VII. — THE STUART HORSE ARTILLERY.
An hour afterward I was at the camp of the Stuart horse artillery.
Five minutes after greeting Tom, who had sought Katy, at “Disaway’s”—been directed to the woods—and there speedily joined us—I left the young ones together, and made my way back to the mansion. There are few things, my dear reader, more disagreeable than—just when you are growing poetical—when blue eyes have excited your romantic feelings—when your heart has begun to glow—when you think “I am the cause of all this happiness, and gayety!”—there are few things I say—but why say it? In thirty seconds the rosy-faced youngster Tom, had driven the antique and battered Surry quite from the mind of the Bird of Beauty. That discomfited individual, therefore, took his way back sadly to Disaway’s, leaving the children his blessing; declined the cordial invitations to spend the night, mounted his horse, and rode to find Will Davenant, at the horse artillery.
Their camp was in the edge of a wood, near the banks of the Rowanty; and having exchanged greetings with my old comrades of the various batteries, and the gallant Colonel Chew, their chieftain, I repaired to Will Davenant’s head-quarters.
These consisted of a breadth of canvass, stretched beneath a tree in the field—in front of which burned a fire.
I had come to talk with Will, but our conversation was obliged to be deferred. The brave boys of the horse artillery, officers and men, gathered round to hear the news from Petersburg; and it was a rare pleasure to me to see again the old familiar faces. Around me, in light of the camp-fire, were grouped the tigers who had fought with Pelham, in the old battles of Stuart. Here were the heroes of a hundred combats; the men who had held their ground desperately in the most desperate encounters—the bulldogs who had showed their teeth and sprung to the death-grapple at Cold Harbor, Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Fleetwood, Gettysburg, in the Wilderness, at Trevillian’s, at Sappony, in a thousand bitter conflicts with the cavalry. Scarred faces, limping bodies, the one-armed, the one-legged,—these I saw around me; the frames slashed and mutilated, but the eyes flashing and full of fight, as in the days when Pelham thundered, loosing his war-hounds on the enemy. I had seen brave commands, in these long years of combat—had touched the hands of heroic men, whose souls fear never entered—but I never saw braver fighters than the horse artillery—soldiers more reckless than Pelham’s bloodhounds. They went to battle laughing. There was something of the tiger in them. They were of every nation nearly—Frenchmen, Irishmen, Italians,—but one sentiment seemed to inspire them—hatred of our friends over the way. From the moment in 1862, when at Barbee’s they raised the loud resounding Marseillaise, while fighting the enemy in front and rear, to this fall of 1864, when they had strewed a hundred battle-fields with dead men and horses, these “swarthy old hounds” of the horse artillery had vindicated their claims to the admiration of Stuart;—in the thunder of their guns, the dead chieftain had seemed still to hurl his defiance at the invaders of Virginia.
Looking around me, I missed many of the old faces, sleeping now beneath the sod. But Dominic, Antonio, and Rossini were still there—those members of the old “Napoleon Detachment” of Pelham’s old battery; there still was Guillemot, the erect, military-looking Frenchman,—Guillemot, with his hand raised to his cap, saluting me with the profoundest respect; these were the faces I had seen a hundred times, and never any thing but gay and full of fight.
Doubtless they remembered me, and thought of Stuart, as others had done, at seeing me. They gave me a soldier’s welcome; soon, from the group around the camp-fire rose a song. Another followed, then another, in the richest tenor; and the forests of Dinwiddie rang with the deep voices, rising clear and sonorous in the moonlight night.
They were old songs of Ashby and Stuart; unpublished ditties of the struggle, which the winds have borne away into the night of the past, and which now live only in memory. There was one of Ashby, commencing,—
“See him enter on the valley,”
which wound up with the words,—
“And they cried, ‘O God they’ve shot him!
Ashby is no more!’
Strike, freemen, for your country,
Sheathe your swords no more!
While remains in arms a Yankee
On Virginia’s shore!”
The air was sad and plaintive. The song rose, and wailed, and died away like the sigh of the wind in the trees, the murmuring airs of evening in the brambles and thickets of the Rowanty. The singers had fought under Ashby, and in their rude and plaintive song they uttered their regrets.
Then the music changed its character, and the stirring replaced the sad.
“If you want to have a good time,
J’ine the cavalry!”
came in grand, uproarious strains; and this was succeeded by the jubilant—
“Farewell, forever to the star-spangled banner,
No longer shall she wave o’er the land of the free;
But we’ll unfurl to the broad breeze of heaven,
The thirteen bright stars round the Palmetto tree!”
At that song—and those words, “the thirteen bright stars round the Palmetto tree!”—you might have seen the eyes of the South Carolinians flash. Many other ditties followed, filling the moonlight night with song—“The Bonnie Blue Flag,” “Katy Wells,” and “The Louisiana Colors.” This last was never printed. Here are a few of the gay verses of the “Irish Lad from Dixie:”—
“My sweetheart’s name is Kathleen,
For her I’ll do or die;
She has a striped straw mattress,
A shanty, pig, and sty.
Her cheeks are bright and beautiful,
Her hair is dark and curly,
She sent me with the secesh boys
To fight with General Early.
“She made our flag with her own hands,
My Kathleen fair and clever,
And twined its staff with shamrock green,
Old Ireland’s pride forever!
She gave it into our trust,
Among our weeping mothers;—
‘Remember, Irish men!’ she said,
‘You bear the Red Cross colors!’
“She told me I must never run;
The Rebel boys were brothers;—
To stand forever by our flag,
The Louisiana colors!
And then she said, ‘If you desert,
You’ll go to the Old Baily!’
Says I, ‘My love, when I can’t shoot,
I’ll use my old shillalah!’
“And many a bloody charge we made,
Nor mind the battle’s blaze;
God gave to us a hero bold,
Our bonny Harry Hays!
And on the heights of Gettysburg,
At twilight first was seen,
The stars of Louisiana bright,
And Katy’s shamrock green.
“And oh! if I get home again,
I swear I’ll never leave her;
I hope the straw mattress will keep,
The pig won’t have the fever!
For then, you know, I’ll marry Kate,
And never think of others.
Hurrah, then, for the shamrock green,
And the Louisiana colors!”
It was nearly midnight before the men separated, repairing to their tents. Their songs had charmed me, and made the long hours flit by like birds. Where are you, brave singers, in this year ‘68? I know not—you are all scattered. Your guns have ceased their thunder, your voices sound no more. But I think you sometimes remember, as you muse, in these dull years, those gay moonlight nights on the banks of the Rowanty.