A good deal has been written about the enormous numbers of killed and wounded in the present Franco-Prussian war, the fact being nevertheless, as we learn on competent authority, that notwithstanding the improvements made of late years in arms of precision, there were, considering the numbers engaged, quite as many men disabled as in the good old days of “Brown Bess” in the wars of the first Napoleon and in our battles in India. Mr. Hill Burton, in one of his recently published volumes of the History of Scotland, and an admirable and very impartial history it is, tells us that in the battle of Langside, an historical combat on the issue of which so much in the after history of England and Scotland depended, 10,000 men were engaged for three-quarters of an hour, with a loss to the Queen’s party of 300 hors de combat, while the victors only lost one man! A very extraordinary fact certainly; but a more wonderful fact still, and neither Mr. Burton nor his reviewers seem to be aware of it, is that of the battle of Tippermuir, fought in 1644, between the Covenanters and the famous Marquis of Montrose, in which Montrose was victorious without the loss of a single man on his own side, although of the Covenanters between four and five hundred were killed in the battle and pursuit. Another curious thing connected with the battle of Tippermuir was this: a body of Highlanders, keen enough for the fray, were without arms of any kind, when Montrose, pointing to the stones that thickly strewed the field, advised them to try these to begin with, and they did, appropriating the arms of their enemies as they fell, and using them with such effect that the battle proper was over in less than half an hour. The only other battle that we can recollect in which such primitive weapons as stones were employed by the combatants was that of Cappel, fought in 1531, between the Protestants of Zurich and the Catholics of the neighbouring cantons. It was in this battle that the celebrated reformer Zwingle, or Zwinglius, met his death. He was first of all knocked down by a stone that, fiercely hurled, struck him on the head, and then, with the exclamation, “Die, obstinate heretic,” the sword of Fockinger of Unterwalden pierced his throat, and the reformer was no more.
The reader has, of course, seen in the papers how beleaguered Paris keeps up communication with Belgium and the provinces, by means of balloons and carrier pigeons. Of balloons and ballooning we have no practical experience; of carrier pigeons we do know something, the bird being as well-known to us as is a robin redbreast to a gardener. We kept them for some time, but were obliged to get quit of them on account of their ineradicable propensity to purloin our neighbours’ turnip seed from the drill immediately after being sown and before they got time to sprout. All pigeons have this habit, but the carrier worse and more persistently than any other. The speed and power of wing appertaining to the carrier pigeon is extraordinary, and if not well attested would be deemed incredible. We remember, for instance, that at the Christmas of 1845, when a student at the University of St. Andrews (best as well as oldest university in Scotland, gainsay it who may!) we spent our holidays at Kirkmichael, a pleasant little village in the Highlands of Perthshire. On leaving St. Andrews we took with us a carrier pigeon, a magnificent bird. On the 1st of January 1846, at the hour of noon precisely, we gave this bird, with a bit of narrow blue ribbon tied under his wing, his liberty on the bridge of Kirkmichael. When let out of his basket he instantly soared up in a sort of spiral flight, ascending and ascending cork-screw fashion until he seemed to the eye no bigger than a wren, then straight and swift as an arrow from a bow he urged his flight southwards, and became lost to view. On returning to St. Andrews, we found that our bird had reached his dovecot, eagerly watched and waited for by his owner, as the College bells were chiming one o’clock on the same day, so that it must have done the distance, about fifty-four miles as the crow flies, in about one hour, or very nearly at the rate of a mile a minute. Now, it must be remembered that this was the bird’s ordinary flight. He doubtless sought his distant home in what one might call a brisk and business-like manner, nor swerved, we may be sure, an inch from his course, nor loitered by the way. He was going well—very well, if you like—throughout, but not going his best. The probability is that under extraordinary pressure, with a falcon in chase, for instance, the same bird could and would have gone twice as fast, or at a rate of something more than a hundred miles an hour. If the reader likes to experiment in this direction, he can easily try it with the common domestic pigeon, as we have done more than once. Years ago we recollect a brother of ours taking, at our suggestion, a common black and white pigeon from the dovecot here to Oban, where, at a preconcerted hour on a day agreed upon, he set it at liberty. The bird took nearly two hours to do the distance, some twenty-three or twenty-four miles as the crow flies; but it probably lingered some time by the way to feed, as, instead of being well fed, which should always be strictly attended to, it received no food at all on the morning of its liberation at Oban. The house-pigeon, however, is useless except for comparatively short distances, and even then is never to be much depended upon. His extreme domesticity predisposes him to pay a visit to every dovecot on the route, and to fraternise with every flock of brother pigeons he may happen to fall in with. His peculiar mode of flight, besides, and his extreme timidity, mark him out as an easy and desirable prey for any keen-eyed hawk or falcon that may be at the moment impransus, as Johnson in his early days once signed a note in London—dinnerless. The common pigeon, too, wings his flight at a comparatively low altitude, and becomes an easy shot to any one with a gun ready to hand when it passes by. Not so the true carrier pigeon, which flies at a great height, far out of range of needle-gun or artillery—out of range of human sight, in fact; so that it is never in danger of being brought to grief, as was poor Gambetta in his balloon when passing above the Prussian lines the other day. The velocity with which some birds fly is almost incredible. A hungry falcon, with his blood up and in eager pursuit of his quarry, will fly at the rate of 150 miles an hour, and keep it up too until his object is attained; and the tremendous impetus of the bird at such a speed accounts for the dreadful wounds that a falcon inflicts when it strikes its prey, sometimes ripping up a grouse, or blackcock, or mallard, from vent to breastbone, as if it had been done by the keen edge of a butcher’s cleaver. A goshawk (Falco palumbarius) belonging to Henry of Navarre—the Henri Quatre of after days—having its royal owner’s name engraved on its golden varvels, made its escape from Fontainebleau in 1574, and was caught in Malta within four-and-twenty hours afterwards—a distance of 1400 miles, or at the rate of sixty miles an hour, supposing him to have been on the wing the whole time. But a hawk never flies by night, so that, on a fair computation, the bird’s speed in winging the enormous distance must have been at the rate of at least 100 miles an hour. We have calculated that a snipe, thoroughly alarmed, and going its best, can fly at the rate of a mile a minute, and there are other well-known birds equally fleet of wing. Nor must it be supposed that the velocity of birds is a mere “flash-in-the-pan,” so to speak—a “spurt,” as it were—which could not be kept up. The long-sustained flights of migratory birds proves the contrary—that birds are not only inconceivably fleet, but, to use a racing term, that they can stay as well. Of our more familiar birds, we should say that the common wild duck of our meres flies with greater velocity than any other bird with which the reader is likely to be well acquainted.
CHAPTER XVII.
Signs of a severe Winter—The Little Auk or Auklet—The Gadwall—Falcons being trained by the Prussians to intercept the Paris Carrier Pigeons—Ballooning—The King of Prussia’s Piety—John Forster—Solar Eclipse of 22d December 1870—The Government and the Eclipse—Large Solar Spots—Visible to the naked eye—Rev. Dr. Cumming—November Meteors.
It must have been in view of some such scene [November 1870] as the early morning presents to the eye at present that Horace began his celebrated ode to Augustus—
“Jam satis terris nivis, atque diræ
Grandinis misit Pater”—
Enough, enough of snow and direful hail! Or if you prefer the wintry scene in the ninth Ode—
“Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum