Why Fritz Sahlmann fell in the mud; why Bank, the shoemaker, got a
blow with the butt-end of a musket; why Rathsherr Herse wished
to set fire to all the mills in the country; and why the King of
Prussia always kept a place at his table for the Rathsherr.
When our prisoners got outside the Brandenburg gate, they marched with
their two men in front and two behind, across the bridge, along the
Brandenburg lane,--for, though called a road it was only a lane, there
being in those days no high roads in Mecklenburg,--and when they came
to the narrow pass leading up to the Windmill hill to which the
Stemhagen folk have given the names of, "Killhorse" and "Break-neck,"
the guard commanded "Halt," for they could go no further.
The whole of the artillery lay in the pass, and had sunk so deep
in the mud that, if all the horses of the neighbourhood had been at
hand--which they were not--they could not have pulled this heap of
misfortune out of it. There lay the French now, and cursed and swore.
Labourers were fetched from the town with spades and shovels, and fresh
horses were sent for from Juernsdorf and Klaukow, and all the while it
rained so heavily that no one could keep a dry thread on his back.
"Neighbour Voss," said baker Witte "what do you say to this rain?"
"Fine weather for late barley," replied the Miller, "if folks have sown
any."
"My shirt is wringing wet," said the baker!
"And my boots are filling with water," said the Miller.
"Herr Burmeister, come behind me; my cloak will give you some shelter,"
said my uncle Herse, and he made himself a little bit broader than
nature had already made him. "I am only glad that these 'slaves of the
tyrant' will get a wetting through and through."
My father got under the cloak, but said nothing, for something had
caught his eye.
Above, on the edge of the narrow pass a group of people were standing:
labourers, servants and Stemhagen burghers, who had followed the
procession in spite of the rain and bad weather, partly from curiosity
and partly from sympathy, and amongst these people Fritz Sahlmann was
slipping in and out, telling the whole story first to one and then to
another of those who did not yet know it. When my father first caught
sight of him, he was standing close by Inspector Braesig of Juernsdorf,
who had come on horseback, and had to ride alongside of the French
army, lest he should never see his team-horses again.
The Inspector was an old friend of my father's, and my father could
clearly see that old Braesig nodded to him and whispered something in
Fritz Sahlmann's ear, when the boy told him of the scrape. Fritz
Sahlmann now stuck his hands in his trowsers' pockets, and began
whistling; whistled himself along the edge; whistled himself down the
bank; when nearly at the bottom cleverly caught his foot in the root of
an old willow; stumbled quite naturally towards the prisoners; and,
when close to my father, fell in the mud as if he could not help it in
the least.
My father bent down and raised him up.
"Watch the horse," whispered Fritz.
He could say no more for he was at once driven off by the French, and
he climbed up the bank again.
If, before, my father had paid attention to the movements of the
Inspector and the lad, he now did so doubly. He watched old Braesig get
down from his horse, crack his riding-whip and give it into Fritz
Sahlmann's hand; the boy now began to lead the horse up and down, but
always a little lower on the bank, till at last he stood still under a
willow-tree as if he were seeking shelter there from the rain. From
this place he made a sign to my father, and my father, who stood under
the cover of my uncle Herse's broad back, waved his hat three times as
if he were shaking the rain from it.
Presently, a coach-and-four came round the corner where the Brandenburg
Lane meets the Ivenack Lane and, in it, sat a general who had been
quartered on the Graf of Ivenack the night before. It, too, drove up
the pass and, when it came to the place where the transport had stuck
fast, some confusion arose amongst the soldiers in getting out of the
way, and no sooner did my father observe this, than he flew, as if shot
out of a pistol, from behind the Herr Rathsherr's cloak, up the bank on
the other side of the coach, to the willow-tree, snatched whip and
bridle out of Fritz Sahlmann's hands, jumped on to the horse,
and--quick as lightning--was down the hill.
"_Feu_, _feu!_" shouted the French; "click, click," went the hammers,
but no response came from the old firelocks, for the powder was as
wet--as Stahl the weaver's coffee grounds.
For one short instant, it seemed as if the Stemhagen burghers, when
they saw their Burmeister riding over hedge and ditch, were going to
give him three cheers; and Bank the shoemaker was just beginning "Our
Burmeister viv ..." when the butt-end of a French musket applied
between his shoulders clearly hinted to him that he had better be off.
His example was followed by the others and, in a twinkling, the place
was clear of everybody except Inspector Braesig, who had stationed
himself against a tree and was smoking a pipe with the greatest
calmness.
Now, whether no one had observed that he had come on horseback, or
whether the French had distinctly seen that he had had nothing to do
with my father's escape, he having stood a long way off from his
horse--whatever it was, nothing was said to him.
The other three prisoners, however, got a double guard, and were
brought away out of the pass into an open field, and thence, to the old
windmill from which the hill took its name, as it was a little drier
there. Here they sat back to back on a millstone and talked together.
"It's a good thing for the Burmeister," said old Witte, as he combed
his wet hair with his brass comb, "that he has got away, but it's bad
for us. We are now like a swarm of bees without a queen. He would have
been sure to have got us all off sooner or later."
"Well, neighbour, it can't be helped," said Miller Voss, and he nodded
his head to Inspector Braesig who had also taken shelter in the mill.
"Hm! Meister Witte," broke in my uncle Herse, "he is well up in town
matters, I don't deny it; but as to war-matters--to what concerns
military affairs--why he has never in his life given the least
attention to them, and he knows about as much of them as ... as ..."
"As you or I, Herr Rathsherr," said the Miller innocently.
"Miller Voss," said the Rathsherr and he drew himself up, making
himself an inch taller, "speak for yourself, if you please, and not for
others. What you know of such matters has all been learned since
yesterday afternoon; for you and the Amtshauptmann and the Burmeister
have brought us into this mess, and, if I had not come to the rescue,
Mamsell Westphalen would be sitting here too, with her teeth
chattering. What _I_ know, I will soon give you a proof of. Do you know
Jahn?"
"Do you mean old Jahn of Peenhaeuser, who mends pots for my wife?"
"Bah! I mean 'Gymnast-Jahn,' who is now in Berlin, the brother-in-law
of Kolloffen of Lukow."
"No, I don't know the man."
"Well then, listen. One day this 'Gymnast-Jahn' was walking along the
streets of Berlin with a student when they came to the Brandenburg
Gate--for the Berliners have got a Brandenburg Gate just as much as the
Stemhageners,--and he pointed to the place where the Goddess of
Victory, which the French had carried off, had formerly stood;
and he asked the student what thought came into his head at the
sight.--'None.'--Smack! he gave him a sound box on the ear."
"That was cool," said the Miller.
"Yes, Herr Rathsherr," said old Witte, "my hand is pretty ready,
but ..."
"Let me finish first, will you?" said my uncle Herse. "'Master
Good-for-nothing,' said Gymnast-Jahn, seeing the student's
astonishment, 'that will teach you to think in future. You should have
thought on seeing that place that we must get the Goddess of Victory
back again from Paris.'"
"Yes but ..." said Witte.
"That's all very well but ..." said the Miller.
The Herr Rathsherr however did not let them get possession of the
field, but turned to the Miller and said,--"Now I ask you, Miller Voss,
when you see this mill, what idea comes into your head?"
"Herr Rathsherr," said the Miller, and he got up and stood a little
distance off, "I hope you don't mean to treat me in that manner?"
"I only ask you, Miller Voss, what idea comes into your head?"
"Well," said the Miller, "what idea ought to come? I think it's a rusty
old thing, and that, in Spring, it ought to have new sails; and that,
if the stones above are no better than these down here, the Stemhagen
folk must get a devilish lot of sand along with their flour."
"And you're right there, neighbour," said the baker.
"And he's wrong there!" cried my uncle Herse. "If he had answered
properly he would have said that it must be set fire to. And it will be
set fire to; all the mills in the whole country must be set fire
to." And he stood up and walked, with long strides round about the
mill-stones.
"Lord save us!" said Miller Voss. "Who is to do this wickedness?"
"I," said my uncle Herse, and he slapped himself on the breast and went
nearer to the two, who wondered what could be coming next, and said, in
a low voice: "When the Landsturm[3] rises, we must set fire to all the
mills as a signal;--that's called a beacon, and the best proof you know
nothing about war-matters is, that you don't even know what a beacon
means."
"Herr Rathsherr," said Miller Voss, "it's all the same to me whether
it's a beacon or a deacon, but, whoever sets fire to my water-mill, had
better look out."
"Watermill? Windmills I mean. Miller Voss; who ever said anything about
watermills? Watermills lie in the ground and don't burn. And now, I ask
you, has the Burmeister as much knowledge and courage to act in time of
war as I have?"
"He's never said he would set mills on fire," said the baker, and
looked at the Herr Rathsherr rather doubtfully as if he did not quite
know whether he was in fun or earnest.
"My dear Witte, you look at me like a cow at a new gate. You are, no
doubt astonished and thinking what does a Stemhagen Rathsherr like me,
know of war and stratagems? My dear Witte, you knead your dough with
your hands, in the baking-trough; I knead mine in my head by thought.
If I were where I ought to be, I should be in the presence of the King
of Prussia, talking with the man. 'Your Majesty,' I should say, 'you
are rather in difficulties, I think?' 'That I am, Herr Rathsherr,' he
would say, 'money is devilish scarce just now.'--'Nothing else?' I
say. 'That's a mere trifle. Only give me full power to do what I
like'--_licentia poetica_ that is called in Latin, Miller Voss,--'and a
regiment of Grenadier Guards.'--'You shall have them, my dear
Rathsherr,' says the King; and I have all the Jews from the whole of
Prussia assembled in the palace-yard at Berlin. I surround the palace
with my grenadiers, place myself at the head of a company and march
with them into the palace-yard. 'Are you all there?' I ask the Jews.
'Yes,' say they. 'Now, are you willing,' I say to them, 'to sacrifice
the half of your possessions on the altar of the Fatherland?'--'We
can't do that,' says one, 'for we should be ruined.'--'Will you, or
will you not?' I ask. I give the word of command 'Attention.'--'Herr
Rathsherr,' says another, 'take a quarter.'--'Not a groschen less than
half,' say I; 'Make ready!'--'We will!' scream the Jews--'Good,' say I,
'then let each one go singly up to the Presence Chamber where his
Majesty is sitting on the Throne, and let each one lay his money on the
steps at his feet.' When they have all been up, I go. 'Well,' I say,
'how is it now your Majesty.'--'Capital, my dear Herr Rathsherr,' says
he, 'would that the other business were going as well.'--'We'll soon
manage it,' say I; 'only give me twenty regiments or so of infantry,
ten of cavalry and as much artillery as you have by you.'--'You shall
have them,' says the King.--'Good,' say I, and march off with my
soldiers away through field and flood, my flanks always covered. I
throw myself upon Hamburg, and surprise the Prince of Eckmuehl; he is
brought before me. 'Build a good high gallows,' say I.--'Mercy,' says
he.--'No mercy,' say I; 'this is for trying to become Duke of
Mecklenburg.'"
"In Heaven's name, Herr Rathsherr," said Miller Voss, "don't talk like
that; just think if those fellows were to understand you."
"That would be the very Devil!" said my uncle Herse, and he looked at
the Frenchmen one after another, but, when he saw that they were paying
no heed to him, he said, "You're an old coward. Miller Voss, the
fellows cannot understand Platt-Deutsch;--Well, so I have him hanged,
and march, to the left, into Hanover, and fall on the rear of the
Corsican--you know whom I mean.--You must always fall upon the enemy's
rear, that is the chief thing, everything else is rubbish. A tremendous
battle! Fifteen thousand prisoners! He sends me a trumpeter: 'A
truce.'--'No good,' say I, 'we have not come here to play.'--'Peace,'
he sends me word.--'Good,' say I; 'Rheinland and Westphalia, the whole
of Alsatia and three-fourths of Lothringen;'--'I can't,' says he, 'my
brother must live.' Forward then again! I march to the right and quiet
Belgium and Holland; all at once I wheel to the left.--'The Devil
take it!' says he. 'Here's that confounded Rathsherr again in my
rear.'--'First regiment of Grenadiers, charge!' I command; the battery
is taken. 'Second regiment of Hussars to the front!'--He ventures
too far forward with his staff. Swoop, the Hussars come down upon
him.--'Here is my sword,' says he.--'Good,' say I, 'now come along with
me. And you, my boys, can now go home again, the war is at an end.' I
now lead him in chains to the foot of the Throne.--'Your Majesty of
Prussia, here he is.'--'Herr Rathsherr,' says the King, 'ask some
favour.'--'Your Majesty,' say I, 'I have no children, but, if you wish
to do something for me, give my wife a little pension when I leave this
life. Otherwise, I wish for nothing but to retire to my former position
of Stemhagen Rathsherr.'--'As you like,' says the King; 'but remember
that whenever you may happen to come to Berlin, a place will be kept
for you at my table.'--I make my bow, say 'Good day,' and go back again
to Stemhagen."
"That's fine of you," said baker Witte. "But what is the good to us of
all this grand military art? This time the thing has begun at the wrong
end; you haven't got him, he has got you--and us into the bargain; and,
if anyone is to be brought bound to the foot of the throne, it will be
us. After all, the Burmeister was the cleverest of us, for he's now on
the other side of the hill, and sitting in a dry place, and our teeth
are chattering with cold like nuts in a bag."
"Pooh, pooh!" said my uncle Herse, "what art is there in running away
before everyone's eyes? No, my advice is that we should do it more
delicately with a stratagem of war. Let us each think of one, and then
we can choose the best."
The Miller had not spoken a word all this time. He was looking, as well
as the rain would let him, down the hill-side to the road. "Good God!"
he said at last. "Why it's sheer impossible; why it's my Fieka and Joe
Voss's Heinrich, who are coming along in that waggon!"
And so it was.