Reize in de binnen-landen van Zuid-Africa

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English summary

Introductory remarks

The author

The author of this journal is Willem Bartholomé Eduard Paravicini di Capelli (1778-1848), an artillery-captain at the time in the army of the Batavian Republic and aide-de-camp of the Cape governor, General Jan Willem Janssens.

He belonged to a very ancient family, tracing its origin to an ancestor who was reputedly related to the Kings of Lombardy and had acted as one of the chamberlains or pares of Charlemagne in Northern Italy in the eighth century.

The original fiefs held by the Paravicini were situated around Lake Como. A branch settled at Chur in Switzerland, and during the wars of religion the the Protestant great-grandfather of the author of the journal emigrated from Chur to become an officer with a Swiss regiment serving in the Netherlands. His descendants were, almost without exception, artillery-officers, several rising to the rank of general in the army of the Netherlands.

The author was born in the town of Zutphen on 22 February 1778, as the eldest son of the officer Johan Caspar Paravicini and his wife Anna Christoffelina Jacoba van Heemskerck, and commenced his military career in the family tradition at the age of nine as artillery cadet. He was commissioned a lieutenant in 1792 and took part in the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 in Flanders.

Like many Orangists he chose to apply for his honourable discharge on the establishment of the Batavian Republic and only returned to service in 1802 as an officer with the 5th Battalion, being almost immediately appointed aidede-camp to the governor-designate of the Cape, Gen. J.W. Janssens. Before his departure for the Cape, the young captain was married at The Hague to Hendrica Justina van Oldenbarneveld genaamd Witte Tullingh (1781-1845) who accompanied him to Cape Town.

During the journey in the interior with the Governor and General en chef, Paravicini proved himself to be not only an efficient amanuensis who wrote the official journal as well as his own private version published here and most of the correspondence en route, but reliable, intelligent and mature in his conduct of affairs on behalf of the Governor. He was the trusted confidant and, on occasion, the substitute of Janssens, which did not prevent him from joining in the fun of the young people and displaying his keen sense of humour, illustrated by a number of incidents in his journal.

On the return to Cape Town in August 1803, Paravicini took an active part in the tense period of preparation for the expected British attack. He was one of the inner military circle to whom the measures planned for the defence of the Colony were entrusted, performing, in addition, certain special duties such

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as the equipment of the expedition of the Commissioner-General J.A. de Mist in October 1803, and the transfer of the Hottentot Corps from Rietvallei to Wynberg.

Following upon his journey to St. Helena Bay with the Governor in May 1804, of which he again kept the brief journal published here, Paravicini was charged with the arrangements for communication between St. Helena Bay and Cape Town. Shortly afterwards he carried out (with Major Kuchler) a survey of artillery positions and batteries in the Cape Peninsula, suggesting a plan for improving the defences.

To supplement the peninsular defence system, Paravicini was instructed, in August 1804, to organize a chain of depots for provisions and military stores between the Castle and Swellendam. In travelling over the same route as in April of the previous year, he also set up a series of signalling-posts provided with cannon for summoning the burghers in case of emergency.

The responsibility of maintaining the system of inland postal communication by means of couriers on horseback, inaugurated in October 1803, also devolved on Paravicini in the course of the year 1804.

By October 1804, it was known at the Cape that Capt. Paravicini had been transferred to the fatherland to serve with the 1st Company of the 2nd Battalion of Artillery, stationed at Breda. Since the war had disrupted shipping to Holland, he had to await passage till April 1805, when, with special permission of the Council of Policy, he was allowed to purchase berths for himself, his wife, and the widow of a brother-officer, on the American brig Mary of Boston.

On his return, his military career was continued in the Kingdom of Holland and in the service of Imperial France. He took part in the campaign in Swedish Pomerania and Prussia in 1806, served in the coastal defences of Holland and, in 1809, took part in the resistance to the British invasion in Zeeland.

While serving in Amsterdam in 1810, an only son was born to Paravicini and his wife, this son later becoming an artillery major in The Hague.

Still a captain in rank, he commanded a company of the 9th (French). Artillery Regiment and served in the French camp at Boulogne in 1811, Holland having now been incorporated in the French Empire of Napoleon. Promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1812, he commanded a battalion of artillery in the Grande Armée of Napoleon on the epic Russian campaign of 1812, taking part in the battles of Vilna, Smolensk, Krasnoi, and at the Beresina. On the retreat from Moscow he suffered frost-bite in both feet and was temporarily held prisoner by the Russians after the Battle of Krasnoi.

In 1813 he took part in the campaign in Bohemia and Saxony, eventually commanding an artillery division till captured with the garrison of Dresden by the Austrians and taken to Hungary. After petitioning the Prince of Orange, the new King of Holland, to be re-instated in the army of the Netherlands, Paravicini was allowed to return to service.

Recommencing his career as lieutenant-colonel of a battalion of artillery,

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he now became an artillery expert, publishing a first manual in 1814 (reprinted in 1831) and being appointed in 1816 as director of ordinance magazines at Antwerp where he designed new types of field artillery before being transferred to Delft. Up to 1824 he initiated various important reforms regarding equipment and organization of artillery and commanded various units, becoming a major-general and chief of staff of the artillery in 1834, and retiring at the beginning of 1841.

The last years of his life he lived at Kralingen, near Rotterdam. He died on 21 April 1848 and was buried there.

The text

The manuscript of the journal of Capt. W.B.E. Paravicini di Capelli was brought to the notice of the editor in 1952 at an exhibition of Africana in The Hague, in the building of the Royal Institute of Philology, Geography and Ethnology (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde).

In the catalogue of the Institute, the Paravicini manuscript is listed as No. H447. It consists of 234 foolscap pages of very fair copy, written in a single hand, on paper dating from about the year 1850. The text is bound, together with 13 water-colours of foolscap-size, in boards, with notes on the provenance of the manuscript on the title-page, and a map from John Barrow's Travels in Southern Africa pasted in at the back. It contains both the main journal (3 April to 13 August 1803) and that of the journey to Saldanha and St. Helena Bay (17 to 26 May 1804).

As far as can be ascertained, the existence of the manuscript was first mentioned by 1874 and appeared in a bibliography on Africa of 1876, when it was in the possession of a grandson of the author, a lieutenant of artillery at Utrecht, from whom it probably passed to Dr. C.M. Kan, co-author of the bibliography of 1876. It appears that the manuscript was subsequently acquired by the publishing firm of E.J. Brill of Leyden, from whom it was purchased by Mr. J.W. Ijzerman and presented to the Institute, which received it on 22 September 1917.

From the text in the Algemeen Rijksarchief at The Hague, the official journal of the journey of Governor J.W. Janssens (which was also written by Capt. W.B.E. Paravicini di Capelli) was edited by Dr. E.C. Godée Molsbergen for the Linschoten Society and published in 1932 in Reizen in Zuid-Afrika, Volume IV. Godée Molsbergen had heard of the Paravicini manuscript journal in 1917, but had not seen it by 1932. Without indicating its relationship to the official journal, the representatives of the Linschoten Society, preparing the edition for the press while Godée Molsbergen was in Batavia, consulted the Paravicini manuscript at the Institute and published from it not only the St. Helena Bay journal, but illustrated the Godée Molsbergen edition of the official journal with prints of five of the thirteen water-colours in monochrome.

The Paravicini manuscript was next handled by Dr. Elizabeth J.M. Conradie

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who mentioned it and discussed it in her doctoral thesis, Hollandse Skrywers uit Suid-Afrika, published in 1934.

There is ample internal proof to indicate that the manuscript was a private version by Paravicini of his own text of the official journal. There is no means of determining whether the two texts were written contemporaneously (on the journey) or whether the private version was compiled afterwards.

The manuscript of the Institute is the only one in existence, as far as could be ascertained. It is definitely not in the handwriting of Paravicini, nor is there any evidence that he revised it. It appears to be a copy, which could have been made in the last years of his life, or even after his death, by one who was probably a member of the family.

The water-colours.

Of the thirteen water-colours in the manuscript, only the first, the view of Table Bay and Cape Town, bears the initials WP. The rest are unsigned. It is probable that all are copies from Paravicini's originals to fit the format of the fair copy of the diary.

From references in the manuscript it appears that Paravicini made more than these thirteen sketches. Some of these were used by Ludwig Alberti for his book and album, published in Amsterdam in 1810. Alberti was a member of the company on the journey from Algoa Bay to Graaff-Reinet in 1803 and was back in Holland from 1806, when he probably came into contact with Paravicini again.

The three texts of the journey of J.W. Janssens.

The Paravicini manuscript, is one of the three texts describing the journey of Governor J.W. Janssens. Two of these are very closely related and even correspond literally to a great extent, both being written by Paravicini, the one as the official record of the journey, the other (published here) as his private version written up for friends or relatives, or for his own edification.

The third text is the diary of Dirk Gysbert van Reenen, a member of the Governor's party on the journey, who wrote an account of which the wording is entirely independent of the two Paravicini texts, exhibiting not the slightest evidence that the two authors had any contact in writing down their daily impressions. Van Reenen's diary was published by the Van Riebeeck Society (No. 18) in 1937, from a text discovered in 1932 in Amsterdam by Dr. Elizabeth J.M. Conradie, and now housed in the Cape Archives.

The official journal of J.W. Janssens was probably completed by Paravicini in Cape Town. Contemporary copies were made, of which two are known. The one came into the possession of the advocate C.J.G. Copes van Hasselt, Secretary to the Council of Policy, and son-in-law of Governor J.W. Janssens. This copy was presented by descendants to the Algemeen Rijksarchief at The

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Hague, and published in 1932 by the Linschoten Society, but with hardly any annotations.

The second copy came into the hands of Dr. M.H.K. Lichtenstein, together with the so-called De Mist Collection, and found its way to the Prussian State Library in Berlin where a photo-copy was made for the Cape Archives in 1924. In 1953 a micro-film copy of the collection, which had largely been removed at the end of the Second World War to the University Library at Tübingen, was made by the present editor on behalf of the S.A. Archives. This is also housed in Cape Town.

A copy of the journal to St. Helena Bay is to be found in the J.W. Janssens Collection in the Algemeen Rijksarchief at The Hague.