Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

  The officers in waiting could not stand it any longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which their commanding officer, after an unavailing attempt to look serious—I should rather write fierce—joined; and there he was, the bloody Davoust—Duke of Auerstad—Prince of Eckmuhl—the Hamburgh Robespierre—the terrible Davoust—dancing all around the room, in a regular guffaw, like to split his sides. The heated stove had made his sword, which rested on it, nearly red-hot.

  All this while the quiet, plain-looking little man sat still. He now rose; but I noticed that he had been fixing his eyes intently on me. I thought I could perceive a tear glistening in them as he spoke,

  “Marshal, will you intrust that boy to me?”

  “Poo,” said the prince, still laughing, “take him—do what you will with him;”—then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, “But, Mr * * *, you must be answerable for him—he must be at hand if I want him.”

  The gentleman who had so unexpectedly patronised me rose and said, “Marshal, I promise.”

  “Very well,” said Davoust. “Lafontaine, desire supper to be sent up.”

  It was brought in, and my new ally and I were shown out.

  As we went down stairs, we looked into a room on the ground floor, at the door of which were four soldiers with fixed bayonets. We there saw, for it was well lit up, about twenty or five-and-twenty respectable-looking men, very English in appearance, all to their long cloaks, an unusual sort of garment to my eye at that time. The night was very wet, and the aforesaid garments were hung on pegs in the wall all around the room, which being strongly heated by a stove, the moisture rose up in a thick mist, and made the faces of the burghers indistinct.

  They were busily engaged talking to each other, some to his neighbour, the others across the table, but all with an expression of the most intense anxiety.

  “Who are these?” said I to my guide.

  “Ask no questions here,” said he, and we passed on.

  I afterwards learned that they were the hostages seized on for the contribution of fifty millions of francs, which had been imposed on the doomed city, and that this very night they had been torn from their families, and cooped up in the way I had seen, where, they were advertised, they must remain until the money should be forthcoming.

  As we walked along the streets, and crossed the numerous bridges over the canals and branches of the river, we found all the houses lit up, by order, as I learned, of the French marshal. The rain descended in torrents, sparkling past the lights, while the city was a desert, with one dreadful exception; for we were waylaid at almost every turn by groups of starving lunatics, their half-naked figures and pale visages glimmering in the glancing lights, under the dripping rain and, had it not been for the numerous sentries scattered along the thoroughfares, I believe we should have been torn to pieces by bands of moping idiots, now rendered ferocious from their sufferings, in consequence of the madhouses having been cleared of their miserable, helpless inmates, in order to be converted into barracks for the troops. At all of these bridges sentries were posted, past which my conductor and myself were franked by the sergeant who accompanied us giving the countersign. At length, civilly touching his cap, although he did not refuse the piece of money tendered by my friend, he left us, wishing us good-night, and saying the coast was clear.

  We proceeded, without further challenge, until we came to a very magnificent house, with some fine trees before it. We approached the door, and rang the door-bell. It was immediately opened, and we entered a large desolate-looking vestibule, about thirty feet square, filled in the centre with a number of bales of goods and a variety of merchandise, while a heavy wooden stair, with clumsy oak balustrades, wound round the sides of it. We ascended, and, turning to the right, entered a large well-furnished room, with a table laid out for supper, with lights, and a comfortable stove at one end. Three young officers of cuirassiers, in their superb uniforms, whose breast and back pieces were glittering on a neighbouring sofa, and a colonel of artillery, were standing round the stove. The colonel, the moment we entered, addressed my conductor:—

  “Ah, * * *, we are devilish hungry—Ich bin dem Verhungern, nahe—and were just on the point of ordering in the provender, had you not appeared.”

  “A little more than that,” thought I; for the food was already smoking on the table.

  Mine host acknowledged the speech with a slight smile.

  “But whom have we here?” said one of the young dragoons. He waited a moment—”Etes vous Français?” I gave him no answer. He then addressed me in German—”Sprechen sie gelaüfig Deutsch?”

  “Why,” chimed in my conductor, “he does speak a little French indifferently enough; but still—”

  Here I was introduced to the young officers, and we all sat down at table; the colonel, civility itself, pressing my host to drink his own wine, and eat his own food, and even rating the servants for not being sufficiently alert in their attendance on their own master.

  “Well, my dear * * * how have you sped with the prince?”

  “Why, colonel,” said my protector, in his cool, calm way, “as well as I expected. I was of some service to him when he was here before, at the time he was taken so very ill, and he has not forgotten it; so I am not included amongst the unfortunate détenus for the payment of the fine. But that is not all; for I am allowed to go to-morrow to my father’s, and here is my passport.”

  “Wonders will never cease,” said the colonel; “but who is that boy?”

  “He is one of the crew of the English boats which tried to cut off Colonel * * * the other evening, near Cuxhaven. His life was saved by a very laughable circumstance certainly; merely by the marshal’s sword, from resting on the stove, having become almost red-hot.” And here he detailed the whole transaction as it took place, which set the party a-laughing most heartily.

  I will always bear witness to the extreme amenity with which I was now treated by the French officers. The evening passed over quickly. About eleven we retired to rest, my friend furnishing me with clothes, and warning me that next morning he would call me at daylight, to proceed to his father’s country-seat, where he intimated that I must remain in the mean time.

  Next morning I was roused accordingly, and a long, low, open carriage rattled up to the door, just before day-dawn. Presently the réveille was beaten, and answered by the different posts in the city and on the ramparts.

  We drove on, merely showing our passport to the sentries at the different bridges, until we reached the gate, where we had to pull up until the officer on duty appeared, and had scrupulously compared our personal appearance with the written description. All was found correct, and we drove on.

  It surprised me very much, after having repeatedly heard of the great strength of Hamburgh, to look out on the large mound of green turf that constituted its chief defence. It is all true that there was a deep ditch and glacis beyond; but there was no covered way, and both the scarp and counterscarp were simple earthen embankments; so that, had the ditch been filled with fascines, there was no wall to face the attacking force after crossing it,—nothing but a green mound, precipitous enough, certainly, and crowned with a low parapet of masonry, and bristling with batteries about half-way down, so that the muzzles of the guns were flush with the neighbouring country beyond the ditch. Still there was wanting, to my imagination, the strength of the high perpendicular wall, with its gaping embrasures and frowning cannon. All this time it never occurred to me that to breach such a defence as that we looked upon was impossible. You might have plumped your shot into it until you had converted it into an iron mine, but no chasm could have been forced in it by all the artillery in Europe; so that battering in breach was entirely out of the question; and this, in truth, constituted the great strength of the place.

  We arrived, after an hour’s drive, at the villa belonging to my protector’s family, and walked into a large room, with a comfortable stove, and extensive preparations made for a comfortable breakfast.

 
; Presently three young ladies appeared. They were his sisters; blue-eyed, fair-haired, white-skinned, round-sterned, plump little partridges.

  “Haben sie gefrühstücht?” said the eldest.

  “Pas encore,” said he in French, with a smile. “But, sisters, I have brought a stranger here, a young English officer, who was recently captured in the river.”

  “An English officer!” exclaimed the three ladies, looking at me, a poor, little, dirty midshipman, in my soiled linen, unbrushed shoes, dirty trousers and jacket, with my little square of white cloth on the collar; and I began to find the eloquent blood mantling in my cheeks and tingling in my ears; but their kindly feelings got the better of a gentle propensity to laugh, and the youngest said—

  “Sie sind gerade zu rechter zeit gekommen:” when, finding that her German was Hebrew to me, she tried the other tack—”Vous arrivez à propos, le déjeûné est prêt.”

  However, I soon found that the moment they were assured that I was in reality an Englishman, they all spoke English, and exceedingly well too. Our meal was finished, and I was standing at the window looking out on a small lawn, where evergreens of the most beautiful kinds were checkered with little round clumps of most luxuriant hollyhocks, and the fruit-trees in the neighbourhood were absolutely bending to the earth under their loads of apples and pears. Presently my friend came up to me; my curiosity could no longer be restrained.

  “Pray, my good sir, what peculiar cause, may I ask, have you for showing me, an entire stranger to you, all this unexpected kindness? I am fully aware that I have no claim on you.”

  “My good boy, you say true; but I have spent the greatest part of my life in London, although a Hamburgher born, and I consider you, therefore, in the light of a countryman. Besides, I will not conceal that your gallant bearing before Davoust riveted my attention, and engaged my good wishes.”

  “But how come you to have so much influence with the mon——general, I mean?”

  “For several reasons,” he replied. “For those, amongst others, you heard the colonel—who has taken the small liberty of turning me out of my own house in Hamburgh—mention last night at supper. But a man like Davoust cannot be judged of by common rules. He has, in short, taken a fancy to me, for which you may thank your stars—although your life has been actually saved by the prince having burned his fingers.—But here comes my father.”

  A venerable old man entered the room, leaning on his stick. I was introduced in due form.

  “He had breakfasted in his own room,” he said, “having been ailing; but he could not rest quietly, after he had heard there was an Englishman in the house, until he had himself welcomed him.”

  I shall never forget the kindness I experienced from these worthy people. For three days I was fed and clothed by them as if I had been a member of the family.

  Like a boy as I was, I had risen on the fourth morning at grey dawn, to be aiding in dragging the fish-pond, so that it might be cleaned out. This was an annual amusement, in which the young men and women in the family, under happier circumstances, had been in the invariable custom of joining; and, changed as these were, they still preserved the fashion. The seine was cast in at one end, loaded at the bottom with heavy sinks, and buoyant at the top with cork floats. We hauled it along the whole length of the pond, thereby driving the fish into an enclosure, about twenty feet square, with a sluice towards the pond, and another fronting the dull ditch that flowed past beyond it. Whenever we had hunted the whole of the finny tribes (barring those slippery youths the eels, who, with all their cleverness, were left to dry in the mud) into the toils, we filled all the tubs, and pots, and pans, and vessels of all kinds and descriptions, with the fat, honest-looking Dutchmen, the carp and tench, who really submitted to their captivity with all the resignation of most ancient and quiet fish, scarcely indicating any sense of its irksomeness, except by a lumbering sluggish flap of their broad heavy tails.

  A transaction of this kind could not take place amongst a group of young folk without shouts of laughter, and it was not until we had caught the whole of the fish in the pond, and placed them in safety, that I had leisure to look about me. The city lay nearly four miles distant from us. The whole country round Hamburgh is level, except the right bank below it of the noble river on which it stands, the Elbe. The house where I was domiciled stood on nearly the highest point of this bank, which gradually sloped down into a swampy hollow, nearly level with the river. It then rose again gently until the swell was crowned with the beautiful town of Altona, and immediately beyond appeared the ramparts and tall spires of the noble city itself.

  The morning had been thick and foggy, but as the sun rose, the white mist that had floated over the whole country gradually concentrated and settled down into the hollow between us and Hamburgh, covering it with an impervious veil, which even extended into the city itself, filling the lower part of it with a dense white bank of fog, which rose so high that the spires alone, with one or two of the most lofty buildings, appeared above the rolling sea of white fleecelike vapour, as if it had been a model of the stronghold, in place of the reality, packed in white wool, so distinct did it appear, diminished as it was in the distance. On the tallest spire of the place, which was now sparkling in the early sunbeams, the French flag, the pestilent tricolor, that upastree, waved sluggishly in the faint morning breeze.

  It attracted my attention, and I pointed it out to my patron. Presently it was hauled down, and a series of signals was made at the yard-arm of a spar that had been slung across it. Who can they be telegraphing to? thought I, while I could notice my host assume a most anxious and startled look, while he peered down into the hollow; but he could see nothing, as the fog bank still filled the whole of the space between the city and the acclivity where we stood.

  “What is that?” said I; for I heard, or thought I heard, a low, rumbling, rushing noise in the ravine. Mr * * * heard it as well as I, apparently, for he put his finger to his lips—as much as to say, “Hold your tongue, my good boy—nous verrons.”

  It increased—the clattering of horses’ hoofs, and the clang of scabbards were heard, and, in a twinkling, the hussar caps of a squadron of light dragoons emerged from out the fog bank, as, charging up the road, they passed the small gate of green basketwork at a hand-gallop. I ought to have mentioned before, that my friend’s house was situated about half-way up the ascent, so that the rising ground behind it in the opposite direction from the city shut out all view towards the country. After the dragoons passed, there was an interval of two minutes, when a troop of flying artillery, with three six-pound field-pieces, rattled after the leading squadron, the horses all in a lather, at full speed, with the guns bounding and jumping behind them as if they had been playthings, followed by their caissons. Presently we could see the leading squadron file to the right—clear the low hedge—and then disappear over the crest of the hill. Twenty or thirty pioneers, who had been carried forward behind as many of the cavalry, were now seen busily employed in filling up the ditch, and cutting down the short scrubby hedge; and presently, the artillery coming up also, filed off sharply to the right, and formed on the very summit of the hill, distinctly visible between us and the grey cold streaks of morning. By the time we had noticed this, the clatter in our immediate neighbourhood was renewed, and a group of mounted officers dashed past us, up the path, like a whirlwind, followed, at a distance of twenty yards, by a single cavalier, apparently a general officer. These did not stop, as they rode at speed past the spot where the artillery were in position, but, dipping over the summit, disappeared down the road, from which they did not appear to diverge, until they were lost to our view beyond the crest of the hill. The hum and buzz, and, anon, the “measured tread of marching men,” in the valley between us and Hamburgh, still continued. The leading files of a light infantry regiment now appeared, swinging along at a round trot, with their muskets poised in their right hands—no knapsacks on their backs. They appeared to follow the route of the group of mounted officer
s, until we could see a puff of white smoke, then another and a third from the field-pieces, followed by thudding reports, there being no high ground nor precipitous bank nor water in the neighbourhood to reflect the sound, and make it emulate Jove’s thunder. At this they struck across the fields, and, forming behind the guns, lay down flat on their faces, where they were soon hid from our view by the wreaths of white smoke, as the sluggish morning breeze rolled it down the hill-side toward us.

  “What the deuce can all this mean—is it a review?” said I, in my innocence.

  “A reconnoissance in force,” groaned my friend. “The Allied troops must be at hand—now, God help us!”

  The women, like frightened hares, paused to look up in their brother’s face, as he kept his eye steadily turned towards the ridge of the hill, and, when he involuntarily wrung his hands, they gave a loud scream, and ran off into the house.

  The breeze at this moment “aside the shroud of battle cast,” and we heard a faint bugle-call, like an echo, wail in the distance, from beyond the hill. It was instantly answered by the loud, startling blare of a dozen of the light infantry bugles above us on the hill-side, and we could see them suddenly start from their lair, and form; while between us and the clearing morning sky, the cavalry, magnified into giants in the strong relief on the outline of the hill, were driven in straggling patrols, like chaff, over the summit—their sabres sparkling in the level sunbeams, and the reports of the red flashes of their pistols crackling down upon us.