Do you remember, my heart, how, nineteen years ago, we passed through here on the road from Prague to Vienna? No mirror showed the future—not even when I passed over this railway, in 1852, with the kind Lynar. We are all well. If we do not become extravagant in our demands, and do not imagine that we have conquered the world, we shall obtain a peace worth the having. But we are as easily intoxicated as cast down, and I have the unthankful office of pouring water into this foaming wine, and to cause it to be understood that we do not inhabit Europe alone, but with three neighbors. The Austrians are encamped in Moravia, and we are already so daring as to affirm that our head-quarters will to-morrow be where theirs are to-day. Prisoners are still arriving, and cannon since the 3d to the number of one hundred and eighty. If they bring up their southern army, with God’s gracious assistance, we will beat that also. Confidence is general. Our people are worthy to be kissed; every man is brave to the death, quiet, obedient, moralized, with empty stomachs, wet clothes, little sleep, boot-soles falling off—friendly towards every one, no plundering and burning, paying what they are able, and eating mouldy bread. There must exist a depth of piety in our common soldier, or all this could not be. It is difficult to obtain any news of friends. We lie miles away from each other; no one knows where the other may be, and there is no one to send—that is to say, plenty of men, but no horses. For four days I have been seeking for Philip,[54] who has been slightly wounded in the head by a lance-thrust, as G. wrote me word, but I can not discover where he lies, and now we have proceeded eight miles farther. The King exposed himself very greatly on the 3d, and it was well that I was with him, for all the warnings of others were in vain, and no one else would have dared to have spoken as I did on the last occasion, when I succeeded, after a knot of ten cuirassiers and fifteen horses of the 6th Cuirassier Regiment were rolling around in their blood, and bombs were flying about in very unpleasant proximity to our Sovereign. The worst of them, fortunately, did not explode. Yet I would rather have it so than that he should be over-prudent. He was full of enthusiasm at his troops, and justly; so that he never remarked the noise and fighting around him, and sat quiet and comfortably, as if at Kreuzberg, continually coming across battalions whom he had to thank and say “Good-night” to, until we had got under fire again. He had to listen to so much on the subject, however, that he will let it alone for the future, and you may rest quite tranquil. I hardly believe in another real battle.
If you receive no news from any one, you may be assured that he is alive and well, for any wounds to friends we hear of in less than twenty-four hours. We have not as yet come into contact with Herwarth and Steinmetz; therefore I have also not seen Sch., but I know that both are well. G. leads his squadron quietly forward with his arm in a sling. Farewell. I must go to duty. Your most faithful
V. B.
Zwittau in Moravia, 11th July, 1866.
I am in want of an inkstand, all being in use; otherwise I am well, after sleeping well on a field-bed and air-mattress, and awakening at eight to find a letter from you. I had gone to bed at eleven. At Königsgrätz I rode the tall roan; was thirteen hours in the saddle without fodder. He behaved very well, was frightened neither at the firing nor the corpses, ate corn-tops and plum-leaves with satisfaction at the most difficult moments, and went thoroughly well to the end, when I seemed more tired than the horse. My first bed for the night was on the roadway of Horic, without straw, with the aid of a carriage cushion. Every place was full of the wounded; the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg found me, and then shared his chamber with me, R., and two adjutants—which, on account of the rain, was very welcome to me. As to the King and the bombs, I have already informed you. The generals all were full of the superstition that, as soldiers, they dared not speak to the King of danger, and always sent me to him, although I am a major. The rising trigger of the revolver covers the sight point, and the notch in the top of the cock does not show in the line of sight. Tell T. of this. Good-bye, my dearest; I must go to S. Your faithful
V. B.
Nicolsburg! It was there that Bismarck fought his quiet battle, there he accomplished his Sadowa, and chivalrously strove for victory and peace, not alone against the diplomacy of his antagonists, but against the proud daring of triumph in his own camp, which encircled him in so heart-warming and so seductive a manner. Perhaps Bismarck never showed himself a greater statesman than in those days; the billows of victory could not overthrow him, mightily as they dashed over him; he stood like a tower in the torrent of rancor, anger, even of most malicious suspicion, which rose up against him. But he perceived the hollow-eyed ghost of pest silently creeping through the armies, and pitilessly strangling out the life of the victors; he knew what the climate of Hungary was in August, and he looked boldly at the cloud which was rising, pregnant with calamity, in the far west. Hail to the faithful and brave hearts who in so terrible an hour clung firmly to Bismarck!
It was a strange coincidence that the magnificent castle of Nicolsburg had passed through the female line from the inheritance of the great house of the Princes of Dietrichstein to General Count von Mensdorff-Ponilly, of Lothringian descent, like the Austrian Imperial House itself, so that peace was actually negotiated in the very mansion of the Imperial Minister for Foreign Affairs himself. Has not the Count Mensdorff-Ponilly, as the heir of the Dietrichsteins through his wife, been recently raised to princely rank under the title of Nicolsburg?
