Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling

by Bertha von Suttner

“Yes,” broke in Frederick, “the fight against an enemy who threatens you with death, the longing, proud desire of conquering him fills you with peculiar enjoyment—pray forgive me the word, Aunt Mary—as indeed everything which sustains or expands life is guaranteed to us by Nature through the reward of joy. As long as man was in peril from savage assailants, on two legs or four, and could only protect his life by killing the latter, battle became one of his delights. If in the midst of a fight the same pleasure creeps through our veins still though we are civilised men, it is only a reminiscence of heredity. And at the present time, when there are in Europe no more savages or beasts of prey, in order that this delight may not vanish from us entirely, we have invented artificial assailants for ourselves. This is what goes on. Attention! You wear blue coats, and those men there red coats. As soon as we clap hands three times the red coats will be turned for you into tigers, and the blue coats will become wild beasts to them. So now—one, two, three; blow the charge, beat the attack; and now you can set off, and devour each other; and after 10,000—or always in proportion to the rise in the magnitude of armies—100,000 artificial tigers have devoured each other with mutual delight in battle at Xdorf, then you have the battle of Xdorf, which is to become historical; and then the men who clap hands assemble round a green congress table in Xstadt, rule lines for altered frontiers on the map, haggle over the proportion of contributions, sign a paper which figures in the historical annals as the Peace of Xstadt, clap their hands three times once more, and say to the redcoats and the bluecoats surviving ‘Embrace each other, men and brethren’!”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CHAPTER XIV.

The Prussians advance on Vienna.—Prussian officers quartered at Grumitz.—My brother Otto’s warlike ardour.—He gets into trouble.—A grand dinner to the self-invited guests.—Sudden engagement of my sister Rosa to Prince Henry von Reuss.—General felicity and enjoyment.—Departure of the Prussians.—Outbreak of cholera at Grumitz.—The château is infected.—First some of the servants, then my sisters, then Otto die of cholera, and lastly my father dies from heart disease, cursing war with his last breath.—Conrad’s suicide.

THERE were Prussians quartered everywhere in the neighbourhood, and now Grumitz had to come into the circle.

Though the suspension of hostilities was already in force, and peace was almost certain, yet general fear and mistrust reigned throughout the people. The idea that these spike-helmeted tigers would tear them to pieces if they could was not easily eradicated out of the people. The three claps of the hand at Nicolsburg had not yet availed to undo the effect of the three claps of the declaration of war, and to make the country-folk look on the Prussians again in the light of brothers. The very name of the opposing nation gathers round it in war time a whole host of hateful implied meanings. It is not merely the distinctive name of a nation hostile for the moment, but it becomes the synonym for “enemy,” and comprises in itself all the repugnance which that word expresses.

And so it happened that the folks in the neighbourhood trembled, as before wolves broken loose, if a Prussian quartermaster came there to procure lodging for his troops. With some besides fear hatred also was expressed, and these thought they were discharging a patriotic duty if they did anything to injure a Prussian, if they sent a rifle bullet out of some place of concealment after “the foe”. This had often taken place, and if the guilty party was caught he was executed without much circumstance. These examples had the effect of making the people suppress their hatred and receive without opposition the soldiers quartered on them. Then they found to their no small amazement that “the enemy” really consisted of nothing but good-humoured, friendly fellows, who paid their way honestly.

One morning, it was early in August, I was sitting in the bow-window of the library and looking out through the open window. From this point was a long view over the surrounding country. I thought I saw from a distance a troop of cavalry moving along the high road in our direction.

“Prussians coming for quarters,” was my first thought. I adjusted a telescope which stood in the bow, and looked towards the point in question. Right; it was a troop of about ten riders with waving black and white little flags on the points of their lances. And among them a man on foot, in hunting costume. Why was he walking in this way between the horses? A prisoner? The glass was not powerful enough. I could not make out whether the man I took for a prisoner might not be one of our own foresters.