by G. A. Henty
“How do you manage coming back?”
“In some places we can pole the boat. She will be light, and will only draw a few inches of water. Then we hire a horse for a bit, at one of these little villages; or, where the road leaves the river, the other three will get out and tow from the edge, while I shall steer. We shall manage it easily enough, if the ice does not form too thickly.
“If the worst comes to the worst, we should stop at one of the villages, get the people to help us to haul her well up, wait till the snows are quite over, and then make our way back on foot, and come and fetch the boat up when the spring floods are over.”
“Then the pass is not so dangerous after all, captain,” Fergus said with a smile.
“Not when the snow has once hardened, and to men accustomed to it. As soon as the weather gets settled there will be a little traffic, and the snow will be beaten down. Besides, where the hills come steep to the water’s edge, a man on foot can always make his way along when the water is low; though a horseman might not be able to do so.”
“In fact, I suppose,” Fergus said, “you all combine, at Leitmeritz, to represent the passes as being a great deal more dangerous than they are; in order to force those obliged to make the journey to take as many men as possible with him, or to pay two or three times the proper fare, by boat.”
“The passes over the hills would be terrible, now,” the man said. “Most of them would be absolutely impassable, until the snow hardens.
“As for the rest,” he added with a smile, “it may be that there is something in what you say; but you see, times are hard. There is little work to be done, and scarce any timber coming down; and if we did not get a good job, occasionally, it would go very hard with us.”
By nightfall they were nearly through the defile. Lanterns were placed in the bow of the boat and, until long after Fergus was asleep, the men continued to work at their poles. When he woke up in the morning the boat was floating down a quiet river, with the plains of Saxony on either side, and the mountain range far astern.
At noon they neared Dresden, and an hour later Fergus stepped ashore. He paid the men the sum arranged, and handed over to them the rest of his provisions, which would be sufficient to carry them far on their way back.
He soon learnt that Marshal Keith was established in his old quarters, and made his way thither. He met two or three officers of his acquaintance, but no one recognized him in his present attire. He had hired a boy, when he landed, to carry his cloak and valises. The saddle and bridle he had sold with the horse.
He was, as usual, passing the sentries at the gate without notice, when one of them stepped in front of him.
“What is your business, sir?”
“My business is with Marshal Keith,” he said, “and it is particular.”
The sentry called a sergeant of the guard.
“You can pass me up,” Fergus said sharply. “I am well known to Marshal Keith, and he will assuredly see me.”
A soldier took him up to the anteroom. Lieutenant Lindsay, who was on duty, came forward, looked at him doubtfully for a moment, and then shouted joyfully:
“Why, Drummond, is it you? This is indeed a joyful meeting, old fellow. I had thought of you as immured in one of the enemy’s fortresses, and as likely to remain there till the war was over, and now here you are! The marshal will be delighted.”
“He cannot be more pleased than I am to be back again, Lindsay. Is he alone?”
“Yes. Come in at once. I won’t announce you.”
He opened the door.
“A gentleman to see you, marshal,” he said, and Fergus walked in.
The marshal recognized him at once and, holding out both hands, shook those of Fergus cordially.
“I am indeed glad to see you,” he said. “We knew that you were unhurt, for on the morning after the battle we sent in a parlementaire to Browne with the list of prisoners taken, and received his list in return; and as your name was among them, and you were not put down as wounded, my anxiety about you was relieved. We tried a month later to get exchanges, but they would not hear of it. In the first place, there is no doubt that the king’s action, in incorporating the Saxons with our army, has caused a strong feeling against him; and in the second, they had plenty of fortresses in which to stow their prisoners, while they would calculate that the more prisoners we had to look after, the fewer men they would have to fight.
“And now, tell me by what miracle you have got here. I have nothing particular to do.
“Lindsay, you may as well stop and hear the story. Tell the sergeant to call you out if any one in particular comes; to everyone else, I am engaged.
“Or stay,” he broke off, “they have just told me that luncheon is ready in the next room. A story is always better told over a bottle of wine, so tell the sergeant, Lindsay, that for the next hour I can see no one, unless it is on very particular business.
“Now, in the first place, Captain Drummond.
“Oh, of course, you have not heard!” he broke off, in answer to Fergus’s look of surprise. “The king and I watched you charge through that Austrian squadron, and when he saw you reach our cavalry in safety, and they turned to come back, he ordered me at once to make out your commission as captain. I ventured to object that you were very young. He said you had saved half his cavalry, and that he would promote you, if you were an infant in arms.”
“It is really absurd, marshal. I shall feel downright ashamed to be called captain by men still lieutenants, though a dozen years older than I am. I fear I have gone over Lindsay’s head.”
“You need not mind me, Drummond,” Lindsay laughed. “I shall have a chance, one of these days; but not a soul will grudge you your promotion. There were many of us who saw your charge; and I can tell you that it was the talk of the whole army, next day, and it was thoroughly recognized that it saved the cavalry; for their commander would certainly have taken them against the Austrians and, if he had, it is equally certain that none of them would have got back again; and when your name appeared in orders the next day, we all felt that no one ever better deserved promotion.”
“The king inquired especially, as soon as the list came, whether you were wounded, Fergus,” Keith said; “and was very much pleased when he heard that you were not.
“Now, let us hear how you come to be here.”
The marshal laughed heartily, when Fergus told of his escape in the disguise of an Austrian field officer.
“It was most admirably managed, Fergus,” he said, when the tale was finished; “and your making for Vienna, instead of for the frontier, was a masterly stroke. Of course your finding a friend there was most fortunate; but even had you not done so, I have no doubt you would have got through, somehow. I think the best idea of all was your taking the post horses, and then getting a fresh suit of clothes from the postmaster.
“I am glad you ordered the major’s suit of clothes to be sent back to him. I should have liked to have seen his face when he found that not only his uniform, but his prisoner, had disappeared.
“It will be a good story to tell the king. He has sore troubles enough on his shoulders, for the difficulties are thickening round; and although Frederick is a born general, he really loves peace, and quiet, and books, and the society of a few friends, far better than the turmoil into which we are plunged.
“The French are going to open the campaign, in the spring, with an army of a hundred thousand men. Russia will invade the east frontier with certainly as many more, perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand. They say these rascally Swedes, who have not a shadow of quarrel against us, intend to land fifty thousand men in Pomerania; and that Austria will put two hundred and fifty thousand in the field. Even tempered and self relying as the king is, all this is enough to drive him to despair; and anything that will interest him for an hour, and make him forget his difficulties, is very welcome.”
The marshal asked many questions for, as he said, the king would like to know all the ins and outs o
f the matter; and he knew that Fergus would much rather that the story should be told the king by another, than that he should be called upon to do so.
“I hope the horse came back safely, Lindsay?” Fergus asked, as they left the marshal’s apartments.
“Oh, yes! He went back with the convoy of wounded, and he is now safe in Keith’s stable. The other is, of course, at the count’s. I sent your things back at the same time, and when we returned here I packed everything up and sewed them in a sack. They are all in the storeroom.”
“What has become of Karl? Did he get safely back?”
“Yes; but he had a nasty sabre wound he got in the charge, and he was in hospital for six weeks. The king gave him a handsome present, on the day after he came in; and would have given him a commission, if he would have taken it, but he declined altogether, saying that he was very comfortable as he was. His colonel would have made him a sergeant at once, but he refused that also.
“Just at present he is still looking after your horse, and helping generally in Keith’s stable. His wound was on the head, and he is scarcely fit for duty with his regiment, so of course he will now fall in to his place with you again.”
Fergus went down to the stable, where he was received with the greatest delight by Karl; whose pride in his master was great, after his exploit at Count Eulenfurst’s, and had been heightened by the feeling excited in the army at his having saved the cavalry from destruction.
“I thought that you would be back by the spring, Captain,” he said. “Donald and I have talked it over, many a time, and we were of one mind that, if any one could get away from an Austrian prison, you would do it.”
WITH FREDERICK THE GREAT [Part 2]
CHAPTER 8
Prague
The next morning Fergus rode over to see Count Eulenfurst, found him quite restored to health, and was received by him, the countess, and Thirza with great pleasure.
“My return in safety is in no small degree due to you, count. Had it not been for the letter to Count Platurn, with which the countess furnished me, I doubt whether I should have been able to get through; or at any rate, if I had done so it could only have been with many hardships and dangers, and certainly great delay.”
“I have no doubt that the help you received from the count was of considerable assistance to you, and lessened your difficulties much, Captain Drummond; but I am sure you would have managed, without it. Had you formed any plans as to what you would have done, had you found him absent?”
“I had thought of several things, count, but I had settled on nothing. I should have remained but a day in Vienna, and should have exchanged the suit I had got from the innkeeper for some other. My idea was that I had best join one of the convoys of provisions going up to Bohemia. I calculated that I should have no difficulty in obtaining a place as a driver, for of course the service is not popular, and any of the men would have been glad enough for me to take his place. I might thus have got forward as far as Prague. After that I must have taken my chance, and I think I could, in the same sort of way, have got as far as Leitmeritz; but there I might have been detained for a very long time, until there was an opportunity of crossing the defiles. It would have been difficult, indeed, for me to have earned my living there; and what was left of the money I had, after paying for the landlord’s suit, would scarce have lasted, with the closest pinching, till spring.”
“You would have managed it somehow, I am sure,” Thirza said confidently. “After getting out of that strong fortress, it would be nothing to get out of Bohemia into Saxony.”
“We have not congratulated you yet,” the countess said, “upon your last promotion. Lieutenant Lindsay came over to tell us about it, and how you had gained it. Of course we were greatly pleased, although grieved to hear that you had been made prisoner. We wondered whether, at the time you were captured, you had any of the letters I had written with you, and whether they would come in useful.
“It did not even occur to me that you would have called upon Count Platurn, my cousin. I thought that you might be detained at Prague, but Vienna is the last place where we should have pictured you. Had we known that you had been sent to Spielberg, I think we should have given up all hope of seeing you again, until you were exchanged; for I have heard that it is one of the strongest of the Austrian fortresses.
“I do hope, Captain Drummond, we shall see a great deal of you this winter. There will not be many gaieties, though no doubt there will be some state balls; but there will be many little gatherings, as usual, among ourselves, and we shall count upon you to attend them always, unless you are detained on service. We learn that it is probable your king will pass the whole of the winter here.”
“We will send your horse down to you today,” the count said. “You will find him in good condition. He has been regularly exercised.”
“Thank you very much, count. I wrote to you before I started, but I have had no opportunity of thanking you, personally, for those splendid animals. Sorry as I was to lose the horse I rode at Lobositz, I congratulated myself that I was not riding one of yours.”
“I should have had no difficulty in replacing him, Captain Drummond,” the count said with a smile. “The least we can do is to keep you in horse flesh while the war lasts; which I hope will not be very long, for surely your king can never hope to make head against the forces that will assail him in the spring, but will be glad to make peace on any terms.”
“No doubt he would be glad to, count; but as his enemies propose to divide his dominions among them, it is not very clear what terms he could make. But though I grant that, on paper, the odds against him is enormous, I think that you will see there will be some hard fighting yet, before Prussia is partitioned.”
“Perhaps so,” the count replied; “but surely the end must be the same. You know I have been a strong opponent of the course taken by the court here. Saxony and Prussia, as Protestant countries, should be natural allies; and I consider it is infamous that the court, or rather Bruhl, who is all powerful, should have joined in a coalition against Frederick, who had given us no cause of complaint, whatever. My sympathies, then, are wholly with him; but I can see no hope, whatever, of his successfully resisting this tremendous combination.”
“Various things might happen, count. The Empresses of Russia or Austria or the Pompadour might die, or the allies might quarrel between themselves. England may find some capable statesman, who will once again get an army together and, joined perhaps by the Netherlands, give France so much to do that she will not be able to give much help to her allies.”
“Yes, all these things might happen; but Frederick’s first campaign has been, to a great extent, a failure. It is true that he has established Saxony as his base, but the Saxon troops will be of no advantage to him. He would have acted much more wisely had he, on their surrender, allowed them to disband and go to their homes. Many then might have enlisted voluntarily. The country would not have had a legitimate grievance, and the common religious tie would soon have turned the scale in favour of Prussia; who, as all see, has been driven to this invasion by our court’s intrigues with Austria. Had he done this he could have marched straight to Prague, have overrun all Bohemia, established his headquarters there, and menaced Vienna itself in the spring.”
“Looking at it coolly, that might have been the best way, count; but a man who finds that three or four of his neighbours have entered into a plot to attack his house, and seize all his goods, may be pardoned if he does not at first go the very wisest way to work.”
The count laughed.
“I hope that the next campaign will turn out differently; but I own that I can scarce see a possibility of Prussia, alone, making head against the dangers that surround her.”
The winter passed quietly. There were fetes, state balls, and many private entertainments; for while all Europe was indignant, or pretended to be so, at the occupation of Saxony, the people of that country were by no means so angry on their own account. They were no more
heavily taxed by Frederick than they were by their own court and, now that the published treaty between the Confederates had made it evident that the country, without its own consent, had been deeply engaged in a conspiracy hostile to Prussia, none could deny that Frederick was amply justified in the step he had taken.
At these parties, only Prussian officers who were personal friends of the host were invited; but Fergus, who had been introduced by Count Eulenfurst to all his acquaintances, was always asked, and was requested to bring with him a few of his personal friends. Lindsay, therefore, was generally his companion, and was, indeed, in a short time invited for his own sake; for the Scottish officers were regarded in a different light to the Prussians, and their pleasant manners and frank gaiety made them general favourites.
Their duties as aides-de-camp were now light, indeed; although both were, two or three times, sent with despatches to Berlin; and even to more distant parts of Prussia, where preparations for the coming campaign were being made on a great scale.
The whole Prussian population were united. It was a war not for conquest but for existence, and all classes responded cheerfully to the royal demands. These were confined to orders for drafts of men, for no new tax of any kind was laid on the people; the expenses of the war being met entirely from the treasure that had, since the termination of the Silesian war, been steadily accumulating, a fixed sum being laid by every year to meet any emergency that might arise.
Towards spring both parties were ready to take the field. The allies had 430,000 men ready for service. Frederick had 150,000 well-trained soldiers, while 40,000 newly-raised troops were posted in fortresses, at points most open to invasion. The odds were indeed sufficient to appall even the steadfast heart of Frederick of Prussia; but no one would have judged, from the calm and tranquil manner in which the king made his arrangements to meet the storm, that he had any doubt as to the issue.