In the 1845 travel guide Le Rhin, Victor Hugo notes: "Then comes Braubach, named in a charter of 933, fief of the Counts Arnstein of Lahngau; an Imperial city under Rodolph in 1270, a domain of the Counts of Katznellenbogen in 1283; accruing to Hesse in 1473; to Darmstadt, in 1632, and in 1802 to Nassau. Braubach, communicating with the baths of the Taunus, is charmingly situated at the foot of a high rock, crested by Marksburg, the castle of which is now a state prison. No marquis but must have his page: and the Duke of Nassau has the impertinence to pretend to prisoners of state! A royal luxury! Twelve thousand six hundred habitants, in eleven hundred houses; a bridge of thirty-six boats, built in 1819, across the Rhine; a stone bridge of fourteen arches upon the Moselle, upon the very foundations raised about 1311, by the Archbishop Baldwin, by means of an ample sale of indulgences; the celebrated fort of Ehrenbreitstein, surrendered to the French the 27th January, 1799, after a blockade during which the besieged paid three francs for a cat, and thirty sous per pound for horseflesh; a well one hundred and eighty feet deep, dug by the Margrave John of Baden; the square of the arsenal, where formerly stood the famous culverine the Griffin, which carried one hundred and sixty pounds, and weighed twenty thousand; an old Franciscan convent, converted into an hospital in 1804