The Lady's Realm/Volume 6/Zampach and its Ghosts

by František Lützow

ZAMPACH AND ITS GHOSTS. BY FRANCIS COUNT LÜTZOW.

the garden terrace.

BOHEMIA has at all periods been a land of ghosts and “spirits.” With the intuition of genius, George Sand, who never visited the country, has, in her “Consuelo,” and “Comtesse de Rudolstadt,” described many of the ancient legends and traditions of the country, and the weird visions which appeared to the mysterious inhabitants of subterranean caverns and dungeons.

The north-eastern districts of Bohemia, in which the castles and ruins of Zampach, Brandeis, Litic, Pottenstein, and many others, are situated, are particularly rich in these romantic traditions. This is especially the case as regards the old ruins on the top of the volcano-like hill of Zampach. The ruins, indeed, have, in the present century, almost disappeared, but the hill is still, because of old associations, visited (not altogether to the delight of the proprietors) by countless tourists, who carefully examine the scanty fragments of masonry that still remain. Intimately connected with these ruins is the memory of John of Smoyno, known to the Bohemians as “Pancír” (the man in armour), from his custom of always appearing in full armour.

John of Smoyno was only one of the many robber-knights who then terrified the north-eastern districts of Bohemia, but his fame has remained exceptional. When King Charles I. of Bohemia, better known as the German Emperor Charles IV., started on an expedition against the robber-knights of north-eastern Bohemia, it was Zampach, the stronghold of the redoubtable Pancír, that was first attacked by the Royal forces. The situation of Zampach, which has already been noted, rendered the siege a difficult undertaking. The King’s forces were detained a considerable time before the castle, and the spot near the village of Pisecna where the King’s tent stood is still pointed out. Hunger at last forced Zampach to submit, and the Pancír surrendered unconditionally to his King. The depredations committed by John of Smoyno so incensed the King that he gave immediate orders that the Pancír should be hanged. The spot is still shown where the execution took place, and the peasants even—no doubt incorrectly—point out the tree to which the Pancír was hanged. The story of the Pancír, historical in its main points, soon became legendary. His gigantic sword is still shown in the house of the parish priest at Pisecna, and a portrait, obviously belonging to a later period, is pointed out as that of the Pancír in the same place.

The castle of Zampach was destroyed by order of Charles, though apparently not entirely, for as late as the beginning of the present century we read that the vast ruins were used as a quarry for building purposes by the inhabitants of the modern village of Zampach, which is situated at the foot of the hill. But the old castle was never re-built, and quaint legends gathered round the deserted spot. One of these refers to the “Devil’s Bridge.” We are told that one of the lords of Zampach was inspired with guilty love for the fair châtelaine of the neighbouring castle of Landsberg. According to the legend, which is by no means in accordance with the present topographical condition of the country, deep ravines then separated the neighbouring castles. But the devil, ever eager to assist sinners, in one night built a long bridge for the lovers—that is to say, the long-stretching hill known to my English visitors as “The Ridge,” which nearly, though not quite, connects Zampach with Landsberg. From that day the two castles were doomed to ruin. Zampach was destroyed in the manner already mentioned; Landsberg also, we are told, was taken by assault and destroyed shortly after the erection of the Devil’s Bridge.

While, as already mentioned, the castle on the summit of the Zampach hill was never re-built, it was not the present house at the foot of that hill that next became the home of the lords of Zampach. Shortly after the destruction of the old castle, a building was erected on the neck of the hill, on a spot about midway between the old and the present château of Zampach. This place, locally known as “Chudoba,” has also long been desolate, but a cottage erected there, probably built out of the materials of the older building, was only demolished within the last few years, when the Countess and I enlarged the Zampach Park. The only record of the second castle at Zampach is to be found in a picture still preserved in the chapel of the present house. A painter, gifted, unfortunately, with no artistic talent, but who was certainly not devoid of imagination, has, in a picture, represented the three castles of Zampach—the one on the summit of the hill, the one at its side, and the present building, which is at its foot-as existing simultaneously. This is, of course, purely imaginative, as there were considerable intervals of time between the destruction and reconstruction of these buildings.

The annals of Zampach, after the destruction of the first castle, are very obscure. The lords of Zampach, who, at that period, took their name from that castle, acquired vast possessions, and for a time ruled over a considerable portion of north-eastern Bohemia.

THE LONG GALLERY WHERE THE GHOST WALKS. The later records of Zampach are intimately connected with the order of the Jesuits. Twenty years after the introduction of the order into Bohemia, there were only forty Jesuits in Bohemia. One of the first acts of the provisional government that was formed at Prague after the defenestration was a decree expelling the Jesuits from Bohemia. But their exile was of short duration, and they returned in triumph in 1620, and then devoted their whole energy to the complete destruction of Bohemian Protestantism. Laws against “heresy,” which cannot be read without a shudder, were established. Tortures too horrible for mention are contained in these ghastly “regulations for the punishment of heretics.” The reading of a “non-Catholic” book was punishable by decapitation, and all such books were to be destroyed. It is to this regulation that the destruction of countless Bohemian books is due. The execution of these regulations was mainly entrusted to the Jesuits, most of whom were foreigners, and ignorant of the national language of Bohemia. It was therefore considered more practical to destroy all works written in that language, taking it for granted that they contained “heretical” thoughts. It is perhaps worthy of note that these severe regulations against all opinions that did not entirely conform with the doctrine of the Church of Rome were, in Austria and Bohemia, maintained up to a comparatively recent period. It is only since the accession of the present Emperor, Francis Joseph, whom, I think, the historians of the future will, in consequence of his statesmanship, impartiality, and benevolence, consider as one of the greatest figures of the nineteenth century, that all such regulations have been entirely abolished.

No part of Bohemia suffered more from the Romanist reign of terror, which followed the battle of the White Mountain, than the north-eastern districts of the land of which the town of Königgrätz is the centre, and in which Zampach is situated. The community of the Bohemian Brethren, generally in England called “Moravians,” had very numerous adherents in that part of Bohemia. Kunwald, the cradle of community of the Bohemian Brethren, and Brandeis and Reichenau (or Rychnov), two of its principal centres, are situated in this district. It was here that the Jesuits displayed their greatest energy and their greatest cruelty. Almost immediately after the battle of the White Mountain, a large Jesuit monastery, as a centre for the missionary work, was founded at Königgrätz; and when, about the year 1630, the estate of Zampach, by the will of its last owner, became the property of the order, a smaller monastery was built there also, which is now our home, but which has been considerably enlarged by us. Jesuits were sent to Zampach from Königgrätz, and a Jesuit from Glaz arrived to be the head of the new community. The district of Glaz, which then belonged to Bohemia, though it is now part of the Prussian kingdom, was largely inhabited by Protestants, and the Superior of the new foundation had there displayed restless energy and terrible cruelty. In absence of any evidence, we may hope that the popular tale that the first head of the Jesuit community, the “Missionarius Glacensis,” as he was called, had caused four thousand Protestants in the district of Glaz to be burnt, is an exaggeration. He certainly bore the reputation of exceptional severity, even in a cruel age; and his features, as depicted in a portrait which still exists in the chapel at Zampach, have distinctive notes of bigotry and ferocity.

THE CASTLE OF ZAMPACH.

The re-conversion of the inhabitants of Zampach to the Church of Rome does not appear to have proceeded rapidly, in spite of the energy of the redoubtable “missionary of Glaz.” It was the custom of the Jesuits to ereçt a large wooden crucifix in Bohemian villages, in commemoration of the date when the village had entirely returned to the Catholic rule that is to say, when every Protestant had been either killed or driven from his home. The still existent commemorative crucifix at Zampach dates only from about the year 1660. The system of conversion pursued at Zampach was, no doubt, the same as in other parts of the country. The wealthier Protestant inhabitants were driven into exile, and their property was confiscated. The peasants, on the other hand, who were then serfs, and therefore attached to the soil, to the cultivation of which they were necessary, were obliged to adopt the ritual and ceremonies of the Roman Church. Most of them did so under compulsion, but many of them continued to attend secret religious services according to the rites of the “Bohemian Brethren,” which were held in secluded spots in the forests. The Jesuits, therefore, in Zampach as elsewhere, were not satisfied with the mere acceptation of the Roman creed on the part of the Bohemian peasants. Simultaneously with their new monastery, the Jesuits had built a large chapel close to it, which, under the present ownership, has been joined to the house. Weekly attendance at the services held in this chapel was obligatory for the Bohemian peasants. Absence from the Sunday mass involved the ignominious penalty of corporal punishment for them—women as well as men.
THE CORNER OF THE LIBRARY WHERE THE GHOST APPEARS. A curious record of this period, a whipping post, which bears the date of 1666, can still be seen in a prominent place in the grounds of Zampach. Though these, now fortunately obsolete, arguments in favour of religious conformity were very numerous in Bohemia, Zampach is one of two places in the country where the ancient whipping-post has been preserved.

The Romanist reign of terror of course became legendary among the Bohemian peasantry, and many weird tales referring to it no doubt circulated among them. They, however, gradually fell into oblivion when the progress of time firmly established the Roman Church in the land, and all reminiscences both religious and political—of the past of Bohemia were discouraged. Yet the legend of the “Ghost of Zampach” is probably one of many which are still known among the inhabitants of a small area of country, and which refer to the re-establishment of the Roman Church in Bohemia, and to the Jesuits, whose work it principally was. The tale is told in various manners. I here give the version which was told me by one of the gamekeepers, who has the distinction—a very great one in Bohemian villages—of being the “oldest inhabitant” of Zampach.

After the disaster of the White Mountain, it was the policy of the Jesuits to gain over to their creed and their order those members of the nobility who had not fled the country, and many youths belonging to Protestant families were more or less forcibly enlisted as novices to the order. In Zampach also, the legend tells us, a young Protestant noble was obliged to join, as a novice, the new foundation of the Jesuits. The young man had, before the battle of the White Mountain, been betrothed to the daughter of a neighbouring noble, but, of course, from the moment that he had become a novice, he was bound by vow to celibacy. Unfortunately, his love did not die, and he still occasionally, at night, escaped from the monastery where he was imprisoned to meet his former bride. Masters in the art of espionage as the Jesuits have always been, it was not likely that these escapades of the young novice would long escape their vigilance. He was—according to the legend—watched, and forcibly brought back to the monastery. His punishment was terrible, though by no means unprecedented in the days of monasticism. It was decided that he should be immured. A hole was made in the thick walls of the monastery near the present morning-room of the Countess, of which a representation is here given, and he was confined there and left to die of starvation. From that moment the spot became haunted. Every night at midnight, so the peasants state, his ghost leaves the spot where he was immured, and for about an hour paces the vast corridor of the monastery. It is impossible to persuade any of the peasants to approach this passage after sunset. They tell us that years ago a workman who had been employed to do some repairs there, and had continued his work up to the evening, had seen the ghost of the novice. He was so terrified at the apparition that he hurried away and immediately committed suicide by hanging himself. The peasants, however, give no details as to the appearance of the ghost. They only say that he still wears ecclesiastical dress, and that his eyes are large and terrible.

“His form you may trace,
But not his face,
’Tis covered by his cowl;
But his eyes may be seen
Through the folds between,
And they seem as a parted soul.”

After the temporary suppression of the Jesuit order in Austria towards the end of the eighteenth century, the monastery, or rather château, of Zampach fell into the hands of different owners, who were generally absentees. If, therefore, the Jesuit novice continued his nightly walks in the deserted passages, no one could bear witness to his apparition. When, in 1884, the estate and château of Zampach were purchased by Countess Lützow, and became— as they have since continued—our residence for about half the year, the question of the “Zampach ghost” became a subject of discussion. Bohemian peasants are perhaps not unnaturally reticent on such subjects, and I am afraid that some of my visitors rather believed that the “ghost” was a fiction imagined by me for the purpose of preventing the sittings in the smoking-room from continuing beyond midnight.

But since last year the existence of the Zampach ghost is a certainty—at least, to the same extent as that of any other ghost—a very necessary qualification!

Two English friends who were studying at Dresden came to Zampach to spend Christmas with us. The conversation in the smoking-room one evening turned to the Zampach ghost, and we decided, a few minutes before twelve—“the hour of ghosts,” as it is called in German—to go to the Countess’s morning-room, near which, as already mentioned, the novice is traditionally said to have been immured. We left the door leading from the morning-room to the passage, along which the ghost is said to pace, open, but at the stroke of midnight a sudden gust of wind closed it. Shortly afterwards we distinctly heard footsteps in the passage; they appeared to be the steps of a person wearing sandals, such as the novice is traditionally reported to have worn. These footsteps, now louder, now more faint, could be heard for at least ten minutes, and I cannot deny that we were decidedly frightened. For a moment it appeared as if the door were being opened, and we hoped, or rather feared, that we should see the ghost whose footsteps we had so distinctly heard. But the door was almost immediately closed. My friends reminded me of the German notion, that ghosts never appear to several people together, but only to one person, who is alone. I suggested that one of them should, next midnight, go alone to the “ghost-room”; but somehow the suggestion was not taken up.

Traditionally connected with the legend of the novice is that of the mysterious fountain in the grounds of Zampach, from which, it is said, a female figure, clad entirely in white, rises for a short time at midnight, only to disappear again after a few minutes. It is said that the bride of the novice threw herself into this fountain when she heard of the disappearance of her lover, and that she nightly leaves her grave to join him in his wanderings through the deserted passages of the castle of Zampach. It is, however, very possible that the tale of the mysterious white apparition is of far more ancient, even ancient, even pagan, origin. The ancient Bohemians believed in the existence of nymphs, known as Rusalky, who peopled the springs, and occasionally appeared to passers-by. I must, however, plead guilty to never having seen the nymph, or Rusalka, of Zampach.

Photo. by J. Caswall Smith, Oxford Street.