_My delight in the restoration of my husband.--The war practically
at an end: but the Prussians continue their advance on Vienna--Life
at Grumitz.--Military education.--My brother Otto.--Description of
the flight of a routed corps.--Peace imminent.--Victory of
Lyssa.--Plans for the future.--Conrad’s return.--The soldier’s
delight in war._
This was the second time in my life that my beloved husband had been
restored to me from the dangers of war.
Oh! the blessedness of having him once more with me. How was it that I,
just I, had succeeded in emerging out of the flood of woe in which so
many had sunk, on to a safe and happy shore? Happy for those who in such
circumstances can raise their eyes with joy to heaven and send up warm
thanks to their Guide above. By this thanksgiving, which, because it is
spoken in humility, they take to be humble, and of which they have no
conception how arrogant and self-important it is in reality, they feel
themselves relieved, inasmuch as they have, according to their own
opinion, given a sufficient discharge for the benefit which has accrued
to them, and which they call grace and favour. I could not put myself in
that position. When I thought of the wretches whom I had seen in those
abodes of misery, and when I thought of the lamentable mothers and wives
whose dear ones had been hurried into torture and death by the same
destiny as had so favoured me--when I thought of this I found it
impossible to be so immodest as to take this favour as having been sent
by God, and one for which I was entitled to give thanks. It appeared to
me that just as, a little while before, Frau Walter, our housekeeper,
had swept her broom over a cupboard on which a swarm of ants who scented
sugar were collected, so fate had swept over the Bohemian battlefields.
The poor busy black things were mostly crushed, killed, scattered; but a
few remained uninjured. Now, would it have been reasonable and proper in
them if they had sent up their heartfelt thanks for this to Frau Walter?
No. I could not entirely banish the woe out of my heart by means of the
joy of meeting again, however great that were. I neither could nor did I
wish to do so. I was not able to help--to dress wounds, nurse, wait on
the sick--like those sisters of mercy and the courageous Frau Simon had
done; my strength was not sufficient for that. But the mercy which
consists in compassion, that I had offered up to my poor brother-men,
and that I could not withdraw from them again in my selfish contentment.
I could not forget.
But if I might not triumph and give thanks yet I well might
_love_--might clasp the beloved one to my heart with a hundredfold the
former tenderness. “Oh Frederick, Frederick!” I repeated amidst our
tears and caresses, “have I got you again?”
“And you wanted to seek me out and nurse me? How heroic and how foolish,
Martha!”
“Foolish! Yes, there I agree with you. The appealing voice which drew me
on was imagination--superstition--for you were not calling for me. But
heroic? No. If you knew how cowardly I showed myself when face to face
with misery! It was only you, if you had been lying there, that I could
have nursed. I have seen horrors, Frederick, that I can never forget.
Oh! this beautiful world of ours, how can people so spoil it, Frederick?
A world in which two beings can so love each other as you and I do, in
which there can glow such a fire of bliss as is our union, how can it be
so foolish as to rake up the flames of hate which brings death and woe
in its train?”
“I also have seen something horrible, Martha--something that I can never
forget. Just think of Godfrey v. Tessow rushing wildly upon me with
uplifted sword--it was in the cavalry action at Sadowa.”
“Aunt Rosalie’s son?”
“The same; he recognised me in time, and let the blade sink which he had
already raised.”
“He acted in that directly contrary to his duty. How? To spare an enemy
of his king and country, under the worthless pretext that he was his own
dear friend and cousin.”
“Poor fellow! He had scarcely let his arm fall when a sabre whistled
over his head. It was my next man, a young officer, who wanted to defend
his lieutenant-colonel, and----”
Frederick stopped and covered his face with both hands.
“Killed?” I asked shuddering. He nodded.
“Mamma, mamma,” resounded from the next room, and the door was burst
open. It was my sister Lilly, leading little Rudolf by the hand.
“Forgive me if I interrupt your _tête-à-tête_ on meeting again, but this
boy was too ardently eager to see his mamma to be denied.”
I hastened to the child and pressed him passionately to my heart. Ah!
poor, poor Aunt Rosalie!
On the very same day the surgeon who had been summoned by telegraph from
Vienna arrived at the château and undertook the treatment of Frederick’s
wound. Six weeks of the most perfect rest, and his cure would be
complete.
That my husband should quit the service was a point perfectly settled
between us two. Of course, this could not be carried out till the war
was at an end. The war might, however, be practically looked on as over.
After the renunciation of Venice the conflict with Italy was ended,
Napoleon’s friendship secured, and we should be in a position to
conclude peace on moderate terms with the northern conqueror. Our
emperor himself was most ardently desirous to put an end to the unlucky
campaign, and would not expose his capital to a siege also. The Prussian
victories in the rest of Germany, joined to the entry of the Prussians
into Frankfort-on-the-Main which took place on July 16, invested our
adversaries with a halo, which, like all success, extorted admiration
even from our countrymen, and awoke a sort of belief that it was an
historical mission which was thus being carried out by Prussia through
the battles she had won. The words “suspension of hostilities,” “peace,”
having been once let drop, one could count on their taking effect as
certainly as in the times when a threatening of war has once found vent
one may reckon on its breaking out sooner or later. Even my father
himself admitted that under the stress of circumstances a suspension of
hostilities was desirable; the army was debilitated, the superiority of
the needle-gun must be recognised, and an advance of the enemy’s troops
on the capital, the blockade of Vienna, and along with that the
destruction of Grumitz, these were possibilities which were not
particularly alluring to even my warlike papa. His trust in the
invincibility of the Austrian troops had then received a severe shock by
present facts, and it is, speaking generally, a predisposition of the
human mind to infer from the events passing before us that they will
recur in a series, that on one success another success will follow, on
one misfortune a fresh misfortune. So it is better to stop in the run of
bad luck--the time of satisfaction and of vengeance will come one day.
Vengeance! and always repeated vengeance! Every war must leave one side
defeated, and if this side can only find satisfaction in the next war, a
war which must naturally produce another defeated side craving
satisfaction, when is it to stop? How can justice be attained, when can
old injustice be atoned, if fresh injustice is always to be employed as
the means of atonement? It would never suggest itself to any reasonable
man to wash out ink spots with ink and oil stains with oil, it is only
blood which has always to be washed out with new blood! The frame of
mind prevailing at Grumitz was on the whole a gloomy one. In the village
panic reigned. “The Prussians are coming. The Prussians are coming” was
always the cry of terror which they kept uttering still, in spite of the
hopes of peace which were cherished in many quarters; and people were
packing up their treasures at home or burying them out of sight. Even in
the château Aunt Mary and Frau Walter had taken care that the family
plate had been put in a secret place of concealment. Lilly was in
constant anxiety about Conrad, of whom there had been no news for
several days; my father found himself wounded in his patriotic honour,
and we two, Frederick and I, in spite of the bliss which lay deep in our
hearts on account of our re-union, had been most painfully shaken by the
miseries of the time which we had experienced, and with which we so
warmly sympathised. And from all sides flowed in constantly fresh food
for this pain. In all the correspondence in the papers, in all our
letters from relatives and acquaintance, there was nothing but
complaints and lamentations. First there was a letter from Aunt Rosalie,
who had not yet learned her unhappiness, but who spoke in such moving
terms of the fear in which she was of having to lose her only child--a
letter over which we two shed bitter tears. And in the evening, when we
sat all together, there was no more of cheerful chatter, seasoned with
jokes, music, card-playing and interesting reading, but always, whether
spoken or read, only histories of woe and death. We read nothing but
newspapers, and these were filled with “war,” and nothing but “war,” and
our talk related chiefly to the experiences which Frederick and I had
brought back from the Bohemian battlefields. My departure thither had
been, it is true, taken very ill by them all, but for all that they
listened eagerly as I related the events there, partly from my own
observation, partly from what I had been told. Rosa was an enthusiast
for Frau Simon, and swore that, if the war was going to continue, she
would join the Saxon Samaritans. Papa, of course, protested against
this.
“With the exception of the sisters of charity and the sutlers no woman
has any business in a war. You must surely see how useless our Martha
showed herself to be. That was an unpardonable prank of yours, you silly
child. Your husband ought to chastise you properly for it.”
Frederick stroked my hand.
“Yes, it was a folly, but a noble one.”
If I spoke of the horrors which I had seen with my own eyes, or which my
travelling companions had related to me, in quite naked terms, I was
often interrupted reproachfully by my father or Aunt Mary, with: “How
can people repeat such dreadful things?” or, “Are you not ashamed, as a
woman, as a gently bred lady, to take such ugly words into your mouth?”
This exhausted my patience.
“Oh, away with your prudery! away with your affected decorum! Any
cruelties may be committed, but it is not permitted to name them. Gently
bred ladies are not to know anything about blood and filth, but they may
embroider the flags which are to wave over this bath of blood; maidens
may not know anything of the cause which is to render their lovers
incapable of reaping the reward of their love, but they are allowed to
promise them that reward, in order to inspire their martial ardour.
_Death_ and killing do not offer anything improper for you--well-bred
ladies as you are--but at the bare mention of the things which are the
sources of the implanted _life_, you must blush and look aside. That is
cruel ethics I would have you know--cruel and cowardly. This looking
aside--with the bodily and the spiritual eye--it is to this that is due
the persistence of so much misery and injustice. If one had but the
courage to look steadily whenever one’s fellow-creatures are pining in
pain and misery, and the courage to reflect on what one saw----”
“Don’t get excited,” interrupted Aunt Mary; “however much we might look,
and however much we might reflect, we should never be able to chase evil
from the earth. It is now, once for all, a vale of misery, and will ever
remain so.”
“It will not,” I replied; and so at least I had the last word.
* * * * *
“The danger that peace will be concluded is coming steadily nearer,”
said my brother Otto complainingly one day.
We were sitting at the time at the family table again, Frederick on the
sofa near us, and some one had just read out of the newspapers the
tidings that Benedetti had arrived in Bohemia, obviously entrusted with
the mission of suggesting proposals for peace.
My little brother--he was indeed big enough by this time, but I had got
into the habit of calling him so--my little brother was in fear of
nothing so much as that the war would come to a speedy end, and it would
not be his lot to chase the enemy out of the country. For the news had
just come from the Neustadt that in case hostilities had to be resumed,
then at the next period of calling out the reserves--_i.e._, next August
18--not only the recruits of the last year, but also a large proportion
of the last but one would have to go at once into active service. This
prospect delighted the young hero. Straight from the academy into the
field! What rapture! Just so a school-girl looks out into the world--to
her first ball. She has learned to dance; the Neustadt scholar has
learned to shoot and fence. She longs to display her powers under a
blazing chandelier in evening dress, to the accompaniment of the
orchestra; and he longs no less for the smart uniform and the great
artillery dance.
My father was of course pleased in the highest degree at his darling’s
martial ardour.
“By easy, my brave boy,” he said in reply to Otto’s sigh over the threat
of peace, patting him the while on the shoulder. “You have a long life
before you. Even if the campaign were to come to an end now, it must
break out again in a year or two.”
I said nothing. Since my outbreak against Aunt Mary I had, on
Frederick’s advice, formed and carried out the resolution to avoid these
painful disputes on the subject of war as far as possible. It would lead
to nothing but bitter feelings; and after having seen the traces of the
grim scourge with my own eyes I had so increased my hatred and my
contempt for war that all defence of it cut into my soul like a personal
insult. About Frederick we were indeed at one--he was to quit the
service; and I was also clear on this point, that my son Rudolf should
not be put into any military institution where the whole of the
education is directed--and _must_, to be consistent, be directed--to
awaken in the young a longing for deeds of war. I once asked my brother
what might be the views which were put before the students on the
subject of war. His replies came to something like what follows: War was
represented as a necessary evil (thus, at any rate, _evil_--a concession
to the spirit of the age) but at the same time as the chief excitant of
the noblest of human virtues--such as courage, the power of
self-renunciation and the spirit of sacrifice, as the bestower of the
greatest glory, and lastly, as the mightiest factor in the development
of civilisation. The mighty conquerors and founders of the so-called
universal empires--Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon--were quoted as the most
exalted specimens of human greatness, and recommended for admiration.
The successes and advantages of war were set forth in the liveliest
colours, while they passed over in complete silence the drawbacks which
inevitably come in its train, its barbarising influence, its ruinous
effects, the moral and physical degeneration it causes. Yes, assuredly,
for the same system was pursued in my case--in the education of
girls--and it was thus that was kindled in my childish spirit the
admiration of warlike laurels which at first inspired me. If I had even
myself been full of regret that the possibility of plucking these
laurels did not beckon me on, as it did the boys, could I now take it
ill in a boy if such a possibility filled him with joy and with
impatience?
And so I answered nothing to Otto’s complaint, but quietly went on with
my reading. I was, as usual, reading a newspaper, and that was filled,
as usual, with news from the theatre of war.
“Here is an interesting correspondence of a physician who accompanied
the retreat of our troops. Shall I read it aloud?” I asked.
“The retreat?” cried Otto. “I had rather not hear about that. Now, if
it were the history of the retreat of the foe, hotly pursued----”
“As a general principle it surprises me,” remarked Frederick, “that any
one should tell the tale of a flight which he has accompanied. That is
an episode of war which the people concerned in it generally pass over
in silence.”
“An orderly retreat is however not a flight,” interposed my father. “We
had one in ’49. It was under Radetzky----”
I knew the story and prevented its continuation by interposing.
“This account was sent to a medical weekly paper, and, therefore, was
not intended for military circles. Listen.”
And without further request for permission I read out the passage.
“It was about four o’clock when our troops began the retreat. We doctors
were fully occupied dressing the wounded--to the number of some
hundreds--who could bear removal. Suddenly cavalry broke in on us, and
spread themselves beside and behind us, over hills and fields,
accompanied by artillery and baggage-waggons, towards Königgrätz. Many
riders fell and _were stamped to pieces_ by the horses that came behind.
Waggons overturned and crushed the foot-men, who were pressed in among
them. We were scattered away from the dressing station, which
disappeared all at once. They shouted to us: “Save yourselves!” While
this cry went on we heard the thunder of the cannon, and splinters of
shell began to fall amongst our crowd. And so we were carried forward by
the press without knowing whither. I despaired of my life. My poor old
mother, my dear espoused bride, farewell! On a sudden we had water
before us, on the right a railway embankment, on the left a hollow way
stopped up with clumsy baggage-and sick-waggons, and behind us an
innumerable crowd of horsemen. We began to wade through the water. Now
came the order to cut the traces of the horses, to save the horses, and
leave the waggons behind. The waggons of the wounded also? Yes, those
too. We on foot were almost in despair: we were wading again over our
knees in water, every moment in fear of being shot down or drowned. At
last we got into a railway station, which again was closely barred. Many
broke through the barrier, the rest leaped over it. I with thousands of
the infantry soldiers ran on. Now we came to a river, waded through it,
then clambered over some palisades, passed again through a second river
up to our necks, clambered up some rising ground, leaped over fallen
trees, and arrived about one A.M. at a little wood, where we sank down
from exhaustion and fever. About three o’clock we marched--that is, some
of us, another part had to remain and die there--we marched on still
dripping with wet and shuddering with cold. The villages were all
empty--no men, no provisions, not even a drop of drinking water; the air
was poisoned, corpses covering the corn-fields; bodies black as coal,
with the eyes fallen from their sockets----”
“Enough! enough!” cried the girls.
“The censorship should not allow the publication of things of that
sort,” said my father. “It might destroy a man’s love for the profession
of a soldier.”
“And especially the love for war, which would be a pity,” I murmured
half aloud.
“As a general rule,” he went on, “about these episodes of flight, the
people who have been present at them should observe a decorous silence,
for it is surely no honour to have borne a part at a general ‘Sauve qui
peut’. The fellow who, by shouting ‘Save yourselves,’ gives the signal
for scampering should be shot down on the spot. One coward raises the
shout, and a thousand brave men are demoralised thereby and obliged to
run with him.”
“Exactly so,” replied Frederick, “just as when one brave man shouts
‘Forward’ a thousand cowards are obliged to rush on, and thus are really
animated by a merely momentary courage. Men cannot in general be divided
so sharply into courageous and cowards, but every one has his moments of
more or less courage and those of more or less cowardice. And
especially when one is dealing with masses of men each individual is
dependent on the condition of his comrades. We are gregarious animals,
and are under the domination of gregarious feelings. Where one sheep
leaps over the others leap after him, where one man rushes on shouting
‘Hurrah’ the others shout and rush after him, and where one dashes down
his musket into the corn in order to run away the others run after him.
In the one case ‘our brave troops’ get praised, in the other their
proceedings are passed over in silence, yet they are all the same
persons. Yes, they are the very same men who, obeying in each case a
common impulse, behave and feel at one time courageously, at another
cowardly. Bravery and fear are to be regarded, not as fixed qualities,
but rather as states of the spirits, just like joy and grief. I, during
my first campaign, was once involved in the whirl of one of these panic
flights. In the official account of the Etat-major, it is true, the
affair was passed over in a few words as an ‘orderly retreat’; but in
fact it was a thorough rout. They rushed on, madly raging in
indescribable confusion; arms, knapsacks, shakos, and cloaks were cast
away; no word of command could be heard; panting, shrieking, hounded on
by despair, the disbanded battalion streamed on, with the enemy pursuing
and firing after them. That is one of the many gruesome phases of
war--the most gruesome, when the two adversaries figure no longer as
warriors but as hunter and prey. Thence arises in the hunter the most
cruel lust of blood; in the prey the most bitter fear of death. The
pursued, hunted and spurred by fear, get into a kind of delirium, all
the feelings and sentiments in which they have been educated, and which
animate a man as he is rushing into battle, such as love of country,
ambition, thirst for noble deeds--all these are lost to the fugitive. He
is filled with one impulse only, in its greatest force, liberated from
all restraint, and that the most vehement which can assume the mastery
of a living being--the impulse of self-preservation: and this, as danger
comes nearer, rises to the highest paroxysm of terror.”
* * * * *
Frederick’s recovery progressed surely. The feverish outer world, too,
seemed to come nearer to recovery. The word “Peace” was always being
spoken more frequently and always louder. The advance of the Prussians,
who found no longer any opposition on the way, and who were quietly
drawing on towards Vienna, by way of Brünn, the keys of which were
delivered by the burgomaster to King William, this advance was more in
the nature of a military promenade than an operation of war, and on July
26 a regular suspension of arms at Nikolsburg was ended by the
preliminaries of peace.
My father had a great delight in the reception of the news of Admiral
Tegethoff’s victory at Lyssa. Italian ships blown into the air, the
_Affundatore_ destroyed, what a satisfaction! I could not with perfect
honesty take my share in his joy. Speaking generally, I could not
understand why, since Venice had already been surrendered, these naval
actions should be fought at all. So much, however, is certain, that
there broke out over this event the most lively shout of joy, not from
my father only, but from all the Viennese papers. The fame of a victory
in war is a thing which has been swollen up to such a size through the
traditions of a thousand years, that even from the mere news of one some
share of pride is spread over the whole population. If anywhere a
general of your country has beaten a general of a foreign country, every
single subject of the state in question is congratulated, and since each
man hears that all the rest are rejoicing, a thing which in itself is
exhilarating, why, each man ends by rejoicing, in fact. This is what
Frederick called “feeling in droves”.
Another political event of those days was that Austria at length joined
the Geneva convention.
“Well, are you contented now?” asked my father as he read the news. “Do
you agree that war, which you are always calling a barbarity, is always
becoming more humane as civilisation progresses? I too am indeed in
favour of carrying on war humanely: the wounded should have the most
careful nursing and all possible relief.... Even on strategic
principles, which in the long ran are surely the most important in
warlike matters, by a proper treatment of the sick very many may become
fit for service again, and be replaced in the ranks in a shorter space
of time.”
“You are right, papa. Material to be used again, that is the chief
thing. But after the things which I have seen, no Red Cross will be
enough, even if they had ten times as much of men and means, to conjure
away the misery which one battle brings with it----”
“No, indeed, not to conjure it away, but to mitigate it. What cannot be
prevented, one must always seek to mitigate.”
“Experience teaches that no sufficient mitigation is possible. I should
therefore wish the maxim to be inverted, ‘What cannot be mitigated ought
to be prevented’.”
It began to be a fixed idea with me, that war must cease. And every
individual _must_ contribute, all that he is able, to bring mankind
nearer to this end, were it but by the thousandth part of a line. I
could not get away from the scenes which I had witnessed in Bohemia.
Especially at night, when I woke out of a sound sleep, I would feel that
sore pain at my heart, and felt at the same time in my conscience the
admonition, just as if some one was giving me the command, “Stop it,
prevent it, do not suffer it”. It was not till I was wide awake and
thought on what I was that the perception of my impotence came over me.
What then was I to stop or to prevent? A man might as well order me, in
face of the sea swelling with winds and waves, “Not to suffer it, dry it
up”. And my next thought was, especially as I listened to his breathing,
one of deep happiness, “I have Frederick again,” and I would plunge into
this idea as vividly as I could, and then I would put my arm round him
as he lay beside me, even at the risk of wakening him, and kiss his
lips.
My son Rudolf had really reason to be jealous of his stepfather, and
this feeling was actually aroused in the boy’s heart, especially since
recent days. That I had gone away from Grumitz without bidding him
good-bye, that after my return my first wish was not to embrace _him_,
that as a general rule I did not move from my husband’s side for almost
the whole day--all this put together caused the poor little fellow one
fine morning to throw himself weeping on my neck, and sob out: “Mamma,
mamma, you do not love me a bit”.
“What nonsense are you talking, child?”
“Yes--only--only papa. I--I will not grow up at all--if you no longer
like me.”
“No longer like you--you my treasure!” I kissed and caressed the weeping
child. “You, my only son, my pride, the joy of my future. I love you
so--so above--no, not above everything--but infinitely.”
After this little scene, my love for my boy came more vividly into my
feelings. In the days just past, I had in fact been so much engrossed by
my fears for Frederick, that poor Rudolf had got thrust a little into
the background.
The plans which Frederick and I had made up between ourselves for the
future were as follows: After the war was over, to quit the military
service, and retire to some small, cheap place, where Frederick’s
pension as colonel, and what I could contribute, would suffice to keep
up our little household. We rejoiced over this solitary independent life
together, as if we had been a pair of young lovers. By means of the
events of our recent experience, we had been taught thoroughly that we
each formed the whole world to the other. Little Rudolf, moreover, was
not excluded from this fellowship. His education was a main business in
filling up the existence we were planning. We were not to pass our days
therein in idleness and without any aim; amongst other things we had
marked out a whole list of studies, which we were to pursue in common.
In especial, there was among the sciences a branch of the science of
law, _international_, to which Frederick intended to devote himself
particularly. His aim was, quite apart from all Utopian and sentimental
theory, to investigate the practical side of national peace. By means of
the perusal of Buckle--to which I had given him the impulse--by means
of an acquaintance with the newest acquisitions in natural philosophy,
which had been revealed to him in the works of Darwin, Büchner, and
others, the conviction had come before him that the world was arriving
at a new phase of knowledge, and to make this knowledge his own, as far
as possible, appeared to him sufficient to fill up life, along with
domestic pleasures.
My father, who meanwhile knew nothing of our views, was making quite
other plans for the future on our behalf. “You will now, Tilling, be
colonel at an early age, and in ten years you will certainly be general.
A fresh war will no doubt break out again about that time, and you may
get the command of an entire _corps d’armée_, or who knows but that you
may reach the rank of commander-in-chief, and perhaps the great
happiness may come to you of restoring the arms of Austria to their full
glory, which is now for the moment obscured. When we have once adopted
the needle-gun, or perhaps some still more effectual system, we shall
soon have the best in a war with these gentlemen of Prussia.”
“Who knows,” I suggested, “perhaps our enmity with Prussia will cease.
Perhaps we shall some day conclude an alliance with them.”
My father shrugged his shoulders. “If women would only abstain from
talking politics!” he said disdainfully. “After what has taken place, we
have to chastise these insolent fellows, we have to get the annexed (as
they call them--I call them ‘plundered’) states back to their severed
allegiance; that is what our honour demands, and the interest of our
position amongst the Powers of Europe. Friendship--alliance with these
transgressors? Never! unless they came and begged humbly for it.”
“In that case,” remarked Frederick, “we should perhaps set our feet on
their necks. Alliances are sought and concluded only with those whom one
respects, or who can offer one protection against a common foe. In
state-craft the ruling principle is egotism.”
“Oh yes,” my father replied, “if the _ego_ means one’s country,
everything else is certainly to be subordinated to it, and everything is
certainly allowable and commanded which seems serviceable to its
interests.”
“It is, however, to be wished,” answered Frederick, “that in the
behaviour of communities the same elevated civilisation should be
reached, as has banished from the behaviour of individuals the rough
self-worship, resting on fist-law, and that the view should prevail more
and more that one’s own interests are really most effectually furthered
by avoiding damage to those of foreigners, or rather in union with the
latter.”
“Eh?” asked my father, with his hand to his ear.
But Frederick could not, of course, repeat this long sentence and
illustrate it, and so the discussion ended.
* * * * *
“I shall be at Grumitz to-morrow at one o’clock.--Conrad.”
Everybody can imagine the delight which this telegram caused Lilly. No
other arrival is hailed with such joy and rapture as that of one
returning from the wars. It is true that in this case there was not also
what is the favourite subject of the common ballads and engravings,
_viz._, “The conqueror’s return”; but the human feelings of the loving
sweetheart would not be interfered with by patriotic considerations, and
if Conrad had “taken” the city of Berlin, I believe this would not have
availed to heighten the warmth of Lilly’s reception of him.
To him, of course, it would have been better if he had come home along
with troops who had been victorious, if he had contributed to conquer
the province of Silesia for his emperor. Meantime, the very fact of
having fought is in itself an honour for a soldier, even if he is one of
the beaten, nay, one of the fallen: the latter is even more especially
glorious. Thus Otto told us that in the academy at Wiener-Neustadt the
names of all the students were inscribed on a table of honour, to whom
the advantage had befallen of having been left dead on the battlefield,
_Tué à l’ennemi_, they say in France; and in that country, as everywhere
else, it is a much-prized ancestral distinction. The more progenitors
one can point out in one’s family who have lost their lives in battles,
whether won or lost, the prouder is the descendant of it, the more value
may he set on his name, the less value on his life. In order to show
oneself worthy of one’s slain ancestors, one must have a lively joy of
one’s own in slaying, active and passive. Well, so much the better is
it, that, as long as war exists, there should also be found people who
see therein elevation and inspiration, nay, even pleasure. The number,
however, of these people is daily becoming less, while the number of the
soldiers becomes daily greater. Whither must this finally lead? To its
becoming _intolerable_. And whither will this lead?
Conrad did not think so deeply. His way of looking at it was excellently
expressed by the well-known song of the lieutenant in the “Dame
Blanche”: “Oh, what delight is a soldier’s life, what delight!” To hear
him speak, one might have actually envied him the expedition of which he
had just formed part. My brother Otto was really filled with this envy.
This warrior returned from his baptism of blood and fire, who even
before looked so knightly in his hussar uniform, and who was now also
adorned with an honourable scar over his chin, received in the shower of
bullets, who had perhaps given their quietus to so many of the foe, he
seemed to him now surrounded by a nimbus of glory.
“It was not a successful campaign, that I must admit,” said Conrad, “but
I have brought back from it one or two grand reminiscences.”
“Tell us, tell us,” Lilly and Otto besought him.
“Well, I cannot give you many details; the whole thing lies behind me
like a dream, the powder gets into one’s head in such a strange way. The
intoxication, in fact, or the fever, the martial fire, in a word, begins
from the moment of marching. The parting from one’s love indeed comes
hard on one; it was the one hour in which my breast was full of tender
pain, but when one is once off with one’s comrades; when the thought is,
now I am going on the highest duty which life can lay on a man, viz., to
defend my beloved country; when, then, the musicians struck up
_Radetzky’s March_, and the silken folds of the flags rustled in the
wind, I must confess, Lilly, that at that moment I would not have turned
back--no, not into the arms of my love. Then I felt that I should never
be worthy of that love except by doing my duty out there by the side of
my brethren. That we were marching to victory we did not doubt. What did
we know about the horrible needle bullets? It was they alone that were
the cause of our defeat. I tell you they fell on our ranks like hail.
And we had also bad leaders. Benedek, you will see, will yet be brought
before a court-martial. We should have attacked. If I should ever become
a general my tactics would be to advance, always advance, play a forward
game, invade the enemy’s country. That surely is only another kind, and
the most weighty one too, of defence:--
If it must be so, go forward--forward go.
The way is found by never looking back,
as the poet says. However, that is nothing to the point; the emperor has
not put me in command, and so I am not responsible for the tactical
blunders: the generals must see how they are to settle with their
military superiors and with their own consciences; we, officers and
soldiers, did our duty--we had to fight, and fight we did. And that is a
grand sensation in itself. The very expectation, the very excitement one
feels when one rushes on to the foe and when the word goes round ‘Now it
is afoot,’ this consciousness that in that moment a portion of the
world’s history is being enacted, and then the pride, the joy in one’s
own courage, Death right and left, great and mysterious, and yet one
bids him a manly defiance----”
“Just like poor Godfrey Tessow,” murmured Frederick to himself. “Well,
of course, it is the same school.”
Conrad went on eagerly.
“One’s heart beats higher, one’s pulse flutters, there awakes--and that
is the peculiar rapture of it--there wakes the joy of battle. The rage,
the hate of the foe blazes up, and at the same time the most burning
love for one’s menaced country, while the onward rush, the hewing down
at them becomes a delight. One feels transported into another world from
that in which one grew up, a world in which all the ordinary feelings
and ways of looking at things are changed into their opposites. Life is
changed into plunder; killing becomes a duty. Only, however, heroism,
the most magnificent self-sacrifice, are left surviving--all other
conceptions have perished in the tumult. Then add the powder-smoke, the
battle-cries. I tell you it is a state of things to which no parallel is
to be found elsewhere. At the most, perhaps, the same fire may glow
through one in the lion or tiger hunt, when one stands in the face of
the maddened wild beast, and----”
“Yes,” broke in Frederick, “the fight against an enemy who threatens you
with death, the longing, proud desire of conquering him fills you with
peculiar enjoyment--pray forgive me the word, Aunt Mary--as indeed
everything which sustains or expands life is guaranteed to us by Nature
through the reward of joy. As long as man was in peril from savage
assailants, on two legs or four, and could only protect his life by
killing the latter, battle became one of his delights. If in the midst
of a fight the same pleasure creeps through our veins still though we
are civilised men, it is only a reminiscence of heredity. And at the
present time, when there are in Europe no more savages or beasts of
prey, in order that this delight may not vanish from us entirely, we
have invented artificial assailants for ourselves. This is what goes on.
Attention! You wear blue coats, and those men there red coats. As soon
as we clap hands three times the red coats will be turned for you into
tigers, and the blue coats will become wild beasts to them. So now--one,
two, three; blow the charge, beat the attack; and now you can set off,
and devour each other; and after 10,000--or always in proportion to the
rise in the magnitude of armies--100,000 artificial tigers have devoured
each other with mutual delight in battle at Xdorf, then you have the
battle of Xdorf, which is to become historical; and then the men who
clap hands assemble round a green congress table in Xstadt, rule lines
for altered frontiers on the map, haggle over the proportion of
contributions, sign a paper which figures in the historical annals as
the Peace of Xstadt, clap their hands three times once more, and say to
the redcoats and the bluecoats surviving ‘Embrace each other, men and
brethren’!”
* * * * *