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+Project Gutenberg's Camps, Quarters and Casual Places, by Archibald Forbes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Camps, Quarters and Casual Places
+
+Author: Archibald Forbes
+
+Posting Date: March 30, 2014 [EBook #9460]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 3, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, Andy Schmitt and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES
+
+BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in
+this volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James
+Knowles of the _Nineteenth Century_, Mr. Percy Bunting of the
+_Contemporary Review_, and the Proprietor of _McClure's Magazine_.
+
+LONDON, _June_ 1896.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+1. MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
+
+2. REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
+
+3. GERMAN WAR PRAYERS
+
+4. MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
+
+5. A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
+
+6. HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
+
+7. CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
+
+8. THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
+
+9. RAILWAY LIZZ
+
+10. MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
+
+11. THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
+
+12. BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
+
+13. THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
+
+14. THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
+
+15. GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
+
+16. THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY
+
+17. THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
+
+18. PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
+
+19. THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
+
+
+
+
+MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
+
+
+The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of
+1870-71, and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince
+Imperial received his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at
+Saarbrücken; to which pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself,
+in the anticipation, which proved well founded, that the tide of war
+would flow that way first. What a pity it is that all war cannot be
+like this early phase of it, of which I speak! It was playing at
+warfare, with just enough of the grim reality cropping up occasionally,
+to give the zest which the reckless Frenchwoman declared was added to a
+pleasure by its being also a sin. The officers of the
+Hohenzollerns--our only infantry regiment in garrison--drank their beer
+placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as their men smoked
+drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms ready for use
+at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the frontier line
+every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with little
+result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or down in
+the valley bounded by the Schönecken wood. The Uhlans, their piebald
+lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round the
+crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising
+mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them
+from time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they
+were, now and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the
+ground--an occurrence invariably followed by a little spurt of lively
+hostility.
+
+I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on
+the St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern
+officers frequented the _table d'hôte_ and where quaint little Max, the
+drollest imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Fraülein Sophie the
+landlord's niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the
+pleasantness and comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did
+I spend at the table of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped
+red head of silent and genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over
+the great ice-pail, with its _chevaux de frise_ of long-necked
+Niersteiner bottles--the worthy Hauptmann supported by blithe
+Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with the _Wacht am Rhein_;
+quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of "six-and-sixty" and
+as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or clink a glass; gay
+young Adjutant von Zülow--he who one day brought in a prisoner from the
+foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of his saddle; and
+many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the Spicheren,
+or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.
+
+But although the Rheinischer Hof associates itself in my mind with many
+memories, half-pleasant, half-sad, it was not the most accustomed haunt
+of the casuals in Saarbrücken, including myself. Of the waifs and
+strays which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the
+great rendezvous was the Hôtel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading
+from the bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a
+free-and-easy place compared with the Rheinischer, and among its
+inmates there was no one who could sing a better song than manly
+George--type of the Briton at whom foreigners stare--who, ignorant of a
+word of their language, wholly unprovided with any authorisation save
+the passport signed "Salisbury," and having not quite so much business
+at the seat of war as he might have at the bottom of a coal-mine,
+gravitates into danger with inevitable certainty, and stumbles through
+all manner of difficulties and bothers by reason of a serene
+good-humour that nothing can ruffle and a cool resolution before which
+every obstacle fades away. Was there ever a more compositely polyglot
+cosmopolitan than poor young de Liefde--half Dutchman, half German by
+birth, an Englishman by adoption, a Frenchman in temperament, speaking
+with equal fluency the language of all four countries, and an
+unconsidered trifle of some half-dozen European languages besides? Then
+there was the English student from Bonn, who had come down to the front
+accompanied by a terrible brute of a dog, vast, shaggy, self-willed,
+and dirty; an animal which, so to speak, owned his owner, and was so
+much the horror and disgust of everybody that on account of him the
+company of his master--one of the pleasantest fellows alive--was the
+source of general apprehension. There was young Silberer the many-sided
+and eccentric, an Austrian nobleman, a Vienna feuilletonist and
+correspondent, a rowing man, a gourmet, ever thinking of his stomach
+and yet prepared for all the roughness of the campaign--warm-hearted,
+passionate, narrow-minded, capable of sleeping for twenty-three out of
+the twenty-four hours, and the wearer of a Scotch cap. There was
+Küster, a German journalist with an address somewhere in the Downham
+Road; and Duff, a Fellow of ---- College, the strangest mixture of
+nervousness and cool courage I ever met.
+
+We were a kind of happy family at the Hagen; the tone of the coterie
+was that of the easiest intimacy into which every newcomer slid quite
+naturally. Thus when on the 31st July there was a somewhat sensational
+arrival, the stolid landlord had not turned the gas on in the empty
+saal before everybody knew and sympathised with the errand of the
+strangers. The party consisted of a plump little girl of about eighteen
+with a bonny round face and fine frank eyes; her sister who was some
+years older; and a brother, the eldest of the three. They had come from
+Silesia on rather a strange tryst. Little Minna Vogt had for her
+_Bräutigam_ a young Feldwebel of the second battalion of the
+Hohenzollerns, a native of Saarlouis. The battalion quartered there was
+under orders to join its first battalion at Saarbrücken, and young
+Eckenstein had written to his betrothed to come and meet him there,
+that the marriage-knot might be tied before he should go on a campaign
+from which he might not return. The arrangement was certainly a
+charming one; we should have a wedding in the Hagen! There was no
+nonsense about our young _Braut_. She told me the little story at
+supper on the night of her arrival in the most matter-of-fact way
+possible, drank her two glasses of red wine, and went off serenely to
+bed with a dainty lisping _Schlafen Sie wohl!_
+
+While Minna was between the sheets in the pleasant chamber in the Hagen
+her lover was lying in bivouac some fifteen miles away. In the
+afternoon of the next day his battalion approached Saarbrücken and
+bivouacked about two miles from the town. Of course we all went out to
+welcome it; some bearing peace-offerings of cigars, others the
+drink-offering of potent Schnapps. The Vogt family were left the sole
+inmates of the Hagen, delicacy preventing their accompanying us. The
+German journalist, however, had a commission to find out young
+Eckenstein and tell him of the bliss that awaited him two short miles
+away. Right hearty fellows were the officers of the second
+battalion--from the grizzled Oberst down to the smooth-faced junior
+lieutenant; and the men who had been marching and bivouacking for a
+fortnight looked as fresh as if they had not travelled five miles.
+Küster soon found the young Feldwebel; and the Hauptmann of his company
+when he heard the state of the case, smiled a grim but kindly smile,
+and gave him leave for two days with the proviso, that if any hostile
+action should be taken in the interval he should rejoin the colours
+immediately and without notice. "No fear of that!" was Eckenstein's
+reply with a significant down glance at his sword; and then, after a
+cheery "good-night" to the hardy bivouackers, we visitors started in
+triumph on our return to the Hagen, the young Feldwebel in our midst It
+was good to see the unrestraint with which Minna--she of the apple face
+and frank eyes--threw herself round the neck of her betrothed as she
+met him on the steps of the Hagen, and his modest manly blush as he
+returned the embrace. Ye gods! did not we make a night of it! Stolid
+Hagen came out of his shell for once, and swore, _Donner Wetter_ that
+he would give us a supper we should remember; and he kept his word. The
+good old pastor of the snow-white hair and withered cheeks--he had been
+engaged to perform the ceremony of the morrow--we voted into the chair
+whether he would or not; and on his right sat Minna and Eckenstein,
+their arms interlacing and whispering soft speeches which were not for
+our ears. The table was covered with bottles of Blume de Saar, the
+champagne peculiar of the Hagen; and the speed with which the full
+bottles were converted into "dead marines" was a caution to
+teetotallers. Then de Liefde the polyglot gave the health of the happy
+couple in a felicitous but composite speech, in which half a dozen
+languages were impartially intermixed so that all might understand at
+least a portion. George the jolly insisted in leading off the honours
+with a truly British "three times three;" and that horrible dog of
+Hyndman's gave the time, like a beast as he was, with stentorian
+barkings. Then Minna and her sister retired, followed by Herr Pastor;
+and after a considerable number of more bottles of Blume de Saar had
+met their fate we formed a procession and escorted the happy Eckenstein
+to the Rheinischer Hof where he was to sleep.
+
+Next morning by eleven, we had all reassembled in the second saal of
+the Hagen. In the great room the marriage-breakfast was laid out, and
+in the kitchen Hagen and his Frau were up to their eyes in mystic
+culinary operations. Minna looked like a rosebud in her pretty
+low-necked blue dress, and the pastor in his cassock helped to the
+diversity of colour. We had done shaking hands with the bride and
+bridegroom after the ceremony, and were sitting down to the marriage
+feast, when young Eckenstein started and made three strides to the open
+window. His accustomed ear had caught a sound which none of us had
+heard. It was the sharp peremptory note of the drum beating the alarm.
+As it came nearer and could no longer be mistaken, the bright colour
+went out from poor Minna's cheek and she clung with a brave touching
+silence to her sister. In two minutes more Eckenstein had his helmet on
+his head and his sword buckled on, and then he turned to say farewell
+to his girl ere he left her for the battle. The parting was silent and
+brief; but the faces of the two were more eloquent than words. Poor
+Minna sat down by the window straining her eyes as Eckenstein, running
+at speed, went his way to the rendezvous.
+
+When I got up to the Bellevue the French were streaming in overwhelming
+force down the slope of the Spicheren into the intervening valley. It
+was a beautiful sight; but I am not going to describe it here. Ere an
+hour was over the shells and chassepôt bullets were sweeping across the
+Exercise Platz, and it was no longer a safe spot for a non-combatant
+like myself. Before I got back into the Hagen after paying my bill at
+the Rheinischer and fetching away my knapsack, the French guns were on
+the Exercise Platz. I heard for the first time the angry screech of the
+mitrailleuse and saw the hailstorm of its bullets spattering on the
+pavement of the bridge. Somehow or other the whole of our little
+coterie had found their way into the Hagen; by a sort of common
+impulse, I imagine. The landlady was already in hysterics; the Vogt
+girls were pale but plucky. Presently the shells began to fly. The
+Prussians had a gun or two on the railway esplanade above us, the fire
+of which the French began to return fiercely. Every shell that fell
+short tumbled in or about the Hagen; and a company of the Hohenzollerns
+was drawn up in the street in front of it, in trying to dislodge which
+the French fire could not well miss the Hagen and the houses opposite.
+A shell burst in the back-yard and the landlady fainted. Another came
+crashing in through a first-floor window, and, bursting, knocked
+several bedrooms into one. Then we thought it time to get the women
+down into the cellar--rather a risky undertaking since the door of it
+was in the backyard. However, we got them all down in safety and came
+up into the second saal to watch the course of events. Hagen gave a
+fearful groan as a shell broke into the kitchen behind us, and,
+bursting in the centre of the stove, sent his _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of
+cookery sputtering in all directions. He gave a still deeper groan as
+another shell crashed into the principal dining-room and knocked the
+long table, laid out as it was for the marriage-feast, into a chaos of
+splinters, tablecloth, and knives and forks. The Restauration Küche on
+the other side was in flames, so was the stable of the hotel to the
+left rear. In this pleasing situation of affairs George produced a pack
+of cards and coolly proposed a game of whist. Küster, de Liefde, and
+Hyndman joined him; and the game proceeded amidst the crashing of the
+projectiles. Silberer and myself took counsel together and agreed that
+the occupation of the town by the French was only a question of a few
+hours at latest. We were both correspondents; and although the French
+would do us no harm our communications with our journals would
+inevitably be stopped--a serious contingency to contemplate at the
+beginning of a campaign. We both agreed that evacuation of the Hagen
+was imperative; but then, how to get out? The only way was up the
+esplanade to the railway station, and upon it the French shells were
+falling and bursting in numbers very trying to the nerves. However,
+there was nothing for it but to make a rush through the fire; and
+saying good-bye to the whist-players we sallied forth. To my disgust I
+found that Silberer positively refused to make a rush of it. Although
+an Austrian all his sympathies were Prussian, and he had the utmost
+contempt for the French. In his broken language his invariable
+appellation for them was "God-damned Hundsöhne!" and he would not run
+before them at any price. I would have run right gladly at top-speed;
+but I did not like to run when another man walked, and so he made me
+saunter at the rate of two miles an hour till we got under shelter.
+After a hot walk of several miles, we reached the Hôtel Till in the
+village of Duttweiler. After all the French, although they might have
+done so, did not occupy Saarbrücken; and towards evening our friends
+came dropping into the Hôtel Till, singly or in pairs. Küster and
+George brought the Vogt sisters out in a waggon--it was surprising to
+see the coolness and composure of the girls. By nightfall we were all
+reunited, except one unfortunate fellow who had been slightly wounded
+and whom a Saarbrücken doctor had kindly received into his house.
+
+On the 6th August came the Prussian repossession of Saarbrücken and the
+desperate storm of the Spicheren. The 40th was the regiment to which
+was assigned the place of honour in the preliminary recapture of the
+Exercise Platz height. Kameke rode up the winding road to the Bellevue;
+then came the march across the broad valley and after much bloodshed
+the final storm of the Spicheren, in which the 40th occupied about the
+left centre of the Prussian advance. Three times did the blue wave
+surge up the green steep, to be beaten back three times by the terrible
+blast of fire that crashed down upon it from above. Yet a fourth time
+it clambered up again, and this time it lipped the brink and poured
+over the intrenchment at the top. But I am not describing the battle.
+
+When it was over or at least when it had drifted away across the
+farther plateau, I followed on in the broad wake of dying and dead
+which the advance had left. The familiar faces of the Hohenzollerns
+were all around me; but either still in death or writhing in the
+torture of wounds. About the centre of the valley lay the genial
+Hauptmann von Krehl, more silent than ever now, for a bullet had gone
+right through that red head of his and he would never more quaff of the
+Niersteiner; neither would Lieutenant von Klipphausen ever again stir
+the blood of the sons of the Fatherland with the _Wacht am Rhein_; he
+lay dead close by the first spur of the slope--what of him at least a
+bursting shell had left. On a little flat half up sat quaint Dr.
+Diestelkamp, like Mark Tapley jolly under difficulties; by his side lay
+a man who had just bled to death as the good doctor explained to me.
+While he had been applying the tourniquet under a hot fire his right
+arm had been broken; and before he could pull himself up and go to the
+rear another bullet had found its billet in his thigh. There the little
+man sat, contentedly smoking till somebody would be good enough to come
+and take him away. Von Zülow too--he of the gay laugh and sprightly
+countenance--was on his back a little higher up, with a bullet through
+the chest. I heard the ominous sound of the escaping air as I raised
+him to give him a drink from my flask. What needs it to become diffuse
+as to the terrible sights which that steep and the plateau above it
+presented on this beautiful summer evening? It was farther to the
+right, in ground more broken with gullies and ravines, that the second
+battalion of the Hohenzollerns had gone up; and I wandered along there
+among the carnage eking out the contents of my flask as far as I could,
+and when the wounded had exhausted the brandy in it filling it up with
+water and still toiling on in a task that seemed endless. At last, in a
+sitting posture, his back against a hawthorn tree in one of the grassy
+ravines, I saw one whom I thought I recognised. "Eckenstein!" I cried
+as I ran forward; for the posture was so natural that I could not but
+think he was alive. Alas! no answer came; the gallant young Feldwebel
+was dead, shot through the throat. He had not been killed outright by
+the fatal bullet; the track was apparent by the blood on the grass
+along which he had crawled to the hawthorn tree against which I found
+him. His head had fallen forward on his chest and his right hand was
+pressed against his left breast. I saw something white in the hollow of
+the hand and easily moved the arm for he was yet warm; it was the
+photograph of the little girl he had married but three short days
+before. The frank eyes looked up at me with a merry unconsciousness;
+and the face of the photograph was spotted with the life-blood of the
+young soldier.
+
+I sent the death-token to Saarlouis by post to the young widow. I never
+knew whether she received it, for all the address I had was Saarlouis.
+Eckenstein I saw buried with two officers in a soldier's grave under
+the hawthorn. Any one taking the ascent up the fourth ravine
+Forbach-ward from the bluff of the Spicheren, may easily find it about
+halfway up. It may be recognised by the wooden cross bearing the rude
+inscription: "Hier ruhen in Gott 2 Officiere, 1 Feldwebel, 40ste
+Hohenzol. Fus. Regt."
+
+
+
+
+REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
+
+1879
+
+
+By Christmas 1878 the winter had brought to a temporary standstill the
+operations of the British troops engaged in the first Afghan campaign,
+and I took the opportunity of this inaction to make a journey into
+Native Burmah, the condition of which seemed thus early to portend the
+interest which almost immediately after converged upon it, because of
+King Thebau's wholesale slaughter of his relatives. Reaching Mandalay,
+the capital of Native Burmah, in the beginning of February 1879, I
+immediately set about compassing an interview with the young king. Both
+Mr. Shaw, who was our Resident at Mandalay at the time of my visit, and
+Dr. Clement Williams whose kindly services I found so useful, are now
+dead, and many changes have occurred since the episode described below;
+but no description, so far as I am aware, has appeared of any visit of
+courtesy and curiosity to the Court of King Thebau of a later date than
+that made by myself at the date specified. One of my principal objects
+in visiting Mandalay, or, in Burmese phrase, of "coming to the Golden
+Feet," was to see the King of Burmah in his royal state in the Presence
+Chamber of the Palace. Certain difficulties stood in the way of the
+accomplishment of this object. I had but a few days to spend in
+Mandalay. With the approval of Mr. Shaw, the British Resident, I
+determined to pursue an informal course of action, and with this intent
+I enlisted the good offices of an English gentleman resident in
+Mandalay, who had intimate relations with the Ministers and the Court.
+
+This gentleman, Dr. Williams, was good enough to help me with zeal and
+address. The line of strategy to adopt was to interest in my cause one
+of the principal Ministers. Of these there were four, who constituted
+the _Hlwot-dau_, or High Court and Council of the Monarchy. These
+"Woonghys" or "Menghyis," as they were more commonly called--"Menghyi,"
+meaning "Great Prince"--were of equal rank; but the senior Minister,
+the Yenangyoung Menghyi, who had precedence, was then in confinement,
+and, indeed, a decree of degradation had gone forth against him.
+Obviously he was of no use; but a more influential man than he ever
+was, and having the additional advantages of being at liberty, in power
+and in favour, was the "Kingwoon Menghyi." He was in effect the Prime
+Minister of the King of Burmah. His position was roughly equivalent to
+that of Bismarck in Germany, or of Gortschakoff in Russia, since, in
+addition to his internal influence, he had the chief direction of
+foreign affairs. Now this "Kingwoon Menghyi" had for a day or two been
+relaxing from the cares of State. Partly for his own pleasure, partly
+by way of example, he had laid out a beautiful garden on the low ground
+near the river. Within this garden he had the intention to build
+himself a suburban residence, which meanwhile was represented by a
+summer pavilion of teak and bamboo. He was a liberal-minded man, and it
+was a satisfaction to him that the shady walks and pleasant rose-groves
+of this garden should be enjoyed by the people of Mandalay. He was a
+reformer, this "Kingwoon Menghyi," and believed in the humanising
+effect of free access to the charms of nature. His garden laid out and
+his pavilion finished, he was celebrating the event by a series of
+_fêtes._ He was "at home" in his pavilion to everybody; bands of music
+played all day long and day after day, in the kiosks, among the young
+palm trees and the rosebushes. Mandalay, high and low, made holiday in
+the mazy walks of his garden and in an improvised theatre, wherein an
+interminable _pooey,_ or Burmese drama, was being enacted before
+ever-varying and constantly appreciative audiences. Dr. Williams opined
+that it would conduce to the success of my object that we should call
+upon the Minister at his garden-house and request him to use his good
+offices in my behalf.
+
+It was near noon when we reached the entrance to the garden. Merry but
+orderly sightseers thronged its alleys, and stared with wondering
+admiration at a rather attenuated jet of water which rose into the
+clear air some thirty feet above a rockwork fountain in the centre.
+Dignitaries strolled about under the stemless umbrellas like huge
+shields, with which assiduous attendants protected them from the sun;
+and were followed by posses of retainers, who prostrated themselves
+whenever their masters halted or looked round. Ladies in white jackets
+and trailing silk skirts of vivid hue were taking a leisurely airing,
+each with her demure maid behind her carrying the lacquer-ware box of
+betel-nut. As often as not the fair ones were blowing copious clouds
+from huge reed-like cheroots. Sounds of shrill music were heard in the
+distance. Walking up the central alley between the rows of palms and
+the hedges of roses, we found in the veranda a mixed crowd of laymen
+and priests, the latter distinguishable by their shaved heads and
+yellow robes. The Minister was just finishing his morning's work of
+distributing offerings to the latter, in commemoration of the opening
+of his gardens. In response to a message, he at once sent to desire
+that we should come to him. The great "shoe-question," the _quaestio
+vexata_ between British officialism and Burmah officialism, did not
+trouble me. I had no official position; I wanted to gain an object. I
+have a respect for the honour of my country, but I could not bring
+myself to realise that the national honour centres in my shoes. So I
+parted with them at the top of the steps leading up into the Minister's
+pavilion, and walking on what is known as my "stocking-feet," and
+feeling rather shuffling and shabby accordingly, was ushered through a
+throng of prostrate dependents into the presence of the Menghyi. He
+came forward frankly and cordially, shook hands with a hearty smile
+with Dr. Williams and myself, and beckoned us into an inner alcove,
+carpeted with rich rugs and panelled with mirrors. Placing himself in a
+half-sitting, half-kneeling attitude which did not expose his feet, he
+beckoned to us to get down also. I own to having experienced extreme
+difficulty in keeping my feet out of sight, which was a point _de
+rigueur_; but his Excellency was not censorious. There was with him a
+secretary who had resided several years in Europe, and who spoke
+fluently English, French, and Italian. This gentleman knew London
+thoroughly, and was perfectly familiar both with the name of the _Daily
+News_ and of myself. He introduced me formally to his Excellency, who,
+I ought to have mentioned, was the head of the Burmese Embassy which
+had visited Europe a few years previously. That his Excellency had some
+sort of knowledge of the political character of the _Daily News_ was
+obvious from the circumstance that when its name was mentioned he
+nodded and exclaimed, "Ah! ah! Gladstone, Bright!" in tones of manifest
+approval, which was no doubt accounted for by the fact that he himself
+was a pronounced Liberal. I explained that I had come to Mandalay to
+learn as much about Burmese manners, customs, and institutions as was
+possible in four days, with intent to embody my impressions in letters
+to England; and that as the King was the chief institution of the
+country, I had a keen anxiety to see him and begged of his Excellency
+to lend me his aid toward doing so. He gave no direct reply, but
+certainly did not frown on the request. We were served with tea
+(without cream or sugar) in pretty china cups, and then the Menghyi,
+observing that we were looking at some quaint-shaped musical
+instruments at the foot of the dais, explained that they belonged to a
+band of rural performers from the Pegu district, and proposed that we
+should first hear them play and afterwards visit the theatre and
+witness the _pooey_. We assenting, he led the way from his pavilion
+through the garden to a pretty kiosk half-embosomed in foliage, and
+chairs having been brought the party sat down. We had put on our shoes
+as we quitted the dais. The Menghyi explained that it was pleasanter
+for him, as it must be for us, that we should change the manner of our
+reception from the Burmese to the European custom; and we were quite
+free to confess that we would sooner sit in chairs than squat on the
+floor. More tea was brought, and a plateful of cheroots. After we had
+sat a little while in the kiosk we were joined by the chief
+Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the Baron de Giers of Burmah, a
+jovial, corpulent, elderly gentleman who had the most wonderful
+likeness to the late Pio Nono, and who clasped his brown hands over his
+fat paunch and kicked about his plump bare brown feet in high enjoyment
+when anything that struck him as humorous was uttered. He wholly
+differed in appearance from his superior, who was a lean-faced and
+lean-figured man, grave, and indeed somewhat sad both of eye and of
+visage when his face was in repose. As we talked, our conversation
+being through the interpreting secretary, there came to the curtained
+entrance to the kiosk a very dainty little lady. I had noticed her
+previously sauntering around the garden under one of the great
+shield-like shades, with a following of serving-men and serving-women
+behind her. She greeted the Menghyi very prettily, with the most
+perfect composure, although strangers were present. She was clearly a
+great pet with the Menghyi; he took her on his knee and played with her
+long black hair, as he told her about the visitors. The little lady was
+in her twelfth year, and was the daughter of a colleague and a relative
+of the Menghyi. She had an olive oval face, with lovely dark eyes, like
+the eyes of a deer. She wore a tiara of feathery white blossoms. In her
+ears were rosettes of chased red gold. Round her throat was a necklace
+of a double row of large pearls. Her fingers--I regret to say her nails
+were not very clean--were loaded with rings set with great diamonds of
+exceptional sparkle and water; one stone in particular must have been
+worth many thousands of pounds. She wore a jacket of white silk, and
+round her loins was girt a gay silken robe that trailed about her bare
+feet as she walked. She shook hands with us with a pretty shyness and
+immediately helped herself to a cheroot, affably accepting a light from
+mine. The Menghyi told us she was a great scholar--could read and write
+with facility, and had accomplishments to boot.
+
+By this time the provincial band had taken its place under one of the
+windows of the kiosk, and it presently struck up. Its music was not
+pretty. There were in the strange weird strain suggestions of gongs,
+bagpipes, penny whistles, and the humble tom-tom of Bengal. The
+gentleman who performed on an instrument which seemed a hybrid between
+a flute and a French horn, occasionally arrested his instrumental music
+to favour us with vocal strains, but he failed to compete successfully
+with the cymbals. I do not think the Menghyi was enraptured by the
+music of the strollers from Pegu, for he presently asked us whether we
+were ready to go to the _pooey_. He again led the way through a garden,
+passing in one corner of it a temporary house of which a company of
+Burmese nuns, short-haired, pallid-faced, unhappy-looking women, were
+in possession; and passing through a gate in the wicker-work fence
+ushered us into the "state-box" of the improvised theatre. There is
+very little labour required to construct a theatre in Burmah. Over a
+framework of bamboo poles stretch a number of squares of matting as a
+protection from the sun. Lay some more down in the centre as a flooring
+for the performers. Tie a few branches round the central bamboo to
+represent a forest, the perpetual set-scene of a Burmese drama; and the
+house is ready. The performers act and dance in the central square laid
+with matting. A little space on one side is reserved as a dressing and
+green room for the actresses; a similar space on the other side serves
+the turn of the actors; and then come the spectators crowding in on all
+four sides of the square. It is an orderly and easily managed audience;
+it may be added an easily amused audience. The youngsters are put or
+put themselves in front and squat down; the grown people kneel or stand
+behind. Our "state-box" was merely a raised platform laid with carpets
+and cushions, from which as we sat we looked over the heads of the
+throng squatting under and in front of us. Of the drama I cannot say
+that I carried away with me particularly clear impressions. True, I
+only saw a part of it--it was to last till the following morning; but
+long before I left the plot to me had become bewilderingly involved.
+The opening was a ballet; of that at least I am certain. There were six
+lady dancers and six gentlemen ditto. The ladies were arrayed in
+splendour, with tinsel tiaras, necklaces, and bracelets, gauzy jackets
+and waving scarfs; and with long, light clinging silken robes, of which
+there was at least a couple of yards on the "boards" about their feet.
+They were old, they were ugly, they leered fiendishly; their faces were
+plastered with powder in a ghastly fashion, and their coquetry behind
+their fans was the acme of caricature. But my pen halts when I would
+describe the gentlemen dancers. I believe that in reality they were not
+meant to represent fallen humanity at all; but were intended to
+personify _nats,_ the spirits or princes of the air of Burmese
+mythology. They carried on their heads pagodas of tinsel and coloured
+glass that towered imposingly aloft. They were arrayed in tight-bodiced
+coats with aprons before and behind of fantastic outline, resembling
+the wings of dragons and griffins, and these coats were an incrusted
+mass of spangles and pieces of coloured glass. Underneath a skirt of
+tartan silk was fitfully visible. Their brown legs and feet were bare.
+The expression of their faces was solemn, not to say lugubrious--one
+performer had a most whimsical resemblance to Mr. Toole when he is sunk
+in an abyss of dramatic woe. They realised the responsibilities of
+their position, and there were moments when these seemed too many for
+them. The orchestra, taken as a whole, was rather noisy; but it
+comprised one instrument, the "bamboo harmonicon," which deserves to be
+known out of Burmah because of its sweetness and range of tone. There
+were lots of "go" in the music, and every now and then one detected a
+kind of echo of a tune not unfamiliar in other climes. One's ear seemed
+to assure one that _Madame Angot_ had been laid under contribution to
+tickle the ears of a Mandalay audience, yet how could this be? The
+explanation was that the instrumentalists, occasionally visiting
+Thayet-myo or Rangoon, had listened there to the strains of our
+military bands, and had adapted these to the Burmese orchestra in some
+deft inscrutable manner, written music being unknown in the musical
+world of Burmah.
+
+Next day the Kingwoon Menghyi took the wholly unprecedented step of
+inviting to dinner the British Resident, his suite, and his
+visitor--myself. Mr. Shaw accepted the invitation, and I considered
+myself specially fortunate in being a participator in a species of
+intercourse at once so novel, and to all seeming so auspicious.
+
+About sundown the Residency party, joined _en route_ by Dr. Williams,
+rode down to the entrance to the gardens. Here we were warmly received
+by the English-speaking secretary, and by the jovial bow-windowed
+minister who so much resembled the late Pio Nono. We were escorted to
+the verandah of the pavilion, where the Menghyi himself stood waiting
+to greet us, and were ushered up to the broad, raised, carpeted
+platform which may be styled the drawing-room. Here was a semicircle of
+chairs. On our way to these, a long row of squatting Burmans was
+passed. As the Resident approached, the Menghyi gave the word, and they
+promptly stood erect in line. He explained that they were the superior
+officers of the army quartered in the capital--generals, he called
+them--whom he had asked to meet us. Of these officers one commanded the
+eastern guard of the Palace, the other the western; two others were
+aides-de-camp after a fashion. Just as the Menghyi and his subordinate
+colleagues represented the Ministry, so these military people
+represented the Court. The former was the moderate constitutional
+element of the gathering; the latter the "jingo" or personal government
+element, for the Burmese Court was reactionary, and those military
+sprigs were of the personal suite of the King and were understood to
+abet him in his falling away from the constitutional promise with which
+his reign began. Their presence rendered the occasion all the more
+significant. That they were deputed from the Palace to attend and watch
+events was pretty certain, and indeed the two aides went away
+immediately after dinner, their excuse being that his Majesty was
+expecting their personal attendance. After a little while of waiting,
+the _mauvais quart d'heure_ having the edge of its awkwardness taken
+off by a series of introductions, dinner was announced, and the
+Menghyi, followed by the Resident, led the way into an adjoining
+dining-room. Good old Pio Nono, who, I ought to have said, had been
+with the Menghyi a member of the Burmese Embassy to Europe, jauntily
+offered me his arm, and gave me to understand that he did so in
+compliance with English fashion. The Resident sat on the right of the
+Menghyi, I was on his left; the rest of the party, to the number of
+about fifteen, took their places indiscriminately; Mr. Andrino, an
+Italian in Burmese employ, being at the head of the table, Dr. Williams
+at the foot. Our meal was a perfectly English dinner, served and eaten
+in the English fashion. The Burmese had taken lessons in the nice
+conduct of a knife and fork, and fed themselves in the most
+irreproachably conventional manner, carefully avoiding the use of a
+knife with their fish. Pio Nono, who sat opposite the Menghyi, tucked
+his napkin over his ample paunch and went in with a will. He was in a
+most hilarious mood, and taxed his memory for reminiscences of his
+visit to England. These were not expressed with useless expenditure of
+verbiage, nor did they flow in unbroken sequence. It was as if he dug
+in his memory with a spade, and found every now and then a gem in the
+shape of a name, which he brandished aloft in triumph. He kept up an
+intermittent and disconnected fire all through dinner, with an interval
+between each discharge, "White-bait!" "Lord Mayor!" "Fishmongers!"
+"Cremorne!" "Crystal Palace!" "Edinburgh!" "Dunrobin!" "Newcastle!"
+"Windsor!"--each name followed by a chuckle and a succession of nods.
+The Menghyi divided his talk between the Resident and myself. He told
+me that of all the men he had met in England his favourite was the late
+Duke of Sutherland; adding that the Duke was a nobleman of great and
+striking eloquence, a trait which I had not been in the habit of
+regarding as markedly characteristic of his Grace. He spoke with much
+warmth of a pleasant visit he had paid to Dunrobin, and said he should
+be heartily glad if the Duke would come to Burmah and give him an
+opportunity of returning his hospitality. Here Pio Nono broke in with
+one of his periodical exclamations. This time it was "Lady Dudley." Of
+her, and of her late husband, the Menghyi then recalled his
+recollections, and if more courtly tributes have been paid to her
+ladyship's charms and grace, I question if any have been heartier and
+more enthusiastic than was the appreciation of this Burmese dignitary.
+The soldier element was at first somewhat stiff, but as the dinner
+proceeded the generals warmed in conversation with the Resident. But
+the aides were obstinately supercilious, and only partially thawed in
+acknowledgment of compliments on the splendour of their jewelry.
+Functionaries attached to the personal suite of his Majesty wore huge
+ear-gems as a distinguishing mark. The aides had these in blazing
+diamonds, and were good enough to take out the ornaments and hand them
+round. The civil ministers wore no ornaments and their dress was
+studiously plain. We were during dinner entertained by music,
+instrumental and vocal, sedulously modulated to prevent conversation
+from being drowned. The meal lasted quite two hours, and when it was
+finished the Menghyi led the way to coffee in one of the kiosks of the
+garden. I should have said that no wine was on the table at dinner. The
+Burmese by religion are total abstainers, and their guests were willing
+to follow their example for the time and to fall in with their
+prejudices. After coffee we were ushered into the drawing-room, and
+listened to a concert. The only solo-vocalist was the prima donna _par
+excellence,_ Mdlle. Yeendun Male. The burden of her songs was love, but
+I could not succeed in having the specific terms translated. Then she
+sang an ode in praise of the Resident, and gracefully accepted his
+pecuniary appreciation of her performance. Pio Nono then beckoned to
+her to flatter me at close quarters; but, mistaking the index, she
+addressed herself to the Residency chaplain in strains of hyperbolical
+encomium. The mistake having been set right, much to the reverend
+gentleman's relief, the songstress overpowered my sensitive modesty by
+impassioned requests in verse that I should delay my departure; that,
+if I could not do so, I should take her away with me; and that, if this
+were beyond my power, I should at least remember her when I was far
+away. The which was an allegory and cost me twenty rupees.
+
+When the good-nights were being said, the Menghyi gratified me by the
+information that the King had given his consent to my presentation, and
+that I was to have the opportunity next morning of "Reverencing the
+Golden Feet."
+
+The Royal Palace occupied the central space of the city of Mandalay. It
+was almost entirely of woodwork, and was not only the counterpart of
+the palace which Major Phayre saw at Amarapoora, but the identical
+palace itself, conveyed piecemeal from its previous site and re-erected
+here. Its outermost enclosure consisted of a massive teak palisading,
+beyond which all round was a wide clear space laid out as an esplanade,
+the farther margin of which was edged by the houses of ministers and
+court officials. The Palace enclosure was a perfect square, each face
+about 370 yards. The main entrance, the only one in general use, was in
+the centre of the eastern face, almost opposite to which, across the
+esplanade, was the _Yoom-daù_, or High Court. This gate was called the
+_Yive-daù-yoo-Taga_, or the Royal Gate of the Chosen, because the
+charge of it was entrusted to chosen troops. As I passed through it on
+my way to be presented to his Majesty, the aspect of the "chosen"
+troops was not imposing. They wore no uniform, and differed in no
+perceptible item from the common coolies of the outside streets. They
+were lying about on charpoys and on the ground, chewing betel or
+smoking cheroots, and there was not even the pretence of there being
+sentries under arms. Some rows of old flintlock guns stood in racks in
+the gateway, rusty, dusty, and untended; they might have been untouched
+since the last insurrection. Crossing an intermediate space overgrown
+with shrubbery, we passed through a high gateway cut in the inner brick
+wall of the enclosure; and there confronted us the great Myenan of
+Mandalay--the Palace of the "Sun-descended Monarch." The first
+impression was disappointing, for the whole front was covered with
+gold-leaf and tawdry tinsel-work which had become weather-worn and
+dingy. But there was no time now to halt, inspect details, and rectify
+perchance first impressions. A message came that the Kingwoon Menghyi,
+my host of the previous evening--substantially the Prime Minister of
+Burmah, desired that we--that was to say, Dr. Williams, my guide,
+philosopher, and friend, and myself--should wait upon him in the
+_Hlwot-daù_, or Hall of the Supreme Council, before entering the Palace
+itself. The _Hlwot-daù_ was a detached structure on the right front of
+the Palace as one entered by the eastern gate. It was the Downing
+Street of Mandalay. Its sides were quite open, and its fantastic roof
+of grotesquely carved teak plastered with gilding, painting, and
+tinsel, was supported on massive teak pillars painted a deep red.
+Taking off our shoes we ascended to the platform of the _Hlwot-daù_,
+where we found the Menghyi surrounded by a crowd of minor officials and
+suitors squatting on their stomachs and elbows, with their legs under
+them and their hands clasped in front of their bent heads. The Menghyi
+came forward several paces to meet us, conducted us to his mat, and
+sitting down himself and bidding us do the same, explained that as it
+was with him a busy day, he would not be able personally to present me
+to the King as he had hoped to have done, but that he had made all
+arrangements and had delegated the charge of us to our old friend whom
+I have ventured to call "Pio Nono." That corpulent and jovial worthy
+made his appearance at this moment along with his English-speaking
+subordinate, and with cordial acknowledgments and farewells to the
+Menghyi we left the _Hlwot-daù_ under their guidance. They led us along
+the front of the Palace, passing the huge gilded cannon that flanked on
+either side the central steps leading up into the throne-room; and
+turning round the northern angle of the Palace front, conducted us to
+the Hall of the _Bya-dyt_, or Household Council. We had to leave our
+shoes at the foot of the steps leading up to it. The _Bya-dyt_ was a
+mere open shed; its lofty roof borne up by massive teak timbers. What
+splendour had once been its in the matter of gilding and tinsel was
+greatly faded. The gold-leaf had been worn off the pillars by constant
+friction, and the place appeared to be used as a lumber-room as well as
+a council-chamber. On the front of one of a pile of empty cases was
+visible, in big black letters, the legend, "Peek, Frean, and Co.,
+London." State documents reposed in the receptacle once occupied by
+biscuits. Clerks lay all around on the rough dusty boards, writing with
+agate stylets on tablets of black papier-mâche; and there was a
+constant flux and reflux of people of all sorts, who appeared to have
+nothing to do and who were doing it with a sedulously lounging
+deliberation that seemed to imply a gratifying absence of arrears of
+official work. We sat down here for a while along with Pio Nono and his
+assistant, who busied himself in dictating to a secretary a description
+of myself and a catalogue of my presents to be read by the herald to
+his Majesty when I should be presented. Then Pio Nono went away and
+presently came back, saying that it was intended to bestow upon me some
+souvenirs of Mandalay, and that to admit of the preparation of these
+the audience would not take place for an hour or so. He invited us in
+the meantime to inspect the public apartments of the Palace itself and
+the objects of interest in the Palace enclosure. So we got up, and
+still without our shoes walked through the suite leading to the
+principal throne-room or great hall of audience.
+
+These were simply a series of minor throne-rooms. The first one in
+order from the private apartments was close to the _Bya-dyt_. It must
+be borne in mind that the whole suite, including the great audience
+hall, were not rooms at all in our sense of the word. They were simply
+open-roofed spaces, the roofs gabled, spiked, and carved into fantastic
+shapes, laden with dingy gold-leaf garishly picked out with glaring
+colours and studded with bits of stained glass; the roofs, or rather I
+should say, the one continuous roof, supported on massive deep red
+pillars of teak-wood. The whole palace was raised from the ground on a
+brick platform some 10 feet high. The partitions between the several
+walls were simply skirtings of planking covered with gold-leaf. The
+whole palace seemed an armoury. Some ten or twelve thousand stand of
+obsolete muskets were ranged along these partitions and crammed into
+the anteroom of the throne-room proper. The whole suite was dingy,
+dirty, and uncared-for; but on a great day, with the gilding renewed,
+carpets spread on the rugged boards, banners waving, and the courtiers
+in full dress, no doubt the effect would have been materially improved.
+The vista from the throne of the great hall of audience looked right
+through the columned arcade to the "Gate of the Chosen"; and that we
+might imagine the scene more vividly, we considered ourselves as on our
+way to Court on one of the great days, and going back to the gate again
+began our pilgrimage anew. The pillared front of the Palace stretched
+before us raised on the terrace, its total length 260 feet. Looking
+between the two gilded cannon, we saw at the foot of the central steps
+a low gate of carved and gilded wood. That gate, it seemed, was never
+opened except to the King--none save he might use those central steps.
+Raising our eyes we looked right up the vista of the hall to the lofty
+throne raised against the gilded partition that closed at once the
+vista and the hall. We had been looking down the great central nave, as
+it were, toward the west gate, in the place of which was the throne.
+But along the eastern front of the terrace ran a long colonnade, whose
+wings formed transepts at right angles to the nave. The throne-room was
+shaped like the letter T, the throne being at the base of the letter
+and the cross-bar representing the colonnade. Entering at the extremity
+of one of these, we traversed it to the centre and then faced the nave.
+The throne was exactly before us, at the end of the pillared vista.
+Five steps led up to the dais. Its form was peculiar, contracting by a
+gradation of steps from the base upwards to mid-height, and again
+expanding to the top, on which was a cushioned ledge such as is seen in
+the box of a theatre. On the platform, which now was bare planks, the
+King and Queen on a great reception day would sit on gorgeous carpets.
+The entrance was through gilded doors from a staircase in the ante-room
+beyond. There was a rack of muskets round the foot of the throne, and
+just outside the rails a half-naked soldier lay snoring. Our Burman
+companion assured us that seeing the throne-room now in its condition
+of dismantled tawdriness, I could form no idea of the fine effect when
+King and Court in all their splendour were gathered in it on a
+ceremonial day. I tried to accept his assurances, but it was not easy
+to imagine such forlorn dinginess changed into dazzling splendour. Just
+over the throne, and in the centre of the Palace and of the city, rose
+in gracefully diminishing stages of fantastic woodcarving a tapering
+_phya-sath_ or spire similar to those surmounting sacred buildings, and
+crowned with the gilded _Htee_, an honour which royalty alone shared
+with ecclesiastical sanctity. The spire, like everything else, had been
+gilt, but it was now sadly tarnished and had lost much of its
+brilliancy of effect.
+
+Having looked at the hall of audience we strolled through the Palace
+esplanade. A wall parted this off from the private apartments and the
+pleasure grounds occupying the western section of the Palace enclosure.
+A series of carved and gilded gables roofed with glittering zinc plates
+was visible over the wall. The grounds were said to be well planted
+with flowering shrubs and fruit trees and to contain lakelets and
+rockeries. Built against the outer wall and facing the enclosed space
+were barracks for soldiers and gun sheds. The accommodation was as
+primitive as are the weapons, and that was saying a good deal. Pio Nono
+led us across to a big wooden house, scarcely at all ornamented, which
+was the everyday abode of the "Lord White Elephant." His "Palace," or
+state apartment, was not pointed out to us. His lordship, in so far as
+his literal claim to be styled a white elephant, was an impostor of the
+deepest dye and a very grim and ugly impostor to boot. He was a great,
+lean, brown, flat-sided brute, his ears, forehead, and trunk mottled
+with a dingy cream colour. But he belonged all the same to the lordly
+race. "White elephants" were a science which had a literature of its
+own. According to this science, it was not the whiteness that was the
+criterion of a "white elephant." So much, indeed, was the reverse, that
+a "white elephant" according to the science may be a brown elephant in
+actual colour. The points were the mottling of the face, the shape and
+colour of the eyes, the position of the ears, and the length of the
+tail. Certainly the "Lord White Elephant" had, to the most cursory
+observation, a peculiar and abnormal eye. The iris was yellow, with a
+reddish outer annulus and a small, clear, black pupil. It was
+essentially a shifty, treacherous eye, and I noticed that everybody
+took particularly good care to keep out of range of his lordship's
+trunk and tusks. The latter were superb--long, massive, and smooth,
+their tips quite meeting far in front of his trunk. His tail was much
+longer than in the Indian elephants, and was tipped with a bunch of
+long, straight, black hair. Altogether he was an unwholesome,
+disagreeable-looking brute, who munched his grass morosely and had no
+elephantine geniality. He was but a youngster--the great, old, really
+white elephant which Yule describes had died some time back, after an
+incumbency dating from 1806. The "White Elephant" was never ridden now,
+but the last King but one used frequently to ride its predecessor,
+acting as his own mahout. We did not see his trappings, as our visit
+was paid unawares when he was quite in undress; but Yule says that when
+arrayed in all his splendour his head-stall was of fine red cloth,
+studded with great rubies, interspersed with valuable diamonds. When
+caparisoned he wore on his forehead, like other Burmese dignitaries
+including the King himself, a golden plate inscribed with his titles
+and a gold crescent set with circles of large gems between the eyes.
+Large silver tassels hung in front of his ears, and he was harnessed
+with bands of gold and crimson set freely with large bosses of pure
+gold. He was a regular "estate of the realm," having a _woon_ or
+minister of his own, four gold umbrellas, the white umbrellas which
+were peculiar to royalty, with a large suite of attendants and an
+appanage to furnish him with maintenance wherewithal. When in state his
+attendants had to leave their shoes behind them when they enter his
+Palace. In a shed adjacent to that occupied by the "Lord White
+Elephant" stood his lady wife, a browner, plumper, and generally more
+amiable-looking animal. Contrary to universal experience elsewhere,
+elephants in Burmah breed in captivity, but this union was unfertile
+and the race of "Lord White Elephants" had to be maintained _ab extra_.
+The so-called white elephants are sports of nature, and are of no
+special breed. They are called Albinoes, and are more plentiful in the
+Siam region than in Burmah.
+
+By this time the hour was approaching that had been fixed for the
+presentation, and we returned to the _Bya-dyt_. The summons came almost
+immediately. Ushered by Pio Nono and accompanied by several courtiers,
+we traversed some open passages and finally reached a kind of pagoda or
+kiosk within the private gardens of the Palace. The King was not to
+appear in state, and this place had been selected by reason of its
+absolute informality. There was no ornament anywhere, not so much as a
+speck of gilding or an atom of tinsel. We solemnly squatted down on a
+low platform covered with grass matting, through which pierced the teak
+columns supporting the lofty roof. A space had been reserved for us in
+the centre, on either side of which, their front describing a
+semicircle, a number of courtiers lay crouching on their stomachs but
+placidly puffing cheroots. On our left were two or three superior
+military officers of the Palace guard, distinguishable only by their
+diamond ear-jewels. My presents--they were trivial: an opera-glass, a
+few boxes of chocolate, and a work-box--were placed before me as I sat
+down. There were other offerings to right and to left of them--a huge
+bunch of cabbages, a basket of _Kohl-rabi_, and three baskets of
+orchids. In the clear space in front I observed also a satin robe lined
+with fur, a couple of silver boxes, and a ruby ring. These, I imagined,
+were also for presentation, but it presently appeared they were his
+Majesty's return gifts for myself. Before us, at a higher elevation,
+there was a plain wooden railing with a gap in the centre, and the
+railing enclosed a sort of recess that looked like a garden-house. Over
+a ledge where the gap was, had been thrown a rich crimson and gold
+trapping that hung low in front, and on the ledge were a crimson
+cushion, a betel box, and a tall oval spittoon in gold set with pearls.
+A few minutes passed, beguiled by conversation in a low tone, when six
+guards armed with double-barrelled firearms of very diverse patterns,
+mounted the platform from the left side and took their places on either
+side, squatting down. The guards wore black silk jackets lined with fur
+and with scarlet kerchiefs bound round their heads. Then a door opened
+in the left side of the garden-house, and there entered first an old
+gaunt beardless man--the chief eunuch--closely followed by the King,
+otherwise unattended. His Majesty came on with a quick step, and sat
+down, resting his right arm on the crimson cushion on the ledge in the
+centre of the railing. He wore a white silk jacket, and a _loonghi_ or
+petticoat robe of rich yellow and green silk. His only ornaments were
+his diamond ear-jewels. As he entered all bent low, and when he had
+seated himself a herald lying on his stomach read aloud my credentials.
+The literal translation was as follows:--"So-and-so, a great newspaper
+teacher of the _Daily News_ of London, tenders to his Most Glorious
+Excellent Majesty, Lord of the Ishaddan, King of Elephants, master of
+many white elephants, lord of the mines of gold, silver, rubies, amber,
+and the noble serpentine, Sovereign of the empires of Thunaparanta and
+Tampadipa, and other great empires and countries, and of all the
+umbrella-wearing chiefs, the supporter of religion, the Sun-descended
+Monarch, arbiter of life, and great, righteous King, King of kings, and
+possessor of boundless dominions, and supreme wisdom, the following
+presents." The reading was intoned in a uniform high recitative,
+strongly resembling that used when our Church Service is intoned; and
+the long-drawn "Phya-a-a-a-a" (my lord) which concluded it, added to
+the resemblance, as it came in exactly like the "Amen" of the Liturgy.
+
+The reading over, the return presents were picked up by an official and
+bundled over to me without any ceremony, the King meanwhile looking on
+in silence, chewing betel and smoking a cheroot. Several of the
+courtiers were following his example in the latter respect. Presently
+the King spoke in a distinct, deliberate voice--
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+Dr. Williams acting as my introducer, replied in Burmese--
+
+"A writer of the _Daily News_ of London, your Majesty."
+
+"Why does he come?"
+
+"To see your Majesty's country, and in the hope of being permitted to
+reverence the Golden Feet."
+
+"Whence does he come?"
+
+"From the British army in Afghanistan, engaged in war against the
+Prince of Cabul."
+
+"And does the war prosper for my friends the English?"
+
+"He reports that it has done so greatly and that the Prince of Cabul is
+a fugitive."
+
+"Where does Cabul lie in relation to Kashmir?"
+
+"Between Kashmir and Persia, in a very mountainous and cold region."
+
+There had been pauses more or less long between each of these
+questions; the King obviously reflecting what he should ask next; then
+there was a longer, and, indeed, a wearisome pause. Then the King spoke
+again.
+
+"Where is the Kingwoon Menghyi?"
+
+"In Court, your Majesty," replied Pio Nono. "It is a Court day."
+
+"It is well. I wish the Ministers to make every day a Court day, and to
+labour hard to give prompt justice to suitors, so that there be no
+complaint of arrears."
+
+With this laudable injunction, his Majesty rose and walked away, and
+the audience was over.
+
+The King of Burmah, when I saw him, was little over twenty, and he had
+been barely four months on the throne. He was a tall, well-built,
+personable young man, very fair in complexion, with a good forehead,
+clear, steady eyes, and a firm but pleasant mouth. His chin was full
+and somewhat sensual-looking, but withal he was a manly, frank-faced
+young fellow, and was said to have gained self-possession and lost the
+early nervous awkwardness of his new position with great rapidity.
+Circumstances had even then occurred to prove that he was very far from
+destitute of a will of his own, and that he had no favour for any
+diminution of the Royal Prerogative. As we passed out of the Palace
+after the interview a house in the Palace grounds was pointed out to
+me, within which had been imprisoned in squalid misery ever since the
+mortal illness of the previous King, a number of the members of the
+Burmese blood royal.
+
+_P.S._--A few days after my visit, all these unfortunately were
+massacred with fiendish refinements of cruelty.
+
+
+
+
+GERMAN WAR PRAYERS 1870-71
+
+
+In the multifarious ramifications of their military organisation the
+Germans by no means neglect religion. Each army corps is partitioned
+into two divisions and each division has its field chaplain. In those
+corps in which there is a large admixture of the Catholic element,
+there is a cleric of that denomination to each division as well as a
+Protestant chaplain. The former is known as a _Feldgeistliger_, a word
+which in itself means nothing more distinctive than a "field
+ecclesiastic," while the Protestant chaplain has usually the title of
+_Feldpastor_. Of the priest I can say but little. The pastors, for the
+most part, are young and energetic men. They may be divided into two
+classes: those who have at home no stated charges, and those who have
+temporarily left their charge for the duration of the war. The former
+generally are regularly posted to a division; the latter, equally
+recognised but not perhaps quite so official, are chiefly to be found
+in the lazarettoes, in the battlefield villages whither the wounded are
+borne to have their fresh wounds roughly seen to, and on the
+battlefield itself. Not that the regular divisional chaplains do not
+face the dangers of the battlefield with devoted courage; but their
+duties, in the nature of their special avocation, lie more among the
+hale and sound who yet stand up before an enemy, than with the poor
+fellows who have been stricken down. Earnestness and devotion are the
+chief characteristics of those pastors. It struck me that their
+education was not of a very high order--certainly not on a par with
+that of the average regimental officer.
+
+The _Feldpastor_ wears an armlet of white and light purple to denote
+his calling; but indeed it is not easy to mistake him for anything else
+than he is. He has his quarters with the Divisional General, and
+preaches whenever and wherever it is convenient to get a congregation.
+A church is passed on the wayside, a regiment halts and defiles into
+it, and the pastor mounts the steps of the altar and holds forth
+therefrom for half an hour. There is a quiet meadow near a village, in
+which a brigade is lying. Looking over the hedge, you may see in the
+meadow a hollow square of helmeted men with the general and the pastor
+in the centre, the latter speaking simple, fervent words to the
+fighting men. When, as during the siege of Paris, a division occupies a
+certain district for a long time, you may chance--let me say on a New
+Year's night--on the village church all ablaze with light. The garrison
+have decorated the gaunt old Norman arches with laurels and evergreens;
+they have cleared out the market-vendor's stock of tallow-dips to
+illuminate the church wherewithal. The band has been practising the
+glorious _Nun Danket alle Gott_ for a week; the vocalists of the
+regiments have been combining to perfect themselves in part-singing.
+The gorgeous trumpery of Roman Catholic church paraphernalia, unheeded
+as it is, looks strangely out of place and contrasts curiously with the
+simple Protestant forms.
+
+The church is crowded with a denser congregation than ever its walls
+contained before. The _Oberst_ sits down with the under-officer; the
+general gropes for half a chair between two stalwart _Kerle_ of the
+line. Hymn-cards are distributed as at the Brighton volunteer service
+in the Pavilion on Easter Sunday. As the pastor enters and takes his
+way up the altar steps--he goes not to the pulpit--there bursts out a
+volume of vocal devotional harmony, which is so pent in the aisles and
+under the arches that the sound seems almost to become a substance.
+Then the pastor delivers a prayer and there is another hymn. He
+enunciates no text when he next begins to speak; he chops not a subject
+up into heads, as the grizzled major who listens to him would partition
+out his battalion into companies. There is no "thirteenthly and lastly"
+in his simple address. But he gets nearer the hearts of his hearers
+than if he assailed them with a battery of logic with multitudinous
+texts for ammunition. For he speaks of the people at home, in the quiet
+corners of the Fatherland; he tells the soldier in language that is of
+his profession, how the fear of the Lord is a better arm than the
+truest-shooting _Zündnadelgewehr_; how preparedness for death and for
+what follows after death, is a part of his accoutrement that the good
+soldier must ever bear about with him.
+
+Herr Pastor has other functions than to preach to the living. The day
+after a battle, his horse must be very tired before the stable-door is
+reached. The burial parties are excavating great pits all over the
+field, while others pick up the dead in the vicinity and bear them unto
+the brink of the common grave. Herr Pastor cannot be ubiquitous. If he
+is not near when the hole is full, the _Feldwebel_ who commands the
+party bares his head, and mutters, "In the name of God, Amen," as he
+strews the first handful of mould on the dead--it may be on friends as
+well as on foes. If the pastor can reach the brink of the pit, it is
+his to say the few words that mark the recognition of the fact that
+those lying stark and grim below him are not as the beasts that perish.
+The Germans have no set funeral service, and if they had, there would
+be no time for it here. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
+in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, _durch
+unsern Herr Jesu Christe_. Amen;" words so familiar, yet never heard
+without a new thrill.
+
+They are slightly uncouth in several matters, these _Feldpastoren_, and
+would not quite suit sundry metropolitan charges one wots of. They do
+not wear gloves, nor are they addicted to scent on their
+pocket-handkerchiefs. Their boots are too often like boats, and when
+they are mounted there is frequently visible an interval of more or
+less dusky stocking between the boot-top and the trouser-leg. They
+slobber stertorously in the consumption of soup, and cut their meat
+with a square-elbowed energy of determination that might make one think
+that they had vanquished the Evil One and had him down there under
+their knife and fork. But they are simple-hearted and valiant servants
+of their Master. Who was it, in the bullet-storm that swept the slope
+of Wörth, from facing which the stout hearts of the fighting men
+blenched and quailed, that there walked quietly into it, to speak words
+of peace and consolation to the dying men whom that terrible storm had
+beaten down? A smooth-faced stripling with the _Feldpastor's_ badge on
+his arm, the gallant Christian son of an eminent Prussian divine, Dr.
+Krummacher of Berlin. At one of the battles (I forget which) a pastor
+came to fill a grave, not to consecrate it. Shall I ever forget the
+unswerving hurry to the front of Kummer's divisional chaplain when the
+_Landwehrleute_, his flock, were going down in their ranks as they held
+with stubbornness unto death the villages in front of Maizières les
+Metz? Let the _Feldpastoren_ slobber and welcome, say I, while they
+gild their slobbering with such devotion as this! But there must be
+times and seasons when Herr Pastor is not at hand; nor can the
+ministration of any pastor stand in the stead of private prayer. The
+German soldier's simple needs in this matter are not disregarded. Each
+man is served out when he gets his kit with a tiny gray volume less
+than quarter the size of this page, the title of which is _Gebetbuch
+für Soldaten_--the Soldier's Prayer-Book. It is supplied from the
+Berlin depôt of the Head Society for the Promotion of Christian
+Knowledge in Germany, and it is a compendium of simple war prayers for
+almost every conceivable situation, with one significant
+exception--there is no prayer in defeat. The word is blotted out of the
+German war vocabulary. It has been said that the belief in the divinity
+of our Saviour is rapidly on the wane in Germany. If this war
+prayer-book avails aught, the taint of the heresy may not enter into
+the army.
+
+Germany is at war. While Paris is frantically shouting _A Berlin!_,
+while all Germany is singing and meaning _Die Wacht am Rhein_, Moltke's
+order goes forth into the towns and villages of the Fatherland for the
+mobilisation of the Reserves. Hans was singing _Die Wacht am Rhein_
+last night over his beer; but there is little heart for song left in
+him as he looks from that paper on the deal table into Gretchen's face.
+She is weeping bitterly as her children cling around her, too young to
+realise the cause of their parents' sorrow. Hans rises moodily, and
+pulling down what military belongings he has not given into the arsenal
+after the last drill, falls a turning over of them abstractedly. By
+chance his hand rests upon the little gray volume, the _Gebetbuch für
+Soldaten_. It opens in his hand, and he comes and sits down by Gretchen
+and reads in a voice that chokes sometimes, the
+
+
+PRAYER IN STRAIT AND SORROW
+
+O Lord Jesus Christ! let the crying and sighing of the poor come before
+Thee. Withhold not Thy countenance from the tears and beseechings of
+the woebegone. Help by Thine outstretched arm, and avert our sorrow
+from us. Awake us who are lying dead in sin and in great danger, and
+whose thoughts often wander from Thee. Let us trust with all our hearts
+that nothing can be so broad, so deep, so high, nor so arduous that Thy
+grace and favour cannot overcome it; that we so can and must be holpen
+out of every difficulty and discomfiture when Thou takest compassion
+upon us. Help us, then, through grace, and so I will praise Thee from
+now to all eternity.
+
+
+Hans has bidden good-bye to Gretchen, and has kissed the children he
+may never see more. He has marched with his fellows to the depôt, and
+got his uniform and arms. The _Militärzug_ has carried him to
+Kreuznach, and thence he has marched sturdily up the Nahe Valley and
+over the ridge into the Kollerthaler Wald. His last halt was at
+Puttingen, but Kameke has sent an aide back at the gallop to summon up
+all supports. The regiment stacks arms for ten minutes' breathing-time
+while the cannon-thunder is borne backward on the wind to the ears of
+the soldiers. In two hours more they will be across the French
+frontier, storming furiously up the Spicheren Berg. As Hans gropes in
+his tunic pocket for his tinder-box, the little war prayer-book somehow
+gets between his fingers. He takes it out with the pipe-light, and
+finds in its pages a prayer surely suited to the situation--the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE OUTMARCHING
+
+O gracious God! I defile from out my Fatherland and from the society of
+my friends,[1] and out of the house of my father into a strange land,
+to campaign against the enemies of our king. Therefore I would cast
+myself with life and soul upon Thy divine bosom and guardianship; and I
+pray Thee, with prostrate humility, that Thou willst guide me with
+Thine eye, and overshadow me with Thy wings. Let Thine angels camp
+round about me, and Thy grace protect me in all the difficulties of the
+marches, in all camps and dangers. Give me wisdom and understanding for
+my ways and works. Give success and blessing to our ingoings and
+outcomings, so that we may do everything well, and conquer on the field
+of battle; and after victory won, turn our steps homeward as the
+heralds who announce peace. So shall we praise Thee with gladsomeness,
+O most gracious Father, for Thy dear Son's sake, Jesus Christ!
+
+[Footnote 1: Every now and then one comes across a German word
+untranslatable in its compact volume of expressiveness. How weakly am I
+forced to render _Freundschaft_ here! "Outmarching," though a literal,
+is a poor equivalent for _Ausmarsch_. In the old Scottish language we
+find an exact correspondent for _aus_; the "Furthmarch" gives the idea
+to a hair's-breadth.]
+
+It is the morning of Gravelotte. King Wilhelm has issued his laconic
+order for the day, and all know how bloody and arduous is the task
+before his host. The French tents are visible away in the distance
+yonder by the auberge of St. Hubert, and already the explosion of an
+occasional shell gives earnest of the wrath to come. The regiment in
+which Hans is a private has marched to Caulre Farm, and is halted for
+breakfast there before beginning the real battle by attacking the
+French outpost stronghold in Verneville. The tough ration beef sticks
+in poor Hans' throat. He is no coward, but he thinks of Gretchen and
+the children, and the Reserve-man draws aside into the thicket to
+commune with his own thoughts. He has already found comfort in the
+little gray volume, and so he pulls it out again to search for
+consolation in this hour of gloom. He finds what he wants in the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE BATTLE
+
+Lord of Sabaoth, with Thee is no distinction in helping in great things
+or in small. We are going now, at the orders of our commanders, to do
+battle in the field with our enemies. Let us give proof of Thy might
+and honour. Help us, Lord our God, for we trust in Thee, and in Thy
+name we go forth against the enemy. Lord Christ, Thou hast said, "I am
+with thee in the hour of need; I will pull thee out, and place thee in
+an honourable place." Bethink Thee, Lord, of Thy word, and remember Thy
+promise. Come to our aid when we are sore pressed, when the close
+grapple is imminent, when the enemy overmatches us, and we have been
+surrounded by them. Stand by us in need, for the aid of man is of no
+avail. Through Thee we will vanquish our enemies, and in Thy name we
+will tread under the foot those who have set themselves in array
+against us. They trust in their own might, and are puffed up with
+pride; but we put our trust in the Almighty God, who, without one
+stroke of the sword, canst smite into the dust not only those who are
+now formed up against us, but also the whole world. God, we await on
+Thy goodness. Blessed are those who put their trust in Thee. Help us,
+that our enemies may not get the better of us, and wax triumphant in
+their might; but strike disorder into their ranks, and smite them
+before our eyes, so that we may overwhelm them. Show us Thy goodness,
+Thou Saviour, of those who trust in Thee. Art Thou not God the Lord
+unto us who are called after Thy name? So be gracious unto us, and take
+us--life and soul--under the protection of Thy grace. And since Thou
+only knowest what is good for us, so we commend ourselves unto Thee
+without reserve, be it for life or for death. Let us live comforted;
+let us fight and endure comforted; let us die comforted, for Jesus
+Christ, Thy dear Son's sake. Amen.
+
+
+Alvensleben is sitting on his horse on the little hillock behind the
+hamlet of Flavigny, pulling his gray moustache, and praying that he
+might see the _Spitze_ of Barneckow's division show itself on the edge
+of the plain up from out the glen of Gorze. Rheinbaben's cavalry are
+half of them down, the other half of them are rallying for another
+charge to save the German centre. Hans is in the wood to the north of
+Tronville, helping to keep back Leboeuf from swamping the left flank.
+The shells from the French artillery on the Roman Road are crashing
+into the wood. The bark is jagged by the slashes of venomous chassepot
+bullets. Twice has Ladmirault come raging down from the heights of
+Bruville, twice has he been sent staggering back. Now, with strong
+reinforcements, he is preparing for a third assault. Meanwhile there is
+a lull in the battle. Hans, grimed and powder-blackened, may let the
+breech of his _Zündnadelgewehr_ cool and may wipe his blood-stained
+bayonet on the forest moss. He has a moment for a glance into the
+little gray volume, and it opens in his blackened fingers at the prayer
+
+
+IN THE AGONY OF THE BATTLE
+
+O Thou Lord and Ruler of Thine own people, awake and look now in grace
+upon Thy folk. Lord Jesus Christ, be now our Jesus, our Helper and
+Deliverer, our rock and fortress, our fiery wall, for Thy great name's
+sake. Be now our Emmanuel, God with us, God in us, God for us, God by
+the side of us. Thou mighty arm of Thy Father, let us now see Thy great
+power, so that men shall hail Thee their God, and the people may bend
+their knees unto Thee. Strengthen and guide the fighting arm of Thy
+believing soldiers, and help them, Thou invincible King of Battles.
+Gird Thyself up, Thou mighty fighting Hero; gird Thy sword on Thy
+loins, and smite our enemy hip and thigh. Art Thou not the Lord who
+directest the wars of the whole world, who breakest the bow, who
+splinterest the spear, and burnest the chariots with fire? Arouse
+Thyself, help us for Thy good will, and cast us not from Thee, God of
+our Saviour; cease Thy wrath against us, and think not for ever of our
+sins. Consider that we are all Thine handiwork; give us Thy countenance
+again, and be gracious unto us. Return unto us, O Lord, and go forth
+with our army. Restore happiness to us with Thy help and counsel, Thou
+staunch and only King of Peace, who with Thy suffering and death hast
+procured for us eternal peace. Give us the victory and an honourable
+peace, and remain with us in life and in death. Amen.
+
+
+Hans has marched from before Metz towards the valley of the Meuse, and
+the regimental camp for the night is on the slopes of the Ardennes,
+over against Chemery. The setting sun is glinting on the windows of the
+Château of Vendresse, where the German King is quartered for the night.
+The birds are chirruping in the bosky dales of the Bar. The morrow is
+fraught with the hot struggle of Sedan, but honest Hans, a simple
+private man, knows nought of strategic moves and takes his ease on the
+sward while he may. He has oiled the needle-gun and done his cooking; a
+stone is under his head and his mantle is about him. As he ponders in
+the dying rays of the setting sun there comes over him the impulse to
+have a look into the pages of the _Gebetbuch_, and he finds there this
+prayer
+
+
+IN THE BIVOUAC
+
+Heavenly Father, here I am, according to Thy divine will, in the
+service of my king and war-master, as is my duty as a soldier; and I
+thank Thee for Thy grace and mercy that Thou hast called me to the
+performance of this duty, because I am certain that it is not a sin,
+but is an obedience to Thy wish and will. But as I know and have learnt
+through Thy gracious Word that none of our good works can avail us, and
+that nobody can be saved merely as a soldier, but only as a Christian,
+I will not rely on my obedience and upon my labours, but will perform
+my duties for Thy sake, and to Thy service. I believe with all my heart
+that the innocent blood of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, which He has shed
+for me, delivers and saves me, for He was obedient to Thee even unto
+death. On this I rely, on this I live and die, on this I fight, and on
+this I do all things. Retain and increase, O God, my Father, this
+belief by Thy Holy Ghost. I commend body and soul to Thy hands. Amen.
+
+
+It is the evening of Sedan, the most momentous victory of the century.
+The bivouac fires light up the sluggish waters of the Meuse, not yet
+run clear from blood. The burning villages still blaze on the lower
+slopes of the Ardennes, and the tired victors, as they point to the
+beleaguered town, exclaim in a kind of maze of sober triumph, "_Der
+Kaiser ist da!_" Hans is joyous with his fellows, chaunts with them
+Luther's glorious hymn, _Nun Danket alle Gott_; and as the watch-fire
+burns up he rummages in the _Gebetbuch_ for something that will chime
+with the current of his thoughts. He finds it in the prayer
+
+
+AFTER THE VICTORY
+
+God of armies! Thou hast given us success and victory against our
+enemies, and hast put them to flight before us. Not unto us, O Lord,
+not unto us, but to Thy holy name alone be all the honour! Thou hast
+done great things for us, therefore our hearts are glad. Without Thy
+aid we should have been worsted; only with God could we have done
+mighty deeds and subdued the power of the enemy. The eye of our general
+Thou hast quickened and guided; Thou hast strengthened the courage of
+our army, and lent it stubborn valour. Yet not the strategy of our
+leader, nor our courage, but Thy great mercy has given us the victory.
+Lord, who are we, that we dare to stand before Thee as soldiers, and
+that our enemies yield and fly before us? We are sinners, even as they
+are, and have deserved Thy fierce wrath and punishment; but for the
+sake of Thy name Thou hast been merciful to us, and hast so marked the
+sore peril of our threatened Fatherland, and hast heard the prayer of
+our king, our people, and our army, because we called upon Thy name,
+and held out our buckler in the name of the Lord of Sabaoth. Blessed be
+Thy holy name for ever and ever. Amen.
+
+
+The surrender of the French army of Sedan has been consummated, and
+Napoleon has departed into captivity; while Hans, marching down by
+Rethel, and through grand old Rheims, and along the smiling vinebergs
+of the Marne Valley, is now _vor Paris_. He is on the _Feldwache_ in
+the forest of Bondy before Raincy, and his turn comes to go on the
+uttermost sentry post. As the snow-drift blows to one side he can see
+the French watch-fires close by him in Bondy; nearer still he sees the
+three stones and the few spadefuls of earth behind which, as he knows,
+is the French outpost sentry confronting him. The straggling rays of
+the watery moon now obscured by snow-scud, now falling on him faintly,
+could not aid him in reading even if he dared avert his eyes from his
+front. But Hans had come to know the value of the little gray volume;
+and while he lay in the _Feldwache_ waiting for his spell of sentry go,
+he had learnt by heart the following prayer
+
+
+FOR OUTPOST SENTRY DUTY
+
+Lord Jesus Christ, I stand here on the foremost fringe of the camp, and
+am holding watch against the enemy; but wert Thou, Lord, not to guard
+us, then the watcher watcheth in vain. Therefore, I pray Thee, cover us
+with Thy grace as with a shield, and let Thy holy angels be round about
+us to guard and preserve us that we be not fallen upon at unawares by
+the enemy. Let the darkness of the night not terrify me; open mine eyes
+and ears that I may observe the oncoming of the enemy from afar, and
+that I may study well the care of myself and of the whole army. Keep me
+in my duty from sleeping on my post and from false security. Let me
+continually call to Thee with my heart, and bend Thyself unto me with
+Thine almighty presence. Be Thou with me and strengthen me, life and
+soul, that in frost, in heat, in rain, in snow, in all storms, I may
+retain my strength and return in health to the _Feldwache_. So I will
+praise Thy name and laud Thy protection. Amen.
+
+
+It is the evening of the 2nd of December. Duerot has tried his hardest
+to sup in Lagny, and has been balked by German valour. But not without
+terrible loss. On the plateau and by the party wall before Villiers,
+dead and wounded Germans lie very thick. In one of the little corries
+in the vineberg poor Hans has gone down. The shells from Fort Nogent
+are bursting all around, endangering the _Krankenträger_ while
+prosecuting their duties of mercy and devotion. Hans has somehow bound
+up his shattered limb; and as he pulled his handkerchief from his
+pocket the little _Gebetbuch_ has dropped out with it. There is none on
+earth to comfort poor Hans; let him open the book and find consolation
+there in the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE SICK AND WOUNDED
+
+Dear and trusty Deliverer, Jesus Christ, I know in my necessity and
+pains no whither to flee to but to Thee, my Saviour, who hast suffered
+for me, and hast called unto all ailing and miserable ones, "Come unto
+Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
+Oh, relieve me, also, of Thy love and kindness, stretch out Thy healing
+and almighty hand, and restore me to health. Free me with Thy aid from
+my wounds and my pains, and console me with Thy grace who art
+vouchsafed to heal the broken heart, and to console all the sorrowful
+ones. Dost Thou take pleasure in our destruction? Our groaning touches
+Thee to the heart, and those whom Thou hast cast down Thou wilt lift up
+again. In Thee, Lord Jesus, I put my trust; I will not cease to
+importune Thee that Thou bringest me not to shame. Help me, save me, so
+I will praise Thee for ever. Amen.
+
+
+Alas for Gretchen and her brood! The 4th of December has dawned, and
+still Hans lies unfound in the corrie of the vineberg. He has no pain
+now, for his shattered limb has been numbed by the cruel frost. His
+eyes are waxing dim and he feels the end near at hand. The foul raven
+of the battlefield croaks above him in his enfeebled loneliness,
+impatient for its meal. The grim king of terrors is very close to thee,
+poor honest soldier of the Fatherland; but thou canst face him as
+boldly as thou hast faced the foe, with the help of the little book of
+which thy frost-chilled fingers have never lost the grip. The gruesome
+bird falls back as thou murmurest the prayer
+
+
+AT THE NEAR APPROACH OF DEATH
+
+Merciful heavenly Father, Thou God of all consolation, I thank Thee
+that Thou hast sent Thy dear Son Jesus Christ to die for me. He has
+through His death taken from death his sting, so that I have no cause
+to fear him more. In that I thank Thee, dear Father, and pray Thee
+receive my spirit in grace, as it now parts from life. Stand by me and
+hold me with Thine almighty hand, that I may conquer all the terrors of
+death. When my ears can hear no more, let Thy Spirit commune with my
+spirit, that I, as Thy child and co-heir with Christ, may speedily be
+with Jesus by Thee in heaven. When my eyes can see no more, so open my
+eyes of faith that I may then see Thy heaven open before me and the
+Lord Jesus on Thy right hand; that I may also be where He is. When my
+tongue shall refuse its utterance, then let Thy Spirit be my spokesman
+with indescribable breathings, and teach me to say with my heart,
+"Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit." Hear me, for Jesus
+Christ's sake. Amen.
+
+
+Would it harm the British soldier, think you, if in his kit there was a
+_Gebetbuch für Soldaten_?
+
+
+
+
+MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
+
+1879
+
+
+In broad essentials the marryings and givings in marriage of India
+nowadays do not greatly differ from these natural phenomena at home;
+but to use a florist's phrase, they are more inclined to "sport." The
+old days are over when consignments of damsels were made to the Indian
+marriage-market, in the assured certainty that the young ladies would
+be brides-elect before reaching the landing ghât. The increased
+facilities which improved means of transit now offer to bachelors for
+running home on short leave have resulted in making the Anglo-Indian
+"spin" rather a drug in the market; and operating in the same untoward
+direction is the growing predilection on the part of the Anglo-Indian
+bachelor for other men's wives, in preference to hampering himself with
+the encumbrance of a wife of his own. Among other social products of
+India old maids are now occasionally found; and the fair creature who
+on her first arrival would smile only on commissioners or colonels has
+been fain, after a few--yet too many--hot seasons have impaired her
+bloom and lowered her pretensions, to put up with a lieutenant or even
+with a dissenting _padre_. Slips between the cup and the lip are more
+frequent in India than in England. Loving and riding away is not wholly
+unknown in the Anglo-Indian community; and indeed, by both parties to
+the contract, engagements are frequently regarded in the mistaken light
+of ninepins. Hearts are seldom broken. At Simla during a late season a
+gallant captain persistently wore the willow till the war broke out,
+because he had been jilted in favour of a colonel; but his appetite
+rapidly recovered its tone on campaign, and he was reported to have
+reopened relations by correspondence from the tented field with a
+former object of his affections. Not long ago there arrived in an
+up-country station a box containing a wedding trousseau, which a lady
+had ordered out from home as the result of an engagement between her
+and a gallant warrior. But in the interval the warrior had departed
+elsewhere and had addressed to the lady a pleasant and affable
+communication, setting forth that there was insanity in his family and
+that he must have been labouring under an access of the family disorder
+when he had proposed to her. It was hard to get such a letter, and it
+must have been harder still for her to gaze on the abortive
+wedding-dress. But the lady did not abandon herself to despair; she
+took a practical view of the situation. She determined to keep the
+trousseau by her for six months, in case she might within that time
+achieve a fresh conquest, when it would come in happily. Should fortune
+not favour her thus far she meant to advertise the wedding-gear for
+sale.
+
+Miss Priest was no "spin" lingering on in spinsterhood against her
+will. It is true that when I saw her first she had already been "out"
+three years, but she might have been married a dozen times over had she
+chosen. I have seen many pretty faces in the fair Anglo-Indian
+sisterhood, but Miss Priest had a brightness and a sparkle that were
+all her own. At flirting, at riding, at walking, at dancing, at
+performing in amateur theatricals, at making fools of men in an airy,
+ruthless, good-hearted fashion, Miss Priest, as an old soldier might
+say, "took the right of the line." There was a fresh vitality about the
+girl that drew men and women alike to her. You met her at dawn
+cantering round Jakko on her pony. Before breakfast she had been
+rinking for an hour, with as likely as not a waltz or two thrown in.
+She never missed a picnic to Annandale, the Waterfalls, or Mashobra.
+Another turn at the Benmore rink before dinner, and for sure a dance
+after, rounded off this young lady's normal day during the Simla
+season. But if pleasure-loving, capricious, and reckless, she scraped
+through the ordeal of Simla gossip without incurring scandal. She was
+such a frank, honest girl, that malign tongues might assail her indeed,
+but ineffectually. And she had given proof that she knew how to take
+care of herself, although her only protectress was a perfectly
+inoffensive mother. On the occasion of the Prince of Wales's visit to
+Lahore, had she not boxed the ears of a burly and somewhat boorish
+swain, who had chosen the outside of an elephant as an eligible
+_locale_ for a proposal, the uncouth abruptness of which did not accord
+with her notion of the fitness of things?
+
+Miss Priest may be said to have lived in a chronic state of
+engagements. The engagements never seemed to come to anything, but that
+was on account mostly of the young lady's wilfulness. It bothered her
+to be engaged to the same man for more than from a week to ten days on
+end. No bones were broken; the gentleman resigned the position at her
+behest, and she would genially dance with him the same night. Malice
+and heartburning were out of the question with a lissom, winsome,
+witching fairy like this, who played with her life as a child does with
+soap-bubbles, and who was as elusory and irresponsible as a summer-day
+rainbow. But one season at Mussoorie Miss Priest contracted an
+engagement somewhat less evanescent. Mussoorie of all Himalayan
+hill-stations is the most demure and proper. Simla occasionally is
+convulsed by scandals, although dispassionate inquiry invariably proves
+that there is nothing in them. The hot blood of the quick and fervid
+Punjaub--casual observers have called the Punjaub stupid, but the
+remark applies only to its officials--is apt to stir the current of
+life at Murree. The chiefs of the North-West are invariably so
+intolerably proper that occasional revolt from their austerity is all
+but forced on Nynee Tal, the sanatorium of that province. But
+Mussoorie, undisturbed by the presence of frolicsome viceroys or
+austere lieutenant-governors, is a limpid pool of pleasant propriety.
+It is not so much that it is decorous as that it is genuinely good; it
+is a favourite resort of clergymen and of clergymen's wives. It was at
+Mussoorie that Miss Priest met Captain Hambleton, a gallant gunner.
+They danced together at the Assembly Rooms; they rode in company round
+the Camel's Back; they went to the same picnics at "The Glen." The
+captain proposed and was accepted. For about the nineteenth time Miss
+Priest was an engaged young lady. And Captain Hambleton was a lover of
+rather a different stamp from the men with whom her name previously had
+been nominally coupled. He was in love and he was a gentleman; he had
+proposed to the girl, not that he and she should be merely engaged but
+that they should be married also. This view of the subject was novel to
+Miss Priest and at first she thought it rather a bore; but the captain
+pegged away and gradually the lady came rather to relish the situation.
+Men and women concurred that the wayward pinions of the fair Bella were
+at last trimmed, if not clipped; and to do her justice the general
+opinion was that, once married, she would make an excellent wife. As
+the close of the Mussoorie season approached the invitations went out
+for Bella Priest's wedding, and for "cake and wine afterwards at the
+house." The wedding-breakfast is a comparatively rare _tamasha_ in
+India; the above is the formula of the usual invitation at the
+hill-stations.
+
+It happened that just two days before the day fixed for the marriage of
+Miss Priest and Captain Hambleton, there was a fancy-dress ball in the
+Assembly Rooms at Mussoorie. I think that as a rule fancy-dress balls
+are greater successes in India than at home. People in India give their
+minds more to the selection and to the elaboration of costumes; and
+there is less of that _mauvaise honte_ when masquerading in fancy
+costume, which makes a ball of this description at home so wooden and
+wanting in go. At a fancy ball in India "the devil" acts accordingly,
+and manages his tail with adroitness and grace. It is a fact that at a
+recent fancy-dress ball in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a
+lady who appeared as "chess," with the chess-men which had formed her
+head-dress. This Mussoorie ball, being the last of the season, was to
+excel all its predecessors in inventive variety. A _padre's_ wife
+conceived the bright idea of appearing as Eve; and only abandoned the
+notion on finding that, no matter what species of thread she used, it
+tore the fig-leaves--a result which, besides causing her a
+disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by engendering doubts as
+to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the creation. Miss Priest
+determined to go to this ball, although doing so under the
+circumstances was scarcely in accordance with the _convenances_; but
+she was a girl very much addicted to having her own way. Captain
+Hambleton did not wish her to go, and there was a temporary coolness
+between the two on the subject; but he yielded and they made it up. The
+principle as to her going once established, Miss Priest's next task was
+to set about the invention of a costume. It was to be her last effort
+as a "spin"; and she determined it should be worthy of her reputation
+for brilliant inventiveness. She had shone as a _Vivandière_, as the
+Daughter of the Regiment, as a Greek Slave, Grace Darling, and so
+forth, times out of number; but those characters were stale. Miss
+Priest had a form of supple rounded grace, nor had Diana shapelier
+limbs. A great inspiration came to her as she sauntered pondering on
+the Mall. Let her go as Ariel, all gauze, flesh-tints, and natural
+curves. She hailed the happy thought and invested in countless yards of
+gauze. She had the tights already by her.
+
+Now Miss Priest, knowing the idiosyncrasy of Captain Hambleton, had
+little doubt that he would put his foot down upon Ariel. But she knew
+he loved her, and with characteristic recklessness determined to trust
+to that and to luck. She too loved him, even better, perhaps, than
+Ariel; but she hoped to keep both the captain and the character. She
+did not, however, tell him of her design, waiting perhaps for a
+favourable opportunity. But even in Arcadian Mussoorie there are the
+"d----d good-natured friends" of whom Byron wrote; and one of those--of
+course it was a woman--told Captain Hambleton of the character in which
+Miss Priest intended to appear at the fancy ball. The captain was a
+headstrong sort of man--what in India is called _zubburdustee_. Instead
+of calling on the girl and talking to her as a wise man would have
+done, he sat down and wrote her a terse letter forbidding her to appear
+as Ariel, and adding that if she should persist in doing so their
+engagement must be considered at an end. Miss Priest naturally fired
+up. Strangely enough, being a woman, she did not reply to the captain's
+letter; but when the evening of the ball came, she duly appeared as
+Ariel with rather less gauze about her shapely limbs than had been her
+original intention. She created an immense sensation. Some of the
+ladies frowned, others turned up their noses, yet others tucked in
+their skirts when she approached; and all vowed that they would decline
+to touch Miss Priest's hand in the quadrille. Miss Priest did not care
+a jot for these demonstrations, and she never danced square dances.
+Among the gentlemen she created a perfect furore.
+
+Captain Hambleton was present at the ball. For the greater part of the
+evening he stood near the door with his eye fixed on Miss Priest,
+apparently rather in sorrow than in anger. His gaze seemed but to
+stimulate her to more vivacious flirtation; and she "carried on above a
+bit," as a cynical subaltern remarked, with the gallant major to whom
+she had been penultimately engaged. Toward the close of the evening
+Captain Hambleton relinquished his post of observation, seemed to
+accept the situation, and was observed at supper-time paying marked
+attention to a married lady with whom his name had been to some extent
+coupled not long before his engagement to Miss Priest.
+
+Next morning Miss Priest took time by the forelock. She waited for no
+further communication from Captain Hambleton; he had already sent his
+ultimatum and she had dared her fate. The morrow was the day fixed for
+the marriage. Many people had been bidden. Mussoorie, including
+Landour, is a large station, and the postal delivery of letters is not
+particularly punctual. So she adopted a plan for warning off the
+wedding-guests identical with that employed in Indian stations for
+circulating notifications as to lawn-tennis gatherings and unimportant
+intimations generally. At the head of the paper is written the
+notification, underneath are the names of the persons concerned. The
+document is intrusted to a messenger known as a _chuprassee_, who goes
+away on his circuit; and each person writes "Seen" opposite his or her
+name in testimony of being posted in the intelligence conveyed in the
+notification. Miss Priest divided the invited guests into four rounds
+and despatched four _chuprassees_, each bearing a document curtly
+announcing that "Miss Priest's marriage will not come off as arranged,
+and the invitations therefore are to be regarded as cancelled."
+
+Miss Priest had no fortune, and her mother was by no means wealthy. It
+may seem strange to English readers--not nearly so much so, however, as
+to Anglo-Indian ones--that Captain Hambleton had thought it a graceful
+and kindly attention to provide the wedding-cake. It had reached him
+across the hills from Peliti's the night of the ball, and now here it
+was on his hands--a great white elephant. Whether in the hope that it
+might be regarded as an olive-branch, whether that he burned to be rid
+of it somehow, or whether, knowing that Miss Priest was bound to get
+married some day and thinking that it would be a convenience if she had
+a bridecake by her handy for the occasion, there is no evidence.
+Anyhow, he sent it to Mrs. Priest with his compliments. That very
+sensible woman did not send it back with a cutting message, as some
+people would have done. Having considerable Indian experience, she had
+learned practical wisdom and the short-sighted folly of cutting
+messages. She kept the bridecake, and enclosed to the gallant captain
+Gosslett's bill for the dozen of simkin that excellent firm had sent in
+to wash it down wherewithal.
+
+Bridecakes are bores to carry about from place to place, and Miss
+Priest and her mother were rather birds of passage. Peliti declined to
+take this particular bridecake back, for all Simla had seen it in his
+window and he saw no possibility of "working it in." So the Priests,
+mother and daughter, determined to realise on it in a somewhat original
+and indeed cynical fashion. The cake was put up to be raffled for.
+
+All the station took tickets for the fun of the thing. Captain
+Hambleton was anxious to show that there was no ill-feeling, and did
+not find himself so unhappy as he had expected--perhaps from the
+_redintegratio amoris_ in another quarter; so he took his ticket in the
+raffle like other people. It is needless to say that he won; and the
+cake duly came back to him.
+
+Had Captain Hambleton been a superstitious man, he might have regarded
+this strange occurrence as indicating that the Fates willed it that he
+should compass somehow a union with Miss Priest. But the captain had no
+superstition in his nature; and, indeed, had begun to think that he was
+well out of it; besides which it was currently reported that Miss
+Priest had already re-engaged herself to another man. But the bridecake
+was upon him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what
+the devil to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody
+would take tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the _khud_
+(_Anglice_, precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he
+reflected that this would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate
+soreness on his part. It cost him a good many pegs before he thought
+the matter out in all its bearings, for, as has been said, he was a
+gunner, but as he sauntered away from the club in the small hours a
+happy thought came to him.
+
+He would give a picnic at which the bogey bridecake should figure
+conspicuously, and then be laid finally by the process of demolition.
+His leave was nearly up; he had experienced much hospitality and a
+picnic would be a graceful and genial acknowledgment thereof. And he
+would ask the Priests just like other people, and no doubt they would
+enter into the spirit of the thing and not send a "decline." Bella, he
+knew, liked picnics nearly as well as balls, and it must be a powerful
+reason indeed that would keep her away from either.
+
+Captain Hambleton's picnic was the last of the season, and everybody
+called it the brightest. "The Glen" resounded to the laughter at
+tiffin, and the shades of night were falling ere stray couples turned
+up from its more sequestered recesses. Amid loud cheers Miss Priest,
+although still Miss Priest, cut up her own bridecake with a serene
+equanimity that proved the charming sweetness of her disposition. There
+was no marriage-bell yet all went merry as a marriage-bell, which is
+occasionally rather a sombre tintinnabulation; and the _débris_ of the
+bridecake finally fell to the sweeper.
+
+I would fain that it were possible, having a regard to truth, to round
+off this little story prettily by telling how in a glade of "The Glen"
+after the demolition of the bridecake, Miss Priest and the captain
+"squared matters," were duly married and lived happily ever after, as
+the story-books say. But this consummation was not attained. Miss
+Priest indeed was in the glade, but it was not with the captain, or at
+least this particular captain; and as for him, he spent the afternoon
+placidly smoking cigarettes as he lay at the feet of his married
+consoler. To the best of my knowledge Miss Priest is Miss Priest still.
+
+
+
+
+A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
+
+
+Referring to a particular phase of this memorable combat, Mr. Kinglake
+wrote: "The question is not ripe for conclusive decision; some of those
+who, as is supposed, might throw much light upon it, have hitherto
+maintained silence." It was in 1868 that the fourth volume--the
+Balaclava volume--of Mr. Kinglake's History was published. Since he
+wrote, singularly few of those who could throw light on obscure points
+of the battle have broken silence. Lord George Paget's Journal
+furnished little fresh information, since Mr. Kinglake had previously
+used it extensively. There is but a spark or two of new light in Sir
+Edward Hamley's more recent compendium. As the years roll on the number
+of survivors diminishes in an increasing ratio, nor does one hear of
+anything valuable left behind by those who fall out of the thinning
+ranks. The reader of the period, in default of any other authority,
+betakes himself to Kinglake. There are those who term Kinglake's
+volumes romance rather than history--or, more mildly, the romance of
+history. But this is unjust and untrue. It would be impertinent to
+speak of his style; that gift apart, his quest for accurate information
+was singularly painstaking, searching, and scrupulous. Yet it cannot be
+said that he was always well served. He had perforce to lean on the
+statements of men who were partisans, writing as he did so near his
+period that nearly all men charged with information were partisans.
+British officers are not given to thrusting on a chronicler tales of
+their own prowess. But _esprit de corps_ in our service is so
+strong--and, spite of its incidental failings that are almost merits
+what lover of his country could wish to see it weakened?--that men of
+otherwise implicit veracity will strain truth, and that is a weak
+phrase, to exalt the conduct of their comrades and their corps. No
+doubt Mr. Kinglake occasionally suffered because of this propensity;
+and, with every respect, his literary _coup d'oeil_, except as regards
+the Alma where he saw for himself, and Inkerman where no _coup d'oeil_
+was possible, was somewhat impaired by his having to make his picture
+of battle a mosaic, each fragment contributed by a distinct actor
+concentrated on his own particular bit of fighting. If ever military
+history becomes a fine art we may find the intending historian, alive
+to the proverb that "onlookers see most of the game," detailing capable
+persons with something of the duty of the subordinate umpire of a sham
+fight, to be answerable each for a given section of the field, the
+historian himself acting as the correlative of the umpire-in-chief.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF BALACLAVA PLAIN.
+
+EXPLANATIONS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Figures 1 to 6 indicate Redoubts.
+
+A. Point of collision.
+
+B. "C" Troop R.H.A.'s position during combat, in support Heavy Cavalry.
+
+C. "C" Troop in action against fugitive Russian Cavalry about D., range
+about 750 yards.
+
+E. Lord Lucan's position watching advance of Russian Cavalry mass.
+
+F. Position "C" Troop when approached by Cardigan and Paget after Light
+Cavalry charge.
+
+G. Position "C" Troop in support Light Cavalry charge.
+
+H. Russian Cavalry mass advancing at trot up "North" valley.
+
+HH. Russian Cavalry General and Staff trotting along Causeway heights,
+with view into both valleys.
+
+K. Line of Light Cavalry charge.
+
+L. Light Brigade during Heavy Cavalry charge.
+
+M. "I" Troop R.H.A. during ditto.
+
+N. Lord Raglan's position (approximate).
+
+O. Scarlett's five squadrons beginning their advance.
+
+P. Russian Cavalry mass halted.]
+
+It is true that the battle of Balaclava was fought to "a gallery"
+consisting of the gazers who looked down into the plain from the upland
+of the Chersonese. But of close and virtually independent spectators of
+the battle's most thrilling episodes, so near the climax of the Heavy
+Cavalry charge that they heard the clash of the sabres, so close to the
+lip of the Valley of Death that they discerned the wounds of our
+stricken troopers who strewed its sward and could greet and be greeted
+by the broken groups that rode back out of the "mouth of hell," there
+was but one small body of people. This body consisted of the officers
+and men of "C" Troop, Royal Horse Artillery. "C" Troop had been
+encamped from 1st October until the morning of the battle close to the
+Light division, in that section of the British position known as the
+Right Attack. When the fighting began in the Balaclava plain on the
+morning of the 25th, it promptly started for the scene of action.
+Pursuing the nearest way to the plain by the Woronzoff road, at the
+point known as the "Cutting" it received an order from Lord Raglan to
+take a more circuitous route, as by the more direct one it was
+following it might become exposed to fire from Russian cannon on the
+Fedoukine heights. Pursuing the circuitous route it came out into the
+plain through the "Col" then known as the "Barrier," crossed the
+"South" or "Inner" valley, and reached the left rear of Scarlett's
+squadrons formed up for the Heavy Cavalry charge. Here it received an
+order from Brigadier-General Strangways, who commanded the Artillery,
+with which it could not comply; and thenceforward "C" Troop throughout
+the day acted independently, at the discretion of its enterprising and
+self-reliant commander. What it saw and what it did are recorded in a
+couple of chapters of a book entitled _From Coruña to Sevastopol_.
+[Footnote: _From Coruña to Sevastopol_: The History of "C" Battery, "A"
+Brigade (late "C" Troop), Royal Horse Artillery. W.H. Allen and Co.]
+This volume was published some years ago, but the interesting and vivid
+details given in its pages of the Balaclava combats and the light it
+throws on many obscure incidents of the day have been strangely
+overlooked. The author of the chapters was an officer in the Troop
+whose experiences he shared and describes, and is a man well known in
+the service to be possessed of acute observation, strong memory, and
+implicit veracity. The present writer has been favoured by this officer
+with much information supplementary to that given in his published
+chapters, which is embodied in the following account throughout which
+the officer will be designated as "the 'C' Troop chronicler."
+
+The "Plain of Balaclava" is divided into two distinct valleys by a low
+ridge known as the "Causeway Heights," which bisects it in the
+direction of its length and is everywhere easily practicable for all
+arms. The valley nearest to the sea and the town of Balaclava has been
+variously termed the "South" and the "Inner" valley; it was on the
+slope descending to it from the ridge that our Heavy Cavalry won their
+success; the valley beyond the ridge is the "North" or "Outer" valley,
+down which, their faces set eastward, sped to glorious disaster the
+"noble six hundred" of the Light Brigade. On the north the plain is
+bounded by the Fedoukine heights; on the west by the steep face of the
+Chersonese upland whereon was the allied main position before
+Sevastopol during the siege; on the south by the broken ground between
+the plain and the sea; on the east by the River Tchernaya and the
+Kamara hills. Our weakness in the plain invited attack. At Kadiköi, on
+its southern verge, Sir Colin Campbell covered Balaclava with a
+Scottish regiment, a Field battery, and some Turks. Near the western
+end of the South valley were the camps of the cavalry division.
+Straggled along the Causeway heights was a series of weak earthworks
+whose total armament consisted of nine iron guns, and among which were
+distributed some six or seven battalions of Turkish infantry. At
+daybreak of 25th October the Russian General Liprandi with a force of
+22,000 infantry, 3300 cavalry, and 78 guns, took the offensive by
+driving the Turkish garrisons out of these earthworks in succession,
+beginning with the most easterly--No. 1, known as "Canrobert's Hill."
+The Turks holding it fought well and stood a storm and heavy loss
+before they were expelled. The other earthworks fell with less and less
+resistance, and the first three, with seven out of their nine guns,
+remained in the Russian possession.
+
+During the morning, while the Russians were taking the earthworks along
+the ridge, our two cavalry brigades, in the words of General Hamley,
+had been manoeuvring so as to threaten the flanks of any force which
+might approach Balaclava, without committing themselves to an action in
+which they would have been without the support of infantry. Ultimately,
+until his infantry should become available, Lord Raglan drew in the
+cavalry division to a position on the left of redoubt No. 6, near the
+foot of the Chersonese upland.
+
+While it was temporarily quiescent there Liprandi was engaging in an
+operation of enterprise rare in the record of Russian cavalry. General
+Ryjoff at the head of a great body of horse started on an advance up
+the North valley. Presently he detached four squadrons to his left,
+which moved toward where Sir Colin Campbell was in position at the head
+of the Kadiköi gorge, was repulsed without difficulty by that soldier's
+fire, and rode back whence it had come. The main body of Russian horse,
+computed by unimaginative authorities to be about 2000 strong,
+continued up the valley till it was about abreast of redoubt No. 4
+[Footnote: See Map.], when it halted; checked apparently, writes
+Kinglake, by the fire of two guns from a battery on the edge of the
+upland. The "C" Troop chronicler states that in addition to "a few"
+shots fired by this battery (manned by Turks), the guns of "I" troop
+R.H.A., temporarily stationed in a little hollow in front of the Light
+Brigade [Footnote: See Map.], fired rapidly one round each,
+"haphazard," over the high ground in their front. General Hamley
+assigns no ground for the Russian halt, but mentions that just at the
+moment of collision between our Heavies and the Russian mass "three
+guns" on the edge of the upland were fired on the latter. From whatever
+cause, the Russian cavalry wheeled obliquely to the leftward, crossed
+the Causeway heights about redoubt No. 5, and began to descend the
+slope of the South valley. Kinglake heard of no ground for believing
+that the Russian horse thus wheeling southward, were cognisant of the
+presence of the Heavies in the valley they were entering. But the "C"
+Troop chronicler states that as the Troop was crossing the plain a few
+Russian horsemen were seen by it trotting fast along the top of the
+ridge [Footnote: See Map.], who, when almost immediately afterwards the
+head of the Russian column showed itself on the skyline, were set down
+as the General commanding it and his staff.
+
+Kinglake observes that the Russians have declared their object in this
+operation to have been the destruction of a non-existent artillery park
+near Kadiköi, while some of our people imagined it to have been a real
+attempt on Balaclava. But up the centre of the North valley was neither
+the directest nor the safest way to Kadiköi, much less to Balaclava. Is
+it not more probable that the enterprise was of the nature merely of a
+sort of "snap-offensive"; while as yet the allied infantry visibly
+pouring down the slopes of the upland were innocuous because of
+distance and while the sole occupants of the plain were a couple of
+weak cavalry brigades and a single horse battery? Ryjoff on the ridge
+could see in his front at least portions of the Light Brigade; its fire
+told him the horse battery was thereabouts too, and there were those
+shots from the cannon on the upland. Is it not feasible that, looking
+down on his left to Scarlett's poor six squadrons--his two following
+regiments were then some distance off--and seeing those squadrons as
+yet without accompanying artillery, he should have judged them his
+easier quarry and ordered the wheel that should bring his avalanche
+down on them?
+
+Kinglake recounts how, while our cavalry division yet stood intact near
+the foot of the upland, Lord Raglan had noticed the instability of the
+Turks under Campbell's command at Kadiköi and had sent Lord Lucan
+directions to move down eight squadrons of Heavies to support them; how
+Scarlett started with the Inniskillings, Greys, and Fifth Dragoon
+Guards, numbering six squadrons, to be followed by the two squadrons of
+the Royals; how the march toward Kadiköi was proceeding along the South
+valley, when all of a sudden Elliot, General Scarlett's aide-de-camp,
+glancing up leftward at the ridge "saw its top fretted with lances, and
+in another moment the skyline broken by evident squadrons of horse."
+Then, Kinglake proceeds, Scarlett's resolve was instantaneous; he gave
+the command "Left wheel into line!" and confronted the mass gathering
+into sight over against him. Soon after Scarlett had started Lord Lucan
+had learned of the advance up the North valley of the great mass of
+Russian cavalry, which he had presently descried himself, as also its
+change of direction southward across the Causeway ridge; and after
+giving Lord Cardigan "parting instructions" which that officer
+construed into compulsory inactivity on his part when a great
+opportunity presented itself, he had galloped off at speed to overtake
+Scarlett and give him directions for prompt conflict with the Russian
+cavalry. Thus far Kinglake.
+
+The testimony of the "C" Troop chronicler differs from the above
+statement in every detail. He significantly points out that Kinglake
+does not, as is his custom, quote the words of Lord Raglan's order
+directing the march of the Heavies to Kadiköi. His averment is to the
+following effect. When the cavalry division after its manoeuvring of
+the morning was retiring by Lord Raglan's command along the South
+valley toward the foot of the upland, it was followed as closely as
+they dared by some Cossacks who busied themselves in spearing and
+capturing the unfortunate Turks flying from the ridge toward Kadiköi
+athwart the rear of the British squadrons. Eventually the Cossacks
+reached the camp of the Light Brigade and set about stabbing and
+hacking at the sick and non-effective horses left standing at the
+picket-lines. Lord Raglan from his commanding position on the upland
+saw those Cossacks working mischief in our lines, and sent a message to
+Lord Lucan "to take some cavalry forward and protect the camp from
+being destroyed." The "C" Troop chronicler has in his possession a
+letter from the actual bearer of this message, to the effect that he
+duly delivered it to Lord Lucan and that consequent on it his lordship
+moved forward some heavy cavalry into the plain toward the
+picket-lines. Testimony to be presently noted will indicate the
+importance of this statement. The chronicler denies that Lord Lucan, as
+Kinglake states, galloped after Scarlett after having given Lord
+Cardigan his "parting instructions." No doubt he did give those
+instructions, when apprised by Lord Raglan's aide-de-camp of the
+threatening advance of Russian horse. But what he then did, assured as
+he was of the stationary attitude of the heavy squadrons sent out to
+protect the camp, was to ride forward along the ridge-line to discern
+for himself where, if indeed anywhere, the Russians were intending to
+strike. He most daringly remained at a forward and commanding point of
+the ridge [Footnote: See Map.] until actually chased off his ground by
+the van of the Russian wheel, and he then galloped straight down the
+slope to join Scarlett drawing out his squadrons for the conflict with
+the Russian mass whose leading files Elliot's keen eye had discerned on
+the skyline.
+
+If Kinglake were right as to his alleged movement of the Heavies toward
+Kadiköi and its sudden arrestment because of Elliot's discovery, "C"
+Troop, as it approached them, would have seen the squadrons still in
+motion. But the chronicler testifies that "C" Troop, while moving to
+the scene of action and when still more than a mile and a half distant
+(at least fifteen minutes at the pace the weakened gun-teams
+travelled), had a full view of the South valley. And it then saw five
+squadrons of heavy cavalry thus early halted in the plain near the
+cavalry picket-lines, fronting towards the ridge and apparently
+perfectly dressed--the Greys (two squadrons deep) in the centre,
+recognised by their bearskins; a helmeted regiment (also two squadrons
+deep) on the left (afterwards known to be the 5th Dragoon Guards); and
+one helmeted squadron on the right (2nd squadron Inniskillings). A
+sixth squadron (1st Inniskillings) was visible some distance to the
+right rear and it was also fronting towards the ridge. This force, so
+and thus early positioned, consisted, avers the chronicler, of the
+identical troops which Kinglake erroneously describes as straggling
+hurriedly into deployment under the urgency of Scarlett and Lucan to
+cope with the suddenly disclosed adversary.
+
+When "C" Troop and its chronicler reached the rear of the formed-up
+squadrons they were found in the same formation as when first observed,
+but the whole had in the interval been moved somewhat to the right,
+farther into the plain, with intent no doubt to be clear of obstacles
+on the previous front. Kinglake speaks throughout of the force that
+first charged under Scarlett--"Scarlett's three hundred," as consisting
+of three squadrons ranked thus:--
+
+
+  -------------------  -------------------    -------------------
+       2nd squad.           lst squad.      2nd squad. Inniskillings
+
+        \__________________________/
+                    Greys.
+
+
+And, although his words are not so clear as usual, he appears to
+believe that the 5th Dragoon Guards, whom in his plan he places some
+little distance to the left rear of the Greys, were actually the last
+to move to the attack, of all the five regiments participating in the
+heavy cavalry onslaught. The "C" Troop chronicler, noting details, be
+it remembered, from his position immediately in rear of the cavalry
+force which first charged, describes its composition and formation
+thus:--
+
+
+     -------------------          -------------------  -------------------
+  Front squad. 5th Dr. Guards.     1st squad. Greys.        2nd squad.
+                                                           Inniskillings.
+     -------------------          -------------------
+  Rear squad. 5th Dr. Guards.      2nd squad. Greys.
+
+
+in all five squadrons, instead of Mr. Kinglake's three. Nor, according
+to the chronicler, did the three squadrons in first line start
+simultaneously, as Kinglake distinctly conveys. The leading squadron of
+the Greys moved off first, and just as it was breaking into a gallop
+was temporarily hampered by the swerving of the horse of Colonel
+Griffiths, who was struck in the head by a bullet from the halted
+Russians' carbine fire. Next moved, almost simultaneously, the 2nd
+squadron Inniskillings and the front squadron 5th Dragoon Guards;
+thirdly, the 2nd squadron Greys, and finally the rear squadron 5th
+Dragoon Guards. Lord Lucan is represented as having been "personally
+concerned in or approving of everything connected with the five
+squadrons at this moment," galloping to each in succession, giving
+orders when and in what sequence it was to start, what section of the
+Russian front it was to strike, and exerting himself to the utmost to
+have everything fully understood. His errors were in omitting to call
+in the outlying regiments of the brigade, and either now--or earlier
+before he left the ridge, specifically to order Lord Cardigan to fall
+on the flank of the Russians at the moment when their front should be
+_aux prises_ with Scarlett's heavy squadrons. "C" Troop's position was
+such that it could command, over the heads of the stationary Heavies,
+the gradual slope up to the Russian front, and every detail of the
+charge was under its eyes. Scarlett's burnished helmet and plain blue
+coat were conspicuous in front. The Troop also had the opportunity of
+making a deliberate study of the Russian cavalry both before and during
+the combat.
+
+Its front had the appearance of three strong squadrons; its formation
+was either close or quarter distance column--probably the former, since
+the column could nowhere be seen through from front to rear; its depth
+halted was about the same as its breadth of front; its pace across the
+ridge was a sharp trot and its discipline was indicated by the
+smartness with which it took ground to the left. Kinglake describes the
+serried mass as encircled by a loose fringe of satellites, but the "C"
+Troop chronicler saw neither skirmishers, flankers, nor scouts; and no
+guns were discerned or heard, although General Hamley says that as the
+huge cohort swept down batteries darted out from it and threw shells
+against the troops on the upland. No Lancers were seen with the column,
+certainly none with pennons. The "partial deployment" of which Kinglake
+speaks, consisting of "wings or forearms" devised to cover the flanks
+or fold inwards on the front, did not make itself apparent to any
+observer of "C" Troop; and indeed the present writer never knew a
+Russian who had heard of it, the species of formation adumbrated, so
+far as he is aware, being confined to Zulu impis. It was noticed, and
+this is not rare, that on the halt the centre pulled up a little
+earlier than the flanks, so that the latter were somewhat prolonged and
+advanced. The halt was quite brief and a slower advance ensued without
+correction of the frontal dressing. Presently there was another halt
+and some pistol or carbine fire from the central squadron on the
+advancing first squadron of the Greys. Kinglake makes the Russian front
+meet our assault halted, but the "C" Troop chronicler declares that
+when the collision occurred the mass were actually moving forward but
+at "a pace so slow that it could hardly be called a trot." General
+Hamley describes "the impetus of the enemy's column carrying it on, and
+pressing our combatants back for a short space," and the chronicler
+speaks of the Russians as surging forward after the impact, but without
+bearing back our people.
+
+It is extremely difficult for the reader of a detailed narrative of a
+combat that may become a landmark in the military history of a nation,
+to realise that it may have been fought and finished in no longer time
+than it has taken him to read the few paragraphs of introductory
+matter. Mr. Kinglake has devoted a whole volume to the battle of
+Balaclava, and four-fifths of it deals with the two cavalry
+fights--Scarlett's charge, and the charge of the Light Brigade. The
+latter deed was enacted from start to finish within the space of
+five-and-twenty minutes; as regards the former, from the first
+appearance of the Russian troopers on the skyline to their defeat and
+flight a period of eight minutes is the outside calculation. General
+Hamley, an eyewitness, says "some four or five minutes." During those
+minutes "C" Troop R.H.A. under Brandling's shrewd and independent
+guidance was moving slowly forward on the right of the ground that had
+been covered by the charging Heavies. There was no opportunity for its
+intervention while the melley lasted. Even when the Russian squadrons
+broke it could not for the moment act while the redcoats were still
+blended with the gray. But Brandling saw that his chance was nigh; he
+galloped forward to the point marked C on the map, unlimbered, and
+stood intent. Kinglake states that the fugitive Russians, hanging
+together as closely as they could, retreated by the way they had come
+and Hamley describes them as vanishing beyond the ridge. Kinglake also
+says that "I" Troop R.H.A. (accompanying the Light Brigade) fired a few
+shots at the retreating horsemen, against whom Barker's battery, from
+its position near Kadiköi, also came into action. The "C" Troop
+chronicler traverses those statements. His testimony is that the
+Russian line of retreat was by their left rear along the slope of the
+South valley, and not immediately over the ridge; that the mass was
+spread over acres of ground; and that their officers were trying to
+rally the men and had actually got some ranks formed, when "C" Troop
+opened fire from about point C in the general direction of point D. "I"
+Troop was out of sight, he says, and Barker out of range; neither came
+into action; but "C" Troop, of whose presence in the field Kinglake
+apparently was unaware, fired forty-nine shot and shells, broke up the
+attempted rally, and punished the Russians severely. The range was
+about 750 paces.
+
+At the time when the Light Brigade started on its "mad-brained" charge
+down the North valley, "C" Troop was halted dismounted on the slope of
+the South valley a little below redoubt No. 5. In rear of it was the
+Heavy Cavalry Brigade, halted on the scene of its recent victorious
+combat. Lord Lucan was some little distance to the front. "C" Troop
+presently saw him trot away over the ridge in the direction of the
+Light Brigade, a scrap of paper in his hand at which he kept
+looking--doubtless the memorable order which Nolan had just brought
+him--and a group of staff officers, among whom was Nolan, behind him.
+Out of curiosity Brandling with his trumpeter rode up to the crest,
+whence he commanded a view into the North valley. By and by some of the
+Heavies were moved over the crest, no doubt the Royals and Greys which
+Scarlett was to lead forward in support of the Light Brigade. All was
+still quiet but for an occasional shot from a Russian battery about
+redoubt No. 2, when suddenly Brandling came galloping back shouting
+"Mount! mount!" and telling his officers as he came in that the Light
+Cavalry had begun an advance on the other side of the ridge. But that
+he had happened to ride to the crest, the charge of the Light Brigade
+would have begun and ended without the knowledge of "C" Troop. No order
+from any source reached it, and Brandling, acting on his own
+initiative, took his guns rapidly to the front along the inner edge of
+the ridge and unlimbered at point G. He durst not fire into the bottom
+of the North valley where our light horsemen were mixed up with the
+enemy; all the diversion he could effect was to open on the Russian
+cannon-smoke directly in his front, about redoubt No. 2. Even from this
+he had soon to desist, being without support and threatened by the
+Russian cavalry, and he retired by the way he had advanced, to point F,
+where the troop halted near the Heavies, whose advance Lord Lucan had
+arrested resolving that they at all events should not be destroyed.
+These regiments had been moved toward the ridge out of the line of fire
+in the North valley, and were kept shifting their position and
+gradually retiring, suffering frequent casualties from the Russian
+artillery about redoubt No. 2 until they finally halted near the crest
+in the vicinity of "C" Troop's latest position at point F.
+
+At this point only the left-hand gun of "C" Troop was on the crest,
+with a view into the North valley; the other guns were on the southern
+slope. But little had been previously seen of the terrible and glorious
+experiences of the Light Brigade; and now what was witnessed was not
+the glory but the horror of battle. For the wounded of the charge were
+passing to the rear, shattered and maimed, some staggering on foot,
+others reeling in their saddles, calling to the gunners and the Heavies
+to look at a "poor broken leg" or a dangling arm. Brandling and his
+officers held their flasks to the poor fellows' mouths as long as the
+contents lasted. The "C" Troop chronicler, whose narrative I have been
+following, tells how Captain Morris, who commanded the 17th Lancers,
+was carried past the front of the troop towards Kadiköi, dreadfully
+wounded about the head and calling loudly: "Lord, have mercy on my
+soul!" Kinglake gives a wholly different account of Captain Morris's
+removal from the field; but the "C" Troop chronicler is quite firm on
+his version, and explains that the 17th Lancers and "C" Troop having
+lain together shortly before the war all the people of the latter knew
+and identified Captain Morris.
+
+Balaclava is rather an old story now, and some readers may require to
+be reminded that the Light Brigade charged in two lines, the first line
+being led by Lord Cardigan, the second by Lord George Paget; that the
+first line rode into the Russian batteries considerably in advance of
+the second, the latter having advanced at a more measured pace; and
+that the second line, with sore diminished ranks and accompanied by a
+couple of groups rather than detachments of the first, came back later
+than did the few survivors of Cardigan's regiments other than the
+groups referred to. The aspersion on Cardigan was that he returned
+prematurely, instead of remaining to share the fortunes of the second
+line of his brigade, and this he did not deny. Kinglake's statement is
+that "he rode back alone at a pace decorously slow, towards the spot
+where Scarlett was halted." He adds that General Scarlett maintained
+that Lord Lucan was present at the time; but Lord Lucan's averment was
+that Lord Cardigan did not approach him until afterwards when all was
+over. Kinglake relates further that when Lord George Paget came back at
+the head of the last detachment, some officers rode forward to greet
+him one of whom was Lord Cardigan. Seeing him approach composedly from
+the rear Lord George exclaimed: "Halloa, Lord Cardigan, weren't you
+there?" to which, according to one version of the story, Cardigan
+replied: "Wasn't I, though? Here, Jenyns, didn't you see me at the
+guns?"
+
+The reasonable inferences from Kinglake are that Cardigan's first halt
+was made and that his earliest remarks were uttered when he reached
+Scarlett, and that he and Paget met after the charge for the first time
+when the alleged question and answer passed.
+
+The "C" Troop chronicler's narrative of events is right in the teeth of
+these inferences. While the troop was halted at point F and after a
+great many wounded and disabled men had already passed it going to the
+rear, Lord Cardigan came riding by at a "quiet pace" close under the
+crest. He had passed the troop on his left for several horse-lengths,
+when he came back and halted within a yard or two of the left-hand gun,
+the only one fairly on the crest. He was not alone, but attended by
+Cornet Yates of his own old regiment the 11th Hussars, a recently
+commissioned ranker. "Lord Cardigan was in the full dress _pelisse_
+(buttoned) of the 11th Hussars, and he rode a chestnut horse very
+distinctly marked and of grand appearance. The horse seemed to have had
+enough of it, and his lordship appeared to have been knocked about but
+was cool and collected. He returned his sword, undid a little of the
+front of his dress and pulled down his underclothing under his
+waistbelt. Then, in a quiet way, as if rather talking to himself, he
+said, 'I tell you what it is: those instruments of theirs,' alluding to
+the Russian weapons, 'are deuced blunt; they tickle up one's ribs!'
+Then he pulled his revolver out of his holster as if the thought had
+just struck him, and said, 'And here's this d----d thing I have never
+thought of until now.' He then replaced it, drew his sword, and said,
+'Well, we've done our share of the work!' and pointing up toward the
+Chasseurs d'Afrique on our left rear (ignorant of their opportune
+service), he added, 'It's time they gave those dappled gentry a
+chance.' Afterwards he asked, 'Has any one seen my regiment?' The men
+answered, 'No, sir.'" Brandling was holding aloof; and his lordship
+turned his horse and rode away farther back.
+
+Just then a cheer was raised by some Heavies who had lately formed in
+front of "C" Troop. Cardigan, so the chronicler tells, looked backward
+to see the occasion, and saw the cheer was in compliment to the 8th
+Hussars coming back with Colonel Sewell in front and Colonel Mayow, the
+brigade-major, behind on the left. Cardigan wheeled, trotted back
+towards the 8th, turned round in front of Colonel Sewell, and took up
+the "walk." Then occurred something "painful to witness. It was seen
+from the left of 'C' Troop that the moment Cardigan's back was toward
+the 8th as he headed them, Colonel Mayow pointed toward him, shook his
+head, and made signs to the officers on the left of the Heavies as much
+as to say, 'See him; he has taken care of himself.'" Men in the ranks
+of the 8th also pointed and made signs to the troopers of the Heavies
+as they were passing left to left. There was, as well, a little excited
+undertalk from one corps to the other. Colonel Sewell neither saw nor
+took part in this wretched business; and of course Cardigan did not
+know that he was being thus ridiculed and disparaged while he was
+smiling and raising his sword to the cheers of the Heavies and the
+gunners.
+
+Immediately after this episode the returning 4th Light Dragoons came
+obliquely across the North valley at a sharp pace, but fell into the
+"walk" as they came within a hundred yards of "C" Troop. Lord George
+Paget, who led what remained of the regiment, rode up to the flank of
+"C" Troop and halted on the very spot where Cardigan had stood a few
+minutes earlier. Lord George had the look of a man who had ridden hard,
+and was heated and excited. He exclaimed in rather a loud tone, "It's a
+d----d shame; there we had a lot of their guns and carriages taken, and
+received no support, and yet there's all this infantry about--it's a
+shame!" Meanwhile Lord Cardigan had come back and was close behind Lord
+George while he was speaking, without the other knowing it. He called
+out, "Lord George Paget!"; and on the latter turning round said to him
+in an undertone, "I am surprised!"; and "tossing his head in the air
+added some other remark which was not heard." Lord George lowered his
+sword to the salute, and, without speaking turned his horse and rode on
+after his men. The "C" Troop chronicler is positive that both officers
+visited "C" Troop before going to any general or to any other command,
+and that they met there for the first time after the combat.
+
+When Lord Raglan came down from the upland after all was over, the "C"
+Troop chronicler says that he went straight for Lucan then in front of
+the Heavy Cavalry brigade, having first sent for Cardigan to meet him.
+After a few moments the latter repassed the troop on his way toward the
+remnant of his brigade. "Then Lord Raglan took Lucan a little forward
+by himself out of hearing of the group of staff officers, and his
+gesticulations of head and arm were so suggestive of passionate anger,
+that the onlookers did not need to be told that the Commander-in-Chief
+did not charge the blame chiefly on Cardigan." Lord Raglan's subsequent
+interview with General Scarlett, which occurred in the hearing of "C"
+Troop, was of a different character. After complimenting the gallant
+old warrior his lordship said, "Now tell me all about yourself."
+Scarlett replied, "When the Russian column was moving down on me, sir,
+I began by sending first a squadron of the Greys at them, and--" but at
+the word "and" Lord Raglan struck in, saying, "And they knocked them
+over like the devil!" He then turned his horse away, as if he did not
+need to hear any more.
+
+
+
+
+HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
+
+
+These be big words, my masters! I can only say they are not mine,--I am
+far too modest to utter any such high-sounding phrase on my own
+responsibility,--but they are the exact terms used by a high municipal
+dignitary in characterising the result of what he was pleased to term
+my "chivalrous conduct." My sardonic chum, on the contrary,--an
+individual wholly abandoned to the ignoble vice of punning,--asserts
+that my conduct was simply "barbarous." It will be for the reader to
+judge.
+
+St. Meuse--let us call it St. Meuse--is a town of what is still French
+Lorraine; and to St. Meuse I came drifting up the Marne Valley, over
+the flat expanse of the plain of Châlons, and by St. Menehould, the
+proud stronghold of pickled pigs' feet, in the second week of September
+1873. St. Meuse was one of the last of the French cities held in pawn
+by the Germans for the payment of the milliards. The last instalment of
+blood-money had been paid and the _Pickelhaubes_ were about to evacuate
+St. Meuse as soon as the cash had been methodically counted, and after
+they should have leisurely filled their baggage trains and packed their
+portmanteaus. My intention in going to St. Meuse was to witness this
+evacuation scene, and to be a spectator of the return of
+light-heartedness to the French population of the place, on the
+withdrawal of the Teuton incubus which for three years had lain upon
+the safety-valve of their constitutional sprightliness. I had been a
+little out of my reckoning of time, and when I reached St. Meuse I
+found that I had a week to stay there before the event should occur
+which I had come to witness; but the interval could not be regarded as
+lost time, for St. Meuse is a very pleasant city and the conditions
+which were so soon to terminate presented a most interesting field of
+study.
+
+You must know that St. Meuse is a fortress. It has a citadel or at
+least such fragments of a citadel as the bombardment had left, and the
+quaint old town is surrounded with bastions which are linked by
+curtains and flanked by lunettes, the whole being girdled by a ditch,
+beyond the counterscarp of which spreads a sloping glacis which makes a
+very pleasant promenade. The defensive strength of the place is reduced
+to zero in these days of far-reaching rifled siege artillery, for it
+lies in a cup and is surrounded on all sides by hills the summits of
+which easily command the fortifications. But the consciousness that it
+is obsolete as a fortress has not yet come home to St. Meuse. It has,
+in truth, a very good opinion of itself as a valorous, not to say
+heroic, place; nor can it be denied that its title to this
+self-complacency has been fairly earned. In the Franco-German war,
+spite of its defects, it stood a siege of over two months and succumbed
+only after a severe bombardment which lasted for several days. And
+while as yet it was not wholly beleaguered, it was very active in
+making itself disagreeable to the foreign invader. It was a patrolling
+party from St. Meuse that intercepted the courier on his way from the
+battlefield of Sedan to Germany, carrying the hurried lines to his wife
+which the Crown Prince of Prussia scrawled on the fly-leaf of an
+orderly book while as yet the last shots of the combat were dropping in
+the distance; carrying too the notes of the momentous battle which
+William Howard-Russell had jotted down in the heat of the action and
+had taken the same opportunity of despatching. St. Meuse, then, had
+balked the Princess of the first tidings of her husband's safety, and
+the great English newspaper of the earliest details of the most
+sensational battle of the age. It had fallen at last, but not
+ingloriously; and the iron of defeat had not entered so deeply into its
+soul as had been the case with some French fortresses, of which it
+could not well be said that they had done their honest best to resist
+their fate. Its self-respect, at least, was left to it, and it was
+something to know that when the German garrison should march away, it
+was bound to leave to St. Meuse the artillery and munitions of war of
+the fortress just as they had been found on the day of the surrender.
+
+I came to like St. Meuse immensely in the course of the days I spent in
+it waiting for the great event of the evacuation. The company at the
+_table d'hôte_ of the Trois Maures was varied and amusing. The Germans
+ate in a room by themselves, so that the obnoxious element was not
+present overtly at the general _table d'hôte._ But we had a few German
+officials in plain clothes--clerks in General Manteuffel's bureau,
+contractors, cigar merchants, etc., who spoke French even among
+themselves, and were painfully polite to the French habitués who were
+as painfully polite in return. There was a batch of Parisian
+journalists who had come to St. Meuse to watch the evacuation, and who
+wrote their letters in the café over the way to the accompaniment of
+_verres_ of absinthe and bocks of beer. Then there was the gallant
+captain of gendarmes, who had arrived in St. Meuse with a trusty band
+of twenty-five subordinates to take over from the Germans the municipal
+superintendence of the place, and, later, the occupation of the
+fortress. He was the most polite man I ever knew, this captain of
+gendarmes, with a clever knack of turning you outside in in the course
+of half an hour's conversation, and the peculiar attribute of having,
+to all appearance, eyes in the back of his head. To him, as he placidly
+ate his food, there came, from time to time, quiet and rather
+bashful-looking men in civilian attire of a slightly seedy description.
+Sometimes they merely caught his eye and went out again without
+speaking; sometimes they handed to him little notes; sometimes they
+held with him a brief whispered conversation during which the captain's
+nonchalance was imperturbable. These respectable individuals who, if
+they saw you once in conversation with their chief, ever after bowed to
+you with the greatest empressement, were members of the secret police.
+
+As for the inhabitants of St. Meuse, they appeared to await the hour of
+their delivery with considerable philosophy. Physically they are the
+finest race I ever saw in France; their men, tall, square, and
+muscular, their women handsome and comely. Numbers of both sexes are
+fair-haired, and the sandiness of hair which we are wont to associate
+with the Scottish Celt is by no means uncommon. A sardonic companion
+whom I had picked up by the way, attributed those characteristics to
+the fact that in the great war St. Meuse was a depôt for British
+prisoners of war who had in some way contrived to imbue the native
+population with some of their own physical attributes. He further
+prophesied a wave of Teuton characteristics as the result of the German
+occupation which was about to terminate; but his insinuations seemed to
+me to partake of the scurrilous, especially as he instanced Lewes, once
+a British depôt for prisoners of war, as a field in which similar
+phenomena were to be discerned. But, nevertheless, I unquestionably
+found a good deal of what may be called national hybridism in St.
+Meuse. I used to buy photographs of a shopkeeper over whose door was
+blazoned the Scottish name Macfarlane. Outwardly Macfarlane was a
+"hielanman" all over. He had a shock-head of bright red hair such as
+might have thatched the poll of the "Dougal cratur;" his cheek-bones
+were high, his nose of the Captain of Knockdunder pattern, and his
+mouth of true Celtic amplitude. One felt instinctively as if Macfarlane
+were bound to know Gaelic, and that the times were out of joint when he
+evinced greater fondness for _eau sucrée_ than for Talisker. It was
+with quite a sense of dislocation of the fitness of things that I found
+Macfarlane could talk nothing but French. But although he had torn up
+the ancient landmarks, or rather suffered them to lapse, he yet was
+proud of his ancestry. His grandfather, it appeared, was a soldier of
+the "Black Watch" who had been a prisoner of war in St. Meuse, and who,
+when the peace came, preferred taking unto himself a daughter of the
+Amalekite and settling in St. Meuse, to going home to a pension of
+sevenpence a day and liberty to ply as an Edinburgh caddie.
+
+As for the German "men in possession," they pursued the even tenor of
+their way in the precise yet phlegmatic German manner. Their guards
+kept the gates and bridges as if they meant to hold the place till the
+crack of doom, instead of being under orders to clear out within the
+week. The recruits drilled on the citadel esplanade, straightening
+their legs and pointing their toes as if their sole ambition in life
+was to kick their feet away into space, down to the very eve of
+evacuation. Their battalions practised skirmishing on the glacis with
+that routine assiduity which is the secret of the German military
+success. Old Manteuffel was living in the prefecture holding his levees
+and giving his stiff ceremonious dinner-parties, as if he had done
+despite to Dr. Cumming's warnings and taken a lease of the place. The
+German officers thronged their café, each man, after the manner of
+German officers, shouting at the pitch of his voice; and at the café of
+the under-officers tough old _Wachtmeisters_ and grizzled sergeants
+with many medals played long quiet games at cards, or knocked the balls
+about on the chubby little pocketless tables with cues the tips of
+which were as large as the base of a six-pounder shell.
+
+The French journalists insisted I should accept it as an article of
+faith, that these two races dwelling together in St. Meuse hated each
+other like poison. They would have it that while discipline alone
+prevented the Germans from massacring every Frenchman in the place, it
+was only a humiliating sense of weakness that hindered the Frenchmen
+from rising in hot fury against the Germans who were their temporary
+masters. I am afraid the gentlemen of the Parisian press came rather to
+dislike me on account of my obdurate scepticism in such matters. That
+there was no great cordiality was obvious and natural. Some of the
+Germans were arrogant and domineering. For instance, having a respect
+for the Germans, it pained and indeed disgusted me to hear a colonel of
+the German staff, in answer to my question whether the evacuating force
+would march out with a rearguard as in war time, reply, "Pho, a field
+gendarme with a whip is rearguard enough against such _canaille!_" But
+in the mouths of Hans and Carl and Johann, the stout _Kerle_ of the
+ranks, there were no such words of bitter scorn for their compulsory
+hosts. The honest fellows drew water for the goodwives on whom they
+were billeted, did a good deal of stolid love-making with the girls,
+and nursed the babies with a solicitude that put to shame the male
+parents of these youthful hopes of Troy. I take leave, as a reasonable
+person, to doubt whether it can lie in the heart of a family to hate a
+man who has dandled its baby and whether a man can be rancorous against
+a family whose baby he has nursed. But fashion's sway is omnipotent in
+emotion as in dress. Ever since the war, journalists, authors, and
+public opinion generally had hammered it into the French nation that if
+it were not to be a traitor to its patriotism, the first article of its
+creed must be hatred against the Germans; and that the bitterer this
+hate the more fervent the patriotism. It was not indeed incumbent on
+Frenchmen and Frenchwomen to accept this creed, but it behoved them at
+least to profess it; and it must be admitted that they did this for the
+most part with an intensity and vigour which seemed to prove that with
+many profession had deepened into conviction.
+
+While as yet the evacuation had been a thing of the remote future, the
+people of St. Meuse had borne the yoke lightly, and indeed had, I
+believe, privily congratulated themselves on the substantial advantages
+in the way of money spent in the place and the immunity from taxation
+which were incidental to the foreign occupation. But as the day for the
+evacuation drew closer and closer, one became dimly conscious of an
+electrical condition of the social atmosphere which any trifle might
+stimulate into a thunderstorm. Blouses gathered and muttered about the
+street-corners, scowling at and elbowing the German soldiers as they
+strode to buy sausages to stay them in the homeward march. The gamins,
+always covertly insolent, no longer cloaked their insolence, and wagged
+little tricolour flags under the nose of the stolid German sentry on
+the Pont St. Croix. At the _table d'hôte_ the painful politeness of the
+German civilians had no effect in thawing the studied coldness of the
+French habitués.
+
+As for myself, I was a neutral, and professing to take no side,
+flattered myself that I could keep out of the vortex of the soreness.
+Soon after my arrival at St. Meuse I had called upon the Mayor at his
+official quarters in the Hôtel de Ville, and had received civil
+speeches in return for civil speeches. Then I had left my card on
+General Manteuffel, with whom I happened to have a previous
+acquaintance; and those formal duties of a benevolent neutral having
+been performed I had held myself free to choose my own company.
+Circumstances had some time before brought me into familiar contact
+with very many German officers, and I had imbibed a liking for their
+ways and conversation, noisy as the latter is. Several of the officers
+then in St. Meuse had been personal acquaintances in other days and it
+was at once natural and pleasant for me to renew the intercourse. I was
+made an honorary member of the mess; I spent many hours in the
+officers' casino; I rode out with the officers of the squadron of
+Uhlans. All this was very pleasant; but as the day of the evacuation
+became close I noticed that the civility of the French captain of
+gendarmes grew colder, that the cordiality of the French habitués of
+the _table d'hôte_ visibly diminished, and that I encountered not a few
+unfriendly looks when I walked through the streets by myself. It began
+to dawn upon me that St. Meuse was getting to reckon me a German
+sympathiser, and as there was no half-way house, therefore not in
+accord with the emotions of France and St. Meuse.
+
+On the afternoon immediately preceding the morning that had been fixed
+for the evacuation, there came to me a polite request that I should
+visit M. le Maire at the Hôtel de Ville. His worship was elaborately
+civil but obviously troubled in mind. He coughed nervously several
+times after the initiatory compliments had passed, and then he began to
+speak. "Monsieur, you are aware that the Germans are going to-morrow
+morning?"
+
+I replied that I had cognisance of this fact. "Do you also know that
+the last of the German officials depart by the 5 A.M. train, not caring
+to remain here after the troops are gone?"
+
+Of this also I was aware.
+
+"Let me hope," continued the Mayor, "that you are going along with
+them, or at all events will ride away with Messieurs the officers?"
+
+On the contrary, was my reply, I had come not only to witness the
+evacuation but to note how St. Meuse should bear herself in the hour of
+her liberation; I desired to witness the rejoicings; I was not less
+anxious to be a spectator of any disturbance if such unhappily should
+occur. Why should M. le Maire have conceived this desire to balk my
+natural curiosity?
+
+M. le Maire was obviously not a little embarrassed; but he persevered
+and was candid. This deplorable occupation was now so nearly finished
+and happily, as yet, everything had been so tranquil, that it would be
+a thousand pities if any untoward event should occur to detract from
+the dignified attitude which the territory now to be evacuated had
+maintained. It was of critical importance in every sense that St. Meuse
+should not give way to riot or disorder on that occasion. He hoped and
+believed it would not--here M. le Maire laid his hand on his heart--but
+a spark, as I knew, fired tinder, and the St. Meuse populace were at
+present figurative tinder. I might be that spark.
+
+"You much resemble a German," said M. le Maire, "with that great yellow
+beard of yours, and your broad shoulders, as if you had carried arms.
+Our citizens have seen you much in the society of Messieurs the German
+officers; they are not in a temper to draw fine distinctions of
+nationality; and, dear sir, I ask you to go away with the Germans lest
+perchance our blouses, reckoning you for a German, should not be very
+tender with you when the spiked helmets are out of the place. The truth
+is," said the worthy Maire with a burst of plain speaking, "I'm afraid
+that you will be mobbed and that there will be a row, and that then the
+Germans may come back and the evacuation be postponed, and I'll get
+wigged by the Prefect and the Minister of the Interior and bully-ragged
+in the newspapers, and St. Meuse will get abused and the fat will be
+generally in the fire!"
+
+Here was an awkward fix. I could not comply with the Mayor's request;
+that was not to be thought of for reasons I need not mention here. I
+had no particular desire to be mobbed. Once before I had experienced
+the tender mercies of a French mob and I knew that they were very
+cruel. But stronger than the personal feeling was my sincere sympathy
+with the Mayor's critical position; and also my anxiety, by what means
+might be within my power, to contribute to the maintenance of a
+tranquillity so desirable. But, then, what means were within my power?
+I could not go; I could not promise to stop indoors, for it was
+incumbent on me to see everything that was to be seen. And if through
+me trouble came I should be responsible heaven knows for what!--with a
+skinful of sore bones into the bargain.
+
+"If Monsieur cannot go,"--the Mayor broke in upon my cogitation,--"if
+Monsieur cannot go, will he pardon the exigency of the occasion if I
+suggest one other alternative? It is,"--here the Mayor hesitated--"it
+is the yellow beard which gives to Monsieur the aspect of a German.
+With only whiskers nobody could take Monsieur for anything but an
+Englishman. If Monsieur would only have the complaisance and charity
+to--to--"
+
+Cut off my beard! Great powers! shear that mane that had been growing
+for years!--that cataract of hair that has been, so to speak, my
+oriflamme; the only physical belonging of which I ever was proud, the
+only thing, so far as I know, that I have ever been envied! For the
+moment the suggestion knocked me all of a heap. There came into my head
+some confused reminiscence of a story about a girl who cut off her hair
+and sold it to keep her mother from starving, or redeem her lover from
+captivity, or something of the kind. But that must have been before the
+epoch of parish relief, and kidnapping is now punishable by statute.
+What was St. Meuse to me that for her I should mow my hirsute glories?
+But then, if people grew savage, they might pull my beard out by the
+roots. And there had been lately dawning on me the dire truth that its
+tawny hue was becoming somewhat freely streaked with gray, a colour I
+abhor, except in eyes. I made up my mind.
+
+"I'll do it, sir," said I to the Mayor, with a manly curtness. My heart
+was too full for many words.
+
+He respected my emotion, bowed in silence over the hand which he had
+grasped, and only spoke to give me the address of his own barber.
+
+This barber was a patriot of unquestioned zeal; but I am inclined to
+think his extraction was similar to that of Macfarlane, for he combined
+patriotism with profit in a most edifying manner. He shaved the German
+officers during the whole of their stay in St. Meuse; he accompanied
+them on their march to the frontier; he earned the last centime in
+Conflans; and then, driving forward to the frontier line, he unfurled
+the tricolour as the last German soldier stepped over it. It is seldom
+that one in this world sees his way to being so adroitly ambidextrous.
+
+But this is a digression. In twenty minutes, shorn and shaven, I was
+back again in the Mayor's parlour. The tears of gratitude stood in his
+eyes. I learned afterwards that a decoration was contingent on his
+preservation of the public peace on the occasion of the evacuation.
+
+Started by the Mayor, the report rapidly circulated through St. Meuse
+that I had cut off my beard rather than that it should be possible that
+any one should mistake me for a German. From being a suspect I became a
+popular idol. The French journalists entertained me to a banquet at
+night at which in libations of champagne eternal amity between France
+and England was pledged. Next morning the Germans went away and then
+St. Meuse kicked up its heels and burst into exuberant joy. The Mayor
+took me up to the station in his own carriage to meet the French
+troops, and introduced me to the colonel of the battalion as a man who
+had made sacrifices for _la belle France_. The colonel shook me
+cordially by the hand and I was embraced by the robust vivandière, who
+struck me as being in the practice of sustaining life on a diet of
+garlic. When we emerged from the station I was cheered almost as loudly
+as was the colonel, and a man waved a tricolour over my head all the
+way back to the town, treading at frequent intervals on my heels. In
+the course of the afternoon I happened to approach the civic band which
+was performing patriotic music in the Place St. Croix. When the
+bandmaster saw me he broke off the programme and struck up "Rule
+Britannia!" in my honour, to the clamorous joy of the audience, who
+were thwarted in their aim of carrying me round the Place shoulder-high
+only by the constancy with which I clung to the railings which surround
+Chevert's statue. But the crowning recognition of my sacrifice came at
+the banquet which the town gave to the French officers. The Mayor
+proposed the toast of "our English friend." "We had all," he said,
+"made sacrifices for _la Patrie_--he himself had sustained the loss of
+a wooden outhouse burned down in the bombardment; the gallant colonel
+on his right had spilt his blood at St. Privat. Them it behoved to
+suffer and they would do it again cheerfully, for it was, as he had
+said, for _la Patrie_. But what was to be said of an honourable
+gentleman who had sacrificed the most distinguishing ornament of his
+physical aspect without the holy stimulus of patriotism, and simply
+that there might be obviated the risk of an embroilment to the possible
+consequence of which he would not further allude? Would it be called
+the language of extravagant hyperbole, or would they not rather be
+words justified by facts, when he ventured before this honourable
+company to assert that his respected English friend had by his
+self-sacrifice saved France from a great peril?" The Mayor's question
+was replied to by a perfect whirlwind of cheering. Everybody in the
+room insisted upon shaking hands with me and I was forced to get on my
+legs and make a reply. Later in the evening I heard the Mayor and the
+town clerk discussing the project of conferring upon me the freedom of
+the city.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
+
+1875
+
+
+The civilian world, even that portion of it which lives by the
+profusest sweat of its brow, enjoys an occasional holiday in the course
+of the year besides Christmas Day. Good Friday brings to most an
+enforced cessation from toil. Easter and Whitsuntide are recognised
+seasons of pleasure in most grades of the civilian community. There are
+few who do not compass somehow an occasional Derby day; and we may
+safely aver that the amount of work done on New Year's Day is not very
+great. But in all the year the soldier has but one real holiday--a
+holiday with all the glorious accompaniments of unwonted varieties of
+dainties and full liberty to be as jolly as he pleases without fear of
+the consequences. True, the individual soldier may have his day's
+leave, nay, his month's furlough; but his enjoyments resulting
+therefrom are not realised in the atmosphere of the barrack-room, but
+rather have their origin in the abandonment for the nonce of his
+military character and a _pro tempore_ return into civilian life.
+Christmas Day is the great regimental merry-making, free to and
+appreciated by the veteran and the recruit alike; and as such it is
+looked forward to for many a month prior to its advent and talked of
+many a day after it is past and gone.
+
+About a month before Christmas the observer skilled in the signs of the
+times may begin to notice the tokens of its approach. Self-deniant
+fellows, men who can trust themselves to carry a few shillings about
+with them without experiencing a chronic sensation that the accumulated
+pelf is burning a hole in their pockets, busy themselves in
+constructing "dimmocking bags" for the occasion, such being the
+barrack-room term for receptacles for money-hoarding purposes. The weak
+vessels, those who mistrust their own constancy under the varied
+temptations of dry throats, empty stomachs, and a scant allowance of
+tobacco, manage to cheat their fragility of "saving grace" by
+requesting their sergeant-major to put them "on the peg,"--that is to
+say, place them under stoppages, so that the accumulation takes place
+in his hands and cannot be dissipated by any premature weaknesses of
+the flesh. Everybody becomes of a sudden astonishingly sober and
+steady. There is hardly any going out of barracks now; for a walk
+involves the expenditure of at least "the price of a pint," and in the
+circumstances this extravagance is not allowable. The guard-room is
+unwontedly empty--nobody except the utterly reckless will get into
+trouble just now; for punishment at this season involves the forfeiture
+of certain privileges and the incurring of certain penalties--the
+former specially prized, the latter exceptionally disgusting at this
+Christmas season.
+
+Slowly the days roll on with anxious expectancy, the coming event
+forming the one engrossing topic of conversation alike in barrack-room,
+in stable, in canteen, and in guard-room. The clever hands of the troop
+are deep in devising a series of ornamentations for the walls and roof
+of the common habitation. One fellow spends all his spare time on the
+top of a table with a bed on top of that again, embellishing the wall
+above the fireplace with a florid design in a variety of colours meant
+to be an exact copy of the device on the regiment's kettledrums, with
+the addition of the legend, "A Merry Christmas to the old Straw-boots,"
+inscribed on a waving scroll below. The skill of another decorator is
+directed to the clipping of sundry squares of coloured paper into
+wondrous forms--Prince of Wales's feathers, gorgeous festoons, and the
+like--with which the gas pendants and the edges of the window-frames
+are disguised out of their original nakedness and hardness of outline,
+so as to be almost unrecognisable by the eye of the matter-of-fact
+barrack-master himself. What is this felonious-looking band up
+to--these four determined rascals in the forbidden high-lows and stable
+overalls who go slinking mysteriously out at the back gate just at the
+gloaming? Are they Fenian sympathisers bound for a secret meeting, or
+are they deserters making off just at the time when there is the least
+likelihood of suspicion? Nay, they are neither; but, nevertheless,
+their errand is a nefarious one. Watch at the gate for an hour and you
+will see them come back again each man laden with the spoils of the
+shrubberies--holly, mistletoe, and evergreens--ruthlessly plundered
+under cover of the darkness. A couple of days before "the day," the
+sergeant-major enters the barrack-room, a smile playing upon his
+rubicund features. We all know what his errand is and he knows right
+well that we do; but he cannot refrain from the customary short
+patronising harangue, "Our worthy captain--liberal gent you
+know--deputed me--what you like for dinner--plum-puddings, of course--a
+quart of beer a man; make up your minds what you'll have--anything but
+game and venison;" and so he vanishes grinning a saturnine grin. The
+moment is a critical one. We ought to be unanimous. What shall we have?
+A council of deliberation is constituted on the spot and proceeds to
+the discussion of the weighty question. The suggestions are not
+numerous. The alternative lies between pork and goose. The old
+soldiers, for some inscrutable reason, go for goose to a man. The
+recruits have a carnal craving after the flesh of the pig. I did once
+hear a "carpet-bag" recruit[1] hesitatingly broach the idea of mutton,
+but he collapsed ignominiously under the concentrated stare of
+righteous indignation with which his heterodox suggestion was received.
+Goose versus pork is eagerly debated. As regards quantity the question
+is a level one, since the allowance from time immemorial has been a
+goose or a leg of pork among three men.
+
+[Footnote 1: "Carpet-bag" recruit is the barrack-room appellation of
+contempt for the young gentleman recruit who joins his regiment
+_omnibus impedimentis_--who, in fact, brings his baggage with him, to
+find it, of course, utterly useless.]
+
+At length the point is decided during the evening stable-hour,
+according as old or young soldiers predominate in the room. The
+sergeant-major is informed of the conclusion arrived at, and in the
+evening the corporal of each room accompanies him on a marketing
+expedition into the town. Another important duty devolves upon the said
+corporal in the course of this marketing tour. The "dimmocking bags"
+have been emptied; the accumulations in the sergeant-major's hands have
+been drawn, and the corporal, freighted with the joint savings, has the
+task of expending the same in beer. In this undertaking he manifests a
+preternatural astuteness. He is not to be inveigled into giving his
+order at a public-house,--swipes from the canteen would do as well as
+that,--nor do the bottled-beer merchants tempt him with their high
+prices for dubious quality. No, he goes direct to the fountain-head. If
+there be a brewery in the place he finds it out and bestows his order
+upon it, thus triumphantly securing the pure article at the wholesale
+price. His purchasing calculation is upon the basis of two gallons per
+man. If, as is generally the case, the barrack-room he represents
+contains twelve men, he orders a twenty-four gallon barrel of
+porter--always porter; and if he has a surplus left he disburses it in
+the purchase of a bottle or two of spirits, for the behoof of any fair
+visitors who may haply honour the barrack-room with their presence.
+
+It is Christmas Eve. The evening stable-hour is over and all hands are
+merrily engaged in the composition of the puddings; some stoning fruit,
+others chopping suet, beating eggs, and so forth. The barrel of beer is
+in the corner but it is sacred as the honour of the regiment! Nothing
+would induce the expectant participants in its contents to broach it
+before its appointed time shall come. So there is beer instead from the
+canteen in the tin pails of the barrack-room, and the work of
+pudding-compounding goes on jovially to the accompaniments of song and
+jest. Now, there is a fear lest too many fingers in the pudding may
+spoil it--lest a multitude of counsellors as to the proportions of
+ingredients and the process of mixing may be productive of the reverse
+of safety. But somehow a man with a specialty is always forthcoming,
+and that specialty is pudding-making. Most likely he has been the butt
+of the room--a quiet, quaint, retiring, awkward fellow who seemed as if
+he never could do anything right. But he has lit upon his vocation at
+last--he is a born pudding-maker. He rises with the occasion, and the
+sheepish "gaby" becomes the knowing practical man; his is now the voice
+of authority, and his comrades recant on the spot, acknowledge his
+superiority without a murmur, and perform "ko-tow" before the once
+despised man of undeveloped abilities. They pull out their clean towels
+with alacrity in response to his demand for pudding-cloths; they run to
+the canteen enthusiastically for a further supply on a hint from him
+that there is a deficiency in the ingredient of allspice. And then he
+artistically gathers together the corners of the cloths and ties up the
+puddings tightly and securely; whereupon a procession is formed to
+escort them into the cook-house, and there, having consigned them into
+the depths of the mighty copper, the "man of the time" remains watching
+the caldron bubble until morning, a great jorum of beer at his elbow
+the ready contribution of his now appreciative comrades.
+
+The hours roll on; and at length out into the darkness of the
+barrack-square stalks the trumpeter on duty, and the shrill notes of
+the _réveille_ echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an
+ordinary morning the _réveille_ is practically negatived, and nobody
+thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds
+quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning
+there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps
+up, as if galvanised, at the first note of the _réveille_. For the
+fulfilment of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to--a remnant of
+the old days when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room.
+The soldier's wife who has the cleaning of the room and who does the
+washing of its inmates--for which services each man pays her a penny a
+day, has from time immemorial taken upon herself the duty of bestowing
+a "morning" on the Christmas anniversary upon the men she "does for."
+Accordingly, about a quarter to six, she enters the room--a
+hard-featured, rough-voiced dame, perhaps, with a fist like a shoulder
+of mutton, but a soldier herself to the very core and with a big,
+tender heart somewhere about her. She carries a bottle of whisky--it is
+always whisky, somehow--in one hand and a glass in the other; and,
+beginning with the oldest soldier administers a calker to every one in
+the room till she comes to the "cruity," upon whom, if he be a
+pullet-faced, homesick, bit of a lad, she may bestow a maternal salute
+in addition, with the advice to consider the regiment as his mother
+now, and be a smart soldier and a good lad.
+
+Breakfast is not an institution in any great acceptation in a cavalry
+regiment on Christmas morning. When the stable-hour is over a great
+many of the troopers do not immediately reappear in the barrack-room.
+Indeed they do not turn up until long after the coffee is cold; and,
+when they do return there is a certain something about them which, to
+the experienced observer, demonstrates the fact that, if they have been
+thirsty, they have not been quenching their drought at the pump. It is
+a standing puzzle to the uninitiated where the soldier in barracks
+contrives to obtain drink of a morning. The canteen is rigorously
+closed. No one is allowed to go out of barracks and no drink is allowed
+to come in. A teetotallers' meeting-hall could not appear more rigidly
+devoid of opportunities for indulgence than does a barrack during the
+morning. Yet I will venture to say, if you go into any barrack in the
+three kingdoms, accost any soldier who is not a raw recruit, and offer
+to pay for a pot of beer, that you will have an instant opportunity
+afforded you of putting your free-handed design into execution any time
+after 7 A.M. I don't think it would be exactly grateful in me to
+"split" upon the spots where a drop can be obtained in season; many a
+time has my parched throat been thankful for the cooling surreptitious
+draught and I refuse to turn upon a benefactor in a dirty way.
+Therefore suffice it to say that many a bold dragoon when he re-enters
+the barrack-room to get ready for church parade, has a wateriness about
+the eye and a knottiness in the tongue which tell of something stronger
+than the matutinal coffee. Indeed, when the trumpet sounds which calls
+the regiment to assemble on the parade-ground, there is dire misgiving
+in the mind of many a stalwart fellow, who is conscious that his face,
+as well as his speech, "berayeth him." But the lynx-eyed men in
+authority who another time would be down on a stagger like a
+card-player on the odd trick and read a flushed face as a passport to
+the guard-room, are genially blind this morning; and so long as a man
+possesses the capacity of looking moderately straight to his own front
+and of going right-about without a flagrant lurch, he is not looked at
+in a critical spirit on the Christmas church parade. And so the
+regiment marches off to church, the band playing merrily in its front.
+I much fear there is no very abiding sense in the bosoms of the
+majority of the sacred errand on which they are bound.
+
+But there are two of the inmates of each room who do not go to church.
+The clever pudding-maker and a sub of his selection are left to cook
+the Christmas dinner. This, as regards the exceptional dainties, is
+done at the barrack-room fire, the cook-house being in use only for the
+now despised ration meat and for the still simmering puddings. The
+handy man cunningly improvises a roasting-jack, and erects a screen
+consisting of bed-quilts spread on a frame of upright forms, for the
+purpose of retaining and throwing back the heat. He is a most versatile
+genius, this handy man. Now we see him in the double character of cook
+and salamander, and anon he develops a special faculty as a clever
+table-decorator as well. This latter qualification asserts itself in
+the face of difficulties which would be utterly discomfiting to one of
+less fertility of resource. There is, indeed, a large expanse of table
+in every barrack-room; but the War Department has not yet thought
+proper to consider private soldiers worthy to enjoy the luxury of
+table-linen. Yet bare boards at a Christmas feast are horribly
+offensive to the eye of taste. Something must be done; something has
+already been done. Ever since the last issue of clean sheets, one or
+two whole-souled fellows have magnanimously abjured these luxuries _pro
+bono publico_. Spartan-like they have lain in blankets, and saved their
+sheets in their pristine cleanliness wherewithal to cover the Christmas
+table. So now these are brought forth, not snow-white certainly, nor of
+a damask texture, being indeed somewhat sackclothy in their appearance,
+but still they are immeasurably in advance of the bare boards; and when
+the covers are laid, with each man's best knife and fork, with a little
+additional crockery-ware borrowed of a beneficent married woman and
+with the dainty sprigs of evergreen stuck on every available coign, the
+effect is triumphantly enlivening.
+
+By the time these preparations are complete the men are back from
+church; and after a brief attendance at stables to water and feed they
+assemble fully dressed in the barrack-room, hungrily silent. The
+captain enters the room and _pro formâ_ asks whether there are "any
+complaints?" A chorus of "No, sir," is his reply; and then the oldest
+soldier in the room with profuse blushing and stammering takes up the
+running, thanks the officer kindly in the name of his comrades for his
+generosity, and wishes him a "Happy Christmas and many of 'em" in
+return. Under cover of the responsive cheer the captain makes his
+escape, and a deputation visits the sergeant-major's quarters to fetch
+the allowance of beer which forms part of the treat. Then all fall to
+and eat! Ye gods, how they eat! Let the man who affirmed before the
+Recruiting Commission that the present scale of military rations was
+liberal enough show himself now, and then for ever hide his head! The
+troopers seem to have become sudden converts to Carlyle's theory on the
+eloquence of silence. It reigns supreme, broken only by the rattle of
+knives and forks and by an occasional gurgle indicative of a man
+judiciously stratifying the solids and liquids, for a space of about
+twenty minutes, by which time--be the fare goose or pork--it is,
+barring the bones, only "a memory of the past." The puddings, turned
+out of the towels in which they have been boiled, then undergo the
+brunt of a fierce assault; but the edge of appetite has been blunted by
+the first course and with most of the men a modicum of pudding goes on
+the shelf for supper. The soldier is very sensitive on the subject of
+his Christmas pudding. I remember once seeing a cook put on the table
+and formally "strapped" for allowing the pudding to stick to the bottom
+of the pot for lack of stirring.
+
+At length dinner is over. Beds are drawn up from the sides of the room
+so as to form a wide circle of divans round the fire, and the big
+barrel's time has come at last. A clever hand whips out the bung, draws
+a pailful, and reinserts the bung till another pailful is wanted, which
+will be very soon. The pail is placed upon the hearthstone and its
+contents are decanted into the pint basins, which do duty in the
+barrack-room for all purposes from containing coffee and soup to mixing
+chrome-yellow and pipe-clay water. The married soldiers come dropping
+in with their wives, for whom the corporal has a special drop of
+"something short" stowed in reserve on the shelf behind his kit. A song
+is called for; another follows, and yet another and another. Now it is
+matter of notice that the songs of soldiers are never of the modern
+music-hall type. You might go into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's
+haunts and never hear such a ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for
+Joseph." The soldier takes especial delight in songs of the sentimental
+pattern; and even when for a brief period he forsakes the region of
+sentiment, it is not to indulge in the outrageously comic but to give
+vent to such sturdy bacchanalian outpourings as the "Good Rhine Wine,"
+"Old John Barleycorn," and "Simon the Cellarer." But these are only
+interludes. "The Soldier's Tear," "The White Squall," "There came a
+Tale to England," "Ben Bolt," "Shells of the Ocean," and other melodies
+of a lugubrious type, are the special favourites of the barrack-room. I
+remember once hearing a cockney recruit attempt "The Perfect Cure" with
+its accompanying gymnastic efforts; but he was I not appreciated, and
+indeed, I think broke down in the middle for want of encouragement.
+
+Songs and beer form the staple of the afternoon's enjoyment,
+intermingled with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of
+bygone Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are
+"townies," i.e. natives of the same district; and there is a good deal
+of undemonstrative feeling in the way they talk of the scenes and folks
+of boyhood. There is no speechifying. Your soldier is not an oratorical
+animal. Not but what he heartily enjoys a speech; but he somehow cannot
+make one, or will not try. I remember me, indeed, of a certain quiet
+Scotsman who one Christmastime being urgently pressed to sing and being
+unblessed with a tuneful voice, volunteered in utter desperation a
+speech instead. He referred in feeling language to the various
+troop-mates who had left us since the preceding Christmas, made a
+touching allusion to the happy home circle in which the Christmases of
+our boyhood had been spent, referred to the manner in which the old
+"Strawboots" had cut their way to glory through the dense masses of
+Russian horsemen on the hillside of Balaclava, and wound up
+appropriately by proposing the toast of "our noble selves." He created
+an immense sensation, was vociferously applauded, and, indeed, was the
+hero of the hour; but ere next Christmas he was among the "have beens"
+himself, and his mantle not having devolved upon any successor we had
+to content ourselves with the songs and the beer.
+
+It is a lucky thing for a good many that there is no roll-call at the
+Christmas evening stable-hour. The non-commissioned officers mercifully
+limit their requirements to seeing the horses watered and bedded down
+by the most presentable of the roisterers, whose desperate efforts to
+simulate abject sobriety in order to establish their claim for
+strong-headedness are very comical to witness. It has often been matter
+of wonderment to me how the orders for the following day which are
+"read out" at the evening stable-hour, are realised on Christmas
+evening with clearness sufficient to ensure their being complied with
+next day without a hitch; but the truth is that, as we shall presently
+see, a certain order of things for the morning after Christmas has
+become stereotyped.
+
+This interruption of the evening stable-hour over the circle re-forms
+round the fire, and the cask finally becomes a "dead marine." The cap
+is then sent round for contributions towards a further instalment of
+the foundation of conviviality, which is fetched from the canteen or
+the sergeant's mess; and another and yet another supply is sent for, as
+long as the funds hold out and somebody keeps sober enough to act as
+Ganymede. The orderly sergeant is not very particular to-night about
+his watch-setting report, for he knows that not many have the physical
+ability to be absent if they were ever so eager. And so the lights go
+out; the sun of the dragoon may be said to set in beer and he is left
+to do his best to sleep himself sober. For in the morning the reins of
+discipline are tightened again. The man who is foolish enough to
+revivify the drink which "is dying out in him" by a refresher is apt to
+find himself an inmate of the black-hole on very scant warning.
+Headaches and thirst are curiously rife, and the consumption of
+"fizzers"--a temperance beverage of an effervescent character vended by
+an individual with the profoundest trust in human nature on the subject
+of deferred payments--is extensive enough to convert the regiment into
+a series of walking reservoirs of carbonic acid gas. The authorities
+display a demoniacal ingenuity in working the beer out of the system of
+the dragoon. The morning duty on the day following Christmas is
+invariably "watering order with numnahs," the numnah being a felt
+saddle-cloth without stirrups. Every man without exception rides
+out--no dodging is permitted--and the moment the malicious fiend of an
+orderly officer gets clear of the barracks he gives the word "Trot!"
+Six miles of it without a break is the set allowance; and it beats
+vinegar, pickles, tea smoked in a tobacco-pipe, or any other nostrum,
+as an effectual generator of sobriety. Six miles at the full trot
+without stirrups on a rough horse I can conscientiously recommend to
+the inebriated gentleman who fears to encounter a justly irate wife at
+two in the morning. I wont answer for the integrity of his cuticle when
+it is over; but I will stake my existence on the abject profundity of
+his sobriety. The process would extract the alcohol from a cask of
+spirits of wine, let alone dispel an average skinful of beer.
+
+And thus evaporates the last vestige of the dragoon's Christmas
+festivity. It may be urged that the enjoyments of which I have
+endeavoured to give a faithful narrative are gross and have no
+elevating tendency. I fear the men of the spur and sabre must bow to
+the justice of the criticism; and I know of nothing to advance in
+mitigation save the old Scotch proverb: "It is ill to mak' a silk purse
+out o' a sow's ear."
+
+
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
+
+
+In these modern days men live fast and forget fast; yet, since it was
+barely twenty-six years ago, numbers among us must still vividly
+remember the lurid autumn of 1870. Eastern and Northern France had been
+deluged with French and German blood. During the month of fighting from
+the 2nd of August to the 1st of September the regular armies of France
+had suffered defeat on defeat, and were now blockaded in Metz or were
+tramping from the catastrophe of Sedan to captivity in Germany. The
+Empire in France had fallen like a house of cards; Napoleon the Third
+was a prisoner of war in Cassel; the Empress and the ill-fated Prince
+Imperial were forlorn exiles in England. To the Empire had succeeded,
+at not even a day's notice--for in France a revolution is ever a
+summary operation--the Government of National Defence with the
+watchword of "War to the bitter end" rather than cede a foot of
+territory or one stone of a fortress. The Germans made no delay. The
+blood-tint had scarcely faded out of the waters of the Meuse, the
+unburied dead of Sedan yet festered in the sun-heat, and the blackened
+ruins of Bazeilles still smoked and stank, when their heads of columns
+set forth on the march to Paris. The troops were full of ardour; but in
+the Royal headquarters there was not a little disquietude. The old King
+made a long stay in the old cathedral city of Rheims, while men all
+over Europe were asking each other whether the catastrophe of Sedan had
+not virtually ended the war and were hoping for the white dove of peace
+to alight on the blood-stained land. But that happy consummation was
+not yet to be. When King Wilhelm crossed the frontier he had proclaimed
+that he warred not with the French nation but with its ruler. That
+ruler was now his prisoner; but Wilhelm had for adversary now the
+French nation, because it had taken up the quarrel which might have
+gone with the _Déchéance_ and in effect had made it its own. In the
+absence of overtures there was no alternative but to march on Paris.
+
+But Bismarck, although he carried a blithe front, was far from
+comfortable. He would fain have had peace--always on his own terms; but
+the question with him was with whom could he negotiate, capable, in the
+existing confusion, of furnishing adequate guarantees for the
+fulfilment of conditions? That requisite he could not discern in the
+self-constituted body which styled itself the Government of National
+Defence, but of which he spoke as "the gentlemen of the pavement." He
+had all the monarchical dislike and distrust of a republic, and before
+the German army had invested Paris he already had begun to ponder as to
+the possibility of reinstating the dethroned dynasty. Possibly indeed,
+he had already felt the pulse of Marshal Bazaine on this subject.
+
+It was on the 23rd of September when the Royal headquarters was at
+Ferrières, Baron Rothschild's château on the east of Paris, that there
+either presented himself to Bismarck an intriguant, or that the
+Chancellor evoked for himself an instrument for whom the way was made
+open to penetrate the beleaguerment of Metz and submit to Bazaine
+certain considerations. In connection with this mission we heard a good
+deal at the time of a mysterious "Mons. M." and an equally mysterious
+"Mons. N." Both were myths: "M." and "N." were alike pseudonyms of the
+real go-between, a certain Edmond Regnier who died in Paris on the 23rd
+of January 1894, after a strange and varied career of which the episode
+to be detailed in this article is the most remarkable. In a now very
+rare pamphlet published by Regnier in November 1870, he describes
+himself as a French landed proprietor with financial interests in
+England yielding him an income of £800 per annum, and as having come to
+England with his family in the end of August of that year in
+consequence of the proximity of German troops to his French residence.
+The painstaking compilers of the indictment against Bazaine give rather
+a different account of the character and antecedents of M. Regnier.
+Their information is that he received an imperfect education,
+sufficiently proven by his extraordinary style and vicious orthography.
+He studied, with little progress, law and medicine; later he took up
+magnetism. He was curiously mixed up in the events of the revolution of
+1848. He had some employment in Algeria as an assistant surgeon.
+Returning to France he developed a quarry of paving-stone, and
+afterwards married in England a wife who brought him a certain
+competence. "Regnier," continues the Report, "is a sharp, audacious
+fellow; his manners are vulgar--vain to excess he considers himself a
+profound politician. Was he induced to throw himself into the midst of
+events by one of the monomanias which are engendered by periods of
+storm and revolution? Was he simply an intriguer, plying his trade? It
+is difficult to tell. But however that may be, the established fact is
+that we find him in England in September 1870 besieging with his
+projects the _entourage_ of the Empress."
+
+Regnier's siege of the forlorn colony at Hastings took the form of a
+bombardment of letters, his principal victim being Madame Le Breton,
+the lady-in-waiting of the Empress and the sister of the unfortunate
+General Bourbaki, then in command of the Imperial Guard at Metz. He was
+about to have his passport viséd by the German Ambassador in London,
+rather an equivocal proceeding for a French subject; and on the 12th of
+September he wrote thus to Madame Le Breton, desiring that the letter
+should be communicated to Her Majesty:--
+
+
+The Ambassador in London of the North German Confederation may possibly
+say, "I think the King of Prussia would prefer treating for peace with
+the Imperial Government rather than with the Republic." If so, I shall
+start to-morrow for Wilhelmshöhe, after having paid a visit to the
+Empress. The following are the propositions I intend to submit to the
+Emperor: (1) That the Empress-Regent ought not to quit French
+territory; (2) That the Imperial fleet _is_ French territory; (3) That
+the fleet which greeted Her Majesty so enthusiastically on its
+departure for the Baltic, or at least a portion of it, however small,
+be taken by the Regent for her seat of government, thus enabling her to
+go from one to another of the French ports where she can count upon the
+largest number of adherents, and so prove that her government exists
+both _de facto_ and _de jure_. Further, that the Empress-Regent issue
+from the fleet four proclamations--viz. to foreign governments, to the
+fleet, to the army, and to the French people.
+
+
+It will suffice to quote two of those suggested proclamations:--
+
+
+To foreign governments! To firmly insist upon the fact that the
+Imperial Government is the _actual_ government, as it is the government
+by right. To the fleet! That just as the Emperor remained to the last
+in the midst of his army, sharing the chances of war, so also does the
+Regent, the only executive power legally existing, come with gladness
+to trust her political fortune to the Imperial fleet.
+
+
+There followed a voluminous screed of irrelevant dissertation.
+
+Regnier confessedly made no way with the Empress. He saw, indeed,
+Madame Le Breton on the 14th, but only to be told, in language worthy
+of a patriot sovereign, that "Her Majesty's feeling was that the
+interests of France should take precedence of those of the dynasty;
+that she would rather do nothing than incur the suspicion of having
+acted from an undue regard for dynastic interests, and that she has the
+greatest horror of any step likely to bring about a civil war." Those
+high-souled expressions ought to have given definite pause to Regnier's
+importunity; but that busybody was indefatigable. A second letter to
+Madame Le Breton for the Empress simply elicited from the gentlemen of
+her suite the information that Her Majesty, having read his
+communications, had expressed the greatest horror of anything
+approaching a civil war. A final letter from him, containing the
+following significant passage:--
+
+
+I myself, or some other person, ought already to have been secretly and
+confidentially in communication with M. de Bismarck; our conditions for
+peace must be more acceptable than those to which the _soi-disant_
+Republican Government may have agreed; every action of theirs ought to
+be turned to our advantage--we ourselves must _act_,
+
+
+evoked the ultimatum that "the Empress would not stir in the matter."
+Regnier then said that as he found no encouragement at Hastings he
+would probably go to Wilhelmshöhe, where he would perhaps be better
+understood; and he produced a photographic view of Hastings on which he
+begged that the Prince Imperial would write a line to his father. On
+the following morning the Prince's equerry returned him the
+photographic view at the foot of which were the simple and affectionate
+words: "Mon cher Papa, je vous envoie ces vues d'Hastings; j'espère
+qu'elles vous plairont. Louis-Napoléon." I am personally familiar with
+the late Prince Imperial's handwriting and readily recognise it in this
+brief sentence. Regnier averred that it was with Her Majesty's consent
+that this paper was given him; but admitted that he was told she added:
+"Tell M. Regnier that there must be great danger in carrying out his
+project, and that I beg him not to attempt its execution." In other
+words, the Empress was willing that he should visit the Emperor at
+Cassel, authenticating him thus far by the Prince Imperial's little
+note; but she put her veto on his undertaking intrigues detrimental to
+the interests of France.
+
+Regnier by no means took the road for Wilhelmshöhe. At 7 P.M. of Sunday
+the 18th he read in the special _Observer_ that Jules Favre was next
+day to have an interview with Bismarck at Meaux. Eager to anticipate
+the Republican Foreign Minister he promptly took the night train for
+Paris. No trains were running beyond Amiens and he did not reach Meaux
+until midnight of the 19th, to learn that Bismarck and the headquarters
+had that day gone to Ferrières. At 10 A.M. of the 20th he reached that
+château and appealed to Count Hatzfeld, now German Ambassador in
+London, for an immediate interview with Bismarck, stating that he had
+come direct from Hastings. He was informed that the Chancellor had an
+appointment with Jules Favre at eleven and that it was improbable he
+could be received in advance. But Bismarck having been apprised of his
+arrival the fortunate Regnier was immediately ushered into his
+presence. Regnier congratulates himself on having anticipated the
+French Minister, ignorant of the circumstance that on the previous day
+the latter had two interviews with Bismarck and that their then
+impending interview was simply for the purpose of communicating to
+Favre the German King's final answer to the French proposals.
+
+Regnier says that he drew from his portfolio the photograph of Hastings
+with the Prince Imperial's little note to his father at its foot and
+handed the paper in silence to Bismarck; and that after the latter had
+looked at it for some moments, Regnier said, "I come, Count, to ask you
+to grant me a pass which will permit me to go to Wilhelmshöhe and give
+this autograph into the Emperor's hands." Why he should have applied to
+Bismarck for this is not apparent, since he might have gone direct from
+Hastings to Wilhelmshöhe without any necessity for invoking the
+Chancellor's offices. It seems extremely probable that the request for
+a pass was a mere pretext to gain an interview, and the more so since
+Bismarck made no allusion to the subject, but after a few moments,
+according to Regnier, addressed that person as follows:--
+
+
+Sir, our position is before you; what can you offer us? with whom can
+we treat? Our determination is fixed so to profit by our present
+position as to render impossible for the future any war against us on
+the part of France. To effect this object, an alteration of the French
+frontier is indispensable. In the presence of two governments--the one
+_de facto_, the other _de jure_--it is difficult, if not impossible, to
+treat with either. The Empress-Regent has quitted French territory, and
+since then has given no sign. The Provisional Government in Paris
+refuses to accept this condition of diminution of territory, but
+proposes an armistice in order to consult the French nation on the
+subject. We can afford to wait. When we find ourselves face to face
+with a government _de facto_ and _de jure_, able to treat on the basis
+we require, then we will treat.
+
+
+Regnier suggested that Bazaine in Metz and Uhrich in Strasburg, if they
+should capitulate, might do so in the name of the Imperial Government.
+Bismarck replied that Jules Favre was assured that the garrisons of
+those fortresses were staunchly Republican; but that his own belief was
+that Bazaine's army of the Rhine was probably Imperialist. Then Regnier
+offered to go at once to Metz. "If you had come a week earlier," said
+Bismarck, "it was yet time; now, I fear, it is too late." Upon this the
+Chancellor went away to meet Jules Favre with the parting words to
+Regnier, "Be so good as to present my respectful homage to his Imperial
+Majesty when you reach Wilhelmshöhe." At a subsequent meeting the same
+evening Regnier repeated his anxiety to go at once to Metz and
+Strasburg and make an agreement that these places should be surrendered
+only in the Emperor's name. Bismarck was clearly not sanguine, but he
+said, "Do what you can to bring us some one with power to treat with
+us, and you will have rendered great service to your country. I will
+give orders for a 'general safe-conduct' to be given you. A telegram
+shall precede you to Metz, which will facilitate your entrance there.
+You should have come sooner." So these two parted; Régnier received his
+"safe-conduct" and started from Ferrières early on the morning of the
+21st. But this indefatigable letter-writer could not depart without a
+farewell letter:--
+
+
+I shall leave (he wrote to Bismarck) your advanced posts near Metz,
+giving orders for the carriage to await my return. I shall wrap myself
+in a shawl, which will hide a portion of my face. In the event of
+Marshal Bazaine acceding to my conditions, either Marshal Canrobert or
+General Bourbaki, acquainted with all that will be requisite for the
+success of my plans, may go out with my papers, dressed in my clothes,
+wrapped in my shawl, and depart for Hastings, after giving me his word
+of honour that for every one, except the Empress, he was to be simply
+Mons. Regnier. If everything succeeded according to my anticipation, he
+might then establish his identity, and place himself at the head of the
+army, with orders to defend the Chamber assembled, if possible, at a
+seaport town, where a loyal portion of the fleet should also be
+present. If the project should miscarry, the Marshal or the General
+would return and resume his post.
+
+
+Bismarck must have smiled grimly as he read this strange farrago; yet,
+whatever may have been his motives, he furthered the errand on which
+Regnier was going to Metz.
+
+That person reached the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles at
+Corny, outside of Metz, on the afternoon of 23rd September and was
+promptly presented to the Prince, who said that Count Bismarck had
+informed him of his wish to enter Metz and had left it to him to decide
+as to the expediency of complying with it. This, said the Prince, he
+was prepared to do and he gave Regnier the requisite pass. The same
+evening that active individual presented himself at the French forepost
+line, and having stated that he had a mission to Marshal Bazaine and
+desired to see him immediately, he was driven to Ban-Saint-Martin where
+the Marshal was residing. Bazaine at once received him in his study. At
+the outset a discrepancy manifests itself in the subsequent testimony
+of the interlocutors. The Marshal states that Regnier said he came on
+the part of the Empress with the consent of Bismarck; while Regnier
+declares that he did not state to the Marshal that he had any mission
+from the Empress. On other points, with one important exception, the
+versions given of the interview by the two participants fairly agree,
+and Bazaine's account of it may be summarised. After Regnier had stated
+that his commission was purely verbal he went on to observe that it was
+to be regretted that a treaty of peace had not put an end to the war
+after Sedan; that the maintenance of the German armies on French
+territory was ruinous to the country; and that it would be doing France
+a great service to obtain an armistice preparatory to the conclusion of
+peace. That as regarded this, the French army under the walls of
+Metz--the only army remaining organised--would be in a position to give
+guarantees to the Germans if it were allowed its liberty of action; but
+that without doubt they would exact as a pledge the surrender of the
+fortress of Metz.
+
+
+I replied (says Bazaine) that certainly if we--the "Army of the
+Rhine"--could extricate ourselves from the _impasse_ in which we now
+were, with the honours of war--that is to say, with arms and
+baggage--in a word completely constituted as an army, we would be in a
+position to maintain order in the interior, and would cause the
+provisions of the convention to be respected; but a difficulty would
+occur as to the fortress of Metz, the governor of which, appointed by
+the Emperor, could not be relieved except by His Majesty himself.
+
+
+One of Regnier's stated objects, continues the Marshal, was to bring it
+about that either Marshal Canrobert or General Bourbaki should go to
+England, inform the Empress of the situation at Metz, and place himself
+at her disposition. The departure of whichever of the two high officers
+should undertake this duty was to be surreptitious; and for this
+Regnier had provided with Prussian assistance. Seven Luxembourg
+surgeons who had been in Metz ever since the battle of Gravelotte had
+written to Marshal Bazaine for leave to go home through the Prussian
+lines. This letter, sent to the Prussian headquarters, was replied to
+in a letter carried into Metz by Regnier and by him given to Bazaine,
+to the effect that the _nine_ surgeons were free to depart. As there
+were but seven surgeons, the implication is obvious that the
+safe-conduct was expanded to cover the incognito exit, along with the
+surgeons, of Regnier and the French officer bound for Hastings.
+
+Regnier gave me (writes Bazaine) so many details of his _soi-disant_
+relations with the Empress and her _entourage_ that, notwithstanding
+the strangeness of the apparition, I put faith in his mission, and
+believed that I ought not, in the general interest, to neglect the
+opportunity opened to me of putting myself in communication with the
+outside world. I consequently told him that he would be duly brought
+into relations with Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki, whom I
+would inform in regard to his proposals, and whom I would place at
+liberty to act as each might choose in the matter.
+
+Finally Regnier produced the photograph of Hastings with the Prince
+Imperial's signature at the foot, and begged the Marshal to add his,
+which he did "as a souvenir of the interview" explained Regnier,
+according to the Marshal; according to Regnier, that he could exhibit
+the signature to Bismarck in proof that he had the Marshal's assent to
+his proposals. Diplomacy conducted by chance signatures on casual
+photographs has a certain innocent simplicity, but is not in accordance
+with modern methods. Perhaps, however, the strangest thing in
+connection with this strange interview is Bazaine's final comment:--
+
+
+All this which I have narrated was only a simple conversation to which
+I attached a merely secondary importance, since M. Regnier had no
+written authority from the Empress nor from M. de Bismarck.... This
+personage, therefore, appeared to act without the knowledge of the
+German military authorities, and it was not until considerably later
+that I became convinced of their cognisance, and of their mutual
+understanding as regards M. Regnier's visit to Metz.
+
+
+And this in the face of General Stiehle's letter to him in his hand,
+brought in by Regnier, sanctioning the exit of the _nine_ surgeons; and
+the Marshal's promise to Régnier that he and the officer who should
+accept the mission to Hastings should quit the camp incognito along
+with the Luxembourg surgeons.
+
+Reference has been made to a discordance between the testimony of
+Marshal Bazaine and of Regnier on a very important point in regard to
+this interview. In his notes taken at the time the latter writes:--
+
+
+The Marshal tells me of his excellent position, of the long period for
+which he can hold out; that he considers himself as the Palladium of
+the Empire. He speaks of the very healthy condition of the troops; and,
+if I may judge by his own rosy face, he is quite right. He tells of all
+the successful sallies he had made, and of the facility with which he
+can break through the besieging lines whenever he chooses to do so.
+
+
+Later, he contradicts all this, explaining that finding himself in the
+Prussian lines and his papers liable to be read, he had written just
+the reverse of what he was told by the Marshal. He says that what
+Bazaine actually informed him was that the bread ration had been
+already diminished and would be necessarily further reduced in a few
+days; that the horses lacked forage and had to be used for food; and
+that in such conditions and taking into account the necessity of
+carrying four or five days' rations for the army and keeping a certain
+number of horses in condition to drag the guns and supplies, there
+would be great difficulty in holding out until the 18th of October.
+Bazaine, for his part, vehemently denied having given Regnier any such
+information, and it seems utterly improbable that he should have done
+so. It is nevertheless the fact that the 18th of October was the last
+day on which rations were issued to the army outside Metz. Regnier must
+have been a wizard; or Bazaine must have leaked atrociously; or there
+must have been lying on the Marshal's table during the interview with
+Regnier, the most recent state furnished by the French intendance, that
+of the 21st of September which specified the 18th of October as the
+precise date of the final exhaustion of the army's supplies.
+
+At midnight of the 23rd Regnier went to the outposts and next morning
+to Corny, where he found a telegram from Bismarck authorising the
+departure for Hastings of a general from the army of Metz. He was back
+again at Ban-Saint-Martin on the afternoon of the 24th, when Marshal
+Canrobert and General Bourbaki were summoned to headquarters to meet
+him and the Luxembourg surgeons were assembled. Canrobert declined the
+proposed mission on the plea of ill-health. Bourbaki had to be searched
+for and was ultimately found at St. Julien with Marshal Lebceuf. As he
+dismounted at the headquarters he asked Colonel Boyer--they had both
+been of the intimate circle of the Empire--whether he knew the person
+walking in the garden with the Marshal?
+
+"No," replied Boyer.
+
+"What?" rejoined Bourbaki; "have you never seen him at the Tuileries?"
+
+"No," said Boyer. "I forget names, but not faces--I never saw this
+fellow. He is neither a familiar of the Tuileries nor an employé."
+Whereupon the two aristocrats despised the bourgeois Regnier. But
+Bourbaki, nevertheless, had to endure the presentation to him of the
+"fellow," who promptly entered on a political discourse to the effect
+that the German Government was reluctant to treat with the Paris
+Government, which it did not consider so lawful as that of the Empress,
+and that if it treated with her the conditions would be less
+burdensome; that the intervention of the army of Metz was
+indispensable; that it was all-important that one of its chiefs should
+repair to the side of the Empress to represent the army with her; and
+that he, Bourbaki, was the fittest person to occupy that position on
+the declinature of Marshal Canrobert. Bourbaki turned from the man of
+verbiage to Bazaine and asked, "Marshal, what do you wish me to do?"
+The Marshal answered that he desired him to repair to the Empress.
+
+"I am ready," answered Bourbaki, "but on certain conditions: you will
+have the goodness to give me a written order; to announce my departure
+in army orders; not to place a substitute in my command; and to promise
+that, pending my return, you will not engage the Guard." His terms were
+accepted; he was told that he was to leave immediately and he went to
+his quarters to make his preparations.
+
+It was understood that the general's departure was to be by way of
+being incognito, so that it should not get wind. He had no civilian
+clothes and Bazaine fitted him out in his; Regnier had obtained from
+one of the Luxembourger surgeons a cap with the Geneva Cross which
+completed the costume. At the Prussian headquarters General Stiehle,
+Prince Frederick Charles's chief of staff, desired to pay his respects
+to a man whose brilliant courage he admired. Bourbaki's bitter answer
+to Regnier who communicated to him Stiehle's wish, was that he would
+see "none of them, nor even eat a morsel of their bread," which, he
+said, would choke him. He presently started with the surgeons,
+travelling in Regnier's name and on Regnier's passport, on an
+enterprise which was to lead to the wreck of a fine career. At the same
+time Regnier quitted Corny on his return to Ferrières to report to
+Bismarck, having promised Bazaine that he would return to Metz within
+six days. His bolt was about shot. But he had not realised this fact.
+He maintains in his curious pamphlet that, to quote his own words, "the
+Minister had given me to understand that if I were backed by Bazaine
+and his army he would treat with me as if I were the representative of
+the Emperor or the Regent. I had obtained from the Marshal a
+capitulation with the honours of war, which the Minister--for the
+furtherance of our political ends--had consented to accord to him." He
+hurried expectant to Ferrières; there to be summarily disillusioned.
+Bismarck gave him an interview on the 28th, and crushed him in a few
+trenchant sentences:--
+
+
+I am surprised and sorry (said the Chancellor) that you, who appeared
+to be a practical man, after having been permitted to enter Metz with
+the certainty of being able to leave it, a favour never before
+accorded, should have left it without some more formal recognition of
+your right to treat than merely a photograph with the Marshal's
+signature on it. But I, Sir, am a diplomatist of many years' standing,
+and this is not enough for me. I regret it; but I find myself compelled
+to relinquish all further communication with you till your powers are
+better defined.
+
+
+Regnier expressed his regret at having been so cruelly deceived but
+thanked Bismarck for his kindness, whereupon the latter offered to give
+him a last chance. "I would certainly," he said, "have treated with you
+as to peace conditions, had you been able to treat in the name of a
+Marshal at the head of 80,000 men; as it is, I will send this telegram
+to the Marshal: 'Does Marshal Bazaine authorise M. Regnier to treat for
+the surrender of the army before Metz in accordance with the conditions
+agreed upon with the last-named?'" On the 29th came Bazaine's somewhat
+diffuse reply:--
+
+
+I cannot reply definitely in the affirmative to the question. Regnier
+announced himself the emissary of the Empress without written
+credentials. He asked the conditions on which I could enter into
+negotiations with Prince Frederick Charles. My answer was that I could
+only accept a convention with the honours of war, not to include the
+fortress of Metz. These are the only conditions which military honour
+permits me to accept.
+
+
+Regnier bombarded the Chancellor with letters until the 30th, when
+Count Hatzfeld informed him that the Minister would listen to nothing
+more until Regnier could show full powers without evasion; that the
+matter must imperatively be conducted openly and above board; and that
+his Excellency hoped Regnier would be able to get clear of it with
+honour, and that soon.
+
+So Regnier quitted Ferrières in great dejection. He gives vent ruefully
+to the belief that Bismarck regarded him as an unaccredited agent of
+the Empress, while, curiously enough, the partisans of the Empress took
+him for an emissary of Bismarck. Reaching Hastings on the 3rd of
+October he found that the Empress was now at Chislehurst. He had
+telegraphed in advance to "M. Regnier," the name which he had
+instructed General Bourbaki to pass under until the true Regnier should
+reach England. But Bourbaki had cast away the false name at the
+instigation of a brother officer while passing through Belgium. On
+arriving at Chislehurst he learned from the Empress that he had been
+made the victim of a mystification on the part of Regnier, and that she
+had never expressed the desire to have with her either Marshal
+Canrobert or himself. This intelligence, of which the newspapers had
+given him a presentiment, struck him to the heart. Although covered by
+his chief's order he found himself in a false position; and he wrote to
+the late Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, begging his good
+offices to obtain for him an authorisation to return to his post. An
+assurance was given that this would be accorded, and he hurried to
+Luxembourg there to await intimation of permission to re-enter Metz.
+Some delay occurred in the transmission of the Royal order to this
+effect and although Bourbaki was assured that the decision would
+shortly reach him, he became impatient, went into France, and placed
+himself at the disposition of the Provisional Government. But
+thenceforth he was a soured and dispirited man. The _ci-devant_
+aide-de-camp of an Emperor writhed under the harrow of Gambetta and
+Freycinet.
+
+As for Regnier, on his return to England he seems to have haunted
+Chislehurst. Once, so he frankly writes, after waiting a full hour in
+expectation of an audience of the Empress Madame Le Breton came to tell
+him that Her Majesty was sorry to have kept him waiting so long, but
+that she had now definitely resolved not to receive him. Yet he hung
+on, and the same evening he tells that he was called somewhat abruptly
+into a room in which stood several gentlemen, when a lady suddenly rose
+from a couch and addressed him standing. At last he was face to face
+with the Empress. "Sir," said Her Majesty, "you have been persistent in
+wishing to speak with me personally; here I am; what have you to say?"
+Then Regnier, by his own account, harangued that august and unfortunate
+lady in a manner which in print seems extremely trenchant and
+dictatorial. It was all in vain, he confesses; he could not alter the
+convictions of the Empress. He says that "she feared that posterity, if
+she yielded, would only see in the act a proof of dynastic selfishness;
+and that dishonour would be attached to the name of whoever should sign
+a treaty based on a cession of territory." Probably Her Majesty spoke
+from a more lofty standpoint than Regnier was able to comprehend or
+appreciate.
+
+Regnier's subsequent career during that troublous period was both
+curious and dubious. General Boyer states that on the 28th of October
+he found Regnier _tête-à-tête_ with Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon). Later
+he went to Cassel, where he busied himself in trying to implicate in
+political machinations sundry French officers who were prisoners there.
+Presently we find him at Versailles, figuring among the conductors of
+the _Moniteur Prussien_, Bismarck's organ during the German occupation
+of that city, in which journal he published a series of articles under
+the title of _Jean Bonhomme_. During the armistice after the surrender
+of Paris he betook himself to Brussels, where he told General Boyer
+that he had gone to Versailles to attempt a renewal of negotiations
+tending towards an Imperial restoration. He showed the general the
+original safe-conduct which Bismarck had given him at Ferrières, and a
+letter of Count Hatzfeld authorising him to visit Versailles. The last
+item during this period recorded of this strange personage--and that
+item one so significant as to justify Mrs. Crawford's shrewd suspicion
+"that Regnier played a double game, and that Prince Bismarck, if he
+chose, could clear up the mystery which hangs over Regnier's curious
+negotiations"--is found in a page of the _Procès Bazaine_. This is the
+gem: "On the 18th of February 1871 he was in Versailles, where he met a
+person of his acquaintance, to whom he uttered the characteristic
+words--'I do not know whether M. de Bismarck will allow me to leave him
+this evening.'" He is said to have later been connected with the Paris
+police under the late M. Lagrange. Whether Regnier was more knave or
+fool--enthusiast, impostor, or "crank"--will probably be never known.
+
+
+
+
+RAILWAY LIZZ
+
+BY AN HOSPITAL MATRON
+
+
+We see many curious phases of humanity--we who administer to the sick
+in the great hospitals which are among the boasts of London. The mask
+worn by the face of the world is dropped before us. We see men as they
+are, and while the sight is often not calculated to enhance our
+estimate of human nature, there are occasionally strong reliefs which
+stand out from the mass of shadow. There are curious opinions
+entertained in the outer world as to the internal economy of hospitals,
+not a few "laymen" imagining that the main end of such establishments
+is that the doctors may have something to experiment upon for the
+advancement of their professional theories--something which, while it
+is human, is not very valuable in the social scale and therefore open
+to be hacked and hewn and operated upon with a freedom begotten of the
+knowledge that the subject is a mere vile corpus.
+
+Nor is this the only delusion. Many people think that the hospital
+nurse is but another name for a heartless harpy, brimful of callous
+selfishness. Her attentions--kindness is an inadmissible word--are
+believed to be purely mercenary. Those who themselves can afford to fee
+her or who have friends able and willing to buy her services, may
+purchase civil treatment and careful nursing while the poor wretch who
+has neither money nor friends may languish unheeded. There is no
+greater mistake than this. Year by year the character of hospital
+nursing has improved. It is not to be denied that in times gone by
+there were nurses the mainsprings of whose actions may be said to have
+been money and gin; but these have long since been driven forth with
+contumely. I have seen a poor wretch of a discharged soldier without a
+single copper to bless himself with, nursed with as much tender
+assiduity and real feeling as if he were in a position to pay his
+nurses handsomely.
+
+Indeed, in most hospitals now the practice of accepting money presents
+is altogether forbidden; and if the prohibition, as in the case of
+railway porters and guards, is sometimes looked upon in the light of a
+dead letter, there is, I sincerely believe, no such thing as any
+grasping after a guerdon nor any neglect in a case where it is evident
+no guerdon is to be expected. There is an hospital I could name in
+which the nurses are prohibited from accepting from patients any more
+substantial recognition of their services than a nosegay of flowers.
+The wards of this hospital are always gay with bright, fragrant posies,
+most of them the contributions of those who, having been carefully
+tended in their need, retain a grateful recollection of the kindness
+and now that they are in health again take this simple, pretty way of
+showing their gratitude. It is two years ago since a rough bricklayer's
+labourer got mended in the accident ward of this hospital of some
+curiously complicated injuries he had received by tumbling from the top
+of a house. Not a Sunday afternoon has there been since the
+house-surgeon told him one morning that he might go out, that he has
+not religiously visited the "Albert" ward and brought his
+thank-offering in the shape of a cheap but grateful nosegay.
+
+Those nurses who thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have
+often curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of
+collecting them. It is by no means always mere regard for the securing
+of the necessaries of life which has brought them to the thankless and
+toilsome occupation. We have all read of nunneries in which women
+immured themselves, anxious to sequester themselves from all
+association with the outer world and to devote themselves to a life of
+penance and devotion. After all their piety was aimless and of no
+utility to humanity. There was a concentrated selfishness in it which
+detracted from its ambitious aspiration. But in the modern nuns of our
+hospitals methinks we have women who, abnegating with equal solicitude
+the pleasures and dissipations of the world, find a more philanthropic
+opening for their exertions in their retirement than in sleeping on
+hair pallets, and in eating nothing but parched peas.
+
+It was towards the autumn of a recent year that a modest-looking young
+woman applied to me for a situation on our nursing staff. She wore a
+widow's dress and seemed a self-contained, reserved little woman, with
+something weighing very heavily on her mind. Her testimonials of
+character were ample and of a very high order but they did not
+enlighten me with any great freedom as to her past history, and she for
+her part appeared by no means eager to supplement the meagre
+information furnished by them. However, people have a right to keep
+their own counsel if they please, and there was no sin in the woman's
+reticence. We happened to be very short of efficient nurses at the time
+and she was at once taken upon trial; her somewhat strange stipulation,
+which she made absolute, being agreed to--that she should not be
+compelled to reside in the hospital, but merely come in to perform her
+turn of nursing, and that over, be at liberty to leave the precincts
+when she pleased. I say the stipulation was a strange one, because
+attached to it there was a considerable pecuniary sacrifice as well as
+a necessity for entering a lower grade.
+
+She made a very excellent nurse, with her quiet, reserved ways and her
+manner of moving about a ward as if she studied the lightness of every
+footfall. But she had her peculiarities. I have already said that she
+was not given to be communicative, and for the first three months she
+was in the place I do not believe she uttered a word to any one within
+the walls except on subjects connected with the performance of her
+duties. Then, too, she manifested a curious fondness for being on duty
+in the accident ward. Most nurses have very little liking for this
+ward--the work is very heavy and unremitting and frequently the sights
+are more than usually repulsive. But she specially made application to
+be placed in it, and the more terrible the nature of the accident the
+more eager was her zeal to minister to the poor victim. It seemed
+almost a morbid fondness which she developed for waiting, in
+particular, upon people injured by railway accidents. When some poor
+mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed almost out of
+resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an empty cot in
+the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a seemingly
+intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and ease the
+poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot" with
+an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however
+conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her
+partiality for railway "cases" was so marked that it appeared to amount
+to a passion; and among the other nurses, never slow to fix upon any
+peculiarity and base upon it some not unfriendly nickname, our quiet
+friend went by the name of "Railway Lizz." Nobody ever got any clue to
+the reason, if there was one, for this predilection of hers. Indeed,
+nobody ever was favoured with the smallest scrap of her confidence. I
+confess to have felt much interest in the sad-eyed young widow and to
+have several times given her an opening which she might have availed
+herself of for narrating something of her past life; but she always
+retired within herself with a sensitiveness which puzzled me not a
+little, satisfied as I was that there was nothing in her antecedents of
+a character which would not bear the light.
+
+There are few holidays within an hospital. Physical suffering is not to
+be mitigated by a gala day; the pressure of disease cannot be lightened
+by jollity and merry-making. One New Year's Eve, when the world outside
+our walls was glad of heart, a poor shattered form was borne into the
+accident ward. It was a railway-porter whom a train had knocked down
+and passed over, crushing the young fellow almost out of the shape of
+humanity. Railway Lizz was by his side in a moment, wetting the
+pain-parched lips and smoothing the pillow of the half-conscious
+sufferer. The house-surgeon came and went with that silent shake of the
+head we know too surely how to interpret, and the mangled
+railway-porter was left in the care of his assiduous nurse. It was
+almost midnight when I again entered the accident ward. The night-lamp
+was burning feebly, shedding a dull dim light over the great room and
+throwing out huge grotesque shadows on the floor and the walls. I
+glanced toward the railway-porter's bed, and the tell-tale screen
+placed around it told me that all was over and that the life had gone
+out of the shattered casket. As I walked down the room toward the
+screen I heard a low subdued sound of bitter sobbing behind it; and
+when I stepped within it, there was the sad-faced widow-nurse weeping
+as if her heart would break. When she saw me she strove hard to repress
+her emotion and to resume the quiet, self-possessed demeanour which it
+was her wont to wear; but she failed in the attempt and the sobs burst
+out in almost convulsive rebellion against the effort to repress them.
+I put my arm round the neck of the poor young thing and stooping down
+kissed her wet cheek as a tear from my own eye mingled with her profuse
+weeping. The evidence of feeling appeared to overpower her utterly; she
+buried her head in my lap, and lay long there sobbing like a child.
+When the acuteness of the emotion had somewhat spent itself I gently
+raised her up, and asked of her what was the cause of a grief so
+poignant. I found that I was now at last within the intrenchments of
+her reserve; with a deep sigh she said, in her Scottish accent, that it
+was "a lang, lang story," but if I cared to hear it she would tell it.
+So sitting there, we two together in the dim twilight of the
+night-lamp, with the shattered corpse of the railway-porter lying there
+"streekit" decently before us, she told the following pathetic tale:--
+
+"I am an Aberdeen girl by birth. My father was the foreman at a
+factory, a very stiff, dour man, but a gude father, and an upright,
+God-fearing man. When I was about eighteen, I fell acquainted with a
+railway-guard, a winsome, manly lad as ever ye would wish to see. If ye
+had kent my Alick, ye wadna wonder at me for what I did. My father was
+a proud man, and he couldna bear that I should marry a man that he said
+wasna my equal in station; and in his firm, masterful way he forbade
+Alick from coming about the house, and me from seeing him. It was a
+sair trial, and I dinna think ony father has a right to put doon his
+foot and mar the happiness of twa young folks in the way mine did. The
+struggle was a bitter ane, between a father's commands and the bidding
+of true luve; and at last, ae night coming home from a friend's house,
+Alick and I forgathered again, and he swore he would not gang till I
+had promised I would marry him afore the week was out.
+
+"I'll not trouble ye with lang details of the battle that I fought with
+mysel', and how in the end Alick conquered. We were married in the West
+Kirk the Sunday after, and we twa set up our simple housekeeping in a
+single room in a house by the back of the Infirmary. Oh, mem, we were
+happy young things! Alick was the fondest, kindest man ye could ever
+think of. Sometimes he wad take me a jaunt the length of Perth in the
+van with him, and point out the places of interest on the road as we
+went flashing by them. Then on the Sunday, when he was off duty, we
+used to take a walk out to the Torry Lighthouse, or down by the auld
+brig o' Balgownie, and then hame to an hour's read of the Bible afore I
+put down the kebbuck and the bannocks. My father keepit hard and
+unforgiving; they tellt me he had sworn an oath I should never darken
+his door again, and at times I felt very sairly the bitterness of his
+feeling toward me, whan I was sitting up waiting for Alick's
+hame-coming whan he was on the night turn; but then he wad come in with
+his blithe smile and cheery greeting and every thought but joy at his
+presence wad flee awa as if by magic. Some of the friends I had kent
+when a lassie at home still keepit up the acquantance, and we used
+sometimes to spend an evening at one of their houses. The New Year time
+came, and Alick and myself got an invitation to keep our New Year's Eve
+at the house of a decent, elderly couple that lived up near the Kitty
+Brewster Station--quiet, retired folk that had been in business and
+made enough to live comfortable on. It was Alick's night for the late
+mail train from Perth, but he would be at Market Street Station in time
+to get up among us to see the auld year out and the new ane in; and I
+was to spend the evening there and wait for his arrival.
+
+"It was a vera happy time. The auld couple were as kind as kind could
+be, and their twa or three young folks keepit up the fun brisk and
+lively. I took a hand at the cairts and sang a lilt like the rest; but
+I was luiking for Alick's company to fill up my cup of happiness. The
+time wore on, and it was getting close to the hour at which he might be
+expectit. I kenna what ailed me, but I felt strangely uneasy and
+anxious for his coming. 'Here he is at last!' I said to myself, as my
+heart gave a jump at the sound of a foot on the gravel walk. As it came
+closer, I kent it wasna Alick's step, and a strange, cauld grip of fear
+and doubt caught me at the heart. Mr. Thomson, that was the name of our
+old friend, was called out, and I overheard the sound of a whispered
+conversation in the passage. Then he put his head in and called out his
+wife; I could see his face was as white as a sheet, and his voice shook
+in spite of himself. The boding of misfortune came upon me with a force
+it was in vain to strive against, and I rose up and gaed out into the
+passage amang them. The auld man was shakin' like an aspen leaf; the
+gudewife had her apron ower her face and was greeting like a bairn, and
+in the door stood Tarn Farquharson, a railway-porter frae the station.
+I saw it aa' quicker nor I can tell it to you, leddy. I steppit up to
+Tarn and charged him simple and straught.
+
+"'Tam, what's happent to my Alick?'
+
+"The wet tears stood in Tarn's e'en as he answered, 'Dinna speer,
+Lizzie, my puir lass, dinna speer, whan the answer maun be a waefu'
+ane.'
+
+"'Tell me the warst, Tam,' says I; 'let me hear the warst, an' pit me
+oot o' my pain!'
+
+"The words are dirlin' and stoonin' in my ears yet--
+
+"'The engine gaed ower him, and he's lyin' dead at Market Street.'
+
+"I didna faint, and I couldna greet. Something gied a crack inside my
+head, and my e'en swam for a minute; but the next I was putting on my
+bonnet and shawl and saying good-nicht to Mrs. Thomson. They tried to
+stop me. I heard Tam whisper to the auld man, 'She maunna see him. He
+is mangled oot o' the shape o' man.'
+
+"But I wasna to be gainsaid, and Tam took my airm as we gaed doon
+through the toon to Market Street. There they tried hard to keep him
+oot frae my sight. They tellt me he wasna fit to be seen, but there's
+nae law that can keep a wife frae seeing her husband's corpse. He was
+lying in a waiting-room covered up with a sheet, and, oh me, he was
+sair, sair mangled--that puir fellow there is naething to him; but the
+winsome, manly face, with the sweet, familiar smile on it, was nane
+spoiled; and lang, lang, I sat there, us twa alane, with my hand on his
+cauld forehead, playing wi' his bonnie waving hair. They left me there,
+in their considerate kindliness, till the cauld light o' the New Year's
+morning began to break, and syne they came and tellt me I maun go. But
+I wadna gang my lane. He was mine, and mine only, sae lang as he was
+abune the mools; and I claimed my dead hame wi' me, to that hoose he
+had left sae brisk and sprichtly whan he kissed me in the morning. Four
+of the railway-porters carried him up to that hame which had lost its
+hame-look for me now. I keepit him to mysel' till they took him awa'
+frae me and laid him under a saugh tree in the Spittal Kirkyard."
+
+She paused in her story, overcome by the bitter memory of the past, and
+I wanted no formal application now to give me the clue to her strange
+preference for the accident ward and her hitherto inexplicable fondness
+for "railway cases." Poor thing, with what inexpressible vividness must
+the circumstances in which this New Year's night was passing with her
+have recalled the sad remembrances of that other New Year's night the
+narrative of which she had just given me! Presently she recovered her
+voice, and briefly concluded the little history.
+
+"Leddy, I was wi' bairn whan my Alick was taken from me. Oh, how I used
+to pray that God would be gude to me, and give me a living keepsake of
+my dead husband! I troubled naebody. I never speered if my father would
+do anything for me; but I got work at the factory, and I lived in
+prayerful hope. My hour of trouble came, and a fatherless laddie was
+born into this weary world, the very picture o' him that was sleeping
+under the tree in the Spittal Kirkyard. I needna tell ye I christened
+him Alick, and the bairn has been my joy and comfort ever since God
+gifted me with him. I found the sichts and memories of Aberdeen ower
+muckle for me, sae I came up to London here, and ye ken the rest about
+me. It was because of being with my bairn that I wouldna agree to live
+in the hospital here like the rest of the nurses, and whan I gang hame
+noo to my little garret, he will waken up out of his saft sleep, rosy
+and fresh, and hold up his bonnie mou', sae like his father's, for
+'mammie's kiss.'"
+
+
+
+
+MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
+
+
+None of the greater rivers of Scotland makes so much haste to reach the
+ocean as does the turbulent and impatient Spey. From its parent lochlet
+in the bosom of the Grampians it speeds through Badenoch, the country
+of Cluny MacPherson, the chief of Clan Chattan, a region to this day
+redolent of memories of the '45. It abates its hurry as its current
+skirts the grave of the beautiful Jean Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, who
+raised the 92nd Highlanders by giving a kiss with the King's shilling
+to every recruit, and who now since many long years
+
+  Sleeps beneath Kinrara's willow.
+
+But after this salaam of courtesy the river roars and bickers down the
+long stretch of shaggy glen which intervenes between the upper and
+lower Rocks of Craigellachie, whence the Clan Grant, whose habitation
+is this ruggedly beautiful strath, takes its slogan of "Stand fast,
+Craigellachie," till it finally sends its headlong torrent shooting
+miles out through the salt water of the Moray Firth. In its course of
+over a hundred miles its fierce current has seldom tarried; yet now and
+again it spreads panting into a long smooth stretch of still water when
+wearied momentarily with buffeting the boulders in its broken and
+contorted bed; or when a great rock, jutting out into its course,
+causes a deep black sullen pool whose sluggish eddy is crested with
+masses of yellow foam. Merely as a wayfaring pedestrian I have followed
+Spey from its source to its mouth; but my intimacy with it in the
+character of a fisherman extends over the five-and-twenty miles of its
+lower course, from the confluence of the pellucid Avon at Ballindalloch
+to the bridge of Fochabers, the native village of the Captain Wilson
+who died so gallantly in the recent fighting in Matabeleland. My first
+Spey trout I took out of water at the foot of the cherry orchard below
+the sweet-lying cottage of Delfur. My first grilse I hooked and played
+with trout tackle in "Dalmunach" on the Laggan water, a pool that is
+the rival of "Dellagyl" and the "Holly Bush" for the proud title of the
+best pool of lower Spey. My first salmon I brought to the gaff with a
+beating heart in that fine swift stretch of water known as "The Dip,"
+which connects the pools of the "Heathery Isle" and the "Red Craig,"
+and which is now leased by that good fisherman, Mr. Justice North. I
+think the Dundurcas water then belonged to the late Mr. Little Gilmour,
+the well-known welter-weight who went so well to hounds season after
+season from Melton Mowbray, and who was as keen in the water on Spey as
+he was over the Leicestershire pastures. A servant of Mr. Little
+Gilmour was drowned in the "Two Stones" pool, the next below the "Holly
+Bush;" and the next pool below the "Two Stones" is called the
+"Beaufort" to this day--named after the present Duke, who took many a
+big fish out of it in the days when he used to come to Speyside with
+his friend Mr. Little Gilmour.
+
+In those long gone-by days brave old Lord Saltoun, the hero of
+Hougomont, resided during the fishing season in the mansion-house of
+Auchinroath, on the high ground at the mouth of the Glen of Rothes. One
+morning, some five-and-forty years ago, my father drove to breakfast
+with the old lord and took me with him. Not caring to send the horse to
+the stable, he left me outside in the dogcart when he entered the
+house. As I waited rather sulkily--for I was mightily hungry--there
+came out on to the doorstep a very queer-looking old person, short of
+figure, round as a ball, his head sunk between very high and rounded
+shoulders, and with short stumpy legs. He was curiously attired in a
+whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped jacket the great collar of
+which reached far up the back of his head, surmounted a pair of
+voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the knee. I imagined
+him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he accosted me
+good-naturedly, asking to whom the dogcart and myself belonged, I
+answered him somewhat shortly and then ingenuously suggested that he
+would be doing me a kindly act if he would go and fetch me out a hunk
+of bread and meat, for I was enduring tortures of hunger.
+
+Then he swore, and that with vigour and fluency, that it was a shame
+that I should have been left outside; called a groom and bade me alight
+and come indoors with him. I demurred--I had got the paternal
+injunction to remain with the horse and cart. "I am master here!"
+exclaimed the old person impetuously; and with further strong language
+he expressed his intention of rating my father soundly for not having
+brought me inside along with himself. Then a question occurred to me,
+and I ventured to ask, "Are you Lord Saltoun?" "Of course I am,"
+replied the old gentleman; "who the devil else should I be?" Well, I
+did not like to avow what I felt, but in truth I was hugely
+disappointed in him; for I had just been reading Siborne's _Waterloo_,
+and to think that this dumpy old fellow in the duffle jacket that came
+up over his ears was the valiant hero who had held Hougomont through
+cannon fire and musketry fire and hand-to-hand bayonet fighting on the
+day of Waterloo while the post he was defending was ablaze, and who had
+actually killed Frenchmen with his own good sword, was a severe
+disenchantment. When I had breakfasted he asked leave of my father to
+let me go with him to the waterside, promising to send me home safely
+later in the day. When he was in Spey up to the armpits--for the "Holly
+Bush" takes deep wading from the Dundurcas side--the old lord looked
+even droller than he had done on the Auchinroath doorstep, and I could
+not reconcile him in the least to my Hougomont ideal. He was delighted
+when I opened on him with that topic, and he told me with great spirit
+of the vehemence with which his brother-officer Colonel Macdonnell, and
+his men forced the French soldiers out of the Hougomont courtyard, and
+how big Sergeant Graham closed the door against them by main force of
+muscular strength. Before he had been in the water twenty minutes the
+old lord was in a fish; his gillie, old Dallas, who could throw a fine
+line in spite of the whisky, gaffed it scientifically, and I was sent
+home rejoicing with a 15 lb. salmon for my mother and a half-sovereign
+for myself wherewith to buy a trouting rod and reel. Lord Saltoun was
+the first lord I ever met, and I have never known one since whom I have
+liked half so well.
+
+Spey is a river which insists on being distinctive. She mistrusts the
+stranger. He may be a good man on Tweed or Tay, but until he has been
+formally introduced to Spey and been admitted to her acquaintance, she
+is chary in according him her favours. She is no flighty coquette, nor
+is she a prude; but she has her demure reserves, and he who would stand
+well with her must ever treat her with consideration and respect. She
+is not as those facile demi-mondaine streams, such as the Helmsdale or
+the Conon, which let themselves be entreated successfully by the chance
+comer on the first jaunty appeal. You must learn the ways of Spey
+before you can prevail with her, and her ways are not the ways of other
+rivers. It was in vain that the veteran chief of southern fishermen,
+the late Francis Francis, threw his line over Spey in the _veni, vidi,
+vici_ manner of one who had made Usk and Wye his potsherd, and who over
+the Hampshire Avon had cast his shoe. Russel, the famous editor of the
+_Scotsman_, the Delane of the north country, who, pen in hand, could
+make a Lord Advocate squirm, and before whose gibe provosts and bailies
+trembled, who had drawn out leviathan with a hook from Tweed, and
+before whom the big fish of Forth could not stand--even he, brilliant
+fisherman as he was, could "come nae speed ava" on Spey, as the old
+Arndilly water-gillie quaintly worded it.
+
+Yet Russel of the _Scotsman_ was perhaps the most whole-souled salmon
+fisher of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations
+extended beyond the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the
+peroration, slightly profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his
+speech on salmon fishing at a Tweedside dinner? "When I die," he
+exclaimed in a fine rapture, "should I go to heaven, I will fish in the
+water of life with a fly dressed with a feather from the wing of an
+angel; should I be unfortunately consigned to another destination, I
+shall nevertheless hope to angle in Styx with the worm that never
+dieth." To his editorial successor Spey was a trifle more gracious than
+she had been to Russel; but she did not wholly open her heart to this
+neophyte of her stream, serving him up in the pool of Dellagyl with the
+ugliest, blackest, gauntest old cock-salmon of her depths, owning a
+snout like the prow of an ancient galley.
+
+Spey exacts from those who would fish her waters with success a
+peculiar and distinctive method of throwing their line, which is known
+as the "Spey cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the
+successive phases of the "Spey cast" in the fishing volume of the
+admirable Badminton series. It cannot be learned by diagrams; no man,
+indeed, can become a proficient in it who has not grown up from
+childhood in the practice of it. Yet its use is absolutely
+indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks, trees, high
+banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead cast. The
+essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this--that his line must
+never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from a
+howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To
+watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal
+education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low
+trajectory, and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a
+dexterous swish of the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet
+supple rod, illustrate a phase at once beautiful and practical of the
+poetry of motion. Among the native salmon fishermen of Speyside,
+_quorum ego parva pars fui,_ there are two distinct manners which may
+be severally distinguished as the easy style and the masterful style.
+The disciples of the easy style throw a fairly long line, but their aim
+is not to cover a maximum distance. What they pride themselves on is
+precise, dexterous, and, above all, light and smooth casting. No fierce
+switchings of the rod reveal their approach before they are in sight;
+like the clergyman of Pollok's _Course of Time_ they love to draw
+rather than to drive. Of the masterful style the most brilliant
+exponent is a short man, but he is the deepest wader in Spey. I believe
+his waders fasten, not round his waist, but round his neck. I have seen
+him in a pool, far beyond his depth, but "treading water" while
+simultaneously wielding a rod about four times the length of himself,
+and sending his line whizzing an extraordinary distance. The resolution
+of his attack seems actually to hypnotise salmon into taking his fly;
+and, once hooked, however hard they may fight for life, they are doomed
+fish.
+
+Ah me! These be gaudy, flaunting, flashy days! Our sober Spey, in the
+matter of salmon fly-hooks, is gradually yielding to the garish
+influence of the times. Spey salmon now begin to allow themselves to be
+captured by such indecorous and revolutionary fly-hooks as the "Canary"
+and the "Silver Doctor." Jaunty men in loud suits of dittoes have come
+into the north country, and display fly-books that vie in the
+variegated brilliancy of their contents with a Dutch tulip bed. We
+staunch adherents to the traditional Spey blacks and browns, we who
+have bred Spey cocks for the sake of their feathers, and have sworn
+through good report and through evil report by the pig's down or Berlin
+wool for body, the Spey cock for hackle, and the mallard drake for
+wings, have jeered at the kaleidoscopic fantasticality of the leaves of
+their fly-books turned over by adventurers from the south country and
+Ireland; and have sneered at the notion that a self-respecting Spey
+salmon would so far demoralise himself as to be allured by a miniature
+presentation of Liberty's shop-window. But the salmon has not regarded
+the matter from our conservative point of view; and now we, too,
+ruefully resort to the "canary" as a dropper when conditions of
+atmosphere and water seem to favour that gaudy implement. And it must
+be owned that even before the "twopence-coloured" gentry came among us
+from distant parts, we, the natives, had been side-tracking from the
+exclusive use of the old-fashioned sombre flies into the occasional use
+of gayer yet still modest "fancies." Of specific Spey hooks in favour
+at the present time the following is, perhaps, a fairly correct and
+comprehensive list: purple king, green king, black king, silver heron,
+gold heron, black dog, silver riach, gold riach, black heron, silver
+green, gold green, Lady Caroline, carron, black fancy, silver spale,
+gold spale, culdrain, dallas, silver thumbie, Sebastopol, Lady Florence
+March, gold purpie, and gled (deadly in "snawbree"). The Spey cock--a
+cross between the Hamburg cock and the old Scottish mottled hen--was
+fifty years ago bred all along Speyside expressly for its feathers,
+used in dressing salmon flies; but the breed is all but extinct now, or
+rather, perhaps, has been crossed and re-crossed out of recognition. It
+is said, however, to be still maintained in the parish of Advie, and
+when the late Mr. Bass had the Tulchan shootings and fishings his head
+keeper used to breed and sell Spey cocks.
+
+Probably the most extensive collection of salmon fly-hooks ever made
+was that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a
+property on which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His
+father was a distinguished Indian civil servant and of later fame as an
+astronomer; and his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the
+best fishermen that ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl.
+Henry Grant himself had been a keen fisherman in his youth, and when,
+after a chequered and roving life in South Africa and elsewhere, he
+came into the estate, he set himself to build up a representative
+collection of salmon flies for all waters and all seasons. His father
+had brought home a large and curious assortment of feathers from the
+Himalayas; Mr. Grant sent far and wide for further supplies of suitable
+and distinctive material, and then he devoted himself to the task of
+dressing hundred after hundred of fly-hooks of every known pattern and
+of every size, from the great three-inch hook for heavy spring water to
+the dainty little "finnock" hook scarcely larger than a trout fly. A
+suitable receptacle was constructed for this collection from the timber
+of the "Auld Gean Tree of Elchies"--the largest of its kind in all
+Scotland--whose trunk had a diameter of nearly four feet and whose
+branches had a spread of over twenty yards. The "Auld Gean Tree" fell
+into its dotage and was cut down to the strains of a "lament," with
+which the wail and skirl of the bagpipes drowned the noise of the
+woodmen's axes. Out of the wood of the "Auld Gean Tree" a local
+artificer constructed a handsome cabinet with many drawers, in which
+were stored the Elchies collection of fly-hooks classified carefully
+according to their sizes and kinds. The cabinet stood--and, I suppose,
+still stands--in the Elchies billiard-room; but I fear the collection
+is sadly diminished, for Henry Grant was the freest-handed of men and
+towards the end of his life anybody who chose was welcome to help
+himself from the contents of the drawers. Yet no doubt some relics of
+this fine collection must still remain; and I hope for his own sake
+that Mr. Justice A.L. Smith the present tenant of Elchies, is free of
+poor Henry's cabinet.
+
+It is a popular delusion that Speyside men are immortal; this is true
+only of distillers. But it is a fact that their longevity is
+phenomenal. If Dr. Ogle had to make up the population returns of Strath
+Spey he could not fail to be profoundly astonished by the comparative
+blankness of the mortality columns. Frederick the Great, when his
+fellows were rather hanging back in the crisis of a battle, stung them
+with the biting taunt, "Do you wish to live for ever?" If his
+descendant of the present day were to address the same question to the
+seniors of Speyside, they would probably reply, "Your Majesty, we ken
+that we canna live for ever; but, faith, we mak' a gey guid attempt!" A
+respected relative of mine died a few years ago at the age of
+eighty-five. Had he been a Southron, he would have been said to have
+died full of years; but of my relative the local paper remarked in a
+touching obituary notice that he "was cut off prematurely in the midst
+of his mature prime." When I was young, Speyside men mostly shuffled
+off this mortal coil by being upset from their gigs when driving home
+recklessly from market with "the maut abune the meal;" but the railways
+have done away in great measure with this cause of death. Nowadays the
+centenarians for the most part fall ultimate victims to paralysis. In
+the south it is understood, I believe, that the third shock is fatal;
+but a Speyside man will resist half a dozen shocks before he succumbs,
+and has been known to walk to the kirk after having endured even a
+greater number of attacks.
+
+Among the senior veterans of our riverside I may venture to name two
+most worthy men and fine salmon fishers. Although both have now wound
+in their reels and unspliced their rods, one of them still lives among
+us hale and hearty. "Jamie" Shanks of Craigellachie is, perhaps, the
+father of the water. He himself is reticent as to his age and there are
+legends on the subject which lack authentication. It is, however, a
+matter of tradition that Jamie was out in the '45; and that, cannily
+returning home when Charles Edward turned back at Derby, he earned the
+price of a croft by showing the Duke of Cumberland the ford across Spey
+near the present bridge of Fochabers, by which the "butcher duke"
+crossed the river on his march to fight the battle of Culloden. It is
+also traditioned that Jamie danced round a bonfire in celebration of
+the marriage of "bonnie Jean," Duchess of Gordon, an event which
+occurred in 1767. Apart from the Dark Ages one thing is certain
+regarding Jamie, that the great flood of 1829 swept away his croft and
+cottage, he himself so narrowly escaping that he left his watch hanging
+on the bed-post, watch and bed-post being subsequently recovered
+floating about in the Moray Firth. The greatest honour that can be
+conferred on a fisherman--the Victoria Cross of the river--has long
+belonged to Jamie; a pool in Spey bears his name, and many a fine
+salmon has been taken out of "Jamie Shanks's Pool," the swirling water
+of which is almost at the good old man's feet as he shifts the "coo" on
+his strip of pasture or watches the gooseberries swelling in his pretty
+garden. His fame has long ago gone throughout all Speyside for skill in
+the use of the gaff: about eight years ago I was witness of the calm,
+swift dexterity with which he gaffed what I believe was his last fish.
+In the serene evening of his long day he still finds pleasant
+occupation in dressing salmon flies; and if you speak him fair and he
+is in good humour "Jamie" may let you have half a dozen as a great
+favour.
+
+The other veteran of our river of whom I would say something was that
+most worthy man and fine salmon fisher Mr. Charles Grant, the
+ex-schoolmaster of Aberlour, better known among us who loved and
+honoured the fine old Highland gentleman as "Charlie" Grant. Charlie no
+longer lives; but to the last he was hale, relished his modest dram,
+and delighted in his quiet yet graphic manner to tell of men and things
+of Speyside familiar to him during his long life by the riverside.
+Charles Grant was the first person who ever rented salmon water on
+Spey. It was about 1838 that he took a lease from the Fife trustees of
+the fishing on the right bank from the burn of Aberlour to the burn of
+Carron, about four miles of as good water as there is in all the run of
+Spey. This water would to-day be cheaply rented at £250 per annum; the
+annual rent paid by Charles Grant was two guineas. A few years later a
+lease was granted by the Fife trustees of the period of the grouse
+shootings of Benrinnes, the wide moorlands of the parishes of Glass,
+Mortlach, and Aberlour, including Glenmarkie the best moor in the
+county, at a rent of £100 a year with four miles of salmon water on
+Spey thrown in. The letting value of these moors and of this water is
+to-day certainly not less than £1500 a year.
+
+Charles Grant had a great and well-deserved reputation for finding a
+fish in water which other men had fished blank. This was partly because
+from long familiarity with the river he knew all the likeliest casts;
+partly because he was sure to have at the end of his casting-line just
+the proper fly for the size of water and condition of weather; and
+partly because of his quiet neat-handed manner of dropping his line on
+the water. There is a story still current on Speyside illustrative of
+this gift of Charlie in finding a fish where people who rather fancied
+themselves had failed--a story which Jamie Shanks to this day does not
+care to hear. Mr. Russel of the _Scotsman_ had done his very best from
+the quick run at the top of the pool of Dalbreck, down to the almost
+dead-still water at the bottom of that fine stretch, and had found no
+luck. Jamie Shanks, who was with Mr. Russel as his fisherman, had gone
+over it to no purpose with a fresh fly. They were grumpishly discussing
+whether they should give Dalbreck another turn or go on to Pool-o-Brock
+the next pool down stream, when Charles Grant made his appearance and
+asked the waterside question, "What luck?" "No luck at all, Charlie!"
+was Russel's answer. "Deevil a rise!" was Shanks's sourer reply. In his
+demure purring way Charles Grant--who in his manner was a duplicate of
+the late Lord Granville--remarked, "There ought to be a fish come out
+of that pool." "Tak' him out, then!" exclaimed Shanks gruffly. "Well,
+I'll try," quoth the soft-spoken Charlie; and just at that spot, about
+forty yards from the head of the pool, where the current slackens and
+the fish lie awhile before breasting the upper rapid, he hooked a fish.
+Then it was that Russel in the genial manner which made provosts swear,
+remarked, "Shanks, I advise you to take a half year at Mr. Grant's
+school!" "Fat for?" inquired Shanks sullenly. "To learn to fish!"
+replied the master of sarcasm of the delicate Scottish variety.
+
+Respectful by nature to their superiors, the honest working folk of
+Speyside occasionally forget themselves comically in their passionate
+ardour that a hooked salmon shall be brought to bank. Lord Elgin, now
+in his Indian satrapy, far away from what Sir Noel Paton in his fine
+elegy on the late Sir Alexander Gordon Cumming of Altyre called
+
+  The rushing thunder of the Spey,
+
+one day hooked a big fish in the "run" below "Polmet". The fish headed
+swiftly down stream, his lordship in eager pursuit, but afraid of
+putting any strain on the line lest the salmon should "break" him. Down
+round the bend below the pool and by the "Slabs" fish and fisherman
+sped, till the latter was brought up by the sheer rock of
+Craigellachie. Fortunately a fisherman ferried the Earl across the
+river to the side on which he was able to follow the fish. On he ran,
+keeping up with the fish, under the bridge, along the margin of
+"Shanks's Pool," past the "Boat of Fiddoch" pool and the mouth of the
+tributary; and he was still on the run along the edge of the croft
+beyond when he was suddenly confronted by an aged man, who dropped his
+turnip hoe and ran eagerly to the side of the young nobleman. Old
+Guthrie could give advice from the experience of a couple of
+generations as poacher, water-gillie, occasional water-bailiff, and
+from as extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the river as Sam
+Weller possessed of London public-houses. And this is what he
+exclaimed: "Ma Lord, ma Lord, gin ye dinna check him, that fush will
+tak' ye doun tae Speymouth--deil, but he'll tow ye oot tae sea! Hing
+intil him, hing intil him!" His lordship exerted himself accordingly,
+but did not secure the old fellow's approval. "Man! man!" Guthrie
+yelled, "ye're nae pittin' a twa-ounce strain on him; he's makin' fun
+o' ye!" The nobleman tried yet harder, yet could not please his
+relentless critic. "God forgie me, but ye canna fush worth a damn! Come
+back on the lan', an' gie him the butt wi' pith!" Thus adjured, his
+lordship acted at last with vigour; the sage, having gaffed the fish,
+abated his wrath, and, as the salmon was being "wetted," tendered his
+respectful apologies.
+
+In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful
+Speyside estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water
+hardly inferior to any throughout the long run of the river. Many a
+man, far away now from "bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the
+river's roll over its rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the
+swift yet smooth flow of "the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against
+the "Red Craig," in the deep, strong water at the foot of which the big
+red fish leap like trout when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting
+into glow of russet and crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank
+above; the smooth restful glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's
+How," in which a fisherman may spend to advantage the livelong day and
+then not leave it fished out; the turbulent half pool, half stream, of
+the "Piles," which always holds large fish lying behind the great
+stones or in the dead water under the daisy-sprinkled bank on which the
+tall beeches cast their shadows; the "Bulwark Pool;" the "Three
+Stones," where the grilse show their silver sides in the late May
+evenings; "Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter now, alas! spoiled
+by gravel; the quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and the "Spout o'
+Cobblepot;" and then the dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon," the deepest
+pool of Spey.
+
+The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a
+handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High
+Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and
+who, while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad. Good in
+the saddle and with the salmon rod, the Colonel was perhaps best behind
+a gun, with which he was not less deadly among the salmon of the Spey
+than among the grouse of Benaigen. His relative, old Lord Saltoun, was
+hard put to it once in the "Lady's How" with a thirty-pound salmon
+which he had hooked foul, and which, in its full vigour, was taking all
+manner of liberties with him, making spring after spring clean out of
+the water. The beast was so rebellious and strong that the old lord
+found it harder to contend with than with the Frenchmen who fought so
+stoutly with him for the possession of Hougomont. The Colonel,
+fowling-piece in hand, was watching the struggle, and seeing that Lord
+Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited his opportunity when the
+big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring, and, firing in the
+nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail, hardly marking
+it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river with
+cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now considered
+rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines, not in
+greed for fish but for the sake of the shooting practice they afforded
+him. When the hooked fish were struggling and in their struggles
+showing their tails out of water, he several times shot two right and
+left breaking the spine in each case close to the tail.
+
+The Colonel was succeeded by his brother, who had been a planter in
+Jamaica before coming to the estate on the death of his brother. Hardly
+was he home when he contested the county unsuccessfully on the old
+never-say-die Protectionist platform against the father of the present
+Duke of Fife; on the first polling-day of which contest I acquired a
+black eye and a bloody nose in the market square of a local village at
+the hands of some gutter lads, with whose demand that I should take the
+Tory rosette out of my bonnet I had declined to comply. Later, this
+gentleman became an assiduous fisher of men as a lay preacher, but he
+was as keen after salmon as he was after sinners. He hooked and
+played--and gaffed--the largest salmon I have ever heard of being
+caught in Spey by an angler--a fish weighing forty-six pounds. The
+actual present laird of Arndilly is a lady, but in her son are
+perpetuated the fishing instincts of his forbears.
+
+My reminiscences of Spey and Speyside are drawing to an end, and I now
+with natural diffidence approach a great theme. Every Speyside man will
+recognise from this exordium that I am about to treat of "Geordie." It
+is quite understood throughout lower Speyside that it is the moral
+support which Geordie accords to Craigellachie Bridge, in the immediate
+vicinity of which he lives, that chiefly maintains that structure; and
+that if he were to withdraw that support, its towers and roadway would
+incontinently collapse into the depths of the sullen pool spanned by
+the graceful erection. The best of men are not universally popular, and
+it must be said that there are those who cast on Geordie the aspersion
+of being "some thrawn," for which the equivalent in south-country
+language is perhaps "a trifle cross-grained." These, however, are
+envious people, who are jealous of Geordie's habitual association with
+lords and dukes, and who resent the trivial stiffness which is no doubt
+apparent in his manner to ordinary people for the first few days after
+the illustrious persons referred to have reluctantly permitted him to
+withdraw from them the light of his countenance. For my own part I have
+found Geordie, all things considered, to be wonderfully affable. That
+his tone is patronising I do not deny; but then there is surely a joy
+in being patronised by the factotum of a duke.
+
+I have never been quite sure, nor have I ever dared to ask Geordie,
+whether he considers the Duke to be his patron, or whether he regards
+himself as the patron of that eminent nobleman. From the
+"aucht-and-forty daugh" of Strathbogie to the Catholic Braes of
+Glenlivat where fifty years ago the "sma' stills" reeked in every
+moorland hollow, across to beautiful Kinrara and down Spey to the
+fertile Braes of Enzie, his Grace is the benevolent despot of a
+thriving tenantry who have good cause to regard him with esteem and
+gratitude. The Duke is a masterful man, whom no factor need attempt to
+lead by the nose; but on the margin of Spey, from the blush-red crags
+of Cairntie down to the head of tide water, he owns his centurion in
+Geordie, who taught him to throw his first line when already he was a
+minister of the Crown, and who, as regards aught appertaining to salmon
+fishing, saith unto his Grace, Do this and he doeth it.
+
+Geordie is a loyal subject, and when a few years ago he had the
+opportunity of seeing Her Majesty during her momentary halt at Elgin
+station, he paid her the compliment of describing her as a "sonsie
+wife." But the heart-loyalty of the honest fellow goes out in all its
+tender yet imperious fulness towards the Castle family, to most of the
+members of which, of both sexes, he has taught the science and practice
+of killing salmon. Hint the faintest shadow of disparagement of any
+member of that noble and worthy house, and you make a life enemy of
+Geordie. On no other subject is he particularly touchy, save one--the
+gameness and vigour of the salmon of Spey. Make light of the fighting
+virtues of Spey fish--exalt above them the horn of the salmon of Tay,
+Ness, or Tweed--and Geordie loses his temper on the instant and
+overwhelms you with the strongest language. There is a tradition that
+among Geordie's remote forbears was one of Cromwell's Ironsides who on
+the march from Aberdeen to Inverness fell in love with a Speyside lass
+of the period, and who, abandoning his Ironside appellation of
+"Hew-Agag-in-Pieces," adopted the surname which Geordie now bears. This
+strain of ancestry may account for Geordie's smooth yet peremptory
+skill as a disciplinarian. It devolves upon him during the rod-fishing
+season to assign to each person of the fishing contingent his or her
+particular stretch of water, and to tell off to each as guide one of
+his assistant attendants.
+
+It is a great treat to find Geordie in a garrulous humour and to listen
+to one of his salmon-fishing stories, told always in the broadest of
+north-country Doric. His sense of humour is singularly keen,
+notwithstanding that he is a Scot; and it is not in his nature to
+minimise his own share in the honour and glory of the incident he may
+relate. One of Geordie's stories is vividly in my recollection, and may
+appropriately conclude my reminiscences of Speyside and its folk. There
+was a stoup of "Benrinnes" on the mantelpiece and a free-drawing pipe
+in Geordie's mouth. His subject was the one on which he can be most
+eloquent--an incident of the salmon-fishing season, on which the worthy
+man delivered himself as follows:--
+
+"Twa or three seasons back I was attendin' Leddy Carline whan she was
+fushin' that gran' pool at the brig o' Fochabers. She's a fine fusher,
+Leddy Carline: faith, she may weel be, for I taucht her mysel'. She
+hookit a saumon aboot the midst o' the pool, an' for a while it gied
+gran' sport; loupin' and tumblin', an' dartin' up the watter an' doon
+the watter at sic a speed as keepit her leddyship muvin' gey fast tae
+keep abriesht o't. Weel, this kin' o' wark, an' a ticht line, began for
+tae tak' the spunk oot o' the saumon, an' I was thinkin' it was a
+quieston o' a few meenits whan I wad be in him wi' the gaff; but my
+birkie, near han' spent though he was, had a canny bit dodge up the
+sleeve o' him. He made a bit whamlin' run, an' deil tak' me gin he
+didna jam himself intil a neuk atween twa rocks, an' there the dour
+beggar bade an' sulkit. Weel, her leddyship keepit aye a steady drag on
+him, an' she gied him the butt wi' power; but she cudna get the beast
+tae budge--no, nae sae muckle as the breadth o' my thoomb-nail. Deil a
+word said Leddy Carline tae me for a gey while, as she vrought an'
+vrought tae gar the saumon quit his neuk. But she cam nae speed wi'
+him; an' at last she says, says she, 'Geordie, I can make nothing of
+him: what in the world is to be done?' 'Gie him a shairp upward yark,
+my leddy,' says I; 'there canna be muckle strength o' resistance left
+in him by this time!' Weel, she did as I tellt her--I will say this for
+Leddy Carline, that she's aye biddable. But, rugg her hardest, the fush
+stuck i' the neuk as gin he waur a bit o' the solid rock, an' her
+leddyship was becomin' gey an' exhaustit. 'Take the rod yourself,
+Geordie,' says she, 'and try what you can do; I freely own the fish is
+too many for me.' Weel, I gruppit the rod, an' I gied a shairp, steady,
+upward drag; an' up the brute cam, clean spent. He hadna been sulkin'
+aifter aa'; he had been fairly wedged atween the twa rocks, for whan I
+landit him, lo an' behold! he was bleedin' like a pig, an' there was a
+muckle gash i' the side o' him, that the rock had torn whan I draggit
+him by main force up an' oot. The taikle was stoot, ye'll obsairve, or
+else he be tae hae broken me; but tak' my word for't, Geordie is no the
+man for tae lippen tae feckless taikle.
+
+"Weel, I hear maist things; an' I was tellt that same nicht hoo at the
+denner-table Leddy Carline relatit the haill adventur', an' owned, fat
+was true aneuch, that the fush had fairly bestit her. Weel, amo' the
+veesitors at the Castle was the Dowager Leddy Breadanham; an' it seemed
+that whan Leddy Carline was through wi' her narrateeve, the dowager be
+tae gie a kin' o' a scornfu' sniff an' cock her neb i' the air; an' she
+said, wha but she, that she didna hae muckle opingin o' Leddy Carline
+as a saumon fisher, an' that she hersel' didna believe there was a fush
+in the run o' Spey that she cudna get the maistery ower. That was a gey
+big word, min' ye; it's langidge I wadna venture for tae make use o'
+mysel', forbye a south-countra dowager.
+
+"Weel, I didna say muckle; but, my faith, like the sailor's paurot, I
+thoucht a deevil o' a lot. The honour o' Spey was in my hauns, an' it
+behuvit me for tae hummle the pride o' her dowager leddyship. The
+morn's mornin' cam, an' by that time I had decided on my plan o'
+operautions. By guid luck I fand the dowager takin' her stroll afore
+brakfast i' the floor-gairden. I ups till her, maks my boo, an' says I,
+unco canny an' respectfu', 'My leddy, ye'll likely be for the watter
+the day?' She said she was, so says I, 'Weel, my leddy, I'll be prood
+for tae gae wi' ye mysel', an' I'll no fail tae reserve for ye as guid
+water as there is in the run o' Spey!' She was quite agreeable, an' so
+we sattlit it.
+
+"The Duke himsel' was oot on the lawn whan I was despatchin' the ither
+fushin' folk, ilk ane wi' his or her fisherman kerryin' the rod.
+'Geordie,' said his Grace, 'with whom will you be going yourself?' 'Wi'
+the Dowager Leddy Breadanham, yer Grace!' says I. 'And where do you
+think of taking her ladyship, Geordie?' speers he. 'N'odd, yer Grace,'
+says I, 'I am sattlin in my min' for tae tak' the leddy tae the "Brig
+o' Fochabers" pool;' an' wi' that I gied a kin' o' a respectfu'
+half-wink. The Duke was no' the kin' o' man for tae wink back, for
+though he's aye grawcious, he's aye dignifeed; but there was a bit
+flichter o' humour roun' his mou' whan he said, says he, 'I think that
+will do very well, Geordie!'
+
+"Praesently me an' her leddyship startit for the 'Brig o' Fochabers'
+pool. She cud be vera affauble whan she likit, I'll say that muckle for
+the dowager; an' me an' her newsed quite couthie-like as we traivellt.
+I saftened tae her some, I frankly own; but than my hert hardent again
+whan I thoucht o' the duty I owed tae Spey an' tae Leddy Carline. Of
+coorse there was a chance that my scheme wad miscairry; but there's no
+a man on Spey frae Tulchan tae the Tug Net that kens the natur' o'
+saumon better nor mysel'. They're like sheep--fat ane daes, the tithers
+will dae; an' gin the dowager hookit a fush, I hadna muckle doobt fat
+that fush wad dae. The dowager didna keep me vera lang in suspense. I
+had only chyngt her fly ance, an' she had maist fushed doon the pool a
+secont time, whan in the ripple o' watter at the head o' the draw abune
+the rapid a fush took her 'Riach' wi' a greedy sook, an' the line was
+rinnin' oot as gin there had been a racehorse at the far end o't, the
+saumon careerin' up the pool like a flash in the clear watter. The
+dowager was as fu' o' life as was the fush. Odd, but she kent brawly
+hoo tae deal wi' her saumon--that I will say for her! There was nae
+need for me tae bide closs by the side o' a leddy that had boastit
+there was na a fush in Spey she cudna maister, sae I clamb up the bank,
+sat doun on ma doup on a bit hillock, an' took the leeberty o' lichtin'
+ma pipe. Losh! but that dowager spanged up an' doun the waterside among
+the stanes aifter that game an' lively fush; an' troth, but she was as
+souple wi' her airms as wi' her legs; for, rinnin' an' loupin' an'
+spangin' as she was, she aye managed for tae keep her line ticht. It
+was a dooms het day, an' there wasna a ruffle o' breeze; sae nae doobt
+the fush was takin' as muckle oot o' her as she was takin' oot o' the
+fush. In aboot ten meenits there happent juist fat I had expectit. The
+fush made a sidelins shoot, an' dairted intil the vera crevice occupeed
+by Leddy Carline's fush the day afore. 'Noo for the fun!' thinks I, as
+I sat still an' smokit calmly. She was certently a perseverin' wummun,
+that dowager--there was nae device she didna try wi' that saumon tae
+force him oot o' the cleft. Aifter aboot ten meenits mair o' this wark,
+she shot at me ower her shouther the obsairve, 'Isn't it an obstinate
+wretch?' 'Aye,' says I pawkily, 'he's gey dour; but he's only a Spey
+fush, an' of coorse ye'll maister him afore ye've dune wi' him!' I'm
+thinkin' she unnerstude the insinivation, for she uttert deil anither
+word, but yokit tee again fell spitefu' tae rug an' yark at the sulkin'
+fush. At last, tae mak a lang story short, she was fairly dune.
+'Geordie,' says she waikly, 'the beast has quite worn me out! I'm fit
+to melt--there is no strength left in me; here, come and take the rod!'
+Weel, I deleeberately raise, poocht ma pipe, an' gaed doun aside her.
+'My leddy,' says I, quite solemn, an' luikin' her straucht i' the
+face--haudin' her wi' my ee, like--'I hae been tellt fat yer leddyship
+said yestreen, that there wasna a saumon in Spey ye cudna maister. Noo,
+I speer this at yer leddyship--respectfu' but direck; div ye admit
+yersel clean bestit--fairly lickit wi' that fush, Spey fush though it
+be? Answer me that, my leddy!' 'I do own myself beaten,' says she, 'and
+I retract my words.' 'Say nae mair, yer leddyship!' says I--for I'm no
+a cruel man--'say nae mair, but maybe ye'll hae the justice for tae say
+a word tae the same effeck in the Castle whaur ye spak yestreen?' 'I
+promise you I will,' said the dowager--'here, take the rod!' Weel, it
+was no sae muckle a fush as was Leddy Carline's. I had it oot in a few
+meenits, an' by that time the dowager was sae far revived that she was
+able to bring it in aboot tae the gaff; an' sae, in the hinner end, she
+in a sense maistert the fush aifter aa'. But I'm thinkin' she will be
+gey cautious in the futur' aboot belittlin' the smeddum o' Spey saumon!"
+
+
+
+
+THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
+
+
+The traveller up the country from Calcutta does not speedily reach
+places the names of which vividly recall the episodes of the great
+Mutiny. It is a chance if, as the train passes Dinapore, he remembers
+the defection of the Sepoy brigade stationed there which Koer Singh
+seduced from its allegiance. Arrah may possibly recall a dim memory of
+Wake's splendid defence of Boyle's bungalow and of Vincent Eyre's
+dashingly executed relief of the indomitable garrison. Benares is a
+little off the main line--Benares, on the parade ground of which Neill
+first put down that peremptory foot of his, where Olpherts was so quick
+with those guns of his, and where Jim Ellicott did his grim work with
+noose and cross-beam until long after the going down of the summer sun.
+But when the traveller's eye first rests on the gray ramparts of
+Akbar's hoary fortress in the angle where the Ganges and the Jumna meet
+and blend one with another, the reality of the Mutiny begins to impress
+itself upon him. Allahabad was the scene of a terrible tragedy; it was
+also the point of departure whence Havelock set forward on Cawnpore
+with his column, not indeed of rescue, but of retribution. The journey
+from Allahabad to Cawnpore, although perchance performed in the night,
+is not one to be slept through by any student of the story of the great
+rebellion. The Indian moon pours her flood of light on the little knoll
+hard by Futtehpore, where Havelock stood when Jwala Pershad's first
+round shot came lobbing, through his staff in among the camp kettles of
+the 64th. That village beyond the mango tope is Futtehpore itself,
+whence the rebel sowars swept headlong down the trunk road till Maude's
+guns gave them the word to halt. The pools are dry now through which,
+when Hamilton's voice had rung out the order--"Forward, at the double!"
+the light company of the Ross-shire Buffs splashed recklessly past the
+abandoned Sepoy guns, in their race with the grenadier company of the
+64th that had for its goal the Pandy barricade outside the village. In
+that cluster of mud huts--its name is Aoong--the gallant Rénaud fell
+with a shattered thigh, as he led his "Lambs" up to the _épaulement_
+which covered its front. One fight a day is fair allowance anywhere,
+but those fellows whom Havelock led were gluttons for fighting.
+Spanning that deep rugged nullah there, down which the Pandoo flows
+turbulently in the rainy season, is the bridge across which in the
+afternoon of the morning of Aoong, Stephenson with his Fusiliers dashed
+into the Sepoy battery and bayoneted the gunners before they could make
+up their minds to run away. And it was in the gray morning following
+the day of that double battle (the 15th of July) that the General,
+having heard for the first time that there were still alive in Cawnpore
+a number of women and children who had escaped the massacre of the
+boats, told his men what he knew. "With God's help," shouted Havelock,
+with a break in his voice that was like a sob, as he stood with his hat
+off and his hand on his sword--"with God's help, men, we will save
+them, or every man die in the attempt!" One answer came back in a great
+cheer; but a sadder answer to the aspiration, a bitter truth that made
+that aspiration futile and hopeless, had lain ever since the evening of
+the day before in the Beebeegur, and almost as the chief was speaking
+the Well was receiving its dead inmates. Where the train begins to
+slacken its pace on approaching the station, it is passing over the
+field of the first--the creditable--battle of Cawnpore. Fresh from the
+butchery Nana Sahib (Dhoondoo Punth) himself had come out to aid in the
+last stand against the avengers. Yonder is the mango tope which formed
+the screen for Hamilton's turning movement. It needs little imagination
+to recall the scene. Close by, at the cross-roads, stands the Sepoy
+battery, and those horsemen still nearer are reconnoitring sowars.
+Beyond the road the Highlanders are deploying on the plain as they
+clear the sheltering flank of the mango trees, amidst a grim silence
+broken only by the crash of the bursting shells and the cries of the
+bullock-drivers as the guns rattle on to open fire from the reverse
+flank. The flush rises in Hamilton's face and the eyes of him begin to
+sparkle, as he shouts "Ross-shire Buffs, wheel into line!" and then
+"Forward!" Quick as lightning the trails of the Sepoy guns are swung
+round and shot and shell come crashing through the ranks, while the
+rebel infantry, with a swiftness which speaks well for their British
+drill, show a front against this inroad on their flank. In silent grim
+imperturbability the Highland line stalks steadily on with the long
+springy step to be learned only on the heather. Now they are within
+eighty yards of the muzzles of the guns, and they can see the colour of
+the mustaches of the men plying and supporting them. Then Hamilton,
+with his sword in the air and his face all ablaze with the fighting
+blood in him, turns round in the saddle, shouts "Charge!" and bids the
+pipers to strike up. Wild and shrill bursts over that Indian plain the
+rude notes of the Northern music. But louder yet, drowning them and the
+roll of the artillery, rings out that Highland war-cry that has so
+often presaged victory to British arms. The Ross-shire men are in and
+over the guns ere the gunners have time to drop their lint-stocks and
+ramming-rods; they fall with bayonets at the charge upon the supporting
+infantry, and the supporting infantry go down where they huddle
+together, lacking the opportunity to break and run away in time. But
+the battle rages all day, and the white soldiers, as they fight their
+way slowly forward, hear the bursts of military music that greet the
+Nana as he moves from place to place, _not_ in the immediate front.
+Barrow and his handful of cavalry volunteers crash into the thick of
+them with the informal order to his men, "Give point, lads; damn cuts
+and guards." Young Havelock, mounted by the side of the gallant and
+ill-fated Stirling trudging forward on foot, brings the 64th on at the
+double against the great 24-pounder on the Cawnpore road that is
+vomiting grape at point-blank range. The night falls and the battle
+ceases, but among the wearied fighting men there is none of the elation
+of victory; for through the ranks, after the going down of the sun, had
+throbbed the bruit, originating no one knew where, that the women and
+children in Cawnpore had been butchered on the afternoon of the day
+before, while Stephenson and his Fusiliers were carrying the bridge of
+the Pandoo Nuddee.
+
+The railway station of Cawnpore is distant more than a mile from the
+cantonment. Close to the road and not far from the station, the
+explorer easily finds the massive pile of the "Savada House," now
+allotted as residences for railway officials. English children play now
+in the corridors once thronged by the minions of the Nana, for here
+were his headquarters during part of the siege. Its verandas all day
+long were full of ministers, diviners, courtiers, and creatures. Here
+strolled the supple, panther-like Azimoolah, the self-asserted
+favourite of home society in the pre-Mutiny days. Teeka Sing, the
+Nana's war minister, had his "bureau" in a tent under the peepul tree
+there. In that other clump of trees, where an ayah is tickling a white
+baby into laughter, was the pavilion of the Nana himself, who inherited
+the Mahratta preference for canvas over bricks and mortar. And here,
+while the crackle of the musketry fire and the din of the big guns came
+softened on the ear by distance, sat the adopted son of the Peishwa
+while Jwala Pershad came for orders about the cavalry, and Bala Rao,
+his brother, explained his devices for harassing the sahibs, and Tantia
+Topee, Hoolass Sing, Azimoolah, and the Nana himself devised the scheme
+of the treachery. But the Savada House has even a more lurid interest
+than this. Hither the women and children whom an unkind fate had spared
+from dying with the men were brought back from the Ghaut of Slaughter.
+You may see the two rooms into which 125 unfortunates were huddled
+after that march from before the presence of one death into the
+presence of another. As they plodded past the intrenchment so long
+held, and across the plain to the Nana's pavilion, "I saw," says a
+spectator, "that many of the ladies were wounded. Their clothes had
+blood upon them. Two were badly hurt and had their heads bound up with
+handkerchiefs; some were wet, covered with mud and blood, and some had
+their dresses torn; but all had clothes. I saw one or two children
+without clothes. There were no men in the party, but only some boys of
+twelve or thirteen. Some of the ladies were barefoot." Hither, too,
+were sent later the women of that detachment of the garrison which had
+got off from the ghaut in the boat defended by Vibart, Ashe, Delafosse,
+Bolton, Moore, and Thomson, and which had been captured at Nuzzufghur
+by Baboo Ram Bux. It had been for those people a turbulent departure
+from the Suttee Chowra Ghaut, but it was a yet more fearful returning.
+"They were brought back," testified a spy; "sixty sahibs, twenty-five
+memsahibs, and four children. The Nana ordered the sahibs to be
+separated from the memsahibs, and shot by the 1st Bengal Native
+Infantry.... 'Then,' said one of the memsahibs, 'I will not leave my
+husband. If he must die I will die with him.' So she ran and sat down
+behind her husband, clasping him round the waist. Directly she said
+this, the other memsahibs said, 'We also will die with our husbands,'
+and they all sat down each by her husband. Then their husbands said,
+'Go back,' and they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered his soldiers,
+and they went in, pulling them forcibly away." ...
+
+The drive from the railway station to the European cantonments is
+pleasant and shaded. At a bend in the road there comes into view a
+broad, flat, treeless parade ground. This plain lies within a circle of
+foliage, above which, on the south-eastern side, rise the balconies and
+flat tops of a long range of barracks built in detached blocks, while
+around the rest of the circle the trees shade the bungalows of the
+cantonment. Near the centre of this level space there is an irregular
+enclosure defined by a shallow sunk wall and low quickset hedge, and in
+the middle of this enclosure rises the ornate and not wholly
+satisfactory structure known as the "Memorial Church." It is built on
+the site of the old dragoon hospital, which was the very focus of the
+agony of the siege. It is impossible to analyse the mingled emotions of
+amazement, pride, pity, wrath, and sorrow which fill the visitor to
+this shrine of British valour, endurance, and constancy. The heart
+swells and the eyes fill as one, standing here with all the arena of
+the heroism lying under one's eyes, recalls the episodes of the
+glorious, piteous story. The blood stirs when one remembers the buoyant
+valour of the gallant Moore, who, "wherever he passed, left men
+something more courageous and women something less unhappy," the
+reckless audacity of Ashe, the cool daring of Delafosse, the deadly
+rifle of Stirling, the heroic devotion of Jervis. And a great lump
+grows in the throat when one bethinks him of the beautiful constancy
+and fearful sufferings of the women; of British ladies going barefoot
+and giving up their stockings as cases for grape-shot; of Mrs. Moore's
+journeys across to No. 2 Barrack; of the hapless gentlewomen, "unshod,
+unkempt, ragged, and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with
+drought, and faint with hunger, sitting waiting to hear that they were
+widows." And what a place it was which the garrison had to defend! Not
+a foot of all the space bomb-proof, an apology for an intrenchment such
+as "an active cow might jump over." The imagination has to do much work
+here, for most of the landmarks are gone. The outline of the
+world-famous earthwork is almost wholly obliterated; only in places is
+it to be dimly recognised by brick-discoloured lines, and a low raised
+line on the smooth _maidan_. The enclosure now existing has no
+reference to the outlines of the intrenchment. That enclosure merely
+surrounds the graveyard, in the midst of which stands the "Memorial
+Church," a structure that cannot be commended from an architectural
+point of view. But the space enclosed around its gaunt red walls is
+pregnant with painful interest. We come first on a railed-in memorial
+tomb, bearing an inscription in raised letters, on a cross let into the
+tessellated pavement: "In three graves within this enclosure lie the
+remains of Major Edward Vibart, 2nd Bengal Cavalry, and about seventy
+officers and soldiers, who, after escaping from the massacre at
+Cawnpore on the 27th June 1857, were captured by the rebels at
+Sheorapore, and murdered on the 1st July." The inmates of these graves
+were originally buried elsewhere, and were removed hither when the
+enclosure was formed. In another part of the enclosure is a raised
+tomb, the slab of which bears the inscription: "This stone marks a spot
+which lay within Wheeler's intrenchment, and covers the remains and is
+sacred to the memory of those who were the first to meet their death
+when beleaguered by mutineers and rebels in June 1857." Two only lie in
+this grave, Mr. Murphy and a lady who died of fever. These two perished
+on the first day of the siege and had the exclusive privilege of being
+decently interred within the precincts of the intrenchment. After the
+first day of the siege there was scant leisure for funeral rites. To
+find the last resting-place of the remaining dead of this siege, we
+must quit the enclosure and walk across the _maidan_ to a spot among
+the trees by the roadside under the shadow of No. 4 Barrack. There was
+an empty well here when the siege begun; three weeks after, when the
+siege ended, this well contained the bodies of 250 British people. With
+daylight the battle raged around that sepulchre, but when the night
+came the slain of the day were borne thither with stealthy step and
+scant attendance. Now the well is filled up, and above it, inside a
+small ornamental enclosure formed by iron railings, there rises a
+monument which bears the following inscription: "In a well under this
+enclosure were laid by the hands of their fellows in suffering the
+bodies of men, women, and children, who died hard by during the heroic
+defence of Wheeler's intrenchment when beleaguered by the rebel Nana."
+Below the inscription is this apposite quotation from Psalm cxli. 7:
+"Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and
+cleaveth wood upon the earth. But mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the
+Lord." At the corners of the flower-plot are small crosses bearing
+individual names. One commemorates Sir George Parker, the cantonment
+magistrate; a second, Captain Jenkins; a third, Lieutenant Saunders and
+the men of the 84th Regiment; a fourth, Lieutenant Glanville and the
+men of the Madras Fusiliers; and here, too, lies stout-hearted yet
+tender-hearted John MacKillop of the Civil Service the hero of another
+well, that from which the team of buffaloes are now drawing water to
+make the mortar for the Memorial Church. Thence was procured the water
+for the garrison and it was a target also for the rebel artillery, so
+that the appearance of a man with a pitcher by day and by night the
+creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower of grape. But John
+MacKillop, "not being a fighting-man," made himself useful as he
+modestly put it, for a week as captain of the Well, till a grape-shot
+sent him to that other well thence never to return.
+
+The Memorial Church is in the form of a cross, and now that it has been
+finished is not destitute of beauty as regards its interior. Perhaps it
+is in place, but the noblest monument that could commemorate Cawnpore
+would have been the maintenance, for the wonder of the world unto all
+time, of the intrenchment and what it surrounded, as nearly as possible
+in the condition in which they were left on the evacuation of the
+garrison. The grandest monument in the world is the Residency of
+Lucknow, which remains and is kept up substantially in the condition in
+which it was left when Sir Colin Campbell brought out its garrison in
+November 1857; and the Cawnpore intrenchment would have been a still
+nobler memorial as the abiding testimony to a defence even more
+wonderful, although unfortunately unsuccessful, than that of Lucknow.
+But the Memorial Church of Cawnpore will always be interesting by
+reason of its site and of the memorial tablets on the walls of its
+interior. In the left transept is a tablet "To the memory of the
+Engineers of the East Indian Railway, who died and were killed in the
+great insurrection of 1857; erected in affectionate remembrance by
+their brother Engineers in the North-West Provinces." On the left side
+of the nave are several tablets. One is to the memory of poor young
+John Nicklen Martin, killed in the battle at Suttee Chowra Ghaut.
+Another commemorates three officers, two sergeants, two corporals, a
+drummer, and twenty privates of the 34th Regiment, killed at the
+(second) Battle of Cawnpore on the 28th November 1857; the day on which
+the Gwalior Contingent, seduced into rebellion by Tantia Topee, made
+itself so unpleasant to General Windham, the "Cawnpore Runners," and
+other regiments of that officer's command. A third tablet is "To the
+memory of A.G. Chalwin, 2nd Light Cavalry, and his wife Louisa, who
+both perished during the siege of Cawnpore in July 1857. These are they
+which came out of great tribulation." A fourth commemorates Captain
+Gordon and Lieutenant Hensley, of the 82nd Foot, also victims of the
+Gwalior Contingent. In the right of the nave there is a tablet "Sacred
+to the memory of Philip Hayes Jackson, who, with Jane, his wife, and
+her brother Ralf Blyth Croker, were massacred by rebels at Cawnpore on
+27th June." Another is to Lieutenant Angelo, of the 16th Grenadiers
+Bengal Native Infantry, who also fell in the boat massacre; and a third
+is to the memory of the gallant Stuart Beatson, who was Havelock's
+adjutant-general, and who, dying as he was of cholera, did his work at
+Pandoo Nuddee and Cawnpore in a _dhoolie_. In the right transept are
+tablets in memory of the officers of the Connaught Rangers, and of the
+officers and men of the 32nd Cornwall Regiment "who fell in defence of
+Lucknow and Cawnpore and subsequent campaign"--fourteen officers and
+448 "women and men." And here, too, is perhaps the most affecting
+memorial of any--a tablet "In memory of Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Wainwright,
+Miss Wainwright, Mrs. Hill, forty-three soldiers' wives and fifty-five
+children, murdered in Cawnpore in 1857."
+
+It is easy enough now to follow the footsteps of Mrs. Moore, dangerous
+as was that journey of hers, from the intrenchment to the corner of No.
+2 Barrack, which she was wont to make when her husband went on duty
+there to strengthen the hands of Mowbray Thomson. There is no trace now
+and the very memory of its whereabouts is lost, of the bamboo hut in a
+sheltered corner which the garrison of this exposed post built for the
+brave gentlewoman. But No. 2 Barrack, except that it is finished and
+tenanted, stands now very much as it did when Glanville first, and when
+he fell then Mowbray Thomson, defended with a success which seems so
+wonderful when we look at the place defended and its situation. The
+garrison was not always the same. "My sixteen men," writes Thomson,
+"consisted in the first instance of Ensign Henderson of the 56th Native
+Infantry, five or six of the Madras Fusiliers, two plate-layers, and
+some men of the 84th. The first instalment was soon disabled. The
+Madras Fusiliers were all shot at their posts. Several of the 84th also
+fell, but in consequence of the importance of the position, as soon as
+a loss in my little corps was reported, Captain Moore sent us over a
+reinforcement from the intrenchment. Sometimes a soldier, sometimes a
+civilian, came. The orders given us were not to surrender with our
+lives, and we did our best to obey them." And in a line with No. 2
+Barrack is No. 4 Barrack, held with equal stanchness by a party of
+Civil Engineers who had been employed on the East Indian Railroad, and
+who had for their commander Captain Jenkins. Seven of the engineers
+perished in defence of this post.
+
+There is nothing more to see on the _maidan_, and one feels his anger
+rising at the obliteration of everything that might help towards the
+localisation of associations. Let us leave the scene of the defence and
+follow the track of the defenders as they marched down to the scene of
+the great treachery. The distance from the intrenchment to the ghaut is
+barely a mile. Think of that stirrup-cup--that _doch an dhorras_--of
+cold water, in which the hapless band pledged one another. The noble
+Moore cheerily leads the way down the slope to the bridge with the
+white rails with an advance guard of a handful of his 32nd men. The
+palanquins with the women, the children, and the wounded follow, the
+latter bandaged up with strips of women's gowns and petticoats, and
+fragments of shirt-sleeves. And then come the fighting-men--a gallant,
+ragged, indomitable band. A martinet colonel would stand aghast--for
+save a regimental button here and there, he would find it hard to
+recognise the gaunt, hairy, sun-scorched squad for British soldiers.
+But let who might incline to disown these few war-worn men in their
+dirty flannel rags and fragmentary nankeen breeches, their foes know
+them for what they are, and make way for the white sahibs with no
+dressing indeed in their ranks, but each man with his rifle on his
+shoulder, the deadly revolver in his belt, and the fearless glance in
+the hollow eye. The wooden bridge with the white rails spans at right
+angles a rough irregular glen which widens out as it approaches the
+river, some three hundred yards distant from the bridge. It is a mere
+footpath that leaves the road on the hither side of the bridge, and
+skirting the dry bed of the nullah touches the river close to the old
+temple. By this footpath it was that our countrymen and countrywomen
+passed down to the cruel ambush which had been laid for them in the
+mouth of the glen. There are few to whom the details of that fell scene
+are not familiar. What a contrast between the turmoil and devilry of it
+and the serene calmness of the all but solitude the ghaut now presents!
+On the knolls of the farther side snug bungalows nestle among the
+trees, under the veranda of one of which a lady is playing with her
+children. The village of Suttee Chowra on the bluff on the left of the
+ghaut, where Tantia Topee's sepoys were concealed, no longer exists; a
+pretty bungalow and its compound occupy its site. The little temple on
+the water's edge by the ghaut is slowly mouldering into decay; on the
+plaster of the coping of its river wall you may still see the marks of
+the treacherous bullets. The stair which, built against its wall, led
+down to the water's edge, has disappeared. Tantia Topee's dispositions
+for the perpetration of the treachery could not now succeed, for the
+Ganges has changed its course and there is deep water close in shore at
+the ghaut. In the stream nearest to the Oude side the river has cast up
+a long narrow dearah island, in the fertile mud of which melons are
+cultivated where once whistled the shot from the guns on the Oude side
+of the river. A Brahmin priest is placidly sunning himself on the river
+platform of the temple over the dome of which hangs the foliage of a
+peepul tree. A dhobie is washing the shirts of a sahib in the stream
+that once was dyed with the blood of the sahibs. There is no monument
+here, no superfluous reminder of the terrible tragedy. The man is not
+to be envied whose eyes are dry, and whose heart beats its normal
+pulsations, while he stands here alone on this spot so densely peopled
+by associations at once so tragic and so glorious.
+
+The scene of the final massacre lies some distance higher up the river.
+As we cross the Ganges canal, the native city lying on our left, there
+rises up before us the rich mass of foliage that forms the outer screen
+of the beautiful Memorial Gardens. The hue of the greenery would be
+sombre but for the blossoms which relieve it, emblem of the divine hope
+which mitigated the gloom of despair for our countrywomen who perished
+so cruelly in this balefully historic spot. Of the Beebeeghur, the term
+by which among the natives is known the bungalow where the massacre was
+perpetrated, not one stone now remains on another but neither its
+memory nor its name will be lost for all time. Natives are strolling in
+the shady flower-bordered walks of the Memorial Gardens, the
+prohibition which long debarred their entrance having been wisely
+removed. In the centre of the garden rises, fringed with cypresses, a
+low mound, the summit of which is crowned by a circular screen, or
+border, of light and beautiful open-work architecture. The circular
+space enclosed is sunken, and from the centre of this sunken space
+there rises a pedestal on which stands the marble presentment of an
+angel. There is no need to explain what episode in the tragic story
+this monument commemorates; the inscription round the capital of the
+pedestal tells its tale succinctly indeed, but the words burn.
+"Sacred," it runs, "to the perpetual memory of the great company of
+Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were
+cruelly massacred by the followers of the rebel, Nana Doondoo Punth of
+Blithoor; and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on
+the 15th day of July 1857." A few paces to the north-west of the
+monument is the spot where stood the bungalow in which the massacre was
+done; and now, where the sight they saw maddened our countrymen long
+ago to a frenzy of revenge, there bloom roses and violets. And a step
+farther on, in a thicket of arbor vitae trees and cypresses, is the
+Memorial Churchyard, with its many nameless mounds, for here were
+buried not a few who died during the long occupation of Cawnpore, and
+in the combats around it. Here there is a monument to Thornhill, the
+Judge of Futtehghur, Mary his wife, and their two children, who
+perished in the massacre. Thornhill was one of the males brought out
+from the bungalow and shot earlier in the afternoon than when the
+women's time came. Another monument bears this inscription: "Sacred to
+the memory of the women and children of the 32nd, this monument is
+raised by twenty men of the same regiment, who were passing through
+Cawnpore, 21st Nov. 1857." And among the tombstones are those of
+gallant Douglas Campbell of the 78th, Woodford of the 2nd Battalion
+Rifle Brigade, and Young of the 4th Bengal Native Infantry.
+
+
+
+
+BISMARCK
+
+BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
+
+
+The ex-Chancellor of the German Empire owed nothing of his unique
+career to adventitious advantages. Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who
+for more than a generation was the most prominent and most powerful
+personality of Europe, was essentially a self-made man. He was a
+younger son of a cadet family of a knightly and ancient but somewhat
+decayed house, ranking among the lesser nobility of the Alt Mark of
+Brandenburg. The square solid mansion in which he was born, embowered
+among its trees in the region between the Elbe and the Havel, might be
+taken by an Englishman for the country residence of a Norfolk or
+Somersetshire squire of moderate fortune. But memories cling around the
+massive old family place of Schoenhausen, such as can belong to no
+English residence of equal date. In the library door of the Brandenburg
+mansion are seen to this day three deep fissures made by the bayonet
+points of French soldiers fresh from the battlefield of Jena, who in
+their brutal lawlessness pursued the young and beautiful chatelaine of
+the house and strove to crush in the door which the fugitive had locked
+behind her. The lady thus terrified and outraged was the mother of
+Bismarck; and the story told him in boyhood of his loved mother's
+narrow escape from worse than death, and of his father's having to
+conceal her in the depth of the adjoining forest, may well have
+inspired their son with the ill-feeling against the French nation which
+he never cared to disguise.
+
+The Bismarcks had been fighting men from time immemorial, and the
+combatant nature of the great scion of their race displayed itself in
+frequent duels during his university career at Göttingen. In the series
+of some eight-and-twenty duels in which he engaged during his first
+three terms, he was wounded but twice--once in the leg and again on the
+cheek, the mark of which latter wound he bears to this day. At one time
+he seems to have all but decided to embrace the military career but for
+family reasons he became a country gentleman, and if Europe had
+remained undisturbed by revolution he might have lived and died a
+bucolic squire, "Dyke Captain" of his district, with a seat in the
+Provincial Diet, a liking for history and philosophy, a propensity to
+rowdyism and drinking bouts of champagne and porter, and a character
+which defined itself in his local appellation of "Mad Bismarck." _Dis
+aliter visum_. The Revolution of 1848 swept over Europe and Bismarck
+rallied to the support of his sovereign. When in 1851 the young
+Landwehr lieutenant was sent to Frankfort by that sovereign as the
+representative of Prussia in the German Diet, he carried with him a
+reputation for unflinching devotion to the Crown, for a conservatism
+which had been styled not only "mediaeval" but "antediluvian," and for
+startling originality in his views as well as fearlessness in
+expressing them. The latter attribute he displayed when, in reply to a
+remark of a French diplomat on a question of policy, "_Cette politique
+va vous conduire à Jena_," Bismarck significantly retorted, "_Pourquoi
+pas à Leipsic ou à Waterloo?_" During his tenure of office at Frankfort
+his conviction steadfastly strengthened that Prussia could become a
+great nation only by shaking herself free from the Austrian supremacy
+in Germany. "It is my conviction," he placed on record in a despatch
+soon after the Crimean War, "that at no distant time we shall have to
+fight with Austria for our very existence;" and he was yet more
+emphatic when he wrote just before leaving Frankfort to take up his new
+position as German Ambassador to Russia in the beginning of 1859: "I
+recognise in our relations with the Bund a certain weakness affecting
+Prussia, which, sooner or later, we shall have to cure _ferro et
+igni_"--with fire and sword--words which embodied the first distinct
+enunciation of that policy of "blood and iron" which was destined
+ultimately to bring about the unification of Germany. His disgust was
+so strong that Prussia did not assert herself against Austria in 1858
+when the latter's hands were full in Italy, that his continued presence
+at Frankfort was considered unadvisable. He remained "in ice"--to use
+his own expression--at St. Petersburg until early in 1862; and in
+September of that year, after a few months of service as Prussian
+Ambassador at Paris, he was appointed by King Wilhelm to the high and
+onerous post of Minister-President with the portfolio of Foreign
+Secretary. It was then that his great career as a European statesman
+really began.
+
+The impression is all but universal that King Wilhelm throughout the
+eventful years which followed was but the figure-head of the ship at
+the helm of which stood Bismarck, strong, shrewd, subtle, cynical, and
+unscrupulous. This conception I believe to be utterly wrong. I hold
+Wilhelm to have been the virtual maker of the united Germany and the
+creator of the German Empire; and that the accomplishment of both those
+objects, the former leading up to the latter, was already quietly in
+his mind long before he mounted the throne. I consider him to have
+possessed the shrewdest insight into character. I believe him to have
+been quite unscrupulous, when once he had brought himself to cross the
+threshold of a line of action. I discern in him this curious, although
+not very rare, phase of character, that although resolutely bent on a
+purpose he was apt to be irresolute and even reluctant in bringing
+himself to consent to measures whereby that purpose was to be
+accomplished. He was that apparent contradiction in terms, a bold
+hesitator; he habitually needed, and knew that he needed, to have his
+hand apparently forced for the achievement of the end he was most bent
+upon. He knew full well that his aspirations could be fulfilled only at
+the bayonet point; and recognising the defects of the army, he had
+while still Regent set himself energetically to the task of making
+Prussia the greatest military power of Europe. He it was who had put
+into the hands of Prussian soldiers the weapon that won Königgrätz.
+With his clear eye for the right man he had found Moltke and placed the
+premier strategist of his day at the head of the General Staff. Roon he
+picked out as if by intuition from comparative obscurity, and assigned
+to him the work of preparing and carrying out that scheme of army
+reform which all continental Europe has copied.
+
+And then, constant in the furtherance of his purposes, Wilhelm
+deliberately invented Bismarck. He had steadfastly taken note of the
+man whom he chose to be his minister from the big Landwehr lieutenant's
+first commission to the Frankfort Diet in 1851; probably, indeed,
+earlier, when Bismarck was a rare but forcible speaker in Frederick
+Wilhelm's "quasi-Parliament." In Bismarck Wilhelm saw precisely the man
+he wanted--the complement of himself; arbitrary as he was, unscrupulous
+as he was, but bolder and at the same time more wise. Knowing where he
+himself was lacking, he recognised the man who, when he himself should
+have the impulse to balk and hesitate, was of that hardier
+nature--"grit" the Americans call it--to take him hard by the head and
+force him over the fence which all the while he had been longing to be
+on the other side of. To a monarch of this character Bismarck was
+simply the ideal guide and support--the man to urge him on when
+hesitating, to restrain him when over-ardent. Wilhelm had all along
+thoroughly realised that war with Austria was among the inevitables
+between him and the accomplishment of his aims, and had accepted it as
+such when it was yet afar off; but when confronted full with it his
+nerve failed him, and Bismarck--engaged among other things for just
+such an emergency--had to act as the spur to prick the side of his
+master's intent. The spur having done its work Wilhelm was himself
+again; he really enjoyed Königgrätz and would fain have dictated peace
+to Austria from the Hofburg of Vienna. In his zeal for promoting German
+unity at Prussia's bayonet point he lost his head a little, and on
+Bismarck devolved, in his own words, "the ungrateful duty of diluting
+the wine of victory with the water of moderation." One of the beads on
+the surface of the former fluid was certainly thus early the Imperial
+idea; but the time for its fulfilment Bismarck wisely judged not yet
+ripe. As it approached four years later, the diary of the Crown Prince
+depicts with unconscious humour the amusing progress of the "weakening"
+of Wilhelm's opposition to the Kaisership; it weakened in good time
+quite out of the sort of existence it had ever had, and Wilhelm was
+ready for the Kaisership before the Kaisership was ready for him.
+
+Bismarck as Premier began as he meant to go on, with uncompromising
+masterfulness. The Chamber and the nation might probably have fallen in
+willingly with Wilhelm's scheme for the reorganisation and
+reinforcement of the army, had it been possible to divulge the intent
+in furtherance of which the increased armament was being created. But
+since neither monarch nor minister could even hint at the objects in
+view, the nation was set against that increased armament for which it
+could discern no apparent use. So the Chamber, session after session,
+went through the accustomed formula of rejecting the military
+reorganisation bill as well as the military expenditure estimates. "No
+surrender" was the steadfast motto of Bismarck and his royal master.
+The constitution, such as it was, in effect was suspended. The Upper
+House voted everything it was asked to vote; loans were duly effected,
+the revenues were collected and the military disbursements were made,
+right in the teeth of the popular will and the veto of the
+representatives of the nation. Bismarck became the best-hated man in
+Prussia. He was compared to Catiline and Strafford; he was threatened
+with impeachment; the House and the nation clamoured to the King for
+his dismissal and for the sovereign's return to the path of
+constitutional government.
+
+But the long "conflict-time" was drawing near its close, and the
+triumph of the monarch and his minister over the constitution was
+approaching. The policy of doing political evil that national advantage
+might come was, for once at least, to stand vindicated. War with
+Austria as the outcome of Bismarck's astute if unscrupulous statecraft
+was imminent when the hostile parliament was dissolved; and a general
+election took place amidst the fervid outburst of enthusiasm which the
+earlier victories of the Prussian arms in the "Seven Weeks' War"
+stirred throughout the nation. The prospect of war had been unpopular
+in the extreme, but the tidings of the first success kindled the flame
+of patriotism. Bismarck lost for ever the title of the "best-hated man
+in Prussia" in the loud volume of the enthusiastic greetings of the
+populace, and on the day of Münchengrätz and Skalitz Prussia now
+rejoiced to put her stubborn neck under the great minister's foot.
+
+The mingled truculence and tortuousness of the diplomacy by which
+Bismarck sapped up to the short but decisive war, the issue of which
+gave to Prussia the virtual headship of Germany and contributed so
+greatly toward the unification of the Fatherland, constitute a striking
+illustration of his methods in statecraft. He was fairly entitled to
+say, "_Ego qui feci_." He had achieved his aim in defiance of the
+nation. The Court threw its weight into the scale against the war; to
+the Crown Prince the strife with Austria was notoriously repugnant. The
+King himself, as the crisis approached, evinced marked hesitation. How
+triumphantly the event vindicated the policy of the great Premier, is a
+matter of history. He has frankly owned that if the decisive battle
+should have resulted in a Prussian defeat, he had resolved not to
+survive the shipwreck of his hopes and schemes. And there was a period
+in the course of the colossal struggle of Königgrätz, when to many men
+it seemed that the wielders of the needle-gun were having the worst of
+the battle. An awful hour for Bismarck, conscious of the load of
+responsibility which he carried. With great effort he could indeed
+maintain a calm visage, but his heart was beating and every pulse of
+him throbbing. In his torture of suspense he caught at straws. Moltke
+asked him for a cigar. As Bismarck handed him his cigar case he
+snatched a shred of comfort from the inference that if matters were
+very bad Moltke could hardly care to smoke. But Moltke was not only in
+a frame for tobacco but Bismarck watched with what deliberate coolness
+the great strategist inspected and smelt at cigar after cigar before
+making his final selection; and he dared to infer that the man who best
+understood the situation was in no perturbation as to the ultimate
+outcome. The opportune arrival of the Crown Prince's army on the
+Austrian right flank decided the business, and that arrival Bismarck
+was the first to discern. Lines were dimly visible on the hither slope
+of the Chlum heights; but they were pronounced to be ploughed ridges.
+Bismarck closed his field-glasses with a snap and exclaimed, "No, these
+are not plough furrows; the spaces are not equal; they are marching
+lines!" And he was right.
+
+Eighteen days after the victory of Königgrätz the Prussian hosts were
+in line on the historic Marchfeld whence the spires of Vienna could be
+dimly seen through the heat-haze. The soldiers were eager for the storm
+of the famous lines of Florisdorf and King Wilhelm was keen to enter
+the Austrian capital. But now the practical wisdom of Bismarck stepped
+in and his arguments for moderation prevailed. The peace which ended
+the Seven Weeks' War revolutionised the face of Germany. Austria
+accepted her utter exile from Germany, recognised the dissolution of
+the old Bund, and consented to non-participation in the new North
+German Confederation of which Prussia was to have the unquestioned
+military and diplomatic leadership. Prussia annexed Hanover, Electoral
+Hesse, Nassau, Sleswig and Holstein, Frankfort-on-Main, and portions of
+Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria. Her territorial acquisitions amounted to
+over 6500 square miles with a population exceeding 4,000,000, and the
+states with which she had been in conflict paid as war indemnity sums
+reaching nearly to £10,000,000 sterling. In a material sense, it had
+not been a bad seven weeks for Prussia; in a sense other than material,
+she had profited incalculably more. She was now, in fact as in name,
+one of the "Great Powers" of Europe. The nation realised at length what
+manner of man this Bismarck was and what it owed to him. When the inner
+history of the period comes to be written, it will be recognised that
+at no time of his extraordinary career did Bismarck prove himself a
+greater statesman than during the five days of armistice in July 1866,
+when he fought his diplomatic Königgrätz in the Castle of Nikolsburg
+and assuaged the wounds of the Austrian defeat by terms the moderation
+of which went far to obliterate the memory of the rancour of the recent
+strife.
+
+He had been wily enough to secure by vague non-committal half-promises
+the neutrality of France during the weeks while Prussia was crushing
+the armed strength of Austria in Bohemia. But the issue of Königgrätz
+startled Napoleon and set France in ferment. Bismarck dared to refuse
+point-blank the demand which the French Emperor made for the fortress
+of Mayence, made though that demand was under threat of war. The
+Prussian commanders would have liked nothing better than a war with
+France, and Roon indeed had warned for mobilisation 350,000 soldiers to
+swell the ranks of the forces already in the field; but Bismarck was
+wise and could wait. He allowed Napoleon to exercise some influence in
+the negotiations in the character of a mediator; and to French
+intervention was owing the stipulation that the South German States
+should be at liberty to form themselves into a South German
+Confederation of which Napoleon hoped to be the patron. But Bismarck
+was a better diplomatist than Napoleon. While he formed and knit
+together the North German Confederation in which Prussia was dominant,
+he quietly negotiated an alliance offensive and defensive with each of
+the Southern States separately. No Southern bund was ever formed, and
+when the Franco-German War broke out in 1870 Napoleon saw the shipwreck
+of his abortive devices in the spectacle of the troops of Bavaria and
+Würtemberg marching on the Rhine in line with the battalions of Prussia.
+
+The unity of Germany was not yet; that consummation and the
+Kaisership--the two greatest triumphs of Bismarck's life--required
+another and a greater war to bring about their accomplishment. During
+the interval between 1866 and 1870, while the armed strength of
+Northern Germany was being quietly but sedulously perfected, Bismarck
+with dexterous caution was smoothing the rough path toward the ultimate
+unification. He would not have his hand forced by the enthusiasts for
+"the consummation of the national destiny." "No horseman can afford to
+be always at a gallop" was the figure with which he met the clamourers
+of the Customs Parliament. He invoked the terms of the treaty of Prague
+against the spokesmen of the Pan-German party inveighing vehemently
+against the policy of delay. He was staunch in his conviction that the
+South for its own safety's sake would come into the union the moment
+that the North should engage in war. He was a few weeks out in his
+reckoning; the Southern States waited until Sedan had been fought, when
+the prospect of the spoils of victory was assured; and this measured
+delay on their part was the best justification of Bismarck's sagacious
+deliberateness. The negotiations were tedious, but at length, on the
+evening of 23rd November 1870 the Convention with Bavaria was signed,
+and the unity of Germany was an accomplished fact. Busch vividly
+depicts the great moment:--
+
+The Chief came in from the salon, and sat down at the table. "Now," he
+exclaimed excitedly, "the Bavarian business is settled and everything
+is signed. _We have got our German Unity and our German Emperor_."
+There was silence for a moment. "Bring a bottle of champagne," said the
+Chief to a servant, "it is a great occasion." After musing a little, he
+remarked, "The Convention has its defects, but it is all the stronger
+on account of them. I count it the most important thing that we have
+accomplished during recent years."
+
+Notwithstanding that there was still before Bismarck a period of twenty
+years of virtual omnipotence, it was in the memorable years of 1870 and
+1871 that the apostle of blood and iron attained the zenith of his
+extraordinary career. Germany was his wash-pot; over France had he cast
+his shoe. The years of _Sturm und Drang_ were behind him, during which
+he had wrought out the military supremacy of Prussia in spite of
+herself; and in 1870 he had no misgivings as to the ultimate result. So
+confident indeed was he that before he crossed the French frontier on
+the second day after the twin victories of Wörth and Spicheren, he had
+already resolved on annexing to the Fatherland the old German province
+of Alsace which had been part of France for a couple of centuries.
+Bismarck was at his best in 1870 in certain attributes; in others he
+was at his worst, and a bitter bad worst that worst was. He was at his
+best in clear swift insight, in firm masterful grasp of every phase of
+every situation, in an instinctive prescience of events, in lucid
+dominance over German and European policy. If patriotism consists in
+earnest efforts to advantage and aggrandise one's native land _per fas
+aut nefas_, than Bismarck during the Franco-German War there never was
+a grander patriot. His hands were clean, he wanted nothing for himself
+except, curiously enough, the only thing that his old master was strong
+enough to deny him, the rank of Field Marshal when that military
+distinction was conferred on Moltke. He was at his worst in many
+respects. He had, or affected, a truculence which was simply brutal,
+its savagery intensified rather than mitigated by a bluff, boisterous
+bonhomie. Jules Favre complained to him that the German cannon in front
+of Paris fired upon the sick and blind in the Blind Institute, Bismarck
+in those days of swaggering prosperity had a fine turn of badinage. "I
+don't know what you find so hard in that," he retorted, "you do far
+worse; you shoot at our soldiers who are hale and useful fighting men."
+It is to be hoped that Favre had a sense of humour; he needed it all to
+relish the grim pleasantry.
+
+I do not suppose, if he had had a free hand, that Bismarck would have
+exhibited the courage of his opinions; but if his sentiments as
+expressed count for anything he would fain have seen the methods of
+warfare in the Dark Ages reverted to. "Prisoners! more prisoners!" he
+once exclaimed at Versailles, after one of Prince Frederick Charles's
+victories in the Loire country--"What the devil do we want with
+prisoners? Why don't they make a battue of them?" His motto, especially
+as regarded Francs-tireurs, was "No quarter," forgetful of the swarms
+of free companions and volunteer bands whose gallant services in
+Prussia's War of Liberation are commemorated to this day in song and
+story. It was told him that among the French prisoners taken at Le
+Bourget were a number of Francs-tireurs--by the way, they were the
+volunteers _de la Presse_ and wore a uniform. "That they should ever
+take Francs-tireurs prisoners!" roared Bismarck in disgust. "They ought
+to have shot them down by files!" Again, when it was reported that
+Garibaldi with his 13,000 "free companions" had been taken prisoners,
+the Chancellor exclaimed, "Thirteen thousand Francs-tireurs, who are
+not even Frenchmen, made prisoners! Why on earth were they not shot?"
+And when he heard that Voights Rhetz having experienced some resistance
+from the inhabitants of the open town of Tours, had shelled it into
+submission, Bismarck waxed wrath because the General had ceased firing
+when the white flag went up. "I would have gone on," said he, "throwing
+shells into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple
+truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was
+not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts
+for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he
+was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent
+undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered
+situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man of cool
+and undaunted courage. I have seen him perfectly impassive under heavy
+fire. In Bar-le-Duc, in Rheims, and over and over again in Versailles,
+I have met him walking alone and unarmed through streets thronged with
+French people who recognised him by the pictures of him, and who glared
+and spat and hissed in a cowed, furtive, malign fashion that was ugly
+to see.
+
+I vividly remember the first occasion on which I saw Bismarck. It was
+on the little tree-shaded _Place_ of St. Johann, the suburb of
+Saarbrücken, in the early evening of the 8th August, the next day but
+one after the battle of the Spicheren. Saarbrücken was full to the
+door-sills with the wounded of the battle and stretcher-parties were
+continually tramping to the "warriors' trench" in the cemetery,
+carrying to their graves soldiers who had died of their wounds. The
+Royal Headquarters had arrived a couple of hours earlier, and I was
+staring with all my eyes at a fresh-faced, white-haired old gentleman
+who was sitting in one of the windows of Guepratt's Hotel and whom I
+knew from the pictures to be King Wilhelm. Two officers in general's
+undress uniform were walking up and down under the pollarded
+lime-trees, talking as they walked. Presently from out a house opposite
+the hotel there emerged a very tall burly man of singularly upright
+carriage and with a certain air of swashbucklerism in his gait. A long
+cavalry sabre trailed and clanked on the rough pavement as he advanced
+to join the two sauntering officers under the trees. He wore the long
+blue double-breasted frockcoat with yellow cuffs and facings and white
+cap which I knew to be the undress uniform of the Bismarck Cuirassiers,
+but he was only partially in undress since the long cuirassier
+thigh-boots in which he strode were conventionally full uniform. The
+wearer of this costume was Bismarck; nor did I ever see him otherwise
+attired except on four occasions--at the Château Bellevue on the
+morning after Sedan, in the Galerie des Glaces in the Château of
+Versailles on 18th January, in the Place de la Concorde of capitulated
+Paris, and in the triumphal entry into Berlin; when he appeared in full
+uniform. Saluting His Majesty and then the two officers whom I
+recognised as Moltke and Roon, he joined the pedestrian couple, taking
+post between them and joining in their promenade and conversation. We
+heard his voice and laugh above the rumble of the waggon wheels on the
+causeway; the other two spoke little--Moltke, as he moved with bent
+head and hands clasped behind his back, scarcely anything.
+
+One would have imagined that those three men, the chief makers of that
+empire which was soon to come to the grand but not brilliant old
+gentleman in the window-seat, were on the most intimate and cordial
+terms. In reality they were jealous of each other with an inconceivable
+intensity. Bismarck had umbrage with Moltke because the great
+strategist withheld from the great statesman the military information
+which the latter held he ought to share. Moltke has roundly disclosed
+in his posthumous book his conviction that Roon's place as Minister of
+War was at home in Germany, not on campaign, embarrassing the former's
+functions. Roon envied Moltke because of the latter's more elevated
+military position, and disliked Bismarck because that outspoken man
+made light of Roon's capacity. I have known the headquarter staff of a
+British army whose members were on bad terms one with the other, and
+the result, to put it mildly, was unsatisfactory. But those three high
+functionaries, each with bitterness in his heart against his fellows,
+nevertheless co-operated earnestly and loyally in the service of their
+sovereign and for the advantage of their country. Their common
+patriotism had the mastery in them of their mutual hatred and jealousy.
+Ardt's line: _"Sein Vaterland muss grösser sein!"_ was the watchword
+and inspiration of all three, and dominated their discordancies.
+
+On the 17th August, the day of comparative quietude intervening between
+the day of Mars-la-Tour and the day of Gravelotte I was wandering about
+among the hamlets and farmsteads to the southward of Mars-la-Tour,
+waiting the arrival in their appointed bivouacs about Puxieux of my
+early friends of the Saxon Army Corps. Since in the battle of the
+previous day some 32,000 men had fallen killed or wounded within a
+comparatively small area, it may be imagined--or rather, without having
+seen the horror of carnage it cannot be imagined--how shambles-like was
+the aspect of this Aceldama. Scrambling up through the Bois la Dame
+with intent to obtain a wider view from the plateau above it, I found
+in a farmyard in the hamlet of Mariaville a number of wounded men under
+the care of a single and rather helpless surgeon. The water supply was
+very short and I volunteered to carry some bucketsful from the stream
+below. The surgeon told me that among his patients was Count Herbert
+Bismarck, the Chancellor's eldest son, who--as was also his younger
+brother Count "Bill"--was a volunteer private in the 2nd Guard
+Dragoons, and who had been shot in the thigh in the desperate charge
+made by that fine regiment to extricate from annihilation the
+Westphalian regiments which had suffered so severely near Bruville. A
+little later I saw Bismarck who had left the King on the Flavigny
+height, and who was riding about, as I assumed, in quest of his wounded
+son's whereabouts. I ventured to inform him on this point and he
+thanked me with some emotion. He was greatly moved at the meeting with
+his son but their interview was short; then he addressed himself to
+reproving the surgeon for not having had the Mariaville poultry killed
+for the use of the wounded, and presently rode away to order up a
+supply of water in barrels. I remember thinking him an exceedingly
+practical man.
+
+The English Warwick was styled the "King-maker"; but it was for the
+Prussian Bismarck to be Emperor-breaker and Emperor-maker within the
+same six months. The most wretched morning of Napoleon's life was that
+following the fatal day of Sedan, spent in and before the weaver's
+cottage on the Donchery road with Bismarck by his side, telling him in
+stern if courteous terms that as a prisoner of war his power to
+exercise the Imperial functions had fallen from him. It has been said
+that "the egg from which was hatched the German Empire was laid on the
+battlefield of Sedan." But, not to speak of the offer of the Imperial
+Crown to King Frederick Wilhelm by the Frankfort Parliament in 1848,
+Bismarck more than a year before the Austro-Prussian war had spoken to
+Lord Augustus Loftus, then British Ambassador to Prussia, of his
+ultimate intention that the King of Prussia should become the Emperor
+of an united Germany. The _Kaiserthum_ permeated the air of Northern
+Germany throughout the years from 1866 to 1870. But Bismarck had the
+true statesman's sense of the proper sequence of things. He would move
+no step toward the Kaisership until German unity was in near and clear
+sight. Then, and not till then, in spite of the Crown Prince's ardour,
+was the Imperial project brought forward, discussed, and finally
+carried through by Bismarck's tact and diplomacy.
+
+On the 18th January 1871, the anniversary of the coronation of the
+first king of his house, Wilhelm was proclaimed German Emperor in the
+Galerie des Glaces of the Château of Versailles. Behind the grand old
+monarch on the dais were ranged the regimental colours which had been
+borne to victory at Wörth and the Spicheren, at Mars-la-Tour,
+Gravelotte, and Sedan. On Wilhelm's right was his handsome and princely
+son; to right and to left stood potentates and princes and the leaders
+of the hosts of United Germany. Stalwart and square, somewhat apart on
+the extreme left of the great semicircle of which his sovereign was the
+centre, with a face of deadly pallor--for he had risen from a
+sick-bed--stood Bismarck in full cuirassier uniform leaning on his
+great sword, the man of all others who might that day most truly say,
+_"Finis Coronat Opus."_ His strong massive features were calm and
+self-possessed, yet elevated as it were by some internal power which
+drew all eyes to the great immobile figure with the indomitable
+lineaments instinct with will--force and masterfulness. After the
+solemn religious service His Majesty in a loud yet broken voice
+proclaimed the re-establishment of the German Empire, and that the
+Imperial dignity so revived was vested in him and his descendants for
+all time in accordance with the unanimous will of the German people.
+Bismarck then stood forward and read in sonorous tones the proclamation
+which the Emperor addressed to the German nation. As his final words
+rang through the hall the Grand Duke of Baden strode forward and
+shouted with all his force, "Long live the Emperor Wilhelm!" With a
+tempest of cheering, amidst waving of swords and of helmets the new
+title was acclaimed, and the Emperor with streaming tears received the
+homage of his liegemen. The first on bended knees to kiss his
+sovereign's hand was the Crown Prince, the second was Bismarck. The
+band struck up the National Anthem. Louder than the music, heard above
+the clamour of the cheering, sounded the thunder of the French cannon
+from Mont Valérien, the _Ave Caesar_ from the reluctant lips of worsted
+France. Bismarck, impassive as he seemed, must have had his emotions as
+he quitted this scene of triumph for the banquet-table of the Kaiser of
+his own making. He knew himself for the most conspicuous man in Europe,
+the greatest subject in the world. It was the proudest day of his life.
+
+There were many proud days still to occur in his long life. One of
+those was on the occasion of the German entry into Paris during the
+armistice which resulted in peace. The war had been of his making, and
+he chose to witness with his own eyes the actual triumph of his craft.
+It was a strange spectacle. There, helmet on head and sword on thigh,
+he sat in the shadow of the crape-shrouded statue of Strasburg on the
+Place de la Concorde. About him had gathered a group of extremely
+sinister French of the Belleville type. They had recognised him, and
+their lurid upward glances at the massive form on the great war-horse
+were charged with baleful meaning. Bismarck once or twice looked down
+on them with a grim smile under his moustache. At length the most
+daring of the "patriots" emitted a tentative hiss. With a little polite
+wave of his gloved hand Bismarck bent over his holster and requested
+"Monsieur" to oblige him with a light for his cigar. The man writhed as
+he compelled himself to comply. Little doubt that in his heart he
+wished the lucifer were a dagger and that he had the courage to use it.
+
+
+
+
+THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
+
+1873
+
+
+"_Thursday_.--Gathering, hand-shaking, brandy and soda and drams.
+
+"_Friday_.--Drinking, dandering, and feeling the way in the forenoon;
+the ordinary in the afternoon; at night a spate of drink and bargaining.
+
+"_Saturday_.--Bargaining and drink.
+
+"_Sunday morning_.--Bargains, drink, and the kirk."
+
+Such was the skeleton programme of the Inverness "Character" Fair given
+by a farmer friend to me, who happened to be lazily rusticating in the
+north of Scotland during the pleasant month of July. My friend asked me
+to accompany him in his visit to this remarkable institution and the
+programme was too tempting for refusal. As we drove to the station he
+handed me Henry Dixon's _Field and Fern_, open at a page which gave
+some particulars of the origin and character of the great annual sheep
+and wool market of the north. "Its Character Market," wrote "The
+Druid,"--no longer, alas! among us--"is the great bucolic glory of
+Inverness. The Fort-William market existed before, but the Sutherland
+and Caithness men, who sold about 14,000 sheep and 15,000 stones of
+wool annually so far back as 1816, did not care to go there. They dealt
+with regular customers year after year, and roving wool-staplers with
+no regular connection went about and notified their arrival on the
+church door. Patrick Sellar, 'the agent for the Sutherland
+Association,' saw exactly that some great _caucus_ of buyers and
+sellers was wanted at a more central spot; and on 27th February 1817
+that meeting of the clans was held at Inverness which brought the fair
+into being. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Burnley, Aberdeen, and
+Elgin signified that their leading merchants were favourable and ready
+to attend. Sutherland, Caithness, Wester Ross, Skye, the Orkneys,
+Harris, and Lewis were represented at the meeting; Bailie Anderson also
+'would state with confidence that the market was approved of by William
+Chisholm, Esq., of Chisholm, and James Laidlaw, tacksman, of Knockfin;'
+and so the matter was settled for ever and aye, and the _Courier_ and
+the _Morning Chronicle_ were the London advertising media. This
+Highland Wool Parliament was originally held on the third Thursday in
+June, but now it begins on the second Thursday of July and lasts till
+the Saturday; and Argyllshire, Nairnshire, and High Aberdeenshire have
+gradually joined in. The plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel
+have always been the scene of the bargains, which are most truly based
+on the broad stone of honour; not a sheep or fleece is to be seen and
+the buyer of the year before gets the first offer of the cast or clip.
+The previous proving and public character of the different flocks are
+the purchasers' guide far more than the sellers' description."
+
+Thus far "The Druid"; and my companion as we drove supplemented his
+information. It is from the circumstance that not a head of sheep or a
+tait of wool is brought to the market but that everything is sold and
+bought unseen and even unsampled, that the market derives its
+appellation of "character" fair. Of the value of the business
+transacted, the amount of money turned over, it is impossible to form
+with confidence even an approximate estimate since there is no source
+for data; but none with whom I spoke put the turnover at a lower figure
+than half a million. In a good season such as the past, over 200,000
+sheep are disposed of exclusive of lambs, and of lambs about the same
+number. The stock sold from the hills are for the most part Cheviots
+and Blackfaces; from the low grounds half-breds, being a cross between
+Leicester and Cheviot and crosses between the Cheviot and Blackface.
+All the sales of sheep and lambs are by the "clad score" which contains
+twenty-one. The odd one is thrown in to meet the contingency of deaths
+before delivery is effected. Established when there was a long and
+wearing journey for the flocks from the hills where they were reared
+down to their purchasers in the lowlands or the south country, the
+altered conditions of transit have stimulated farmers to efforts for
+the abolition of the "clad score." Now that sheep are trucked by
+railway instead of being driven on foot or conveyed from the islands to
+their destination in steamers specially chartered for the purpose, the
+farmers grudge the "one in" of the "clad score." In 1866 they seized
+the opportunity of an exceptionally high market and keen competition to
+combine against the old reckoning and in a measure succeeded. But next
+year was as dull as '66 had been brisk, and then the buyers and dealers
+had their revenge and re-established the "clad score" in all its
+pristine firmness of position. The sheep-farmers wean their lambs about
+the 24th of August and delivery of them is given to the buyers as soon
+as possible thereafter. The delivery of ewes and wethers is timed by
+individual arrangement. A large proportion of the old ewes--no ewes are
+sold but such as are old--go to England where a lamb or two is got from
+them before they are fattened. Most of the lambs are bought by
+sheep-farmers who, not keeping a ewe flock, are not themselves
+breeders, and are kept till they are three years old--"three shears" as
+they are technically called--and sold fat into the south country. There
+they get what Mr. M'Combie called the last dip and the butcher sells
+them as "prime four-year-old wedder mutton."
+
+The size of some of the Highland sheep farms is to be reckoned by miles
+not by acres; and the stock, as in Australia, by the thousand. The
+largest sheep-owner, perhaps, that the Highlands ever knew was Cameron
+of Corrichollie, now dead. He was once examined before a Committee of
+the House of Commons, and came to be questioned on the subject of his
+ownership of sheep. "You may have some 1500 sheep, probably, sir?"
+quoth the interrogating M.P. "Aiblins," was Corrichollie's quiet reply
+as he took a pinch of snuff; "aiblins I have a few more nor that." "Two
+thousand, then?" "Yes, I pelieve I have that and a few more forpye,"
+calmly responded the Highlander with another pinch. "Five thousand?"
+"Oh, ay, and a few more." "Twenty thousand, sir?" cried the M.P.,
+capping with a burst his previous bid. "Oh, ay, and some more forpye,"
+was the imperturbable response. "In Heaven's name how many sheep have
+you, man?" burst out the astonished catechist. "I'm no very sure to a
+thousan' or two," replied Corrichollie in his dry laconic way and with
+an extra big pinch; "but I'm owner of forty thousan' sheep at the
+lowest reckoning." Lochiel, known to the Sassenach as Mr. Cameron,
+M.P., is perhaps the largest living sheep-owner in Scotland. He has at
+least 30,000 sheep on his vast tracks of moorland on the braes of
+Lochaber. In the Island of Skye Captain Cameron of Talisker has a flock
+of some 12,000; and there are several other flocks both in the islands
+and on the mainland of more than equal magnitude. Sheep-farming, at
+least in many instances, is an hereditary avocation, and some families
+can trace a sheep-farming ancestry very far back. The oldest
+sheep-farming family in Scotland are the Mackinnons of Corrie in Skye.
+They have been on Corrie for four hundred years and they were holding
+sheep-farms elsewhere even earlier. The Macraes of Achnagart in
+Kintail, paid rent to Seaforth for two hundred years. For as long
+before they had held Achnagart on the tenure of a bunch of heather
+exigible annually and their fighting services as good clansmen. Two
+hundred years ago an annual rental of £5 was substituted for the
+heather "corve"; the clansmen's service continuing and being rendered
+up till the '45. Now clanship is but a name: a Seaforth Mackenzie is no
+longer chief in Kintail, and the Macrae who has succeeded his forbears
+in Achnagart finds the bunch of heather and the £5 alike superseded by
+the very far other than nominal rent of £1000. The modern Achnagart
+with his broad shoulders and burly frame, looks as capable as were any
+of his ancestry to render personal service to his chief if a demand
+were made upon him; and very probably would be quite prepared to accept
+a reduction of his money rental if an obligation to perform feudal
+clan-service were substituted. Achnagart with his £1000 a year rental
+by no means tops the sheep-farming rentals of his county. Perhaps
+Robertson of Achiltie, whose sheep-walks stretch up on to the
+snow-patched shoulders of Ben Wyvis and far away west to Loch Broom,
+pays the highest sheep-farming rental in Ross-shire, when the factor
+has pocketed his half-yearly check for £800.
+
+Part of this I learn from my friend as we drive to the station; part I
+gather afterwards from other sources. The station for which we are
+bound is Elgin, the county town of Morayshire. Between Elgin and
+Inverness, it is true, we shall see but few of the great sheep-farmers
+and flock-masters of the west country, who converge on the annual tryst
+from other points of the compass and by various routes--by the Skye
+railway, by that portion of the Highland line which extends north of
+Inverness, through Ross into Sutherland, by the Caledonian Canal, etc.
+But it is promised to me that I shall see many of the notable
+agriculturists of Moray land, who go to the market as buyers; and a
+contingent of sheep-breeders are sure to join us at Forres, coming down
+the Highland line from the Inverness-shire Highlands on Upper
+Strathspey. There is quite an exceptional throng on the platform of the
+Elgin station, of farmers, factors, lawyers, and
+ex-coffee-planters--all very plentiful in Elgin; tanners bound for
+investments in prospective pelts; and men of no avocation yet as much
+bound to visit Inverness to-day as if they meant to invest thousands.
+In a corner towers the mighty form of Paterson of Mulben, famous among
+breeders of polls with his tribe of "Mayflowers." From beneath a kilt
+peep out the brawny limbs of Willie Brown of Linkwood and Morriston,
+nephew of stout old Sir George who commanded the light division at the
+Alma, son to a factor whose word in his day was as the laws of the
+Medes and Persians over a wide territory, and himself the feeder of the
+leviathan cross red ox and the beautiful gray heifer which took honours
+so high at one of the recent Smithfield Christmas Shows. There is the
+white beard and hearty face of Mr. Collie, late of Ardgay, owner
+erstwhile of "Fair Maid of Perth" and breeder of "Zarah." Here, too, is
+a fresh, sprightly gentleman in a kilt whom his companions designate
+"the Bourach." Requesting an explanation of the term I am told that
+"Bourach" is the Gaelic for "through-other," which again is the
+Scottish synonym for a kind of amalgam of addled and harum-scarum. A
+jolly tanner observes: "I'll get a compartment to oursels." The reason
+of the desire for this exclusive accommodation is apparent as soon as
+we start. A "deck" of cards is produced and a quartette betake
+themselves to whist with half-crown stakes on the rubber and sixpenny
+points. This was mild speculation to that which was engaged in on the
+homeward journey after the market, when a Strathspey sheep-farmer won
+£8 between Dalvey and Forres. As my friends shuffle and deal, I look
+out of window at the warm gray towers of the cathedral, beautiful still
+spite of the desecrating hand of the "Wolf of Badenoch." Our road lies
+through the fertile "Laigh of Moray," one of the richest wheat
+districts in the Empire and as beautiful as fertile. At Alves we pick
+up a fresh, hale gentleman, who is described to me as "the laird of
+three properties," bought for more than £100,000 by a man who began
+life as the son of a hillside crofter. We pass the picturesque ruins of
+Kinloss Abbey and draw up at Forres station, whose platform is thronged
+with noted agriculturists bound for the "Character" Fair. Here is that
+spirited Englishman Mr. Harris of Earnhill, whose great cross ox took
+the cup at the Agricultural Hall seven or eight years ago; and the
+brothers Bruce--he of Newton Struthers, whose marvellous polled cow
+beat everything in Bingley Hall at the '71 Christmas Show and but for
+"foot and mouth" would have repeated the performance at the Smithfield
+Show; and he of Burnside who likewise has stamped his mark pretty
+deeply in the latter arena. At Forres we first hear Gaelic; for a train
+from Carr Bridge and Grantown in Upper Strathspey has come down the
+Highland Railway to join ours, and the red-haired Grants around the
+Rock of Craigellachie--where a man whose name is not Grant is regarded
+as a _lusus naturae_--are Gaelic speakers to a man. No witches accost
+us, and speaking personally I feel no "pricking of the thumbs" as we
+skirt the blasted heath on which Macbeth met the witches; the most
+graphic modern description of which on record was given to Henry Dixon
+in the following quaint form of Shakespearean annotation: "It's just a
+sort of eminence; all firs and ploughed land now; you paid a toll near
+it. I'm thinking, it's just a mile wast from Brodie Station."
+
+Nairn is that town by the citation of a peculiarity of which King Jamie
+put to shame the boastings of the Southrons as to the superior
+magnitude of English towns. "I have a town," quoth the sapient James,
+"in my ancient kingdom of Scotland, whilk is sae lang that at ane end
+of it a different language is spoken from that whilk prevails at the
+other." To this day the monarch's words are true; one end of Nairn is
+Gaelic, the other Sassenach. Here we obtain a considerable accession of
+strength. The attributes of one kilted chieftain are described to me in
+curious scraps of illustrative patchwork. "A great litigant, an
+enthusiastic agriculturist, a dealer in Hielan' nowt--something of a
+Hielan' nowt himself, a semi-auctioneer, a great hand as chairman at an
+agricultural dinner, a visitor to the Baker Street Bazaar when the
+Smithfield Shows were held there and where the Cockneys mistook him for
+one of the exhibits and began pinching and punching him." Stewart of
+Duntalloch swings his stalwart form into our carriage--a noted breeder
+of Highland cattle and as fine a specimen of a Highlander as can be
+seen from Reay to Pitlochrie. "Culloden! Culloden!" chant the porters
+in that curious sing-song peculiar to the Scotch platform porter. The
+whistle of the engine and the talk about turnips and cattle contrast
+harshly with that bleak, lonely, moorland swell yonder--the patches of
+green among the brown heather telling where moulders the dust of the
+chivalrous clansmen. It is but little longer than a century and a
+quarter ago since Charles Stuart and Cumberland confronted each other
+over against us there; and here are the descendants of the men that
+fought in their tartans for the "King over the Water," who are
+discussing the right proportion of phosphates in artificial manures and
+of whom one asks me confidentially for my opinion on the Leger
+favourite.
+
+Here we are at Inverness at length; that city of the Clachnacudden
+stone. There is quite a crowd in the spacious station of business
+people who have been awaiting the arrival of the train from the east,
+and the buyers and sellers whom it has conveyed find themselves at once
+among eager friends. Hurried announcements are made as to the
+conditions and prospects of the market. The card-players have plunged
+suddenly _in medias res_ of bargaining. The man who had volunteered to
+stand me a seltzer and sherry has forgotten all about his offer, and is
+talking energetically about clad scores and the price of lambs. I quit
+the station and walk up Union Street through a gradually thickening
+throng, till I reach Church Street and shoulder my way to the front of
+the Caledonian Hotel. I am now in "the heart of the market," standing
+as I am on the plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel and
+looking up and down along the crowded street. What physique, what broad
+shoulders, what stalwart limbs, what wiry red beards and high
+cheek-bones there are everywhere! You have the kilt at every turn, in
+every tartan, and often in no tartan at all. Other men wear
+whole-coloured suits of inconceivably shaggy tweed, and the breadth of
+the bonnets is only equalled by that of the accents. Every second man
+has a mighty plaid over his shoulder. It may serve as a sample of his
+wool, for invariably it is home made. Some carry long twisted crooks
+such as we see in old pastoral prints; others have massive gnarled
+sticks grasped in vast sinewy hands on the back of which the wiry red
+hairs stand out like prickles. There is falling what in the south we
+should reckon as a very respectable pelt of rain, but the Inverness
+Wool Fair heeds rain no more than thistledown. Hardly a man has thought
+it worth his pains to envelop his shoulders in his plaid, but stands
+and lets the rain take its chance. There is a perfect babel of tongues;
+no bawling or shouting, however, but a perpetual gruff _susurrus_ of
+broad guttural conversation accentuated every now and then by a louder
+exclamation in Gaelic. Quite half of the throng are discoursing in this
+language. It is possible to note the difference in the character of the
+Celt and Teuton. The former gesticulates, splutters out a perfect
+torrent of alternately shrill, guttural, and intoned Gaelic; he shrugs
+his shoulders, he throws his arms about, he thrills with vivacity. The
+Teuton expresses quiet, sententious canniness in every gesture and
+every utterance; he is a cold-blooded man and keeps his breath to cool
+his porridge.
+
+On the plain-stones there are a number of benches on which men sit down
+to gossip and chaffer. Scraps of dialogue float about in the moist air.
+If you care to be an eavesdropper you must have a knowledge of Gaelic
+to be one effectively. "It's to be a stout market," remarks stalwart
+Macrae of Invershiel, come of a fine old West Highland stock and
+himself a very large sheep-farmer. "Sixteen shillings is my price. I'll
+come down a little if you like," says the tenant of Belmaduthy to
+keen-faced Mr. Mackenzie of Liverpool, one of the largest wool-dealers
+and sheep-buyers visiting the market. "You'll petter juist pe coming
+down to it at once." "I could not meet you at all." "I'm afraid I'll pe
+doing what they'll pe laughing at me for." "We can't agree at all," are
+the words as a couple separate, probably to come together again later
+in the day. "An do reic thu na 'h'uainn fhathast, Coignasgailean?" "Cha
+neil fios again'm lieil thusa air son tavigse thoirtorra,
+Cnocnangraisheag?" "Thig gus ain fluich sin ambarfan." Perhaps I had
+better translate. Two sheep-farmers are in colloquy, and address each
+other by the names of their farms, as is all but universal in the
+north. Cnocnangraisheag asks Coignasgailean, "Have you sold your
+lambs?" The cautious reply is, "I don't know; are you inclined to give
+me an offer?" and the proposal ensues, "Come and let us take a drink on
+the transaction." Let us follow the two worthies into the Caledonian.
+Jostling goes for nothing here and you may shove as much in reason as
+you choose, taking your chance of reprisals from the sons of Anak. The
+lobbies of the Caledonian are full of men drinking and bargaining with
+books in hand. There is no sitting-room in all the house and we follow
+the Cnocnangraisheag and his friend into the billiard-room, where we
+are promptly served standing. What keenness of business-discussion
+mingled with what galore of whisky there is everywhere! The whisky
+seems to make no more impression than if it were ginger-beer; and yet
+it is over-proof Talisker, as my throat and eyes find to their cost
+when I recklessly attempt to imitate Coignasgailean and take a dram
+neat. As I pass the bar going out Willie Brown is bawling for soda with
+something in it, and Donald Murray of Geanies, one of the ablest men in
+the north of Scotland, brushes by with quick decisive step. In the
+doorway stands the sturdy square-built form of Macdonald of Balranald,
+the largest breeder of Highland cattle in the country. Over the
+heathery pasture-land of North Uist 1500 head and more of horned newt
+of his range in half-wild freedom. The Mundells and the Mitchells seem
+ubiquitous. The ancestors of both families came from England as
+shepherds when the Sutherland clearances were made toward the end of
+last century, and between them they now hold probably the largest
+acreage--or rather mileage, of sheep-farming territory in all Scotland.
+
+It is a "very dour market," that all admit. Everybody is holding back,
+for it is obvious prices are to be "desperate high" and everybody wants
+to get the full benefit of the rise. The predetermination of the
+Southern dealers to "buy out" freely at big prices had been rashly
+revealed over-night by one of the fraternity at the after-dinner
+toddy-symposium in the Caledonian. He had been sedulously plied with
+drink by "Charlie Mitchell" and some others of the Ross and Sutherland
+sheep-farmers, till reticence had departed from his tongue. Ultimately
+he had leaped on the table, breaking any quantity of glass-ware in the
+saltatory feat, and had asserted with free swearing his readiness to
+give 50s. all round for every three-year-old wedder in the north of
+Scotland. His horror-stricken partners rushed upon him and bundled him
+downstairs in hot haste, but the murder was out and the "dour market"
+was accounted for. Fancy 50s. a head for beasts that do not weigh 60
+lb. apiece as they come off the hill! No wonder that we townsmen have
+to pay dear for our mutton.
+
+I push my way out of the heart of the market to find the outlying
+neighbourhood studded all over with conversing groups. There is an
+all-pervading smell of whisky, and yet I see no man who has "turned a
+hair" by reason of the strength of the Talisker. A town-crier ringing a
+bell passes me. He halts, and the burden of his cry is, "There is a
+large supply of fresh haddies in the market!" The walls are placarded
+with advertisements of sheep smearing and dipping substances; the
+leading ingredients of which appear to be tar and butter. A recruiting
+sergeant of the Scots Fusilier Guards is standing by the Clachnacudden
+Stone, apparently in some dejection owing to the little business doing
+in his line. Men don't come to the "Character" Fair to 'list. It
+strikes me that quite three-fourths of the shops of Inverness are
+devoted to the sale of articles of Highland costume. Their fronts are
+hidden by hangings of tartan cloth; the windows are decked with
+sporrans, dirks, cairngorm plaid-brooches, ram's-head snuff-boxes,
+bullocks' horns and skean dhus. If I chose I might enter the emporium
+of Messrs. Macdougall in my Sassenach garb and re-emerge in ten minutes
+outwardly a full-blown Highland chief, from the eagle's feather in my
+bonnet to the buckles on my brogues. Turning down High Street I reach
+the quay on the Ness bank, where I find in full blast a horse fair of a
+very miscellaneous description, and totally destitute of the features
+that have earned for the wool market the title of "Character" Fair.
+There are blood colts running chiefly to stomach, splints and bog
+spavins; ponies with shaggy manes, trim barrels, and clean legs; and
+slack-jointed cart-horses nearly asleep--for "ginger" is an institution
+which does not seem to have come so far north as Inverness. Business is
+lively here, the chronic "dourness" of a market being discounted by the
+scarcity of horseflesh.
+
+At four o'clock we sit down to the market ordinary in the great room of
+the Caledonian. A member of Parliament occupies the chair, one of the
+croupiers is a baronet, the other the chief of the clan Mackintosh.
+There is a great collection of north-country notabilities, and tables
+upon tables of sheep-farmers and sheep-dealers. We have a considerable
+_cacoethes_ of speech-making, among the orators being Professor Blackie
+of Edinburgh, whose quaint comicalities convulse his audience. It is
+pretty late when the Professor rises to speak, and the whisky has been
+flowing free. Some one interjects a whiskyfied interruption into the
+Professor's speech, who at once in stentorian tones orders that the
+disturber of the harmony of the evening shall be summarily consigned to
+the lunatic asylum. I see him ejected with something like the force of
+a stone from a catapult and have no reasonable doubt that he will spend
+the night an inmate of "Craig Duncan." The speeches over bargaining
+recommences moistened by toddy, which fluid appears to exercise an
+appreciable softening influence on the "dourness" of the market. Till
+long after midnight seasoned vessels are talking and dealing, booking
+sales while they sip their tenth tumbler.
+
+I have to leave on the Saturday morning, but I make no doubt that the
+skeleton programme given at the beginning of this paper will have its
+bones duly clothed with flesh.
+
+
+
+
+THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
+
+
+At first sight the proposition may appear startling and indeed absurd;
+yet hard facts, I venture to believe, will enforce the conviction on
+unprejudiced minds that the warfare of the present when contrasted with
+the warfare of the past is dilatory, ineffective, and inconclusive.
+
+Present, or contemporary warfare may be taken to date from the general
+adoption of rifled firearms; the warfare of the past may fairly be
+limited for purposes of comparison or contrast, to the smooth-bore era;
+indeed, for those purposes there is no need to go outside the present
+century. Roughly speaking the first five and a half decades of the
+century were smooth-bore decades; the three and a half later decades
+have been rifled decades, of which about two and a half decades
+constitute the breechloading period. Considering the extraordinary
+advances since the end of the smooth-bore era in everything tending to
+promote celerity and decisiveness in the result of campaigns--the
+revolution in swiftness of shooting and length of range of firearms,
+the development in the science of gunnery, the increased devotion to
+military study, the vast additions to the military strength of the
+nations, looking to the facilities for rapid conveyance of troops and
+transportation of supplies afforded by railways and steam
+water-carriage, to the intensified artillery fire that can now be
+brought to bear on fortresses, to the manifold advantages afforded by
+the electric telegraph, and to the crushing cost of warfare, urging
+vigorous exertions toward the speedy decision of campaigns--reviewing,
+I say, the thousand and one circumstances encouraging to short, sharp,
+and decisive action in contemporary warfare, it is a strange and
+bewildering fact that the wars of the smooth-bore era were for the most
+part, shorter, sharper, and more decisive. Spite of inferiority of
+weapons the battles of that period were bloodier than those of the
+present, and it is a mathematically demonstrable proposition that the
+heavier the slaughter of combatants the nearer must be the end of a
+war. There is no pursuit now after victory won and the vanquished draws
+off shaken but not broken; in the smooth-bore era a vigorous pursuit
+scattered him to the four winds. When Wellington in the Peninsula
+wanted a fortress and being in a hurry could not wait the result of a
+formal siege or a starvation blockade, he carried it by storm. No
+fortress is ever stormed now, no matter how urgent the need for its
+reduction, no matter how obsolete its defences. The Germans in 1871 did
+attempt to carry by assault an outwork of Belfort, but failed utterly.
+It would almost seem that in the matter of forlorn hopes the Caucasian
+is played out.
+
+Assertions are easy, but they go for little unless they can be proved;
+some examples, therefore, may be cited in support of the contentions
+advanced above. The Prussians are proud and with justice, of what is
+known as the "Seven Weeks' War of 1866" although as a matter of fact
+the contest with Austria did not last so long, for Prince Frederick
+Charles crossed the Bohemian frontier on the 23rd of June and the
+armistice which ended hostilities was signed at Nikolsburg on the 26th
+of July. The Prussian armies were stronger than their opponents by more
+than one-fourth and they were armed with the needle-gun against the
+Austrian muzzle-loading rifle. When the armistice was signed the
+Prussians lay on the Marchfeld within dim sight of the
+Stephanien-Thurm, it is true; but with the strong and strongly armed
+and held lines of Florisdorf, the Danube, and the army of the Archduke
+Albrecht between them and the Austrian capital. On the 9th of October
+1806 Napoleon crossed the Saale. On the 14th at Jena he smashed
+Hohenlohe's Prussian army, the contending hosts being about equal
+strength; on the same day Davoust at Auerstadt with 27,000 men routed
+Brunswick's command over 50,000 strong. On the 25th of October Napoleon
+entered Berlin, the war virtually over and all Prussia at his feet with
+the exception of a few fortresses, the last of which fell on the 8th of
+November. Which was the swifter, the more brilliant, and the more
+decisive--the campaign of 1866, or the campaign of 1806?
+
+The Franco-German war is generally regarded as an exceptionally
+effective performance on the part of the Germans. The first German
+force entered France on the 4th of August 1870. Paris was invested on
+the 21st of September, the German armies having fought four great
+battles and several serious actions between the frontier and the French
+capital. An armistice, which was not conclusive since it allowed the
+siege of Belfort to proceed and Bourbaki's army to be free to attempt
+raising it, was signed at Versailles on the 28th of January 1871, but
+the actual conclusion of hostilities dates from the 16th of February,
+the day on which Belfort surrendered. The Franco-German war, therefore,
+lasted six and a half months. The Germans were in full preparedness
+except that their rifle was inferior to the French _chassepot_; they
+were in overwhelmingly superior numerical strength in every encounter
+save two with French regular troops, and they had on their banners the
+prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries were utterly unready for a great
+struggle; the French army was in a wretched state in every sense of the
+word; indeed, after Sedan there remained hardly any regulars able to
+take the field. In August 1805 Napoleon's Grande Armée was at Boulogne
+looking across to the British shores. Those inaccessible, he promptly
+altered his plans and went against Austria. Mack with 84,000 Austrian
+soldiers was at Ulm, waiting for the expected Russian army of
+co-operation and meantime covering the valley of the Danube. Napoleon
+crossed the Rhine on the 26th of September. Just as in 1870 the Germans
+on the plain of Mars-la-Tour thrust themselves between Bazaine and the
+rest of France, so Napoleon turned Mack and from Aalen to the Tyrol
+stood between him and Austria. Mack capitulated Ulm and his army on the
+19th of October and Napoleon was in Vienna on the 13th of November.
+Although he possessed the Austrian capital, he was not, however, master
+of the Austrian empire. The latter result did not fall to him until the
+2nd of December, when under "the sun of Austerlitz" he with 73,000 men
+defeated the Austro-Russian army 85,000 strong, inflicting on it a loss
+of 30,000 men at the cost of 12,000 of his own soldiers _hors de
+combat_. It took the Germans in 1870 a month and a half to get from the
+frontier to _outside_ Paris; just in the same time, although certainly
+not with so severe fighting by the way but nearly twice as long a
+march, Napoleon moved from the Rhine to _inside_ Vienna. From the
+active commencement to the cessation of hostilities the Franco-German
+war lasted six and a half months; reckoning from the crossing of the
+Rhine to the evening of Austerlitz Napoleon subjugated Austria in two
+and a quarter months. Perhaps, however, his campaign of 1809 against
+Austria furnishes a more exact parallel with the campaign of the
+Germans in 1870-71. He assumed command on the 17th of April, having
+hurried from Spain. He defeated the Austrians five times in as many
+days, at Thann, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmuhl, and Ratisbon; and he was
+in Vienna on the 13th of May. Balked at Aspern and Essling, he gained
+his point at Wagram on the 5th of July, and hostilities ceased with the
+armistice of Znaim on the 11th after having lasted for a period short
+of three months by a week.
+
+The Russians have a reputation for good marching, and certainly
+Suvaroff made good time in his long march from Russia to Northern Italy
+in 1799; almost as good, indeed, as Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, and
+Kutusoff made in falling back before Napoleon when he invaded Russia in
+1812. But they have not improved either in marching or in fighting at
+all commensurately with the improved appliances. In 1877, after
+dawdling two months they crossed the Danube on the 21st to the 27th of
+June. Osman Pasha at Plevna gave them pause until the 10th of December,
+at which date they were not so far into Bulgaria as they had been five
+months previously. After the fall of Plevna the Russian armies would
+have gone into winter quarters but for a private quasi-ultimatum
+communicated to the Tzar from a high source in England, to the effect
+that unpleasant consequences could not be guaranteed against if the war
+was not finished in one campaign. Alexander, who was quite an astute
+man in his way, was temporarily enraged by this restriction, but
+recovering his calmness, realised that nowhere in war books is any
+particular time specified for the termination or duration of a
+campaign. It appeared that so long as an army keeps the field
+uninterruptedly a campaign may continue until the Greek kalends. In
+less time than that Gourko and Skobeleff undertook to finish the
+business; by the vigour with which they forced their way across the
+Balkans in the heart of the bitter winter Sophia, Philippopolis, and
+Adrianople fell into Russian hands; and the Russian troops had been
+halted some time almost in face of Constantinople when the treaty of
+San Stephano was signed on the 3rd of March 1878. It had taken the
+Russians of 1877-78 eight weary months to cover the distance between
+the Danube and the Marmora. But fifty years earlier a Russian general
+had marched from the Danube to the Aegean in three and a half months,
+nor was his journey by any means a smooth and bloodless one. Diebitch
+crossed the Danube in May 1828 and besieged Silistria from the 17th of
+May until the 1st of July. Silistria has undergone three resolute
+sieges during the century; it succumbed but once, and then to Diebitch.
+Pressing south immediately, he worsted the Turkish Grand Vizier in the
+fierce battle of Kuleutscha and then by diverse routes hurried down
+into the great Roumelian valley. Adrianople made no resistance and
+although his force was attenuated by hardship and disease, when the
+Turkish diplomatists procrastinated the audacious and gallant Diebitch
+marched his thin regiments forward toward Constantinople. They had
+traversed on a wide front half the distance between Adrianople and the
+capital when the dilatory Turkish negotiators saw fit to imitate the
+coon and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the
+weakness of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned
+whether, that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied
+Constantinople on the swagger. His master was prepared promptly to
+reinforce him; Constantinople was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than
+in 1878, and certainly Diebitch was much smarter than were the Grand
+Duke Nicholas, his fossil Nepokoitschitsky, and his pure theorist
+Levitsky.
+
+The contrast between the character of our own contemporary military
+operations and that of those of the smooth-bore era is very strongly
+marked. In 1838-39 Keane marched an Anglo-Indian army from our frontier
+at Ferozepore over Candahar to Cabul without experiencing any serious
+check, and with the single important incident of taking Ghuzni by storm
+on the way. Our positions at and about Cabul were not seriously
+molested until late in 1841, when the paralysis of demoralisation
+struck our soldiers because of the crass follies of a wrong-headed
+civilian chief and the feebleness of a decrepit general. Nott
+throughout held Candahar firmly; the Khyber Pass remained open until
+faith was broken with the hillmen; Jellalabad held out until the
+"Retribution Column" camped under its walls. But for the awful
+catastrophe which befell in the passes the hapless brigade which under
+the influence of deplorable pusillanimity and gross mismanagement had
+evacuated Cabul, no serious military calamity marked our occupation of
+Afghanistan and certainly stubborn resistance had not confronted our
+arms. From 1878 to 1880 we were in Afghanistan again, this time with
+breech-loading far-ranging rifles, copious artillery of the newest
+types, and commanders physically and mentally efficient. All those
+advantages availed us not one whit. The Afghans took more liberties
+with us than they had done forty years previously. They stood up to us
+in fair fight over and over again: at Ali Musjid, at the Pewar Kotul,
+at Charasiab, on the Takt-i-Shah and the Asmai heights, at Candahar.
+They took the dashing offensive at Ahmed Kheyl and at the
+Shutur-gurdan; they drove Dunham Massy's cavalry and took British guns;
+they reoccupied Cabul in the face of our arms, they besieged Candahar,
+they hemmed Roberts within the Sherpoor cantonments and assailed him
+there. They destroyed a British brigade at Maiwand and blocked Gough in
+the Jugdulluck Pass. Finally our evacuating army had to macadamise its
+unmolested route down the passes by bribes to the hillmen, and the
+result of the second Afghan war was about as barren as that of the
+first.
+
+It was in the year 1886 that, the resolution having been taken to
+dethrone Thebau and annex Upper Burmah, Prendergast began his all but
+bloodless movement on Mandalay. The Burmans of today have never
+adventured a battle, yet after years of desultory bushwhacking the
+pacification of Upper Burmah has still to be fully accomplished. On the
+10th of April 1852 an Anglo-Indian expedition commanded by General
+Godwin landed at Rangoon. During the next fifteen months it did a good
+deal of hard fighting, for the Burmans of that period made a stout
+resistance. At midsummer of 1853 Lord Dalhousie proclaimed the war
+finished, announced the annexation and pacification of Lower Burmah,
+and broke up the army. The cost of the war of which the result was this
+fine addition to our Indian Empire, was two millions sterling; almost
+from the first the province was self-supporting and uninterrupted peace
+has reigned within its borders. We did not dally in those primitive
+smooth-bore days. Sir Charles Napier took the field against the Scinde
+Ameers on the 16th of February 1843. Next day he fought the battle of
+Meanee, entered Hyderabad on the 2Oth, and on the 24th of March won the
+decisive victory of Dubba which placed Scinde at his mercy, although
+not until June did the old "Lion of Meerpore" succumb to Jacob. But
+before then Napier was well forward with his admirable measures for the
+peaceful administration of the great province he had added to British
+India.
+
+The expedition for the rescue of General Gordon was tediously boated up
+the Nile, with the result that the "desert column" which Sir Herbert
+Stewart led so valiantly across the Bayuda reached Gubat just in time
+to be too late, and was itself extricated from imminent disaster by the
+masterful promptitude of Sir Redvers Buller. Notwithstanding a general
+consensus of professional and expert opinion in favour of the
+alternative route from Souakin to Berber, 240 miles long and far from
+waterless, the adoption of it was condemned as impossible. In June
+1801, away back in the primitive days, an Anglo-Indian brigade 5000
+strong ordered from Bombay, reached Kosseir on the Red Sea bound for
+the Upper Nile at Kenéh thence to join Abercromby's force operating in
+Lower Egypt. The distance from Kosseir to Kenéh is 120 miles across a
+barren desert with scanty and unfrequent springs. The march was by
+regiments, of which the first quitted Kosseir on the 1st of July. The
+record of the desert-march of the 10th Foot is now before me. It left
+Kosseir on the 20th of July and reached Kenéh on the 29th, marching at
+the rate of twelve miles per day. Its loss on the march was one
+drummer. The whole brigade was at Kenéh in the early days of August,
+the period between its debarkation and its concentration on the Nile
+being about five weeks. The march was effected at the very worst season
+of the year. It was half the distance of a march from Souakin to
+Berber; the latter march by a force of the same strength could well
+have been accomplished in three months. The opposition on the march
+could not have been so severe as that which Stewart's desert column
+encountered. Nevertheless, as I have said, the Souakin-Berber route was
+pronounced impossible by the deciding authority.
+
+The comparative feebleness of contemporary warfare is perhaps
+exceptionally manifest in relation to the reduction of fortresses.
+During the Franco-German War the frequency of announcements of the fall
+of French fortresses used to be the subject of casual jeers. The jeers
+were misplaced. The French fortresses, labouring under every
+conceivable disadvantage, did not do themselves discredit. All of them
+were more or less obsolete. Excluding Metz and Paris, neither fortified
+to date, their average age was about a century and a half and few had
+been amended since their first construction. They were mostly
+garrisoned by inferior troops, often almost entirely by Mobiles. Only
+in one instance was there an effective director of the defence. That
+they uniformly enclosed towns whose civilian population had to endure
+bombardment, was an obvious hindrance to desperate resistance. Yet,
+setting aside Bitsch which was never taken, the average duration of the
+defence of the seventeen fortresses which made other than nominal
+resistance was forty-one days. Excluding Paris and Metz which virtually
+were intrenched camps, the average period of resistance was
+thirty-three days. The Germans used siege artillery in fourteen cases;
+although only on two instances, Belfort and Strasburg, were formal
+sieges undertaken. "It appears," writes Major Sydenham Clarke in his
+recent remarkable work on Fortification [Footnote: _Fortification_. By
+Major G. Sydenham Clarke, C.M. G. (London: John Murray).] which ought
+to revolutionise that art, "that the average period of resistance of
+the (nominally obsolete) French fortresses was the same as that of
+besieged fortresses of the Marlborough and Peninsular periods.
+Including Paris and Metz, the era of rifled weapons actually shows an
+increase of 20 per cent in the time-endurance of permanent
+fortifications. Granted that a mere measurement in days affords no
+absolute standard of comparison, the striking fact remains that in
+spite of every sort of disability the French fortresses, pitted against
+guns that were not dreamed of when they were built, acquitted
+themselves quite as well as the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the Vauban school
+in the days of their glory." Even in the cases of fortresses whose
+reduction was urgently needed since they interfered with the German
+communications--such as Strasburg, Toul, and Soissons--the quick
+_ultima ratio_ of assault was not resorted to by the Germans. And yet
+the Germans could not have failed to recognise that but for the
+fortresses they would have swept France clear of all organised bodies
+of troops within two months of the frontier battles. During the
+Peninsular War Wellington made twelve assaults on breached fortresses
+of which five were successful; of his twelve attempts to escalade six
+succeeded. The Germans in 1870-71 never attempted a breach and their
+solitary effort at escalade, on the Basse Perche of Belfort, utterly
+failed.
+
+The Russians in 1877 were even less enterprising than had been the
+Germans in 1870. They went against three permanently fortified places,
+the antediluvian little Matchin which if I remember right blew itself
+up; the crumbling Nicopolis which surrendered after one day's fighting;
+and Rustchuk which held out till the end of the war. They would not
+look at Silistria, ruined, but strong in heroic memories; they avoided
+Rasgrad, Schumla, and the Black Sea fortresses; Sophia, Philippopolis,
+and Adrianople made no resistance. The earthworks of Plevna, vicious as
+they were in many characteristics, they found impregnable. I think
+Suvaroff would have carried them; I am sure Skobeleff would if he had
+got his way.
+
+The vastly expensive armaments of the present--the rifled
+breech-loader, the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range
+field-guns, and so forth, are all accepted and paid for by the
+respective nations in the frank and naked expectation that these
+weapons will perform increased execution on the enemy in war time. This
+granted, nor can it be denied, it logically follows that if this
+increased execution is not performed nations are entitled to regard it
+as a grievance that they do not get blood for their money, and this
+they certainly do not have; so that even in this sanguinary particular
+the warfare of to-day is a comparative failure. The topic, however, is
+rather a ghastly one and I refrain from citing evidence; which,
+however, is easily accessible to any one who cares to seek it.
+
+The anticipation is confidently adventured that a great revolution will
+be made in warfare by the magazine rifle with its increased range, the
+machine gun, and the quick-firing field artillery which will speedily
+be introduced into every service. It does not seem likely that
+smokeless powder will create any very important change, except in siege
+operations. On the battlefield neither artillery nor infantry come into
+action out of sight of the enemy. When either arm opens fire within
+sight of the enemy its position can be almost invariably detected by
+the field-glass, irrespective of the smokelessness or non-smokelessness
+of its ammunition. Indeed, the use of smokeless powder would seem
+inevitably to damage the fortunes of the attack. Under cover of a bank
+of smoke the soldiers hurrying on to feed the fighting line are fairly
+hidden from aimed hostile fire. It may be argued that their aim is thus
+reciprocally hindered; but the reply is that their anxiety is not so
+much to be shooting during their reinforcing advance as to get forward
+into the fighting line, where the atmosphere is not so greatly
+obscured. Smokeless powder will no doubt advantage the defence.
+
+It need not be remarked that a battle is a physical impossibility while
+both sides adhere to the passive defensive; and experience proves that
+battles are rare in which both sides are committed to the active
+offensive, whether by preference or necessity. Mars-la-Tour (16th
+August 1870) was the only contest of this nature in the Franco-German
+War. Bazaine had to be on the offensive because he was ordered to get
+away towards Verdun; Alvensleben took it because it was the only means
+whereby he could hinder Bazaine from accomplishing his purpose. But for
+the most part one side in battle is on the offensive; the other on the
+defensive. The invader is habitually the offensive person, just for the
+reason that the native force commonly acts on the defensive; the latter
+is anxious to hinder further penetration into the bowels of its land;
+the former's desire is to effect that penetration. The defensive of the
+native army need not, however, be the passive defensive; indeed, unless
+the position be exceptionally strong that is according to present
+tenets to be avoided. When, always with an underlying purpose of
+defence, its chief resorts to the offensive for reasons that he regards
+as good, his strategy or his tactics as the case may be, are expressed
+by the term "defensive-offensive."
+
+It says a good deal for the peaceful predilections of the nations, that
+there has been no fairly balanced experience affording the material for
+decision as to the relative advantage of the offensive and the
+defensive under modern conditions. In 1866 the Prussians, opposing the
+needle-gun to the Austrian muzzle-loader, naturally utilised this
+pre-eminence by adopting uniformly the offensive and traditions of the
+Great Frederick doubtless seconded the needle-gun. After Sadowa
+controversy ran high as to the proper system of tactics when
+breech-loader should oppose breech-loader. A strong party maintained
+that "the defensive had now become so strong that true science lay in
+forcing the adversary to attack. Let him come on, and then one might
+fairly rely on victory." As Boguslawski observes--"This conception of
+tactics would paralyse the offensive, for how can an army advance if it
+has always to wait till an enemy attacks?" After much exercitation the
+Germans determined to adhere to the offensive. In the recent modest
+language of Baron von der Goltz: [Footnote: _The Nation in Arms_, by
+Lieutenant-Colonel Baron von der Goltz. (Allen.)] "Our modern German
+mode of battle aims at being entirely a final struggle, which we
+conceive of as being inseparable from an unsparing offensive.
+Temporising, waiting, and a calm defensive are very unsympathetic to
+our nature. Everything with us is action. Our strength lies in great
+decisions on the battlefield." Perhaps also the guileless Germans were
+quite alert to the fact that Marshal Niel had shattered the French
+army's tradition of the offensive, and gone counter to the French
+soldier's nature by enjoining the defensive in the latest official
+instructions. Had the Teutons suborned him the Marshal could not have
+done them a better turn.
+
+Their offensive tactics against an enemy unnaturally lashed to the
+stake of the defensive stood the Germans in excellent stead in 1870. On
+every occasion they resorted to the offensive against an enemy in the
+field; strictly refraining, however, from that expedient when it was a
+fortress and not soldiers _en vive force_ that stood in the way. At St.
+Privat their offensive would probably have been worsted if Canrobert
+had been reinforced or even if a supply of ammunition had reached him;
+and a loss there of one-third of the combatants of the Guard Corps
+without result caused them to change for the better the method of their
+attack. But in every battle from Weissenburg to Sedan with the
+exception of the confused _mêlée_ of Mars-la-Tour, the French, besides
+being bewildered and discouraged, were in inferior strength; after
+Sedan the French levies in the field were scarcely soldiers. There was
+no fair testing of the relative advantages of defence and offence in
+the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78; and so it remains that in an actual
+and practical sense no firm decision has yet been established. All
+civilised nations are, however, assiduously practising the methods of
+the offensive.
+
+It may nevertheless be anticipated that in future warfare between
+evenly matched combatants the offensive will get the worst of it at the
+hands of the defensive. The word "anticipate" is used in preference to
+"apprehend," because one's sympathy is naturally for the invaded state
+unless it has been wantonly aggressive and insolent. The invaded army,
+if the term may be used, having familiar knowledge of the terrain will
+take up a position in the fair-way of the invader; affording strong
+flank _appui_ and a far-stretching clear range in front and on flanks.
+It will throw up several lines, or still better, tiers of shallow
+trenches along its front and flanks, with emplacements for artillery
+and machine guns. The invader must attack; he cannot turn the enemy's
+position and expose his communications to that enemy. He takes the
+offensive, doing so, as is the received practice, in front and on a
+flank. From the outset he will find the offensive a sterner ordeal than
+in the Franco-German War days. He will have to break into loose order
+at a greater distance, because of the longer range of small arms, and
+the further scope, the greater accuracy, and the quicker fire of the
+new artillery. He too possesses those weapons, but he cannot use them
+with so great effect. His field batteries suffer from the hostile
+cannon fire as they move forward to take up a position. His infantry
+cannot fire on the run; when they drop after a rush the aim of panting
+and breathless men cannot be of the best. And their target is fairly
+protected and at least partially hidden. The defenders behind their low
+épaulement do not pant; their marksmen only at first are allowed to
+fire; these make things unpleasant for the massed gunners out yonder,
+who share their attentions with the spraying-out infantry-men. The
+quick-firing cannon of the defence are getting in their work
+methodically. Neither its gunners nor its infantry need be nervous as
+to expending ammunition freely since plenteous supplies are promptly
+available, a convenience which does not infallibly come to either guns
+or rifles of the attack. The Germans report as their experience in the
+capacity of assailants that the rapidity and excitement of the advance,
+the stir of strife, the turmoil, exhilarate the soldiers, and that
+patriotism and fire-discipline in combination enforce a cool steady
+maintenance of fire; that in view of the ominous spectacle of the swift
+and confident advance, under torture of the storm of shell-fire and the
+hail of bullets which they have to endure in immobility, the defenders,
+previously shaken by the assailants' artillery preparation, become
+nervous, waver, and finally break when the cheers of the final
+concentrated rush strike on their ears. That this was scarcely true as
+regarded French regulars the annals of every battle of the
+Franco-German War up to and including Sedan conclusively show. It is
+true, however, that the French nature is intolerant of inactivity and
+in 1870 suffered under the deprivation of its _métier;_ but how often
+the Germans recoiled from the shelter trenches of the Spicheren and
+gave ground all along the line from St. Privat to the Bois de Vaux, men
+who witnessed those desperate struggles cannot forget while they live.
+Warriors of greater equanimity than the French soldier possesses might
+perhaps stand on the defensive in calm self-confidence with simple
+breech-loaders as their weapons, if simple breech-loaders were also
+weapons of the assailants. But in his magazine rifle the soldier of the
+future can keep the defensive not only with self-confidence, but with
+high elation, for in it he will possess a weapon against which it seems
+improbable that the attack (although armed too with a magazine or
+repeating rifle) can prevail.
+
+The assailants fall fast as their advance pushes forward, thinned down
+by the rifle fire, the mitraille, and the shrapnel of the defence. But
+they are gallant men and while life lasts they will not be denied. The
+long bloody advance is all but over; the survivors of it who have
+attained thus far are lying down getting their wind for the final
+concentration and rush. Meanwhile, since after they once again stand up
+they will use no more rifle fire till they have conquered or are
+beaten, they are pouring forth against the defence their reserve of
+bullets in or attached to their rifle-butts. The defenders take this
+punishment, like Colonel Quagg, lying down, courting the protection of
+their earth-bank. The hail of the assailants' bullets ceases; already
+the artillery of the attack has desisted lest it should injure friend
+as well as foe. The word runs along the line and the clumps of men
+lying prostrate there out in the open. The officers spring to their
+feet, wave their swords, and cheer loudly. The men are up in an
+instant, and the swift rush focussing toward a point begins. The
+distance to be traversed before the attackers are _aux prises_ with the
+defenders is about one hundred and fifty yards.
+
+It is no mere storm of missiles which meets fair in the face those
+charging heroes; no, it is a moving wall of metal against which they
+rush to their ruin. For the infantry of the defence are emptying their
+magazines now at point-blank range. Emptied magazine yields to full
+one; the Maxims are pumping, not bullets, but veritable streams of
+death, with calm, devilish swiftness. The quick-firing guns are
+spouting radiating torrents of case. The attackers are mown down as
+corn falls, not before the sickle but the scythe. Not a man has
+reached, or can reach, the little earth-bank behind which the defenders
+keep their ground. The attack has failed; and failed from no lack of
+valour, of methodised effort, of punctilious compliance with every
+instruction; but simply because the defence--the defence of the future
+in warfare--has been too strong for the attack. One will not occupy
+space by recounting how in the very nick of time the staunch defence
+flashes out into the counter-offensive; nor need one enlarge on the
+sure results to the invader as the unassailed flank of the defence
+throws forward the shoulder and takes in flank the dislocated masses of
+aggressors.
+
+One or two such experiences will definitively settle the point as to
+the relative advantage of the offensive and the defensive. Soldiers
+will not submit themselves to re-trial on re-trial of a _res judicata_.
+Grant, dogged though he was, had to accept that lesson in the shambles
+of Cold Harbour. For the bravest sane man will rather live than die. No
+man burns to become cannon-fodder. The Turk, who is supposed to court
+death in battle for religious reasons of a somewhat material kind, can
+run away even when the alternative is immediate removal to a Paradise
+of unlimited houris and copious sherbet. There are no braver men than
+Russian soldiers; but going into action against the Turks tried their
+nerves, not because they feared the Turks as antagonists, but because
+they knew too well that a petty wound disabling from retreat meant not
+alone death but unspeakable mutilation before that release.
+
+It is obvious that if, as is here anticipated, the offensive proves
+impossible in the battle of the future, an exaggerated phase of the
+stalemate which Boguslawski so pathetically deprecates will occur. The
+world need not greatly concern itself regarding this issue; the
+situation will almost invariably be in favour of the invaded and will
+probably present itself near his frontier line. He can afford to wait
+until the invader tires of inaction and goes home.
+
+Magazine and machine guns would seem to sound the knell of possible
+employment of cavalry in battle. No matter how dislocated are the
+infantry ridden at so long as they are not quite demoralised, however
+_rusé_ the cavalry leader--however favourable to sudden unexpected
+onslaught is the ground, the quick-firing arms of the future must
+apparently stall off the most enterprising horsemen. Probably if the
+writer were arguing the point with a German, the famous experiences of
+von Bredow might be adduced in bar of this contention. In the combat of
+Tobitschau in 1866 Bredow led his cuirassier regiment straight at three
+Austrian batteries in action, captured the eighteen guns and everybody
+and everything belonging to them, with the loss to himself of but ten
+men and eight horses. It is true, says the honest official account,
+that the ground favoured the charge and that the shells fired by the
+usually skilled Austrian gunners flew high. But during the last 100
+yards grape was substituted for shell, and Bredow deserved all the
+credit he got. Still stronger against my argument was Bredow's
+memorable work at Mars-la-Tour, when at the head of six squadrons he
+charged across 1000 yards of open plain, rode over and through two
+separate lines of French infantry, carried a line of cannon numbering
+nine batteries, rode 1000 yards farther into the very heart of the
+French army, and came back with a loss of not quite one half of his
+strength. The _Todtenritt_, as the Germans call it, was a wonderful
+exploit, a second Balaclava charge and a bloodier one; and there was
+this distinction that it had a purpose and that that purpose was
+achieved. For Bredow's charge in effect wrecked France. It arrested the
+French advance which would else have swept Alvensleben aside; and to
+its timely effect is traceable the sequence of events that ended in the
+capitulation of Metz. The fact that although from the beginning of his
+charge until he struck the front of the first French infantry line
+Bredow took the rifle-fire of a whole French division yet did not lose
+above fifty men, has been a notable weapon in the hands of those who
+argue that good cavalry can charge home on unshaken infantry. But never
+more will French infantry shoot from the hip as Lafont's conscripts at
+Mars-la-Tour shot in the vague direction of Bredow's squadrons. French
+cavalry never got within yards of German infantry even in loose order;
+and the magazine or repeating rifle held reasonably straight will stop
+the most thrusting cavalry that ever heard the "charge" sound.
+
+Fortifications of the future will differ curiously from those of the
+present. The latter, with their towering scarps, their massive
+_enceintes_, their "portentous ditches," will remain as monuments of a
+vicious system, except where, as in the cases of Vienna, Cologne,
+Sedan, etc., the dwellers in the cities they encircle shall procure
+their demolition for the sake of elbow-room, or until modern howitzer
+shells or missiles charged with high explosives shall pulverise their
+naked expanses of masonry. In the fortification of the future the
+defender will no longer be "enclosed in the toils imposed by the
+engineer" with the inevitable disabilities they entail, while the
+besieger enjoys the advantage of free mobility. Plevna has killed the
+castellated fortress. With free communications the full results
+attainable by fortress artillery intelligently used, will at length
+come to be realised. Unless in rare cases and for exceptional reasons
+towns will gradually cease to be fortified even by an encirclement of
+detached forts. Where the latter are availed of, practical experience
+will infallibly condemn the expensive and complex cupola-surmounted
+construction of which General Brialmont is the champion. "A work,"
+trenchantly argues Major Sydenham Clarke, "designed on the principles
+of the Roman catacombs is suited only for the dead, in a literal or in
+a military sense. The vast system of subterranean chambers and passages
+is capable of entombing a brigade, but denies all necessary tactical
+freedom of action to a battalion."
+
+The fortress of the future will probably be in the nature of an
+intrenched camp. The interior of the position will provide casemate
+accommodation for an army of considerable strength. Its defences will
+consist of a circle at intervals of about 2500 yards, of permanent
+redoubts which shall be invisible at moderate ranges for infantry and
+machine guns, the garrison of each redoubt to consist of a half
+battalion. Such a work was in 1886 constructed at Chatham in thirty-one
+working days, to hold a garrison of 200 men housed in casemates built
+in concrete, for less than £3000, and experiments proved that it would
+require a "prohibitory expenditure" of ammunition to cause it serious
+damage by artillery fire. The supporting defensive armament will
+consist of a powerful artillery rendered mobile by means of tram-roads,
+this defence supplemented by a field force carrying on outpost duties
+and manning field works guarding the intervals between the redoubts.
+Advanced defences and exterior obstacles of as formidable a character
+as possible will be the complement of what in effect will be an
+immensely elaborated Plevna, which, properly armed and fully organised,
+will "fulfil all the requirements of defence" while possessing
+important potentialities of offence.
+
+An illustration is pertinent of the pre-eminent utility of such
+fortified and strongly held positions, of whose characteristics the
+above is the merest outline. In the event of a future Franco-German
+War, the immensely expensive cordon of fortresses with which the French
+have lined their frontier, efficiently equipped, duly garrisoned and
+well commanded, will unquestionably present a serious obstacle to the
+invading armies. The Germans talk of _vive force_--shell heavily and
+then storm; the latter resort one for which they have in the past
+displayed no predilection. Whether by storm or interpenetration, they
+will probably break the cordon, but they cannot advance without masking
+all the principal fortresses. This will employ a considerable portion
+of their strength, and the invasion will proceed in less force, which
+will be an advantage to the defenders. But if instead of those
+multitudinous fortresses the French had constructed, say, three such
+intrenched-camp fortresses as have been sketched, each quartering
+50,000 men, it would appear that they would have done better for
+themselves at far less cost. Each intrenched position containing a
+field army 50,000 strong would engross a beleaguering host of 100,000
+men. The positions of the type outlined are claimed to be impregnable;
+they could contain supplies and munitions for at least a year,
+detaining around them for that period 300,000 of the enemy. No European
+power except Russia has soldiers enough to spare so long such a mass of
+troops standing fast, and simultaneously to prosecute the invasion of a
+first-rate power with approximately equal numbers. France at the cost
+of 150,000 men would be holding supine on her frontier double the
+number of Germans--surely no disadvantageous transaction.
+
+In conclusion, it may be worth while to point out that the current
+impression that the maintenance by states of "bloated armaments" is a
+keen incentive to war, is fallacious. How often do we hear, "There must
+be a big war soon; the powers cannot long stand the cost of standing
+looking at each other, all armed to the teeth!" War is infinitely more
+costly than the costliest preparedness. But this is not all. The
+country gentleman for once in a way brings his family to town for the
+season, pledging himself privily to strict economy when the term of
+dissipation ends, in order to restore the balance. But for a State, as
+the sequel to a season of war there is no such potentiality of economy.
+Rather there is the grim certainty of heavier and yet heavier
+expenditure after the war, in the still obligatory character of the
+armed man keeping his house. Therefore it is that potentates are
+reluctant to draw the sword, and rather bear the ills they have than
+fly to other evils inevitably worse still. Whether the final outcome
+will be universal national bankruptcy or the millennium, is a problem
+as yet insoluble.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
+
+[Footnote: _Bandobast_ is an Indian word, which, like many others, has
+been all but formally incorporated into Anglo-Indian English. The
+meaning is, plan, scheme, organised arrangement.]
+
+
+George Martell was an indigo-planter in Western Tirhoot, a fine tract
+of Bengal stretching from the Ganges to the Nepaul Terai, and roughly
+bounded on the west by the Gunduck, on the east by the Kussi.
+Planter-life in Tirhoot is very pleasant to a man in robust health, who
+possesses some resources within himself. In many respects it more
+resembles active rural life at home than does any other life led by
+Anglo-Indians. The joys of a planter's life have been enthusiastically
+sung by a planter-poet; and the frank genial hospitality of the
+planter's bungalow stands out pre-eminent, even amidst the universal
+hospitality of India. The planter's bungalow is open to all comers. The
+established formula for the arriving stranger is first to call for
+brandy-and-soda, then to order a bath, and finally to inquire the name
+of the occupant his host. The laws of hospitality are as the laws of
+the Medes and Persians. Once in the famine time a stranger in a palki
+reached a planter's bungalow in an outlying district, and sent in his
+card. The planter sent him out a drink but did not bid him enter. The
+stranger remained in the veranda till sundown, had another drink, and
+then went on his way. This breach of statute law became known. There
+was much excuse for the planter, for the traveller was a missionary and
+in other respects was a _persona ingrata_. But the credit of
+planterhood was at stake; and so strong was the force of public opinion
+that the planter who had been a defaulter in hospitality had to abandon
+the profession and quit the district. It was on this occasion laid down
+as a guiding illustration, that if Judas Iscariot, when travelling
+around looking for an eligible tree on which to hang himself, had
+claimed the hospitality of a planter's bungalow, the dweller therein
+would have been bound to accord him that hospitality. Not even
+newspaper correspondents were to be sent empty away.
+
+The indigo-planter is "up in the morning early" and away at a swinging
+canter on his "waler" nag, out into the _dahaut_ to visit the _zillahs_
+on which his crop is growing. He returns when the sun is getting high
+with a famous appetite for a breakfast which is more than half
+luncheon. After his siesta he may look in upon a neighbour--all Tirhoot
+are neighbours and within a radius of thirty miles is considered next
+door. He would ride that distance any day to spend an hour or two in a
+house brightened by the presence of womanhood. His anxious period is
+_mahaye_ time, when the indigo is in the vats and the quantity and
+quality of the yield depend so much on care and skill. But except at
+_mahaye_ time he is always ready for relaxation, whether it takes the
+form of a polo match, a pig-sticking expedition, or a race-meeting at
+Sonepoor, Muzzufferpore, or Chumparun. These race-meetings last for
+several days on end, there being racing and hunting on alternate days
+with a ball every second night. It used to be worth a journey to India
+to see Jimmy Macleod cram a cross-grained "waler" over an awkward
+fence, and squeeze the last ounce out of the brute in the run home on
+the flat. The Tirhoot ladies are in all respects charming; and it must
+remain a moot point with the discriminating observer whether they are
+more delightful in the genial home-circles of which they are the
+centres and ornaments, or in the more exciting stir and whirl of the
+ballroom. After every gathering hecatombs of slain male victims
+mournfully cumber the ground; and one all-conquering fair one, now
+herself conquered by matrimony and motherhood, wrung from those her
+charms had blighted the title of "the destroying angel."
+
+George Martell was an honest sort of a clod. He stood well with the
+ryots, and the mark of his factory always brought out keen bidding at
+Thomas's auction-mart in Mission Row and was held in respect in the
+Commission Sale Rooms in Mincing Lane. He was a good shikaree and could
+hold his own either at polo or at billiards; but being somewhat shy and
+not a little clumsy he did not frequent race-balls nor throw himself in
+the way of "destroying angels." He had been over a dozen years in the
+district and had not been known to propose once, so that he had come to
+be set down as a misogynist. Among his chief allies was a neighbouring
+planter called Mactavish. Mactavish in some incomprehensible way--he
+being a gaunt, uncouth, bristly Scot, whose Highland accent was as
+strong as the whisky with which he had coloured his nose--had contrived
+to woo and win a bonny, baby-faced girl, the ripple of whose laughter
+and the dancing sheen of whose auburn curls filled the Mactavish
+bungalow with glad bright sunshine. When Mac first brought home this
+winsome fairy Martell had sheepishly shunned the residence of his
+friend, till one fine morning when he came in from the _dahaut_ he
+found Minnie Mactavish quite at home among the pipes, empty soda-water
+bottles, and broken chairs that constituted the principal articles of
+furniture in his bachelor sitting-room. Minnie had come to fetch her
+husband's friend and in her dainty imperious way would take no denial.
+So George had his bath, got a fresh horse saddled, nearly chucked
+Minnie over the other side as he clumsily helped her to mount her pony,
+and rode away with her a willing if somewhat clownish captive. Arriving
+at the bungalow Mactavish, honest George was bewildered by the
+transformation it had undergone. Flowers were where the spirit-case
+used to stand. There was a drawing-room with actually a piano in it;
+the _World_ lay on the table instead of the _Sporting Times_, and the
+servants wore a quiet, tasteful livery. Mac himself had been trimmed
+and titivated almost out of recognition. He who had been wont to lounge
+half the day in his _pyjamas_ was now almost smartly dressed; his beard
+was cropped, and his bristly poll brushed and oiled. If George had a
+weak spot in him it was for a simple song well sung. Mrs. Mac,
+accompanying herself on the piano, sang to him "The Land o' the Leal"
+and brewed him a mild peg with her own fair hands. George by bedtime
+did not know whether he was on his head or his heels.
+
+He lay awake all night thinking over all he had seen. Mactavish now was
+clearly a better man than ever he had been before. He had told George
+he was living more cheaply as a married man than ever he had done as a
+bachelor; and in the matter of happiness there was no comparison.
+George rose early to go home; but early as it was Mrs. Mac was up too,
+and arrayed in a killing morning _négligé_ that fairly made poor George
+stammer, gave him his _chota hazri_ and stroked his horse's head as he
+mounted. About half-way home George suddenly shouted, "D----d if I
+don't do it too!" and brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack
+that set his horse buck-jumping.
+
+In effect, George Martell had determined to get married. But where to
+find a Mrs. Martell? Mrs. Mactavish had told him she had no sisters and
+that her only relative was a maiden grand-aunt, whom George thought
+must be a little too old to marry unless in the last resort. If he took
+the field at the next race-meeting the fellows would chaff the life out
+of him; and besides, he scarcely felt himself man enough to face a
+"destroying angel." As he pondered, riding slowly homeward, a thought
+occurred to him. When he had been at home a dozen years ago his two
+girl-sisters had been at school, and their great playmate had been a
+girl of eleven, by name Laura Davidson. Laura was a pretty child. He
+had taken occasional notice of her; had once kissed her after having
+been severely scratched in the struggle; and had taken her and his
+sisters to the local theatre. What if Laura Davidson--now some
+three-and-twenty--were still single? What if she were pretty and nice?
+He remembered that the colour of her hair was not unlike Mrs. Mac's,
+and was in ringlets too. And what if she were willing to come out and
+make lonely George Martell as happy a man as was that lucky old Mac?
+
+It was mail-day, and George, taking time by the forelock, sat down and
+wrote to his sister what had come into his head. By the return mail he
+had her reply: Laura Davidson was single; she was nice; she was pretty;
+she had fair ringlets; she had a hazy memory of George and the kissing
+episode, and was willing to come out and marry him and try to make him
+happy. But she could not well come alone; could George suggest any
+method of _chaperonage_ on the voyage?
+
+In the district of Champarun, which in essentials is part of Tirhoot,
+lies the quaint little cavalry cantonment of Segowlie. It is the last
+relic of the old Nepaul war, which caused the erection of a chain of
+cantonments along the frontier all of which save Segowlie, are now
+abandoned. There is just room for one native cavalry regiment at
+Segowlie, and the soldiers like the station because of excellent sport
+and the good comradeship of the planters. At Segowlie at the time I am
+writing of there happened to be quartered a certain Major Freeze, whose
+wife, after a couple of years at home, was about returning to India.
+George had some acquaintance with the Major and a far-off profound
+respect for his wife, who was an admirable and stately lady. It
+occurred to him to try whether it could not be managed that she should
+bring out the future Mrs. Martell. He saw the Major, who was only too
+delighted at the prospect of a new lady in the district, and the affair
+was soon arranged. Mrs. Freeze wrote that she and Miss Davidson were
+leaving by such-and-such a mail; and knowing that Martell was rather
+lumpy when a lady was in the case, she thoughtfully suggested that he
+should go down to Bombay and meet them so as to get over the initial
+awkwardness by making himself useful and gain his intended's respect by
+swearing at the niggers.
+
+All went well. But George Martell was not quite his own master, he was
+only part of a "concern" and was bound to do his best for his partners.
+It happened, just about the time the P. and O. steamer was due at
+Bombay, that the most ticklish period of the indigo-planters' year was
+upon Martell. The juice had begun to flow from the vats. He had no
+assistant and he did not dare to leave the work, so he telegraphed to
+Bombay to explain this to Mrs. Freeze, and added that he would meet her
+and her companion at Bankipore where their long railway journey would
+end. Miss Davidson did not understand much about the absorbing crisis
+of indigo production, and she had a spice of romance in her
+composition; so that poor Martell did not rise in her estimation by his
+default at Bombay. When the ladies reached Bankipore there was still no
+Martell, but only a _chuprassee_ with a note to say that the juice was
+still running, and that Martell sahib could not leave the factory but
+would be waiting for them at Segowlie. At this even Mrs. Freeze almost
+lost her temper.
+
+They have a "State Railway" now in Tirhoot, but at the time I am
+writing of there was only one _pukha_ road in all the district. The
+ladies travelled in palanquins, or palkis, as they are more familiarly
+called. It is a long journey from Bankipore to Segowlie, and three
+nights were spent in travelling. Bluff old Minden Wilson stood on the
+bank above the ghât to welcome Mrs. Freeze across the Ganges. One day
+was spent at young Spudd's factory, the second at the residence of a
+genial planter rejoicing in the quaint name of Hong Kong Scribbens; on
+the third morning they reached Segowlie. But still no Martell; only a
+_chit_ to say that that plaguy juice was still running but that he
+hoped to be able to drive over to dinner. Miss Davidson went to bed in
+a huff; and Major Freeze was temporarily inclined to think that her
+home-trip had impaired his good lady's amiability of character.
+
+Martell did turn up at dinner-time. But he was hardly a man at any time
+to create much of an impression, and on this occasion he appeared to
+exceptional disadvantage. He was stutteringly nervous; and there were
+some evidences that he had been ineffectually striving to mitigate his
+nervousness by the consumption of his namesake. He wore a new
+dress-coat which had not the remotest pretensions to fit him, and the
+bear's-grease which he had freely used gave unpleasant token of
+rancidity. The dinner was an unsatisfactory performance. Miss Davidson
+was extremely _distraite_, while Martell became more and more nervous
+as the meal progressed and was manifestly relieved when the ladies
+retired. Soon after they had done so the Major was sent for from the
+drawing-room. He found Miss Davidson sobbing on his wife's bosom. He
+asked what was the matter. The girl, with many sobbing interruptions,
+gasped out--
+
+"He's the wrong man! O Heavens, I never saw _him_ before! The man I
+remember who gave me sweets when I was a child had black hair; _he_ has
+red! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, please send that man away and let me go
+home!"
+
+And then Miss Davidson went off into hysterics.
+
+Here was a pretty state of matters! The Major and his wife could not
+see their way clear at all. Consultation followed consultation, with
+visits on the Major's part to poor Martell in the dining-room
+irregularly interspersed. It was almost morning before affairs arranged
+themselves after a fashion. The new basis agreed upon was that the
+previously existing arrangement should be regarded as dead, and that a
+courtship between Martell and Miss Davidson should be commenced _de
+novo_--he to do his best to recommend himself to the lady's affections,
+she to learn to love him if she could, red hair and all. And so George
+went home, and the Segowlie household went to bed.
+
+Poor George at the best had a very poor idea of courting acceptably;
+and surely no man was more heavily handicapped in the enterprise
+prescribed him. He had to court to order, and to combat, besides, both
+the bad impression made at starting and the misfortune of his red hair.
+The poor fellow did his best. He used to come and sit in Mrs. Freeze's
+drawing-room hours on end, glowering at Miss Davidson in a silence
+broken by spasmodic efforts at forced talk. He brought the girl
+presents, gave her a horse, and begged of her to ride with him. But the
+great stupid fellow had not thought of a habit and the girl felt a
+delicacy in telling him that she had not one. So the horse ate his head
+off in idleness, and George's heart went farther and farther down in
+the direction of his boots. He had so bothered Mrs. Freeze that she had
+washed her hands of him, and had bidden him worry it out on his own
+line.
+
+In less than a month the crisis came. Miss Davidson could not bring
+herself to think of poor George as affording the makings of a husband.
+She told Mrs. Freeze so, and begged, for kindness sake, that the Major
+would break this her determination to Mr. Martell and desire him to
+give the thing up as hopeless. The Major thought the best course to
+pursue was to write to George to this effect. Next morning in the small
+hours the poor fellow turned up in the Segowlie veranda in a terribly
+bad way. He would not accept his fate at second-hand in this fashion;
+he must see Miss Davidson and try to move her to be kind to him. In the
+end there was an interview between them, from which George emerged
+quiet but very pale. His notable matrimonial bandobast had proved the
+deadest of failures; and the poor fellow's lip trembled as he thought
+of Mactavish's happy home and his own forlorn bungalow.
+
+But although he had red hair and did not know in the least what to do
+with his feet, George Martell was a gentleman. The lady continuing
+anxious to go home, he insisted on his right to pay her return passage
+as he had done her passage outward, urging rather ruefully that, having
+taken a shot at happiness and having missed fire, he must be the sole
+sufferer. It is a little surprising that this uncouth chivalry did not
+melt the lady, but she was obdurate, although she let him have his way
+about the passage money. So in the company of an officer's wife going
+home Miss Davidson quitted Segowlie and journeyed to Bombay. Poor old
+George, with a very sore heart, was bent on seeing the last of her
+before settling down again to the old dull bachelor life. He dodged
+down to Bombay in the same train, travelling second class that he might
+not annoy the girl by a chance meeting; and stood with a sad face
+leaning on the rail of the Apollo Bunder, as he watched the ship
+containing his miscarried venture steam out of Bombay harbour on its
+voyage to England.
+
+The same night he set out on his return to his plantation. At near
+midnight the mail-train from Bombay reaches Eginpoora, at the head of
+the famous Bhore ghât. Some refreshment is ordinarily procurable there,
+but it is not much of a place. George Martell had had a drink, and was
+sauntering moodily up and down the platform waiting for the whistle to
+sound. As he passed the second class compartment reserved for ladies he
+heard a low, tremulous voice exclaim, "Oh, if I could only make them
+understand that I'd give the world for a cup of tea!" George, if
+uncouth, was a practical man. His prompt voice rang out, "_Qui hye, ek
+pyala chah lao!_" Promptly came the refreshment-room _khitmutghar_,
+hurrying with the tea; and George, taking off his hat, begged to know
+whether he could be of any further service.
+
+It was a very pleasant face that looked out on him in the moonlight,
+and there was more than mere conventionality in the accents in which
+the pleasant voice acknowledged his opportune courtesy. Insensibly
+George and the lady drifted into conversation. She was very lonely,
+poor thing; a friendless girl coming out to be governess in the family
+of a _burra sahib_ at Chupra. Now Chupra is only across the Gunduck
+from Tirhoot, so George told his new acquaintance they were both going
+to nearly the same place, and professed his cordial willingness to
+assist her on the journey. He did so, escorting her right into Chupra
+before he set his face homeward; and he thenceforth got into a habit of
+visiting Chupra very frequently. Need I prolong the story? I happened
+to be in Bankipore when the Prince of Wales visited that centre of
+famine-wallahs. It fell to my pleasant lot to take Mrs. Martell in to
+dinner at the Commissioner's hospitable table. Mrs. Mactavish was
+sitting opposite; and I went back to my bedroom-tent in the compound
+without having made up my mind whether she or Mrs. Martell was the
+prettier and the nicer. So you see George Martell did not make quite so
+bad a _bandobast_ after all.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY--1879
+
+
+It was in Cawnpore on my way up country, during the Prince of Wales's
+tour through India, that there were shown to me some curious and
+interesting mementoes of the siege of Lucknow. The friend in whose
+possession they were was near Havelock as he sat before his tent in the
+short Indian twilight, a short time before the advance on Lucknow made
+by him and Outram in September 1857. Through the gloom of the falling
+twilight there came marching towards the General a file of Highlanders
+escorting a tall, gaunt Oude man, on whose swarthy face the lamplight
+struck as he salaamed before the General Lord Sahib. Then he extracted
+from his ear a minute section of quill sealed at both ends. The
+General's son opened the strange envelope forwarded by a postal service
+so hazardous, and unrolled a morsel of paper which seemed to be covered
+with cabalistic signs. The missive had been sent out from Lucknow by
+Brigadier Inglis, the commander of the beleaguered garrison of the
+Lucknow Residency, and its bearer was the stanch and daring scout,
+Ungud. As I write the originals of this communication and of others
+which came in the same way lie before me; and two of those missives in
+their curious mixture of characters may be found of interest to readers
+of to-day.
+
+
+LUKHNOW, _Septr. 16th._ (Recd. 19th.)
+
+MY DEAR GENERAL--The last letter I recd. from you was dated 24th ult'o,
+since when I have rec'd [Greek: no neus] whatever from y'r [Greek:
+kamp] or of y'r [Greek: movements] but am now [Greek: dailae expekting]
+to receive [Greek: inteligense] of y'r [Greek: advanse] in this [Greek:
+direktion]. Since the date of my last letter the enemy have continued
+to persevere unceasingly in their efforts against this position & the
+firing has never ceased day or night; they have about [Greek: sixten]
+guns in position round us--many of them 18 p'rs. On 5th inst. they made
+a very determined attack after exploding 2 mines and [Greek: suksaeded]
+for a [Greek: moment] in [Greek: almost geting] into one of our [Greek:
+bateries], but were eventually repulsed on all sides with heavy loss.
+Since the above date they have kept up a cannonade & musketry fire,
+occasionally throwing in a shell or two. My [Greek: waeklae loses]
+continue very [Greek: hevae] both in [Greek: ophisers] & [Greek: men].
+I shall be quite out of [Greek: rum] for the [Greek: men] in [Greek:
+eit dais], but we have been [Greek: living] on [Greek: redused rations]
+& I hope to be [Greek: able] to [Greek: get] on [Greek: til] about
+[Greek: phirst prox]. If you have not [Greek: relieved] us by [Greek:
+then] we shall have [Greek: no meat lepht], as I must [Greek: kaep]
+some few [Greek: buloks] to [Greek: move] my [Greek: guns] about the
+[Greek: positions]. As it is I have had to [Greek: kil] almost all the
+[Greek: gun buloks], for my men c'd not [Greek: perphorm] the [Greek:
+ard work without animal phood]. There is a report, tho' from a source
+on which I cannot implicitly rely, that [Greek: mansing] has just
+[Greek: arived] in [Greek: luknow] havg. [Greek: lepht part] of his
+[Greek: phors outside] the [Greek: sitae]. It is said that [Greek: he]
+is in [Greek: our interest] and that [Greek: he] has [Greek: taken] the
+[Greek: above step] at the [Greek: instigation] of B[Greek: riti]sh
+[Greek: athoritae]. But I cannot say whether [Greek: su]ch [Greek: be
+the kase], as all I have to go upon is [Greek: bazar rumors]. I am
+[Greek: most anxious] to [Greek: hear] of yr. [Greek: advanse] to
+[Greek: enable mae] to [Greek: rae-asure our native soldiers].
+[Footnote: The reader will observe that the words are English, though
+the characters are Greek.]--Yours truly,
+
+J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_,
+
+H.M. 32'd Reg't.
+
+To Brig'r Havelock, Commg. Relieving Force.
+
+
+The other missive is of an earlier date, and was brought out in the
+same manner as the first.
+
+
+_August 16_. (Recd. 23rd August.)
+
+MY DEAR GENERAL--A note from Colonel Tytler to Mr. Gubbins reached last
+night, dated "Mungalwar, 4th instant," the latter part of which is as
+follows:--"You must [Greek: aid] us in [Greek: everae] way even to
+cutting y'r way out if we [Greek: kant phorse our] way in. We have
+[Greek: onlae a small phorse]." This has [Greek: kaused mae] much
+[Greek: uneasiness], as it is quite [Greek: imposible] with my [Greek:
+weak] & [Greek: shatered phorse] that I can [Greek: leave] my [Greek:
+dephenses]. You must bear in mind how I am [Greek: hampered], that I
+have upwards of [Greek: one undred & twentae-sik wounded], and at the
+least [Greek: two undred & twenae women], & about [Greek: two undred] &
+[Greek: thirtae children], & no [Greek: kariage] of any [Greek:
+deskription], besides [Greek: sakriphising twentae-thrae laks] of
+[Greek: treasure] & about [Greek: thirtae guns] of [Greek: sorts]. In
+consequence of the news rec'd I shall soon put the [Greek: phorse] on
+[Greek: alph rations], unless I [Greek: hear phrom] you. [Greek: Our
+provisions] will [Greek: last] us [Greek: then] till [Greek: about] the
+[Greek: tenth] [Greek: september]. If you [Greek: hope] to [Greek: save
+this no time must] be [Greek: lost] in pushing forward. We are [Greek:
+dailae] being [Greek: ataked] by the [Greek: enemae], who are within a
+few yards of our [Greek: dephenses]. Their [Greek: mines] have [Greek:
+alreadae weakened our post], & I have [Greek: everae] [Greek: reason]
+to [Greek: believe] that are carrying on [Greek: others]. Their [Greek:
+aeteen] [Greeks: pounders] are within 150 yards of [Greek: some oph our
+bateries], & [Greek: phrom] their [Greek: positions & [Greek: our
+inabilitae] to [Greek: phorm working] [Greek: parties], we [Greek:
+kanot repli] to [Greek: them. Thae damage done ourlae] is very [Greek:
+great]. My [Greek: strength] now in [Greek: europeans] is [Greek: thrae
+undred] & [Greek: phiphtae], & about [Greek: thrae hundred natives], &
+the men [Greek: dreadphulae] [Greek: harassed], & owing to [Greek:
+part] of the [Greek: residensae] having been [Greek: brought down] by
+[Greek: round shot] are without [Greek: shelter]. Our [Greek: native]
+[Greek: phorse] hav'g been [Greek: asured] on Col. Tytler's authority
+of y'r [Greek: near] [Greek: aproach some twentae phive dais ago are
+naturallae losing konphidense], [Greek: and iph thae leave] us I do not
+[Greek: sae how the dephenses] are to be [Greek: manned]. Did you
+[Greek: reseive a letter & plan phrom] the [Greek: man] [Greek:
+Ungud]?--Kindly answer this question.--Yours truly,
+
+J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_.
+
+Cawnpore is an engrossing theme, and Bithoor alone would furnish
+material for an article; but my present subject is Lucknow, and I must
+get to it. There is a railway now to Lucknow from Cawnpore, but the
+railway bridge across the Ganges is not yet finished and passengers
+must cross by the bridge of boats to the Oude side. Behind me, as the
+gharry jingles over the wooden platform, is the fort which Havelock
+began, which Neill completed, and in which Windham found the shelter
+which alone saved him from utter defeat. Before me is the low Gangetic
+shore, with the dumpy sand-hills gradually rising from the water's
+edge. A few years ago there used to ride at the head of that noble
+regiment the 78th Highlanders, a smooth-faced, gaunt, long-legged,
+stooping officer on an old white horse. The Colonel had a voice like a
+girl and his men irreverently called him the "old squeaker"; but
+although you never heard him talk of his deeds he had a habit of going
+quietly and steadily to the front, taking fighting and hardship
+philosophically as part of the day's work. Those sand-banks were once
+the scene of some quiet, unsensational heroism of his. He commanded the
+two companies of Highlanders whom Havelock threw on the unknown shore
+as the vanguard of his advance into Oude. No prior reconnaissance was
+possible. Oude swarmed with an armed and hostile population. The
+chances were that an army was hovering but a little way inland, waiting
+to attack the head of the column on landing. But it was necessary to
+risk all contingencies, and Mackenzie accepted the service as he might
+have done an invitation to a glass of grog. In the dead of the night
+the boats stood across with the little forlorn hope with which Havelock
+essayed to grapple on to Oude. Landing in the rain and darkness, it was
+Mackenzie's task to grope for an enemy if there should be one in his
+vicinity. There was not; but for four-and-twenty hours his little band
+hung on to the Oude bank as it were by their eyelids, detached,
+unsupported, and wholly charged with the taking care of themselves
+until it was possible to send a reinforcement. The charge of this
+vague, uncertain, tentative enterprise, fraught with risks so imminent
+and so vast, required a cool, steady-balanced courage of no common
+order.
+
+"Onao!" shouts the conductor of the train at the first station from
+Cawnpore, and we look out on a few railway bungalows and a large native
+village apparently in a ruinous state. All this journey is studded with
+battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to
+make a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically
+Private Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the
+hesitation of his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the
+mutineers. We jog on very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to
+India in point of slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at
+home; but every yard of the ground is interesting. Along that high road
+passed in long, strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde
+brought away from Lucknow--the civilians, the women, the children, and
+the wounded of the immortal garrison. That swell beyond the mango trees
+under which the _nhil gau_ are feeding, is Mungalwar, Havelock's
+menacing position. No wonder though the outskirts of this town on the
+high road present a ruined appearance. It is Busseerutgunge, the scene
+of three of Havelock's battles and victories, fought and won in a
+single fortnight. We pass Bunnee, where Havelock and Outram tramping on
+to the relief, fired a royal salute in the hope that the sound of it
+might reach to the Residency and cheer the hearts of its garrison. And
+now we are on the platform of the Lucknow station which has more of an
+English look about it than have most Indian stations. There is a
+bookstall, although it is not one of Smith's; and there are lots of
+English faces in the crowd waiting the arrival of the train. The
+natives, one sees at a glance, are of very different physique from the
+people of Bengal. The Oude man is tall, square-shouldered, and upright;
+he has more hair on his face than has the Bengali, and his carriage is
+that of a free man. The railway station of Lucknow is flanked by two
+earthwork fortifications of considerable pretensions.
+
+Lucknow is so full of interest and the objects of interest are so
+widely spread that one is in doubt where to begin the pilgrimage. But
+the Alumbagh is on the railway side of the canal and therefore nearest;
+and I drive directly to it before going into the town. From the station
+the road to the Alumbagh turns sharp to the left and the two miles'
+drive is through beautiful groves and gardens. Then the plain opens up
+and there is the detached temple which so long was one of Outram's
+outlying pickets; and to the left of it the square-walled enclosure of
+the Alumbagh itself with the four corners flanked by earthen bastions.
+The top of the wall is everywhere roughly crenelated for musketry fire,
+and on two of its faces there are countless tokens that it has been the
+target for round shot and bullets. The Alumbagh in the pre-Mutiny
+period was a pleasure-garden of one of the princes of Oude. The
+enclosed park contained a summer palace and all the surroundings were
+pretty and tasteful. It was for the possession of the Alumbagh that
+Havelock fought his last battle before the relief; here it was where he
+left his baggage and went in; here it was that Clyde halted to organise
+the turning movement which achieved the second relief. Hither were
+brought from the Dilkoosha the women and children of the garrison prior
+to starting on the march for Cawnpore; here Outram lay threatening
+Lucknow from Clyde's relief until the latter's ultimate capture of the
+city. But these occurrences contribute but trivially to the interest of
+the Alumbagh in comparison with the circumstance that within its
+enclosure is the grave of Havelock. We enter the great enclosure under
+the lofty arch of the castellated gateway. From this a straight avenue
+bordered by arbor vitae trees, conducts to a square plot of ground
+enclosed by low posts and chains. Inside this there is a little garden
+the plants of which a native gardener is watering as we open the
+wicket. From the centre of the little garden there rises a shapely
+obelisk on a square pedestal and on one side of the pedestal is a long
+inscription. "Here lie," it begins, "the mortal remains of Henry
+Havelock;" and so, methinks, it might have ended. There is needed no
+prolix biographical inscription to tell the reverent pilgrim of the
+deeds of the dead man by whose grave he stands--so long as history
+lives, so long does it suffice to know that "here lie the mortal
+remains of Henry Havelock"--and the text and verse of poetry grate on
+one as redundancies. He sickened two days before the evacuation of the
+Residency and died on the morning of the 24th of November in his dooly
+in a tent of the camp at the Dilkoosha. The life went out of him just
+as the march began, and his soldiers conveyed with them, on the litter
+on which he had expired, the mortal remains of the chief who had so
+often led them on to victory.
+
+On the following morning they buried him here in the Alumbagh, under
+the tree which still spreads its branches over the little garden in
+which he lies. There stood around the grave-mouth Colin Campbell and
+the chivalrous Outram, and stanch old Walter Hamilton, and the
+ever-ready Fraser Tytler; and the "boy Harry" to whom the campaign had
+brought the gain of fame and the loss of a father; and the devoted
+Harwood with "his heart in the coffin there with Caesar;" and the
+heroic William Peel; and that "colossal red Celt," the noble, ill-fated
+Adrian Hope, sacrificed afterwards to incompetent obstinacy. Behind
+stood in a wide circle the soldiers of the Ross-shire Buffs and the
+"Blue Caps" who had served the dead chief so stanchly, and had gathered
+here now, with many a memory of his ready praise of valour and his
+indefatigable regard for the comfort of his men, stirring in their
+war-worn hearts--
+
+  Guarded to a soldier's grave
+  By the bravest of the brave,
+  He hath gained a nobler tomb
+  Than in old cathedral gloom.
+  Nobler mourners paid the rite,
+  Than the crowd that craves a sight;
+  England's banners o'er him waved,
+  Dead he keeps the name he saved.
+
+The burial-place was being temporarily abandoned, and as the rebels
+desecrated all the graves they could discover it was necessary to
+obliterate as much as possible the tokens of the interment. A big "H"
+was carved into the bark of the tree and a small tin plate fastened to
+its trunk, to guide to the subsequent investigation of the spot. Dr.
+Russell tells us that when he visited the Alumbagh before his return
+home after the mutiny in Oude was stamped out, he found the hero's
+grave a muddy trench near the foot of a tree which bore the mark of a
+round shot and had carved into its bark the letter "H." The tree is
+here still and the dent of the round shot, and faintly too is to be
+discerned the carved letter but the bark around it seems to have been
+whittled away, perhaps by the sacrilegious knives of relic-seeking
+visitors. There is the grave of a young lieutenant in a corner of the
+little garden and a few private soldiers lie hard by.
+
+I turn my face now toward the Charbagh bridge, following the route
+taken by Havelock's force on the 25th of September--the memorable day
+of the relief. There is the field where, as at a table in the open air
+Havelock and Outram were studying a map, a round shot from the Sepoy
+battery by the Yellow House ricochetted between them. There is the spot
+where stood the Yellow House itself, whence after a desperate struggle
+Maude's artillerymen drove the Sepoy garrison and its guns. Presently
+with a sweep the road comes into a direct line with the Charbagh bridge
+over the canal. Now there is not a house in the vicinity; the Charbagh
+garden has been thrown into the plain and the steep banks of the canal
+are perfectly naked. But then the scene was very different. On the
+Lucknow side the native city came close up to the bridge and lined the
+canal. The tall houses to right and left of the bridge on the Lucknow
+side were full of men with firearms. At that end of the bridge there
+was a regular overlapping breastwork, and behind it rose an earthwork
+battery solidly constructed and armed with five guns, one a 42-pounder,
+all crammed to the muzzle with grape. Let us sit down on the parapet
+and try to realise the scene. Outram with the 78th has made a detour to
+the right through the Charbagh garden to clear it of the enemy, and,
+gaining the canal bank, to bring a flanking fire to bear on its
+defenders. There is only room for two of Maude's guns; and there they
+stand out in the open on the road trying to answer the fire of the
+rebel battery. Thrown forward along the bank to the left of the bridge
+is a company of the Madras Fusiliers under Arnold, lying down and
+returning the musketry fire from the houses on the other side. Maude's
+guns are forward in the straight throat of the road where it leads on
+to the bridge close by, but round the bend under cover of the wall the
+Madras Fusiliers are lying down. In a bay of the wall of the Charbagh
+enclosure General Neill is standing waiting for the effect of Outram's
+flank movement to develop, and young Havelock, mounted, is on the other
+side of the road somewhat forward. Matters are at a deadlock. It seems
+as if Outram had lost his way. Maude's gunners are all down; he has
+repeatedly called for volunteers from the infantry behind, and now his
+gallant subaltern, Maitland, is doing bombardier's work. Maude calls to
+young Havelock that he shall be forced to retire his guns if something
+is not done at once; and Havelock rides across through the fire and in
+his capacity as assistant adjutant-general urges on Neill the need for
+an immediate assault. Neill "is not in command; he cannot take the
+responsibility; and General Outram must turn up soon." Havelock turns
+and rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks
+encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at
+the long detention under fire. "Come out of that, sir," cried one
+soldier, "a chap's just had his head taken off there!" It is a grim
+joke that reply which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: "And what
+the devil are we here for but to get our heads taken off?" Young
+Havelock is bent on the perpetration of what, under the circumstances,
+may be called a pious fraud. His father, who commands the operations,
+is behind with the Reserve, and he disappears round the bend on the
+make-belief of getting instructions from the chief. The General is far
+in the rear but his son comes back at the gallop, rides up to Neill,
+and saluting with his sword, says, "You are to carry the bridge at
+once, sir." Neill, acquiescing in the superior order, replies, "Get the
+regiment together then, and see it formed up." At the word and without
+waiting for the regiment to rise and form the gallant and eager Arnold
+springs up from his advanced position and dashes on to the bridge,
+followed by about a dozen of his nearest skirmishers. Tytler and
+Havelock, as eager as Arnold, set spurs to their horses and are by his
+side in a moment. The brave and ardent 84th, commanded by Willis,
+dashes to the front. Then the hurricane opens. The big gun crammed to
+the muzzle with grape, sweeps its iron sleet across the bridge in the
+face of the gallant band, and the Sepoy sharpshooters converge their
+fire on it. Arnold drops shot through both thighs, Tytler's horse goes
+down with a crash, the bridge is swept clear save for young Havelock
+erect and unwounded, waving his sword and shouting for the Fusiliers to
+come on, and a Fusilier corporal, Jakes by name, who, as he rams a
+bullet home into his Enfield, says cheerily to Havelock, "We'll soon
+have the ---- out of that, sir!" And corporal Jakes is a true prophet.
+Before the big gun can be loaded again the stormers are on the bridge
+in a rushing mass. They are across it, they clear the barricade, they
+storm the battery, they are bayoneting the Sepoy gunners as they stand.
+The Charbagh bridge is won, but with severe loss which continues more
+or less all the way to the Residency; and when one comes to know the
+ground it becomes more and more obvious that the strategy of Havelock,
+overruled by Outram, was wise and prescient, when he counselled a wide
+turning movement by the Dilkoosha, over the Goomtee near the
+Martinière, and so along its northern bank to the Badshah-bagh, almost
+opposite to the Residency and commanding the iron bridge.
+
+I recross the Charbagh bridge and bend away to the left by the byroad
+along the canal side by which the 78th Highlanders penetrated to the
+front of the Kaiser-bagh. Most of the native houses are now destroyed,
+whence was poured so deadly a fire on the advancing Ross-shire men that
+three colour-bearers fell in succession, and the colour fell to the
+grasp of the gallant Valentine McMaster, the assistant-surgeon of the
+regiment. And now I stand in front of the main entrance to the
+Kaiser-bagh, hard by the spot where stood the Sepoy battery which the
+Highlanders so opportunely took in reverse. Before me on the _maidan_
+is the plain monument to Sir Mountstuart Jackson, Captain Orr, and a
+sergeant, who were murdered in the Kaiser-bagh when the success of
+Campbell's final operations became certain. I enter the great square
+enclosure of the Kaiser-bagh and stand in the desolation of what was
+once a gay garden where the King of Oude and his women were wont to
+disport themselves. The place stands much as Campbell's men left it
+after looting its multifarious rich treasures. The dainty little
+pavilions are empty and dilapidated, the statues are broken and
+tottering. Quitting the Kaiser-bagh, I try to realise the scene of that
+informal council of war in one of the outlying courtyards of the
+numerous palaces. I want to fix the spot where on his big waler sat
+Outram, a splash of blood across his face, and his arm in a sling;
+where Havelock, dismounted, walked up and down by Outram's side with
+short, nervous strides, halting now and then to give emphasis to the
+argument, while all around them were officers, soldiers, guns, natives,
+wounded men, bullocks, and a surging tide of disorganisation
+momentarily pouring into the square. But the attempt is fruitless. The
+whole area has been cleared of buildings right up to the gate of the
+Residency, only that hard by the Goomtee there still stands the river
+wing of the Chutter Munzil Palace with its fantastic architecture, and
+that the palace of the King of Oude is now the station library and
+assembly rooms. The Hureen Khana, the Lalbagh, the courts of the Furrut
+Bux Palace, the Khas Bazaar, and the Clock Tower have alike been swept
+away, and in their place there opens up before the eye trim ornamental
+grounds with neat plantations which extend up to the Baileyguard
+itself. One archway alone stands--a gaunt commemorative skeleton--a
+pedestal for the statue of a noble soldier. It was from a chamber above
+the crown of this arch that the sepoy shot Neill as he sat on his horse
+urging the confused press of guns and men through the archway. The spot
+is memorable for other causes. This archway led into that court which
+is world-famous under the name of Dhooly Square. Here it was that the
+native bearers abandoned the wounded in the doolies which poor Bensley
+Thornhill was trying to guide into the Residency; here it was where
+they were butchered and burned as they lay, and here it was where Dr.
+Home and a handful of men of the escort did what in them lay to cover
+the wounded and defended themselves for a day and a night against
+continuous attacks of countless enemies.
+
+The _via dolorosa_, the road of death up which Outram and Havelock
+fought their way with Brazier's Sikhs and the Ross-shire Buffs, is now
+a pleasant open drive amid clumps of trees, leading on to the
+Residency. A strange thrill runs through one's frame as there opens up
+before one that reddish-gray crumbling archway spanning the roadway
+into the Residency grounds. Its face is dented and splintered with
+cannon-shot and pitted all over by musket-bullets. This is none other
+than that historic Baileyguard gate which burly Jock Aitken and his
+faithful Sepoys kept so stanchly. You may see the marks still of the
+earth banked up against it on the interior during the siege. To the
+right and left runs the low wall which was the curtain of the defence,
+now crumbled so as to be almost indistinguishable. But there still
+stands, retired somewhat from the right of the archway, Aitken's
+post--the guard-house and treasury, its pillars and façade cut and
+dented all over with the marks of bullets fired by "Bob the Nailer" and
+his comrades from the Clock Tower which stood over against it. And in
+the curtain wall between the archway and the building is still to be
+traced the faint outline of the embrasure through which Outram and
+Havelock entered on the memorable evening. The turmoil and din and
+conflicting emotions of that terrible, glorious day have merged into a
+strange serenity of quietude. The scene is solitary, save for a native
+woman who is playing with her baby on a spot where once dead bodies lay
+in heaps. But the other older scene rises up vividly before the mind's
+eye out of the present calm. Havelock and Outram and the staff have
+passed through the embrasure here, and now there are rushing in the men
+of the ranks, powder-grimed, dusty, bloody; but a minute before raging
+with the stern passion of the battle, now full of a woman-like
+tenderness. And all around them as they swarm in there crowd a mass of
+folk eager to give welcome. There are officers and men of the garrison,
+civilians whom the siege has made into soldiers; women, too, weeping
+tears of joy down on the faces of the children for whom they had not
+dared to hope for aught but death. There are gaunt men, pallid with
+loss of blood, whose great eyes shine weirdly amid the torchlight and
+whose thin hands tremble with weakness as they grip the sinewy, grimy
+hands of the Highlanders. These are the wounded of the long siege who
+have crawled out from the hospital up yonder, as many of them as could
+compass the exertion, with a welcome to their deliverers. The hearts of
+the impulsive Highlanders wax very warm. As they grasp the hands held
+out to them they exclaim, "God bless you!" "Why, we expected to have
+found only your bones!" "And the children are living too!" and many
+other fervid and incoherent ejaculations. The ladies of the garrison
+come among the Highlanders, shaking them enthusiastically by the hand;
+and the children clasp the shaggy men round the neck, and to say truth,
+so do some of the mothers. But Jessie Dunbar and her "Dinna ye hear
+it?" in reference to the bagpipe music, are in the category of
+melodramatic fictions.
+
+The position which bears and will bear to all time the title of the
+Residency of Lucknow, is an elevated plateau of land, irregular in
+surface, of which the highest point is occupied by the Residency
+building, while the area around was studded irregularly with buildings,
+chiefly the houses of the principal civilian officials of the station.
+When Campbell brought away the garrison in November 1857 it lapsed into
+the hands of the mutineers, who held it till his final occupation of
+the city and its surroundings in March of the following year. They
+pulled down not a few of the already shattered buildings, and left
+their fell imprint on the spot in an atrociously ghastly way by
+desecrating the graves in which brave hands had laid our dead
+country-people and flinging the exhumed corpses into the Goomtee. When
+India once more became settled the Residency, its commemorative
+features uninterfered with, was laid out as a garden and flowers and
+shrubs now grow on soil once wet with the blood of heroes. The _débris_
+has been removed or dispersed; the shattered buildings are prevented
+from crumbling farther; tablets bearing the names of the different
+positions and places of interest are let into the walls; and it is
+possible, by exploring the place map in hand, to identify all the
+features of the defence. The avenue from the Baileyguard gate rises
+with a steep slope to the Residency building. On either side of the
+approach and hard by the gate, are the blistered and shattered remnants
+of two large houses; that on the right is the banqueting house which
+was used as the hospital during the siege; that on the left was Dr.
+Fayrer's house. The banqueting house is a mere shell, riven everywhere
+with shot and pitted over by musket-bullets as if it had suffered from
+smallpox. The ground-floor has escaped with less damage but the
+banqueting hall itself has been wholly wrecked by the persistent fire
+which the rebels showered upon it, and to which, notwithstanding the
+mattresses and sandbags with which the windows were blocked, several
+poor fellows fell victims as they lay wounded on their cots. Dr.
+Fayrer's house is equally a battered ruin. In its first floor, roofless
+and forlorn, its front torn open by shot and the pillars of its windows
+jagged into fantastic fragments, is the veranda in which Sir Henry
+Lawrence, 4th July 1857, died, exposed to fire to the very last. At the
+top of the slope of the avenue and on the left front of the Residency
+building as we approach it--on what, indeed, was once the lawn--has
+been raised an artificial mound, its slopes covered with flowering
+shrubs, its summit bearing the monumental obelisk on the pedestal of
+which is the terse, appropriate inscription: "In memory of
+Major-General Sir Henry Lawrence and the brave men who fell in defence
+of the Residency. _Si monumentum quaeris Circumspice!_" Beyond this
+lies the scathed and blighted ruin of the Residency House, once a large
+and imposing structure, now so utterly wrecked and shivered that one
+wonders how the crumbling reddish-gray walls are kept erect. The
+veranda was battered down and much of the front of the building lies
+bodily open, the structure being supported on the battered and
+distorted pillars assisted by great balks of wood. Entering by the left
+wing I pass down a winding stair into the bowels of the earth till I
+reach the spacious and lofty vaults or _tykhana_ under the building.
+Here, the place affording comparative safety, lived immured the women
+of the garrison, the soldiers' wives, half-caste females, the wives of
+the meaner civilians and their children. The poor creatures were seldom
+allowed to come up to the surface, lest they should come in the way of
+the shot which constantly lacerated the whole area, and few visitors
+were allowed access to them. Veritably they were in a dungeon.
+Provisions were lowered down to them from the window orifices near the
+roof of the vaulting, and there were days when the firing was so heavy
+that orders were given to them not even to rise from their beds on the
+floor. For shot occasionally found a way even into the _tykhana_; you
+may see the holes it made in penetrating. The miserables were billeted
+off ten in a room, and there they lived, without sweepers, baths,
+dhobies, or any of the comforts which the climate makes necessities.
+Here in these dungeons children were born, only for the most part to
+die. Ascending another staircase I pass through some rooms in which
+lived (and died) some of the ladies of the garrison, and passing from
+the left wing by a shattered corridor am able to look up into the room
+in which Sir Henry Lawrence received his death-wound. Access to it is
+impossible by reason of the tottering condition of the structure; and
+turning away I clamber up the worn staircase in the shot-riven tower on
+the summit of which still stands the flagstaff on which were hoisted
+the signals with which the garrison were wont to communicate with the
+Alumbagh. The walls of the staircase and the flat roof of the tower are
+scratched and written all over with the names of visitors; many of the
+names are those of natives, but more are those of British soldiers, who
+have occasionally added a piece of their mind in characteristically
+strong language.
+
+I set out on a pilgrimage under the still easily traceable contour of
+the intrenchment. Passing "Sam Lawrence's Battery" above what was the
+water-gate, I traverse the projecting tongue at the end of which stood
+the "Redan Battery" whose fire swept the river face up to the iron
+bridge. Returning, and passing the spot where "Evans's Battery" stood,
+I find myself in the churchyard in a slight depression of the ground.
+Of the church, which was itself a defensive post, not one stone remains
+on another and the mutineers hacked to pieces the ground of the
+churchyard. The ground is now neatly enclosed and ornamentally planted
+and is studded with many monuments, few of which speak the truth when
+they profess to cover the dust of those whom they commemorate. There
+are the regimental monuments of the 5th Madras Fusiliers, the 84th (360
+men besides officers), the Royal Artillery, the 90th (a long list of
+officers and 271 men). The monument of the 1st Madras Fusiliers bears
+the names of Neill, Stephenson, Renaud, and Arnold, and commemorates a
+loss of 352 men. There is a monument to Mr. Polehampton the exemplary
+chaplain, and hard by a plain slab bears the inscription, "Here lies
+Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty; may the Lord have mercy on
+his soul!" words dictated by himself on his deathbed. Other monuments
+commemorate Captain Graham of the Bengal Cavalry and two children; Mr.
+Fairhurst the Roman Catholic chaplain; Major Banks; Captain Fulton of
+the 32nd who earned the title of "Defender of Lucknow;" Lucas, the
+travelling Irish gentleman who served as a volunteer and fell in the
+last sortie; Captain Becher; Captain Moorsom; poor Bensley Thornhill
+and his young daughter; "Mrs. Elizabeth Arne, burnt with a shell-ball
+during the siege;" Lieutenant Cunliffe; Mr. Ommaney the Judicial
+Commissioner; and others. The nameless hillocks of poor Jack Private
+are plentiful, for here were buried many of those who fell in the final
+capture; and there are children's graves. Interments take place still.
+I saw a freshly-made grave; but only those are entitled to a last
+resting-place here who were among the beleaguered during the long
+defence. I have seen the medal for the defence of Lucknow on the breast
+of a man who was a child in arms at the time of the siege, and such an
+one would have the right to claim interment in this doubly hallowed
+ground. From the churchyard I pass out along the narrow neck to that
+forlorn-hope post, "Innes's Garrison," and along the western face of
+the intrenchment by the sides of the sheep-house and the
+slaughter-house, to Gubbins's post. The mere foundations of the house
+are visible which the stout civilian so gallantly defended, and the
+famous tree, gradually pruned to a mere stump by the enemy's fire, is
+no longer extant. Along the southern face of the position there are no
+buildings which are not ruined. Sikh Square, the Brigade Mess House,
+and the Martinière boys' post, are alike represented by fragmentary
+gray walls shivered with shot and shored up here and there by beams.
+The rooms of the Begum Kothi near the centre of the position, are still
+laterally entire but roofless. The walls of this structure are
+exceptionally thick and here many of the ladies of the garrison were
+quartered. All around the Residency position the native houses which at
+the time of the siege crowded close up on the intrenchment, are now
+destroyed; and indeed the native town has been curtailed into
+comparatively small dimensions and is entirely separated from the area
+in which the houses of the station are built.
+
+Quitting the Residency I drive westward by the river side, over the
+site of the Captan Bazaar, past also that huge fortified heap the
+Muchee Bawn, till I reach the beautiful enclosure in which the great
+Imambara stands. This majestic structure--part temple, part convent,
+part palace, and now part fortress--dominates the whole _terrain_, and
+from its lofty flat roof one looks down on the plain where the weekly
+_hât_ or market is being held, on the gardens and mansions across the
+river, and southward upon the dense mass of houses which constitute the
+native city. Sentries promenade the battlements of the Muchee Bawn, and
+the Imambara--an apartment to which for space and height I know none in
+Europe comparable--is now used as an arsenal, where are stored the
+great siege guns which William Peel plied with so great skill and
+gallantry. Just outside the Imambara, on the edge of the _maidan_
+between it and the Moosabagh, I come on a little railed churchyard
+where rest a few British soldiers who fell during Lord Clyde's final
+operations in this direction. Then, with a sweep across the plain to
+the south and by a slight ascent, I reach the gate of the city which
+opens into the Chowk or principal street--the street traversed in
+disguise by the dauntless Kavanagh when he went out from the garrison
+to convey information and afford guidance to Sir Colin Campbell on his
+first advance. The gatehouse is held by a strong force of native
+policemen, armed as if they were soldiers; and as I pass the guard I
+stand in the Chowk itself, in the midst of a throng of gaily clad male
+pedestrians, women in chintz trousers, laden donkeys, multitudinous
+children, and still more multitudinous stinks. All down both sides the
+fronts of the lower stories are open, and in the recesses sit merchants
+displaying paltry jewelry, slippers, pipes, turban cloths, and
+Manchester stuffs of the gaudiest patterns. The main street of Lucknow
+has been called "The Street of Silver," but I could find little among
+its jewelry either of silver or of gold. The first floors all have
+balconies, and on these sit draped, barefooted women of Rahab's
+profession. The women of Lucknow are fairer and handsomer, and the men
+bolder and more stalwart, than those in Bengal, and it takes no great
+penetration to discern that Lucknow is still ruled by fear and not by
+love.
+
+It remained for me still to investigate the scenes of the route by
+which Lord Clyde came in on both his advances; but to do justice to
+these would demand separate articles. Let me begin the hasty sketch at
+the Dilkoosha Palace, two miles and more away to the east of the
+Residency; for on both occasions the Dilkoosha was Clyde's base. Wajid
+Ali's twenty-foot wall has now given place to an earthen embankment
+surrounding a beautiful pleasure park, and there are now smooth green
+slopes instead of the dense forest through which Clyde's soldiers
+marched on their turning movement. On a swell in the midst of the park,
+commanding a view of the fantastic architecture of the Martinière down
+by the tank, stands the gaunt ruin of the once trim and dainty
+Dilkoosha Palace or rather garden-house. From one of the pepper-box
+turrets up there Lord Clyde directed the attack on the Martinière on
+his ultimate operation; and here it was that, as Dr. Russell tells us,
+a round shot dispersed his staff on the adjacent leads. After quietude
+was restored the Dilkoosha was the headquarters for a time of Sir Hope
+Grant, but now it has been allowed to fall into decay although the
+garden in the rear of it is prettily kept up. On the reverse slope
+behind the Dilkoosha was the camp in one of the tents of which Havelock
+died. We drive down the gentle slope once traversed at a rushing double
+by the Black Watch on their way to carry the Martinière, past the great
+tank out of the centre of which rises the tall column to the memory of
+Claude Martine, and reach the entrance of the fantastic building which
+he built, in which he was buried, and which bears his name. We see at
+the angle of the northern wing the slope up which the gun was run which
+played so heavily on the Dilkoosha up on the wooded knoll there. The
+Martinière is now, as it was before the Mutiny, a college for European
+boys, and the young fellows are playing on the terraces. Grotesque
+stone statues are in niches and along the tops of the balconies; you
+may see on them the marks of the bullets which the honest fellows of
+the Black Watch fired at them, taking them for Pandies. I go down into
+a vault and see the tomb of Claude Martine; but it is empty, for the
+mutineers desecrated his grave and scattered his bones to the winds of
+heaven. Then I make for the roof, through the dormitories of the boys
+and past fantastic stone griffins and lions and Gorgons, till I reach
+the top of the tower and touch the flagstaff from which, during the
+relief time, was given the answering signal to that hoisted on the
+tower of the Residency. I stand in the niches where the mutineer
+marksmen used to sit with their hookahs and take pot shots at the
+Dilkoosha. I look down to the eastward on the Goomtee, and note the
+spot where Outram crossed on that flank movement which would have been
+very much more successful than it was had he been permitted to drive it
+home. To the north-east beyond the topes is the battle-ground of
+Chinhut, where Lawrence received so terrible a reverse at the beginning
+of the siege. Due north is the Kookrail viaduct which Outram cleared
+with the Rifles and the 79th, and in whose vicinity Jung Bahadour, the
+crafty and bloodthirsty generalissimo of Nepaul, "co-operated" by a
+demonstration which never became anything more. And to the west there
+lie stretched out before me the domes, minarets, and spires of Lucknow,
+rising above the foliage in which their bases are hidden, and the
+routes of Clyde in the relief and capture. The rays of the afternoon
+sun are stirring into colour the dusky gray of the Secunderbagh and of
+the Nuddun Rusool, or "Grave of the Prophet," used as a powder magazine
+by the rebels. Below me, on the lawn of the Martinière, is the big
+gun--one of Claude Martine's casting--which did the rebels so much
+service at the other angle of the Martinière and which was spiked at
+last by two men of Peel's naval brigade, who swam the Goomtee for the
+purpose. That little enclosure slightly to the left surrounds "all that
+can die" of that strange mixture of high spirit, cool daring, and weak
+principle, the famous chief of Hodson's Horse. By Hodson's side lies
+Captain da Costa of the 56th N.I., attached to Brazier's Sikhs. Of this
+officer is told that, having lost many relatives in the butchery of
+Cawnpore, he joined the regiment likeliest to be in the front of the
+Lucknow fighting, and fell by one of the first shots fired in the
+assault on the Kaiser-bagh.
+
+Descending from the Martinière tower I traverse the park to the
+westward passing the grave of Captain Otway Mayne, cross the dry canal
+along which are still visible the heaps of earth which mark the
+stupendous first line of the rebels' defences, and bending to the left
+reach the Secunderbagh. This famous place was a pleasure garden
+surrounded with a lofty wall with turrets at the angles and a
+castellated gateway. The interior garden is now waste and forlorn, the
+rank grass growing breast-high in the corners where the slaughter was
+heaviest. Here in this little enclosure, not half the size of the
+garden of Bedford Square, 2000 Sepoys died the death at the hands of
+the 93rd, the 53rd, and the 4th Punjaubees. Their common grave is under
+the low mound on the other side of the road. The loopholes stand as
+they were left by the mutineers when our fellows came bursting in
+through the ragged breach made in the reverse side from the main
+entrance by Peel's guns. Farther on--that is, nearer to the
+Residency--I come to the Shah Nujeef, with its strong exterior wall
+enclosing the domed temple in its centre. It is still easy to trace the
+marks of the breach made in the angle in the wall by Peel's battering
+guns, and the tree is still standing up which Salmon, Southwell, and
+Harrison climbed in response to his proffer of the Victoria Cross.
+Opposite the Shah Nujeef white girls are playing on the lawn of that
+castellated building, for the Koorsheyd Munzil, on the top of which
+there was hoisted the British flag in the face of a _feu d'enfer_, is
+now a seminary for the daughters of Europeans. A little beyond, on the
+plain in front of the Motee Mahal, is the spot where Campbell met
+Outram and Havelock--a spot which, methinks, might well be marked by a
+monument; and after this I lose my reckoning by reason of the extent of
+the demolition, and am forced to resort to guesswork as to the precise
+localities.
+
+
+
+
+THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
+
+
+Writing of the late Alexander III. of Russia, a foreign author has
+recently permitted himself to observe: "Marvellous personal courage is
+not a striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs as it was
+of the English Tudors." It will be conceded that periods materially
+govern the conditions under which sovereigns and their royal relatives
+have found opportunities for proving their personal courage. The Tudor
+dynasty had ended before the Romanoff dynasty began. It is true,
+indeed, that the ending of the former with the death of Elizabeth in
+1603 occurred only a few years before the foundation of the latter by
+the election to the Tzarship of Michael Feodorovitz Romanoff in 1612.
+But of the five sovereigns of the Tudor dynasty it happened that only
+one, Henry VII., the first monarch of that dynasty, found or made an
+opportunity for the display of marked--scarcely perhaps of
+"marvellous"--personal courage; and thus the selection of the Tudor
+dynasty by the writer referred to as furnishing a contrasting
+illustration in the matter of personal courage to that of the Romanoffs
+was not particularly fortunate. Henry VIII. was only once in action; he
+shared in the skirmish known as the "Battle of the Spurs," because of
+the precipitate flight of the French horse. Edward VI. died at the age
+of sixteen, and the two remaining sovereigns of the dynasty were women,
+of whom it is true that Elizabeth was a strong and vigorous ruler, but
+in the nature of things had no opportunity for showing "marvellous
+personal courage." Henry VII. literally found his crown in the heart of
+the _mêlée_ on Bosworth field, it matters not which of the alternative
+stories is correct, that he himself killed Richard, or that Richard was
+killed in the act of striking him a desperate blow. But Henry at
+Bosworth in 1485 still belonged to the days of chivalry--to an era in
+which monarchs were also armour-clad knights, who headed charges in
+person and gave and took with spear, sword, and battle-axe. Long before
+Peter the Great, more than two centuries after Bosworth, foamed at the
+mouth with rage and hacked with his sword at his panicstricken troops
+fleeing from the field of Narva on that winter day of 1700, the face of
+warfare had altered and the _métier_ of the commander, were he
+sovereign or were he subject, had undergone a radical change.
+
+Of a family of the human race it is not rationally possible to
+predicate a typical generic characteristic of mind. A physical trait
+will endure down the generations, as witness the Hapsburg lip and the
+swarthy complexion of the Finch-Hattons, in the face of alliances from
+outside the races; but, save as regards one exception, there is no
+assurance of a continuous inheritance of mental attributes. What a
+contrast is there between Frederick the Great and his father; between
+George III. and his successor; between the present Emperor of Austria
+and his hapless son; between the genial, wistful, and well-intentioned
+Alexander II. of Russia and the not less well-intentioned but
+narrow-minded and despotic sovereign who succeeded him! But there may
+be reserved one exception to the absence of assurance of inherited
+mental attributes--one mental feature in which identity takes the place
+of dissimilarity, and even of actual contrast. And that feature--that
+inherited characteristic of a race whose progenitors happily possessed
+it--is personal courage.
+
+Take, for example, the Hohenzollerns. One need not hark back to
+Carlyle's original Conrad, the seeker of his fortune who tramped down
+from the ancestral cliff-castle on his way to take service under
+Barbarossa. Before and since the "Grosse Kurfurst" there has been no
+Hohenzollern who has not been a brave man. He himself was the hero of
+Fehrbellin. His son, the first king of the line, Carlyle's "Expensive
+Herr," was "valiant in action" during the third war of Louis XIV. The
+rugged Frederick William, father of Frederick the Great, had his own
+tough piece of war against the volcanic Charles XII. of Sweden and did
+a stout stroke of hard fighting at Malplaquet. Of Fritz himself the
+world has full note. Bad, sensual, debauched Hohenzollern as was his
+successor, Frederick the Fat, he had fought stoutly in his youth-time
+under his illustrious uncle. His son, Frederick William III.,
+overthrown by Napoleon who called him a "corporal," did good soldierly
+work in the "War of Liberation" and fought his way to Paris in 1814.
+His eldest son, Frederick William IV., the vague, benevolent dreamer
+whom _Punch_ used to call "King Clicquot" and who died of softening of
+the brain, even he, too, as a lad had distinguished himself in the "War
+of Liberation" and in the fighting during the subsequent advance on
+Paris. As for grand old William I., the real maker of the German Empire
+on the _quid facit per alium facit per se_ axiom, he died a veteran of
+many wars. He was not seventeen when he won the Iron Cross by a service
+of conspicuous gallantry under heavy fire. He took his chances in the
+bullet and shell fire at Königgrätz, and again on the afternoon of
+Gravelotte. Not a Hohenzollern of them all but shared as became their
+race in the dangers of the great war of 1870-71; even Prince George,
+the music composer, the only non-soldier of the family, took the field.
+William's noble son, whose premature death neither Germany nor England
+has yet ceased to deplore, took the lead of one army; his nephew Prince
+Frederick Charles, a great commander and a brilliant soldier, was the
+leader of another. One of his brothers, Prince Albert the elder, made
+the campaign as cavalry chief; whose son, Prince Albert junior, now a
+veteran Field-Marshal, commanded a brigade of guard-cavalry with a
+skill and daring not wholly devoid of recklessness. Another brother,
+Prince Charles, the father of the "Red Prince," made the campaign with
+the royal headquarters; Prince Adalbert, a cousin of the sovereign and
+head of the Prussian Navy, had his horse shot under him on the
+battlefield of Gravelotte.
+
+The trait of personal courage has markedly characterised the House of
+Hanover. As King of England George I. did no fighting, but before he
+reached that position he had distinguished himself in war not a little;
+against the Danes and Swedes in 1700 and in high command in the war of
+the Spanish succession from 1701 to 1709. His successor, while yet
+young, had displayed conspicuous valour in the battle of Oudenarde, and
+later in life at Dettingen; and he was the last British monarch who
+took part in actual warfare. Cumberland had no meritorious attribute
+save that of personal courage, but that virtue in him was undeniable.
+At Dettingen he was wounded in the forefront of the battle; at Fontenoy
+the "martial boy" was ever in the heart of the fiercest fire, fighting
+at "a spiritual white heat." His grand-nephew the Duke of York was an
+unfortunate soldier, but his personal courage was unquestioned. In the
+present reign a cousin and a son of the sovereign have done good
+service in the field; and that venerable lady herself in situations of
+personal danger has consistently maintained the calm courage of her
+race.
+
+The foreign author has written that "marvellous personal courage is not
+the striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs." He makes
+an exception to this quasi-indictment in favour of the Emperor
+Nicholas, who, he admits, "was absolutely ignorant of fear, and could
+face a band of insurgents with the calm self-possession of a shepherd
+surveying his bleating sheep." The monarch who at the moment of his
+accession illustrated the dominant force of his character by
+confronting amid the bullet fire the ferocious mutiny of half an army
+corps, and who crushed the bloodthirsty _émeute_ with dauntless
+resolution and iron hand; the man who, facing the populace of St.
+Petersburg crazed with terror of the cholera and red with the blood of
+slaughtered physicians, quelled its panic-fury by commanding the people
+in the sternest tones of his sonorous voice to kneel in the dust and
+propitiate by prayers the wrath of the Almighty--such a man is
+scarcely, perhaps, adequately characterised by the expressions which
+have been quoted. But setting aside this instance of the fearlessness
+of Nicholas, facts appear to refute pretty conclusively reflections on
+the personal courage of the Romanoffs. No purpose can be served by
+cumbering the record by going back into the period of Russia's
+semi-civilisation; illustrations from three generations may reasonably
+suffice. At Austerlitz Alexander I. was close up to the fighting line
+in the Pratzen section of that great battle, and so recklessly did he
+expose himself that the report spread rearward that he had fallen. He
+was riding with Moreau in the heart of the bloody turmoil before
+Dresden when a French cannon-ball mortally wounded the renegade French
+general, and he was splashed by the latter's blood. Moreau had insisted
+on riding on the outside, else the ball which caused his death would
+certainly have struck Alexander. That monarch participated actively and
+forwardly in most of the battles of the campaign of 1814 which
+culminated in the allied occupation of Paris. Marmont's bullets were
+still flying when he rode on to the hill of Belleville and looked down
+through the smoke of battle on the French capital. The captious foreign
+writer has admitted that Nicholas, the successor of Alexander, was
+"absolutely ignorant of fear," and I have cited a convincing instance
+of his "marvellous personal courage." Two of his sons--the Grand Dukes
+Nicholas and Michael--were under fire in the battle of Inkerman and
+shared for some time the perils of the siege of Sevastopol. Alexander
+II. was certainly a man of real, although quiet and undemonstrative,
+personal courage. But for his disregard of the precautions by which the
+police sought to surround him he probably would have been alive to-day.
+The Third Section was wholly unrepresented in Bulgaria and His
+Majesty's protection on campaign consisted merely of a handful of
+Cossacks. No cordon of sentries surrounded his simple camp; his tent at
+Pavlo and the dilapidated Turkish house which for weeks was his
+residence at Gorni Studen were alike destitute of any guards. The
+imperial Court of Russia is said to be the most punctiliously
+ceremonious of all courts; in the field the Tzar absolutely dispensed
+with any sort of ceremony. He dined with his suite and staff at a
+frugal table in a spare hospital marquee; his guests, the foreign
+attachés and any passing officers or strangers who happened to be in
+camp. When he drove out his escort consisted of a couple of Cossacks.
+In the woods about Biela at the beginning of the war there still
+remained some forlorn bivouacs of Turkish families; he would alight and
+visit those, his sole companion the aide-de-camp on duty; and would
+fearlessly venture among the sullen Turks all of whom were armed with
+deadly weapons, try to persuade them to return to their homes, and,
+unmoved by their refusal, promise to send them food and medicine.
+Dispensing with all etiquette he would see without delay any one coming
+in with tidings from fighting points, were he officer, civilian, or war
+correspondent. During the September attack on Plevna he was continually
+in the field while daylight lasted, looking out on the slaughter from
+an eminence within range of the Turkish cannon-fire, and manifestly
+enduring keen anguish at the spectacle of the losses sustained by his
+brave, patient troops. Later, during the investment of Plevna, his
+point of observation was a redoubt on the Radischevo ridge still closer
+to the Turkish front of fire, and it was thence he witnessed the
+surrender of Osman's army on the memorable 10th December 1877. If
+Alexander was fearless alike in camp and in the field on campaign, he
+was certainly not less so in St. Petersburg, when he returned thither
+after the fall of Plevna.
+
+Alexander II. literally sacrificed his life to his self-regardless
+concern for the suffering. After the first bomb had burst on the
+Alexandra Canal Road, striking down civilians and Cossacks of the
+following escort but leaving the Emperor unhurt, his coachman begged to
+be allowed to dash forward and get clear of danger. But Alexander
+forbade him with the words, "No, no! I must alight and see to the
+wounded;" and as he was carrying out his heroic and benign intention,
+the second bomb exploded and wrought his death.
+
+As did the men of the Hohenzollern house in 1870, so in 1877 the adult
+male Romanoffs went to the war with scarce an exception. The Grand Duke
+Nicholas, brother of the Emperor and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
+armies in Europe, was neither a great general nor an honest man; but
+there could be no question as to his personal courage. That attribute
+he evinced with utter recklessness when arriving, as was his wont, too
+late for a deliberate and careful survey, he galloped round the Turkish
+positions on the morning on which began the September bombardment of
+Plevna, in proximity to Turkish cannon-fire so dangerous that his staff
+remonstrated, and that even the sedate American historian of the war
+speaks of him as having "exposed himself imprudently to the Turkish
+pickets." His son, the Grand Duke Nicholas, jun., in 1877 scarcely of
+age, was nevertheless a keen practical soldier, imbued with the wisdom
+of getting to close quarters and staying there. He was among the first
+to cross the Danube at Sistova under the Turkish fire, and he fought
+with great gallantry under Mirsky in the Schipka Pass. The brothers,
+Prince Nicholas and Prince Eugene of Leuchtenberg, members of the
+imperial house, commanded each a cavalry brigade in Gourko's dashing
+raid across the Balkans at the beginning of the campaign, and both were
+conspicuous for soldierly skill and personal gallantry in the desperate
+fighting in the Tundja Valley. The Grand Duke Vladimir, the second
+brother of Alexander III., headed the infantry advance in the direction
+of Rustchuk, and served with marked distinction in command of one of
+the corps in the army of the Lom. A younger brother, the Grand Duke
+Alexis, the nautical member of the imperial family, had charge of the
+torpedo and subaqueous mining operations on the Danube, and was held to
+have shown practical skill, assiduity, and vigour. Prince Serge of
+Leuchtenberg, younger brother of the Leuchtenbergs previously
+mentioned, was shot dead by a bullet through the head in the course of
+his duty as a staff officer at the front of a reconnaissance in force
+made against the Turkish force in Jovan-Tchiflik in October of the war.
+He was a soldier of great promise and had frequently distinguished
+himself. No unworthy record, it is submitted, earned in war by the
+members of a family of which, according to the foreign author,
+"personal courage is not the striking characteristic."
+
+That writer may be warranted in stating that the late Tzar had been
+frequently accused of cowardice--an indictment to which, it must be
+admitted, many undeniable facts lent a strong colouring of probability;
+and he further tells of "the Emperor's aversion to ride on horseback,
+and of his dread of a horse even when the animal was harnessed to a
+vehicle." There is something, however, of inconsistency in his
+observation that Alexander III. might well have been a contrast to his
+grandfather without deserving the epithet craven-hearted. The
+melancholy explanation of the strange apparent change between the
+Tzarewitch of 1877 and the Tzar of 1894 may lie in the statement that
+"Alexander's nerves had been undoubtedly shaken by the terrible events
+in which he had been a spectator or actor." In 1877, when in campaign
+in Bulgaria, Alexander did not know what "nerves" meant. He was then a
+man of strong, if slow, mental force, stolid, peremptory, reactionary;
+the possessor of dull but firm resolution. He had a strong though
+clumsy seat on horseback and was no infrequent rider. He had two ruling
+dislikes: one was war, the other was officers of German extraction. The
+latter he got rid of; the former he regarded as a necessary evil of the
+hour; he longed for its ending, but while it lasted he did his sturdy
+and loyal best to wage it to the advantage of the Russian arms. And in
+this he succeeded, stanchly fulfilling the particular duty which was
+laid upon him, that of protecting the Russian left flank from the
+Danube to the foothills of the Balkans. He had good troops, the
+subordinate commands were fairly well filled, and his headquarter staff
+was efficient--General Dochtouroff, its _sous-chef_, was certainly the
+ablest staff-officer in the Russian army. But Alexander was no puppet
+of his staff; he understood his business as the commander of the army
+of the Lom, performed his functions in a firm, quiet fashion, and
+withal was the trusty and successful warden of the eastern marches. His
+force never amounted to 50,000 men, and his enemy was in considerably
+greater strength. He had successes and he sustained reverses, but he
+was equal to either fortune; always resolute in his steadfast, dogged
+manner, and never whining for reinforcements when things went against
+him, but doing his best with the means to his hand. They used to speak
+of him in the principal headquarter as the only commander who never
+gave them any bother. So highly was he thought of there that when,
+after the unsuccessful attempt on Plevna in the September of the war,
+the Guard Corps was arriving from Russia and there was the temporary
+intention to use it with other troops in an immediate offensive
+movement across the Balkans, he was named to take the command of the
+enterprise. But this intention having been presently departed from, and
+the reinforcements being ordered instead to the Plevna section of the
+theatre of war, the Tzarewitch retained his command on the left flank,
+and thus in mid-December had the opportunity of inflicting a severe
+defeat on Suleiman Pasha, just as in September he had worsted Mehemet
+Ali in the battle of Carkova. It is sad to be told that a man once so
+resolute and masterful should later have been the victim of shattered
+nerves; it is sadder still to learn that he was a mark for accusations
+of cowardice. He never was a gracious, far less a lovable man; but, as
+I can testify from personal knowledge, he was a cool and brave soldier
+in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877.
+
+
+
+
+PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
+
+1875
+
+
+On a Sunday morning in early June, just before the church bells begin
+to ring, there is wont to be held the annual general parade and
+inspection of the Corps of Commissionaires, on the enclosed grass plot
+by the margin of the ornamental water in St. James's Park. On the
+ground, and accompanying the inspecting officer on his tour through the
+opened ranks, there are always not a few veteran officers, glad by
+their presence on such an occasion to countenance and recognise their
+humbler comrades in arms in bygone war-dramas enacted elsewhere than
+within hearing of London Sunday bells. No scene could be imagined
+presenting a more practical confutation of the ignorant calumny that
+the British army is composed of the froth and the dregs of the British
+nation, and that there exists no cordial feeling between British
+soldiers and British officers. It is good to see how the face kindles
+of the veteran guardsman at the sight and the kindly greeting of Sir
+Charles Russell. Doubtless the honest private's thoughts go back to
+that misty morning on the slopes of Inkerman, when officer and private
+stood shoulder to shoulder in the fierce press, and there rang again in
+his ears the cheer with which the Guards greeted the act of valour by
+the performance of which the baronet won the Victoria Cross. There is a
+feeling deeper than a mere formality in the half-dozen words that pass
+between Sir William Codrington and the old soldier of the 7th Royal
+Fusiliers, to whom the gallant general showed the way up to the Russian
+front, through the shot-torn vineyards on the slopes of the Alma. When
+one feeble old ex-warrior is smitten suddenly on parade with a palsied
+faintness, it is on the yet stalwart arm of his old chief that he
+totters out of the ranks, and the twain do not part till the superior
+has exacted a pledge that his humble ex-subordinate shall call upon him
+on the morrow, with a view to medical advice and strengthening comforts.
+
+Notwithstanding that in the true old martial spirit it shows what in
+the Service is known as a good front, it is not a very athletic or
+puissant cohort this, that stands on parade here on the grass within
+hearing of the church bells. The grizzled old soldiers, sooth to say,
+look rather the worse for wear. There is a decided shortcoming among
+them of the proper complement of limbs, and one at least, in speaking
+of the battlefields he had seen, might with truth echo the old soldier
+in Burns's _Jolly Beggars_--
+
+  And there I left for witness a leg and an arm.
+
+They carry no weapons; to some may belong the knowledge only of the
+obsolete "Brown Bess" manual exercise; and not many have been so
+recently on active service as to have learnt the handling of the modern
+breech-loader. On the whole, a battered, fossil, maimed army of
+superannuated fighting men, scarcely fitted to shine in the new tactics
+of the "swarm-attack" by which the battles of the future are to be won
+or lost. But you cannot jibe at the worn old soldiers as "lean and
+slippered pantaloons." Look how truly, with what instinctive intuition,
+the dressing is taken up at the word of command; note how the old
+martial carriage comes back to the most dilapidated when the adjutant
+calls his command to "attention." Age and wounds have not quenched the
+fighting spirit of the old soldiers; there is not a man of them but
+would, did the need arise, "clatter on his stumps to the sound of the
+drum." There are few breasts in those ranks that are not decorated with
+medals. In very truth the parade is a record of British campaigns for
+the last thirty years. Among the thicket of medals on the bosom of this
+broken old light dragoon note the one bearing the legend, "Cabul 1842"
+within the laurel wreath. Its wearer was a trooper in the famous
+"rescue" column. The skeletons of Elphinstone's hapless force littered
+the slopes of the Tezeen Valley, up which the squadron in which he rode
+charged straight for the tent of the splendid demon Akbar Khan. He rode
+behind Campbell at the battle of Punniar, and won there that star of
+silver and bronze which hangs from the famous "rainbow" ribbon.
+"Sutlej" is the legend on another of his medals, and he could recount
+to you the memorable story of Thackwell's cavalry operations against
+the Sikh field works, and how that division of seasoned horsemen
+reduced outpost duty to a methodical science. "Punjab" medals for
+Gough's campaign of 1848-49 are scattered up and down in the ranks. The
+sword-cut athwart this wiry old trooper's cheek he got in the hot
+_mêlée_ of Ramhuggur, where a certain Brigadier Colin Campbell whom men
+knew afterwards as Lord Clyde, found it hard work to hold his own, and
+where gallant Cureton and the veteran William Havelock fell at the head
+of their light horsemen as they crashed into the heart of 4000 Sikhs.
+His neighbour took part in the storm of Mooltan, and saw stout,
+calm-pulsed Sergeant John Bennet of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers plant the
+British ensign on the crest of the breach and quietly stand by it
+there, supporting it in the tempest of shot and shell till the storming
+party had made the breach their own. This old soldier of the 24th can
+tell you of the butchery of his regiment at Chillianwallah; how Brooks
+went down between the Sikh guns, how Brigadier Pennycuick was killed
+out to the front, and how his son, a beardless ensign, maddened at the
+sight of the mangling of his father's body, rushed out and fought
+against all comers over the corpse till the lad fell dead on his dead
+father; how on that terrible day the loss of the 24th was 13 officers
+killed, 10 wounded, and 497 men killed and wounded; and how the issue
+of the bloody combat might have been very different but for the
+display, on the part of Colin Campbell, of "that steady coolness and
+military decision for which he was so remarkable." Scarcely a great
+show on a troop-horse would this bent and gnarled old 12th Lancer make
+to-day, but he and his fellows rode right well on the day for which he
+wears this "Cape" medal, with the blue and orange ribbon and the lion
+and mimosa bush on the reverse. Because of its prickles the Boers call
+the mimosa the "wait-a-bit" thorn, but there was no thought of waiting
+a bit among the 12th Lancers at the Berea, when they charged the savage
+Basutos and captured their chief Moshesh. This one-armed veteran of the
+Royal Fusiliers was left lying wounded in the Great Redoubt on the
+Russian slope of the Alma, when the terrible fire of grape and musketry
+forced Codrington's brigade of the Light Division temporarily to give
+ground after it had struggled so valiantly up the rugged broken banks,
+and through the hailstorm of fire that swept through the vineyards.
+This still stalwart man was one of the nineteen sergeants of the
+33rd--the Duke of Wellington's Own--who were either killed or wounded
+in defence of the colours on the same bloody but glorious day. A few
+files farther down the line stands an old 93rd man. The veteran
+Sutherland Highlander was one of that "thin red line" which disdained
+to form square when the Russian squadrons rode with seeming heart at
+the kilted men on Balaclava day. He heard Colin Campbell's stern
+repressive rebuke--"Ninety-third, ninety-third, damn all that
+eagerness!" when the hotter spirits of the regiment would fain have
+broken ranks and met the Russians half-way with the cold steel; he saw
+the Scotch wife chastise the fugitive Turks with her tongue and her
+frying-pan. Speak to his tall, shaggy neighbour of the "bonny Jocks,"
+and you will call up a flush of pleasure on the harsh-featured Scottish
+face; for he was a trooper in the Greys on that self-same Balaclava day
+when the avalanche of Russian horsemen thundered down upon the heavy
+brigade. He was among those who heard, and with sternly rapturous
+anticipation obeyed Scarlet's calm-pitched, far-sounding order, "Left
+wheel into line!" He was among those who, when the trumpets had sounded
+the charge, strove in vain by dint of spur to overtake the gallant old
+chief with the long white moustache, as he rode foremost on the foe
+with the dashing Elliot and the burly Shegog on either flank of him; he
+was among those who, as they hewed and hacked their way through the
+press, heard already from the far side of the _mêlée_ the stentorian
+adjuration of big Adjutant Miller, as standing up in his stirrups the
+burly Scot shouted, "Rally, rally on me, ye muckle ----!" Mightily
+knocked about has been this man with the empty sleeve, but he does not
+belie the familiar sobriquet of his old regiment; he was one of the
+"Diehards," a title well earned by the 57th on the bloody height of
+Albuera, and it was under their colours that he lost his arm on
+Inkerman morning. There is quite a little regiment of men who were
+wounded in the "trenches" or about the Redan. There is no "19" now on
+the buttons of this scarred veteran, but the number was there when he
+followed Massy and Molesworth over the parapet of the Redan on the day
+when so much good English blood was wasted. Shoulder to shoulder now,
+as oft of yore, stand two old soldiers of the Buffs both of whom went
+down in the same assault; and an umwhile bugler of the Perthshire
+Grey-breeks "minds the day" well also by reason of the wound that has
+crippled him for life. As he stands on parade this calm Sabbath
+morning, that maimed man of the 60th Rifles can remember another and a
+very different Sabbath--the 10th of May 1857 in Meerut--day and place
+of the first outburst of the Mutiny; a fell Sabbath of burning,
+slaughter, and dismay, of disregard of sex, age, and rank, of fierce
+brutality and of nameless agony. He was one of the rifles whose fire in
+the assault of Delhi covered the desperate duty of blowing open the
+Cashmere Gate, performed with so methodical calmness by Home, Salkeld,
+and Burgess; and his comrade hero with the maimed limb, when the hour
+had come for a rush to close quarters, followed Reid and Muter over the
+breastwork at the end of the serai of Kissengunge. Proud, yet their
+pride dashed by sadness, must be the soldiering memories of this stout
+northman, erstwhile a front rank man in the old Ross-shire Buffs, a
+regiment ever true to its noble Celtic motto of _Cuidichn Rhi_. At
+Kooshab, in the short, but brilliant Persian War, he fought in the same
+field where Malcolmson earned the Victoria Cross by one of the most
+gallant acts for which that guerdon of valour ever has been accorded.
+He was in Mackenzie's company at Cawnpore when the Highlanders, stirred
+by the wild strains of the war-pibroch, rushed upon the Nana's battery
+at the angle of the mango tope with the irresistible fury of one of
+their own mountain torrents in spate. And next day he was among those
+who, with drawn ghastly faces and scared eyes, looked into that fearful
+well, filled to the lip with the mangled corpses of British women and
+children. He was one of those who, standing by that well, pledged the
+oath administered by the bareheaded Ross-shire sergeant over the long,
+heavy tress of auburn hair which a demon's tulwar had severed from the
+head of an Englishwoman, that while strong arm and trusty steel lasted
+to no living thing of the accursed race should quarter be accorded. And
+he was one of those who, having battled their way over the Charbagh
+Bridge, having threaded the bullet-torn path to the Kaiser-bagh, and
+having forced for themselves a passage up to the embrasures by the
+Baileyguard Gate, melted from the stern fierceness of the fray when the
+siege-worn women and children in the residency of Lucknow sobbed out
+upon their necks blessings for the deliverance. His rear-rank man is an
+ex-Bengal Fusilier, wounded once at Sabraon, again at Pegu, and a third
+time at Delhi. He will not be offended if you hail him as one of the
+"old Dirty-shirts;" for it was in honourable disregard of appearances
+as they toiled night and day in the trenches of Delhi that the
+regiment, which now in the Queen's service is numbered 101, gained the
+nickname. Time and space fail one to tell a tithe of the stories of
+valour and hardship linked in the medals and wounds borne by men on
+this unostentatious parade--a parade the members of which have shed
+their blood on the soil of every quarter of the globe. The minutest
+military annals scarcely name some of the obscure combats in which men
+here to-day have fought and bled. This man desperately wounded at
+Najou, near Shanghai; that one wounded in two places at Owna, in
+Persia; this one with a sleeve emptied at Aroga, in Abyssinia--who
+among us remember aught, if, indeed, we have ever heard, of Najou,
+Owna, or Aroga? On the breast of this bent, hoary old man, note these
+strange emblems, the Cross of San Fernando and the Order of the Tower
+and Sword. Their wearer is a relic of the British Legion in the Carlist
+War of 1837, and they were won under brave old De Lacy Evans at the
+siege of Bilbao.
+
+Over the modest portals of the Commissionaire Barracks in the Strand
+might well be inscribed the legend, "To all the military glories of
+Britain." But just as we have not long ago seen the pride of a palace
+in another land on whose façade is a kindred inscription, abased by the
+occupation of a foreign conqueror, so there was a time when the living
+emblems of Britain's military glory were wont to undergo much
+humiliation and adversity when their career of soldiering had come to
+an end. Germany recompenses her veterans by according them, as a right,
+reputable civil employ when they have served their time as soldiers;
+the custom of Britain, on the contrary, has been too commonly to leave
+her scarred and war-worn soldiers to their own resources, or to a
+pension on which to live is impossible. We were always ready enough to
+feel a glow at the achievements of our arms; but till lately we were
+prone to reckon the individual soldier as a social pariah, and to
+regard the fact of a man's having served in the ranks as a brand of
+discredit. To this estimate, it must be allowed, the ex-soldier himself
+very often contributed not a little. Destitute of a future, and often
+debarred by wounds or by broken health from any laborious industrial
+employment, he made the most of the present; and his idea of making the
+most of the future not unfrequently took the form of beer and
+shiftlessness. Recognising the disadvantages that bore so hard on the
+deserving old soldier, recognising too, in the words of the late Sir
+John Burgoyne, that "there are many qualities peculiar to the soldier
+and sailor, and imbibed by him in the ordinary course of his service,
+which, added to good character and conduct, may render such men more
+eligible than others for various services in civil life," Captain
+Edward Walter founded the Corps of Commissionaires. That organisation,
+beginning with seven men, has now a strength of several hundreds, and
+its ranks are still open to all the eligible recruits who choose to
+come forward. The Commissionaire is no recipient of charity; what
+Captain Walter has done is simply to show him how he may earn an honest
+and comfortable livelihood, and to provide him, if he desires it, with
+a home of a kind which the ex-militaire naturally most appreciates. The
+advantages are open to him of a savings-bank and of a sick and burial
+fund, and when the evil days come when he can no longer earn his own
+bread, the "Retiring Fund" guarantees the thrifty and steady
+Commissionaire against the prospect of ending his days in the
+workhouse. Among the fruits of Captain Walter's devoted and gratuitous
+services in this cause has been a wholesome change in the bias of
+popular opinion as to the worth of old soldiers. No longer are they
+regarded as the mere chaff and _débris_ of the cannon fodder--"no
+account men," as Bret Harte has it; he has furnished them with
+opportunity to prove, and they have proved, that they can so live and
+so work as to win the respect and trust of their brethren of the
+civilian world. The man who has done this thing deserves well, not
+alone of the British army, but of the British nation. He has brought it
+about that the time has come when most men think with Sir Roger de
+Coverley. "You must know," says Sir Roger, "I never make use of anybody
+to row me that has not lost either a leg or an arm. I would rather bate
+him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has
+been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop ... I
+would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg."
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
+
+
+The actual fighting phase of this memorable campaign was confined to
+the four days from the 15th to the 18th of June, both days inclusive.
+The literature concerning itself with that period would make a library
+of itself. Scarcely a military writer of any European nation but has
+delivered himself on the subject, from Clausewitz to General Maurice,
+from Berton to Brialmont. Thiers, Alison, and Hooper may be cited of
+the host of civilian writers whom the theme has enticed to description
+and criticism. There is scarcely a point in the brief vivid drama that
+has not furnished a topic for warm and sustained controversy; and the
+cult of the Waterloo campaign is more assiduous to-day than when the
+participators in the great strife were testifying to their own
+experiences.
+
+Quite recently an important work dealing chiefly with the inner history
+of the campaign has come to us from the other side of the Atlantic.
+[Footnote: _The Campaign of Waterloo: a Military History_. By John
+Codman Ropes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. February 1893.] Its
+author, Mr. John Ropes, is a civilian gentleman of Boston, who has
+devoted his life to military study. He has given years to the
+elucidation of the problems of the Waterloo campaign, has trodden every
+foot of its ground, and has burrowed for recondite matter in the
+military archives of divers nations. A citizen of the American
+Republic, he is free alike from national prejudices and national
+prepossessions; if he is perhaps not uniformly correct in his
+inferences, his rigorous impartiality is always conspicuous. By his
+research and acute perception he has let light in upon not a few
+obscurities; and it may be pertinent briefly to summarise the inner
+history of the campaign, giving what may seem their due weight to the
+arguments and representations of the American writer.
+
+The following were the respective positions on the 14th of
+June:--Wellington's heterogeneous army, about 94,000 strong with 196
+guns, lay widely dispersed in cantonments from the Scheldt to the
+Charleroi-Brussels chaussée, its front extending from Tournay through
+Mons and Binche to Nivelles and Quatre Bras. Of the Prussian army under
+Blücher, about 121,000 strong with 312 guns, one corps was at Liège,
+another near the Meuse above Namur, a third at Namur, and Ziethen's in
+advance holding the line of the Sambre. The mass of Blücher's command
+had already seen service and, with the exception of the Saxons, was
+full of zeal; the corps were well commanded, and their chief, although
+he had his limits, was a thorough soldier. The French army, consisting
+of five corps d'armée, the Guard, four cavalry corps and 344
+guns--total fighting strength 124,500--Napoleon had succeeded in
+assembling with wonderful celerity and secrecy south of the Sambre
+within an easy march of Charleroi. Its officers and soldiers were alike
+veterans but its organisation was somewhat defective. Napoleon scarcely
+preserved the phenomenal force of earlier years; but, in Mr. Ropes's
+words, he disclosed "no conspicuous lack of energy and activity." Soult
+was far from being an ideal chief of staff. Ney, to whom was assigned
+the command of the left wing, only reached the army on the 15th, and
+without a staff; Grouchy, to whom on the 16th was suddenly given the
+command of the right wing, was not a man of high military capacity.
+
+Napoleon's plan of campaign was founded on the circumstance that the
+bases of the allied armies lay in opposite directions--the English base
+on the German Ocean, the Prussian through Liège and Maestricht to the
+Rhine. The military probability was that if either army was forced to
+retreat, it would retreat towards its base; and to do this would be to
+march away from its ally. Napoleon was in no situation to manoeuvre
+leisurely, with all Europe on the march against him. His engrossing aim
+was to gain immediate victory over his adversaries in Belgium before
+the Russians and Austrians should close in around him. His expectation
+was that Blücher would offer battle about Fleurus and be overwhelmed
+before the Anglo-Dutch army could come to the support of its Prussian
+ally. To make sure of preventing that junction the Emperor's intention
+was to detail Ney with the left wing to reach and hold Quatre Bras. The
+Prussians thoroughly beaten, drifting rearward toward their base, and
+reduced to a condition of comparative inoffensiveness, he would then
+turn on Wellington and force him to give battle.
+
+Mr. Ropes refutes the contention maintained by a great array of
+authorities, that Napoleon's design was to "wedge himself into the
+interval between the allied armies" by seizing simultaneously Sombreffe
+and Quatre Bras, in order to cut the communication between the two
+armies and then defeat them in succession. Against this view he
+successfully marshals Napoleon himself, Wellington by the mouth of Lord
+Ellesmere, and the great German strategist Clausewitz. It will suffice
+to quote Napoleon:--
+
+  The Emperor's intention was that his advance should
+  occupy Fleurus, the mass concealed behind this town;
+  he took good care ... above all things not to occupy
+  Sombreffe. To have done so would have caused the
+  failure of all his dispositions, for then the battle of Ligny
+  would not have been fought, and Blücher would have had
+  to make Wavre the concentration-point for his army.
+
+Wellington alludes pointedly to the obvious danger to the French army
+of the suggested wedge position in what the Germans call _die taktische
+Mitte_, where, instead of being able to defeat the allies in
+succession, it would itself be liable to be crushed between the upper
+and the nether millstone.
+
+At daybreak of the 15th Napoleon took the offensive, driving in Ziethen
+on and through Charleroi although not without sharp fighting. On that
+evening three French corps, the Guard, and most of the cavalry, were
+concentrated about Charleroi and forward toward Fleurus, ready to
+attack Blücher next day. Controversy has been very keen on the question
+whether or not on the afternoon of the 15th Napoleon gave Ney verbal
+orders to occupy Quatre Bras the same evening. Mr. Ropes holds it
+"almost certain" that the order was given. From Napoleon's bulletin
+despatched on the evening of the 15th, which is the only piece of
+strictly contemporary evidence, he quotes: "Le Prince de la Moskowa
+(Ney) a eu le soir son quartier général aux Quatres-Chemins;" and he
+remarks that this must have been the belief in the headquarter "unless
+we gratuitously invent an intention to deceive the public." There is no
+need for Mr. Ropes to put that strain on himself, since the main
+purport of Napoleon's bulletins notoriously was to deceive the public.
+But if Napoleon had not intended that Ney should occupy Quatre Bras on
+the night of the 15th, the statement that this had been done would have
+been a purposeless futility; and if he had intended that Ney should do
+so it is unlikely that he should have omitted to give him instructions
+to that effect. Grouchy claims to have heard Napoleon censure Ney for
+his omission to occupy Quatre Bras; an omission which had its
+importance, for the reason, among others, that it was ominous of the
+Marshal's infinitely more harmful disobedience of orders next day.
+
+All writers agree that Blücher ordered the concentration of his army in
+the fighting position previously chosen in the event of the French
+advancing by Charleroi, "without," in Mr. Ropes's words, "any definite
+agreement or undertaking with Wellington that he was to have English
+aid in the impending battle." He was content to take his risk of the
+English general's possible inability for sundry obvious reasons, to
+come to his support. And while the Prussian army with the unfortunate
+exception of Bülow's corps, was on the 15th moving toward the chosen
+position of Ligny, where its right was to be on St. Amand, its centre
+on and behind Ligny, and its left about Balâtre, what was happening in
+the Anglo-Dutch army lying spread out westward of the
+Charleroi--Brussels chaussée?
+
+Wellington was at Brussels expecting the French invasion by or west of
+the Mons-Brussels road, to meet which he considered his army very well
+placed, but could expect no Prussian cooperation. His courier service,
+with his forces so dispersed, should have been well organised and
+alert, but it was neither; and Napoleon's secrecy and suddenness in
+taking the offensive were worthy of his best days. It has been freely
+imputed to Wellington that he was thereby in a measure surprised. There
+is the strange and probably mythical story in the work professing to be
+Fouché's _Memoirs_ to the effect that Wellington was relying on him for
+information of Napoleon's plans, and that he--Fouché--played the
+English commander false. "On the very day of Napoleon's departure from
+Paris," say the _Memoirs_, "I despatched Madame D----, furnished with
+notes in cipher, narrating the whole plan of the campaign. But at the
+same time I privately sent orders for such obstacles at the frontier,
+where she was to pass, that she could not reach Wellington's
+headquarters till after the event. This was the real explanation of the
+inactivity of the British generalissimo which excited such universal
+astonishment." Readers of the _Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury_
+will remember the apparently authentic statement of Captain Bowles,
+that Wellington, rising from the supper-table at the famous ball,
+
+  whispered to ask the Duke of Richmond if he had a good
+  map. The Duke of Richmond said he had, and took
+  Wellington into his dressing-room. Wellington shut the
+  door and said, "Napoleon has humbugged me, by God;
+  he has gained twenty-four hours' march on me.... I
+  have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras;
+  but we shall not stop him there, and if so I must fight
+  him _there_" (passing his thumb-nail over the position of
+  Waterloo). The conversation was repeated to me by the
+  Duke of Richmond two minutes after it occurred.
+
+Facts, however, are stronger evidence than words; and this confession
+on Wellington's part is inconsistent with the circumstance that he had
+not hurried to retrieve the time he is represented as having owned that
+Napoleon had gained on him--that he had, on the contrary, allowed his
+adversary to gain several hours more. Wellington's combination of
+caution and decision throughout this momentous period is a very
+interesting study. It was not until 3 P.M. (of the 15th) that there
+reached him tidings almost simultaneously of firing between the
+outposts about Thuin and that Ziethen had been attacked before
+Charleroi, the two places ten miles apart and both occurrences in the
+early morning. Those affairs might have been casual outpost skirmishes;
+and the Duke, in anticipation of further information, took no measures
+for some hours. At length, in default of later tidings he determined on
+the precautionary step of assembling his divisions at their respective
+rendezvous points in readiness to march; further specifically directing
+a concentration of 25,000 men at Nivelles on his then left flank, when
+it should have been ascertained for certain that the enemy's line of
+attack was by Charleroi. These orders were sent out early in the
+evening--"between 5 and 7." Later in the evening came a letter from
+Blücher announcing the concentration of the Prussian army to occupy the
+Ligny fighting position, in which disposition Wellington acquiesced;
+but, still uncertain of Napoleon's true line of attack--his conviction
+being, as is well known, that Napoleon should have moved on the British
+right--he would not definitely fix the point of ultimate concentration
+of his army until he should receive intelligence from Mons. But
+Blücher's tidings caused him to issue about 10 P.M. a second set of
+orders, commanding a general movement of the army, not as yet to any
+specific point of concentration but in prescribed directions towards
+its left (eastward). At length, when the news came from Mons that he
+need have no further serious solicitude about his right since the whole
+French army was advancing by Charleroi, he saw his way clear. Towards
+midnight, writes Müffling the Prussian Commissioner at his
+headquarters, Wellington informed him of the tidings from Mons, and
+added: "The orders for the concentration of my army at Nivelles and
+Quatre Bras are already despatched. Let us, therefore, go to the ball."
+
+There are three definite evidences that before midnight of the 15th
+Wellington had resolved to concentrate about Quatre Bras, and had
+issued final orders accordingly--his statement to the Duke of Richmond,
+his statement to Müffling, and his statement in his official report to
+Lord Bathurst. Yet Mr. Ropes believes that his decision to that effect
+"could not have been arrived at very long before he left Brussels" on
+the morning of the 16th, which he did "probably about half-past seven."
+He founds this belief on two orders dated "16th June" sent to Lord Hill
+in the early morning of that day, in which there is no allusion to a
+concentration at Quatre Bras. But those were merely supplementary
+instructions as to points of detail; for example, one of them enjoined
+that a division ordered earlier to Enghien should move instead by way
+of Braine le Comte, that being a nearer route toward the final general
+destination of Quatre Bras specified in the earlier (the "towards
+midnight") orders. The latter orders are not extant, having been lost
+according to Gurwood, with De Lancey's papers when he fell at Waterloo;
+but that they must have been issued is proved by the fact that they
+were acted upon by the troops; and that they were issued before
+midnight of the 15th is made clear by Wellington's three specific
+statements to that effect.
+
+When the Duke left Brussels for the front on the morning of the 16th he
+took with him a singularly optimistic paper styled "Disposition of the
+British Army at 7 A.M., 16th June," which was "written out for the
+information of the Commander of the Forces by Colonel Sir W. de
+Lancey," his Quartermaster-General. In the nature of things for the
+most part guess-work, the wish as regarded almost every particular set
+out in this document was father to the thought. Wellington was no doubt
+reasonably justified in accepting and relying on this flattering
+"Disposition;" but its terms, as Mr. Ropes conclusively shows, simply
+misled him and caused him also unconsciously to mislead Blücher, both
+by the expressions of the letter written by him to that chief on his
+arrival at Quatre Bras and later when he met the Prussian commander at
+the mill of Brye. Wellington was indeed trebly fortunate in finding the
+Quatre Bras position still available to him--fortunate that Ney on the
+previous evening had defaulted from his orders in refraining from
+occupying it; fortunate that Ney still on this morning was remaining
+passive; and more fortunate still that it had been occupied, defended,
+and reinforced by Dutch-Belgian troops not only without orders from him
+but in bold and happy violation of his orders. Perponcher's division
+was scarcely a potent representative of the Anglo-Dutch army, but there
+was nothing more at hand; and pending the coming up of reinforcements
+Wellington, with rather a sanguine reliance on Ney's maintenance of
+inactivity, rode over to Brye and had a conversation with Blücher.
+There are contradictory accounts of its tenor, and Gneisenau certainly
+seems to have formed the impression that the Duke gave a positive
+pledge of support. Mr. Ropes considers that, misled by the erroneous
+"Disposition," Wellington honestly believed he would be able to
+co-operate with Blücher, and that he "certainly did give that commander
+some assurance of support by the Anglo-Dutch army in the impending
+battle." Müffling, who was present, states that the Duke's last words
+were: "Well, I will come, provided I am not attacked myself;" and this
+probably was the final undertaking. Wellington's words were in
+accordance with the caution of his character; and it is certain that
+Blücher had decided to fight at Ligny whether assured or not of his
+brother-commander's support. That Wellington regarded Blücher's
+dispositions for battle as objectionable is proved by his blunt comment
+to Hardinge--"If they fight here they will be damnably licked!"
+
+It would have been possible for Napoleon to have crushed the Prussian
+army in the early hours of the 16th when it was in the throes of
+formation for battle; and this he would probably have done if Ney had
+occupied Quatre Bras on the previous evening. But in Ney's default of
+accomplishing this Napoleon, in his solicitude that Wellington should
+be hindered from supporting Blücher, determined to delay his own stroke
+against the latter until Ney should be in possession of Quatre Bras
+with the left wing, where, in Soult's words, "he ought to be able to
+destroy any force of the enemy that might present itself," and then
+come to the support of the Emperor by getting on the Prussian rear
+behind St. Amand. Napoleon's instructions were explicit that Ney was to
+march on Quatre Bras, take position there, and then send an infantry
+division and Kellerman's cavalry to points eastward, whence the Emperor
+might summon them to participate in his own operations. If Ney had
+fulfilled his orders by utilising the whole force at his disposal, in
+all human probability he would have defeated Wellington at Quatre Bras,
+whose troops, arriving in detail, would have been crushed by greatly
+superior numbers as they came up. As it was, although at the beginning
+of the battle he was in superior strength, Ney never utilised more than
+22,000 men; whereas by its close Wellington had 31,000, and, thanks to
+the stanchness of the British infantry, was the victor in a very
+hard-fought contest. But Mr. Ropes has reason in holding it humanly
+certain that he would have been beaten--in which case the battle of
+Waterloo would never have been fought--had not D'Erlon's corps of Ney's
+command while marching towards Quatre Bras, been turned aside in the
+direction of the Prussian right.
+
+In the justifiable belief that Ney was duly carrying out his orders
+Napoleon at half-past one opened the battle of Ligny. He had expected
+to have to deal with but a single Prussian corps, but the actual fact
+was that, while he had 74,000 men on the field, Blücher had 87,000 with
+a superior strength of artillery. The fighting was long and severe.
+From the first, recognising the defects of his adversary's position,
+Napoleon was satisfied that he could defeat the Prussian army. But he
+needed to do more--to crush, to rout it, so that he need give himself
+no further concern regarding it. This he saw his way to accomplish if
+Ney were to strike in presently on the Prussian right; and so, with
+intent to stir that chief to vigorous enterprise, the message was sent
+him that "the fate of France was in his hands." The battle proceeded,
+Blücher throwing in his reserves freely, Napoleon chary of his and
+playing the waiting game pending Ney's expected co-operation. About
+half-past five he was preparing to put in the Guard and strike the
+decisive blow, when information reached him from his right that a
+column, presumably hostile, was visible some two miles distant marching
+toward Fleurus. Napoleon sent an aide to ascertain the facts and until
+his return postponed the decisive moment. Two hours later the
+information was brought back that the approaching column was D'Erlon's
+from Ney's wing. This intelligence dispelled all anxiety. Strangely
+enough, no instructions were sent to the approaching reinforcement, and
+the suspended stroke was promptly dealt. The Prussians, after desperate
+fighting, were everywhere driven back. Napoleon with part of the
+Imperial Guard broke Blücher's centre, and the French army deployed on
+the heights beyond the stream. In a word, Napoleon had defeated the
+Prussians, but had neither crushed nor routed them. There was no
+pursuit.
+
+D'Erlon's corps on this afternoon had achieved the doubly sinister
+distinction of having prevented Ney from gaining a probable victory at
+Quatre Bras, and of detracting from the thoroughness of Napoleon's
+actual victory at Ligny. While it was leisurely marching towards
+Frasnes in support of Ney, it was diverted eastward towards the
+Prussian right flank in consequence of an order given (whether
+authorised or not is uncertain) by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor. It
+was about to deploy for action, when, on receiving from Ney a
+peremptory order to rejoin his command; and in absence of a command
+from Napoleon to strike the Prussian flank, it went about and tramped
+back towards Frasnes. D'Erlon's promenade was as futile as the famous
+march of the King of France up the hill and then down again.
+
+Mr. Ropes considers that on the morning of the 17th Napoleon had thus
+far in the main fulfilled his programme. This view may be questioned.
+He had merely defeated two of the four Prussian corps; he had not
+wrecked Blücher. He had failed to occupy Quatre Bras; the Anglo-Dutch
+army had succeeded in effecting a partial concentration and in
+repulsing his left wing there. Still it must be admitted that with two
+corps absolutely intact and with no serious losses in the Guard and
+cavalry, Napoleon was in good shape for carrying out his plan. If Ney
+had sent him word overnight that Wellington's army was bivouacking
+about Quatre Bras in ignorance, as it turned out, of the result of
+Ligny, he might have attacked it to good purpose in conjunction with
+Ney in the early morning of the 17th. But Ney was silent and sulky;
+Napoleon himself was greatly fatigued, and Soult was of no service to
+him.
+
+During the night the Prussians "had folded their tents like the Arabs,
+and as silently stolen away." They had neither been watched nor
+followed up, all touch of them had been lost, and there was nothing to
+indicate their line of retreat. This slovenliness on the part of the
+French would not have occurred in Napoleon's earlier days; nor in those
+days of greater vigour would he have delayed until after midday of the
+17th to follow up an army which he had defeated on the previous
+evening, and which had disappeared from before him in the course of the
+night. The reports which had been sent in from a cavalry reconnaissance
+despatched in the morning indicated that the Prussians were retiring on
+Namur. No reconnaissance had been made in the direction of Tilly and
+Wavre. This was a strange error, since Blücher had two corps still
+untouched, and as above everything a fighting man, was not likely to
+throw up his hands and forsake his ally after one partial discomfiture.
+Napoleon tardily determined to despatch Grouchy on the errand of
+following up the Prussians with a force consisting of about 33,000 men
+with ninety-six guns. Thus far all authorities are agreed; but as
+regards the character of the orders given to Grouchy for his guidance
+in an obviously somewhat complicated enterprise, there is an
+extraordinary contrariety of evidence. It is stated in the _St. Helena
+Memoirs_ that Grouchy received positive orders to keep himself always
+between the main French army and Blücher; to maintain constant
+communication with the former and in a position easily to rejoin it;
+that since it was possible that Blücher might retreat on Wavre, he
+(Grouchy) was to be there simultaneously; if the Prussians should
+continue their march on Brussels and should pass the night in the
+forest of Soignies, he was to follow to the edge of the forest; should
+they retire on the Meuse, he was to watch them with part of his cavalry
+and himself occupy Wavre with the mass of his force, where he should be
+in position for easy communication with Napoleon's headquarters. Those
+orders are certainly specific enough, but there is no record of them;
+and they may be assumed to represent rather what Napoleon at St. Helena
+considered Grouchy should have done, than what he was actually ordered
+to do.
+
+Grouchy's version, again--and it is adequately corroborated--is to the
+effect that about midday of the 17th on the field of Ligny, the Emperor
+gave him the verbal order to take the 3rd and 4th Corps and certain
+cavalry and "go in pursuit of the Prussians." Grouchy raised sundry
+objections which the Emperor overruled and repeated his commands,
+adding that "it was for me (Grouchy) to discover the route taken by
+Blücher; that he himself was going to fight the English, and that it
+was for me to complete the defeat of the Prussians by attacking them as
+soon as I should have caught up with them." So much for Grouchy for the
+moment.
+
+Soon after the Emperor had given Grouchy this verbal order, tidings
+came in from a scouting party that a body of Prussian troops had been
+seen about 9 A.M. at Gembloux, considerably northward of the Namur
+road. The abstract probability no doubt was that the Prussians would
+retire towards their base. But that Napoleon kept an open mind on the
+subject is evidenced by his instruction to Grouchy to "go and discover
+the route taken by Blücher," and this later intelligence, it may be
+assumed, opened his mind yet further. He thought it well, then, to send
+to Grouchy a supplementary written order which in the temporary absence
+of Marshal Soult he dictated to General Bertrand. This order enjoined
+on Grouchy to proceed with his force to Gembloux; to explore in the
+directions of Namur and Maestricht; to pursue the enemy; explore his
+march; and report upon his manoeuvres, so that "I (Napoleon) may be
+able to penetrate what the enemy is intending to do; whether he is
+separating himself from the English, or whether they are intending
+still to unite in trying the fate of another battle to cover Brussels
+or Liège." To me I confess--and the view is also that of Chesney and
+Maurice--this written order is simply an amplification in detail of the
+previous verbal order, which by instructing Grouchy "to discover the
+route taken by Blücher" clearly evinced doubt in Napoleon's mind as to
+the Prussian line of retreat. Mr. Ropes, on the other hand, bases an
+indictment on Grouchy's conduct on the argument that not only was the
+tone of the written order altogether different from that of the verbal
+order, but that the duty assigned to Grouchy by the former was wholly
+different from that specified in the latter.
+
+He adds that Grouchy constantly and persistently denied having received
+any other than the verbal order, that in this denial Grouchy lied, and
+that "the mischievous influence of this deliberate concealment of his
+orders by Grouchy caused for nearly thirty years after the battle of
+Waterloo to be prevalent a wholly false notion as to the task assigned
+by Napoleon to the Marshal." Certainly Grouchy's conduct is
+inexplicable to any one holding the belief, as I do, that there is
+nothing in the written order to account for Grouchy's denial of having
+received it. It is more inexplicable than Mr. Ropes appears to be aware
+of. It is true, as Mr. Ropes proves, that Grouchy vehemently denied
+receiving the written order in all his works printed from 1818 to 1829.
+But he had actually acknowledged its receipt almost immediately after
+Waterloo. In his son's little book, _Le Maréchal de Grouchy du 16me au
+19me Juin, 1815,_ is printed among the _Documents Historiques Inédits_
+a paper styled "Allocution du Maréchal Grouchy à quelques-uns des
+officiers généraux sous les ordres, lorsqu'il eût appris les désastres
+de Waterloo." From this document I make the following extract: "A few
+hours later the Emperor modified his first order, and caused to be
+written to me by the Grand Marshal Bertrand the order to betake myself
+to Gembloux, and to send reconnaissances towards Namur. 'It is
+important,' continued the order, 'to discover the intentions of the
+Prussians--whether they are separating from the English, or have the
+design to take the chance of a new battle.'" It is strange that this
+acknowledgment should never have been cited against Grouchy; stranger
+still that in the face of it he should have maintained his denials; yet
+more strange that those denials were never exposed; and most strange of
+all, that finally the "written order" should have appeared for the
+first time in a casual article published in 1842, without evoking any
+explanation from Grouchy, or any strictures on his persistent mendacity.
+
+It may be questioned whether the force of 33,000 men entrusted to
+Grouchy was not either too large or too small. The main French army, in
+the possible contingencies before it, could not safely spare so large a
+detachment, as events showed. Grouchy's command was not sufficiently
+strong to oppose the whole Prussian army; two corps of which could
+certainly have "held" it, while the other two were free to support
+Wellington. Mr. Ropes thinks it might have been diminished by one-half,
+but then a single Prussian corps could have dealt with it. It is
+difficult to discern in what respect the 6000 cavalry assigned to
+Grouchy should have been inadequate to such service as could reasonably
+have been expected of his whole command.
+
+The British force about Quatre Bras on the morning of the 17th amounted
+to about 45,000 men. Early on that morning Wellington was in
+conversation with the Captain Bowles previously mentioned, when an
+officer galloped up and, to quote Captain Bowles,
+
+  whispered to the Duke, who then turned to me and said,
+  "Old Blücher has had a d----d good licking and has gone
+  back to Wavre. As he has gone back, we must go too. I
+  suppose in England they will say we have been licked--I
+  can't help that."
+
+He quietly withdrew his troops from their positions, an operation which
+Ney, with 40,000 men at his disposal, did not attempt to molest,
+notwithstanding repeated orders from Napoleon to move on Quatre Bras.
+Early in the afternoon Napoleon reached that vicinity with the Guard,
+6th Corps, and Milhaud's Cuirassiers, picked up Ney's command, and
+mounting his horse led the French army, following up Wellington's
+retreat. His energy and activity throughout the march is described as
+intense. Those characteristics he continued to evince during the
+following night and in the morning of the eventful 18th. In the dead of
+night he spent two hours on the picquet line, and about seven he was
+out again on the foreposts in the mud and rain. His anxiety was not as
+to the issue of a battle with Wellington, but lest Wellington should
+not stand and fight. That apprehension was dispelled when, as he rode
+along his front about 8 A.M., he saw the Anglo-Dutch army taking up its
+ground. He was aware that at least one "pretty strong Prussian
+column"--which actually consisted of the two corps beaten at Ligny--had
+retired on Wavre. But notwithstanding the disquieting vagueness and
+ineptitude of Grouchy's letter of 10 P.M. of the 17th from Gembloux,
+and that up to the morning of the battle he had sent no suggestions or
+instructions to that officer, he yet trusted implicitly to him to fend
+off the Prussians; and it did not seem to occur to him that
+Wellington's calm expectant attitude indicated his assurance of
+Blücher's cooperation.
+
+In one of the cavalry charges toward the close of the battle of Ligny,
+Blücher had been overthrown, ridden over, almost taken prisoner, and
+severely bruised; but the gallant old hussar was almost himself again
+next morning, thanks to copious doses of gin and rhubarb, for the
+effluvium of which restorative he apologised to Hardinge as he embraced
+that wounded officer, in the extremely plain expression, "_Ich stinke
+etwas_." Gneisenau, his Chief of Staff, rather distrusted Wellington's
+good faith, and doubted whether it was not the safer policy for the
+Prussian army to fall back toward Liège. But Blücher prevailed over his
+lieutenants; and on the evening of the 17th all four Prussian corps in
+a strength of about 90,000 men, were concentrated about Wavre, some
+nine miles east of the Waterloo position, full of ardour and confident
+of success. That same night Müffling informed Blücher by letter that
+the Anglo-Dutch army had occupied the position named, wherein to fight
+next day; and Blücher's loyal answer was that Bülow's corps at daybreak
+should march by way of St. Lambert to strike the French right; that
+Pirch's would follow in support; and that the other two would stand in
+readiness. This communication, which reached Wellington at headquarters
+at 2 A.M. of the 18th, has been held to have been the first actually
+definite assurance of Prussian support. The story to the effect that on
+the evening of the 17th the Duke rode over to Wavre to make sure from
+Blücher's own mouth that he could rely on Prussian support next day, to
+the truth of which not a little of vague testimony has been adduced,
+may be now definitely disregarded. The evidence against the legend is
+conclusive. An authoritative contradiction was given to it in an
+article in the _Quarterly Review_ of 1842, from the pen of Lord Francis
+Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, who confessedly wrote under the
+inspiration of the Duke, and in this instance directly from a
+memorandum drawn up by his Grace. Quite recently there have been found
+and are now in the possession of the Rev. Frederick Gurney, the
+grandson of the late Sir John Gurney, the notes of a "conversation with
+the Duke of Wellington and Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Williams,
+Judges on Circuit, at Strath-fieldsaye House, on 24th February 1837."
+The annotator was Baron Gurney, to the following effect:--"The
+conversation had been commenced by my inquiring of him (the Duke)
+whether a story which I had heard was true of his having ridden over to
+Blücher on the night before the battle of Waterloo, and returned on the
+same horse. He said--'No, that was not so. I did not see Blücher on the
+day before Waterloo. I saw him the day before, on the day of Quatre
+Bras. I saw him after Waterloo, and he kissed me. He embraced me on
+horseback. I had communicated with him the day before Waterloo.'" The
+rest of the conversation made no further reference to the topic of the
+ride to Wavre.
+
+It is not proposed to give here any account of the memorable battle,
+the main incidents of which are familiar to all. It was of course
+Wellington's policy to take up a defensive attitude; both because of
+the incapacity of his raw soldiers for manoeuvring, and since every
+minute before Napoleon should begin the offensive was of value to the
+English commander, as it diminished the length of punishment he would
+have to endure single-handed. Further, he was numerically weaker than
+his adversary, while his troops were at once of divers nationalities
+and divers character; his main reliance was on his British troops and
+those of the King's German Legion. Napoleon for his part deliberately
+delayed to attack when celerity of action was all-important to him,
+disregarding the obvious probability of Prussian assistance to
+Wellington, and sanguinely expecting that Grouchy would either avert
+that support or reach him in time to neutralise it. Mr. Ropes has
+written an admirable criticism of the errors of the French in their
+contest with the Anglo-Dutch army, for which Ney was for the most part
+responsible, since from before 3 P.M. Napoleon was engrossed in
+preparing his right flank for defence against the Prussians. The issue
+of the great battle all men know. The badness of the roads retarded the
+Prussians greatly, and, save in Bülow's corps, there was no doubt
+considerable delay in starting; but the proverb that "All's well that
+ends well" might have been coined with special application to the
+battle of Waterloo.
+
+It only remains briefly to refer to Mr. Ropes's elaborate _résumé_ of
+the melancholy adventures of Grouchy, on whom he may be regarded as too
+severe. Sent out too late on a species of roving commission, more was
+expected from him by Napoleon than could have been accomplished by any
+but a leader of the highest order, whereas Grouchy had never given
+evidence of being more than respectable. He received from his master
+neither instructions nor information from the time he left the field of
+Ligny until 4 P.M. of the 18th, nor until at Walhain he heard the
+cannonade of Waterloo had he any knowledge of the whereabouts of the
+French main army. On the morning of the 18th he was late in leaving
+Gembloux, on not the most direct route towards Wavre; instead of moving
+on which, when he heard the noise of the battle, he should no doubt
+have marched straight for the Dyle bridges at Ottignies and Moustier.
+Had he done so, spite of all delays he could have been across the Dyle
+by 4 P.M. But when Mr. Ropes claims that thus Grouchy would have been
+able to arrest the march toward the battlefield of the two leading
+Prussian corps, one of which was four miles distant from him and the
+other still farther away, he is too exacting. Had Grouchy made the vain
+attempt, the two nearer Prussian corps would have taken him in flank
+and headed him off, while Bülow and Ziethen pressed on to the
+battlefield. If he had marched straight and swiftly on the
+cannon-thunder of Waterloo, he might perhaps have been in time to
+effect something in the nature of a diversion, although it is extremely
+improbable that he could have materially changed the fortune of the
+day; but instead, acting on the letter of Napoleon's instructions
+despatched to him on the morning of the battle, he moved on Wavre and
+engaged in a futile action with the Prussian 3rd Corps there. A shrewd
+and enterprising man would have at least seen into the spirit of his
+orders; Grouchy could not do this, and he is to be pitied rather than
+blamed.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Camps, Quarters and Casual Places, by 
+Archibald Forbes
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+Project Gutenberg's Camps, Quarters and Casual Places, by Archibald Forbes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Camps, Quarters and Casual Places
+
+Author: Archibald Forbes
+
+Posting Date: March 30, 2014 [EBook #9460]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 3, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES ***
+
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+Proofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines.
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+
+
+<h1>
+<br /><br /><br />
+CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES
+</h1>
+
+<p class="t2">
+BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+NOTE
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in
+this volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James
+Knowles of the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, Mr. Percy Bunting of the
+<i>Contemporary Review</i>, and the Proprietor of <i>McClure's Magazine</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+LONDON, <i>June</i> 1896.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+CONTENTS
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+1. <a href="#chap01">MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE</a><br />
+2. <a href="#chap02">REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET</a><br />
+3. <a href="#chap03">GERMAN WAR PRAYERS</a><br />
+4. <a href="#chap04">MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE</a><br />
+5. <a href="#chap05">A VERSION OF BALACLAVA</a><br />
+6. <a href="#chap06">HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"</a><br />
+7. <a href="#chap07">CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT</a><br />
+8. <a href="#chap08">THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER</a><br />
+9. <a href="#chap09">RAILWAY LIZZ</a><br />
+10. <a href="#chap10">MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER</a><br />
+11. <a href="#chap11">THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY</a><br />
+12. <a href="#chap12">BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR</a><br />
+13. <a href="#chap13">THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR</a><br />
+14. <a href="#chap14">THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE</a><br />
+15. <a href="#chap15">GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST</a><br />
+16. <a href="#chap16">THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY</a><br />
+17. <a href="#chap17">THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY</a><br />
+18. <a href="#chap18">PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES</a><br />
+19. <a href="#chap19">THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap01"></a>
+MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of
+1870-71, and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince
+Imperial received his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at
+Saarbrücken; to which pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself,
+in the anticipation, which proved well founded, that the tide of war
+would flow that way first. What a pity it is that all war cannot be
+like this early phase of it, of which I speak! It was playing at
+warfare, with just enough of the grim reality cropping up occasionally,
+to give the zest which the reckless Frenchwoman declared was added to a
+pleasure by its being also a sin. The officers of the
+Hohenzollerns&mdash;our only infantry regiment in garrison&mdash;drank their beer
+placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as their men smoked
+drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms ready for use
+at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the frontier line
+every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with little
+result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or down in
+the valley bounded by the Schönecken wood. The Uhlans, their piebald
+lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round the
+crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising
+mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them
+from time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they
+were, now and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the
+ground&mdash;an occurrence invariably followed by a little spurt of lively
+hostility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on
+the St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern
+officers frequented the <i>table d'hôte</i> and where quaint little Max, the
+drollest imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Fraülein Sophie the
+landlord's niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the
+pleasantness and comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did
+I spend at the table of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped
+red head of silent and genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over
+the great ice-pail, with its <i>chevaux de frise</i> of long-necked
+Niersteiner bottles&mdash;the worthy Hauptmann supported by blithe
+Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with the <i>Wacht am Rhein</i>;
+quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of "six-and-sixty" and
+as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or clink a glass; gay
+young Adjutant von Zülow&mdash;he who one day brought in a prisoner from the
+foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of his saddle; and
+many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the Spicheren,
+or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But although the Rheinischer Hof associates itself in my mind with many
+memories, half-pleasant, half-sad, it was not the most accustomed haunt
+of the casuals in Saarbrücken, including myself. Of the waifs and
+strays which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the
+great rendezvous was the Hôtel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading
+from the bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a
+free-and-easy place compared with the Rheinischer, and among its
+inmates there was no one who could sing a better song than manly
+George&mdash;type of the Briton at whom foreigners stare&mdash;who, ignorant of a
+word of their language, wholly unprovided with any authorisation save
+the passport signed "Salisbury," and having not quite so much business
+at the seat of war as he might have at the bottom of a coal-mine,
+gravitates into danger with inevitable certainty, and stumbles through
+all manner of difficulties and bothers by reason of a serene
+good-humour that nothing can ruffle and a cool resolution before which
+every obstacle fades away. Was there ever a more compositely polyglot
+cosmopolitan than poor young de Liefde&mdash;half Dutchman, half German by
+birth, an Englishman by adoption, a Frenchman in temperament, speaking
+with equal fluency the language of all four countries, and an
+unconsidered trifle of some half-dozen European languages besides? Then
+there was the English student from Bonn, who had come down to the front
+accompanied by a terrible brute of a dog, vast, shaggy, self-willed,
+and dirty; an animal which, so to speak, owned his owner, and was so
+much the horror and disgust of everybody that on account of him the
+company of his master&mdash;one of the pleasantest fellows alive&mdash;was the
+source of general apprehension. There was young Silberer the many-sided
+and eccentric, an Austrian nobleman, a Vienna feuilletonist and
+correspondent, a rowing man, a gourmet, ever thinking of his stomach
+and yet prepared for all the roughness of the campaign&mdash;warm-hearted,
+passionate, narrow-minded, capable of sleeping for twenty-three out of
+the twenty-four hours, and the wearer of a Scotch cap. There was
+Küster, a German journalist with an address somewhere in the Downham
+Road; and Duff, a Fellow of &mdash;&mdash; College, the strangest mixture of
+nervousness and cool courage I ever met.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were a kind of happy family at the Hagen; the tone of the coterie
+was that of the easiest intimacy into which every newcomer slid quite
+naturally. Thus when on the 31st July there was a somewhat sensational
+arrival, the stolid landlord had not turned the gas on in the empty
+saal before everybody knew and sympathised with the errand of the
+strangers. The party consisted of a plump little girl of about eighteen
+with a bonny round face and fine frank eyes; her sister who was some
+years older; and a brother, the eldest of the three. They had come from
+Silesia on rather a strange tryst. Little Minna Vogt had for her
+<i>Bräutigam</i> a young Feldwebel of the second battalion of the
+Hohenzollerns, a native of Saarlouis. The battalion quartered there was
+under orders to join its first battalion at Saarbrücken, and young
+Eckenstein had written to his betrothed to come and meet him there,
+that the marriage-knot might be tied before he should go on a campaign
+from which he might not return. The arrangement was certainly a
+charming one; we should have a wedding in the Hagen! There was no
+nonsense about our young <i>Braut</i>. She told me the little story at
+supper on the night of her arrival in the most matter-of-fact way
+possible, drank her two glasses of red wine, and went off serenely to
+bed with a dainty lisping <i>Schlafen Sie wohl!</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Minna was between the sheets in the pleasant chamber in the Hagen
+her lover was lying in bivouac some fifteen miles away. In the
+afternoon of the next day his battalion approached Saarbrücken and
+bivouacked about two miles from the town. Of course we all went out to
+welcome it; some bearing peace-offerings of cigars, others the
+drink-offering of potent Schnapps. The Vogt family were left the sole
+inmates of the Hagen, delicacy preventing their accompanying us. The
+German journalist, however, had a commission to find out young
+Eckenstein and tell him of the bliss that awaited him two short miles
+away. Right hearty fellows were the officers of the second
+battalion&mdash;from the grizzled Oberst down to the smooth-faced junior
+lieutenant; and the men who had been marching and bivouacking for a
+fortnight looked as fresh as if they had not travelled five miles.
+Küster soon found the young Feldwebel; and the Hauptmann of his company
+when he heard the state of the case, smiled a grim but kindly smile,
+and gave him leave for two days with the proviso, that if any hostile
+action should be taken in the interval he should rejoin the colours
+immediately and without notice. "No fear of that!" was Eckenstein's
+reply with a significant down glance at his sword; and then, after a
+cheery "good-night" to the hardy bivouackers, we visitors started in
+triumph on our return to the Hagen, the young Feldwebel in our midst It
+was good to see the unrestraint with which Minna&mdash;she of the apple face
+and frank eyes&mdash;threw herself round the neck of her betrothed as she
+met him on the steps of the Hagen, and his modest manly blush as he
+returned the embrace. Ye gods! did not we make a night of it! Stolid
+Hagen came out of his shell for once, and swore, <i>Donner Wetter</i> that
+he would give us a supper we should remember; and he kept his word. The
+good old pastor of the snow-white hair and withered cheeks&mdash;he had been
+engaged to perform the ceremony of the morrow&mdash;we voted into the chair
+whether he would or not; and on his right sat Minna and Eckenstein,
+their arms interlacing and whispering soft speeches which were not for
+our ears. The table was covered with bottles of Blume de Saar, the
+champagne peculiar of the Hagen; and the speed with which the full
+bottles were converted into "dead marines" was a caution to
+teetotallers. Then de Liefde the polyglot gave the health of the happy
+couple in a felicitous but composite speech, in which half a dozen
+languages were impartially intermixed so that all might understand at
+least a portion. George the jolly insisted in leading off the honours
+with a truly British "three times three;" and that horrible dog of
+Hyndman's gave the time, like a beast as he was, with stentorian
+barkings. Then Minna and her sister retired, followed by Herr Pastor;
+and after a considerable number of more bottles of Blume de Saar had
+met their fate we formed a procession and escorted the happy Eckenstein
+to the Rheinischer Hof where he was to sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning by eleven, we had all reassembled in the second saal of
+the Hagen. In the great room the marriage-breakfast was laid out, and
+in the kitchen Hagen and his Frau were up to their eyes in mystic
+culinary operations. Minna looked like a rosebud in her pretty
+low-necked blue dress, and the pastor in his cassock helped to the
+diversity of colour. We had done shaking hands with the bride and
+bridegroom after the ceremony, and were sitting down to the marriage
+feast, when young Eckenstein started and made three strides to the open
+window. His accustomed ear had caught a sound which none of us had
+heard. It was the sharp peremptory note of the drum beating the alarm.
+As it came nearer and could no longer be mistaken, the bright colour
+went out from poor Minna's cheek and she clung with a brave touching
+silence to her sister. In two minutes more Eckenstein had his helmet on
+his head and his sword buckled on, and then he turned to say farewell
+to his girl ere he left her for the battle. The parting was silent and
+brief; but the faces of the two were more eloquent than words. Poor
+Minna sat down by the window straining her eyes as Eckenstein, running
+at speed, went his way to the rendezvous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I got up to the Bellevue the French were streaming in overwhelming
+force down the slope of the Spicheren into the intervening valley. It
+was a beautiful sight; but I am not going to describe it here. Ere an
+hour was over the shells and chassepôt bullets were sweeping across the
+Exercise Platz, and it was no longer a safe spot for a non-combatant
+like myself. Before I got back into the Hagen after paying my bill at
+the Rheinischer and fetching away my knapsack, the French guns were on
+the Exercise Platz. I heard for the first time the angry screech of the
+mitrailleuse and saw the hailstorm of its bullets spattering on the
+pavement of the bridge. Somehow or other the whole of our little
+coterie had found their way into the Hagen; by a sort of common
+impulse, I imagine. The landlady was already in hysterics; the Vogt
+girls were pale but plucky. Presently the shells began to fly. The
+Prussians had a gun or two on the railway esplanade above us, the fire
+of which the French began to return fiercely. Every shell that fell
+short tumbled in or about the Hagen; and a company of the Hohenzollerns
+was drawn up in the street in front of it, in trying to dislodge which
+the French fire could not well miss the Hagen and the houses opposite.
+A shell burst in the back-yard and the landlady fainted. Another came
+crashing in through a first-floor window, and, bursting, knocked
+several bedrooms into one. Then we thought it time to get the women
+down into the cellar&mdash;rather a risky undertaking since the door of it
+was in the backyard. However, we got them all down in safety and came
+up into the second saal to watch the course of events. Hagen gave a
+fearful groan as a shell broke into the kitchen behind us, and,
+bursting in the centre of the stove, sent his <i>chefs-d'oeuvre</i> of
+cookery sputtering in all directions. He gave a still deeper groan as
+another shell crashed into the principal dining-room and knocked the
+long table, laid out as it was for the marriage-feast, into a chaos of
+splinters, tablecloth, and knives and forks. The Restauration Küche on
+the other side was in flames, so was the stable of the hotel to the
+left rear. In this pleasing situation of affairs George produced a pack
+of cards and coolly proposed a game of whist. Küster, de Liefde, and
+Hyndman joined him; and the game proceeded amidst the crashing of the
+projectiles. Silberer and myself took counsel together and agreed that
+the occupation of the town by the French was only a question of a few
+hours at latest. We were both correspondents; and although the French
+would do us no harm our communications with our journals would
+inevitably be stopped&mdash;a serious contingency to contemplate at the
+beginning of a campaign. We both agreed that evacuation of the Hagen
+was imperative; but then, how to get out? The only way was up the
+esplanade to the railway station, and upon it the French shells were
+falling and bursting in numbers very trying to the nerves. However,
+there was nothing for it but to make a rush through the fire; and
+saying good-bye to the whist-players we sallied forth. To my disgust I
+found that Silberer positively refused to make a rush of it. Although
+an Austrian all his sympathies were Prussian, and he had the utmost
+contempt for the French. In his broken language his invariable
+appellation for them was "God-damned Hundsöhne!" and he would not run
+before them at any price. I would have run right gladly at top-speed;
+but I did not like to run when another man walked, and so he made me
+saunter at the rate of two miles an hour till we got under shelter.
+After a hot walk of several miles, we reached the Hôtel Till in the
+village of Duttweiler. After all the French, although they might have
+done so, did not occupy Saarbrücken; and towards evening our friends
+came dropping into the Hôtel Till, singly or in pairs. Küster and
+George brought the Vogt sisters out in a waggon&mdash;it was surprising to
+see the coolness and composure of the girls. By nightfall we were all
+reunited, except one unfortunate fellow who had been slightly wounded
+and whom a Saarbrücken doctor had kindly received into his house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the 6th August came the Prussian repossession of Saarbrücken and the
+desperate storm of the Spicheren. The 40th was the regiment to which
+was assigned the place of honour in the preliminary recapture of the
+Exercise Platz height. Kameke rode up the winding road to the Bellevue;
+then came the march across the broad valley and after much bloodshed
+the final storm of the Spicheren, in which the 40th occupied about the
+left centre of the Prussian advance. Three times did the blue wave
+surge up the green steep, to be beaten back three times by the terrible
+blast of fire that crashed down upon it from above. Yet a fourth time
+it clambered up again, and this time it lipped the brink and poured
+over the intrenchment at the top. But I am not describing the battle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When it was over or at least when it had drifted away across the
+farther plateau, I followed on in the broad wake of dying and dead
+which the advance had left. The familiar faces of the Hohenzollerns
+were all around me; but either still in death or writhing in the
+torture of wounds. About the centre of the valley lay the genial
+Hauptmann von Krehl, more silent than ever now, for a bullet had gone
+right through that red head of his and he would never more quaff of the
+Niersteiner; neither would Lieutenant von Klipphausen ever again stir
+the blood of the sons of the Fatherland with the <i>Wacht am Rhein</i>; he
+lay dead close by the first spur of the slope&mdash;what of him at least a
+bursting shell had left. On a little flat half up sat quaint Dr.
+Diestelkamp, like Mark Tapley jolly under difficulties; by his side lay
+a man who had just bled to death as the good doctor explained to me.
+While he had been applying the tourniquet under a hot fire his right
+arm had been broken; and before he could pull himself up and go to the
+rear another bullet had found its billet in his thigh. There the little
+man sat, contentedly smoking till somebody would be good enough to come
+and take him away. Von Zülow too&mdash;he of the gay laugh and sprightly
+countenance&mdash;was on his back a little higher up, with a bullet through
+the chest. I heard the ominous sound of the escaping air as I raised
+him to give him a drink from my flask. What needs it to become diffuse
+as to the terrible sights which that steep and the plateau above it
+presented on this beautiful summer evening? It was farther to the
+right, in ground more broken with gullies and ravines, that the second
+battalion of the Hohenzollerns had gone up; and I wandered along there
+among the carnage eking out the contents of my flask as far as I could,
+and when the wounded had exhausted the brandy in it filling it up with
+water and still toiling on in a task that seemed endless. At last, in a
+sitting posture, his back against a hawthorn tree in one of the grassy
+ravines, I saw one whom I thought I recognised. "Eckenstein!" I cried
+as I ran forward; for the posture was so natural that I could not but
+think he was alive. Alas! no answer came; the gallant young Feldwebel
+was dead, shot through the throat. He had not been killed outright by
+the fatal bullet; the track was apparent by the blood on the grass
+along which he had crawled to the hawthorn tree against which I found
+him. His head had fallen forward on his chest and his right hand was
+pressed against his left breast. I saw something white in the hollow of
+the hand and easily moved the arm for he was yet warm; it was the
+photograph of the little girl he had married but three short days
+before. The frank eyes looked up at me with a merry unconsciousness;
+and the face of the photograph was spotted with the life-blood of the
+young soldier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sent the death-token to Saarlouis by post to the young widow. I never
+knew whether she received it, for all the address I had was Saarlouis.
+Eckenstein I saw buried with two officers in a soldier's grave under
+the hawthorn. Any one taking the ascent up the fourth ravine
+Forbach-ward from the bluff of the Spicheren, may easily find it about
+halfway up. It may be recognised by the wooden cross bearing the rude
+inscription: "Hier ruhen in Gott 2 Officiere, 1 Feldwebel, 40ste
+Hohenzol. Fus. Regt."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap02"></a>
+REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
+</h3>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+1879
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By Christmas 1878 the winter had brought to a temporary standstill the
+operations of the British troops engaged in the first Afghan campaign,
+and I took the opportunity of this inaction to make a journey into
+Native Burmah, the condition of which seemed thus early to portend the
+interest which almost immediately after converged upon it, because of
+King Thebau's wholesale slaughter of his relatives. Reaching Mandalay,
+the capital of Native Burmah, in the beginning of February 1879, I
+immediately set about compassing an interview with the young king. Both
+Mr. Shaw, who was our Resident at Mandalay at the time of my visit, and
+Dr. Clement Williams whose kindly services I found so useful, are now
+dead, and many changes have occurred since the episode described below;
+but no description, so far as I am aware, has appeared of any visit of
+courtesy and curiosity to the Court of King Thebau of a later date than
+that made by myself at the date specified. One of my principal objects
+in visiting Mandalay, or, in Burmese phrase, of "coming to the Golden
+Feet," was to see the King of Burmah in his royal state in the Presence
+Chamber of the Palace. Certain difficulties stood in the way of the
+accomplishment of this object. I had but a few days to spend in
+Mandalay. With the approval of Mr. Shaw, the British Resident, I
+determined to pursue an informal course of action, and with this intent
+I enlisted the good offices of an English gentleman resident in
+Mandalay, who had intimate relations with the Ministers and the Court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This gentleman, Dr. Williams, was good enough to help me with zeal and
+address. The line of strategy to adopt was to interest in my cause one
+of the principal Ministers. Of these there were four, who constituted
+the <i>Hlwot-dau</i>, or High Court and Council of the Monarchy. These
+"Woonghys" or "Menghyis," as they were more commonly called&mdash;"Menghyi,"
+meaning "Great Prince"&mdash;were of equal rank; but the senior Minister,
+the Yenangyoung Menghyi, who had precedence, was then in confinement,
+and, indeed, a decree of degradation had gone forth against him.
+Obviously he was of no use; but a more influential man than he ever
+was, and having the additional advantages of being at liberty, in power
+and in favour, was the "Kingwoon Menghyi." He was in effect the Prime
+Minister of the King of Burmah. His position was roughly equivalent to
+that of Bismarck in Germany, or of Gortschakoff in Russia, since, in
+addition to his internal influence, he had the chief direction of
+foreign affairs. Now this "Kingwoon Menghyi" had for a day or two been
+relaxing from the cares of State. Partly for his own pleasure, partly
+by way of example, he had laid out a beautiful garden on the low ground
+near the river. Within this garden he had the intention to build
+himself a suburban residence, which meanwhile was represented by a
+summer pavilion of teak and bamboo. He was a liberal-minded man, and it
+was a satisfaction to him that the shady walks and pleasant rose-groves
+of this garden should be enjoyed by the people of Mandalay. He was a
+reformer, this "Kingwoon Menghyi," and believed in the humanising
+effect of free access to the charms of nature. His garden laid out and
+his pavilion finished, he was celebrating the event by a series of
+<i>fêtes.</i> He was "at home" in his pavilion to everybody; bands of music
+played all day long and day after day, in the kiosks, among the young
+palm trees and the rosebushes. Mandalay, high and low, made holiday in
+the mazy walks of his garden and in an improvised theatre, wherein an
+interminable <i>pooey,</i> or Burmese drama, was being enacted before
+ever-varying and constantly appreciative audiences. Dr. Williams opined
+that it would conduce to the success of my object that we should call
+upon the Minister at his garden-house and request him to use his good
+offices in my behalf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was near noon when we reached the entrance to the garden. Merry but
+orderly sightseers thronged its alleys, and stared with wondering
+admiration at a rather attenuated jet of water which rose into the
+clear air some thirty feet above a rockwork fountain in the centre.
+Dignitaries strolled about under the stemless umbrellas like huge
+shields, with which assiduous attendants protected them from the sun;
+and were followed by posses of retainers, who prostrated themselves
+whenever their masters halted or looked round. Ladies in white jackets
+and trailing silk skirts of vivid hue were taking a leisurely airing,
+each with her demure maid behind her carrying the lacquer-ware box of
+betel-nut. As often as not the fair ones were blowing copious clouds
+from huge reed-like cheroots. Sounds of shrill music were heard in the
+distance. Walking up the central alley between the rows of palms and
+the hedges of roses, we found in the veranda a mixed crowd of laymen
+and priests, the latter distinguishable by their shaved heads and
+yellow robes. The Minister was just finishing his morning's work of
+distributing offerings to the latter, in commemoration of the opening
+of his gardens. In response to a message, he at once sent to desire
+that we should come to him. The great "shoe-question," the <i>quaestio
+vexata</i> between British officialism and Burmah officialism, did not
+trouble me. I had no official position; I wanted to gain an object. I
+have a respect for the honour of my country, but I could not bring
+myself to realise that the national honour centres in my shoes. So I
+parted with them at the top of the steps leading up into the Minister's
+pavilion, and walking on what is known as my "stocking-feet," and
+feeling rather shuffling and shabby accordingly, was ushered through a
+throng of prostrate dependents into the presence of the Menghyi. He
+came forward frankly and cordially, shook hands with a hearty smile
+with Dr. Williams and myself, and beckoned us into an inner alcove,
+carpeted with rich rugs and panelled with mirrors. Placing himself in a
+half-sitting, half-kneeling attitude which did not expose his feet, he
+beckoned to us to get down also. I own to having experienced extreme
+difficulty in keeping my feet out of sight, which was a point <i>de
+rigueur</i>; but his Excellency was not censorious. There was with him a
+secretary who had resided several years in Europe, and who spoke
+fluently English, French, and Italian. This gentleman knew London
+thoroughly, and was perfectly familiar both with the name of the <i>Daily
+News</i> and of myself. He introduced me formally to his Excellency, who,
+I ought to have mentioned, was the head of the Burmese Embassy which
+had visited Europe a few years previously. That his Excellency had some
+sort of knowledge of the political character of the <i>Daily News</i> was
+obvious from the circumstance that when its name was mentioned he
+nodded and exclaimed, "Ah! ah! Gladstone, Bright!" in tones of manifest
+approval, which was no doubt accounted for by the fact that he himself
+was a pronounced Liberal. I explained that I had come to Mandalay to
+learn as much about Burmese manners, customs, and institutions as was
+possible in four days, with intent to embody my impressions in letters
+to England; and that as the King was the chief institution of the
+country, I had a keen anxiety to see him and begged of his Excellency
+to lend me his aid toward doing so. He gave no direct reply, but
+certainly did not frown on the request. We were served with tea
+(without cream or sugar) in pretty china cups, and then the Menghyi,
+observing that we were looking at some quaint-shaped musical
+instruments at the foot of the dais, explained that they belonged to a
+band of rural performers from the Pegu district, and proposed that we
+should first hear them play and afterwards visit the theatre and
+witness the <i>pooey</i>. We assenting, he led the way from his pavilion
+through the garden to a pretty kiosk half-embosomed in foliage, and
+chairs having been brought the party sat down. We had put on our shoes
+as we quitted the dais. The Menghyi explained that it was pleasanter
+for him, as it must be for us, that we should change the manner of our
+reception from the Burmese to the European custom; and we were quite
+free to confess that we would sooner sit in chairs than squat on the
+floor. More tea was brought, and a plateful of cheroots. After we had
+sat a little while in the kiosk we were joined by the chief
+Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the Baron de Giers of Burmah, a
+jovial, corpulent, elderly gentleman who had the most wonderful
+likeness to the late Pio Nono, and who clasped his brown hands over his
+fat paunch and kicked about his plump bare brown feet in high enjoyment
+when anything that struck him as humorous was uttered. He wholly
+differed in appearance from his superior, who was a lean-faced and
+lean-figured man, grave, and indeed somewhat sad both of eye and of
+visage when his face was in repose. As we talked, our conversation
+being through the interpreting secretary, there came to the curtained
+entrance to the kiosk a very dainty little lady. I had noticed her
+previously sauntering around the garden under one of the great
+shield-like shades, with a following of serving-men and serving-women
+behind her. She greeted the Menghyi very prettily, with the most
+perfect composure, although strangers were present. She was clearly a
+great pet with the Menghyi; he took her on his knee and played with her
+long black hair, as he told her about the visitors. The little lady was
+in her twelfth year, and was the daughter of a colleague and a relative
+of the Menghyi. She had an olive oval face, with lovely dark eyes, like
+the eyes of a deer. She wore a tiara of feathery white blossoms. In her
+ears were rosettes of chased red gold. Round her throat was a necklace
+of a double row of large pearls. Her fingers&mdash;I regret to say her nails
+were not very clean&mdash;were loaded with rings set with great diamonds of
+exceptional sparkle and water; one stone in particular must have been
+worth many thousands of pounds. She wore a jacket of white silk, and
+round her loins was girt a gay silken robe that trailed about her bare
+feet as she walked. She shook hands with us with a pretty shyness and
+immediately helped herself to a cheroot, affably accepting a light from
+mine. The Menghyi told us she was a great scholar&mdash;could read and write
+with facility, and had accomplishments to boot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time the provincial band had taken its place under one of the
+windows of the kiosk, and it presently struck up. Its music was not
+pretty. There were in the strange weird strain suggestions of gongs,
+bagpipes, penny whistles, and the humble tom-tom of Bengal. The
+gentleman who performed on an instrument which seemed a hybrid between
+a flute and a French horn, occasionally arrested his instrumental music
+to favour us with vocal strains, but he failed to compete successfully
+with the cymbals. I do not think the Menghyi was enraptured by the
+music of the strollers from Pegu, for he presently asked us whether we
+were ready to go to the <i>pooey</i>. He again led the way through a garden,
+passing in one corner of it a temporary house of which a company of
+Burmese nuns, short-haired, pallid-faced, unhappy-looking women, were
+in possession; and passing through a gate in the wicker-work fence
+ushered us into the "state-box" of the improvised theatre. There is
+very little labour required to construct a theatre in Burmah. Over a
+framework of bamboo poles stretch a number of squares of matting as a
+protection from the sun. Lay some more down in the centre as a flooring
+for the performers. Tie a few branches round the central bamboo to
+represent a forest, the perpetual set-scene of a Burmese drama; and the
+house is ready. The performers act and dance in the central square laid
+with matting. A little space on one side is reserved as a dressing and
+green room for the actresses; a similar space on the other side serves
+the turn of the actors; and then come the spectators crowding in on all
+four sides of the square. It is an orderly and easily managed audience;
+it may be added an easily amused audience. The youngsters are put or
+put themselves in front and squat down; the grown people kneel or stand
+behind. Our "state-box" was merely a raised platform laid with carpets
+and cushions, from which as we sat we looked over the heads of the
+throng squatting under and in front of us. Of the drama I cannot say
+that I carried away with me particularly clear impressions. True, I
+only saw a part of it&mdash;it was to last till the following morning; but
+long before I left the plot to me had become bewilderingly involved.
+The opening was a ballet; of that at least I am certain. There were six
+lady dancers and six gentlemen ditto. The ladies were arrayed in
+splendour, with tinsel tiaras, necklaces, and bracelets, gauzy jackets
+and waving scarfs; and with long, light clinging silken robes, of which
+there was at least a couple of yards on the "boards" about their feet.
+They were old, they were ugly, they leered fiendishly; their faces were
+plastered with powder in a ghastly fashion, and their coquetry behind
+their fans was the acme of caricature. But my pen halts when I would
+describe the gentlemen dancers. I believe that in reality they were not
+meant to represent fallen humanity at all; but were intended to
+personify <i>nats,</i> the spirits or princes of the air of Burmese
+mythology. They carried on their heads pagodas of tinsel and coloured
+glass that towered imposingly aloft. They were arrayed in tight-bodiced
+coats with aprons before and behind of fantastic outline, resembling
+the wings of dragons and griffins, and these coats were an incrusted
+mass of spangles and pieces of coloured glass. Underneath a skirt of
+tartan silk was fitfully visible. Their brown legs and feet were bare.
+The expression of their faces was solemn, not to say lugubrious&mdash;one
+performer had a most whimsical resemblance to Mr. Toole when he is sunk
+in an abyss of dramatic woe. They realised the responsibilities of
+their position, and there were moments when these seemed too many for
+them. The orchestra, taken as a whole, was rather noisy; but it
+comprised one instrument, the "bamboo harmonicon," which deserves to be
+known out of Burmah because of its sweetness and range of tone. There
+were lots of "go" in the music, and every now and then one detected a
+kind of echo of a tune not unfamiliar in other climes. One's ear seemed
+to assure one that <i>Madame Angot</i> had been laid under contribution to
+tickle the ears of a Mandalay audience, yet how could this be? The
+explanation was that the instrumentalists, occasionally visiting
+Thayet-myo or Rangoon, had listened there to the strains of our
+military bands, and had adapted these to the Burmese orchestra in some
+deft inscrutable manner, written music being unknown in the musical
+world of Burmah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day the Kingwoon Menghyi took the wholly unprecedented step of
+inviting to dinner the British Resident, his suite, and his
+visitor&mdash;myself. Mr. Shaw accepted the invitation, and I considered
+myself specially fortunate in being a participator in a species of
+intercourse at once so novel, and to all seeming so auspicious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About sundown the Residency party, joined <i>en route</i> by Dr. Williams,
+rode down to the entrance to the gardens. Here we were warmly received
+by the English-speaking secretary, and by the jovial bow-windowed
+minister who so much resembled the late Pio Nono. We were escorted to
+the verandah of the pavilion, where the Menghyi himself stood waiting
+to greet us, and were ushered up to the broad, raised, carpeted
+platform which may be styled the drawing-room. Here was a semicircle of
+chairs. On our way to these, a long row of squatting Burmans was
+passed. As the Resident approached, the Menghyi gave the word, and they
+promptly stood erect in line. He explained that they were the superior
+officers of the army quartered in the capital&mdash;generals, he called
+them&mdash;whom he had asked to meet us. Of these officers one commanded the
+eastern guard of the Palace, the other the western; two others were
+aides-de-camp after a fashion. Just as the Menghyi and his subordinate
+colleagues represented the Ministry, so these military people
+represented the Court. The former was the moderate constitutional
+element of the gathering; the latter the "jingo" or personal government
+element, for the Burmese Court was reactionary, and those military
+sprigs were of the personal suite of the King and were understood to
+abet him in his falling away from the constitutional promise with which
+his reign began. Their presence rendered the occasion all the more
+significant. That they were deputed from the Palace to attend and watch
+events was pretty certain, and indeed the two aides went away
+immediately after dinner, their excuse being that his Majesty was
+expecting their personal attendance. After a little while of waiting,
+the <i>mauvais quart d'heure</i> having the edge of its awkwardness taken
+off by a series of introductions, dinner was announced, and the
+Menghyi, followed by the Resident, led the way into an adjoining
+dining-room. Good old Pio Nono, who, I ought to have said, had been
+with the Menghyi a member of the Burmese Embassy to Europe, jauntily
+offered me his arm, and gave me to understand that he did so in
+compliance with English fashion. The Resident sat on the right of the
+Menghyi, I was on his left; the rest of the party, to the number of
+about fifteen, took their places indiscriminately; Mr. Andrino, an
+Italian in Burmese employ, being at the head of the table, Dr. Williams
+at the foot. Our meal was a perfectly English dinner, served and eaten
+in the English fashion. The Burmese had taken lessons in the nice
+conduct of a knife and fork, and fed themselves in the most
+irreproachably conventional manner, carefully avoiding the use of a
+knife with their fish. Pio Nono, who sat opposite the Menghyi, tucked
+his napkin over his ample paunch and went in with a will. He was in a
+most hilarious mood, and taxed his memory for reminiscences of his
+visit to England. These were not expressed with useless expenditure of
+verbiage, nor did they flow in unbroken sequence. It was as if he dug
+in his memory with a spade, and found every now and then a gem in the
+shape of a name, which he brandished aloft in triumph. He kept up an
+intermittent and disconnected fire all through dinner, with an interval
+between each discharge, "White-bait!" "Lord Mayor!" "Fishmongers!"
+"Cremorne!" "Crystal Palace!" "Edinburgh!" "Dunrobin!" "Newcastle!"
+"Windsor!"&mdash;each name followed by a chuckle and a succession of nods.
+The Menghyi divided his talk between the Resident and myself. He told
+me that of all the men he had met in England his favourite was the late
+Duke of Sutherland; adding that the Duke was a nobleman of great and
+striking eloquence, a trait which I had not been in the habit of
+regarding as markedly characteristic of his Grace. He spoke with much
+warmth of a pleasant visit he had paid to Dunrobin, and said he should
+be heartily glad if the Duke would come to Burmah and give him an
+opportunity of returning his hospitality. Here Pio Nono broke in with
+one of his periodical exclamations. This time it was "Lady Dudley." Of
+her, and of her late husband, the Menghyi then recalled his
+recollections, and if more courtly tributes have been paid to her
+ladyship's charms and grace, I question if any have been heartier and
+more enthusiastic than was the appreciation of this Burmese dignitary.
+The soldier element was at first somewhat stiff, but as the dinner
+proceeded the generals warmed in conversation with the Resident. But
+the aides were obstinately supercilious, and only partially thawed in
+acknowledgment of compliments on the splendour of their jewelry.
+Functionaries attached to the personal suite of his Majesty wore huge
+ear-gems as a distinguishing mark. The aides had these in blazing
+diamonds, and were good enough to take out the ornaments and hand them
+round. The civil ministers wore no ornaments and their dress was
+studiously plain. We were during dinner entertained by music,
+instrumental and vocal, sedulously modulated to prevent conversation
+from being drowned. The meal lasted quite two hours, and when it was
+finished the Menghyi led the way to coffee in one of the kiosks of the
+garden. I should have said that no wine was on the table at dinner. The
+Burmese by religion are total abstainers, and their guests were willing
+to follow their example for the time and to fall in with their
+prejudices. After coffee we were ushered into the drawing-room, and
+listened to a concert. The only solo-vocalist was the prima donna <i>par
+excellence,</i> Mdlle. Yeendun Male. The burden of her songs was love, but
+I could not succeed in having the specific terms translated. Then she
+sang an ode in praise of the Resident, and gracefully accepted his
+pecuniary appreciation of her performance. Pio Nono then beckoned to
+her to flatter me at close quarters; but, mistaking the index, she
+addressed herself to the Residency chaplain in strains of hyperbolical
+encomium. The mistake having been set right, much to the reverend
+gentleman's relief, the songstress overpowered my sensitive modesty by
+impassioned requests in verse that I should delay my departure; that,
+if I could not do so, I should take her away with me; and that, if this
+were beyond my power, I should at least remember her when I was far
+away. The which was an allegory and cost me twenty rupees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the good-nights were being said, the Menghyi gratified me by the
+information that the King had given his consent to my presentation, and
+that I was to have the opportunity next morning of "Reverencing the
+Golden Feet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Royal Palace occupied the central space of the city of Mandalay. It
+was almost entirely of woodwork, and was not only the counterpart of
+the palace which Major Phayre saw at Amarapoora, but the identical
+palace itself, conveyed piecemeal from its previous site and re-erected
+here. Its outermost enclosure consisted of a massive teak palisading,
+beyond which all round was a wide clear space laid out as an esplanade,
+the farther margin of which was edged by the houses of ministers and
+court officials. The Palace enclosure was a perfect square, each face
+about 370 yards. The main entrance, the only one in general use, was in
+the centre of the eastern face, almost opposite to which, across the
+esplanade, was the <i>Yoom-daù</i>, or High Court. This gate was called the
+<i>Yive-daù-yoo-Taga</i>, or the Royal Gate of the Chosen, because the
+charge of it was entrusted to chosen troops. As I passed through it on
+my way to be presented to his Majesty, the aspect of the "chosen"
+troops was not imposing. They wore no uniform, and differed in no
+perceptible item from the common coolies of the outside streets. They
+were lying about on charpoys and on the ground, chewing betel or
+smoking cheroots, and there was not even the pretence of there being
+sentries under arms. Some rows of old flintlock guns stood in racks in
+the gateway, rusty, dusty, and untended; they might have been untouched
+since the last insurrection. Crossing an intermediate space overgrown
+with shrubbery, we passed through a high gateway cut in the inner brick
+wall of the enclosure; and there confronted us the great Myenan of
+Mandalay&mdash;the Palace of the "Sun-descended Monarch." The first
+impression was disappointing, for the whole front was covered with
+gold-leaf and tawdry tinsel-work which had become weather-worn and
+dingy. But there was no time now to halt, inspect details, and rectify
+perchance first impressions. A message came that the Kingwoon Menghyi,
+my host of the previous evening&mdash;substantially the Prime Minister of
+Burmah, desired that we&mdash;that was to say, Dr. Williams, my guide,
+philosopher, and friend, and myself&mdash;should wait upon him in the
+<i>Hlwot-daù</i>, or Hall of the Supreme Council, before entering the Palace
+itself. The <i>Hlwot-daù</i> was a detached structure on the right front of
+the Palace as one entered by the eastern gate. It was the Downing
+Street of Mandalay. Its sides were quite open, and its fantastic roof
+of grotesquely carved teak plastered with gilding, painting, and
+tinsel, was supported on massive teak pillars painted a deep red.
+Taking off our shoes we ascended to the platform of the <i>Hlwot-daù</i>,
+where we found the Menghyi surrounded by a crowd of minor officials and
+suitors squatting on their stomachs and elbows, with their legs under
+them and their hands clasped in front of their bent heads. The Menghyi
+came forward several paces to meet us, conducted us to his mat, and
+sitting down himself and bidding us do the same, explained that as it
+was with him a busy day, he would not be able personally to present me
+to the King as he had hoped to have done, but that he had made all
+arrangements and had delegated the charge of us to our old friend whom
+I have ventured to call "Pio Nono." That corpulent and jovial worthy
+made his appearance at this moment along with his English-speaking
+subordinate, and with cordial acknowledgments and farewells to the
+Menghyi we left the <i>Hlwot-daù</i> under their guidance. They led us along
+the front of the Palace, passing the huge gilded cannon that flanked on
+either side the central steps leading up into the throne-room; and
+turning round the northern angle of the Palace front, conducted us to
+the Hall of the <i>Bya-dyt</i>, or Household Council. We had to leave our
+shoes at the foot of the steps leading up to it. The <i>Bya-dyt</i> was a
+mere open shed; its lofty roof borne up by massive teak timbers. What
+splendour had once been its in the matter of gilding and tinsel was
+greatly faded. The gold-leaf had been worn off the pillars by constant
+friction, and the place appeared to be used as a lumber-room as well as
+a council-chamber. On the front of one of a pile of empty cases was
+visible, in big black letters, the legend, "Peek, Frean, and Co.,
+London." State documents reposed in the receptacle once occupied by
+biscuits. Clerks lay all around on the rough dusty boards, writing with
+agate stylets on tablets of black papier-mâche; and there was a
+constant flux and reflux of people of all sorts, who appeared to have
+nothing to do and who were doing it with a sedulously lounging
+deliberation that seemed to imply a gratifying absence of arrears of
+official work. We sat down here for a while along with Pio Nono and his
+assistant, who busied himself in dictating to a secretary a description
+of myself and a catalogue of my presents to be read by the herald to
+his Majesty when I should be presented. Then Pio Nono went away and
+presently came back, saying that it was intended to bestow upon me some
+souvenirs of Mandalay, and that to admit of the preparation of these
+the audience would not take place for an hour or so. He invited us in
+the meantime to inspect the public apartments of the Palace itself and
+the objects of interest in the Palace enclosure. So we got up, and
+still without our shoes walked through the suite leading to the
+principal throne-room or great hall of audience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were simply a series of minor throne-rooms. The first one in
+order from the private apartments was close to the <i>Bya-dyt</i>. It must
+be borne in mind that the whole suite, including the great audience
+hall, were not rooms at all in our sense of the word. They were simply
+open-roofed spaces, the roofs gabled, spiked, and carved into fantastic
+shapes, laden with dingy gold-leaf garishly picked out with glaring
+colours and studded with bits of stained glass; the roofs, or rather I
+should say, the one continuous roof, supported on massive deep red
+pillars of teak-wood. The whole palace was raised from the ground on a
+brick platform some 10 feet high. The partitions between the several
+walls were simply skirtings of planking covered with gold-leaf. The
+whole palace seemed an armoury. Some ten or twelve thousand stand of
+obsolete muskets were ranged along these partitions and crammed into
+the anteroom of the throne-room proper. The whole suite was dingy,
+dirty, and uncared-for; but on a great day, with the gilding renewed,
+carpets spread on the rugged boards, banners waving, and the courtiers
+in full dress, no doubt the effect would have been materially improved.
+The vista from the throne of the great hall of audience looked right
+through the columned arcade to the "Gate of the Chosen"; and that we
+might imagine the scene more vividly, we considered ourselves as on our
+way to Court on one of the great days, and going back to the gate again
+began our pilgrimage anew. The pillared front of the Palace stretched
+before us raised on the terrace, its total length 260 feet. Looking
+between the two gilded cannon, we saw at the foot of the central steps
+a low gate of carved and gilded wood. That gate, it seemed, was never
+opened except to the King&mdash;none save he might use those central steps.
+Raising our eyes we looked right up the vista of the hall to the lofty
+throne raised against the gilded partition that closed at once the
+vista and the hall. We had been looking down the great central nave, as
+it were, toward the west gate, in the place of which was the throne.
+But along the eastern front of the terrace ran a long colonnade, whose
+wings formed transepts at right angles to the nave. The throne-room was
+shaped like the letter T, the throne being at the base of the letter
+and the cross-bar representing the colonnade. Entering at the extremity
+of one of these, we traversed it to the centre and then faced the nave.
+The throne was exactly before us, at the end of the pillared vista.
+Five steps led up to the dais. Its form was peculiar, contracting by a
+gradation of steps from the base upwards to mid-height, and again
+expanding to the top, on which was a cushioned ledge such as is seen in
+the box of a theatre. On the platform, which now was bare planks, the
+King and Queen on a great reception day would sit on gorgeous carpets.
+The entrance was through gilded doors from a staircase in the ante-room
+beyond. There was a rack of muskets round the foot of the throne, and
+just outside the rails a half-naked soldier lay snoring. Our Burman
+companion assured us that seeing the throne-room now in its condition
+of dismantled tawdriness, I could form no idea of the fine effect when
+King and Court in all their splendour were gathered in it on a
+ceremonial day. I tried to accept his assurances, but it was not easy
+to imagine such forlorn dinginess changed into dazzling splendour. Just
+over the throne, and in the centre of the Palace and of the city, rose
+in gracefully diminishing stages of fantastic woodcarving a tapering
+<i>phya-sath</i> or spire similar to those surmounting sacred buildings, and
+crowned with the gilded <i>Htee</i>, an honour which royalty alone shared
+with ecclesiastical sanctity. The spire, like everything else, had been
+gilt, but it was now sadly tarnished and had lost much of its
+brilliancy of effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having looked at the hall of audience we strolled through the Palace
+esplanade. A wall parted this off from the private apartments and the
+pleasure grounds occupying the western section of the Palace enclosure.
+A series of carved and gilded gables roofed with glittering zinc plates
+was visible over the wall. The grounds were said to be well planted
+with flowering shrubs and fruit trees and to contain lakelets and
+rockeries. Built against the outer wall and facing the enclosed space
+were barracks for soldiers and gun sheds. The accommodation was as
+primitive as are the weapons, and that was saying a good deal. Pio Nono
+led us across to a big wooden house, scarcely at all ornamented, which
+was the everyday abode of the "Lord White Elephant." His "Palace," or
+state apartment, was not pointed out to us. His lordship, in so far as
+his literal claim to be styled a white elephant, was an impostor of the
+deepest dye and a very grim and ugly impostor to boot. He was a great,
+lean, brown, flat-sided brute, his ears, forehead, and trunk mottled
+with a dingy cream colour. But he belonged all the same to the lordly
+race. "White elephants" were a science which had a literature of its
+own. According to this science, it was not the whiteness that was the
+criterion of a "white elephant." So much, indeed, was the reverse, that
+a "white elephant" according to the science may be a brown elephant in
+actual colour. The points were the mottling of the face, the shape and
+colour of the eyes, the position of the ears, and the length of the
+tail. Certainly the "Lord White Elephant" had, to the most cursory
+observation, a peculiar and abnormal eye. The iris was yellow, with a
+reddish outer annulus and a small, clear, black pupil. It was
+essentially a shifty, treacherous eye, and I noticed that everybody
+took particularly good care to keep out of range of his lordship's
+trunk and tusks. The latter were superb&mdash;long, massive, and smooth,
+their tips quite meeting far in front of his trunk. His tail was much
+longer than in the Indian elephants, and was tipped with a bunch of
+long, straight, black hair. Altogether he was an unwholesome,
+disagreeable-looking brute, who munched his grass morosely and had no
+elephantine geniality. He was but a youngster&mdash;the great, old, really
+white elephant which Yule describes had died some time back, after an
+incumbency dating from 1806. The "White Elephant" was never ridden now,
+but the last King but one used frequently to ride its predecessor,
+acting as his own mahout. We did not see his trappings, as our visit
+was paid unawares when he was quite in undress; but Yule says that when
+arrayed in all his splendour his head-stall was of fine red cloth,
+studded with great rubies, interspersed with valuable diamonds. When
+caparisoned he wore on his forehead, like other Burmese dignitaries
+including the King himself, a golden plate inscribed with his titles
+and a gold crescent set with circles of large gems between the eyes.
+Large silver tassels hung in front of his ears, and he was harnessed
+with bands of gold and crimson set freely with large bosses of pure
+gold. He was a regular "estate of the realm," having a <i>woon</i> or
+minister of his own, four gold umbrellas, the white umbrellas which
+were peculiar to royalty, with a large suite of attendants and an
+appanage to furnish him with maintenance wherewithal. When in state his
+attendants had to leave their shoes behind them when they enter his
+Palace. In a shed adjacent to that occupied by the "Lord White
+Elephant" stood his lady wife, a browner, plumper, and generally more
+amiable-looking animal. Contrary to universal experience elsewhere,
+elephants in Burmah breed in captivity, but this union was unfertile
+and the race of "Lord White Elephants" had to be maintained <i>ab extra</i>.
+The so-called white elephants are sports of nature, and are of no
+special breed. They are called Albinoes, and are more plentiful in the
+Siam region than in Burmah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time the hour was approaching that had been fixed for the
+presentation, and we returned to the <i>Bya-dyt</i>. The summons came almost
+immediately. Ushered by Pio Nono and accompanied by several courtiers,
+we traversed some open passages and finally reached a kind of pagoda or
+kiosk within the private gardens of the Palace. The King was not to
+appear in state, and this place had been selected by reason of its
+absolute informality. There was no ornament anywhere, not so much as a
+speck of gilding or an atom of tinsel. We solemnly squatted down on a
+low platform covered with grass matting, through which pierced the teak
+columns supporting the lofty roof. A space had been reserved for us in
+the centre, on either side of which, their front describing a
+semicircle, a number of courtiers lay crouching on their stomachs but
+placidly puffing cheroots. On our left were two or three superior
+military officers of the Palace guard, distinguishable only by their
+diamond ear-jewels. My presents&mdash;they were trivial: an opera-glass, a
+few boxes of chocolate, and a work-box&mdash;were placed before me as I sat
+down. There were other offerings to right and to left of them&mdash;a huge
+bunch of cabbages, a basket of <i>Kohl-rabi</i>, and three baskets of
+orchids. In the clear space in front I observed also a satin robe lined
+with fur, a couple of silver boxes, and a ruby ring. These, I imagined,
+were also for presentation, but it presently appeared they were his
+Majesty's return gifts for myself. Before us, at a higher elevation,
+there was a plain wooden railing with a gap in the centre, and the
+railing enclosed a sort of recess that looked like a garden-house. Over
+a ledge where the gap was, had been thrown a rich crimson and gold
+trapping that hung low in front, and on the ledge were a crimson
+cushion, a betel box, and a tall oval spittoon in gold set with pearls.
+A few minutes passed, beguiled by conversation in a low tone, when six
+guards armed with double-barrelled firearms of very diverse patterns,
+mounted the platform from the left side and took their places on either
+side, squatting down. The guards wore black silk jackets lined with fur
+and with scarlet kerchiefs bound round their heads. Then a door opened
+in the left side of the garden-house, and there entered first an old
+gaunt beardless man&mdash;the chief eunuch&mdash;closely followed by the King,
+otherwise unattended. His Majesty came on with a quick step, and sat
+down, resting his right arm on the crimson cushion on the ledge in the
+centre of the railing. He wore a white silk jacket, and a <i>loonghi</i> or
+petticoat robe of rich yellow and green silk. His only ornaments were
+his diamond ear-jewels. As he entered all bent low, and when he had
+seated himself a herald lying on his stomach read aloud my credentials.
+The literal translation was as follows:&mdash;"So-and-so, a great newspaper
+teacher of the <i>Daily News</i> of London, tenders to his Most Glorious
+Excellent Majesty, Lord of the Ishaddan, King of Elephants, master of
+many white elephants, lord of the mines of gold, silver, rubies, amber,
+and the noble serpentine, Sovereign of the empires of Thunaparanta and
+Tampadipa, and other great empires and countries, and of all the
+umbrella-wearing chiefs, the supporter of religion, the Sun-descended
+Monarch, arbiter of life, and great, righteous King, King of kings, and
+possessor of boundless dominions, and supreme wisdom, the following
+presents." The reading was intoned in a uniform high recitative,
+strongly resembling that used when our Church Service is intoned; and
+the long-drawn "Phya-a-a-a-a" (my lord) which concluded it, added to
+the resemblance, as it came in exactly like the "Amen" of the Liturgy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reading over, the return presents were picked up by an official and
+bundled over to me without any ceremony, the King meanwhile looking on
+in silence, chewing betel and smoking a cheroot. Several of the
+courtiers were following his example in the latter respect. Presently
+the King spoke in a distinct, deliberate voice&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who is he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Williams acting as my introducer, replied in Burmese&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A writer of the <i>Daily News</i> of London, your Majesty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why does he come?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To see your Majesty's country, and in the hope of being permitted to
+reverence the Golden Feet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whence does he come?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From the British army in Afghanistan, engaged in war against the
+Prince of Cabul."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And does the war prosper for my friends the English?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He reports that it has done so greatly and that the Prince of Cabul is
+a fugitive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where does Cabul lie in relation to Kashmir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Between Kashmir and Persia, in a very mountainous and cold region."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There had been pauses more or less long between each of these
+questions; the King obviously reflecting what he should ask next; then
+there was a longer, and, indeed, a wearisome pause. Then the King spoke
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where is the Kingwoon Menghyi?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In Court, your Majesty," replied Pio Nono. "It is a Court day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is well. I wish the Ministers to make every day a Court day, and to
+labour hard to give prompt justice to suitors, so that there be no
+complaint of arrears."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this laudable injunction, his Majesty rose and walked away, and
+the audience was over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The King of Burmah, when I saw him, was little over twenty, and he had
+been barely four months on the throne. He was a tall, well-built,
+personable young man, very fair in complexion, with a good forehead,
+clear, steady eyes, and a firm but pleasant mouth. His chin was full
+and somewhat sensual-looking, but withal he was a manly, frank-faced
+young fellow, and was said to have gained self-possession and lost the
+early nervous awkwardness of his new position with great rapidity.
+Circumstances had even then occurred to prove that he was very far from
+destitute of a will of his own, and that he had no favour for any
+diminution of the Royal Prerogative. As we passed out of the Palace
+after the interview a house in the Palace grounds was pointed out to
+me, within which had been imprisoned in squalid misery ever since the
+mortal illness of the previous King, a number of the members of the
+Burmese blood royal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>P.S.</i>&mdash;A few days after my visit, all these unfortunately were
+massacred with fiendish refinements of cruelty.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap03"></a>
+GERMAN WAR PRAYERS 1870-71
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+In the multifarious ramifications of their military organisation the
+Germans by no means neglect religion. Each army corps is partitioned
+into two divisions and each division has its field chaplain. In those
+corps in which there is a large admixture of the Catholic element,
+there is a cleric of that denomination to each division as well as a
+Protestant chaplain. The former is known as a <i>Feldgeistliger</i>, a word
+which in itself means nothing more distinctive than a "field
+ecclesiastic," while the Protestant chaplain has usually the title of
+<i>Feldpastor</i>. Of the priest I can say but little. The pastors, for the
+most part, are young and energetic men. They may be divided into two
+classes: those who have at home no stated charges, and those who have
+temporarily left their charge for the duration of the war. The former
+generally are regularly posted to a division; the latter, equally
+recognised but not perhaps quite so official, are chiefly to be found
+in the lazarettoes, in the battlefield villages whither the wounded are
+borne to have their fresh wounds roughly seen to, and on the
+battlefield itself. Not that the regular divisional chaplains do not
+face the dangers of the battlefield with devoted courage; but their
+duties, in the nature of their special avocation, lie more among the
+hale and sound who yet stand up before an enemy, than with the poor
+fellows who have been stricken down. Earnestness and devotion are the
+chief characteristics of those pastors. It struck me that their
+education was not of a very high order&mdash;certainly not on a par with
+that of the average regimental officer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>Feldpastor</i> wears an armlet of white and light purple to denote
+his calling; but indeed it is not easy to mistake him for anything else
+than he is. He has his quarters with the Divisional General, and
+preaches whenever and wherever it is convenient to get a congregation.
+A church is passed on the wayside, a regiment halts and defiles into
+it, and the pastor mounts the steps of the altar and holds forth
+therefrom for half an hour. There is a quiet meadow near a village, in
+which a brigade is lying. Looking over the hedge, you may see in the
+meadow a hollow square of helmeted men with the general and the pastor
+in the centre, the latter speaking simple, fervent words to the
+fighting men. When, as during the siege of Paris, a division occupies a
+certain district for a long time, you may chance&mdash;let me say on a New
+Year's night&mdash;on the village church all ablaze with light. The garrison
+have decorated the gaunt old Norman arches with laurels and evergreens;
+they have cleared out the market-vendor's stock of tallow-dips to
+illuminate the church wherewithal. The band has been practising the
+glorious <i>Nun Danket alle Gott</i> for a week; the vocalists of the
+regiments have been combining to perfect themselves in part-singing.
+The gorgeous trumpery of Roman Catholic church paraphernalia, unheeded
+as it is, looks strangely out of place and contrasts curiously with the
+simple Protestant forms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The church is crowded with a denser congregation than ever its walls
+contained before. The <i>Oberst</i> sits down with the under-officer; the
+general gropes for half a chair between two stalwart <i>Kerle</i> of the
+line. Hymn-cards are distributed as at the Brighton volunteer service
+in the Pavilion on Easter Sunday. As the pastor enters and takes his
+way up the altar steps&mdash;he goes not to the pulpit&mdash;there bursts out a
+volume of vocal devotional harmony, which is so pent in the aisles and
+under the arches that the sound seems almost to become a substance.
+Then the pastor delivers a prayer and there is another hymn. He
+enunciates no text when he next begins to speak; he chops not a subject
+up into heads, as the grizzled major who listens to him would partition
+out his battalion into companies. There is no "thirteenthly and lastly"
+in his simple address. But he gets nearer the hearts of his hearers
+than if he assailed them with a battery of logic with multitudinous
+texts for ammunition. For he speaks of the people at home, in the quiet
+corners of the Fatherland; he tells the soldier in language that is of
+his profession, how the fear of the Lord is a better arm than the
+truest-shooting <i>Zündnadelgewehr</i>; how preparedness for death and for
+what follows after death, is a part of his accoutrement that the good
+soldier must ever bear about with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Herr Pastor has other functions than to preach to the living. The day
+after a battle, his horse must be very tired before the stable-door is
+reached. The burial parties are excavating great pits all over the
+field, while others pick up the dead in the vicinity and bear them unto
+the brink of the common grave. Herr Pastor cannot be ubiquitous. If he
+is not near when the hole is full, the <i>Feldwebel</i> who commands the
+party bares his head, and mutters, "In the name of God, Amen," as he
+strews the first handful of mould on the dead&mdash;it may be on friends as
+well as on foes. If the pastor can reach the brink of the pit, it is
+his to say the few words that mark the recognition of the fact that
+those lying stark and grim below him are not as the beasts that perish.
+The Germans have no set funeral service, and if they had, there would
+be no time for it here. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
+in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, <i>durch
+unsern Herr Jesu Christe</i>. Amen;" words so familiar, yet never heard
+without a new thrill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are slightly uncouth in several matters, these <i>Feldpastoren</i>, and
+would not quite suit sundry metropolitan charges one wots of. They do
+not wear gloves, nor are they addicted to scent on their
+pocket-handkerchiefs. Their boots are too often like boats, and when
+they are mounted there is frequently visible an interval of more or
+less dusky stocking between the boot-top and the trouser-leg. They
+slobber stertorously in the consumption of soup, and cut their meat
+with a square-elbowed energy of determination that might make one think
+that they had vanquished the Evil One and had him down there under
+their knife and fork. But they are simple-hearted and valiant servants
+of their Master. Who was it, in the bullet-storm that swept the slope
+of Wörth, from facing which the stout hearts of the fighting men
+blenched and quailed, that there walked quietly into it, to speak words
+of peace and consolation to the dying men whom that terrible storm had
+beaten down? A smooth-faced stripling with the <i>Feldpastor's</i> badge on
+his arm, the gallant Christian son of an eminent Prussian divine, Dr.
+Krummacher of Berlin. At one of the battles (I forget which) a pastor
+came to fill a grave, not to consecrate it. Shall I ever forget the
+unswerving hurry to the front of Kummer's divisional chaplain when the
+<i>Landwehrleute</i>, his flock, were going down in their ranks as they held
+with stubbornness unto death the villages in front of Maizières les
+Metz? Let the <i>Feldpastoren</i> slobber and welcome, say I, while they
+gild their slobbering with such devotion as this! But there must be
+times and seasons when Herr Pastor is not at hand; nor can the
+ministration of any pastor stand in the stead of private prayer. The
+German soldier's simple needs in this matter are not disregarded. Each
+man is served out when he gets his kit with a tiny gray volume less
+than quarter the size of this page, the title of which is <i>Gebetbuch
+für Soldaten</i>&mdash;the Soldier's Prayer-Book. It is supplied from the
+Berlin depôt of the Head Society for the Promotion of Christian
+Knowledge in Germany, and it is a compendium of simple war prayers for
+almost every conceivable situation, with one significant
+exception&mdash;there is no prayer in defeat. The word is blotted out of the
+German war vocabulary. It has been said that the belief in the divinity
+of our Saviour is rapidly on the wane in Germany. If this war
+prayer-book avails aught, the taint of the heresy may not enter into
+the army.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Germany is at war. While Paris is frantically shouting <i>A Berlin!</i>,
+while all Germany is singing and meaning <i>Die Wacht am Rhein</i>, Moltke's
+order goes forth into the towns and villages of the Fatherland for the
+mobilisation of the Reserves. Hans was singing <i>Die Wacht am Rhein</i>
+last night over his beer; but there is little heart for song left in
+him as he looks from that paper on the deal table into Gretchen's face.
+She is weeping bitterly as her children cling around her, too young to
+realise the cause of their parents' sorrow. Hans rises moodily, and
+pulling down what military belongings he has not given into the arsenal
+after the last drill, falls a turning over of them abstractedly. By
+chance his hand rests upon the little gray volume, the <i>Gebetbuch für
+Soldaten</i>. It opens in his hand, and he comes and sits down by Gretchen
+and reads in a voice that chokes sometimes, the
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+PRAYER IN STRAIT AND SORROW
+</p>
+
+<p>
+O Lord Jesus Christ! let the crying and sighing of the poor come before
+Thee. Withhold not Thy countenance from the tears and beseechings of
+the woebegone. Help by Thine outstretched arm, and avert our sorrow
+from us. Awake us who are lying dead in sin and in great danger, and
+whose thoughts often wander from Thee. Let us trust with all our hearts
+that nothing can be so broad, so deep, so high, nor so arduous that Thy
+grace and favour cannot overcome it; that we so can and must be holpen
+out of every difficulty and discomfiture when Thou takest compassion
+upon us. Help us, then, through grace, and so I will praise Thee from
+now to all eternity.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Hans has bidden good-bye to Gretchen, and has kissed the children he
+may never see more. He has marched with his fellows to the depôt, and
+got his uniform and arms. The <i>Militärzug</i> has carried him to
+Kreuznach, and thence he has marched sturdily up the Nahe Valley and
+over the ridge into the Kollerthaler Wald. His last halt was at
+Puttingen, but Kameke has sent an aide back at the gallop to summon up
+all supports. The regiment stacks arms for ten minutes' breathing-time
+while the cannon-thunder is borne backward on the wind to the ears of
+the soldiers. In two hours more they will be across the French
+frontier, storming furiously up the Spicheren Berg. As Hans gropes in
+his tunic pocket for his tinder-box, the little war prayer-book somehow
+gets between his fingers. He takes it out with the pipe-light, and
+finds in its pages a prayer surely suited to the situation&mdash;the prayer
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+FOR THE OUTMARCHING
+</p>
+
+<p>
+O gracious God! I defile from out my Fatherland and from the society of
+my friends,[1] and out of the house of my father into a strange land,
+to campaign against the enemies of our king. Therefore I would cast
+myself with life and soul upon Thy divine bosom and guardianship; and I
+pray Thee, with prostrate humility, that Thou willst guide me with
+Thine eye, and overshadow me with Thy wings. Let Thine angels camp
+round about me, and Thy grace protect me in all the difficulties of the
+marches, in all camps and dangers. Give me wisdom and understanding for
+my ways and works. Give success and blessing to our ingoings and
+outcomings, so that we may do everything well, and conquer on the field
+of battle; and after victory won, turn our steps homeward as the
+heralds who announce peace. So shall we praise Thee with gladsomeness,
+O most gracious Father, for Thy dear Son's sake, Jesus Christ!
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[Footnote 1: Every now and then one comes across a German word
+untranslatable in its compact volume of expressiveness. How weakly am I
+forced to render <i>Freundschaft</i> here! "Outmarching," though a literal,
+is a poor equivalent for <i>Ausmarsch</i>. In the old Scottish language we
+find an exact correspondent for <i>aus</i>; the "Furthmarch" gives the idea
+to a hair's-breadth.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is the morning of Gravelotte. King Wilhelm has issued his laconic
+order for the day, and all know how bloody and arduous is the task
+before his host. The French tents are visible away in the distance
+yonder by the auberge of St. Hubert, and already the explosion of an
+occasional shell gives earnest of the wrath to come. The regiment in
+which Hans is a private has marched to Caulre Farm, and is halted for
+breakfast there before beginning the real battle by attacking the
+French outpost stronghold in Verneville. The tough ration beef sticks
+in poor Hans' throat. He is no coward, but he thinks of Gretchen and
+the children, and the Reserve-man draws aside into the thicket to
+commune with his own thoughts. He has already found comfort in the
+little gray volume, and so he pulls it out again to search for
+consolation in this hour of gloom. He finds what he wants in the prayer
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+FOR THE BATTLE
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord of Sabaoth, with Thee is no distinction in helping in great things
+or in small. We are going now, at the orders of our commanders, to do
+battle in the field with our enemies. Let us give proof of Thy might
+and honour. Help us, Lord our God, for we trust in Thee, and in Thy
+name we go forth against the enemy. Lord Christ, Thou hast said, "I am
+with thee in the hour of need; I will pull thee out, and place thee in
+an honourable place." Bethink Thee, Lord, of Thy word, and remember Thy
+promise. Come to our aid when we are sore pressed, when the close
+grapple is imminent, when the enemy overmatches us, and we have been
+surrounded by them. Stand by us in need, for the aid of man is of no
+avail. Through Thee we will vanquish our enemies, and in Thy name we
+will tread under the foot those who have set themselves in array
+against us. They trust in their own might, and are puffed up with
+pride; but we put our trust in the Almighty God, who, without one
+stroke of the sword, canst smite into the dust not only those who are
+now formed up against us, but also the whole world. God, we await on
+Thy goodness. Blessed are those who put their trust in Thee. Help us,
+that our enemies may not get the better of us, and wax triumphant in
+their might; but strike disorder into their ranks, and smite them
+before our eyes, so that we may overwhelm them. Show us Thy goodness,
+Thou Saviour, of those who trust in Thee. Art Thou not God the Lord
+unto us who are called after Thy name? So be gracious unto us, and take
+us&mdash;life and soul&mdash;under the protection of Thy grace. And since Thou
+only knowest what is good for us, so we commend ourselves unto Thee
+without reserve, be it for life or for death. Let us live comforted;
+let us fight and endure comforted; let us die comforted, for Jesus
+Christ, Thy dear Son's sake. Amen.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Alvensleben is sitting on his horse on the little hillock behind the
+hamlet of Flavigny, pulling his gray moustache, and praying that he
+might see the <i>Spitze</i> of Barneckow's division show itself on the edge
+of the plain up from out the glen of Gorze. Rheinbaben's cavalry are
+half of them down, the other half of them are rallying for another
+charge to save the German centre. Hans is in the wood to the north of
+Tronville, helping to keep back Leboeuf from swamping the left flank.
+The shells from the French artillery on the Roman Road are crashing
+into the wood. The bark is jagged by the slashes of venomous chassepot
+bullets. Twice has Ladmirault come raging down from the heights of
+Bruville, twice has he been sent staggering back. Now, with strong
+reinforcements, he is preparing for a third assault. Meanwhile there is
+a lull in the battle. Hans, grimed and powder-blackened, may let the
+breech of his <i>Zündnadelgewehr</i> cool and may wipe his blood-stained
+bayonet on the forest moss. He has a moment for a glance into the
+little gray volume, and it opens in his blackened fingers at the prayer
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+IN THE AGONY OF THE BATTLE
+</p>
+
+<p>
+O Thou Lord and Ruler of Thine own people, awake and look now in grace
+upon Thy folk. Lord Jesus Christ, be now our Jesus, our Helper and
+Deliverer, our rock and fortress, our fiery wall, for Thy great name's
+sake. Be now our Emmanuel, God with us, God in us, God for us, God by
+the side of us. Thou mighty arm of Thy Father, let us now see Thy great
+power, so that men shall hail Thee their God, and the people may bend
+their knees unto Thee. Strengthen and guide the fighting arm of Thy
+believing soldiers, and help them, Thou invincible King of Battles.
+Gird Thyself up, Thou mighty fighting Hero; gird Thy sword on Thy
+loins, and smite our enemy hip and thigh. Art Thou not the Lord who
+directest the wars of the whole world, who breakest the bow, who
+splinterest the spear, and burnest the chariots with fire? Arouse
+Thyself, help us for Thy good will, and cast us not from Thee, God of
+our Saviour; cease Thy wrath against us, and think not for ever of our
+sins. Consider that we are all Thine handiwork; give us Thy countenance
+again, and be gracious unto us. Return unto us, O Lord, and go forth
+with our army. Restore happiness to us with Thy help and counsel, Thou
+staunch and only King of Peace, who with Thy suffering and death hast
+procured for us eternal peace. Give us the victory and an honourable
+peace, and remain with us in life and in death. Amen.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Hans has marched from before Metz towards the valley of the Meuse, and
+the regimental camp for the night is on the slopes of the Ardennes,
+over against Chemery. The setting sun is glinting on the windows of the
+Château of Vendresse, where the German King is quartered for the night.
+The birds are chirruping in the bosky dales of the Bar. The morrow is
+fraught with the hot struggle of Sedan, but honest Hans, a simple
+private man, knows nought of strategic moves and takes his ease on the
+sward while he may. He has oiled the needle-gun and done his cooking; a
+stone is under his head and his mantle is about him. As he ponders in
+the dying rays of the setting sun there comes over him the impulse to
+have a look into the pages of the <i>Gebetbuch</i>, and he finds there this
+prayer
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+IN THE BIVOUAC
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heavenly Father, here I am, according to Thy divine will, in the
+service of my king and war-master, as is my duty as a soldier; and I
+thank Thee for Thy grace and mercy that Thou hast called me to the
+performance of this duty, because I am certain that it is not a sin,
+but is an obedience to Thy wish and will. But as I know and have learnt
+through Thy gracious Word that none of our good works can avail us, and
+that nobody can be saved merely as a soldier, but only as a Christian,
+I will not rely on my obedience and upon my labours, but will perform
+my duties for Thy sake, and to Thy service. I believe with all my heart
+that the innocent blood of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, which He has shed
+for me, delivers and saves me, for He was obedient to Thee even unto
+death. On this I rely, on this I live and die, on this I fight, and on
+this I do all things. Retain and increase, O God, my Father, this
+belief by Thy Holy Ghost. I commend body and soul to Thy hands. Amen.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+It is the evening of Sedan, the most momentous victory of the century.
+The bivouac fires light up the sluggish waters of the Meuse, not yet
+run clear from blood. The burning villages still blaze on the lower
+slopes of the Ardennes, and the tired victors, as they point to the
+beleaguered town, exclaim in a kind of maze of sober triumph, "<i>Der
+Kaiser ist da!</i>" Hans is joyous with his fellows, chaunts with them
+Luther's glorious hymn, <i>Nun Danket alle Gott</i>; and as the watch-fire
+burns up he rummages in the <i>Gebetbuch</i> for something that will chime
+with the current of his thoughts. He finds it in the prayer
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+AFTER THE VICTORY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+God of armies! Thou hast given us success and victory against our
+enemies, and hast put them to flight before us. Not unto us, O Lord,
+not unto us, but to Thy holy name alone be all the honour! Thou hast
+done great things for us, therefore our hearts are glad. Without Thy
+aid we should have been worsted; only with God could we have done
+mighty deeds and subdued the power of the enemy. The eye of our general
+Thou hast quickened and guided; Thou hast strengthened the courage of
+our army, and lent it stubborn valour. Yet not the strategy of our
+leader, nor our courage, but Thy great mercy has given us the victory.
+Lord, who are we, that we dare to stand before Thee as soldiers, and
+that our enemies yield and fly before us? We are sinners, even as they
+are, and have deserved Thy fierce wrath and punishment; but for the
+sake of Thy name Thou hast been merciful to us, and hast so marked the
+sore peril of our threatened Fatherland, and hast heard the prayer of
+our king, our people, and our army, because we called upon Thy name,
+and held out our buckler in the name of the Lord of Sabaoth. Blessed be
+Thy holy name for ever and ever. Amen.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+The surrender of the French army of Sedan has been consummated, and
+Napoleon has departed into captivity; while Hans, marching down by
+Rethel, and through grand old Rheims, and along the smiling vinebergs
+of the Marne Valley, is now <i>vor Paris</i>. He is on the <i>Feldwache</i> in
+the forest of Bondy before Raincy, and his turn comes to go on the
+uttermost sentry post. As the snow-drift blows to one side he can see
+the French watch-fires close by him in Bondy; nearer still he sees the
+three stones and the few spadefuls of earth behind which, as he knows,
+is the French outpost sentry confronting him. The straggling rays of
+the watery moon now obscured by snow-scud, now falling on him faintly,
+could not aid him in reading even if he dared avert his eyes from his
+front. But Hans had come to know the value of the little gray volume;
+and while he lay in the <i>Feldwache</i> waiting for his spell of sentry go,
+he had learnt by heart the following prayer
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+FOR OUTPOST SENTRY DUTY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord Jesus Christ, I stand here on the foremost fringe of the camp, and
+am holding watch against the enemy; but wert Thou, Lord, not to guard
+us, then the watcher watcheth in vain. Therefore, I pray Thee, cover us
+with Thy grace as with a shield, and let Thy holy angels be round about
+us to guard and preserve us that we be not fallen upon at unawares by
+the enemy. Let the darkness of the night not terrify me; open mine eyes
+and ears that I may observe the oncoming of the enemy from afar, and
+that I may study well the care of myself and of the whole army. Keep me
+in my duty from sleeping on my post and from false security. Let me
+continually call to Thee with my heart, and bend Thyself unto me with
+Thine almighty presence. Be Thou with me and strengthen me, life and
+soul, that in frost, in heat, in rain, in snow, in all storms, I may
+retain my strength and return in health to the <i>Feldwache</i>. So I will
+praise Thy name and laud Thy protection. Amen.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+It is the evening of the 2nd of December. Duerot has tried his hardest
+to sup in Lagny, and has been balked by German valour. But not without
+terrible loss. On the plateau and by the party wall before Villiers,
+dead and wounded Germans lie very thick. In one of the little corries
+in the vineberg poor Hans has gone down. The shells from Fort Nogent
+are bursting all around, endangering the <i>Krankenträger</i> while
+prosecuting their duties of mercy and devotion. Hans has somehow bound
+up his shattered limb; and as he pulled his handkerchief from his
+pocket the little <i>Gebetbuch</i> has dropped out with it. There is none on
+earth to comfort poor Hans; let him open the book and find consolation
+there in the prayer
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+FOR THE SICK AND WOUNDED
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear and trusty Deliverer, Jesus Christ, I know in my necessity and
+pains no whither to flee to but to Thee, my Saviour, who hast suffered
+for me, and hast called unto all ailing and miserable ones, "Come unto
+Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
+Oh, relieve me, also, of Thy love and kindness, stretch out Thy healing
+and almighty hand, and restore me to health. Free me with Thy aid from
+my wounds and my pains, and console me with Thy grace who art
+vouchsafed to heal the broken heart, and to console all the sorrowful
+ones. Dost Thou take pleasure in our destruction? Our groaning touches
+Thee to the heart, and those whom Thou hast cast down Thou wilt lift up
+again. In Thee, Lord Jesus, I put my trust; I will not cease to
+importune Thee that Thou bringest me not to shame. Help me, save me, so
+I will praise Thee for ever. Amen.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Alas for Gretchen and her brood! The 4th of December has dawned, and
+still Hans lies unfound in the corrie of the vineberg. He has no pain
+now, for his shattered limb has been numbed by the cruel frost. His
+eyes are waxing dim and he feels the end near at hand. The foul raven
+of the battlefield croaks above him in his enfeebled loneliness,
+impatient for its meal. The grim king of terrors is very close to thee,
+poor honest soldier of the Fatherland; but thou canst face him as
+boldly as thou hast faced the foe, with the help of the little book of
+which thy frost-chilled fingers have never lost the grip. The gruesome
+bird falls back as thou murmurest the prayer
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+AT THE NEAR APPROACH OF DEATH
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Merciful heavenly Father, Thou God of all consolation, I thank Thee
+that Thou hast sent Thy dear Son Jesus Christ to die for me. He has
+through His death taken from death his sting, so that I have no cause
+to fear him more. In that I thank Thee, dear Father, and pray Thee
+receive my spirit in grace, as it now parts from life. Stand by me and
+hold me with Thine almighty hand, that I may conquer all the terrors of
+death. When my ears can hear no more, let Thy Spirit commune with my
+spirit, that I, as Thy child and co-heir with Christ, may speedily be
+with Jesus by Thee in heaven. When my eyes can see no more, so open my
+eyes of faith that I may then see Thy heaven open before me and the
+Lord Jesus on Thy right hand; that I may also be where He is. When my
+tongue shall refuse its utterance, then let Thy Spirit be my spokesman
+with indescribable breathings, and teach me to say with my heart,
+"Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit." Hear me, for Jesus
+Christ's sake. Amen.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Would it harm the British soldier, think you, if in his kit there was a
+<i>Gebetbuch für Soldaten</i>?
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap04"></a>
+MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
+</h3>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+1879
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In broad essentials the marryings and givings in marriage of India
+nowadays do not greatly differ from these natural phenomena at home;
+but to use a florist's phrase, they are more inclined to "sport." The
+old days are over when consignments of damsels were made to the Indian
+marriage-market, in the assured certainty that the young ladies would
+be brides-elect before reaching the landing ghât. The increased
+facilities which improved means of transit now offer to bachelors for
+running home on short leave have resulted in making the Anglo-Indian
+"spin" rather a drug in the market; and operating in the same untoward
+direction is the growing predilection on the part of the Anglo-Indian
+bachelor for other men's wives, in preference to hampering himself with
+the encumbrance of a wife of his own. Among other social products of
+India old maids are now occasionally found; and the fair creature who
+on her first arrival would smile only on commissioners or colonels has
+been fain, after a few&mdash;yet too many&mdash;hot seasons have impaired her
+bloom and lowered her pretensions, to put up with a lieutenant or even
+with a dissenting <i>padre</i>. Slips between the cup and the lip are more
+frequent in India than in England. Loving and riding away is not wholly
+unknown in the Anglo-Indian community; and indeed, by both parties to
+the contract, engagements are frequently regarded in the mistaken light
+of ninepins. Hearts are seldom broken. At Simla during a late season a
+gallant captain persistently wore the willow till the war broke out,
+because he had been jilted in favour of a colonel; but his appetite
+rapidly recovered its tone on campaign, and he was reported to have
+reopened relations by correspondence from the tented field with a
+former object of his affections. Not long ago there arrived in an
+up-country station a box containing a wedding trousseau, which a lady
+had ordered out from home as the result of an engagement between her
+and a gallant warrior. But in the interval the warrior had departed
+elsewhere and had addressed to the lady a pleasant and affable
+communication, setting forth that there was insanity in his family and
+that he must have been labouring under an access of the family disorder
+when he had proposed to her. It was hard to get such a letter, and it
+must have been harder still for her to gaze on the abortive
+wedding-dress. But the lady did not abandon herself to despair; she
+took a practical view of the situation. She determined to keep the
+trousseau by her for six months, in case she might within that time
+achieve a fresh conquest, when it would come in happily. Should fortune
+not favour her thus far she meant to advertise the wedding-gear for
+sale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Priest was no "spin" lingering on in spinsterhood against her
+will. It is true that when I saw her first she had already been "out"
+three years, but she might have been married a dozen times over had she
+chosen. I have seen many pretty faces in the fair Anglo-Indian
+sisterhood, but Miss Priest had a brightness and a sparkle that were
+all her own. At flirting, at riding, at walking, at dancing, at
+performing in amateur theatricals, at making fools of men in an airy,
+ruthless, good-hearted fashion, Miss Priest, as an old soldier might
+say, "took the right of the line." There was a fresh vitality about the
+girl that drew men and women alike to her. You met her at dawn
+cantering round Jakko on her pony. Before breakfast she had been
+rinking for an hour, with as likely as not a waltz or two thrown in.
+She never missed a picnic to Annandale, the Waterfalls, or Mashobra.
+Another turn at the Benmore rink before dinner, and for sure a dance
+after, rounded off this young lady's normal day during the Simla
+season. But if pleasure-loving, capricious, and reckless, she scraped
+through the ordeal of Simla gossip without incurring scandal. She was
+such a frank, honest girl, that malign tongues might assail her indeed,
+but ineffectually. And she had given proof that she knew how to take
+care of herself, although her only protectress was a perfectly
+inoffensive mother. On the occasion of the Prince of Wales's visit to
+Lahore, had she not boxed the ears of a burly and somewhat boorish
+swain, who had chosen the outside of an elephant as an eligible
+<i>locale</i> for a proposal, the uncouth abruptness of which did not accord
+with her notion of the fitness of things?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Priest may be said to have lived in a chronic state of
+engagements. The engagements never seemed to come to anything, but that
+was on account mostly of the young lady's wilfulness. It bothered her
+to be engaged to the same man for more than from a week to ten days on
+end. No bones were broken; the gentleman resigned the position at her
+behest, and she would genially dance with him the same night. Malice
+and heartburning were out of the question with a lissom, winsome,
+witching fairy like this, who played with her life as a child does with
+soap-bubbles, and who was as elusory and irresponsible as a summer-day
+rainbow. But one season at Mussoorie Miss Priest contracted an
+engagement somewhat less evanescent. Mussoorie of all Himalayan
+hill-stations is the most demure and proper. Simla occasionally is
+convulsed by scandals, although dispassionate inquiry invariably proves
+that there is nothing in them. The hot blood of the quick and fervid
+Punjaub&mdash;casual observers have called the Punjaub stupid, but the
+remark applies only to its officials&mdash;is apt to stir the current of
+life at Murree. The chiefs of the North-West are invariably so
+intolerably proper that occasional revolt from their austerity is all
+but forced on Nynee Tal, the sanatorium of that province. But
+Mussoorie, undisturbed by the presence of frolicsome viceroys or
+austere lieutenant-governors, is a limpid pool of pleasant propriety.
+It is not so much that it is decorous as that it is genuinely good; it
+is a favourite resort of clergymen and of clergymen's wives. It was at
+Mussoorie that Miss Priest met Captain Hambleton, a gallant gunner.
+They danced together at the Assembly Rooms; they rode in company round
+the Camel's Back; they went to the same picnics at "The Glen." The
+captain proposed and was accepted. For about the nineteenth time Miss
+Priest was an engaged young lady. And Captain Hambleton was a lover of
+rather a different stamp from the men with whom her name previously had
+been nominally coupled. He was in love and he was a gentleman; he had
+proposed to the girl, not that he and she should be merely engaged but
+that they should be married also. This view of the subject was novel to
+Miss Priest and at first she thought it rather a bore; but the captain
+pegged away and gradually the lady came rather to relish the situation.
+Men and women concurred that the wayward pinions of the fair Bella were
+at last trimmed, if not clipped; and to do her justice the general
+opinion was that, once married, she would make an excellent wife. As
+the close of the Mussoorie season approached the invitations went out
+for Bella Priest's wedding, and for "cake and wine afterwards at the
+house." The wedding-breakfast is a comparatively rare <i>tamasha</i> in
+India; the above is the formula of the usual invitation at the
+hill-stations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It happened that just two days before the day fixed for the marriage of
+Miss Priest and Captain Hambleton, there was a fancy-dress ball in the
+Assembly Rooms at Mussoorie. I think that as a rule fancy-dress balls
+are greater successes in India than at home. People in India give their
+minds more to the selection and to the elaboration of costumes; and
+there is less of that <i>mauvaise honte</i> when masquerading in fancy
+costume, which makes a ball of this description at home so wooden and
+wanting in go. At a fancy ball in India "the devil" acts accordingly,
+and manages his tail with adroitness and grace. It is a fact that at a
+recent fancy-dress ball in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a
+lady who appeared as "chess," with the chess-men which had formed her
+head-dress. This Mussoorie ball, being the last of the season, was to
+excel all its predecessors in inventive variety. A <i>padre's</i> wife
+conceived the bright idea of appearing as Eve; and only abandoned the
+notion on finding that, no matter what species of thread she used, it
+tore the fig-leaves&mdash;a result which, besides causing her a
+disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by engendering doubts as
+to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the creation. Miss Priest
+determined to go to this ball, although doing so under the
+circumstances was scarcely in accordance with the <i>convenances</i>; but
+she was a girl very much addicted to having her own way. Captain
+Hambleton did not wish her to go, and there was a temporary coolness
+between the two on the subject; but he yielded and they made it up. The
+principle as to her going once established, Miss Priest's next task was
+to set about the invention of a costume. It was to be her last effort
+as a "spin"; and she determined it should be worthy of her reputation
+for brilliant inventiveness. She had shone as a <i>Vivandière</i>, as the
+Daughter of the Regiment, as a Greek Slave, Grace Darling, and so
+forth, times out of number; but those characters were stale. Miss
+Priest had a form of supple rounded grace, nor had Diana shapelier
+limbs. A great inspiration came to her as she sauntered pondering on
+the Mall. Let her go as Ariel, all gauze, flesh-tints, and natural
+curves. She hailed the happy thought and invested in countless yards of
+gauze. She had the tights already by her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Miss Priest, knowing the idiosyncrasy of Captain Hambleton, had
+little doubt that he would put his foot down upon Ariel. But she knew
+he loved her, and with characteristic recklessness determined to trust
+to that and to luck. She too loved him, even better, perhaps, than
+Ariel; but she hoped to keep both the captain and the character. She
+did not, however, tell him of her design, waiting perhaps for a
+favourable opportunity. But even in Arcadian Mussoorie there are the
+"d&mdash;&mdash;d good-natured friends" of whom Byron wrote; and one of those&mdash;of
+course it was a woman&mdash;told Captain Hambleton of the character in which
+Miss Priest intended to appear at the fancy ball. The captain was a
+headstrong sort of man&mdash;what in India is called <i>zubburdustee</i>. Instead
+of calling on the girl and talking to her as a wise man would have
+done, he sat down and wrote her a terse letter forbidding her to appear
+as Ariel, and adding that if she should persist in doing so their
+engagement must be considered at an end. Miss Priest naturally fired
+up. Strangely enough, being a woman, she did not reply to the captain's
+letter; but when the evening of the ball came, she duly appeared as
+Ariel with rather less gauze about her shapely limbs than had been her
+original intention. She created an immense sensation. Some of the
+ladies frowned, others turned up their noses, yet others tucked in
+their skirts when she approached; and all vowed that they would decline
+to touch Miss Priest's hand in the quadrille. Miss Priest did not care
+a jot for these demonstrations, and she never danced square dances.
+Among the gentlemen she created a perfect furore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Hambleton was present at the ball. For the greater part of the
+evening he stood near the door with his eye fixed on Miss Priest,
+apparently rather in sorrow than in anger. His gaze seemed but to
+stimulate her to more vivacious flirtation; and she "carried on above a
+bit," as a cynical subaltern remarked, with the gallant major to whom
+she had been penultimately engaged. Toward the close of the evening
+Captain Hambleton relinquished his post of observation, seemed to
+accept the situation, and was observed at supper-time paying marked
+attention to a married lady with whom his name had been to some extent
+coupled not long before his engagement to Miss Priest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning Miss Priest took time by the forelock. She waited for no
+further communication from Captain Hambleton; he had already sent his
+ultimatum and she had dared her fate. The morrow was the day fixed for
+the marriage. Many people had been bidden. Mussoorie, including
+Landour, is a large station, and the postal delivery of letters is not
+particularly punctual. So she adopted a plan for warning off the
+wedding-guests identical with that employed in Indian stations for
+circulating notifications as to lawn-tennis gatherings and unimportant
+intimations generally. At the head of the paper is written the
+notification, underneath are the names of the persons concerned. The
+document is intrusted to a messenger known as a <i>chuprassee</i>, who goes
+away on his circuit; and each person writes "Seen" opposite his or her
+name in testimony of being posted in the intelligence conveyed in the
+notification. Miss Priest divided the invited guests into four rounds
+and despatched four <i>chuprassees</i>, each bearing a document curtly
+announcing that "Miss Priest's marriage will not come off as arranged,
+and the invitations therefore are to be regarded as cancelled."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Priest had no fortune, and her mother was by no means wealthy. It
+may seem strange to English readers&mdash;not nearly so much so, however, as
+to Anglo-Indian ones&mdash;that Captain Hambleton had thought it a graceful
+and kindly attention to provide the wedding-cake. It had reached him
+across the hills from Peliti's the night of the ball, and now here it
+was on his hands&mdash;a great white elephant. Whether in the hope that it
+might be regarded as an olive-branch, whether that he burned to be rid
+of it somehow, or whether, knowing that Miss Priest was bound to get
+married some day and thinking that it would be a convenience if she had
+a bridecake by her handy for the occasion, there is no evidence.
+Anyhow, he sent it to Mrs. Priest with his compliments. That very
+sensible woman did not send it back with a cutting message, as some
+people would have done. Having considerable Indian experience, she had
+learned practical wisdom and the short-sighted folly of cutting
+messages. She kept the bridecake, and enclosed to the gallant captain
+Gosslett's bill for the dozen of simkin that excellent firm had sent in
+to wash it down wherewithal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bridecakes are bores to carry about from place to place, and Miss
+Priest and her mother were rather birds of passage. Peliti declined to
+take this particular bridecake back, for all Simla had seen it in his
+window and he saw no possibility of "working it in." So the Priests,
+mother and daughter, determined to realise on it in a somewhat original
+and indeed cynical fashion. The cake was put up to be raffled for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the station took tickets for the fun of the thing. Captain
+Hambleton was anxious to show that there was no ill-feeling, and did
+not find himself so unhappy as he had expected&mdash;perhaps from the
+<i>redintegratio amoris</i> in another quarter; so he took his ticket in the
+raffle like other people. It is needless to say that he won; and the
+cake duly came back to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had Captain Hambleton been a superstitious man, he might have regarded
+this strange occurrence as indicating that the Fates willed it that he
+should compass somehow a union with Miss Priest. But the captain had no
+superstition in his nature; and, indeed, had begun to think that he was
+well out of it; besides which it was currently reported that Miss
+Priest had already re-engaged herself to another man. But the bridecake
+was upon him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what
+the devil to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody
+would take tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the <i>khud</i>
+(<i>Anglice</i>, precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he
+reflected that this would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate
+soreness on his part. It cost him a good many pegs before he thought
+the matter out in all its bearings, for, as has been said, he was a
+gunner, but as he sauntered away from the club in the small hours a
+happy thought came to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He would give a picnic at which the bogey bridecake should figure
+conspicuously, and then be laid finally by the process of demolition.
+His leave was nearly up; he had experienced much hospitality and a
+picnic would be a graceful and genial acknowledgment thereof. And he
+would ask the Priests just like other people, and no doubt they would
+enter into the spirit of the thing and not send a "decline." Bella, he
+knew, liked picnics nearly as well as balls, and it must be a powerful
+reason indeed that would keep her away from either.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Hambleton's picnic was the last of the season, and everybody
+called it the brightest. "The Glen" resounded to the laughter at
+tiffin, and the shades of night were falling ere stray couples turned
+up from its more sequestered recesses. Amid loud cheers Miss Priest,
+although still Miss Priest, cut up her own bridecake with a serene
+equanimity that proved the charming sweetness of her disposition. There
+was no marriage-bell yet all went merry as a marriage-bell, which is
+occasionally rather a sombre tintinnabulation; and the <i>débris</i> of the
+bridecake finally fell to the sweeper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I would fain that it were possible, having a regard to truth, to round
+off this little story prettily by telling how in a glade of "The Glen"
+after the demolition of the bridecake, Miss Priest and the captain
+"squared matters," were duly married and lived happily ever after, as
+the story-books say. But this consummation was not attained. Miss
+Priest indeed was in the glade, but it was not with the captain, or at
+least this particular captain; and as for him, he spent the afternoon
+placidly smoking cigarettes as he lay at the feet of his married
+consoler. To the best of my knowledge Miss Priest is Miss Priest still.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap05"></a>
+A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Referring to a particular phase of this memorable combat, Mr. Kinglake
+wrote: "The question is not ripe for conclusive decision; some of those
+who, as is supposed, might throw much light upon it, have hitherto
+maintained silence." It was in 1868 that the fourth volume&mdash;the
+Balaclava volume&mdash;of Mr. Kinglake's History was published. Since he
+wrote, singularly few of those who could throw light on obscure points
+of the battle have broken silence. Lord George Paget's Journal
+furnished little fresh information, since Mr. Kinglake had previously
+used it extensively. There is but a spark or two of new light in Sir
+Edward Hamley's more recent compendium. As the years roll on the number
+of survivors diminishes in an increasing ratio, nor does one hear of
+anything valuable left behind by those who fall out of the thinning
+ranks. The reader of the period, in default of any other authority,
+betakes himself to Kinglake. There are those who term Kinglake's
+volumes romance rather than history&mdash;or, more mildly, the romance of
+history. But this is unjust and untrue. It would be impertinent to
+speak of his style; that gift apart, his quest for accurate information
+was singularly painstaking, searching, and scrupulous. Yet it cannot be
+said that he was always well served. He had perforce to lean on the
+statements of men who were partisans, writing as he did so near his
+period that nearly all men charged with information were partisans.
+British officers are not given to thrusting on a chronicler tales of
+their own prowess. But <i>esprit de corps</i> in our service is so
+strong&mdash;and, spite of its incidental failings that are almost merits
+what lover of his country could wish to see it weakened?&mdash;that men of
+otherwise implicit veracity will strain truth, and that is a weak
+phrase, to exalt the conduct of their comrades and their corps. No
+doubt Mr. Kinglake occasionally suffered because of this propensity;
+and, with every respect, his literary <i>coup d'oeil</i>, except as regards
+the Alma where he saw for himself, and Inkerman where no <i>coup d'oeil</i>
+was possible, was somewhat impaired by his having to make his picture
+of battle a mosaic, each fragment contributed by a distinct actor
+concentrated on his own particular bit of fighting. If ever military
+history becomes a fine art we may find the intending historian, alive
+to the proverb that "onlookers see most of the game," detailing capable
+persons with something of the duty of the subordinate umpire of a sham
+fight, to be answerable each for a given section of the field, the
+historian himself acting as the correlative of the umpire-in-chief.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+[Illustration: MAP OF BALACLAVA PLAIN.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+EXPLANATIONS.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+       *       *       *       *       *<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Figures 1 to 6 indicate Redoubts.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+A. Point of collision.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+B. "C" Troop R.H.A.'s position during combat, in support Heavy Cavalry.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+C. "C" Troop in action against fugitive Russian Cavalry about D., range
+about 750 yards.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+E. Lord Lucan's position watching advance of Russian Cavalry mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+F. Position "C" Troop when approached by Cardigan and Paget after Light
+Cavalry charge.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+G. Position "C" Troop in support Light Cavalry charge.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+H. Russian Cavalry mass advancing at trot up "North" valley.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+HH. Russian Cavalry General and Staff trotting along Causeway heights,
+with view into both valleys.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+K. Line of Light Cavalry charge.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+L. Light Brigade during Heavy Cavalry charge.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+M. "I" Troop R.H.A. during ditto.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+N. Lord Raglan's position (approximate).
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+O. Scarlett's five squadrons beginning their advance.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+P. Russian Cavalry mass halted.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is true that the battle of Balaclava was fought to "a gallery"
+consisting of the gazers who looked down into the plain from the upland
+of the Chersonese. But of close and virtually independent spectators of
+the battle's most thrilling episodes, so near the climax of the Heavy
+Cavalry charge that they heard the clash of the sabres, so close to the
+lip of the Valley of Death that they discerned the wounds of our
+stricken troopers who strewed its sward and could greet and be greeted
+by the broken groups that rode back out of the "mouth of hell," there
+was but one small body of people. This body consisted of the officers
+and men of "C" Troop, Royal Horse Artillery. "C" Troop had been
+encamped from 1st October until the morning of the battle close to the
+Light division, in that section of the British position known as the
+Right Attack. When the fighting began in the Balaclava plain on the
+morning of the 25th, it promptly started for the scene of action.
+Pursuing the nearest way to the plain by the Woronzoff road, at the
+point known as the "Cutting" it received an order from Lord Raglan to
+take a more circuitous route, as by the more direct one it was
+following it might become exposed to fire from Russian cannon on the
+Fedoukine heights. Pursuing the circuitous route it came out into the
+plain through the "Col" then known as the "Barrier," crossed the
+"South" or "Inner" valley, and reached the left rear of Scarlett's
+squadrons formed up for the Heavy Cavalry charge. Here it received an
+order from Brigadier-General Strangways, who commanded the Artillery,
+with which it could not comply; and thenceforward "C" Troop throughout
+the day acted independently, at the discretion of its enterprising and
+self-reliant commander. What it saw and what it did are recorded in a
+couple of chapters of a book entitled <i>From Coruña to Sevastopol</i>.
+[Footnote: <i>From Coruña to Sevastopol</i>: The History of "C" Battery, "A"
+Brigade (late "C" Troop), Royal Horse Artillery. W.H. Allen and Co.]
+This volume was published some years ago, but the interesting and vivid
+details given in its pages of the Balaclava combats and the light it
+throws on many obscure incidents of the day have been strangely
+overlooked. The author of the chapters was an officer in the Troop
+whose experiences he shared and describes, and is a man well known in
+the service to be possessed of acute observation, strong memory, and
+implicit veracity. The present writer has been favoured by this officer
+with much information supplementary to that given in his published
+chapters, which is embodied in the following account throughout which
+the officer will be designated as "the 'C' Troop chronicler."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The "Plain of Balaclava" is divided into two distinct valleys by a low
+ridge known as the "Causeway Heights," which bisects it in the
+direction of its length and is everywhere easily practicable for all
+arms. The valley nearest to the sea and the town of Balaclava has been
+variously termed the "South" and the "Inner" valley; it was on the
+slope descending to it from the ridge that our Heavy Cavalry won their
+success; the valley beyond the ridge is the "North" or "Outer" valley,
+down which, their faces set eastward, sped to glorious disaster the
+"noble six hundred" of the Light Brigade. On the north the plain is
+bounded by the Fedoukine heights; on the west by the steep face of the
+Chersonese upland whereon was the allied main position before
+Sevastopol during the siege; on the south by the broken ground between
+the plain and the sea; on the east by the River Tchernaya and the
+Kamara hills. Our weakness in the plain invited attack. At Kadiköi, on
+its southern verge, Sir Colin Campbell covered Balaclava with a
+Scottish regiment, a Field battery, and some Turks. Near the western
+end of the South valley were the camps of the cavalry division.
+Straggled along the Causeway heights was a series of weak earthworks
+whose total armament consisted of nine iron guns, and among which were
+distributed some six or seven battalions of Turkish infantry. At
+daybreak of 25th October the Russian General Liprandi with a force of
+22,000 infantry, 3300 cavalry, and 78 guns, took the offensive by
+driving the Turkish garrisons out of these earthworks in succession,
+beginning with the most easterly&mdash;No. 1, known as "Canrobert's Hill."
+The Turks holding it fought well and stood a storm and heavy loss
+before they were expelled. The other earthworks fell with less and less
+resistance, and the first three, with seven out of their nine guns,
+remained in the Russian possession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the morning, while the Russians were taking the earthworks along
+the ridge, our two cavalry brigades, in the words of General Hamley,
+had been manoeuvring so as to threaten the flanks of any force which
+might approach Balaclava, without committing themselves to an action in
+which they would have been without the support of infantry. Ultimately,
+until his infantry should become available, Lord Raglan drew in the
+cavalry division to a position on the left of redoubt No. 6, near the
+foot of the Chersonese upland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While it was temporarily quiescent there Liprandi was engaging in an
+operation of enterprise rare in the record of Russian cavalry. General
+Ryjoff at the head of a great body of horse started on an advance up
+the North valley. Presently he detached four squadrons to his left,
+which moved toward where Sir Colin Campbell was in position at the head
+of the Kadiköi gorge, was repulsed without difficulty by that soldier's
+fire, and rode back whence it had come. The main body of Russian horse,
+computed by unimaginative authorities to be about 2000 strong,
+continued up the valley till it was about abreast of redoubt No. 4
+[Footnote: See Map.], when it halted; checked apparently, writes
+Kinglake, by the fire of two guns from a battery on the edge of the
+upland. The "C" Troop chronicler states that in addition to "a few"
+shots fired by this battery (manned by Turks), the guns of "I" troop
+R.H.A., temporarily stationed in a little hollow in front of the Light
+Brigade [Footnote: See Map.], fired rapidly one round each,
+"haphazard," over the high ground in their front. General Hamley
+assigns no ground for the Russian halt, but mentions that just at the
+moment of collision between our Heavies and the Russian mass "three
+guns" on the edge of the upland were fired on the latter. From whatever
+cause, the Russian cavalry wheeled obliquely to the leftward, crossed
+the Causeway heights about redoubt No. 5, and began to descend the
+slope of the South valley. Kinglake heard of no ground for believing
+that the Russian horse thus wheeling southward, were cognisant of the
+presence of the Heavies in the valley they were entering. But the "C"
+Troop chronicler states that as the Troop was crossing the plain a few
+Russian horsemen were seen by it trotting fast along the top of the
+ridge [Footnote: See Map.], who, when almost immediately afterwards the
+head of the Russian column showed itself on the skyline, were set down
+as the General commanding it and his staff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kinglake observes that the Russians have declared their object in this
+operation to have been the destruction of a non-existent artillery park
+near Kadiköi, while some of our people imagined it to have been a real
+attempt on Balaclava. But up the centre of the North valley was neither
+the directest nor the safest way to Kadiköi, much less to Balaclava. Is
+it not more probable that the enterprise was of the nature merely of a
+sort of "snap-offensive"; while as yet the allied infantry visibly
+pouring down the slopes of the upland were innocuous because of
+distance and while the sole occupants of the plain were a couple of
+weak cavalry brigades and a single horse battery? Ryjoff on the ridge
+could see in his front at least portions of the Light Brigade; its fire
+told him the horse battery was thereabouts too, and there were those
+shots from the cannon on the upland. Is it not feasible that, looking
+down on his left to Scarlett's poor six squadrons&mdash;his two following
+regiments were then some distance off&mdash;and seeing those squadrons as
+yet without accompanying artillery, he should have judged them his
+easier quarry and ordered the wheel that should bring his avalanche
+down on them?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kinglake recounts how, while our cavalry division yet stood intact near
+the foot of the upland, Lord Raglan had noticed the instability of the
+Turks under Campbell's command at Kadiköi and had sent Lord Lucan
+directions to move down eight squadrons of Heavies to support them; how
+Scarlett started with the Inniskillings, Greys, and Fifth Dragoon
+Guards, numbering six squadrons, to be followed by the two squadrons of
+the Royals; how the march toward Kadiköi was proceeding along the South
+valley, when all of a sudden Elliot, General Scarlett's aide-de-camp,
+glancing up leftward at the ridge "saw its top fretted with lances, and
+in another moment the skyline broken by evident squadrons of horse."
+Then, Kinglake proceeds, Scarlett's resolve was instantaneous; he gave
+the command "Left wheel into line!" and confronted the mass gathering
+into sight over against him. Soon after Scarlett had started Lord Lucan
+had learned of the advance up the North valley of the great mass of
+Russian cavalry, which he had presently descried himself, as also its
+change of direction southward across the Causeway ridge; and after
+giving Lord Cardigan "parting instructions" which that officer
+construed into compulsory inactivity on his part when a great
+opportunity presented itself, he had galloped off at speed to overtake
+Scarlett and give him directions for prompt conflict with the Russian
+cavalry. Thus far Kinglake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The testimony of the "C" Troop chronicler differs from the above
+statement in every detail. He significantly points out that Kinglake
+does not, as is his custom, quote the words of Lord Raglan's order
+directing the march of the Heavies to Kadiköi. His averment is to the
+following effect. When the cavalry division after its manoeuvring of
+the morning was retiring by Lord Raglan's command along the South
+valley toward the foot of the upland, it was followed as closely as
+they dared by some Cossacks who busied themselves in spearing and
+capturing the unfortunate Turks flying from the ridge toward Kadiköi
+athwart the rear of the British squadrons. Eventually the Cossacks
+reached the camp of the Light Brigade and set about stabbing and
+hacking at the sick and non-effective horses left standing at the
+picket-lines. Lord Raglan from his commanding position on the upland
+saw those Cossacks working mischief in our lines, and sent a message to
+Lord Lucan "to take some cavalry forward and protect the camp from
+being destroyed." The "C" Troop chronicler has in his possession a
+letter from the actual bearer of this message, to the effect that he
+duly delivered it to Lord Lucan and that consequent on it his lordship
+moved forward some heavy cavalry into the plain toward the
+picket-lines. Testimony to be presently noted will indicate the
+importance of this statement. The chronicler denies that Lord Lucan, as
+Kinglake states, galloped after Scarlett after having given Lord
+Cardigan his "parting instructions." No doubt he did give those
+instructions, when apprised by Lord Raglan's aide-de-camp of the
+threatening advance of Russian horse. But what he then did, assured as
+he was of the stationary attitude of the heavy squadrons sent out to
+protect the camp, was to ride forward along the ridge-line to discern
+for himself where, if indeed anywhere, the Russians were intending to
+strike. He most daringly remained at a forward and commanding point of
+the ridge [Footnote: See Map.] until actually chased off his ground by
+the van of the Russian wheel, and he then galloped straight down the
+slope to join Scarlett drawing out his squadrons for the conflict with
+the Russian mass whose leading files Elliot's keen eye had discerned on
+the skyline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Kinglake were right as to his alleged movement of the Heavies toward
+Kadiköi and its sudden arrestment because of Elliot's discovery, "C"
+Troop, as it approached them, would have seen the squadrons still in
+motion. But the chronicler testifies that "C" Troop, while moving to
+the scene of action and when still more than a mile and a half distant
+(at least fifteen minutes at the pace the weakened gun-teams
+travelled), had a full view of the South valley. And it then saw five
+squadrons of heavy cavalry thus early halted in the plain near the
+cavalry picket-lines, fronting towards the ridge and apparently
+perfectly dressed&mdash;the Greys (two squadrons deep) in the centre,
+recognised by their bearskins; a helmeted regiment (also two squadrons
+deep) on the left (afterwards known to be the 5th Dragoon Guards); and
+one helmeted squadron on the right (2nd squadron Inniskillings). A
+sixth squadron (1st Inniskillings) was visible some distance to the
+right rear and it was also fronting towards the ridge. This force, so
+and thus early positioned, consisted, avers the chronicler, of the
+identical troops which Kinglake erroneously describes as straggling
+hurriedly into deployment under the urgency of Scarlett and Lucan to
+cope with the suddenly disclosed adversary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When "C" Troop and its chronicler reached the rear of the formed-up
+squadrons they were found in the same formation as when first observed,
+but the whole had in the interval been moved somewhat to the right,
+farther into the plain, with intent no doubt to be clear of obstacles
+on the previous front. Kinglake speaks throughout of the force that
+first charged under Scarlett&mdash;"Scarlett's three hundred," as consisting
+of three squadrons ranked thus:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<pre>
+  &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-  &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-    &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
+       2nd squad.           lst squad.      2nd squad. Inniskillings
+
+        \__________________________/
+                    Greys.
+</pre>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+And, although his words are not so clear as usual, he appears to
+believe that the 5th Dragoon Guards, whom in his plan he places some
+little distance to the left rear of the Greys, were actually the last
+to move to the attack, of all the five regiments participating in the
+heavy cavalry onslaught. The "C" Troop chronicler, noting details, be
+it remembered, from his position immediately in rear of the cavalry
+force which first charged, describes its composition and formation
+thus:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<pre>
+     &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-          &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-  &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
+  Front squad. 5th Dr. Guards.     1st squad. Greys.        2nd squad.
+                                                           Inniskillings.
+     &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-          &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
+  Rear squad. 5th Dr. Guards.      2nd squad. Greys.
+</pre>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+in all five squadrons, instead of Mr. Kinglake's three. Nor, according
+to the chronicler, did the three squadrons in first line start
+simultaneously, as Kinglake distinctly conveys. The leading squadron of
+the Greys moved off first, and just as it was breaking into a gallop
+was temporarily hampered by the swerving of the horse of Colonel
+Griffiths, who was struck in the head by a bullet from the halted
+Russians' carbine fire. Next moved, almost simultaneously, the 2nd
+squadron Inniskillings and the front squadron 5th Dragoon Guards;
+thirdly, the 2nd squadron Greys, and finally the rear squadron 5th
+Dragoon Guards. Lord Lucan is represented as having been "personally
+concerned in or approving of everything connected with the five
+squadrons at this moment," galloping to each in succession, giving
+orders when and in what sequence it was to start, what section of the
+Russian front it was to strike, and exerting himself to the utmost to
+have everything fully understood. His errors were in omitting to call
+in the outlying regiments of the brigade, and either now&mdash;or earlier
+before he left the ridge, specifically to order Lord Cardigan to fall
+on the flank of the Russians at the moment when their front should be
+<i>aux prises</i> with Scarlett's heavy squadrons. "C" Troop's position was
+such that it could command, over the heads of the stationary Heavies,
+the gradual slope up to the Russian front, and every detail of the
+charge was under its eyes. Scarlett's burnished helmet and plain blue
+coat were conspicuous in front. The Troop also had the opportunity of
+making a deliberate study of the Russian cavalry both before and during
+the combat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Its front had the appearance of three strong squadrons; its formation
+was either close or quarter distance column&mdash;probably the former, since
+the column could nowhere be seen through from front to rear; its depth
+halted was about the same as its breadth of front; its pace across the
+ridge was a sharp trot and its discipline was indicated by the
+smartness with which it took ground to the left. Kinglake describes the
+serried mass as encircled by a loose fringe of satellites, but the "C"
+Troop chronicler saw neither skirmishers, flankers, nor scouts; and no
+guns were discerned or heard, although General Hamley says that as the
+huge cohort swept down batteries darted out from it and threw shells
+against the troops on the upland. No Lancers were seen with the column,
+certainly none with pennons. The "partial deployment" of which Kinglake
+speaks, consisting of "wings or forearms" devised to cover the flanks
+or fold inwards on the front, did not make itself apparent to any
+observer of "C" Troop; and indeed the present writer never knew a
+Russian who had heard of it, the species of formation adumbrated, so
+far as he is aware, being confined to Zulu impis. It was noticed, and
+this is not rare, that on the halt the centre pulled up a little
+earlier than the flanks, so that the latter were somewhat prolonged and
+advanced. The halt was quite brief and a slower advance ensued without
+correction of the frontal dressing. Presently there was another halt
+and some pistol or carbine fire from the central squadron on the
+advancing first squadron of the Greys. Kinglake makes the Russian front
+meet our assault halted, but the "C" Troop chronicler declares that
+when the collision occurred the mass were actually moving forward but
+at "a pace so slow that it could hardly be called a trot." General
+Hamley describes "the impetus of the enemy's column carrying it on, and
+pressing our combatants back for a short space," and the chronicler
+speaks of the Russians as surging forward after the impact, but without
+bearing back our people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is extremely difficult for the reader of a detailed narrative of a
+combat that may become a landmark in the military history of a nation,
+to realise that it may have been fought and finished in no longer time
+than it has taken him to read the few paragraphs of introductory
+matter. Mr. Kinglake has devoted a whole volume to the battle of
+Balaclava, and four-fifths of it deals with the two cavalry
+fights&mdash;Scarlett's charge, and the charge of the Light Brigade. The
+latter deed was enacted from start to finish within the space of
+five-and-twenty minutes; as regards the former, from the first
+appearance of the Russian troopers on the skyline to their defeat and
+flight a period of eight minutes is the outside calculation. General
+Hamley, an eyewitness, says "some four or five minutes." During those
+minutes "C" Troop R.H.A. under Brandling's shrewd and independent
+guidance was moving slowly forward on the right of the ground that had
+been covered by the charging Heavies. There was no opportunity for its
+intervention while the melley lasted. Even when the Russian squadrons
+broke it could not for the moment act while the redcoats were still
+blended with the gray. But Brandling saw that his chance was nigh; he
+galloped forward to the point marked C on the map, unlimbered, and
+stood intent. Kinglake states that the fugitive Russians, hanging
+together as closely as they could, retreated by the way they had come
+and Hamley describes them as vanishing beyond the ridge. Kinglake also
+says that "I" Troop R.H.A. (accompanying the Light Brigade) fired a few
+shots at the retreating horsemen, against whom Barker's battery, from
+its position near Kadiköi, also came into action. The "C" Troop
+chronicler traverses those statements. His testimony is that the
+Russian line of retreat was by their left rear along the slope of the
+South valley, and not immediately over the ridge; that the mass was
+spread over acres of ground; and that their officers were trying to
+rally the men and had actually got some ranks formed, when "C" Troop
+opened fire from about point C in the general direction of point D. "I"
+Troop was out of sight, he says, and Barker out of range; neither came
+into action; but "C" Troop, of whose presence in the field Kinglake
+apparently was unaware, fired forty-nine shot and shells, broke up the
+attempted rally, and punished the Russians severely. The range was
+about 750 paces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the time when the Light Brigade started on its "mad-brained" charge
+down the North valley, "C" Troop was halted dismounted on the slope of
+the South valley a little below redoubt No. 5. In rear of it was the
+Heavy Cavalry Brigade, halted on the scene of its recent victorious
+combat. Lord Lucan was some little distance to the front. "C" Troop
+presently saw him trot away over the ridge in the direction of the
+Light Brigade, a scrap of paper in his hand at which he kept
+looking&mdash;doubtless the memorable order which Nolan had just brought
+him&mdash;and a group of staff officers, among whom was Nolan, behind him.
+Out of curiosity Brandling with his trumpeter rode up to the crest,
+whence he commanded a view into the North valley. By and by some of the
+Heavies were moved over the crest, no doubt the Royals and Greys which
+Scarlett was to lead forward in support of the Light Brigade. All was
+still quiet but for an occasional shot from a Russian battery about
+redoubt No. 2, when suddenly Brandling came galloping back shouting
+"Mount! mount!" and telling his officers as he came in that the Light
+Cavalry had begun an advance on the other side of the ridge. But that
+he had happened to ride to the crest, the charge of the Light Brigade
+would have begun and ended without the knowledge of "C" Troop. No order
+from any source reached it, and Brandling, acting on his own
+initiative, took his guns rapidly to the front along the inner edge of
+the ridge and unlimbered at point G. He durst not fire into the bottom
+of the North valley where our light horsemen were mixed up with the
+enemy; all the diversion he could effect was to open on the Russian
+cannon-smoke directly in his front, about redoubt No. 2. Even from this
+he had soon to desist, being without support and threatened by the
+Russian cavalry, and he retired by the way he had advanced, to point F,
+where the troop halted near the Heavies, whose advance Lord Lucan had
+arrested resolving that they at all events should not be destroyed.
+These regiments had been moved toward the ridge out of the line of fire
+in the North valley, and were kept shifting their position and
+gradually retiring, suffering frequent casualties from the Russian
+artillery about redoubt No. 2 until they finally halted near the crest
+in the vicinity of "C" Troop's latest position at point F.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point only the left-hand gun of "C" Troop was on the crest,
+with a view into the North valley; the other guns were on the southern
+slope. But little had been previously seen of the terrible and glorious
+experiences of the Light Brigade; and now what was witnessed was not
+the glory but the horror of battle. For the wounded of the charge were
+passing to the rear, shattered and maimed, some staggering on foot,
+others reeling in their saddles, calling to the gunners and the Heavies
+to look at a "poor broken leg" or a dangling arm. Brandling and his
+officers held their flasks to the poor fellows' mouths as long as the
+contents lasted. The "C" Troop chronicler, whose narrative I have been
+following, tells how Captain Morris, who commanded the 17th Lancers,
+was carried past the front of the troop towards Kadiköi, dreadfully
+wounded about the head and calling loudly: "Lord, have mercy on my
+soul!" Kinglake gives a wholly different account of Captain Morris's
+removal from the field; but the "C" Troop chronicler is quite firm on
+his version, and explains that the 17th Lancers and "C" Troop having
+lain together shortly before the war all the people of the latter knew
+and identified Captain Morris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Balaclava is rather an old story now, and some readers may require to
+be reminded that the Light Brigade charged in two lines, the first line
+being led by Lord Cardigan, the second by Lord George Paget; that the
+first line rode into the Russian batteries considerably in advance of
+the second, the latter having advanced at a more measured pace; and
+that the second line, with sore diminished ranks and accompanied by a
+couple of groups rather than detachments of the first, came back later
+than did the few survivors of Cardigan's regiments other than the
+groups referred to. The aspersion on Cardigan was that he returned
+prematurely, instead of remaining to share the fortunes of the second
+line of his brigade, and this he did not deny. Kinglake's statement is
+that "he rode back alone at a pace decorously slow, towards the spot
+where Scarlett was halted." He adds that General Scarlett maintained
+that Lord Lucan was present at the time; but Lord Lucan's averment was
+that Lord Cardigan did not approach him until afterwards when all was
+over. Kinglake relates further that when Lord George Paget came back at
+the head of the last detachment, some officers rode forward to greet
+him one of whom was Lord Cardigan. Seeing him approach composedly from
+the rear Lord George exclaimed: "Halloa, Lord Cardigan, weren't you
+there?" to which, according to one version of the story, Cardigan
+replied: "Wasn't I, though? Here, Jenyns, didn't you see me at the
+guns?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reasonable inferences from Kinglake are that Cardigan's first halt
+was made and that his earliest remarks were uttered when he reached
+Scarlett, and that he and Paget met after the charge for the first time
+when the alleged question and answer passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The "C" Troop chronicler's narrative of events is right in the teeth of
+these inferences. While the troop was halted at point F and after a
+great many wounded and disabled men had already passed it going to the
+rear, Lord Cardigan came riding by at a "quiet pace" close under the
+crest. He had passed the troop on his left for several horse-lengths,
+when he came back and halted within a yard or two of the left-hand gun,
+the only one fairly on the crest. He was not alone, but attended by
+Cornet Yates of his own old regiment the 11th Hussars, a recently
+commissioned ranker. "Lord Cardigan was in the full dress <i>pelisse</i>
+(buttoned) of the 11th Hussars, and he rode a chestnut horse very
+distinctly marked and of grand appearance. The horse seemed to have had
+enough of it, and his lordship appeared to have been knocked about but
+was cool and collected. He returned his sword, undid a little of the
+front of his dress and pulled down his underclothing under his
+waistbelt. Then, in a quiet way, as if rather talking to himself, he
+said, 'I tell you what it is: those instruments of theirs,' alluding to
+the Russian weapons, 'are deuced blunt; they tickle up one's ribs!'
+Then he pulled his revolver out of his holster as if the thought had
+just struck him, and said, 'And here's this d&mdash;&mdash;d thing I have never
+thought of until now.' He then replaced it, drew his sword, and said,
+'Well, we've done our share of the work!' and pointing up toward the
+Chasseurs d'Afrique on our left rear (ignorant of their opportune
+service), he added, 'It's time they gave those dappled gentry a
+chance.' Afterwards he asked, 'Has any one seen my regiment?' The men
+answered, 'No, sir.'" Brandling was holding aloof; and his lordship
+turned his horse and rode away farther back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then a cheer was raised by some Heavies who had lately formed in
+front of "C" Troop. Cardigan, so the chronicler tells, looked backward
+to see the occasion, and saw the cheer was in compliment to the 8th
+Hussars coming back with Colonel Sewell in front and Colonel Mayow, the
+brigade-major, behind on the left. Cardigan wheeled, trotted back
+towards the 8th, turned round in front of Colonel Sewell, and took up
+the "walk." Then occurred something "painful to witness. It was seen
+from the left of 'C' Troop that the moment Cardigan's back was toward
+the 8th as he headed them, Colonel Mayow pointed toward him, shook his
+head, and made signs to the officers on the left of the Heavies as much
+as to say, 'See him; he has taken care of himself.'" Men in the ranks
+of the 8th also pointed and made signs to the troopers of the Heavies
+as they were passing left to left. There was, as well, a little excited
+undertalk from one corps to the other. Colonel Sewell neither saw nor
+took part in this wretched business; and of course Cardigan did not
+know that he was being thus ridiculed and disparaged while he was
+smiling and raising his sword to the cheers of the Heavies and the
+gunners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately after this episode the returning 4th Light Dragoons came
+obliquely across the North valley at a sharp pace, but fell into the
+"walk" as they came within a hundred yards of "C" Troop. Lord George
+Paget, who led what remained of the regiment, rode up to the flank of
+"C" Troop and halted on the very spot where Cardigan had stood a few
+minutes earlier. Lord George had the look of a man who had ridden hard,
+and was heated and excited. He exclaimed in rather a loud tone, "It's a
+d&mdash;&mdash;d shame; there we had a lot of their guns and carriages taken, and
+received no support, and yet there's all this infantry about&mdash;it's a
+shame!" Meanwhile Lord Cardigan had come back and was close behind Lord
+George while he was speaking, without the other knowing it. He called
+out, "Lord George Paget!"; and on the latter turning round said to him
+in an undertone, "I am surprised!"; and "tossing his head in the air
+added some other remark which was not heard." Lord George lowered his
+sword to the salute, and, without speaking turned his horse and rode on
+after his men. The "C" Troop chronicler is positive that both officers
+visited "C" Troop before going to any general or to any other command,
+and that they met there for the first time after the combat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Lord Raglan came down from the upland after all was over, the "C"
+Troop chronicler says that he went straight for Lucan then in front of
+the Heavy Cavalry brigade, having first sent for Cardigan to meet him.
+After a few moments the latter repassed the troop on his way toward the
+remnant of his brigade. "Then Lord Raglan took Lucan a little forward
+by himself out of hearing of the group of staff officers, and his
+gesticulations of head and arm were so suggestive of passionate anger,
+that the onlookers did not need to be told that the Commander-in-Chief
+did not charge the blame chiefly on Cardigan." Lord Raglan's subsequent
+interview with General Scarlett, which occurred in the hearing of "C"
+Troop, was of a different character. After complimenting the gallant
+old warrior his lordship said, "Now tell me all about yourself."
+Scarlett replied, "When the Russian column was moving down on me, sir,
+I began by sending first a squadron of the Greys at them, and&mdash;" but at
+the word "and" Lord Raglan struck in, saying, "And they knocked them
+over like the devil!" He then turned his horse away, as if he did not
+need to hear any more.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap06"></a>
+HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+These be big words, my masters! I can only say they are not mine,&mdash;I am
+far too modest to utter any such high-sounding phrase on my own
+responsibility,&mdash;but they are the exact terms used by a high municipal
+dignitary in characterising the result of what he was pleased to term
+my "chivalrous conduct." My sardonic chum, on the contrary,&mdash;an
+individual wholly abandoned to the ignoble vice of punning,&mdash;asserts
+that my conduct was simply "barbarous." It will be for the reader to
+judge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+St. Meuse&mdash;let us call it St. Meuse&mdash;is a town of what is still French
+Lorraine; and to St. Meuse I came drifting up the Marne Valley, over
+the flat expanse of the plain of Châlons, and by St. Menehould, the
+proud stronghold of pickled pigs' feet, in the second week of September
+1873. St. Meuse was one of the last of the French cities held in pawn
+by the Germans for the payment of the milliards. The last instalment of
+blood-money had been paid and the <i>Pickelhaubes</i> were about to evacuate
+St. Meuse as soon as the cash had been methodically counted, and after
+they should have leisurely filled their baggage trains and packed their
+portmanteaus. My intention in going to St. Meuse was to witness this
+evacuation scene, and to be a spectator of the return of
+light-heartedness to the French population of the place, on the
+withdrawal of the Teuton incubus which for three years had lain upon
+the safety-valve of their constitutional sprightliness. I had been a
+little out of my reckoning of time, and when I reached St. Meuse I
+found that I had a week to stay there before the event should occur
+which I had come to witness; but the interval could not be regarded as
+lost time, for St. Meuse is a very pleasant city and the conditions
+which were so soon to terminate presented a most interesting field of
+study.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You must know that St. Meuse is a fortress. It has a citadel or at
+least such fragments of a citadel as the bombardment had left, and the
+quaint old town is surrounded with bastions which are linked by
+curtains and flanked by lunettes, the whole being girdled by a ditch,
+beyond the counterscarp of which spreads a sloping glacis which makes a
+very pleasant promenade. The defensive strength of the place is reduced
+to zero in these days of far-reaching rifled siege artillery, for it
+lies in a cup and is surrounded on all sides by hills the summits of
+which easily command the fortifications. But the consciousness that it
+is obsolete as a fortress has not yet come home to St. Meuse. It has,
+in truth, a very good opinion of itself as a valorous, not to say
+heroic, place; nor can it be denied that its title to this
+self-complacency has been fairly earned. In the Franco-German war,
+spite of its defects, it stood a siege of over two months and succumbed
+only after a severe bombardment which lasted for several days. And
+while as yet it was not wholly beleaguered, it was very active in
+making itself disagreeable to the foreign invader. It was a patrolling
+party from St. Meuse that intercepted the courier on his way from the
+battlefield of Sedan to Germany, carrying the hurried lines to his wife
+which the Crown Prince of Prussia scrawled on the fly-leaf of an
+orderly book while as yet the last shots of the combat were dropping in
+the distance; carrying too the notes of the momentous battle which
+William Howard-Russell had jotted down in the heat of the action and
+had taken the same opportunity of despatching. St. Meuse, then, had
+balked the Princess of the first tidings of her husband's safety, and
+the great English newspaper of the earliest details of the most
+sensational battle of the age. It had fallen at last, but not
+ingloriously; and the iron of defeat had not entered so deeply into its
+soul as had been the case with some French fortresses, of which it
+could not well be said that they had done their honest best to resist
+their fate. Its self-respect, at least, was left to it, and it was
+something to know that when the German garrison should march away, it
+was bound to leave to St. Meuse the artillery and munitions of war of
+the fortress just as they had been found on the day of the surrender.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I came to like St. Meuse immensely in the course of the days I spent in
+it waiting for the great event of the evacuation. The company at the
+<i>table d'hôte</i> of the Trois Maures was varied and amusing. The Germans
+ate in a room by themselves, so that the obnoxious element was not
+present overtly at the general <i>table d'hôte.</i> But we had a few German
+officials in plain clothes&mdash;clerks in General Manteuffel's bureau,
+contractors, cigar merchants, etc., who spoke French even among
+themselves, and were painfully polite to the French habitués who were
+as painfully polite in return. There was a batch of Parisian
+journalists who had come to St. Meuse to watch the evacuation, and who
+wrote their letters in the café over the way to the accompaniment of
+<i>verres</i> of absinthe and bocks of beer. Then there was the gallant
+captain of gendarmes, who had arrived in St. Meuse with a trusty band
+of twenty-five subordinates to take over from the Germans the municipal
+superintendence of the place, and, later, the occupation of the
+fortress. He was the most polite man I ever knew, this captain of
+gendarmes, with a clever knack of turning you outside in in the course
+of half an hour's conversation, and the peculiar attribute of having,
+to all appearance, eyes in the back of his head. To him, as he placidly
+ate his food, there came, from time to time, quiet and rather
+bashful-looking men in civilian attire of a slightly seedy description.
+Sometimes they merely caught his eye and went out again without
+speaking; sometimes they handed to him little notes; sometimes they
+held with him a brief whispered conversation during which the captain's
+nonchalance was imperturbable. These respectable individuals who, if
+they saw you once in conversation with their chief, ever after bowed to
+you with the greatest empressement, were members of the secret police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the inhabitants of St. Meuse, they appeared to await the hour of
+their delivery with considerable philosophy. Physically they are the
+finest race I ever saw in France; their men, tall, square, and
+muscular, their women handsome and comely. Numbers of both sexes are
+fair-haired, and the sandiness of hair which we are wont to associate
+with the Scottish Celt is by no means uncommon. A sardonic companion
+whom I had picked up by the way, attributed those characteristics to
+the fact that in the great war St. Meuse was a depôt for British
+prisoners of war who had in some way contrived to imbue the native
+population with some of their own physical attributes. He further
+prophesied a wave of Teuton characteristics as the result of the German
+occupation which was about to terminate; but his insinuations seemed to
+me to partake of the scurrilous, especially as he instanced Lewes, once
+a British depôt for prisoners of war, as a field in which similar
+phenomena were to be discerned. But, nevertheless, I unquestionably
+found a good deal of what may be called national hybridism in St.
+Meuse. I used to buy photographs of a shopkeeper over whose door was
+blazoned the Scottish name Macfarlane. Outwardly Macfarlane was a
+"hielanman" all over. He had a shock-head of bright red hair such as
+might have thatched the poll of the "Dougal cratur;" his cheek-bones
+were high, his nose of the Captain of Knockdunder pattern, and his
+mouth of true Celtic amplitude. One felt instinctively as if Macfarlane
+were bound to know Gaelic, and that the times were out of joint when he
+evinced greater fondness for <i>eau sucrée</i> than for Talisker. It was
+with quite a sense of dislocation of the fitness of things that I found
+Macfarlane could talk nothing but French. But although he had torn up
+the ancient landmarks, or rather suffered them to lapse, he yet was
+proud of his ancestry. His grandfather, it appeared, was a soldier of
+the "Black Watch" who had been a prisoner of war in St. Meuse, and who,
+when the peace came, preferred taking unto himself a daughter of the
+Amalekite and settling in St. Meuse, to going home to a pension of
+sevenpence a day and liberty to ply as an Edinburgh caddie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the German "men in possession," they pursued the even tenor of
+their way in the precise yet phlegmatic German manner. Their guards
+kept the gates and bridges as if they meant to hold the place till the
+crack of doom, instead of being under orders to clear out within the
+week. The recruits drilled on the citadel esplanade, straightening
+their legs and pointing their toes as if their sole ambition in life
+was to kick their feet away into space, down to the very eve of
+evacuation. Their battalions practised skirmishing on the glacis with
+that routine assiduity which is the secret of the German military
+success. Old Manteuffel was living in the prefecture holding his levees
+and giving his stiff ceremonious dinner-parties, as if he had done
+despite to Dr. Cumming's warnings and taken a lease of the place. The
+German officers thronged their café, each man, after the manner of
+German officers, shouting at the pitch of his voice; and at the café of
+the under-officers tough old <i>Wachtmeisters</i> and grizzled sergeants
+with many medals played long quiet games at cards, or knocked the balls
+about on the chubby little pocketless tables with cues the tips of
+which were as large as the base of a six-pounder shell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The French journalists insisted I should accept it as an article of
+faith, that these two races dwelling together in St. Meuse hated each
+other like poison. They would have it that while discipline alone
+prevented the Germans from massacring every Frenchman in the place, it
+was only a humiliating sense of weakness that hindered the Frenchmen
+from rising in hot fury against the Germans who were their temporary
+masters. I am afraid the gentlemen of the Parisian press came rather to
+dislike me on account of my obdurate scepticism in such matters. That
+there was no great cordiality was obvious and natural. Some of the
+Germans were arrogant and domineering. For instance, having a respect
+for the Germans, it pained and indeed disgusted me to hear a colonel of
+the German staff, in answer to my question whether the evacuating force
+would march out with a rearguard as in war time, reply, "Pho, a field
+gendarme with a whip is rearguard enough against such <i>canaille!</i>" But
+in the mouths of Hans and Carl and Johann, the stout <i>Kerle</i> of the
+ranks, there were no such words of bitter scorn for their compulsory
+hosts. The honest fellows drew water for the goodwives on whom they
+were billeted, did a good deal of stolid love-making with the girls,
+and nursed the babies with a solicitude that put to shame the male
+parents of these youthful hopes of Troy. I take leave, as a reasonable
+person, to doubt whether it can lie in the heart of a family to hate a
+man who has dandled its baby and whether a man can be rancorous against
+a family whose baby he has nursed. But fashion's sway is omnipotent in
+emotion as in dress. Ever since the war, journalists, authors, and
+public opinion generally had hammered it into the French nation that if
+it were not to be a traitor to its patriotism, the first article of its
+creed must be hatred against the Germans; and that the bitterer this
+hate the more fervent the patriotism. It was not indeed incumbent on
+Frenchmen and Frenchwomen to accept this creed, but it behoved them at
+least to profess it; and it must be admitted that they did this for the
+most part with an intensity and vigour which seemed to prove that with
+many profession had deepened into conviction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While as yet the evacuation had been a thing of the remote future, the
+people of St. Meuse had borne the yoke lightly, and indeed had, I
+believe, privily congratulated themselves on the substantial advantages
+in the way of money spent in the place and the immunity from taxation
+which were incidental to the foreign occupation. But as the day for the
+evacuation drew closer and closer, one became dimly conscious of an
+electrical condition of the social atmosphere which any trifle might
+stimulate into a thunderstorm. Blouses gathered and muttered about the
+street-corners, scowling at and elbowing the German soldiers as they
+strode to buy sausages to stay them in the homeward march. The gamins,
+always covertly insolent, no longer cloaked their insolence, and wagged
+little tricolour flags under the nose of the stolid German sentry on
+the Pont St. Croix. At the <i>table d'hôte</i> the painful politeness of the
+German civilians had no effect in thawing the studied coldness of the
+French habitués.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for myself, I was a neutral, and professing to take no side,
+flattered myself that I could keep out of the vortex of the soreness.
+Soon after my arrival at St. Meuse I had called upon the Mayor at his
+official quarters in the Hôtel de Ville, and had received civil
+speeches in return for civil speeches. Then I had left my card on
+General Manteuffel, with whom I happened to have a previous
+acquaintance; and those formal duties of a benevolent neutral having
+been performed I had held myself free to choose my own company.
+Circumstances had some time before brought me into familiar contact
+with very many German officers, and I had imbibed a liking for their
+ways and conversation, noisy as the latter is. Several of the officers
+then in St. Meuse had been personal acquaintances in other days and it
+was at once natural and pleasant for me to renew the intercourse. I was
+made an honorary member of the mess; I spent many hours in the
+officers' casino; I rode out with the officers of the squadron of
+Uhlans. All this was very pleasant; but as the day of the evacuation
+became close I noticed that the civility of the French captain of
+gendarmes grew colder, that the cordiality of the French habitués of
+the <i>table d'hôte</i> visibly diminished, and that I encountered not a few
+unfriendly looks when I walked through the streets by myself. It began
+to dawn upon me that St. Meuse was getting to reckon me a German
+sympathiser, and as there was no half-way house, therefore not in
+accord with the emotions of France and St. Meuse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the afternoon immediately preceding the morning that had been fixed
+for the evacuation, there came to me a polite request that I should
+visit M. le Maire at the Hôtel de Ville. His worship was elaborately
+civil but obviously troubled in mind. He coughed nervously several
+times after the initiatory compliments had passed, and then he began to
+speak. "Monsieur, you are aware that the Germans are going to-morrow
+morning?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I replied that I had cognisance of this fact. "Do you also know that
+the last of the German officials depart by the 5 A.M. train, not caring
+to remain here after the troops are gone?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of this also I was aware.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me hope," continued the Mayor, "that you are going along with
+them, or at all events will ride away with Messieurs the officers?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the contrary, was my reply, I had come not only to witness the
+evacuation but to note how St. Meuse should bear herself in the hour of
+her liberation; I desired to witness the rejoicings; I was not less
+anxious to be a spectator of any disturbance if such unhappily should
+occur. Why should M. le Maire have conceived this desire to balk my
+natural curiosity?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. le Maire was obviously not a little embarrassed; but he persevered
+and was candid. This deplorable occupation was now so nearly finished
+and happily, as yet, everything had been so tranquil, that it would be
+a thousand pities if any untoward event should occur to detract from
+the dignified attitude which the territory now to be evacuated had
+maintained. It was of critical importance in every sense that St. Meuse
+should not give way to riot or disorder on that occasion. He hoped and
+believed it would not&mdash;here M. le Maire laid his hand on his heart&mdash;but
+a spark, as I knew, fired tinder, and the St. Meuse populace were at
+present figurative tinder. I might be that spark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You much resemble a German," said M. le Maire, "with that great yellow
+beard of yours, and your broad shoulders, as if you had carried arms.
+Our citizens have seen you much in the society of Messieurs the German
+officers; they are not in a temper to draw fine distinctions of
+nationality; and, dear sir, I ask you to go away with the Germans lest
+perchance our blouses, reckoning you for a German, should not be very
+tender with you when the spiked helmets are out of the place. The truth
+is," said the worthy Maire with a burst of plain speaking, "I'm afraid
+that you will be mobbed and that there will be a row, and that then the
+Germans may come back and the evacuation be postponed, and I'll get
+wigged by the Prefect and the Minister of the Interior and bully-ragged
+in the newspapers, and St. Meuse will get abused and the fat will be
+generally in the fire!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was an awkward fix. I could not comply with the Mayor's request;
+that was not to be thought of for reasons I need not mention here. I
+had no particular desire to be mobbed. Once before I had experienced
+the tender mercies of a French mob and I knew that they were very
+cruel. But stronger than the personal feeling was my sincere sympathy
+with the Mayor's critical position; and also my anxiety, by what means
+might be within my power, to contribute to the maintenance of a
+tranquillity so desirable. But, then, what means were within my power?
+I could not go; I could not promise to stop indoors, for it was
+incumbent on me to see everything that was to be seen. And if through
+me trouble came I should be responsible heaven knows for what!&mdash;with a
+skinful of sore bones into the bargain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If Monsieur cannot go,"&mdash;the Mayor broke in upon my cogitation,&mdash;"if
+Monsieur cannot go, will he pardon the exigency of the occasion if I
+suggest one other alternative? It is,"&mdash;here the Mayor hesitated&mdash;"it
+is the yellow beard which gives to Monsieur the aspect of a German.
+With only whiskers nobody could take Monsieur for anything but an
+Englishman. If Monsieur would only have the complaisance and charity
+to&mdash;to&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cut off my beard! Great powers! shear that mane that had been growing
+for years!&mdash;that cataract of hair that has been, so to speak, my
+oriflamme; the only physical belonging of which I ever was proud, the
+only thing, so far as I know, that I have ever been envied! For the
+moment the suggestion knocked me all of a heap. There came into my head
+some confused reminiscence of a story about a girl who cut off her hair
+and sold it to keep her mother from starving, or redeem her lover from
+captivity, or something of the kind. But that must have been before the
+epoch of parish relief, and kidnapping is now punishable by statute.
+What was St. Meuse to me that for her I should mow my hirsute glories?
+But then, if people grew savage, they might pull my beard out by the
+roots. And there had been lately dawning on me the dire truth that its
+tawny hue was becoming somewhat freely streaked with gray, a colour I
+abhor, except in eyes. I made up my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll do it, sir," said I to the Mayor, with a manly curtness. My heart
+was too full for many words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He respected my emotion, bowed in silence over the hand which he had
+grasped, and only spoke to give me the address of his own barber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This barber was a patriot of unquestioned zeal; but I am inclined to
+think his extraction was similar to that of Macfarlane, for he combined
+patriotism with profit in a most edifying manner. He shaved the German
+officers during the whole of their stay in St. Meuse; he accompanied
+them on their march to the frontier; he earned the last centime in
+Conflans; and then, driving forward to the frontier line, he unfurled
+the tricolour as the last German soldier stepped over it. It is seldom
+that one in this world sees his way to being so adroitly ambidextrous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this is a digression. In twenty minutes, shorn and shaven, I was
+back again in the Mayor's parlour. The tears of gratitude stood in his
+eyes. I learned afterwards that a decoration was contingent on his
+preservation of the public peace on the occasion of the evacuation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Started by the Mayor, the report rapidly circulated through St. Meuse
+that I had cut off my beard rather than that it should be possible that
+any one should mistake me for a German. From being a suspect I became a
+popular idol. The French journalists entertained me to a banquet at
+night at which in libations of champagne eternal amity between France
+and England was pledged. Next morning the Germans went away and then
+St. Meuse kicked up its heels and burst into exuberant joy. The Mayor
+took me up to the station in his own carriage to meet the French
+troops, and introduced me to the colonel of the battalion as a man who
+had made sacrifices for <i>la belle France</i>. The colonel shook me
+cordially by the hand and I was embraced by the robust vivandière, who
+struck me as being in the practice of sustaining life on a diet of
+garlic. When we emerged from the station I was cheered almost as loudly
+as was the colonel, and a man waved a tricolour over my head all the
+way back to the town, treading at frequent intervals on my heels. In
+the course of the afternoon I happened to approach the civic band which
+was performing patriotic music in the Place St. Croix. When the
+bandmaster saw me he broke off the programme and struck up "Rule
+Britannia!" in my honour, to the clamorous joy of the audience, who
+were thwarted in their aim of carrying me round the Place shoulder-high
+only by the constancy with which I clung to the railings which surround
+Chevert's statue. But the crowning recognition of my sacrifice came at
+the banquet which the town gave to the French officers. The Mayor
+proposed the toast of "our English friend." "We had all," he said,
+"made sacrifices for <i>la Patrie</i>&mdash;he himself had sustained the loss of
+a wooden outhouse burned down in the bombardment; the gallant colonel
+on his right had spilt his blood at St. Privat. Them it behoved to
+suffer and they would do it again cheerfully, for it was, as he had
+said, for <i>la Patrie</i>. But what was to be said of an honourable
+gentleman who had sacrificed the most distinguishing ornament of his
+physical aspect without the holy stimulus of patriotism, and simply
+that there might be obviated the risk of an embroilment to the possible
+consequence of which he would not further allude? Would it be called
+the language of extravagant hyperbole, or would they not rather be
+words justified by facts, when he ventured before this honourable
+company to assert that his respected English friend had by his
+self-sacrifice saved France from a great peril?" The Mayor's question
+was replied to by a perfect whirlwind of cheering. Everybody in the
+room insisted upon shaking hands with me and I was forced to get on my
+legs and make a reply. Later in the evening I heard the Mayor and the
+town clerk discussing the project of conferring upon me the freedom of
+the city.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap07"></a>
+CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
+</h3>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+1875
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The civilian world, even that portion of it which lives by the
+profusest sweat of its brow, enjoys an occasional holiday in the course
+of the year besides Christmas Day. Good Friday brings to most an
+enforced cessation from toil. Easter and Whitsuntide are recognised
+seasons of pleasure in most grades of the civilian community. There are
+few who do not compass somehow an occasional Derby day; and we may
+safely aver that the amount of work done on New Year's Day is not very
+great. But in all the year the soldier has but one real holiday&mdash;a
+holiday with all the glorious accompaniments of unwonted varieties of
+dainties and full liberty to be as jolly as he pleases without fear of
+the consequences. True, the individual soldier may have his day's
+leave, nay, his month's furlough; but his enjoyments resulting
+therefrom are not realised in the atmosphere of the barrack-room, but
+rather have their origin in the abandonment for the nonce of his
+military character and a <i>pro tempore</i> return into civilian life.
+Christmas Day is the great regimental merry-making, free to and
+appreciated by the veteran and the recruit alike; and as such it is
+looked forward to for many a month prior to its advent and talked of
+many a day after it is past and gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About a month before Christmas the observer skilled in the signs of the
+times may begin to notice the tokens of its approach. Self-deniant
+fellows, men who can trust themselves to carry a few shillings about
+with them without experiencing a chronic sensation that the accumulated
+pelf is burning a hole in their pockets, busy themselves in
+constructing "dimmocking bags" for the occasion, such being the
+barrack-room term for receptacles for money-hoarding purposes. The weak
+vessels, those who mistrust their own constancy under the varied
+temptations of dry throats, empty stomachs, and a scant allowance of
+tobacco, manage to cheat their fragility of "saving grace" by
+requesting their sergeant-major to put them "on the peg,"&mdash;that is to
+say, place them under stoppages, so that the accumulation takes place
+in his hands and cannot be dissipated by any premature weaknesses of
+the flesh. Everybody becomes of a sudden astonishingly sober and
+steady. There is hardly any going out of barracks now; for a walk
+involves the expenditure of at least "the price of a pint," and in the
+circumstances this extravagance is not allowable. The guard-room is
+unwontedly empty&mdash;nobody except the utterly reckless will get into
+trouble just now; for punishment at this season involves the forfeiture
+of certain privileges and the incurring of certain penalties&mdash;the
+former specially prized, the latter exceptionally disgusting at this
+Christmas season.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slowly the days roll on with anxious expectancy, the coming event
+forming the one engrossing topic of conversation alike in barrack-room,
+in stable, in canteen, and in guard-room. The clever hands of the troop
+are deep in devising a series of ornamentations for the walls and roof
+of the common habitation. One fellow spends all his spare time on the
+top of a table with a bed on top of that again, embellishing the wall
+above the fireplace with a florid design in a variety of colours meant
+to be an exact copy of the device on the regiment's kettledrums, with
+the addition of the legend, "A Merry Christmas to the old Straw-boots,"
+inscribed on a waving scroll below. The skill of another decorator is
+directed to the clipping of sundry squares of coloured paper into
+wondrous forms&mdash;Prince of Wales's feathers, gorgeous festoons, and the
+like&mdash;with which the gas pendants and the edges of the window-frames
+are disguised out of their original nakedness and hardness of outline,
+so as to be almost unrecognisable by the eye of the matter-of-fact
+barrack-master himself. What is this felonious-looking band up
+to&mdash;these four determined rascals in the forbidden high-lows and stable
+overalls who go slinking mysteriously out at the back gate just at the
+gloaming? Are they Fenian sympathisers bound for a secret meeting, or
+are they deserters making off just at the time when there is the least
+likelihood of suspicion? Nay, they are neither; but, nevertheless,
+their errand is a nefarious one. Watch at the gate for an hour and you
+will see them come back again each man laden with the spoils of the
+shrubberies&mdash;holly, mistletoe, and evergreens&mdash;ruthlessly plundered
+under cover of the darkness. A couple of days before "the day," the
+sergeant-major enters the barrack-room, a smile playing upon his
+rubicund features. We all know what his errand is and he knows right
+well that we do; but he cannot refrain from the customary short
+patronising harangue, "Our worthy captain&mdash;liberal gent you
+know&mdash;deputed me&mdash;what you like for dinner&mdash;plum-puddings, of course&mdash;a
+quart of beer a man; make up your minds what you'll have&mdash;anything but
+game and venison;" and so he vanishes grinning a saturnine grin. The
+moment is a critical one. We ought to be unanimous. What shall we have?
+A council of deliberation is constituted on the spot and proceeds to
+the discussion of the weighty question. The suggestions are not
+numerous. The alternative lies between pork and goose. The old
+soldiers, for some inscrutable reason, go for goose to a man. The
+recruits have a carnal craving after the flesh of the pig. I did once
+hear a "carpet-bag" recruit[1] hesitatingly broach the idea of mutton,
+but he collapsed ignominiously under the concentrated stare of
+righteous indignation with which his heterodox suggestion was received.
+Goose versus pork is eagerly debated. As regards quantity the question
+is a level one, since the allowance from time immemorial has been a
+goose or a leg of pork among three men.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[Footnote 1: "Carpet-bag" recruit is the barrack-room appellation of
+contempt for the young gentleman recruit who joins his regiment
+<i>omnibus impedimentis</i>&mdash;who, in fact, brings his baggage with him, to
+find it, of course, utterly useless.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length the point is decided during the evening stable-hour,
+according as old or young soldiers predominate in the room. The
+sergeant-major is informed of the conclusion arrived at, and in the
+evening the corporal of each room accompanies him on a marketing
+expedition into the town. Another important duty devolves upon the said
+corporal in the course of this marketing tour. The "dimmocking bags"
+have been emptied; the accumulations in the sergeant-major's hands have
+been drawn, and the corporal, freighted with the joint savings, has the
+task of expending the same in beer. In this undertaking he manifests a
+preternatural astuteness. He is not to be inveigled into giving his
+order at a public-house,&mdash;swipes from the canteen would do as well as
+that,&mdash;nor do the bottled-beer merchants tempt him with their high
+prices for dubious quality. No, he goes direct to the fountain-head. If
+there be a brewery in the place he finds it out and bestows his order
+upon it, thus triumphantly securing the pure article at the wholesale
+price. His purchasing calculation is upon the basis of two gallons per
+man. If, as is generally the case, the barrack-room he represents
+contains twelve men, he orders a twenty-four gallon barrel of
+porter&mdash;always porter; and if he has a surplus left he disburses it in
+the purchase of a bottle or two of spirits, for the behoof of any fair
+visitors who may haply honour the barrack-room with their presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is Christmas Eve. The evening stable-hour is over and all hands are
+merrily engaged in the composition of the puddings; some stoning fruit,
+others chopping suet, beating eggs, and so forth. The barrel of beer is
+in the corner but it is sacred as the honour of the regiment! Nothing
+would induce the expectant participants in its contents to broach it
+before its appointed time shall come. So there is beer instead from the
+canteen in the tin pails of the barrack-room, and the work of
+pudding-compounding goes on jovially to the accompaniments of song and
+jest. Now, there is a fear lest too many fingers in the pudding may
+spoil it&mdash;lest a multitude of counsellors as to the proportions of
+ingredients and the process of mixing may be productive of the reverse
+of safety. But somehow a man with a specialty is always forthcoming,
+and that specialty is pudding-making. Most likely he has been the butt
+of the room&mdash;a quiet, quaint, retiring, awkward fellow who seemed as if
+he never could do anything right. But he has lit upon his vocation at
+last&mdash;he is a born pudding-maker. He rises with the occasion, and the
+sheepish "gaby" becomes the knowing practical man; his is now the voice
+of authority, and his comrades recant on the spot, acknowledge his
+superiority without a murmur, and perform "ko-tow" before the once
+despised man of undeveloped abilities. They pull out their clean towels
+with alacrity in response to his demand for pudding-cloths; they run to
+the canteen enthusiastically for a further supply on a hint from him
+that there is a deficiency in the ingredient of allspice. And then he
+artistically gathers together the corners of the cloths and ties up the
+puddings tightly and securely; whereupon a procession is formed to
+escort them into the cook-house, and there, having consigned them into
+the depths of the mighty copper, the "man of the time" remains watching
+the caldron bubble until morning, a great jorum of beer at his elbow
+the ready contribution of his now appreciative comrades.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hours roll on; and at length out into the darkness of the
+barrack-square stalks the trumpeter on duty, and the shrill notes of
+the <i>réveille</i> echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an
+ordinary morning the <i>réveille</i> is practically negatived, and nobody
+thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds
+quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning
+there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps
+up, as if galvanised, at the first note of the <i>réveille</i>. For the
+fulfilment of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to&mdash;a remnant of
+the old days when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room.
+The soldier's wife who has the cleaning of the room and who does the
+washing of its inmates&mdash;for which services each man pays her a penny a
+day, has from time immemorial taken upon herself the duty of bestowing
+a "morning" on the Christmas anniversary upon the men she "does for."
+Accordingly, about a quarter to six, she enters the room&mdash;a
+hard-featured, rough-voiced dame, perhaps, with a fist like a shoulder
+of mutton, but a soldier herself to the very core and with a big,
+tender heart somewhere about her. She carries a bottle of whisky&mdash;it is
+always whisky, somehow&mdash;in one hand and a glass in the other; and,
+beginning with the oldest soldier administers a calker to every one in
+the room till she comes to the "cruity," upon whom, if he be a
+pullet-faced, homesick, bit of a lad, she may bestow a maternal salute
+in addition, with the advice to consider the regiment as his mother
+now, and be a smart soldier and a good lad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Breakfast is not an institution in any great acceptation in a cavalry
+regiment on Christmas morning. When the stable-hour is over a great
+many of the troopers do not immediately reappear in the barrack-room.
+Indeed they do not turn up until long after the coffee is cold; and,
+when they do return there is a certain something about them which, to
+the experienced observer, demonstrates the fact that, if they have been
+thirsty, they have not been quenching their drought at the pump. It is
+a standing puzzle to the uninitiated where the soldier in barracks
+contrives to obtain drink of a morning. The canteen is rigorously
+closed. No one is allowed to go out of barracks and no drink is allowed
+to come in. A teetotallers' meeting-hall could not appear more rigidly
+devoid of opportunities for indulgence than does a barrack during the
+morning. Yet I will venture to say, if you go into any barrack in the
+three kingdoms, accost any soldier who is not a raw recruit, and offer
+to pay for a pot of beer, that you will have an instant opportunity
+afforded you of putting your free-handed design into execution any time
+after 7 A.M. I don't think it would be exactly grateful in me to
+"split" upon the spots where a drop can be obtained in season; many a
+time has my parched throat been thankful for the cooling surreptitious
+draught and I refuse to turn upon a benefactor in a dirty way.
+Therefore suffice it to say that many a bold dragoon when he re-enters
+the barrack-room to get ready for church parade, has a wateriness about
+the eye and a knottiness in the tongue which tell of something stronger
+than the matutinal coffee. Indeed, when the trumpet sounds which calls
+the regiment to assemble on the parade-ground, there is dire misgiving
+in the mind of many a stalwart fellow, who is conscious that his face,
+as well as his speech, "berayeth him." But the lynx-eyed men in
+authority who another time would be down on a stagger like a
+card-player on the odd trick and read a flushed face as a passport to
+the guard-room, are genially blind this morning; and so long as a man
+possesses the capacity of looking moderately straight to his own front
+and of going right-about without a flagrant lurch, he is not looked at
+in a critical spirit on the Christmas church parade. And so the
+regiment marches off to church, the band playing merrily in its front.
+I much fear there is no very abiding sense in the bosoms of the
+majority of the sacred errand on which they are bound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there are two of the inmates of each room who do not go to church.
+The clever pudding-maker and a sub of his selection are left to cook
+the Christmas dinner. This, as regards the exceptional dainties, is
+done at the barrack-room fire, the cook-house being in use only for the
+now despised ration meat and for the still simmering puddings. The
+handy man cunningly improvises a roasting-jack, and erects a screen
+consisting of bed-quilts spread on a frame of upright forms, for the
+purpose of retaining and throwing back the heat. He is a most versatile
+genius, this handy man. Now we see him in the double character of cook
+and salamander, and anon he develops a special faculty as a clever
+table-decorator as well. This latter qualification asserts itself in
+the face of difficulties which would be utterly discomfiting to one of
+less fertility of resource. There is, indeed, a large expanse of table
+in every barrack-room; but the War Department has not yet thought
+proper to consider private soldiers worthy to enjoy the luxury of
+table-linen. Yet bare boards at a Christmas feast are horribly
+offensive to the eye of taste. Something must be done; something has
+already been done. Ever since the last issue of clean sheets, one or
+two whole-souled fellows have magnanimously abjured these luxuries <i>pro
+bono publico</i>. Spartan-like they have lain in blankets, and saved their
+sheets in their pristine cleanliness wherewithal to cover the Christmas
+table. So now these are brought forth, not snow-white certainly, nor of
+a damask texture, being indeed somewhat sackclothy in their appearance,
+but still they are immeasurably in advance of the bare boards; and when
+the covers are laid, with each man's best knife and fork, with a little
+additional crockery-ware borrowed of a beneficent married woman and
+with the dainty sprigs of evergreen stuck on every available coign, the
+effect is triumphantly enlivening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the time these preparations are complete the men are back from
+church; and after a brief attendance at stables to water and feed they
+assemble fully dressed in the barrack-room, hungrily silent. The
+captain enters the room and <i>pro formâ</i> asks whether there are "any
+complaints?" A chorus of "No, sir," is his reply; and then the oldest
+soldier in the room with profuse blushing and stammering takes up the
+running, thanks the officer kindly in the name of his comrades for his
+generosity, and wishes him a "Happy Christmas and many of 'em" in
+return. Under cover of the responsive cheer the captain makes his
+escape, and a deputation visits the sergeant-major's quarters to fetch
+the allowance of beer which forms part of the treat. Then all fall to
+and eat! Ye gods, how they eat! Let the man who affirmed before the
+Recruiting Commission that the present scale of military rations was
+liberal enough show himself now, and then for ever hide his head! The
+troopers seem to have become sudden converts to Carlyle's theory on the
+eloquence of silence. It reigns supreme, broken only by the rattle of
+knives and forks and by an occasional gurgle indicative of a man
+judiciously stratifying the solids and liquids, for a space of about
+twenty minutes, by which time&mdash;be the fare goose or pork&mdash;it is,
+barring the bones, only "a memory of the past." The puddings, turned
+out of the towels in which they have been boiled, then undergo the
+brunt of a fierce assault; but the edge of appetite has been blunted by
+the first course and with most of the men a modicum of pudding goes on
+the shelf for supper. The soldier is very sensitive on the subject of
+his Christmas pudding. I remember once seeing a cook put on the table
+and formally "strapped" for allowing the pudding to stick to the bottom
+of the pot for lack of stirring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length dinner is over. Beds are drawn up from the sides of the room
+so as to form a wide circle of divans round the fire, and the big
+barrel's time has come at last. A clever hand whips out the bung, draws
+a pailful, and reinserts the bung till another pailful is wanted, which
+will be very soon. The pail is placed upon the hearthstone and its
+contents are decanted into the pint basins, which do duty in the
+barrack-room for all purposes from containing coffee and soup to mixing
+chrome-yellow and pipe-clay water. The married soldiers come dropping
+in with their wives, for whom the corporal has a special drop of
+"something short" stowed in reserve on the shelf behind his kit. A song
+is called for; another follows, and yet another and another. Now it is
+matter of notice that the songs of soldiers are never of the modern
+music-hall type. You might go into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's
+haunts and never hear such a ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for
+Joseph." The soldier takes especial delight in songs of the sentimental
+pattern; and even when for a brief period he forsakes the region of
+sentiment, it is not to indulge in the outrageously comic but to give
+vent to such sturdy bacchanalian outpourings as the "Good Rhine Wine,"
+"Old John Barleycorn," and "Simon the Cellarer." But these are only
+interludes. "The Soldier's Tear," "The White Squall," "There came a
+Tale to England," "Ben Bolt," "Shells of the Ocean," and other melodies
+of a lugubrious type, are the special favourites of the barrack-room. I
+remember once hearing a cockney recruit attempt "The Perfect Cure" with
+its accompanying gymnastic efforts; but he was I not appreciated, and
+indeed, I think broke down in the middle for want of encouragement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Songs and beer form the staple of the afternoon's enjoyment,
+intermingled with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of
+bygone Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are
+"townies," i.e. natives of the same district; and there is a good deal
+of undemonstrative feeling in the way they talk of the scenes and folks
+of boyhood. There is no speechifying. Your soldier is not an oratorical
+animal. Not but what he heartily enjoys a speech; but he somehow cannot
+make one, or will not try. I remember me, indeed, of a certain quiet
+Scotsman who one Christmastime being urgently pressed to sing and being
+unblessed with a tuneful voice, volunteered in utter desperation a
+speech instead. He referred in feeling language to the various
+troop-mates who had left us since the preceding Christmas, made a
+touching allusion to the happy home circle in which the Christmases of
+our boyhood had been spent, referred to the manner in which the old
+"Strawboots" had cut their way to glory through the dense masses of
+Russian horsemen on the hillside of Balaclava, and wound up
+appropriately by proposing the toast of "our noble selves." He created
+an immense sensation, was vociferously applauded, and, indeed, was the
+hero of the hour; but ere next Christmas he was among the "have beens"
+himself, and his mantle not having devolved upon any successor we had
+to content ourselves with the songs and the beer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a lucky thing for a good many that there is no roll-call at the
+Christmas evening stable-hour. The non-commissioned officers mercifully
+limit their requirements to seeing the horses watered and bedded down
+by the most presentable of the roisterers, whose desperate efforts to
+simulate abject sobriety in order to establish their claim for
+strong-headedness are very comical to witness. It has often been matter
+of wonderment to me how the orders for the following day which are
+"read out" at the evening stable-hour, are realised on Christmas
+evening with clearness sufficient to ensure their being complied with
+next day without a hitch; but the truth is that, as we shall presently
+see, a certain order of things for the morning after Christmas has
+become stereotyped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This interruption of the evening stable-hour over the circle re-forms
+round the fire, and the cask finally becomes a "dead marine." The cap
+is then sent round for contributions towards a further instalment of
+the foundation of conviviality, which is fetched from the canteen or
+the sergeant's mess; and another and yet another supply is sent for, as
+long as the funds hold out and somebody keeps sober enough to act as
+Ganymede. The orderly sergeant is not very particular to-night about
+his watch-setting report, for he knows that not many have the physical
+ability to be absent if they were ever so eager. And so the lights go
+out; the sun of the dragoon may be said to set in beer and he is left
+to do his best to sleep himself sober. For in the morning the reins of
+discipline are tightened again. The man who is foolish enough to
+revivify the drink which "is dying out in him" by a refresher is apt to
+find himself an inmate of the black-hole on very scant warning.
+Headaches and thirst are curiously rife, and the consumption of
+"fizzers"&mdash;a temperance beverage of an effervescent character vended by
+an individual with the profoundest trust in human nature on the subject
+of deferred payments&mdash;is extensive enough to convert the regiment into
+a series of walking reservoirs of carbonic acid gas. The authorities
+display a demoniacal ingenuity in working the beer out of the system of
+the dragoon. The morning duty on the day following Christmas is
+invariably "watering order with numnahs," the numnah being a felt
+saddle-cloth without stirrups. Every man without exception rides
+out&mdash;no dodging is permitted&mdash;and the moment the malicious fiend of an
+orderly officer gets clear of the barracks he gives the word "Trot!"
+Six miles of it without a break is the set allowance; and it beats
+vinegar, pickles, tea smoked in a tobacco-pipe, or any other nostrum,
+as an effectual generator of sobriety. Six miles at the full trot
+without stirrups on a rough horse I can conscientiously recommend to
+the inebriated gentleman who fears to encounter a justly irate wife at
+two in the morning. I wont answer for the integrity of his cuticle when
+it is over; but I will stake my existence on the abject profundity of
+his sobriety. The process would extract the alcohol from a cask of
+spirits of wine, let alone dispel an average skinful of beer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And thus evaporates the last vestige of the dragoon's Christmas
+festivity. It may be urged that the enjoyments of which I have
+endeavoured to give a faithful narrative are gross and have no
+elevating tendency. I fear the men of the spur and sabre must bow to
+the justice of the criticism; and I know of nothing to advance in
+mitigation save the old Scotch proverb: "It is ill to mak' a silk purse
+out o' a sow's ear."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap08"></a>
+THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+In these modern days men live fast and forget fast; yet, since it was
+barely twenty-six years ago, numbers among us must still vividly
+remember the lurid autumn of 1870. Eastern and Northern France had been
+deluged with French and German blood. During the month of fighting from
+the 2nd of August to the 1st of September the regular armies of France
+had suffered defeat on defeat, and were now blockaded in Metz or were
+tramping from the catastrophe of Sedan to captivity in Germany. The
+Empire in France had fallen like a house of cards; Napoleon the Third
+was a prisoner of war in Cassel; the Empress and the ill-fated Prince
+Imperial were forlorn exiles in England. To the Empire had succeeded,
+at not even a day's notice&mdash;for in France a revolution is ever a
+summary operation&mdash;the Government of National Defence with the
+watchword of "War to the bitter end" rather than cede a foot of
+territory or one stone of a fortress. The Germans made no delay. The
+blood-tint had scarcely faded out of the waters of the Meuse, the
+unburied dead of Sedan yet festered in the sun-heat, and the blackened
+ruins of Bazeilles still smoked and stank, when their heads of columns
+set forth on the march to Paris. The troops were full of ardour; but in
+the Royal headquarters there was not a little disquietude. The old King
+made a long stay in the old cathedral city of Rheims, while men all
+over Europe were asking each other whether the catastrophe of Sedan had
+not virtually ended the war and were hoping for the white dove of peace
+to alight on the blood-stained land. But that happy consummation was
+not yet to be. When King Wilhelm crossed the frontier he had proclaimed
+that he warred not with the French nation but with its ruler. That
+ruler was now his prisoner; but Wilhelm had for adversary now the
+French nation, because it had taken up the quarrel which might have
+gone with the <i>Déchéance</i> and in effect had made it its own. In the
+absence of overtures there was no alternative but to march on Paris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Bismarck, although he carried a blithe front, was far from
+comfortable. He would fain have had peace&mdash;always on his own terms; but
+the question with him was with whom could he negotiate, capable, in the
+existing confusion, of furnishing adequate guarantees for the
+fulfilment of conditions? That requisite he could not discern in the
+self-constituted body which styled itself the Government of National
+Defence, but of which he spoke as "the gentlemen of the pavement." He
+had all the monarchical dislike and distrust of a republic, and before
+the German army had invested Paris he already had begun to ponder as to
+the possibility of reinstating the dethroned dynasty. Possibly indeed,
+he had already felt the pulse of Marshal Bazaine on this subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was on the 23rd of September when the Royal headquarters was at
+Ferrières, Baron Rothschild's château on the east of Paris, that there
+either presented himself to Bismarck an intriguant, or that the
+Chancellor evoked for himself an instrument for whom the way was made
+open to penetrate the beleaguerment of Metz and submit to Bazaine
+certain considerations. In connection with this mission we heard a good
+deal at the time of a mysterious "Mons. M." and an equally mysterious
+"Mons. N." Both were myths: "M." and "N." were alike pseudonyms of the
+real go-between, a certain Edmond Regnier who died in Paris on the 23rd
+of January 1894, after a strange and varied career of which the episode
+to be detailed in this article is the most remarkable. In a now very
+rare pamphlet published by Regnier in November 1870, he describes
+himself as a French landed proprietor with financial interests in
+England yielding him an income of £800 per annum, and as having come to
+England with his family in the end of August of that year in
+consequence of the proximity of German troops to his French residence.
+The painstaking compilers of the indictment against Bazaine give rather
+a different account of the character and antecedents of M. Regnier.
+Their information is that he received an imperfect education,
+sufficiently proven by his extraordinary style and vicious orthography.
+He studied, with little progress, law and medicine; later he took up
+magnetism. He was curiously mixed up in the events of the revolution of
+1848. He had some employment in Algeria as an assistant surgeon.
+Returning to France he developed a quarry of paving-stone, and
+afterwards married in England a wife who brought him a certain
+competence. "Regnier," continues the Report, "is a sharp, audacious
+fellow; his manners are vulgar&mdash;vain to excess he considers himself a
+profound politician. Was he induced to throw himself into the midst of
+events by one of the monomanias which are engendered by periods of
+storm and revolution? Was he simply an intriguer, plying his trade? It
+is difficult to tell. But however that may be, the established fact is
+that we find him in England in September 1870 besieging with his
+projects the <i>entourage</i> of the Empress."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Regnier's siege of the forlorn colony at Hastings took the form of a
+bombardment of letters, his principal victim being Madame Le Breton,
+the lady-in-waiting of the Empress and the sister of the unfortunate
+General Bourbaki, then in command of the Imperial Guard at Metz. He was
+about to have his passport viséd by the German Ambassador in London,
+rather an equivocal proceeding for a French subject; and on the 12th of
+September he wrote thus to Madame Le Breton, desiring that the letter
+should be communicated to Her Majesty:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+The Ambassador in London of the North German Confederation may possibly
+say, "I think the King of Prussia would prefer treating for peace with
+the Imperial Government rather than with the Republic." If so, I shall
+start to-morrow for Wilhelmshöhe, after having paid a visit to the
+Empress. The following are the propositions I intend to submit to the
+Emperor: (1) That the Empress-Regent ought not to quit French
+territory; (2) That the Imperial fleet <i>is</i> French territory; (3) That
+the fleet which greeted Her Majesty so enthusiastically on its
+departure for the Baltic, or at least a portion of it, however small,
+be taken by the Regent for her seat of government, thus enabling her to
+go from one to another of the French ports where she can count upon the
+largest number of adherents, and so prove that her government exists
+both <i>de facto</i> and <i>de jure</i>. Further, that the Empress-Regent issue
+from the fleet four proclamations&mdash;viz. to foreign governments, to the
+fleet, to the army, and to the French people.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+It will suffice to quote two of those suggested proclamations:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+To foreign governments! To firmly insist upon the fact that the
+Imperial Government is the <i>actual</i> government, as it is the government
+by right. To the fleet! That just as the Emperor remained to the last
+in the midst of his army, sharing the chances of war, so also does the
+Regent, the only executive power legally existing, come with gladness
+to trust her political fortune to the Imperial fleet.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+There followed a voluminous screed of irrelevant dissertation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Regnier confessedly made no way with the Empress. He saw, indeed,
+Madame Le Breton on the 14th, but only to be told, in language worthy
+of a patriot sovereign, that "Her Majesty's feeling was that the
+interests of France should take precedence of those of the dynasty;
+that she would rather do nothing than incur the suspicion of having
+acted from an undue regard for dynastic interests, and that she has the
+greatest horror of any step likely to bring about a civil war." Those
+high-souled expressions ought to have given definite pause to Regnier's
+importunity; but that busybody was indefatigable. A second letter to
+Madame Le Breton for the Empress simply elicited from the gentlemen of
+her suite the information that Her Majesty, having read his
+communications, had expressed the greatest horror of anything
+approaching a civil war. A final letter from him, containing the
+following significant passage:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+I myself, or some other person, ought already to have been secretly and
+confidentially in communication with M. de Bismarck; our conditions for
+peace must be more acceptable than those to which the <i>soi-disant</i>
+Republican Government may have agreed; every action of theirs ought to
+be turned to our advantage&mdash;we ourselves must <i>act</i>,
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+evoked the ultimatum that "the Empress would not stir in the matter."
+Regnier then said that as he found no encouragement at Hastings he
+would probably go to Wilhelmshöhe, where he would perhaps be better
+understood; and he produced a photographic view of Hastings on which he
+begged that the Prince Imperial would write a line to his father. On
+the following morning the Prince's equerry returned him the
+photographic view at the foot of which were the simple and affectionate
+words: "Mon cher Papa, je vous envoie ces vues d'Hastings; j'espère
+qu'elles vous plairont. Louis-Napoléon." I am personally familiar with
+the late Prince Imperial's handwriting and readily recognise it in this
+brief sentence. Regnier averred that it was with Her Majesty's consent
+that this paper was given him; but admitted that he was told she added:
+"Tell M. Regnier that there must be great danger in carrying out his
+project, and that I beg him not to attempt its execution." In other
+words, the Empress was willing that he should visit the Emperor at
+Cassel, authenticating him thus far by the Prince Imperial's little
+note; but she put her veto on his undertaking intrigues detrimental to
+the interests of France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Regnier by no means took the road for Wilhelmshöhe. At 7 P.M. of Sunday
+the 18th he read in the special <i>Observer</i> that Jules Favre was next
+day to have an interview with Bismarck at Meaux. Eager to anticipate
+the Republican Foreign Minister he promptly took the night train for
+Paris. No trains were running beyond Amiens and he did not reach Meaux
+until midnight of the 19th, to learn that Bismarck and the headquarters
+had that day gone to Ferrières. At 10 A.M. of the 20th he reached that
+château and appealed to Count Hatzfeld, now German Ambassador in
+London, for an immediate interview with Bismarck, stating that he had
+come direct from Hastings. He was informed that the Chancellor had an
+appointment with Jules Favre at eleven and that it was improbable he
+could be received in advance. But Bismarck having been apprised of his
+arrival the fortunate Regnier was immediately ushered into his
+presence. Regnier congratulates himself on having anticipated the
+French Minister, ignorant of the circumstance that on the previous day
+the latter had two interviews with Bismarck and that their then
+impending interview was simply for the purpose of communicating to
+Favre the German King's final answer to the French proposals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Regnier says that he drew from his portfolio the photograph of Hastings
+with the Prince Imperial's little note to his father at its foot and
+handed the paper in silence to Bismarck; and that after the latter had
+looked at it for some moments, Regnier said, "I come, Count, to ask you
+to grant me a pass which will permit me to go to Wilhelmshöhe and give
+this autograph into the Emperor's hands." Why he should have applied to
+Bismarck for this is not apparent, since he might have gone direct from
+Hastings to Wilhelmshöhe without any necessity for invoking the
+Chancellor's offices. It seems extremely probable that the request for
+a pass was a mere pretext to gain an interview, and the more so since
+Bismarck made no allusion to the subject, but after a few moments,
+according to Regnier, addressed that person as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Sir, our position is before you; what can you offer us? with whom can
+we treat? Our determination is fixed so to profit by our present
+position as to render impossible for the future any war against us on
+the part of France. To effect this object, an alteration of the French
+frontier is indispensable. In the presence of two governments&mdash;the one
+<i>de facto</i>, the other <i>de jure</i>&mdash;it is difficult, if not impossible, to
+treat with either. The Empress-Regent has quitted French territory, and
+since then has given no sign. The Provisional Government in Paris
+refuses to accept this condition of diminution of territory, but
+proposes an armistice in order to consult the French nation on the
+subject. We can afford to wait. When we find ourselves face to face
+with a government <i>de facto</i> and <i>de jure</i>, able to treat on the basis
+we require, then we will treat.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Regnier suggested that Bazaine in Metz and Uhrich in Strasburg, if they
+should capitulate, might do so in the name of the Imperial Government.
+Bismarck replied that Jules Favre was assured that the garrisons of
+those fortresses were staunchly Republican; but that his own belief was
+that Bazaine's army of the Rhine was probably Imperialist. Then Regnier
+offered to go at once to Metz. "If you had come a week earlier," said
+Bismarck, "it was yet time; now, I fear, it is too late." Upon this the
+Chancellor went away to meet Jules Favre with the parting words to
+Regnier, "Be so good as to present my respectful homage to his Imperial
+Majesty when you reach Wilhelmshöhe." At a subsequent meeting the same
+evening Regnier repeated his anxiety to go at once to Metz and
+Strasburg and make an agreement that these places should be surrendered
+only in the Emperor's name. Bismarck was clearly not sanguine, but he
+said, "Do what you can to bring us some one with power to treat with
+us, and you will have rendered great service to your country. I will
+give orders for a 'general safe-conduct' to be given you. A telegram
+shall precede you to Metz, which will facilitate your entrance there.
+You should have come sooner." So these two parted; Régnier received his
+"safe-conduct" and started from Ferrières early on the morning of the
+21st. But this indefatigable letter-writer could not depart without a
+farewell letter:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+I shall leave (he wrote to Bismarck) your advanced posts near Metz,
+giving orders for the carriage to await my return. I shall wrap myself
+in a shawl, which will hide a portion of my face. In the event of
+Marshal Bazaine acceding to my conditions, either Marshal Canrobert or
+General Bourbaki, acquainted with all that will be requisite for the
+success of my plans, may go out with my papers, dressed in my clothes,
+wrapped in my shawl, and depart for Hastings, after giving me his word
+of honour that for every one, except the Empress, he was to be simply
+Mons. Regnier. If everything succeeded according to my anticipation, he
+might then establish his identity, and place himself at the head of the
+army, with orders to defend the Chamber assembled, if possible, at a
+seaport town, where a loyal portion of the fleet should also be
+present. If the project should miscarry, the Marshal or the General
+would return and resume his post.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Bismarck must have smiled grimly as he read this strange farrago; yet,
+whatever may have been his motives, he furthered the errand on which
+Regnier was going to Metz.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That person reached the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles at
+Corny, outside of Metz, on the afternoon of 23rd September and was
+promptly presented to the Prince, who said that Count Bismarck had
+informed him of his wish to enter Metz and had left it to him to decide
+as to the expediency of complying with it. This, said the Prince, he
+was prepared to do and he gave Regnier the requisite pass. The same
+evening that active individual presented himself at the French forepost
+line, and having stated that he had a mission to Marshal Bazaine and
+desired to see him immediately, he was driven to Ban-Saint-Martin where
+the Marshal was residing. Bazaine at once received him in his study. At
+the outset a discrepancy manifests itself in the subsequent testimony
+of the interlocutors. The Marshal states that Regnier said he came on
+the part of the Empress with the consent of Bismarck; while Regnier
+declares that he did not state to the Marshal that he had any mission
+from the Empress. On other points, with one important exception, the
+versions given of the interview by the two participants fairly agree,
+and Bazaine's account of it may be summarised. After Regnier had stated
+that his commission was purely verbal he went on to observe that it was
+to be regretted that a treaty of peace had not put an end to the war
+after Sedan; that the maintenance of the German armies on French
+territory was ruinous to the country; and that it would be doing France
+a great service to obtain an armistice preparatory to the conclusion of
+peace. That as regarded this, the French army under the walls of
+Metz&mdash;the only army remaining organised&mdash;would be in a position to give
+guarantees to the Germans if it were allowed its liberty of action; but
+that without doubt they would exact as a pledge the surrender of the
+fortress of Metz.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+I replied (says Bazaine) that certainly if we&mdash;the "Army of the
+Rhine"&mdash;could extricate ourselves from the <i>impasse</i> in which we now
+were, with the honours of war&mdash;that is to say, with arms and
+baggage&mdash;in a word completely constituted as an army, we would be in a
+position to maintain order in the interior, and would cause the
+provisions of the convention to be respected; but a difficulty would
+occur as to the fortress of Metz, the governor of which, appointed by
+the Emperor, could not be relieved except by His Majesty himself.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+One of Regnier's stated objects, continues the Marshal, was to bring it
+about that either Marshal Canrobert or General Bourbaki should go to
+England, inform the Empress of the situation at Metz, and place himself
+at her disposition. The departure of whichever of the two high officers
+should undertake this duty was to be surreptitious; and for this
+Regnier had provided with Prussian assistance. Seven Luxembourg
+surgeons who had been in Metz ever since the battle of Gravelotte had
+written to Marshal Bazaine for leave to go home through the Prussian
+lines. This letter, sent to the Prussian headquarters, was replied to
+in a letter carried into Metz by Regnier and by him given to Bazaine,
+to the effect that the <i>nine</i> surgeons were free to depart. As there
+were but seven surgeons, the implication is obvious that the
+safe-conduct was expanded to cover the incognito exit, along with the
+surgeons, of Regnier and the French officer bound for Hastings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Regnier gave me (writes Bazaine) so many details of his <i>soi-disant</i>
+relations with the Empress and her <i>entourage</i> that, notwithstanding
+the strangeness of the apparition, I put faith in his mission, and
+believed that I ought not, in the general interest, to neglect the
+opportunity opened to me of putting myself in communication with the
+outside world. I consequently told him that he would be duly brought
+into relations with Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki, whom I
+would inform in regard to his proposals, and whom I would place at
+liberty to act as each might choose in the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally Regnier produced the photograph of Hastings with the Prince
+Imperial's signature at the foot, and begged the Marshal to add his,
+which he did "as a souvenir of the interview" explained Regnier,
+according to the Marshal; according to Regnier, that he could exhibit
+the signature to Bismarck in proof that he had the Marshal's assent to
+his proposals. Diplomacy conducted by chance signatures on casual
+photographs has a certain innocent simplicity, but is not in accordance
+with modern methods. Perhaps, however, the strangest thing in
+connection with this strange interview is Bazaine's final comment:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+All this which I have narrated was only a simple conversation to which
+I attached a merely secondary importance, since M. Regnier had no
+written authority from the Empress nor from M. de Bismarck.... This
+personage, therefore, appeared to act without the knowledge of the
+German military authorities, and it was not until considerably later
+that I became convinced of their cognisance, and of their mutual
+understanding as regards M. Regnier's visit to Metz.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+And this in the face of General Stiehle's letter to him in his hand,
+brought in by Regnier, sanctioning the exit of the <i>nine</i> surgeons; and
+the Marshal's promise to Régnier that he and the officer who should
+accept the mission to Hastings should quit the camp incognito along
+with the Luxembourg surgeons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reference has been made to a discordance between the testimony of
+Marshal Bazaine and of Regnier on a very important point in regard to
+this interview. In his notes taken at the time the latter writes:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+The Marshal tells me of his excellent position, of the long period for
+which he can hold out; that he considers himself as the Palladium of
+the Empire. He speaks of the very healthy condition of the troops; and,
+if I may judge by his own rosy face, he is quite right. He tells of all
+the successful sallies he had made, and of the facility with which he
+can break through the besieging lines whenever he chooses to do so.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Later, he contradicts all this, explaining that finding himself in the
+Prussian lines and his papers liable to be read, he had written just
+the reverse of what he was told by the Marshal. He says that what
+Bazaine actually informed him was that the bread ration had been
+already diminished and would be necessarily further reduced in a few
+days; that the horses lacked forage and had to be used for food; and
+that in such conditions and taking into account the necessity of
+carrying four or five days' rations for the army and keeping a certain
+number of horses in condition to drag the guns and supplies, there
+would be great difficulty in holding out until the 18th of October.
+Bazaine, for his part, vehemently denied having given Regnier any such
+information, and it seems utterly improbable that he should have done
+so. It is nevertheless the fact that the 18th of October was the last
+day on which rations were issued to the army outside Metz. Regnier must
+have been a wizard; or Bazaine must have leaked atrociously; or there
+must have been lying on the Marshal's table during the interview with
+Regnier, the most recent state furnished by the French intendance, that
+of the 21st of September which specified the 18th of October as the
+precise date of the final exhaustion of the army's supplies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At midnight of the 23rd Regnier went to the outposts and next morning
+to Corny, where he found a telegram from Bismarck authorising the
+departure for Hastings of a general from the army of Metz. He was back
+again at Ban-Saint-Martin on the afternoon of the 24th, when Marshal
+Canrobert and General Bourbaki were summoned to headquarters to meet
+him and the Luxembourg surgeons were assembled. Canrobert declined the
+proposed mission on the plea of ill-health. Bourbaki had to be searched
+for and was ultimately found at St. Julien with Marshal Lebceuf. As he
+dismounted at the headquarters he asked Colonel Boyer&mdash;they had both
+been of the intimate circle of the Empire&mdash;whether he knew the person
+walking in the garden with the Marshal?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," replied Boyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?" rejoined Bourbaki; "have you never seen him at the Tuileries?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Boyer. "I forget names, but not faces&mdash;I never saw this
+fellow. He is neither a familiar of the Tuileries nor an employé."
+Whereupon the two aristocrats despised the bourgeois Regnier. But
+Bourbaki, nevertheless, had to endure the presentation to him of the
+"fellow," who promptly entered on a political discourse to the effect
+that the German Government was reluctant to treat with the Paris
+Government, which it did not consider so lawful as that of the Empress,
+and that if it treated with her the conditions would be less
+burdensome; that the intervention of the army of Metz was
+indispensable; that it was all-important that one of its chiefs should
+repair to the side of the Empress to represent the army with her; and
+that he, Bourbaki, was the fittest person to occupy that position on
+the declinature of Marshal Canrobert. Bourbaki turned from the man of
+verbiage to Bazaine and asked, "Marshal, what do you wish me to do?"
+The Marshal answered that he desired him to repair to the Empress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am ready," answered Bourbaki, "but on certain conditions: you will
+have the goodness to give me a written order; to announce my departure
+in army orders; not to place a substitute in my command; and to promise
+that, pending my return, you will not engage the Guard." His terms were
+accepted; he was told that he was to leave immediately and he went to
+his quarters to make his preparations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was understood that the general's departure was to be by way of
+being incognito, so that it should not get wind. He had no civilian
+clothes and Bazaine fitted him out in his; Regnier had obtained from
+one of the Luxembourger surgeons a cap with the Geneva Cross which
+completed the costume. At the Prussian headquarters General Stiehle,
+Prince Frederick Charles's chief of staff, desired to pay his respects
+to a man whose brilliant courage he admired. Bourbaki's bitter answer
+to Regnier who communicated to him Stiehle's wish, was that he would
+see "none of them, nor even eat a morsel of their bread," which, he
+said, would choke him. He presently started with the surgeons,
+travelling in Regnier's name and on Regnier's passport, on an
+enterprise which was to lead to the wreck of a fine career. At the same
+time Regnier quitted Corny on his return to Ferrières to report to
+Bismarck, having promised Bazaine that he would return to Metz within
+six days. His bolt was about shot. But he had not realised this fact.
+He maintains in his curious pamphlet that, to quote his own words, "the
+Minister had given me to understand that if I were backed by Bazaine
+and his army he would treat with me as if I were the representative of
+the Emperor or the Regent. I had obtained from the Marshal a
+capitulation with the honours of war, which the Minister&mdash;for the
+furtherance of our political ends&mdash;had consented to accord to him." He
+hurried expectant to Ferrières; there to be summarily disillusioned.
+Bismarck gave him an interview on the 28th, and crushed him in a few
+trenchant sentences:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+I am surprised and sorry (said the Chancellor) that you, who appeared
+to be a practical man, after having been permitted to enter Metz with
+the certainty of being able to leave it, a favour never before
+accorded, should have left it without some more formal recognition of
+your right to treat than merely a photograph with the Marshal's
+signature on it. But I, Sir, am a diplomatist of many years' standing,
+and this is not enough for me. I regret it; but I find myself compelled
+to relinquish all further communication with you till your powers are
+better defined.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Regnier expressed his regret at having been so cruelly deceived but
+thanked Bismarck for his kindness, whereupon the latter offered to give
+him a last chance. "I would certainly," he said, "have treated with you
+as to peace conditions, had you been able to treat in the name of a
+Marshal at the head of 80,000 men; as it is, I will send this telegram
+to the Marshal: 'Does Marshal Bazaine authorise M. Regnier to treat for
+the surrender of the army before Metz in accordance with the conditions
+agreed upon with the last-named?'" On the 29th came Bazaine's somewhat
+diffuse reply:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+I cannot reply definitely in the affirmative to the question. Regnier
+announced himself the emissary of the Empress without written
+credentials. He asked the conditions on which I could enter into
+negotiations with Prince Frederick Charles. My answer was that I could
+only accept a convention with the honours of war, not to include the
+fortress of Metz. These are the only conditions which military honour
+permits me to accept.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Regnier bombarded the Chancellor with letters until the 30th, when
+Count Hatzfeld informed him that the Minister would listen to nothing
+more until Regnier could show full powers without evasion; that the
+matter must imperatively be conducted openly and above board; and that
+his Excellency hoped Regnier would be able to get clear of it with
+honour, and that soon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Regnier quitted Ferrières in great dejection. He gives vent ruefully
+to the belief that Bismarck regarded him as an unaccredited agent of
+the Empress, while, curiously enough, the partisans of the Empress took
+him for an emissary of Bismarck. Reaching Hastings on the 3rd of
+October he found that the Empress was now at Chislehurst. He had
+telegraphed in advance to "M. Regnier," the name which he had
+instructed General Bourbaki to pass under until the true Regnier should
+reach England. But Bourbaki had cast away the false name at the
+instigation of a brother officer while passing through Belgium. On
+arriving at Chislehurst he learned from the Empress that he had been
+made the victim of a mystification on the part of Regnier, and that she
+had never expressed the desire to have with her either Marshal
+Canrobert or himself. This intelligence, of which the newspapers had
+given him a presentiment, struck him to the heart. Although covered by
+his chief's order he found himself in a false position; and he wrote to
+the late Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, begging his good
+offices to obtain for him an authorisation to return to his post. An
+assurance was given that this would be accorded, and he hurried to
+Luxembourg there to await intimation of permission to re-enter Metz.
+Some delay occurred in the transmission of the Royal order to this
+effect and although Bourbaki was assured that the decision would
+shortly reach him, he became impatient, went into France, and placed
+himself at the disposition of the Provisional Government. But
+thenceforth he was a soured and dispirited man. The <i>ci-devant</i>
+aide-de-camp of an Emperor writhed under the harrow of Gambetta and
+Freycinet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for Regnier, on his return to England he seems to have haunted
+Chislehurst. Once, so he frankly writes, after waiting a full hour in
+expectation of an audience of the Empress Madame Le Breton came to tell
+him that Her Majesty was sorry to have kept him waiting so long, but
+that she had now definitely resolved not to receive him. Yet he hung
+on, and the same evening he tells that he was called somewhat abruptly
+into a room in which stood several gentlemen, when a lady suddenly rose
+from a couch and addressed him standing. At last he was face to face
+with the Empress. "Sir," said Her Majesty, "you have been persistent in
+wishing to speak with me personally; here I am; what have you to say?"
+Then Regnier, by his own account, harangued that august and unfortunate
+lady in a manner which in print seems extremely trenchant and
+dictatorial. It was all in vain, he confesses; he could not alter the
+convictions of the Empress. He says that "she feared that posterity, if
+she yielded, would only see in the act a proof of dynastic selfishness;
+and that dishonour would be attached to the name of whoever should sign
+a treaty based on a cession of territory." Probably Her Majesty spoke
+from a more lofty standpoint than Regnier was able to comprehend or
+appreciate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Regnier's subsequent career during that troublous period was both
+curious and dubious. General Boyer states that on the 28th of October
+he found Regnier <i>tête-à-tête</i> with Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon). Later
+he went to Cassel, where he busied himself in trying to implicate in
+political machinations sundry French officers who were prisoners there.
+Presently we find him at Versailles, figuring among the conductors of
+the <i>Moniteur Prussien</i>, Bismarck's organ during the German occupation
+of that city, in which journal he published a series of articles under
+the title of <i>Jean Bonhomme</i>. During the armistice after the surrender
+of Paris he betook himself to Brussels, where he told General Boyer
+that he had gone to Versailles to attempt a renewal of negotiations
+tending towards an Imperial restoration. He showed the general the
+original safe-conduct which Bismarck had given him at Ferrières, and a
+letter of Count Hatzfeld authorising him to visit Versailles. The last
+item during this period recorded of this strange personage&mdash;and that
+item one so significant as to justify Mrs. Crawford's shrewd suspicion
+"that Regnier played a double game, and that Prince Bismarck, if he
+chose, could clear up the mystery which hangs over Regnier's curious
+negotiations"&mdash;is found in a page of the <i>Procès Bazaine</i>. This is the
+gem: "On the 18th of February 1871 he was in Versailles, where he met a
+person of his acquaintance, to whom he uttered the characteristic
+words&mdash;'I do not know whether M. de Bismarck will allow me to leave him
+this evening.'" He is said to have later been connected with the Paris
+police under the late M. Lagrange. Whether Regnier was more knave or
+fool&mdash;enthusiast, impostor, or "crank"&mdash;will probably be never known.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap09"></a>
+RAILWAY LIZZ
+</h3>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+BY AN HOSPITAL MATRON
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We see many curious phases of humanity&mdash;we who administer to the sick
+in the great hospitals which are among the boasts of London. The mask
+worn by the face of the world is dropped before us. We see men as they
+are, and while the sight is often not calculated to enhance our
+estimate of human nature, there are occasionally strong reliefs which
+stand out from the mass of shadow. There are curious opinions
+entertained in the outer world as to the internal economy of hospitals,
+not a few "laymen" imagining that the main end of such establishments
+is that the doctors may have something to experiment upon for the
+advancement of their professional theories&mdash;something which, while it
+is human, is not very valuable in the social scale and therefore open
+to be hacked and hewn and operated upon with a freedom begotten of the
+knowledge that the subject is a mere vile corpus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor is this the only delusion. Many people think that the hospital
+nurse is but another name for a heartless harpy, brimful of callous
+selfishness. Her attentions&mdash;kindness is an inadmissible word&mdash;are
+believed to be purely mercenary. Those who themselves can afford to fee
+her or who have friends able and willing to buy her services, may
+purchase civil treatment and careful nursing while the poor wretch who
+has neither money nor friends may languish unheeded. There is no
+greater mistake than this. Year by year the character of hospital
+nursing has improved. It is not to be denied that in times gone by
+there were nurses the mainsprings of whose actions may be said to have
+been money and gin; but these have long since been driven forth with
+contumely. I have seen a poor wretch of a discharged soldier without a
+single copper to bless himself with, nursed with as much tender
+assiduity and real feeling as if he were in a position to pay his
+nurses handsomely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, in most hospitals now the practice of accepting money presents
+is altogether forbidden; and if the prohibition, as in the case of
+railway porters and guards, is sometimes looked upon in the light of a
+dead letter, there is, I sincerely believe, no such thing as any
+grasping after a guerdon nor any neglect in a case where it is evident
+no guerdon is to be expected. There is an hospital I could name in
+which the nurses are prohibited from accepting from patients any more
+substantial recognition of their services than a nosegay of flowers.
+The wards of this hospital are always gay with bright, fragrant posies,
+most of them the contributions of those who, having been carefully
+tended in their need, retain a grateful recollection of the kindness
+and now that they are in health again take this simple, pretty way of
+showing their gratitude. It is two years ago since a rough bricklayer's
+labourer got mended in the accident ward of this hospital of some
+curiously complicated injuries he had received by tumbling from the top
+of a house. Not a Sunday afternoon has there been since the
+house-surgeon told him one morning that he might go out, that he has
+not religiously visited the "Albert" ward and brought his
+thank-offering in the shape of a cheap but grateful nosegay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those nurses who thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have
+often curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of
+collecting them. It is by no means always mere regard for the securing
+of the necessaries of life which has brought them to the thankless and
+toilsome occupation. We have all read of nunneries in which women
+immured themselves, anxious to sequester themselves from all
+association with the outer world and to devote themselves to a life of
+penance and devotion. After all their piety was aimless and of no
+utility to humanity. There was a concentrated selfishness in it which
+detracted from its ambitious aspiration. But in the modern nuns of our
+hospitals methinks we have women who, abnegating with equal solicitude
+the pleasures and dissipations of the world, find a more philanthropic
+opening for their exertions in their retirement than in sleeping on
+hair pallets, and in eating nothing but parched peas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was towards the autumn of a recent year that a modest-looking young
+woman applied to me for a situation on our nursing staff. She wore a
+widow's dress and seemed a self-contained, reserved little woman, with
+something weighing very heavily on her mind. Her testimonials of
+character were ample and of a very high order but they did not
+enlighten me with any great freedom as to her past history, and she for
+her part appeared by no means eager to supplement the meagre
+information furnished by them. However, people have a right to keep
+their own counsel if they please, and there was no sin in the woman's
+reticence. We happened to be very short of efficient nurses at the time
+and she was at once taken upon trial; her somewhat strange stipulation,
+which she made absolute, being agreed to&mdash;that she should not be
+compelled to reside in the hospital, but merely come in to perform her
+turn of nursing, and that over, be at liberty to leave the precincts
+when she pleased. I say the stipulation was a strange one, because
+attached to it there was a considerable pecuniary sacrifice as well as
+a necessity for entering a lower grade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made a very excellent nurse, with her quiet, reserved ways and her
+manner of moving about a ward as if she studied the lightness of every
+footfall. But she had her peculiarities. I have already said that she
+was not given to be communicative, and for the first three months she
+was in the place I do not believe she uttered a word to any one within
+the walls except on subjects connected with the performance of her
+duties. Then, too, she manifested a curious fondness for being on duty
+in the accident ward. Most nurses have very little liking for this
+ward&mdash;the work is very heavy and unremitting and frequently the sights
+are more than usually repulsive. But she specially made application to
+be placed in it, and the more terrible the nature of the accident the
+more eager was her zeal to minister to the poor victim. It seemed
+almost a morbid fondness which she developed for waiting, in
+particular, upon people injured by railway accidents. When some poor
+mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed almost out of
+resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an empty cot in
+the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a seemingly
+intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and ease the
+poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot" with
+an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however
+conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her
+partiality for railway "cases" was so marked that it appeared to amount
+to a passion; and among the other nurses, never slow to fix upon any
+peculiarity and base upon it some not unfriendly nickname, our quiet
+friend went by the name of "Railway Lizz." Nobody ever got any clue to
+the reason, if there was one, for this predilection of hers. Indeed,
+nobody ever was favoured with the smallest scrap of her confidence. I
+confess to have felt much interest in the sad-eyed young widow and to
+have several times given her an opening which she might have availed
+herself of for narrating something of her past life; but she always
+retired within herself with a sensitiveness which puzzled me not a
+little, satisfied as I was that there was nothing in her antecedents of
+a character which would not bear the light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are few holidays within an hospital. Physical suffering is not to
+be mitigated by a gala day; the pressure of disease cannot be lightened
+by jollity and merry-making. One New Year's Eve, when the world outside
+our walls was glad of heart, a poor shattered form was borne into the
+accident ward. It was a railway-porter whom a train had knocked down
+and passed over, crushing the young fellow almost out of the shape of
+humanity. Railway Lizz was by his side in a moment, wetting the
+pain-parched lips and smoothing the pillow of the half-conscious
+sufferer. The house-surgeon came and went with that silent shake of the
+head we know too surely how to interpret, and the mangled
+railway-porter was left in the care of his assiduous nurse. It was
+almost midnight when I again entered the accident ward. The night-lamp
+was burning feebly, shedding a dull dim light over the great room and
+throwing out huge grotesque shadows on the floor and the walls. I
+glanced toward the railway-porter's bed, and the tell-tale screen
+placed around it told me that all was over and that the life had gone
+out of the shattered casket. As I walked down the room toward the
+screen I heard a low subdued sound of bitter sobbing behind it; and
+when I stepped within it, there was the sad-faced widow-nurse weeping
+as if her heart would break. When she saw me she strove hard to repress
+her emotion and to resume the quiet, self-possessed demeanour which it
+was her wont to wear; but she failed in the attempt and the sobs burst
+out in almost convulsive rebellion against the effort to repress them.
+I put my arm round the neck of the poor young thing and stooping down
+kissed her wet cheek as a tear from my own eye mingled with her profuse
+weeping. The evidence of feeling appeared to overpower her utterly; she
+buried her head in my lap, and lay long there sobbing like a child.
+When the acuteness of the emotion had somewhat spent itself I gently
+raised her up, and asked of her what was the cause of a grief so
+poignant. I found that I was now at last within the intrenchments of
+her reserve; with a deep sigh she said, in her Scottish accent, that it
+was "a lang, lang story," but if I cared to hear it she would tell it.
+So sitting there, we two together in the dim twilight of the
+night-lamp, with the shattered corpse of the railway-porter lying there
+"streekit" decently before us, she told the following pathetic tale:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am an Aberdeen girl by birth. My father was the foreman at a
+factory, a very stiff, dour man, but a gude father, and an upright,
+God-fearing man. When I was about eighteen, I fell acquainted with a
+railway-guard, a winsome, manly lad as ever ye would wish to see. If ye
+had kent my Alick, ye wadna wonder at me for what I did. My father was
+a proud man, and he couldna bear that I should marry a man that he said
+wasna my equal in station; and in his firm, masterful way he forbade
+Alick from coming about the house, and me from seeing him. It was a
+sair trial, and I dinna think ony father has a right to put doon his
+foot and mar the happiness of twa young folks in the way mine did. The
+struggle was a bitter ane, between a father's commands and the bidding
+of true luve; and at last, ae night coming home from a friend's house,
+Alick and I forgathered again, and he swore he would not gang till I
+had promised I would marry him afore the week was out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll not trouble ye with lang details of the battle that I fought with
+mysel', and how in the end Alick conquered. We were married in the West
+Kirk the Sunday after, and we twa set up our simple housekeeping in a
+single room in a house by the back of the Infirmary. Oh, mem, we were
+happy young things! Alick was the fondest, kindest man ye could ever
+think of. Sometimes he wad take me a jaunt the length of Perth in the
+van with him, and point out the places of interest on the road as we
+went flashing by them. Then on the Sunday, when he was off duty, we
+used to take a walk out to the Torry Lighthouse, or down by the auld
+brig o' Balgownie, and then hame to an hour's read of the Bible afore I
+put down the kebbuck and the bannocks. My father keepit hard and
+unforgiving; they tellt me he had sworn an oath I should never darken
+his door again, and at times I felt very sairly the bitterness of his
+feeling toward me, whan I was sitting up waiting for Alick's
+hame-coming whan he was on the night turn; but then he wad come in with
+his blithe smile and cheery greeting and every thought but joy at his
+presence wad flee awa as if by magic. Some of the friends I had kent
+when a lassie at home still keepit up the acquantance, and we used
+sometimes to spend an evening at one of their houses. The New Year time
+came, and Alick and myself got an invitation to keep our New Year's Eve
+at the house of a decent, elderly couple that lived up near the Kitty
+Brewster Station&mdash;quiet, retired folk that had been in business and
+made enough to live comfortable on. It was Alick's night for the late
+mail train from Perth, but he would be at Market Street Station in time
+to get up among us to see the auld year out and the new ane in; and I
+was to spend the evening there and wait for his arrival.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was a vera happy time. The auld couple were as kind as kind could
+be, and their twa or three young folks keepit up the fun brisk and
+lively. I took a hand at the cairts and sang a lilt like the rest; but
+I was luiking for Alick's company to fill up my cup of happiness. The
+time wore on, and it was getting close to the hour at which he might be
+expectit. I kenna what ailed me, but I felt strangely uneasy and
+anxious for his coming. 'Here he is at last!' I said to myself, as my
+heart gave a jump at the sound of a foot on the gravel walk. As it came
+closer, I kent it wasna Alick's step, and a strange, cauld grip of fear
+and doubt caught me at the heart. Mr. Thomson, that was the name of our
+old friend, was called out, and I overheard the sound of a whispered
+conversation in the passage. Then he put his head in and called out his
+wife; I could see his face was as white as a sheet, and his voice shook
+in spite of himself. The boding of misfortune came upon me with a force
+it was in vain to strive against, and I rose up and gaed out into the
+passage amang them. The auld man was shakin' like an aspen leaf; the
+gudewife had her apron ower her face and was greeting like a bairn, and
+in the door stood Tarn Farquharson, a railway-porter frae the station.
+I saw it aa' quicker nor I can tell it to you, leddy. I steppit up to
+Tarn and charged him simple and straught.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Tam, what's happent to my Alick?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The wet tears stood in Tarn's e'en as he answered, 'Dinna speer,
+Lizzie, my puir lass, dinna speer, whan the answer maun be a waefu'
+ane.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Tell me the warst, Tam,' says I; 'let me hear the warst, an' pit me
+oot o' my pain!'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The words are dirlin' and stoonin' in my ears yet&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'The engine gaed ower him, and he's lyin' dead at Market Street.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didna faint, and I couldna greet. Something gied a crack inside my
+head, and my e'en swam for a minute; but the next I was putting on my
+bonnet and shawl and saying good-nicht to Mrs. Thomson. They tried to
+stop me. I heard Tam whisper to the auld man, 'She maunna see him. He
+is mangled oot o' the shape o' man.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I wasna to be gainsaid, and Tam took my airm as we gaed doon
+through the toon to Market Street. There they tried hard to keep him
+oot frae my sight. They tellt me he wasna fit to be seen, but there's
+nae law that can keep a wife frae seeing her husband's corpse. He was
+lying in a waiting-room covered up with a sheet, and, oh me, he was
+sair, sair mangled&mdash;that puir fellow there is naething to him; but the
+winsome, manly face, with the sweet, familiar smile on it, was nane
+spoiled; and lang, lang, I sat there, us twa alane, with my hand on his
+cauld forehead, playing wi' his bonnie waving hair. They left me there,
+in their considerate kindliness, till the cauld light o' the New Year's
+morning began to break, and syne they came and tellt me I maun go. But
+I wadna gang my lane. He was mine, and mine only, sae lang as he was
+abune the mools; and I claimed my dead hame wi' me, to that hoose he
+had left sae brisk and sprichtly whan he kissed me in the morning. Four
+of the railway-porters carried him up to that hame which had lost its
+hame-look for me now. I keepit him to mysel' till they took him awa'
+frae me and laid him under a saugh tree in the Spittal Kirkyard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She paused in her story, overcome by the bitter memory of the past, and
+I wanted no formal application now to give me the clue to her strange
+preference for the accident ward and her hitherto inexplicable fondness
+for "railway cases." Poor thing, with what inexpressible vividness must
+the circumstances in which this New Year's night was passing with her
+have recalled the sad remembrances of that other New Year's night the
+narrative of which she had just given me! Presently she recovered her
+voice, and briefly concluded the little history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Leddy, I was wi' bairn whan my Alick was taken from me. Oh, how I used
+to pray that God would be gude to me, and give me a living keepsake of
+my dead husband! I troubled naebody. I never speered if my father would
+do anything for me; but I got work at the factory, and I lived in
+prayerful hope. My hour of trouble came, and a fatherless laddie was
+born into this weary world, the very picture o' him that was sleeping
+under the tree in the Spittal Kirkyard. I needna tell ye I christened
+him Alick, and the bairn has been my joy and comfort ever since God
+gifted me with him. I found the sichts and memories of Aberdeen ower
+muckle for me, sae I came up to London here, and ye ken the rest about
+me. It was because of being with my bairn that I wouldna agree to live
+in the hospital here like the rest of the nurses, and whan I gang hame
+noo to my little garret, he will waken up out of his saft sleep, rosy
+and fresh, and hold up his bonnie mou', sae like his father's, for
+'mammie's kiss.'"
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap10"></a>
+MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+None of the greater rivers of Scotland makes so much haste to reach the
+ocean as does the turbulent and impatient Spey. From its parent lochlet
+in the bosom of the Grampians it speeds through Badenoch, the country
+of Cluny MacPherson, the chief of Clan Chattan, a region to this day
+redolent of memories of the '45. It abates its hurry as its current
+skirts the grave of the beautiful Jean Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, who
+raised the 92nd Highlanders by giving a kiss with the King's shilling
+to every recruit, and who now since many long years
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  Sleeps beneath Kinrara's willow.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But after this salaam of courtesy the river roars and bickers down the
+long stretch of shaggy glen which intervenes between the upper and
+lower Rocks of Craigellachie, whence the Clan Grant, whose habitation
+is this ruggedly beautiful strath, takes its slogan of "Stand fast,
+Craigellachie," till it finally sends its headlong torrent shooting
+miles out through the salt water of the Moray Firth. In its course of
+over a hundred miles its fierce current has seldom tarried; yet now and
+again it spreads panting into a long smooth stretch of still water when
+wearied momentarily with buffeting the boulders in its broken and
+contorted bed; or when a great rock, jutting out into its course,
+causes a deep black sullen pool whose sluggish eddy is crested with
+masses of yellow foam. Merely as a wayfaring pedestrian I have followed
+Spey from its source to its mouth; but my intimacy with it in the
+character of a fisherman extends over the five-and-twenty miles of its
+lower course, from the confluence of the pellucid Avon at Ballindalloch
+to the bridge of Fochabers, the native village of the Captain Wilson
+who died so gallantly in the recent fighting in Matabeleland. My first
+Spey trout I took out of water at the foot of the cherry orchard below
+the sweet-lying cottage of Delfur. My first grilse I hooked and played
+with trout tackle in "Dalmunach" on the Laggan water, a pool that is
+the rival of "Dellagyl" and the "Holly Bush" for the proud title of the
+best pool of lower Spey. My first salmon I brought to the gaff with a
+beating heart in that fine swift stretch of water known as "The Dip,"
+which connects the pools of the "Heathery Isle" and the "Red Craig,"
+and which is now leased by that good fisherman, Mr. Justice North. I
+think the Dundurcas water then belonged to the late Mr. Little Gilmour,
+the well-known welter-weight who went so well to hounds season after
+season from Melton Mowbray, and who was as keen in the water on Spey as
+he was over the Leicestershire pastures. A servant of Mr. Little
+Gilmour was drowned in the "Two Stones" pool, the next below the "Holly
+Bush;" and the next pool below the "Two Stones" is called the
+"Beaufort" to this day&mdash;named after the present Duke, who took many a
+big fish out of it in the days when he used to come to Speyside with
+his friend Mr. Little Gilmour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In those long gone-by days brave old Lord Saltoun, the hero of
+Hougomont, resided during the fishing season in the mansion-house of
+Auchinroath, on the high ground at the mouth of the Glen of Rothes. One
+morning, some five-and-forty years ago, my father drove to breakfast
+with the old lord and took me with him. Not caring to send the horse to
+the stable, he left me outside in the dogcart when he entered the
+house. As I waited rather sulkily&mdash;for I was mightily hungry&mdash;there
+came out on to the doorstep a very queer-looking old person, short of
+figure, round as a ball, his head sunk between very high and rounded
+shoulders, and with short stumpy legs. He was curiously attired in a
+whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped jacket the great collar of
+which reached far up the back of his head, surmounted a pair of
+voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the knee. I imagined
+him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he accosted me
+good-naturedly, asking to whom the dogcart and myself belonged, I
+answered him somewhat shortly and then ingenuously suggested that he
+would be doing me a kindly act if he would go and fetch me out a hunk
+of bread and meat, for I was enduring tortures of hunger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he swore, and that with vigour and fluency, that it was a shame
+that I should have been left outside; called a groom and bade me alight
+and come indoors with him. I demurred&mdash;I had got the paternal
+injunction to remain with the horse and cart. "I am master here!"
+exclaimed the old person impetuously; and with further strong language
+he expressed his intention of rating my father soundly for not having
+brought me inside along with himself. Then a question occurred to me,
+and I ventured to ask, "Are you Lord Saltoun?" "Of course I am,"
+replied the old gentleman; "who the devil else should I be?" Well, I
+did not like to avow what I felt, but in truth I was hugely
+disappointed in him; for I had just been reading Siborne's <i>Waterloo</i>,
+and to think that this dumpy old fellow in the duffle jacket that came
+up over his ears was the valiant hero who had held Hougomont through
+cannon fire and musketry fire and hand-to-hand bayonet fighting on the
+day of Waterloo while the post he was defending was ablaze, and who had
+actually killed Frenchmen with his own good sword, was a severe
+disenchantment. When I had breakfasted he asked leave of my father to
+let me go with him to the waterside, promising to send me home safely
+later in the day. When he was in Spey up to the armpits&mdash;for the "Holly
+Bush" takes deep wading from the Dundurcas side&mdash;the old lord looked
+even droller than he had done on the Auchinroath doorstep, and I could
+not reconcile him in the least to my Hougomont ideal. He was delighted
+when I opened on him with that topic, and he told me with great spirit
+of the vehemence with which his brother-officer Colonel Macdonnell, and
+his men forced the French soldiers out of the Hougomont courtyard, and
+how big Sergeant Graham closed the door against them by main force of
+muscular strength. Before he had been in the water twenty minutes the
+old lord was in a fish; his gillie, old Dallas, who could throw a fine
+line in spite of the whisky, gaffed it scientifically, and I was sent
+home rejoicing with a 15 lb. salmon for my mother and a half-sovereign
+for myself wherewith to buy a trouting rod and reel. Lord Saltoun was
+the first lord I ever met, and I have never known one since whom I have
+liked half so well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Spey is a river which insists on being distinctive. She mistrusts the
+stranger. He may be a good man on Tweed or Tay, but until he has been
+formally introduced to Spey and been admitted to her acquaintance, she
+is chary in according him her favours. She is no flighty coquette, nor
+is she a prude; but she has her demure reserves, and he who would stand
+well with her must ever treat her with consideration and respect. She
+is not as those facile demi-mondaine streams, such as the Helmsdale or
+the Conon, which let themselves be entreated successfully by the chance
+comer on the first jaunty appeal. You must learn the ways of Spey
+before you can prevail with her, and her ways are not the ways of other
+rivers. It was in vain that the veteran chief of southern fishermen,
+the late Francis Francis, threw his line over Spey in the <i>veni, vidi,
+vici</i> manner of one who had made Usk and Wye his potsherd, and who over
+the Hampshire Avon had cast his shoe. Russel, the famous editor of the
+<i>Scotsman</i>, the Delane of the north country, who, pen in hand, could
+make a Lord Advocate squirm, and before whose gibe provosts and bailies
+trembled, who had drawn out leviathan with a hook from Tweed, and
+before whom the big fish of Forth could not stand&mdash;even he, brilliant
+fisherman as he was, could "come nae speed ava" on Spey, as the old
+Arndilly water-gillie quaintly worded it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet Russel of the <i>Scotsman</i> was perhaps the most whole-souled salmon
+fisher of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations
+extended beyond the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the
+peroration, slightly profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his
+speech on salmon fishing at a Tweedside dinner? "When I die," he
+exclaimed in a fine rapture, "should I go to heaven, I will fish in the
+water of life with a fly dressed with a feather from the wing of an
+angel; should I be unfortunately consigned to another destination, I
+shall nevertheless hope to angle in Styx with the worm that never
+dieth." To his editorial successor Spey was a trifle more gracious than
+she had been to Russel; but she did not wholly open her heart to this
+neophyte of her stream, serving him up in the pool of Dellagyl with the
+ugliest, blackest, gauntest old cock-salmon of her depths, owning a
+snout like the prow of an ancient galley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Spey exacts from those who would fish her waters with success a
+peculiar and distinctive method of throwing their line, which is known
+as the "Spey cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the
+successive phases of the "Spey cast" in the fishing volume of the
+admirable Badminton series. It cannot be learned by diagrams; no man,
+indeed, can become a proficient in it who has not grown up from
+childhood in the practice of it. Yet its use is absolutely
+indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks, trees, high
+banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead cast. The
+essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this&mdash;that his line must
+never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from a
+howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To
+watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal
+education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low
+trajectory, and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a
+dexterous swish of the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet
+supple rod, illustrate a phase at once beautiful and practical of the
+poetry of motion. Among the native salmon fishermen of Speyside,
+<i>quorum ego parva pars fui,</i> there are two distinct manners which may
+be severally distinguished as the easy style and the masterful style.
+The disciples of the easy style throw a fairly long line, but their aim
+is not to cover a maximum distance. What they pride themselves on is
+precise, dexterous, and, above all, light and smooth casting. No fierce
+switchings of the rod reveal their approach before they are in sight;
+like the clergyman of Pollok's <i>Course of Time</i> they love to draw
+rather than to drive. Of the masterful style the most brilliant
+exponent is a short man, but he is the deepest wader in Spey. I believe
+his waders fasten, not round his waist, but round his neck. I have seen
+him in a pool, far beyond his depth, but "treading water" while
+simultaneously wielding a rod about four times the length of himself,
+and sending his line whizzing an extraordinary distance. The resolution
+of his attack seems actually to hypnotise salmon into taking his fly;
+and, once hooked, however hard they may fight for life, they are doomed
+fish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah me! These be gaudy, flaunting, flashy days! Our sober Spey, in the
+matter of salmon fly-hooks, is gradually yielding to the garish
+influence of the times. Spey salmon now begin to allow themselves to be
+captured by such indecorous and revolutionary fly-hooks as the "Canary"
+and the "Silver Doctor." Jaunty men in loud suits of dittoes have come
+into the north country, and display fly-books that vie in the
+variegated brilliancy of their contents with a Dutch tulip bed. We
+staunch adherents to the traditional Spey blacks and browns, we who
+have bred Spey cocks for the sake of their feathers, and have sworn
+through good report and through evil report by the pig's down or Berlin
+wool for body, the Spey cock for hackle, and the mallard drake for
+wings, have jeered at the kaleidoscopic fantasticality of the leaves of
+their fly-books turned over by adventurers from the south country and
+Ireland; and have sneered at the notion that a self-respecting Spey
+salmon would so far demoralise himself as to be allured by a miniature
+presentation of Liberty's shop-window. But the salmon has not regarded
+the matter from our conservative point of view; and now we, too,
+ruefully resort to the "canary" as a dropper when conditions of
+atmosphere and water seem to favour that gaudy implement. And it must
+be owned that even before the "twopence-coloured" gentry came among us
+from distant parts, we, the natives, had been side-tracking from the
+exclusive use of the old-fashioned sombre flies into the occasional use
+of gayer yet still modest "fancies." Of specific Spey hooks in favour
+at the present time the following is, perhaps, a fairly correct and
+comprehensive list: purple king, green king, black king, silver heron,
+gold heron, black dog, silver riach, gold riach, black heron, silver
+green, gold green, Lady Caroline, carron, black fancy, silver spale,
+gold spale, culdrain, dallas, silver thumbie, Sebastopol, Lady Florence
+March, gold purpie, and gled (deadly in "snawbree"). The Spey cock&mdash;a
+cross between the Hamburg cock and the old Scottish mottled hen&mdash;was
+fifty years ago bred all along Speyside expressly for its feathers,
+used in dressing salmon flies; but the breed is all but extinct now, or
+rather, perhaps, has been crossed and re-crossed out of recognition. It
+is said, however, to be still maintained in the parish of Advie, and
+when the late Mr. Bass had the Tulchan shootings and fishings his head
+keeper used to breed and sell Spey cocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Probably the most extensive collection of salmon fly-hooks ever made
+was that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a
+property on which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His
+father was a distinguished Indian civil servant and of later fame as an
+astronomer; and his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the
+best fishermen that ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl.
+Henry Grant himself had been a keen fisherman in his youth, and when,
+after a chequered and roving life in South Africa and elsewhere, he
+came into the estate, he set himself to build up a representative
+collection of salmon flies for all waters and all seasons. His father
+had brought home a large and curious assortment of feathers from the
+Himalayas; Mr. Grant sent far and wide for further supplies of suitable
+and distinctive material, and then he devoted himself to the task of
+dressing hundred after hundred of fly-hooks of every known pattern and
+of every size, from the great three-inch hook for heavy spring water to
+the dainty little "finnock" hook scarcely larger than a trout fly. A
+suitable receptacle was constructed for this collection from the timber
+of the "Auld Gean Tree of Elchies"&mdash;the largest of its kind in all
+Scotland&mdash;whose trunk had a diameter of nearly four feet and whose
+branches had a spread of over twenty yards. The "Auld Gean Tree" fell
+into its dotage and was cut down to the strains of a "lament," with
+which the wail and skirl of the bagpipes drowned the noise of the
+woodmen's axes. Out of the wood of the "Auld Gean Tree" a local
+artificer constructed a handsome cabinet with many drawers, in which
+were stored the Elchies collection of fly-hooks classified carefully
+according to their sizes and kinds. The cabinet stood&mdash;and, I suppose,
+still stands&mdash;in the Elchies billiard-room; but I fear the collection
+is sadly diminished, for Henry Grant was the freest-handed of men and
+towards the end of his life anybody who chose was welcome to help
+himself from the contents of the drawers. Yet no doubt some relics of
+this fine collection must still remain; and I hope for his own sake
+that Mr. Justice A.L. Smith the present tenant of Elchies, is free of
+poor Henry's cabinet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a popular delusion that Speyside men are immortal; this is true
+only of distillers. But it is a fact that their longevity is
+phenomenal. If Dr. Ogle had to make up the population returns of Strath
+Spey he could not fail to be profoundly astonished by the comparative
+blankness of the mortality columns. Frederick the Great, when his
+fellows were rather hanging back in the crisis of a battle, stung them
+with the biting taunt, "Do you wish to live for ever?" If his
+descendant of the present day were to address the same question to the
+seniors of Speyside, they would probably reply, "Your Majesty, we ken
+that we canna live for ever; but, faith, we mak' a gey guid attempt!" A
+respected relative of mine died a few years ago at the age of
+eighty-five. Had he been a Southron, he would have been said to have
+died full of years; but of my relative the local paper remarked in a
+touching obituary notice that he "was cut off prematurely in the midst
+of his mature prime." When I was young, Speyside men mostly shuffled
+off this mortal coil by being upset from their gigs when driving home
+recklessly from market with "the maut abune the meal;" but the railways
+have done away in great measure with this cause of death. Nowadays the
+centenarians for the most part fall ultimate victims to paralysis. In
+the south it is understood, I believe, that the third shock is fatal;
+but a Speyside man will resist half a dozen shocks before he succumbs,
+and has been known to walk to the kirk after having endured even a
+greater number of attacks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the senior veterans of our riverside I may venture to name two
+most worthy men and fine salmon fishers. Although both have now wound
+in their reels and unspliced their rods, one of them still lives among
+us hale and hearty. "Jamie" Shanks of Craigellachie is, perhaps, the
+father of the water. He himself is reticent as to his age and there are
+legends on the subject which lack authentication. It is, however, a
+matter of tradition that Jamie was out in the '45; and that, cannily
+returning home when Charles Edward turned back at Derby, he earned the
+price of a croft by showing the Duke of Cumberland the ford across Spey
+near the present bridge of Fochabers, by which the "butcher duke"
+crossed the river on his march to fight the battle of Culloden. It is
+also traditioned that Jamie danced round a bonfire in celebration of
+the marriage of "bonnie Jean," Duchess of Gordon, an event which
+occurred in 1767. Apart from the Dark Ages one thing is certain
+regarding Jamie, that the great flood of 1829 swept away his croft and
+cottage, he himself so narrowly escaping that he left his watch hanging
+on the bed-post, watch and bed-post being subsequently recovered
+floating about in the Moray Firth. The greatest honour that can be
+conferred on a fisherman&mdash;the Victoria Cross of the river&mdash;has long
+belonged to Jamie; a pool in Spey bears his name, and many a fine
+salmon has been taken out of "Jamie Shanks's Pool," the swirling water
+of which is almost at the good old man's feet as he shifts the "coo" on
+his strip of pasture or watches the gooseberries swelling in his pretty
+garden. His fame has long ago gone throughout all Speyside for skill in
+the use of the gaff: about eight years ago I was witness of the calm,
+swift dexterity with which he gaffed what I believe was his last fish.
+In the serene evening of his long day he still finds pleasant
+occupation in dressing salmon flies; and if you speak him fair and he
+is in good humour "Jamie" may let you have half a dozen as a great
+favour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other veteran of our river of whom I would say something was that
+most worthy man and fine salmon fisher Mr. Charles Grant, the
+ex-schoolmaster of Aberlour, better known among us who loved and
+honoured the fine old Highland gentleman as "Charlie" Grant. Charlie no
+longer lives; but to the last he was hale, relished his modest dram,
+and delighted in his quiet yet graphic manner to tell of men and things
+of Speyside familiar to him during his long life by the riverside.
+Charles Grant was the first person who ever rented salmon water on
+Spey. It was about 1838 that he took a lease from the Fife trustees of
+the fishing on the right bank from the burn of Aberlour to the burn of
+Carron, about four miles of as good water as there is in all the run of
+Spey. This water would to-day be cheaply rented at £250 per annum; the
+annual rent paid by Charles Grant was two guineas. A few years later a
+lease was granted by the Fife trustees of the period of the grouse
+shootings of Benrinnes, the wide moorlands of the parishes of Glass,
+Mortlach, and Aberlour, including Glenmarkie the best moor in the
+county, at a rent of £100 a year with four miles of salmon water on
+Spey thrown in. The letting value of these moors and of this water is
+to-day certainly not less than £1500 a year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Charles Grant had a great and well-deserved reputation for finding a
+fish in water which other men had fished blank. This was partly because
+from long familiarity with the river he knew all the likeliest casts;
+partly because he was sure to have at the end of his casting-line just
+the proper fly for the size of water and condition of weather; and
+partly because of his quiet neat-handed manner of dropping his line on
+the water. There is a story still current on Speyside illustrative of
+this gift of Charlie in finding a fish where people who rather fancied
+themselves had failed&mdash;a story which Jamie Shanks to this day does not
+care to hear. Mr. Russel of the <i>Scotsman</i> had done his very best from
+the quick run at the top of the pool of Dalbreck, down to the almost
+dead-still water at the bottom of that fine stretch, and had found no
+luck. Jamie Shanks, who was with Mr. Russel as his fisherman, had gone
+over it to no purpose with a fresh fly. They were grumpishly discussing
+whether they should give Dalbreck another turn or go on to Pool-o-Brock
+the next pool down stream, when Charles Grant made his appearance and
+asked the waterside question, "What luck?" "No luck at all, Charlie!"
+was Russel's answer. "Deevil a rise!" was Shanks's sourer reply. In his
+demure purring way Charles Grant&mdash;who in his manner was a duplicate of
+the late Lord Granville&mdash;remarked, "There ought to be a fish come out
+of that pool." "Tak' him out, then!" exclaimed Shanks gruffly. "Well,
+I'll try," quoth the soft-spoken Charlie; and just at that spot, about
+forty yards from the head of the pool, where the current slackens and
+the fish lie awhile before breasting the upper rapid, he hooked a fish.
+Then it was that Russel in the genial manner which made provosts swear,
+remarked, "Shanks, I advise you to take a half year at Mr. Grant's
+school!" "Fat for?" inquired Shanks sullenly. "To learn to fish!"
+replied the master of sarcasm of the delicate Scottish variety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Respectful by nature to their superiors, the honest working folk of
+Speyside occasionally forget themselves comically in their passionate
+ardour that a hooked salmon shall be brought to bank. Lord Elgin, now
+in his Indian satrapy, far away from what Sir Noel Paton in his fine
+elegy on the late Sir Alexander Gordon Cumming of Altyre called
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  The rushing thunder of the Spey,<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+one day hooked a big fish in the "run" below "Polmet". The fish headed
+swiftly down stream, his lordship in eager pursuit, but afraid of
+putting any strain on the line lest the salmon should "break" him. Down
+round the bend below the pool and by the "Slabs" fish and fisherman
+sped, till the latter was brought up by the sheer rock of
+Craigellachie. Fortunately a fisherman ferried the Earl across the
+river to the side on which he was able to follow the fish. On he ran,
+keeping up with the fish, under the bridge, along the margin of
+"Shanks's Pool," past the "Boat of Fiddoch" pool and the mouth of the
+tributary; and he was still on the run along the edge of the croft
+beyond when he was suddenly confronted by an aged man, who dropped his
+turnip hoe and ran eagerly to the side of the young nobleman. Old
+Guthrie could give advice from the experience of a couple of
+generations as poacher, water-gillie, occasional water-bailiff, and
+from as extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the river as Sam
+Weller possessed of London public-houses. And this is what he
+exclaimed: "Ma Lord, ma Lord, gin ye dinna check him, that fush will
+tak' ye doun tae Speymouth&mdash;deil, but he'll tow ye oot tae sea! Hing
+intil him, hing intil him!" His lordship exerted himself accordingly,
+but did not secure the old fellow's approval. "Man! man!" Guthrie
+yelled, "ye're nae pittin' a twa-ounce strain on him; he's makin' fun
+o' ye!" The nobleman tried yet harder, yet could not please his
+relentless critic. "God forgie me, but ye canna fush worth a damn! Come
+back on the lan', an' gie him the butt wi' pith!" Thus adjured, his
+lordship acted at last with vigour; the sage, having gaffed the fish,
+abated his wrath, and, as the salmon was being "wetted," tendered his
+respectful apologies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful
+Speyside estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water
+hardly inferior to any throughout the long run of the river. Many a
+man, far away now from "bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the
+river's roll over its rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the
+swift yet smooth flow of "the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against
+the "Red Craig," in the deep, strong water at the foot of which the big
+red fish leap like trout when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting
+into glow of russet and crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank
+above; the smooth restful glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's
+How," in which a fisherman may spend to advantage the livelong day and
+then not leave it fished out; the turbulent half pool, half stream, of
+the "Piles," which always holds large fish lying behind the great
+stones or in the dead water under the daisy-sprinkled bank on which the
+tall beeches cast their shadows; the "Bulwark Pool;" the "Three
+Stones," where the grilse show their silver sides in the late May
+evenings; "Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter now, alas! spoiled
+by gravel; the quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and the "Spout o'
+Cobblepot;" and then the dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon," the deepest
+pool of Spey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a
+handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High
+Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and
+who, while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad. Good in
+the saddle and with the salmon rod, the Colonel was perhaps best behind
+a gun, with which he was not less deadly among the salmon of the Spey
+than among the grouse of Benaigen. His relative, old Lord Saltoun, was
+hard put to it once in the "Lady's How" with a thirty-pound salmon
+which he had hooked foul, and which, in its full vigour, was taking all
+manner of liberties with him, making spring after spring clean out of
+the water. The beast was so rebellious and strong that the old lord
+found it harder to contend with than with the Frenchmen who fought so
+stoutly with him for the possession of Hougomont. The Colonel,
+fowling-piece in hand, was watching the struggle, and seeing that Lord
+Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited his opportunity when the
+big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring, and, firing in the
+nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail, hardly marking
+it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river with
+cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now considered
+rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines, not in
+greed for fish but for the sake of the shooting practice they afforded
+him. When the hooked fish were struggling and in their struggles
+showing their tails out of water, he several times shot two right and
+left breaking the spine in each case close to the tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Colonel was succeeded by his brother, who had been a planter in
+Jamaica before coming to the estate on the death of his brother. Hardly
+was he home when he contested the county unsuccessfully on the old
+never-say-die Protectionist platform against the father of the present
+Duke of Fife; on the first polling-day of which contest I acquired a
+black eye and a bloody nose in the market square of a local village at
+the hands of some gutter lads, with whose demand that I should take the
+Tory rosette out of my bonnet I had declined to comply. Later, this
+gentleman became an assiduous fisher of men as a lay preacher, but he
+was as keen after salmon as he was after sinners. He hooked and
+played&mdash;and gaffed&mdash;the largest salmon I have ever heard of being
+caught in Spey by an angler&mdash;a fish weighing forty-six pounds. The
+actual present laird of Arndilly is a lady, but in her son are
+perpetuated the fishing instincts of his forbears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My reminiscences of Spey and Speyside are drawing to an end, and I now
+with natural diffidence approach a great theme. Every Speyside man will
+recognise from this exordium that I am about to treat of "Geordie." It
+is quite understood throughout lower Speyside that it is the moral
+support which Geordie accords to Craigellachie Bridge, in the immediate
+vicinity of which he lives, that chiefly maintains that structure; and
+that if he were to withdraw that support, its towers and roadway would
+incontinently collapse into the depths of the sullen pool spanned by
+the graceful erection. The best of men are not universally popular, and
+it must be said that there are those who cast on Geordie the aspersion
+of being "some thrawn," for which the equivalent in south-country
+language is perhaps "a trifle cross-grained." These, however, are
+envious people, who are jealous of Geordie's habitual association with
+lords and dukes, and who resent the trivial stiffness which is no doubt
+apparent in his manner to ordinary people for the first few days after
+the illustrious persons referred to have reluctantly permitted him to
+withdraw from them the light of his countenance. For my own part I have
+found Geordie, all things considered, to be wonderfully affable. That
+his tone is patronising I do not deny; but then there is surely a joy
+in being patronised by the factotum of a duke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have never been quite sure, nor have I ever dared to ask Geordie,
+whether he considers the Duke to be his patron, or whether he regards
+himself as the patron of that eminent nobleman. From the
+"aucht-and-forty daugh" of Strathbogie to the Catholic Braes of
+Glenlivat where fifty years ago the "sma' stills" reeked in every
+moorland hollow, across to beautiful Kinrara and down Spey to the
+fertile Braes of Enzie, his Grace is the benevolent despot of a
+thriving tenantry who have good cause to regard him with esteem and
+gratitude. The Duke is a masterful man, whom no factor need attempt to
+lead by the nose; but on the margin of Spey, from the blush-red crags
+of Cairntie down to the head of tide water, he owns his centurion in
+Geordie, who taught him to throw his first line when already he was a
+minister of the Crown, and who, as regards aught appertaining to salmon
+fishing, saith unto his Grace, Do this and he doeth it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geordie is a loyal subject, and when a few years ago he had the
+opportunity of seeing Her Majesty during her momentary halt at Elgin
+station, he paid her the compliment of describing her as a "sonsie
+wife." But the heart-loyalty of the honest fellow goes out in all its
+tender yet imperious fulness towards the Castle family, to most of the
+members of which, of both sexes, he has taught the science and practice
+of killing salmon. Hint the faintest shadow of disparagement of any
+member of that noble and worthy house, and you make a life enemy of
+Geordie. On no other subject is he particularly touchy, save one&mdash;the
+gameness and vigour of the salmon of Spey. Make light of the fighting
+virtues of Spey fish&mdash;exalt above them the horn of the salmon of Tay,
+Ness, or Tweed&mdash;and Geordie loses his temper on the instant and
+overwhelms you with the strongest language. There is a tradition that
+among Geordie's remote forbears was one of Cromwell's Ironsides who on
+the march from Aberdeen to Inverness fell in love with a Speyside lass
+of the period, and who, abandoning his Ironside appellation of
+"Hew-Agag-in-Pieces," adopted the surname which Geordie now bears. This
+strain of ancestry may account for Geordie's smooth yet peremptory
+skill as a disciplinarian. It devolves upon him during the rod-fishing
+season to assign to each person of the fishing contingent his or her
+particular stretch of water, and to tell off to each as guide one of
+his assistant attendants.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a great treat to find Geordie in a garrulous humour and to listen
+to one of his salmon-fishing stories, told always in the broadest of
+north-country Doric. His sense of humour is singularly keen,
+notwithstanding that he is a Scot; and it is not in his nature to
+minimise his own share in the honour and glory of the incident he may
+relate. One of Geordie's stories is vividly in my recollection, and may
+appropriately conclude my reminiscences of Speyside and its folk. There
+was a stoup of "Benrinnes" on the mantelpiece and a free-drawing pipe
+in Geordie's mouth. His subject was the one on which he can be most
+eloquent&mdash;an incident of the salmon-fishing season, on which the worthy
+man delivered himself as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Twa or three seasons back I was attendin' Leddy Carline whan she was
+fushin' that gran' pool at the brig o' Fochabers. She's a fine fusher,
+Leddy Carline: faith, she may weel be, for I taucht her mysel'. She
+hookit a saumon aboot the midst o' the pool, an' for a while it gied
+gran' sport; loupin' and tumblin', an' dartin' up the watter an' doon
+the watter at sic a speed as keepit her leddyship muvin' gey fast tae
+keep abriesht o't. Weel, this kin' o' wark, an' a ticht line, began for
+tae tak' the spunk oot o' the saumon, an' I was thinkin' it was a
+quieston o' a few meenits whan I wad be in him wi' the gaff; but my
+birkie, near han' spent though he was, had a canny bit dodge up the
+sleeve o' him. He made a bit whamlin' run, an' deil tak' me gin he
+didna jam himself intil a neuk atween twa rocks, an' there the dour
+beggar bade an' sulkit. Weel, her leddyship keepit aye a steady drag on
+him, an' she gied him the butt wi' power; but she cudna get the beast
+tae budge&mdash;no, nae sae muckle as the breadth o' my thoomb-nail. Deil a
+word said Leddy Carline tae me for a gey while, as she vrought an'
+vrought tae gar the saumon quit his neuk. But she cam nae speed wi'
+him; an' at last she says, says she, 'Geordie, I can make nothing of
+him: what in the world is to be done?' 'Gie him a shairp upward yark,
+my leddy,' says I; 'there canna be muckle strength o' resistance left
+in him by this time!' Weel, she did as I tellt her&mdash;I will say this for
+Leddy Carline, that she's aye biddable. But, rugg her hardest, the fush
+stuck i' the neuk as gin he waur a bit o' the solid rock, an' her
+leddyship was becomin' gey an' exhaustit. 'Take the rod yourself,
+Geordie,' says she, 'and try what you can do; I freely own the fish is
+too many for me.' Weel, I gruppit the rod, an' I gied a shairp, steady,
+upward drag; an' up the brute cam, clean spent. He hadna been sulkin'
+aifter aa'; he had been fairly wedged atween the twa rocks, for whan I
+landit him, lo an' behold! he was bleedin' like a pig, an' there was a
+muckle gash i' the side o' him, that the rock had torn whan I draggit
+him by main force up an' oot. The taikle was stoot, ye'll obsairve, or
+else he be tae hae broken me; but tak' my word for't, Geordie is no the
+man for tae lippen tae feckless taikle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Weel, I hear maist things; an' I was tellt that same nicht hoo at the
+denner-table Leddy Carline relatit the haill adventur', an' owned, fat
+was true aneuch, that the fush had fairly bestit her. Weel, amo' the
+veesitors at the Castle was the Dowager Leddy Breadanham; an' it seemed
+that whan Leddy Carline was through wi' her narrateeve, the dowager be
+tae gie a kin' o' a scornfu' sniff an' cock her neb i' the air; an' she
+said, wha but she, that she didna hae muckle opingin o' Leddy Carline
+as a saumon fisher, an' that she hersel' didna believe there was a fush
+in the run o' Spey that she cudna get the maistery ower. That was a gey
+big word, min' ye; it's langidge I wadna venture for tae make use o'
+mysel', forbye a south-countra dowager.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Weel, I didna say muckle; but, my faith, like the sailor's paurot, I
+thoucht a deevil o' a lot. The honour o' Spey was in my hauns, an' it
+behuvit me for tae hummle the pride o' her dowager leddyship. The
+morn's mornin' cam, an' by that time I had decided on my plan o'
+operautions. By guid luck I fand the dowager takin' her stroll afore
+brakfast i' the floor-gairden. I ups till her, maks my boo, an' says I,
+unco canny an' respectfu', 'My leddy, ye'll likely be for the watter
+the day?' She said she was, so says I, 'Weel, my leddy, I'll be prood
+for tae gae wi' ye mysel', an' I'll no fail tae reserve for ye as guid
+water as there is in the run o' Spey!' She was quite agreeable, an' so
+we sattlit it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Duke himsel' was oot on the lawn whan I was despatchin' the ither
+fushin' folk, ilk ane wi' his or her fisherman kerryin' the rod.
+'Geordie,' said his Grace, 'with whom will you be going yourself?' 'Wi'
+the Dowager Leddy Breadanham, yer Grace!' says I. 'And where do you
+think of taking her ladyship, Geordie?' speers he. 'N'odd, yer Grace,'
+says I, 'I am sattlin in my min' for tae tak' the leddy tae the "Brig
+o' Fochabers" pool;' an' wi' that I gied a kin' o' a respectfu'
+half-wink. The Duke was no' the kin' o' man for tae wink back, for
+though he's aye grawcious, he's aye dignifeed; but there was a bit
+flichter o' humour roun' his mou' whan he said, says he, 'I think that
+will do very well, Geordie!'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Praesently me an' her leddyship startit for the 'Brig o' Fochabers'
+pool. She cud be vera affauble whan she likit, I'll say that muckle for
+the dowager; an' me an' her newsed quite couthie-like as we traivellt.
+I saftened tae her some, I frankly own; but than my hert hardent again
+whan I thoucht o' the duty I owed tae Spey an' tae Leddy Carline. Of
+coorse there was a chance that my scheme wad miscairry; but there's no
+a man on Spey frae Tulchan tae the Tug Net that kens the natur' o'
+saumon better nor mysel'. They're like sheep&mdash;fat ane daes, the tithers
+will dae; an' gin the dowager hookit a fush, I hadna muckle doobt fat
+that fush wad dae. The dowager didna keep me vera lang in suspense. I
+had only chyngt her fly ance, an' she had maist fushed doon the pool a
+secont time, whan in the ripple o' watter at the head o' the draw abune
+the rapid a fush took her 'Riach' wi' a greedy sook, an' the line was
+rinnin' oot as gin there had been a racehorse at the far end o't, the
+saumon careerin' up the pool like a flash in the clear watter. The
+dowager was as fu' o' life as was the fush. Odd, but she kent brawly
+hoo tae deal wi' her saumon&mdash;that I will say for her! There was nae
+need for me tae bide closs by the side o' a leddy that had boastit
+there was na a fush in Spey she cudna maister, sae I clamb up the bank,
+sat doun on ma doup on a bit hillock, an' took the leeberty o' lichtin'
+ma pipe. Losh! but that dowager spanged up an' doun the waterside among
+the stanes aifter that game an' lively fush; an' troth, but she was as
+souple wi' her airms as wi' her legs; for, rinnin' an' loupin' an'
+spangin' as she was, she aye managed for tae keep her line ticht. It
+was a dooms het day, an' there wasna a ruffle o' breeze; sae nae doobt
+the fush was takin' as muckle oot o' her as she was takin' oot o' the
+fush. In aboot ten meenits there happent juist fat I had expectit. The
+fush made a sidelins shoot, an' dairted intil the vera crevice occupeed
+by Leddy Carline's fush the day afore. 'Noo for the fun!' thinks I, as
+I sat still an' smokit calmly. She was certently a perseverin' wummun,
+that dowager&mdash;there was nae device she didna try wi' that saumon tae
+force him oot o' the cleft. Aifter aboot ten meenits mair o' this wark,
+she shot at me ower her shouther the obsairve, 'Isn't it an obstinate
+wretch?' 'Aye,' says I pawkily, 'he's gey dour; but he's only a Spey
+fush, an' of coorse ye'll maister him afore ye've dune wi' him!' I'm
+thinkin' she unnerstude the insinivation, for she uttert deil anither
+word, but yokit tee again fell spitefu' tae rug an' yark at the sulkin'
+fush. At last, tae mak a lang story short, she was fairly dune.
+'Geordie,' says she waikly, 'the beast has quite worn me out! I'm fit
+to melt&mdash;there is no strength left in me; here, come and take the rod!'
+Weel, I deleeberately raise, poocht ma pipe, an' gaed doun aside her.
+'My leddy,' says I, quite solemn, an' luikin' her straucht i' the
+face&mdash;haudin' her wi' my ee, like&mdash;'I hae been tellt fat yer leddyship
+said yestreen, that there wasna a saumon in Spey ye cudna maister. Noo,
+I speer this at yer leddyship&mdash;respectfu' but direck; div ye admit
+yersel clean bestit&mdash;fairly lickit wi' that fush, Spey fush though it
+be? Answer me that, my leddy!' 'I do own myself beaten,' says she, 'and
+I retract my words.' 'Say nae mair, yer leddyship!' says I&mdash;for I'm no
+a cruel man&mdash;'say nae mair, but maybe ye'll hae the justice for tae say
+a word tae the same effeck in the Castle whaur ye spak yestreen?' 'I
+promise you I will,' said the dowager&mdash;'here, take the rod!' Weel, it
+was no sae muckle a fush as was Leddy Carline's. I had it oot in a few
+meenits, an' by that time the dowager was sae far revived that she was
+able to bring it in aboot tae the gaff; an' sae, in the hinner end, she
+in a sense maistert the fush aifter aa'. But I'm thinkin' she will be
+gey cautious in the futur' aboot belittlin' the smeddum o' Spey saumon!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap11"></a>
+THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The traveller up the country from Calcutta does not speedily reach
+places the names of which vividly recall the episodes of the great
+Mutiny. It is a chance if, as the train passes Dinapore, he remembers
+the defection of the Sepoy brigade stationed there which Koer Singh
+seduced from its allegiance. Arrah may possibly recall a dim memory of
+Wake's splendid defence of Boyle's bungalow and of Vincent Eyre's
+dashingly executed relief of the indomitable garrison. Benares is a
+little off the main line&mdash;Benares, on the parade ground of which Neill
+first put down that peremptory foot of his, where Olpherts was so quick
+with those guns of his, and where Jim Ellicott did his grim work with
+noose and cross-beam until long after the going down of the summer sun.
+But when the traveller's eye first rests on the gray ramparts of
+Akbar's hoary fortress in the angle where the Ganges and the Jumna meet
+and blend one with another, the reality of the Mutiny begins to impress
+itself upon him. Allahabad was the scene of a terrible tragedy; it was
+also the point of departure whence Havelock set forward on Cawnpore
+with his column, not indeed of rescue, but of retribution. The journey
+from Allahabad to Cawnpore, although perchance performed in the night,
+is not one to be slept through by any student of the story of the great
+rebellion. The Indian moon pours her flood of light on the little knoll
+hard by Futtehpore, where Havelock stood when Jwala Pershad's first
+round shot came lobbing, through his staff in among the camp kettles of
+the 64th. That village beyond the mango tope is Futtehpore itself,
+whence the rebel sowars swept headlong down the trunk road till Maude's
+guns gave them the word to halt. The pools are dry now through which,
+when Hamilton's voice had rung out the order&mdash;"Forward, at the double!"
+the light company of the Ross-shire Buffs splashed recklessly past the
+abandoned Sepoy guns, in their race with the grenadier company of the
+64th that had for its goal the Pandy barricade outside the village. In
+that cluster of mud huts&mdash;its name is Aoong&mdash;the gallant Rénaud fell
+with a shattered thigh, as he led his "Lambs" up to the <i>épaulement</i>
+which covered its front. One fight a day is fair allowance anywhere,
+but those fellows whom Havelock led were gluttons for fighting.
+Spanning that deep rugged nullah there, down which the Pandoo flows
+turbulently in the rainy season, is the bridge across which in the
+afternoon of the morning of Aoong, Stephenson with his Fusiliers dashed
+into the Sepoy battery and bayoneted the gunners before they could make
+up their minds to run away. And it was in the gray morning following
+the day of that double battle (the 15th of July) that the General,
+having heard for the first time that there were still alive in Cawnpore
+a number of women and children who had escaped the massacre of the
+boats, told his men what he knew. "With God's help," shouted Havelock,
+with a break in his voice that was like a sob, as he stood with his hat
+off and his hand on his sword&mdash;"with God's help, men, we will save
+them, or every man die in the attempt!" One answer came back in a great
+cheer; but a sadder answer to the aspiration, a bitter truth that made
+that aspiration futile and hopeless, had lain ever since the evening of
+the day before in the Beebeegur, and almost as the chief was speaking
+the Well was receiving its dead inmates. Where the train begins to
+slacken its pace on approaching the station, it is passing over the
+field of the first&mdash;the creditable&mdash;battle of Cawnpore. Fresh from the
+butchery Nana Sahib (Dhoondoo Punth) himself had come out to aid in the
+last stand against the avengers. Yonder is the mango tope which formed
+the screen for Hamilton's turning movement. It needs little imagination
+to recall the scene. Close by, at the cross-roads, stands the Sepoy
+battery, and those horsemen still nearer are reconnoitring sowars.
+Beyond the road the Highlanders are deploying on the plain as they
+clear the sheltering flank of the mango trees, amidst a grim silence
+broken only by the crash of the bursting shells and the cries of the
+bullock-drivers as the guns rattle on to open fire from the reverse
+flank. The flush rises in Hamilton's face and the eyes of him begin to
+sparkle, as he shouts "Ross-shire Buffs, wheel into line!" and then
+"Forward!" Quick as lightning the trails of the Sepoy guns are swung
+round and shot and shell come crashing through the ranks, while the
+rebel infantry, with a swiftness which speaks well for their British
+drill, show a front against this inroad on their flank. In silent grim
+imperturbability the Highland line stalks steadily on with the long
+springy step to be learned only on the heather. Now they are within
+eighty yards of the muzzles of the guns, and they can see the colour of
+the mustaches of the men plying and supporting them. Then Hamilton,
+with his sword in the air and his face all ablaze with the fighting
+blood in him, turns round in the saddle, shouts "Charge!" and bids the
+pipers to strike up. Wild and shrill bursts over that Indian plain the
+rude notes of the Northern music. But louder yet, drowning them and the
+roll of the artillery, rings out that Highland war-cry that has so
+often presaged victory to British arms. The Ross-shire men are in and
+over the guns ere the gunners have time to drop their lint-stocks and
+ramming-rods; they fall with bayonets at the charge upon the supporting
+infantry, and the supporting infantry go down where they huddle
+together, lacking the opportunity to break and run away in time. But
+the battle rages all day, and the white soldiers, as they fight their
+way slowly forward, hear the bursts of military music that greet the
+Nana as he moves from place to place, <i>not</i> in the immediate front.
+Barrow and his handful of cavalry volunteers crash into the thick of
+them with the informal order to his men, "Give point, lads; damn cuts
+and guards." Young Havelock, mounted by the side of the gallant and
+ill-fated Stirling trudging forward on foot, brings the 64th on at the
+double against the great 24-pounder on the Cawnpore road that is
+vomiting grape at point-blank range. The night falls and the battle
+ceases, but among the wearied fighting men there is none of the elation
+of victory; for through the ranks, after the going down of the sun, had
+throbbed the bruit, originating no one knew where, that the women and
+children in Cawnpore had been butchered on the afternoon of the day
+before, while Stephenson and his Fusiliers were carrying the bridge of
+the Pandoo Nuddee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The railway station of Cawnpore is distant more than a mile from the
+cantonment. Close to the road and not far from the station, the
+explorer easily finds the massive pile of the "Savada House," now
+allotted as residences for railway officials. English children play now
+in the corridors once thronged by the minions of the Nana, for here
+were his headquarters during part of the siege. Its verandas all day
+long were full of ministers, diviners, courtiers, and creatures. Here
+strolled the supple, panther-like Azimoolah, the self-asserted
+favourite of home society in the pre-Mutiny days. Teeka Sing, the
+Nana's war minister, had his "bureau" in a tent under the peepul tree
+there. In that other clump of trees, where an ayah is tickling a white
+baby into laughter, was the pavilion of the Nana himself, who inherited
+the Mahratta preference for canvas over bricks and mortar. And here,
+while the crackle of the musketry fire and the din of the big guns came
+softened on the ear by distance, sat the adopted son of the Peishwa
+while Jwala Pershad came for orders about the cavalry, and Bala Rao,
+his brother, explained his devices for harassing the sahibs, and Tantia
+Topee, Hoolass Sing, Azimoolah, and the Nana himself devised the scheme
+of the treachery. But the Savada House has even a more lurid interest
+than this. Hither the women and children whom an unkind fate had spared
+from dying with the men were brought back from the Ghaut of Slaughter.
+You may see the two rooms into which 125 unfortunates were huddled
+after that march from before the presence of one death into the
+presence of another. As they plodded past the intrenchment so long
+held, and across the plain to the Nana's pavilion, "I saw," says a
+spectator, "that many of the ladies were wounded. Their clothes had
+blood upon them. Two were badly hurt and had their heads bound up with
+handkerchiefs; some were wet, covered with mud and blood, and some had
+their dresses torn; but all had clothes. I saw one or two children
+without clothes. There were no men in the party, but only some boys of
+twelve or thirteen. Some of the ladies were barefoot." Hither, too,
+were sent later the women of that detachment of the garrison which had
+got off from the ghaut in the boat defended by Vibart, Ashe, Delafosse,
+Bolton, Moore, and Thomson, and which had been captured at Nuzzufghur
+by Baboo Ram Bux. It had been for those people a turbulent departure
+from the Suttee Chowra Ghaut, but it was a yet more fearful returning.
+"They were brought back," testified a spy; "sixty sahibs, twenty-five
+memsahibs, and four children. The Nana ordered the sahibs to be
+separated from the memsahibs, and shot by the 1st Bengal Native
+Infantry.... 'Then,' said one of the memsahibs, 'I will not leave my
+husband. If he must die I will die with him.' So she ran and sat down
+behind her husband, clasping him round the waist. Directly she said
+this, the other memsahibs said, 'We also will die with our husbands,'
+and they all sat down each by her husband. Then their husbands said,
+'Go back,' and they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered his soldiers,
+and they went in, pulling them forcibly away." ...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The drive from the railway station to the European cantonments is
+pleasant and shaded. At a bend in the road there comes into view a
+broad, flat, treeless parade ground. This plain lies within a circle of
+foliage, above which, on the south-eastern side, rise the balconies and
+flat tops of a long range of barracks built in detached blocks, while
+around the rest of the circle the trees shade the bungalows of the
+cantonment. Near the centre of this level space there is an irregular
+enclosure defined by a shallow sunk wall and low quickset hedge, and in
+the middle of this enclosure rises the ornate and not wholly
+satisfactory structure known as the "Memorial Church." It is built on
+the site of the old dragoon hospital, which was the very focus of the
+agony of the siege. It is impossible to analyse the mingled emotions of
+amazement, pride, pity, wrath, and sorrow which fill the visitor to
+this shrine of British valour, endurance, and constancy. The heart
+swells and the eyes fill as one, standing here with all the arena of
+the heroism lying under one's eyes, recalls the episodes of the
+glorious, piteous story. The blood stirs when one remembers the buoyant
+valour of the gallant Moore, who, "wherever he passed, left men
+something more courageous and women something less unhappy," the
+reckless audacity of Ashe, the cool daring of Delafosse, the deadly
+rifle of Stirling, the heroic devotion of Jervis. And a great lump
+grows in the throat when one bethinks him of the beautiful constancy
+and fearful sufferings of the women; of British ladies going barefoot
+and giving up their stockings as cases for grape-shot; of Mrs. Moore's
+journeys across to No. 2 Barrack; of the hapless gentlewomen, "unshod,
+unkempt, ragged, and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with
+drought, and faint with hunger, sitting waiting to hear that they were
+widows." And what a place it was which the garrison had to defend! Not
+a foot of all the space bomb-proof, an apology for an intrenchment such
+as "an active cow might jump over." The imagination has to do much work
+here, for most of the landmarks are gone. The outline of the
+world-famous earthwork is almost wholly obliterated; only in places is
+it to be dimly recognised by brick-discoloured lines, and a low raised
+line on the smooth <i>maidan</i>. The enclosure now existing has no
+reference to the outlines of the intrenchment. That enclosure merely
+surrounds the graveyard, in the midst of which stands the "Memorial
+Church," a structure that cannot be commended from an architectural
+point of view. But the space enclosed around its gaunt red walls is
+pregnant with painful interest. We come first on a railed-in memorial
+tomb, bearing an inscription in raised letters, on a cross let into the
+tessellated pavement: "In three graves within this enclosure lie the
+remains of Major Edward Vibart, 2nd Bengal Cavalry, and about seventy
+officers and soldiers, who, after escaping from the massacre at
+Cawnpore on the 27th June 1857, were captured by the rebels at
+Sheorapore, and murdered on the 1st July." The inmates of these graves
+were originally buried elsewhere, and were removed hither when the
+enclosure was formed. In another part of the enclosure is a raised
+tomb, the slab of which bears the inscription: "This stone marks a spot
+which lay within Wheeler's intrenchment, and covers the remains and is
+sacred to the memory of those who were the first to meet their death
+when beleaguered by mutineers and rebels in June 1857." Two only lie in
+this grave, Mr. Murphy and a lady who died of fever. These two perished
+on the first day of the siege and had the exclusive privilege of being
+decently interred within the precincts of the intrenchment. After the
+first day of the siege there was scant leisure for funeral rites. To
+find the last resting-place of the remaining dead of this siege, we
+must quit the enclosure and walk across the <i>maidan</i> to a spot among
+the trees by the roadside under the shadow of No. 4 Barrack. There was
+an empty well here when the siege begun; three weeks after, when the
+siege ended, this well contained the bodies of 250 British people. With
+daylight the battle raged around that sepulchre, but when the night
+came the slain of the day were borne thither with stealthy step and
+scant attendance. Now the well is filled up, and above it, inside a
+small ornamental enclosure formed by iron railings, there rises a
+monument which bears the following inscription: "In a well under this
+enclosure were laid by the hands of their fellows in suffering the
+bodies of men, women, and children, who died hard by during the heroic
+defence of Wheeler's intrenchment when beleaguered by the rebel Nana."
+Below the inscription is this apposite quotation from Psalm cxli. 7:
+"Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and
+cleaveth wood upon the earth. But mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the
+Lord." At the corners of the flower-plot are small crosses bearing
+individual names. One commemorates Sir George Parker, the cantonment
+magistrate; a second, Captain Jenkins; a third, Lieutenant Saunders and
+the men of the 84th Regiment; a fourth, Lieutenant Glanville and the
+men of the Madras Fusiliers; and here, too, lies stout-hearted yet
+tender-hearted John MacKillop of the Civil Service the hero of another
+well, that from which the team of buffaloes are now drawing water to
+make the mortar for the Memorial Church. Thence was procured the water
+for the garrison and it was a target also for the rebel artillery, so
+that the appearance of a man with a pitcher by day and by night the
+creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower of grape. But John
+MacKillop, "not being a fighting-man," made himself useful as he
+modestly put it, for a week as captain of the Well, till a grape-shot
+sent him to that other well thence never to return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Memorial Church is in the form of a cross, and now that it has been
+finished is not destitute of beauty as regards its interior. Perhaps it
+is in place, but the noblest monument that could commemorate Cawnpore
+would have been the maintenance, for the wonder of the world unto all
+time, of the intrenchment and what it surrounded, as nearly as possible
+in the condition in which they were left on the evacuation of the
+garrison. The grandest monument in the world is the Residency of
+Lucknow, which remains and is kept up substantially in the condition in
+which it was left when Sir Colin Campbell brought out its garrison in
+November 1857; and the Cawnpore intrenchment would have been a still
+nobler memorial as the abiding testimony to a defence even more
+wonderful, although unfortunately unsuccessful, than that of Lucknow.
+But the Memorial Church of Cawnpore will always be interesting by
+reason of its site and of the memorial tablets on the walls of its
+interior. In the left transept is a tablet "To the memory of the
+Engineers of the East Indian Railway, who died and were killed in the
+great insurrection of 1857; erected in affectionate remembrance by
+their brother Engineers in the North-West Provinces." On the left side
+of the nave are several tablets. One is to the memory of poor young
+John Nicklen Martin, killed in the battle at Suttee Chowra Ghaut.
+Another commemorates three officers, two sergeants, two corporals, a
+drummer, and twenty privates of the 34th Regiment, killed at the
+(second) Battle of Cawnpore on the 28th November 1857; the day on which
+the Gwalior Contingent, seduced into rebellion by Tantia Topee, made
+itself so unpleasant to General Windham, the "Cawnpore Runners," and
+other regiments of that officer's command. A third tablet is "To the
+memory of A.G. Chalwin, 2nd Light Cavalry, and his wife Louisa, who
+both perished during the siege of Cawnpore in July 1857. These are they
+which came out of great tribulation." A fourth commemorates Captain
+Gordon and Lieutenant Hensley, of the 82nd Foot, also victims of the
+Gwalior Contingent. In the right of the nave there is a tablet "Sacred
+to the memory of Philip Hayes Jackson, who, with Jane, his wife, and
+her brother Ralf Blyth Croker, were massacred by rebels at Cawnpore on
+27th June." Another is to Lieutenant Angelo, of the 16th Grenadiers
+Bengal Native Infantry, who also fell in the boat massacre; and a third
+is to the memory of the gallant Stuart Beatson, who was Havelock's
+adjutant-general, and who, dying as he was of cholera, did his work at
+Pandoo Nuddee and Cawnpore in a <i>dhoolie</i>. In the right transept are
+tablets in memory of the officers of the Connaught Rangers, and of the
+officers and men of the 32nd Cornwall Regiment "who fell in defence of
+Lucknow and Cawnpore and subsequent campaign"&mdash;fourteen officers and
+448 "women and men." And here, too, is perhaps the most affecting
+memorial of any&mdash;a tablet "In memory of Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Wainwright,
+Miss Wainwright, Mrs. Hill, forty-three soldiers' wives and fifty-five
+children, murdered in Cawnpore in 1857."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is easy enough now to follow the footsteps of Mrs. Moore, dangerous
+as was that journey of hers, from the intrenchment to the corner of No.
+2 Barrack, which she was wont to make when her husband went on duty
+there to strengthen the hands of Mowbray Thomson. There is no trace now
+and the very memory of its whereabouts is lost, of the bamboo hut in a
+sheltered corner which the garrison of this exposed post built for the
+brave gentlewoman. But No. 2 Barrack, except that it is finished and
+tenanted, stands now very much as it did when Glanville first, and when
+he fell then Mowbray Thomson, defended with a success which seems so
+wonderful when we look at the place defended and its situation. The
+garrison was not always the same. "My sixteen men," writes Thomson,
+"consisted in the first instance of Ensign Henderson of the 56th Native
+Infantry, five or six of the Madras Fusiliers, two plate-layers, and
+some men of the 84th. The first instalment was soon disabled. The
+Madras Fusiliers were all shot at their posts. Several of the 84th also
+fell, but in consequence of the importance of the position, as soon as
+a loss in my little corps was reported, Captain Moore sent us over a
+reinforcement from the intrenchment. Sometimes a soldier, sometimes a
+civilian, came. The orders given us were not to surrender with our
+lives, and we did our best to obey them." And in a line with No. 2
+Barrack is No. 4 Barrack, held with equal stanchness by a party of
+Civil Engineers who had been employed on the East Indian Railroad, and
+who had for their commander Captain Jenkins. Seven of the engineers
+perished in defence of this post.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is nothing more to see on the <i>maidan</i>, and one feels his anger
+rising at the obliteration of everything that might help towards the
+localisation of associations. Let us leave the scene of the defence and
+follow the track of the defenders as they marched down to the scene of
+the great treachery. The distance from the intrenchment to the ghaut is
+barely a mile. Think of that stirrup-cup&mdash;that <i>doch an dhorras</i>&mdash;of
+cold water, in which the hapless band pledged one another. The noble
+Moore cheerily leads the way down the slope to the bridge with the
+white rails with an advance guard of a handful of his 32nd men. The
+palanquins with the women, the children, and the wounded follow, the
+latter bandaged up with strips of women's gowns and petticoats, and
+fragments of shirt-sleeves. And then come the fighting-men&mdash;a gallant,
+ragged, indomitable band. A martinet colonel would stand aghast&mdash;for
+save a regimental button here and there, he would find it hard to
+recognise the gaunt, hairy, sun-scorched squad for British soldiers.
+But let who might incline to disown these few war-worn men in their
+dirty flannel rags and fragmentary nankeen breeches, their foes know
+them for what they are, and make way for the white sahibs with no
+dressing indeed in their ranks, but each man with his rifle on his
+shoulder, the deadly revolver in his belt, and the fearless glance in
+the hollow eye. The wooden bridge with the white rails spans at right
+angles a rough irregular glen which widens out as it approaches the
+river, some three hundred yards distant from the bridge. It is a mere
+footpath that leaves the road on the hither side of the bridge, and
+skirting the dry bed of the nullah touches the river close to the old
+temple. By this footpath it was that our countrymen and countrywomen
+passed down to the cruel ambush which had been laid for them in the
+mouth of the glen. There are few to whom the details of that fell scene
+are not familiar. What a contrast between the turmoil and devilry of it
+and the serene calmness of the all but solitude the ghaut now presents!
+On the knolls of the farther side snug bungalows nestle among the
+trees, under the veranda of one of which a lady is playing with her
+children. The village of Suttee Chowra on the bluff on the left of the
+ghaut, where Tantia Topee's sepoys were concealed, no longer exists; a
+pretty bungalow and its compound occupy its site. The little temple on
+the water's edge by the ghaut is slowly mouldering into decay; on the
+plaster of the coping of its river wall you may still see the marks of
+the treacherous bullets. The stair which, built against its wall, led
+down to the water's edge, has disappeared. Tantia Topee's dispositions
+for the perpetration of the treachery could not now succeed, for the
+Ganges has changed its course and there is deep water close in shore at
+the ghaut. In the stream nearest to the Oude side the river has cast up
+a long narrow dearah island, in the fertile mud of which melons are
+cultivated where once whistled the shot from the guns on the Oude side
+of the river. A Brahmin priest is placidly sunning himself on the river
+platform of the temple over the dome of which hangs the foliage of a
+peepul tree. A dhobie is washing the shirts of a sahib in the stream
+that once was dyed with the blood of the sahibs. There is no monument
+here, no superfluous reminder of the terrible tragedy. The man is not
+to be envied whose eyes are dry, and whose heart beats its normal
+pulsations, while he stands here alone on this spot so densely peopled
+by associations at once so tragic and so glorious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scene of the final massacre lies some distance higher up the river.
+As we cross the Ganges canal, the native city lying on our left, there
+rises up before us the rich mass of foliage that forms the outer screen
+of the beautiful Memorial Gardens. The hue of the greenery would be
+sombre but for the blossoms which relieve it, emblem of the divine hope
+which mitigated the gloom of despair for our countrywomen who perished
+so cruelly in this balefully historic spot. Of the Beebeeghur, the term
+by which among the natives is known the bungalow where the massacre was
+perpetrated, not one stone now remains on another but neither its
+memory nor its name will be lost for all time. Natives are strolling in
+the shady flower-bordered walks of the Memorial Gardens, the
+prohibition which long debarred their entrance having been wisely
+removed. In the centre of the garden rises, fringed with cypresses, a
+low mound, the summit of which is crowned by a circular screen, or
+border, of light and beautiful open-work architecture. The circular
+space enclosed is sunken, and from the centre of this sunken space
+there rises a pedestal on which stands the marble presentment of an
+angel. There is no need to explain what episode in the tragic story
+this monument commemorates; the inscription round the capital of the
+pedestal tells its tale succinctly indeed, but the words burn.
+"Sacred," it runs, "to the perpetual memory of the great company of
+Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were
+cruelly massacred by the followers of the rebel, Nana Doondoo Punth of
+Blithoor; and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on
+the 15th day of July 1857." A few paces to the north-west of the
+monument is the spot where stood the bungalow in which the massacre was
+done; and now, where the sight they saw maddened our countrymen long
+ago to a frenzy of revenge, there bloom roses and violets. And a step
+farther on, in a thicket of arbor vitae trees and cypresses, is the
+Memorial Churchyard, with its many nameless mounds, for here were
+buried not a few who died during the long occupation of Cawnpore, and
+in the combats around it. Here there is a monument to Thornhill, the
+Judge of Futtehghur, Mary his wife, and their two children, who
+perished in the massacre. Thornhill was one of the males brought out
+from the bungalow and shot earlier in the afternoon than when the
+women's time came. Another monument bears this inscription: "Sacred to
+the memory of the women and children of the 32nd, this monument is
+raised by twenty men of the same regiment, who were passing through
+Cawnpore, 21st Nov. 1857." And among the tombstones are those of
+gallant Douglas Campbell of the 78th, Woodford of the 2nd Battalion
+Rifle Brigade, and Young of the 4th Bengal Native Infantry.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap12"></a>
+BISMARCK
+</h3>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ex-Chancellor of the German Empire owed nothing of his unique
+career to adventitious advantages. Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who
+for more than a generation was the most prominent and most powerful
+personality of Europe, was essentially a self-made man. He was a
+younger son of a cadet family of a knightly and ancient but somewhat
+decayed house, ranking among the lesser nobility of the Alt Mark of
+Brandenburg. The square solid mansion in which he was born, embowered
+among its trees in the region between the Elbe and the Havel, might be
+taken by an Englishman for the country residence of a Norfolk or
+Somersetshire squire of moderate fortune. But memories cling around the
+massive old family place of Schoenhausen, such as can belong to no
+English residence of equal date. In the library door of the Brandenburg
+mansion are seen to this day three deep fissures made by the bayonet
+points of French soldiers fresh from the battlefield of Jena, who in
+their brutal lawlessness pursued the young and beautiful chatelaine of
+the house and strove to crush in the door which the fugitive had locked
+behind her. The lady thus terrified and outraged was the mother of
+Bismarck; and the story told him in boyhood of his loved mother's
+narrow escape from worse than death, and of his father's having to
+conceal her in the depth of the adjoining forest, may well have
+inspired their son with the ill-feeling against the French nation which
+he never cared to disguise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bismarcks had been fighting men from time immemorial, and the
+combatant nature of the great scion of their race displayed itself in
+frequent duels during his university career at Göttingen. In the series
+of some eight-and-twenty duels in which he engaged during his first
+three terms, he was wounded but twice&mdash;once in the leg and again on the
+cheek, the mark of which latter wound he bears to this day. At one time
+he seems to have all but decided to embrace the military career but for
+family reasons he became a country gentleman, and if Europe had
+remained undisturbed by revolution he might have lived and died a
+bucolic squire, "Dyke Captain" of his district, with a seat in the
+Provincial Diet, a liking for history and philosophy, a propensity to
+rowdyism and drinking bouts of champagne and porter, and a character
+which defined itself in his local appellation of "Mad Bismarck." <i>Dis
+aliter visum</i>. The Revolution of 1848 swept over Europe and Bismarck
+rallied to the support of his sovereign. When in 1851 the young
+Landwehr lieutenant was sent to Frankfort by that sovereign as the
+representative of Prussia in the German Diet, he carried with him a
+reputation for unflinching devotion to the Crown, for a conservatism
+which had been styled not only "mediaeval" but "antediluvian," and for
+startling originality in his views as well as fearlessness in
+expressing them. The latter attribute he displayed when, in reply to a
+remark of a French diplomat on a question of policy, "<i>Cette politique
+va vous conduire à Jena</i>," Bismarck significantly retorted, "<i>Pourquoi
+pas à Leipsic ou à Waterloo?</i>" During his tenure of office at Frankfort
+his conviction steadfastly strengthened that Prussia could become a
+great nation only by shaking herself free from the Austrian supremacy
+in Germany. "It is my conviction," he placed on record in a despatch
+soon after the Crimean War, "that at no distant time we shall have to
+fight with Austria for our very existence;" and he was yet more
+emphatic when he wrote just before leaving Frankfort to take up his new
+position as German Ambassador to Russia in the beginning of 1859: "I
+recognise in our relations with the Bund a certain weakness affecting
+Prussia, which, sooner or later, we shall have to cure <i>ferro et
+igni</i>"&mdash;with fire and sword&mdash;words which embodied the first distinct
+enunciation of that policy of "blood and iron" which was destined
+ultimately to bring about the unification of Germany. His disgust was
+so strong that Prussia did not assert herself against Austria in 1858
+when the latter's hands were full in Italy, that his continued presence
+at Frankfort was considered unadvisable. He remained "in ice"&mdash;to use
+his own expression&mdash;at St. Petersburg until early in 1862; and in
+September of that year, after a few months of service as Prussian
+Ambassador at Paris, he was appointed by King Wilhelm to the high and
+onerous post of Minister-President with the portfolio of Foreign
+Secretary. It was then that his great career as a European statesman
+really began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The impression is all but universal that King Wilhelm throughout the
+eventful years which followed was but the figure-head of the ship at
+the helm of which stood Bismarck, strong, shrewd, subtle, cynical, and
+unscrupulous. This conception I believe to be utterly wrong. I hold
+Wilhelm to have been the virtual maker of the united Germany and the
+creator of the German Empire; and that the accomplishment of both those
+objects, the former leading up to the latter, was already quietly in
+his mind long before he mounted the throne. I consider him to have
+possessed the shrewdest insight into character. I believe him to have
+been quite unscrupulous, when once he had brought himself to cross the
+threshold of a line of action. I discern in him this curious, although
+not very rare, phase of character, that although resolutely bent on a
+purpose he was apt to be irresolute and even reluctant in bringing
+himself to consent to measures whereby that purpose was to be
+accomplished. He was that apparent contradiction in terms, a bold
+hesitator; he habitually needed, and knew that he needed, to have his
+hand apparently forced for the achievement of the end he was most bent
+upon. He knew full well that his aspirations could be fulfilled only at
+the bayonet point; and recognising the defects of the army, he had
+while still Regent set himself energetically to the task of making
+Prussia the greatest military power of Europe. He it was who had put
+into the hands of Prussian soldiers the weapon that won Königgrätz.
+With his clear eye for the right man he had found Moltke and placed the
+premier strategist of his day at the head of the General Staff. Roon he
+picked out as if by intuition from comparative obscurity, and assigned
+to him the work of preparing and carrying out that scheme of army
+reform which all continental Europe has copied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, constant in the furtherance of his purposes, Wilhelm
+deliberately invented Bismarck. He had steadfastly taken note of the
+man whom he chose to be his minister from the big Landwehr lieutenant's
+first commission to the Frankfort Diet in 1851; probably, indeed,
+earlier, when Bismarck was a rare but forcible speaker in Frederick
+Wilhelm's "quasi-Parliament." In Bismarck Wilhelm saw precisely the man
+he wanted&mdash;the complement of himself; arbitrary as he was, unscrupulous
+as he was, but bolder and at the same time more wise. Knowing where he
+himself was lacking, he recognised the man who, when he himself should
+have the impulse to balk and hesitate, was of that hardier
+nature&mdash;"grit" the Americans call it&mdash;to take him hard by the head and
+force him over the fence which all the while he had been longing to be
+on the other side of. To a monarch of this character Bismarck was
+simply the ideal guide and support&mdash;the man to urge him on when
+hesitating, to restrain him when over-ardent. Wilhelm had all along
+thoroughly realised that war with Austria was among the inevitables
+between him and the accomplishment of his aims, and had accepted it as
+such when it was yet afar off; but when confronted full with it his
+nerve failed him, and Bismarck&mdash;engaged among other things for just
+such an emergency&mdash;had to act as the spur to prick the side of his
+master's intent. The spur having done its work Wilhelm was himself
+again; he really enjoyed Königgrätz and would fain have dictated peace
+to Austria from the Hofburg of Vienna. In his zeal for promoting German
+unity at Prussia's bayonet point he lost his head a little, and on
+Bismarck devolved, in his own words, "the ungrateful duty of diluting
+the wine of victory with the water of moderation." One of the beads on
+the surface of the former fluid was certainly thus early the Imperial
+idea; but the time for its fulfilment Bismarck wisely judged not yet
+ripe. As it approached four years later, the diary of the Crown Prince
+depicts with unconscious humour the amusing progress of the "weakening"
+of Wilhelm's opposition to the Kaisership; it weakened in good time
+quite out of the sort of existence it had ever had, and Wilhelm was
+ready for the Kaisership before the Kaisership was ready for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bismarck as Premier began as he meant to go on, with uncompromising
+masterfulness. The Chamber and the nation might probably have fallen in
+willingly with Wilhelm's scheme for the reorganisation and
+reinforcement of the army, had it been possible to divulge the intent
+in furtherance of which the increased armament was being created. But
+since neither monarch nor minister could even hint at the objects in
+view, the nation was set against that increased armament for which it
+could discern no apparent use. So the Chamber, session after session,
+went through the accustomed formula of rejecting the military
+reorganisation bill as well as the military expenditure estimates. "No
+surrender" was the steadfast motto of Bismarck and his royal master.
+The constitution, such as it was, in effect was suspended. The Upper
+House voted everything it was asked to vote; loans were duly effected,
+the revenues were collected and the military disbursements were made,
+right in the teeth of the popular will and the veto of the
+representatives of the nation. Bismarck became the best-hated man in
+Prussia. He was compared to Catiline and Strafford; he was threatened
+with impeachment; the House and the nation clamoured to the King for
+his dismissal and for the sovereign's return to the path of
+constitutional government.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the long "conflict-time" was drawing near its close, and the
+triumph of the monarch and his minister over the constitution was
+approaching. The policy of doing political evil that national advantage
+might come was, for once at least, to stand vindicated. War with
+Austria as the outcome of Bismarck's astute if unscrupulous statecraft
+was imminent when the hostile parliament was dissolved; and a general
+election took place amidst the fervid outburst of enthusiasm which the
+earlier victories of the Prussian arms in the "Seven Weeks' War"
+stirred throughout the nation. The prospect of war had been unpopular
+in the extreme, but the tidings of the first success kindled the flame
+of patriotism. Bismarck lost for ever the title of the "best-hated man
+in Prussia" in the loud volume of the enthusiastic greetings of the
+populace, and on the day of Münchengrätz and Skalitz Prussia now
+rejoiced to put her stubborn neck under the great minister's foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mingled truculence and tortuousness of the diplomacy by which
+Bismarck sapped up to the short but decisive war, the issue of which
+gave to Prussia the virtual headship of Germany and contributed so
+greatly toward the unification of the Fatherland, constitute a striking
+illustration of his methods in statecraft. He was fairly entitled to
+say, "<i>Ego qui feci</i>." He had achieved his aim in defiance of the
+nation. The Court threw its weight into the scale against the war; to
+the Crown Prince the strife with Austria was notoriously repugnant. The
+King himself, as the crisis approached, evinced marked hesitation. How
+triumphantly the event vindicated the policy of the great Premier, is a
+matter of history. He has frankly owned that if the decisive battle
+should have resulted in a Prussian defeat, he had resolved not to
+survive the shipwreck of his hopes and schemes. And there was a period
+in the course of the colossal struggle of Königgrätz, when to many men
+it seemed that the wielders of the needle-gun were having the worst of
+the battle. An awful hour for Bismarck, conscious of the load of
+responsibility which he carried. With great effort he could indeed
+maintain a calm visage, but his heart was beating and every pulse of
+him throbbing. In his torture of suspense he caught at straws. Moltke
+asked him for a cigar. As Bismarck handed him his cigar case he
+snatched a shred of comfort from the inference that if matters were
+very bad Moltke could hardly care to smoke. But Moltke was not only in
+a frame for tobacco but Bismarck watched with what deliberate coolness
+the great strategist inspected and smelt at cigar after cigar before
+making his final selection; and he dared to infer that the man who best
+understood the situation was in no perturbation as to the ultimate
+outcome. The opportune arrival of the Crown Prince's army on the
+Austrian right flank decided the business, and that arrival Bismarck
+was the first to discern. Lines were dimly visible on the hither slope
+of the Chlum heights; but they were pronounced to be ploughed ridges.
+Bismarck closed his field-glasses with a snap and exclaimed, "No, these
+are not plough furrows; the spaces are not equal; they are marching
+lines!" And he was right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eighteen days after the victory of Königgrätz the Prussian hosts were
+in line on the historic Marchfeld whence the spires of Vienna could be
+dimly seen through the heat-haze. The soldiers were eager for the storm
+of the famous lines of Florisdorf and King Wilhelm was keen to enter
+the Austrian capital. But now the practical wisdom of Bismarck stepped
+in and his arguments for moderation prevailed. The peace which ended
+the Seven Weeks' War revolutionised the face of Germany. Austria
+accepted her utter exile from Germany, recognised the dissolution of
+the old Bund, and consented to non-participation in the new North
+German Confederation of which Prussia was to have the unquestioned
+military and diplomatic leadership. Prussia annexed Hanover, Electoral
+Hesse, Nassau, Sleswig and Holstein, Frankfort-on-Main, and portions of
+Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria. Her territorial acquisitions amounted to
+over 6500 square miles with a population exceeding 4,000,000, and the
+states with which she had been in conflict paid as war indemnity sums
+reaching nearly to £10,000,000 sterling. In a material sense, it had
+not been a bad seven weeks for Prussia; in a sense other than material,
+she had profited incalculably more. She was now, in fact as in name,
+one of the "Great Powers" of Europe. The nation realised at length what
+manner of man this Bismarck was and what it owed to him. When the inner
+history of the period comes to be written, it will be recognised that
+at no time of his extraordinary career did Bismarck prove himself a
+greater statesman than during the five days of armistice in July 1866,
+when he fought his diplomatic Königgrätz in the Castle of Nikolsburg
+and assuaged the wounds of the Austrian defeat by terms the moderation
+of which went far to obliterate the memory of the rancour of the recent
+strife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been wily enough to secure by vague non-committal half-promises
+the neutrality of France during the weeks while Prussia was crushing
+the armed strength of Austria in Bohemia. But the issue of Königgrätz
+startled Napoleon and set France in ferment. Bismarck dared to refuse
+point-blank the demand which the French Emperor made for the fortress
+of Mayence, made though that demand was under threat of war. The
+Prussian commanders would have liked nothing better than a war with
+France, and Roon indeed had warned for mobilisation 350,000 soldiers to
+swell the ranks of the forces already in the field; but Bismarck was
+wise and could wait. He allowed Napoleon to exercise some influence in
+the negotiations in the character of a mediator; and to French
+intervention was owing the stipulation that the South German States
+should be at liberty to form themselves into a South German
+Confederation of which Napoleon hoped to be the patron. But Bismarck
+was a better diplomatist than Napoleon. While he formed and knit
+together the North German Confederation in which Prussia was dominant,
+he quietly negotiated an alliance offensive and defensive with each of
+the Southern States separately. No Southern bund was ever formed, and
+when the Franco-German War broke out in 1870 Napoleon saw the shipwreck
+of his abortive devices in the spectacle of the troops of Bavaria and
+Würtemberg marching on the Rhine in line with the battalions of Prussia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The unity of Germany was not yet; that consummation and the
+Kaisership&mdash;the two greatest triumphs of Bismarck's life&mdash;required
+another and a greater war to bring about their accomplishment. During
+the interval between 1866 and 1870, while the armed strength of
+Northern Germany was being quietly but sedulously perfected, Bismarck
+with dexterous caution was smoothing the rough path toward the ultimate
+unification. He would not have his hand forced by the enthusiasts for
+"the consummation of the national destiny." "No horseman can afford to
+be always at a gallop" was the figure with which he met the clamourers
+of the Customs Parliament. He invoked the terms of the treaty of Prague
+against the spokesmen of the Pan-German party inveighing vehemently
+against the policy of delay. He was staunch in his conviction that the
+South for its own safety's sake would come into the union the moment
+that the North should engage in war. He was a few weeks out in his
+reckoning; the Southern States waited until Sedan had been fought, when
+the prospect of the spoils of victory was assured; and this measured
+delay on their part was the best justification of Bismarck's sagacious
+deliberateness. The negotiations were tedious, but at length, on the
+evening of 23rd November 1870 the Convention with Bavaria was signed,
+and the unity of Germany was an accomplished fact. Busch vividly
+depicts the great moment:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Chief came in from the salon, and sat down at the table. "Now," he
+exclaimed excitedly, "the Bavarian business is settled and everything
+is signed. <i>We have got our German Unity and our German Emperor</i>."
+There was silence for a moment. "Bring a bottle of champagne," said the
+Chief to a servant, "it is a great occasion." After musing a little, he
+remarked, "The Convention has its defects, but it is all the stronger
+on account of them. I count it the most important thing that we have
+accomplished during recent years."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Notwithstanding that there was still before Bismarck a period of twenty
+years of virtual omnipotence, it was in the memorable years of 1870 and
+1871 that the apostle of blood and iron attained the zenith of his
+extraordinary career. Germany was his wash-pot; over France had he cast
+his shoe. The years of <i>Sturm und Drang</i> were behind him, during which
+he had wrought out the military supremacy of Prussia in spite of
+herself; and in 1870 he had no misgivings as to the ultimate result. So
+confident indeed was he that before he crossed the French frontier on
+the second day after the twin victories of Wörth and Spicheren, he had
+already resolved on annexing to the Fatherland the old German province
+of Alsace which had been part of France for a couple of centuries.
+Bismarck was at his best in 1870 in certain attributes; in others he
+was at his worst, and a bitter bad worst that worst was. He was at his
+best in clear swift insight, in firm masterful grasp of every phase of
+every situation, in an instinctive prescience of events, in lucid
+dominance over German and European policy. If patriotism consists in
+earnest efforts to advantage and aggrandise one's native land <i>per fas
+aut nefas</i>, than Bismarck during the Franco-German War there never was
+a grander patriot. His hands were clean, he wanted nothing for himself
+except, curiously enough, the only thing that his old master was strong
+enough to deny him, the rank of Field Marshal when that military
+distinction was conferred on Moltke. He was at his worst in many
+respects. He had, or affected, a truculence which was simply brutal,
+its savagery intensified rather than mitigated by a bluff, boisterous
+bonhomie. Jules Favre complained to him that the German cannon in front
+of Paris fired upon the sick and blind in the Blind Institute, Bismarck
+in those days of swaggering prosperity had a fine turn of badinage. "I
+don't know what you find so hard in that," he retorted, "you do far
+worse; you shoot at our soldiers who are hale and useful fighting men."
+It is to be hoped that Favre had a sense of humour; he needed it all to
+relish the grim pleasantry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I do not suppose, if he had had a free hand, that Bismarck would have
+exhibited the courage of his opinions; but if his sentiments as
+expressed count for anything he would fain have seen the methods of
+warfare in the Dark Ages reverted to. "Prisoners! more prisoners!" he
+once exclaimed at Versailles, after one of Prince Frederick Charles's
+victories in the Loire country&mdash;"What the devil do we want with
+prisoners? Why don't they make a battue of them?" His motto, especially
+as regarded Francs-tireurs, was "No quarter," forgetful of the swarms
+of free companions and volunteer bands whose gallant services in
+Prussia's War of Liberation are commemorated to this day in song and
+story. It was told him that among the French prisoners taken at Le
+Bourget were a number of Francs-tireurs&mdash;by the way, they were the
+volunteers <i>de la Presse</i> and wore a uniform. "That they should ever
+take Francs-tireurs prisoners!" roared Bismarck in disgust. "They ought
+to have shot them down by files!" Again, when it was reported that
+Garibaldi with his 13,000 "free companions" had been taken prisoners,
+the Chancellor exclaimed, "Thirteen thousand Francs-tireurs, who are
+not even Frenchmen, made prisoners! Why on earth were they not shot?"
+And when he heard that Voights Rhetz having experienced some resistance
+from the inhabitants of the open town of Tours, had shelled it into
+submission, Bismarck waxed wrath because the General had ceased firing
+when the white flag went up. "I would have gone on," said he, "throwing
+shells into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple
+truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was
+not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts
+for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he
+was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent
+undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered
+situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man of cool
+and undaunted courage. I have seen him perfectly impassive under heavy
+fire. In Bar-le-Duc, in Rheims, and over and over again in Versailles,
+I have met him walking alone and unarmed through streets thronged with
+French people who recognised him by the pictures of him, and who glared
+and spat and hissed in a cowed, furtive, malign fashion that was ugly
+to see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I vividly remember the first occasion on which I saw Bismarck. It was
+on the little tree-shaded <i>Place</i> of St. Johann, the suburb of
+Saarbrücken, in the early evening of the 8th August, the next day but
+one after the battle of the Spicheren. Saarbrücken was full to the
+door-sills with the wounded of the battle and stretcher-parties were
+continually tramping to the "warriors' trench" in the cemetery,
+carrying to their graves soldiers who had died of their wounds. The
+Royal Headquarters had arrived a couple of hours earlier, and I was
+staring with all my eyes at a fresh-faced, white-haired old gentleman
+who was sitting in one of the windows of Guepratt's Hotel and whom I
+knew from the pictures to be King Wilhelm. Two officers in general's
+undress uniform were walking up and down under the pollarded
+lime-trees, talking as they walked. Presently from out a house opposite
+the hotel there emerged a very tall burly man of singularly upright
+carriage and with a certain air of swashbucklerism in his gait. A long
+cavalry sabre trailed and clanked on the rough pavement as he advanced
+to join the two sauntering officers under the trees. He wore the long
+blue double-breasted frockcoat with yellow cuffs and facings and white
+cap which I knew to be the undress uniform of the Bismarck Cuirassiers,
+but he was only partially in undress since the long cuirassier
+thigh-boots in which he strode were conventionally full uniform. The
+wearer of this costume was Bismarck; nor did I ever see him otherwise
+attired except on four occasions&mdash;at the Château Bellevue on the
+morning after Sedan, in the Galerie des Glaces in the Château of
+Versailles on 18th January, in the Place de la Concorde of capitulated
+Paris, and in the triumphal entry into Berlin; when he appeared in full
+uniform. Saluting His Majesty and then the two officers whom I
+recognised as Moltke and Roon, he joined the pedestrian couple, taking
+post between them and joining in their promenade and conversation. We
+heard his voice and laugh above the rumble of the waggon wheels on the
+causeway; the other two spoke little&mdash;Moltke, as he moved with bent
+head and hands clasped behind his back, scarcely anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One would have imagined that those three men, the chief makers of that
+empire which was soon to come to the grand but not brilliant old
+gentleman in the window-seat, were on the most intimate and cordial
+terms. In reality they were jealous of each other with an inconceivable
+intensity. Bismarck had umbrage with Moltke because the great
+strategist withheld from the great statesman the military information
+which the latter held he ought to share. Moltke has roundly disclosed
+in his posthumous book his conviction that Roon's place as Minister of
+War was at home in Germany, not on campaign, embarrassing the former's
+functions. Roon envied Moltke because of the latter's more elevated
+military position, and disliked Bismarck because that outspoken man
+made light of Roon's capacity. I have known the headquarter staff of a
+British army whose members were on bad terms one with the other, and
+the result, to put it mildly, was unsatisfactory. But those three high
+functionaries, each with bitterness in his heart against his fellows,
+nevertheless co-operated earnestly and loyally in the service of their
+sovereign and for the advantage of their country. Their common
+patriotism had the mastery in them of their mutual hatred and jealousy.
+Ardt's line: <i>"Sein Vaterland muss grösser sein!"</i> was the watchword
+and inspiration of all three, and dominated their discordancies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the 17th August, the day of comparative quietude intervening between
+the day of Mars-la-Tour and the day of Gravelotte I was wandering about
+among the hamlets and farmsteads to the southward of Mars-la-Tour,
+waiting the arrival in their appointed bivouacs about Puxieux of my
+early friends of the Saxon Army Corps. Since in the battle of the
+previous day some 32,000 men had fallen killed or wounded within a
+comparatively small area, it may be imagined&mdash;or rather, without having
+seen the horror of carnage it cannot be imagined&mdash;how shambles-like was
+the aspect of this Aceldama. Scrambling up through the Bois la Dame
+with intent to obtain a wider view from the plateau above it, I found
+in a farmyard in the hamlet of Mariaville a number of wounded men under
+the care of a single and rather helpless surgeon. The water supply was
+very short and I volunteered to carry some bucketsful from the stream
+below. The surgeon told me that among his patients was Count Herbert
+Bismarck, the Chancellor's eldest son, who&mdash;as was also his younger
+brother Count "Bill"&mdash;was a volunteer private in the 2nd Guard
+Dragoons, and who had been shot in the thigh in the desperate charge
+made by that fine regiment to extricate from annihilation the
+Westphalian regiments which had suffered so severely near Bruville. A
+little later I saw Bismarck who had left the King on the Flavigny
+height, and who was riding about, as I assumed, in quest of his wounded
+son's whereabouts. I ventured to inform him on this point and he
+thanked me with some emotion. He was greatly moved at the meeting with
+his son but their interview was short; then he addressed himself to
+reproving the surgeon for not having had the Mariaville poultry killed
+for the use of the wounded, and presently rode away to order up a
+supply of water in barrels. I remember thinking him an exceedingly
+practical man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The English Warwick was styled the "King-maker"; but it was for the
+Prussian Bismarck to be Emperor-breaker and Emperor-maker within the
+same six months. The most wretched morning of Napoleon's life was that
+following the fatal day of Sedan, spent in and before the weaver's
+cottage on the Donchery road with Bismarck by his side, telling him in
+stern if courteous terms that as a prisoner of war his power to
+exercise the Imperial functions had fallen from him. It has been said
+that "the egg from which was hatched the German Empire was laid on the
+battlefield of Sedan." But, not to speak of the offer of the Imperial
+Crown to King Frederick Wilhelm by the Frankfort Parliament in 1848,
+Bismarck more than a year before the Austro-Prussian war had spoken to
+Lord Augustus Loftus, then British Ambassador to Prussia, of his
+ultimate intention that the King of Prussia should become the Emperor
+of an united Germany. The <i>Kaiserthum</i> permeated the air of Northern
+Germany throughout the years from 1866 to 1870. But Bismarck had the
+true statesman's sense of the proper sequence of things. He would move
+no step toward the Kaisership until German unity was in near and clear
+sight. Then, and not till then, in spite of the Crown Prince's ardour,
+was the Imperial project brought forward, discussed, and finally
+carried through by Bismarck's tact and diplomacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the 18th January 1871, the anniversary of the coronation of the
+first king of his house, Wilhelm was proclaimed German Emperor in the
+Galerie des Glaces of the Château of Versailles. Behind the grand old
+monarch on the dais were ranged the regimental colours which had been
+borne to victory at Wörth and the Spicheren, at Mars-la-Tour,
+Gravelotte, and Sedan. On Wilhelm's right was his handsome and princely
+son; to right and to left stood potentates and princes and the leaders
+of the hosts of United Germany. Stalwart and square, somewhat apart on
+the extreme left of the great semicircle of which his sovereign was the
+centre, with a face of deadly pallor&mdash;for he had risen from a
+sick-bed&mdash;stood Bismarck in full cuirassier uniform leaning on his
+great sword, the man of all others who might that day most truly say,
+<i>"Finis Coronat Opus."</i> His strong massive features were calm and
+self-possessed, yet elevated as it were by some internal power which
+drew all eyes to the great immobile figure with the indomitable
+lineaments instinct with will&mdash;force and masterfulness. After the
+solemn religious service His Majesty in a loud yet broken voice
+proclaimed the re-establishment of the German Empire, and that the
+Imperial dignity so revived was vested in him and his descendants for
+all time in accordance with the unanimous will of the German people.
+Bismarck then stood forward and read in sonorous tones the proclamation
+which the Emperor addressed to the German nation. As his final words
+rang through the hall the Grand Duke of Baden strode forward and
+shouted with all his force, "Long live the Emperor Wilhelm!" With a
+tempest of cheering, amidst waving of swords and of helmets the new
+title was acclaimed, and the Emperor with streaming tears received the
+homage of his liegemen. The first on bended knees to kiss his
+sovereign's hand was the Crown Prince, the second was Bismarck. The
+band struck up the National Anthem. Louder than the music, heard above
+the clamour of the cheering, sounded the thunder of the French cannon
+from Mont Valérien, the <i>Ave Caesar</i> from the reluctant lips of worsted
+France. Bismarck, impassive as he seemed, must have had his emotions as
+he quitted this scene of triumph for the banquet-table of the Kaiser of
+his own making. He knew himself for the most conspicuous man in Europe,
+the greatest subject in the world. It was the proudest day of his life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were many proud days still to occur in his long life. One of
+those was on the occasion of the German entry into Paris during the
+armistice which resulted in peace. The war had been of his making, and
+he chose to witness with his own eyes the actual triumph of his craft.
+It was a strange spectacle. There, helmet on head and sword on thigh,
+he sat in the shadow of the crape-shrouded statue of Strasburg on the
+Place de la Concorde. About him had gathered a group of extremely
+sinister French of the Belleville type. They had recognised him, and
+their lurid upward glances at the massive form on the great war-horse
+were charged with baleful meaning. Bismarck once or twice looked down
+on them with a grim smile under his moustache. At length the most
+daring of the "patriots" emitted a tentative hiss. With a little polite
+wave of his gloved hand Bismarck bent over his holster and requested
+"Monsieur" to oblige him with a light for his cigar. The man writhed as
+he compelled himself to comply. Little doubt that in his heart he
+wished the lucifer were a dagger and that he had the courage to use it.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap13"></a>
+THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
+</h3>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+1873
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Thursday</i>.&mdash;Gathering, hand-shaking, brandy and soda and drams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Friday</i>.&mdash;Drinking, dandering, and feeling the way in the forenoon;
+the ordinary in the afternoon; at night a spate of drink and bargaining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Saturday</i>.&mdash;Bargaining and drink.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Sunday morning</i>.&mdash;Bargains, drink, and the kirk."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the skeleton programme of the Inverness "Character" Fair given
+by a farmer friend to me, who happened to be lazily rusticating in the
+north of Scotland during the pleasant month of July. My friend asked me
+to accompany him in his visit to this remarkable institution and the
+programme was too tempting for refusal. As we drove to the station he
+handed me Henry Dixon's <i>Field and Fern</i>, open at a page which gave
+some particulars of the origin and character of the great annual sheep
+and wool market of the north. "Its Character Market," wrote "The
+Druid,"&mdash;no longer, alas! among us&mdash;"is the great bucolic glory of
+Inverness. The Fort-William market existed before, but the Sutherland
+and Caithness men, who sold about 14,000 sheep and 15,000 stones of
+wool annually so far back as 1816, did not care to go there. They dealt
+with regular customers year after year, and roving wool-staplers with
+no regular connection went about and notified their arrival on the
+church door. Patrick Sellar, 'the agent for the Sutherland
+Association,' saw exactly that some great <i>caucus</i> of buyers and
+sellers was wanted at a more central spot; and on 27th February 1817
+that meeting of the clans was held at Inverness which brought the fair
+into being. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Burnley, Aberdeen, and
+Elgin signified that their leading merchants were favourable and ready
+to attend. Sutherland, Caithness, Wester Ross, Skye, the Orkneys,
+Harris, and Lewis were represented at the meeting; Bailie Anderson also
+'would state with confidence that the market was approved of by William
+Chisholm, Esq., of Chisholm, and James Laidlaw, tacksman, of Knockfin;'
+and so the matter was settled for ever and aye, and the <i>Courier</i> and
+the <i>Morning Chronicle</i> were the London advertising media. This
+Highland Wool Parliament was originally held on the third Thursday in
+June, but now it begins on the second Thursday of July and lasts till
+the Saturday; and Argyllshire, Nairnshire, and High Aberdeenshire have
+gradually joined in. The plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel
+have always been the scene of the bargains, which are most truly based
+on the broad stone of honour; not a sheep or fleece is to be seen and
+the buyer of the year before gets the first offer of the cast or clip.
+The previous proving and public character of the different flocks are
+the purchasers' guide far more than the sellers' description."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus far "The Druid"; and my companion as we drove supplemented his
+information. It is from the circumstance that not a head of sheep or a
+tait of wool is brought to the market but that everything is sold and
+bought unseen and even unsampled, that the market derives its
+appellation of "character" fair. Of the value of the business
+transacted, the amount of money turned over, it is impossible to form
+with confidence even an approximate estimate since there is no source
+for data; but none with whom I spoke put the turnover at a lower figure
+than half a million. In a good season such as the past, over 200,000
+sheep are disposed of exclusive of lambs, and of lambs about the same
+number. The stock sold from the hills are for the most part Cheviots
+and Blackfaces; from the low grounds half-breds, being a cross between
+Leicester and Cheviot and crosses between the Cheviot and Blackface.
+All the sales of sheep and lambs are by the "clad score" which contains
+twenty-one. The odd one is thrown in to meet the contingency of deaths
+before delivery is effected. Established when there was a long and
+wearing journey for the flocks from the hills where they were reared
+down to their purchasers in the lowlands or the south country, the
+altered conditions of transit have stimulated farmers to efforts for
+the abolition of the "clad score." Now that sheep are trucked by
+railway instead of being driven on foot or conveyed from the islands to
+their destination in steamers specially chartered for the purpose, the
+farmers grudge the "one in" of the "clad score." In 1866 they seized
+the opportunity of an exceptionally high market and keen competition to
+combine against the old reckoning and in a measure succeeded. But next
+year was as dull as '66 had been brisk, and then the buyers and dealers
+had their revenge and re-established the "clad score" in all its
+pristine firmness of position. The sheep-farmers wean their lambs about
+the 24th of August and delivery of them is given to the buyers as soon
+as possible thereafter. The delivery of ewes and wethers is timed by
+individual arrangement. A large proportion of the old ewes&mdash;no ewes are
+sold but such as are old&mdash;go to England where a lamb or two is got from
+them before they are fattened. Most of the lambs are bought by
+sheep-farmers who, not keeping a ewe flock, are not themselves
+breeders, and are kept till they are three years old&mdash;"three shears" as
+they are technically called&mdash;and sold fat into the south country. There
+they get what Mr. M'Combie called the last dip and the butcher sells
+them as "prime four-year-old wedder mutton."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The size of some of the Highland sheep farms is to be reckoned by miles
+not by acres; and the stock, as in Australia, by the thousand. The
+largest sheep-owner, perhaps, that the Highlands ever knew was Cameron
+of Corrichollie, now dead. He was once examined before a Committee of
+the House of Commons, and came to be questioned on the subject of his
+ownership of sheep. "You may have some 1500 sheep, probably, sir?"
+quoth the interrogating M.P. "Aiblins," was Corrichollie's quiet reply
+as he took a pinch of snuff; "aiblins I have a few more nor that." "Two
+thousand, then?" "Yes, I pelieve I have that and a few more forpye,"
+calmly responded the Highlander with another pinch. "Five thousand?"
+"Oh, ay, and a few more." "Twenty thousand, sir?" cried the M.P.,
+capping with a burst his previous bid. "Oh, ay, and some more forpye,"
+was the imperturbable response. "In Heaven's name how many sheep have
+you, man?" burst out the astonished catechist. "I'm no very sure to a
+thousan' or two," replied Corrichollie in his dry laconic way and with
+an extra big pinch; "but I'm owner of forty thousan' sheep at the
+lowest reckoning." Lochiel, known to the Sassenach as Mr. Cameron,
+M.P., is perhaps the largest living sheep-owner in Scotland. He has at
+least 30,000 sheep on his vast tracks of moorland on the braes of
+Lochaber. In the Island of Skye Captain Cameron of Talisker has a flock
+of some 12,000; and there are several other flocks both in the islands
+and on the mainland of more than equal magnitude. Sheep-farming, at
+least in many instances, is an hereditary avocation, and some families
+can trace a sheep-farming ancestry very far back. The oldest
+sheep-farming family in Scotland are the Mackinnons of Corrie in Skye.
+They have been on Corrie for four hundred years and they were holding
+sheep-farms elsewhere even earlier. The Macraes of Achnagart in
+Kintail, paid rent to Seaforth for two hundred years. For as long
+before they had held Achnagart on the tenure of a bunch of heather
+exigible annually and their fighting services as good clansmen. Two
+hundred years ago an annual rental of £5 was substituted for the
+heather "corve"; the clansmen's service continuing and being rendered
+up till the '45. Now clanship is but a name: a Seaforth Mackenzie is no
+longer chief in Kintail, and the Macrae who has succeeded his forbears
+in Achnagart finds the bunch of heather and the £5 alike superseded by
+the very far other than nominal rent of £1000. The modern Achnagart
+with his broad shoulders and burly frame, looks as capable as were any
+of his ancestry to render personal service to his chief if a demand
+were made upon him; and very probably would be quite prepared to accept
+a reduction of his money rental if an obligation to perform feudal
+clan-service were substituted. Achnagart with his £1000 a year rental
+by no means tops the sheep-farming rentals of his county. Perhaps
+Robertson of Achiltie, whose sheep-walks stretch up on to the
+snow-patched shoulders of Ben Wyvis and far away west to Loch Broom,
+pays the highest sheep-farming rental in Ross-shire, when the factor
+has pocketed his half-yearly check for £800.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Part of this I learn from my friend as we drive to the station; part I
+gather afterwards from other sources. The station for which we are
+bound is Elgin, the county town of Morayshire. Between Elgin and
+Inverness, it is true, we shall see but few of the great sheep-farmers
+and flock-masters of the west country, who converge on the annual tryst
+from other points of the compass and by various routes&mdash;by the Skye
+railway, by that portion of the Highland line which extends north of
+Inverness, through Ross into Sutherland, by the Caledonian Canal, etc.
+But it is promised to me that I shall see many of the notable
+agriculturists of Moray land, who go to the market as buyers; and a
+contingent of sheep-breeders are sure to join us at Forres, coming down
+the Highland line from the Inverness-shire Highlands on Upper
+Strathspey. There is quite an exceptional throng on the platform of the
+Elgin station, of farmers, factors, lawyers, and
+ex-coffee-planters&mdash;all very plentiful in Elgin; tanners bound for
+investments in prospective pelts; and men of no avocation yet as much
+bound to visit Inverness to-day as if they meant to invest thousands.
+In a corner towers the mighty form of Paterson of Mulben, famous among
+breeders of polls with his tribe of "Mayflowers." From beneath a kilt
+peep out the brawny limbs of Willie Brown of Linkwood and Morriston,
+nephew of stout old Sir George who commanded the light division at the
+Alma, son to a factor whose word in his day was as the laws of the
+Medes and Persians over a wide territory, and himself the feeder of the
+leviathan cross red ox and the beautiful gray heifer which took honours
+so high at one of the recent Smithfield Christmas Shows. There is the
+white beard and hearty face of Mr. Collie, late of Ardgay, owner
+erstwhile of "Fair Maid of Perth" and breeder of "Zarah." Here, too, is
+a fresh, sprightly gentleman in a kilt whom his companions designate
+"the Bourach." Requesting an explanation of the term I am told that
+"Bourach" is the Gaelic for "through-other," which again is the
+Scottish synonym for a kind of amalgam of addled and harum-scarum. A
+jolly tanner observes: "I'll get a compartment to oursels." The reason
+of the desire for this exclusive accommodation is apparent as soon as
+we start. A "deck" of cards is produced and a quartette betake
+themselves to whist with half-crown stakes on the rubber and sixpenny
+points. This was mild speculation to that which was engaged in on the
+homeward journey after the market, when a Strathspey sheep-farmer won
+£8 between Dalvey and Forres. As my friends shuffle and deal, I look
+out of window at the warm gray towers of the cathedral, beautiful still
+spite of the desecrating hand of the "Wolf of Badenoch." Our road lies
+through the fertile "Laigh of Moray," one of the richest wheat
+districts in the Empire and as beautiful as fertile. At Alves we pick
+up a fresh, hale gentleman, who is described to me as "the laird of
+three properties," bought for more than £100,000 by a man who began
+life as the son of a hillside crofter. We pass the picturesque ruins of
+Kinloss Abbey and draw up at Forres station, whose platform is thronged
+with noted agriculturists bound for the "Character" Fair. Here is that
+spirited Englishman Mr. Harris of Earnhill, whose great cross ox took
+the cup at the Agricultural Hall seven or eight years ago; and the
+brothers Bruce&mdash;he of Newton Struthers, whose marvellous polled cow
+beat everything in Bingley Hall at the '71 Christmas Show and but for
+"foot and mouth" would have repeated the performance at the Smithfield
+Show; and he of Burnside who likewise has stamped his mark pretty
+deeply in the latter arena. At Forres we first hear Gaelic; for a train
+from Carr Bridge and Grantown in Upper Strathspey has come down the
+Highland Railway to join ours, and the red-haired Grants around the
+Rock of Craigellachie&mdash;where a man whose name is not Grant is regarded
+as a <i>lusus naturae</i>&mdash;are Gaelic speakers to a man. No witches accost
+us, and speaking personally I feel no "pricking of the thumbs" as we
+skirt the blasted heath on which Macbeth met the witches; the most
+graphic modern description of which on record was given to Henry Dixon
+in the following quaint form of Shakespearean annotation: "It's just a
+sort of eminence; all firs and ploughed land now; you paid a toll near
+it. I'm thinking, it's just a mile wast from Brodie Station."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nairn is that town by the citation of a peculiarity of which King Jamie
+put to shame the boastings of the Southrons as to the superior
+magnitude of English towns. "I have a town," quoth the sapient James,
+"in my ancient kingdom of Scotland, whilk is sae lang that at ane end
+of it a different language is spoken from that whilk prevails at the
+other." To this day the monarch's words are true; one end of Nairn is
+Gaelic, the other Sassenach. Here we obtain a considerable accession of
+strength. The attributes of one kilted chieftain are described to me in
+curious scraps of illustrative patchwork. "A great litigant, an
+enthusiastic agriculturist, a dealer in Hielan' nowt&mdash;something of a
+Hielan' nowt himself, a semi-auctioneer, a great hand as chairman at an
+agricultural dinner, a visitor to the Baker Street Bazaar when the
+Smithfield Shows were held there and where the Cockneys mistook him for
+one of the exhibits and began pinching and punching him." Stewart of
+Duntalloch swings his stalwart form into our carriage&mdash;a noted breeder
+of Highland cattle and as fine a specimen of a Highlander as can be
+seen from Reay to Pitlochrie. "Culloden! Culloden!" chant the porters
+in that curious sing-song peculiar to the Scotch platform porter. The
+whistle of the engine and the talk about turnips and cattle contrast
+harshly with that bleak, lonely, moorland swell yonder&mdash;the patches of
+green among the brown heather telling where moulders the dust of the
+chivalrous clansmen. It is but little longer than a century and a
+quarter ago since Charles Stuart and Cumberland confronted each other
+over against us there; and here are the descendants of the men that
+fought in their tartans for the "King over the Water," who are
+discussing the right proportion of phosphates in artificial manures and
+of whom one asks me confidentially for my opinion on the Leger
+favourite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here we are at Inverness at length; that city of the Clachnacudden
+stone. There is quite a crowd in the spacious station of business
+people who have been awaiting the arrival of the train from the east,
+and the buyers and sellers whom it has conveyed find themselves at once
+among eager friends. Hurried announcements are made as to the
+conditions and prospects of the market. The card-players have plunged
+suddenly <i>in medias res</i> of bargaining. The man who had volunteered to
+stand me a seltzer and sherry has forgotten all about his offer, and is
+talking energetically about clad scores and the price of lambs. I quit
+the station and walk up Union Street through a gradually thickening
+throng, till I reach Church Street and shoulder my way to the front of
+the Caledonian Hotel. I am now in "the heart of the market," standing
+as I am on the plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel and
+looking up and down along the crowded street. What physique, what broad
+shoulders, what stalwart limbs, what wiry red beards and high
+cheek-bones there are everywhere! You have the kilt at every turn, in
+every tartan, and often in no tartan at all. Other men wear
+whole-coloured suits of inconceivably shaggy tweed, and the breadth of
+the bonnets is only equalled by that of the accents. Every second man
+has a mighty plaid over his shoulder. It may serve as a sample of his
+wool, for invariably it is home made. Some carry long twisted crooks
+such as we see in old pastoral prints; others have massive gnarled
+sticks grasped in vast sinewy hands on the back of which the wiry red
+hairs stand out like prickles. There is falling what in the south we
+should reckon as a very respectable pelt of rain, but the Inverness
+Wool Fair heeds rain no more than thistledown. Hardly a man has thought
+it worth his pains to envelop his shoulders in his plaid, but stands
+and lets the rain take its chance. There is a perfect babel of tongues;
+no bawling or shouting, however, but a perpetual gruff <i>susurrus</i> of
+broad guttural conversation accentuated every now and then by a louder
+exclamation in Gaelic. Quite half of the throng are discoursing in this
+language. It is possible to note the difference in the character of the
+Celt and Teuton. The former gesticulates, splutters out a perfect
+torrent of alternately shrill, guttural, and intoned Gaelic; he shrugs
+his shoulders, he throws his arms about, he thrills with vivacity. The
+Teuton expresses quiet, sententious canniness in every gesture and
+every utterance; he is a cold-blooded man and keeps his breath to cool
+his porridge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the plain-stones there are a number of benches on which men sit down
+to gossip and chaffer. Scraps of dialogue float about in the moist air.
+If you care to be an eavesdropper you must have a knowledge of Gaelic
+to be one effectively. "It's to be a stout market," remarks stalwart
+Macrae of Invershiel, come of a fine old West Highland stock and
+himself a very large sheep-farmer. "Sixteen shillings is my price. I'll
+come down a little if you like," says the tenant of Belmaduthy to
+keen-faced Mr. Mackenzie of Liverpool, one of the largest wool-dealers
+and sheep-buyers visiting the market. "You'll petter juist pe coming
+down to it at once." "I could not meet you at all." "I'm afraid I'll pe
+doing what they'll pe laughing at me for." "We can't agree at all," are
+the words as a couple separate, probably to come together again later
+in the day. "An do reic thu na 'h'uainn fhathast, Coignasgailean?" "Cha
+neil fios again'm lieil thusa air son tavigse thoirtorra,
+Cnocnangraisheag?" "Thig gus ain fluich sin ambarfan." Perhaps I had
+better translate. Two sheep-farmers are in colloquy, and address each
+other by the names of their farms, as is all but universal in the
+north. Cnocnangraisheag asks Coignasgailean, "Have you sold your
+lambs?" The cautious reply is, "I don't know; are you inclined to give
+me an offer?" and the proposal ensues, "Come and let us take a drink on
+the transaction." Let us follow the two worthies into the Caledonian.
+Jostling goes for nothing here and you may shove as much in reason as
+you choose, taking your chance of reprisals from the sons of Anak. The
+lobbies of the Caledonian are full of men drinking and bargaining with
+books in hand. There is no sitting-room in all the house and we follow
+the Cnocnangraisheag and his friend into the billiard-room, where we
+are promptly served standing. What keenness of business-discussion
+mingled with what galore of whisky there is everywhere! The whisky
+seems to make no more impression than if it were ginger-beer; and yet
+it is over-proof Talisker, as my throat and eyes find to their cost
+when I recklessly attempt to imitate Coignasgailean and take a dram
+neat. As I pass the bar going out Willie Brown is bawling for soda with
+something in it, and Donald Murray of Geanies, one of the ablest men in
+the north of Scotland, brushes by with quick decisive step. In the
+doorway stands the sturdy square-built form of Macdonald of Balranald,
+the largest breeder of Highland cattle in the country. Over the
+heathery pasture-land of North Uist 1500 head and more of horned newt
+of his range in half-wild freedom. The Mundells and the Mitchells seem
+ubiquitous. The ancestors of both families came from England as
+shepherds when the Sutherland clearances were made toward the end of
+last century, and between them they now hold probably the largest
+acreage&mdash;or rather mileage, of sheep-farming territory in all Scotland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a "very dour market," that all admit. Everybody is holding back,
+for it is obvious prices are to be "desperate high" and everybody wants
+to get the full benefit of the rise. The predetermination of the
+Southern dealers to "buy out" freely at big prices had been rashly
+revealed over-night by one of the fraternity at the after-dinner
+toddy-symposium in the Caledonian. He had been sedulously plied with
+drink by "Charlie Mitchell" and some others of the Ross and Sutherland
+sheep-farmers, till reticence had departed from his tongue. Ultimately
+he had leaped on the table, breaking any quantity of glass-ware in the
+saltatory feat, and had asserted with free swearing his readiness to
+give 50s. all round for every three-year-old wedder in the north of
+Scotland. His horror-stricken partners rushed upon him and bundled him
+downstairs in hot haste, but the murder was out and the "dour market"
+was accounted for. Fancy 50s. a head for beasts that do not weigh 60
+lb. apiece as they come off the hill! No wonder that we townsmen have
+to pay dear for our mutton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I push my way out of the heart of the market to find the outlying
+neighbourhood studded all over with conversing groups. There is an
+all-pervading smell of whisky, and yet I see no man who has "turned a
+hair" by reason of the strength of the Talisker. A town-crier ringing a
+bell passes me. He halts, and the burden of his cry is, "There is a
+large supply of fresh haddies in the market!" The walls are placarded
+with advertisements of sheep smearing and dipping substances; the
+leading ingredients of which appear to be tar and butter. A recruiting
+sergeant of the Scots Fusilier Guards is standing by the Clachnacudden
+Stone, apparently in some dejection owing to the little business doing
+in his line. Men don't come to the "Character" Fair to 'list. It
+strikes me that quite three-fourths of the shops of Inverness are
+devoted to the sale of articles of Highland costume. Their fronts are
+hidden by hangings of tartan cloth; the windows are decked with
+sporrans, dirks, cairngorm plaid-brooches, ram's-head snuff-boxes,
+bullocks' horns and skean dhus. If I chose I might enter the emporium
+of Messrs. Macdougall in my Sassenach garb and re-emerge in ten minutes
+outwardly a full-blown Highland chief, from the eagle's feather in my
+bonnet to the buckles on my brogues. Turning down High Street I reach
+the quay on the Ness bank, where I find in full blast a horse fair of a
+very miscellaneous description, and totally destitute of the features
+that have earned for the wool market the title of "Character" Fair.
+There are blood colts running chiefly to stomach, splints and bog
+spavins; ponies with shaggy manes, trim barrels, and clean legs; and
+slack-jointed cart-horses nearly asleep&mdash;for "ginger" is an institution
+which does not seem to have come so far north as Inverness. Business is
+lively here, the chronic "dourness" of a market being discounted by the
+scarcity of horseflesh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At four o'clock we sit down to the market ordinary in the great room of
+the Caledonian. A member of Parliament occupies the chair, one of the
+croupiers is a baronet, the other the chief of the clan Mackintosh.
+There is a great collection of north-country notabilities, and tables
+upon tables of sheep-farmers and sheep-dealers. We have a considerable
+<i>cacoethes</i> of speech-making, among the orators being Professor Blackie
+of Edinburgh, whose quaint comicalities convulse his audience. It is
+pretty late when the Professor rises to speak, and the whisky has been
+flowing free. Some one interjects a whiskyfied interruption into the
+Professor's speech, who at once in stentorian tones orders that the
+disturber of the harmony of the evening shall be summarily consigned to
+the lunatic asylum. I see him ejected with something like the force of
+a stone from a catapult and have no reasonable doubt that he will spend
+the night an inmate of "Craig Duncan." The speeches over bargaining
+recommences moistened by toddy, which fluid appears to exercise an
+appreciable softening influence on the "dourness" of the market. Till
+long after midnight seasoned vessels are talking and dealing, booking
+sales while they sip their tenth tumbler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have to leave on the Saturday morning, but I make no doubt that the
+skeleton programme given at the beginning of this paper will have its
+bones duly clothed with flesh.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap14"></a>
+THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+At first sight the proposition may appear startling and indeed absurd;
+yet hard facts, I venture to believe, will enforce the conviction on
+unprejudiced minds that the warfare of the present when contrasted with
+the warfare of the past is dilatory, ineffective, and inconclusive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Present, or contemporary warfare may be taken to date from the general
+adoption of rifled firearms; the warfare of the past may fairly be
+limited for purposes of comparison or contrast, to the smooth-bore era;
+indeed, for those purposes there is no need to go outside the present
+century. Roughly speaking the first five and a half decades of the
+century were smooth-bore decades; the three and a half later decades
+have been rifled decades, of which about two and a half decades
+constitute the breechloading period. Considering the extraordinary
+advances since the end of the smooth-bore era in everything tending to
+promote celerity and decisiveness in the result of campaigns&mdash;the
+revolution in swiftness of shooting and length of range of firearms,
+the development in the science of gunnery, the increased devotion to
+military study, the vast additions to the military strength of the
+nations, looking to the facilities for rapid conveyance of troops and
+transportation of supplies afforded by railways and steam
+water-carriage, to the intensified artillery fire that can now be
+brought to bear on fortresses, to the manifold advantages afforded by
+the electric telegraph, and to the crushing cost of warfare, urging
+vigorous exertions toward the speedy decision of campaigns&mdash;reviewing,
+I say, the thousand and one circumstances encouraging to short, sharp,
+and decisive action in contemporary warfare, it is a strange and
+bewildering fact that the wars of the smooth-bore era were for the most
+part, shorter, sharper, and more decisive. Spite of inferiority of
+weapons the battles of that period were bloodier than those of the
+present, and it is a mathematically demonstrable proposition that the
+heavier the slaughter of combatants the nearer must be the end of a
+war. There is no pursuit now after victory won and the vanquished draws
+off shaken but not broken; in the smooth-bore era a vigorous pursuit
+scattered him to the four winds. When Wellington in the Peninsula
+wanted a fortress and being in a hurry could not wait the result of a
+formal siege or a starvation blockade, he carried it by storm. No
+fortress is ever stormed now, no matter how urgent the need for its
+reduction, no matter how obsolete its defences. The Germans in 1871 did
+attempt to carry by assault an outwork of Belfort, but failed utterly.
+It would almost seem that in the matter of forlorn hopes the Caucasian
+is played out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Assertions are easy, but they go for little unless they can be proved;
+some examples, therefore, may be cited in support of the contentions
+advanced above. The Prussians are proud and with justice, of what is
+known as the "Seven Weeks' War of 1866" although as a matter of fact
+the contest with Austria did not last so long, for Prince Frederick
+Charles crossed the Bohemian frontier on the 23rd of June and the
+armistice which ended hostilities was signed at Nikolsburg on the 26th
+of July. The Prussian armies were stronger than their opponents by more
+than one-fourth and they were armed with the needle-gun against the
+Austrian muzzle-loading rifle. When the armistice was signed the
+Prussians lay on the Marchfeld within dim sight of the
+Stephanien-Thurm, it is true; but with the strong and strongly armed
+and held lines of Florisdorf, the Danube, and the army of the Archduke
+Albrecht between them and the Austrian capital. On the 9th of October
+1806 Napoleon crossed the Saale. On the 14th at Jena he smashed
+Hohenlohe's Prussian army, the contending hosts being about equal
+strength; on the same day Davoust at Auerstadt with 27,000 men routed
+Brunswick's command over 50,000 strong. On the 25th of October Napoleon
+entered Berlin, the war virtually over and all Prussia at his feet with
+the exception of a few fortresses, the last of which fell on the 8th of
+November. Which was the swifter, the more brilliant, and the more
+decisive&mdash;the campaign of 1866, or the campaign of 1806?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Franco-German war is generally regarded as an exceptionally
+effective performance on the part of the Germans. The first German
+force entered France on the 4th of August 1870. Paris was invested on
+the 21st of September, the German armies having fought four great
+battles and several serious actions between the frontier and the French
+capital. An armistice, which was not conclusive since it allowed the
+siege of Belfort to proceed and Bourbaki's army to be free to attempt
+raising it, was signed at Versailles on the 28th of January 1871, but
+the actual conclusion of hostilities dates from the 16th of February,
+the day on which Belfort surrendered. The Franco-German war, therefore,
+lasted six and a half months. The Germans were in full preparedness
+except that their rifle was inferior to the French <i>chassepot</i>; they
+were in overwhelmingly superior numerical strength in every encounter
+save two with French regular troops, and they had on their banners the
+prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries were utterly unready for a great
+struggle; the French army was in a wretched state in every sense of the
+word; indeed, after Sedan there remained hardly any regulars able to
+take the field. In August 1805 Napoleon's Grande Armée was at Boulogne
+looking across to the British shores. Those inaccessible, he promptly
+altered his plans and went against Austria. Mack with 84,000 Austrian
+soldiers was at Ulm, waiting for the expected Russian army of
+co-operation and meantime covering the valley of the Danube. Napoleon
+crossed the Rhine on the 26th of September. Just as in 1870 the Germans
+on the plain of Mars-la-Tour thrust themselves between Bazaine and the
+rest of France, so Napoleon turned Mack and from Aalen to the Tyrol
+stood between him and Austria. Mack capitulated Ulm and his army on the
+19th of October and Napoleon was in Vienna on the 13th of November.
+Although he possessed the Austrian capital, he was not, however, master
+of the Austrian empire. The latter result did not fall to him until the
+2nd of December, when under "the sun of Austerlitz" he with 73,000 men
+defeated the Austro-Russian army 85,000 strong, inflicting on it a loss
+of 30,000 men at the cost of 12,000 of his own soldiers <i>hors de
+combat</i>. It took the Germans in 1870 a month and a half to get from the
+frontier to <i>outside</i> Paris; just in the same time, although certainly
+not with so severe fighting by the way but nearly twice as long a
+march, Napoleon moved from the Rhine to <i>inside</i> Vienna. From the
+active commencement to the cessation of hostilities the Franco-German
+war lasted six and a half months; reckoning from the crossing of the
+Rhine to the evening of Austerlitz Napoleon subjugated Austria in two
+and a quarter months. Perhaps, however, his campaign of 1809 against
+Austria furnishes a more exact parallel with the campaign of the
+Germans in 1870-71. He assumed command on the 17th of April, having
+hurried from Spain. He defeated the Austrians five times in as many
+days, at Thann, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmuhl, and Ratisbon; and he was
+in Vienna on the 13th of May. Balked at Aspern and Essling, he gained
+his point at Wagram on the 5th of July, and hostilities ceased with the
+armistice of Znaim on the 11th after having lasted for a period short
+of three months by a week.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Russians have a reputation for good marching, and certainly
+Suvaroff made good time in his long march from Russia to Northern Italy
+in 1799; almost as good, indeed, as Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, and
+Kutusoff made in falling back before Napoleon when he invaded Russia in
+1812. But they have not improved either in marching or in fighting at
+all commensurately with the improved appliances. In 1877, after
+dawdling two months they crossed the Danube on the 21st to the 27th of
+June. Osman Pasha at Plevna gave them pause until the 10th of December,
+at which date they were not so far into Bulgaria as they had been five
+months previously. After the fall of Plevna the Russian armies would
+have gone into winter quarters but for a private quasi-ultimatum
+communicated to the Tzar from a high source in England, to the effect
+that unpleasant consequences could not be guaranteed against if the war
+was not finished in one campaign. Alexander, who was quite an astute
+man in his way, was temporarily enraged by this restriction, but
+recovering his calmness, realised that nowhere in war books is any
+particular time specified for the termination or duration of a
+campaign. It appeared that so long as an army keeps the field
+uninterruptedly a campaign may continue until the Greek kalends. In
+less time than that Gourko and Skobeleff undertook to finish the
+business; by the vigour with which they forced their way across the
+Balkans in the heart of the bitter winter Sophia, Philippopolis, and
+Adrianople fell into Russian hands; and the Russian troops had been
+halted some time almost in face of Constantinople when the treaty of
+San Stephano was signed on the 3rd of March 1878. It had taken the
+Russians of 1877-78 eight weary months to cover the distance between
+the Danube and the Marmora. But fifty years earlier a Russian general
+had marched from the Danube to the Aegean in three and a half months,
+nor was his journey by any means a smooth and bloodless one. Diebitch
+crossed the Danube in May 1828 and besieged Silistria from the 17th of
+May until the 1st of July. Silistria has undergone three resolute
+sieges during the century; it succumbed but once, and then to Diebitch.
+Pressing south immediately, he worsted the Turkish Grand Vizier in the
+fierce battle of Kuleutscha and then by diverse routes hurried down
+into the great Roumelian valley. Adrianople made no resistance and
+although his force was attenuated by hardship and disease, when the
+Turkish diplomatists procrastinated the audacious and gallant Diebitch
+marched his thin regiments forward toward Constantinople. They had
+traversed on a wide front half the distance between Adrianople and the
+capital when the dilatory Turkish negotiators saw fit to imitate the
+coon and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the
+weakness of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned
+whether, that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied
+Constantinople on the swagger. His master was prepared promptly to
+reinforce him; Constantinople was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than
+in 1878, and certainly Diebitch was much smarter than were the Grand
+Duke Nicholas, his fossil Nepokoitschitsky, and his pure theorist
+Levitsky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The contrast between the character of our own contemporary military
+operations and that of those of the smooth-bore era is very strongly
+marked. In 1838-39 Keane marched an Anglo-Indian army from our frontier
+at Ferozepore over Candahar to Cabul without experiencing any serious
+check, and with the single important incident of taking Ghuzni by storm
+on the way. Our positions at and about Cabul were not seriously
+molested until late in 1841, when the paralysis of demoralisation
+struck our soldiers because of the crass follies of a wrong-headed
+civilian chief and the feebleness of a decrepit general. Nott
+throughout held Candahar firmly; the Khyber Pass remained open until
+faith was broken with the hillmen; Jellalabad held out until the
+"Retribution Column" camped under its walls. But for the awful
+catastrophe which befell in the passes the hapless brigade which under
+the influence of deplorable pusillanimity and gross mismanagement had
+evacuated Cabul, no serious military calamity marked our occupation of
+Afghanistan and certainly stubborn resistance had not confronted our
+arms. From 1878 to 1880 we were in Afghanistan again, this time with
+breech-loading far-ranging rifles, copious artillery of the newest
+types, and commanders physically and mentally efficient. All those
+advantages availed us not one whit. The Afghans took more liberties
+with us than they had done forty years previously. They stood up to us
+in fair fight over and over again: at Ali Musjid, at the Pewar Kotul,
+at Charasiab, on the Takt-i-Shah and the Asmai heights, at Candahar.
+They took the dashing offensive at Ahmed Kheyl and at the
+Shutur-gurdan; they drove Dunham Massy's cavalry and took British guns;
+they reoccupied Cabul in the face of our arms, they besieged Candahar,
+they hemmed Roberts within the Sherpoor cantonments and assailed him
+there. They destroyed a British brigade at Maiwand and blocked Gough in
+the Jugdulluck Pass. Finally our evacuating army had to macadamise its
+unmolested route down the passes by bribes to the hillmen, and the
+result of the second Afghan war was about as barren as that of the
+first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in the year 1886 that, the resolution having been taken to
+dethrone Thebau and annex Upper Burmah, Prendergast began his all but
+bloodless movement on Mandalay. The Burmans of today have never
+adventured a battle, yet after years of desultory bushwhacking the
+pacification of Upper Burmah has still to be fully accomplished. On the
+10th of April 1852 an Anglo-Indian expedition commanded by General
+Godwin landed at Rangoon. During the next fifteen months it did a good
+deal of hard fighting, for the Burmans of that period made a stout
+resistance. At midsummer of 1853 Lord Dalhousie proclaimed the war
+finished, announced the annexation and pacification of Lower Burmah,
+and broke up the army. The cost of the war of which the result was this
+fine addition to our Indian Empire, was two millions sterling; almost
+from the first the province was self-supporting and uninterrupted peace
+has reigned within its borders. We did not dally in those primitive
+smooth-bore days. Sir Charles Napier took the field against the Scinde
+Ameers on the 16th of February 1843. Next day he fought the battle of
+Meanee, entered Hyderabad on the 2Oth, and on the 24th of March won the
+decisive victory of Dubba which placed Scinde at his mercy, although
+not until June did the old "Lion of Meerpore" succumb to Jacob. But
+before then Napier was well forward with his admirable measures for the
+peaceful administration of the great province he had added to British
+India.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The expedition for the rescue of General Gordon was tediously boated up
+the Nile, with the result that the "desert column" which Sir Herbert
+Stewart led so valiantly across the Bayuda reached Gubat just in time
+to be too late, and was itself extricated from imminent disaster by the
+masterful promptitude of Sir Redvers Buller. Notwithstanding a general
+consensus of professional and expert opinion in favour of the
+alternative route from Souakin to Berber, 240 miles long and far from
+waterless, the adoption of it was condemned as impossible. In June
+1801, away back in the primitive days, an Anglo-Indian brigade 5000
+strong ordered from Bombay, reached Kosseir on the Red Sea bound for
+the Upper Nile at Kenéh thence to join Abercromby's force operating in
+Lower Egypt. The distance from Kosseir to Kenéh is 120 miles across a
+barren desert with scanty and unfrequent springs. The march was by
+regiments, of which the first quitted Kosseir on the 1st of July. The
+record of the desert-march of the 10th Foot is now before me. It left
+Kosseir on the 20th of July and reached Kenéh on the 29th, marching at
+the rate of twelve miles per day. Its loss on the march was one
+drummer. The whole brigade was at Kenéh in the early days of August,
+the period between its debarkation and its concentration on the Nile
+being about five weeks. The march was effected at the very worst season
+of the year. It was half the distance of a march from Souakin to
+Berber; the latter march by a force of the same strength could well
+have been accomplished in three months. The opposition on the march
+could not have been so severe as that which Stewart's desert column
+encountered. Nevertheless, as I have said, the Souakin-Berber route was
+pronounced impossible by the deciding authority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The comparative feebleness of contemporary warfare is perhaps
+exceptionally manifest in relation to the reduction of fortresses.
+During the Franco-German War the frequency of announcements of the fall
+of French fortresses used to be the subject of casual jeers. The jeers
+were misplaced. The French fortresses, labouring under every
+conceivable disadvantage, did not do themselves discredit. All of them
+were more or less obsolete. Excluding Metz and Paris, neither fortified
+to date, their average age was about a century and a half and few had
+been amended since their first construction. They were mostly
+garrisoned by inferior troops, often almost entirely by Mobiles. Only
+in one instance was there an effective director of the defence. That
+they uniformly enclosed towns whose civilian population had to endure
+bombardment, was an obvious hindrance to desperate resistance. Yet,
+setting aside Bitsch which was never taken, the average duration of the
+defence of the seventeen fortresses which made other than nominal
+resistance was forty-one days. Excluding Paris and Metz which virtually
+were intrenched camps, the average period of resistance was
+thirty-three days. The Germans used siege artillery in fourteen cases;
+although only on two instances, Belfort and Strasburg, were formal
+sieges undertaken. "It appears," writes Major Sydenham Clarke in his
+recent remarkable work on Fortification [Footnote: <i>Fortification</i>. By
+Major G. Sydenham Clarke, C.M. G. (London: John Murray).] which ought
+to revolutionise that art, "that the average period of resistance of
+the (nominally obsolete) French fortresses was the same as that of
+besieged fortresses of the Marlborough and Peninsular periods.
+Including Paris and Metz, the era of rifled weapons actually shows an
+increase of 20 per cent in the time-endurance of permanent
+fortifications. Granted that a mere measurement in days affords no
+absolute standard of comparison, the striking fact remains that in
+spite of every sort of disability the French fortresses, pitted against
+guns that were not dreamed of when they were built, acquitted
+themselves quite as well as the <i>chefs-d'oeuvre</i> of the Vauban school
+in the days of their glory." Even in the cases of fortresses whose
+reduction was urgently needed since they interfered with the German
+communications&mdash;such as Strasburg, Toul, and Soissons&mdash;the quick
+<i>ultima ratio</i> of assault was not resorted to by the Germans. And yet
+the Germans could not have failed to recognise that but for the
+fortresses they would have swept France clear of all organised bodies
+of troops within two months of the frontier battles. During the
+Peninsular War Wellington made twelve assaults on breached fortresses
+of which five were successful; of his twelve attempts to escalade six
+succeeded. The Germans in 1870-71 never attempted a breach and their
+solitary effort at escalade, on the Basse Perche of Belfort, utterly
+failed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Russians in 1877 were even less enterprising than had been the
+Germans in 1870. They went against three permanently fortified places,
+the antediluvian little Matchin which if I remember right blew itself
+up; the crumbling Nicopolis which surrendered after one day's fighting;
+and Rustchuk which held out till the end of the war. They would not
+look at Silistria, ruined, but strong in heroic memories; they avoided
+Rasgrad, Schumla, and the Black Sea fortresses; Sophia, Philippopolis,
+and Adrianople made no resistance. The earthworks of Plevna, vicious as
+they were in many characteristics, they found impregnable. I think
+Suvaroff would have carried them; I am sure Skobeleff would if he had
+got his way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The vastly expensive armaments of the present&mdash;the rifled
+breech-loader, the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range
+field-guns, and so forth, are all accepted and paid for by the
+respective nations in the frank and naked expectation that these
+weapons will perform increased execution on the enemy in war time. This
+granted, nor can it be denied, it logically follows that if this
+increased execution is not performed nations are entitled to regard it
+as a grievance that they do not get blood for their money, and this
+they certainly do not have; so that even in this sanguinary particular
+the warfare of to-day is a comparative failure. The topic, however, is
+rather a ghastly one and I refrain from citing evidence; which,
+however, is easily accessible to any one who cares to seek it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The anticipation is confidently adventured that a great revolution will
+be made in warfare by the magazine rifle with its increased range, the
+machine gun, and the quick-firing field artillery which will speedily
+be introduced into every service. It does not seem likely that
+smokeless powder will create any very important change, except in siege
+operations. On the battlefield neither artillery nor infantry come into
+action out of sight of the enemy. When either arm opens fire within
+sight of the enemy its position can be almost invariably detected by
+the field-glass, irrespective of the smokelessness or non-smokelessness
+of its ammunition. Indeed, the use of smokeless powder would seem
+inevitably to damage the fortunes of the attack. Under cover of a bank
+of smoke the soldiers hurrying on to feed the fighting line are fairly
+hidden from aimed hostile fire. It may be argued that their aim is thus
+reciprocally hindered; but the reply is that their anxiety is not so
+much to be shooting during their reinforcing advance as to get forward
+into the fighting line, where the atmosphere is not so greatly
+obscured. Smokeless powder will no doubt advantage the defence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It need not be remarked that a battle is a physical impossibility while
+both sides adhere to the passive defensive; and experience proves that
+battles are rare in which both sides are committed to the active
+offensive, whether by preference or necessity. Mars-la-Tour (16th
+August 1870) was the only contest of this nature in the Franco-German
+War. Bazaine had to be on the offensive because he was ordered to get
+away towards Verdun; Alvensleben took it because it was the only means
+whereby he could hinder Bazaine from accomplishing his purpose. But for
+the most part one side in battle is on the offensive; the other on the
+defensive. The invader is habitually the offensive person, just for the
+reason that the native force commonly acts on the defensive; the latter
+is anxious to hinder further penetration into the bowels of its land;
+the former's desire is to effect that penetration. The defensive of the
+native army need not, however, be the passive defensive; indeed, unless
+the position be exceptionally strong that is according to present
+tenets to be avoided. When, always with an underlying purpose of
+defence, its chief resorts to the offensive for reasons that he regards
+as good, his strategy or his tactics as the case may be, are expressed
+by the term "defensive-offensive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It says a good deal for the peaceful predilections of the nations, that
+there has been no fairly balanced experience affording the material for
+decision as to the relative advantage of the offensive and the
+defensive under modern conditions. In 1866 the Prussians, opposing the
+needle-gun to the Austrian muzzle-loader, naturally utilised this
+pre-eminence by adopting uniformly the offensive and traditions of the
+Great Frederick doubtless seconded the needle-gun. After Sadowa
+controversy ran high as to the proper system of tactics when
+breech-loader should oppose breech-loader. A strong party maintained
+that "the defensive had now become so strong that true science lay in
+forcing the adversary to attack. Let him come on, and then one might
+fairly rely on victory." As Boguslawski observes&mdash;"This conception of
+tactics would paralyse the offensive, for how can an army advance if it
+has always to wait till an enemy attacks?" After much exercitation the
+Germans determined to adhere to the offensive. In the recent modest
+language of Baron von der Goltz: [Footnote: <i>The Nation in Arms</i>, by
+Lieutenant-Colonel Baron von der Goltz. (Allen.)] "Our modern German
+mode of battle aims at being entirely a final struggle, which we
+conceive of as being inseparable from an unsparing offensive.
+Temporising, waiting, and a calm defensive are very unsympathetic to
+our nature. Everything with us is action. Our strength lies in great
+decisions on the battlefield." Perhaps also the guileless Germans were
+quite alert to the fact that Marshal Niel had shattered the French
+army's tradition of the offensive, and gone counter to the French
+soldier's nature by enjoining the defensive in the latest official
+instructions. Had the Teutons suborned him the Marshal could not have
+done them a better turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their offensive tactics against an enemy unnaturally lashed to the
+stake of the defensive stood the Germans in excellent stead in 1870. On
+every occasion they resorted to the offensive against an enemy in the
+field; strictly refraining, however, from that expedient when it was a
+fortress and not soldiers <i>en vive force</i> that stood in the way. At St.
+Privat their offensive would probably have been worsted if Canrobert
+had been reinforced or even if a supply of ammunition had reached him;
+and a loss there of one-third of the combatants of the Guard Corps
+without result caused them to change for the better the method of their
+attack. But in every battle from Weissenburg to Sedan with the
+exception of the confused <i>mêlée</i> of Mars-la-Tour, the French, besides
+being bewildered and discouraged, were in inferior strength; after
+Sedan the French levies in the field were scarcely soldiers. There was
+no fair testing of the relative advantages of defence and offence in
+the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78; and so it remains that in an actual
+and practical sense no firm decision has yet been established. All
+civilised nations are, however, assiduously practising the methods of
+the offensive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It may nevertheless be anticipated that in future warfare between
+evenly matched combatants the offensive will get the worst of it at the
+hands of the defensive. The word "anticipate" is used in preference to
+"apprehend," because one's sympathy is naturally for the invaded state
+unless it has been wantonly aggressive and insolent. The invaded army,
+if the term may be used, having familiar knowledge of the terrain will
+take up a position in the fair-way of the invader; affording strong
+flank <i>appui</i> and a far-stretching clear range in front and on flanks.
+It will throw up several lines, or still better, tiers of shallow
+trenches along its front and flanks, with emplacements for artillery
+and machine guns. The invader must attack; he cannot turn the enemy's
+position and expose his communications to that enemy. He takes the
+offensive, doing so, as is the received practice, in front and on a
+flank. From the outset he will find the offensive a sterner ordeal than
+in the Franco-German War days. He will have to break into loose order
+at a greater distance, because of the longer range of small arms, and
+the further scope, the greater accuracy, and the quicker fire of the
+new artillery. He too possesses those weapons, but he cannot use them
+with so great effect. His field batteries suffer from the hostile
+cannon fire as they move forward to take up a position. His infantry
+cannot fire on the run; when they drop after a rush the aim of panting
+and breathless men cannot be of the best. And their target is fairly
+protected and at least partially hidden. The defenders behind their low
+épaulement do not pant; their marksmen only at first are allowed to
+fire; these make things unpleasant for the massed gunners out yonder,
+who share their attentions with the spraying-out infantry-men. The
+quick-firing cannon of the defence are getting in their work
+methodically. Neither its gunners nor its infantry need be nervous as
+to expending ammunition freely since plenteous supplies are promptly
+available, a convenience which does not infallibly come to either guns
+or rifles of the attack. The Germans report as their experience in the
+capacity of assailants that the rapidity and excitement of the advance,
+the stir of strife, the turmoil, exhilarate the soldiers, and that
+patriotism and fire-discipline in combination enforce a cool steady
+maintenance of fire; that in view of the ominous spectacle of the swift
+and confident advance, under torture of the storm of shell-fire and the
+hail of bullets which they have to endure in immobility, the defenders,
+previously shaken by the assailants' artillery preparation, become
+nervous, waver, and finally break when the cheers of the final
+concentrated rush strike on their ears. That this was scarcely true as
+regarded French regulars the annals of every battle of the
+Franco-German War up to and including Sedan conclusively show. It is
+true, however, that the French nature is intolerant of inactivity and
+in 1870 suffered under the deprivation of its <i>métier;</i> but how often
+the Germans recoiled from the shelter trenches of the Spicheren and
+gave ground all along the line from St. Privat to the Bois de Vaux, men
+who witnessed those desperate struggles cannot forget while they live.
+Warriors of greater equanimity than the French soldier possesses might
+perhaps stand on the defensive in calm self-confidence with simple
+breech-loaders as their weapons, if simple breech-loaders were also
+weapons of the assailants. But in his magazine rifle the soldier of the
+future can keep the defensive not only with self-confidence, but with
+high elation, for in it he will possess a weapon against which it seems
+improbable that the attack (although armed too with a magazine or
+repeating rifle) can prevail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The assailants fall fast as their advance pushes forward, thinned down
+by the rifle fire, the mitraille, and the shrapnel of the defence. But
+they are gallant men and while life lasts they will not be denied. The
+long bloody advance is all but over; the survivors of it who have
+attained thus far are lying down getting their wind for the final
+concentration and rush. Meanwhile, since after they once again stand up
+they will use no more rifle fire till they have conquered or are
+beaten, they are pouring forth against the defence their reserve of
+bullets in or attached to their rifle-butts. The defenders take this
+punishment, like Colonel Quagg, lying down, courting the protection of
+their earth-bank. The hail of the assailants' bullets ceases; already
+the artillery of the attack has desisted lest it should injure friend
+as well as foe. The word runs along the line and the clumps of men
+lying prostrate there out in the open. The officers spring to their
+feet, wave their swords, and cheer loudly. The men are up in an
+instant, and the swift rush focussing toward a point begins. The
+distance to be traversed before the attackers are <i>aux prises</i> with the
+defenders is about one hundred and fifty yards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is no mere storm of missiles which meets fair in the face those
+charging heroes; no, it is a moving wall of metal against which they
+rush to their ruin. For the infantry of the defence are emptying their
+magazines now at point-blank range. Emptied magazine yields to full
+one; the Maxims are pumping, not bullets, but veritable streams of
+death, with calm, devilish swiftness. The quick-firing guns are
+spouting radiating torrents of case. The attackers are mown down as
+corn falls, not before the sickle but the scythe. Not a man has
+reached, or can reach, the little earth-bank behind which the defenders
+keep their ground. The attack has failed; and failed from no lack of
+valour, of methodised effort, of punctilious compliance with every
+instruction; but simply because the defence&mdash;the defence of the future
+in warfare&mdash;has been too strong for the attack. One will not occupy
+space by recounting how in the very nick of time the staunch defence
+flashes out into the counter-offensive; nor need one enlarge on the
+sure results to the invader as the unassailed flank of the defence
+throws forward the shoulder and takes in flank the dislocated masses of
+aggressors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One or two such experiences will definitively settle the point as to
+the relative advantage of the offensive and the defensive. Soldiers
+will not submit themselves to re-trial on re-trial of a <i>res judicata</i>.
+Grant, dogged though he was, had to accept that lesson in the shambles
+of Cold Harbour. For the bravest sane man will rather live than die. No
+man burns to become cannon-fodder. The Turk, who is supposed to court
+death in battle for religious reasons of a somewhat material kind, can
+run away even when the alternative is immediate removal to a Paradise
+of unlimited houris and copious sherbet. There are no braver men than
+Russian soldiers; but going into action against the Turks tried their
+nerves, not because they feared the Turks as antagonists, but because
+they knew too well that a petty wound disabling from retreat meant not
+alone death but unspeakable mutilation before that release.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is obvious that if, as is here anticipated, the offensive proves
+impossible in the battle of the future, an exaggerated phase of the
+stalemate which Boguslawski so pathetically deprecates will occur. The
+world need not greatly concern itself regarding this issue; the
+situation will almost invariably be in favour of the invaded and will
+probably present itself near his frontier line. He can afford to wait
+until the invader tires of inaction and goes home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Magazine and machine guns would seem to sound the knell of possible
+employment of cavalry in battle. No matter how dislocated are the
+infantry ridden at so long as they are not quite demoralised, however
+<i>rusé</i> the cavalry leader&mdash;however favourable to sudden unexpected
+onslaught is the ground, the quick-firing arms of the future must
+apparently stall off the most enterprising horsemen. Probably if the
+writer were arguing the point with a German, the famous experiences of
+von Bredow might be adduced in bar of this contention. In the combat of
+Tobitschau in 1866 Bredow led his cuirassier regiment straight at three
+Austrian batteries in action, captured the eighteen guns and everybody
+and everything belonging to them, with the loss to himself of but ten
+men and eight horses. It is true, says the honest official account,
+that the ground favoured the charge and that the shells fired by the
+usually skilled Austrian gunners flew high. But during the last 100
+yards grape was substituted for shell, and Bredow deserved all the
+credit he got. Still stronger against my argument was Bredow's
+memorable work at Mars-la-Tour, when at the head of six squadrons he
+charged across 1000 yards of open plain, rode over and through two
+separate lines of French infantry, carried a line of cannon numbering
+nine batteries, rode 1000 yards farther into the very heart of the
+French army, and came back with a loss of not quite one half of his
+strength. The <i>Todtenritt</i>, as the Germans call it, was a wonderful
+exploit, a second Balaclava charge and a bloodier one; and there was
+this distinction that it had a purpose and that that purpose was
+achieved. For Bredow's charge in effect wrecked France. It arrested the
+French advance which would else have swept Alvensleben aside; and to
+its timely effect is traceable the sequence of events that ended in the
+capitulation of Metz. The fact that although from the beginning of his
+charge until he struck the front of the first French infantry line
+Bredow took the rifle-fire of a whole French division yet did not lose
+above fifty men, has been a notable weapon in the hands of those who
+argue that good cavalry can charge home on unshaken infantry. But never
+more will French infantry shoot from the hip as Lafont's conscripts at
+Mars-la-Tour shot in the vague direction of Bredow's squadrons. French
+cavalry never got within yards of German infantry even in loose order;
+and the magazine or repeating rifle held reasonably straight will stop
+the most thrusting cavalry that ever heard the "charge" sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fortifications of the future will differ curiously from those of the
+present. The latter, with their towering scarps, their massive
+<i>enceintes</i>, their "portentous ditches," will remain as monuments of a
+vicious system, except where, as in the cases of Vienna, Cologne,
+Sedan, etc., the dwellers in the cities they encircle shall procure
+their demolition for the sake of elbow-room, or until modern howitzer
+shells or missiles charged with high explosives shall pulverise their
+naked expanses of masonry. In the fortification of the future the
+defender will no longer be "enclosed in the toils imposed by the
+engineer" with the inevitable disabilities they entail, while the
+besieger enjoys the advantage of free mobility. Plevna has killed the
+castellated fortress. With free communications the full results
+attainable by fortress artillery intelligently used, will at length
+come to be realised. Unless in rare cases and for exceptional reasons
+towns will gradually cease to be fortified even by an encirclement of
+detached forts. Where the latter are availed of, practical experience
+will infallibly condemn the expensive and complex cupola-surmounted
+construction of which General Brialmont is the champion. "A work,"
+trenchantly argues Major Sydenham Clarke, "designed on the principles
+of the Roman catacombs is suited only for the dead, in a literal or in
+a military sense. The vast system of subterranean chambers and passages
+is capable of entombing a brigade, but denies all necessary tactical
+freedom of action to a battalion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fortress of the future will probably be in the nature of an
+intrenched camp. The interior of the position will provide casemate
+accommodation for an army of considerable strength. Its defences will
+consist of a circle at intervals of about 2500 yards, of permanent
+redoubts which shall be invisible at moderate ranges for infantry and
+machine guns, the garrison of each redoubt to consist of a half
+battalion. Such a work was in 1886 constructed at Chatham in thirty-one
+working days, to hold a garrison of 200 men housed in casemates built
+in concrete, for less than £3000, and experiments proved that it would
+require a "prohibitory expenditure" of ammunition to cause it serious
+damage by artillery fire. The supporting defensive armament will
+consist of a powerful artillery rendered mobile by means of tram-roads,
+this defence supplemented by a field force carrying on outpost duties
+and manning field works guarding the intervals between the redoubts.
+Advanced defences and exterior obstacles of as formidable a character
+as possible will be the complement of what in effect will be an
+immensely elaborated Plevna, which, properly armed and fully organised,
+will "fulfil all the requirements of defence" while possessing
+important potentialities of offence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An illustration is pertinent of the pre-eminent utility of such
+fortified and strongly held positions, of whose characteristics the
+above is the merest outline. In the event of a future Franco-German
+War, the immensely expensive cordon of fortresses with which the French
+have lined their frontier, efficiently equipped, duly garrisoned and
+well commanded, will unquestionably present a serious obstacle to the
+invading armies. The Germans talk of <i>vive force</i>&mdash;shell heavily and
+then storm; the latter resort one for which they have in the past
+displayed no predilection. Whether by storm or interpenetration, they
+will probably break the cordon, but they cannot advance without masking
+all the principal fortresses. This will employ a considerable portion
+of their strength, and the invasion will proceed in less force, which
+will be an advantage to the defenders. But if instead of those
+multitudinous fortresses the French had constructed, say, three such
+intrenched-camp fortresses as have been sketched, each quartering
+50,000 men, it would appear that they would have done better for
+themselves at far less cost. Each intrenched position containing a
+field army 50,000 strong would engross a beleaguering host of 100,000
+men. The positions of the type outlined are claimed to be impregnable;
+they could contain supplies and munitions for at least a year,
+detaining around them for that period 300,000 of the enemy. No European
+power except Russia has soldiers enough to spare so long such a mass of
+troops standing fast, and simultaneously to prosecute the invasion of a
+first-rate power with approximately equal numbers. France at the cost
+of 150,000 men would be holding supine on her frontier double the
+number of Germans&mdash;surely no disadvantageous transaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In conclusion, it may be worth while to point out that the current
+impression that the maintenance by states of "bloated armaments" is a
+keen incentive to war, is fallacious. How often do we hear, "There must
+be a big war soon; the powers cannot long stand the cost of standing
+looking at each other, all armed to the teeth!" War is infinitely more
+costly than the costliest preparedness. But this is not all. The
+country gentleman for once in a way brings his family to town for the
+season, pledging himself privily to strict economy when the term of
+dissipation ends, in order to restore the balance. But for a State, as
+the sequel to a season of war there is no such potentiality of economy.
+Rather there is the grim certainty of heavier and yet heavier
+expenditure after the war, in the still obligatory character of the
+armed man keeping his house. Therefore it is that potentates are
+reluctant to draw the sword, and rather bear the ills they have than
+fly to other evils inevitably worse still. Whether the final outcome
+will be universal national bankruptcy or the millennium, is a problem
+as yet insoluble.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap15"></a>
+GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
+</h3>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[Footnote: <i>Bandobast</i> is an Indian word, which, like many others, has
+been all but formally incorporated into Anglo-Indian English. The
+meaning is, plan, scheme, organised arrangement.]
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+George Martell was an indigo-planter in Western Tirhoot, a fine tract
+of Bengal stretching from the Ganges to the Nepaul Terai, and roughly
+bounded on the west by the Gunduck, on the east by the Kussi.
+Planter-life in Tirhoot is very pleasant to a man in robust health, who
+possesses some resources within himself. In many respects it more
+resembles active rural life at home than does any other life led by
+Anglo-Indians. The joys of a planter's life have been enthusiastically
+sung by a planter-poet; and the frank genial hospitality of the
+planter's bungalow stands out pre-eminent, even amidst the universal
+hospitality of India. The planter's bungalow is open to all comers. The
+established formula for the arriving stranger is first to call for
+brandy-and-soda, then to order a bath, and finally to inquire the name
+of the occupant his host. The laws of hospitality are as the laws of
+the Medes and Persians. Once in the famine time a stranger in a palki
+reached a planter's bungalow in an outlying district, and sent in his
+card. The planter sent him out a drink but did not bid him enter. The
+stranger remained in the veranda till sundown, had another drink, and
+then went on his way. This breach of statute law became known. There
+was much excuse for the planter, for the traveller was a missionary and
+in other respects was a <i>persona ingrata</i>. But the credit of
+planterhood was at stake; and so strong was the force of public opinion
+that the planter who had been a defaulter in hospitality had to abandon
+the profession and quit the district. It was on this occasion laid down
+as a guiding illustration, that if Judas Iscariot, when travelling
+around looking for an eligible tree on which to hang himself, had
+claimed the hospitality of a planter's bungalow, the dweller therein
+would have been bound to accord him that hospitality. Not even
+newspaper correspondents were to be sent empty away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The indigo-planter is "up in the morning early" and away at a swinging
+canter on his "waler" nag, out into the <i>dahaut</i> to visit the <i>zillahs</i>
+on which his crop is growing. He returns when the sun is getting high
+with a famous appetite for a breakfast which is more than half
+luncheon. After his siesta he may look in upon a neighbour&mdash;all Tirhoot
+are neighbours and within a radius of thirty miles is considered next
+door. He would ride that distance any day to spend an hour or two in a
+house brightened by the presence of womanhood. His anxious period is
+<i>mahaye</i> time, when the indigo is in the vats and the quantity and
+quality of the yield depend so much on care and skill. But except at
+<i>mahaye</i> time he is always ready for relaxation, whether it takes the
+form of a polo match, a pig-sticking expedition, or a race-meeting at
+Sonepoor, Muzzufferpore, or Chumparun. These race-meetings last for
+several days on end, there being racing and hunting on alternate days
+with a ball every second night. It used to be worth a journey to India
+to see Jimmy Macleod cram a cross-grained "waler" over an awkward
+fence, and squeeze the last ounce out of the brute in the run home on
+the flat. The Tirhoot ladies are in all respects charming; and it must
+remain a moot point with the discriminating observer whether they are
+more delightful in the genial home-circles of which they are the
+centres and ornaments, or in the more exciting stir and whirl of the
+ballroom. After every gathering hecatombs of slain male victims
+mournfully cumber the ground; and one all-conquering fair one, now
+herself conquered by matrimony and motherhood, wrung from those her
+charms had blighted the title of "the destroying angel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George Martell was an honest sort of a clod. He stood well with the
+ryots, and the mark of his factory always brought out keen bidding at
+Thomas's auction-mart in Mission Row and was held in respect in the
+Commission Sale Rooms in Mincing Lane. He was a good shikaree and could
+hold his own either at polo or at billiards; but being somewhat shy and
+not a little clumsy he did not frequent race-balls nor throw himself in
+the way of "destroying angels." He had been over a dozen years in the
+district and had not been known to propose once, so that he had come to
+be set down as a misogynist. Among his chief allies was a neighbouring
+planter called Mactavish. Mactavish in some incomprehensible way&mdash;he
+being a gaunt, uncouth, bristly Scot, whose Highland accent was as
+strong as the whisky with which he had coloured his nose&mdash;had contrived
+to woo and win a bonny, baby-faced girl, the ripple of whose laughter
+and the dancing sheen of whose auburn curls filled the Mactavish
+bungalow with glad bright sunshine. When Mac first brought home this
+winsome fairy Martell had sheepishly shunned the residence of his
+friend, till one fine morning when he came in from the <i>dahaut</i> he
+found Minnie Mactavish quite at home among the pipes, empty soda-water
+bottles, and broken chairs that constituted the principal articles of
+furniture in his bachelor sitting-room. Minnie had come to fetch her
+husband's friend and in her dainty imperious way would take no denial.
+So George had his bath, got a fresh horse saddled, nearly chucked
+Minnie over the other side as he clumsily helped her to mount her pony,
+and rode away with her a willing if somewhat clownish captive. Arriving
+at the bungalow Mactavish, honest George was bewildered by the
+transformation it had undergone. Flowers were where the spirit-case
+used to stand. There was a drawing-room with actually a piano in it;
+the <i>World</i> lay on the table instead of the <i>Sporting Times</i>, and the
+servants wore a quiet, tasteful livery. Mac himself had been trimmed
+and titivated almost out of recognition. He who had been wont to lounge
+half the day in his <i>pyjamas</i> was now almost smartly dressed; his beard
+was cropped, and his bristly poll brushed and oiled. If George had a
+weak spot in him it was for a simple song well sung. Mrs. Mac,
+accompanying herself on the piano, sang to him "The Land o' the Leal"
+and brewed him a mild peg with her own fair hands. George by bedtime
+did not know whether he was on his head or his heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lay awake all night thinking over all he had seen. Mactavish now was
+clearly a better man than ever he had been before. He had told George
+he was living more cheaply as a married man than ever he had done as a
+bachelor; and in the matter of happiness there was no comparison.
+George rose early to go home; but early as it was Mrs. Mac was up too,
+and arrayed in a killing morning <i>négligé</i> that fairly made poor George
+stammer, gave him his <i>chota hazri</i> and stroked his horse's head as he
+mounted. About half-way home George suddenly shouted, "D&mdash;&mdash;d if I
+don't do it too!" and brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack
+that set his horse buck-jumping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In effect, George Martell had determined to get married. But where to
+find a Mrs. Martell? Mrs. Mactavish had told him she had no sisters and
+that her only relative was a maiden grand-aunt, whom George thought
+must be a little too old to marry unless in the last resort. If he took
+the field at the next race-meeting the fellows would chaff the life out
+of him; and besides, he scarcely felt himself man enough to face a
+"destroying angel." As he pondered, riding slowly homeward, a thought
+occurred to him. When he had been at home a dozen years ago his two
+girl-sisters had been at school, and their great playmate had been a
+girl of eleven, by name Laura Davidson. Laura was a pretty child. He
+had taken occasional notice of her; had once kissed her after having
+been severely scratched in the struggle; and had taken her and his
+sisters to the local theatre. What if Laura Davidson&mdash;now some
+three-and-twenty&mdash;were still single? What if she were pretty and nice?
+He remembered that the colour of her hair was not unlike Mrs. Mac's,
+and was in ringlets too. And what if she were willing to come out and
+make lonely George Martell as happy a man as was that lucky old Mac?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was mail-day, and George, taking time by the forelock, sat down and
+wrote to his sister what had come into his head. By the return mail he
+had her reply: Laura Davidson was single; she was nice; she was pretty;
+she had fair ringlets; she had a hazy memory of George and the kissing
+episode, and was willing to come out and marry him and try to make him
+happy. But she could not well come alone; could George suggest any
+method of <i>chaperonage</i> on the voyage?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the district of Champarun, which in essentials is part of Tirhoot,
+lies the quaint little cavalry cantonment of Segowlie. It is the last
+relic of the old Nepaul war, which caused the erection of a chain of
+cantonments along the frontier all of which save Segowlie, are now
+abandoned. There is just room for one native cavalry regiment at
+Segowlie, and the soldiers like the station because of excellent sport
+and the good comradeship of the planters. At Segowlie at the time I am
+writing of there happened to be quartered a certain Major Freeze, whose
+wife, after a couple of years at home, was about returning to India.
+George had some acquaintance with the Major and a far-off profound
+respect for his wife, who was an admirable and stately lady. It
+occurred to him to try whether it could not be managed that she should
+bring out the future Mrs. Martell. He saw the Major, who was only too
+delighted at the prospect of a new lady in the district, and the affair
+was soon arranged. Mrs. Freeze wrote that she and Miss Davidson were
+leaving by such-and-such a mail; and knowing that Martell was rather
+lumpy when a lady was in the case, she thoughtfully suggested that he
+should go down to Bombay and meet them so as to get over the initial
+awkwardness by making himself useful and gain his intended's respect by
+swearing at the niggers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All went well. But George Martell was not quite his own master, he was
+only part of a "concern" and was bound to do his best for his partners.
+It happened, just about the time the P. and O. steamer was due at
+Bombay, that the most ticklish period of the indigo-planters' year was
+upon Martell. The juice had begun to flow from the vats. He had no
+assistant and he did not dare to leave the work, so he telegraphed to
+Bombay to explain this to Mrs. Freeze, and added that he would meet her
+and her companion at Bankipore where their long railway journey would
+end. Miss Davidson did not understand much about the absorbing crisis
+of indigo production, and she had a spice of romance in her
+composition; so that poor Martell did not rise in her estimation by his
+default at Bombay. When the ladies reached Bankipore there was still no
+Martell, but only a <i>chuprassee</i> with a note to say that the juice was
+still running, and that Martell sahib could not leave the factory but
+would be waiting for them at Segowlie. At this even Mrs. Freeze almost
+lost her temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They have a "State Railway" now in Tirhoot, but at the time I am
+writing of there was only one <i>pukha</i> road in all the district. The
+ladies travelled in palanquins, or palkis, as they are more familiarly
+called. It is a long journey from Bankipore to Segowlie, and three
+nights were spent in travelling. Bluff old Minden Wilson stood on the
+bank above the ghât to welcome Mrs. Freeze across the Ganges. One day
+was spent at young Spudd's factory, the second at the residence of a
+genial planter rejoicing in the quaint name of Hong Kong Scribbens; on
+the third morning they reached Segowlie. But still no Martell; only a
+<i>chit</i> to say that that plaguy juice was still running but that he
+hoped to be able to drive over to dinner. Miss Davidson went to bed in
+a huff; and Major Freeze was temporarily inclined to think that her
+home-trip had impaired his good lady's amiability of character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martell did turn up at dinner-time. But he was hardly a man at any time
+to create much of an impression, and on this occasion he appeared to
+exceptional disadvantage. He was stutteringly nervous; and there were
+some evidences that he had been ineffectually striving to mitigate his
+nervousness by the consumption of his namesake. He wore a new
+dress-coat which had not the remotest pretensions to fit him, and the
+bear's-grease which he had freely used gave unpleasant token of
+rancidity. The dinner was an unsatisfactory performance. Miss Davidson
+was extremely <i>distraite</i>, while Martell became more and more nervous
+as the meal progressed and was manifestly relieved when the ladies
+retired. Soon after they had done so the Major was sent for from the
+drawing-room. He found Miss Davidson sobbing on his wife's bosom. He
+asked what was the matter. The girl, with many sobbing interruptions,
+gasped out&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's the wrong man! O Heavens, I never saw <i>him</i> before! The man I
+remember who gave me sweets when I was a child had black hair; <i>he</i> has
+red! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, please send that man away and let me go
+home!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Miss Davidson went off into hysterics.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a pretty state of matters! The Major and his wife could not
+see their way clear at all. Consultation followed consultation, with
+visits on the Major's part to poor Martell in the dining-room
+irregularly interspersed. It was almost morning before affairs arranged
+themselves after a fashion. The new basis agreed upon was that the
+previously existing arrangement should be regarded as dead, and that a
+courtship between Martell and Miss Davidson should be commenced <i>de
+novo</i>&mdash;he to do his best to recommend himself to the lady's affections,
+she to learn to love him if she could, red hair and all. And so George
+went home, and the Segowlie household went to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor George at the best had a very poor idea of courting acceptably;
+and surely no man was more heavily handicapped in the enterprise
+prescribed him. He had to court to order, and to combat, besides, both
+the bad impression made at starting and the misfortune of his red hair.
+The poor fellow did his best. He used to come and sit in Mrs. Freeze's
+drawing-room hours on end, glowering at Miss Davidson in a silence
+broken by spasmodic efforts at forced talk. He brought the girl
+presents, gave her a horse, and begged of her to ride with him. But the
+great stupid fellow had not thought of a habit and the girl felt a
+delicacy in telling him that she had not one. So the horse ate his head
+off in idleness, and George's heart went farther and farther down in
+the direction of his boots. He had so bothered Mrs. Freeze that she had
+washed her hands of him, and had bidden him worry it out on his own
+line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In less than a month the crisis came. Miss Davidson could not bring
+herself to think of poor George as affording the makings of a husband.
+She told Mrs. Freeze so, and begged, for kindness sake, that the Major
+would break this her determination to Mr. Martell and desire him to
+give the thing up as hopeless. The Major thought the best course to
+pursue was to write to George to this effect. Next morning in the small
+hours the poor fellow turned up in the Segowlie veranda in a terribly
+bad way. He would not accept his fate at second-hand in this fashion;
+he must see Miss Davidson and try to move her to be kind to him. In the
+end there was an interview between them, from which George emerged
+quiet but very pale. His notable matrimonial bandobast had proved the
+deadest of failures; and the poor fellow's lip trembled as he thought
+of Mactavish's happy home and his own forlorn bungalow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But although he had red hair and did not know in the least what to do
+with his feet, George Martell was a gentleman. The lady continuing
+anxious to go home, he insisted on his right to pay her return passage
+as he had done her passage outward, urging rather ruefully that, having
+taken a shot at happiness and having missed fire, he must be the sole
+sufferer. It is a little surprising that this uncouth chivalry did not
+melt the lady, but she was obdurate, although she let him have his way
+about the passage money. So in the company of an officer's wife going
+home Miss Davidson quitted Segowlie and journeyed to Bombay. Poor old
+George, with a very sore heart, was bent on seeing the last of her
+before settling down again to the old dull bachelor life. He dodged
+down to Bombay in the same train, travelling second class that he might
+not annoy the girl by a chance meeting; and stood with a sad face
+leaning on the rail of the Apollo Bunder, as he watched the ship
+containing his miscarried venture steam out of Bombay harbour on its
+voyage to England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The same night he set out on his return to his plantation. At near
+midnight the mail-train from Bombay reaches Eginpoora, at the head of
+the famous Bhore ghât. Some refreshment is ordinarily procurable there,
+but it is not much of a place. George Martell had had a drink, and was
+sauntering moodily up and down the platform waiting for the whistle to
+sound. As he passed the second class compartment reserved for ladies he
+heard a low, tremulous voice exclaim, "Oh, if I could only make them
+understand that I'd give the world for a cup of tea!" George, if
+uncouth, was a practical man. His prompt voice rang out, "<i>Qui hye, ek
+pyala chah lao!</i>" Promptly came the refreshment-room <i>khitmutghar</i>,
+hurrying with the tea; and George, taking off his hat, begged to know
+whether he could be of any further service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a very pleasant face that looked out on him in the moonlight,
+and there was more than mere conventionality in the accents in which
+the pleasant voice acknowledged his opportune courtesy. Insensibly
+George and the lady drifted into conversation. She was very lonely,
+poor thing; a friendless girl coming out to be governess in the family
+of a <i>burra sahib</i> at Chupra. Now Chupra is only across the Gunduck
+from Tirhoot, so George told his new acquaintance they were both going
+to nearly the same place, and professed his cordial willingness to
+assist her on the journey. He did so, escorting her right into Chupra
+before he set his face homeward; and he thenceforth got into a habit of
+visiting Chupra very frequently. Need I prolong the story? I happened
+to be in Bankipore when the Prince of Wales visited that centre of
+famine-wallahs. It fell to my pleasant lot to take Mrs. Martell in to
+dinner at the Commissioner's hospitable table. Mrs. Mactavish was
+sitting opposite; and I went back to my bedroom-tent in the compound
+without having made up my mind whether she or Mrs. Martell was the
+prettier and the nicer. So you see George Martell did not make quite so
+bad a <i>bandobast</i> after all.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap16"></a>
+THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY&mdash;1879
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+It was in Cawnpore on my way up country, during the Prince of Wales's
+tour through India, that there were shown to me some curious and
+interesting mementoes of the siege of Lucknow. The friend in whose
+possession they were was near Havelock as he sat before his tent in the
+short Indian twilight, a short time before the advance on Lucknow made
+by him and Outram in September 1857. Through the gloom of the falling
+twilight there came marching towards the General a file of Highlanders
+escorting a tall, gaunt Oude man, on whose swarthy face the lamplight
+struck as he salaamed before the General Lord Sahib. Then he extracted
+from his ear a minute section of quill sealed at both ends. The
+General's son opened the strange envelope forwarded by a postal service
+so hazardous, and unrolled a morsel of paper which seemed to be covered
+with cabalistic signs. The missive had been sent out from Lucknow by
+Brigadier Inglis, the commander of the beleaguered garrison of the
+Lucknow Residency, and its bearer was the stanch and daring scout,
+Ungud. As I write the originals of this communication and of others
+which came in the same way lie before me; and two of those missives in
+their curious mixture of characters may be found of interest to readers
+of to-day.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+LUKHNOW, <i>Septr. 16th.</i> (Recd. 19th.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MY DEAR GENERAL&mdash;The last letter I recd. from you was dated 24th ult'o,
+since when I have rec'd [Greek: no neus] whatever from y'r [Greek:
+kamp] or of y'r [Greek: movements] but am now [Greek: dailae expekting]
+to receive [Greek: inteligense] of y'r [Greek: advanse] in this [Greek:
+direktion]. Since the date of my last letter the enemy have continued
+to persevere unceasingly in their efforts against this position &amp; the
+firing has never ceased day or night; they have about [Greek: sixten]
+guns in position round us&mdash;many of them 18 p'rs. On 5th inst. they made
+a very determined attack after exploding 2 mines and [Greek: suksaeded]
+for a [Greek: moment] in [Greek: almost geting] into one of our [Greek:
+bateries], but were eventually repulsed on all sides with heavy loss.
+Since the above date they have kept up a cannonade &amp; musketry fire,
+occasionally throwing in a shell or two. My [Greek: waeklae loses]
+continue very [Greek: hevae] both in [Greek: ophisers] &amp; [Greek: men].
+I shall be quite out of [Greek: rum] for the [Greek: men] in [Greek:
+eit dais], but we have been [Greek: living] on [Greek: redused rations]
+&amp; I hope to be [Greek: able] to [Greek: get] on [Greek: til] about
+[Greek: phirst prox]. If you have not [Greek: relieved] us by [Greek:
+then] we shall have [Greek: no meat lepht], as I must [Greek: kaep]
+some few [Greek: buloks] to [Greek: move] my [Greek: guns] about the
+[Greek: positions]. As it is I have had to [Greek: kil] almost all the
+[Greek: gun buloks], for my men c'd not [Greek: perphorm] the [Greek:
+ard work without animal phood]. There is a report, tho' from a source
+on which I cannot implicitly rely, that [Greek: mansing] has just
+[Greek: arived] in [Greek: luknow] havg. [Greek: lepht part] of his
+[Greek: phors outside] the [Greek: sitae]. It is said that [Greek: he]
+is in [Greek: our interest] and that [Greek: he] has [Greek: taken] the
+[Greek: above step] at the [Greek: instigation] of B[Greek: riti]sh
+[Greek: athoritae]. But I cannot say whether [Greek: su]ch [Greek: be
+the kase], as all I have to go upon is [Greek: bazar rumors]. I am
+[Greek: most anxious] to [Greek: hear] of yr. [Greek: advanse] to
+[Greek: enable mae] to [Greek: rae-asure our native soldiers].
+[Footnote: The reader will observe that the words are English, though
+the characters are Greek.]&mdash;Yours truly,
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+J. INGLIS, <i>Brigadier</i>,
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+H.M. 32'd Reg't.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+To Brig'r Havelock, Commg. Relieving Force.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+The other missive is of an earlier date, and was brought out in the
+same manner as the first.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<i>August 16</i>. (Recd. 23rd August.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MY DEAR GENERAL&mdash;A note from Colonel Tytler to Mr. Gubbins reached last
+night, dated "Mungalwar, 4th instant," the latter part of which is as
+follows:&mdash;"You must [Greek: aid] us in [Greek: everae] way even to
+cutting y'r way out if we [Greek: kant phorse our] way in. We have
+[Greek: onlae a small phorse]." This has [Greek: kaused mae] much
+[Greek: uneasiness], as it is quite [Greek: imposible] with my [Greek:
+weak] &amp; [Greek: shatered phorse] that I can [Greek: leave] my [Greek:
+dephenses]. You must bear in mind how I am [Greek: hampered], that I
+have upwards of [Greek: one undred &amp; twentae-sik wounded], and at the
+least [Greek: two undred &amp; twenae women], &amp; about [Greek: two undred] &amp;
+[Greek: thirtae children], &amp; no [Greek: kariage] of any [Greek:
+deskription], besides [Greek: sakriphising twentae-thrae laks] of
+[Greek: treasure] &amp; about [Greek: thirtae guns] of [Greek: sorts]. In
+consequence of the news rec'd I shall soon put the [Greek: phorse] on
+[Greek: alph rations], unless I [Greek: hear phrom] you. [Greek: Our
+provisions] will [Greek: last] us [Greek: then] till [Greek: about] the
+[Greek: tenth] [Greek: september]. If you [Greek: hope] to [Greek: save
+this no time must] be [Greek: lost] in pushing forward. We are [Greek:
+dailae] being [Greek: ataked] by the [Greek: enemae], who are within a
+few yards of our [Greek: dephenses]. Their [Greek: mines] have [Greek:
+alreadae weakened our post], &amp; I have [Greek: everae] [Greek: reason]
+to [Greek: believe] that are carrying on [Greek: others]. Their [Greek:
+aeteen] [Greeks: pounders] are within 150 yards of [Greek: some oph our
+bateries], &amp; [Greek: phrom] their [Greek: positions &amp; [Greek: our
+inabilitae] to [Greek: phorm working] [Greek: parties], we [Greek:
+kanot repli] to [Greek: them. Thae damage done ourlae] is very [Greek:
+great]. My [Greek: strength] now in [Greek: europeans] is [Greek: thrae
+undred] &amp; [Greek: phiphtae], &amp; about [Greek: thrae hundred natives], &amp;
+the men [Greek: dreadphulae] [Greek: harassed], &amp; owing to [Greek:
+part] of the [Greek: residensae] having been [Greek: brought down] by
+[Greek: round shot] are without [Greek: shelter]. Our [Greek: native]
+[Greek: phorse] hav'g been [Greek: asured] on Col. Tytler's authority
+of y'r [Greek: near] [Greek: aproach some twentae phive dais ago are
+naturallae losing konphidense], [Greek: and iph thae leave] us I do not
+[Greek: sae how the dephenses] are to be [Greek: manned]. Did you
+[Greek: reseive a letter &amp; plan phrom] the [Greek: man] [Greek:
+Ungud]?&mdash;Kindly answer this question.&mdash;Yours truly,
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+J. INGLIS, <i>Brigadier</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cawnpore is an engrossing theme, and Bithoor alone would furnish
+material for an article; but my present subject is Lucknow, and I must
+get to it. There is a railway now to Lucknow from Cawnpore, but the
+railway bridge across the Ganges is not yet finished and passengers
+must cross by the bridge of boats to the Oude side. Behind me, as the
+gharry jingles over the wooden platform, is the fort which Havelock
+began, which Neill completed, and in which Windham found the shelter
+which alone saved him from utter defeat. Before me is the low Gangetic
+shore, with the dumpy sand-hills gradually rising from the water's
+edge. A few years ago there used to ride at the head of that noble
+regiment the 78th Highlanders, a smooth-faced, gaunt, long-legged,
+stooping officer on an old white horse. The Colonel had a voice like a
+girl and his men irreverently called him the "old squeaker"; but
+although you never heard him talk of his deeds he had a habit of going
+quietly and steadily to the front, taking fighting and hardship
+philosophically as part of the day's work. Those sand-banks were once
+the scene of some quiet, unsensational heroism of his. He commanded the
+two companies of Highlanders whom Havelock threw on the unknown shore
+as the vanguard of his advance into Oude. No prior reconnaissance was
+possible. Oude swarmed with an armed and hostile population. The
+chances were that an army was hovering but a little way inland, waiting
+to attack the head of the column on landing. But it was necessary to
+risk all contingencies, and Mackenzie accepted the service as he might
+have done an invitation to a glass of grog. In the dead of the night
+the boats stood across with the little forlorn hope with which Havelock
+essayed to grapple on to Oude. Landing in the rain and darkness, it was
+Mackenzie's task to grope for an enemy if there should be one in his
+vicinity. There was not; but for four-and-twenty hours his little band
+hung on to the Oude bank as it were by their eyelids, detached,
+unsupported, and wholly charged with the taking care of themselves
+until it was possible to send a reinforcement. The charge of this
+vague, uncertain, tentative enterprise, fraught with risks so imminent
+and so vast, required a cool, steady-balanced courage of no common
+order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Onao!" shouts the conductor of the train at the first station from
+Cawnpore, and we look out on a few railway bungalows and a large native
+village apparently in a ruinous state. All this journey is studded with
+battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to
+make a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically
+Private Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the
+hesitation of his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the
+mutineers. We jog on very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to
+India in point of slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at
+home; but every yard of the ground is interesting. Along that high road
+passed in long, strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde
+brought away from Lucknow&mdash;the civilians, the women, the children, and
+the wounded of the immortal garrison. That swell beyond the mango trees
+under which the <i>nhil gau</i> are feeding, is Mungalwar, Havelock's
+menacing position. No wonder though the outskirts of this town on the
+high road present a ruined appearance. It is Busseerutgunge, the scene
+of three of Havelock's battles and victories, fought and won in a
+single fortnight. We pass Bunnee, where Havelock and Outram tramping on
+to the relief, fired a royal salute in the hope that the sound of it
+might reach to the Residency and cheer the hearts of its garrison. And
+now we are on the platform of the Lucknow station which has more of an
+English look about it than have most Indian stations. There is a
+bookstall, although it is not one of Smith's; and there are lots of
+English faces in the crowd waiting the arrival of the train. The
+natives, one sees at a glance, are of very different physique from the
+people of Bengal. The Oude man is tall, square-shouldered, and upright;
+he has more hair on his face than has the Bengali, and his carriage is
+that of a free man. The railway station of Lucknow is flanked by two
+earthwork fortifications of considerable pretensions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucknow is so full of interest and the objects of interest are so
+widely spread that one is in doubt where to begin the pilgrimage. But
+the Alumbagh is on the railway side of the canal and therefore nearest;
+and I drive directly to it before going into the town. From the station
+the road to the Alumbagh turns sharp to the left and the two miles'
+drive is through beautiful groves and gardens. Then the plain opens up
+and there is the detached temple which so long was one of Outram's
+outlying pickets; and to the left of it the square-walled enclosure of
+the Alumbagh itself with the four corners flanked by earthen bastions.
+The top of the wall is everywhere roughly crenelated for musketry fire,
+and on two of its faces there are countless tokens that it has been the
+target for round shot and bullets. The Alumbagh in the pre-Mutiny
+period was a pleasure-garden of one of the princes of Oude. The
+enclosed park contained a summer palace and all the surroundings were
+pretty and tasteful. It was for the possession of the Alumbagh that
+Havelock fought his last battle before the relief; here it was where he
+left his baggage and went in; here it was that Clyde halted to organise
+the turning movement which achieved the second relief. Hither were
+brought from the Dilkoosha the women and children of the garrison prior
+to starting on the march for Cawnpore; here Outram lay threatening
+Lucknow from Clyde's relief until the latter's ultimate capture of the
+city. But these occurrences contribute but trivially to the interest of
+the Alumbagh in comparison with the circumstance that within its
+enclosure is the grave of Havelock. We enter the great enclosure under
+the lofty arch of the castellated gateway. From this a straight avenue
+bordered by arbor vitae trees, conducts to a square plot of ground
+enclosed by low posts and chains. Inside this there is a little garden
+the plants of which a native gardener is watering as we open the
+wicket. From the centre of the little garden there rises a shapely
+obelisk on a square pedestal and on one side of the pedestal is a long
+inscription. "Here lie," it begins, "the mortal remains of Henry
+Havelock;" and so, methinks, it might have ended. There is needed no
+prolix biographical inscription to tell the reverent pilgrim of the
+deeds of the dead man by whose grave he stands&mdash;so long as history
+lives, so long does it suffice to know that "here lie the mortal
+remains of Henry Havelock"&mdash;and the text and verse of poetry grate on
+one as redundancies. He sickened two days before the evacuation of the
+Residency and died on the morning of the 24th of November in his dooly
+in a tent of the camp at the Dilkoosha. The life went out of him just
+as the march began, and his soldiers conveyed with them, on the litter
+on which he had expired, the mortal remains of the chief who had so
+often led them on to victory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the following morning they buried him here in the Alumbagh, under
+the tree which still spreads its branches over the little garden in
+which he lies. There stood around the grave-mouth Colin Campbell and
+the chivalrous Outram, and stanch old Walter Hamilton, and the
+ever-ready Fraser Tytler; and the "boy Harry" to whom the campaign had
+brought the gain of fame and the loss of a father; and the devoted
+Harwood with "his heart in the coffin there with Caesar;" and the
+heroic William Peel; and that "colossal red Celt," the noble, ill-fated
+Adrian Hope, sacrificed afterwards to incompetent obstinacy. Behind
+stood in a wide circle the soldiers of the Ross-shire Buffs and the
+"Blue Caps" who had served the dead chief so stanchly, and had gathered
+here now, with many a memory of his ready praise of valour and his
+indefatigable regard for the comfort of his men, stirring in their
+war-worn hearts&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  Guarded to a soldier's grave<br />
+  By the bravest of the brave,<br />
+  He hath gained a nobler tomb<br />
+  Than in old cathedral gloom.<br />
+  Nobler mourners paid the rite,<br />
+  Than the crowd that craves a sight;<br />
+  England's banners o'er him waved,<br />
+  Dead he keeps the name he saved.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The burial-place was being temporarily abandoned, and as the rebels
+desecrated all the graves they could discover it was necessary to
+obliterate as much as possible the tokens of the interment. A big "H"
+was carved into the bark of the tree and a small tin plate fastened to
+its trunk, to guide to the subsequent investigation of the spot. Dr.
+Russell tells us that when he visited the Alumbagh before his return
+home after the mutiny in Oude was stamped out, he found the hero's
+grave a muddy trench near the foot of a tree which bore the mark of a
+round shot and had carved into its bark the letter "H." The tree is
+here still and the dent of the round shot, and faintly too is to be
+discerned the carved letter but the bark around it seems to have been
+whittled away, perhaps by the sacrilegious knives of relic-seeking
+visitors. There is the grave of a young lieutenant in a corner of the
+little garden and a few private soldiers lie hard by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turn my face now toward the Charbagh bridge, following the route
+taken by Havelock's force on the 25th of September&mdash;the memorable day
+of the relief. There is the field where, as at a table in the open air
+Havelock and Outram were studying a map, a round shot from the Sepoy
+battery by the Yellow House ricochetted between them. There is the spot
+where stood the Yellow House itself, whence after a desperate struggle
+Maude's artillerymen drove the Sepoy garrison and its guns. Presently
+with a sweep the road comes into a direct line with the Charbagh bridge
+over the canal. Now there is not a house in the vicinity; the Charbagh
+garden has been thrown into the plain and the steep banks of the canal
+are perfectly naked. But then the scene was very different. On the
+Lucknow side the native city came close up to the bridge and lined the
+canal. The tall houses to right and left of the bridge on the Lucknow
+side were full of men with firearms. At that end of the bridge there
+was a regular overlapping breastwork, and behind it rose an earthwork
+battery solidly constructed and armed with five guns, one a 42-pounder,
+all crammed to the muzzle with grape. Let us sit down on the parapet
+and try to realise the scene. Outram with the 78th has made a detour to
+the right through the Charbagh garden to clear it of the enemy, and,
+gaining the canal bank, to bring a flanking fire to bear on its
+defenders. There is only room for two of Maude's guns; and there they
+stand out in the open on the road trying to answer the fire of the
+rebel battery. Thrown forward along the bank to the left of the bridge
+is a company of the Madras Fusiliers under Arnold, lying down and
+returning the musketry fire from the houses on the other side. Maude's
+guns are forward in the straight throat of the road where it leads on
+to the bridge close by, but round the bend under cover of the wall the
+Madras Fusiliers are lying down. In a bay of the wall of the Charbagh
+enclosure General Neill is standing waiting for the effect of Outram's
+flank movement to develop, and young Havelock, mounted, is on the other
+side of the road somewhat forward. Matters are at a deadlock. It seems
+as if Outram had lost his way. Maude's gunners are all down; he has
+repeatedly called for volunteers from the infantry behind, and now his
+gallant subaltern, Maitland, is doing bombardier's work. Maude calls to
+young Havelock that he shall be forced to retire his guns if something
+is not done at once; and Havelock rides across through the fire and in
+his capacity as assistant adjutant-general urges on Neill the need for
+an immediate assault. Neill "is not in command; he cannot take the
+responsibility; and General Outram must turn up soon." Havelock turns
+and rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks
+encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at
+the long detention under fire. "Come out of that, sir," cried one
+soldier, "a chap's just had his head taken off there!" It is a grim
+joke that reply which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: "And what
+the devil are we here for but to get our heads taken off?" Young
+Havelock is bent on the perpetration of what, under the circumstances,
+may be called a pious fraud. His father, who commands the operations,
+is behind with the Reserve, and he disappears round the bend on the
+make-belief of getting instructions from the chief. The General is far
+in the rear but his son comes back at the gallop, rides up to Neill,
+and saluting with his sword, says, "You are to carry the bridge at
+once, sir." Neill, acquiescing in the superior order, replies, "Get the
+regiment together then, and see it formed up." At the word and without
+waiting for the regiment to rise and form the gallant and eager Arnold
+springs up from his advanced position and dashes on to the bridge,
+followed by about a dozen of his nearest skirmishers. Tytler and
+Havelock, as eager as Arnold, set spurs to their horses and are by his
+side in a moment. The brave and ardent 84th, commanded by Willis,
+dashes to the front. Then the hurricane opens. The big gun crammed to
+the muzzle with grape, sweeps its iron sleet across the bridge in the
+face of the gallant band, and the Sepoy sharpshooters converge their
+fire on it. Arnold drops shot through both thighs, Tytler's horse goes
+down with a crash, the bridge is swept clear save for young Havelock
+erect and unwounded, waving his sword and shouting for the Fusiliers to
+come on, and a Fusilier corporal, Jakes by name, who, as he rams a
+bullet home into his Enfield, says cheerily to Havelock, "We'll soon
+have the &mdash;&mdash; out of that, sir!" And corporal Jakes is a true prophet.
+Before the big gun can be loaded again the stormers are on the bridge
+in a rushing mass. They are across it, they clear the barricade, they
+storm the battery, they are bayoneting the Sepoy gunners as they stand.
+The Charbagh bridge is won, but with severe loss which continues more
+or less all the way to the Residency; and when one comes to know the
+ground it becomes more and more obvious that the strategy of Havelock,
+overruled by Outram, was wise and prescient, when he counselled a wide
+turning movement by the Dilkoosha, over the Goomtee near the
+Martinière, and so along its northern bank to the Badshah-bagh, almost
+opposite to the Residency and commanding the iron bridge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I recross the Charbagh bridge and bend away to the left by the byroad
+along the canal side by which the 78th Highlanders penetrated to the
+front of the Kaiser-bagh. Most of the native houses are now destroyed,
+whence was poured so deadly a fire on the advancing Ross-shire men that
+three colour-bearers fell in succession, and the colour fell to the
+grasp of the gallant Valentine McMaster, the assistant-surgeon of the
+regiment. And now I stand in front of the main entrance to the
+Kaiser-bagh, hard by the spot where stood the Sepoy battery which the
+Highlanders so opportunely took in reverse. Before me on the <i>maidan</i>
+is the plain monument to Sir Mountstuart Jackson, Captain Orr, and a
+sergeant, who were murdered in the Kaiser-bagh when the success of
+Campbell's final operations became certain. I enter the great square
+enclosure of the Kaiser-bagh and stand in the desolation of what was
+once a gay garden where the King of Oude and his women were wont to
+disport themselves. The place stands much as Campbell's men left it
+after looting its multifarious rich treasures. The dainty little
+pavilions are empty and dilapidated, the statues are broken and
+tottering. Quitting the Kaiser-bagh, I try to realise the scene of that
+informal council of war in one of the outlying courtyards of the
+numerous palaces. I want to fix the spot where on his big waler sat
+Outram, a splash of blood across his face, and his arm in a sling;
+where Havelock, dismounted, walked up and down by Outram's side with
+short, nervous strides, halting now and then to give emphasis to the
+argument, while all around them were officers, soldiers, guns, natives,
+wounded men, bullocks, and a surging tide of disorganisation
+momentarily pouring into the square. But the attempt is fruitless. The
+whole area has been cleared of buildings right up to the gate of the
+Residency, only that hard by the Goomtee there still stands the river
+wing of the Chutter Munzil Palace with its fantastic architecture, and
+that the palace of the King of Oude is now the station library and
+assembly rooms. The Hureen Khana, the Lalbagh, the courts of the Furrut
+Bux Palace, the Khas Bazaar, and the Clock Tower have alike been swept
+away, and in their place there opens up before the eye trim ornamental
+grounds with neat plantations which extend up to the Baileyguard
+itself. One archway alone stands&mdash;a gaunt commemorative skeleton&mdash;a
+pedestal for the statue of a noble soldier. It was from a chamber above
+the crown of this arch that the sepoy shot Neill as he sat on his horse
+urging the confused press of guns and men through the archway. The spot
+is memorable for other causes. This archway led into that court which
+is world-famous under the name of Dhooly Square. Here it was that the
+native bearers abandoned the wounded in the doolies which poor Bensley
+Thornhill was trying to guide into the Residency; here it was where
+they were butchered and burned as they lay, and here it was where Dr.
+Home and a handful of men of the escort did what in them lay to cover
+the wounded and defended themselves for a day and a night against
+continuous attacks of countless enemies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>via dolorosa</i>, the road of death up which Outram and Havelock
+fought their way with Brazier's Sikhs and the Ross-shire Buffs, is now
+a pleasant open drive amid clumps of trees, leading on to the
+Residency. A strange thrill runs through one's frame as there opens up
+before one that reddish-gray crumbling archway spanning the roadway
+into the Residency grounds. Its face is dented and splintered with
+cannon-shot and pitted all over by musket-bullets. This is none other
+than that historic Baileyguard gate which burly Jock Aitken and his
+faithful Sepoys kept so stanchly. You may see the marks still of the
+earth banked up against it on the interior during the siege. To the
+right and left runs the low wall which was the curtain of the defence,
+now crumbled so as to be almost indistinguishable. But there still
+stands, retired somewhat from the right of the archway, Aitken's
+post&mdash;the guard-house and treasury, its pillars and façade cut and
+dented all over with the marks of bullets fired by "Bob the Nailer" and
+his comrades from the Clock Tower which stood over against it. And in
+the curtain wall between the archway and the building is still to be
+traced the faint outline of the embrasure through which Outram and
+Havelock entered on the memorable evening. The turmoil and din and
+conflicting emotions of that terrible, glorious day have merged into a
+strange serenity of quietude. The scene is solitary, save for a native
+woman who is playing with her baby on a spot where once dead bodies lay
+in heaps. But the other older scene rises up vividly before the mind's
+eye out of the present calm. Havelock and Outram and the staff have
+passed through the embrasure here, and now there are rushing in the men
+of the ranks, powder-grimed, dusty, bloody; but a minute before raging
+with the stern passion of the battle, now full of a woman-like
+tenderness. And all around them as they swarm in there crowd a mass of
+folk eager to give welcome. There are officers and men of the garrison,
+civilians whom the siege has made into soldiers; women, too, weeping
+tears of joy down on the faces of the children for whom they had not
+dared to hope for aught but death. There are gaunt men, pallid with
+loss of blood, whose great eyes shine weirdly amid the torchlight and
+whose thin hands tremble with weakness as they grip the sinewy, grimy
+hands of the Highlanders. These are the wounded of the long siege who
+have crawled out from the hospital up yonder, as many of them as could
+compass the exertion, with a welcome to their deliverers. The hearts of
+the impulsive Highlanders wax very warm. As they grasp the hands held
+out to them they exclaim, "God bless you!" "Why, we expected to have
+found only your bones!" "And the children are living too!" and many
+other fervid and incoherent ejaculations. The ladies of the garrison
+come among the Highlanders, shaking them enthusiastically by the hand;
+and the children clasp the shaggy men round the neck, and to say truth,
+so do some of the mothers. But Jessie Dunbar and her "Dinna ye hear
+it?" in reference to the bagpipe music, are in the category of
+melodramatic fictions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The position which bears and will bear to all time the title of the
+Residency of Lucknow, is an elevated plateau of land, irregular in
+surface, of which the highest point is occupied by the Residency
+building, while the area around was studded irregularly with buildings,
+chiefly the houses of the principal civilian officials of the station.
+When Campbell brought away the garrison in November 1857 it lapsed into
+the hands of the mutineers, who held it till his final occupation of
+the city and its surroundings in March of the following year. They
+pulled down not a few of the already shattered buildings, and left
+their fell imprint on the spot in an atrociously ghastly way by
+desecrating the graves in which brave hands had laid our dead
+country-people and flinging the exhumed corpses into the Goomtee. When
+India once more became settled the Residency, its commemorative
+features uninterfered with, was laid out as a garden and flowers and
+shrubs now grow on soil once wet with the blood of heroes. The <i>débris</i>
+has been removed or dispersed; the shattered buildings are prevented
+from crumbling farther; tablets bearing the names of the different
+positions and places of interest are let into the walls; and it is
+possible, by exploring the place map in hand, to identify all the
+features of the defence. The avenue from the Baileyguard gate rises
+with a steep slope to the Residency building. On either side of the
+approach and hard by the gate, are the blistered and shattered remnants
+of two large houses; that on the right is the banqueting house which
+was used as the hospital during the siege; that on the left was Dr.
+Fayrer's house. The banqueting house is a mere shell, riven everywhere
+with shot and pitted over by musket-bullets as if it had suffered from
+smallpox. The ground-floor has escaped with less damage but the
+banqueting hall itself has been wholly wrecked by the persistent fire
+which the rebels showered upon it, and to which, notwithstanding the
+mattresses and sandbags with which the windows were blocked, several
+poor fellows fell victims as they lay wounded on their cots. Dr.
+Fayrer's house is equally a battered ruin. In its first floor, roofless
+and forlorn, its front torn open by shot and the pillars of its windows
+jagged into fantastic fragments, is the veranda in which Sir Henry
+Lawrence, 4th July 1857, died, exposed to fire to the very last. At the
+top of the slope of the avenue and on the left front of the Residency
+building as we approach it&mdash;on what, indeed, was once the lawn&mdash;has
+been raised an artificial mound, its slopes covered with flowering
+shrubs, its summit bearing the monumental obelisk on the pedestal of
+which is the terse, appropriate inscription: "In memory of
+Major-General Sir Henry Lawrence and the brave men who fell in defence
+of the Residency. <i>Si monumentum quaeris Circumspice!</i>" Beyond this
+lies the scathed and blighted ruin of the Residency House, once a large
+and imposing structure, now so utterly wrecked and shivered that one
+wonders how the crumbling reddish-gray walls are kept erect. The
+veranda was battered down and much of the front of the building lies
+bodily open, the structure being supported on the battered and
+distorted pillars assisted by great balks of wood. Entering by the left
+wing I pass down a winding stair into the bowels of the earth till I
+reach the spacious and lofty vaults or <i>tykhana</i> under the building.
+Here, the place affording comparative safety, lived immured the women
+of the garrison, the soldiers' wives, half-caste females, the wives of
+the meaner civilians and their children. The poor creatures were seldom
+allowed to come up to the surface, lest they should come in the way of
+the shot which constantly lacerated the whole area, and few visitors
+were allowed access to them. Veritably they were in a dungeon.
+Provisions were lowered down to them from the window orifices near the
+roof of the vaulting, and there were days when the firing was so heavy
+that orders were given to them not even to rise from their beds on the
+floor. For shot occasionally found a way even into the <i>tykhana</i>; you
+may see the holes it made in penetrating. The miserables were billeted
+off ten in a room, and there they lived, without sweepers, baths,
+dhobies, or any of the comforts which the climate makes necessities.
+Here in these dungeons children were born, only for the most part to
+die. Ascending another staircase I pass through some rooms in which
+lived (and died) some of the ladies of the garrison, and passing from
+the left wing by a shattered corridor am able to look up into the room
+in which Sir Henry Lawrence received his death-wound. Access to it is
+impossible by reason of the tottering condition of the structure; and
+turning away I clamber up the worn staircase in the shot-riven tower on
+the summit of which still stands the flagstaff on which were hoisted
+the signals with which the garrison were wont to communicate with the
+Alumbagh. The walls of the staircase and the flat roof of the tower are
+scratched and written all over with the names of visitors; many of the
+names are those of natives, but more are those of British soldiers, who
+have occasionally added a piece of their mind in characteristically
+strong language.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I set out on a pilgrimage under the still easily traceable contour of
+the intrenchment. Passing "Sam Lawrence's Battery" above what was the
+water-gate, I traverse the projecting tongue at the end of which stood
+the "Redan Battery" whose fire swept the river face up to the iron
+bridge. Returning, and passing the spot where "Evans's Battery" stood,
+I find myself in the churchyard in a slight depression of the ground.
+Of the church, which was itself a defensive post, not one stone remains
+on another and the mutineers hacked to pieces the ground of the
+churchyard. The ground is now neatly enclosed and ornamentally planted
+and is studded with many monuments, few of which speak the truth when
+they profess to cover the dust of those whom they commemorate. There
+are the regimental monuments of the 5th Madras Fusiliers, the 84th (360
+men besides officers), the Royal Artillery, the 90th (a long list of
+officers and 271 men). The monument of the 1st Madras Fusiliers bears
+the names of Neill, Stephenson, Renaud, and Arnold, and commemorates a
+loss of 352 men. There is a monument to Mr. Polehampton the exemplary
+chaplain, and hard by a plain slab bears the inscription, "Here lies
+Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty; may the Lord have mercy on
+his soul!" words dictated by himself on his deathbed. Other monuments
+commemorate Captain Graham of the Bengal Cavalry and two children; Mr.
+Fairhurst the Roman Catholic chaplain; Major Banks; Captain Fulton of
+the 32nd who earned the title of "Defender of Lucknow;" Lucas, the
+travelling Irish gentleman who served as a volunteer and fell in the
+last sortie; Captain Becher; Captain Moorsom; poor Bensley Thornhill
+and his young daughter; "Mrs. Elizabeth Arne, burnt with a shell-ball
+during the siege;" Lieutenant Cunliffe; Mr. Ommaney the Judicial
+Commissioner; and others. The nameless hillocks of poor Jack Private
+are plentiful, for here were buried many of those who fell in the final
+capture; and there are children's graves. Interments take place still.
+I saw a freshly-made grave; but only those are entitled to a last
+resting-place here who were among the beleaguered during the long
+defence. I have seen the medal for the defence of Lucknow on the breast
+of a man who was a child in arms at the time of the siege, and such an
+one would have the right to claim interment in this doubly hallowed
+ground. From the churchyard I pass out along the narrow neck to that
+forlorn-hope post, "Innes's Garrison," and along the western face of
+the intrenchment by the sides of the sheep-house and the
+slaughter-house, to Gubbins's post. The mere foundations of the house
+are visible which the stout civilian so gallantly defended, and the
+famous tree, gradually pruned to a mere stump by the enemy's fire, is
+no longer extant. Along the southern face of the position there are no
+buildings which are not ruined. Sikh Square, the Brigade Mess House,
+and the Martinière boys' post, are alike represented by fragmentary
+gray walls shivered with shot and shored up here and there by beams.
+The rooms of the Begum Kothi near the centre of the position, are still
+laterally entire but roofless. The walls of this structure are
+exceptionally thick and here many of the ladies of the garrison were
+quartered. All around the Residency position the native houses which at
+the time of the siege crowded close up on the intrenchment, are now
+destroyed; and indeed the native town has been curtailed into
+comparatively small dimensions and is entirely separated from the area
+in which the houses of the station are built.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quitting the Residency I drive westward by the river side, over the
+site of the Captan Bazaar, past also that huge fortified heap the
+Muchee Bawn, till I reach the beautiful enclosure in which the great
+Imambara stands. This majestic structure&mdash;part temple, part convent,
+part palace, and now part fortress&mdash;dominates the whole <i>terrain</i>, and
+from its lofty flat roof one looks down on the plain where the weekly
+<i>hât</i> or market is being held, on the gardens and mansions across the
+river, and southward upon the dense mass of houses which constitute the
+native city. Sentries promenade the battlements of the Muchee Bawn, and
+the Imambara&mdash;an apartment to which for space and height I know none in
+Europe comparable&mdash;is now used as an arsenal, where are stored the
+great siege guns which William Peel plied with so great skill and
+gallantry. Just outside the Imambara, on the edge of the <i>maidan</i>
+between it and the Moosabagh, I come on a little railed churchyard
+where rest a few British soldiers who fell during Lord Clyde's final
+operations in this direction. Then, with a sweep across the plain to
+the south and by a slight ascent, I reach the gate of the city which
+opens into the Chowk or principal street&mdash;the street traversed in
+disguise by the dauntless Kavanagh when he went out from the garrison
+to convey information and afford guidance to Sir Colin Campbell on his
+first advance. The gatehouse is held by a strong force of native
+policemen, armed as if they were soldiers; and as I pass the guard I
+stand in the Chowk itself, in the midst of a throng of gaily clad male
+pedestrians, women in chintz trousers, laden donkeys, multitudinous
+children, and still more multitudinous stinks. All down both sides the
+fronts of the lower stories are open, and in the recesses sit merchants
+displaying paltry jewelry, slippers, pipes, turban cloths, and
+Manchester stuffs of the gaudiest patterns. The main street of Lucknow
+has been called "The Street of Silver," but I could find little among
+its jewelry either of silver or of gold. The first floors all have
+balconies, and on these sit draped, barefooted women of Rahab's
+profession. The women of Lucknow are fairer and handsomer, and the men
+bolder and more stalwart, than those in Bengal, and it takes no great
+penetration to discern that Lucknow is still ruled by fear and not by
+love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It remained for me still to investigate the scenes of the route by
+which Lord Clyde came in on both his advances; but to do justice to
+these would demand separate articles. Let me begin the hasty sketch at
+the Dilkoosha Palace, two miles and more away to the east of the
+Residency; for on both occasions the Dilkoosha was Clyde's base. Wajid
+Ali's twenty-foot wall has now given place to an earthen embankment
+surrounding a beautiful pleasure park, and there are now smooth green
+slopes instead of the dense forest through which Clyde's soldiers
+marched on their turning movement. On a swell in the midst of the park,
+commanding a view of the fantastic architecture of the Martinière down
+by the tank, stands the gaunt ruin of the once trim and dainty
+Dilkoosha Palace or rather garden-house. From one of the pepper-box
+turrets up there Lord Clyde directed the attack on the Martinière on
+his ultimate operation; and here it was that, as Dr. Russell tells us,
+a round shot dispersed his staff on the adjacent leads. After quietude
+was restored the Dilkoosha was the headquarters for a time of Sir Hope
+Grant, but now it has been allowed to fall into decay although the
+garden in the rear of it is prettily kept up. On the reverse slope
+behind the Dilkoosha was the camp in one of the tents of which Havelock
+died. We drive down the gentle slope once traversed at a rushing double
+by the Black Watch on their way to carry the Martinière, past the great
+tank out of the centre of which rises the tall column to the memory of
+Claude Martine, and reach the entrance of the fantastic building which
+he built, in which he was buried, and which bears his name. We see at
+the angle of the northern wing the slope up which the gun was run which
+played so heavily on the Dilkoosha up on the wooded knoll there. The
+Martinière is now, as it was before the Mutiny, a college for European
+boys, and the young fellows are playing on the terraces. Grotesque
+stone statues are in niches and along the tops of the balconies; you
+may see on them the marks of the bullets which the honest fellows of
+the Black Watch fired at them, taking them for Pandies. I go down into
+a vault and see the tomb of Claude Martine; but it is empty, for the
+mutineers desecrated his grave and scattered his bones to the winds of
+heaven. Then I make for the roof, through the dormitories of the boys
+and past fantastic stone griffins and lions and Gorgons, till I reach
+the top of the tower and touch the flagstaff from which, during the
+relief time, was given the answering signal to that hoisted on the
+tower of the Residency. I stand in the niches where the mutineer
+marksmen used to sit with their hookahs and take pot shots at the
+Dilkoosha. I look down to the eastward on the Goomtee, and note the
+spot where Outram crossed on that flank movement which would have been
+very much more successful than it was had he been permitted to drive it
+home. To the north-east beyond the topes is the battle-ground of
+Chinhut, where Lawrence received so terrible a reverse at the beginning
+of the siege. Due north is the Kookrail viaduct which Outram cleared
+with the Rifles and the 79th, and in whose vicinity Jung Bahadour, the
+crafty and bloodthirsty generalissimo of Nepaul, "co-operated" by a
+demonstration which never became anything more. And to the west there
+lie stretched out before me the domes, minarets, and spires of Lucknow,
+rising above the foliage in which their bases are hidden, and the
+routes of Clyde in the relief and capture. The rays of the afternoon
+sun are stirring into colour the dusky gray of the Secunderbagh and of
+the Nuddun Rusool, or "Grave of the Prophet," used as a powder magazine
+by the rebels. Below me, on the lawn of the Martinière, is the big
+gun&mdash;one of Claude Martine's casting&mdash;which did the rebels so much
+service at the other angle of the Martinière and which was spiked at
+last by two men of Peel's naval brigade, who swam the Goomtee for the
+purpose. That little enclosure slightly to the left surrounds "all that
+can die" of that strange mixture of high spirit, cool daring, and weak
+principle, the famous chief of Hodson's Horse. By Hodson's side lies
+Captain da Costa of the 56th N.I., attached to Brazier's Sikhs. Of this
+officer is told that, having lost many relatives in the butchery of
+Cawnpore, he joined the regiment likeliest to be in the front of the
+Lucknow fighting, and fell by one of the first shots fired in the
+assault on the Kaiser-bagh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Descending from the Martinière tower I traverse the park to the
+westward passing the grave of Captain Otway Mayne, cross the dry canal
+along which are still visible the heaps of earth which mark the
+stupendous first line of the rebels' defences, and bending to the left
+reach the Secunderbagh. This famous place was a pleasure garden
+surrounded with a lofty wall with turrets at the angles and a
+castellated gateway. The interior garden is now waste and forlorn, the
+rank grass growing breast-high in the corners where the slaughter was
+heaviest. Here in this little enclosure, not half the size of the
+garden of Bedford Square, 2000 Sepoys died the death at the hands of
+the 93rd, the 53rd, and the 4th Punjaubees. Their common grave is under
+the low mound on the other side of the road. The loopholes stand as
+they were left by the mutineers when our fellows came bursting in
+through the ragged breach made in the reverse side from the main
+entrance by Peel's guns. Farther on&mdash;that is, nearer to the
+Residency&mdash;I come to the Shah Nujeef, with its strong exterior wall
+enclosing the domed temple in its centre. It is still easy to trace the
+marks of the breach made in the angle in the wall by Peel's battering
+guns, and the tree is still standing up which Salmon, Southwell, and
+Harrison climbed in response to his proffer of the Victoria Cross.
+Opposite the Shah Nujeef white girls are playing on the lawn of that
+castellated building, for the Koorsheyd Munzil, on the top of which
+there was hoisted the British flag in the face of a <i>feu d'enfer</i>, is
+now a seminary for the daughters of Europeans. A little beyond, on the
+plain in front of the Motee Mahal, is the spot where Campbell met
+Outram and Havelock&mdash;a spot which, methinks, might well be marked by a
+monument; and after this I lose my reckoning by reason of the extent of
+the demolition, and am forced to resort to guesswork as to the precise
+localities.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap17"></a>
+THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Writing of the late Alexander III. of Russia, a foreign author has
+recently permitted himself to observe: "Marvellous personal courage is
+not a striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs as it was
+of the English Tudors." It will be conceded that periods materially
+govern the conditions under which sovereigns and their royal relatives
+have found opportunities for proving their personal courage. The Tudor
+dynasty had ended before the Romanoff dynasty began. It is true,
+indeed, that the ending of the former with the death of Elizabeth in
+1603 occurred only a few years before the foundation of the latter by
+the election to the Tzarship of Michael Feodorovitz Romanoff in 1612.
+But of the five sovereigns of the Tudor dynasty it happened that only
+one, Henry VII., the first monarch of that dynasty, found or made an
+opportunity for the display of marked&mdash;scarcely perhaps of
+"marvellous"&mdash;personal courage; and thus the selection of the Tudor
+dynasty by the writer referred to as furnishing a contrasting
+illustration in the matter of personal courage to that of the Romanoffs
+was not particularly fortunate. Henry VIII. was only once in action; he
+shared in the skirmish known as the "Battle of the Spurs," because of
+the precipitate flight of the French horse. Edward VI. died at the age
+of sixteen, and the two remaining sovereigns of the dynasty were women,
+of whom it is true that Elizabeth was a strong and vigorous ruler, but
+in the nature of things had no opportunity for showing "marvellous
+personal courage." Henry VII. literally found his crown in the heart of
+the <i>mêlée</i> on Bosworth field, it matters not which of the alternative
+stories is correct, that he himself killed Richard, or that Richard was
+killed in the act of striking him a desperate blow. But Henry at
+Bosworth in 1485 still belonged to the days of chivalry&mdash;to an era in
+which monarchs were also armour-clad knights, who headed charges in
+person and gave and took with spear, sword, and battle-axe. Long before
+Peter the Great, more than two centuries after Bosworth, foamed at the
+mouth with rage and hacked with his sword at his panicstricken troops
+fleeing from the field of Narva on that winter day of 1700, the face of
+warfare had altered and the <i>métier</i> of the commander, were he
+sovereign or were he subject, had undergone a radical change.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of a family of the human race it is not rationally possible to
+predicate a typical generic characteristic of mind. A physical trait
+will endure down the generations, as witness the Hapsburg lip and the
+swarthy complexion of the Finch-Hattons, in the face of alliances from
+outside the races; but, save as regards one exception, there is no
+assurance of a continuous inheritance of mental attributes. What a
+contrast is there between Frederick the Great and his father; between
+George III. and his successor; between the present Emperor of Austria
+and his hapless son; between the genial, wistful, and well-intentioned
+Alexander II. of Russia and the not less well-intentioned but
+narrow-minded and despotic sovereign who succeeded him! But there may
+be reserved one exception to the absence of assurance of inherited
+mental attributes&mdash;one mental feature in which identity takes the place
+of dissimilarity, and even of actual contrast. And that feature&mdash;that
+inherited characteristic of a race whose progenitors happily possessed
+it&mdash;is personal courage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Take, for example, the Hohenzollerns. One need not hark back to
+Carlyle's original Conrad, the seeker of his fortune who tramped down
+from the ancestral cliff-castle on his way to take service under
+Barbarossa. Before and since the "Grosse Kurfurst" there has been no
+Hohenzollern who has not been a brave man. He himself was the hero of
+Fehrbellin. His son, the first king of the line, Carlyle's "Expensive
+Herr," was "valiant in action" during the third war of Louis XIV. The
+rugged Frederick William, father of Frederick the Great, had his own
+tough piece of war against the volcanic Charles XII. of Sweden and did
+a stout stroke of hard fighting at Malplaquet. Of Fritz himself the
+world has full note. Bad, sensual, debauched Hohenzollern as was his
+successor, Frederick the Fat, he had fought stoutly in his youth-time
+under his illustrious uncle. His son, Frederick William III.,
+overthrown by Napoleon who called him a "corporal," did good soldierly
+work in the "War of Liberation" and fought his way to Paris in 1814.
+His eldest son, Frederick William IV., the vague, benevolent dreamer
+whom <i>Punch</i> used to call "King Clicquot" and who died of softening of
+the brain, even he, too, as a lad had distinguished himself in the "War
+of Liberation" and in the fighting during the subsequent advance on
+Paris. As for grand old William I., the real maker of the German Empire
+on the <i>quid facit per alium facit per se</i> axiom, he died a veteran of
+many wars. He was not seventeen when he won the Iron Cross by a service
+of conspicuous gallantry under heavy fire. He took his chances in the
+bullet and shell fire at Königgrätz, and again on the afternoon of
+Gravelotte. Not a Hohenzollern of them all but shared as became their
+race in the dangers of the great war of 1870-71; even Prince George,
+the music composer, the only non-soldier of the family, took the field.
+William's noble son, whose premature death neither Germany nor England
+has yet ceased to deplore, took the lead of one army; his nephew Prince
+Frederick Charles, a great commander and a brilliant soldier, was the
+leader of another. One of his brothers, Prince Albert the elder, made
+the campaign as cavalry chief; whose son, Prince Albert junior, now a
+veteran Field-Marshal, commanded a brigade of guard-cavalry with a
+skill and daring not wholly devoid of recklessness. Another brother,
+Prince Charles, the father of the "Red Prince," made the campaign with
+the royal headquarters; Prince Adalbert, a cousin of the sovereign and
+head of the Prussian Navy, had his horse shot under him on the
+battlefield of Gravelotte.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trait of personal courage has markedly characterised the House of
+Hanover. As King of England George I. did no fighting, but before he
+reached that position he had distinguished himself in war not a little;
+against the Danes and Swedes in 1700 and in high command in the war of
+the Spanish succession from 1701 to 1709. His successor, while yet
+young, had displayed conspicuous valour in the battle of Oudenarde, and
+later in life at Dettingen; and he was the last British monarch who
+took part in actual warfare. Cumberland had no meritorious attribute
+save that of personal courage, but that virtue in him was undeniable.
+At Dettingen he was wounded in the forefront of the battle; at Fontenoy
+the "martial boy" was ever in the heart of the fiercest fire, fighting
+at "a spiritual white heat." His grand-nephew the Duke of York was an
+unfortunate soldier, but his personal courage was unquestioned. In the
+present reign a cousin and a son of the sovereign have done good
+service in the field; and that venerable lady herself in situations of
+personal danger has consistently maintained the calm courage of her
+race.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The foreign author has written that "marvellous personal courage is not
+the striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs." He makes
+an exception to this quasi-indictment in favour of the Emperor
+Nicholas, who, he admits, "was absolutely ignorant of fear, and could
+face a band of insurgents with the calm self-possession of a shepherd
+surveying his bleating sheep." The monarch who at the moment of his
+accession illustrated the dominant force of his character by
+confronting amid the bullet fire the ferocious mutiny of half an army
+corps, and who crushed the bloodthirsty <i>émeute</i> with dauntless
+resolution and iron hand; the man who, facing the populace of St.
+Petersburg crazed with terror of the cholera and red with the blood of
+slaughtered physicians, quelled its panic-fury by commanding the people
+in the sternest tones of his sonorous voice to kneel in the dust and
+propitiate by prayers the wrath of the Almighty&mdash;such a man is
+scarcely, perhaps, adequately characterised by the expressions which
+have been quoted. But setting aside this instance of the fearlessness
+of Nicholas, facts appear to refute pretty conclusively reflections on
+the personal courage of the Romanoffs. No purpose can be served by
+cumbering the record by going back into the period of Russia's
+semi-civilisation; illustrations from three generations may reasonably
+suffice. At Austerlitz Alexander I. was close up to the fighting line
+in the Pratzen section of that great battle, and so recklessly did he
+expose himself that the report spread rearward that he had fallen. He
+was riding with Moreau in the heart of the bloody turmoil before
+Dresden when a French cannon-ball mortally wounded the renegade French
+general, and he was splashed by the latter's blood. Moreau had insisted
+on riding on the outside, else the ball which caused his death would
+certainly have struck Alexander. That monarch participated actively and
+forwardly in most of the battles of the campaign of 1814 which
+culminated in the allied occupation of Paris. Marmont's bullets were
+still flying when he rode on to the hill of Belleville and looked down
+through the smoke of battle on the French capital. The captious foreign
+writer has admitted that Nicholas, the successor of Alexander, was
+"absolutely ignorant of fear," and I have cited a convincing instance
+of his "marvellous personal courage." Two of his sons&mdash;the Grand Dukes
+Nicholas and Michael&mdash;were under fire in the battle of Inkerman and
+shared for some time the perils of the siege of Sevastopol. Alexander
+II. was certainly a man of real, although quiet and undemonstrative,
+personal courage. But for his disregard of the precautions by which the
+police sought to surround him he probably would have been alive to-day.
+The Third Section was wholly unrepresented in Bulgaria and His
+Majesty's protection on campaign consisted merely of a handful of
+Cossacks. No cordon of sentries surrounded his simple camp; his tent at
+Pavlo and the dilapidated Turkish house which for weeks was his
+residence at Gorni Studen were alike destitute of any guards. The
+imperial Court of Russia is said to be the most punctiliously
+ceremonious of all courts; in the field the Tzar absolutely dispensed
+with any sort of ceremony. He dined with his suite and staff at a
+frugal table in a spare hospital marquee; his guests, the foreign
+attachés and any passing officers or strangers who happened to be in
+camp. When he drove out his escort consisted of a couple of Cossacks.
+In the woods about Biela at the beginning of the war there still
+remained some forlorn bivouacs of Turkish families; he would alight and
+visit those, his sole companion the aide-de-camp on duty; and would
+fearlessly venture among the sullen Turks all of whom were armed with
+deadly weapons, try to persuade them to return to their homes, and,
+unmoved by their refusal, promise to send them food and medicine.
+Dispensing with all etiquette he would see without delay any one coming
+in with tidings from fighting points, were he officer, civilian, or war
+correspondent. During the September attack on Plevna he was continually
+in the field while daylight lasted, looking out on the slaughter from
+an eminence within range of the Turkish cannon-fire, and manifestly
+enduring keen anguish at the spectacle of the losses sustained by his
+brave, patient troops. Later, during the investment of Plevna, his
+point of observation was a redoubt on the Radischevo ridge still closer
+to the Turkish front of fire, and it was thence he witnessed the
+surrender of Osman's army on the memorable 10th December 1877. If
+Alexander was fearless alike in camp and in the field on campaign, he
+was certainly not less so in St. Petersburg, when he returned thither
+after the fall of Plevna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alexander II. literally sacrificed his life to his self-regardless
+concern for the suffering. After the first bomb had burst on the
+Alexandra Canal Road, striking down civilians and Cossacks of the
+following escort but leaving the Emperor unhurt, his coachman begged to
+be allowed to dash forward and get clear of danger. But Alexander
+forbade him with the words, "No, no! I must alight and see to the
+wounded;" and as he was carrying out his heroic and benign intention,
+the second bomb exploded and wrought his death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As did the men of the Hohenzollern house in 1870, so in 1877 the adult
+male Romanoffs went to the war with scarce an exception. The Grand Duke
+Nicholas, brother of the Emperor and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
+armies in Europe, was neither a great general nor an honest man; but
+there could be no question as to his personal courage. That attribute
+he evinced with utter recklessness when arriving, as was his wont, too
+late for a deliberate and careful survey, he galloped round the Turkish
+positions on the morning on which began the September bombardment of
+Plevna, in proximity to Turkish cannon-fire so dangerous that his staff
+remonstrated, and that even the sedate American historian of the war
+speaks of him as having "exposed himself imprudently to the Turkish
+pickets." His son, the Grand Duke Nicholas, jun., in 1877 scarcely of
+age, was nevertheless a keen practical soldier, imbued with the wisdom
+of getting to close quarters and staying there. He was among the first
+to cross the Danube at Sistova under the Turkish fire, and he fought
+with great gallantry under Mirsky in the Schipka Pass. The brothers,
+Prince Nicholas and Prince Eugene of Leuchtenberg, members of the
+imperial house, commanded each a cavalry brigade in Gourko's dashing
+raid across the Balkans at the beginning of the campaign, and both were
+conspicuous for soldierly skill and personal gallantry in the desperate
+fighting in the Tundja Valley. The Grand Duke Vladimir, the second
+brother of Alexander III., headed the infantry advance in the direction
+of Rustchuk, and served with marked distinction in command of one of
+the corps in the army of the Lom. A younger brother, the Grand Duke
+Alexis, the nautical member of the imperial family, had charge of the
+torpedo and subaqueous mining operations on the Danube, and was held to
+have shown practical skill, assiduity, and vigour. Prince Serge of
+Leuchtenberg, younger brother of the Leuchtenbergs previously
+mentioned, was shot dead by a bullet through the head in the course of
+his duty as a staff officer at the front of a reconnaissance in force
+made against the Turkish force in Jovan-Tchiflik in October of the war.
+He was a soldier of great promise and had frequently distinguished
+himself. No unworthy record, it is submitted, earned in war by the
+members of a family of which, according to the foreign author,
+"personal courage is not the striking characteristic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That writer may be warranted in stating that the late Tzar had been
+frequently accused of cowardice&mdash;an indictment to which, it must be
+admitted, many undeniable facts lent a strong colouring of probability;
+and he further tells of "the Emperor's aversion to ride on horseback,
+and of his dread of a horse even when the animal was harnessed to a
+vehicle." There is something, however, of inconsistency in his
+observation that Alexander III. might well have been a contrast to his
+grandfather without deserving the epithet craven-hearted. The
+melancholy explanation of the strange apparent change between the
+Tzarewitch of 1877 and the Tzar of 1894 may lie in the statement that
+"Alexander's nerves had been undoubtedly shaken by the terrible events
+in which he had been a spectator or actor." In 1877, when in campaign
+in Bulgaria, Alexander did not know what "nerves" meant. He was then a
+man of strong, if slow, mental force, stolid, peremptory, reactionary;
+the possessor of dull but firm resolution. He had a strong though
+clumsy seat on horseback and was no infrequent rider. He had two ruling
+dislikes: one was war, the other was officers of German extraction. The
+latter he got rid of; the former he regarded as a necessary evil of the
+hour; he longed for its ending, but while it lasted he did his sturdy
+and loyal best to wage it to the advantage of the Russian arms. And in
+this he succeeded, stanchly fulfilling the particular duty which was
+laid upon him, that of protecting the Russian left flank from the
+Danube to the foothills of the Balkans. He had good troops, the
+subordinate commands were fairly well filled, and his headquarter staff
+was efficient&mdash;General Dochtouroff, its <i>sous-chef</i>, was certainly the
+ablest staff-officer in the Russian army. But Alexander was no puppet
+of his staff; he understood his business as the commander of the army
+of the Lom, performed his functions in a firm, quiet fashion, and
+withal was the trusty and successful warden of the eastern marches. His
+force never amounted to 50,000 men, and his enemy was in considerably
+greater strength. He had successes and he sustained reverses, but he
+was equal to either fortune; always resolute in his steadfast, dogged
+manner, and never whining for reinforcements when things went against
+him, but doing his best with the means to his hand. They used to speak
+of him in the principal headquarter as the only commander who never
+gave them any bother. So highly was he thought of there that when,
+after the unsuccessful attempt on Plevna in the September of the war,
+the Guard Corps was arriving from Russia and there was the temporary
+intention to use it with other troops in an immediate offensive
+movement across the Balkans, he was named to take the command of the
+enterprise. But this intention having been presently departed from, and
+the reinforcements being ordered instead to the Plevna section of the
+theatre of war, the Tzarewitch retained his command on the left flank,
+and thus in mid-December had the opportunity of inflicting a severe
+defeat on Suleiman Pasha, just as in September he had worsted Mehemet
+Ali in the battle of Carkova. It is sad to be told that a man once so
+resolute and masterful should later have been the victim of shattered
+nerves; it is sadder still to learn that he was a mark for accusations
+of cowardice. He never was a gracious, far less a lovable man; but, as
+I can testify from personal knowledge, he was a cool and brave soldier
+in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap18"></a>
+PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
+</h3>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+1875
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a Sunday morning in early June, just before the church bells begin
+to ring, there is wont to be held the annual general parade and
+inspection of the Corps of Commissionaires, on the enclosed grass plot
+by the margin of the ornamental water in St. James's Park. On the
+ground, and accompanying the inspecting officer on his tour through the
+opened ranks, there are always not a few veteran officers, glad by
+their presence on such an occasion to countenance and recognise their
+humbler comrades in arms in bygone war-dramas enacted elsewhere than
+within hearing of London Sunday bells. No scene could be imagined
+presenting a more practical confutation of the ignorant calumny that
+the British army is composed of the froth and the dregs of the British
+nation, and that there exists no cordial feeling between British
+soldiers and British officers. It is good to see how the face kindles
+of the veteran guardsman at the sight and the kindly greeting of Sir
+Charles Russell. Doubtless the honest private's thoughts go back to
+that misty morning on the slopes of Inkerman, when officer and private
+stood shoulder to shoulder in the fierce press, and there rang again in
+his ears the cheer with which the Guards greeted the act of valour by
+the performance of which the baronet won the Victoria Cross. There is a
+feeling deeper than a mere formality in the half-dozen words that pass
+between Sir William Codrington and the old soldier of the 7th Royal
+Fusiliers, to whom the gallant general showed the way up to the Russian
+front, through the shot-torn vineyards on the slopes of the Alma. When
+one feeble old ex-warrior is smitten suddenly on parade with a palsied
+faintness, it is on the yet stalwart arm of his old chief that he
+totters out of the ranks, and the twain do not part till the superior
+has exacted a pledge that his humble ex-subordinate shall call upon him
+on the morrow, with a view to medical advice and strengthening comforts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Notwithstanding that in the true old martial spirit it shows what in
+the Service is known as a good front, it is not a very athletic or
+puissant cohort this, that stands on parade here on the grass within
+hearing of the church bells. The grizzled old soldiers, sooth to say,
+look rather the worse for wear. There is a decided shortcoming among
+them of the proper complement of limbs, and one at least, in speaking
+of the battlefields he had seen, might with truth echo the old soldier
+in Burns's <i>Jolly Beggars</i>&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  And there I left for witness a leg and an arm.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They carry no weapons; to some may belong the knowledge only of the
+obsolete "Brown Bess" manual exercise; and not many have been so
+recently on active service as to have learnt the handling of the modern
+breech-loader. On the whole, a battered, fossil, maimed army of
+superannuated fighting men, scarcely fitted to shine in the new tactics
+of the "swarm-attack" by which the battles of the future are to be won
+or lost. But you cannot jibe at the worn old soldiers as "lean and
+slippered pantaloons." Look how truly, with what instinctive intuition,
+the dressing is taken up at the word of command; note how the old
+martial carriage comes back to the most dilapidated when the adjutant
+calls his command to "attention." Age and wounds have not quenched the
+fighting spirit of the old soldiers; there is not a man of them but
+would, did the need arise, "clatter on his stumps to the sound of the
+drum." There are few breasts in those ranks that are not decorated with
+medals. In very truth the parade is a record of British campaigns for
+the last thirty years. Among the thicket of medals on the bosom of this
+broken old light dragoon note the one bearing the legend, "Cabul 1842"
+within the laurel wreath. Its wearer was a trooper in the famous
+"rescue" column. The skeletons of Elphinstone's hapless force littered
+the slopes of the Tezeen Valley, up which the squadron in which he rode
+charged straight for the tent of the splendid demon Akbar Khan. He rode
+behind Campbell at the battle of Punniar, and won there that star of
+silver and bronze which hangs from the famous "rainbow" ribbon.
+"Sutlej" is the legend on another of his medals, and he could recount
+to you the memorable story of Thackwell's cavalry operations against
+the Sikh field works, and how that division of seasoned horsemen
+reduced outpost duty to a methodical science. "Punjab" medals for
+Gough's campaign of 1848-49 are scattered up and down in the ranks. The
+sword-cut athwart this wiry old trooper's cheek he got in the hot
+<i>mêlée</i> of Ramhuggur, where a certain Brigadier Colin Campbell whom men
+knew afterwards as Lord Clyde, found it hard work to hold his own, and
+where gallant Cureton and the veteran William Havelock fell at the head
+of their light horsemen as they crashed into the heart of 4000 Sikhs.
+His neighbour took part in the storm of Mooltan, and saw stout,
+calm-pulsed Sergeant John Bennet of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers plant the
+British ensign on the crest of the breach and quietly stand by it
+there, supporting it in the tempest of shot and shell till the storming
+party had made the breach their own. This old soldier of the 24th can
+tell you of the butchery of his regiment at Chillianwallah; how Brooks
+went down between the Sikh guns, how Brigadier Pennycuick was killed
+out to the front, and how his son, a beardless ensign, maddened at the
+sight of the mangling of his father's body, rushed out and fought
+against all comers over the corpse till the lad fell dead on his dead
+father; how on that terrible day the loss of the 24th was 13 officers
+killed, 10 wounded, and 497 men killed and wounded; and how the issue
+of the bloody combat might have been very different but for the
+display, on the part of Colin Campbell, of "that steady coolness and
+military decision for which he was so remarkable." Scarcely a great
+show on a troop-horse would this bent and gnarled old 12th Lancer make
+to-day, but he and his fellows rode right well on the day for which he
+wears this "Cape" medal, with the blue and orange ribbon and the lion
+and mimosa bush on the reverse. Because of its prickles the Boers call
+the mimosa the "wait-a-bit" thorn, but there was no thought of waiting
+a bit among the 12th Lancers at the Berea, when they charged the savage
+Basutos and captured their chief Moshesh. This one-armed veteran of the
+Royal Fusiliers was left lying wounded in the Great Redoubt on the
+Russian slope of the Alma, when the terrible fire of grape and musketry
+forced Codrington's brigade of the Light Division temporarily to give
+ground after it had struggled so valiantly up the rugged broken banks,
+and through the hailstorm of fire that swept through the vineyards.
+This still stalwart man was one of the nineteen sergeants of the
+33rd&mdash;the Duke of Wellington's Own&mdash;who were either killed or wounded
+in defence of the colours on the same bloody but glorious day. A few
+files farther down the line stands an old 93rd man. The veteran
+Sutherland Highlander was one of that "thin red line" which disdained
+to form square when the Russian squadrons rode with seeming heart at
+the kilted men on Balaclava day. He heard Colin Campbell's stern
+repressive rebuke&mdash;"Ninety-third, ninety-third, damn all that
+eagerness!" when the hotter spirits of the regiment would fain have
+broken ranks and met the Russians half-way with the cold steel; he saw
+the Scotch wife chastise the fugitive Turks with her tongue and her
+frying-pan. Speak to his tall, shaggy neighbour of the "bonny Jocks,"
+and you will call up a flush of pleasure on the harsh-featured Scottish
+face; for he was a trooper in the Greys on that self-same Balaclava day
+when the avalanche of Russian horsemen thundered down upon the heavy
+brigade. He was among those who heard, and with sternly rapturous
+anticipation obeyed Scarlet's calm-pitched, far-sounding order, "Left
+wheel into line!" He was among those who, when the trumpets had sounded
+the charge, strove in vain by dint of spur to overtake the gallant old
+chief with the long white moustache, as he rode foremost on the foe
+with the dashing Elliot and the burly Shegog on either flank of him; he
+was among those who, as they hewed and hacked their way through the
+press, heard already from the far side of the <i>mêlée</i> the stentorian
+adjuration of big Adjutant Miller, as standing up in his stirrups the
+burly Scot shouted, "Rally, rally on me, ye muckle &mdash;&mdash;!" Mightily
+knocked about has been this man with the empty sleeve, but he does not
+belie the familiar sobriquet of his old regiment; he was one of the
+"Diehards," a title well earned by the 57th on the bloody height of
+Albuera, and it was under their colours that he lost his arm on
+Inkerman morning. There is quite a little regiment of men who were
+wounded in the "trenches" or about the Redan. There is no "19" now on
+the buttons of this scarred veteran, but the number was there when he
+followed Massy and Molesworth over the parapet of the Redan on the day
+when so much good English blood was wasted. Shoulder to shoulder now,
+as oft of yore, stand two old soldiers of the Buffs both of whom went
+down in the same assault; and an umwhile bugler of the Perthshire
+Grey-breeks "minds the day" well also by reason of the wound that has
+crippled him for life. As he stands on parade this calm Sabbath
+morning, that maimed man of the 60th Rifles can remember another and a
+very different Sabbath&mdash;the 10th of May 1857 in Meerut&mdash;day and place
+of the first outburst of the Mutiny; a fell Sabbath of burning,
+slaughter, and dismay, of disregard of sex, age, and rank, of fierce
+brutality and of nameless agony. He was one of the rifles whose fire in
+the assault of Delhi covered the desperate duty of blowing open the
+Cashmere Gate, performed with so methodical calmness by Home, Salkeld,
+and Burgess; and his comrade hero with the maimed limb, when the hour
+had come for a rush to close quarters, followed Reid and Muter over the
+breastwork at the end of the serai of Kissengunge. Proud, yet their
+pride dashed by sadness, must be the soldiering memories of this stout
+northman, erstwhile a front rank man in the old Ross-shire Buffs, a
+regiment ever true to its noble Celtic motto of <i>Cuidichn Rhi</i>. At
+Kooshab, in the short, but brilliant Persian War, he fought in the same
+field where Malcolmson earned the Victoria Cross by one of the most
+gallant acts for which that guerdon of valour ever has been accorded.
+He was in Mackenzie's company at Cawnpore when the Highlanders, stirred
+by the wild strains of the war-pibroch, rushed upon the Nana's battery
+at the angle of the mango tope with the irresistible fury of one of
+their own mountain torrents in spate. And next day he was among those
+who, with drawn ghastly faces and scared eyes, looked into that fearful
+well, filled to the lip with the mangled corpses of British women and
+children. He was one of those who, standing by that well, pledged the
+oath administered by the bareheaded Ross-shire sergeant over the long,
+heavy tress of auburn hair which a demon's tulwar had severed from the
+head of an Englishwoman, that while strong arm and trusty steel lasted
+to no living thing of the accursed race should quarter be accorded. And
+he was one of those who, having battled their way over the Charbagh
+Bridge, having threaded the bullet-torn path to the Kaiser-bagh, and
+having forced for themselves a passage up to the embrasures by the
+Baileyguard Gate, melted from the stern fierceness of the fray when the
+siege-worn women and children in the residency of Lucknow sobbed out
+upon their necks blessings for the deliverance. His rear-rank man is an
+ex-Bengal Fusilier, wounded once at Sabraon, again at Pegu, and a third
+time at Delhi. He will not be offended if you hail him as one of the
+"old Dirty-shirts;" for it was in honourable disregard of appearances
+as they toiled night and day in the trenches of Delhi that the
+regiment, which now in the Queen's service is numbered 101, gained the
+nickname. Time and space fail one to tell a tithe of the stories of
+valour and hardship linked in the medals and wounds borne by men on
+this unostentatious parade&mdash;a parade the members of which have shed
+their blood on the soil of every quarter of the globe. The minutest
+military annals scarcely name some of the obscure combats in which men
+here to-day have fought and bled. This man desperately wounded at
+Najou, near Shanghai; that one wounded in two places at Owna, in
+Persia; this one with a sleeve emptied at Aroga, in Abyssinia&mdash;who
+among us remember aught, if, indeed, we have ever heard, of Najou,
+Owna, or Aroga? On the breast of this bent, hoary old man, note these
+strange emblems, the Cross of San Fernando and the Order of the Tower
+and Sword. Their wearer is a relic of the British Legion in the Carlist
+War of 1837, and they were won under brave old De Lacy Evans at the
+siege of Bilbao.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over the modest portals of the Commissionaire Barracks in the Strand
+might well be inscribed the legend, "To all the military glories of
+Britain." But just as we have not long ago seen the pride of a palace
+in another land on whose façade is a kindred inscription, abased by the
+occupation of a foreign conqueror, so there was a time when the living
+emblems of Britain's military glory were wont to undergo much
+humiliation and adversity when their career of soldiering had come to
+an end. Germany recompenses her veterans by according them, as a right,
+reputable civil employ when they have served their time as soldiers;
+the custom of Britain, on the contrary, has been too commonly to leave
+her scarred and war-worn soldiers to their own resources, or to a
+pension on which to live is impossible. We were always ready enough to
+feel a glow at the achievements of our arms; but till lately we were
+prone to reckon the individual soldier as a social pariah, and to
+regard the fact of a man's having served in the ranks as a brand of
+discredit. To this estimate, it must be allowed, the ex-soldier himself
+very often contributed not a little. Destitute of a future, and often
+debarred by wounds or by broken health from any laborious industrial
+employment, he made the most of the present; and his idea of making the
+most of the future not unfrequently took the form of beer and
+shiftlessness. Recognising the disadvantages that bore so hard on the
+deserving old soldier, recognising too, in the words of the late Sir
+John Burgoyne, that "there are many qualities peculiar to the soldier
+and sailor, and imbibed by him in the ordinary course of his service,
+which, added to good character and conduct, may render such men more
+eligible than others for various services in civil life," Captain
+Edward Walter founded the Corps of Commissionaires. That organisation,
+beginning with seven men, has now a strength of several hundreds, and
+its ranks are still open to all the eligible recruits who choose to
+come forward. The Commissionaire is no recipient of charity; what
+Captain Walter has done is simply to show him how he may earn an honest
+and comfortable livelihood, and to provide him, if he desires it, with
+a home of a kind which the ex-militaire naturally most appreciates. The
+advantages are open to him of a savings-bank and of a sick and burial
+fund, and when the evil days come when he can no longer earn his own
+bread, the "Retiring Fund" guarantees the thrifty and steady
+Commissionaire against the prospect of ending his days in the
+workhouse. Among the fruits of Captain Walter's devoted and gratuitous
+services in this cause has been a wholesome change in the bias of
+popular opinion as to the worth of old soldiers. No longer are they
+regarded as the mere chaff and <i>débris</i> of the cannon fodder&mdash;"no
+account men," as Bret Harte has it; he has furnished them with
+opportunity to prove, and they have proved, that they can so live and
+so work as to win the respect and trust of their brethren of the
+civilian world. The man who has done this thing deserves well, not
+alone of the British army, but of the British nation. He has brought it
+about that the time has come when most men think with Sir Roger de
+Coverley. "You must know," says Sir Roger, "I never make use of anybody
+to row me that has not lost either a leg or an arm. I would rather bate
+him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has
+been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop ... I
+would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+<a id="chap19"></a>
+THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The actual fighting phase of this memorable campaign was confined to
+the four days from the 15th to the 18th of June, both days inclusive.
+The literature concerning itself with that period would make a library
+of itself. Scarcely a military writer of any European nation but has
+delivered himself on the subject, from Clausewitz to General Maurice,
+from Berton to Brialmont. Thiers, Alison, and Hooper may be cited of
+the host of civilian writers whom the theme has enticed to description
+and criticism. There is scarcely a point in the brief vivid drama that
+has not furnished a topic for warm and sustained controversy; and the
+cult of the Waterloo campaign is more assiduous to-day than when the
+participators in the great strife were testifying to their own
+experiences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quite recently an important work dealing chiefly with the inner history
+of the campaign has come to us from the other side of the Atlantic.
+[Footnote: <i>The Campaign of Waterloo: a Military History</i>. By John
+Codman Ropes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. February 1893.] Its
+author, Mr. John Ropes, is a civilian gentleman of Boston, who has
+devoted his life to military study. He has given years to the
+elucidation of the problems of the Waterloo campaign, has trodden every
+foot of its ground, and has burrowed for recondite matter in the
+military archives of divers nations. A citizen of the American
+Republic, he is free alike from national prejudices and national
+prepossessions; if he is perhaps not uniformly correct in his
+inferences, his rigorous impartiality is always conspicuous. By his
+research and acute perception he has let light in upon not a few
+obscurities; and it may be pertinent briefly to summarise the inner
+history of the campaign, giving what may seem their due weight to the
+arguments and representations of the American writer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following were the respective positions on the 14th of
+June:&mdash;Wellington's heterogeneous army, about 94,000 strong with 196
+guns, lay widely dispersed in cantonments from the Scheldt to the
+Charleroi-Brussels chaussée, its front extending from Tournay through
+Mons and Binche to Nivelles and Quatre Bras. Of the Prussian army under
+Blücher, about 121,000 strong with 312 guns, one corps was at Liège,
+another near the Meuse above Namur, a third at Namur, and Ziethen's in
+advance holding the line of the Sambre. The mass of Blücher's command
+had already seen service and, with the exception of the Saxons, was
+full of zeal; the corps were well commanded, and their chief, although
+he had his limits, was a thorough soldier. The French army, consisting
+of five corps d'armée, the Guard, four cavalry corps and 344
+guns&mdash;total fighting strength 124,500&mdash;Napoleon had succeeded in
+assembling with wonderful celerity and secrecy south of the Sambre
+within an easy march of Charleroi. Its officers and soldiers were alike
+veterans but its organisation was somewhat defective. Napoleon scarcely
+preserved the phenomenal force of earlier years; but, in Mr. Ropes's
+words, he disclosed "no conspicuous lack of energy and activity." Soult
+was far from being an ideal chief of staff. Ney, to whom was assigned
+the command of the left wing, only reached the army on the 15th, and
+without a staff; Grouchy, to whom on the 16th was suddenly given the
+command of the right wing, was not a man of high military capacity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Napoleon's plan of campaign was founded on the circumstance that the
+bases of the allied armies lay in opposite directions&mdash;the English base
+on the German Ocean, the Prussian through Liège and Maestricht to the
+Rhine. The military probability was that if either army was forced to
+retreat, it would retreat towards its base; and to do this would be to
+march away from its ally. Napoleon was in no situation to manoeuvre
+leisurely, with all Europe on the march against him. His engrossing aim
+was to gain immediate victory over his adversaries in Belgium before
+the Russians and Austrians should close in around him. His expectation
+was that Blücher would offer battle about Fleurus and be overwhelmed
+before the Anglo-Dutch army could come to the support of its Prussian
+ally. To make sure of preventing that junction the Emperor's intention
+was to detail Ney with the left wing to reach and hold Quatre Bras. The
+Prussians thoroughly beaten, drifting rearward toward their base, and
+reduced to a condition of comparative inoffensiveness, he would then
+turn on Wellington and force him to give battle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Ropes refutes the contention maintained by a great array of
+authorities, that Napoleon's design was to "wedge himself into the
+interval between the allied armies" by seizing simultaneously Sombreffe
+and Quatre Bras, in order to cut the communication between the two
+armies and then defeat them in succession. Against this view he
+successfully marshals Napoleon himself, Wellington by the mouth of Lord
+Ellesmere, and the great German strategist Clausewitz. It will suffice
+to quote Napoleon:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+  The Emperor's intention was that his advance should
+  occupy Fleurus, the mass concealed behind this town;
+  he took good care ... above all things not to occupy
+  Sombreffe. To have done so would have caused the
+  failure of all his dispositions, for then the battle of Ligny
+  would not have been fought, and Blücher would have had
+  to make Wavre the concentration-point for his army.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wellington alludes pointedly to the obvious danger to the French army
+of the suggested wedge position in what the Germans call <i>die taktische
+Mitte</i>, where, instead of being able to defeat the allies in
+succession, it would itself be liable to be crushed between the upper
+and the nether millstone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At daybreak of the 15th Napoleon took the offensive, driving in Ziethen
+on and through Charleroi although not without sharp fighting. On that
+evening three French corps, the Guard, and most of the cavalry, were
+concentrated about Charleroi and forward toward Fleurus, ready to
+attack Blücher next day. Controversy has been very keen on the question
+whether or not on the afternoon of the 15th Napoleon gave Ney verbal
+orders to occupy Quatre Bras the same evening. Mr. Ropes holds it
+"almost certain" that the order was given. From Napoleon's bulletin
+despatched on the evening of the 15th, which is the only piece of
+strictly contemporary evidence, he quotes: "Le Prince de la Moskowa
+(Ney) a eu le soir son quartier général aux Quatres-Chemins;" and he
+remarks that this must have been the belief in the headquarter "unless
+we gratuitously invent an intention to deceive the public." There is no
+need for Mr. Ropes to put that strain on himself, since the main
+purport of Napoleon's bulletins notoriously was to deceive the public.
+But if Napoleon had not intended that Ney should occupy Quatre Bras on
+the night of the 15th, the statement that this had been done would have
+been a purposeless futility; and if he had intended that Ney should do
+so it is unlikely that he should have omitted to give him instructions
+to that effect. Grouchy claims to have heard Napoleon censure Ney for
+his omission to occupy Quatre Bras; an omission which had its
+importance, for the reason, among others, that it was ominous of the
+Marshal's infinitely more harmful disobedience of orders next day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All writers agree that Blücher ordered the concentration of his army in
+the fighting position previously chosen in the event of the French
+advancing by Charleroi, "without," in Mr. Ropes's words, "any definite
+agreement or undertaking with Wellington that he was to have English
+aid in the impending battle." He was content to take his risk of the
+English general's possible inability for sundry obvious reasons, to
+come to his support. And while the Prussian army with the unfortunate
+exception of Bülow's corps, was on the 15th moving toward the chosen
+position of Ligny, where its right was to be on St. Amand, its centre
+on and behind Ligny, and its left about Balâtre, what was happening in
+the Anglo-Dutch army lying spread out westward of the
+Charleroi&mdash;Brussels chaussée?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wellington was at Brussels expecting the French invasion by or west of
+the Mons-Brussels road, to meet which he considered his army very well
+placed, but could expect no Prussian cooperation. His courier service,
+with his forces so dispersed, should have been well organised and
+alert, but it was neither; and Napoleon's secrecy and suddenness in
+taking the offensive were worthy of his best days. It has been freely
+imputed to Wellington that he was thereby in a measure surprised. There
+is the strange and probably mythical story in the work professing to be
+Fouché's <i>Memoirs</i> to the effect that Wellington was relying on him for
+information of Napoleon's plans, and that he&mdash;Fouché&mdash;played the
+English commander false. "On the very day of Napoleon's departure from
+Paris," say the <i>Memoirs</i>, "I despatched Madame D&mdash;&mdash;, furnished with
+notes in cipher, narrating the whole plan of the campaign. But at the
+same time I privately sent orders for such obstacles at the frontier,
+where she was to pass, that she could not reach Wellington's
+headquarters till after the event. This was the real explanation of the
+inactivity of the British generalissimo which excited such universal
+astonishment." Readers of the <i>Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury</i>
+will remember the apparently authentic statement of Captain Bowles,
+that Wellington, rising from the supper-table at the famous ball,
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+  whispered to ask the Duke of Richmond if he had a good
+  map. The Duke of Richmond said he had, and took
+  Wellington into his dressing-room. Wellington shut the
+  door and said, "Napoleon has humbugged me, by God;
+  he has gained twenty-four hours' march on me.... I
+  have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras;
+  but we shall not stop him there, and if so I must fight
+  him <i>there</i>" (passing his thumb-nail over the position of
+  Waterloo). The conversation was repeated to me by the
+  Duke of Richmond two minutes after it occurred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Facts, however, are stronger evidence than words; and this confession
+on Wellington's part is inconsistent with the circumstance that he had
+not hurried to retrieve the time he is represented as having owned that
+Napoleon had gained on him&mdash;that he had, on the contrary, allowed his
+adversary to gain several hours more. Wellington's combination of
+caution and decision throughout this momentous period is a very
+interesting study. It was not until 3 P.M. (of the 15th) that there
+reached him tidings almost simultaneously of firing between the
+outposts about Thuin and that Ziethen had been attacked before
+Charleroi, the two places ten miles apart and both occurrences in the
+early morning. Those affairs might have been casual outpost skirmishes;
+and the Duke, in anticipation of further information, took no measures
+for some hours. At length, in default of later tidings he determined on
+the precautionary step of assembling his divisions at their respective
+rendezvous points in readiness to march; further specifically directing
+a concentration of 25,000 men at Nivelles on his then left flank, when
+it should have been ascertained for certain that the enemy's line of
+attack was by Charleroi. These orders were sent out early in the
+evening&mdash;"between 5 and 7." Later in the evening came a letter from
+Blücher announcing the concentration of the Prussian army to occupy the
+Ligny fighting position, in which disposition Wellington acquiesced;
+but, still uncertain of Napoleon's true line of attack&mdash;his conviction
+being, as is well known, that Napoleon should have moved on the British
+right&mdash;he would not definitely fix the point of ultimate concentration
+of his army until he should receive intelligence from Mons. But
+Blücher's tidings caused him to issue about 10 P.M. a second set of
+orders, commanding a general movement of the army, not as yet to any
+specific point of concentration but in prescribed directions towards
+its left (eastward). At length, when the news came from Mons that he
+need have no further serious solicitude about his right since the whole
+French army was advancing by Charleroi, he saw his way clear. Towards
+midnight, writes Müffling the Prussian Commissioner at his
+headquarters, Wellington informed him of the tidings from Mons, and
+added: "The orders for the concentration of my army at Nivelles and
+Quatre Bras are already despatched. Let us, therefore, go to the ball."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are three definite evidences that before midnight of the 15th
+Wellington had resolved to concentrate about Quatre Bras, and had
+issued final orders accordingly&mdash;his statement to the Duke of Richmond,
+his statement to Müffling, and his statement in his official report to
+Lord Bathurst. Yet Mr. Ropes believes that his decision to that effect
+"could not have been arrived at very long before he left Brussels" on
+the morning of the 16th, which he did "probably about half-past seven."
+He founds this belief on two orders dated "16th June" sent to Lord Hill
+in the early morning of that day, in which there is no allusion to a
+concentration at Quatre Bras. But those were merely supplementary
+instructions as to points of detail; for example, one of them enjoined
+that a division ordered earlier to Enghien should move instead by way
+of Braine le Comte, that being a nearer route toward the final general
+destination of Quatre Bras specified in the earlier (the "towards
+midnight") orders. The latter orders are not extant, having been lost
+according to Gurwood, with De Lancey's papers when he fell at Waterloo;
+but that they must have been issued is proved by the fact that they
+were acted upon by the troops; and that they were issued before
+midnight of the 15th is made clear by Wellington's three specific
+statements to that effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Duke left Brussels for the front on the morning of the 16th he
+took with him a singularly optimistic paper styled "Disposition of the
+British Army at 7 A.M., 16th June," which was "written out for the
+information of the Commander of the Forces by Colonel Sir W. de
+Lancey," his Quartermaster-General. In the nature of things for the
+most part guess-work, the wish as regarded almost every particular set
+out in this document was father to the thought. Wellington was no doubt
+reasonably justified in accepting and relying on this flattering
+"Disposition;" but its terms, as Mr. Ropes conclusively shows, simply
+misled him and caused him also unconsciously to mislead Blücher, both
+by the expressions of the letter written by him to that chief on his
+arrival at Quatre Bras and later when he met the Prussian commander at
+the mill of Brye. Wellington was indeed trebly fortunate in finding the
+Quatre Bras position still available to him&mdash;fortunate that Ney on the
+previous evening had defaulted from his orders in refraining from
+occupying it; fortunate that Ney still on this morning was remaining
+passive; and more fortunate still that it had been occupied, defended,
+and reinforced by Dutch-Belgian troops not only without orders from him
+but in bold and happy violation of his orders. Perponcher's division
+was scarcely a potent representative of the Anglo-Dutch army, but there
+was nothing more at hand; and pending the coming up of reinforcements
+Wellington, with rather a sanguine reliance on Ney's maintenance of
+inactivity, rode over to Brye and had a conversation with Blücher.
+There are contradictory accounts of its tenor, and Gneisenau certainly
+seems to have formed the impression that the Duke gave a positive
+pledge of support. Mr. Ropes considers that, misled by the erroneous
+"Disposition," Wellington honestly believed he would be able to
+co-operate with Blücher, and that he "certainly did give that commander
+some assurance of support by the Anglo-Dutch army in the impending
+battle." Müffling, who was present, states that the Duke's last words
+were: "Well, I will come, provided I am not attacked myself;" and this
+probably was the final undertaking. Wellington's words were in
+accordance with the caution of his character; and it is certain that
+Blücher had decided to fight at Ligny whether assured or not of his
+brother-commander's support. That Wellington regarded Blücher's
+dispositions for battle as objectionable is proved by his blunt comment
+to Hardinge&mdash;"If they fight here they will be damnably licked!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would have been possible for Napoleon to have crushed the Prussian
+army in the early hours of the 16th when it was in the throes of
+formation for battle; and this he would probably have done if Ney had
+occupied Quatre Bras on the previous evening. But in Ney's default of
+accomplishing this Napoleon, in his solicitude that Wellington should
+be hindered from supporting Blücher, determined to delay his own stroke
+against the latter until Ney should be in possession of Quatre Bras
+with the left wing, where, in Soult's words, "he ought to be able to
+destroy any force of the enemy that might present itself," and then
+come to the support of the Emperor by getting on the Prussian rear
+behind St. Amand. Napoleon's instructions were explicit that Ney was to
+march on Quatre Bras, take position there, and then send an infantry
+division and Kellerman's cavalry to points eastward, whence the Emperor
+might summon them to participate in his own operations. If Ney had
+fulfilled his orders by utilising the whole force at his disposal, in
+all human probability he would have defeated Wellington at Quatre Bras,
+whose troops, arriving in detail, would have been crushed by greatly
+superior numbers as they came up. As it was, although at the beginning
+of the battle he was in superior strength, Ney never utilised more than
+22,000 men; whereas by its close Wellington had 31,000, and, thanks to
+the stanchness of the British infantry, was the victor in a very
+hard-fought contest. But Mr. Ropes has reason in holding it humanly
+certain that he would have been beaten&mdash;in which case the battle of
+Waterloo would never have been fought&mdash;had not D'Erlon's corps of Ney's
+command while marching towards Quatre Bras, been turned aside in the
+direction of the Prussian right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the justifiable belief that Ney was duly carrying out his orders
+Napoleon at half-past one opened the battle of Ligny. He had expected
+to have to deal with but a single Prussian corps, but the actual fact
+was that, while he had 74,000 men on the field, Blücher had 87,000 with
+a superior strength of artillery. The fighting was long and severe.
+From the first, recognising the defects of his adversary's position,
+Napoleon was satisfied that he could defeat the Prussian army. But he
+needed to do more&mdash;to crush, to rout it, so that he need give himself
+no further concern regarding it. This he saw his way to accomplish if
+Ney were to strike in presently on the Prussian right; and so, with
+intent to stir that chief to vigorous enterprise, the message was sent
+him that "the fate of France was in his hands." The battle proceeded,
+Blücher throwing in his reserves freely, Napoleon chary of his and
+playing the waiting game pending Ney's expected co-operation. About
+half-past five he was preparing to put in the Guard and strike the
+decisive blow, when information reached him from his right that a
+column, presumably hostile, was visible some two miles distant marching
+toward Fleurus. Napoleon sent an aide to ascertain the facts and until
+his return postponed the decisive moment. Two hours later the
+information was brought back that the approaching column was D'Erlon's
+from Ney's wing. This intelligence dispelled all anxiety. Strangely
+enough, no instructions were sent to the approaching reinforcement, and
+the suspended stroke was promptly dealt. The Prussians, after desperate
+fighting, were everywhere driven back. Napoleon with part of the
+Imperial Guard broke Blücher's centre, and the French army deployed on
+the heights beyond the stream. In a word, Napoleon had defeated the
+Prussians, but had neither crushed nor routed them. There was no
+pursuit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+D'Erlon's corps on this afternoon had achieved the doubly sinister
+distinction of having prevented Ney from gaining a probable victory at
+Quatre Bras, and of detracting from the thoroughness of Napoleon's
+actual victory at Ligny. While it was leisurely marching towards
+Frasnes in support of Ney, it was diverted eastward towards the
+Prussian right flank in consequence of an order given (whether
+authorised or not is uncertain) by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor. It
+was about to deploy for action, when, on receiving from Ney a
+peremptory order to rejoin his command; and in absence of a command
+from Napoleon to strike the Prussian flank, it went about and tramped
+back towards Frasnes. D'Erlon's promenade was as futile as the famous
+march of the King of France up the hill and then down again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Ropes considers that on the morning of the 17th Napoleon had thus
+far in the main fulfilled his programme. This view may be questioned.
+He had merely defeated two of the four Prussian corps; he had not
+wrecked Blücher. He had failed to occupy Quatre Bras; the Anglo-Dutch
+army had succeeded in effecting a partial concentration and in
+repulsing his left wing there. Still it must be admitted that with two
+corps absolutely intact and with no serious losses in the Guard and
+cavalry, Napoleon was in good shape for carrying out his plan. If Ney
+had sent him word overnight that Wellington's army was bivouacking
+about Quatre Bras in ignorance, as it turned out, of the result of
+Ligny, he might have attacked it to good purpose in conjunction with
+Ney in the early morning of the 17th. But Ney was silent and sulky;
+Napoleon himself was greatly fatigued, and Soult was of no service to
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the night the Prussians "had folded their tents like the Arabs,
+and as silently stolen away." They had neither been watched nor
+followed up, all touch of them had been lost, and there was nothing to
+indicate their line of retreat. This slovenliness on the part of the
+French would not have occurred in Napoleon's earlier days; nor in those
+days of greater vigour would he have delayed until after midday of the
+17th to follow up an army which he had defeated on the previous
+evening, and which had disappeared from before him in the course of the
+night. The reports which had been sent in from a cavalry reconnaissance
+despatched in the morning indicated that the Prussians were retiring on
+Namur. No reconnaissance had been made in the direction of Tilly and
+Wavre. This was a strange error, since Blücher had two corps still
+untouched, and as above everything a fighting man, was not likely to
+throw up his hands and forsake his ally after one partial discomfiture.
+Napoleon tardily determined to despatch Grouchy on the errand of
+following up the Prussians with a force consisting of about 33,000 men
+with ninety-six guns. Thus far all authorities are agreed; but as
+regards the character of the orders given to Grouchy for his guidance
+in an obviously somewhat complicated enterprise, there is an
+extraordinary contrariety of evidence. It is stated in the <i>St. Helena
+Memoirs</i> that Grouchy received positive orders to keep himself always
+between the main French army and Blücher; to maintain constant
+communication with the former and in a position easily to rejoin it;
+that since it was possible that Blücher might retreat on Wavre, he
+(Grouchy) was to be there simultaneously; if the Prussians should
+continue their march on Brussels and should pass the night in the
+forest of Soignies, he was to follow to the edge of the forest; should
+they retire on the Meuse, he was to watch them with part of his cavalry
+and himself occupy Wavre with the mass of his force, where he should be
+in position for easy communication with Napoleon's headquarters. Those
+orders are certainly specific enough, but there is no record of them;
+and they may be assumed to represent rather what Napoleon at St. Helena
+considered Grouchy should have done, than what he was actually ordered
+to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grouchy's version, again&mdash;and it is adequately corroborated&mdash;is to the
+effect that about midday of the 17th on the field of Ligny, the Emperor
+gave him the verbal order to take the 3rd and 4th Corps and certain
+cavalry and "go in pursuit of the Prussians." Grouchy raised sundry
+objections which the Emperor overruled and repeated his commands,
+adding that "it was for me (Grouchy) to discover the route taken by
+Blücher; that he himself was going to fight the English, and that it
+was for me to complete the defeat of the Prussians by attacking them as
+soon as I should have caught up with them." So much for Grouchy for the
+moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon after the Emperor had given Grouchy this verbal order, tidings
+came in from a scouting party that a body of Prussian troops had been
+seen about 9 A.M. at Gembloux, considerably northward of the Namur
+road. The abstract probability no doubt was that the Prussians would
+retire towards their base. But that Napoleon kept an open mind on the
+subject is evidenced by his instruction to Grouchy to "go and discover
+the route taken by Blücher," and this later intelligence, it may be
+assumed, opened his mind yet further. He thought it well, then, to send
+to Grouchy a supplementary written order which in the temporary absence
+of Marshal Soult he dictated to General Bertrand. This order enjoined
+on Grouchy to proceed with his force to Gembloux; to explore in the
+directions of Namur and Maestricht; to pursue the enemy; explore his
+march; and report upon his manoeuvres, so that "I (Napoleon) may be
+able to penetrate what the enemy is intending to do; whether he is
+separating himself from the English, or whether they are intending
+still to unite in trying the fate of another battle to cover Brussels
+or Liège." To me I confess&mdash;and the view is also that of Chesney and
+Maurice&mdash;this written order is simply an amplification in detail of the
+previous verbal order, which by instructing Grouchy "to discover the
+route taken by Blücher" clearly evinced doubt in Napoleon's mind as to
+the Prussian line of retreat. Mr. Ropes, on the other hand, bases an
+indictment on Grouchy's conduct on the argument that not only was the
+tone of the written order altogether different from that of the verbal
+order, but that the duty assigned to Grouchy by the former was wholly
+different from that specified in the latter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He adds that Grouchy constantly and persistently denied having received
+any other than the verbal order, that in this denial Grouchy lied, and
+that "the mischievous influence of this deliberate concealment of his
+orders by Grouchy caused for nearly thirty years after the battle of
+Waterloo to be prevalent a wholly false notion as to the task assigned
+by Napoleon to the Marshal." Certainly Grouchy's conduct is
+inexplicable to any one holding the belief, as I do, that there is
+nothing in the written order to account for Grouchy's denial of having
+received it. It is more inexplicable than Mr. Ropes appears to be aware
+of. It is true, as Mr. Ropes proves, that Grouchy vehemently denied
+receiving the written order in all his works printed from 1818 to 1829.
+But he had actually acknowledged its receipt almost immediately after
+Waterloo. In his son's little book, <i>Le Maréchal de Grouchy du 16me au
+19me Juin, 1815,</i> is printed among the <i>Documents Historiques Inédits</i>
+a paper styled "Allocution du Maréchal Grouchy à quelques-uns des
+officiers généraux sous les ordres, lorsqu'il eût appris les désastres
+de Waterloo." From this document I make the following extract: "A few
+hours later the Emperor modified his first order, and caused to be
+written to me by the Grand Marshal Bertrand the order to betake myself
+to Gembloux, and to send reconnaissances towards Namur. 'It is
+important,' continued the order, 'to discover the intentions of the
+Prussians&mdash;whether they are separating from the English, or have the
+design to take the chance of a new battle.'" It is strange that this
+acknowledgment should never have been cited against Grouchy; stranger
+still that in the face of it he should have maintained his denials; yet
+more strange that those denials were never exposed; and most strange of
+all, that finally the "written order" should have appeared for the
+first time in a casual article published in 1842, without evoking any
+explanation from Grouchy, or any strictures on his persistent mendacity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It may be questioned whether the force of 33,000 men entrusted to
+Grouchy was not either too large or too small. The main French army, in
+the possible contingencies before it, could not safely spare so large a
+detachment, as events showed. Grouchy's command was not sufficiently
+strong to oppose the whole Prussian army; two corps of which could
+certainly have "held" it, while the other two were free to support
+Wellington. Mr. Ropes thinks it might have been diminished by one-half,
+but then a single Prussian corps could have dealt with it. It is
+difficult to discern in what respect the 6000 cavalry assigned to
+Grouchy should have been inadequate to such service as could reasonably
+have been expected of his whole command.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The British force about Quatre Bras on the morning of the 17th amounted
+to about 45,000 men. Early on that morning Wellington was in
+conversation with the Captain Bowles previously mentioned, when an
+officer galloped up and, to quote Captain Bowles,
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+  whispered to the Duke, who then turned to me and said,
+  "Old Blücher has had a d&mdash;&mdash;d good licking and has gone
+  back to Wavre. As he has gone back, we must go too. I
+  suppose in England they will say we have been licked&mdash;I
+  can't help that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He quietly withdrew his troops from their positions, an operation which
+Ney, with 40,000 men at his disposal, did not attempt to molest,
+notwithstanding repeated orders from Napoleon to move on Quatre Bras.
+Early in the afternoon Napoleon reached that vicinity with the Guard,
+6th Corps, and Milhaud's Cuirassiers, picked up Ney's command, and
+mounting his horse led the French army, following up Wellington's
+retreat. His energy and activity throughout the march is described as
+intense. Those characteristics he continued to evince during the
+following night and in the morning of the eventful 18th. In the dead of
+night he spent two hours on the picquet line, and about seven he was
+out again on the foreposts in the mud and rain. His anxiety was not as
+to the issue of a battle with Wellington, but lest Wellington should
+not stand and fight. That apprehension was dispelled when, as he rode
+along his front about 8 A.M., he saw the Anglo-Dutch army taking up its
+ground. He was aware that at least one "pretty strong Prussian
+column"&mdash;which actually consisted of the two corps beaten at Ligny&mdash;had
+retired on Wavre. But notwithstanding the disquieting vagueness and
+ineptitude of Grouchy's letter of 10 P.M. of the 17th from Gembloux,
+and that up to the morning of the battle he had sent no suggestions or
+instructions to that officer, he yet trusted implicitly to him to fend
+off the Prussians; and it did not seem to occur to him that
+Wellington's calm expectant attitude indicated his assurance of
+Blücher's cooperation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In one of the cavalry charges toward the close of the battle of Ligny,
+Blücher had been overthrown, ridden over, almost taken prisoner, and
+severely bruised; but the gallant old hussar was almost himself again
+next morning, thanks to copious doses of gin and rhubarb, for the
+effluvium of which restorative he apologised to Hardinge as he embraced
+that wounded officer, in the extremely plain expression, "<i>Ich stinke
+etwas</i>." Gneisenau, his Chief of Staff, rather distrusted Wellington's
+good faith, and doubted whether it was not the safer policy for the
+Prussian army to fall back toward Liège. But Blücher prevailed over his
+lieutenants; and on the evening of the 17th all four Prussian corps in
+a strength of about 90,000 men, were concentrated about Wavre, some
+nine miles east of the Waterloo position, full of ardour and confident
+of success. That same night Müffling informed Blücher by letter that
+the Anglo-Dutch army had occupied the position named, wherein to fight
+next day; and Blücher's loyal answer was that Bülow's corps at daybreak
+should march by way of St. Lambert to strike the French right; that
+Pirch's would follow in support; and that the other two would stand in
+readiness. This communication, which reached Wellington at headquarters
+at 2 A.M. of the 18th, has been held to have been the first actually
+definite assurance of Prussian support. The story to the effect that on
+the evening of the 17th the Duke rode over to Wavre to make sure from
+Blücher's own mouth that he could rely on Prussian support next day, to
+the truth of which not a little of vague testimony has been adduced,
+may be now definitely disregarded. The evidence against the legend is
+conclusive. An authoritative contradiction was given to it in an
+article in the <i>Quarterly Review</i> of 1842, from the pen of Lord Francis
+Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, who confessedly wrote under the
+inspiration of the Duke, and in this instance directly from a
+memorandum drawn up by his Grace. Quite recently there have been found
+and are now in the possession of the Rev. Frederick Gurney, the
+grandson of the late Sir John Gurney, the notes of a "conversation with
+the Duke of Wellington and Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Williams,
+Judges on Circuit, at Strath-fieldsaye House, on 24th February 1837."
+The annotator was Baron Gurney, to the following effect:&mdash;"The
+conversation had been commenced by my inquiring of him (the Duke)
+whether a story which I had heard was true of his having ridden over to
+Blücher on the night before the battle of Waterloo, and returned on the
+same horse. He said&mdash;'No, that was not so. I did not see Blücher on the
+day before Waterloo. I saw him the day before, on the day of Quatre
+Bras. I saw him after Waterloo, and he kissed me. He embraced me on
+horseback. I had communicated with him the day before Waterloo.'" The
+rest of the conversation made no further reference to the topic of the
+ride to Wavre.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not proposed to give here any account of the memorable battle,
+the main incidents of which are familiar to all. It was of course
+Wellington's policy to take up a defensive attitude; both because of
+the incapacity of his raw soldiers for manoeuvring, and since every
+minute before Napoleon should begin the offensive was of value to the
+English commander, as it diminished the length of punishment he would
+have to endure single-handed. Further, he was numerically weaker than
+his adversary, while his troops were at once of divers nationalities
+and divers character; his main reliance was on his British troops and
+those of the King's German Legion. Napoleon for his part deliberately
+delayed to attack when celerity of action was all-important to him,
+disregarding the obvious probability of Prussian assistance to
+Wellington, and sanguinely expecting that Grouchy would either avert
+that support or reach him in time to neutralise it. Mr. Ropes has
+written an admirable criticism of the errors of the French in their
+contest with the Anglo-Dutch army, for which Ney was for the most part
+responsible, since from before 3 P.M. Napoleon was engrossed in
+preparing his right flank for defence against the Prussians. The issue
+of the great battle all men know. The badness of the roads retarded the
+Prussians greatly, and, save in Bülow's corps, there was no doubt
+considerable delay in starting; but the proverb that "All's well that
+ends well" might have been coined with special application to the
+battle of Waterloo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It only remains briefly to refer to Mr. Ropes's elaborate <i>résumé</i> of
+the melancholy adventures of Grouchy, on whom he may be regarded as too
+severe. Sent out too late on a species of roving commission, more was
+expected from him by Napoleon than could have been accomplished by any
+but a leader of the highest order, whereas Grouchy had never given
+evidence of being more than respectable. He received from his master
+neither instructions nor information from the time he left the field of
+Ligny until 4 P.M. of the 18th, nor until at Walhain he heard the
+cannonade of Waterloo had he any knowledge of the whereabouts of the
+French main army. On the morning of the 18th he was late in leaving
+Gembloux, on not the most direct route towards Wavre; instead of moving
+on which, when he heard the noise of the battle, he should no doubt
+have marched straight for the Dyle bridges at Ottignies and Moustier.
+Had he done so, spite of all delays he could have been across the Dyle
+by 4 P.M. But when Mr. Ropes claims that thus Grouchy would have been
+able to arrest the march toward the battlefield of the two leading
+Prussian corps, one of which was four miles distant from him and the
+other still farther away, he is too exacting. Had Grouchy made the vain
+attempt, the two nearer Prussian corps would have taken him in flank
+and headed him off, while Bülow and Ziethen pressed on to the
+battlefield. If he had marched straight and swiftly on the
+cannon-thunder of Waterloo, he might perhaps have been in time to
+effect something in the nature of a diversion, although it is extremely
+improbable that he could have materially changed the fortune of the
+day; but instead, acting on the letter of Napoleon's instructions
+despatched to him on the morning of the battle, he moved on Wavre and
+engaged in a futile action with the Prussian 3rd Corps there. A shrewd
+and enterprising man would have at least seen into the spirit of his
+orders; Grouchy could not do this, and he is to be pitied rather than
+blamed.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="finis">
+THE END
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Camps, Quarters and Casual Places, by 
+Archibald Forbes
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+Project Gutenberg's Camps, Quarters and Casual Places, by Archibald Forbes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Camps, Quarters and Casual Places
+
+Author: Archibald Forbes
+
+Posting Date: March 30, 2014 [EBook #9460]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 3, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES ***
+
+
+
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+Produced by Eric Eldred, Andy Schmitt and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines.
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+
+
+CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES
+
+BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in
+this volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James
+Knowles of the _Nineteenth Century_, Mr. Percy Bunting of the
+_Contemporary Review_, and the Proprietor of _McClure's Magazine_.
+
+LONDON, _June_ 1896.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+1. MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
+
+2. REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
+
+3. GERMAN WAR PRAYERS
+
+4. MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
+
+5. A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
+
+6. HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
+
+7. CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
+
+8. THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
+
+9. RAILWAY LIZZ
+
+10. MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
+
+11. THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
+
+12. BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
+
+13. THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
+
+14. THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
+
+15. GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
+
+16. THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY
+
+17. THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
+
+18. PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
+
+19. THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
+
+
+
+
+MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
+
+
+The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of
+1870-71, and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince
+Imperial received his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at
+Saarbruecken; to which pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself,
+in the anticipation, which proved well founded, that the tide of war
+would flow that way first. What a pity it is that all war cannot be
+like this early phase of it, of which I speak! It was playing at
+warfare, with just enough of the grim reality cropping up occasionally,
+to give the zest which the reckless Frenchwoman declared was added to a
+pleasure by its being also a sin. The officers of the
+Hohenzollerns--our only infantry regiment in garrison--drank their beer
+placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as their men smoked
+drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms ready for use
+at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the frontier line
+every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with little
+result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or down in
+the valley bounded by the Schoenecken wood. The Uhlans, their piebald
+lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round the
+crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising
+mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them
+from time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they
+were, now and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the
+ground--an occurrence invariably followed by a little spurt of lively
+hostility.
+
+I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on
+the St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern
+officers frequented the _table d'hote_ and where quaint little Max, the
+drollest imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Frauelein Sophie the
+landlord's niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the
+pleasantness and comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did
+I spend at the table of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped
+red head of silent and genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over
+the great ice-pail, with its _chevaux de frise_ of long-necked
+Niersteiner bottles--the worthy Hauptmann supported by blithe
+Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with the _Wacht am Rhein_;
+quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of "six-and-sixty" and
+as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or clink a glass; gay
+young Adjutant von Zuelow--he who one day brought in a prisoner from the
+foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of his saddle; and
+many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the Spicheren,
+or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.
+
+But although the Rheinischer Hof associates itself in my mind with many
+memories, half-pleasant, half-sad, it was not the most accustomed haunt
+of the casuals in Saarbruecken, including myself. Of the waifs and
+strays which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the
+great rendezvous was the Hotel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading
+from the bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a
+free-and-easy place compared with the Rheinischer, and among its
+inmates there was no one who could sing a better song than manly
+George--type of the Briton at whom foreigners stare--who, ignorant of a
+word of their language, wholly unprovided with any authorisation save
+the passport signed "Salisbury," and having not quite so much business
+at the seat of war as he might have at the bottom of a coal-mine,
+gravitates into danger with inevitable certainty, and stumbles through
+all manner of difficulties and bothers by reason of a serene
+good-humour that nothing can ruffle and a cool resolution before which
+every obstacle fades away. Was there ever a more compositely polyglot
+cosmopolitan than poor young de Liefde--half Dutchman, half German by
+birth, an Englishman by adoption, a Frenchman in temperament, speaking
+with equal fluency the language of all four countries, and an
+unconsidered trifle of some half-dozen European languages besides? Then
+there was the English student from Bonn, who had come down to the front
+accompanied by a terrible brute of a dog, vast, shaggy, self-willed,
+and dirty; an animal which, so to speak, owned his owner, and was so
+much the horror and disgust of everybody that on account of him the
+company of his master--one of the pleasantest fellows alive--was the
+source of general apprehension. There was young Silberer the many-sided
+and eccentric, an Austrian nobleman, a Vienna feuilletonist and
+correspondent, a rowing man, a gourmet, ever thinking of his stomach
+and yet prepared for all the roughness of the campaign--warm-hearted,
+passionate, narrow-minded, capable of sleeping for twenty-three out of
+the twenty-four hours, and the wearer of a Scotch cap. There was
+Kuester, a German journalist with an address somewhere in the Downham
+Road; and Duff, a Fellow of ---- College, the strangest mixture of
+nervousness and cool courage I ever met.
+
+We were a kind of happy family at the Hagen; the tone of the coterie
+was that of the easiest intimacy into which every newcomer slid quite
+naturally. Thus when on the 31st July there was a somewhat sensational
+arrival, the stolid landlord had not turned the gas on in the empty
+saal before everybody knew and sympathised with the errand of the
+strangers. The party consisted of a plump little girl of about eighteen
+with a bonny round face and fine frank eyes; her sister who was some
+years older; and a brother, the eldest of the three. They had come from
+Silesia on rather a strange tryst. Little Minna Vogt had for her
+_Braeutigam_ a young Feldwebel of the second battalion of the
+Hohenzollerns, a native of Saarlouis. The battalion quartered there was
+under orders to join its first battalion at Saarbruecken, and young
+Eckenstein had written to his betrothed to come and meet him there,
+that the marriage-knot might be tied before he should go on a campaign
+from which he might not return. The arrangement was certainly a
+charming one; we should have a wedding in the Hagen! There was no
+nonsense about our young _Braut_. She told me the little story at
+supper on the night of her arrival in the most matter-of-fact way
+possible, drank her two glasses of red wine, and went off serenely to
+bed with a dainty lisping _Schlafen Sie wohl!_
+
+While Minna was between the sheets in the pleasant chamber in the Hagen
+her lover was lying in bivouac some fifteen miles away. In the
+afternoon of the next day his battalion approached Saarbruecken and
+bivouacked about two miles from the town. Of course we all went out to
+welcome it; some bearing peace-offerings of cigars, others the
+drink-offering of potent Schnapps. The Vogt family were left the sole
+inmates of the Hagen, delicacy preventing their accompanying us. The
+German journalist, however, had a commission to find out young
+Eckenstein and tell him of the bliss that awaited him two short miles
+away. Right hearty fellows were the officers of the second
+battalion--from the grizzled Oberst down to the smooth-faced junior
+lieutenant; and the men who had been marching and bivouacking for a
+fortnight looked as fresh as if they had not travelled five miles.
+Kuester soon found the young Feldwebel; and the Hauptmann of his company
+when he heard the state of the case, smiled a grim but kindly smile,
+and gave him leave for two days with the proviso, that if any hostile
+action should be taken in the interval he should rejoin the colours
+immediately and without notice. "No fear of that!" was Eckenstein's
+reply with a significant down glance at his sword; and then, after a
+cheery "good-night" to the hardy bivouackers, we visitors started in
+triumph on our return to the Hagen, the young Feldwebel in our midst It
+was good to see the unrestraint with which Minna--she of the apple face
+and frank eyes--threw herself round the neck of her betrothed as she
+met him on the steps of the Hagen, and his modest manly blush as he
+returned the embrace. Ye gods! did not we make a night of it! Stolid
+Hagen came out of his shell for once, and swore, _Donner Wetter_ that
+he would give us a supper we should remember; and he kept his word. The
+good old pastor of the snow-white hair and withered cheeks--he had been
+engaged to perform the ceremony of the morrow--we voted into the chair
+whether he would or not; and on his right sat Minna and Eckenstein,
+their arms interlacing and whispering soft speeches which were not for
+our ears. The table was covered with bottles of Blume de Saar, the
+champagne peculiar of the Hagen; and the speed with which the full
+bottles were converted into "dead marines" was a caution to
+teetotallers. Then de Liefde the polyglot gave the health of the happy
+couple in a felicitous but composite speech, in which half a dozen
+languages were impartially intermixed so that all might understand at
+least a portion. George the jolly insisted in leading off the honours
+with a truly British "three times three;" and that horrible dog of
+Hyndman's gave the time, like a beast as he was, with stentorian
+barkings. Then Minna and her sister retired, followed by Herr Pastor;
+and after a considerable number of more bottles of Blume de Saar had
+met their fate we formed a procession and escorted the happy Eckenstein
+to the Rheinischer Hof where he was to sleep.
+
+Next morning by eleven, we had all reassembled in the second saal of
+the Hagen. In the great room the marriage-breakfast was laid out, and
+in the kitchen Hagen and his Frau were up to their eyes in mystic
+culinary operations. Minna looked like a rosebud in her pretty
+low-necked blue dress, and the pastor in his cassock helped to the
+diversity of colour. We had done shaking hands with the bride and
+bridegroom after the ceremony, and were sitting down to the marriage
+feast, when young Eckenstein started and made three strides to the open
+window. His accustomed ear had caught a sound which none of us had
+heard. It was the sharp peremptory note of the drum beating the alarm.
+As it came nearer and could no longer be mistaken, the bright colour
+went out from poor Minna's cheek and she clung with a brave touching
+silence to her sister. In two minutes more Eckenstein had his helmet on
+his head and his sword buckled on, and then he turned to say farewell
+to his girl ere he left her for the battle. The parting was silent and
+brief; but the faces of the two were more eloquent than words. Poor
+Minna sat down by the window straining her eyes as Eckenstein, running
+at speed, went his way to the rendezvous.
+
+When I got up to the Bellevue the French were streaming in overwhelming
+force down the slope of the Spicheren into the intervening valley. It
+was a beautiful sight; but I am not going to describe it here. Ere an
+hour was over the shells and chassepot bullets were sweeping across the
+Exercise Platz, and it was no longer a safe spot for a non-combatant
+like myself. Before I got back into the Hagen after paying my bill at
+the Rheinischer and fetching away my knapsack, the French guns were on
+the Exercise Platz. I heard for the first time the angry screech of the
+mitrailleuse and saw the hailstorm of its bullets spattering on the
+pavement of the bridge. Somehow or other the whole of our little
+coterie had found their way into the Hagen; by a sort of common
+impulse, I imagine. The landlady was already in hysterics; the Vogt
+girls were pale but plucky. Presently the shells began to fly. The
+Prussians had a gun or two on the railway esplanade above us, the fire
+of which the French began to return fiercely. Every shell that fell
+short tumbled in or about the Hagen; and a company of the Hohenzollerns
+was drawn up in the street in front of it, in trying to dislodge which
+the French fire could not well miss the Hagen and the houses opposite.
+A shell burst in the back-yard and the landlady fainted. Another came
+crashing in through a first-floor window, and, bursting, knocked
+several bedrooms into one. Then we thought it time to get the women
+down into the cellar--rather a risky undertaking since the door of it
+was in the backyard. However, we got them all down in safety and came
+up into the second saal to watch the course of events. Hagen gave a
+fearful groan as a shell broke into the kitchen behind us, and,
+bursting in the centre of the stove, sent his _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of
+cookery sputtering in all directions. He gave a still deeper groan as
+another shell crashed into the principal dining-room and knocked the
+long table, laid out as it was for the marriage-feast, into a chaos of
+splinters, tablecloth, and knives and forks. The Restauration Kueche on
+the other side was in flames, so was the stable of the hotel to the
+left rear. In this pleasing situation of affairs George produced a pack
+of cards and coolly proposed a game of whist. Kuester, de Liefde, and
+Hyndman joined him; and the game proceeded amidst the crashing of the
+projectiles. Silberer and myself took counsel together and agreed that
+the occupation of the town by the French was only a question of a few
+hours at latest. We were both correspondents; and although the French
+would do us no harm our communications with our journals would
+inevitably be stopped--a serious contingency to contemplate at the
+beginning of a campaign. We both agreed that evacuation of the Hagen
+was imperative; but then, how to get out? The only way was up the
+esplanade to the railway station, and upon it the French shells were
+falling and bursting in numbers very trying to the nerves. However,
+there was nothing for it but to make a rush through the fire; and
+saying good-bye to the whist-players we sallied forth. To my disgust I
+found that Silberer positively refused to make a rush of it. Although
+an Austrian all his sympathies were Prussian, and he had the utmost
+contempt for the French. In his broken language his invariable
+appellation for them was "God-damned Hundsoehne!" and he would not run
+before them at any price. I would have run right gladly at top-speed;
+but I did not like to run when another man walked, and so he made me
+saunter at the rate of two miles an hour till we got under shelter.
+After a hot walk of several miles, we reached the Hotel Till in the
+village of Duttweiler. After all the French, although they might have
+done so, did not occupy Saarbruecken; and towards evening our friends
+came dropping into the Hotel Till, singly or in pairs. Kuester and
+George brought the Vogt sisters out in a waggon--it was surprising to
+see the coolness and composure of the girls. By nightfall we were all
+reunited, except one unfortunate fellow who had been slightly wounded
+and whom a Saarbruecken doctor had kindly received into his house.
+
+On the 6th August came the Prussian repossession of Saarbruecken and the
+desperate storm of the Spicheren. The 40th was the regiment to which
+was assigned the place of honour in the preliminary recapture of the
+Exercise Platz height. Kameke rode up the winding road to the Bellevue;
+then came the march across the broad valley and after much bloodshed
+the final storm of the Spicheren, in which the 40th occupied about the
+left centre of the Prussian advance. Three times did the blue wave
+surge up the green steep, to be beaten back three times by the terrible
+blast of fire that crashed down upon it from above. Yet a fourth time
+it clambered up again, and this time it lipped the brink and poured
+over the intrenchment at the top. But I am not describing the battle.
+
+When it was over or at least when it had drifted away across the
+farther plateau, I followed on in the broad wake of dying and dead
+which the advance had left. The familiar faces of the Hohenzollerns
+were all around me; but either still in death or writhing in the
+torture of wounds. About the centre of the valley lay the genial
+Hauptmann von Krehl, more silent than ever now, for a bullet had gone
+right through that red head of his and he would never more quaff of the
+Niersteiner; neither would Lieutenant von Klipphausen ever again stir
+the blood of the sons of the Fatherland with the _Wacht am Rhein_; he
+lay dead close by the first spur of the slope--what of him at least a
+bursting shell had left. On a little flat half up sat quaint Dr.
+Diestelkamp, like Mark Tapley jolly under difficulties; by his side lay
+a man who had just bled to death as the good doctor explained to me.
+While he had been applying the tourniquet under a hot fire his right
+arm had been broken; and before he could pull himself up and go to the
+rear another bullet had found its billet in his thigh. There the little
+man sat, contentedly smoking till somebody would be good enough to come
+and take him away. Von Zuelow too--he of the gay laugh and sprightly
+countenance--was on his back a little higher up, with a bullet through
+the chest. I heard the ominous sound of the escaping air as I raised
+him to give him a drink from my flask. What needs it to become diffuse
+as to the terrible sights which that steep and the plateau above it
+presented on this beautiful summer evening? It was farther to the
+right, in ground more broken with gullies and ravines, that the second
+battalion of the Hohenzollerns had gone up; and I wandered along there
+among the carnage eking out the contents of my flask as far as I could,
+and when the wounded had exhausted the brandy in it filling it up with
+water and still toiling on in a task that seemed endless. At last, in a
+sitting posture, his back against a hawthorn tree in one of the grassy
+ravines, I saw one whom I thought I recognised. "Eckenstein!" I cried
+as I ran forward; for the posture was so natural that I could not but
+think he was alive. Alas! no answer came; the gallant young Feldwebel
+was dead, shot through the throat. He had not been killed outright by
+the fatal bullet; the track was apparent by the blood on the grass
+along which he had crawled to the hawthorn tree against which I found
+him. His head had fallen forward on his chest and his right hand was
+pressed against his left breast. I saw something white in the hollow of
+the hand and easily moved the arm for he was yet warm; it was the
+photograph of the little girl he had married but three short days
+before. The frank eyes looked up at me with a merry unconsciousness;
+and the face of the photograph was spotted with the life-blood of the
+young soldier.
+
+I sent the death-token to Saarlouis by post to the young widow. I never
+knew whether she received it, for all the address I had was Saarlouis.
+Eckenstein I saw buried with two officers in a soldier's grave under
+the hawthorn. Any one taking the ascent up the fourth ravine
+Forbach-ward from the bluff of the Spicheren, may easily find it about
+halfway up. It may be recognised by the wooden cross bearing the rude
+inscription: "Hier ruhen in Gott 2 Officiere, 1 Feldwebel, 40ste
+Hohenzol. Fus. Regt."
+
+
+
+
+REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
+
+1879
+
+
+By Christmas 1878 the winter had brought to a temporary standstill the
+operations of the British troops engaged in the first Afghan campaign,
+and I took the opportunity of this inaction to make a journey into
+Native Burmah, the condition of which seemed thus early to portend the
+interest which almost immediately after converged upon it, because of
+King Thebau's wholesale slaughter of his relatives. Reaching Mandalay,
+the capital of Native Burmah, in the beginning of February 1879, I
+immediately set about compassing an interview with the young king. Both
+Mr. Shaw, who was our Resident at Mandalay at the time of my visit, and
+Dr. Clement Williams whose kindly services I found so useful, are now
+dead, and many changes have occurred since the episode described below;
+but no description, so far as I am aware, has appeared of any visit of
+courtesy and curiosity to the Court of King Thebau of a later date than
+that made by myself at the date specified. One of my principal objects
+in visiting Mandalay, or, in Burmese phrase, of "coming to the Golden
+Feet," was to see the King of Burmah in his royal state in the Presence
+Chamber of the Palace. Certain difficulties stood in the way of the
+accomplishment of this object. I had but a few days to spend in
+Mandalay. With the approval of Mr. Shaw, the British Resident, I
+determined to pursue an informal course of action, and with this intent
+I enlisted the good offices of an English gentleman resident in
+Mandalay, who had intimate relations with the Ministers and the Court.
+
+This gentleman, Dr. Williams, was good enough to help me with zeal and
+address. The line of strategy to adopt was to interest in my cause one
+of the principal Ministers. Of these there were four, who constituted
+the _Hlwot-dau_, or High Court and Council of the Monarchy. These
+"Woonghys" or "Menghyis," as they were more commonly called--"Menghyi,"
+meaning "Great Prince"--were of equal rank; but the senior Minister,
+the Yenangyoung Menghyi, who had precedence, was then in confinement,
+and, indeed, a decree of degradation had gone forth against him.
+Obviously he was of no use; but a more influential man than he ever
+was, and having the additional advantages of being at liberty, in power
+and in favour, was the "Kingwoon Menghyi." He was in effect the Prime
+Minister of the King of Burmah. His position was roughly equivalent to
+that of Bismarck in Germany, or of Gortschakoff in Russia, since, in
+addition to his internal influence, he had the chief direction of
+foreign affairs. Now this "Kingwoon Menghyi" had for a day or two been
+relaxing from the cares of State. Partly for his own pleasure, partly
+by way of example, he had laid out a beautiful garden on the low ground
+near the river. Within this garden he had the intention to build
+himself a suburban residence, which meanwhile was represented by a
+summer pavilion of teak and bamboo. He was a liberal-minded man, and it
+was a satisfaction to him that the shady walks and pleasant rose-groves
+of this garden should be enjoyed by the people of Mandalay. He was a
+reformer, this "Kingwoon Menghyi," and believed in the humanising
+effect of free access to the charms of nature. His garden laid out and
+his pavilion finished, he was celebrating the event by a series of
+_fetes._ He was "at home" in his pavilion to everybody; bands of music
+played all day long and day after day, in the kiosks, among the young
+palm trees and the rosebushes. Mandalay, high and low, made holiday in
+the mazy walks of his garden and in an improvised theatre, wherein an
+interminable _pooey,_ or Burmese drama, was being enacted before
+ever-varying and constantly appreciative audiences. Dr. Williams opined
+that it would conduce to the success of my object that we should call
+upon the Minister at his garden-house and request him to use his good
+offices in my behalf.
+
+It was near noon when we reached the entrance to the garden. Merry but
+orderly sightseers thronged its alleys, and stared with wondering
+admiration at a rather attenuated jet of water which rose into the
+clear air some thirty feet above a rockwork fountain in the centre.
+Dignitaries strolled about under the stemless umbrellas like huge
+shields, with which assiduous attendants protected them from the sun;
+and were followed by posses of retainers, who prostrated themselves
+whenever their masters halted or looked round. Ladies in white jackets
+and trailing silk skirts of vivid hue were taking a leisurely airing,
+each with her demure maid behind her carrying the lacquer-ware box of
+betel-nut. As often as not the fair ones were blowing copious clouds
+from huge reed-like cheroots. Sounds of shrill music were heard in the
+distance. Walking up the central alley between the rows of palms and
+the hedges of roses, we found in the veranda a mixed crowd of laymen
+and priests, the latter distinguishable by their shaved heads and
+yellow robes. The Minister was just finishing his morning's work of
+distributing offerings to the latter, in commemoration of the opening
+of his gardens. In response to a message, he at once sent to desire
+that we should come to him. The great "shoe-question," the _quaestio
+vexata_ between British officialism and Burmah officialism, did not
+trouble me. I had no official position; I wanted to gain an object. I
+have a respect for the honour of my country, but I could not bring
+myself to realise that the national honour centres in my shoes. So I
+parted with them at the top of the steps leading up into the Minister's
+pavilion, and walking on what is known as my "stocking-feet," and
+feeling rather shuffling and shabby accordingly, was ushered through a
+throng of prostrate dependents into the presence of the Menghyi. He
+came forward frankly and cordially, shook hands with a hearty smile
+with Dr. Williams and myself, and beckoned us into an inner alcove,
+carpeted with rich rugs and panelled with mirrors. Placing himself in a
+half-sitting, half-kneeling attitude which did not expose his feet, he
+beckoned to us to get down also. I own to having experienced extreme
+difficulty in keeping my feet out of sight, which was a point _de
+rigueur_; but his Excellency was not censorious. There was with him a
+secretary who had resided several years in Europe, and who spoke
+fluently English, French, and Italian. This gentleman knew London
+thoroughly, and was perfectly familiar both with the name of the _Daily
+News_ and of myself. He introduced me formally to his Excellency, who,
+I ought to have mentioned, was the head of the Burmese Embassy which
+had visited Europe a few years previously. That his Excellency had some
+sort of knowledge of the political character of the _Daily News_ was
+obvious from the circumstance that when its name was mentioned he
+nodded and exclaimed, "Ah! ah! Gladstone, Bright!" in tones of manifest
+approval, which was no doubt accounted for by the fact that he himself
+was a pronounced Liberal. I explained that I had come to Mandalay to
+learn as much about Burmese manners, customs, and institutions as was
+possible in four days, with intent to embody my impressions in letters
+to England; and that as the King was the chief institution of the
+country, I had a keen anxiety to see him and begged of his Excellency
+to lend me his aid toward doing so. He gave no direct reply, but
+certainly did not frown on the request. We were served with tea
+(without cream or sugar) in pretty china cups, and then the Menghyi,
+observing that we were looking at some quaint-shaped musical
+instruments at the foot of the dais, explained that they belonged to a
+band of rural performers from the Pegu district, and proposed that we
+should first hear them play and afterwards visit the theatre and
+witness the _pooey_. We assenting, he led the way from his pavilion
+through the garden to a pretty kiosk half-embosomed in foliage, and
+chairs having been brought the party sat down. We had put on our shoes
+as we quitted the dais. The Menghyi explained that it was pleasanter
+for him, as it must be for us, that we should change the manner of our
+reception from the Burmese to the European custom; and we were quite
+free to confess that we would sooner sit in chairs than squat on the
+floor. More tea was brought, and a plateful of cheroots. After we had
+sat a little while in the kiosk we were joined by the chief
+Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the Baron de Giers of Burmah, a
+jovial, corpulent, elderly gentleman who had the most wonderful
+likeness to the late Pio Nono, and who clasped his brown hands over his
+fat paunch and kicked about his plump bare brown feet in high enjoyment
+when anything that struck him as humorous was uttered. He wholly
+differed in appearance from his superior, who was a lean-faced and
+lean-figured man, grave, and indeed somewhat sad both of eye and of
+visage when his face was in repose. As we talked, our conversation
+being through the interpreting secretary, there came to the curtained
+entrance to the kiosk a very dainty little lady. I had noticed her
+previously sauntering around the garden under one of the great
+shield-like shades, with a following of serving-men and serving-women
+behind her. She greeted the Menghyi very prettily, with the most
+perfect composure, although strangers were present. She was clearly a
+great pet with the Menghyi; he took her on his knee and played with her
+long black hair, as he told her about the visitors. The little lady was
+in her twelfth year, and was the daughter of a colleague and a relative
+of the Menghyi. She had an olive oval face, with lovely dark eyes, like
+the eyes of a deer. She wore a tiara of feathery white blossoms. In her
+ears were rosettes of chased red gold. Round her throat was a necklace
+of a double row of large pearls. Her fingers--I regret to say her nails
+were not very clean--were loaded with rings set with great diamonds of
+exceptional sparkle and water; one stone in particular must have been
+worth many thousands of pounds. She wore a jacket of white silk, and
+round her loins was girt a gay silken robe that trailed about her bare
+feet as she walked. She shook hands with us with a pretty shyness and
+immediately helped herself to a cheroot, affably accepting a light from
+mine. The Menghyi told us she was a great scholar--could read and write
+with facility, and had accomplishments to boot.
+
+By this time the provincial band had taken its place under one of the
+windows of the kiosk, and it presently struck up. Its music was not
+pretty. There were in the strange weird strain suggestions of gongs,
+bagpipes, penny whistles, and the humble tom-tom of Bengal. The
+gentleman who performed on an instrument which seemed a hybrid between
+a flute and a French horn, occasionally arrested his instrumental music
+to favour us with vocal strains, but he failed to compete successfully
+with the cymbals. I do not think the Menghyi was enraptured by the
+music of the strollers from Pegu, for he presently asked us whether we
+were ready to go to the _pooey_. He again led the way through a garden,
+passing in one corner of it a temporary house of which a company of
+Burmese nuns, short-haired, pallid-faced, unhappy-looking women, were
+in possession; and passing through a gate in the wicker-work fence
+ushered us into the "state-box" of the improvised theatre. There is
+very little labour required to construct a theatre in Burmah. Over a
+framework of bamboo poles stretch a number of squares of matting as a
+protection from the sun. Lay some more down in the centre as a flooring
+for the performers. Tie a few branches round the central bamboo to
+represent a forest, the perpetual set-scene of a Burmese drama; and the
+house is ready. The performers act and dance in the central square laid
+with matting. A little space on one side is reserved as a dressing and
+green room for the actresses; a similar space on the other side serves
+the turn of the actors; and then come the spectators crowding in on all
+four sides of the square. It is an orderly and easily managed audience;
+it may be added an easily amused audience. The youngsters are put or
+put themselves in front and squat down; the grown people kneel or stand
+behind. Our "state-box" was merely a raised platform laid with carpets
+and cushions, from which as we sat we looked over the heads of the
+throng squatting under and in front of us. Of the drama I cannot say
+that I carried away with me particularly clear impressions. True, I
+only saw a part of it--it was to last till the following morning; but
+long before I left the plot to me had become bewilderingly involved.
+The opening was a ballet; of that at least I am certain. There were six
+lady dancers and six gentlemen ditto. The ladies were arrayed in
+splendour, with tinsel tiaras, necklaces, and bracelets, gauzy jackets
+and waving scarfs; and with long, light clinging silken robes, of which
+there was at least a couple of yards on the "boards" about their feet.
+They were old, they were ugly, they leered fiendishly; their faces were
+plastered with powder in a ghastly fashion, and their coquetry behind
+their fans was the acme of caricature. But my pen halts when I would
+describe the gentlemen dancers. I believe that in reality they were not
+meant to represent fallen humanity at all; but were intended to
+personify _nats,_ the spirits or princes of the air of Burmese
+mythology. They carried on their heads pagodas of tinsel and coloured
+glass that towered imposingly aloft. They were arrayed in tight-bodiced
+coats with aprons before and behind of fantastic outline, resembling
+the wings of dragons and griffins, and these coats were an incrusted
+mass of spangles and pieces of coloured glass. Underneath a skirt of
+tartan silk was fitfully visible. Their brown legs and feet were bare.
+The expression of their faces was solemn, not to say lugubrious--one
+performer had a most whimsical resemblance to Mr. Toole when he is sunk
+in an abyss of dramatic woe. They realised the responsibilities of
+their position, and there were moments when these seemed too many for
+them. The orchestra, taken as a whole, was rather noisy; but it
+comprised one instrument, the "bamboo harmonicon," which deserves to be
+known out of Burmah because of its sweetness and range of tone. There
+were lots of "go" in the music, and every now and then one detected a
+kind of echo of a tune not unfamiliar in other climes. One's ear seemed
+to assure one that _Madame Angot_ had been laid under contribution to
+tickle the ears of a Mandalay audience, yet how could this be? The
+explanation was that the instrumentalists, occasionally visiting
+Thayet-myo or Rangoon, had listened there to the strains of our
+military bands, and had adapted these to the Burmese orchestra in some
+deft inscrutable manner, written music being unknown in the musical
+world of Burmah.
+
+Next day the Kingwoon Menghyi took the wholly unprecedented step of
+inviting to dinner the British Resident, his suite, and his
+visitor--myself. Mr. Shaw accepted the invitation, and I considered
+myself specially fortunate in being a participator in a species of
+intercourse at once so novel, and to all seeming so auspicious.
+
+About sundown the Residency party, joined _en route_ by Dr. Williams,
+rode down to the entrance to the gardens. Here we were warmly received
+by the English-speaking secretary, and by the jovial bow-windowed
+minister who so much resembled the late Pio Nono. We were escorted to
+the verandah of the pavilion, where the Menghyi himself stood waiting
+to greet us, and were ushered up to the broad, raised, carpeted
+platform which may be styled the drawing-room. Here was a semicircle of
+chairs. On our way to these, a long row of squatting Burmans was
+passed. As the Resident approached, the Menghyi gave the word, and they
+promptly stood erect in line. He explained that they were the superior
+officers of the army quartered in the capital--generals, he called
+them--whom he had asked to meet us. Of these officers one commanded the
+eastern guard of the Palace, the other the western; two others were
+aides-de-camp after a fashion. Just as the Menghyi and his subordinate
+colleagues represented the Ministry, so these military people
+represented the Court. The former was the moderate constitutional
+element of the gathering; the latter the "jingo" or personal government
+element, for the Burmese Court was reactionary, and those military
+sprigs were of the personal suite of the King and were understood to
+abet him in his falling away from the constitutional promise with which
+his reign began. Their presence rendered the occasion all the more
+significant. That they were deputed from the Palace to attend and watch
+events was pretty certain, and indeed the two aides went away
+immediately after dinner, their excuse being that his Majesty was
+expecting their personal attendance. After a little while of waiting,
+the _mauvais quart d'heure_ having the edge of its awkwardness taken
+off by a series of introductions, dinner was announced, and the
+Menghyi, followed by the Resident, led the way into an adjoining
+dining-room. Good old Pio Nono, who, I ought to have said, had been
+with the Menghyi a member of the Burmese Embassy to Europe, jauntily
+offered me his arm, and gave me to understand that he did so in
+compliance with English fashion. The Resident sat on the right of the
+Menghyi, I was on his left; the rest of the party, to the number of
+about fifteen, took their places indiscriminately; Mr. Andrino, an
+Italian in Burmese employ, being at the head of the table, Dr. Williams
+at the foot. Our meal was a perfectly English dinner, served and eaten
+in the English fashion. The Burmese had taken lessons in the nice
+conduct of a knife and fork, and fed themselves in the most
+irreproachably conventional manner, carefully avoiding the use of a
+knife with their fish. Pio Nono, who sat opposite the Menghyi, tucked
+his napkin over his ample paunch and went in with a will. He was in a
+most hilarious mood, and taxed his memory for reminiscences of his
+visit to England. These were not expressed with useless expenditure of
+verbiage, nor did they flow in unbroken sequence. It was as if he dug
+in his memory with a spade, and found every now and then a gem in the
+shape of a name, which he brandished aloft in triumph. He kept up an
+intermittent and disconnected fire all through dinner, with an interval
+between each discharge, "White-bait!" "Lord Mayor!" "Fishmongers!"
+"Cremorne!" "Crystal Palace!" "Edinburgh!" "Dunrobin!" "Newcastle!"
+"Windsor!"--each name followed by a chuckle and a succession of nods.
+The Menghyi divided his talk between the Resident and myself. He told
+me that of all the men he had met in England his favourite was the late
+Duke of Sutherland; adding that the Duke was a nobleman of great and
+striking eloquence, a trait which I had not been in the habit of
+regarding as markedly characteristic of his Grace. He spoke with much
+warmth of a pleasant visit he had paid to Dunrobin, and said he should
+be heartily glad if the Duke would come to Burmah and give him an
+opportunity of returning his hospitality. Here Pio Nono broke in with
+one of his periodical exclamations. This time it was "Lady Dudley." Of
+her, and of her late husband, the Menghyi then recalled his
+recollections, and if more courtly tributes have been paid to her
+ladyship's charms and grace, I question if any have been heartier and
+more enthusiastic than was the appreciation of this Burmese dignitary.
+The soldier element was at first somewhat stiff, but as the dinner
+proceeded the generals warmed in conversation with the Resident. But
+the aides were obstinately supercilious, and only partially thawed in
+acknowledgment of compliments on the splendour of their jewelry.
+Functionaries attached to the personal suite of his Majesty wore huge
+ear-gems as a distinguishing mark. The aides had these in blazing
+diamonds, and were good enough to take out the ornaments and hand them
+round. The civil ministers wore no ornaments and their dress was
+studiously plain. We were during dinner entertained by music,
+instrumental and vocal, sedulously modulated to prevent conversation
+from being drowned. The meal lasted quite two hours, and when it was
+finished the Menghyi led the way to coffee in one of the kiosks of the
+garden. I should have said that no wine was on the table at dinner. The
+Burmese by religion are total abstainers, and their guests were willing
+to follow their example for the time and to fall in with their
+prejudices. After coffee we were ushered into the drawing-room, and
+listened to a concert. The only solo-vocalist was the prima donna _par
+excellence,_ Mdlle. Yeendun Male. The burden of her songs was love, but
+I could not succeed in having the specific terms translated. Then she
+sang an ode in praise of the Resident, and gracefully accepted his
+pecuniary appreciation of her performance. Pio Nono then beckoned to
+her to flatter me at close quarters; but, mistaking the index, she
+addressed herself to the Residency chaplain in strains of hyperbolical
+encomium. The mistake having been set right, much to the reverend
+gentleman's relief, the songstress overpowered my sensitive modesty by
+impassioned requests in verse that I should delay my departure; that,
+if I could not do so, I should take her away with me; and that, if this
+were beyond my power, I should at least remember her when I was far
+away. The which was an allegory and cost me twenty rupees.
+
+When the good-nights were being said, the Menghyi gratified me by the
+information that the King had given his consent to my presentation, and
+that I was to have the opportunity next morning of "Reverencing the
+Golden Feet."
+
+The Royal Palace occupied the central space of the city of Mandalay. It
+was almost entirely of woodwork, and was not only the counterpart of
+the palace which Major Phayre saw at Amarapoora, but the identical
+palace itself, conveyed piecemeal from its previous site and re-erected
+here. Its outermost enclosure consisted of a massive teak palisading,
+beyond which all round was a wide clear space laid out as an esplanade,
+the farther margin of which was edged by the houses of ministers and
+court officials. The Palace enclosure was a perfect square, each face
+about 370 yards. The main entrance, the only one in general use, was in
+the centre of the eastern face, almost opposite to which, across the
+esplanade, was the _Yoom-dau_, or High Court. This gate was called the
+_Yive-dau-yoo-Taga_, or the Royal Gate of the Chosen, because the
+charge of it was entrusted to chosen troops. As I passed through it on
+my way to be presented to his Majesty, the aspect of the "chosen"
+troops was not imposing. They wore no uniform, and differed in no
+perceptible item from the common coolies of the outside streets. They
+were lying about on charpoys and on the ground, chewing betel or
+smoking cheroots, and there was not even the pretence of there being
+sentries under arms. Some rows of old flintlock guns stood in racks in
+the gateway, rusty, dusty, and untended; they might have been untouched
+since the last insurrection. Crossing an intermediate space overgrown
+with shrubbery, we passed through a high gateway cut in the inner brick
+wall of the enclosure; and there confronted us the great Myenan of
+Mandalay--the Palace of the "Sun-descended Monarch." The first
+impression was disappointing, for the whole front was covered with
+gold-leaf and tawdry tinsel-work which had become weather-worn and
+dingy. But there was no time now to halt, inspect details, and rectify
+perchance first impressions. A message came that the Kingwoon Menghyi,
+my host of the previous evening--substantially the Prime Minister of
+Burmah, desired that we--that was to say, Dr. Williams, my guide,
+philosopher, and friend, and myself--should wait upon him in the
+_Hlwot-dau_, or Hall of the Supreme Council, before entering the Palace
+itself. The _Hlwot-dau_ was a detached structure on the right front of
+the Palace as one entered by the eastern gate. It was the Downing
+Street of Mandalay. Its sides were quite open, and its fantastic roof
+of grotesquely carved teak plastered with gilding, painting, and
+tinsel, was supported on massive teak pillars painted a deep red.
+Taking off our shoes we ascended to the platform of the _Hlwot-dau_,
+where we found the Menghyi surrounded by a crowd of minor officials and
+suitors squatting on their stomachs and elbows, with their legs under
+them and their hands clasped in front of their bent heads. The Menghyi
+came forward several paces to meet us, conducted us to his mat, and
+sitting down himself and bidding us do the same, explained that as it
+was with him a busy day, he would not be able personally to present me
+to the King as he had hoped to have done, but that he had made all
+arrangements and had delegated the charge of us to our old friend whom
+I have ventured to call "Pio Nono." That corpulent and jovial worthy
+made his appearance at this moment along with his English-speaking
+subordinate, and with cordial acknowledgments and farewells to the
+Menghyi we left the _Hlwot-dau_ under their guidance. They led us along
+the front of the Palace, passing the huge gilded cannon that flanked on
+either side the central steps leading up into the throne-room; and
+turning round the northern angle of the Palace front, conducted us to
+the Hall of the _Bya-dyt_, or Household Council. We had to leave our
+shoes at the foot of the steps leading up to it. The _Bya-dyt_ was a
+mere open shed; its lofty roof borne up by massive teak timbers. What
+splendour had once been its in the matter of gilding and tinsel was
+greatly faded. The gold-leaf had been worn off the pillars by constant
+friction, and the place appeared to be used as a lumber-room as well as
+a council-chamber. On the front of one of a pile of empty cases was
+visible, in big black letters, the legend, "Peek, Frean, and Co.,
+London." State documents reposed in the receptacle once occupied by
+biscuits. Clerks lay all around on the rough dusty boards, writing with
+agate stylets on tablets of black papier-mache; and there was a
+constant flux and reflux of people of all sorts, who appeared to have
+nothing to do and who were doing it with a sedulously lounging
+deliberation that seemed to imply a gratifying absence of arrears of
+official work. We sat down here for a while along with Pio Nono and his
+assistant, who busied himself in dictating to a secretary a description
+of myself and a catalogue of my presents to be read by the herald to
+his Majesty when I should be presented. Then Pio Nono went away and
+presently came back, saying that it was intended to bestow upon me some
+souvenirs of Mandalay, and that to admit of the preparation of these
+the audience would not take place for an hour or so. He invited us in
+the meantime to inspect the public apartments of the Palace itself and
+the objects of interest in the Palace enclosure. So we got up, and
+still without our shoes walked through the suite leading to the
+principal throne-room or great hall of audience.
+
+These were simply a series of minor throne-rooms. The first one in
+order from the private apartments was close to the _Bya-dyt_. It must
+be borne in mind that the whole suite, including the great audience
+hall, were not rooms at all in our sense of the word. They were simply
+open-roofed spaces, the roofs gabled, spiked, and carved into fantastic
+shapes, laden with dingy gold-leaf garishly picked out with glaring
+colours and studded with bits of stained glass; the roofs, or rather I
+should say, the one continuous roof, supported on massive deep red
+pillars of teak-wood. The whole palace was raised from the ground on a
+brick platform some 10 feet high. The partitions between the several
+walls were simply skirtings of planking covered with gold-leaf. The
+whole palace seemed an armoury. Some ten or twelve thousand stand of
+obsolete muskets were ranged along these partitions and crammed into
+the anteroom of the throne-room proper. The whole suite was dingy,
+dirty, and uncared-for; but on a great day, with the gilding renewed,
+carpets spread on the rugged boards, banners waving, and the courtiers
+in full dress, no doubt the effect would have been materially improved.
+The vista from the throne of the great hall of audience looked right
+through the columned arcade to the "Gate of the Chosen"; and that we
+might imagine the scene more vividly, we considered ourselves as on our
+way to Court on one of the great days, and going back to the gate again
+began our pilgrimage anew. The pillared front of the Palace stretched
+before us raised on the terrace, its total length 260 feet. Looking
+between the two gilded cannon, we saw at the foot of the central steps
+a low gate of carved and gilded wood. That gate, it seemed, was never
+opened except to the King--none save he might use those central steps.
+Raising our eyes we looked right up the vista of the hall to the lofty
+throne raised against the gilded partition that closed at once the
+vista and the hall. We had been looking down the great central nave, as
+it were, toward the west gate, in the place of which was the throne.
+But along the eastern front of the terrace ran a long colonnade, whose
+wings formed transepts at right angles to the nave. The throne-room was
+shaped like the letter T, the throne being at the base of the letter
+and the cross-bar representing the colonnade. Entering at the extremity
+of one of these, we traversed it to the centre and then faced the nave.
+The throne was exactly before us, at the end of the pillared vista.
+Five steps led up to the dais. Its form was peculiar, contracting by a
+gradation of steps from the base upwards to mid-height, and again
+expanding to the top, on which was a cushioned ledge such as is seen in
+the box of a theatre. On the platform, which now was bare planks, the
+King and Queen on a great reception day would sit on gorgeous carpets.
+The entrance was through gilded doors from a staircase in the ante-room
+beyond. There was a rack of muskets round the foot of the throne, and
+just outside the rails a half-naked soldier lay snoring. Our Burman
+companion assured us that seeing the throne-room now in its condition
+of dismantled tawdriness, I could form no idea of the fine effect when
+King and Court in all their splendour were gathered in it on a
+ceremonial day. I tried to accept his assurances, but it was not easy
+to imagine such forlorn dinginess changed into dazzling splendour. Just
+over the throne, and in the centre of the Palace and of the city, rose
+in gracefully diminishing stages of fantastic woodcarving a tapering
+_phya-sath_ or spire similar to those surmounting sacred buildings, and
+crowned with the gilded _Htee_, an honour which royalty alone shared
+with ecclesiastical sanctity. The spire, like everything else, had been
+gilt, but it was now sadly tarnished and had lost much of its
+brilliancy of effect.
+
+Having looked at the hall of audience we strolled through the Palace
+esplanade. A wall parted this off from the private apartments and the
+pleasure grounds occupying the western section of the Palace enclosure.
+A series of carved and gilded gables roofed with glittering zinc plates
+was visible over the wall. The grounds were said to be well planted
+with flowering shrubs and fruit trees and to contain lakelets and
+rockeries. Built against the outer wall and facing the enclosed space
+were barracks for soldiers and gun sheds. The accommodation was as
+primitive as are the weapons, and that was saying a good deal. Pio Nono
+led us across to a big wooden house, scarcely at all ornamented, which
+was the everyday abode of the "Lord White Elephant." His "Palace," or
+state apartment, was not pointed out to us. His lordship, in so far as
+his literal claim to be styled a white elephant, was an impostor of the
+deepest dye and a very grim and ugly impostor to boot. He was a great,
+lean, brown, flat-sided brute, his ears, forehead, and trunk mottled
+with a dingy cream colour. But he belonged all the same to the lordly
+race. "White elephants" were a science which had a literature of its
+own. According to this science, it was not the whiteness that was the
+criterion of a "white elephant." So much, indeed, was the reverse, that
+a "white elephant" according to the science may be a brown elephant in
+actual colour. The points were the mottling of the face, the shape and
+colour of the eyes, the position of the ears, and the length of the
+tail. Certainly the "Lord White Elephant" had, to the most cursory
+observation, a peculiar and abnormal eye. The iris was yellow, with a
+reddish outer annulus and a small, clear, black pupil. It was
+essentially a shifty, treacherous eye, and I noticed that everybody
+took particularly good care to keep out of range of his lordship's
+trunk and tusks. The latter were superb--long, massive, and smooth,
+their tips quite meeting far in front of his trunk. His tail was much
+longer than in the Indian elephants, and was tipped with a bunch of
+long, straight, black hair. Altogether he was an unwholesome,
+disagreeable-looking brute, who munched his grass morosely and had no
+elephantine geniality. He was but a youngster--the great, old, really
+white elephant which Yule describes had died some time back, after an
+incumbency dating from 1806. The "White Elephant" was never ridden now,
+but the last King but one used frequently to ride its predecessor,
+acting as his own mahout. We did not see his trappings, as our visit
+was paid unawares when he was quite in undress; but Yule says that when
+arrayed in all his splendour his head-stall was of fine red cloth,
+studded with great rubies, interspersed with valuable diamonds. When
+caparisoned he wore on his forehead, like other Burmese dignitaries
+including the King himself, a golden plate inscribed with his titles
+and a gold crescent set with circles of large gems between the eyes.
+Large silver tassels hung in front of his ears, and he was harnessed
+with bands of gold and crimson set freely with large bosses of pure
+gold. He was a regular "estate of the realm," having a _woon_ or
+minister of his own, four gold umbrellas, the white umbrellas which
+were peculiar to royalty, with a large suite of attendants and an
+appanage to furnish him with maintenance wherewithal. When in state his
+attendants had to leave their shoes behind them when they enter his
+Palace. In a shed adjacent to that occupied by the "Lord White
+Elephant" stood his lady wife, a browner, plumper, and generally more
+amiable-looking animal. Contrary to universal experience elsewhere,
+elephants in Burmah breed in captivity, but this union was unfertile
+and the race of "Lord White Elephants" had to be maintained _ab extra_.
+The so-called white elephants are sports of nature, and are of no
+special breed. They are called Albinoes, and are more plentiful in the
+Siam region than in Burmah.
+
+By this time the hour was approaching that had been fixed for the
+presentation, and we returned to the _Bya-dyt_. The summons came almost
+immediately. Ushered by Pio Nono and accompanied by several courtiers,
+we traversed some open passages and finally reached a kind of pagoda or
+kiosk within the private gardens of the Palace. The King was not to
+appear in state, and this place had been selected by reason of its
+absolute informality. There was no ornament anywhere, not so much as a
+speck of gilding or an atom of tinsel. We solemnly squatted down on a
+low platform covered with grass matting, through which pierced the teak
+columns supporting the lofty roof. A space had been reserved for us in
+the centre, on either side of which, their front describing a
+semicircle, a number of courtiers lay crouching on their stomachs but
+placidly puffing cheroots. On our left were two or three superior
+military officers of the Palace guard, distinguishable only by their
+diamond ear-jewels. My presents--they were trivial: an opera-glass, a
+few boxes of chocolate, and a work-box--were placed before me as I sat
+down. There were other offerings to right and to left of them--a huge
+bunch of cabbages, a basket of _Kohl-rabi_, and three baskets of
+orchids. In the clear space in front I observed also a satin robe lined
+with fur, a couple of silver boxes, and a ruby ring. These, I imagined,
+were also for presentation, but it presently appeared they were his
+Majesty's return gifts for myself. Before us, at a higher elevation,
+there was a plain wooden railing with a gap in the centre, and the
+railing enclosed a sort of recess that looked like a garden-house. Over
+a ledge where the gap was, had been thrown a rich crimson and gold
+trapping that hung low in front, and on the ledge were a crimson
+cushion, a betel box, and a tall oval spittoon in gold set with pearls.
+A few minutes passed, beguiled by conversation in a low tone, when six
+guards armed with double-barrelled firearms of very diverse patterns,
+mounted the platform from the left side and took their places on either
+side, squatting down. The guards wore black silk jackets lined with fur
+and with scarlet kerchiefs bound round their heads. Then a door opened
+in the left side of the garden-house, and there entered first an old
+gaunt beardless man--the chief eunuch--closely followed by the King,
+otherwise unattended. His Majesty came on with a quick step, and sat
+down, resting his right arm on the crimson cushion on the ledge in the
+centre of the railing. He wore a white silk jacket, and a _loonghi_ or
+petticoat robe of rich yellow and green silk. His only ornaments were
+his diamond ear-jewels. As he entered all bent low, and when he had
+seated himself a herald lying on his stomach read aloud my credentials.
+The literal translation was as follows:--"So-and-so, a great newspaper
+teacher of the _Daily News_ of London, tenders to his Most Glorious
+Excellent Majesty, Lord of the Ishaddan, King of Elephants, master of
+many white elephants, lord of the mines of gold, silver, rubies, amber,
+and the noble serpentine, Sovereign of the empires of Thunaparanta and
+Tampadipa, and other great empires and countries, and of all the
+umbrella-wearing chiefs, the supporter of religion, the Sun-descended
+Monarch, arbiter of life, and great, righteous King, King of kings, and
+possessor of boundless dominions, and supreme wisdom, the following
+presents." The reading was intoned in a uniform high recitative,
+strongly resembling that used when our Church Service is intoned; and
+the long-drawn "Phya-a-a-a-a" (my lord) which concluded it, added to
+the resemblance, as it came in exactly like the "Amen" of the Liturgy.
+
+The reading over, the return presents were picked up by an official and
+bundled over to me without any ceremony, the King meanwhile looking on
+in silence, chewing betel and smoking a cheroot. Several of the
+courtiers were following his example in the latter respect. Presently
+the King spoke in a distinct, deliberate voice--
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+Dr. Williams acting as my introducer, replied in Burmese--
+
+"A writer of the _Daily News_ of London, your Majesty."
+
+"Why does he come?"
+
+"To see your Majesty's country, and in the hope of being permitted to
+reverence the Golden Feet."
+
+"Whence does he come?"
+
+"From the British army in Afghanistan, engaged in war against the
+Prince of Cabul."
+
+"And does the war prosper for my friends the English?"
+
+"He reports that it has done so greatly and that the Prince of Cabul is
+a fugitive."
+
+"Where does Cabul lie in relation to Kashmir?"
+
+"Between Kashmir and Persia, in a very mountainous and cold region."
+
+There had been pauses more or less long between each of these
+questions; the King obviously reflecting what he should ask next; then
+there was a longer, and, indeed, a wearisome pause. Then the King spoke
+again.
+
+"Where is the Kingwoon Menghyi?"
+
+"In Court, your Majesty," replied Pio Nono. "It is a Court day."
+
+"It is well. I wish the Ministers to make every day a Court day, and to
+labour hard to give prompt justice to suitors, so that there be no
+complaint of arrears."
+
+With this laudable injunction, his Majesty rose and walked away, and
+the audience was over.
+
+The King of Burmah, when I saw him, was little over twenty, and he had
+been barely four months on the throne. He was a tall, well-built,
+personable young man, very fair in complexion, with a good forehead,
+clear, steady eyes, and a firm but pleasant mouth. His chin was full
+and somewhat sensual-looking, but withal he was a manly, frank-faced
+young fellow, and was said to have gained self-possession and lost the
+early nervous awkwardness of his new position with great rapidity.
+Circumstances had even then occurred to prove that he was very far from
+destitute of a will of his own, and that he had no favour for any
+diminution of the Royal Prerogative. As we passed out of the Palace
+after the interview a house in the Palace grounds was pointed out to
+me, within which had been imprisoned in squalid misery ever since the
+mortal illness of the previous King, a number of the members of the
+Burmese blood royal.
+
+_P.S._--A few days after my visit, all these unfortunately were
+massacred with fiendish refinements of cruelty.
+
+
+
+
+GERMAN WAR PRAYERS 1870-71
+
+
+In the multifarious ramifications of their military organisation the
+Germans by no means neglect religion. Each army corps is partitioned
+into two divisions and each division has its field chaplain. In those
+corps in which there is a large admixture of the Catholic element,
+there is a cleric of that denomination to each division as well as a
+Protestant chaplain. The former is known as a _Feldgeistliger_, a word
+which in itself means nothing more distinctive than a "field
+ecclesiastic," while the Protestant chaplain has usually the title of
+_Feldpastor_. Of the priest I can say but little. The pastors, for the
+most part, are young and energetic men. They may be divided into two
+classes: those who have at home no stated charges, and those who have
+temporarily left their charge for the duration of the war. The former
+generally are regularly posted to a division; the latter, equally
+recognised but not perhaps quite so official, are chiefly to be found
+in the lazarettoes, in the battlefield villages whither the wounded are
+borne to have their fresh wounds roughly seen to, and on the
+battlefield itself. Not that the regular divisional chaplains do not
+face the dangers of the battlefield with devoted courage; but their
+duties, in the nature of their special avocation, lie more among the
+hale and sound who yet stand up before an enemy, than with the poor
+fellows who have been stricken down. Earnestness and devotion are the
+chief characteristics of those pastors. It struck me that their
+education was not of a very high order--certainly not on a par with
+that of the average regimental officer.
+
+The _Feldpastor_ wears an armlet of white and light purple to denote
+his calling; but indeed it is not easy to mistake him for anything else
+than he is. He has his quarters with the Divisional General, and
+preaches whenever and wherever it is convenient to get a congregation.
+A church is passed on the wayside, a regiment halts and defiles into
+it, and the pastor mounts the steps of the altar and holds forth
+therefrom for half an hour. There is a quiet meadow near a village, in
+which a brigade is lying. Looking over the hedge, you may see in the
+meadow a hollow square of helmeted men with the general and the pastor
+in the centre, the latter speaking simple, fervent words to the
+fighting men. When, as during the siege of Paris, a division occupies a
+certain district for a long time, you may chance--let me say on a New
+Year's night--on the village church all ablaze with light. The garrison
+have decorated the gaunt old Norman arches with laurels and evergreens;
+they have cleared out the market-vendor's stock of tallow-dips to
+illuminate the church wherewithal. The band has been practising the
+glorious _Nun Danket alle Gott_ for a week; the vocalists of the
+regiments have been combining to perfect themselves in part-singing.
+The gorgeous trumpery of Roman Catholic church paraphernalia, unheeded
+as it is, looks strangely out of place and contrasts curiously with the
+simple Protestant forms.
+
+The church is crowded with a denser congregation than ever its walls
+contained before. The _Oberst_ sits down with the under-officer; the
+general gropes for half a chair between two stalwart _Kerle_ of the
+line. Hymn-cards are distributed as at the Brighton volunteer service
+in the Pavilion on Easter Sunday. As the pastor enters and takes his
+way up the altar steps--he goes not to the pulpit--there bursts out a
+volume of vocal devotional harmony, which is so pent in the aisles and
+under the arches that the sound seems almost to become a substance.
+Then the pastor delivers a prayer and there is another hymn. He
+enunciates no text when he next begins to speak; he chops not a subject
+up into heads, as the grizzled major who listens to him would partition
+out his battalion into companies. There is no "thirteenthly and lastly"
+in his simple address. But he gets nearer the hearts of his hearers
+than if he assailed them with a battery of logic with multitudinous
+texts for ammunition. For he speaks of the people at home, in the quiet
+corners of the Fatherland; he tells the soldier in language that is of
+his profession, how the fear of the Lord is a better arm than the
+truest-shooting _Zuendnadelgewehr_; how preparedness for death and for
+what follows after death, is a part of his accoutrement that the good
+soldier must ever bear about with him.
+
+Herr Pastor has other functions than to preach to the living. The day
+after a battle, his horse must be very tired before the stable-door is
+reached. The burial parties are excavating great pits all over the
+field, while others pick up the dead in the vicinity and bear them unto
+the brink of the common grave. Herr Pastor cannot be ubiquitous. If he
+is not near when the hole is full, the _Feldwebel_ who commands the
+party bares his head, and mutters, "In the name of God, Amen," as he
+strews the first handful of mould on the dead--it may be on friends as
+well as on foes. If the pastor can reach the brink of the pit, it is
+his to say the few words that mark the recognition of the fact that
+those lying stark and grim below him are not as the beasts that perish.
+The Germans have no set funeral service, and if they had, there would
+be no time for it here. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
+in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, _durch
+unsern Herr Jesu Christe_. Amen;" words so familiar, yet never heard
+without a new thrill.
+
+They are slightly uncouth in several matters, these _Feldpastoren_, and
+would not quite suit sundry metropolitan charges one wots of. They do
+not wear gloves, nor are they addicted to scent on their
+pocket-handkerchiefs. Their boots are too often like boats, and when
+they are mounted there is frequently visible an interval of more or
+less dusky stocking between the boot-top and the trouser-leg. They
+slobber stertorously in the consumption of soup, and cut their meat
+with a square-elbowed energy of determination that might make one think
+that they had vanquished the Evil One and had him down there under
+their knife and fork. But they are simple-hearted and valiant servants
+of their Master. Who was it, in the bullet-storm that swept the slope
+of Woerth, from facing which the stout hearts of the fighting men
+blenched and quailed, that there walked quietly into it, to speak words
+of peace and consolation to the dying men whom that terrible storm had
+beaten down? A smooth-faced stripling with the _Feldpastor's_ badge on
+his arm, the gallant Christian son of an eminent Prussian divine, Dr.
+Krummacher of Berlin. At one of the battles (I forget which) a pastor
+came to fill a grave, not to consecrate it. Shall I ever forget the
+unswerving hurry to the front of Kummer's divisional chaplain when the
+_Landwehrleute_, his flock, were going down in their ranks as they held
+with stubbornness unto death the villages in front of Maizieres les
+Metz? Let the _Feldpastoren_ slobber and welcome, say I, while they
+gild their slobbering with such devotion as this! But there must be
+times and seasons when Herr Pastor is not at hand; nor can the
+ministration of any pastor stand in the stead of private prayer. The
+German soldier's simple needs in this matter are not disregarded. Each
+man is served out when he gets his kit with a tiny gray volume less
+than quarter the size of this page, the title of which is _Gebetbuch
+fuer Soldaten_--the Soldier's Prayer-Book. It is supplied from the
+Berlin depot of the Head Society for the Promotion of Christian
+Knowledge in Germany, and it is a compendium of simple war prayers for
+almost every conceivable situation, with one significant
+exception--there is no prayer in defeat. The word is blotted out of the
+German war vocabulary. It has been said that the belief in the divinity
+of our Saviour is rapidly on the wane in Germany. If this war
+prayer-book avails aught, the taint of the heresy may not enter into
+the army.
+
+Germany is at war. While Paris is frantically shouting _A Berlin!_,
+while all Germany is singing and meaning _Die Wacht am Rhein_, Moltke's
+order goes forth into the towns and villages of the Fatherland for the
+mobilisation of the Reserves. Hans was singing _Die Wacht am Rhein_
+last night over his beer; but there is little heart for song left in
+him as he looks from that paper on the deal table into Gretchen's face.
+She is weeping bitterly as her children cling around her, too young to
+realise the cause of their parents' sorrow. Hans rises moodily, and
+pulling down what military belongings he has not given into the arsenal
+after the last drill, falls a turning over of them abstractedly. By
+chance his hand rests upon the little gray volume, the _Gebetbuch fuer
+Soldaten_. It opens in his hand, and he comes and sits down by Gretchen
+and reads in a voice that chokes sometimes, the
+
+
+PRAYER IN STRAIT AND SORROW
+
+O Lord Jesus Christ! let the crying and sighing of the poor come before
+Thee. Withhold not Thy countenance from the tears and beseechings of
+the woebegone. Help by Thine outstretched arm, and avert our sorrow
+from us. Awake us who are lying dead in sin and in great danger, and
+whose thoughts often wander from Thee. Let us trust with all our hearts
+that nothing can be so broad, so deep, so high, nor so arduous that Thy
+grace and favour cannot overcome it; that we so can and must be holpen
+out of every difficulty and discomfiture when Thou takest compassion
+upon us. Help us, then, through grace, and so I will praise Thee from
+now to all eternity.
+
+
+Hans has bidden good-bye to Gretchen, and has kissed the children he
+may never see more. He has marched with his fellows to the depot, and
+got his uniform and arms. The _Militaerzug_ has carried him to
+Kreuznach, and thence he has marched sturdily up the Nahe Valley and
+over the ridge into the Kollerthaler Wald. His last halt was at
+Puttingen, but Kameke has sent an aide back at the gallop to summon up
+all supports. The regiment stacks arms for ten minutes' breathing-time
+while the cannon-thunder is borne backward on the wind to the ears of
+the soldiers. In two hours more they will be across the French
+frontier, storming furiously up the Spicheren Berg. As Hans gropes in
+his tunic pocket for his tinder-box, the little war prayer-book somehow
+gets between his fingers. He takes it out with the pipe-light, and
+finds in its pages a prayer surely suited to the situation--the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE OUTMARCHING
+
+O gracious God! I defile from out my Fatherland and from the society of
+my friends,[1] and out of the house of my father into a strange land,
+to campaign against the enemies of our king. Therefore I would cast
+myself with life and soul upon Thy divine bosom and guardianship; and I
+pray Thee, with prostrate humility, that Thou willst guide me with
+Thine eye, and overshadow me with Thy wings. Let Thine angels camp
+round about me, and Thy grace protect me in all the difficulties of the
+marches, in all camps and dangers. Give me wisdom and understanding for
+my ways and works. Give success and blessing to our ingoings and
+outcomings, so that we may do everything well, and conquer on the field
+of battle; and after victory won, turn our steps homeward as the
+heralds who announce peace. So shall we praise Thee with gladsomeness,
+O most gracious Father, for Thy dear Son's sake, Jesus Christ!
+
+[Footnote 1: Every now and then one comes across a German word
+untranslatable in its compact volume of expressiveness. How weakly am I
+forced to render _Freundschaft_ here! "Outmarching," though a literal,
+is a poor equivalent for _Ausmarsch_. In the old Scottish language we
+find an exact correspondent for _aus_; the "Furthmarch" gives the idea
+to a hair's-breadth.]
+
+It is the morning of Gravelotte. King Wilhelm has issued his laconic
+order for the day, and all know how bloody and arduous is the task
+before his host. The French tents are visible away in the distance
+yonder by the auberge of St. Hubert, and already the explosion of an
+occasional shell gives earnest of the wrath to come. The regiment in
+which Hans is a private has marched to Caulre Farm, and is halted for
+breakfast there before beginning the real battle by attacking the
+French outpost stronghold in Verneville. The tough ration beef sticks
+in poor Hans' throat. He is no coward, but he thinks of Gretchen and
+the children, and the Reserve-man draws aside into the thicket to
+commune with his own thoughts. He has already found comfort in the
+little gray volume, and so he pulls it out again to search for
+consolation in this hour of gloom. He finds what he wants in the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE BATTLE
+
+Lord of Sabaoth, with Thee is no distinction in helping in great things
+or in small. We are going now, at the orders of our commanders, to do
+battle in the field with our enemies. Let us give proof of Thy might
+and honour. Help us, Lord our God, for we trust in Thee, and in Thy
+name we go forth against the enemy. Lord Christ, Thou hast said, "I am
+with thee in the hour of need; I will pull thee out, and place thee in
+an honourable place." Bethink Thee, Lord, of Thy word, and remember Thy
+promise. Come to our aid when we are sore pressed, when the close
+grapple is imminent, when the enemy overmatches us, and we have been
+surrounded by them. Stand by us in need, for the aid of man is of no
+avail. Through Thee we will vanquish our enemies, and in Thy name we
+will tread under the foot those who have set themselves in array
+against us. They trust in their own might, and are puffed up with
+pride; but we put our trust in the Almighty God, who, without one
+stroke of the sword, canst smite into the dust not only those who are
+now formed up against us, but also the whole world. God, we await on
+Thy goodness. Blessed are those who put their trust in Thee. Help us,
+that our enemies may not get the better of us, and wax triumphant in
+their might; but strike disorder into their ranks, and smite them
+before our eyes, so that we may overwhelm them. Show us Thy goodness,
+Thou Saviour, of those who trust in Thee. Art Thou not God the Lord
+unto us who are called after Thy name? So be gracious unto us, and take
+us--life and soul--under the protection of Thy grace. And since Thou
+only knowest what is good for us, so we commend ourselves unto Thee
+without reserve, be it for life or for death. Let us live comforted;
+let us fight and endure comforted; let us die comforted, for Jesus
+Christ, Thy dear Son's sake. Amen.
+
+
+Alvensleben is sitting on his horse on the little hillock behind the
+hamlet of Flavigny, pulling his gray moustache, and praying that he
+might see the _Spitze_ of Barneckow's division show itself on the edge
+of the plain up from out the glen of Gorze. Rheinbaben's cavalry are
+half of them down, the other half of them are rallying for another
+charge to save the German centre. Hans is in the wood to the north of
+Tronville, helping to keep back Leboeuf from swamping the left flank.
+The shells from the French artillery on the Roman Road are crashing
+into the wood. The bark is jagged by the slashes of venomous chassepot
+bullets. Twice has Ladmirault come raging down from the heights of
+Bruville, twice has he been sent staggering back. Now, with strong
+reinforcements, he is preparing for a third assault. Meanwhile there is
+a lull in the battle. Hans, grimed and powder-blackened, may let the
+breech of his _Zuendnadelgewehr_ cool and may wipe his blood-stained
+bayonet on the forest moss. He has a moment for a glance into the
+little gray volume, and it opens in his blackened fingers at the prayer
+
+
+IN THE AGONY OF THE BATTLE
+
+O Thou Lord and Ruler of Thine own people, awake and look now in grace
+upon Thy folk. Lord Jesus Christ, be now our Jesus, our Helper and
+Deliverer, our rock and fortress, our fiery wall, for Thy great name's
+sake. Be now our Emmanuel, God with us, God in us, God for us, God by
+the side of us. Thou mighty arm of Thy Father, let us now see Thy great
+power, so that men shall hail Thee their God, and the people may bend
+their knees unto Thee. Strengthen and guide the fighting arm of Thy
+believing soldiers, and help them, Thou invincible King of Battles.
+Gird Thyself up, Thou mighty fighting Hero; gird Thy sword on Thy
+loins, and smite our enemy hip and thigh. Art Thou not the Lord who
+directest the wars of the whole world, who breakest the bow, who
+splinterest the spear, and burnest the chariots with fire? Arouse
+Thyself, help us for Thy good will, and cast us not from Thee, God of
+our Saviour; cease Thy wrath against us, and think not for ever of our
+sins. Consider that we are all Thine handiwork; give us Thy countenance
+again, and be gracious unto us. Return unto us, O Lord, and go forth
+with our army. Restore happiness to us with Thy help and counsel, Thou
+staunch and only King of Peace, who with Thy suffering and death hast
+procured for us eternal peace. Give us the victory and an honourable
+peace, and remain with us in life and in death. Amen.
+
+
+Hans has marched from before Metz towards the valley of the Meuse, and
+the regimental camp for the night is on the slopes of the Ardennes,
+over against Chemery. The setting sun is glinting on the windows of the
+Chateau of Vendresse, where the German King is quartered for the night.
+The birds are chirruping in the bosky dales of the Bar. The morrow is
+fraught with the hot struggle of Sedan, but honest Hans, a simple
+private man, knows nought of strategic moves and takes his ease on the
+sward while he may. He has oiled the needle-gun and done his cooking; a
+stone is under his head and his mantle is about him. As he ponders in
+the dying rays of the setting sun there comes over him the impulse to
+have a look into the pages of the _Gebetbuch_, and he finds there this
+prayer
+
+
+IN THE BIVOUAC
+
+Heavenly Father, here I am, according to Thy divine will, in the
+service of my king and war-master, as is my duty as a soldier; and I
+thank Thee for Thy grace and mercy that Thou hast called me to the
+performance of this duty, because I am certain that it is not a sin,
+but is an obedience to Thy wish and will. But as I know and have learnt
+through Thy gracious Word that none of our good works can avail us, and
+that nobody can be saved merely as a soldier, but only as a Christian,
+I will not rely on my obedience and upon my labours, but will perform
+my duties for Thy sake, and to Thy service. I believe with all my heart
+that the innocent blood of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, which He has shed
+for me, delivers and saves me, for He was obedient to Thee even unto
+death. On this I rely, on this I live and die, on this I fight, and on
+this I do all things. Retain and increase, O God, my Father, this
+belief by Thy Holy Ghost. I commend body and soul to Thy hands. Amen.
+
+
+It is the evening of Sedan, the most momentous victory of the century.
+The bivouac fires light up the sluggish waters of the Meuse, not yet
+run clear from blood. The burning villages still blaze on the lower
+slopes of the Ardennes, and the tired victors, as they point to the
+beleaguered town, exclaim in a kind of maze of sober triumph, "_Der
+Kaiser ist da!_" Hans is joyous with his fellows, chaunts with them
+Luther's glorious hymn, _Nun Danket alle Gott_; and as the watch-fire
+burns up he rummages in the _Gebetbuch_ for something that will chime
+with the current of his thoughts. He finds it in the prayer
+
+
+AFTER THE VICTORY
+
+God of armies! Thou hast given us success and victory against our
+enemies, and hast put them to flight before us. Not unto us, O Lord,
+not unto us, but to Thy holy name alone be all the honour! Thou hast
+done great things for us, therefore our hearts are glad. Without Thy
+aid we should have been worsted; only with God could we have done
+mighty deeds and subdued the power of the enemy. The eye of our general
+Thou hast quickened and guided; Thou hast strengthened the courage of
+our army, and lent it stubborn valour. Yet not the strategy of our
+leader, nor our courage, but Thy great mercy has given us the victory.
+Lord, who are we, that we dare to stand before Thee as soldiers, and
+that our enemies yield and fly before us? We are sinners, even as they
+are, and have deserved Thy fierce wrath and punishment; but for the
+sake of Thy name Thou hast been merciful to us, and hast so marked the
+sore peril of our threatened Fatherland, and hast heard the prayer of
+our king, our people, and our army, because we called upon Thy name,
+and held out our buckler in the name of the Lord of Sabaoth. Blessed be
+Thy holy name for ever and ever. Amen.
+
+
+The surrender of the French army of Sedan has been consummated, and
+Napoleon has departed into captivity; while Hans, marching down by
+Rethel, and through grand old Rheims, and along the smiling vinebergs
+of the Marne Valley, is now _vor Paris_. He is on the _Feldwache_ in
+the forest of Bondy before Raincy, and his turn comes to go on the
+uttermost sentry post. As the snow-drift blows to one side he can see
+the French watch-fires close by him in Bondy; nearer still he sees the
+three stones and the few spadefuls of earth behind which, as he knows,
+is the French outpost sentry confronting him. The straggling rays of
+the watery moon now obscured by snow-scud, now falling on him faintly,
+could not aid him in reading even if he dared avert his eyes from his
+front. But Hans had come to know the value of the little gray volume;
+and while he lay in the _Feldwache_ waiting for his spell of sentry go,
+he had learnt by heart the following prayer
+
+
+FOR OUTPOST SENTRY DUTY
+
+Lord Jesus Christ, I stand here on the foremost fringe of the camp, and
+am holding watch against the enemy; but wert Thou, Lord, not to guard
+us, then the watcher watcheth in vain. Therefore, I pray Thee, cover us
+with Thy grace as with a shield, and let Thy holy angels be round about
+us to guard and preserve us that we be not fallen upon at unawares by
+the enemy. Let the darkness of the night not terrify me; open mine eyes
+and ears that I may observe the oncoming of the enemy from afar, and
+that I may study well the care of myself and of the whole army. Keep me
+in my duty from sleeping on my post and from false security. Let me
+continually call to Thee with my heart, and bend Thyself unto me with
+Thine almighty presence. Be Thou with me and strengthen me, life and
+soul, that in frost, in heat, in rain, in snow, in all storms, I may
+retain my strength and return in health to the _Feldwache_. So I will
+praise Thy name and laud Thy protection. Amen.
+
+
+It is the evening of the 2nd of December. Duerot has tried his hardest
+to sup in Lagny, and has been balked by German valour. But not without
+terrible loss. On the plateau and by the party wall before Villiers,
+dead and wounded Germans lie very thick. In one of the little corries
+in the vineberg poor Hans has gone down. The shells from Fort Nogent
+are bursting all around, endangering the _Krankentraeger_ while
+prosecuting their duties of mercy and devotion. Hans has somehow bound
+up his shattered limb; and as he pulled his handkerchief from his
+pocket the little _Gebetbuch_ has dropped out with it. There is none on
+earth to comfort poor Hans; let him open the book and find consolation
+there in the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE SICK AND WOUNDED
+
+Dear and trusty Deliverer, Jesus Christ, I know in my necessity and
+pains no whither to flee to but to Thee, my Saviour, who hast suffered
+for me, and hast called unto all ailing and miserable ones, "Come unto
+Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
+Oh, relieve me, also, of Thy love and kindness, stretch out Thy healing
+and almighty hand, and restore me to health. Free me with Thy aid from
+my wounds and my pains, and console me with Thy grace who art
+vouchsafed to heal the broken heart, and to console all the sorrowful
+ones. Dost Thou take pleasure in our destruction? Our groaning touches
+Thee to the heart, and those whom Thou hast cast down Thou wilt lift up
+again. In Thee, Lord Jesus, I put my trust; I will not cease to
+importune Thee that Thou bringest me not to shame. Help me, save me, so
+I will praise Thee for ever. Amen.
+
+
+Alas for Gretchen and her brood! The 4th of December has dawned, and
+still Hans lies unfound in the corrie of the vineberg. He has no pain
+now, for his shattered limb has been numbed by the cruel frost. His
+eyes are waxing dim and he feels the end near at hand. The foul raven
+of the battlefield croaks above him in his enfeebled loneliness,
+impatient for its meal. The grim king of terrors is very close to thee,
+poor honest soldier of the Fatherland; but thou canst face him as
+boldly as thou hast faced the foe, with the help of the little book of
+which thy frost-chilled fingers have never lost the grip. The gruesome
+bird falls back as thou murmurest the prayer
+
+
+AT THE NEAR APPROACH OF DEATH
+
+Merciful heavenly Father, Thou God of all consolation, I thank Thee
+that Thou hast sent Thy dear Son Jesus Christ to die for me. He has
+through His death taken from death his sting, so that I have no cause
+to fear him more. In that I thank Thee, dear Father, and pray Thee
+receive my spirit in grace, as it now parts from life. Stand by me and
+hold me with Thine almighty hand, that I may conquer all the terrors of
+death. When my ears can hear no more, let Thy Spirit commune with my
+spirit, that I, as Thy child and co-heir with Christ, may speedily be
+with Jesus by Thee in heaven. When my eyes can see no more, so open my
+eyes of faith that I may then see Thy heaven open before me and the
+Lord Jesus on Thy right hand; that I may also be where He is. When my
+tongue shall refuse its utterance, then let Thy Spirit be my spokesman
+with indescribable breathings, and teach me to say with my heart,
+"Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit." Hear me, for Jesus
+Christ's sake. Amen.
+
+
+Would it harm the British soldier, think you, if in his kit there was a
+_Gebetbuch fuer Soldaten_?
+
+
+
+
+MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
+
+1879
+
+
+In broad essentials the marryings and givings in marriage of India
+nowadays do not greatly differ from these natural phenomena at home;
+but to use a florist's phrase, they are more inclined to "sport." The
+old days are over when consignments of damsels were made to the Indian
+marriage-market, in the assured certainty that the young ladies would
+be brides-elect before reaching the landing ghat. The increased
+facilities which improved means of transit now offer to bachelors for
+running home on short leave have resulted in making the Anglo-Indian
+"spin" rather a drug in the market; and operating in the same untoward
+direction is the growing predilection on the part of the Anglo-Indian
+bachelor for other men's wives, in preference to hampering himself with
+the encumbrance of a wife of his own. Among other social products of
+India old maids are now occasionally found; and the fair creature who
+on her first arrival would smile only on commissioners or colonels has
+been fain, after a few--yet too many--hot seasons have impaired her
+bloom and lowered her pretensions, to put up with a lieutenant or even
+with a dissenting _padre_. Slips between the cup and the lip are more
+frequent in India than in England. Loving and riding away is not wholly
+unknown in the Anglo-Indian community; and indeed, by both parties to
+the contract, engagements are frequently regarded in the mistaken light
+of ninepins. Hearts are seldom broken. At Simla during a late season a
+gallant captain persistently wore the willow till the war broke out,
+because he had been jilted in favour of a colonel; but his appetite
+rapidly recovered its tone on campaign, and he was reported to have
+reopened relations by correspondence from the tented field with a
+former object of his affections. Not long ago there arrived in an
+up-country station a box containing a wedding trousseau, which a lady
+had ordered out from home as the result of an engagement between her
+and a gallant warrior. But in the interval the warrior had departed
+elsewhere and had addressed to the lady a pleasant and affable
+communication, setting forth that there was insanity in his family and
+that he must have been labouring under an access of the family disorder
+when he had proposed to her. It was hard to get such a letter, and it
+must have been harder still for her to gaze on the abortive
+wedding-dress. But the lady did not abandon herself to despair; she
+took a practical view of the situation. She determined to keep the
+trousseau by her for six months, in case she might within that time
+achieve a fresh conquest, when it would come in happily. Should fortune
+not favour her thus far she meant to advertise the wedding-gear for
+sale.
+
+Miss Priest was no "spin" lingering on in spinsterhood against her
+will. It is true that when I saw her first she had already been "out"
+three years, but she might have been married a dozen times over had she
+chosen. I have seen many pretty faces in the fair Anglo-Indian
+sisterhood, but Miss Priest had a brightness and a sparkle that were
+all her own. At flirting, at riding, at walking, at dancing, at
+performing in amateur theatricals, at making fools of men in an airy,
+ruthless, good-hearted fashion, Miss Priest, as an old soldier might
+say, "took the right of the line." There was a fresh vitality about the
+girl that drew men and women alike to her. You met her at dawn
+cantering round Jakko on her pony. Before breakfast she had been
+rinking for an hour, with as likely as not a waltz or two thrown in.
+She never missed a picnic to Annandale, the Waterfalls, or Mashobra.
+Another turn at the Benmore rink before dinner, and for sure a dance
+after, rounded off this young lady's normal day during the Simla
+season. But if pleasure-loving, capricious, and reckless, she scraped
+through the ordeal of Simla gossip without incurring scandal. She was
+such a frank, honest girl, that malign tongues might assail her indeed,
+but ineffectually. And she had given proof that she knew how to take
+care of herself, although her only protectress was a perfectly
+inoffensive mother. On the occasion of the Prince of Wales's visit to
+Lahore, had she not boxed the ears of a burly and somewhat boorish
+swain, who had chosen the outside of an elephant as an eligible
+_locale_ for a proposal, the uncouth abruptness of which did not accord
+with her notion of the fitness of things?
+
+Miss Priest may be said to have lived in a chronic state of
+engagements. The engagements never seemed to come to anything, but that
+was on account mostly of the young lady's wilfulness. It bothered her
+to be engaged to the same man for more than from a week to ten days on
+end. No bones were broken; the gentleman resigned the position at her
+behest, and she would genially dance with him the same night. Malice
+and heartburning were out of the question with a lissom, winsome,
+witching fairy like this, who played with her life as a child does with
+soap-bubbles, and who was as elusory and irresponsible as a summer-day
+rainbow. But one season at Mussoorie Miss Priest contracted an
+engagement somewhat less evanescent. Mussoorie of all Himalayan
+hill-stations is the most demure and proper. Simla occasionally is
+convulsed by scandals, although dispassionate inquiry invariably proves
+that there is nothing in them. The hot blood of the quick and fervid
+Punjaub--casual observers have called the Punjaub stupid, but the
+remark applies only to its officials--is apt to stir the current of
+life at Murree. The chiefs of the North-West are invariably so
+intolerably proper that occasional revolt from their austerity is all
+but forced on Nynee Tal, the sanatorium of that province. But
+Mussoorie, undisturbed by the presence of frolicsome viceroys or
+austere lieutenant-governors, is a limpid pool of pleasant propriety.
+It is not so much that it is decorous as that it is genuinely good; it
+is a favourite resort of clergymen and of clergymen's wives. It was at
+Mussoorie that Miss Priest met Captain Hambleton, a gallant gunner.
+They danced together at the Assembly Rooms; they rode in company round
+the Camel's Back; they went to the same picnics at "The Glen." The
+captain proposed and was accepted. For about the nineteenth time Miss
+Priest was an engaged young lady. And Captain Hambleton was a lover of
+rather a different stamp from the men with whom her name previously had
+been nominally coupled. He was in love and he was a gentleman; he had
+proposed to the girl, not that he and she should be merely engaged but
+that they should be married also. This view of the subject was novel to
+Miss Priest and at first she thought it rather a bore; but the captain
+pegged away and gradually the lady came rather to relish the situation.
+Men and women concurred that the wayward pinions of the fair Bella were
+at last trimmed, if not clipped; and to do her justice the general
+opinion was that, once married, she would make an excellent wife. As
+the close of the Mussoorie season approached the invitations went out
+for Bella Priest's wedding, and for "cake and wine afterwards at the
+house." The wedding-breakfast is a comparatively rare _tamasha_ in
+India; the above is the formula of the usual invitation at the
+hill-stations.
+
+It happened that just two days before the day fixed for the marriage of
+Miss Priest and Captain Hambleton, there was a fancy-dress ball in the
+Assembly Rooms at Mussoorie. I think that as a rule fancy-dress balls
+are greater successes in India than at home. People in India give their
+minds more to the selection and to the elaboration of costumes; and
+there is less of that _mauvaise honte_ when masquerading in fancy
+costume, which makes a ball of this description at home so wooden and
+wanting in go. At a fancy ball in India "the devil" acts accordingly,
+and manages his tail with adroitness and grace. It is a fact that at a
+recent fancy-dress ball in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a
+lady who appeared as "chess," with the chess-men which had formed her
+head-dress. This Mussoorie ball, being the last of the season, was to
+excel all its predecessors in inventive variety. A _padre's_ wife
+conceived the bright idea of appearing as Eve; and only abandoned the
+notion on finding that, no matter what species of thread she used, it
+tore the fig-leaves--a result which, besides causing her a
+disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by engendering doubts as
+to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the creation. Miss Priest
+determined to go to this ball, although doing so under the
+circumstances was scarcely in accordance with the _convenances_; but
+she was a girl very much addicted to having her own way. Captain
+Hambleton did not wish her to go, and there was a temporary coolness
+between the two on the subject; but he yielded and they made it up. The
+principle as to her going once established, Miss Priest's next task was
+to set about the invention of a costume. It was to be her last effort
+as a "spin"; and she determined it should be worthy of her reputation
+for brilliant inventiveness. She had shone as a _Vivandiere_, as the
+Daughter of the Regiment, as a Greek Slave, Grace Darling, and so
+forth, times out of number; but those characters were stale. Miss
+Priest had a form of supple rounded grace, nor had Diana shapelier
+limbs. A great inspiration came to her as she sauntered pondering on
+the Mall. Let her go as Ariel, all gauze, flesh-tints, and natural
+curves. She hailed the happy thought and invested in countless yards of
+gauze. She had the tights already by her.
+
+Now Miss Priest, knowing the idiosyncrasy of Captain Hambleton, had
+little doubt that he would put his foot down upon Ariel. But she knew
+he loved her, and with characteristic recklessness determined to trust
+to that and to luck. She too loved him, even better, perhaps, than
+Ariel; but she hoped to keep both the captain and the character. She
+did not, however, tell him of her design, waiting perhaps for a
+favourable opportunity. But even in Arcadian Mussoorie there are the
+"d----d good-natured friends" of whom Byron wrote; and one of those--of
+course it was a woman--told Captain Hambleton of the character in which
+Miss Priest intended to appear at the fancy ball. The captain was a
+headstrong sort of man--what in India is called _zubburdustee_. Instead
+of calling on the girl and talking to her as a wise man would have
+done, he sat down and wrote her a terse letter forbidding her to appear
+as Ariel, and adding that if she should persist in doing so their
+engagement must be considered at an end. Miss Priest naturally fired
+up. Strangely enough, being a woman, she did not reply to the captain's
+letter; but when the evening of the ball came, she duly appeared as
+Ariel with rather less gauze about her shapely limbs than had been her
+original intention. She created an immense sensation. Some of the
+ladies frowned, others turned up their noses, yet others tucked in
+their skirts when she approached; and all vowed that they would decline
+to touch Miss Priest's hand in the quadrille. Miss Priest did not care
+a jot for these demonstrations, and she never danced square dances.
+Among the gentlemen she created a perfect furore.
+
+Captain Hambleton was present at the ball. For the greater part of the
+evening he stood near the door with his eye fixed on Miss Priest,
+apparently rather in sorrow than in anger. His gaze seemed but to
+stimulate her to more vivacious flirtation; and she "carried on above a
+bit," as a cynical subaltern remarked, with the gallant major to whom
+she had been penultimately engaged. Toward the close of the evening
+Captain Hambleton relinquished his post of observation, seemed to
+accept the situation, and was observed at supper-time paying marked
+attention to a married lady with whom his name had been to some extent
+coupled not long before his engagement to Miss Priest.
+
+Next morning Miss Priest took time by the forelock. She waited for no
+further communication from Captain Hambleton; he had already sent his
+ultimatum and she had dared her fate. The morrow was the day fixed for
+the marriage. Many people had been bidden. Mussoorie, including
+Landour, is a large station, and the postal delivery of letters is not
+particularly punctual. So she adopted a plan for warning off the
+wedding-guests identical with that employed in Indian stations for
+circulating notifications as to lawn-tennis gatherings and unimportant
+intimations generally. At the head of the paper is written the
+notification, underneath are the names of the persons concerned. The
+document is intrusted to a messenger known as a _chuprassee_, who goes
+away on his circuit; and each person writes "Seen" opposite his or her
+name in testimony of being posted in the intelligence conveyed in the
+notification. Miss Priest divided the invited guests into four rounds
+and despatched four _chuprassees_, each bearing a document curtly
+announcing that "Miss Priest's marriage will not come off as arranged,
+and the invitations therefore are to be regarded as cancelled."
+
+Miss Priest had no fortune, and her mother was by no means wealthy. It
+may seem strange to English readers--not nearly so much so, however, as
+to Anglo-Indian ones--that Captain Hambleton had thought it a graceful
+and kindly attention to provide the wedding-cake. It had reached him
+across the hills from Peliti's the night of the ball, and now here it
+was on his hands--a great white elephant. Whether in the hope that it
+might be regarded as an olive-branch, whether that he burned to be rid
+of it somehow, or whether, knowing that Miss Priest was bound to get
+married some day and thinking that it would be a convenience if she had
+a bridecake by her handy for the occasion, there is no evidence.
+Anyhow, he sent it to Mrs. Priest with his compliments. That very
+sensible woman did not send it back with a cutting message, as some
+people would have done. Having considerable Indian experience, she had
+learned practical wisdom and the short-sighted folly of cutting
+messages. She kept the bridecake, and enclosed to the gallant captain
+Gosslett's bill for the dozen of simkin that excellent firm had sent in
+to wash it down wherewithal.
+
+Bridecakes are bores to carry about from place to place, and Miss
+Priest and her mother were rather birds of passage. Peliti declined to
+take this particular bridecake back, for all Simla had seen it in his
+window and he saw no possibility of "working it in." So the Priests,
+mother and daughter, determined to realise on it in a somewhat original
+and indeed cynical fashion. The cake was put up to be raffled for.
+
+All the station took tickets for the fun of the thing. Captain
+Hambleton was anxious to show that there was no ill-feeling, and did
+not find himself so unhappy as he had expected--perhaps from the
+_redintegratio amoris_ in another quarter; so he took his ticket in the
+raffle like other people. It is needless to say that he won; and the
+cake duly came back to him.
+
+Had Captain Hambleton been a superstitious man, he might have regarded
+this strange occurrence as indicating that the Fates willed it that he
+should compass somehow a union with Miss Priest. But the captain had no
+superstition in his nature; and, indeed, had begun to think that he was
+well out of it; besides which it was currently reported that Miss
+Priest had already re-engaged herself to another man. But the bridecake
+was upon him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what
+the devil to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody
+would take tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the _khud_
+(_Anglice_, precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he
+reflected that this would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate
+soreness on his part. It cost him a good many pegs before he thought
+the matter out in all its bearings, for, as has been said, he was a
+gunner, but as he sauntered away from the club in the small hours a
+happy thought came to him.
+
+He would give a picnic at which the bogey bridecake should figure
+conspicuously, and then be laid finally by the process of demolition.
+His leave was nearly up; he had experienced much hospitality and a
+picnic would be a graceful and genial acknowledgment thereof. And he
+would ask the Priests just like other people, and no doubt they would
+enter into the spirit of the thing and not send a "decline." Bella, he
+knew, liked picnics nearly as well as balls, and it must be a powerful
+reason indeed that would keep her away from either.
+
+Captain Hambleton's picnic was the last of the season, and everybody
+called it the brightest. "The Glen" resounded to the laughter at
+tiffin, and the shades of night were falling ere stray couples turned
+up from its more sequestered recesses. Amid loud cheers Miss Priest,
+although still Miss Priest, cut up her own bridecake with a serene
+equanimity that proved the charming sweetness of her disposition. There
+was no marriage-bell yet all went merry as a marriage-bell, which is
+occasionally rather a sombre tintinnabulation; and the _debris_ of the
+bridecake finally fell to the sweeper.
+
+I would fain that it were possible, having a regard to truth, to round
+off this little story prettily by telling how in a glade of "The Glen"
+after the demolition of the bridecake, Miss Priest and the captain
+"squared matters," were duly married and lived happily ever after, as
+the story-books say. But this consummation was not attained. Miss
+Priest indeed was in the glade, but it was not with the captain, or at
+least this particular captain; and as for him, he spent the afternoon
+placidly smoking cigarettes as he lay at the feet of his married
+consoler. To the best of my knowledge Miss Priest is Miss Priest still.
+
+
+
+
+A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
+
+
+Referring to a particular phase of this memorable combat, Mr. Kinglake
+wrote: "The question is not ripe for conclusive decision; some of those
+who, as is supposed, might throw much light upon it, have hitherto
+maintained silence." It was in 1868 that the fourth volume--the
+Balaclava volume--of Mr. Kinglake's History was published. Since he
+wrote, singularly few of those who could throw light on obscure points
+of the battle have broken silence. Lord George Paget's Journal
+furnished little fresh information, since Mr. Kinglake had previously
+used it extensively. There is but a spark or two of new light in Sir
+Edward Hamley's more recent compendium. As the years roll on the number
+of survivors diminishes in an increasing ratio, nor does one hear of
+anything valuable left behind by those who fall out of the thinning
+ranks. The reader of the period, in default of any other authority,
+betakes himself to Kinglake. There are those who term Kinglake's
+volumes romance rather than history--or, more mildly, the romance of
+history. But this is unjust and untrue. It would be impertinent to
+speak of his style; that gift apart, his quest for accurate information
+was singularly painstaking, searching, and scrupulous. Yet it cannot be
+said that he was always well served. He had perforce to lean on the
+statements of men who were partisans, writing as he did so near his
+period that nearly all men charged with information were partisans.
+British officers are not given to thrusting on a chronicler tales of
+their own prowess. But _esprit de corps_ in our service is so
+strong--and, spite of its incidental failings that are almost merits
+what lover of his country could wish to see it weakened?--that men of
+otherwise implicit veracity will strain truth, and that is a weak
+phrase, to exalt the conduct of their comrades and their corps. No
+doubt Mr. Kinglake occasionally suffered because of this propensity;
+and, with every respect, his literary _coup d'oeil_, except as regards
+the Alma where he saw for himself, and Inkerman where no _coup d'oeil_
+was possible, was somewhat impaired by his having to make his picture
+of battle a mosaic, each fragment contributed by a distinct actor
+concentrated on his own particular bit of fighting. If ever military
+history becomes a fine art we may find the intending historian, alive
+to the proverb that "onlookers see most of the game," detailing capable
+persons with something of the duty of the subordinate umpire of a sham
+fight, to be answerable each for a given section of the field, the
+historian himself acting as the correlative of the umpire-in-chief.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF BALACLAVA PLAIN.
+
+EXPLANATIONS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Figures 1 to 6 indicate Redoubts.
+
+A. Point of collision.
+
+B. "C" Troop R.H.A.'s position during combat, in support Heavy Cavalry.
+
+C. "C" Troop in action against fugitive Russian Cavalry about D., range
+about 750 yards.
+
+E. Lord Lucan's position watching advance of Russian Cavalry mass.
+
+F. Position "C" Troop when approached by Cardigan and Paget after Light
+Cavalry charge.
+
+G. Position "C" Troop in support Light Cavalry charge.
+
+H. Russian Cavalry mass advancing at trot up "North" valley.
+
+HH. Russian Cavalry General and Staff trotting along Causeway heights,
+with view into both valleys.
+
+K. Line of Light Cavalry charge.
+
+L. Light Brigade during Heavy Cavalry charge.
+
+M. "I" Troop R.H.A. during ditto.
+
+N. Lord Raglan's position (approximate).
+
+O. Scarlett's five squadrons beginning their advance.
+
+P. Russian Cavalry mass halted.]
+
+It is true that the battle of Balaclava was fought to "a gallery"
+consisting of the gazers who looked down into the plain from the upland
+of the Chersonese. But of close and virtually independent spectators of
+the battle's most thrilling episodes, so near the climax of the Heavy
+Cavalry charge that they heard the clash of the sabres, so close to the
+lip of the Valley of Death that they discerned the wounds of our
+stricken troopers who strewed its sward and could greet and be greeted
+by the broken groups that rode back out of the "mouth of hell," there
+was but one small body of people. This body consisted of the officers
+and men of "C" Troop, Royal Horse Artillery. "C" Troop had been
+encamped from 1st October until the morning of the battle close to the
+Light division, in that section of the British position known as the
+Right Attack. When the fighting began in the Balaclava plain on the
+morning of the 25th, it promptly started for the scene of action.
+Pursuing the nearest way to the plain by the Woronzoff road, at the
+point known as the "Cutting" it received an order from Lord Raglan to
+take a more circuitous route, as by the more direct one it was
+following it might become exposed to fire from Russian cannon on the
+Fedoukine heights. Pursuing the circuitous route it came out into the
+plain through the "Col" then known as the "Barrier," crossed the
+"South" or "Inner" valley, and reached the left rear of Scarlett's
+squadrons formed up for the Heavy Cavalry charge. Here it received an
+order from Brigadier-General Strangways, who commanded the Artillery,
+with which it could not comply; and thenceforward "C" Troop throughout
+the day acted independently, at the discretion of its enterprising and
+self-reliant commander. What it saw and what it did are recorded in a
+couple of chapters of a book entitled _From Coruna to Sevastopol_.
+[Footnote: _From Coruna to Sevastopol_: The History of "C" Battery, "A"
+Brigade (late "C" Troop), Royal Horse Artillery. W.H. Allen and Co.]
+This volume was published some years ago, but the interesting and vivid
+details given in its pages of the Balaclava combats and the light it
+throws on many obscure incidents of the day have been strangely
+overlooked. The author of the chapters was an officer in the Troop
+whose experiences he shared and describes, and is a man well known in
+the service to be possessed of acute observation, strong memory, and
+implicit veracity. The present writer has been favoured by this officer
+with much information supplementary to that given in his published
+chapters, which is embodied in the following account throughout which
+the officer will be designated as "the 'C' Troop chronicler."
+
+The "Plain of Balaclava" is divided into two distinct valleys by a low
+ridge known as the "Causeway Heights," which bisects it in the
+direction of its length and is everywhere easily practicable for all
+arms. The valley nearest to the sea and the town of Balaclava has been
+variously termed the "South" and the "Inner" valley; it was on the
+slope descending to it from the ridge that our Heavy Cavalry won their
+success; the valley beyond the ridge is the "North" or "Outer" valley,
+down which, their faces set eastward, sped to glorious disaster the
+"noble six hundred" of the Light Brigade. On the north the plain is
+bounded by the Fedoukine heights; on the west by the steep face of the
+Chersonese upland whereon was the allied main position before
+Sevastopol during the siege; on the south by the broken ground between
+the plain and the sea; on the east by the River Tchernaya and the
+Kamara hills. Our weakness in the plain invited attack. At Kadikoei, on
+its southern verge, Sir Colin Campbell covered Balaclava with a
+Scottish regiment, a Field battery, and some Turks. Near the western
+end of the South valley were the camps of the cavalry division.
+Straggled along the Causeway heights was a series of weak earthworks
+whose total armament consisted of nine iron guns, and among which were
+distributed some six or seven battalions of Turkish infantry. At
+daybreak of 25th October the Russian General Liprandi with a force of
+22,000 infantry, 3300 cavalry, and 78 guns, took the offensive by
+driving the Turkish garrisons out of these earthworks in succession,
+beginning with the most easterly--No. 1, known as "Canrobert's Hill."
+The Turks holding it fought well and stood a storm and heavy loss
+before they were expelled. The other earthworks fell with less and less
+resistance, and the first three, with seven out of their nine guns,
+remained in the Russian possession.
+
+During the morning, while the Russians were taking the earthworks along
+the ridge, our two cavalry brigades, in the words of General Hamley,
+had been manoeuvring so as to threaten the flanks of any force which
+might approach Balaclava, without committing themselves to an action in
+which they would have been without the support of infantry. Ultimately,
+until his infantry should become available, Lord Raglan drew in the
+cavalry division to a position on the left of redoubt No. 6, near the
+foot of the Chersonese upland.
+
+While it was temporarily quiescent there Liprandi was engaging in an
+operation of enterprise rare in the record of Russian cavalry. General
+Ryjoff at the head of a great body of horse started on an advance up
+the North valley. Presently he detached four squadrons to his left,
+which moved toward where Sir Colin Campbell was in position at the head
+of the Kadikoei gorge, was repulsed without difficulty by that soldier's
+fire, and rode back whence it had come. The main body of Russian horse,
+computed by unimaginative authorities to be about 2000 strong,
+continued up the valley till it was about abreast of redoubt No. 4
+[Footnote: See Map.], when it halted; checked apparently, writes
+Kinglake, by the fire of two guns from a battery on the edge of the
+upland. The "C" Troop chronicler states that in addition to "a few"
+shots fired by this battery (manned by Turks), the guns of "I" troop
+R.H.A., temporarily stationed in a little hollow in front of the Light
+Brigade [Footnote: See Map.], fired rapidly one round each,
+"haphazard," over the high ground in their front. General Hamley
+assigns no ground for the Russian halt, but mentions that just at the
+moment of collision between our Heavies and the Russian mass "three
+guns" on the edge of the upland were fired on the latter. From whatever
+cause, the Russian cavalry wheeled obliquely to the leftward, crossed
+the Causeway heights about redoubt No. 5, and began to descend the
+slope of the South valley. Kinglake heard of no ground for believing
+that the Russian horse thus wheeling southward, were cognisant of the
+presence of the Heavies in the valley they were entering. But the "C"
+Troop chronicler states that as the Troop was crossing the plain a few
+Russian horsemen were seen by it trotting fast along the top of the
+ridge [Footnote: See Map.], who, when almost immediately afterwards the
+head of the Russian column showed itself on the skyline, were set down
+as the General commanding it and his staff.
+
+Kinglake observes that the Russians have declared their object in this
+operation to have been the destruction of a non-existent artillery park
+near Kadikoei, while some of our people imagined it to have been a real
+attempt on Balaclava. But up the centre of the North valley was neither
+the directest nor the safest way to Kadikoei, much less to Balaclava. Is
+it not more probable that the enterprise was of the nature merely of a
+sort of "snap-offensive"; while as yet the allied infantry visibly
+pouring down the slopes of the upland were innocuous because of
+distance and while the sole occupants of the plain were a couple of
+weak cavalry brigades and a single horse battery? Ryjoff on the ridge
+could see in his front at least portions of the Light Brigade; its fire
+told him the horse battery was thereabouts too, and there were those
+shots from the cannon on the upland. Is it not feasible that, looking
+down on his left to Scarlett's poor six squadrons--his two following
+regiments were then some distance off--and seeing those squadrons as
+yet without accompanying artillery, he should have judged them his
+easier quarry and ordered the wheel that should bring his avalanche
+down on them?
+
+Kinglake recounts how, while our cavalry division yet stood intact near
+the foot of the upland, Lord Raglan had noticed the instability of the
+Turks under Campbell's command at Kadikoei and had sent Lord Lucan
+directions to move down eight squadrons of Heavies to support them; how
+Scarlett started with the Inniskillings, Greys, and Fifth Dragoon
+Guards, numbering six squadrons, to be followed by the two squadrons of
+the Royals; how the march toward Kadikoei was proceeding along the South
+valley, when all of a sudden Elliot, General Scarlett's aide-de-camp,
+glancing up leftward at the ridge "saw its top fretted with lances, and
+in another moment the skyline broken by evident squadrons of horse."
+Then, Kinglake proceeds, Scarlett's resolve was instantaneous; he gave
+the command "Left wheel into line!" and confronted the mass gathering
+into sight over against him. Soon after Scarlett had started Lord Lucan
+had learned of the advance up the North valley of the great mass of
+Russian cavalry, which he had presently descried himself, as also its
+change of direction southward across the Causeway ridge; and after
+giving Lord Cardigan "parting instructions" which that officer
+construed into compulsory inactivity on his part when a great
+opportunity presented itself, he had galloped off at speed to overtake
+Scarlett and give him directions for prompt conflict with the Russian
+cavalry. Thus far Kinglake.
+
+The testimony of the "C" Troop chronicler differs from the above
+statement in every detail. He significantly points out that Kinglake
+does not, as is his custom, quote the words of Lord Raglan's order
+directing the march of the Heavies to Kadikoei. His averment is to the
+following effect. When the cavalry division after its manoeuvring of
+the morning was retiring by Lord Raglan's command along the South
+valley toward the foot of the upland, it was followed as closely as
+they dared by some Cossacks who busied themselves in spearing and
+capturing the unfortunate Turks flying from the ridge toward Kadikoei
+athwart the rear of the British squadrons. Eventually the Cossacks
+reached the camp of the Light Brigade and set about stabbing and
+hacking at the sick and non-effective horses left standing at the
+picket-lines. Lord Raglan from his commanding position on the upland
+saw those Cossacks working mischief in our lines, and sent a message to
+Lord Lucan "to take some cavalry forward and protect the camp from
+being destroyed." The "C" Troop chronicler has in his possession a
+letter from the actual bearer of this message, to the effect that he
+duly delivered it to Lord Lucan and that consequent on it his lordship
+moved forward some heavy cavalry into the plain toward the
+picket-lines. Testimony to be presently noted will indicate the
+importance of this statement. The chronicler denies that Lord Lucan, as
+Kinglake states, galloped after Scarlett after having given Lord
+Cardigan his "parting instructions." No doubt he did give those
+instructions, when apprised by Lord Raglan's aide-de-camp of the
+threatening advance of Russian horse. But what he then did, assured as
+he was of the stationary attitude of the heavy squadrons sent out to
+protect the camp, was to ride forward along the ridge-line to discern
+for himself where, if indeed anywhere, the Russians were intending to
+strike. He most daringly remained at a forward and commanding point of
+the ridge [Footnote: See Map.] until actually chased off his ground by
+the van of the Russian wheel, and he then galloped straight down the
+slope to join Scarlett drawing out his squadrons for the conflict with
+the Russian mass whose leading files Elliot's keen eye had discerned on
+the skyline.
+
+If Kinglake were right as to his alleged movement of the Heavies toward
+Kadikoei and its sudden arrestment because of Elliot's discovery, "C"
+Troop, as it approached them, would have seen the squadrons still in
+motion. But the chronicler testifies that "C" Troop, while moving to
+the scene of action and when still more than a mile and a half distant
+(at least fifteen minutes at the pace the weakened gun-teams
+travelled), had a full view of the South valley. And it then saw five
+squadrons of heavy cavalry thus early halted in the plain near the
+cavalry picket-lines, fronting towards the ridge and apparently
+perfectly dressed--the Greys (two squadrons deep) in the centre,
+recognised by their bearskins; a helmeted regiment (also two squadrons
+deep) on the left (afterwards known to be the 5th Dragoon Guards); and
+one helmeted squadron on the right (2nd squadron Inniskillings). A
+sixth squadron (1st Inniskillings) was visible some distance to the
+right rear and it was also fronting towards the ridge. This force, so
+and thus early positioned, consisted, avers the chronicler, of the
+identical troops which Kinglake erroneously describes as straggling
+hurriedly into deployment under the urgency of Scarlett and Lucan to
+cope with the suddenly disclosed adversary.
+
+When "C" Troop and its chronicler reached the rear of the formed-up
+squadrons they were found in the same formation as when first observed,
+but the whole had in the interval been moved somewhat to the right,
+farther into the plain, with intent no doubt to be clear of obstacles
+on the previous front. Kinglake speaks throughout of the force that
+first charged under Scarlett--"Scarlett's three hundred," as consisting
+of three squadrons ranked thus:--
+
+
+  -------------------  -------------------    -------------------
+       2nd squad.           lst squad.      2nd squad. Inniskillings
+
+        \__________________________/
+                    Greys.
+
+
+And, although his words are not so clear as usual, he appears to
+believe that the 5th Dragoon Guards, whom in his plan he places some
+little distance to the left rear of the Greys, were actually the last
+to move to the attack, of all the five regiments participating in the
+heavy cavalry onslaught. The "C" Troop chronicler, noting details, be
+it remembered, from his position immediately in rear of the cavalry
+force which first charged, describes its composition and formation
+thus:--
+
+
+     -------------------          -------------------  -------------------
+  Front squad. 5th Dr. Guards.     1st squad. Greys.        2nd squad.
+                                                           Inniskillings.
+     -------------------          -------------------
+  Rear squad. 5th Dr. Guards.      2nd squad. Greys.
+
+
+in all five squadrons, instead of Mr. Kinglake's three. Nor, according
+to the chronicler, did the three squadrons in first line start
+simultaneously, as Kinglake distinctly conveys. The leading squadron of
+the Greys moved off first, and just as it was breaking into a gallop
+was temporarily hampered by the swerving of the horse of Colonel
+Griffiths, who was struck in the head by a bullet from the halted
+Russians' carbine fire. Next moved, almost simultaneously, the 2nd
+squadron Inniskillings and the front squadron 5th Dragoon Guards;
+thirdly, the 2nd squadron Greys, and finally the rear squadron 5th
+Dragoon Guards. Lord Lucan is represented as having been "personally
+concerned in or approving of everything connected with the five
+squadrons at this moment," galloping to each in succession, giving
+orders when and in what sequence it was to start, what section of the
+Russian front it was to strike, and exerting himself to the utmost to
+have everything fully understood. His errors were in omitting to call
+in the outlying regiments of the brigade, and either now--or earlier
+before he left the ridge, specifically to order Lord Cardigan to fall
+on the flank of the Russians at the moment when their front should be
+_aux prises_ with Scarlett's heavy squadrons. "C" Troop's position was
+such that it could command, over the heads of the stationary Heavies,
+the gradual slope up to the Russian front, and every detail of the
+charge was under its eyes. Scarlett's burnished helmet and plain blue
+coat were conspicuous in front. The Troop also had the opportunity of
+making a deliberate study of the Russian cavalry both before and during
+the combat.
+
+Its front had the appearance of three strong squadrons; its formation
+was either close or quarter distance column--probably the former, since
+the column could nowhere be seen through from front to rear; its depth
+halted was about the same as its breadth of front; its pace across the
+ridge was a sharp trot and its discipline was indicated by the
+smartness with which it took ground to the left. Kinglake describes the
+serried mass as encircled by a loose fringe of satellites, but the "C"
+Troop chronicler saw neither skirmishers, flankers, nor scouts; and no
+guns were discerned or heard, although General Hamley says that as the
+huge cohort swept down batteries darted out from it and threw shells
+against the troops on the upland. No Lancers were seen with the column,
+certainly none with pennons. The "partial deployment" of which Kinglake
+speaks, consisting of "wings or forearms" devised to cover the flanks
+or fold inwards on the front, did not make itself apparent to any
+observer of "C" Troop; and indeed the present writer never knew a
+Russian who had heard of it, the species of formation adumbrated, so
+far as he is aware, being confined to Zulu impis. It was noticed, and
+this is not rare, that on the halt the centre pulled up a little
+earlier than the flanks, so that the latter were somewhat prolonged and
+advanced. The halt was quite brief and a slower advance ensued without
+correction of the frontal dressing. Presently there was another halt
+and some pistol or carbine fire from the central squadron on the
+advancing first squadron of the Greys. Kinglake makes the Russian front
+meet our assault halted, but the "C" Troop chronicler declares that
+when the collision occurred the mass were actually moving forward but
+at "a pace so slow that it could hardly be called a trot." General
+Hamley describes "the impetus of the enemy's column carrying it on, and
+pressing our combatants back for a short space," and the chronicler
+speaks of the Russians as surging forward after the impact, but without
+bearing back our people.
+
+It is extremely difficult for the reader of a detailed narrative of a
+combat that may become a landmark in the military history of a nation,
+to realise that it may have been fought and finished in no longer time
+than it has taken him to read the few paragraphs of introductory
+matter. Mr. Kinglake has devoted a whole volume to the battle of
+Balaclava, and four-fifths of it deals with the two cavalry
+fights--Scarlett's charge, and the charge of the Light Brigade. The
+latter deed was enacted from start to finish within the space of
+five-and-twenty minutes; as regards the former, from the first
+appearance of the Russian troopers on the skyline to their defeat and
+flight a period of eight minutes is the outside calculation. General
+Hamley, an eyewitness, says "some four or five minutes." During those
+minutes "C" Troop R.H.A. under Brandling's shrewd and independent
+guidance was moving slowly forward on the right of the ground that had
+been covered by the charging Heavies. There was no opportunity for its
+intervention while the melley lasted. Even when the Russian squadrons
+broke it could not for the moment act while the redcoats were still
+blended with the gray. But Brandling saw that his chance was nigh; he
+galloped forward to the point marked C on the map, unlimbered, and
+stood intent. Kinglake states that the fugitive Russians, hanging
+together as closely as they could, retreated by the way they had come
+and Hamley describes them as vanishing beyond the ridge. Kinglake also
+says that "I" Troop R.H.A. (accompanying the Light Brigade) fired a few
+shots at the retreating horsemen, against whom Barker's battery, from
+its position near Kadikoei, also came into action. The "C" Troop
+chronicler traverses those statements. His testimony is that the
+Russian line of retreat was by their left rear along the slope of the
+South valley, and not immediately over the ridge; that the mass was
+spread over acres of ground; and that their officers were trying to
+rally the men and had actually got some ranks formed, when "C" Troop
+opened fire from about point C in the general direction of point D. "I"
+Troop was out of sight, he says, and Barker out of range; neither came
+into action; but "C" Troop, of whose presence in the field Kinglake
+apparently was unaware, fired forty-nine shot and shells, broke up the
+attempted rally, and punished the Russians severely. The range was
+about 750 paces.
+
+At the time when the Light Brigade started on its "mad-brained" charge
+down the North valley, "C" Troop was halted dismounted on the slope of
+the South valley a little below redoubt No. 5. In rear of it was the
+Heavy Cavalry Brigade, halted on the scene of its recent victorious
+combat. Lord Lucan was some little distance to the front. "C" Troop
+presently saw him trot away over the ridge in the direction of the
+Light Brigade, a scrap of paper in his hand at which he kept
+looking--doubtless the memorable order which Nolan had just brought
+him--and a group of staff officers, among whom was Nolan, behind him.
+Out of curiosity Brandling with his trumpeter rode up to the crest,
+whence he commanded a view into the North valley. By and by some of the
+Heavies were moved over the crest, no doubt the Royals and Greys which
+Scarlett was to lead forward in support of the Light Brigade. All was
+still quiet but for an occasional shot from a Russian battery about
+redoubt No. 2, when suddenly Brandling came galloping back shouting
+"Mount! mount!" and telling his officers as he came in that the Light
+Cavalry had begun an advance on the other side of the ridge. But that
+he had happened to ride to the crest, the charge of the Light Brigade
+would have begun and ended without the knowledge of "C" Troop. No order
+from any source reached it, and Brandling, acting on his own
+initiative, took his guns rapidly to the front along the inner edge of
+the ridge and unlimbered at point G. He durst not fire into the bottom
+of the North valley where our light horsemen were mixed up with the
+enemy; all the diversion he could effect was to open on the Russian
+cannon-smoke directly in his front, about redoubt No. 2. Even from this
+he had soon to desist, being without support and threatened by the
+Russian cavalry, and he retired by the way he had advanced, to point F,
+where the troop halted near the Heavies, whose advance Lord Lucan had
+arrested resolving that they at all events should not be destroyed.
+These regiments had been moved toward the ridge out of the line of fire
+in the North valley, and were kept shifting their position and
+gradually retiring, suffering frequent casualties from the Russian
+artillery about redoubt No. 2 until they finally halted near the crest
+in the vicinity of "C" Troop's latest position at point F.
+
+At this point only the left-hand gun of "C" Troop was on the crest,
+with a view into the North valley; the other guns were on the southern
+slope. But little had been previously seen of the terrible and glorious
+experiences of the Light Brigade; and now what was witnessed was not
+the glory but the horror of battle. For the wounded of the charge were
+passing to the rear, shattered and maimed, some staggering on foot,
+others reeling in their saddles, calling to the gunners and the Heavies
+to look at a "poor broken leg" or a dangling arm. Brandling and his
+officers held their flasks to the poor fellows' mouths as long as the
+contents lasted. The "C" Troop chronicler, whose narrative I have been
+following, tells how Captain Morris, who commanded the 17th Lancers,
+was carried past the front of the troop towards Kadikoei, dreadfully
+wounded about the head and calling loudly: "Lord, have mercy on my
+soul!" Kinglake gives a wholly different account of Captain Morris's
+removal from the field; but the "C" Troop chronicler is quite firm on
+his version, and explains that the 17th Lancers and "C" Troop having
+lain together shortly before the war all the people of the latter knew
+and identified Captain Morris.
+
+Balaclava is rather an old story now, and some readers may require to
+be reminded that the Light Brigade charged in two lines, the first line
+being led by Lord Cardigan, the second by Lord George Paget; that the
+first line rode into the Russian batteries considerably in advance of
+the second, the latter having advanced at a more measured pace; and
+that the second line, with sore diminished ranks and accompanied by a
+couple of groups rather than detachments of the first, came back later
+than did the few survivors of Cardigan's regiments other than the
+groups referred to. The aspersion on Cardigan was that he returned
+prematurely, instead of remaining to share the fortunes of the second
+line of his brigade, and this he did not deny. Kinglake's statement is
+that "he rode back alone at a pace decorously slow, towards the spot
+where Scarlett was halted." He adds that General Scarlett maintained
+that Lord Lucan was present at the time; but Lord Lucan's averment was
+that Lord Cardigan did not approach him until afterwards when all was
+over. Kinglake relates further that when Lord George Paget came back at
+the head of the last detachment, some officers rode forward to greet
+him one of whom was Lord Cardigan. Seeing him approach composedly from
+the rear Lord George exclaimed: "Halloa, Lord Cardigan, weren't you
+there?" to which, according to one version of the story, Cardigan
+replied: "Wasn't I, though? Here, Jenyns, didn't you see me at the
+guns?"
+
+The reasonable inferences from Kinglake are that Cardigan's first halt
+was made and that his earliest remarks were uttered when he reached
+Scarlett, and that he and Paget met after the charge for the first time
+when the alleged question and answer passed.
+
+The "C" Troop chronicler's narrative of events is right in the teeth of
+these inferences. While the troop was halted at point F and after a
+great many wounded and disabled men had already passed it going to the
+rear, Lord Cardigan came riding by at a "quiet pace" close under the
+crest. He had passed the troop on his left for several horse-lengths,
+when he came back and halted within a yard or two of the left-hand gun,
+the only one fairly on the crest. He was not alone, but attended by
+Cornet Yates of his own old regiment the 11th Hussars, a recently
+commissioned ranker. "Lord Cardigan was in the full dress _pelisse_
+(buttoned) of the 11th Hussars, and he rode a chestnut horse very
+distinctly marked and of grand appearance. The horse seemed to have had
+enough of it, and his lordship appeared to have been knocked about but
+was cool and collected. He returned his sword, undid a little of the
+front of his dress and pulled down his underclothing under his
+waistbelt. Then, in a quiet way, as if rather talking to himself, he
+said, 'I tell you what it is: those instruments of theirs,' alluding to
+the Russian weapons, 'are deuced blunt; they tickle up one's ribs!'
+Then he pulled his revolver out of his holster as if the thought had
+just struck him, and said, 'And here's this d----d thing I have never
+thought of until now.' He then replaced it, drew his sword, and said,
+'Well, we've done our share of the work!' and pointing up toward the
+Chasseurs d'Afrique on our left rear (ignorant of their opportune
+service), he added, 'It's time they gave those dappled gentry a
+chance.' Afterwards he asked, 'Has any one seen my regiment?' The men
+answered, 'No, sir.'" Brandling was holding aloof; and his lordship
+turned his horse and rode away farther back.
+
+Just then a cheer was raised by some Heavies who had lately formed in
+front of "C" Troop. Cardigan, so the chronicler tells, looked backward
+to see the occasion, and saw the cheer was in compliment to the 8th
+Hussars coming back with Colonel Sewell in front and Colonel Mayow, the
+brigade-major, behind on the left. Cardigan wheeled, trotted back
+towards the 8th, turned round in front of Colonel Sewell, and took up
+the "walk." Then occurred something "painful to witness. It was seen
+from the left of 'C' Troop that the moment Cardigan's back was toward
+the 8th as he headed them, Colonel Mayow pointed toward him, shook his
+head, and made signs to the officers on the left of the Heavies as much
+as to say, 'See him; he has taken care of himself.'" Men in the ranks
+of the 8th also pointed and made signs to the troopers of the Heavies
+as they were passing left to left. There was, as well, a little excited
+undertalk from one corps to the other. Colonel Sewell neither saw nor
+took part in this wretched business; and of course Cardigan did not
+know that he was being thus ridiculed and disparaged while he was
+smiling and raising his sword to the cheers of the Heavies and the
+gunners.
+
+Immediately after this episode the returning 4th Light Dragoons came
+obliquely across the North valley at a sharp pace, but fell into the
+"walk" as they came within a hundred yards of "C" Troop. Lord George
+Paget, who led what remained of the regiment, rode up to the flank of
+"C" Troop and halted on the very spot where Cardigan had stood a few
+minutes earlier. Lord George had the look of a man who had ridden hard,
+and was heated and excited. He exclaimed in rather a loud tone, "It's a
+d----d shame; there we had a lot of their guns and carriages taken, and
+received no support, and yet there's all this infantry about--it's a
+shame!" Meanwhile Lord Cardigan had come back and was close behind Lord
+George while he was speaking, without the other knowing it. He called
+out, "Lord George Paget!"; and on the latter turning round said to him
+in an undertone, "I am surprised!"; and "tossing his head in the air
+added some other remark which was not heard." Lord George lowered his
+sword to the salute, and, without speaking turned his horse and rode on
+after his men. The "C" Troop chronicler is positive that both officers
+visited "C" Troop before going to any general or to any other command,
+and that they met there for the first time after the combat.
+
+When Lord Raglan came down from the upland after all was over, the "C"
+Troop chronicler says that he went straight for Lucan then in front of
+the Heavy Cavalry brigade, having first sent for Cardigan to meet him.
+After a few moments the latter repassed the troop on his way toward the
+remnant of his brigade. "Then Lord Raglan took Lucan a little forward
+by himself out of hearing of the group of staff officers, and his
+gesticulations of head and arm were so suggestive of passionate anger,
+that the onlookers did not need to be told that the Commander-in-Chief
+did not charge the blame chiefly on Cardigan." Lord Raglan's subsequent
+interview with General Scarlett, which occurred in the hearing of "C"
+Troop, was of a different character. After complimenting the gallant
+old warrior his lordship said, "Now tell me all about yourself."
+Scarlett replied, "When the Russian column was moving down on me, sir,
+I began by sending first a squadron of the Greys at them, and--" but at
+the word "and" Lord Raglan struck in, saying, "And they knocked them
+over like the devil!" He then turned his horse away, as if he did not
+need to hear any more.
+
+
+
+
+HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
+
+
+These be big words, my masters! I can only say they are not mine,--I am
+far too modest to utter any such high-sounding phrase on my own
+responsibility,--but they are the exact terms used by a high municipal
+dignitary in characterising the result of what he was pleased to term
+my "chivalrous conduct." My sardonic chum, on the contrary,--an
+individual wholly abandoned to the ignoble vice of punning,--asserts
+that my conduct was simply "barbarous." It will be for the reader to
+judge.
+
+St. Meuse--let us call it St. Meuse--is a town of what is still French
+Lorraine; and to St. Meuse I came drifting up the Marne Valley, over
+the flat expanse of the plain of Chalons, and by St. Menehould, the
+proud stronghold of pickled pigs' feet, in the second week of September
+1873. St. Meuse was one of the last of the French cities held in pawn
+by the Germans for the payment of the milliards. The last instalment of
+blood-money had been paid and the _Pickelhaubes_ were about to evacuate
+St. Meuse as soon as the cash had been methodically counted, and after
+they should have leisurely filled their baggage trains and packed their
+portmanteaus. My intention in going to St. Meuse was to witness this
+evacuation scene, and to be a spectator of the return of
+light-heartedness to the French population of the place, on the
+withdrawal of the Teuton incubus which for three years had lain upon
+the safety-valve of their constitutional sprightliness. I had been a
+little out of my reckoning of time, and when I reached St. Meuse I
+found that I had a week to stay there before the event should occur
+which I had come to witness; but the interval could not be regarded as
+lost time, for St. Meuse is a very pleasant city and the conditions
+which were so soon to terminate presented a most interesting field of
+study.
+
+You must know that St. Meuse is a fortress. It has a citadel or at
+least such fragments of a citadel as the bombardment had left, and the
+quaint old town is surrounded with bastions which are linked by
+curtains and flanked by lunettes, the whole being girdled by a ditch,
+beyond the counterscarp of which spreads a sloping glacis which makes a
+very pleasant promenade. The defensive strength of the place is reduced
+to zero in these days of far-reaching rifled siege artillery, for it
+lies in a cup and is surrounded on all sides by hills the summits of
+which easily command the fortifications. But the consciousness that it
+is obsolete as a fortress has not yet come home to St. Meuse. It has,
+in truth, a very good opinion of itself as a valorous, not to say
+heroic, place; nor can it be denied that its title to this
+self-complacency has been fairly earned. In the Franco-German war,
+spite of its defects, it stood a siege of over two months and succumbed
+only after a severe bombardment which lasted for several days. And
+while as yet it was not wholly beleaguered, it was very active in
+making itself disagreeable to the foreign invader. It was a patrolling
+party from St. Meuse that intercepted the courier on his way from the
+battlefield of Sedan to Germany, carrying the hurried lines to his wife
+which the Crown Prince of Prussia scrawled on the fly-leaf of an
+orderly book while as yet the last shots of the combat were dropping in
+the distance; carrying too the notes of the momentous battle which
+William Howard-Russell had jotted down in the heat of the action and
+had taken the same opportunity of despatching. St. Meuse, then, had
+balked the Princess of the first tidings of her husband's safety, and
+the great English newspaper of the earliest details of the most
+sensational battle of the age. It had fallen at last, but not
+ingloriously; and the iron of defeat had not entered so deeply into its
+soul as had been the case with some French fortresses, of which it
+could not well be said that they had done their honest best to resist
+their fate. Its self-respect, at least, was left to it, and it was
+something to know that when the German garrison should march away, it
+was bound to leave to St. Meuse the artillery and munitions of war of
+the fortress just as they had been found on the day of the surrender.
+
+I came to like St. Meuse immensely in the course of the days I spent in
+it waiting for the great event of the evacuation. The company at the
+_table d'hote_ of the Trois Maures was varied and amusing. The Germans
+ate in a room by themselves, so that the obnoxious element was not
+present overtly at the general _table d'hote._ But we had a few German
+officials in plain clothes--clerks in General Manteuffel's bureau,
+contractors, cigar merchants, etc., who spoke French even among
+themselves, and were painfully polite to the French habitues who were
+as painfully polite in return. There was a batch of Parisian
+journalists who had come to St. Meuse to watch the evacuation, and who
+wrote their letters in the cafe over the way to the accompaniment of
+_verres_ of absinthe and bocks of beer. Then there was the gallant
+captain of gendarmes, who had arrived in St. Meuse with a trusty band
+of twenty-five subordinates to take over from the Germans the municipal
+superintendence of the place, and, later, the occupation of the
+fortress. He was the most polite man I ever knew, this captain of
+gendarmes, with a clever knack of turning you outside in in the course
+of half an hour's conversation, and the peculiar attribute of having,
+to all appearance, eyes in the back of his head. To him, as he placidly
+ate his food, there came, from time to time, quiet and rather
+bashful-looking men in civilian attire of a slightly seedy description.
+Sometimes they merely caught his eye and went out again without
+speaking; sometimes they handed to him little notes; sometimes they
+held with him a brief whispered conversation during which the captain's
+nonchalance was imperturbable. These respectable individuals who, if
+they saw you once in conversation with their chief, ever after bowed to
+you with the greatest empressement, were members of the secret police.
+
+As for the inhabitants of St. Meuse, they appeared to await the hour of
+their delivery with considerable philosophy. Physically they are the
+finest race I ever saw in France; their men, tall, square, and
+muscular, their women handsome and comely. Numbers of both sexes are
+fair-haired, and the sandiness of hair which we are wont to associate
+with the Scottish Celt is by no means uncommon. A sardonic companion
+whom I had picked up by the way, attributed those characteristics to
+the fact that in the great war St. Meuse was a depot for British
+prisoners of war who had in some way contrived to imbue the native
+population with some of their own physical attributes. He further
+prophesied a wave of Teuton characteristics as the result of the German
+occupation which was about to terminate; but his insinuations seemed to
+me to partake of the scurrilous, especially as he instanced Lewes, once
+a British depot for prisoners of war, as a field in which similar
+phenomena were to be discerned. But, nevertheless, I unquestionably
+found a good deal of what may be called national hybridism in St.
+Meuse. I used to buy photographs of a shopkeeper over whose door was
+blazoned the Scottish name Macfarlane. Outwardly Macfarlane was a
+"hielanman" all over. He had a shock-head of bright red hair such as
+might have thatched the poll of the "Dougal cratur;" his cheek-bones
+were high, his nose of the Captain of Knockdunder pattern, and his
+mouth of true Celtic amplitude. One felt instinctively as if Macfarlane
+were bound to know Gaelic, and that the times were out of joint when he
+evinced greater fondness for _eau sucree_ than for Talisker. It was
+with quite a sense of dislocation of the fitness of things that I found
+Macfarlane could talk nothing but French. But although he had torn up
+the ancient landmarks, or rather suffered them to lapse, he yet was
+proud of his ancestry. His grandfather, it appeared, was a soldier of
+the "Black Watch" who had been a prisoner of war in St. Meuse, and who,
+when the peace came, preferred taking unto himself a daughter of the
+Amalekite and settling in St. Meuse, to going home to a pension of
+sevenpence a day and liberty to ply as an Edinburgh caddie.
+
+As for the German "men in possession," they pursued the even tenor of
+their way in the precise yet phlegmatic German manner. Their guards
+kept the gates and bridges as if they meant to hold the place till the
+crack of doom, instead of being under orders to clear out within the
+week. The recruits drilled on the citadel esplanade, straightening
+their legs and pointing their toes as if their sole ambition in life
+was to kick their feet away into space, down to the very eve of
+evacuation. Their battalions practised skirmishing on the glacis with
+that routine assiduity which is the secret of the German military
+success. Old Manteuffel was living in the prefecture holding his levees
+and giving his stiff ceremonious dinner-parties, as if he had done
+despite to Dr. Cumming's warnings and taken a lease of the place. The
+German officers thronged their cafe, each man, after the manner of
+German officers, shouting at the pitch of his voice; and at the cafe of
+the under-officers tough old _Wachtmeisters_ and grizzled sergeants
+with many medals played long quiet games at cards, or knocked the balls
+about on the chubby little pocketless tables with cues the tips of
+which were as large as the base of a six-pounder shell.
+
+The French journalists insisted I should accept it as an article of
+faith, that these two races dwelling together in St. Meuse hated each
+other like poison. They would have it that while discipline alone
+prevented the Germans from massacring every Frenchman in the place, it
+was only a humiliating sense of weakness that hindered the Frenchmen
+from rising in hot fury against the Germans who were their temporary
+masters. I am afraid the gentlemen of the Parisian press came rather to
+dislike me on account of my obdurate scepticism in such matters. That
+there was no great cordiality was obvious and natural. Some of the
+Germans were arrogant and domineering. For instance, having a respect
+for the Germans, it pained and indeed disgusted me to hear a colonel of
+the German staff, in answer to my question whether the evacuating force
+would march out with a rearguard as in war time, reply, "Pho, a field
+gendarme with a whip is rearguard enough against such _canaille!_" But
+in the mouths of Hans and Carl and Johann, the stout _Kerle_ of the
+ranks, there were no such words of bitter scorn for their compulsory
+hosts. The honest fellows drew water for the goodwives on whom they
+were billeted, did a good deal of stolid love-making with the girls,
+and nursed the babies with a solicitude that put to shame the male
+parents of these youthful hopes of Troy. I take leave, as a reasonable
+person, to doubt whether it can lie in the heart of a family to hate a
+man who has dandled its baby and whether a man can be rancorous against
+a family whose baby he has nursed. But fashion's sway is omnipotent in
+emotion as in dress. Ever since the war, journalists, authors, and
+public opinion generally had hammered it into the French nation that if
+it were not to be a traitor to its patriotism, the first article of its
+creed must be hatred against the Germans; and that the bitterer this
+hate the more fervent the patriotism. It was not indeed incumbent on
+Frenchmen and Frenchwomen to accept this creed, but it behoved them at
+least to profess it; and it must be admitted that they did this for the
+most part with an intensity and vigour which seemed to prove that with
+many profession had deepened into conviction.
+
+While as yet the evacuation had been a thing of the remote future, the
+people of St. Meuse had borne the yoke lightly, and indeed had, I
+believe, privily congratulated themselves on the substantial advantages
+in the way of money spent in the place and the immunity from taxation
+which were incidental to the foreign occupation. But as the day for the
+evacuation drew closer and closer, one became dimly conscious of an
+electrical condition of the social atmosphere which any trifle might
+stimulate into a thunderstorm. Blouses gathered and muttered about the
+street-corners, scowling at and elbowing the German soldiers as they
+strode to buy sausages to stay them in the homeward march. The gamins,
+always covertly insolent, no longer cloaked their insolence, and wagged
+little tricolour flags under the nose of the stolid German sentry on
+the Pont St. Croix. At the _table d'hote_ the painful politeness of the
+German civilians had no effect in thawing the studied coldness of the
+French habitues.
+
+As for myself, I was a neutral, and professing to take no side,
+flattered myself that I could keep out of the vortex of the soreness.
+Soon after my arrival at St. Meuse I had called upon the Mayor at his
+official quarters in the Hotel de Ville, and had received civil
+speeches in return for civil speeches. Then I had left my card on
+General Manteuffel, with whom I happened to have a previous
+acquaintance; and those formal duties of a benevolent neutral having
+been performed I had held myself free to choose my own company.
+Circumstances had some time before brought me into familiar contact
+with very many German officers, and I had imbibed a liking for their
+ways and conversation, noisy as the latter is. Several of the officers
+then in St. Meuse had been personal acquaintances in other days and it
+was at once natural and pleasant for me to renew the intercourse. I was
+made an honorary member of the mess; I spent many hours in the
+officers' casino; I rode out with the officers of the squadron of
+Uhlans. All this was very pleasant; but as the day of the evacuation
+became close I noticed that the civility of the French captain of
+gendarmes grew colder, that the cordiality of the French habitues of
+the _table d'hote_ visibly diminished, and that I encountered not a few
+unfriendly looks when I walked through the streets by myself. It began
+to dawn upon me that St. Meuse was getting to reckon me a German
+sympathiser, and as there was no half-way house, therefore not in
+accord with the emotions of France and St. Meuse.
+
+On the afternoon immediately preceding the morning that had been fixed
+for the evacuation, there came to me a polite request that I should
+visit M. le Maire at the Hotel de Ville. His worship was elaborately
+civil but obviously troubled in mind. He coughed nervously several
+times after the initiatory compliments had passed, and then he began to
+speak. "Monsieur, you are aware that the Germans are going to-morrow
+morning?"
+
+I replied that I had cognisance of this fact. "Do you also know that
+the last of the German officials depart by the 5 A.M. train, not caring
+to remain here after the troops are gone?"
+
+Of this also I was aware.
+
+"Let me hope," continued the Mayor, "that you are going along with
+them, or at all events will ride away with Messieurs the officers?"
+
+On the contrary, was my reply, I had come not only to witness the
+evacuation but to note how St. Meuse should bear herself in the hour of
+her liberation; I desired to witness the rejoicings; I was not less
+anxious to be a spectator of any disturbance if such unhappily should
+occur. Why should M. le Maire have conceived this desire to balk my
+natural curiosity?
+
+M. le Maire was obviously not a little embarrassed; but he persevered
+and was candid. This deplorable occupation was now so nearly finished
+and happily, as yet, everything had been so tranquil, that it would be
+a thousand pities if any untoward event should occur to detract from
+the dignified attitude which the territory now to be evacuated had
+maintained. It was of critical importance in every sense that St. Meuse
+should not give way to riot or disorder on that occasion. He hoped and
+believed it would not--here M. le Maire laid his hand on his heart--but
+a spark, as I knew, fired tinder, and the St. Meuse populace were at
+present figurative tinder. I might be that spark.
+
+"You much resemble a German," said M. le Maire, "with that great yellow
+beard of yours, and your broad shoulders, as if you had carried arms.
+Our citizens have seen you much in the society of Messieurs the German
+officers; they are not in a temper to draw fine distinctions of
+nationality; and, dear sir, I ask you to go away with the Germans lest
+perchance our blouses, reckoning you for a German, should not be very
+tender with you when the spiked helmets are out of the place. The truth
+is," said the worthy Maire with a burst of plain speaking, "I'm afraid
+that you will be mobbed and that there will be a row, and that then the
+Germans may come back and the evacuation be postponed, and I'll get
+wigged by the Prefect and the Minister of the Interior and bully-ragged
+in the newspapers, and St. Meuse will get abused and the fat will be
+generally in the fire!"
+
+Here was an awkward fix. I could not comply with the Mayor's request;
+that was not to be thought of for reasons I need not mention here. I
+had no particular desire to be mobbed. Once before I had experienced
+the tender mercies of a French mob and I knew that they were very
+cruel. But stronger than the personal feeling was my sincere sympathy
+with the Mayor's critical position; and also my anxiety, by what means
+might be within my power, to contribute to the maintenance of a
+tranquillity so desirable. But, then, what means were within my power?
+I could not go; I could not promise to stop indoors, for it was
+incumbent on me to see everything that was to be seen. And if through
+me trouble came I should be responsible heaven knows for what!--with a
+skinful of sore bones into the bargain.
+
+"If Monsieur cannot go,"--the Mayor broke in upon my cogitation,--"if
+Monsieur cannot go, will he pardon the exigency of the occasion if I
+suggest one other alternative? It is,"--here the Mayor hesitated--"it
+is the yellow beard which gives to Monsieur the aspect of a German.
+With only whiskers nobody could take Monsieur for anything but an
+Englishman. If Monsieur would only have the complaisance and charity
+to--to--"
+
+Cut off my beard! Great powers! shear that mane that had been growing
+for years!--that cataract of hair that has been, so to speak, my
+oriflamme; the only physical belonging of which I ever was proud, the
+only thing, so far as I know, that I have ever been envied! For the
+moment the suggestion knocked me all of a heap. There came into my head
+some confused reminiscence of a story about a girl who cut off her hair
+and sold it to keep her mother from starving, or redeem her lover from
+captivity, or something of the kind. But that must have been before the
+epoch of parish relief, and kidnapping is now punishable by statute.
+What was St. Meuse to me that for her I should mow my hirsute glories?
+But then, if people grew savage, they might pull my beard out by the
+roots. And there had been lately dawning on me the dire truth that its
+tawny hue was becoming somewhat freely streaked with gray, a colour I
+abhor, except in eyes. I made up my mind.
+
+"I'll do it, sir," said I to the Mayor, with a manly curtness. My heart
+was too full for many words.
+
+He respected my emotion, bowed in silence over the hand which he had
+grasped, and only spoke to give me the address of his own barber.
+
+This barber was a patriot of unquestioned zeal; but I am inclined to
+think his extraction was similar to that of Macfarlane, for he combined
+patriotism with profit in a most edifying manner. He shaved the German
+officers during the whole of their stay in St. Meuse; he accompanied
+them on their march to the frontier; he earned the last centime in
+Conflans; and then, driving forward to the frontier line, he unfurled
+the tricolour as the last German soldier stepped over it. It is seldom
+that one in this world sees his way to being so adroitly ambidextrous.
+
+But this is a digression. In twenty minutes, shorn and shaven, I was
+back again in the Mayor's parlour. The tears of gratitude stood in his
+eyes. I learned afterwards that a decoration was contingent on his
+preservation of the public peace on the occasion of the evacuation.
+
+Started by the Mayor, the report rapidly circulated through St. Meuse
+that I had cut off my beard rather than that it should be possible that
+any one should mistake me for a German. From being a suspect I became a
+popular idol. The French journalists entertained me to a banquet at
+night at which in libations of champagne eternal amity between France
+and England was pledged. Next morning the Germans went away and then
+St. Meuse kicked up its heels and burst into exuberant joy. The Mayor
+took me up to the station in his own carriage to meet the French
+troops, and introduced me to the colonel of the battalion as a man who
+had made sacrifices for _la belle France_. The colonel shook me
+cordially by the hand and I was embraced by the robust vivandiere, who
+struck me as being in the practice of sustaining life on a diet of
+garlic. When we emerged from the station I was cheered almost as loudly
+as was the colonel, and a man waved a tricolour over my head all the
+way back to the town, treading at frequent intervals on my heels. In
+the course of the afternoon I happened to approach the civic band which
+was performing patriotic music in the Place St. Croix. When the
+bandmaster saw me he broke off the programme and struck up "Rule
+Britannia!" in my honour, to the clamorous joy of the audience, who
+were thwarted in their aim of carrying me round the Place shoulder-high
+only by the constancy with which I clung to the railings which surround
+Chevert's statue. But the crowning recognition of my sacrifice came at
+the banquet which the town gave to the French officers. The Mayor
+proposed the toast of "our English friend." "We had all," he said,
+"made sacrifices for _la Patrie_--he himself had sustained the loss of
+a wooden outhouse burned down in the bombardment; the gallant colonel
+on his right had spilt his blood at St. Privat. Them it behoved to
+suffer and they would do it again cheerfully, for it was, as he had
+said, for _la Patrie_. But what was to be said of an honourable
+gentleman who had sacrificed the most distinguishing ornament of his
+physical aspect without the holy stimulus of patriotism, and simply
+that there might be obviated the risk of an embroilment to the possible
+consequence of which he would not further allude? Would it be called
+the language of extravagant hyperbole, or would they not rather be
+words justified by facts, when he ventured before this honourable
+company to assert that his respected English friend had by his
+self-sacrifice saved France from a great peril?" The Mayor's question
+was replied to by a perfect whirlwind of cheering. Everybody in the
+room insisted upon shaking hands with me and I was forced to get on my
+legs and make a reply. Later in the evening I heard the Mayor and the
+town clerk discussing the project of conferring upon me the freedom of
+the city.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
+
+1875
+
+
+The civilian world, even that portion of it which lives by the
+profusest sweat of its brow, enjoys an occasional holiday in the course
+of the year besides Christmas Day. Good Friday brings to most an
+enforced cessation from toil. Easter and Whitsuntide are recognised
+seasons of pleasure in most grades of the civilian community. There are
+few who do not compass somehow an occasional Derby day; and we may
+safely aver that the amount of work done on New Year's Day is not very
+great. But in all the year the soldier has but one real holiday--a
+holiday with all the glorious accompaniments of unwonted varieties of
+dainties and full liberty to be as jolly as he pleases without fear of
+the consequences. True, the individual soldier may have his day's
+leave, nay, his month's furlough; but his enjoyments resulting
+therefrom are not realised in the atmosphere of the barrack-room, but
+rather have their origin in the abandonment for the nonce of his
+military character and a _pro tempore_ return into civilian life.
+Christmas Day is the great regimental merry-making, free to and
+appreciated by the veteran and the recruit alike; and as such it is
+looked forward to for many a month prior to its advent and talked of
+many a day after it is past and gone.
+
+About a month before Christmas the observer skilled in the signs of the
+times may begin to notice the tokens of its approach. Self-deniant
+fellows, men who can trust themselves to carry a few shillings about
+with them without experiencing a chronic sensation that the accumulated
+pelf is burning a hole in their pockets, busy themselves in
+constructing "dimmocking bags" for the occasion, such being the
+barrack-room term for receptacles for money-hoarding purposes. The weak
+vessels, those who mistrust their own constancy under the varied
+temptations of dry throats, empty stomachs, and a scant allowance of
+tobacco, manage to cheat their fragility of "saving grace" by
+requesting their sergeant-major to put them "on the peg,"--that is to
+say, place them under stoppages, so that the accumulation takes place
+in his hands and cannot be dissipated by any premature weaknesses of
+the flesh. Everybody becomes of a sudden astonishingly sober and
+steady. There is hardly any going out of barracks now; for a walk
+involves the expenditure of at least "the price of a pint," and in the
+circumstances this extravagance is not allowable. The guard-room is
+unwontedly empty--nobody except the utterly reckless will get into
+trouble just now; for punishment at this season involves the forfeiture
+of certain privileges and the incurring of certain penalties--the
+former specially prized, the latter exceptionally disgusting at this
+Christmas season.
+
+Slowly the days roll on with anxious expectancy, the coming event
+forming the one engrossing topic of conversation alike in barrack-room,
+in stable, in canteen, and in guard-room. The clever hands of the troop
+are deep in devising a series of ornamentations for the walls and roof
+of the common habitation. One fellow spends all his spare time on the
+top of a table with a bed on top of that again, embellishing the wall
+above the fireplace with a florid design in a variety of colours meant
+to be an exact copy of the device on the regiment's kettledrums, with
+the addition of the legend, "A Merry Christmas to the old Straw-boots,"
+inscribed on a waving scroll below. The skill of another decorator is
+directed to the clipping of sundry squares of coloured paper into
+wondrous forms--Prince of Wales's feathers, gorgeous festoons, and the
+like--with which the gas pendants and the edges of the window-frames
+are disguised out of their original nakedness and hardness of outline,
+so as to be almost unrecognisable by the eye of the matter-of-fact
+barrack-master himself. What is this felonious-looking band up
+to--these four determined rascals in the forbidden high-lows and stable
+overalls who go slinking mysteriously out at the back gate just at the
+gloaming? Are they Fenian sympathisers bound for a secret meeting, or
+are they deserters making off just at the time when there is the least
+likelihood of suspicion? Nay, they are neither; but, nevertheless,
+their errand is a nefarious one. Watch at the gate for an hour and you
+will see them come back again each man laden with the spoils of the
+shrubberies--holly, mistletoe, and evergreens--ruthlessly plundered
+under cover of the darkness. A couple of days before "the day," the
+sergeant-major enters the barrack-room, a smile playing upon his
+rubicund features. We all know what his errand is and he knows right
+well that we do; but he cannot refrain from the customary short
+patronising harangue, "Our worthy captain--liberal gent you
+know--deputed me--what you like for dinner--plum-puddings, of course--a
+quart of beer a man; make up your minds what you'll have--anything but
+game and venison;" and so he vanishes grinning a saturnine grin. The
+moment is a critical one. We ought to be unanimous. What shall we have?
+A council of deliberation is constituted on the spot and proceeds to
+the discussion of the weighty question. The suggestions are not
+numerous. The alternative lies between pork and goose. The old
+soldiers, for some inscrutable reason, go for goose to a man. The
+recruits have a carnal craving after the flesh of the pig. I did once
+hear a "carpet-bag" recruit[1] hesitatingly broach the idea of mutton,
+but he collapsed ignominiously under the concentrated stare of
+righteous indignation with which his heterodox suggestion was received.
+Goose versus pork is eagerly debated. As regards quantity the question
+is a level one, since the allowance from time immemorial has been a
+goose or a leg of pork among three men.
+
+[Footnote 1: "Carpet-bag" recruit is the barrack-room appellation of
+contempt for the young gentleman recruit who joins his regiment
+_omnibus impedimentis_--who, in fact, brings his baggage with him, to
+find it, of course, utterly useless.]
+
+At length the point is decided during the evening stable-hour,
+according as old or young soldiers predominate in the room. The
+sergeant-major is informed of the conclusion arrived at, and in the
+evening the corporal of each room accompanies him on a marketing
+expedition into the town. Another important duty devolves upon the said
+corporal in the course of this marketing tour. The "dimmocking bags"
+have been emptied; the accumulations in the sergeant-major's hands have
+been drawn, and the corporal, freighted with the joint savings, has the
+task of expending the same in beer. In this undertaking he manifests a
+preternatural astuteness. He is not to be inveigled into giving his
+order at a public-house,--swipes from the canteen would do as well as
+that,--nor do the bottled-beer merchants tempt him with their high
+prices for dubious quality. No, he goes direct to the fountain-head. If
+there be a brewery in the place he finds it out and bestows his order
+upon it, thus triumphantly securing the pure article at the wholesale
+price. His purchasing calculation is upon the basis of two gallons per
+man. If, as is generally the case, the barrack-room he represents
+contains twelve men, he orders a twenty-four gallon barrel of
+porter--always porter; and if he has a surplus left he disburses it in
+the purchase of a bottle or two of spirits, for the behoof of any fair
+visitors who may haply honour the barrack-room with their presence.
+
+It is Christmas Eve. The evening stable-hour is over and all hands are
+merrily engaged in the composition of the puddings; some stoning fruit,
+others chopping suet, beating eggs, and so forth. The barrel of beer is
+in the corner but it is sacred as the honour of the regiment! Nothing
+would induce the expectant participants in its contents to broach it
+before its appointed time shall come. So there is beer instead from the
+canteen in the tin pails of the barrack-room, and the work of
+pudding-compounding goes on jovially to the accompaniments of song and
+jest. Now, there is a fear lest too many fingers in the pudding may
+spoil it--lest a multitude of counsellors as to the proportions of
+ingredients and the process of mixing may be productive of the reverse
+of safety. But somehow a man with a specialty is always forthcoming,
+and that specialty is pudding-making. Most likely he has been the butt
+of the room--a quiet, quaint, retiring, awkward fellow who seemed as if
+he never could do anything right. But he has lit upon his vocation at
+last--he is a born pudding-maker. He rises with the occasion, and the
+sheepish "gaby" becomes the knowing practical man; his is now the voice
+of authority, and his comrades recant on the spot, acknowledge his
+superiority without a murmur, and perform "ko-tow" before the once
+despised man of undeveloped abilities. They pull out their clean towels
+with alacrity in response to his demand for pudding-cloths; they run to
+the canteen enthusiastically for a further supply on a hint from him
+that there is a deficiency in the ingredient of allspice. And then he
+artistically gathers together the corners of the cloths and ties up the
+puddings tightly and securely; whereupon a procession is formed to
+escort them into the cook-house, and there, having consigned them into
+the depths of the mighty copper, the "man of the time" remains watching
+the caldron bubble until morning, a great jorum of beer at his elbow
+the ready contribution of his now appreciative comrades.
+
+The hours roll on; and at length out into the darkness of the
+barrack-square stalks the trumpeter on duty, and the shrill notes of
+the _reveille_ echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an
+ordinary morning the _reveille_ is practically negatived, and nobody
+thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds
+quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning
+there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps
+up, as if galvanised, at the first note of the _reveille_. For the
+fulfilment of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to--a remnant of
+the old days when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room.
+The soldier's wife who has the cleaning of the room and who does the
+washing of its inmates--for which services each man pays her a penny a
+day, has from time immemorial taken upon herself the duty of bestowing
+a "morning" on the Christmas anniversary upon the men she "does for."
+Accordingly, about a quarter to six, she enters the room--a
+hard-featured, rough-voiced dame, perhaps, with a fist like a shoulder
+of mutton, but a soldier herself to the very core and with a big,
+tender heart somewhere about her. She carries a bottle of whisky--it is
+always whisky, somehow--in one hand and a glass in the other; and,
+beginning with the oldest soldier administers a calker to every one in
+the room till she comes to the "cruity," upon whom, if he be a
+pullet-faced, homesick, bit of a lad, she may bestow a maternal salute
+in addition, with the advice to consider the regiment as his mother
+now, and be a smart soldier and a good lad.
+
+Breakfast is not an institution in any great acceptation in a cavalry
+regiment on Christmas morning. When the stable-hour is over a great
+many of the troopers do not immediately reappear in the barrack-room.
+Indeed they do not turn up until long after the coffee is cold; and,
+when they do return there is a certain something about them which, to
+the experienced observer, demonstrates the fact that, if they have been
+thirsty, they have not been quenching their drought at the pump. It is
+a standing puzzle to the uninitiated where the soldier in barracks
+contrives to obtain drink of a morning. The canteen is rigorously
+closed. No one is allowed to go out of barracks and no drink is allowed
+to come in. A teetotallers' meeting-hall could not appear more rigidly
+devoid of opportunities for indulgence than does a barrack during the
+morning. Yet I will venture to say, if you go into any barrack in the
+three kingdoms, accost any soldier who is not a raw recruit, and offer
+to pay for a pot of beer, that you will have an instant opportunity
+afforded you of putting your free-handed design into execution any time
+after 7 A.M. I don't think it would be exactly grateful in me to
+"split" upon the spots where a drop can be obtained in season; many a
+time has my parched throat been thankful for the cooling surreptitious
+draught and I refuse to turn upon a benefactor in a dirty way.
+Therefore suffice it to say that many a bold dragoon when he re-enters
+the barrack-room to get ready for church parade, has a wateriness about
+the eye and a knottiness in the tongue which tell of something stronger
+than the matutinal coffee. Indeed, when the trumpet sounds which calls
+the regiment to assemble on the parade-ground, there is dire misgiving
+in the mind of many a stalwart fellow, who is conscious that his face,
+as well as his speech, "berayeth him." But the lynx-eyed men in
+authority who another time would be down on a stagger like a
+card-player on the odd trick and read a flushed face as a passport to
+the guard-room, are genially blind this morning; and so long as a man
+possesses the capacity of looking moderately straight to his own front
+and of going right-about without a flagrant lurch, he is not looked at
+in a critical spirit on the Christmas church parade. And so the
+regiment marches off to church, the band playing merrily in its front.
+I much fear there is no very abiding sense in the bosoms of the
+majority of the sacred errand on which they are bound.
+
+But there are two of the inmates of each room who do not go to church.
+The clever pudding-maker and a sub of his selection are left to cook
+the Christmas dinner. This, as regards the exceptional dainties, is
+done at the barrack-room fire, the cook-house being in use only for the
+now despised ration meat and for the still simmering puddings. The
+handy man cunningly improvises a roasting-jack, and erects a screen
+consisting of bed-quilts spread on a frame of upright forms, for the
+purpose of retaining and throwing back the heat. He is a most versatile
+genius, this handy man. Now we see him in the double character of cook
+and salamander, and anon he develops a special faculty as a clever
+table-decorator as well. This latter qualification asserts itself in
+the face of difficulties which would be utterly discomfiting to one of
+less fertility of resource. There is, indeed, a large expanse of table
+in every barrack-room; but the War Department has not yet thought
+proper to consider private soldiers worthy to enjoy the luxury of
+table-linen. Yet bare boards at a Christmas feast are horribly
+offensive to the eye of taste. Something must be done; something has
+already been done. Ever since the last issue of clean sheets, one or
+two whole-souled fellows have magnanimously abjured these luxuries _pro
+bono publico_. Spartan-like they have lain in blankets, and saved their
+sheets in their pristine cleanliness wherewithal to cover the Christmas
+table. So now these are brought forth, not snow-white certainly, nor of
+a damask texture, being indeed somewhat sackclothy in their appearance,
+but still they are immeasurably in advance of the bare boards; and when
+the covers are laid, with each man's best knife and fork, with a little
+additional crockery-ware borrowed of a beneficent married woman and
+with the dainty sprigs of evergreen stuck on every available coign, the
+effect is triumphantly enlivening.
+
+By the time these preparations are complete the men are back from
+church; and after a brief attendance at stables to water and feed they
+assemble fully dressed in the barrack-room, hungrily silent. The
+captain enters the room and _pro forma_ asks whether there are "any
+complaints?" A chorus of "No, sir," is his reply; and then the oldest
+soldier in the room with profuse blushing and stammering takes up the
+running, thanks the officer kindly in the name of his comrades for his
+generosity, and wishes him a "Happy Christmas and many of 'em" in
+return. Under cover of the responsive cheer the captain makes his
+escape, and a deputation visits the sergeant-major's quarters to fetch
+the allowance of beer which forms part of the treat. Then all fall to
+and eat! Ye gods, how they eat! Let the man who affirmed before the
+Recruiting Commission that the present scale of military rations was
+liberal enough show himself now, and then for ever hide his head! The
+troopers seem to have become sudden converts to Carlyle's theory on the
+eloquence of silence. It reigns supreme, broken only by the rattle of
+knives and forks and by an occasional gurgle indicative of a man
+judiciously stratifying the solids and liquids, for a space of about
+twenty minutes, by which time--be the fare goose or pork--it is,
+barring the bones, only "a memory of the past." The puddings, turned
+out of the towels in which they have been boiled, then undergo the
+brunt of a fierce assault; but the edge of appetite has been blunted by
+the first course and with most of the men a modicum of pudding goes on
+the shelf for supper. The soldier is very sensitive on the subject of
+his Christmas pudding. I remember once seeing a cook put on the table
+and formally "strapped" for allowing the pudding to stick to the bottom
+of the pot for lack of stirring.
+
+At length dinner is over. Beds are drawn up from the sides of the room
+so as to form a wide circle of divans round the fire, and the big
+barrel's time has come at last. A clever hand whips out the bung, draws
+a pailful, and reinserts the bung till another pailful is wanted, which
+will be very soon. The pail is placed upon the hearthstone and its
+contents are decanted into the pint basins, which do duty in the
+barrack-room for all purposes from containing coffee and soup to mixing
+chrome-yellow and pipe-clay water. The married soldiers come dropping
+in with their wives, for whom the corporal has a special drop of
+"something short" stowed in reserve on the shelf behind his kit. A song
+is called for; another follows, and yet another and another. Now it is
+matter of notice that the songs of soldiers are never of the modern
+music-hall type. You might go into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's
+haunts and never hear such a ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for
+Joseph." The soldier takes especial delight in songs of the sentimental
+pattern; and even when for a brief period he forsakes the region of
+sentiment, it is not to indulge in the outrageously comic but to give
+vent to such sturdy bacchanalian outpourings as the "Good Rhine Wine,"
+"Old John Barleycorn," and "Simon the Cellarer." But these are only
+interludes. "The Soldier's Tear," "The White Squall," "There came a
+Tale to England," "Ben Bolt," "Shells of the Ocean," and other melodies
+of a lugubrious type, are the special favourites of the barrack-room. I
+remember once hearing a cockney recruit attempt "The Perfect Cure" with
+its accompanying gymnastic efforts; but he was I not appreciated, and
+indeed, I think broke down in the middle for want of encouragement.
+
+Songs and beer form the staple of the afternoon's enjoyment,
+intermingled with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of
+bygone Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are
+"townies," i.e. natives of the same district; and there is a good deal
+of undemonstrative feeling in the way they talk of the scenes and folks
+of boyhood. There is no speechifying. Your soldier is not an oratorical
+animal. Not but what he heartily enjoys a speech; but he somehow cannot
+make one, or will not try. I remember me, indeed, of a certain quiet
+Scotsman who one Christmastime being urgently pressed to sing and being
+unblessed with a tuneful voice, volunteered in utter desperation a
+speech instead. He referred in feeling language to the various
+troop-mates who had left us since the preceding Christmas, made a
+touching allusion to the happy home circle in which the Christmases of
+our boyhood had been spent, referred to the manner in which the old
+"Strawboots" had cut their way to glory through the dense masses of
+Russian horsemen on the hillside of Balaclava, and wound up
+appropriately by proposing the toast of "our noble selves." He created
+an immense sensation, was vociferously applauded, and, indeed, was the
+hero of the hour; but ere next Christmas he was among the "have beens"
+himself, and his mantle not having devolved upon any successor we had
+to content ourselves with the songs and the beer.
+
+It is a lucky thing for a good many that there is no roll-call at the
+Christmas evening stable-hour. The non-commissioned officers mercifully
+limit their requirements to seeing the horses watered and bedded down
+by the most presentable of the roisterers, whose desperate efforts to
+simulate abject sobriety in order to establish their claim for
+strong-headedness are very comical to witness. It has often been matter
+of wonderment to me how the orders for the following day which are
+"read out" at the evening stable-hour, are realised on Christmas
+evening with clearness sufficient to ensure their being complied with
+next day without a hitch; but the truth is that, as we shall presently
+see, a certain order of things for the morning after Christmas has
+become stereotyped.
+
+This interruption of the evening stable-hour over the circle re-forms
+round the fire, and the cask finally becomes a "dead marine." The cap
+is then sent round for contributions towards a further instalment of
+the foundation of conviviality, which is fetched from the canteen or
+the sergeant's mess; and another and yet another supply is sent for, as
+long as the funds hold out and somebody keeps sober enough to act as
+Ganymede. The orderly sergeant is not very particular to-night about
+his watch-setting report, for he knows that not many have the physical
+ability to be absent if they were ever so eager. And so the lights go
+out; the sun of the dragoon may be said to set in beer and he is left
+to do his best to sleep himself sober. For in the morning the reins of
+discipline are tightened again. The man who is foolish enough to
+revivify the drink which "is dying out in him" by a refresher is apt to
+find himself an inmate of the black-hole on very scant warning.
+Headaches and thirst are curiously rife, and the consumption of
+"fizzers"--a temperance beverage of an effervescent character vended by
+an individual with the profoundest trust in human nature on the subject
+of deferred payments--is extensive enough to convert the regiment into
+a series of walking reservoirs of carbonic acid gas. The authorities
+display a demoniacal ingenuity in working the beer out of the system of
+the dragoon. The morning duty on the day following Christmas is
+invariably "watering order with numnahs," the numnah being a felt
+saddle-cloth without stirrups. Every man without exception rides
+out--no dodging is permitted--and the moment the malicious fiend of an
+orderly officer gets clear of the barracks he gives the word "Trot!"
+Six miles of it without a break is the set allowance; and it beats
+vinegar, pickles, tea smoked in a tobacco-pipe, or any other nostrum,
+as an effectual generator of sobriety. Six miles at the full trot
+without stirrups on a rough horse I can conscientiously recommend to
+the inebriated gentleman who fears to encounter a justly irate wife at
+two in the morning. I wont answer for the integrity of his cuticle when
+it is over; but I will stake my existence on the abject profundity of
+his sobriety. The process would extract the alcohol from a cask of
+spirits of wine, let alone dispel an average skinful of beer.
+
+And thus evaporates the last vestige of the dragoon's Christmas
+festivity. It may be urged that the enjoyments of which I have
+endeavoured to give a faithful narrative are gross and have no
+elevating tendency. I fear the men of the spur and sabre must bow to
+the justice of the criticism; and I know of nothing to advance in
+mitigation save the old Scotch proverb: "It is ill to mak' a silk purse
+out o' a sow's ear."
+
+
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
+
+
+In these modern days men live fast and forget fast; yet, since it was
+barely twenty-six years ago, numbers among us must still vividly
+remember the lurid autumn of 1870. Eastern and Northern France had been
+deluged with French and German blood. During the month of fighting from
+the 2nd of August to the 1st of September the regular armies of France
+had suffered defeat on defeat, and were now blockaded in Metz or were
+tramping from the catastrophe of Sedan to captivity in Germany. The
+Empire in France had fallen like a house of cards; Napoleon the Third
+was a prisoner of war in Cassel; the Empress and the ill-fated Prince
+Imperial were forlorn exiles in England. To the Empire had succeeded,
+at not even a day's notice--for in France a revolution is ever a
+summary operation--the Government of National Defence with the
+watchword of "War to the bitter end" rather than cede a foot of
+territory or one stone of a fortress. The Germans made no delay. The
+blood-tint had scarcely faded out of the waters of the Meuse, the
+unburied dead of Sedan yet festered in the sun-heat, and the blackened
+ruins of Bazeilles still smoked and stank, when their heads of columns
+set forth on the march to Paris. The troops were full of ardour; but in
+the Royal headquarters there was not a little disquietude. The old King
+made a long stay in the old cathedral city of Rheims, while men all
+over Europe were asking each other whether the catastrophe of Sedan had
+not virtually ended the war and were hoping for the white dove of peace
+to alight on the blood-stained land. But that happy consummation was
+not yet to be. When King Wilhelm crossed the frontier he had proclaimed
+that he warred not with the French nation but with its ruler. That
+ruler was now his prisoner; but Wilhelm had for adversary now the
+French nation, because it had taken up the quarrel which might have
+gone with the _Decheance_ and in effect had made it its own. In the
+absence of overtures there was no alternative but to march on Paris.
+
+But Bismarck, although he carried a blithe front, was far from
+comfortable. He would fain have had peace--always on his own terms; but
+the question with him was with whom could he negotiate, capable, in the
+existing confusion, of furnishing adequate guarantees for the
+fulfilment of conditions? That requisite he could not discern in the
+self-constituted body which styled itself the Government of National
+Defence, but of which he spoke as "the gentlemen of the pavement." He
+had all the monarchical dislike and distrust of a republic, and before
+the German army had invested Paris he already had begun to ponder as to
+the possibility of reinstating the dethroned dynasty. Possibly indeed,
+he had already felt the pulse of Marshal Bazaine on this subject.
+
+It was on the 23rd of September when the Royal headquarters was at
+Ferrieres, Baron Rothschild's chateau on the east of Paris, that there
+either presented himself to Bismarck an intriguant, or that the
+Chancellor evoked for himself an instrument for whom the way was made
+open to penetrate the beleaguerment of Metz and submit to Bazaine
+certain considerations. In connection with this mission we heard a good
+deal at the time of a mysterious "Mons. M." and an equally mysterious
+"Mons. N." Both were myths: "M." and "N." were alike pseudonyms of the
+real go-between, a certain Edmond Regnier who died in Paris on the 23rd
+of January 1894, after a strange and varied career of which the episode
+to be detailed in this article is the most remarkable. In a now very
+rare pamphlet published by Regnier in November 1870, he describes
+himself as a French landed proprietor with financial interests in
+England yielding him an income of L800 per annum, and as having come to
+England with his family in the end of August of that year in
+consequence of the proximity of German troops to his French residence.
+The painstaking compilers of the indictment against Bazaine give rather
+a different account of the character and antecedents of M. Regnier.
+Their information is that he received an imperfect education,
+sufficiently proven by his extraordinary style and vicious orthography.
+He studied, with little progress, law and medicine; later he took up
+magnetism. He was curiously mixed up in the events of the revolution of
+1848. He had some employment in Algeria as an assistant surgeon.
+Returning to France he developed a quarry of paving-stone, and
+afterwards married in England a wife who brought him a certain
+competence. "Regnier," continues the Report, "is a sharp, audacious
+fellow; his manners are vulgar--vain to excess he considers himself a
+profound politician. Was he induced to throw himself into the midst of
+events by one of the monomanias which are engendered by periods of
+storm and revolution? Was he simply an intriguer, plying his trade? It
+is difficult to tell. But however that may be, the established fact is
+that we find him in England in September 1870 besieging with his
+projects the _entourage_ of the Empress."
+
+Regnier's siege of the forlorn colony at Hastings took the form of a
+bombardment of letters, his principal victim being Madame Le Breton,
+the lady-in-waiting of the Empress and the sister of the unfortunate
+General Bourbaki, then in command of the Imperial Guard at Metz. He was
+about to have his passport vised by the German Ambassador in London,
+rather an equivocal proceeding for a French subject; and on the 12th of
+September he wrote thus to Madame Le Breton, desiring that the letter
+should be communicated to Her Majesty:--
+
+
+The Ambassador in London of the North German Confederation may possibly
+say, "I think the King of Prussia would prefer treating for peace with
+the Imperial Government rather than with the Republic." If so, I shall
+start to-morrow for Wilhelmshoehe, after having paid a visit to the
+Empress. The following are the propositions I intend to submit to the
+Emperor: (1) That the Empress-Regent ought not to quit French
+territory; (2) That the Imperial fleet _is_ French territory; (3) That
+the fleet which greeted Her Majesty so enthusiastically on its
+departure for the Baltic, or at least a portion of it, however small,
+be taken by the Regent for her seat of government, thus enabling her to
+go from one to another of the French ports where she can count upon the
+largest number of adherents, and so prove that her government exists
+both _de facto_ and _de jure_. Further, that the Empress-Regent issue
+from the fleet four proclamations--viz. to foreign governments, to the
+fleet, to the army, and to the French people.
+
+
+It will suffice to quote two of those suggested proclamations:--
+
+
+To foreign governments! To firmly insist upon the fact that the
+Imperial Government is the _actual_ government, as it is the government
+by right. To the fleet! That just as the Emperor remained to the last
+in the midst of his army, sharing the chances of war, so also does the
+Regent, the only executive power legally existing, come with gladness
+to trust her political fortune to the Imperial fleet.
+
+
+There followed a voluminous screed of irrelevant dissertation.
+
+Regnier confessedly made no way with the Empress. He saw, indeed,
+Madame Le Breton on the 14th, but only to be told, in language worthy
+of a patriot sovereign, that "Her Majesty's feeling was that the
+interests of France should take precedence of those of the dynasty;
+that she would rather do nothing than incur the suspicion of having
+acted from an undue regard for dynastic interests, and that she has the
+greatest horror of any step likely to bring about a civil war." Those
+high-souled expressions ought to have given definite pause to Regnier's
+importunity; but that busybody was indefatigable. A second letter to
+Madame Le Breton for the Empress simply elicited from the gentlemen of
+her suite the information that Her Majesty, having read his
+communications, had expressed the greatest horror of anything
+approaching a civil war. A final letter from him, containing the
+following significant passage:--
+
+
+I myself, or some other person, ought already to have been secretly and
+confidentially in communication with M. de Bismarck; our conditions for
+peace must be more acceptable than those to which the _soi-disant_
+Republican Government may have agreed; every action of theirs ought to
+be turned to our advantage--we ourselves must _act_,
+
+
+evoked the ultimatum that "the Empress would not stir in the matter."
+Regnier then said that as he found no encouragement at Hastings he
+would probably go to Wilhelmshoehe, where he would perhaps be better
+understood; and he produced a photographic view of Hastings on which he
+begged that the Prince Imperial would write a line to his father. On
+the following morning the Prince's equerry returned him the
+photographic view at the foot of which were the simple and affectionate
+words: "Mon cher Papa, je vous envoie ces vues d'Hastings; j'espere
+qu'elles vous plairont. Louis-Napoleon." I am personally familiar with
+the late Prince Imperial's handwriting and readily recognise it in this
+brief sentence. Regnier averred that it was with Her Majesty's consent
+that this paper was given him; but admitted that he was told she added:
+"Tell M. Regnier that there must be great danger in carrying out his
+project, and that I beg him not to attempt its execution." In other
+words, the Empress was willing that he should visit the Emperor at
+Cassel, authenticating him thus far by the Prince Imperial's little
+note; but she put her veto on his undertaking intrigues detrimental to
+the interests of France.
+
+Regnier by no means took the road for Wilhelmshoehe. At 7 P.M. of Sunday
+the 18th he read in the special _Observer_ that Jules Favre was next
+day to have an interview with Bismarck at Meaux. Eager to anticipate
+the Republican Foreign Minister he promptly took the night train for
+Paris. No trains were running beyond Amiens and he did not reach Meaux
+until midnight of the 19th, to learn that Bismarck and the headquarters
+had that day gone to Ferrieres. At 10 A.M. of the 20th he reached that
+chateau and appealed to Count Hatzfeld, now German Ambassador in
+London, for an immediate interview with Bismarck, stating that he had
+come direct from Hastings. He was informed that the Chancellor had an
+appointment with Jules Favre at eleven and that it was improbable he
+could be received in advance. But Bismarck having been apprised of his
+arrival the fortunate Regnier was immediately ushered into his
+presence. Regnier congratulates himself on having anticipated the
+French Minister, ignorant of the circumstance that on the previous day
+the latter had two interviews with Bismarck and that their then
+impending interview was simply for the purpose of communicating to
+Favre the German King's final answer to the French proposals.
+
+Regnier says that he drew from his portfolio the photograph of Hastings
+with the Prince Imperial's little note to his father at its foot and
+handed the paper in silence to Bismarck; and that after the latter had
+looked at it for some moments, Regnier said, "I come, Count, to ask you
+to grant me a pass which will permit me to go to Wilhelmshoehe and give
+this autograph into the Emperor's hands." Why he should have applied to
+Bismarck for this is not apparent, since he might have gone direct from
+Hastings to Wilhelmshoehe without any necessity for invoking the
+Chancellor's offices. It seems extremely probable that the request for
+a pass was a mere pretext to gain an interview, and the more so since
+Bismarck made no allusion to the subject, but after a few moments,
+according to Regnier, addressed that person as follows:--
+
+
+Sir, our position is before you; what can you offer us? with whom can
+we treat? Our determination is fixed so to profit by our present
+position as to render impossible for the future any war against us on
+the part of France. To effect this object, an alteration of the French
+frontier is indispensable. In the presence of two governments--the one
+_de facto_, the other _de jure_--it is difficult, if not impossible, to
+treat with either. The Empress-Regent has quitted French territory, and
+since then has given no sign. The Provisional Government in Paris
+refuses to accept this condition of diminution of territory, but
+proposes an armistice in order to consult the French nation on the
+subject. We can afford to wait. When we find ourselves face to face
+with a government _de facto_ and _de jure_, able to treat on the basis
+we require, then we will treat.
+
+
+Regnier suggested that Bazaine in Metz and Uhrich in Strasburg, if they
+should capitulate, might do so in the name of the Imperial Government.
+Bismarck replied that Jules Favre was assured that the garrisons of
+those fortresses were staunchly Republican; but that his own belief was
+that Bazaine's army of the Rhine was probably Imperialist. Then Regnier
+offered to go at once to Metz. "If you had come a week earlier," said
+Bismarck, "it was yet time; now, I fear, it is too late." Upon this the
+Chancellor went away to meet Jules Favre with the parting words to
+Regnier, "Be so good as to present my respectful homage to his Imperial
+Majesty when you reach Wilhelmshoehe." At a subsequent meeting the same
+evening Regnier repeated his anxiety to go at once to Metz and
+Strasburg and make an agreement that these places should be surrendered
+only in the Emperor's name. Bismarck was clearly not sanguine, but he
+said, "Do what you can to bring us some one with power to treat with
+us, and you will have rendered great service to your country. I will
+give orders for a 'general safe-conduct' to be given you. A telegram
+shall precede you to Metz, which will facilitate your entrance there.
+You should have come sooner." So these two parted; Regnier received his
+"safe-conduct" and started from Ferrieres early on the morning of the
+21st. But this indefatigable letter-writer could not depart without a
+farewell letter:--
+
+
+I shall leave (he wrote to Bismarck) your advanced posts near Metz,
+giving orders for the carriage to await my return. I shall wrap myself
+in a shawl, which will hide a portion of my face. In the event of
+Marshal Bazaine acceding to my conditions, either Marshal Canrobert or
+General Bourbaki, acquainted with all that will be requisite for the
+success of my plans, may go out with my papers, dressed in my clothes,
+wrapped in my shawl, and depart for Hastings, after giving me his word
+of honour that for every one, except the Empress, he was to be simply
+Mons. Regnier. If everything succeeded according to my anticipation, he
+might then establish his identity, and place himself at the head of the
+army, with orders to defend the Chamber assembled, if possible, at a
+seaport town, where a loyal portion of the fleet should also be
+present. If the project should miscarry, the Marshal or the General
+would return and resume his post.
+
+
+Bismarck must have smiled grimly as he read this strange farrago; yet,
+whatever may have been his motives, he furthered the errand on which
+Regnier was going to Metz.
+
+That person reached the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles at
+Corny, outside of Metz, on the afternoon of 23rd September and was
+promptly presented to the Prince, who said that Count Bismarck had
+informed him of his wish to enter Metz and had left it to him to decide
+as to the expediency of complying with it. This, said the Prince, he
+was prepared to do and he gave Regnier the requisite pass. The same
+evening that active individual presented himself at the French forepost
+line, and having stated that he had a mission to Marshal Bazaine and
+desired to see him immediately, he was driven to Ban-Saint-Martin where
+the Marshal was residing. Bazaine at once received him in his study. At
+the outset a discrepancy manifests itself in the subsequent testimony
+of the interlocutors. The Marshal states that Regnier said he came on
+the part of the Empress with the consent of Bismarck; while Regnier
+declares that he did not state to the Marshal that he had any mission
+from the Empress. On other points, with one important exception, the
+versions given of the interview by the two participants fairly agree,
+and Bazaine's account of it may be summarised. After Regnier had stated
+that his commission was purely verbal he went on to observe that it was
+to be regretted that a treaty of peace had not put an end to the war
+after Sedan; that the maintenance of the German armies on French
+territory was ruinous to the country; and that it would be doing France
+a great service to obtain an armistice preparatory to the conclusion of
+peace. That as regarded this, the French army under the walls of
+Metz--the only army remaining organised--would be in a position to give
+guarantees to the Germans if it were allowed its liberty of action; but
+that without doubt they would exact as a pledge the surrender of the
+fortress of Metz.
+
+
+I replied (says Bazaine) that certainly if we--the "Army of the
+Rhine"--could extricate ourselves from the _impasse_ in which we now
+were, with the honours of war--that is to say, with arms and
+baggage--in a word completely constituted as an army, we would be in a
+position to maintain order in the interior, and would cause the
+provisions of the convention to be respected; but a difficulty would
+occur as to the fortress of Metz, the governor of which, appointed by
+the Emperor, could not be relieved except by His Majesty himself.
+
+
+One of Regnier's stated objects, continues the Marshal, was to bring it
+about that either Marshal Canrobert or General Bourbaki should go to
+England, inform the Empress of the situation at Metz, and place himself
+at her disposition. The departure of whichever of the two high officers
+should undertake this duty was to be surreptitious; and for this
+Regnier had provided with Prussian assistance. Seven Luxembourg
+surgeons who had been in Metz ever since the battle of Gravelotte had
+written to Marshal Bazaine for leave to go home through the Prussian
+lines. This letter, sent to the Prussian headquarters, was replied to
+in a letter carried into Metz by Regnier and by him given to Bazaine,
+to the effect that the _nine_ surgeons were free to depart. As there
+were but seven surgeons, the implication is obvious that the
+safe-conduct was expanded to cover the incognito exit, along with the
+surgeons, of Regnier and the French officer bound for Hastings.
+
+Regnier gave me (writes Bazaine) so many details of his _soi-disant_
+relations with the Empress and her _entourage_ that, notwithstanding
+the strangeness of the apparition, I put faith in his mission, and
+believed that I ought not, in the general interest, to neglect the
+opportunity opened to me of putting myself in communication with the
+outside world. I consequently told him that he would be duly brought
+into relations with Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki, whom I
+would inform in regard to his proposals, and whom I would place at
+liberty to act as each might choose in the matter.
+
+Finally Regnier produced the photograph of Hastings with the Prince
+Imperial's signature at the foot, and begged the Marshal to add his,
+which he did "as a souvenir of the interview" explained Regnier,
+according to the Marshal; according to Regnier, that he could exhibit
+the signature to Bismarck in proof that he had the Marshal's assent to
+his proposals. Diplomacy conducted by chance signatures on casual
+photographs has a certain innocent simplicity, but is not in accordance
+with modern methods. Perhaps, however, the strangest thing in
+connection with this strange interview is Bazaine's final comment:--
+
+
+All this which I have narrated was only a simple conversation to which
+I attached a merely secondary importance, since M. Regnier had no
+written authority from the Empress nor from M. de Bismarck.... This
+personage, therefore, appeared to act without the knowledge of the
+German military authorities, and it was not until considerably later
+that I became convinced of their cognisance, and of their mutual
+understanding as regards M. Regnier's visit to Metz.
+
+
+And this in the face of General Stiehle's letter to him in his hand,
+brought in by Regnier, sanctioning the exit of the _nine_ surgeons; and
+the Marshal's promise to Regnier that he and the officer who should
+accept the mission to Hastings should quit the camp incognito along
+with the Luxembourg surgeons.
+
+Reference has been made to a discordance between the testimony of
+Marshal Bazaine and of Regnier on a very important point in regard to
+this interview. In his notes taken at the time the latter writes:--
+
+
+The Marshal tells me of his excellent position, of the long period for
+which he can hold out; that he considers himself as the Palladium of
+the Empire. He speaks of the very healthy condition of the troops; and,
+if I may judge by his own rosy face, he is quite right. He tells of all
+the successful sallies he had made, and of the facility with which he
+can break through the besieging lines whenever he chooses to do so.
+
+
+Later, he contradicts all this, explaining that finding himself in the
+Prussian lines and his papers liable to be read, he had written just
+the reverse of what he was told by the Marshal. He says that what
+Bazaine actually informed him was that the bread ration had been
+already diminished and would be necessarily further reduced in a few
+days; that the horses lacked forage and had to be used for food; and
+that in such conditions and taking into account the necessity of
+carrying four or five days' rations for the army and keeping a certain
+number of horses in condition to drag the guns and supplies, there
+would be great difficulty in holding out until the 18th of October.
+Bazaine, for his part, vehemently denied having given Regnier any such
+information, and it seems utterly improbable that he should have done
+so. It is nevertheless the fact that the 18th of October was the last
+day on which rations were issued to the army outside Metz. Regnier must
+have been a wizard; or Bazaine must have leaked atrociously; or there
+must have been lying on the Marshal's table during the interview with
+Regnier, the most recent state furnished by the French intendance, that
+of the 21st of September which specified the 18th of October as the
+precise date of the final exhaustion of the army's supplies.
+
+At midnight of the 23rd Regnier went to the outposts and next morning
+to Corny, where he found a telegram from Bismarck authorising the
+departure for Hastings of a general from the army of Metz. He was back
+again at Ban-Saint-Martin on the afternoon of the 24th, when Marshal
+Canrobert and General Bourbaki were summoned to headquarters to meet
+him and the Luxembourg surgeons were assembled. Canrobert declined the
+proposed mission on the plea of ill-health. Bourbaki had to be searched
+for and was ultimately found at St. Julien with Marshal Lebceuf. As he
+dismounted at the headquarters he asked Colonel Boyer--they had both
+been of the intimate circle of the Empire--whether he knew the person
+walking in the garden with the Marshal?
+
+"No," replied Boyer.
+
+"What?" rejoined Bourbaki; "have you never seen him at the Tuileries?"
+
+"No," said Boyer. "I forget names, but not faces--I never saw this
+fellow. He is neither a familiar of the Tuileries nor an employe."
+Whereupon the two aristocrats despised the bourgeois Regnier. But
+Bourbaki, nevertheless, had to endure the presentation to him of the
+"fellow," who promptly entered on a political discourse to the effect
+that the German Government was reluctant to treat with the Paris
+Government, which it did not consider so lawful as that of the Empress,
+and that if it treated with her the conditions would be less
+burdensome; that the intervention of the army of Metz was
+indispensable; that it was all-important that one of its chiefs should
+repair to the side of the Empress to represent the army with her; and
+that he, Bourbaki, was the fittest person to occupy that position on
+the declinature of Marshal Canrobert. Bourbaki turned from the man of
+verbiage to Bazaine and asked, "Marshal, what do you wish me to do?"
+The Marshal answered that he desired him to repair to the Empress.
+
+"I am ready," answered Bourbaki, "but on certain conditions: you will
+have the goodness to give me a written order; to announce my departure
+in army orders; not to place a substitute in my command; and to promise
+that, pending my return, you will not engage the Guard." His terms were
+accepted; he was told that he was to leave immediately and he went to
+his quarters to make his preparations.
+
+It was understood that the general's departure was to be by way of
+being incognito, so that it should not get wind. He had no civilian
+clothes and Bazaine fitted him out in his; Regnier had obtained from
+one of the Luxembourger surgeons a cap with the Geneva Cross which
+completed the costume. At the Prussian headquarters General Stiehle,
+Prince Frederick Charles's chief of staff, desired to pay his respects
+to a man whose brilliant courage he admired. Bourbaki's bitter answer
+to Regnier who communicated to him Stiehle's wish, was that he would
+see "none of them, nor even eat a morsel of their bread," which, he
+said, would choke him. He presently started with the surgeons,
+travelling in Regnier's name and on Regnier's passport, on an
+enterprise which was to lead to the wreck of a fine career. At the same
+time Regnier quitted Corny on his return to Ferrieres to report to
+Bismarck, having promised Bazaine that he would return to Metz within
+six days. His bolt was about shot. But he had not realised this fact.
+He maintains in his curious pamphlet that, to quote his own words, "the
+Minister had given me to understand that if I were backed by Bazaine
+and his army he would treat with me as if I were the representative of
+the Emperor or the Regent. I had obtained from the Marshal a
+capitulation with the honours of war, which the Minister--for the
+furtherance of our political ends--had consented to accord to him." He
+hurried expectant to Ferrieres; there to be summarily disillusioned.
+Bismarck gave him an interview on the 28th, and crushed him in a few
+trenchant sentences:--
+
+
+I am surprised and sorry (said the Chancellor) that you, who appeared
+to be a practical man, after having been permitted to enter Metz with
+the certainty of being able to leave it, a favour never before
+accorded, should have left it without some more formal recognition of
+your right to treat than merely a photograph with the Marshal's
+signature on it. But I, Sir, am a diplomatist of many years' standing,
+and this is not enough for me. I regret it; but I find myself compelled
+to relinquish all further communication with you till your powers are
+better defined.
+
+
+Regnier expressed his regret at having been so cruelly deceived but
+thanked Bismarck for his kindness, whereupon the latter offered to give
+him a last chance. "I would certainly," he said, "have treated with you
+as to peace conditions, had you been able to treat in the name of a
+Marshal at the head of 80,000 men; as it is, I will send this telegram
+to the Marshal: 'Does Marshal Bazaine authorise M. Regnier to treat for
+the surrender of the army before Metz in accordance with the conditions
+agreed upon with the last-named?'" On the 29th came Bazaine's somewhat
+diffuse reply:--
+
+
+I cannot reply definitely in the affirmative to the question. Regnier
+announced himself the emissary of the Empress without written
+credentials. He asked the conditions on which I could enter into
+negotiations with Prince Frederick Charles. My answer was that I could
+only accept a convention with the honours of war, not to include the
+fortress of Metz. These are the only conditions which military honour
+permits me to accept.
+
+
+Regnier bombarded the Chancellor with letters until the 30th, when
+Count Hatzfeld informed him that the Minister would listen to nothing
+more until Regnier could show full powers without evasion; that the
+matter must imperatively be conducted openly and above board; and that
+his Excellency hoped Regnier would be able to get clear of it with
+honour, and that soon.
+
+So Regnier quitted Ferrieres in great dejection. He gives vent ruefully
+to the belief that Bismarck regarded him as an unaccredited agent of
+the Empress, while, curiously enough, the partisans of the Empress took
+him for an emissary of Bismarck. Reaching Hastings on the 3rd of
+October he found that the Empress was now at Chislehurst. He had
+telegraphed in advance to "M. Regnier," the name which he had
+instructed General Bourbaki to pass under until the true Regnier should
+reach England. But Bourbaki had cast away the false name at the
+instigation of a brother officer while passing through Belgium. On
+arriving at Chislehurst he learned from the Empress that he had been
+made the victim of a mystification on the part of Regnier, and that she
+had never expressed the desire to have with her either Marshal
+Canrobert or himself. This intelligence, of which the newspapers had
+given him a presentiment, struck him to the heart. Although covered by
+his chief's order he found himself in a false position; and he wrote to
+the late Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, begging his good
+offices to obtain for him an authorisation to return to his post. An
+assurance was given that this would be accorded, and he hurried to
+Luxembourg there to await intimation of permission to re-enter Metz.
+Some delay occurred in the transmission of the Royal order to this
+effect and although Bourbaki was assured that the decision would
+shortly reach him, he became impatient, went into France, and placed
+himself at the disposition of the Provisional Government. But
+thenceforth he was a soured and dispirited man. The _ci-devant_
+aide-de-camp of an Emperor writhed under the harrow of Gambetta and
+Freycinet.
+
+As for Regnier, on his return to England he seems to have haunted
+Chislehurst. Once, so he frankly writes, after waiting a full hour in
+expectation of an audience of the Empress Madame Le Breton came to tell
+him that Her Majesty was sorry to have kept him waiting so long, but
+that she had now definitely resolved not to receive him. Yet he hung
+on, and the same evening he tells that he was called somewhat abruptly
+into a room in which stood several gentlemen, when a lady suddenly rose
+from a couch and addressed him standing. At last he was face to face
+with the Empress. "Sir," said Her Majesty, "you have been persistent in
+wishing to speak with me personally; here I am; what have you to say?"
+Then Regnier, by his own account, harangued that august and unfortunate
+lady in a manner which in print seems extremely trenchant and
+dictatorial. It was all in vain, he confesses; he could not alter the
+convictions of the Empress. He says that "she feared that posterity, if
+she yielded, would only see in the act a proof of dynastic selfishness;
+and that dishonour would be attached to the name of whoever should sign
+a treaty based on a cession of territory." Probably Her Majesty spoke
+from a more lofty standpoint than Regnier was able to comprehend or
+appreciate.
+
+Regnier's subsequent career during that troublous period was both
+curious and dubious. General Boyer states that on the 28th of October
+he found Regnier _tete-a-tete_ with Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon). Later
+he went to Cassel, where he busied himself in trying to implicate in
+political machinations sundry French officers who were prisoners there.
+Presently we find him at Versailles, figuring among the conductors of
+the _Moniteur Prussien_, Bismarck's organ during the German occupation
+of that city, in which journal he published a series of articles under
+the title of _Jean Bonhomme_. During the armistice after the surrender
+of Paris he betook himself to Brussels, where he told General Boyer
+that he had gone to Versailles to attempt a renewal of negotiations
+tending towards an Imperial restoration. He showed the general the
+original safe-conduct which Bismarck had given him at Ferrieres, and a
+letter of Count Hatzfeld authorising him to visit Versailles. The last
+item during this period recorded of this strange personage--and that
+item one so significant as to justify Mrs. Crawford's shrewd suspicion
+"that Regnier played a double game, and that Prince Bismarck, if he
+chose, could clear up the mystery which hangs over Regnier's curious
+negotiations"--is found in a page of the _Proces Bazaine_. This is the
+gem: "On the 18th of February 1871 he was in Versailles, where he met a
+person of his acquaintance, to whom he uttered the characteristic
+words--'I do not know whether M. de Bismarck will allow me to leave him
+this evening.'" He is said to have later been connected with the Paris
+police under the late M. Lagrange. Whether Regnier was more knave or
+fool--enthusiast, impostor, or "crank"--will probably be never known.
+
+
+
+
+RAILWAY LIZZ
+
+BY AN HOSPITAL MATRON
+
+
+We see many curious phases of humanity--we who administer to the sick
+in the great hospitals which are among the boasts of London. The mask
+worn by the face of the world is dropped before us. We see men as they
+are, and while the sight is often not calculated to enhance our
+estimate of human nature, there are occasionally strong reliefs which
+stand out from the mass of shadow. There are curious opinions
+entertained in the outer world as to the internal economy of hospitals,
+not a few "laymen" imagining that the main end of such establishments
+is that the doctors may have something to experiment upon for the
+advancement of their professional theories--something which, while it
+is human, is not very valuable in the social scale and therefore open
+to be hacked and hewn and operated upon with a freedom begotten of the
+knowledge that the subject is a mere vile corpus.
+
+Nor is this the only delusion. Many people think that the hospital
+nurse is but another name for a heartless harpy, brimful of callous
+selfishness. Her attentions--kindness is an inadmissible word--are
+believed to be purely mercenary. Those who themselves can afford to fee
+her or who have friends able and willing to buy her services, may
+purchase civil treatment and careful nursing while the poor wretch who
+has neither money nor friends may languish unheeded. There is no
+greater mistake than this. Year by year the character of hospital
+nursing has improved. It is not to be denied that in times gone by
+there were nurses the mainsprings of whose actions may be said to have
+been money and gin; but these have long since been driven forth with
+contumely. I have seen a poor wretch of a discharged soldier without a
+single copper to bless himself with, nursed with as much tender
+assiduity and real feeling as if he were in a position to pay his
+nurses handsomely.
+
+Indeed, in most hospitals now the practice of accepting money presents
+is altogether forbidden; and if the prohibition, as in the case of
+railway porters and guards, is sometimes looked upon in the light of a
+dead letter, there is, I sincerely believe, no such thing as any
+grasping after a guerdon nor any neglect in a case where it is evident
+no guerdon is to be expected. There is an hospital I could name in
+which the nurses are prohibited from accepting from patients any more
+substantial recognition of their services than a nosegay of flowers.
+The wards of this hospital are always gay with bright, fragrant posies,
+most of them the contributions of those who, having been carefully
+tended in their need, retain a grateful recollection of the kindness
+and now that they are in health again take this simple, pretty way of
+showing their gratitude. It is two years ago since a rough bricklayer's
+labourer got mended in the accident ward of this hospital of some
+curiously complicated injuries he had received by tumbling from the top
+of a house. Not a Sunday afternoon has there been since the
+house-surgeon told him one morning that he might go out, that he has
+not religiously visited the "Albert" ward and brought his
+thank-offering in the shape of a cheap but grateful nosegay.
+
+Those nurses who thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have
+often curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of
+collecting them. It is by no means always mere regard for the securing
+of the necessaries of life which has brought them to the thankless and
+toilsome occupation. We have all read of nunneries in which women
+immured themselves, anxious to sequester themselves from all
+association with the outer world and to devote themselves to a life of
+penance and devotion. After all their piety was aimless and of no
+utility to humanity. There was a concentrated selfishness in it which
+detracted from its ambitious aspiration. But in the modern nuns of our
+hospitals methinks we have women who, abnegating with equal solicitude
+the pleasures and dissipations of the world, find a more philanthropic
+opening for their exertions in their retirement than in sleeping on
+hair pallets, and in eating nothing but parched peas.
+
+It was towards the autumn of a recent year that a modest-looking young
+woman applied to me for a situation on our nursing staff. She wore a
+widow's dress and seemed a self-contained, reserved little woman, with
+something weighing very heavily on her mind. Her testimonials of
+character were ample and of a very high order but they did not
+enlighten me with any great freedom as to her past history, and she for
+her part appeared by no means eager to supplement the meagre
+information furnished by them. However, people have a right to keep
+their own counsel if they please, and there was no sin in the woman's
+reticence. We happened to be very short of efficient nurses at the time
+and she was at once taken upon trial; her somewhat strange stipulation,
+which she made absolute, being agreed to--that she should not be
+compelled to reside in the hospital, but merely come in to perform her
+turn of nursing, and that over, be at liberty to leave the precincts
+when she pleased. I say the stipulation was a strange one, because
+attached to it there was a considerable pecuniary sacrifice as well as
+a necessity for entering a lower grade.
+
+She made a very excellent nurse, with her quiet, reserved ways and her
+manner of moving about a ward as if she studied the lightness of every
+footfall. But she had her peculiarities. I have already said that she
+was not given to be communicative, and for the first three months she
+was in the place I do not believe she uttered a word to any one within
+the walls except on subjects connected with the performance of her
+duties. Then, too, she manifested a curious fondness for being on duty
+in the accident ward. Most nurses have very little liking for this
+ward--the work is very heavy and unremitting and frequently the sights
+are more than usually repulsive. But she specially made application to
+be placed in it, and the more terrible the nature of the accident the
+more eager was her zeal to minister to the poor victim. It seemed
+almost a morbid fondness which she developed for waiting, in
+particular, upon people injured by railway accidents. When some poor
+mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed almost out of
+resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an empty cot in
+the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a seemingly
+intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and ease the
+poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot" with
+an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however
+conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her
+partiality for railway "cases" was so marked that it appeared to amount
+to a passion; and among the other nurses, never slow to fix upon any
+peculiarity and base upon it some not unfriendly nickname, our quiet
+friend went by the name of "Railway Lizz." Nobody ever got any clue to
+the reason, if there was one, for this predilection of hers. Indeed,
+nobody ever was favoured with the smallest scrap of her confidence. I
+confess to have felt much interest in the sad-eyed young widow and to
+have several times given her an opening which she might have availed
+herself of for narrating something of her past life; but she always
+retired within herself with a sensitiveness which puzzled me not a
+little, satisfied as I was that there was nothing in her antecedents of
+a character which would not bear the light.
+
+There are few holidays within an hospital. Physical suffering is not to
+be mitigated by a gala day; the pressure of disease cannot be lightened
+by jollity and merry-making. One New Year's Eve, when the world outside
+our walls was glad of heart, a poor shattered form was borne into the
+accident ward. It was a railway-porter whom a train had knocked down
+and passed over, crushing the young fellow almost out of the shape of
+humanity. Railway Lizz was by his side in a moment, wetting the
+pain-parched lips and smoothing the pillow of the half-conscious
+sufferer. The house-surgeon came and went with that silent shake of the
+head we know too surely how to interpret, and the mangled
+railway-porter was left in the care of his assiduous nurse. It was
+almost midnight when I again entered the accident ward. The night-lamp
+was burning feebly, shedding a dull dim light over the great room and
+throwing out huge grotesque shadows on the floor and the walls. I
+glanced toward the railway-porter's bed, and the tell-tale screen
+placed around it told me that all was over and that the life had gone
+out of the shattered casket. As I walked down the room toward the
+screen I heard a low subdued sound of bitter sobbing behind it; and
+when I stepped within it, there was the sad-faced widow-nurse weeping
+as if her heart would break. When she saw me she strove hard to repress
+her emotion and to resume the quiet, self-possessed demeanour which it
+was her wont to wear; but she failed in the attempt and the sobs burst
+out in almost convulsive rebellion against the effort to repress them.
+I put my arm round the neck of the poor young thing and stooping down
+kissed her wet cheek as a tear from my own eye mingled with her profuse
+weeping. The evidence of feeling appeared to overpower her utterly; she
+buried her head in my lap, and lay long there sobbing like a child.
+When the acuteness of the emotion had somewhat spent itself I gently
+raised her up, and asked of her what was the cause of a grief so
+poignant. I found that I was now at last within the intrenchments of
+her reserve; with a deep sigh she said, in her Scottish accent, that it
+was "a lang, lang story," but if I cared to hear it she would tell it.
+So sitting there, we two together in the dim twilight of the
+night-lamp, with the shattered corpse of the railway-porter lying there
+"streekit" decently before us, she told the following pathetic tale:--
+
+"I am an Aberdeen girl by birth. My father was the foreman at a
+factory, a very stiff, dour man, but a gude father, and an upright,
+God-fearing man. When I was about eighteen, I fell acquainted with a
+railway-guard, a winsome, manly lad as ever ye would wish to see. If ye
+had kent my Alick, ye wadna wonder at me for what I did. My father was
+a proud man, and he couldna bear that I should marry a man that he said
+wasna my equal in station; and in his firm, masterful way he forbade
+Alick from coming about the house, and me from seeing him. It was a
+sair trial, and I dinna think ony father has a right to put doon his
+foot and mar the happiness of twa young folks in the way mine did. The
+struggle was a bitter ane, between a father's commands and the bidding
+of true luve; and at last, ae night coming home from a friend's house,
+Alick and I forgathered again, and he swore he would not gang till I
+had promised I would marry him afore the week was out.
+
+"I'll not trouble ye with lang details of the battle that I fought with
+mysel', and how in the end Alick conquered. We were married in the West
+Kirk the Sunday after, and we twa set up our simple housekeeping in a
+single room in a house by the back of the Infirmary. Oh, mem, we were
+happy young things! Alick was the fondest, kindest man ye could ever
+think of. Sometimes he wad take me a jaunt the length of Perth in the
+van with him, and point out the places of interest on the road as we
+went flashing by them. Then on the Sunday, when he was off duty, we
+used to take a walk out to the Torry Lighthouse, or down by the auld
+brig o' Balgownie, and then hame to an hour's read of the Bible afore I
+put down the kebbuck and the bannocks. My father keepit hard and
+unforgiving; they tellt me he had sworn an oath I should never darken
+his door again, and at times I felt very sairly the bitterness of his
+feeling toward me, whan I was sitting up waiting for Alick's
+hame-coming whan he was on the night turn; but then he wad come in with
+his blithe smile and cheery greeting and every thought but joy at his
+presence wad flee awa as if by magic. Some of the friends I had kent
+when a lassie at home still keepit up the acquantance, and we used
+sometimes to spend an evening at one of their houses. The New Year time
+came, and Alick and myself got an invitation to keep our New Year's Eve
+at the house of a decent, elderly couple that lived up near the Kitty
+Brewster Station--quiet, retired folk that had been in business and
+made enough to live comfortable on. It was Alick's night for the late
+mail train from Perth, but he would be at Market Street Station in time
+to get up among us to see the auld year out and the new ane in; and I
+was to spend the evening there and wait for his arrival.
+
+"It was a vera happy time. The auld couple were as kind as kind could
+be, and their twa or three young folks keepit up the fun brisk and
+lively. I took a hand at the cairts and sang a lilt like the rest; but
+I was luiking for Alick's company to fill up my cup of happiness. The
+time wore on, and it was getting close to the hour at which he might be
+expectit. I kenna what ailed me, but I felt strangely uneasy and
+anxious for his coming. 'Here he is at last!' I said to myself, as my
+heart gave a jump at the sound of a foot on the gravel walk. As it came
+closer, I kent it wasna Alick's step, and a strange, cauld grip of fear
+and doubt caught me at the heart. Mr. Thomson, that was the name of our
+old friend, was called out, and I overheard the sound of a whispered
+conversation in the passage. Then he put his head in and called out his
+wife; I could see his face was as white as a sheet, and his voice shook
+in spite of himself. The boding of misfortune came upon me with a force
+it was in vain to strive against, and I rose up and gaed out into the
+passage amang them. The auld man was shakin' like an aspen leaf; the
+gudewife had her apron ower her face and was greeting like a bairn, and
+in the door stood Tarn Farquharson, a railway-porter frae the station.
+I saw it aa' quicker nor I can tell it to you, leddy. I steppit up to
+Tarn and charged him simple and straught.
+
+"'Tam, what's happent to my Alick?'
+
+"The wet tears stood in Tarn's e'en as he answered, 'Dinna speer,
+Lizzie, my puir lass, dinna speer, whan the answer maun be a waefu'
+ane.'
+
+"'Tell me the warst, Tam,' says I; 'let me hear the warst, an' pit me
+oot o' my pain!'
+
+"The words are dirlin' and stoonin' in my ears yet--
+
+"'The engine gaed ower him, and he's lyin' dead at Market Street.'
+
+"I didna faint, and I couldna greet. Something gied a crack inside my
+head, and my e'en swam for a minute; but the next I was putting on my
+bonnet and shawl and saying good-nicht to Mrs. Thomson. They tried to
+stop me. I heard Tam whisper to the auld man, 'She maunna see him. He
+is mangled oot o' the shape o' man.'
+
+"But I wasna to be gainsaid, and Tam took my airm as we gaed doon
+through the toon to Market Street. There they tried hard to keep him
+oot frae my sight. They tellt me he wasna fit to be seen, but there's
+nae law that can keep a wife frae seeing her husband's corpse. He was
+lying in a waiting-room covered up with a sheet, and, oh me, he was
+sair, sair mangled--that puir fellow there is naething to him; but the
+winsome, manly face, with the sweet, familiar smile on it, was nane
+spoiled; and lang, lang, I sat there, us twa alane, with my hand on his
+cauld forehead, playing wi' his bonnie waving hair. They left me there,
+in their considerate kindliness, till the cauld light o' the New Year's
+morning began to break, and syne they came and tellt me I maun go. But
+I wadna gang my lane. He was mine, and mine only, sae lang as he was
+abune the mools; and I claimed my dead hame wi' me, to that hoose he
+had left sae brisk and sprichtly whan he kissed me in the morning. Four
+of the railway-porters carried him up to that hame which had lost its
+hame-look for me now. I keepit him to mysel' till they took him awa'
+frae me and laid him under a saugh tree in the Spittal Kirkyard."
+
+She paused in her story, overcome by the bitter memory of the past, and
+I wanted no formal application now to give me the clue to her strange
+preference for the accident ward and her hitherto inexplicable fondness
+for "railway cases." Poor thing, with what inexpressible vividness must
+the circumstances in which this New Year's night was passing with her
+have recalled the sad remembrances of that other New Year's night the
+narrative of which she had just given me! Presently she recovered her
+voice, and briefly concluded the little history.
+
+"Leddy, I was wi' bairn whan my Alick was taken from me. Oh, how I used
+to pray that God would be gude to me, and give me a living keepsake of
+my dead husband! I troubled naebody. I never speered if my father would
+do anything for me; but I got work at the factory, and I lived in
+prayerful hope. My hour of trouble came, and a fatherless laddie was
+born into this weary world, the very picture o' him that was sleeping
+under the tree in the Spittal Kirkyard. I needna tell ye I christened
+him Alick, and the bairn has been my joy and comfort ever since God
+gifted me with him. I found the sichts and memories of Aberdeen ower
+muckle for me, sae I came up to London here, and ye ken the rest about
+me. It was because of being with my bairn that I wouldna agree to live
+in the hospital here like the rest of the nurses, and whan I gang hame
+noo to my little garret, he will waken up out of his saft sleep, rosy
+and fresh, and hold up his bonnie mou', sae like his father's, for
+'mammie's kiss.'"
+
+
+
+
+MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
+
+
+None of the greater rivers of Scotland makes so much haste to reach the
+ocean as does the turbulent and impatient Spey. From its parent lochlet
+in the bosom of the Grampians it speeds through Badenoch, the country
+of Cluny MacPherson, the chief of Clan Chattan, a region to this day
+redolent of memories of the '45. It abates its hurry as its current
+skirts the grave of the beautiful Jean Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, who
+raised the 92nd Highlanders by giving a kiss with the King's shilling
+to every recruit, and who now since many long years
+
+  Sleeps beneath Kinrara's willow.
+
+But after this salaam of courtesy the river roars and bickers down the
+long stretch of shaggy glen which intervenes between the upper and
+lower Rocks of Craigellachie, whence the Clan Grant, whose habitation
+is this ruggedly beautiful strath, takes its slogan of "Stand fast,
+Craigellachie," till it finally sends its headlong torrent shooting
+miles out through the salt water of the Moray Firth. In its course of
+over a hundred miles its fierce current has seldom tarried; yet now and
+again it spreads panting into a long smooth stretch of still water when
+wearied momentarily with buffeting the boulders in its broken and
+contorted bed; or when a great rock, jutting out into its course,
+causes a deep black sullen pool whose sluggish eddy is crested with
+masses of yellow foam. Merely as a wayfaring pedestrian I have followed
+Spey from its source to its mouth; but my intimacy with it in the
+character of a fisherman extends over the five-and-twenty miles of its
+lower course, from the confluence of the pellucid Avon at Ballindalloch
+to the bridge of Fochabers, the native village of the Captain Wilson
+who died so gallantly in the recent fighting in Matabeleland. My first
+Spey trout I took out of water at the foot of the cherry orchard below
+the sweet-lying cottage of Delfur. My first grilse I hooked and played
+with trout tackle in "Dalmunach" on the Laggan water, a pool that is
+the rival of "Dellagyl" and the "Holly Bush" for the proud title of the
+best pool of lower Spey. My first salmon I brought to the gaff with a
+beating heart in that fine swift stretch of water known as "The Dip,"
+which connects the pools of the "Heathery Isle" and the "Red Craig,"
+and which is now leased by that good fisherman, Mr. Justice North. I
+think the Dundurcas water then belonged to the late Mr. Little Gilmour,
+the well-known welter-weight who went so well to hounds season after
+season from Melton Mowbray, and who was as keen in the water on Spey as
+he was over the Leicestershire pastures. A servant of Mr. Little
+Gilmour was drowned in the "Two Stones" pool, the next below the "Holly
+Bush;" and the next pool below the "Two Stones" is called the
+"Beaufort" to this day--named after the present Duke, who took many a
+big fish out of it in the days when he used to come to Speyside with
+his friend Mr. Little Gilmour.
+
+In those long gone-by days brave old Lord Saltoun, the hero of
+Hougomont, resided during the fishing season in the mansion-house of
+Auchinroath, on the high ground at the mouth of the Glen of Rothes. One
+morning, some five-and-forty years ago, my father drove to breakfast
+with the old lord and took me with him. Not caring to send the horse to
+the stable, he left me outside in the dogcart when he entered the
+house. As I waited rather sulkily--for I was mightily hungry--there
+came out on to the doorstep a very queer-looking old person, short of
+figure, round as a ball, his head sunk between very high and rounded
+shoulders, and with short stumpy legs. He was curiously attired in a
+whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped jacket the great collar of
+which reached far up the back of his head, surmounted a pair of
+voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the knee. I imagined
+him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he accosted me
+good-naturedly, asking to whom the dogcart and myself belonged, I
+answered him somewhat shortly and then ingenuously suggested that he
+would be doing me a kindly act if he would go and fetch me out a hunk
+of bread and meat, for I was enduring tortures of hunger.
+
+Then he swore, and that with vigour and fluency, that it was a shame
+that I should have been left outside; called a groom and bade me alight
+and come indoors with him. I demurred--I had got the paternal
+injunction to remain with the horse and cart. "I am master here!"
+exclaimed the old person impetuously; and with further strong language
+he expressed his intention of rating my father soundly for not having
+brought me inside along with himself. Then a question occurred to me,
+and I ventured to ask, "Are you Lord Saltoun?" "Of course I am,"
+replied the old gentleman; "who the devil else should I be?" Well, I
+did not like to avow what I felt, but in truth I was hugely
+disappointed in him; for I had just been reading Siborne's _Waterloo_,
+and to think that this dumpy old fellow in the duffle jacket that came
+up over his ears was the valiant hero who had held Hougomont through
+cannon fire and musketry fire and hand-to-hand bayonet fighting on the
+day of Waterloo while the post he was defending was ablaze, and who had
+actually killed Frenchmen with his own good sword, was a severe
+disenchantment. When I had breakfasted he asked leave of my father to
+let me go with him to the waterside, promising to send me home safely
+later in the day. When he was in Spey up to the armpits--for the "Holly
+Bush" takes deep wading from the Dundurcas side--the old lord looked
+even droller than he had done on the Auchinroath doorstep, and I could
+not reconcile him in the least to my Hougomont ideal. He was delighted
+when I opened on him with that topic, and he told me with great spirit
+of the vehemence with which his brother-officer Colonel Macdonnell, and
+his men forced the French soldiers out of the Hougomont courtyard, and
+how big Sergeant Graham closed the door against them by main force of
+muscular strength. Before he had been in the water twenty minutes the
+old lord was in a fish; his gillie, old Dallas, who could throw a fine
+line in spite of the whisky, gaffed it scientifically, and I was sent
+home rejoicing with a 15 lb. salmon for my mother and a half-sovereign
+for myself wherewith to buy a trouting rod and reel. Lord Saltoun was
+the first lord I ever met, and I have never known one since whom I have
+liked half so well.
+
+Spey is a river which insists on being distinctive. She mistrusts the
+stranger. He may be a good man on Tweed or Tay, but until he has been
+formally introduced to Spey and been admitted to her acquaintance, she
+is chary in according him her favours. She is no flighty coquette, nor
+is she a prude; but she has her demure reserves, and he who would stand
+well with her must ever treat her with consideration and respect. She
+is not as those facile demi-mondaine streams, such as the Helmsdale or
+the Conon, which let themselves be entreated successfully by the chance
+comer on the first jaunty appeal. You must learn the ways of Spey
+before you can prevail with her, and her ways are not the ways of other
+rivers. It was in vain that the veteran chief of southern fishermen,
+the late Francis Francis, threw his line over Spey in the _veni, vidi,
+vici_ manner of one who had made Usk and Wye his potsherd, and who over
+the Hampshire Avon had cast his shoe. Russel, the famous editor of the
+_Scotsman_, the Delane of the north country, who, pen in hand, could
+make a Lord Advocate squirm, and before whose gibe provosts and bailies
+trembled, who had drawn out leviathan with a hook from Tweed, and
+before whom the big fish of Forth could not stand--even he, brilliant
+fisherman as he was, could "come nae speed ava" on Spey, as the old
+Arndilly water-gillie quaintly worded it.
+
+Yet Russel of the _Scotsman_ was perhaps the most whole-souled salmon
+fisher of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations
+extended beyond the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the
+peroration, slightly profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his
+speech on salmon fishing at a Tweedside dinner? "When I die," he
+exclaimed in a fine rapture, "should I go to heaven, I will fish in the
+water of life with a fly dressed with a feather from the wing of an
+angel; should I be unfortunately consigned to another destination, I
+shall nevertheless hope to angle in Styx with the worm that never
+dieth." To his editorial successor Spey was a trifle more gracious than
+she had been to Russel; but she did not wholly open her heart to this
+neophyte of her stream, serving him up in the pool of Dellagyl with the
+ugliest, blackest, gauntest old cock-salmon of her depths, owning a
+snout like the prow of an ancient galley.
+
+Spey exacts from those who would fish her waters with success a
+peculiar and distinctive method of throwing their line, which is known
+as the "Spey cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the
+successive phases of the "Spey cast" in the fishing volume of the
+admirable Badminton series. It cannot be learned by diagrams; no man,
+indeed, can become a proficient in it who has not grown up from
+childhood in the practice of it. Yet its use is absolutely
+indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks, trees, high
+banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead cast. The
+essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this--that his line must
+never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from a
+howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To
+watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal
+education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low
+trajectory, and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a
+dexterous swish of the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet
+supple rod, illustrate a phase at once beautiful and practical of the
+poetry of motion. Among the native salmon fishermen of Speyside,
+_quorum ego parva pars fui,_ there are two distinct manners which may
+be severally distinguished as the easy style and the masterful style.
+The disciples of the easy style throw a fairly long line, but their aim
+is not to cover a maximum distance. What they pride themselves on is
+precise, dexterous, and, above all, light and smooth casting. No fierce
+switchings of the rod reveal their approach before they are in sight;
+like the clergyman of Pollok's _Course of Time_ they love to draw
+rather than to drive. Of the masterful style the most brilliant
+exponent is a short man, but he is the deepest wader in Spey. I believe
+his waders fasten, not round his waist, but round his neck. I have seen
+him in a pool, far beyond his depth, but "treading water" while
+simultaneously wielding a rod about four times the length of himself,
+and sending his line whizzing an extraordinary distance. The resolution
+of his attack seems actually to hypnotise salmon into taking his fly;
+and, once hooked, however hard they may fight for life, they are doomed
+fish.
+
+Ah me! These be gaudy, flaunting, flashy days! Our sober Spey, in the
+matter of salmon fly-hooks, is gradually yielding to the garish
+influence of the times. Spey salmon now begin to allow themselves to be
+captured by such indecorous and revolutionary fly-hooks as the "Canary"
+and the "Silver Doctor." Jaunty men in loud suits of dittoes have come
+into the north country, and display fly-books that vie in the
+variegated brilliancy of their contents with a Dutch tulip bed. We
+staunch adherents to the traditional Spey blacks and browns, we who
+have bred Spey cocks for the sake of their feathers, and have sworn
+through good report and through evil report by the pig's down or Berlin
+wool for body, the Spey cock for hackle, and the mallard drake for
+wings, have jeered at the kaleidoscopic fantasticality of the leaves of
+their fly-books turned over by adventurers from the south country and
+Ireland; and have sneered at the notion that a self-respecting Spey
+salmon would so far demoralise himself as to be allured by a miniature
+presentation of Liberty's shop-window. But the salmon has not regarded
+the matter from our conservative point of view; and now we, too,
+ruefully resort to the "canary" as a dropper when conditions of
+atmosphere and water seem to favour that gaudy implement. And it must
+be owned that even before the "twopence-coloured" gentry came among us
+from distant parts, we, the natives, had been side-tracking from the
+exclusive use of the old-fashioned sombre flies into the occasional use
+of gayer yet still modest "fancies." Of specific Spey hooks in favour
+at the present time the following is, perhaps, a fairly correct and
+comprehensive list: purple king, green king, black king, silver heron,
+gold heron, black dog, silver riach, gold riach, black heron, silver
+green, gold green, Lady Caroline, carron, black fancy, silver spale,
+gold spale, culdrain, dallas, silver thumbie, Sebastopol, Lady Florence
+March, gold purpie, and gled (deadly in "snawbree"). The Spey cock--a
+cross between the Hamburg cock and the old Scottish mottled hen--was
+fifty years ago bred all along Speyside expressly for its feathers,
+used in dressing salmon flies; but the breed is all but extinct now, or
+rather, perhaps, has been crossed and re-crossed out of recognition. It
+is said, however, to be still maintained in the parish of Advie, and
+when the late Mr. Bass had the Tulchan shootings and fishings his head
+keeper used to breed and sell Spey cocks.
+
+Probably the most extensive collection of salmon fly-hooks ever made
+was that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a
+property on which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His
+father was a distinguished Indian civil servant and of later fame as an
+astronomer; and his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the
+best fishermen that ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl.
+Henry Grant himself had been a keen fisherman in his youth, and when,
+after a chequered and roving life in South Africa and elsewhere, he
+came into the estate, he set himself to build up a representative
+collection of salmon flies for all waters and all seasons. His father
+had brought home a large and curious assortment of feathers from the
+Himalayas; Mr. Grant sent far and wide for further supplies of suitable
+and distinctive material, and then he devoted himself to the task of
+dressing hundred after hundred of fly-hooks of every known pattern and
+of every size, from the great three-inch hook for heavy spring water to
+the dainty little "finnock" hook scarcely larger than a trout fly. A
+suitable receptacle was constructed for this collection from the timber
+of the "Auld Gean Tree of Elchies"--the largest of its kind in all
+Scotland--whose trunk had a diameter of nearly four feet and whose
+branches had a spread of over twenty yards. The "Auld Gean Tree" fell
+into its dotage and was cut down to the strains of a "lament," with
+which the wail and skirl of the bagpipes drowned the noise of the
+woodmen's axes. Out of the wood of the "Auld Gean Tree" a local
+artificer constructed a handsome cabinet with many drawers, in which
+were stored the Elchies collection of fly-hooks classified carefully
+according to their sizes and kinds. The cabinet stood--and, I suppose,
+still stands--in the Elchies billiard-room; but I fear the collection
+is sadly diminished, for Henry Grant was the freest-handed of men and
+towards the end of his life anybody who chose was welcome to help
+himself from the contents of the drawers. Yet no doubt some relics of
+this fine collection must still remain; and I hope for his own sake
+that Mr. Justice A.L. Smith the present tenant of Elchies, is free of
+poor Henry's cabinet.
+
+It is a popular delusion that Speyside men are immortal; this is true
+only of distillers. But it is a fact that their longevity is
+phenomenal. If Dr. Ogle had to make up the population returns of Strath
+Spey he could not fail to be profoundly astonished by the comparative
+blankness of the mortality columns. Frederick the Great, when his
+fellows were rather hanging back in the crisis of a battle, stung them
+with the biting taunt, "Do you wish to live for ever?" If his
+descendant of the present day were to address the same question to the
+seniors of Speyside, they would probably reply, "Your Majesty, we ken
+that we canna live for ever; but, faith, we mak' a gey guid attempt!" A
+respected relative of mine died a few years ago at the age of
+eighty-five. Had he been a Southron, he would have been said to have
+died full of years; but of my relative the local paper remarked in a
+touching obituary notice that he "was cut off prematurely in the midst
+of his mature prime." When I was young, Speyside men mostly shuffled
+off this mortal coil by being upset from their gigs when driving home
+recklessly from market with "the maut abune the meal;" but the railways
+have done away in great measure with this cause of death. Nowadays the
+centenarians for the most part fall ultimate victims to paralysis. In
+the south it is understood, I believe, that the third shock is fatal;
+but a Speyside man will resist half a dozen shocks before he succumbs,
+and has been known to walk to the kirk after having endured even a
+greater number of attacks.
+
+Among the senior veterans of our riverside I may venture to name two
+most worthy men and fine salmon fishers. Although both have now wound
+in their reels and unspliced their rods, one of them still lives among
+us hale and hearty. "Jamie" Shanks of Craigellachie is, perhaps, the
+father of the water. He himself is reticent as to his age and there are
+legends on the subject which lack authentication. It is, however, a
+matter of tradition that Jamie was out in the '45; and that, cannily
+returning home when Charles Edward turned back at Derby, he earned the
+price of a croft by showing the Duke of Cumberland the ford across Spey
+near the present bridge of Fochabers, by which the "butcher duke"
+crossed the river on his march to fight the battle of Culloden. It is
+also traditioned that Jamie danced round a bonfire in celebration of
+the marriage of "bonnie Jean," Duchess of Gordon, an event which
+occurred in 1767. Apart from the Dark Ages one thing is certain
+regarding Jamie, that the great flood of 1829 swept away his croft and
+cottage, he himself so narrowly escaping that he left his watch hanging
+on the bed-post, watch and bed-post being subsequently recovered
+floating about in the Moray Firth. The greatest honour that can be
+conferred on a fisherman--the Victoria Cross of the river--has long
+belonged to Jamie; a pool in Spey bears his name, and many a fine
+salmon has been taken out of "Jamie Shanks's Pool," the swirling water
+of which is almost at the good old man's feet as he shifts the "coo" on
+his strip of pasture or watches the gooseberries swelling in his pretty
+garden. His fame has long ago gone throughout all Speyside for skill in
+the use of the gaff: about eight years ago I was witness of the calm,
+swift dexterity with which he gaffed what I believe was his last fish.
+In the serene evening of his long day he still finds pleasant
+occupation in dressing salmon flies; and if you speak him fair and he
+is in good humour "Jamie" may let you have half a dozen as a great
+favour.
+
+The other veteran of our river of whom I would say something was that
+most worthy man and fine salmon fisher Mr. Charles Grant, the
+ex-schoolmaster of Aberlour, better known among us who loved and
+honoured the fine old Highland gentleman as "Charlie" Grant. Charlie no
+longer lives; but to the last he was hale, relished his modest dram,
+and delighted in his quiet yet graphic manner to tell of men and things
+of Speyside familiar to him during his long life by the riverside.
+Charles Grant was the first person who ever rented salmon water on
+Spey. It was about 1838 that he took a lease from the Fife trustees of
+the fishing on the right bank from the burn of Aberlour to the burn of
+Carron, about four miles of as good water as there is in all the run of
+Spey. This water would to-day be cheaply rented at L250 per annum; the
+annual rent paid by Charles Grant was two guineas. A few years later a
+lease was granted by the Fife trustees of the period of the grouse
+shootings of Benrinnes, the wide moorlands of the parishes of Glass,
+Mortlach, and Aberlour, including Glenmarkie the best moor in the
+county, at a rent of L100 a year with four miles of salmon water on
+Spey thrown in. The letting value of these moors and of this water is
+to-day certainly not less than L1500 a year.
+
+Charles Grant had a great and well-deserved reputation for finding a
+fish in water which other men had fished blank. This was partly because
+from long familiarity with the river he knew all the likeliest casts;
+partly because he was sure to have at the end of his casting-line just
+the proper fly for the size of water and condition of weather; and
+partly because of his quiet neat-handed manner of dropping his line on
+the water. There is a story still current on Speyside illustrative of
+this gift of Charlie in finding a fish where people who rather fancied
+themselves had failed--a story which Jamie Shanks to this day does not
+care to hear. Mr. Russel of the _Scotsman_ had done his very best from
+the quick run at the top of the pool of Dalbreck, down to the almost
+dead-still water at the bottom of that fine stretch, and had found no
+luck. Jamie Shanks, who was with Mr. Russel as his fisherman, had gone
+over it to no purpose with a fresh fly. They were grumpishly discussing
+whether they should give Dalbreck another turn or go on to Pool-o-Brock
+the next pool down stream, when Charles Grant made his appearance and
+asked the waterside question, "What luck?" "No luck at all, Charlie!"
+was Russel's answer. "Deevil a rise!" was Shanks's sourer reply. In his
+demure purring way Charles Grant--who in his manner was a duplicate of
+the late Lord Granville--remarked, "There ought to be a fish come out
+of that pool." "Tak' him out, then!" exclaimed Shanks gruffly. "Well,
+I'll try," quoth the soft-spoken Charlie; and just at that spot, about
+forty yards from the head of the pool, where the current slackens and
+the fish lie awhile before breasting the upper rapid, he hooked a fish.
+Then it was that Russel in the genial manner which made provosts swear,
+remarked, "Shanks, I advise you to take a half year at Mr. Grant's
+school!" "Fat for?" inquired Shanks sullenly. "To learn to fish!"
+replied the master of sarcasm of the delicate Scottish variety.
+
+Respectful by nature to their superiors, the honest working folk of
+Speyside occasionally forget themselves comically in their passionate
+ardour that a hooked salmon shall be brought to bank. Lord Elgin, now
+in his Indian satrapy, far away from what Sir Noel Paton in his fine
+elegy on the late Sir Alexander Gordon Cumming of Altyre called
+
+  The rushing thunder of the Spey,
+
+one day hooked a big fish in the "run" below "Polmet". The fish headed
+swiftly down stream, his lordship in eager pursuit, but afraid of
+putting any strain on the line lest the salmon should "break" him. Down
+round the bend below the pool and by the "Slabs" fish and fisherman
+sped, till the latter was brought up by the sheer rock of
+Craigellachie. Fortunately a fisherman ferried the Earl across the
+river to the side on which he was able to follow the fish. On he ran,
+keeping up with the fish, under the bridge, along the margin of
+"Shanks's Pool," past the "Boat of Fiddoch" pool and the mouth of the
+tributary; and he was still on the run along the edge of the croft
+beyond when he was suddenly confronted by an aged man, who dropped his
+turnip hoe and ran eagerly to the side of the young nobleman. Old
+Guthrie could give advice from the experience of a couple of
+generations as poacher, water-gillie, occasional water-bailiff, and
+from as extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the river as Sam
+Weller possessed of London public-houses. And this is what he
+exclaimed: "Ma Lord, ma Lord, gin ye dinna check him, that fush will
+tak' ye doun tae Speymouth--deil, but he'll tow ye oot tae sea! Hing
+intil him, hing intil him!" His lordship exerted himself accordingly,
+but did not secure the old fellow's approval. "Man! man!" Guthrie
+yelled, "ye're nae pittin' a twa-ounce strain on him; he's makin' fun
+o' ye!" The nobleman tried yet harder, yet could not please his
+relentless critic. "God forgie me, but ye canna fush worth a damn! Come
+back on the lan', an' gie him the butt wi' pith!" Thus adjured, his
+lordship acted at last with vigour; the sage, having gaffed the fish,
+abated his wrath, and, as the salmon was being "wetted," tendered his
+respectful apologies.
+
+In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful
+Speyside estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water
+hardly inferior to any throughout the long run of the river. Many a
+man, far away now from "bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the
+river's roll over its rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the
+swift yet smooth flow of "the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against
+the "Red Craig," in the deep, strong water at the foot of which the big
+red fish leap like trout when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting
+into glow of russet and crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank
+above; the smooth restful glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's
+How," in which a fisherman may spend to advantage the livelong day and
+then not leave it fished out; the turbulent half pool, half stream, of
+the "Piles," which always holds large fish lying behind the great
+stones or in the dead water under the daisy-sprinkled bank on which the
+tall beeches cast their shadows; the "Bulwark Pool;" the "Three
+Stones," where the grilse show their silver sides in the late May
+evenings; "Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter now, alas! spoiled
+by gravel; the quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and the "Spout o'
+Cobblepot;" and then the dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon," the deepest
+pool of Spey.
+
+The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a
+handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High
+Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and
+who, while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad. Good in
+the saddle and with the salmon rod, the Colonel was perhaps best behind
+a gun, with which he was not less deadly among the salmon of the Spey
+than among the grouse of Benaigen. His relative, old Lord Saltoun, was
+hard put to it once in the "Lady's How" with a thirty-pound salmon
+which he had hooked foul, and which, in its full vigour, was taking all
+manner of liberties with him, making spring after spring clean out of
+the water. The beast was so rebellious and strong that the old lord
+found it harder to contend with than with the Frenchmen who fought so
+stoutly with him for the possession of Hougomont. The Colonel,
+fowling-piece in hand, was watching the struggle, and seeing that Lord
+Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited his opportunity when the
+big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring, and, firing in the
+nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail, hardly marking
+it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river with
+cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now considered
+rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines, not in
+greed for fish but for the sake of the shooting practice they afforded
+him. When the hooked fish were struggling and in their struggles
+showing their tails out of water, he several times shot two right and
+left breaking the spine in each case close to the tail.
+
+The Colonel was succeeded by his brother, who had been a planter in
+Jamaica before coming to the estate on the death of his brother. Hardly
+was he home when he contested the county unsuccessfully on the old
+never-say-die Protectionist platform against the father of the present
+Duke of Fife; on the first polling-day of which contest I acquired a
+black eye and a bloody nose in the market square of a local village at
+the hands of some gutter lads, with whose demand that I should take the
+Tory rosette out of my bonnet I had declined to comply. Later, this
+gentleman became an assiduous fisher of men as a lay preacher, but he
+was as keen after salmon as he was after sinners. He hooked and
+played--and gaffed--the largest salmon I have ever heard of being
+caught in Spey by an angler--a fish weighing forty-six pounds. The
+actual present laird of Arndilly is a lady, but in her son are
+perpetuated the fishing instincts of his forbears.
+
+My reminiscences of Spey and Speyside are drawing to an end, and I now
+with natural diffidence approach a great theme. Every Speyside man will
+recognise from this exordium that I am about to treat of "Geordie." It
+is quite understood throughout lower Speyside that it is the moral
+support which Geordie accords to Craigellachie Bridge, in the immediate
+vicinity of which he lives, that chiefly maintains that structure; and
+that if he were to withdraw that support, its towers and roadway would
+incontinently collapse into the depths of the sullen pool spanned by
+the graceful erection. The best of men are not universally popular, and
+it must be said that there are those who cast on Geordie the aspersion
+of being "some thrawn," for which the equivalent in south-country
+language is perhaps "a trifle cross-grained." These, however, are
+envious people, who are jealous of Geordie's habitual association with
+lords and dukes, and who resent the trivial stiffness which is no doubt
+apparent in his manner to ordinary people for the first few days after
+the illustrious persons referred to have reluctantly permitted him to
+withdraw from them the light of his countenance. For my own part I have
+found Geordie, all things considered, to be wonderfully affable. That
+his tone is patronising I do not deny; but then there is surely a joy
+in being patronised by the factotum of a duke.
+
+I have never been quite sure, nor have I ever dared to ask Geordie,
+whether he considers the Duke to be his patron, or whether he regards
+himself as the patron of that eminent nobleman. From the
+"aucht-and-forty daugh" of Strathbogie to the Catholic Braes of
+Glenlivat where fifty years ago the "sma' stills" reeked in every
+moorland hollow, across to beautiful Kinrara and down Spey to the
+fertile Braes of Enzie, his Grace is the benevolent despot of a
+thriving tenantry who have good cause to regard him with esteem and
+gratitude. The Duke is a masterful man, whom no factor need attempt to
+lead by the nose; but on the margin of Spey, from the blush-red crags
+of Cairntie down to the head of tide water, he owns his centurion in
+Geordie, who taught him to throw his first line when already he was a
+minister of the Crown, and who, as regards aught appertaining to salmon
+fishing, saith unto his Grace, Do this and he doeth it.
+
+Geordie is a loyal subject, and when a few years ago he had the
+opportunity of seeing Her Majesty during her momentary halt at Elgin
+station, he paid her the compliment of describing her as a "sonsie
+wife." But the heart-loyalty of the honest fellow goes out in all its
+tender yet imperious fulness towards the Castle family, to most of the
+members of which, of both sexes, he has taught the science and practice
+of killing salmon. Hint the faintest shadow of disparagement of any
+member of that noble and worthy house, and you make a life enemy of
+Geordie. On no other subject is he particularly touchy, save one--the
+gameness and vigour of the salmon of Spey. Make light of the fighting
+virtues of Spey fish--exalt above them the horn of the salmon of Tay,
+Ness, or Tweed--and Geordie loses his temper on the instant and
+overwhelms you with the strongest language. There is a tradition that
+among Geordie's remote forbears was one of Cromwell's Ironsides who on
+the march from Aberdeen to Inverness fell in love with a Speyside lass
+of the period, and who, abandoning his Ironside appellation of
+"Hew-Agag-in-Pieces," adopted the surname which Geordie now bears. This
+strain of ancestry may account for Geordie's smooth yet peremptory
+skill as a disciplinarian. It devolves upon him during the rod-fishing
+season to assign to each person of the fishing contingent his or her
+particular stretch of water, and to tell off to each as guide one of
+his assistant attendants.
+
+It is a great treat to find Geordie in a garrulous humour and to listen
+to one of his salmon-fishing stories, told always in the broadest of
+north-country Doric. His sense of humour is singularly keen,
+notwithstanding that he is a Scot; and it is not in his nature to
+minimise his own share in the honour and glory of the incident he may
+relate. One of Geordie's stories is vividly in my recollection, and may
+appropriately conclude my reminiscences of Speyside and its folk. There
+was a stoup of "Benrinnes" on the mantelpiece and a free-drawing pipe
+in Geordie's mouth. His subject was the one on which he can be most
+eloquent--an incident of the salmon-fishing season, on which the worthy
+man delivered himself as follows:--
+
+"Twa or three seasons back I was attendin' Leddy Carline whan she was
+fushin' that gran' pool at the brig o' Fochabers. She's a fine fusher,
+Leddy Carline: faith, she may weel be, for I taucht her mysel'. She
+hookit a saumon aboot the midst o' the pool, an' for a while it gied
+gran' sport; loupin' and tumblin', an' dartin' up the watter an' doon
+the watter at sic a speed as keepit her leddyship muvin' gey fast tae
+keep abriesht o't. Weel, this kin' o' wark, an' a ticht line, began for
+tae tak' the spunk oot o' the saumon, an' I was thinkin' it was a
+quieston o' a few meenits whan I wad be in him wi' the gaff; but my
+birkie, near han' spent though he was, had a canny bit dodge up the
+sleeve o' him. He made a bit whamlin' run, an' deil tak' me gin he
+didna jam himself intil a neuk atween twa rocks, an' there the dour
+beggar bade an' sulkit. Weel, her leddyship keepit aye a steady drag on
+him, an' she gied him the butt wi' power; but she cudna get the beast
+tae budge--no, nae sae muckle as the breadth o' my thoomb-nail. Deil a
+word said Leddy Carline tae me for a gey while, as she vrought an'
+vrought tae gar the saumon quit his neuk. But she cam nae speed wi'
+him; an' at last she says, says she, 'Geordie, I can make nothing of
+him: what in the world is to be done?' 'Gie him a shairp upward yark,
+my leddy,' says I; 'there canna be muckle strength o' resistance left
+in him by this time!' Weel, she did as I tellt her--I will say this for
+Leddy Carline, that she's aye biddable. But, rugg her hardest, the fush
+stuck i' the neuk as gin he waur a bit o' the solid rock, an' her
+leddyship was becomin' gey an' exhaustit. 'Take the rod yourself,
+Geordie,' says she, 'and try what you can do; I freely own the fish is
+too many for me.' Weel, I gruppit the rod, an' I gied a shairp, steady,
+upward drag; an' up the brute cam, clean spent. He hadna been sulkin'
+aifter aa'; he had been fairly wedged atween the twa rocks, for whan I
+landit him, lo an' behold! he was bleedin' like a pig, an' there was a
+muckle gash i' the side o' him, that the rock had torn whan I draggit
+him by main force up an' oot. The taikle was stoot, ye'll obsairve, or
+else he be tae hae broken me; but tak' my word for't, Geordie is no the
+man for tae lippen tae feckless taikle.
+
+"Weel, I hear maist things; an' I was tellt that same nicht hoo at the
+denner-table Leddy Carline relatit the haill adventur', an' owned, fat
+was true aneuch, that the fush had fairly bestit her. Weel, amo' the
+veesitors at the Castle was the Dowager Leddy Breadanham; an' it seemed
+that whan Leddy Carline was through wi' her narrateeve, the dowager be
+tae gie a kin' o' a scornfu' sniff an' cock her neb i' the air; an' she
+said, wha but she, that she didna hae muckle opingin o' Leddy Carline
+as a saumon fisher, an' that she hersel' didna believe there was a fush
+in the run o' Spey that she cudna get the maistery ower. That was a gey
+big word, min' ye; it's langidge I wadna venture for tae make use o'
+mysel', forbye a south-countra dowager.
+
+"Weel, I didna say muckle; but, my faith, like the sailor's paurot, I
+thoucht a deevil o' a lot. The honour o' Spey was in my hauns, an' it
+behuvit me for tae hummle the pride o' her dowager leddyship. The
+morn's mornin' cam, an' by that time I had decided on my plan o'
+operautions. By guid luck I fand the dowager takin' her stroll afore
+brakfast i' the floor-gairden. I ups till her, maks my boo, an' says I,
+unco canny an' respectfu', 'My leddy, ye'll likely be for the watter
+the day?' She said she was, so says I, 'Weel, my leddy, I'll be prood
+for tae gae wi' ye mysel', an' I'll no fail tae reserve for ye as guid
+water as there is in the run o' Spey!' She was quite agreeable, an' so
+we sattlit it.
+
+"The Duke himsel' was oot on the lawn whan I was despatchin' the ither
+fushin' folk, ilk ane wi' his or her fisherman kerryin' the rod.
+'Geordie,' said his Grace, 'with whom will you be going yourself?' 'Wi'
+the Dowager Leddy Breadanham, yer Grace!' says I. 'And where do you
+think of taking her ladyship, Geordie?' speers he. 'N'odd, yer Grace,'
+says I, 'I am sattlin in my min' for tae tak' the leddy tae the "Brig
+o' Fochabers" pool;' an' wi' that I gied a kin' o' a respectfu'
+half-wink. The Duke was no' the kin' o' man for tae wink back, for
+though he's aye grawcious, he's aye dignifeed; but there was a bit
+flichter o' humour roun' his mou' whan he said, says he, 'I think that
+will do very well, Geordie!'
+
+"Praesently me an' her leddyship startit for the 'Brig o' Fochabers'
+pool. She cud be vera affauble whan she likit, I'll say that muckle for
+the dowager; an' me an' her newsed quite couthie-like as we traivellt.
+I saftened tae her some, I frankly own; but than my hert hardent again
+whan I thoucht o' the duty I owed tae Spey an' tae Leddy Carline. Of
+coorse there was a chance that my scheme wad miscairry; but there's no
+a man on Spey frae Tulchan tae the Tug Net that kens the natur' o'
+saumon better nor mysel'. They're like sheep--fat ane daes, the tithers
+will dae; an' gin the dowager hookit a fush, I hadna muckle doobt fat
+that fush wad dae. The dowager didna keep me vera lang in suspense. I
+had only chyngt her fly ance, an' she had maist fushed doon the pool a
+secont time, whan in the ripple o' watter at the head o' the draw abune
+the rapid a fush took her 'Riach' wi' a greedy sook, an' the line was
+rinnin' oot as gin there had been a racehorse at the far end o't, the
+saumon careerin' up the pool like a flash in the clear watter. The
+dowager was as fu' o' life as was the fush. Odd, but she kent brawly
+hoo tae deal wi' her saumon--that I will say for her! There was nae
+need for me tae bide closs by the side o' a leddy that had boastit
+there was na a fush in Spey she cudna maister, sae I clamb up the bank,
+sat doun on ma doup on a bit hillock, an' took the leeberty o' lichtin'
+ma pipe. Losh! but that dowager spanged up an' doun the waterside among
+the stanes aifter that game an' lively fush; an' troth, but she was as
+souple wi' her airms as wi' her legs; for, rinnin' an' loupin' an'
+spangin' as she was, she aye managed for tae keep her line ticht. It
+was a dooms het day, an' there wasna a ruffle o' breeze; sae nae doobt
+the fush was takin' as muckle oot o' her as she was takin' oot o' the
+fush. In aboot ten meenits there happent juist fat I had expectit. The
+fush made a sidelins shoot, an' dairted intil the vera crevice occupeed
+by Leddy Carline's fush the day afore. 'Noo for the fun!' thinks I, as
+I sat still an' smokit calmly. She was certently a perseverin' wummun,
+that dowager--there was nae device she didna try wi' that saumon tae
+force him oot o' the cleft. Aifter aboot ten meenits mair o' this wark,
+she shot at me ower her shouther the obsairve, 'Isn't it an obstinate
+wretch?' 'Aye,' says I pawkily, 'he's gey dour; but he's only a Spey
+fush, an' of coorse ye'll maister him afore ye've dune wi' him!' I'm
+thinkin' she unnerstude the insinivation, for she uttert deil anither
+word, but yokit tee again fell spitefu' tae rug an' yark at the sulkin'
+fush. At last, tae mak a lang story short, she was fairly dune.
+'Geordie,' says she waikly, 'the beast has quite worn me out! I'm fit
+to melt--there is no strength left in me; here, come and take the rod!'
+Weel, I deleeberately raise, poocht ma pipe, an' gaed doun aside her.
+'My leddy,' says I, quite solemn, an' luikin' her straucht i' the
+face--haudin' her wi' my ee, like--'I hae been tellt fat yer leddyship
+said yestreen, that there wasna a saumon in Spey ye cudna maister. Noo,
+I speer this at yer leddyship--respectfu' but direck; div ye admit
+yersel clean bestit--fairly lickit wi' that fush, Spey fush though it
+be? Answer me that, my leddy!' 'I do own myself beaten,' says she, 'and
+I retract my words.' 'Say nae mair, yer leddyship!' says I--for I'm no
+a cruel man--'say nae mair, but maybe ye'll hae the justice for tae say
+a word tae the same effeck in the Castle whaur ye spak yestreen?' 'I
+promise you I will,' said the dowager--'here, take the rod!' Weel, it
+was no sae muckle a fush as was Leddy Carline's. I had it oot in a few
+meenits, an' by that time the dowager was sae far revived that she was
+able to bring it in aboot tae the gaff; an' sae, in the hinner end, she
+in a sense maistert the fush aifter aa'. But I'm thinkin' she will be
+gey cautious in the futur' aboot belittlin' the smeddum o' Spey saumon!"
+
+
+
+
+THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
+
+
+The traveller up the country from Calcutta does not speedily reach
+places the names of which vividly recall the episodes of the great
+Mutiny. It is a chance if, as the train passes Dinapore, he remembers
+the defection of the Sepoy brigade stationed there which Koer Singh
+seduced from its allegiance. Arrah may possibly recall a dim memory of
+Wake's splendid defence of Boyle's bungalow and of Vincent Eyre's
+dashingly executed relief of the indomitable garrison. Benares is a
+little off the main line--Benares, on the parade ground of which Neill
+first put down that peremptory foot of his, where Olpherts was so quick
+with those guns of his, and where Jim Ellicott did his grim work with
+noose and cross-beam until long after the going down of the summer sun.
+But when the traveller's eye first rests on the gray ramparts of
+Akbar's hoary fortress in the angle where the Ganges and the Jumna meet
+and blend one with another, the reality of the Mutiny begins to impress
+itself upon him. Allahabad was the scene of a terrible tragedy; it was
+also the point of departure whence Havelock set forward on Cawnpore
+with his column, not indeed of rescue, but of retribution. The journey
+from Allahabad to Cawnpore, although perchance performed in the night,
+is not one to be slept through by any student of the story of the great
+rebellion. The Indian moon pours her flood of light on the little knoll
+hard by Futtehpore, where Havelock stood when Jwala Pershad's first
+round shot came lobbing, through his staff in among the camp kettles of
+the 64th. That village beyond the mango tope is Futtehpore itself,
+whence the rebel sowars swept headlong down the trunk road till Maude's
+guns gave them the word to halt. The pools are dry now through which,
+when Hamilton's voice had rung out the order--"Forward, at the double!"
+the light company of the Ross-shire Buffs splashed recklessly past the
+abandoned Sepoy guns, in their race with the grenadier company of the
+64th that had for its goal the Pandy barricade outside the village. In
+that cluster of mud huts--its name is Aoong--the gallant Renaud fell
+with a shattered thigh, as he led his "Lambs" up to the _epaulement_
+which covered its front. One fight a day is fair allowance anywhere,
+but those fellows whom Havelock led were gluttons for fighting.
+Spanning that deep rugged nullah there, down which the Pandoo flows
+turbulently in the rainy season, is the bridge across which in the
+afternoon of the morning of Aoong, Stephenson with his Fusiliers dashed
+into the Sepoy battery and bayoneted the gunners before they could make
+up their minds to run away. And it was in the gray morning following
+the day of that double battle (the 15th of July) that the General,
+having heard for the first time that there were still alive in Cawnpore
+a number of women and children who had escaped the massacre of the
+boats, told his men what he knew. "With God's help," shouted Havelock,
+with a break in his voice that was like a sob, as he stood with his hat
+off and his hand on his sword--"with God's help, men, we will save
+them, or every man die in the attempt!" One answer came back in a great
+cheer; but a sadder answer to the aspiration, a bitter truth that made
+that aspiration futile and hopeless, had lain ever since the evening of
+the day before in the Beebeegur, and almost as the chief was speaking
+the Well was receiving its dead inmates. Where the train begins to
+slacken its pace on approaching the station, it is passing over the
+field of the first--the creditable--battle of Cawnpore. Fresh from the
+butchery Nana Sahib (Dhoondoo Punth) himself had come out to aid in the
+last stand against the avengers. Yonder is the mango tope which formed
+the screen for Hamilton's turning movement. It needs little imagination
+to recall the scene. Close by, at the cross-roads, stands the Sepoy
+battery, and those horsemen still nearer are reconnoitring sowars.
+Beyond the road the Highlanders are deploying on the plain as they
+clear the sheltering flank of the mango trees, amidst a grim silence
+broken only by the crash of the bursting shells and the cries of the
+bullock-drivers as the guns rattle on to open fire from the reverse
+flank. The flush rises in Hamilton's face and the eyes of him begin to
+sparkle, as he shouts "Ross-shire Buffs, wheel into line!" and then
+"Forward!" Quick as lightning the trails of the Sepoy guns are swung
+round and shot and shell come crashing through the ranks, while the
+rebel infantry, with a swiftness which speaks well for their British
+drill, show a front against this inroad on their flank. In silent grim
+imperturbability the Highland line stalks steadily on with the long
+springy step to be learned only on the heather. Now they are within
+eighty yards of the muzzles of the guns, and they can see the colour of
+the mustaches of the men plying and supporting them. Then Hamilton,
+with his sword in the air and his face all ablaze with the fighting
+blood in him, turns round in the saddle, shouts "Charge!" and bids the
+pipers to strike up. Wild and shrill bursts over that Indian plain the
+rude notes of the Northern music. But louder yet, drowning them and the
+roll of the artillery, rings out that Highland war-cry that has so
+often presaged victory to British arms. The Ross-shire men are in and
+over the guns ere the gunners have time to drop their lint-stocks and
+ramming-rods; they fall with bayonets at the charge upon the supporting
+infantry, and the supporting infantry go down where they huddle
+together, lacking the opportunity to break and run away in time. But
+the battle rages all day, and the white soldiers, as they fight their
+way slowly forward, hear the bursts of military music that greet the
+Nana as he moves from place to place, _not_ in the immediate front.
+Barrow and his handful of cavalry volunteers crash into the thick of
+them with the informal order to his men, "Give point, lads; damn cuts
+and guards." Young Havelock, mounted by the side of the gallant and
+ill-fated Stirling trudging forward on foot, brings the 64th on at the
+double against the great 24-pounder on the Cawnpore road that is
+vomiting grape at point-blank range. The night falls and the battle
+ceases, but among the wearied fighting men there is none of the elation
+of victory; for through the ranks, after the going down of the sun, had
+throbbed the bruit, originating no one knew where, that the women and
+children in Cawnpore had been butchered on the afternoon of the day
+before, while Stephenson and his Fusiliers were carrying the bridge of
+the Pandoo Nuddee.
+
+The railway station of Cawnpore is distant more than a mile from the
+cantonment. Close to the road and not far from the station, the
+explorer easily finds the massive pile of the "Savada House," now
+allotted as residences for railway officials. English children play now
+in the corridors once thronged by the minions of the Nana, for here
+were his headquarters during part of the siege. Its verandas all day
+long were full of ministers, diviners, courtiers, and creatures. Here
+strolled the supple, panther-like Azimoolah, the self-asserted
+favourite of home society in the pre-Mutiny days. Teeka Sing, the
+Nana's war minister, had his "bureau" in a tent under the peepul tree
+there. In that other clump of trees, where an ayah is tickling a white
+baby into laughter, was the pavilion of the Nana himself, who inherited
+the Mahratta preference for canvas over bricks and mortar. And here,
+while the crackle of the musketry fire and the din of the big guns came
+softened on the ear by distance, sat the adopted son of the Peishwa
+while Jwala Pershad came for orders about the cavalry, and Bala Rao,
+his brother, explained his devices for harassing the sahibs, and Tantia
+Topee, Hoolass Sing, Azimoolah, and the Nana himself devised the scheme
+of the treachery. But the Savada House has even a more lurid interest
+than this. Hither the women and children whom an unkind fate had spared
+from dying with the men were brought back from the Ghaut of Slaughter.
+You may see the two rooms into which 125 unfortunates were huddled
+after that march from before the presence of one death into the
+presence of another. As they plodded past the intrenchment so long
+held, and across the plain to the Nana's pavilion, "I saw," says a
+spectator, "that many of the ladies were wounded. Their clothes had
+blood upon them. Two were badly hurt and had their heads bound up with
+handkerchiefs; some were wet, covered with mud and blood, and some had
+their dresses torn; but all had clothes. I saw one or two children
+without clothes. There were no men in the party, but only some boys of
+twelve or thirteen. Some of the ladies were barefoot." Hither, too,
+were sent later the women of that detachment of the garrison which had
+got off from the ghaut in the boat defended by Vibart, Ashe, Delafosse,
+Bolton, Moore, and Thomson, and which had been captured at Nuzzufghur
+by Baboo Ram Bux. It had been for those people a turbulent departure
+from the Suttee Chowra Ghaut, but it was a yet more fearful returning.
+"They were brought back," testified a spy; "sixty sahibs, twenty-five
+memsahibs, and four children. The Nana ordered the sahibs to be
+separated from the memsahibs, and shot by the 1st Bengal Native
+Infantry.... 'Then,' said one of the memsahibs, 'I will not leave my
+husband. If he must die I will die with him.' So she ran and sat down
+behind her husband, clasping him round the waist. Directly she said
+this, the other memsahibs said, 'We also will die with our husbands,'
+and they all sat down each by her husband. Then their husbands said,
+'Go back,' and they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered his soldiers,
+and they went in, pulling them forcibly away." ...
+
+The drive from the railway station to the European cantonments is
+pleasant and shaded. At a bend in the road there comes into view a
+broad, flat, treeless parade ground. This plain lies within a circle of
+foliage, above which, on the south-eastern side, rise the balconies and
+flat tops of a long range of barracks built in detached blocks, while
+around the rest of the circle the trees shade the bungalows of the
+cantonment. Near the centre of this level space there is an irregular
+enclosure defined by a shallow sunk wall and low quickset hedge, and in
+the middle of this enclosure rises the ornate and not wholly
+satisfactory structure known as the "Memorial Church." It is built on
+the site of the old dragoon hospital, which was the very focus of the
+agony of the siege. It is impossible to analyse the mingled emotions of
+amazement, pride, pity, wrath, and sorrow which fill the visitor to
+this shrine of British valour, endurance, and constancy. The heart
+swells and the eyes fill as one, standing here with all the arena of
+the heroism lying under one's eyes, recalls the episodes of the
+glorious, piteous story. The blood stirs when one remembers the buoyant
+valour of the gallant Moore, who, "wherever he passed, left men
+something more courageous and women something less unhappy," the
+reckless audacity of Ashe, the cool daring of Delafosse, the deadly
+rifle of Stirling, the heroic devotion of Jervis. And a great lump
+grows in the throat when one bethinks him of the beautiful constancy
+and fearful sufferings of the women; of British ladies going barefoot
+and giving up their stockings as cases for grape-shot; of Mrs. Moore's
+journeys across to No. 2 Barrack; of the hapless gentlewomen, "unshod,
+unkempt, ragged, and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with
+drought, and faint with hunger, sitting waiting to hear that they were
+widows." And what a place it was which the garrison had to defend! Not
+a foot of all the space bomb-proof, an apology for an intrenchment such
+as "an active cow might jump over." The imagination has to do much work
+here, for most of the landmarks are gone. The outline of the
+world-famous earthwork is almost wholly obliterated; only in places is
+it to be dimly recognised by brick-discoloured lines, and a low raised
+line on the smooth _maidan_. The enclosure now existing has no
+reference to the outlines of the intrenchment. That enclosure merely
+surrounds the graveyard, in the midst of which stands the "Memorial
+Church," a structure that cannot be commended from an architectural
+point of view. But the space enclosed around its gaunt red walls is
+pregnant with painful interest. We come first on a railed-in memorial
+tomb, bearing an inscription in raised letters, on a cross let into the
+tessellated pavement: "In three graves within this enclosure lie the
+remains of Major Edward Vibart, 2nd Bengal Cavalry, and about seventy
+officers and soldiers, who, after escaping from the massacre at
+Cawnpore on the 27th June 1857, were captured by the rebels at
+Sheorapore, and murdered on the 1st July." The inmates of these graves
+were originally buried elsewhere, and were removed hither when the
+enclosure was formed. In another part of the enclosure is a raised
+tomb, the slab of which bears the inscription: "This stone marks a spot
+which lay within Wheeler's intrenchment, and covers the remains and is
+sacred to the memory of those who were the first to meet their death
+when beleaguered by mutineers and rebels in June 1857." Two only lie in
+this grave, Mr. Murphy and a lady who died of fever. These two perished
+on the first day of the siege and had the exclusive privilege of being
+decently interred within the precincts of the intrenchment. After the
+first day of the siege there was scant leisure for funeral rites. To
+find the last resting-place of the remaining dead of this siege, we
+must quit the enclosure and walk across the _maidan_ to a spot among
+the trees by the roadside under the shadow of No. 4 Barrack. There was
+an empty well here when the siege begun; three weeks after, when the
+siege ended, this well contained the bodies of 250 British people. With
+daylight the battle raged around that sepulchre, but when the night
+came the slain of the day were borne thither with stealthy step and
+scant attendance. Now the well is filled up, and above it, inside a
+small ornamental enclosure formed by iron railings, there rises a
+monument which bears the following inscription: "In a well under this
+enclosure were laid by the hands of their fellows in suffering the
+bodies of men, women, and children, who died hard by during the heroic
+defence of Wheeler's intrenchment when beleaguered by the rebel Nana."
+Below the inscription is this apposite quotation from Psalm cxli. 7:
+"Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and
+cleaveth wood upon the earth. But mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the
+Lord." At the corners of the flower-plot are small crosses bearing
+individual names. One commemorates Sir George Parker, the cantonment
+magistrate; a second, Captain Jenkins; a third, Lieutenant Saunders and
+the men of the 84th Regiment; a fourth, Lieutenant Glanville and the
+men of the Madras Fusiliers; and here, too, lies stout-hearted yet
+tender-hearted John MacKillop of the Civil Service the hero of another
+well, that from which the team of buffaloes are now drawing water to
+make the mortar for the Memorial Church. Thence was procured the water
+for the garrison and it was a target also for the rebel artillery, so
+that the appearance of a man with a pitcher by day and by night the
+creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower of grape. But John
+MacKillop, "not being a fighting-man," made himself useful as he
+modestly put it, for a week as captain of the Well, till a grape-shot
+sent him to that other well thence never to return.
+
+The Memorial Church is in the form of a cross, and now that it has been
+finished is not destitute of beauty as regards its interior. Perhaps it
+is in place, but the noblest monument that could commemorate Cawnpore
+would have been the maintenance, for the wonder of the world unto all
+time, of the intrenchment and what it surrounded, as nearly as possible
+in the condition in which they were left on the evacuation of the
+garrison. The grandest monument in the world is the Residency of
+Lucknow, which remains and is kept up substantially in the condition in
+which it was left when Sir Colin Campbell brought out its garrison in
+November 1857; and the Cawnpore intrenchment would have been a still
+nobler memorial as the abiding testimony to a defence even more
+wonderful, although unfortunately unsuccessful, than that of Lucknow.
+But the Memorial Church of Cawnpore will always be interesting by
+reason of its site and of the memorial tablets on the walls of its
+interior. In the left transept is a tablet "To the memory of the
+Engineers of the East Indian Railway, who died and were killed in the
+great insurrection of 1857; erected in affectionate remembrance by
+their brother Engineers in the North-West Provinces." On the left side
+of the nave are several tablets. One is to the memory of poor young
+John Nicklen Martin, killed in the battle at Suttee Chowra Ghaut.
+Another commemorates three officers, two sergeants, two corporals, a
+drummer, and twenty privates of the 34th Regiment, killed at the
+(second) Battle of Cawnpore on the 28th November 1857; the day on which
+the Gwalior Contingent, seduced into rebellion by Tantia Topee, made
+itself so unpleasant to General Windham, the "Cawnpore Runners," and
+other regiments of that officer's command. A third tablet is "To the
+memory of A.G. Chalwin, 2nd Light Cavalry, and his wife Louisa, who
+both perished during the siege of Cawnpore in July 1857. These are they
+which came out of great tribulation." A fourth commemorates Captain
+Gordon and Lieutenant Hensley, of the 82nd Foot, also victims of the
+Gwalior Contingent. In the right of the nave there is a tablet "Sacred
+to the memory of Philip Hayes Jackson, who, with Jane, his wife, and
+her brother Ralf Blyth Croker, were massacred by rebels at Cawnpore on
+27th June." Another is to Lieutenant Angelo, of the 16th Grenadiers
+Bengal Native Infantry, who also fell in the boat massacre; and a third
+is to the memory of the gallant Stuart Beatson, who was Havelock's
+adjutant-general, and who, dying as he was of cholera, did his work at
+Pandoo Nuddee and Cawnpore in a _dhoolie_. In the right transept are
+tablets in memory of the officers of the Connaught Rangers, and of the
+officers and men of the 32nd Cornwall Regiment "who fell in defence of
+Lucknow and Cawnpore and subsequent campaign"--fourteen officers and
+448 "women and men." And here, too, is perhaps the most affecting
+memorial of any--a tablet "In memory of Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Wainwright,
+Miss Wainwright, Mrs. Hill, forty-three soldiers' wives and fifty-five
+children, murdered in Cawnpore in 1857."
+
+It is easy enough now to follow the footsteps of Mrs. Moore, dangerous
+as was that journey of hers, from the intrenchment to the corner of No.
+2 Barrack, which she was wont to make when her husband went on duty
+there to strengthen the hands of Mowbray Thomson. There is no trace now
+and the very memory of its whereabouts is lost, of the bamboo hut in a
+sheltered corner which the garrison of this exposed post built for the
+brave gentlewoman. But No. 2 Barrack, except that it is finished and
+tenanted, stands now very much as it did when Glanville first, and when
+he fell then Mowbray Thomson, defended with a success which seems so
+wonderful when we look at the place defended and its situation. The
+garrison was not always the same. "My sixteen men," writes Thomson,
+"consisted in the first instance of Ensign Henderson of the 56th Native
+Infantry, five or six of the Madras Fusiliers, two plate-layers, and
+some men of the 84th. The first instalment was soon disabled. The
+Madras Fusiliers were all shot at their posts. Several of the 84th also
+fell, but in consequence of the importance of the position, as soon as
+a loss in my little corps was reported, Captain Moore sent us over a
+reinforcement from the intrenchment. Sometimes a soldier, sometimes a
+civilian, came. The orders given us were not to surrender with our
+lives, and we did our best to obey them." And in a line with No. 2
+Barrack is No. 4 Barrack, held with equal stanchness by a party of
+Civil Engineers who had been employed on the East Indian Railroad, and
+who had for their commander Captain Jenkins. Seven of the engineers
+perished in defence of this post.
+
+There is nothing more to see on the _maidan_, and one feels his anger
+rising at the obliteration of everything that might help towards the
+localisation of associations. Let us leave the scene of the defence and
+follow the track of the defenders as they marched down to the scene of
+the great treachery. The distance from the intrenchment to the ghaut is
+barely a mile. Think of that stirrup-cup--that _doch an dhorras_--of
+cold water, in which the hapless band pledged one another. The noble
+Moore cheerily leads the way down the slope to the bridge with the
+white rails with an advance guard of a handful of his 32nd men. The
+palanquins with the women, the children, and the wounded follow, the
+latter bandaged up with strips of women's gowns and petticoats, and
+fragments of shirt-sleeves. And then come the fighting-men--a gallant,
+ragged, indomitable band. A martinet colonel would stand aghast--for
+save a regimental button here and there, he would find it hard to
+recognise the gaunt, hairy, sun-scorched squad for British soldiers.
+But let who might incline to disown these few war-worn men in their
+dirty flannel rags and fragmentary nankeen breeches, their foes know
+them for what they are, and make way for the white sahibs with no
+dressing indeed in their ranks, but each man with his rifle on his
+shoulder, the deadly revolver in his belt, and the fearless glance in
+the hollow eye. The wooden bridge with the white rails spans at right
+angles a rough irregular glen which widens out as it approaches the
+river, some three hundred yards distant from the bridge. It is a mere
+footpath that leaves the road on the hither side of the bridge, and
+skirting the dry bed of the nullah touches the river close to the old
+temple. By this footpath it was that our countrymen and countrywomen
+passed down to the cruel ambush which had been laid for them in the
+mouth of the glen. There are few to whom the details of that fell scene
+are not familiar. What a contrast between the turmoil and devilry of it
+and the serene calmness of the all but solitude the ghaut now presents!
+On the knolls of the farther side snug bungalows nestle among the
+trees, under the veranda of one of which a lady is playing with her
+children. The village of Suttee Chowra on the bluff on the left of the
+ghaut, where Tantia Topee's sepoys were concealed, no longer exists; a
+pretty bungalow and its compound occupy its site. The little temple on
+the water's edge by the ghaut is slowly mouldering into decay; on the
+plaster of the coping of its river wall you may still see the marks of
+the treacherous bullets. The stair which, built against its wall, led
+down to the water's edge, has disappeared. Tantia Topee's dispositions
+for the perpetration of the treachery could not now succeed, for the
+Ganges has changed its course and there is deep water close in shore at
+the ghaut. In the stream nearest to the Oude side the river has cast up
+a long narrow dearah island, in the fertile mud of which melons are
+cultivated where once whistled the shot from the guns on the Oude side
+of the river. A Brahmin priest is placidly sunning himself on the river
+platform of the temple over the dome of which hangs the foliage of a
+peepul tree. A dhobie is washing the shirts of a sahib in the stream
+that once was dyed with the blood of the sahibs. There is no monument
+here, no superfluous reminder of the terrible tragedy. The man is not
+to be envied whose eyes are dry, and whose heart beats its normal
+pulsations, while he stands here alone on this spot so densely peopled
+by associations at once so tragic and so glorious.
+
+The scene of the final massacre lies some distance higher up the river.
+As we cross the Ganges canal, the native city lying on our left, there
+rises up before us the rich mass of foliage that forms the outer screen
+of the beautiful Memorial Gardens. The hue of the greenery would be
+sombre but for the blossoms which relieve it, emblem of the divine hope
+which mitigated the gloom of despair for our countrywomen who perished
+so cruelly in this balefully historic spot. Of the Beebeeghur, the term
+by which among the natives is known the bungalow where the massacre was
+perpetrated, not one stone now remains on another but neither its
+memory nor its name will be lost for all time. Natives are strolling in
+the shady flower-bordered walks of the Memorial Gardens, the
+prohibition which long debarred their entrance having been wisely
+removed. In the centre of the garden rises, fringed with cypresses, a
+low mound, the summit of which is crowned by a circular screen, or
+border, of light and beautiful open-work architecture. The circular
+space enclosed is sunken, and from the centre of this sunken space
+there rises a pedestal on which stands the marble presentment of an
+angel. There is no need to explain what episode in the tragic story
+this monument commemorates; the inscription round the capital of the
+pedestal tells its tale succinctly indeed, but the words burn.
+"Sacred," it runs, "to the perpetual memory of the great company of
+Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were
+cruelly massacred by the followers of the rebel, Nana Doondoo Punth of
+Blithoor; and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on
+the 15th day of July 1857." A few paces to the north-west of the
+monument is the spot where stood the bungalow in which the massacre was
+done; and now, where the sight they saw maddened our countrymen long
+ago to a frenzy of revenge, there bloom roses and violets. And a step
+farther on, in a thicket of arbor vitae trees and cypresses, is the
+Memorial Churchyard, with its many nameless mounds, for here were
+buried not a few who died during the long occupation of Cawnpore, and
+in the combats around it. Here there is a monument to Thornhill, the
+Judge of Futtehghur, Mary his wife, and their two children, who
+perished in the massacre. Thornhill was one of the males brought out
+from the bungalow and shot earlier in the afternoon than when the
+women's time came. Another monument bears this inscription: "Sacred to
+the memory of the women and children of the 32nd, this monument is
+raised by twenty men of the same regiment, who were passing through
+Cawnpore, 21st Nov. 1857." And among the tombstones are those of
+gallant Douglas Campbell of the 78th, Woodford of the 2nd Battalion
+Rifle Brigade, and Young of the 4th Bengal Native Infantry.
+
+
+
+
+BISMARCK
+
+BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
+
+
+The ex-Chancellor of the German Empire owed nothing of his unique
+career to adventitious advantages. Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who
+for more than a generation was the most prominent and most powerful
+personality of Europe, was essentially a self-made man. He was a
+younger son of a cadet family of a knightly and ancient but somewhat
+decayed house, ranking among the lesser nobility of the Alt Mark of
+Brandenburg. The square solid mansion in which he was born, embowered
+among its trees in the region between the Elbe and the Havel, might be
+taken by an Englishman for the country residence of a Norfolk or
+Somersetshire squire of moderate fortune. But memories cling around the
+massive old family place of Schoenhausen, such as can belong to no
+English residence of equal date. In the library door of the Brandenburg
+mansion are seen to this day three deep fissures made by the bayonet
+points of French soldiers fresh from the battlefield of Jena, who in
+their brutal lawlessness pursued the young and beautiful chatelaine of
+the house and strove to crush in the door which the fugitive had locked
+behind her. The lady thus terrified and outraged was the mother of
+Bismarck; and the story told him in boyhood of his loved mother's
+narrow escape from worse than death, and of his father's having to
+conceal her in the depth of the adjoining forest, may well have
+inspired their son with the ill-feeling against the French nation which
+he never cared to disguise.
+
+The Bismarcks had been fighting men from time immemorial, and the
+combatant nature of the great scion of their race displayed itself in
+frequent duels during his university career at Goettingen. In the series
+of some eight-and-twenty duels in which he engaged during his first
+three terms, he was wounded but twice--once in the leg and again on the
+cheek, the mark of which latter wound he bears to this day. At one time
+he seems to have all but decided to embrace the military career but for
+family reasons he became a country gentleman, and if Europe had
+remained undisturbed by revolution he might have lived and died a
+bucolic squire, "Dyke Captain" of his district, with a seat in the
+Provincial Diet, a liking for history and philosophy, a propensity to
+rowdyism and drinking bouts of champagne and porter, and a character
+which defined itself in his local appellation of "Mad Bismarck." _Dis
+aliter visum_. The Revolution of 1848 swept over Europe and Bismarck
+rallied to the support of his sovereign. When in 1851 the young
+Landwehr lieutenant was sent to Frankfort by that sovereign as the
+representative of Prussia in the German Diet, he carried with him a
+reputation for unflinching devotion to the Crown, for a conservatism
+which had been styled not only "mediaeval" but "antediluvian," and for
+startling originality in his views as well as fearlessness in
+expressing them. The latter attribute he displayed when, in reply to a
+remark of a French diplomat on a question of policy, "_Cette politique
+va vous conduire a Jena_," Bismarck significantly retorted, "_Pourquoi
+pas a Leipsic ou a Waterloo?_" During his tenure of office at Frankfort
+his conviction steadfastly strengthened that Prussia could become a
+great nation only by shaking herself free from the Austrian supremacy
+in Germany. "It is my conviction," he placed on record in a despatch
+soon after the Crimean War, "that at no distant time we shall have to
+fight with Austria for our very existence;" and he was yet more
+emphatic when he wrote just before leaving Frankfort to take up his new
+position as German Ambassador to Russia in the beginning of 1859: "I
+recognise in our relations with the Bund a certain weakness affecting
+Prussia, which, sooner or later, we shall have to cure _ferro et
+igni_"--with fire and sword--words which embodied the first distinct
+enunciation of that policy of "blood and iron" which was destined
+ultimately to bring about the unification of Germany. His disgust was
+so strong that Prussia did not assert herself against Austria in 1858
+when the latter's hands were full in Italy, that his continued presence
+at Frankfort was considered unadvisable. He remained "in ice"--to use
+his own expression--at St. Petersburg until early in 1862; and in
+September of that year, after a few months of service as Prussian
+Ambassador at Paris, he was appointed by King Wilhelm to the high and
+onerous post of Minister-President with the portfolio of Foreign
+Secretary. It was then that his great career as a European statesman
+really began.
+
+The impression is all but universal that King Wilhelm throughout the
+eventful years which followed was but the figure-head of the ship at
+the helm of which stood Bismarck, strong, shrewd, subtle, cynical, and
+unscrupulous. This conception I believe to be utterly wrong. I hold
+Wilhelm to have been the virtual maker of the united Germany and the
+creator of the German Empire; and that the accomplishment of both those
+objects, the former leading up to the latter, was already quietly in
+his mind long before he mounted the throne. I consider him to have
+possessed the shrewdest insight into character. I believe him to have
+been quite unscrupulous, when once he had brought himself to cross the
+threshold of a line of action. I discern in him this curious, although
+not very rare, phase of character, that although resolutely bent on a
+purpose he was apt to be irresolute and even reluctant in bringing
+himself to consent to measures whereby that purpose was to be
+accomplished. He was that apparent contradiction in terms, a bold
+hesitator; he habitually needed, and knew that he needed, to have his
+hand apparently forced for the achievement of the end he was most bent
+upon. He knew full well that his aspirations could be fulfilled only at
+the bayonet point; and recognising the defects of the army, he had
+while still Regent set himself energetically to the task of making
+Prussia the greatest military power of Europe. He it was who had put
+into the hands of Prussian soldiers the weapon that won Koeniggraetz.
+With his clear eye for the right man he had found Moltke and placed the
+premier strategist of his day at the head of the General Staff. Roon he
+picked out as if by intuition from comparative obscurity, and assigned
+to him the work of preparing and carrying out that scheme of army
+reform which all continental Europe has copied.
+
+And then, constant in the furtherance of his purposes, Wilhelm
+deliberately invented Bismarck. He had steadfastly taken note of the
+man whom he chose to be his minister from the big Landwehr lieutenant's
+first commission to the Frankfort Diet in 1851; probably, indeed,
+earlier, when Bismarck was a rare but forcible speaker in Frederick
+Wilhelm's "quasi-Parliament." In Bismarck Wilhelm saw precisely the man
+he wanted--the complement of himself; arbitrary as he was, unscrupulous
+as he was, but bolder and at the same time more wise. Knowing where he
+himself was lacking, he recognised the man who, when he himself should
+have the impulse to balk and hesitate, was of that hardier
+nature--"grit" the Americans call it--to take him hard by the head and
+force him over the fence which all the while he had been longing to be
+on the other side of. To a monarch of this character Bismarck was
+simply the ideal guide and support--the man to urge him on when
+hesitating, to restrain him when over-ardent. Wilhelm had all along
+thoroughly realised that war with Austria was among the inevitables
+between him and the accomplishment of his aims, and had accepted it as
+such when it was yet afar off; but when confronted full with it his
+nerve failed him, and Bismarck--engaged among other things for just
+such an emergency--had to act as the spur to prick the side of his
+master's intent. The spur having done its work Wilhelm was himself
+again; he really enjoyed Koeniggraetz and would fain have dictated peace
+to Austria from the Hofburg of Vienna. In his zeal for promoting German
+unity at Prussia's bayonet point he lost his head a little, and on
+Bismarck devolved, in his own words, "the ungrateful duty of diluting
+the wine of victory with the water of moderation." One of the beads on
+the surface of the former fluid was certainly thus early the Imperial
+idea; but the time for its fulfilment Bismarck wisely judged not yet
+ripe. As it approached four years later, the diary of the Crown Prince
+depicts with unconscious humour the amusing progress of the "weakening"
+of Wilhelm's opposition to the Kaisership; it weakened in good time
+quite out of the sort of existence it had ever had, and Wilhelm was
+ready for the Kaisership before the Kaisership was ready for him.
+
+Bismarck as Premier began as he meant to go on, with uncompromising
+masterfulness. The Chamber and the nation might probably have fallen in
+willingly with Wilhelm's scheme for the reorganisation and
+reinforcement of the army, had it been possible to divulge the intent
+in furtherance of which the increased armament was being created. But
+since neither monarch nor minister could even hint at the objects in
+view, the nation was set against that increased armament for which it
+could discern no apparent use. So the Chamber, session after session,
+went through the accustomed formula of rejecting the military
+reorganisation bill as well as the military expenditure estimates. "No
+surrender" was the steadfast motto of Bismarck and his royal master.
+The constitution, such as it was, in effect was suspended. The Upper
+House voted everything it was asked to vote; loans were duly effected,
+the revenues were collected and the military disbursements were made,
+right in the teeth of the popular will and the veto of the
+representatives of the nation. Bismarck became the best-hated man in
+Prussia. He was compared to Catiline and Strafford; he was threatened
+with impeachment; the House and the nation clamoured to the King for
+his dismissal and for the sovereign's return to the path of
+constitutional government.
+
+But the long "conflict-time" was drawing near its close, and the
+triumph of the monarch and his minister over the constitution was
+approaching. The policy of doing political evil that national advantage
+might come was, for once at least, to stand vindicated. War with
+Austria as the outcome of Bismarck's astute if unscrupulous statecraft
+was imminent when the hostile parliament was dissolved; and a general
+election took place amidst the fervid outburst of enthusiasm which the
+earlier victories of the Prussian arms in the "Seven Weeks' War"
+stirred throughout the nation. The prospect of war had been unpopular
+in the extreme, but the tidings of the first success kindled the flame
+of patriotism. Bismarck lost for ever the title of the "best-hated man
+in Prussia" in the loud volume of the enthusiastic greetings of the
+populace, and on the day of Muenchengraetz and Skalitz Prussia now
+rejoiced to put her stubborn neck under the great minister's foot.
+
+The mingled truculence and tortuousness of the diplomacy by which
+Bismarck sapped up to the short but decisive war, the issue of which
+gave to Prussia the virtual headship of Germany and contributed so
+greatly toward the unification of the Fatherland, constitute a striking
+illustration of his methods in statecraft. He was fairly entitled to
+say, "_Ego qui feci_." He had achieved his aim in defiance of the
+nation. The Court threw its weight into the scale against the war; to
+the Crown Prince the strife with Austria was notoriously repugnant. The
+King himself, as the crisis approached, evinced marked hesitation. How
+triumphantly the event vindicated the policy of the great Premier, is a
+matter of history. He has frankly owned that if the decisive battle
+should have resulted in a Prussian defeat, he had resolved not to
+survive the shipwreck of his hopes and schemes. And there was a period
+in the course of the colossal struggle of Koeniggraetz, when to many men
+it seemed that the wielders of the needle-gun were having the worst of
+the battle. An awful hour for Bismarck, conscious of the load of
+responsibility which he carried. With great effort he could indeed
+maintain a calm visage, but his heart was beating and every pulse of
+him throbbing. In his torture of suspense he caught at straws. Moltke
+asked him for a cigar. As Bismarck handed him his cigar case he
+snatched a shred of comfort from the inference that if matters were
+very bad Moltke could hardly care to smoke. But Moltke was not only in
+a frame for tobacco but Bismarck watched with what deliberate coolness
+the great strategist inspected and smelt at cigar after cigar before
+making his final selection; and he dared to infer that the man who best
+understood the situation was in no perturbation as to the ultimate
+outcome. The opportune arrival of the Crown Prince's army on the
+Austrian right flank decided the business, and that arrival Bismarck
+was the first to discern. Lines were dimly visible on the hither slope
+of the Chlum heights; but they were pronounced to be ploughed ridges.
+Bismarck closed his field-glasses with a snap and exclaimed, "No, these
+are not plough furrows; the spaces are not equal; they are marching
+lines!" And he was right.
+
+Eighteen days after the victory of Koeniggraetz the Prussian hosts were
+in line on the historic Marchfeld whence the spires of Vienna could be
+dimly seen through the heat-haze. The soldiers were eager for the storm
+of the famous lines of Florisdorf and King Wilhelm was keen to enter
+the Austrian capital. But now the practical wisdom of Bismarck stepped
+in and his arguments for moderation prevailed. The peace which ended
+the Seven Weeks' War revolutionised the face of Germany. Austria
+accepted her utter exile from Germany, recognised the dissolution of
+the old Bund, and consented to non-participation in the new North
+German Confederation of which Prussia was to have the unquestioned
+military and diplomatic leadership. Prussia annexed Hanover, Electoral
+Hesse, Nassau, Sleswig and Holstein, Frankfort-on-Main, and portions of
+Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria. Her territorial acquisitions amounted to
+over 6500 square miles with a population exceeding 4,000,000, and the
+states with which she had been in conflict paid as war indemnity sums
+reaching nearly to L10,000,000 sterling. In a material sense, it had
+not been a bad seven weeks for Prussia; in a sense other than material,
+she had profited incalculably more. She was now, in fact as in name,
+one of the "Great Powers" of Europe. The nation realised at length what
+manner of man this Bismarck was and what it owed to him. When the inner
+history of the period comes to be written, it will be recognised that
+at no time of his extraordinary career did Bismarck prove himself a
+greater statesman than during the five days of armistice in July 1866,
+when he fought his diplomatic Koeniggraetz in the Castle of Nikolsburg
+and assuaged the wounds of the Austrian defeat by terms the moderation
+of which went far to obliterate the memory of the rancour of the recent
+strife.
+
+He had been wily enough to secure by vague non-committal half-promises
+the neutrality of France during the weeks while Prussia was crushing
+the armed strength of Austria in Bohemia. But the issue of Koeniggraetz
+startled Napoleon and set France in ferment. Bismarck dared to refuse
+point-blank the demand which the French Emperor made for the fortress
+of Mayence, made though that demand was under threat of war. The
+Prussian commanders would have liked nothing better than a war with
+France, and Roon indeed had warned for mobilisation 350,000 soldiers to
+swell the ranks of the forces already in the field; but Bismarck was
+wise and could wait. He allowed Napoleon to exercise some influence in
+the negotiations in the character of a mediator; and to French
+intervention was owing the stipulation that the South German States
+should be at liberty to form themselves into a South German
+Confederation of which Napoleon hoped to be the patron. But Bismarck
+was a better diplomatist than Napoleon. While he formed and knit
+together the North German Confederation in which Prussia was dominant,
+he quietly negotiated an alliance offensive and defensive with each of
+the Southern States separately. No Southern bund was ever formed, and
+when the Franco-German War broke out in 1870 Napoleon saw the shipwreck
+of his abortive devices in the spectacle of the troops of Bavaria and
+Wuertemberg marching on the Rhine in line with the battalions of Prussia.
+
+The unity of Germany was not yet; that consummation and the
+Kaisership--the two greatest triumphs of Bismarck's life--required
+another and a greater war to bring about their accomplishment. During
+the interval between 1866 and 1870, while the armed strength of
+Northern Germany was being quietly but sedulously perfected, Bismarck
+with dexterous caution was smoothing the rough path toward the ultimate
+unification. He would not have his hand forced by the enthusiasts for
+"the consummation of the national destiny." "No horseman can afford to
+be always at a gallop" was the figure with which he met the clamourers
+of the Customs Parliament. He invoked the terms of the treaty of Prague
+against the spokesmen of the Pan-German party inveighing vehemently
+against the policy of delay. He was staunch in his conviction that the
+South for its own safety's sake would come into the union the moment
+that the North should engage in war. He was a few weeks out in his
+reckoning; the Southern States waited until Sedan had been fought, when
+the prospect of the spoils of victory was assured; and this measured
+delay on their part was the best justification of Bismarck's sagacious
+deliberateness. The negotiations were tedious, but at length, on the
+evening of 23rd November 1870 the Convention with Bavaria was signed,
+and the unity of Germany was an accomplished fact. Busch vividly
+depicts the great moment:--
+
+The Chief came in from the salon, and sat down at the table. "Now," he
+exclaimed excitedly, "the Bavarian business is settled and everything
+is signed. _We have got our German Unity and our German Emperor_."
+There was silence for a moment. "Bring a bottle of champagne," said the
+Chief to a servant, "it is a great occasion." After musing a little, he
+remarked, "The Convention has its defects, but it is all the stronger
+on account of them. I count it the most important thing that we have
+accomplished during recent years."
+
+Notwithstanding that there was still before Bismarck a period of twenty
+years of virtual omnipotence, it was in the memorable years of 1870 and
+1871 that the apostle of blood and iron attained the zenith of his
+extraordinary career. Germany was his wash-pot; over France had he cast
+his shoe. The years of _Sturm und Drang_ were behind him, during which
+he had wrought out the military supremacy of Prussia in spite of
+herself; and in 1870 he had no misgivings as to the ultimate result. So
+confident indeed was he that before he crossed the French frontier on
+the second day after the twin victories of Woerth and Spicheren, he had
+already resolved on annexing to the Fatherland the old German province
+of Alsace which had been part of France for a couple of centuries.
+Bismarck was at his best in 1870 in certain attributes; in others he
+was at his worst, and a bitter bad worst that worst was. He was at his
+best in clear swift insight, in firm masterful grasp of every phase of
+every situation, in an instinctive prescience of events, in lucid
+dominance over German and European policy. If patriotism consists in
+earnest efforts to advantage and aggrandise one's native land _per fas
+aut nefas_, than Bismarck during the Franco-German War there never was
+a grander patriot. His hands were clean, he wanted nothing for himself
+except, curiously enough, the only thing that his old master was strong
+enough to deny him, the rank of Field Marshal when that military
+distinction was conferred on Moltke. He was at his worst in many
+respects. He had, or affected, a truculence which was simply brutal,
+its savagery intensified rather than mitigated by a bluff, boisterous
+bonhomie. Jules Favre complained to him that the German cannon in front
+of Paris fired upon the sick and blind in the Blind Institute, Bismarck
+in those days of swaggering prosperity had a fine turn of badinage. "I
+don't know what you find so hard in that," he retorted, "you do far
+worse; you shoot at our soldiers who are hale and useful fighting men."
+It is to be hoped that Favre had a sense of humour; he needed it all to
+relish the grim pleasantry.
+
+I do not suppose, if he had had a free hand, that Bismarck would have
+exhibited the courage of his opinions; but if his sentiments as
+expressed count for anything he would fain have seen the methods of
+warfare in the Dark Ages reverted to. "Prisoners! more prisoners!" he
+once exclaimed at Versailles, after one of Prince Frederick Charles's
+victories in the Loire country--"What the devil do we want with
+prisoners? Why don't they make a battue of them?" His motto, especially
+as regarded Francs-tireurs, was "No quarter," forgetful of the swarms
+of free companions and volunteer bands whose gallant services in
+Prussia's War of Liberation are commemorated to this day in song and
+story. It was told him that among the French prisoners taken at Le
+Bourget were a number of Francs-tireurs--by the way, they were the
+volunteers _de la Presse_ and wore a uniform. "That they should ever
+take Francs-tireurs prisoners!" roared Bismarck in disgust. "They ought
+to have shot them down by files!" Again, when it was reported that
+Garibaldi with his 13,000 "free companions" had been taken prisoners,
+the Chancellor exclaimed, "Thirteen thousand Francs-tireurs, who are
+not even Frenchmen, made prisoners! Why on earth were they not shot?"
+And when he heard that Voights Rhetz having experienced some resistance
+from the inhabitants of the open town of Tours, had shelled it into
+submission, Bismarck waxed wrath because the General had ceased firing
+when the white flag went up. "I would have gone on," said he, "throwing
+shells into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple
+truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was
+not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts
+for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he
+was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent
+undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered
+situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man of cool
+and undaunted courage. I have seen him perfectly impassive under heavy
+fire. In Bar-le-Duc, in Rheims, and over and over again in Versailles,
+I have met him walking alone and unarmed through streets thronged with
+French people who recognised him by the pictures of him, and who glared
+and spat and hissed in a cowed, furtive, malign fashion that was ugly
+to see.
+
+I vividly remember the first occasion on which I saw Bismarck. It was
+on the little tree-shaded _Place_ of St. Johann, the suburb of
+Saarbruecken, in the early evening of the 8th August, the next day but
+one after the battle of the Spicheren. Saarbruecken was full to the
+door-sills with the wounded of the battle and stretcher-parties were
+continually tramping to the "warriors' trench" in the cemetery,
+carrying to their graves soldiers who had died of their wounds. The
+Royal Headquarters had arrived a couple of hours earlier, and I was
+staring with all my eyes at a fresh-faced, white-haired old gentleman
+who was sitting in one of the windows of Guepratt's Hotel and whom I
+knew from the pictures to be King Wilhelm. Two officers in general's
+undress uniform were walking up and down under the pollarded
+lime-trees, talking as they walked. Presently from out a house opposite
+the hotel there emerged a very tall burly man of singularly upright
+carriage and with a certain air of swashbucklerism in his gait. A long
+cavalry sabre trailed and clanked on the rough pavement as he advanced
+to join the two sauntering officers under the trees. He wore the long
+blue double-breasted frockcoat with yellow cuffs and facings and white
+cap which I knew to be the undress uniform of the Bismarck Cuirassiers,
+but he was only partially in undress since the long cuirassier
+thigh-boots in which he strode were conventionally full uniform. The
+wearer of this costume was Bismarck; nor did I ever see him otherwise
+attired except on four occasions--at the Chateau Bellevue on the
+morning after Sedan, in the Galerie des Glaces in the Chateau of
+Versailles on 18th January, in the Place de la Concorde of capitulated
+Paris, and in the triumphal entry into Berlin; when he appeared in full
+uniform. Saluting His Majesty and then the two officers whom I
+recognised as Moltke and Roon, he joined the pedestrian couple, taking
+post between them and joining in their promenade and conversation. We
+heard his voice and laugh above the rumble of the waggon wheels on the
+causeway; the other two spoke little--Moltke, as he moved with bent
+head and hands clasped behind his back, scarcely anything.
+
+One would have imagined that those three men, the chief makers of that
+empire which was soon to come to the grand but not brilliant old
+gentleman in the window-seat, were on the most intimate and cordial
+terms. In reality they were jealous of each other with an inconceivable
+intensity. Bismarck had umbrage with Moltke because the great
+strategist withheld from the great statesman the military information
+which the latter held he ought to share. Moltke has roundly disclosed
+in his posthumous book his conviction that Roon's place as Minister of
+War was at home in Germany, not on campaign, embarrassing the former's
+functions. Roon envied Moltke because of the latter's more elevated
+military position, and disliked Bismarck because that outspoken man
+made light of Roon's capacity. I have known the headquarter staff of a
+British army whose members were on bad terms one with the other, and
+the result, to put it mildly, was unsatisfactory. But those three high
+functionaries, each with bitterness in his heart against his fellows,
+nevertheless co-operated earnestly and loyally in the service of their
+sovereign and for the advantage of their country. Their common
+patriotism had the mastery in them of their mutual hatred and jealousy.
+Ardt's line: _"Sein Vaterland muss groesser sein!"_ was the watchword
+and inspiration of all three, and dominated their discordancies.
+
+On the 17th August, the day of comparative quietude intervening between
+the day of Mars-la-Tour and the day of Gravelotte I was wandering about
+among the hamlets and farmsteads to the southward of Mars-la-Tour,
+waiting the arrival in their appointed bivouacs about Puxieux of my
+early friends of the Saxon Army Corps. Since in the battle of the
+previous day some 32,000 men had fallen killed or wounded within a
+comparatively small area, it may be imagined--or rather, without having
+seen the horror of carnage it cannot be imagined--how shambles-like was
+the aspect of this Aceldama. Scrambling up through the Bois la Dame
+with intent to obtain a wider view from the plateau above it, I found
+in a farmyard in the hamlet of Mariaville a number of wounded men under
+the care of a single and rather helpless surgeon. The water supply was
+very short and I volunteered to carry some bucketsful from the stream
+below. The surgeon told me that among his patients was Count Herbert
+Bismarck, the Chancellor's eldest son, who--as was also his younger
+brother Count "Bill"--was a volunteer private in the 2nd Guard
+Dragoons, and who had been shot in the thigh in the desperate charge
+made by that fine regiment to extricate from annihilation the
+Westphalian regiments which had suffered so severely near Bruville. A
+little later I saw Bismarck who had left the King on the Flavigny
+height, and who was riding about, as I assumed, in quest of his wounded
+son's whereabouts. I ventured to inform him on this point and he
+thanked me with some emotion. He was greatly moved at the meeting with
+his son but their interview was short; then he addressed himself to
+reproving the surgeon for not having had the Mariaville poultry killed
+for the use of the wounded, and presently rode away to order up a
+supply of water in barrels. I remember thinking him an exceedingly
+practical man.
+
+The English Warwick was styled the "King-maker"; but it was for the
+Prussian Bismarck to be Emperor-breaker and Emperor-maker within the
+same six months. The most wretched morning of Napoleon's life was that
+following the fatal day of Sedan, spent in and before the weaver's
+cottage on the Donchery road with Bismarck by his side, telling him in
+stern if courteous terms that as a prisoner of war his power to
+exercise the Imperial functions had fallen from him. It has been said
+that "the egg from which was hatched the German Empire was laid on the
+battlefield of Sedan." But, not to speak of the offer of the Imperial
+Crown to King Frederick Wilhelm by the Frankfort Parliament in 1848,
+Bismarck more than a year before the Austro-Prussian war had spoken to
+Lord Augustus Loftus, then British Ambassador to Prussia, of his
+ultimate intention that the King of Prussia should become the Emperor
+of an united Germany. The _Kaiserthum_ permeated the air of Northern
+Germany throughout the years from 1866 to 1870. But Bismarck had the
+true statesman's sense of the proper sequence of things. He would move
+no step toward the Kaisership until German unity was in near and clear
+sight. Then, and not till then, in spite of the Crown Prince's ardour,
+was the Imperial project brought forward, discussed, and finally
+carried through by Bismarck's tact and diplomacy.
+
+On the 18th January 1871, the anniversary of the coronation of the
+first king of his house, Wilhelm was proclaimed German Emperor in the
+Galerie des Glaces of the Chateau of Versailles. Behind the grand old
+monarch on the dais were ranged the regimental colours which had been
+borne to victory at Woerth and the Spicheren, at Mars-la-Tour,
+Gravelotte, and Sedan. On Wilhelm's right was his handsome and princely
+son; to right and to left stood potentates and princes and the leaders
+of the hosts of United Germany. Stalwart and square, somewhat apart on
+the extreme left of the great semicircle of which his sovereign was the
+centre, with a face of deadly pallor--for he had risen from a
+sick-bed--stood Bismarck in full cuirassier uniform leaning on his
+great sword, the man of all others who might that day most truly say,
+_"Finis Coronat Opus."_ His strong massive features were calm and
+self-possessed, yet elevated as it were by some internal power which
+drew all eyes to the great immobile figure with the indomitable
+lineaments instinct with will--force and masterfulness. After the
+solemn religious service His Majesty in a loud yet broken voice
+proclaimed the re-establishment of the German Empire, and that the
+Imperial dignity so revived was vested in him and his descendants for
+all time in accordance with the unanimous will of the German people.
+Bismarck then stood forward and read in sonorous tones the proclamation
+which the Emperor addressed to the German nation. As his final words
+rang through the hall the Grand Duke of Baden strode forward and
+shouted with all his force, "Long live the Emperor Wilhelm!" With a
+tempest of cheering, amidst waving of swords and of helmets the new
+title was acclaimed, and the Emperor with streaming tears received the
+homage of his liegemen. The first on bended knees to kiss his
+sovereign's hand was the Crown Prince, the second was Bismarck. The
+band struck up the National Anthem. Louder than the music, heard above
+the clamour of the cheering, sounded the thunder of the French cannon
+from Mont Valerien, the _Ave Caesar_ from the reluctant lips of worsted
+France. Bismarck, impassive as he seemed, must have had his emotions as
+he quitted this scene of triumph for the banquet-table of the Kaiser of
+his own making. He knew himself for the most conspicuous man in Europe,
+the greatest subject in the world. It was the proudest day of his life.
+
+There were many proud days still to occur in his long life. One of
+those was on the occasion of the German entry into Paris during the
+armistice which resulted in peace. The war had been of his making, and
+he chose to witness with his own eyes the actual triumph of his craft.
+It was a strange spectacle. There, helmet on head and sword on thigh,
+he sat in the shadow of the crape-shrouded statue of Strasburg on the
+Place de la Concorde. About him had gathered a group of extremely
+sinister French of the Belleville type. They had recognised him, and
+their lurid upward glances at the massive form on the great war-horse
+were charged with baleful meaning. Bismarck once or twice looked down
+on them with a grim smile under his moustache. At length the most
+daring of the "patriots" emitted a tentative hiss. With a little polite
+wave of his gloved hand Bismarck bent over his holster and requested
+"Monsieur" to oblige him with a light for his cigar. The man writhed as
+he compelled himself to comply. Little doubt that in his heart he
+wished the lucifer were a dagger and that he had the courage to use it.
+
+
+
+
+THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
+
+1873
+
+
+"_Thursday_.--Gathering, hand-shaking, brandy and soda and drams.
+
+"_Friday_.--Drinking, dandering, and feeling the way in the forenoon;
+the ordinary in the afternoon; at night a spate of drink and bargaining.
+
+"_Saturday_.--Bargaining and drink.
+
+"_Sunday morning_.--Bargains, drink, and the kirk."
+
+Such was the skeleton programme of the Inverness "Character" Fair given
+by a farmer friend to me, who happened to be lazily rusticating in the
+north of Scotland during the pleasant month of July. My friend asked me
+to accompany him in his visit to this remarkable institution and the
+programme was too tempting for refusal. As we drove to the station he
+handed me Henry Dixon's _Field and Fern_, open at a page which gave
+some particulars of the origin and character of the great annual sheep
+and wool market of the north. "Its Character Market," wrote "The
+Druid,"--no longer, alas! among us--"is the great bucolic glory of
+Inverness. The Fort-William market existed before, but the Sutherland
+and Caithness men, who sold about 14,000 sheep and 15,000 stones of
+wool annually so far back as 1816, did not care to go there. They dealt
+with regular customers year after year, and roving wool-staplers with
+no regular connection went about and notified their arrival on the
+church door. Patrick Sellar, 'the agent for the Sutherland
+Association,' saw exactly that some great _caucus_ of buyers and
+sellers was wanted at a more central spot; and on 27th February 1817
+that meeting of the clans was held at Inverness which brought the fair
+into being. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Burnley, Aberdeen, and
+Elgin signified that their leading merchants were favourable and ready
+to attend. Sutherland, Caithness, Wester Ross, Skye, the Orkneys,
+Harris, and Lewis were represented at the meeting; Bailie Anderson also
+'would state with confidence that the market was approved of by William
+Chisholm, Esq., of Chisholm, and James Laidlaw, tacksman, of Knockfin;'
+and so the matter was settled for ever and aye, and the _Courier_ and
+the _Morning Chronicle_ were the London advertising media. This
+Highland Wool Parliament was originally held on the third Thursday in
+June, but now it begins on the second Thursday of July and lasts till
+the Saturday; and Argyllshire, Nairnshire, and High Aberdeenshire have
+gradually joined in. The plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel
+have always been the scene of the bargains, which are most truly based
+on the broad stone of honour; not a sheep or fleece is to be seen and
+the buyer of the year before gets the first offer of the cast or clip.
+The previous proving and public character of the different flocks are
+the purchasers' guide far more than the sellers' description."
+
+Thus far "The Druid"; and my companion as we drove supplemented his
+information. It is from the circumstance that not a head of sheep or a
+tait of wool is brought to the market but that everything is sold and
+bought unseen and even unsampled, that the market derives its
+appellation of "character" fair. Of the value of the business
+transacted, the amount of money turned over, it is impossible to form
+with confidence even an approximate estimate since there is no source
+for data; but none with whom I spoke put the turnover at a lower figure
+than half a million. In a good season such as the past, over 200,000
+sheep are disposed of exclusive of lambs, and of lambs about the same
+number. The stock sold from the hills are for the most part Cheviots
+and Blackfaces; from the low grounds half-breds, being a cross between
+Leicester and Cheviot and crosses between the Cheviot and Blackface.
+All the sales of sheep and lambs are by the "clad score" which contains
+twenty-one. The odd one is thrown in to meet the contingency of deaths
+before delivery is effected. Established when there was a long and
+wearing journey for the flocks from the hills where they were reared
+down to their purchasers in the lowlands or the south country, the
+altered conditions of transit have stimulated farmers to efforts for
+the abolition of the "clad score." Now that sheep are trucked by
+railway instead of being driven on foot or conveyed from the islands to
+their destination in steamers specially chartered for the purpose, the
+farmers grudge the "one in" of the "clad score." In 1866 they seized
+the opportunity of an exceptionally high market and keen competition to
+combine against the old reckoning and in a measure succeeded. But next
+year was as dull as '66 had been brisk, and then the buyers and dealers
+had their revenge and re-established the "clad score" in all its
+pristine firmness of position. The sheep-farmers wean their lambs about
+the 24th of August and delivery of them is given to the buyers as soon
+as possible thereafter. The delivery of ewes and wethers is timed by
+individual arrangement. A large proportion of the old ewes--no ewes are
+sold but such as are old--go to England where a lamb or two is got from
+them before they are fattened. Most of the lambs are bought by
+sheep-farmers who, not keeping a ewe flock, are not themselves
+breeders, and are kept till they are three years old--"three shears" as
+they are technically called--and sold fat into the south country. There
+they get what Mr. M'Combie called the last dip and the butcher sells
+them as "prime four-year-old wedder mutton."
+
+The size of some of the Highland sheep farms is to be reckoned by miles
+not by acres; and the stock, as in Australia, by the thousand. The
+largest sheep-owner, perhaps, that the Highlands ever knew was Cameron
+of Corrichollie, now dead. He was once examined before a Committee of
+the House of Commons, and came to be questioned on the subject of his
+ownership of sheep. "You may have some 1500 sheep, probably, sir?"
+quoth the interrogating M.P. "Aiblins," was Corrichollie's quiet reply
+as he took a pinch of snuff; "aiblins I have a few more nor that." "Two
+thousand, then?" "Yes, I pelieve I have that and a few more forpye,"
+calmly responded the Highlander with another pinch. "Five thousand?"
+"Oh, ay, and a few more." "Twenty thousand, sir?" cried the M.P.,
+capping with a burst his previous bid. "Oh, ay, and some more forpye,"
+was the imperturbable response. "In Heaven's name how many sheep have
+you, man?" burst out the astonished catechist. "I'm no very sure to a
+thousan' or two," replied Corrichollie in his dry laconic way and with
+an extra big pinch; "but I'm owner of forty thousan' sheep at the
+lowest reckoning." Lochiel, known to the Sassenach as Mr. Cameron,
+M.P., is perhaps the largest living sheep-owner in Scotland. He has at
+least 30,000 sheep on his vast tracks of moorland on the braes of
+Lochaber. In the Island of Skye Captain Cameron of Talisker has a flock
+of some 12,000; and there are several other flocks both in the islands
+and on the mainland of more than equal magnitude. Sheep-farming, at
+least in many instances, is an hereditary avocation, and some families
+can trace a sheep-farming ancestry very far back. The oldest
+sheep-farming family in Scotland are the Mackinnons of Corrie in Skye.
+They have been on Corrie for four hundred years and they were holding
+sheep-farms elsewhere even earlier. The Macraes of Achnagart in
+Kintail, paid rent to Seaforth for two hundred years. For as long
+before they had held Achnagart on the tenure of a bunch of heather
+exigible annually and their fighting services as good clansmen. Two
+hundred years ago an annual rental of L5 was substituted for the
+heather "corve"; the clansmen's service continuing and being rendered
+up till the '45. Now clanship is but a name: a Seaforth Mackenzie is no
+longer chief in Kintail, and the Macrae who has succeeded his forbears
+in Achnagart finds the bunch of heather and the L5 alike superseded by
+the very far other than nominal rent of L1000. The modern Achnagart
+with his broad shoulders and burly frame, looks as capable as were any
+of his ancestry to render personal service to his chief if a demand
+were made upon him; and very probably would be quite prepared to accept
+a reduction of his money rental if an obligation to perform feudal
+clan-service were substituted. Achnagart with his L1000 a year rental
+by no means tops the sheep-farming rentals of his county. Perhaps
+Robertson of Achiltie, whose sheep-walks stretch up on to the
+snow-patched shoulders of Ben Wyvis and far away west to Loch Broom,
+pays the highest sheep-farming rental in Ross-shire, when the factor
+has pocketed his half-yearly check for L800.
+
+Part of this I learn from my friend as we drive to the station; part I
+gather afterwards from other sources. The station for which we are
+bound is Elgin, the county town of Morayshire. Between Elgin and
+Inverness, it is true, we shall see but few of the great sheep-farmers
+and flock-masters of the west country, who converge on the annual tryst
+from other points of the compass and by various routes--by the Skye
+railway, by that portion of the Highland line which extends north of
+Inverness, through Ross into Sutherland, by the Caledonian Canal, etc.
+But it is promised to me that I shall see many of the notable
+agriculturists of Moray land, who go to the market as buyers; and a
+contingent of sheep-breeders are sure to join us at Forres, coming down
+the Highland line from the Inverness-shire Highlands on Upper
+Strathspey. There is quite an exceptional throng on the platform of the
+Elgin station, of farmers, factors, lawyers, and
+ex-coffee-planters--all very plentiful in Elgin; tanners bound for
+investments in prospective pelts; and men of no avocation yet as much
+bound to visit Inverness to-day as if they meant to invest thousands.
+In a corner towers the mighty form of Paterson of Mulben, famous among
+breeders of polls with his tribe of "Mayflowers." From beneath a kilt
+peep out the brawny limbs of Willie Brown of Linkwood and Morriston,
+nephew of stout old Sir George who commanded the light division at the
+Alma, son to a factor whose word in his day was as the laws of the
+Medes and Persians over a wide territory, and himself the feeder of the
+leviathan cross red ox and the beautiful gray heifer which took honours
+so high at one of the recent Smithfield Christmas Shows. There is the
+white beard and hearty face of Mr. Collie, late of Ardgay, owner
+erstwhile of "Fair Maid of Perth" and breeder of "Zarah." Here, too, is
+a fresh, sprightly gentleman in a kilt whom his companions designate
+"the Bourach." Requesting an explanation of the term I am told that
+"Bourach" is the Gaelic for "through-other," which again is the
+Scottish synonym for a kind of amalgam of addled and harum-scarum. A
+jolly tanner observes: "I'll get a compartment to oursels." The reason
+of the desire for this exclusive accommodation is apparent as soon as
+we start. A "deck" of cards is produced and a quartette betake
+themselves to whist with half-crown stakes on the rubber and sixpenny
+points. This was mild speculation to that which was engaged in on the
+homeward journey after the market, when a Strathspey sheep-farmer won
+L8 between Dalvey and Forres. As my friends shuffle and deal, I look
+out of window at the warm gray towers of the cathedral, beautiful still
+spite of the desecrating hand of the "Wolf of Badenoch." Our road lies
+through the fertile "Laigh of Moray," one of the richest wheat
+districts in the Empire and as beautiful as fertile. At Alves we pick
+up a fresh, hale gentleman, who is described to me as "the laird of
+three properties," bought for more than L100,000 by a man who began
+life as the son of a hillside crofter. We pass the picturesque ruins of
+Kinloss Abbey and draw up at Forres station, whose platform is thronged
+with noted agriculturists bound for the "Character" Fair. Here is that
+spirited Englishman Mr. Harris of Earnhill, whose great cross ox took
+the cup at the Agricultural Hall seven or eight years ago; and the
+brothers Bruce--he of Newton Struthers, whose marvellous polled cow
+beat everything in Bingley Hall at the '71 Christmas Show and but for
+"foot and mouth" would have repeated the performance at the Smithfield
+Show; and he of Burnside who likewise has stamped his mark pretty
+deeply in the latter arena. At Forres we first hear Gaelic; for a train
+from Carr Bridge and Grantown in Upper Strathspey has come down the
+Highland Railway to join ours, and the red-haired Grants around the
+Rock of Craigellachie--where a man whose name is not Grant is regarded
+as a _lusus naturae_--are Gaelic speakers to a man. No witches accost
+us, and speaking personally I feel no "pricking of the thumbs" as we
+skirt the blasted heath on which Macbeth met the witches; the most
+graphic modern description of which on record was given to Henry Dixon
+in the following quaint form of Shakespearean annotation: "It's just a
+sort of eminence; all firs and ploughed land now; you paid a toll near
+it. I'm thinking, it's just a mile wast from Brodie Station."
+
+Nairn is that town by the citation of a peculiarity of which King Jamie
+put to shame the boastings of the Southrons as to the superior
+magnitude of English towns. "I have a town," quoth the sapient James,
+"in my ancient kingdom of Scotland, whilk is sae lang that at ane end
+of it a different language is spoken from that whilk prevails at the
+other." To this day the monarch's words are true; one end of Nairn is
+Gaelic, the other Sassenach. Here we obtain a considerable accession of
+strength. The attributes of one kilted chieftain are described to me in
+curious scraps of illustrative patchwork. "A great litigant, an
+enthusiastic agriculturist, a dealer in Hielan' nowt--something of a
+Hielan' nowt himself, a semi-auctioneer, a great hand as chairman at an
+agricultural dinner, a visitor to the Baker Street Bazaar when the
+Smithfield Shows were held there and where the Cockneys mistook him for
+one of the exhibits and began pinching and punching him." Stewart of
+Duntalloch swings his stalwart form into our carriage--a noted breeder
+of Highland cattle and as fine a specimen of a Highlander as can be
+seen from Reay to Pitlochrie. "Culloden! Culloden!" chant the porters
+in that curious sing-song peculiar to the Scotch platform porter. The
+whistle of the engine and the talk about turnips and cattle contrast
+harshly with that bleak, lonely, moorland swell yonder--the patches of
+green among the brown heather telling where moulders the dust of the
+chivalrous clansmen. It is but little longer than a century and a
+quarter ago since Charles Stuart and Cumberland confronted each other
+over against us there; and here are the descendants of the men that
+fought in their tartans for the "King over the Water," who are
+discussing the right proportion of phosphates in artificial manures and
+of whom one asks me confidentially for my opinion on the Leger
+favourite.
+
+Here we are at Inverness at length; that city of the Clachnacudden
+stone. There is quite a crowd in the spacious station of business
+people who have been awaiting the arrival of the train from the east,
+and the buyers and sellers whom it has conveyed find themselves at once
+among eager friends. Hurried announcements are made as to the
+conditions and prospects of the market. The card-players have plunged
+suddenly _in medias res_ of bargaining. The man who had volunteered to
+stand me a seltzer and sherry has forgotten all about his offer, and is
+talking energetically about clad scores and the price of lambs. I quit
+the station and walk up Union Street through a gradually thickening
+throng, till I reach Church Street and shoulder my way to the front of
+the Caledonian Hotel. I am now in "the heart of the market," standing
+as I am on the plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel and
+looking up and down along the crowded street. What physique, what broad
+shoulders, what stalwart limbs, what wiry red beards and high
+cheek-bones there are everywhere! You have the kilt at every turn, in
+every tartan, and often in no tartan at all. Other men wear
+whole-coloured suits of inconceivably shaggy tweed, and the breadth of
+the bonnets is only equalled by that of the accents. Every second man
+has a mighty plaid over his shoulder. It may serve as a sample of his
+wool, for invariably it is home made. Some carry long twisted crooks
+such as we see in old pastoral prints; others have massive gnarled
+sticks grasped in vast sinewy hands on the back of which the wiry red
+hairs stand out like prickles. There is falling what in the south we
+should reckon as a very respectable pelt of rain, but the Inverness
+Wool Fair heeds rain no more than thistledown. Hardly a man has thought
+it worth his pains to envelop his shoulders in his plaid, but stands
+and lets the rain take its chance. There is a perfect babel of tongues;
+no bawling or shouting, however, but a perpetual gruff _susurrus_ of
+broad guttural conversation accentuated every now and then by a louder
+exclamation in Gaelic. Quite half of the throng are discoursing in this
+language. It is possible to note the difference in the character of the
+Celt and Teuton. The former gesticulates, splutters out a perfect
+torrent of alternately shrill, guttural, and intoned Gaelic; he shrugs
+his shoulders, he throws his arms about, he thrills with vivacity. The
+Teuton expresses quiet, sententious canniness in every gesture and
+every utterance; he is a cold-blooded man and keeps his breath to cool
+his porridge.
+
+On the plain-stones there are a number of benches on which men sit down
+to gossip and chaffer. Scraps of dialogue float about in the moist air.
+If you care to be an eavesdropper you must have a knowledge of Gaelic
+to be one effectively. "It's to be a stout market," remarks stalwart
+Macrae of Invershiel, come of a fine old West Highland stock and
+himself a very large sheep-farmer. "Sixteen shillings is my price. I'll
+come down a little if you like," says the tenant of Belmaduthy to
+keen-faced Mr. Mackenzie of Liverpool, one of the largest wool-dealers
+and sheep-buyers visiting the market. "You'll petter juist pe coming
+down to it at once." "I could not meet you at all." "I'm afraid I'll pe
+doing what they'll pe laughing at me for." "We can't agree at all," are
+the words as a couple separate, probably to come together again later
+in the day. "An do reic thu na 'h'uainn fhathast, Coignasgailean?" "Cha
+neil fios again'm lieil thusa air son tavigse thoirtorra,
+Cnocnangraisheag?" "Thig gus ain fluich sin ambarfan." Perhaps I had
+better translate. Two sheep-farmers are in colloquy, and address each
+other by the names of their farms, as is all but universal in the
+north. Cnocnangraisheag asks Coignasgailean, "Have you sold your
+lambs?" The cautious reply is, "I don't know; are you inclined to give
+me an offer?" and the proposal ensues, "Come and let us take a drink on
+the transaction." Let us follow the two worthies into the Caledonian.
+Jostling goes for nothing here and you may shove as much in reason as
+you choose, taking your chance of reprisals from the sons of Anak. The
+lobbies of the Caledonian are full of men drinking and bargaining with
+books in hand. There is no sitting-room in all the house and we follow
+the Cnocnangraisheag and his friend into the billiard-room, where we
+are promptly served standing. What keenness of business-discussion
+mingled with what galore of whisky there is everywhere! The whisky
+seems to make no more impression than if it were ginger-beer; and yet
+it is over-proof Talisker, as my throat and eyes find to their cost
+when I recklessly attempt to imitate Coignasgailean and take a dram
+neat. As I pass the bar going out Willie Brown is bawling for soda with
+something in it, and Donald Murray of Geanies, one of the ablest men in
+the north of Scotland, brushes by with quick decisive step. In the
+doorway stands the sturdy square-built form of Macdonald of Balranald,
+the largest breeder of Highland cattle in the country. Over the
+heathery pasture-land of North Uist 1500 head and more of horned newt
+of his range in half-wild freedom. The Mundells and the Mitchells seem
+ubiquitous. The ancestors of both families came from England as
+shepherds when the Sutherland clearances were made toward the end of
+last century, and between them they now hold probably the largest
+acreage--or rather mileage, of sheep-farming territory in all Scotland.
+
+It is a "very dour market," that all admit. Everybody is holding back,
+for it is obvious prices are to be "desperate high" and everybody wants
+to get the full benefit of the rise. The predetermination of the
+Southern dealers to "buy out" freely at big prices had been rashly
+revealed over-night by one of the fraternity at the after-dinner
+toddy-symposium in the Caledonian. He had been sedulously plied with
+drink by "Charlie Mitchell" and some others of the Ross and Sutherland
+sheep-farmers, till reticence had departed from his tongue. Ultimately
+he had leaped on the table, breaking any quantity of glass-ware in the
+saltatory feat, and had asserted with free swearing his readiness to
+give 50s. all round for every three-year-old wedder in the north of
+Scotland. His horror-stricken partners rushed upon him and bundled him
+downstairs in hot haste, but the murder was out and the "dour market"
+was accounted for. Fancy 50s. a head for beasts that do not weigh 60
+lb. apiece as they come off the hill! No wonder that we townsmen have
+to pay dear for our mutton.
+
+I push my way out of the heart of the market to find the outlying
+neighbourhood studded all over with conversing groups. There is an
+all-pervading smell of whisky, and yet I see no man who has "turned a
+hair" by reason of the strength of the Talisker. A town-crier ringing a
+bell passes me. He halts, and the burden of his cry is, "There is a
+large supply of fresh haddies in the market!" The walls are placarded
+with advertisements of sheep smearing and dipping substances; the
+leading ingredients of which appear to be tar and butter. A recruiting
+sergeant of the Scots Fusilier Guards is standing by the Clachnacudden
+Stone, apparently in some dejection owing to the little business doing
+in his line. Men don't come to the "Character" Fair to 'list. It
+strikes me that quite three-fourths of the shops of Inverness are
+devoted to the sale of articles of Highland costume. Their fronts are
+hidden by hangings of tartan cloth; the windows are decked with
+sporrans, dirks, cairngorm plaid-brooches, ram's-head snuff-boxes,
+bullocks' horns and skean dhus. If I chose I might enter the emporium
+of Messrs. Macdougall in my Sassenach garb and re-emerge in ten minutes
+outwardly a full-blown Highland chief, from the eagle's feather in my
+bonnet to the buckles on my brogues. Turning down High Street I reach
+the quay on the Ness bank, where I find in full blast a horse fair of a
+very miscellaneous description, and totally destitute of the features
+that have earned for the wool market the title of "Character" Fair.
+There are blood colts running chiefly to stomach, splints and bog
+spavins; ponies with shaggy manes, trim barrels, and clean legs; and
+slack-jointed cart-horses nearly asleep--for "ginger" is an institution
+which does not seem to have come so far north as Inverness. Business is
+lively here, the chronic "dourness" of a market being discounted by the
+scarcity of horseflesh.
+
+At four o'clock we sit down to the market ordinary in the great room of
+the Caledonian. A member of Parliament occupies the chair, one of the
+croupiers is a baronet, the other the chief of the clan Mackintosh.
+There is a great collection of north-country notabilities, and tables
+upon tables of sheep-farmers and sheep-dealers. We have a considerable
+_cacoethes_ of speech-making, among the orators being Professor Blackie
+of Edinburgh, whose quaint comicalities convulse his audience. It is
+pretty late when the Professor rises to speak, and the whisky has been
+flowing free. Some one interjects a whiskyfied interruption into the
+Professor's speech, who at once in stentorian tones orders that the
+disturber of the harmony of the evening shall be summarily consigned to
+the lunatic asylum. I see him ejected with something like the force of
+a stone from a catapult and have no reasonable doubt that he will spend
+the night an inmate of "Craig Duncan." The speeches over bargaining
+recommences moistened by toddy, which fluid appears to exercise an
+appreciable softening influence on the "dourness" of the market. Till
+long after midnight seasoned vessels are talking and dealing, booking
+sales while they sip their tenth tumbler.
+
+I have to leave on the Saturday morning, but I make no doubt that the
+skeleton programme given at the beginning of this paper will have its
+bones duly clothed with flesh.
+
+
+
+
+THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
+
+
+At first sight the proposition may appear startling and indeed absurd;
+yet hard facts, I venture to believe, will enforce the conviction on
+unprejudiced minds that the warfare of the present when contrasted with
+the warfare of the past is dilatory, ineffective, and inconclusive.
+
+Present, or contemporary warfare may be taken to date from the general
+adoption of rifled firearms; the warfare of the past may fairly be
+limited for purposes of comparison or contrast, to the smooth-bore era;
+indeed, for those purposes there is no need to go outside the present
+century. Roughly speaking the first five and a half decades of the
+century were smooth-bore decades; the three and a half later decades
+have been rifled decades, of which about two and a half decades
+constitute the breechloading period. Considering the extraordinary
+advances since the end of the smooth-bore era in everything tending to
+promote celerity and decisiveness in the result of campaigns--the
+revolution in swiftness of shooting and length of range of firearms,
+the development in the science of gunnery, the increased devotion to
+military study, the vast additions to the military strength of the
+nations, looking to the facilities for rapid conveyance of troops and
+transportation of supplies afforded by railways and steam
+water-carriage, to the intensified artillery fire that can now be
+brought to bear on fortresses, to the manifold advantages afforded by
+the electric telegraph, and to the crushing cost of warfare, urging
+vigorous exertions toward the speedy decision of campaigns--reviewing,
+I say, the thousand and one circumstances encouraging to short, sharp,
+and decisive action in contemporary warfare, it is a strange and
+bewildering fact that the wars of the smooth-bore era were for the most
+part, shorter, sharper, and more decisive. Spite of inferiority of
+weapons the battles of that period were bloodier than those of the
+present, and it is a mathematically demonstrable proposition that the
+heavier the slaughter of combatants the nearer must be the end of a
+war. There is no pursuit now after victory won and the vanquished draws
+off shaken but not broken; in the smooth-bore era a vigorous pursuit
+scattered him to the four winds. When Wellington in the Peninsula
+wanted a fortress and being in a hurry could not wait the result of a
+formal siege or a starvation blockade, he carried it by storm. No
+fortress is ever stormed now, no matter how urgent the need for its
+reduction, no matter how obsolete its defences. The Germans in 1871 did
+attempt to carry by assault an outwork of Belfort, but failed utterly.
+It would almost seem that in the matter of forlorn hopes the Caucasian
+is played out.
+
+Assertions are easy, but they go for little unless they can be proved;
+some examples, therefore, may be cited in support of the contentions
+advanced above. The Prussians are proud and with justice, of what is
+known as the "Seven Weeks' War of 1866" although as a matter of fact
+the contest with Austria did not last so long, for Prince Frederick
+Charles crossed the Bohemian frontier on the 23rd of June and the
+armistice which ended hostilities was signed at Nikolsburg on the 26th
+of July. The Prussian armies were stronger than their opponents by more
+than one-fourth and they were armed with the needle-gun against the
+Austrian muzzle-loading rifle. When the armistice was signed the
+Prussians lay on the Marchfeld within dim sight of the
+Stephanien-Thurm, it is true; but with the strong and strongly armed
+and held lines of Florisdorf, the Danube, and the army of the Archduke
+Albrecht between them and the Austrian capital. On the 9th of October
+1806 Napoleon crossed the Saale. On the 14th at Jena he smashed
+Hohenlohe's Prussian army, the contending hosts being about equal
+strength; on the same day Davoust at Auerstadt with 27,000 men routed
+Brunswick's command over 50,000 strong. On the 25th of October Napoleon
+entered Berlin, the war virtually over and all Prussia at his feet with
+the exception of a few fortresses, the last of which fell on the 8th of
+November. Which was the swifter, the more brilliant, and the more
+decisive--the campaign of 1866, or the campaign of 1806?
+
+The Franco-German war is generally regarded as an exceptionally
+effective performance on the part of the Germans. The first German
+force entered France on the 4th of August 1870. Paris was invested on
+the 21st of September, the German armies having fought four great
+battles and several serious actions between the frontier and the French
+capital. An armistice, which was not conclusive since it allowed the
+siege of Belfort to proceed and Bourbaki's army to be free to attempt
+raising it, was signed at Versailles on the 28th of January 1871, but
+the actual conclusion of hostilities dates from the 16th of February,
+the day on which Belfort surrendered. The Franco-German war, therefore,
+lasted six and a half months. The Germans were in full preparedness
+except that their rifle was inferior to the French _chassepot_; they
+were in overwhelmingly superior numerical strength in every encounter
+save two with French regular troops, and they had on their banners the
+prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries were utterly unready for a great
+struggle; the French army was in a wretched state in every sense of the
+word; indeed, after Sedan there remained hardly any regulars able to
+take the field. In August 1805 Napoleon's Grande Armee was at Boulogne
+looking across to the British shores. Those inaccessible, he promptly
+altered his plans and went against Austria. Mack with 84,000 Austrian
+soldiers was at Ulm, waiting for the expected Russian army of
+co-operation and meantime covering the valley of the Danube. Napoleon
+crossed the Rhine on the 26th of September. Just as in 1870 the Germans
+on the plain of Mars-la-Tour thrust themselves between Bazaine and the
+rest of France, so Napoleon turned Mack and from Aalen to the Tyrol
+stood between him and Austria. Mack capitulated Ulm and his army on the
+19th of October and Napoleon was in Vienna on the 13th of November.
+Although he possessed the Austrian capital, he was not, however, master
+of the Austrian empire. The latter result did not fall to him until the
+2nd of December, when under "the sun of Austerlitz" he with 73,000 men
+defeated the Austro-Russian army 85,000 strong, inflicting on it a loss
+of 30,000 men at the cost of 12,000 of his own soldiers _hors de
+combat_. It took the Germans in 1870 a month and a half to get from the
+frontier to _outside_ Paris; just in the same time, although certainly
+not with so severe fighting by the way but nearly twice as long a
+march, Napoleon moved from the Rhine to _inside_ Vienna. From the
+active commencement to the cessation of hostilities the Franco-German
+war lasted six and a half months; reckoning from the crossing of the
+Rhine to the evening of Austerlitz Napoleon subjugated Austria in two
+and a quarter months. Perhaps, however, his campaign of 1809 against
+Austria furnishes a more exact parallel with the campaign of the
+Germans in 1870-71. He assumed command on the 17th of April, having
+hurried from Spain. He defeated the Austrians five times in as many
+days, at Thann, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmuhl, and Ratisbon; and he was
+in Vienna on the 13th of May. Balked at Aspern and Essling, he gained
+his point at Wagram on the 5th of July, and hostilities ceased with the
+armistice of Znaim on the 11th after having lasted for a period short
+of three months by a week.
+
+The Russians have a reputation for good marching, and certainly
+Suvaroff made good time in his long march from Russia to Northern Italy
+in 1799; almost as good, indeed, as Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, and
+Kutusoff made in falling back before Napoleon when he invaded Russia in
+1812. But they have not improved either in marching or in fighting at
+all commensurately with the improved appliances. In 1877, after
+dawdling two months they crossed the Danube on the 21st to the 27th of
+June. Osman Pasha at Plevna gave them pause until the 10th of December,
+at which date they were not so far into Bulgaria as they had been five
+months previously. After the fall of Plevna the Russian armies would
+have gone into winter quarters but for a private quasi-ultimatum
+communicated to the Tzar from a high source in England, to the effect
+that unpleasant consequences could not be guaranteed against if the war
+was not finished in one campaign. Alexander, who was quite an astute
+man in his way, was temporarily enraged by this restriction, but
+recovering his calmness, realised that nowhere in war books is any
+particular time specified for the termination or duration of a
+campaign. It appeared that so long as an army keeps the field
+uninterruptedly a campaign may continue until the Greek kalends. In
+less time than that Gourko and Skobeleff undertook to finish the
+business; by the vigour with which they forced their way across the
+Balkans in the heart of the bitter winter Sophia, Philippopolis, and
+Adrianople fell into Russian hands; and the Russian troops had been
+halted some time almost in face of Constantinople when the treaty of
+San Stephano was signed on the 3rd of March 1878. It had taken the
+Russians of 1877-78 eight weary months to cover the distance between
+the Danube and the Marmora. But fifty years earlier a Russian general
+had marched from the Danube to the Aegean in three and a half months,
+nor was his journey by any means a smooth and bloodless one. Diebitch
+crossed the Danube in May 1828 and besieged Silistria from the 17th of
+May until the 1st of July. Silistria has undergone three resolute
+sieges during the century; it succumbed but once, and then to Diebitch.
+Pressing south immediately, he worsted the Turkish Grand Vizier in the
+fierce battle of Kuleutscha and then by diverse routes hurried down
+into the great Roumelian valley. Adrianople made no resistance and
+although his force was attenuated by hardship and disease, when the
+Turkish diplomatists procrastinated the audacious and gallant Diebitch
+marched his thin regiments forward toward Constantinople. They had
+traversed on a wide front half the distance between Adrianople and the
+capital when the dilatory Turkish negotiators saw fit to imitate the
+coon and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the
+weakness of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned
+whether, that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied
+Constantinople on the swagger. His master was prepared promptly to
+reinforce him; Constantinople was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than
+in 1878, and certainly Diebitch was much smarter than were the Grand
+Duke Nicholas, his fossil Nepokoitschitsky, and his pure theorist
+Levitsky.
+
+The contrast between the character of our own contemporary military
+operations and that of those of the smooth-bore era is very strongly
+marked. In 1838-39 Keane marched an Anglo-Indian army from our frontier
+at Ferozepore over Candahar to Cabul without experiencing any serious
+check, and with the single important incident of taking Ghuzni by storm
+on the way. Our positions at and about Cabul were not seriously
+molested until late in 1841, when the paralysis of demoralisation
+struck our soldiers because of the crass follies of a wrong-headed
+civilian chief and the feebleness of a decrepit general. Nott
+throughout held Candahar firmly; the Khyber Pass remained open until
+faith was broken with the hillmen; Jellalabad held out until the
+"Retribution Column" camped under its walls. But for the awful
+catastrophe which befell in the passes the hapless brigade which under
+the influence of deplorable pusillanimity and gross mismanagement had
+evacuated Cabul, no serious military calamity marked our occupation of
+Afghanistan and certainly stubborn resistance had not confronted our
+arms. From 1878 to 1880 we were in Afghanistan again, this time with
+breech-loading far-ranging rifles, copious artillery of the newest
+types, and commanders physically and mentally efficient. All those
+advantages availed us not one whit. The Afghans took more liberties
+with us than they had done forty years previously. They stood up to us
+in fair fight over and over again: at Ali Musjid, at the Pewar Kotul,
+at Charasiab, on the Takt-i-Shah and the Asmai heights, at Candahar.
+They took the dashing offensive at Ahmed Kheyl and at the
+Shutur-gurdan; they drove Dunham Massy's cavalry and took British guns;
+they reoccupied Cabul in the face of our arms, they besieged Candahar,
+they hemmed Roberts within the Sherpoor cantonments and assailed him
+there. They destroyed a British brigade at Maiwand and blocked Gough in
+the Jugdulluck Pass. Finally our evacuating army had to macadamise its
+unmolested route down the passes by bribes to the hillmen, and the
+result of the second Afghan war was about as barren as that of the
+first.
+
+It was in the year 1886 that, the resolution having been taken to
+dethrone Thebau and annex Upper Burmah, Prendergast began his all but
+bloodless movement on Mandalay. The Burmans of today have never
+adventured a battle, yet after years of desultory bushwhacking the
+pacification of Upper Burmah has still to be fully accomplished. On the
+10th of April 1852 an Anglo-Indian expedition commanded by General
+Godwin landed at Rangoon. During the next fifteen months it did a good
+deal of hard fighting, for the Burmans of that period made a stout
+resistance. At midsummer of 1853 Lord Dalhousie proclaimed the war
+finished, announced the annexation and pacification of Lower Burmah,
+and broke up the army. The cost of the war of which the result was this
+fine addition to our Indian Empire, was two millions sterling; almost
+from the first the province was self-supporting and uninterrupted peace
+has reigned within its borders. We did not dally in those primitive
+smooth-bore days. Sir Charles Napier took the field against the Scinde
+Ameers on the 16th of February 1843. Next day he fought the battle of
+Meanee, entered Hyderabad on the 2Oth, and on the 24th of March won the
+decisive victory of Dubba which placed Scinde at his mercy, although
+not until June did the old "Lion of Meerpore" succumb to Jacob. But
+before then Napier was well forward with his admirable measures for the
+peaceful administration of the great province he had added to British
+India.
+
+The expedition for the rescue of General Gordon was tediously boated up
+the Nile, with the result that the "desert column" which Sir Herbert
+Stewart led so valiantly across the Bayuda reached Gubat just in time
+to be too late, and was itself extricated from imminent disaster by the
+masterful promptitude of Sir Redvers Buller. Notwithstanding a general
+consensus of professional and expert opinion in favour of the
+alternative route from Souakin to Berber, 240 miles long and far from
+waterless, the adoption of it was condemned as impossible. In June
+1801, away back in the primitive days, an Anglo-Indian brigade 5000
+strong ordered from Bombay, reached Kosseir on the Red Sea bound for
+the Upper Nile at Keneh thence to join Abercromby's force operating in
+Lower Egypt. The distance from Kosseir to Keneh is 120 miles across a
+barren desert with scanty and unfrequent springs. The march was by
+regiments, of which the first quitted Kosseir on the 1st of July. The
+record of the desert-march of the 10th Foot is now before me. It left
+Kosseir on the 20th of July and reached Keneh on the 29th, marching at
+the rate of twelve miles per day. Its loss on the march was one
+drummer. The whole brigade was at Keneh in the early days of August,
+the period between its debarkation and its concentration on the Nile
+being about five weeks. The march was effected at the very worst season
+of the year. It was half the distance of a march from Souakin to
+Berber; the latter march by a force of the same strength could well
+have been accomplished in three months. The opposition on the march
+could not have been so severe as that which Stewart's desert column
+encountered. Nevertheless, as I have said, the Souakin-Berber route was
+pronounced impossible by the deciding authority.
+
+The comparative feebleness of contemporary warfare is perhaps
+exceptionally manifest in relation to the reduction of fortresses.
+During the Franco-German War the frequency of announcements of the fall
+of French fortresses used to be the subject of casual jeers. The jeers
+were misplaced. The French fortresses, labouring under every
+conceivable disadvantage, did not do themselves discredit. All of them
+were more or less obsolete. Excluding Metz and Paris, neither fortified
+to date, their average age was about a century and a half and few had
+been amended since their first construction. They were mostly
+garrisoned by inferior troops, often almost entirely by Mobiles. Only
+in one instance was there an effective director of the defence. That
+they uniformly enclosed towns whose civilian population had to endure
+bombardment, was an obvious hindrance to desperate resistance. Yet,
+setting aside Bitsch which was never taken, the average duration of the
+defence of the seventeen fortresses which made other than nominal
+resistance was forty-one days. Excluding Paris and Metz which virtually
+were intrenched camps, the average period of resistance was
+thirty-three days. The Germans used siege artillery in fourteen cases;
+although only on two instances, Belfort and Strasburg, were formal
+sieges undertaken. "It appears," writes Major Sydenham Clarke in his
+recent remarkable work on Fortification [Footnote: _Fortification_. By
+Major G. Sydenham Clarke, C.M. G. (London: John Murray).] which ought
+to revolutionise that art, "that the average period of resistance of
+the (nominally obsolete) French fortresses was the same as that of
+besieged fortresses of the Marlborough and Peninsular periods.
+Including Paris and Metz, the era of rifled weapons actually shows an
+increase of 20 per cent in the time-endurance of permanent
+fortifications. Granted that a mere measurement in days affords no
+absolute standard of comparison, the striking fact remains that in
+spite of every sort of disability the French fortresses, pitted against
+guns that were not dreamed of when they were built, acquitted
+themselves quite as well as the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the Vauban school
+in the days of their glory." Even in the cases of fortresses whose
+reduction was urgently needed since they interfered with the German
+communications--such as Strasburg, Toul, and Soissons--the quick
+_ultima ratio_ of assault was not resorted to by the Germans. And yet
+the Germans could not have failed to recognise that but for the
+fortresses they would have swept France clear of all organised bodies
+of troops within two months of the frontier battles. During the
+Peninsular War Wellington made twelve assaults on breached fortresses
+of which five were successful; of his twelve attempts to escalade six
+succeeded. The Germans in 1870-71 never attempted a breach and their
+solitary effort at escalade, on the Basse Perche of Belfort, utterly
+failed.
+
+The Russians in 1877 were even less enterprising than had been the
+Germans in 1870. They went against three permanently fortified places,
+the antediluvian little Matchin which if I remember right blew itself
+up; the crumbling Nicopolis which surrendered after one day's fighting;
+and Rustchuk which held out till the end of the war. They would not
+look at Silistria, ruined, but strong in heroic memories; they avoided
+Rasgrad, Schumla, and the Black Sea fortresses; Sophia, Philippopolis,
+and Adrianople made no resistance. The earthworks of Plevna, vicious as
+they were in many characteristics, they found impregnable. I think
+Suvaroff would have carried them; I am sure Skobeleff would if he had
+got his way.
+
+The vastly expensive armaments of the present--the rifled
+breech-loader, the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range
+field-guns, and so forth, are all accepted and paid for by the
+respective nations in the frank and naked expectation that these
+weapons will perform increased execution on the enemy in war time. This
+granted, nor can it be denied, it logically follows that if this
+increased execution is not performed nations are entitled to regard it
+as a grievance that they do not get blood for their money, and this
+they certainly do not have; so that even in this sanguinary particular
+the warfare of to-day is a comparative failure. The topic, however, is
+rather a ghastly one and I refrain from citing evidence; which,
+however, is easily accessible to any one who cares to seek it.
+
+The anticipation is confidently adventured that a great revolution will
+be made in warfare by the magazine rifle with its increased range, the
+machine gun, and the quick-firing field artillery which will speedily
+be introduced into every service. It does not seem likely that
+smokeless powder will create any very important change, except in siege
+operations. On the battlefield neither artillery nor infantry come into
+action out of sight of the enemy. When either arm opens fire within
+sight of the enemy its position can be almost invariably detected by
+the field-glass, irrespective of the smokelessness or non-smokelessness
+of its ammunition. Indeed, the use of smokeless powder would seem
+inevitably to damage the fortunes of the attack. Under cover of a bank
+of smoke the soldiers hurrying on to feed the fighting line are fairly
+hidden from aimed hostile fire. It may be argued that their aim is thus
+reciprocally hindered; but the reply is that their anxiety is not so
+much to be shooting during their reinforcing advance as to get forward
+into the fighting line, where the atmosphere is not so greatly
+obscured. Smokeless powder will no doubt advantage the defence.
+
+It need not be remarked that a battle is a physical impossibility while
+both sides adhere to the passive defensive; and experience proves that
+battles are rare in which both sides are committed to the active
+offensive, whether by preference or necessity. Mars-la-Tour (16th
+August 1870) was the only contest of this nature in the Franco-German
+War. Bazaine had to be on the offensive because he was ordered to get
+away towards Verdun; Alvensleben took it because it was the only means
+whereby he could hinder Bazaine from accomplishing his purpose. But for
+the most part one side in battle is on the offensive; the other on the
+defensive. The invader is habitually the offensive person, just for the
+reason that the native force commonly acts on the defensive; the latter
+is anxious to hinder further penetration into the bowels of its land;
+the former's desire is to effect that penetration. The defensive of the
+native army need not, however, be the passive defensive; indeed, unless
+the position be exceptionally strong that is according to present
+tenets to be avoided. When, always with an underlying purpose of
+defence, its chief resorts to the offensive for reasons that he regards
+as good, his strategy or his tactics as the case may be, are expressed
+by the term "defensive-offensive."
+
+It says a good deal for the peaceful predilections of the nations, that
+there has been no fairly balanced experience affording the material for
+decision as to the relative advantage of the offensive and the
+defensive under modern conditions. In 1866 the Prussians, opposing the
+needle-gun to the Austrian muzzle-loader, naturally utilised this
+pre-eminence by adopting uniformly the offensive and traditions of the
+Great Frederick doubtless seconded the needle-gun. After Sadowa
+controversy ran high as to the proper system of tactics when
+breech-loader should oppose breech-loader. A strong party maintained
+that "the defensive had now become so strong that true science lay in
+forcing the adversary to attack. Let him come on, and then one might
+fairly rely on victory." As Boguslawski observes--"This conception of
+tactics would paralyse the offensive, for how can an army advance if it
+has always to wait till an enemy attacks?" After much exercitation the
+Germans determined to adhere to the offensive. In the recent modest
+language of Baron von der Goltz: [Footnote: _The Nation in Arms_, by
+Lieutenant-Colonel Baron von der Goltz. (Allen.)] "Our modern German
+mode of battle aims at being entirely a final struggle, which we
+conceive of as being inseparable from an unsparing offensive.
+Temporising, waiting, and a calm defensive are very unsympathetic to
+our nature. Everything with us is action. Our strength lies in great
+decisions on the battlefield." Perhaps also the guileless Germans were
+quite alert to the fact that Marshal Niel had shattered the French
+army's tradition of the offensive, and gone counter to the French
+soldier's nature by enjoining the defensive in the latest official
+instructions. Had the Teutons suborned him the Marshal could not have
+done them a better turn.
+
+Their offensive tactics against an enemy unnaturally lashed to the
+stake of the defensive stood the Germans in excellent stead in 1870. On
+every occasion they resorted to the offensive against an enemy in the
+field; strictly refraining, however, from that expedient when it was a
+fortress and not soldiers _en vive force_ that stood in the way. At St.
+Privat their offensive would probably have been worsted if Canrobert
+had been reinforced or even if a supply of ammunition had reached him;
+and a loss there of one-third of the combatants of the Guard Corps
+without result caused them to change for the better the method of their
+attack. But in every battle from Weissenburg to Sedan with the
+exception of the confused _melee_ of Mars-la-Tour, the French, besides
+being bewildered and discouraged, were in inferior strength; after
+Sedan the French levies in the field were scarcely soldiers. There was
+no fair testing of the relative advantages of defence and offence in
+the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78; and so it remains that in an actual
+and practical sense no firm decision has yet been established. All
+civilised nations are, however, assiduously practising the methods of
+the offensive.
+
+It may nevertheless be anticipated that in future warfare between
+evenly matched combatants the offensive will get the worst of it at the
+hands of the defensive. The word "anticipate" is used in preference to
+"apprehend," because one's sympathy is naturally for the invaded state
+unless it has been wantonly aggressive and insolent. The invaded army,
+if the term may be used, having familiar knowledge of the terrain will
+take up a position in the fair-way of the invader; affording strong
+flank _appui_ and a far-stretching clear range in front and on flanks.
+It will throw up several lines, or still better, tiers of shallow
+trenches along its front and flanks, with emplacements for artillery
+and machine guns. The invader must attack; he cannot turn the enemy's
+position and expose his communications to that enemy. He takes the
+offensive, doing so, as is the received practice, in front and on a
+flank. From the outset he will find the offensive a sterner ordeal than
+in the Franco-German War days. He will have to break into loose order
+at a greater distance, because of the longer range of small arms, and
+the further scope, the greater accuracy, and the quicker fire of the
+new artillery. He too possesses those weapons, but he cannot use them
+with so great effect. His field batteries suffer from the hostile
+cannon fire as they move forward to take up a position. His infantry
+cannot fire on the run; when they drop after a rush the aim of panting
+and breathless men cannot be of the best. And their target is fairly
+protected and at least partially hidden. The defenders behind their low
+epaulement do not pant; their marksmen only at first are allowed to
+fire; these make things unpleasant for the massed gunners out yonder,
+who share their attentions with the spraying-out infantry-men. The
+quick-firing cannon of the defence are getting in their work
+methodically. Neither its gunners nor its infantry need be nervous as
+to expending ammunition freely since plenteous supplies are promptly
+available, a convenience which does not infallibly come to either guns
+or rifles of the attack. The Germans report as their experience in the
+capacity of assailants that the rapidity and excitement of the advance,
+the stir of strife, the turmoil, exhilarate the soldiers, and that
+patriotism and fire-discipline in combination enforce a cool steady
+maintenance of fire; that in view of the ominous spectacle of the swift
+and confident advance, under torture of the storm of shell-fire and the
+hail of bullets which they have to endure in immobility, the defenders,
+previously shaken by the assailants' artillery preparation, become
+nervous, waver, and finally break when the cheers of the final
+concentrated rush strike on their ears. That this was scarcely true as
+regarded French regulars the annals of every battle of the
+Franco-German War up to and including Sedan conclusively show. It is
+true, however, that the French nature is intolerant of inactivity and
+in 1870 suffered under the deprivation of its _metier;_ but how often
+the Germans recoiled from the shelter trenches of the Spicheren and
+gave ground all along the line from St. Privat to the Bois de Vaux, men
+who witnessed those desperate struggles cannot forget while they live.
+Warriors of greater equanimity than the French soldier possesses might
+perhaps stand on the defensive in calm self-confidence with simple
+breech-loaders as their weapons, if simple breech-loaders were also
+weapons of the assailants. But in his magazine rifle the soldier of the
+future can keep the defensive not only with self-confidence, but with
+high elation, for in it he will possess a weapon against which it seems
+improbable that the attack (although armed too with a magazine or
+repeating rifle) can prevail.
+
+The assailants fall fast as their advance pushes forward, thinned down
+by the rifle fire, the mitraille, and the shrapnel of the defence. But
+they are gallant men and while life lasts they will not be denied. The
+long bloody advance is all but over; the survivors of it who have
+attained thus far are lying down getting their wind for the final
+concentration and rush. Meanwhile, since after they once again stand up
+they will use no more rifle fire till they have conquered or are
+beaten, they are pouring forth against the defence their reserve of
+bullets in or attached to their rifle-butts. The defenders take this
+punishment, like Colonel Quagg, lying down, courting the protection of
+their earth-bank. The hail of the assailants' bullets ceases; already
+the artillery of the attack has desisted lest it should injure friend
+as well as foe. The word runs along the line and the clumps of men
+lying prostrate there out in the open. The officers spring to their
+feet, wave their swords, and cheer loudly. The men are up in an
+instant, and the swift rush focussing toward a point begins. The
+distance to be traversed before the attackers are _aux prises_ with the
+defenders is about one hundred and fifty yards.
+
+It is no mere storm of missiles which meets fair in the face those
+charging heroes; no, it is a moving wall of metal against which they
+rush to their ruin. For the infantry of the defence are emptying their
+magazines now at point-blank range. Emptied magazine yields to full
+one; the Maxims are pumping, not bullets, but veritable streams of
+death, with calm, devilish swiftness. The quick-firing guns are
+spouting radiating torrents of case. The attackers are mown down as
+corn falls, not before the sickle but the scythe. Not a man has
+reached, or can reach, the little earth-bank behind which the defenders
+keep their ground. The attack has failed; and failed from no lack of
+valour, of methodised effort, of punctilious compliance with every
+instruction; but simply because the defence--the defence of the future
+in warfare--has been too strong for the attack. One will not occupy
+space by recounting how in the very nick of time the staunch defence
+flashes out into the counter-offensive; nor need one enlarge on the
+sure results to the invader as the unassailed flank of the defence
+throws forward the shoulder and takes in flank the dislocated masses of
+aggressors.
+
+One or two such experiences will definitively settle the point as to
+the relative advantage of the offensive and the defensive. Soldiers
+will not submit themselves to re-trial on re-trial of a _res judicata_.
+Grant, dogged though he was, had to accept that lesson in the shambles
+of Cold Harbour. For the bravest sane man will rather live than die. No
+man burns to become cannon-fodder. The Turk, who is supposed to court
+death in battle for religious reasons of a somewhat material kind, can
+run away even when the alternative is immediate removal to a Paradise
+of unlimited houris and copious sherbet. There are no braver men than
+Russian soldiers; but going into action against the Turks tried their
+nerves, not because they feared the Turks as antagonists, but because
+they knew too well that a petty wound disabling from retreat meant not
+alone death but unspeakable mutilation before that release.
+
+It is obvious that if, as is here anticipated, the offensive proves
+impossible in the battle of the future, an exaggerated phase of the
+stalemate which Boguslawski so pathetically deprecates will occur. The
+world need not greatly concern itself regarding this issue; the
+situation will almost invariably be in favour of the invaded and will
+probably present itself near his frontier line. He can afford to wait
+until the invader tires of inaction and goes home.
+
+Magazine and machine guns would seem to sound the knell of possible
+employment of cavalry in battle. No matter how dislocated are the
+infantry ridden at so long as they are not quite demoralised, however
+_ruse_ the cavalry leader--however favourable to sudden unexpected
+onslaught is the ground, the quick-firing arms of the future must
+apparently stall off the most enterprising horsemen. Probably if the
+writer were arguing the point with a German, the famous experiences of
+von Bredow might be adduced in bar of this contention. In the combat of
+Tobitschau in 1866 Bredow led his cuirassier regiment straight at three
+Austrian batteries in action, captured the eighteen guns and everybody
+and everything belonging to them, with the loss to himself of but ten
+men and eight horses. It is true, says the honest official account,
+that the ground favoured the charge and that the shells fired by the
+usually skilled Austrian gunners flew high. But during the last 100
+yards grape was substituted for shell, and Bredow deserved all the
+credit he got. Still stronger against my argument was Bredow's
+memorable work at Mars-la-Tour, when at the head of six squadrons he
+charged across 1000 yards of open plain, rode over and through two
+separate lines of French infantry, carried a line of cannon numbering
+nine batteries, rode 1000 yards farther into the very heart of the
+French army, and came back with a loss of not quite one half of his
+strength. The _Todtenritt_, as the Germans call it, was a wonderful
+exploit, a second Balaclava charge and a bloodier one; and there was
+this distinction that it had a purpose and that that purpose was
+achieved. For Bredow's charge in effect wrecked France. It arrested the
+French advance which would else have swept Alvensleben aside; and to
+its timely effect is traceable the sequence of events that ended in the
+capitulation of Metz. The fact that although from the beginning of his
+charge until he struck the front of the first French infantry line
+Bredow took the rifle-fire of a whole French division yet did not lose
+above fifty men, has been a notable weapon in the hands of those who
+argue that good cavalry can charge home on unshaken infantry. But never
+more will French infantry shoot from the hip as Lafont's conscripts at
+Mars-la-Tour shot in the vague direction of Bredow's squadrons. French
+cavalry never got within yards of German infantry even in loose order;
+and the magazine or repeating rifle held reasonably straight will stop
+the most thrusting cavalry that ever heard the "charge" sound.
+
+Fortifications of the future will differ curiously from those of the
+present. The latter, with their towering scarps, their massive
+_enceintes_, their "portentous ditches," will remain as monuments of a
+vicious system, except where, as in the cases of Vienna, Cologne,
+Sedan, etc., the dwellers in the cities they encircle shall procure
+their demolition for the sake of elbow-room, or until modern howitzer
+shells or missiles charged with high explosives shall pulverise their
+naked expanses of masonry. In the fortification of the future the
+defender will no longer be "enclosed in the toils imposed by the
+engineer" with the inevitable disabilities they entail, while the
+besieger enjoys the advantage of free mobility. Plevna has killed the
+castellated fortress. With free communications the full results
+attainable by fortress artillery intelligently used, will at length
+come to be realised. Unless in rare cases and for exceptional reasons
+towns will gradually cease to be fortified even by an encirclement of
+detached forts. Where the latter are availed of, practical experience
+will infallibly condemn the expensive and complex cupola-surmounted
+construction of which General Brialmont is the champion. "A work,"
+trenchantly argues Major Sydenham Clarke, "designed on the principles
+of the Roman catacombs is suited only for the dead, in a literal or in
+a military sense. The vast system of subterranean chambers and passages
+is capable of entombing a brigade, but denies all necessary tactical
+freedom of action to a battalion."
+
+The fortress of the future will probably be in the nature of an
+intrenched camp. The interior of the position will provide casemate
+accommodation for an army of considerable strength. Its defences will
+consist of a circle at intervals of about 2500 yards, of permanent
+redoubts which shall be invisible at moderate ranges for infantry and
+machine guns, the garrison of each redoubt to consist of a half
+battalion. Such a work was in 1886 constructed at Chatham in thirty-one
+working days, to hold a garrison of 200 men housed in casemates built
+in concrete, for less than L3000, and experiments proved that it would
+require a "prohibitory expenditure" of ammunition to cause it serious
+damage by artillery fire. The supporting defensive armament will
+consist of a powerful artillery rendered mobile by means of tram-roads,
+this defence supplemented by a field force carrying on outpost duties
+and manning field works guarding the intervals between the redoubts.
+Advanced defences and exterior obstacles of as formidable a character
+as possible will be the complement of what in effect will be an
+immensely elaborated Plevna, which, properly armed and fully organised,
+will "fulfil all the requirements of defence" while possessing
+important potentialities of offence.
+
+An illustration is pertinent of the pre-eminent utility of such
+fortified and strongly held positions, of whose characteristics the
+above is the merest outline. In the event of a future Franco-German
+War, the immensely expensive cordon of fortresses with which the French
+have lined their frontier, efficiently equipped, duly garrisoned and
+well commanded, will unquestionably present a serious obstacle to the
+invading armies. The Germans talk of _vive force_--shell heavily and
+then storm; the latter resort one for which they have in the past
+displayed no predilection. Whether by storm or interpenetration, they
+will probably break the cordon, but they cannot advance without masking
+all the principal fortresses. This will employ a considerable portion
+of their strength, and the invasion will proceed in less force, which
+will be an advantage to the defenders. But if instead of those
+multitudinous fortresses the French had constructed, say, three such
+intrenched-camp fortresses as have been sketched, each quartering
+50,000 men, it would appear that they would have done better for
+themselves at far less cost. Each intrenched position containing a
+field army 50,000 strong would engross a beleaguering host of 100,000
+men. The positions of the type outlined are claimed to be impregnable;
+they could contain supplies and munitions for at least a year,
+detaining around them for that period 300,000 of the enemy. No European
+power except Russia has soldiers enough to spare so long such a mass of
+troops standing fast, and simultaneously to prosecute the invasion of a
+first-rate power with approximately equal numbers. France at the cost
+of 150,000 men would be holding supine on her frontier double the
+number of Germans--surely no disadvantageous transaction.
+
+In conclusion, it may be worth while to point out that the current
+impression that the maintenance by states of "bloated armaments" is a
+keen incentive to war, is fallacious. How often do we hear, "There must
+be a big war soon; the powers cannot long stand the cost of standing
+looking at each other, all armed to the teeth!" War is infinitely more
+costly than the costliest preparedness. But this is not all. The
+country gentleman for once in a way brings his family to town for the
+season, pledging himself privily to strict economy when the term of
+dissipation ends, in order to restore the balance. But for a State, as
+the sequel to a season of war there is no such potentiality of economy.
+Rather there is the grim certainty of heavier and yet heavier
+expenditure after the war, in the still obligatory character of the
+armed man keeping his house. Therefore it is that potentates are
+reluctant to draw the sword, and rather bear the ills they have than
+fly to other evils inevitably worse still. Whether the final outcome
+will be universal national bankruptcy or the millennium, is a problem
+as yet insoluble.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
+
+[Footnote: _Bandobast_ is an Indian word, which, like many others, has
+been all but formally incorporated into Anglo-Indian English. The
+meaning is, plan, scheme, organised arrangement.]
+
+
+George Martell was an indigo-planter in Western Tirhoot, a fine tract
+of Bengal stretching from the Ganges to the Nepaul Terai, and roughly
+bounded on the west by the Gunduck, on the east by the Kussi.
+Planter-life in Tirhoot is very pleasant to a man in robust health, who
+possesses some resources within himself. In many respects it more
+resembles active rural life at home than does any other life led by
+Anglo-Indians. The joys of a planter's life have been enthusiastically
+sung by a planter-poet; and the frank genial hospitality of the
+planter's bungalow stands out pre-eminent, even amidst the universal
+hospitality of India. The planter's bungalow is open to all comers. The
+established formula for the arriving stranger is first to call for
+brandy-and-soda, then to order a bath, and finally to inquire the name
+of the occupant his host. The laws of hospitality are as the laws of
+the Medes and Persians. Once in the famine time a stranger in a palki
+reached a planter's bungalow in an outlying district, and sent in his
+card. The planter sent him out a drink but did not bid him enter. The
+stranger remained in the veranda till sundown, had another drink, and
+then went on his way. This breach of statute law became known. There
+was much excuse for the planter, for the traveller was a missionary and
+in other respects was a _persona ingrata_. But the credit of
+planterhood was at stake; and so strong was the force of public opinion
+that the planter who had been a defaulter in hospitality had to abandon
+the profession and quit the district. It was on this occasion laid down
+as a guiding illustration, that if Judas Iscariot, when travelling
+around looking for an eligible tree on which to hang himself, had
+claimed the hospitality of a planter's bungalow, the dweller therein
+would have been bound to accord him that hospitality. Not even
+newspaper correspondents were to be sent empty away.
+
+The indigo-planter is "up in the morning early" and away at a swinging
+canter on his "waler" nag, out into the _dahaut_ to visit the _zillahs_
+on which his crop is growing. He returns when the sun is getting high
+with a famous appetite for a breakfast which is more than half
+luncheon. After his siesta he may look in upon a neighbour--all Tirhoot
+are neighbours and within a radius of thirty miles is considered next
+door. He would ride that distance any day to spend an hour or two in a
+house brightened by the presence of womanhood. His anxious period is
+_mahaye_ time, when the indigo is in the vats and the quantity and
+quality of the yield depend so much on care and skill. But except at
+_mahaye_ time he is always ready for relaxation, whether it takes the
+form of a polo match, a pig-sticking expedition, or a race-meeting at
+Sonepoor, Muzzufferpore, or Chumparun. These race-meetings last for
+several days on end, there being racing and hunting on alternate days
+with a ball every second night. It used to be worth a journey to India
+to see Jimmy Macleod cram a cross-grained "waler" over an awkward
+fence, and squeeze the last ounce out of the brute in the run home on
+the flat. The Tirhoot ladies are in all respects charming; and it must
+remain a moot point with the discriminating observer whether they are
+more delightful in the genial home-circles of which they are the
+centres and ornaments, or in the more exciting stir and whirl of the
+ballroom. After every gathering hecatombs of slain male victims
+mournfully cumber the ground; and one all-conquering fair one, now
+herself conquered by matrimony and motherhood, wrung from those her
+charms had blighted the title of "the destroying angel."
+
+George Martell was an honest sort of a clod. He stood well with the
+ryots, and the mark of his factory always brought out keen bidding at
+Thomas's auction-mart in Mission Row and was held in respect in the
+Commission Sale Rooms in Mincing Lane. He was a good shikaree and could
+hold his own either at polo or at billiards; but being somewhat shy and
+not a little clumsy he did not frequent race-balls nor throw himself in
+the way of "destroying angels." He had been over a dozen years in the
+district and had not been known to propose once, so that he had come to
+be set down as a misogynist. Among his chief allies was a neighbouring
+planter called Mactavish. Mactavish in some incomprehensible way--he
+being a gaunt, uncouth, bristly Scot, whose Highland accent was as
+strong as the whisky with which he had coloured his nose--had contrived
+to woo and win a bonny, baby-faced girl, the ripple of whose laughter
+and the dancing sheen of whose auburn curls filled the Mactavish
+bungalow with glad bright sunshine. When Mac first brought home this
+winsome fairy Martell had sheepishly shunned the residence of his
+friend, till one fine morning when he came in from the _dahaut_ he
+found Minnie Mactavish quite at home among the pipes, empty soda-water
+bottles, and broken chairs that constituted the principal articles of
+furniture in his bachelor sitting-room. Minnie had come to fetch her
+husband's friend and in her dainty imperious way would take no denial.
+So George had his bath, got a fresh horse saddled, nearly chucked
+Minnie over the other side as he clumsily helped her to mount her pony,
+and rode away with her a willing if somewhat clownish captive. Arriving
+at the bungalow Mactavish, honest George was bewildered by the
+transformation it had undergone. Flowers were where the spirit-case
+used to stand. There was a drawing-room with actually a piano in it;
+the _World_ lay on the table instead of the _Sporting Times_, and the
+servants wore a quiet, tasteful livery. Mac himself had been trimmed
+and titivated almost out of recognition. He who had been wont to lounge
+half the day in his _pyjamas_ was now almost smartly dressed; his beard
+was cropped, and his bristly poll brushed and oiled. If George had a
+weak spot in him it was for a simple song well sung. Mrs. Mac,
+accompanying herself on the piano, sang to him "The Land o' the Leal"
+and brewed him a mild peg with her own fair hands. George by bedtime
+did not know whether he was on his head or his heels.
+
+He lay awake all night thinking over all he had seen. Mactavish now was
+clearly a better man than ever he had been before. He had told George
+he was living more cheaply as a married man than ever he had done as a
+bachelor; and in the matter of happiness there was no comparison.
+George rose early to go home; but early as it was Mrs. Mac was up too,
+and arrayed in a killing morning _neglige_ that fairly made poor George
+stammer, gave him his _chota hazri_ and stroked his horse's head as he
+mounted. About half-way home George suddenly shouted, "D----d if I
+don't do it too!" and brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack
+that set his horse buck-jumping.
+
+In effect, George Martell had determined to get married. But where to
+find a Mrs. Martell? Mrs. Mactavish had told him she had no sisters and
+that her only relative was a maiden grand-aunt, whom George thought
+must be a little too old to marry unless in the last resort. If he took
+the field at the next race-meeting the fellows would chaff the life out
+of him; and besides, he scarcely felt himself man enough to face a
+"destroying angel." As he pondered, riding slowly homeward, a thought
+occurred to him. When he had been at home a dozen years ago his two
+girl-sisters had been at school, and their great playmate had been a
+girl of eleven, by name Laura Davidson. Laura was a pretty child. He
+had taken occasional notice of her; had once kissed her after having
+been severely scratched in the struggle; and had taken her and his
+sisters to the local theatre. What if Laura Davidson--now some
+three-and-twenty--were still single? What if she were pretty and nice?
+He remembered that the colour of her hair was not unlike Mrs. Mac's,
+and was in ringlets too. And what if she were willing to come out and
+make lonely George Martell as happy a man as was that lucky old Mac?
+
+It was mail-day, and George, taking time by the forelock, sat down and
+wrote to his sister what had come into his head. By the return mail he
+had her reply: Laura Davidson was single; she was nice; she was pretty;
+she had fair ringlets; she had a hazy memory of George and the kissing
+episode, and was willing to come out and marry him and try to make him
+happy. But she could not well come alone; could George suggest any
+method of _chaperonage_ on the voyage?
+
+In the district of Champarun, which in essentials is part of Tirhoot,
+lies the quaint little cavalry cantonment of Segowlie. It is the last
+relic of the old Nepaul war, which caused the erection of a chain of
+cantonments along the frontier all of which save Segowlie, are now
+abandoned. There is just room for one native cavalry regiment at
+Segowlie, and the soldiers like the station because of excellent sport
+and the good comradeship of the planters. At Segowlie at the time I am
+writing of there happened to be quartered a certain Major Freeze, whose
+wife, after a couple of years at home, was about returning to India.
+George had some acquaintance with the Major and a far-off profound
+respect for his wife, who was an admirable and stately lady. It
+occurred to him to try whether it could not be managed that she should
+bring out the future Mrs. Martell. He saw the Major, who was only too
+delighted at the prospect of a new lady in the district, and the affair
+was soon arranged. Mrs. Freeze wrote that she and Miss Davidson were
+leaving by such-and-such a mail; and knowing that Martell was rather
+lumpy when a lady was in the case, she thoughtfully suggested that he
+should go down to Bombay and meet them so as to get over the initial
+awkwardness by making himself useful and gain his intended's respect by
+swearing at the niggers.
+
+All went well. But George Martell was not quite his own master, he was
+only part of a "concern" and was bound to do his best for his partners.
+It happened, just about the time the P. and O. steamer was due at
+Bombay, that the most ticklish period of the indigo-planters' year was
+upon Martell. The juice had begun to flow from the vats. He had no
+assistant and he did not dare to leave the work, so he telegraphed to
+Bombay to explain this to Mrs. Freeze, and added that he would meet her
+and her companion at Bankipore where their long railway journey would
+end. Miss Davidson did not understand much about the absorbing crisis
+of indigo production, and she had a spice of romance in her
+composition; so that poor Martell did not rise in her estimation by his
+default at Bombay. When the ladies reached Bankipore there was still no
+Martell, but only a _chuprassee_ with a note to say that the juice was
+still running, and that Martell sahib could not leave the factory but
+would be waiting for them at Segowlie. At this even Mrs. Freeze almost
+lost her temper.
+
+They have a "State Railway" now in Tirhoot, but at the time I am
+writing of there was only one _pukha_ road in all the district. The
+ladies travelled in palanquins, or palkis, as they are more familiarly
+called. It is a long journey from Bankipore to Segowlie, and three
+nights were spent in travelling. Bluff old Minden Wilson stood on the
+bank above the ghat to welcome Mrs. Freeze across the Ganges. One day
+was spent at young Spudd's factory, the second at the residence of a
+genial planter rejoicing in the quaint name of Hong Kong Scribbens; on
+the third morning they reached Segowlie. But still no Martell; only a
+_chit_ to say that that plaguy juice was still running but that he
+hoped to be able to drive over to dinner. Miss Davidson went to bed in
+a huff; and Major Freeze was temporarily inclined to think that her
+home-trip had impaired his good lady's amiability of character.
+
+Martell did turn up at dinner-time. But he was hardly a man at any time
+to create much of an impression, and on this occasion he appeared to
+exceptional disadvantage. He was stutteringly nervous; and there were
+some evidences that he had been ineffectually striving to mitigate his
+nervousness by the consumption of his namesake. He wore a new
+dress-coat which had not the remotest pretensions to fit him, and the
+bear's-grease which he had freely used gave unpleasant token of
+rancidity. The dinner was an unsatisfactory performance. Miss Davidson
+was extremely _distraite_, while Martell became more and more nervous
+as the meal progressed and was manifestly relieved when the ladies
+retired. Soon after they had done so the Major was sent for from the
+drawing-room. He found Miss Davidson sobbing on his wife's bosom. He
+asked what was the matter. The girl, with many sobbing interruptions,
+gasped out--
+
+"He's the wrong man! O Heavens, I never saw _him_ before! The man I
+remember who gave me sweets when I was a child had black hair; _he_ has
+red! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, please send that man away and let me go
+home!"
+
+And then Miss Davidson went off into hysterics.
+
+Here was a pretty state of matters! The Major and his wife could not
+see their way clear at all. Consultation followed consultation, with
+visits on the Major's part to poor Martell in the dining-room
+irregularly interspersed. It was almost morning before affairs arranged
+themselves after a fashion. The new basis agreed upon was that the
+previously existing arrangement should be regarded as dead, and that a
+courtship between Martell and Miss Davidson should be commenced _de
+novo_--he to do his best to recommend himself to the lady's affections,
+she to learn to love him if she could, red hair and all. And so George
+went home, and the Segowlie household went to bed.
+
+Poor George at the best had a very poor idea of courting acceptably;
+and surely no man was more heavily handicapped in the enterprise
+prescribed him. He had to court to order, and to combat, besides, both
+the bad impression made at starting and the misfortune of his red hair.
+The poor fellow did his best. He used to come and sit in Mrs. Freeze's
+drawing-room hours on end, glowering at Miss Davidson in a silence
+broken by spasmodic efforts at forced talk. He brought the girl
+presents, gave her a horse, and begged of her to ride with him. But the
+great stupid fellow had not thought of a habit and the girl felt a
+delicacy in telling him that she had not one. So the horse ate his head
+off in idleness, and George's heart went farther and farther down in
+the direction of his boots. He had so bothered Mrs. Freeze that she had
+washed her hands of him, and had bidden him worry it out on his own
+line.
+
+In less than a month the crisis came. Miss Davidson could not bring
+herself to think of poor George as affording the makings of a husband.
+She told Mrs. Freeze so, and begged, for kindness sake, that the Major
+would break this her determination to Mr. Martell and desire him to
+give the thing up as hopeless. The Major thought the best course to
+pursue was to write to George to this effect. Next morning in the small
+hours the poor fellow turned up in the Segowlie veranda in a terribly
+bad way. He would not accept his fate at second-hand in this fashion;
+he must see Miss Davidson and try to move her to be kind to him. In the
+end there was an interview between them, from which George emerged
+quiet but very pale. His notable matrimonial bandobast had proved the
+deadest of failures; and the poor fellow's lip trembled as he thought
+of Mactavish's happy home and his own forlorn bungalow.
+
+But although he had red hair and did not know in the least what to do
+with his feet, George Martell was a gentleman. The lady continuing
+anxious to go home, he insisted on his right to pay her return passage
+as he had done her passage outward, urging rather ruefully that, having
+taken a shot at happiness and having missed fire, he must be the sole
+sufferer. It is a little surprising that this uncouth chivalry did not
+melt the lady, but she was obdurate, although she let him have his way
+about the passage money. So in the company of an officer's wife going
+home Miss Davidson quitted Segowlie and journeyed to Bombay. Poor old
+George, with a very sore heart, was bent on seeing the last of her
+before settling down again to the old dull bachelor life. He dodged
+down to Bombay in the same train, travelling second class that he might
+not annoy the girl by a chance meeting; and stood with a sad face
+leaning on the rail of the Apollo Bunder, as he watched the ship
+containing his miscarried venture steam out of Bombay harbour on its
+voyage to England.
+
+The same night he set out on his return to his plantation. At near
+midnight the mail-train from Bombay reaches Eginpoora, at the head of
+the famous Bhore ghat. Some refreshment is ordinarily procurable there,
+but it is not much of a place. George Martell had had a drink, and was
+sauntering moodily up and down the platform waiting for the whistle to
+sound. As he passed the second class compartment reserved for ladies he
+heard a low, tremulous voice exclaim, "Oh, if I could only make them
+understand that I'd give the world for a cup of tea!" George, if
+uncouth, was a practical man. His prompt voice rang out, "_Qui hye, ek
+pyala chah lao!_" Promptly came the refreshment-room _khitmutghar_,
+hurrying with the tea; and George, taking off his hat, begged to know
+whether he could be of any further service.
+
+It was a very pleasant face that looked out on him in the moonlight,
+and there was more than mere conventionality in the accents in which
+the pleasant voice acknowledged his opportune courtesy. Insensibly
+George and the lady drifted into conversation. She was very lonely,
+poor thing; a friendless girl coming out to be governess in the family
+of a _burra sahib_ at Chupra. Now Chupra is only across the Gunduck
+from Tirhoot, so George told his new acquaintance they were both going
+to nearly the same place, and professed his cordial willingness to
+assist her on the journey. He did so, escorting her right into Chupra
+before he set his face homeward; and he thenceforth got into a habit of
+visiting Chupra very frequently. Need I prolong the story? I happened
+to be in Bankipore when the Prince of Wales visited that centre of
+famine-wallahs. It fell to my pleasant lot to take Mrs. Martell in to
+dinner at the Commissioner's hospitable table. Mrs. Mactavish was
+sitting opposite; and I went back to my bedroom-tent in the compound
+without having made up my mind whether she or Mrs. Martell was the
+prettier and the nicer. So you see George Martell did not make quite so
+bad a _bandobast_ after all.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY--1879
+
+
+It was in Cawnpore on my way up country, during the Prince of Wales's
+tour through India, that there were shown to me some curious and
+interesting mementoes of the siege of Lucknow. The friend in whose
+possession they were was near Havelock as he sat before his tent in the
+short Indian twilight, a short time before the advance on Lucknow made
+by him and Outram in September 1857. Through the gloom of the falling
+twilight there came marching towards the General a file of Highlanders
+escorting a tall, gaunt Oude man, on whose swarthy face the lamplight
+struck as he salaamed before the General Lord Sahib. Then he extracted
+from his ear a minute section of quill sealed at both ends. The
+General's son opened the strange envelope forwarded by a postal service
+so hazardous, and unrolled a morsel of paper which seemed to be covered
+with cabalistic signs. The missive had been sent out from Lucknow by
+Brigadier Inglis, the commander of the beleaguered garrison of the
+Lucknow Residency, and its bearer was the stanch and daring scout,
+Ungud. As I write the originals of this communication and of others
+which came in the same way lie before me; and two of those missives in
+their curious mixture of characters may be found of interest to readers
+of to-day.
+
+
+LUKHNOW, _Septr. 16th._ (Recd. 19th.)
+
+MY DEAR GENERAL--The last letter I recd. from you was dated 24th ult'o,
+since when I have rec'd [Greek: no neus] whatever from y'r [Greek:
+kamp] or of y'r [Greek: movements] but am now [Greek: dailae expekting]
+to receive [Greek: inteligense] of y'r [Greek: advanse] in this [Greek:
+direktion]. Since the date of my last letter the enemy have continued
+to persevere unceasingly in their efforts against this position & the
+firing has never ceased day or night; they have about [Greek: sixten]
+guns in position round us--many of them 18 p'rs. On 5th inst. they made
+a very determined attack after exploding 2 mines and [Greek: suksaeded]
+for a [Greek: moment] in [Greek: almost geting] into one of our [Greek:
+bateries], but were eventually repulsed on all sides with heavy loss.
+Since the above date they have kept up a cannonade & musketry fire,
+occasionally throwing in a shell or two. My [Greek: waeklae loses]
+continue very [Greek: hevae] both in [Greek: ophisers] & [Greek: men].
+I shall be quite out of [Greek: rum] for the [Greek: men] in [Greek:
+eit dais], but we have been [Greek: living] on [Greek: redused rations]
+& I hope to be [Greek: able] to [Greek: get] on [Greek: til] about
+[Greek: phirst prox]. If you have not [Greek: relieved] us by [Greek:
+then] we shall have [Greek: no meat lepht], as I must [Greek: kaep]
+some few [Greek: buloks] to [Greek: move] my [Greek: guns] about the
+[Greek: positions]. As it is I have had to [Greek: kil] almost all the
+[Greek: gun buloks], for my men c'd not [Greek: perphorm] the [Greek:
+ard work without animal phood]. There is a report, tho' from a source
+on which I cannot implicitly rely, that [Greek: mansing] has just
+[Greek: arived] in [Greek: luknow] havg. [Greek: lepht part] of his
+[Greek: phors outside] the [Greek: sitae]. It is said that [Greek: he]
+is in [Greek: our interest] and that [Greek: he] has [Greek: taken] the
+[Greek: above step] at the [Greek: instigation] of B[Greek: riti]sh
+[Greek: athoritae]. But I cannot say whether [Greek: su]ch [Greek: be
+the kase], as all I have to go upon is [Greek: bazar rumors]. I am
+[Greek: most anxious] to [Greek: hear] of yr. [Greek: advanse] to
+[Greek: enable mae] to [Greek: rae-asure our native soldiers].
+[Footnote: The reader will observe that the words are English, though
+the characters are Greek.]--Yours truly,
+
+J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_,
+
+H.M. 32'd Reg't.
+
+To Brig'r Havelock, Commg. Relieving Force.
+
+
+The other missive is of an earlier date, and was brought out in the
+same manner as the first.
+
+
+_August 16_. (Recd. 23rd August.)
+
+MY DEAR GENERAL--A note from Colonel Tytler to Mr. Gubbins reached last
+night, dated "Mungalwar, 4th instant," the latter part of which is as
+follows:--"You must [Greek: aid] us in [Greek: everae] way even to
+cutting y'r way out if we [Greek: kant phorse our] way in. We have
+[Greek: onlae a small phorse]." This has [Greek: kaused mae] much
+[Greek: uneasiness], as it is quite [Greek: imposible] with my [Greek:
+weak] & [Greek: shatered phorse] that I can [Greek: leave] my [Greek:
+dephenses]. You must bear in mind how I am [Greek: hampered], that I
+have upwards of [Greek: one undred & twentae-sik wounded], and at the
+least [Greek: two undred & twenae women], & about [Greek: two undred] &
+[Greek: thirtae children], & no [Greek: kariage] of any [Greek:
+deskription], besides [Greek: sakriphising twentae-thrae laks] of
+[Greek: treasure] & about [Greek: thirtae guns] of [Greek: sorts]. In
+consequence of the news rec'd I shall soon put the [Greek: phorse] on
+[Greek: alph rations], unless I [Greek: hear phrom] you. [Greek: Our
+provisions] will [Greek: last] us [Greek: then] till [Greek: about] the
+[Greek: tenth] [Greek: september]. If you [Greek: hope] to [Greek: save
+this no time must] be [Greek: lost] in pushing forward. We are [Greek:
+dailae] being [Greek: ataked] by the [Greek: enemae], who are within a
+few yards of our [Greek: dephenses]. Their [Greek: mines] have [Greek:
+alreadae weakened our post], & I have [Greek: everae] [Greek: reason]
+to [Greek: believe] that are carrying on [Greek: others]. Their [Greek:
+aeteen] [Greeks: pounders] are within 150 yards of [Greek: some oph our
+bateries], & [Greek: phrom] their [Greek: positions & [Greek: our
+inabilitae] to [Greek: phorm working] [Greek: parties], we [Greek:
+kanot repli] to [Greek: them. Thae damage done ourlae] is very [Greek:
+great]. My [Greek: strength] now in [Greek: europeans] is [Greek: thrae
+undred] & [Greek: phiphtae], & about [Greek: thrae hundred natives], &
+the men [Greek: dreadphulae] [Greek: harassed], & owing to [Greek:
+part] of the [Greek: residensae] having been [Greek: brought down] by
+[Greek: round shot] are without [Greek: shelter]. Our [Greek: native]
+[Greek: phorse] hav'g been [Greek: asured] on Col. Tytler's authority
+of y'r [Greek: near] [Greek: aproach some twentae phive dais ago are
+naturallae losing konphidense], [Greek: and iph thae leave] us I do not
+[Greek: sae how the dephenses] are to be [Greek: manned]. Did you
+[Greek: reseive a letter & plan phrom] the [Greek: man] [Greek:
+Ungud]?--Kindly answer this question.--Yours truly,
+
+J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_.
+
+Cawnpore is an engrossing theme, and Bithoor alone would furnish
+material for an article; but my present subject is Lucknow, and I must
+get to it. There is a railway now to Lucknow from Cawnpore, but the
+railway bridge across the Ganges is not yet finished and passengers
+must cross by the bridge of boats to the Oude side. Behind me, as the
+gharry jingles over the wooden platform, is the fort which Havelock
+began, which Neill completed, and in which Windham found the shelter
+which alone saved him from utter defeat. Before me is the low Gangetic
+shore, with the dumpy sand-hills gradually rising from the water's
+edge. A few years ago there used to ride at the head of that noble
+regiment the 78th Highlanders, a smooth-faced, gaunt, long-legged,
+stooping officer on an old white horse. The Colonel had a voice like a
+girl and his men irreverently called him the "old squeaker"; but
+although you never heard him talk of his deeds he had a habit of going
+quietly and steadily to the front, taking fighting and hardship
+philosophically as part of the day's work. Those sand-banks were once
+the scene of some quiet, unsensational heroism of his. He commanded the
+two companies of Highlanders whom Havelock threw on the unknown shore
+as the vanguard of his advance into Oude. No prior reconnaissance was
+possible. Oude swarmed with an armed and hostile population. The
+chances were that an army was hovering but a little way inland, waiting
+to attack the head of the column on landing. But it was necessary to
+risk all contingencies, and Mackenzie accepted the service as he might
+have done an invitation to a glass of grog. In the dead of the night
+the boats stood across with the little forlorn hope with which Havelock
+essayed to grapple on to Oude. Landing in the rain and darkness, it was
+Mackenzie's task to grope for an enemy if there should be one in his
+vicinity. There was not; but for four-and-twenty hours his little band
+hung on to the Oude bank as it were by their eyelids, detached,
+unsupported, and wholly charged with the taking care of themselves
+until it was possible to send a reinforcement. The charge of this
+vague, uncertain, tentative enterprise, fraught with risks so imminent
+and so vast, required a cool, steady-balanced courage of no common
+order.
+
+"Onao!" shouts the conductor of the train at the first station from
+Cawnpore, and we look out on a few railway bungalows and a large native
+village apparently in a ruinous state. All this journey is studded with
+battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to
+make a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically
+Private Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the
+hesitation of his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the
+mutineers. We jog on very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to
+India in point of slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at
+home; but every yard of the ground is interesting. Along that high road
+passed in long, strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde
+brought away from Lucknow--the civilians, the women, the children, and
+the wounded of the immortal garrison. That swell beyond the mango trees
+under which the _nhil gau_ are feeding, is Mungalwar, Havelock's
+menacing position. No wonder though the outskirts of this town on the
+high road present a ruined appearance. It is Busseerutgunge, the scene
+of three of Havelock's battles and victories, fought and won in a
+single fortnight. We pass Bunnee, where Havelock and Outram tramping on
+to the relief, fired a royal salute in the hope that the sound of it
+might reach to the Residency and cheer the hearts of its garrison. And
+now we are on the platform of the Lucknow station which has more of an
+English look about it than have most Indian stations. There is a
+bookstall, although it is not one of Smith's; and there are lots of
+English faces in the crowd waiting the arrival of the train. The
+natives, one sees at a glance, are of very different physique from the
+people of Bengal. The Oude man is tall, square-shouldered, and upright;
+he has more hair on his face than has the Bengali, and his carriage is
+that of a free man. The railway station of Lucknow is flanked by two
+earthwork fortifications of considerable pretensions.
+
+Lucknow is so full of interest and the objects of interest are so
+widely spread that one is in doubt where to begin the pilgrimage. But
+the Alumbagh is on the railway side of the canal and therefore nearest;
+and I drive directly to it before going into the town. From the station
+the road to the Alumbagh turns sharp to the left and the two miles'
+drive is through beautiful groves and gardens. Then the plain opens up
+and there is the detached temple which so long was one of Outram's
+outlying pickets; and to the left of it the square-walled enclosure of
+the Alumbagh itself with the four corners flanked by earthen bastions.
+The top of the wall is everywhere roughly crenelated for musketry fire,
+and on two of its faces there are countless tokens that it has been the
+target for round shot and bullets. The Alumbagh in the pre-Mutiny
+period was a pleasure-garden of one of the princes of Oude. The
+enclosed park contained a summer palace and all the surroundings were
+pretty and tasteful. It was for the possession of the Alumbagh that
+Havelock fought his last battle before the relief; here it was where he
+left his baggage and went in; here it was that Clyde halted to organise
+the turning movement which achieved the second relief. Hither were
+brought from the Dilkoosha the women and children of the garrison prior
+to starting on the march for Cawnpore; here Outram lay threatening
+Lucknow from Clyde's relief until the latter's ultimate capture of the
+city. But these occurrences contribute but trivially to the interest of
+the Alumbagh in comparison with the circumstance that within its
+enclosure is the grave of Havelock. We enter the great enclosure under
+the lofty arch of the castellated gateway. From this a straight avenue
+bordered by arbor vitae trees, conducts to a square plot of ground
+enclosed by low posts and chains. Inside this there is a little garden
+the plants of which a native gardener is watering as we open the
+wicket. From the centre of the little garden there rises a shapely
+obelisk on a square pedestal and on one side of the pedestal is a long
+inscription. "Here lie," it begins, "the mortal remains of Henry
+Havelock;" and so, methinks, it might have ended. There is needed no
+prolix biographical inscription to tell the reverent pilgrim of the
+deeds of the dead man by whose grave he stands--so long as history
+lives, so long does it suffice to know that "here lie the mortal
+remains of Henry Havelock"--and the text and verse of poetry grate on
+one as redundancies. He sickened two days before the evacuation of the
+Residency and died on the morning of the 24th of November in his dooly
+in a tent of the camp at the Dilkoosha. The life went out of him just
+as the march began, and his soldiers conveyed with them, on the litter
+on which he had expired, the mortal remains of the chief who had so
+often led them on to victory.
+
+On the following morning they buried him here in the Alumbagh, under
+the tree which still spreads its branches over the little garden in
+which he lies. There stood around the grave-mouth Colin Campbell and
+the chivalrous Outram, and stanch old Walter Hamilton, and the
+ever-ready Fraser Tytler; and the "boy Harry" to whom the campaign had
+brought the gain of fame and the loss of a father; and the devoted
+Harwood with "his heart in the coffin there with Caesar;" and the
+heroic William Peel; and that "colossal red Celt," the noble, ill-fated
+Adrian Hope, sacrificed afterwards to incompetent obstinacy. Behind
+stood in a wide circle the soldiers of the Ross-shire Buffs and the
+"Blue Caps" who had served the dead chief so stanchly, and had gathered
+here now, with many a memory of his ready praise of valour and his
+indefatigable regard for the comfort of his men, stirring in their
+war-worn hearts--
+
+  Guarded to a soldier's grave
+  By the bravest of the brave,
+  He hath gained a nobler tomb
+  Than in old cathedral gloom.
+  Nobler mourners paid the rite,
+  Than the crowd that craves a sight;
+  England's banners o'er him waved,
+  Dead he keeps the name he saved.
+
+The burial-place was being temporarily abandoned, and as the rebels
+desecrated all the graves they could discover it was necessary to
+obliterate as much as possible the tokens of the interment. A big "H"
+was carved into the bark of the tree and a small tin plate fastened to
+its trunk, to guide to the subsequent investigation of the spot. Dr.
+Russell tells us that when he visited the Alumbagh before his return
+home after the mutiny in Oude was stamped out, he found the hero's
+grave a muddy trench near the foot of a tree which bore the mark of a
+round shot and had carved into its bark the letter "H." The tree is
+here still and the dent of the round shot, and faintly too is to be
+discerned the carved letter but the bark around it seems to have been
+whittled away, perhaps by the sacrilegious knives of relic-seeking
+visitors. There is the grave of a young lieutenant in a corner of the
+little garden and a few private soldiers lie hard by.
+
+I turn my face now toward the Charbagh bridge, following the route
+taken by Havelock's force on the 25th of September--the memorable day
+of the relief. There is the field where, as at a table in the open air
+Havelock and Outram were studying a map, a round shot from the Sepoy
+battery by the Yellow House ricochetted between them. There is the spot
+where stood the Yellow House itself, whence after a desperate struggle
+Maude's artillerymen drove the Sepoy garrison and its guns. Presently
+with a sweep the road comes into a direct line with the Charbagh bridge
+over the canal. Now there is not a house in the vicinity; the Charbagh
+garden has been thrown into the plain and the steep banks of the canal
+are perfectly naked. But then the scene was very different. On the
+Lucknow side the native city came close up to the bridge and lined the
+canal. The tall houses to right and left of the bridge on the Lucknow
+side were full of men with firearms. At that end of the bridge there
+was a regular overlapping breastwork, and behind it rose an earthwork
+battery solidly constructed and armed with five guns, one a 42-pounder,
+all crammed to the muzzle with grape. Let us sit down on the parapet
+and try to realise the scene. Outram with the 78th has made a detour to
+the right through the Charbagh garden to clear it of the enemy, and,
+gaining the canal bank, to bring a flanking fire to bear on its
+defenders. There is only room for two of Maude's guns; and there they
+stand out in the open on the road trying to answer the fire of the
+rebel battery. Thrown forward along the bank to the left of the bridge
+is a company of the Madras Fusiliers under Arnold, lying down and
+returning the musketry fire from the houses on the other side. Maude's
+guns are forward in the straight throat of the road where it leads on
+to the bridge close by, but round the bend under cover of the wall the
+Madras Fusiliers are lying down. In a bay of the wall of the Charbagh
+enclosure General Neill is standing waiting for the effect of Outram's
+flank movement to develop, and young Havelock, mounted, is on the other
+side of the road somewhat forward. Matters are at a deadlock. It seems
+as if Outram had lost his way. Maude's gunners are all down; he has
+repeatedly called for volunteers from the infantry behind, and now his
+gallant subaltern, Maitland, is doing bombardier's work. Maude calls to
+young Havelock that he shall be forced to retire his guns if something
+is not done at once; and Havelock rides across through the fire and in
+his capacity as assistant adjutant-general urges on Neill the need for
+an immediate assault. Neill "is not in command; he cannot take the
+responsibility; and General Outram must turn up soon." Havelock turns
+and rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks
+encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at
+the long detention under fire. "Come out of that, sir," cried one
+soldier, "a chap's just had his head taken off there!" It is a grim
+joke that reply which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: "And what
+the devil are we here for but to get our heads taken off?" Young
+Havelock is bent on the perpetration of what, under the circumstances,
+may be called a pious fraud. His father, who commands the operations,
+is behind with the Reserve, and he disappears round the bend on the
+make-belief of getting instructions from the chief. The General is far
+in the rear but his son comes back at the gallop, rides up to Neill,
+and saluting with his sword, says, "You are to carry the bridge at
+once, sir." Neill, acquiescing in the superior order, replies, "Get the
+regiment together then, and see it formed up." At the word and without
+waiting for the regiment to rise and form the gallant and eager Arnold
+springs up from his advanced position and dashes on to the bridge,
+followed by about a dozen of his nearest skirmishers. Tytler and
+Havelock, as eager as Arnold, set spurs to their horses and are by his
+side in a moment. The brave and ardent 84th, commanded by Willis,
+dashes to the front. Then the hurricane opens. The big gun crammed to
+the muzzle with grape, sweeps its iron sleet across the bridge in the
+face of the gallant band, and the Sepoy sharpshooters converge their
+fire on it. Arnold drops shot through both thighs, Tytler's horse goes
+down with a crash, the bridge is swept clear save for young Havelock
+erect and unwounded, waving his sword and shouting for the Fusiliers to
+come on, and a Fusilier corporal, Jakes by name, who, as he rams a
+bullet home into his Enfield, says cheerily to Havelock, "We'll soon
+have the ---- out of that, sir!" And corporal Jakes is a true prophet.
+Before the big gun can be loaded again the stormers are on the bridge
+in a rushing mass. They are across it, they clear the barricade, they
+storm the battery, they are bayoneting the Sepoy gunners as they stand.
+The Charbagh bridge is won, but with severe loss which continues more
+or less all the way to the Residency; and when one comes to know the
+ground it becomes more and more obvious that the strategy of Havelock,
+overruled by Outram, was wise and prescient, when he counselled a wide
+turning movement by the Dilkoosha, over the Goomtee near the
+Martiniere, and so along its northern bank to the Badshah-bagh, almost
+opposite to the Residency and commanding the iron bridge.
+
+I recross the Charbagh bridge and bend away to the left by the byroad
+along the canal side by which the 78th Highlanders penetrated to the
+front of the Kaiser-bagh. Most of the native houses are now destroyed,
+whence was poured so deadly a fire on the advancing Ross-shire men that
+three colour-bearers fell in succession, and the colour fell to the
+grasp of the gallant Valentine McMaster, the assistant-surgeon of the
+regiment. And now I stand in front of the main entrance to the
+Kaiser-bagh, hard by the spot where stood the Sepoy battery which the
+Highlanders so opportunely took in reverse. Before me on the _maidan_
+is the plain monument to Sir Mountstuart Jackson, Captain Orr, and a
+sergeant, who were murdered in the Kaiser-bagh when the success of
+Campbell's final operations became certain. I enter the great square
+enclosure of the Kaiser-bagh and stand in the desolation of what was
+once a gay garden where the King of Oude and his women were wont to
+disport themselves. The place stands much as Campbell's men left it
+after looting its multifarious rich treasures. The dainty little
+pavilions are empty and dilapidated, the statues are broken and
+tottering. Quitting the Kaiser-bagh, I try to realise the scene of that
+informal council of war in one of the outlying courtyards of the
+numerous palaces. I want to fix the spot where on his big waler sat
+Outram, a splash of blood across his face, and his arm in a sling;
+where Havelock, dismounted, walked up and down by Outram's side with
+short, nervous strides, halting now and then to give emphasis to the
+argument, while all around them were officers, soldiers, guns, natives,
+wounded men, bullocks, and a surging tide of disorganisation
+momentarily pouring into the square. But the attempt is fruitless. The
+whole area has been cleared of buildings right up to the gate of the
+Residency, only that hard by the Goomtee there still stands the river
+wing of the Chutter Munzil Palace with its fantastic architecture, and
+that the palace of the King of Oude is now the station library and
+assembly rooms. The Hureen Khana, the Lalbagh, the courts of the Furrut
+Bux Palace, the Khas Bazaar, and the Clock Tower have alike been swept
+away, and in their place there opens up before the eye trim ornamental
+grounds with neat plantations which extend up to the Baileyguard
+itself. One archway alone stands--a gaunt commemorative skeleton--a
+pedestal for the statue of a noble soldier. It was from a chamber above
+the crown of this arch that the sepoy shot Neill as he sat on his horse
+urging the confused press of guns and men through the archway. The spot
+is memorable for other causes. This archway led into that court which
+is world-famous under the name of Dhooly Square. Here it was that the
+native bearers abandoned the wounded in the doolies which poor Bensley
+Thornhill was trying to guide into the Residency; here it was where
+they were butchered and burned as they lay, and here it was where Dr.
+Home and a handful of men of the escort did what in them lay to cover
+the wounded and defended themselves for a day and a night against
+continuous attacks of countless enemies.
+
+The _via dolorosa_, the road of death up which Outram and Havelock
+fought their way with Brazier's Sikhs and the Ross-shire Buffs, is now
+a pleasant open drive amid clumps of trees, leading on to the
+Residency. A strange thrill runs through one's frame as there opens up
+before one that reddish-gray crumbling archway spanning the roadway
+into the Residency grounds. Its face is dented and splintered with
+cannon-shot and pitted all over by musket-bullets. This is none other
+than that historic Baileyguard gate which burly Jock Aitken and his
+faithful Sepoys kept so stanchly. You may see the marks still of the
+earth banked up against it on the interior during the siege. To the
+right and left runs the low wall which was the curtain of the defence,
+now crumbled so as to be almost indistinguishable. But there still
+stands, retired somewhat from the right of the archway, Aitken's
+post--the guard-house and treasury, its pillars and facade cut and
+dented all over with the marks of bullets fired by "Bob the Nailer" and
+his comrades from the Clock Tower which stood over against it. And in
+the curtain wall between the archway and the building is still to be
+traced the faint outline of the embrasure through which Outram and
+Havelock entered on the memorable evening. The turmoil and din and
+conflicting emotions of that terrible, glorious day have merged into a
+strange serenity of quietude. The scene is solitary, save for a native
+woman who is playing with her baby on a spot where once dead bodies lay
+in heaps. But the other older scene rises up vividly before the mind's
+eye out of the present calm. Havelock and Outram and the staff have
+passed through the embrasure here, and now there are rushing in the men
+of the ranks, powder-grimed, dusty, bloody; but a minute before raging
+with the stern passion of the battle, now full of a woman-like
+tenderness. And all around them as they swarm in there crowd a mass of
+folk eager to give welcome. There are officers and men of the garrison,
+civilians whom the siege has made into soldiers; women, too, weeping
+tears of joy down on the faces of the children for whom they had not
+dared to hope for aught but death. There are gaunt men, pallid with
+loss of blood, whose great eyes shine weirdly amid the torchlight and
+whose thin hands tremble with weakness as they grip the sinewy, grimy
+hands of the Highlanders. These are the wounded of the long siege who
+have crawled out from the hospital up yonder, as many of them as could
+compass the exertion, with a welcome to their deliverers. The hearts of
+the impulsive Highlanders wax very warm. As they grasp the hands held
+out to them they exclaim, "God bless you!" "Why, we expected to have
+found only your bones!" "And the children are living too!" and many
+other fervid and incoherent ejaculations. The ladies of the garrison
+come among the Highlanders, shaking them enthusiastically by the hand;
+and the children clasp the shaggy men round the neck, and to say truth,
+so do some of the mothers. But Jessie Dunbar and her "Dinna ye hear
+it?" in reference to the bagpipe music, are in the category of
+melodramatic fictions.
+
+The position which bears and will bear to all time the title of the
+Residency of Lucknow, is an elevated plateau of land, irregular in
+surface, of which the highest point is occupied by the Residency
+building, while the area around was studded irregularly with buildings,
+chiefly the houses of the principal civilian officials of the station.
+When Campbell brought away the garrison in November 1857 it lapsed into
+the hands of the mutineers, who held it till his final occupation of
+the city and its surroundings in March of the following year. They
+pulled down not a few of the already shattered buildings, and left
+their fell imprint on the spot in an atrociously ghastly way by
+desecrating the graves in which brave hands had laid our dead
+country-people and flinging the exhumed corpses into the Goomtee. When
+India once more became settled the Residency, its commemorative
+features uninterfered with, was laid out as a garden and flowers and
+shrubs now grow on soil once wet with the blood of heroes. The _debris_
+has been removed or dispersed; the shattered buildings are prevented
+from crumbling farther; tablets bearing the names of the different
+positions and places of interest are let into the walls; and it is
+possible, by exploring the place map in hand, to identify all the
+features of the defence. The avenue from the Baileyguard gate rises
+with a steep slope to the Residency building. On either side of the
+approach and hard by the gate, are the blistered and shattered remnants
+of two large houses; that on the right is the banqueting house which
+was used as the hospital during the siege; that on the left was Dr.
+Fayrer's house. The banqueting house is a mere shell, riven everywhere
+with shot and pitted over by musket-bullets as if it had suffered from
+smallpox. The ground-floor has escaped with less damage but the
+banqueting hall itself has been wholly wrecked by the persistent fire
+which the rebels showered upon it, and to which, notwithstanding the
+mattresses and sandbags with which the windows were blocked, several
+poor fellows fell victims as they lay wounded on their cots. Dr.
+Fayrer's house is equally a battered ruin. In its first floor, roofless
+and forlorn, its front torn open by shot and the pillars of its windows
+jagged into fantastic fragments, is the veranda in which Sir Henry
+Lawrence, 4th July 1857, died, exposed to fire to the very last. At the
+top of the slope of the avenue and on the left front of the Residency
+building as we approach it--on what, indeed, was once the lawn--has
+been raised an artificial mound, its slopes covered with flowering
+shrubs, its summit bearing the monumental obelisk on the pedestal of
+which is the terse, appropriate inscription: "In memory of
+Major-General Sir Henry Lawrence and the brave men who fell in defence
+of the Residency. _Si monumentum quaeris Circumspice!_" Beyond this
+lies the scathed and blighted ruin of the Residency House, once a large
+and imposing structure, now so utterly wrecked and shivered that one
+wonders how the crumbling reddish-gray walls are kept erect. The
+veranda was battered down and much of the front of the building lies
+bodily open, the structure being supported on the battered and
+distorted pillars assisted by great balks of wood. Entering by the left
+wing I pass down a winding stair into the bowels of the earth till I
+reach the spacious and lofty vaults or _tykhana_ under the building.
+Here, the place affording comparative safety, lived immured the women
+of the garrison, the soldiers' wives, half-caste females, the wives of
+the meaner civilians and their children. The poor creatures were seldom
+allowed to come up to the surface, lest they should come in the way of
+the shot which constantly lacerated the whole area, and few visitors
+were allowed access to them. Veritably they were in a dungeon.
+Provisions were lowered down to them from the window orifices near the
+roof of the vaulting, and there were days when the firing was so heavy
+that orders were given to them not even to rise from their beds on the
+floor. For shot occasionally found a way even into the _tykhana_; you
+may see the holes it made in penetrating. The miserables were billeted
+off ten in a room, and there they lived, without sweepers, baths,
+dhobies, or any of the comforts which the climate makes necessities.
+Here in these dungeons children were born, only for the most part to
+die. Ascending another staircase I pass through some rooms in which
+lived (and died) some of the ladies of the garrison, and passing from
+the left wing by a shattered corridor am able to look up into the room
+in which Sir Henry Lawrence received his death-wound. Access to it is
+impossible by reason of the tottering condition of the structure; and
+turning away I clamber up the worn staircase in the shot-riven tower on
+the summit of which still stands the flagstaff on which were hoisted
+the signals with which the garrison were wont to communicate with the
+Alumbagh. The walls of the staircase and the flat roof of the tower are
+scratched and written all over with the names of visitors; many of the
+names are those of natives, but more are those of British soldiers, who
+have occasionally added a piece of their mind in characteristically
+strong language.
+
+I set out on a pilgrimage under the still easily traceable contour of
+the intrenchment. Passing "Sam Lawrence's Battery" above what was the
+water-gate, I traverse the projecting tongue at the end of which stood
+the "Redan Battery" whose fire swept the river face up to the iron
+bridge. Returning, and passing the spot where "Evans's Battery" stood,
+I find myself in the churchyard in a slight depression of the ground.
+Of the church, which was itself a defensive post, not one stone remains
+on another and the mutineers hacked to pieces the ground of the
+churchyard. The ground is now neatly enclosed and ornamentally planted
+and is studded with many monuments, few of which speak the truth when
+they profess to cover the dust of those whom they commemorate. There
+are the regimental monuments of the 5th Madras Fusiliers, the 84th (360
+men besides officers), the Royal Artillery, the 90th (a long list of
+officers and 271 men). The monument of the 1st Madras Fusiliers bears
+the names of Neill, Stephenson, Renaud, and Arnold, and commemorates a
+loss of 352 men. There is a monument to Mr. Polehampton the exemplary
+chaplain, and hard by a plain slab bears the inscription, "Here lies
+Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty; may the Lord have mercy on
+his soul!" words dictated by himself on his deathbed. Other monuments
+commemorate Captain Graham of the Bengal Cavalry and two children; Mr.
+Fairhurst the Roman Catholic chaplain; Major Banks; Captain Fulton of
+the 32nd who earned the title of "Defender of Lucknow;" Lucas, the
+travelling Irish gentleman who served as a volunteer and fell in the
+last sortie; Captain Becher; Captain Moorsom; poor Bensley Thornhill
+and his young daughter; "Mrs. Elizabeth Arne, burnt with a shell-ball
+during the siege;" Lieutenant Cunliffe; Mr. Ommaney the Judicial
+Commissioner; and others. The nameless hillocks of poor Jack Private
+are plentiful, for here were buried many of those who fell in the final
+capture; and there are children's graves. Interments take place still.
+I saw a freshly-made grave; but only those are entitled to a last
+resting-place here who were among the beleaguered during the long
+defence. I have seen the medal for the defence of Lucknow on the breast
+of a man who was a child in arms at the time of the siege, and such an
+one would have the right to claim interment in this doubly hallowed
+ground. From the churchyard I pass out along the narrow neck to that
+forlorn-hope post, "Innes's Garrison," and along the western face of
+the intrenchment by the sides of the sheep-house and the
+slaughter-house, to Gubbins's post. The mere foundations of the house
+are visible which the stout civilian so gallantly defended, and the
+famous tree, gradually pruned to a mere stump by the enemy's fire, is
+no longer extant. Along the southern face of the position there are no
+buildings which are not ruined. Sikh Square, the Brigade Mess House,
+and the Martiniere boys' post, are alike represented by fragmentary
+gray walls shivered with shot and shored up here and there by beams.
+The rooms of the Begum Kothi near the centre of the position, are still
+laterally entire but roofless. The walls of this structure are
+exceptionally thick and here many of the ladies of the garrison were
+quartered. All around the Residency position the native houses which at
+the time of the siege crowded close up on the intrenchment, are now
+destroyed; and indeed the native town has been curtailed into
+comparatively small dimensions and is entirely separated from the area
+in which the houses of the station are built.
+
+Quitting the Residency I drive westward by the river side, over the
+site of the Captan Bazaar, past also that huge fortified heap the
+Muchee Bawn, till I reach the beautiful enclosure in which the great
+Imambara stands. This majestic structure--part temple, part convent,
+part palace, and now part fortress--dominates the whole _terrain_, and
+from its lofty flat roof one looks down on the plain where the weekly
+_hat_ or market is being held, on the gardens and mansions across the
+river, and southward upon the dense mass of houses which constitute the
+native city. Sentries promenade the battlements of the Muchee Bawn, and
+the Imambara--an apartment to which for space and height I know none in
+Europe comparable--is now used as an arsenal, where are stored the
+great siege guns which William Peel plied with so great skill and
+gallantry. Just outside the Imambara, on the edge of the _maidan_
+between it and the Moosabagh, I come on a little railed churchyard
+where rest a few British soldiers who fell during Lord Clyde's final
+operations in this direction. Then, with a sweep across the plain to
+the south and by a slight ascent, I reach the gate of the city which
+opens into the Chowk or principal street--the street traversed in
+disguise by the dauntless Kavanagh when he went out from the garrison
+to convey information and afford guidance to Sir Colin Campbell on his
+first advance. The gatehouse is held by a strong force of native
+policemen, armed as if they were soldiers; and as I pass the guard I
+stand in the Chowk itself, in the midst of a throng of gaily clad male
+pedestrians, women in chintz trousers, laden donkeys, multitudinous
+children, and still more multitudinous stinks. All down both sides the
+fronts of the lower stories are open, and in the recesses sit merchants
+displaying paltry jewelry, slippers, pipes, turban cloths, and
+Manchester stuffs of the gaudiest patterns. The main street of Lucknow
+has been called "The Street of Silver," but I could find little among
+its jewelry either of silver or of gold. The first floors all have
+balconies, and on these sit draped, barefooted women of Rahab's
+profession. The women of Lucknow are fairer and handsomer, and the men
+bolder and more stalwart, than those in Bengal, and it takes no great
+penetration to discern that Lucknow is still ruled by fear and not by
+love.
+
+It remained for me still to investigate the scenes of the route by
+which Lord Clyde came in on both his advances; but to do justice to
+these would demand separate articles. Let me begin the hasty sketch at
+the Dilkoosha Palace, two miles and more away to the east of the
+Residency; for on both occasions the Dilkoosha was Clyde's base. Wajid
+Ali's twenty-foot wall has now given place to an earthen embankment
+surrounding a beautiful pleasure park, and there are now smooth green
+slopes instead of the dense forest through which Clyde's soldiers
+marched on their turning movement. On a swell in the midst of the park,
+commanding a view of the fantastic architecture of the Martiniere down
+by the tank, stands the gaunt ruin of the once trim and dainty
+Dilkoosha Palace or rather garden-house. From one of the pepper-box
+turrets up there Lord Clyde directed the attack on the Martiniere on
+his ultimate operation; and here it was that, as Dr. Russell tells us,
+a round shot dispersed his staff on the adjacent leads. After quietude
+was restored the Dilkoosha was the headquarters for a time of Sir Hope
+Grant, but now it has been allowed to fall into decay although the
+garden in the rear of it is prettily kept up. On the reverse slope
+behind the Dilkoosha was the camp in one of the tents of which Havelock
+died. We drive down the gentle slope once traversed at a rushing double
+by the Black Watch on their way to carry the Martiniere, past the great
+tank out of the centre of which rises the tall column to the memory of
+Claude Martine, and reach the entrance of the fantastic building which
+he built, in which he was buried, and which bears his name. We see at
+the angle of the northern wing the slope up which the gun was run which
+played so heavily on the Dilkoosha up on the wooded knoll there. The
+Martiniere is now, as it was before the Mutiny, a college for European
+boys, and the young fellows are playing on the terraces. Grotesque
+stone statues are in niches and along the tops of the balconies; you
+may see on them the marks of the bullets which the honest fellows of
+the Black Watch fired at them, taking them for Pandies. I go down into
+a vault and see the tomb of Claude Martine; but it is empty, for the
+mutineers desecrated his grave and scattered his bones to the winds of
+heaven. Then I make for the roof, through the dormitories of the boys
+and past fantastic stone griffins and lions and Gorgons, till I reach
+the top of the tower and touch the flagstaff from which, during the
+relief time, was given the answering signal to that hoisted on the
+tower of the Residency. I stand in the niches where the mutineer
+marksmen used to sit with their hookahs and take pot shots at the
+Dilkoosha. I look down to the eastward on the Goomtee, and note the
+spot where Outram crossed on that flank movement which would have been
+very much more successful than it was had he been permitted to drive it
+home. To the north-east beyond the topes is the battle-ground of
+Chinhut, where Lawrence received so terrible a reverse at the beginning
+of the siege. Due north is the Kookrail viaduct which Outram cleared
+with the Rifles and the 79th, and in whose vicinity Jung Bahadour, the
+crafty and bloodthirsty generalissimo of Nepaul, "co-operated" by a
+demonstration which never became anything more. And to the west there
+lie stretched out before me the domes, minarets, and spires of Lucknow,
+rising above the foliage in which their bases are hidden, and the
+routes of Clyde in the relief and capture. The rays of the afternoon
+sun are stirring into colour the dusky gray of the Secunderbagh and of
+the Nuddun Rusool, or "Grave of the Prophet," used as a powder magazine
+by the rebels. Below me, on the lawn of the Martiniere, is the big
+gun--one of Claude Martine's casting--which did the rebels so much
+service at the other angle of the Martiniere and which was spiked at
+last by two men of Peel's naval brigade, who swam the Goomtee for the
+purpose. That little enclosure slightly to the left surrounds "all that
+can die" of that strange mixture of high spirit, cool daring, and weak
+principle, the famous chief of Hodson's Horse. By Hodson's side lies
+Captain da Costa of the 56th N.I., attached to Brazier's Sikhs. Of this
+officer is told that, having lost many relatives in the butchery of
+Cawnpore, he joined the regiment likeliest to be in the front of the
+Lucknow fighting, and fell by one of the first shots fired in the
+assault on the Kaiser-bagh.
+
+Descending from the Martiniere tower I traverse the park to the
+westward passing the grave of Captain Otway Mayne, cross the dry canal
+along which are still visible the heaps of earth which mark the
+stupendous first line of the rebels' defences, and bending to the left
+reach the Secunderbagh. This famous place was a pleasure garden
+surrounded with a lofty wall with turrets at the angles and a
+castellated gateway. The interior garden is now waste and forlorn, the
+rank grass growing breast-high in the corners where the slaughter was
+heaviest. Here in this little enclosure, not half the size of the
+garden of Bedford Square, 2000 Sepoys died the death at the hands of
+the 93rd, the 53rd, and the 4th Punjaubees. Their common grave is under
+the low mound on the other side of the road. The loopholes stand as
+they were left by the mutineers when our fellows came bursting in
+through the ragged breach made in the reverse side from the main
+entrance by Peel's guns. Farther on--that is, nearer to the
+Residency--I come to the Shah Nujeef, with its strong exterior wall
+enclosing the domed temple in its centre. It is still easy to trace the
+marks of the breach made in the angle in the wall by Peel's battering
+guns, and the tree is still standing up which Salmon, Southwell, and
+Harrison climbed in response to his proffer of the Victoria Cross.
+Opposite the Shah Nujeef white girls are playing on the lawn of that
+castellated building, for the Koorsheyd Munzil, on the top of which
+there was hoisted the British flag in the face of a _feu d'enfer_, is
+now a seminary for the daughters of Europeans. A little beyond, on the
+plain in front of the Motee Mahal, is the spot where Campbell met
+Outram and Havelock--a spot which, methinks, might well be marked by a
+monument; and after this I lose my reckoning by reason of the extent of
+the demolition, and am forced to resort to guesswork as to the precise
+localities.
+
+
+
+
+THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
+
+
+Writing of the late Alexander III. of Russia, a foreign author has
+recently permitted himself to observe: "Marvellous personal courage is
+not a striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs as it was
+of the English Tudors." It will be conceded that periods materially
+govern the conditions under which sovereigns and their royal relatives
+have found opportunities for proving their personal courage. The Tudor
+dynasty had ended before the Romanoff dynasty began. It is true,
+indeed, that the ending of the former with the death of Elizabeth in
+1603 occurred only a few years before the foundation of the latter by
+the election to the Tzarship of Michael Feodorovitz Romanoff in 1612.
+But of the five sovereigns of the Tudor dynasty it happened that only
+one, Henry VII., the first monarch of that dynasty, found or made an
+opportunity for the display of marked--scarcely perhaps of
+"marvellous"--personal courage; and thus the selection of the Tudor
+dynasty by the writer referred to as furnishing a contrasting
+illustration in the matter of personal courage to that of the Romanoffs
+was not particularly fortunate. Henry VIII. was only once in action; he
+shared in the skirmish known as the "Battle of the Spurs," because of
+the precipitate flight of the French horse. Edward VI. died at the age
+of sixteen, and the two remaining sovereigns of the dynasty were women,
+of whom it is true that Elizabeth was a strong and vigorous ruler, but
+in the nature of things had no opportunity for showing "marvellous
+personal courage." Henry VII. literally found his crown in the heart of
+the _melee_ on Bosworth field, it matters not which of the alternative
+stories is correct, that he himself killed Richard, or that Richard was
+killed in the act of striking him a desperate blow. But Henry at
+Bosworth in 1485 still belonged to the days of chivalry--to an era in
+which monarchs were also armour-clad knights, who headed charges in
+person and gave and took with spear, sword, and battle-axe. Long before
+Peter the Great, more than two centuries after Bosworth, foamed at the
+mouth with rage and hacked with his sword at his panicstricken troops
+fleeing from the field of Narva on that winter day of 1700, the face of
+warfare had altered and the _metier_ of the commander, were he
+sovereign or were he subject, had undergone a radical change.
+
+Of a family of the human race it is not rationally possible to
+predicate a typical generic characteristic of mind. A physical trait
+will endure down the generations, as witness the Hapsburg lip and the
+swarthy complexion of the Finch-Hattons, in the face of alliances from
+outside the races; but, save as regards one exception, there is no
+assurance of a continuous inheritance of mental attributes. What a
+contrast is there between Frederick the Great and his father; between
+George III. and his successor; between the present Emperor of Austria
+and his hapless son; between the genial, wistful, and well-intentioned
+Alexander II. of Russia and the not less well-intentioned but
+narrow-minded and despotic sovereign who succeeded him! But there may
+be reserved one exception to the absence of assurance of inherited
+mental attributes--one mental feature in which identity takes the place
+of dissimilarity, and even of actual contrast. And that feature--that
+inherited characteristic of a race whose progenitors happily possessed
+it--is personal courage.
+
+Take, for example, the Hohenzollerns. One need not hark back to
+Carlyle's original Conrad, the seeker of his fortune who tramped down
+from the ancestral cliff-castle on his way to take service under
+Barbarossa. Before and since the "Grosse Kurfurst" there has been no
+Hohenzollern who has not been a brave man. He himself was the hero of
+Fehrbellin. His son, the first king of the line, Carlyle's "Expensive
+Herr," was "valiant in action" during the third war of Louis XIV. The
+rugged Frederick William, father of Frederick the Great, had his own
+tough piece of war against the volcanic Charles XII. of Sweden and did
+a stout stroke of hard fighting at Malplaquet. Of Fritz himself the
+world has full note. Bad, sensual, debauched Hohenzollern as was his
+successor, Frederick the Fat, he had fought stoutly in his youth-time
+under his illustrious uncle. His son, Frederick William III.,
+overthrown by Napoleon who called him a "corporal," did good soldierly
+work in the "War of Liberation" and fought his way to Paris in 1814.
+His eldest son, Frederick William IV., the vague, benevolent dreamer
+whom _Punch_ used to call "King Clicquot" and who died of softening of
+the brain, even he, too, as a lad had distinguished himself in the "War
+of Liberation" and in the fighting during the subsequent advance on
+Paris. As for grand old William I., the real maker of the German Empire
+on the _quid facit per alium facit per se_ axiom, he died a veteran of
+many wars. He was not seventeen when he won the Iron Cross by a service
+of conspicuous gallantry under heavy fire. He took his chances in the
+bullet and shell fire at Koeniggraetz, and again on the afternoon of
+Gravelotte. Not a Hohenzollern of them all but shared as became their
+race in the dangers of the great war of 1870-71; even Prince George,
+the music composer, the only non-soldier of the family, took the field.
+William's noble son, whose premature death neither Germany nor England
+has yet ceased to deplore, took the lead of one army; his nephew Prince
+Frederick Charles, a great commander and a brilliant soldier, was the
+leader of another. One of his brothers, Prince Albert the elder, made
+the campaign as cavalry chief; whose son, Prince Albert junior, now a
+veteran Field-Marshal, commanded a brigade of guard-cavalry with a
+skill and daring not wholly devoid of recklessness. Another brother,
+Prince Charles, the father of the "Red Prince," made the campaign with
+the royal headquarters; Prince Adalbert, a cousin of the sovereign and
+head of the Prussian Navy, had his horse shot under him on the
+battlefield of Gravelotte.
+
+The trait of personal courage has markedly characterised the House of
+Hanover. As King of England George I. did no fighting, but before he
+reached that position he had distinguished himself in war not a little;
+against the Danes and Swedes in 1700 and in high command in the war of
+the Spanish succession from 1701 to 1709. His successor, while yet
+young, had displayed conspicuous valour in the battle of Oudenarde, and
+later in life at Dettingen; and he was the last British monarch who
+took part in actual warfare. Cumberland had no meritorious attribute
+save that of personal courage, but that virtue in him was undeniable.
+At Dettingen he was wounded in the forefront of the battle; at Fontenoy
+the "martial boy" was ever in the heart of the fiercest fire, fighting
+at "a spiritual white heat." His grand-nephew the Duke of York was an
+unfortunate soldier, but his personal courage was unquestioned. In the
+present reign a cousin and a son of the sovereign have done good
+service in the field; and that venerable lady herself in situations of
+personal danger has consistently maintained the calm courage of her
+race.
+
+The foreign author has written that "marvellous personal courage is not
+the striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs." He makes
+an exception to this quasi-indictment in favour of the Emperor
+Nicholas, who, he admits, "was absolutely ignorant of fear, and could
+face a band of insurgents with the calm self-possession of a shepherd
+surveying his bleating sheep." The monarch who at the moment of his
+accession illustrated the dominant force of his character by
+confronting amid the bullet fire the ferocious mutiny of half an army
+corps, and who crushed the bloodthirsty _emeute_ with dauntless
+resolution and iron hand; the man who, facing the populace of St.
+Petersburg crazed with terror of the cholera and red with the blood of
+slaughtered physicians, quelled its panic-fury by commanding the people
+in the sternest tones of his sonorous voice to kneel in the dust and
+propitiate by prayers the wrath of the Almighty--such a man is
+scarcely, perhaps, adequately characterised by the expressions which
+have been quoted. But setting aside this instance of the fearlessness
+of Nicholas, facts appear to refute pretty conclusively reflections on
+the personal courage of the Romanoffs. No purpose can be served by
+cumbering the record by going back into the period of Russia's
+semi-civilisation; illustrations from three generations may reasonably
+suffice. At Austerlitz Alexander I. was close up to the fighting line
+in the Pratzen section of that great battle, and so recklessly did he
+expose himself that the report spread rearward that he had fallen. He
+was riding with Moreau in the heart of the bloody turmoil before
+Dresden when a French cannon-ball mortally wounded the renegade French
+general, and he was splashed by the latter's blood. Moreau had insisted
+on riding on the outside, else the ball which caused his death would
+certainly have struck Alexander. That monarch participated actively and
+forwardly in most of the battles of the campaign of 1814 which
+culminated in the allied occupation of Paris. Marmont's bullets were
+still flying when he rode on to the hill of Belleville and looked down
+through the smoke of battle on the French capital. The captious foreign
+writer has admitted that Nicholas, the successor of Alexander, was
+"absolutely ignorant of fear," and I have cited a convincing instance
+of his "marvellous personal courage." Two of his sons--the Grand Dukes
+Nicholas and Michael--were under fire in the battle of Inkerman and
+shared for some time the perils of the siege of Sevastopol. Alexander
+II. was certainly a man of real, although quiet and undemonstrative,
+personal courage. But for his disregard of the precautions by which the
+police sought to surround him he probably would have been alive to-day.
+The Third Section was wholly unrepresented in Bulgaria and His
+Majesty's protection on campaign consisted merely of a handful of
+Cossacks. No cordon of sentries surrounded his simple camp; his tent at
+Pavlo and the dilapidated Turkish house which for weeks was his
+residence at Gorni Studen were alike destitute of any guards. The
+imperial Court of Russia is said to be the most punctiliously
+ceremonious of all courts; in the field the Tzar absolutely dispensed
+with any sort of ceremony. He dined with his suite and staff at a
+frugal table in a spare hospital marquee; his guests, the foreign
+attaches and any passing officers or strangers who happened to be in
+camp. When he drove out his escort consisted of a couple of Cossacks.
+In the woods about Biela at the beginning of the war there still
+remained some forlorn bivouacs of Turkish families; he would alight and
+visit those, his sole companion the aide-de-camp on duty; and would
+fearlessly venture among the sullen Turks all of whom were armed with
+deadly weapons, try to persuade them to return to their homes, and,
+unmoved by their refusal, promise to send them food and medicine.
+Dispensing with all etiquette he would see without delay any one coming
+in with tidings from fighting points, were he officer, civilian, or war
+correspondent. During the September attack on Plevna he was continually
+in the field while daylight lasted, looking out on the slaughter from
+an eminence within range of the Turkish cannon-fire, and manifestly
+enduring keen anguish at the spectacle of the losses sustained by his
+brave, patient troops. Later, during the investment of Plevna, his
+point of observation was a redoubt on the Radischevo ridge still closer
+to the Turkish front of fire, and it was thence he witnessed the
+surrender of Osman's army on the memorable 10th December 1877. If
+Alexander was fearless alike in camp and in the field on campaign, he
+was certainly not less so in St. Petersburg, when he returned thither
+after the fall of Plevna.
+
+Alexander II. literally sacrificed his life to his self-regardless
+concern for the suffering. After the first bomb had burst on the
+Alexandra Canal Road, striking down civilians and Cossacks of the
+following escort but leaving the Emperor unhurt, his coachman begged to
+be allowed to dash forward and get clear of danger. But Alexander
+forbade him with the words, "No, no! I must alight and see to the
+wounded;" and as he was carrying out his heroic and benign intention,
+the second bomb exploded and wrought his death.
+
+As did the men of the Hohenzollern house in 1870, so in 1877 the adult
+male Romanoffs went to the war with scarce an exception. The Grand Duke
+Nicholas, brother of the Emperor and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
+armies in Europe, was neither a great general nor an honest man; but
+there could be no question as to his personal courage. That attribute
+he evinced with utter recklessness when arriving, as was his wont, too
+late for a deliberate and careful survey, he galloped round the Turkish
+positions on the morning on which began the September bombardment of
+Plevna, in proximity to Turkish cannon-fire so dangerous that his staff
+remonstrated, and that even the sedate American historian of the war
+speaks of him as having "exposed himself imprudently to the Turkish
+pickets." His son, the Grand Duke Nicholas, jun., in 1877 scarcely of
+age, was nevertheless a keen practical soldier, imbued with the wisdom
+of getting to close quarters and staying there. He was among the first
+to cross the Danube at Sistova under the Turkish fire, and he fought
+with great gallantry under Mirsky in the Schipka Pass. The brothers,
+Prince Nicholas and Prince Eugene of Leuchtenberg, members of the
+imperial house, commanded each a cavalry brigade in Gourko's dashing
+raid across the Balkans at the beginning of the campaign, and both were
+conspicuous for soldierly skill and personal gallantry in the desperate
+fighting in the Tundja Valley. The Grand Duke Vladimir, the second
+brother of Alexander III., headed the infantry advance in the direction
+of Rustchuk, and served with marked distinction in command of one of
+the corps in the army of the Lom. A younger brother, the Grand Duke
+Alexis, the nautical member of the imperial family, had charge of the
+torpedo and subaqueous mining operations on the Danube, and was held to
+have shown practical skill, assiduity, and vigour. Prince Serge of
+Leuchtenberg, younger brother of the Leuchtenbergs previously
+mentioned, was shot dead by a bullet through the head in the course of
+his duty as a staff officer at the front of a reconnaissance in force
+made against the Turkish force in Jovan-Tchiflik in October of the war.
+He was a soldier of great promise and had frequently distinguished
+himself. No unworthy record, it is submitted, earned in war by the
+members of a family of which, according to the foreign author,
+"personal courage is not the striking characteristic."
+
+That writer may be warranted in stating that the late Tzar had been
+frequently accused of cowardice--an indictment to which, it must be
+admitted, many undeniable facts lent a strong colouring of probability;
+and he further tells of "the Emperor's aversion to ride on horseback,
+and of his dread of a horse even when the animal was harnessed to a
+vehicle." There is something, however, of inconsistency in his
+observation that Alexander III. might well have been a contrast to his
+grandfather without deserving the epithet craven-hearted. The
+melancholy explanation of the strange apparent change between the
+Tzarewitch of 1877 and the Tzar of 1894 may lie in the statement that
+"Alexander's nerves had been undoubtedly shaken by the terrible events
+in which he had been a spectator or actor." In 1877, when in campaign
+in Bulgaria, Alexander did not know what "nerves" meant. He was then a
+man of strong, if slow, mental force, stolid, peremptory, reactionary;
+the possessor of dull but firm resolution. He had a strong though
+clumsy seat on horseback and was no infrequent rider. He had two ruling
+dislikes: one was war, the other was officers of German extraction. The
+latter he got rid of; the former he regarded as a necessary evil of the
+hour; he longed for its ending, but while it lasted he did his sturdy
+and loyal best to wage it to the advantage of the Russian arms. And in
+this he succeeded, stanchly fulfilling the particular duty which was
+laid upon him, that of protecting the Russian left flank from the
+Danube to the foothills of the Balkans. He had good troops, the
+subordinate commands were fairly well filled, and his headquarter staff
+was efficient--General Dochtouroff, its _sous-chef_, was certainly the
+ablest staff-officer in the Russian army. But Alexander was no puppet
+of his staff; he understood his business as the commander of the army
+of the Lom, performed his functions in a firm, quiet fashion, and
+withal was the trusty and successful warden of the eastern marches. His
+force never amounted to 50,000 men, and his enemy was in considerably
+greater strength. He had successes and he sustained reverses, but he
+was equal to either fortune; always resolute in his steadfast, dogged
+manner, and never whining for reinforcements when things went against
+him, but doing his best with the means to his hand. They used to speak
+of him in the principal headquarter as the only commander who never
+gave them any bother. So highly was he thought of there that when,
+after the unsuccessful attempt on Plevna in the September of the war,
+the Guard Corps was arriving from Russia and there was the temporary
+intention to use it with other troops in an immediate offensive
+movement across the Balkans, he was named to take the command of the
+enterprise. But this intention having been presently departed from, and
+the reinforcements being ordered instead to the Plevna section of the
+theatre of war, the Tzarewitch retained his command on the left flank,
+and thus in mid-December had the opportunity of inflicting a severe
+defeat on Suleiman Pasha, just as in September he had worsted Mehemet
+Ali in the battle of Carkova. It is sad to be told that a man once so
+resolute and masterful should later have been the victim of shattered
+nerves; it is sadder still to learn that he was a mark for accusations
+of cowardice. He never was a gracious, far less a lovable man; but, as
+I can testify from personal knowledge, he was a cool and brave soldier
+in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877.
+
+
+
+
+PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
+
+1875
+
+
+On a Sunday morning in early June, just before the church bells begin
+to ring, there is wont to be held the annual general parade and
+inspection of the Corps of Commissionaires, on the enclosed grass plot
+by the margin of the ornamental water in St. James's Park. On the
+ground, and accompanying the inspecting officer on his tour through the
+opened ranks, there are always not a few veteran officers, glad by
+their presence on such an occasion to countenance and recognise their
+humbler comrades in arms in bygone war-dramas enacted elsewhere than
+within hearing of London Sunday bells. No scene could be imagined
+presenting a more practical confutation of the ignorant calumny that
+the British army is composed of the froth and the dregs of the British
+nation, and that there exists no cordial feeling between British
+soldiers and British officers. It is good to see how the face kindles
+of the veteran guardsman at the sight and the kindly greeting of Sir
+Charles Russell. Doubtless the honest private's thoughts go back to
+that misty morning on the slopes of Inkerman, when officer and private
+stood shoulder to shoulder in the fierce press, and there rang again in
+his ears the cheer with which the Guards greeted the act of valour by
+the performance of which the baronet won the Victoria Cross. There is a
+feeling deeper than a mere formality in the half-dozen words that pass
+between Sir William Codrington and the old soldier of the 7th Royal
+Fusiliers, to whom the gallant general showed the way up to the Russian
+front, through the shot-torn vineyards on the slopes of the Alma. When
+one feeble old ex-warrior is smitten suddenly on parade with a palsied
+faintness, it is on the yet stalwart arm of his old chief that he
+totters out of the ranks, and the twain do not part till the superior
+has exacted a pledge that his humble ex-subordinate shall call upon him
+on the morrow, with a view to medical advice and strengthening comforts.
+
+Notwithstanding that in the true old martial spirit it shows what in
+the Service is known as a good front, it is not a very athletic or
+puissant cohort this, that stands on parade here on the grass within
+hearing of the church bells. The grizzled old soldiers, sooth to say,
+look rather the worse for wear. There is a decided shortcoming among
+them of the proper complement of limbs, and one at least, in speaking
+of the battlefields he had seen, might with truth echo the old soldier
+in Burns's _Jolly Beggars_--
+
+  And there I left for witness a leg and an arm.
+
+They carry no weapons; to some may belong the knowledge only of the
+obsolete "Brown Bess" manual exercise; and not many have been so
+recently on active service as to have learnt the handling of the modern
+breech-loader. On the whole, a battered, fossil, maimed army of
+superannuated fighting men, scarcely fitted to shine in the new tactics
+of the "swarm-attack" by which the battles of the future are to be won
+or lost. But you cannot jibe at the worn old soldiers as "lean and
+slippered pantaloons." Look how truly, with what instinctive intuition,
+the dressing is taken up at the word of command; note how the old
+martial carriage comes back to the most dilapidated when the adjutant
+calls his command to "attention." Age and wounds have not quenched the
+fighting spirit of the old soldiers; there is not a man of them but
+would, did the need arise, "clatter on his stumps to the sound of the
+drum." There are few breasts in those ranks that are not decorated with
+medals. In very truth the parade is a record of British campaigns for
+the last thirty years. Among the thicket of medals on the bosom of this
+broken old light dragoon note the one bearing the legend, "Cabul 1842"
+within the laurel wreath. Its wearer was a trooper in the famous
+"rescue" column. The skeletons of Elphinstone's hapless force littered
+the slopes of the Tezeen Valley, up which the squadron in which he rode
+charged straight for the tent of the splendid demon Akbar Khan. He rode
+behind Campbell at the battle of Punniar, and won there that star of
+silver and bronze which hangs from the famous "rainbow" ribbon.
+"Sutlej" is the legend on another of his medals, and he could recount
+to you the memorable story of Thackwell's cavalry operations against
+the Sikh field works, and how that division of seasoned horsemen
+reduced outpost duty to a methodical science. "Punjab" medals for
+Gough's campaign of 1848-49 are scattered up and down in the ranks. The
+sword-cut athwart this wiry old trooper's cheek he got in the hot
+_melee_ of Ramhuggur, where a certain Brigadier Colin Campbell whom men
+knew afterwards as Lord Clyde, found it hard work to hold his own, and
+where gallant Cureton and the veteran William Havelock fell at the head
+of their light horsemen as they crashed into the heart of 4000 Sikhs.
+His neighbour took part in the storm of Mooltan, and saw stout,
+calm-pulsed Sergeant John Bennet of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers plant the
+British ensign on the crest of the breach and quietly stand by it
+there, supporting it in the tempest of shot and shell till the storming
+party had made the breach their own. This old soldier of the 24th can
+tell you of the butchery of his regiment at Chillianwallah; how Brooks
+went down between the Sikh guns, how Brigadier Pennycuick was killed
+out to the front, and how his son, a beardless ensign, maddened at the
+sight of the mangling of his father's body, rushed out and fought
+against all comers over the corpse till the lad fell dead on his dead
+father; how on that terrible day the loss of the 24th was 13 officers
+killed, 10 wounded, and 497 men killed and wounded; and how the issue
+of the bloody combat might have been very different but for the
+display, on the part of Colin Campbell, of "that steady coolness and
+military decision for which he was so remarkable." Scarcely a great
+show on a troop-horse would this bent and gnarled old 12th Lancer make
+to-day, but he and his fellows rode right well on the day for which he
+wears this "Cape" medal, with the blue and orange ribbon and the lion
+and mimosa bush on the reverse. Because of its prickles the Boers call
+the mimosa the "wait-a-bit" thorn, but there was no thought of waiting
+a bit among the 12th Lancers at the Berea, when they charged the savage
+Basutos and captured their chief Moshesh. This one-armed veteran of the
+Royal Fusiliers was left lying wounded in the Great Redoubt on the
+Russian slope of the Alma, when the terrible fire of grape and musketry
+forced Codrington's brigade of the Light Division temporarily to give
+ground after it had struggled so valiantly up the rugged broken banks,
+and through the hailstorm of fire that swept through the vineyards.
+This still stalwart man was one of the nineteen sergeants of the
+33rd--the Duke of Wellington's Own--who were either killed or wounded
+in defence of the colours on the same bloody but glorious day. A few
+files farther down the line stands an old 93rd man. The veteran
+Sutherland Highlander was one of that "thin red line" which disdained
+to form square when the Russian squadrons rode with seeming heart at
+the kilted men on Balaclava day. He heard Colin Campbell's stern
+repressive rebuke--"Ninety-third, ninety-third, damn all that
+eagerness!" when the hotter spirits of the regiment would fain have
+broken ranks and met the Russians half-way with the cold steel; he saw
+the Scotch wife chastise the fugitive Turks with her tongue and her
+frying-pan. Speak to his tall, shaggy neighbour of the "bonny Jocks,"
+and you will call up a flush of pleasure on the harsh-featured Scottish
+face; for he was a trooper in the Greys on that self-same Balaclava day
+when the avalanche of Russian horsemen thundered down upon the heavy
+brigade. He was among those who heard, and with sternly rapturous
+anticipation obeyed Scarlet's calm-pitched, far-sounding order, "Left
+wheel into line!" He was among those who, when the trumpets had sounded
+the charge, strove in vain by dint of spur to overtake the gallant old
+chief with the long white moustache, as he rode foremost on the foe
+with the dashing Elliot and the burly Shegog on either flank of him; he
+was among those who, as they hewed and hacked their way through the
+press, heard already from the far side of the _melee_ the stentorian
+adjuration of big Adjutant Miller, as standing up in his stirrups the
+burly Scot shouted, "Rally, rally on me, ye muckle ----!" Mightily
+knocked about has been this man with the empty sleeve, but he does not
+belie the familiar sobriquet of his old regiment; he was one of the
+"Diehards," a title well earned by the 57th on the bloody height of
+Albuera, and it was under their colours that he lost his arm on
+Inkerman morning. There is quite a little regiment of men who were
+wounded in the "trenches" or about the Redan. There is no "19" now on
+the buttons of this scarred veteran, but the number was there when he
+followed Massy and Molesworth over the parapet of the Redan on the day
+when so much good English blood was wasted. Shoulder to shoulder now,
+as oft of yore, stand two old soldiers of the Buffs both of whom went
+down in the same assault; and an umwhile bugler of the Perthshire
+Grey-breeks "minds the day" well also by reason of the wound that has
+crippled him for life. As he stands on parade this calm Sabbath
+morning, that maimed man of the 60th Rifles can remember another and a
+very different Sabbath--the 10th of May 1857 in Meerut--day and place
+of the first outburst of the Mutiny; a fell Sabbath of burning,
+slaughter, and dismay, of disregard of sex, age, and rank, of fierce
+brutality and of nameless agony. He was one of the rifles whose fire in
+the assault of Delhi covered the desperate duty of blowing open the
+Cashmere Gate, performed with so methodical calmness by Home, Salkeld,
+and Burgess; and his comrade hero with the maimed limb, when the hour
+had come for a rush to close quarters, followed Reid and Muter over the
+breastwork at the end of the serai of Kissengunge. Proud, yet their
+pride dashed by sadness, must be the soldiering memories of this stout
+northman, erstwhile a front rank man in the old Ross-shire Buffs, a
+regiment ever true to its noble Celtic motto of _Cuidichn Rhi_. At
+Kooshab, in the short, but brilliant Persian War, he fought in the same
+field where Malcolmson earned the Victoria Cross by one of the most
+gallant acts for which that guerdon of valour ever has been accorded.
+He was in Mackenzie's company at Cawnpore when the Highlanders, stirred
+by the wild strains of the war-pibroch, rushed upon the Nana's battery
+at the angle of the mango tope with the irresistible fury of one of
+their own mountain torrents in spate. And next day he was among those
+who, with drawn ghastly faces and scared eyes, looked into that fearful
+well, filled to the lip with the mangled corpses of British women and
+children. He was one of those who, standing by that well, pledged the
+oath administered by the bareheaded Ross-shire sergeant over the long,
+heavy tress of auburn hair which a demon's tulwar had severed from the
+head of an Englishwoman, that while strong arm and trusty steel lasted
+to no living thing of the accursed race should quarter be accorded. And
+he was one of those who, having battled their way over the Charbagh
+Bridge, having threaded the bullet-torn path to the Kaiser-bagh, and
+having forced for themselves a passage up to the embrasures by the
+Baileyguard Gate, melted from the stern fierceness of the fray when the
+siege-worn women and children in the residency of Lucknow sobbed out
+upon their necks blessings for the deliverance. His rear-rank man is an
+ex-Bengal Fusilier, wounded once at Sabraon, again at Pegu, and a third
+time at Delhi. He will not be offended if you hail him as one of the
+"old Dirty-shirts;" for it was in honourable disregard of appearances
+as they toiled night and day in the trenches of Delhi that the
+regiment, which now in the Queen's service is numbered 101, gained the
+nickname. Time and space fail one to tell a tithe of the stories of
+valour and hardship linked in the medals and wounds borne by men on
+this unostentatious parade--a parade the members of which have shed
+their blood on the soil of every quarter of the globe. The minutest
+military annals scarcely name some of the obscure combats in which men
+here to-day have fought and bled. This man desperately wounded at
+Najou, near Shanghai; that one wounded in two places at Owna, in
+Persia; this one with a sleeve emptied at Aroga, in Abyssinia--who
+among us remember aught, if, indeed, we have ever heard, of Najou,
+Owna, or Aroga? On the breast of this bent, hoary old man, note these
+strange emblems, the Cross of San Fernando and the Order of the Tower
+and Sword. Their wearer is a relic of the British Legion in the Carlist
+War of 1837, and they were won under brave old De Lacy Evans at the
+siege of Bilbao.
+
+Over the modest portals of the Commissionaire Barracks in the Strand
+might well be inscribed the legend, "To all the military glories of
+Britain." But just as we have not long ago seen the pride of a palace
+in another land on whose facade is a kindred inscription, abased by the
+occupation of a foreign conqueror, so there was a time when the living
+emblems of Britain's military glory were wont to undergo much
+humiliation and adversity when their career of soldiering had come to
+an end. Germany recompenses her veterans by according them, as a right,
+reputable civil employ when they have served their time as soldiers;
+the custom of Britain, on the contrary, has been too commonly to leave
+her scarred and war-worn soldiers to their own resources, or to a
+pension on which to live is impossible. We were always ready enough to
+feel a glow at the achievements of our arms; but till lately we were
+prone to reckon the individual soldier as a social pariah, and to
+regard the fact of a man's having served in the ranks as a brand of
+discredit. To this estimate, it must be allowed, the ex-soldier himself
+very often contributed not a little. Destitute of a future, and often
+debarred by wounds or by broken health from any laborious industrial
+employment, he made the most of the present; and his idea of making the
+most of the future not unfrequently took the form of beer and
+shiftlessness. Recognising the disadvantages that bore so hard on the
+deserving old soldier, recognising too, in the words of the late Sir
+John Burgoyne, that "there are many qualities peculiar to the soldier
+and sailor, and imbibed by him in the ordinary course of his service,
+which, added to good character and conduct, may render such men more
+eligible than others for various services in civil life," Captain
+Edward Walter founded the Corps of Commissionaires. That organisation,
+beginning with seven men, has now a strength of several hundreds, and
+its ranks are still open to all the eligible recruits who choose to
+come forward. The Commissionaire is no recipient of charity; what
+Captain Walter has done is simply to show him how he may earn an honest
+and comfortable livelihood, and to provide him, if he desires it, with
+a home of a kind which the ex-militaire naturally most appreciates. The
+advantages are open to him of a savings-bank and of a sick and burial
+fund, and when the evil days come when he can no longer earn his own
+bread, the "Retiring Fund" guarantees the thrifty and steady
+Commissionaire against the prospect of ending his days in the
+workhouse. Among the fruits of Captain Walter's devoted and gratuitous
+services in this cause has been a wholesome change in the bias of
+popular opinion as to the worth of old soldiers. No longer are they
+regarded as the mere chaff and _debris_ of the cannon fodder--"no
+account men," as Bret Harte has it; he has furnished them with
+opportunity to prove, and they have proved, that they can so live and
+so work as to win the respect and trust of their brethren of the
+civilian world. The man who has done this thing deserves well, not
+alone of the British army, but of the British nation. He has brought it
+about that the time has come when most men think with Sir Roger de
+Coverley. "You must know," says Sir Roger, "I never make use of anybody
+to row me that has not lost either a leg or an arm. I would rather bate
+him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has
+been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop ... I
+would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg."
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
+
+
+The actual fighting phase of this memorable campaign was confined to
+the four days from the 15th to the 18th of June, both days inclusive.
+The literature concerning itself with that period would make a library
+of itself. Scarcely a military writer of any European nation but has
+delivered himself on the subject, from Clausewitz to General Maurice,
+from Berton to Brialmont. Thiers, Alison, and Hooper may be cited of
+the host of civilian writers whom the theme has enticed to description
+and criticism. There is scarcely a point in the brief vivid drama that
+has not furnished a topic for warm and sustained controversy; and the
+cult of the Waterloo campaign is more assiduous to-day than when the
+participators in the great strife were testifying to their own
+experiences.
+
+Quite recently an important work dealing chiefly with the inner history
+of the campaign has come to us from the other side of the Atlantic.
+[Footnote: _The Campaign of Waterloo: a Military History_. By John
+Codman Ropes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. February 1893.] Its
+author, Mr. John Ropes, is a civilian gentleman of Boston, who has
+devoted his life to military study. He has given years to the
+elucidation of the problems of the Waterloo campaign, has trodden every
+foot of its ground, and has burrowed for recondite matter in the
+military archives of divers nations. A citizen of the American
+Republic, he is free alike from national prejudices and national
+prepossessions; if he is perhaps not uniformly correct in his
+inferences, his rigorous impartiality is always conspicuous. By his
+research and acute perception he has let light in upon not a few
+obscurities; and it may be pertinent briefly to summarise the inner
+history of the campaign, giving what may seem their due weight to the
+arguments and representations of the American writer.
+
+The following were the respective positions on the 14th of
+June:--Wellington's heterogeneous army, about 94,000 strong with 196
+guns, lay widely dispersed in cantonments from the Scheldt to the
+Charleroi-Brussels chaussee, its front extending from Tournay through
+Mons and Binche to Nivelles and Quatre Bras. Of the Prussian army under
+Bluecher, about 121,000 strong with 312 guns, one corps was at Liege,
+another near the Meuse above Namur, a third at Namur, and Ziethen's in
+advance holding the line of the Sambre. The mass of Bluecher's command
+had already seen service and, with the exception of the Saxons, was
+full of zeal; the corps were well commanded, and their chief, although
+he had his limits, was a thorough soldier. The French army, consisting
+of five corps d'armee, the Guard, four cavalry corps and 344
+guns--total fighting strength 124,500--Napoleon had succeeded in
+assembling with wonderful celerity and secrecy south of the Sambre
+within an easy march of Charleroi. Its officers and soldiers were alike
+veterans but its organisation was somewhat defective. Napoleon scarcely
+preserved the phenomenal force of earlier years; but, in Mr. Ropes's
+words, he disclosed "no conspicuous lack of energy and activity." Soult
+was far from being an ideal chief of staff. Ney, to whom was assigned
+the command of the left wing, only reached the army on the 15th, and
+without a staff; Grouchy, to whom on the 16th was suddenly given the
+command of the right wing, was not a man of high military capacity.
+
+Napoleon's plan of campaign was founded on the circumstance that the
+bases of the allied armies lay in opposite directions--the English base
+on the German Ocean, the Prussian through Liege and Maestricht to the
+Rhine. The military probability was that if either army was forced to
+retreat, it would retreat towards its base; and to do this would be to
+march away from its ally. Napoleon was in no situation to manoeuvre
+leisurely, with all Europe on the march against him. His engrossing aim
+was to gain immediate victory over his adversaries in Belgium before
+the Russians and Austrians should close in around him. His expectation
+was that Bluecher would offer battle about Fleurus and be overwhelmed
+before the Anglo-Dutch army could come to the support of its Prussian
+ally. To make sure of preventing that junction the Emperor's intention
+was to detail Ney with the left wing to reach and hold Quatre Bras. The
+Prussians thoroughly beaten, drifting rearward toward their base, and
+reduced to a condition of comparative inoffensiveness, he would then
+turn on Wellington and force him to give battle.
+
+Mr. Ropes refutes the contention maintained by a great array of
+authorities, that Napoleon's design was to "wedge himself into the
+interval between the allied armies" by seizing simultaneously Sombreffe
+and Quatre Bras, in order to cut the communication between the two
+armies and then defeat them in succession. Against this view he
+successfully marshals Napoleon himself, Wellington by the mouth of Lord
+Ellesmere, and the great German strategist Clausewitz. It will suffice
+to quote Napoleon:--
+
+  The Emperor's intention was that his advance should
+  occupy Fleurus, the mass concealed behind this town;
+  he took good care ... above all things not to occupy
+  Sombreffe. To have done so would have caused the
+  failure of all his dispositions, for then the battle of Ligny
+  would not have been fought, and Bluecher would have had
+  to make Wavre the concentration-point for his army.
+
+Wellington alludes pointedly to the obvious danger to the French army
+of the suggested wedge position in what the Germans call _die taktische
+Mitte_, where, instead of being able to defeat the allies in
+succession, it would itself be liable to be crushed between the upper
+and the nether millstone.
+
+At daybreak of the 15th Napoleon took the offensive, driving in Ziethen
+on and through Charleroi although not without sharp fighting. On that
+evening three French corps, the Guard, and most of the cavalry, were
+concentrated about Charleroi and forward toward Fleurus, ready to
+attack Bluecher next day. Controversy has been very keen on the question
+whether or not on the afternoon of the 15th Napoleon gave Ney verbal
+orders to occupy Quatre Bras the same evening. Mr. Ropes holds it
+"almost certain" that the order was given. From Napoleon's bulletin
+despatched on the evening of the 15th, which is the only piece of
+strictly contemporary evidence, he quotes: "Le Prince de la Moskowa
+(Ney) a eu le soir son quartier general aux Quatres-Chemins;" and he
+remarks that this must have been the belief in the headquarter "unless
+we gratuitously invent an intention to deceive the public." There is no
+need for Mr. Ropes to put that strain on himself, since the main
+purport of Napoleon's bulletins notoriously was to deceive the public.
+But if Napoleon had not intended that Ney should occupy Quatre Bras on
+the night of the 15th, the statement that this had been done would have
+been a purposeless futility; and if he had intended that Ney should do
+so it is unlikely that he should have omitted to give him instructions
+to that effect. Grouchy claims to have heard Napoleon censure Ney for
+his omission to occupy Quatre Bras; an omission which had its
+importance, for the reason, among others, that it was ominous of the
+Marshal's infinitely more harmful disobedience of orders next day.
+
+All writers agree that Bluecher ordered the concentration of his army in
+the fighting position previously chosen in the event of the French
+advancing by Charleroi, "without," in Mr. Ropes's words, "any definite
+agreement or undertaking with Wellington that he was to have English
+aid in the impending battle." He was content to take his risk of the
+English general's possible inability for sundry obvious reasons, to
+come to his support. And while the Prussian army with the unfortunate
+exception of Buelow's corps, was on the 15th moving toward the chosen
+position of Ligny, where its right was to be on St. Amand, its centre
+on and behind Ligny, and its left about Balatre, what was happening in
+the Anglo-Dutch army lying spread out westward of the
+Charleroi--Brussels chaussee?
+
+Wellington was at Brussels expecting the French invasion by or west of
+the Mons-Brussels road, to meet which he considered his army very well
+placed, but could expect no Prussian cooperation. His courier service,
+with his forces so dispersed, should have been well organised and
+alert, but it was neither; and Napoleon's secrecy and suddenness in
+taking the offensive were worthy of his best days. It has been freely
+imputed to Wellington that he was thereby in a measure surprised. There
+is the strange and probably mythical story in the work professing to be
+Fouche's _Memoirs_ to the effect that Wellington was relying on him for
+information of Napoleon's plans, and that he--Fouche--played the
+English commander false. "On the very day of Napoleon's departure from
+Paris," say the _Memoirs_, "I despatched Madame D----, furnished with
+notes in cipher, narrating the whole plan of the campaign. But at the
+same time I privately sent orders for such obstacles at the frontier,
+where she was to pass, that she could not reach Wellington's
+headquarters till after the event. This was the real explanation of the
+inactivity of the British generalissimo which excited such universal
+astonishment." Readers of the _Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury_
+will remember the apparently authentic statement of Captain Bowles,
+that Wellington, rising from the supper-table at the famous ball,
+
+  whispered to ask the Duke of Richmond if he had a good
+  map. The Duke of Richmond said he had, and took
+  Wellington into his dressing-room. Wellington shut the
+  door and said, "Napoleon has humbugged me, by God;
+  he has gained twenty-four hours' march on me.... I
+  have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras;
+  but we shall not stop him there, and if so I must fight
+  him _there_" (passing his thumb-nail over the position of
+  Waterloo). The conversation was repeated to me by the
+  Duke of Richmond two minutes after it occurred.
+
+Facts, however, are stronger evidence than words; and this confession
+on Wellington's part is inconsistent with the circumstance that he had
+not hurried to retrieve the time he is represented as having owned that
+Napoleon had gained on him--that he had, on the contrary, allowed his
+adversary to gain several hours more. Wellington's combination of
+caution and decision throughout this momentous period is a very
+interesting study. It was not until 3 P.M. (of the 15th) that there
+reached him tidings almost simultaneously of firing between the
+outposts about Thuin and that Ziethen had been attacked before
+Charleroi, the two places ten miles apart and both occurrences in the
+early morning. Those affairs might have been casual outpost skirmishes;
+and the Duke, in anticipation of further information, took no measures
+for some hours. At length, in default of later tidings he determined on
+the precautionary step of assembling his divisions at their respective
+rendezvous points in readiness to march; further specifically directing
+a concentration of 25,000 men at Nivelles on his then left flank, when
+it should have been ascertained for certain that the enemy's line of
+attack was by Charleroi. These orders were sent out early in the
+evening--"between 5 and 7." Later in the evening came a letter from
+Bluecher announcing the concentration of the Prussian army to occupy the
+Ligny fighting position, in which disposition Wellington acquiesced;
+but, still uncertain of Napoleon's true line of attack--his conviction
+being, as is well known, that Napoleon should have moved on the British
+right--he would not definitely fix the point of ultimate concentration
+of his army until he should receive intelligence from Mons. But
+Bluecher's tidings caused him to issue about 10 P.M. a second set of
+orders, commanding a general movement of the army, not as yet to any
+specific point of concentration but in prescribed directions towards
+its left (eastward). At length, when the news came from Mons that he
+need have no further serious solicitude about his right since the whole
+French army was advancing by Charleroi, he saw his way clear. Towards
+midnight, writes Mueffling the Prussian Commissioner at his
+headquarters, Wellington informed him of the tidings from Mons, and
+added: "The orders for the concentration of my army at Nivelles and
+Quatre Bras are already despatched. Let us, therefore, go to the ball."
+
+There are three definite evidences that before midnight of the 15th
+Wellington had resolved to concentrate about Quatre Bras, and had
+issued final orders accordingly--his statement to the Duke of Richmond,
+his statement to Mueffling, and his statement in his official report to
+Lord Bathurst. Yet Mr. Ropes believes that his decision to that effect
+"could not have been arrived at very long before he left Brussels" on
+the morning of the 16th, which he did "probably about half-past seven."
+He founds this belief on two orders dated "16th June" sent to Lord Hill
+in the early morning of that day, in which there is no allusion to a
+concentration at Quatre Bras. But those were merely supplementary
+instructions as to points of detail; for example, one of them enjoined
+that a division ordered earlier to Enghien should move instead by way
+of Braine le Comte, that being a nearer route toward the final general
+destination of Quatre Bras specified in the earlier (the "towards
+midnight") orders. The latter orders are not extant, having been lost
+according to Gurwood, with De Lancey's papers when he fell at Waterloo;
+but that they must have been issued is proved by the fact that they
+were acted upon by the troops; and that they were issued before
+midnight of the 15th is made clear by Wellington's three specific
+statements to that effect.
+
+When the Duke left Brussels for the front on the morning of the 16th he
+took with him a singularly optimistic paper styled "Disposition of the
+British Army at 7 A.M., 16th June," which was "written out for the
+information of the Commander of the Forces by Colonel Sir W. de
+Lancey," his Quartermaster-General. In the nature of things for the
+most part guess-work, the wish as regarded almost every particular set
+out in this document was father to the thought. Wellington was no doubt
+reasonably justified in accepting and relying on this flattering
+"Disposition;" but its terms, as Mr. Ropes conclusively shows, simply
+misled him and caused him also unconsciously to mislead Bluecher, both
+by the expressions of the letter written by him to that chief on his
+arrival at Quatre Bras and later when he met the Prussian commander at
+the mill of Brye. Wellington was indeed trebly fortunate in finding the
+Quatre Bras position still available to him--fortunate that Ney on the
+previous evening had defaulted from his orders in refraining from
+occupying it; fortunate that Ney still on this morning was remaining
+passive; and more fortunate still that it had been occupied, defended,
+and reinforced by Dutch-Belgian troops not only without orders from him
+but in bold and happy violation of his orders. Perponcher's division
+was scarcely a potent representative of the Anglo-Dutch army, but there
+was nothing more at hand; and pending the coming up of reinforcements
+Wellington, with rather a sanguine reliance on Ney's maintenance of
+inactivity, rode over to Brye and had a conversation with Bluecher.
+There are contradictory accounts of its tenor, and Gneisenau certainly
+seems to have formed the impression that the Duke gave a positive
+pledge of support. Mr. Ropes considers that, misled by the erroneous
+"Disposition," Wellington honestly believed he would be able to
+co-operate with Bluecher, and that he "certainly did give that commander
+some assurance of support by the Anglo-Dutch army in the impending
+battle." Mueffling, who was present, states that the Duke's last words
+were: "Well, I will come, provided I am not attacked myself;" and this
+probably was the final undertaking. Wellington's words were in
+accordance with the caution of his character; and it is certain that
+Bluecher had decided to fight at Ligny whether assured or not of his
+brother-commander's support. That Wellington regarded Bluecher's
+dispositions for battle as objectionable is proved by his blunt comment
+to Hardinge--"If they fight here they will be damnably licked!"
+
+It would have been possible for Napoleon to have crushed the Prussian
+army in the early hours of the 16th when it was in the throes of
+formation for battle; and this he would probably have done if Ney had
+occupied Quatre Bras on the previous evening. But in Ney's default of
+accomplishing this Napoleon, in his solicitude that Wellington should
+be hindered from supporting Bluecher, determined to delay his own stroke
+against the latter until Ney should be in possession of Quatre Bras
+with the left wing, where, in Soult's words, "he ought to be able to
+destroy any force of the enemy that might present itself," and then
+come to the support of the Emperor by getting on the Prussian rear
+behind St. Amand. Napoleon's instructions were explicit that Ney was to
+march on Quatre Bras, take position there, and then send an infantry
+division and Kellerman's cavalry to points eastward, whence the Emperor
+might summon them to participate in his own operations. If Ney had
+fulfilled his orders by utilising the whole force at his disposal, in
+all human probability he would have defeated Wellington at Quatre Bras,
+whose troops, arriving in detail, would have been crushed by greatly
+superior numbers as they came up. As it was, although at the beginning
+of the battle he was in superior strength, Ney never utilised more than
+22,000 men; whereas by its close Wellington had 31,000, and, thanks to
+the stanchness of the British infantry, was the victor in a very
+hard-fought contest. But Mr. Ropes has reason in holding it humanly
+certain that he would have been beaten--in which case the battle of
+Waterloo would never have been fought--had not D'Erlon's corps of Ney's
+command while marching towards Quatre Bras, been turned aside in the
+direction of the Prussian right.
+
+In the justifiable belief that Ney was duly carrying out his orders
+Napoleon at half-past one opened the battle of Ligny. He had expected
+to have to deal with but a single Prussian corps, but the actual fact
+was that, while he had 74,000 men on the field, Bluecher had 87,000 with
+a superior strength of artillery. The fighting was long and severe.
+From the first, recognising the defects of his adversary's position,
+Napoleon was satisfied that he could defeat the Prussian army. But he
+needed to do more--to crush, to rout it, so that he need give himself
+no further concern regarding it. This he saw his way to accomplish if
+Ney were to strike in presently on the Prussian right; and so, with
+intent to stir that chief to vigorous enterprise, the message was sent
+him that "the fate of France was in his hands." The battle proceeded,
+Bluecher throwing in his reserves freely, Napoleon chary of his and
+playing the waiting game pending Ney's expected co-operation. About
+half-past five he was preparing to put in the Guard and strike the
+decisive blow, when information reached him from his right that a
+column, presumably hostile, was visible some two miles distant marching
+toward Fleurus. Napoleon sent an aide to ascertain the facts and until
+his return postponed the decisive moment. Two hours later the
+information was brought back that the approaching column was D'Erlon's
+from Ney's wing. This intelligence dispelled all anxiety. Strangely
+enough, no instructions were sent to the approaching reinforcement, and
+the suspended stroke was promptly dealt. The Prussians, after desperate
+fighting, were everywhere driven back. Napoleon with part of the
+Imperial Guard broke Bluecher's centre, and the French army deployed on
+the heights beyond the stream. In a word, Napoleon had defeated the
+Prussians, but had neither crushed nor routed them. There was no
+pursuit.
+
+D'Erlon's corps on this afternoon had achieved the doubly sinister
+distinction of having prevented Ney from gaining a probable victory at
+Quatre Bras, and of detracting from the thoroughness of Napoleon's
+actual victory at Ligny. While it was leisurely marching towards
+Frasnes in support of Ney, it was diverted eastward towards the
+Prussian right flank in consequence of an order given (whether
+authorised or not is uncertain) by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor. It
+was about to deploy for action, when, on receiving from Ney a
+peremptory order to rejoin his command; and in absence of a command
+from Napoleon to strike the Prussian flank, it went about and tramped
+back towards Frasnes. D'Erlon's promenade was as futile as the famous
+march of the King of France up the hill and then down again.
+
+Mr. Ropes considers that on the morning of the 17th Napoleon had thus
+far in the main fulfilled his programme. This view may be questioned.
+He had merely defeated two of the four Prussian corps; he had not
+wrecked Bluecher. He had failed to occupy Quatre Bras; the Anglo-Dutch
+army had succeeded in effecting a partial concentration and in
+repulsing his left wing there. Still it must be admitted that with two
+corps absolutely intact and with no serious losses in the Guard and
+cavalry, Napoleon was in good shape for carrying out his plan. If Ney
+had sent him word overnight that Wellington's army was bivouacking
+about Quatre Bras in ignorance, as it turned out, of the result of
+Ligny, he might have attacked it to good purpose in conjunction with
+Ney in the early morning of the 17th. But Ney was silent and sulky;
+Napoleon himself was greatly fatigued, and Soult was of no service to
+him.
+
+During the night the Prussians "had folded their tents like the Arabs,
+and as silently stolen away." They had neither been watched nor
+followed up, all touch of them had been lost, and there was nothing to
+indicate their line of retreat. This slovenliness on the part of the
+French would not have occurred in Napoleon's earlier days; nor in those
+days of greater vigour would he have delayed until after midday of the
+17th to follow up an army which he had defeated on the previous
+evening, and which had disappeared from before him in the course of the
+night. The reports which had been sent in from a cavalry reconnaissance
+despatched in the morning indicated that the Prussians were retiring on
+Namur. No reconnaissance had been made in the direction of Tilly and
+Wavre. This was a strange error, since Bluecher had two corps still
+untouched, and as above everything a fighting man, was not likely to
+throw up his hands and forsake his ally after one partial discomfiture.
+Napoleon tardily determined to despatch Grouchy on the errand of
+following up the Prussians with a force consisting of about 33,000 men
+with ninety-six guns. Thus far all authorities are agreed; but as
+regards the character of the orders given to Grouchy for his guidance
+in an obviously somewhat complicated enterprise, there is an
+extraordinary contrariety of evidence. It is stated in the _St. Helena
+Memoirs_ that Grouchy received positive orders to keep himself always
+between the main French army and Bluecher; to maintain constant
+communication with the former and in a position easily to rejoin it;
+that since it was possible that Bluecher might retreat on Wavre, he
+(Grouchy) was to be there simultaneously; if the Prussians should
+continue their march on Brussels and should pass the night in the
+forest of Soignies, he was to follow to the edge of the forest; should
+they retire on the Meuse, he was to watch them with part of his cavalry
+and himself occupy Wavre with the mass of his force, where he should be
+in position for easy communication with Napoleon's headquarters. Those
+orders are certainly specific enough, but there is no record of them;
+and they may be assumed to represent rather what Napoleon at St. Helena
+considered Grouchy should have done, than what he was actually ordered
+to do.
+
+Grouchy's version, again--and it is adequately corroborated--is to the
+effect that about midday of the 17th on the field of Ligny, the Emperor
+gave him the verbal order to take the 3rd and 4th Corps and certain
+cavalry and "go in pursuit of the Prussians." Grouchy raised sundry
+objections which the Emperor overruled and repeated his commands,
+adding that "it was for me (Grouchy) to discover the route taken by
+Bluecher; that he himself was going to fight the English, and that it
+was for me to complete the defeat of the Prussians by attacking them as
+soon as I should have caught up with them." So much for Grouchy for the
+moment.
+
+Soon after the Emperor had given Grouchy this verbal order, tidings
+came in from a scouting party that a body of Prussian troops had been
+seen about 9 A.M. at Gembloux, considerably northward of the Namur
+road. The abstract probability no doubt was that the Prussians would
+retire towards their base. But that Napoleon kept an open mind on the
+subject is evidenced by his instruction to Grouchy to "go and discover
+the route taken by Bluecher," and this later intelligence, it may be
+assumed, opened his mind yet further. He thought it well, then, to send
+to Grouchy a supplementary written order which in the temporary absence
+of Marshal Soult he dictated to General Bertrand. This order enjoined
+on Grouchy to proceed with his force to Gembloux; to explore in the
+directions of Namur and Maestricht; to pursue the enemy; explore his
+march; and report upon his manoeuvres, so that "I (Napoleon) may be
+able to penetrate what the enemy is intending to do; whether he is
+separating himself from the English, or whether they are intending
+still to unite in trying the fate of another battle to cover Brussels
+or Liege." To me I confess--and the view is also that of Chesney and
+Maurice--this written order is simply an amplification in detail of the
+previous verbal order, which by instructing Grouchy "to discover the
+route taken by Bluecher" clearly evinced doubt in Napoleon's mind as to
+the Prussian line of retreat. Mr. Ropes, on the other hand, bases an
+indictment on Grouchy's conduct on the argument that not only was the
+tone of the written order altogether different from that of the verbal
+order, but that the duty assigned to Grouchy by the former was wholly
+different from that specified in the latter.
+
+He adds that Grouchy constantly and persistently denied having received
+any other than the verbal order, that in this denial Grouchy lied, and
+that "the mischievous influence of this deliberate concealment of his
+orders by Grouchy caused for nearly thirty years after the battle of
+Waterloo to be prevalent a wholly false notion as to the task assigned
+by Napoleon to the Marshal." Certainly Grouchy's conduct is
+inexplicable to any one holding the belief, as I do, that there is
+nothing in the written order to account for Grouchy's denial of having
+received it. It is more inexplicable than Mr. Ropes appears to be aware
+of. It is true, as Mr. Ropes proves, that Grouchy vehemently denied
+receiving the written order in all his works printed from 1818 to 1829.
+But he had actually acknowledged its receipt almost immediately after
+Waterloo. In his son's little book, _Le Marechal de Grouchy du 16me au
+19me Juin, 1815,_ is printed among the _Documents Historiques Inedits_
+a paper styled "Allocution du Marechal Grouchy a quelques-uns des
+officiers generaux sous les ordres, lorsqu'il eut appris les desastres
+de Waterloo." From this document I make the following extract: "A few
+hours later the Emperor modified his first order, and caused to be
+written to me by the Grand Marshal Bertrand the order to betake myself
+to Gembloux, and to send reconnaissances towards Namur. 'It is
+important,' continued the order, 'to discover the intentions of the
+Prussians--whether they are separating from the English, or have the
+design to take the chance of a new battle.'" It is strange that this
+acknowledgment should never have been cited against Grouchy; stranger
+still that in the face of it he should have maintained his denials; yet
+more strange that those denials were never exposed; and most strange of
+all, that finally the "written order" should have appeared for the
+first time in a casual article published in 1842, without evoking any
+explanation from Grouchy, or any strictures on his persistent mendacity.
+
+It may be questioned whether the force of 33,000 men entrusted to
+Grouchy was not either too large or too small. The main French army, in
+the possible contingencies before it, could not safely spare so large a
+detachment, as events showed. Grouchy's command was not sufficiently
+strong to oppose the whole Prussian army; two corps of which could
+certainly have "held" it, while the other two were free to support
+Wellington. Mr. Ropes thinks it might have been diminished by one-half,
+but then a single Prussian corps could have dealt with it. It is
+difficult to discern in what respect the 6000 cavalry assigned to
+Grouchy should have been inadequate to such service as could reasonably
+have been expected of his whole command.
+
+The British force about Quatre Bras on the morning of the 17th amounted
+to about 45,000 men. Early on that morning Wellington was in
+conversation with the Captain Bowles previously mentioned, when an
+officer galloped up and, to quote Captain Bowles,
+
+  whispered to the Duke, who then turned to me and said,
+  "Old Bluecher has had a d----d good licking and has gone
+  back to Wavre. As he has gone back, we must go too. I
+  suppose in England they will say we have been licked--I
+  can't help that."
+
+He quietly withdrew his troops from their positions, an operation which
+Ney, with 40,000 men at his disposal, did not attempt to molest,
+notwithstanding repeated orders from Napoleon to move on Quatre Bras.
+Early in the afternoon Napoleon reached that vicinity with the Guard,
+6th Corps, and Milhaud's Cuirassiers, picked up Ney's command, and
+mounting his horse led the French army, following up Wellington's
+retreat. His energy and activity throughout the march is described as
+intense. Those characteristics he continued to evince during the
+following night and in the morning of the eventful 18th. In the dead of
+night he spent two hours on the picquet line, and about seven he was
+out again on the foreposts in the mud and rain. His anxiety was not as
+to the issue of a battle with Wellington, but lest Wellington should
+not stand and fight. That apprehension was dispelled when, as he rode
+along his front about 8 A.M., he saw the Anglo-Dutch army taking up its
+ground. He was aware that at least one "pretty strong Prussian
+column"--which actually consisted of the two corps beaten at Ligny--had
+retired on Wavre. But notwithstanding the disquieting vagueness and
+ineptitude of Grouchy's letter of 10 P.M. of the 17th from Gembloux,
+and that up to the morning of the battle he had sent no suggestions or
+instructions to that officer, he yet trusted implicitly to him to fend
+off the Prussians; and it did not seem to occur to him that
+Wellington's calm expectant attitude indicated his assurance of
+Bluecher's cooperation.
+
+In one of the cavalry charges toward the close of the battle of Ligny,
+Bluecher had been overthrown, ridden over, almost taken prisoner, and
+severely bruised; but the gallant old hussar was almost himself again
+next morning, thanks to copious doses of gin and rhubarb, for the
+effluvium of which restorative he apologised to Hardinge as he embraced
+that wounded officer, in the extremely plain expression, "_Ich stinke
+etwas_." Gneisenau, his Chief of Staff, rather distrusted Wellington's
+good faith, and doubted whether it was not the safer policy for the
+Prussian army to fall back toward Liege. But Bluecher prevailed over his
+lieutenants; and on the evening of the 17th all four Prussian corps in
+a strength of about 90,000 men, were concentrated about Wavre, some
+nine miles east of the Waterloo position, full of ardour and confident
+of success. That same night Mueffling informed Bluecher by letter that
+the Anglo-Dutch army had occupied the position named, wherein to fight
+next day; and Bluecher's loyal answer was that Buelow's corps at daybreak
+should march by way of St. Lambert to strike the French right; that
+Pirch's would follow in support; and that the other two would stand in
+readiness. This communication, which reached Wellington at headquarters
+at 2 A.M. of the 18th, has been held to have been the first actually
+definite assurance of Prussian support. The story to the effect that on
+the evening of the 17th the Duke rode over to Wavre to make sure from
+Bluecher's own mouth that he could rely on Prussian support next day, to
+the truth of which not a little of vague testimony has been adduced,
+may be now definitely disregarded. The evidence against the legend is
+conclusive. An authoritative contradiction was given to it in an
+article in the _Quarterly Review_ of 1842, from the pen of Lord Francis
+Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, who confessedly wrote under the
+inspiration of the Duke, and in this instance directly from a
+memorandum drawn up by his Grace. Quite recently there have been found
+and are now in the possession of the Rev. Frederick Gurney, the
+grandson of the late Sir John Gurney, the notes of a "conversation with
+the Duke of Wellington and Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Williams,
+Judges on Circuit, at Strath-fieldsaye House, on 24th February 1837."
+The annotator was Baron Gurney, to the following effect:--"The
+conversation had been commenced by my inquiring of him (the Duke)
+whether a story which I had heard was true of his having ridden over to
+Bluecher on the night before the battle of Waterloo, and returned on the
+same horse. He said--'No, that was not so. I did not see Bluecher on the
+day before Waterloo. I saw him the day before, on the day of Quatre
+Bras. I saw him after Waterloo, and he kissed me. He embraced me on
+horseback. I had communicated with him the day before Waterloo.'" The
+rest of the conversation made no further reference to the topic of the
+ride to Wavre.
+
+It is not proposed to give here any account of the memorable battle,
+the main incidents of which are familiar to all. It was of course
+Wellington's policy to take up a defensive attitude; both because of
+the incapacity of his raw soldiers for manoeuvring, and since every
+minute before Napoleon should begin the offensive was of value to the
+English commander, as it diminished the length of punishment he would
+have to endure single-handed. Further, he was numerically weaker than
+his adversary, while his troops were at once of divers nationalities
+and divers character; his main reliance was on his British troops and
+those of the King's German Legion. Napoleon for his part deliberately
+delayed to attack when celerity of action was all-important to him,
+disregarding the obvious probability of Prussian assistance to
+Wellington, and sanguinely expecting that Grouchy would either avert
+that support or reach him in time to neutralise it. Mr. Ropes has
+written an admirable criticism of the errors of the French in their
+contest with the Anglo-Dutch army, for which Ney was for the most part
+responsible, since from before 3 P.M. Napoleon was engrossed in
+preparing his right flank for defence against the Prussians. The issue
+of the great battle all men know. The badness of the roads retarded the
+Prussians greatly, and, save in Buelow's corps, there was no doubt
+considerable delay in starting; but the proverb that "All's well that
+ends well" might have been coined with special application to the
+battle of Waterloo.
+
+It only remains briefly to refer to Mr. Ropes's elaborate _resume_ of
+the melancholy adventures of Grouchy, on whom he may be regarded as too
+severe. Sent out too late on a species of roving commission, more was
+expected from him by Napoleon than could have been accomplished by any
+but a leader of the highest order, whereas Grouchy had never given
+evidence of being more than respectable. He received from his master
+neither instructions nor information from the time he left the field of
+Ligny until 4 P.M. of the 18th, nor until at Walhain he heard the
+cannonade of Waterloo had he any knowledge of the whereabouts of the
+French main army. On the morning of the 18th he was late in leaving
+Gembloux, on not the most direct route towards Wavre; instead of moving
+on which, when he heard the noise of the battle, he should no doubt
+have marched straight for the Dyle bridges at Ottignies and Moustier.
+Had he done so, spite of all delays he could have been across the Dyle
+by 4 P.M. But when Mr. Ropes claims that thus Grouchy would have been
+able to arrest the march toward the battlefield of the two leading
+Prussian corps, one of which was four miles distant from him and the
+other still farther away, he is too exacting. Had Grouchy made the vain
+attempt, the two nearer Prussian corps would have taken him in flank
+and headed him off, while Buelow and Ziethen pressed on to the
+battlefield. If he had marched straight and swiftly on the
+cannon-thunder of Waterloo, he might perhaps have been in time to
+effect something in the nature of a diversion, although it is extremely
+improbable that he could have materially changed the fortune of the
+day; but instead, acting on the letter of Napoleon's instructions
+despatched to him on the morning of the battle, he moved on Wavre and
+engaged in a futile action with the Prussian 3rd Corps there. A shrewd
+and enterprising man would have at least seen into the spirit of his
+orders; Grouchy could not do this, and he is to be pitied rather than
+blamed.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Camps, Quarters and Casual Places, by
+Archibald Forbes
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES ***
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+Project Gutenberg's Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places, by Archibald Forbes
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+Title: Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
+
+Author: Archibald Forbes
+
+Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9460]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 3, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPS, QUARTERS, AND CASUAL PLACES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, Andy Schmitt and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES
+
+BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in this
+volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James Knowles of
+the _Nineteenth Century_, Mr. Percy Bunting of the _Contemporary Review_,
+and the Proprietor of _McClure's Magazine_.
+
+LONDON, _June_ 1896.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+1. MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
+
+2. REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
+
+3. GERMAN WAR PRAYERS
+
+4. MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
+
+5. A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
+
+6. HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
+
+7. CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
+
+8. THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
+
+9. RAILWAY LIZZ
+
+10. MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
+
+11. THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
+
+12. BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
+
+13. THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
+
+14. THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
+
+15. GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
+
+16. THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY
+
+17. THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
+
+18. PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
+
+19. THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
+
+
+
+
+MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
+
+
+The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of 1870-71,
+and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince Imperial received
+his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at Saarbruecken; to which
+pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself, in the anticipation,
+which proved well founded, that the tide of war would flow that way first.
+What a pity it is that all war cannot be like this early phase of it, of
+which I speak! It was playing at warfare, with just enough of the grim
+reality cropping up occasionally, to give the zest which the reckless
+Frenchwoman declared was added to a pleasure by its being also a sin. The
+officers of the Hohenzollerns--our only infantry regiment in garrison--
+drank their beer placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as
+their men smoked drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms
+ready for use at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the
+frontier line every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with
+little result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or
+down in the valley bounded by the Schoenecken wood. The Uhlans, their
+piebald lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round
+the crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising
+mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them from
+time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they were, now
+and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the ground--an occurrence
+invariably followed by a little spurt of lively hostility.
+
+I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on the
+St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern officers
+frequented the _table d'hote_ and where quaint little Max, the drollest
+imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Frauelein Sophie the landlord's
+niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the pleasantness and
+comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did I spend at the table
+of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped red head of silent and
+genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over the great ice-pail, with its
+_chevaux de frise_ of long-necked Niersteiner bottles--the worthy
+Hauptmann supported by blithe Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with
+the _Wacht am Rhein_; quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of
+"six-and-sixty" and as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or
+clink a glass; gay young Adjutant von Zuelow--he who one day brought in a
+prisoner from the foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of
+his saddle; and many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the
+Spicheren, or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.
+
+But although the Rheinischer Hof associates itself in my mind with many
+memories, half-pleasant, half-sad, it was not the most accustomed haunt of
+the casuals in Saarbruecken, including myself. Of the waifs and strays
+which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the great
+rendezvous was the Hotel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading from the
+bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a free-and-easy place
+compared with the Rheinischer, and among its inmates there was no one who
+could sing a better song than manly George--type of the Briton at whom
+foreigners stare--who, ignorant of a word of their language, wholly
+unprovided with any authorisation save the passport signed "Salisbury,"
+and having not quite so much business at the seat of war as he might have
+at the bottom of a coal-mine, gravitates into danger with inevitable
+certainty, and stumbles through all manner of difficulties and bothers by
+reason of a serene good-humour that nothing can ruffle and a cool
+resolution before which every obstacle fades away. Was there ever a more
+compositely polyglot cosmopolitan than poor young de Liefde--half
+Dutchman, half German by birth, an Englishman by adoption, a Frenchman in
+temperament, speaking with equal fluency the language of all four
+countries, and an unconsidered trifle of some half-dozen European
+languages besides? Then there was the English student from Bonn, who had
+come down to the front accompanied by a terrible brute of a dog, vast,
+shaggy, self-willed, and dirty; an animal which, so to speak, owned his
+owner, and was so much the horror and disgust of everybody that on account
+of him the company of his master--one of the pleasantest fellows alive--
+was the source of general apprehension. There was young Silberer the
+many-sided and eccentric, an Austrian nobleman, a Vienna feuilletonist and
+correspondent, a rowing man, a gourmet, ever thinking of his stomach and
+yet prepared for all the roughness of the campaign--warm-hearted,
+passionate, narrow-minded, capable of sleeping for twenty-three out of the
+twenty-four hours, and the wearer of a Scotch cap. There was Kuester, a
+German journalist with an address somewhere in the Downham Road; and Duff,
+a Fellow of ---- College, the strangest mixture of nervousness and cool
+courage I ever met.
+
+We were a kind of happy family at the Hagen; the tone of the coterie was
+that of the easiest intimacy into which every newcomer slid quite
+naturally. Thus when on the 31st July there was a somewhat sensational
+arrival, the stolid landlord had not turned the gas on in the empty saal
+before everybody knew and sympathised with the errand of the strangers.
+The party consisted of a plump little girl of about eighteen with a bonny
+round face and fine frank eyes; her sister who was some years older; and a
+brother, the eldest of the three. They had come from Silesia on rather a
+strange tryst. Little Minna Vogt had for her _Braeutigam_ a young Feldwebel
+of the second battalion of the Hohenzollerns, a native of Saarlouis. The
+battalion quartered there was under orders to join its first battalion at
+Saarbruecken, and young Eckenstein had written to his betrothed to come and
+meet him there, that the marriage-knot might be tied before he should go
+on a campaign from which he might not return. The arrangement was
+certainly a charming one; we should have a wedding in the Hagen! There was
+no nonsense about our young _Braut_. She told me the little story at
+supper on the night of her arrival in the most matter-of-fact way
+possible, drank her two glasses of red wine, and went off serenely to bed
+with a dainty lisping _Schlafen Sie wohl!_
+
+While Minna was between the sheets in the pleasant chamber in the Hagen
+her lover was lying in bivouac some fifteen miles away. In the afternoon
+of the next day his battalion approached Saarbruecken and bivouacked about
+two miles from the town. Of course we all went out to welcome it; some
+bearing peace-offerings of cigars, others the drink-offering of potent
+Schnapps. The Vogt family were left the sole inmates of the Hagen,
+delicacy preventing their accompanying us. The German journalist, however,
+had a commission to find out young Eckenstein and tell him of the bliss
+that awaited him two short miles away. Right hearty fellows were the
+officers of the second battalion--from the grizzled Oberst down to the
+smooth-faced junior lieutenant; and the men who had been marching and
+bivouacking for a fortnight looked as fresh as if they had not travelled
+five miles. Kuester soon found the young Feldwebel; and the Hauptmann of
+his company when he heard the state of the case, smiled a grim but kindly
+smile, and gave him leave for two days with the proviso, that if any
+hostile action should be taken in the interval he should rejoin the
+colours immediately and without notice. "No fear of that!" was
+Eckenstein's reply with a significant down glance at his sword; and then,
+after a cheery "good-night" to the hardy bivouackers, we visitors started
+in triumph on our return to the Hagen, the young Feldwebel in our midst It
+was good to see the unrestraint with which Minna--she of the apple face
+and frank eyes--threw herself round the neck of her betrothed as she met
+him on the steps of the Hagen, and his modest manly blush as he returned
+the embrace. Ye gods! did not we make a night of it! Stolid Hagen came out
+of his shell for once, and swore, _Donner Wetter_ that he would give us a
+supper we should remember; and he kept his word. The good old pastor of
+the snow-white hair and withered cheeks--he had been engaged to perform
+the ceremony of the morrow--we voted into the chair whether he would or
+not; and on his right sat Minna and Eckenstein, their arms interlacing and
+whispering soft speeches which were not for our ears. The table was
+covered with bottles of Blume de Saar, the champagne peculiar of the Hagen;
+and the speed with which the full bottles were converted into "dead
+marines" was a caution to teetotallers. Then de Liefde the polyglot gave
+the health of the happy couple in a felicitous but composite speech, in
+which half a dozen languages were impartially intermixed so that all might
+understand at least a portion. George the jolly insisted in leading off
+the honours with a truly British "three times three;" and that horrible
+dog of Hyndman's gave the time, like a beast as he was, with stentorian
+barkings. Then Minna and her sister retired, followed by Herr Pastor; and
+after a considerable number of more bottles of Blume de Saar had met their
+fate we formed a procession and escorted the happy Eckenstein to the
+Rheinischer Hof where he was to sleep.
+
+Next morning by eleven, we had all reassembled in the second saal of the
+Hagen. In the great room the marriage-breakfast was laid out, and in the
+kitchen Hagen and his Frau were up to their eyes in mystic culinary
+operations. Minna looked like a rosebud in her pretty low-necked blue
+dress, and the pastor in his cassock helped to the diversity of colour. We
+had done shaking hands with the bride and bridegroom after the ceremony,
+and were sitting down to the marriage feast, when young Eckenstein started
+and made three strides to the open window. His accustomed ear had caught a
+sound which none of us had heard. It was the sharp peremptory note of the
+drum beating the alarm. As it came nearer and could no longer be mistaken,
+the bright colour went out from poor Minna's cheek and she clung with a
+brave touching silence to her sister. In two minutes more Eckenstein had
+his helmet on his head and his sword buckled on, and then he turned to say
+farewell to his girl ere he left her for the battle. The parting was
+silent and brief; but the faces of the two were more eloquent than words.
+Poor Minna sat down by the window straining her eyes as Eckenstein,
+running at speed, went his way to the rendezvous.
+
+When I got up to the Bellevue the French were streaming in overwhelming
+force down the slope of the Spicheren into the intervening valley. It was
+a beautiful sight; but I am not going to describe it here. Ere an hour was
+over the shells and chassepot bullets were sweeping across the Exercise
+Platz, and it was no longer a safe spot for a non-combatant like myself.
+Before I got back into the Hagen after paying my bill at the Rheinischer
+and fetching away my knapsack, the French guns were on the Exercise Platz.
+I heard for the first time the angry screech of the mitrailleuse and saw
+the hailstorm of its bullets spattering on the pavement of the bridge.
+Somehow or other the whole of our little coterie had found their way into
+the Hagen; by a sort of common impulse, I imagine. The landlady was
+already in hysterics; the Vogt girls were pale but plucky. Presently the
+shells began to fly. The Prussians had a gun or two on the railway
+esplanade above us, the fire of which the French began to return fiercely.
+Every shell that fell short tumbled in or about the Hagen; and a company
+of the Hohenzollerns was drawn up in the street in front of it, in trying
+to dislodge which the French fire could not well miss the Hagen and the
+houses opposite. A shell burst in the back-yard and the landlady fainted.
+Another came crashing in through a first-floor window, and, bursting,
+knocked several bedrooms into one. Then we thought it time to get the
+women down into the cellar--rather a risky undertaking since the door of
+it was in the backyard. However, we got them all down in safety and came
+up into the second saal to watch the course of events. Hagen gave a
+fearful groan as a shell broke into the kitchen behind us, and, bursting
+in the centre of the stove, sent his _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of cookery sputtering
+in all directions. He gave a still deeper groan as another shell crashed
+into the principal dining-room and knocked the long table, laid out as it
+was for the marriage-feast, into a chaos of splinters, tablecloth, and
+knives and forks. The Restauration Kueche on the other side was in flames,
+so was the stable of the hotel to the left rear. In this pleasing
+situation of affairs George produced a pack of cards and coolly proposed a
+game of whist. Kuester, de Liefde, and Hyndman joined him; and the game
+proceeded amidst the crashing of the projectiles. Silberer and myself took
+counsel together and agreed that the occupation of the town by the French
+was only a question of a few hours at latest. We were both correspondents;
+and although the French would do us no harm our communications with our
+journals would inevitably be stopped--a serious contingency to contemplate
+at the beginning of a campaign. We both agreed that evacuation of the
+Hagen was imperative; but then, how to get out? The only way was up the
+esplanade to the railway station, and upon it the French shells were
+falling and bursting in numbers very trying to the nerves. However, there
+was nothing for it but to make a rush through the fire; and saying
+good-bye to the whist-players we sallied forth. To my disgust I found that
+Silberer positively refused to make a rush of it. Although an Austrian all
+his sympathies were Prussian, and he had the utmost contempt for the
+French. In his broken language his invariable appellation for them was
+"God-damned Hundsoehne!" and he would not run before them at any price. I
+would have run right gladly at top-speed; but I did not like to run when
+another man walked, and so he made me saunter at the rate of two miles an
+hour till we got under shelter. After a hot walk of several miles, we
+reached the Hotel Till in the village of Duttweiler. After all the French,
+although they might have done so, did not occupy Saarbruecken; and towards
+evening our friends came dropping into the Hotel Till, singly or in pairs.
+Kuester and George brought the Vogt sisters out in a waggon--it was
+surprising to see the coolness and composure of the girls. By nightfall we
+were all reunited, except one unfortunate fellow who had been slightly
+wounded and whom a Saarbruecken doctor had kindly received into his house.
+
+On the 6th August came the Prussian repossession of Saarbruecken and the
+desperate storm of the Spicheren. The 40th was the regiment to which was
+assigned the place of honour in the preliminary recapture of the Exercise
+Platz height. Kameke rode up the winding road to the Bellevue; then came
+the march across the broad valley and after much bloodshed the final storm
+of the Spicheren, in which the 40th occupied about the left centre of the
+Prussian advance. Three times did the blue wave surge up the green steep,
+to be beaten back three times by the terrible blast of fire that crashed
+down upon it from above. Yet a fourth time it clambered up again, and this
+time it lipped the brink and poured over the intrenchment at the top. But
+I am not describing the battle.
+
+When it was over or at least when it had drifted away across the farther
+plateau, I followed on in the broad wake of dying and dead which the
+advance had left. The familiar faces of the Hohenzollerns were all around
+me; but either still in death or writhing in the torture of wounds. About
+the centre of the valley lay the genial Hauptmann von Krehl, more silent
+than ever now, for a bullet had gone right through that red head of his
+and he would never more quaff of the Niersteiner; neither would Lieutenant
+von Klipphausen ever again stir the blood of the sons of the Fatherland
+with the _Wacht am Rhein_; he lay dead close by the first spur of the
+slope--what of him at least a bursting shell had left. On a little flat
+half up sat quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, like Mark Tapley jolly under
+difficulties; by his side lay a man who had just bled to death as the good
+doctor explained to me. While he had been applying the tourniquet under a
+hot fire his right arm had been broken; and before he could pull himself
+up and go to the rear another bullet had found its billet in his thigh.
+There the little man sat, contentedly smoking till somebody would be good
+enough to come and take him away. Von Zuelow too--he of the gay laugh and
+sprightly countenance--was on his back a little higher up, with a bullet
+through the chest. I heard the ominous sound of the escaping air as I
+raised him to give him a drink from my flask. What needs it to become
+diffuse as to the terrible sights which that steep and the plateau above
+it presented on this beautiful summer evening? It was farther to the
+right, in ground more broken with gullies and ravines, that the second
+battalion of the Hohenzollerns had gone up; and I wandered along there
+among the carnage eking out the contents of my flask as far as I could,
+and when the wounded had exhausted the brandy in it filling it up with
+water and still toiling on in a task that seemed endless. At last, in a
+sitting posture, his back against a hawthorn tree in one of the grassy
+ravines, I saw one whom I thought I recognised. "Eckenstein!" I cried as I
+ran forward; for the posture was so natural that I could not but think he
+was alive. Alas! no answer came; the gallant young Feldwebel was dead,
+shot through the throat. He had not been killed outright by the fatal
+bullet; the track was apparent by the blood on the grass along which he
+had crawled to the hawthorn tree against which I found him. His head had
+fallen forward on his chest and his right hand was pressed against his
+left breast. I saw something white in the hollow of the hand and easily
+moved the arm for he was yet warm; it was the photograph of the little
+girl he had married but three short days before. The frank eyes looked up
+at me with a merry unconsciousness; and the face of the photograph was
+spotted with the life-blood of the young soldier.
+
+I sent the death-token to Saarlouis by post to the young widow. I never
+knew whether she received it, for all the address I had was Saarlouis.
+Eckenstein I saw buried with two officers in a soldier's grave under the
+hawthorn. Any one taking the ascent up the fourth ravine Forbach-ward from
+the bluff of the Spicheren, may easily find it about halfway up. It may be
+recognised by the wooden cross bearing the rude inscription: "Hier ruhen
+in Gott 2 Officiere, 1 Feldwebel, 40ste Hohenzol. Fus. Regt."
+
+
+
+
+REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
+
+1879
+
+
+By Christmas 1878 the winter had brought to a temporary standstill the
+operations of the British troops engaged in the first Afghan campaign, and
+I took the opportunity of this inaction to make a journey into Native
+Burmah, the condition of which seemed thus early to portend the interest
+which almost immediately after converged upon it, because of King Thebau's
+wholesale slaughter of his relatives. Reaching Mandalay, the capital of
+Native Burmah, in the beginning of February 1879, I immediately set about
+compassing an interview with the young king. Both Mr. Shaw, who was our
+Resident at Mandalay at the time of my visit, and Dr. Clement Williams
+whose kindly services I found so useful, are now dead, and many changes
+have occurred since the episode described below; but no description, so
+far as I am aware, has appeared of any visit of courtesy and curiosity to
+the Court of King Thebau of a later date than that made by myself at the
+date specified. One of my principal objects in visiting Mandalay, or, in
+Burmese phrase, of "coming to the Golden Feet," was to see the King of
+Burmah in his royal state in the Presence Chamber of the Palace. Certain
+difficulties stood in the way of the accomplishment of this object. I had
+but a few days to spend in Mandalay. With the approval of Mr. Shaw, the
+British Resident, I determined to pursue an informal course of action, and
+with this intent I enlisted the good offices of an English gentleman
+resident in Mandalay, who had intimate relations with the Ministers and
+the Court.
+
+This gentleman, Dr. Williams, was good enough to help me with zeal and
+address. The line of strategy to adopt was to interest in my cause one of
+the principal Ministers. Of these there were four, who constituted the
+_Hlwot-dau_, or High Court and Council of the Monarchy. These "Woonghys"
+or "Menghyis," as they were more commonly called--"Menghyi," meaning
+"Great Prince"--were of equal rank; but the senior Minister, the
+Yenangyoung Menghyi, who had precedence, was then in confinement, and,
+indeed, a decree of degradation had gone forth against him. Obviously he
+was of no use; but a more influential man than he ever was, and having the
+additional advantages of being at liberty, in power and in favour, was the
+"Kingwoon Menghyi." He was in effect the Prime Minister of the King of
+Burmah. His position was roughly equivalent to that of Bismarck in
+Germany, or of Gortschakoff in Russia, since, in addition to his internal
+influence, he had the chief direction of foreign affairs. Now this
+"Kingwoon Menghyi" had for a day or two been relaxing from the cares of
+State. Partly for his own pleasure, partly by way of example, he had laid
+out a beautiful garden on the low ground near the river. Within this
+garden he had the intention to build himself a suburban residence, which
+meanwhile was represented by a summer pavilion of teak and bamboo. He was
+a liberal-minded man, and it was a satisfaction to him that the shady
+walks and pleasant rose-groves of this garden should be enjoyed by the
+people of Mandalay. He was a reformer, this "Kingwoon Menghyi," and
+believed in the humanising effect of free access to the charms of nature.
+His garden laid out and his pavilion finished, he was celebrating the
+event by a series of _fetes._ He was "at home" in his pavilion to
+everybody; bands of music played all day long and day after day, in the
+kiosks, among the young palm trees and the rosebushes. Mandalay, high and
+low, made holiday in the mazy walks of his garden and in an improvised
+theatre, wherein an interminable _pooey,_ or Burmese drama, was being
+enacted before ever-varying and constantly appreciative audiences. Dr.
+Williams opined that it would conduce to the success of my object that we
+should call upon the Minister at his garden-house and request him to use
+his good offices in my behalf.
+
+It was near noon when we reached the entrance to the garden. Merry but
+orderly sightseers thronged its alleys, and stared with wondering
+admiration at a rather attenuated jet of water which rose into the clear
+air some thirty feet above a rockwork fountain in the centre. Dignitaries
+strolled about under the stemless umbrellas like huge shields, with which
+assiduous attendants protected them from the sun; and were followed by
+posses of retainers, who prostrated themselves whenever their masters
+halted or looked round. Ladies in white jackets and trailing silk skirts
+of vivid hue were taking a leisurely airing, each with her demure maid
+behind her carrying the lacquer-ware box of betel-nut. As often as not the
+fair ones were blowing copious clouds from huge reed-like cheroots. Sounds
+of shrill music were heard in the distance. Walking up the central alley
+between the rows of palms and the hedges of roses, we found in the veranda
+a mixed crowd of laymen and priests, the latter distinguishable by their
+shaved heads and yellow robes. The Minister was just finishing his
+morning's work of distributing offerings to the latter, in commemoration
+of the opening of his gardens. In response to a message, he at once sent
+to desire that we should come to him. The great "shoe-question," the
+_quaestio vexata_ between British officialism and Burmah officialism, did
+not trouble me. I had no official position; I wanted to gain an object. I
+have a respect for the honour of my country, but I could not bring myself
+to realise that the national honour centres in my shoes. So I parted with
+them at the top of the steps leading up into the Minister's pavilion, and
+walking on what is known as my "stocking-feet," and feeling rather
+shuffling and shabby accordingly, was ushered through a throng of
+prostrate dependents into the presence of the Menghyi. He came forward
+frankly and cordially, shook hands with a hearty smile with Dr. Williams
+and myself, and beckoned us into an inner alcove, carpeted with rich rugs
+and panelled with mirrors. Placing himself in a half-sitting,
+half-kneeling attitude which did not expose his feet, he beckoned to us to
+get down also. I own to having experienced extreme difficulty in keeping
+my feet out of sight, which was a point _de rigueur_; but his Excellency
+was not censorious. There was with him a secretary who had resided several
+years in Europe, and who spoke fluently English, French, and Italian. This
+gentleman knew London thoroughly, and was perfectly familiar both with the
+name of the _Daily News_ and of myself. He introduced me formally to his
+Excellency, who, I ought to have mentioned, was the head of the Burmese
+Embassy which had visited Europe a few years previously. That his
+Excellency had some sort of knowledge of the political character of the
+_Daily News_ was obvious from the circumstance that when its name was
+mentioned he nodded and exclaimed, "Ah! ah! Gladstone, Bright!" in tones
+of manifest approval, which was no doubt accounted for by the fact that he
+himself was a pronounced Liberal. I explained that I had come to Mandalay
+to learn as much about Burmese manners, customs, and institutions as was
+possible in four days, with intent to embody my impressions in letters to
+England; and that as the King was the chief institution of the country, I
+had a keen anxiety to see him and begged of his Excellency to lend me his
+aid toward doing so. He gave no direct reply, but certainly did not frown
+on the request. We were served with tea (without cream or sugar) in pretty
+china cups, and then the Menghyi, observing that we were looking at some
+quaint-shaped musical instruments at the foot of the dais, explained that
+they belonged to a band of rural performers from the Pegu district, and
+proposed that we should first hear them play and afterwards visit the
+theatre and witness the _pooey_. We assenting, he led the way from his
+pavilion through the garden to a pretty kiosk half-embosomed in foliage,
+and chairs having been brought the party sat down. We had put on our shoes
+as we quitted the dais. The Menghyi explained that it was pleasanter for
+him, as it must be for us, that we should change the manner of our
+reception from the Burmese to the European custom; and we were quite free
+to confess that we would sooner sit in chairs than squat on the floor.
+More tea was brought, and a plateful of cheroots. After we had sat a
+little while in the kiosk we were joined by the chief Under-Secretary for
+Foreign Affairs, the Baron de Giers of Burmah, a jovial, corpulent,
+elderly gentleman who had the most wonderful likeness to the late Pio
+Nono, and who clasped his brown hands over his fat paunch and kicked about
+his plump bare brown feet in high enjoyment when anything that struck him
+as humorous was uttered. He wholly differed in appearance from his
+superior, who was a lean-faced and lean-figured man, grave, and indeed
+somewhat sad both of eye and of visage when his face was in repose. As we
+talked, our conversation being through the interpreting secretary, there
+came to the curtained entrance to the kiosk a very dainty little lady. I
+had noticed her previously sauntering around the garden under one of the
+great shield-like shades, with a following of serving-men and
+serving-women behind her. She greeted the Menghyi very prettily, with the
+most perfect composure, although strangers were present. She was clearly a
+great pet with the Menghyi; he took her on his knee and played with her
+long black hair, as he told her about the visitors. The little lady was in
+her twelfth year, and was the daughter of a colleague and a relative of
+the Menghyi. She had an olive oval face, with lovely dark eyes, like the
+eyes of a deer. She wore a tiara of feathery white blossoms. In her ears
+were rosettes of chased red gold. Round her throat was a necklace of a
+double row of large pearls. Her fingers--I regret to say her nails were
+not very clean--were loaded with rings set with great diamonds of
+exceptional sparkle and water; one stone in particular must have been
+worth many thousands of pounds. She wore a jacket of white silk, and round
+her loins was girt a gay silken robe that trailed about her bare feet as
+she walked. She shook hands with us with a pretty shyness and immediately
+helped herself to a cheroot, affably accepting a light from mine. The
+Menghyi told us she was a great scholar--could read and write with
+facility, and had accomplishments to boot.
+
+By this time the provincial band had taken its place under one of the
+windows of the kiosk, and it presently struck up. Its music was not
+pretty. There were in the strange weird strain suggestions of gongs,
+bagpipes, penny whistles, and the humble tom-tom of Bengal. The gentleman
+who performed on an instrument which seemed a hybrid between a flute and a
+French horn, occasionally arrested his instrumental music to favour us
+with vocal strains, but he failed to compete successfully with the
+cymbals. I do not think the Menghyi was enraptured by the music of the
+strollers from Pegu, for he presently asked us whether we were ready to go
+to the _pooey_. He again led the way through a garden, passing in one
+corner of it a temporary house of which a company of Burmese nuns,
+short-haired, pallid-faced, unhappy-looking women, were in possession; and
+passing through a gate in the wicker-work fence ushered us into the
+"state-box" of the improvised theatre. There is very little labour
+required to construct a theatre in Burmah. Over a framework of bamboo
+poles stretch a number of squares of matting as a protection from the sun.
+Lay some more down in the centre as a flooring for the performers. Tie a
+few branches round the central bamboo to represent a forest, the perpetual
+set-scene of a Burmese drama; and the house is ready. The performers act
+and dance in the central square laid with matting. A little space on one
+side is reserved as a dressing and green room for the actresses; a similar
+space on the other side serves the turn of the actors; and then come the
+spectators crowding in on all four sides of the square. It is an orderly
+and easily managed audience; it may be added an easily amused audience.
+The youngsters are put or put themselves in front and squat down; the
+grown people kneel or stand behind. Our "state-box" was merely a raised
+platform laid with carpets and cushions, from which as we sat we looked
+over the heads of the throng squatting under and in front of us. Of the
+drama I cannot say that I carried away with me particularly clear
+impressions. True, I only saw a part of it--it was to last till the
+following morning; but long before I left the plot to me had become
+bewilderingly involved. The opening was a ballet; of that at least I am
+certain. There were six lady dancers and six gentlemen ditto. The ladies
+were arrayed in splendour, with tinsel tiaras, necklaces, and bracelets,
+gauzy jackets and waving scarfs; and with long, light clinging silken
+robes, of which there was at least a couple of yards on the "boards" about
+their feet. They were old, they were ugly, they leered fiendishly; their
+faces were plastered with powder in a ghastly fashion, and their coquetry
+behind their fans was the acme of caricature. But my pen halts when I
+would describe the gentlemen dancers. I believe that in reality they were
+not meant to represent fallen humanity at all; but were intended to
+personify _nats,_ the spirits or princes of the air of Burmese mythology.
+They carried on their heads pagodas of tinsel and coloured glass that
+towered imposingly aloft. They were arrayed in tight-bodiced coats with
+aprons before and behind of fantastic outline, resembling the wings of
+dragons and griffins, and these coats were an incrusted mass of spangles
+and pieces of coloured glass. Underneath a skirt of tartan silk was
+fitfully visible. Their brown legs and feet were bare. The expression of
+their faces was solemn, not to say lugubrious--one performer had a most
+whimsical resemblance to Mr. Toole when he is sunk in an abyss of dramatic
+woe. They realised the responsibilities of their position, and there were
+moments when these seemed too many for them. The orchestra, taken as a
+whole, was rather noisy; but it comprised one instrument, the "bamboo
+harmonicon," which deserves to be known out of Burmah because of its
+sweetness and range of tone. There were lots of "go" in the music, and
+every now and then one detected a kind of echo of a tune not unfamiliar in
+other climes. One's ear seemed to assure one that _Madame Angot_ had been
+laid under contribution to tickle the ears of a Mandalay audience, yet how
+could this be? The explanation was that the instrumentalists, occasionally
+visiting Thayet-myo or Rangoon, had listened there to the strains of our
+military bands, and had adapted these to the Burmese orchestra in some
+deft inscrutable manner, written music being unknown in the musical world
+of Burmah.
+
+Next day the Kingwoon Menghyi took the wholly unprecedented step of
+inviting to dinner the British Resident, his suite, and his visitor--
+myself. Mr. Shaw accepted the invitation, and I considered myself
+specially fortunate in being a participator in a species of intercourse at
+once so novel, and to all seeming so auspicious.
+
+About sundown the Residency party, joined _en route_ by Dr. Williams, rode
+down to the entrance to the gardens. Here we were warmly received by the
+English-speaking secretary, and by the jovial bow-windowed minister who so
+much resembled the late Pio Nono. We were escorted to the verandah of the
+pavilion, where the Menghyi himself stood waiting to greet us, and were
+ushered up to the broad, raised, carpeted platform which may be styled the
+drawing-room. Here was a semicircle of chairs. On our way to these, a long
+row of squatting Burmans was passed. As the Resident approached, the
+Menghyi gave the word, and they promptly stood erect in line. He explained
+that they were the superior officers of the army quartered in the capital--
+generals, he called them--whom he had asked to meet us. Of these officers
+one commanded the eastern guard of the Palace, the other the western; two
+others were aides-de-camp after a fashion. Just as the Menghyi and his
+subordinate colleagues represented the Ministry, so these military people
+represented the Court. The former was the moderate constitutional element
+of the gathering; the latter the "jingo" or personal government element,
+for the Burmese Court was reactionary, and those military sprigs were of
+the personal suite of the King and were understood to abet him in his
+falling away from the constitutional promise with which his reign began.
+Their presence rendered the occasion all the more significant. That they
+were deputed from the Palace to attend and watch events was pretty
+certain, and indeed the two aides went away immediately after dinner,
+their excuse being that his Majesty was expecting their personal
+attendance. After a little while of waiting, the _mauvais quart d'heure_
+having the edge of its awkwardness taken off by a series of introductions,
+dinner was announced, and the Menghyi, followed by the Resident, led the
+way into an adjoining dining-room. Good old Pio Nono, who, I ought to have
+said, had been with the Menghyi a member of the Burmese Embassy to Europe,
+jauntily offered me his arm, and gave me to understand that he did so in
+compliance with English fashion. The Resident sat on the right of the
+Menghyi, I was on his left; the rest of the party, to the number of about
+fifteen, took their places indiscriminately; Mr. Andrino, an Italian in
+Burmese employ, being at the head of the table, Dr. Williams at the foot.
+Our meal was a perfectly English dinner, served and eaten in the English
+fashion. The Burmese had taken lessons in the nice conduct of a knife and
+fork, and fed themselves in the most irreproachably conventional manner,
+carefully avoiding the use of a knife with their fish. Pio Nono, who sat
+opposite the Menghyi, tucked his napkin over his ample paunch and went in
+with a will. He was in a most hilarious mood, and taxed his memory for
+reminiscences of his visit to England. These were not expressed with
+useless expenditure of verbiage, nor did they flow in unbroken sequence.
+It was as if he dug in his memory with a spade, and found every now and
+then a gem in the shape of a name, which he brandished aloft in triumph.
+He kept up an intermittent and disconnected fire all through dinner, with
+an interval between each discharge, "White-bait!" "Lord Mayor!"
+"Fishmongers!" "Cremorne!" "Crystal Palace!" "Edinburgh!" "Dunrobin!"
+"Newcastle!" "Windsor!"--each name followed by a chuckle and a succession
+of nods. The Menghyi divided his talk between the Resident and myself. He
+told me that of all the men he had met in England his favourite was the
+late Duke of Sutherland; adding that the Duke was a nobleman of great and
+striking eloquence, a trait which I had not been in the habit of regarding
+as markedly characteristic of his Grace. He spoke with much warmth of a
+pleasant visit he had paid to Dunrobin, and said he should be heartily
+glad if the Duke would come to Burmah and give him an opportunity of
+returning his hospitality. Here Pio Nono broke in with one of his
+periodical exclamations. This time it was "Lady Dudley." Of her, and of
+her late husband, the Menghyi then recalled his recollections, and if more
+courtly tributes have been paid to her ladyship's charms and grace, I
+question if any have been heartier and more enthusiastic than was the
+appreciation of this Burmese dignitary. The soldier element was at first
+somewhat stiff, but as the dinner proceeded the generals warmed in
+conversation with the Resident. But the aides were obstinately
+supercilious, and only partially thawed in acknowledgment of compliments
+on the splendour of their jewelry. Functionaries attached to the personal
+suite of his Majesty wore huge ear-gems as a distinguishing mark. The
+aides had these in blazing diamonds, and were good enough to take out the
+ornaments and hand them round. The civil ministers wore no ornaments and
+their dress was studiously plain. We were during dinner entertained by
+music, instrumental and vocal, sedulously modulated to prevent
+conversation from being drowned. The meal lasted quite two hours, and when
+it was finished the Menghyi led the way to coffee in one of the kiosks of
+the garden. I should have said that no wine was on the table at dinner.
+The Burmese by religion are total abstainers, and their guests were
+willing to follow their example for the time and to fall in with their
+prejudices. After coffee we were ushered into the drawing-room, and
+listened to a concert. The only solo-vocalist was the prima donna _par
+excellence,_ Mdlle. Yeendun Male. The burden of her songs was love, but I
+could not succeed in having the specific terms translated. Then she sang
+an ode in praise of the Resident, and gracefully accepted his pecuniary
+appreciation of her performance. Pio Nono then beckoned to her to flatter
+me at close quarters; but, mistaking the index, she addressed herself to
+the Residency chaplain in strains of hyperbolical encomium. The mistake
+having been set right, much to the reverend gentleman's relief, the
+songstress overpowered my sensitive modesty by impassioned requests in
+verse that I should delay my departure; that, if I could not do so, I
+should take her away with me; and that, if this were beyond my power, I
+should at least remember her when I was far away. The which was an
+allegory and cost me twenty rupees.
+
+When the good-nights were being said, the Menghyi gratified me by the
+information that the King had given his consent to my presentation, and
+that I was to have the opportunity next morning of "Reverencing the Golden
+Feet."
+
+The Royal Palace occupied the central space of the city of Mandalay. It
+was almost entirely of woodwork, and was not only the counterpart of the
+palace which Major Phayre saw at Amarapoora, but the identical palace
+itself, conveyed piecemeal from its previous site and re-erected here. Its
+outermost enclosure consisted of a massive teak palisading, beyond which
+all round was a wide clear space laid out as an esplanade, the farther
+margin of which was edged by the houses of ministers and court officials.
+The Palace enclosure was a perfect square, each face about 370 yards. The
+main entrance, the only one in general use, was in the centre of the
+eastern face, almost opposite to which, across the esplanade, was the
+_Yoom-dau_, or High Court. This gate was called the _Yive-dau-yoo-Taga_,
+or the Royal Gate of the Chosen, because the charge of it was entrusted to
+chosen troops. As I passed through it on my way to be presented to his
+Majesty, the aspect of the "chosen" troops was not imposing. They wore no
+uniform, and differed in no perceptible item from the common coolies of
+the outside streets. They were lying about on charpoys and on the ground,
+chewing betel or smoking cheroots, and there was not even the pretence of
+there being sentries under arms. Some rows of old flintlock guns stood in
+racks in the gateway, rusty, dusty, and untended; they might have been
+untouched since the last insurrection. Crossing an intermediate space
+overgrown with shrubbery, we passed through a high gateway cut in the
+inner brick wall of the enclosure; and there confronted us the great
+Myenan of Mandalay--the Palace of the "Sun-descended Monarch." The first
+impression was disappointing, for the whole front was covered with
+gold-leaf and tawdry tinsel-work which had become weather-worn and dingy.
+But there was no time now to halt, inspect details, and rectify perchance
+first impressions. A message came that the Kingwoon Menghyi, my host of
+the previous evening--substantially the Prime Minister of Burmah, desired
+that we--that was to say, Dr. Williams, my guide, philosopher, and friend,
+and myself--should wait upon him in the _Hlwot-dau_, or Hall of the
+Supreme Council, before entering the Palace itself. The _Hlwot-dau_ was a
+detached structure on the right front of the Palace as one entered by the
+eastern gate. It was the Downing Street of Mandalay. Its sides were quite
+open, and its fantastic roof of grotesquely carved teak plastered with
+gilding, painting, and tinsel, was supported on massive teak pillars
+painted a deep red. Taking off our shoes we ascended to the platform of
+the _Hlwot-dau_, where we found the Menghyi surrounded by a crowd of minor
+officials and suitors squatting on their stomachs and elbows, with their
+legs under them and their hands clasped in front of their bent heads. The
+Menghyi came forward several paces to meet us, conducted us to his mat,
+and sitting down himself and bidding us do the same, explained that as it
+was with him a busy day, he would not be able personally to present me to
+the King as he had hoped to have done, but that he had made all
+arrangements and had delegated the charge of us to our old friend whom I
+have ventured to call "Pio Nono." That corpulent and jovial worthy made
+his appearance at this moment along with his English-speaking subordinate,
+and with cordial acknowledgments and farewells to the Menghyi we left the
+_Hlwot-dau_ under their guidance. They led us along the front of the
+Palace, passing the huge gilded cannon that flanked on either side the
+central steps leading up into the throne-room; and turning round the
+northern angle of the Palace front, conducted us to the Hall of the
+_Bya-dyt_, or Household Council. We had to leave our shoes at the foot of
+the steps leading up to it. The _Bya-dyt_ was a mere open shed; its lofty
+roof borne up by massive teak timbers. What splendour had once been its in
+the matter of gilding and tinsel was greatly faded. The gold-leaf had been
+worn off the pillars by constant friction, and the place appeared to be
+used as a lumber-room as well as a council-chamber. On the front of one of
+a pile of empty cases was visible, in big black letters, the legend,
+"Peek, Frean, and Co., London." State documents reposed in the receptacle
+once occupied by biscuits. Clerks lay all around on the rough dusty
+boards, writing with agate stylets on tablets of black papier-mache; and
+there was a constant flux and reflux of people of all sorts, who appeared
+to have nothing to do and who were doing it with a sedulously lounging
+deliberation that seemed to imply a gratifying absence of arrears of
+official work. We sat down here for a while along with Pio Nono and his
+assistant, who busied himself in dictating to a secretary a description of
+myself and a catalogue of my presents to be read by the herald to his
+Majesty when I should be presented. Then Pio Nono went away and presently
+came back, saying that it was intended to bestow upon me some souvenirs of
+Mandalay, and that to admit of the preparation of these the audience would
+not take place for an hour or so. He invited us in the meantime to inspect
+the public apartments of the Palace itself and the objects of interest in
+the Palace enclosure. So we got up, and still without our shoes walked
+through the suite leading to the principal throne-room or great hall of
+audience.
+
+These were simply a series of minor throne-rooms. The first one in order
+from the private apartments was close to the _Bya-dyt_. It must be borne
+in mind that the whole suite, including the great audience hall, were not
+rooms at all in our sense of the word. They were simply open-roofed
+spaces, the roofs gabled, spiked, and carved into fantastic shapes, laden
+with dingy gold-leaf garishly picked out with glaring colours and studded
+with bits of stained glass; the roofs, or rather I should say, the one
+continuous roof, supported on massive deep red pillars of teak-wood. The
+whole palace was raised from the ground on a brick platform some 10 feet
+high. The partitions between the several walls were simply skirtings of
+planking covered with gold-leaf. The whole palace seemed an armoury. Some
+ten or twelve thousand stand of obsolete muskets were ranged along these
+partitions and crammed into the anteroom of the throne-room proper. The
+whole suite was dingy, dirty, and uncared-for; but on a great day, with
+the gilding renewed, carpets spread on the rugged boards, banners waving,
+and the courtiers in full dress, no doubt the effect would have been
+materially improved. The vista from the throne of the great hall of
+audience looked right through the columned arcade to the "Gate of the
+Chosen"; and that we might imagine the scene more vividly, we considered
+ourselves as on our way to Court on one of the great days, and going back
+to the gate again began our pilgrimage anew. The pillared front of the
+Palace stretched before us raised on the terrace, its total length 260
+feet. Looking between the two gilded cannon, we saw at the foot of the
+central steps a low gate of carved and gilded wood. That gate, it seemed,
+was never opened except to the King--none save he might use those central
+steps. Raising our eyes we looked right up the vista of the hall to the
+lofty throne raised against the gilded partition that closed at once the
+vista and the hall. We had been looking down the great central nave, as it
+were, toward the west gate, in the place of which was the throne. But
+along the eastern front of the terrace ran a long colonnade, whose wings
+formed transepts at right angles to the nave. The throne-room was shaped
+like the letter T, the throne being at the base of the letter and the
+cross-bar representing the colonnade. Entering at the extremity of one of
+these, we traversed it to the centre and then faced the nave. The throne
+was exactly before us, at the end of the pillared vista. Five steps led up
+to the dais. Its form was peculiar, contracting by a gradation of steps
+from the base upwards to mid-height, and again expanding to the top, on
+which was a cushioned ledge such as is seen in the box of a theatre. On
+the platform, which now was bare planks, the King and Queen on a great
+reception day would sit on gorgeous carpets. The entrance was through
+gilded doors from a staircase in the ante-room beyond. There was a rack of
+muskets round the foot of the throne, and just outside the rails a
+half-naked soldier lay snoring. Our Burman companion assured us that
+seeing the throne-room now in its condition of dismantled tawdriness, I
+could form no idea of the fine effect when King and Court in all their
+splendour were gathered in it on a ceremonial day. I tried to accept his
+assurances, but it was not easy to imagine such forlorn dinginess changed
+into dazzling splendour. Just over the throne, and in the centre of the
+Palace and of the city, rose in gracefully diminishing stages of fantastic
+woodcarving a tapering _phya-sath_ or spire similar to those surmounting
+sacred buildings, and crowned with the gilded _Htee_, an honour which
+royalty alone shared with ecclesiastical sanctity. The spire, like
+everything else, had been gilt, but it was now sadly tarnished and had
+lost much of its brilliancy of effect.
+
+Having looked at the hall of audience we strolled through the Palace
+esplanade. A wall parted this off from the private apartments and the
+pleasure grounds occupying the western section of the Palace enclosure. A
+series of carved and gilded gables roofed with glittering zinc plates was
+visible over the wall. The grounds were said to be well planted with
+flowering shrubs and fruit trees and to contain lakelets and rockeries.
+Built against the outer wall and facing the enclosed space were barracks
+for soldiers and gun sheds. The accommodation was as primitive as are the
+weapons, and that was saying a good deal. Pio Nono led us across to a big
+wooden house, scarcely at all ornamented, which was the everyday abode of
+the "Lord White Elephant." His "Palace," or state apartment, was not
+pointed out to us. His lordship, in so far as his literal claim to be
+styled a white elephant, was an impostor of the deepest dye and a very
+grim and ugly impostor to boot. He was a great, lean, brown, flat-sided
+brute, his ears, forehead, and trunk mottled with a dingy cream colour.
+But he belonged all the same to the lordly race. "White elephants" were a
+science which had a literature of its own. According to this science, it
+was not the whiteness that was the criterion of a "white elephant." So
+much, indeed, was the reverse, that a "white elephant" according to the
+science may be a brown elephant in actual colour. The points were the
+mottling of the face, the shape and colour of the eyes, the position of
+the ears, and the length of the tail. Certainly the "Lord White Elephant"
+had, to the most cursory observation, a peculiar and abnormal eye. The
+iris was yellow, with a reddish outer annulus and a small, clear, black
+pupil. It was essentially a shifty, treacherous eye, and I noticed that
+everybody took particularly good care to keep out of range of his
+lordship's trunk and tusks. The latter were superb--long, massive, and
+smooth, their tips quite meeting far in front of his trunk. His tail was
+much longer than in the Indian elephants, and was tipped with a bunch of
+long, straight, black hair. Altogether he was an unwholesome,
+disagreeable-looking brute, who munched his grass morosely and had no
+elephantine geniality. He was but a youngster--the great, old, really
+white elephant which Yule describes had died some time back, after an
+incumbency dating from 1806. The "White Elephant" was never ridden now,
+but the last King but one used frequently to ride its predecessor, acting
+as his own mahout. We did not see his trappings, as our visit was paid
+unawares when he was quite in undress; but Yule says that when arrayed in
+all his splendour his head-stall was of fine red cloth, studded with great
+rubies, interspersed with valuable diamonds. When caparisoned he wore on
+his forehead, like other Burmese dignitaries including the King himself, a
+golden plate inscribed with his titles and a gold crescent set with
+circles of large gems between the eyes. Large silver tassels hung in front
+of his ears, and he was harnessed with bands of gold and crimson set
+freely with large bosses of pure gold. He was a regular "estate of the
+realm," having a _woon_ or minister of his own, four gold umbrellas, the
+white umbrellas which were peculiar to royalty, with a large suite of
+attendants and an appanage to furnish him with maintenance wherewithal.
+When in state his attendants had to leave their shoes behind them when
+they enter his Palace. In a shed adjacent to that occupied by the "Lord
+White Elephant" stood his lady wife, a browner, plumper, and generally
+more amiable-looking animal. Contrary to universal experience elsewhere,
+elephants in Burmah breed in captivity, but this union was unfertile and
+the race of "Lord White Elephants" had to be maintained _ab extra_. The
+so-called white elephants are sports of nature, and are of no special
+breed. They are called Albinoes, and are more plentiful in the Siam region
+than in Burmah.
+
+By this time the hour was approaching that had been fixed for the
+presentation, and we returned to the _Bya-dyt_. The summons came almost
+immediately. Ushered by Pio Nono and accompanied by several courtiers, we
+traversed some open passages and finally reached a kind of pagoda or kiosk
+within the private gardens of the Palace. The King was not to appear in
+state, and this place had been selected by reason of its absolute
+informality. There was no ornament anywhere, not so much as a speck of
+gilding or an atom of tinsel. We solemnly squatted down on a low platform
+covered with grass matting, through which pierced the teak columns
+supporting the lofty roof. A space had been reserved for us in the centre,
+on either side of which, their front describing a semicircle, a number of
+courtiers lay crouching on their stomachs but placidly puffing cheroots.
+On our left were two or three superior military officers of the Palace
+guard, distinguishable only by their diamond ear-jewels. My presents--
+they were trivial: an opera-glass, a few boxes of chocolate, and a
+work-box--were placed before me as I sat down. There were other offerings
+to right and to left of them--a huge bunch of cabbages, a basket of
+_Kohl-rabi_, and three baskets of orchids. In the clear space in front I
+observed also a satin robe lined with fur, a couple of silver boxes, and a
+ruby ring. These, I imagined, were also for presentation, but it presently
+appeared they were his Majesty's return gifts for myself. Before us, at a
+higher elevation, there was a plain wooden railing with a gap in the
+centre, and the railing enclosed a sort of recess that looked like a
+garden-house. Over a ledge where the gap was, had been thrown a rich
+crimson and gold trapping that hung low in front, and on the ledge were a
+crimson cushion, a betel box, and a tall oval spittoon in gold set with
+pearls. A few minutes passed, beguiled by conversation in a low tone, when
+six guards armed with double-barrelled firearms of very diverse patterns,
+mounted the platform from the left side and took their places on either
+side, squatting down. The guards wore black silk jackets lined with fur
+and with scarlet kerchiefs bound round their heads. Then a door opened in
+the left side of the garden-house, and there entered first an old gaunt
+beardless man--the chief eunuch--closely followed by the King, otherwise
+unattended. His Majesty came on with a quick step, and sat down, resting
+his right arm on the crimson cushion on the ledge in the centre of the
+railing. He wore a white silk jacket, and a _loonghi_ or petticoat robe of
+rich yellow and green silk. His only ornaments were his diamond
+ear-jewels. As he entered all bent low, and when he had seated himself a
+herald lying on his stomach read aloud my credentials. The literal
+translation was as follows:--"So-and-so, a great newspaper teacher of the
+_Daily News_ of London, tenders to his Most Glorious Excellent Majesty,
+Lord of the Ishaddan, King of Elephants, master of many white elephants,
+lord of the mines of gold, silver, rubies, amber, and the noble
+serpentine, Sovereign of the empires of Thunaparanta and Tampadipa, and
+other great empires and countries, and of all the umbrella-wearing chiefs,
+the supporter of religion, the Sun-descended Monarch, arbiter of life, and
+great, righteous King, King of kings, and possessor of boundless
+dominions, and supreme wisdom, the following presents." The reading was
+intoned in a uniform high recitative, strongly resembling that used when
+our Church Service is intoned; and the long-drawn "Phya-a-a-a-a" (my lord)
+which concluded it, added to the resemblance, as it came in exactly like
+the "Amen" of the Liturgy.
+
+The reading over, the return presents were picked up by an official and
+bundled over to me without any ceremony, the King meanwhile looking on in
+silence, chewing betel and smoking a cheroot. Several of the courtiers
+were following his example in the latter respect. Presently the King spoke
+in a distinct, deliberate voice--
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+Dr. Williams acting as my introducer, replied in Burmese--
+
+"A writer of the _Daily News_ of London, your Majesty."
+
+"Why does he come?"
+
+"To see your Majesty's country, and in the hope of being permitted to
+reverence the Golden Feet."
+
+"Whence does he come?"
+
+"From the British army in Afghanistan, engaged in war against the Prince
+of Cabul."
+
+"And does the war prosper for my friends the English?"
+
+"He reports that it has done so greatly and that the Prince of Cabul is a
+fugitive."
+
+"Where does Cabul lie in relation to Kashmir?"
+
+"Between Kashmir and Persia, in a very mountainous and cold region."
+
+There had been pauses more or less long between each of these questions;
+the King obviously reflecting what he should ask next; then there was a
+longer, and, indeed, a wearisome pause. Then the King spoke again.
+
+"Where is the Kingwoon Menghyi?"
+
+"In Court, your Majesty," replied Pio Nono. "It is a Court day."
+
+"It is well. I wish the Ministers to make every day a Court day, and to
+labour hard to give prompt justice to suitors, so that there be no
+complaint of arrears."
+
+With this laudable injunction, his Majesty rose and walked away, and the
+audience was over.
+
+The King of Burmah, when I saw him, was little over twenty, and he had
+been barely four months on the throne. He was a tall, well-built,
+personable young man, very fair in complexion, with a good forehead,
+clear, steady eyes, and a firm but pleasant mouth. His chin was full and
+somewhat sensual-looking, but withal he was a manly, frank-faced young
+fellow, and was said to have gained self-possession and lost the early
+nervous awkwardness of his new position with great rapidity. Circumstances
+had even then occurred to prove that he was very far from destitute of a
+will of his own, and that he had no favour for any diminution of the Royal
+Prerogative. As we passed out of the Palace after the interview a house in
+the Palace grounds was pointed out to me, within which had been imprisoned
+in squalid misery ever since the mortal illness of the previous King, a
+number of the members of the Burmese blood royal.
+
+_P.S._--A few days after my visit, all these unfortunately were massacred
+with fiendish refinements of cruelty.
+
+
+
+
+GERMAN WAR PRAYERS 1870-71
+
+
+In the multifarious ramifications of their military organisation the
+Germans by no means neglect religion. Each army corps is partitioned into
+two divisions and each division has its field chaplain. In those corps in
+which there is a large admixture of the Catholic element, there is a
+cleric of that denomination to each division as well as a Protestant
+chaplain. The former is known as a _Feldgeistliger_, a word which in
+itself means nothing more distinctive than a "field ecclesiastic," while
+the Protestant chaplain has usually the title of _Feldpastor_. Of the
+priest I can say but little. The pastors, for the most part, are young and
+energetic men. They may be divided into two classes: those who have at
+home no stated charges, and those who have temporarily left their charge
+for the duration of the war. The former generally are regularly posted to
+a division; the latter, equally recognised but not perhaps quite so
+official, are chiefly to be found in the lazarettoes, in the battlefield
+villages whither the wounded are borne to have their fresh wounds roughly
+seen to, and on the battlefield itself. Not that the regular divisional
+chaplains do not face the dangers of the battlefield with devoted courage;
+but their duties, in the nature of their special avocation, lie more among
+the hale and sound who yet stand up before an enemy, than with the poor
+fellows who have been stricken down. Earnestness and devotion are the
+chief characteristics of those pastors. It struck me that their education
+was not of a very high order--certainly not on a par with that of the
+average regimental officer.
+
+The _Feldpastor_ wears an armlet of white and light purple to denote his
+calling; but indeed it is not easy to mistake him for anything else than
+he is. He has his quarters with the Divisional General, and preaches
+whenever and wherever it is convenient to get a congregation. A church is
+passed on the wayside, a regiment halts and defiles into it, and the
+pastor mounts the steps of the altar and holds forth therefrom for half an
+hour. There is a quiet meadow near a village, in which a brigade is lying.
+Looking over the hedge, you may see in the meadow a hollow square of
+helmeted men with the general and the pastor in the centre, the latter
+speaking simple, fervent words to the fighting men. When, as during the
+siege of Paris, a division occupies a certain district for a long time,
+you may chance--let me say on a New Year's night--on the village church
+all ablaze with light. The garrison have decorated the gaunt old Norman
+arches with laurels and evergreens; they have cleared out the
+market-vendor's stock of tallow-dips to illuminate the church wherewithal.
+The band has been practising the glorious _Nun Danket alle Gott_ for a
+week; the vocalists of the regiments have been combining to perfect
+themselves in part-singing. The gorgeous trumpery of Roman Catholic church
+paraphernalia, unheeded as it is, looks strangely out of place and
+contrasts curiously with the simple Protestant forms.
+
+The church is crowded with a denser congregation than ever its walls
+contained before. The _Oberst_ sits down with the under-officer; the
+general gropes for half a chair between two stalwart _Kerle_ of the line.
+Hymn-cards are distributed as at the Brighton volunteer service in the
+Pavilion on Easter Sunday. As the pastor enters and takes his way up the
+altar steps--he goes not to the pulpit--there bursts out a volume of vocal
+devotional harmony, which is so pent in the aisles and under the arches
+that the sound seems almost to become a substance. Then the pastor
+delivers a prayer and there is another hymn. He enunciates no text when he
+next begins to speak; he chops not a subject up into heads, as the
+grizzled major who listens to him would partition out his battalion into
+companies. There is no "thirteenthly and lastly" in his simple address.
+But he gets nearer the hearts of his hearers than if he assailed them with
+a battery of logic with multitudinous texts for ammunition. For he speaks
+of the people at home, in the quiet corners of the Fatherland; he tells
+the soldier in language that is of his profession, how the fear of the
+Lord is a better arm than the truest-shooting _Zuendnadelgewehr_; how
+preparedness for death and for what follows after death, is a part of his
+accoutrement that the good soldier must ever bear about with him.
+
+Herr Pastor has other functions than to preach to the living. The day
+after a battle, his horse must be very tired before the stable-door is
+reached. The burial parties are excavating great pits all over the field,
+while others pick up the dead in the vicinity and bear them unto the brink
+of the common grave. Herr Pastor cannot be ubiquitous. If he is not near
+when the hole is full, the _Feldwebel_ who commands the party bares his
+head, and mutters, "In the name of God, Amen," as he strews the first
+handful of mould on the dead--it may be on friends as well as on foes. If
+the pastor can reach the brink of the pit, it is his to say the few words
+that mark the recognition of the fact that those lying stark and grim
+below him are not as the beasts that perish. The Germans have no set
+funeral service, and if they had, there would be no time for it here.
+"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of
+the resurrection to eternal life, _durch unsern Herr Jesu Christe_. Amen;"
+words so familiar, yet never heard without a new thrill.
+
+They are slightly uncouth in several matters, these _Feldpastoren_, and
+would not quite suit sundry metropolitan charges one wots of. They do not
+wear gloves, nor are they addicted to scent on their pocket-handkerchiefs.
+Their boots are too often like boats, and when they are mounted there is
+frequently visible an interval of more or less dusky stocking between the
+boot-top and the trouser-leg. They slobber stertorously in the consumption
+of soup, and cut their meat with a square-elbowed energy of determination
+that might make one think that they had vanquished the Evil One and had
+him down there under their knife and fork. But they are simple-hearted and
+valiant servants of their Master. Who was it, in the bullet-storm that
+swept the slope of Woerth, from facing which the stout hearts of the
+fighting men blenched and quailed, that there walked quietly into it, to
+speak words of peace and consolation to the dying men whom that terrible
+storm had beaten down? A smooth-faced stripling with the _Feldpastor's_
+badge on his arm, the gallant Christian son of an eminent Prussian divine,
+Dr. Krummacher of Berlin. At one of the battles (I forget which) a pastor
+came to fill a grave, not to consecrate it. Shall I ever forget the
+unswerving hurry to the front of Kummer's divisional chaplain when the
+_Landwehrleute_, his flock, were going down in their ranks as they held
+with stubbornness unto death the villages in front of Maizieres les Metz?
+Let the _Feldpastoren_ slobber and welcome, say I, while they gild their
+slobbering with such devotion as this! But there must be times and seasons
+when Herr Pastor is not at hand; nor can the ministration of any pastor
+stand in the stead of private prayer. The German soldier's simple needs in
+this matter are not disregarded. Each man is served out when he gets his
+kit with a tiny gray volume less than quarter the size of this page, the
+title of which is _Gebetbuch fuer Soldaten_--the Soldier's Prayer-Book. It
+is supplied from the Berlin depot of the Head Society for the Promotion of
+Christian Knowledge in Germany, and it is a compendium of simple war
+prayers for almost every conceivable situation, with one significant
+exception--there is no prayer in defeat. The word is blotted out of the
+German war vocabulary. It has been said that the belief in the divinity of
+our Saviour is rapidly on the wane in Germany. If this war prayer-book
+avails aught, the taint of the heresy may not enter into the army.
+
+Germany is at war. While Paris is frantically shouting _A Berlin!_, while
+all Germany is singing and meaning _Die Wacht am Rhein_, Moltke's order
+goes forth into the towns and villages of the Fatherland for the
+mobilisation of the Reserves. Hans was singing _Die Wacht am Rhein_ last
+night over his beer; but there is little heart for song left in him as he
+looks from that paper on the deal table into Gretchen's face. She is
+weeping bitterly as her children cling around her, too young to realise
+the cause of their parents' sorrow. Hans rises moodily, and pulling down
+what military belongings he has not given into the arsenal after the last
+drill, falls a turning over of them abstractedly. By chance his hand rests
+upon the little gray volume, the _Gebetbuch fuer Soldaten_. It opens in his
+hand, and he comes and sits down by Gretchen and reads in a voice that
+chokes sometimes, the
+
+
+PRAYER IN STRAIT AND SORROW
+
+O Lord Jesus Christ! let the crying and sighing of the poor come before
+Thee. Withhold not Thy countenance from the tears and beseechings of the
+woebegone. Help by Thine outstretched arm, and avert our sorrow from us.
+Awake us who are lying dead in sin and in great danger, and whose thoughts
+often wander from Thee. Let us trust with all our hearts that nothing can
+be so broad, so deep, so high, nor so arduous that Thy grace and favour
+cannot overcome it; that we so can and must be holpen out of every
+difficulty and discomfiture when Thou takest compassion upon us. Help us,
+then, through grace, and so I will praise Thee from now to all eternity.
+
+
+Hans has bidden good-bye to Gretchen, and has kissed the children he may
+never see more. He has marched with his fellows to the depot, and got his
+uniform and arms. The _Militaerzug_ has carried him to Kreuznach, and
+thence he has marched sturdily up the Nahe Valley and over the ridge into
+the Kollerthaler Wald. His last halt was at Puttingen, but Kameke has sent
+an aide back at the gallop to summon up all supports. The regiment stacks
+arms for ten minutes' breathing-time while the cannon-thunder is borne
+backward on the wind to the ears of the soldiers. In two hours more they
+will be across the French frontier, storming furiously up the Spicheren
+Berg. As Hans gropes in his tunic pocket for his tinder-box, the little
+war prayer-book somehow gets between his fingers. He takes it out with the
+pipe-light, and finds in its pages a prayer surely suited to the
+situation--the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE OUTMARCHING
+
+O gracious God! I defile from out my Fatherland and from the society of my
+friends,[1] and out of the house of my father into a strange land, to
+campaign against the enemies of our king. Therefore I would cast myself
+with life and soul upon Thy divine bosom and guardianship; and I pray
+Thee, with prostrate humility, that Thou willst guide me with Thine eye,
+and overshadow me with Thy wings. Let Thine angels camp round about me,
+and Thy grace protect me in all the difficulties of the marches, in all
+camps and dangers. Give me wisdom and understanding for my ways and works.
+Give success and blessing to our ingoings and outcomings, so that we may
+do everything well, and conquer on the field of battle; and after victory
+won, turn our steps homeward as the heralds who announce peace. So shall
+we praise Thee with gladsomeness, O most gracious Father, for Thy dear
+Son's sake, Jesus Christ!
+
+[Footnote 1: Every now and then one comes across a German word
+untranslatable in its compact volume of expressiveness. How weakly am I
+forced to render _Freundschaft_ here! "Outmarching," though a literal, is
+a poor equivalent for _Ausmarsch_. In the old Scottish language we find an
+exact correspondent for _aus_; the "Furthmarch" gives the idea to a
+hair's-breadth.]
+
+It is the morning of Gravelotte. King Wilhelm has issued his laconic order
+for the day, and all know how bloody and arduous is the task before his
+host. The French tents are visible away in the distance yonder by the
+auberge of St. Hubert, and already the explosion of an occasional shell
+gives earnest of the wrath to come. The regiment in which Hans is a
+private has marched to Caulre Farm, and is halted for breakfast there
+before beginning the real battle by attacking the French outpost
+stronghold in Verneville. The tough ration beef sticks in poor Hans'
+throat. He is no coward, but he thinks of Gretchen and the children, and
+the Reserve-man draws aside into the thicket to commune with his own
+thoughts. He has already found comfort in the little gray volume, and so
+he pulls it out again to search for consolation in this hour of gloom. He
+finds what he wants in the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE BATTLE
+
+Lord of Sabaoth, with Thee is no distinction in helping in great things or
+in small. We are going now, at the orders of our commanders, to do battle
+in the field with our enemies. Let us give proof of Thy might and honour.
+Help us, Lord our God, for we trust in Thee, and in Thy name we go forth
+against the enemy. Lord Christ, Thou hast said, "I am with thee in the
+hour of need; I will pull thee out, and place thee in an honourable
+place." Bethink Thee, Lord, of Thy word, and remember Thy promise. Come to
+our aid when we are sore pressed, when the close grapple is imminent, when
+the enemy overmatches us, and we have been surrounded by them. Stand by us
+in need, for the aid of man is of no avail. Through Thee we will vanquish
+our enemies, and in Thy name we will tread under the foot those who have
+set themselves in array against us. They trust in their own might, and are
+puffed up with pride; but we put our trust in the Almighty God, who,
+without one stroke of the sword, canst smite into the dust not only those
+who are now formed up against us, but also the whole world. God, we await
+on Thy goodness. Blessed are those who put their trust in Thee. Help us,
+that our enemies may not get the better of us, and wax triumphant in their
+might; but strike disorder into their ranks, and smite them before our
+eyes, so that we may overwhelm them. Show us Thy goodness, Thou Saviour,
+of those who trust in Thee. Art Thou not God the Lord unto us who are
+called after Thy name? So be gracious unto us, and take us--life and soul--
+under the protection of Thy grace. And since Thou only knowest what is
+good for us, so we commend ourselves unto Thee without reserve, be it for
+life or for death. Let us live comforted; let us fight and endure
+comforted; let us die comforted, for Jesus Christ, Thy dear Son's sake.
+Amen.
+
+
+Alvensleben is sitting on his horse on the little hillock behind the
+hamlet of Flavigny, pulling his gray moustache, and praying that he might
+see the _Spitze_ of Barneckow's division show itself on the edge of the
+plain up from out the glen of Gorze. Rheinbaben's cavalry are half of them
+down, the other half of them are rallying for another charge to save the
+German centre. Hans is in the wood to the north of Tronville, helping to
+keep back Leboeuf from swamping the left flank. The shells from the French
+artillery on the Roman Road are crashing into the wood. The bark is jagged
+by the slashes of venomous chassepot bullets. Twice has Ladmirault come
+raging down from the heights of Bruville, twice has he been sent
+staggering back. Now, with strong reinforcements, he is preparing for a
+third assault. Meanwhile there is a lull in the battle. Hans, grimed and
+powder-blackened, may let the breech of his _Zuendnadelgewehr_ cool and may
+wipe his blood-stained bayonet on the forest moss. He has a moment for a
+glance into the little gray volume, and it opens in his blackened fingers
+at the prayer
+
+
+IN THE AGONY OF THE BATTLE
+
+O Thou Lord and Ruler of Thine own people, awake and look now in grace
+upon Thy folk. Lord Jesus Christ, be now our Jesus, our Helper and
+Deliverer, our rock and fortress, our fiery wall, for Thy great name's
+sake. Be now our Emmanuel, God with us, God in us, God for us, God by the
+side of us. Thou mighty arm of Thy Father, let us now see Thy great power,
+so that men shall hail Thee their God, and the people may bend their knees
+unto Thee. Strengthen and guide the fighting arm of Thy believing
+soldiers, and help them, Thou invincible King of Battles. Gird Thyself up,
+Thou mighty fighting Hero; gird Thy sword on Thy loins, and smite our
+enemy hip and thigh. Art Thou not the Lord who directest the wars of the
+whole world, who breakest the bow, who splinterest the spear, and burnest
+the chariots with fire? Arouse Thyself, help us for Thy good will, and
+cast us not from Thee, God of our Saviour; cease Thy wrath against us, and
+think not for ever of our sins. Consider that we are all Thine handiwork;
+give us Thy countenance again, and be gracious unto us. Return unto us, O
+Lord, and go forth with our army. Restore happiness to us with Thy help
+and counsel, Thou staunch and only King of Peace, who with Thy suffering
+and death hast procured for us eternal peace. Give us the victory and an
+honourable peace, and remain with us in life and in death. Amen.
+
+
+Hans has marched from before Metz towards the valley of the Meuse, and the
+regimental camp for the night is on the slopes of the Ardennes, over
+against Chemery. The setting sun is glinting on the windows of the Chateau
+of Vendresse, where the German King is quartered for the night. The birds
+are chirruping in the bosky dales of the Bar. The morrow is fraught with
+the hot struggle of Sedan, but honest Hans, a simple private man, knows
+nought of strategic moves and takes his ease on the sward while he may. He
+has oiled the needle-gun and done his cooking; a stone is under his head
+and his mantle is about him. As he ponders in the dying rays of the
+setting sun there comes over him the impulse to have a look into the pages
+of the _Gebetbuch_, and he finds there this prayer
+
+
+IN THE BIVOUAC
+
+Heavenly Father, here I am, according to Thy divine will, in the service
+of my king and war-master, as is my duty as a soldier; and I thank Thee
+for Thy grace and mercy that Thou hast called me to the performance of
+this duty, because I am certain that it is not a sin, but is an obedience
+to Thy wish and will. But as I know and have learnt through Thy gracious
+Word that none of our good works can avail us, and that nobody can be
+saved merely as a soldier, but only as a Christian, I will not rely on my
+obedience and upon my labours, but will perform my duties for Thy sake,
+and to Thy service. I believe with all my heart that the innocent blood of
+Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, which He has shed for me, delivers and saves
+me, for He was obedient to Thee even unto death. On this I rely, on this I
+live and die, on this I fight, and on this I do all things. Retain and
+increase, O God, my Father, this belief by Thy Holy Ghost. I commend body
+and soul to Thy hands. Amen.
+
+
+It is the evening of Sedan, the most momentous victory of the century. The
+bivouac fires light up the sluggish waters of the Meuse, not yet run clear
+from blood. The burning villages still blaze on the lower slopes of the
+Ardennes, and the tired victors, as they point to the beleaguered town,
+exclaim in a kind of maze of sober triumph, "_Der Kaiser ist da!_" Hans is
+joyous with his fellows, chaunts with them Luther's glorious hymn, _Nun
+Danket alle Gott_; and as the watch-fire burns up he rummages in the
+_Gebetbuch_ for something that will chime with the current of his
+thoughts. He finds it in the prayer
+
+
+AFTER THE VICTORY
+
+God of armies! Thou hast given us success and victory against our enemies,
+and hast put them to flight before us. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us,
+but to Thy holy name alone be all the honour! Thou hast done great things
+for us, therefore our hearts are glad. Without Thy aid we should have been
+worsted; only with God could we have done mighty deeds and subdued the
+power of the enemy. The eye of our general Thou hast quickened and guided;
+Thou hast strengthened the courage of our army, and lent it stubborn
+valour. Yet not the strategy of our leader, nor our courage, but Thy great
+mercy has given us the victory. Lord, who are we, that we dare to stand
+before Thee as soldiers, and that our enemies yield and fly before us? We
+are sinners, even as they are, and have deserved Thy fierce wrath and
+punishment; but for the sake of Thy name Thou hast been merciful to us,
+and hast so marked the sore peril of our threatened Fatherland, and hast
+heard the prayer of our king, our people, and our army, because we called
+upon Thy name, and held out our buckler in the name of the Lord of
+Sabaoth. Blessed be Thy holy name for ever and ever. Amen.
+
+
+The surrender of the French army of Sedan has been consummated, and
+Napoleon has departed into captivity; while Hans, marching down by Rethel,
+and through grand old Rheims, and along the smiling vinebergs of the Marne
+Valley, is now _vor Paris_. He is on the _Feldwache_ in the forest of
+Bondy before Raincy, and his turn comes to go on the uttermost sentry
+post. As the snow-drift blows to one side he can see the French
+watch-fires close by him in Bondy; nearer still he sees the three stones
+and the few spadefuls of earth behind which, as he knows, is the French
+outpost sentry confronting him. The straggling rays of the watery moon now
+obscured by snow-scud, now falling on him faintly, could not aid him in
+reading even if he dared avert his eyes from his front. But Hans had come
+to know the value of the little gray volume; and while he lay in the
+_Feldwache_ waiting for his spell of sentry go, he had learnt by heart the
+following prayer
+
+
+FOR OUTPOST SENTRY DUTY
+
+Lord Jesus Christ, I stand here on the foremost fringe of the camp, and am
+holding watch against the enemy; but wert Thou, Lord, not to guard us,
+then the watcher watcheth in vain. Therefore, I pray Thee, cover us with
+Thy grace as with a shield, and let Thy holy angels be round about us to
+guard and preserve us that we be not fallen upon at unawares by the enemy.
+Let the darkness of the night not terrify me; open mine eyes and ears that
+I may observe the oncoming of the enemy from afar, and that I may study
+well the care of myself and of the whole army. Keep me in my duty from
+sleeping on my post and from false security. Let me continually call to
+Thee with my heart, and bend Thyself unto me with Thine almighty presence.
+Be Thou with me and strengthen me, life and soul, that in frost, in heat,
+in rain, in snow, in all storms, I may retain my strength and return in
+health to the _Feldwache_. So I will praise Thy name and laud Thy
+protection. Amen.
+
+
+It is the evening of the 2nd of December. Duerot has tried his hardest to
+sup in Lagny, and has been balked by German valour. But not without
+terrible loss. On the plateau and by the party wall before Villiers, dead
+and wounded Germans lie very thick. In one of the little corries in the
+vineberg poor Hans has gone down. The shells from Fort Nogent are bursting
+all around, endangering the _Krankentraeger_ while prosecuting their duties
+of mercy and devotion. Hans has somehow bound up his shattered limb; and
+as he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket the little _Gebetbuch_ has
+dropped out with it. There is none on earth to comfort poor Hans; let him
+open the book and find consolation there in the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE SICK AND WOUNDED
+
+Dear and trusty Deliverer, Jesus Christ, I know in my necessity and pains
+no whither to flee to but to Thee, my Saviour, who hast suffered for me,
+and hast called unto all ailing and miserable ones, "Come unto Me, all ye
+who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Oh, relieve me,
+also, of Thy love and kindness, stretch out Thy healing and almighty hand,
+and restore me to health. Free me with Thy aid from my wounds and my
+pains, and console me with Thy grace who art vouchsafed to heal the broken
+heart, and to console all the sorrowful ones. Dost Thou take pleasure in
+our destruction? Our groaning touches Thee to the heart, and those whom
+Thou hast cast down Thou wilt lift up again. In Thee, Lord Jesus, I put my
+trust; I will not cease to importune Thee that Thou bringest me not to
+shame. Help me, save me, so I will praise Thee for ever. Amen.
+
+
+Alas for Gretchen and her brood! The 4th of December has dawned, and still
+Hans lies unfound in the corrie of the vineberg. He has no pain now, for
+his shattered limb has been numbed by the cruel frost. His eyes are waxing
+dim and he feels the end near at hand. The foul raven of the battlefield
+croaks above him in his enfeebled loneliness, impatient for its meal. The
+grim king of terrors is very close to thee, poor honest soldier of the
+Fatherland; but thou canst face him as boldly as thou hast faced the foe,
+with the help of the little book of which thy frost-chilled fingers have
+never lost the grip. The gruesome bird falls back as thou murmurest the
+prayer
+
+
+AT THE NEAR APPROACH OF DEATH
+
+Merciful heavenly Father, Thou God of all consolation, I thank Thee that
+Thou hast sent Thy dear Son Jesus Christ to die for me. He has through His
+death taken from death his sting, so that I have no cause to fear him
+more. In that I thank Thee, dear Father, and pray Thee receive my spirit
+in grace, as it now parts from life. Stand by me and hold me with Thine
+almighty hand, that I may conquer all the terrors of death. When my ears
+can hear no more, let Thy Spirit commune with my spirit, that I, as Thy
+child and co-heir with Christ, may speedily be with Jesus by Thee in
+heaven. When my eyes can see no more, so open my eyes of faith that I may
+then see Thy heaven open before me and the Lord Jesus on Thy right hand;
+that I may also be where He is. When my tongue shall refuse its utterance,
+then let Thy Spirit be my spokesman with indescribable breathings, and
+teach me to say with my heart, "Father, into Thy hands I commit my
+spirit." Hear me, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
+
+
+Would it harm the British soldier, think you, if in his kit there was a
+_Gebetbuch fuer Soldaten_?
+
+
+
+
+MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
+
+1879
+
+
+In broad essentials the marryings and givings in marriage of India
+nowadays do not greatly differ from these natural phenomena at home; but
+to use a florist's phrase, they are more inclined to "sport." The old days
+are over when consignments of damsels were made to the Indian
+marriage-market, in the assured certainty that the young ladies would be
+brides-elect before reaching the landing ghat. The increased facilities
+which improved means of transit now offer to bachelors for running home on
+short leave have resulted in making the Anglo-Indian "spin" rather a drug
+in the market; and operating in the same untoward direction is the growing
+predilection on the part of the Anglo-Indian bachelor for other men's
+wives, in preference to hampering himself with the encumbrance of a wife
+of his own. Among other social products of India old maids are now
+occasionally found; and the fair creature who on her first arrival would
+smile only on commissioners or colonels has been fain, after a few--yet
+too many--hot seasons have impaired her bloom and lowered her
+pretensions, to put up with a lieutenant or even with a dissenting
+_padre_. Slips between the cup and the lip are more frequent in India than
+in England. Loving and riding away is not wholly unknown in the
+Anglo-Indian community; and indeed, by both parties to the contract,
+engagements are frequently regarded in the mistaken light of ninepins.
+Hearts are seldom broken. At Simla during a late season a gallant captain
+persistently wore the willow till the war broke out, because he had been
+jilted in favour of a colonel; but his appetite rapidly recovered its tone
+on campaign, and he was reported to have reopened relations by
+correspondence from the tented field with a former object of his
+affections. Not long ago there arrived in an up-country station a box
+containing a wedding trousseau, which a lady had ordered out from home as
+the result of an engagement between her and a gallant warrior. But in the
+interval the warrior had departed elsewhere and had addressed to the lady
+a pleasant and affable communication, setting forth that there was
+insanity in his family and that he must have been labouring under an
+access of the family disorder when he had proposed to her. It was hard to
+get such a letter, and it must have been harder still for her to gaze on
+the abortive wedding-dress. But the lady did not abandon herself to
+despair; she took a practical view of the situation. She determined to
+keep the trousseau by her for six months, in case she might within that
+time achieve a fresh conquest, when it would come in happily. Should
+fortune not favour her thus far she meant to advertise the wedding-gear
+for sale.
+
+Miss Priest was no "spin" lingering on in spinsterhood against her will.
+It is true that when I saw her first she had already been "out" three
+years, but she might have been married a dozen times over had she chosen.
+I have seen many pretty faces in the fair Anglo-Indian sisterhood, but
+Miss Priest had a brightness and a sparkle that were all her own. At
+flirting, at riding, at walking, at dancing, at performing in amateur
+theatricals, at making fools of men in an airy, ruthless, good-hearted
+fashion, Miss Priest, as an old soldier might say, "took the right of the
+line." There was a fresh vitality about the girl that drew men and women
+alike to her. You met her at dawn cantering round Jakko on her pony.
+Before breakfast she had been rinking for an hour, with as likely as not a
+waltz or two thrown in. She never missed a picnic to Annandale, the
+Waterfalls, or Mashobra. Another turn at the Benmore rink before dinner,
+and for sure a dance after, rounded off this young lady's normal day
+during the Simla season. But if pleasure-loving, capricious, and reckless,
+she scraped through the ordeal of Simla gossip without incurring scandal.
+She was such a frank, honest girl, that malign tongues might assail her
+indeed, but ineffectually. And she had given proof that she knew how to
+take care of herself, although her only protectress was a perfectly
+inoffensive mother. On the occasion of the Prince of Wales's visit to
+Lahore, had she not boxed the ears of a burly and somewhat boorish swain,
+who had chosen the outside of an elephant as an eligible _locale_ for a
+proposal, the uncouth abruptness of which did not accord with her notion
+of the fitness of things?
+
+Miss Priest may be said to have lived in a chronic state of engagements.
+The engagements never seemed to come to anything, but that was on account
+mostly of the young lady's wilfulness. It bothered her to be engaged to
+the same man for more than from a week to ten days on end. No bones were
+broken; the gentleman resigned the position at her behest, and she would
+genially dance with him the same night. Malice and heartburning were out
+of the question with a lissom, winsome, witching fairy like this, who
+played with her life as a child does with soap-bubbles, and who was as
+elusory and irresponsible as a summer-day rainbow. But one season at
+Mussoorie Miss Priest contracted an engagement somewhat less evanescent.
+Mussoorie of all Himalayan hill-stations is the most demure and proper.
+Simla occasionally is convulsed by scandals, although dispassionate
+inquiry invariably proves that there is nothing in them. The hot blood of
+the quick and fervid Punjaub--casual observers have called the Punjaub
+stupid, but the remark applies only to its officials--is apt to stir the
+current of life at Murree. The chiefs of the North-West are invariably so
+intolerably proper that occasional revolt from their austerity is all but
+forced on Nynee Tal, the sanatorium of that province. But Mussoorie,
+undisturbed by the presence of frolicsome viceroys or austere
+lieutenant-governors, is a limpid pool of pleasant propriety. It is not so
+much that it is decorous as that it is genuinely good; it is a favourite
+resort of clergymen and of clergymen's wives. It was at Mussoorie that
+Miss Priest met Captain Hambleton, a gallant gunner. They danced together
+at the Assembly Rooms; they rode in company round the Camel's Back; they
+went to the same picnics at "The Glen." The captain proposed and was
+accepted. For about the nineteenth time Miss Priest was an engaged young
+lady. And Captain Hambleton was a lover of rather a different stamp from
+the men with whom her name previously had been nominally coupled. He was
+in love and he was a gentleman; he had proposed to the girl, not that he
+and she should be merely engaged but that they should be married also.
+This view of the subject was novel to Miss Priest and at first she thought
+it rather a bore; but the captain pegged away and gradually the lady came
+rather to relish the situation. Men and women concurred that the wayward
+pinions of the fair Bella were at last trimmed, if not clipped; and to do
+her justice the general opinion was that, once married, she would make an
+excellent wife. As the close of the Mussoorie season approached the
+invitations went out for Bella Priest's wedding, and for "cake and wine
+afterwards at the house." The wedding-breakfast is a comparatively rare
+_tamasha_ in India; the above is the formula of the usual invitation at
+the hill-stations.
+
+It happened that just two days before the day fixed for the marriage of
+Miss Priest and Captain Hambleton, there was a fancy-dress ball in the
+Assembly Rooms at Mussoorie. I think that as a rule fancy-dress balls are
+greater successes in India than at home. People in India give their minds
+more to the selection and to the elaboration of costumes; and there is
+less of that _mauvaise honte_ when masquerading in fancy costume, which
+makes a ball of this description at home so wooden and wanting in go. At a
+fancy ball in India "the devil" acts accordingly, and manages his tail
+with adroitness and grace. It is a fact that at a recent fancy-dress ball
+in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a lady who appeared as "chess,"
+with the chess-men which had formed her head-dress. This Mussoorie ball,
+being the last of the season, was to excel all its predecessors in
+inventive variety. A _padre's_ wife conceived the bright idea of appearing
+as Eve; and only abandoned the notion on finding that, no matter what
+species of thread she used, it tore the fig-leaves--a result which,
+besides causing her a disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by
+engendering doubts as to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the
+creation. Miss Priest determined to go to this ball, although doing so
+under the circumstances was scarcely in accordance with the _convenances_;
+but she was a girl very much addicted to having her own way. Captain
+Hambleton did not wish her to go, and there was a temporary coolness
+between the two on the subject; but he yielded and they made it up. The
+principle as to her going once established, Miss Priest's next task was to
+set about the invention of a costume. It was to be her last effort as a
+"spin"; and she determined it should be worthy of her reputation for
+brilliant inventiveness. She had shone as a _Vivandiere_, as the Daughter
+of the Regiment, as a Greek Slave, Grace Darling, and so forth, times out
+of number; but those characters were stale. Miss Priest had a form of
+supple rounded grace, nor had Diana shapelier limbs. A great inspiration
+came to her as she sauntered pondering on the Mall. Let her go as Ariel,
+all gauze, flesh-tints, and natural curves. She hailed the happy thought
+and invested in countless yards of gauze. She had the tights already by
+her.
+
+Now Miss Priest, knowing the idiosyncrasy of Captain Hambleton, had little
+doubt that he would put his foot down upon Ariel. But she knew he loved
+her, and with characteristic recklessness determined to trust to that and
+to luck. She too loved him, even better, perhaps, than Ariel; but she
+hoped to keep both the captain and the character. She did not, however,
+tell him of her design, waiting perhaps for a favourable opportunity. But
+even in Arcadian Mussoorie there are the "d----d good-natured friends" of
+whom Byron wrote; and one of those--of course it was a woman--told Captain
+Hambleton of the character in which Miss Priest intended to appear at the
+fancy ball. The captain was a headstrong sort of man--what in India is
+called _zubburdustee_. Instead of calling on the girl and talking to her
+as a wise man would have done, he sat down and wrote her a terse letter
+forbidding her to appear as Ariel, and adding that if she should persist
+in doing so their engagement must be considered at an end. Miss Priest
+naturally fired up. Strangely enough, being a woman, she did not reply to
+the captain's letter; but when the evening of the ball came, she duly
+appeared as Ariel with rather less gauze about her shapely limbs than had
+been her original intention. She created an immense sensation. Some of the
+ladies frowned, others turned up their noses, yet others tucked in their
+skirts when she approached; and all vowed that they would decline to touch
+Miss Priest's hand in the quadrille. Miss Priest did not care a jot for
+these demonstrations, and she never danced square dances. Among the
+gentlemen she created a perfect furore.
+
+Captain Hambleton was present at the ball. For the greater part of the
+evening he stood near the door with his eye fixed on Miss Priest,
+apparently rather in sorrow than in anger. His gaze seemed but to
+stimulate her to more vivacious flirtation; and she "carried on above a
+bit," as a cynical subaltern remarked, with the gallant major to whom she
+had been penultimately engaged. Toward the close of the evening Captain
+Hambleton relinquished his post of observation, seemed to accept the
+situation, and was observed at supper-time paying marked attention to a
+married lady with whom his name had been to some extent coupled not long
+before his engagement to Miss Priest.
+
+Next morning Miss Priest took time by the forelock. She waited for no
+further communication from Captain Hambleton; he had already sent his
+ultimatum and she had dared her fate. The morrow was the day fixed for the
+marriage. Many people had been bidden. Mussoorie, including Landour, is a
+large station, and the postal delivery of letters is not particularly
+punctual. So she adopted a plan for warning off the wedding-guests
+identical with that employed in Indian stations for circulating
+notifications as to lawn-tennis gatherings and unimportant intimations
+generally. At the head of the paper is written the notification,
+underneath are the names of the persons concerned. The document is
+intrusted to a messenger known as a _chuprassee_, who goes away on his
+circuit; and each person writes "Seen" opposite his or her name in
+testimony of being posted in the intelligence conveyed in the
+notification. Miss Priest divided the invited guests into four rounds and
+despatched four _chuprassees_, each bearing a document curtly announcing
+that "Miss Priest's marriage will not come off as arranged, and the
+invitations therefore are to be regarded as cancelled."
+
+Miss Priest had no fortune, and her mother was by no means wealthy. It may
+seem strange to English readers--not nearly so much so, however, as to
+Anglo-Indian ones--that Captain Hambleton had thought it a graceful and
+kindly attention to provide the wedding-cake. It had reached him across
+the hills from Peliti's the night of the ball, and now here it was on his
+hands--a great white elephant. Whether in the hope that it might be
+regarded as an olive-branch, whether that he burned to be rid of it
+somehow, or whether, knowing that Miss Priest was bound to get married
+some day and thinking that it would be a convenience if she had a
+bridecake by her handy for the occasion, there is no evidence. Anyhow, he
+sent it to Mrs. Priest with his compliments. That very sensible woman did
+not send it back with a cutting message, as some people would have done.
+Having considerable Indian experience, she had learned practical wisdom
+and the short-sighted folly of cutting messages. She kept the bridecake,
+and enclosed to the gallant captain Gosslett's bill for the dozen of
+simkin that excellent firm had sent in to wash it down wherewithal.
+
+Bridecakes are bores to carry about from place to place, and Miss Priest
+and her mother were rather birds of passage. Peliti declined to take this
+particular bridecake back, for all Simla had seen it in his window and he
+saw no possibility of "working it in." So the Priests, mother and
+daughter, determined to realise on it in a somewhat original and indeed
+cynical fashion. The cake was put up to be raffled for.
+
+All the station took tickets for the fun of the thing. Captain Hambleton
+was anxious to show that there was no ill-feeling, and did not find
+himself so unhappy as he had expected--perhaps from the _redintegratio
+amoris_ in another quarter; so he took his ticket in the raffle like other
+people. It is needless to say that he won; and the cake duly came back to
+him.
+
+Had Captain Hambleton been a superstitious man, he might have regarded
+this strange occurrence as indicating that the Fates willed it that he
+should compass somehow a union with Miss Priest. But the captain had no
+superstition in his nature; and, indeed, had begun to think that he was
+well out of it; besides which it was currently reported that Miss Priest
+had already re-engaged herself to another man. But the bridecake was upon
+him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what the devil
+to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody would take
+tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the _khud_ (_Anglice_,
+precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he reflected that this
+would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate soreness on his part. It
+cost him a good many pegs before he thought the matter out in all its
+bearings, for, as has been said, he was a gunner, but as he sauntered away
+from the club in the small hours a happy thought came to him.
+
+He would give a picnic at which the bogey bridecake should figure
+conspicuously, and then be laid finally by the process of demolition. His
+leave was nearly up; he had experienced much hospitality and a picnic
+would be a graceful and genial acknowledgment thereof. And he would ask
+the Priests just like other people, and no doubt they would enter into the
+spirit of the thing and not send a "decline." Bella, he knew, liked
+picnics nearly as well as balls, and it must be a powerful reason indeed
+that would keep her away from either.
+
+Captain Hambleton's picnic was the last of the season, and everybody
+called it the brightest. "The Glen" resounded to the laughter at tiffin,
+and the shades of night were falling ere stray couples turned up from its
+more sequestered recesses. Amid loud cheers Miss Priest, although still
+Miss Priest, cut up her own bridecake with a serene equanimity that proved
+the charming sweetness of her disposition. There was no marriage-bell yet
+all went merry as a marriage-bell, which is occasionally rather a sombre
+tintinnabulation; and the _debris_ of the bridecake finally fell to the
+sweeper.
+
+I would fain that it were possible, having a regard to truth, to round off
+this little story prettily by telling how in a glade of "The Glen" after
+the demolition of the bridecake, Miss Priest and the captain "squared
+matters," were duly married and lived happily ever after, as the
+story-books say. But this consummation was not attained. Miss Priest
+indeed was in the glade, but it was not with the captain, or at least this
+particular captain; and as for him, he spent the afternoon placidly
+smoking cigarettes as he lay at the feet of his married consoler. To the
+best of my knowledge Miss Priest is Miss Priest still.
+
+
+
+
+A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
+
+
+Referring to a particular phase of this memorable combat, Mr. Kinglake
+wrote: "The question is not ripe for conclusive decision; some of those
+who, as is supposed, might throw much light upon it, have hitherto
+maintained silence." It was in 1868 that the fourth volume--the Balaclava
+volume--of Mr. Kinglake's History was published. Since he wrote,
+singularly few of those who could throw light on obscure points of the
+battle have broken silence. Lord George Paget's Journal furnished little
+fresh information, since Mr. Kinglake had previously used it extensively.
+There is but a spark or two of new light in Sir Edward Hamley's more
+recent compendium. As the years roll on the number of survivors diminishes
+in an increasing ratio, nor does one hear of anything valuable left behind
+by those who fall out of the thinning ranks. The reader of the period, in
+default of any other authority, betakes himself to Kinglake. There are
+those who term Kinglake's volumes romance rather than history--or, more
+mildly, the romance of history. But this is unjust and untrue. It would be
+impertinent to speak of his style; that gift apart, his quest for accurate
+information was singularly painstaking, searching, and scrupulous. Yet it
+cannot be said that he was always well served. He had perforce to lean on
+the statements of men who were partisans, writing as he did so near his
+period that nearly all men charged with information were partisans.
+British officers are not given to thrusting on a chronicler tales of their
+own prowess. But _esprit de corps_ in our service is so strong--and, spite
+of its incidental failings that are almost merits what lover of his
+country could wish to see it weakened?--that men of otherwise implicit
+veracity will strain truth, and that is a weak phrase, to exalt the
+conduct of their comrades and their corps. No doubt Mr. Kinglake
+occasionally suffered because of this propensity; and, with every respect,
+his literary _coup d'oeil_, except as regards the Alma where he saw for
+himself, and Inkerman where no _coup d'oeil_ was possible, was somewhat
+impaired by his having to make his picture of battle a mosaic, each
+fragment contributed by a distinct actor concentrated on his own
+particular bit of fighting. If ever military history becomes a fine art we
+may find the intending historian, alive to the proverb that "onlookers see
+most of the game," detailing capable persons with something of the duty of
+the subordinate umpire of a sham fight, to be answerable each for a given
+section of the field, the historian himself acting as the correlative of
+the umpire-in-chief.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF BALACLAVA PLAIN.
+
+EXPLANATIONS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Figures 1 to 6 indicate Redoubts.
+
+A. Point of collision.
+
+B. "C" Troop R.H.A.'s position during combat, in support Heavy Cavalry.
+
+C. "C" Troop in action against fugitive Russian Cavalry about D., range
+about 750 yards.
+
+E. Lord Lucan's position watching advance of Russian Cavalry mass.
+
+F. Position "C" Troop when approached by Cardigan and Paget after Light
+Cavalry charge.
+
+G. Position "C" Troop in support Light Cavalry charge.
+
+H. Russian Cavalry mass advancing at trot up "North" valley.
+
+HH. Russian Cavalry General and Staff trotting along Causeway heights,
+with view into both valleys.
+
+K. Line of Light Cavalry charge.
+
+L. Light Brigade during Heavy Cavalry charge.
+
+M. "I" Troop R.H.A. during ditto.
+
+N. Lord Raglan's position (approximate).
+
+O. Scarlett's five squadrons beginning their advance.
+
+P. Russian Cavalry mass halted.]
+
+It is true that the battle of Balaclava was fought to "a gallery"
+consisting of the gazers who looked down into the plain from the upland of
+the Chersonese. But of close and virtually independent spectators of the
+battle's most thrilling episodes, so near the climax of the Heavy Cavalry
+charge that they heard the clash of the sabres, so close to the lip of the
+Valley of Death that they discerned the wounds of our stricken troopers
+who strewed its sward and could greet and be greeted by the broken groups
+that rode back out of the "mouth of hell," there was but one small body of
+people. This body consisted of the officers and men of "C" Troop, Royal
+Horse Artillery. "C" Troop had been encamped from 1st October until the
+morning of the battle close to the Light division, in that section of the
+British position known as the Right Attack. When the fighting began in the
+Balaclava plain on the morning of the 25th, it promptly started for the
+scene of action. Pursuing the nearest way to the plain by the Woronzoff
+road, at the point known as the "Cutting" it received an order from Lord
+Raglan to take a more circuitous route, as by the more direct one it was
+following it might become exposed to fire from Russian cannon on the
+Fedoukine heights. Pursuing the circuitous route it came out into the
+plain through the "Col" then known as the "Barrier," crossed the "South"
+or "Inner" valley, and reached the left rear of Scarlett's squadrons
+formed up for the Heavy Cavalry charge. Here it received an order from
+Brigadier-General Strangways, who commanded the Artillery, with which it
+could not comply; and thenceforward "C" Troop throughout the day acted
+independently, at the discretion of its enterprising and self-reliant
+commander. What it saw and what it did are recorded in a couple of
+chapters of a book entitled _From Coruna to Sevastopol_. [Footnote: _From
+Coruna to Sevastopol_: The History of "C" Battery, "A" Brigade (late "C"
+Troop), Royal Horse Artillery. W.H. Allen and Co.] This volume was
+published some years ago, but the interesting and vivid details given in
+its pages of the Balaclava combats and the light it throws on many obscure
+incidents of the day have been strangely overlooked. The author of the
+chapters was an officer in the Troop whose experiences he shared and
+describes, and is a man well known in the service to be possessed of acute
+observation, strong memory, and implicit veracity. The present writer has
+been favoured by this officer with much information supplementary to that
+given in his published chapters, which is embodied in the following
+account throughout which the officer will be designated as "the 'C' Troop
+chronicler."
+
+The "Plain of Balaclava" is divided into two distinct valleys by a low
+ridge known as the "Causeway Heights," which bisects it in the direction
+of its length and is everywhere easily practicable for all arms. The
+valley nearest to the sea and the town of Balaclava has been variously
+termed the "South" and the "Inner" valley; it was on the slope descending
+to it from the ridge that our Heavy Cavalry won their success; the valley
+beyond the ridge is the "North" or "Outer" valley, down which, their faces
+set eastward, sped to glorious disaster the "noble six hundred" of the
+Light Brigade. On the north the plain is bounded by the Fedoukine heights;
+on the west by the steep face of the Chersonese upland whereon was the
+allied main position before Sevastopol during the siege; on the south by
+the broken ground between the plain and the sea; on the east by the River
+Tchernaya and the Kamara hills. Our weakness in the plain invited attack.
+At Kadikoei, on its southern verge, Sir Colin Campbell covered Balaclava
+with a Scottish regiment, a Field battery, and some Turks. Near the
+western end of the South valley were the camps of the cavalry division.
+Straggled along the Causeway heights was a series of weak earthworks whose
+total armament consisted of nine iron guns, and among which were
+distributed some six or seven battalions of Turkish infantry. At daybreak
+of 25th October the Russian General Liprandi with a force of 22,000
+infantry, 3300 cavalry, and 78 guns, took the offensive by driving the
+Turkish garrisons out of these earthworks in succession, beginning with
+the most easterly--No. 1, known as "Canrobert's Hill." The Turks holding
+it fought well and stood a storm and heavy loss before they were expelled.
+The other earthworks fell with less and less resistance, and the first
+three, with seven out of their nine guns, remained in the Russian
+possession.
+
+During the morning, while the Russians were taking the earthworks along
+the ridge, our two cavalry brigades, in the words of General Hamley, had
+been manoeuvring so as to threaten the flanks of any force which might
+approach Balaclava, without committing themselves to an action in which
+they would have been without the support of infantry. Ultimately, until
+his infantry should become available, Lord Raglan drew in the cavalry
+division to a position on the left of redoubt No. 6, near the foot of the
+Chersonese upland.
+
+While it was temporarily quiescent there Liprandi was engaging in an
+operation of enterprise rare in the record of Russian cavalry. General
+Ryjoff at the head of a great body of horse started on an advance up the
+North valley. Presently he detached four squadrons to his left, which
+moved toward where Sir Colin Campbell was in position at the head of the
+Kadikoei gorge, was repulsed without difficulty by that soldier's fire, and
+rode back whence it had come. The main body of Russian horse, computed by
+unimaginative authorities to be about 2000 strong, continued up the valley
+till it was about abreast of redoubt No. 4 [Footnote: See Map.], when it
+halted; checked apparently, writes Kinglake, by the fire of two guns from
+a battery on the edge of the upland. The "C" Troop chronicler states that
+in addition to "a few" shots fired by this battery (manned by Turks), the
+guns of "I" troop R.H.A., temporarily stationed in a little hollow in
+front of the Light Brigade [Footnote: See Map.], fired rapidly one round
+each, "haphazard," over the high ground in their front. General Hamley
+assigns no ground for the Russian halt, but mentions that just at the
+moment of collision between our Heavies and the Russian mass "three guns"
+on the edge of the upland were fired on the latter. From whatever cause,
+the Russian cavalry wheeled obliquely to the leftward, crossed the
+Causeway heights about redoubt No. 5, and began to descend the slope of
+the South valley. Kinglake heard of no ground for believing that the
+Russian horse thus wheeling southward, were cognisant of the presence of
+the Heavies in the valley they were entering. But the "C" Troop chronicler
+states that as the Troop was crossing the plain a few Russian horsemen
+were seen by it trotting fast along the top of the ridge [Footnote: See
+Map.], who, when almost immediately afterwards the head of the Russian
+column showed itself on the skyline, were set down as the General
+commanding it and his staff.
+
+Kinglake observes that the Russians have declared their object in this
+operation to have been the destruction of a non-existent artillery park
+near Kadikoei, while some of our people imagined it to have been a real
+attempt on Balaclava. But up the centre of the North valley was neither
+the directest nor the safest way to Kadikoei, much less to Balaclava. Is it
+not more probable that the enterprise was of the nature merely of a sort
+of "snap-offensive"; while as yet the allied infantry visibly pouring down
+the slopes of the upland were innocuous because of distance and while the
+sole occupants of the plain were a couple of weak cavalry brigades and a
+single horse battery? Ryjoff on the ridge could see in his front at least
+portions of the Light Brigade; its fire told him the horse battery was
+thereabouts too, and there were those shots from the cannon on the upland.
+Is it not feasible that, looking down on his left to Scarlett's poor six
+squadrons--his two following regiments were then some distance off--and
+seeing those squadrons as yet without accompanying artillery, he should
+have judged them his easier quarry and ordered the wheel that should bring
+his avalanche down on them?
+
+Kinglake recounts how, while our cavalry division yet stood intact near
+the foot of the upland, Lord Raglan had noticed the instability of the
+Turks under Campbell's command at Kadikoei and had sent Lord Lucan
+directions to move down eight squadrons of Heavies to support them; how
+Scarlett started with the Inniskillings, Greys, and Fifth Dragoon Guards,
+numbering six squadrons, to be followed by the two squadrons of the Royals;
+how the march toward Kadikoei was proceeding along the South valley, when
+all of a sudden Elliot, General Scarlett's aide-de-camp, glancing up
+leftward at the ridge "saw its top fretted with lances, and in another
+moment the skyline broken by evident squadrons of horse." Then, Kinglake
+proceeds, Scarlett's resolve was instantaneous; he gave the command "Left
+wheel into line!" and confronted the mass gathering into sight over
+against him. Soon after Scarlett had started Lord Lucan had learned of the
+advance up the North valley of the great mass of Russian cavalry, which he
+had presently descried himself, as also its change of direction southward
+across the Causeway ridge; and after giving Lord Cardigan "parting
+instructions" which that officer construed into compulsory inactivity on
+his part when a great opportunity presented itself, he had galloped off at
+speed to overtake Scarlett and give him directions for prompt conflict
+with the Russian cavalry. Thus far Kinglake.
+
+The testimony of the "C" Troop chronicler differs from the above statement
+in every detail. He significantly points out that Kinglake does not, as is
+his custom, quote the words of Lord Raglan's order directing the march of
+the Heavies to Kadikoei. His averment is to the following effect. When the
+cavalry division after its manoeuvring of the morning was retiring by Lord
+Raglan's command along the South valley toward the foot of the upland, it
+was followed as closely as they dared by some Cossacks who busied
+themselves in spearing and capturing the unfortunate Turks flying from the
+ridge toward Kadikoei athwart the rear of the British squadrons. Eventually
+the Cossacks reached the camp of the Light Brigade and set about stabbing
+and hacking at the sick and non-effective horses left standing at the
+picket-lines. Lord Raglan from his commanding position on the upland saw
+those Cossacks working mischief in our lines, and sent a message to Lord
+Lucan "to take some cavalry forward and protect the camp from being
+destroyed." The "C" Troop chronicler has in his possession a letter from
+the actual bearer of this message, to the effect that he duly delivered it
+to Lord Lucan and that consequent on it his lordship moved forward some
+heavy cavalry into the plain toward the picket-lines. Testimony to be
+presently noted will indicate the importance of this statement. The
+chronicler denies that Lord Lucan, as Kinglake states, galloped after
+Scarlett after having given Lord Cardigan his "parting instructions." No
+doubt he did give those instructions, when apprised by Lord Raglan's
+aide-de-camp of the threatening advance of Russian horse. But what he then
+did, assured as he was of the stationary attitude of the heavy squadrons
+sent out to protect the camp, was to ride forward along the ridge-line to
+discern for himself where, if indeed anywhere, the Russians were intending
+to strike. He most daringly remained at a forward and commanding point of
+the ridge [Footnote: See Map.] until actually chased off his ground by the
+van of the Russian wheel, and he then galloped straight down the slope to
+join Scarlett drawing out his squadrons for the conflict with the Russian
+mass whose leading files Elliot's keen eye had discerned on the skyline.
+
+If Kinglake were right as to his alleged movement of the Heavies toward
+Kadikoei and its sudden arrestment because of Elliot's discovery, "C"
+Troop, as it approached them, would have seen the squadrons still in
+motion. But the chronicler testifies that "C" Troop, while moving to the
+scene of action and when still more than a mile and a half distant (at
+least fifteen minutes at the pace the weakened gun-teams travelled), had a
+full view of the South valley. And it then saw five squadrons of heavy
+cavalry thus early halted in the plain near the cavalry picket-lines,
+fronting towards the ridge and apparently perfectly dressed--the Greys
+(two squadrons deep) in the centre, recognised by their bearskins; a
+helmeted regiment (also two squadrons deep) on the left (afterwards known
+to be the 5th Dragoon Guards); and one helmeted squadron on the right (2nd
+squadron Inniskillings). A sixth squadron (1st Inniskillings) was visible
+some distance to the right rear and it was also fronting towards the
+ridge. This force, so and thus early positioned, consisted, avers the
+chronicler, of the identical troops which Kinglake erroneously describes
+as straggling hurriedly into deployment under the urgency of Scarlett and
+Lucan to cope with the suddenly disclosed adversary.
+
+When "C" Troop and its chronicler reached the rear of the formed-up
+squadrons they were found in the same formation as when first observed,
+but the whole had in the interval been moved somewhat to the right,
+farther into the plain, with intent no doubt to be clear of obstacles on
+the previous front. Kinglake speaks throughout of the force that first
+charged under Scarlett--"Scarlett's three hundred," as consisting of three
+squadrons ranked thus:--
+
+
+-------------------  -------------------    -------------------
+     2nd squad.           lst squad.      2nd squad. Inniskillings
+
+      \__________________________/
+                  Greys.
+
+
+And, although his words are not so clear as usual, he appears to believe
+that the 5th Dragoon Guards, whom in his plan he places some little
+distance to the left rear of the Greys, were actually the last to move to
+the attack, of all the five regiments participating in the heavy cavalry
+onslaught. The "C" Troop chronicler, noting details, be it remembered,
+from his position immediately in rear of the cavalry force which first
+charged, describes its composition and formation thus:--
+
+
+   -------------------          -------------------  -------------------
+Front squad. 5th Dr. Guards.     1st squad. Greys.        2nd squad.
+                                                         Inniskillings.
+   -------------------          -------------------
+Rear squad. 5th Dr. Guards.      2nd squad. Greys.
+
+
+in all five squadrons, instead of Mr. Kinglake's three. Nor, according to
+the chronicler, did the three squadrons in first line start
+simultaneously, as Kinglake distinctly conveys. The leading squadron of
+the Greys moved off first, and just as it was breaking into a gallop was
+temporarily hampered by the swerving of the horse of Colonel Griffiths,
+who was struck in the head by a bullet from the halted Russians' carbine
+fire. Next moved, almost simultaneously, the 2nd squadron Inniskillings
+and the front squadron 5th Dragoon Guards; thirdly, the 2nd squadron
+Greys, and finally the rear squadron 5th Dragoon Guards. Lord Lucan is
+represented as having been "personally concerned in or approving of
+everything connected with the five squadrons at this moment," galloping to
+each in succession, giving orders when and in what sequence it was to
+start, what section of the Russian front it was to strike, and exerting
+himself to the utmost to have everything fully understood. His errors were
+in omitting to call in the outlying regiments of the brigade, and either
+now--or earlier before he left the ridge, specifically to order Lord
+Cardigan to fall on the flank of the Russians at the moment when their
+front should be _aux prises_ with Scarlett's heavy squadrons. "C" Troop's
+position was such that it could command, over the heads of the stationary
+Heavies, the gradual slope up to the Russian front, and every detail of
+the charge was under its eyes. Scarlett's burnished helmet and plain blue
+coat were conspicuous in front. The Troop also had the opportunity of
+making a deliberate study of the Russian cavalry both before and during
+the combat.
+
+Its front had the appearance of three strong squadrons; its formation was
+either close or quarter distance column--probably the former, since the
+column could nowhere be seen through from front to rear; its depth halted
+was about the same as its breadth of front; its pace across the ridge was
+a sharp trot and its discipline was indicated by the smartness with which
+it took ground to the left. Kinglake describes the serried mass as
+encircled by a loose fringe of satellites, but the "C" Troop chronicler
+saw neither skirmishers, flankers, nor scouts; and no guns were discerned
+or heard, although General Hamley says that as the huge cohort swept down
+batteries darted out from it and threw shells against the troops on the
+upland. No Lancers were seen with the column, certainly none with pennons.
+The "partial deployment" of which Kinglake speaks, consisting of "wings or
+forearms" devised to cover the flanks or fold inwards on the front, did
+not make itself apparent to any observer of "C" Troop; and indeed the
+present writer never knew a Russian who had heard of it, the species of
+formation adumbrated, so far as he is aware, being confined to Zulu impis.
+It was noticed, and this is not rare, that on the halt the centre pulled
+up a little earlier than the flanks, so that the latter were somewhat
+prolonged and advanced. The halt was quite brief and a slower advance
+ensued without correction of the frontal dressing. Presently there was
+another halt and some pistol or carbine fire from the central squadron on
+the advancing first squadron of the Greys. Kinglake makes the Russian
+front meet our assault halted, but the "C" Troop chronicler declares that
+when the collision occurred the mass were actually moving forward but at
+"a pace so slow that it could hardly be called a trot." General Hamley
+describes "the impetus of the enemy's column carrying it on, and pressing
+our combatants back for a short space," and the chronicler speaks of the
+Russians as surging forward after the impact, but without bearing back our
+people.
+
+It is extremely difficult for the reader of a detailed narrative of a
+combat that may become a landmark in the military history of a nation, to
+realise that it may have been fought and finished in no longer time than
+it has taken him to read the few paragraphs of introductory matter. Mr.
+Kinglake has devoted a whole volume to the battle of Balaclava, and
+four-fifths of it deals with the two cavalry fights--Scarlett's charge,
+and the charge of the Light Brigade. The latter deed was enacted from
+start to finish within the space of five-and-twenty minutes; as regards
+the former, from the first appearance of the Russian troopers on the
+skyline to their defeat and flight a period of eight minutes is the
+outside calculation. General Hamley, an eyewitness, says "some four or
+five minutes." During those minutes "C" Troop R.H.A. under Brandling's
+shrewd and independent guidance was moving slowly forward on the right of
+the ground that had been covered by the charging Heavies. There was no
+opportunity for its intervention while the melley lasted. Even when the
+Russian squadrons broke it could not for the moment act while the redcoats
+were still blended with the gray. But Brandling saw that his chance was
+nigh; he galloped forward to the point marked C on the map, unlimbered,
+and stood intent. Kinglake states that the fugitive Russians, hanging
+together as closely as they could, retreated by the way they had come and
+Hamley describes them as vanishing beyond the ridge. Kinglake also says
+that "I" Troop R.H.A. (accompanying the Light Brigade) fired a few shots
+at the retreating horsemen, against whom Barker's battery, from its
+position near Kadikoei, also came into action. The "C" Troop chronicler
+traverses those statements. His testimony is that the Russian line of
+retreat was by their left rear along the slope of the South valley, and
+not immediately over the ridge; that the mass was spread over acres of
+ground; and that their officers were trying to rally the men and had
+actually got some ranks formed, when "C" Troop opened fire from about
+point C in the general direction of point D. "I" Troop was out of sight,
+he says, and Barker out of range; neither came into action; but "C" Troop,
+of whose presence in the field Kinglake apparently was unaware, fired
+forty-nine shot and shells, broke up the attempted rally, and punished the
+Russians severely. The range was about 750 paces.
+
+At the time when the Light Brigade started on its "mad-brained" charge
+down the North valley, "C" Troop was halted dismounted on the slope of the
+South valley a little below redoubt No. 5. In rear of it was the Heavy
+Cavalry Brigade, halted on the scene of its recent victorious combat. Lord
+Lucan was some little distance to the front. "C" Troop presently saw him
+trot away over the ridge in the direction of the Light Brigade, a scrap of
+paper in his hand at which he kept looking--doubtless the memorable order
+which Nolan had just brought him--and a group of staff officers, among
+whom was Nolan, behind him. Out of curiosity Brandling with his trumpeter
+rode up to the crest, whence he commanded a view into the North valley. By
+and by some of the Heavies were moved over the crest, no doubt the Royals
+and Greys which Scarlett was to lead forward in support of the Light
+Brigade. All was still quiet but for an occasional shot from a Russian
+battery about redoubt No. 2, when suddenly Brandling came galloping back
+shouting "Mount! mount!" and telling his officers as he came in that the
+Light Cavalry had begun an advance on the other side of the ridge. But
+that he had happened to ride to the crest, the charge of the Light Brigade
+would have begun and ended without the knowledge of "C" Troop. No order
+from any source reached it, and Brandling, acting on his own initiative,
+took his guns rapidly to the front along the inner edge of the ridge and
+unlimbered at point G. He durst not fire into the bottom of the North
+valley where our light horsemen were mixed up with the enemy; all the
+diversion he could effect was to open on the Russian cannon-smoke directly
+in his front, about redoubt No. 2. Even from this he had soon to desist,
+being without support and threatened by the Russian cavalry, and he
+retired by the way he had advanced, to point F, where the troop halted
+near the Heavies, whose advance Lord Lucan had arrested resolving that
+they at all events should not be destroyed. These regiments had been moved
+toward the ridge out of the line of fire in the North valley, and were
+kept shifting their position and gradually retiring, suffering frequent
+casualties from the Russian artillery about redoubt No. 2 until they
+finally halted near the crest in the vicinity of "C" Troop's latest
+position at point F.
+
+At this point only the left-hand gun of "C" Troop was on the crest, with a
+view into the North valley; the other guns were on the southern slope. But
+little had been previously seen of the terrible and glorious experiences
+of the Light Brigade; and now what was witnessed was not the glory but the
+horror of battle. For the wounded of the charge were passing to the rear,
+shattered and maimed, some staggering on foot, others reeling in their
+saddles, calling to the gunners and the Heavies to look at a "poor broken
+leg" or a dangling arm. Brandling and his officers held their flasks to
+the poor fellows' mouths as long as the contents lasted. The "C" Troop
+chronicler, whose narrative I have been following, tells how Captain
+Morris, who commanded the 17th Lancers, was carried past the front of the
+troop towards Kadikoei, dreadfully wounded about the head and calling
+loudly: "Lord, have mercy on my soul!" Kinglake gives a wholly different
+account of Captain Morris's removal from the field; but the "C" Troop
+chronicler is quite firm on his version, and explains that the 17th
+Lancers and "C" Troop having lain together shortly before the war all the
+people of the latter knew and identified Captain Morris.
+
+Balaclava is rather an old story now, and some readers may require to be
+reminded that the Light Brigade charged in two lines, the first line being
+led by Lord Cardigan, the second by Lord George Paget; that the first line
+rode into the Russian batteries considerably in advance of the second, the
+latter having advanced at a more measured pace; and that the second line,
+with sore diminished ranks and accompanied by a couple of groups rather
+than detachments of the first, came back later than did the few survivors
+of Cardigan's regiments other than the groups referred to. The aspersion
+on Cardigan was that he returned prematurely, instead of remaining to
+share the fortunes of the second line of his brigade, and this he did not
+deny. Kinglake's statement is that "he rode back alone at a pace
+decorously slow, towards the spot where Scarlett was halted." He adds that
+General Scarlett maintained that Lord Lucan was present at the time; but
+Lord Lucan's averment was that Lord Cardigan did not approach him until
+afterwards when all was over. Kinglake relates further that when Lord
+George Paget came back at the head of the last detachment, some officers
+rode forward to greet him one of whom was Lord Cardigan. Seeing him
+approach composedly from the rear Lord George exclaimed: "Halloa, Lord
+Cardigan, weren't you there?" to which, according to one version of the
+story, Cardigan replied: "Wasn't I, though? Here, Jenyns, didn't you see
+me at the guns?"
+
+The reasonable inferences from Kinglake are that Cardigan's first halt was
+made and that his earliest remarks were uttered when he reached Scarlett,
+and that he and Paget met after the charge for the first time when the
+alleged question and answer passed.
+
+The "C" Troop chronicler's narrative of events is right in the teeth of
+these inferences. While the troop was halted at point F and after a great
+many wounded and disabled men had already passed it going to the rear,
+Lord Cardigan came riding by at a "quiet pace" close under the crest. He
+had passed the troop on his left for several horse-lengths, when he came
+back and halted within a yard or two of the left-hand gun, the only one
+fairly on the crest. He was not alone, but attended by Cornet Yates of his
+own old regiment the 11th Hussars, a recently commissioned ranker. "Lord
+Cardigan was in the full dress _pelisse_ (buttoned) of the 11th Hussars,
+and he rode a chestnut horse very distinctly marked and of grand
+appearance. The horse seemed to have had enough of it, and his lordship
+appeared to have been knocked about but was cool and collected. He
+returned his sword, undid a little of the front of his dress and pulled
+down his underclothing under his waistbelt. Then, in a quiet way, as if
+rather talking to himself, he said, 'I tell you what it is: those
+instruments of theirs,' alluding to the Russian weapons, 'are deuced blunt;
+they tickle up one's ribs!' Then he pulled his revolver out of his
+holster as if the thought had just struck him, and said, 'And here's this
+d----d thing I have never thought of until now.' He then replaced it, drew
+his sword, and said, 'Well, we've done our share of the work!' and
+pointing up toward the Chasseurs d'Afrique on our left rear (ignorant of
+their opportune service), he added, 'It's time they gave those dappled
+gentry a chance.' Afterwards he asked, 'Has any one seen my regiment?' The
+men answered, 'No, sir.'" Brandling was holding aloof; and his lordship
+turned his horse and rode away farther back.
+
+Just then a cheer was raised by some Heavies who had lately formed in
+front of "C" Troop. Cardigan, so the chronicler tells, looked backward to
+see the occasion, and saw the cheer was in compliment to the 8th Hussars
+coming back with Colonel Sewell in front and Colonel Mayow, the
+brigade-major, behind on the left. Cardigan wheeled, trotted back towards
+the 8th, turned round in front of Colonel Sewell, and took up the "walk."
+Then occurred something "painful to witness. It was seen from the left of
+'C' Troop that the moment Cardigan's back was toward the 8th as he headed
+them, Colonel Mayow pointed toward him, shook his head, and made signs to
+the officers on the left of the Heavies as much as to say, 'See him; he
+has taken care of himself.'" Men in the ranks of the 8th also pointed and
+made signs to the troopers of the Heavies as they were passing left to
+left. There was, as well, a little excited undertalk from one corps to the
+other. Colonel Sewell neither saw nor took part in this wretched business;
+and of course Cardigan did not know that he was being thus ridiculed and
+disparaged while he was smiling and raising his sword to the cheers of the
+Heavies and the gunners.
+
+Immediately after this episode the returning 4th Light Dragoons came
+obliquely across the North valley at a sharp pace, but fell into the
+"walk" as they came within a hundred yards of "C" Troop. Lord George
+Paget, who led what remained of the regiment, rode up to the flank of "C"
+Troop and halted on the very spot where Cardigan had stood a few minutes
+earlier. Lord George had the look of a man who had ridden hard, and was
+heated and excited. He exclaimed in rather a loud tone, "It's a d----d
+shame; there we had a lot of their guns and carriages taken, and received
+no support, and yet there's all this infantry about--it's a shame!"
+Meanwhile Lord Cardigan had come back and was close behind Lord George
+while he was speaking, without the other knowing it. He called out, "Lord
+George Paget!"; and on the latter turning round said to him in an
+undertone, "I am surprised!"; and "tossing his head in the air added some
+other remark which was not heard." Lord George lowered his sword to the
+salute, and, without speaking turned his horse and rode on after his men.
+The "C" Troop chronicler is positive that both officers visited "C" Troop
+before going to any general or to any other command, and that they met
+there for the first time after the combat.
+
+When Lord Raglan came down from the upland after all was over, the "C"
+Troop chronicler says that he went straight for Lucan then in front of the
+Heavy Cavalry brigade, having first sent for Cardigan to meet him. After a
+few moments the latter repassed the troop on his way toward the remnant of
+his brigade. "Then Lord Raglan took Lucan a little forward by himself out
+of hearing of the group of staff officers, and his gesticulations of head
+and arm were so suggestive of passionate anger, that the onlookers did not
+need to be told that the Commander-in-Chief did not charge the blame
+chiefly on Cardigan." Lord Raglan's subsequent interview with General
+Scarlett, which occurred in the hearing of "C" Troop, was of a different
+character. After complimenting the gallant old warrior his lordship said,
+"Now tell me all about yourself." Scarlett replied, "When the Russian
+column was moving down on me, sir, I began by sending first a squadron of
+the Greys at them, and--" but at the word "and" Lord Raglan struck in,
+saying, "And they knocked them over like the devil!" He then turned his
+horse away, as if he did not need to hear any more.
+
+
+
+
+HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
+
+
+These be big words, my masters! I can only say they are not mine,--I am
+far too modest to utter any such high-sounding phrase on my own
+responsibility,--but they are the exact terms used by a high municipal
+dignitary in characterising the result of what he was pleased to term my
+"chivalrous conduct." My sardonic chum, on the contrary,--an individual
+wholly abandoned to the ignoble vice of punning,--asserts that my conduct
+was simply "barbarous." It will be for the reader to judge.
+
+St. Meuse--let us call it St. Meuse--is a town of what is still French
+Lorraine; and to St. Meuse I came drifting up the Marne Valley, over the
+flat expanse of the plain of Chalons, and by St. Menehould, the proud
+stronghold of pickled pigs' feet, in the second week of September 1873.
+St. Meuse was one of the last of the French cities held in pawn by the
+Germans for the payment of the milliards. The last instalment of
+blood-money had been paid and the _Pickelhaubes_ were about to evacuate
+St. Meuse as soon as the cash had been methodically counted, and after
+they should have leisurely filled their baggage trains and packed their
+portmanteaus. My intention in going to St. Meuse was to witness this
+evacuation scene, and to be a spectator of the return of light-heartedness
+to the French population of the place, on the withdrawal of the Teuton
+incubus which for three years had lain upon the safety-valve of their
+constitutional sprightliness. I had been a little out of my reckoning of
+time, and when I reached St. Meuse I found that I had a week to stay there
+before the event should occur which I had come to witness; but the
+interval could not be regarded as lost time, for St. Meuse is a very
+pleasant city and the conditions which were so soon to terminate presented
+a most interesting field of study.
+
+You must know that St. Meuse is a fortress. It has a citadel or at least
+such fragments of a citadel as the bombardment had left, and the quaint
+old town is surrounded with bastions which are linked by curtains and
+flanked by lunettes, the whole being girdled by a ditch, beyond the
+counterscarp of which spreads a sloping glacis which makes a very pleasant
+promenade. The defensive strength of the place is reduced to zero in these
+days of far-reaching rifled siege artillery, for it lies in a cup and is
+surrounded on all sides by hills the summits of which easily command the
+fortifications. But the consciousness that it is obsolete as a fortress
+has not yet come home to St. Meuse. It has, in truth, a very good opinion
+of itself as a valorous, not to say heroic, place; nor can it be denied
+that its title to this self-complacency has been fairly earned. In the
+Franco-German war, spite of its defects, it stood a siege of over two
+months and succumbed only after a severe bombardment which lasted for
+several days. And while as yet it was not wholly beleaguered, it was very
+active in making itself disagreeable to the foreign invader. It was a
+patrolling party from St. Meuse that intercepted the courier on his way
+from the battlefield of Sedan to Germany, carrying the hurried lines to
+his wife which the Crown Prince of Prussia scrawled on the fly-leaf of an
+orderly book while as yet the last shots of the combat were dropping in
+the distance; carrying too the notes of the momentous battle which William
+Howard-Russell had jotted down in the heat of the action and had taken the
+same opportunity of despatching. St. Meuse, then, had balked the Princess
+of the first tidings of her husband's safety, and the great English
+newspaper of the earliest details of the most sensational battle of the
+age. It had fallen at last, but not ingloriously; and the iron of defeat
+had not entered so deeply into its soul as had been the case with some
+French fortresses, of which it could not well be said that they had done
+their honest best to resist their fate. Its self-respect, at least, was
+left to it, and it was something to know that when the German garrison
+should march away, it was bound to leave to St. Meuse the artillery and
+munitions of war of the fortress just as they had been found on the day of
+the surrender.
+
+I came to like St. Meuse immensely in the course of the days I spent in it
+waiting for the great event of the evacuation. The company at the _table
+d'hote_ of the Trois Maures was varied and amusing. The Germans ate in a
+room by themselves, so that the obnoxious element was not present overtly
+at the general _table d'hote._ But we had a few German officials in plain
+clothes--clerks in General Manteuffel's bureau, contractors, cigar
+merchants, etc., who spoke French even among themselves, and were
+painfully polite to the French habitues who were as painfully polite in
+return. There was a batch of Parisian journalists who had come to St.
+Meuse to watch the evacuation, and who wrote their letters in the cafe
+over the way to the accompaniment of _verres_ of absinthe and bocks of
+beer. Then there was the gallant captain of gendarmes, who had arrived in
+St. Meuse with a trusty band of twenty-five subordinates to take over from
+the Germans the municipal superintendence of the place, and, later, the
+occupation of the fortress. He was the most polite man I ever knew, this
+captain of gendarmes, with a clever knack of turning you outside in in the
+course of half an hour's conversation, and the peculiar attribute of
+having, to all appearance, eyes in the back of his head. To him, as he
+placidly ate his food, there came, from time to time, quiet and rather
+bashful-looking men in civilian attire of a slightly seedy description.
+Sometimes they merely caught his eye and went out again without speaking;
+sometimes they handed to him little notes; sometimes they held with him a
+brief whispered conversation during which the captain's nonchalance was
+imperturbable. These respectable individuals who, if they saw you once in
+conversation with their chief, ever after bowed to you with the greatest
+empressement, were members of the secret police.
+
+As for the inhabitants of St. Meuse, they appeared to await the hour of
+their delivery with considerable philosophy. Physically they are the
+finest race I ever saw in France; their men, tall, square, and muscular,
+their women handsome and comely. Numbers of both sexes are fair-haired,
+and the sandiness of hair which we are wont to associate with the Scottish
+Celt is by no means uncommon. A sardonic companion whom I had picked up by
+the way, attributed those characteristics to the fact that in the great
+war St. Meuse was a depot for British prisoners of war who had in some way
+contrived to imbue the native population with some of their own physical
+attributes. He further prophesied a wave of Teuton characteristics as the
+result of the German occupation which was about to terminate; but his
+insinuations seemed to me to partake of the scurrilous, especially as he
+instanced Lewes, once a British depot for prisoners of war, as a field in
+which similar phenomena were to be discerned. But, nevertheless, I
+unquestionably found a good deal of what may be called national hybridism
+in St. Meuse. I used to buy photographs of a shopkeeper over whose door
+was blazoned the Scottish name Macfarlane. Outwardly Macfarlane was a
+"hielanman" all over. He had a shock-head of bright red hair such as might
+have thatched the poll of the "Dougal cratur;" his cheek-bones were high,
+his nose of the Captain of Knockdunder pattern, and his mouth of true
+Celtic amplitude. One felt instinctively as if Macfarlane were bound to
+know Gaelic, and that the times were out of joint when he evinced greater
+fondness for _eau sucree_ than for Talisker. It was with quite a sense of
+dislocation of the fitness of things that I found Macfarlane could talk
+nothing but French. But although he had torn up the ancient landmarks, or
+rather suffered them to lapse, he yet was proud of his ancestry. His
+grandfather, it appeared, was a soldier of the "Black Watch" who had been
+a prisoner of war in St. Meuse, and who, when the peace came, preferred
+taking unto himself a daughter of the Amalekite and settling in St. Meuse,
+to going home to a pension of sevenpence a day and liberty to ply as an
+Edinburgh caddie.
+
+As for the German "men in possession," they pursued the even tenor of
+their way in the precise yet phlegmatic German manner. Their guards kept
+the gates and bridges as if they meant to hold the place till the crack of
+doom, instead of being under orders to clear out within the week. The
+recruits drilled on the citadel esplanade, straightening their legs and
+pointing their toes as if their sole ambition in life was to kick their
+feet away into space, down to the very eve of evacuation. Their battalions
+practised skirmishing on the glacis with that routine assiduity which is
+the secret of the German military success. Old Manteuffel was living in
+the prefecture holding his levees and giving his stiff ceremonious
+dinner-parties, as if he had done despite to Dr. Cumming's warnings and
+taken a lease of the place. The German officers thronged their cafe, each
+man, after the manner of German officers, shouting at the pitch of his
+voice; and at the cafe of the under-officers tough old _Wachtmeisters_ and
+grizzled sergeants with many medals played long quiet games at cards, or
+knocked the balls about on the chubby little pocketless tables with cues
+the tips of which were as large as the base of a six-pounder shell.
+
+The French journalists insisted I should accept it as an article of faith,
+that these two races dwelling together in St. Meuse hated each other like
+poison. They would have it that while discipline alone prevented the
+Germans from massacring every Frenchman in the place, it was only a
+humiliating sense of weakness that hindered the Frenchmen from rising in
+hot fury against the Germans who were their temporary masters. I am afraid
+the gentlemen of the Parisian press came rather to dislike me on account
+of my obdurate scepticism in such matters. That there was no great
+cordiality was obvious and natural. Some of the Germans were arrogant and
+domineering. For instance, having a respect for the Germans, it pained and
+indeed disgusted me to hear a colonel of the German staff, in answer to my
+question whether the evacuating force would march out with a rearguard as
+in war time, reply, "Pho, a field gendarme with a whip is rearguard enough
+against such _canaille!_" But in the mouths of Hans and Carl and Johann,
+the stout _Kerle_ of the ranks, there were no such words of bitter scorn
+for their compulsory hosts. The honest fellows drew water for the
+goodwives on whom they were billeted, did a good deal of stolid
+love-making with the girls, and nursed the babies with a solicitude that
+put to shame the male parents of these youthful hopes of Troy. I take
+leave, as a reasonable person, to doubt whether it can lie in the heart of
+a family to hate a man who has dandled its baby and whether a man can be
+rancorous against a family whose baby he has nursed. But fashion's sway is
+omnipotent in emotion as in dress. Ever since the war, journalists,
+authors, and public opinion generally had hammered it into the French
+nation that if it were not to be a traitor to its patriotism, the first
+article of its creed must be hatred against the Germans; and that the
+bitterer this hate the more fervent the patriotism. It was not indeed
+incumbent on Frenchmen and Frenchwomen to accept this creed, but it
+behoved them at least to profess it; and it must be admitted that they did
+this for the most part with an intensity and vigour which seemed to prove
+that with many profession had deepened into conviction.
+
+While as yet the evacuation had been a thing of the remote future, the
+people of St. Meuse had borne the yoke lightly, and indeed had, I believe,
+privily congratulated themselves on the substantial advantages in the way
+of money spent in the place and the immunity from taxation which were
+incidental to the foreign occupation. But as the day for the evacuation
+drew closer and closer, one became dimly conscious of an electrical
+condition of the social atmosphere which any trifle might stimulate into a
+thunderstorm. Blouses gathered and muttered about the street-corners,
+scowling at and elbowing the German soldiers as they strode to buy
+sausages to stay them in the homeward march. The gamins, always covertly
+insolent, no longer cloaked their insolence, and wagged little tricolour
+flags under the nose of the stolid German sentry on the Pont St. Croix. At
+the _table d'hote_ the painful politeness of the German civilians had no
+effect in thawing the studied coldness of the French habitues.
+
+As for myself, I was a neutral, and professing to take no side, flattered
+myself that I could keep out of the vortex of the soreness. Soon after my
+arrival at St. Meuse I had called upon the Mayor at his official quarters
+in the Hotel de Ville, and had received civil speeches in return for civil
+speeches. Then I had left my card on General Manteuffel, with whom I
+happened to have a previous acquaintance; and those formal duties of a
+benevolent neutral having been performed I had held myself free to choose
+my own company. Circumstances had some time before brought me into
+familiar contact with very many German officers, and I had imbibed a
+liking for their ways and conversation, noisy as the latter is. Several of
+the officers then in St. Meuse had been personal acquaintances in other
+days and it was at once natural and pleasant for me to renew the
+intercourse. I was made an honorary member of the mess; I spent many hours
+in the officers' casino; I rode out with the officers of the squadron of
+Uhlans. All this was very pleasant; but as the day of the evacuation
+became close I noticed that the civility of the French captain of
+gendarmes grew colder, that the cordiality of the French habitues of the
+_table d'hote_ visibly diminished, and that I encountered not a few
+unfriendly looks when I walked through the streets by myself. It began to
+dawn upon me that St. Meuse was getting to reckon me a German sympathiser,
+and as there was no half-way house, therefore not in accord with the
+emotions of France and St. Meuse.
+
+On the afternoon immediately preceding the morning that had been fixed for
+the evacuation, there came to me a polite request that I should visit M.
+le Maire at the Hotel de Ville. His worship was elaborately civil but
+obviously troubled in mind. He coughed nervously several times after the
+initiatory compliments had passed, and then he began to speak. "Monsieur,
+you are aware that the Germans are going to-morrow morning?"
+
+I replied that I had cognisance of this fact. "Do you also know that the
+last of the German officials depart by the 5 A.M. train, not caring to
+remain here after the troops are gone?"
+
+Of this also I was aware.
+
+"Let me hope," continued the Mayor, "that you are going along with them,
+or at all events will ride away with Messieurs the officers?"
+
+On the contrary, was my reply, I had come not only to witness the
+evacuation but to note how St. Meuse should bear herself in the hour of
+her liberation; I desired to witness the rejoicings; I was not less
+anxious to be a spectator of any disturbance if such unhappily should
+occur. Why should M. le Maire have conceived this desire to balk my
+natural curiosity?
+
+M. le Maire was obviously not a little embarrassed; but he persevered and
+was candid. This deplorable occupation was now so nearly finished and
+happily, as yet, everything had been so tranquil, that it would be a
+thousand pities if any untoward event should occur to detract from the
+dignified attitude which the territory now to be evacuated had maintained.
+It was of critical importance in every sense that St. Meuse should not
+give way to riot or disorder on that occasion. He hoped and believed it
+would not--here M. le Maire laid his hand on his heart--but a spark, as I
+knew, fired tinder, and the St. Meuse populace were at present figurative
+tinder. I might be that spark.
+
+"You much resemble a German," said M. le Maire, "with that great yellow
+beard of yours, and your broad shoulders, as if you had carried arms. Our
+citizens have seen you much in the society of Messieurs the German
+officers; they are not in a temper to draw fine distinctions of
+nationality; and, dear sir, I ask you to go away with the Germans lest
+perchance our blouses, reckoning you for a German, should not be very
+tender with you when the spiked helmets are out of the place. The truth
+is," said the worthy Maire with a burst of plain speaking, "I'm afraid
+that you will be mobbed and that there will be a row, and that then the
+Germans may come back and the evacuation be postponed, and I'll get wigged
+by the Prefect and the Minister of the Interior and bully-ragged in the
+newspapers, and St. Meuse will get abused and the fat will be generally in
+the fire!"
+
+Here was an awkward fix. I could not comply with the Mayor's request; that
+was not to be thought of for reasons I need not mention here. I had no
+particular desire to be mobbed. Once before I had experienced the tender
+mercies of a French mob and I knew that they were very cruel. But stronger
+than the personal feeling was my sincere sympathy with the Mayor's
+critical position; and also my anxiety, by what means might be within my
+power, to contribute to the maintenance of a tranquillity so desirable.
+But, then, what means were within my power? I could not go; I could not
+promise to stop indoors, for it was incumbent on me to see everything that
+was to be seen. And if through me trouble came I should be responsible
+heaven knows for what!--with a skinful of sore bones into the bargain.
+
+"If Monsieur cannot go,"--the Mayor broke in upon my cogitation,--"if
+Monsieur cannot go, will he pardon the exigency of the occasion if I
+suggest one other alternative? It is,"--here the Mayor hesitated--"it is
+the yellow beard which gives to Monsieur the aspect of a German. With only
+whiskers nobody could take Monsieur for anything but an Englishman. If
+Monsieur would only have the complaisance and charity to--to--"
+
+Cut off my beard! Great powers! shear that mane that had been growing for
+years!--that cataract of hair that has been, so to speak, my oriflamme;
+the only physical belonging of which I ever was proud, the only thing, so
+far as I know, that I have ever been envied! For the moment the suggestion
+knocked me all of a heap. There came into my head some confused
+reminiscence of a story about a girl who cut off her hair and sold it to
+keep her mother from starving, or redeem her lover from captivity, or
+something of the kind. But that must have been before the epoch of parish
+relief, and kidnapping is now punishable by statute. What was St. Meuse to
+me that for her I should mow my hirsute glories? But then, if people grew
+savage, they might pull my beard out by the roots. And there had been
+lately dawning on me the dire truth that its tawny hue was becoming
+somewhat freely streaked with gray, a colour I abhor, except in eyes. I
+made up my mind.
+
+"I'll do it, sir," said I to the Mayor, with a manly curtness. My heart
+was too full for many words.
+
+He respected my emotion, bowed in silence over the hand which he had
+grasped, and only spoke to give me the address of his own barber.
+
+This barber was a patriot of unquestioned zeal; but I am inclined to think
+his extraction was similar to that of Macfarlane, for he combined
+patriotism with profit in a most edifying manner. He shaved the German
+officers during the whole of their stay in St. Meuse; he accompanied them
+on their march to the frontier; he earned the last centime in Conflans;
+and then, driving forward to the frontier line, he unfurled the tricolour
+as the last German soldier stepped over it. It is seldom that one in this
+world sees his way to being so adroitly ambidextrous.
+
+But this is a digression. In twenty minutes, shorn and shaven, I was back
+again in the Mayor's parlour. The tears of gratitude stood in his eyes. I
+learned afterwards that a decoration was contingent on his preservation of
+the public peace on the occasion of the evacuation.
+
+Started by the Mayor, the report rapidly circulated through St. Meuse that
+I had cut off my beard rather than that it should be possible that any one
+should mistake me for a German. From being a suspect I became a popular
+idol. The French journalists entertained me to a banquet at night at which
+in libations of champagne eternal amity between France and England was
+pledged. Next morning the Germans went away and then St. Meuse kicked up
+its heels and burst into exuberant joy. The Mayor took me up to the
+station in his own carriage to meet the French troops, and introduced me
+to the colonel of the battalion as a man who had made sacrifices for _la
+belle France_. The colonel shook me cordially by the hand and I was
+embraced by the robust vivandiere, who struck me as being in the practice
+of sustaining life on a diet of garlic. When we emerged from the station I
+was cheered almost as loudly as was the colonel, and a man waved a
+tricolour over my head all the way back to the town, treading at frequent
+intervals on my heels. In the course of the afternoon I happened to
+approach the civic band which was performing patriotic music in the Place
+St. Croix. When the bandmaster saw me he broke off the programme and
+struck up "Rule Britannia!" in my honour, to the clamorous joy of the
+audience, who were thwarted in their aim of carrying me round the Place
+shoulder-high only by the constancy with which I clung to the railings
+which surround Chevert's statue. But the crowning recognition of my
+sacrifice came at the banquet which the town gave to the French officers.
+The Mayor proposed the toast of "our English friend." "We had all," he
+said, "made sacrifices for _la Patrie_--he himself had sustained the loss
+of a wooden outhouse burned down in the bombardment; the gallant colonel
+on his right had spilt his blood at St. Privat. Them it behoved to suffer
+and they would do it again cheerfully, for it was, as he had said, for _la
+Patrie_. But what was to be said of an honourable gentleman who had
+sacrificed the most distinguishing ornament of his physical aspect without
+the holy stimulus of patriotism, and simply that there might be obviated
+the risk of an embroilment to the possible consequence of which he would
+not further allude? Would it be called the language of extravagant
+hyperbole, or would they not rather be words justified by facts, when he
+ventured before this honourable company to assert that his respected
+English friend had by his self-sacrifice saved France from a great peril?"
+The Mayor's question was replied to by a perfect whirlwind of cheering.
+Everybody in the room insisted upon shaking hands with me and I was forced
+to get on my legs and make a reply. Later in the evening I heard the Mayor
+and the town clerk discussing the project of conferring upon me the
+freedom of the city.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
+
+1875
+
+
+The civilian world, even that portion of it which lives by the profusest
+sweat of its brow, enjoys an occasional holiday in the course of the year
+besides Christmas Day. Good Friday brings to most an enforced cessation
+from toil. Easter and Whitsuntide are recognised seasons of pleasure in
+most grades of the civilian community. There are few who do not compass
+somehow an occasional Derby day; and we may safely aver that the amount of
+work done on New Year's Day is not very great. But in all the year the
+soldier has but one real holiday--a holiday with all the glorious
+accompaniments of unwonted varieties of dainties and full liberty to be as
+jolly as he pleases without fear of the consequences. True, the individual
+soldier may have his day's leave, nay, his month's furlough; but his
+enjoyments resulting therefrom are not realised in the atmosphere of the
+barrack-room, but rather have their origin in the abandonment for the
+nonce of his military character and a _pro tempore_ return into civilian
+life. Christmas Day is the great regimental merry-making, free to and
+appreciated by the veteran and the recruit alike; and as such it is looked
+forward to for many a month prior to its advent and talked of many a day
+after it is past and gone.
+
+About a month before Christmas the observer skilled in the signs of the
+times may begin to notice the tokens of its approach. Self-deniant
+fellows, men who can trust themselves to carry a few shillings about with
+them without experiencing a chronic sensation that the accumulated pelf is
+burning a hole in their pockets, busy themselves in constructing
+"dimmocking bags" for the occasion, such being the barrack-room term for
+receptacles for money-hoarding purposes. The weak vessels, those who
+mistrust their own constancy under the varied temptations of dry throats,
+empty stomachs, and a scant allowance of tobacco, manage to cheat their
+fragility of "saving grace" by requesting their sergeant-major to put them
+"on the peg,"--that is to say, place them under stoppages, so that the
+accumulation takes place in his hands and cannot be dissipated by any
+premature weaknesses of the flesh. Everybody becomes of a sudden
+astonishingly sober and steady. There is hardly any going out of barracks
+now; for a walk involves the expenditure of at least "the price of a
+pint," and in the circumstances this extravagance is not allowable. The
+guard-room is unwontedly empty--nobody except the utterly reckless will
+get into trouble just now; for punishment at this season involves the
+forfeiture of certain privileges and the incurring of certain penalties--
+the former specially prized, the latter exceptionally disgusting at this
+Christmas season.
+
+Slowly the days roll on with anxious expectancy, the coming event forming
+the one engrossing topic of conversation alike in barrack-room, in stable,
+in canteen, and in guard-room. The clever hands of the troop are deep in
+devising a series of ornamentations for the walls and roof of the common
+habitation. One fellow spends all his spare time on the top of a table
+with a bed on top of that again, embellishing the wall above the fireplace
+with a florid design in a variety of colours meant to be an exact copy of
+the device on the regiment's kettledrums, with the addition of the legend,
+"A Merry Christmas to the old Straw-boots," inscribed on a waving scroll
+below. The skill of another decorator is directed to the clipping of
+sundry squares of coloured paper into wondrous forms--Prince of Wales's
+feathers, gorgeous festoons, and the like--with which the gas pendants and
+the edges of the window-frames are disguised out of their original
+nakedness and hardness of outline, so as to be almost unrecognisable by
+the eye of the matter-of-fact barrack-master himself. What is this
+felonious-looking band up to--these four determined rascals in the
+forbidden high-lows and stable overalls who go slinking mysteriously out
+at the back gate just at the gloaming? Are they Fenian sympathisers bound
+for a secret meeting, or are they deserters making off just at the time
+when there is the least likelihood of suspicion? Nay, they are neither;
+but, nevertheless, their errand is a nefarious one. Watch at the gate for
+an hour and you will see them come back again each man laden with the
+spoils of the shrubberies--holly, mistletoe, and evergreens--ruthlessly
+plundered under cover of the darkness. A couple of days before "the day,"
+the sergeant-major enters the barrack-room, a smile playing upon his
+rubicund features. We all know what his errand is and he knows right well
+that we do; but he cannot refrain from the customary short patronising
+harangue, "Our worthy captain--liberal gent you know--deputed me--what you
+like for dinner--plum-puddings, of course--a quart of beer a man; make up
+your minds what you'll have--anything but game and venison;" and so he
+vanishes grinning a saturnine grin. The moment is a critical one. We ought
+to be unanimous. What shall we have? A council of deliberation is
+constituted on the spot and proceeds to the discussion of the weighty
+question. The suggestions are not numerous. The alternative lies between
+pork and goose. The old soldiers, for some inscrutable reason, go for
+goose to a man. The recruits have a carnal craving after the flesh of the
+pig. I did once hear a "carpet-bag" recruit[1] hesitatingly broach the idea
+of mutton, but he collapsed ignominiously under the concentrated stare of
+righteous indignation with which his heterodox suggestion was received.
+Goose versus pork is eagerly debated. As regards quantity the question
+is a level one, since the allowance from time immemorial has been a goose
+or a leg of pork among three men.
+
+[Footnote 1: "Carpet-bag" recruit is the barrack-room appellation of
+contempt for the young gentleman recruit who joins his regiment _omnibus
+impedimentis_--who, in fact, brings his baggage with him, to find it, of
+course, utterly useless.]
+
+At length the point is decided during the evening stable-hour, according
+as old or young soldiers predominate in the room. The sergeant-major is
+informed of the conclusion arrived at, and in the evening the corporal of
+each room accompanies him on a marketing expedition into the town. Another
+important duty devolves upon the said corporal in the course of this
+marketing tour. The "dimmocking bags" have been emptied; the accumulations
+in the sergeant-major's hands have been drawn, and the corporal, freighted
+with the joint savings, has the task of expending the same in beer. In
+this undertaking he manifests a preternatural astuteness. He is not to be
+inveigled into giving his order at a public-house,--swipes from the
+canteen would do as well as that,--nor do the bottled-beer merchants tempt
+him with their high prices for dubious quality. No, he goes direct to the
+fountain-head. If there be a brewery in the place he finds it out and
+bestows his order upon it, thus triumphantly securing the pure article at
+the wholesale price. His purchasing calculation is upon the basis of two
+gallons per man. If, as is generally the case, the barrack-room he
+represents contains twelve men, he orders a twenty-four gallon barrel of
+porter--always porter; and if he has a surplus left he disburses it in the
+purchase of a bottle or two of spirits, for the behoof of any fair
+visitors who may haply honour the barrack-room with their presence.
+
+It is Christmas Eve. The evening stable-hour is over and all hands are
+merrily engaged in the composition of the puddings; some stoning fruit,
+others chopping suet, beating eggs, and so forth. The barrel of beer is in
+the corner but it is sacred as the honour of the regiment! Nothing would
+induce the expectant participants in its contents to broach it before its
+appointed time shall come. So there is beer instead from the canteen in
+the tin pails of the barrack-room, and the work of pudding-compounding
+goes on jovially to the accompaniments of song and jest. Now, there is a
+fear lest too many fingers in the pudding may spoil it--lest a multitude
+of counsellors as to the proportions of ingredients and the process of
+mixing may be productive of the reverse of safety. But somehow a man with
+a specialty is always forthcoming, and that specialty is pudding-making.
+Most likely he has been the butt of the room--a quiet, quaint, retiring,
+awkward fellow who seemed as if he never could do anything right. But he
+has lit upon his vocation at last--he is a born pudding-maker. He rises
+with the occasion, and the sheepish "gaby" becomes the knowing practical
+man; his is now the voice of authority, and his comrades recant on the
+spot, acknowledge his superiority without a murmur, and perform "ko-tow"
+before the once despised man of undeveloped abilities. They pull out their
+clean towels with alacrity in response to his demand for pudding-cloths;
+they run to the canteen enthusiastically for a further supply on a hint
+from him that there is a deficiency in the ingredient of allspice. And
+then he artistically gathers together the corners of the cloths and ties
+up the puddings tightly and securely; whereupon a procession is formed to
+escort them into the cook-house, and there, having consigned them into the
+depths of the mighty copper, the "man of the time" remains watching the
+caldron bubble until morning, a great jorum of beer at his elbow the ready
+contribution of his now appreciative comrades.
+
+The hours roll on; and at length out into the darkness of the
+barrack-square stalks the trumpeter on duty, and the shrill notes of the
+_reveille_ echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an
+ordinary morning the _reveille_ is practically negatived, and nobody
+thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds
+quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning
+there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps up,
+as if galvanised, at the first note of the _reveille_. For the fulfilment
+of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to--a remnant of the old days
+when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room. The soldier's
+wife who has the cleaning of the room and who does the washing of its
+inmates--for which services each man pays her a penny a day, has from time
+immemorial taken upon herself the duty of bestowing a "morning" on the
+Christmas anniversary upon the men she "does for." Accordingly, about a
+quarter to six, she enters the room--a hard-featured, rough-voiced dame,
+perhaps, with a fist like a shoulder of mutton, but a soldier herself to
+the very core and with a big, tender heart somewhere about her. She
+carries a bottle of whisky--it is always whisky, somehow--in one hand and
+a glass in the other; and, beginning with the oldest soldier administers a
+calker to every one in the room till she comes to the "cruity," upon whom,
+if he be a pullet-faced, homesick, bit of a lad, she may bestow a maternal
+salute in addition, with the advice to consider the regiment as his mother
+now, and be a smart soldier and a good lad.
+
+Breakfast is not an institution in any great acceptation in a cavalry
+regiment on Christmas morning. When the stable-hour is over a great many
+of the troopers do not immediately reappear in the barrack-room. Indeed
+they do not turn up until long after the coffee is cold; and, when they do
+return there is a certain something about them which, to the experienced
+observer, demonstrates the fact that, if they have been thirsty, they have
+not been quenching their drought at the pump. It is a standing puzzle to
+the uninitiated where the soldier in barracks contrives to obtain drink of
+a morning. The canteen is rigorously closed. No one is allowed to go out
+of barracks and no drink is allowed to come in. A teetotallers'
+meeting-hall could not appear more rigidly devoid of opportunities for
+indulgence than does a barrack during the morning. Yet I will venture to
+say, if you go into any barrack in the three kingdoms, accost any soldier
+who is not a raw recruit, and offer to pay for a pot of beer, that you
+will have an instant opportunity afforded you of putting your free-handed
+design into execution any time after 7 A.M. I don't think it would be
+exactly grateful in me to "split" upon the spots where a drop can be
+obtained in season; many a time has my parched throat been thankful for
+the cooling surreptitious draught and I refuse to turn upon a benefactor
+in a dirty way. Therefore suffice it to say that many a bold dragoon when
+he re-enters the barrack-room to get ready for church parade, has a
+wateriness about the eye and a knottiness in the tongue which tell of
+something stronger than the matutinal coffee. Indeed, when the trumpet
+sounds which calls the regiment to assemble on the parade-ground, there is
+dire misgiving in the mind of many a stalwart fellow, who is conscious
+that his face, as well as his speech, "berayeth him." But the lynx-eyed
+men in authority who another time would be down on a stagger like a
+card-player on the odd trick and read a flushed face as a passport to the
+guard-room, are genially blind this morning; and so long as a man
+possesses the capacity of looking moderately straight to his own front and
+of going right-about without a flagrant lurch, he is not looked at in a
+critical spirit on the Christmas church parade. And so the regiment
+marches off to church, the band playing merrily in its front. I much fear
+there is no very abiding sense in the bosoms of the majority of the sacred
+errand on which they are bound.
+
+But there are two of the inmates of each room who do not go to church. The
+clever pudding-maker and a sub of his selection are left to cook the
+Christmas dinner. This, as regards the exceptional dainties, is done at
+the barrack-room fire, the cook-house being in use only for the now
+despised ration meat and for the still simmering puddings. The handy man
+cunningly improvises a roasting-jack, and erects a screen consisting of
+bed-quilts spread on a frame of upright forms, for the purpose of
+retaining and throwing back the heat. He is a most versatile genius, this
+handy man. Now we see him in the double character of cook and salamander,
+and anon he develops a special faculty as a clever table-decorator as
+well. This latter qualification asserts itself in the face of difficulties
+which would be utterly discomfiting to one of less fertility of resource.
+There is, indeed, a large expanse of table in every barrack-room; but the
+War Department has not yet thought proper to consider private soldiers
+worthy to enjoy the luxury of table-linen. Yet bare boards at a Christmas
+feast are horribly offensive to the eye of taste. Something must be done;
+something has already been done. Ever since the last issue of clean
+sheets, one or two whole-souled fellows have magnanimously abjured these
+luxuries _pro bono publico_. Spartan-like they have lain in blankets, and
+saved their sheets in their pristine cleanliness wherewithal to cover the
+Christmas table. So now these are brought forth, not snow-white certainly,
+nor of a damask texture, being indeed somewhat sackclothy in their
+appearance, but still they are immeasurably in advance of the bare boards;
+and when the covers are laid, with each man's best knife and fork, with a
+little additional crockery-ware borrowed of a beneficent married woman and
+with the dainty sprigs of evergreen stuck on every available coign, the
+effect is triumphantly enlivening.
+
+By the time these preparations are complete the men are back from church;
+and after a brief attendance at stables to water and feed they assemble
+fully dressed in the barrack-room, hungrily silent. The captain enters the
+room and _pro forma_ asks whether there are "any complaints?" A chorus of
+"No, sir," is his reply; and then the oldest soldier in the room with
+profuse blushing and stammering takes up the running, thanks the officer
+kindly in the name of his comrades for his generosity, and wishes him a
+"Happy Christmas and many of 'em" in return. Under cover of the responsive
+cheer the captain makes his escape, and a deputation visits the
+sergeant-major's quarters to fetch the allowance of beer which forms part
+of the treat. Then all fall to and eat! Ye gods, how they eat! Let the man
+who affirmed before the Recruiting Commission that the present scale of
+military rations was liberal enough show himself now, and then for ever
+hide his head! The troopers seem to have become sudden converts to
+Carlyle's theory on the eloquence of silence. It reigns supreme, broken
+only by the rattle of knives and forks and by an occasional gurgle
+indicative of a man judiciously stratifying the solids and liquids, for a
+space of about twenty minutes, by which time--be the fare goose or pork--
+it is, barring the bones, only "a memory of the past." The puddings,
+turned out of the towels in which they have been boiled, then undergo the
+brunt of a fierce assault; but the edge of appetite has been blunted by
+the first course and with most of the men a modicum of pudding goes on the
+shelf for supper. The soldier is very sensitive on the subject of his
+Christmas pudding. I remember once seeing a cook put on the table and
+formally "strapped" for allowing the pudding to stick to the bottom of the
+pot for lack of stirring.
+
+At length dinner is over. Beds are drawn up from the sides of the room so
+as to form a wide circle of divans round the fire, and the big barrel's
+time has come at last. A clever hand whips out the bung, draws a pailful,
+and reinserts the bung till another pailful is wanted, which will be very
+soon. The pail is placed upon the hearthstone and its contents are
+decanted into the pint basins, which do duty in the barrack-room for all
+purposes from containing coffee and soup to mixing chrome-yellow and
+pipe-clay water. The married soldiers come dropping in with their wives,
+for whom the corporal has a special drop of "something short" stowed in
+reserve on the shelf behind his kit. A song is called for; another
+follows, and yet another and another. Now it is matter of notice that the
+songs of soldiers are never of the modern music-hall type. You might go
+into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's haunts and never hear such a
+ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for Joseph." The soldier takes
+especial delight in songs of the sentimental pattern; and even when for a
+brief period he forsakes the region of sentiment, it is not to indulge in
+the outrageously comic but to give vent to such sturdy bacchanalian
+outpourings as the "Good Rhine Wine," "Old John Barleycorn," and "Simon
+the Cellarer." But these are only interludes. "The Soldier's Tear," "The
+White Squall," "There came a Tale to England," "Ben Bolt," "Shells of the
+Ocean," and other melodies of a lugubrious type, are the special
+favourites of the barrack-room. I remember once hearing a cockney recruit
+attempt "The Perfect Cure" with its accompanying gymnastic efforts; but he
+was I not appreciated, and indeed, I think broke down in the middle for
+want of encouragement.
+
+Songs and beer form the staple of the afternoon's enjoyment, intermingled
+with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of bygone
+Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are "townies," i.e.
+natives of the same district; and there is a good deal of undemonstrative
+feeling in the way they talk of the scenes and folks of boyhood. There is
+no speechifying. Your soldier is not an oratorical animal. Not but what he
+heartily enjoys a speech; but he somehow cannot make one, or will not try.
+I remember me, indeed, of a certain quiet Scotsman who one Christmastime
+being urgently pressed to sing and being unblessed with a tuneful voice,
+volunteered in utter desperation a speech instead. He referred in feeling
+language to the various troop-mates who had left us since the preceding
+Christmas, made a touching allusion to the happy home circle in which the
+Christmases of our boyhood had been spent, referred to the manner in which
+the old "Strawboots" had cut their way to glory through the dense masses
+of Russian horsemen on the hillside of Balaclava, and wound up
+appropriately by proposing the toast of "our noble selves." He created an
+immense sensation, was vociferously applauded, and, indeed, was the hero
+of the hour; but ere next Christmas he was among the "have beens" himself,
+and his mantle not having devolved upon any successor we had to content
+ourselves with the songs and the beer.
+
+It is a lucky thing for a good many that there is no roll-call at the
+Christmas evening stable-hour. The non-commissioned officers mercifully
+limit their requirements to seeing the horses watered and bedded down by
+the most presentable of the roisterers, whose desperate efforts to
+simulate abject sobriety in order to establish their claim for
+strong-headedness are very comical to witness. It has often been matter of
+wonderment to me how the orders for the following day which are "read out"
+at the evening stable-hour, are realised on Christmas evening with
+clearness sufficient to ensure their being complied with next day without
+a hitch; but the truth is that, as we shall presently see, a certain order
+of things for the morning after Christmas has become stereotyped.
+
+This interruption of the evening stable-hour over the circle re-forms
+round the fire, and the cask finally becomes a "dead marine." The cap is
+then sent round for contributions towards a further instalment of the
+foundation of conviviality, which is fetched from the canteen or the
+sergeant's mess; and another and yet another supply is sent for, as long
+as the funds hold out and somebody keeps sober enough to act as Ganymede.
+The orderly sergeant is not very particular to-night about his
+watch-setting report, for he knows that not many have the physical ability
+to be absent if they were ever so eager. And so the lights go out; the sun
+of the dragoon may be said to set in beer and he is left to do his best to
+sleep himself sober. For in the morning the reins of discipline are
+tightened again. The man who is foolish enough to revivify the drink which
+"is dying out in him" by a refresher is apt to find himself an inmate of
+the black-hole on very scant warning. Headaches and thirst are curiously
+rife, and the consumption of "fizzers"--a temperance beverage of an
+effervescent character vended by an individual with the profoundest trust
+in human nature on the subject of deferred payments--is extensive enough
+to convert the regiment into a series of walking reservoirs of carbonic
+acid gas. The authorities display a demoniacal ingenuity in working the
+beer out of the system of the dragoon. The morning duty on the day
+following Christmas is invariably "watering order with numnahs," the
+numnah being a felt saddle-cloth without stirrups. Every man without
+exception rides out--no dodging is permitted--and the moment the malicious
+fiend of an orderly officer gets clear of the barracks he gives the word
+"Trot!" Six miles of it without a break is the set allowance; and it beats
+vinegar, pickles, tea smoked in a tobacco-pipe, or any other nostrum, as
+an effectual generator of sobriety. Six miles at the full trot without
+stirrups on a rough horse I can conscientiously recommend to the
+inebriated gentleman who fears to encounter a justly irate wife at two in
+the morning. I wont answer for the integrity of his cuticle when it is
+over; but I will stake my existence on the abject profundity of his
+sobriety. The process would extract the alcohol from a cask of spirits of
+wine, let alone dispel an average skinful of beer.
+
+And thus evaporates the last vestige of the dragoon's Christmas festivity.
+It may be urged that the enjoyments of which I have endeavoured to give a
+faithful narrative are gross and have no elevating tendency. I fear the
+men of the spur and sabre must bow to the justice of the criticism; and I
+know of nothing to advance in mitigation save the old Scotch proverb: "It
+is ill to mak' a silk purse out o' a sow's ear."
+
+
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
+
+
+In these modern days men live fast and forget fast; yet, since it was
+barely twenty-six years ago, numbers among us must still vividly remember
+the lurid autumn of 1870. Eastern and Northern France had been deluged
+with French and German blood. During the month of fighting from the 2nd of
+August to the 1st of September the regular armies of France had suffered
+defeat on defeat, and were now blockaded in Metz or were tramping from the
+catastrophe of Sedan to captivity in Germany. The Empire in France had
+fallen like a house of cards; Napoleon the Third was a prisoner of war in
+Cassel; the Empress and the ill-fated Prince Imperial were forlorn exiles
+in England. To the Empire had succeeded, at not even a day's notice--for
+in France a revolution is ever a summary operation--the Government of
+National Defence with the watchword of "War to the bitter end" rather than
+cede a foot of territory or one stone of a fortress. The Germans made no
+delay. The blood-tint had scarcely faded out of the waters of the Meuse,
+the unburied dead of Sedan yet festered in the sun-heat, and the blackened
+ruins of Bazeilles still smoked and stank, when their heads of columns set
+forth on the march to Paris. The troops were full of ardour; but in the
+Royal headquarters there was not a little disquietude. The old King made a
+long stay in the old cathedral city of Rheims, while men all over Europe
+were asking each other whether the catastrophe of Sedan had not virtually
+ended the war and were hoping for the white dove of peace to alight on the
+blood-stained land. But that happy consummation was not yet to be. When
+King Wilhelm crossed the frontier he had proclaimed that he warred not
+with the French nation but with its ruler. That ruler was now his prisoner;
+but Wilhelm had for adversary now the French nation, because it had taken
+up the quarrel which might have gone with the _Decheance_ and in effect
+had made it its own. In the absence of overtures there was no alternative
+but to march on Paris.
+
+But Bismarck, although he carried a blithe front, was far from
+comfortable. He would fain have had peace--always on his own terms; but
+the question with him was with whom could he negotiate, capable, in the
+existing confusion, of furnishing adequate guarantees for the fulfilment
+of conditions? That requisite he could not discern in the self-constituted
+body which styled itself the Government of National Defence, but of which
+he spoke as "the gentlemen of the pavement." He had all the monarchical
+dislike and distrust of a republic, and before the German army had
+invested Paris he already had begun to ponder as to the possibility of
+reinstating the dethroned dynasty. Possibly indeed, he had already felt
+the pulse of Marshal Bazaine on this subject.
+
+It was on the 23rd of September when the Royal headquarters was at
+Ferrieres, Baron Rothschild's chateau on the east of Paris, that there
+either presented himself to Bismarck an intriguant, or that the Chancellor
+evoked for himself an instrument for whom the way was made open to
+penetrate the beleaguerment of Metz and submit to Bazaine certain
+considerations. In connection with this mission we heard a good deal at
+the time of a mysterious "Mons. M." and an equally mysterious "Mons. N."
+Both were myths: "M." and "N." were alike pseudonyms of the real
+go-between, a certain Edmond Regnier who died in Paris on the 23rd of
+January 1894, after a strange and varied career of which the episode to be
+detailed in this article is the most remarkable. In a now very rare
+pamphlet published by Regnier in November 1870, he describes himself as a
+French landed proprietor with financial interests in England yielding him
+an income of L800 per annum, and as having come to England with his family
+in the end of August of that year in consequence of the proximity of
+German troops to his French residence. The painstaking compilers of the
+indictment against Bazaine give rather a different account of the
+character and antecedents of M. Regnier. Their information is that he
+received an imperfect education, sufficiently proven by his extraordinary
+style and vicious orthography. He studied, with little progress, law and
+medicine; later he took up magnetism. He was curiously mixed up in the
+events of the revolution of 1848. He had some employment in Algeria as an
+assistant surgeon. Returning to France he developed a quarry of
+paving-stone, and afterwards married in England a wife who brought him a
+certain competence. "Regnier," continues the Report, "is a sharp,
+audacious fellow; his manners are vulgar--vain to excess he considers
+himself a profound politician. Was he induced to throw himself into the
+midst of events by one of the monomanias which are engendered by periods
+of storm and revolution? Was he simply an intriguer, plying his trade? It
+is difficult to tell. But however that may be, the established fact is
+that we find him in England in September 1870 besieging with his projects
+the _entourage_ of the Empress."
+
+Regnier's siege of the forlorn colony at Hastings took the form of a
+bombardment of letters, his principal victim being Madame Le Breton, the
+lady-in-waiting of the Empress and the sister of the unfortunate General
+Bourbaki, then in command of the Imperial Guard at Metz. He was about to
+have his passport vised by the German Ambassador in London, rather an
+equivocal proceeding for a French subject; and on the 12th of September he
+wrote thus to Madame Le Breton, desiring that the letter should be
+communicated to Her Majesty:--
+
+
+The Ambassador in London of the North German Confederation may possibly
+say, "I think the King of Prussia would prefer treating for peace with the
+Imperial Government rather than with the Republic." If so, I shall start
+to-morrow for Wilhelmshoehe, after having paid a visit to the Empress. The
+following are the propositions I intend to submit to the Emperor: (1) That
+the Empress-Regent ought not to quit French territory; (2) That the
+Imperial fleet _is_ French territory; (3) That the fleet which greeted Her
+Majesty so enthusiastically on its departure for the Baltic, or at least a
+portion of it, however small, be taken by the Regent for her seat of
+government, thus enabling her to go from one to another of the French
+ports where she can count upon the largest number of adherents, and so
+prove that her government exists both _de facto_ and _de jure_. Further,
+that the Empress-Regent issue from the fleet four proclamations--viz. to
+foreign governments, to the fleet, to the army, and to the French people.
+
+
+It will suffice to quote two of those suggested proclamations:--
+
+
+To foreign governments! To firmly insist upon the fact that the Imperial
+Government is the _actual_ government, as it is the government by right.
+To the fleet! That just as the Emperor remained to the last in the midst
+of his army, sharing the chances of war, so also does the Regent, the only
+executive power legally existing, come with gladness to trust her
+political fortune to the Imperial fleet.
+
+
+There followed a voluminous screed of irrelevant dissertation.
+
+Regnier confessedly made no way with the Empress. He saw, indeed, Madame
+Le Breton on the 14th, but only to be told, in language worthy of a
+patriot sovereign, that "Her Majesty's feeling was that the interests of
+France should take precedence of those of the dynasty; that she would
+rather do nothing than incur the suspicion of having acted from an undue
+regard for dynastic interests, and that she has the greatest horror of any
+step likely to bring about a civil war." Those high-souled expressions
+ought to have given definite pause to Regnier's importunity; but that
+busybody was indefatigable. A second letter to Madame Le Breton for the
+Empress simply elicited from the gentlemen of her suite the information
+that Her Majesty, having read his communications, had expressed the
+greatest horror of anything approaching a civil war. A final letter from
+him, containing the following significant passage:--
+
+
+I myself, or some other person, ought already to have been secretly and
+confidentially in communication with M. de Bismarck; our conditions for
+peace must be more acceptable than those to which the _soi-disant_
+Republican Government may have agreed; every action of theirs ought to be
+turned to our advantage--we ourselves must _act_,
+
+
+evoked the ultimatum that "the Empress would not stir in the matter."
+Regnier then said that as he found no encouragement at Hastings he would
+probably go to Wilhelmshoehe, where he would perhaps be better understood;
+and he produced a photographic view of Hastings on which he begged that
+the Prince Imperial would write a line to his father. On the following
+morning the Prince's equerry returned him the photographic view at the
+foot of which were the simple and affectionate words: "Mon cher Papa, je
+vous envoie ces vues d'Hastings; j'espere qu'elles vous plairont.
+Louis-Napoleon." I am personally familiar with the late Prince Imperial's
+handwriting and readily recognise it in this brief sentence. Regnier
+averred that it was with Her Majesty's consent that this paper was given
+him; but admitted that he was told she added: "Tell M. Regnier that there
+must be great danger in carrying out his project, and that I beg him not
+to attempt its execution." In other words, the Empress was willing that he
+should visit the Emperor at Cassel, authenticating him thus far by the
+Prince Imperial's little note; but she put her veto on his undertaking
+intrigues detrimental to the interests of France.
+
+Regnier by no means took the road for Wilhelmshoehe. At 7 P.M. of Sunday
+the 18th he read in the special _Observer_ that Jules Favre was next day
+to have an interview with Bismarck at Meaux. Eager to anticipate the
+Republican Foreign Minister he promptly took the night train for Paris. No
+trains were running beyond Amiens and he did not reach Meaux until
+midnight of the 19th, to learn that Bismarck and the headquarters had that
+day gone to Ferrieres. At 10 A.M. of the 20th he reached that chateau and
+appealed to Count Hatzfeld, now German Ambassador in London, for an
+immediate interview with Bismarck, stating that he had come direct from
+Hastings. He was informed that the Chancellor had an appointment with
+Jules Favre at eleven and that it was improbable he could be received in
+advance. But Bismarck having been apprised of his arrival the fortunate
+Regnier was immediately ushered into his presence. Regnier congratulates
+himself on having anticipated the French Minister, ignorant of the
+circumstance that on the previous day the latter had two interviews with
+Bismarck and that their then impending interview was simply for the
+purpose of communicating to Favre the German King's final answer to the
+French proposals.
+
+Regnier says that he drew from his portfolio the photograph of Hastings
+with the Prince Imperial's little note to his father at its foot and
+handed the paper in silence to Bismarck; and that after the latter had
+looked at it for some moments, Regnier said, "I come, Count, to ask you to
+grant me a pass which will permit me to go to Wilhelmshoehe and give this
+autograph into the Emperor's hands." Why he should have applied to
+Bismarck for this is not apparent, since he might have gone direct from
+Hastings to Wilhelmshoehe without any necessity for invoking the
+Chancellor's offices. It seems extremely probable that the request for a
+pass was a mere pretext to gain an interview, and the more so since
+Bismarck made no allusion to the subject, but after a few moments,
+according to Regnier, addressed that person as follows:--
+
+
+Sir, our position is before you; what can you offer us? with whom can we
+treat? Our determination is fixed so to profit by our present position as
+to render impossible for the future any war against us on the part of
+France. To effect this object, an alteration of the French frontier is
+indispensable. In the presence of two governments--the one _de facto_, the
+other _de jure_--it is difficult, if not impossible, to treat with either.
+The Empress-Regent has quitted French territory, and since then has given
+no sign. The Provisional Government in Paris refuses to accept this
+condition of diminution of territory, but proposes an armistice in order
+to consult the French nation on the subject. We can afford to wait. When
+we find ourselves face to face with a government _de facto_ and _de jure_,
+able to treat on the basis we require, then we will treat.
+
+
+Regnier suggested that Bazaine in Metz and Uhrich in Strasburg, if they
+should capitulate, might do so in the name of the Imperial Government.
+Bismarck replied that Jules Favre was assured that the garrisons of those
+fortresses were staunchly Republican; but that his own belief was that
+Bazaine's army of the Rhine was probably Imperialist. Then Regnier offered
+to go at once to Metz. "If you had come a week earlier," said Bismarck,
+"it was yet time; now, I fear, it is too late." Upon this the Chancellor
+went away to meet Jules Favre with the parting words to Regnier, "Be so
+good as to present my respectful homage to his Imperial Majesty when you
+reach Wilhelmshoehe." At a subsequent meeting the same evening Regnier
+repeated his anxiety to go at once to Metz and Strasburg and make an
+agreement that these places should be surrendered only in the Emperor's
+name. Bismarck was clearly not sanguine, but he said, "Do what you can to
+bring us some one with power to treat with us, and you will have rendered
+great service to your country. I will give orders for a 'general
+safe-conduct' to be given you. A telegram shall precede you to Metz, which
+will facilitate your entrance there. You should have come sooner." So
+these two parted; Regnier received his "safe-conduct" and started from
+Ferrieres early on the morning of the 21st. But this indefatigable
+letter-writer could not depart without a farewell letter:--
+
+
+I shall leave (he wrote to Bismarck) your advanced posts near Metz, giving
+orders for the carriage to await my return. I shall wrap myself in a
+shawl, which will hide a portion of my face. In the event of Marshal
+Bazaine acceding to my conditions, either Marshal Canrobert or General
+Bourbaki, acquainted with all that will be requisite for the success of my
+plans, may go out with my papers, dressed in my clothes, wrapped in my
+shawl, and depart for Hastings, after giving me his word of honour that
+for every one, except the Empress, he was to be simply Mons. Regnier. If
+everything succeeded according to my anticipation, he might then establish
+his identity, and place himself at the head of the army, with orders to
+defend the Chamber assembled, if possible, at a seaport town, where a
+loyal portion of the fleet should also be present. If the project should
+miscarry, the Marshal or the General would return and resume his post.
+
+
+Bismarck must have smiled grimly as he read this strange farrago; yet,
+whatever may have been his motives, he furthered the errand on which
+Regnier was going to Metz.
+
+That person reached the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles at Corny,
+outside of Metz, on the afternoon of 23rd September and was promptly
+presented to the Prince, who said that Count Bismarck had informed him of
+his wish to enter Metz and had left it to him to decide as to the
+expediency of complying with it. This, said the Prince, he was prepared to
+do and he gave Regnier the requisite pass. The same evening that active
+individual presented himself at the French forepost line, and having
+stated that he had a mission to Marshal Bazaine and desired to see him
+immediately, he was driven to Ban-Saint-Martin where the Marshal was
+residing. Bazaine at once received him in his study. At the outset a
+discrepancy manifests itself in the subsequent testimony of the
+interlocutors. The Marshal states that Regnier said he came on the part of
+the Empress with the consent of Bismarck; while Regnier declares that he
+did not state to the Marshal that he had any mission from the Empress. On
+other points, with one important exception, the versions given of the
+interview by the two participants fairly agree, and Bazaine's account of
+it may be summarised. After Regnier had stated that his commission was
+purely verbal he went on to observe that it was to be regretted that a
+treaty of peace had not put an end to the war after Sedan; that the
+maintenance of the German armies on French territory was ruinous to the
+country; and that it would be doing France a great service to obtain an
+armistice preparatory to the conclusion of peace. That as regarded this,
+the French army under the walls of Metz--the only army remaining
+organised--would be in a position to give guarantees to the Germans if it
+were allowed its liberty of action; but that without doubt they would
+exact as a pledge the surrender of the fortress of Metz.
+
+
+I replied (says Bazaine) that certainly if we--the "Army of the Rhine"--
+could extricate ourselves from the _impasse_ in which we now were, with
+the honours of war--that is to say, with arms and baggage--in a word
+completely constituted as an army, we would be in a position to maintain
+order in the interior, and would cause the provisions of the convention to
+be respected; but a difficulty would occur as to the fortress of Metz, the
+governor of which, appointed by the Emperor, could not be relieved except
+by His Majesty himself.
+
+
+One of Regnier's stated objects, continues the Marshal, was to bring it
+about that either Marshal Canrobert or General Bourbaki should go to
+England, inform the Empress of the situation at Metz, and place himself at
+her disposition. The departure of whichever of the two high officers
+should undertake this duty was to be surreptitious; and for this Regnier
+had provided with Prussian assistance. Seven Luxembourg surgeons who had
+been in Metz ever since the battle of Gravelotte had written to Marshal
+Bazaine for leave to go home through the Prussian lines. This letter, sent
+to the Prussian headquarters, was replied to in a letter carried into Metz
+by Regnier and by him given to Bazaine, to the effect that the _nine_
+surgeons were free to depart. As there were but seven surgeons, the
+implication is obvious that the safe-conduct was expanded to cover the
+incognito exit, along with the surgeons, of Regnier and the French officer
+bound for Hastings.
+
+Regnier gave me (writes Bazaine) so many details of his _soi-disant_
+relations with the Empress and her _entourage_ that, notwithstanding the
+strangeness of the apparition, I put faith in his mission, and believed
+that I ought not, in the general interest, to neglect the opportunity
+opened to me of putting myself in communication with the outside world. I
+consequently told him that he would be duly brought into relations with
+Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki, whom I would inform in regard to
+his proposals, and whom I would place at liberty to act as each might
+choose in the matter.
+
+Finally Regnier produced the photograph of Hastings with the Prince
+Imperial's signature at the foot, and begged the Marshal to add his, which
+he did "as a souvenir of the interview" explained Regnier, according to
+the Marshal; according to Regnier, that he could exhibit the signature to
+Bismarck in proof that he had the Marshal's assent to his proposals.
+Diplomacy conducted by chance signatures on casual photographs has a
+certain innocent simplicity, but is not in accordance with modern methods.
+Perhaps, however, the strangest thing in connection with this strange
+interview is Bazaine's final comment:--
+
+
+All this which I have narrated was only a simple conversation to which I
+attached a merely secondary importance, since M. Regnier had no written
+authority from the Empress nor from M. de Bismarck.... This personage,
+therefore, appeared to act without the knowledge of the German military
+authorities, and it was not until considerably later that I became
+convinced of their cognisance, and of their mutual understanding as
+regards M. Regnier's visit to Metz.
+
+
+And this in the face of General Stiehle's letter to him in his hand,
+brought in by Regnier, sanctioning the exit of the _nine_ surgeons; and
+the Marshal's promise to Regnier that he and the officer who should accept
+the mission to Hastings should quit the camp incognito along with the
+Luxembourg surgeons.
+
+Reference has been made to a discordance between the testimony of Marshal
+Bazaine and of Regnier on a very important point in regard to this
+interview. In his notes taken at the time the latter writes:--
+
+
+The Marshal tells me of his excellent position, of the long period for
+which he can hold out; that he considers himself as the Palladium of the
+Empire. He speaks of the very healthy condition of the troops; and, if I
+may judge by his own rosy face, he is quite right. He tells of all the
+successful sallies he had made, and of the facility with which he can
+break through the besieging lines whenever he chooses to do so.
+
+
+Later, he contradicts all this, explaining that finding himself in the
+Prussian lines and his papers liable to be read, he had written just the
+reverse of what he was told by the Marshal. He says that what Bazaine
+actually informed him was that the bread ration had been already
+diminished and would be necessarily further reduced in a few days; that
+the horses lacked forage and had to be used for food; and that in such
+conditions and taking into account the necessity of carrying four or five
+days' rations for the army and keeping a certain number of horses in
+condition to drag the guns and supplies, there would be great difficulty
+in holding out until the 18th of October. Bazaine, for his part,
+vehemently denied having given Regnier any such information, and it seems
+utterly improbable that he should have done so. It is nevertheless the
+fact that the 18th of October was the last day on which rations were
+issued to the army outside Metz. Regnier must have been a wizard; or
+Bazaine must have leaked atrociously; or there must have been lying on the
+Marshal's table during the interview with Regnier, the most recent state
+furnished by the French intendance, that of the 21st of September which
+specified the 18th of October as the precise date of the final exhaustion
+of the army's supplies.
+
+At midnight of the 23rd Regnier went to the outposts and next morning to
+Corny, where he found a telegram from Bismarck authorising the departure
+for Hastings of a general from the army of Metz. He was back again at
+Ban-Saint-Martin on the afternoon of the 24th, when Marshal Canrobert and
+General Bourbaki were summoned to headquarters to meet him and the
+Luxembourg surgeons were assembled. Canrobert declined the proposed
+mission on the plea of ill-health. Bourbaki had to be searched for and was
+ultimately found at St. Julien with Marshal Lebceuf. As he dismounted at
+the headquarters he asked Colonel Boyer--they had both been of the
+intimate circle of the Empire--whether he knew the person walking in the
+garden with the Marshal?
+
+"No," replied Boyer.
+
+"What?" rejoined Bourbaki; "have you never seen him at the Tuileries?"
+
+"No," said Boyer. "I forget names, but not faces--I never saw this fellow.
+He is neither a familiar of the Tuileries nor an employe." Whereupon the
+two aristocrats despised the bourgeois Regnier. But Bourbaki,
+nevertheless, had to endure the presentation to him of the "fellow," who
+promptly entered on a political discourse to the effect that the German
+Government was reluctant to treat with the Paris Government, which it did
+not consider so lawful as that of the Empress, and that if it treated with
+her the conditions would be less burdensome; that the intervention of the
+army of Metz was indispensable; that it was all-important that one of its
+chiefs should repair to the side of the Empress to represent the army with
+her; and that he, Bourbaki, was the fittest person to occupy that position
+on the declinature of Marshal Canrobert. Bourbaki turned from the man of
+verbiage to Bazaine and asked, "Marshal, what do you wish me to do?" The
+Marshal answered that he desired him to repair to the Empress.
+
+"I am ready," answered Bourbaki, "but on certain conditions: you will have
+the goodness to give me a written order; to announce my departure in army
+orders; not to place a substitute in my command; and to promise that,
+pending my return, you will not engage the Guard." His terms were accepted;
+he was told that he was to leave immediately and he went to his quarters
+to make his preparations.
+
+It was understood that the general's departure was to be by way of being
+incognito, so that it should not get wind. He had no civilian clothes and
+Bazaine fitted him out in his; Regnier had obtained from one of the
+Luxembourger surgeons a cap with the Geneva Cross which completed the
+costume. At the Prussian headquarters General Stiehle, Prince Frederick
+Charles's chief of staff, desired to pay his respects to a man whose
+brilliant courage he admired. Bourbaki's bitter answer to Regnier who
+communicated to him Stiehle's wish, was that he would see "none of them,
+nor even eat a morsel of their bread," which, he said, would choke him. He
+presently started with the surgeons, travelling in Regnier's name and on
+Regnier's passport, on an enterprise which was to lead to the wreck of a
+fine career. At the same time Regnier quitted Corny on his return to
+Ferrieres to report to Bismarck, having promised Bazaine that he would
+return to Metz within six days. His bolt was about shot. But he had not
+realised this fact. He maintains in his curious pamphlet that, to quote
+his own words, "the Minister had given me to understand that if I were
+backed by Bazaine and his army he would treat with me as if I were the
+representative of the Emperor or the Regent. I had obtained from the
+Marshal a capitulation with the honours of war, which the Minister--for
+the furtherance of our political ends--had consented to accord to him." He
+hurried expectant to Ferrieres; there to be summarily disillusioned.
+Bismarck gave him an interview on the 28th, and crushed him in a few
+trenchant sentences:--
+
+
+I am surprised and sorry (said the Chancellor) that you, who appeared to
+be a practical man, after having been permitted to enter Metz with the
+certainty of being able to leave it, a favour never before accorded,
+should have left it without some more formal recognition of your right to
+treat than merely a photograph with the Marshal's signature on it. But I,
+Sir, am a diplomatist of many years' standing, and this is not enough for
+me. I regret it; but I find myself compelled to relinquish all further
+communication with you till your powers are better defined.
+
+
+Regnier expressed his regret at having been so cruelly deceived but
+thanked Bismarck for his kindness, whereupon the latter offered to give
+him a last chance. "I would certainly," he said, "have treated with you as
+to peace conditions, had you been able to treat in the name of a Marshal
+at the head of 80,000 men; as it is, I will send this telegram to the
+Marshal: 'Does Marshal Bazaine authorise M. Regnier to treat for the
+surrender of the army before Metz in accordance with the conditions agreed
+upon with the last-named?'" On the 29th came Bazaine's somewhat diffuse
+reply:--
+
+
+I cannot reply definitely in the affirmative to the question. Regnier
+announced himself the emissary of the Empress without written credentials.
+He asked the conditions on which I could enter into negotiations with
+Prince Frederick Charles. My answer was that I could only accept a
+convention with the honours of war, not to include the fortress of Metz.
+These are the only conditions which military honour permits me to accept.
+
+
+Regnier bombarded the Chancellor with letters until the 30th, when Count
+Hatzfeld informed him that the Minister would listen to nothing more until
+Regnier could show full powers without evasion; that the matter must
+imperatively be conducted openly and above board; and that his Excellency
+hoped Regnier would be able to get clear of it with honour, and that soon.
+
+So Regnier quitted Ferrieres in great dejection. He gives vent ruefully to
+the belief that Bismarck regarded him as an unaccredited agent of the
+Empress, while, curiously enough, the partisans of the Empress took him
+for an emissary of Bismarck. Reaching Hastings on the 3rd of October he
+found that the Empress was now at Chislehurst. He had telegraphed in
+advance to "M. Regnier," the name which he had instructed General Bourbaki
+to pass under until the true Regnier should reach England. But Bourbaki
+had cast away the false name at the instigation of a brother officer while
+passing through Belgium. On arriving at Chislehurst he learned from the
+Empress that he had been made the victim of a mystification on the part of
+Regnier, and that she had never expressed the desire to have with her
+either Marshal Canrobert or himself. This intelligence, of which the
+newspapers had given him a presentiment, struck him to the heart. Although
+covered by his chief's order he found himself in a false position; and he
+wrote to the late Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, begging his good
+offices to obtain for him an authorisation to return to his post. An
+assurance was given that this would be accorded, and he hurried to
+Luxembourg there to await intimation of permission to re-enter Metz. Some
+delay occurred in the transmission of the Royal order to this effect and
+although Bourbaki was assured that the decision would shortly reach him,
+he became impatient, went into France, and placed himself at the
+disposition of the Provisional Government. But thenceforth he was a soured
+and dispirited man. The _ci-devant_ aide-de-camp of an Emperor writhed
+under the harrow of Gambetta and Freycinet.
+
+As for Regnier, on his return to England he seems to have haunted
+Chislehurst. Once, so he frankly writes, after waiting a full hour in
+expectation of an audience of the Empress Madame Le Breton came to tell
+him that Her Majesty was sorry to have kept him waiting so long, but that
+she had now definitely resolved not to receive him. Yet he hung on, and
+the same evening he tells that he was called somewhat abruptly into a room
+in which stood several gentlemen, when a lady suddenly rose from a couch
+and addressed him standing. At last he was face to face with the Empress.
+"Sir," said Her Majesty, "you have been persistent in wishing to speak
+with me personally; here I am; what have you to say?" Then Regnier, by his
+own account, harangued that august and unfortunate lady in a manner which
+in print seems extremely trenchant and dictatorial. It was all in vain, he
+confesses; he could not alter the convictions of the Empress. He says that
+"she feared that posterity, if she yielded, would only see in the act a
+proof of dynastic selfishness; and that dishonour would be attached to the
+name of whoever should sign a treaty based on a cession of territory."
+Probably Her Majesty spoke from a more lofty standpoint than Regnier was
+able to comprehend or appreciate.
+
+Regnier's subsequent career during that troublous period was both curious
+and dubious. General Boyer states that on the 28th of October he found
+Regnier _tete-a-tete_ with Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon). Later he went to
+Cassel, where he busied himself in trying to implicate in political
+machinations sundry French officers who were prisoners there. Presently we
+find him at Versailles, figuring among the conductors of the _Moniteur
+Prussien_, Bismarck's organ during the German occupation of that city, in
+which journal he published a series of articles under the title of _Jean
+Bonhomme_. During the armistice after the surrender of Paris he betook
+himself to Brussels, where he told General Boyer that he had gone to
+Versailles to attempt a renewal of negotiations tending towards an
+Imperial restoration. He showed the general the original safe-conduct
+which Bismarck had given him at Ferrieres, and a letter of Count Hatzfeld
+authorising him to visit Versailles. The last item during this period
+recorded of this strange personage--and that item one so significant as to
+justify Mrs. Crawford's shrewd suspicion "that Regnier played a double
+game, and that Prince Bismarck, if he chose, could clear up the mystery
+which hangs over Regnier's curious negotiations"--is found in a page of
+the _Proces Bazaine_. This is the gem: "On the 18th of February 1871 he
+was in Versailles, where he met a person of his acquaintance, to whom he
+uttered the characteristic words--'I do not know whether M. de Bismarck
+will allow me to leave him this evening.'" He is said to have later been
+connected with the Paris police under the late M. Lagrange. Whether
+Regnier was more knave or fool--enthusiast, impostor, or "crank"--will
+probably be never known.
+
+
+
+
+RAILWAY LIZZ
+
+BY AN HOSPITAL MATRON
+
+
+We see many curious phases of humanity--we who administer to the sick in
+the great hospitals which are among the boasts of London. The mask worn by
+the face of the world is dropped before us. We see men as they are, and
+while the sight is often not calculated to enhance our estimate of human
+nature, there are occasionally strong reliefs which stand out from the
+mass of shadow. There are curious opinions entertained in the outer world
+as to the internal economy of hospitals, not a few "laymen" imagining that
+the main end of such establishments is that the doctors may have something
+to experiment upon for the advancement of their professional theories--
+something which, while it is human, is not very valuable in the social
+scale and therefore open to be hacked and hewn and operated upon with a
+freedom begotten of the knowledge that the subject is a mere vile corpus.
+
+Nor is this the only delusion. Many people think that the hospital nurse
+is but another name for a heartless harpy, brimful of callous selfishness.
+Her attentions--kindness is an inadmissible word--are believed to be
+purely mercenary. Those who themselves can afford to fee her or who have
+friends able and willing to buy her services, may purchase civil treatment
+and careful nursing while the poor wretch who has neither money nor
+friends may languish unheeded. There is no greater mistake than this. Year
+by year the character of hospital nursing has improved. It is not to be
+denied that in times gone by there were nurses the mainsprings of whose
+actions may be said to have been money and gin; but these have long since
+been driven forth with contumely. I have seen a poor wretch of a
+discharged soldier without a single copper to bless himself with, nursed
+with as much tender assiduity and real feeling as if he were in a position
+to pay his nurses handsomely.
+
+Indeed, in most hospitals now the practice of accepting money presents is
+altogether forbidden; and if the prohibition, as in the case of railway
+porters and guards, is sometimes looked upon in the light of a dead
+letter, there is, I sincerely believe, no such thing as any grasping after
+a guerdon nor any neglect in a case where it is evident no guerdon is to
+be expected. There is an hospital I could name in which the nurses are
+prohibited from accepting from patients any more substantial recognition
+of their services than a nosegay of flowers. The wards of this hospital
+are always gay with bright, fragrant posies, most of them the
+contributions of those who, having been carefully tended in their need,
+retain a grateful recollection of the kindness and now that they are in
+health again take this simple, pretty way of showing their gratitude. It
+is two years ago since a rough bricklayer's labourer got mended in the
+accident ward of this hospital of some curiously complicated injuries he
+had received by tumbling from the top of a house. Not a Sunday afternoon
+has there been since the house-surgeon told him one morning that he might
+go out, that he has not religiously visited the "Albert" ward and brought
+his thank-offering in the shape of a cheap but grateful nosegay.
+
+Those nurses who thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have often
+curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of collecting them.
+It is by no means always mere regard for the securing of the necessaries
+of life which has brought them to the thankless and toilsome occupation.
+We have all read of nunneries in which women immured themselves, anxious
+to sequester themselves from all association with the outer world and to
+devote themselves to a life of penance and devotion. After all their piety
+was aimless and of no utility to humanity. There was a concentrated
+selfishness in it which detracted from its ambitious aspiration. But in
+the modern nuns of our hospitals methinks we have women who, abnegating
+with equal solicitude the pleasures and dissipations of the world, find a
+more philanthropic opening for their exertions in their retirement than in
+sleeping on hair pallets, and in eating nothing but parched peas.
+
+It was towards the autumn of a recent year that a modest-looking young
+woman applied to me for a situation on our nursing staff. She wore a
+widow's dress and seemed a self-contained, reserved little woman, with
+something weighing very heavily on her mind. Her testimonials of character
+were ample and of a very high order but they did not enlighten me with any
+great freedom as to her past history, and she for her part appeared by no
+means eager to supplement the meagre information furnished by them.
+However, people have a right to keep their own counsel if they please, and
+there was no sin in the woman's reticence. We happened to be very short of
+efficient nurses at the time and she was at once taken upon trial; her
+somewhat strange stipulation, which she made absolute, being agreed to--
+that she should not be compelled to reside in the hospital, but merely
+come in to perform her turn of nursing, and that over, be at liberty to
+leave the precincts when she pleased. I say the stipulation was a strange
+one, because attached to it there was a considerable pecuniary sacrifice
+as well as a necessity for entering a lower grade.
+
+She made a very excellent nurse, with her quiet, reserved ways and her
+manner of moving about a ward as if she studied the lightness of every
+footfall. But she had her peculiarities. I have already said that she was
+not given to be communicative, and for the first three months she was in
+the place I do not believe she uttered a word to any one within the walls
+except on subjects connected with the performance of her duties. Then,
+too, she manifested a curious fondness for being on duty in the accident
+ward. Most nurses have very little liking for this ward--the work is very
+heavy and unremitting and frequently the sights are more than usually
+repulsive. But she specially made application to be placed in it, and the
+more terrible the nature of the accident the more eager was her zeal to
+minister to the poor victim. It seemed almost a morbid fondness which she
+developed for waiting, in particular, upon people injured by railway
+accidents. When some poor mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed
+almost out of resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an
+empty cot in the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a
+seemingly intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and
+ease the poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot"
+with an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however
+conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her
+partiality for railway "cases" was so marked that it appeared to amount to
+a passion; and among the other nurses, never slow to fix upon any
+peculiarity and base upon it some not unfriendly nickname, our quiet
+friend went by the name of "Railway Lizz." Nobody ever got any clue to the
+reason, if there was one, for this predilection of hers. Indeed, nobody
+ever was favoured with the smallest scrap of her confidence. I confess to
+have felt much interest in the sad-eyed young widow and to have several
+times given her an opening which she might have availed herself of for
+narrating something of her past life; but she always retired within
+herself with a sensitiveness which puzzled me not a little, satisfied as I
+was that there was nothing in her antecedents of a character which would
+not bear the light.
+
+There are few holidays within an hospital. Physical suffering is not to be
+mitigated by a gala day; the pressure of disease cannot be lightened by
+jollity and merry-making. One New Year's Eve, when the world outside our
+walls was glad of heart, a poor shattered form was borne into the accident
+ward. It was a railway-porter whom a train had knocked down and passed
+over, crushing the young fellow almost out of the shape of humanity.
+Railway Lizz was by his side in a moment, wetting the pain-parched lips
+and smoothing the pillow of the half-conscious sufferer. The house-surgeon
+came and went with that silent shake of the head we know too surely how to
+interpret, and the mangled railway-porter was left in the care of his
+assiduous nurse. It was almost midnight when I again entered the accident
+ward. The night-lamp was burning feebly, shedding a dull dim light over
+the great room and throwing out huge grotesque shadows on the floor and
+the walls. I glanced toward the railway-porter's bed, and the tell-tale
+screen placed around it told me that all was over and that the life had
+gone out of the shattered casket. As I walked down the room toward the
+screen I heard a low subdued sound of bitter sobbing behind it; and when I
+stepped within it, there was the sad-faced widow-nurse weeping as if her
+heart would break. When she saw me she strove hard to repress her emotion
+and to resume the quiet, self-possessed demeanour which it was her wont to
+wear; but she failed in the attempt and the sobs burst out in almost
+convulsive rebellion against the effort to repress them. I put my arm
+round the neck of the poor young thing and stooping down kissed her wet
+cheek as a tear from my own eye mingled with her profuse weeping. The
+evidence of feeling appeared to overpower her utterly; she buried her head
+in my lap, and lay long there sobbing like a child. When the acuteness of
+the emotion had somewhat spent itself I gently raised her up, and asked of
+her what was the cause of a grief so poignant. I found that I was now at
+last within the intrenchments of her reserve; with a deep sigh she said,
+in her Scottish accent, that it was "a lang, lang story," but if I cared
+to hear it she would tell it. So sitting there, we two together in the dim
+twilight of the night-lamp, with the shattered corpse of the
+railway-porter lying there "streekit" decently before us, she told the
+following pathetic tale:--
+
+"I am an Aberdeen girl by birth. My father was the foreman at a factory, a
+very stiff, dour man, but a gude father, and an upright, God-fearing man.
+When I was about eighteen, I fell acquainted with a railway-guard, a
+winsome, manly lad as ever ye would wish to see. If ye had kent my Alick,
+ye wadna wonder at me for what I did. My father was a proud man, and he
+couldna bear that I should marry a man that he said wasna my equal in
+station; and in his firm, masterful way he forbade Alick from coming about
+the house, and me from seeing him. It was a sair trial, and I dinna think
+ony father has a right to put doon his foot and mar the happiness of twa
+young folks in the way mine did. The struggle was a bitter ane, between a
+father's commands and the bidding of true luve; and at last, ae night
+coming home from a friend's house, Alick and I forgathered again, and he
+swore he would not gang till I had promised I would marry him afore the
+week was out.
+
+"I'll not trouble ye with lang details of the battle that I fought with
+mysel', and how in the end Alick conquered. We were married in the West
+Kirk the Sunday after, and we twa set up our simple housekeeping in a
+single room in a house by the back of the Infirmary. Oh, mem, we were
+happy young things! Alick was the fondest, kindest man ye could ever think
+of. Sometimes he wad take me a jaunt the length of Perth in the van with
+him, and point out the places of interest on the road as we went flashing
+by them. Then on the Sunday, when he was off duty, we used to take a walk
+out to the Torry Lighthouse, or down by the auld brig o' Balgownie, and
+then hame to an hour's read of the Bible afore I put down the kebbuck and
+the bannocks. My father keepit hard and unforgiving; they tellt me he had
+sworn an oath I should never darken his door again, and at times I felt
+very sairly the bitterness of his feeling toward me, whan I was sitting up
+waiting for Alick's hame-coming whan he was on the night turn; but then he
+wad come in with his blithe smile and cheery greeting and every thought
+but joy at his presence wad flee awa as if by magic. Some of the friends I
+had kent when a lassie at home still keepit up the acquantance, and we
+used sometimes to spend an evening at one of their houses. The New Year
+time came, and Alick and myself got an invitation to keep our New Year's
+Eve at the house of a decent, elderly couple that lived up near the Kitty
+Brewster Station--quiet, retired folk that had been in business and made
+enough to live comfortable on. It was Alick's night for the late mail
+train from Perth, but he would be at Market Street Station in time to get
+up among us to see the auld year out and the new ane in; and I was to
+spend the evening there and wait for his arrival.
+
+"It was a vera happy time. The auld couple were as kind as kind could be,
+and their twa or three young folks keepit up the fun brisk and lively.
+I took a hand at the cairts and sang a lilt like the rest; but I was
+luiking for Alick's company to fill up my cup of happiness. The time wore
+on, and it was getting close to the hour at which he might be expectit. I
+kenna what ailed me, but I felt strangely uneasy and anxious for his
+coming. 'Here he is at last!' I said to myself, as my heart gave a jump at
+the sound of a foot on the gravel walk. As it came closer, I kent it wasna
+Alick's step, and a strange, cauld grip of fear and doubt caught me at the
+heart. Mr. Thomson, that was the name of our old friend, was called out,
+and I overheard the sound of a whispered conversation in the passage. Then
+he put his head in and called out his wife; I could see his face was as
+white as a sheet, and his voice shook in spite of himself. The boding of
+misfortune came upon me with a force it was in vain to strive against, and
+I rose up and gaed out into the passage amang them. The auld man was
+shakin' like an aspen leaf; the gudewife had her apron ower her face and
+was greeting like a bairn, and in the door stood Tarn Farquharson, a
+railway-porter frae the station. I saw it aa' quicker nor I can tell it to
+you, leddy. I steppit up to Tarn and charged him simple and straught.
+
+"'Tam, what's happent to my Alick?'
+
+"The wet tears stood in Tarn's e'en as he answered, 'Dinna speer, Lizzie,
+my puir lass, dinna speer, whan the answer maun be a waefu' ane.'
+
+"'Tell me the warst, Tam,' says I; 'let me hear the warst, an' pit me oot
+o' my pain!'
+
+"The words are dirlin' and stoonin' in my ears yet--
+
+"'The engine gaed ower him, and he's lyin' dead at Market Street.'
+
+"I didna faint, and I couldna greet. Something gied a crack inside my
+head, and my e'en swam for a minute; but the next I was putting on my
+bonnet and shawl and saying good-nicht to Mrs. Thomson. They tried to stop
+me. I heard Tam whisper to the auld man, 'She maunna see him. He is
+mangled oot o' the shape o' man.'
+
+"But I wasna to be gainsaid, and Tam took my airm as we gaed doon through
+the toon to Market Street. There they tried hard to keep him oot frae my
+sight. They tellt me he wasna fit to be seen, but there's nae law that can
+keep a wife frae seeing her husband's corpse. He was lying in a
+waiting-room covered up with a sheet, and, oh me, he was sair, sair
+mangled--that puir fellow there is naething to him; but the winsome, manly
+face, with the sweet, familiar smile on it, was nane spoiled; and lang,
+lang, I sat there, us twa alane, with my hand on his cauld forehead,
+playing wi' his bonnie waving hair. They left me there, in their
+considerate kindliness, till the cauld light o' the New Year's morning
+began to break, and syne they came and tellt me I maun go. But I wadna
+gang my lane. He was mine, and mine only, sae lang as he was abune the
+mools; and I claimed my dead hame wi' me, to that hoose he had left sae
+brisk and sprichtly whan he kissed me in the morning. Four of the
+railway-porters carried him up to that hame which had lost its hame-look
+for me now. I keepit him to mysel' till they took him awa' frae me and
+laid him under a saugh tree in the Spittal Kirkyard."
+
+She paused in her story, overcome by the bitter memory of the past, and I
+wanted no formal application now to give me the clue to her strange
+preference for the accident ward and her hitherto inexplicable fondness
+for "railway cases." Poor thing, with what inexpressible vividness must
+the circumstances in which this New Year's night was passing with her have
+recalled the sad remembrances of that other New Year's night the narrative
+of which she had just given me! Presently she recovered her voice, and
+briefly concluded the little history.
+
+"Leddy, I was wi' bairn whan my Alick was taken from me. Oh, how I used to
+pray that God would be gude to me, and give me a living keepsake of my
+dead husband! I troubled naebody. I never speered if my father would do
+anything for me; but I got work at the factory, and I lived in prayerful
+hope. My hour of trouble came, and a fatherless laddie was born into this
+weary world, the very picture o' him that was sleeping under the tree in
+the Spittal Kirkyard. I needna tell ye I christened him Alick, and the
+bairn has been my joy and comfort ever since God gifted me with him. I
+found the sichts and memories of Aberdeen ower muckle for me, sae I came
+up to London here, and ye ken the rest about me. It was because of being
+with my bairn that I wouldna agree to live in the hospital here like the
+rest of the nurses, and whan I gang hame noo to my little garret, he will
+waken up out of his saft sleep, rosy and fresh, and hold up his bonnie
+mou', sae like his father's, for 'mammie's kiss.'"
+
+
+
+
+MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
+
+
+None of the greater rivers of Scotland makes so much haste to reach the
+ocean as does the turbulent and impatient Spey. From its parent lochlet in
+the bosom of the Grampians it speeds through Badenoch, the country of
+Cluny MacPherson, the chief of Clan Chattan, a region to this day redolent
+of memories of the '45. It abates its hurry as its current skirts the
+grave of the beautiful Jean Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, who raised the
+92nd Highlanders by giving a kiss with the King's shilling to every
+recruit, and who now since many long years
+
+  Sleeps beneath Kinrara's willow.
+
+But after this salaam of courtesy the river roars and bickers down the
+long stretch of shaggy glen which intervenes between the upper and lower
+Rocks of Craigellachie, whence the Clan Grant, whose habitation is this
+ruggedly beautiful strath, takes its slogan of "Stand fast,
+Craigellachie," till it finally sends its headlong torrent shooting miles
+out through the salt water of the Moray Firth. In its course of over a
+hundred miles its fierce current has seldom tarried; yet now and again it
+spreads panting into a long smooth stretch of still water when wearied
+momentarily with buffeting the boulders in its broken and contorted bed;
+or when a great rock, jutting out into its course, causes a deep black
+sullen pool whose sluggish eddy is crested with masses of yellow foam.
+Merely as a wayfaring pedestrian I have followed Spey from its source to
+its mouth; but my intimacy with it in the character of a fisherman extends
+over the five-and-twenty miles of its lower course, from the confluence of
+the pellucid Avon at Ballindalloch to the bridge of Fochabers, the native
+village of the Captain Wilson who died so gallantly in the recent fighting
+in Matabeleland. My first Spey trout I took out of water at the foot of
+the cherry orchard below the sweet-lying cottage of Delfur. My first
+grilse I hooked and played with trout tackle in "Dalmunach" on the Laggan
+water, a pool that is the rival of "Dellagyl" and the "Holly Bush" for the
+proud title of the best pool of lower Spey. My first salmon I brought to
+the gaff with a beating heart in that fine swift stretch of water known as
+"The Dip," which connects the pools of the "Heathery Isle" and the "Red
+Craig," and which is now leased by that good fisherman, Mr. Justice North.
+I think the Dundurcas water then belonged to the late Mr. Little Gilmour,
+the well-known welter-weight who went so well to hounds season after
+season from Melton Mowbray, and who was as keen in the water on Spey as he
+was over the Leicestershire pastures. A servant of Mr. Little Gilmour was
+drowned in the "Two Stones" pool, the next below the "Holly Bush;" and the
+next pool below the "Two Stones" is called the "Beaufort" to this day--
+named after the present Duke, who took many a big fish out of it in the
+days when he used to come to Speyside with his friend Mr. Little Gilmour.
+
+In those long gone-by days brave old Lord Saltoun, the hero of Hougomont,
+resided during the fishing season in the mansion-house of Auchinroath, on
+the high ground at the mouth of the Glen of Rothes. One morning, some
+five-and-forty years ago, my father drove to breakfast with the old lord
+and took me with him. Not caring to send the horse to the stable, he left
+me outside in the dogcart when he entered the house. As I waited rather
+sulkily--for I was mightily hungry--there came out on to the doorstep a
+very queer-looking old person, short of figure, round as a ball, his head
+sunk between very high and rounded shoulders, and with short stumpy legs.
+He was curiously attired in a whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped
+jacket the great collar of which reached far up the back of his head,
+surmounted a pair of voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the
+knee. I imagined him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he
+accosted me good-naturedly, asking to whom the dogcart and myself
+belonged, I answered him somewhat shortly and then ingenuously suggested
+that he would be doing me a kindly act if he would go and fetch me out a
+hunk of bread and meat, for I was enduring tortures of hunger.
+
+Then he swore, and that with vigour and fluency, that it was a shame that
+I should have been left outside; called a groom and bade me alight and
+come indoors with him. I demurred--I had got the paternal injunction to
+remain with the horse and cart. "I am master here!" exclaimed the old
+person impetuously; and with further strong language he expressed his
+intention of rating my father soundly for not having brought me inside
+along with himself. Then a question occurred to me, and I ventured to ask,
+"Are you Lord Saltoun?" "Of course I am," replied the old gentleman; "who
+the devil else should I be?" Well, I did not like to avow what I felt, but
+in truth I was hugely disappointed in him; for I had just been reading
+Siborne's _Waterloo_, and to think that this dumpy old fellow in the
+duffle jacket that came up over his ears was the valiant hero who had held
+Hougomont through cannon fire and musketry fire and hand-to-hand bayonet
+fighting on the day of Waterloo while the post he was defending was
+ablaze, and who had actually killed Frenchmen with his own good sword, was
+a severe disenchantment. When I had breakfasted he asked leave of my
+father to let me go with him to the waterside, promising to send me home
+safely later in the day. When he was in Spey up to the armpits--for the
+"Holly Bush" takes deep wading from the Dundurcas side--the old lord
+looked even droller than he had done on the Auchinroath doorstep, and I
+could not reconcile him in the least to my Hougomont ideal. He was
+delighted when I opened on him with that topic, and he told me with great
+spirit of the vehemence with which his brother-officer Colonel Macdonnell,
+and his men forced the French soldiers out of the Hougomont courtyard, and
+how big Sergeant Graham closed the door against them by main force of
+muscular strength. Before he had been in the water twenty minutes the old
+lord was in a fish; his gillie, old Dallas, who could throw a fine line in
+spite of the whisky, gaffed it scientifically, and I was sent home
+rejoicing with a 15 lb. salmon for my mother and a half-sovereign for
+myself wherewith to buy a trouting rod and reel. Lord Saltoun was the
+first lord I ever met, and I have never known one since whom I have liked
+half so well.
+
+Spey is a river which insists on being distinctive. She mistrusts the
+stranger. He may be a good man on Tweed or Tay, but until he has been
+formally introduced to Spey and been admitted to her acquaintance, she is
+chary in according him her favours. She is no flighty coquette, nor is she
+a prude; but she has her demure reserves, and he who would stand well with
+her must ever treat her with consideration and respect. She is not as
+those facile demi-mondaine streams, such as the Helmsdale or the Conon,
+which let themselves be entreated successfully by the chance comer on the
+first jaunty appeal. You must learn the ways of Spey before you can
+prevail with her, and her ways are not the ways of other rivers. It was in
+vain that the veteran chief of southern fishermen, the late Francis
+Francis, threw his line over Spey in the _veni, vidi, vici_ manner of one
+who had made Usk and Wye his potsherd, and who over the Hampshire Avon had
+cast his shoe. Russel, the famous editor of the _Scotsman_, the Delane of
+the north country, who, pen in hand, could make a Lord Advocate squirm,
+and before whose gibe provosts and bailies trembled, who had drawn out
+leviathan with a hook from Tweed, and before whom the big fish of Forth
+could not stand--even he, brilliant fisherman as he was, could "come nae
+speed ava" on Spey, as the old Arndilly water-gillie quaintly worded it.
+
+Yet Russel of the _Scotsman_ was perhaps the most whole-souled salmon
+fisher of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations
+extended beyond the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the
+peroration, slightly profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his
+speech on salmon fishing at a Tweedside dinner? "When I die," he exclaimed
+in a fine rapture, "should I go to heaven, I will fish in the water of
+life with a fly dressed with a feather from the wing of an angel; should I
+be unfortunately consigned to another destination, I shall nevertheless
+hope to angle in Styx with the worm that never dieth." To his editorial
+successor Spey was a trifle more gracious than she had been to Russel; but
+she did not wholly open her heart to this neophyte of her stream, serving
+him up in the pool of Dellagyl with the ugliest, blackest, gauntest old
+cock-salmon of her depths, owning a snout like the prow of an ancient
+galley.
+
+Spey exacts from those who would fish her waters with success a peculiar
+and distinctive method of throwing their line, which is known as the "Spey
+cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the successive phases of the
+"Spey cast" in the fishing volume of the admirable Badminton series. It
+cannot be learned by diagrams; no man, indeed, can become a proficient in
+it who has not grown up from childhood in the practice of it. Yet its use
+is absolutely indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks,
+trees, high banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead
+cast. The essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this--that his line
+must never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from
+a howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To
+watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal
+education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory,
+and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a dexterous swish of
+the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet supple rod, illustrate
+a phase at once beautiful and practical of the poetry of motion. Among the
+native salmon fishermen of Speyside, _quorum ego parva pars fui,_ there
+are two distinct manners which may be severally distinguished as the easy
+style and the masterful style. The disciples of the easy style throw a
+fairly long line, but their aim is not to cover a maximum distance. What
+they pride themselves on is precise, dexterous, and, above all, light and
+smooth casting. No fierce switchings of the rod reveal their approach
+before they are in sight; like the clergyman of Pollok's _Course of Time_
+they love to draw rather than to drive. Of the masterful style the most
+brilliant exponent is a short man, but he is the deepest wader in Spey. I
+believe his waders fasten, not round his waist, but round his neck. I have
+seen him in a pool, far beyond his depth, but "treading water" while
+simultaneously wielding a rod about four times the length of himself, and
+sending his line whizzing an extraordinary distance. The resolution of his
+attack seems actually to hypnotise salmon into taking his fly; and, once
+hooked, however hard they may fight for life, they are doomed fish.
+
+Ah me! These be gaudy, flaunting, flashy days! Our sober Spey, in the
+matter of salmon fly-hooks, is gradually yielding to the garish influence
+of the times. Spey salmon now begin to allow themselves to be captured by
+such indecorous and revolutionary fly-hooks as the "Canary" and the
+"Silver Doctor." Jaunty men in loud suits of dittoes have come into the
+north country, and display fly-books that vie in the variegated brilliancy
+of their contents with a Dutch tulip bed. We staunch adherents to the
+traditional Spey blacks and browns, we who have bred Spey cocks for the
+sake of their feathers, and have sworn through good report and through
+evil report by the pig's down or Berlin wool for body, the Spey cock for
+hackle, and the mallard drake for wings, have jeered at the kaleidoscopic
+fantasticality of the leaves of their fly-books turned over by adventurers
+from the south country and Ireland; and have sneered at the notion that a
+self-respecting Spey salmon would so far demoralise himself as to be
+allured by a miniature presentation of Liberty's shop-window. But the
+salmon has not regarded the matter from our conservative point of view;
+and now we, too, ruefully resort to the "canary" as a dropper when
+conditions of atmosphere and water seem to favour that gaudy implement.
+And it must be owned that even before the "twopence-coloured" gentry came
+among us from distant parts, we, the natives, had been side-tracking from
+the exclusive use of the old-fashioned sombre flies into the occasional
+use of gayer yet still modest "fancies." Of specific Spey hooks in favour
+at the present time the following is, perhaps, a fairly correct and
+comprehensive list: purple king, green king, black king, silver heron,
+gold heron, black dog, silver riach, gold riach, black heron, silver
+green, gold green, Lady Caroline, carron, black fancy, silver spale, gold
+spale, culdrain, dallas, silver thumbie, Sebastopol, Lady Florence March,
+gold purpie, and gled (deadly in "snawbree"). The Spey cock--a cross
+between the Hamburg cock and the old Scottish mottled hen--was fifty years
+ago bred all along Speyside expressly for its feathers, used in dressing
+salmon flies; but the breed is all but extinct now, or rather, perhaps,
+has been crossed and re-crossed out of recognition. It is said, however,
+to be still maintained in the parish of Advie, and when the late Mr. Bass
+had the Tulchan shootings and fishings his head keeper used to breed and
+sell Spey cocks.
+
+Probably the most extensive collection of salmon fly-hooks ever made was
+that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a property on
+which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His father was a
+distinguished Indian civil servant and of later fame as an astronomer; and
+his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the best fishermen that
+ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl. Henry Grant himself had
+been a keen fisherman in his youth, and when, after a chequered and roving
+life in South Africa and elsewhere, he came into the estate, he set
+himself to build up a representative collection of salmon flies for all
+waters and all seasons. His father had brought home a large and curious
+assortment of feathers from the Himalayas; Mr. Grant sent far and wide for
+further supplies of suitable and distinctive material, and then he devoted
+himself to the task of dressing hundred after hundred of fly-hooks of
+every known pattern and of every size, from the great three-inch hook for
+heavy spring water to the dainty little "finnock" hook scarcely larger
+than a trout fly. A suitable receptacle was constructed for this
+collection from the timber of the "Auld Gean Tree of Elchies"--the largest
+of its kind in all Scotland--whose trunk had a diameter of nearly four
+feet and whose branches had a spread of over twenty yards. The "Auld Gean
+Tree" fell into its dotage and was cut down to the strains of a "lament,"
+with which the wail and skirl of the bagpipes drowned the noise of the
+woodmen's axes. Out of the wood of the "Auld Gean Tree" a local artificer
+constructed a handsome cabinet with many drawers, in which were stored the
+Elchies collection of fly-hooks classified carefully according to their
+sizes and kinds. The cabinet stood--and, I suppose, still stands--in the
+Elchies billiard-room; but I fear the collection is sadly diminished, for
+Henry Grant was the freest-handed of men and towards the end of his life
+anybody who chose was welcome to help himself from the contents of the
+drawers. Yet no doubt some relics of this fine collection must still
+remain; and I hope for his own sake that Mr. Justice A.L. Smith the
+present tenant of Elchies, is free of poor Henry's cabinet.
+
+It is a popular delusion that Speyside men are immortal; this is true only
+of distillers. But it is a fact that their longevity is phenomenal. If Dr.
+Ogle had to make up the population returns of Strath Spey he could not
+fail to be profoundly astonished by the comparative blankness of the
+mortality columns. Frederick the Great, when his fellows were rather
+hanging back in the crisis of a battle, stung them with the biting taunt,
+"Do you wish to live for ever?" If his descendant of the present day were
+to address the same question to the seniors of Speyside, they would
+probably reply, "Your Majesty, we ken that we canna live for ever; but,
+faith, we mak' a gey guid attempt!" A respected relative of mine died a
+few years ago at the age of eighty-five. Had he been a Southron, he would
+have been said to have died full of years; but of my relative the local
+paper remarked in a touching obituary notice that he "was cut off
+prematurely in the midst of his mature prime." When I was young, Speyside
+men mostly shuffled off this mortal coil by being upset from their gigs
+when driving home recklessly from market with "the maut abune the meal;"
+but the railways have done away in great measure with this cause of death.
+Nowadays the centenarians for the most part fall ultimate victims to
+paralysis. In the south it is understood, I believe, that the third shock
+is fatal; but a Speyside man will resist half a dozen shocks before he
+succumbs, and has been known to walk to the kirk after having endured even
+a greater number of attacks.
+
+Among the senior veterans of our riverside I may venture to name two most
+worthy men and fine salmon fishers. Although both have now wound in their
+reels and unspliced their rods, one of them still lives among us hale and
+hearty. "Jamie" Shanks of Craigellachie is, perhaps, the father of the
+water. He himself is reticent as to his age and there are legends on the
+subject which lack authentication. It is, however, a matter of tradition
+that Jamie was out in the '45; and that, cannily returning home when
+Charles Edward turned back at Derby, he earned the price of a croft by
+showing the Duke of Cumberland the ford across Spey near the present
+bridge of Fochabers, by which the "butcher duke" crossed the river on his
+march to fight the battle of Culloden. It is also traditioned that Jamie
+danced round a bonfire in celebration of the marriage of "bonnie Jean,"
+Duchess of Gordon, an event which occurred in 1767. Apart from the Dark
+Ages one thing is certain regarding Jamie, that the great flood of 1829
+swept away his croft and cottage, he himself so narrowly escaping that he
+left his watch hanging on the bed-post, watch and bed-post being
+subsequently recovered floating about in the Moray Firth. The greatest
+honour that can be conferred on a fisherman--the Victoria Cross of the
+river--has long belonged to Jamie; a pool in Spey bears his name, and many
+a fine salmon has been taken out of "Jamie Shanks's Pool," the swirling
+water of which is almost at the good old man's feet as he shifts the "coo"
+on his strip of pasture or watches the gooseberries swelling in his pretty
+garden. His fame has long ago gone throughout all Speyside for skill in
+the use of the gaff: about eight years ago I was witness of the calm,
+swift dexterity with which he gaffed what I believe was his last fish. In
+the serene evening of his long day he still finds pleasant occupation in
+dressing salmon flies; and if you speak him fair and he is in good humour
+"Jamie" may let you have half a dozen as a great favour.
+
+The other veteran of our river of whom I would say something was that most
+worthy man and fine salmon fisher Mr. Charles Grant, the ex-schoolmaster
+of Aberlour, better known among us who loved and honoured the fine old
+Highland gentleman as "Charlie" Grant. Charlie no longer lives; but to the
+last he was hale, relished his modest dram, and delighted in his quiet yet
+graphic manner to tell of men and things of Speyside familiar to him
+during his long life by the riverside. Charles Grant was the first person
+who ever rented salmon water on Spey. It was about 1838 that he took a
+lease from the Fife trustees of the fishing on the right bank from the
+burn of Aberlour to the burn of Carron, about four miles of as good water
+as there is in all the run of Spey. This water would to-day be cheaply
+rented at L250 per annum; the annual rent paid by Charles Grant was two
+guineas. A few years later a lease was granted by the Fife trustees of the
+period of the grouse shootings of Benrinnes, the wide moorlands of the
+parishes of Glass, Mortlach, and Aberlour, including Glenmarkie the best
+moor in the county, at a rent of L100 a year with four miles of salmon
+water on Spey thrown in. The letting value of these moors and of this
+water is to-day certainly not less than L1500 a year.
+
+Charles Grant had a great and well-deserved reputation for finding a fish
+in water which other men had fished blank. This was partly because from
+long familiarity with the river he knew all the likeliest casts; partly
+because he was sure to have at the end of his casting-line just the proper
+fly for the size of water and condition of weather; and partly because of
+his quiet neat-handed manner of dropping his line on the water. There is a
+story still current on Speyside illustrative of this gift of Charlie in
+finding a fish where people who rather fancied themselves had failed--a
+story which Jamie Shanks to this day does not care to hear. Mr. Russel of
+the _Scotsman_ had done his very best from the quick run at the top of the
+pool of Dalbreck, down to the almost dead-still water at the bottom of
+that fine stretch, and had found no luck. Jamie Shanks, who was with Mr.
+Russel as his fisherman, had gone over it to no purpose with a fresh fly.
+They were grumpishly discussing whether they should give Dalbreck another
+turn or go on to Pool-o-Brock the next pool down stream, when Charles
+Grant made his appearance and asked the waterside question, "What luck?"
+"No luck at all, Charlie!" was Russel's answer. "Deevil a rise!" was
+Shanks's sourer reply. In his demure purring way Charles Grant--who in his
+manner was a duplicate of the late Lord Granville--remarked, "There ought
+to be a fish come out of that pool." "Tak' him out, then!" exclaimed
+Shanks gruffly. "Well, I'll try," quoth the soft-spoken Charlie; and just
+at that spot, about forty yards from the head of the pool, where the
+current slackens and the fish lie awhile before breasting the upper rapid,
+he hooked a fish. Then it was that Russel in the genial manner which made
+provosts swear, remarked, "Shanks, I advise you to take a half year at Mr.
+Grant's school!" "Fat for?" inquired Shanks sullenly. "To learn to fish!"
+replied the master of sarcasm of the delicate Scottish variety.
+
+Respectful by nature to their superiors, the honest working folk of
+Speyside occasionally forget themselves comically in their passionate
+ardour that a hooked salmon shall be brought to bank. Lord Elgin, now in
+his Indian satrapy, far away from what Sir Noel Paton in his fine elegy on
+the late Sir Alexander Gordon Cumming of Altyre called
+
+  The rushing thunder of the Spey,
+
+one day hooked a big fish in the "run" below "Polmet". The fish headed
+swiftly down stream, his lordship in eager pursuit, but afraid of putting
+any strain on the line lest the salmon should "break" him. Down round the
+bend below the pool and by the "Slabs" fish and fisherman sped, till the
+latter was brought up by the sheer rock of Craigellachie. Fortunately a
+fisherman ferried the Earl across the river to the side on which he was
+able to follow the fish. On he ran, keeping up with the fish, under the
+bridge, along the margin of "Shanks's Pool," past the "Boat of Fiddoch"
+pool and the mouth of the tributary; and he was still on the run along the
+edge of the croft beyond when he was suddenly confronted by an aged man,
+who dropped his turnip hoe and ran eagerly to the side of the young
+nobleman. Old Guthrie could give advice from the experience of a couple of
+generations as poacher, water-gillie, occasional water-bailiff, and from
+as extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the river as Sam Weller
+possessed of London public-houses. And this is what he exclaimed: "Ma
+Lord, ma Lord, gin ye dinna check him, that fush will tak' ye doun tae
+Speymouth--deil, but he'll tow ye oot tae sea! Hing intil him, hing intil
+him!" His lordship exerted himself accordingly, but did not secure the old
+fellow's approval. "Man! man!" Guthrie yelled, "ye're nae pittin' a
+twa-ounce strain on him; he's makin' fun o' ye!" The nobleman tried yet
+harder, yet could not please his relentless critic. "God forgie me, but ye
+canna fush worth a damn! Come back on the lan', an' gie him the butt wi'
+pith!" Thus adjured, his lordship acted at last with vigour; the sage,
+having gaffed the fish, abated his wrath, and, as the salmon was being
+"wetted," tendered his respectful apologies.
+
+In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful Speyside
+estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water hardly inferior
+to any throughout the long run of the river. Many a man, far away now from
+"bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the river's roll over its
+rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the swift yet smooth flow of
+"the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against the "Red Craig," in the
+deep, strong water at the foot of which the big red fish leap like trout
+when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting into glow of russet and
+crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank above; the smooth restful
+glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's How," in which a fisherman
+may spend to advantage the livelong day and then not leave it fished out;
+the turbulent half pool, half stream, of the "Piles," which always holds
+large fish lying behind the great stones or in the dead water under the
+daisy-sprinkled bank on which the tall beeches cast their shadows; the
+"Bulwark Pool;" the "Three Stones," where the grilse show their silver
+sides in the late May evenings; "Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter
+now, alas! spoiled by gravel; the quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and
+the "Spout o' Cobblepot;" and then the dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon,"
+the deepest pool of Spey.
+
+The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a
+handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High
+Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and who,
+while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad. Good in the
+saddle and with the salmon rod, the Colonel was perhaps best behind a gun,
+with which he was not less deadly among the salmon of the Spey than among
+the grouse of Benaigen. His relative, old Lord Saltoun, was hard put to it
+once in the "Lady's How" with a thirty-pound salmon which he had hooked
+foul, and which, in its full vigour, was taking all manner of liberties
+with him, making spring after spring clean out of the water. The beast was
+so rebellious and strong that the old lord found it harder to contend with
+than with the Frenchmen who fought so stoutly with him for the possession
+of Hougomont. The Colonel, fowling-piece in hand, was watching the
+struggle, and seeing that Lord Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited
+his opportunity when the big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring,
+and, firing in the nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail,
+hardly marking it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river
+with cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now
+considered rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines,
+not in greed for fish but for the sake of the shooting practice they
+afforded him. When the hooked fish were struggling and in their struggles
+showing their tails out of water, he several times shot two right and left
+breaking the spine in each case close to the tail.
+
+The Colonel was succeeded by his brother, who had been a planter in
+Jamaica before coming to the estate on the death of his brother. Hardly
+was he home when he contested the county unsuccessfully on the old
+never-say-die Protectionist platform against the father of the present
+Duke of Fife; on the first polling-day of which contest I acquired a black
+eye and a bloody nose in the market square of a local village at the hands
+of some gutter lads, with whose demand that I should take the Tory rosette
+out of my bonnet I had declined to comply. Later, this gentleman became an
+assiduous fisher of men as a lay preacher, but he was as keen after salmon
+as he was after sinners. He hooked and played--and gaffed--the largest
+salmon I have ever heard of being caught in Spey by an angler--a fish
+weighing forty-six pounds. The actual present laird of Arndilly is a lady,
+but in her son are perpetuated the fishing instincts of his forbears.
+
+My reminiscences of Spey and Speyside are drawing to an end, and I now
+with natural diffidence approach a great theme. Every Speyside man will
+recognise from this exordium that I am about to treat of "Geordie." It is
+quite understood throughout lower Speyside that it is the moral support
+which Geordie accords to Craigellachie Bridge, in the immediate vicinity
+of which he lives, that chiefly maintains that structure; and that if he
+were to withdraw that support, its towers and roadway would incontinently
+collapse into the depths of the sullen pool spanned by the graceful
+erection. The best of men are not universally popular, and it must be said
+that there are those who cast on Geordie the aspersion of being "some
+thrawn," for which the equivalent in south-country language is perhaps "a
+trifle cross-grained." These, however, are envious people, who are jealous
+of Geordie's habitual association with lords and dukes, and who resent the
+trivial stiffness which is no doubt apparent in his manner to ordinary
+people for the first few days after the illustrious persons referred to
+have reluctantly permitted him to withdraw from them the light of his
+countenance. For my own part I have found Geordie, all things considered,
+to be wonderfully affable. That his tone is patronising I do not deny; but
+then there is surely a joy in being patronised by the factotum of a duke.
+
+I have never been quite sure, nor have I ever dared to ask Geordie,
+whether he considers the Duke to be his patron, or whether he regards
+himself as the patron of that eminent nobleman. From the "aucht-and-forty
+daugh" of Strathbogie to the Catholic Braes of Glenlivat where fifty years
+ago the "sma' stills" reeked in every moorland hollow, across to beautiful
+Kinrara and down Spey to the fertile Braes of Enzie, his Grace is the
+benevolent despot of a thriving tenantry who have good cause to regard him
+with esteem and gratitude. The Duke is a masterful man, whom no factor
+need attempt to lead by the nose; but on the margin of Spey, from the
+blush-red crags of Cairntie down to the head of tide water, he owns his
+centurion in Geordie, who taught him to throw his first line when already
+he was a minister of the Crown, and who, as regards aught appertaining to
+salmon fishing, saith unto his Grace, Do this and he doeth it.
+
+Geordie is a loyal subject, and when a few years ago he had the
+opportunity of seeing Her Majesty during her momentary halt at Elgin
+station, he paid her the compliment of describing her as a "sonsie wife."
+But the heart-loyalty of the honest fellow goes out in all its tender yet
+imperious fulness towards the Castle family, to most of the members of
+which, of both sexes, he has taught the science and practice of killing
+salmon. Hint the faintest shadow of disparagement of any member of that
+noble and worthy house, and you make a life enemy of Geordie. On no other
+subject is he particularly touchy, save one--the gameness and vigour of
+the salmon of Spey. Make light of the fighting virtues of Spey fish--exalt
+above them the horn of the salmon of Tay, Ness, or Tweed--and Geordie
+loses his temper on the instant and overwhelms you with the strongest
+language. There is a tradition that among Geordie's remote forbears was
+one of Cromwell's Ironsides who on the march from Aberdeen to Inverness
+fell in love with a Speyside lass of the period, and who, abandoning his
+Ironside appellation of "Hew-Agag-in-Pieces," adopted the surname which
+Geordie now bears. This strain of ancestry may account for Geordie's
+smooth yet peremptory skill as a disciplinarian. It devolves upon him
+during the rod-fishing season to assign to each person of the fishing
+contingent his or her particular stretch of water, and to tell off to each
+as guide one of his assistant attendants.
+
+It is a great treat to find Geordie in a garrulous humour and to listen to
+one of his salmon-fishing stories, told always in the broadest of
+north-country Doric. His sense of humour is singularly keen,
+notwithstanding that he is a Scot; and it is not in his nature to minimise
+his own share in the honour and glory of the incident he may relate. One
+of Geordie's stories is vividly in my recollection, and may appropriately
+conclude my reminiscences of Speyside and its folk. There was a stoup of
+"Benrinnes" on the mantelpiece and a free-drawing pipe in Geordie's mouth.
+His subject was the one on which he can be most eloquent--an incident of
+the salmon-fishing season, on which the worthy man delivered himself as
+follows:--
+
+"Twa or three seasons back I was attendin' Leddy Carline whan she was
+fushin' that gran' pool at the brig o' Fochabers. She's a fine fusher,
+Leddy Carline: faith, she may weel be, for I taucht her mysel'. She hookit
+a saumon aboot the midst o' the pool, an' for a while it gied gran' sport;
+loupin' and tumblin', an' dartin' up the watter an' doon the watter at sic
+a speed as keepit her leddyship muvin' gey fast tae keep abriesht o't.
+Weel, this kin' o' wark, an' a ticht line, began for tae tak' the spunk
+oot o' the saumon, an' I was thinkin' it was a quieston o' a few meenits
+whan I wad be in him wi' the gaff; but my birkie, near han' spent though
+he was, had a canny bit dodge up the sleeve o' him. He made a bit whamlin'
+run, an' deil tak' me gin he didna jam himself intil a neuk atween twa
+rocks, an' there the dour beggar bade an' sulkit. Weel, her leddyship
+keepit aye a steady drag on him, an' she gied him the butt wi' power; but
+she cudna get the beast tae budge--no, nae sae muckle as the breadth o' my
+thoomb-nail. Deil a word said Leddy Carline tae me for a gey while, as she
+vrought an' vrought tae gar the saumon quit his neuk. But she cam nae
+speed wi' him; an' at last she says, says she, 'Geordie, I can make
+nothing of him: what in the world is to be done?' 'Gie him a shairp upward
+yark, my leddy,' says I; 'there canna be muckle strength o' resistance
+left in him by this time!' Weel, she did as I tellt her--I will say this
+for Leddy Carline, that she's aye biddable. But, rugg her hardest, the
+fush stuck i' the neuk as gin he waur a bit o' the solid rock, an' her
+leddyship was becomin' gey an' exhaustit. 'Take the rod yourself,
+Geordie,' says she, 'and try what you can do; I freely own the fish is too
+many for me.' Weel, I gruppit the rod, an' I gied a shairp, steady, upward
+drag; an' up the brute cam, clean spent. He hadna been sulkin' aifter aa';
+he had been fairly wedged atween the twa rocks, for whan I landit him, lo
+an' behold! he was bleedin' like a pig, an' there was a muckle gash i' the
+side o' him, that the rock had torn whan I draggit him by main force up
+an' oot. The taikle was stoot, ye'll obsairve, or else he be tae hae
+broken me; but tak' my word for't, Geordie is no the man for tae lippen
+tae feckless taikle.
+
+"Weel, I hear maist things; an' I was tellt that same nicht hoo at the
+denner-table Leddy Carline relatit the haill adventur', an' owned, fat was
+true aneuch, that the fush had fairly bestit her. Weel, amo' the veesitors
+at the Castle was the Dowager Leddy Breadanham; an' it seemed that whan
+Leddy Carline was through wi' her narrateeve, the dowager be tae gie a
+kin' o' a scornfu' sniff an' cock her neb i' the air; an' she said, wha
+but she, that she didna hae muckle opingin o' Leddy Carline as a saumon
+fisher, an' that she hersel' didna believe there was a fush in the run o'
+Spey that she cudna get the maistery ower. That was a gey big word, min'
+ye; it's langidge I wadna venture for tae make use o' mysel', forbye a
+south-countra dowager.
+
+"Weel, I didna say muckle; but, my faith, like the sailor's paurot, I
+thoucht a deevil o' a lot. The honour o' Spey was in my hauns, an' it
+behuvit me for tae hummle the pride o' her dowager leddyship. The morn's
+mornin' cam, an' by that time I had decided on my plan o' operautions. By
+guid luck I fand the dowager takin' her stroll afore brakfast i' the
+floor-gairden. I ups till her, maks my boo, an' says I, unco canny an'
+respectfu', 'My leddy, ye'll likely be for the watter the day?' She said
+she was, so says I, 'Weel, my leddy, I'll be prood for tae gae wi' ye
+mysel', an' I'll no fail tae reserve for ye as guid water as there is in
+the run o' Spey!' She was quite agreeable, an' so we sattlit it.
+
+"The Duke himsel' was oot on the lawn whan I was despatchin' the ither
+fushin' folk, ilk ane wi' his or her fisherman kerryin' the rod.
+'Geordie,' said his Grace, 'with whom will you be going yourself?' 'Wi'
+the Dowager Leddy Breadanham, yer Grace!' says I. 'And where do you think
+of taking her ladyship, Geordie?' speers he. 'N'odd, yer Grace,' says I,
+'I am sattlin in my min' for tae tak' the leddy tae the "Brig o'
+Fochabers" pool;' an' wi' that I gied a kin' o' a respectfu' half-wink.
+The Duke was no' the kin' o' man for tae wink back, for though he's aye
+grawcious, he's aye dignifeed; but there was a bit flichter o' humour
+roun' his mou' whan he said, says he, 'I think that will do very well,
+Geordie!'
+
+"Praesently me an' her leddyship startit for the 'Brig o' Fochabers' pool.
+She cud be vera affauble whan she likit, I'll say that muckle for the
+dowager; an' me an' her newsed quite couthie-like as we traivellt. I
+saftened tae her some, I frankly own; but than my hert hardent again whan
+I thoucht o' the duty I owed tae Spey an' tae Leddy Carline. Of coorse
+there was a chance that my scheme wad miscairry; but there's no a man on
+Spey frae Tulchan tae the Tug Net that kens the natur' o' saumon better
+nor mysel'. They're like sheep--fat ane daes, the tithers will dae; an'
+gin the dowager hookit a fush, I hadna muckle doobt fat that fush wad dae.
+The dowager didna keep me vera lang in suspense. I had only chyngt her fly
+ance, an' she had maist fushed doon the pool a secont time, whan in the
+ripple o' watter at the head o' the draw abune the rapid a fush took her
+'Riach' wi' a greedy sook, an' the line was rinnin' oot as gin there had
+been a racehorse at the far end o't, the saumon careerin' up the pool like
+a flash in the clear watter. The dowager was as fu' o' life as was the
+fush. Odd, but she kent brawly hoo tae deal wi' her saumon--that I will
+say for her! There was nae need for me tae bide closs by the side o' a
+leddy that had boastit there was na a fush in Spey she cudna maister, sae
+I clamb up the bank, sat doun on ma doup on a bit hillock, an' took the
+leeberty o' lichtin' ma pipe. Losh! but that dowager spanged up an' doun
+the waterside among the stanes aifter that game an' lively fush; an'
+troth, but she was as souple wi' her airms as wi' her legs; for, rinnin'
+an' loupin' an' spangin' as she was, she aye managed for tae keep her line
+ticht. It was a dooms het day, an' there wasna a ruffle o' breeze; sae nae
+doobt the fush was takin' as muckle oot o' her as she was takin' oot o'
+the fush. In aboot ten meenits there happent juist fat I had expectit. The
+fush made a sidelins shoot, an' dairted intil the vera crevice occupeed by
+Leddy Carline's fush the day afore. 'Noo for the fun!' thinks I, as I sat
+still an' smokit calmly. She was certently a perseverin' wummun, that
+dowager--there was nae device she didna try wi' that saumon tae force him
+oot o' the cleft. Aifter aboot ten meenits mair o' this wark, she shot at
+me ower her shouther the obsairve, 'Isn't it an obstinate wretch?' 'Aye,'
+says I pawkily, 'he's gey dour; but he's only a Spey fush, an' of coorse
+ye'll maister him afore ye've dune wi' him!' I'm thinkin' she unnerstude
+the insinivation, for she uttert deil anither word, but yokit tee again
+fell spitefu' tae rug an' yark at the sulkin' fush. At last, tae mak a
+lang story short, she was fairly dune. 'Geordie,' says she waikly, 'the
+beast has quite worn me out! I'm fit to melt--there is no strength left in
+me; here, come and take the rod!' Weel, I deleeberately raise, poocht ma
+pipe, an' gaed doun aside her. 'My leddy,' says I, quite solemn, an'
+luikin' her straucht i' the face--haudin' her wi' my ee, like--'I hae been
+tellt fat yer leddyship said yestreen, that there wasna a saumon in Spey
+ye cudna maister. Noo, I speer this at yer leddyship--respectfu' but
+direck; div ye admit yersel clean bestit--fairly lickit wi' that fush,
+Spey fush though it be? Answer me that, my leddy!' 'I do own myself
+beaten,' says she, 'and I retract my words.' 'Say nae mair, yer
+leddyship!' says I--for I'm no a cruel man--'say nae mair, but maybe ye'll
+hae the justice for tae say a word tae the same effeck in the Castle whaur
+ye spak yestreen?' 'I promise you I will,' said the dowager--'here, take
+the rod!' Weel, it was no sae muckle a fush as was Leddy Carline's. I had
+it oot in a few meenits, an' by that time the dowager was sae far revived
+that she was able to bring it in aboot tae the gaff; an' sae, in the
+hinner end, she in a sense maistert the fush aifter aa'. But I'm thinkin'
+she will be gey cautious in the futur' aboot belittlin' the smeddum o'
+Spey saumon!"
+
+
+
+
+THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
+
+
+The traveller up the country from Calcutta does not speedily reach places
+the names of which vividly recall the episodes of the great Mutiny. It is
+a chance if, as the train passes Dinapore, he remembers the defection of
+the Sepoy brigade stationed there which Koer Singh seduced from its
+allegiance. Arrah may possibly recall a dim memory of Wake's splendid
+defence of Boyle's bungalow and of Vincent Eyre's dashingly executed
+relief of the indomitable garrison. Benares is a little off the main line--
+Benares, on the parade ground of which Neill first put down that
+peremptory foot of his, where Olpherts was so quick with those guns of
+his, and where Jim Ellicott did his grim work with noose and cross-beam
+until long after the going down of the summer sun. But when the
+traveller's eye first rests on the gray ramparts of Akbar's hoary fortress
+in the angle where the Ganges and the Jumna meet and blend one with
+another, the reality of the Mutiny begins to impress itself upon him.
+Allahabad was the scene of a terrible tragedy; it was also the point of
+departure whence Havelock set forward on Cawnpore with his column, not
+indeed of rescue, but of retribution. The journey from Allahabad to
+Cawnpore, although perchance performed in the night, is not one to be
+slept through by any student of the story of the great rebellion. The
+Indian moon pours her flood of light on the little knoll hard by
+Futtehpore, where Havelock stood when Jwala Pershad's first round shot
+came lobbing, through his staff in among the camp kettles of the 64th.
+That village beyond the mango tope is Futtehpore itself, whence the rebel
+sowars swept headlong down the trunk road till Maude's guns gave them the
+word to halt. The pools are dry now through which, when Hamilton's voice
+had rung out the order--"Forward, at the double!" the light company of the
+Ross-shire Buffs splashed recklessly past the abandoned Sepoy guns, in
+their race with the grenadier company of the 64th that had for its goal
+the Pandy barricade outside the village. In that cluster of mud huts--its
+name is Aoong--the gallant Renaud fell with a shattered thigh, as he led
+his "Lambs" up to the _epaulement_ which covered its front. One fight a
+day is fair allowance anywhere, but those fellows whom Havelock led were
+gluttons for fighting. Spanning that deep rugged nullah there, down which
+the Pandoo flows turbulently in the rainy season, is the bridge across
+which in the afternoon of the morning of Aoong, Stephenson with his
+Fusiliers dashed into the Sepoy battery and bayoneted the gunners before
+they could make up their minds to run away. And it was in the gray morning
+following the day of that double battle (the 15th of July) that the
+General, having heard for the first time that there were still alive in
+Cawnpore a number of women and children who had escaped the massacre of
+the boats, told his men what he knew. "With God's help," shouted Havelock,
+with a break in his voice that was like a sob, as he stood with his hat
+off and his hand on his sword--"with God's help, men, we will save them,
+or every man die in the attempt!" One answer came back in a great cheer;
+but a sadder answer to the aspiration, a bitter truth that made that
+aspiration futile and hopeless, had lain ever since the evening of the day
+before in the Beebeegur, and almost as the chief was speaking the Well was
+receiving its dead inmates. Where the train begins to slacken its pace on
+approaching the station, it is passing over the field of the first--the
+creditable--battle of Cawnpore. Fresh from the butchery Nana Sahib
+(Dhoondoo Punth) himself had come out to aid in the last stand against the
+avengers. Yonder is the mango tope which formed the screen for Hamilton's
+turning movement. It needs little imagination to recall the scene. Close
+by, at the cross-roads, stands the Sepoy battery, and those horsemen still
+nearer are reconnoitring sowars. Beyond the road the Highlanders are
+deploying on the plain as they clear the sheltering flank of the mango
+trees, amidst a grim silence broken only by the crash of the bursting
+shells and the cries of the bullock-drivers as the guns rattle on to open
+fire from the reverse flank. The flush rises in Hamilton's face and the
+eyes of him begin to sparkle, as he shouts "Ross-shire Buffs, wheel into
+line!" and then "Forward!" Quick as lightning the trails of the Sepoy guns
+are swung round and shot and shell come crashing through the ranks, while
+the rebel infantry, with a swiftness which speaks well for their British
+drill, show a front against this inroad on their flank. In silent grim
+imperturbability the Highland line stalks steadily on with the long
+springy step to be learned only on the heather. Now they are within eighty
+yards of the muzzles of the guns, and they can see the colour of the
+mustaches of the men plying and supporting them. Then Hamilton, with his
+sword in the air and his face all ablaze with the fighting blood in him,
+turns round in the saddle, shouts "Charge!" and bids the pipers to strike
+up. Wild and shrill bursts over that Indian plain the rude notes of the
+Northern music. But louder yet, drowning them and the roll of the
+artillery, rings out that Highland war-cry that has so often presaged
+victory to British arms. The Ross-shire men are in and over the guns ere
+the gunners have time to drop their lint-stocks and ramming-rods; they
+fall with bayonets at the charge upon the supporting infantry, and the
+supporting infantry go down where they huddle together, lacking the
+opportunity to break and run away in time. But the battle rages all day,
+and the white soldiers, as they fight their way slowly forward, hear the
+bursts of military music that greet the Nana as he moves from place to
+place, _not_ in the immediate front. Barrow and his handful of cavalry
+volunteers crash into the thick of them with the informal order to his
+men, "Give point, lads; damn cuts and guards." Young Havelock, mounted by
+the side of the gallant and ill-fated Stirling trudging forward on foot,
+brings the 64th on at the double against the great 24-pounder on the
+Cawnpore road that is vomiting grape at point-blank range. The night falls
+and the battle ceases, but among the wearied fighting men there is none of
+the elation of victory; for through the ranks, after the going down of the
+sun, had throbbed the bruit, originating no one knew where, that the women
+and children in Cawnpore had been butchered on the afternoon of the day
+before, while Stephenson and his Fusiliers were carrying the bridge of the
+Pandoo Nuddee.
+
+The railway station of Cawnpore is distant more than a mile from the
+cantonment. Close to the road and not far from the station, the explorer
+easily finds the massive pile of the "Savada House," now allotted as
+residences for railway officials. English children play now in the
+corridors once thronged by the minions of the Nana, for here were his
+headquarters during part of the siege. Its verandas all day long were full
+of ministers, diviners, courtiers, and creatures. Here strolled the
+supple, panther-like Azimoolah, the self-asserted favourite of home
+society in the pre-Mutiny days. Teeka Sing, the Nana's war minister, had
+his "bureau" in a tent under the peepul tree there. In that other clump of
+trees, where an ayah is tickling a white baby into laughter, was the
+pavilion of the Nana himself, who inherited the Mahratta preference for
+canvas over bricks and mortar. And here, while the crackle of the musketry
+fire and the din of the big guns came softened on the ear by distance, sat
+the adopted son of the Peishwa while Jwala Pershad came for orders about
+the cavalry, and Bala Rao, his brother, explained his devices for
+harassing the sahibs, and Tantia Topee, Hoolass Sing, Azimoolah, and the
+Nana himself devised the scheme of the treachery. But the Savada House has
+even a more lurid interest than this. Hither the women and children whom
+an unkind fate had spared from dying with the men were brought back from
+the Ghaut of Slaughter. You may see the two rooms into which 125
+unfortunates were huddled after that march from before the presence of one
+death into the presence of another. As they plodded past the intrenchment
+so long held, and across the plain to the Nana's pavilion, "I saw," says a
+spectator, "that many of the ladies were wounded. Their clothes had blood
+upon them. Two were badly hurt and had their heads bound up with
+handkerchiefs; some were wet, covered with mud and blood, and some had
+their dresses torn; but all had clothes. I saw one or two children without
+clothes. There were no men in the party, but only some boys of twelve or
+thirteen. Some of the ladies were barefoot." Hither, too, were sent later
+the women of that detachment of the garrison which had got off from the
+ghaut in the boat defended by Vibart, Ashe, Delafosse, Bolton, Moore, and
+Thomson, and which had been captured at Nuzzufghur by Baboo Ram Bux. It
+had been for those people a turbulent departure from the Suttee Chowra
+Ghaut, but it was a yet more fearful returning. "They were brought back,"
+testified a spy; "sixty sahibs, twenty-five memsahibs, and four children.
+The Nana ordered the sahibs to be separated from the memsahibs, and shot
+by the 1st Bengal Native Infantry.... 'Then,' said one of the memsahibs,
+'I will not leave my husband. If he must die I will die with him.' So she
+ran and sat down behind her husband, clasping him round the waist.
+Directly she said this, the other memsahibs said, 'We also will die with
+our husbands,' and they all sat down each by her husband. Then their
+husbands said, 'Go back,' and they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered
+his soldiers, and they went in, pulling them forcibly away." ...
+
+The drive from the railway station to the European cantonments is pleasant
+and shaded. At a bend in the road there comes into view a broad, flat,
+treeless parade ground. This plain lies within a circle of foliage, above
+which, on the south-eastern side, rise the balconies and flat tops of a
+long range of barracks built in detached blocks, while around the rest of
+the circle the trees shade the bungalows of the cantonment. Near the
+centre of this level space there is an irregular enclosure defined by a
+shallow sunk wall and low quickset hedge, and in the middle of this
+enclosure rises the ornate and not wholly satisfactory structure known as
+the "Memorial Church." It is built on the site of the old dragoon
+hospital, which was the very focus of the agony of the siege. It is
+impossible to analyse the mingled emotions of amazement, pride, pity,
+wrath, and sorrow which fill the visitor to this shrine of British valour,
+endurance, and constancy. The heart swells and the eyes fill as one,
+standing here with all the arena of the heroism lying under one's eyes,
+recalls the episodes of the glorious, piteous story. The blood stirs when
+one remembers the buoyant valour of the gallant Moore, who, "wherever he
+passed, left men something more courageous and women something less
+unhappy," the reckless audacity of Ashe, the cool daring of Delafosse, the
+deadly rifle of Stirling, the heroic devotion of Jervis. And a great lump
+grows in the throat when one bethinks him of the beautiful constancy and
+fearful sufferings of the women; of British ladies going barefoot and
+giving up their stockings as cases for grape-shot; of Mrs. Moore's
+journeys across to No. 2 Barrack; of the hapless gentlewomen, "unshod,
+unkempt, ragged, and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with drought,
+and faint with hunger, sitting waiting to hear that they were widows." And
+what a place it was which the garrison had to defend! Not a foot of all
+the space bomb-proof, an apology for an intrenchment such as "an active
+cow might jump over." The imagination has to do much work here, for most
+of the landmarks are gone. The outline of the world-famous earthwork is
+almost wholly obliterated; only in places is it to be dimly recognised by
+brick-discoloured lines, and a low raised line on the smooth _maidan_. The
+enclosure now existing has no reference to the outlines of the
+intrenchment. That enclosure merely surrounds the graveyard, in the midst
+of which stands the "Memorial Church," a structure that cannot be
+commended from an architectural point of view. But the space enclosed
+around its gaunt red walls is pregnant with painful interest. We come
+first on a railed-in memorial tomb, bearing an inscription in raised
+letters, on a cross let into the tessellated pavement: "In three graves
+within this enclosure lie the remains of Major Edward Vibart, 2nd Bengal
+Cavalry, and about seventy officers and soldiers, who, after escaping from
+the massacre at Cawnpore on the 27th June 1857, were captured by the
+rebels at Sheorapore, and murdered on the 1st July." The inmates of these
+graves were originally buried elsewhere, and were removed hither when the
+enclosure was formed. In another part of the enclosure is a raised tomb,
+the slab of which bears the inscription: "This stone marks a spot which
+lay within Wheeler's intrenchment, and covers the remains and is sacred to
+the memory of those who were the first to meet their death when
+beleaguered by mutineers and rebels in June 1857." Two only lie in this
+grave, Mr. Murphy and a lady who died of fever. These two perished on the
+first day of the siege and had the exclusive privilege of being decently
+interred within the precincts of the intrenchment. After the first day of
+the siege there was scant leisure for funeral rites. To find the last
+resting-place of the remaining dead of this siege, we must quit the
+enclosure and walk across the _maidan_ to a spot among the trees by the
+roadside under the shadow of No. 4 Barrack. There was an empty well here
+when the siege begun; three weeks after, when the siege ended, this well
+contained the bodies of 250 British people. With daylight the battle raged
+around that sepulchre, but when the night came the slain of the day were
+borne thither with stealthy step and scant attendance. Now the well is
+filled up, and above it, inside a small ornamental enclosure formed by
+iron railings, there rises a monument which bears the following
+inscription: "In a well under this enclosure were laid by the hands of
+their fellows in suffering the bodies of men, women, and children, who
+died hard by during the heroic defence of Wheeler's intrenchment when
+beleaguered by the rebel Nana." Below the inscription is this apposite
+quotation from Psalm cxli. 7: "Our bones are scattered at the grave's
+mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. But mine eyes
+are unto Thee, O God the Lord." At the corners of the flower-plot are
+small crosses bearing individual names. One commemorates Sir George
+Parker, the cantonment magistrate; a second, Captain Jenkins; a third,
+Lieutenant Saunders and the men of the 84th Regiment; a fourth, Lieutenant
+Glanville and the men of the Madras Fusiliers; and here, too, lies
+stout-hearted yet tender-hearted John MacKillop of the Civil Service the
+hero of another well, that from which the team of buffaloes are now
+drawing water to make the mortar for the Memorial Church. Thence was
+procured the water for the garrison and it was a target also for the rebel
+artillery, so that the appearance of a man with a pitcher by day and by
+night the creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower of grape.
+But John MacKillop, "not being a fighting-man," made himself useful as he
+modestly put it, for a week as captain of the Well, till a grape-shot sent
+him to that other well thence never to return.
+
+The Memorial Church is in the form of a cross, and now that it has been
+finished is not destitute of beauty as regards its interior. Perhaps it is
+in place, but the noblest monument that could commemorate Cawnpore would
+have been the maintenance, for the wonder of the world unto all time, of
+the intrenchment and what it surrounded, as nearly as possible in the
+condition in which they were left on the evacuation of the garrison. The
+grandest monument in the world is the Residency of Lucknow, which remains
+and is kept up substantially in the condition in which it was left when
+Sir Colin Campbell brought out its garrison in November 1857; and the
+Cawnpore intrenchment would have been a still nobler memorial as the
+abiding testimony to a defence even more wonderful, although unfortunately
+unsuccessful, than that of Lucknow. But the Memorial Church of Cawnpore
+will always be interesting by reason of its site and of the memorial
+tablets on the walls of its interior. In the left transept is a tablet "To
+the memory of the Engineers of the East Indian Railway, who died and were
+killed in the great insurrection of 1857; erected in affectionate
+remembrance by their brother Engineers in the North-West Provinces." On
+the left side of the nave are several tablets. One is to the memory of
+poor young John Nicklen Martin, killed in the battle at Suttee Chowra
+Ghaut. Another commemorates three officers, two sergeants, two corporals,
+a drummer, and twenty privates of the 34th Regiment, killed at the
+(second) Battle of Cawnpore on the 28th November 1857; the day on which
+the Gwalior Contingent, seduced into rebellion by Tantia Topee, made
+itself so unpleasant to General Windham, the "Cawnpore Runners," and other
+regiments of that officer's command. A third tablet is "To the memory of
+A.G. Chalwin, 2nd Light Cavalry, and his wife Louisa, who both perished
+during the siege of Cawnpore in July 1857. These are they which came out
+of great tribulation." A fourth commemorates Captain Gordon and Lieutenant
+Hensley, of the 82nd Foot, also victims of the Gwalior Contingent. In the
+right of the nave there is a tablet "Sacred to the memory of Philip Hayes
+Jackson, who, with Jane, his wife, and her brother Ralf Blyth Croker, were
+massacred by rebels at Cawnpore on 27th June." Another is to Lieutenant
+Angelo, of the 16th Grenadiers Bengal Native Infantry, who also fell in
+the boat massacre; and a third is to the memory of the gallant Stuart
+Beatson, who was Havelock's adjutant-general, and who, dying as he was of
+cholera, did his work at Pandoo Nuddee and Cawnpore in a _dhoolie_. In the
+right transept are tablets in memory of the officers of the Connaught
+Rangers, and of the officers and men of the 32nd Cornwall Regiment "who
+fell in defence of Lucknow and Cawnpore and subsequent campaign"--fourteen
+officers and 448 "women and men." And here, too, is perhaps the most
+affecting memorial of any--a tablet "In memory of Mrs. Moore, Mrs.
+Wainwright, Miss Wainwright, Mrs. Hill, forty-three soldiers' wives and
+fifty-five children, murdered in Cawnpore in 1857."
+
+It is easy enough now to follow the footsteps of Mrs. Moore, dangerous as
+was that journey of hers, from the intrenchment to the corner of No. 2
+Barrack, which she was wont to make when her husband went on duty there to
+strengthen the hands of Mowbray Thomson. There is no trace now and the
+very memory of its whereabouts is lost, of the bamboo hut in a sheltered
+corner which the garrison of this exposed post built for the brave
+gentlewoman. But No. 2 Barrack, except that it is finished and tenanted,
+stands now very much as it did when Glanville first, and when he fell then
+Mowbray Thomson, defended with a success which seems so wonderful when we
+look at the place defended and its situation. The garrison was not always
+the same. "My sixteen men," writes Thomson, "consisted in the first
+instance of Ensign Henderson of the 56th Native Infantry, five or six of
+the Madras Fusiliers, two plate-layers, and some men of the 84th. The
+first instalment was soon disabled. The Madras Fusiliers were all shot at
+their posts. Several of the 84th also fell, but in consequence of the
+importance of the position, as soon as a loss in my little corps was
+reported, Captain Moore sent us over a reinforcement from the
+intrenchment. Sometimes a soldier, sometimes a civilian, came. The orders
+given us were not to surrender with our lives, and we did our best to obey
+them." And in a line with No. 2 Barrack is No. 4 Barrack, held with equal
+stanchness by a party of Civil Engineers who had been employed on the East
+Indian Railroad, and who had for their commander Captain Jenkins. Seven of
+the engineers perished in defence of this post.
+
+There is nothing more to see on the _maidan_, and one feels his anger
+rising at the obliteration of everything that might help towards the
+localisation of associations. Let us leave the scene of the defence and
+follow the track of the defenders as they marched down to the scene of the
+great treachery. The distance from the intrenchment to the ghaut is barely
+a mile. Think of that stirrup-cup--that _doch an dhorras_--of cold water,
+in which the hapless band pledged one another. The noble Moore cheerily
+leads the way down the slope to the bridge with the white rails with an
+advance guard of a handful of his 32nd men. The palanquins with the women,
+the children, and the wounded follow, the latter bandaged up with strips
+of women's gowns and petticoats, and fragments of shirt-sleeves. And then
+come the fighting-men--a gallant, ragged, indomitable band. A martinet
+colonel would stand aghast--for save a regimental button here and there,
+he would find it hard to recognise the gaunt, hairy, sun-scorched squad
+for British soldiers. But let who might incline to disown these few
+war-worn men in their dirty flannel rags and fragmentary nankeen breeches,
+their foes know them for what they are, and make way for the white sahibs
+with no dressing indeed in their ranks, but each man with his rifle on his
+shoulder, the deadly revolver in his belt, and the fearless glance in the
+hollow eye. The wooden bridge with the white rails spans at right angles a
+rough irregular glen which widens out as it approaches the river, some
+three hundred yards distant from the bridge. It is a mere footpath that
+leaves the road on the hither side of the bridge, and skirting the dry bed
+of the nullah touches the river close to the old temple. By this footpath
+it was that our countrymen and countrywomen passed down to the cruel
+ambush which had been laid for them in the mouth of the glen. There are
+few to whom the details of that fell scene are not familiar. What a
+contrast between the turmoil and devilry of it and the serene calmness of
+the all but solitude the ghaut now presents! On the knolls of the farther
+side snug bungalows nestle among the trees, under the veranda of one of
+which a lady is playing with her children. The village of Suttee Chowra on
+the bluff on the left of the ghaut, where Tantia Topee's sepoys were
+concealed, no longer exists; a pretty bungalow and its compound occupy its
+site. The little temple on the water's edge by the ghaut is slowly
+mouldering into decay; on the plaster of the coping of its river wall you
+may still see the marks of the treacherous bullets. The stair which, built
+against its wall, led down to the water's edge, has disappeared. Tantia
+Topee's dispositions for the perpetration of the treachery could not now
+succeed, for the Ganges has changed its course and there is deep water
+close in shore at the ghaut. In the stream nearest to the Oude side the
+river has cast up a long narrow dearah island, in the fertile mud of which
+melons are cultivated where once whistled the shot from the guns on the
+Oude side of the river. A Brahmin priest is placidly sunning himself on
+the river platform of the temple over the dome of which hangs the foliage
+of a peepul tree. A dhobie is washing the shirts of a sahib in the stream
+that once was dyed with the blood of the sahibs. There is no monument
+here, no superfluous reminder of the terrible tragedy. The man is not to
+be envied whose eyes are dry, and whose heart beats its normal pulsations,
+while he stands here alone on this spot so densely peopled by associations
+at once so tragic and so glorious.
+
+The scene of the final massacre lies some distance higher up the river. As
+we cross the Ganges canal, the native city lying on our left, there rises
+up before us the rich mass of foliage that forms the outer screen of the
+beautiful Memorial Gardens. The hue of the greenery would be sombre but
+for the blossoms which relieve it, emblem of the divine hope which
+mitigated the gloom of despair for our countrywomen who perished so
+cruelly in this balefully historic spot. Of the Beebeeghur, the term by
+which among the natives is known the bungalow where the massacre was
+perpetrated, not one stone now remains on another but neither its memory
+nor its name will be lost for all time. Natives are strolling in the shady
+flower-bordered walks of the Memorial Gardens, the prohibition which long
+debarred their entrance having been wisely removed. In the centre of the
+garden rises, fringed with cypresses, a low mound, the summit of which is
+crowned by a circular screen, or border, of light and beautiful open-work
+architecture. The circular space enclosed is sunken, and from the centre
+of this sunken space there rises a pedestal on which stands the marble
+presentment of an angel. There is no need to explain what episode in the
+tragic story this monument commemorates; the inscription round the capital
+of the pedestal tells its tale succinctly indeed, but the words burn.
+"Sacred," it runs, "to the perpetual memory of the great company of
+Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were
+cruelly massacred by the followers of the rebel, Nana Doondoo Punth of
+Blithoor; and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the
+15th day of July 1857." A few paces to the north-west of the monument is
+the spot where stood the bungalow in which the massacre was done; and now,
+where the sight they saw maddened our countrymen long ago to a frenzy of
+revenge, there bloom roses and violets. And a step farther on, in a
+thicket of arbor vitae trees and cypresses, is the Memorial Churchyard,
+with its many nameless mounds, for here were buried not a few who died
+during the long occupation of Cawnpore, and in the combats around it. Here
+there is a monument to Thornhill, the Judge of Futtehghur, Mary his wife,
+and their two children, who perished in the massacre. Thornhill was one of
+the males brought out from the bungalow and shot earlier in the afternoon
+than when the women's time came. Another monument bears this inscription:
+"Sacred to the memory of the women and children of the 32nd, this monument
+is raised by twenty men of the same regiment, who were passing through
+Cawnpore, 21st Nov. 1857." And among the tombstones are those of gallant
+Douglas Campbell of the 78th, Woodford of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade,
+and Young of the 4th Bengal Native Infantry.
+
+
+
+
+BISMARCK
+
+BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
+
+
+The ex-Chancellor of the German Empire owed nothing of his unique career
+to adventitious advantages. Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who for more
+than a generation was the most prominent and most powerful personality of
+Europe, was essentially a self-made man. He was a younger son of a cadet
+family of a knightly and ancient but somewhat decayed house, ranking among
+the lesser nobility of the Alt Mark of Brandenburg. The square solid
+mansion in which he was born, embowered among its trees in the region
+between the Elbe and the Havel, might be taken by an Englishman for the
+country residence of a Norfolk or Somersetshire squire of moderate
+fortune. But memories cling around the massive old family place of
+Schoenhausen, such as can belong to no English residence of equal date. In
+the library door of the Brandenburg mansion are seen to this day three
+deep fissures made by the bayonet points of French soldiers fresh from the
+battlefield of Jena, who in their brutal lawlessness pursued the young and
+beautiful chatelaine of the house and strove to crush in the door which
+the fugitive had locked behind her. The lady thus terrified and outraged
+was the mother of Bismarck; and the story told him in boyhood of his loved
+mother's narrow escape from worse than death, and of his father's having
+to conceal her in the depth of the adjoining forest, may well have
+inspired their son with the ill-feeling against the French nation which he
+never cared to disguise.
+
+The Bismarcks had been fighting men from time immemorial, and the
+combatant nature of the great scion of their race displayed itself in
+frequent duels during his university career at Goettingen. In the series of
+some eight-and-twenty duels in which he engaged during his first three
+terms, he was wounded but twice--once in the leg and again on the cheek,
+the mark of which latter wound he bears to this day. At one time he seems
+to have all but decided to embrace the military career but for family
+reasons he became a country gentleman, and if Europe had remained
+undisturbed by revolution he might have lived and died a bucolic squire,
+"Dyke Captain" of his district, with a seat in the Provincial Diet, a
+liking for history and philosophy, a propensity to rowdyism and drinking
+bouts of champagne and porter, and a character which defined itself in his
+local appellation of "Mad Bismarck." _Dis aliter visum_. The Revolution of
+1848 swept over Europe and Bismarck rallied to the support of his
+sovereign. When in 1851 the young Landwehr lieutenant was sent to
+Frankfort by that sovereign as the representative of Prussia in the German
+Diet, he carried with him a reputation for unflinching devotion to the
+Crown, for a conservatism which had been styled not only "mediaeval" but
+"antediluvian," and for startling originality in his views as well as
+fearlessness in expressing them. The latter attribute he displayed when,
+in reply to a remark of a French diplomat on a question of policy, "_Cette
+politique va vous conduire a Jena_," Bismarck significantly retorted,
+"_Pourquoi pas a Leipsic ou a Waterloo?_" During his tenure of office at
+Frankfort his conviction steadfastly strengthened that Prussia could
+become a great nation only by shaking herself free from the Austrian
+supremacy in Germany. "It is my conviction," he placed on record in a
+despatch soon after the Crimean War, "that at no distant time we shall
+have to fight with Austria for our very existence;" and he was yet more
+emphatic when he wrote just before leaving Frankfort to take up his new
+position as German Ambassador to Russia in the beginning of 1859: "I
+recognise in our relations with the Bund a certain weakness affecting
+Prussia, which, sooner or later, we shall have to cure _ferro et igni_"--
+with fire and sword--words which embodied the first distinct enunciation
+of that policy of "blood and iron" which was destined ultimately to bring
+about the unification of Germany. His disgust was so strong that Prussia
+did not assert herself against Austria in 1858 when the latter's hands
+were full in Italy, that his continued presence at Frankfort was
+considered unadvisable. He remained "in ice"--to use his own expression--
+at St. Petersburg until early in 1862; and in September of that year,
+after a few months of service as Prussian Ambassador at Paris, he was
+appointed by King Wilhelm to the high and onerous post of
+Minister-President with the portfolio of Foreign Secretary. It was then
+that his great career as a European statesman really began.
+
+The impression is all but universal that King Wilhelm throughout the
+eventful years which followed was but the figure-head of the ship at the
+helm of which stood Bismarck, strong, shrewd, subtle, cynical, and
+unscrupulous. This conception I believe to be utterly wrong. I hold
+Wilhelm to have been the virtual maker of the united Germany and the
+creator of the German Empire; and that the accomplishment of both those
+objects, the former leading up to the latter, was already quietly in his
+mind long before he mounted the throne. I consider him to have possessed
+the shrewdest insight into character. I believe him to have been quite
+unscrupulous, when once he had brought himself to cross the threshold of a
+line of action. I discern in him this curious, although not very rare,
+phase of character, that although resolutely bent on a purpose he was apt
+to be irresolute and even reluctant in bringing himself to consent to
+measures whereby that purpose was to be accomplished. He was that apparent
+contradiction in terms, a bold hesitator; he habitually needed, and knew
+that he needed, to have his hand apparently forced for the achievement of
+the end he was most bent upon. He knew full well that his aspirations
+could be fulfilled only at the bayonet point; and recognising the defects
+of the army, he had while still Regent set himself energetically to the
+task of making Prussia the greatest military power of Europe. He it was
+who had put into the hands of Prussian soldiers the weapon that won
+Koeniggraetz. With his clear eye for the right man he had found Moltke and
+placed the premier strategist of his day at the head of the General Staff.
+Roon he picked out as if by intuition from comparative obscurity, and
+assigned to him the work of preparing and carrying out that scheme of army
+reform which all continental Europe has copied.
+
+And then, constant in the furtherance of his purposes, Wilhelm
+deliberately invented Bismarck. He had steadfastly taken note of the man
+whom he chose to be his minister from the big Landwehr lieutenant's first
+commission to the Frankfort Diet in 1851; probably, indeed, earlier, when
+Bismarck was a rare but forcible speaker in Frederick Wilhelm's
+"quasi-Parliament." In Bismarck Wilhelm saw precisely the man he wanted--
+the complement of himself; arbitrary as he was, unscrupulous as he was,
+but bolder and at the same time more wise. Knowing where he himself was
+lacking, he recognised the man who, when he himself should have the
+impulse to balk and hesitate, was of that hardier nature--"grit" the
+Americans call it--to take him hard by the head and force him over the
+fence which all the while he had been longing to be on the other side of.
+To a monarch of this character Bismarck was simply the ideal guide and
+support--the man to urge him on when hesitating, to restrain him when
+over-ardent. Wilhelm had all along thoroughly realised that war with
+Austria was among the inevitables between him and the accomplishment of
+his aims, and had accepted it as such when it was yet afar off; but when
+confronted full with it his nerve failed him, and Bismarck--engaged among
+other things for just such an emergency--had to act as the spur to prick
+the side of his master's intent. The spur having done its work Wilhelm was
+himself again; he really enjoyed Koeniggraetz and would fain have dictated
+peace to Austria from the Hofburg of Vienna. In his zeal for promoting
+German unity at Prussia's bayonet point he lost his head a little, and on
+Bismarck devolved, in his own words, "the ungrateful duty of diluting the
+wine of victory with the water of moderation." One of the beads on the
+surface of the former fluid was certainly thus early the Imperial idea;
+but the time for its fulfilment Bismarck wisely judged not yet ripe. As it
+approached four years later, the diary of the Crown Prince depicts with
+unconscious humour the amusing progress of the "weakening" of Wilhelm's
+opposition to the Kaisership; it weakened in good time quite out of the
+sort of existence it had ever had, and Wilhelm was ready for the
+Kaisership before the Kaisership was ready for him.
+
+Bismarck as Premier began as he meant to go on, with uncompromising
+masterfulness. The Chamber and the nation might probably have fallen in
+willingly with Wilhelm's scheme for the reorganisation and reinforcement
+of the army, had it been possible to divulge the intent in furtherance of
+which the increased armament was being created. But since neither monarch
+nor minister could even hint at the objects in view, the nation was set
+against that increased armament for which it could discern no apparent
+use. So the Chamber, session after session, went through the accustomed
+formula of rejecting the military reorganisation bill as well as the
+military expenditure estimates. "No surrender" was the steadfast motto of
+Bismarck and his royal master. The constitution, such as it was, in effect
+was suspended. The Upper House voted everything it was asked to vote;
+loans were duly effected, the revenues were collected and the military
+disbursements were made, right in the teeth of the popular will and the
+veto of the representatives of the nation. Bismarck became the best-hated
+man in Prussia. He was compared to Catiline and Strafford; he was
+threatened with impeachment; the House and the nation clamoured to the
+King for his dismissal and for the sovereign's return to the path of
+constitutional government.
+
+But the long "conflict-time" was drawing near its close, and the triumph
+of the monarch and his minister over the constitution was approaching. The
+policy of doing political evil that national advantage might come was, for
+once at least, to stand vindicated. War with Austria as the outcome of
+Bismarck's astute if unscrupulous statecraft was imminent when the hostile
+parliament was dissolved; and a general election took place amidst the
+fervid outburst of enthusiasm which the earlier victories of the Prussian
+arms in the "Seven Weeks' War" stirred throughout the nation. The prospect
+of war had been unpopular in the extreme, but the tidings of the first
+success kindled the flame of patriotism. Bismarck lost for ever the title
+of the "best-hated man in Prussia" in the loud volume of the enthusiastic
+greetings of the populace, and on the day of Muenchengraetz and Skalitz
+Prussia now rejoiced to put her stubborn neck under the great minister's
+foot.
+
+The mingled truculence and tortuousness of the diplomacy by which Bismarck
+sapped up to the short but decisive war, the issue of which gave to
+Prussia the virtual headship of Germany and contributed so greatly toward
+the unification of the Fatherland, constitute a striking illustration of
+his methods in statecraft. He was fairly entitled to say, "_Ego qui
+feci_." He had achieved his aim in defiance of the nation. The Court threw
+its weight into the scale against the war; to the Crown Prince the strife
+with Austria was notoriously repugnant. The King himself, as the crisis
+approached, evinced marked hesitation. How triumphantly the event
+vindicated the policy of the great Premier, is a matter of history. He has
+frankly owned that if the decisive battle should have resulted in a
+Prussian defeat, he had resolved not to survive the shipwreck of his hopes
+and schemes. And there was a period in the course of the colossal struggle
+of Koeniggraetz, when to many men it seemed that the wielders of the
+needle-gun were having the worst of the battle. An awful hour for
+Bismarck, conscious of the load of responsibility which he carried. With
+great effort he could indeed maintain a calm visage, but his heart was
+beating and every pulse of him throbbing. In his torture of suspense he
+caught at straws. Moltke asked him for a cigar. As Bismarck handed him his
+cigar case he snatched a shred of comfort from the inference that if
+matters were very bad Moltke could hardly care to smoke. But Moltke was
+not only in a frame for tobacco but Bismarck watched with what deliberate
+coolness the great strategist inspected and smelt at cigar after cigar
+before making his final selection; and he dared to infer that the man who
+best understood the situation was in no perturbation as to the ultimate
+outcome. The opportune arrival of the Crown Prince's army on the Austrian
+right flank decided the business, and that arrival Bismarck was the first
+to discern. Lines were dimly visible on the hither slope of the Chlum
+heights; but they were pronounced to be ploughed ridges. Bismarck closed
+his field-glasses with a snap and exclaimed, "No, these are not plough
+furrows; the spaces are not equal; they are marching lines!" And he was
+right.
+
+Eighteen days after the victory of Koeniggraetz the Prussian hosts were in
+line on the historic Marchfeld whence the spires of Vienna could be dimly
+seen through the heat-haze. The soldiers were eager for the storm of the
+famous lines of Florisdorf and King Wilhelm was keen to enter the Austrian
+capital. But now the practical wisdom of Bismarck stepped in and his
+arguments for moderation prevailed. The peace which ended the Seven Weeks'
+War revolutionised the face of Germany. Austria accepted her utter exile
+from Germany, recognised the dissolution of the old Bund, and consented to
+non-participation in the new North German Confederation of which Prussia
+was to have the unquestioned military and diplomatic leadership. Prussia
+annexed Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Nassau, Sleswig and Holstein,
+Frankfort-on-Main, and portions of Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria. Her
+territorial acquisitions amounted to over 6500 square miles with a
+population exceeding 4,000,000, and the states with which she had been in
+conflict paid as war indemnity sums reaching nearly to L10,000,000
+sterling. In a material sense, it had not been a bad seven weeks for
+Prussia; in a sense other than material, she had profited incalculably
+more. She was now, in fact as in name, one of the "Great Powers" of
+Europe. The nation realised at length what manner of man this Bismarck was
+and what it owed to him. When the inner history of the period comes to be
+written, it will be recognised that at no time of his extraordinary career
+did Bismarck prove himself a greater statesman than during the five days
+of armistice in July 1866, when he fought his diplomatic Koeniggraetz in the
+Castle of Nikolsburg and assuaged the wounds of the Austrian defeat by
+terms the moderation of which went far to obliterate the memory of the
+rancour of the recent strife.
+
+He had been wily enough to secure by vague non-committal half-promises the
+neutrality of France during the weeks while Prussia was crushing the armed
+strength of Austria in Bohemia. But the issue of Koeniggraetz startled
+Napoleon and set France in ferment. Bismarck dared to refuse point-blank
+the demand which the French Emperor made for the fortress of Mayence, made
+though that demand was under threat of war. The Prussian commanders would
+have liked nothing better than a war with France, and Roon indeed had
+warned for mobilisation 350,000 soldiers to swell the ranks of the forces
+already in the field; but Bismarck was wise and could wait. He allowed
+Napoleon to exercise some influence in the negotiations in the character
+of a mediator; and to French intervention was owing the stipulation that
+the South German States should be at liberty to form themselves into a
+South German Confederation of which Napoleon hoped to be the patron. But
+Bismarck was a better diplomatist than Napoleon. While he formed and knit
+together the North German Confederation in which Prussia was dominant, he
+quietly negotiated an alliance offensive and defensive with each of the
+Southern States separately. No Southern bund was ever formed, and when the
+Franco-German War broke out in 1870 Napoleon saw the shipwreck of his
+abortive devices in the spectacle of the troops of Bavaria and Wuertemberg
+marching on the Rhine in line with the battalions of Prussia.
+
+The unity of Germany was not yet; that consummation and the Kaisership--
+the two greatest triumphs of Bismarck's life--required another and a
+greater war to bring about their accomplishment. During the interval
+between 1866 and 1870, while the armed strength of Northern Germany was
+being quietly but sedulously perfected, Bismarck with dexterous caution
+was smoothing the rough path toward the ultimate unification. He would not
+have his hand forced by the enthusiasts for "the consummation of the
+national destiny." "No horseman can afford to be always at a gallop" was
+the figure with which he met the clamourers of the Customs Parliament. He
+invoked the terms of the treaty of Prague against the spokesmen of the
+Pan-German party inveighing vehemently against the policy of delay. He was
+staunch in his conviction that the South for its own safety's sake would
+come into the union the moment that the North should engage in war. He was
+a few weeks out in his reckoning; the Southern States waited until Sedan
+had been fought, when the prospect of the spoils of victory was assured;
+and this measured delay on their part was the best justification of
+Bismarck's sagacious deliberateness. The negotiations were tedious, but at
+length, on the evening of 23rd November 1870 the Convention with Bavaria
+was signed, and the unity of Germany was an accomplished fact. Busch
+vividly depicts the great moment:--
+
+The Chief came in from the salon, and sat down at the table. "Now," he
+exclaimed excitedly, "the Bavarian business is settled and everything is
+signed. _We have got our German Unity and our German Emperor_." There was
+silence for a moment. "Bring a bottle of champagne," said the Chief to a
+servant, "it is a great occasion." After musing a little, he remarked,
+"The Convention has its defects, but it is all the stronger on account of
+them. I count it the most important thing that we have accomplished during
+recent years."
+
+Notwithstanding that there was still before Bismarck a period of twenty
+years of virtual omnipotence, it was in the memorable years of 1870 and
+1871 that the apostle of blood and iron attained the zenith of his
+extraordinary career. Germany was his wash-pot; over France had he cast
+his shoe. The years of _Sturm und Drang_ were behind him, during which he
+had wrought out the military supremacy of Prussia in spite of herself; and
+in 1870 he had no misgivings as to the ultimate result. So confident
+indeed was he that before he crossed the French frontier on the second day
+after the twin victories of Woerth and Spicheren, he had already resolved
+on annexing to the Fatherland the old German province of Alsace which had
+been part of France for a couple of centuries. Bismarck was at his best in
+1870 in certain attributes; in others he was at his worst, and a bitter
+bad worst that worst was. He was at his best in clear swift insight, in
+firm masterful grasp of every phase of every situation, in an instinctive
+prescience of events, in lucid dominance over German and European policy.
+If patriotism consists in earnest efforts to advantage and aggrandise
+one's native land _per fas aut nefas_, than Bismarck during the
+Franco-German War there never was a grander patriot. His hands were clean,
+he wanted nothing for himself except, curiously enough, the only thing
+that his old master was strong enough to deny him, the rank of Field
+Marshal when that military distinction was conferred on Moltke. He was at
+his worst in many respects. He had, or affected, a truculence which was
+simply brutal, its savagery intensified rather than mitigated by a bluff,
+boisterous bonhomie. Jules Favre complained to him that the German cannon
+in front of Paris fired upon the sick and blind in the Blind Institute,
+Bismarck in those days of swaggering prosperity had a fine turn of
+badinage. "I don't know what you find so hard in that," he retorted, "you
+do far worse; you shoot at our soldiers who are hale and useful fighting
+men." It is to be hoped that Favre had a sense of humour; he needed it all
+to relish the grim pleasantry.
+
+I do not suppose, if he had had a free hand, that Bismarck would have
+exhibited the courage of his opinions; but if his sentiments as expressed
+count for anything he would fain have seen the methods of warfare in the
+Dark Ages reverted to. "Prisoners! more prisoners!" he once exclaimed at
+Versailles, after one of Prince Frederick Charles's victories in the Loire
+country--"What the devil do we want with prisoners? Why don't they make a
+battue of them?" His motto, especially as regarded Francs-tireurs, was "No
+quarter," forgetful of the swarms of free companions and volunteer bands
+whose gallant services in Prussia's War of Liberation are commemorated to
+this day in song and story. It was told him that among the French
+prisoners taken at Le Bourget were a number of Francs-tireurs--by the way,
+they were the volunteers _de la Presse_ and wore a uniform. "That they
+should ever take Francs-tireurs prisoners!" roared Bismarck in disgust.
+"They ought to have shot them down by files!" Again, when it was reported
+that Garibaldi with his 13,000 "free companions" had been taken prisoners,
+the Chancellor exclaimed, "Thirteen thousand Francs-tireurs, who are not
+even Frenchmen, made prisoners! Why on earth were they not shot?" And when
+he heard that Voights Rhetz having experienced some resistance from the
+inhabitants of the open town of Tours, had shelled it into submission,
+Bismarck waxed wrath because the General had ceased firing when the white
+flag went up. "I would have gone on," said he, "throwing shells into the
+town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in
+spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a
+gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious
+bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the
+war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified attitude
+and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be
+said of him, however, that he was a man of cool and undaunted courage. I
+have seen him perfectly impassive under heavy fire. In Bar-le-Duc, in
+Rheims, and over and over again in Versailles, I have met him walking
+alone and unarmed through streets thronged with French people who
+recognised him by the pictures of him, and who glared and spat and hissed
+in a cowed, furtive, malign fashion that was ugly to see.
+
+I vividly remember the first occasion on which I saw Bismarck. It was on
+the little tree-shaded _Place_ of St. Johann, the suburb of Saarbruecken,
+in the early evening of the 8th August, the next day but one after the
+battle of the Spicheren. Saarbruecken was full to the door-sills with the
+wounded of the battle and stretcher-parties were continually tramping to
+the "warriors' trench" in the cemetery, carrying to their graves soldiers
+who had died of their wounds. The Royal Headquarters had arrived a couple
+of hours earlier, and I was staring with all my eyes at a fresh-faced,
+white-haired old gentleman who was sitting in one of the windows of
+Guepratt's Hotel and whom I knew from the pictures to be King Wilhelm. Two
+officers in general's undress uniform were walking up and down under the
+pollarded lime-trees, talking as they walked. Presently from out a house
+opposite the hotel there emerged a very tall burly man of singularly
+upright carriage and with a certain air of swashbucklerism in his gait. A
+long cavalry sabre trailed and clanked on the rough pavement as he
+advanced to join the two sauntering officers under the trees. He wore the
+long blue double-breasted frockcoat with yellow cuffs and facings and
+white cap which I knew to be the undress uniform of the Bismarck
+Cuirassiers, but he was only partially in undress since the long
+cuirassier thigh-boots in which he strode were conventionally full
+uniform. The wearer of this costume was Bismarck; nor did I ever see him
+otherwise attired except on four occasions--at the Chateau Bellevue on the
+morning after Sedan, in the Galerie des Glaces in the Chateau of
+Versailles on 18th January, in the Place de la Concorde of capitulated
+Paris, and in the triumphal entry into Berlin; when he appeared in full
+uniform. Saluting His Majesty and then the two officers whom I recognised
+as Moltke and Roon, he joined the pedestrian couple, taking post between
+them and joining in their promenade and conversation. We heard his voice
+and laugh above the rumble of the waggon wheels on the causeway; the other
+two spoke little--Moltke, as he moved with bent head and hands clasped
+behind his back, scarcely anything.
+
+One would have imagined that those three men, the chief makers of that
+empire which was soon to come to the grand but not brilliant old gentleman
+in the window-seat, were on the most intimate and cordial terms. In
+reality they were jealous of each other with an inconceivable intensity.
+Bismarck had umbrage with Moltke because the great strategist withheld
+from the great statesman the military information which the latter held he
+ought to share. Moltke has roundly disclosed in his posthumous book his
+conviction that Roon's place as Minister of War was at home in Germany,
+not on campaign, embarrassing the former's functions. Roon envied Moltke
+because of the latter's more elevated military position, and disliked
+Bismarck because that outspoken man made light of Roon's capacity. I have
+known the headquarter staff of a British army whose members were on bad
+terms one with the other, and the result, to put it mildly, was
+unsatisfactory. But those three high functionaries, each with bitterness
+in his heart against his fellows, nevertheless co-operated earnestly and
+loyally in the service of their sovereign and for the advantage of their
+country. Their common patriotism had the mastery in them of their mutual
+hatred and jealousy. Ardt's line: _"Sein Vaterland muss groesser sein!"_
+was the watchword and inspiration of all three, and dominated their
+discordancies.
+
+On the 17th August, the day of comparative quietude intervening between
+the day of Mars-la-Tour and the day of Gravelotte I was wandering about
+among the hamlets and farmsteads to the southward of Mars-la-Tour, waiting
+the arrival in their appointed bivouacs about Puxieux of my early friends
+of the Saxon Army Corps. Since in the battle of the previous day some
+32,000 men had fallen killed or wounded within a comparatively small area,
+it may be imagined--or rather, without having seen the horror of carnage
+it cannot be imagined--how shambles-like was the aspect of this Aceldama.
+Scrambling up through the Bois la Dame with intent to obtain a wider view
+from the plateau above it, I found in a farmyard in the hamlet of
+Mariaville a number of wounded men under the care of a single and rather
+helpless surgeon. The water supply was very short and I volunteered to
+carry some bucketsful from the stream below. The surgeon told me that
+among his patients was Count Herbert Bismarck, the Chancellor's eldest
+son, who--as was also his younger brother Count "Bill"--was a volunteer
+private in the 2nd Guard Dragoons, and who had been shot in the thigh in
+the desperate charge made by that fine regiment to extricate from
+annihilation the Westphalian regiments which had suffered so severely near
+Bruville. A little later I saw Bismarck who had left the King on the
+Flavigny height, and who was riding about, as I assumed, in quest of his
+wounded son's whereabouts. I ventured to inform him on this point and he
+thanked me with some emotion. He was greatly moved at the meeting with his
+son but their interview was short; then he addressed himself to reproving
+the surgeon for not having had the Mariaville poultry killed for the use
+of the wounded, and presently rode away to order up a supply of water in
+barrels. I remember thinking him an exceedingly practical man.
+
+The English Warwick was styled the "King-maker"; but it was for the
+Prussian Bismarck to be Emperor-breaker and Emperor-maker within the same
+six months. The most wretched morning of Napoleon's life was that
+following the fatal day of Sedan, spent in and before the weaver's cottage
+on the Donchery road with Bismarck by his side, telling him in stern if
+courteous terms that as a prisoner of war his power to exercise the
+Imperial functions had fallen from him. It has been said that "the egg
+from which was hatched the German Empire was laid on the battlefield of
+Sedan." But, not to speak of the offer of the Imperial Crown to King
+Frederick Wilhelm by the Frankfort Parliament in 1848, Bismarck more than
+a year before the Austro-Prussian war had spoken to Lord Augustus Loftus,
+then British Ambassador to Prussia, of his ultimate intention that the
+King of Prussia should become the Emperor of an united Germany. The
+_Kaiserthum_ permeated the air of Northern Germany throughout the years
+from 1866 to 1870. But Bismarck had the true statesman's sense of the
+proper sequence of things. He would move no step toward the Kaisership
+until German unity was in near and clear sight. Then, and not till then,
+in spite of the Crown Prince's ardour, was the Imperial project brought
+forward, discussed, and finally carried through by Bismarck's tact and
+diplomacy.
+
+On the 18th January 1871, the anniversary of the coronation of the first
+king of his house, Wilhelm was proclaimed German Emperor in the Galerie
+des Glaces of the Chateau of Versailles. Behind the grand old monarch on
+the dais were ranged the regimental colours which had been borne to
+victory at Woerth and the Spicheren, at Mars-la-Tour, Gravelotte, and
+Sedan. On Wilhelm's right was his handsome and princely son; to right and
+to left stood potentates and princes and the leaders of the hosts of
+United Germany. Stalwart and square, somewhat apart on the extreme left of
+the great semicircle of which his sovereign was the centre, with a face of
+deadly pallor--for he had risen from a sick-bed--stood Bismarck in full
+cuirassier uniform leaning on his great sword, the man of all others who
+might that day most truly say, _"Finis Coronat Opus."_ His strong massive
+features were calm and self-possessed, yet elevated as it were by some
+internal power which drew all eyes to the great immobile figure with the
+indomitable lineaments instinct with will--force and masterfulness. After
+the solemn religious service His Majesty in a loud yet broken voice
+proclaimed the re-establishment of the German Empire, and that the
+Imperial dignity so revived was vested in him and his descendants for all
+time in accordance with the unanimous will of the German people. Bismarck
+then stood forward and read in sonorous tones the proclamation which the
+Emperor addressed to the German nation. As his final words rang through
+the hall the Grand Duke of Baden strode forward and shouted with all his
+force, "Long live the Emperor Wilhelm!" With a tempest of cheering, amidst
+waving of swords and of helmets the new title was acclaimed, and the
+Emperor with streaming tears received the homage of his liegemen. The
+first on bended knees to kiss his sovereign's hand was the Crown Prince,
+the second was Bismarck. The band struck up the National Anthem. Louder
+than the music, heard above the clamour of the cheering, sounded the
+thunder of the French cannon from Mont Valerien, the _Ave Caesar_ from the
+reluctant lips of worsted France. Bismarck, impassive as he seemed, must
+have had his emotions as he quitted this scene of triumph for the
+banquet-table of the Kaiser of his own making. He knew himself for the
+most conspicuous man in Europe, the greatest subject in the world. It was
+the proudest day of his life.
+
+There were many proud days still to occur in his long life. One of those
+was on the occasion of the German entry into Paris during the armistice
+which resulted in peace. The war had been of his making, and he chose to
+witness with his own eyes the actual triumph of his craft. It was a
+strange spectacle. There, helmet on head and sword on thigh, he sat in the
+shadow of the crape-shrouded statue of Strasburg on the Place de la
+Concorde. About him had gathered a group of extremely sinister French of
+the Belleville type. They had recognised him, and their lurid upward
+glances at the massive form on the great war-horse were charged with
+baleful meaning. Bismarck once or twice looked down on them with a grim
+smile under his moustache. At length the most daring of the "patriots"
+emitted a tentative hiss. With a little polite wave of his gloved hand
+Bismarck bent over his holster and requested "Monsieur" to oblige him with
+a light for his cigar. The man writhed as he compelled himself to comply.
+Little doubt that in his heart he wished the lucifer were a dagger and
+that he had the courage to use it.
+
+
+
+
+THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
+
+1873
+
+
+"_Thursday_.--Gathering, hand-shaking, brandy and soda and drams.
+
+"_Friday_.--Drinking, dandering, and feeling the way in the forenoon; the
+ordinary in the afternoon; at night a spate of drink and bargaining.
+
+"_Saturday_.--Bargaining and drink.
+
+"_Sunday morning_.--Bargains, drink, and the kirk."
+
+Such was the skeleton programme of the Inverness "Character" Fair given by
+a farmer friend to me, who happened to be lazily rusticating in the north
+of Scotland during the pleasant month of July. My friend asked me to
+accompany him in his visit to this remarkable institution and the
+programme was too tempting for refusal. As we drove to the station he
+handed me Henry Dixon's _Field and Fern_, open at a page which gave some
+particulars of the origin and character of the great annual sheep and wool
+market of the north. "Its Character Market," wrote "The Druid,"--no
+longer, alas! among us--"is the great bucolic glory of Inverness. The
+Fort-William market existed before, but the Sutherland and Caithness men,
+who sold about 14,000 sheep and 15,000 stones of wool annually so far back
+as 1816, did not care to go there. They dealt with regular customers year
+after year, and roving wool-staplers with no regular connection went about
+and notified their arrival on the church door. Patrick Sellar, 'the agent
+for the Sutherland Association,' saw exactly that some great _caucus_ of
+buyers and sellers was wanted at a more central spot; and on 27th February
+1817 that meeting of the clans was held at Inverness which brought the
+fair into being. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Burnley, Aberdeen, and
+Elgin signified that their leading merchants were favourable and ready to
+attend. Sutherland, Caithness, Wester Ross, Skye, the Orkneys, Harris, and
+Lewis were represented at the meeting; Bailie Anderson also 'would state
+with confidence that the market was approved of by William Chisholm, Esq.,
+of Chisholm, and James Laidlaw, tacksman, of Knockfin;' and so the matter
+was settled for ever and aye, and the _Courier_ and the _Morning
+Chronicle_ were the London advertising media. This Highland Wool
+Parliament was originally held on the third Thursday in June, but now it
+begins on the second Thursday of July and lasts till the Saturday; and
+Argyllshire, Nairnshire, and High Aberdeenshire have gradually joined in.
+The plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel have always been the
+scene of the bargains, which are most truly based on the broad stone of
+honour; not a sheep or fleece is to be seen and the buyer of the year
+before gets the first offer of the cast or clip. The previous proving and
+public character of the different flocks are the purchasers' guide far
+more than the sellers' description."
+
+Thus far "The Druid"; and my companion as we drove supplemented his
+information. It is from the circumstance that not a head of sheep or a
+tait of wool is brought to the market but that everything is sold and
+bought unseen and even unsampled, that the market derives its appellation
+of "character" fair. Of the value of the business transacted, the amount
+of money turned over, it is impossible to form with confidence even an
+approximate estimate since there is no source for data; but none with whom
+I spoke put the turnover at a lower figure than half a million. In a good
+season such as the past, over 200,000 sheep are disposed of exclusive of
+lambs, and of lambs about the same number. The stock sold from the hills
+are for the most part Cheviots and Blackfaces; from the low grounds
+half-breds, being a cross between Leicester and Cheviot and crosses
+between the Cheviot and Blackface. All the sales of sheep and lambs are by
+the "clad score" which contains twenty-one. The odd one is thrown in to
+meet the contingency of deaths before delivery is effected. Established
+when there was a long and wearing journey for the flocks from the hills
+where they were reared down to their purchasers in the lowlands or the
+south country, the altered conditions of transit have stimulated farmers
+to efforts for the abolition of the "clad score." Now that sheep are
+trucked by railway instead of being driven on foot or conveyed from the
+islands to their destination in steamers specially chartered for the
+purpose, the farmers grudge the "one in" of the "clad score." In 1866 they
+seized the opportunity of an exceptionally high market and keen
+competition to combine against the old reckoning and in a measure
+succeeded. But next year was as dull as '66 had been brisk, and then the
+buyers and dealers had their revenge and re-established the "clad score"
+in all its pristine firmness of position. The sheep-farmers wean their
+lambs about the 24th of August and delivery of them is given to the buyers
+as soon as possible thereafter. The delivery of ewes and wethers is timed
+by individual arrangement. A large proportion of the old ewes--no ewes are
+sold but such as are old--go to England where a lamb or two is got from
+them before they are fattened. Most of the lambs are bought by
+sheep-farmers who, not keeping a ewe flock, are not themselves breeders,
+and are kept till they are three years old--"three shears" as they are
+technically called--and sold fat into the south country. There they get
+what Mr. M'Combie called the last dip and the butcher sells them as "prime
+four-year-old wedder mutton."
+
+The size of some of the Highland sheep farms is to be reckoned by miles
+not by acres; and the stock, as in Australia, by the thousand. The largest
+sheep-owner, perhaps, that the Highlands ever knew was Cameron of
+Corrichollie, now dead. He was once examined before a Committee of the
+House of Commons, and came to be questioned on the subject of his
+ownership of sheep. "You may have some 1500 sheep, probably, sir?" quoth
+the interrogating M.P. "Aiblins," was Corrichollie's quiet reply as he
+took a pinch of snuff; "aiblins I have a few more nor that." "Two
+thousand, then?" "Yes, I pelieve I have that and a few more forpye,"
+calmly responded the Highlander with another pinch. "Five thousand?" "Oh,
+ay, and a few more." "Twenty thousand, sir?" cried the M.P., capping with
+a burst his previous bid. "Oh, ay, and some more forpye," was the
+imperturbable response. "In Heaven's name how many sheep have you, man?"
+burst out the astonished catechist. "I'm no very sure to a thousan' or
+two," replied Corrichollie in his dry laconic way and with an extra big
+pinch; "but I'm owner of forty thousan' sheep at the lowest reckoning."
+Lochiel, known to the Sassenach as Mr. Cameron, M.P., is perhaps the
+largest living sheep-owner in Scotland. He has at least 30,000 sheep on
+his vast tracks of moorland on the braes of Lochaber. In the Island of
+Skye Captain Cameron of Talisker has a flock of some 12,000; and there are
+several other flocks both in the islands and on the mainland of more than
+equal magnitude. Sheep-farming, at least in many instances, is an
+hereditary avocation, and some families can trace a sheep-farming ancestry
+very far back. The oldest sheep-farming family in Scotland are the
+Mackinnons of Corrie in Skye. They have been on Corrie for four hundred
+years and they were holding sheep-farms elsewhere even earlier. The
+Macraes of Achnagart in Kintail, paid rent to Seaforth for two hundred
+years. For as long before they had held Achnagart on the tenure of a bunch
+of heather exigible annually and their fighting services as good clansmen.
+Two hundred years ago an annual rental of L5 was substituted for the
+heather "corve"; the clansmen's service continuing and being rendered up
+till the '45. Now clanship is but a name: a Seaforth Mackenzie is no
+longer chief in Kintail, and the Macrae who has succeeded his forbears in
+Achnagart finds the bunch of heather and the L5 alike superseded by the
+very far other than nominal rent of L1000. The modern Achnagart with his
+broad shoulders and burly frame, looks as capable as were any of his
+ancestry to render personal service to his chief if a demand were made
+upon him; and very probably would be quite prepared to accept a reduction
+of his money rental if an obligation to perform feudal clan-service were
+substituted. Achnagart with his L1000 a year rental by no means tops the
+sheep-farming rentals of his county. Perhaps Robertson of Achiltie, whose
+sheep-walks stretch up on to the snow-patched shoulders of Ben Wyvis and
+far away west to Loch Broom, pays the highest sheep-farming rental in
+Ross-shire, when the factor has pocketed his half-yearly check for L800.
+
+Part of this I learn from my friend as we drive to the station; part I
+gather afterwards from other sources. The station for which we are bound
+is Elgin, the county town of Morayshire. Between Elgin and Inverness, it
+is true, we shall see but few of the great sheep-farmers and flock-masters
+of the west country, who converge on the annual tryst from other points of
+the compass and by various routes--by the Skye railway, by that portion of
+the Highland line which extends north of Inverness, through Ross into
+Sutherland, by the Caledonian Canal, etc. But it is promised to me that I
+shall see many of the notable agriculturists of Moray land, who go to the
+market as buyers; and a contingent of sheep-breeders are sure to join us
+at Forres, coming down the Highland line from the Inverness-shire
+Highlands on Upper Strathspey. There is quite an exceptional throng on the
+platform of the Elgin station, of farmers, factors, lawyers, and
+ex-coffee-planters--all very plentiful in Elgin; tanners bound for
+investments in prospective pelts; and men of no avocation yet as much
+bound to visit Inverness to-day as if they meant to invest thousands. In a
+corner towers the mighty form of Paterson of Mulben, famous among breeders
+of polls with his tribe of "Mayflowers." From beneath a kilt peep out the
+brawny limbs of Willie Brown of Linkwood and Morriston, nephew of stout
+old Sir George who commanded the light division at the Alma, son to a
+factor whose word in his day was as the laws of the Medes and Persians
+over a wide territory, and himself the feeder of the leviathan cross red
+ox and the beautiful gray heifer which took honours so high at one of the
+recent Smithfield Christmas Shows. There is the white beard and hearty
+face of Mr. Collie, late of Ardgay, owner erstwhile of "Fair Maid of
+Perth" and breeder of "Zarah." Here, too, is a fresh, sprightly gentleman
+in a kilt whom his companions designate "the Bourach." Requesting an
+explanation of the term I am told that "Bourach" is the Gaelic for
+"through-other," which again is the Scottish synonym for a kind of amalgam
+of addled and harum-scarum. A jolly tanner observes: "I'll get a
+compartment to oursels." The reason of the desire for this exclusive
+accommodation is apparent as soon as we start. A "deck" of cards is
+produced and a quartette betake themselves to whist with half-crown stakes
+on the rubber and sixpenny points. This was mild speculation to that which
+was engaged in on the homeward journey after the market, when a Strathspey
+sheep-farmer won L8 between Dalvey and Forres. As my friends shuffle and
+deal, I look out of window at the warm gray towers of the cathedral,
+beautiful still spite of the desecrating hand of the "Wolf of Badenoch."
+Our road lies through the fertile "Laigh of Moray," one of the richest
+wheat districts in the Empire and as beautiful as fertile. At Alves we
+pick up a fresh, hale gentleman, who is described to me as "the laird of
+three properties," bought for more than L100,000 by a man who began life
+as the son of a hillside crofter. We pass the picturesque ruins of Kinloss
+Abbey and draw up at Forres station, whose platform is thronged with noted
+agriculturists bound for the "Character" Fair. Here is that spirited
+Englishman Mr. Harris of Earnhill, whose great cross ox took the cup at
+the Agricultural Hall seven or eight years ago; and the brothers Bruce--he
+of Newton Struthers, whose marvellous polled cow beat everything in
+Bingley Hall at the '71 Christmas Show and but for "foot and mouth" would
+have repeated the performance at the Smithfield Show; and he of Burnside
+who likewise has stamped his mark pretty deeply in the latter arena. At
+Forres we first hear Gaelic; for a train from Carr Bridge and Grantown in
+Upper Strathspey has come down the Highland Railway to join ours, and the
+red-haired Grants around the Rock of Craigellachie--where a man whose name
+is not Grant is regarded as a _lusus naturae_--are Gaelic speakers to a
+man. No witches accost us, and speaking personally I feel no "pricking of
+the thumbs" as we skirt the blasted heath on which Macbeth met the witches;
+the most graphic modern description of which on record was given to Henry
+Dixon in the following quaint form of Shakespearean annotation: "It's just
+a sort of eminence; all firs and ploughed land now; you paid a toll near
+it. I'm thinking, it's just a mile wast from Brodie Station."
+
+Nairn is that town by the citation of a peculiarity of which King Jamie
+put to shame the boastings of the Southrons as to the superior magnitude
+of English towns. "I have a town," quoth the sapient James, "in my ancient
+kingdom of Scotland, whilk is sae lang that at ane end of it a different
+language is spoken from that whilk prevails at the other." To this day the
+monarch's words are true; one end of Nairn is Gaelic, the other Sassenach.
+Here we obtain a considerable accession of strength. The attributes of one
+kilted chieftain are described to me in curious scraps of illustrative
+patchwork. "A great litigant, an enthusiastic agriculturist, a dealer in
+Hielan' nowt--something of a Hielan' nowt himself, a semi-auctioneer, a
+great hand as chairman at an agricultural dinner, a visitor to the Baker
+Street Bazaar when the Smithfield Shows were held there and where the
+Cockneys mistook him for one of the exhibits and began pinching and
+punching him." Stewart of Duntalloch swings his stalwart form into our
+carriage--a noted breeder of Highland cattle and as fine a specimen of a
+Highlander as can be seen from Reay to Pitlochrie. "Culloden! Culloden!"
+chant the porters in that curious sing-song peculiar to the Scotch
+platform porter. The whistle of the engine and the talk about turnips and
+cattle contrast harshly with that bleak, lonely, moorland swell yonder--
+the patches of green among the brown heather telling where moulders the
+dust of the chivalrous clansmen. It is but little longer than a century
+and a quarter ago since Charles Stuart and Cumberland confronted each
+other over against us there; and here are the descendants of the men that
+fought in their tartans for the "King over the Water," who are discussing
+the right proportion of phosphates in artificial manures and of whom one
+asks me confidentially for my opinion on the Leger favourite.
+
+Here we are at Inverness at length; that city of the Clachnacudden stone.
+There is quite a crowd in the spacious station of business people who have
+been awaiting the arrival of the train from the east, and the buyers and
+sellers whom it has conveyed find themselves at once among eager friends.
+Hurried announcements are made as to the conditions and prospects of the
+market. The card-players have plunged suddenly _in medias res_ of
+bargaining. The man who had volunteered to stand me a seltzer and sherry
+has forgotten all about his offer, and is talking energetically about clad
+scores and the price of lambs. I quit the station and walk up Union Street
+through a gradually thickening throng, till I reach Church Street and
+shoulder my way to the front of the Caledonian Hotel. I am now in "the
+heart of the market," standing as I am on the plain-stones in front of the
+Caledonian Hotel and looking up and down along the crowded street. What
+physique, what broad shoulders, what stalwart limbs, what wiry red beards
+and high cheek-bones there are everywhere! You have the kilt at every
+turn, in every tartan, and often in no tartan at all. Other men wear
+whole-coloured suits of inconceivably shaggy tweed, and the breadth of the
+bonnets is only equalled by that of the accents. Every second man has a
+mighty plaid over his shoulder. It may serve as a sample of his wool, for
+invariably it is home made. Some carry long twisted crooks such as we see
+in old pastoral prints; others have massive gnarled sticks grasped in vast
+sinewy hands on the back of which the wiry red hairs stand out like
+prickles. There is falling what in the south we should reckon as a very
+respectable pelt of rain, but the Inverness Wool Fair heeds rain no more
+than thistledown. Hardly a man has thought it worth his pains to envelop
+his shoulders in his plaid, but stands and lets the rain take its chance.
+There is a perfect babel of tongues; no bawling or shouting, however, but
+a perpetual gruff _susurrus_ of broad guttural conversation accentuated
+every now and then by a louder exclamation in Gaelic. Quite half of the
+throng are discoursing in this language. It is possible to note the
+difference in the character of the Celt and Teuton. The former
+gesticulates, splutters out a perfect torrent of alternately shrill,
+guttural, and intoned Gaelic; he shrugs his shoulders, he throws his arms
+about, he thrills with vivacity. The Teuton expresses quiet, sententious
+canniness in every gesture and every utterance; he is a cold-blooded man
+and keeps his breath to cool his porridge.
+
+On the plain-stones there are a number of benches on which men sit down to
+gossip and chaffer. Scraps of dialogue float about in the moist air. If
+you care to be an eavesdropper you must have a knowledge of Gaelic to be
+one effectively. "It's to be a stout market," remarks stalwart Macrae of
+Invershiel, come of a fine old West Highland stock and himself a very
+large sheep-farmer. "Sixteen shillings is my price. I'll come down a
+little if you like," says the tenant of Belmaduthy to keen-faced Mr.
+Mackenzie of Liverpool, one of the largest wool-dealers and sheep-buyers
+visiting the market. "You'll petter juist pe coming down to it at once."
+"I could not meet you at all." "I'm afraid I'll pe doing what they'll pe
+laughing at me for." "We can't agree at all," are the words as a couple
+separate, probably to come together again later in the day. "An do reic
+thu na 'h'uainn fhathast, Coignasgailean?" "Cha neil fios again'm lieil
+thusa air son tavigse thoirtorra, Cnocnangraisheag?" "Thig gus ain fluich
+sin ambarfan." Perhaps I had better translate. Two sheep-farmers are in
+colloquy, and address each other by the names of their farms, as is all
+but universal in the north. Cnocnangraisheag asks Coignasgailean, "Have
+you sold your lambs?" The cautious reply is, "I don't know; are you
+inclined to give me an offer?" and the proposal ensues, "Come and let us
+take a drink on the transaction." Let us follow the two worthies into the
+Caledonian. Jostling goes for nothing here and you may shove as much in
+reason as you choose, taking your chance of reprisals from the sons of
+Anak. The lobbies of the Caledonian are full of men drinking and
+bargaining with books in hand. There is no sitting-room in all the house
+and we follow the Cnocnangraisheag and his friend into the billiard-room,
+where we are promptly served standing. What keenness of
+business-discussion mingled with what galore of whisky there is
+everywhere! The whisky seems to make no more impression than if it were
+ginger-beer; and yet it is over-proof Talisker, as my throat and eyes find
+to their cost when I recklessly attempt to imitate Coignasgailean and take
+a dram neat. As I pass the bar going out Willie Brown is bawling for soda
+with something in it, and Donald Murray of Geanies, one of the ablest men
+in the north of Scotland, brushes by with quick decisive step. In the
+doorway stands the sturdy square-built form of Macdonald of Balranald, the
+largest breeder of Highland cattle in the country. Over the heathery
+pasture-land of North Uist 1500 head and more of horned newt of his range
+in half-wild freedom. The Mundells and the Mitchells seem ubiquitous. The
+ancestors of both families came from England as shepherds when the
+Sutherland clearances were made toward the end of last century, and
+between them they now hold probably the largest acreage--or rather
+mileage, of sheep-farming territory in all Scotland.
+
+It is a "very dour market," that all admit. Everybody is holding back, for
+it is obvious prices are to be "desperate high" and everybody wants to get
+the full benefit of the rise. The predetermination of the Southern dealers
+to "buy out" freely at big prices had been rashly revealed over-night by
+one of the fraternity at the after-dinner toddy-symposium in the
+Caledonian. He had been sedulously plied with drink by "Charlie Mitchell"
+and some others of the Ross and Sutherland sheep-farmers, till reticence
+had departed from his tongue. Ultimately he had leaped on the table,
+breaking any quantity of glass-ware in the saltatory feat, and had
+asserted with free swearing his readiness to give 50s. all round for every
+three-year-old wedder in the north of Scotland. His horror-stricken
+partners rushed upon him and bundled him downstairs in hot haste, but the
+murder was out and the "dour market" was accounted for. Fancy 50s. a head
+for beasts that do not weigh 60 lb. apiece as they come off the hill! No
+wonder that we townsmen have to pay dear for our mutton.
+
+I push my way out of the heart of the market to find the outlying
+neighbourhood studded all over with conversing groups. There is an
+all-pervading smell of whisky, and yet I see no man who has "turned a
+hair" by reason of the strength of the Talisker. A town-crier ringing a
+bell passes me. He halts, and the burden of his cry is, "There is a large
+supply of fresh haddies in the market!" The walls are placarded with
+advertisements of sheep smearing and dipping substances; the leading
+ingredients of which appear to be tar and butter. A recruiting sergeant of
+the Scots Fusilier Guards is standing by the Clachnacudden Stone,
+apparently in some dejection owing to the little business doing in his
+line. Men don't come to the "Character" Fair to 'list. It strikes me that
+quite three-fourths of the shops of Inverness are devoted to the sale of
+articles of Highland costume. Their fronts are hidden by hangings of
+tartan cloth; the windows are decked with sporrans, dirks, cairngorm
+plaid-brooches, ram's-head snuff-boxes, bullocks' horns and skean dhus. If
+I chose I might enter the emporium of Messrs. Macdougall in my Sassenach
+garb and re-emerge in ten minutes outwardly a full-blown Highland chief,
+from the eagle's feather in my bonnet to the buckles on my brogues.
+Turning down High Street I reach the quay on the Ness bank, where I find
+in full blast a horse fair of a very miscellaneous description, and
+totally destitute of the features that have earned for the wool market the
+title of "Character" Fair. There are blood colts running chiefly to
+stomach, splints and bog spavins; ponies with shaggy manes, trim barrels,
+and clean legs; and slack-jointed cart-horses nearly asleep--for "ginger"
+is an institution which does not seem to have come so far north as
+Inverness. Business is lively here, the chronic "dourness" of a market
+being discounted by the scarcity of horseflesh.
+
+At four o'clock we sit down to the market ordinary in the great room of
+the Caledonian. A member of Parliament occupies the chair, one of the
+croupiers is a baronet, the other the chief of the clan Mackintosh. There
+is a great collection of north-country notabilities, and tables upon
+tables of sheep-farmers and sheep-dealers. We have a considerable
+_cacoethes_ of speech-making, among the orators being Professor Blackie of
+Edinburgh, whose quaint comicalities convulse his audience. It is pretty
+late when the Professor rises to speak, and the whisky has been flowing
+free. Some one interjects a whiskyfied interruption into the Professor's
+speech, who at once in stentorian tones orders that the disturber of the
+harmony of the evening shall be summarily consigned to the lunatic asylum.
+I see him ejected with something like the force of a stone from a catapult
+and have no reasonable doubt that he will spend the night an inmate of
+"Craig Duncan." The speeches over bargaining recommences moistened by
+toddy, which fluid appears to exercise an appreciable softening influence
+on the "dourness" of the market. Till long after midnight seasoned vessels
+are talking and dealing, booking sales while they sip their tenth tumbler.
+
+I have to leave on the Saturday morning, but I make no doubt that the
+skeleton programme given at the beginning of this paper will have its
+bones duly clothed with flesh.
+
+
+
+
+THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
+
+
+At first sight the proposition may appear startling and indeed absurd; yet
+hard facts, I venture to believe, will enforce the conviction on
+unprejudiced minds that the warfare of the present when contrasted with
+the warfare of the past is dilatory, ineffective, and inconclusive.
+
+Present, or contemporary warfare may be taken to date from the general
+adoption of rifled firearms; the warfare of the past may fairly be limited
+for purposes of comparison or contrast, to the smooth-bore era; indeed,
+for those purposes there is no need to go outside the present century.
+Roughly speaking the first five and a half decades of the century were
+smooth-bore decades; the three and a half later decades have been rifled
+decades, of which about two and a half decades constitute the
+breechloading period. Considering the extraordinary advances since the end
+of the smooth-bore era in everything tending to promote celerity and
+decisiveness in the result of campaigns--the revolution in swiftness of
+shooting and length of range of firearms, the development in the science
+of gunnery, the increased devotion to military study, the vast additions
+to the military strength of the nations, looking to the facilities for
+rapid conveyance of troops and transportation of supplies afforded by
+railways and steam water-carriage, to the intensified artillery fire that
+can now be brought to bear on fortresses, to the manifold advantages
+afforded by the electric telegraph, and to the crushing cost of warfare,
+urging vigorous exertions toward the speedy decision of campaigns--
+reviewing, I say, the thousand and one circumstances encouraging to short,
+sharp, and decisive action in contemporary warfare, it is a strange and
+bewildering fact that the wars of the smooth-bore era were for the most
+part, shorter, sharper, and more decisive. Spite of inferiority of weapons
+the battles of that period were bloodier than those of the present, and it
+is a mathematically demonstrable proposition that the heavier the
+slaughter of combatants the nearer must be the end of a war. There is no
+pursuit now after victory won and the vanquished draws off shaken but not
+broken; in the smooth-bore era a vigorous pursuit scattered him to the
+four winds. When Wellington in the Peninsula wanted a fortress and being
+in a hurry could not wait the result of a formal siege or a starvation
+blockade, he carried it by storm. No fortress is ever stormed now, no
+matter how urgent the need for its reduction, no matter how obsolete its
+defences. The Germans in 1871 did attempt to carry by assault an outwork
+of Belfort, but failed utterly. It would almost seem that in the matter of
+forlorn hopes the Caucasian is played out.
+
+Assertions are easy, but they go for little unless they can be proved;
+some examples, therefore, may be cited in support of the contentions
+advanced above. The Prussians are proud and with justice, of what is known
+as the "Seven Weeks' War of 1866" although as a matter of fact the contest
+with Austria did not last so long, for Prince Frederick Charles crossed
+the Bohemian frontier on the 23rd of June and the armistice which ended
+hostilities was signed at Nikolsburg on the 26th of July. The Prussian
+armies were stronger than their opponents by more than one-fourth and they
+were armed with the needle-gun against the Austrian muzzle-loading rifle.
+When the armistice was signed the Prussians lay on the Marchfeld within
+dim sight of the Stephanien-Thurm, it is true; but with the strong and
+strongly armed and held lines of Florisdorf, the Danube, and the army of
+the Archduke Albrecht between them and the Austrian capital. On the 9th of
+October 1806 Napoleon crossed the Saale. On the 14th at Jena he smashed
+Hohenlohe's Prussian army, the contending hosts being about equal strength;
+on the same day Davoust at Auerstadt with 27,000 men routed Brunswick's
+command over 50,000 strong. On the 25th of October Napoleon entered
+Berlin, the war virtually over and all Prussia at his feet with the
+exception of a few fortresses, the last of which fell on the 8th of
+November. Which was the swifter, the more brilliant, and the more
+decisive--the campaign of 1866, or the campaign of 1806?
+
+The Franco-German war is generally regarded as an exceptionally effective
+performance on the part of the Germans. The first German force entered
+France on the 4th of August 1870. Paris was invested on the 21st of
+September, the German armies having fought four great battles and several
+serious actions between the frontier and the French capital. An armistice,
+which was not conclusive since it allowed the siege of Belfort to proceed
+and Bourbaki's army to be free to attempt raising it, was signed at
+Versailles on the 28th of January 1871, but the actual conclusion of
+hostilities dates from the 16th of February, the day on which Belfort
+surrendered. The Franco-German war, therefore, lasted six and a half
+months. The Germans were in full preparedness except that their rifle was
+inferior to the French _chassepot_; they were in overwhelmingly superior
+numerical strength in every encounter save two with French regular troops,
+and they had on their banners the prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries
+were utterly unready for a great struggle; the French army was in a
+wretched state in every sense of the word; indeed, after Sedan there
+remained hardly any regulars able to take the field. In August 1805
+Napoleon's Grande Armee was at Boulogne looking across to the British
+shores. Those inaccessible, he promptly altered his plans and went against
+Austria. Mack with 84,000 Austrian soldiers was at Ulm, waiting for the
+expected Russian army of co-operation and meantime covering the valley of
+the Danube. Napoleon crossed the Rhine on the 26th of September. Just as
+in 1870 the Germans on the plain of Mars-la-Tour thrust themselves between
+Bazaine and the rest of France, so Napoleon turned Mack and from Aalen to
+the Tyrol stood between him and Austria. Mack capitulated Ulm and his army
+on the 19th of October and Napoleon was in Vienna on the 13th of November.
+Although he possessed the Austrian capital, he was not, however, master of
+the Austrian empire. The latter result did not fall to him until the 2nd
+of December, when under "the sun of Austerlitz" he with 73,000 men
+defeated the Austro-Russian army 85,000 strong, inflicting on it a loss of
+30,000 men at the cost of 12,000 of his own soldiers _hors de combat_. It
+took the Germans in 1870 a month and a half to get from the frontier to
+_outside_ Paris; just in the same time, although certainly not with so
+severe fighting by the way but nearly twice as long a march, Napoleon
+moved from the Rhine to _inside_ Vienna. From the active commencement to
+the cessation of hostilities the Franco-German war lasted six and a half
+months; reckoning from the crossing of the Rhine to the evening of
+Austerlitz Napoleon subjugated Austria in two and a quarter months.
+Perhaps, however, his campaign of 1809 against Austria furnishes a more
+exact parallel with the campaign of the Germans in 1870-71. He assumed
+command on the 17th of April, having hurried from Spain. He defeated the
+Austrians five times in as many days, at Thann, Abensberg, Landshut,
+Eckmuhl, and Ratisbon; and he was in Vienna on the 13th of May. Balked at
+Aspern and Essling, he gained his point at Wagram on the 5th of July, and
+hostilities ceased with the armistice of Znaim on the 11th after having
+lasted for a period short of three months by a week.
+
+The Russians have a reputation for good marching, and certainly Suvaroff
+made good time in his long march from Russia to Northern Italy in 1799;
+almost as good, indeed, as Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, and Kutusoff made
+in falling back before Napoleon when he invaded Russia in 1812. But they
+have not improved either in marching or in fighting at all commensurately
+with the improved appliances. In 1877, after dawdling two months they
+crossed the Danube on the 21st to the 27th of June. Osman Pasha at Plevna
+gave them pause until the 10th of December, at which date they were not so
+far into Bulgaria as they had been five months previously. After the fall
+of Plevna the Russian armies would have gone into winter quarters but for
+a private quasi-ultimatum communicated to the Tzar from a high source in
+England, to the effect that unpleasant consequences could not be
+guaranteed against if the war was not finished in one campaign. Alexander,
+who was quite an astute man in his way, was temporarily enraged by this
+restriction, but recovering his calmness, realised that nowhere in war
+books is any particular time specified for the termination or duration of
+a campaign. It appeared that so long as an army keeps the field
+uninterruptedly a campaign may continue until the Greek kalends. In less
+time than that Gourko and Skobeleff undertook to finish the business; by
+the vigour with which they forced their way across the Balkans in the
+heart of the bitter winter Sophia, Philippopolis, and Adrianople fell into
+Russian hands; and the Russian troops had been halted some time almost in
+face of Constantinople when the treaty of San Stephano was signed on the
+3rd of March 1878. It had taken the Russians of 1877-78 eight weary months
+to cover the distance between the Danube and the Marmora. But fifty years
+earlier a Russian general had marched from the Danube to the Aegean in
+three and a half months, nor was his journey by any means a smooth and
+bloodless one. Diebitch crossed the Danube in May 1828 and besieged
+Silistria from the 17th of May until the 1st of July. Silistria has
+undergone three resolute sieges during the century; it succumbed but once,
+and then to Diebitch. Pressing south immediately, he worsted the Turkish
+Grand Vizier in the fierce battle of Kuleutscha and then by diverse routes
+hurried down into the great Roumelian valley. Adrianople made no
+resistance and although his force was attenuated by hardship and disease,
+when the Turkish diplomatists procrastinated the audacious and gallant
+Diebitch marched his thin regiments forward toward Constantinople. They
+had traversed on a wide front half the distance between Adrianople and the
+capital when the dilatory Turkish negotiators saw fit to imitate the coon
+and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the weakness
+of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned whether,
+that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied Constantinople on the
+swagger. His master was prepared promptly to reinforce him; Constantinople
+was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than in 1878, and certainly Diebitch
+was much smarter than were the Grand Duke Nicholas, his fossil
+Nepokoitschitsky, and his pure theorist Levitsky.
+
+The contrast between the character of our own contemporary military
+operations and that of those of the smooth-bore era is very strongly
+marked. In 1838-39 Keane marched an Anglo-Indian army from our frontier at
+Ferozepore over Candahar to Cabul without experiencing any serious check,
+and with the single important incident of taking Ghuzni by storm on the
+way. Our positions at and about Cabul were not seriously molested until
+late in 1841, when the paralysis of demoralisation struck our soldiers
+because of the crass follies of a wrong-headed civilian chief and the
+feebleness of a decrepit general. Nott throughout held Candahar firmly;
+the Khyber Pass remained open until faith was broken with the hillmen;
+Jellalabad held out until the "Retribution Column" camped under its walls.
+But for the awful catastrophe which befell in the passes the hapless
+brigade which under the influence of deplorable pusillanimity and gross
+mismanagement had evacuated Cabul, no serious military calamity marked our
+occupation of Afghanistan and certainly stubborn resistance had not
+confronted our arms. From 1878 to 1880 we were in Afghanistan again, this
+time with breech-loading far-ranging rifles, copious artillery of the
+newest types, and commanders physically and mentally efficient. All those
+advantages availed us not one whit. The Afghans took more liberties with
+us than they had done forty years previously. They stood up to us in fair
+fight over and over again: at Ali Musjid, at the Pewar Kotul, at
+Charasiab, on the Takt-i-Shah and the Asmai heights, at Candahar. They
+took the dashing offensive at Ahmed Kheyl and at the Shutur-gurdan; they
+drove Dunham Massy's cavalry and took British guns; they reoccupied Cabul
+in the face of our arms, they besieged Candahar, they hemmed Roberts
+within the Sherpoor cantonments and assailed him there. They destroyed a
+British brigade at Maiwand and blocked Gough in the Jugdulluck Pass.
+Finally our evacuating army had to macadamise its unmolested route down
+the passes by bribes to the hillmen, and the result of the second Afghan
+war was about as barren as that of the first.
+
+It was in the year 1886 that, the resolution having been taken to dethrone
+Thebau and annex Upper Burmah, Prendergast began his all but bloodless
+movement on Mandalay. The Burmans of today have never adventured a battle,
+yet after years of desultory bushwhacking the pacification of Upper Burmah
+has still to be fully accomplished. On the 10th of April 1852 an
+Anglo-Indian expedition commanded by General Godwin landed at Rangoon.
+During the next fifteen months it did a good deal of hard fighting, for
+the Burmans of that period made a stout resistance. At midsummer of 1853
+Lord Dalhousie proclaimed the war finished, announced the annexation and
+pacification of Lower Burmah, and broke up the army. The cost of the war
+of which the result was this fine addition to our Indian Empire, was two
+millions sterling; almost from the first the province was self-supporting
+and uninterrupted peace has reigned within its borders. We did not dally
+in those primitive smooth-bore days. Sir Charles Napier took the field
+against the Scinde Ameers on the 16th of February 1843. Next day he fought
+the battle of Meanee, entered Hyderabad on the 2Oth, and on the 24th of
+March won the decisive victory of Dubba which placed Scinde at his mercy,
+although not until June did the old "Lion of Meerpore" succumb to Jacob.
+But before then Napier was well forward with his admirable measures for
+the peaceful administration of the great province he had added to British
+India.
+
+The expedition for the rescue of General Gordon was tediously boated up
+the Nile, with the result that the "desert column" which Sir Herbert
+Stewart led so valiantly across the Bayuda reached Gubat just in time to
+be too late, and was itself extricated from imminent disaster by the
+masterful promptitude of Sir Redvers Buller. Notwithstanding a general
+consensus of professional and expert opinion in favour of the alternative
+route from Souakin to Berber, 240 miles long and far from waterless, the
+adoption of it was condemned as impossible. In June 1801, away back in the
+primitive days, an Anglo-Indian brigade 5000 strong ordered from Bombay,
+reached Kosseir on the Red Sea bound for the Upper Nile at Keneh thence to
+join Abercromby's force operating in Lower Egypt. The distance from
+Kosseir to Keneh is 120 miles across a barren desert with scanty and
+unfrequent springs. The march was by regiments, of which the first quitted
+Kosseir on the 1st of July. The record of the desert-march of the 10th
+Foot is now before me. It left Kosseir on the 20th of July and reached
+Keneh on the 29th, marching at the rate of twelve miles per day. Its loss
+on the march was one drummer. The whole brigade was at Keneh in the early
+days of August, the period between its debarkation and its concentration
+on the Nile being about five weeks. The march was effected at the very
+worst season of the year. It was half the distance of a march from Souakin
+to Berber; the latter march by a force of the same strength could well
+have been accomplished in three months. The opposition on the march could
+not have been so severe as that which Stewart's desert column encountered.
+Nevertheless, as I have said, the Souakin-Berber route was pronounced
+impossible by the deciding authority.
+
+The comparative feebleness of contemporary warfare is perhaps
+exceptionally manifest in relation to the reduction of fortresses. During
+the Franco-German War the frequency of announcements of the fall of French
+fortresses used to be the subject of casual jeers. The jeers were
+misplaced. The French fortresses, labouring under every conceivable
+disadvantage, did not do themselves discredit. All of them were more or
+less obsolete. Excluding Metz and Paris, neither fortified to date, their
+average age was about a century and a half and few had been amended since
+their first construction. They were mostly garrisoned by inferior troops,
+often almost entirely by Mobiles. Only in one instance was there an
+effective director of the defence. That they uniformly enclosed towns
+whose civilian population had to endure bombardment, was an obvious
+hindrance to desperate resistance. Yet, setting aside Bitsch which was
+never taken, the average duration of the defence of the seventeen
+fortresses which made other than nominal resistance was forty-one days.
+Excluding Paris and Metz which virtually were intrenched camps, the
+average period of resistance was thirty-three days. The Germans used siege
+artillery in fourteen cases; although only on two instances, Belfort and
+Strasburg, were formal sieges undertaken. "It appears," writes Major
+Sydenham Clarke in his recent remarkable work on Fortification [Footnote:
+_Fortification_. By Major G. Sydenham Clarke, C.M. G. (London: John
+Murray).] which ought to revolutionise that art, "that the average period
+of resistance of the (nominally obsolete) French fortresses was the same
+as that of besieged fortresses of the Marlborough and Peninsular periods.
+Including Paris and Metz, the era of rifled weapons actually shows an
+increase of 20 per cent in the time-endurance of permanent fortifications.
+Granted that a mere measurement in days affords no absolute standard of
+comparison, the striking fact remains that in spite of every sort of
+disability the French fortresses, pitted against guns that were not
+dreamed of when they were built, acquitted themselves quite as well as the
+_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the Vauban school in the days of their glory." Even in
+the cases of fortresses whose reduction was urgently needed since they
+interfered with the German communications--such as Strasburg, Toul, and
+Soissons--the quick _ultima ratio_ of assault was not resorted to by the
+Germans. And yet the Germans could not have failed to recognise that but
+for the fortresses they would have swept France clear of all organised
+bodies of troops within two months of the frontier battles. During the
+Peninsular War Wellington made twelve assaults on breached fortresses of
+which five were successful; of his twelve attempts to escalade six
+succeeded. The Germans in 1870-71 never attempted a breach and their
+solitary effort at escalade, on the Basse Perche of Belfort, utterly
+failed.
+
+The Russians in 1877 were even less enterprising than had been the Germans
+in 1870. They went against three permanently fortified places, the
+antediluvian little Matchin which if I remember right blew itself up; the
+crumbling Nicopolis which surrendered after one day's fighting; and
+Rustchuk which held out till the end of the war. They would not look at
+Silistria, ruined, but strong in heroic memories; they avoided Rasgrad,
+Schumla, and the Black Sea fortresses; Sophia, Philippopolis, and
+Adrianople made no resistance. The earthworks of Plevna, vicious as they
+were in many characteristics, they found impregnable. I think Suvaroff
+would have carried them; I am sure Skobeleff would if he had got his way.
+
+The vastly expensive armaments of the present--the rifled breech-loader,
+the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range field-guns, and so
+forth, are all accepted and paid for by the respective nations in the
+frank and naked expectation that these weapons will perform increased
+execution on the enemy in war time. This granted, nor can it be denied, it
+logically follows that if this increased execution is not performed
+nations are entitled to regard it as a grievance that they do not get
+blood for their money, and this they certainly do not have; so that even
+in this sanguinary particular the warfare of to-day is a comparative
+failure. The topic, however, is rather a ghastly one and I refrain from
+citing evidence; which, however, is easily accessible to any one who cares
+to seek it.
+
+The anticipation is confidently adventured that a great revolution will be
+made in warfare by the magazine rifle with its increased range, the
+machine gun, and the quick-firing field artillery which will speedily be
+introduced into every service. It does not seem likely that smokeless
+powder will create any very important change, except in siege operations.
+On the battlefield neither artillery nor infantry come into action out of
+sight of the enemy. When either arm opens fire within sight of the enemy
+its position can be almost invariably detected by the field-glass,
+irrespective of the smokelessness or non-smokelessness of its ammunition.
+Indeed, the use of smokeless powder would seem inevitably to damage the
+fortunes of the attack. Under cover of a bank of smoke the soldiers
+hurrying on to feed the fighting line are fairly hidden from aimed hostile
+fire. It may be argued that their aim is thus reciprocally hindered; but
+the reply is that their anxiety is not so much to be shooting during their
+reinforcing advance as to get forward into the fighting line, where the
+atmosphere is not so greatly obscured. Smokeless powder will no doubt
+advantage the defence.
+
+It need not be remarked that a battle is a physical impossibility while
+both sides adhere to the passive defensive; and experience proves that
+battles are rare in which both sides are committed to the active
+offensive, whether by preference or necessity. Mars-la-Tour (16th August
+1870) was the only contest of this nature in the Franco-German War.
+Bazaine had to be on the offensive because he was ordered to get away
+towards Verdun; Alvensleben took it because it was the only means whereby
+he could hinder Bazaine from accomplishing his purpose. But for the most
+part one side in battle is on the offensive; the other on the defensive.
+The invader is habitually the offensive person, just for the reason that
+the native force commonly acts on the defensive; the latter is anxious to
+hinder further penetration into the bowels of its land; the former's
+desire is to effect that penetration. The defensive of the native army
+need not, however, be the passive defensive; indeed, unless the position
+be exceptionally strong that is according to present tenets to be avoided.
+When, always with an underlying purpose of defence, its chief resorts to
+the offensive for reasons that he regards as good, his strategy or his
+tactics as the case may be, are expressed by the term
+"defensive-offensive."
+
+It says a good deal for the peaceful predilections of the nations, that
+there has been no fairly balanced experience affording the material for
+decision as to the relative advantage of the offensive and the defensive
+under modern conditions. In 1866 the Prussians, opposing the needle-gun to
+the Austrian muzzle-loader, naturally utilised this pre-eminence by
+adopting uniformly the offensive and traditions of the Great Frederick
+doubtless seconded the needle-gun. After Sadowa controversy ran high as to
+the proper system of tactics when breech-loader should oppose
+breech-loader. A strong party maintained that "the defensive had now
+become so strong that true science lay in forcing the adversary to attack.
+Let him come on, and then one might fairly rely on victory." As
+Boguslawski observes--"This conception of tactics would paralyse the
+offensive, for how can an army advance if it has always to wait till an
+enemy attacks?" After much exercitation the Germans determined to adhere
+to the offensive. In the recent modest language of Baron von der Goltz:
+[Footnote: _The Nation in Arms_, by Lieutenant-Colonel Baron von der
+Goltz. (Allen.)] "Our modern German mode of battle aims at being entirely
+a final struggle, which we conceive of as being inseparable from an
+unsparing offensive. Temporising, waiting, and a calm defensive are very
+unsympathetic to our nature. Everything with us is action. Our strength
+lies in great decisions on the battlefield." Perhaps also the guileless
+Germans were quite alert to the fact that Marshal Niel had shattered the
+French army's tradition of the offensive, and gone counter to the French
+soldier's nature by enjoining the defensive in the latest official
+instructions. Had the Teutons suborned him the Marshal could not have done
+them a better turn.
+
+Their offensive tactics against an enemy unnaturally lashed to the stake
+of the defensive stood the Germans in excellent stead in 1870. On every
+occasion they resorted to the offensive against an enemy in the field;
+strictly refraining, however, from that expedient when it was a fortress
+and not soldiers _en vive force_ that stood in the way. At St. Privat
+their offensive would probably have been worsted if Canrobert had been
+reinforced or even if a supply of ammunition had reached him; and a loss
+there of one-third of the combatants of the Guard Corps without result
+caused them to change for the better the method of their attack. But in
+every battle from Weissenburg to Sedan with the exception of the confused
+_melee_ of Mars-la-Tour, the French, besides being bewildered and
+discouraged, were in inferior strength; after Sedan the French levies in
+the field were scarcely soldiers. There was no fair testing of the
+relative advantages of defence and offence in the Russo-Turkish War of
+1877-78; and so it remains that in an actual and practical sense no firm
+decision has yet been established. All civilised nations are, however,
+assiduously practising the methods of the offensive.
+
+It may nevertheless be anticipated that in future warfare between evenly
+matched combatants the offensive will get the worst of it at the hands of
+the defensive. The word "anticipate" is used in preference to "apprehend,"
+because one's sympathy is naturally for the invaded state unless it has
+been wantonly aggressive and insolent. The invaded army, if the term may
+be used, having familiar knowledge of the terrain will take up a position
+in the fair-way of the invader; affording strong flank _appui_ and a
+far-stretching clear range in front and on flanks. It will throw up
+several lines, or still better, tiers of shallow trenches along its front
+and flanks, with emplacements for artillery and machine guns. The invader
+must attack; he cannot turn the enemy's position and expose his
+communications to that enemy. He takes the offensive, doing so, as is the
+received practice, in front and on a flank. From the outset he will find
+the offensive a sterner ordeal than in the Franco-German War days. He will
+have to break into loose order at a greater distance, because of the
+longer range of small arms, and the further scope, the greater accuracy,
+and the quicker fire of the new artillery. He too possesses those weapons,
+but he cannot use them with so great effect. His field batteries suffer
+from the hostile cannon fire as they move forward to take up a position.
+His infantry cannot fire on the run; when they drop after a rush the aim
+of panting and breathless men cannot be of the best. And their target is
+fairly protected and at least partially hidden. The defenders behind their
+low epaulement do not pant; their marksmen only at first are allowed to
+fire; these make things unpleasant for the massed gunners out yonder, who
+share their attentions with the spraying-out infantry-men. The
+quick-firing cannon of the defence are getting in their work methodically.
+Neither its gunners nor its infantry need be nervous as to expending
+ammunition freely since plenteous supplies are promptly available, a
+convenience which does not infallibly come to either guns or rifles of the
+attack. The Germans report as their experience in the capacity of
+assailants that the rapidity and excitement of the advance, the stir of
+strife, the turmoil, exhilarate the soldiers, and that patriotism and
+fire-discipline in combination enforce a cool steady maintenance of fire;
+that in view of the ominous spectacle of the swift and confident advance,
+under torture of the storm of shell-fire and the hail of bullets which
+they have to endure in immobility, the defenders, previously shaken by the
+assailants' artillery preparation, become nervous, waver, and finally
+break when the cheers of the final concentrated rush strike on their ears.
+That this was scarcely true as regarded French regulars the annals of
+every battle of the Franco-German War up to and including Sedan
+conclusively show. It is true, however, that the French nature is
+intolerant of inactivity and in 1870 suffered under the deprivation of its
+_metier;_ but how often the Germans recoiled from the shelter trenches of
+the Spicheren and gave ground all along the line from St. Privat to the
+Bois de Vaux, men who witnessed those desperate struggles cannot forget
+while they live. Warriors of greater equanimity than the French soldier
+possesses might perhaps stand on the defensive in calm self-confidence
+with simple breech-loaders as their weapons, if simple breech-loaders were
+also weapons of the assailants. But in his magazine rifle the soldier of
+the future can keep the defensive not only with self-confidence, but with
+high elation, for in it he will possess a weapon against which it seems
+improbable that the attack (although armed too with a magazine or
+repeating rifle) can prevail.
+
+The assailants fall fast as their advance pushes forward, thinned down by
+the rifle fire, the mitraille, and the shrapnel of the defence. But they
+are gallant men and while life lasts they will not be denied. The long
+bloody advance is all but over; the survivors of it who have attained thus
+far are lying down getting their wind for the final concentration and
+rush. Meanwhile, since after they once again stand up they will use no
+more rifle fire till they have conquered or are beaten, they are pouring
+forth against the defence their reserve of bullets in or attached to their
+rifle-butts. The defenders take this punishment, like Colonel Quagg, lying
+down, courting the protection of their earth-bank. The hail of the
+assailants' bullets ceases; already the artillery of the attack has
+desisted lest it should injure friend as well as foe. The word runs along
+the line and the clumps of men lying prostrate there out in the open. The
+officers spring to their feet, wave their swords, and cheer loudly. The
+men are up in an instant, and the swift rush focussing toward a point
+begins. The distance to be traversed before the attackers are _aux prises_
+with the defenders is about one hundred and fifty yards.
+
+It is no mere storm of missiles which meets fair in the face those
+charging heroes; no, it is a moving wall of metal against which they rush
+to their ruin. For the infantry of the defence are emptying their
+magazines now at point-blank range. Emptied magazine yields to full one;
+the Maxims are pumping, not bullets, but veritable streams of death, with
+calm, devilish swiftness. The quick-firing guns are spouting radiating
+torrents of case. The attackers are mown down as corn falls, not before
+the sickle but the scythe. Not a man has reached, or can reach, the little
+earth-bank behind which the defenders keep their ground. The attack has
+failed; and failed from no lack of valour, of methodised effort, of
+punctilious compliance with every instruction; but simply because the
+defence--the defence of the future in warfare--has been too strong for the
+attack. One will not occupy space by recounting how in the very nick of
+time the staunch defence flashes out into the counter-offensive; nor need
+one enlarge on the sure results to the invader as the unassailed flank of
+the defence throws forward the shoulder and takes in flank the dislocated
+masses of aggressors.
+
+One or two such experiences will definitively settle the point as to the
+relative advantage of the offensive and the defensive. Soldiers will not
+submit themselves to re-trial on re-trial of a _res judicata_. Grant,
+dogged though he was, had to accept that lesson in the shambles of Cold
+Harbour. For the bravest sane man will rather live than die. No man burns
+to become cannon-fodder. The Turk, who is supposed to court death in
+battle for religious reasons of a somewhat material kind, can run away
+even when the alternative is immediate removal to a Paradise of unlimited
+houris and copious sherbet. There are no braver men than Russian soldiers;
+but going into action against the Turks tried their nerves, not because
+they feared the Turks as antagonists, but because they knew too well that
+a petty wound disabling from retreat meant not alone death but unspeakable
+mutilation before that release.
+
+It is obvious that if, as is here anticipated, the offensive proves
+impossible in the battle of the future, an exaggerated phase of the
+stalemate which Boguslawski so pathetically deprecates will occur. The
+world need not greatly concern itself regarding this issue; the situation
+will almost invariably be in favour of the invaded and will probably
+present itself near his frontier line. He can afford to wait until the
+invader tires of inaction and goes home.
+
+Magazine and machine guns would seem to sound the knell of possible
+employment of cavalry in battle. No matter how dislocated are the infantry
+ridden at so long as they are not quite demoralised, however _ruse_ the
+cavalry leader--however favourable to sudden unexpected onslaught is the
+ground, the quick-firing arms of the future must apparently stall off the
+most enterprising horsemen. Probably if the writer were arguing the point
+with a German, the famous experiences of von Bredow might be adduced in
+bar of this contention. In the combat of Tobitschau in 1866 Bredow led his
+cuirassier regiment straight at three Austrian batteries in action,
+captured the eighteen guns and everybody and everything belonging to them,
+with the loss to himself of but ten men and eight horses. It is true, says
+the honest official account, that the ground favoured the charge and that
+the shells fired by the usually skilled Austrian gunners flew high. But
+during the last 100 yards grape was substituted for shell, and Bredow
+deserved all the credit he got. Still stronger against my argument was
+Bredow's memorable work at Mars-la-Tour, when at the head of six squadrons
+he charged across 1000 yards of open plain, rode over and through two
+separate lines of French infantry, carried a line of cannon numbering nine
+batteries, rode 1000 yards farther into the very heart of the French army,
+and came back with a loss of not quite one half of his strength. The
+_Todtenritt_, as the Germans call it, was a wonderful exploit, a second
+Balaclava charge and a bloodier one; and there was this distinction that
+it had a purpose and that that purpose was achieved. For Bredow's charge
+in effect wrecked France. It arrested the French advance which would else
+have swept Alvensleben aside; and to its timely effect is traceable the
+sequence of events that ended in the capitulation of Metz. The fact that
+although from the beginning of his charge until he struck the front of the
+first French infantry line Bredow took the rifle-fire of a whole French
+division yet did not lose above fifty men, has been a notable weapon in
+the hands of those who argue that good cavalry can charge home on unshaken
+infantry. But never more will French infantry shoot from the hip as
+Lafont's conscripts at Mars-la-Tour shot in the vague direction of
+Bredow's squadrons. French cavalry never got within yards of German
+infantry even in loose order; and the magazine or repeating rifle held
+reasonably straight will stop the most thrusting cavalry that ever heard
+the "charge" sound.
+
+Fortifications of the future will differ curiously from those of the
+present. The latter, with their towering scarps, their massive
+_enceintes_, their "portentous ditches," will remain as monuments of a
+vicious system, except where, as in the cases of Vienna, Cologne, Sedan,
+etc., the dwellers in the cities they encircle shall procure their
+demolition for the sake of elbow-room, or until modern howitzer shells or
+missiles charged with high explosives shall pulverise their naked expanses
+of masonry. In the fortification of the future the defender will no longer
+be "enclosed in the toils imposed by the engineer" with the inevitable
+disabilities they entail, while the besieger enjoys the advantage of free
+mobility. Plevna has killed the castellated fortress. With free
+communications the full results attainable by fortress artillery
+intelligently used, will at length come to be realised. Unless in rare
+cases and for exceptional reasons towns will gradually cease to be
+fortified even by an encirclement of detached forts. Where the latter are
+availed of, practical experience will infallibly condemn the expensive and
+complex cupola-surmounted construction of which General Brialmont is the
+champion. "A work," trenchantly argues Major Sydenham Clarke, "designed on
+the principles of the Roman catacombs is suited only for the dead, in a
+literal or in a military sense. The vast system of subterranean chambers
+and passages is capable of entombing a brigade, but denies all necessary
+tactical freedom of action to a battalion."
+
+The fortress of the future will probably be in the nature of an intrenched
+camp. The interior of the position will provide casemate accommodation for
+an army of considerable strength. Its defences will consist of a circle at
+intervals of about 2500 yards, of permanent redoubts which shall be
+invisible at moderate ranges for infantry and machine guns, the garrison
+of each redoubt to consist of a half battalion. Such a work was in 1886
+constructed at Chatham in thirty-one working days, to hold a garrison of
+200 men housed in casemates built in concrete, for less than L3000, and
+experiments proved that it would require a "prohibitory expenditure" of
+ammunition to cause it serious damage by artillery fire. The supporting
+defensive armament will consist of a powerful artillery rendered mobile by
+means of tram-roads, this defence supplemented by a field force carrying
+on outpost duties and manning field works guarding the intervals between
+the redoubts. Advanced defences and exterior obstacles of as formidable a
+character as possible will be the complement of what in effect will be an
+immensely elaborated Plevna, which, properly armed and fully organised,
+will "fulfil all the requirements of defence" while possessing important
+potentialities of offence.
+
+An illustration is pertinent of the pre-eminent utility of such fortified
+and strongly held positions, of whose characteristics the above is the
+merest outline. In the event of a future Franco-German War, the immensely
+expensive cordon of fortresses with which the French have lined their
+frontier, efficiently equipped, duly garrisoned and well commanded, will
+unquestionably present a serious obstacle to the invading armies. The
+Germans talk of _vive force_--shell heavily and then storm; the latter
+resort one for which they have in the past displayed no predilection.
+Whether by storm or interpenetration, they will probably break the cordon,
+but they cannot advance without masking all the principal fortresses. This
+will employ a considerable portion of their strength, and the invasion
+will proceed in less force, which will be an advantage to the defenders.
+But if instead of those multitudinous fortresses the French had
+constructed, say, three such intrenched-camp fortresses as have been
+sketched, each quartering 50,000 men, it would appear that they would have
+done better for themselves at far less cost. Each intrenched position
+containing a field army 50,000 strong would engross a beleaguering host of
+100,000 men. The positions of the type outlined are claimed to be
+impregnable; they could contain supplies and munitions for at least a
+year, detaining around them for that period 300,000 of the enemy. No
+European power except Russia has soldiers enough to spare so long such a
+mass of troops standing fast, and simultaneously to prosecute the invasion
+of a first-rate power with approximately equal numbers. France at the cost
+of 150,000 men would be holding supine on her frontier double the number
+of Germans--surely no disadvantageous transaction.
+
+In conclusion, it may be worth while to point out that the current
+impression that the maintenance by states of "bloated armaments" is a keen
+incentive to war, is fallacious. How often do we hear, "There must be a
+big war soon; the powers cannot long stand the cost of standing looking at
+each other, all armed to the teeth!" War is infinitely more costly than
+the costliest preparedness. But this is not all. The country gentleman for
+once in a way brings his family to town for the season, pledging himself
+privily to strict economy when the term of dissipation ends, in order to
+restore the balance. But for a State, as the sequel to a season of war
+there is no such potentiality of economy. Rather there is the grim
+certainty of heavier and yet heavier expenditure after the war, in the
+still obligatory character of the armed man keeping his house. Therefore
+it is that potentates are reluctant to draw the sword, and rather bear the
+ills they have than fly to other evils inevitably worse still. Whether the
+final outcome will be universal national bankruptcy or the millennium, is
+a problem as yet insoluble.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
+
+[Footnote: _Bandobast_ is an Indian word, which, like many others, has
+been all but formally incorporated into Anglo-Indian English. The meaning
+is, plan, scheme, organised arrangement.]
+
+
+George Martell was an indigo-planter in Western Tirhoot, a fine tract of
+Bengal stretching from the Ganges to the Nepaul Terai, and roughly bounded
+on the west by the Gunduck, on the east by the Kussi. Planter-life in
+Tirhoot is very pleasant to a man in robust health, who possesses some
+resources within himself. In many respects it more resembles active rural
+life at home than does any other life led by Anglo-Indians. The joys of a
+planter's life have been enthusiastically sung by a planter-poet; and the
+frank genial hospitality of the planter's bungalow stands out pre-eminent,
+even amidst the universal hospitality of India. The planter's bungalow is
+open to all comers. The established formula for the arriving stranger is
+first to call for brandy-and-soda, then to order a bath, and finally to
+inquire the name of the occupant his host. The laws of hospitality are as
+the laws of the Medes and Persians. Once in the famine time a stranger in
+a palki reached a planter's bungalow in an outlying district, and sent in
+his card. The planter sent him out a drink but did not bid him enter. The
+stranger remained in the veranda till sundown, had another drink, and then
+went on his way. This breach of statute law became known. There was much
+excuse for the planter, for the traveller was a missionary and in other
+respects was a _persona ingrata_. But the credit of planterhood was at
+stake; and so strong was the force of public opinion that the planter who
+had been a defaulter in hospitality had to abandon the profession and quit
+the district. It was on this occasion laid down as a guiding illustration,
+that if Judas Iscariot, when travelling around looking for an eligible
+tree on which to hang himself, had claimed the hospitality of a planter's
+bungalow, the dweller therein would have been bound to accord him that
+hospitality. Not even newspaper correspondents were to be sent empty away.
+
+The indigo-planter is "up in the morning early" and away at a swinging
+canter on his "waler" nag, out into the _dahaut_ to visit the _zillahs_ on
+which his crop is growing. He returns when the sun is getting high with a
+famous appetite for a breakfast which is more than half luncheon. After
+his siesta he may look in upon a neighbour--all Tirhoot are neighbours and
+within a radius of thirty miles is considered next door. He would ride
+that distance any day to spend an hour or two in a house brightened by the
+presence of womanhood. His anxious period is _mahaye_ time, when the
+indigo is in the vats and the quantity and quality of the yield depend so
+much on care and skill. But except at _mahaye_ time he is always ready for
+relaxation, whether it takes the form of a polo match, a pig-sticking
+expedition, or a race-meeting at Sonepoor, Muzzufferpore, or Chumparun.
+These race-meetings last for several days on end, there being racing and
+hunting on alternate days with a ball every second night. It used to be
+worth a journey to India to see Jimmy Macleod cram a cross-grained "waler"
+over an awkward fence, and squeeze the last ounce out of the brute in the
+run home on the flat. The Tirhoot ladies are in all respects charming; and
+it must remain a moot point with the discriminating observer whether they
+are more delightful in the genial home-circles of which they are the
+centres and ornaments, or in the more exciting stir and whirl of the
+ballroom. After every gathering hecatombs of slain male victims mournfully
+cumber the ground; and one all-conquering fair one, now herself conquered
+by matrimony and motherhood, wrung from those her charms had blighted the
+title of "the destroying angel."
+
+George Martell was an honest sort of a clod. He stood well with the ryots,
+and the mark of his factory always brought out keen bidding at Thomas's
+auction-mart in Mission Row and was held in respect in the Commission Sale
+Rooms in Mincing Lane. He was a good shikaree and could hold his own
+either at polo or at billiards; but being somewhat shy and not a little
+clumsy he did not frequent race-balls nor throw himself in the way of
+"destroying angels." He had been over a dozen years in the district and
+had not been known to propose once, so that he had come to be set down as
+a misogynist. Among his chief allies was a neighbouring planter called
+Mactavish. Mactavish in some incomprehensible way--he being a gaunt,
+uncouth, bristly Scot, whose Highland accent was as strong as the whisky
+with which he had coloured his nose--had contrived to woo and win a bonny,
+baby-faced girl, the ripple of whose laughter and the dancing sheen of
+whose auburn curls filled the Mactavish bungalow with glad bright
+sunshine. When Mac first brought home this winsome fairy Martell had
+sheepishly shunned the residence of his friend, till one fine morning when
+he came in from the _dahaut_ he found Minnie Mactavish quite at home among
+the pipes, empty soda-water bottles, and broken chairs that constituted
+the principal articles of furniture in his bachelor sitting-room. Minnie
+had come to fetch her husband's friend and in her dainty imperious way
+would take no denial. So George had his bath, got a fresh horse saddled,
+nearly chucked Minnie over the other side as he clumsily helped her to
+mount her pony, and rode away with her a willing if somewhat clownish
+captive. Arriving at the bungalow Mactavish, honest George was bewildered
+by the transformation it had undergone. Flowers were where the spirit-case
+used to stand. There was a drawing-room with actually a piano in it; the
+_World_ lay on the table instead of the _Sporting Times_, and the servants
+wore a quiet, tasteful livery. Mac himself had been trimmed and titivated
+almost out of recognition. He who had been wont to lounge half the day in
+his _pyjamas_ was now almost smartly dressed; his beard was cropped, and
+his bristly poll brushed and oiled. If George had a weak spot in him it
+was for a simple song well sung. Mrs. Mac, accompanying herself on the
+piano, sang to him "The Land o' the Leal" and brewed him a mild peg with
+her own fair hands. George by bedtime did not know whether he was on his
+head or his heels.
+
+He lay awake all night thinking over all he had seen. Mactavish now was
+clearly a better man than ever he had been before. He had told George he
+was living more cheaply as a married man than ever he had done as a
+bachelor; and in the matter of happiness there was no comparison. George
+rose early to go home; but early as it was Mrs. Mac was up too, and
+arrayed in a killing morning _neglige_ that fairly made poor George
+stammer, gave him his _chota hazri_ and stroked his horse's head as he
+mounted. About half-way home George suddenly shouted, "D----d if I don't
+do it too!" and brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack that set
+his horse buck-jumping.
+
+In effect, George Martell had determined to get married. But where to find
+a Mrs. Martell? Mrs. Mactavish had told him she had no sisters and that
+her only relative was a maiden grand-aunt, whom George thought must be a
+little too old to marry unless in the last resort. If he took the field at
+the next race-meeting the fellows would chaff the life out of him; and
+besides, he scarcely felt himself man enough to face a "destroying angel."
+As he pondered, riding slowly homeward, a thought occurred to him. When he
+had been at home a dozen years ago his two girl-sisters had been at
+school, and their great playmate had been a girl of eleven, by name Laura
+Davidson. Laura was a pretty child. He had taken occasional notice of her;
+had once kissed her after having been severely scratched in the struggle;
+and had taken her and his sisters to the local theatre. What if Laura
+Davidson--now some three-and-twenty--were still single? What if she were
+pretty and nice? He remembered that the colour of her hair was not unlike
+Mrs. Mac's, and was in ringlets too. And what if she were willing to come
+out and make lonely George Martell as happy a man as was that lucky old
+Mac?
+
+It was mail-day, and George, taking time by the forelock, sat down and
+wrote to his sister what had come into his head. By the return mail he had
+her reply: Laura Davidson was single; she was nice; she was pretty; she
+had fair ringlets; she had a hazy memory of George and the kissing
+episode, and was willing to come out and marry him and try to make him
+happy. But she could not well come alone; could George suggest any method
+of _chaperonage_ on the voyage?
+
+In the district of Champarun, which in essentials is part of Tirhoot, lies
+the quaint little cavalry cantonment of Segowlie. It is the last relic of
+the old Nepaul war, which caused the erection of a chain of cantonments
+along the frontier all of which save Segowlie, are now abandoned. There is
+just room for one native cavalry regiment at Segowlie, and the soldiers
+like the station because of excellent sport and the good comradeship of
+the planters. At Segowlie at the time I am writing of there happened to be
+quartered a certain Major Freeze, whose wife, after a couple of years at
+home, was about returning to India. George had some acquaintance with the
+Major and a far-off profound respect for his wife, who was an admirable
+and stately lady. It occurred to him to try whether it could not be
+managed that she should bring out the future Mrs. Martell. He saw the
+Major, who was only too delighted at the prospect of a new lady in the
+district, and the affair was soon arranged. Mrs. Freeze wrote that she and
+Miss Davidson were leaving by such-and-such a mail; and knowing that
+Martell was rather lumpy when a lady was in the case, she thoughtfully
+suggested that he should go down to Bombay and meet them so as to get over
+the initial awkwardness by making himself useful and gain his intended's
+respect by swearing at the niggers.
+
+All went well. But George Martell was not quite his own master, he was
+only part of a "concern" and was bound to do his best for his partners. It
+happened, just about the time the P. and O. steamer was due at Bombay,
+that the most ticklish period of the indigo-planters' year was upon
+Martell. The juice had begun to flow from the vats. He had no assistant
+and he did not dare to leave the work, so he telegraphed to Bombay to
+explain this to Mrs. Freeze, and added that he would meet her and her
+companion at Bankipore where their long railway journey would end. Miss
+Davidson did not understand much about the absorbing crisis of indigo
+production, and she had a spice of romance in her composition; so that
+poor Martell did not rise in her estimation by his default at Bombay. When
+the ladies reached Bankipore there was still no Martell, but only a
+_chuprassee_ with a note to say that the juice was still running, and that
+Martell sahib could not leave the factory but would be waiting for them at
+Segowlie. At this even Mrs. Freeze almost lost her temper.
+
+They have a "State Railway" now in Tirhoot, but at the time I am writing
+of there was only one _pukha_ road in all the district. The ladies
+travelled in palanquins, or palkis, as they are more familiarly called. It
+is a long journey from Bankipore to Segowlie, and three nights were spent
+in travelling. Bluff old Minden Wilson stood on the bank above the ghat to
+welcome Mrs. Freeze across the Ganges. One day was spent at young Spudd's
+factory, the second at the residence of a genial planter rejoicing in the
+quaint name of Hong Kong Scribbens; on the third morning they reached
+Segowlie. But still no Martell; only a _chit_ to say that that plaguy
+juice was still running but that he hoped to be able to drive over to
+dinner. Miss Davidson went to bed in a huff; and Major Freeze was
+temporarily inclined to think that her home-trip had impaired his good
+lady's amiability of character.
+
+Martell did turn up at dinner-time. But he was hardly a man at any time to
+create much of an impression, and on this occasion he appeared to
+exceptional disadvantage. He was stutteringly nervous; and there were some
+evidences that he had been ineffectually striving to mitigate his
+nervousness by the consumption of his namesake. He wore a new dress-coat
+which had not the remotest pretensions to fit him, and the bear's-grease
+which he had freely used gave unpleasant token of rancidity. The dinner
+was an unsatisfactory performance. Miss Davidson was extremely
+_distraite_, while Martell became more and more nervous as the meal
+progressed and was manifestly relieved when the ladies retired. Soon after
+they had done so the Major was sent for from the drawing-room. He found
+Miss Davidson sobbing on his wife's bosom. He asked what was the matter.
+The girl, with many sobbing interruptions, gasped out--
+
+"He's the wrong man! O Heavens, I never saw _him_ before! The man I
+remember who gave me sweets when I was a child had black hair; _he_ has
+red! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, please send that man away and let me go
+home!"
+
+And then Miss Davidson went off into hysterics.
+
+Here was a pretty state of matters! The Major and his wife could not see
+their way clear at all. Consultation followed consultation, with visits on
+the Major's part to poor Martell in the dining-room irregularly
+interspersed. It was almost morning before affairs arranged themselves
+after a fashion. The new basis agreed upon was that the previously
+existing arrangement should be regarded as dead, and that a courtship
+between Martell and Miss Davidson should be commenced _de novo_--he to do
+his best to recommend himself to the lady's affections, she to learn to
+love him if she could, red hair and all. And so George went home, and the
+Segowlie household went to bed.
+
+Poor George at the best had a very poor idea of courting acceptably; and
+surely no man was more heavily handicapped in the enterprise prescribed
+him. He had to court to order, and to combat, besides, both the bad
+impression made at starting and the misfortune of his red hair. The poor
+fellow did his best. He used to come and sit in Mrs. Freeze's drawing-room
+hours on end, glowering at Miss Davidson in a silence broken by spasmodic
+efforts at forced talk. He brought the girl presents, gave her a horse,
+and begged of her to ride with him. But the great stupid fellow had not
+thought of a habit and the girl felt a delicacy in telling him that she
+had not one. So the horse ate his head off in idleness, and George's heart
+went farther and farther down in the direction of his boots. He had so
+bothered Mrs. Freeze that she had washed her hands of him, and had bidden
+him worry it out on his own line.
+
+In less than a month the crisis came. Miss Davidson could not bring
+herself to think of poor George as affording the makings of a husband. She
+told Mrs. Freeze so, and begged, for kindness sake, that the Major would
+break this her determination to Mr. Martell and desire him to give the
+thing up as hopeless. The Major thought the best course to pursue was to
+write to George to this effect. Next morning in the small hours the poor
+fellow turned up in the Segowlie veranda in a terribly bad way. He would
+not accept his fate at second-hand in this fashion; he must see Miss
+Davidson and try to move her to be kind to him. In the end there was an
+interview between them, from which George emerged quiet but very pale. His
+notable matrimonial bandobast had proved the deadest of failures; and the
+poor fellow's lip trembled as he thought of Mactavish's happy home and his
+own forlorn bungalow.
+
+But although he had red hair and did not know in the least what to do with
+his feet, George Martell was a gentleman. The lady continuing anxious to
+go home, he insisted on his right to pay her return passage as he had done
+her passage outward, urging rather ruefully that, having taken a shot at
+happiness and having missed fire, he must be the sole sufferer. It is a
+little surprising that this uncouth chivalry did not melt the lady, but
+she was obdurate, although she let him have his way about the passage
+money. So in the company of an officer's wife going home Miss Davidson
+quitted Segowlie and journeyed to Bombay. Poor old George, with a very
+sore heart, was bent on seeing the last of her before settling down again
+to the old dull bachelor life. He dodged down to Bombay in the same train,
+travelling second class that he might not annoy the girl by a chance
+meeting; and stood with a sad face leaning on the rail of the Apollo
+Bunder, as he watched the ship containing his miscarried venture steam out
+of Bombay harbour on its voyage to England.
+
+The same night he set out on his return to his plantation. At near
+midnight the mail-train from Bombay reaches Eginpoora, at the head of the
+famous Bhore ghat. Some refreshment is ordinarily procurable there, but it
+is not much of a place. George Martell had had a drink, and was sauntering
+moodily up and down the platform waiting for the whistle to sound. As he
+passed the second class compartment reserved for ladies he heard a low,
+tremulous voice exclaim, "Oh, if I could only make them understand that
+I'd give the world for a cup of tea!" George, if uncouth, was a practical
+man. His prompt voice rang out, "_Qui hye, ek pyala chah lao!_" Promptly
+came the refreshment-room _khitmutghar_, hurrying with the tea; and
+George, taking off his hat, begged to know whether he could be of any
+further service.
+
+It was a very pleasant face that looked out on him in the moonlight, and
+there was more than mere conventionality in the accents in which the
+pleasant voice acknowledged his opportune courtesy. Insensibly George and
+the lady drifted into conversation. She was very lonely, poor thing; a
+friendless girl coming out to be governess in the family of a _burra
+sahib_ at Chupra. Now Chupra is only across the Gunduck from Tirhoot, so
+George told his new acquaintance they were both going to nearly the same
+place, and professed his cordial willingness to assist her on the journey.
+He did so, escorting her right into Chupra before he set his face homeward;
+and he thenceforth got into a habit of visiting Chupra very frequently.
+Need I prolong the story? I happened to be in Bankipore when the Prince of
+Wales visited that centre of famine-wallahs. It fell to my pleasant lot to
+take Mrs. Martell in to dinner at the Commissioner's hospitable table.
+Mrs. Mactavish was sitting opposite; and I went back to my bedroom-tent in
+the compound without having made up my mind whether she or Mrs. Martell
+was the prettier and the nicer. So you see George Martell did not make
+quite so bad a _bandobast_ after all.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY--1879
+
+
+It was in Cawnpore on my way up country, during the Prince of Wales's tour
+through India, that there were shown to me some curious and interesting
+mementoes of the siege of Lucknow. The friend in whose possession they
+were was near Havelock as he sat before his tent in the short Indian
+twilight, a short time before the advance on Lucknow made by him and
+Outram in September 1857. Through the gloom of the falling twilight there
+came marching towards the General a file of Highlanders escorting a tall,
+gaunt Oude man, on whose swarthy face the lamplight struck as he salaamed
+before the General Lord Sahib. Then he extracted from his ear a minute
+section of quill sealed at both ends. The General's son opened the strange
+envelope forwarded by a postal service so hazardous, and unrolled a morsel
+of paper which seemed to be covered with cabalistic signs. The missive had
+been sent out from Lucknow by Brigadier Inglis, the commander of the
+beleaguered garrison of the Lucknow Residency, and its bearer was the
+stanch and daring scout, Ungud. As I write the originals of this
+communication and of others which came in the same way lie before me; and
+two of those missives in their curious mixture of characters may be found
+of interest to readers of to-day.
+
+
+LUKHNOW, _Septr. 16th._ (Recd. 19th.)
+
+MY DEAR GENERAL--The last letter I recd. from you was dated 24th ult'o,
+since when I have rec'd [Greek: no neus] whatever from y'r [Greek: kamp]
+or of y'r [Greek: movements] but am now [Greek: dailae expekting] to
+receive [Greek: inteligense] of y'r [Greek: advanse] in this [Greek:
+direktion]. Since the date of my last letter the enemy have continued to
+persevere unceasingly in their efforts against this position & the firing
+has never ceased day or night; they have about [Greek: sixten] guns in
+position round us--many of them 18 p'rs. On 5th inst. they made a very
+determined attack after exploding 2 mines and [Greek: suksaeded] for a
+[Greek: moment] in [Greek: almost geting] into one of our [Greek:
+bateries], but were eventually repulsed on all sides with heavy loss.
+Since the above date they have kept up a cannonade & musketry fire,
+occasionally throwing in a shell or two. My [Greek: waeklae loses]
+continue very [Greek: hevae] both in [Greek: ophisers] & [Greek: men]. I
+shall be quite out of [Greek: rum] for the [Greek: men] in [Greek: eit
+dais], but we have been [Greek: living] on [Greek: redused rations] & I
+hope to be [Greek: able] to [Greek: get] on [Greek: til] about [Greek:
+phirst prox]. If you have not [Greek: relieved] us by [Greek: then] we
+shall have [Greek: no meat lepht], as I must [Greek: kaep] some few [Greek:
+buloks] to [Greek: move] my [Greek: guns] about the [Greek: positions].
+As it is I have had to [Greek: kil] almost all the [Greek: gun buloks],
+for my men c'd not [Greek: perphorm] the [Greek: ard work without animal
+phood]. There is a report, tho' from a source on which I cannot implicitly
+rely, that [Greek: mansing] has just [Greek: arived] in [Greek: luknow]
+havg. [Greek: lepht part] of his [Greek: phors outside] the [Greek:
+sitae]. It is said that [Greek: he] is in [Greek: our interest] and that
+[Greek: he] has [Greek: taken] the [Greek: above step] at the [Greek:
+instigation] of B[Greek: riti]sh [Greek: athoritae]. But I cannot say
+whether [Greek: su]ch [Greek: be the kase], as all I have to go upon is
+[Greek: bazar rumors]. I am [Greek: most anxious] to [Greek: hear] of yr.
+[Greek: advanse] to [Greek: enable mae] to [Greek: rae-asure our native
+soldiers]. [Footnote: The reader will observe that the words are English,
+though the characters are Greek.]--Yours truly,
+
+J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_,
+
+H.M. 32'd Reg't.
+
+To Brig'r Havelock, Commg. Relieving Force.
+
+
+The other missive is of an earlier date, and was brought out in the same
+manner as the first.
+
+
+_August 16_. (Recd. 23rd August.)
+
+MY DEAR GENERAL--A note from Colonel Tytler to Mr. Gubbins reached last
+night, dated "Mungalwar, 4th instant," the latter part of which is as
+follows:--"You must [Greek: aid] us in [Greek: everae] way even to cutting
+y'r way out if we [Greek: kant phorse our] way in. We have [Greek: onlae a
+small phorse]." This has [Greek: kaused mae] much [Greek: uneasiness], as
+it is quite [Greek: imposible] with my [Greek: weak] & [Greek: shatered
+phorse] that I can [Greek: leave] my [Greek: dephenses]. You must bear in
+mind how I am [Greek: hampered], that I have upwards of [Greek: one undred
+& twentae-sik wounded], and at the least [Greek: two undred & twenae
+women], & about [Greek: two undred] & [Greek: thirtae children], & no
+[Greek: kariage] of any [Greek: deskription], besides [Greek: sakriphising
+twentae-thrae laks] of [Greek: treasure] & about [Greek: thirtae guns] of
+[Greek: sorts]. In consequence of the news rec'd I shall soon put the
+[Greek: phorse] on [Greek: alph rations], unless I [Greek: hear phrom]
+you. [Greek: Our provisions] will [Greek: last] us [Greek: then] till
+[Greek: about] the [Greek: tenth] [Greek: september]. If you [Greek: hope]
+to [Greek: save this no time must] be [Greek: lost] in pushing forward. We
+are [Greek: dailae] being [Greek: ataked] by the [Greek: enemae], who are
+within a few yards of our [Greek: dephenses]. Their [Greek: mines] have
+[Greek: alreadae weakened our post], & I have [Greek: everae] [Greek:
+reason] to [Greek: believe] that are carrying on [Greek: others]. Their
+[Greek: aeteen] [Greeks: pounders] are within 150 yards of [Greek: some
+oph our bateries], & [Greek: phrom] their [Greek: positions & [Greek: our
+inabilitae] to [Greek: phorm working] [Greek: parties], we [Greek: kanot
+repli] to [Greek: them. Thae damage done ourlae] is very [Greek: great].
+My [Greek: strength] now in [Greek: europeans] is [Greek: thrae undred] &
+[Greek: phiphtae], & about [Greek: thrae hundred natives], & the men
+[Greek: dreadphulae] [Greek: harassed], & owing to [Greek: part] of the
+[Greek: residensae] having been [Greek: brought down] by [Greek: round
+shot] are without [Greek: shelter]. Our [Greek: native] [Greek: phorse]
+hav'g been [Greek: asured] on Col. Tytler's authority of y'r [Greek: near]
+[Greek: aproach some twentae phive dais ago are naturallae losing
+konphidense], [Greek: and iph thae leave] us I do not [Greek: sae how the
+dephenses] are to be [Greek: manned]. Did you [Greek: reseive a letter &
+plan phrom] the [Greek: man] [Greek: Ungud]?--Kindly answer this
+question.--Yours truly,
+
+J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_.
+
+Cawnpore is an engrossing theme, and Bithoor alone would furnish material
+for an article; but my present subject is Lucknow, and I must get to it.
+There is a railway now to Lucknow from Cawnpore, but the railway bridge
+across the Ganges is not yet finished and passengers must cross by the
+bridge of boats to the Oude side. Behind me, as the gharry jingles over
+the wooden platform, is the fort which Havelock began, which Neill
+completed, and in which Windham found the shelter which alone saved him
+from utter defeat. Before me is the low Gangetic shore, with the dumpy
+sand-hills gradually rising from the water's edge. A few years ago there
+used to ride at the head of that noble regiment the 78th Highlanders, a
+smooth-faced, gaunt, long-legged, stooping officer on an old white horse.
+The Colonel had a voice like a girl and his men irreverently called him
+the "old squeaker"; but although you never heard him talk of his deeds he
+had a habit of going quietly and steadily to the front, taking fighting
+and hardship philosophically as part of the day's work. Those sand-banks
+were once the scene of some quiet, unsensational heroism of his. He
+commanded the two companies of Highlanders whom Havelock threw on the
+unknown shore as the vanguard of his advance into Oude. No prior
+reconnaissance was possible. Oude swarmed with an armed and hostile
+population. The chances were that an army was hovering but a little way
+inland, waiting to attack the head of the column on landing. But it was
+necessary to risk all contingencies, and Mackenzie accepted the service as
+he might have done an invitation to a glass of grog. In the dead of the
+night the boats stood across with the little forlorn hope with which
+Havelock essayed to grapple on to Oude. Landing in the rain and darkness,
+it was Mackenzie's task to grope for an enemy if there should be one in
+his vicinity. There was not; but for four-and-twenty hours his little band
+hung on to the Oude bank as it were by their eyelids, detached,
+unsupported, and wholly charged with the taking care of themselves until
+it was possible to send a reinforcement. The charge of this vague,
+uncertain, tentative enterprise, fraught with risks so imminent and so
+vast, required a cool, steady-balanced courage of no common order.
+
+"Onao!" shouts the conductor of the train at the first station from
+Cawnpore, and we look out on a few railway bungalows and a large native
+village apparently in a ruinous state. All this journey is studded with
+battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to make
+a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically Private
+Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the hesitation of
+his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the mutineers. We jog on
+very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to India in point of
+slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at home; but every yard
+of the ground is interesting. Along that high road passed in long,
+strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde brought away from
+Lucknow--the civilians, the women, the children, and the wounded of the
+immortal garrison. That swell beyond the mango trees under which the _nhil
+gau_ are feeding, is Mungalwar, Havelock's menacing position. No wonder
+though the outskirts of this town on the high road present a ruined
+appearance. It is Busseerutgunge, the scene of three of Havelock's battles
+and victories, fought and won in a single fortnight. We pass Bunnee, where
+Havelock and Outram tramping on to the relief, fired a royal salute in the
+hope that the sound of it might reach to the Residency and cheer the
+hearts of its garrison. And now we are on the platform of the Lucknow
+station which has more of an English look about it than have most Indian
+stations. There is a bookstall, although it is not one of Smith's; and
+there are lots of English faces in the crowd waiting the arrival of the
+train. The natives, one sees at a glance, are of very different physique
+from the people of Bengal. The Oude man is tall, square-shouldered, and
+upright; he has more hair on his face than has the Bengali, and his
+carriage is that of a free man. The railway station of Lucknow is flanked
+by two earthwork fortifications of considerable pretensions.
+
+Lucknow is so full of interest and the objects of interest are so widely
+spread that one is in doubt where to begin the pilgrimage. But the
+Alumbagh is on the railway side of the canal and therefore nearest; and I
+drive directly to it before going into the town. From the station the road
+to the Alumbagh turns sharp to the left and the two miles' drive is
+through beautiful groves and gardens. Then the plain opens up and there is
+the detached temple which so long was one of Outram's outlying pickets;
+and to the left of it the square-walled enclosure of the Alumbagh itself
+with the four corners flanked by earthen bastions. The top of the wall is
+everywhere roughly crenelated for musketry fire, and on two of its faces
+there are countless tokens that it has been the target for round shot and
+bullets. The Alumbagh in the pre-Mutiny period was a pleasure-garden of
+one of the princes of Oude. The enclosed park contained a summer palace
+and all the surroundings were pretty and tasteful. It was for the
+possession of the Alumbagh that Havelock fought his last battle before the
+relief; here it was where he left his baggage and went in; here it was
+that Clyde halted to organise the turning movement which achieved the
+second relief. Hither were brought from the Dilkoosha the women and
+children of the garrison prior to starting on the march for Cawnpore; here
+Outram lay threatening Lucknow from Clyde's relief until the latter's
+ultimate capture of the city. But these occurrences contribute but
+trivially to the interest of the Alumbagh in comparison with the
+circumstance that within its enclosure is the grave of Havelock. We enter
+the great enclosure under the lofty arch of the castellated gateway. From
+this a straight avenue bordered by arbor vitae trees, conducts to a square
+plot of ground enclosed by low posts and chains. Inside this there is a
+little garden the plants of which a native gardener is watering as we open
+the wicket. From the centre of the little garden there rises a shapely
+obelisk on a square pedestal and on one side of the pedestal is a long
+inscription. "Here lie," it begins, "the mortal remains of Henry
+Havelock;" and so, methinks, it might have ended. There is needed no
+prolix biographical inscription to tell the reverent pilgrim of the deeds
+of the dead man by whose grave he stands--so long as history lives, so
+long does it suffice to know that "here lie the mortal remains of Henry
+Havelock"--and the text and verse of poetry grate on one as redundancies.
+He sickened two days before the evacuation of the Residency and died on
+the morning of the 24th of November in his dooly in a tent of the camp at
+the Dilkoosha. The life went out of him just as the march began, and his
+soldiers conveyed with them, on the litter on which he had expired, the
+mortal remains of the chief who had so often led them on to victory.
+
+On the following morning they buried him here in the Alumbagh, under the
+tree which still spreads its branches over the little garden in which he
+lies. There stood around the grave-mouth Colin Campbell and the chivalrous
+Outram, and stanch old Walter Hamilton, and the ever-ready Fraser Tytler;
+and the "boy Harry" to whom the campaign had brought the gain of fame and
+the loss of a father; and the devoted Harwood with "his heart in the
+coffin there with Caesar;" and the heroic William Peel; and that "colossal
+red Celt," the noble, ill-fated Adrian Hope, sacrificed afterwards to
+incompetent obstinacy. Behind stood in a wide circle the soldiers of the
+Ross-shire Buffs and the "Blue Caps" who had served the dead chief so
+stanchly, and had gathered here now, with many a memory of his ready
+praise of valour and his indefatigable regard for the comfort of his men,
+stirring in their war-worn hearts--
+
+  Guarded to a soldier's grave
+  By the bravest of the brave,
+  He hath gained a nobler tomb
+  Than in old cathedral gloom.
+  Nobler mourners paid the rite,
+  Than the crowd that craves a sight;
+  England's banners o'er him waved,
+  Dead he keeps the name he saved.
+
+The burial-place was being temporarily abandoned, and as the rebels
+desecrated all the graves they could discover it was necessary to
+obliterate as much as possible the tokens of the interment. A big "H" was
+carved into the bark of the tree and a small tin plate fastened to its
+trunk, to guide to the subsequent investigation of the spot. Dr. Russell
+tells us that when he visited the Alumbagh before his return home after
+the mutiny in Oude was stamped out, he found the hero's grave a muddy
+trench near the foot of a tree which bore the mark of a round shot and had
+carved into its bark the letter "H." The tree is here still and the dent
+of the round shot, and faintly too is to be discerned the carved letter
+but the bark around it seems to have been whittled away, perhaps by the
+sacrilegious knives of relic-seeking visitors. There is the grave of a
+young lieutenant in a corner of the little garden and a few private
+soldiers lie hard by.
+
+I turn my face now toward the Charbagh bridge, following the route taken
+by Havelock's force on the 25th of September--the memorable day of the
+relief. There is the field where, as at a table in the open air Havelock
+and Outram were studying a map, a round shot from the Sepoy battery by the
+Yellow House ricochetted between them. There is the spot where stood the
+Yellow House itself, whence after a desperate struggle Maude's
+artillerymen drove the Sepoy garrison and its guns. Presently with a sweep
+the road comes into a direct line with the Charbagh bridge over the canal.
+Now there is not a house in the vicinity; the Charbagh garden has been
+thrown into the plain and the steep banks of the canal are perfectly
+naked. But then the scene was very different. On the Lucknow side the
+native city came close up to the bridge and lined the canal. The tall
+houses to right and left of the bridge on the Lucknow side were full of
+men with firearms. At that end of the bridge there was a regular
+overlapping breastwork, and behind it rose an earthwork battery solidly
+constructed and armed with five guns, one a 42-pounder, all crammed to the
+muzzle with grape. Let us sit down on the parapet and try to realise the
+scene. Outram with the 78th has made a detour to the right through the
+Charbagh garden to clear it of the enemy, and, gaining the canal bank, to
+bring a flanking fire to bear on its defenders. There is only room for two
+of Maude's guns; and there they stand out in the open on the road trying
+to answer the fire of the rebel battery. Thrown forward along the bank to
+the left of the bridge is a company of the Madras Fusiliers under Arnold,
+lying down and returning the musketry fire from the houses on the other
+side. Maude's guns are forward in the straight throat of the road where it
+leads on to the bridge close by, but round the bend under cover of the
+wall the Madras Fusiliers are lying down. In a bay of the wall of the
+Charbagh enclosure General Neill is standing waiting for the effect of
+Outram's flank movement to develop, and young Havelock, mounted, is on the
+other side of the road somewhat forward. Matters are at a deadlock. It
+seems as if Outram had lost his way. Maude's gunners are all down; he has
+repeatedly called for volunteers from the infantry behind, and now his
+gallant subaltern, Maitland, is doing bombardier's work. Maude calls to
+young Havelock that he shall be forced to retire his guns if something is
+not done at once; and Havelock rides across through the fire and in his
+capacity as assistant adjutant-general urges on Neill the need for an
+immediate assault. Neill "is not in command; he cannot take the
+responsibility; and General Outram must turn up soon." Havelock turns and
+rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks
+encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at the
+long detention under fire. "Come out of that, sir," cried one soldier, "a
+chap's just had his head taken off there!" It is a grim joke that reply
+which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: "And what the devil are we here
+for but to get our heads taken off?" Young Havelock is bent on the
+perpetration of what, under the circumstances, may be called a pious
+fraud. His father, who commands the operations, is behind with the
+Reserve, and he disappears round the bend on the make-belief of getting
+instructions from the chief. The General is far in the rear but his son
+comes back at the gallop, rides up to Neill, and saluting with his sword,
+says, "You are to carry the bridge at once, sir." Neill, acquiescing in
+the superior order, replies, "Get the regiment together then, and see it
+formed up." At the word and without waiting for the regiment to rise and
+form the gallant and eager Arnold springs up from his advanced position
+and dashes on to the bridge, followed by about a dozen of his nearest
+skirmishers. Tytler and Havelock, as eager as Arnold, set spurs to their
+horses and are by his side in a moment. The brave and ardent 84th,
+commanded by Willis, dashes to the front. Then the hurricane opens. The
+big gun crammed to the muzzle with grape, sweeps its iron sleet across the
+bridge in the face of the gallant band, and the Sepoy sharpshooters
+converge their fire on it. Arnold drops shot through both thighs, Tytler's
+horse goes down with a crash, the bridge is swept clear save for young
+Havelock erect and unwounded, waving his sword and shouting for the
+Fusiliers to come on, and a Fusilier corporal, Jakes by name, who, as he
+rams a bullet home into his Enfield, says cheerily to Havelock, "We'll
+soon have the ---- out of that, sir!" And corporal Jakes is a true
+prophet. Before the big gun can be loaded again the stormers are on the
+bridge in a rushing mass. They are across it, they clear the barricade,
+they storm the battery, they are bayoneting the Sepoy gunners as they
+stand. The Charbagh bridge is won, but with severe loss which continues
+more or less all the way to the Residency; and when one comes to know the
+ground it becomes more and more obvious that the strategy of Havelock,
+overruled by Outram, was wise and prescient, when he counselled a wide
+turning movement by the Dilkoosha, over the Goomtee near the Martiniere,
+and so along its northern bank to the Badshah-bagh, almost opposite to the
+Residency and commanding the iron bridge.
+
+I recross the Charbagh bridge and bend away to the left by the byroad
+along the canal side by which the 78th Highlanders penetrated to the front
+of the Kaiser-bagh. Most of the native houses are now destroyed, whence
+was poured so deadly a fire on the advancing Ross-shire men that three
+colour-bearers fell in succession, and the colour fell to the grasp of the
+gallant Valentine McMaster, the assistant-surgeon of the regiment. And now
+I stand in front of the main entrance to the Kaiser-bagh, hard by the spot
+where stood the Sepoy battery which the Highlanders so opportunely took in
+reverse. Before me on the _maidan_ is the plain monument to Sir
+Mountstuart Jackson, Captain Orr, and a sergeant, who were murdered in the
+Kaiser-bagh when the success of Campbell's final operations became
+certain. I enter the great square enclosure of the Kaiser-bagh and stand
+in the desolation of what was once a gay garden where the King of Oude and
+his women were wont to disport themselves. The place stands much as
+Campbell's men left it after looting its multifarious rich treasures. The
+dainty little pavilions are empty and dilapidated, the statues are broken
+and tottering. Quitting the Kaiser-bagh, I try to realise the scene of
+that informal council of war in one of the outlying courtyards of the
+numerous palaces. I want to fix the spot where on his big waler sat
+Outram, a splash of blood across his face, and his arm in a sling; where
+Havelock, dismounted, walked up and down by Outram's side with short,
+nervous strides, halting now and then to give emphasis to the argument,
+while all around them were officers, soldiers, guns, natives, wounded men,
+bullocks, and a surging tide of disorganisation momentarily pouring into
+the square. But the attempt is fruitless. The whole area has been cleared
+of buildings right up to the gate of the Residency, only that hard by the
+Goomtee there still stands the river wing of the Chutter Munzil Palace
+with its fantastic architecture, and that the palace of the King of Oude
+is now the station library and assembly rooms. The Hureen Khana, the
+Lalbagh, the courts of the Furrut Bux Palace, the Khas Bazaar, and the
+Clock Tower have alike been swept away, and in their place there opens up
+before the eye trim ornamental grounds with neat plantations which extend
+up to the Baileyguard itself. One archway alone stands--a gaunt
+commemorative skeleton--a pedestal for the statue of a noble soldier. It
+was from a chamber above the crown of this arch that the sepoy shot Neill
+as he sat on his horse urging the confused press of guns and men through
+the archway. The spot is memorable for other causes. This archway led into
+that court which is world-famous under the name of Dhooly Square. Here it
+was that the native bearers abandoned the wounded in the doolies which
+poor Bensley Thornhill was trying to guide into the Residency; here it was
+where they were butchered and burned as they lay, and here it was where
+Dr. Home and a handful of men of the escort did what in them lay to cover
+the wounded and defended themselves for a day and a night against
+continuous attacks of countless enemies.
+
+The _via dolorosa_, the road of death up which Outram and Havelock fought
+their way with Brazier's Sikhs and the Ross-shire Buffs, is now a pleasant
+open drive amid clumps of trees, leading on to the Residency. A strange
+thrill runs through one's frame as there opens up before one that
+reddish-gray crumbling archway spanning the roadway into the Residency
+grounds. Its face is dented and splintered with cannon-shot and pitted all
+over by musket-bullets. This is none other than that historic Baileyguard
+gate which burly Jock Aitken and his faithful Sepoys kept so stanchly. You
+may see the marks still of the earth banked up against it on the interior
+during the siege. To the right and left runs the low wall which was the
+curtain of the defence, now crumbled so as to be almost indistinguishable.
+But there still stands, retired somewhat from the right of the archway,
+Aitken's post--the guard-house and treasury, its pillars and facade cut
+and dented all over with the marks of bullets fired by "Bob the Nailer"
+and his comrades from the Clock Tower which stood over against it. And in
+the curtain wall between the archway and the building is still to be
+traced the faint outline of the embrasure through which Outram and
+Havelock entered on the memorable evening. The turmoil and din and
+conflicting emotions of that terrible, glorious day have merged into a
+strange serenity of quietude. The scene is solitary, save for a native
+woman who is playing with her baby on a spot where once dead bodies lay in
+heaps. But the other older scene rises up vividly before the mind's eye
+out of the present calm. Havelock and Outram and the staff have passed
+through the embrasure here, and now there are rushing in the men of the
+ranks, powder-grimed, dusty, bloody; but a minute before raging with the
+stern passion of the battle, now full of a woman-like tenderness. And all
+around them as they swarm in there crowd a mass of folk eager to give
+welcome. There are officers and men of the garrison, civilians whom the
+siege has made into soldiers; women, too, weeping tears of joy down on the
+faces of the children for whom they had not dared to hope for aught but
+death. There are gaunt men, pallid with loss of blood, whose great eyes
+shine weirdly amid the torchlight and whose thin hands tremble with
+weakness as they grip the sinewy, grimy hands of the Highlanders. These
+are the wounded of the long siege who have crawled out from the hospital
+up yonder, as many of them as could compass the exertion, with a welcome
+to their deliverers. The hearts of the impulsive Highlanders wax very
+warm. As they grasp the hands held out to them they exclaim, "God bless
+you!" "Why, we expected to have found only your bones!" "And the children
+are living too!" and many other fervid and incoherent ejaculations. The
+ladies of the garrison come among the Highlanders, shaking them
+enthusiastically by the hand; and the children clasp the shaggy men round
+the neck, and to say truth, so do some of the mothers. But Jessie Dunbar
+and her "Dinna ye hear it?" in reference to the bagpipe music, are in the
+category of melodramatic fictions.
+
+The position which bears and will bear to all time the title of the
+Residency of Lucknow, is an elevated plateau of land, irregular in
+surface, of which the highest point is occupied by the Residency building,
+while the area around was studded irregularly with buildings, chiefly the
+houses of the principal civilian officials of the station. When Campbell
+brought away the garrison in November 1857 it lapsed into the hands of the
+mutineers, who held it till his final occupation of the city and its
+surroundings in March of the following year. They pulled down not a few of
+the already shattered buildings, and left their fell imprint on the spot
+in an atrociously ghastly way by desecrating the graves in which brave
+hands had laid our dead country-people and flinging the exhumed corpses
+into the Goomtee. When India once more became settled the Residency, its
+commemorative features uninterfered with, was laid out as a garden and
+flowers and shrubs now grow on soil once wet with the blood of heroes. The
+_debris_ has been removed or dispersed; the shattered buildings are
+prevented from crumbling farther; tablets bearing the names of the
+different positions and places of interest are let into the walls; and it
+is possible, by exploring the place map in hand, to identify all the
+features of the defence. The avenue from the Baileyguard gate rises with a
+steep slope to the Residency building. On either side of the approach and
+hard by the gate, are the blistered and shattered remnants of two large
+houses; that on the right is the banqueting house which was used as the
+hospital during the siege; that on the left was Dr. Fayrer's house. The
+banqueting house is a mere shell, riven everywhere with shot and pitted
+over by musket-bullets as if it had suffered from smallpox. The
+ground-floor has escaped with less damage but the banqueting hall itself
+has been wholly wrecked by the persistent fire which the rebels showered
+upon it, and to which, notwithstanding the mattresses and sandbags with
+which the windows were blocked, several poor fellows fell victims as they
+lay wounded on their cots. Dr. Fayrer's house is equally a battered ruin.
+In its first floor, roofless and forlorn, its front torn open by shot and
+the pillars of its windows jagged into fantastic fragments, is the veranda
+in which Sir Henry Lawrence, 4th July 1857, died, exposed to fire to the
+very last. At the top of the slope of the avenue and on the left front of
+the Residency building as we approach it--on what, indeed, was once the
+lawn--has been raised an artificial mound, its slopes covered with
+flowering shrubs, its summit bearing the monumental obelisk on the
+pedestal of which is the terse, appropriate inscription: "In memory of
+Major-General Sir Henry Lawrence and the brave men who fell in defence of
+the Residency. _Si monumentum quaeris Circumspice!_" Beyond this lies the
+scathed and blighted ruin of the Residency House, once a large and
+imposing structure, now so utterly wrecked and shivered that one wonders
+how the crumbling reddish-gray walls are kept erect. The veranda was
+battered down and much of the front of the building lies bodily open, the
+structure being supported on the battered and distorted pillars assisted
+by great balks of wood. Entering by the left wing I pass down a winding
+stair into the bowels of the earth till I reach the spacious and lofty
+vaults or _tykhana_ under the building. Here, the place affording
+comparative safety, lived immured the women of the garrison, the soldiers'
+wives, half-caste females, the wives of the meaner civilians and their
+children. The poor creatures were seldom allowed to come up to the
+surface, lest they should come in the way of the shot which constantly
+lacerated the whole area, and few visitors were allowed access to them.
+Veritably they were in a dungeon. Provisions were lowered down to them
+from the window orifices near the roof of the vaulting, and there were
+days when the firing was so heavy that orders were given to them not even
+to rise from their beds on the floor. For shot occasionally found a way
+even into the _tykhana_; you may see the holes it made in penetrating. The
+miserables were billeted off ten in a room, and there they lived, without
+sweepers, baths, dhobies, or any of the comforts which the climate makes
+necessities. Here in these dungeons children were born, only for the most
+part to die. Ascending another staircase I pass through some rooms in
+which lived (and died) some of the ladies of the garrison, and passing
+from the left wing by a shattered corridor am able to look up into the
+room in which Sir Henry Lawrence received his death-wound. Access to it is
+impossible by reason of the tottering condition of the structure; and
+turning away I clamber up the worn staircase in the shot-riven tower on
+the summit of which still stands the flagstaff on which were hoisted the
+signals with which the garrison were wont to communicate with the
+Alumbagh. The walls of the staircase and the flat roof of the tower are
+scratched and written all over with the names of visitors; many of the
+names are those of natives, but more are those of British soldiers, who
+have occasionally added a piece of their mind in characteristically strong
+language.
+
+I set out on a pilgrimage under the still easily traceable contour of the
+intrenchment. Passing "Sam Lawrence's Battery" above what was the
+water-gate, I traverse the projecting tongue at the end of which stood the
+"Redan Battery" whose fire swept the river face up to the iron bridge.
+Returning, and passing the spot where "Evans's Battery" stood, I find
+myself in the churchyard in a slight depression of the ground. Of the
+church, which was itself a defensive post, not one stone remains on
+another and the mutineers hacked to pieces the ground of the churchyard.
+The ground is now neatly enclosed and ornamentally planted and is studded
+with many monuments, few of which speak the truth when they profess to
+cover the dust of those whom they commemorate. There are the regimental
+monuments of the 5th Madras Fusiliers, the 84th (360 men besides
+officers), the Royal Artillery, the 90th (a long list of officers and 271
+men). The monument of the 1st Madras Fusiliers bears the names of Neill,
+Stephenson, Renaud, and Arnold, and commemorates a loss of 352 men. There
+is a monument to Mr. Polehampton the exemplary chaplain, and hard by a
+plain slab bears the inscription, "Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to
+do his duty; may the Lord have mercy on his soul!" words dictated by
+himself on his deathbed. Other monuments commemorate Captain Graham of the
+Bengal Cavalry and two children; Mr. Fairhurst the Roman Catholic chaplain;
+Major Banks; Captain Fulton of the 32nd who earned the title of "Defender
+of Lucknow;" Lucas, the travelling Irish gentleman who served as a
+volunteer and fell in the last sortie; Captain Becher; Captain Moorsom;
+poor Bensley Thornhill and his young daughter; "Mrs. Elizabeth Arne, burnt
+with a shell-ball during the siege;" Lieutenant Cunliffe; Mr. Ommaney the
+Judicial Commissioner; and others. The nameless hillocks of poor Jack
+Private are plentiful, for here were buried many of those who fell in the
+final capture; and there are children's graves. Interments take place
+still. I saw a freshly-made grave; but only those are entitled to a last
+resting-place here who were among the beleaguered during the long defence.
+I have seen the medal for the defence of Lucknow on the breast of a man
+who was a child in arms at the time of the siege, and such an one would
+have the right to claim interment in this doubly hallowed ground. From the
+churchyard I pass out along the narrow neck to that forlorn-hope post,
+"Innes's Garrison," and along the western face of the intrenchment by the
+sides of the sheep-house and the slaughter-house, to Gubbins's post. The
+mere foundations of the house are visible which the stout civilian so
+gallantly defended, and the famous tree, gradually pruned to a mere stump
+by the enemy's fire, is no longer extant. Along the southern face of the
+position there are no buildings which are not ruined. Sikh Square, the
+Brigade Mess House, and the Martiniere boys' post, are alike represented
+by fragmentary gray walls shivered with shot and shored up here and there
+by beams. The rooms of the Begum Kothi near the centre of the position,
+are still laterally entire but roofless. The walls of this structure are
+exceptionally thick and here many of the ladies of the garrison were
+quartered. All around the Residency position the native houses which at
+the time of the siege crowded close up on the intrenchment, are now
+destroyed; and indeed the native town has been curtailed into
+comparatively small dimensions and is entirely separated from the area in
+which the houses of the station are built.
+
+Quitting the Residency I drive westward by the river side, over the site
+of the Captan Bazaar, past also that huge fortified heap the Muchee Bawn,
+till I reach the beautiful enclosure in which the great Imambara stands.
+This majestic structure--part temple, part convent, part palace, and now
+part fortress--dominates the whole _terrain_, and from its lofty flat roof
+one looks down on the plain where the weekly _hat_ or market is being
+held, on the gardens and mansions across the river, and southward upon the
+dense mass of houses which constitute the native city. Sentries promenade
+the battlements of the Muchee Bawn, and the Imambara--an apartment to
+which for space and height I know none in Europe comparable--is now used
+as an arsenal, where are stored the great siege guns which William Peel
+plied with so great skill and gallantry. Just outside the Imambara, on the
+edge of the _maidan_ between it and the Moosabagh, I come on a little
+railed churchyard where rest a few British soldiers who fell during Lord
+Clyde's final operations in this direction. Then, with a sweep across the
+plain to the south and by a slight ascent, I reach the gate of the city
+which opens into the Chowk or principal street--the street traversed in
+disguise by the dauntless Kavanagh when he went out from the garrison to
+convey information and afford guidance to Sir Colin Campbell on his first
+advance. The gatehouse is held by a strong force of native policemen,
+armed as if they were soldiers; and as I pass the guard I stand in the
+Chowk itself, in the midst of a throng of gaily clad male pedestrians,
+women in chintz trousers, laden donkeys, multitudinous children, and still
+more multitudinous stinks. All down both sides the fronts of the lower
+stories are open, and in the recesses sit merchants displaying paltry
+jewelry, slippers, pipes, turban cloths, and Manchester stuffs of the
+gaudiest patterns. The main street of Lucknow has been called "The Street
+of Silver," but I could find little among its jewelry either of silver or
+of gold. The first floors all have balconies, and on these sit draped,
+barefooted women of Rahab's profession. The women of Lucknow are fairer
+and handsomer, and the men bolder and more stalwart, than those in Bengal,
+and it takes no great penetration to discern that Lucknow is still ruled
+by fear and not by love.
+
+It remained for me still to investigate the scenes of the route by which
+Lord Clyde came in on both his advances; but to do justice to these would
+demand separate articles. Let me begin the hasty sketch at the Dilkoosha
+Palace, two miles and more away to the east of the Residency; for on both
+occasions the Dilkoosha was Clyde's base. Wajid Ali's twenty-foot wall has
+now given place to an earthen embankment surrounding a beautiful pleasure
+park, and there are now smooth green slopes instead of the dense forest
+through which Clyde's soldiers marched on their turning movement. On a
+swell in the midst of the park, commanding a view of the fantastic
+architecture of the Martiniere down by the tank, stands the gaunt ruin of
+the once trim and dainty Dilkoosha Palace or rather garden-house. From one
+of the pepper-box turrets up there Lord Clyde directed the attack on the
+Martiniere on his ultimate operation; and here it was that, as Dr. Russell
+tells us, a round shot dispersed his staff on the adjacent leads. After
+quietude was restored the Dilkoosha was the headquarters for a time of Sir
+Hope Grant, but now it has been allowed to fall into decay although the
+garden in the rear of it is prettily kept up. On the reverse slope behind
+the Dilkoosha was the camp in one of the tents of which Havelock died. We
+drive down the gentle slope once traversed at a rushing double by the
+Black Watch on their way to carry the Martiniere, past the great tank out
+of the centre of which rises the tall column to the memory of Claude
+Martine, and reach the entrance of the fantastic building which he built,
+in which he was buried, and which bears his name. We see at the angle of
+the northern wing the slope up which the gun was run which played so
+heavily on the Dilkoosha up on the wooded knoll there. The Martiniere is
+now, as it was before the Mutiny, a college for European boys, and the
+young fellows are playing on the terraces. Grotesque stone statues are in
+niches and along the tops of the balconies; you may see on them the marks
+of the bullets which the honest fellows of the Black Watch fired at them,
+taking them for Pandies. I go down into a vault and see the tomb of Claude
+Martine; but it is empty, for the mutineers desecrated his grave and
+scattered his bones to the winds of heaven. Then I make for the roof,
+through the dormitories of the boys and past fantastic stone griffins and
+lions and Gorgons, till I reach the top of the tower and touch the
+flagstaff from which, during the relief time, was given the answering
+signal to that hoisted on the tower of the Residency. I stand in the
+niches where the mutineer marksmen used to sit with their hookahs and take
+pot shots at the Dilkoosha. I look down to the eastward on the Goomtee,
+and note the spot where Outram crossed on that flank movement which would
+have been very much more successful than it was had he been permitted to
+drive it home. To the north-east beyond the topes is the battle-ground of
+Chinhut, where Lawrence received so terrible a reverse at the beginning of
+the siege. Due north is the Kookrail viaduct which Outram cleared with the
+Rifles and the 79th, and in whose vicinity Jung Bahadour, the crafty and
+bloodthirsty generalissimo of Nepaul, "co-operated" by a demonstration
+which never became anything more. And to the west there lie stretched out
+before me the domes, minarets, and spires of Lucknow, rising above the
+foliage in which their bases are hidden, and the routes of Clyde in the
+relief and capture. The rays of the afternoon sun are stirring into colour
+the dusky gray of the Secunderbagh and of the Nuddun Rusool, or "Grave of
+the Prophet," used as a powder magazine by the rebels. Below me, on the
+lawn of the Martiniere, is the big gun--one of Claude Martine's casting--
+which did the rebels so much service at the other angle of the Martiniere
+and which was spiked at last by two men of Peel's naval brigade, who swam
+the Goomtee for the purpose. That little enclosure slightly to the left
+surrounds "all that can die" of that strange mixture of high spirit, cool
+daring, and weak principle, the famous chief of Hodson's Horse. By
+Hodson's side lies Captain da Costa of the 56th N.I., attached to
+Brazier's Sikhs. Of this officer is told that, having lost many relatives
+in the butchery of Cawnpore, he joined the regiment likeliest to be in the
+front of the Lucknow fighting, and fell by one of the first shots fired in
+the assault on the Kaiser-bagh.
+
+Descending from the Martiniere tower I traverse the park to the westward
+passing the grave of Captain Otway Mayne, cross the dry canal along which
+are still visible the heaps of earth which mark the stupendous first line
+of the rebels' defences, and bending to the left reach the Secunderbagh.
+This famous place was a pleasure garden surrounded with a lofty wall with
+turrets at the angles and a castellated gateway. The interior garden is
+now waste and forlorn, the rank grass growing breast-high in the corners
+where the slaughter was heaviest. Here in this little enclosure, not half
+the size of the garden of Bedford Square, 2000 Sepoys died the death at
+the hands of the 93rd, the 53rd, and the 4th Punjaubees. Their common
+grave is under the low mound on the other side of the road. The loopholes
+stand as they were left by the mutineers when our fellows came bursting in
+through the ragged breach made in the reverse side from the main entrance
+by Peel's guns. Farther on--that is, nearer to the Residency--I come to
+the Shah Nujeef, with its strong exterior wall enclosing the domed temple
+in its centre. It is still easy to trace the marks of the breach made in
+the angle in the wall by Peel's battering guns, and the tree is still
+standing up which Salmon, Southwell, and Harrison climbed in response to
+his proffer of the Victoria Cross. Opposite the Shah Nujeef white girls
+are playing on the lawn of that castellated building, for the Koorsheyd
+Munzil, on the top of which there was hoisted the British flag in the face
+of a _feu d'enfer_, is now a seminary for the daughters of Europeans. A
+little beyond, on the plain in front of the Motee Mahal, is the spot where
+Campbell met Outram and Havelock--a spot which, methinks, might well be
+marked by a monument; and after this I lose my reckoning by reason of the
+extent of the demolition, and am forced to resort to guesswork as to the
+precise localities.
+
+
+
+
+THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
+
+
+Writing of the late Alexander III. of Russia, a foreign author has
+recently permitted himself to observe: "Marvellous personal courage is not
+a striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs as it was of the
+English Tudors." It will be conceded that periods materially govern the
+conditions under which sovereigns and their royal relatives have found
+opportunities for proving their personal courage. The Tudor dynasty had
+ended before the Romanoff dynasty began. It is true, indeed, that the
+ending of the former with the death of Elizabeth in 1603 occurred only a
+few years before the foundation of the latter by the election to the
+Tzarship of Michael Feodorovitz Romanoff in 1612. But of the five
+sovereigns of the Tudor dynasty it happened that only one, Henry VII., the
+first monarch of that dynasty, found or made an opportunity for the
+display of marked--scarcely perhaps of "marvellous"--personal courage; and
+thus the selection of the Tudor dynasty by the writer referred to as
+furnishing a contrasting illustration in the matter of personal courage to
+that of the Romanoffs was not particularly fortunate. Henry VIII. was only
+once in action; he shared in the skirmish known as the "Battle of the
+Spurs," because of the precipitate flight of the French horse. Edward VI.
+died at the age of sixteen, and the two remaining sovereigns of the
+dynasty were women, of whom it is true that Elizabeth was a strong and
+vigorous ruler, but in the nature of things had no opportunity for showing
+"marvellous personal courage." Henry VII. literally found his crown in the
+heart of the _melee_ on Bosworth field, it matters not which of the
+alternative stories is correct, that he himself killed Richard, or that
+Richard was killed in the act of striking him a desperate blow. But Henry
+at Bosworth in 1485 still belonged to the days of chivalry--to an era in
+which monarchs were also armour-clad knights, who headed charges in person
+and gave and took with spear, sword, and battle-axe. Long before Peter the
+Great, more than two centuries after Bosworth, foamed at the mouth with
+rage and hacked with his sword at his panicstricken troops fleeing from
+the field of Narva on that winter day of 1700, the face of warfare had
+altered and the _metier_ of the commander, were he sovereign or were he
+subject, had undergone a radical change.
+
+Of a family of the human race it is not rationally possible to predicate a
+typical generic characteristic of mind. A physical trait will endure down
+the generations, as witness the Hapsburg lip and the swarthy complexion of
+the Finch-Hattons, in the face of alliances from outside the races; but,
+save as regards one exception, there is no assurance of a continuous
+inheritance of mental attributes. What a contrast is there between
+Frederick the Great and his father; between George III. and his successor;
+between the present Emperor of Austria and his hapless son; between the
+genial, wistful, and well-intentioned Alexander II. of Russia and the not
+less well-intentioned but narrow-minded and despotic sovereign who
+succeeded him! But there may be reserved one exception to the absence of
+assurance of inherited mental attributes--one mental feature in which
+identity takes the place of dissimilarity, and even of actual contrast.
+And that feature--that inherited characteristic of a race whose
+progenitors happily possessed it--is personal courage.
+
+Take, for example, the Hohenzollerns. One need not hark back to Carlyle's
+original Conrad, the seeker of his fortune who tramped down from the
+ancestral cliff-castle on his way to take service under Barbarossa. Before
+and since the "Grosse Kurfurst" there has been no Hohenzollern who has not
+been a brave man. He himself was the hero of Fehrbellin. His son, the
+first king of the line, Carlyle's "Expensive Herr," was "valiant in
+action" during the third war of Louis XIV. The rugged Frederick William,
+father of Frederick the Great, had his own tough piece of war against the
+volcanic Charles XII. of Sweden and did a stout stroke of hard fighting at
+Malplaquet. Of Fritz himself the world has full note. Bad, sensual,
+debauched Hohenzollern as was his successor, Frederick the Fat, he had
+fought stoutly in his youth-time under his illustrious uncle. His son,
+Frederick William III., overthrown by Napoleon who called him a
+"corporal," did good soldierly work in the "War of Liberation" and fought
+his way to Paris in 1814. His eldest son, Frederick William IV., the
+vague, benevolent dreamer whom _Punch_ used to call "King Clicquot" and
+who died of softening of the brain, even he, too, as a lad had
+distinguished himself in the "War of Liberation" and in the fighting
+during the subsequent advance on Paris. As for grand old William I., the
+real maker of the German Empire on the _quid facit per alium facit per se_
+axiom, he died a veteran of many wars. He was not seventeen when he won
+the Iron Cross by a service of conspicuous gallantry under heavy fire. He
+took his chances in the bullet and shell fire at Koeniggraetz, and again on
+the afternoon of Gravelotte. Not a Hohenzollern of them all but shared as
+became their race in the dangers of the great war of 1870-71; even Prince
+George, the music composer, the only non-soldier of the family, took the
+field. William's noble son, whose premature death neither Germany nor
+England has yet ceased to deplore, took the lead of one army; his nephew
+Prince Frederick Charles, a great commander and a brilliant soldier, was
+the leader of another. One of his brothers, Prince Albert the elder, made
+the campaign as cavalry chief; whose son, Prince Albert junior, now a
+veteran Field-Marshal, commanded a brigade of guard-cavalry with a skill
+and daring not wholly devoid of recklessness. Another brother, Prince
+Charles, the father of the "Red Prince," made the campaign with the royal
+headquarters; Prince Adalbert, a cousin of the sovereign and head of the
+Prussian Navy, had his horse shot under him on the battlefield of
+Gravelotte.
+
+The trait of personal courage has markedly characterised the House of
+Hanover. As King of England George I. did no fighting, but before he
+reached that position he had distinguished himself in war not a little;
+against the Danes and Swedes in 1700 and in high command in the war of the
+Spanish succession from 1701 to 1709. His successor, while yet young, had
+displayed conspicuous valour in the battle of Oudenarde, and later in life
+at Dettingen; and he was the last British monarch who took part in actual
+warfare. Cumberland had no meritorious attribute save that of personal
+courage, but that virtue in him was undeniable. At Dettingen he was
+wounded in the forefront of the battle; at Fontenoy the "martial boy" was
+ever in the heart of the fiercest fire, fighting at "a spiritual white
+heat." His grand-nephew the Duke of York was an unfortunate soldier, but
+his personal courage was unquestioned. In the present reign a cousin and a
+son of the sovereign have done good service in the field; and that
+venerable lady herself in situations of personal danger has consistently
+maintained the calm courage of her race.
+
+The foreign author has written that "marvellous personal courage is not
+the striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs." He makes an
+exception to this quasi-indictment in favour of the Emperor Nicholas, who,
+he admits, "was absolutely ignorant of fear, and could face a band of
+insurgents with the calm self-possession of a shepherd surveying his
+bleating sheep." The monarch who at the moment of his accession
+illustrated the dominant force of his character by confronting amid the
+bullet fire the ferocious mutiny of half an army corps, and who crushed
+the bloodthirsty _emeute_ with dauntless resolution and iron hand; the man
+who, facing the populace of St. Petersburg crazed with terror of the
+cholera and red with the blood of slaughtered physicians, quelled its
+panic-fury by commanding the people in the sternest tones of his sonorous
+voice to kneel in the dust and propitiate by prayers the wrath of the
+Almighty--such a man is scarcely, perhaps, adequately characterised by the
+expressions which have been quoted. But setting aside this instance of the
+fearlessness of Nicholas, facts appear to refute pretty conclusively
+reflections on the personal courage of the Romanoffs. No purpose can be
+served by cumbering the record by going back into the period of Russia's
+semi-civilisation; illustrations from three generations may reasonably
+suffice. At Austerlitz Alexander I. was close up to the fighting line in
+the Pratzen section of that great battle, and so recklessly did he expose
+himself that the report spread rearward that he had fallen. He was riding
+with Moreau in the heart of the bloody turmoil before Dresden when a
+French cannon-ball mortally wounded the renegade French general, and he
+was splashed by the latter's blood. Moreau had insisted on riding on the
+outside, else the ball which caused his death would certainly have struck
+Alexander. That monarch participated actively and forwardly in most of the
+battles of the campaign of 1814 which culminated in the allied occupation
+of Paris. Marmont's bullets were still flying when he rode on to the hill
+of Belleville and looked down through the smoke of battle on the French
+capital. The captious foreign writer has admitted that Nicholas, the
+successor of Alexander, was "absolutely ignorant of fear," and I have
+cited a convincing instance of his "marvellous personal courage." Two of
+his sons--the Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael--were under fire in the
+battle of Inkerman and shared for some time the perils of the siege of
+Sevastopol. Alexander II. was certainly a man of real, although quiet and
+undemonstrative, personal courage. But for his disregard of the
+precautions by which the police sought to surround him he probably would
+have been alive to-day. The Third Section was wholly unrepresented in
+Bulgaria and His Majesty's protection on campaign consisted merely of a
+handful of Cossacks. No cordon of sentries surrounded his simple camp; his
+tent at Pavlo and the dilapidated Turkish house which for weeks was his
+residence at Gorni Studen were alike destitute of any guards. The imperial
+Court of Russia is said to be the most punctiliously ceremonious of all
+courts; in the field the Tzar absolutely dispensed with any sort of
+ceremony. He dined with his suite and staff at a frugal table in a spare
+hospital marquee; his guests, the foreign attaches and any passing
+officers or strangers who happened to be in camp. When he drove out his
+escort consisted of a couple of Cossacks. In the woods about Biela at the
+beginning of the war there still remained some forlorn bivouacs of Turkish
+families; he would alight and visit those, his sole companion the
+aide-de-camp on duty; and would fearlessly venture among the sullen Turks
+all of whom were armed with deadly weapons, try to persuade them to return
+to their homes, and, unmoved by their refusal, promise to send them food
+and medicine. Dispensing with all etiquette he would see without delay any
+one coming in with tidings from fighting points, were he officer,
+civilian, or war correspondent. During the September attack on Plevna he
+was continually in the field while daylight lasted, looking out on the
+slaughter from an eminence within range of the Turkish cannon-fire, and
+manifestly enduring keen anguish at the spectacle of the losses sustained
+by his brave, patient troops. Later, during the investment of Plevna, his
+point of observation was a redoubt on the Radischevo ridge still closer to
+the Turkish front of fire, and it was thence he witnessed the surrender of
+Osman's army on the memorable 10th December 1877. If Alexander was
+fearless alike in camp and in the field on campaign, he was certainly not
+less so in St. Petersburg, when he returned thither after the fall of
+Plevna.
+
+Alexander II. literally sacrificed his life to his self-regardless concern
+for the suffering. After the first bomb had burst on the Alexandra Canal
+Road, striking down civilians and Cossacks of the following escort but
+leaving the Emperor unhurt, his coachman begged to be allowed to dash
+forward and get clear of danger. But Alexander forbade him with the words,
+"No, no! I must alight and see to the wounded;" and as he was carrying out
+his heroic and benign intention, the second bomb exploded and wrought his
+death.
+
+As did the men of the Hohenzollern house in 1870, so in 1877 the adult
+male Romanoffs went to the war with scarce an exception. The Grand Duke
+Nicholas, brother of the Emperor and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
+armies in Europe, was neither a great general nor an honest man; but there
+could be no question as to his personal courage. That attribute he evinced
+with utter recklessness when arriving, as was his wont, too late for a
+deliberate and careful survey, he galloped round the Turkish positions on
+the morning on which began the September bombardment of Plevna, in
+proximity to Turkish cannon-fire so dangerous that his staff remonstrated,
+and that even the sedate American historian of the war speaks of him as
+having "exposed himself imprudently to the Turkish pickets." His son, the
+Grand Duke Nicholas, jun., in 1877 scarcely of age, was nevertheless a
+keen practical soldier, imbued with the wisdom of getting to close
+quarters and staying there. He was among the first to cross the Danube at
+Sistova under the Turkish fire, and he fought with great gallantry under
+Mirsky in the Schipka Pass. The brothers, Prince Nicholas and Prince
+Eugene of Leuchtenberg, members of the imperial house, commanded each a
+cavalry brigade in Gourko's dashing raid across the Balkans at the
+beginning of the campaign, and both were conspicuous for soldierly skill
+and personal gallantry in the desperate fighting in the Tundja Valley. The
+Grand Duke Vladimir, the second brother of Alexander III., headed the
+infantry advance in the direction of Rustchuk, and served with marked
+distinction in command of one of the corps in the army of the Lom. A
+younger brother, the Grand Duke Alexis, the nautical member of the
+imperial family, had charge of the torpedo and subaqueous mining
+operations on the Danube, and was held to have shown practical skill,
+assiduity, and vigour. Prince Serge of Leuchtenberg, younger brother of
+the Leuchtenbergs previously mentioned, was shot dead by a bullet through
+the head in the course of his duty as a staff officer at the front of a
+reconnaissance in force made against the Turkish force in Jovan-Tchiflik
+in October of the war. He was a soldier of great promise and had
+frequently distinguished himself. No unworthy record, it is submitted,
+earned in war by the members of a family of which, according to the
+foreign author, "personal courage is not the striking characteristic."
+
+That writer may be warranted in stating that the late Tzar had been
+frequently accused of cowardice--an indictment to which, it must be
+admitted, many undeniable facts lent a strong colouring of probability;
+and he further tells of "the Emperor's aversion to ride on horseback, and
+of his dread of a horse even when the animal was harnessed to a vehicle."
+There is something, however, of inconsistency in his observation that
+Alexander III. might well have been a contrast to his grandfather without
+deserving the epithet craven-hearted. The melancholy explanation of the
+strange apparent change between the Tzarewitch of 1877 and the Tzar of
+1894 may lie in the statement that "Alexander's nerves had been
+undoubtedly shaken by the terrible events in which he had been a spectator
+or actor." In 1877, when in campaign in Bulgaria, Alexander did not know
+what "nerves" meant. He was then a man of strong, if slow, mental force,
+stolid, peremptory, reactionary; the possessor of dull but firm
+resolution. He had a strong though clumsy seat on horseback and was no
+infrequent rider. He had two ruling dislikes: one was war, the other was
+officers of German extraction. The latter he got rid of; the former he
+regarded as a necessary evil of the hour; he longed for its ending, but
+while it lasted he did his sturdy and loyal best to wage it to the
+advantage of the Russian arms. And in this he succeeded, stanchly
+fulfilling the particular duty which was laid upon him, that of protecting
+the Russian left flank from the Danube to the foothills of the Balkans. He
+had good troops, the subordinate commands were fairly well filled, and his
+headquarter staff was efficient--General Dochtouroff, its _sous-chef_, was
+certainly the ablest staff-officer in the Russian army. But Alexander was
+no puppet of his staff; he understood his business as the commander of the
+army of the Lom, performed his functions in a firm, quiet fashion, and
+withal was the trusty and successful warden of the eastern marches. His
+force never amounted to 50,000 men, and his enemy was in considerably
+greater strength. He had successes and he sustained reverses, but he was
+equal to either fortune; always resolute in his steadfast, dogged manner,
+and never whining for reinforcements when things went against him, but
+doing his best with the means to his hand. They used to speak of him in
+the principal headquarter as the only commander who never gave them any
+bother. So highly was he thought of there that when, after the
+unsuccessful attempt on Plevna in the September of the war, the Guard
+Corps was arriving from Russia and there was the temporary intention to
+use it with other troops in an immediate offensive movement across the
+Balkans, he was named to take the command of the enterprise. But this
+intention having been presently departed from, and the reinforcements
+being ordered instead to the Plevna section of the theatre of war, the
+Tzarewitch retained his command on the left flank, and thus in
+mid-December had the opportunity of inflicting a severe defeat on Suleiman
+Pasha, just as in September he had worsted Mehemet Ali in the battle of
+Carkova. It is sad to be told that a man once so resolute and masterful
+should later have been the victim of shattered nerves; it is sadder still
+to learn that he was a mark for accusations of cowardice. He never was a
+gracious, far less a lovable man; but, as I can testify from personal
+knowledge, he was a cool and brave soldier in the Russo-Turkish War of
+1877.
+
+
+
+
+PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
+
+1875
+
+
+On a Sunday morning in early June, just before the church bells begin to
+ring, there is wont to be held the annual general parade and inspection of
+the Corps of Commissionaires, on the enclosed grass plot by the margin of
+the ornamental water in St. James's Park. On the ground, and accompanying
+the inspecting officer on his tour through the opened ranks, there are
+always not a few veteran officers, glad by their presence on such an
+occasion to countenance and recognise their humbler comrades in arms in
+bygone war-dramas enacted elsewhere than within hearing of London Sunday
+bells. No scene could be imagined presenting a more practical confutation
+of the ignorant calumny that the British army is composed of the froth and
+the dregs of the British nation, and that there exists no cordial feeling
+between British soldiers and British officers. It is good to see how the
+face kindles of the veteran guardsman at the sight and the kindly greeting
+of Sir Charles Russell. Doubtless the honest private's thoughts go back to
+that misty morning on the slopes of Inkerman, when officer and private
+stood shoulder to shoulder in the fierce press, and there rang again in
+his ears the cheer with which the Guards greeted the act of valour by the
+performance of which the baronet won the Victoria Cross. There is a
+feeling deeper than a mere formality in the half-dozen words that pass
+between Sir William Codrington and the old soldier of the 7th Royal
+Fusiliers, to whom the gallant general showed the way up to the Russian
+front, through the shot-torn vineyards on the slopes of the Alma. When one
+feeble old ex-warrior is smitten suddenly on parade with a palsied
+faintness, it is on the yet stalwart arm of his old chief that he totters
+out of the ranks, and the twain do not part till the superior has exacted
+a pledge that his humble ex-subordinate shall call upon him on the morrow,
+with a view to medical advice and strengthening comforts.
+
+Notwithstanding that in the true old martial spirit it shows what in the
+Service is known as a good front, it is not a very athletic or puissant
+cohort this, that stands on parade here on the grass within hearing of the
+church bells. The grizzled old soldiers, sooth to say, look rather the
+worse for wear. There is a decided shortcoming among them of the proper
+complement of limbs, and one at least, in speaking of the battlefields he
+had seen, might with truth echo the old soldier in Burns's _Jolly
+Beggars_--
+
+  And there I left for witness a leg and an arm.
+
+They carry no weapons; to some may belong the knowledge only of the
+obsolete "Brown Bess" manual exercise; and not many have been so recently
+on active service as to have learnt the handling of the modern
+breech-loader. On the whole, a battered, fossil, maimed army of
+superannuated fighting men, scarcely fitted to shine in the new tactics of
+the "swarm-attack" by which the battles of the future are to be won or
+lost. But you cannot jibe at the worn old soldiers as "lean and slippered
+pantaloons." Look how truly, with what instinctive intuition, the dressing
+is taken up at the word of command; note how the old martial carriage
+comes back to the most dilapidated when the adjutant calls his command to
+"attention." Age and wounds have not quenched the fighting spirit of the
+old soldiers; there is not a man of them but would, did the need arise,
+"clatter on his stumps to the sound of the drum." There are few breasts in
+those ranks that are not decorated with medals. In very truth the parade
+is a record of British campaigns for the last thirty years. Among the
+thicket of medals on the bosom of this broken old light dragoon note the
+one bearing the legend, "Cabul 1842" within the laurel wreath. Its wearer
+was a trooper in the famous "rescue" column. The skeletons of
+Elphinstone's hapless force littered the slopes of the Tezeen Valley, up
+which the squadron in which he rode charged straight for the tent of the
+splendid demon Akbar Khan. He rode behind Campbell at the battle of
+Punniar, and won there that star of silver and bronze which hangs from the
+famous "rainbow" ribbon. "Sutlej" is the legend on another of his medals,
+and he could recount to you the memorable story of Thackwell's cavalry
+operations against the Sikh field works, and how that division of seasoned
+horsemen reduced outpost duty to a methodical science. "Punjab" medals for
+Gough's campaign of 1848-49 are scattered up and down in the ranks. The
+sword-cut athwart this wiry old trooper's cheek he got in the hot _melee_
+of Ramhuggur, where a certain Brigadier Colin Campbell whom men knew
+afterwards as Lord Clyde, found it hard work to hold his own, and where
+gallant Cureton and the veteran William Havelock fell at the head of their
+light horsemen as they crashed into the heart of 4000 Sikhs. His neighbour
+took part in the storm of Mooltan, and saw stout, calm-pulsed Sergeant
+John Bennet of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers plant the British ensign on the
+crest of the breach and quietly stand by it there, supporting it in the
+tempest of shot and shell till the storming party had made the breach
+their own. This old soldier of the 24th can tell you of the butchery of
+his regiment at Chillianwallah; how Brooks went down between the Sikh
+guns, how Brigadier Pennycuick was killed out to the front, and how his
+son, a beardless ensign, maddened at the sight of the mangling of his
+father's body, rushed out and fought against all comers over the corpse
+till the lad fell dead on his dead father; how on that terrible day the
+loss of the 24th was 13 officers killed, 10 wounded, and 497 men killed
+and wounded; and how the issue of the bloody combat might have been very
+different but for the display, on the part of Colin Campbell, of "that
+steady coolness and military decision for which he was so remarkable."
+Scarcely a great show on a troop-horse would this bent and gnarled old
+12th Lancer make to-day, but he and his fellows rode right well on the day
+for which he wears this "Cape" medal, with the blue and orange ribbon and
+the lion and mimosa bush on the reverse. Because of its prickles the Boers
+call the mimosa the "wait-a-bit" thorn, but there was no thought of
+waiting a bit among the 12th Lancers at the Berea, when they charged the
+savage Basutos and captured their chief Moshesh. This one-armed veteran of
+the Royal Fusiliers was left lying wounded in the Great Redoubt on the
+Russian slope of the Alma, when the terrible fire of grape and musketry
+forced Codrington's brigade of the Light Division temporarily to give
+ground after it had struggled so valiantly up the rugged broken banks, and
+through the hailstorm of fire that swept through the vineyards. This still
+stalwart man was one of the nineteen sergeants of the 33rd--the Duke of
+Wellington's Own--who were either killed or wounded in defence of the
+colours on the same bloody but glorious day. A few files farther down the
+line stands an old 93rd man. The veteran Sutherland Highlander was one of
+that "thin red line" which disdained to form square when the Russian
+squadrons rode with seeming heart at the kilted men on Balaclava day. He
+heard Colin Campbell's stern repressive rebuke--"Ninety-third,
+ninety-third, damn all that eagerness!" when the hotter spirits of the
+regiment would fain have broken ranks and met the Russians half-way with
+the cold steel; he saw the Scotch wife chastise the fugitive Turks with
+her tongue and her frying-pan. Speak to his tall, shaggy neighbour of the
+"bonny Jocks," and you will call up a flush of pleasure on the
+harsh-featured Scottish face; for he was a trooper in the Greys on that
+self-same Balaclava day when the avalanche of Russian horsemen thundered
+down upon the heavy brigade. He was among those who heard, and with
+sternly rapturous anticipation obeyed Scarlet's calm-pitched, far-sounding
+order, "Left wheel into line!" He was among those who, when the trumpets
+had sounded the charge, strove in vain by dint of spur to overtake the
+gallant old chief with the long white moustache, as he rode foremost on
+the foe with the dashing Elliot and the burly Shegog on either flank of
+him; he was among those who, as they hewed and hacked their way through
+the press, heard already from the far side of the _melee_ the stentorian
+adjuration of big Adjutant Miller, as standing up in his stirrups the
+burly Scot shouted, "Rally, rally on me, ye muckle ----!" Mightily knocked
+about has been this man with the empty sleeve, but he does not belie the
+familiar sobriquet of his old regiment; he was one of the "Diehards," a
+title well earned by the 57th on the bloody height of Albuera, and it was
+under their colours that he lost his arm on Inkerman morning. There is
+quite a little regiment of men who were wounded in the "trenches" or about
+the Redan. There is no "19" now on the buttons of this scarred veteran,
+but the number was there when he followed Massy and Molesworth over the
+parapet of the Redan on the day when so much good English blood was
+wasted. Shoulder to shoulder now, as oft of yore, stand two old soldiers
+of the Buffs both of whom went down in the same assault; and an umwhile
+bugler of the Perthshire Grey-breeks "minds the day" well also by reason
+of the wound that has crippled him for life. As he stands on parade this
+calm Sabbath morning, that maimed man of the 60th Rifles can remember
+another and a very different Sabbath--the 10th of May 1857 in Meerut--day
+and place of the first outburst of the Mutiny; a fell Sabbath of burning,
+slaughter, and dismay, of disregard of sex, age, and rank, of fierce
+brutality and of nameless agony. He was one of the rifles whose fire in
+the assault of Delhi covered the desperate duty of blowing open the
+Cashmere Gate, performed with so methodical calmness by Home, Salkeld, and
+Burgess; and his comrade hero with the maimed limb, when the hour had come
+for a rush to close quarters, followed Reid and Muter over the breastwork
+at the end of the serai of Kissengunge. Proud, yet their pride dashed by
+sadness, must be the soldiering memories of this stout northman, erstwhile
+a front rank man in the old Ross-shire Buffs, a regiment ever true to its
+noble Celtic motto of _Cuidichn Rhi_. At Kooshab, in the short, but
+brilliant Persian War, he fought in the same field where Malcolmson earned
+the Victoria Cross by one of the most gallant acts for which that guerdon
+of valour ever has been accorded. He was in Mackenzie's company at
+Cawnpore when the Highlanders, stirred by the wild strains of the
+war-pibroch, rushed upon the Nana's battery at the angle of the mango tope
+with the irresistible fury of one of their own mountain torrents in spate.
+And next day he was among those who, with drawn ghastly faces and scared
+eyes, looked into that fearful well, filled to the lip with the mangled
+corpses of British women and children. He was one of those who, standing
+by that well, pledged the oath administered by the bareheaded Ross-shire
+sergeant over the long, heavy tress of auburn hair which a demon's tulwar
+had severed from the head of an Englishwoman, that while strong arm and
+trusty steel lasted to no living thing of the accursed race should quarter
+be accorded. And he was one of those who, having battled their way over
+the Charbagh Bridge, having threaded the bullet-torn path to the
+Kaiser-bagh, and having forced for themselves a passage up to the
+embrasures by the Baileyguard Gate, melted from the stern fierceness of
+the fray when the siege-worn women and children in the residency of
+Lucknow sobbed out upon their necks blessings for the deliverance. His
+rear-rank man is an ex-Bengal Fusilier, wounded once at Sabraon, again at
+Pegu, and a third time at Delhi. He will not be offended if you hail him
+as one of the "old Dirty-shirts;" for it was in honourable disregard of
+appearances as they toiled night and day in the trenches of Delhi that the
+regiment, which now in the Queen's service is numbered 101, gained the
+nickname. Time and space fail one to tell a tithe of the stories of valour
+and hardship linked in the medals and wounds borne by men on this
+unostentatious parade--a parade the members of which have shed their blood
+on the soil of every quarter of the globe. The minutest military annals
+scarcely name some of the obscure combats in which men here to-day have
+fought and bled. This man desperately wounded at Najou, near Shanghai;
+that one wounded in two places at Owna, in Persia; this one with a sleeve
+emptied at Aroga, in Abyssinia--who among us remember aught, if, indeed,
+we have ever heard, of Najou, Owna, or Aroga? On the breast of this bent,
+hoary old man, note these strange emblems, the Cross of San Fernando and
+the Order of the Tower and Sword. Their wearer is a relic of the British
+Legion in the Carlist War of 1837, and they were won under brave old De
+Lacy Evans at the siege of Bilbao.
+
+Over the modest portals of the Commissionaire Barracks in the Strand might
+well be inscribed the legend, "To all the military glories of Britain."
+But just as we have not long ago seen the pride of a palace in another
+land on whose facade is a kindred inscription, abased by the occupation of
+a foreign conqueror, so there was a time when the living emblems of
+Britain's military glory were wont to undergo much humiliation and
+adversity when their career of soldiering had come to an end. Germany
+recompenses her veterans by according them, as a right, reputable civil
+employ when they have served their time as soldiers; the custom of
+Britain, on the contrary, has been too commonly to leave her scarred and
+war-worn soldiers to their own resources, or to a pension on which to live
+is impossible. We were always ready enough to feel a glow at the
+achievements of our arms; but till lately we were prone to reckon the
+individual soldier as a social pariah, and to regard the fact of a man's
+having served in the ranks as a brand of discredit. To this estimate, it
+must be allowed, the ex-soldier himself very often contributed not a
+little. Destitute of a future, and often debarred by wounds or by broken
+health from any laborious industrial employment, he made the most of the
+present; and his idea of making the most of the future not unfrequently
+took the form of beer and shiftlessness. Recognising the disadvantages
+that bore so hard on the deserving old soldier, recognising too, in the
+words of the late Sir John Burgoyne, that "there are many qualities
+peculiar to the soldier and sailor, and imbibed by him in the ordinary
+course of his service, which, added to good character and conduct, may
+render such men more eligible than others for various services in civil
+life," Captain Edward Walter founded the Corps of Commissionaires. That
+organisation, beginning with seven men, has now a strength of several
+hundreds, and its ranks are still open to all the eligible recruits who
+choose to come forward. The Commissionaire is no recipient of charity;
+what Captain Walter has done is simply to show him how he may earn an
+honest and comfortable livelihood, and to provide him, if he desires it,
+with a home of a kind which the ex-militaire naturally most appreciates.
+The advantages are open to him of a savings-bank and of a sick and burial
+fund, and when the evil days come when he can no longer earn his own
+bread, the "Retiring Fund" guarantees the thrifty and steady
+Commissionaire against the prospect of ending his days in the workhouse.
+Among the fruits of Captain Walter's devoted and gratuitous services in
+this cause has been a wholesome change in the bias of popular opinion as
+to the worth of old soldiers. No longer are they regarded as the mere
+chaff and _debris_ of the cannon fodder--"no account men," as Bret Harte
+has it; he has furnished them with opportunity to prove, and they have
+proved, that they can so live and so work as to win the respect and trust
+of their brethren of the civilian world. The man who has done this thing
+deserves well, not alone of the British army, but of the British nation.
+He has brought it about that the time has come when most men think with
+Sir Roger de Coverley. "You must know," says Sir Roger, "I never make use
+of anybody to row me that has not lost either a leg or an arm. I would
+rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man
+that has been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop
+... I would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg."
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
+
+
+The actual fighting phase of this memorable campaign was confined to the
+four days from the 15th to the 18th of June, both days inclusive. The
+literature concerning itself with that period would make a library of
+itself. Scarcely a military writer of any European nation but has
+delivered himself on the subject, from Clausewitz to General Maurice, from
+Berton to Brialmont. Thiers, Alison, and Hooper may be cited of the host
+of civilian writers whom the theme has enticed to description and
+criticism. There is scarcely a point in the brief vivid drama that has not
+furnished a topic for warm and sustained controversy; and the cult of the
+Waterloo campaign is more assiduous to-day than when the participators in
+the great strife were testifying to their own experiences.
+
+Quite recently an important work dealing chiefly with the inner history of
+the campaign has come to us from the other side of the Atlantic. [Footnote:
+_The Campaign of Waterloo: a Military History_. By John Codman Ropes. New
+York: Charles Scribner's Sons. February 1893.] Its author, Mr. John Ropes,
+is a civilian gentleman of Boston, who has devoted his life to military
+study. He has given years to the elucidation of the problems of the
+Waterloo campaign, has trodden every foot of its ground, and has burrowed
+for recondite matter in the military archives of divers nations. A citizen
+of the American Republic, he is free alike from national prejudices and
+national prepossessions; if he is perhaps not uniformly correct in his
+inferences, his rigorous impartiality is always conspicuous. By his
+research and acute perception he has let light in upon not a few
+obscurities; and it may be pertinent briefly to summarise the inner
+history of the campaign, giving what may seem their due weight to the
+arguments and representations of the American writer.
+
+The following were the respective positions on the 14th of June:--
+Wellington's heterogeneous army, about 94,000 strong with 196 guns, lay
+widely dispersed in cantonments from the Scheldt to the Charleroi-Brussels
+chaussee, its front extending from Tournay through Mons and Binche to
+Nivelles and Quatre Bras. Of the Prussian army under Bluecher, about
+121,000 strong with 312 guns, one corps was at Liege, another near the
+Meuse above Namur, a third at Namur, and Ziethen's in advance holding the
+line of the Sambre. The mass of Bluecher's command had already seen service
+and, with the exception of the Saxons, was full of zeal; the corps were
+well commanded, and their chief, although he had his limits, was a
+thorough soldier. The French army, consisting of five corps d'armee, the
+Guard, four cavalry corps and 344 guns--total fighting strength 124,500--
+Napoleon had succeeded in assembling with wonderful celerity and secrecy
+south of the Sambre within an easy march of Charleroi. Its officers and
+soldiers were alike veterans but its organisation was somewhat defective.
+Napoleon scarcely preserved the phenomenal force of earlier years; but, in
+Mr. Ropes's words, he disclosed "no conspicuous lack of energy and
+activity." Soult was far from being an ideal chief of staff. Ney, to whom
+was assigned the command of the left wing, only reached the army on the
+15th, and without a staff; Grouchy, to whom on the 16th was suddenly given
+the command of the right wing, was not a man of high military capacity.
+
+Napoleon's plan of campaign was founded on the circumstance that the bases
+of the allied armies lay in opposite directions--the English base on the
+German Ocean, the Prussian through Liege and Maestricht to the Rhine. The
+military probability was that if either army was forced to retreat, it
+would retreat towards its base; and to do this would be to march away from
+its ally. Napoleon was in no situation to manoeuvre leisurely, with all
+Europe on the march against him. His engrossing aim was to gain immediate
+victory over his adversaries in Belgium before the Russians and Austrians
+should close in around him. His expectation was that Bluecher would offer
+battle about Fleurus and be overwhelmed before the Anglo-Dutch army could
+come to the support of its Prussian ally. To make sure of preventing that
+junction the Emperor's intention was to detail Ney with the left wing to
+reach and hold Quatre Bras. The Prussians thoroughly beaten, drifting
+rearward toward their base, and reduced to a condition of comparative
+inoffensiveness, he would then turn on Wellington and force him to give
+battle.
+
+Mr. Ropes refutes the contention maintained by a great array of
+authorities, that Napoleon's design was to "wedge himself into the
+interval between the allied armies" by seizing simultaneously Sombreffe
+and Quatre Bras, in order to cut the communication between the two armies
+and then defeat them in succession. Against this view he successfully
+marshals Napoleon himself, Wellington by the mouth of Lord Ellesmere, and
+the great German strategist Clausewitz. It will suffice to quote
+Napoleon:--
+
+  The Emperor's intention was that his advance should
+  occupy Fleurus, the mass concealed behind this town;
+  he took good care ... above all things not to occupy
+  Sombreffe. To have done so would have caused the
+  failure of all his dispositions, for then the battle of Ligny
+  would not have been fought, and Bluecher would have had
+  to make Wavre the concentration-point for his army.
+
+Wellington alludes pointedly to the obvious danger to the French army of
+the suggested wedge position in what the Germans call _die taktische
+Mitte_, where, instead of being able to defeat the allies in succession,
+it would itself be liable to be crushed between the upper and the nether
+millstone.
+
+At daybreak of the 15th Napoleon took the offensive, driving in Ziethen on
+and through Charleroi although not without sharp fighting. On that evening
+three French corps, the Guard, and most of the cavalry, were concentrated
+about Charleroi and forward toward Fleurus, ready to attack Bluecher next
+day. Controversy has been very keen on the question whether or not on the
+afternoon of the 15th Napoleon gave Ney verbal orders to occupy Quatre
+Bras the same evening. Mr. Ropes holds it "almost certain" that the order
+was given. From Napoleon's bulletin despatched on the evening of the 15th,
+which is the only piece of strictly contemporary evidence, he quotes: "Le
+Prince de la Moskowa (Ney) a eu le soir son quartier general aux
+Quatres-Chemins;" and he remarks that this must have been the belief in
+the headquarter "unless we gratuitously invent an intention to deceive the
+public." There is no need for Mr. Ropes to put that strain on himself,
+since the main purport of Napoleon's bulletins notoriously was to deceive
+the public. But if Napoleon had not intended that Ney should occupy Quatre
+Bras on the night of the 15th, the statement that this had been done would
+have been a purposeless futility; and if he had intended that Ney should
+do so it is unlikely that he should have omitted to give him instructions
+to that effect. Grouchy claims to have heard Napoleon censure Ney for his
+omission to occupy Quatre Bras; an omission which had its importance, for
+the reason, among others, that it was ominous of the Marshal's infinitely
+more harmful disobedience of orders next day.
+
+All writers agree that Bluecher ordered the concentration of his army in
+the fighting position previously chosen in the event of the French
+advancing by Charleroi, "without," in Mr. Ropes's words, "any definite
+agreement or undertaking with Wellington that he was to have English aid
+in the impending battle." He was content to take his risk of the English
+general's possible inability for sundry obvious reasons, to come to his
+support. And while the Prussian army with the unfortunate exception of
+Buelow's corps, was on the 15th moving toward the chosen position of Ligny,
+where its right was to be on St. Amand, its centre on and behind Ligny,
+and its left about Balatre, what was happening in the Anglo-Dutch army
+lying spread out westward of the Charleroi--Brussels chaussee?
+
+Wellington was at Brussels expecting the French invasion by or west of the
+Mons-Brussels road, to meet which he considered his army very well placed,
+but could expect no Prussian cooperation. His courier service, with his
+forces so dispersed, should have been well organised and alert, but it was
+neither; and Napoleon's secrecy and suddenness in taking the offensive
+were worthy of his best days. It has been freely imputed to Wellington
+that he was thereby in a measure surprised. There is the strange and
+probably mythical story in the work professing to be Fouche's _Memoirs_ to
+the effect that Wellington was relying on him for information of
+Napoleon's plans, and that he--Fouche--played the English commander false.
+"On the very day of Napoleon's departure from Paris," say the _Memoirs_,
+"I despatched Madame D----, furnished with notes in cipher, narrating the
+whole plan of the campaign. But at the same time I privately sent orders
+for such obstacles at the frontier, where she was to pass, that she could
+not reach Wellington's headquarters till after the event. This was the
+real explanation of the inactivity of the British generalissimo which
+excited such universal astonishment." Readers of the _Letters of the First
+Earl of Malmesbury_ will remember the apparently authentic statement of
+Captain Bowles, that Wellington, rising from the supper-table at the
+famous ball,
+
+  whispered to ask the Duke of Richmond if he had a good
+  map. The Duke of Richmond said he had, and took
+  Wellington into his dressing-room. Wellington shut the
+  door and said, "Napoleon has humbugged me, by God;
+  he has gained twenty-four hours' march on me.... I
+  have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras;
+  but we shall not stop him there, and if so I must fight
+  him _there_" (passing his thumb-nail over the position of
+  Waterloo). The conversation was repeated to me by the
+  Duke of Richmond two minutes after it occurred.
+
+Facts, however, are stronger evidence than words; and this confession on
+Wellington's part is inconsistent with the circumstance that he had not
+hurried to retrieve the time he is represented as having owned that
+Napoleon had gained on him--that he had, on the contrary, allowed his
+adversary to gain several hours more. Wellington's combination of caution
+and decision throughout this momentous period is a very interesting study.
+It was not until 3 P.M. (of the 15th) that there reached him tidings
+almost simultaneously of firing between the outposts about Thuin and that
+Ziethen had been attacked before Charleroi, the two places ten miles apart
+and both occurrences in the early morning. Those affairs might have been
+casual outpost skirmishes; and the Duke, in anticipation of further
+information, took no measures for some hours. At length, in default of
+later tidings he determined on the precautionary step of assembling his
+divisions at their respective rendezvous points in readiness to march;
+further specifically directing a concentration of 25,000 men at Nivelles
+on his then left flank, when it should have been ascertained for certain
+that the enemy's line of attack was by Charleroi. These orders were sent
+out early in the evening--"between 5 and 7." Later in the evening came a
+letter from Bluecher announcing the concentration of the Prussian army to
+occupy the Ligny fighting position, in which disposition Wellington
+acquiesced; but, still uncertain of Napoleon's true line of attack--his
+conviction being, as is well known, that Napoleon should have moved on the
+British right--he would not definitely fix the point of ultimate
+concentration of his army until he should receive intelligence from Mons.
+But Bluecher's tidings caused him to issue about 10 P.M. a second set of
+orders, commanding a general movement of the army, not as yet to any
+specific point of concentration but in prescribed directions towards its
+left (eastward). At length, when the news came from Mons that he need have
+no further serious solicitude about his right since the whole French army
+was advancing by Charleroi, he saw his way clear. Towards midnight, writes
+Mueffling the Prussian Commissioner at his headquarters, Wellington
+informed him of the tidings from Mons, and added: "The orders for the
+concentration of my army at Nivelles and Quatre Bras are already
+despatched. Let us, therefore, go to the ball."
+
+There are three definite evidences that before midnight of the 15th
+Wellington had resolved to concentrate about Quatre Bras, and had issued
+final orders accordingly--his statement to the Duke of Richmond, his
+statement to Mueffling, and his statement in his official report to Lord
+Bathurst. Yet Mr. Ropes believes that his decision to that effect "could
+not have been arrived at very long before he left Brussels" on the morning
+of the 16th, which he did "probably about half-past seven." He founds this
+belief on two orders dated "16th June" sent to Lord Hill in the early
+morning of that day, in which there is no allusion to a concentration at
+Quatre Bras. But those were merely supplementary instructions as to points
+of detail; for example, one of them enjoined that a division ordered
+earlier to Enghien should move instead by way of Braine le Comte, that
+being a nearer route toward the final general destination of Quatre Bras
+specified in the earlier (the "towards midnight") orders. The latter
+orders are not extant, having been lost according to Gurwood, with De
+Lancey's papers when he fell at Waterloo; but that they must have been
+issued is proved by the fact that they were acted upon by the troops; and
+that they were issued before midnight of the 15th is made clear by
+Wellington's three specific statements to that effect.
+
+When the Duke left Brussels for the front on the morning of the 16th he
+took with him a singularly optimistic paper styled "Disposition of the
+British Army at 7 A.M., 16th June," which was "written out for the
+information of the Commander of the Forces by Colonel Sir W. de Lancey,"
+his Quartermaster-General. In the nature of things for the most part
+guess-work, the wish as regarded almost every particular set out in this
+document was father to the thought. Wellington was no doubt reasonably
+justified in accepting and relying on this flattering "Disposition;" but
+its terms, as Mr. Ropes conclusively shows, simply misled him and caused
+him also unconsciously to mislead Bluecher, both by the expressions of the
+letter written by him to that chief on his arrival at Quatre Bras and
+later when he met the Prussian commander at the mill of Brye. Wellington
+was indeed trebly fortunate in finding the Quatre Bras position still
+available to him--fortunate that Ney on the previous evening had defaulted
+from his orders in refraining from occupying it; fortunate that Ney still
+on this morning was remaining passive; and more fortunate still that it
+had been occupied, defended, and reinforced by Dutch-Belgian troops not
+only without orders from him but in bold and happy violation of his
+orders. Perponcher's division was scarcely a potent representative of the
+Anglo-Dutch army, but there was nothing more at hand; and pending the
+coming up of reinforcements Wellington, with rather a sanguine reliance on
+Ney's maintenance of inactivity, rode over to Brye and had a conversation
+with Bluecher. There are contradictory accounts of its tenor, and Gneisenau
+certainly seems to have formed the impression that the Duke gave a
+positive pledge of support. Mr. Ropes considers that, misled by the
+erroneous "Disposition," Wellington honestly believed he would be able to
+co-operate with Bluecher, and that he "certainly did give that commander
+some assurance of support by the Anglo-Dutch army in the impending
+battle." Mueffling, who was present, states that the Duke's last words were:
+"Well, I will come, provided I am not attacked myself;" and this probably
+was the final undertaking. Wellington's words were in accordance with the
+caution of his character; and it is certain that Bluecher had decided to
+fight at Ligny whether assured or not of his brother-commander's support.
+That Wellington regarded Bluecher's dispositions for battle as
+objectionable is proved by his blunt comment to Hardinge--"If they fight
+here they will be damnably licked!"
+
+It would have been possible for Napoleon to have crushed the Prussian army
+in the early hours of the 16th when it was in the throes of formation for
+battle; and this he would probably have done if Ney had occupied Quatre
+Bras on the previous evening. But in Ney's default of accomplishing this
+Napoleon, in his solicitude that Wellington should be hindered from
+supporting Bluecher, determined to delay his own stroke against the latter
+until Ney should be in possession of Quatre Bras with the left wing,
+where, in Soult's words, "he ought to be able to destroy any force of the
+enemy that might present itself," and then come to the support of the
+Emperor by getting on the Prussian rear behind St. Amand. Napoleon's
+instructions were explicit that Ney was to march on Quatre Bras, take
+position there, and then send an infantry division and Kellerman's cavalry
+to points eastward, whence the Emperor might summon them to participate in
+his own operations. If Ney had fulfilled his orders by utilising the whole
+force at his disposal, in all human probability he would have defeated
+Wellington at Quatre Bras, whose troops, arriving in detail, would have
+been crushed by greatly superior numbers as they came up. As it was,
+although at the beginning of the battle he was in superior strength, Ney
+never utilised more than 22,000 men; whereas by its close Wellington had
+31,000, and, thanks to the stanchness of the British infantry, was the
+victor in a very hard-fought contest. But Mr. Ropes has reason in holding
+it humanly certain that he would have been beaten--in which case the
+battle of Waterloo would never have been fought--had not D'Erlon's corps
+of Ney's command while marching towards Quatre Bras, been turned aside in
+the direction of the Prussian right.
+
+In the justifiable belief that Ney was duly carrying out his orders
+Napoleon at half-past one opened the battle of Ligny. He had expected to
+have to deal with but a single Prussian corps, but the actual fact was
+that, while he had 74,000 men on the field, Bluecher had 87,000 with a
+superior strength of artillery. The fighting was long and severe. From the
+first, recognising the defects of his adversary's position, Napoleon was
+satisfied that he could defeat the Prussian army. But he needed to do
+more--to crush, to rout it, so that he need give himself no further
+concern regarding it. This he saw his way to accomplish if Ney were to
+strike in presently on the Prussian right; and so, with intent to stir
+that chief to vigorous enterprise, the message was sent him that "the fate
+of France was in his hands." The battle proceeded, Bluecher throwing in his
+reserves freely, Napoleon chary of his and playing the waiting game
+pending Ney's expected co-operation. About half-past five he was preparing
+to put in the Guard and strike the decisive blow, when information reached
+him from his right that a column, presumably hostile, was visible some two
+miles distant marching toward Fleurus. Napoleon sent an aide to ascertain
+the facts and until his return postponed the decisive moment. Two hours
+later the information was brought back that the approaching column was
+D'Erlon's from Ney's wing. This intelligence dispelled all anxiety.
+Strangely enough, no instructions were sent to the approaching
+reinforcement, and the suspended stroke was promptly dealt. The Prussians,
+after desperate fighting, were everywhere driven back. Napoleon with part
+of the Imperial Guard broke Bluecher's centre, and the French army deployed
+on the heights beyond the stream. In a word, Napoleon had defeated the
+Prussians, but had neither crushed nor routed them. There was no pursuit.
+
+D'Erlon's corps on this afternoon had achieved the doubly sinister
+distinction of having prevented Ney from gaining a probable victory at
+Quatre Bras, and of detracting from the thoroughness of Napoleon's actual
+victory at Ligny. While it was leisurely marching towards Frasnes in
+support of Ney, it was diverted eastward towards the Prussian right flank
+in consequence of an order given (whether authorised or not is uncertain)
+by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor. It was about to deploy for action,
+when, on receiving from Ney a peremptory order to rejoin his command; and
+in absence of a command from Napoleon to strike the Prussian flank, it
+went about and tramped back towards Frasnes. D'Erlon's promenade was as
+futile as the famous march of the King of France up the hill and then down
+again.
+
+Mr. Ropes considers that on the morning of the 17th Napoleon had thus far
+in the main fulfilled his programme. This view may be questioned. He had
+merely defeated two of the four Prussian corps; he had not wrecked
+Bluecher. He had failed to occupy Quatre Bras; the Anglo-Dutch army had
+succeeded in effecting a partial concentration and in repulsing his left
+wing there. Still it must be admitted that with two corps absolutely
+intact and with no serious losses in the Guard and cavalry, Napoleon was
+in good shape for carrying out his plan. If Ney had sent him word
+overnight that Wellington's army was bivouacking about Quatre Bras in
+ignorance, as it turned out, of the result of Ligny, he might have
+attacked it to good purpose in conjunction with Ney in the early morning
+of the 17th. But Ney was silent and sulky; Napoleon himself was greatly
+fatigued, and Soult was of no service to him.
+
+During the night the Prussians "had folded their tents like the Arabs, and
+as silently stolen away." They had neither been watched nor followed up,
+all touch of them had been lost, and there was nothing to indicate their
+line of retreat. This slovenliness on the part of the French would not
+have occurred in Napoleon's earlier days; nor in those days of greater
+vigour would he have delayed until after midday of the 17th to follow up
+an army which he had defeated on the previous evening, and which had
+disappeared from before him in the course of the night. The reports which
+had been sent in from a cavalry reconnaissance despatched in the morning
+indicated that the Prussians were retiring on Namur. No reconnaissance had
+been made in the direction of Tilly and Wavre. This was a strange error,
+since Bluecher had two corps still untouched, and as above everything a
+fighting man, was not likely to throw up his hands and forsake his ally
+after one partial discomfiture. Napoleon tardily determined to despatch
+Grouchy on the errand of following up the Prussians with a force
+consisting of about 33,000 men with ninety-six guns. Thus far all
+authorities are agreed; but as regards the character of the orders given
+to Grouchy for his guidance in an obviously somewhat complicated
+enterprise, there is an extraordinary contrariety of evidence. It is
+stated in the _St. Helena Memoirs_ that Grouchy received positive orders
+to keep himself always between the main French army and Bluecher; to
+maintain constant communication with the former and in a position easily
+to rejoin it; that since it was possible that Bluecher might retreat on
+Wavre, he (Grouchy) was to be there simultaneously; if the Prussians
+should continue their march on Brussels and should pass the night in the
+forest of Soignies, he was to follow to the edge of the forest; should
+they retire on the Meuse, he was to watch them with part of his cavalry
+and himself occupy Wavre with the mass of his force, where he should be in
+position for easy communication with Napoleon's headquarters. Those orders
+are certainly specific enough, but there is no record of them; and they
+may be assumed to represent rather what Napoleon at St. Helena considered
+Grouchy should have done, than what he was actually ordered to do.
+
+Grouchy's version, again--and it is adequately corroborated--is to the
+effect that about midday of the 17th on the field of Ligny, the Emperor
+gave him the verbal order to take the 3rd and 4th Corps and certain
+cavalry and "go in pursuit of the Prussians." Grouchy raised sundry
+objections which the Emperor overruled and repeated his commands, adding
+that "it was for me (Grouchy) to discover the route taken by Bluecher; that
+he himself was going to fight the English, and that it was for me to
+complete the defeat of the Prussians by attacking them as soon as I should
+have caught up with them." So much for Grouchy for the moment.
+
+Soon after the Emperor had given Grouchy this verbal order, tidings came
+in from a scouting party that a body of Prussian troops had been seen
+about 9 A.M. at Gembloux, considerably northward of the Namur road. The
+abstract probability no doubt was that the Prussians would retire towards
+their base. But that Napoleon kept an open mind on the subject is
+evidenced by his instruction to Grouchy to "go and discover the route
+taken by Bluecher," and this later intelligence, it may be assumed, opened
+his mind yet further. He thought it well, then, to send to Grouchy a
+supplementary written order which in the temporary absence of Marshal
+Soult he dictated to General Bertrand. This order enjoined on Grouchy to
+proceed with his force to Gembloux; to explore in the directions of Namur
+and Maestricht; to pursue the enemy; explore his march; and report upon
+his manoeuvres, so that "I (Napoleon) may be able to penetrate what the
+enemy is intending to do; whether he is separating himself from the
+English, or whether they are intending still to unite in trying the fate
+of another battle to cover Brussels or Liege." To me I confess--and the
+view is also that of Chesney and Maurice--this written order is simply an
+amplification in detail of the previous verbal order, which by instructing
+Grouchy "to discover the route taken by Bluecher" clearly evinced doubt in
+Napoleon's mind as to the Prussian line of retreat. Mr. Ropes, on the
+other hand, bases an indictment on Grouchy's conduct on the argument that
+not only was the tone of the written order altogether different from that
+of the verbal order, but that the duty assigned to Grouchy by the former
+was wholly different from that specified in the latter.
+
+He adds that Grouchy constantly and persistently denied having received
+any other than the verbal order, that in this denial Grouchy lied, and
+that "the mischievous influence of this deliberate concealment of his
+orders by Grouchy caused for nearly thirty years after the battle of
+Waterloo to be prevalent a wholly false notion as to the task assigned by
+Napoleon to the Marshal." Certainly Grouchy's conduct is inexplicable to
+any one holding the belief, as I do, that there is nothing in the written
+order to account for Grouchy's denial of having received it. It is more
+inexplicable than Mr. Ropes appears to be aware of. It is true, as Mr.
+Ropes proves, that Grouchy vehemently denied receiving the written order
+in all his works printed from 1818 to 1829. But he had actually
+acknowledged its receipt almost immediately after Waterloo. In his son's
+little book, _Le Marechal de Grouchy du 16me au 19me Juin, 1815,_ is
+printed among the _Documents Historiques Inedits_ a paper styled
+"Allocution du Marechal Grouchy a quelques-uns des officiers generaux sous
+les ordres, lorsqu'il eut appris les desastres de Waterloo." From this
+document I make the following extract: "A few hours later the Emperor
+modified his first order, and caused to be written to me by the Grand
+Marshal Bertrand the order to betake myself to Gembloux, and to send
+reconnaissances towards Namur. 'It is important,' continued the order, 'to
+discover the intentions of the Prussians--whether they are separating from
+the English, or have the design to take the chance of a new battle.'" It
+is strange that this acknowledgment should never have been cited against
+Grouchy; stranger still that in the face of it he should have maintained
+his denials; yet more strange that those denials were never exposed; and
+most strange of all, that finally the "written order" should have appeared
+for the first time in a casual article published in 1842, without evoking
+any explanation from Grouchy, or any strictures on his persistent
+mendacity.
+
+It may be questioned whether the force of 33,000 men entrusted to Grouchy
+was not either too large or too small. The main French army, in the
+possible contingencies before it, could not safely spare so large a
+detachment, as events showed. Grouchy's command was not sufficiently
+strong to oppose the whole Prussian army; two corps of which could
+certainly have "held" it, while the other two were free to support
+Wellington. Mr. Ropes thinks it might have been diminished by one-half,
+but then a single Prussian corps could have dealt with it. It is difficult
+to discern in what respect the 6000 cavalry assigned to Grouchy should
+have been inadequate to such service as could reasonably have been
+expected of his whole command.
+
+The British force about Quatre Bras on the morning of the 17th amounted to
+about 45,000 men. Early on that morning Wellington was in conversation
+with the Captain Bowles previously mentioned, when an officer galloped up
+and, to quote Captain Bowles,
+
+  whispered to the Duke, who then turned to me and said,
+  "Old Bluecher has had a d----d good licking and has gone
+  back to Wavre. As he has gone back, we must go too. I
+  suppose in England they will say we have been licked--I
+  can't help that."
+
+He quietly withdrew his troops from their positions, an operation which
+Ney, with 40,000 men at his disposal, did not attempt to molest,
+notwithstanding repeated orders from Napoleon to move on Quatre Bras.
+Early in the afternoon Napoleon reached that vicinity with the Guard, 6th
+Corps, and Milhaud's Cuirassiers, picked up Ney's command, and mounting
+his horse led the French army, following up Wellington's retreat. His
+energy and activity throughout the march is described as intense. Those
+characteristics he continued to evince during the following night and in
+the morning of the eventful 18th. In the dead of night he spent two hours
+on the picquet line, and about seven he was out again on the foreposts in
+the mud and rain. His anxiety was not as to the issue of a battle with
+Wellington, but lest Wellington should not stand and fight. That
+apprehension was dispelled when, as he rode along his front about 8 A.M.,
+he saw the Anglo-Dutch army taking up its ground. He was aware that at
+least one "pretty strong Prussian column"--which actually consisted of the
+two corps beaten at Ligny--had retired on Wavre. But notwithstanding the
+disquieting vagueness and ineptitude of Grouchy's letter of 10 P.M. of the
+17th from Gembloux, and that up to the morning of the battle he had sent
+no suggestions or instructions to that officer, he yet trusted implicitly
+to him to fend off the Prussians; and it did not seem to occur to him that
+Wellington's calm expectant attitude indicated his assurance of Bluecher's
+cooperation.
+
+In one of the cavalry charges toward the close of the battle of Ligny,
+Bluecher had been overthrown, ridden over, almost taken prisoner, and
+severely bruised; but the gallant old hussar was almost himself again next
+morning, thanks to copious doses of gin and rhubarb, for the effluvium of
+which restorative he apologised to Hardinge as he embraced that wounded
+officer, in the extremely plain expression, "_Ich stinke etwas_."
+Gneisenau, his Chief of Staff, rather distrusted Wellington's good faith,
+and doubted whether it was not the safer policy for the Prussian army to
+fall back toward Liege. But Bluecher prevailed over his lieutenants; and on
+the evening of the 17th all four Prussian corps in a strength of about
+90,000 men, were concentrated about Wavre, some nine miles east of the
+Waterloo position, full of ardour and confident of success. That same
+night Mueffling informed Bluecher by letter that the Anglo-Dutch army had
+occupied the position named, wherein to fight next day; and Bluecher's
+loyal answer was that Buelow's corps at daybreak should march by way of St.
+Lambert to strike the French right; that Pirch's would follow in support;
+and that the other two would stand in readiness. This communication, which
+reached Wellington at headquarters at 2 A.M. of the 18th, has been held to
+have been the first actually definite assurance of Prussian support. The
+story to the effect that on the evening of the 17th the Duke rode over to
+Wavre to make sure from Bluecher's own mouth that he could rely on Prussian
+support next day, to the truth of which not a little of vague testimony
+has been adduced, may be now definitely disregarded. The evidence against
+the legend is conclusive. An authoritative contradiction was given to it
+in an article in the _Quarterly Review_ of 1842, from the pen of Lord
+Francis Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, who confessedly wrote under
+the inspiration of the Duke, and in this instance directly from a
+memorandum drawn up by his Grace. Quite recently there have been found and
+are now in the possession of the Rev. Frederick Gurney, the grandson of
+the late Sir John Gurney, the notes of a "conversation with the Duke of
+Wellington and Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Williams, Judges on Circuit,
+at Strath-fieldsaye House, on 24th February 1837." The annotator was Baron
+Gurney, to the following effect:--"The conversation had been commenced by
+my inquiring of him (the Duke) whether a story which I had heard was true
+of his having ridden over to Bluecher on the night before the battle of
+Waterloo, and returned on the same horse. He said--'No, that was not so. I
+did not see Bluecher on the day before Waterloo. I saw him the day before,
+on the day of Quatre Bras. I saw him after Waterloo, and he kissed me. He
+embraced me on horseback. I had communicated with him the day before
+Waterloo.'" The rest of the conversation made no further reference to the
+topic of the ride to Wavre.
+
+It is not proposed to give here any account of the memorable battle, the
+main incidents of which are familiar to all. It was of course Wellington's
+policy to take up a defensive attitude; both because of the incapacity of
+his raw soldiers for manoeuvring, and since every minute before Napoleon
+should begin the offensive was of value to the English commander, as it
+diminished the length of punishment he would have to endure single-handed.
+Further, he was numerically weaker than his adversary, while his troops
+were at once of divers nationalities and divers character; his main
+reliance was on his British troops and those of the King's German Legion.
+Napoleon for his part deliberately delayed to attack when celerity of
+action was all-important to him, disregarding the obvious probability of
+Prussian assistance to Wellington, and sanguinely expecting that Grouchy
+would either avert that support or reach him in time to neutralise it. Mr.
+Ropes has written an admirable criticism of the errors of the French in
+their contest with the Anglo-Dutch army, for which Ney was for the most
+part responsible, since from before 3 P.M. Napoleon was engrossed in
+preparing his right flank for defence against the Prussians. The issue of
+the great battle all men know. The badness of the roads retarded the
+Prussians greatly, and, save in Buelow's corps, there was no doubt
+considerable delay in starting; but the proverb that "All's well that ends
+well" might have been coined with special application to the battle of
+Waterloo.
+
+It only remains briefly to refer to Mr. Ropes's elaborate _resume_ of the
+melancholy adventures of Grouchy, on whom he may be regarded as too
+severe. Sent out too late on a species of roving commission, more was
+expected from him by Napoleon than could have been accomplished by any but
+a leader of the highest order, whereas Grouchy had never given evidence of
+being more than respectable. He received from his master neither
+instructions nor information from the time he left the field of Ligny
+until 4 P.M. of the 18th, nor until at Walhain he heard the cannonade of
+Waterloo had he any knowledge of the whereabouts of the French main army.
+On the morning of the 18th he was late in leaving Gembloux, on not the
+most direct route towards Wavre; instead of moving on which, when he heard
+the noise of the battle, he should no doubt have marched straight for the
+Dyle bridges at Ottignies and Moustier. Had he done so, spite of all
+delays he could have been across the Dyle by 4 P.M. But when Mr. Ropes
+claims that thus Grouchy would have been able to arrest the march toward
+the battlefield of the two leading Prussian corps, one of which was four
+miles distant from him and the other still farther away, he is too
+exacting. Had Grouchy made the vain attempt, the two nearer Prussian corps
+would have taken him in flank and headed him off, while Buelow and Ziethen
+pressed on to the battlefield. If he had marched straight and swiftly on
+the cannon-thunder of Waterloo, he might perhaps have been in time to
+effect something in the nature of a diversion, although it is extremely
+improbable that he could have materially changed the fortune of the day;
+but instead, acting on the letter of Napoleon's instructions despatched to
+him on the morning of the battle, he moved on Wavre and engaged in a
+futile action with the Prussian 3rd Corps there. A shrewd and enterprising
+man would have at least seen into the spirit of his orders; Grouchy could
+not do this, and he is to be pitied rather than blamed.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
+by Archibald Forbes
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places, by Archibald Forbes
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+Title: Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
+
+Author: Archibald Forbes
+
+Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9460]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 3, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPS, QUARTERS, AND CASUAL PLACES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, Andy Schmitt and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES
+
+BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in this
+volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James Knowles of
+the _Nineteenth Century_, Mr. Percy Bunting of the _Contemporary Review_,
+and the Proprietor of _McClure's Magazine_.
+
+LONDON, _June_ 1896.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+1. MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
+
+2. REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
+
+3. GERMAN WAR PRAYERS
+
+4. MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
+
+5. A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
+
+6. HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
+
+7. CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
+
+8. THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
+
+9. RAILWAY LIZZ
+
+10. MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
+
+11. THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
+
+12. BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
+
+13. THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
+
+14. THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
+
+15. GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
+
+16. THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY
+
+17. THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
+
+18. PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
+
+19. THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
+
+
+
+
+MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
+
+
+The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of 1870-71,
+and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince Imperial received
+his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at Saarbrücken; to which
+pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself, in the anticipation,
+which proved well founded, that the tide of war would flow that way first.
+What a pity it is that all war cannot be like this early phase of it, of
+which I speak! It was playing at warfare, with just enough of the grim
+reality cropping up occasionally, to give the zest which the reckless
+Frenchwoman declared was added to a pleasure by its being also a sin. The
+officers of the Hohenzollerns--our only infantry regiment in garrison--
+drank their beer placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as
+their men smoked drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms
+ready for use at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the
+frontier line every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with
+little result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or
+down in the valley bounded by the Schönecken wood. The Uhlans, their
+piebald lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round
+the crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising
+mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them from
+time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they were, now
+and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the ground--an occurrence
+invariably followed by a little spurt of lively hostility.
+
+I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on the
+St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern officers
+frequented the _table d'hôte_ and where quaint little Max, the drollest
+imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Fraülein Sophie the landlord's
+niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the pleasantness and
+comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did I spend at the table
+of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped red head of silent and
+genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over the great ice-pail, with its
+_chevaux de frise_ of long-necked Niersteiner bottles--the worthy
+Hauptmann supported by blithe Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with
+the _Wacht am Rhein_; quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of
+"six-and-sixty" and as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or
+clink a glass; gay young Adjutant von Zülow--he who one day brought in a
+prisoner from the foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of
+his saddle; and many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the
+Spicheren, or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.
+
+But although the Rheinischer Hof associates itself in my mind with many
+memories, half-pleasant, half-sad, it was not the most accustomed haunt of
+the casuals in Saarbrücken, including myself. Of the waifs and strays
+which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the great
+rendezvous was the Hôtel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading from the
+bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a free-and-easy place
+compared with the Rheinischer, and among its inmates there was no one who
+could sing a better song than manly George--type of the Briton at whom
+foreigners stare--who, ignorant of a word of their language, wholly
+unprovided with any authorisation save the passport signed "Salisbury,"
+and having not quite so much business at the seat of war as he might have
+at the bottom of a coal-mine, gravitates into danger with inevitable
+certainty, and stumbles through all manner of difficulties and bothers by
+reason of a serene good-humour that nothing can ruffle and a cool
+resolution before which every obstacle fades away. Was there ever a more
+compositely polyglot cosmopolitan than poor young de Liefde--half
+Dutchman, half German by birth, an Englishman by adoption, a Frenchman in
+temperament, speaking with equal fluency the language of all four
+countries, and an unconsidered trifle of some half-dozen European
+languages besides? Then there was the English student from Bonn, who had
+come down to the front accompanied by a terrible brute of a dog, vast,
+shaggy, self-willed, and dirty; an animal which, so to speak, owned his
+owner, and was so much the horror and disgust of everybody that on account
+of him the company of his master--one of the pleasantest fellows alive--
+was the source of general apprehension. There was young Silberer the
+many-sided and eccentric, an Austrian nobleman, a Vienna feuilletonist and
+correspondent, a rowing man, a gourmet, ever thinking of his stomach and
+yet prepared for all the roughness of the campaign--warm-hearted,
+passionate, narrow-minded, capable of sleeping for twenty-three out of the
+twenty-four hours, and the wearer of a Scotch cap. There was Küster, a
+German journalist with an address somewhere in the Downham Road; and Duff,
+a Fellow of ---- College, the strangest mixture of nervousness and cool
+courage I ever met.
+
+We were a kind of happy family at the Hagen; the tone of the coterie was
+that of the easiest intimacy into which every newcomer slid quite
+naturally. Thus when on the 31st July there was a somewhat sensational
+arrival, the stolid landlord had not turned the gas on in the empty saal
+before everybody knew and sympathised with the errand of the strangers.
+The party consisted of a plump little girl of about eighteen with a bonny
+round face and fine frank eyes; her sister who was some years older; and a
+brother, the eldest of the three. They had come from Silesia on rather a
+strange tryst. Little Minna Vogt had for her _Bräutigam_ a young Feldwebel
+of the second battalion of the Hohenzollerns, a native of Saarlouis. The
+battalion quartered there was under orders to join its first battalion at
+Saarbrücken, and young Eckenstein had written to his betrothed to come and
+meet him there, that the marriage-knot might be tied before he should go
+on a campaign from which he might not return. The arrangement was
+certainly a charming one; we should have a wedding in the Hagen! There was
+no nonsense about our young _Braut_. She told me the little story at
+supper on the night of her arrival in the most matter-of-fact way
+possible, drank her two glasses of red wine, and went off serenely to bed
+with a dainty lisping _Schlafen Sie wohl!_
+
+While Minna was between the sheets in the pleasant chamber in the Hagen
+her lover was lying in bivouac some fifteen miles away. In the afternoon
+of the next day his battalion approached Saarbrücken and bivouacked about
+two miles from the town. Of course we all went out to welcome it; some
+bearing peace-offerings of cigars, others the drink-offering of potent
+Schnapps. The Vogt family were left the sole inmates of the Hagen,
+delicacy preventing their accompanying us. The German journalist, however,
+had a commission to find out young Eckenstein and tell him of the bliss
+that awaited him two short miles away. Right hearty fellows were the
+officers of the second battalion--from the grizzled Oberst down to the
+smooth-faced junior lieutenant; and the men who had been marching and
+bivouacking for a fortnight looked as fresh as if they had not travelled
+five miles. Küster soon found the young Feldwebel; and the Hauptmann of
+his company when he heard the state of the case, smiled a grim but kindly
+smile, and gave him leave for two days with the proviso, that if any
+hostile action should be taken in the interval he should rejoin the
+colours immediately and without notice. "No fear of that!" was
+Eckenstein's reply with a significant down glance at his sword; and then,
+after a cheery "good-night" to the hardy bivouackers, we visitors started
+in triumph on our return to the Hagen, the young Feldwebel in our midst It
+was good to see the unrestraint with which Minna--she of the apple face
+and frank eyes--threw herself round the neck of her betrothed as she met
+him on the steps of the Hagen, and his modest manly blush as he returned
+the embrace. Ye gods! did not we make a night of it! Stolid Hagen came out
+of his shell for once, and swore, _Donner Wetter_ that he would give us a
+supper we should remember; and he kept his word. The good old pastor of
+the snow-white hair and withered cheeks--he had been engaged to perform
+the ceremony of the morrow--we voted into the chair whether he would or
+not; and on his right sat Minna and Eckenstein, their arms interlacing and
+whispering soft speeches which were not for our ears. The table was
+covered with bottles of Blume de Saar, the champagne peculiar of the Hagen;
+and the speed with which the full bottles were converted into "dead
+marines" was a caution to teetotallers. Then de Liefde the polyglot gave
+the health of the happy couple in a felicitous but composite speech, in
+which half a dozen languages were impartially intermixed so that all might
+understand at least a portion. George the jolly insisted in leading off
+the honours with a truly British "three times three;" and that horrible
+dog of Hyndman's gave the time, like a beast as he was, with stentorian
+barkings. Then Minna and her sister retired, followed by Herr Pastor; and
+after a considerable number of more bottles of Blume de Saar had met their
+fate we formed a procession and escorted the happy Eckenstein to the
+Rheinischer Hof where he was to sleep.
+
+Next morning by eleven, we had all reassembled in the second saal of the
+Hagen. In the great room the marriage-breakfast was laid out, and in the
+kitchen Hagen and his Frau were up to their eyes in mystic culinary
+operations. Minna looked like a rosebud in her pretty low-necked blue
+dress, and the pastor in his cassock helped to the diversity of colour. We
+had done shaking hands with the bride and bridegroom after the ceremony,
+and were sitting down to the marriage feast, when young Eckenstein started
+and made three strides to the open window. His accustomed ear had caught a
+sound which none of us had heard. It was the sharp peremptory note of the
+drum beating the alarm. As it came nearer and could no longer be mistaken,
+the bright colour went out from poor Minna's cheek and she clung with a
+brave touching silence to her sister. In two minutes more Eckenstein had
+his helmet on his head and his sword buckled on, and then he turned to say
+farewell to his girl ere he left her for the battle. The parting was
+silent and brief; but the faces of the two were more eloquent than words.
+Poor Minna sat down by the window straining her eyes as Eckenstein,
+running at speed, went his way to the rendezvous.
+
+When I got up to the Bellevue the French were streaming in overwhelming
+force down the slope of the Spicheren into the intervening valley. It was
+a beautiful sight; but I am not going to describe it here. Ere an hour was
+over the shells and chassepôt bullets were sweeping across the Exercise
+Platz, and it was no longer a safe spot for a non-combatant like myself.
+Before I got back into the Hagen after paying my bill at the Rheinischer
+and fetching away my knapsack, the French guns were on the Exercise Platz.
+I heard for the first time the angry screech of the mitrailleuse and saw
+the hailstorm of its bullets spattering on the pavement of the bridge.
+Somehow or other the whole of our little coterie had found their way into
+the Hagen; by a sort of common impulse, I imagine. The landlady was
+already in hysterics; the Vogt girls were pale but plucky. Presently the
+shells began to fly. The Prussians had a gun or two on the railway
+esplanade above us, the fire of which the French began to return fiercely.
+Every shell that fell short tumbled in or about the Hagen; and a company
+of the Hohenzollerns was drawn up in the street in front of it, in trying
+to dislodge which the French fire could not well miss the Hagen and the
+houses opposite. A shell burst in the back-yard and the landlady fainted.
+Another came crashing in through a first-floor window, and, bursting,
+knocked several bedrooms into one. Then we thought it time to get the
+women down into the cellar--rather a risky undertaking since the door of
+it was in the backyard. However, we got them all down in safety and came
+up into the second saal to watch the course of events. Hagen gave a
+fearful groan as a shell broke into the kitchen behind us, and, bursting
+in the centre of the stove, sent his _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of cookery sputtering
+in all directions. He gave a still deeper groan as another shell crashed
+into the principal dining-room and knocked the long table, laid out as it
+was for the marriage-feast, into a chaos of splinters, tablecloth, and
+knives and forks. The Restauration Küche on the other side was in flames,
+so was the stable of the hotel to the left rear. In this pleasing
+situation of affairs George produced a pack of cards and coolly proposed a
+game of whist. Küster, de Liefde, and Hyndman joined him; and the game
+proceeded amidst the crashing of the projectiles. Silberer and myself took
+counsel together and agreed that the occupation of the town by the French
+was only a question of a few hours at latest. We were both correspondents;
+and although the French would do us no harm our communications with our
+journals would inevitably be stopped--a serious contingency to contemplate
+at the beginning of a campaign. We both agreed that evacuation of the
+Hagen was imperative; but then, how to get out? The only way was up the
+esplanade to the railway station, and upon it the French shells were
+falling and bursting in numbers very trying to the nerves. However, there
+was nothing for it but to make a rush through the fire; and saying
+good-bye to the whist-players we sallied forth. To my disgust I found that
+Silberer positively refused to make a rush of it. Although an Austrian all
+his sympathies were Prussian, and he had the utmost contempt for the
+French. In his broken language his invariable appellation for them was
+"God-damned Hundsöhne!" and he would not run before them at any price. I
+would have run right gladly at top-speed; but I did not like to run when
+another man walked, and so he made me saunter at the rate of two miles an
+hour till we got under shelter. After a hot walk of several miles, we
+reached the Hôtel Till in the village of Duttweiler. After all the French,
+although they might have done so, did not occupy Saarbrücken; and towards
+evening our friends came dropping into the Hôtel Till, singly or in pairs.
+Küster and George brought the Vogt sisters out in a waggon--it was
+surprising to see the coolness and composure of the girls. By nightfall we
+were all reunited, except one unfortunate fellow who had been slightly
+wounded and whom a Saarbrücken doctor had kindly received into his house.
+
+On the 6th August came the Prussian repossession of Saarbrücken and the
+desperate storm of the Spicheren. The 40th was the regiment to which was
+assigned the place of honour in the preliminary recapture of the Exercise
+Platz height. Kameke rode up the winding road to the Bellevue; then came
+the march across the broad valley and after much bloodshed the final storm
+of the Spicheren, in which the 40th occupied about the left centre of the
+Prussian advance. Three times did the blue wave surge up the green steep,
+to be beaten back three times by the terrible blast of fire that crashed
+down upon it from above. Yet a fourth time it clambered up again, and this
+time it lipped the brink and poured over the intrenchment at the top. But
+I am not describing the battle.
+
+When it was over or at least when it had drifted away across the farther
+plateau, I followed on in the broad wake of dying and dead which the
+advance had left. The familiar faces of the Hohenzollerns were all around
+me; but either still in death or writhing in the torture of wounds. About
+the centre of the valley lay the genial Hauptmann von Krehl, more silent
+than ever now, for a bullet had gone right through that red head of his
+and he would never more quaff of the Niersteiner; neither would Lieutenant
+von Klipphausen ever again stir the blood of the sons of the Fatherland
+with the _Wacht am Rhein_; he lay dead close by the first spur of the
+slope--what of him at least a bursting shell had left. On a little flat
+half up sat quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, like Mark Tapley jolly under
+difficulties; by his side lay a man who had just bled to death as the good
+doctor explained to me. While he had been applying the tourniquet under a
+hot fire his right arm had been broken; and before he could pull himself
+up and go to the rear another bullet had found its billet in his thigh.
+There the little man sat, contentedly smoking till somebody would be good
+enough to come and take him away. Von Zülow too--he of the gay laugh and
+sprightly countenance--was on his back a little higher up, with a bullet
+through the chest. I heard the ominous sound of the escaping air as I
+raised him to give him a drink from my flask. What needs it to become
+diffuse as to the terrible sights which that steep and the plateau above
+it presented on this beautiful summer evening? It was farther to the
+right, in ground more broken with gullies and ravines, that the second
+battalion of the Hohenzollerns had gone up; and I wandered along there
+among the carnage eking out the contents of my flask as far as I could,
+and when the wounded had exhausted the brandy in it filling it up with
+water and still toiling on in a task that seemed endless. At last, in a
+sitting posture, his back against a hawthorn tree in one of the grassy
+ravines, I saw one whom I thought I recognised. "Eckenstein!" I cried as I
+ran forward; for the posture was so natural that I could not but think he
+was alive. Alas! no answer came; the gallant young Feldwebel was dead,
+shot through the throat. He had not been killed outright by the fatal
+bullet; the track was apparent by the blood on the grass along which he
+had crawled to the hawthorn tree against which I found him. His head had
+fallen forward on his chest and his right hand was pressed against his
+left breast. I saw something white in the hollow of the hand and easily
+moved the arm for he was yet warm; it was the photograph of the little
+girl he had married but three short days before. The frank eyes looked up
+at me with a merry unconsciousness; and the face of the photograph was
+spotted with the life-blood of the young soldier.
+
+I sent the death-token to Saarlouis by post to the young widow. I never
+knew whether she received it, for all the address I had was Saarlouis.
+Eckenstein I saw buried with two officers in a soldier's grave under the
+hawthorn. Any one taking the ascent up the fourth ravine Forbach-ward from
+the bluff of the Spicheren, may easily find it about halfway up. It may be
+recognised by the wooden cross bearing the rude inscription: "Hier ruhen
+in Gott 2 Officiere, 1 Feldwebel, 40ste Hohenzol. Fus. Regt."
+
+
+
+
+REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
+
+1879
+
+
+By Christmas 1878 the winter had brought to a temporary standstill the
+operations of the British troops engaged in the first Afghan campaign, and
+I took the opportunity of this inaction to make a journey into Native
+Burmah, the condition of which seemed thus early to portend the interest
+which almost immediately after converged upon it, because of King Thebau's
+wholesale slaughter of his relatives. Reaching Mandalay, the capital of
+Native Burmah, in the beginning of February 1879, I immediately set about
+compassing an interview with the young king. Both Mr. Shaw, who was our
+Resident at Mandalay at the time of my visit, and Dr. Clement Williams
+whose kindly services I found so useful, are now dead, and many changes
+have occurred since the episode described below; but no description, so
+far as I am aware, has appeared of any visit of courtesy and curiosity to
+the Court of King Thebau of a later date than that made by myself at the
+date specified. One of my principal objects in visiting Mandalay, or, in
+Burmese phrase, of "coming to the Golden Feet," was to see the King of
+Burmah in his royal state in the Presence Chamber of the Palace. Certain
+difficulties stood in the way of the accomplishment of this object. I had
+but a few days to spend in Mandalay. With the approval of Mr. Shaw, the
+British Resident, I determined to pursue an informal course of action, and
+with this intent I enlisted the good offices of an English gentleman
+resident in Mandalay, who had intimate relations with the Ministers and
+the Court.
+
+This gentleman, Dr. Williams, was good enough to help me with zeal and
+address. The line of strategy to adopt was to interest in my cause one of
+the principal Ministers. Of these there were four, who constituted the
+_Hlwot-dau_, or High Court and Council of the Monarchy. These "Woonghys"
+or "Menghyis," as they were more commonly called--"Menghyi," meaning
+"Great Prince"--were of equal rank; but the senior Minister, the
+Yenangyoung Menghyi, who had precedence, was then in confinement, and,
+indeed, a decree of degradation had gone forth against him. Obviously he
+was of no use; but a more influential man than he ever was, and having the
+additional advantages of being at liberty, in power and in favour, was the
+"Kingwoon Menghyi." He was in effect the Prime Minister of the King of
+Burmah. His position was roughly equivalent to that of Bismarck in
+Germany, or of Gortschakoff in Russia, since, in addition to his internal
+influence, he had the chief direction of foreign affairs. Now this
+"Kingwoon Menghyi" had for a day or two been relaxing from the cares of
+State. Partly for his own pleasure, partly by way of example, he had laid
+out a beautiful garden on the low ground near the river. Within this
+garden he had the intention to build himself a suburban residence, which
+meanwhile was represented by a summer pavilion of teak and bamboo. He was
+a liberal-minded man, and it was a satisfaction to him that the shady
+walks and pleasant rose-groves of this garden should be enjoyed by the
+people of Mandalay. He was a reformer, this "Kingwoon Menghyi," and
+believed in the humanising effect of free access to the charms of nature.
+His garden laid out and his pavilion finished, he was celebrating the
+event by a series of _fêtes._ He was "at home" in his pavilion to
+everybody; bands of music played all day long and day after day, in the
+kiosks, among the young palm trees and the rosebushes. Mandalay, high and
+low, made holiday in the mazy walks of his garden and in an improvised
+theatre, wherein an interminable _pooey,_ or Burmese drama, was being
+enacted before ever-varying and constantly appreciative audiences. Dr.
+Williams opined that it would conduce to the success of my object that we
+should call upon the Minister at his garden-house and request him to use
+his good offices in my behalf.
+
+It was near noon when we reached the entrance to the garden. Merry but
+orderly sightseers thronged its alleys, and stared with wondering
+admiration at a rather attenuated jet of water which rose into the clear
+air some thirty feet above a rockwork fountain in the centre. Dignitaries
+strolled about under the stemless umbrellas like huge shields, with which
+assiduous attendants protected them from the sun; and were followed by
+posses of retainers, who prostrated themselves whenever their masters
+halted or looked round. Ladies in white jackets and trailing silk skirts
+of vivid hue were taking a leisurely airing, each with her demure maid
+behind her carrying the lacquer-ware box of betel-nut. As often as not the
+fair ones were blowing copious clouds from huge reed-like cheroots. Sounds
+of shrill music were heard in the distance. Walking up the central alley
+between the rows of palms and the hedges of roses, we found in the veranda
+a mixed crowd of laymen and priests, the latter distinguishable by their
+shaved heads and yellow robes. The Minister was just finishing his
+morning's work of distributing offerings to the latter, in commemoration
+of the opening of his gardens. In response to a message, he at once sent
+to desire that we should come to him. The great "shoe-question," the
+_quaestio vexata_ between British officialism and Burmah officialism, did
+not trouble me. I had no official position; I wanted to gain an object. I
+have a respect for the honour of my country, but I could not bring myself
+to realise that the national honour centres in my shoes. So I parted with
+them at the top of the steps leading up into the Minister's pavilion, and
+walking on what is known as my "stocking-feet," and feeling rather
+shuffling and shabby accordingly, was ushered through a throng of
+prostrate dependents into the presence of the Menghyi. He came forward
+frankly and cordially, shook hands with a hearty smile with Dr. Williams
+and myself, and beckoned us into an inner alcove, carpeted with rich rugs
+and panelled with mirrors. Placing himself in a half-sitting,
+half-kneeling attitude which did not expose his feet, he beckoned to us to
+get down also. I own to having experienced extreme difficulty in keeping
+my feet out of sight, which was a point _de rigueur_; but his Excellency
+was not censorious. There was with him a secretary who had resided several
+years in Europe, and who spoke fluently English, French, and Italian. This
+gentleman knew London thoroughly, and was perfectly familiar both with the
+name of the _Daily News_ and of myself. He introduced me formally to his
+Excellency, who, I ought to have mentioned, was the head of the Burmese
+Embassy which had visited Europe a few years previously. That his
+Excellency had some sort of knowledge of the political character of the
+_Daily News_ was obvious from the circumstance that when its name was
+mentioned he nodded and exclaimed, "Ah! ah! Gladstone, Bright!" in tones
+of manifest approval, which was no doubt accounted for by the fact that he
+himself was a pronounced Liberal. I explained that I had come to Mandalay
+to learn as much about Burmese manners, customs, and institutions as was
+possible in four days, with intent to embody my impressions in letters to
+England; and that as the King was the chief institution of the country, I
+had a keen anxiety to see him and begged of his Excellency to lend me his
+aid toward doing so. He gave no direct reply, but certainly did not frown
+on the request. We were served with tea (without cream or sugar) in pretty
+china cups, and then the Menghyi, observing that we were looking at some
+quaint-shaped musical instruments at the foot of the dais, explained that
+they belonged to a band of rural performers from the Pegu district, and
+proposed that we should first hear them play and afterwards visit the
+theatre and witness the _pooey_. We assenting, he led the way from his
+pavilion through the garden to a pretty kiosk half-embosomed in foliage,
+and chairs having been brought the party sat down. We had put on our shoes
+as we quitted the dais. The Menghyi explained that it was pleasanter for
+him, as it must be for us, that we should change the manner of our
+reception from the Burmese to the European custom; and we were quite free
+to confess that we would sooner sit in chairs than squat on the floor.
+More tea was brought, and a plateful of cheroots. After we had sat a
+little while in the kiosk we were joined by the chief Under-Secretary for
+Foreign Affairs, the Baron de Giers of Burmah, a jovial, corpulent,
+elderly gentleman who had the most wonderful likeness to the late Pio
+Nono, and who clasped his brown hands over his fat paunch and kicked about
+his plump bare brown feet in high enjoyment when anything that struck him
+as humorous was uttered. He wholly differed in appearance from his
+superior, who was a lean-faced and lean-figured man, grave, and indeed
+somewhat sad both of eye and of visage when his face was in repose. As we
+talked, our conversation being through the interpreting secretary, there
+came to the curtained entrance to the kiosk a very dainty little lady. I
+had noticed her previously sauntering around the garden under one of the
+great shield-like shades, with a following of serving-men and
+serving-women behind her. She greeted the Menghyi very prettily, with the
+most perfect composure, although strangers were present. She was clearly a
+great pet with the Menghyi; he took her on his knee and played with her
+long black hair, as he told her about the visitors. The little lady was in
+her twelfth year, and was the daughter of a colleague and a relative of
+the Menghyi. She had an olive oval face, with lovely dark eyes, like the
+eyes of a deer. She wore a tiara of feathery white blossoms. In her ears
+were rosettes of chased red gold. Round her throat was a necklace of a
+double row of large pearls. Her fingers--I regret to say her nails were
+not very clean--were loaded with rings set with great diamonds of
+exceptional sparkle and water; one stone in particular must have been
+worth many thousands of pounds. She wore a jacket of white silk, and round
+her loins was girt a gay silken robe that trailed about her bare feet as
+she walked. She shook hands with us with a pretty shyness and immediately
+helped herself to a cheroot, affably accepting a light from mine. The
+Menghyi told us she was a great scholar--could read and write with
+facility, and had accomplishments to boot.
+
+By this time the provincial band had taken its place under one of the
+windows of the kiosk, and it presently struck up. Its music was not
+pretty. There were in the strange weird strain suggestions of gongs,
+bagpipes, penny whistles, and the humble tom-tom of Bengal. The gentleman
+who performed on an instrument which seemed a hybrid between a flute and a
+French horn, occasionally arrested his instrumental music to favour us
+with vocal strains, but he failed to compete successfully with the
+cymbals. I do not think the Menghyi was enraptured by the music of the
+strollers from Pegu, for he presently asked us whether we were ready to go
+to the _pooey_. He again led the way through a garden, passing in one
+corner of it a temporary house of which a company of Burmese nuns,
+short-haired, pallid-faced, unhappy-looking women, were in possession; and
+passing through a gate in the wicker-work fence ushered us into the
+"state-box" of the improvised theatre. There is very little labour
+required to construct a theatre in Burmah. Over a framework of bamboo
+poles stretch a number of squares of matting as a protection from the sun.
+Lay some more down in the centre as a flooring for the performers. Tie a
+few branches round the central bamboo to represent a forest, the perpetual
+set-scene of a Burmese drama; and the house is ready. The performers act
+and dance in the central square laid with matting. A little space on one
+side is reserved as a dressing and green room for the actresses; a similar
+space on the other side serves the turn of the actors; and then come the
+spectators crowding in on all four sides of the square. It is an orderly
+and easily managed audience; it may be added an easily amused audience.
+The youngsters are put or put themselves in front and squat down; the
+grown people kneel or stand behind. Our "state-box" was merely a raised
+platform laid with carpets and cushions, from which as we sat we looked
+over the heads of the throng squatting under and in front of us. Of the
+drama I cannot say that I carried away with me particularly clear
+impressions. True, I only saw a part of it--it was to last till the
+following morning; but long before I left the plot to me had become
+bewilderingly involved. The opening was a ballet; of that at least I am
+certain. There were six lady dancers and six gentlemen ditto. The ladies
+were arrayed in splendour, with tinsel tiaras, necklaces, and bracelets,
+gauzy jackets and waving scarfs; and with long, light clinging silken
+robes, of which there was at least a couple of yards on the "boards" about
+their feet. They were old, they were ugly, they leered fiendishly; their
+faces were plastered with powder in a ghastly fashion, and their coquetry
+behind their fans was the acme of caricature. But my pen halts when I
+would describe the gentlemen dancers. I believe that in reality they were
+not meant to represent fallen humanity at all; but were intended to
+personify _nats,_ the spirits or princes of the air of Burmese mythology.
+They carried on their heads pagodas of tinsel and coloured glass that
+towered imposingly aloft. They were arrayed in tight-bodiced coats with
+aprons before and behind of fantastic outline, resembling the wings of
+dragons and griffins, and these coats were an incrusted mass of spangles
+and pieces of coloured glass. Underneath a skirt of tartan silk was
+fitfully visible. Their brown legs and feet were bare. The expression of
+their faces was solemn, not to say lugubrious--one performer had a most
+whimsical resemblance to Mr. Toole when he is sunk in an abyss of dramatic
+woe. They realised the responsibilities of their position, and there were
+moments when these seemed too many for them. The orchestra, taken as a
+whole, was rather noisy; but it comprised one instrument, the "bamboo
+harmonicon," which deserves to be known out of Burmah because of its
+sweetness and range of tone. There were lots of "go" in the music, and
+every now and then one detected a kind of echo of a tune not unfamiliar in
+other climes. One's ear seemed to assure one that _Madame Angot_ had been
+laid under contribution to tickle the ears of a Mandalay audience, yet how
+could this be? The explanation was that the instrumentalists, occasionally
+visiting Thayet-myo or Rangoon, had listened there to the strains of our
+military bands, and had adapted these to the Burmese orchestra in some
+deft inscrutable manner, written music being unknown in the musical world
+of Burmah.
+
+Next day the Kingwoon Menghyi took the wholly unprecedented step of
+inviting to dinner the British Resident, his suite, and his visitor--
+myself. Mr. Shaw accepted the invitation, and I considered myself
+specially fortunate in being a participator in a species of intercourse at
+once so novel, and to all seeming so auspicious.
+
+About sundown the Residency party, joined _en route_ by Dr. Williams, rode
+down to the entrance to the gardens. Here we were warmly received by the
+English-speaking secretary, and by the jovial bow-windowed minister who so
+much resembled the late Pio Nono. We were escorted to the verandah of the
+pavilion, where the Menghyi himself stood waiting to greet us, and were
+ushered up to the broad, raised, carpeted platform which may be styled the
+drawing-room. Here was a semicircle of chairs. On our way to these, a long
+row of squatting Burmans was passed. As the Resident approached, the
+Menghyi gave the word, and they promptly stood erect in line. He explained
+that they were the superior officers of the army quartered in the capital--
+generals, he called them--whom he had asked to meet us. Of these officers
+one commanded the eastern guard of the Palace, the other the western; two
+others were aides-de-camp after a fashion. Just as the Menghyi and his
+subordinate colleagues represented the Ministry, so these military people
+represented the Court. The former was the moderate constitutional element
+of the gathering; the latter the "jingo" or personal government element,
+for the Burmese Court was reactionary, and those military sprigs were of
+the personal suite of the King and were understood to abet him in his
+falling away from the constitutional promise with which his reign began.
+Their presence rendered the occasion all the more significant. That they
+were deputed from the Palace to attend and watch events was pretty
+certain, and indeed the two aides went away immediately after dinner,
+their excuse being that his Majesty was expecting their personal
+attendance. After a little while of waiting, the _mauvais quart d'heure_
+having the edge of its awkwardness taken off by a series of introductions,
+dinner was announced, and the Menghyi, followed by the Resident, led the
+way into an adjoining dining-room. Good old Pio Nono, who, I ought to have
+said, had been with the Menghyi a member of the Burmese Embassy to Europe,
+jauntily offered me his arm, and gave me to understand that he did so in
+compliance with English fashion. The Resident sat on the right of the
+Menghyi, I was on his left; the rest of the party, to the number of about
+fifteen, took their places indiscriminately; Mr. Andrino, an Italian in
+Burmese employ, being at the head of the table, Dr. Williams at the foot.
+Our meal was a perfectly English dinner, served and eaten in the English
+fashion. The Burmese had taken lessons in the nice conduct of a knife and
+fork, and fed themselves in the most irreproachably conventional manner,
+carefully avoiding the use of a knife with their fish. Pio Nono, who sat
+opposite the Menghyi, tucked his napkin over his ample paunch and went in
+with a will. He was in a most hilarious mood, and taxed his memory for
+reminiscences of his visit to England. These were not expressed with
+useless expenditure of verbiage, nor did they flow in unbroken sequence.
+It was as if he dug in his memory with a spade, and found every now and
+then a gem in the shape of a name, which he brandished aloft in triumph.
+He kept up an intermittent and disconnected fire all through dinner, with
+an interval between each discharge, "White-bait!" "Lord Mayor!"
+"Fishmongers!" "Cremorne!" "Crystal Palace!" "Edinburgh!" "Dunrobin!"
+"Newcastle!" "Windsor!"--each name followed by a chuckle and a succession
+of nods. The Menghyi divided his talk between the Resident and myself. He
+told me that of all the men he had met in England his favourite was the
+late Duke of Sutherland; adding that the Duke was a nobleman of great and
+striking eloquence, a trait which I had not been in the habit of regarding
+as markedly characteristic of his Grace. He spoke with much warmth of a
+pleasant visit he had paid to Dunrobin, and said he should be heartily
+glad if the Duke would come to Burmah and give him an opportunity of
+returning his hospitality. Here Pio Nono broke in with one of his
+periodical exclamations. This time it was "Lady Dudley." Of her, and of
+her late husband, the Menghyi then recalled his recollections, and if more
+courtly tributes have been paid to her ladyship's charms and grace, I
+question if any have been heartier and more enthusiastic than was the
+appreciation of this Burmese dignitary. The soldier element was at first
+somewhat stiff, but as the dinner proceeded the generals warmed in
+conversation with the Resident. But the aides were obstinately
+supercilious, and only partially thawed in acknowledgment of compliments
+on the splendour of their jewelry. Functionaries attached to the personal
+suite of his Majesty wore huge ear-gems as a distinguishing mark. The
+aides had these in blazing diamonds, and were good enough to take out the
+ornaments and hand them round. The civil ministers wore no ornaments and
+their dress was studiously plain. We were during dinner entertained by
+music, instrumental and vocal, sedulously modulated to prevent
+conversation from being drowned. The meal lasted quite two hours, and when
+it was finished the Menghyi led the way to coffee in one of the kiosks of
+the garden. I should have said that no wine was on the table at dinner.
+The Burmese by religion are total abstainers, and their guests were
+willing to follow their example for the time and to fall in with their
+prejudices. After coffee we were ushered into the drawing-room, and
+listened to a concert. The only solo-vocalist was the prima donna _par
+excellence,_ Mdlle. Yeendun Male. The burden of her songs was love, but I
+could not succeed in having the specific terms translated. Then she sang
+an ode in praise of the Resident, and gracefully accepted his pecuniary
+appreciation of her performance. Pio Nono then beckoned to her to flatter
+me at close quarters; but, mistaking the index, she addressed herself to
+the Residency chaplain in strains of hyperbolical encomium. The mistake
+having been set right, much to the reverend gentleman's relief, the
+songstress overpowered my sensitive modesty by impassioned requests in
+verse that I should delay my departure; that, if I could not do so, I
+should take her away with me; and that, if this were beyond my power, I
+should at least remember her when I was far away. The which was an
+allegory and cost me twenty rupees.
+
+When the good-nights were being said, the Menghyi gratified me by the
+information that the King had given his consent to my presentation, and
+that I was to have the opportunity next morning of "Reverencing the Golden
+Feet."
+
+The Royal Palace occupied the central space of the city of Mandalay. It
+was almost entirely of woodwork, and was not only the counterpart of the
+palace which Major Phayre saw at Amarapoora, but the identical palace
+itself, conveyed piecemeal from its previous site and re-erected here. Its
+outermost enclosure consisted of a massive teak palisading, beyond which
+all round was a wide clear space laid out as an esplanade, the farther
+margin of which was edged by the houses of ministers and court officials.
+The Palace enclosure was a perfect square, each face about 370 yards. The
+main entrance, the only one in general use, was in the centre of the
+eastern face, almost opposite to which, across the esplanade, was the
+_Yoom-daù_, or High Court. This gate was called the _Yive-daù-yoo-Taga_,
+or the Royal Gate of the Chosen, because the charge of it was entrusted to
+chosen troops. As I passed through it on my way to be presented to his
+Majesty, the aspect of the "chosen" troops was not imposing. They wore no
+uniform, and differed in no perceptible item from the common coolies of
+the outside streets. They were lying about on charpoys and on the ground,
+chewing betel or smoking cheroots, and there was not even the pretence of
+there being sentries under arms. Some rows of old flintlock guns stood in
+racks in the gateway, rusty, dusty, and untended; they might have been
+untouched since the last insurrection. Crossing an intermediate space
+overgrown with shrubbery, we passed through a high gateway cut in the
+inner brick wall of the enclosure; and there confronted us the great
+Myenan of Mandalay--the Palace of the "Sun-descended Monarch." The first
+impression was disappointing, for the whole front was covered with
+gold-leaf and tawdry tinsel-work which had become weather-worn and dingy.
+But there was no time now to halt, inspect details, and rectify perchance
+first impressions. A message came that the Kingwoon Menghyi, my host of
+the previous evening--substantially the Prime Minister of Burmah, desired
+that we--that was to say, Dr. Williams, my guide, philosopher, and friend,
+and myself--should wait upon him in the _Hlwot-daù_, or Hall of the
+Supreme Council, before entering the Palace itself. The _Hlwot-daù_ was a
+detached structure on the right front of the Palace as one entered by the
+eastern gate. It was the Downing Street of Mandalay. Its sides were quite
+open, and its fantastic roof of grotesquely carved teak plastered with
+gilding, painting, and tinsel, was supported on massive teak pillars
+painted a deep red. Taking off our shoes we ascended to the platform of
+the _Hlwot-daù_, where we found the Menghyi surrounded by a crowd of minor
+officials and suitors squatting on their stomachs and elbows, with their
+legs under them and their hands clasped in front of their bent heads. The
+Menghyi came forward several paces to meet us, conducted us to his mat,
+and sitting down himself and bidding us do the same, explained that as it
+was with him a busy day, he would not be able personally to present me to
+the King as he had hoped to have done, but that he had made all
+arrangements and had delegated the charge of us to our old friend whom I
+have ventured to call "Pio Nono." That corpulent and jovial worthy made
+his appearance at this moment along with his English-speaking subordinate,
+and with cordial acknowledgments and farewells to the Menghyi we left the
+_Hlwot-daù_ under their guidance. They led us along the front of the
+Palace, passing the huge gilded cannon that flanked on either side the
+central steps leading up into the throne-room; and turning round the
+northern angle of the Palace front, conducted us to the Hall of the
+_Bya-dyt_, or Household Council. We had to leave our shoes at the foot of
+the steps leading up to it. The _Bya-dyt_ was a mere open shed; its lofty
+roof borne up by massive teak timbers. What splendour had once been its in
+the matter of gilding and tinsel was greatly faded. The gold-leaf had been
+worn off the pillars by constant friction, and the place appeared to be
+used as a lumber-room as well as a council-chamber. On the front of one of
+a pile of empty cases was visible, in big black letters, the legend,
+"Peek, Frean, and Co., London." State documents reposed in the receptacle
+once occupied by biscuits. Clerks lay all around on the rough dusty
+boards, writing with agate stylets on tablets of black papier-mâche; and
+there was a constant flux and reflux of people of all sorts, who appeared
+to have nothing to do and who were doing it with a sedulously lounging
+deliberation that seemed to imply a gratifying absence of arrears of
+official work. We sat down here for a while along with Pio Nono and his
+assistant, who busied himself in dictating to a secretary a description of
+myself and a catalogue of my presents to be read by the herald to his
+Majesty when I should be presented. Then Pio Nono went away and presently
+came back, saying that it was intended to bestow upon me some souvenirs of
+Mandalay, and that to admit of the preparation of these the audience would
+not take place for an hour or so. He invited us in the meantime to inspect
+the public apartments of the Palace itself and the objects of interest in
+the Palace enclosure. So we got up, and still without our shoes walked
+through the suite leading to the principal throne-room or great hall of
+audience.
+
+These were simply a series of minor throne-rooms. The first one in order
+from the private apartments was close to the _Bya-dyt_. It must be borne
+in mind that the whole suite, including the great audience hall, were not
+rooms at all in our sense of the word. They were simply open-roofed
+spaces, the roofs gabled, spiked, and carved into fantastic shapes, laden
+with dingy gold-leaf garishly picked out with glaring colours and studded
+with bits of stained glass; the roofs, or rather I should say, the one
+continuous roof, supported on massive deep red pillars of teak-wood. The
+whole palace was raised from the ground on a brick platform some 10 feet
+high. The partitions between the several walls were simply skirtings of
+planking covered with gold-leaf. The whole palace seemed an armoury. Some
+ten or twelve thousand stand of obsolete muskets were ranged along these
+partitions and crammed into the anteroom of the throne-room proper. The
+whole suite was dingy, dirty, and uncared-for; but on a great day, with
+the gilding renewed, carpets spread on the rugged boards, banners waving,
+and the courtiers in full dress, no doubt the effect would have been
+materially improved. The vista from the throne of the great hall of
+audience looked right through the columned arcade to the "Gate of the
+Chosen"; and that we might imagine the scene more vividly, we considered
+ourselves as on our way to Court on one of the great days, and going back
+to the gate again began our pilgrimage anew. The pillared front of the
+Palace stretched before us raised on the terrace, its total length 260
+feet. Looking between the two gilded cannon, we saw at the foot of the
+central steps a low gate of carved and gilded wood. That gate, it seemed,
+was never opened except to the King--none save he might use those central
+steps. Raising our eyes we looked right up the vista of the hall to the
+lofty throne raised against the gilded partition that closed at once the
+vista and the hall. We had been looking down the great central nave, as it
+were, toward the west gate, in the place of which was the throne. But
+along the eastern front of the terrace ran a long colonnade, whose wings
+formed transepts at right angles to the nave. The throne-room was shaped
+like the letter T, the throne being at the base of the letter and the
+cross-bar representing the colonnade. Entering at the extremity of one of
+these, we traversed it to the centre and then faced the nave. The throne
+was exactly before us, at the end of the pillared vista. Five steps led up
+to the dais. Its form was peculiar, contracting by a gradation of steps
+from the base upwards to mid-height, and again expanding to the top, on
+which was a cushioned ledge such as is seen in the box of a theatre. On
+the platform, which now was bare planks, the King and Queen on a great
+reception day would sit on gorgeous carpets. The entrance was through
+gilded doors from a staircase in the ante-room beyond. There was a rack of
+muskets round the foot of the throne, and just outside the rails a
+half-naked soldier lay snoring. Our Burman companion assured us that
+seeing the throne-room now in its condition of dismantled tawdriness, I
+could form no idea of the fine effect when King and Court in all their
+splendour were gathered in it on a ceremonial day. I tried to accept his
+assurances, but it was not easy to imagine such forlorn dinginess changed
+into dazzling splendour. Just over the throne, and in the centre of the
+Palace and of the city, rose in gracefully diminishing stages of fantastic
+woodcarving a tapering _phya-sath_ or spire similar to those surmounting
+sacred buildings, and crowned with the gilded _Htee_, an honour which
+royalty alone shared with ecclesiastical sanctity. The spire, like
+everything else, had been gilt, but it was now sadly tarnished and had
+lost much of its brilliancy of effect.
+
+Having looked at the hall of audience we strolled through the Palace
+esplanade. A wall parted this off from the private apartments and the
+pleasure grounds occupying the western section of the Palace enclosure. A
+series of carved and gilded gables roofed with glittering zinc plates was
+visible over the wall. The grounds were said to be well planted with
+flowering shrubs and fruit trees and to contain lakelets and rockeries.
+Built against the outer wall and facing the enclosed space were barracks
+for soldiers and gun sheds. The accommodation was as primitive as are the
+weapons, and that was saying a good deal. Pio Nono led us across to a big
+wooden house, scarcely at all ornamented, which was the everyday abode of
+the "Lord White Elephant." His "Palace," or state apartment, was not
+pointed out to us. His lordship, in so far as his literal claim to be
+styled a white elephant, was an impostor of the deepest dye and a very
+grim and ugly impostor to boot. He was a great, lean, brown, flat-sided
+brute, his ears, forehead, and trunk mottled with a dingy cream colour.
+But he belonged all the same to the lordly race. "White elephants" were a
+science which had a literature of its own. According to this science, it
+was not the whiteness that was the criterion of a "white elephant." So
+much, indeed, was the reverse, that a "white elephant" according to the
+science may be a brown elephant in actual colour. The points were the
+mottling of the face, the shape and colour of the eyes, the position of
+the ears, and the length of the tail. Certainly the "Lord White Elephant"
+had, to the most cursory observation, a peculiar and abnormal eye. The
+iris was yellow, with a reddish outer annulus and a small, clear, black
+pupil. It was essentially a shifty, treacherous eye, and I noticed that
+everybody took particularly good care to keep out of range of his
+lordship's trunk and tusks. The latter were superb--long, massive, and
+smooth, their tips quite meeting far in front of his trunk. His tail was
+much longer than in the Indian elephants, and was tipped with a bunch of
+long, straight, black hair. Altogether he was an unwholesome,
+disagreeable-looking brute, who munched his grass morosely and had no
+elephantine geniality. He was but a youngster--the great, old, really
+white elephant which Yule describes had died some time back, after an
+incumbency dating from 1806. The "White Elephant" was never ridden now,
+but the last King but one used frequently to ride its predecessor, acting
+as his own mahout. We did not see his trappings, as our visit was paid
+unawares when he was quite in undress; but Yule says that when arrayed in
+all his splendour his head-stall was of fine red cloth, studded with great
+rubies, interspersed with valuable diamonds. When caparisoned he wore on
+his forehead, like other Burmese dignitaries including the King himself, a
+golden plate inscribed with his titles and a gold crescent set with
+circles of large gems between the eyes. Large silver tassels hung in front
+of his ears, and he was harnessed with bands of gold and crimson set
+freely with large bosses of pure gold. He was a regular "estate of the
+realm," having a _woon_ or minister of his own, four gold umbrellas, the
+white umbrellas which were peculiar to royalty, with a large suite of
+attendants and an appanage to furnish him with maintenance wherewithal.
+When in state his attendants had to leave their shoes behind them when
+they enter his Palace. In a shed adjacent to that occupied by the "Lord
+White Elephant" stood his lady wife, a browner, plumper, and generally
+more amiable-looking animal. Contrary to universal experience elsewhere,
+elephants in Burmah breed in captivity, but this union was unfertile and
+the race of "Lord White Elephants" had to be maintained _ab extra_. The
+so-called white elephants are sports of nature, and are of no special
+breed. They are called Albinoes, and are more plentiful in the Siam region
+than in Burmah.
+
+By this time the hour was approaching that had been fixed for the
+presentation, and we returned to the _Bya-dyt_. The summons came almost
+immediately. Ushered by Pio Nono and accompanied by several courtiers, we
+traversed some open passages and finally reached a kind of pagoda or kiosk
+within the private gardens of the Palace. The King was not to appear in
+state, and this place had been selected by reason of its absolute
+informality. There was no ornament anywhere, not so much as a speck of
+gilding or an atom of tinsel. We solemnly squatted down on a low platform
+covered with grass matting, through which pierced the teak columns
+supporting the lofty roof. A space had been reserved for us in the centre,
+on either side of which, their front describing a semicircle, a number of
+courtiers lay crouching on their stomachs but placidly puffing cheroots.
+On our left were two or three superior military officers of the Palace
+guard, distinguishable only by their diamond ear-jewels. My presents--
+they were trivial: an opera-glass, a few boxes of chocolate, and a
+work-box--were placed before me as I sat down. There were other offerings
+to right and to left of them--a huge bunch of cabbages, a basket of
+_Kohl-rabi_, and three baskets of orchids. In the clear space in front I
+observed also a satin robe lined with fur, a couple of silver boxes, and a
+ruby ring. These, I imagined, were also for presentation, but it presently
+appeared they were his Majesty's return gifts for myself. Before us, at a
+higher elevation, there was a plain wooden railing with a gap in the
+centre, and the railing enclosed a sort of recess that looked like a
+garden-house. Over a ledge where the gap was, had been thrown a rich
+crimson and gold trapping that hung low in front, and on the ledge were a
+crimson cushion, a betel box, and a tall oval spittoon in gold set with
+pearls. A few minutes passed, beguiled by conversation in a low tone, when
+six guards armed with double-barrelled firearms of very diverse patterns,
+mounted the platform from the left side and took their places on either
+side, squatting down. The guards wore black silk jackets lined with fur
+and with scarlet kerchiefs bound round their heads. Then a door opened in
+the left side of the garden-house, and there entered first an old gaunt
+beardless man--the chief eunuch--closely followed by the King, otherwise
+unattended. His Majesty came on with a quick step, and sat down, resting
+his right arm on the crimson cushion on the ledge in the centre of the
+railing. He wore a white silk jacket, and a _loonghi_ or petticoat robe of
+rich yellow and green silk. His only ornaments were his diamond
+ear-jewels. As he entered all bent low, and when he had seated himself a
+herald lying on his stomach read aloud my credentials. The literal
+translation was as follows:--"So-and-so, a great newspaper teacher of the
+_Daily News_ of London, tenders to his Most Glorious Excellent Majesty,
+Lord of the Ishaddan, King of Elephants, master of many white elephants,
+lord of the mines of gold, silver, rubies, amber, and the noble
+serpentine, Sovereign of the empires of Thunaparanta and Tampadipa, and
+other great empires and countries, and of all the umbrella-wearing chiefs,
+the supporter of religion, the Sun-descended Monarch, arbiter of life, and
+great, righteous King, King of kings, and possessor of boundless
+dominions, and supreme wisdom, the following presents." The reading was
+intoned in a uniform high recitative, strongly resembling that used when
+our Church Service is intoned; and the long-drawn "Phya-a-a-a-a" (my lord)
+which concluded it, added to the resemblance, as it came in exactly like
+the "Amen" of the Liturgy.
+
+The reading over, the return presents were picked up by an official and
+bundled over to me without any ceremony, the King meanwhile looking on in
+silence, chewing betel and smoking a cheroot. Several of the courtiers
+were following his example in the latter respect. Presently the King spoke
+in a distinct, deliberate voice--
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+Dr. Williams acting as my introducer, replied in Burmese--
+
+"A writer of the _Daily News_ of London, your Majesty."
+
+"Why does he come?"
+
+"To see your Majesty's country, and in the hope of being permitted to
+reverence the Golden Feet."
+
+"Whence does he come?"
+
+"From the British army in Afghanistan, engaged in war against the Prince
+of Cabul."
+
+"And does the war prosper for my friends the English?"
+
+"He reports that it has done so greatly and that the Prince of Cabul is a
+fugitive."
+
+"Where does Cabul lie in relation to Kashmir?"
+
+"Between Kashmir and Persia, in a very mountainous and cold region."
+
+There had been pauses more or less long between each of these questions;
+the King obviously reflecting what he should ask next; then there was a
+longer, and, indeed, a wearisome pause. Then the King spoke again.
+
+"Where is the Kingwoon Menghyi?"
+
+"In Court, your Majesty," replied Pio Nono. "It is a Court day."
+
+"It is well. I wish the Ministers to make every day a Court day, and to
+labour hard to give prompt justice to suitors, so that there be no
+complaint of arrears."
+
+With this laudable injunction, his Majesty rose and walked away, and the
+audience was over.
+
+The King of Burmah, when I saw him, was little over twenty, and he had
+been barely four months on the throne. He was a tall, well-built,
+personable young man, very fair in complexion, with a good forehead,
+clear, steady eyes, and a firm but pleasant mouth. His chin was full and
+somewhat sensual-looking, but withal he was a manly, frank-faced young
+fellow, and was said to have gained self-possession and lost the early
+nervous awkwardness of his new position with great rapidity. Circumstances
+had even then occurred to prove that he was very far from destitute of a
+will of his own, and that he had no favour for any diminution of the Royal
+Prerogative. As we passed out of the Palace after the interview a house in
+the Palace grounds was pointed out to me, within which had been imprisoned
+in squalid misery ever since the mortal illness of the previous King, a
+number of the members of the Burmese blood royal.
+
+_P.S._--A few days after my visit, all these unfortunately were massacred
+with fiendish refinements of cruelty.
+
+
+
+
+GERMAN WAR PRAYERS 1870-71
+
+
+In the multifarious ramifications of their military organisation the
+Germans by no means neglect religion. Each army corps is partitioned into
+two divisions and each division has its field chaplain. In those corps in
+which there is a large admixture of the Catholic element, there is a
+cleric of that denomination to each division as well as a Protestant
+chaplain. The former is known as a _Feldgeistliger_, a word which in
+itself means nothing more distinctive than a "field ecclesiastic," while
+the Protestant chaplain has usually the title of _Feldpastor_. Of the
+priest I can say but little. The pastors, for the most part, are young and
+energetic men. They may be divided into two classes: those who have at
+home no stated charges, and those who have temporarily left their charge
+for the duration of the war. The former generally are regularly posted to
+a division; the latter, equally recognised but not perhaps quite so
+official, are chiefly to be found in the lazarettoes, in the battlefield
+villages whither the wounded are borne to have their fresh wounds roughly
+seen to, and on the battlefield itself. Not that the regular divisional
+chaplains do not face the dangers of the battlefield with devoted courage;
+but their duties, in the nature of their special avocation, lie more among
+the hale and sound who yet stand up before an enemy, than with the poor
+fellows who have been stricken down. Earnestness and devotion are the
+chief characteristics of those pastors. It struck me that their education
+was not of a very high order--certainly not on a par with that of the
+average regimental officer.
+
+The _Feldpastor_ wears an armlet of white and light purple to denote his
+calling; but indeed it is not easy to mistake him for anything else than
+he is. He has his quarters with the Divisional General, and preaches
+whenever and wherever it is convenient to get a congregation. A church is
+passed on the wayside, a regiment halts and defiles into it, and the
+pastor mounts the steps of the altar and holds forth therefrom for half an
+hour. There is a quiet meadow near a village, in which a brigade is lying.
+Looking over the hedge, you may see in the meadow a hollow square of
+helmeted men with the general and the pastor in the centre, the latter
+speaking simple, fervent words to the fighting men. When, as during the
+siege of Paris, a division occupies a certain district for a long time,
+you may chance--let me say on a New Year's night--on the village church
+all ablaze with light. The garrison have decorated the gaunt old Norman
+arches with laurels and evergreens; they have cleared out the
+market-vendor's stock of tallow-dips to illuminate the church wherewithal.
+The band has been practising the glorious _Nun Danket alle Gott_ for a
+week; the vocalists of the regiments have been combining to perfect
+themselves in part-singing. The gorgeous trumpery of Roman Catholic church
+paraphernalia, unheeded as it is, looks strangely out of place and
+contrasts curiously with the simple Protestant forms.
+
+The church is crowded with a denser congregation than ever its walls
+contained before. The _Oberst_ sits down with the under-officer; the
+general gropes for half a chair between two stalwart _Kerle_ of the line.
+Hymn-cards are distributed as at the Brighton volunteer service in the
+Pavilion on Easter Sunday. As the pastor enters and takes his way up the
+altar steps--he goes not to the pulpit--there bursts out a volume of vocal
+devotional harmony, which is so pent in the aisles and under the arches
+that the sound seems almost to become a substance. Then the pastor
+delivers a prayer and there is another hymn. He enunciates no text when he
+next begins to speak; he chops not a subject up into heads, as the
+grizzled major who listens to him would partition out his battalion into
+companies. There is no "thirteenthly and lastly" in his simple address.
+But he gets nearer the hearts of his hearers than if he assailed them with
+a battery of logic with multitudinous texts for ammunition. For he speaks
+of the people at home, in the quiet corners of the Fatherland; he tells
+the soldier in language that is of his profession, how the fear of the
+Lord is a better arm than the truest-shooting _Zündnadelgewehr_; how
+preparedness for death and for what follows after death, is a part of his
+accoutrement that the good soldier must ever bear about with him.
+
+Herr Pastor has other functions than to preach to the living. The day
+after a battle, his horse must be very tired before the stable-door is
+reached. The burial parties are excavating great pits all over the field,
+while others pick up the dead in the vicinity and bear them unto the brink
+of the common grave. Herr Pastor cannot be ubiquitous. If he is not near
+when the hole is full, the _Feldwebel_ who commands the party bares his
+head, and mutters, "In the name of God, Amen," as he strews the first
+handful of mould on the dead--it may be on friends as well as on foes. If
+the pastor can reach the brink of the pit, it is his to say the few words
+that mark the recognition of the fact that those lying stark and grim
+below him are not as the beasts that perish. The Germans have no set
+funeral service, and if they had, there would be no time for it here.
+"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of
+the resurrection to eternal life, _durch unsern Herr Jesu Christe_. Amen;"
+words so familiar, yet never heard without a new thrill.
+
+They are slightly uncouth in several matters, these _Feldpastoren_, and
+would not quite suit sundry metropolitan charges one wots of. They do not
+wear gloves, nor are they addicted to scent on their pocket-handkerchiefs.
+Their boots are too often like boats, and when they are mounted there is
+frequently visible an interval of more or less dusky stocking between the
+boot-top and the trouser-leg. They slobber stertorously in the consumption
+of soup, and cut their meat with a square-elbowed energy of determination
+that might make one think that they had vanquished the Evil One and had
+him down there under their knife and fork. But they are simple-hearted and
+valiant servants of their Master. Who was it, in the bullet-storm that
+swept the slope of Wörth, from facing which the stout hearts of the
+fighting men blenched and quailed, that there walked quietly into it, to
+speak words of peace and consolation to the dying men whom that terrible
+storm had beaten down? A smooth-faced stripling with the _Feldpastor's_
+badge on his arm, the gallant Christian son of an eminent Prussian divine,
+Dr. Krummacher of Berlin. At one of the battles (I forget which) a pastor
+came to fill a grave, not to consecrate it. Shall I ever forget the
+unswerving hurry to the front of Kummer's divisional chaplain when the
+_Landwehrleute_, his flock, were going down in their ranks as they held
+with stubbornness unto death the villages in front of Maizières les Metz?
+Let the _Feldpastoren_ slobber and welcome, say I, while they gild their
+slobbering with such devotion as this! But there must be times and seasons
+when Herr Pastor is not at hand; nor can the ministration of any pastor
+stand in the stead of private prayer. The German soldier's simple needs in
+this matter are not disregarded. Each man is served out when he gets his
+kit with a tiny gray volume less than quarter the size of this page, the
+title of which is _Gebetbuch für Soldaten_--the Soldier's Prayer-Book. It
+is supplied from the Berlin depôt of the Head Society for the Promotion of
+Christian Knowledge in Germany, and it is a compendium of simple war
+prayers for almost every conceivable situation, with one significant
+exception--there is no prayer in defeat. The word is blotted out of the
+German war vocabulary. It has been said that the belief in the divinity of
+our Saviour is rapidly on the wane in Germany. If this war prayer-book
+avails aught, the taint of the heresy may not enter into the army.
+
+Germany is at war. While Paris is frantically shouting _A Berlin!_, while
+all Germany is singing and meaning _Die Wacht am Rhein_, Moltke's order
+goes forth into the towns and villages of the Fatherland for the
+mobilisation of the Reserves. Hans was singing _Die Wacht am Rhein_ last
+night over his beer; but there is little heart for song left in him as he
+looks from that paper on the deal table into Gretchen's face. She is
+weeping bitterly as her children cling around her, too young to realise
+the cause of their parents' sorrow. Hans rises moodily, and pulling down
+what military belongings he has not given into the arsenal after the last
+drill, falls a turning over of them abstractedly. By chance his hand rests
+upon the little gray volume, the _Gebetbuch für Soldaten_. It opens in his
+hand, and he comes and sits down by Gretchen and reads in a voice that
+chokes sometimes, the
+
+
+PRAYER IN STRAIT AND SORROW
+
+O Lord Jesus Christ! let the crying and sighing of the poor come before
+Thee. Withhold not Thy countenance from the tears and beseechings of the
+woebegone. Help by Thine outstretched arm, and avert our sorrow from us.
+Awake us who are lying dead in sin and in great danger, and whose thoughts
+often wander from Thee. Let us trust with all our hearts that nothing can
+be so broad, so deep, so high, nor so arduous that Thy grace and favour
+cannot overcome it; that we so can and must be holpen out of every
+difficulty and discomfiture when Thou takest compassion upon us. Help us,
+then, through grace, and so I will praise Thee from now to all eternity.
+
+
+Hans has bidden good-bye to Gretchen, and has kissed the children he may
+never see more. He has marched with his fellows to the depôt, and got his
+uniform and arms. The _Militärzug_ has carried him to Kreuznach, and
+thence he has marched sturdily up the Nahe Valley and over the ridge into
+the Kollerthaler Wald. His last halt was at Puttingen, but Kameke has sent
+an aide back at the gallop to summon up all supports. The regiment stacks
+arms for ten minutes' breathing-time while the cannon-thunder is borne
+backward on the wind to the ears of the soldiers. In two hours more they
+will be across the French frontier, storming furiously up the Spicheren
+Berg. As Hans gropes in his tunic pocket for his tinder-box, the little
+war prayer-book somehow gets between his fingers. He takes it out with the
+pipe-light, and finds in its pages a prayer surely suited to the
+situation--the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE OUTMARCHING
+
+O gracious God! I defile from out my Fatherland and from the society of my
+friends,[1] and out of the house of my father into a strange land, to
+campaign against the enemies of our king. Therefore I would cast myself
+with life and soul upon Thy divine bosom and guardianship; and I pray
+Thee, with prostrate humility, that Thou willst guide me with Thine eye,
+and overshadow me with Thy wings. Let Thine angels camp round about me,
+and Thy grace protect me in all the difficulties of the marches, in all
+camps and dangers. Give me wisdom and understanding for my ways and works.
+Give success and blessing to our ingoings and outcomings, so that we may
+do everything well, and conquer on the field of battle; and after victory
+won, turn our steps homeward as the heralds who announce peace. So shall
+we praise Thee with gladsomeness, O most gracious Father, for Thy dear
+Son's sake, Jesus Christ!
+
+[Footnote 1: Every now and then one comes across a German word
+untranslatable in its compact volume of expressiveness. How weakly am I
+forced to render _Freundschaft_ here! "Outmarching," though a literal, is
+a poor equivalent for _Ausmarsch_. In the old Scottish language we find an
+exact correspondent for _aus_; the "Furthmarch" gives the idea to a
+hair's-breadth.]
+
+It is the morning of Gravelotte. King Wilhelm has issued his laconic order
+for the day, and all know how bloody and arduous is the task before his
+host. The French tents are visible away in the distance yonder by the
+auberge of St. Hubert, and already the explosion of an occasional shell
+gives earnest of the wrath to come. The regiment in which Hans is a
+private has marched to Caulre Farm, and is halted for breakfast there
+before beginning the real battle by attacking the French outpost
+stronghold in Verneville. The tough ration beef sticks in poor Hans'
+throat. He is no coward, but he thinks of Gretchen and the children, and
+the Reserve-man draws aside into the thicket to commune with his own
+thoughts. He has already found comfort in the little gray volume, and so
+he pulls it out again to search for consolation in this hour of gloom. He
+finds what he wants in the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE BATTLE
+
+Lord of Sabaoth, with Thee is no distinction in helping in great things or
+in small. We are going now, at the orders of our commanders, to do battle
+in the field with our enemies. Let us give proof of Thy might and honour.
+Help us, Lord our God, for we trust in Thee, and in Thy name we go forth
+against the enemy. Lord Christ, Thou hast said, "I am with thee in the
+hour of need; I will pull thee out, and place thee in an honourable
+place." Bethink Thee, Lord, of Thy word, and remember Thy promise. Come to
+our aid when we are sore pressed, when the close grapple is imminent, when
+the enemy overmatches us, and we have been surrounded by them. Stand by us
+in need, for the aid of man is of no avail. Through Thee we will vanquish
+our enemies, and in Thy name we will tread under the foot those who have
+set themselves in array against us. They trust in their own might, and are
+puffed up with pride; but we put our trust in the Almighty God, who,
+without one stroke of the sword, canst smite into the dust not only those
+who are now formed up against us, but also the whole world. God, we await
+on Thy goodness. Blessed are those who put their trust in Thee. Help us,
+that our enemies may not get the better of us, and wax triumphant in their
+might; but strike disorder into their ranks, and smite them before our
+eyes, so that we may overwhelm them. Show us Thy goodness, Thou Saviour,
+of those who trust in Thee. Art Thou not God the Lord unto us who are
+called after Thy name? So be gracious unto us, and take us--life and soul--
+under the protection of Thy grace. And since Thou only knowest what is
+good for us, so we commend ourselves unto Thee without reserve, be it for
+life or for death. Let us live comforted; let us fight and endure
+comforted; let us die comforted, for Jesus Christ, Thy dear Son's sake.
+Amen.
+
+
+Alvensleben is sitting on his horse on the little hillock behind the
+hamlet of Flavigny, pulling his gray moustache, and praying that he might
+see the _Spitze_ of Barneckow's division show itself on the edge of the
+plain up from out the glen of Gorze. Rheinbaben's cavalry are half of them
+down, the other half of them are rallying for another charge to save the
+German centre. Hans is in the wood to the north of Tronville, helping to
+keep back Leboeuf from swamping the left flank. The shells from the French
+artillery on the Roman Road are crashing into the wood. The bark is jagged
+by the slashes of venomous chassepot bullets. Twice has Ladmirault come
+raging down from the heights of Bruville, twice has he been sent
+staggering back. Now, with strong reinforcements, he is preparing for a
+third assault. Meanwhile there is a lull in the battle. Hans, grimed and
+powder-blackened, may let the breech of his _Zündnadelgewehr_ cool and may
+wipe his blood-stained bayonet on the forest moss. He has a moment for a
+glance into the little gray volume, and it opens in his blackened fingers
+at the prayer
+
+
+IN THE AGONY OF THE BATTLE
+
+O Thou Lord and Ruler of Thine own people, awake and look now in grace
+upon Thy folk. Lord Jesus Christ, be now our Jesus, our Helper and
+Deliverer, our rock and fortress, our fiery wall, for Thy great name's
+sake. Be now our Emmanuel, God with us, God in us, God for us, God by the
+side of us. Thou mighty arm of Thy Father, let us now see Thy great power,
+so that men shall hail Thee their God, and the people may bend their knees
+unto Thee. Strengthen and guide the fighting arm of Thy believing
+soldiers, and help them, Thou invincible King of Battles. Gird Thyself up,
+Thou mighty fighting Hero; gird Thy sword on Thy loins, and smite our
+enemy hip and thigh. Art Thou not the Lord who directest the wars of the
+whole world, who breakest the bow, who splinterest the spear, and burnest
+the chariots with fire? Arouse Thyself, help us for Thy good will, and
+cast us not from Thee, God of our Saviour; cease Thy wrath against us, and
+think not for ever of our sins. Consider that we are all Thine handiwork;
+give us Thy countenance again, and be gracious unto us. Return unto us, O
+Lord, and go forth with our army. Restore happiness to us with Thy help
+and counsel, Thou staunch and only King of Peace, who with Thy suffering
+and death hast procured for us eternal peace. Give us the victory and an
+honourable peace, and remain with us in life and in death. Amen.
+
+
+Hans has marched from before Metz towards the valley of the Meuse, and the
+regimental camp for the night is on the slopes of the Ardennes, over
+against Chemery. The setting sun is glinting on the windows of the Château
+of Vendresse, where the German King is quartered for the night. The birds
+are chirruping in the bosky dales of the Bar. The morrow is fraught with
+the hot struggle of Sedan, but honest Hans, a simple private man, knows
+nought of strategic moves and takes his ease on the sward while he may. He
+has oiled the needle-gun and done his cooking; a stone is under his head
+and his mantle is about him. As he ponders in the dying rays of the
+setting sun there comes over him the impulse to have a look into the pages
+of the _Gebetbuch_, and he finds there this prayer
+
+
+IN THE BIVOUAC
+
+Heavenly Father, here I am, according to Thy divine will, in the service
+of my king and war-master, as is my duty as a soldier; and I thank Thee
+for Thy grace and mercy that Thou hast called me to the performance of
+this duty, because I am certain that it is not a sin, but is an obedience
+to Thy wish and will. But as I know and have learnt through Thy gracious
+Word that none of our good works can avail us, and that nobody can be
+saved merely as a soldier, but only as a Christian, I will not rely on my
+obedience and upon my labours, but will perform my duties for Thy sake,
+and to Thy service. I believe with all my heart that the innocent blood of
+Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, which He has shed for me, delivers and saves
+me, for He was obedient to Thee even unto death. On this I rely, on this I
+live and die, on this I fight, and on this I do all things. Retain and
+increase, O God, my Father, this belief by Thy Holy Ghost. I commend body
+and soul to Thy hands. Amen.
+
+
+It is the evening of Sedan, the most momentous victory of the century. The
+bivouac fires light up the sluggish waters of the Meuse, not yet run clear
+from blood. The burning villages still blaze on the lower slopes of the
+Ardennes, and the tired victors, as they point to the beleaguered town,
+exclaim in a kind of maze of sober triumph, "_Der Kaiser ist da!_" Hans is
+joyous with his fellows, chaunts with them Luther's glorious hymn, _Nun
+Danket alle Gott_; and as the watch-fire burns up he rummages in the
+_Gebetbuch_ for something that will chime with the current of his
+thoughts. He finds it in the prayer
+
+
+AFTER THE VICTORY
+
+God of armies! Thou hast given us success and victory against our enemies,
+and hast put them to flight before us. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us,
+but to Thy holy name alone be all the honour! Thou hast done great things
+for us, therefore our hearts are glad. Without Thy aid we should have been
+worsted; only with God could we have done mighty deeds and subdued the
+power of the enemy. The eye of our general Thou hast quickened and guided;
+Thou hast strengthened the courage of our army, and lent it stubborn
+valour. Yet not the strategy of our leader, nor our courage, but Thy great
+mercy has given us the victory. Lord, who are we, that we dare to stand
+before Thee as soldiers, and that our enemies yield and fly before us? We
+are sinners, even as they are, and have deserved Thy fierce wrath and
+punishment; but for the sake of Thy name Thou hast been merciful to us,
+and hast so marked the sore peril of our threatened Fatherland, and hast
+heard the prayer of our king, our people, and our army, because we called
+upon Thy name, and held out our buckler in the name of the Lord of
+Sabaoth. Blessed be Thy holy name for ever and ever. Amen.
+
+
+The surrender of the French army of Sedan has been consummated, and
+Napoleon has departed into captivity; while Hans, marching down by Rethel,
+and through grand old Rheims, and along the smiling vinebergs of the Marne
+Valley, is now _vor Paris_. He is on the _Feldwache_ in the forest of
+Bondy before Raincy, and his turn comes to go on the uttermost sentry
+post. As the snow-drift blows to one side he can see the French
+watch-fires close by him in Bondy; nearer still he sees the three stones
+and the few spadefuls of earth behind which, as he knows, is the French
+outpost sentry confronting him. The straggling rays of the watery moon now
+obscured by snow-scud, now falling on him faintly, could not aid him in
+reading even if he dared avert his eyes from his front. But Hans had come
+to know the value of the little gray volume; and while he lay in the
+_Feldwache_ waiting for his spell of sentry go, he had learnt by heart the
+following prayer
+
+
+FOR OUTPOST SENTRY DUTY
+
+Lord Jesus Christ, I stand here on the foremost fringe of the camp, and am
+holding watch against the enemy; but wert Thou, Lord, not to guard us,
+then the watcher watcheth in vain. Therefore, I pray Thee, cover us with
+Thy grace as with a shield, and let Thy holy angels be round about us to
+guard and preserve us that we be not fallen upon at unawares by the enemy.
+Let the darkness of the night not terrify me; open mine eyes and ears that
+I may observe the oncoming of the enemy from afar, and that I may study
+well the care of myself and of the whole army. Keep me in my duty from
+sleeping on my post and from false security. Let me continually call to
+Thee with my heart, and bend Thyself unto me with Thine almighty presence.
+Be Thou with me and strengthen me, life and soul, that in frost, in heat,
+in rain, in snow, in all storms, I may retain my strength and return in
+health to the _Feldwache_. So I will praise Thy name and laud Thy
+protection. Amen.
+
+
+It is the evening of the 2nd of December. Duerot has tried his hardest to
+sup in Lagny, and has been balked by German valour. But not without
+terrible loss. On the plateau and by the party wall before Villiers, dead
+and wounded Germans lie very thick. In one of the little corries in the
+vineberg poor Hans has gone down. The shells from Fort Nogent are bursting
+all around, endangering the _Krankenträger_ while prosecuting their duties
+of mercy and devotion. Hans has somehow bound up his shattered limb; and
+as he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket the little _Gebetbuch_ has
+dropped out with it. There is none on earth to comfort poor Hans; let him
+open the book and find consolation there in the prayer
+
+
+FOR THE SICK AND WOUNDED
+
+Dear and trusty Deliverer, Jesus Christ, I know in my necessity and pains
+no whither to flee to but to Thee, my Saviour, who hast suffered for me,
+and hast called unto all ailing and miserable ones, "Come unto Me, all ye
+who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Oh, relieve me,
+also, of Thy love and kindness, stretch out Thy healing and almighty hand,
+and restore me to health. Free me with Thy aid from my wounds and my
+pains, and console me with Thy grace who art vouchsafed to heal the broken
+heart, and to console all the sorrowful ones. Dost Thou take pleasure in
+our destruction? Our groaning touches Thee to the heart, and those whom
+Thou hast cast down Thou wilt lift up again. In Thee, Lord Jesus, I put my
+trust; I will not cease to importune Thee that Thou bringest me not to
+shame. Help me, save me, so I will praise Thee for ever. Amen.
+
+
+Alas for Gretchen and her brood! The 4th of December has dawned, and still
+Hans lies unfound in the corrie of the vineberg. He has no pain now, for
+his shattered limb has been numbed by the cruel frost. His eyes are waxing
+dim and he feels the end near at hand. The foul raven of the battlefield
+croaks above him in his enfeebled loneliness, impatient for its meal. The
+grim king of terrors is very close to thee, poor honest soldier of the
+Fatherland; but thou canst face him as boldly as thou hast faced the foe,
+with the help of the little book of which thy frost-chilled fingers have
+never lost the grip. The gruesome bird falls back as thou murmurest the
+prayer
+
+
+AT THE NEAR APPROACH OF DEATH
+
+Merciful heavenly Father, Thou God of all consolation, I thank Thee that
+Thou hast sent Thy dear Son Jesus Christ to die for me. He has through His
+death taken from death his sting, so that I have no cause to fear him
+more. In that I thank Thee, dear Father, and pray Thee receive my spirit
+in grace, as it now parts from life. Stand by me and hold me with Thine
+almighty hand, that I may conquer all the terrors of death. When my ears
+can hear no more, let Thy Spirit commune with my spirit, that I, as Thy
+child and co-heir with Christ, may speedily be with Jesus by Thee in
+heaven. When my eyes can see no more, so open my eyes of faith that I may
+then see Thy heaven open before me and the Lord Jesus on Thy right hand;
+that I may also be where He is. When my tongue shall refuse its utterance,
+then let Thy Spirit be my spokesman with indescribable breathings, and
+teach me to say with my heart, "Father, into Thy hands I commit my
+spirit." Hear me, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
+
+
+Would it harm the British soldier, think you, if in his kit there was a
+_Gebetbuch für Soldaten_?
+
+
+
+
+MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
+
+1879
+
+
+In broad essentials the marryings and givings in marriage of India
+nowadays do not greatly differ from these natural phenomena at home; but
+to use a florist's phrase, they are more inclined to "sport." The old days
+are over when consignments of damsels were made to the Indian
+marriage-market, in the assured certainty that the young ladies would be
+brides-elect before reaching the landing ghât. The increased facilities
+which improved means of transit now offer to bachelors for running home on
+short leave have resulted in making the Anglo-Indian "spin" rather a drug
+in the market; and operating in the same untoward direction is the growing
+predilection on the part of the Anglo-Indian bachelor for other men's
+wives, in preference to hampering himself with the encumbrance of a wife
+of his own. Among other social products of India old maids are now
+occasionally found; and the fair creature who on her first arrival would
+smile only on commissioners or colonels has been fain, after a few--yet
+too many--hot seasons have impaired her bloom and lowered her
+pretensions, to put up with a lieutenant or even with a dissenting
+_padre_. Slips between the cup and the lip are more frequent in India than
+in England. Loving and riding away is not wholly unknown in the
+Anglo-Indian community; and indeed, by both parties to the contract,
+engagements are frequently regarded in the mistaken light of ninepins.
+Hearts are seldom broken. At Simla during a late season a gallant captain
+persistently wore the willow till the war broke out, because he had been
+jilted in favour of a colonel; but his appetite rapidly recovered its tone
+on campaign, and he was reported to have reopened relations by
+correspondence from the tented field with a former object of his
+affections. Not long ago there arrived in an up-country station a box
+containing a wedding trousseau, which a lady had ordered out from home as
+the result of an engagement between her and a gallant warrior. But in the
+interval the warrior had departed elsewhere and had addressed to the lady
+a pleasant and affable communication, setting forth that there was
+insanity in his family and that he must have been labouring under an
+access of the family disorder when he had proposed to her. It was hard to
+get such a letter, and it must have been harder still for her to gaze on
+the abortive wedding-dress. But the lady did not abandon herself to
+despair; she took a practical view of the situation. She determined to
+keep the trousseau by her for six months, in case she might within that
+time achieve a fresh conquest, when it would come in happily. Should
+fortune not favour her thus far she meant to advertise the wedding-gear
+for sale.
+
+Miss Priest was no "spin" lingering on in spinsterhood against her will.
+It is true that when I saw her first she had already been "out" three
+years, but she might have been married a dozen times over had she chosen.
+I have seen many pretty faces in the fair Anglo-Indian sisterhood, but
+Miss Priest had a brightness and a sparkle that were all her own. At
+flirting, at riding, at walking, at dancing, at performing in amateur
+theatricals, at making fools of men in an airy, ruthless, good-hearted
+fashion, Miss Priest, as an old soldier might say, "took the right of the
+line." There was a fresh vitality about the girl that drew men and women
+alike to her. You met her at dawn cantering round Jakko on her pony.
+Before breakfast she had been rinking for an hour, with as likely as not a
+waltz or two thrown in. She never missed a picnic to Annandale, the
+Waterfalls, or Mashobra. Another turn at the Benmore rink before dinner,
+and for sure a dance after, rounded off this young lady's normal day
+during the Simla season. But if pleasure-loving, capricious, and reckless,
+she scraped through the ordeal of Simla gossip without incurring scandal.
+She was such a frank, honest girl, that malign tongues might assail her
+indeed, but ineffectually. And she had given proof that she knew how to
+take care of herself, although her only protectress was a perfectly
+inoffensive mother. On the occasion of the Prince of Wales's visit to
+Lahore, had she not boxed the ears of a burly and somewhat boorish swain,
+who had chosen the outside of an elephant as an eligible _locale_ for a
+proposal, the uncouth abruptness of which did not accord with her notion
+of the fitness of things?
+
+Miss Priest may be said to have lived in a chronic state of engagements.
+The engagements never seemed to come to anything, but that was on account
+mostly of the young lady's wilfulness. It bothered her to be engaged to
+the same man for more than from a week to ten days on end. No bones were
+broken; the gentleman resigned the position at her behest, and she would
+genially dance with him the same night. Malice and heartburning were out
+of the question with a lissom, winsome, witching fairy like this, who
+played with her life as a child does with soap-bubbles, and who was as
+elusory and irresponsible as a summer-day rainbow. But one season at
+Mussoorie Miss Priest contracted an engagement somewhat less evanescent.
+Mussoorie of all Himalayan hill-stations is the most demure and proper.
+Simla occasionally is convulsed by scandals, although dispassionate
+inquiry invariably proves that there is nothing in them. The hot blood of
+the quick and fervid Punjaub--casual observers have called the Punjaub
+stupid, but the remark applies only to its officials--is apt to stir the
+current of life at Murree. The chiefs of the North-West are invariably so
+intolerably proper that occasional revolt from their austerity is all but
+forced on Nynee Tal, the sanatorium of that province. But Mussoorie,
+undisturbed by the presence of frolicsome viceroys or austere
+lieutenant-governors, is a limpid pool of pleasant propriety. It is not so
+much that it is decorous as that it is genuinely good; it is a favourite
+resort of clergymen and of clergymen's wives. It was at Mussoorie that
+Miss Priest met Captain Hambleton, a gallant gunner. They danced together
+at the Assembly Rooms; they rode in company round the Camel's Back; they
+went to the same picnics at "The Glen." The captain proposed and was
+accepted. For about the nineteenth time Miss Priest was an engaged young
+lady. And Captain Hambleton was a lover of rather a different stamp from
+the men with whom her name previously had been nominally coupled. He was
+in love and he was a gentleman; he had proposed to the girl, not that he
+and she should be merely engaged but that they should be married also.
+This view of the subject was novel to Miss Priest and at first she thought
+it rather a bore; but the captain pegged away and gradually the lady came
+rather to relish the situation. Men and women concurred that the wayward
+pinions of the fair Bella were at last trimmed, if not clipped; and to do
+her justice the general opinion was that, once married, she would make an
+excellent wife. As the close of the Mussoorie season approached the
+invitations went out for Bella Priest's wedding, and for "cake and wine
+afterwards at the house." The wedding-breakfast is a comparatively rare
+_tamasha_ in India; the above is the formula of the usual invitation at
+the hill-stations.
+
+It happened that just two days before the day fixed for the marriage of
+Miss Priest and Captain Hambleton, there was a fancy-dress ball in the
+Assembly Rooms at Mussoorie. I think that as a rule fancy-dress balls are
+greater successes in India than at home. People in India give their minds
+more to the selection and to the elaboration of costumes; and there is
+less of that _mauvaise honte_ when masquerading in fancy costume, which
+makes a ball of this description at home so wooden and wanting in go. At a
+fancy ball in India "the devil" acts accordingly, and manages his tail
+with adroitness and grace. It is a fact that at a recent fancy-dress ball
+in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a lady who appeared as "chess,"
+with the chess-men which had formed her head-dress. This Mussoorie ball,
+being the last of the season, was to excel all its predecessors in
+inventive variety. A _padre's_ wife conceived the bright idea of appearing
+as Eve; and only abandoned the notion on finding that, no matter what
+species of thread she used, it tore the fig-leaves--a result which,
+besides causing her a disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by
+engendering doubts as to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the
+creation. Miss Priest determined to go to this ball, although doing so
+under the circumstances was scarcely in accordance with the _convenances_;
+but she was a girl very much addicted to having her own way. Captain
+Hambleton did not wish her to go, and there was a temporary coolness
+between the two on the subject; but he yielded and they made it up. The
+principle as to her going once established, Miss Priest's next task was to
+set about the invention of a costume. It was to be her last effort as a
+"spin"; and she determined it should be worthy of her reputation for
+brilliant inventiveness. She had shone as a _Vivandière_, as the Daughter
+of the Regiment, as a Greek Slave, Grace Darling, and so forth, times out
+of number; but those characters were stale. Miss Priest had a form of
+supple rounded grace, nor had Diana shapelier limbs. A great inspiration
+came to her as she sauntered pondering on the Mall. Let her go as Ariel,
+all gauze, flesh-tints, and natural curves. She hailed the happy thought
+and invested in countless yards of gauze. She had the tights already by
+her.
+
+Now Miss Priest, knowing the idiosyncrasy of Captain Hambleton, had little
+doubt that he would put his foot down upon Ariel. But she knew he loved
+her, and with characteristic recklessness determined to trust to that and
+to luck. She too loved him, even better, perhaps, than Ariel; but she
+hoped to keep both the captain and the character. She did not, however,
+tell him of her design, waiting perhaps for a favourable opportunity. But
+even in Arcadian Mussoorie there are the "d----d good-natured friends" of
+whom Byron wrote; and one of those--of course it was a woman--told Captain
+Hambleton of the character in which Miss Priest intended to appear at the
+fancy ball. The captain was a headstrong sort of man--what in India is
+called _zubburdustee_. Instead of calling on the girl and talking to her
+as a wise man would have done, he sat down and wrote her a terse letter
+forbidding her to appear as Ariel, and adding that if she should persist
+in doing so their engagement must be considered at an end. Miss Priest
+naturally fired up. Strangely enough, being a woman, she did not reply to
+the captain's letter; but when the evening of the ball came, she duly
+appeared as Ariel with rather less gauze about her shapely limbs than had
+been her original intention. She created an immense sensation. Some of the
+ladies frowned, others turned up their noses, yet others tucked in their
+skirts when she approached; and all vowed that they would decline to touch
+Miss Priest's hand in the quadrille. Miss Priest did not care a jot for
+these demonstrations, and she never danced square dances. Among the
+gentlemen she created a perfect furore.
+
+Captain Hambleton was present at the ball. For the greater part of the
+evening he stood near the door with his eye fixed on Miss Priest,
+apparently rather in sorrow than in anger. His gaze seemed but to
+stimulate her to more vivacious flirtation; and she "carried on above a
+bit," as a cynical subaltern remarked, with the gallant major to whom she
+had been penultimately engaged. Toward the close of the evening Captain
+Hambleton relinquished his post of observation, seemed to accept the
+situation, and was observed at supper-time paying marked attention to a
+married lady with whom his name had been to some extent coupled not long
+before his engagement to Miss Priest.
+
+Next morning Miss Priest took time by the forelock. She waited for no
+further communication from Captain Hambleton; he had already sent his
+ultimatum and she had dared her fate. The morrow was the day fixed for the
+marriage. Many people had been bidden. Mussoorie, including Landour, is a
+large station, and the postal delivery of letters is not particularly
+punctual. So she adopted a plan for warning off the wedding-guests
+identical with that employed in Indian stations for circulating
+notifications as to lawn-tennis gatherings and unimportant intimations
+generally. At the head of the paper is written the notification,
+underneath are the names of the persons concerned. The document is
+intrusted to a messenger known as a _chuprassee_, who goes away on his
+circuit; and each person writes "Seen" opposite his or her name in
+testimony of being posted in the intelligence conveyed in the
+notification. Miss Priest divided the invited guests into four rounds and
+despatched four _chuprassees_, each bearing a document curtly announcing
+that "Miss Priest's marriage will not come off as arranged, and the
+invitations therefore are to be regarded as cancelled."
+
+Miss Priest had no fortune, and her mother was by no means wealthy. It may
+seem strange to English readers--not nearly so much so, however, as to
+Anglo-Indian ones--that Captain Hambleton had thought it a graceful and
+kindly attention to provide the wedding-cake. It had reached him across
+the hills from Peliti's the night of the ball, and now here it was on his
+hands--a great white elephant. Whether in the hope that it might be
+regarded as an olive-branch, whether that he burned to be rid of it
+somehow, or whether, knowing that Miss Priest was bound to get married
+some day and thinking that it would be a convenience if she had a
+bridecake by her handy for the occasion, there is no evidence. Anyhow, he
+sent it to Mrs. Priest with his compliments. That very sensible woman did
+not send it back with a cutting message, as some people would have done.
+Having considerable Indian experience, she had learned practical wisdom
+and the short-sighted folly of cutting messages. She kept the bridecake,
+and enclosed to the gallant captain Gosslett's bill for the dozen of
+simkin that excellent firm had sent in to wash it down wherewithal.
+
+Bridecakes are bores to carry about from place to place, and Miss Priest
+and her mother were rather birds of passage. Peliti declined to take this
+particular bridecake back, for all Simla had seen it in his window and he
+saw no possibility of "working it in." So the Priests, mother and
+daughter, determined to realise on it in a somewhat original and indeed
+cynical fashion. The cake was put up to be raffled for.
+
+All the station took tickets for the fun of the thing. Captain Hambleton
+was anxious to show that there was no ill-feeling, and did not find
+himself so unhappy as he had expected--perhaps from the _redintegratio
+amoris_ in another quarter; so he took his ticket in the raffle like other
+people. It is needless to say that he won; and the cake duly came back to
+him.
+
+Had Captain Hambleton been a superstitious man, he might have regarded
+this strange occurrence as indicating that the Fates willed it that he
+should compass somehow a union with Miss Priest. But the captain had no
+superstition in his nature; and, indeed, had begun to think that he was
+well out of it; besides which it was currently reported that Miss Priest
+had already re-engaged herself to another man. But the bridecake was upon
+him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what the devil
+to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody would take
+tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the _khud_ (_Anglice_,
+precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he reflected that this
+would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate soreness on his part. It
+cost him a good many pegs before he thought the matter out in all its
+bearings, for, as has been said, he was a gunner, but as he sauntered away
+from the club in the small hours a happy thought came to him.
+
+He would give a picnic at which the bogey bridecake should figure
+conspicuously, and then be laid finally by the process of demolition. His
+leave was nearly up; he had experienced much hospitality and a picnic
+would be a graceful and genial acknowledgment thereof. And he would ask
+the Priests just like other people, and no doubt they would enter into the
+spirit of the thing and not send a "decline." Bella, he knew, liked
+picnics nearly as well as balls, and it must be a powerful reason indeed
+that would keep her away from either.
+
+Captain Hambleton's picnic was the last of the season, and everybody
+called it the brightest. "The Glen" resounded to the laughter at tiffin,
+and the shades of night were falling ere stray couples turned up from its
+more sequestered recesses. Amid loud cheers Miss Priest, although still
+Miss Priest, cut up her own bridecake with a serene equanimity that proved
+the charming sweetness of her disposition. There was no marriage-bell yet
+all went merry as a marriage-bell, which is occasionally rather a sombre
+tintinnabulation; and the _débris_ of the bridecake finally fell to the
+sweeper.
+
+I would fain that it were possible, having a regard to truth, to round off
+this little story prettily by telling how in a glade of "The Glen" after
+the demolition of the bridecake, Miss Priest and the captain "squared
+matters," were duly married and lived happily ever after, as the
+story-books say. But this consummation was not attained. Miss Priest
+indeed was in the glade, but it was not with the captain, or at least this
+particular captain; and as for him, he spent the afternoon placidly
+smoking cigarettes as he lay at the feet of his married consoler. To the
+best of my knowledge Miss Priest is Miss Priest still.
+
+
+
+
+A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
+
+
+Referring to a particular phase of this memorable combat, Mr. Kinglake
+wrote: "The question is not ripe for conclusive decision; some of those
+who, as is supposed, might throw much light upon it, have hitherto
+maintained silence." It was in 1868 that the fourth volume--the Balaclava
+volume--of Mr. Kinglake's History was published. Since he wrote,
+singularly few of those who could throw light on obscure points of the
+battle have broken silence. Lord George Paget's Journal furnished little
+fresh information, since Mr. Kinglake had previously used it extensively.
+There is but a spark or two of new light in Sir Edward Hamley's more
+recent compendium. As the years roll on the number of survivors diminishes
+in an increasing ratio, nor does one hear of anything valuable left behind
+by those who fall out of the thinning ranks. The reader of the period, in
+default of any other authority, betakes himself to Kinglake. There are
+those who term Kinglake's volumes romance rather than history--or, more
+mildly, the romance of history. But this is unjust and untrue. It would be
+impertinent to speak of his style; that gift apart, his quest for accurate
+information was singularly painstaking, searching, and scrupulous. Yet it
+cannot be said that he was always well served. He had perforce to lean on
+the statements of men who were partisans, writing as he did so near his
+period that nearly all men charged with information were partisans.
+British officers are not given to thrusting on a chronicler tales of their
+own prowess. But _esprit de corps_ in our service is so strong--and, spite
+of its incidental failings that are almost merits what lover of his
+country could wish to see it weakened?--that men of otherwise implicit
+veracity will strain truth, and that is a weak phrase, to exalt the
+conduct of their comrades and their corps. No doubt Mr. Kinglake
+occasionally suffered because of this propensity; and, with every respect,
+his literary _coup d'oeil_, except as regards the Alma where he saw for
+himself, and Inkerman where no _coup d'oeil_ was possible, was somewhat
+impaired by his having to make his picture of battle a mosaic, each
+fragment contributed by a distinct actor concentrated on his own
+particular bit of fighting. If ever military history becomes a fine art we
+may find the intending historian, alive to the proverb that "onlookers see
+most of the game," detailing capable persons with something of the duty of
+the subordinate umpire of a sham fight, to be answerable each for a given
+section of the field, the historian himself acting as the correlative of
+the umpire-in-chief.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF BALACLAVA PLAIN.
+
+EXPLANATIONS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Figures 1 to 6 indicate Redoubts.
+
+A. Point of collision.
+
+B. "C" Troop R.H.A.'s position during combat, in support Heavy Cavalry.
+
+C. "C" Troop in action against fugitive Russian Cavalry about D., range
+about 750 yards.
+
+E. Lord Lucan's position watching advance of Russian Cavalry mass.
+
+F. Position "C" Troop when approached by Cardigan and Paget after Light
+Cavalry charge.
+
+G. Position "C" Troop in support Light Cavalry charge.
+
+H. Russian Cavalry mass advancing at trot up "North" valley.
+
+HH. Russian Cavalry General and Staff trotting along Causeway heights,
+with view into both valleys.
+
+K. Line of Light Cavalry charge.
+
+L. Light Brigade during Heavy Cavalry charge.
+
+M. "I" Troop R.H.A. during ditto.
+
+N. Lord Raglan's position (approximate).
+
+O. Scarlett's five squadrons beginning their advance.
+
+P. Russian Cavalry mass halted.]
+
+It is true that the battle of Balaclava was fought to "a gallery"
+consisting of the gazers who looked down into the plain from the upland of
+the Chersonese. But of close and virtually independent spectators of the
+battle's most thrilling episodes, so near the climax of the Heavy Cavalry
+charge that they heard the clash of the sabres, so close to the lip of the
+Valley of Death that they discerned the wounds of our stricken troopers
+who strewed its sward and could greet and be greeted by the broken groups
+that rode back out of the "mouth of hell," there was but one small body of
+people. This body consisted of the officers and men of "C" Troop, Royal
+Horse Artillery. "C" Troop had been encamped from 1st October until the
+morning of the battle close to the Light division, in that section of the
+British position known as the Right Attack. When the fighting began in the
+Balaclava plain on the morning of the 25th, it promptly started for the
+scene of action. Pursuing the nearest way to the plain by the Woronzoff
+road, at the point known as the "Cutting" it received an order from Lord
+Raglan to take a more circuitous route, as by the more direct one it was
+following it might become exposed to fire from Russian cannon on the
+Fedoukine heights. Pursuing the circuitous route it came out into the
+plain through the "Col" then known as the "Barrier," crossed the "South"
+or "Inner" valley, and reached the left rear of Scarlett's squadrons
+formed up for the Heavy Cavalry charge. Here it received an order from
+Brigadier-General Strangways, who commanded the Artillery, with which it
+could not comply; and thenceforward "C" Troop throughout the day acted
+independently, at the discretion of its enterprising and self-reliant
+commander. What it saw and what it did are recorded in a couple of
+chapters of a book entitled _From Coruña to Sevastopol_. [Footnote: _From
+Coruña to Sevastopol_: The History of "C" Battery, "A" Brigade (late "C"
+Troop), Royal Horse Artillery. W.H. Allen and Co.] This volume was
+published some years ago, but the interesting and vivid details given in
+its pages of the Balaclava combats and the light it throws on many obscure
+incidents of the day have been strangely overlooked. The author of the
+chapters was an officer in the Troop whose experiences he shared and
+describes, and is a man well known in the service to be possessed of acute
+observation, strong memory, and implicit veracity. The present writer has
+been favoured by this officer with much information supplementary to that
+given in his published chapters, which is embodied in the following
+account throughout which the officer will be designated as "the 'C' Troop
+chronicler."
+
+The "Plain of Balaclava" is divided into two distinct valleys by a low
+ridge known as the "Causeway Heights," which bisects it in the direction
+of its length and is everywhere easily practicable for all arms. The
+valley nearest to the sea and the town of Balaclava has been variously
+termed the "South" and the "Inner" valley; it was on the slope descending
+to it from the ridge that our Heavy Cavalry won their success; the valley
+beyond the ridge is the "North" or "Outer" valley, down which, their faces
+set eastward, sped to glorious disaster the "noble six hundred" of the
+Light Brigade. On the north the plain is bounded by the Fedoukine heights;
+on the west by the steep face of the Chersonese upland whereon was the
+allied main position before Sevastopol during the siege; on the south by
+the broken ground between the plain and the sea; on the east by the River
+Tchernaya and the Kamara hills. Our weakness in the plain invited attack.
+At Kadiköi, on its southern verge, Sir Colin Campbell covered Balaclava
+with a Scottish regiment, a Field battery, and some Turks. Near the
+western end of the South valley were the camps of the cavalry division.
+Straggled along the Causeway heights was a series of weak earthworks whose
+total armament consisted of nine iron guns, and among which were
+distributed some six or seven battalions of Turkish infantry. At daybreak
+of 25th October the Russian General Liprandi with a force of 22,000
+infantry, 3300 cavalry, and 78 guns, took the offensive by driving the
+Turkish garrisons out of these earthworks in succession, beginning with
+the most easterly--No. 1, known as "Canrobert's Hill." The Turks holding
+it fought well and stood a storm and heavy loss before they were expelled.
+The other earthworks fell with less and less resistance, and the first
+three, with seven out of their nine guns, remained in the Russian
+possession.
+
+During the morning, while the Russians were taking the earthworks along
+the ridge, our two cavalry brigades, in the words of General Hamley, had
+been manoeuvring so as to threaten the flanks of any force which might
+approach Balaclava, without committing themselves to an action in which
+they would have been without the support of infantry. Ultimately, until
+his infantry should become available, Lord Raglan drew in the cavalry
+division to a position on the left of redoubt No. 6, near the foot of the
+Chersonese upland.
+
+While it was temporarily quiescent there Liprandi was engaging in an
+operation of enterprise rare in the record of Russian cavalry. General
+Ryjoff at the head of a great body of horse started on an advance up the
+North valley. Presently he detached four squadrons to his left, which
+moved toward where Sir Colin Campbell was in position at the head of the
+Kadiköi gorge, was repulsed without difficulty by that soldier's fire, and
+rode back whence it had come. The main body of Russian horse, computed by
+unimaginative authorities to be about 2000 strong, continued up the valley
+till it was about abreast of redoubt No. 4 [Footnote: See Map.], when it
+halted; checked apparently, writes Kinglake, by the fire of two guns from
+a battery on the edge of the upland. The "C" Troop chronicler states that
+in addition to "a few" shots fired by this battery (manned by Turks), the
+guns of "I" troop R.H.A., temporarily stationed in a little hollow in
+front of the Light Brigade [Footnote: See Map.], fired rapidly one round
+each, "haphazard," over the high ground in their front. General Hamley
+assigns no ground for the Russian halt, but mentions that just at the
+moment of collision between our Heavies and the Russian mass "three guns"
+on the edge of the upland were fired on the latter. From whatever cause,
+the Russian cavalry wheeled obliquely to the leftward, crossed the
+Causeway heights about redoubt No. 5, and began to descend the slope of
+the South valley. Kinglake heard of no ground for believing that the
+Russian horse thus wheeling southward, were cognisant of the presence of
+the Heavies in the valley they were entering. But the "C" Troop chronicler
+states that as the Troop was crossing the plain a few Russian horsemen
+were seen by it trotting fast along the top of the ridge [Footnote: See
+Map.], who, when almost immediately afterwards the head of the Russian
+column showed itself on the skyline, were set down as the General
+commanding it and his staff.
+
+Kinglake observes that the Russians have declared their object in this
+operation to have been the destruction of a non-existent artillery park
+near Kadiköi, while some of our people imagined it to have been a real
+attempt on Balaclava. But up the centre of the North valley was neither
+the directest nor the safest way to Kadiköi, much less to Balaclava. Is it
+not more probable that the enterprise was of the nature merely of a sort
+of "snap-offensive"; while as yet the allied infantry visibly pouring down
+the slopes of the upland were innocuous because of distance and while the
+sole occupants of the plain were a couple of weak cavalry brigades and a
+single horse battery? Ryjoff on the ridge could see in his front at least
+portions of the Light Brigade; its fire told him the horse battery was
+thereabouts too, and there were those shots from the cannon on the upland.
+Is it not feasible that, looking down on his left to Scarlett's poor six
+squadrons--his two following regiments were then some distance off--and
+seeing those squadrons as yet without accompanying artillery, he should
+have judged them his easier quarry and ordered the wheel that should bring
+his avalanche down on them?
+
+Kinglake recounts how, while our cavalry division yet stood intact near
+the foot of the upland, Lord Raglan had noticed the instability of the
+Turks under Campbell's command at Kadiköi and had sent Lord Lucan
+directions to move down eight squadrons of Heavies to support them; how
+Scarlett started with the Inniskillings, Greys, and Fifth Dragoon Guards,
+numbering six squadrons, to be followed by the two squadrons of the Royals;
+how the march toward Kadiköi was proceeding along the South valley, when
+all of a sudden Elliot, General Scarlett's aide-de-camp, glancing up
+leftward at the ridge "saw its top fretted with lances, and in another
+moment the skyline broken by evident squadrons of horse." Then, Kinglake
+proceeds, Scarlett's resolve was instantaneous; he gave the command "Left
+wheel into line!" and confronted the mass gathering into sight over
+against him. Soon after Scarlett had started Lord Lucan had learned of the
+advance up the North valley of the great mass of Russian cavalry, which he
+had presently descried himself, as also its change of direction southward
+across the Causeway ridge; and after giving Lord Cardigan "parting
+instructions" which that officer construed into compulsory inactivity on
+his part when a great opportunity presented itself, he had galloped off at
+speed to overtake Scarlett and give him directions for prompt conflict
+with the Russian cavalry. Thus far Kinglake.
+
+The testimony of the "C" Troop chronicler differs from the above statement
+in every detail. He significantly points out that Kinglake does not, as is
+his custom, quote the words of Lord Raglan's order directing the march of
+the Heavies to Kadiköi. His averment is to the following effect. When the
+cavalry division after its manoeuvring of the morning was retiring by Lord
+Raglan's command along the South valley toward the foot of the upland, it
+was followed as closely as they dared by some Cossacks who busied
+themselves in spearing and capturing the unfortunate Turks flying from the
+ridge toward Kadiköi athwart the rear of the British squadrons. Eventually
+the Cossacks reached the camp of the Light Brigade and set about stabbing
+and hacking at the sick and non-effective horses left standing at the
+picket-lines. Lord Raglan from his commanding position on the upland saw
+those Cossacks working mischief in our lines, and sent a message to Lord
+Lucan "to take some cavalry forward and protect the camp from being
+destroyed." The "C" Troop chronicler has in his possession a letter from
+the actual bearer of this message, to the effect that he duly delivered it
+to Lord Lucan and that consequent on it his lordship moved forward some
+heavy cavalry into the plain toward the picket-lines. Testimony to be
+presently noted will indicate the importance of this statement. The
+chronicler denies that Lord Lucan, as Kinglake states, galloped after
+Scarlett after having given Lord Cardigan his "parting instructions." No
+doubt he did give those instructions, when apprised by Lord Raglan's
+aide-de-camp of the threatening advance of Russian horse. But what he then
+did, assured as he was of the stationary attitude of the heavy squadrons
+sent out to protect the camp, was to ride forward along the ridge-line to
+discern for himself where, if indeed anywhere, the Russians were intending
+to strike. He most daringly remained at a forward and commanding point of
+the ridge [Footnote: See Map.] until actually chased off his ground by the
+van of the Russian wheel, and he then galloped straight down the slope to
+join Scarlett drawing out his squadrons for the conflict with the Russian
+mass whose leading files Elliot's keen eye had discerned on the skyline.
+
+If Kinglake were right as to his alleged movement of the Heavies toward
+Kadiköi and its sudden arrestment because of Elliot's discovery, "C"
+Troop, as it approached them, would have seen the squadrons still in
+motion. But the chronicler testifies that "C" Troop, while moving to the
+scene of action and when still more than a mile and a half distant (at
+least fifteen minutes at the pace the weakened gun-teams travelled), had a
+full view of the South valley. And it then saw five squadrons of heavy
+cavalry thus early halted in the plain near the cavalry picket-lines,
+fronting towards the ridge and apparently perfectly dressed--the Greys
+(two squadrons deep) in the centre, recognised by their bearskins; a
+helmeted regiment (also two squadrons deep) on the left (afterwards known
+to be the 5th Dragoon Guards); and one helmeted squadron on the right (2nd
+squadron Inniskillings). A sixth squadron (1st Inniskillings) was visible
+some distance to the right rear and it was also fronting towards the
+ridge. This force, so and thus early positioned, consisted, avers the
+chronicler, of the identical troops which Kinglake erroneously describes
+as straggling hurriedly into deployment under the urgency of Scarlett and
+Lucan to cope with the suddenly disclosed adversary.
+
+When "C" Troop and its chronicler reached the rear of the formed-up
+squadrons they were found in the same formation as when first observed,
+but the whole had in the interval been moved somewhat to the right,
+farther into the plain, with intent no doubt to be clear of obstacles on
+the previous front. Kinglake speaks throughout of the force that first
+charged under Scarlett--"Scarlett's three hundred," as consisting of three
+squadrons ranked thus:--
+
+
+-------------------  -------------------    -------------------
+     2nd squad.           lst squad.      2nd squad. Inniskillings
+
+      \__________________________/
+                  Greys.
+
+
+And, although his words are not so clear as usual, he appears to believe
+that the 5th Dragoon Guards, whom in his plan he places some little
+distance to the left rear of the Greys, were actually the last to move to
+the attack, of all the five regiments participating in the heavy cavalry
+onslaught. The "C" Troop chronicler, noting details, be it remembered,
+from his position immediately in rear of the cavalry force which first
+charged, describes its composition and formation thus:--
+
+
+   -------------------          -------------------  -------------------
+Front squad. 5th Dr. Guards.     1st squad. Greys.        2nd squad.
+                                                         Inniskillings.
+   -------------------          -------------------
+Rear squad. 5th Dr. Guards.      2nd squad. Greys.
+
+
+in all five squadrons, instead of Mr. Kinglake's three. Nor, according to
+the chronicler, did the three squadrons in first line start
+simultaneously, as Kinglake distinctly conveys. The leading squadron of
+the Greys moved off first, and just as it was breaking into a gallop was
+temporarily hampered by the swerving of the horse of Colonel Griffiths,
+who was struck in the head by a bullet from the halted Russians' carbine
+fire. Next moved, almost simultaneously, the 2nd squadron Inniskillings
+and the front squadron 5th Dragoon Guards; thirdly, the 2nd squadron
+Greys, and finally the rear squadron 5th Dragoon Guards. Lord Lucan is
+represented as having been "personally concerned in or approving of
+everything connected with the five squadrons at this moment," galloping to
+each in succession, giving orders when and in what sequence it was to
+start, what section of the Russian front it was to strike, and exerting
+himself to the utmost to have everything fully understood. His errors were
+in omitting to call in the outlying regiments of the brigade, and either
+now--or earlier before he left the ridge, specifically to order Lord
+Cardigan to fall on the flank of the Russians at the moment when their
+front should be _aux prises_ with Scarlett's heavy squadrons. "C" Troop's
+position was such that it could command, over the heads of the stationary
+Heavies, the gradual slope up to the Russian front, and every detail of
+the charge was under its eyes. Scarlett's burnished helmet and plain blue
+coat were conspicuous in front. The Troop also had the opportunity of
+making a deliberate study of the Russian cavalry both before and during
+the combat.
+
+Its front had the appearance of three strong squadrons; its formation was
+either close or quarter distance column--probably the former, since the
+column could nowhere be seen through from front to rear; its depth halted
+was about the same as its breadth of front; its pace across the ridge was
+a sharp trot and its discipline was indicated by the smartness with which
+it took ground to the left. Kinglake describes the serried mass as
+encircled by a loose fringe of satellites, but the "C" Troop chronicler
+saw neither skirmishers, flankers, nor scouts; and no guns were discerned
+or heard, although General Hamley says that as the huge cohort swept down
+batteries darted out from it and threw shells against the troops on the
+upland. No Lancers were seen with the column, certainly none with pennons.
+The "partial deployment" of which Kinglake speaks, consisting of "wings or
+forearms" devised to cover the flanks or fold inwards on the front, did
+not make itself apparent to any observer of "C" Troop; and indeed the
+present writer never knew a Russian who had heard of it, the species of
+formation adumbrated, so far as he is aware, being confined to Zulu impis.
+It was noticed, and this is not rare, that on the halt the centre pulled
+up a little earlier than the flanks, so that the latter were somewhat
+prolonged and advanced. The halt was quite brief and a slower advance
+ensued without correction of the frontal dressing. Presently there was
+another halt and some pistol or carbine fire from the central squadron on
+the advancing first squadron of the Greys. Kinglake makes the Russian
+front meet our assault halted, but the "C" Troop chronicler declares that
+when the collision occurred the mass were actually moving forward but at
+"a pace so slow that it could hardly be called a trot." General Hamley
+describes "the impetus of the enemy's column carrying it on, and pressing
+our combatants back for a short space," and the chronicler speaks of the
+Russians as surging forward after the impact, but without bearing back our
+people.
+
+It is extremely difficult for the reader of a detailed narrative of a
+combat that may become a landmark in the military history of a nation, to
+realise that it may have been fought and finished in no longer time than
+it has taken him to read the few paragraphs of introductory matter. Mr.
+Kinglake has devoted a whole volume to the battle of Balaclava, and
+four-fifths of it deals with the two cavalry fights--Scarlett's charge,
+and the charge of the Light Brigade. The latter deed was enacted from
+start to finish within the space of five-and-twenty minutes; as regards
+the former, from the first appearance of the Russian troopers on the
+skyline to their defeat and flight a period of eight minutes is the
+outside calculation. General Hamley, an eyewitness, says "some four or
+five minutes." During those minutes "C" Troop R.H.A. under Brandling's
+shrewd and independent guidance was moving slowly forward on the right of
+the ground that had been covered by the charging Heavies. There was no
+opportunity for its intervention while the melley lasted. Even when the
+Russian squadrons broke it could not for the moment act while the redcoats
+were still blended with the gray. But Brandling saw that his chance was
+nigh; he galloped forward to the point marked C on the map, unlimbered,
+and stood intent. Kinglake states that the fugitive Russians, hanging
+together as closely as they could, retreated by the way they had come and
+Hamley describes them as vanishing beyond the ridge. Kinglake also says
+that "I" Troop R.H.A. (accompanying the Light Brigade) fired a few shots
+at the retreating horsemen, against whom Barker's battery, from its
+position near Kadiköi, also came into action. The "C" Troop chronicler
+traverses those statements. His testimony is that the Russian line of
+retreat was by their left rear along the slope of the South valley, and
+not immediately over the ridge; that the mass was spread over acres of
+ground; and that their officers were trying to rally the men and had
+actually got some ranks formed, when "C" Troop opened fire from about
+point C in the general direction of point D. "I" Troop was out of sight,
+he says, and Barker out of range; neither came into action; but "C" Troop,
+of whose presence in the field Kinglake apparently was unaware, fired
+forty-nine shot and shells, broke up the attempted rally, and punished the
+Russians severely. The range was about 750 paces.
+
+At the time when the Light Brigade started on its "mad-brained" charge
+down the North valley, "C" Troop was halted dismounted on the slope of the
+South valley a little below redoubt No. 5. In rear of it was the Heavy
+Cavalry Brigade, halted on the scene of its recent victorious combat. Lord
+Lucan was some little distance to the front. "C" Troop presently saw him
+trot away over the ridge in the direction of the Light Brigade, a scrap of
+paper in his hand at which he kept looking--doubtless the memorable order
+which Nolan had just brought him--and a group of staff officers, among
+whom was Nolan, behind him. Out of curiosity Brandling with his trumpeter
+rode up to the crest, whence he commanded a view into the North valley. By
+and by some of the Heavies were moved over the crest, no doubt the Royals
+and Greys which Scarlett was to lead forward in support of the Light
+Brigade. All was still quiet but for an occasional shot from a Russian
+battery about redoubt No. 2, when suddenly Brandling came galloping back
+shouting "Mount! mount!" and telling his officers as he came in that the
+Light Cavalry had begun an advance on the other side of the ridge. But
+that he had happened to ride to the crest, the charge of the Light Brigade
+would have begun and ended without the knowledge of "C" Troop. No order
+from any source reached it, and Brandling, acting on his own initiative,
+took his guns rapidly to the front along the inner edge of the ridge and
+unlimbered at point G. He durst not fire into the bottom of the North
+valley where our light horsemen were mixed up with the enemy; all the
+diversion he could effect was to open on the Russian cannon-smoke directly
+in his front, about redoubt No. 2. Even from this he had soon to desist,
+being without support and threatened by the Russian cavalry, and he
+retired by the way he had advanced, to point F, where the troop halted
+near the Heavies, whose advance Lord Lucan had arrested resolving that
+they at all events should not be destroyed. These regiments had been moved
+toward the ridge out of the line of fire in the North valley, and were
+kept shifting their position and gradually retiring, suffering frequent
+casualties from the Russian artillery about redoubt No. 2 until they
+finally halted near the crest in the vicinity of "C" Troop's latest
+position at point F.
+
+At this point only the left-hand gun of "C" Troop was on the crest, with a
+view into the North valley; the other guns were on the southern slope. But
+little had been previously seen of the terrible and glorious experiences
+of the Light Brigade; and now what was witnessed was not the glory but the
+horror of battle. For the wounded of the charge were passing to the rear,
+shattered and maimed, some staggering on foot, others reeling in their
+saddles, calling to the gunners and the Heavies to look at a "poor broken
+leg" or a dangling arm. Brandling and his officers held their flasks to
+the poor fellows' mouths as long as the contents lasted. The "C" Troop
+chronicler, whose narrative I have been following, tells how Captain
+Morris, who commanded the 17th Lancers, was carried past the front of the
+troop towards Kadiköi, dreadfully wounded about the head and calling
+loudly: "Lord, have mercy on my soul!" Kinglake gives a wholly different
+account of Captain Morris's removal from the field; but the "C" Troop
+chronicler is quite firm on his version, and explains that the 17th
+Lancers and "C" Troop having lain together shortly before the war all the
+people of the latter knew and identified Captain Morris.
+
+Balaclava is rather an old story now, and some readers may require to be
+reminded that the Light Brigade charged in two lines, the first line being
+led by Lord Cardigan, the second by Lord George Paget; that the first line
+rode into the Russian batteries considerably in advance of the second, the
+latter having advanced at a more measured pace; and that the second line,
+with sore diminished ranks and accompanied by a couple of groups rather
+than detachments of the first, came back later than did the few survivors
+of Cardigan's regiments other than the groups referred to. The aspersion
+on Cardigan was that he returned prematurely, instead of remaining to
+share the fortunes of the second line of his brigade, and this he did not
+deny. Kinglake's statement is that "he rode back alone at a pace
+decorously slow, towards the spot where Scarlett was halted." He adds that
+General Scarlett maintained that Lord Lucan was present at the time; but
+Lord Lucan's averment was that Lord Cardigan did not approach him until
+afterwards when all was over. Kinglake relates further that when Lord
+George Paget came back at the head of the last detachment, some officers
+rode forward to greet him one of whom was Lord Cardigan. Seeing him
+approach composedly from the rear Lord George exclaimed: "Halloa, Lord
+Cardigan, weren't you there?" to which, according to one version of the
+story, Cardigan replied: "Wasn't I, though? Here, Jenyns, didn't you see
+me at the guns?"
+
+The reasonable inferences from Kinglake are that Cardigan's first halt was
+made and that his earliest remarks were uttered when he reached Scarlett,
+and that he and Paget met after the charge for the first time when the
+alleged question and answer passed.
+
+The "C" Troop chronicler's narrative of events is right in the teeth of
+these inferences. While the troop was halted at point F and after a great
+many wounded and disabled men had already passed it going to the rear,
+Lord Cardigan came riding by at a "quiet pace" close under the crest. He
+had passed the troop on his left for several horse-lengths, when he came
+back and halted within a yard or two of the left-hand gun, the only one
+fairly on the crest. He was not alone, but attended by Cornet Yates of his
+own old regiment the 11th Hussars, a recently commissioned ranker. "Lord
+Cardigan was in the full dress _pelisse_ (buttoned) of the 11th Hussars,
+and he rode a chestnut horse very distinctly marked and of grand
+appearance. The horse seemed to have had enough of it, and his lordship
+appeared to have been knocked about but was cool and collected. He
+returned his sword, undid a little of the front of his dress and pulled
+down his underclothing under his waistbelt. Then, in a quiet way, as if
+rather talking to himself, he said, 'I tell you what it is: those
+instruments of theirs,' alluding to the Russian weapons, 'are deuced blunt;
+they tickle up one's ribs!' Then he pulled his revolver out of his
+holster as if the thought had just struck him, and said, 'And here's this
+d----d thing I have never thought of until now.' He then replaced it, drew
+his sword, and said, 'Well, we've done our share of the work!' and
+pointing up toward the Chasseurs d'Afrique on our left rear (ignorant of
+their opportune service), he added, 'It's time they gave those dappled
+gentry a chance.' Afterwards he asked, 'Has any one seen my regiment?' The
+men answered, 'No, sir.'" Brandling was holding aloof; and his lordship
+turned his horse and rode away farther back.
+
+Just then a cheer was raised by some Heavies who had lately formed in
+front of "C" Troop. Cardigan, so the chronicler tells, looked backward to
+see the occasion, and saw the cheer was in compliment to the 8th Hussars
+coming back with Colonel Sewell in front and Colonel Mayow, the
+brigade-major, behind on the left. Cardigan wheeled, trotted back towards
+the 8th, turned round in front of Colonel Sewell, and took up the "walk."
+Then occurred something "painful to witness. It was seen from the left of
+'C' Troop that the moment Cardigan's back was toward the 8th as he headed
+them, Colonel Mayow pointed toward him, shook his head, and made signs to
+the officers on the left of the Heavies as much as to say, 'See him; he
+has taken care of himself.'" Men in the ranks of the 8th also pointed and
+made signs to the troopers of the Heavies as they were passing left to
+left. There was, as well, a little excited undertalk from one corps to the
+other. Colonel Sewell neither saw nor took part in this wretched business;
+and of course Cardigan did not know that he was being thus ridiculed and
+disparaged while he was smiling and raising his sword to the cheers of the
+Heavies and the gunners.
+
+Immediately after this episode the returning 4th Light Dragoons came
+obliquely across the North valley at a sharp pace, but fell into the
+"walk" as they came within a hundred yards of "C" Troop. Lord George
+Paget, who led what remained of the regiment, rode up to the flank of "C"
+Troop and halted on the very spot where Cardigan had stood a few minutes
+earlier. Lord George had the look of a man who had ridden hard, and was
+heated and excited. He exclaimed in rather a loud tone, "It's a d----d
+shame; there we had a lot of their guns and carriages taken, and received
+no support, and yet there's all this infantry about--it's a shame!"
+Meanwhile Lord Cardigan had come back and was close behind Lord George
+while he was speaking, without the other knowing it. He called out, "Lord
+George Paget!"; and on the latter turning round said to him in an
+undertone, "I am surprised!"; and "tossing his head in the air added some
+other remark which was not heard." Lord George lowered his sword to the
+salute, and, without speaking turned his horse and rode on after his men.
+The "C" Troop chronicler is positive that both officers visited "C" Troop
+before going to any general or to any other command, and that they met
+there for the first time after the combat.
+
+When Lord Raglan came down from the upland after all was over, the "C"
+Troop chronicler says that he went straight for Lucan then in front of the
+Heavy Cavalry brigade, having first sent for Cardigan to meet him. After a
+few moments the latter repassed the troop on his way toward the remnant of
+his brigade. "Then Lord Raglan took Lucan a little forward by himself out
+of hearing of the group of staff officers, and his gesticulations of head
+and arm were so suggestive of passionate anger, that the onlookers did not
+need to be told that the Commander-in-Chief did not charge the blame
+chiefly on Cardigan." Lord Raglan's subsequent interview with General
+Scarlett, which occurred in the hearing of "C" Troop, was of a different
+character. After complimenting the gallant old warrior his lordship said,
+"Now tell me all about yourself." Scarlett replied, "When the Russian
+column was moving down on me, sir, I began by sending first a squadron of
+the Greys at them, and--" but at the word "and" Lord Raglan struck in,
+saying, "And they knocked them over like the devil!" He then turned his
+horse away, as if he did not need to hear any more.
+
+
+
+
+HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
+
+
+These be big words, my masters! I can only say they are not mine,--I am
+far too modest to utter any such high-sounding phrase on my own
+responsibility,--but they are the exact terms used by a high municipal
+dignitary in characterising the result of what he was pleased to term my
+"chivalrous conduct." My sardonic chum, on the contrary,--an individual
+wholly abandoned to the ignoble vice of punning,--asserts that my conduct
+was simply "barbarous." It will be for the reader to judge.
+
+St. Meuse--let us call it St. Meuse--is a town of what is still French
+Lorraine; and to St. Meuse I came drifting up the Marne Valley, over the
+flat expanse of the plain of Châlons, and by St. Menehould, the proud
+stronghold of pickled pigs' feet, in the second week of September 1873.
+St. Meuse was one of the last of the French cities held in pawn by the
+Germans for the payment of the milliards. The last instalment of
+blood-money had been paid and the _Pickelhaubes_ were about to evacuate
+St. Meuse as soon as the cash had been methodically counted, and after
+they should have leisurely filled their baggage trains and packed their
+portmanteaus. My intention in going to St. Meuse was to witness this
+evacuation scene, and to be a spectator of the return of light-heartedness
+to the French population of the place, on the withdrawal of the Teuton
+incubus which for three years had lain upon the safety-valve of their
+constitutional sprightliness. I had been a little out of my reckoning of
+time, and when I reached St. Meuse I found that I had a week to stay there
+before the event should occur which I had come to witness; but the
+interval could not be regarded as lost time, for St. Meuse is a very
+pleasant city and the conditions which were so soon to terminate presented
+a most interesting field of study.
+
+You must know that St. Meuse is a fortress. It has a citadel or at least
+such fragments of a citadel as the bombardment had left, and the quaint
+old town is surrounded with bastions which are linked by curtains and
+flanked by lunettes, the whole being girdled by a ditch, beyond the
+counterscarp of which spreads a sloping glacis which makes a very pleasant
+promenade. The defensive strength of the place is reduced to zero in these
+days of far-reaching rifled siege artillery, for it lies in a cup and is
+surrounded on all sides by hills the summits of which easily command the
+fortifications. But the consciousness that it is obsolete as a fortress
+has not yet come home to St. Meuse. It has, in truth, a very good opinion
+of itself as a valorous, not to say heroic, place; nor can it be denied
+that its title to this self-complacency has been fairly earned. In the
+Franco-German war, spite of its defects, it stood a siege of over two
+months and succumbed only after a severe bombardment which lasted for
+several days. And while as yet it was not wholly beleaguered, it was very
+active in making itself disagreeable to the foreign invader. It was a
+patrolling party from St. Meuse that intercepted the courier on his way
+from the battlefield of Sedan to Germany, carrying the hurried lines to
+his wife which the Crown Prince of Prussia scrawled on the fly-leaf of an
+orderly book while as yet the last shots of the combat were dropping in
+the distance; carrying too the notes of the momentous battle which William
+Howard-Russell had jotted down in the heat of the action and had taken the
+same opportunity of despatching. St. Meuse, then, had balked the Princess
+of the first tidings of her husband's safety, and the great English
+newspaper of the earliest details of the most sensational battle of the
+age. It had fallen at last, but not ingloriously; and the iron of defeat
+had not entered so deeply into its soul as had been the case with some
+French fortresses, of which it could not well be said that they had done
+their honest best to resist their fate. Its self-respect, at least, was
+left to it, and it was something to know that when the German garrison
+should march away, it was bound to leave to St. Meuse the artillery and
+munitions of war of the fortress just as they had been found on the day of
+the surrender.
+
+I came to like St. Meuse immensely in the course of the days I spent in it
+waiting for the great event of the evacuation. The company at the _table
+d'hôte_ of the Trois Maures was varied and amusing. The Germans ate in a
+room by themselves, so that the obnoxious element was not present overtly
+at the general _table d'hôte._ But we had a few German officials in plain
+clothes--clerks in General Manteuffel's bureau, contractors, cigar
+merchants, etc., who spoke French even among themselves, and were
+painfully polite to the French habitués who were as painfully polite in
+return. There was a batch of Parisian journalists who had come to St.
+Meuse to watch the evacuation, and who wrote their letters in the café
+over the way to the accompaniment of _verres_ of absinthe and bocks of
+beer. Then there was the gallant captain of gendarmes, who had arrived in
+St. Meuse with a trusty band of twenty-five subordinates to take over from
+the Germans the municipal superintendence of the place, and, later, the
+occupation of the fortress. He was the most polite man I ever knew, this
+captain of gendarmes, with a clever knack of turning you outside in in the
+course of half an hour's conversation, and the peculiar attribute of
+having, to all appearance, eyes in the back of his head. To him, as he
+placidly ate his food, there came, from time to time, quiet and rather
+bashful-looking men in civilian attire of a slightly seedy description.
+Sometimes they merely caught his eye and went out again without speaking;
+sometimes they handed to him little notes; sometimes they held with him a
+brief whispered conversation during which the captain's nonchalance was
+imperturbable. These respectable individuals who, if they saw you once in
+conversation with their chief, ever after bowed to you with the greatest
+empressement, were members of the secret police.
+
+As for the inhabitants of St. Meuse, they appeared to await the hour of
+their delivery with considerable philosophy. Physically they are the
+finest race I ever saw in France; their men, tall, square, and muscular,
+their women handsome and comely. Numbers of both sexes are fair-haired,
+and the sandiness of hair which we are wont to associate with the Scottish
+Celt is by no means uncommon. A sardonic companion whom I had picked up by
+the way, attributed those characteristics to the fact that in the great
+war St. Meuse was a depôt for British prisoners of war who had in some way
+contrived to imbue the native population with some of their own physical
+attributes. He further prophesied a wave of Teuton characteristics as the
+result of the German occupation which was about to terminate; but his
+insinuations seemed to me to partake of the scurrilous, especially as he
+instanced Lewes, once a British depôt for prisoners of war, as a field in
+which similar phenomena were to be discerned. But, nevertheless, I
+unquestionably found a good deal of what may be called national hybridism
+in St. Meuse. I used to buy photographs of a shopkeeper over whose door
+was blazoned the Scottish name Macfarlane. Outwardly Macfarlane was a
+"hielanman" all over. He had a shock-head of bright red hair such as might
+have thatched the poll of the "Dougal cratur;" his cheek-bones were high,
+his nose of the Captain of Knockdunder pattern, and his mouth of true
+Celtic amplitude. One felt instinctively as if Macfarlane were bound to
+know Gaelic, and that the times were out of joint when he evinced greater
+fondness for _eau sucrée_ than for Talisker. It was with quite a sense of
+dislocation of the fitness of things that I found Macfarlane could talk
+nothing but French. But although he had torn up the ancient landmarks, or
+rather suffered them to lapse, he yet was proud of his ancestry. His
+grandfather, it appeared, was a soldier of the "Black Watch" who had been
+a prisoner of war in St. Meuse, and who, when the peace came, preferred
+taking unto himself a daughter of the Amalekite and settling in St. Meuse,
+to going home to a pension of sevenpence a day and liberty to ply as an
+Edinburgh caddie.
+
+As for the German "men in possession," they pursued the even tenor of
+their way in the precise yet phlegmatic German manner. Their guards kept
+the gates and bridges as if they meant to hold the place till the crack of
+doom, instead of being under orders to clear out within the week. The
+recruits drilled on the citadel esplanade, straightening their legs and
+pointing their toes as if their sole ambition in life was to kick their
+feet away into space, down to the very eve of evacuation. Their battalions
+practised skirmishing on the glacis with that routine assiduity which is
+the secret of the German military success. Old Manteuffel was living in
+the prefecture holding his levees and giving his stiff ceremonious
+dinner-parties, as if he had done despite to Dr. Cumming's warnings and
+taken a lease of the place. The German officers thronged their café, each
+man, after the manner of German officers, shouting at the pitch of his
+voice; and at the café of the under-officers tough old _Wachtmeisters_ and
+grizzled sergeants with many medals played long quiet games at cards, or
+knocked the balls about on the chubby little pocketless tables with cues
+the tips of which were as large as the base of a six-pounder shell.
+
+The French journalists insisted I should accept it as an article of faith,
+that these two races dwelling together in St. Meuse hated each other like
+poison. They would have it that while discipline alone prevented the
+Germans from massacring every Frenchman in the place, it was only a
+humiliating sense of weakness that hindered the Frenchmen from rising in
+hot fury against the Germans who were their temporary masters. I am afraid
+the gentlemen of the Parisian press came rather to dislike me on account
+of my obdurate scepticism in such matters. That there was no great
+cordiality was obvious and natural. Some of the Germans were arrogant and
+domineering. For instance, having a respect for the Germans, it pained and
+indeed disgusted me to hear a colonel of the German staff, in answer to my
+question whether the evacuating force would march out with a rearguard as
+in war time, reply, "Pho, a field gendarme with a whip is rearguard enough
+against such _canaille!_" But in the mouths of Hans and Carl and Johann,
+the stout _Kerle_ of the ranks, there were no such words of bitter scorn
+for their compulsory hosts. The honest fellows drew water for the
+goodwives on whom they were billeted, did a good deal of stolid
+love-making with the girls, and nursed the babies with a solicitude that
+put to shame the male parents of these youthful hopes of Troy. I take
+leave, as a reasonable person, to doubt whether it can lie in the heart of
+a family to hate a man who has dandled its baby and whether a man can be
+rancorous against a family whose baby he has nursed. But fashion's sway is
+omnipotent in emotion as in dress. Ever since the war, journalists,
+authors, and public opinion generally had hammered it into the French
+nation that if it were not to be a traitor to its patriotism, the first
+article of its creed must be hatred against the Germans; and that the
+bitterer this hate the more fervent the patriotism. It was not indeed
+incumbent on Frenchmen and Frenchwomen to accept this creed, but it
+behoved them at least to profess it; and it must be admitted that they did
+this for the most part with an intensity and vigour which seemed to prove
+that with many profession had deepened into conviction.
+
+While as yet the evacuation had been a thing of the remote future, the
+people of St. Meuse had borne the yoke lightly, and indeed had, I believe,
+privily congratulated themselves on the substantial advantages in the way
+of money spent in the place and the immunity from taxation which were
+incidental to the foreign occupation. But as the day for the evacuation
+drew closer and closer, one became dimly conscious of an electrical
+condition of the social atmosphere which any trifle might stimulate into a
+thunderstorm. Blouses gathered and muttered about the street-corners,
+scowling at and elbowing the German soldiers as they strode to buy
+sausages to stay them in the homeward march. The gamins, always covertly
+insolent, no longer cloaked their insolence, and wagged little tricolour
+flags under the nose of the stolid German sentry on the Pont St. Croix. At
+the _table d'hôte_ the painful politeness of the German civilians had no
+effect in thawing the studied coldness of the French habitués.
+
+As for myself, I was a neutral, and professing to take no side, flattered
+myself that I could keep out of the vortex of the soreness. Soon after my
+arrival at St. Meuse I had called upon the Mayor at his official quarters
+in the Hôtel de Ville, and had received civil speeches in return for civil
+speeches. Then I had left my card on General Manteuffel, with whom I
+happened to have a previous acquaintance; and those formal duties of a
+benevolent neutral having been performed I had held myself free to choose
+my own company. Circumstances had some time before brought me into
+familiar contact with very many German officers, and I had imbibed a
+liking for their ways and conversation, noisy as the latter is. Several of
+the officers then in St. Meuse had been personal acquaintances in other
+days and it was at once natural and pleasant for me to renew the
+intercourse. I was made an honorary member of the mess; I spent many hours
+in the officers' casino; I rode out with the officers of the squadron of
+Uhlans. All this was very pleasant; but as the day of the evacuation
+became close I noticed that the civility of the French captain of
+gendarmes grew colder, that the cordiality of the French habitués of the
+_table d'hôte_ visibly diminished, and that I encountered not a few
+unfriendly looks when I walked through the streets by myself. It began to
+dawn upon me that St. Meuse was getting to reckon me a German sympathiser,
+and as there was no half-way house, therefore not in accord with the
+emotions of France and St. Meuse.
+
+On the afternoon immediately preceding the morning that had been fixed for
+the evacuation, there came to me a polite request that I should visit M.
+le Maire at the Hôtel de Ville. His worship was elaborately civil but
+obviously troubled in mind. He coughed nervously several times after the
+initiatory compliments had passed, and then he began to speak. "Monsieur,
+you are aware that the Germans are going to-morrow morning?"
+
+I replied that I had cognisance of this fact. "Do you also know that the
+last of the German officials depart by the 5 A.M. train, not caring to
+remain here after the troops are gone?"
+
+Of this also I was aware.
+
+"Let me hope," continued the Mayor, "that you are going along with them,
+or at all events will ride away with Messieurs the officers?"
+
+On the contrary, was my reply, I had come not only to witness the
+evacuation but to note how St. Meuse should bear herself in the hour of
+her liberation; I desired to witness the rejoicings; I was not less
+anxious to be a spectator of any disturbance if such unhappily should
+occur. Why should M. le Maire have conceived this desire to balk my
+natural curiosity?
+
+M. le Maire was obviously not a little embarrassed; but he persevered and
+was candid. This deplorable occupation was now so nearly finished and
+happily, as yet, everything had been so tranquil, that it would be a
+thousand pities if any untoward event should occur to detract from the
+dignified attitude which the territory now to be evacuated had maintained.
+It was of critical importance in every sense that St. Meuse should not
+give way to riot or disorder on that occasion. He hoped and believed it
+would not--here M. le Maire laid his hand on his heart--but a spark, as I
+knew, fired tinder, and the St. Meuse populace were at present figurative
+tinder. I might be that spark.
+
+"You much resemble a German," said M. le Maire, "with that great yellow
+beard of yours, and your broad shoulders, as if you had carried arms. Our
+citizens have seen you much in the society of Messieurs the German
+officers; they are not in a temper to draw fine distinctions of
+nationality; and, dear sir, I ask you to go away with the Germans lest
+perchance our blouses, reckoning you for a German, should not be very
+tender with you when the spiked helmets are out of the place. The truth
+is," said the worthy Maire with a burst of plain speaking, "I'm afraid
+that you will be mobbed and that there will be a row, and that then the
+Germans may come back and the evacuation be postponed, and I'll get wigged
+by the Prefect and the Minister of the Interior and bully-ragged in the
+newspapers, and St. Meuse will get abused and the fat will be generally in
+the fire!"
+
+Here was an awkward fix. I could not comply with the Mayor's request; that
+was not to be thought of for reasons I need not mention here. I had no
+particular desire to be mobbed. Once before I had experienced the tender
+mercies of a French mob and I knew that they were very cruel. But stronger
+than the personal feeling was my sincere sympathy with the Mayor's
+critical position; and also my anxiety, by what means might be within my
+power, to contribute to the maintenance of a tranquillity so desirable.
+But, then, what means were within my power? I could not go; I could not
+promise to stop indoors, for it was incumbent on me to see everything that
+was to be seen. And if through me trouble came I should be responsible
+heaven knows for what!--with a skinful of sore bones into the bargain.
+
+"If Monsieur cannot go,"--the Mayor broke in upon my cogitation,--"if
+Monsieur cannot go, will he pardon the exigency of the occasion if I
+suggest one other alternative? It is,"--here the Mayor hesitated--"it is
+the yellow beard which gives to Monsieur the aspect of a German. With only
+whiskers nobody could take Monsieur for anything but an Englishman. If
+Monsieur would only have the complaisance and charity to--to--"
+
+Cut off my beard! Great powers! shear that mane that had been growing for
+years!--that cataract of hair that has been, so to speak, my oriflamme;
+the only physical belonging of which I ever was proud, the only thing, so
+far as I know, that I have ever been envied! For the moment the suggestion
+knocked me all of a heap. There came into my head some confused
+reminiscence of a story about a girl who cut off her hair and sold it to
+keep her mother from starving, or redeem her lover from captivity, or
+something of the kind. But that must have been before the epoch of parish
+relief, and kidnapping is now punishable by statute. What was St. Meuse to
+me that for her I should mow my hirsute glories? But then, if people grew
+savage, they might pull my beard out by the roots. And there had been
+lately dawning on me the dire truth that its tawny hue was becoming
+somewhat freely streaked with gray, a colour I abhor, except in eyes. I
+made up my mind.
+
+"I'll do it, sir," said I to the Mayor, with a manly curtness. My heart
+was too full for many words.
+
+He respected my emotion, bowed in silence over the hand which he had
+grasped, and only spoke to give me the address of his own barber.
+
+This barber was a patriot of unquestioned zeal; but I am inclined to think
+his extraction was similar to that of Macfarlane, for he combined
+patriotism with profit in a most edifying manner. He shaved the German
+officers during the whole of their stay in St. Meuse; he accompanied them
+on their march to the frontier; he earned the last centime in Conflans;
+and then, driving forward to the frontier line, he unfurled the tricolour
+as the last German soldier stepped over it. It is seldom that one in this
+world sees his way to being so adroitly ambidextrous.
+
+But this is a digression. In twenty minutes, shorn and shaven, I was back
+again in the Mayor's parlour. The tears of gratitude stood in his eyes. I
+learned afterwards that a decoration was contingent on his preservation of
+the public peace on the occasion of the evacuation.
+
+Started by the Mayor, the report rapidly circulated through St. Meuse that
+I had cut off my beard rather than that it should be possible that any one
+should mistake me for a German. From being a suspect I became a popular
+idol. The French journalists entertained me to a banquet at night at which
+in libations of champagne eternal amity between France and England was
+pledged. Next morning the Germans went away and then St. Meuse kicked up
+its heels and burst into exuberant joy. The Mayor took me up to the
+station in his own carriage to meet the French troops, and introduced me
+to the colonel of the battalion as a man who had made sacrifices for _la
+belle France_. The colonel shook me cordially by the hand and I was
+embraced by the robust vivandière, who struck me as being in the practice
+of sustaining life on a diet of garlic. When we emerged from the station I
+was cheered almost as loudly as was the colonel, and a man waved a
+tricolour over my head all the way back to the town, treading at frequent
+intervals on my heels. In the course of the afternoon I happened to
+approach the civic band which was performing patriotic music in the Place
+St. Croix. When the bandmaster saw me he broke off the programme and
+struck up "Rule Britannia!" in my honour, to the clamorous joy of the
+audience, who were thwarted in their aim of carrying me round the Place
+shoulder-high only by the constancy with which I clung to the railings
+which surround Chevert's statue. But the crowning recognition of my
+sacrifice came at the banquet which the town gave to the French officers.
+The Mayor proposed the toast of "our English friend." "We had all," he
+said, "made sacrifices for _la Patrie_--he himself had sustained the loss
+of a wooden outhouse burned down in the bombardment; the gallant colonel
+on his right had spilt his blood at St. Privat. Them it behoved to suffer
+and they would do it again cheerfully, for it was, as he had said, for _la
+Patrie_. But what was to be said of an honourable gentleman who had
+sacrificed the most distinguishing ornament of his physical aspect without
+the holy stimulus of patriotism, and simply that there might be obviated
+the risk of an embroilment to the possible consequence of which he would
+not further allude? Would it be called the language of extravagant
+hyperbole, or would they not rather be words justified by facts, when he
+ventured before this honourable company to assert that his respected
+English friend had by his self-sacrifice saved France from a great peril?"
+The Mayor's question was replied to by a perfect whirlwind of cheering.
+Everybody in the room insisted upon shaking hands with me and I was forced
+to get on my legs and make a reply. Later in the evening I heard the Mayor
+and the town clerk discussing the project of conferring upon me the
+freedom of the city.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
+
+1875
+
+
+The civilian world, even that portion of it which lives by the profusest
+sweat of its brow, enjoys an occasional holiday in the course of the year
+besides Christmas Day. Good Friday brings to most an enforced cessation
+from toil. Easter and Whitsuntide are recognised seasons of pleasure in
+most grades of the civilian community. There are few who do not compass
+somehow an occasional Derby day; and we may safely aver that the amount of
+work done on New Year's Day is not very great. But in all the year the
+soldier has but one real holiday--a holiday with all the glorious
+accompaniments of unwonted varieties of dainties and full liberty to be as
+jolly as he pleases without fear of the consequences. True, the individual
+soldier may have his day's leave, nay, his month's furlough; but his
+enjoyments resulting therefrom are not realised in the atmosphere of the
+barrack-room, but rather have their origin in the abandonment for the
+nonce of his military character and a _pro tempore_ return into civilian
+life. Christmas Day is the great regimental merry-making, free to and
+appreciated by the veteran and the recruit alike; and as such it is looked
+forward to for many a month prior to its advent and talked of many a day
+after it is past and gone.
+
+About a month before Christmas the observer skilled in the signs of the
+times may begin to notice the tokens of its approach. Self-deniant
+fellows, men who can trust themselves to carry a few shillings about with
+them without experiencing a chronic sensation that the accumulated pelf is
+burning a hole in their pockets, busy themselves in constructing
+"dimmocking bags" for the occasion, such being the barrack-room term for
+receptacles for money-hoarding purposes. The weak vessels, those who
+mistrust their own constancy under the varied temptations of dry throats,
+empty stomachs, and a scant allowance of tobacco, manage to cheat their
+fragility of "saving grace" by requesting their sergeant-major to put them
+"on the peg,"--that is to say, place them under stoppages, so that the
+accumulation takes place in his hands and cannot be dissipated by any
+premature weaknesses of the flesh. Everybody becomes of a sudden
+astonishingly sober and steady. There is hardly any going out of barracks
+now; for a walk involves the expenditure of at least "the price of a
+pint," and in the circumstances this extravagance is not allowable. The
+guard-room is unwontedly empty--nobody except the utterly reckless will
+get into trouble just now; for punishment at this season involves the
+forfeiture of certain privileges and the incurring of certain penalties--
+the former specially prized, the latter exceptionally disgusting at this
+Christmas season.
+
+Slowly the days roll on with anxious expectancy, the coming event forming
+the one engrossing topic of conversation alike in barrack-room, in stable,
+in canteen, and in guard-room. The clever hands of the troop are deep in
+devising a series of ornamentations for the walls and roof of the common
+habitation. One fellow spends all his spare time on the top of a table
+with a bed on top of that again, embellishing the wall above the fireplace
+with a florid design in a variety of colours meant to be an exact copy of
+the device on the regiment's kettledrums, with the addition of the legend,
+"A Merry Christmas to the old Straw-boots," inscribed on a waving scroll
+below. The skill of another decorator is directed to the clipping of
+sundry squares of coloured paper into wondrous forms--Prince of Wales's
+feathers, gorgeous festoons, and the like--with which the gas pendants and
+the edges of the window-frames are disguised out of their original
+nakedness and hardness of outline, so as to be almost unrecognisable by
+the eye of the matter-of-fact barrack-master himself. What is this
+felonious-looking band up to--these four determined rascals in the
+forbidden high-lows and stable overalls who go slinking mysteriously out
+at the back gate just at the gloaming? Are they Fenian sympathisers bound
+for a secret meeting, or are they deserters making off just at the time
+when there is the least likelihood of suspicion? Nay, they are neither;
+but, nevertheless, their errand is a nefarious one. Watch at the gate for
+an hour and you will see them come back again each man laden with the
+spoils of the shrubberies--holly, mistletoe, and evergreens--ruthlessly
+plundered under cover of the darkness. A couple of days before "the day,"
+the sergeant-major enters the barrack-room, a smile playing upon his
+rubicund features. We all know what his errand is and he knows right well
+that we do; but he cannot refrain from the customary short patronising
+harangue, "Our worthy captain--liberal gent you know--deputed me--what you
+like for dinner--plum-puddings, of course--a quart of beer a man; make up
+your minds what you'll have--anything but game and venison;" and so he
+vanishes grinning a saturnine grin. The moment is a critical one. We ought
+to be unanimous. What shall we have? A council of deliberation is
+constituted on the spot and proceeds to the discussion of the weighty
+question. The suggestions are not numerous. The alternative lies between
+pork and goose. The old soldiers, for some inscrutable reason, go for
+goose to a man. The recruits have a carnal craving after the flesh of the
+pig. I did once hear a "carpet-bag" recruit[1] hesitatingly broach the idea
+of mutton, but he collapsed ignominiously under the concentrated stare of
+righteous indignation with which his heterodox suggestion was received.
+Goose versus pork is eagerly debated. As regards quantity the question
+is a level one, since the allowance from time immemorial has been a goose
+or a leg of pork among three men.
+
+[Footnote 1: "Carpet-bag" recruit is the barrack-room appellation of
+contempt for the young gentleman recruit who joins his regiment _omnibus
+impedimentis_--who, in fact, brings his baggage with him, to find it, of
+course, utterly useless.]
+
+At length the point is decided during the evening stable-hour, according
+as old or young soldiers predominate in the room. The sergeant-major is
+informed of the conclusion arrived at, and in the evening the corporal of
+each room accompanies him on a marketing expedition into the town. Another
+important duty devolves upon the said corporal in the course of this
+marketing tour. The "dimmocking bags" have been emptied; the accumulations
+in the sergeant-major's hands have been drawn, and the corporal, freighted
+with the joint savings, has the task of expending the same in beer. In
+this undertaking he manifests a preternatural astuteness. He is not to be
+inveigled into giving his order at a public-house,--swipes from the
+canteen would do as well as that,--nor do the bottled-beer merchants tempt
+him with their high prices for dubious quality. No, he goes direct to the
+fountain-head. If there be a brewery in the place he finds it out and
+bestows his order upon it, thus triumphantly securing the pure article at
+the wholesale price. His purchasing calculation is upon the basis of two
+gallons per man. If, as is generally the case, the barrack-room he
+represents contains twelve men, he orders a twenty-four gallon barrel of
+porter--always porter; and if he has a surplus left he disburses it in the
+purchase of a bottle or two of spirits, for the behoof of any fair
+visitors who may haply honour the barrack-room with their presence.
+
+It is Christmas Eve. The evening stable-hour is over and all hands are
+merrily engaged in the composition of the puddings; some stoning fruit,
+others chopping suet, beating eggs, and so forth. The barrel of beer is in
+the corner but it is sacred as the honour of the regiment! Nothing would
+induce the expectant participants in its contents to broach it before its
+appointed time shall come. So there is beer instead from the canteen in
+the tin pails of the barrack-room, and the work of pudding-compounding
+goes on jovially to the accompaniments of song and jest. Now, there is a
+fear lest too many fingers in the pudding may spoil it--lest a multitude
+of counsellors as to the proportions of ingredients and the process of
+mixing may be productive of the reverse of safety. But somehow a man with
+a specialty is always forthcoming, and that specialty is pudding-making.
+Most likely he has been the butt of the room--a quiet, quaint, retiring,
+awkward fellow who seemed as if he never could do anything right. But he
+has lit upon his vocation at last--he is a born pudding-maker. He rises
+with the occasion, and the sheepish "gaby" becomes the knowing practical
+man; his is now the voice of authority, and his comrades recant on the
+spot, acknowledge his superiority without a murmur, and perform "ko-tow"
+before the once despised man of undeveloped abilities. They pull out their
+clean towels with alacrity in response to his demand for pudding-cloths;
+they run to the canteen enthusiastically for a further supply on a hint
+from him that there is a deficiency in the ingredient of allspice. And
+then he artistically gathers together the corners of the cloths and ties
+up the puddings tightly and securely; whereupon a procession is formed to
+escort them into the cook-house, and there, having consigned them into the
+depths of the mighty copper, the "man of the time" remains watching the
+caldron bubble until morning, a great jorum of beer at his elbow the ready
+contribution of his now appreciative comrades.
+
+The hours roll on; and at length out into the darkness of the
+barrack-square stalks the trumpeter on duty, and the shrill notes of the
+_réveille_ echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an
+ordinary morning the _réveille_ is practically negatived, and nobody
+thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds
+quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning
+there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps up,
+as if galvanised, at the first note of the _réveille_. For the fulfilment
+of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to--a remnant of the old days
+when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room. The soldier's
+wife who has the cleaning of the room and who does the washing of its
+inmates--for which services each man pays her a penny a day, has from time
+immemorial taken upon herself the duty of bestowing a "morning" on the
+Christmas anniversary upon the men she "does for." Accordingly, about a
+quarter to six, she enters the room--a hard-featured, rough-voiced dame,
+perhaps, with a fist like a shoulder of mutton, but a soldier herself to
+the very core and with a big, tender heart somewhere about her. She
+carries a bottle of whisky--it is always whisky, somehow--in one hand and
+a glass in the other; and, beginning with the oldest soldier administers a
+calker to every one in the room till she comes to the "cruity," upon whom,
+if he be a pullet-faced, homesick, bit of a lad, she may bestow a maternal
+salute in addition, with the advice to consider the regiment as his mother
+now, and be a smart soldier and a good lad.
+
+Breakfast is not an institution in any great acceptation in a cavalry
+regiment on Christmas morning. When the stable-hour is over a great many
+of the troopers do not immediately reappear in the barrack-room. Indeed
+they do not turn up until long after the coffee is cold; and, when they do
+return there is a certain something about them which, to the experienced
+observer, demonstrates the fact that, if they have been thirsty, they have
+not been quenching their drought at the pump. It is a standing puzzle to
+the uninitiated where the soldier in barracks contrives to obtain drink of
+a morning. The canteen is rigorously closed. No one is allowed to go out
+of barracks and no drink is allowed to come in. A teetotallers'
+meeting-hall could not appear more rigidly devoid of opportunities for
+indulgence than does a barrack during the morning. Yet I will venture to
+say, if you go into any barrack in the three kingdoms, accost any soldier
+who is not a raw recruit, and offer to pay for a pot of beer, that you
+will have an instant opportunity afforded you of putting your free-handed
+design into execution any time after 7 A.M. I don't think it would be
+exactly grateful in me to "split" upon the spots where a drop can be
+obtained in season; many a time has my parched throat been thankful for
+the cooling surreptitious draught and I refuse to turn upon a benefactor
+in a dirty way. Therefore suffice it to say that many a bold dragoon when
+he re-enters the barrack-room to get ready for church parade, has a
+wateriness about the eye and a knottiness in the tongue which tell of
+something stronger than the matutinal coffee. Indeed, when the trumpet
+sounds which calls the regiment to assemble on the parade-ground, there is
+dire misgiving in the mind of many a stalwart fellow, who is conscious
+that his face, as well as his speech, "berayeth him." But the lynx-eyed
+men in authority who another time would be down on a stagger like a
+card-player on the odd trick and read a flushed face as a passport to the
+guard-room, are genially blind this morning; and so long as a man
+possesses the capacity of looking moderately straight to his own front and
+of going right-about without a flagrant lurch, he is not looked at in a
+critical spirit on the Christmas church parade. And so the regiment
+marches off to church, the band playing merrily in its front. I much fear
+there is no very abiding sense in the bosoms of the majority of the sacred
+errand on which they are bound.
+
+But there are two of the inmates of each room who do not go to church. The
+clever pudding-maker and a sub of his selection are left to cook the
+Christmas dinner. This, as regards the exceptional dainties, is done at
+the barrack-room fire, the cook-house being in use only for the now
+despised ration meat and for the still simmering puddings. The handy man
+cunningly improvises a roasting-jack, and erects a screen consisting of
+bed-quilts spread on a frame of upright forms, for the purpose of
+retaining and throwing back the heat. He is a most versatile genius, this
+handy man. Now we see him in the double character of cook and salamander,
+and anon he develops a special faculty as a clever table-decorator as
+well. This latter qualification asserts itself in the face of difficulties
+which would be utterly discomfiting to one of less fertility of resource.
+There is, indeed, a large expanse of table in every barrack-room; but the
+War Department has not yet thought proper to consider private soldiers
+worthy to enjoy the luxury of table-linen. Yet bare boards at a Christmas
+feast are horribly offensive to the eye of taste. Something must be done;
+something has already been done. Ever since the last issue of clean
+sheets, one or two whole-souled fellows have magnanimously abjured these
+luxuries _pro bono publico_. Spartan-like they have lain in blankets, and
+saved their sheets in their pristine cleanliness wherewithal to cover the
+Christmas table. So now these are brought forth, not snow-white certainly,
+nor of a damask texture, being indeed somewhat sackclothy in their
+appearance, but still they are immeasurably in advance of the bare boards;
+and when the covers are laid, with each man's best knife and fork, with a
+little additional crockery-ware borrowed of a beneficent married woman and
+with the dainty sprigs of evergreen stuck on every available coign, the
+effect is triumphantly enlivening.
+
+By the time these preparations are complete the men are back from church;
+and after a brief attendance at stables to water and feed they assemble
+fully dressed in the barrack-room, hungrily silent. The captain enters the
+room and _pro formâ_ asks whether there are "any complaints?" A chorus of
+"No, sir," is his reply; and then the oldest soldier in the room with
+profuse blushing and stammering takes up the running, thanks the officer
+kindly in the name of his comrades for his generosity, and wishes him a
+"Happy Christmas and many of 'em" in return. Under cover of the responsive
+cheer the captain makes his escape, and a deputation visits the
+sergeant-major's quarters to fetch the allowance of beer which forms part
+of the treat. Then all fall to and eat! Ye gods, how they eat! Let the man
+who affirmed before the Recruiting Commission that the present scale of
+military rations was liberal enough show himself now, and then for ever
+hide his head! The troopers seem to have become sudden converts to
+Carlyle's theory on the eloquence of silence. It reigns supreme, broken
+only by the rattle of knives and forks and by an occasional gurgle
+indicative of a man judiciously stratifying the solids and liquids, for a
+space of about twenty minutes, by which time--be the fare goose or pork--
+it is, barring the bones, only "a memory of the past." The puddings,
+turned out of the towels in which they have been boiled, then undergo the
+brunt of a fierce assault; but the edge of appetite has been blunted by
+the first course and with most of the men a modicum of pudding goes on the
+shelf for supper. The soldier is very sensitive on the subject of his
+Christmas pudding. I remember once seeing a cook put on the table and
+formally "strapped" for allowing the pudding to stick to the bottom of the
+pot for lack of stirring.
+
+At length dinner is over. Beds are drawn up from the sides of the room so
+as to form a wide circle of divans round the fire, and the big barrel's
+time has come at last. A clever hand whips out the bung, draws a pailful,
+and reinserts the bung till another pailful is wanted, which will be very
+soon. The pail is placed upon the hearthstone and its contents are
+decanted into the pint basins, which do duty in the barrack-room for all
+purposes from containing coffee and soup to mixing chrome-yellow and
+pipe-clay water. The married soldiers come dropping in with their wives,
+for whom the corporal has a special drop of "something short" stowed in
+reserve on the shelf behind his kit. A song is called for; another
+follows, and yet another and another. Now it is matter of notice that the
+songs of soldiers are never of the modern music-hall type. You might go
+into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's haunts and never hear such a
+ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for Joseph." The soldier takes
+especial delight in songs of the sentimental pattern; and even when for a
+brief period he forsakes the region of sentiment, it is not to indulge in
+the outrageously comic but to give vent to such sturdy bacchanalian
+outpourings as the "Good Rhine Wine," "Old John Barleycorn," and "Simon
+the Cellarer." But these are only interludes. "The Soldier's Tear," "The
+White Squall," "There came a Tale to England," "Ben Bolt," "Shells of the
+Ocean," and other melodies of a lugubrious type, are the special
+favourites of the barrack-room. I remember once hearing a cockney recruit
+attempt "The Perfect Cure" with its accompanying gymnastic efforts; but he
+was I not appreciated, and indeed, I think broke down in the middle for
+want of encouragement.
+
+Songs and beer form the staple of the afternoon's enjoyment, intermingled
+with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of bygone
+Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are "townies," i.e.
+natives of the same district; and there is a good deal of undemonstrative
+feeling in the way they talk of the scenes and folks of boyhood. There is
+no speechifying. Your soldier is not an oratorical animal. Not but what he
+heartily enjoys a speech; but he somehow cannot make one, or will not try.
+I remember me, indeed, of a certain quiet Scotsman who one Christmastime
+being urgently pressed to sing and being unblessed with a tuneful voice,
+volunteered in utter desperation a speech instead. He referred in feeling
+language to the various troop-mates who had left us since the preceding
+Christmas, made a touching allusion to the happy home circle in which the
+Christmases of our boyhood had been spent, referred to the manner in which
+the old "Strawboots" had cut their way to glory through the dense masses
+of Russian horsemen on the hillside of Balaclava, and wound up
+appropriately by proposing the toast of "our noble selves." He created an
+immense sensation, was vociferously applauded, and, indeed, was the hero
+of the hour; but ere next Christmas he was among the "have beens" himself,
+and his mantle not having devolved upon any successor we had to content
+ourselves with the songs and the beer.
+
+It is a lucky thing for a good many that there is no roll-call at the
+Christmas evening stable-hour. The non-commissioned officers mercifully
+limit their requirements to seeing the horses watered and bedded down by
+the most presentable of the roisterers, whose desperate efforts to
+simulate abject sobriety in order to establish their claim for
+strong-headedness are very comical to witness. It has often been matter of
+wonderment to me how the orders for the following day which are "read out"
+at the evening stable-hour, are realised on Christmas evening with
+clearness sufficient to ensure their being complied with next day without
+a hitch; but the truth is that, as we shall presently see, a certain order
+of things for the morning after Christmas has become stereotyped.
+
+This interruption of the evening stable-hour over the circle re-forms
+round the fire, and the cask finally becomes a "dead marine." The cap is
+then sent round for contributions towards a further instalment of the
+foundation of conviviality, which is fetched from the canteen or the
+sergeant's mess; and another and yet another supply is sent for, as long
+as the funds hold out and somebody keeps sober enough to act as Ganymede.
+The orderly sergeant is not very particular to-night about his
+watch-setting report, for he knows that not many have the physical ability
+to be absent if they were ever so eager. And so the lights go out; the sun
+of the dragoon may be said to set in beer and he is left to do his best to
+sleep himself sober. For in the morning the reins of discipline are
+tightened again. The man who is foolish enough to revivify the drink which
+"is dying out in him" by a refresher is apt to find himself an inmate of
+the black-hole on very scant warning. Headaches and thirst are curiously
+rife, and the consumption of "fizzers"--a temperance beverage of an
+effervescent character vended by an individual with the profoundest trust
+in human nature on the subject of deferred payments--is extensive enough
+to convert the regiment into a series of walking reservoirs of carbonic
+acid gas. The authorities display a demoniacal ingenuity in working the
+beer out of the system of the dragoon. The morning duty on the day
+following Christmas is invariably "watering order with numnahs," the
+numnah being a felt saddle-cloth without stirrups. Every man without
+exception rides out--no dodging is permitted--and the moment the malicious
+fiend of an orderly officer gets clear of the barracks he gives the word
+"Trot!" Six miles of it without a break is the set allowance; and it beats
+vinegar, pickles, tea smoked in a tobacco-pipe, or any other nostrum, as
+an effectual generator of sobriety. Six miles at the full trot without
+stirrups on a rough horse I can conscientiously recommend to the
+inebriated gentleman who fears to encounter a justly irate wife at two in
+the morning. I wont answer for the integrity of his cuticle when it is
+over; but I will stake my existence on the abject profundity of his
+sobriety. The process would extract the alcohol from a cask of spirits of
+wine, let alone dispel an average skinful of beer.
+
+And thus evaporates the last vestige of the dragoon's Christmas festivity.
+It may be urged that the enjoyments of which I have endeavoured to give a
+faithful narrative are gross and have no elevating tendency. I fear the
+men of the spur and sabre must bow to the justice of the criticism; and I
+know of nothing to advance in mitigation save the old Scotch proverb: "It
+is ill to mak' a silk purse out o' a sow's ear."
+
+
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
+
+
+In these modern days men live fast and forget fast; yet, since it was
+barely twenty-six years ago, numbers among us must still vividly remember
+the lurid autumn of 1870. Eastern and Northern France had been deluged
+with French and German blood. During the month of fighting from the 2nd of
+August to the 1st of September the regular armies of France had suffered
+defeat on defeat, and were now blockaded in Metz or were tramping from the
+catastrophe of Sedan to captivity in Germany. The Empire in France had
+fallen like a house of cards; Napoleon the Third was a prisoner of war in
+Cassel; the Empress and the ill-fated Prince Imperial were forlorn exiles
+in England. To the Empire had succeeded, at not even a day's notice--for
+in France a revolution is ever a summary operation--the Government of
+National Defence with the watchword of "War to the bitter end" rather than
+cede a foot of territory or one stone of a fortress. The Germans made no
+delay. The blood-tint had scarcely faded out of the waters of the Meuse,
+the unburied dead of Sedan yet festered in the sun-heat, and the blackened
+ruins of Bazeilles still smoked and stank, when their heads of columns set
+forth on the march to Paris. The troops were full of ardour; but in the
+Royal headquarters there was not a little disquietude. The old King made a
+long stay in the old cathedral city of Rheims, while men all over Europe
+were asking each other whether the catastrophe of Sedan had not virtually
+ended the war and were hoping for the white dove of peace to alight on the
+blood-stained land. But that happy consummation was not yet to be. When
+King Wilhelm crossed the frontier he had proclaimed that he warred not
+with the French nation but with its ruler. That ruler was now his prisoner;
+but Wilhelm had for adversary now the French nation, because it had taken
+up the quarrel which might have gone with the _Déchéance_ and in effect
+had made it its own. In the absence of overtures there was no alternative
+but to march on Paris.
+
+But Bismarck, although he carried a blithe front, was far from
+comfortable. He would fain have had peace--always on his own terms; but
+the question with him was with whom could he negotiate, capable, in the
+existing confusion, of furnishing adequate guarantees for the fulfilment
+of conditions? That requisite he could not discern in the self-constituted
+body which styled itself the Government of National Defence, but of which
+he spoke as "the gentlemen of the pavement." He had all the monarchical
+dislike and distrust of a republic, and before the German army had
+invested Paris he already had begun to ponder as to the possibility of
+reinstating the dethroned dynasty. Possibly indeed, he had already felt
+the pulse of Marshal Bazaine on this subject.
+
+It was on the 23rd of September when the Royal headquarters was at
+Ferrières, Baron Rothschild's château on the east of Paris, that there
+either presented himself to Bismarck an intriguant, or that the Chancellor
+evoked for himself an instrument for whom the way was made open to
+penetrate the beleaguerment of Metz and submit to Bazaine certain
+considerations. In connection with this mission we heard a good deal at
+the time of a mysterious "Mons. M." and an equally mysterious "Mons. N."
+Both were myths: "M." and "N." were alike pseudonyms of the real
+go-between, a certain Edmond Regnier who died in Paris on the 23rd of
+January 1894, after a strange and varied career of which the episode to be
+detailed in this article is the most remarkable. In a now very rare
+pamphlet published by Regnier in November 1870, he describes himself as a
+French landed proprietor with financial interests in England yielding him
+an income of £800 per annum, and as having come to England with his family
+in the end of August of that year in consequence of the proximity of
+German troops to his French residence. The painstaking compilers of the
+indictment against Bazaine give rather a different account of the
+character and antecedents of M. Regnier. Their information is that he
+received an imperfect education, sufficiently proven by his extraordinary
+style and vicious orthography. He studied, with little progress, law and
+medicine; later he took up magnetism. He was curiously mixed up in the
+events of the revolution of 1848. He had some employment in Algeria as an
+assistant surgeon. Returning to France he developed a quarry of
+paving-stone, and afterwards married in England a wife who brought him a
+certain competence. "Regnier," continues the Report, "is a sharp,
+audacious fellow; his manners are vulgar--vain to excess he considers
+himself a profound politician. Was he induced to throw himself into the
+midst of events by one of the monomanias which are engendered by periods
+of storm and revolution? Was he simply an intriguer, plying his trade? It
+is difficult to tell. But however that may be, the established fact is
+that we find him in England in September 1870 besieging with his projects
+the _entourage_ of the Empress."
+
+Regnier's siege of the forlorn colony at Hastings took the form of a
+bombardment of letters, his principal victim being Madame Le Breton, the
+lady-in-waiting of the Empress and the sister of the unfortunate General
+Bourbaki, then in command of the Imperial Guard at Metz. He was about to
+have his passport viséd by the German Ambassador in London, rather an
+equivocal proceeding for a French subject; and on the 12th of September he
+wrote thus to Madame Le Breton, desiring that the letter should be
+communicated to Her Majesty:--
+
+
+The Ambassador in London of the North German Confederation may possibly
+say, "I think the King of Prussia would prefer treating for peace with the
+Imperial Government rather than with the Republic." If so, I shall start
+to-morrow for Wilhelmshöhe, after having paid a visit to the Empress. The
+following are the propositions I intend to submit to the Emperor: (1) That
+the Empress-Regent ought not to quit French territory; (2) That the
+Imperial fleet _is_ French territory; (3) That the fleet which greeted Her
+Majesty so enthusiastically on its departure for the Baltic, or at least a
+portion of it, however small, be taken by the Regent for her seat of
+government, thus enabling her to go from one to another of the French
+ports where she can count upon the largest number of adherents, and so
+prove that her government exists both _de facto_ and _de jure_. Further,
+that the Empress-Regent issue from the fleet four proclamations--viz. to
+foreign governments, to the fleet, to the army, and to the French people.
+
+
+It will suffice to quote two of those suggested proclamations:--
+
+
+To foreign governments! To firmly insist upon the fact that the Imperial
+Government is the _actual_ government, as it is the government by right.
+To the fleet! That just as the Emperor remained to the last in the midst
+of his army, sharing the chances of war, so also does the Regent, the only
+executive power legally existing, come with gladness to trust her
+political fortune to the Imperial fleet.
+
+
+There followed a voluminous screed of irrelevant dissertation.
+
+Regnier confessedly made no way with the Empress. He saw, indeed, Madame
+Le Breton on the 14th, but only to be told, in language worthy of a
+patriot sovereign, that "Her Majesty's feeling was that the interests of
+France should take precedence of those of the dynasty; that she would
+rather do nothing than incur the suspicion of having acted from an undue
+regard for dynastic interests, and that she has the greatest horror of any
+step likely to bring about a civil war." Those high-souled expressions
+ought to have given definite pause to Regnier's importunity; but that
+busybody was indefatigable. A second letter to Madame Le Breton for the
+Empress simply elicited from the gentlemen of her suite the information
+that Her Majesty, having read his communications, had expressed the
+greatest horror of anything approaching a civil war. A final letter from
+him, containing the following significant passage:--
+
+
+I myself, or some other person, ought already to have been secretly and
+confidentially in communication with M. de Bismarck; our conditions for
+peace must be more acceptable than those to which the _soi-disant_
+Republican Government may have agreed; every action of theirs ought to be
+turned to our advantage--we ourselves must _act_,
+
+
+evoked the ultimatum that "the Empress would not stir in the matter."
+Regnier then said that as he found no encouragement at Hastings he would
+probably go to Wilhelmshöhe, where he would perhaps be better understood;
+and he produced a photographic view of Hastings on which he begged that
+the Prince Imperial would write a line to his father. On the following
+morning the Prince's equerry returned him the photographic view at the
+foot of which were the simple and affectionate words: "Mon cher Papa, je
+vous envoie ces vues d'Hastings; j'espère qu'elles vous plairont.
+Louis-Napoléon." I am personally familiar with the late Prince Imperial's
+handwriting and readily recognise it in this brief sentence. Regnier
+averred that it was with Her Majesty's consent that this paper was given
+him; but admitted that he was told she added: "Tell M. Regnier that there
+must be great danger in carrying out his project, and that I beg him not
+to attempt its execution." In other words, the Empress was willing that he
+should visit the Emperor at Cassel, authenticating him thus far by the
+Prince Imperial's little note; but she put her veto on his undertaking
+intrigues detrimental to the interests of France.
+
+Regnier by no means took the road for Wilhelmshöhe. At 7 P.M. of Sunday
+the 18th he read in the special _Observer_ that Jules Favre was next day
+to have an interview with Bismarck at Meaux. Eager to anticipate the
+Republican Foreign Minister he promptly took the night train for Paris. No
+trains were running beyond Amiens and he did not reach Meaux until
+midnight of the 19th, to learn that Bismarck and the headquarters had that
+day gone to Ferrières. At 10 A.M. of the 20th he reached that château and
+appealed to Count Hatzfeld, now German Ambassador in London, for an
+immediate interview with Bismarck, stating that he had come direct from
+Hastings. He was informed that the Chancellor had an appointment with
+Jules Favre at eleven and that it was improbable he could be received in
+advance. But Bismarck having been apprised of his arrival the fortunate
+Regnier was immediately ushered into his presence. Regnier congratulates
+himself on having anticipated the French Minister, ignorant of the
+circumstance that on the previous day the latter had two interviews with
+Bismarck and that their then impending interview was simply for the
+purpose of communicating to Favre the German King's final answer to the
+French proposals.
+
+Regnier says that he drew from his portfolio the photograph of Hastings
+with the Prince Imperial's little note to his father at its foot and
+handed the paper in silence to Bismarck; and that after the latter had
+looked at it for some moments, Regnier said, "I come, Count, to ask you to
+grant me a pass which will permit me to go to Wilhelmshöhe and give this
+autograph into the Emperor's hands." Why he should have applied to
+Bismarck for this is not apparent, since he might have gone direct from
+Hastings to Wilhelmshöhe without any necessity for invoking the
+Chancellor's offices. It seems extremely probable that the request for a
+pass was a mere pretext to gain an interview, and the more so since
+Bismarck made no allusion to the subject, but after a few moments,
+according to Regnier, addressed that person as follows:--
+
+
+Sir, our position is before you; what can you offer us? with whom can we
+treat? Our determination is fixed so to profit by our present position as
+to render impossible for the future any war against us on the part of
+France. To effect this object, an alteration of the French frontier is
+indispensable. In the presence of two governments--the one _de facto_, the
+other _de jure_--it is difficult, if not impossible, to treat with either.
+The Empress-Regent has quitted French territory, and since then has given
+no sign. The Provisional Government in Paris refuses to accept this
+condition of diminution of territory, but proposes an armistice in order
+to consult the French nation on the subject. We can afford to wait. When
+we find ourselves face to face with a government _de facto_ and _de jure_,
+able to treat on the basis we require, then we will treat.
+
+
+Regnier suggested that Bazaine in Metz and Uhrich in Strasburg, if they
+should capitulate, might do so in the name of the Imperial Government.
+Bismarck replied that Jules Favre was assured that the garrisons of those
+fortresses were staunchly Republican; but that his own belief was that
+Bazaine's army of the Rhine was probably Imperialist. Then Regnier offered
+to go at once to Metz. "If you had come a week earlier," said Bismarck,
+"it was yet time; now, I fear, it is too late." Upon this the Chancellor
+went away to meet Jules Favre with the parting words to Regnier, "Be so
+good as to present my respectful homage to his Imperial Majesty when you
+reach Wilhelmshöhe." At a subsequent meeting the same evening Regnier
+repeated his anxiety to go at once to Metz and Strasburg and make an
+agreement that these places should be surrendered only in the Emperor's
+name. Bismarck was clearly not sanguine, but he said, "Do what you can to
+bring us some one with power to treat with us, and you will have rendered
+great service to your country. I will give orders for a 'general
+safe-conduct' to be given you. A telegram shall precede you to Metz, which
+will facilitate your entrance there. You should have come sooner." So
+these two parted; Régnier received his "safe-conduct" and started from
+Ferrières early on the morning of the 21st. But this indefatigable
+letter-writer could not depart without a farewell letter:--
+
+
+I shall leave (he wrote to Bismarck) your advanced posts near Metz, giving
+orders for the carriage to await my return. I shall wrap myself in a
+shawl, which will hide a portion of my face. In the event of Marshal
+Bazaine acceding to my conditions, either Marshal Canrobert or General
+Bourbaki, acquainted with all that will be requisite for the success of my
+plans, may go out with my papers, dressed in my clothes, wrapped in my
+shawl, and depart for Hastings, after giving me his word of honour that
+for every one, except the Empress, he was to be simply Mons. Regnier. If
+everything succeeded according to my anticipation, he might then establish
+his identity, and place himself at the head of the army, with orders to
+defend the Chamber assembled, if possible, at a seaport town, where a
+loyal portion of the fleet should also be present. If the project should
+miscarry, the Marshal or the General would return and resume his post.
+
+
+Bismarck must have smiled grimly as he read this strange farrago; yet,
+whatever may have been his motives, he furthered the errand on which
+Regnier was going to Metz.
+
+That person reached the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles at Corny,
+outside of Metz, on the afternoon of 23rd September and was promptly
+presented to the Prince, who said that Count Bismarck had informed him of
+his wish to enter Metz and had left it to him to decide as to the
+expediency of complying with it. This, said the Prince, he was prepared to
+do and he gave Regnier the requisite pass. The same evening that active
+individual presented himself at the French forepost line, and having
+stated that he had a mission to Marshal Bazaine and desired to see him
+immediately, he was driven to Ban-Saint-Martin where the Marshal was
+residing. Bazaine at once received him in his study. At the outset a
+discrepancy manifests itself in the subsequent testimony of the
+interlocutors. The Marshal states that Regnier said he came on the part of
+the Empress with the consent of Bismarck; while Regnier declares that he
+did not state to the Marshal that he had any mission from the Empress. On
+other points, with one important exception, the versions given of the
+interview by the two participants fairly agree, and Bazaine's account of
+it may be summarised. After Regnier had stated that his commission was
+purely verbal he went on to observe that it was to be regretted that a
+treaty of peace had not put an end to the war after Sedan; that the
+maintenance of the German armies on French territory was ruinous to the
+country; and that it would be doing France a great service to obtain an
+armistice preparatory to the conclusion of peace. That as regarded this,
+the French army under the walls of Metz--the only army remaining
+organised--would be in a position to give guarantees to the Germans if it
+were allowed its liberty of action; but that without doubt they would
+exact as a pledge the surrender of the fortress of Metz.
+
+
+I replied (says Bazaine) that certainly if we--the "Army of the Rhine"--
+could extricate ourselves from the _impasse_ in which we now were, with
+the honours of war--that is to say, with arms and baggage--in a word
+completely constituted as an army, we would be in a position to maintain
+order in the interior, and would cause the provisions of the convention to
+be respected; but a difficulty would occur as to the fortress of Metz, the
+governor of which, appointed by the Emperor, could not be relieved except
+by His Majesty himself.
+
+
+One of Regnier's stated objects, continues the Marshal, was to bring it
+about that either Marshal Canrobert or General Bourbaki should go to
+England, inform the Empress of the situation at Metz, and place himself at
+her disposition. The departure of whichever of the two high officers
+should undertake this duty was to be surreptitious; and for this Regnier
+had provided with Prussian assistance. Seven Luxembourg surgeons who had
+been in Metz ever since the battle of Gravelotte had written to Marshal
+Bazaine for leave to go home through the Prussian lines. This letter, sent
+to the Prussian headquarters, was replied to in a letter carried into Metz
+by Regnier and by him given to Bazaine, to the effect that the _nine_
+surgeons were free to depart. As there were but seven surgeons, the
+implication is obvious that the safe-conduct was expanded to cover the
+incognito exit, along with the surgeons, of Regnier and the French officer
+bound for Hastings.
+
+Regnier gave me (writes Bazaine) so many details of his _soi-disant_
+relations with the Empress and her _entourage_ that, notwithstanding the
+strangeness of the apparition, I put faith in his mission, and believed
+that I ought not, in the general interest, to neglect the opportunity
+opened to me of putting myself in communication with the outside world. I
+consequently told him that he would be duly brought into relations with
+Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki, whom I would inform in regard to
+his proposals, and whom I would place at liberty to act as each might
+choose in the matter.
+
+Finally Regnier produced the photograph of Hastings with the Prince
+Imperial's signature at the foot, and begged the Marshal to add his, which
+he did "as a souvenir of the interview" explained Regnier, according to
+the Marshal; according to Regnier, that he could exhibit the signature to
+Bismarck in proof that he had the Marshal's assent to his proposals.
+Diplomacy conducted by chance signatures on casual photographs has a
+certain innocent simplicity, but is not in accordance with modern methods.
+Perhaps, however, the strangest thing in connection with this strange
+interview is Bazaine's final comment:--
+
+
+All this which I have narrated was only a simple conversation to which I
+attached a merely secondary importance, since M. Regnier had no written
+authority from the Empress nor from M. de Bismarck.... This personage,
+therefore, appeared to act without the knowledge of the German military
+authorities, and it was not until considerably later that I became
+convinced of their cognisance, and of their mutual understanding as
+regards M. Regnier's visit to Metz.
+
+
+And this in the face of General Stiehle's letter to him in his hand,
+brought in by Regnier, sanctioning the exit of the _nine_ surgeons; and
+the Marshal's promise to Régnier that he and the officer who should accept
+the mission to Hastings should quit the camp incognito along with the
+Luxembourg surgeons.
+
+Reference has been made to a discordance between the testimony of Marshal
+Bazaine and of Regnier on a very important point in regard to this
+interview. In his notes taken at the time the latter writes:--
+
+
+The Marshal tells me of his excellent position, of the long period for
+which he can hold out; that he considers himself as the Palladium of the
+Empire. He speaks of the very healthy condition of the troops; and, if I
+may judge by his own rosy face, he is quite right. He tells of all the
+successful sallies he had made, and of the facility with which he can
+break through the besieging lines whenever he chooses to do so.
+
+
+Later, he contradicts all this, explaining that finding himself in the
+Prussian lines and his papers liable to be read, he had written just the
+reverse of what he was told by the Marshal. He says that what Bazaine
+actually informed him was that the bread ration had been already
+diminished and would be necessarily further reduced in a few days; that
+the horses lacked forage and had to be used for food; and that in such
+conditions and taking into account the necessity of carrying four or five
+days' rations for the army and keeping a certain number of horses in
+condition to drag the guns and supplies, there would be great difficulty
+in holding out until the 18th of October. Bazaine, for his part,
+vehemently denied having given Regnier any such information, and it seems
+utterly improbable that he should have done so. It is nevertheless the
+fact that the 18th of October was the last day on which rations were
+issued to the army outside Metz. Regnier must have been a wizard; or
+Bazaine must have leaked atrociously; or there must have been lying on the
+Marshal's table during the interview with Regnier, the most recent state
+furnished by the French intendance, that of the 21st of September which
+specified the 18th of October as the precise date of the final exhaustion
+of the army's supplies.
+
+At midnight of the 23rd Regnier went to the outposts and next morning to
+Corny, where he found a telegram from Bismarck authorising the departure
+for Hastings of a general from the army of Metz. He was back again at
+Ban-Saint-Martin on the afternoon of the 24th, when Marshal Canrobert and
+General Bourbaki were summoned to headquarters to meet him and the
+Luxembourg surgeons were assembled. Canrobert declined the proposed
+mission on the plea of ill-health. Bourbaki had to be searched for and was
+ultimately found at St. Julien with Marshal Lebceuf. As he dismounted at
+the headquarters he asked Colonel Boyer--they had both been of the
+intimate circle of the Empire--whether he knew the person walking in the
+garden with the Marshal?
+
+"No," replied Boyer.
+
+"What?" rejoined Bourbaki; "have you never seen him at the Tuileries?"
+
+"No," said Boyer. "I forget names, but not faces--I never saw this fellow.
+He is neither a familiar of the Tuileries nor an employé." Whereupon the
+two aristocrats despised the bourgeois Regnier. But Bourbaki,
+nevertheless, had to endure the presentation to him of the "fellow," who
+promptly entered on a political discourse to the effect that the German
+Government was reluctant to treat with the Paris Government, which it did
+not consider so lawful as that of the Empress, and that if it treated with
+her the conditions would be less burdensome; that the intervention of the
+army of Metz was indispensable; that it was all-important that one of its
+chiefs should repair to the side of the Empress to represent the army with
+her; and that he, Bourbaki, was the fittest person to occupy that position
+on the declinature of Marshal Canrobert. Bourbaki turned from the man of
+verbiage to Bazaine and asked, "Marshal, what do you wish me to do?" The
+Marshal answered that he desired him to repair to the Empress.
+
+"I am ready," answered Bourbaki, "but on certain conditions: you will have
+the goodness to give me a written order; to announce my departure in army
+orders; not to place a substitute in my command; and to promise that,
+pending my return, you will not engage the Guard." His terms were accepted;
+he was told that he was to leave immediately and he went to his quarters
+to make his preparations.
+
+It was understood that the general's departure was to be by way of being
+incognito, so that it should not get wind. He had no civilian clothes and
+Bazaine fitted him out in his; Regnier had obtained from one of the
+Luxembourger surgeons a cap with the Geneva Cross which completed the
+costume. At the Prussian headquarters General Stiehle, Prince Frederick
+Charles's chief of staff, desired to pay his respects to a man whose
+brilliant courage he admired. Bourbaki's bitter answer to Regnier who
+communicated to him Stiehle's wish, was that he would see "none of them,
+nor even eat a morsel of their bread," which, he said, would choke him. He
+presently started with the surgeons, travelling in Regnier's name and on
+Regnier's passport, on an enterprise which was to lead to the wreck of a
+fine career. At the same time Regnier quitted Corny on his return to
+Ferrières to report to Bismarck, having promised Bazaine that he would
+return to Metz within six days. His bolt was about shot. But he had not
+realised this fact. He maintains in his curious pamphlet that, to quote
+his own words, "the Minister had given me to understand that if I were
+backed by Bazaine and his army he would treat with me as if I were the
+representative of the Emperor or the Regent. I had obtained from the
+Marshal a capitulation with the honours of war, which the Minister--for
+the furtherance of our political ends--had consented to accord to him." He
+hurried expectant to Ferrières; there to be summarily disillusioned.
+Bismarck gave him an interview on the 28th, and crushed him in a few
+trenchant sentences:--
+
+
+I am surprised and sorry (said the Chancellor) that you, who appeared to
+be a practical man, after having been permitted to enter Metz with the
+certainty of being able to leave it, a favour never before accorded,
+should have left it without some more formal recognition of your right to
+treat than merely a photograph with the Marshal's signature on it. But I,
+Sir, am a diplomatist of many years' standing, and this is not enough for
+me. I regret it; but I find myself compelled to relinquish all further
+communication with you till your powers are better defined.
+
+
+Regnier expressed his regret at having been so cruelly deceived but
+thanked Bismarck for his kindness, whereupon the latter offered to give
+him a last chance. "I would certainly," he said, "have treated with you as
+to peace conditions, had you been able to treat in the name of a Marshal
+at the head of 80,000 men; as it is, I will send this telegram to the
+Marshal: 'Does Marshal Bazaine authorise M. Regnier to treat for the
+surrender of the army before Metz in accordance with the conditions agreed
+upon with the last-named?'" On the 29th came Bazaine's somewhat diffuse
+reply:--
+
+
+I cannot reply definitely in the affirmative to the question. Regnier
+announced himself the emissary of the Empress without written credentials.
+He asked the conditions on which I could enter into negotiations with
+Prince Frederick Charles. My answer was that I could only accept a
+convention with the honours of war, not to include the fortress of Metz.
+These are the only conditions which military honour permits me to accept.
+
+
+Regnier bombarded the Chancellor with letters until the 30th, when Count
+Hatzfeld informed him that the Minister would listen to nothing more until
+Regnier could show full powers without evasion; that the matter must
+imperatively be conducted openly and above board; and that his Excellency
+hoped Regnier would be able to get clear of it with honour, and that soon.
+
+So Regnier quitted Ferrières in great dejection. He gives vent ruefully to
+the belief that Bismarck regarded him as an unaccredited agent of the
+Empress, while, curiously enough, the partisans of the Empress took him
+for an emissary of Bismarck. Reaching Hastings on the 3rd of October he
+found that the Empress was now at Chislehurst. He had telegraphed in
+advance to "M. Regnier," the name which he had instructed General Bourbaki
+to pass under until the true Regnier should reach England. But Bourbaki
+had cast away the false name at the instigation of a brother officer while
+passing through Belgium. On arriving at Chislehurst he learned from the
+Empress that he had been made the victim of a mystification on the part of
+Regnier, and that she had never expressed the desire to have with her
+either Marshal Canrobert or himself. This intelligence, of which the
+newspapers had given him a presentiment, struck him to the heart. Although
+covered by his chief's order he found himself in a false position; and he
+wrote to the late Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, begging his good
+offices to obtain for him an authorisation to return to his post. An
+assurance was given that this would be accorded, and he hurried to
+Luxembourg there to await intimation of permission to re-enter Metz. Some
+delay occurred in the transmission of the Royal order to this effect and
+although Bourbaki was assured that the decision would shortly reach him,
+he became impatient, went into France, and placed himself at the
+disposition of the Provisional Government. But thenceforth he was a soured
+and dispirited man. The _ci-devant_ aide-de-camp of an Emperor writhed
+under the harrow of Gambetta and Freycinet.
+
+As for Regnier, on his return to England he seems to have haunted
+Chislehurst. Once, so he frankly writes, after waiting a full hour in
+expectation of an audience of the Empress Madame Le Breton came to tell
+him that Her Majesty was sorry to have kept him waiting so long, but that
+she had now definitely resolved not to receive him. Yet he hung on, and
+the same evening he tells that he was called somewhat abruptly into a room
+in which stood several gentlemen, when a lady suddenly rose from a couch
+and addressed him standing. At last he was face to face with the Empress.
+"Sir," said Her Majesty, "you have been persistent in wishing to speak
+with me personally; here I am; what have you to say?" Then Regnier, by his
+own account, harangued that august and unfortunate lady in a manner which
+in print seems extremely trenchant and dictatorial. It was all in vain, he
+confesses; he could not alter the convictions of the Empress. He says that
+"she feared that posterity, if she yielded, would only see in the act a
+proof of dynastic selfishness; and that dishonour would be attached to the
+name of whoever should sign a treaty based on a cession of territory."
+Probably Her Majesty spoke from a more lofty standpoint than Regnier was
+able to comprehend or appreciate.
+
+Regnier's subsequent career during that troublous period was both curious
+and dubious. General Boyer states that on the 28th of October he found
+Regnier _tête-à-tête_ with Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon). Later he went to
+Cassel, where he busied himself in trying to implicate in political
+machinations sundry French officers who were prisoners there. Presently we
+find him at Versailles, figuring among the conductors of the _Moniteur
+Prussien_, Bismarck's organ during the German occupation of that city, in
+which journal he published a series of articles under the title of _Jean
+Bonhomme_. During the armistice after the surrender of Paris he betook
+himself to Brussels, where he told General Boyer that he had gone to
+Versailles to attempt a renewal of negotiations tending towards an
+Imperial restoration. He showed the general the original safe-conduct
+which Bismarck had given him at Ferrières, and a letter of Count Hatzfeld
+authorising him to visit Versailles. The last item during this period
+recorded of this strange personage--and that item one so significant as to
+justify Mrs. Crawford's shrewd suspicion "that Regnier played a double
+game, and that Prince Bismarck, if he chose, could clear up the mystery
+which hangs over Regnier's curious negotiations"--is found in a page of
+the _Procès Bazaine_. This is the gem: "On the 18th of February 1871 he
+was in Versailles, where he met a person of his acquaintance, to whom he
+uttered the characteristic words--'I do not know whether M. de Bismarck
+will allow me to leave him this evening.'" He is said to have later been
+connected with the Paris police under the late M. Lagrange. Whether
+Regnier was more knave or fool--enthusiast, impostor, or "crank"--will
+probably be never known.
+
+
+
+
+RAILWAY LIZZ
+
+BY AN HOSPITAL MATRON
+
+
+We see many curious phases of humanity--we who administer to the sick in
+the great hospitals which are among the boasts of London. The mask worn by
+the face of the world is dropped before us. We see men as they are, and
+while the sight is often not calculated to enhance our estimate of human
+nature, there are occasionally strong reliefs which stand out from the
+mass of shadow. There are curious opinions entertained in the outer world
+as to the internal economy of hospitals, not a few "laymen" imagining that
+the main end of such establishments is that the doctors may have something
+to experiment upon for the advancement of their professional theories--
+something which, while it is human, is not very valuable in the social
+scale and therefore open to be hacked and hewn and operated upon with a
+freedom begotten of the knowledge that the subject is a mere vile corpus.
+
+Nor is this the only delusion. Many people think that the hospital nurse
+is but another name for a heartless harpy, brimful of callous selfishness.
+Her attentions--kindness is an inadmissible word--are believed to be
+purely mercenary. Those who themselves can afford to fee her or who have
+friends able and willing to buy her services, may purchase civil treatment
+and careful nursing while the poor wretch who has neither money nor
+friends may languish unheeded. There is no greater mistake than this. Year
+by year the character of hospital nursing has improved. It is not to be
+denied that in times gone by there were nurses the mainsprings of whose
+actions may be said to have been money and gin; but these have long since
+been driven forth with contumely. I have seen a poor wretch of a
+discharged soldier without a single copper to bless himself with, nursed
+with as much tender assiduity and real feeling as if he were in a position
+to pay his nurses handsomely.
+
+Indeed, in most hospitals now the practice of accepting money presents is
+altogether forbidden; and if the prohibition, as in the case of railway
+porters and guards, is sometimes looked upon in the light of a dead
+letter, there is, I sincerely believe, no such thing as any grasping after
+a guerdon nor any neglect in a case where it is evident no guerdon is to
+be expected. There is an hospital I could name in which the nurses are
+prohibited from accepting from patients any more substantial recognition
+of their services than a nosegay of flowers. The wards of this hospital
+are always gay with bright, fragrant posies, most of them the
+contributions of those who, having been carefully tended in their need,
+retain a grateful recollection of the kindness and now that they are in
+health again take this simple, pretty way of showing their gratitude. It
+is two years ago since a rough bricklayer's labourer got mended in the
+accident ward of this hospital of some curiously complicated injuries he
+had received by tumbling from the top of a house. Not a Sunday afternoon
+has there been since the house-surgeon told him one morning that he might
+go out, that he has not religiously visited the "Albert" ward and brought
+his thank-offering in the shape of a cheap but grateful nosegay.
+
+Those nurses who thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have often
+curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of collecting them.
+It is by no means always mere regard for the securing of the necessaries
+of life which has brought them to the thankless and toilsome occupation.
+We have all read of nunneries in which women immured themselves, anxious
+to sequester themselves from all association with the outer world and to
+devote themselves to a life of penance and devotion. After all their piety
+was aimless and of no utility to humanity. There was a concentrated
+selfishness in it which detracted from its ambitious aspiration. But in
+the modern nuns of our hospitals methinks we have women who, abnegating
+with equal solicitude the pleasures and dissipations of the world, find a
+more philanthropic opening for their exertions in their retirement than in
+sleeping on hair pallets, and in eating nothing but parched peas.
+
+It was towards the autumn of a recent year that a modest-looking young
+woman applied to me for a situation on our nursing staff. She wore a
+widow's dress and seemed a self-contained, reserved little woman, with
+something weighing very heavily on her mind. Her testimonials of character
+were ample and of a very high order but they did not enlighten me with any
+great freedom as to her past history, and she for her part appeared by no
+means eager to supplement the meagre information furnished by them.
+However, people have a right to keep their own counsel if they please, and
+there was no sin in the woman's reticence. We happened to be very short of
+efficient nurses at the time and she was at once taken upon trial; her
+somewhat strange stipulation, which she made absolute, being agreed to--
+that she should not be compelled to reside in the hospital, but merely
+come in to perform her turn of nursing, and that over, be at liberty to
+leave the precincts when she pleased. I say the stipulation was a strange
+one, because attached to it there was a considerable pecuniary sacrifice
+as well as a necessity for entering a lower grade.
+
+She made a very excellent nurse, with her quiet, reserved ways and her
+manner of moving about a ward as if she studied the lightness of every
+footfall. But she had her peculiarities. I have already said that she was
+not given to be communicative, and for the first three months she was in
+the place I do not believe she uttered a word to any one within the walls
+except on subjects connected with the performance of her duties. Then,
+too, she manifested a curious fondness for being on duty in the accident
+ward. Most nurses have very little liking for this ward--the work is very
+heavy and unremitting and frequently the sights are more than usually
+repulsive. But she specially made application to be placed in it, and the
+more terrible the nature of the accident the more eager was her zeal to
+minister to the poor victim. It seemed almost a morbid fondness which she
+developed for waiting, in particular, upon people injured by railway
+accidents. When some poor mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed
+almost out of resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an
+empty cot in the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a
+seemingly intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and
+ease the poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot"
+with an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however
+conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her
+partiality for railway "cases" was so marked that it appeared to amount to
+a passion; and among the other nurses, never slow to fix upon any
+peculiarity and base upon it some not unfriendly nickname, our quiet
+friend went by the name of "Railway Lizz." Nobody ever got any clue to the
+reason, if there was one, for this predilection of hers. Indeed, nobody
+ever was favoured with the smallest scrap of her confidence. I confess to
+have felt much interest in the sad-eyed young widow and to have several
+times given her an opening which she might have availed herself of for
+narrating something of her past life; but she always retired within
+herself with a sensitiveness which puzzled me not a little, satisfied as I
+was that there was nothing in her antecedents of a character which would
+not bear the light.
+
+There are few holidays within an hospital. Physical suffering is not to be
+mitigated by a gala day; the pressure of disease cannot be lightened by
+jollity and merry-making. One New Year's Eve, when the world outside our
+walls was glad of heart, a poor shattered form was borne into the accident
+ward. It was a railway-porter whom a train had knocked down and passed
+over, crushing the young fellow almost out of the shape of humanity.
+Railway Lizz was by his side in a moment, wetting the pain-parched lips
+and smoothing the pillow of the half-conscious sufferer. The house-surgeon
+came and went with that silent shake of the head we know too surely how to
+interpret, and the mangled railway-porter was left in the care of his
+assiduous nurse. It was almost midnight when I again entered the accident
+ward. The night-lamp was burning feebly, shedding a dull dim light over
+the great room and throwing out huge grotesque shadows on the floor and
+the walls. I glanced toward the railway-porter's bed, and the tell-tale
+screen placed around it told me that all was over and that the life had
+gone out of the shattered casket. As I walked down the room toward the
+screen I heard a low subdued sound of bitter sobbing behind it; and when I
+stepped within it, there was the sad-faced widow-nurse weeping as if her
+heart would break. When she saw me she strove hard to repress her emotion
+and to resume the quiet, self-possessed demeanour which it was her wont to
+wear; but she failed in the attempt and the sobs burst out in almost
+convulsive rebellion against the effort to repress them. I put my arm
+round the neck of the poor young thing and stooping down kissed her wet
+cheek as a tear from my own eye mingled with her profuse weeping. The
+evidence of feeling appeared to overpower her utterly; she buried her head
+in my lap, and lay long there sobbing like a child. When the acuteness of
+the emotion had somewhat spent itself I gently raised her up, and asked of
+her what was the cause of a grief so poignant. I found that I was now at
+last within the intrenchments of her reserve; with a deep sigh she said,
+in her Scottish accent, that it was "a lang, lang story," but if I cared
+to hear it she would tell it. So sitting there, we two together in the dim
+twilight of the night-lamp, with the shattered corpse of the
+railway-porter lying there "streekit" decently before us, she told the
+following pathetic tale:--
+
+"I am an Aberdeen girl by birth. My father was the foreman at a factory, a
+very stiff, dour man, but a gude father, and an upright, God-fearing man.
+When I was about eighteen, I fell acquainted with a railway-guard, a
+winsome, manly lad as ever ye would wish to see. If ye had kent my Alick,
+ye wadna wonder at me for what I did. My father was a proud man, and he
+couldna bear that I should marry a man that he said wasna my equal in
+station; and in his firm, masterful way he forbade Alick from coming about
+the house, and me from seeing him. It was a sair trial, and I dinna think
+ony father has a right to put doon his foot and mar the happiness of twa
+young folks in the way mine did. The struggle was a bitter ane, between a
+father's commands and the bidding of true luve; and at last, ae night
+coming home from a friend's house, Alick and I forgathered again, and he
+swore he would not gang till I had promised I would marry him afore the
+week was out.
+
+"I'll not trouble ye with lang details of the battle that I fought with
+mysel', and how in the end Alick conquered. We were married in the West
+Kirk the Sunday after, and we twa set up our simple housekeeping in a
+single room in a house by the back of the Infirmary. Oh, mem, we were
+happy young things! Alick was the fondest, kindest man ye could ever think
+of. Sometimes he wad take me a jaunt the length of Perth in the van with
+him, and point out the places of interest on the road as we went flashing
+by them. Then on the Sunday, when he was off duty, we used to take a walk
+out to the Torry Lighthouse, or down by the auld brig o' Balgownie, and
+then hame to an hour's read of the Bible afore I put down the kebbuck and
+the bannocks. My father keepit hard and unforgiving; they tellt me he had
+sworn an oath I should never darken his door again, and at times I felt
+very sairly the bitterness of his feeling toward me, whan I was sitting up
+waiting for Alick's hame-coming whan he was on the night turn; but then he
+wad come in with his blithe smile and cheery greeting and every thought
+but joy at his presence wad flee awa as if by magic. Some of the friends I
+had kent when a lassie at home still keepit up the acquantance, and we
+used sometimes to spend an evening at one of their houses. The New Year
+time came, and Alick and myself got an invitation to keep our New Year's
+Eve at the house of a decent, elderly couple that lived up near the Kitty
+Brewster Station--quiet, retired folk that had been in business and made
+enough to live comfortable on. It was Alick's night for the late mail
+train from Perth, but he would be at Market Street Station in time to get
+up among us to see the auld year out and the new ane in; and I was to
+spend the evening there and wait for his arrival.
+
+"It was a vera happy time. The auld couple were as kind as kind could be,
+and their twa or three young folks keepit up the fun brisk and lively.
+I took a hand at the cairts and sang a lilt like the rest; but I was
+luiking for Alick's company to fill up my cup of happiness. The time wore
+on, and it was getting close to the hour at which he might be expectit. I
+kenna what ailed me, but I felt strangely uneasy and anxious for his
+coming. 'Here he is at last!' I said to myself, as my heart gave a jump at
+the sound of a foot on the gravel walk. As it came closer, I kent it wasna
+Alick's step, and a strange, cauld grip of fear and doubt caught me at the
+heart. Mr. Thomson, that was the name of our old friend, was called out,
+and I overheard the sound of a whispered conversation in the passage. Then
+he put his head in and called out his wife; I could see his face was as
+white as a sheet, and his voice shook in spite of himself. The boding of
+misfortune came upon me with a force it was in vain to strive against, and
+I rose up and gaed out into the passage amang them. The auld man was
+shakin' like an aspen leaf; the gudewife had her apron ower her face and
+was greeting like a bairn, and in the door stood Tarn Farquharson, a
+railway-porter frae the station. I saw it aa' quicker nor I can tell it to
+you, leddy. I steppit up to Tarn and charged him simple and straught.
+
+"'Tam, what's happent to my Alick?'
+
+"The wet tears stood in Tarn's e'en as he answered, 'Dinna speer, Lizzie,
+my puir lass, dinna speer, whan the answer maun be a waefu' ane.'
+
+"'Tell me the warst, Tam,' says I; 'let me hear the warst, an' pit me oot
+o' my pain!'
+
+"The words are dirlin' and stoonin' in my ears yet--
+
+"'The engine gaed ower him, and he's lyin' dead at Market Street.'
+
+"I didna faint, and I couldna greet. Something gied a crack inside my
+head, and my e'en swam for a minute; but the next I was putting on my
+bonnet and shawl and saying good-nicht to Mrs. Thomson. They tried to stop
+me. I heard Tam whisper to the auld man, 'She maunna see him. He is
+mangled oot o' the shape o' man.'
+
+"But I wasna to be gainsaid, and Tam took my airm as we gaed doon through
+the toon to Market Street. There they tried hard to keep him oot frae my
+sight. They tellt me he wasna fit to be seen, but there's nae law that can
+keep a wife frae seeing her husband's corpse. He was lying in a
+waiting-room covered up with a sheet, and, oh me, he was sair, sair
+mangled--that puir fellow there is naething to him; but the winsome, manly
+face, with the sweet, familiar smile on it, was nane spoiled; and lang,
+lang, I sat there, us twa alane, with my hand on his cauld forehead,
+playing wi' his bonnie waving hair. They left me there, in their
+considerate kindliness, till the cauld light o' the New Year's morning
+began to break, and syne they came and tellt me I maun go. But I wadna
+gang my lane. He was mine, and mine only, sae lang as he was abune the
+mools; and I claimed my dead hame wi' me, to that hoose he had left sae
+brisk and sprichtly whan he kissed me in the morning. Four of the
+railway-porters carried him up to that hame which had lost its hame-look
+for me now. I keepit him to mysel' till they took him awa' frae me and
+laid him under a saugh tree in the Spittal Kirkyard."
+
+She paused in her story, overcome by the bitter memory of the past, and I
+wanted no formal application now to give me the clue to her strange
+preference for the accident ward and her hitherto inexplicable fondness
+for "railway cases." Poor thing, with what inexpressible vividness must
+the circumstances in which this New Year's night was passing with her have
+recalled the sad remembrances of that other New Year's night the narrative
+of which she had just given me! Presently she recovered her voice, and
+briefly concluded the little history.
+
+"Leddy, I was wi' bairn whan my Alick was taken from me. Oh, how I used to
+pray that God would be gude to me, and give me a living keepsake of my
+dead husband! I troubled naebody. I never speered if my father would do
+anything for me; but I got work at the factory, and I lived in prayerful
+hope. My hour of trouble came, and a fatherless laddie was born into this
+weary world, the very picture o' him that was sleeping under the tree in
+the Spittal Kirkyard. I needna tell ye I christened him Alick, and the
+bairn has been my joy and comfort ever since God gifted me with him. I
+found the sichts and memories of Aberdeen ower muckle for me, sae I came
+up to London here, and ye ken the rest about me. It was because of being
+with my bairn that I wouldna agree to live in the hospital here like the
+rest of the nurses, and whan I gang hame noo to my little garret, he will
+waken up out of his saft sleep, rosy and fresh, and hold up his bonnie
+mou', sae like his father's, for 'mammie's kiss.'"
+
+
+
+
+MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
+
+
+None of the greater rivers of Scotland makes so much haste to reach the
+ocean as does the turbulent and impatient Spey. From its parent lochlet in
+the bosom of the Grampians it speeds through Badenoch, the country of
+Cluny MacPherson, the chief of Clan Chattan, a region to this day redolent
+of memories of the '45. It abates its hurry as its current skirts the
+grave of the beautiful Jean Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, who raised the
+92nd Highlanders by giving a kiss with the King's shilling to every
+recruit, and who now since many long years
+
+  Sleeps beneath Kinrara's willow.
+
+But after this salaam of courtesy the river roars and bickers down the
+long stretch of shaggy glen which intervenes between the upper and lower
+Rocks of Craigellachie, whence the Clan Grant, whose habitation is this
+ruggedly beautiful strath, takes its slogan of "Stand fast,
+Craigellachie," till it finally sends its headlong torrent shooting miles
+out through the salt water of the Moray Firth. In its course of over a
+hundred miles its fierce current has seldom tarried; yet now and again it
+spreads panting into a long smooth stretch of still water when wearied
+momentarily with buffeting the boulders in its broken and contorted bed;
+or when a great rock, jutting out into its course, causes a deep black
+sullen pool whose sluggish eddy is crested with masses of yellow foam.
+Merely as a wayfaring pedestrian I have followed Spey from its source to
+its mouth; but my intimacy with it in the character of a fisherman extends
+over the five-and-twenty miles of its lower course, from the confluence of
+the pellucid Avon at Ballindalloch to the bridge of Fochabers, the native
+village of the Captain Wilson who died so gallantly in the recent fighting
+in Matabeleland. My first Spey trout I took out of water at the foot of
+the cherry orchard below the sweet-lying cottage of Delfur. My first
+grilse I hooked and played with trout tackle in "Dalmunach" on the Laggan
+water, a pool that is the rival of "Dellagyl" and the "Holly Bush" for the
+proud title of the best pool of lower Spey. My first salmon I brought to
+the gaff with a beating heart in that fine swift stretch of water known as
+"The Dip," which connects the pools of the "Heathery Isle" and the "Red
+Craig," and which is now leased by that good fisherman, Mr. Justice North.
+I think the Dundurcas water then belonged to the late Mr. Little Gilmour,
+the well-known welter-weight who went so well to hounds season after
+season from Melton Mowbray, and who was as keen in the water on Spey as he
+was over the Leicestershire pastures. A servant of Mr. Little Gilmour was
+drowned in the "Two Stones" pool, the next below the "Holly Bush;" and the
+next pool below the "Two Stones" is called the "Beaufort" to this day--
+named after the present Duke, who took many a big fish out of it in the
+days when he used to come to Speyside with his friend Mr. Little Gilmour.
+
+In those long gone-by days brave old Lord Saltoun, the hero of Hougomont,
+resided during the fishing season in the mansion-house of Auchinroath, on
+the high ground at the mouth of the Glen of Rothes. One morning, some
+five-and-forty years ago, my father drove to breakfast with the old lord
+and took me with him. Not caring to send the horse to the stable, he left
+me outside in the dogcart when he entered the house. As I waited rather
+sulkily--for I was mightily hungry--there came out on to the doorstep a
+very queer-looking old person, short of figure, round as a ball, his head
+sunk between very high and rounded shoulders, and with short stumpy legs.
+He was curiously attired in a whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped
+jacket the great collar of which reached far up the back of his head,
+surmounted a pair of voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the
+knee. I imagined him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he
+accosted me good-naturedly, asking to whom the dogcart and myself
+belonged, I answered him somewhat shortly and then ingenuously suggested
+that he would be doing me a kindly act if he would go and fetch me out a
+hunk of bread and meat, for I was enduring tortures of hunger.
+
+Then he swore, and that with vigour and fluency, that it was a shame that
+I should have been left outside; called a groom and bade me alight and
+come indoors with him. I demurred--I had got the paternal injunction to
+remain with the horse and cart. "I am master here!" exclaimed the old
+person impetuously; and with further strong language he expressed his
+intention of rating my father soundly for not having brought me inside
+along with himself. Then a question occurred to me, and I ventured to ask,
+"Are you Lord Saltoun?" "Of course I am," replied the old gentleman; "who
+the devil else should I be?" Well, I did not like to avow what I felt, but
+in truth I was hugely disappointed in him; for I had just been reading
+Siborne's _Waterloo_, and to think that this dumpy old fellow in the
+duffle jacket that came up over his ears was the valiant hero who had held
+Hougomont through cannon fire and musketry fire and hand-to-hand bayonet
+fighting on the day of Waterloo while the post he was defending was
+ablaze, and who had actually killed Frenchmen with his own good sword, was
+a severe disenchantment. When I had breakfasted he asked leave of my
+father to let me go with him to the waterside, promising to send me home
+safely later in the day. When he was in Spey up to the armpits--for the
+"Holly Bush" takes deep wading from the Dundurcas side--the old lord
+looked even droller than he had done on the Auchinroath doorstep, and I
+could not reconcile him in the least to my Hougomont ideal. He was
+delighted when I opened on him with that topic, and he told me with great
+spirit of the vehemence with which his brother-officer Colonel Macdonnell,
+and his men forced the French soldiers out of the Hougomont courtyard, and
+how big Sergeant Graham closed the door against them by main force of
+muscular strength. Before he had been in the water twenty minutes the old
+lord was in a fish; his gillie, old Dallas, who could throw a fine line in
+spite of the whisky, gaffed it scientifically, and I was sent home
+rejoicing with a 15 lb. salmon for my mother and a half-sovereign for
+myself wherewith to buy a trouting rod and reel. Lord Saltoun was the
+first lord I ever met, and I have never known one since whom I have liked
+half so well.
+
+Spey is a river which insists on being distinctive. She mistrusts the
+stranger. He may be a good man on Tweed or Tay, but until he has been
+formally introduced to Spey and been admitted to her acquaintance, she is
+chary in according him her favours. She is no flighty coquette, nor is she
+a prude; but she has her demure reserves, and he who would stand well with
+her must ever treat her with consideration and respect. She is not as
+those facile demi-mondaine streams, such as the Helmsdale or the Conon,
+which let themselves be entreated successfully by the chance comer on the
+first jaunty appeal. You must learn the ways of Spey before you can
+prevail with her, and her ways are not the ways of other rivers. It was in
+vain that the veteran chief of southern fishermen, the late Francis
+Francis, threw his line over Spey in the _veni, vidi, vici_ manner of one
+who had made Usk and Wye his potsherd, and who over the Hampshire Avon had
+cast his shoe. Russel, the famous editor of the _Scotsman_, the Delane of
+the north country, who, pen in hand, could make a Lord Advocate squirm,
+and before whose gibe provosts and bailies trembled, who had drawn out
+leviathan with a hook from Tweed, and before whom the big fish of Forth
+could not stand--even he, brilliant fisherman as he was, could "come nae
+speed ava" on Spey, as the old Arndilly water-gillie quaintly worded it.
+
+Yet Russel of the _Scotsman_ was perhaps the most whole-souled salmon
+fisher of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations
+extended beyond the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the
+peroration, slightly profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his
+speech on salmon fishing at a Tweedside dinner? "When I die," he exclaimed
+in a fine rapture, "should I go to heaven, I will fish in the water of
+life with a fly dressed with a feather from the wing of an angel; should I
+be unfortunately consigned to another destination, I shall nevertheless
+hope to angle in Styx with the worm that never dieth." To his editorial
+successor Spey was a trifle more gracious than she had been to Russel; but
+she did not wholly open her heart to this neophyte of her stream, serving
+him up in the pool of Dellagyl with the ugliest, blackest, gauntest old
+cock-salmon of her depths, owning a snout like the prow of an ancient
+galley.
+
+Spey exacts from those who would fish her waters with success a peculiar
+and distinctive method of throwing their line, which is known as the "Spey
+cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the successive phases of the
+"Spey cast" in the fishing volume of the admirable Badminton series. It
+cannot be learned by diagrams; no man, indeed, can become a proficient in
+it who has not grown up from childhood in the practice of it. Yet its use
+is absolutely indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks,
+trees, high banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead
+cast. The essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this--that his line
+must never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from
+a howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To
+watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal
+education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory,
+and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a dexterous swish of
+the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet supple rod, illustrate
+a phase at once beautiful and practical of the poetry of motion. Among the
+native salmon fishermen of Speyside, _quorum ego parva pars fui,_ there
+are two distinct manners which may be severally distinguished as the easy
+style and the masterful style. The disciples of the easy style throw a
+fairly long line, but their aim is not to cover a maximum distance. What
+they pride themselves on is precise, dexterous, and, above all, light and
+smooth casting. No fierce switchings of the rod reveal their approach
+before they are in sight; like the clergyman of Pollok's _Course of Time_
+they love to draw rather than to drive. Of the masterful style the most
+brilliant exponent is a short man, but he is the deepest wader in Spey. I
+believe his waders fasten, not round his waist, but round his neck. I have
+seen him in a pool, far beyond his depth, but "treading water" while
+simultaneously wielding a rod about four times the length of himself, and
+sending his line whizzing an extraordinary distance. The resolution of his
+attack seems actually to hypnotise salmon into taking his fly; and, once
+hooked, however hard they may fight for life, they are doomed fish.
+
+Ah me! These be gaudy, flaunting, flashy days! Our sober Spey, in the
+matter of salmon fly-hooks, is gradually yielding to the garish influence
+of the times. Spey salmon now begin to allow themselves to be captured by
+such indecorous and revolutionary fly-hooks as the "Canary" and the
+"Silver Doctor." Jaunty men in loud suits of dittoes have come into the
+north country, and display fly-books that vie in the variegated brilliancy
+of their contents with a Dutch tulip bed. We staunch adherents to the
+traditional Spey blacks and browns, we who have bred Spey cocks for the
+sake of their feathers, and have sworn through good report and through
+evil report by the pig's down or Berlin wool for body, the Spey cock for
+hackle, and the mallard drake for wings, have jeered at the kaleidoscopic
+fantasticality of the leaves of their fly-books turned over by adventurers
+from the south country and Ireland; and have sneered at the notion that a
+self-respecting Spey salmon would so far demoralise himself as to be
+allured by a miniature presentation of Liberty's shop-window. But the
+salmon has not regarded the matter from our conservative point of view;
+and now we, too, ruefully resort to the "canary" as a dropper when
+conditions of atmosphere and water seem to favour that gaudy implement.
+And it must be owned that even before the "twopence-coloured" gentry came
+among us from distant parts, we, the natives, had been side-tracking from
+the exclusive use of the old-fashioned sombre flies into the occasional
+use of gayer yet still modest "fancies." Of specific Spey hooks in favour
+at the present time the following is, perhaps, a fairly correct and
+comprehensive list: purple king, green king, black king, silver heron,
+gold heron, black dog, silver riach, gold riach, black heron, silver
+green, gold green, Lady Caroline, carron, black fancy, silver spale, gold
+spale, culdrain, dallas, silver thumbie, Sebastopol, Lady Florence March,
+gold purpie, and gled (deadly in "snawbree"). The Spey cock--a cross
+between the Hamburg cock and the old Scottish mottled hen--was fifty years
+ago bred all along Speyside expressly for its feathers, used in dressing
+salmon flies; but the breed is all but extinct now, or rather, perhaps,
+has been crossed and re-crossed out of recognition. It is said, however,
+to be still maintained in the parish of Advie, and when the late Mr. Bass
+had the Tulchan shootings and fishings his head keeper used to breed and
+sell Spey cocks.
+
+Probably the most extensive collection of salmon fly-hooks ever made was
+that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a property on
+which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His father was a
+distinguished Indian civil servant and of later fame as an astronomer; and
+his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the best fishermen that
+ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl. Henry Grant himself had
+been a keen fisherman in his youth, and when, after a chequered and roving
+life in South Africa and elsewhere, he came into the estate, he set
+himself to build up a representative collection of salmon flies for all
+waters and all seasons. His father had brought home a large and curious
+assortment of feathers from the Himalayas; Mr. Grant sent far and wide for
+further supplies of suitable and distinctive material, and then he devoted
+himself to the task of dressing hundred after hundred of fly-hooks of
+every known pattern and of every size, from the great three-inch hook for
+heavy spring water to the dainty little "finnock" hook scarcely larger
+than a trout fly. A suitable receptacle was constructed for this
+collection from the timber of the "Auld Gean Tree of Elchies"--the largest
+of its kind in all Scotland--whose trunk had a diameter of nearly four
+feet and whose branches had a spread of over twenty yards. The "Auld Gean
+Tree" fell into its dotage and was cut down to the strains of a "lament,"
+with which the wail and skirl of the bagpipes drowned the noise of the
+woodmen's axes. Out of the wood of the "Auld Gean Tree" a local artificer
+constructed a handsome cabinet with many drawers, in which were stored the
+Elchies collection of fly-hooks classified carefully according to their
+sizes and kinds. The cabinet stood--and, I suppose, still stands--in the
+Elchies billiard-room; but I fear the collection is sadly diminished, for
+Henry Grant was the freest-handed of men and towards the end of his life
+anybody who chose was welcome to help himself from the contents of the
+drawers. Yet no doubt some relics of this fine collection must still
+remain; and I hope for his own sake that Mr. Justice A.L. Smith the
+present tenant of Elchies, is free of poor Henry's cabinet.
+
+It is a popular delusion that Speyside men are immortal; this is true only
+of distillers. But it is a fact that their longevity is phenomenal. If Dr.
+Ogle had to make up the population returns of Strath Spey he could not
+fail to be profoundly astonished by the comparative blankness of the
+mortality columns. Frederick the Great, when his fellows were rather
+hanging back in the crisis of a battle, stung them with the biting taunt,
+"Do you wish to live for ever?" If his descendant of the present day were
+to address the same question to the seniors of Speyside, they would
+probably reply, "Your Majesty, we ken that we canna live for ever; but,
+faith, we mak' a gey guid attempt!" A respected relative of mine died a
+few years ago at the age of eighty-five. Had he been a Southron, he would
+have been said to have died full of years; but of my relative the local
+paper remarked in a touching obituary notice that he "was cut off
+prematurely in the midst of his mature prime." When I was young, Speyside
+men mostly shuffled off this mortal coil by being upset from their gigs
+when driving home recklessly from market with "the maut abune the meal;"
+but the railways have done away in great measure with this cause of death.
+Nowadays the centenarians for the most part fall ultimate victims to
+paralysis. In the south it is understood, I believe, that the third shock
+is fatal; but a Speyside man will resist half a dozen shocks before he
+succumbs, and has been known to walk to the kirk after having endured even
+a greater number of attacks.
+
+Among the senior veterans of our riverside I may venture to name two most
+worthy men and fine salmon fishers. Although both have now wound in their
+reels and unspliced their rods, one of them still lives among us hale and
+hearty. "Jamie" Shanks of Craigellachie is, perhaps, the father of the
+water. He himself is reticent as to his age and there are legends on the
+subject which lack authentication. It is, however, a matter of tradition
+that Jamie was out in the '45; and that, cannily returning home when
+Charles Edward turned back at Derby, he earned the price of a croft by
+showing the Duke of Cumberland the ford across Spey near the present
+bridge of Fochabers, by which the "butcher duke" crossed the river on his
+march to fight the battle of Culloden. It is also traditioned that Jamie
+danced round a bonfire in celebration of the marriage of "bonnie Jean,"
+Duchess of Gordon, an event which occurred in 1767. Apart from the Dark
+Ages one thing is certain regarding Jamie, that the great flood of 1829
+swept away his croft and cottage, he himself so narrowly escaping that he
+left his watch hanging on the bed-post, watch and bed-post being
+subsequently recovered floating about in the Moray Firth. The greatest
+honour that can be conferred on a fisherman--the Victoria Cross of the
+river--has long belonged to Jamie; a pool in Spey bears his name, and many
+a fine salmon has been taken out of "Jamie Shanks's Pool," the swirling
+water of which is almost at the good old man's feet as he shifts the "coo"
+on his strip of pasture or watches the gooseberries swelling in his pretty
+garden. His fame has long ago gone throughout all Speyside for skill in
+the use of the gaff: about eight years ago I was witness of the calm,
+swift dexterity with which he gaffed what I believe was his last fish. In
+the serene evening of his long day he still finds pleasant occupation in
+dressing salmon flies; and if you speak him fair and he is in good humour
+"Jamie" may let you have half a dozen as a great favour.
+
+The other veteran of our river of whom I would say something was that most
+worthy man and fine salmon fisher Mr. Charles Grant, the ex-schoolmaster
+of Aberlour, better known among us who loved and honoured the fine old
+Highland gentleman as "Charlie" Grant. Charlie no longer lives; but to the
+last he was hale, relished his modest dram, and delighted in his quiet yet
+graphic manner to tell of men and things of Speyside familiar to him
+during his long life by the riverside. Charles Grant was the first person
+who ever rented salmon water on Spey. It was about 1838 that he took a
+lease from the Fife trustees of the fishing on the right bank from the
+burn of Aberlour to the burn of Carron, about four miles of as good water
+as there is in all the run of Spey. This water would to-day be cheaply
+rented at £250 per annum; the annual rent paid by Charles Grant was two
+guineas. A few years later a lease was granted by the Fife trustees of the
+period of the grouse shootings of Benrinnes, the wide moorlands of the
+parishes of Glass, Mortlach, and Aberlour, including Glenmarkie the best
+moor in the county, at a rent of £100 a year with four miles of salmon
+water on Spey thrown in. The letting value of these moors and of this
+water is to-day certainly not less than £1500 a year.
+
+Charles Grant had a great and well-deserved reputation for finding a fish
+in water which other men had fished blank. This was partly because from
+long familiarity with the river he knew all the likeliest casts; partly
+because he was sure to have at the end of his casting-line just the proper
+fly for the size of water and condition of weather; and partly because of
+his quiet neat-handed manner of dropping his line on the water. There is a
+story still current on Speyside illustrative of this gift of Charlie in
+finding a fish where people who rather fancied themselves had failed--a
+story which Jamie Shanks to this day does not care to hear. Mr. Russel of
+the _Scotsman_ had done his very best from the quick run at the top of the
+pool of Dalbreck, down to the almost dead-still water at the bottom of
+that fine stretch, and had found no luck. Jamie Shanks, who was with Mr.
+Russel as his fisherman, had gone over it to no purpose with a fresh fly.
+They were grumpishly discussing whether they should give Dalbreck another
+turn or go on to Pool-o-Brock the next pool down stream, when Charles
+Grant made his appearance and asked the waterside question, "What luck?"
+"No luck at all, Charlie!" was Russel's answer. "Deevil a rise!" was
+Shanks's sourer reply. In his demure purring way Charles Grant--who in his
+manner was a duplicate of the late Lord Granville--remarked, "There ought
+to be a fish come out of that pool." "Tak' him out, then!" exclaimed
+Shanks gruffly. "Well, I'll try," quoth the soft-spoken Charlie; and just
+at that spot, about forty yards from the head of the pool, where the
+current slackens and the fish lie awhile before breasting the upper rapid,
+he hooked a fish. Then it was that Russel in the genial manner which made
+provosts swear, remarked, "Shanks, I advise you to take a half year at Mr.
+Grant's school!" "Fat for?" inquired Shanks sullenly. "To learn to fish!"
+replied the master of sarcasm of the delicate Scottish variety.
+
+Respectful by nature to their superiors, the honest working folk of
+Speyside occasionally forget themselves comically in their passionate
+ardour that a hooked salmon shall be brought to bank. Lord Elgin, now in
+his Indian satrapy, far away from what Sir Noel Paton in his fine elegy on
+the late Sir Alexander Gordon Cumming of Altyre called
+
+  The rushing thunder of the Spey,
+
+one day hooked a big fish in the "run" below "Polmet". The fish headed
+swiftly down stream, his lordship in eager pursuit, but afraid of putting
+any strain on the line lest the salmon should "break" him. Down round the
+bend below the pool and by the "Slabs" fish and fisherman sped, till the
+latter was brought up by the sheer rock of Craigellachie. Fortunately a
+fisherman ferried the Earl across the river to the side on which he was
+able to follow the fish. On he ran, keeping up with the fish, under the
+bridge, along the margin of "Shanks's Pool," past the "Boat of Fiddoch"
+pool and the mouth of the tributary; and he was still on the run along the
+edge of the croft beyond when he was suddenly confronted by an aged man,
+who dropped his turnip hoe and ran eagerly to the side of the young
+nobleman. Old Guthrie could give advice from the experience of a couple of
+generations as poacher, water-gillie, occasional water-bailiff, and from
+as extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the river as Sam Weller
+possessed of London public-houses. And this is what he exclaimed: "Ma
+Lord, ma Lord, gin ye dinna check him, that fush will tak' ye doun tae
+Speymouth--deil, but he'll tow ye oot tae sea! Hing intil him, hing intil
+him!" His lordship exerted himself accordingly, but did not secure the old
+fellow's approval. "Man! man!" Guthrie yelled, "ye're nae pittin' a
+twa-ounce strain on him; he's makin' fun o' ye!" The nobleman tried yet
+harder, yet could not please his relentless critic. "God forgie me, but ye
+canna fush worth a damn! Come back on the lan', an' gie him the butt wi'
+pith!" Thus adjured, his lordship acted at last with vigour; the sage,
+having gaffed the fish, abated his wrath, and, as the salmon was being
+"wetted," tendered his respectful apologies.
+
+In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful Speyside
+estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water hardly inferior
+to any throughout the long run of the river. Many a man, far away now from
+"bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the river's roll over its
+rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the swift yet smooth flow of
+"the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against the "Red Craig," in the
+deep, strong water at the foot of which the big red fish leap like trout
+when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting into glow of russet and
+crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank above; the smooth restful
+glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's How," in which a fisherman
+may spend to advantage the livelong day and then not leave it fished out;
+the turbulent half pool, half stream, of the "Piles," which always holds
+large fish lying behind the great stones or in the dead water under the
+daisy-sprinkled bank on which the tall beeches cast their shadows; the
+"Bulwark Pool;" the "Three Stones," where the grilse show their silver
+sides in the late May evenings; "Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter
+now, alas! spoiled by gravel; the quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and
+the "Spout o' Cobblepot;" and then the dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon,"
+the deepest pool of Spey.
+
+The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a
+handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High
+Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and who,
+while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad. Good in the
+saddle and with the salmon rod, the Colonel was perhaps best behind a gun,
+with which he was not less deadly among the salmon of the Spey than among
+the grouse of Benaigen. His relative, old Lord Saltoun, was hard put to it
+once in the "Lady's How" with a thirty-pound salmon which he had hooked
+foul, and which, in its full vigour, was taking all manner of liberties
+with him, making spring after spring clean out of the water. The beast was
+so rebellious and strong that the old lord found it harder to contend with
+than with the Frenchmen who fought so stoutly with him for the possession
+of Hougomont. The Colonel, fowling-piece in hand, was watching the
+struggle, and seeing that Lord Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited
+his opportunity when the big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring,
+and, firing in the nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail,
+hardly marking it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river
+with cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now
+considered rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines,
+not in greed for fish but for the sake of the shooting practice they
+afforded him. When the hooked fish were struggling and in their struggles
+showing their tails out of water, he several times shot two right and left
+breaking the spine in each case close to the tail.
+
+The Colonel was succeeded by his brother, who had been a planter in
+Jamaica before coming to the estate on the death of his brother. Hardly
+was he home when he contested the county unsuccessfully on the old
+never-say-die Protectionist platform against the father of the present
+Duke of Fife; on the first polling-day of which contest I acquired a black
+eye and a bloody nose in the market square of a local village at the hands
+of some gutter lads, with whose demand that I should take the Tory rosette
+out of my bonnet I had declined to comply. Later, this gentleman became an
+assiduous fisher of men as a lay preacher, but he was as keen after salmon
+as he was after sinners. He hooked and played--and gaffed--the largest
+salmon I have ever heard of being caught in Spey by an angler--a fish
+weighing forty-six pounds. The actual present laird of Arndilly is a lady,
+but in her son are perpetuated the fishing instincts of his forbears.
+
+My reminiscences of Spey and Speyside are drawing to an end, and I now
+with natural diffidence approach a great theme. Every Speyside man will
+recognise from this exordium that I am about to treat of "Geordie." It is
+quite understood throughout lower Speyside that it is the moral support
+which Geordie accords to Craigellachie Bridge, in the immediate vicinity
+of which he lives, that chiefly maintains that structure; and that if he
+were to withdraw that support, its towers and roadway would incontinently
+collapse into the depths of the sullen pool spanned by the graceful
+erection. The best of men are not universally popular, and it must be said
+that there are those who cast on Geordie the aspersion of being "some
+thrawn," for which the equivalent in south-country language is perhaps "a
+trifle cross-grained." These, however, are envious people, who are jealous
+of Geordie's habitual association with lords and dukes, and who resent the
+trivial stiffness which is no doubt apparent in his manner to ordinary
+people for the first few days after the illustrious persons referred to
+have reluctantly permitted him to withdraw from them the light of his
+countenance. For my own part I have found Geordie, all things considered,
+to be wonderfully affable. That his tone is patronising I do not deny; but
+then there is surely a joy in being patronised by the factotum of a duke.
+
+I have never been quite sure, nor have I ever dared to ask Geordie,
+whether he considers the Duke to be his patron, or whether he regards
+himself as the patron of that eminent nobleman. From the "aucht-and-forty
+daugh" of Strathbogie to the Catholic Braes of Glenlivat where fifty years
+ago the "sma' stills" reeked in every moorland hollow, across to beautiful
+Kinrara and down Spey to the fertile Braes of Enzie, his Grace is the
+benevolent despot of a thriving tenantry who have good cause to regard him
+with esteem and gratitude. The Duke is a masterful man, whom no factor
+need attempt to lead by the nose; but on the margin of Spey, from the
+blush-red crags of Cairntie down to the head of tide water, he owns his
+centurion in Geordie, who taught him to throw his first line when already
+he was a minister of the Crown, and who, as regards aught appertaining to
+salmon fishing, saith unto his Grace, Do this and he doeth it.
+
+Geordie is a loyal subject, and when a few years ago he had the
+opportunity of seeing Her Majesty during her momentary halt at Elgin
+station, he paid her the compliment of describing her as a "sonsie wife."
+But the heart-loyalty of the honest fellow goes out in all its tender yet
+imperious fulness towards the Castle family, to most of the members of
+which, of both sexes, he has taught the science and practice of killing
+salmon. Hint the faintest shadow of disparagement of any member of that
+noble and worthy house, and you make a life enemy of Geordie. On no other
+subject is he particularly touchy, save one--the gameness and vigour of
+the salmon of Spey. Make light of the fighting virtues of Spey fish--exalt
+above them the horn of the salmon of Tay, Ness, or Tweed--and Geordie
+loses his temper on the instant and overwhelms you with the strongest
+language. There is a tradition that among Geordie's remote forbears was
+one of Cromwell's Ironsides who on the march from Aberdeen to Inverness
+fell in love with a Speyside lass of the period, and who, abandoning his
+Ironside appellation of "Hew-Agag-in-Pieces," adopted the surname which
+Geordie now bears. This strain of ancestry may account for Geordie's
+smooth yet peremptory skill as a disciplinarian. It devolves upon him
+during the rod-fishing season to assign to each person of the fishing
+contingent his or her particular stretch of water, and to tell off to each
+as guide one of his assistant attendants.
+
+It is a great treat to find Geordie in a garrulous humour and to listen to
+one of his salmon-fishing stories, told always in the broadest of
+north-country Doric. His sense of humour is singularly keen,
+notwithstanding that he is a Scot; and it is not in his nature to minimise
+his own share in the honour and glory of the incident he may relate. One
+of Geordie's stories is vividly in my recollection, and may appropriately
+conclude my reminiscences of Speyside and its folk. There was a stoup of
+"Benrinnes" on the mantelpiece and a free-drawing pipe in Geordie's mouth.
+His subject was the one on which he can be most eloquent--an incident of
+the salmon-fishing season, on which the worthy man delivered himself as
+follows:--
+
+"Twa or three seasons back I was attendin' Leddy Carline whan she was
+fushin' that gran' pool at the brig o' Fochabers. She's a fine fusher,
+Leddy Carline: faith, she may weel be, for I taucht her mysel'. She hookit
+a saumon aboot the midst o' the pool, an' for a while it gied gran' sport;
+loupin' and tumblin', an' dartin' up the watter an' doon the watter at sic
+a speed as keepit her leddyship muvin' gey fast tae keep abriesht o't.
+Weel, this kin' o' wark, an' a ticht line, began for tae tak' the spunk
+oot o' the saumon, an' I was thinkin' it was a quieston o' a few meenits
+whan I wad be in him wi' the gaff; but my birkie, near han' spent though
+he was, had a canny bit dodge up the sleeve o' him. He made a bit whamlin'
+run, an' deil tak' me gin he didna jam himself intil a neuk atween twa
+rocks, an' there the dour beggar bade an' sulkit. Weel, her leddyship
+keepit aye a steady drag on him, an' she gied him the butt wi' power; but
+she cudna get the beast tae budge--no, nae sae muckle as the breadth o' my
+thoomb-nail. Deil a word said Leddy Carline tae me for a gey while, as she
+vrought an' vrought tae gar the saumon quit his neuk. But she cam nae
+speed wi' him; an' at last she says, says she, 'Geordie, I can make
+nothing of him: what in the world is to be done?' 'Gie him a shairp upward
+yark, my leddy,' says I; 'there canna be muckle strength o' resistance
+left in him by this time!' Weel, she did as I tellt her--I will say this
+for Leddy Carline, that she's aye biddable. But, rugg her hardest, the
+fush stuck i' the neuk as gin he waur a bit o' the solid rock, an' her
+leddyship was becomin' gey an' exhaustit. 'Take the rod yourself,
+Geordie,' says she, 'and try what you can do; I freely own the fish is too
+many for me.' Weel, I gruppit the rod, an' I gied a shairp, steady, upward
+drag; an' up the brute cam, clean spent. He hadna been sulkin' aifter aa';
+he had been fairly wedged atween the twa rocks, for whan I landit him, lo
+an' behold! he was bleedin' like a pig, an' there was a muckle gash i' the
+side o' him, that the rock had torn whan I draggit him by main force up
+an' oot. The taikle was stoot, ye'll obsairve, or else he be tae hae
+broken me; but tak' my word for't, Geordie is no the man for tae lippen
+tae feckless taikle.
+
+"Weel, I hear maist things; an' I was tellt that same nicht hoo at the
+denner-table Leddy Carline relatit the haill adventur', an' owned, fat was
+true aneuch, that the fush had fairly bestit her. Weel, amo' the veesitors
+at the Castle was the Dowager Leddy Breadanham; an' it seemed that whan
+Leddy Carline was through wi' her narrateeve, the dowager be tae gie a
+kin' o' a scornfu' sniff an' cock her neb i' the air; an' she said, wha
+but she, that she didna hae muckle opingin o' Leddy Carline as a saumon
+fisher, an' that she hersel' didna believe there was a fush in the run o'
+Spey that she cudna get the maistery ower. That was a gey big word, min'
+ye; it's langidge I wadna venture for tae make use o' mysel', forbye a
+south-countra dowager.
+
+"Weel, I didna say muckle; but, my faith, like the sailor's paurot, I
+thoucht a deevil o' a lot. The honour o' Spey was in my hauns, an' it
+behuvit me for tae hummle the pride o' her dowager leddyship. The morn's
+mornin' cam, an' by that time I had decided on my plan o' operautions. By
+guid luck I fand the dowager takin' her stroll afore brakfast i' the
+floor-gairden. I ups till her, maks my boo, an' says I, unco canny an'
+respectfu', 'My leddy, ye'll likely be for the watter the day?' She said
+she was, so says I, 'Weel, my leddy, I'll be prood for tae gae wi' ye
+mysel', an' I'll no fail tae reserve for ye as guid water as there is in
+the run o' Spey!' She was quite agreeable, an' so we sattlit it.
+
+"The Duke himsel' was oot on the lawn whan I was despatchin' the ither
+fushin' folk, ilk ane wi' his or her fisherman kerryin' the rod.
+'Geordie,' said his Grace, 'with whom will you be going yourself?' 'Wi'
+the Dowager Leddy Breadanham, yer Grace!' says I. 'And where do you think
+of taking her ladyship, Geordie?' speers he. 'N'odd, yer Grace,' says I,
+'I am sattlin in my min' for tae tak' the leddy tae the "Brig o'
+Fochabers" pool;' an' wi' that I gied a kin' o' a respectfu' half-wink.
+The Duke was no' the kin' o' man for tae wink back, for though he's aye
+grawcious, he's aye dignifeed; but there was a bit flichter o' humour
+roun' his mou' whan he said, says he, 'I think that will do very well,
+Geordie!'
+
+"Praesently me an' her leddyship startit for the 'Brig o' Fochabers' pool.
+She cud be vera affauble whan she likit, I'll say that muckle for the
+dowager; an' me an' her newsed quite couthie-like as we traivellt. I
+saftened tae her some, I frankly own; but than my hert hardent again whan
+I thoucht o' the duty I owed tae Spey an' tae Leddy Carline. Of coorse
+there was a chance that my scheme wad miscairry; but there's no a man on
+Spey frae Tulchan tae the Tug Net that kens the natur' o' saumon better
+nor mysel'. They're like sheep--fat ane daes, the tithers will dae; an'
+gin the dowager hookit a fush, I hadna muckle doobt fat that fush wad dae.
+The dowager didna keep me vera lang in suspense. I had only chyngt her fly
+ance, an' she had maist fushed doon the pool a secont time, whan in the
+ripple o' watter at the head o' the draw abune the rapid a fush took her
+'Riach' wi' a greedy sook, an' the line was rinnin' oot as gin there had
+been a racehorse at the far end o't, the saumon careerin' up the pool like
+a flash in the clear watter. The dowager was as fu' o' life as was the
+fush. Odd, but she kent brawly hoo tae deal wi' her saumon--that I will
+say for her! There was nae need for me tae bide closs by the side o' a
+leddy that had boastit there was na a fush in Spey she cudna maister, sae
+I clamb up the bank, sat doun on ma doup on a bit hillock, an' took the
+leeberty o' lichtin' ma pipe. Losh! but that dowager spanged up an' doun
+the waterside among the stanes aifter that game an' lively fush; an'
+troth, but she was as souple wi' her airms as wi' her legs; for, rinnin'
+an' loupin' an' spangin' as she was, she aye managed for tae keep her line
+ticht. It was a dooms het day, an' there wasna a ruffle o' breeze; sae nae
+doobt the fush was takin' as muckle oot o' her as she was takin' oot o'
+the fush. In aboot ten meenits there happent juist fat I had expectit. The
+fush made a sidelins shoot, an' dairted intil the vera crevice occupeed by
+Leddy Carline's fush the day afore. 'Noo for the fun!' thinks I, as I sat
+still an' smokit calmly. She was certently a perseverin' wummun, that
+dowager--there was nae device she didna try wi' that saumon tae force him
+oot o' the cleft. Aifter aboot ten meenits mair o' this wark, she shot at
+me ower her shouther the obsairve, 'Isn't it an obstinate wretch?' 'Aye,'
+says I pawkily, 'he's gey dour; but he's only a Spey fush, an' of coorse
+ye'll maister him afore ye've dune wi' him!' I'm thinkin' she unnerstude
+the insinivation, for she uttert deil anither word, but yokit tee again
+fell spitefu' tae rug an' yark at the sulkin' fush. At last, tae mak a
+lang story short, she was fairly dune. 'Geordie,' says she waikly, 'the
+beast has quite worn me out! I'm fit to melt--there is no strength left in
+me; here, come and take the rod!' Weel, I deleeberately raise, poocht ma
+pipe, an' gaed doun aside her. 'My leddy,' says I, quite solemn, an'
+luikin' her straucht i' the face--haudin' her wi' my ee, like--'I hae been
+tellt fat yer leddyship said yestreen, that there wasna a saumon in Spey
+ye cudna maister. Noo, I speer this at yer leddyship--respectfu' but
+direck; div ye admit yersel clean bestit--fairly lickit wi' that fush,
+Spey fush though it be? Answer me that, my leddy!' 'I do own myself
+beaten,' says she, 'and I retract my words.' 'Say nae mair, yer
+leddyship!' says I--for I'm no a cruel man--'say nae mair, but maybe ye'll
+hae the justice for tae say a word tae the same effeck in the Castle whaur
+ye spak yestreen?' 'I promise you I will,' said the dowager--'here, take
+the rod!' Weel, it was no sae muckle a fush as was Leddy Carline's. I had
+it oot in a few meenits, an' by that time the dowager was sae far revived
+that she was able to bring it in aboot tae the gaff; an' sae, in the
+hinner end, she in a sense maistert the fush aifter aa'. But I'm thinkin'
+she will be gey cautious in the futur' aboot belittlin' the smeddum o'
+Spey saumon!"
+
+
+
+
+THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
+
+
+The traveller up the country from Calcutta does not speedily reach places
+the names of which vividly recall the episodes of the great Mutiny. It is
+a chance if, as the train passes Dinapore, he remembers the defection of
+the Sepoy brigade stationed there which Koer Singh seduced from its
+allegiance. Arrah may possibly recall a dim memory of Wake's splendid
+defence of Boyle's bungalow and of Vincent Eyre's dashingly executed
+relief of the indomitable garrison. Benares is a little off the main line--
+Benares, on the parade ground of which Neill first put down that
+peremptory foot of his, where Olpherts was so quick with those guns of
+his, and where Jim Ellicott did his grim work with noose and cross-beam
+until long after the going down of the summer sun. But when the
+traveller's eye first rests on the gray ramparts of Akbar's hoary fortress
+in the angle where the Ganges and the Jumna meet and blend one with
+another, the reality of the Mutiny begins to impress itself upon him.
+Allahabad was the scene of a terrible tragedy; it was also the point of
+departure whence Havelock set forward on Cawnpore with his column, not
+indeed of rescue, but of retribution. The journey from Allahabad to
+Cawnpore, although perchance performed in the night, is not one to be
+slept through by any student of the story of the great rebellion. The
+Indian moon pours her flood of light on the little knoll hard by
+Futtehpore, where Havelock stood when Jwala Pershad's first round shot
+came lobbing, through his staff in among the camp kettles of the 64th.
+That village beyond the mango tope is Futtehpore itself, whence the rebel
+sowars swept headlong down the trunk road till Maude's guns gave them the
+word to halt. The pools are dry now through which, when Hamilton's voice
+had rung out the order--"Forward, at the double!" the light company of the
+Ross-shire Buffs splashed recklessly past the abandoned Sepoy guns, in
+their race with the grenadier company of the 64th that had for its goal
+the Pandy barricade outside the village. In that cluster of mud huts--its
+name is Aoong--the gallant Rénaud fell with a shattered thigh, as he led
+his "Lambs" up to the _épaulement_ which covered its front. One fight a
+day is fair allowance anywhere, but those fellows whom Havelock led were
+gluttons for fighting. Spanning that deep rugged nullah there, down which
+the Pandoo flows turbulently in the rainy season, is the bridge across
+which in the afternoon of the morning of Aoong, Stephenson with his
+Fusiliers dashed into the Sepoy battery and bayoneted the gunners before
+they could make up their minds to run away. And it was in the gray morning
+following the day of that double battle (the 15th of July) that the
+General, having heard for the first time that there were still alive in
+Cawnpore a number of women and children who had escaped the massacre of
+the boats, told his men what he knew. "With God's help," shouted Havelock,
+with a break in his voice that was like a sob, as he stood with his hat
+off and his hand on his sword--"with God's help, men, we will save them,
+or every man die in the attempt!" One answer came back in a great cheer;
+but a sadder answer to the aspiration, a bitter truth that made that
+aspiration futile and hopeless, had lain ever since the evening of the day
+before in the Beebeegur, and almost as the chief was speaking the Well was
+receiving its dead inmates. Where the train begins to slacken its pace on
+approaching the station, it is passing over the field of the first--the
+creditable--battle of Cawnpore. Fresh from the butchery Nana Sahib
+(Dhoondoo Punth) himself had come out to aid in the last stand against the
+avengers. Yonder is the mango tope which formed the screen for Hamilton's
+turning movement. It needs little imagination to recall the scene. Close
+by, at the cross-roads, stands the Sepoy battery, and those horsemen still
+nearer are reconnoitring sowars. Beyond the road the Highlanders are
+deploying on the plain as they clear the sheltering flank of the mango
+trees, amidst a grim silence broken only by the crash of the bursting
+shells and the cries of the bullock-drivers as the guns rattle on to open
+fire from the reverse flank. The flush rises in Hamilton's face and the
+eyes of him begin to sparkle, as he shouts "Ross-shire Buffs, wheel into
+line!" and then "Forward!" Quick as lightning the trails of the Sepoy guns
+are swung round and shot and shell come crashing through the ranks, while
+the rebel infantry, with a swiftness which speaks well for their British
+drill, show a front against this inroad on their flank. In silent grim
+imperturbability the Highland line stalks steadily on with the long
+springy step to be learned only on the heather. Now they are within eighty
+yards of the muzzles of the guns, and they can see the colour of the
+mustaches of the men plying and supporting them. Then Hamilton, with his
+sword in the air and his face all ablaze with the fighting blood in him,
+turns round in the saddle, shouts "Charge!" and bids the pipers to strike
+up. Wild and shrill bursts over that Indian plain the rude notes of the
+Northern music. But louder yet, drowning them and the roll of the
+artillery, rings out that Highland war-cry that has so often presaged
+victory to British arms. The Ross-shire men are in and over the guns ere
+the gunners have time to drop their lint-stocks and ramming-rods; they
+fall with bayonets at the charge upon the supporting infantry, and the
+supporting infantry go down where they huddle together, lacking the
+opportunity to break and run away in time. But the battle rages all day,
+and the white soldiers, as they fight their way slowly forward, hear the
+bursts of military music that greet the Nana as he moves from place to
+place, _not_ in the immediate front. Barrow and his handful of cavalry
+volunteers crash into the thick of them with the informal order to his
+men, "Give point, lads; damn cuts and guards." Young Havelock, mounted by
+the side of the gallant and ill-fated Stirling trudging forward on foot,
+brings the 64th on at the double against the great 24-pounder on the
+Cawnpore road that is vomiting grape at point-blank range. The night falls
+and the battle ceases, but among the wearied fighting men there is none of
+the elation of victory; for through the ranks, after the going down of the
+sun, had throbbed the bruit, originating no one knew where, that the women
+and children in Cawnpore had been butchered on the afternoon of the day
+before, while Stephenson and his Fusiliers were carrying the bridge of the
+Pandoo Nuddee.
+
+The railway station of Cawnpore is distant more than a mile from the
+cantonment. Close to the road and not far from the station, the explorer
+easily finds the massive pile of the "Savada House," now allotted as
+residences for railway officials. English children play now in the
+corridors once thronged by the minions of the Nana, for here were his
+headquarters during part of the siege. Its verandas all day long were full
+of ministers, diviners, courtiers, and creatures. Here strolled the
+supple, panther-like Azimoolah, the self-asserted favourite of home
+society in the pre-Mutiny days. Teeka Sing, the Nana's war minister, had
+his "bureau" in a tent under the peepul tree there. In that other clump of
+trees, where an ayah is tickling a white baby into laughter, was the
+pavilion of the Nana himself, who inherited the Mahratta preference for
+canvas over bricks and mortar. And here, while the crackle of the musketry
+fire and the din of the big guns came softened on the ear by distance, sat
+the adopted son of the Peishwa while Jwala Pershad came for orders about
+the cavalry, and Bala Rao, his brother, explained his devices for
+harassing the sahibs, and Tantia Topee, Hoolass Sing, Azimoolah, and the
+Nana himself devised the scheme of the treachery. But the Savada House has
+even a more lurid interest than this. Hither the women and children whom
+an unkind fate had spared from dying with the men were brought back from
+the Ghaut of Slaughter. You may see the two rooms into which 125
+unfortunates were huddled after that march from before the presence of one
+death into the presence of another. As they plodded past the intrenchment
+so long held, and across the plain to the Nana's pavilion, "I saw," says a
+spectator, "that many of the ladies were wounded. Their clothes had blood
+upon them. Two were badly hurt and had their heads bound up with
+handkerchiefs; some were wet, covered with mud and blood, and some had
+their dresses torn; but all had clothes. I saw one or two children without
+clothes. There were no men in the party, but only some boys of twelve or
+thirteen. Some of the ladies were barefoot." Hither, too, were sent later
+the women of that detachment of the garrison which had got off from the
+ghaut in the boat defended by Vibart, Ashe, Delafosse, Bolton, Moore, and
+Thomson, and which had been captured at Nuzzufghur by Baboo Ram Bux. It
+had been for those people a turbulent departure from the Suttee Chowra
+Ghaut, but it was a yet more fearful returning. "They were brought back,"
+testified a spy; "sixty sahibs, twenty-five memsahibs, and four children.
+The Nana ordered the sahibs to be separated from the memsahibs, and shot
+by the 1st Bengal Native Infantry.... 'Then,' said one of the memsahibs,
+'I will not leave my husband. If he must die I will die with him.' So she
+ran and sat down behind her husband, clasping him round the waist.
+Directly she said this, the other memsahibs said, 'We also will die with
+our husbands,' and they all sat down each by her husband. Then their
+husbands said, 'Go back,' and they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered
+his soldiers, and they went in, pulling them forcibly away." ...
+
+The drive from the railway station to the European cantonments is pleasant
+and shaded. At a bend in the road there comes into view a broad, flat,
+treeless parade ground. This plain lies within a circle of foliage, above
+which, on the south-eastern side, rise the balconies and flat tops of a
+long range of barracks built in detached blocks, while around the rest of
+the circle the trees shade the bungalows of the cantonment. Near the
+centre of this level space there is an irregular enclosure defined by a
+shallow sunk wall and low quickset hedge, and in the middle of this
+enclosure rises the ornate and not wholly satisfactory structure known as
+the "Memorial Church." It is built on the site of the old dragoon
+hospital, which was the very focus of the agony of the siege. It is
+impossible to analyse the mingled emotions of amazement, pride, pity,
+wrath, and sorrow which fill the visitor to this shrine of British valour,
+endurance, and constancy. The heart swells and the eyes fill as one,
+standing here with all the arena of the heroism lying under one's eyes,
+recalls the episodes of the glorious, piteous story. The blood stirs when
+one remembers the buoyant valour of the gallant Moore, who, "wherever he
+passed, left men something more courageous and women something less
+unhappy," the reckless audacity of Ashe, the cool daring of Delafosse, the
+deadly rifle of Stirling, the heroic devotion of Jervis. And a great lump
+grows in the throat when one bethinks him of the beautiful constancy and
+fearful sufferings of the women; of British ladies going barefoot and
+giving up their stockings as cases for grape-shot; of Mrs. Moore's
+journeys across to No. 2 Barrack; of the hapless gentlewomen, "unshod,
+unkempt, ragged, and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with drought,
+and faint with hunger, sitting waiting to hear that they were widows." And
+what a place it was which the garrison had to defend! Not a foot of all
+the space bomb-proof, an apology for an intrenchment such as "an active
+cow might jump over." The imagination has to do much work here, for most
+of the landmarks are gone. The outline of the world-famous earthwork is
+almost wholly obliterated; only in places is it to be dimly recognised by
+brick-discoloured lines, and a low raised line on the smooth _maidan_. The
+enclosure now existing has no reference to the outlines of the
+intrenchment. That enclosure merely surrounds the graveyard, in the midst
+of which stands the "Memorial Church," a structure that cannot be
+commended from an architectural point of view. But the space enclosed
+around its gaunt red walls is pregnant with painful interest. We come
+first on a railed-in memorial tomb, bearing an inscription in raised
+letters, on a cross let into the tessellated pavement: "In three graves
+within this enclosure lie the remains of Major Edward Vibart, 2nd Bengal
+Cavalry, and about seventy officers and soldiers, who, after escaping from
+the massacre at Cawnpore on the 27th June 1857, were captured by the
+rebels at Sheorapore, and murdered on the 1st July." The inmates of these
+graves were originally buried elsewhere, and were removed hither when the
+enclosure was formed. In another part of the enclosure is a raised tomb,
+the slab of which bears the inscription: "This stone marks a spot which
+lay within Wheeler's intrenchment, and covers the remains and is sacred to
+the memory of those who were the first to meet their death when
+beleaguered by mutineers and rebels in June 1857." Two only lie in this
+grave, Mr. Murphy and a lady who died of fever. These two perished on the
+first day of the siege and had the exclusive privilege of being decently
+interred within the precincts of the intrenchment. After the first day of
+the siege there was scant leisure for funeral rites. To find the last
+resting-place of the remaining dead of this siege, we must quit the
+enclosure and walk across the _maidan_ to a spot among the trees by the
+roadside under the shadow of No. 4 Barrack. There was an empty well here
+when the siege begun; three weeks after, when the siege ended, this well
+contained the bodies of 250 British people. With daylight the battle raged
+around that sepulchre, but when the night came the slain of the day were
+borne thither with stealthy step and scant attendance. Now the well is
+filled up, and above it, inside a small ornamental enclosure formed by
+iron railings, there rises a monument which bears the following
+inscription: "In a well under this enclosure were laid by the hands of
+their fellows in suffering the bodies of men, women, and children, who
+died hard by during the heroic defence of Wheeler's intrenchment when
+beleaguered by the rebel Nana." Below the inscription is this apposite
+quotation from Psalm cxli. 7: "Our bones are scattered at the grave's
+mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. But mine eyes
+are unto Thee, O God the Lord." At the corners of the flower-plot are
+small crosses bearing individual names. One commemorates Sir George
+Parker, the cantonment magistrate; a second, Captain Jenkins; a third,
+Lieutenant Saunders and the men of the 84th Regiment; a fourth, Lieutenant
+Glanville and the men of the Madras Fusiliers; and here, too, lies
+stout-hearted yet tender-hearted John MacKillop of the Civil Service the
+hero of another well, that from which the team of buffaloes are now
+drawing water to make the mortar for the Memorial Church. Thence was
+procured the water for the garrison and it was a target also for the rebel
+artillery, so that the appearance of a man with a pitcher by day and by
+night the creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower of grape.
+But John MacKillop, "not being a fighting-man," made himself useful as he
+modestly put it, for a week as captain of the Well, till a grape-shot sent
+him to that other well thence never to return.
+
+The Memorial Church is in the form of a cross, and now that it has been
+finished is not destitute of beauty as regards its interior. Perhaps it is
+in place, but the noblest monument that could commemorate Cawnpore would
+have been the maintenance, for the wonder of the world unto all time, of
+the intrenchment and what it surrounded, as nearly as possible in the
+condition in which they were left on the evacuation of the garrison. The
+grandest monument in the world is the Residency of Lucknow, which remains
+and is kept up substantially in the condition in which it was left when
+Sir Colin Campbell brought out its garrison in November 1857; and the
+Cawnpore intrenchment would have been a still nobler memorial as the
+abiding testimony to a defence even more wonderful, although unfortunately
+unsuccessful, than that of Lucknow. But the Memorial Church of Cawnpore
+will always be interesting by reason of its site and of the memorial
+tablets on the walls of its interior. In the left transept is a tablet "To
+the memory of the Engineers of the East Indian Railway, who died and were
+killed in the great insurrection of 1857; erected in affectionate
+remembrance by their brother Engineers in the North-West Provinces." On
+the left side of the nave are several tablets. One is to the memory of
+poor young John Nicklen Martin, killed in the battle at Suttee Chowra
+Ghaut. Another commemorates three officers, two sergeants, two corporals,
+a drummer, and twenty privates of the 34th Regiment, killed at the
+(second) Battle of Cawnpore on the 28th November 1857; the day on which
+the Gwalior Contingent, seduced into rebellion by Tantia Topee, made
+itself so unpleasant to General Windham, the "Cawnpore Runners," and other
+regiments of that officer's command. A third tablet is "To the memory of
+A.G. Chalwin, 2nd Light Cavalry, and his wife Louisa, who both perished
+during the siege of Cawnpore in July 1857. These are they which came out
+of great tribulation." A fourth commemorates Captain Gordon and Lieutenant
+Hensley, of the 82nd Foot, also victims of the Gwalior Contingent. In the
+right of the nave there is a tablet "Sacred to the memory of Philip Hayes
+Jackson, who, with Jane, his wife, and her brother Ralf Blyth Croker, were
+massacred by rebels at Cawnpore on 27th June." Another is to Lieutenant
+Angelo, of the 16th Grenadiers Bengal Native Infantry, who also fell in
+the boat massacre; and a third is to the memory of the gallant Stuart
+Beatson, who was Havelock's adjutant-general, and who, dying as he was of
+cholera, did his work at Pandoo Nuddee and Cawnpore in a _dhoolie_. In the
+right transept are tablets in memory of the officers of the Connaught
+Rangers, and of the officers and men of the 32nd Cornwall Regiment "who
+fell in defence of Lucknow and Cawnpore and subsequent campaign"--fourteen
+officers and 448 "women and men." And here, too, is perhaps the most
+affecting memorial of any--a tablet "In memory of Mrs. Moore, Mrs.
+Wainwright, Miss Wainwright, Mrs. Hill, forty-three soldiers' wives and
+fifty-five children, murdered in Cawnpore in 1857."
+
+It is easy enough now to follow the footsteps of Mrs. Moore, dangerous as
+was that journey of hers, from the intrenchment to the corner of No. 2
+Barrack, which she was wont to make when her husband went on duty there to
+strengthen the hands of Mowbray Thomson. There is no trace now and the
+very memory of its whereabouts is lost, of the bamboo hut in a sheltered
+corner which the garrison of this exposed post built for the brave
+gentlewoman. But No. 2 Barrack, except that it is finished and tenanted,
+stands now very much as it did when Glanville first, and when he fell then
+Mowbray Thomson, defended with a success which seems so wonderful when we
+look at the place defended and its situation. The garrison was not always
+the same. "My sixteen men," writes Thomson, "consisted in the first
+instance of Ensign Henderson of the 56th Native Infantry, five or six of
+the Madras Fusiliers, two plate-layers, and some men of the 84th. The
+first instalment was soon disabled. The Madras Fusiliers were all shot at
+their posts. Several of the 84th also fell, but in consequence of the
+importance of the position, as soon as a loss in my little corps was
+reported, Captain Moore sent us over a reinforcement from the
+intrenchment. Sometimes a soldier, sometimes a civilian, came. The orders
+given us were not to surrender with our lives, and we did our best to obey
+them." And in a line with No. 2 Barrack is No. 4 Barrack, held with equal
+stanchness by a party of Civil Engineers who had been employed on the East
+Indian Railroad, and who had for their commander Captain Jenkins. Seven of
+the engineers perished in defence of this post.
+
+There is nothing more to see on the _maidan_, and one feels his anger
+rising at the obliteration of everything that might help towards the
+localisation of associations. Let us leave the scene of the defence and
+follow the track of the defenders as they marched down to the scene of the
+great treachery. The distance from the intrenchment to the ghaut is barely
+a mile. Think of that stirrup-cup--that _doch an dhorras_--of cold water,
+in which the hapless band pledged one another. The noble Moore cheerily
+leads the way down the slope to the bridge with the white rails with an
+advance guard of a handful of his 32nd men. The palanquins with the women,
+the children, and the wounded follow, the latter bandaged up with strips
+of women's gowns and petticoats, and fragments of shirt-sleeves. And then
+come the fighting-men--a gallant, ragged, indomitable band. A martinet
+colonel would stand aghast--for save a regimental button here and there,
+he would find it hard to recognise the gaunt, hairy, sun-scorched squad
+for British soldiers. But let who might incline to disown these few
+war-worn men in their dirty flannel rags and fragmentary nankeen breeches,
+their foes know them for what they are, and make way for the white sahibs
+with no dressing indeed in their ranks, but each man with his rifle on his
+shoulder, the deadly revolver in his belt, and the fearless glance in the
+hollow eye. The wooden bridge with the white rails spans at right angles a
+rough irregular glen which widens out as it approaches the river, some
+three hundred yards distant from the bridge. It is a mere footpath that
+leaves the road on the hither side of the bridge, and skirting the dry bed
+of the nullah touches the river close to the old temple. By this footpath
+it was that our countrymen and countrywomen passed down to the cruel
+ambush which had been laid for them in the mouth of the glen. There are
+few to whom the details of that fell scene are not familiar. What a
+contrast between the turmoil and devilry of it and the serene calmness of
+the all but solitude the ghaut now presents! On the knolls of the farther
+side snug bungalows nestle among the trees, under the veranda of one of
+which a lady is playing with her children. The village of Suttee Chowra on
+the bluff on the left of the ghaut, where Tantia Topee's sepoys were
+concealed, no longer exists; a pretty bungalow and its compound occupy its
+site. The little temple on the water's edge by the ghaut is slowly
+mouldering into decay; on the plaster of the coping of its river wall you
+may still see the marks of the treacherous bullets. The stair which, built
+against its wall, led down to the water's edge, has disappeared. Tantia
+Topee's dispositions for the perpetration of the treachery could not now
+succeed, for the Ganges has changed its course and there is deep water
+close in shore at the ghaut. In the stream nearest to the Oude side the
+river has cast up a long narrow dearah island, in the fertile mud of which
+melons are cultivated where once whistled the shot from the guns on the
+Oude side of the river. A Brahmin priest is placidly sunning himself on
+the river platform of the temple over the dome of which hangs the foliage
+of a peepul tree. A dhobie is washing the shirts of a sahib in the stream
+that once was dyed with the blood of the sahibs. There is no monument
+here, no superfluous reminder of the terrible tragedy. The man is not to
+be envied whose eyes are dry, and whose heart beats its normal pulsations,
+while he stands here alone on this spot so densely peopled by associations
+at once so tragic and so glorious.
+
+The scene of the final massacre lies some distance higher up the river. As
+we cross the Ganges canal, the native city lying on our left, there rises
+up before us the rich mass of foliage that forms the outer screen of the
+beautiful Memorial Gardens. The hue of the greenery would be sombre but
+for the blossoms which relieve it, emblem of the divine hope which
+mitigated the gloom of despair for our countrywomen who perished so
+cruelly in this balefully historic spot. Of the Beebeeghur, the term by
+which among the natives is known the bungalow where the massacre was
+perpetrated, not one stone now remains on another but neither its memory
+nor its name will be lost for all time. Natives are strolling in the shady
+flower-bordered walks of the Memorial Gardens, the prohibition which long
+debarred their entrance having been wisely removed. In the centre of the
+garden rises, fringed with cypresses, a low mound, the summit of which is
+crowned by a circular screen, or border, of light and beautiful open-work
+architecture. The circular space enclosed is sunken, and from the centre
+of this sunken space there rises a pedestal on which stands the marble
+presentment of an angel. There is no need to explain what episode in the
+tragic story this monument commemorates; the inscription round the capital
+of the pedestal tells its tale succinctly indeed, but the words burn.
+"Sacred," it runs, "to the perpetual memory of the great company of
+Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were
+cruelly massacred by the followers of the rebel, Nana Doondoo Punth of
+Blithoor; and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the
+15th day of July 1857." A few paces to the north-west of the monument is
+the spot where stood the bungalow in which the massacre was done; and now,
+where the sight they saw maddened our countrymen long ago to a frenzy of
+revenge, there bloom roses and violets. And a step farther on, in a
+thicket of arbor vitae trees and cypresses, is the Memorial Churchyard,
+with its many nameless mounds, for here were buried not a few who died
+during the long occupation of Cawnpore, and in the combats around it. Here
+there is a monument to Thornhill, the Judge of Futtehghur, Mary his wife,
+and their two children, who perished in the massacre. Thornhill was one of
+the males brought out from the bungalow and shot earlier in the afternoon
+than when the women's time came. Another monument bears this inscription:
+"Sacred to the memory of the women and children of the 32nd, this monument
+is raised by twenty men of the same regiment, who were passing through
+Cawnpore, 21st Nov. 1857." And among the tombstones are those of gallant
+Douglas Campbell of the 78th, Woodford of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade,
+and Young of the 4th Bengal Native Infantry.
+
+
+
+
+BISMARCK
+
+BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
+
+
+The ex-Chancellor of the German Empire owed nothing of his unique career
+to adventitious advantages. Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who for more
+than a generation was the most prominent and most powerful personality of
+Europe, was essentially a self-made man. He was a younger son of a cadet
+family of a knightly and ancient but somewhat decayed house, ranking among
+the lesser nobility of the Alt Mark of Brandenburg. The square solid
+mansion in which he was born, embowered among its trees in the region
+between the Elbe and the Havel, might be taken by an Englishman for the
+country residence of a Norfolk or Somersetshire squire of moderate
+fortune. But memories cling around the massive old family place of
+Schoenhausen, such as can belong to no English residence of equal date. In
+the library door of the Brandenburg mansion are seen to this day three
+deep fissures made by the bayonet points of French soldiers fresh from the
+battlefield of Jena, who in their brutal lawlessness pursued the young and
+beautiful chatelaine of the house and strove to crush in the door which
+the fugitive had locked behind her. The lady thus terrified and outraged
+was the mother of Bismarck; and the story told him in boyhood of his loved
+mother's narrow escape from worse than death, and of his father's having
+to conceal her in the depth of the adjoining forest, may well have
+inspired their son with the ill-feeling against the French nation which he
+never cared to disguise.
+
+The Bismarcks had been fighting men from time immemorial, and the
+combatant nature of the great scion of their race displayed itself in
+frequent duels during his university career at Göttingen. In the series of
+some eight-and-twenty duels in which he engaged during his first three
+terms, he was wounded but twice--once in the leg and again on the cheek,
+the mark of which latter wound he bears to this day. At one time he seems
+to have all but decided to embrace the military career but for family
+reasons he became a country gentleman, and if Europe had remained
+undisturbed by revolution he might have lived and died a bucolic squire,
+"Dyke Captain" of his district, with a seat in the Provincial Diet, a
+liking for history and philosophy, a propensity to rowdyism and drinking
+bouts of champagne and porter, and a character which defined itself in his
+local appellation of "Mad Bismarck." _Dis aliter visum_. The Revolution of
+1848 swept over Europe and Bismarck rallied to the support of his
+sovereign. When in 1851 the young Landwehr lieutenant was sent to
+Frankfort by that sovereign as the representative of Prussia in the German
+Diet, he carried with him a reputation for unflinching devotion to the
+Crown, for a conservatism which had been styled not only "mediaeval" but
+"antediluvian," and for startling originality in his views as well as
+fearlessness in expressing them. The latter attribute he displayed when,
+in reply to a remark of a French diplomat on a question of policy, "_Cette
+politique va vous conduire à Jena_," Bismarck significantly retorted,
+"_Pourquoi pas à Leipsic ou à Waterloo?_" During his tenure of office at
+Frankfort his conviction steadfastly strengthened that Prussia could
+become a great nation only by shaking herself free from the Austrian
+supremacy in Germany. "It is my conviction," he placed on record in a
+despatch soon after the Crimean War, "that at no distant time we shall
+have to fight with Austria for our very existence;" and he was yet more
+emphatic when he wrote just before leaving Frankfort to take up his new
+position as German Ambassador to Russia in the beginning of 1859: "I
+recognise in our relations with the Bund a certain weakness affecting
+Prussia, which, sooner or later, we shall have to cure _ferro et igni_"--
+with fire and sword--words which embodied the first distinct enunciation
+of that policy of "blood and iron" which was destined ultimately to bring
+about the unification of Germany. His disgust was so strong that Prussia
+did not assert herself against Austria in 1858 when the latter's hands
+were full in Italy, that his continued presence at Frankfort was
+considered unadvisable. He remained "in ice"--to use his own expression--
+at St. Petersburg until early in 1862; and in September of that year,
+after a few months of service as Prussian Ambassador at Paris, he was
+appointed by King Wilhelm to the high and onerous post of
+Minister-President with the portfolio of Foreign Secretary. It was then
+that his great career as a European statesman really began.
+
+The impression is all but universal that King Wilhelm throughout the
+eventful years which followed was but the figure-head of the ship at the
+helm of which stood Bismarck, strong, shrewd, subtle, cynical, and
+unscrupulous. This conception I believe to be utterly wrong. I hold
+Wilhelm to have been the virtual maker of the united Germany and the
+creator of the German Empire; and that the accomplishment of both those
+objects, the former leading up to the latter, was already quietly in his
+mind long before he mounted the throne. I consider him to have possessed
+the shrewdest insight into character. I believe him to have been quite
+unscrupulous, when once he had brought himself to cross the threshold of a
+line of action. I discern in him this curious, although not very rare,
+phase of character, that although resolutely bent on a purpose he was apt
+to be irresolute and even reluctant in bringing himself to consent to
+measures whereby that purpose was to be accomplished. He was that apparent
+contradiction in terms, a bold hesitator; he habitually needed, and knew
+that he needed, to have his hand apparently forced for the achievement of
+the end he was most bent upon. He knew full well that his aspirations
+could be fulfilled only at the bayonet point; and recognising the defects
+of the army, he had while still Regent set himself energetically to the
+task of making Prussia the greatest military power of Europe. He it was
+who had put into the hands of Prussian soldiers the weapon that won
+Königgrätz. With his clear eye for the right man he had found Moltke and
+placed the premier strategist of his day at the head of the General Staff.
+Roon he picked out as if by intuition from comparative obscurity, and
+assigned to him the work of preparing and carrying out that scheme of army
+reform which all continental Europe has copied.
+
+And then, constant in the furtherance of his purposes, Wilhelm
+deliberately invented Bismarck. He had steadfastly taken note of the man
+whom he chose to be his minister from the big Landwehr lieutenant's first
+commission to the Frankfort Diet in 1851; probably, indeed, earlier, when
+Bismarck was a rare but forcible speaker in Frederick Wilhelm's
+"quasi-Parliament." In Bismarck Wilhelm saw precisely the man he wanted--
+the complement of himself; arbitrary as he was, unscrupulous as he was,
+but bolder and at the same time more wise. Knowing where he himself was
+lacking, he recognised the man who, when he himself should have the
+impulse to balk and hesitate, was of that hardier nature--"grit" the
+Americans call it--to take him hard by the head and force him over the
+fence which all the while he had been longing to be on the other side of.
+To a monarch of this character Bismarck was simply the ideal guide and
+support--the man to urge him on when hesitating, to restrain him when
+over-ardent. Wilhelm had all along thoroughly realised that war with
+Austria was among the inevitables between him and the accomplishment of
+his aims, and had accepted it as such when it was yet afar off; but when
+confronted full with it his nerve failed him, and Bismarck--engaged among
+other things for just such an emergency--had to act as the spur to prick
+the side of his master's intent. The spur having done its work Wilhelm was
+himself again; he really enjoyed Königgrätz and would fain have dictated
+peace to Austria from the Hofburg of Vienna. In his zeal for promoting
+German unity at Prussia's bayonet point he lost his head a little, and on
+Bismarck devolved, in his own words, "the ungrateful duty of diluting the
+wine of victory with the water of moderation." One of the beads on the
+surface of the former fluid was certainly thus early the Imperial idea;
+but the time for its fulfilment Bismarck wisely judged not yet ripe. As it
+approached four years later, the diary of the Crown Prince depicts with
+unconscious humour the amusing progress of the "weakening" of Wilhelm's
+opposition to the Kaisership; it weakened in good time quite out of the
+sort of existence it had ever had, and Wilhelm was ready for the
+Kaisership before the Kaisership was ready for him.
+
+Bismarck as Premier began as he meant to go on, with uncompromising
+masterfulness. The Chamber and the nation might probably have fallen in
+willingly with Wilhelm's scheme for the reorganisation and reinforcement
+of the army, had it been possible to divulge the intent in furtherance of
+which the increased armament was being created. But since neither monarch
+nor minister could even hint at the objects in view, the nation was set
+against that increased armament for which it could discern no apparent
+use. So the Chamber, session after session, went through the accustomed
+formula of rejecting the military reorganisation bill as well as the
+military expenditure estimates. "No surrender" was the steadfast motto of
+Bismarck and his royal master. The constitution, such as it was, in effect
+was suspended. The Upper House voted everything it was asked to vote;
+loans were duly effected, the revenues were collected and the military
+disbursements were made, right in the teeth of the popular will and the
+veto of the representatives of the nation. Bismarck became the best-hated
+man in Prussia. He was compared to Catiline and Strafford; he was
+threatened with impeachment; the House and the nation clamoured to the
+King for his dismissal and for the sovereign's return to the path of
+constitutional government.
+
+But the long "conflict-time" was drawing near its close, and the triumph
+of the monarch and his minister over the constitution was approaching. The
+policy of doing political evil that national advantage might come was, for
+once at least, to stand vindicated. War with Austria as the outcome of
+Bismarck's astute if unscrupulous statecraft was imminent when the hostile
+parliament was dissolved; and a general election took place amidst the
+fervid outburst of enthusiasm which the earlier victories of the Prussian
+arms in the "Seven Weeks' War" stirred throughout the nation. The prospect
+of war had been unpopular in the extreme, but the tidings of the first
+success kindled the flame of patriotism. Bismarck lost for ever the title
+of the "best-hated man in Prussia" in the loud volume of the enthusiastic
+greetings of the populace, and on the day of Münchengrätz and Skalitz
+Prussia now rejoiced to put her stubborn neck under the great minister's
+foot.
+
+The mingled truculence and tortuousness of the diplomacy by which Bismarck
+sapped up to the short but decisive war, the issue of which gave to
+Prussia the virtual headship of Germany and contributed so greatly toward
+the unification of the Fatherland, constitute a striking illustration of
+his methods in statecraft. He was fairly entitled to say, "_Ego qui
+feci_." He had achieved his aim in defiance of the nation. The Court threw
+its weight into the scale against the war; to the Crown Prince the strife
+with Austria was notoriously repugnant. The King himself, as the crisis
+approached, evinced marked hesitation. How triumphantly the event
+vindicated the policy of the great Premier, is a matter of history. He has
+frankly owned that if the decisive battle should have resulted in a
+Prussian defeat, he had resolved not to survive the shipwreck of his hopes
+and schemes. And there was a period in the course of the colossal struggle
+of Königgrätz, when to many men it seemed that the wielders of the
+needle-gun were having the worst of the battle. An awful hour for
+Bismarck, conscious of the load of responsibility which he carried. With
+great effort he could indeed maintain a calm visage, but his heart was
+beating and every pulse of him throbbing. In his torture of suspense he
+caught at straws. Moltke asked him for a cigar. As Bismarck handed him his
+cigar case he snatched a shred of comfort from the inference that if
+matters were very bad Moltke could hardly care to smoke. But Moltke was
+not only in a frame for tobacco but Bismarck watched with what deliberate
+coolness the great strategist inspected and smelt at cigar after cigar
+before making his final selection; and he dared to infer that the man who
+best understood the situation was in no perturbation as to the ultimate
+outcome. The opportune arrival of the Crown Prince's army on the Austrian
+right flank decided the business, and that arrival Bismarck was the first
+to discern. Lines were dimly visible on the hither slope of the Chlum
+heights; but they were pronounced to be ploughed ridges. Bismarck closed
+his field-glasses with a snap and exclaimed, "No, these are not plough
+furrows; the spaces are not equal; they are marching lines!" And he was
+right.
+
+Eighteen days after the victory of Königgrätz the Prussian hosts were in
+line on the historic Marchfeld whence the spires of Vienna could be dimly
+seen through the heat-haze. The soldiers were eager for the storm of the
+famous lines of Florisdorf and King Wilhelm was keen to enter the Austrian
+capital. But now the practical wisdom of Bismarck stepped in and his
+arguments for moderation prevailed. The peace which ended the Seven Weeks'
+War revolutionised the face of Germany. Austria accepted her utter exile
+from Germany, recognised the dissolution of the old Bund, and consented to
+non-participation in the new North German Confederation of which Prussia
+was to have the unquestioned military and diplomatic leadership. Prussia
+annexed Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Nassau, Sleswig and Holstein,
+Frankfort-on-Main, and portions of Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria. Her
+territorial acquisitions amounted to over 6500 square miles with a
+population exceeding 4,000,000, and the states with which she had been in
+conflict paid as war indemnity sums reaching nearly to £10,000,000
+sterling. In a material sense, it had not been a bad seven weeks for
+Prussia; in a sense other than material, she had profited incalculably
+more. She was now, in fact as in name, one of the "Great Powers" of
+Europe. The nation realised at length what manner of man this Bismarck was
+and what it owed to him. When the inner history of the period comes to be
+written, it will be recognised that at no time of his extraordinary career
+did Bismarck prove himself a greater statesman than during the five days
+of armistice in July 1866, when he fought his diplomatic Königgrätz in the
+Castle of Nikolsburg and assuaged the wounds of the Austrian defeat by
+terms the moderation of which went far to obliterate the memory of the
+rancour of the recent strife.
+
+He had been wily enough to secure by vague non-committal half-promises the
+neutrality of France during the weeks while Prussia was crushing the armed
+strength of Austria in Bohemia. But the issue of Königgrätz startled
+Napoleon and set France in ferment. Bismarck dared to refuse point-blank
+the demand which the French Emperor made for the fortress of Mayence, made
+though that demand was under threat of war. The Prussian commanders would
+have liked nothing better than a war with France, and Roon indeed had
+warned for mobilisation 350,000 soldiers to swell the ranks of the forces
+already in the field; but Bismarck was wise and could wait. He allowed
+Napoleon to exercise some influence in the negotiations in the character
+of a mediator; and to French intervention was owing the stipulation that
+the South German States should be at liberty to form themselves into a
+South German Confederation of which Napoleon hoped to be the patron. But
+Bismarck was a better diplomatist than Napoleon. While he formed and knit
+together the North German Confederation in which Prussia was dominant, he
+quietly negotiated an alliance offensive and defensive with each of the
+Southern States separately. No Southern bund was ever formed, and when the
+Franco-German War broke out in 1870 Napoleon saw the shipwreck of his
+abortive devices in the spectacle of the troops of Bavaria and Würtemberg
+marching on the Rhine in line with the battalions of Prussia.
+
+The unity of Germany was not yet; that consummation and the Kaisership--
+the two greatest triumphs of Bismarck's life--required another and a
+greater war to bring about their accomplishment. During the interval
+between 1866 and 1870, while the armed strength of Northern Germany was
+being quietly but sedulously perfected, Bismarck with dexterous caution
+was smoothing the rough path toward the ultimate unification. He would not
+have his hand forced by the enthusiasts for "the consummation of the
+national destiny." "No horseman can afford to be always at a gallop" was
+the figure with which he met the clamourers of the Customs Parliament. He
+invoked the terms of the treaty of Prague against the spokesmen of the
+Pan-German party inveighing vehemently against the policy of delay. He was
+staunch in his conviction that the South for its own safety's sake would
+come into the union the moment that the North should engage in war. He was
+a few weeks out in his reckoning; the Southern States waited until Sedan
+had been fought, when the prospect of the spoils of victory was assured;
+and this measured delay on their part was the best justification of
+Bismarck's sagacious deliberateness. The negotiations were tedious, but at
+length, on the evening of 23rd November 1870 the Convention with Bavaria
+was signed, and the unity of Germany was an accomplished fact. Busch
+vividly depicts the great moment:--
+
+The Chief came in from the salon, and sat down at the table. "Now," he
+exclaimed excitedly, "the Bavarian business is settled and everything is
+signed. _We have got our German Unity and our German Emperor_." There was
+silence for a moment. "Bring a bottle of champagne," said the Chief to a
+servant, "it is a great occasion." After musing a little, he remarked,
+"The Convention has its defects, but it is all the stronger on account of
+them. I count it the most important thing that we have accomplished during
+recent years."
+
+Notwithstanding that there was still before Bismarck a period of twenty
+years of virtual omnipotence, it was in the memorable years of 1870 and
+1871 that the apostle of blood and iron attained the zenith of his
+extraordinary career. Germany was his wash-pot; over France had he cast
+his shoe. The years of _Sturm und Drang_ were behind him, during which he
+had wrought out the military supremacy of Prussia in spite of herself; and
+in 1870 he had no misgivings as to the ultimate result. So confident
+indeed was he that before he crossed the French frontier on the second day
+after the twin victories of Wörth and Spicheren, he had already resolved
+on annexing to the Fatherland the old German province of Alsace which had
+been part of France for a couple of centuries. Bismarck was at his best in
+1870 in certain attributes; in others he was at his worst, and a bitter
+bad worst that worst was. He was at his best in clear swift insight, in
+firm masterful grasp of every phase of every situation, in an instinctive
+prescience of events, in lucid dominance over German and European policy.
+If patriotism consists in earnest efforts to advantage and aggrandise
+one's native land _per fas aut nefas_, than Bismarck during the
+Franco-German War there never was a grander patriot. His hands were clean,
+he wanted nothing for himself except, curiously enough, the only thing
+that his old master was strong enough to deny him, the rank of Field
+Marshal when that military distinction was conferred on Moltke. He was at
+his worst in many respects. He had, or affected, a truculence which was
+simply brutal, its savagery intensified rather than mitigated by a bluff,
+boisterous bonhomie. Jules Favre complained to him that the German cannon
+in front of Paris fired upon the sick and blind in the Blind Institute,
+Bismarck in those days of swaggering prosperity had a fine turn of
+badinage. "I don't know what you find so hard in that," he retorted, "you
+do far worse; you shoot at our soldiers who are hale and useful fighting
+men." It is to be hoped that Favre had a sense of humour; he needed it all
+to relish the grim pleasantry.
+
+I do not suppose, if he had had a free hand, that Bismarck would have
+exhibited the courage of his opinions; but if his sentiments as expressed
+count for anything he would fain have seen the methods of warfare in the
+Dark Ages reverted to. "Prisoners! more prisoners!" he once exclaimed at
+Versailles, after one of Prince Frederick Charles's victories in the Loire
+country--"What the devil do we want with prisoners? Why don't they make a
+battue of them?" His motto, especially as regarded Francs-tireurs, was "No
+quarter," forgetful of the swarms of free companions and volunteer bands
+whose gallant services in Prussia's War of Liberation are commemorated to
+this day in song and story. It was told him that among the French
+prisoners taken at Le Bourget were a number of Francs-tireurs--by the way,
+they were the volunteers _de la Presse_ and wore a uniform. "That they
+should ever take Francs-tireurs prisoners!" roared Bismarck in disgust.
+"They ought to have shot them down by files!" Again, when it was reported
+that Garibaldi with his 13,000 "free companions" had been taken prisoners,
+the Chancellor exclaimed, "Thirteen thousand Francs-tireurs, who are not
+even Frenchmen, made prisoners! Why on earth were they not shot?" And when
+he heard that Voights Rhetz having experienced some resistance from the
+inhabitants of the open town of Tours, had shelled it into submission,
+Bismarck waxed wrath because the General had ceased firing when the white
+flag went up. "I would have gone on," said he, "throwing shells into the
+town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in
+spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a
+gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious
+bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the
+war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified attitude
+and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be
+said of him, however, that he was a man of cool and undaunted courage. I
+have seen him perfectly impassive under heavy fire. In Bar-le-Duc, in
+Rheims, and over and over again in Versailles, I have met him walking
+alone and unarmed through streets thronged with French people who
+recognised him by the pictures of him, and who glared and spat and hissed
+in a cowed, furtive, malign fashion that was ugly to see.
+
+I vividly remember the first occasion on which I saw Bismarck. It was on
+the little tree-shaded _Place_ of St. Johann, the suburb of Saarbrücken,
+in the early evening of the 8th August, the next day but one after the
+battle of the Spicheren. Saarbrücken was full to the door-sills with the
+wounded of the battle and stretcher-parties were continually tramping to
+the "warriors' trench" in the cemetery, carrying to their graves soldiers
+who had died of their wounds. The Royal Headquarters had arrived a couple
+of hours earlier, and I was staring with all my eyes at a fresh-faced,
+white-haired old gentleman who was sitting in one of the windows of
+Guepratt's Hotel and whom I knew from the pictures to be King Wilhelm. Two
+officers in general's undress uniform were walking up and down under the
+pollarded lime-trees, talking as they walked. Presently from out a house
+opposite the hotel there emerged a very tall burly man of singularly
+upright carriage and with a certain air of swashbucklerism in his gait. A
+long cavalry sabre trailed and clanked on the rough pavement as he
+advanced to join the two sauntering officers under the trees. He wore the
+long blue double-breasted frockcoat with yellow cuffs and facings and
+white cap which I knew to be the undress uniform of the Bismarck
+Cuirassiers, but he was only partially in undress since the long
+cuirassier thigh-boots in which he strode were conventionally full
+uniform. The wearer of this costume was Bismarck; nor did I ever see him
+otherwise attired except on four occasions--at the Château Bellevue on the
+morning after Sedan, in the Galerie des Glaces in the Château of
+Versailles on 18th January, in the Place de la Concorde of capitulated
+Paris, and in the triumphal entry into Berlin; when he appeared in full
+uniform. Saluting His Majesty and then the two officers whom I recognised
+as Moltke and Roon, he joined the pedestrian couple, taking post between
+them and joining in their promenade and conversation. We heard his voice
+and laugh above the rumble of the waggon wheels on the causeway; the other
+two spoke little--Moltke, as he moved with bent head and hands clasped
+behind his back, scarcely anything.
+
+One would have imagined that those three men, the chief makers of that
+empire which was soon to come to the grand but not brilliant old gentleman
+in the window-seat, were on the most intimate and cordial terms. In
+reality they were jealous of each other with an inconceivable intensity.
+Bismarck had umbrage with Moltke because the great strategist withheld
+from the great statesman the military information which the latter held he
+ought to share. Moltke has roundly disclosed in his posthumous book his
+conviction that Roon's place as Minister of War was at home in Germany,
+not on campaign, embarrassing the former's functions. Roon envied Moltke
+because of the latter's more elevated military position, and disliked
+Bismarck because that outspoken man made light of Roon's capacity. I have
+known the headquarter staff of a British army whose members were on bad
+terms one with the other, and the result, to put it mildly, was
+unsatisfactory. But those three high functionaries, each with bitterness
+in his heart against his fellows, nevertheless co-operated earnestly and
+loyally in the service of their sovereign and for the advantage of their
+country. Their common patriotism had the mastery in them of their mutual
+hatred and jealousy. Ardt's line: _"Sein Vaterland muss grösser sein!"_
+was the watchword and inspiration of all three, and dominated their
+discordancies.
+
+On the 17th August, the day of comparative quietude intervening between
+the day of Mars-la-Tour and the day of Gravelotte I was wandering about
+among the hamlets and farmsteads to the southward of Mars-la-Tour, waiting
+the arrival in their appointed bivouacs about Puxieux of my early friends
+of the Saxon Army Corps. Since in the battle of the previous day some
+32,000 men had fallen killed or wounded within a comparatively small area,
+it may be imagined--or rather, without having seen the horror of carnage
+it cannot be imagined--how shambles-like was the aspect of this Aceldama.
+Scrambling up through the Bois la Dame with intent to obtain a wider view
+from the plateau above it, I found in a farmyard in the hamlet of
+Mariaville a number of wounded men under the care of a single and rather
+helpless surgeon. The water supply was very short and I volunteered to
+carry some bucketsful from the stream below. The surgeon told me that
+among his patients was Count Herbert Bismarck, the Chancellor's eldest
+son, who--as was also his younger brother Count "Bill"--was a volunteer
+private in the 2nd Guard Dragoons, and who had been shot in the thigh in
+the desperate charge made by that fine regiment to extricate from
+annihilation the Westphalian regiments which had suffered so severely near
+Bruville. A little later I saw Bismarck who had left the King on the
+Flavigny height, and who was riding about, as I assumed, in quest of his
+wounded son's whereabouts. I ventured to inform him on this point and he
+thanked me with some emotion. He was greatly moved at the meeting with his
+son but their interview was short; then he addressed himself to reproving
+the surgeon for not having had the Mariaville poultry killed for the use
+of the wounded, and presently rode away to order up a supply of water in
+barrels. I remember thinking him an exceedingly practical man.
+
+The English Warwick was styled the "King-maker"; but it was for the
+Prussian Bismarck to be Emperor-breaker and Emperor-maker within the same
+six months. The most wretched morning of Napoleon's life was that
+following the fatal day of Sedan, spent in and before the weaver's cottage
+on the Donchery road with Bismarck by his side, telling him in stern if
+courteous terms that as a prisoner of war his power to exercise the
+Imperial functions had fallen from him. It has been said that "the egg
+from which was hatched the German Empire was laid on the battlefield of
+Sedan." But, not to speak of the offer of the Imperial Crown to King
+Frederick Wilhelm by the Frankfort Parliament in 1848, Bismarck more than
+a year before the Austro-Prussian war had spoken to Lord Augustus Loftus,
+then British Ambassador to Prussia, of his ultimate intention that the
+King of Prussia should become the Emperor of an united Germany. The
+_Kaiserthum_ permeated the air of Northern Germany throughout the years
+from 1866 to 1870. But Bismarck had the true statesman's sense of the
+proper sequence of things. He would move no step toward the Kaisership
+until German unity was in near and clear sight. Then, and not till then,
+in spite of the Crown Prince's ardour, was the Imperial project brought
+forward, discussed, and finally carried through by Bismarck's tact and
+diplomacy.
+
+On the 18th January 1871, the anniversary of the coronation of the first
+king of his house, Wilhelm was proclaimed German Emperor in the Galerie
+des Glaces of the Château of Versailles. Behind the grand old monarch on
+the dais were ranged the regimental colours which had been borne to
+victory at Wörth and the Spicheren, at Mars-la-Tour, Gravelotte, and
+Sedan. On Wilhelm's right was his handsome and princely son; to right and
+to left stood potentates and princes and the leaders of the hosts of
+United Germany. Stalwart and square, somewhat apart on the extreme left of
+the great semicircle of which his sovereign was the centre, with a face of
+deadly pallor--for he had risen from a sick-bed--stood Bismarck in full
+cuirassier uniform leaning on his great sword, the man of all others who
+might that day most truly say, _"Finis Coronat Opus."_ His strong massive
+features were calm and self-possessed, yet elevated as it were by some
+internal power which drew all eyes to the great immobile figure with the
+indomitable lineaments instinct with will--force and masterfulness. After
+the solemn religious service His Majesty in a loud yet broken voice
+proclaimed the re-establishment of the German Empire, and that the
+Imperial dignity so revived was vested in him and his descendants for all
+time in accordance with the unanimous will of the German people. Bismarck
+then stood forward and read in sonorous tones the proclamation which the
+Emperor addressed to the German nation. As his final words rang through
+the hall the Grand Duke of Baden strode forward and shouted with all his
+force, "Long live the Emperor Wilhelm!" With a tempest of cheering, amidst
+waving of swords and of helmets the new title was acclaimed, and the
+Emperor with streaming tears received the homage of his liegemen. The
+first on bended knees to kiss his sovereign's hand was the Crown Prince,
+the second was Bismarck. The band struck up the National Anthem. Louder
+than the music, heard above the clamour of the cheering, sounded the
+thunder of the French cannon from Mont Valérien, the _Ave Caesar_ from the
+reluctant lips of worsted France. Bismarck, impassive as he seemed, must
+have had his emotions as he quitted this scene of triumph for the
+banquet-table of the Kaiser of his own making. He knew himself for the
+most conspicuous man in Europe, the greatest subject in the world. It was
+the proudest day of his life.
+
+There were many proud days still to occur in his long life. One of those
+was on the occasion of the German entry into Paris during the armistice
+which resulted in peace. The war had been of his making, and he chose to
+witness with his own eyes the actual triumph of his craft. It was a
+strange spectacle. There, helmet on head and sword on thigh, he sat in the
+shadow of the crape-shrouded statue of Strasburg on the Place de la
+Concorde. About him had gathered a group of extremely sinister French of
+the Belleville type. They had recognised him, and their lurid upward
+glances at the massive form on the great war-horse were charged with
+baleful meaning. Bismarck once or twice looked down on them with a grim
+smile under his moustache. At length the most daring of the "patriots"
+emitted a tentative hiss. With a little polite wave of his gloved hand
+Bismarck bent over his holster and requested "Monsieur" to oblige him with
+a light for his cigar. The man writhed as he compelled himself to comply.
+Little doubt that in his heart he wished the lucifer were a dagger and
+that he had the courage to use it.
+
+
+
+
+THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
+
+1873
+
+
+"_Thursday_.--Gathering, hand-shaking, brandy and soda and drams.
+
+"_Friday_.--Drinking, dandering, and feeling the way in the forenoon; the
+ordinary in the afternoon; at night a spate of drink and bargaining.
+
+"_Saturday_.--Bargaining and drink.
+
+"_Sunday morning_.--Bargains, drink, and the kirk."
+
+Such was the skeleton programme of the Inverness "Character" Fair given by
+a farmer friend to me, who happened to be lazily rusticating in the north
+of Scotland during the pleasant month of July. My friend asked me to
+accompany him in his visit to this remarkable institution and the
+programme was too tempting for refusal. As we drove to the station he
+handed me Henry Dixon's _Field and Fern_, open at a page which gave some
+particulars of the origin and character of the great annual sheep and wool
+market of the north. "Its Character Market," wrote "The Druid,"--no
+longer, alas! among us--"is the great bucolic glory of Inverness. The
+Fort-William market existed before, but the Sutherland and Caithness men,
+who sold about 14,000 sheep and 15,000 stones of wool annually so far back
+as 1816, did not care to go there. They dealt with regular customers year
+after year, and roving wool-staplers with no regular connection went about
+and notified their arrival on the church door. Patrick Sellar, 'the agent
+for the Sutherland Association,' saw exactly that some great _caucus_ of
+buyers and sellers was wanted at a more central spot; and on 27th February
+1817 that meeting of the clans was held at Inverness which brought the
+fair into being. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Burnley, Aberdeen, and
+Elgin signified that their leading merchants were favourable and ready to
+attend. Sutherland, Caithness, Wester Ross, Skye, the Orkneys, Harris, and
+Lewis were represented at the meeting; Bailie Anderson also 'would state
+with confidence that the market was approved of by William Chisholm, Esq.,
+of Chisholm, and James Laidlaw, tacksman, of Knockfin;' and so the matter
+was settled for ever and aye, and the _Courier_ and the _Morning
+Chronicle_ were the London advertising media. This Highland Wool
+Parliament was originally held on the third Thursday in June, but now it
+begins on the second Thursday of July and lasts till the Saturday; and
+Argyllshire, Nairnshire, and High Aberdeenshire have gradually joined in.
+The plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel have always been the
+scene of the bargains, which are most truly based on the broad stone of
+honour; not a sheep or fleece is to be seen and the buyer of the year
+before gets the first offer of the cast or clip. The previous proving and
+public character of the different flocks are the purchasers' guide far
+more than the sellers' description."
+
+Thus far "The Druid"; and my companion as we drove supplemented his
+information. It is from the circumstance that not a head of sheep or a
+tait of wool is brought to the market but that everything is sold and
+bought unseen and even unsampled, that the market derives its appellation
+of "character" fair. Of the value of the business transacted, the amount
+of money turned over, it is impossible to form with confidence even an
+approximate estimate since there is no source for data; but none with whom
+I spoke put the turnover at a lower figure than half a million. In a good
+season such as the past, over 200,000 sheep are disposed of exclusive of
+lambs, and of lambs about the same number. The stock sold from the hills
+are for the most part Cheviots and Blackfaces; from the low grounds
+half-breds, being a cross between Leicester and Cheviot and crosses
+between the Cheviot and Blackface. All the sales of sheep and lambs are by
+the "clad score" which contains twenty-one. The odd one is thrown in to
+meet the contingency of deaths before delivery is effected. Established
+when there was a long and wearing journey for the flocks from the hills
+where they were reared down to their purchasers in the lowlands or the
+south country, the altered conditions of transit have stimulated farmers
+to efforts for the abolition of the "clad score." Now that sheep are
+trucked by railway instead of being driven on foot or conveyed from the
+islands to their destination in steamers specially chartered for the
+purpose, the farmers grudge the "one in" of the "clad score." In 1866 they
+seized the opportunity of an exceptionally high market and keen
+competition to combine against the old reckoning and in a measure
+succeeded. But next year was as dull as '66 had been brisk, and then the
+buyers and dealers had their revenge and re-established the "clad score"
+in all its pristine firmness of position. The sheep-farmers wean their
+lambs about the 24th of August and delivery of them is given to the buyers
+as soon as possible thereafter. The delivery of ewes and wethers is timed
+by individual arrangement. A large proportion of the old ewes--no ewes are
+sold but such as are old--go to England where a lamb or two is got from
+them before they are fattened. Most of the lambs are bought by
+sheep-farmers who, not keeping a ewe flock, are not themselves breeders,
+and are kept till they are three years old--"three shears" as they are
+technically called--and sold fat into the south country. There they get
+what Mr. M'Combie called the last dip and the butcher sells them as "prime
+four-year-old wedder mutton."
+
+The size of some of the Highland sheep farms is to be reckoned by miles
+not by acres; and the stock, as in Australia, by the thousand. The largest
+sheep-owner, perhaps, that the Highlands ever knew was Cameron of
+Corrichollie, now dead. He was once examined before a Committee of the
+House of Commons, and came to be questioned on the subject of his
+ownership of sheep. "You may have some 1500 sheep, probably, sir?" quoth
+the interrogating M.P. "Aiblins," was Corrichollie's quiet reply as he
+took a pinch of snuff; "aiblins I have a few more nor that." "Two
+thousand, then?" "Yes, I pelieve I have that and a few more forpye,"
+calmly responded the Highlander with another pinch. "Five thousand?" "Oh,
+ay, and a few more." "Twenty thousand, sir?" cried the M.P., capping with
+a burst his previous bid. "Oh, ay, and some more forpye," was the
+imperturbable response. "In Heaven's name how many sheep have you, man?"
+burst out the astonished catechist. "I'm no very sure to a thousan' or
+two," replied Corrichollie in his dry laconic way and with an extra big
+pinch; "but I'm owner of forty thousan' sheep at the lowest reckoning."
+Lochiel, known to the Sassenach as Mr. Cameron, M.P., is perhaps the
+largest living sheep-owner in Scotland. He has at least 30,000 sheep on
+his vast tracks of moorland on the braes of Lochaber. In the Island of
+Skye Captain Cameron of Talisker has a flock of some 12,000; and there are
+several other flocks both in the islands and on the mainland of more than
+equal magnitude. Sheep-farming, at least in many instances, is an
+hereditary avocation, and some families can trace a sheep-farming ancestry
+very far back. The oldest sheep-farming family in Scotland are the
+Mackinnons of Corrie in Skye. They have been on Corrie for four hundred
+years and they were holding sheep-farms elsewhere even earlier. The
+Macraes of Achnagart in Kintail, paid rent to Seaforth for two hundred
+years. For as long before they had held Achnagart on the tenure of a bunch
+of heather exigible annually and their fighting services as good clansmen.
+Two hundred years ago an annual rental of £5 was substituted for the
+heather "corve"; the clansmen's service continuing and being rendered up
+till the '45. Now clanship is but a name: a Seaforth Mackenzie is no
+longer chief in Kintail, and the Macrae who has succeeded his forbears in
+Achnagart finds the bunch of heather and the £5 alike superseded by the
+very far other than nominal rent of £1000. The modern Achnagart with his
+broad shoulders and burly frame, looks as capable as were any of his
+ancestry to render personal service to his chief if a demand were made
+upon him; and very probably would be quite prepared to accept a reduction
+of his money rental if an obligation to perform feudal clan-service were
+substituted. Achnagart with his £1000 a year rental by no means tops the
+sheep-farming rentals of his county. Perhaps Robertson of Achiltie, whose
+sheep-walks stretch up on to the snow-patched shoulders of Ben Wyvis and
+far away west to Loch Broom, pays the highest sheep-farming rental in
+Ross-shire, when the factor has pocketed his half-yearly check for £800.
+
+Part of this I learn from my friend as we drive to the station; part I
+gather afterwards from other sources. The station for which we are bound
+is Elgin, the county town of Morayshire. Between Elgin and Inverness, it
+is true, we shall see but few of the great sheep-farmers and flock-masters
+of the west country, who converge on the annual tryst from other points of
+the compass and by various routes--by the Skye railway, by that portion of
+the Highland line which extends north of Inverness, through Ross into
+Sutherland, by the Caledonian Canal, etc. But it is promised to me that I
+shall see many of the notable agriculturists of Moray land, who go to the
+market as buyers; and a contingent of sheep-breeders are sure to join us
+at Forres, coming down the Highland line from the Inverness-shire
+Highlands on Upper Strathspey. There is quite an exceptional throng on the
+platform of the Elgin station, of farmers, factors, lawyers, and
+ex-coffee-planters--all very plentiful in Elgin; tanners bound for
+investments in prospective pelts; and men of no avocation yet as much
+bound to visit Inverness to-day as if they meant to invest thousands. In a
+corner towers the mighty form of Paterson of Mulben, famous among breeders
+of polls with his tribe of "Mayflowers." From beneath a kilt peep out the
+brawny limbs of Willie Brown of Linkwood and Morriston, nephew of stout
+old Sir George who commanded the light division at the Alma, son to a
+factor whose word in his day was as the laws of the Medes and Persians
+over a wide territory, and himself the feeder of the leviathan cross red
+ox and the beautiful gray heifer which took honours so high at one of the
+recent Smithfield Christmas Shows. There is the white beard and hearty
+face of Mr. Collie, late of Ardgay, owner erstwhile of "Fair Maid of
+Perth" and breeder of "Zarah." Here, too, is a fresh, sprightly gentleman
+in a kilt whom his companions designate "the Bourach." Requesting an
+explanation of the term I am told that "Bourach" is the Gaelic for
+"through-other," which again is the Scottish synonym for a kind of amalgam
+of addled and harum-scarum. A jolly tanner observes: "I'll get a
+compartment to oursels." The reason of the desire for this exclusive
+accommodation is apparent as soon as we start. A "deck" of cards is
+produced and a quartette betake themselves to whist with half-crown stakes
+on the rubber and sixpenny points. This was mild speculation to that which
+was engaged in on the homeward journey after the market, when a Strathspey
+sheep-farmer won £8 between Dalvey and Forres. As my friends shuffle and
+deal, I look out of window at the warm gray towers of the cathedral,
+beautiful still spite of the desecrating hand of the "Wolf of Badenoch."
+Our road lies through the fertile "Laigh of Moray," one of the richest
+wheat districts in the Empire and as beautiful as fertile. At Alves we
+pick up a fresh, hale gentleman, who is described to me as "the laird of
+three properties," bought for more than £100,000 by a man who began life
+as the son of a hillside crofter. We pass the picturesque ruins of Kinloss
+Abbey and draw up at Forres station, whose platform is thronged with noted
+agriculturists bound for the "Character" Fair. Here is that spirited
+Englishman Mr. Harris of Earnhill, whose great cross ox took the cup at
+the Agricultural Hall seven or eight years ago; and the brothers Bruce--he
+of Newton Struthers, whose marvellous polled cow beat everything in
+Bingley Hall at the '71 Christmas Show and but for "foot and mouth" would
+have repeated the performance at the Smithfield Show; and he of Burnside
+who likewise has stamped his mark pretty deeply in the latter arena. At
+Forres we first hear Gaelic; for a train from Carr Bridge and Grantown in
+Upper Strathspey has come down the Highland Railway to join ours, and the
+red-haired Grants around the Rock of Craigellachie--where a man whose name
+is not Grant is regarded as a _lusus naturae_--are Gaelic speakers to a
+man. No witches accost us, and speaking personally I feel no "pricking of
+the thumbs" as we skirt the blasted heath on which Macbeth met the witches;
+the most graphic modern description of which on record was given to Henry
+Dixon in the following quaint form of Shakespearean annotation: "It's just
+a sort of eminence; all firs and ploughed land now; you paid a toll near
+it. I'm thinking, it's just a mile wast from Brodie Station."
+
+Nairn is that town by the citation of a peculiarity of which King Jamie
+put to shame the boastings of the Southrons as to the superior magnitude
+of English towns. "I have a town," quoth the sapient James, "in my ancient
+kingdom of Scotland, whilk is sae lang that at ane end of it a different
+language is spoken from that whilk prevails at the other." To this day the
+monarch's words are true; one end of Nairn is Gaelic, the other Sassenach.
+Here we obtain a considerable accession of strength. The attributes of one
+kilted chieftain are described to me in curious scraps of illustrative
+patchwork. "A great litigant, an enthusiastic agriculturist, a dealer in
+Hielan' nowt--something of a Hielan' nowt himself, a semi-auctioneer, a
+great hand as chairman at an agricultural dinner, a visitor to the Baker
+Street Bazaar when the Smithfield Shows were held there and where the
+Cockneys mistook him for one of the exhibits and began pinching and
+punching him." Stewart of Duntalloch swings his stalwart form into our
+carriage--a noted breeder of Highland cattle and as fine a specimen of a
+Highlander as can be seen from Reay to Pitlochrie. "Culloden! Culloden!"
+chant the porters in that curious sing-song peculiar to the Scotch
+platform porter. The whistle of the engine and the talk about turnips and
+cattle contrast harshly with that bleak, lonely, moorland swell yonder--
+the patches of green among the brown heather telling where moulders the
+dust of the chivalrous clansmen. It is but little longer than a century
+and a quarter ago since Charles Stuart and Cumberland confronted each
+other over against us there; and here are the descendants of the men that
+fought in their tartans for the "King over the Water," who are discussing
+the right proportion of phosphates in artificial manures and of whom one
+asks me confidentially for my opinion on the Leger favourite.
+
+Here we are at Inverness at length; that city of the Clachnacudden stone.
+There is quite a crowd in the spacious station of business people who have
+been awaiting the arrival of the train from the east, and the buyers and
+sellers whom it has conveyed find themselves at once among eager friends.
+Hurried announcements are made as to the conditions and prospects of the
+market. The card-players have plunged suddenly _in medias res_ of
+bargaining. The man who had volunteered to stand me a seltzer and sherry
+has forgotten all about his offer, and is talking energetically about clad
+scores and the price of lambs. I quit the station and walk up Union Street
+through a gradually thickening throng, till I reach Church Street and
+shoulder my way to the front of the Caledonian Hotel. I am now in "the
+heart of the market," standing as I am on the plain-stones in front of the
+Caledonian Hotel and looking up and down along the crowded street. What
+physique, what broad shoulders, what stalwart limbs, what wiry red beards
+and high cheek-bones there are everywhere! You have the kilt at every
+turn, in every tartan, and often in no tartan at all. Other men wear
+whole-coloured suits of inconceivably shaggy tweed, and the breadth of the
+bonnets is only equalled by that of the accents. Every second man has a
+mighty plaid over his shoulder. It may serve as a sample of his wool, for
+invariably it is home made. Some carry long twisted crooks such as we see
+in old pastoral prints; others have massive gnarled sticks grasped in vast
+sinewy hands on the back of which the wiry red hairs stand out like
+prickles. There is falling what in the south we should reckon as a very
+respectable pelt of rain, but the Inverness Wool Fair heeds rain no more
+than thistledown. Hardly a man has thought it worth his pains to envelop
+his shoulders in his plaid, but stands and lets the rain take its chance.
+There is a perfect babel of tongues; no bawling or shouting, however, but
+a perpetual gruff _susurrus_ of broad guttural conversation accentuated
+every now and then by a louder exclamation in Gaelic. Quite half of the
+throng are discoursing in this language. It is possible to note the
+difference in the character of the Celt and Teuton. The former
+gesticulates, splutters out a perfect torrent of alternately shrill,
+guttural, and intoned Gaelic; he shrugs his shoulders, he throws his arms
+about, he thrills with vivacity. The Teuton expresses quiet, sententious
+canniness in every gesture and every utterance; he is a cold-blooded man
+and keeps his breath to cool his porridge.
+
+On the plain-stones there are a number of benches on which men sit down to
+gossip and chaffer. Scraps of dialogue float about in the moist air. If
+you care to be an eavesdropper you must have a knowledge of Gaelic to be
+one effectively. "It's to be a stout market," remarks stalwart Macrae of
+Invershiel, come of a fine old West Highland stock and himself a very
+large sheep-farmer. "Sixteen shillings is my price. I'll come down a
+little if you like," says the tenant of Belmaduthy to keen-faced Mr.
+Mackenzie of Liverpool, one of the largest wool-dealers and sheep-buyers
+visiting the market. "You'll petter juist pe coming down to it at once."
+"I could not meet you at all." "I'm afraid I'll pe doing what they'll pe
+laughing at me for." "We can't agree at all," are the words as a couple
+separate, probably to come together again later in the day. "An do reic
+thu na 'h'uainn fhathast, Coignasgailean?" "Cha neil fios again'm lieil
+thusa air son tavigse thoirtorra, Cnocnangraisheag?" "Thig gus ain fluich
+sin ambarfan." Perhaps I had better translate. Two sheep-farmers are in
+colloquy, and address each other by the names of their farms, as is all
+but universal in the north. Cnocnangraisheag asks Coignasgailean, "Have
+you sold your lambs?" The cautious reply is, "I don't know; are you
+inclined to give me an offer?" and the proposal ensues, "Come and let us
+take a drink on the transaction." Let us follow the two worthies into the
+Caledonian. Jostling goes for nothing here and you may shove as much in
+reason as you choose, taking your chance of reprisals from the sons of
+Anak. The lobbies of the Caledonian are full of men drinking and
+bargaining with books in hand. There is no sitting-room in all the house
+and we follow the Cnocnangraisheag and his friend into the billiard-room,
+where we are promptly served standing. What keenness of
+business-discussion mingled with what galore of whisky there is
+everywhere! The whisky seems to make no more impression than if it were
+ginger-beer; and yet it is over-proof Talisker, as my throat and eyes find
+to their cost when I recklessly attempt to imitate Coignasgailean and take
+a dram neat. As I pass the bar going out Willie Brown is bawling for soda
+with something in it, and Donald Murray of Geanies, one of the ablest men
+in the north of Scotland, brushes by with quick decisive step. In the
+doorway stands the sturdy square-built form of Macdonald of Balranald, the
+largest breeder of Highland cattle in the country. Over the heathery
+pasture-land of North Uist 1500 head and more of horned newt of his range
+in half-wild freedom. The Mundells and the Mitchells seem ubiquitous. The
+ancestors of both families came from England as shepherds when the
+Sutherland clearances were made toward the end of last century, and
+between them they now hold probably the largest acreage--or rather
+mileage, of sheep-farming territory in all Scotland.
+
+It is a "very dour market," that all admit. Everybody is holding back, for
+it is obvious prices are to be "desperate high" and everybody wants to get
+the full benefit of the rise. The predetermination of the Southern dealers
+to "buy out" freely at big prices had been rashly revealed over-night by
+one of the fraternity at the after-dinner toddy-symposium in the
+Caledonian. He had been sedulously plied with drink by "Charlie Mitchell"
+and some others of the Ross and Sutherland sheep-farmers, till reticence
+had departed from his tongue. Ultimately he had leaped on the table,
+breaking any quantity of glass-ware in the saltatory feat, and had
+asserted with free swearing his readiness to give 50s. all round for every
+three-year-old wedder in the north of Scotland. His horror-stricken
+partners rushed upon him and bundled him downstairs in hot haste, but the
+murder was out and the "dour market" was accounted for. Fancy 50s. a head
+for beasts that do not weigh 60 lb. apiece as they come off the hill! No
+wonder that we townsmen have to pay dear for our mutton.
+
+I push my way out of the heart of the market to find the outlying
+neighbourhood studded all over with conversing groups. There is an
+all-pervading smell of whisky, and yet I see no man who has "turned a
+hair" by reason of the strength of the Talisker. A town-crier ringing a
+bell passes me. He halts, and the burden of his cry is, "There is a large
+supply of fresh haddies in the market!" The walls are placarded with
+advertisements of sheep smearing and dipping substances; the leading
+ingredients of which appear to be tar and butter. A recruiting sergeant of
+the Scots Fusilier Guards is standing by the Clachnacudden Stone,
+apparently in some dejection owing to the little business doing in his
+line. Men don't come to the "Character" Fair to 'list. It strikes me that
+quite three-fourths of the shops of Inverness are devoted to the sale of
+articles of Highland costume. Their fronts are hidden by hangings of
+tartan cloth; the windows are decked with sporrans, dirks, cairngorm
+plaid-brooches, ram's-head snuff-boxes, bullocks' horns and skean dhus. If
+I chose I might enter the emporium of Messrs. Macdougall in my Sassenach
+garb and re-emerge in ten minutes outwardly a full-blown Highland chief,
+from the eagle's feather in my bonnet to the buckles on my brogues.
+Turning down High Street I reach the quay on the Ness bank, where I find
+in full blast a horse fair of a very miscellaneous description, and
+totally destitute of the features that have earned for the wool market the
+title of "Character" Fair. There are blood colts running chiefly to
+stomach, splints and bog spavins; ponies with shaggy manes, trim barrels,
+and clean legs; and slack-jointed cart-horses nearly asleep--for "ginger"
+is an institution which does not seem to have come so far north as
+Inverness. Business is lively here, the chronic "dourness" of a market
+being discounted by the scarcity of horseflesh.
+
+At four o'clock we sit down to the market ordinary in the great room of
+the Caledonian. A member of Parliament occupies the chair, one of the
+croupiers is a baronet, the other the chief of the clan Mackintosh. There
+is a great collection of north-country notabilities, and tables upon
+tables of sheep-farmers and sheep-dealers. We have a considerable
+_cacoethes_ of speech-making, among the orators being Professor Blackie of
+Edinburgh, whose quaint comicalities convulse his audience. It is pretty
+late when the Professor rises to speak, and the whisky has been flowing
+free. Some one interjects a whiskyfied interruption into the Professor's
+speech, who at once in stentorian tones orders that the disturber of the
+harmony of the evening shall be summarily consigned to the lunatic asylum.
+I see him ejected with something like the force of a stone from a catapult
+and have no reasonable doubt that he will spend the night an inmate of
+"Craig Duncan." The speeches over bargaining recommences moistened by
+toddy, which fluid appears to exercise an appreciable softening influence
+on the "dourness" of the market. Till long after midnight seasoned vessels
+are talking and dealing, booking sales while they sip their tenth tumbler.
+
+I have to leave on the Saturday morning, but I make no doubt that the
+skeleton programme given at the beginning of this paper will have its
+bones duly clothed with flesh.
+
+
+
+
+THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
+
+
+At first sight the proposition may appear startling and indeed absurd; yet
+hard facts, I venture to believe, will enforce the conviction on
+unprejudiced minds that the warfare of the present when contrasted with
+the warfare of the past is dilatory, ineffective, and inconclusive.
+
+Present, or contemporary warfare may be taken to date from the general
+adoption of rifled firearms; the warfare of the past may fairly be limited
+for purposes of comparison or contrast, to the smooth-bore era; indeed,
+for those purposes there is no need to go outside the present century.
+Roughly speaking the first five and a half decades of the century were
+smooth-bore decades; the three and a half later decades have been rifled
+decades, of which about two and a half decades constitute the
+breechloading period. Considering the extraordinary advances since the end
+of the smooth-bore era in everything tending to promote celerity and
+decisiveness in the result of campaigns--the revolution in swiftness of
+shooting and length of range of firearms, the development in the science
+of gunnery, the increased devotion to military study, the vast additions
+to the military strength of the nations, looking to the facilities for
+rapid conveyance of troops and transportation of supplies afforded by
+railways and steam water-carriage, to the intensified artillery fire that
+can now be brought to bear on fortresses, to the manifold advantages
+afforded by the electric telegraph, and to the crushing cost of warfare,
+urging vigorous exertions toward the speedy decision of campaigns--
+reviewing, I say, the thousand and one circumstances encouraging to short,
+sharp, and decisive action in contemporary warfare, it is a strange and
+bewildering fact that the wars of the smooth-bore era were for the most
+part, shorter, sharper, and more decisive. Spite of inferiority of weapons
+the battles of that period were bloodier than those of the present, and it
+is a mathematically demonstrable proposition that the heavier the
+slaughter of combatants the nearer must be the end of a war. There is no
+pursuit now after victory won and the vanquished draws off shaken but not
+broken; in the smooth-bore era a vigorous pursuit scattered him to the
+four winds. When Wellington in the Peninsula wanted a fortress and being
+in a hurry could not wait the result of a formal siege or a starvation
+blockade, he carried it by storm. No fortress is ever stormed now, no
+matter how urgent the need for its reduction, no matter how obsolete its
+defences. The Germans in 1871 did attempt to carry by assault an outwork
+of Belfort, but failed utterly. It would almost seem that in the matter of
+forlorn hopes the Caucasian is played out.
+
+Assertions are easy, but they go for little unless they can be proved;
+some examples, therefore, may be cited in support of the contentions
+advanced above. The Prussians are proud and with justice, of what is known
+as the "Seven Weeks' War of 1866" although as a matter of fact the contest
+with Austria did not last so long, for Prince Frederick Charles crossed
+the Bohemian frontier on the 23rd of June and the armistice which ended
+hostilities was signed at Nikolsburg on the 26th of July. The Prussian
+armies were stronger than their opponents by more than one-fourth and they
+were armed with the needle-gun against the Austrian muzzle-loading rifle.
+When the armistice was signed the Prussians lay on the Marchfeld within
+dim sight of the Stephanien-Thurm, it is true; but with the strong and
+strongly armed and held lines of Florisdorf, the Danube, and the army of
+the Archduke Albrecht between them and the Austrian capital. On the 9th of
+October 1806 Napoleon crossed the Saale. On the 14th at Jena he smashed
+Hohenlohe's Prussian army, the contending hosts being about equal strength;
+on the same day Davoust at Auerstadt with 27,000 men routed Brunswick's
+command over 50,000 strong. On the 25th of October Napoleon entered
+Berlin, the war virtually over and all Prussia at his feet with the
+exception of a few fortresses, the last of which fell on the 8th of
+November. Which was the swifter, the more brilliant, and the more
+decisive--the campaign of 1866, or the campaign of 1806?
+
+The Franco-German war is generally regarded as an exceptionally effective
+performance on the part of the Germans. The first German force entered
+France on the 4th of August 1870. Paris was invested on the 21st of
+September, the German armies having fought four great battles and several
+serious actions between the frontier and the French capital. An armistice,
+which was not conclusive since it allowed the siege of Belfort to proceed
+and Bourbaki's army to be free to attempt raising it, was signed at
+Versailles on the 28th of January 1871, but the actual conclusion of
+hostilities dates from the 16th of February, the day on which Belfort
+surrendered. The Franco-German war, therefore, lasted six and a half
+months. The Germans were in full preparedness except that their rifle was
+inferior to the French _chassepot_; they were in overwhelmingly superior
+numerical strength in every encounter save two with French regular troops,
+and they had on their banners the prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries
+were utterly unready for a great struggle; the French army was in a
+wretched state in every sense of the word; indeed, after Sedan there
+remained hardly any regulars able to take the field. In August 1805
+Napoleon's Grande Armée was at Boulogne looking across to the British
+shores. Those inaccessible, he promptly altered his plans and went against
+Austria. Mack with 84,000 Austrian soldiers was at Ulm, waiting for the
+expected Russian army of co-operation and meantime covering the valley of
+the Danube. Napoleon crossed the Rhine on the 26th of September. Just as
+in 1870 the Germans on the plain of Mars-la-Tour thrust themselves between
+Bazaine and the rest of France, so Napoleon turned Mack and from Aalen to
+the Tyrol stood between him and Austria. Mack capitulated Ulm and his army
+on the 19th of October and Napoleon was in Vienna on the 13th of November.
+Although he possessed the Austrian capital, he was not, however, master of
+the Austrian empire. The latter result did not fall to him until the 2nd
+of December, when under "the sun of Austerlitz" he with 73,000 men
+defeated the Austro-Russian army 85,000 strong, inflicting on it a loss of
+30,000 men at the cost of 12,000 of his own soldiers _hors de combat_. It
+took the Germans in 1870 a month and a half to get from the frontier to
+_outside_ Paris; just in the same time, although certainly not with so
+severe fighting by the way but nearly twice as long a march, Napoleon
+moved from the Rhine to _inside_ Vienna. From the active commencement to
+the cessation of hostilities the Franco-German war lasted six and a half
+months; reckoning from the crossing of the Rhine to the evening of
+Austerlitz Napoleon subjugated Austria in two and a quarter months.
+Perhaps, however, his campaign of 1809 against Austria furnishes a more
+exact parallel with the campaign of the Germans in 1870-71. He assumed
+command on the 17th of April, having hurried from Spain. He defeated the
+Austrians five times in as many days, at Thann, Abensberg, Landshut,
+Eckmuhl, and Ratisbon; and he was in Vienna on the 13th of May. Balked at
+Aspern and Essling, he gained his point at Wagram on the 5th of July, and
+hostilities ceased with the armistice of Znaim on the 11th after having
+lasted for a period short of three months by a week.
+
+The Russians have a reputation for good marching, and certainly Suvaroff
+made good time in his long march from Russia to Northern Italy in 1799;
+almost as good, indeed, as Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, and Kutusoff made
+in falling back before Napoleon when he invaded Russia in 1812. But they
+have not improved either in marching or in fighting at all commensurately
+with the improved appliances. In 1877, after dawdling two months they
+crossed the Danube on the 21st to the 27th of June. Osman Pasha at Plevna
+gave them pause until the 10th of December, at which date they were not so
+far into Bulgaria as they had been five months previously. After the fall
+of Plevna the Russian armies would have gone into winter quarters but for
+a private quasi-ultimatum communicated to the Tzar from a high source in
+England, to the effect that unpleasant consequences could not be
+guaranteed against if the war was not finished in one campaign. Alexander,
+who was quite an astute man in his way, was temporarily enraged by this
+restriction, but recovering his calmness, realised that nowhere in war
+books is any particular time specified for the termination or duration of
+a campaign. It appeared that so long as an army keeps the field
+uninterruptedly a campaign may continue until the Greek kalends. In less
+time than that Gourko and Skobeleff undertook to finish the business; by
+the vigour with which they forced their way across the Balkans in the
+heart of the bitter winter Sophia, Philippopolis, and Adrianople fell into
+Russian hands; and the Russian troops had been halted some time almost in
+face of Constantinople when the treaty of San Stephano was signed on the
+3rd of March 1878. It had taken the Russians of 1877-78 eight weary months
+to cover the distance between the Danube and the Marmora. But fifty years
+earlier a Russian general had marched from the Danube to the Aegean in
+three and a half months, nor was his journey by any means a smooth and
+bloodless one. Diebitch crossed the Danube in May 1828 and besieged
+Silistria from the 17th of May until the 1st of July. Silistria has
+undergone three resolute sieges during the century; it succumbed but once,
+and then to Diebitch. Pressing south immediately, he worsted the Turkish
+Grand Vizier in the fierce battle of Kuleutscha and then by diverse routes
+hurried down into the great Roumelian valley. Adrianople made no
+resistance and although his force was attenuated by hardship and disease,
+when the Turkish diplomatists procrastinated the audacious and gallant
+Diebitch marched his thin regiments forward toward Constantinople. They
+had traversed on a wide front half the distance between Adrianople and the
+capital when the dilatory Turkish negotiators saw fit to imitate the coon
+and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the weakness
+of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned whether,
+that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied Constantinople on the
+swagger. His master was prepared promptly to reinforce him; Constantinople
+was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than in 1878, and certainly Diebitch
+was much smarter than were the Grand Duke Nicholas, his fossil
+Nepokoitschitsky, and his pure theorist Levitsky.
+
+The contrast between the character of our own contemporary military
+operations and that of those of the smooth-bore era is very strongly
+marked. In 1838-39 Keane marched an Anglo-Indian army from our frontier at
+Ferozepore over Candahar to Cabul without experiencing any serious check,
+and with the single important incident of taking Ghuzni by storm on the
+way. Our positions at and about Cabul were not seriously molested until
+late in 1841, when the paralysis of demoralisation struck our soldiers
+because of the crass follies of a wrong-headed civilian chief and the
+feebleness of a decrepit general. Nott throughout held Candahar firmly;
+the Khyber Pass remained open until faith was broken with the hillmen;
+Jellalabad held out until the "Retribution Column" camped under its walls.
+But for the awful catastrophe which befell in the passes the hapless
+brigade which under the influence of deplorable pusillanimity and gross
+mismanagement had evacuated Cabul, no serious military calamity marked our
+occupation of Afghanistan and certainly stubborn resistance had not
+confronted our arms. From 1878 to 1880 we were in Afghanistan again, this
+time with breech-loading far-ranging rifles, copious artillery of the
+newest types, and commanders physically and mentally efficient. All those
+advantages availed us not one whit. The Afghans took more liberties with
+us than they had done forty years previously. They stood up to us in fair
+fight over and over again: at Ali Musjid, at the Pewar Kotul, at
+Charasiab, on the Takt-i-Shah and the Asmai heights, at Candahar. They
+took the dashing offensive at Ahmed Kheyl and at the Shutur-gurdan; they
+drove Dunham Massy's cavalry and took British guns; they reoccupied Cabul
+in the face of our arms, they besieged Candahar, they hemmed Roberts
+within the Sherpoor cantonments and assailed him there. They destroyed a
+British brigade at Maiwand and blocked Gough in the Jugdulluck Pass.
+Finally our evacuating army had to macadamise its unmolested route down
+the passes by bribes to the hillmen, and the result of the second Afghan
+war was about as barren as that of the first.
+
+It was in the year 1886 that, the resolution having been taken to dethrone
+Thebau and annex Upper Burmah, Prendergast began his all but bloodless
+movement on Mandalay. The Burmans of today have never adventured a battle,
+yet after years of desultory bushwhacking the pacification of Upper Burmah
+has still to be fully accomplished. On the 10th of April 1852 an
+Anglo-Indian expedition commanded by General Godwin landed at Rangoon.
+During the next fifteen months it did a good deal of hard fighting, for
+the Burmans of that period made a stout resistance. At midsummer of 1853
+Lord Dalhousie proclaimed the war finished, announced the annexation and
+pacification of Lower Burmah, and broke up the army. The cost of the war
+of which the result was this fine addition to our Indian Empire, was two
+millions sterling; almost from the first the province was self-supporting
+and uninterrupted peace has reigned within its borders. We did not dally
+in those primitive smooth-bore days. Sir Charles Napier took the field
+against the Scinde Ameers on the 16th of February 1843. Next day he fought
+the battle of Meanee, entered Hyderabad on the 2Oth, and on the 24th of
+March won the decisive victory of Dubba which placed Scinde at his mercy,
+although not until June did the old "Lion of Meerpore" succumb to Jacob.
+But before then Napier was well forward with his admirable measures for
+the peaceful administration of the great province he had added to British
+India.
+
+The expedition for the rescue of General Gordon was tediously boated up
+the Nile, with the result that the "desert column" which Sir Herbert
+Stewart led so valiantly across the Bayuda reached Gubat just in time to
+be too late, and was itself extricated from imminent disaster by the
+masterful promptitude of Sir Redvers Buller. Notwithstanding a general
+consensus of professional and expert opinion in favour of the alternative
+route from Souakin to Berber, 240 miles long and far from waterless, the
+adoption of it was condemned as impossible. In June 1801, away back in the
+primitive days, an Anglo-Indian brigade 5000 strong ordered from Bombay,
+reached Kosseir on the Red Sea bound for the Upper Nile at Kenéh thence to
+join Abercromby's force operating in Lower Egypt. The distance from
+Kosseir to Kenéh is 120 miles across a barren desert with scanty and
+unfrequent springs. The march was by regiments, of which the first quitted
+Kosseir on the 1st of July. The record of the desert-march of the 10th
+Foot is now before me. It left Kosseir on the 20th of July and reached
+Kenéh on the 29th, marching at the rate of twelve miles per day. Its loss
+on the march was one drummer. The whole brigade was at Kenéh in the early
+days of August, the period between its debarkation and its concentration
+on the Nile being about five weeks. The march was effected at the very
+worst season of the year. It was half the distance of a march from Souakin
+to Berber; the latter march by a force of the same strength could well
+have been accomplished in three months. The opposition on the march could
+not have been so severe as that which Stewart's desert column encountered.
+Nevertheless, as I have said, the Souakin-Berber route was pronounced
+impossible by the deciding authority.
+
+The comparative feebleness of contemporary warfare is perhaps
+exceptionally manifest in relation to the reduction of fortresses. During
+the Franco-German War the frequency of announcements of the fall of French
+fortresses used to be the subject of casual jeers. The jeers were
+misplaced. The French fortresses, labouring under every conceivable
+disadvantage, did not do themselves discredit. All of them were more or
+less obsolete. Excluding Metz and Paris, neither fortified to date, their
+average age was about a century and a half and few had been amended since
+their first construction. They were mostly garrisoned by inferior troops,
+often almost entirely by Mobiles. Only in one instance was there an
+effective director of the defence. That they uniformly enclosed towns
+whose civilian population had to endure bombardment, was an obvious
+hindrance to desperate resistance. Yet, setting aside Bitsch which was
+never taken, the average duration of the defence of the seventeen
+fortresses which made other than nominal resistance was forty-one days.
+Excluding Paris and Metz which virtually were intrenched camps, the
+average period of resistance was thirty-three days. The Germans used siege
+artillery in fourteen cases; although only on two instances, Belfort and
+Strasburg, were formal sieges undertaken. "It appears," writes Major
+Sydenham Clarke in his recent remarkable work on Fortification [Footnote:
+_Fortification_. By Major G. Sydenham Clarke, C.M. G. (London: John
+Murray).] which ought to revolutionise that art, "that the average period
+of resistance of the (nominally obsolete) French fortresses was the same
+as that of besieged fortresses of the Marlborough and Peninsular periods.
+Including Paris and Metz, the era of rifled weapons actually shows an
+increase of 20 per cent in the time-endurance of permanent fortifications.
+Granted that a mere measurement in days affords no absolute standard of
+comparison, the striking fact remains that in spite of every sort of
+disability the French fortresses, pitted against guns that were not
+dreamed of when they were built, acquitted themselves quite as well as the
+_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the Vauban school in the days of their glory." Even in
+the cases of fortresses whose reduction was urgently needed since they
+interfered with the German communications--such as Strasburg, Toul, and
+Soissons--the quick _ultima ratio_ of assault was not resorted to by the
+Germans. And yet the Germans could not have failed to recognise that but
+for the fortresses they would have swept France clear of all organised
+bodies of troops within two months of the frontier battles. During the
+Peninsular War Wellington made twelve assaults on breached fortresses of
+which five were successful; of his twelve attempts to escalade six
+succeeded. The Germans in 1870-71 never attempted a breach and their
+solitary effort at escalade, on the Basse Perche of Belfort, utterly
+failed.
+
+The Russians in 1877 were even less enterprising than had been the Germans
+in 1870. They went against three permanently fortified places, the
+antediluvian little Matchin which if I remember right blew itself up; the
+crumbling Nicopolis which surrendered after one day's fighting; and
+Rustchuk which held out till the end of the war. They would not look at
+Silistria, ruined, but strong in heroic memories; they avoided Rasgrad,
+Schumla, and the Black Sea fortresses; Sophia, Philippopolis, and
+Adrianople made no resistance. The earthworks of Plevna, vicious as they
+were in many characteristics, they found impregnable. I think Suvaroff
+would have carried them; I am sure Skobeleff would if he had got his way.
+
+The vastly expensive armaments of the present--the rifled breech-loader,
+the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range field-guns, and so
+forth, are all accepted and paid for by the respective nations in the
+frank and naked expectation that these weapons will perform increased
+execution on the enemy in war time. This granted, nor can it be denied, it
+logically follows that if this increased execution is not performed
+nations are entitled to regard it as a grievance that they do not get
+blood for their money, and this they certainly do not have; so that even
+in this sanguinary particular the warfare of to-day is a comparative
+failure. The topic, however, is rather a ghastly one and I refrain from
+citing evidence; which, however, is easily accessible to any one who cares
+to seek it.
+
+The anticipation is confidently adventured that a great revolution will be
+made in warfare by the magazine rifle with its increased range, the
+machine gun, and the quick-firing field artillery which will speedily be
+introduced into every service. It does not seem likely that smokeless
+powder will create any very important change, except in siege operations.
+On the battlefield neither artillery nor infantry come into action out of
+sight of the enemy. When either arm opens fire within sight of the enemy
+its position can be almost invariably detected by the field-glass,
+irrespective of the smokelessness or non-smokelessness of its ammunition.
+Indeed, the use of smokeless powder would seem inevitably to damage the
+fortunes of the attack. Under cover of a bank of smoke the soldiers
+hurrying on to feed the fighting line are fairly hidden from aimed hostile
+fire. It may be argued that their aim is thus reciprocally hindered; but
+the reply is that their anxiety is not so much to be shooting during their
+reinforcing advance as to get forward into the fighting line, where the
+atmosphere is not so greatly obscured. Smokeless powder will no doubt
+advantage the defence.
+
+It need not be remarked that a battle is a physical impossibility while
+both sides adhere to the passive defensive; and experience proves that
+battles are rare in which both sides are committed to the active
+offensive, whether by preference or necessity. Mars-la-Tour (16th August
+1870) was the only contest of this nature in the Franco-German War.
+Bazaine had to be on the offensive because he was ordered to get away
+towards Verdun; Alvensleben took it because it was the only means whereby
+he could hinder Bazaine from accomplishing his purpose. But for the most
+part one side in battle is on the offensive; the other on the defensive.
+The invader is habitually the offensive person, just for the reason that
+the native force commonly acts on the defensive; the latter is anxious to
+hinder further penetration into the bowels of its land; the former's
+desire is to effect that penetration. The defensive of the native army
+need not, however, be the passive defensive; indeed, unless the position
+be exceptionally strong that is according to present tenets to be avoided.
+When, always with an underlying purpose of defence, its chief resorts to
+the offensive for reasons that he regards as good, his strategy or his
+tactics as the case may be, are expressed by the term
+"defensive-offensive."
+
+It says a good deal for the peaceful predilections of the nations, that
+there has been no fairly balanced experience affording the material for
+decision as to the relative advantage of the offensive and the defensive
+under modern conditions. In 1866 the Prussians, opposing the needle-gun to
+the Austrian muzzle-loader, naturally utilised this pre-eminence by
+adopting uniformly the offensive and traditions of the Great Frederick
+doubtless seconded the needle-gun. After Sadowa controversy ran high as to
+the proper system of tactics when breech-loader should oppose
+breech-loader. A strong party maintained that "the defensive had now
+become so strong that true science lay in forcing the adversary to attack.
+Let him come on, and then one might fairly rely on victory." As
+Boguslawski observes--"This conception of tactics would paralyse the
+offensive, for how can an army advance if it has always to wait till an
+enemy attacks?" After much exercitation the Germans determined to adhere
+to the offensive. In the recent modest language of Baron von der Goltz:
+[Footnote: _The Nation in Arms_, by Lieutenant-Colonel Baron von der
+Goltz. (Allen.)] "Our modern German mode of battle aims at being entirely
+a final struggle, which we conceive of as being inseparable from an
+unsparing offensive. Temporising, waiting, and a calm defensive are very
+unsympathetic to our nature. Everything with us is action. Our strength
+lies in great decisions on the battlefield." Perhaps also the guileless
+Germans were quite alert to the fact that Marshal Niel had shattered the
+French army's tradition of the offensive, and gone counter to the French
+soldier's nature by enjoining the defensive in the latest official
+instructions. Had the Teutons suborned him the Marshal could not have done
+them a better turn.
+
+Their offensive tactics against an enemy unnaturally lashed to the stake
+of the defensive stood the Germans in excellent stead in 1870. On every
+occasion they resorted to the offensive against an enemy in the field;
+strictly refraining, however, from that expedient when it was a fortress
+and not soldiers _en vive force_ that stood in the way. At St. Privat
+their offensive would probably have been worsted if Canrobert had been
+reinforced or even if a supply of ammunition had reached him; and a loss
+there of one-third of the combatants of the Guard Corps without result
+caused them to change for the better the method of their attack. But in
+every battle from Weissenburg to Sedan with the exception of the confused
+_mêlée_ of Mars-la-Tour, the French, besides being bewildered and
+discouraged, were in inferior strength; after Sedan the French levies in
+the field were scarcely soldiers. There was no fair testing of the
+relative advantages of defence and offence in the Russo-Turkish War of
+1877-78; and so it remains that in an actual and practical sense no firm
+decision has yet been established. All civilised nations are, however,
+assiduously practising the methods of the offensive.
+
+It may nevertheless be anticipated that in future warfare between evenly
+matched combatants the offensive will get the worst of it at the hands of
+the defensive. The word "anticipate" is used in preference to "apprehend,"
+because one's sympathy is naturally for the invaded state unless it has
+been wantonly aggressive and insolent. The invaded army, if the term may
+be used, having familiar knowledge of the terrain will take up a position
+in the fair-way of the invader; affording strong flank _appui_ and a
+far-stretching clear range in front and on flanks. It will throw up
+several lines, or still better, tiers of shallow trenches along its front
+and flanks, with emplacements for artillery and machine guns. The invader
+must attack; he cannot turn the enemy's position and expose his
+communications to that enemy. He takes the offensive, doing so, as is the
+received practice, in front and on a flank. From the outset he will find
+the offensive a sterner ordeal than in the Franco-German War days. He will
+have to break into loose order at a greater distance, because of the
+longer range of small arms, and the further scope, the greater accuracy,
+and the quicker fire of the new artillery. He too possesses those weapons,
+but he cannot use them with so great effect. His field batteries suffer
+from the hostile cannon fire as they move forward to take up a position.
+His infantry cannot fire on the run; when they drop after a rush the aim
+of panting and breathless men cannot be of the best. And their target is
+fairly protected and at least partially hidden. The defenders behind their
+low épaulement do not pant; their marksmen only at first are allowed to
+fire; these make things unpleasant for the massed gunners out yonder, who
+share their attentions with the spraying-out infantry-men. The
+quick-firing cannon of the defence are getting in their work methodically.
+Neither its gunners nor its infantry need be nervous as to expending
+ammunition freely since plenteous supplies are promptly available, a
+convenience which does not infallibly come to either guns or rifles of the
+attack. The Germans report as their experience in the capacity of
+assailants that the rapidity and excitement of the advance, the stir of
+strife, the turmoil, exhilarate the soldiers, and that patriotism and
+fire-discipline in combination enforce a cool steady maintenance of fire;
+that in view of the ominous spectacle of the swift and confident advance,
+under torture of the storm of shell-fire and the hail of bullets which
+they have to endure in immobility, the defenders, previously shaken by the
+assailants' artillery preparation, become nervous, waver, and finally
+break when the cheers of the final concentrated rush strike on their ears.
+That this was scarcely true as regarded French regulars the annals of
+every battle of the Franco-German War up to and including Sedan
+conclusively show. It is true, however, that the French nature is
+intolerant of inactivity and in 1870 suffered under the deprivation of its
+_métier;_ but how often the Germans recoiled from the shelter trenches of
+the Spicheren and gave ground all along the line from St. Privat to the
+Bois de Vaux, men who witnessed those desperate struggles cannot forget
+while they live. Warriors of greater equanimity than the French soldier
+possesses might perhaps stand on the defensive in calm self-confidence
+with simple breech-loaders as their weapons, if simple breech-loaders were
+also weapons of the assailants. But in his magazine rifle the soldier of
+the future can keep the defensive not only with self-confidence, but with
+high elation, for in it he will possess a weapon against which it seems
+improbable that the attack (although armed too with a magazine or
+repeating rifle) can prevail.
+
+The assailants fall fast as their advance pushes forward, thinned down by
+the rifle fire, the mitraille, and the shrapnel of the defence. But they
+are gallant men and while life lasts they will not be denied. The long
+bloody advance is all but over; the survivors of it who have attained thus
+far are lying down getting their wind for the final concentration and
+rush. Meanwhile, since after they once again stand up they will use no
+more rifle fire till they have conquered or are beaten, they are pouring
+forth against the defence their reserve of bullets in or attached to their
+rifle-butts. The defenders take this punishment, like Colonel Quagg, lying
+down, courting the protection of their earth-bank. The hail of the
+assailants' bullets ceases; already the artillery of the attack has
+desisted lest it should injure friend as well as foe. The word runs along
+the line and the clumps of men lying prostrate there out in the open. The
+officers spring to their feet, wave their swords, and cheer loudly. The
+men are up in an instant, and the swift rush focussing toward a point
+begins. The distance to be traversed before the attackers are _aux prises_
+with the defenders is about one hundred and fifty yards.
+
+It is no mere storm of missiles which meets fair in the face those
+charging heroes; no, it is a moving wall of metal against which they rush
+to their ruin. For the infantry of the defence are emptying their
+magazines now at point-blank range. Emptied magazine yields to full one;
+the Maxims are pumping, not bullets, but veritable streams of death, with
+calm, devilish swiftness. The quick-firing guns are spouting radiating
+torrents of case. The attackers are mown down as corn falls, not before
+the sickle but the scythe. Not a man has reached, or can reach, the little
+earth-bank behind which the defenders keep their ground. The attack has
+failed; and failed from no lack of valour, of methodised effort, of
+punctilious compliance with every instruction; but simply because the
+defence--the defence of the future in warfare--has been too strong for the
+attack. One will not occupy space by recounting how in the very nick of
+time the staunch defence flashes out into the counter-offensive; nor need
+one enlarge on the sure results to the invader as the unassailed flank of
+the defence throws forward the shoulder and takes in flank the dislocated
+masses of aggressors.
+
+One or two such experiences will definitively settle the point as to the
+relative advantage of the offensive and the defensive. Soldiers will not
+submit themselves to re-trial on re-trial of a _res judicata_. Grant,
+dogged though he was, had to accept that lesson in the shambles of Cold
+Harbour. For the bravest sane man will rather live than die. No man burns
+to become cannon-fodder. The Turk, who is supposed to court death in
+battle for religious reasons of a somewhat material kind, can run away
+even when the alternative is immediate removal to a Paradise of unlimited
+houris and copious sherbet. There are no braver men than Russian soldiers;
+but going into action against the Turks tried their nerves, not because
+they feared the Turks as antagonists, but because they knew too well that
+a petty wound disabling from retreat meant not alone death but unspeakable
+mutilation before that release.
+
+It is obvious that if, as is here anticipated, the offensive proves
+impossible in the battle of the future, an exaggerated phase of the
+stalemate which Boguslawski so pathetically deprecates will occur. The
+world need not greatly concern itself regarding this issue; the situation
+will almost invariably be in favour of the invaded and will probably
+present itself near his frontier line. He can afford to wait until the
+invader tires of inaction and goes home.
+
+Magazine and machine guns would seem to sound the knell of possible
+employment of cavalry in battle. No matter how dislocated are the infantry
+ridden at so long as they are not quite demoralised, however _rusé_ the
+cavalry leader--however favourable to sudden unexpected onslaught is the
+ground, the quick-firing arms of the future must apparently stall off the
+most enterprising horsemen. Probably if the writer were arguing the point
+with a German, the famous experiences of von Bredow might be adduced in
+bar of this contention. In the combat of Tobitschau in 1866 Bredow led his
+cuirassier regiment straight at three Austrian batteries in action,
+captured the eighteen guns and everybody and everything belonging to them,
+with the loss to himself of but ten men and eight horses. It is true, says
+the honest official account, that the ground favoured the charge and that
+the shells fired by the usually skilled Austrian gunners flew high. But
+during the last 100 yards grape was substituted for shell, and Bredow
+deserved all the credit he got. Still stronger against my argument was
+Bredow's memorable work at Mars-la-Tour, when at the head of six squadrons
+he charged across 1000 yards of open plain, rode over and through two
+separate lines of French infantry, carried a line of cannon numbering nine
+batteries, rode 1000 yards farther into the very heart of the French army,
+and came back with a loss of not quite one half of his strength. The
+_Todtenritt_, as the Germans call it, was a wonderful exploit, a second
+Balaclava charge and a bloodier one; and there was this distinction that
+it had a purpose and that that purpose was achieved. For Bredow's charge
+in effect wrecked France. It arrested the French advance which would else
+have swept Alvensleben aside; and to its timely effect is traceable the
+sequence of events that ended in the capitulation of Metz. The fact that
+although from the beginning of his charge until he struck the front of the
+first French infantry line Bredow took the rifle-fire of a whole French
+division yet did not lose above fifty men, has been a notable weapon in
+the hands of those who argue that good cavalry can charge home on unshaken
+infantry. But never more will French infantry shoot from the hip as
+Lafont's conscripts at Mars-la-Tour shot in the vague direction of
+Bredow's squadrons. French cavalry never got within yards of German
+infantry even in loose order; and the magazine or repeating rifle held
+reasonably straight will stop the most thrusting cavalry that ever heard
+the "charge" sound.
+
+Fortifications of the future will differ curiously from those of the
+present. The latter, with their towering scarps, their massive
+_enceintes_, their "portentous ditches," will remain as monuments of a
+vicious system, except where, as in the cases of Vienna, Cologne, Sedan,
+etc., the dwellers in the cities they encircle shall procure their
+demolition for the sake of elbow-room, or until modern howitzer shells or
+missiles charged with high explosives shall pulverise their naked expanses
+of masonry. In the fortification of the future the defender will no longer
+be "enclosed in the toils imposed by the engineer" with the inevitable
+disabilities they entail, while the besieger enjoys the advantage of free
+mobility. Plevna has killed the castellated fortress. With free
+communications the full results attainable by fortress artillery
+intelligently used, will at length come to be realised. Unless in rare
+cases and for exceptional reasons towns will gradually cease to be
+fortified even by an encirclement of detached forts. Where the latter are
+availed of, practical experience will infallibly condemn the expensive and
+complex cupola-surmounted construction of which General Brialmont is the
+champion. "A work," trenchantly argues Major Sydenham Clarke, "designed on
+the principles of the Roman catacombs is suited only for the dead, in a
+literal or in a military sense. The vast system of subterranean chambers
+and passages is capable of entombing a brigade, but denies all necessary
+tactical freedom of action to a battalion."
+
+The fortress of the future will probably be in the nature of an intrenched
+camp. The interior of the position will provide casemate accommodation for
+an army of considerable strength. Its defences will consist of a circle at
+intervals of about 2500 yards, of permanent redoubts which shall be
+invisible at moderate ranges for infantry and machine guns, the garrison
+of each redoubt to consist of a half battalion. Such a work was in 1886
+constructed at Chatham in thirty-one working days, to hold a garrison of
+200 men housed in casemates built in concrete, for less than £3000, and
+experiments proved that it would require a "prohibitory expenditure" of
+ammunition to cause it serious damage by artillery fire. The supporting
+defensive armament will consist of a powerful artillery rendered mobile by
+means of tram-roads, this defence supplemented by a field force carrying
+on outpost duties and manning field works guarding the intervals between
+the redoubts. Advanced defences and exterior obstacles of as formidable a
+character as possible will be the complement of what in effect will be an
+immensely elaborated Plevna, which, properly armed and fully organised,
+will "fulfil all the requirements of defence" while possessing important
+potentialities of offence.
+
+An illustration is pertinent of the pre-eminent utility of such fortified
+and strongly held positions, of whose characteristics the above is the
+merest outline. In the event of a future Franco-German War, the immensely
+expensive cordon of fortresses with which the French have lined their
+frontier, efficiently equipped, duly garrisoned and well commanded, will
+unquestionably present a serious obstacle to the invading armies. The
+Germans talk of _vive force_--shell heavily and then storm; the latter
+resort one for which they have in the past displayed no predilection.
+Whether by storm or interpenetration, they will probably break the cordon,
+but they cannot advance without masking all the principal fortresses. This
+will employ a considerable portion of their strength, and the invasion
+will proceed in less force, which will be an advantage to the defenders.
+But if instead of those multitudinous fortresses the French had
+constructed, say, three such intrenched-camp fortresses as have been
+sketched, each quartering 50,000 men, it would appear that they would have
+done better for themselves at far less cost. Each intrenched position
+containing a field army 50,000 strong would engross a beleaguering host of
+100,000 men. The positions of the type outlined are claimed to be
+impregnable; they could contain supplies and munitions for at least a
+year, detaining around them for that period 300,000 of the enemy. No
+European power except Russia has soldiers enough to spare so long such a
+mass of troops standing fast, and simultaneously to prosecute the invasion
+of a first-rate power with approximately equal numbers. France at the cost
+of 150,000 men would be holding supine on her frontier double the number
+of Germans--surely no disadvantageous transaction.
+
+In conclusion, it may be worth while to point out that the current
+impression that the maintenance by states of "bloated armaments" is a keen
+incentive to war, is fallacious. How often do we hear, "There must be a
+big war soon; the powers cannot long stand the cost of standing looking at
+each other, all armed to the teeth!" War is infinitely more costly than
+the costliest preparedness. But this is not all. The country gentleman for
+once in a way brings his family to town for the season, pledging himself
+privily to strict economy when the term of dissipation ends, in order to
+restore the balance. But for a State, as the sequel to a season of war
+there is no such potentiality of economy. Rather there is the grim
+certainty of heavier and yet heavier expenditure after the war, in the
+still obligatory character of the armed man keeping his house. Therefore
+it is that potentates are reluctant to draw the sword, and rather bear the
+ills they have than fly to other evils inevitably worse still. Whether the
+final outcome will be universal national bankruptcy or the millennium, is
+a problem as yet insoluble.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
+
+[Footnote: _Bandobast_ is an Indian word, which, like many others, has
+been all but formally incorporated into Anglo-Indian English. The meaning
+is, plan, scheme, organised arrangement.]
+
+
+George Martell was an indigo-planter in Western Tirhoot, a fine tract of
+Bengal stretching from the Ganges to the Nepaul Terai, and roughly bounded
+on the west by the Gunduck, on the east by the Kussi. Planter-life in
+Tirhoot is very pleasant to a man in robust health, who possesses some
+resources within himself. In many respects it more resembles active rural
+life at home than does any other life led by Anglo-Indians. The joys of a
+planter's life have been enthusiastically sung by a planter-poet; and the
+frank genial hospitality of the planter's bungalow stands out pre-eminent,
+even amidst the universal hospitality of India. The planter's bungalow is
+open to all comers. The established formula for the arriving stranger is
+first to call for brandy-and-soda, then to order a bath, and finally to
+inquire the name of the occupant his host. The laws of hospitality are as
+the laws of the Medes and Persians. Once in the famine time a stranger in
+a palki reached a planter's bungalow in an outlying district, and sent in
+his card. The planter sent him out a drink but did not bid him enter. The
+stranger remained in the veranda till sundown, had another drink, and then
+went on his way. This breach of statute law became known. There was much
+excuse for the planter, for the traveller was a missionary and in other
+respects was a _persona ingrata_. But the credit of planterhood was at
+stake; and so strong was the force of public opinion that the planter who
+had been a defaulter in hospitality had to abandon the profession and quit
+the district. It was on this occasion laid down as a guiding illustration,
+that if Judas Iscariot, when travelling around looking for an eligible
+tree on which to hang himself, had claimed the hospitality of a planter's
+bungalow, the dweller therein would have been bound to accord him that
+hospitality. Not even newspaper correspondents were to be sent empty away.
+
+The indigo-planter is "up in the morning early" and away at a swinging
+canter on his "waler" nag, out into the _dahaut_ to visit the _zillahs_ on
+which his crop is growing. He returns when the sun is getting high with a
+famous appetite for a breakfast which is more than half luncheon. After
+his siesta he may look in upon a neighbour--all Tirhoot are neighbours and
+within a radius of thirty miles is considered next door. He would ride
+that distance any day to spend an hour or two in a house brightened by the
+presence of womanhood. His anxious period is _mahaye_ time, when the
+indigo is in the vats and the quantity and quality of the yield depend so
+much on care and skill. But except at _mahaye_ time he is always ready for
+relaxation, whether it takes the form of a polo match, a pig-sticking
+expedition, or a race-meeting at Sonepoor, Muzzufferpore, or Chumparun.
+These race-meetings last for several days on end, there being racing and
+hunting on alternate days with a ball every second night. It used to be
+worth a journey to India to see Jimmy Macleod cram a cross-grained "waler"
+over an awkward fence, and squeeze the last ounce out of the brute in the
+run home on the flat. The Tirhoot ladies are in all respects charming; and
+it must remain a moot point with the discriminating observer whether they
+are more delightful in the genial home-circles of which they are the
+centres and ornaments, or in the more exciting stir and whirl of the
+ballroom. After every gathering hecatombs of slain male victims mournfully
+cumber the ground; and one all-conquering fair one, now herself conquered
+by matrimony and motherhood, wrung from those her charms had blighted the
+title of "the destroying angel."
+
+George Martell was an honest sort of a clod. He stood well with the ryots,
+and the mark of his factory always brought out keen bidding at Thomas's
+auction-mart in Mission Row and was held in respect in the Commission Sale
+Rooms in Mincing Lane. He was a good shikaree and could hold his own
+either at polo or at billiards; but being somewhat shy and not a little
+clumsy he did not frequent race-balls nor throw himself in the way of
+"destroying angels." He had been over a dozen years in the district and
+had not been known to propose once, so that he had come to be set down as
+a misogynist. Among his chief allies was a neighbouring planter called
+Mactavish. Mactavish in some incomprehensible way--he being a gaunt,
+uncouth, bristly Scot, whose Highland accent was as strong as the whisky
+with which he had coloured his nose--had contrived to woo and win a bonny,
+baby-faced girl, the ripple of whose laughter and the dancing sheen of
+whose auburn curls filled the Mactavish bungalow with glad bright
+sunshine. When Mac first brought home this winsome fairy Martell had
+sheepishly shunned the residence of his friend, till one fine morning when
+he came in from the _dahaut_ he found Minnie Mactavish quite at home among
+the pipes, empty soda-water bottles, and broken chairs that constituted
+the principal articles of furniture in his bachelor sitting-room. Minnie
+had come to fetch her husband's friend and in her dainty imperious way
+would take no denial. So George had his bath, got a fresh horse saddled,
+nearly chucked Minnie over the other side as he clumsily helped her to
+mount her pony, and rode away with her a willing if somewhat clownish
+captive. Arriving at the bungalow Mactavish, honest George was bewildered
+by the transformation it had undergone. Flowers were where the spirit-case
+used to stand. There was a drawing-room with actually a piano in it; the
+_World_ lay on the table instead of the _Sporting Times_, and the servants
+wore a quiet, tasteful livery. Mac himself had been trimmed and titivated
+almost out of recognition. He who had been wont to lounge half the day in
+his _pyjamas_ was now almost smartly dressed; his beard was cropped, and
+his bristly poll brushed and oiled. If George had a weak spot in him it
+was for a simple song well sung. Mrs. Mac, accompanying herself on the
+piano, sang to him "The Land o' the Leal" and brewed him a mild peg with
+her own fair hands. George by bedtime did not know whether he was on his
+head or his heels.
+
+He lay awake all night thinking over all he had seen. Mactavish now was
+clearly a better man than ever he had been before. He had told George he
+was living more cheaply as a married man than ever he had done as a
+bachelor; and in the matter of happiness there was no comparison. George
+rose early to go home; but early as it was Mrs. Mac was up too, and
+arrayed in a killing morning _négligé_ that fairly made poor George
+stammer, gave him his _chota hazri_ and stroked his horse's head as he
+mounted. About half-way home George suddenly shouted, "D----d if I don't
+do it too!" and brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack that set
+his horse buck-jumping.
+
+In effect, George Martell had determined to get married. But where to find
+a Mrs. Martell? Mrs. Mactavish had told him she had no sisters and that
+her only relative was a maiden grand-aunt, whom George thought must be a
+little too old to marry unless in the last resort. If he took the field at
+the next race-meeting the fellows would chaff the life out of him; and
+besides, he scarcely felt himself man enough to face a "destroying angel."
+As he pondered, riding slowly homeward, a thought occurred to him. When he
+had been at home a dozen years ago his two girl-sisters had been at
+school, and their great playmate had been a girl of eleven, by name Laura
+Davidson. Laura was a pretty child. He had taken occasional notice of her;
+had once kissed her after having been severely scratched in the struggle;
+and had taken her and his sisters to the local theatre. What if Laura
+Davidson--now some three-and-twenty--were still single? What if she were
+pretty and nice? He remembered that the colour of her hair was not unlike
+Mrs. Mac's, and was in ringlets too. And what if she were willing to come
+out and make lonely George Martell as happy a man as was that lucky old
+Mac?
+
+It was mail-day, and George, taking time by the forelock, sat down and
+wrote to his sister what had come into his head. By the return mail he had
+her reply: Laura Davidson was single; she was nice; she was pretty; she
+had fair ringlets; she had a hazy memory of George and the kissing
+episode, and was willing to come out and marry him and try to make him
+happy. But she could not well come alone; could George suggest any method
+of _chaperonage_ on the voyage?
+
+In the district of Champarun, which in essentials is part of Tirhoot, lies
+the quaint little cavalry cantonment of Segowlie. It is the last relic of
+the old Nepaul war, which caused the erection of a chain of cantonments
+along the frontier all of which save Segowlie, are now abandoned. There is
+just room for one native cavalry regiment at Segowlie, and the soldiers
+like the station because of excellent sport and the good comradeship of
+the planters. At Segowlie at the time I am writing of there happened to be
+quartered a certain Major Freeze, whose wife, after a couple of years at
+home, was about returning to India. George had some acquaintance with the
+Major and a far-off profound respect for his wife, who was an admirable
+and stately lady. It occurred to him to try whether it could not be
+managed that she should bring out the future Mrs. Martell. He saw the
+Major, who was only too delighted at the prospect of a new lady in the
+district, and the affair was soon arranged. Mrs. Freeze wrote that she and
+Miss Davidson were leaving by such-and-such a mail; and knowing that
+Martell was rather lumpy when a lady was in the case, she thoughtfully
+suggested that he should go down to Bombay and meet them so as to get over
+the initial awkwardness by making himself useful and gain his intended's
+respect by swearing at the niggers.
+
+All went well. But George Martell was not quite his own master, he was
+only part of a "concern" and was bound to do his best for his partners. It
+happened, just about the time the P. and O. steamer was due at Bombay,
+that the most ticklish period of the indigo-planters' year was upon
+Martell. The juice had begun to flow from the vats. He had no assistant
+and he did not dare to leave the work, so he telegraphed to Bombay to
+explain this to Mrs. Freeze, and added that he would meet her and her
+companion at Bankipore where their long railway journey would end. Miss
+Davidson did not understand much about the absorbing crisis of indigo
+production, and she had a spice of romance in her composition; so that
+poor Martell did not rise in her estimation by his default at Bombay. When
+the ladies reached Bankipore there was still no Martell, but only a
+_chuprassee_ with a note to say that the juice was still running, and that
+Martell sahib could not leave the factory but would be waiting for them at
+Segowlie. At this even Mrs. Freeze almost lost her temper.
+
+They have a "State Railway" now in Tirhoot, but at the time I am writing
+of there was only one _pukha_ road in all the district. The ladies
+travelled in palanquins, or palkis, as they are more familiarly called. It
+is a long journey from Bankipore to Segowlie, and three nights were spent
+in travelling. Bluff old Minden Wilson stood on the bank above the ghât to
+welcome Mrs. Freeze across the Ganges. One day was spent at young Spudd's
+factory, the second at the residence of a genial planter rejoicing in the
+quaint name of Hong Kong Scribbens; on the third morning they reached
+Segowlie. But still no Martell; only a _chit_ to say that that plaguy
+juice was still running but that he hoped to be able to drive over to
+dinner. Miss Davidson went to bed in a huff; and Major Freeze was
+temporarily inclined to think that her home-trip had impaired his good
+lady's amiability of character.
+
+Martell did turn up at dinner-time. But he was hardly a man at any time to
+create much of an impression, and on this occasion he appeared to
+exceptional disadvantage. He was stutteringly nervous; and there were some
+evidences that he had been ineffectually striving to mitigate his
+nervousness by the consumption of his namesake. He wore a new dress-coat
+which had not the remotest pretensions to fit him, and the bear's-grease
+which he had freely used gave unpleasant token of rancidity. The dinner
+was an unsatisfactory performance. Miss Davidson was extremely
+_distraite_, while Martell became more and more nervous as the meal
+progressed and was manifestly relieved when the ladies retired. Soon after
+they had done so the Major was sent for from the drawing-room. He found
+Miss Davidson sobbing on his wife's bosom. He asked what was the matter.
+The girl, with many sobbing interruptions, gasped out--
+
+"He's the wrong man! O Heavens, I never saw _him_ before! The man I
+remember who gave me sweets when I was a child had black hair; _he_ has
+red! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, please send that man away and let me go
+home!"
+
+And then Miss Davidson went off into hysterics.
+
+Here was a pretty state of matters! The Major and his wife could not see
+their way clear at all. Consultation followed consultation, with visits on
+the Major's part to poor Martell in the dining-room irregularly
+interspersed. It was almost morning before affairs arranged themselves
+after a fashion. The new basis agreed upon was that the previously
+existing arrangement should be regarded as dead, and that a courtship
+between Martell and Miss Davidson should be commenced _de novo_--he to do
+his best to recommend himself to the lady's affections, she to learn to
+love him if she could, red hair and all. And so George went home, and the
+Segowlie household went to bed.
+
+Poor George at the best had a very poor idea of courting acceptably; and
+surely no man was more heavily handicapped in the enterprise prescribed
+him. He had to court to order, and to combat, besides, both the bad
+impression made at starting and the misfortune of his red hair. The poor
+fellow did his best. He used to come and sit in Mrs. Freeze's drawing-room
+hours on end, glowering at Miss Davidson in a silence broken by spasmodic
+efforts at forced talk. He brought the girl presents, gave her a horse,
+and begged of her to ride with him. But the great stupid fellow had not
+thought of a habit and the girl felt a delicacy in telling him that she
+had not one. So the horse ate his head off in idleness, and George's heart
+went farther and farther down in the direction of his boots. He had so
+bothered Mrs. Freeze that she had washed her hands of him, and had bidden
+him worry it out on his own line.
+
+In less than a month the crisis came. Miss Davidson could not bring
+herself to think of poor George as affording the makings of a husband. She
+told Mrs. Freeze so, and begged, for kindness sake, that the Major would
+break this her determination to Mr. Martell and desire him to give the
+thing up as hopeless. The Major thought the best course to pursue was to
+write to George to this effect. Next morning in the small hours the poor
+fellow turned up in the Segowlie veranda in a terribly bad way. He would
+not accept his fate at second-hand in this fashion; he must see Miss
+Davidson and try to move her to be kind to him. In the end there was an
+interview between them, from which George emerged quiet but very pale. His
+notable matrimonial bandobast had proved the deadest of failures; and the
+poor fellow's lip trembled as he thought of Mactavish's happy home and his
+own forlorn bungalow.
+
+But although he had red hair and did not know in the least what to do with
+his feet, George Martell was a gentleman. The lady continuing anxious to
+go home, he insisted on his right to pay her return passage as he had done
+her passage outward, urging rather ruefully that, having taken a shot at
+happiness and having missed fire, he must be the sole sufferer. It is a
+little surprising that this uncouth chivalry did not melt the lady, but
+she was obdurate, although she let him have his way about the passage
+money. So in the company of an officer's wife going home Miss Davidson
+quitted Segowlie and journeyed to Bombay. Poor old George, with a very
+sore heart, was bent on seeing the last of her before settling down again
+to the old dull bachelor life. He dodged down to Bombay in the same train,
+travelling second class that he might not annoy the girl by a chance
+meeting; and stood with a sad face leaning on the rail of the Apollo
+Bunder, as he watched the ship containing his miscarried venture steam out
+of Bombay harbour on its voyage to England.
+
+The same night he set out on his return to his plantation. At near
+midnight the mail-train from Bombay reaches Eginpoora, at the head of the
+famous Bhore ghât. Some refreshment is ordinarily procurable there, but it
+is not much of a place. George Martell had had a drink, and was sauntering
+moodily up and down the platform waiting for the whistle to sound. As he
+passed the second class compartment reserved for ladies he heard a low,
+tremulous voice exclaim, "Oh, if I could only make them understand that
+I'd give the world for a cup of tea!" George, if uncouth, was a practical
+man. His prompt voice rang out, "_Qui hye, ek pyala chah lao!_" Promptly
+came the refreshment-room _khitmutghar_, hurrying with the tea; and
+George, taking off his hat, begged to know whether he could be of any
+further service.
+
+It was a very pleasant face that looked out on him in the moonlight, and
+there was more than mere conventionality in the accents in which the
+pleasant voice acknowledged his opportune courtesy. Insensibly George and
+the lady drifted into conversation. She was very lonely, poor thing; a
+friendless girl coming out to be governess in the family of a _burra
+sahib_ at Chupra. Now Chupra is only across the Gunduck from Tirhoot, so
+George told his new acquaintance they were both going to nearly the same
+place, and professed his cordial willingness to assist her on the journey.
+He did so, escorting her right into Chupra before he set his face homeward;
+and he thenceforth got into a habit of visiting Chupra very frequently.
+Need I prolong the story? I happened to be in Bankipore when the Prince of
+Wales visited that centre of famine-wallahs. It fell to my pleasant lot to
+take Mrs. Martell in to dinner at the Commissioner's hospitable table.
+Mrs. Mactavish was sitting opposite; and I went back to my bedroom-tent in
+the compound without having made up my mind whether she or Mrs. Martell
+was the prettier and the nicer. So you see George Martell did not make
+quite so bad a _bandobast_ after all.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY--1879
+
+
+It was in Cawnpore on my way up country, during the Prince of Wales's tour
+through India, that there were shown to me some curious and interesting
+mementoes of the siege of Lucknow. The friend in whose possession they
+were was near Havelock as he sat before his tent in the short Indian
+twilight, a short time before the advance on Lucknow made by him and
+Outram in September 1857. Through the gloom of the falling twilight there
+came marching towards the General a file of Highlanders escorting a tall,
+gaunt Oude man, on whose swarthy face the lamplight struck as he salaamed
+before the General Lord Sahib. Then he extracted from his ear a minute
+section of quill sealed at both ends. The General's son opened the strange
+envelope forwarded by a postal service so hazardous, and unrolled a morsel
+of paper which seemed to be covered with cabalistic signs. The missive had
+been sent out from Lucknow by Brigadier Inglis, the commander of the
+beleaguered garrison of the Lucknow Residency, and its bearer was the
+stanch and daring scout, Ungud. As I write the originals of this
+communication and of others which came in the same way lie before me; and
+two of those missives in their curious mixture of characters may be found
+of interest to readers of to-day.
+
+
+LUKHNOW, _Septr. 16th._ (Recd. 19th.)
+
+MY DEAR GENERAL--The last letter I recd. from you was dated 24th ult'o,
+since when I have rec'd [Greek: no neus] whatever from y'r [Greek: kamp]
+or of y'r [Greek: movements] but am now [Greek: dailae expekting] to
+receive [Greek: inteligense] of y'r [Greek: advanse] in this [Greek:
+direktion]. Since the date of my last letter the enemy have continued to
+persevere unceasingly in their efforts against this position & the firing
+has never ceased day or night; they have about [Greek: sixten] guns in
+position round us--many of them 18 p'rs. On 5th inst. they made a very
+determined attack after exploding 2 mines and [Greek: suksaeded] for a
+[Greek: moment] in [Greek: almost geting] into one of our [Greek:
+bateries], but were eventually repulsed on all sides with heavy loss.
+Since the above date they have kept up a cannonade & musketry fire,
+occasionally throwing in a shell or two. My [Greek: waeklae loses]
+continue very [Greek: hevae] both in [Greek: ophisers] & [Greek: men]. I
+shall be quite out of [Greek: rum] for the [Greek: men] in [Greek: eit
+dais], but we have been [Greek: living] on [Greek: redused rations] & I
+hope to be [Greek: able] to [Greek: get] on [Greek: til] about [Greek:
+phirst prox]. If you have not [Greek: relieved] us by [Greek: then] we
+shall have [Greek: no meat lepht], as I must [Greek: kaep] some few [Greek:
+buloks] to [Greek: move] my [Greek: guns] about the [Greek: positions].
+As it is I have had to [Greek: kil] almost all the [Greek: gun buloks],
+for my men c'd not [Greek: perphorm] the [Greek: ard work without animal
+phood]. There is a report, tho' from a source on which I cannot implicitly
+rely, that [Greek: mansing] has just [Greek: arived] in [Greek: luknow]
+havg. [Greek: lepht part] of his [Greek: phors outside] the [Greek:
+sitae]. It is said that [Greek: he] is in [Greek: our interest] and that
+[Greek: he] has [Greek: taken] the [Greek: above step] at the [Greek:
+instigation] of B[Greek: riti]sh [Greek: athoritae]. But I cannot say
+whether [Greek: su]ch [Greek: be the kase], as all I have to go upon is
+[Greek: bazar rumors]. I am [Greek: most anxious] to [Greek: hear] of yr.
+[Greek: advanse] to [Greek: enable mae] to [Greek: rae-asure our native
+soldiers]. [Footnote: The reader will observe that the words are English,
+though the characters are Greek.]--Yours truly,
+
+J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_,
+
+H.M. 32'd Reg't.
+
+To Brig'r Havelock, Commg. Relieving Force.
+
+
+The other missive is of an earlier date, and was brought out in the same
+manner as the first.
+
+
+_August 16_. (Recd. 23rd August.)
+
+MY DEAR GENERAL--A note from Colonel Tytler to Mr. Gubbins reached last
+night, dated "Mungalwar, 4th instant," the latter part of which is as
+follows:--"You must [Greek: aid] us in [Greek: everae] way even to cutting
+y'r way out if we [Greek: kant phorse our] way in. We have [Greek: onlae a
+small phorse]." This has [Greek: kaused mae] much [Greek: uneasiness], as
+it is quite [Greek: imposible] with my [Greek: weak] & [Greek: shatered
+phorse] that I can [Greek: leave] my [Greek: dephenses]. You must bear in
+mind how I am [Greek: hampered], that I have upwards of [Greek: one undred
+& twentae-sik wounded], and at the least [Greek: two undred & twenae
+women], & about [Greek: two undred] & [Greek: thirtae children], & no
+[Greek: kariage] of any [Greek: deskription], besides [Greek: sakriphising
+twentae-thrae laks] of [Greek: treasure] & about [Greek: thirtae guns] of
+[Greek: sorts]. In consequence of the news rec'd I shall soon put the
+[Greek: phorse] on [Greek: alph rations], unless I [Greek: hear phrom]
+you. [Greek: Our provisions] will [Greek: last] us [Greek: then] till
+[Greek: about] the [Greek: tenth] [Greek: september]. If you [Greek: hope]
+to [Greek: save this no time must] be [Greek: lost] in pushing forward. We
+are [Greek: dailae] being [Greek: ataked] by the [Greek: enemae], who are
+within a few yards of our [Greek: dephenses]. Their [Greek: mines] have
+[Greek: alreadae weakened our post], & I have [Greek: everae] [Greek:
+reason] to [Greek: believe] that are carrying on [Greek: others]. Their
+[Greek: aeteen] [Greeks: pounders] are within 150 yards of [Greek: some
+oph our bateries], & [Greek: phrom] their [Greek: positions & [Greek: our
+inabilitae] to [Greek: phorm working] [Greek: parties], we [Greek: kanot
+repli] to [Greek: them. Thae damage done ourlae] is very [Greek: great].
+My [Greek: strength] now in [Greek: europeans] is [Greek: thrae undred] &
+[Greek: phiphtae], & about [Greek: thrae hundred natives], & the men
+[Greek: dreadphulae] [Greek: harassed], & owing to [Greek: part] of the
+[Greek: residensae] having been [Greek: brought down] by [Greek: round
+shot] are without [Greek: shelter]. Our [Greek: native] [Greek: phorse]
+hav'g been [Greek: asured] on Col. Tytler's authority of y'r [Greek: near]
+[Greek: aproach some twentae phive dais ago are naturallae losing
+konphidense], [Greek: and iph thae leave] us I do not [Greek: sae how the
+dephenses] are to be [Greek: manned]. Did you [Greek: reseive a letter &
+plan phrom] the [Greek: man] [Greek: Ungud]?--Kindly answer this
+question.--Yours truly,
+
+J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_.
+
+Cawnpore is an engrossing theme, and Bithoor alone would furnish material
+for an article; but my present subject is Lucknow, and I must get to it.
+There is a railway now to Lucknow from Cawnpore, but the railway bridge
+across the Ganges is not yet finished and passengers must cross by the
+bridge of boats to the Oude side. Behind me, as the gharry jingles over
+the wooden platform, is the fort which Havelock began, which Neill
+completed, and in which Windham found the shelter which alone saved him
+from utter defeat. Before me is the low Gangetic shore, with the dumpy
+sand-hills gradually rising from the water's edge. A few years ago there
+used to ride at the head of that noble regiment the 78th Highlanders, a
+smooth-faced, gaunt, long-legged, stooping officer on an old white horse.
+The Colonel had a voice like a girl and his men irreverently called him
+the "old squeaker"; but although you never heard him talk of his deeds he
+had a habit of going quietly and steadily to the front, taking fighting
+and hardship philosophically as part of the day's work. Those sand-banks
+were once the scene of some quiet, unsensational heroism of his. He
+commanded the two companies of Highlanders whom Havelock threw on the
+unknown shore as the vanguard of his advance into Oude. No prior
+reconnaissance was possible. Oude swarmed with an armed and hostile
+population. The chances were that an army was hovering but a little way
+inland, waiting to attack the head of the column on landing. But it was
+necessary to risk all contingencies, and Mackenzie accepted the service as
+he might have done an invitation to a glass of grog. In the dead of the
+night the boats stood across with the little forlorn hope with which
+Havelock essayed to grapple on to Oude. Landing in the rain and darkness,
+it was Mackenzie's task to grope for an enemy if there should be one in
+his vicinity. There was not; but for four-and-twenty hours his little band
+hung on to the Oude bank as it were by their eyelids, detached,
+unsupported, and wholly charged with the taking care of themselves until
+it was possible to send a reinforcement. The charge of this vague,
+uncertain, tentative enterprise, fraught with risks so imminent and so
+vast, required a cool, steady-balanced courage of no common order.
+
+"Onao!" shouts the conductor of the train at the first station from
+Cawnpore, and we look out on a few railway bungalows and a large native
+village apparently in a ruinous state. All this journey is studded with
+battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to make
+a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically Private
+Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the hesitation of
+his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the mutineers. We jog on
+very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to India in point of
+slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at home; but every yard
+of the ground is interesting. Along that high road passed in long,
+strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde brought away from
+Lucknow--the civilians, the women, the children, and the wounded of the
+immortal garrison. That swell beyond the mango trees under which the _nhil
+gau_ are feeding, is Mungalwar, Havelock's menacing position. No wonder
+though the outskirts of this town on the high road present a ruined
+appearance. It is Busseerutgunge, the scene of three of Havelock's battles
+and victories, fought and won in a single fortnight. We pass Bunnee, where
+Havelock and Outram tramping on to the relief, fired a royal salute in the
+hope that the sound of it might reach to the Residency and cheer the
+hearts of its garrison. And now we are on the platform of the Lucknow
+station which has more of an English look about it than have most Indian
+stations. There is a bookstall, although it is not one of Smith's; and
+there are lots of English faces in the crowd waiting the arrival of the
+train. The natives, one sees at a glance, are of very different physique
+from the people of Bengal. The Oude man is tall, square-shouldered, and
+upright; he has more hair on his face than has the Bengali, and his
+carriage is that of a free man. The railway station of Lucknow is flanked
+by two earthwork fortifications of considerable pretensions.
+
+Lucknow is so full of interest and the objects of interest are so widely
+spread that one is in doubt where to begin the pilgrimage. But the
+Alumbagh is on the railway side of the canal and therefore nearest; and I
+drive directly to it before going into the town. From the station the road
+to the Alumbagh turns sharp to the left and the two miles' drive is
+through beautiful groves and gardens. Then the plain opens up and there is
+the detached temple which so long was one of Outram's outlying pickets;
+and to the left of it the square-walled enclosure of the Alumbagh itself
+with the four corners flanked by earthen bastions. The top of the wall is
+everywhere roughly crenelated for musketry fire, and on two of its faces
+there are countless tokens that it has been the target for round shot and
+bullets. The Alumbagh in the pre-Mutiny period was a pleasure-garden of
+one of the princes of Oude. The enclosed park contained a summer palace
+and all the surroundings were pretty and tasteful. It was for the
+possession of the Alumbagh that Havelock fought his last battle before the
+relief; here it was where he left his baggage and went in; here it was
+that Clyde halted to organise the turning movement which achieved the
+second relief. Hither were brought from the Dilkoosha the women and
+children of the garrison prior to starting on the march for Cawnpore; here
+Outram lay threatening Lucknow from Clyde's relief until the latter's
+ultimate capture of the city. But these occurrences contribute but
+trivially to the interest of the Alumbagh in comparison with the
+circumstance that within its enclosure is the grave of Havelock. We enter
+the great enclosure under the lofty arch of the castellated gateway. From
+this a straight avenue bordered by arbor vitae trees, conducts to a square
+plot of ground enclosed by low posts and chains. Inside this there is a
+little garden the plants of which a native gardener is watering as we open
+the wicket. From the centre of the little garden there rises a shapely
+obelisk on a square pedestal and on one side of the pedestal is a long
+inscription. "Here lie," it begins, "the mortal remains of Henry
+Havelock;" and so, methinks, it might have ended. There is needed no
+prolix biographical inscription to tell the reverent pilgrim of the deeds
+of the dead man by whose grave he stands--so long as history lives, so
+long does it suffice to know that "here lie the mortal remains of Henry
+Havelock"--and the text and verse of poetry grate on one as redundancies.
+He sickened two days before the evacuation of the Residency and died on
+the morning of the 24th of November in his dooly in a tent of the camp at
+the Dilkoosha. The life went out of him just as the march began, and his
+soldiers conveyed with them, on the litter on which he had expired, the
+mortal remains of the chief who had so often led them on to victory.
+
+On the following morning they buried him here in the Alumbagh, under the
+tree which still spreads its branches over the little garden in which he
+lies. There stood around the grave-mouth Colin Campbell and the chivalrous
+Outram, and stanch old Walter Hamilton, and the ever-ready Fraser Tytler;
+and the "boy Harry" to whom the campaign had brought the gain of fame and
+the loss of a father; and the devoted Harwood with "his heart in the
+coffin there with Caesar;" and the heroic William Peel; and that "colossal
+red Celt," the noble, ill-fated Adrian Hope, sacrificed afterwards to
+incompetent obstinacy. Behind stood in a wide circle the soldiers of the
+Ross-shire Buffs and the "Blue Caps" who had served the dead chief so
+stanchly, and had gathered here now, with many a memory of his ready
+praise of valour and his indefatigable regard for the comfort of his men,
+stirring in their war-worn hearts--
+
+  Guarded to a soldier's grave
+  By the bravest of the brave,
+  He hath gained a nobler tomb
+  Than in old cathedral gloom.
+  Nobler mourners paid the rite,
+  Than the crowd that craves a sight;
+  England's banners o'er him waved,
+  Dead he keeps the name he saved.
+
+The burial-place was being temporarily abandoned, and as the rebels
+desecrated all the graves they could discover it was necessary to
+obliterate as much as possible the tokens of the interment. A big "H" was
+carved into the bark of the tree and a small tin plate fastened to its
+trunk, to guide to the subsequent investigation of the spot. Dr. Russell
+tells us that when he visited the Alumbagh before his return home after
+the mutiny in Oude was stamped out, he found the hero's grave a muddy
+trench near the foot of a tree which bore the mark of a round shot and had
+carved into its bark the letter "H." The tree is here still and the dent
+of the round shot, and faintly too is to be discerned the carved letter
+but the bark around it seems to have been whittled away, perhaps by the
+sacrilegious knives of relic-seeking visitors. There is the grave of a
+young lieutenant in a corner of the little garden and a few private
+soldiers lie hard by.
+
+I turn my face now toward the Charbagh bridge, following the route taken
+by Havelock's force on the 25th of September--the memorable day of the
+relief. There is the field where, as at a table in the open air Havelock
+and Outram were studying a map, a round shot from the Sepoy battery by the
+Yellow House ricochetted between them. There is the spot where stood the
+Yellow House itself, whence after a desperate struggle Maude's
+artillerymen drove the Sepoy garrison and its guns. Presently with a sweep
+the road comes into a direct line with the Charbagh bridge over the canal.
+Now there is not a house in the vicinity; the Charbagh garden has been
+thrown into the plain and the steep banks of the canal are perfectly
+naked. But then the scene was very different. On the Lucknow side the
+native city came close up to the bridge and lined the canal. The tall
+houses to right and left of the bridge on the Lucknow side were full of
+men with firearms. At that end of the bridge there was a regular
+overlapping breastwork, and behind it rose an earthwork battery solidly
+constructed and armed with five guns, one a 42-pounder, all crammed to the
+muzzle with grape. Let us sit down on the parapet and try to realise the
+scene. Outram with the 78th has made a detour to the right through the
+Charbagh garden to clear it of the enemy, and, gaining the canal bank, to
+bring a flanking fire to bear on its defenders. There is only room for two
+of Maude's guns; and there they stand out in the open on the road trying
+to answer the fire of the rebel battery. Thrown forward along the bank to
+the left of the bridge is a company of the Madras Fusiliers under Arnold,
+lying down and returning the musketry fire from the houses on the other
+side. Maude's guns are forward in the straight throat of the road where it
+leads on to the bridge close by, but round the bend under cover of the
+wall the Madras Fusiliers are lying down. In a bay of the wall of the
+Charbagh enclosure General Neill is standing waiting for the effect of
+Outram's flank movement to develop, and young Havelock, mounted, is on the
+other side of the road somewhat forward. Matters are at a deadlock. It
+seems as if Outram had lost his way. Maude's gunners are all down; he has
+repeatedly called for volunteers from the infantry behind, and now his
+gallant subaltern, Maitland, is doing bombardier's work. Maude calls to
+young Havelock that he shall be forced to retire his guns if something is
+not done at once; and Havelock rides across through the fire and in his
+capacity as assistant adjutant-general urges on Neill the need for an
+immediate assault. Neill "is not in command; he cannot take the
+responsibility; and General Outram must turn up soon." Havelock turns and
+rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks
+encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at the
+long detention under fire. "Come out of that, sir," cried one soldier, "a
+chap's just had his head taken off there!" It is a grim joke that reply
+which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: "And what the devil are we here
+for but to get our heads taken off?" Young Havelock is bent on the
+perpetration of what, under the circumstances, may be called a pious
+fraud. His father, who commands the operations, is behind with the
+Reserve, and he disappears round the bend on the make-belief of getting
+instructions from the chief. The General is far in the rear but his son
+comes back at the gallop, rides up to Neill, and saluting with his sword,
+says, "You are to carry the bridge at once, sir." Neill, acquiescing in
+the superior order, replies, "Get the regiment together then, and see it
+formed up." At the word and without waiting for the regiment to rise and
+form the gallant and eager Arnold springs up from his advanced position
+and dashes on to the bridge, followed by about a dozen of his nearest
+skirmishers. Tytler and Havelock, as eager as Arnold, set spurs to their
+horses and are by his side in a moment. The brave and ardent 84th,
+commanded by Willis, dashes to the front. Then the hurricane opens. The
+big gun crammed to the muzzle with grape, sweeps its iron sleet across the
+bridge in the face of the gallant band, and the Sepoy sharpshooters
+converge their fire on it. Arnold drops shot through both thighs, Tytler's
+horse goes down with a crash, the bridge is swept clear save for young
+Havelock erect and unwounded, waving his sword and shouting for the
+Fusiliers to come on, and a Fusilier corporal, Jakes by name, who, as he
+rams a bullet home into his Enfield, says cheerily to Havelock, "We'll
+soon have the ---- out of that, sir!" And corporal Jakes is a true
+prophet. Before the big gun can be loaded again the stormers are on the
+bridge in a rushing mass. They are across it, they clear the barricade,
+they storm the battery, they are bayoneting the Sepoy gunners as they
+stand. The Charbagh bridge is won, but with severe loss which continues
+more or less all the way to the Residency; and when one comes to know the
+ground it becomes more and more obvious that the strategy of Havelock,
+overruled by Outram, was wise and prescient, when he counselled a wide
+turning movement by the Dilkoosha, over the Goomtee near the Martinière,
+and so along its northern bank to the Badshah-bagh, almost opposite to the
+Residency and commanding the iron bridge.
+
+I recross the Charbagh bridge and bend away to the left by the byroad
+along the canal side by which the 78th Highlanders penetrated to the front
+of the Kaiser-bagh. Most of the native houses are now destroyed, whence
+was poured so deadly a fire on the advancing Ross-shire men that three
+colour-bearers fell in succession, and the colour fell to the grasp of the
+gallant Valentine McMaster, the assistant-surgeon of the regiment. And now
+I stand in front of the main entrance to the Kaiser-bagh, hard by the spot
+where stood the Sepoy battery which the Highlanders so opportunely took in
+reverse. Before me on the _maidan_ is the plain monument to Sir
+Mountstuart Jackson, Captain Orr, and a sergeant, who were murdered in the
+Kaiser-bagh when the success of Campbell's final operations became
+certain. I enter the great square enclosure of the Kaiser-bagh and stand
+in the desolation of what was once a gay garden where the King of Oude and
+his women were wont to disport themselves. The place stands much as
+Campbell's men left it after looting its multifarious rich treasures. The
+dainty little pavilions are empty and dilapidated, the statues are broken
+and tottering. Quitting the Kaiser-bagh, I try to realise the scene of
+that informal council of war in one of the outlying courtyards of the
+numerous palaces. I want to fix the spot where on his big waler sat
+Outram, a splash of blood across his face, and his arm in a sling; where
+Havelock, dismounted, walked up and down by Outram's side with short,
+nervous strides, halting now and then to give emphasis to the argument,
+while all around them were officers, soldiers, guns, natives, wounded men,
+bullocks, and a surging tide of disorganisation momentarily pouring into
+the square. But the attempt is fruitless. The whole area has been cleared
+of buildings right up to the gate of the Residency, only that hard by the
+Goomtee there still stands the river wing of the Chutter Munzil Palace
+with its fantastic architecture, and that the palace of the King of Oude
+is now the station library and assembly rooms. The Hureen Khana, the
+Lalbagh, the courts of the Furrut Bux Palace, the Khas Bazaar, and the
+Clock Tower have alike been swept away, and in their place there opens up
+before the eye trim ornamental grounds with neat plantations which extend
+up to the Baileyguard itself. One archway alone stands--a gaunt
+commemorative skeleton--a pedestal for the statue of a noble soldier. It
+was from a chamber above the crown of this arch that the sepoy shot Neill
+as he sat on his horse urging the confused press of guns and men through
+the archway. The spot is memorable for other causes. This archway led into
+that court which is world-famous under the name of Dhooly Square. Here it
+was that the native bearers abandoned the wounded in the doolies which
+poor Bensley Thornhill was trying to guide into the Residency; here it was
+where they were butchered and burned as they lay, and here it was where
+Dr. Home and a handful of men of the escort did what in them lay to cover
+the wounded and defended themselves for a day and a night against
+continuous attacks of countless enemies.
+
+The _via dolorosa_, the road of death up which Outram and Havelock fought
+their way with Brazier's Sikhs and the Ross-shire Buffs, is now a pleasant
+open drive amid clumps of trees, leading on to the Residency. A strange
+thrill runs through one's frame as there opens up before one that
+reddish-gray crumbling archway spanning the roadway into the Residency
+grounds. Its face is dented and splintered with cannon-shot and pitted all
+over by musket-bullets. This is none other than that historic Baileyguard
+gate which burly Jock Aitken and his faithful Sepoys kept so stanchly. You
+may see the marks still of the earth banked up against it on the interior
+during the siege. To the right and left runs the low wall which was the
+curtain of the defence, now crumbled so as to be almost indistinguishable.
+But there still stands, retired somewhat from the right of the archway,
+Aitken's post--the guard-house and treasury, its pillars and façade cut
+and dented all over with the marks of bullets fired by "Bob the Nailer"
+and his comrades from the Clock Tower which stood over against it. And in
+the curtain wall between the archway and the building is still to be
+traced the faint outline of the embrasure through which Outram and
+Havelock entered on the memorable evening. The turmoil and din and
+conflicting emotions of that terrible, glorious day have merged into a
+strange serenity of quietude. The scene is solitary, save for a native
+woman who is playing with her baby on a spot where once dead bodies lay in
+heaps. But the other older scene rises up vividly before the mind's eye
+out of the present calm. Havelock and Outram and the staff have passed
+through the embrasure here, and now there are rushing in the men of the
+ranks, powder-grimed, dusty, bloody; but a minute before raging with the
+stern passion of the battle, now full of a woman-like tenderness. And all
+around them as they swarm in there crowd a mass of folk eager to give
+welcome. There are officers and men of the garrison, civilians whom the
+siege has made into soldiers; women, too, weeping tears of joy down on the
+faces of the children for whom they had not dared to hope for aught but
+death. There are gaunt men, pallid with loss of blood, whose great eyes
+shine weirdly amid the torchlight and whose thin hands tremble with
+weakness as they grip the sinewy, grimy hands of the Highlanders. These
+are the wounded of the long siege who have crawled out from the hospital
+up yonder, as many of them as could compass the exertion, with a welcome
+to their deliverers. The hearts of the impulsive Highlanders wax very
+warm. As they grasp the hands held out to them they exclaim, "God bless
+you!" "Why, we expected to have found only your bones!" "And the children
+are living too!" and many other fervid and incoherent ejaculations. The
+ladies of the garrison come among the Highlanders, shaking them
+enthusiastically by the hand; and the children clasp the shaggy men round
+the neck, and to say truth, so do some of the mothers. But Jessie Dunbar
+and her "Dinna ye hear it?" in reference to the bagpipe music, are in the
+category of melodramatic fictions.
+
+The position which bears and will bear to all time the title of the
+Residency of Lucknow, is an elevated plateau of land, irregular in
+surface, of which the highest point is occupied by the Residency building,
+while the area around was studded irregularly with buildings, chiefly the
+houses of the principal civilian officials of the station. When Campbell
+brought away the garrison in November 1857 it lapsed into the hands of the
+mutineers, who held it till his final occupation of the city and its
+surroundings in March of the following year. They pulled down not a few of
+the already shattered buildings, and left their fell imprint on the spot
+in an atrociously ghastly way by desecrating the graves in which brave
+hands had laid our dead country-people and flinging the exhumed corpses
+into the Goomtee. When India once more became settled the Residency, its
+commemorative features uninterfered with, was laid out as a garden and
+flowers and shrubs now grow on soil once wet with the blood of heroes. The
+_débris_ has been removed or dispersed; the shattered buildings are
+prevented from crumbling farther; tablets bearing the names of the
+different positions and places of interest are let into the walls; and it
+is possible, by exploring the place map in hand, to identify all the
+features of the defence. The avenue from the Baileyguard gate rises with a
+steep slope to the Residency building. On either side of the approach and
+hard by the gate, are the blistered and shattered remnants of two large
+houses; that on the right is the banqueting house which was used as the
+hospital during the siege; that on the left was Dr. Fayrer's house. The
+banqueting house is a mere shell, riven everywhere with shot and pitted
+over by musket-bullets as if it had suffered from smallpox. The
+ground-floor has escaped with less damage but the banqueting hall itself
+has been wholly wrecked by the persistent fire which the rebels showered
+upon it, and to which, notwithstanding the mattresses and sandbags with
+which the windows were blocked, several poor fellows fell victims as they
+lay wounded on their cots. Dr. Fayrer's house is equally a battered ruin.
+In its first floor, roofless and forlorn, its front torn open by shot and
+the pillars of its windows jagged into fantastic fragments, is the veranda
+in which Sir Henry Lawrence, 4th July 1857, died, exposed to fire to the
+very last. At the top of the slope of the avenue and on the left front of
+the Residency building as we approach it--on what, indeed, was once the
+lawn--has been raised an artificial mound, its slopes covered with
+flowering shrubs, its summit bearing the monumental obelisk on the
+pedestal of which is the terse, appropriate inscription: "In memory of
+Major-General Sir Henry Lawrence and the brave men who fell in defence of
+the Residency. _Si monumentum quaeris Circumspice!_" Beyond this lies the
+scathed and blighted ruin of the Residency House, once a large and
+imposing structure, now so utterly wrecked and shivered that one wonders
+how the crumbling reddish-gray walls are kept erect. The veranda was
+battered down and much of the front of the building lies bodily open, the
+structure being supported on the battered and distorted pillars assisted
+by great balks of wood. Entering by the left wing I pass down a winding
+stair into the bowels of the earth till I reach the spacious and lofty
+vaults or _tykhana_ under the building. Here, the place affording
+comparative safety, lived immured the women of the garrison, the soldiers'
+wives, half-caste females, the wives of the meaner civilians and their
+children. The poor creatures were seldom allowed to come up to the
+surface, lest they should come in the way of the shot which constantly
+lacerated the whole area, and few visitors were allowed access to them.
+Veritably they were in a dungeon. Provisions were lowered down to them
+from the window orifices near the roof of the vaulting, and there were
+days when the firing was so heavy that orders were given to them not even
+to rise from their beds on the floor. For shot occasionally found a way
+even into the _tykhana_; you may see the holes it made in penetrating. The
+miserables were billeted off ten in a room, and there they lived, without
+sweepers, baths, dhobies, or any of the comforts which the climate makes
+necessities. Here in these dungeons children were born, only for the most
+part to die. Ascending another staircase I pass through some rooms in
+which lived (and died) some of the ladies of the garrison, and passing
+from the left wing by a shattered corridor am able to look up into the
+room in which Sir Henry Lawrence received his death-wound. Access to it is
+impossible by reason of the tottering condition of the structure; and
+turning away I clamber up the worn staircase in the shot-riven tower on
+the summit of which still stands the flagstaff on which were hoisted the
+signals with which the garrison were wont to communicate with the
+Alumbagh. The walls of the staircase and the flat roof of the tower are
+scratched and written all over with the names of visitors; many of the
+names are those of natives, but more are those of British soldiers, who
+have occasionally added a piece of their mind in characteristically strong
+language.
+
+I set out on a pilgrimage under the still easily traceable contour of the
+intrenchment. Passing "Sam Lawrence's Battery" above what was the
+water-gate, I traverse the projecting tongue at the end of which stood the
+"Redan Battery" whose fire swept the river face up to the iron bridge.
+Returning, and passing the spot where "Evans's Battery" stood, I find
+myself in the churchyard in a slight depression of the ground. Of the
+church, which was itself a defensive post, not one stone remains on
+another and the mutineers hacked to pieces the ground of the churchyard.
+The ground is now neatly enclosed and ornamentally planted and is studded
+with many monuments, few of which speak the truth when they profess to
+cover the dust of those whom they commemorate. There are the regimental
+monuments of the 5th Madras Fusiliers, the 84th (360 men besides
+officers), the Royal Artillery, the 90th (a long list of officers and 271
+men). The monument of the 1st Madras Fusiliers bears the names of Neill,
+Stephenson, Renaud, and Arnold, and commemorates a loss of 352 men. There
+is a monument to Mr. Polehampton the exemplary chaplain, and hard by a
+plain slab bears the inscription, "Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to
+do his duty; may the Lord have mercy on his soul!" words dictated by
+himself on his deathbed. Other monuments commemorate Captain Graham of the
+Bengal Cavalry and two children; Mr. Fairhurst the Roman Catholic chaplain;
+Major Banks; Captain Fulton of the 32nd who earned the title of "Defender
+of Lucknow;" Lucas, the travelling Irish gentleman who served as a
+volunteer and fell in the last sortie; Captain Becher; Captain Moorsom;
+poor Bensley Thornhill and his young daughter; "Mrs. Elizabeth Arne, burnt
+with a shell-ball during the siege;" Lieutenant Cunliffe; Mr. Ommaney the
+Judicial Commissioner; and others. The nameless hillocks of poor Jack
+Private are plentiful, for here were buried many of those who fell in the
+final capture; and there are children's graves. Interments take place
+still. I saw a freshly-made grave; but only those are entitled to a last
+resting-place here who were among the beleaguered during the long defence.
+I have seen the medal for the defence of Lucknow on the breast of a man
+who was a child in arms at the time of the siege, and such an one would
+have the right to claim interment in this doubly hallowed ground. From the
+churchyard I pass out along the narrow neck to that forlorn-hope post,
+"Innes's Garrison," and along the western face of the intrenchment by the
+sides of the sheep-house and the slaughter-house, to Gubbins's post. The
+mere foundations of the house are visible which the stout civilian so
+gallantly defended, and the famous tree, gradually pruned to a mere stump
+by the enemy's fire, is no longer extant. Along the southern face of the
+position there are no buildings which are not ruined. Sikh Square, the
+Brigade Mess House, and the Martinière boys' post, are alike represented
+by fragmentary gray walls shivered with shot and shored up here and there
+by beams. The rooms of the Begum Kothi near the centre of the position,
+are still laterally entire but roofless. The walls of this structure are
+exceptionally thick and here many of the ladies of the garrison were
+quartered. All around the Residency position the native houses which at
+the time of the siege crowded close up on the intrenchment, are now
+destroyed; and indeed the native town has been curtailed into
+comparatively small dimensions and is entirely separated from the area in
+which the houses of the station are built.
+
+Quitting the Residency I drive westward by the river side, over the site
+of the Captan Bazaar, past also that huge fortified heap the Muchee Bawn,
+till I reach the beautiful enclosure in which the great Imambara stands.
+This majestic structure--part temple, part convent, part palace, and now
+part fortress--dominates the whole _terrain_, and from its lofty flat roof
+one looks down on the plain where the weekly _hât_ or market is being
+held, on the gardens and mansions across the river, and southward upon the
+dense mass of houses which constitute the native city. Sentries promenade
+the battlements of the Muchee Bawn, and the Imambara--an apartment to
+which for space and height I know none in Europe comparable--is now used
+as an arsenal, where are stored the great siege guns which William Peel
+plied with so great skill and gallantry. Just outside the Imambara, on the
+edge of the _maidan_ between it and the Moosabagh, I come on a little
+railed churchyard where rest a few British soldiers who fell during Lord
+Clyde's final operations in this direction. Then, with a sweep across the
+plain to the south and by a slight ascent, I reach the gate of the city
+which opens into the Chowk or principal street--the street traversed in
+disguise by the dauntless Kavanagh when he went out from the garrison to
+convey information and afford guidance to Sir Colin Campbell on his first
+advance. The gatehouse is held by a strong force of native policemen,
+armed as if they were soldiers; and as I pass the guard I stand in the
+Chowk itself, in the midst of a throng of gaily clad male pedestrians,
+women in chintz trousers, laden donkeys, multitudinous children, and still
+more multitudinous stinks. All down both sides the fronts of the lower
+stories are open, and in the recesses sit merchants displaying paltry
+jewelry, slippers, pipes, turban cloths, and Manchester stuffs of the
+gaudiest patterns. The main street of Lucknow has been called "The Street
+of Silver," but I could find little among its jewelry either of silver or
+of gold. The first floors all have balconies, and on these sit draped,
+barefooted women of Rahab's profession. The women of Lucknow are fairer
+and handsomer, and the men bolder and more stalwart, than those in Bengal,
+and it takes no great penetration to discern that Lucknow is still ruled
+by fear and not by love.
+
+It remained for me still to investigate the scenes of the route by which
+Lord Clyde came in on both his advances; but to do justice to these would
+demand separate articles. Let me begin the hasty sketch at the Dilkoosha
+Palace, two miles and more away to the east of the Residency; for on both
+occasions the Dilkoosha was Clyde's base. Wajid Ali's twenty-foot wall has
+now given place to an earthen embankment surrounding a beautiful pleasure
+park, and there are now smooth green slopes instead of the dense forest
+through which Clyde's soldiers marched on their turning movement. On a
+swell in the midst of the park, commanding a view of the fantastic
+architecture of the Martinière down by the tank, stands the gaunt ruin of
+the once trim and dainty Dilkoosha Palace or rather garden-house. From one
+of the pepper-box turrets up there Lord Clyde directed the attack on the
+Martinière on his ultimate operation; and here it was that, as Dr. Russell
+tells us, a round shot dispersed his staff on the adjacent leads. After
+quietude was restored the Dilkoosha was the headquarters for a time of Sir
+Hope Grant, but now it has been allowed to fall into decay although the
+garden in the rear of it is prettily kept up. On the reverse slope behind
+the Dilkoosha was the camp in one of the tents of which Havelock died. We
+drive down the gentle slope once traversed at a rushing double by the
+Black Watch on their way to carry the Martinière, past the great tank out
+of the centre of which rises the tall column to the memory of Claude
+Martine, and reach the entrance of the fantastic building which he built,
+in which he was buried, and which bears his name. We see at the angle of
+the northern wing the slope up which the gun was run which played so
+heavily on the Dilkoosha up on the wooded knoll there. The Martinière is
+now, as it was before the Mutiny, a college for European boys, and the
+young fellows are playing on the terraces. Grotesque stone statues are in
+niches and along the tops of the balconies; you may see on them the marks
+of the bullets which the honest fellows of the Black Watch fired at them,
+taking them for Pandies. I go down into a vault and see the tomb of Claude
+Martine; but it is empty, for the mutineers desecrated his grave and
+scattered his bones to the winds of heaven. Then I make for the roof,
+through the dormitories of the boys and past fantastic stone griffins and
+lions and Gorgons, till I reach the top of the tower and touch the
+flagstaff from which, during the relief time, was given the answering
+signal to that hoisted on the tower of the Residency. I stand in the
+niches where the mutineer marksmen used to sit with their hookahs and take
+pot shots at the Dilkoosha. I look down to the eastward on the Goomtee,
+and note the spot where Outram crossed on that flank movement which would
+have been very much more successful than it was had he been permitted to
+drive it home. To the north-east beyond the topes is the battle-ground of
+Chinhut, where Lawrence received so terrible a reverse at the beginning of
+the siege. Due north is the Kookrail viaduct which Outram cleared with the
+Rifles and the 79th, and in whose vicinity Jung Bahadour, the crafty and
+bloodthirsty generalissimo of Nepaul, "co-operated" by a demonstration
+which never became anything more. And to the west there lie stretched out
+before me the domes, minarets, and spires of Lucknow, rising above the
+foliage in which their bases are hidden, and the routes of Clyde in the
+relief and capture. The rays of the afternoon sun are stirring into colour
+the dusky gray of the Secunderbagh and of the Nuddun Rusool, or "Grave of
+the Prophet," used as a powder magazine by the rebels. Below me, on the
+lawn of the Martinière, is the big gun--one of Claude Martine's casting--
+which did the rebels so much service at the other angle of the Martinière
+and which was spiked at last by two men of Peel's naval brigade, who swam
+the Goomtee for the purpose. That little enclosure slightly to the left
+surrounds "all that can die" of that strange mixture of high spirit, cool
+daring, and weak principle, the famous chief of Hodson's Horse. By
+Hodson's side lies Captain da Costa of the 56th N.I., attached to
+Brazier's Sikhs. Of this officer is told that, having lost many relatives
+in the butchery of Cawnpore, he joined the regiment likeliest to be in the
+front of the Lucknow fighting, and fell by one of the first shots fired in
+the assault on the Kaiser-bagh.
+
+Descending from the Martinière tower I traverse the park to the westward
+passing the grave of Captain Otway Mayne, cross the dry canal along which
+are still visible the heaps of earth which mark the stupendous first line
+of the rebels' defences, and bending to the left reach the Secunderbagh.
+This famous place was a pleasure garden surrounded with a lofty wall with
+turrets at the angles and a castellated gateway. The interior garden is
+now waste and forlorn, the rank grass growing breast-high in the corners
+where the slaughter was heaviest. Here in this little enclosure, not half
+the size of the garden of Bedford Square, 2000 Sepoys died the death at
+the hands of the 93rd, the 53rd, and the 4th Punjaubees. Their common
+grave is under the low mound on the other side of the road. The loopholes
+stand as they were left by the mutineers when our fellows came bursting in
+through the ragged breach made in the reverse side from the main entrance
+by Peel's guns. Farther on--that is, nearer to the Residency--I come to
+the Shah Nujeef, with its strong exterior wall enclosing the domed temple
+in its centre. It is still easy to trace the marks of the breach made in
+the angle in the wall by Peel's battering guns, and the tree is still
+standing up which Salmon, Southwell, and Harrison climbed in response to
+his proffer of the Victoria Cross. Opposite the Shah Nujeef white girls
+are playing on the lawn of that castellated building, for the Koorsheyd
+Munzil, on the top of which there was hoisted the British flag in the face
+of a _feu d'enfer_, is now a seminary for the daughters of Europeans. A
+little beyond, on the plain in front of the Motee Mahal, is the spot where
+Campbell met Outram and Havelock--a spot which, methinks, might well be
+marked by a monument; and after this I lose my reckoning by reason of the
+extent of the demolition, and am forced to resort to guesswork as to the
+precise localities.
+
+
+
+
+THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
+
+
+Writing of the late Alexander III. of Russia, a foreign author has
+recently permitted himself to observe: "Marvellous personal courage is not
+a striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs as it was of the
+English Tudors." It will be conceded that periods materially govern the
+conditions under which sovereigns and their royal relatives have found
+opportunities for proving their personal courage. The Tudor dynasty had
+ended before the Romanoff dynasty began. It is true, indeed, that the
+ending of the former with the death of Elizabeth in 1603 occurred only a
+few years before the foundation of the latter by the election to the
+Tzarship of Michael Feodorovitz Romanoff in 1612. But of the five
+sovereigns of the Tudor dynasty it happened that only one, Henry VII., the
+first monarch of that dynasty, found or made an opportunity for the
+display of marked--scarcely perhaps of "marvellous"--personal courage; and
+thus the selection of the Tudor dynasty by the writer referred to as
+furnishing a contrasting illustration in the matter of personal courage to
+that of the Romanoffs was not particularly fortunate. Henry VIII. was only
+once in action; he shared in the skirmish known as the "Battle of the
+Spurs," because of the precipitate flight of the French horse. Edward VI.
+died at the age of sixteen, and the two remaining sovereigns of the
+dynasty were women, of whom it is true that Elizabeth was a strong and
+vigorous ruler, but in the nature of things had no opportunity for showing
+"marvellous personal courage." Henry VII. literally found his crown in the
+heart of the _mêlée_ on Bosworth field, it matters not which of the
+alternative stories is correct, that he himself killed Richard, or that
+Richard was killed in the act of striking him a desperate blow. But Henry
+at Bosworth in 1485 still belonged to the days of chivalry--to an era in
+which monarchs were also armour-clad knights, who headed charges in person
+and gave and took with spear, sword, and battle-axe. Long before Peter the
+Great, more than two centuries after Bosworth, foamed at the mouth with
+rage and hacked with his sword at his panicstricken troops fleeing from
+the field of Narva on that winter day of 1700, the face of warfare had
+altered and the _métier_ of the commander, were he sovereign or were he
+subject, had undergone a radical change.
+
+Of a family of the human race it is not rationally possible to predicate a
+typical generic characteristic of mind. A physical trait will endure down
+the generations, as witness the Hapsburg lip and the swarthy complexion of
+the Finch-Hattons, in the face of alliances from outside the races; but,
+save as regards one exception, there is no assurance of a continuous
+inheritance of mental attributes. What a contrast is there between
+Frederick the Great and his father; between George III. and his successor;
+between the present Emperor of Austria and his hapless son; between the
+genial, wistful, and well-intentioned Alexander II. of Russia and the not
+less well-intentioned but narrow-minded and despotic sovereign who
+succeeded him! But there may be reserved one exception to the absence of
+assurance of inherited mental attributes--one mental feature in which
+identity takes the place of dissimilarity, and even of actual contrast.
+And that feature--that inherited characteristic of a race whose
+progenitors happily possessed it--is personal courage.
+
+Take, for example, the Hohenzollerns. One need not hark back to Carlyle's
+original Conrad, the seeker of his fortune who tramped down from the
+ancestral cliff-castle on his way to take service under Barbarossa. Before
+and since the "Grosse Kurfurst" there has been no Hohenzollern who has not
+been a brave man. He himself was the hero of Fehrbellin. His son, the
+first king of the line, Carlyle's "Expensive Herr," was "valiant in
+action" during the third war of Louis XIV. The rugged Frederick William,
+father of Frederick the Great, had his own tough piece of war against the
+volcanic Charles XII. of Sweden and did a stout stroke of hard fighting at
+Malplaquet. Of Fritz himself the world has full note. Bad, sensual,
+debauched Hohenzollern as was his successor, Frederick the Fat, he had
+fought stoutly in his youth-time under his illustrious uncle. His son,
+Frederick William III., overthrown by Napoleon who called him a
+"corporal," did good soldierly work in the "War of Liberation" and fought
+his way to Paris in 1814. His eldest son, Frederick William IV., the
+vague, benevolent dreamer whom _Punch_ used to call "King Clicquot" and
+who died of softening of the brain, even he, too, as a lad had
+distinguished himself in the "War of Liberation" and in the fighting
+during the subsequent advance on Paris. As for grand old William I., the
+real maker of the German Empire on the _quid facit per alium facit per se_
+axiom, he died a veteran of many wars. He was not seventeen when he won
+the Iron Cross by a service of conspicuous gallantry under heavy fire. He
+took his chances in the bullet and shell fire at Königgrätz, and again on
+the afternoon of Gravelotte. Not a Hohenzollern of them all but shared as
+became their race in the dangers of the great war of 1870-71; even Prince
+George, the music composer, the only non-soldier of the family, took the
+field. William's noble son, whose premature death neither Germany nor
+England has yet ceased to deplore, took the lead of one army; his nephew
+Prince Frederick Charles, a great commander and a brilliant soldier, was
+the leader of another. One of his brothers, Prince Albert the elder, made
+the campaign as cavalry chief; whose son, Prince Albert junior, now a
+veteran Field-Marshal, commanded a brigade of guard-cavalry with a skill
+and daring not wholly devoid of recklessness. Another brother, Prince
+Charles, the father of the "Red Prince," made the campaign with the royal
+headquarters; Prince Adalbert, a cousin of the sovereign and head of the
+Prussian Navy, had his horse shot under him on the battlefield of
+Gravelotte.
+
+The trait of personal courage has markedly characterised the House of
+Hanover. As King of England George I. did no fighting, but before he
+reached that position he had distinguished himself in war not a little;
+against the Danes and Swedes in 1700 and in high command in the war of the
+Spanish succession from 1701 to 1709. His successor, while yet young, had
+displayed conspicuous valour in the battle of Oudenarde, and later in life
+at Dettingen; and he was the last British monarch who took part in actual
+warfare. Cumberland had no meritorious attribute save that of personal
+courage, but that virtue in him was undeniable. At Dettingen he was
+wounded in the forefront of the battle; at Fontenoy the "martial boy" was
+ever in the heart of the fiercest fire, fighting at "a spiritual white
+heat." His grand-nephew the Duke of York was an unfortunate soldier, but
+his personal courage was unquestioned. In the present reign a cousin and a
+son of the sovereign have done good service in the field; and that
+venerable lady herself in situations of personal danger has consistently
+maintained the calm courage of her race.
+
+The foreign author has written that "marvellous personal courage is not
+the striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs." He makes an
+exception to this quasi-indictment in favour of the Emperor Nicholas, who,
+he admits, "was absolutely ignorant of fear, and could face a band of
+insurgents with the calm self-possession of a shepherd surveying his
+bleating sheep." The monarch who at the moment of his accession
+illustrated the dominant force of his character by confronting amid the
+bullet fire the ferocious mutiny of half an army corps, and who crushed
+the bloodthirsty _émeute_ with dauntless resolution and iron hand; the man
+who, facing the populace of St. Petersburg crazed with terror of the
+cholera and red with the blood of slaughtered physicians, quelled its
+panic-fury by commanding the people in the sternest tones of his sonorous
+voice to kneel in the dust and propitiate by prayers the wrath of the
+Almighty--such a man is scarcely, perhaps, adequately characterised by the
+expressions which have been quoted. But setting aside this instance of the
+fearlessness of Nicholas, facts appear to refute pretty conclusively
+reflections on the personal courage of the Romanoffs. No purpose can be
+served by cumbering the record by going back into the period of Russia's
+semi-civilisation; illustrations from three generations may reasonably
+suffice. At Austerlitz Alexander I. was close up to the fighting line in
+the Pratzen section of that great battle, and so recklessly did he expose
+himself that the report spread rearward that he had fallen. He was riding
+with Moreau in the heart of the bloody turmoil before Dresden when a
+French cannon-ball mortally wounded the renegade French general, and he
+was splashed by the latter's blood. Moreau had insisted on riding on the
+outside, else the ball which caused his death would certainly have struck
+Alexander. That monarch participated actively and forwardly in most of the
+battles of the campaign of 1814 which culminated in the allied occupation
+of Paris. Marmont's bullets were still flying when he rode on to the hill
+of Belleville and looked down through the smoke of battle on the French
+capital. The captious foreign writer has admitted that Nicholas, the
+successor of Alexander, was "absolutely ignorant of fear," and I have
+cited a convincing instance of his "marvellous personal courage." Two of
+his sons--the Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael--were under fire in the
+battle of Inkerman and shared for some time the perils of the siege of
+Sevastopol. Alexander II. was certainly a man of real, although quiet and
+undemonstrative, personal courage. But for his disregard of the
+precautions by which the police sought to surround him he probably would
+have been alive to-day. The Third Section was wholly unrepresented in
+Bulgaria and His Majesty's protection on campaign consisted merely of a
+handful of Cossacks. No cordon of sentries surrounded his simple camp; his
+tent at Pavlo and the dilapidated Turkish house which for weeks was his
+residence at Gorni Studen were alike destitute of any guards. The imperial
+Court of Russia is said to be the most punctiliously ceremonious of all
+courts; in the field the Tzar absolutely dispensed with any sort of
+ceremony. He dined with his suite and staff at a frugal table in a spare
+hospital marquee; his guests, the foreign attachés and any passing
+officers or strangers who happened to be in camp. When he drove out his
+escort consisted of a couple of Cossacks. In the woods about Biela at the
+beginning of the war there still remained some forlorn bivouacs of Turkish
+families; he would alight and visit those, his sole companion the
+aide-de-camp on duty; and would fearlessly venture among the sullen Turks
+all of whom were armed with deadly weapons, try to persuade them to return
+to their homes, and, unmoved by their refusal, promise to send them food
+and medicine. Dispensing with all etiquette he would see without delay any
+one coming in with tidings from fighting points, were he officer,
+civilian, or war correspondent. During the September attack on Plevna he
+was continually in the field while daylight lasted, looking out on the
+slaughter from an eminence within range of the Turkish cannon-fire, and
+manifestly enduring keen anguish at the spectacle of the losses sustained
+by his brave, patient troops. Later, during the investment of Plevna, his
+point of observation was a redoubt on the Radischevo ridge still closer to
+the Turkish front of fire, and it was thence he witnessed the surrender of
+Osman's army on the memorable 10th December 1877. If Alexander was
+fearless alike in camp and in the field on campaign, he was certainly not
+less so in St. Petersburg, when he returned thither after the fall of
+Plevna.
+
+Alexander II. literally sacrificed his life to his self-regardless concern
+for the suffering. After the first bomb had burst on the Alexandra Canal
+Road, striking down civilians and Cossacks of the following escort but
+leaving the Emperor unhurt, his coachman begged to be allowed to dash
+forward and get clear of danger. But Alexander forbade him with the words,
+"No, no! I must alight and see to the wounded;" and as he was carrying out
+his heroic and benign intention, the second bomb exploded and wrought his
+death.
+
+As did the men of the Hohenzollern house in 1870, so in 1877 the adult
+male Romanoffs went to the war with scarce an exception. The Grand Duke
+Nicholas, brother of the Emperor and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
+armies in Europe, was neither a great general nor an honest man; but there
+could be no question as to his personal courage. That attribute he evinced
+with utter recklessness when arriving, as was his wont, too late for a
+deliberate and careful survey, he galloped round the Turkish positions on
+the morning on which began the September bombardment of Plevna, in
+proximity to Turkish cannon-fire so dangerous that his staff remonstrated,
+and that even the sedate American historian of the war speaks of him as
+having "exposed himself imprudently to the Turkish pickets." His son, the
+Grand Duke Nicholas, jun., in 1877 scarcely of age, was nevertheless a
+keen practical soldier, imbued with the wisdom of getting to close
+quarters and staying there. He was among the first to cross the Danube at
+Sistova under the Turkish fire, and he fought with great gallantry under
+Mirsky in the Schipka Pass. The brothers, Prince Nicholas and Prince
+Eugene of Leuchtenberg, members of the imperial house, commanded each a
+cavalry brigade in Gourko's dashing raid across the Balkans at the
+beginning of the campaign, and both were conspicuous for soldierly skill
+and personal gallantry in the desperate fighting in the Tundja Valley. The
+Grand Duke Vladimir, the second brother of Alexander III., headed the
+infantry advance in the direction of Rustchuk, and served with marked
+distinction in command of one of the corps in the army of the Lom. A
+younger brother, the Grand Duke Alexis, the nautical member of the
+imperial family, had charge of the torpedo and subaqueous mining
+operations on the Danube, and was held to have shown practical skill,
+assiduity, and vigour. Prince Serge of Leuchtenberg, younger brother of
+the Leuchtenbergs previously mentioned, was shot dead by a bullet through
+the head in the course of his duty as a staff officer at the front of a
+reconnaissance in force made against the Turkish force in Jovan-Tchiflik
+in October of the war. He was a soldier of great promise and had
+frequently distinguished himself. No unworthy record, it is submitted,
+earned in war by the members of a family of which, according to the
+foreign author, "personal courage is not the striking characteristic."
+
+That writer may be warranted in stating that the late Tzar had been
+frequently accused of cowardice--an indictment to which, it must be
+admitted, many undeniable facts lent a strong colouring of probability;
+and he further tells of "the Emperor's aversion to ride on horseback, and
+of his dread of a horse even when the animal was harnessed to a vehicle."
+There is something, however, of inconsistency in his observation that
+Alexander III. might well have been a contrast to his grandfather without
+deserving the epithet craven-hearted. The melancholy explanation of the
+strange apparent change between the Tzarewitch of 1877 and the Tzar of
+1894 may lie in the statement that "Alexander's nerves had been
+undoubtedly shaken by the terrible events in which he had been a spectator
+or actor." In 1877, when in campaign in Bulgaria, Alexander did not know
+what "nerves" meant. He was then a man of strong, if slow, mental force,
+stolid, peremptory, reactionary; the possessor of dull but firm
+resolution. He had a strong though clumsy seat on horseback and was no
+infrequent rider. He had two ruling dislikes: one was war, the other was
+officers of German extraction. The latter he got rid of; the former he
+regarded as a necessary evil of the hour; he longed for its ending, but
+while it lasted he did his sturdy and loyal best to wage it to the
+advantage of the Russian arms. And in this he succeeded, stanchly
+fulfilling the particular duty which was laid upon him, that of protecting
+the Russian left flank from the Danube to the foothills of the Balkans. He
+had good troops, the subordinate commands were fairly well filled, and his
+headquarter staff was efficient--General Dochtouroff, its _sous-chef_, was
+certainly the ablest staff-officer in the Russian army. But Alexander was
+no puppet of his staff; he understood his business as the commander of the
+army of the Lom, performed his functions in a firm, quiet fashion, and
+withal was the trusty and successful warden of the eastern marches. His
+force never amounted to 50,000 men, and his enemy was in considerably
+greater strength. He had successes and he sustained reverses, but he was
+equal to either fortune; always resolute in his steadfast, dogged manner,
+and never whining for reinforcements when things went against him, but
+doing his best with the means to his hand. They used to speak of him in
+the principal headquarter as the only commander who never gave them any
+bother. So highly was he thought of there that when, after the
+unsuccessful attempt on Plevna in the September of the war, the Guard
+Corps was arriving from Russia and there was the temporary intention to
+use it with other troops in an immediate offensive movement across the
+Balkans, he was named to take the command of the enterprise. But this
+intention having been presently departed from, and the reinforcements
+being ordered instead to the Plevna section of the theatre of war, the
+Tzarewitch retained his command on the left flank, and thus in
+mid-December had the opportunity of inflicting a severe defeat on Suleiman
+Pasha, just as in September he had worsted Mehemet Ali in the battle of
+Carkova. It is sad to be told that a man once so resolute and masterful
+should later have been the victim of shattered nerves; it is sadder still
+to learn that he was a mark for accusations of cowardice. He never was a
+gracious, far less a lovable man; but, as I can testify from personal
+knowledge, he was a cool and brave soldier in the Russo-Turkish War of
+1877.
+
+
+
+
+PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
+
+1875
+
+
+On a Sunday morning in early June, just before the church bells begin to
+ring, there is wont to be held the annual general parade and inspection of
+the Corps of Commissionaires, on the enclosed grass plot by the margin of
+the ornamental water in St. James's Park. On the ground, and accompanying
+the inspecting officer on his tour through the opened ranks, there are
+always not a few veteran officers, glad by their presence on such an
+occasion to countenance and recognise their humbler comrades in arms in
+bygone war-dramas enacted elsewhere than within hearing of London Sunday
+bells. No scene could be imagined presenting a more practical confutation
+of the ignorant calumny that the British army is composed of the froth and
+the dregs of the British nation, and that there exists no cordial feeling
+between British soldiers and British officers. It is good to see how the
+face kindles of the veteran guardsman at the sight and the kindly greeting
+of Sir Charles Russell. Doubtless the honest private's thoughts go back to
+that misty morning on the slopes of Inkerman, when officer and private
+stood shoulder to shoulder in the fierce press, and there rang again in
+his ears the cheer with which the Guards greeted the act of valour by the
+performance of which the baronet won the Victoria Cross. There is a
+feeling deeper than a mere formality in the half-dozen words that pass
+between Sir William Codrington and the old soldier of the 7th Royal
+Fusiliers, to whom the gallant general showed the way up to the Russian
+front, through the shot-torn vineyards on the slopes of the Alma. When one
+feeble old ex-warrior is smitten suddenly on parade with a palsied
+faintness, it is on the yet stalwart arm of his old chief that he totters
+out of the ranks, and the twain do not part till the superior has exacted
+a pledge that his humble ex-subordinate shall call upon him on the morrow,
+with a view to medical advice and strengthening comforts.
+
+Notwithstanding that in the true old martial spirit it shows what in the
+Service is known as a good front, it is not a very athletic or puissant
+cohort this, that stands on parade here on the grass within hearing of the
+church bells. The grizzled old soldiers, sooth to say, look rather the
+worse for wear. There is a decided shortcoming among them of the proper
+complement of limbs, and one at least, in speaking of the battlefields he
+had seen, might with truth echo the old soldier in Burns's _Jolly
+Beggars_--
+
+  And there I left for witness a leg and an arm.
+
+They carry no weapons; to some may belong the knowledge only of the
+obsolete "Brown Bess" manual exercise; and not many have been so recently
+on active service as to have learnt the handling of the modern
+breech-loader. On the whole, a battered, fossil, maimed army of
+superannuated fighting men, scarcely fitted to shine in the new tactics of
+the "swarm-attack" by which the battles of the future are to be won or
+lost. But you cannot jibe at the worn old soldiers as "lean and slippered
+pantaloons." Look how truly, with what instinctive intuition, the dressing
+is taken up at the word of command; note how the old martial carriage
+comes back to the most dilapidated when the adjutant calls his command to
+"attention." Age and wounds have not quenched the fighting spirit of the
+old soldiers; there is not a man of them but would, did the need arise,
+"clatter on his stumps to the sound of the drum." There are few breasts in
+those ranks that are not decorated with medals. In very truth the parade
+is a record of British campaigns for the last thirty years. Among the
+thicket of medals on the bosom of this broken old light dragoon note the
+one bearing the legend, "Cabul 1842" within the laurel wreath. Its wearer
+was a trooper in the famous "rescue" column. The skeletons of
+Elphinstone's hapless force littered the slopes of the Tezeen Valley, up
+which the squadron in which he rode charged straight for the tent of the
+splendid demon Akbar Khan. He rode behind Campbell at the battle of
+Punniar, and won there that star of silver and bronze which hangs from the
+famous "rainbow" ribbon. "Sutlej" is the legend on another of his medals,
+and he could recount to you the memorable story of Thackwell's cavalry
+operations against the Sikh field works, and how that division of seasoned
+horsemen reduced outpost duty to a methodical science. "Punjab" medals for
+Gough's campaign of 1848-49 are scattered up and down in the ranks. The
+sword-cut athwart this wiry old trooper's cheek he got in the hot _mêlée_
+of Ramhuggur, where a certain Brigadier Colin Campbell whom men knew
+afterwards as Lord Clyde, found it hard work to hold his own, and where
+gallant Cureton and the veteran William Havelock fell at the head of their
+light horsemen as they crashed into the heart of 4000 Sikhs. His neighbour
+took part in the storm of Mooltan, and saw stout, calm-pulsed Sergeant
+John Bennet of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers plant the British ensign on the
+crest of the breach and quietly stand by it there, supporting it in the
+tempest of shot and shell till the storming party had made the breach
+their own. This old soldier of the 24th can tell you of the butchery of
+his regiment at Chillianwallah; how Brooks went down between the Sikh
+guns, how Brigadier Pennycuick was killed out to the front, and how his
+son, a beardless ensign, maddened at the sight of the mangling of his
+father's body, rushed out and fought against all comers over the corpse
+till the lad fell dead on his dead father; how on that terrible day the
+loss of the 24th was 13 officers killed, 10 wounded, and 497 men killed
+and wounded; and how the issue of the bloody combat might have been very
+different but for the display, on the part of Colin Campbell, of "that
+steady coolness and military decision for which he was so remarkable."
+Scarcely a great show on a troop-horse would this bent and gnarled old
+12th Lancer make to-day, but he and his fellows rode right well on the day
+for which he wears this "Cape" medal, with the blue and orange ribbon and
+the lion and mimosa bush on the reverse. Because of its prickles the Boers
+call the mimosa the "wait-a-bit" thorn, but there was no thought of
+waiting a bit among the 12th Lancers at the Berea, when they charged the
+savage Basutos and captured their chief Moshesh. This one-armed veteran of
+the Royal Fusiliers was left lying wounded in the Great Redoubt on the
+Russian slope of the Alma, when the terrible fire of grape and musketry
+forced Codrington's brigade of the Light Division temporarily to give
+ground after it had struggled so valiantly up the rugged broken banks, and
+through the hailstorm of fire that swept through the vineyards. This still
+stalwart man was one of the nineteen sergeants of the 33rd--the Duke of
+Wellington's Own--who were either killed or wounded in defence of the
+colours on the same bloody but glorious day. A few files farther down the
+line stands an old 93rd man. The veteran Sutherland Highlander was one of
+that "thin red line" which disdained to form square when the Russian
+squadrons rode with seeming heart at the kilted men on Balaclava day. He
+heard Colin Campbell's stern repressive rebuke--"Ninety-third,
+ninety-third, damn all that eagerness!" when the hotter spirits of the
+regiment would fain have broken ranks and met the Russians half-way with
+the cold steel; he saw the Scotch wife chastise the fugitive Turks with
+her tongue and her frying-pan. Speak to his tall, shaggy neighbour of the
+"bonny Jocks," and you will call up a flush of pleasure on the
+harsh-featured Scottish face; for he was a trooper in the Greys on that
+self-same Balaclava day when the avalanche of Russian horsemen thundered
+down upon the heavy brigade. He was among those who heard, and with
+sternly rapturous anticipation obeyed Scarlet's calm-pitched, far-sounding
+order, "Left wheel into line!" He was among those who, when the trumpets
+had sounded the charge, strove in vain by dint of spur to overtake the
+gallant old chief with the long white moustache, as he rode foremost on
+the foe with the dashing Elliot and the burly Shegog on either flank of
+him; he was among those who, as they hewed and hacked their way through
+the press, heard already from the far side of the _mêlée_ the stentorian
+adjuration of big Adjutant Miller, as standing up in his stirrups the
+burly Scot shouted, "Rally, rally on me, ye muckle ----!" Mightily knocked
+about has been this man with the empty sleeve, but he does not belie the
+familiar sobriquet of his old regiment; he was one of the "Diehards," a
+title well earned by the 57th on the bloody height of Albuera, and it was
+under their colours that he lost his arm on Inkerman morning. There is
+quite a little regiment of men who were wounded in the "trenches" or about
+the Redan. There is no "19" now on the buttons of this scarred veteran,
+but the number was there when he followed Massy and Molesworth over the
+parapet of the Redan on the day when so much good English blood was
+wasted. Shoulder to shoulder now, as oft of yore, stand two old soldiers
+of the Buffs both of whom went down in the same assault; and an umwhile
+bugler of the Perthshire Grey-breeks "minds the day" well also by reason
+of the wound that has crippled him for life. As he stands on parade this
+calm Sabbath morning, that maimed man of the 60th Rifles can remember
+another and a very different Sabbath--the 10th of May 1857 in Meerut--day
+and place of the first outburst of the Mutiny; a fell Sabbath of burning,
+slaughter, and dismay, of disregard of sex, age, and rank, of fierce
+brutality and of nameless agony. He was one of the rifles whose fire in
+the assault of Delhi covered the desperate duty of blowing open the
+Cashmere Gate, performed with so methodical calmness by Home, Salkeld, and
+Burgess; and his comrade hero with the maimed limb, when the hour had come
+for a rush to close quarters, followed Reid and Muter over the breastwork
+at the end of the serai of Kissengunge. Proud, yet their pride dashed by
+sadness, must be the soldiering memories of this stout northman, erstwhile
+a front rank man in the old Ross-shire Buffs, a regiment ever true to its
+noble Celtic motto of _Cuidichn Rhi_. At Kooshab, in the short, but
+brilliant Persian War, he fought in the same field where Malcolmson earned
+the Victoria Cross by one of the most gallant acts for which that guerdon
+of valour ever has been accorded. He was in Mackenzie's company at
+Cawnpore when the Highlanders, stirred by the wild strains of the
+war-pibroch, rushed upon the Nana's battery at the angle of the mango tope
+with the irresistible fury of one of their own mountain torrents in spate.
+And next day he was among those who, with drawn ghastly faces and scared
+eyes, looked into that fearful well, filled to the lip with the mangled
+corpses of British women and children. He was one of those who, standing
+by that well, pledged the oath administered by the bareheaded Ross-shire
+sergeant over the long, heavy tress of auburn hair which a demon's tulwar
+had severed from the head of an Englishwoman, that while strong arm and
+trusty steel lasted to no living thing of the accursed race should quarter
+be accorded. And he was one of those who, having battled their way over
+the Charbagh Bridge, having threaded the bullet-torn path to the
+Kaiser-bagh, and having forced for themselves a passage up to the
+embrasures by the Baileyguard Gate, melted from the stern fierceness of
+the fray when the siege-worn women and children in the residency of
+Lucknow sobbed out upon their necks blessings for the deliverance. His
+rear-rank man is an ex-Bengal Fusilier, wounded once at Sabraon, again at
+Pegu, and a third time at Delhi. He will not be offended if you hail him
+as one of the "old Dirty-shirts;" for it was in honourable disregard of
+appearances as they toiled night and day in the trenches of Delhi that the
+regiment, which now in the Queen's service is numbered 101, gained the
+nickname. Time and space fail one to tell a tithe of the stories of valour
+and hardship linked in the medals and wounds borne by men on this
+unostentatious parade--a parade the members of which have shed their blood
+on the soil of every quarter of the globe. The minutest military annals
+scarcely name some of the obscure combats in which men here to-day have
+fought and bled. This man desperately wounded at Najou, near Shanghai;
+that one wounded in two places at Owna, in Persia; this one with a sleeve
+emptied at Aroga, in Abyssinia--who among us remember aught, if, indeed,
+we have ever heard, of Najou, Owna, or Aroga? On the breast of this bent,
+hoary old man, note these strange emblems, the Cross of San Fernando and
+the Order of the Tower and Sword. Their wearer is a relic of the British
+Legion in the Carlist War of 1837, and they were won under brave old De
+Lacy Evans at the siege of Bilbao.
+
+Over the modest portals of the Commissionaire Barracks in the Strand might
+well be inscribed the legend, "To all the military glories of Britain."
+But just as we have not long ago seen the pride of a palace in another
+land on whose façade is a kindred inscription, abased by the occupation of
+a foreign conqueror, so there was a time when the living emblems of
+Britain's military glory were wont to undergo much humiliation and
+adversity when their career of soldiering had come to an end. Germany
+recompenses her veterans by according them, as a right, reputable civil
+employ when they have served their time as soldiers; the custom of
+Britain, on the contrary, has been too commonly to leave her scarred and
+war-worn soldiers to their own resources, or to a pension on which to live
+is impossible. We were always ready enough to feel a glow at the
+achievements of our arms; but till lately we were prone to reckon the
+individual soldier as a social pariah, and to regard the fact of a man's
+having served in the ranks as a brand of discredit. To this estimate, it
+must be allowed, the ex-soldier himself very often contributed not a
+little. Destitute of a future, and often debarred by wounds or by broken
+health from any laborious industrial employment, he made the most of the
+present; and his idea of making the most of the future not unfrequently
+took the form of beer and shiftlessness. Recognising the disadvantages
+that bore so hard on the deserving old soldier, recognising too, in the
+words of the late Sir John Burgoyne, that "there are many qualities
+peculiar to the soldier and sailor, and imbibed by him in the ordinary
+course of his service, which, added to good character and conduct, may
+render such men more eligible than others for various services in civil
+life," Captain Edward Walter founded the Corps of Commissionaires. That
+organisation, beginning with seven men, has now a strength of several
+hundreds, and its ranks are still open to all the eligible recruits who
+choose to come forward. The Commissionaire is no recipient of charity;
+what Captain Walter has done is simply to show him how he may earn an
+honest and comfortable livelihood, and to provide him, if he desires it,
+with a home of a kind which the ex-militaire naturally most appreciates.
+The advantages are open to him of a savings-bank and of a sick and burial
+fund, and when the evil days come when he can no longer earn his own
+bread, the "Retiring Fund" guarantees the thrifty and steady
+Commissionaire against the prospect of ending his days in the workhouse.
+Among the fruits of Captain Walter's devoted and gratuitous services in
+this cause has been a wholesome change in the bias of popular opinion as
+to the worth of old soldiers. No longer are they regarded as the mere
+chaff and _débris_ of the cannon fodder--"no account men," as Bret Harte
+has it; he has furnished them with opportunity to prove, and they have
+proved, that they can so live and so work as to win the respect and trust
+of their brethren of the civilian world. The man who has done this thing
+deserves well, not alone of the British army, but of the British nation.
+He has brought it about that the time has come when most men think with
+Sir Roger de Coverley. "You must know," says Sir Roger, "I never make use
+of anybody to row me that has not lost either a leg or an arm. I would
+rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man
+that has been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop
+... I would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg."
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
+
+
+The actual fighting phase of this memorable campaign was confined to the
+four days from the 15th to the 18th of June, both days inclusive. The
+literature concerning itself with that period would make a library of
+itself. Scarcely a military writer of any European nation but has
+delivered himself on the subject, from Clausewitz to General Maurice, from
+Berton to Brialmont. Thiers, Alison, and Hooper may be cited of the host
+of civilian writers whom the theme has enticed to description and
+criticism. There is scarcely a point in the brief vivid drama that has not
+furnished a topic for warm and sustained controversy; and the cult of the
+Waterloo campaign is more assiduous to-day than when the participators in
+the great strife were testifying to their own experiences.
+
+Quite recently an important work dealing chiefly with the inner history of
+the campaign has come to us from the other side of the Atlantic. [Footnote:
+_The Campaign of Waterloo: a Military History_. By John Codman Ropes. New
+York: Charles Scribner's Sons. February 1893.] Its author, Mr. John Ropes,
+is a civilian gentleman of Boston, who has devoted his life to military
+study. He has given years to the elucidation of the problems of the
+Waterloo campaign, has trodden every foot of its ground, and has burrowed
+for recondite matter in the military archives of divers nations. A citizen
+of the American Republic, he is free alike from national prejudices and
+national prepossessions; if he is perhaps not uniformly correct in his
+inferences, his rigorous impartiality is always conspicuous. By his
+research and acute perception he has let light in upon not a few
+obscurities; and it may be pertinent briefly to summarise the inner
+history of the campaign, giving what may seem their due weight to the
+arguments and representations of the American writer.
+
+The following were the respective positions on the 14th of June:--
+Wellington's heterogeneous army, about 94,000 strong with 196 guns, lay
+widely dispersed in cantonments from the Scheldt to the Charleroi-Brussels
+chaussée, its front extending from Tournay through Mons and Binche to
+Nivelles and Quatre Bras. Of the Prussian army under Blücher, about
+121,000 strong with 312 guns, one corps was at Liège, another near the
+Meuse above Namur, a third at Namur, and Ziethen's in advance holding the
+line of the Sambre. The mass of Blücher's command had already seen service
+and, with the exception of the Saxons, was full of zeal; the corps were
+well commanded, and their chief, although he had his limits, was a
+thorough soldier. The French army, consisting of five corps d'armée, the
+Guard, four cavalry corps and 344 guns--total fighting strength 124,500--
+Napoleon had succeeded in assembling with wonderful celerity and secrecy
+south of the Sambre within an easy march of Charleroi. Its officers and
+soldiers were alike veterans but its organisation was somewhat defective.
+Napoleon scarcely preserved the phenomenal force of earlier years; but, in
+Mr. Ropes's words, he disclosed "no conspicuous lack of energy and
+activity." Soult was far from being an ideal chief of staff. Ney, to whom
+was assigned the command of the left wing, only reached the army on the
+15th, and without a staff; Grouchy, to whom on the 16th was suddenly given
+the command of the right wing, was not a man of high military capacity.
+
+Napoleon's plan of campaign was founded on the circumstance that the bases
+of the allied armies lay in opposite directions--the English base on the
+German Ocean, the Prussian through Liège and Maestricht to the Rhine. The
+military probability was that if either army was forced to retreat, it
+would retreat towards its base; and to do this would be to march away from
+its ally. Napoleon was in no situation to manoeuvre leisurely, with all
+Europe on the march against him. His engrossing aim was to gain immediate
+victory over his adversaries in Belgium before the Russians and Austrians
+should close in around him. His expectation was that Blücher would offer
+battle about Fleurus and be overwhelmed before the Anglo-Dutch army could
+come to the support of its Prussian ally. To make sure of preventing that
+junction the Emperor's intention was to detail Ney with the left wing to
+reach and hold Quatre Bras. The Prussians thoroughly beaten, drifting
+rearward toward their base, and reduced to a condition of comparative
+inoffensiveness, he would then turn on Wellington and force him to give
+battle.
+
+Mr. Ropes refutes the contention maintained by a great array of
+authorities, that Napoleon's design was to "wedge himself into the
+interval between the allied armies" by seizing simultaneously Sombreffe
+and Quatre Bras, in order to cut the communication between the two armies
+and then defeat them in succession. Against this view he successfully
+marshals Napoleon himself, Wellington by the mouth of Lord Ellesmere, and
+the great German strategist Clausewitz. It will suffice to quote
+Napoleon:--
+
+  The Emperor's intention was that his advance should
+  occupy Fleurus, the mass concealed behind this town;
+  he took good care ... above all things not to occupy
+  Sombreffe. To have done so would have caused the
+  failure of all his dispositions, for then the battle of Ligny
+  would not have been fought, and Blücher would have had
+  to make Wavre the concentration-point for his army.
+
+Wellington alludes pointedly to the obvious danger to the French army of
+the suggested wedge position in what the Germans call _die taktische
+Mitte_, where, instead of being able to defeat the allies in succession,
+it would itself be liable to be crushed between the upper and the nether
+millstone.
+
+At daybreak of the 15th Napoleon took the offensive, driving in Ziethen on
+and through Charleroi although not without sharp fighting. On that evening
+three French corps, the Guard, and most of the cavalry, were concentrated
+about Charleroi and forward toward Fleurus, ready to attack Blücher next
+day. Controversy has been very keen on the question whether or not on the
+afternoon of the 15th Napoleon gave Ney verbal orders to occupy Quatre
+Bras the same evening. Mr. Ropes holds it "almost certain" that the order
+was given. From Napoleon's bulletin despatched on the evening of the 15th,
+which is the only piece of strictly contemporary evidence, he quotes: "Le
+Prince de la Moskowa (Ney) a eu le soir son quartier général aux
+Quatres-Chemins;" and he remarks that this must have been the belief in
+the headquarter "unless we gratuitously invent an intention to deceive the
+public." There is no need for Mr. Ropes to put that strain on himself,
+since the main purport of Napoleon's bulletins notoriously was to deceive
+the public. But if Napoleon had not intended that Ney should occupy Quatre
+Bras on the night of the 15th, the statement that this had been done would
+have been a purposeless futility; and if he had intended that Ney should
+do so it is unlikely that he should have omitted to give him instructions
+to that effect. Grouchy claims to have heard Napoleon censure Ney for his
+omission to occupy Quatre Bras; an omission which had its importance, for
+the reason, among others, that it was ominous of the Marshal's infinitely
+more harmful disobedience of orders next day.
+
+All writers agree that Blücher ordered the concentration of his army in
+the fighting position previously chosen in the event of the French
+advancing by Charleroi, "without," in Mr. Ropes's words, "any definite
+agreement or undertaking with Wellington that he was to have English aid
+in the impending battle." He was content to take his risk of the English
+general's possible inability for sundry obvious reasons, to come to his
+support. And while the Prussian army with the unfortunate exception of
+Bülow's corps, was on the 15th moving toward the chosen position of Ligny,
+where its right was to be on St. Amand, its centre on and behind Ligny,
+and its left about Balâtre, what was happening in the Anglo-Dutch army
+lying spread out westward of the Charleroi--Brussels chaussée?
+
+Wellington was at Brussels expecting the French invasion by or west of the
+Mons-Brussels road, to meet which he considered his army very well placed,
+but could expect no Prussian cooperation. His courier service, with his
+forces so dispersed, should have been well organised and alert, but it was
+neither; and Napoleon's secrecy and suddenness in taking the offensive
+were worthy of his best days. It has been freely imputed to Wellington
+that he was thereby in a measure surprised. There is the strange and
+probably mythical story in the work professing to be Fouché's _Memoirs_ to
+the effect that Wellington was relying on him for information of
+Napoleon's plans, and that he--Fouché--played the English commander false.
+"On the very day of Napoleon's departure from Paris," say the _Memoirs_,
+"I despatched Madame D----, furnished with notes in cipher, narrating the
+whole plan of the campaign. But at the same time I privately sent orders
+for such obstacles at the frontier, where she was to pass, that she could
+not reach Wellington's headquarters till after the event. This was the
+real explanation of the inactivity of the British generalissimo which
+excited such universal astonishment." Readers of the _Letters of the First
+Earl of Malmesbury_ will remember the apparently authentic statement of
+Captain Bowles, that Wellington, rising from the supper-table at the
+famous ball,
+
+  whispered to ask the Duke of Richmond if he had a good
+  map. The Duke of Richmond said he had, and took
+  Wellington into his dressing-room. Wellington shut the
+  door and said, "Napoleon has humbugged me, by God;
+  he has gained twenty-four hours' march on me.... I
+  have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras;
+  but we shall not stop him there, and if so I must fight
+  him _there_" (passing his thumb-nail over the position of
+  Waterloo). The conversation was repeated to me by the
+  Duke of Richmond two minutes after it occurred.
+
+Facts, however, are stronger evidence than words; and this confession on
+Wellington's part is inconsistent with the circumstance that he had not
+hurried to retrieve the time he is represented as having owned that
+Napoleon had gained on him--that he had, on the contrary, allowed his
+adversary to gain several hours more. Wellington's combination of caution
+and decision throughout this momentous period is a very interesting study.
+It was not until 3 P.M. (of the 15th) that there reached him tidings
+almost simultaneously of firing between the outposts about Thuin and that
+Ziethen had been attacked before Charleroi, the two places ten miles apart
+and both occurrences in the early morning. Those affairs might have been
+casual outpost skirmishes; and the Duke, in anticipation of further
+information, took no measures for some hours. At length, in default of
+later tidings he determined on the precautionary step of assembling his
+divisions at their respective rendezvous points in readiness to march;
+further specifically directing a concentration of 25,000 men at Nivelles
+on his then left flank, when it should have been ascertained for certain
+that the enemy's line of attack was by Charleroi. These orders were sent
+out early in the evening--"between 5 and 7." Later in the evening came a
+letter from Blücher announcing the concentration of the Prussian army to
+occupy the Ligny fighting position, in which disposition Wellington
+acquiesced; but, still uncertain of Napoleon's true line of attack--his
+conviction being, as is well known, that Napoleon should have moved on the
+British right--he would not definitely fix the point of ultimate
+concentration of his army until he should receive intelligence from Mons.
+But Blücher's tidings caused him to issue about 10 P.M. a second set of
+orders, commanding a general movement of the army, not as yet to any
+specific point of concentration but in prescribed directions towards its
+left (eastward). At length, when the news came from Mons that he need have
+no further serious solicitude about his right since the whole French army
+was advancing by Charleroi, he saw his way clear. Towards midnight, writes
+Müffling the Prussian Commissioner at his headquarters, Wellington
+informed him of the tidings from Mons, and added: "The orders for the
+concentration of my army at Nivelles and Quatre Bras are already
+despatched. Let us, therefore, go to the ball."
+
+There are three definite evidences that before midnight of the 15th
+Wellington had resolved to concentrate about Quatre Bras, and had issued
+final orders accordingly--his statement to the Duke of Richmond, his
+statement to Müffling, and his statement in his official report to Lord
+Bathurst. Yet Mr. Ropes believes that his decision to that effect "could
+not have been arrived at very long before he left Brussels" on the morning
+of the 16th, which he did "probably about half-past seven." He founds this
+belief on two orders dated "16th June" sent to Lord Hill in the early
+morning of that day, in which there is no allusion to a concentration at
+Quatre Bras. But those were merely supplementary instructions as to points
+of detail; for example, one of them enjoined that a division ordered
+earlier to Enghien should move instead by way of Braine le Comte, that
+being a nearer route toward the final general destination of Quatre Bras
+specified in the earlier (the "towards midnight") orders. The latter
+orders are not extant, having been lost according to Gurwood, with De
+Lancey's papers when he fell at Waterloo; but that they must have been
+issued is proved by the fact that they were acted upon by the troops; and
+that they were issued before midnight of the 15th is made clear by
+Wellington's three specific statements to that effect.
+
+When the Duke left Brussels for the front on the morning of the 16th he
+took with him a singularly optimistic paper styled "Disposition of the
+British Army at 7 A.M., 16th June," which was "written out for the
+information of the Commander of the Forces by Colonel Sir W. de Lancey,"
+his Quartermaster-General. In the nature of things for the most part
+guess-work, the wish as regarded almost every particular set out in this
+document was father to the thought. Wellington was no doubt reasonably
+justified in accepting and relying on this flattering "Disposition;" but
+its terms, as Mr. Ropes conclusively shows, simply misled him and caused
+him also unconsciously to mislead Blücher, both by the expressions of the
+letter written by him to that chief on his arrival at Quatre Bras and
+later when he met the Prussian commander at the mill of Brye. Wellington
+was indeed trebly fortunate in finding the Quatre Bras position still
+available to him--fortunate that Ney on the previous evening had defaulted
+from his orders in refraining from occupying it; fortunate that Ney still
+on this morning was remaining passive; and more fortunate still that it
+had been occupied, defended, and reinforced by Dutch-Belgian troops not
+only without orders from him but in bold and happy violation of his
+orders. Perponcher's division was scarcely a potent representative of the
+Anglo-Dutch army, but there was nothing more at hand; and pending the
+coming up of reinforcements Wellington, with rather a sanguine reliance on
+Ney's maintenance of inactivity, rode over to Brye and had a conversation
+with Blücher. There are contradictory accounts of its tenor, and Gneisenau
+certainly seems to have formed the impression that the Duke gave a
+positive pledge of support. Mr. Ropes considers that, misled by the
+erroneous "Disposition," Wellington honestly believed he would be able to
+co-operate with Blücher, and that he "certainly did give that commander
+some assurance of support by the Anglo-Dutch army in the impending
+battle." Müffling, who was present, states that the Duke's last words were:
+"Well, I will come, provided I am not attacked myself;" and this probably
+was the final undertaking. Wellington's words were in accordance with the
+caution of his character; and it is certain that Blücher had decided to
+fight at Ligny whether assured or not of his brother-commander's support.
+That Wellington regarded Blücher's dispositions for battle as
+objectionable is proved by his blunt comment to Hardinge--"If they fight
+here they will be damnably licked!"
+
+It would have been possible for Napoleon to have crushed the Prussian army
+in the early hours of the 16th when it was in the throes of formation for
+battle; and this he would probably have done if Ney had occupied Quatre
+Bras on the previous evening. But in Ney's default of accomplishing this
+Napoleon, in his solicitude that Wellington should be hindered from
+supporting Blücher, determined to delay his own stroke against the latter
+until Ney should be in possession of Quatre Bras with the left wing,
+where, in Soult's words, "he ought to be able to destroy any force of the
+enemy that might present itself," and then come to the support of the
+Emperor by getting on the Prussian rear behind St. Amand. Napoleon's
+instructions were explicit that Ney was to march on Quatre Bras, take
+position there, and then send an infantry division and Kellerman's cavalry
+to points eastward, whence the Emperor might summon them to participate in
+his own operations. If Ney had fulfilled his orders by utilising the whole
+force at his disposal, in all human probability he would have defeated
+Wellington at Quatre Bras, whose troops, arriving in detail, would have
+been crushed by greatly superior numbers as they came up. As it was,
+although at the beginning of the battle he was in superior strength, Ney
+never utilised more than 22,000 men; whereas by its close Wellington had
+31,000, and, thanks to the stanchness of the British infantry, was the
+victor in a very hard-fought contest. But Mr. Ropes has reason in holding
+it humanly certain that he would have been beaten--in which case the
+battle of Waterloo would never have been fought--had not D'Erlon's corps
+of Ney's command while marching towards Quatre Bras, been turned aside in
+the direction of the Prussian right.
+
+In the justifiable belief that Ney was duly carrying out his orders
+Napoleon at half-past one opened the battle of Ligny. He had expected to
+have to deal with but a single Prussian corps, but the actual fact was
+that, while he had 74,000 men on the field, Blücher had 87,000 with a
+superior strength of artillery. The fighting was long and severe. From the
+first, recognising the defects of his adversary's position, Napoleon was
+satisfied that he could defeat the Prussian army. But he needed to do
+more--to crush, to rout it, so that he need give himself no further
+concern regarding it. This he saw his way to accomplish if Ney were to
+strike in presently on the Prussian right; and so, with intent to stir
+that chief to vigorous enterprise, the message was sent him that "the fate
+of France was in his hands." The battle proceeded, Blücher throwing in his
+reserves freely, Napoleon chary of his and playing the waiting game
+pending Ney's expected co-operation. About half-past five he was preparing
+to put in the Guard and strike the decisive blow, when information reached
+him from his right that a column, presumably hostile, was visible some two
+miles distant marching toward Fleurus. Napoleon sent an aide to ascertain
+the facts and until his return postponed the decisive moment. Two hours
+later the information was brought back that the approaching column was
+D'Erlon's from Ney's wing. This intelligence dispelled all anxiety.
+Strangely enough, no instructions were sent to the approaching
+reinforcement, and the suspended stroke was promptly dealt. The Prussians,
+after desperate fighting, were everywhere driven back. Napoleon with part
+of the Imperial Guard broke Blücher's centre, and the French army deployed
+on the heights beyond the stream. In a word, Napoleon had defeated the
+Prussians, but had neither crushed nor routed them. There was no pursuit.
+
+D'Erlon's corps on this afternoon had achieved the doubly sinister
+distinction of having prevented Ney from gaining a probable victory at
+Quatre Bras, and of detracting from the thoroughness of Napoleon's actual
+victory at Ligny. While it was leisurely marching towards Frasnes in
+support of Ney, it was diverted eastward towards the Prussian right flank
+in consequence of an order given (whether authorised or not is uncertain)
+by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor. It was about to deploy for action,
+when, on receiving from Ney a peremptory order to rejoin his command; and
+in absence of a command from Napoleon to strike the Prussian flank, it
+went about and tramped back towards Frasnes. D'Erlon's promenade was as
+futile as the famous march of the King of France up the hill and then down
+again.
+
+Mr. Ropes considers that on the morning of the 17th Napoleon had thus far
+in the main fulfilled his programme. This view may be questioned. He had
+merely defeated two of the four Prussian corps; he had not wrecked
+Blücher. He had failed to occupy Quatre Bras; the Anglo-Dutch army had
+succeeded in effecting a partial concentration and in repulsing his left
+wing there. Still it must be admitted that with two corps absolutely
+intact and with no serious losses in the Guard and cavalry, Napoleon was
+in good shape for carrying out his plan. If Ney had sent him word
+overnight that Wellington's army was bivouacking about Quatre Bras in
+ignorance, as it turned out, of the result of Ligny, he might have
+attacked it to good purpose in conjunction with Ney in the early morning
+of the 17th. But Ney was silent and sulky; Napoleon himself was greatly
+fatigued, and Soult was of no service to him.
+
+During the night the Prussians "had folded their tents like the Arabs, and
+as silently stolen away." They had neither been watched nor followed up,
+all touch of them had been lost, and there was nothing to indicate their
+line of retreat. This slovenliness on the part of the French would not
+have occurred in Napoleon's earlier days; nor in those days of greater
+vigour would he have delayed until after midday of the 17th to follow up
+an army which he had defeated on the previous evening, and which had
+disappeared from before him in the course of the night. The reports which
+had been sent in from a cavalry reconnaissance despatched in the morning
+indicated that the Prussians were retiring on Namur. No reconnaissance had
+been made in the direction of Tilly and Wavre. This was a strange error,
+since Blücher had two corps still untouched, and as above everything a
+fighting man, was not likely to throw up his hands and forsake his ally
+after one partial discomfiture. Napoleon tardily determined to despatch
+Grouchy on the errand of following up the Prussians with a force
+consisting of about 33,000 men with ninety-six guns. Thus far all
+authorities are agreed; but as regards the character of the orders given
+to Grouchy for his guidance in an obviously somewhat complicated
+enterprise, there is an extraordinary contrariety of evidence. It is
+stated in the _St. Helena Memoirs_ that Grouchy received positive orders
+to keep himself always between the main French army and Blücher; to
+maintain constant communication with the former and in a position easily
+to rejoin it; that since it was possible that Blücher might retreat on
+Wavre, he (Grouchy) was to be there simultaneously; if the Prussians
+should continue their march on Brussels and should pass the night in the
+forest of Soignies, he was to follow to the edge of the forest; should
+they retire on the Meuse, he was to watch them with part of his cavalry
+and himself occupy Wavre with the mass of his force, where he should be in
+position for easy communication with Napoleon's headquarters. Those orders
+are certainly specific enough, but there is no record of them; and they
+may be assumed to represent rather what Napoleon at St. Helena considered
+Grouchy should have done, than what he was actually ordered to do.
+
+Grouchy's version, again--and it is adequately corroborated--is to the
+effect that about midday of the 17th on the field of Ligny, the Emperor
+gave him the verbal order to take the 3rd and 4th Corps and certain
+cavalry and "go in pursuit of the Prussians." Grouchy raised sundry
+objections which the Emperor overruled and repeated his commands, adding
+that "it was for me (Grouchy) to discover the route taken by Blücher; that
+he himself was going to fight the English, and that it was for me to
+complete the defeat of the Prussians by attacking them as soon as I should
+have caught up with them." So much for Grouchy for the moment.
+
+Soon after the Emperor had given Grouchy this verbal order, tidings came
+in from a scouting party that a body of Prussian troops had been seen
+about 9 A.M. at Gembloux, considerably northward of the Namur road. The
+abstract probability no doubt was that the Prussians would retire towards
+their base. But that Napoleon kept an open mind on the subject is
+evidenced by his instruction to Grouchy to "go and discover the route
+taken by Blücher," and this later intelligence, it may be assumed, opened
+his mind yet further. He thought it well, then, to send to Grouchy a
+supplementary written order which in the temporary absence of Marshal
+Soult he dictated to General Bertrand. This order enjoined on Grouchy to
+proceed with his force to Gembloux; to explore in the directions of Namur
+and Maestricht; to pursue the enemy; explore his march; and report upon
+his manoeuvres, so that "I (Napoleon) may be able to penetrate what the
+enemy is intending to do; whether he is separating himself from the
+English, or whether they are intending still to unite in trying the fate
+of another battle to cover Brussels or Liège." To me I confess--and the
+view is also that of Chesney and Maurice--this written order is simply an
+amplification in detail of the previous verbal order, which by instructing
+Grouchy "to discover the route taken by Blücher" clearly evinced doubt in
+Napoleon's mind as to the Prussian line of retreat. Mr. Ropes, on the
+other hand, bases an indictment on Grouchy's conduct on the argument that
+not only was the tone of the written order altogether different from that
+of the verbal order, but that the duty assigned to Grouchy by the former
+was wholly different from that specified in the latter.
+
+He adds that Grouchy constantly and persistently denied having received
+any other than the verbal order, that in this denial Grouchy lied, and
+that "the mischievous influence of this deliberate concealment of his
+orders by Grouchy caused for nearly thirty years after the battle of
+Waterloo to be prevalent a wholly false notion as to the task assigned by
+Napoleon to the Marshal." Certainly Grouchy's conduct is inexplicable to
+any one holding the belief, as I do, that there is nothing in the written
+order to account for Grouchy's denial of having received it. It is more
+inexplicable than Mr. Ropes appears to be aware of. It is true, as Mr.
+Ropes proves, that Grouchy vehemently denied receiving the written order
+in all his works printed from 1818 to 1829. But he had actually
+acknowledged its receipt almost immediately after Waterloo. In his son's
+little book, _Le Maréchal de Grouchy du 16me au 19me Juin, 1815,_ is
+printed among the _Documents Historiques Inédits_ a paper styled
+"Allocution du Maréchal Grouchy à quelques-uns des officiers généraux sous
+les ordres, lorsqu'il eût appris les désastres de Waterloo." From this
+document I make the following extract: "A few hours later the Emperor
+modified his first order, and caused to be written to me by the Grand
+Marshal Bertrand the order to betake myself to Gembloux, and to send
+reconnaissances towards Namur. 'It is important,' continued the order, 'to
+discover the intentions of the Prussians--whether they are separating from
+the English, or have the design to take the chance of a new battle.'" It
+is strange that this acknowledgment should never have been cited against
+Grouchy; stranger still that in the face of it he should have maintained
+his denials; yet more strange that those denials were never exposed; and
+most strange of all, that finally the "written order" should have appeared
+for the first time in a casual article published in 1842, without evoking
+any explanation from Grouchy, or any strictures on his persistent
+mendacity.
+
+It may be questioned whether the force of 33,000 men entrusted to Grouchy
+was not either too large or too small. The main French army, in the
+possible contingencies before it, could not safely spare so large a
+detachment, as events showed. Grouchy's command was not sufficiently
+strong to oppose the whole Prussian army; two corps of which could
+certainly have "held" it, while the other two were free to support
+Wellington. Mr. Ropes thinks it might have been diminished by one-half,
+but then a single Prussian corps could have dealt with it. It is difficult
+to discern in what respect the 6000 cavalry assigned to Grouchy should
+have been inadequate to such service as could reasonably have been
+expected of his whole command.
+
+The British force about Quatre Bras on the morning of the 17th amounted to
+about 45,000 men. Early on that morning Wellington was in conversation
+with the Captain Bowles previously mentioned, when an officer galloped up
+and, to quote Captain Bowles,
+
+  whispered to the Duke, who then turned to me and said,
+  "Old Blücher has had a d----d good licking and has gone
+  back to Wavre. As he has gone back, we must go too. I
+  suppose in England they will say we have been licked--I
+  can't help that."
+
+He quietly withdrew his troops from their positions, an operation which
+Ney, with 40,000 men at his disposal, did not attempt to molest,
+notwithstanding repeated orders from Napoleon to move on Quatre Bras.
+Early in the afternoon Napoleon reached that vicinity with the Guard, 6th
+Corps, and Milhaud's Cuirassiers, picked up Ney's command, and mounting
+his horse led the French army, following up Wellington's retreat. His
+energy and activity throughout the march is described as intense. Those
+characteristics he continued to evince during the following night and in
+the morning of the eventful 18th. In the dead of night he spent two hours
+on the picquet line, and about seven he was out again on the foreposts in
+the mud and rain. His anxiety was not as to the issue of a battle with
+Wellington, but lest Wellington should not stand and fight. That
+apprehension was dispelled when, as he rode along his front about 8 A.M.,
+he saw the Anglo-Dutch army taking up its ground. He was aware that at
+least one "pretty strong Prussian column"--which actually consisted of the
+two corps beaten at Ligny--had retired on Wavre. But notwithstanding the
+disquieting vagueness and ineptitude of Grouchy's letter of 10 P.M. of the
+17th from Gembloux, and that up to the morning of the battle he had sent
+no suggestions or instructions to that officer, he yet trusted implicitly
+to him to fend off the Prussians; and it did not seem to occur to him that
+Wellington's calm expectant attitude indicated his assurance of Blücher's
+cooperation.
+
+In one of the cavalry charges toward the close of the battle of Ligny,
+Blücher had been overthrown, ridden over, almost taken prisoner, and
+severely bruised; but the gallant old hussar was almost himself again next
+morning, thanks to copious doses of gin and rhubarb, for the effluvium of
+which restorative he apologised to Hardinge as he embraced that wounded
+officer, in the extremely plain expression, "_Ich stinke etwas_."
+Gneisenau, his Chief of Staff, rather distrusted Wellington's good faith,
+and doubted whether it was not the safer policy for the Prussian army to
+fall back toward Liège. But Blücher prevailed over his lieutenants; and on
+the evening of the 17th all four Prussian corps in a strength of about
+90,000 men, were concentrated about Wavre, some nine miles east of the
+Waterloo position, full of ardour and confident of success. That same
+night Müffling informed Blücher by letter that the Anglo-Dutch army had
+occupied the position named, wherein to fight next day; and Blücher's
+loyal answer was that Bülow's corps at daybreak should march by way of St.
+Lambert to strike the French right; that Pirch's would follow in support;
+and that the other two would stand in readiness. This communication, which
+reached Wellington at headquarters at 2 A.M. of the 18th, has been held to
+have been the first actually definite assurance of Prussian support. The
+story to the effect that on the evening of the 17th the Duke rode over to
+Wavre to make sure from Blücher's own mouth that he could rely on Prussian
+support next day, to the truth of which not a little of vague testimony
+has been adduced, may be now definitely disregarded. The evidence against
+the legend is conclusive. An authoritative contradiction was given to it
+in an article in the _Quarterly Review_ of 1842, from the pen of Lord
+Francis Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, who confessedly wrote under
+the inspiration of the Duke, and in this instance directly from a
+memorandum drawn up by his Grace. Quite recently there have been found and
+are now in the possession of the Rev. Frederick Gurney, the grandson of
+the late Sir John Gurney, the notes of a "conversation with the Duke of
+Wellington and Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Williams, Judges on Circuit,
+at Strath-fieldsaye House, on 24th February 1837." The annotator was Baron
+Gurney, to the following effect:--"The conversation had been commenced by
+my inquiring of him (the Duke) whether a story which I had heard was true
+of his having ridden over to Blücher on the night before the battle of
+Waterloo, and returned on the same horse. He said--'No, that was not so. I
+did not see Blücher on the day before Waterloo. I saw him the day before,
+on the day of Quatre Bras. I saw him after Waterloo, and he kissed me. He
+embraced me on horseback. I had communicated with him the day before
+Waterloo.'" The rest of the conversation made no further reference to the
+topic of the ride to Wavre.
+
+It is not proposed to give here any account of the memorable battle, the
+main incidents of which are familiar to all. It was of course Wellington's
+policy to take up a defensive attitude; both because of the incapacity of
+his raw soldiers for manoeuvring, and since every minute before Napoleon
+should begin the offensive was of value to the English commander, as it
+diminished the length of punishment he would have to endure single-handed.
+Further, he was numerically weaker than his adversary, while his troops
+were at once of divers nationalities and divers character; his main
+reliance was on his British troops and those of the King's German Legion.
+Napoleon for his part deliberately delayed to attack when celerity of
+action was all-important to him, disregarding the obvious probability of
+Prussian assistance to Wellington, and sanguinely expecting that Grouchy
+would either avert that support or reach him in time to neutralise it. Mr.
+Ropes has written an admirable criticism of the errors of the French in
+their contest with the Anglo-Dutch army, for which Ney was for the most
+part responsible, since from before 3 P.M. Napoleon was engrossed in
+preparing his right flank for defence against the Prussians. The issue of
+the great battle all men know. The badness of the roads retarded the
+Prussians greatly, and, save in Bülow's corps, there was no doubt
+considerable delay in starting; but the proverb that "All's well that ends
+well" might have been coined with special application to the battle of
+Waterloo.
+
+It only remains briefly to refer to Mr. Ropes's elaborate _résumé_ of the
+melancholy adventures of Grouchy, on whom he may be regarded as too
+severe. Sent out too late on a species of roving commission, more was
+expected from him by Napoleon than could have been accomplished by any but
+a leader of the highest order, whereas Grouchy had never given evidence of
+being more than respectable. He received from his master neither
+instructions nor information from the time he left the field of Ligny
+until 4 P.M. of the 18th, nor until at Walhain he heard the cannonade of
+Waterloo had he any knowledge of the whereabouts of the French main army.
+On the morning of the 18th he was late in leaving Gembloux, on not the
+most direct route towards Wavre; instead of moving on which, when he heard
+the noise of the battle, he should no doubt have marched straight for the
+Dyle bridges at Ottignies and Moustier. Had he done so, spite of all
+delays he could have been across the Dyle by 4 P.M. But when Mr. Ropes
+claims that thus Grouchy would have been able to arrest the march toward
+the battlefield of the two leading Prussian corps, one of which was four
+miles distant from him and the other still farther away, he is too
+exacting. Had Grouchy made the vain attempt, the two nearer Prussian corps
+would have taken him in flank and headed him off, while Bülow and Ziethen
+pressed on to the battlefield. If he had marched straight and swiftly on
+the cannon-thunder of Waterloo, he might perhaps have been in time to
+effect something in the nature of a diversion, although it is extremely
+improbable that he could have materially changed the fortune of the day;
+but instead, acting on the letter of Napoleon's instructions despatched to
+him on the morning of the battle, he moved on Wavre and engaged in a
+futile action with the Prussian 3rd Corps there. A shrewd and enterprising
+man would have at least seen into the spirit of his orders; Grouchy could
+not do this, and he is to be pitied rather than blamed.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
+by Archibald Forbes
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