Coach is said to be derived from caroche, Italian; a term first used in the eleventh century, and invented to designate a military machine, so called.

We intend the word coaches to stand for the generic name of all those machines used for the carriage of persons, on business or pleasure, (except, indeed, those for the conveyance of the dead,) from the state carriage of the sovereign down to the humble gig. The original inventor of this species of carriage is said to have been an Athenian monarch, 1489 years before Christ, who being afflicted with lameness in his feet, first invented a coach for his convenience, and with a view to conceal his debility. This may be regarded as the first original, of the kind, of Grecian invention.

The ancient historian, Diodorus Siculus, makes mention of a carriage in which Sesostris was wont to be drawn; and also, he says when he entered the city, or went out to the sacrifice, had four of his captive kings yoked to his chariot; but it is conjectured this carriage, to which that historian alludes, was a warrior’s car. There is, most assuredly, ample room to believe that this was the first species of carriage which was introduced; if so, those existed long before the Athenian king above-named; because all the Homeric heroes, Greeks as well as Trojans, and their auxiliaries, rode in these machines, called chariots, or warriors’ cars, which are also known to have existed long antecedent to that period. We remain assured that war chariots were used in the first ages of the world, by all the great monarchs who possessed dominion.

That species of carriage before said to have been invented by the Athenian monarch, we therefore presume, was a covered carriage, similar to that species designated in the twelve tables of the Roman law, and by them called arcera, which was said to be a carriage of the last presumed description, and mentioned as being intended for the conveyance of the infirm. To this species of carriage succeeded the soft lectica. But we will leave this part of our subject, and proceed towards our own times.

After the subversion of the Roman power, the northern sovereigns, who had become the barbarous and ignorant oppressors of our species, introduced and established, among other political regulations, the feudal system, as it was called, by which all property in land was held by certain fiefs, whereby the king, or, as termed, lord of the soil, let certain portions of the land to his nobles, military officers, and other great persons, generally often on condition of certain services required to be performed, called knights’ service, and other military tenures; by which custom those tenants of the sovereign had to provide certain men and horses to serve him in his wars.—These first tenants, or vassals, afterwards underlet those lands to villains, so named, in contradistinction to the present recognised term, from their living in villages or hamlets, and other tenants, from whom, in their turn, similar services and certain provisions were required.—Thus the European world, which had become the prey of effeminacy and luxury, had, by this single important circumstance, their character so radically changed, that, like the mysterious power of the CadmÆan wand of Harlequin, wrought so uncommon a change in the morals of European society, that those who had formerly kept carriages, and wallowed in all the soft luxurious delicacy of Asiatic effeminacy, suddenly, or, at least, progressively, became a society of hardy equestrian veterans. Insomuch, that masters and servants, husbands and wives, clergy and laity, all rode upon horses, mules, or asses, which latter animals were chiefly used by women, monks, and other religious professors. The minister rode to court; the horse, without a conductor, returned to the stable, till a servant, regulated by the horologe, took him back to the court for his master. In this manner, we are assured, the magistrates of the imperial cities rode to council, till as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century; so that in the year 1502, steps to assist in mounting were erected by the Roman gate at Frankfort. The members of the council who, at the diet and other occasions, were employed as ambassadors, were, on this account, called rittmeister in the language of the country; at present the expression riding-servant is preserved in some of the imperial cities. The entry of great lords in public into any place, or their departure from it, was never in a carriage, but always on horseback; in all the pontifical records, speaking of ceremonials, no mention is made either of a state coach, or body coachman, but of state horses and state mules. In the following regulation, it is found that the horse which his Holiness rode “was necessary to be of an iron-grey colour; not mettlesome, but a quiet, tractable nag. That a stool of three steps should be provided for the assistance of his Holiness in mounting: that the emperor, or kings, if present, were obliged to hold his stirrup, and lead the horse.”

Bishops made their public entry, on induction, on horses or asses richly caparisoned. At the coronation of the emperor, the electors and principal officers of the empire were ordered to make their entry on horseback.—It was formerly requisite, that those who received a fief, or other investiture, should make their appearance on horseback. The vassal was obliged to ride with two attendants to the court of his lord, where, after he had dismounted his horse, he received his fief.

Covered carriages were again introduced in the beginning of the sixteenth century, for the accommodation of women of the very first rank; the men, however, thought it disgraceful to ride in them. At that period, when the electors, and other Germanic princes, did not choose to be present at the meeting of the States, they excused themselves to the emperor, that their health would not permit them to ride on horseback, which was considered as an established point, that it was unbecoming to them to ride like women. What, according to their prevailing ideas, was not permitted to princes, was much less allowed to their servants. In A.D. 1554, when Count Wolf, of Barby, was summoned by John Frederic, Elector of Saxony, to go to Spires, to attend the convention of the States assembled there, he requested leave, on account of ill health, to make use of a close carriage with four horses. When the counts and nobility were invited to attend the solemnity of the elector’s half brother, John Ernest, the invitation was accompanied with a memorandum, that such dresses of ceremony as they might be desirous of taking with them, should be transported in a small waggon;—which notice would have been unnecessary, had coaches been generally used among those nobles. The use of covered carriages was in fact, for a long time, prohibited even to women, the consorts of princes. About the year 1545, the wife of a certain duke obtained from him, with great difficulty, permission to use a covered carriage in a journey to the baths, in which permission there was this express stipulation, that none of her attendants were to be permitted this indulgence: though much pomp was displayed upon the occasion by the duchess. Such is the influence of example in our superiors, who can mould dependents and inferiors to whatever shape they please.

Notwithstanding all these ceremonious regulations, about the end of the fifteenth century, kings and princes began to employ covered carriages in journeys, and afterwards on public solemnities. When Richard II., towards the close of the fourteenth century, was compelled to fly from his rebellious subjects, himself with all his followers, were on horseback; but his mother, who was weak and sick, rode in a carriage. But this became afterwards unfashionable here, for that monarch’s queen, Anna, daughter of the King of Bohemia, showed the English ladies how gracefully she could ride on a side-saddle; and therefore whirlicotes (the ancient name for coaches in England), and chariots, were disused in England, except on coronations and other public solemnities.

In the year 1471, after the battle of Tewkesbury, which decided the fate of Henry VI., and that of the house of Lancaster, when others flew in different directions, the queen was found in her coach, almost dead with sorrow.

In 1474, the Emperor Frederic III. came to Frankfort in a close carriage; and as he remained in it on account of the wetness of the weather, the inhabitants had no occasion to support the canopy which was to have been held over him, while he went to the council house and returned. In the following year, the same emperor visited that city in a very magnificent carriage. In 1487, on occasion of the celebration of the feast of St. George at Windsor, the third year of Henry VII., the queen and king went in a rich chaise; they were attended by twenty-one ladies. In the description of the splendid tournament held by the Elector of Brandenburg, at Ruppin, in 1509, Beckmann says, he reads of a carriage all gilt, which belonged to the Electress; of twelve other coaches, ornamented with crimson; and of another, belonging to the Duchess of Mecklenburgh, which was hung with red satin.

In the Northumberland household book, about this period, is an order of the duke for the chapel stuff to be sent before in my lord’s chariot.

At the coronation of the Emperor Maximilian, 1562, the Elector of Cologne had twelve carriages. In 1594, when John Sigismund did homage at Warsaw, for Prussia, he had in his train thirty-six coaches, with six horses each. Count Kevenhiller, speaking of the marriage of Ferdinand II. with a princess of Bavaria, says, “The bride rode with her sisters in a splendid carriage studded with gold; her maids of honour in carriages hung with black satin, and the rest of the ladies in neat leather carriages.”

Mary, Infanta of Spain, spouse of Ferdinand III., rode, in 1631, in a glass carriage, in which no more than two persons could sit. The wedding carriage of the first wife of the Emperor Leopold, who was a Spanish princess, cost, with the harness, 38,000 florins. The coaches used by that emperor are thus described:—“In the imperial coaches no great magnificence was to be seen; they were covered over with red cloth and black nails. The harness was black, and in the whole work there was no gold. The panels were of glass, and on that account they were called the imperial glass coaches. On festivals the harness was ornamented with red silk fringes. The imperial coaches were distinguished only by their having leather traces; but the ladies in the imperial suite were obliged to be content to be conveyed in carriages, the traces of which were made of ropes.” At the magnificent court of Ernest Augustus, at Hanover, there were in 1681, fifty gilt coaches, with six horses each. So early did Hanover begin to surpass other cities in the number and splendour of its carriages.

The first time that coaches were introduced into Sweden was towards the end of the sixteenth century, when John of Finland, among other articles of luxury, brought one with him on his return from England.

Beckmann also informs us, that the great lords of Germany first imagined that they could suppress the use of coaches by prohibitions. There is still preserved an edict, in which the feudal nobility and vassals are forbidden the use of coaches, under pain of incurring the punishment of felony.

Philip II., Duke of Pomeranian-Stettin, reminded his vassals also, in 1608, that they ought not to make so much use of carriages as of horses. All these orders and admonitions, however, were of no avail, and coaches became common all over Germany.

Persons of the first rank (ladies we presume), in France, frequently sat behind their equerry, and the horse was often led by servants. When Charles VI., wished to see, incognito, the entry of the queen, he placed himself behind his master of the horse, with whom, however, he was incommoded in the crowd. Private persons in France, physicians, for instance, used no carriages in the fifteenth century. In Paris, at all the palaces and public places, there were steps for mounting on horseback.

Carriages, notwithstanding, appear to have been used very early in France, as appears by an ordinance issued in 1294, for suppressing luxury, and in which the citizens were prohibited from using carriages. About 1550, there were at Paris, for the first time, only three coaches; one of which belonged to the queen; another to Diana of Poictiers, the favourite mistress of two kings, Francis I. and Henry II.; and the third to RenÉ de Laval, a corpulent nobleman, unable to ride on horseback. Henry IV. was assassinated in a coach; but he usually rode through the streets of Paris on horseback. For himself and his queen he had only one coach, as appears by a letter which he writes to a friend, which is still preserved: “I cannot wait upon you to-day, because my wife is using my carriage.”

Roubo, in his costly treatise on joiners’ work, has furnished three figures of carriages used in the time of Henry IV., from drawings preserved in the King’s Library: from them it is seen those coaches were not suspended by straps, that they had a canopy supported by ornamental pillars, and that the whole body was surrounded by curtains of stuff or leather, which could be drawn up. The coach in which Louis IV. made his public entrance about the middle of the seventeenth century, appears from a drawing in the same library to have been a suspended carriage.

Our national chronicler, John Stowe, says coaches were first known in England about 1580; he likewise says, they were first brought from Germany by the Earl of Arundel, in 1589. Anderson places the period when coaches began to be used in common here about 1605. It is remarked of the Duke of Buckingham, that he was the first who was drawn by six horses, in 1619. To ridicule this pomp, the Earl of Northumberland put eight horses to his carriage.

Things are altered now when we have carriages of every description—for the high and low, the rich and the poor. Vis-a-vis,—an open carriage chiefly constructed for the benefit of conversation, as its name implies. Landau, landaulets, phÆtons, chaises, whiskeys, cabs, fiacres, &c., &c., are but names adapted to different purposes, and constructed nearly upon the same principles as coaches, but some of them close, others open, some to be opened or shut according to the weather, or taste of the passengers, and calculated to contain an indefinite number, from two to six persons; nay, there are the jolly good omnibuses running in every town and village in the kingdom, the generality of which are constructed to carry twelve inside and eight outside passengers.

The number of hackney coaches which ply in the streets of London have been augmented from time to time, since their first establishment in 1625, when there were only twenty. Coaches, cabs, omnibuses, &c., now plying, amount to nearly three thousand.

To prevent imposition, the proprietors of these carriages are compelled to have their names painted on some conspicuous place of the carriage, and their number affixed in the inside, as well as the out. This regulation has become absolutely necessary of late years, on account of the numerous frauds practised by the coachmen.

We read that in Russia there are employed clumsy, but very convenient sorts of carriages, so constructed as to be either closed or open, and to hold a bed or couch, called brichka, with which persons can travel even for two or three thousand miles without much inconvenience, except it be over the rough stones of their towns, owing to the superior accommodations of either lying down or sitting; this change of position renders a journey less irksome, without which it would prove intolerable. In Russia, from Riga to the Crimea, at least, post horses are furnished by the government, and entrusted to subalterns in the Russian army to provide them.

Coaches for hire were first established by public authority in France, as early as 1671. There are employed in the streets of the capital no fewer than three thousand hackney coaches. As early as the year 1650 Charles Villerme paid into the royal treasury fifteen thousand livres, for the exclusive privilege of keeping and using fiacres in Paris.

Post chaises were introduced in the year 1664.

Hackney coaches were established in Edinburgh in 1673, when the number was only twenty. Public fiacres were introduced at Warsaw in 1778. In Amsterdam the coaches have no wheels; nor have they any at Petersburg in the winter—they are used as sledges.

The state-coach of the city of London is a species of heir-loom, or the hereditary property of the city; it is a very large and apparently extremely heavy machine, but superbly decorated with large panels of crystal glass, richly gilt, and elegantly painted with several appropriate designs. In one of the centre panels, among a group of figures, is one supporting a shield bearing the inscription “Henry Fitzalwin, 1189,” in the old English, character; therefore we conjecture that the coach was constructed at a period coeval with the above date.