THE HORRORS OF WAR.
In a work recently published in London, entitled "Lights and Shades of Military Life," M. de Vigny, the author, gives incidents from his own experience which place in a striking light some of the unutterable horrors of war.
In his first march, with his ambition glowing as brightly as his maiden sword, and his hopes yet fresh as his untarnished epaulets, he falls in with an old chef de bataillon. He was a man of about fifty, with mustaches, tall and stout, his back curved, after the manner of old military officers who have carried the knapsack. His features were hard but benevolent, such as you often meet with in the army, indicating, at the same time, the natural goodness of the heart of the man, and the callousness induced by long use to scenes of blood and carnage. This old soldier of the Empire is marching along beside a little cart, drawn by a sorry mule, in which sits a woman—a maniac—whose story he tells with a soldier's frankness, as a part of his own history. The old man had been a sailor in his youth, and at the time of the Directory was captain of a merchantman. From that situation he was promoted, aristocracy being at a discount, to command the Marat, a brig of war, and one of his first duties was to sail with two political prisoners, a young Frenchman and his wife. He supposed that he was to land them at Cayenne, to which place other exiles had previously been dispatched in other vessels; but he carried sealed orders from the Directory, which were not to be opened till the vessel reached the Equator. On the passage, the captain and his young passengers became greatly attached to each other, so much so that he wished to leave the service, and, with what fortune he had, share and alleviate their fate. In their youth and innocence, and earnest love for each other, the young unfortunates had twined themselves about the rough heart of the sailor, and he regarded them as his children. But there was the ominous letter, bearing the red seals of the Directory, which was to decide their fate—and the time arrived for it to be opened. The seals were broken, and what was the captain's horror to find that it contained an order for him to have the young husband shot, and then to return with the wife to France. After he had read the paper, he rubbed his eyes, thinking that they must have deceived him. He could not trust his senses. His limbs trembled beneath him. He could not trust himself to go near the fair young Laura, who looked so happy, with tidings that would blight her existence. What was he to do? He never seems to have thought of leaving the order unexecuted; the iron of unreasoning obedience had seared his soul too deeply for that. The horrid task, revolt at it as he might, was a duty, because he had been ordered to do it. He communicated the order to his victim, who heard his fate with a stoicism worthy of an old Roman. His only thought was for his poor young wife, so fair, and fond, and gentle. He said, with a voice as mild as usual, "I ask no favor, captain. I should never forgive myself if I were to cause you to violate your duty. I should merely like to say a few words to Laura, and I beg you to protect her, in case she should survive me, which I do not think she will." It is arranged between the victim of slavish obedience, and the victim of the cruelty of the Reign of Terror, that poor Laura should know nothing of what was to be her husband's fate. She is put into a boat at night and rowed from the ship, while the tragedy is being acted out; but she sees the flash of the muskets, her heart tells her too plainly what has happened, and her reason fails under the shock. "At the moment of firing, she clasped her hand to her head, as if a ball had struck her brow, and sat down in the boat without fainting, without shrieking, without speaking, and returned to the brig with the crew when they pleased and how they pleased." The old captain spoke to her but she did not understand him. She was mute, rubbing her pale forehead, and trembling as though she were afraid of every body, and thus she remained an idiot for life. The captain returned to France with his charge, got himself removed into the land forces, for the sea—into which he had cast innocent blood—was unbearable to him; and had continued to watch over the poor imbecile as a father over his child. M. de Vigny saw the poor woman; he says, "I saw two blue eyes of extraordinary size, admirable in point of form, starting from a long, pale, emaciated face, inundated by perfectly straight fair hair. I saw, in truth, nothing but those two eyes, which were all that was left of that poor woman, for the rest of her was dead. Her forehead was red, her cheeks hollow and white, and bluish on the cheek bones. She was crouched among the straw, so that one could just see her two knees rising above it, and on them she was playing all alone at dominoes. She looked at us for a moment, trembled a long time, smiled at me a little, and began to play again. It seemed to me that she was trying to make out how her right hand beat her left." It was the wreck of love and beauty, torn by the blind slave obedience, at the bidding of vengeance and hate. M. de Vigny was a young and thoughtless soldier; but young and thoughtless as he was, the phantom glory must have beamed brightly indeed, to prevent him from seeing the gloomy darkness of such a shade of military life as this, and keep him from shaking the fetters of blind obedience from intellect and mercy. He never saw the old chef and his charge again; but he heard of them. In speaking to a brother officer one day of the sad story, his companion in arms replied, "Ah, my dear fellow, I knew that poor devil well. A brave man he was too; he was taken off by a cannon-ball at Waterloo. He had, in fact, left along with the baggage a sort of crazy girl, whom we took to the hospitable of Amiens on our way to the army of the Loire, and who died there and raving at the end of three days."
If in this story we recognize the goodness, the true nobility of heart of this old soldier, we can not fail to see in all its hideousness, the horrors and evils of a system which deadens intellect, paralyzes virtue, and dims the light of mercy—the system of slavish obedience, crushing out all individuality, and making the good and the bad alike its subservient instruments.
As a pendant to the above we take a few extracts from the story of Captain Renaud, once a page to Napoleon, of whom Byron truly says:
"With might unquestioned—power to save—
Thine only gift hath been the grave,
To those that worship'd thee."
And so poor Renaud found. He had the misfortune to fall under the displeasure of the Emperor, and was sent from the army to serve on board that abortive flat-bottomed-boat armada, which threatened a descent upon the shores of England. Here he was taken prisoner, and, after a long captivity, being exchanged, hastened to Paris to throw himself at the feet of the conqueror. The reception was a strange one. It took place at the Opera, and we quote a description of it. "He (Napoleon) placed his left hand upon his left eye to see better, according to his custom; I perceived that he had recognized me. He turned about sharply, took no notice of any thing but the stage, and presently retired. I was already in waiting for him. He walked fast along the corridor, and, from his thick legs, squeezed into white silk stockings, and his bloated figure in his green dress, I should scarcely have known him again. He stopped short before me, and speaking to the colonel, who presented me, instead of addressing himself direct to me, 'Why,' said he, 'have I never seen any thing of him? Still a lieutenant?'
"'He has been a prisoner ever since 1804.'
"'Why did he not make his escape?'
"'I was on parole!' said I, in an undertone.
"'I don't like prisoners!—the fellows ought to get killed,' said he, turning his back upon me.
"We remained motionless in file, and when the whole of his suite had passed: 'My dear fellow,' said the colonel, 'don't you see plainly that you are a fool? You have lost your promotion, and nobody thinks the better of you for it.'"
Poor obedience, blind, slavish, unreasoning; its reward was often to be spurned. "Fool" indeed; a great many people will be inclined to re-echo the colonel's epithet, not because Renaud had been a prisoner—not because he was not killed, or did not escape, but because this same habit of obedience had so thoroughly taken the true man out of him, that he did not cut the epaulets from his shoulders, and leave glory to find some other fool. But he was a soldier, and a soldier's first duty was obedience. He went to his regiment, and from his after-life we extract another "shade" of the horrors of war. Captain Renaud narrates how he surprised a detachment of Russians at their post. It was a glorious achievement of course—a parallel to any of the atrocities of the North American Indians. "I came up slowly, and I could not, I must confess, get the better of a certain emotion which I had never felt at the moment of other encounters. It was shame for attacking men who were asleep; I saw them wrapped in their cloaks, lighted by a close lantern, and my heart throbbed violently. But all at once, at the moment of acting, I feared that it was a weakness very like that of cowards; I was afraid that I had for once felt fear, and taking my sword, which had been concealed under my arm, I briskly entered first, setting the example to my grenadiers. I made a motion to them which they comprehended; they fell first upon the guns, then upon the men, like wolves upon a flock of sheep. Oh, it was a dismal, a horrible butchery. The bayonet pierced, the butt-end smashed, the knee stifled, the hand strangled. All cries were extinguished, almost before they were uttered, beneath the feet of our soldiers; and not a head was raised without receiving the mortal blow. On entering, I had struck at random a terrible stroke at something black, which I had run through and through. An old officer, a tall stout man, whose head was covered with white hair, sprung upon his feet like a phantom, made a violent lunge at my face with a sword, and instantly dropped dead pierced by the bayonets! On my part, I fell beside him, stunned by the blow, which had struck me between the eyes, and I heard beneath me the tender and dying voice of a boy, saying, 'papa!' I then comprehended what I had done, and I looked at my work with frantic eagerness. I saw one of those officers of fourteen, so numerous in the Russian armies, which invaded us at that period, and who were dragged away to this awful school. His long curling hair fell upon his bosom, as fair, as silken as that of a woman, and his head was bowed, as though he had but fallen asleep a second time. His rosy lips, expanded like those of a new-born infant, seemed to be yet moist with the nurse's milk; and his large blue eyes, half open, had a beauty of form that was fond and feminine. I lifted him upon one arm, and his cheek fell against mine, dripping with blood, as though he were burying his face in his mother's bosom to warm it again. He seemed to shrink from me, and crouch close to the ground, in order to get away from his murderer. Filial affection, and the confidence and repose of a delicious sleep pervaded his lifeless face, and he seemed to say to me, 'Let us sleep in peace!'
"At this moment, the colonel entered, followed close by his column, whose step and arms I heard.
"'Bravo, my dear fellow,' said he, 'you've done that job cleverly; but you are wounded!'
"'Look there,' said I; 'what difference is there between me and a murderer?'
"'Eh! Sacre dieu! comrade, what would you have? 'Tis our trade!'"
Great God! what a trade for men to give themselves up to, for considerations of all kinds, from peerages and pensions down to a shilling a day. Legalized murder as a profession for the poor foster-children of passive obedience, who, when they trust themselves to think, sometimes find themselves—and upon their own showing, too—little better than murderers. Poor Captain Renaud, however, continued in the service still. So thoroughly was the man smothered in the soldier, that neglect, contempt, contumely, and the sensations of a homicide were not sufficient to induce him to break his fetters. After Napoleon's fall, he remained a soldier of the Bourbons, and there was a sort of poetical justice in his death; for in the sanguinary revolution of 1830 a gamin de Paris, a boy scarcely able to hold a horse-pistol, shot the veteran of the Empire.
M. de Vigny closes his portion of the "Lights and Shades" by setting up an idol for soldiers to worship, and which is to sustain them under all their sufferings. The profession of arms has lost the attribute of apparent usefulness which once belonged to it. The star of glory is setting below the horizon of peace; and warriors, knowing themselves at once hated and feared—feeling themselves out of place in the era which is beginning—degraded from heroes into policemen—are to lean upon Honor for support; but we think, that in the midst of obloquy, privation, and neglect, that sentiment will prove but a broken staff, incapable of bearing such a load of misery and wrong.