Johann Beckmann - A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

It would be difficult to give an exact description of these carriages without a figure, and drawings or paintings of them do not seem to be common.

In the month of October 1785, when I visited the senate-house at Bremen, I saw in the tax-chamber a view of the city, painted on the wall in oil colours, by John Landwehr, in 1661. On the left side of the fore-ground I observed a long quadrangular carriage, which did not appear to be suspended by leather straps. It was covered with a canopy supported by four pillars, but had no curtains, so that one could see all the persons who were in it. In the side there was a small door, and before there seemed to be a low seat, or perhaps a box. The coachman sat upon the horses. It was evident, from their dress, that the persons in it were burgomasters.

In the history of France we find many proofs that at Paris, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and even sixteenth centuries, the French monarchs rode commonly on horses, the servants of the court on mules, and the princesses, together with the principal ladies, sometimes on asses. Persons of the first rank frequently sat behind their equerry, and the horse was often led by servants. When Charles VI. wished to see incognito the entrance of the queen, he placed himself on horseback behind Savoisy, who was his confidant, with whom, however, he was much incommoded in the crowd 169. When Louis, duke of Orleans, that prince’s brother, was assassinated in 1407, the two ecuyers who accompanied him rode both upon the same horse 170. In the year 1534, queen Eleonora and the princesses rode on white horses ( des haquenées blanches ) during a sacred festival. That private persons also, such as physicians, for example, used no carriages in the fifteenth century, is proved by the principal entrance to their public school, which was built in 1472, being so narrow that a carriage could not pass through it, though it was one of the widest at that period. In Paris also, at all the palaces and public buildings, there were steps for mounting on horseback, such as those which the parliament caused to be erected in 1599; and Sauval says on this occasion, that though many of these steps in latter periods had been taken away, there still remained several of them in his time at old buildings.

Carriages, however, appear to have been used very early in France. An ordinance of Philip the Fair, issued in 1294, for suppressing luxury, and in which the citizens’ wives are forbid to use carriages ( cars ), is still preserved 171. Under Francis I., or about 1550, somewhat later, there were at Paris, for the first time, only three coaches, one of which belonged to the queen, another to Diana de Poictiers, the mistress of two kings, Francis I. and Henry II., by the latter of whom she was created duchess of Valentinois, and the third to René de Laval, lord of Bois-dauphin. The last was a corpulent unwieldy nobleman, who was not able to ride on horseback. Others say, that the first three coaches belonged to Catherine de Medici; Diana, duchess of Angoulême, the natural daughter of Henry II., who died in 1619, in the eightieth year of her age; and Christopher de Thou, first president of the parliament. The last was excused by the gout; but the rest of the ministers of state soon followed his example 172. Henry IV. was assassinated in a coach; but he usually rode through the streets of Paris on horseback, and to provide against rain, carried a large cloak behind him. For himself and his queen he had only one coach; as appears by a letter still preserved, in which he writes to a friend, “I cannot wait upon you today, because my wife is using my coach 173.” We, however, find two coaches at the public solemnity on the arrival of the Spanish ambassador, Don Peter de Toledo, under Henry IV. 174This contradiction is not worth further research; but it shows that all writers do not speak of the same kind of carriages or coaches, and that every improvement has formed as it were an epoch in the history of them, which perhaps would be best elucidated by figures or engravings.

Roubo, in his costly Treatise on joiners’ work 175, has given three figures of such ( chars ) carriages as were used under Henry IV., from drawings preserved in the king’s library. By these it is seen that those coaches were not suspended by straps, that they had a canopy supported by ornamented pillars, and that the whole body was surrounded by curtains of stuff or leather, which could be drawn up. The coach in which Louis XIV. made his public entrance, about the middle of the seventeenth century, appears, from a drawing in the king’s library, to have been a suspended carriage.

The oldest carriages used by the ladies in England were known under the now-forgotten name of whirlicotes . When Richard II., towards the end of the fourteenth century, was obliged to fly before his rebellious subjects, he and all his followers were on horseback; his mother only, who was indisposed, rode in a carriage. This, however, became afterwards somewhat unfashionable, when that monarch’s queen, Ann, the daughter of the emperor Charles IV., showed the English ladies how gracefully and conveniently she could ride on a side-saddle. Whirlicotes therefore were disused, except at coronations and other public solemnities 176. Coaches were first known in England about the year 1580, and, as Stow says, were introduced from Germany by Fitz-allen, earl of Arundel 177. In the year 1598, when the English ambassador came to Scotland, he had a coach with him 178. Anderson places the period when coaches began to be in common use, about the year 1605. The celebrated duke of Buckingham, the unworthy favourite of two kings, was the first person who rode with a coach and six horses, in 1619. To ridicule this new pomp, the earl of Northumberland put eight horses to his carriage.

Towards the end of the thirteenth century, when Charles of Anjou made his entrance into Naples, the queen rode in a carriage, called by historians caretta , the outside and inside of which were covered with sky-blue velvet, interspersed with golden lilies, a magnificence never before seen by the Neapolitans. At the entrance of Frederic II. into Padua, in the year 1239, it appears that there were no carriages, for the most elegantly dressed ladies who came to meet him were on palfreys ornamented with trappings ( sedentes in phaleratis et ambulantibus palafredis ). It is well known that the luxury of carriages spread from Naples all over Italy.

Coaches were seen for the first time in Spain in the year 1546. Such at least is the account of Twiss, who, according to his usual custom, says so without giving his authority 179.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, John of Finland, on his return from England, among other articles of luxury, brought with him to Sweden the first coach 180. Before that period, the greatest lords in Sweden, when they travelled by land, carried their wives with them on horseback. The princesses even travelled in that manner, and, when it rained, took with them a mantle of wax-cloth.

It appears that there were elegant coaches in the capital of Russia so early as the beginning of the seventeenth century 181.

But to what nation ought we to ascribe the invention of coaches? If under this name we comprehend covered carriages, these are so old as not to admit of any dispute respecting the question. To the following, however, one might expect an answer, Who first fell on the idea of suspending the body of the carriage from elastic springs, by which the whole machine has undoubtedly been much improved? To this question, however, I can find no answer, except the information before-mentioned, that suspended carriages were known in the time of Louis XIV.

As the name coach is now adopted, with a little variation, in all the European languages, some have thought to determine the country of this invention from the etymology of the word 182. But even allowing that one could fix the origin of the word, it would by no means be ascertained what kind of a carriage we ought properly to understand by it. M. Cornides 183has lately endeavoured to prove that the word coach is of Hungarian extraction, and that it had its rise from a village in the province of Wieselburg, which at present is called Kitsee , but was known formerly by the name of Kotsee , and that this travelling machine was even there first invented. However this may be, the grounds on which he supports his assertion deserve to be here quoted, as they seem at least to prove that in the sixteenth century, or even earlier, a kind of covered carriages was known, under the name of Hungarian carriages 184. As the word Gutschi , and not Gutsche , was used at first in Germany, the last syllable gives us reason to conjecture that it is rather of Hungarian than German extraction. As Hortleder 185tells us that Charles V., because he had the gout, laid himself to sleep in an Hungarian Gutsche , one might almost conclude that the peculiarity of these carriages consisted in their being so constructed as to admit people to sleep in them. This conjecture is supported by the meaning of the word Gutsche , which formerly signified a couch or sofa 186. As the writers quoted by Cornides call the Hungarian coaches sometimes ( leves ) light, sometimes ( veloces ) swift, they ought rather to be considered as a particular kind of carriages for travelling with expedition. It is, however, still more worthy of remark, that, so early as the year 1457, the ambassador of Ladislaus V., king of Hungary and Bohemia, brought with him to the queen of France, besides other presents, a carriage which excited great wonder at Paris, and which, as an old historian says, was branlant et moult riche 187. Does not the first word of this expression seem to indicate that the carriage was suspended?