The Rhine, its valley and history . ury. On the opposite Rhine bank isthe ruined castle of Rheinfels, which belonged to theArchiepiscopal Electors of Mainz, the medieval sove-reigns of this part of the Rhineland, and on a rockyisland precisely in the gorge mouth is a smaller ruin, theMouse Tower, to which there attaches the legend ofthe bad Elector Hatto, who in a time of famine boughtup all the corn and, when his good people of Mainzimportuned him for bread, burnt them in a barn, andwas forthwith chased from Mainz by the rats, whofollowed him to Bingen, and from Bingen even to hisfinal refuge
The Rhine, its valley and history . ury. On the opposite Rhine bank isthe ruined castle of Rheinfels, which belonged to theArchiepiscopal Electors of Mainz, the medieval sove-reigns of this part of the Rhineland, and on a rockyisland precisely in the gorge mouth is a smaller ruin, theMouse Tower, to which there attaches the legend ofthe bad Elector Hatto, who in a time of famine boughtup all the corn and, when his good people of Mainzimportuned him for bread, burnt them in a barn, andwas forthwith chased from Mainz by the rats, whofollowed him to Bingen, and from Bingen even to hisfinal refuge in the tower on the island, and there atehim. Modern analysis, however, attributes to the nameof Mouse Tower the derivation merely of Musturm,the old German word for arsenal. Bingen was a free city of the Empire, and a memberof the Rhenish League of which Mainz was the centreduring the two centuries when it managed to keep itsArchbishop in order. Afterwards Bingen shared thefate of Mainz and fell under archiepiscopal despotism,144. The Rhine Gorge< until at the reconstruction of Germany at Vienna ini 8 14 both towns passed to Hesse-Darmstadt, the boun-dary between Prussia and Hesse being placed midwayover the bridge of the Nahe at Bingen. High on theopposite Niederwald, at the end of the Taunus, is theNational German Memorial of the events of 1870-71,the crisis of German history being fitly commemo-rated at the critical point in the course of the great-est German river. From Bingen to Coblenz for forty miles the gorgeof the Rhine is continuous, and the castles and littletowns, both full of history, succeed one anothernow on this side and now on that. The first of thecastles is on the left hand, the Rheinstein, once theresidence of the Archbishop of Trier, and rival there-fore to the Ehrenfels opposite, of the See of and still on the heights of the same bank aretwo ruins, the Falkeuburg and the Sooneck, oncerobber strongholds for the harrying of the medievaltraf
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1908
