COWARDICE AND COURAGE.
Shakespeare, the universal teacher, who knew every phase of the heart, and touched every chord of feeling, has declared aphoristically, speaking as Julius Caesar:
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant only taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
Notwithstanding this, fear is one of the strongest impulses of our nature—fear of discovery, shame, or punishment when we have done wrong: fear of pain, danger, or death. Dr. Johnson said in conversation: "Fear is one of the passions of humanity of which it is impossible to divest it. You all remember that the Emperor Charles V., when he read upon the tomb of a Spanish nobleman, 'Here lies one who never knew fear,' wittily observed, 'Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers.'" In opposition to this we may quote an anecdote told of Lord Howe, when in command of the Channel Fleet. One night he was suddenly awakened by an officer, who, in great trepidation, told him the ship was on fire close to the powder-room; the admiral coolly replied: "If it is so, sir, we shall very soon know it." Some minutes afterwards the lieutenant returned, and told his lordship he had no occasion to be afraid, for the fire was extinguished. "Afraid!" replied Lord Howe, hastily; "what do you mean by that, sir? I never was afraid in my life."
No emotions of the human frame are more opposite than cowardice and courage, each taken in its simple sense, yet both spring from the same sources—physical temperament early training. We do not make our own nervous system, which is often grievously tampered with or perverted by silly, ill-conditioned nurses, servants, and teachers, who frightened children with tales of bugbears, monsters and hobgoblins, until they scream if left in the dark for a moment, and dare not sleep in a room by themselves. Pillory or flogging at the cart's tail would be too mild a punishment for those moral Thugs, who strangle wholesome feelings in the first dawn of their existence, and supply their place with baneful impressions, which, strongly implanted in early youth, grow and strengthen to a period of life when reason on to subdue them, but frequently fails to do so. Viewed in this light, constitutional timidity is a misfortune rather than a crime, however contemptible it may be considered; while mere animal insensibility to danger, which readily calls for admiration, has no claim to rank as a virtue. We speak not here of the moral courage which may be engrafted on a nature originally pusillanimous, by pride, education or a sense of duty and station. Henry IV., of France, and Frederick the Great, of Prussia, are illustrious examples of this victory of over matter. Both were instinctively afraid of danger, and both are recorded as evincing perfect self-possession and displaying prodigies of valor in many a hotly-contested field. Henry's flesh quivered the first time he found himself in action, although his heart was firm. "Villanous nature, I will make thee ashamed of thyself!" he exclaimed, as he spurred his horse through a [{161}] breach before which the bravest veterans paused; and ever afterward the white plume was recognized as the rallying point of battle. Frederick turned from the field of Molwitz, and left his marshals to win the day without him; but it was his first and only moment of wavering through a life of hard campaigns.
Some natures are so constant that no surprise can shake them. An instance occurs in the career of Crillon, called by distinction, "The Brave," in an Army where all were valiant. He was stationed with a small detachment in a lone house. Some young officers, in the dead of night, raised a cry that the enemy were upon them, a company by loud shouts and the firing of musketry. Crillon started from his bed, seized his sword, and rushed down-stairs in his shirt, calling on all to follow him and die at their posts like men. A burst of laughter behind arrested his steps, and he at once penetrated the joke. He re-ascendant, and seizing one of the perpetrators roughly by the arm, explained: "Young man, it is well for you that your trick failed. Had you thrown me off my guard, you would have been the first I should have sacrificed to my lost honor. Take warning, and deal in no such folly for the future."
Charles XII. was gifted from infancy with iron nerves. "What is that noise?" he asked, as the balls whistling past him when landing in Denmark—a mere stripling, under a heavy fire. "The sound of the shot the fire at your majesty," replied Marshal Renschild. "Good!" said the king; "henceforth that shall be my music." And so he made it, with little intermission, until the last and fatal bullet, whether fired by traitor or foe, which entered his brain, and finished his wild career at Fredericshall, eighteen years later.
Murat and Lannes were the admitted paladins of the Imperial army; yet both once came to a stand-still before the battery which vomited forth fire and death. "Rascals!" muttered Napoleon, bitterly; "have I made you too rich?" Stung by the taunt, they rushed on, and the victory was gained. No epidemic is so contagious as a panic. When once caught, it expands with the velocity of an ignited train. A celebrated case occurred in Henry the Eighth's time, at the Battle of the Spurs, in 1513, so called because the defeated force fled with such haste that it was impossible for the best mounted cavaliers to overtake them. Thus the killed and wounded made but a poor figure. Then came Falkirk, in 1746, of which Horace Walpole said: "The fighting lay in a small compass, the greater part of both armies running away." Then the memorable "Races of Castlebar," of which the less that is said the better; then the sauve qui peut of Waterloo; and though last, far from least, the pell-mell rout of Bull's Run, which inaugurated the late American war. Livy records, and Sir William Napier quotes the anecdote, that after a drawn battle a god, calling out in the night, declared that the Etruscans had lost one man more than the Romans! whereupon a panic fell on the former, and they abandoned the field to their adversaries, who gathered all the fruits of a real victory.
There are some who think they can face danger and death until the moment of trial arrives, and then their nerves give way. In the biographies of John Graham, Viscount of Dundee, we find it related that, during the civil wars of that period, a friend of his, a loyal and devoted partisan of the house of Stuart, like himself, committed his favorite son to his charge. "I give him to the king's cause," said the father; "take care that he does not dishonor his name and race. I depend on you to look after him." In the first action, the unlucky youth exhibited undoubted symptoms of cowardice. Dundee took him aside and said "The service in which we are engaged is desperate, [{162}] and requires desperate resolution on the part of all concerned in it. You have mistaken your trade. Go home, before worse happens." The youth shed bitter tears, said it was a momentary weakness, implored for another trial, and promised to behave better the next time. Dundee relented. The next trial soon came, with the same result. Dundee rode up to the recreant, pistol in hand, and exclaiming, "Your father's son shall never die by the hands of the hangman," shot him dead upon the spot.
Experienced military authorities have delivered their opinion that of one hundred rank and file, taken indiscriminately—Alexanders at six-pence per diem, as Voltaire sneeringly designates them—one third are determined daredevils, who will face any danger, and flinch from nothing; the next division are waverers, equally disposed to stand or run, and likely to be led either way by example; while the residue are rank cowards. Dr. Johnson took a more unfavorable view. At a dinner at General Paoli's, in 1778, when fears of an invasion were circulated, Mr. John Spottiswoode, the solicitor, observed that Mr. Fraser, an engineer, who had recently visited Dunkirk, said the French had the same fears of us. "It is thus," remarked Dr. Johnson, "that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one half mankind brave, and one half cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting; but being all cowards, we go on tolerably well."
It is difficult to invest with interest a quality so universally held in contempt as cowardice; yet Sir Walter Scott has succeeded in obtaining sympathy for Conachar, or Eachin M'Ian. the young Highland chieftain, in the Fair Maid of Perth. He evidently conceived the character con amore, and has elaborated it with skill and care.
Montaigne observes of fear that it is a surprisal of the heart upon the apprehension of approaching evil; and if it reaches the degree of terror, and the evil seems impendent, the hair is raised on end, and the whole body put into horror and trembling. After this, if the passion continues, the spirits are thrown into confusion, so that they cannot execute their offices; the usual successors of reason fail, judgment is blinded, the powers of voluntary motion become weak, and the heart is insufficient to maintain the circulation of the blood, which, stopping and stagnating in the ventricles, causes painting and swooning, and sometimes sudden death. The quaint old essayist then illustrates by examples. He tells of a jester who had contrived to give his master, a petty prince of Italy, a hearty ducking and a fright to boot, to cure him of an ague. The treatment succeeded; but the autocrat, by way of retaliation, had his audacious physician tried for treason, and condemned to lose his had. The criminal was brought forth, the priest received his confession, and the luckless buffoon knelt to prepare for the blow. Instead of wielding his axe, the executioner, as he had been instructed, threw a pitcher of water on the bare neck of the criminal. Here the jest was to have ended; but the shock was too great for poor Gonella, who was found dead on the block.
Montaigne also says, that fear manifests its utmost power and effect when it throws men into a valiant despair, having before deprived them of all sense both of duty and honor. In the first great battle of the Romans against Hannibal, under the Consul Sempronius, a body of twenty thousand men that had taken flight, seeing no other escape for their cowardice, threw themselves headlong upon the great mass of their pursuing enemies, with wonderful force and fury they charged, and cut a passage through, with a prodigious slaughter of the Carthaginians; thus purchasing an ignominious retreat at the same price which might have won for them glorious victory.
But if fear is a destructive, it also sometimes acts in an opposite sense. Dr. Thomas Bartoline tells us in his history of anatomy, that fear has been known to cure epilepsy, gout, and ague. He relates that a woman of condition, who was affected with the tertian ague, was so terrified by the explosion of a bomb, which was fired off during her fit, that she fainted away and was thought to be dead. "Having then sent for me to see her," he adds, "and finding her pulse still pretty strong, I prescribed for her some slight cordials, and she soon recovered from her state of weakness without any appearance of fever, which had afterward no return."
Bartoline says again that a young lady who had a quartan ague for several months successively, was invited by some of her acquaintance to take an excursion on the water, with a view to dissipate the melancholy ideas occasioned by her illness; but they had scarcely got into the boat when it began to sink, and all were terribly shocked with the dread of perishing. After escaping this danger, the patient found that the terror had cured her ailment, and she had no return of the ague.
A third instance recorded by Bartoline is even more extraordinary than the two we have already named. A man forty-two years of age, of a hot and moist constitution, subject to a colic, but the fits not violent, was seized one evening, about sunset, with an internal cold, though the weather on that day was unusually warm. Different medicines were administered to him, but without success. He died within eighteen or nineteen hours, without the least agitation or any of the convulsions that frequently accompany the parting agony, so that he seemed to subside into a placid sleep. His friends requested Dr. Bartoline to open his body, and it was found that he had died of a mortification of the punereus. He was a very fat subject, and what was surprising in to huge and corpulent a body, his bones were as small as those of a young girl, and his muscles extremely weak, thin, and membraneous rather than fleshy. While the doctor was making these observations on the dissected corpse, a brother of the deceased, who had been absent for sixteen years, and was of the same size, constitution, and habit of body, entered the room suddenly and unexpectedly. He looked on the remains of his relative, heard the detail of the circumstances of his death, the cause of which he saw confirmed with his own eyes, and reasoned for some time calmly and sensibly on the mournful event. All at once he became stupefied, speechless, and fell into a fainting fit, from which neither balsams nor stimulants, nor any of the remedies resorted to in such cases, could recover him. The opening of a vein was suggested, but this advice was not followed. All present appeared as if paralyzed with horror. The patient seemed to be without pulse or respiration, his limbs began to stiffen, and he was pronounced to be on the point of expiring. A sudden idea struck Bartoline, for which he says he could not account, but he said aloud, "Let us recompose the dead body and sew it up; in the meantime the other will be quite dead, and I will dissect him also." The words were scarcely uttered when the gentleman supposed to be in articulo mortis started up from the sofa on which he had been laid, roared out with the lungs of a bull, snatched up his cloak, took to his heels, as if nothing had happened to him, and lived for many years after in an excellent slate of health.
Fear has been known to turn the hair in a single night from black to grey or white. This happened, amongst others, to Ludovico Sforza. The same is asserted of Queen Marie Antoinette, although not so suddenly, and, as some say, from grief, not fear. The Emperor Louis, of Bavaria, anno 1256, suspected his wife, Mary of Brabant, without just cause, condemned her, unheard, for adultery, and caused her chief lady-in-waiting, who was also [{164}] innocent, to be cast headlong from a tower, as a confederate in his dishonor. Soon after this horrible cruelty he was visited by a fearful vision one night, and rose in the morning with his dark locks as white as snow.
A young Spaniard of noble family, Don Diego Osorio, being in love with a lady of the court, prevailed on her to grant him an interview by night in the royal gardens. The barking of a little dog betrayed them. The gallant was seized by the guard and conveyed to prison. It was a capital crime to be found in that place without special permission, and therefore he was condemned to die. The reading of the sentence so unmanned him that the next morning he stood in presence of his jailer with a furrowed visage and grey hair. The fact being reported to King Ferdinand as a prodigy, he was moved to compassion, and pardoned the culprit, saying, he had been sufficiently punished in exchanging the bloom of youth for the hoary aspect of age. The same happened to the father of Martin Delrio, who, lying sick in bed, heard the physicians say he would certainly die. He recovered, but the fright gave him a grey head in a few hours, and this instance of the terror he had suffered never afterward left him.
Robert Boyle, in his Philosophical Examples, relates the following incident of the same class: "Being about four or six years since," he says, "in the county of Cork, there was an Irish captain, a man of middle age and stature, who came with some of his followers to surrender himself to the Lord Broghill, who then commanded the English forces in those parts, upon a public offer of pardon to the Irish that would lay down their arms. He was casually met with in a suspicious place by a party of the English, and intercepted, the Lord Broghill being then absent. He was so apprehensive of being put to death before the return of the commander-in-chief, that his anxiety of mind quickly altered the color of his hair in a peculiar manner. It was not uniformly changed, but here and there certain peculiar tufts and locks, whose bases might be about an inch in diameter were suddenly turned white alone; the rest of his hair, whereof the Irish used to wear good store, retained its natural reddish color."
A sudden shock operates on the memory as well as on the hair. In Pliny's Natural History we read of one who, being struck violently and unexpectedly by a stone, forgot his letters, and could never write again; another, he says, through a fall from the roof of a very high house, lost his remembrance of his own mother, his nearest kinsfolks, friends, and neighbors; and a third, in a fit of sickness, ceased to recognize his own servants. Messala Corvinus, the great orator, being startled suddenly, forgot his own name, and was unable to remember it for a considerable time. The same thing happened to Sidney Smith, not from fear, but from absence of mind. He called on a friend, who was not at home, and he happened to have no card to leave. "What name, sir?" said the servant. "That's exactly what I can't tell you," was the reply.
Augustus Caesar was not a valiant man, in the popular acceptation of the word. He shrank in his tent from the onset at Philippi, skulked in the hold of the admiral's galley during the sea-fight with Sextus Pompey in the Straits of Messina, and was a safe spectator on shore at Actium. Antony, and even his own friend and lieutenant, Agrippa, taunted him with his want of courage. He was so terrified at thunder and lightning that he always carried with him the skin of a sea-calf as an antidote. If he suspected the approach of a tempest, he ran to some underground vault until the symptoms passed over. Yet Suetonius says he once, under necessity, showed a bold front to a danger he could not avoid. He was walking abroad with Diomedes, his steward, when a wild boar, which had broken loose, rushed directly toward them. [{165}] Thus steward in his terror, ran behind the emperor and interposed him as a shield betwixt the assailant and himself. Augustus stood his ground, because flight was barred, and the boar turned tail. But knowing that fear, not malice, had prompted the conduct of his servant, he had the magnanimity to confine his resentment to a perpetual just. Caligula, who affected to contemn the gods, was equally terrified with Augustus at the least indication of thunder and lightning. He covered his head, and if the explosions chanced to be loud and near, leaped from his couch and hid himself under it.
History mentions several sovereigns who loved war, but had no taste for personal participation in its perils. Charles the Fifth, and his son, Philip the second, are amongst the number, The leading characteristic of the latter was cruelty, a disposition generally associated with cowardice. Diocletian, after he became emperor, fought more by his lieutenants than in person. Lactantius said of him that he was timid and spiritless in all situations of danger. Erat in omni tumultu meticulosus et animi dejectus. [Footnote 35]
[Footnote 35: Lactant. De Mortibus Persecutorum, c. ix.]
A commander should be self-collected in a battle, calm under a shower of darts or the whistling of artillery; but to prove his courage, he is not called upon to charge windmills with the chivalric madness of Don Quixote, or to slay eight hundred enemies with his own hand, as recorded of Aurelian and Richard Coeur de Lion. Charles of Sweden and Attila loved fighting for fighting's sake; for the certaminis gaudia, as Cassiodorus writes; "the rapture of the strife," as Lord Byron translates the passage. Yet a brave general is not obliged to be a vulture snuffing blood like the truculent king of the Huns. He can maintain his reputation for personal courage without jumping alone into the midst of an army of foes, as Alexander did from the walls of Oxydrace; or resisting a host of many thousands with three hundred men, as Charles XII. did at Bender; or of placing his foot first on the scaling ladder in emulation of the extreme daring of the Constable Bourbon, under extreme circumstances, at the storming of Rome. Charles the First lacked moral courage, but he was no craven physically. His bravery in the field, and calm dignity on the scaffold, went far in atonement of his political weaknesses and shortcomings.
The mind naturally revolts from sudden or violent death. Yet it has its recommendations. It is never painful. The important consideration is lest it should be unprepared for. We mourn the loss of a friend or relative who is killed in battle more than we do that of one who dies in the course of nature, or of an incidental fever. We lament a soldier's death because it seems untimely. A sufferer who languishes of disease, ends his life with more pain but with less credit. He leaves no example to be quoted, no honor to be cherished as an heirloom by his descendants. We affect to be greatly shocked at the misfortunes or death of a friend or acquaintance, but there is something pharisaical in this exuberance of sympathy, only we are unwilling to confess the truth openly.
Foote, who was a scoffer, and in all respects an irreligious man, said, when very ill, that he was not afraid to die. David Hume, an esprit fort of a more pretentious character, declared that it gave him no more uneasiness to think he should not be after this life, than that he had not been before he began to exist. An ingenious sophistry, like his essay on miracles. We do not believe that any one ever really persuaded himself that he was not a responsible being, and not answerable for his deeds done in the flesh. Sir Henry Halford, in his essays, expresses his surprise that of the great number of patients he had attended, so few appeared reluctant to die. "We may suppose," he adds, "that this willingness to submit to the common and irresistible doom, arises from an [{166}] impatience of suffering, or from that passive indifference which is sometimes the result of debility and extreme bodily pain."
Themistocles was quite as unwilling to die, although he assigned a better reason for his love of life. Finding his mental and physical powers beginning to decay, in such a manner as to indicate his approaching end, he grieved that he must now depart, when, as he said, he was only beginning to grow wise. As an instance of superstitious terror, Plutarch tells us that Amestis, the wife of the great Xerxes, buried twelve persons alive, offering them as a sacrifice to Pluto for the prolongation of her own days. Mecaenas, the great patron of learning, and favorite of Augustus, had such a horror of death, that he had often in his mouth, "all things are to be endured so long as life is continued." The Emperor Domitian, from innate timidity, caused the walls of the galleries wherein he took daily recreation to be garnished with the stone called phangites, the brightness of which reflected all that was passing behind him. Theophrastus, the philosopher, who lived to be one hundred and seven years of age, was so attached to life that he complained of the partiality of nature in granting longevity to the crow and the stag beyond that accorded to man. Plutarch, in his life of Pericles, names a skilful engineer called Artemon, who was withal so timorous that he was frightened at his own shadow, and seldom stirred out of his house for fear some accident should betide him. Two of his servants always held a brazen target over his head lest anything might fall upon it; and if necessity compelled him to go abroad, he never walked, but was carried in a litter which hung within an inch or two of the ground.
We read, in a more recent author, of a certain Rhodius, who, being sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in a dungeon, by a tyrant, for indulging in unseasonable liberty of speech, was treated in all respects like a caged beast, with great torture and ignominy. His food was scanty and loathsome; his hands were amputated, his face gashed and disfigured with wounds. In this miserable plight, some of his friends suggested to him to put an end to his sufferings by voluntary starvation. "No," he replied; "while life remains all things are to be hoped for." He clung to mere existence when death would have been a relief. How are we to reconcile or account for these strange contradictions? The sum of all appears to be that human nature is a complex mystery, beyond the powers of man to fathom with the limited faculties attached to his transitory condition.
Let us turn now to a more attractive quality, courage and, manly daring as exhibited in life and and death, particularly in the "last scene of all." Finis coranat opus—the end crowns the work. When Epaminondas asked whether Chabrias, Iphicrates or himself deserved the highest place in the esteem of their fellow-beings, he replied, "You must see us die before that question can be answered." His own exit at Mantinea, in the moment of a glorious victory, was singularly brilliant, and his parting sentiments illustrated the purity of his life. The situation finds an exact parallel in the fall of Gustavus Adolphus, under the same circumstances, at Lutzen. The name of the patriot who seals with blood his devotion to his cause, on a winning field, is encircled with and imperishable halo of glory, the thought of which would stir the pulse of an anchorite. Claverhouse, in Old Mortality, describes the feeling with true military enthusiasm. "It is not," he says, "the expiring pang that is worth thinking of in an event that must happen one day, and may befall us at any moment—it is the memory which the soldier leaves behind him, like the long train of light that follows the sunken sun; that is all which is worth caring for, which distinguishes the death of the brave or the ignoble. When I think of death, as a chance of [{167}] almost hourly occurrence in the course before me, it is in the hope of pressing one day some well-fought and hard-won field of battle, and expiring with the shout of victory in my ear; that would be worth dying for, and more, it would be worth having lived for." And so fell the real Claverhouse on the field of Killiecrankie, and with him vanished the passing gleam of sunshine in the fortunes of the master he served so loyally and well. Had he lived to improve his victory, he would have been in Edinburgh in two or three days, and it is difficult to say what turn the pages of coming history might then have taken. As soon as it was known that he was killed, his army of Highland clans dispersed, and never collected again. They were held together by his single name, and had no faith in any other leader.
A heathen poet, Antiphanes, who lived a century earlier than Socrates or his pupil Plato, and five hundred years before the Christian revelation, has a remarkable passage to this effect, of which the following verbal translation is given by Addison in the Spectator: "Grieve not above measure for deceased friends. They are not dead, but have only finished that journey we are all necessitated to take. We ourselves must go to that great place of reception in which they are all of them assembled, and in this general rendezvous of mankind live together in another state of being."
Men of the most opposite characters have jested on the point of death. Sir Thomas More, a Christian philosopher, said to the executioner, "Good friend, let me put my beard out of the way, for that has committed no offence against the king."
The following instance, recorded by the Abbé Vertot, in his history of the revolutions of Portugal, may claim comparison, for intrepidity and greatness of soul, with anything that we read of in Greek or Roman lore. When Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, invaded the territories of Muley Moloch, Emperor of Morocco to de-throne him and set his crown on the head of his nephew, Moloch was wearing away with a distemper which he himself knew and felt to be incurable. However, he prepared for the reception of the formidable foreign enemy. He was so utterly exhausted by his malady, that he scarcely expected to outlive the day when the decisive battle was fought at Alcazar. But knowing the fatal consequences that would happen to his children and people in case he should die before he put an end to that war, he gave directions to his principal officers that if he died during the engagement they should conceal his death from the army, and should ride up to the litter in which his corpse was carried, under pretence of receiving orders from him as usual. Before the action began he was carried through all the ranks of his host, with the curtains of the litter drawn up, as they stood in battle array, and encouraged them to fight valiantly in defence of their religion and country. Finding the action at one period of the day turning against him, and seeing that the decisive moment had arrived, he, though verging on his last agonies, threw himself out of his litter. The enthusiasm of his spirit for the moment conquered the feebleness of his body; he was lifted upon a horse, rallied his troops, and led them to a renewed charge, which ended in a complete victory on the side of the Moors. The King of Portugal was killed. At least, he disappeared mysteriously, and never was seen again; his body, like that of James the Fourth at Flodden, was not clearly identified, and more than one pretender from time to time came forward to personate him; his entire army was dispersed, slain, or rendered captive. Muley Moloch lived to witness the effect of his charge, when nature gave way; his officers replaced him in his litter; he was unable to speak, but laying his finger on his lips to enjoin secrecy on all who stood around him, died a few moments afterwards in that posture.
Fortitude and valor are, after all, more derived from constitution and example than from any inherent power of the mind. When Sylla beheld his army on the point of defeat by Archelaus, the general of Mithridates, he alighted from his horse, snatched a standard from the bearer, and rushing with it into the midst of the enemy, cried out, "Here, comrades, I intend to die; but for you, when asked where you left your general, remember it was at Orchomenus." The soldiers, moved by his speech and example, returned to their ranks, renewed the fight, and converted an imminent overthrow into a decisive victory. At Marathon, Cynegirus, an Athenian, having pursued the Persians to their ships, grasped a boat in which some of them were putting off from the shore, with his right hand, holding it until his hand was cut off; he then seized it with the left, which was also immediately severed. After that, he retained it with his teeth, nor did he relinquish that last hold until his fleeting breath failed, and thereby disappointed the resolute intention of his mind.
The exploits of Mutius Seaevola, who thrust his hand into the fire to frighten Porsenna, and of Horatius Cocles, who defended a bridge singly against an army, are familiar to every school-boy. The latter, in the glowing verses of Macaulay, is a favorite subject of selection at school speech-days, and for public readings or recitations. According to the same authority, Plutarch, the heroism of Seaevola had been anticipated by Agesilaus, the brother of Themistocles. When Xerxes arrived with his countless hosts at Cape Artemisium, the bold Athenian, disguised as a Persian, came into the camp of the barbarians, and slew one of the captains of the royal guard, supposing he had been the king himself. He was immediately brought before Xerxes, who was then offering sacrifices upon the altar of the Sun. Agesilaus thrust his hand into the flame, and endured the torture without sigh or groan. Xerxes ordered them to loose him. "All we Athenians," said Agesilaus, "are of the same determination. If thou wilt not believe it, I will also suffer my left hand to be consumed by the fire." The king, awed and impressed with respect for such undaunted constancy, commanded him to be carefully kept and well treated. Did one story suggest the other, or are both real or fabulous?
Valerius Maximus relates the following anecdote: "After the ancient custom of the Macedonians, certain noble youths waited on Alexander the Great when he sacrificed to the gods. One of these, holding a censer in his hand, stood before the king. It chanced that a live coal fell upon his arm, and so burnt it that the smell of the charred flesh affected the bystanders; yet the sufferer suppressed the pain, in silence, and held his arm immovable, lest by shaking the censer he should interrupt the sacrifice, or by his groaning disturb the king. Alexander, that he might still further try his fortitude, purposely continued and protracted the sacrifice; yet the noble-hearted boy persisted in his resolute intention." To this rare instance of fortitude he adds another. "Anaxarchus, a philosopher of Abdera, was remarkable for freedom of speech, which no personal consideration restrained. He was a friend of Alexander, and when the great conqueror was wounded, said bluntly, 'Behold the blood of a man and not of a god.' But Alexander was too noble to be offended at such a home truth. It was otherwise with Nicocreon, tyrant of Cyprus, to whose court Anaxarchus betook himself on the death of Alexander. When the sage openly reproached him with his cruelties, Nicocreon seized and threatened to pound him in a stone mortar with iron hammers. 'Pound the body of Anaxarchus at thy pleasure,' exclaimed he; 'his soul thou canst not pound.' The tyrant, in a paroxysm of rage, ordered his tongue to be cut from his mouth. [{169}] 'Effeminate wretch,' cried the undaunted monitor, 'neither shall that part of my body be at thy disposal.' So saying, he bit off his own tongue, and spat it in the face of his persecutor."
Bacon, in his History of Life and Death, mentions a certain tradition of a man, who being under the executioner's hands for high treason, after his heart was plucked from his body, was yet heard to murmur several words of prayer. He also instances another strange example in the case of the Burgundian who murdered the Prince of Orange. When the first part of his sentence, which only related to cutting off his curls of hair, was carried out, he absolutely shed shed tears; yet, when scourged with rods of iron, and his flesh torn with red-hot pincers, he uttered neither sigh nor grown. Before his sense of feeling became extinct under reiterated tortures, a part of the scaffold fell on the head of a spectator. The criminal was observed to laugh at the accident.
It is recorded of Caius Marius, seven times Roman consul, and conquer of the Cimbri and Teutones, that a short time before his death, in his seventieth year, a swelling in the leg location the necessity of its being cut off. To this he submitted without a distortion of the face or any visible sign of suffering. The surgeon told him the other leg was as badly affected and peremptorily demanded the same remedy, if he wished his life to be prolonged. "No," said Marius, "the pain is greater than the advantage." Something very similar occurred at the death of General Moreau on the field of Dresden, in 1813. A cannon ball, as he was in conversation with the Emperor of Russia, shattered his right knee, passed through the body of the horse, and left his other leg suspended by a few ligaments. He sat up and coolly smoked a cigar while undergoing the amputation of the left. On being told that he must also lose the right, he shrugged his shoulders, and said to the surgeons, "On with your work, if it must be so; but if I had known at the beginning, I would have kept my legs and spared your trouble." He survived only a few hours.
In 1571 Marc Antonio Bragandino, a noble Venetian, who was governor of Famagusta, in the island of Cyprus, defended that city with indomitable perseverance during a long siege, which cost Mustapha, the general of the Turkish army, many thousands of his bravest soldiers. The promised aid from Venice not arriving in time, Bragandino was compelled to surrender on honorable conditions, which Mustapha violated with consummate treachery. He caused the principal officers to be beheaded in sight of their commander, who was reserved for a more inhuman punishment. Three times the scimetar was drawn across his throat, that he might endure the pain of more than one death, yet the illustrious victim quailed not nor wavered in his intrepid demeanor. His nose and ears were then cut off, and loaded with chains he was compelled to carry earth in a hod to those who were repairing the fortifications. With this heavy burden he was forced to bend and kiss the ground every time he passed before Mustapha. Still his courage supported him, and he kept dignified silence. Finally he was lashed to the yard-arm of one of the Turkish galleys, and flayed alive. He endured all with unshaken firmness, and to the last reproached the infidels with their perfidy and inhumanity. His skin was carried in parade along the coasts of Syria and Egypt, and deposited in the arsenal of Constantinople, whence it was obtained by the children of the illustrious hero, and preserved as the most glorious relic in their family.
We find it written in Baker's Chronicle that King William Rufus, being reconciled to his brother Robert, assisted him to recover Fort St. Michael, in Normandy, forcibly held by Prince Henry, afterwards Henry the First. During the siege, William one day [{170}] happening to be riding carelessly along the shore, was set upon by three knights, who assaulted him so fiercely that they drew him from his saddle, and the saddle from his horse. But catching up his saddle, and drawing his sword, he defended himself until rescue came. Being afterwards blamed for his obstinacy in risking his life for a trifling part of his equipment, "It would have angered me to the very heart," he replied, "that the knaves should have bragged they had won the saddle from me." The same authority tells us that "Malcolm, king of the Scots, a contemporary of William Rufus, was a most valiant prince, as appears by an act of his of an extraordinary strain. Hearing of a conspiracy and plot to murder him, by one whose name is not recorded, he dissembled all knowledge of it, till being abroad one day hunting in company with the concealed traitor, he took him apart in a wood, and being alone, 'Here now,' said he, 'is fit time and place to do that manfully which you intended to do treacherously; draw your weapon, and if you now kill me, none being present, you can incur no danger.' By this speech of the king's the fellow was so daunted, that presently he fell down at his feet and humbly implored forgiveness; which being granted, he proved himself ever after a loyal and faithful servant. This same Malcolm, son of the Duncan who was murdered by Macbeth, was himself killed at the siege of Alnwick Castle, in 1093. A young English knight rode into the Scottish camp, armed only with a slight spear, whereon hung the keys of the castle, and approaching near the king, lowered his lance, as if presenting the keys in token of surrender. Suddenly he made a home thrust at the monarch's eye, which ran into his brain, and he fell dead on the instant, the bold Englishman saving himself by the swiftness of his horse. From this act of desperate valor came the surname of Piercy, or Percy, ever since borne with so much honor by the noble house of Northumberland."
A Dutch seaman being condemned to death, his punishment was changed, and he was ordered to be left on the island of St. Helena, at that time uninhabited. The horrors of solitude, without the hope of escape, determined him to attempt one of the strangest actions ever recorded. There had been interred that day in the same island an officer of the ship. The seaman took the body out of the coffin, and having made a kind of or of the upper board, ventured to see in it. There was fortunately for him a dead calm, and as he glided along, early the next morning he came near the ship lying immovable within two leagues of the island. When his former companions saw so strange a float upon the waters, they imagined it was a spectral delusion, but when they discovered the reality, were not a little startled at the resolution of the man who durst hazard himself on the sea in three boards slightly nailed together. He had little hope of being received by those who had so lately sentenced him to death. Accordingly it was put to the question whether he should be saved or not. After some debates and much difference of opinion, mercy prevailed. He was taken on board, and came afterwards to Holland, where he lived in the town of Hoorn, and related to many how miraculously God had delivered him.
Raleigh's History of the World abounds in anecdotes of undaunted action. Amongst many others, the following is not the least remarkable: "Henry, Earl of Alsatia, surname Iron, because of his strength, obtained great favor with Edward the Third by reason of his valor, and of course became a mark of envy for the courtiers. One day, in the absence of the king, they counselled the queen that forasmuch as the earl was unduly preferred before all the English peers and knights, she would make trial whether he was so highly descended as he gave out, by causing a lion to be let loose on him unawares, affirming that if Henry were truly noble the lion would [{171}] refuse to assail him. They obtained leave to the effect that they desired. The earl was accustomed to rise before day, and to walk in the lower court of the castle in which he resided, to enjoy the fresh air of the morning. A lion was brought in during the night, in his cage, the door of which was afterward raised by a mechanical contrivance, so that he had liberty of escape. The earl came down in his night gown, with girdle and sword, when he encountered the lion, bristling his hair and roaring in the middle of the court. Not in the least astonished or thrown off his guard he called out with a stout voice, 'Stand, you dog!' Whereupon the lion crouched at his feet, to the great amazement of the courtiers, who peeped from their hiding-places to see the issue of the trick they had planned. The earl grasped the lion by the mane, shut him up in his cage, and left his night-cap upon his back, and so came forth, without even looking behind him. 'Now,' said he to them that skulked behind the casements, 'let him amongst you that standeth most upon his pedigree go and fetch My night-cap.' But they, one and all, ashamed and terrified, withdrew themselves in silence."
But the most brilliant deeds and daring of warriors on the battle-field, stimulated by all the excitements of pride, ambition, and man's applause, in the estimate of true heroism fall far below the glory of the patient, unpretending martyr, who dies for his faith at the stake, amidst the blaspheming yells of his persecutors.
How impressive is the character drawn by Modestus, deputy of the Emperor Valens, of St. Basil the Great, as he is justly called, whom he sought to draw, with other eminent bishops, into the heresy of Arius. He attempted it at first with caresses and all the sugared phrases that might be expected from one who had words at command. Disappointed in this course, he tried threats of exile, torture, and death. Finding all equally fruitless, he returned to his lord with this character of Basil—"Firmior est quam ut verbis, praestantior quam ut minis, fortior quam ut blanditiis vinci possit." He is so resolute and determined, that neither words, threats, nor allurements have any power to alter him.
A sense of duty, in its high moral definition, ranks far beyond the mere courage of the soldier, the selfish love of fame, the thirst of glory, or the desire of personal pre-eminence. The late Duke of Wellington was duty personified. The following illustrative anecdote has never, we believe, been in print, and came to the present relater through a source which vouches its authenticity. The duke was also reticent, and not given to communicate his arrangements more openly to his officers than was required for their exact comprehension and the fulfilment of their instructions. It is generally supposed that Lord Hill was second in command at Waterloo, and that he would have assumed the direction of affairs had the great duke been killed or wounded during the battle. This is a mistake. Lord Uxbridge, afterwards Marquis of Anglesea, was senior in rank, by the date of his lieutenant-general's commission, to Lord Hill, and on him the command would have devolved in the possible and not improbable contingency alluded to. The duke communicated with him most frankly and cordially on all professional points, but from family incidents there was not that perfect unreserve and friendly intercourse in private which otherwise might have been. On the evening of the 17th of June, Lord Uxbridge said to Sir Hussey Vivian, his old friend and brother officer of the 7th Hussars, "I am very unpleasantly situated. There will be a great battle to-morrow. The duke, as we all know, exposes himself without reserve, and will, in all probability, do so more than ever on this occasion. If an unlucky shot should strike him, and I find myself suddenly in command, I have not the most distant idea of what his intentions are. I would give the world to know, as they [{172}] must be profoundly calculated, and far beyond any I could hit upon for myself in a sudden crisis. We are not personally intimate enough to allow me to ask or hint the question. What shall I do?" "Consult Alava," replied Vivian. "He is evidently more in the duke's confidence than any one else, and will perhaps undertake to speak to him." Lord Uxbridge followed the suggestion, rode over to head-quarters, and finding General Alava, stated the object of his visit. "I agree with you," said the Spaniard; "the question is serious; but honored as I am by the duke's confidence, I dare not propose it to him. I think, however, that you can and ought to do so. If you like, I will tell him you are here." Lord Uxbridge, not without reluctance, consented, and being introduced to the duke's apartments, with some hesitation stated, as delicately as he could, the matter which disturbed him. The duke listened until Lord Uxbridge ceased to speak; his features indicated no emotion; and when he replied, it was without impatience, surprise, or any alteration of his usual manner. After a short pause he said, "Who do you expect will attack to-morrow, I or Bonaparte?" "Bonaparte, I suppose," answered Lord Uxbridge. "Well, then," rejoined the duke, "he has not told me his plans; how then can I tell you mine, which must depend on his?" Lord Uxbridge said no more; he had nothing more to say. The duke seeing that he looked a little blank, laid his hand gently on his shoulder: "But one thing, Uxbridge," he observed, "is quite certain; come what may, you and I will both do our duty." And so, with a cordial pressure of the hand, they parted.