NUREMBERG.
If it had been our fate after that to continue our flight in the same
weary fashion we had before devised, lying in woods by day, and all
night riding jaded horses, until we passed the gates of some free
city, I do not think that I could have gone through with it. Doubtless
it was my duty to go with my lady. But the long hours of daylight
inaction, the slow brooding tramp, must have proved intolerable. And
at some time or other, in some way or other, I must have snapped the
ties that bound me.
But, as if the loss of my heart had rid us of some spell cast over us,
by noon of that day we stood safe. For, an hour before noon, while we
lay in a fir-wood not far from Weimar, and Jacob kept watch on the
road below, and the rest slept as we pleased, a party of horse came
along the way, and made as if to pass below us. They numbered more
than a hundred, and Jacob's heart failed him, lest some ring or buckle
of our accoutrements should sparkle and catch their eyes. To shift the
burden he called us, and we went to watch them.
'Do they go north or south?' I asked him as I rose.
'North,' he whispered.
After that they were nothing to me, but I went with the rest. Our lair
was in some rocks overhanging the road. By the time we looked over,
the horsemen were below us, and we could see nothing of them; though
the sullen tramp of their horses, and the jingle of bit and spur,
reached us clearly. Presently they came into sight again on the road
beyond, riding steadily away with their backs to us.
'That is not General Tzerclas?' my lady muttered anxiously.
'Nor any of his people!' Steve said with an oath.
That led me to look more closely, and I saw in a moment something that
lifted me out of my moodiness. I sprang on the rock against which I
was leaning and shouted long and loudly.
'Himmel!' Steve cried, seizing me by the ankle. 'Are you mad, man?'
But I only shouted again, and waved my cap frantically. Then I slipped
down, sobered. 'They see us,' I cried. 'They are Leuchtenstein's
riders. And Count Hugo is with them. You are safe, my lady.'
She turned white and red, and I saw her clutch at the rock to keep
herself on her feet. 'Are you sure?' she said. The troop had halted
and were wheeling slowly and in perfect order.
'Quite sure, my lady,' I answered, with a touch of bitterness in my
tone. Why had not this happened yesterday or the day before? Then my
girl would have been saved. Now it came too late! Too late! No wonder
I felt bitterly about it.
We went down into the road on foot, a little party of nine--four women
and five men. The horsemen, as they came up, looked at us in wonder.
Our clothes, even my lady's, were dyed with mud and torn in a score of
places. We had not washed for days, and our faces were lean with
famine. Some of the women were shoeless and had their hair about their
ears, while Steve was bare-headed and bare-armed, and looked so huge a
ruffian the stocks must have yawned for him anywhere. They drew up and
gazed at us, and then Count Hugo came riding down the column and saw
us.
My lady went forward a step. 'Count Leuchtenstein,' she said, her
voice breaking; she had only seen him once, and then under the mask of
a plain name. But he was safety, honour, life now, and I think that
she could have kissed him. I think for a little she could have fallen
into his arms.
'Countess!' he said, as he sprang from his horse in wonder. 'Is it
really you? Gott im Himmel! These are strange times. Waldgrave! Your
pardon. Ach! Have you come on foot?'
'Not I. But these brave men have,' my lady answered, tears in her
voice.
He looked at Steve and grunted. Then he looked at me and his eyes
lightened. 'Are these all your party?' he said hurriedly.
'All,' my lady answered in a low voice. He did not ask farther, but he
sighed, and I knew that he had looked for his child. 'I came north
upon a reconnaissance, and was about to turn,' he said. 'I am thankful
that I did not turn before. Is Tzerclas in pursuit of you?'
'I do not know,' my lady answered, and told him shortly of our flight,
and how we had lain two days and a night in the osier-bed.
'It was a good thought,' he said. 'But I fear that you are half
famished.' And he called for food and wine, and served my lady with
his own hands, while he saw that we did not go without. 'Campaigner's
fare,' he said. 'But you come of a fighting stock, Countess, and can
put up with it.'
'Shame on me if I could not,' she answered.
There was a quaver in her voice, which showed how the rencontre moved
her, how full her heart was of unspoken gratitude.
'When you have finished, we will get to horse,' he said. 'I must take
you with me to Nuremberg, for I am not strong enough to detach a
party. But this evening we will make a long halt at Hesel, and secure
you a good night's rest.'
'I am sorry to be so burdensome,' my lady said timidly.
He shrugged his shoulders without compliment, but I did not hear what
he answered. For I could bear no more. Marie seemed so forgotten in
this crowd, so much a thing of the past, that my gorge rose. No word
of her, no thought of her, no talk of a search party! I pictured her
forlorn, helpless little figure, her pale, uncomplaining face--I and
no one else; and I had to go away into the bushes to hide myself. She
was forgotten already. She had done all for them, I said to myself,
and they forgot her.
Then, in the thicket screened from the party, I had a thought--to go
back and look for her, myself. Now my lady was safe, there was nothing
to prevent me. I had only to lie close among the rocks until Count
Hugo left, and then I might plod back on foot and search as I pleased.
In a flash I saw the poplars, and the road running beneath the
ash-tree, and the woman's body lying stiff and stark on the sward. And
I burned to be there.
Left to myself I should have gone too. But the plan was no sooner
formed than shattered. While I stood, hotfoot to be about it, and
pausing only to consider which way I could steal off most safely, a
rustling warned me that some one was coming, and before I could stir,
a burly trooper broke through the bushes and confronted me. He saluted
me stolidly.
'Sergeant,' he said, 'the general is waiting for you.'
'The general?' I said.
'The Count, if you like it better,' he answered. 'Come, if you
please.'
I followed him, full of vexation. It was but a step into the road. The
moment I appeared, some one gave the word 'Mount!' A horse was thrust
in front of me, two or three troopers who still remained afoot swung
themselves into the saddle; and I followed their example. In a trice
we were moving down the valley at a dull, steady pace--southwards,
southwards. I looked back, and saw the fir trees and rocks where we
had lain hidden, and then we turned a corner, and they were gone.
Gone, and all round me I heard the measured tramp of the troop-horses,
the swinging tones of the men, and the clink and jingle of sword and
spur. I called myself a cur, but I went on, swept away by the force of
numbers, as the straw by the current. Once I caught Count Hugo's eye
fixed on me, and I fancied he had a message for me, but I failed to
interpret it.
Steve rode by me, and his face too was moody. I suppose that we should
all of us have thanked God the peril was past. But my lady rode in
another part with Count Leuchtenstein and the Waldgrave; and Steve
yearned, I fancy, for the old days of trouble and equality, when there
was no one to come between us.
I saw Count Hugo that night. He sent for me to his quarters at Hesel,
and told me frankly that he would have let me go back had he thought
good could come of it.
'But it would have been looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, my
friend,' he continued. 'Tzerclas' men would have picked you up, or the
peasants killed you for a soldier, and in a month perhaps the girl
would have returned safe and sound, to find you dead.'
'My lord!' I cried passionately, 'she saved your child. It was to her
as her own!'
'I know it,' he answered with gravity, which of itself rebuked me.
'And where is my child?'
I shook my head.
'Yet I do not give up my work and the task God and the times have
given me, and go out looking for it!' he answered severely. 'Leaving
Scot, and Swede, and Pole, and Switzer to divide my country. For
shame! You have your work too, and it lies by your lady's side. See to
it that you do it. For the rest I have scouts out, who know the
country; if I learn anything through them you shall hear it. And now
of another matter. How long has the Waldgrave been like this, my
friend?'
'Like this, my lord?' I muttered stupidly.
He nodded. 'Yes, like this,' he repeated. 'I have heard him called a
brave man. Coming of his stock, he should be; and when I saw him in
Tzerclas' camp he had the air of one. Now he starts at a shadow, is in
a trance half his time, and a tremor the other half. What ails him?'
I told him how he had been wounded, fighting bravely, and that since
that he had not been himself.
Count Hugo rubbed his chin gravely. 'It is a pity,' he said. 'We want
all--every German arm and every German head. We want you. Man alive!'
he continued, roused to anger, I suppose, by my dull face, 'do you
know what is in front of you?'
'No, my lord,' I said in apathy.
He opened his mouth as if to hurl a volley of words at me. But he
thought better of it and shut his lips tight. 'Very well,' he said
grimly. 'Wait three days and you will see.'
But in truth, I had not to wait three days. Before sunset of the next
I began to see, and, downcast as I was, to prick up my ears in wonder.
Beyond Romhild and between that town and Bamberg, the great road which
runs through the valley of the Pegnitz, was such a sight as I had
never seen. For many miles together a column of dust marked its
course, and under this went on endless marching. We were but a link in
a long chain, dragging slowly southwards. Now it was a herd of
oxen that passed along, moving tediously and painfully, driven by
half-naked cattle-men and guarded by a troop of grimy horse. Now it
was a reinforcement of foot from Fulda, rank upon rank of shambling
men trailing long pikes, and footsore, and parched as they were,
getting over the ground in a wonderful fashion. After them would come
a long string of waggons, bearing corn, and hay, and malt, and wines;
all lurching slowly forward, slowly southward; often delayed, for
every quarter of a mile a horse fell or an axle broke, yet getting
forward.
And then the most wonderful sight of all, a regiment of Swedish horse
passed us, marching from Erfurt. All their horses were grey, and all
their head-pieces, backs and breasts of black metal, matched one
another. As they came on through the dust with a tramp which shook the
ground, they sang, company by company, to the music of drums and
trumpets, a hymn, 'Versage nicht, du Haeuflein klein!' Behind them a
line of light waggons carried their wives and children, also singing.
And so they went by us, eight hundred swords, and I thought it a
marvel I should never see beaten.
When they were gone out of sight, there were still droves of horses
and mighty flocks of sheep to come, and cargoes of pork, and more foot
and horse and guns. Some companies wore buff coats and small steel
caps, and carried arquebuses; and some marched smothered in huge
headpieces with backs and breasts to match. And besides all the
things I have mentioned and the crowds of sutlers and horse-boys that
went with them, there were munition waggons closely guarded, and
pack-horses laden with powder, and always and always waggons of corn
and hay.
And all hurrying, jostling, crawling southwards. It seemed to me that
the world was marching southwards; that if we went on we must fall in
at the end of this with every one we knew. And the thought comforted
me.
Steve put it into words after his fashion. 'It must be a big place we
are going to,' he said, about noon of the second day, 'or who is to
eat all this? And do you mark, Master Martin? We meet no one coming
back. All go south. This place Nuremberg that they talk of must be
worth seeing.'
'It should be,' I said.
And after that the excitement of the march began to take hold of me. I
began to think and wonder, and look forward, with an eagerness I did
not understand, to the issues of this.
We lay a night at Bamberg, where the crowd and confusion and the
stress of people were so great that Steve would have it we had come to
Nuremberg. And certainly I had never known such a hurly-burly, nor
heard of it except at the great fair at Dantzic. The night after we
lay at Erlangen, which we found fortified, trenched, and guarded, with
troops lying in the square, and the streets turned into stables. From
that place to Nuremberg was a matter of ten miles only; but the press
was so great on the road that it took us a good part of the day to
ride from one to the other. In the open country on either side of the
way strong bodies of horse and foot were disposed. It seemed to me
that here was already an army and a camp.
But when late in the afternoon we entered Nuremberg itself, and viewed
the traffic in the streets, and the endless lines of gabled houses,
the splendid mansions and bridges, the climbing roofs and turrets and
spires of this, the greatest city in Germany, then we thought little
of all we had seen before. Here thousands upon thousands rubbed
shoulders in the streets; here continuous boats turned the river into
solid land. Here we were told were baked every day a hundred thousand
loaves of bread; and I saw with my own eyes a list of a hundred and
thirty-eight bakehouses. The roar of the ways, choked with soldiers
and citizens, the babel of strange tongues, the clamour of bells and
trumpets, deafened us. The constant crowding and pushing and halting
turned our heads. I forgot my grief and my hope too. Who but a madman
would look to find a single face where thousands gazed from the
windows? or could deem himself important with this swarming, teeming
hive before him? Steve stared stupidly about him; I rode dazed and
perplexed. The troopers laughed at us, or promised us greater things
when we should see the Swedish Lager outside the town, and
Wallenstein's great camp arrayed against it. But I noticed that even
they, as we drew nearer to the heart of the city, fell silent at
times, and looked at one another, surprised at the great influx of
people and the shifting scenes which the streets presented.
For myself and Steve and the men, we were as good as nought. A house
in the Ritter-Strasse was assigned to my lady for her quarters--no one
could lodge in the city without the leave of the magistrates; and we
were glad to get into it and cool our dizzy heads, and look at one
another. Count Hugo stayed awhile, standing with my lady and the
Waldgrave in one of the great oriels that overlooked the street. But a
mounted messenger, sent on from the Town House, summoned him, and he
took horse again for the camp. I do not know what we should have done
without him at entering. The soldiers, who crowded the streets, showed
scant respect for names, and would as soon have jostled my lady as a
citizen's wife; but wherever he came hats were doffed and voices
lowered, and in the greatest press a way was made for him as by magic.
For that night we had seen enough. I thought we had seen all, or that
nothing in my life would ever surprise me again. But next day my lady
went up to the Burg on the hill in the middle of the city to look
abroad, and took Steve and myself with her. And then I found that I
had not seen the half. The city, all roofs and spires and bridges,
girt with a wall of seventy towers, roared beneath us; and that I had
expected. But outside the wall I now saw a second city of huts and
tents, with a great earthwork about it, and bastions and demilunes and
picquets posted.
This was the Swedish Lager. It lay principally to the south of the
city proper, though on all sides it encircled it more or less. They
told me that there lay in it about forty thousand soldiers and twenty
thousand horses, and twenty thousand camp followers; but the number
was constantly increasing, death and disease notwithstanding, so that
it presently stood as high as sixty thousand fighting men and half as
many followers, to say nothing of the garrison that lay in the city,
or the troops posted to guard the approaches. It seemed to me, gazing
over that mighty multitude from the top of the hill, that nothing
could resist such a force; and I looked abroad with curiosity for the
enemy.
I expected to view his army cheek by jowl with us; and I was
disappointed when I saw beyond our camp to southward, where I was told
he lay, only a clear plain with the little river Rednitz flowing
through it. This plain was a league and more in width, and it was
empty of men. Beyond it rose a black wooded ridge, very steep and
hairy.
My lady explained that Wallenstein's army lay along this
ridge--seventy thousand men, and forty thousand horses, and
Wallenstein himself. His camp we heard was eight miles round, the
front guarded by a line of cannon, and taking in whole villages and
castles. And now I looked again I saw the smoke hang among the trees.
They whispered in Nuremberg that no man in that army took pay; that
all served for booty; and that the troopers that sacked Magdeburg and
followed Tilly were, beside these, gentle and kindly men.
'God help us!' my lady cried fervently. 'God help this great city! God
help the North! Never was such a battle fought as must be fought
here!'
We went down very much sobered, filled with awe and wonder and
great thoughts, the dullest of us feeling the air heavy with portents,
the more clerkly considering of Armageddon and the Last Fight.
Briefly--for thirteen years the Emperor and the Papists had hustled
and harried the Protestants; had dragooned Donauwoerth, and held down
Bohemia, and plundered the Palatinate, and crushed the King of
Denmark, and wherever there was a weak Protestant state had pressed
sorely on it. Then one short year before I stood on the Burg above the
Pegnitz, the Protestant king had come out of the North like a
thunderbolt, had shattered in a month the Papist armies, had run like
a devouring fire down the Priests' Lane, rushed over Bohemia, shaken
the Emperor on his throne!
But could he maintain himself? That was now to be seen. To the
Emperor's help had come all who loved the old system, and would have
it that the south was Germany; all who wished to chain men's minds and
saw their profit in the shadow of the imperial throne; all who lived
by license and plunder, and reckoned a mass to-day against a murder
to-morrow. All these had come, from the great Duke of Friedland
grasping at empire, to the meanest freebooter with peasant's blood on
his hands and in his veins; and there they lay opposite us,
impregnably placed on the Burgstall, waiting patiently until famine
and the sword should weaken the fair city, and enable them to plunge
their vulture's talons into its vitals.
No wonder that in Nuremberg the citizens could be distinguished from
the soldiers by their careworn faces; or that many a man stood morning
and evening to gaze at the carved and lofty front of his house--by St.
Sebald's or behind the new Cathedral--and wondered how long the fire
would spare it. The magistrates who had staked all--their own and the
city's--on this cast, went about with stern, grave faces and feared
almost to meet the public eye. With a doubled population, with a huge
army to feed, with order to keep, with houses and wives and daughters
of their own to protect, with sack and storm looming luridly in the
future, who had cares like theirs?
One man only, and him I saw as we went home from the Burg. It was near
the foot of the Burg hill, where the strasse meets three other ways.
At that time Count Tilly's crooked, dwarfish figure and pale horse's
face, and the great hat and boots which seemed to swallow him up, were
fresh in my mind; and sometimes I had wondered whether this other
great commander were like him. Well, I was to know; for through the
crowd at the junction of these four roads, while we stood waiting to
pass, there came a man on a white horse, followed by half a score of
others on horseback; and in a moment I knew from the shouting and the
way women thrust papers into his hands that we saw the King of Sweden.
He wore a plain buff coat and a grey flapped hat with a feather; a
tall man and rather bulky, his face massive and fleshy, with a close
moustache trimmed to a point and a small tuft on his chin. His aspect
was grave; he looked about him with a calm eye, and the shouting did
not seem to move him. They told me that it was Ba[=n]er, the Swedish
General, who rode with him, and our Bernard of Weimar who followed.
But my eye fell more quickly on Count Leuchtenstein, who rode after,
with the great Chancellor Oxenstierna; in him, in his steady gaze and
serene brow and wholesome strength, I traced the nearest likeness to
the king.
And so I first saw the great Gustavus Adolphus. It was said that he
would at times fall into fits of Berserk rage, and that in the field
he was another man, keen as his sword, swift as fire, pitiless to
those who flinched, among the foremost in the charge, a very
thunderbolt of war. But as I saw him taking papers from women's hands
at the end of the Burg Strasse, he had rather the air of a quiet,
worthy prince--of Coburg or Darmstadt, it might be,--no dresser and no
brawler; nor would any one, to see him then, have thought that this
was the lion of the north who had dashed the pride of Pappenheim and
flung aside the firebrands of the south. Or that even now he had on
his shoulders the burden of two great nations and the fate of a
million of men.