Lay Down Your Arms 41

Lay Down Your Arms 41

Oh, this official wisdom! so dry, so well-instructed, so real, so

redolent of prudence, and so unfathomably stupid!

 

* * * * *

 

The first engagement between our troops in Bohemia and the enemy took

place on June 25 at Liebenau. My father brought us this news with his

usual triumphant mien.

 

“That is a grand beginning,” he said; “you can see heaven is on our

side. It is significant that the first with whom these windbags had to

do were the troops of our celebrated ‘Iron Brigade’. You know, of

course, the Poschach Brigade which defended Königsberg in Silesia so

valiantly--they will give them all they want!” (However, the next news

from the seat of war showed that after five hours’ fighting this

brigade, forming part of the advanced guard of Clam-Gallas, retreated to

Podol. Also that Frederick was there--which I did not know--and that in

the same night Podol, which had been barricaded, was attacked by General

Horn, and the fight renewed by the bright moonlight; which also I heard

later.) “But,” continued my father, “even more splendid than in the

north is the beginning of matters in the south. At Custozza we have

gained a victory, children, more glorious than any but one. I have

always said it: Lombardy must become ours! Are you not delighted? I

regard the war as already decided; for if we get done with the Italians,

who do at any rate set a regular trained army in the field against us,

we shall not find it hard to deal with these ‘tailors’ apprentices’.

This Landwehr--it is really an impudence--but it is just of a piece with

the whole Prussian conceit to take the field against regular armies

with such stuff. There are these fellows, torn away from the workbench

and the writing-desk; they are not inured to any hardship, and so it is

impossible that they can stand in the field against soldiers proof

against blood and steel. Just look there--at what the _Wiener Zeitung_

of June 24 writes in its ‘original correspondence’--surely that is good

news: ‘In Prussian Silesia cattle plague has broken out, and, as is

understood, in a highly threatening form’.”

 

“‘Cattle plague,’ ‘threatening form,’ ‘joyful news,’” I said with a

slight shake of the head; “nice things people must take pleasure in in

times of war. However, one good thing is that black and yellow posts are

erected on the frontiers, so that the plague cannot cross.”

 

But my father did not hear, and went on reading his pleasant

intelligence:--

 

Fever is raging among the Prussian troops at Neisse. The unhealthy

marsh-land, the bad treatment and the miserable shelter of the

troops accumulated in the villages around, must necessarily produce

such results. In Austria we have no idea of the treatment of the

Prussian soldiery. The nobles believe themselves entitled to give

any orders they please to the “common folk”. Six ounces of pork per

man is all--and that for men who are not experienced soldiers.

 

“The newspapers are all full of capital news; above all, the account of

the glorious day of Custozza. You should keep these papers, Martha.”

 

And I have kept them. It is what people should always do; and when a new

national quarrel is impending, then read, not the most recent

newspapers, but those dating from the former war, and then you will see

what weight to attach to all their prophesying and boasting, and even to

their accounts and intelligence. _That_ is instructive.

 

From the seat of war in the north--from headquarters of the Army of

the North--they write to us as follows, on the subject of the

Prussian plan of campaign (!): “According to the latest advices,

the Prussian army has shifted its headquarters to Eastern Silesia.

(Then follows in the usual tactical style a long narrative of the

projected movements and positions contemplated by the enemy,

according to which the gentleman who furnished the news must have

had a much clearer picture before him than Moltke and Roon.)

According to this, it seems to be the object of the Prussians to

anticipate in this way our march on Berlin by their own in which,

however, they will hardly succeed, having regard to the precautions

taken (with which again ‘our special correspondent’ is much more

familiar than Benedek). Favourable accounts may be looked for from

the northern army with the utmost confidence, even if they do not

arrive so quickly as the popular longing desires them to do. They

will, however, thereby become more decisive and more important.”

 

The new _Frankfurter Zeitung_ relates a pleasant interlude, the march of

Austrian troops of Italian nationality through Munich, as follows:--

 

Among the troops passing through Munich were some battalions of the

line. They, like the rest of the troops passing through the

Bavarian capital, were entertained in the garden of an inn situated

near the station. Any one might convince himself with what delight

these Venetians testified to their joy in fighting the foes of

Austria (perhaps too “any one” might have imagined that drunken

soldiers would willingly show enthusiasm for anything they were

told to be enthusiastic about). In Würzburg the station was filled

by the rank and file of an Austrian regiment of infantry of the

line. As far as could be ascertained the whole consisted of

Venetians. They were received with equal friendliness (_i.e._, were

made equally drunk); and the men could not find words to express

with sufficient warmth their joy and their determination to fight

against the truce-breakers (of two parties at war with each other

the other is always “the truce-breakers”). The hurrahs were

endless. (Could not this “Mr. Any One,” who was thus lounging about

the railway station, and so edified by the cries of the soldiery,

find out that there is nothing so contagious as hurrahing--that a

thousand voices shouting together are not the __EXPRESSION__ of a

thousand unanimous sentiments, but simply exemplify the working of

the natural instinct of imitation?)

 

At Böhmisch-Trübau Field-Marshal Benedek communicated to the Army of the

North the three bulletins relative to the victory of the Army of the

South, and added the following order of the day:--

 

In the name of the Army of the North, I have despatched the

following telegram to the commander of the Army of the South:

Field-Marshal Benedek and the whole northern army to the glorious

and most illustrious Commander-in-chief of the brave southern army

with joyful admiration, sends most hearty congratulations on the

news of the famous day of Custozza. The campaign in the south is

opened with a new and glorious victory for our arms. Glorious

Custozza shines on the escutcheon of the imperial army.

 

Soldiers of the Army of the North! You will receive the news with

shouts of joy. You will move to battle with increased enthusiasm,

so that we also may very soon inscribe names of fame on that same

shield, and announce to the emperor a victory from the north also

towards which our warlike ardour burns, and which your valour and

devotion will conquer, to the cry “Long live the emperor”.

 

BENEDEK.

 

 

 

To the foregoing telegram the following answer from Verona reached

Böhmisch-Trübau:--

 

The Army of the South and its commander return their thanks to

their beloved ex-commander and his brave army. Convinced that we

also shall soon have to send our congratulations for a similar

victory.

 

“Convinced! Convinced!” ...

 

“Does not your heart leap up, my children, when you read such things?”

shouted my father in delight. “Can you not rise up to a sufficient

height of patriotic feeling to throw into the background your private

circumstances at the sight of such triumphs, you, Martha, to forget that

your Frederick, and you, Lilly, that your Conrad is exposed to some

danger? Danger which probably they will come out of safe and sound: and

even to succumb to which--a fate which they share with the best sons of

our country--would redound to their fame and honour. There is not a

soldier who would not willingly die to the call, ‘For our country!’”

 

“If, after a lost battle, a man is left lying with shattered limbs on

the field,” I replied, “and lies there undiscovered for four or five

days and nights in indescribable agonies from thirst and hunger, rotting

while still alive, and so perishes, knowing all the while that his death

has not helped his country you talk of one bit, but has brought his

loved ones to despair, I should like to know whether all this time he is

gladly dying to the call you speak of.”

 

“You are outrageous, and besides you speak in such shrill tones, quite

unbecoming for a lady.”

 

“Oh yes, the true word, the naked reality, is outrageous, is shameless.

Only the phrase which by thousandfold repetition has become sanctioned

is ‘proper,’ but I assure you, father, that this unnatural ‘joy in

dying’ which is thus exacted from all men, however heroic it may seem to

him who uses the phrase, sounds to me like a _spoken death-knell_.”

 

* * * * *

 

Among Frederick’s papers, many years later, I found a letter which in

those days I sent to the seat of war. This letter shows as clearly as

possible with what feelings I was filled at that time.

 

“Grumitz, _June 28, 1866_.

 

“Dear one,--I am not alive. Fancy that in the next room people are

debating whether I am to be executed in the next few days or no, while I

have to wait outside for their decision. During this period of waiting I

do indeed breathe, but can I call it _living_? The next room, in which

the question is to be decided, is called Bohemia. But no, my love, the

picture is hardly yet correct. For if it were only a matter of _my_ life

or death, the anxiety would not be so great. For my anxiety concerns a

far dearer life than my own; and my fear is concerned even with

something still worse than your death--with your possible agony in

dying. Oh that all this were over, over! Oh that our victories would

come in speedy succession; not for the sake of the victory, but of the end!