, being made through the most delightfull inclosed Country that can be immagined, it is paved in the middle, as well as the best streets in London, and kept in better repair."^[53]

1. On the relative excellence of ancient and modern roads, see Friedländer, Roman Life and Manners, i, 275.
2. For the routes of the Roman roads, see ibid., p. 272. On the lack of roads, see p. 277.
3. History of England, i, 279–91.
4. See Crabb Robinson's Diary, i, 411.
5. Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, pp. 261, 278.
6. Cf. Thierry, Almanach du Voyageur, p. 385.
7. Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 52.
8. Ibid., p. 127.
9. Ibid., p. 60.
10. Ibid., p. 12.
11. Travels in Italy, p. 6.
12. Breval, Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, ii, 41.
13. Carr, The Stranger in France, p. 269.
14. "The way from Paris to this city [Orléans], as indeed most of the roads in France, is paved with a small square-face stone, so that the country does not much molest the traveller with dirt and ill-way, as in England, only 't is somewhat hard to the poor horses' feet, which causes them to ride more temperately, seldom going out of the trot, or grand pas, as they call it." Evelyn, Diary (1644), i, 71.
15. The Gentleman's Guide, p. 4.
16. Page 56.
17. Letters, ii, 52, 53.
18. Journey to Paris (1776), i, 34, 35.
19. Nugent, Grand Tour, i, 238.
20. Letters, p. 9.
21. Tivaroni, Storia Critica del Risorgimento Italiano, i, 157.
22. Concerning Sardinia, Tivaroni observes: "In 1720 there was not a post-office in the entire island, there were no roads, no easy means of communication, not even between the principal cities." Ibid., i, 183.
23. Tour on the Continent, iii, 89.
24. Letters from Italy, p. 266.
25. Wright, Some Observations made in Travelling through France and Italy, i, 20.
26. Smollett, Travels, ii, 183.
27. Eustace, Classical Tour in Italy, i, 191.
28. Ibid, I, 195.
29. Travels, p. 146.
30. Voyage en Italie, ii, 146.
31. Remarks on Italy, Works, ii, 330.
32. Grand Tour, iii, 324. A note written on the margin by a later tourist remarks, "Very fine road now."
33. Lettres sur l'Italie, ii, 98 f.
34. Tivaroni, Storia Critica del Risorgimento Italiano, i, 341.
35. Ibid., i, 340, 341.
36. Voyage en Italie, vii, 238, 239.
37. Tivaroni, Storia Critica del Risorgimento Italiano, i, 341.
38. Trevelyan, Garibaldi and the Thousand, p. 146.
39. Colletta, History of the Kingdom of Naples, 1734–1843, i, 49.
40. Cf. Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 405.
41. Incidents like the following were common, and this is from the year 1794, on the road between Coblenz and Ems: "Turning short by the corner of a hedge, one of our horses fell into a deep slough, in which the wheels of our carriage on the left side were instantly buried." Cogan, The Rhine, ii, 78.
42. New Voyage to Italy, i¹, 87.
43. Ibid., i², 503.
44. Breval, Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, ii, 69.
45. Grand Tour, ii, 68.
46. View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany, p. 231. A little later he adds (p. 246): "As soon as the roads were passable, we left Cassel, and arrived, not without difficulty and some risk, at Munden."
47. Tour through Germany, pp. 73, 74.
48. Tour in Germany, ii, 7.
49. Ibid., ii, 1.
50. Letters from Italy, ii, 230, 231.
51. Cogan, The Rhine, ii, 259.
52. In 1750, Voltaire notes that "one is mired in summer in august Germany." He adds: "Of all modern nations, France and the little country of the Belgians are the only ones that have roads worthy of antiquity." Cited by Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 262.
53. Essex, Journal of a Tour, etc., p. 55.