SAIL FOR GERMANY.
We had been very comfortable in our quiet country quarters in Sussex,
and being so near London, our officers led a gay life, for at least
one-half of them were always in town "between returns;" but now
Ranelagh and Vauxhall, with their fireworks and lighted promenades,
their belles, beaux, music, and gaiety; the _ridotti_, the opera, the
theatres, and entertainments _al fresco_ in the beautiful West-end
parks, or by barges up the Thames to Richmond or to Hampton Court,
were all to be exchanged for the long dusty march by day or the dark
and weary one by night--the tented camp, the wet bivouac, and the
perils of the German war.
The regiment was embarked on board of two frigates--the _Venus_ and
_Thames_. The Light Troop was in the latter, under Major Maitland.
Owing to the circumstances of the expedition, and that the frigates,
after landing us, were to run down the Channel and join the Brest
blockading fleet, under Anson and Howe, discipline was somewhat
relaxed, and the seamen and marines were permitted the privilege of
having their wives, sweethearts, and friends on board. So there were
enough, and to spare, of singing and weeping, swearing, smoking, and
even fighting between decks.
To most of us the atmosphere, especially below, was rendered
insupportable by the mingled odours of bilge, coarse tobacco,
purser's gin, and new paint, while the language heard on every side
was neither classical nor poetical; and this continued until the Blue
Peter appeared fluttering from the frigate's foremasthead, and the
boom of one of her bow-chasers announced that all shore-people must
leave. Then began the howling of women and the grumbling of the
seamen, many of whom, to express their discontent, roared in chorus a
song then popular among taverns and crimping-houses, a portion of
which ran thus:--
"Ere Hawke did bang Mounseer Conflan,
We had plenty of beef and beer;
_Now_ Mounseer's beat, we've little to eat,
And d----n the drop of gin so neat,
Since John Bull's nought to fear."
After having most severe weather at sea, we were landed at the
quaint, old, and Dutch-like town of Embden, about the middle of
September.
There we remained two days, giving our horses gentle exercise after
the cramps of the sea voyage, riding them by the long canals which
intersect the city, and by the sluices of which the whole surrounding
country can be inundated in time of war. The officers received a
banquet from the burgomaster and Count of Embden in the old feudal
castle of the latter, and then we marched to join the allied British
and Hanoverians, who were now commanded by Prince Ferdinand of
Brunswick.
I shall never forget that route, which occupied ten days. The rain
poured incessantly, and we had to traverse a low, marshy country, few
portions of which were less than fetlock deep in water. Many of the
towns we passed through had been destroyed; the inhabitants of others
declined to be incommoded. Thus we frequently bivouacked amid the
wet, being quite without tents; but old Colonel Preston always
cheered us on. Sometimes he would say, as some of us nodded over our
holsters, when riding wearily on in the grey dawn that heralded
another day of toil and travel:
"You are weary, my gude lads; we shall halt in an hour; but there can
be no sleep even then, unless with the sword in the hand and the foot
in the stirrup."
On one of those wretched marches I had command of the regimental
baggage-guard, and was hourly annoyed by the master waggoner, an East
Frieslander, who was never sober, as he drank constantly from a keg
of Schiedam which hung at the back of his wain, and his companions
assured me that he had never been sober for a year--others averred
that he had been born drunk, so great a toper was he. I was riding a
little way in rear of the escort, which was traversing a fetid swamp
from whence a pestilential evening mist was rising white as milk,
when amid that gloomy vapour there suddenly rose in front a lambent
light of a pale hue. Then a cry of dismay from Hob Elliot and others
of my men, made me trot up to the spot, where I beheld a very
appalling spectacle.
The Friesland waggoner was lying on his back, and literally on
fire--flames were issuing from his crackling nostrils, mouth, and
ears, and even, while we gazed on him, his whole face and hair were
burned away, while the fire seemed to pass over his whole body,
scorching his clothes to powder.
Dr. Lancelot Probe, our surgeon, came speedily back from the front,
but the Frieslander was already beyond his skill, having expired in
agony. It was a case of spontaneous combustion. Probe naturally
conjectured that a spark from his pipe--which he yet firmly
grasped--had ignited the fumes of the spirit within him, and the
subtle gases issuing from every pore and orifice, had kindled at once
to fire, on reaching the external air.
Be it as it may, the terrible episode of the Frieslander had the
effect of keeping some of our most tipsy fellows sober for many a
week after.
Our mode of passing the night was generally thus.
A ridge would be selected; we dismounted and cloaked, throwing a
portion over the saddle and holsters, each man standing by his horse,
and holding on by the stirrup leather to steady himself if sleeping,
as he was pretty sure to be. Despite the danger of lying down among
the horses' hoofs, some did so in utter weariness, but were soon
forced to get up again, lest their own chargers should tread on them.
Moreover, a dragoon accoutred cannot lie on his back for the spurs
that are on his heels, and the cartridge-box between his shoulders,
nor on his right side for his haversack, nor on his left for his
canteen and sword-hilt; thus, when harnessed, he has no resource but
to sleep on his face with his nose and toes in the turf!
So the dreary night would pass--the trumpet pour its melancholy twang
through the mist at daybreak, and amid the pestilential swamp we
would groom our horses or imagine that we did so; pour the water out
of our boots; partake of a ration biscuit soaked by the night rain to
pulp, if nothing better could be had; denounce the Hanoverians for
whom we, H.M. Scots Greys, endured all this discomfort, and then
again resume the march, which ended on the 31st of September, when we
joined Prince Ferdinand at Coesveldt, a small but fortified town in
Westphalia.
On those long marches, Tom Kirkton--he had now attained the rank of
troop-sergeant--and I had many a confab as of old, for on service
rank makes little difference, if discipline be retained. He
frequently and bluntly urged that I should "lay siege," as he phrased
it, "to my pretty cousin, and marry her, and so quit this miserable
work. Lay siege!" he added, on one occasion; "you don't require to
do that, for I have no doubt she is anxious enough to hook you for
the mere sake of being Lady Gauntlet."
"This is most flattering, Tom; and so you would have me pander to a
spirit so mercenary. Nay, nay; I cannot judge of her thus; and by
this time perhaps she is the wife of Major Shirley, whom I left in
possession of the field."
But Tom's advice, though heedlessly given, always rankled long and
bitterly in my mind.
And now, lest the reader may naturally inquire what object we had in
making a tour of Germany, I may briefly state that his Britannic
Majesty's native and well-beloved Electorate of Hanover had been
overrun by a French army, to expel whom, Prince Ferdinand of
Brunswick had put himself at the head of the German troops, and to
reinforce these, six regiments of British infantry and some cavalry
had joined him, and were now under the command of Lord George
Sackville. Since the accession of the house of Guelph to the throne,
the whole taxes and energies of the British people had been
systematically devoted to the defence of Hanover and the pauper
princelings of Germany; just as in the preceding age they had been
wasted in defence of King William's dearly-beloved Dutch; and it was
not until the peace of Paris that, as an historian says, the nation
"would no longer suffer the public treasure to be squandered on poor
foreign princes under the name of subsidies, to enable them to fight
their own battles, nor the blood of British soldiers to be spilt to
water the forests and fertilize the plains of Germany."
However, these are after-thoughts; of such we took little heed then,
and cared less whom we fought, or where, remembering only a soldier's
first duty--implicit obedience.
I shall briefly state that we skirmished through all Westphalia; that
during these operations I received a slight pistol wound in the
bridle hand; Colonel Preston had a horse shot under him, and Tom
Kirkton a standard pole broken by a grape-shot, and so forth, until
the month of November, when we retired to winter quarters at the
little city of Alphen, in the Bishopric of Paderborn, where we
remained quietly recruiting our energies for a new struggle in the
early part of the ensuing year.
The allies, 34,000 strong, were led, as I have stated, by Ferdinand
of Brunswick, one of the most celebrated generals of the age; but
opposed to him were two maréchals of France, one, whose name found an
echo in my heart, the Duc de Broglie, and the other M. de Contades,
with 60,000 troops, the flower of the French line--men at whose hands
the British and Hanoverians had suffered a series of reverses which
made us long for spring, that the contest might be renewed and ended
for ever.
END OF VOL. II.
LONDON:
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS,
CHANDOS-STREET.