PRINCE XAVIER OF SAXONY.
The Light Troop had gone more than a mile from the field with the
pursuing cavalry before it was ordered to return on the service just
stated. When falling back, we passed through a hamlet where the
baggage of our brigade was lying, and there we were surrounded by our
soldiers' wives, clamorously inquiring for tidings of the past day.
"Oh, please your honour, gude sir," cried one, holding her baby to
her bare breast with one hand, while the other clung to my
stirrup-leather, her eyes streaming with tears the while; "can you
tell us if the regiment has been engaged, for heavy has the firing
been all day?"
"Have the Greys suffered--have the Greys suffered?"
"Did you see my puir gudeman--he is in the 1st troop--John Drummond,
sir?"
"Shot--my poor Willie shot!" shrieked another. "Then God help his
puir bairns and me in this waefu' country, for we ne'er shall see the
bonnie Braes o' Angus again!"
Such were some of the cries I heard on all sides as we hurried
through the hamlet at a trot, and returned to the field on which the
moonlight had succeeded the long level flush of the set sun.
There lay all the usual amount of death and agony--the sad
paraphernalia of war--and the pale dead in every variety of attitude
and contortion, so close to each other that in some places one might
have stepped from body to body.
Already had many been stripped nude as when they came into the world
by those wretches who hover like carrion crows on the skirts of an
army; and their pale marble skins gleamed horribly white with their
black and gaping wounds in the cold moonlight.
Amid these many horrors--the dying and the dead, legs, arms,
blood-gouts and spattered brains--some phlegmatic German infantry
were quietly bivouacking and lighting fires to cook their supper.
Others lay down weary and worn, their mouths parched with thirst, and
their canteens empty, after twelve hours' marching and fighting.
As we rode slowly over the field to scare plunderers and protect the
wounded, I heard, amid a group of officers whom we passed, one
laughing loudly, and found him to be Major Shirley. A revulsion of
feeling made the flow of this man's spirits extravagant; and here,
amid the rows and piles of dead and wounded--amid the expiring on
that solemn, harrowing, and moonlighted plain--he was joking and
laughing, like a fool or a drunkard--he, the poltroon who could not
articulate an order when under a fire at noon!
"_His_ weird is no come yet," I heard old Sergeant Duff mutter as we
rode on in extended order, our horses sometimes stumbling over what
appeared to be a heap of freshly gathered grain or hemp. These had
been uprooted by some kind hand, and spread over a dead comrade to
protect or conceal his body from plunderers; and everywhere lay
fragments of exploded shells and the half imbedded cannon-shot that
had ploughed up the grass or corn in long furrows.
We sought for and interred, separately, in his cloak, the body of
poor Keith, our young lieutenant. Elsewhere the dead were rapidly
interred; some by lantern-light, and with them, undistinguished among
the rank and file, Prince Xavier of Saxony.
One soldier of our 51st got his diamond star, and sold it to a Jew
for some hundred pounds, which he spent in six months, keeping the
regiment in an uproar while the money lasted; another got his purse,
which was filled with louis d'ors; and a third 51st man got his
watch, which was studded with brilliants. Some Westphalian boors
then stripped the body, which was flung into a pit and interred with
about twenty others.
All the churches in Minden and its vicinity were converted into
hospitals. The interior of the old Cathedral--whither I rode to
inquire after Hob Elliot and some others of ours--presented a very
singular scene. It is a dark but stately edifice, said to have been
formerly the palace of the Pagan King Wittikind, but was turned by
him into a church after his conversion.
Along the high-arched Gothic aisles were rows of wounded
soldiers--British, French, and Hanoverian--groaning, praying,
cursing, and rustling fretfully among the bloody straw on which they
lay. Knapsacks, haversacks, and accoutrements hung on every carved
knob, and there was not a saint who did not bear a load of
sword-belts, bridles, or canteens slung about his neck or piled
within his niche, while, in the Gothic porch, the chapter-house, and
the painted chapel of Our Lady of Minden, stood surgeons' blocks for
operations; and there were Dr. Probe and all the medical men of the
army busy in their shirt-sleeves with knife and saw, and up to their
bared elbows in blood.
There was no time, nor was it then the fashion to reduce fractures;
so around each military Æsculapius lay piles of legs, arms, hands,
and feet, amputated as fast as their owners could be brought from the
field; and these revolting fragments were cast into a corner until
they could be carted away to the pits that were being dug by our
working parties amid the harvest-fields on the plain of Todtenhausen.
But such is war, and such are its grim concomitants.
On the noon of the day after the battle I was returning from the
visit to this hospital, or cathedral, and was proceeding to rejoin
the Light Troop which was bivouacked in a hemp-field at some distance
from the pits where the dead lay, when two French officers and a
trumpeter, all mounted, and accompanied by six dragoons, came
suddenly upon me at an angle of the road.
As one bore a white banner on a sergeant's pike, I recognised at once
a flag of truce, so we simultaneously reined up and courteously
saluted each other. One wore the gorgeous uniform of Colonel of the
Regiment de Bretagne; the other was a French Hussar officer, in whom
I recognised the Chevalier de Boisguiller.
"_Peste! monsieur,_" said he, "you and I have the luck of meeting in
strange places, but seldom under pleasant circumstances. We are in
haste, for those we have left behind are not likely to wait for us,
pressed as they now are by your cavalry; so, can you direct us to the
quarters of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick?"
"With pleasure. You are the bearer----"
"Nay, my friend Monsieur le Comte is bearer of a letter from the
Maréchal de Contades, our commander-in-chief, to the Prince,
inquiring into the fate of Prince Xavier of Saxony."
"His fate?" I repeated, and shook my head.
"_Oui, monsieur,_" said the officer, who bore the rank of count, with
great earnestness; "if he is wounded we come to offer a suitable
equivalent in exchange for him; if, unhappily, killed, to solicit the
restoration of his remains, for he is the brother of her Majesty the
Queen of France, and I had the honour to be his particular friend."
While we were speaking, a royal coach and six, accompanied by a
squadron of French Household Troops, preceded by an officer bearing a
white flag, and by four trumpeters, wheeled round the angle of the
road and joined us.
"Here comes the Prince's carriage, with Monsieur Monjoy to receive
him, whether dead or alive," said Boisguiller.
With some reluctance I informed these officers that I had seen the
Prince cut down by one of our own troopers, and almost immediately
afterwards pierced by a ball in front of the grenadier company of our
51st Foot; and that his body had been buried with others on the field.
This information filled the Frenchman with a sorrow that seemed
genuine; and the colonel of the Regiment de Bretagne, a handsome, but
stern-looking young man, actually wept aloud.
Prince Ferdinand, to whose quarters I conducted them, gave orders to
open some of the pits in the field; so a working party was detailed,
and a search instituted among the naked and mangled dead for the body
of the unfortunate Prince.
No less than eighty of these horrid graves were unclosed, and their
poor occupants pulled by the legs or arms from among the mould and
examined before the discovery of the Prince's piebald charger in one
hecatomb gave hope that his late rider's remains might be near; and
accordingly, in one that was filled with Mousquetaires Gris et
Noires, we found a nude and bloody corpse, which all the French
officers at once declared to be Prince Xavier of Saxony, stripped
even to his boots.
He had received a bullet in the left temple, which was his mortal
wound. His right arm was found to be broken. This had been done by
the sword of Hob Elliot. His fine hair was still neatly dressed,
tied by a blue satin ribbon, and powdered with brown _maréchale_.
The poor remains were rolled in a large crimson velvet mantle,
bearing a royal star, and placed in the coach, which was driven
rapidly off, followed by its escort, to which all our guards,
sentinels, and out-pickets presented arms.