Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places

A >> Archibald Forbes >> Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21