I got down to the seat of war some weeks before the summer armistice, and indulged in what you call the criminal curiosity of witnessing blood and desolation. Never shall time efface from my memory the recollection of that hour of astonishment when I stood with the good monks of St James’ to overlook a charge of Klenau’s cavalry upon the French under Grenier. We saw the fire given and returned, and heard distinctly the sound of French pas de charge collecting the lines to attack in close column. After three hours awaiting the issue of a severe action, a park of artillery was opened just beneath the walls of the monastery, and several drivers that were stationed there to convey the wounded in spring waggons were killed in our sight.
In some notes relating to the same period he remarks that, in point of impressions, this formed the most important epoch in his life; but he adds that his recollections of seeing men strewn dead on the field, or what was worse, seeing them dying, were so horrible, that he studiously endeavoured to banish them from his memory.
There were, however, scenes of peace as well as of war. Some Hamburg friends had given him letters of introduction to the venerable Abbot Arbuthnot, of the Benedictine Scots College, under whose protection it was believed that he would have special opportunities for study and observation; and the hospitality of the monks now ‘amused’ him, as he puts it, into such tranquillity as was possible in that perilous time. The ‘splendour and sublimity’ of the Catholic Church service, notably the music, also affected him with all the attraction of novelty. But these things were at best only alleviations. Campbell had already begun to suffer from Johnson’s demon of hypochondria, and when the novelty of his surroundings had worn off, he felt himself in the worst imaginable plight of the stranger in a strange land. The following programme of his day’s doings affords a hint of his wretchedness:
I rise at seven—thanks to the flies that forbid me to sleep—and after returning thanks to God for prolonging my miserable existence at Ratisbon, I put on a pair of boots and pantaloons, and study with open windows, and half-naked, till ten o’clock. I then chew a crust of bread, and eat a plum for breakfast. At 11 my parlez-vous-Français steps in with his formal periwig and still more formal bow. I chatter a jargon of Latin and French to him—for he has no English—and study again from 12 till 1: dine and read English or Greek till 2, and then take an afternoon walk. Under a burning sun I then expose my feeble carcase in a walk round the cursed walls, or traverse the wood where the Rothmantels or ‘Red Cloaks’ and Hussars amused us at cut-and-thrust before the city was taken. Sometimes I venture to the heights where the last kick-up was seen, when the poor Austrians were driven across the Danube. The Convent I seldom visit: we always get upon politics, and that is a cursed subject.
So indeed it seemed. It was, however, Campbell’s own fault. The brotherhood of the Schotten Kirche[2] had welcomed him very heartily on his arrival; but they were Jacobites, and he was so indiscreet as to make open avowal of his Republican opinions. The result was unpleasant enough. One of the monks denounced him for his political heresies; others regarded him with ill-concealed suspicion and distrust. A countryman of his own, who bore the conventual name of Father Boniface, had recommended him to an unsuitable lodging at the house of a friend, and Campbell complained that he had been robbed there. Father Boniface met the complaint with abuse, and ‘spoke to me once or twice,’ says Campbell, ‘in a manner rather strange.’ One night the Father dogged him into the refectory and attacked him with the most blackguardly scurrility. ‘I never,’ writes Campbell, ‘found myself so completely carried away by indignation. I flew at the scoundrel and would have soon rewarded his insolence had not the others interposed.’ After an experience like this, it was only natural that he should declaim against the ‘lazy, loathsome, ignorant, ill-bred’ monks, whose society he had at first found so agreeable! The only one for whom he entertained a lasting regard was Dr Arbuthnot, whom he describes as ‘the most commanding figure he ever beheld,’ and to whom he unmistakably alludes in ‘The Ritter Bann,’ one of his later poems.
Being unable either to advance or retreat, and not knowing what to do with himself amid the gloom and excitement caused by the presence of two hostile armies, Campbell appears to have sunk into something like blank despair. ‘Oh, God!’ he exclaims in a letter, ‘when the dull dusk of evening comes on, when the melancholy bell calls to vespers, I find myself a poor solitary being, dumb from the want of heart to speak, and deaf to all that is said from a want of interest to hear.’ About the future he feels an insecurity and a dread which baffle all his efforts to form a scheme or resolution. Low-minded people suspect him, and debate about his character, and wonder what he can be doing in Ratisbon. He cannot settle himself to literary work of any kind. He sits down resolved to compose in spite of uncertainty and uneasiness, and looks helplessly for hours together at the paper before him.
Campbell’s letters of this period make indeed most doleful reading. They are addressed, for the most part, to John Richardson, a young Edinburgh lawyer who enjoyed familiar intercourse with Scott and other dii majores of the capital. Richardson had promised to join him in Germany, and when Campbell is not voicing his woes, he is planning schemes for Richardson and himself when at length they are free to start on a tour. With economy he thinks they might visit every corner of Germany, travel three thousand miles, stop at convenient stages for a few days at a time, and be ‘masters of all the geographical knowledge worth learning’ for £30 a-piece. They will require nothing in the way of baggage but ‘a stick fitted as an umbrella—a nice contrivance very common here—with a fine Holland shirt in one pocket, our stockings and silk breeches in the other, and a few cravats wrapped in clean paper in the crowns of our hats.’ At country inns they can have bed and supper for half-a-crown, coffee for sixpence, and bread and beer for twopence. As for books, Campbell will always manage to carry enough in his pockets for evening amusement; but Richardson must ‘bring, for God’s sake, Shakespeare and a few British classics.’ A striking idea occurs to him in one of his sportive moods. ‘Without degrading our characters in the least, we might have some articles from Britain and dispose of them to immense advantage. The merchants here are greedy and blind to their interests: they sell little because they sell so high. Their general profit is two hundred per cent.’ The spectacle of Thomas Campbell hawking British goods round the German Empire would have been sufficiently diverting; but of course it was only another of his ponderous pleasantries.
Nevertheless, there was good reason for his being anxious about making a little money. His funds were fast giving out, and at present he did not quite see how he was to replenish his purse. He makes constant complaint about the uncertainty of remittances, and in one letter strikes his hand on his ‘sad heart’ as he thinks of himself starving far from home and friends. However, matters mended a little for a time: his spirits revived, he found himself able to work again; and the armistice having been renewed, he made various interesting excursions into the interior, getting as far as Munich, and returning by the valley of the Iser. ‘I remember,’ he says, speaking of these excursions in a letter quoted by Washington Irving, ‘I remember how little I valued the art of painting before I got into the heart of such impressive scenes; but in Germany I would have given anything to have possessed an art capable of conveying ideas inaccessible to speech and writing. Some particular scenes were indeed rather overcharged with that degree of the terrific which oversteps the sublime; and I own my flesh yet creeps at the recollection of spring-waggons and hospitals. But the sight of Ingolstadt in ruins or Hohenlinden covered with fire, seven miles in circumference, were spectacles never to be forgotten.’
The reference to Hohenlinden here is somewhat puzzling. According to Beattie, Campbell left Ratisbon in the beginning of October, and went by way of Leipsic to Altona, where he remained until his return to England. He was certainly at Altona in the beginning of November, for his letters then begin to date from thence. But the battle of Hohenlinden was not fought until the 3rd of December, and it is therefore clear that Campbell, unless he made a journey of which we have no trace, could not have seen Hohenlinden ‘covered with fire.’ Beattie suggests that in the passage just quoted Hohenlinden may be a slip for Landshut on the Iser, Leipheim, near Gunzberg, or Donauwert, where battles and conflagrations took place during the summer campaign, the effects of which Campbell may have witnessed after his arrival on the Danube. He says that he often heard the poet refer to ‘the sight of Ingolstadt in ruins,’ but he never once heard him describe the field of Hohenlinden. Of course if he visited Munich at the time mentioned he may have made a cursory survey of the village; but until after the battle, travellers never thought of going out of their way to see Hohenlinden. It is a pity that there should be any dubiety upon this matter, for our interest in Campbell’s stirring lines would have been heightened by the knowledge that he had been an eye-witness of the events which they describe.
The armistice which had been renewed at Hohenlinden on the 28th of September was for forty-five days. As the time for its termination approached Campbell thought it wise, in view of a resumption of hostilities, to secure his passports, and escape from Ratisbon. There was another determining point: his funds were now almost exhausted, and he wanted to be nearer home. He decided to go to Hamburg, whence, if remittances did not arrive, he could take passage for Leith. Of his journey from Ratisbon we hear practically nothing, though in one of his letters he gives an indication of his route by mentioning such towns as Nuremberg, Bamberg, Weimar, Jena, Leipsic, Halle, Brunswick, and Lunenburg. In his previous journey to Ratisbon in July he seems to have followed the course of the Elbe to Dresden, and thence proceeded through Zwickau, Bayreuth, and Amberg to the seat of war on the Danube; so that now he was, as he says, ‘master of all to be seen’ in a very considerable part of the country.