Chapter IV

Restored happiness—Prussians still press toward Vienna—War practically
over—Quiet country life—Military school—My only brother
Otto—Description of flying troops—Peace in sight—Victory of
Lyssa—Our plans of retirement—Conrad comes home—He describes his
enthusiasm for war.

Thus for the second time my beloved husband was restored to me from the dangers of war.

Who was I, that this tide of woe should have passed over and left me safe and happy on the shore, when so many thousands had sunk beneath the flood of misery? Happy indeed were those who were simple-hearted enough to lift up their glance to heaven and express their deep gratitude to the Almighty Guide, and feel that for this special blessing a divine Providence had chosen them. Those who speak such gratitude think they are humble, but they do not realise how arrogant and self-important they really are. When I thought of the poor wretches and the broken hearts and the mourning mothers and wives, I could not be so immodest as to take all this as a favour sent from God to me. I remembered how our housekeeper swept one day from a closet a swarm of ants. Fate had in just such a way swept over the fields of Bohemia. The poor workers had been ruthlessly scattered, crushed, and killed—only a few were unhurt. In the case of the ants, would it seem reasonable and just to imagine those few remaining ones would send up prayers of gratitude to the housekeeper?

However great was our joy of reunion, I could not unload the burden of sorrow and suffering I had seen. Though I could not help and nurse and endure like those other courageous women, yet I felt a compassion toward my brother men that I could never drown in selfish contentment again. I would settle this account with the world some day.

Yet, though I could not feel triumphant and grateful, I could love with a hundred fold more tenderness than ever before. “Oh, Frederick, Frederick,” I would repeat with tears and caresses, “have I found you at last?”

“Yes, and you rushed off to find me and nurse me—was that not heroic and foolish of you, Martha?”

“Foolish, I agree. I imagined I heard you call. But heroic, no! If you only could know how cowardly I was in the face of misery! If you had been lying there I could have been brave. Such horrors as I have seen I shall never forget. Oh, this world is so beautiful, and how can men make it so terrible? A world in which we two can find such happiness and fill with such unchanging love, how can any one spoil it by stirring up such flames of hate to bring death and agony?”

“I have seen horrible things too, Martha—one thing I shall never forget. Who do you suppose sprang at me during our cavalry engagement at Sadowa? Gottfried von Tessow.”

“Aunt Cornelia’s son?”

“Yes; he recognised me in time, and dropped his sword, which he held ready to sink into my skull.”

“Where was his duty? How could he spare his King’s and country’s enemy? How dare he think first of friend or cousin?”

“The poor boy! His arm dropped, and suddenly a sabre swung from the officer next to me, who wished to defend my life——” and Frederick covered his face with his hands.

“Killed,” I asked, shuddering. He nodded.

“Mamma, mamma!” came from the next room, and Lilli appeared with my little Rudolf. I rushed to him, and eagerly pressed him to me. “Ah, poor, poor Aunt Cornelia.”

* * * * *

It looked as though the war was practically over. The quarrel with France and Italy ceased when Austria abandoned Venice. Prussia offered liberal terms, and our emperor was anxious lest Vienna, his capital, should be besieged. Prussia’s other German victories, and the entry into Frankfort, awoke a certain admiration which success always brings, and imbued even the Austrians with the feeling that Prussia might be destined to perform a certain historical mission in her victories.

The words “truce” and “peace” became contagious, and one could almost count upon their coming true, in the same way as war threats gave rise to war. My father admitted that the needle-gun had exhausted our ranks. He did not wish to contemplate a march on Vienna, which meant the destruction of his estate in Grumitz. That would have been too much for even his bellicose spirit. His confidence in Austria’s invincibility was sadly shaken, and in common with the rest of mortals he felt it was best to put a stop to the run of luck, for no doubt some day the tide would turn with an opportunity for vengeance. Vengeance follows vengeance! Every war leaves one side defeated with the belief that the next war will give them satisfaction! And so one struggle invites and demands the next—where will it end? How can justice ever be established if in punishing an old wrong another is committed? Can one obliterate ink-stains with ink, or oil-spots with oil? Yet they say nothing but blood can wash out blood.

At Grumitz a gloom settled over every one. The villagers prepared for the coming of the Prussians, hiding their possessions. Even our family silver was secreted. We read and talked of nothing but the war. Lilli had heard nothing from Conrad for days. My father’s patriotism was deeply wounded, and though Frederick and I were blissfully happy in our reunion, yet the unhappiness of the rest affected us painfully. Over a letter from Aunt Cornelia we shed bitter tears for she had not yet learned of her only son’s death.

As we sat all together in the evening there was no music or cheerful chatter, no jokes or games, only the repetition of stories of woe and death.

Any possibility of the prolongation of the war filled my brother Otto with enthusiasm, for in that event the seniors of the military academy had been promised to be called into the service. He longed for this privilege—straight from the military school into the battle-field. Just as a girl graduate longs for her first ball, for which she has been taught to dance, and the light and music, so the young cadet welcomes his first engagement in the great artillery dance for which he has been learning to shoot.

Frederick and I had decided that upon the declaration of Peace he would resign from the army, and that under no circumstances would our son be educated at school where the whole education was bent upon awakening in boys the thirst for military glory. I questioned my brother Otto, and found that in the schools they taught that war was a necessary evil (at least acknowledging, in the spirit of the age, that it is an evil), at the same time the chief incentive to all the noblest manly virtues—courage, endurance, and self-sacrifice. Through war comes the highest glory to men and the greatest progress to civilisation. Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon, conquerors and empire builders, were to be regarded as the supreme types of human exaltation. War’s successes and benefits were described in high colours, but its wretched results were piously ignored. There was complete silence as to the barbarity, degeneration, and ruin which it brought.

I remembered my own girlish enthusiasm for war, and could hardly blame my brother that he looked upon a possible call to battle with impatience.

I offered one day to read the report of a retreat of our army, and Otto impatiently said, “I would rather not hear it. If it were the enemy retreating that would be different.”

“Retreats are generally passed over in silence,” remarked Frederick.

But my father hastily added, “A well-ordered retreat is not a flight. Why, in ’49——”

But I knew the old story of ’49, and headed it off by beginning to read:—

About four o’clock our troops began to retreat. We surgeons were
caring for several hundred wounded, when suddenly the cavalry broke in
on us. A general rush brought on tremendous confusion of artillery,
cavalry, infantry, and baggage, all joining in the flight. Men, horse,
and waggons were mingled together. We were swept from our work. They
shouted to us, “Save yourselves!” as the shell burst overhead. We were
carried forward by the surging mass, we knew not whither——

“Enough! enough!” cried the two girls.

“The censor of the press should stop such stuff from appearing,” exclaimed my father angrily. “It takes away all pride in the profession of war.”

“Yes, if they should destroy all joy in war it would be such a pity,” I said in an undertone.

“At least,” continued my father, “those who take part in a flight ought to be quiet about it—it is no honour. The rascal who shouted ‘Save yourselves!’ ought to be shot. A coward raises a yell and thousands of brave men are demoralised and run with him.”

“And in the same way,” responded Frederick, “when some brave fellow shouts ‘Forward!’ a thousand cowards sweep after him, inspired with his courage. Men cannot be called either cowardly or brave, for every one has his moments of strength and weakness. When crowded together we move as a herd, dependent upon the mind of our fellows. One man rushes, shouting ‘Hurrah!’ and the rest do the same. Another drops his gun and runs and the rest follow. In each case it is the same impulse, yet in the one case they are praised for courage and in the other blamed for cowardice. Bravery and fear are not fixed qualities, neither are joy and sorrow: they are merely different states of mind. In my first campaign I was drawn into such a wild confusion of flight. The official reports called it a well-ordered retreat, but it was, in fact, a complete riot. We rushed madly on, without orders, panting and shrieking with despair, the enemy goading us with bullets. This is one of the most horrible phases of war, when men are no longer gallant soldiers but beasts, and hunt each other as prey; the pursuer becomes a blood-drunken savage and the pursued is filled with the delirium of terror like a poor animal at bay. All the sentiments of patriotism, ambition, and noble deeds with which he has been educated for the battle are forgotten—he is merely possessed with the instinct for self-preservation and filled with the wildest paroxysms of terror.”

Frederick’s recovery progressed, even as the feverishness of the outer world lessened, and daily we heard more of peace. The Prussians advanced without obstacle, and surely and slowly approached Vienna, passing through the City of Brunn, where they had already been given the keys. But their march was more like a military promenade than an activity of war, and by July 26 the preliminaries of peace were announced.

Another political event of the day was that Austria had, at last, joined the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross.

“Does that satisfy you?” asked my father as he read the news aloud. “You call war barbarism, but you see it also progresses with civilisation and becomes more humane. I am in favour of all these efforts to relieve the wounded. Even from the stand-point of statesmanship it is wiser, for it is well that the sick should be made fit for service again.”

“You are right, papa. The important thing is that they be made useful material for future battles. But no Red Cross can alleviate the agonies I have witnessed. With multiplied men and means they could not conjure away the results of one battle——”

“Not conjure it away, but mitigate it—what we cannot prevent we should seek to mitigate.”

“For what I have seen there is no mitigation. We should turn the rule about: what we cannot mitigate we ought to prevent.”

That war must cease was daily becoming a fixed idea with me—and that every human being should work to this end. The scenes I had witnessed after the great battle haunted me, especially at night, when I would awake with the most terrible oppression of heart and pricking of conscience just as if I were being commanded to stop it. And only when fully awake would I realise my entire incapacity to stem such a tide—as well might I face the swelling waves of the sea, and command them to dry up.

Frederick and I had made very definite plans for the future. At the close of the war he was to resign, and we would retire to some small country place, and live with his pension and my allowance in a simple way.

Frederick intended to take up the study of international law and science apart from its sentimental and utopian aspect, and make himself capable of grasping the practical side of all these ideas. He felt that the world was coming into a new era of thought, and he desired to lead his life into these lines along with our domestic pleasures.

We had not communicated our thoughts to my father, who had quite other ambitions for our future.

“You will be a colonel at a very early age, Tilling,” he said one day, “and in ten years you will certainly be a general. A fresh war will certainly give you the command of an entire corps, and you may even reach the rank of commander-in-chief, who knows. It may come to your lot to restore the glory of the arms of Austria, which is for the moment under a cloud. When once we adopt the needle-gun or some more effective weapon we shall soon have the best of these Prussian gentlemen.”

“Who knows,” I suggested, “we may even make it up with the Prussians and become their allies.”

My father shrugged his shoulders. “If women would only keep out of politics! Our honour and our position as a Power of Europe demand that we should punish these insolent braggarts, and take back the states which they have annexed. What! friendship with these dastardly enemies! Never! unless they come and humbly beg for it.”

“In that event,” remarked Frederick, “we would set our feet upon their necks. Alliances are only sought with those whom we fear or need as a protection against a common foe. In statecraft egotism is the ruling motive.”

“Yes, indeed,” my father replied, “when that ego represents our own fatherland everything else is secondary.”

“We can but wish,” replied Frederick, “that communities may adopt the same rules of behaviour as is demanded of individuals, which does away with the law of the fist and the vulgar self-seeking, and declares that our own interests are best advanced when we are in harmony with the interests of others.”

“What’s that?” asked my father, with his hand to his ear, but Frederick wisely dropped the discussion.

* * * * *

I shall arrive at Grumitz to-morrow at one o’clock.

CONRAD.

The delight with which this dispatch was received by Lilli can be imagined. No welcome is so loving and gracious as that given to him who returns from war. Naturally he would have preferred to return victoriously, to have aided in conquering for his emperor, but it was honour enough to have fought at all—and to be among the fallen was a specially glorious fate. Otto said that in the military academy every one who was left dead on the field was specially inscribed in the roll of honour, and the more ancestors one could boast as having fallen in battle, the prouder were the descendants, and the less value should they place upon their own lives. To show one’s appreciation of such ancestors need one actively and passively rejoice in all kinds of bloodshed in war?

Perhaps it is better that so long as war exists there should be plenty that find pleasure and inspiration in it. Alas! this class is daily growing less, while the armies are daily increasing. Where will it finally lead?

But Conrad did not think so far ahead, and my brother Otto was his envious admirer—of the hussar uniform, the scar that decorated his chin, which he got in passing through a rain of bullets—all this surrounded him with a halo of glory.

“I will admit it was an unfortunate campaign, but I have brought back glorious memories of it.”

“Oh, tell us, tell us!” Lilli and Otto cried.

“The details are gone, but the whole lies behind me like a dream, for powder gets into one’s head in such a strange way. The moment the order comes to march, the intoxication and the fever begin, even at the very moment of suffering the pain of farewell from loved ones. But when surrounded by comrades, filled with the demand of patriotic duty, marching with the bands playing and the flag fluttering, I would not have turned back even to the arms of my sweetheart. Nor would I be worthy of her if I did. One never doubts one is marching to victory. The needle-guns, you say? Ah, they alone were the cause of our defeat—their bullets fell upon us like hailstones. Also Benedek’s generalship was poor. They should court-martial him. If I were ever general I should play a forward game, ever advancing on the enemy. However, since the Emperor did not put me in charge, the tactics were not my fault. We officers and soldiers were ordered to fight, and fight we did. And that was the glorious sensation of it. The anticipation, the suspense, waiting for the order to charge—the consciousness that in the next moment we should be creating history—the delight in one’s own courage, with Death to the right and left—bidding this awful mystery defiance——”

“Just like poor Gottfried Tessow,” murmured Frederick to me. “Of course it is all from the same teaching.”

Conrad continued eagerly: “One’s heart beats higher, one’s pulse quickens, there awakes—that is the peculiar ecstasy of it all—there wakes the mad delight in battle, the ferocious hatred of the foe, the blazing passion for one’s menaced fatherland—and on we rush, and hewing down becomes a mad revelry. One feels as if transported to another world. Ordinary feelings have changed to their opposites. Life itself is our prey; to slay is the law. The only motives that do not disappear in the conflict are magnificent heroism and self-sacrifice. To this add powder, smoke, and battle-cries. It is a sensation unparalleled—there is nothing like it—except perhaps a lion or tiger hunt, when one stands face to face with maddened beasts.”

“Yes,” Frederick added, “while man was still subject to attack from two or four-legged savages, to protect his life by killing the latter was a delight. The hereditary thirst for blood has not completely died out of civilised man, and since in Europe we have no longer beast nor barbarism to fight, we create an artificial enemy for ourselves, and the hunt goes thus: You here, have red coats, and over there blue coats. Three claps, and presto, the red coats are changed into tigers and the blue coats become wild beasts to them. Again attention! Trumpets blow, one, two, three; drums beat; now begin; eat each other up. And if 100,000 such beasts eat each other up at X——, history records the famous X—— battle. Then the men who clapped their hands assemble about a green table in X——, lay down their maps, rearrange the frontier lines, haggle over who shall pay the bills, sign a paper which figures in history as the Peace of X——. The magicians clap again three times, and order the red coats and the blue coats, ‘Now, dear children, embrace each other again as men and brethren.’”