The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus
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Such thoughts and others like them preoccupied me for some time. I couldn’t stop thinking about turning over my whole farm and my entire fortune to setting up a united Christian community of some kind. However, dad said straight out: he doubted I’d ever get a bunch of lads like that together.
Twenty
Tells of an entertaining excursion from the Black Forest to Moscow in Russia
That same autumn groups of French, Swedes and Hessians came to the farm for a spot of rest and recreation while blockading the nearby Imperial town, built originally by an English king, after whom it was named. One result was that everyone, driving his livestock and carting his possessions, fled to the forest. My neighbours all did so, as I did myself, leaving the house almost empty, except for a retired Swedish colonel who borrowed it to live in. The colonel found a number of books in my closet that I hadn’t been able to remove in the rush. Among them were some mathematical and geometrical outlines as well as stuff to do with fortifications, which mainly interested his engineers. Anyway, deducing that his billet belonged to no ordinary peasant farmer, he started to ask around, curious to know what sort of person I was. His polite enquiries, mingled with hideous threats, led me to call on him – in my own house, if you please! He received me quite courteously and instructed his people not to damage or destroy any of my things unnecessarily. Indeed, so friendly was he that I told him all about myself, particularly as regarded my family and background. Hearing this, he was amazed that with war raging all around me I chose to live among peasants and watch while someone else tied his horse to my fence when I might have won greater honour by tying mine to someone else’s. Instead (he advised me), I should re-buckle my sword and not hide my God-given talents under a bushel, or in my case a plough. He was sure that if I took service with the Swedes I’d soon have occasion to put my personal and military accomplishments to good use. I listened coldly before saying that a man stood little chance of promotion without a friend to give him a bunk-up. To which he retorted that my qualities alone would win me both friends and promotion. Anyway, the Swedish army included a large number of Scots noblemen, among whom he was sure I’d find relatives in potentially useful positions. Talking of which (he went on), Torstensson had promised him a regiment, and as soon as the promise was fulfilled (as he had no doubt it would be) he’d make me his lieutenant colonel. With these and suchlike words he made my mouth water something dreadful. And since there was little hope of peace in the near future and every chance of my farm being commandeered for some time (to my consequent ruin), I decided to get involved again and promised the colonel that I’d join him – on condition that he matched deed to word and gave me the lieutenant colonel job when his new regiment arrived.
The die was thus cast. I sent for my dad/godfather, who was still with my livestock at Baiersbronn, and signed the farm over to him and his wife, with the proviso that at their deaths it and all goods and chattels should pass to my bastard, Simplicius (the one that had been left on my doorstep), there being no rightful heirs. Having settled my affairs and made arrangements for the upbringing of said illegitimate son, I asked for my horse and collected together what cash and jewellery remained. The blockade I mentioned before had suddenly been lifted, so we’d received orders earlier than expected to strike camp and rejoin the main Swedish army. I was attached to the colonel as his steward, which meant that along with his servants and horses I kept him and his whole household supplied by means of robbery and theft – which we soldiers refer to as ‘foraging’.
Torstensson’s promises (of which the colonel had made so much when interviewing me at the farm) were by no means as sweeping as the man had claimed. On the contrary, I got the impression the colonel was in some disfavour. ‘Huh!’ he told me. ‘Some bugger’s been saying things about me at general staff. I’ll not be in this job for long – you’ll see!’ And, fearing that my patience wouldn’t last for ever, he forged letters about how he’d been asked to raise a fresh regiment in Livonia, where he was from, and used them to persuade me to take ship with him from Wismar and sail to Livonia from there. That was mostly flannel, as it turned out. He’d not been asked to raise a regiment; he was just a down-at-heel aristocrat living off his wife’s money.
I’d been lied to twice already and lured so far off course that I let myself take the bait a third time. The colonel showed me letters from Moscow offering him a top military post (so he said; he was translating into German for me) and what was described as a proper salary. He was on the point of leaving, complete with wife and children. I reasoned that he’d not be moving house for peanuts, so it was with high hopes that I joined him on the trip. I was skint anyway and saw no chance of getting back to Germany anytime soon. However, as we crossed the border into Russia and began meeting discharged German soldiers (officers, particularly), I started to have second thoughts. ‘What the hell are we doing?’ I grumbled to my colonel. ‘Where there’s a war raging, we leave, and where peace reigns and folk have no use for soldiers, that’s where we fetch up!’ But he continued to encourage me, saying I should leave it to him: he knew his way around better than these losers.
Safely arrived in Moscow, I sensed immediately that something was wrong. My colonel conferred daily with high-ups – but far more with bishops than with lay cheeses. This struck me as odd, certainly, but also suspiciously churchy. All kinds of ideas and misgivings began to stir in my brain, but I couldn’t work out what was wrong. One day he told me himself that this wasn’t about the war: his conscience was urging him to adopt the Greek Orthodox faith. In sincere tones, since he was no longer in a position to help me as promised, he advised me to do the same. His Majesty the Tsar had already heard good things about me and my qualities (so he said) and would be pleased, if I did convert, to elevate me to the nobility, giving me a fine estate and a large staff of servants. It was an offer too good to refuse (the swindler told me); anyone would be well advised to take so powerful a monarch as his supreme master, not some half-baked grand prince. I was flabbergasted. I hardly knew how to answer the colonel. Anywhere else and I’d have let him feel my reply on the nose rather than take it in aurally. But here, where I was a virtual prisoner, I knew I must take a different tone and respond accordingly. So for a long time I said nothing. Eventually, pulling myself together, I said I’d come with him to Moscow under the impression that I’d be serving in His Tsarist Majesty’s army. If HTM no longer needed soldiers, there was sod all I could do about that, least of all blame said Tsar, because it was he (namely, the colonel) who’d talked me into making the trip – for nothing, as it turned out. I certainly couldn’t say I’d been sent for. That HTM had nevertheless graciously deigned to offer me so great an honour was something I could and would boast about far and wide but didn’t deserve and wasn’t, in all humility, able to accept. Me, contemplate switching religions, when my dearest wish was to be sitting back home in the Black Forest owing nothing to nobody? ‘Do as you please, then,’ he answered. ‘I only thought that, when God and good fortune give you such greeting, the least you could reciprocate with is a proper “thank you”. But if you’d rather not have a leg-up and if you don’t want to live like a prince, I hope you’ll credit me with having virtually bust a gut for you!’ After which he bowed deeply, spun on his heel, and left me sitting there. He didn’t wait to be shown out.
As I sat there, totally bemused and trying to make sense of my current predicament, I heard two carriages draw up in front of our lodgings. From the window, I watched as my colonel and his sons climbed into one and his wife and daughters into the other. Vehicles and coachmen bore the imperial livery, and several clerics completed the scene, dancing attendance on the couple and showing every sign of favourable inclination.
Twenty-One
More about what happened to Simplicius in Moscow
From then on I was kept under surveillance – not openly but secretly by several members of the Tsar’s bodyguard; I wasn’t aware of anything. As for my colonel, he and his family had disappeared,
and I’d no way of knowing where to. You’ll appreciate: this was a time when some curious ideas ran around inside my head and no doubt many grey hairs appeared on top of it. I made enquiries among the German merchants and tradesmen who formed part of the Moscow citizenry, at the same time moaning to them about my situation and the risks I had to dodge. They told me not to worry and gave me advice about perhaps finding my way back to Germany. However, as soon as they learnt that the Tsar was determined to keep me in the country (by force, if necessary), they all clammed up on me. They avoided me completely, in fact, making it hard to find somewhere to crash. I’d already sold my horse and saddle and started unpicking my clothes to take out, one by one, the ducats that I’d wisely sewn into them as a precaution. Finally, I began turning my rings and bits and pieces of jewellery into cash in order to keep my head above water until a good opportunity of returning to Germany came along. Meanwhile said colonel, together with his entourage, changed faiths and was promptly assigned a sizeable aristocratic spread farmed by a large body of serfs.
Around this time a decree went out that in future, on pain of certain punishment, no one (and that meant aliens, too) should live in idleness, eating the bread from working people’s mouths. Any immigrant refusing to work must quit country districts within a month, towns within twenty-four hours. So some fifty of us got together and swore in God’s name to hike back to Germany via Podolia. However, we were no more than two hours’ journey out of Moscow when a troop of Russian horsemen came up behind and stopped us. It seemed His Tsarist Majesty was pissed off that so many of us had got together to waltz through his lands willy-nilly without a single passport between us. HTM had every right (they added) to send us to Siberia for gross insubordination. On the way back to the city, I learnt how things stood so far as I was concerned. The officer commanding the troop told me in so many words that the Tsar didn’t want me to leave the country. He sincerely advised me to bow to the Tsar’s will, convert to the Tsar’s religion, and above all not sneeze at the offer of a noble estate as accepted by the colonel. Because if I did (i.e. turned down such an estate), if I refused to live among them as a lord, I’d be forced into subjection as a serf. Nor should I blame the Tsar for not wishing to allow anyone as experienced as said colonel had described me as being to slip the leash (i.e. undarken his borders). Here I protested that the colonel might possibly have exaggerated my skills, virtues and wide knowledge. Yes, I’d come to the country prepared to shed blood in the service of its monarch and the glorious Russian nation and do battle with the foes of both. But converting was something I simply wasn’t prepared to contemplate. However, if I could possibly perform such service without straining my conscience, HTM would find me agreeable.
I was separated from the others and lodged with a merchant, where I was visibly kept under guard but received board every day in the form of superb food and exquisite wines from the court kitchens. I was also visited daily by congenial folk who sometimes invited me back. One in particular (a brainy fellow, clearly acting under orders) engaged me daily in friendly conversation. I spoke quite good Russian by now, you see. On several occasions our conversation turned to technical matters such as war machines and other military apparatus: fortifications, artillery – that sort of thing. After a number of surreptitious attempts to winkle out whether I’d decided to fall in with the Tsar’s plan, he found there was no hope of my ever changing my mind. So he changed tack. If I was dead set on not becoming Russian, would I at least do the Tsar the huge favour of passing on some of my knowledge to his people? HTM would reward my compliance by showering me with the highest imperial honours. I replied that it had always been (and still was) my intention to be the Tsar’s most humble servant; that was why I’d come to Russia in the first place. So why was I being kept prisoner? ‘Ah, no, sir,’ he said, ‘you misunderstand. You’re not being kept prisoner; it’s because of the Tsar’s affection for you that he doesn’t want to lose you.’ ‘All right, why am I kept under surveillance?’ I asked. ‘Because’, he told me, ‘HTM fears you might come to harm.’
Now that he knew where I stood, he informed me that the Tsar proposed all-mercifully to mine saltpetre and manufacture gunpowder in his own country. However, since none of the Tsar’s subjects knew how to set about either operation, I’d be doing their monarch a great service if I performed both for him. The Tsar would provide the necessary people and funds, and he himself most earnestly asked that I should not dismiss so all-merciful a proposal out of hand. Besides, they’d now received reports that I was the ideal man for the job. I answered, ‘Sir, I’ll say it again: if I can be of service to HTM in any way, and if HTM will consent to let me keep my religion, he’ll not find me wanting.’ At this the Russian (who was a very big cheese indeed) relaxed completely and drank more toasts to me than if he’d been German.
Next morning HTM sent two high-ups and an interpreter to me. Together we signed a contract, and on their boss’s behalf the boyars presented me with a magnificent Russian garment. A few days later I began my search for saltpetre deposits and showed some of my new assistants how to separate it from the soil and purify it. At the same time I designed a powder mill and showed others how to make charcoal. The result was that within a very short time we’d produced quite a quantity of gunpowder suitable for both handguns and large cannon. I had as much labour as I required, you see, as well as my personal staff, who attended to my every need (or should I say: kept an eye on me).
I was getting on famously when one day said colonel turned up, dressed in Russian garb and accompanied by a splendidly attired retinue of servants. The purpose of such magnificence was of course to persuade me to convert as well. However, I was perfectly aware that the clothes came from the HTM’s dressing room and had been issued purely on loan – for the sole purpose of making me green with envy. This was common practice at the Russian court.