Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity

by H. E. Jacob

  This was on the twenty-fifth day of the Mohammedan month of Ramadhan. Slowly the army of liberation thrust forward a wedge of pikemen and riders. At Sievering and Pötzleinsdorf, and also in the long semicircle between Dornbach and the Danube, the adversaries came into contact. The Christian artillery drew so close to the Turkish army that sometimes the guns fired at a range of only forty paces at foes who were manning the vineyards. Then, as Vaelkeren relates, there began “a skirmishing with men in full armour, men armed with swords and daggers, with harquebuses and pistols.” Under difficulties, however, because the contesting warriors were hidden among the vineyards, so that often only their headgear could be seen. King John Sobieski commanded that the Polish infantry, to distinguish it from the Turkish and lest the Christians attack their own men, should wear aprons of plaited straw.

  Now, while the battle raged fiercely, in the midst of the Turkish lines, when the smoke parted for a moment, there was visible a red tent, over which had been hoisted the green flag of the Prophet, the sacred banner brought from Mecca. It signified “victory or death.” In this case it signified death. The valour of the Turks was of no avail. Badenese, Franconians, and various others of the Christian troops had already made their way among the Turkish tents, and Count Mercy’s dragoons were close to the walls of Vienna. They shouted to Starhemberg that the time was ripe for him to make a sally, but—wonder of wonders!—in the trenches that faced the wall there was hardly a living Turk left. By the time Charles of Lorraine had led his forces as far as Währing, some of the besiegers had already fled headlong towards the east.

  This flight of the Turks was so sudden, and so unexpected after their valiant resistance, that Sobieski thought it might be a ruse. Under pain of death, he forbade any of his men to leave the ranks or give themselves up to pillage. But no further attack came from the Turkish side.

  A vast amount of booty was secured from Kara Mustafa’s camp. “The Turkish generalissimo,” wrote Sobieski to his wife, “was in such a hurry to escape that he fled with only the horse on which he was riding and the clothes on his back. The area of the camp is as big as that of Warsaw and Lemberg put together.” Five-and-twenty thousand tents were taken uninjured; twenty thousand head of beef, camels, and mules; ten thousand sheep; and two hundred and fifty thousand quarters of grain. The famine in the beleaguered city thus came to an end. The burgesses streamed forth from the town, and, with tears in their eyes, embraced one another as they saw the mountains of honey, rice, and dripping. The prices of comestibles, which, during the last days of the siege, had risen to dizzy heights, came down with a rush. A pound of beef could now be had for sixpence.

  Amid the spoil there was so much unfamiliar to the Christians that they were inclined to make fun of it or even to destroy it. For instance, there were parrots; and in the tent that had belonged to the pasha of Damascus was a tame monkey, fettered by a silver chain. The civilians of Leopoldstadt and the Bavarian dragoons came to blows that night when they discovered five hundred sacks full of a black, dry, agreeable-smelling substance that seemed to them to be some sort of fodder. The sacks were enormous. As to their contents, no one had ever before seen the like.

  They were beans or grains, and a Bavarian cavalry lieutenant said he had heard of them. They were used as camel-fodder. Well, there were plenty of camels among the spoil: long-necked, two-humped beasts, of no use as mounts for Christians. The troopers were disposed to empty the sacks into the Danube.

  The Leopoldstadt men objected, since the Bavarians had found these sacks of “fodder” upon their ground. The dispute went on for some time, and the dragoons set fire to one of the sacks, contents of which, as they burned, gave off a pleasant odour. With a servant holding a torch to light him on his path, Kolshitsky, the new citizen of Vienna, now arrived upon the scene. He was no longer wearing his Turkish dress, and, as promised, he had been provided with a residence on Leopoldstadt Island. But he had not yet applied for his charter to practise some specific occupation.

  Kolshitsky’s nostrils dilated as he inhaled the reek from the burning sack. “Holy Mary!” he shouted to the disputants. “That is coffee that you are burning! If you don’t know what coffee is, give the stuff to me. I can find a good use for it.”

  Nothing could be refused to the stalwart Pole who had done the beleaguered Viennese such good service, so the “useless fodder” was bestowed on him to do with as he liked.

  During the next few days, Kolshitsky had a private conversation with some of the town councillors of Vienna, and he found the desired occupation.

  Of course, Kolshitsky was not the first inhabitant of Central Europe who, at that date, had heard of coffee and partaken of the beverage. Christian travellers in the East brought news of it much earlier, but the news had remained unheeded. Many such travellers, strangely enough, ignored it: for instance, Antonio Menavino, in his enumeration of the beverages drunk by the Turks in the year 1548; nor did Pierre Belon refer to it when, ten years later, he listed the important shrubs of Arabia. Belon probably regarded coffee as an African plant.

  The first book of travel in which a German alludes to coffee is that of the Swabian, Leonhard Rauwolf. This distinguished Augsburg physician published his Reis’ in die Morgenländer in 1582, a whole century before Kolshitsky opened the first coffee-house in Vienna. Rauwolf lived in the Near East from 1573 to 1578, and travelled as far as Persia. Everywhere he found the population drinking coffee, and was told that it had been a familiar beverage for hundreds of years. “Among others there is an excellent drink which they greatly esteem. They call it ‘Chauve.’ It is almost as black as ink, and is a valuable remedy in disorders of the stomach. The custom is to drink it early in the morning, in public places, quite openly, out of earthenware or porcelain cups. They do not drink much at a time, and, having drunk, walk up and down for a little, before sitting down together in a circle. The beverage is made by adding to boiling water the fruit which they call ‘bunnu,’ which in size and colour resembles laurel berries, the kernel being hidden away between two thin lobes of fruit. The use of the drink is so general that there are many houses which make a practice of supplying it ready prepared; and also, in the bazaars, merchants who sell the fruit are plentiful.”

  An important thing to notice in this report is that Rauwolf mentions, besides the Arabic name of coffee, the Ethiopian name of the fruit, for his “bunnu” is obviously the same word as “bunc.” Indeed, Hübner’s encyclopædia, published in 1717 and one of the earliest works of the kind, actually informs us that the German word “Bohne,” bean, is derived from “bunc.” Of course this is absurd, for there is an old Teutonic root, “Baûna,” from which “Bohne” and bean are both derived.

  The next person in Europe to describe coffee was the remarkable man Prosper Albanus. Like an Italian of similar name, Pietro d’Abano, the medieval “sorcerer,” he was professor of botany in Padua. From the home of magic, from contemporary Egypt—which for many Europeans in 1592 was as magical a land as it had been for the Greeks of Homer’s day—Albanus compiled a herbal. Naturally he mentioned the “arbor bon,” “cum fructu suo buna.” This scholar writes: “In the pleasure-garden of a Turk, my distinguished friend Hali Bey, I saw a fine tree which produces grains of an ordinary aspect. They are called ‘bon’ or ‘ban.’ From this the Arabs and the Egyptians prepare a black beverage, which they drink instead of wine, and which, like wine in our own country, is sold in public-houses. They call it ‘caova.’ The beans of the ‘ban’ tree are imported from Arabia Felix. I have seen one of these trees, whose leaves are extremely thick, and have a strong lustre. It is an evergreen.”

  Prosper Albanus the botanist having said his say, Prosper Albanus the physician continues: “The Turks use the decoction from these beans to relieve ills of the stomach and to dispel constipation. They also find it most useful when the liver is congested or when they have pains in the splenic region. Nor can there be any doubt that ‘caova’ is a valuable remedy in inflammations of the womb. The women of Egypt dr
ink a great deal of it, very hot, during menstruation, in small sips at a time, being especially inclined to use it when the menstrual flow is suppressed. This use of the remedy has been well tested; ‘caova’ purifies the body.”

  Bellus, the humanist, was the first to send coffee beans to Europe, doing this in the year 1596. The recipient was Clusius, the physician and botanist whose unlatinized name was Charles de Lécluse, who was instructed by Bellus to “roast the beans first over the fire, and then crush them in a wooden mortar.” De Lécluse, who was for many years resident in Vienna as director of the Imperial Gardens, and who spent the last days of his life in Holland, gave an account of coffee in two of his works: Rariorum plantarum historia and Exoticorum libri decem.

  The humanist Pietro della Valle set sail in 1614 upon an Oriental journey of which he gave an account in his letters, Viaggi in Turchia, Persia ed India descritti da lui medesimo in 54 lettere famigliari. Being rather deaf, he misheard the name “k’ahwah,” and always speaks of it as “cahne.” Writing from Constantinople in February, 1615, he reported: “The Turks consume a black beverage. During the summer they drink it to refresh and cool themselves, whereas in winter they find it warming; yet it is the same drink in both cases, similarly prepared. They take long draughts of it, extremely hot, but not during meal-times, since this would remove their inclination to eat any more. It is consumed after the meal, as a dainty. It also promotes fellowship and conversation, so that there are few assemblies of friends where this beverage is not consumed. They call it ‘cahne’; it is the product of a tree which grows in Arabia, in the neighbourhood of Mecca. If we are to believe the Turks, it is good for the stomach and for the digestion and wards off colics and catarrhs. It is also said that, when drunk after supper, it prevents those who consume it from feeling sleepy. For that reason, students who wish to read into the late hours are fond of it.” We are told that when della Valle returned to Italy twelve years later, accompanied by a number of Orientals, he showed coffee-beans to the astonished Romans.

  Sir Thomas Herbert, a member of a distinguished English family, visited Persia in 1626, when he was twenty years of age, in the suite of Sir Dodmore Cotton, ambassador to the shah. Herbert reports: “There is nothing of which the Persians are fonder than ‘coho’ or ‘copha,’ which the Turks call ‘caphe.’ This beverage is so black and bitter that one might suppose it to have come from the River Styx. It is prepared from rounded beans which resemble the beans of the laurel. Drunk very hot, it is said to be healthy, dispelling melancholy, drying tears, allaying anger, and producing cheerfulness. Still, the Persians would not prize it so greatly as they do, did not tradition inform them that it was brought to earth by the Angel Gabriel in order to revive the flagging energies of Mohammed the Prophet. Mohammed himself declared that when he had drunk this magic potion he felt strong enough to unhorse forty men and to possess forty women.”

  These are perhaps the most admiring words which any Occidental has ever written about coffee, but their defect is their inaccuracy. No one but Sir Thomas Herbert—and he throws the responsibility on the Prophet—has ever been inclined to describe coffee as an aphrodisiac. Many, indeed, speak of it as having the opposite effect.

  Coming back to Kolshitsky, when that worthy opened the first Viennese coffee-house in the Domgasse, where the shadow of St. Stephen’s tower falls at noon, cultured circles of the Austrian capital were unquestionably acquainted with coffee by repute. But they had never drunk it. When they now made trials of the beverage, their first impression of the “Turkish muck” was unfavourable—no matter whether they were masters of art, doctors, clerics, or merchants.

  The Viennese were wine-bibbers. True, the lovely green-and-gold vines which, since the days of the Roman occupation, had flourished on the western outskirts of Vienna were now destroyed beyond repair. They had been fired together with the suburbs. The tough vine-stems had been cut to make palisades; the acrid urine of thousands of camels, asses, and oxen rendered the soil wellnigh as barren as the steppes of Central Asia. For years to come, the Viennese would not be able to get wine from their own vine-stocks, but would have to import what they needed at great cost. Still, even though deprived of the customary joys of Bacchus, they felt little inclination for the beverage of the Black Apollo.

  Yet the vast stores of coffee-beans that Franz Georg Kolshitsky had obtained as booty from the Turkish camp were a disadvantage to him by their very magnitude. Unless he were to make a bonfire of the lot, or commit suicide by having the coffee piled on him until he was suffocated, he must manage to sell his wares. “Well and good,” he said to himself, “if my customers don’t like Turkish coffee, we must make a Viennese coffee that they will favour!” He used a strainer to rid the beverage of the grounds which made the Viennese choke. The clear liquid thus obtained would have been regarded with scorn by the Turks, the Serbs, and all the inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula, who were firmly convinced that the virtue of coffee resided in the sediment. Little did Kolshitsky care, however. He was highly satisfied with the clarified decoction. Then he added a sufficiency of well-matured honey, and softened the taste by diluting the black coffee with milk.

  The imam of Shehodet Monastery would probably have had a fit at any such notion. What better could you expect from “giaours and dogs” than that they should thus misuse the gift to Mohammed that they had secured as plunder from the Turkish camp outside Vienna? It was rank folly, so the Turkish true believers would have thought, to sweeten coffee and to dilute it with milk!

  What did that matter to Kolshitsky? He had found something that was agreeable to Western palates, a beverage that all the European world has gladly drunk ever since. Now there were guests in plenty at the new coffee-house. There were two further attractive innovations. He arranged with Peter Wendler, a neighbouring baker, to supply him with an abundance of light, crescent-shaped rolls. The Viennese burghers, when day after day they ate these crescents, were agreeably reminded, drinking their coffee to wash them down, of the recent defeat of the followers of the Crescent who had come so near to taking Vienna by storm. The other novelty was Krapfen, toothsome spherical doughnuts filled with syrup, supplied to Kolshitsky by a baker-woman named Cecilia or Veronica Krapf.

  Thus, built upon coffee, milk, crescents, and doughnuts, was established the first Viennese coffee-house—the mother of huge dynasties, offshoots, and crossings.

  BOOK TWO

  Health of the Nations

  6

  Venetian Commerce

  BY the then usual channels of world trade, large supplies of coffee were continually being brought to Vienna, entering the southeastern portal of the empire. For a long time, however, no effect upon Germany was noticeable.

  The soldiers of the allied contingents that had saved the imperial capital from destruction did not take any coffee with them on their return home. If, for instance, coffee had at that time been brought to Dresden, we should learn of the fact from Hasche, historian to that town, who records that three days after the defeat of the Turkish army that had invested Vienna—on September 16, 1683, that is to say—a thanksgiving festival was held in Dresden. On October 1, behind the Dresden arsenal, a public exhibition of the war-booty was held. “There were shown five Turkish tents of multicoloured cotton, tied by cotton ribbons, very costly articles; also six heavy guns. There was likewise an elephant, which, however, caught a chill, and soon died; numerous camels, as well, to which the climate was unsuitable, so that they did not live long. In addition to many rare manuscripts, there was an ancient copy of the Koran, the sacred book of the Arabs, beautifully inscribed upon silk paper and illuminated.” Had there been any coffee, we cannot doubt that Hasche would have mentioned the fact. The returning Saxon soldiers had not brought any.

  Thus, to begin with, it could not be said that the opening of Kolshitsky’s coffee-house had an effect in Germany, though, no doubt, there was general talk along the Danube about the way in which the Viennese had taken to drinking coffee. Still, since even the Viennes
e were slow to adopt the new beverage, we cannot be surprised that the South German States proved tardy in the matter. The use spread up the Danube, for, three years later, in 1686, the first coffee-house was opened in Ratisbon. Then a jump was made northward, to Nürnberg. Here a halt was called, and it was a long time before coffee made any further advance.

  Like every other commodity, coffee is subject to the law of supply and demand. Was there, at that date, an effective supply of coffee? The original Viennese stock was a prize of war, and not for a long time did it occur to anyone to import fresh quantities through the devastated lands of Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Apart from the fact that, after the Battle of Vienna, the Turkish war continued (for the emperor’s armies invaded the Balkans, and had repeated brushes with those of the sultan), land transport of Oriental goods would—the distances being so great—have made them too expensive for German consumption. As far as High Germany and Central Germany were concerned, only marine transport by way of Venice was possible. The position of Venice as against Turkey was peculiar. When the Turks occupied the territories of southeastern Europe, they came everywhere in conflict with the Venetians, who traded along the coasts of Greece and in the Archipelago. Commerce was the only sort of life for Venice. In that city there was no land where grain could be grown or beasts pastured. The citizens of the republic lived in their crowded houses amid the lagoons and canals or on ships that spent most of the time at sea. Nevertheless, though war between the Venetians and Turks went on for hundreds of years, this conflict never completely interrupted trade between them. At a time when the land routes between East and West, between Vienna and Constantinople, were closed by war or the imminence of war, maritime commerce still went on between the Queen of the Adriatic and Morea, Asia Minor, and Egypt. It continued because, religious and political enmity notwithstanding, it was of vital importance both to the Crescent and the Cross.