Lay Down Your Arms 43

Lay Down Your Arms 43

I uttered a low sound of disgust.

 

“What would you have?” said my father, shrugging his shoulders. “It is

horrible, I grant, but it is war.”

 

“Then at least never assert that war ennobles men. Confess that it

unmans them, makes them tigers, devils. Boiling oil! Uh!”

 

“Self-defence, which is enjoined on us, and righteous retribution, my

dear Martha. Do you think that our people like the bullets of their

needle-guns? Our brave fellows have to be exposed, like defenceless

cattle in a slaughter-house, to this murderous weapon. But we are too

numerous, too disciplined, too warlike, not to conquer these ‘tailors’

for all that. At the beginning one or two failures have taken place;

that I admit. Benedek ought to have crossed the Prussian frontier at

once. I have my doubts whether this choice of a general was quite a

happy one. If it had been determined to send the Archduke Albert there

and give Benedek the Army of the South--but I will not despond too soon.

Up to the present there have really been only some preliminary

engagements which have been magnified by the Prussians into great

victories. The decisive battles are still to come. We are now

concentrating on Königgrätz; there we shall await the enemy, a hundred

thousand strong. There our northern Custozza will be fought.”

 

Frederick was to fight there too. His last letter, arrived that morning,

brought the news: “We are bound for Königgrätz”.

 

Up to this time I had had tidings regularly. Though in his first letter

he had prepared me for his being able only to write little, yet

Frederick had made use of every opportunity to send me a word or two. In

pencil, on horseback, in his tent, in a hasty scrawl only legible by me,

he would write on pages torn out of his note-book letters destined for

me. Some he found opportunities for sending, and some did not come into

my hands till the campaign was over.

 

I have kept these memorials up to the present hour. They are not

careful, polished descriptions of the war, such as the war

correspondents of the papers offer in their despatches, or the

historians of the war in their publications; no sketches of battles

worked up with all the technicalities of strategical details; no

battle-pictures heightened with rhetorical flights, in which the

narrator is always occupied in letting his own imperturbability,

heroism, and patriotic enthusiasm shine out. Frederick’s sketches are

nothing of this sort, I know. But what they are, I need not decide. Here

are some of them:--

 

“In bivouac. Outside the tent, it is indeed a mild, splendid summer

night; the heavens, so great and so indifferent, full of shining stars.

The men are lying on the earth, exhausted by their long, fatiguing

marches. Only for us, staff officers, have one or two tents been

pitched. In mine there are three field-beds. My two comrades are asleep.

I am sitting at the table, on which are the empty grog glasses and a

lighted candle. It is by the feeble, flickering light of this (a draught

of wind comes in through the open flap) that I am writing to you, my

beloved wife. I have left my bed to Puxl, he was so tired, the poor

fellow! I am almost sorry I brought him with me; he too is, as our men

say the Prussian Landwehr are, ‘not used to the hardships and privations

of a campaign’. Now he is snoring sweetly and happily--is dreaming, I

fancy, very likely, of his friend and patron, Rudolf, Count Dotzky. And

I am dreaming of you, Martha; I am silly, I know, but I see your dear

form as like you as the image of a dream sitting in yonder corner of the

tent on a camp-stool. What longing seizes me to go thither and lay my

head on your bosom. But I do not do so, because I know that then the

image would disappear.

 

“I have just been out for an instant. The stars are shining as

indifferently as ever. On the ground a few shadows are gliding--those of

stragglers. Many, many men are left behind on the road; these have now

slipped in here drawn on by the light of our watch-fires. But not all;

some are still lying in some far-off ditch or cornfield. What a heat it

was during this forced march! The sun flamed as if it would boil your

brains, add to that the heavy knapsack and the heavy musket on their

galled shoulders; and yet no one murmured. But a few fell out and could

not get up again. Two or three succumbed to sunstroke and fell dead at

once. Their bodies were put on an ambulance waggon.

 

“This June night, however illuminated by moon and stars, and however

warm it may be, is still disenchanted. There are no nightingales or

chirping crickets to be heard, no scents of rose and jasmine to be

breathed. All the sweet sounds are drowned by the noise of snorting or

neighing horses, by the men’s voices and the tramp of the sentries’

tread; all sweet scents overpowered by the smell of the harness and

other barrack odours. Still all that is nothing; for now you do not hear

the ravens croaking over their feast, you do not smell gun-powder,

blood, and corruption. All that is coming--_ad majorem patriæ gloriam_.

It is worth noting how blind men are. In looking at the funeral piles

which have been lighted ‘for the greater glory of God’ in old times,

they break out into curses over such blind, cruel, senseless fanaticism,

but are full of admiration for the corpse-strewn battlefields of the

present day. The torture chambers of the dark middle ages excite their

horror, but they feel pride over their own arsenals. The light is

burning down--the form in that corner has disappeared. I will also lie

down to rest, beside our good Puxl.”

 

* * * * *

 

“Up on a hill, amidst a group of generals and high officers, with a

field-glass at his eye--that is the situation in a war which produces

the greatest æsthetic effect. The gentlemen who paint battle pieces and

make illustrations for the journals know this too. Generals on a hill

reconnoitring with their glasses are represented again and again; and

just as often a leader pressing forward at the head of his troops on a

horse, as white and light-stepping as possible, stretching his arm out

towards a point in the background all in smoke, and turning the head

towards those rushing on after him, plainly shouting ‘Follow me, lads!’

 

“From my station on this hill one sees really a piece of battle poetry.

The picture is magnificent, and sufficiently distant to have the effect

of a real picture, without the details, the horrors, and disgusts of

the reality; no gushing blood, no death-rattles, nothing but elevated

and magnificent effects of line and colour. Those far-extended ranks of

the army corps winding on, that unbounded procession of infantry

regiments, divisions of cavalry, and batteries of artillery, then the

ammunition train, the requisitioned country waggons, the pack horses,

and, bringing up the rear, the baggage. The picture comes out still more

imposing if, in the wide country stretched out beneath the hill, you can

see, not merely the movements of _one_, but the meeting of two armies.

Then how the flashing sword-blades, the waving flags, the horses rearing

up like foaming waves, mingle with each other, while amongst them clouds

of smoke arise, forming themselves in places into thick veils which hide

all the picture, and when they lift show groups of fighters. Then, as

accompaniment, the noise of shots rolling through the mountains, every

stroke of which thunders the word Death! Death! Death! through the air.

Yes, that sort of thing may well inspire battle lays. And for the

composition, too, of those contributions to the history of the period

which are to be published after the conclusion of the campaign, the

station on the hill-top offers favourable opportunities. There, at any

rate, the narrative can be made out with some exactness. The X Division

met the enemy at N, drove him back, reached the main bulk of the army;

strong forces of the enemy showed themselves on the left flank--and so

on, and so on. But one who is not on the hill, peering through his

field-glass, one who is himself taking part in the action, he can

_never_, never relate the progress of a battle in a way worthy of

belief. He sees, feels, and thinks of only what is close to him. All the

rest of his narrative is from intuition, for which he avails himself of

the old formulas. ‘Look, Tilling,’ one of the generals said to me, as I

was standing near him on the hill. ‘Is not that striking? A grand army,

is it not? Why, what are you thinking about?’ What was I thinking about,

my Martha? About you. But to my superior officer I could not say so. So

I answered, with all due deference, some untruth. ‘All due deference’

and ‘truth’ have besides little to do with each other. The latter is a

very proud fellow, and turns with contempt from all servility.”

 

* * * * *

 

“The village is ours--no, it is the enemy’s--now ours again--and yet

once more the enemy’s; but it is no longer a village, but a smoking mass

of the ruins of houses.

 

“The inhabitants (was it not really _their_ village?) had left it

previously and were away--luckily for them, for the fighting in an

inhabited place is something really fearful; for then the bullets from

friend and foe fall into the midst of the rooms and kill women and

children. One family, however, had remained behind in the place which

yesterday we took, lost, re-took, and lost again--namely, an old married

couple and their daughter, the latter in childbed. The husband is

serving in our regiment. He told me the story as we were nearing the

village. ‘There, colonel, in that house with the red roof, is living my

wife with her old parents. They have not been able to get away, poor

creatures; my wife may be confined any moment, and the old folks are

half-crippled; for God’s sake, colonel, order me there!’ Poor devil! he

got there just in time to see the mother and child die; a shell had

exploded under their bed. What has happened to the old folks I do not

know. They are probably buried under the ruins; the house was one of the

first set on fire by the cannonade. Fighting in the open country is

terrible enough, but fighting amongst human dwellings is ten times more

cruel. Crashing timber, bursting flames, stifling smoke; cattle run mad

with fear; every wall a fortress or a barricade, every window a

shot-hole. I saw a breastwork there which was formed of corpses. The

defenders had heaped up all the slain that were lying near, in order,

from that rampart, to fire over on to their assailants. I shall surely

never forget that wall in all my life. A man, who formed one of its

bricks, penned in among the other corpse-bricks, was still alive, and

was moving his arm.

 

“‘Still alive’--that is a condition, occurring in war with a thousand

differences, which conceals sufferings incalculable. If there were any

angel of mercy hovering over the battlefields he would have enough to do

in giving the poor creatures--men and beasts--who are ‘still alive’

their _coup de grâce_.”

 

* * * * *

 

“To-day we had a little cavalry skirmish in the open field. A Prussian

cavalry regiment came forward at a trot, deployed into line, and then,

with their horses well in hand and their sabres above their heads, rode

down on us at a hand gallop. We did not wait for their attack, but

galloped out against the enemy. No shots were exchanged. When a few

paces from each other both ranks burst out into a thundering ‘hurrah’

(shouting intoxicates; the Indians and Zulus know that even better than

we do); and so we rushed on each other, horse to horse, knee to knee;

the sabres whistled in the air and came down on the men’s heads. Soon

all were huddled together too close to use their weapons; then they

struggled breast to breast, and the horses, getting wild and frightened,

snorted and plunged, reared up, and struck about them. I too was on the

ground once, and saw--no very pleasant sight--a horse’s hoof striking

out within a hair’s breadth of my temples.”

 

* * * * *

 

“Another day of marching, with one or two skirmishes. I have experienced

a great sorrow. Such a mournful picture accompanies me. Among the many

pictures of woe which are all around me this ought not so to strike me,

ought not to give me such pain. But I cannot help it; it touches me

nearly, and I cannot shake it off. Puxl--our poor, happy, good, little

dog--oh, if I had only left him at home with his little master, Rudolf!

He was running after us, as usual. Suddenly he gave a shriek of pain;

the splinter of a shell had torn off his fore-leg. He could not come

after us, so is left behind, and is ‘still alive’. Between twenty-four

and forty-eight hours have passed, and he is ‘still alive’. ‘Oh master!

my good master!’ his cries seemed to say. ‘Do not leave poor Puxl here!

His heart will break!’ And what especially pains me is the thought that

the faithful dying creature must misunderstand me. For he saw that I

turned round, that I must have understood his cry for help and yet was

so cold and so cruel as to leave him there. Poor Puxl could not

understand that a regiment advancing to the attack, out of whose ranks

comrades are falling and are left on the ground, cannot be ordered to

halt for the sake of a dog who has been hit. He has no conception of the

higher duty which I had to obey: and so the poor true heart of the dog

is complaining of my unmercifulness. Only think of troubling oneself

about such trumpery in the midst of the ‘great events’ and gigantic

misfortunes which fill the present time. That is what many would say, with a shrug of the shoulders; but not you, Martha, not you. I know that a tear will come into your eyes for our poor Puxl.”