CHAPTER VI. THE CRIMP WAGGON--MILITARY EPISODES
The covered waggon to which I was ordered to march was standing, as Ihave said, in the courtyard of the farm, with another dismal vehicleof the same kind hard by it. Each was pretty well filled with a crew ofmen, whom the atrocious crimp who had seized upon me, had enlisted underthe banners of the glorious Frederick; and I could see by the lanternsof the sentinels, as they thrust me into the straw, a dozen dark figureshuddled together in the horrible moving prison where I was now to beconfined. A scream and a curse from my opposite neighbour showed me thathe was most likely wounded, as I myself was; and, during the whole ofthe wretched night, the moans and sobs of the poor fellows in similarcaptivity kept up a continual painful chorus, which effectuallyprevented my getting any relief from my ills in sleep. At midnight(as far as I could judge) the horses were put to the waggons, and thecreaking lumbering machines were put in motion. A couple of soldiers,strongly armed, sat on the outer bench of the cart, and their grim facespeered in with their lanterns every now and then through the canvascurtains, that they might count the number of their prisoners. Thebrutes were half-drunk, and were singing love and war songs, such as 'OGretchen mein Taubchen, mein Herzenstrompet, Mein Kanon, mein Heerpaukund meine Musket,' 'Prinz Eugen der edle Ritter.' and the like; theirwild whoops and jodels making doleful discord with the groans of uscaptives within the waggons. Many a time afterwards have I heard theseditties sung on the march, or in the barrack-room, or round the fires aswe lay out at night.
I was not near so unhappy, in spite of all, as I had been on my firstenlisting in Ireland. At least, thought I, if I am degraded to be aprivate soldier there will be no one of my acquaintance who will witnessmy shame; and that is the point which I have always cared for most.There will be no one to say, 'There is young Redmond Barry, thedescendant or the Barrys, the fashionable young blood of Dublin,pipeclaying his belt and carrying his brown Bess.' Indeed, but forthat opinion of the world, with which it is necessary that every man ofspirit should keep upon equal terms, I, for my part, would have alwaysbeen contented with the humblest portion. Now here, to all intentsand purposes, one was as far removed from the world as in the wildsof Siberia, or in Robinson Crusoe's Island. And I reasoned with myselfthus:--'Now you are caught, there is no use in repining: make the bestof your situation, and get all the pleasure you can out of it. Thereare a thousand opportunities of plunder, &c., offered to the soldier inwar-time, out of which he can get both pleasure and profit: make use ofthese, and be happy. Besides, you are extraordinarily brave, handsome,and clever: and who knows but you may procure advancement in your newservice?'
In this philosophical way I looked at my misfortunes, determining notto be cast down by them; and bore woes and my broken head with perfectmagnanimity. The latter was, for the moment, an evil against which itrequired no small powers of endurance to contend; for the jolts of thewaggon were dreadful, and every shake caused a throb in my brain which Ithought would have split my skull. As the morning dawned, I saw that theman next me, a gaunt yellow-haired creature, in black, had a cushion ofstraw under his head.
'Are you wounded, comrade?' said I.
'Praised be the Lord,' said he, 'I am sore hurt in spirit and body,and bruised in many members; wounded, however, am I not. And you, pooryouth?'
'I am wounded in the head,' said I, 'and I want your pillow: giveit me--I've a clasp-knife in my pocket!' and with this I gave him aterrible look, meaning to say (and mean it I did, for look you, A LAGUERRE C'EST A LA GUERRE, and I am none of your milksops) that, unlesshe yielded me the accommodation, I would give him a taste of my steel.
'I would give it thee without any threat, friend,' said theyellow-haired man meekly, and handed me over his little sack of straw.
He then leaned himself back as comfortably as he could against thecart, and began repeating, 'Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott,' by which Iconcluded that I had got into the company of a parson. With the jolts ofthe waggon, and accidents of the journey, various more exclamations andmovements of the passengers showed what a motley company we were. Everynow and then a countryman would burst into tears; a French voice wouldbe heard to say, 'O mon Dieu!--mon Dieu!' a couple more of the samenation were jabbering oaths and chattering incessantly; and a certainallusion to his own and everybody else's eyes, which came from astalwart figure at the far corner, told me that there was certainly anEnglishman in our crew.
But I was spared soon the tedium and discomforts of the journey. Inspite of the clergyman's cushion, my head, which was throbbing withpain, was brought abruptly in contact with the side of the waggon; itbegan to bleed afresh: I became almost light-headed. I only recollecthaving a draught of water here and there; once stopping at a fortifiedtown, where an officer counted us:--all the rest of the journey waspassed in a drowsy stupor, from which, when I awoke, I found myselflying in a hospital bed, with a nun in a white hood watching over me.
'They are in sad spiritual darkness,' said a voice from the bed next tome, when the nun had finished her kind offices and retired: 'they arein the night of error, and yet there is the light of faith in those poorcreatures.'
It was my comrade of the crimp waggon, his huge broad face looming outfrom under a white nightcap, and ensconced in the bed beside.
'What! you there, Herr Pastor?' said I.
'Only a candidate, sir,' answered the white nightcap. 'But, praised beHeaven! you have come to. You have had a wild time of it. You have beentalking in the English language (with which I am acquainted) of Ireland,and a young lady, and Mick, and of another young lady, and of a house onfire, and of the British Grenadiers, concerning whom you sung us partsof a ballad, and of a number of other matters appertaining, no doubt, toyour personal history.'
'It has been a very strange one,' said I; 'and, perhaps, there is no manin the world, of my birth, whose misfortunes can at all be compared tomine.'
I do not object to own that I am disposed to brag of my birth andother acquirements; for I have always found that if a man does not givehimself a good word, his friends will not do it for him.
'Well,' said my fellow-patient, 'I have no doubt yours is a strangetale, and shall be glad to hear it anon; but at present you must notbe permitted to speak much, for your fever has been long, and yourexhaustion great.'
'Where are we?' I asked; and the candidate informed me that we were inthe bishopric and town of Fulda, at present occupied by Prince Henry'stroops. There had been a skirmish with an out-party of French near thetown, in which a shot entering the waggon, the poor candidate had beenwounded.
As the reader knows already my history, I will not take the troubleto repeat it here, or to give the additions with which I favouredmy comrade in misfortune. But I confess that I told him ours was thegreatest family and finest palace in Ireland, that we were enormouslywealthy, related to all the peerage descended from the ancient kings,&c.; and, to my surprise, in the course of our conversation, I foundthat my interlocutor knew a great deal more about Ireland than I did.When, for instance, I spoke of my descent,--
'From which race of kings?' said he.
'Oh!' said I (for my memory for dates was never very accurate), 'fromthe old ancient kings of all.'
'What! can you trace your origin to the sons Japhet?' said he.
''Faith, I can,' answered I, 'and farther too,--Nebuchadnezzar, if youlike.'
'I see,' said the candidate, smiling, 'that you look upon those legendswith incredulity. These Partholans and Nemedians, of whom your writersfondly make mention, cannot be authentically vouched for in history. Nordo I believe that we have any more foundation for the tales concerningthem, than for the legends relative to Joseph of Arimathea and KingBruce which prevailed two centuries back in the sister island.
And then he began a discourse about the Phoenicians, the Scyths orGoths, the Tuath de Danans, Tacitus, and King MacNeil; which was, to saythe truth, the very first news I had heard of those personages. As forEnglish, he spoke it as well as I, and had seven more languages, hesaid, equall
y at his command; for, on my quoting the only Latin linethat I knew, that out of the poet Homer, which says,--
'As in praesenti perfectum fumat in avi,'
he began to speak to me in the Roman tongue; on which I was fain to tellhim that we pronounced it in a different way in Ireland, and so got offthe conversation.
My honest friend's history was a curious one, and it may be told here inorder to show of what motley materials our levies were composed:--
'I am,' said he, 'a Saxon by birth, my father being pastor of thevillage of Pfannkuchen, where I imbibed the first rudiments ofknowledge. At sixteen (I am now twenty-three), having mastered the Greekand Latin tongues, with the French, English, Arabic, and Hebrew; andhaving come into possession of a legacy of a hundred rixdalers, a sumamply sufficient to defray my University courses, I went to the famousacademy of Gottingen, where I devoted four years to the exact sciencesand theology. Also, I learned what worldly accomplishments I couldcommand; taking a dancing-tutor at the expense of a groschen a lesson, acourse of fencing from a French practitioner, and attending lectureson the great horse and the equestrian science at the hippodrome of acelebrated cavalry professor. My opinion is, that a man should knoweverything as far as in his power lies: that he should complete hiscycle of experience; and, one science being as necessary as another, itbehoves him.
'I am not of a saving turn, hence my little fortune of a hundredrixdalers, which has served to keep many a prudent man for a score ofyears, barely sufficed for five years' studies; after which my studieswere interrupted, my pupils fell off, and I was obliged to devote muchtime to shoe-binding in order to save money, and, at a futureperiod, resume my academic course. During this period I contracted anattachment' (here the candidate sighed a little) 'with a person,who, though not beautiful, and forty years of age, is yet likely tosympathise with my existence; and, a month since, my kind friend andpatron, University Prorector Doctor Nasenbrumm, having informed me thatthe Pfarrer of Rumpelwitz was dead, asked whether I would like to havemy name placed upon the candidate list, and if I were minded to preach atrial sermon? As the gaining of this living would further my union withmy Amalia, I joyously consented, and prepared a discourse.
'If you like I will recite it to you--No?--Well, I will give youextracts from it upon our line of march. To proceed, then, with mybiographical sketch, which is now very near a conclusion; or, as Ishould more correctly say, which has very nearly brought me to thepresent period of time: I preached that sermon at Rumpelwitz, in which Ihope that the Babylonian question was pretty satisfactorily set atrest. I preached it before the Herr Baron and his noble family, and someofficers of distinction who were staying at his castle. Mr. Doctor Moserof Halle followed me in the evening discourse; but, though his exercisewas learned, and he disposed of a passage of Ignatius, which he provedto be a manifest interpolation, I do not think his sermon had the effectwhich mine produced, and that the Rumpelwitzers much relished it. Afterthe sermon, all the candidates walked out of church together, and suppedlovingly at the "Blue Stag" in Rumpelwitz.
'While so occupied, a waiter came in and said that a person withoutwished to speak to one of the reverend candidates, "the tall one." Thiscould only mean me, for I was a head and shoulders higher than anyother reverend gentleman present. I issued out to see who was theperson desiring to hold converse with me, and found a man whom I had nodifficulty in recognising as one of the Jewish persuasion.
'"Sir," said this Hebrew, "I have heard from a friend, who was in yourchurch to-day, the heads of the admirable discourse you pronouncedthere. It has affected me deeply, most deeply. There are only one ortwo points on which I am yet in doubt, and if your honour could butcondescend to enlighten me on these, I think--I think Solomon Hirschwould be a convert to your eloquence."
'"What are these points, my good friend?" said I; and I pointed out tohim the twenty-four heads of my sermon, asking him in which of these hisdoubts lay.
'We had been walking up and down before the inn while our conversationtook place, but the windows being open, and my comrades having heard thediscourse in the morning, requested me, rather peevishly, not to resumeit at that period. I, therefore, moved on with my disciple, and, at hisrequest, began at once the sermon; for my memory is good for anything,and I can repeat any book I have read thrice.
'I poured out, then, under the trees, and in the calm moonlight, thatdiscourse which I had pronounced under the blazing sun of noon. MyIsraelite only interrupted me by exclamations indicative of surprise,assent, admiration, and increasing conviction. "Prodigious!" saidhe;--"Wunderschon!" would he remark at the conclusion of some eloquentpassage; in a word, he exhausted the complimentary interjections of ourlanguage: and to compliments what man is averse? I think we must havewalked two miles when I got to my third head and my companion begged Iwould enter his house, which we now neared, and partake of a glass ofbeer; to which I was never averse.
'That house, sir, was the inn at which you, too, if I judge aright, weretaken. No sooner was I in the place, than three crimps rushed upon me,told me I was a deserter, and their prisoner, and called upon me todeliver up my money and papers; which I did with a solemn protest asto my sacred character. They consisted of my sermon in MS., ProrectorNasenbrumm's recommendatory letter, proving my identity, and threegroschen four pfennigs in bullion. I had already been in the cart twentyhours when you reached the house. The French officer, who lay oppositeyou (he who screamed when you trod on his foot, for he was wounded),was brought in shortly before your arrival. He had been taken with hisepaulets and regimentals, and declared his quality and rank; but he wasalone (I believe it was some affair of love with a Hessian lady whichcaused him to be unattended); and as the persons into whose hands hefell will make more profit of him as a recruit than as a prisoner, he ismade to share our fate. He is not the first by many scores so captured.One of M. de Soubise's cooks, and three actors out of a troop in theFrench camp, several deserters from your English troops (the men are ledaway by being told that there is no flogging in the Prussian service),and three Dutchmen were taken besides.'
'And you,' said I--'you who were just on the point of getting a valuableliving,--you who have so much learning, are you not indignant at theoutrage?'
'I am a Saxon,' said the candidate, 'and there is no use in indignation.Our government is crushed under Frederick's heel these five years, andI might as well hope for mercy from the Grand Mogul. Nor am I, in truth,discontented with my lot; I have lived on a penny bread for so manyyears, that a soldier's rations will be a luxury to me. I do not careabout more or less blows of a cane; all such evils are passing, andtherefore endurable. I will never, God willing, slay a man in combat;but I am not unanxious to experience on myself the effect of thewar-passion, which has had so great an influence on the human race. Itwas for the same reason that I determined to marry Amalia, for a man isnot a complete Mensch until he is the father of a family; to be whichis a condition of his existence, and therefore a duty of his education.Amalia must wait; she is out of the reach of want, being, indeed, cookto the Frau Prorectorinn Nasenbrumm, my worthy patron's lady. I have oneor two books with me, which no one is likely to take from me, and one inmy heart which is the best of all. If it shall please Heaven to finishmy existence here, before I can prosecute my studies further, what causehave I to repine? I pray God I may not be mistaken, but I think I havewronged no man, and committed no mortal sin. If I have, I know where tolook for forgiveness; and if I die, as I have said, without knowing allthat I would desire to learn, shall I not be in a situation to learnEVERYTHING, and what can human soul ask for more?
'Pardon me for putting so many _I_'s in my discourse,' said thecandidate, 'but when a man is talking of himself, 'tis the briefest andsimplest way of talking.'
In which, perhaps, though I hate egotism, I think my friend was right.Although he acknowledged himself to be a mean-spirited fellow, with nomore ambition than to know the contents of a few musty books, I thinkthe man had some good in him; especially in the resolution with which h
ebore his calamities. Many a gallant man of the highest honour is oftennot proof against these, and has been known to despair over a baddinner, or to be cast down at a ragged-elbowed coat. MY maxim is to bearall, to put up with water if you cannot get Burgundy, and if you have novelvet to be content with frieze. But Burgundy and velvet are the best,bien entendu, and the man is a fool who will not seize the best when thescramble is open.
The heads of the sermon which my friend the theologian intended toimpart to me, were, however, never told; for, after our coming outof the hospital, he was drafted into a regiment quartered as far aspossible from his native country, in Pomerania; while I was put intothe Bulow regiment, of which the ordinary headquarters were Berlin. ThePrussian regiments seldom change their garrisons as ours do, for thefear of desertion is so great, that it becomes necessary to know theface of every individual in the service; and, in time of peace, men liveand die in the same town. This does not add, as may be imagined, to theamusements of the soldier's life. It is lest any young gentleman likemyself should take a fancy to a military career, and fancy that of aprivate soldier a tolerable one, that I am giving these, I hope, moraldescriptions of what we poor fellows in the ranks really suffered.
As soon as we recovered, we were dismissed from the nuns and thehospital to the town prison of Fulda, where we were kept like slaves andcriminals, with artillerymen with lighted matches at the doors of thecourtyards and the huge black dormitory where some hundreds of us lay;until we were despatched to our different destinations. It was soon seenby the exercise which were the old soldiers amongst us, and which therecruits; and for the former, while we lay in prison, there was a littlemore leisure: though, if possible, a still more strict watch kept thanover the broken-spirited yokels who had been forced or coaxed into theservice. To describe the characters here assembled would require Mr.Gilray's own pencil. There were men of all nations and callings. TheEnglishmen boxed and bullied; the Frenchmen played cards, and danced,and fenced; the heavy Germans smoked their pipes and drank beer, if theycould manage to purchase it. Those who had anything to risk gambled, andat this sport I was pretty lucky, for, not having a penny when I enteredthe depot (having been robbed of every farthing of my property by therascally crimps), I won near a dollar in my very first game at cardswith one of the Frenchmen; who did not think of asking whether I couldpay or not upon losing. Such, at least, is the advantage of having agentlemanlike appearance; it has saved me many a time since by procuringme credit when my fortunes were at their lowest ebb.
Among the Frenchmen there was a splendid man and soldier, whosereal name we never knew, but whose ultimate history created no smallsensation, when it came to be known in the Prussian army. If beauty andcourage are proofs of nobility, as (although I have seen some of theugliest dogs and the greatest cowards in the world in the noblesse) Ihave no doubt courage and beauty are, this Frenchman must have been ofthe highest families in France, so grand and noble was his manner, sosuperb his person. He was not quite so tall as myself, fair, while I amdark, and, if possible, rather broader in the shoulders. He was the onlyman I ever met who could master me with the small-sword; with which hewould pink me four times to my three. As for the sabre, I could knockhim to pieces with it; and I could leap farther and carry more thanhe could. This, however, is mere egotism. This Frenchman, with whom Ibecame pretty intimate--for we were the two cocks, as it were, of thedepot, and neither had any feeling of low jealousy--was called, for wantof a better name, Le Blondin, on account of his complexion. He was not adeserter, but had come in from the Lower Rhine and the bishoprics, as Ifancy; fortune having proved unfavourable to him at play probably, andother means of existence being denied him. I suspect that the Bastilewas waiting for him in his own country, had he taken a fancy to returnthither.
He was passionately fond of play and liquor, and thus we had aconsiderable sympathy together: when excited by one or the other, hebecame frightful. I, for my part, can bear, without wincing, both illluck and wine; hence my advantage over him was considerable in ourbouts, and I won enough money from him to make my position tenable. Hehad a wife outside (who, I take it, was the cause of his misfortunesand separation from his family), and she used to be admitted to see himtwice or thrice a week, and never came empty-handed---a little brownbright-eyed creature, whose ogles had made the greatest impression uponall the world.
This man was drafted into a regiment that was quartered at Neiss inSilesia, which is only at a short distance from the Austrian frontier;he maintained always the same character for daring and skill, and was,in the secret republic of the regiment--which always exists as wellas the regular military hierarchy--the acknowledged leader. He wasan admirable soldier, as I have said; but haughty, dissolute, and adrunkard. A man of this mark, unless he takes care to coax and flatterhis officers (which I always did), is sure to fall out with them. LeBlondin's captain was his sworn enemy, and his punishments were frequentand severe.
His wife and the women of the regiment (this was after the peace) usedto carry on a little commerce of smuggling across the Austrian frontier,where their dealings were winked at by both parties; and in obedienceto the instructions of her husband, this woman, from every one of herexcursions, would bring in a little powder and ball: commodities whichare not to be procured by the Prussian soldier, and which were stowedaway in secret till wanted. They WERE to be wanted, and that soon.
Le Blondin had organised a great and extraordinary conspiracy. We don'tknow how far it went, how many hundreds or thousands it embraced; butstrange were the stories told about the plot amongst us privates: forthe news was spread from garrison to garrison, and talked of by thearmy, in spite of all the Government efforts to hush it up--hush itup, indeed! I have been of the people myself; I have seen the Irishrebellion, and I know what is the free-masonry of the poor.
He made himself the head of the plot. There were no writings nor papers.No single one of the conspirators communicated with any other thanthe Frenchman; but personally he gave his orders to them all. He hadarranged matters for a general rising of the garrison, at twelve o'clockon a certain day: the guard-houses in the town were to be seized, thesentinels cut down, and--who knows the rest? Some of our people usedto say that the conspiracy was spread through all Silesia, and that LeBlondin was to be made a general in the Austrian service.
At twelve o'clock, and opposite the guard-house by the Bohmer-Thor ofNeiss, some thirty men were lounging about in their undress, and theFrenchman stood near the sentinel of the guard-house, sharpening a woodhatchet on a stone. At the stroke of twelve, he got up, split open thesentinel's head with a blow of his axe, and the thirty men, rushing intothe guard-house, took possession of the arms there, and marched at onceto the gate. The sentry there tried to drop the bar, but the Frenchmanrushed up to him, and, with another blow of the axe, cut off his righthand, with which he held the chain. Seeing the men rushing out armed,the guard without the gate drew up across the road to prevent theirpassage; but the Frenchman's thirty gave them a volley, charged themwith the bayonet, and brought down several, and the rest flying, thethirty rushed on. The frontier is only a league from Neiss, and theymade rapidly towards it.
But the alarm was given in the town, and what saved it was that theclock by which the Frenchman went was a quarter of an hour faster thanany of the clocks in the town. The generale was beat, the troopscalled to arms, and thus the men who were to have attacked the otherguard-houses, were obliged to fall into the ranks, and their projectwas defeated. This, however, likewise rendered the discovery of theconspirators impossible, for no man could betray his comrade, nor, ofcourse, would he criminate himself.
Cavalry was sent in pursuit of the Frenchman and his thirty fugitives,who were, by this time, far on their way to the Bohemian frontier. Whenthe horse came up with them, they turned, received them with a volleyand the bayonet, and drove them back. The Austrians were out at thebarriers, looking eagerly on at the conflict. The women, who were on thelook-out too, brought more ammunition to these intrepid deserters, andth
ey engaged and drove back the dragoons several times. But in thesegallant and fruitless combats much time was lost, and a battalionpresently came up, and surrounded the brave thirty; when the fate of thepoor fellows was decided. They fought with the fury of despair: not oneof them asked for quarter. When their ammunition failed, they foughtwith the steel, and were shot down or bayoneted where they stood. TheFrenchman was the very last man who was hit. He received a bullet in thethigh, and fell, and in this state was overpowered, killing the officerwho first advanced to seize him.
He and the very few of his comrades who survived were carried backto Neiss, and immediately, as the ringleader, he was brought before acouncil of war. He refused all interrogations which were made as to hisreal name and family. 'What matters who I am?' said he; 'you have me andwill shoot me. My name would not save me were it ever so famous.' In thesame way he declined to make a single discovery regarding the plot. 'Itwas all my doing,' he said; 'each man engaged in it only knew me, and isignorant of every one of his comrades. The secret is mine alone, andthe secret shall die with me.' When the officers asked him what was thereason which induced him to meditate a crime so horrible?--'It wasyour infernal brutality and tyranny,' he said. 'You are all butchers,ruffians, tigers, and you owe it to the cowardice of your men that youwere not murdered long ago.'
At this his captain burst into the most furious exclamations against thewounded man, and rushing up to him, struck him a blow with his fist. ButLe Blondin, wounded as he was, as quick as thought seized the bayonet ofone of the soldiers who supported him, and plunged it into the officer'sbreast. 'Scoundrel and monster,' said he, 'I shall have the consolationof sending you out of the world before I die.' He was shot that day.He offered to write to the King, if the officers would agree to let hisletter go sealed into the hands of the postmaster; but they feared, nodoubt, that something might be said to inculpate themselves, and refusedhim the permission. At the next review Frederick treated them, it issaid, with great severity, and rebuked them for not having granted theFrenchman his request. However, it was the King's interest to concealthe matter, and so it was, as I have said before, hushed up--so wellhushed up, that a hundred thousand soldiers in the army knew it; andmany's the one of us that has drunk to the Frenchman's memory over ourwine, as a martyr for the cause of the soldier. I shall have,doubtless, some readers who will cry out at this, that I am encouraginginsubordination and advocating murder. If these men had served asprivates in the Prussian army from 1760 to 1765, they would not beso apt to take objection. This man destroyed two sentinels to get hisliberty; how many hundreds of thousands of his own and the Austrianpeople did King Frederick kill because he took a fancy to Silesia? Itwas the accursed tyranny of the system that sharpened the axe whichbrained the two sentinels of Neiss: and so let officers take warning,and think twice ere they visit poor fellows with the cane.
I could tell many more stories about the army; but as, from having beena soldier myself, all my sympathies are in the ranks, no doubt mytales would be pronounced to be of an immoral tendency, and I had best,therefore, be brief. Fancy my surprise while in this depot, when one daya well-known voice saluted my ear, and I heard a meagre young gentleman,who was brought in by a couple of troopers and received a few cutsacross the shoulders from one of them, say in the best English, 'Youinfernal WASCAL, I'll be wevenged for this. I'll WITE to my ambassador,as sure as my name's Fakenham of Fakenham.' I burst out laughing atthis: it was my old acquaintance in MY corporal's coat. Lischen hadsworn stoutly, that he was really and truly the private, and the poorfellow had been drafted off, and was to be made one of us. But I bear nomalice, and having made the whole room roar with the story of the wayin which I had tricked the poor lad, I gave him a piece of advice, whichprocured him his liberty. 'Go to the inspecting officer,' said I; 'ifthey once get you into Prussia it is all over with you, and they willnever give you up. Go now to the commandant of the depot, promise hima hundred--five hundred guineas to set you free; say that the crimpingcaptain has your papers and portfolio' (this was true); 'above all, showhim that you have the means of paying him the promised money, and I willwarrant you are set free.' He did as I advised, and when we were put onthe march Mr. Fakenham found means to be allowed to go into hospital,and while in hospital the matter was arranged as I had recommended.He had nearly, however, missed his freedom by his own stinginess inbargaining for it, and never showed the least gratitude towards me hisbenefactor.
I am not going to give any romantic narrative of the Seven Years' War.At the close of it, the Prussian army, so renowned for its disciplinedvalour, was officered and under-officered by native Prussians, it istrue; but was composed for the most part of men hired or stolen, likemyself, from almost every nation in Europe. The deserting to and frowas prodigious. In my regiment (Bulow's) alone before the war, there hadbeen no less than 600 Frenchmen, and as they marched out of Berlinfor the campaign, one of the fellows had an old fiddle on which hewas flaying a French tune, and his comrades danced almost, rather thanwalked, after him, singing, 'Nous allons en France.' Two years after,when they returned to Berlin, there were only six of these men left; therest had fled or were killed in action. The life the private soldier ledwas a frightful one to any but men of iron courage and endurance. Therewas a corporal to every three men, marching behind them, and pitilesslyusing the cane; so much so that it used to be said that in actionthere was a front rank of privates and a second rank of sergeantsand corporals to drive them on. Many men would give way to the mostfrightful acts of despair under these incessant persecutions andtortures; and amongst several regiments of the army a horrible practicehad sprung up, which for some time caused the greatest alarm to theGovernment. This was a strange frightful custom of CHILD-MURDER. The menused to say that life was unbearable, that suicide was a crime; inorder to avert which, and to finish with the intolerable misery of theirposition, the best plan was to kill a young child, which was innocent,and therefore secure of heaven, and then to deliver themselves up asguilty of the murder. The King himself--the hero, sage, and philosopher,the prince who had always liberality on his lips and who affected ahorror of capital punishments--was frightened at this dreadful protest,on the part of the wretches whom he had kidnapped, against his monstroustyranny; but his only means of remedying the evil was strictly to forbidthat such criminals should be attended by any ecclesiastic whatever, anddenied all religious consolation.
The punishment was incessant. Every officer had the liberty to inflictit, and in peace it was more cruel than in war. For when peace camethe King turned adrift such of his officers as were not noble; whatevertheir services might have been. He would call a captain to the front ofhis company and say, 'He is not noble, let him go.' We were afraid ofhim somehow, and were cowed before him like wild beasts before theirkeeper. I have seen the bravest men of the army cry like children at acut of the cane; I have seen a little ensign of fifteen call out a manof fifty from the ranks, a man who had been in a hundred battles, andhe has stood presenting arms, and sobbing and howling like a baby, whilethe young wretch lashed him over the arms and thighs with the stick.In a day of action this man would dare anything. A button might be awryTHEN and nobody touched him; but when they had made the brute fight,then they lashed him again into subordination. Almost all of us yieldedto the spell--scarce one could break it. The French officer I havespoken of as taken along with me, was in my company, and caned likea dog. I met him at Versailles twenty years afterwards, and he turnedquite pale and sick when I spoke to him of old days. 'For God's sake,'said he, 'don't talk of that time: I wake up from my sleep trembling andcrying even now.'
As for me, after a very brief time (in which it must be confessedI tasted, like my comrades, of the cane) and after I had foundopportunities to show myself to be a brave and dexterous soldier, Itook the means I had adopted in the English army to prevent any furtherpersonal degradation. I wore a bullet around my neck, which I did nottake the pains to conceal, and I gave out that it should be for the manor officer who caused me to be chastised. And
there was something inmy character which made my superiors believe me; for that bullet hadalready served me to kill an Austrian colonel, and I would have givenit to a Prussian with as little remorse. For what cared I for theirquarrels, or whether the eagle under which I marched had one head ortwo? All I said was, 'No man shall find me tripping in my duty; but noman shall ever lay a hand upon me.' And by this maxim I abided as longas I remained in the service.
I do not intend to make a history of battles in the Prussian any morethan in the English service. I did my duty in them as well as another,and by the time that my moustache had grown to a decent length, whichit did when I was twenty years of age, there was not a braver, cleverer,handsomer, and I must own, wickeder soldier in the Prussian army. I hadformed myself to the condition of the proper fighting beast; on a day ofaction I was savage and happy; out of the field I took all the pleasureI could get, and was by no means delicate as to its quality or themanner of procuring it. The truth is, however, that there was among ourmen a much higher tone of society than among the clumsy louts in theEnglish army, and our service was generally so strict that we had littletime for doing mischief. I am very dark and swarthy in complexion,and was called by our fellows the 'Black Englander,' the 'SchwartzerEnglander,' or the English Devil. If any service was to be done, I wassure to be put upon it. I got frequent gratifications of money, but nopromotion; and it was on the day after I had killed the Austrian colonel(a great officer of Uhlans, whom I engaged--singly and on foot) thatGeneral Bulow, my colonel, gave me two Frederics-d'or in front of theregiment, and said, 'I reward thee now; but I fear I shall have to hangthee one day or other.' I spent the money, and that I had taken from thecolonel's body, every groschen, that night with some jovial companions;but as long as war lasted was never without a dollar in my purse.