_The Austrian reverses increase.--Sketches from the seat of war,
showing its realities, as viewed by a soldier who abhors
war.--Death of poor Puxl.--My husband avows his determination never
to serve in another campaign._
“Never was such a thing heard of--defeat after defeat. First the village
of Podol, barricaded by Clam-Gallas, carried by storm, taken in the
night by moonlight, and by the light of the conflagration. Then Gitchin
conquered. The needle-gun, the cursed needle-gun, mows our troops down
by whole ranks at a time. The two great army corps of the enemy, that
commanded by the Crown Prince and that under Prince Fr. Karl, have
joined, and are pressing forward against Münchengrätz.” Thus sounded the
terrible news, and my father communicated it with as great a degree of
lamentation as he had shown joy in telling us the victorious news from
Custozza. But his confidence was not yet shaken.
“Let them come, all of them, all, into our Bohemia, and be annihilated
there, to the last man. There is no escape there, no retreat for them;
we hem them in, we encircle them, and the enraged country folks
themselves will give them the finishing stroke. It is not altogether so
advantageous as you might suppose to operate in an enemy’s country; for
in that case you have not only the army but the whole population against
you. The people poured boiling water and oil on the Prussians from the
windows of the houses at----.”
I uttered a low sound of disgust.
“What would you have?” said my father, shrugging his shoulders. “It is
horrible, I grant, but it is war.”
“Then at least never assert that war ennobles men. Confess that it
unmans them, makes them tigers, devils. Boiling oil! Uh!”
“Self-defence, which is enjoined on us, and righteous retribution, my
dear Martha. Do you think that our people like the bullets of their
needle-guns? Our brave fellows have to be exposed, like defenceless
cattle in a slaughter-house, to this murderous weapon. But we are too
numerous, too disciplined, too warlike, not to conquer these ‘tailors’
for all that. At the beginning one or two failures have taken place;
that I admit. Benedek ought to have crossed the Prussian frontier at
once. I have my doubts whether this choice of a general was quite a
happy one. If it had been determined to send the Archduke Albert there
and give Benedek the Army of the South--but I will not despond too soon.
Up to the present there have really been only some preliminary
engagements which have been magnified by the Prussians into great
victories. The decisive battles are still to come. We are now
concentrating on Königgrätz; there we shall await the enemy, a hundred
thousand strong. There our northern Custozza will be fought.”
Frederick was to fight there too. His last letter, arrived that morning,
brought the news: “We are bound for Königgrätz”.
Up to this time I had had tidings regularly. Though in his first letter
he had prepared me for his being able only to write little, yet
Frederick had made use of every opportunity to send me a word or two. In
pencil, on horseback, in his tent, in a hasty scrawl only legible by me,
he would write on pages torn out of his note-book letters destined for
me. Some he found opportunities for sending, and some did not come into
my hands till the campaign was over.
I have kept these memorials up to the present hour. They are not
careful, polished descriptions of the war, such as the war
correspondents of the papers offer in their despatches, or the
historians of the war in their publications; no sketches of battles
worked up with all the technicalities of strategical details; no
battle-pictures heightened with rhetorical flights, in which the
narrator is always occupied in letting his own imperturbability,
heroism, and patriotic enthusiasm shine out. Frederick’s sketches are
nothing of this sort, I know. But what they are, I need not decide. Here
are some of them:--
“In bivouac. Outside the tent, it is indeed a mild, splendid summer
night; the heavens, so great and so indifferent, full of shining stars.
The men are lying on the earth, exhausted by their long, fatiguing
marches. Only for us, staff officers, have one or two tents been
pitched. In mine there are three field-beds. My two comrades are asleep.
I am sitting at the table, on which are the empty grog glasses and a
lighted candle. It is by the feeble, flickering light of this (a draught
of wind comes in through the open flap) that I am writing to you, my
beloved wife. I have left my bed to Puxl, he was so tired, the poor
fellow! I am almost sorry I brought him with me; he too is, as our men
say the Prussian Landwehr are, ‘not used to the hardships and privations
of a campaign’. Now he is snoring sweetly and happily--is dreaming, I
fancy, very likely, of his friend and patron, Rudolf, Count Dotzky. And
I am dreaming of you, Martha; I am silly, I know, but I see your dear
form as like you as the image of a dream sitting in yonder corner of the
tent on a camp-stool. What longing seizes me to go thither and lay my
head on your bosom. But I do not do so, because I know that then the
image would disappear.
“I have just been out for an instant. The stars are shining as
indifferently as ever. On the ground a few shadows are gliding--those of
stragglers. Many, many men are left behind on the road; these have now
slipped in here drawn on by the light of our watch-fires. But not all;
some are still lying in some far-off ditch or cornfield. What a heat it
was during this forced march! The sun flamed as if it would boil your
brains, add to that the heavy knapsack and the heavy musket on their
galled shoulders; and yet no one murmured. But a few fell out and could
not get up again. Two or three succumbed to sunstroke and fell dead at
once. Their bodies were put on an ambulance waggon.
“This June night, however illuminated by moon and stars, and however
warm it may be, is still disenchanted. There are no nightingales or
chirping crickets to be heard, no scents of rose and jasmine to be
breathed. All the sweet sounds are drowned by the noise of snorting or
neighing horses, by the men’s voices and the tramp of the sentries’
tread; all sweet scents overpowered by the smell of the harness and
other barrack odours. Still all that is nothing; for now you do not hear
the ravens croaking over their feast, you do not smell gun-powder,
blood, and corruption. All that is coming--_ad majorem patriæ gloriam_.
It is worth noting how blind men are. In looking at the funeral piles
which have been lighted ‘for the greater glory of God’ in old times,
they break out into curses over such blind, cruel, senseless fanaticism,
but are full of admiration for the corpse-strewn battlefields of the
present day. The torture chambers of the dark middle ages excite their
horror, but they feel pride over their own arsenals. The light is
burning down--the form in that corner has disappeared. I will also lie
down to rest, beside our good Puxl.”
* * * * *
“Up on a hill, amidst a group of generals and high officers, with a
field-glass at his eye--that is the situation in a war which produces
the greatest æsthetic effect. The gentlemen who paint battle pieces and
make illustrations for the journals know this too. Generals on a hill
reconnoitring with their glasses are represented again and again; and
just as often a leader pressing forward at the head of his troops on a
horse, as white and light-stepping as possible, stretching his arm out
towards a point in the background all in smoke, and turning the head
towards those rushing on after him, plainly shouting ‘Follow me, lads!’
“From my station on this hill one sees really a piece of battle poetry.
The picture is magnificent, and sufficiently distant to have the effect
of a real picture, without the details, the horrors, and disgusts of
the reality; no gushing blood, no death-rattles, nothing but elevated
and magnificent effects of line and colour. Those far-extended ranks of
the army corps winding on, that unbounded procession of infantry
regiments, divisions of cavalry, and batteries of artillery, then the
ammunition train, the requisitioned country waggons, the pack horses,
and, bringing up the rear, the baggage. The picture comes out still more
imposing if, in the wide country stretched out beneath the hill, you can
see, not merely the movements of _one_, but the meeting of two armies.
Then how the flashing sword-blades, the waving flags, the horses rearing
up like foaming waves, mingle with each other, while amongst them clouds
of smoke arise, forming themselves in places into thick veils which hide
all the picture, and when they lift show groups of fighters. Then, as
accompaniment, the noise of shots rolling through the mountains, every
stroke of which thunders the word Death! Death! Death! through the air.
Yes, that sort of thing may well inspire battle lays. And for the
composition, too, of those contributions to the history of the period
which are to be published after the conclusion of the campaign, the
station on the hill-top offers favourable opportunities. There, at any
rate, the narrative can be made out with some exactness. The X Division
met the enemy at N, drove him back, reached the main bulk of the army;
strong forces of the enemy showed themselves on the left flank--and so
on, and so on. But one who is not on the hill, peering through his
field-glass, one who is himself taking part in the action, he can
_never_, never relate the progress of a battle in a way worthy of
belief. He sees, feels, and thinks of only what is close to him. All the
rest of his narrative is from intuition, for which he avails himself of
the old formulas. ‘Look, Tilling,’ one of the generals said to me, as I
was standing near him on the hill. ‘Is not that striking? A grand army,
is it not? Why, what are you thinking about?’ What was I thinking about,
my Martha? About you. But to my superior officer I could not say so. So
I answered, with all due deference, some untruth. ‘All due deference’
and ‘truth’ have besides little to do with each other. The latter is a
very proud fellow, and turns with contempt from all servility.”
* * * * *
“The village is ours--no, it is the enemy’s--now ours again--and yet
once more the enemy’s; but it is no longer a village, but a smoking mass
of the ruins of houses.
“The inhabitants (was it not really _their_ village?) had left it
previously and were away--luckily for them, for the fighting in an
inhabited place is something really fearful; for then the bullets from
friend and foe fall into the midst of the rooms and kill women and
children. One family, however, had remained behind in the place which
yesterday we took, lost, re-took, and lost again--namely, an old married
couple and their daughter, the latter in childbed. The husband is
serving in our regiment. He told me the story as we were nearing the
village. ‘There, colonel, in that house with the red roof, is living my
wife with her old parents. They have not been able to get away, poor
creatures; my wife may be confined any moment, and the old folks are
half-crippled; for God’s sake, colonel, order me there!’ Poor devil! he
got there just in time to see the mother and child die; a shell had
exploded under their bed. What has happened to the old folks I do not
know. They are probably buried under the ruins; the house was one of the
first set on fire by the cannonade. Fighting in the open country is
terrible enough, but fighting amongst human dwellings is ten times more
cruel. Crashing timber, bursting flames, stifling smoke; cattle run mad
with fear; every wall a fortress or a barricade, every window a
shot-hole. I saw a breastwork there which was formed of corpses. The
defenders had heaped up all the slain that were lying near, in order,
from that rampart, to fire over on to their assailants. I shall surely
never forget that wall in all my life. A man, who formed one of its
bricks, penned in among the other corpse-bricks, was still alive, and
was moving his arm.
“‘Still alive’--that is a condition, occurring in war with a thousand
differences, which conceals sufferings incalculable. If there were any
angel of mercy hovering over the battlefields he would have enough to do
in giving the poor creatures--men and beasts--who are ‘still alive’
their _coup de grâce_.”
* * * * *
“To-day we had a little cavalry skirmish in the open field. A Prussian
cavalry regiment came forward at a trot, deployed into line, and then,
with their horses well in hand and their sabres above their heads, rode
down on us at a hand gallop. We did not wait for their attack, but
galloped out against the enemy. No shots were exchanged. When a few
paces from each other both ranks burst out into a thundering ‘hurrah’
(shouting intoxicates; the Indians and Zulus know that even better than
we do); and so we rushed on each other, horse to horse, knee to knee;
the sabres whistled in the air and came down on the men’s heads. Soon
all were huddled together too close to use their weapons; then they
struggled breast to breast, and the horses, getting wild and frightened,
snorted and plunged, reared up, and struck about them. I too was on the
ground once, and saw--no very pleasant sight--a horse’s hoof striking
out within a hair’s breadth of my temples.”
* * * * *
“Another day of marching, with one or two skirmishes. I have experienced
a great sorrow. Such a mournful picture accompanies me. Among the many
pictures of woe which are all around me this ought not so to strike me,
ought not to give me such pain. But I cannot help it; it touches me
nearly, and I cannot shake it off. Puxl--our poor, happy, good, little
dog--oh, if I had only left him at home with his little master, Rudolf!
He was running after us, as usual. Suddenly he gave a shriek of pain;
the splinter of a shell had torn off his fore-leg. He could not come
after us, so is left behind, and is ‘still alive’. Between twenty-four
and forty-eight hours have passed, and he is ‘still alive’. ‘Oh master!
my good master!’ his cries seemed to say. ‘Do not leave poor Puxl here!
His heart will break!’ And what especially pains me is the thought that
the faithful dying creature must misunderstand me. For he saw that I
turned round, that I must have understood his cry for help and yet was
so cold and so cruel as to leave him there. Poor Puxl could not
understand that a regiment advancing to the attack, out of whose ranks
comrades are falling and are left on the ground, cannot be ordered to
halt for the sake of a dog who has been hit. He has no conception of the
higher duty which I had to obey: and so the poor true heart of the dog
is complaining of my unmercifulness. Only think of troubling oneself
about such trumpery in the midst of the ‘great events’ and gigantic
misfortunes which fill the present time. That is what many would say,
with a shrug of the shoulders; but not you, Martha, not you. I know that
a tear will come into your eyes for our poor Puxl.”
* * * * *
“What is happening there? The execution party is drawn out. Has a spy
been caught? One? Seventeen this time. There they come, in four ranks,
each one of four men, surrounded by a square of soldiers. The condemned
men step out, with their heads down. Behind comes a cart with a corpse
in it; and bound to the corpse the dead man’s son--a boy of twelve, also
condemned.
“I could not look on at the execution, and withdrew; but I heard the
firing. A cloud of smoke rose from behind the walls. All were dead, the
boy included.”
* * * * *
“At last a comfortable night’s lodging in a little town! The poor little
nest! Provisions, which were to have served the people for months, we
have taken on requisition. ‘Requisition!’ Well, it is one good thing to
have a pretty recognised name for a thing. However, I was at least glad
to have got a good night’s lodging and a good night’s food; and--let me
tell you a story:--
“I was just going to lie down in bed, when my orderly announced that a
man of my regiment was there, and earnestly begged for admission, as he
had something for me. ‘Well, let him come in;’ and the man entered. And
before he went out I had rewarded him handsomely, shaken him by both
hands, and promised to look after his wife and children. For what he
brought me, the fine fellow, had given me the greatest pleasure, and had
freed me from a pain under which I had been suffering for the last
thirty-six hours. It was my Puxl. Injured, it is true--honourably
wounded--but still alive, and so happy to be with his master, by whose
behaviour he must certainly have seen that he had been wrong in charging
him with want of fondness for him. Ah, that was indeed a scene of
re-union. First of all, a drink of water! How good it was! He
interrupted his greedy drinking ten times to bark out his joy to me.
Then I bound up the stump of his leg for him, set before him a tasty
supper of meat and cheese, and put him to sleep on my bed. We both slept
well. In the morning when I woke he licked my hand again and again in
token of thanks. Then he stretched out his poor little leg, breathed
deep, and--was no more. Poor Puxl! It is better so.”
* * * * *
“What is all I have seen to-day? If I shut my eyes, what has passed
before them comes with terrible distinctness into my memory. ‘Nothing
but pain and pictures of horror,’ you will say. Why then do other men
bring such fresh, such joyful images away with them from war? Ah, yes!
These others close their eyes to the pain and the horror. They _say
nothing about them_. If they write, or if they narrate, they give
themselves no trouble to paint their experiences after nature; but they
occupy themselves in imitating descriptions which they have read, and
which they take as models, and in bringing out those impressions which
are considered heroic. If they occasionally tell also of scenes of
destruction, which contain in themselves the bitterest pain and the
bitterest terror, nothing of either is to be discovered in their tone.
On the contrary, the more terrible the more indifferent are they, the
more horrible the more easy. Disapprobation, anger, excitement? Nothing
of all this. Well, perhaps instead of this, a slight breath of
sentimental pity, a few sighs of compassion. But their heads are soon in
the air again. ‘The heart to God, and the hand against the foe.’ Hurrah,
Tra-ra-ra!
“Now look at two of the pictures which impressed themselves on me.
“Steep, rocky heights. Jägers nimble as cats climbing up them. The
object was to ‘take’ the heights, from the top of which the enemy was
firing. What I see are the forms of the assailants who are climbing up,
and some of them who are hit by the enemy’s shot, suddenly stretch both
arms out, let their muskets fall, and with their heads falling
backwards, drop off the height, step by step, from one rocky point to
another, smashing their limbs to pieces.
“I see a horseman at some distance obliquely behind me, at whose side a
shell burst. His horse swerved aside, and came against the tail of mine,
then shot past me. The man sat still in the saddle, but a fragment of
the shell had ripped his belly open, and torn all the intestines out.
The upper part of his body was held on to the lower only by the spine.
From the ribs to the thighs nothing but one great bleeding cavity. A
short distance further he fell to the ground, with one foot still
clinging in the stirrup, and the galloping horse dragging him on over
the stony soil.”
* * * * *
“An artillery division is sticking fast in a part of the road which is
steep and soaked with rain. The guns are sinking deeper than their
wheels in the morass. It is only with the most extreme exertion,
dripping with sweat, and animated by the most unmerciful flogging, that
the horses can get forward. One, however, dead beat before, now can do
no more. Thumping him does no good; he is quite willing, but he cannot.
He literally _can_ not. Cannot that man see this, whose blows are
raining down on the poor beast’s head? If the cruel brute had been the
driver of a waggon in the service of some builder, any peace officer,
even I myself, would have had him arrested. But this gunner, who has to
get his death-laden carriage forward anyhow, is only doing his duty. The
horse, however, cannot know this. The tortured, well-meaning, noble
creature, who has exerted himself to the utmost limit of his vital
power, what must he think in his inmost heart of such hard-heartedness
and such want of sense? Think, as animals do think, not in words and
conceptions, but in feelings, and feelings which are all the more lively
for wanting expression. There is but _one_ expression for it, the shriek
of pain; and he did shriek, that poor horse, till at last he sank down,
a shriek so long drawn and so resounding, that it still rings in my ear,
that it haunted me in my dream the next night--a horrible dream in other
respects. I thought that I was--how can I ever tell you the story?
dreams are so senseless that language conformable to sense is hardly
adapted to their reproduction--that I was the sense of pain in such an
artillery horse--no, not one, but in 100,000, for in my dream I had
quickly summed up the number of the horses slaughtered in one campaign,
and thus this pain multiplied its effect at once a hundred-thousandfold.
The men _know_ at least why their lives are exposed to danger. They know
whither they are going, and what for; but we poor unfortunates know
nothing--all around us is night and horror. The men seem to go with
pleasure to meet their foes, but we are surrounded by foes--our own
masters, whom we would love so truly, to serve whom we spend our last
energies, they rain blows on us, they leave us lying helpless; and all
that we have to suffer besides, the fear that makes the sweat of agony
run from our whole body, the thirst--for we too suffer from fever--oh,
that thirst! the thirst of us poor bleeding, maltreated 100,000
horses!... Here I woke, and clutched the water bottle. I was myself
suffering from burning, feverish thirst.”
* * * * *
“Another street fight in the little town of Saar. To the noise of the
battle-cries and the shots is joined the crashing of timber and the
falling of walls. A shell burst in one of the houses, and the pressure
of the air, caused by its explosion, was so powerful that several
soldiers were wounded by the ruins of the house which were borne along
by the air. A window flew over my head with the window-sash still in it.
The chimney-stack tumbled down, the plaster crumbled into dust and
filled the air with a stifling cloud that stung one’s eyes. From one
lane to another (how the hoofs rang on the jagged pavements) the fight
wound on, and reached the market-place. In the middle of the square
stands a high pillar of the Virgin. The Mother of God holds her child in
one arm and stretches the other out in blessing. Here the fight was
prolonged--man to man. They were hacking at me, I was laying about me on
all sides. Whether I hit one or more of them I know not: in such moments
one does not retain much perception. Still two cases are photographed on
my soul, and I fear that the market-place at Saar will remain always
burned into my memory. A Prussian dragoon, strong as Goliath, tore one
of our officers (a pretty, dandified lieutenant--how many girls are
perhaps mad after him) out of his saddle, and split his skull at the
feet of the Virgin’s pillar. The gentle saint looked on unmoved. Another
of the enemy’s dragoons--a Goliath too--seized, just before me almost,
my right-hand man, and bent him backwards in his saddle so powerfully
that he broke his back--I myself heard it crack. To this also the
Madonna gave her stony blessing.”
* * * * *
“From a height to-day the field-glass of the staff officer commanded
once more a scene rich in changes. There was, for instance, the collapse
of a bridge as a train of waggons was moving across it. Did the latter
contain wounded? I do not know. I could not ascertain. I only saw that
the whole train--waggons, horses, and men--sank into the deep and
rushing stream and there disappeared. The event was a ‘fortunate’ one,
since the train of waggons belonged to the ‘blacks’. In the game now
being played I designate ‘us’ as the white side. The bridge did not
collapse by accident; the whites, knowing that their adversaries had to
cross it, had sawn through the pillars--a dexterous stroke that.
“A second prospect, on the other hand, which one might view from the
same height represented one of the follies of the “whites”. Our
Khevenhüller Regiment was directed into a morass, from which it could
not extricate itself, and they were all, except a few, shot down. The
wounded fell into the morass, and there had to sink and be smothered,
their mouth, nose, and eyes filled with mud, so that they could not even
utter a cry. Oh yes! it must be admitted to have been an error of the
man who commanded the troops to go there; but ‘to err is human,’ and the
loss is not a great one--might represent a pawn taken--a speedy, lucky
move of castle or queen, and all is right again. The mud, it is true,
remains in the mouth and eyes of the fallen, but that is a very
secondary consideration. What is reprehensible is the tactical error;
that has to be wiped out by some later fortunate combination, and then
the leader implicated in it may still be decorated with grand orders and
promotions. That lately our 18th battalion of Jägers in a night battle
was firing for several hours on our King of Prussia Regiment, and the
error was not found out till break of day; that a part of the Gyulai
Regiment was led into a pond--these are little oversights, such as may
happen even to the best players in the heat of a game.”
* * * * *
“It is decided--if I come back from this campaign, I quit the service.
Setting everything else aside, if one has learned to regard anything
with such horror as war produces in me, it would be a continual lie to
keep in the service of that thing. Even before this, I went, as you
know, to battle unwillingly, and with a judgment condemnatory of it; but
now this unwillingness has so increased, this condemnation has become so
strengthened, that all the reasons which before determined me to
persevere with my profession have ceased to operate. The sentiments
derived from my youthful training, and perhaps also, to some extent,
inherited, which still pleaded with me in favour of the military life,
have now quite departed from me in the course of the horrors I have just
experienced. I do not know whether it is the studies, which I undertook
in common with you, and from which I discovered that my contempt for war
is not an isolated feeling, but is shared by the best spirits of the
age, or whether it is the conversations I have had with you, in which I
have strengthened myself in my views by their free expression and your
concurrence in them; in one word, my former vague, half-smothered
feeling has changed into a clear conviction, a conviction which makes it
from this time impossible to do service to the war god. It is the same
kind of change as comes to many people in matters of belief. First they
are somewhat sceptical and indifferent, still they can assist at the
business of the temple with a certain sense of reverence. But when once
all mysticism is put aside, when they rise to the perception that the
ceremony which they are attending rests on folly, and sometimes on cruel
folly, as in the case of the religious death-sacrifices, then they will
no longer kneel beside the other befooled folks, no longer deceive
themselves and the world by entering the now desecrated temple. This is
the process which has gone on with me in relation to the cruel worship
of Mars. The mysterious, supernatural, awe-inspiring feeling which the
appearance of this deity generally awakes in men, and which in former
times obscured my senses also, has now entirely passed away for me. The
liturgy of the bulletins and the ritual of heroic phraseology no longer
appear to me as a divine revelation; the mighty organ-voice of the
cannon, the incense-smoke of the powder have no charm more for me. I
assist at the terrible worship perfectly devoid of belief or reverence,
and can now see nothing in it except the tortures of the victims, hear
nothing but their wailing death-cries. And thence comes it that these
pages, which I am filling with my impressions of war, contain nothing
except pain seen with pain.”