Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 339, January, 1844
TextCHAPTER VII.
THE VICARAGE
Our history began at the Vicarage; there let it end. It is a cheerful summer's morning, and Margaret sits in the study of her friend Mr. Middleton, who has learned to look upon his charge as upon a daughter. She is still attired in widow's weeds, but looks more composed and happy than when we saw her many months ago there.
"You will not leave us, then," said the good vicar; "we have not tired you yet?"
"No," answered Margaret, with a sweet contented smile, "here must I live and die. My duties will not suffer me to depart, even were I so inclined. What would my children do?"
"Ah, what indeed? The school would certainly go to rack and ruin."
"And my old friends, the Harpers and the Wakefields?"
"Why, the old ladies would very soon die of a broken heart, no doubt of it; and then, there's our dispensary and little hospital. Why, where should we look for a new apothecary?"
"These are but the worst days of my life, Mr. Middleton, which I dedicate to usefulness. How am I to make good the deficiency of earlier years?"
"By relying, my dear madam, upon the grace and love of Heaven, who in mercy regards not what we have been, but what we are."
"And is there pardon for so great a sinner?"
"Doubt it not, dear lady. Had you not been loved, you never would have been chastised—you would never have become an obedient and willing child. Be sure, dear Mrs Allcraft, that having repented, you are pardoned and reconciled to your Father. Pray, hold fast to this conviction. You have reason to believe it; for truly you have not despised the chastening of the Lord, nor fainted when you were rebuked of him."
KÍEFF
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF IVÁN KOZLÓFF
BY T.B. SHAW
O Kiéff! where religion ever seemeth
To light existence in our native land;
Where o'er Petchérskoi's dome the bright cross gleameth,
Like some fair star, that still in heaven doth stand;
Where, like a golden sheet, around thee streameth
Thy plain, and meads that far away expand;
And by thy hoary wall, with ceaseless motion,
Old Dniéper's foaming swell sweeps on to ocean.
How oft to thee in spirit have I panted,
O holy city, country of my heart!
How oft, in vision, have I gazed enchanted
On thy fair towers—a sainted thing thou art!—
By Lávra's walls or Dniéper's wave, nor wanted
A spell to draw me from this life apart;
In thee my country I behold, victorious,
Holy and beautiful, and great and glorious.
The moon her soft ray on Petchérskoi poureth,
Its domes are shining in the river's wave;
The soul the spirit of the past adoreth,
Where sleeps beneath thee many a holy grave:
Vladímir's shade above thee calmly soareth,
Thy towers speak of the sainted and the brave;
Afar I gaze, and all in dreamy splendour
Breathes of the past—a spell sublime and tender.
There fought the warriors in the field of glory,
Strong in the faith, against their country's foe;
And many a royal flower yon palace hoary,
In virgin loveliness, hath seen to blow.
And Báyan sang to them the noble story,
And secret rapture in their breast did glow;
Hark! midnight sounds—that brazen voice is dying—
A day to meet the vanish'd days is flying.
Where are the valiant?—the resistless lances—
The brands that were as lightning when they waved?
Where are the beautiful—whose sunny glances
Our fathers, with such potency, enslaved?
Where is the bard, whose song no more entrances?
Ah! that deep bell hath answer'd what I craved:
And thou alone, by these grey walls, O river!
Murmurest, Dniéper, still, and flow'st for ever.
MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN
PART VII
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"
SHAKSPEARE.
At daybreak, the bustle of the camp awoke me. I rose hastily, mounted my horse, and spurred to the rendezvous of the general staff. Nothing could be more animated than the scene before me, and which spread to the utmost reach of view. The advance of the combined forces had moved at early dawn, and the columns were seen far away, ascending the sides of a hilly range by different routes, sometimes penetrating through the forest, and catching the lights of a brilliant rising sun on their plumes and arms. The sound of their trumpets and bands was heard from time to time, enriched by the distance, and coming on the fresh morning breeze, with something of its freshness, to the ear and the mind. The troops now passing under the knoll on which the commander-in-chief and his staff had taken their stand, were the main body, and were Austrian, fine-looking battalions, superbly uniformed, and covered with military decorations, the fruits of the late Turkish campaigns, and the picked troops of an empire of thirty millions of men. Nothing could be more brilliant, novel, or picturesque, than the display of this admirable force, as it moved in front of the rising ground on which our cortège stood.
"You will now see," said Varnhorst, who sat curbing, with no slight difficulty, his fiery Ukraine charger at my side, "the troops of countries of which Europe, in general, knows no more than of the tribes of the new world. The Austrian sceptre brings into the field all the barbaric arms and costumes of the border land of Christendom and the Turk."
Varnhorst, familiar with every service of the continent, was a capital cicerone, and I listened with strong interest as he pronounced the names, and gave little characteristic anecdotes, of the gallant regiments that successively wheeled at the foot of the slope—the Archducal grenadiers—the Eugene battalion, which had won their horse-tails at the passage of the Danube—the Lichtensteins, who had stormed Belgrade—the Imperial Guard, a magnificent corps, who had led the last assault on the Grand Vizier's lines, and finished the war. The light infantry of Maria Theresa, and the Hungarian grenadiers and cuirassiers, a mass of steel and gold, closed the march of the main body. Nothing could be more splendid. And all this was done under the perpetual peal of trumpets, and the thunder of drums and gongs, that seemed absolutely to shake the air. It was completely the Miltonic march and harmony—
"Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds."
But I was now to witness a still more spirit-stirring scene.
The trampling of a multitude of horse, and the tossing of lances and banners in the distance, suddenly turned all eyes in their direction.
"Now, prepare," said the Count, "for a sight, perhaps not altogether so soldierlike, but fully as much to my taste, as the buff-belt and grenadiers'-cap formality of the line. You shall see the Austrian flankers—every corps equipped after its native fashion. And whatever our martinets may say, there is nothing that gives such spirits to the soldier, as dressing according to the style of his own country. My early service was in Transylvania; and if I were to choose troops for a desperate service, I say—give me either the man of the hill, or the man of the forest, exactly in the coat of the chamois-shooter, or the wolf-hunter."
He had scarcely pointed my attention to the movement, when the whole body of the rearguard was in full and rapid advance. The plain was literally covered with those irregulars, who swept on like a surge, or rather, from the diversity of their colours, and the vast half-circle which they formed on the ground, a living rainbow. Part were infantry and part cavalry, but they were so intermingled, and the motion of all was so rapid, that it was difficult to mark the distinction. From my recollection of the history of the Seven Years' War, I felt a double interest in the sight of the different castes and classes of the service, which I had hitherto known only by name. Thus passed before me the famous Croatian companies—the Pandours, together forming the finest outpost troops of the army—the free companies of the Tyrol, the first marksmen of the empire, a fine athletic race, with the eagle's feather in their broad hats, and the sinewy step of the mountaineer—the lancers of the Bannat, first-rate videttes, an Albanian division, which had taken service with Austria on the close of the war; and, independently of all name and order, a cloud of wild cavalry, Turk, Christian, and barbarian, who followed the campaign for its chances, and galloped, sported, and charged each other like the Arabs of the desert.
The late triumphs of the Imperial arms in Turkey had even enhanced the customary display, and the standards of the cavalry and colours of the battalions, were stiff with the embroidered titles of captured fortresses and conquered fields. Turkish instruments of music figured among the troops, and the captive horse-tails were conspicuous in more than one corps, which had plucked down the pride of the Moslem. The richness and variety of this extraordinary spectacle struck me as so perfectly Oriental, that I might have imagined myself suddenly transferred to Asia, and looked for the pasha and his spahis; or even for the rajah, his elephants, and his turbaned spearmen. But all this gay splendour has long since been changed. The Croats are now regulars, and all the rest have followed their example.
My admiration was so loud, that it caught the ear of the duke. He turned his quick countenance on me, and said—"Tell our friends at home, M. Marston, what you have seen to-day. I presume you know that Maria Theresa was a first-rate soldier; or, at least, she had the happy art of finding them. You may see Laudohn's hand in her battalions. As for the light troops, Europe can show nothing superior in their kind. Trenk's Pandours, and Nadasti's hussars were worth an army to Austria, from the first Silesian war down to the last shot fired in Germany. But follow me, and you shall see the work of another great master."
We spurred across the plain to the mouth of a deep, wooded defile, through which the Prussian grand corps d'armée were advancing. The brigades which now met our view were evidently of a different character from the Austrian; their uniforms of the utmost simplicity; their march utterly silent; the heads of the columns observing their distances with such accuracy, that, on a signal, they could have been instantly formed in order of battle; every movement of the main body simply directed by a flag carried from hill to hill, and even the battalion movements marked by the mere waving of a sword. Even their military music was of a peculiarly soft and subdued character. On my observing this to Varnhorst, his reply was—"That this was one of the favourite points of the Great Frederick. 'I hate drums in the march,' said the king, 'they do nothing but confuse the step. Every one knows that the beat at the head of the column takes time to reach the rear. Besides, the drum deafens the ear. Keep it, therefore, for the battle, when the more noise the better.' He also placed the band in the centre of the column. 'If they are fond of music,' said he, 'why should not every man have his share?'"
The steady advance, the solid force, and the sweet harmony, almost realized the noble poetic conception—
"Anon they move
In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft recorders, such as raised
To heights of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle; and instead of rage,
Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved
With dread of death to flight or foul retreat."
It is true that they wanted the picturesque splendour of ancient warfare. The ten thousand banners, with orient colours waving, the "forest huge of spears," the "thronging helms," and "serried shields, in thick array of depth immeasurable." But if the bayonet, the lance, and even the cannon offered less to the eye, the true source of the grandeur of war was there—the power, the tremendous impulse, the materiel of those shocks which convulse nations—the marshalled strength, fierce science, and stern will, before which the works of man perish like chaff before the wind, and the glory of nations vanishes like a shade.
While the last of the troops were defiling before the duke and his staff, a courier brought up despatches.
"Gentlemen," said the duke, after glancing at one of the papers, "the army of the Prince de Condé is in march to join us. They have already reached the neighbourhood. We must now lose no time. M. Marston, you will report to your Government what you have seen to-day. We are in march for Paris."
Varnhorst and Guiscard were now summoned to the side of the duke; a spot was found where we might shelter ourselves from the overpowering blaze of the sun; the successive despatches were opened; a large map of the routes from Champagne to the capital was laid on the ground; and we dismounted, and, sitting together, like old comrades, we held our little council of war.
"I can make nothing of my French correspondents in general," said the duke, after perusing a long letter, "but M. le Comte writes like Cagliostro. He has evidently some prodigious secret, which he is determined to envelope in still deeper secrecy. He tells me that La Fayette has fled; but when, where, or for what purpose, is all equally an enigma. In one sentence of his letter he would persuade me that all France is disorganized, and in the next, that it is more resolved to resist than ever. Paris is prepared to rise at the first sight of the white flag, and Paris is sending out six thousand men every three hours to join the republican force in the field. Paris is in despair. Paris is in furious exultation. How am I to understand all this? Even in his postscript he tells me, in one breath, that the whole of the strong places in our front are filled with national guards, and that no less than seven corps of troops of the line are prepared to fight us in the plains of Champagne; and that we have only to push on to take the towns—charge the troops of the line to see them disperse—and advance within ten leagues of Paris to extinguish the rebellion, set the royal family free, and restore the monarchy."
The mysterious letter was handed round our circle in succession, and seemed equally beyond comprehension to us all. We had yet to learn the temperament of a capital, where every half-hour produced a total change of the popular mind. The letter, fantastically expressed as it was, conveyed the true condition of the hour. The picture was true, but the countenance changed every moment. He might as well have given the colours of cloud.
I had now entered on a course of adventure the most exciting of all others, and at the most exciting time of life. But all the world round me was in a state of excitement. Every nation of Europe was throwing open its armoury, and preparing its weapons for the field. The troops invading France were palpably no more than the advanced guards of Prussia and Austria. Even with all my inexperience, I foresaw that the war would differ from all the past; that it would be, not a war of tactics, but a war of opinion; that not armies, but the people marshalled into hosts, would be ultimately the deciders of the victory; and that on whichever side the popular feeling was more serious, persevering, and intense, there the triumph would be gained. I must still confess, however, in disparagement to my military sagacity, that I was totally unprepared for the gallant resistance of the French recruits. What can they do without officers?—ten thousand of whom had been noblesse, and were now emigrants? What can they do without a commissariat, what can they do without pay, and who is to pay them in a bankrupt nation? Those were the constant topics at headquarters. We were marching to an assured victory. France was at an end. We should remodel the Government, and teach the sans culottes the hazard of trying the trade of politicians.
There was but one man in the camp who did not coincide in those glittering visions. Let me once more do justice to a prince whose character has been affected by the caprices of fortune. The Duke of Brunswick's language to me, as we saw the Tricolor waving on the walls of Longwy, the first fortress which lay in our road, was—"Sir, your court must not be deceived. We shall probably take the town, and defeat its wavering army; but up to this moment, we have not been joined by a single peasant. The population are against us. This is not a German war; it is more like yours in America. I have but one hundred and twenty thousand men against twenty-five millions." To my remark, "that there might be large body of concealed loyalty in France, which only waited the advance of the Allies to declare itself," his calm and grave reply was: "That I must not suffer my Government to suppose him capable of abandoning the royal cause, while there was hope in military means. That it was his determination to hazard all things rather than chill the coalition. But this let me impress upon your Ministry," said he, with his powerful eye turned full on me; "that if intrigue in the German cabinets, or tardiness on the part of yours, shall be suffered to impede my progress, all is at an end. I know the French; if we pause, they will pour on. If we do not reach Paris, we must prepare to defend Berlin and Vienna. If the war is not ended within a month, it may last for those twenty years."
The commander-in-chief was true to his word. He lost no time. Before night our batteries were in full play upon the bastions of Longwy, and as our tents had not yet overtaken us, I lay down under a vineyard shed in a circle of the staff, with our cloaks for our pillows, listening to the roar of our artillery; until it mingled with my dreams.
We were on horse an hour before daybreak, and the cannonade still continued heavy. It was actively returned, and the ramparts were a circuit of fire. As a spectacle, nothing could be more vivid, striking, and full of interest. To wait for the slow approaches of a formal siege was out of the question. Intelligence had reached us that the scattered French armies, having now ascertained the point at which the burst over the frontier was to be made, had been suddenly combined, and had taken a strong position directly in our way to the capital. A protracted siege would raise the country in our rear, and, thus placed between two fires, the grand army might find itself paralysed at the first step of the campaign. The place must be battered until a breach was made, and stormed à la Turque. Our anxiety during the day was indescribable. With our telescopes constantly in our hands, we watched the effect of every new discharge; we galloped from hill to hill with the impatience of men in actual combat, and every eye and tongue was busy in calculating the distances, the power of guns, and the time which the crumbling works would take to fill up the ditch. The reports of the engineers, towards evening, announced that a practicable breach was made, and three battalions of Austrian grenadiers, and as many of Prussians, were ordered under arms for the assault. To make this gallant enterprize more conspicuous, the whole army was formed in columns, and marched to the heights, which commanded a view of the fortress. The fire from the batteries now became a continued roar, and the guns of Longwy, whose fire had slackened during the day, answered them with an equal thunder; the space between was soon covered with smoke, and when the battalions of grenadiers moved down the hillside, and plunged into the valley, they looked like masses of men disappearing into the depths of ocean. The anxiety now grew intense. I hardly breathed; and yet I had a mingled sensation of delight, eagerness, and yet of uncertainty, to which nothing that I had ever felt before was comparable. I longed to follow those brave men to the assault, and probably would have made some such extravagant blunder, but for seeing Varnhorst's broad visage turned on me with a look of that quiet humour which, of all things on earth, soonest brings a man to his senses. "My good friend," said he, "however fine this affair may be, live in hope of seeing something finer. Never be shot at Longwy, when you may have a chance of scaling the walls of Paris. I have made a vow never to be hanged in the beginning of a revolution, nor to be shot in the beginning of a war. But come, the duke is beckoning to us. Let us follow him."
We saw the general and his staff galloping from the ground where he had remained from the beginning of the assault, to a height still more exposed, and where the guns from the fortress were tearing up the soil. From this spot a large body of troops were seen rushing from the gate of the fortress, and plunging into the valley. The result of this powerful sortie was soon heard, for every thing was invisible under the thick cloud, which grew thicker every moment, in the volleys of musketry, and the shouts of the troops on both sides. Varnhorst now received an order from the chief of the staff, which produced its effect, in the rush of a squadron of Prussian cavalry on the flank of the enemy's column. In a few minutes it was broken, and we saw its wrecks swept along the side of the hill. An universal shout was sent up from the army, and our next sight was the ascent of the Austrian and Prussian standards, gradually rising through the smoke, and making their way towards the glacis. They had reached the foot of the breach, when the fire of the town suddenly ceased. A white flag waved on the rampart, and the drums of the garrison beat the chamade. Longwy had surrendered! All now was triumph and congratulation. We flocked round the duke, and hailed his first conquest as a promise of perpetual success. He was in high spirits at an achievement which was so important to the national impression of his talents and resources. The sortie of the garrison had given the capture an éclât which could not have been obtained by the mere surrender of a strong place. But the most important point of all was, the surrender before the assault. "The sight of our troops is enough," was the universal conclusion. If the fortified barrier of France cannot resist, what will be done by troops as raw as peasants, and officers as raw as their troops? The capitulation was a matter of half an hour, and by nightfall I followed the duke and his escort into the town. It was illuminated by order of the conquerors, and, whether bongrè or malgrè, it looked showy; we had gazers in abundance, as the dashing staff caracoled their way through the streets. I observed, however, that we had no acclamations. To have hissed us, might be a hazardous experiment, while so many Hulans were galloping through the Grande Rue; but we got no smiles. In the midst of the crowd, I met Varnhorst steering his charger with no small difficulty, and carrying a packet of notes in his hand. "Go to your quarters, and dress," said my good-humoured friend. "You will have a busy night of it. The duke has invited the French commandant and his officers to dine with him, and we are to have a ball and supper afterwards for the ladies. Lose no time." He left me wondering at the new world into which I had fallen, and strongly doubting, that he would be able to fill up his ball-room. But I was mistaken. The dinner was handsomely attended, and the ball more handsomely still. "Fortune de la guerre," reconciled the gallant captains of the garrison to the change; and they fully enjoyed the contrast between a night on the ramparts, and the hours spent at the Prussian generalissimo's splendidly furnished table. The ball which followed exhibited a crowd of the belles of Longwy, all as happy as dress and dancing could make them. It was a charming episode in the sullen history of campaigning, and before I flung myself on the embroidered sofa of the mayor's drawing-room, where my billet had been given for the night, I was on terms of eternal "friendship" with a whole group of classic beauties—Aspasias, Psyches and Cleopatras.
But neither love nor luxury, neither the smiles of that fair Champagnaises, nor the delight of treading on the tesselated floors, and feasting on the richness of municipal tables, could now detain us. We were in our saddles by daybreak, and with horses that outstripped the wind, with hearts light as air, and with prospects of endless victory and orders and honours innumerable before us, we galloped along, preceded, surrounded, and followed by the most showy squadrons that ever wore lace and feathers. The delight of this period was indescribable. It was to me a new birth of faculties that resembled a new sense of being, a buoyant and elastic lightness of feelings and frame. The pure air; the perpetual change of scene; the novelty of the landscape; the restless and vivid variety of events, and those too of the most powerful and comprehensive nature; the superb display of the finest army that the Continent had sent to war for the last hundred years; and all this excitement and enjoyment, with an unrivaled vista of matchless conquest in the horizon, a triumphal march through the provinces, to be consummated by the peace of Europe in Paris, filled even my vexed and wearied spirit with new life. If I am right in my theory, that the mind reaches stages of its growth with as much distinctness as the frame, this was one of them. I was conscious from this time of a more matured view of human being, of a clearer knowledge of its impulses, of a more vigorous, firm, and enlarged capacity for dealing with the real concerns of life. I still loved; and, strange, hopeless, and bewildering as that passion was in the breast of one who seemed destined to all the diversities of fortune—it remained without relief, or relaxation through all. It was the vein of gold, or perhaps the stream of fire, beneath the soil, inaccessible to the power of change on the surface, but that surface undergoing every impulse and influence of art and nature.
The army now advanced unopposed. Still we received neither cheers nor reinforcements from the population. Yet we had now begun to be careless on the topic. The intelligence from Paris was favourable in all the leading points. The king was resuming his popularity, though still a prisoner. The Jacobins were exhibiting signs of terror, though still masters of every thing. The recruits were running away, though the decree for the general rising of the country was arming the people. In short, the news was exactly of that checkered order which was calculated to put us all in the highest spirits. The submission of Paris, at least until we were its conquerors, would have deprived us of a triumph on the spot, and the proclamation of a general peace would have been received as the command for a general mourning.
The duke was in the highest animation, and he talked to every one round him, as we marched along, with more than condescension. He was easy, familiar, and flushed with approaching victory. "We have now," said he, "broken through the 'iron barrier,' the pride of Vauban, and the boast of France for these hundred years. To-morrow Verdun will fall. The commandant of Thionville, in desperation at the certainty of our taking the town by assault, has shot himself, and the keys are on their way to me. Nothing but villages now lie in our road, and once past those heights," and he pointed to a range of woody hills on the far horizon, "and we shall send our light troops en promenade to Paris." We all responded in our various ways of congratulation.
"Apropos," said the duke, applying to me, "M. Marston, you have been later on the spot than any of us. What can you tell of this M. Dumourier, who, I see from my letters, is appointed to the forlorn hope of France—the command of the broken armies of Lafayette and Luckner?"
My answer was briefly a hope that the new general would be as much overmatched by the duke's fortunes in the field, as he had been by party in the capital. "Still, he seemed to me a clever, and even a remarkable man, however inexperienced as a soldier."
"If he is the officer of that name who served in the last French war, he is an old acquaintance of mine," observed the duke. "I remember him perfectly. He was a mere boy, who, in a rash skirmish with some of our hussars, was wounded severely and taken prisoner. But as I learned that he was the son of a French literateur of some eminence whom I had met in Paris, and as I had conceived a favourable opinion of the young soldier's gallantry, I gave him his parole and sent him back to his family, who, I think, were Provencals. He was unquestionably spirited and intelligent, and with experience might make either minister or general; but as he has begun by failure in the one capacity, it will be our business to show him that he may find success equally difficult in another. At all events, we have nothing but this minister-general between us and Notre-Dame. He has taken up a position on the Argonne ridge in our front. To force it will be but an affair of three hours. Adieu, gentlemen." He put spurs to his horse, and galloped to one of the columns which approached with trumpets sounding, bearing the captured banner of the church tower of Longwy.