"Like a man superior to fortune. I never saw him exhibit higher
ability than in his dispositions for our last battle. He has become a
magnificent tactician. But Alexander the Great himself could not
fight without troops: and such was our exact condition.
"Dumourier, at the head of a hundred thousand men, had turned short
from the Prussian retreat, and flung himself upon the Netherlands.
How many troops do you think the wisdom of the Aulic Council had
provided to protect the provinces? Scarcely more than a third of the
number, and those scattered over a frontier of a hundred miles; in a
country, too, where every Man spoke French, where every man was half
Republican already, where the people had actually begun a revolution,
and where we had scarcely a friend, a fortress in repair, or
ammunition enough for _feu de joie_. The French, of course, burst in
like an inundation, sweeping every thing before them. I was at dinner
with Clairfait and his staff on the day when the intelligence
arrived. The map was laid upon the table, and we had a kind of debate
on the course which the Frenchman would take. That evening completed
my opinion of him as a general. He took the clearest view among all
our conjectures, as the event proved, so far as the enemy's movements
were concerned; though I still retain my own idea of an original
error in the choice of our field of battle. Before the twilight fell,
we mounted our horses, and rode to the spot where Clairfait had
already made up his mind to meet the French. It was certainly a
capital position for defence--a range of heights not too high for
guns, surmounted by a central plateau; the very position for a
battery and a brigade; but the very worst that could be taken against
the new enemy whom we had to oppose."
"Yet, what could an army of French recruits be expected to do against
a disciplined force so strongly posted?" was my question.
"My answer to that point," said Varnhorst, "must be a quotation from
my old master of tactics. If the purpose of a general is simply to
defend himself, let him keep his troops on heights; if his purpose is
simply to make an artillery fight, let him keep behind his guns; but
if it is his purpose to beat the enemy, he must leave himself able to
follow them--and this he can do only on a plain. In the end, after
beating the enemy in a dozen attempts to carry our batteries, but
without the power of striking a blow in retaliation, we saw them
carried all at once, and were totally driven from the field."
"So much for bravery and discipline against bravery and enthusiasm,"
said I. "Yet the enemy's loss must have been tremendous. Every
assault must have torn their columns to pieces." Even this attempt at
reconciling him to his ill fortune failed.
"Yes," was the cool reply; "but they could afford it, which was more
than we could do. Remember the maxim, my young friend, when you shall
come to be a general, that the only security for gaining battles is,
to have good troops, and a good many of them.--The French recruits
fought like recruits, without knowing whether the enemy were before
or behind them; but they fought, and when they were beaten they
fought again. While we were fixed on our heights, they were formed
into column once more, and marched gallantly up to the mouth of our
guns. Then, we had but 18,000 men to the Frenchman's 60,000. Such
odds are too great. Whether our great king would have fought at all
with such odds against him, may be a question; but there can be none,
whether he would have fixed himself where he could not manoeuvre. The
Frenchman attacked us on flanks and centre, just when and where he
pleased; there stood we, mowing down his masses from our fourteen
redoubts, and waiting to be attacked again. To do him justice, he
fought stoutly; and to do us justice, we fought sturdily. But still
we were losing men; the affair looked unpromising from the first half
hour; and I pronounced that, if Dumourier had but perseverance
enough, he must carry the field."
I made some passing remark on the singular hazard of bringing untried
troops against the proverbial discipline of a German army, and the
probability that the age of the wild armies of peasantry in Europe
would be renewed, by the evidence of its success.
"Right," said Varnhorst. "The thing that struck me most was, the new
character of the whole engagement. It was Republicanism in the field;
a bold riot, a mob battle. Nor will it be the last of its kind. Our
whole line was once attacked by the French demi-brigades, coming to
the charge, with a general chorus of the _Marseillaise_ hymn. The
effect was magnificent, as we heard it pealing over the field through
all the roar of cannon and musketry. The attack was defeated. It was
renewed, under a chorus in honour of their general, and 'Vive
Dumourier' was chanted by 50,000 voices, as they advanced against our
batteries. This charge broke in upon our position, and took five of
our fourteen redoubts. Even Clairfait now acknowledged that all was
lost; two-thirds of our men were _hors de combat_, and orders were
given for a retreat. My turn now came to act, and I moved forward
with my small brigade of cavalry--but I was not more lucky than the
rest."
I pressed to hear the particulars, but his mind was still overwhelmed
with a sense of military calamity, always the most reluctant topic to
a brave and honest soldier; and he simply said--"the whole was a
_mêlée_. Our rear was threatened in force by a column which had
stormed the heights under a young _brave_, whom I had observed,
during the day, exposing himself gallantly to all the risks of the
field. To stop the progress of the enemy on this point was essential;
for the safety of the whole army was compromised. We charged them,
checked them, but found the brigade involved in a force of ten times
our number; fought our way out again with heavy loss; and after all,
a shot, which brought my charger to the ground, left me wounded and
bruised in the hands of the French. I was taken up insensible, was
carried to the tent of the young commander of the column, whom I
found to be a Duc de Chartres, the son of the late Duke of Orleans.
His kindness to his prisoner was equal to his gallantry in the field.
Few and hurried as our interviews were, while his army remained in
its position he gave me the idea of a mind of great promise, and
destined for great things, unless the chances of war should stop his
career. But, though a Republican soldier, to my surprise he was no
Republican. His enquiries into the state of popular opinion in
Europe, showed at once his sagacity, and the turn which his thoughts,
young as he was, were already taking.--But the diadem is trampled
under foot in France for ever; and with cannon-shot in his front
every day of his life, and the guillotine in his rear, who can answer
for the history of any man for twenty-four hours together?"
My time in Paris had now come to a close. All my enquiries for the
fate of Lafontaine had been fruitless; and I dreaded the still more
anxious enquiries to which I should be subjected on my arrival; but I
had at least the intelligence to give, that I had not left him in the
fangs of the jailers of St Lazare. I took leave of my bold and
open-hearted Prussian friend with a regret, which I had scarcely
expected to feel for one with whom I had been thrown into contact
simply by the rough chances of campaigning; but I had the
gratification of procuring for him, through the mysterious interest
of Elnathan, an order for his transmission to Berlin in the first
exchange of prisoners. This promise seemed to compensate all the
services which he had rendered to me. "I shall see the Rhine again,"
said he, "which is much more than I ever expected since the day of
our misfortune. "I shall see the Rhine again!--and thanks to you for
it." He pressed my hand with honest gratitude.
The carriage which was to convey me to Calais was now at the door.
Still, one thought as uppermost in his mind; it was, that I should
give due credit to the bravery of the Austrian general and his army.
"If I have spoken of the engagement at all," said he, "it was merely
to put you in possession of the facts. You return to England; you
will of course hear the battle which lost the Netherlands discussed
in various versions. The opinion of England decides the opinion of
Europe. Tell, then, your countrymen, in vindication of Clairfait and
his troops, that after holding his ground for nine hours against
three times his force, he retreated with the steadiness of a movement
on parade, without leaving behind him a single gun, colour, or
prisoner. Tell them, too, that he was defeated only through the
marvellous negligence of a government which left him to fight battles
without brigades, defend fortresses without guns, and protect
insurgent provinces with a fugitive army."
My answer was--"You may rely upon my fighting your battles over the
London dinner-tables, as perseveringly, if not as much against odds,
as you fought it in the field. But the fortune of war is proverbial,
and I hope yet to pour out a libation to you as Generalissimo
Varnsdorf, the restorer of the Austrian laurels."
"Well, Marston, may you be a true prophet! But read that letter from
Guiscard; our long-headed friend not merely crops our German laurels,
but threatens to root up the tree." He handed me a letter from the
Prussian philosopher: it was a curious _catalogue raisonné_ of the
_im_probabilities of success in the general war of Europe against the
Republic; concluding with the words, so characteristic of his solemn
and reflective views of man and the affairs of man--
"War is the original propensity of human nature, and civilization is
the great promoter of war. The more civilized all nations become, the
more they fight. The most civilized continent of the world has spent
the fourth of its modern existence in war. Every man of common sense,
of course, abhors its waste of life, of treasure, and of time. Still
the propensity is so strong, that it continues the most prodigal
sacrifice of them all. I think that we are entering on a period, when
war, more than ever, will be the business of nations. I should not be
surprised if the mania of turning nations into beggars, and the
population into the dust of the field, should last for half a
century; until the whole existing generation are in their graves, and
a new generation shall take their places, astonished at the fondness
of their fathers for bankruptcy and bloodshed." After some sharp
censures of the unpurposed conduct of the German cabinets, he
finished by saying--"If the French continue to fight as they have
just fought, Jemappes will be the beginning of a new era. In the
history of the world, every great change of human supremacy has been
the result of a change in the principles of war; and the nation which
has been the first to adopt that change, has led the triumph for its
time. France has now found out a new element in war--the force of
multitude, the charge of the masses; and she will conquer, until the
kings of Europe follow her example, and call their nations to the
field. Till then she will be invincible, but then her conquests will
vanish; and the world, exhausted by carnage, will be quiet for a
while. But the wolfish spirit of human nature will again hunger for
prey; some new system of havoc will be discovered by some great
genius, who ought to be cursed to the lowest depths of human memory;
but who will be exalted to the most rapturous heights of human
praise. Then again, when one half of the earth is turned into a field
of battle, and the other into a cemetery, mankind will cry out for
peace; and again, when refreshed, will rush into still more ruinous
war:--thus all things run in a circle. But France has found out the
secret for this age, and--_vae victis!_--the pestilence will be tame
to the triumph of her frenzy, her rapine, and her revenge."
"Exactly what I should have expected from Guiscard," was my remark;
"he is always making bold attempts to tear up the surface of the
time, and look into what is growing below."
"Well, well," replied my honest fellow soldier, "I never perplex my
brain with those things. I dare say your philosophers may be right;
at least once in a hundred years. But take my word for it, that
musket and bayonet will be useful matters still; and that discipline
and my old master Frederick, will be as good as Dumourier and
desperation, when we shall have brigade for brigade."
The postillions cracked their whips, the little Norman horses tore
their way over the rough pavement; the sovereign people scattered off
on every side, to save their lives and limbs; and the plan of St
Denis, rich with golden corn, and tracked by lines of stately trees,
opened far and wide before me. From the first ascent I gave a
_parting_ glance at Paris--it was mingled of rejoicing and regret.
What hours of interest, of novelty, and of terror, had I not passed
within the circuit of those walls! Yet, how the eye cheats
reality!--that city of imprisonment and frantic liberty, of royal
sorrow and of popular exultation, now looked a vast circle of calm
and stately beauty. How delusive is distance in every thing! Across
that plain, luxuriant with harvest, surrounded with those soft hills,
and glittering in the purple of this glorious evening, it looked a
paradise. I knew it--a pendemonium!
I speeded on--every thing was animated and animating in my journey.
It was the finest season of the year; the roads were good; the
prospects--as I swept down valley and rushed round hill, with the
insolent speed of a government _employé_, leaving all meaner
vehicles, travellers, and the whole workday world behind--seemed to
be to redeem the character of French landscape. But how much of its
colouring was my own! Was _I_ not _free?_ was I not _returning to
England?_ was I not approaching scenes, and forms, and the realities
of those recollections, which, even in the field of battle, and at
the foot of the scaffold, had alternately cheered and pained,
delighted and distressed me?--yet which, even with all their
anxieties, were dearer than the most gilded hopes of ambition. Was I
not about to meet the gay smile and poignant vivacity of Mariamne?
was I not about to wander in the shades of my paternal castle? to see
those relatives who were to shape so large a share of my future
happiness; to meet in public life the eminent public men, with whose
renown the courts and even the camps of Europe were already ringing:
and last, proudest, and most profound feeling of all--was I not to
venture near the shrine on which I had placed my idol; to offer her
the solemn and distant homage of the heart; perhaps to hear of her
from day to day; perhaps to see her noble beauty; perhaps even to
_hear_ that voice, of which the simplest accents sank to my
soul.--But I must not attempt to describe sensations which are in
their nature indescribable; which dispose the spirit of man to
silence; and which, in their true intensity, suffer but one faculty
to exist, absorbing all the rest in deep sleep and delicious reverie.
I drove with the haste of a courier to London; and after having
deposited my despatches with one of the under-secretaries of the
Foreign office, I flew to Mordecai's den in the city. London appeared
to me more crowded than ever; the streets longer, and buildings
dingier; and the whole, seen after the smokeless and light-coloured
towns of the Continent, looked an enormous manufactory, where men
wore themselves out in perpetual blackness and bustle, to make their
bread, and die. But my heart beat quickly as I reached the door of
that dingiest of all its dwellings, where the lord of hundreds of
thousands of pounds burrowed himself on the eyes of mankind.
I knocked, but was long unanswered; at last a meagre clerk, evidently
of the "fallen people," and who seemed dug up from the depths of the
dungeon, gave me the intelligence that "his master and family had
left England." The answer was like an icebolt through my frame. This
was the moment to which I had looked forward with, I shall not say
what emotions. I could scarcely define them; but they had a share of
every strong, every faithful, and every touching remembrance of my
nature. My disappointment was a pang. My head grey dizzy, I reeled;
and asked leave to enter the gloomy door, and rest for a moment. But
this the guardian of the den was too cautious to allow, and I should
have probably fainted in the street, but for the appearance of an
ancient Rebecca, the wife of the clerk, who, feeling the compassion
which belongs to the sex in all instances, and exerting the authority
which is so generally claimed by the better-halves of men, pushed her
husband back, and led the way into the old cobwebbed parlour where I
had so often been. A glass of water, the sole hospitality of the
house, revived me; and after some enquiries alike fruitless with the
past, I was about to take my leave, when the clerk, in his removal of
some papers, not to be trusted within reach of a stranger, dropped a
letter from the bundle, on which was my name. From the variety of
addresses it had evidently travelled far, and had been returned from
half the post-offices of the Continent. It was two months' old, but
its news was to me most interesting. It was from Mordecai; and after
alluding to some pecuniary transactions with his foreign brethren,
always the first topic, he hurried on in his usual abrupt
strain:--"Mariamne has insisted on my leaving England for a while.
This is perplexing; as the war must produce a new loan, and London
is, after all, the only place where those affairs can be transacted
without trouble.--My child is well, and yet she looks pallid from
time to time, and sheds tears when she thinks herself unobserved. All
this may pass away, but it makes me uneasy; and, as she has evidently
made up her mind to travel, I have only to give way--for, with all
her caprices, she is my child, my only child, and my beloved child!
"I have heard a good deal of your proceedings from my correspondent
and kinsman in Paris. You have acquitted yourself well, and it shall
not be unknown in the quarter where it may be of most service to
you.--I have been stopped by Mariamne's singing in the next room, and
her voice has almost unmanned me; she is melancholy of late, and her
only music now is taken from those ancestral hymns which our nation
regard as the songs of the Captivity. Her tones at this moment are
singularly touching, and I have been forced to lay down my pen, for
she has melted me to tears. Yet her colour has not altogether faded
lately, and I think sometimes that her eyes look brighter than ever!
Heaven help me, if I should lose her. I should then be alone in the
world.
"You may rely on my intelligence--a war is _inevitable_. You may also
rely on my conjecture--that it will be the most desperate war which
Europe has yet seen. One that will break up _foundations_, as well as
break down superstructures; not a war of politics but of principles;
not a war for conquest but for ruin. All the treasuries of Europe
will be bankrupt within a twelvemonth of its commencement; unless
England shall become their banker. This will be the harvest of the
men of money.--It is unfortunate that your money is all lodged for
your commission; otherwise, in the course of a few operations, you
might make cent per cent, which I propose to do. _Apropos_ of
commissions. I had nearly omitted, in my own family anxieties, to
mention the object for which I began my letter. I have _failed_ in
arranging the affair of your commission! This was not for want of
zeal. But the prospect of a war has deranged and inflamed every
thing. The young nobility have actually besieged the Horse-guards.
All the weight of the aristocracy has pressed upon the minister, and
minor influence has been driven from the field. The spirit is too
gallant a one to be blamed;--and yet--are there not a hundred other
pursuits, in which an intelligent and active mind, like your own,
might follow on the way to fortune? You have seen enough of
campaigning to know, that it is not all a flourish of trumpets. Has
the world but one gate, and that the Horse-guards? If my personal
judgment were to be asked, I should feel no regret for a
disappointment which may have come only to turn your knowledge and
ability to purposes not less suitable to an ambitious spirit, nor
less likely to produce a powerful impression on the world--the only
thing, after all, worth living for! You may laugh at this language
from a man of my country and my trade. But even _I_ have my ambition;
and you may yet discover it to be not less bold than if I carried the
lamp of Gideon, or wielded the sword of the Maccabee.--I must stop
again; my poor restless child is coming into the room at this moment,
complaining of the chill, in one of the finest days of summer. She
says that this villa has grown sunless, airless, and comfortless.
Finding that I am writing to you, she sends her best wishes; and bids
me ask, what is the fashionable colour for mantles in Paris, and also
what is become of that 'wandering creature,' Lafontaine, if you
should happen to recollect such a personage."
"P.S.--My daughter insists on our setting out from Brighton
to-morrow, and crossing the Channel the day after. She has a whim for
revisiting Switzerland; and in the mean time begs that if, during our
absence, _you_ should have a whim for sea air and solitude, you may
make of the villa any use you please.--Yours sincerely,
"J.V. MORDECAI."
After reading this strange and broken letter, I was almost glad that
I had not seen Mariamne. Lafontaine was in her heart still, in spite
of absence. At this I did not wonder, for the heart of woman, when
once struck, is almost incapable of change: but the suspense was
killing her; and I had no doubt that her loss would sink even her
strong-headed parent to the grave. Yet, what tidings had I to give?
Whether her young soldier was shot in the attempt to escape from St
Lazare, or thrown into some of those hideous dungeons, where so many
thousands were dying in misery from day to day, was entirely beyond
my power to tell. It was better that she should be roving over the
bright hills, and breathing the fresh breezes of Switzerland, than
listening to my hopeless conjectures at home; trying to reconcile
herself to all the chances which passion is so painfully ingenious in
creating, and dying, like a flower in all its beauty, on the spot
where it had grown.
But the letter contained nothing of the _one_ name, for which my
first glance had looked over every line with breathless anxiety.
There was not a syllable of Clotilde! The father's cares had absorbed
all other thoughts; and the letter was to me a blank in that
knowledge for which I panted, as the hart pants for the fountains.
Still, I was not dead to the calls of friendship; and that night's
mail carried a long epistle to Mordecai, detailing my escapes, and
the services of his kindred in France; and for Mariamne's ear, all
that I could conceive cheering in my hopes of that "wandering
creature, Lafontaine."
But I was forced to think of sterner subjects. I had arrived in
England at a time of the most extraordinary public excitement. Every
man felt that some great trial of England and of Europe was at hand;
but none could distinctly define either its nature or its cause.
France, which had then begun to pour out her furious declamations
against this country, was, of course, generally looked to as the
quarter from which the storm was to come; but the higher minds
evidently contemplated hazards nearer home. Affiliated societies,
corresponding clubs, and all the revolutionary apparatus, from whose
crush and clamour I had so lately emerged, met the ear and the eye on
all occasions; and the fiery ferocity of French rebellion was nearly
rivalled by the grave insolence of English "Rights of Man." But I am
not about to write the history of a time of national fever. The
republicanism, which Cicero and Plutarch instil into us all at our
schools, had been extinguished in me by the squalid realities of
France. I had seen the dissecting-room, and was cured of my love for
the science. My spirit, too, required rest. I could have exclaimed
with all the sincerity, and with all the weariness too, of the
poet:--
Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more!"
But, perhaps fortunately for my understanding, if not for my life, I
was not suffered to take refuge in the wilderness. London was around
me; rich and beggared, splendid and sullen, idle and busy London. I
was floating on those waves of human being, in which the struggler
must make for the shore, or sink. I was in the centre of that huge
whispering gallery, where every sound of earth was echoed and
re-echoed with new power; and where it was impossible to dream. My
days were now spent in communication with the offices of government,
and a large portion of my nights in carrying on those
correspondences, which, though seldom known in the routine of Downing
Street, form the essential part of its intercourse with the
continental cabinets. But a period of suspense still remained.
Parliament had been already summoned for the 13th of December. Up to
nearly the last moment, the cabinet had been kept in uncertainty as
to the actual intents of France. There had been declamation in
abundance in the French legislature and the journals; but with this
unsubstantial evidence the cabinet could not meet the country.
Couriers were sent in all directions; boats were stationed along the
coast to bring the first intelligence of actual hostilities suddenly;
every conceivable expedient was adopted; but all in vain. The day of
opening the Session was within twenty-four hours. After lingering
hour by hour, in expectancy of the arrival of despatches from our
ambassador at the Hague, I offered to cross the sea in the first
fishing-boat which I could find, and ascertain the facts. My offer
was accepted; and in the twilight of a winter's morning, and in the
midst of a snow-storm, I was making my shivering way homeward through
the wretched lanes which, dark as pitch and narrow as footpaths, then
led to the centre of the diplomatic world; when, in my haste, I had
nearly overset a meagre figure, which, half-blinded by the storm, was
tottering towards the Foreign office. After a growl, in the most
angry jargon, the man recognized me; he was the clerk whom I had seen
at Mordecai's house. He had, but an hour before, received, by one of
the private couriers of the firm, a letter, with orders to deliver it
with all expedition. He put it into my hand: it was not from
Mordecai, but from Elnathan, and was simply in these words:--"My
kinsman and your friend has desired me to forward to you the first
intelligence of hostilities. I send you a copy of the bulletin which
will be issued at noon this day. It is yet unknown; but I have it
from a source on which you may perfectly rely. Of this make what use
you think advantageous. Your well-wisher."
With what pangs the great money-trafficker must have consigned to my
use a piece of intelligence which must have been a mine of wealth to
any one who carried it first to the Stock Exchange, I could easily
conjecture. But I saw in it the powerful pressure of Mordecai, which
none of his tribe seemed even to have the means of resisting. My
sensations were singular enough as I traced my way up the dark and
lumbering staircase of the Foreign office; with the consciousness
that, if I had chosen to turn my steps in another direction, I might
before night be master of thousands, or of hundreds of thousands. But
it is only due to the sense of honour which had been impressed on me,
even in the riot and roughness of my Eton days, to say, that I did
not hesitate for a moment Sending one of the attendants to arouse the
chief clerk, I stood waiting his arrival with the bulletin unopened
in my hands. The official had gone to his house in the country, and
might not return for some hours. My perplexity increased. Every
moment might supersede the value of my priority. At length a
twinkling light through the chinks of one of the dilapidated doors,
told me that there was some one within, from whom I might, at least,
ask when and how ministers were to be approached. The door was
opened, and, to my surprise, I found that the occupant of the chamber
was one of the most influential members of administration. My name
and purpose were easily given; and I was received as I believe few
are in the habit of being received by the disposers of high things in
high places. The fire had sunk to embers, the lamp was dull, and the
hearer was half frozen and half asleep. Yet no sooner had he cast his
eyes upon the mysterious paper which I gave into his grasp, than all
his faculties were in full activity.
"This," said he, "is the most important paper that has reached this
country since the taking of the Bastile. THE SCHELDT IS OPENED! This
involves an attack on Holland; the defence of our ally is a matter of
treaty, and we must arm without delay. The war is begun, but where it
shall end"--he paused, and fixing his eyes above, with a solemnity of
expression which I had not expected in the stern and hard-lined
countenance, "or who shall live to see its close--who shall tell?"
"We have been waiting," said he, "for this intelligence from week to
week, with the fullest expectation that it would come; and yet, when
it has come, it strikes like a thunderclap. This is the third night
that I have sat in this hovel, at this table, unable to go to rest,
and looking for the despatch from hour to hour.--You see, sir, that
our life is at least not the bed of roses for which the world is so
apt to give us credit. It is like the life of my own hills--the
higher the sheiling stands, the more it gets of the blast."
I do not give the name of this remarkable man. He was a Scot, and
possessed of all the best characteristics of his country. I had heard
him in Parliament, where he was the most powerful second of the most
powerful first that England had seen. But if all men were inferior to
the prime minister in majesty and fulness of conception, the man to
whom I now listened had no superior in readiness of retort, in
aptness of illustration--that mixture of sport and satire, of easy
jest and subtle sarcasm, which forms the happiest talent for the
miscellaneous uses of debate. If Pitt moved forward like the armed
man of chivalry, or rather like the main body of the battle--for
never man was more entitled to the appellation of a "host in
himself"--never were front, flanks, and rear of the host covered by a
more rapid, quick-witted, and indefatigable auxiliary. He was a man
of family, and brought with him into public life, not the manners of
a menial of office, but the bearing of a gentleman. Birth and blood
were in his bold and manly countenance; and I could have felt no
difficulty in conceiving him, if his course had followed his nature,
the chieftain on his hills, at the head of his gallant retainers,
pursuing the wild sports of his romantic region; or in some foreign
land, gathering the laurels which the Scotch soldier has so often and
so proudly added to the honours of the empire.
He was perfectly familiar with the great question of the time, and
saw the full bearings of my intelligence with admirable sagacity;
pointed out the inevitable results of suffering France to take upon
herself the arbitration of Europe, and gave new and powerful views of
the higher relation in which England was to stand, as the general
protectress of the Continent. "This bulletin," said he, "announces
the fact, that a French squadron has actually sailed up the Scheldt
to attack Antwerp. Yet it was not ten years since France protested
against the same act by Austria, as a violation of the rights of
Holland. The new aggression is, therefore, not simply a solitary
violence, but a vast fraud; not merely the breach of an individual
treaty, but a declaration that no treaty is henceforth to be held as
binding; it is more than an act of rapine; it is an universal
dissolution of the principles by which society is held together. In
what times are we about to live?"
My reply was--"That it depended on the spirit of England herself,
whether the conflict was to be followed by honour or by shame; that
she had a glorious career before her, if she had magnanimity
sufficient to take the part marked out for her by circumstances; and
that, with the championship of the world in her hands, even defeat
would be a triumph."
He now turned the conversation to myself; spoke with more than
official civility of my services, and peculiarly of the immediate
one; and asked in what branch of diplomacy I desired advancement?
My answer was prompt. "In none. I desired promotion but in one
way--the army." I then briefly stated the accidental loss of my
original appointment, and received, before I left the chamber, a note
for the secretary at war, recommending me, in the strongest terms,
for a commission in the Guards.--The world was now before me, and the
world in the most vivid, various, and dazzling shape; in the boldest
development of grandeur, terror, and wild vicissitude, which it
exhibited for a thousand years--ENGLAND WAS AT WAR!
There is no sight on earth more singular, or more awful, than a great
nation going to war. I saw the scene in its highest point of view, by
seeing it in England. Its perfect freedom, its infinite, and often
conflicting, variety of opinion--its passionate excitement, and its
stupendous power, gave the summons to hostilities a character of
interest, of grandeur, and of indefinite but vast purposes,
unexampled in any other time, or in any other country. When one of
the old monarchies commenced war, the operation, however large and
formidable, was simple. A monarch resolved, a council sat, less to
guide than to echo his resolution; an army marched, invaded the
enemy's territory, fought a battle--perhaps a dubious one--rested on
its arms; and while _Te Deum_ was sung in both capitals alike for the
"victory" of neither, the ministers of both were constructing an
armistice, a negotiation, and a peace--each and all to be null and
void on the first opportunity.
But the war of England was a war of the nation--a war of wrath and
indignation--a war of the dangers of civilized society entrusted to a
single championship--a great effort of human nature to discharge, in
the shape of blood, a disease which was sapping the vitals of Europe;
or in a still higher, and therefore a more faithful view, the
gathering of a tempest, which, after sweeping France in its fury, was
to restore the exhausted soil and blasted vegetation of monarchy
throughout the Continent; and in whose highest, England, serene and
undismayed, was to
"Ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm."
I must acknowledge, that I looked upon the coming conflict with a
strange sense of mingled alarm and rejoicing. For the latter feeling,
perhaps I ought to make some apology; but I was young, ardent, and
ambitious. My place in life was unfixed; standing in that unhappy
middle position, in which stands a man of birth too high to suffer
his adoption of the humbler means of existence, and yet of resources
too inadequate to sustain him without action--nay, bold and
indefatigable exertion. I, at the moment, felt a very inferior degree
of compunction at the crisis which offered to give me at least a
chance of being seen, known, and understood among men. I felt like a
man whose ship was stranded, and who saw the storm lifting the surges
that were to lift him along with them; or like the traveller in an
earthquake, who saw the cleft in the ground swallowing up the river
which had hitherto presented an impassable obstacle--cities and
mountains might sink before the concussion had done its irresistible
will, but, at all events, it had cleared his way.
In thoughts like these, rash and unconnected as they were, I spent
many a restless day, and still more restless night. I often sprang
from a pillow which, if I had lived in the days of witchcraft, I
should have thought spelled to refuse me sleep; and walking for
hours, endeavoured to reduce into shape the speculations which filled
my mind with splendours and catastrophes worthy of oriental dreams.
Why did I not then pursue the career in which I had begun the world?
Why not devote myself to diplomacy, in which I had hitherto received
honour? Why not enter into Parliament, which opened all the secrets
of power? For this I had two reasons. The first--and, let me confess,
the most imperious--was, that my pride had been deeply hurt by the
loss of my commission. I felt that I had not only been deprived of a
noble profession, accidental as was the loss; but that I had
subjected myself to the trivial, but stinging remarks, which never
fail to find an obnoxious cause for every failure. While this cloud
hung over me, I was determined never to return to my father's house.
Good-natured as the friends of my family might be, I was fully aware
of the style in which misfortune is treated in the idleness of
country life; and the Honourable Mr Marston's loss of his rank in his
Majesty's guards, or his preference of a more pacific promotion, was
too tempting a topic to lose any of its stimulants by the popular
ignorance of the true transaction. My next reason was, that my mind
was harassed and wearied by disappointment, until I should not have
regreted to terminate the struggle in the first field of battle. The
only woman whom I loved, and whom, in the strange frenzy of passion,
I solemnly believed to be the only woman on earth deserving to be so
loved, had wholly disappeared, and was, by this time, probably
wedded. The only woman whom I regarded as a friend, was in another
country, probably dying. If I could have returned to Mortimer
Castle--which I had already determined to be impossible--I should
have found only a callous, perhaps a contemptuous, head of the
family, angry at my return to burden him. Even Vincent--my old and
kind-hearted friend Vincent--had been a soldier; and though I was
sure of never receiving a reproach from his wise and gentle lips, was
I equally sure that I could escape the flash, or the sorrow, of his
eye?
In thoughts like these, and they were dangerous ones, I made many a
solitary rush out into the wild winds and beating snows of the
winter, which had set in early and been remarkably severe; walking
bareheaded in the most lonely places of the suburbs, stripping my
bosom to the blast, and longing for its tenfold chill to assuage the
fever which burned within me. I had also found the old delay at the
Horse-guards. The feelings of this period make me look with infinite
compassion on the unhappy beings who take their lives into their own
hands, and who extinguish all their earthly anxieties at a plunge.
But I had imbibed principles of a firmer substance, and but upon one
occasion, and one alone, felt tempted to an act of despair.
Taking my lonely dinner in a tavern of the suburbs, the waiter handed
me a newspaper, which he had rescued for my behoof from the hands of
a group, eager, as all the world then was, for French intelligence.
My eye rambled into the fashionable column; and the first paragraph,
headed "Marriage in high life," announced that, on the morrow, were
to be solemnized the nuptials of Clotilde, Countess de Tourville,
with the Marquis de Montrecour, colonel of the French Mousquetaires,
&c. The paper dropped from my hands. I rushed out of the house; and,
scarcely knowing where I went, I hurried on, until I found myself out
of the sight or sound of mortal. The night was pitch-dark; there was
no lamp near; the wind roared; and it was only by the flash of the
foam that I discovered the broad sheet of water before me. I had
strayed into Hyde Park, and was on the bank of the Serpentine. With
what ease might I not finish all! It was another step. Life was a
burden--thought was a torment--the light of day a loathing. But the
paroxysm soon gave way. Impressions of the duty and the trials of
human nature, made in earlier years, revived within me with a
singular freshness and force. Tears gushed from my eyes, fast and
flowing; and, with a long-forgotten prayer for patience and humility,
I turned from the place of temptation. As I reached the streets once
more, I heard the trumpets of the Life Guards, and the band of a
battalion returning to their quarters. The infantry were the
Coldstream. They had been lining the streets for the king's
procession to open the sitting of Parliament. This was the 13th of
December--the memorable day to which every heart in Europe was more
or less vibrating; yet which I had totally forgotten. What is man but
an electrical machine after all? The sound and sight of soldiership
restored me to the full vividness of my nature. The machine required
only to be touched, to shoot out its latent sparks; and with a new
spirit and a new determination kindling through every fibre, I
hastened to be present at that debate which was to be the judgment of
nations.
My official intercourse with ministers had given me some privileges,
and I obtained a seat under the gallery--that part of the House of
Commons which is occasionally allotted to strangers of a certain
rank. The House was crowded, and every countenance was pictured with
interest and solemn anxiety. Grey, Sheridan, and other distinguished
names of party, had already taken their seats; but the great heads of
Government and Opposition were still absent. At length a buzz among
the crowd who filled the floor,--and the name of Fox repeated in
every tone of congratulation, announced the pre-eminent orator of
England. I now saw Fox for the first time; and I was instantly struck
with the incomparable similitude of all that I saw of him to all that
I had conceived from his character and his style. In the broad bold
forehead, the strong sense--in the relaxed mouth, the self-indulgent
and reckless enjoyment--in the quick, small eye under those
magnificent black brows, the man of sagacity, of sarcasm, and of
humour; and in the grand contour of a countenance and head, which
might have been sculptured to take its place among the sages and
sovereigns of antiquity, the living proof of those extraordinary
powers, which could have been checked in their ascent to the highest
elevation of public life, only by prejudices and passions not less
extraordinary. As he advanced up the House, he recognized every one
on both sides, and spoke or smiled to nearly all. He stopped once or
twice in his way, and was surrounded by a circle with whom, as I
could judge from their laughter, he exchanged some pleasantry of the
hour. When at length he arrived at the seat which had been reserved
for him, he threw himself upon it with the easy look of comfort of a
man who had reached home--gave nod to Windham, held out a finger to
Grey, warmly shook hands with Sheridan; and then, opening his
well-known blue and buff costume, threw himself back into the bench,
and laughingly gasped for air.
But another movement of the crowd at the bar announced another
arrival, and Pitt entered the House. His look and movement were
equally characteristic with those of his great rival. He looked to
neither the right nor the left; replied to the salutations of his
friends by the slightest possible bow; neither spoke nor smiled; but,
slowly advancing, took his seat in total silence. The Speaker,
hitherto occupied with some routine business, now read the King's
speech, and, calling on "Mr Pitt," the minister rose. I have for that
rising but one description--the one which filled my memory at the
moment, from the noblest poet of the world.
"Deep on his front engraven,
Deliberation sat, and public care.
Sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies. His look
Drew audience and attention, still as night,
Or summer's noontide air."