Instead of arriving with a flourish of trumpets and a burst of news, sufficient to fill the columns of the Gazette and to mask our defeat, we should sneak into Downing Street as dead men out of mind. For the memory of the Office is short.
The only alternative was relying on our immunity as a Mission to post across Germany with Hamburg or Memel as our objective. Both seaports were in enemy hands, and to leave them might be as difficult as to reach them. Then, to reach them we must travel many days and nights across Saxony, Prussia, Mecklenburg, all hostile lands; we must travel over bad roads, exposed at every post-house and every halting place to the curiosity of German police or French patrols; and with the certainty that Napoleon — if he saw cause — would no more respect our claim to privilege than he had respected the sovereignty of Baden in the case of the Duc d’Enghien, or the neutrality of Saxony, where he had arrested our envoy, and ransacked his papers.
Gentz, who had been our principal link with Metternich, undertook to furnish us with passports for the overland journey; he could not do otherwise. But he urged us so earnestly to go by sea that it was clear that he gravely feared that the credentials would not be respected, and that his government would be held responsible for the catastrophe.
How I might have decided, had the lead been mine, and the credit to be gained by a speedy return been also for me, I cannot say. As things were, I supported Gentz.
But the last word lay, of course, with my chief; and Ellis, naturally deliberate and trained to a meticulous caution, seemed for once to have changed moods with me. He decided, and with little hesitation, on the overland journey. He foresaw that were he the first to reach London with the news of the Armistice, he would gain some credit and might hope to veil under a great show of energy the real failure of his Mission.
At any rate that was how I explained a decision at odds with his character. He had but five years and an uncle in the Cabinet the advantage of me — with much less experience of the country we were to traverse. It might have been thought, then, that he would open his mind to me, and in that case I am confident that I should have loyally entered into his hopes. But he would not declare himself. The reserve which had marred our relations from the first continued to part us at this crisis. And I found, I am afraid — God forgive me for it, as things turned out! — a sly pleasure in probing his motives and pricking him to the verge of avowing them. Nor, I fear, was I quite unaware that my opposition had the effect of hardening him in his resolve.
“Certainly it seems to me,” I would argue, “ that we are running a considerable risk, Ellis. And for no adequate reason.”
“H’m!” Perceval’s answers when he was riding the high horse often began in that way. “H’m!” Then with his snuff-box in one hand and a pinch delicately poised in the fingers of the other — an attitude that always provoked me, for I knew it to be copied from Metternich—” Possibly! Possibly it may appear so. But there are things that I have to consider very carefully, Cartwright.
I bear a heavy, a very heavy responsibility.” And his eyes would seek the distance, as if he lived under a burden of thought unshared by common men. “It is of vital, the most vital importance that the Office should have this information as speedily as possible. The very fate of Europe, my dear Cartwright, may depend upon it. And therefore I must not think of myself. No! No!”
“True,” I would reply between irritation and amusement. “But if we never arrive with the information?”
The gesture with which he thrust the idea aside was superb. “Ah, to be sure! Well, we must face that. But I think that you exaggerate the risk. I do indeed. One might suppose, listening to you, that we were proposing to cross France itself!”
“We are going to do something much more serious,” I retorted. “If we were going to cross France it would be with French passports and even Nap would hesitate to kidnap us á la face da soleil. But we are going to do quite another thing, Chief. We are going to plunge into the dark. We are going to traverse a country unknown and uncharted, for, since we knew it, Germany is another land — a country as much subject to France, more shame to it, as if it were little Luxemburg or Cleves! We are going to do that with Saxon or Prussian passports of which Davout — Davout, the real Governor of Germany — will make no more, if he come across us and have an object to serve, than of a piece of paper! And we are going to do it though, believe me, there is not between the Reisenge-birge and the Baltic a policeman or a douanier, a change-house or a custom house that isn’t as much under Napoleon’s orders as if Germany were French! Look at poor Schill! Was ever a more abortive rising? At first it looked as if he might effect something. But he is dead and disowned, and the only result of his attempt is that French troops are everywhere patrolling the country and putting out the embers. If we fall in with one of these parties—”
Perceval’s glance at me was a very arid one. “My dear Cartwright,” pompously. “This is the effect of being too long on the Continent. You are obsessed by Napoleon and his power. The thought of him paralyses you as it paralysed these luckless Austrians. He casts a shadow—”
“Ay, he does,” I cried, taking him up rather more sharply than became me. “A deep black shadow! And you will find that that shadow stretches across Germany and we may very well be lost in the gloom of it. By all means, if you decide on it, make the venture. But make it with your eyes open, for it is, believe me, a plunge into the unknown. For sixteen or eighteen days it you make for Hamburg and three weeks if you make for Memel we shall be travelling in constant peril, liable to be arrested — and worse — at every post-house and every town-gate.”
“My good fellow,” he rejoined, a little contemptuously. “You see everything en noir. You have too much imagination.”
He was my Chief, and I refrained. I did not tell him that he had none.
“And you forget,” he continued, “ that Klatz has performed this journey which you make out to be so formidable more than once. He has been to Hamburg three times in the last six months.”
“Klatz is a German,” I returned. “He knows every turn and twist of the business. He has his connections along the road, and even so, it was necessary, as you know, to give him a douceur of a hundred pounds for each journey. And consider, that if we reach Hamburg in safety, we have still to find the means of leaving the country.”
“Then we must go as Klatz’s letters go,” with decision. “That will be as we are advised when we reach Hamburg. In the meantime,” with a return to his usual pomposity, “we must shut our eyes to the risk, and — h’m — think only of the public service. See, if you please, that nothing is left behind, burn with care all brouillons, and have all ready for a start on Wednesday. Kaspar will see the carriage packed. The Prussian passports should meet us at the frontier, but I will see Gentz about that. A little forethought, a little prevision, my dear secretary, and the difficulties will disappear. Some discomfort we shall no doubt encounter, but personal considerations must give way to — to higher interests.”
I saw that I could not move him, I am not sure that I wished to move him. His complacency and his determination to ignore the injury that he had done me — albeit innocently — irritated me, and I had argued in a spirit of opposition when alas, as I now see, a single frank, kindly word might have brought us together, and placed us on a better footing. For with all his little mannerisms Perceval was a good fellow at bottom.
And yet I was right. The extent to which Europe was then closed to us can to-day hardly be understood. We had a footing in Portugal — Talavera was fought in the very month of which I am writing — and some relations, albeit touchy — with Denmark. But upon all between those distant points — and immensely distant they were when roads were few, and travelling slow — lay thick darkness, the shadow of Napoleon. He had overthrown Austria at Austerlitz, Prussia at Jena, Russia at Friedland, and now at Wagram he had taught a final lesson to a prostrate, terror-stricken, divided Germany. The northwest of that vast land he governed through his brothers. The south-west, the Confedera
tion of the Rhine, was his creature. Prussia, a remnant of its former greatness, survived on his sufferance, its fortresses held by French troops, its king an exile from his own capital. From the Rhine to the far Niemen, from the Baltic to the Alps, his word was law, his hint an order, his officers pro-consuls. He had built up again the Empire of Charlemagne.
One power alone still raised its head against him. One country alone still stood between him and universal dominion; and all that he could do he had done and was doing to vanquish it, to eradicate its very name, to wipe its memory from the countries he ruled. He had closed the Continent to English goods, he had seized or expelled every Englishman, he had driven out our embassies, he had striven to silence our language.
And he had so far succeeded that even for our Foreign Office Europe had become a dark continent. It took in that day a week for the most urgent news to travel from Vienna to Berlin; but many, many weeks would elapse before the same tidings, slowly filtering through secret channels, became known in Downing Street. Smugglers with some regularity carried letters from the Elbe to Heligoland; thence a packet crossed at intervals to Harwich. Less frequently a similar post ran between Memel and Husum on the Danish coast. But the information which thus trickled through was late and scanty, and I had stated no more than the truth when I said that we were plunging into the dark, into a Germany uncharted and unknown.
Withal on the 18th — the 18th of July, 1809 — at six in the morning we left Iglau, His Excellency and I travelling in the carriage which I had bought on my arrival, Klatz and Perceval’s servant, Kaspar, attending us in a post calash.
CHAPTER II
TWO SCRAPS OF PAPER
AND for some days all went so well with us that if Perceval had been given to badinage, in place of being a person of much and solemn dignity, he might have had the laugh of me. Screened by the troops thrown out to cover the Archduke’s right wing, and under favour of the Armistice, we made good progress, our worst privation a crowded lodging at night, our gravest hindrance a thronged road by day. For Gentz had kept his promises. Everywhere word of our coming had preceded us. The best quarters had been retained for us — under canvas if no better offered — and from one headquarters to another we were forwarded with care and received with honour. Across the more lonely tracts, or where danger threatened, we were escorted by a handful of hussars, and the ring of their spurs and the clatter of their scabbards became as much a feature of our progress and as monotonous to the ear as the dull level of the Bohemian plain became to the eye.
July day after July day saw us leaving some tiny town, perched on a low hill whence its towers and steeples looked down on the cornfields and vine-lands, and making for just such another town perched on a twin hill and visible some hours before we reached it. I have said that we were received with honour and sped on our way with care; but time and again there was more than this — so much more that even the heart of the diplomatist, trained to mark and learn and betray nothing, was touched by the wistful looks that followed us, as if with us departed the last gleam of hope, the last spark of independence. Metternich and Stadion might lay their misfortunes at our door, might sneer at England’s slowness to move and curse her caution. But the staff-officers and the like with whom we had to do knew nothing of la haute politique, and discerned in us only a succour which the fortune of war had cut off.
However, I must not dwell on this. Suffice it that on the 24th we reached Prague, that ancient city, the home of Wallenstein, the battle ground of the sects, as mediaeval as when the Thirty Years’ War ringed it about with fire. We crossed the famous bridge with its monstrous statues, and on the 25th at Teschen we passed — under the protection of a parlementaire — from the Austrian to the Saxon lines, and from friendship to a mute and guarded hostility. Nor was this the worst. Hitherto we had been protected from the graver disorders of the roads. Troops had been halted to give us passage, convoys had been drawn aside for us. But henceforth we struggled forward in the full current, jostled and delayed by all the flotsam and jetsam that floats on the ebb-tide of war. We in our turn had to halt while guns and reinforcements marched by us, or we thrust a devious way through bands of scowling men — deserters, beggars, camp-vultures, women, who cursed us in all the tongues of Europe. Staff-officers, travelling fast in calashes, flung mud over us. Here the post-house was full and, if we ate at all, we must eat seated in our carriage before the house. There the relays were out, no horses were to be had, and we must wait, watched with hostile eyes by a surly crowd.
We were all of two days travelling from Teschen to Dresden.
We presently discovered — and hardly knew whether to welcome or regret it — that, in place of our friendly escort, our clattering smiling hussars, a single mounted gendarme followed at a distance and kept a watchful eye on our proceedings.
“He is following us,” said Perceval after looking back for a time, his long neck stretched out of the carriage.
“Oh, yes, he is following us,” I assented. But even I did not then foresee that that little black blur on the road behind us was to grow to so great a cloud of trouble.
We drove into Dresden an hour before sunset, and paused at the gate to show our papers. An officer, tall, spare, correct, unsmiling, advanced to the door of the carriage, “You are staying, Excellency?”
“At the Hotel de Pologne,” I said.
“Pardon!” he replied. “At the Stadt Berlin, if it please you. I am directed to say that your horses are ordered for six o’clock to-morrow.”
“But,” I objected — it is the business of the secretary to stand between his Chief and the vulgar world—” His Excellency is tired, sir. He has been travelling for some days and proposes to stay here a day to recruit.”
“I regret. But the horses are ordered for six. It is an order, gentlemen.”
I shrugged my shoulders, while Ellis clothed himself in sulky dignity. But I could see that he was troubled. He was no coward, but lacking imagination he had nerves. And, touchy, he felt every prick to his dignity as if England were injured in his person.
“D — n them!” he said, letting nature for once have its way with him.
“With all my heart,” I rejoined. “ But in the meantime we must leave at six.”
Presently I noticed that steps had been taken to isolate us. We were lodged in a separate wing of the Stadt Berlin, and the servants who waited on us went to and fro with grim faces, said little, and had a louche look. I suspected them of being in the police service, but whatever of ill augury this imparted was counteracted by the reflection that the object of the precaution might be merely our safety.
And in any case it was a small matter. It was a trifle beside the perplexity which began on the next day to harass and divide us and at Wittenberg came to a head. The weather was still cloudy and hot, the air oppressive, and Ellis, troubled by the authorities’ attitude, had slept ill and was out of temper. Klatz — I have said little of Klatz, but we went much by his advice — was more fussy than ordinary, and Kaspar, a phlegmatic Swiss, seemed to be the only person untouched by circumstances.
Then, the horses given us were poor, and the knowledge that henceforward our way lay across the dull featureless plain of Middle Europe pressed upon us. The thought of its immense unbroken expanses, its flat wastes stretching to the horizon, its forests set dark about pale shimmering lakes, weighed, I remember, strangely on the imagination. Arriving late in the day at Grossenhayn, a little town on the frontier, we were stopped at the Prussian barrier, required to descend, and ushered into an inner room.
We were received by an officer who, except that the blue of his uniform was darker, might have been the replica of him of Dresden, as sallow, as reticent, as unsmiling. He was as stiff as a ramrod, but I saluted him with due ceremony.
“You expected us? “I said.
“Naturally.”
“His Excellency—”
“Excellency?” with a shrug and a sour smile. “Only,” bowing slightly, “ where he is accredited, I
suggest, sir.”
It was rather a shock, but I set it down to Prussian churlishness and raised my eyebrows. “ Still it is in that character that our Prussian credentials should be awaiting us,” I replied.
He took no notice of my remark, but “ Your papers to this point, if you please,” he said.
I produced them. “You will see that they are special,” I said, “ and countersigned by—”
“I can read, mein Herr!”
The man was brutal, and evidently with intention, but there was nothing to be gained by contending with him. Perceval took a seat with an impassive face, and we waited in silence while the man perused the papers. He did this twice, from time to time holding them up to the light and scanning them with a suspicion that aroused — in me at any rate — a desire to kick him. At length he put down the papers, opened a drawer in the table beside him, and deliberately placed them in the drawer. He locked it and returned the key to his pocket.
“And our new ones?” said I.
“You will proceed with these,” he replied, and he took a fresh set from another drawer. “They are drawn in favour of Herren Eils and Wagenmacher, merchants of Hamburg, returning to Hamburg, with their clerk and servant. Gentlemen,” raising his hand, as recovering from my astonishment I began to remonstrate, “I am acting under orders, in your interest as well as in that of the State. And my orders are peremptory. If you prefer to return by the way you have come, you are at liberty to do so, and you will relieve us from embarrassment. I shall then return you your original papers. But if you choose to proceed you will proceed with these. We have, of course, been warned of your coming, the matter has been fully considered, and—”
“The devil it has, sir!” Ellis cried, and unable to contain himself longer, he rose in his wrath, tall, thin, dry. “Are you aware, sir, who I am? Are you aware, sir, of my status as an ambassador relying on that law of nations which is observed by every civilized country? I am, sir. His Britannic Majesty’s Envoy, duly accredited to the Court of Vienna, and I claim to proceed as such.” The man smiled his sour smile. He made as if he blew something away. “ Piff,” be said. “A claim — but a claim, and most equivocal. An Envoy to a State with which your sovereign is at war, as he is at war with us? No, Excellency, be satisfied. We might,” darkly, “adopt another course, and I do not know that it would not be wiser. But those whose orders I obey prefer to avoid ambiguities, and in a word those are my instructions. I can neither alter them nor take from them.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 679