Lay Down Your Arms 40

Lay Down Your Arms 40

CHAPTER X.

 

_The Austro-Prussian war.--My husband with the army.--Parting

letters.--Dr. Bresser.--The course of the war.--Victory of

Custozza.--Austrian reverses in Bohemia.--War correspondence in the

newspapers.--Discussions with my father.--A long letter to my

husband._

 

 

So it had come again--this greatest of all misfortunes--and was greeted

by the populace with the accustomed rejoicing. The regiments marched out

(in what state were they to return?) and wishes for victory, and

blessings, and the shouting of the street boys were their accompaniment.

 

Frederick had been ordered to Bohemia some time previously, even before

war had been declared; and just when matters were in such a position as

to enable me to entertain a confident hope that the quarrel about the

duchies, so unblessed and so contemptible, would be settled amicably.

And, therefore, this time I was spared the heart-rending leave-taking

which precedes the setting off of one’s beloved directly “to the war”.

When my father brought me the news in triumph: “Now it is off,” I had

been already alone for a fortnight. And for some time I had quite made

my mind up to this news, as a criminal in his cell has made up his mind

to the reading of the death-sentence.

 

I bowed my head and said nothing.

 

“Keep up a good heart, my child. The war will not last long; in a day or

two we shall be in Berlin. And as your husband came back from

Schleswig-Holstein, so he will come back from this campaign, but covered

with much greener laurels. It may, indeed, be unpleasant for him, being

himself of Prussian extraction, to fight against Prussia, but after he

entered into the Austrian service he became one of us body and soul.

Those Prussians! the arrogant windbags! they want to turn us out of the

Bund! they will soon repent it; if Silesia becomes ours again, and if

the Hapsburgs----”

 

I stretched out my hand: “Father--one request--leave me to myself”.

 

He might have imagined that I felt the need of giving my tears full

vent; and as he was an enemy to all scenes of emotion, he willingly

granted my wish and took his departure.

 

I, however, did not weep. I felt as if a numbing stroke had fallen on my

head. Breathing heavily, staring blindly, I sat motionless for some

time. Then I went to my writing-table, opened the red volume, and made

this entry:--

 

“The sentence of death is pronounced. A hundred thousand men are to be

executed. Will Frederick be among them? And I also, as a consequence.

Who am I that I should not perish like the rest of the hundred thousand?

I wish I were dead already.”

 

From Frederick I received the same day a few hasty lines.

 

“My wife, be of good cheer; keep your heart up! We have been happy--no

one can take that from us--even if to-day for us, as for so many others,

the decree has gone forth--‘It is finished’. (The same thought here as I

expressed in my red book about the many others who were sentenced.)

To-day we go to meet ‘the enemy’. Perhaps I shall recognise there a few

comrades in battle at Düppel and Alsen--possibly my little cousin

Godfrey.... We are to march on Liebenau with the advanced guard of Count

Clam-Gallas. From this time there will be no more leisure for writing.

Do not look for any _letters_ for you. At the most, if opportunity

offers, a line, as a token that I am alive. But before that I should

like to find one single word which could comprehend in itself the whole

of my love that I might write it here for you in case it might be my

last. I can find only this word--‘Martha’. You know what that means for

me.”

 

Conrad Althaus had also to march. He was full of fire and delight in

battle, and animated by sufficient hatred of the Prussians to make him

start off with pleasure; still his parting was hard for him. The

marriage licence had arrived only two days before the order to march.

 

“Oh, Lilly, Lilly,” he cried with pain, as he said adieu to his

affianced bride, “why did you delay so long to accept me? Who knows now

whether I shall come back again?”

 

My poor sister was herself full of repentance. Now for the first time

there sprang up passionate love for him she had slighted so long. When

he was gone she sank into my arms in tears.

 

“Oh, why did I not say ‘yes’ long ago! I should now have been his wife.”

 

“Then, my poor Lilly, the parting would have been all the more painful

for you.”

 

She shook her head. I well understood what was going on in her mind,

perhaps more clearly than she understood herself; to be obliged to part

with love-longings still unfulfilled, and, perhaps, destined to remain

for ever unfulfilled; to see the cup torn from their lips, and possibly

shattered, before they had had a single draught--that might well be

doubly torturing.

 

My father, sisters, and Aunt Mary now removed to Grumitz. I was easily

persuaded to go there too with my little son. As long as Frederick was

away, my own hearth seemed extinguished--I could not stay there. It is

strange. I felt myself just as much a widow, to have done with life just

as thoroughly, as if the news of the outbreak of war had been at the

same time the news of Frederick’s death. Occasionally in the midst of my

dull grief, a brighter thought would break in: “He is alive and surely

may come back”; but along with it an idea of horror would rise again:

“He is writhing and agonising in intolerable pains; he is fainting in a

trench; heavy waggons are driving over his shattered limbs; flies and

worms are crawling over his open wounds; the people who are clearing the

field of battle take the stiffened object lying on the ground for dead,

and are shovelling him still alive along with the dead into the damp

trench: there he comes to himself and----”

 

With a loud scream I woke up from such images as these.

 

“What is the matter with you now, Martha,” said my father in a scolding

tone. “You will drive yourself out of your senses if you brood in this

way and cry out so; why will you summon up such foolish pictures out of

your fancy? It is sinful.”

 

I had indeed often given __EXPRESSION__ aloud to these ideas of mine, and

this irritated my father extremely.

 

“Sinful,” he went on, “and improper and nonsensical. Such cases as your

excited fancy pictures, do no doubt occur once in a thousand times among

the common men, but a staff-officer, as your husband is, is not left to

lie on the field. Besides, as a general rule, folks should not think

about such horrid things. Such conduct involves a kind of sacrilege, a

profanation of war, in keeping these pitiful details before one’s eyes

instead of the sublimity of the whole. One should not think about them.”

 

“Yes, yes, not think about it,” I replied, “that is always the custom of

mankind in the presence of any human misery--‘don’t think about it,’

that is the support of all kinds of barbarity.”

 

Our family doctor, Dr. Bresser, was not at this moment at Grumitz, he

had voluntarily placed himself at the disposal of the army medical

department, and had started for the theatre of war, and the idea

occurred to me also whether I should not go too, as a sick-nurse. Yes,

if I could have known that I should be in Frederick’s neighbourhood, be

at hand in case he was wounded, I would not have hesitated. But for

others? No, there my strength broke down, my spirit of sacrifice failed.

To see them die, hear the death-rattle, want to give help to hundreds

begging for help, and have no help to give, to bring on myself all this

pain, this disgust, this grief, without thereby getting to Frederick, on

the contrary diminishing thereby the chance of meeting again, for the

nurses themselves ran into various kinds of danger to their lives. No;

that I would not do. Besides my father informed me that a private person

like myself was altogether inadmissible for nursing in a field hospital,

that this office could only be exercised by soldiers of the army medical

service, or at the most by sisters of charity.

 

“To pluck charpie,” he said, “and prepare bandages for the Patriotic Aid

Society, that is the only thing that you ladies can do to help the

wounded, and that my daughters ought to do diligently, on that I bestow

my blessing.”

 

And it was now to this occupation that my sisters and I devoted many

hours of every day. Rosa and Lilly worked with gently compassionate,

almost happy-looking faces. As we heaped up the fine threads under our

fingers into soft masses, or folded up the strips of linen in beautiful

order together, the occupation affected the two girls like an office of

charitable nursing: they fancied themselves soothing the burning pains

and staunching the bleeding wounds, hearing the sighs of relief and

seeing the grateful glances of those on whom they attended. The picture

they so formed of the condition of a wounded man was then almost a

pleasant one. Enviable soldiers! who, delivered from the dangers of the

raging fight, were now stretched on clean soft beds, and there would be

nursed and pampered up to the time of their recovery, lulled for the

most part in a half-unconscious slumber of luxurious fatigue, waking up

again occasionally to the pleasant consciousness that their lives were

saved, and that they would be able to return to their friends at home

and relate to them how they had received their honourable wounds at the

battle of----.

 

Our father also encouraged them in this innocent way of looking at it.

“Bravo, bravo, girls! working again to-day! You have now again prepared

delights for a number of our brave defenders. What a relief it is to get

a pad of charpie like that on a bleeding wound! I can tell you a tale

about that. Long ago, when I got that bullet in my leg at Palestro----”

and so on, and so on.

 

I however sighed and said nothing. I had heard other histories of

wounds than those which my father loved to relate, histories which bore

about the same relation to the usual veterans’ anecdotes, as the

realities of the life of a poor shepherd do to the pastoral pictures of

Watteau.

 

The Red Cross. I knew through what an impulse of popular sympathy,

shocked to the most painful degree, that institution had been called

into life. In its time I had followed the debate which took place at

Geneva on the subject, and had read the tract by Dunant, which gave the

impetus to the whole thing. A heart-rending cry of woe was that tract!

The noble patrician of Geneva had hurried to the field of Solferino, in

order to give what aid he could; and what he found there he related to

the world. Innumerable wounded men, who had been lying there for five or

six days without any assistance. He would have liked to save them all;

but what could he, a single person, do, what could the other few

individuals, in the face of this mass of misery? He saw men whose lives

might have been saved by a drop of water, by a mouthful of bread. He saw

men who, still breathing, had to be buried in fearful haste.... Then he

spoke out; said what had often been admitted, but now found an echo for

the first time, _viz._, that the means for nursing and rescue at the

disposal of the army administration had not grown in proportion to the

requirements of a battle. And so the “Red Cross” was founded.

 

Austria had at that time not yet adhered to the Geneva Convention. Why?

Why is there resistance opposed to everything that is new, however rich

in blessing, and however simple it may be? Because of the law of

laziness, the power of holy custom. “The idea is very fine, but

impracticable,” is the saying. I often heard my father repeat these

arguments of hesitation used by several of the delegates at the

Conference of 1863. “Impracticable, and, even if practicable, yet in

many points of view unbecoming. The military authorities could not allow

that private action on the field of battle was admissible. In war

tactical aims must have the priority over the friendly offices of

humanity; and how could this private action be surrounded with proper

guarantees against the existence of espionage? And the expenses! Is not

war costly enough already? The voluntary nurses would, through their own

material wants, fall as a burden on the provision department; or, if

they are to supply themselves in the country occupied, will there not

arise a regrettable difficulty for the army administration through the

purchase of the articles necessary for the service, and the immediate raising of their price?”