The lively adventures of Gavin Hamilton

by Molly Elliot Seawell

“Good news! great news!” he said, sitting down on the table, where Gavin was studying a large map of the country spread out before him. “We move to-morrow. A wagon train of more than three thousand four-horse wagons, loaded with money, food, clothing, and ammunition—they say our old acquaintance, the King of Prussia, is devilish short of ammunition—has started from Neisse. If it reaches Olmutz, it will prolong the siege certainly—Frederick thinks it will give him the victory. But if we can stop it, we can save Olmutz without a pitched battle, and thereby ruin the Prussian campaign in the beginning. It has an escort of seven thousand men, and four thousand men will be sent to meet it; that means that the Prussians must lose a whole army corps, as well as their three or four thousand wagons and twelve thousand horses.”

“And we will stop them here,” cried Gavin, excitably, pointing on the map to the pass of Domstadtl. “You know, that pass, hemmed in by mountains, and narrow and devious, a thousand men could stop ten thousand there.”

“We will make a feint at Guntersdorf, a few miles before they get to Domstadtl; but you are right; the Prussians must open that gate and shut it after them if they want to save their convoy; and the opening and shutting will be hard enough, I promise you. We move the day after to-morrow, so go to bed. You will have work to do to-morrow.”

Work, indeed, there was to do for every officer and man in Marshal Daun’s army; and the morning after they were on the march. It was a bright and beautiful June morning, and it seemed a holiday march to the fifty thousand Austrians. Marshal Daun was noted for keeping his men well fed, and the friendly disposition of the people in the province made this an easy thing to do. The Austrian armies were ever the most picturesque in Europe, owing to the splendour and variety of their uniforms and the different races represented. Rested and refreshed after the disastrous campaign of the autumn, on this day they hailed with joy the prospect of meeting their ancient enemy. With fresh twigs in their helmets, with their knapsacks well filled, the great masses of cavalry, infantry, and artillery stepped out in beautiful order, threading their way along the breezy uplands and through the green heart of the wooded hills down to the charming valleys below.

St. Arnaud and Gavin were with the vanguard. A part of their duty was to throw a reinforcement of eleven hundred men into Olmutz, and it was Marshal Daun’s design to make Frederick think that a pitched battle in front of Olmutz was designed.

All through the dewy morning they travelled briskly, and after a short rest at noon they again took up the line of march in the golden afternoon. About six o’clock they reached a little white village in the plain, which was to be the halting place for the night of Loudon’s corps.

It was an exquisite June evening, cool for the season, with a young moon trembling in the east, and a sky all green and rose and opal in the west. Myriads of flashing stars glittered in the deep blue heavens, and the passing from the golden light of day to the silver radiance of the night was ineffably lovely.

From the vast green plain and the dusky hills and valleys rose the camp-fires of fifty thousand men. Just at sunset the band of St. Arnaud’s regiment, marching out to a green field beyond the village, began to play the national hymn. Other bands, from the near-by plain and the far-away recesses of the hills and valleys, joined in, and the music, deliciously softened by the distances, floated upward, till it was lost in the evening sky.

Gavin and St. Arnaud, walking together along a little hawthorn-bordered lane, listened with a feeling of delight so sharp as to be almost pain. The magic beauty of the scene, the hour, and the sweet music were overpowering. St. Arnaud’s words, after a long silence, when the last echo of the music had died among the hills, were:

“And this delicious prelude is the beginning of the great concert of war, cannon, and musketry, the groans and cries of the wounded, the wild weeping of widows and orphans, the tap of the drum in the funeral march.”