The covered waggon to which I was ordered to march was standing, as I
have said, in the courtyard of the farm, with another dismal vehicle
of the same kind hard by it. Each was pretty well filled with a crew of
men, whom the atrocious crimp who had seized upon me, had enlisted under
the banners of the glorious Frederick; and I could see by the lanterns
of the sentinels, as they thrust me into the straw, a dozen dark figures
huddled together in the horrible moving prison where I was now to be
confined. A scream and a curse from my opposite neighbour showed me that
he was most likely wounded, as I myself was; and, during the whole of
the wretched night, the moans and sobs of the poor fellows in similar
captivity kept up a continual painful chorus, which effectually
prevented my getting any relief from my ills in sleep. At midnight
(as far as I could judge) the horses were put to the waggons, and the
creaking lumbering machines were put in motion. A couple of soldiers,
strongly armed, sat on the outer bench of the cart, and their grim faces
peered in with their lanterns every now and then through the canvas
curtains, that they might count the number of their prisoners. The
brutes were half-drunk, and were singing love and war songs, such as ‘O
Gretchen mein Taubchen, mein Herzenstrompet, Mein Kanon, mein Heerpauk
und meine Musket,’ ‘Prinz Eugen der edle Ritter.’ and the like; their
wild whoops and jodels making doleful discord with the groans of us
captives within the waggons. Many a time afterwards have I heard these
ditties sung on the march, or in the barrack-room, or round the fires as
we lay out at night.
I was not near so unhappy, in spite of all, as I had been on my first
enlisting in Ireland. At least, thought I, if I am degraded to be a
private soldier there will be no one of my acquaintance who will witness
my shame; and that is the point which I have always cared for most.
There will be no one to say, ‘There is young Redmond Barry, the
descendant of the Barrys, the fashionable young blood of Dublin,
pipeclaying his belt and carrying his brown Bess.’ Indeed, but for
that opinion of the world, with which it is necessary that every man of
spirit should keep upon equal terms, I, for my part, would have always
been contented with the humblest portion. Now here, to all intents
and purposes, one was as far removed from the world as in the wilds
of Siberia, or in Robinson Crusoe’s Island. And I reasoned with myself
thus:--‘Now you are caught, there is no use in repining: make the best
of your situation, and get all the pleasure you can out of it. There
are a thousand opportunities of plunder, &c., offered to the soldier in
war-time, out of which he can get both pleasure and profit: make use of
these, and be happy. Besides, you are extraordinarily brave, handsome,
and clever: and who knows but you may procure advancement in your new
service?’
In this philosophical way I looked at my misfortunes, determining not
to be cast down by them; and bore woes and my broken head with perfect
magnanimity. The latter was, for the moment, an evil against which it
required no small powers of endurance to contend; for the jolts of the
waggon were dreadful, and every shake caused a throb in my brain which I
thought would have split my skull. As the morning dawned, I saw that the
man next me, a gaunt yellow-haired creature, in black, had a cushion of
straw under his head.
‘Are you wounded, comrade?’ said I.
‘Praised be the Lord,’ said he, ‘I am sore hurt in spirit and body,
and bruised in many members; wounded, however, am I not. And you, poor
youth?’
‘I am wounded in the head,’ said I, ‘and I want your pillow: give
it me--I’ve a clasp-knife in my pocket!’ and with this I gave him a
terrible look, meaning to say (and mean it I did, for look you, A LA
GUERRE C’EST A LA GUERRE, and I am none of your milksops) that, unless
he yielded me the accommodation, I would give him a taste of my steel.
‘I would give it thee without any threat, friend,’ said the
yellow-haired man meekly, and handed me over his little sack of straw.
He then leaned himself back as comfortably as he could against the
cart, and began repeating, ‘Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott,’ by which I
concluded that I had got into the company of a parson. With the jolts of
the waggon, and accidents of the journey, various more exclamations and
movements of the passengers showed what a motley company we were. Every
now and then a countryman would burst into tears; a French voice would
be heard to say, ‘O mon Dieu!--mon Dieu!’ a couple more of the same
nation were jabbering oaths and chattering incessantly; and a certain
allusion to his own and everybody else’s eyes, which came from a
stalwart figure at the far corner, told me that there was certainly an
Englishman in our crew.
But I was spared soon the tedium and discomforts of the journey. In
spite of the clergyman’s cushion, my head, which was throbbing with
pain, was brought abruptly in contact with the side of the waggon; it
began to bleed afresh: I became almost light-headed. I only recollect
having a draught of water here and there; once stopping at a fortified
town, where an officer counted us:--all the rest of the journey was
passed in a drowsy stupor, from which, when I awoke, I found myself
lying in a hospital bed, with a nun in a white hood watching over me.
‘They are in sad spiritual darkness,’ said a voice from the bed next to
me, when the nun had finished her kind offices and retired: ‘they are
in the night of error, and yet there is the light of faith in those poor
creatures.’
It was my comrade of the crimp waggon, his huge broad face looming out
from under a white nightcap, and ensconced in the bed beside.
‘What! you there, Herr Pastor?’ said I.
‘Only a candidate, sir,’ answered the white nightcap. ‘But, praised be
Heaven! you have come to. You have had a wild time of it. You have been
talking in the English language (with which I am acquainted) of Ireland,
and a young lady, and Mick, and of another young lady, and of a house on
fire, and of the British Grenadiers, concerning whom you sung us parts
of a ballad, and of a number of other matters appertaining, no doubt, to
your personal history.’
‘It has been a very strange one,’ said I; ‘and, perhaps, there is no man
in the world, of my birth, whose misfortunes can at all be compared to
mine.’
I do not object to own that I am disposed to brag of my birth and
other acquirements; for I have always found that if a man does not give
himself a good word, his friends will not do it for him.
‘Well,’ said my fellow-patient, ‘I have no doubt yours is a strange
tale, and shall be glad to hear it anon; but at present you must not
be permitted to speak much, for your fever has been long, and your
exhaustion great.’
‘Where are we?’ I asked; and the candidate informed me that we were in
the bishopric and town of Fulda, at present occupied by Prince Henry’s
troops. There had been a skirmish with an out-party of French near the
town, in which a shot entering the waggon, the poor candidate had been
wounded.
As the reader knows already my history, I will not take the trouble
to repeat it here, or to give the additions with which I favoured
my comrade in misfortune. But I confess that I told him ours was the
greatest family and finest palace in Ireland, that we were enormously
wealthy, related to all the peerage descended from the ancient kings,
&c.; and, to my surprise, in the course of our conversation, I found
that my interlocutor knew a great deal more about Ireland than I did.
When, for instance, I spoke of my descent,--
‘From which race of kings?’ said he.
‘Oh!’ said I (for my memory for dates was never very accurate), ‘from
the old ancient kings of all.’
‘What! can you trace your origin to the sons Japhet?’ said he.
‘’Faith, I can,’ answered I, ‘and farther too,--Nebuchadnezzar, if you
like.’
‘I see,’ said the candidate, smiling, ‘that you look upon those legends
with incredulity. These Partholans and Nemedians, of whom your writers
fondly make mention, cannot be authentically vouched for in history. Nor
do I believe that we have any more foundation for the tales concerning
them, than for the legends relative to Joseph of Arimathea and King
Bruce which prevailed two centuries back in the sister island.
And then he began a discourse about the Phoenicians, the Scyths or
Goths, the Tuath de Danans, Tacitus, and King MacNeil; which was, to say
the truth, the very first news I had heard of those personages. As for
English, he spoke it as well as I, and had seven more languages, he
said, equally at his command; for, on my quoting the only Latin line
that I knew, that out of the poet Homer, which says,--
‘As in praesenti perfectum fumat in avi,’
he began to speak to me in the Roman tongue; on which I was fain to tell
him that we pronounced it in a different way in Ireland, and so got off
the conversation.
My honest friend’s history was a curious one, and it may be told here in
order to show of what motley materials our levies were composed:--
‘I am,’ said he, ‘a Saxon by birth, my father being pastor of the
village of Pfannkuchen, where I imbibed the first rudiments of
knowledge. At sixteen (I am now twenty-three), having mastered the Greek
and Latin tongues, with the French, English, Arabic, and Hebrew; and
having come into possession of a legacy of a hundred rixdalers, a sum
amply sufficient to defray my University courses, I went to the famous
academy of Gottingen, where I devoted four years to the exact sciences
and theology. Also, I learned what worldly accomplishments I could
command; taking a dancing-tutor at the expense of a groschen a lesson, a
course of fencing from a French practitioner, and attending lectures
on the great horse and the equestrian science at the hippodrome of a
celebrated cavalry professor. My opinion is, that a man should know
everything as far as in his power lies: that he should complete his
cycle of experience; and, one science being as necessary as another, it
behoves him.
‘I am not of a saving turn, hence my little fortune of a hundred
rixdalers, which has served to keep many a prudent man for a score of
years, barely sufficed for five years’ studies; after which my studies
were interrupted, my pupils fell off, and I was obliged to devote much
time to shoe-binding in order to save money, and, at a future
period, resume my academic course. During this period I contracted an
attachment’ (here the candidate sighed a little) ‘with a person,
who, though not beautiful, and forty years of age, is yet likely to
sympathise with my existence; and, a month since, my kind friend and
patron, University Prorector Doctor Nasenbrumm, having informed me that
the Pfarrer of Rumpelwitz was dead, asked whether I would like to have
my name placed upon the candidate list, and if I were minded to preach a
trial sermon? As the gaining of this living would further my union with
my Amalia, I joyously consented, and prepared a discourse.
‘If you like I will recite it to you--No?--Well, I will give you
extracts from it upon our line of march. To proceed, then, with my
biographical sketch, which is now very near a conclusion; or, as I
should more correctly say, which has very nearly brought me to the
present period of time: I preached that sermon at Rumpelwitz, in which I
hope that the Babylonian question was pretty satisfactorily set at
rest. I preached it before the Herr Baron and his noble family, and some
officers of distinction who were staying at his castle. Mr. Doctor Moser
of Halle followed me in the evening discourse; but, though his exercise
was learned, and he disposed of a passage of Ignatius, which he proved
to be a manifest interpolation, I do not think his sermon had the effect
which mine produced, and that the Rumpelwitzers much relished it. After
the sermon, all the candidates walked out of church together, and supped
lovingly at the “Blue Stag” in Rumpelwitz.
‘While so occupied, a waiter came in and said that a person without
wished to speak to one of the reverend candidates, “the tall one.” This
could only mean me, for I was a head and shoulders higher than any
other reverend gentleman present. I issued out to see who was the
person desiring to hold converse with me, and found a man whom I had no
difficulty in recognising as one of the Jewish persuasion.
‘“Sir,” said this Hebrew, “I have heard from a friend, who was in your
church to-day, the heads of the admirable discourse you pronounced
there. It has affected me deeply, most deeply. There are only one or
two points on which I am yet in doubt, and if your honour could but
condescend to enlighten me on these, I think--I think Solomon Hirsch
would be a convert to your eloquence.”
‘“What are these points, my good friend?” said I; and I pointed out to
him the twenty-four heads of my sermon, asking him in which of these his
doubts lay.
‘We had been walking up and down before the inn while our conversation
took place, but the windows being open, and my comrades having heard the
discourse in the morning, requested me, rather peevishly, not to resume
it at that period. I, therefore, moved on with my disciple, and, at his
request, began at once the sermon; for my memory is good for anything,
and I can repeat any book I have read thrice.
‘I poured out, then, under the trees, and in the calm moonlight, that
discourse which I had pronounced under the blazing sun of noon. My
Israelite only interrupted me by exclamations indicative of surprise,
assent, admiration, and increasing conviction. “Prodigious!” said
he;--“Wunderschon!” would he remark at the conclusion of some eloquent
passage; in a word, he exhausted the complimentary interjections of our
language: and to compliments what man is averse? I think we must have
walked two miles when I got to my third head and my companion begged I
would enter his house, which we now neared, and partake of a glass of
beer; to which I was never averse.
‘That house, sir, was the inn at which you, too, if I judge aright, were
taken. No sooner was I in the place, than three crimps rushed upon me,
told me I was a deserter, and their prisoner, and called upon me to
deliver up my money and papers; which I did with a solemn protest as
to my sacred character. They consisted of my sermon in MS., Prorector
Nasenbrumm’s recommendatory letter, proving my identity, and three
groschen four pfennigs in bullion. I had already been in the cart twenty
hours when you reached the house. The French officer, who lay opposite
you (he who screamed when you trod on his foot, for he was wounded),
was brought in shortly before your arrival. He had been taken with his
epaulets and regimentals, and declared his quality and rank; but he was
alone (I believe it was some affair of love with a Hessian lady which
caused him to be unattended); and as the persons into whose hands he
fell will make more profit of him as a recruit than as a prisoner, he is
made to share our fate. He is not the first by many scores so captured.
One of M. de Soubise’s cooks, and three actors out of a troop in the
French camp, several deserters from your English troops (the men are led
away by being told that there is no flogging in the Prussian service),
and three Dutchmen were taken besides.’
‘And you,’ said I--‘you who were just on the point of getting a valuable
living,--you who have so much learning, are you not indignant at the
outrage?’
‘I am a Saxon,’ said the candidate, ‘and there is no use in indignation.
Our government is crushed under Frederick’s heel these five years, and
I might as well hope for mercy from the Grand Mogul. Nor am I, in truth,
discontented with my lot; I have lived on a penny bread for so many
years, that a soldier’s rations will be a luxury to me. I do not care
about more or less blows of a cane; all such evils are passing, and
therefore endurable. I will never, God willing, slay a man in combat;
but I am not unanxious to experience on myself the effect of the
war-passion, which has had so great an influence on the human race. It
was for the same reason that I determined to marry Amalia, for a man is
not a complete Mensch until he is the father of a family; to be which
is a condition of his existence, and therefore a duty of his education.
Amalia must wait; she is out of the reach of want, being, indeed, cook
to the Frau Prorectorinn Nasenbrumm, my worthy patron’s lady. I have one
or two books with me, which no one is likely to take from me, and one in
my heart which is the best of all. If it shall please Heaven to finish
my existence here, before I can prosecute my studies further, what cause
have I to repine? I pray God I may not be mistaken, but I think I have
wronged no man, and committed no mortal sin. If I have, I know where to
look for forgiveness; and if I die, as I have said, without knowing all
that I would desire to learn, shall I not be in a situation to learn
EVERYTHING, and what can human soul ask for more?
‘Pardon me for putting so many _I_‘s in my discourse,’ said the
candidate, ‘but when a man is talking of himself, ‘tis the briefest and
simplest way of talking.’
In which, perhaps, though I hate egotism, I think my friend was right.
Although he acknowledged himself to be a mean-spirited fellow, with no
more ambition than to know the contents of a few musty books, I think
the man had some good in him; especially in the resolution with which he
bore his calamities. Many a gallant man of the highest honour is often
not proof against these, and has been known to despair over a bad
dinner, or to be cast down at a ragged-elbowed coat. MY maxim is to bear
all, to put up with water if you cannot get Burgundy, and if you have no
velvet to be content with frieze. But Burgundy and velvet are the best,
bien entendu, and the man is a fool who will not seize the best when the
scramble is open.
The heads of the sermon which my friend the theologian intended to
impart to me, were, however, never told; for, after our coming out
of the hospital, he was drafted into a regiment quartered as far as
possible from his native country, in Pomerania; while I was put into
the Bulow regiment, of which the ordinary headquarters were Berlin. The
Prussian regiments seldom change their garrisons as ours do, for the
fear of desertion is so great, that it becomes necessary to know the
face of every individual in the service; and, in time of peace, men live
and die in the same town. This does not add, as may be imagined, to the
amusements of the soldier’s life. It is lest any young gentleman like
myself should take a fancy to a military career, and fancy that of a
private soldier a tolerable one, that I am giving these, I hope, moral
descriptions of what we poor fellows in the ranks really suffered.
As soon as we recovered, we were dismissed from the nuns and the
hospital to the town prison of Fulda, where we were kept like slaves and
criminals, with artillerymen with lighted matches at the doors of the
courtyards and the huge black dormitory where some hundreds of us lay;
until we were despatched to our different destinations. It was soon seen
by the exercise which were the old soldiers amongst us, and which the
recruits; and for the former, while we lay in prison, there was a little
more leisure: though, if possible, a still more strict watch kept than
over the broken-spirited yokels who had been forced or coaxed into the
service. To describe the characters here assembled would require Mr.
Gilray’s own pencil. There were men of all nations and callings. The
Englishmen boxed and bullied; the Frenchmen played cards, and danced,
and fenced; the heavy Germans smoked their pipes and drank beer, if they
could manage to purchase it. Those who had anything to risk gambled, and
at this sport I was pretty lucky, for, not having a penny when I entered
the depot (having been robbed of every farthing of my property by the
rascally crimps), I won near a dollar in my very first game at cards
with one of the Frenchmen; who did not think of asking whether I could
pay or not upon losing. Such, at least, is the advantage of having a
gentlemanlike appearance; it has saved me many a time since by procuring
me credit when my fortunes were at their lowest ebb.
Among the Frenchmen there was a splendid man and soldier, whose
real name we never knew, but whose ultimate history created no small
sensation, when it came to be known in the Prussian army. If beauty and
courage are proofs of nobility, as (although I have seen some of the
ugliest dogs and the greatest cowards in the world in the noblesse) I
have no doubt courage and beauty are, this Frenchman must have been of
the highest families in France, so grand and noble was his manner, so
superb his person. He was not quite so tall as myself, fair, while I am
dark, and, if possible, rather broader in the shoulders. He was the only
man I ever met who could master me with the small-sword; with which he
would pink me four times to my three. As for the sabre, I could knock
him to pieces with it; and I could leap farther and carry more than
he could. This, however, is mere egotism. This Frenchman, with whom I
became pretty intimate--for we were the two cocks, as it were, of the
depot, and neither had any feeling of low jealousy--was called, for want
of a better name, Le Blondin, on account of his complexion. He was not a
deserter, but had come in from the Lower Rhine and the bishoprics, as I
fancy; fortune having proved unfavourable to him at play probably, and
other means of existence being denied him. I suspect that the Bastile
was waiting for him in his own country, had he taken a fancy to return
thither.
He was passionately fond of play and liquor, and thus we had a
considerable sympathy together: when excited by one or the other, he
became frightful. I, for my part, can bear, without wincing, both ill
luck and wine; hence my advantage over him was considerable in our
bouts, and I won enough money from him to make my position tenable. He
had a wife outside (who, I take it, was the cause of his misfortunes
and separation from his family), and she used to be admitted to see him
twice or thrice a week, and never came empty-handed---a little brown
bright-eyed creature, whose ogles had made the greatest impression upon
all the world.
This man was drafted into a regiment that was quartered at Neiss in
Silesia, which is only at a short distance from the Austrian frontier;
he maintained always the same character for daring and skill, and was,
in the secret republic of the regiment--which always exists as well
as the regular military hierarchy--the acknowledged leader. He was
an admirable soldier, as I have said; but haughty, dissolute, and a
drunkard. A man of this mark, unless he takes care to coax and flatter
his officers (which I always did), is sure to fall out with them. Le
Blondin’s captain was his sworn enemy, and his punishments were frequent
and severe.
His wife and the women of the regiment (this was after the peace) used
to carry on a little commerce of smuggling across the Austrian frontier,
where their dealings were winked at by both parties; and in obedience
to the instructions of her husband, this woman, from every one of her
excursions, would bring in a little powder and ball: commodities which
are not to be procured by the Prussian soldier, and which were stowed
away in secret till wanted. They WERE to be wanted, and that soon.
Le Blondin had organised a great and extraordinary conspiracy. We don’t
know how far it went, how many hundreds or thousands it embraced; but
strange were the stories told about the plot amongst us privates: for
the news was spread from garrison to garrison, and talked of by the
army, in spite of all the Government efforts to hush it up--hush it
up, indeed! I have been of the people myself; I have seen the Irish
rebellion, and I know what is the free-masonry of the poor.
He made himself the head of the plot. There were no writings nor papers.
No single one of the conspirators communicated with any other than
the Frenchman; but personally he gave his orders to them all. He had
arranged matters for a general rising of the garrison, at twelve o’clock
on a certain day: the guard-houses in the town were to be seized, the
sentinels cut down, and--who knows the rest? Some of our people used
to say that the conspiracy was spread through all Silesia, and that Le
Blondin was to be made a general in the Austrian service.
At twelve o’clock, and opposite the guard-house by the Bohmer-Thor of
Neiss, some thirty men were lounging about in their undress, and the
Frenchman stood near the sentinel of the guard-house, sharpening a wood
hatchet on a stone. At the stroke of twelve, he got up, split open the
sentinel’s head with a blow of his axe, and the thirty men, rushing into
the guard-house, took possession of the arms there, and marched at once
to the gate. The sentry there tried to drop the bar, but the Frenchman
rushed up to him, and, with another blow of the axe, cut off his right
hand, with which he held the chain. Seeing the men rushing out armed,
the guard without the gate drew up across the road to prevent their
passage; but the Frenchman’s thirty gave them a volley, charged them
with the bayonet, and brought down several, and the rest flying, the
thirty rushed on. The frontier is only a league from Neiss, and they
made rapidly towards it.
But the alarm was given in the town, and what saved it was that the
clock by which the Frenchman went was a quarter of an hour faster than
any of the clocks in the town. The generale was beat, the troops
called to arms, and thus the men who were to have attacked the other
guard-houses, were obliged to fall into the ranks, and their project
was defeated. This, however, likewise rendered the discovery of the
conspirators impossible, for no man could betray his comrade, nor, of
course, would he criminate himself.
Cavalry was sent in pursuit of the Frenchman and his thirty fugitives,
who were, by this time, far on their way to the Bohemian frontier. When
the horse came up with them, they turned, received them with a volley
and the bayonet, and drove them back. The Austrians were out at the
barriers, looking eagerly on at the conflict. The women, who were on the
look-out too, brought more ammunition to these intrepid deserters, and
they engaged and drove back the dragoons several times. But in these
gallant and fruitless combats much time was lost, and a battalion
presently came up, and surrounded the brave thirty; when the fate of the
poor fellows was decided. They fought with the fury of despair: not one
of them asked for quarter. When their ammunition failed, they fought
with the steel, and were shot down or bayoneted where they stood. The
Frenchman was the very last man who was hit. He received a bullet in the
thigh, and fell, and in this state was overpowered, killing the officer
who first advanced to seize him.
He and the very few of his comrades who survived were carried back
to Neiss, and immediately, as the ringleader, he was brought before a
council of war. He refused all interrogations which were made as to his
real name and family. ‘What matters who I am?’ said he; ‘you have me and
will shoot me. My name would not save me were it ever so famous.’ In the
same way he declined to make a single discovery regarding the plot. ‘It
was all my doing,’ he said; ‘each man engaged in it only knew me, and is
ignorant of every one of his comrades. The secret is mine alone, and
the secret shall die with me.’ When the officers asked him what was the
reason which induced him to meditate a crime so horrible?--‘It was
your infernal brutality and tyranny,’ he said. ‘You are all butchers,
ruffians, tigers, and you owe it to the cowardice of your men that you
were not murdered long ago.’
At this his captain burst into the most furious exclamations against the
wounded man, and rushing up to him, struck him a blow with his fist. But
Le Blondin, wounded as he was, as quick as thought seized the bayonet of
one of the soldiers who supported him, and plunged it into the officer’s
breast. ‘Scoundrel and monster,’ said he, ‘I shall have the consolation
of sending you out of the world before I die.’ He was shot that day.
He offered to write to the King, if the officers would agree to let his
letter go sealed into the hands of the postmaster; but they feared, no
doubt, that something might be said to inculpate themselves, and refused
him the permission. At the next review Frederick treated them, it is
said, with great severity, and rebuked them for not having granted the
Frenchman his request. However, it was the King’s interest to conceal
the matter, and so it was, as I have said before, hushed up--so well
hushed up, that a hundred thousand soldiers in the army knew it; and
many’s the one of us that has drunk to the Frenchman’s memory over our
wine, as a martyr for the cause of the soldier. I shall have,
doubtless, some readers who will cry out at this, that I am encouraging
insubordination and advocating murder. If these men had served as
privates in the Prussian army from 1760 to 1765, they would not be
so apt to take objection. This man destroyed two sentinels to get his
liberty; how many hundreds of thousands of his own and the Austrian
people did King Frederick kill because he took a fancy to Silesia? It
was the accursed tyranny of the system that sharpened the axe which
brained the two sentinels of Neiss: and so let officers take warning,
and think twice ere they visit poor fellows with the cane.
I could tell many more stories about the army; but as, from having been
a soldier myself, all my sympathies are in the ranks, no doubt my
tales would be pronounced to be of an immoral tendency, and I had best,
therefore, be brief. Fancy my surprise while in this depot, when one day
a well-known voice saluted my ear, and I heard a meagre young gentleman,
who was brought in by a couple of troopers and received a few cuts
across the shoulders from one of them, say in the best English, ‘You
infernal WASCAL, I’ll be wevenged for this. I’ll WITE to my ambassador,
as sure as my name’s Fakenham of Fakenham.’ I burst out laughing at
this: it was my old acquaintance in MY corporal’s coat. Lischen had
sworn stoutly, that he was really and truly the private, and the poor
fellow had been drafted off, and was to be made one of us. But I bear no
malice, and having made the whole room roar with the story of the way
in which I had tricked the poor lad, I gave him a piece of advice, which
procured him his liberty. ‘Go to the inspecting officer,’ said I; ‘if
they once get you into Prussia it is all over with you, and they will
never give you up. Go now to the commandant of the depot, promise him
a hundred--five hundred guineas to set you free; say that the crimping
captain has your papers and portfolio’ (this was true); ‘above all, show
him that you have the means of paying him the promised money, and I will
warrant you are set free.’ He did as I advised, and when we were put on
the march Mr. Fakenham found means to be allowed to go into hospital,
and while in hospital the matter was arranged as I had recommended.
He had nearly, however, missed his freedom by his own stinginess in
bargaining for it, and never showed the least gratitude towards me his
benefactor.
I am not going to give any romantic narrative of the Seven Years’ War.
At the close of it, the Prussian army, so renowned for its disciplined
valour, was officered and under-officered by native Prussians, it is
true; but was composed for the most part of men hired or stolen, like
myself, from almost every nation in Europe. The deserting to and fro
was prodigious. In my regiment (Bulow’s) alone before the war, there had
been no less than 600 Frenchmen, and as they marched out of Berlin
for the campaign, one of the fellows had an old fiddle on which he
was flaying a French tune, and his comrades danced almost, rather than
walked, after him, singing, ‘Nous allons en France.’ Two years after,
when they returned to Berlin, there were only six of these men left; the
rest had fled or were killed in action. The life the private soldier led
was a frightful one to any but men of iron courage and endurance. There
was a corporal to every three men, marching behind them, and pitilessly
using the cane; so much so that it used to be said that in action
there was a front rank of privates and a second rank of sergeants
and corporals to drive them on. Many men would give way to the most
frightful acts of despair under these incessant persecutions and
tortures; and amongst several regiments of the army a horrible practice
had sprung up, which for some time caused the greatest alarm to the
Government. This was a strange frightful custom of CHILD-MURDER. The men
used to say that life was unbearable, that suicide was a crime; in
order to avert which, and to finish with the intolerable misery of their
position, the best plan was to kill a young child, which was innocent,
and therefore secure of heaven, and then to deliver themselves up as
guilty of the murder. The King himself--the hero, sage, and philosopher,
the prince who had always liberality on his lips and who affected a
horror of capital punishments--was frightened at this dreadful protest,
on the part of the wretches whom he had kidnapped, against his monstrous
tyranny; but his only means of remedying the evil was strictly to forbid
that such criminals should be attended by any ecclesiastic whatever, and
denied all religious consolation.
The punishment was incessant. Every officer had the liberty to inflict
it, and in peace it was more cruel than in war. For when peace came
the King turned adrift such of his officers as were not noble; whatever
their services might have been. He would call a captain to the front of
his company and say, ‘He is not noble, let him go.’ We were afraid of
him somehow, and were cowed before him like wild beasts before their
keeper. I have seen the bravest men of the army cry like children at a
cut of the cane; I have seen a little ensign of fifteen call out a man
of fifty from the ranks, a man who had been in a hundred battles, and
he has stood presenting arms, and sobbing and howling like a baby, while
the young wretch lashed him over the arms and thighs with the stick.
In a day of action this man would dare anything. A button might be awry
THEN and nobody touched him; but when they had made the brute fight,
then they lashed him again into subordination. Almost all of us yielded
to the spell--scarce one could break it. The French officer I have
spoken of as taken along with me, was in my company, and caned like
a dog. I met him at Versailles twenty years afterwards, and he turned
quite pale and sick when I spoke to him of old days. ‘For God’s sake,’
said he, ‘don’t talk of that time: I wake up from my sleep trembling and
crying even now.’
As for me, after a very brief time (in which it must be confessed
I tasted, like my comrades, of the cane) and after I had found
opportunities to show myself to be a brave and dexterous soldier, I
took the means I had adopted in the English army to prevent any further
personal degradation. I wore a bullet around my neck, which I did not
take the pains to conceal, and I gave out that it should be for the man
or officer who caused me to be chastised. And there was something in
my character which made my superiors believe me; for that bullet had
already served me to kill an Austrian colonel, and I would have given
it to a Prussian with as little remorse. For what cared I for their
quarrels, or whether the eagle under which I marched had one head or
two? All I said was, ‘No man shall find me tripping in my duty; but no
man shall ever lay a hand upon me.’ And by this maxim I abided as long
as I remained in the service.
I do not intend to make a history of battles in the Prussian any more
than in the English service. I did my duty in them as well as another,
and by the time that my moustache had grown to a decent length, which
it did when I was twenty years of age, there was not a braver, cleverer,
handsomer, and I must own, wickeder soldier in the Prussian army. I had
formed myself to the condition of the proper fighting beast; on a day of
action I was savage and happy; out of the field I took all the pleasure
I could get, and was by no means delicate as to its quality or the
manner of procuring it. The truth is, however, that there was among our
men a much higher tone of society than among the clumsy louts in the
English army, and our service was generally so strict that we had little
time for doing mischief. I am very dark and swarthy in complexion,
and was called by our fellows the ‘Black Englander,’ the ‘Schwartzer
Englander,’ or the English Devil. If any service was to be done, I was
sure to be put upon it. I got frequent gratifications of money, but no
promotion; and it was on the day after I had killed the Austrian colonel
(a great officer of Uhlans, whom I engaged--singly and on foot) that
General Bulow, my colonel, gave me two Frederics-d’or in front of the
regiment, and said, ‘I reward thee now; but I fear I shall have to hang
thee one day or other.’ I spent the money, and that I had taken from the
colonel’s body, every groschen, that night with some jovial companions;
but as long as war lasted was never without a dollar in my purse.