The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862
Here is certainly a falling off from Luther's Ein feste Burg, but his spirit was in the fight; and the hymn is wonderfully improved when the great Swedish captain takes it to his death.
Von Kleist (1715-1759) studied law at Königsberg, but later became an officer in the Prussian service. He wrote, in 1759, an ode to the Prussian army, was wounded at the Battle of Künersdorf, where Frederic the Great lost his army and received a ball in his snuff-box. His poetry is very poor stuff. The weight of the enemy crushes down the hills and makes the planet tremble; agony and eternal night impend; and where the Austrian horses drink, the water fails. But his verses were full of good advice to the soldiers, to spare, in the progress of their great achievements, the poor peasant who is not their foe, to help his need, and to leave pillage to Croats and cowards. The advice was less palatable to Frederic's troops than the verses.
But there were two famous soldier's songs, of unknown origin, the pets of every camp, which piqued all the poets into writing war-verses as soon as the genius of Frederic kindled such enthusiasm among Prussians. The first was an old one about Prince Eugene, who was another hero, loved in camps, and besung with ardor around every watchfire. It is a genuine soldier's song.
Prince Eugene, the noble captain,For the Kaiser would recoverTown and fortress of Belgrade;So he put a bridge togetherTo transport his army thither,And before the town parade.When the floating bridge was ready,So that guns and wagons steadyCould pass o'er the Danube stream,By Semlin a camp collected.That the Turks might be ejected,To their great chagrin and shame.Twenty-first of August was it,When a spy in stormy weatherCame, and told the Prince and sworeThat the Turks they all amounted,Near, at least, as could be counted,To three hundred thousand men, or more.Prince Eugenius never trembledAt the news, but straight assembledAll his generals to know:Them he carefully instructedHow the troops should be conductedSmartly to attack the foe.With the watchword he commandedThey should wait till twelve was soundedAt the middle of the night;Mounting then upon their horses,For a skirmish with the forces,Go in earnest at the fight.Straightway all to horseback getting,Weapons handy, forth were settingSilently from the redoubt:Musketeers, dragooners also,Bravely fought and made them fall so,—Led them such a dance about.And our cannoneers advancingFurnished music for the dancing,With their pieces great and small;Great and small upon them playing,Heathen were averse to staying,Ran, and did not stay at all.Prince Eugenius on the right wingLike a lion did his fighting,So he did field-marshal's part:Prince Ludwig rode from one to th' other,Cried, "Keep firm, each German brother,Hurt the foe with all your heart!"Prince Ludwig, struck by bullet leaden,With his youthful life did redden,And his soul did then resign:Badly Prince Eugene wept o'er him,For the love he always bore him,—Had him brought to Peterwardein.The music is peculiar,—one flat, 3/4 time,—a very rare measure, and giving plenty of opportunity for a quaint camp-style of singing.
The other song appeared during Frederic's Silesian War. It contains some choice reminiscences of his favorite rhetoric.
Fridericus Rex, our master and king,His soldiers altogether to the field would bring,Battalions two hundred, and a thousand squadrons clear,And cartridges sixty to every grenadier."Cursed fellows, ye!"—his Majesty began,—"For me stand in battle, each man to man;Silesia and County Glatz to me they will not grant,Nor the hundred millions either which I want."The Empress and the French have gone to be allied,And the Roman kingdom has revolted from my side,And the Russians are bringing into Prussia war;—Up, let us show them that we Prussians are!"My General Schwerin, and Field-Marshal Von Keith,And Von Ziethen, Major-General, are ready for a fight;Turban-spitting Element! Cross and Lightning getWho has not found Fritz and his soldiers out yet!"Now adieu, Louisa!13—Louisa, dry your eyes!There's not a soldier's life for every ball that flies;For if all the bullets singly hit their men,Where could our Majesties get soldiers then?"Now the hole a musket-bullet makes is small,—'T is a larger hole made by a cannon-ball;But the bullets all are of iron and of lead,And many a bullet goes for many overhead."'T is a right heavy calibre to our artillery,And never goes a Prussian over to the enemy,For 't is cursed bad money that the Swedes have to pay;Is there any better coin of the Austrian?—who can say?"The French are paid off in pomade by their king,But each week in pennies we get our reckoning;Sacrament of Cross and Lightning! Turbans, spit away!Who draws so promptly as the Prussian his pay?"With a laurel-wreath adorned, Fridericus my King,If you had only oftener permitted plundering,Fredericus Rex, king and hero of the fight,We would drive the Devil for thee out of sight!Among the songs which the military ardor of this period stimulated, the best are those by Gleim, (1719-1803) called "Songs of a Prussian Grenadier." All the literary men, Lessing not excepted, were seized with the Prussian enthusiasm; the pen ravaged the domain of sentiment to collect trophies for Father Friedrich. The desolation it produced in the attempt to write the word Glory could be matched only by the sword. But Gleim was a man of spirit and considerable power. The shock of Frederic's military successes made him suddenly drop the pen with which he had been inditing Anacreontics, and weak, rhymeless Horatian moods. His grenadier-songs, though often meagre and inflated, and marked with the literary vices of the time, do still account for the great fame which they acquired, as they went marching with the finest army that Europe ever saw. Here is a specimen:—
VICTORY-SONG AFTER THE BATTLE NEAR PRAGUEVictoria! with us is God;There lies the haughty foe!He falls, for righteous is our God;Victoria! he lies low.'T is true our father14 is no more,Yet hero-like be went,And now the conquering host looks o'erFrom high and starry tent.The noble man, he led the wayFor God and Fatherland,And scarce was his old head so grayAs valiant his hand.With fire of youth and hero-craftA banner snatching, heHeld it aloft upon its shaftFor all of us to see;And said,—"My children, now attack,—Take each redoubt and gun!"And swifter than the lightning trackWe followed, every one.Alas, the flag that led the strifeFalls with him ere we win!It was a glorious end of life:O fortunate Schwerin!And when thy Frederic saw thee low,From out his sobbing breathHis orders hurled us on the foeIn vengeance for thy death.Thou, Henry,15 wert a soldier true,Thou foughtest royally!From deed to deed our glances flew,Thou lion-youth, with thee!A Prussian heart with valor quick,Right Christian was his mood:Red grew his sword, and flowing thickHis steps with Pandourt16-blood.Full seven earth-works did we clear,The bear-skins broke and fled;Then, Frederic, went thy grenadierHigh over heaps of dead:Remembered, in the murderous fight,God, Fatherland, and thee,—Turned, from the deep and smoky night,His Frederic to see,And trembled,—with a flush of fearHis visage mounted high;He trembled, not that death was near,But lest thou, too, shouldst die:Despised the balls like scattered seed,The cannon's thunder-tone,Fought fiercely, did a hero's deed,Till all thy foes had flown.Now thanks he God for all His might,And sings, Victoria!And all the blood from out this fightFlows to Theresia.And if she will not stay the plague,Nor peace to thee concede,Storm with us, Frederic, first her Prague,Then, to Vienna lead!The love which the soldiers had for Frederic survived in the army after all the veterans of his wars had passed away. It is well preserved in this camp-song:—
THE INVALIDES AT FATHER FREDERIC'S GRAVEHere stump we round upon our crutches, round our Father's grave we go, And from our eyelids down our grizzled beards the bitter tears will flow.
'T was long ago, with Frederic living, that wegot our lawful gains:A meagre ration now they serve us,—life's nolonger worth the pains.Here stump we round, deserted orphans, andwith tears each other see,—Are waiting for our marching orders hence,to be again with thee.Yes, Father, only could we buy thee, with ourblood, by Heaven, yes,—We Invalides, forlorn detachment, straightthrough death would storming press!When the German princes issued to their subjects unlimited orders for Constitutions, to be filled up and presented after the domination of Napoleon was destroyed, all classes hastened, fervid with hope and anti-Gallic feeling, to offer their best men for the War of Liberation. Then the poets took again their rhythm from an air vibrating with the cannon's pulse. There was Germanic unity for a while, fed upon expectation and the smoke of successful fields. Most of the songs of this period have been already translated. Ruckert, in a series of verses which he called "Sonnets in Armor," gave a fine scholarly expression to the popular desires. Here is his exultation over the Battle of Leipsic:—
Can there no songRoar with a mightLoud as the fightLeipsic's region along?Three days and three nights,No moment of rest,And not for a jest,Went thundering the fights.Three days and three nightsLeipsic Fair kept: Frenchmen who pleasuredThere with an iron yardstick were measured,Bringing the reckoning with them to rights.Three days and all nightA battue of larks the Leipsicker make;Every haul a hundred he takes,A thousand each flight.Ha! it is good,Now that the Russian can boast no longerHe alone of us is strongerTo slake his steppes with hostile blood.Not in the frosty North alone,But here in Meissen,Here at Leipsic on the Pleissen,Can the French be overthrown.Shallow Pleissen deep is flowing;Plains upheaving,The dead receiving,Seem to mountains for us growing.They will be our mountains never,But this fameShall be our claimOn the rolls of earth forever.What all this amounted to, when the German people began to send in their constitutional cartes-blanches, is nicely taken off by Hoffman von Fallersleben, in this mock war-song, published in 1842:—
All sing.
Hark to the beating drum!See how the people come!Flag in the van!We follow, man for man.Rouse, rouseFrom earth and house!Ye women and children, good night!Forth we hasten, we hasten to the fight,With God for our King and Fatherland.A night-patrol of 1813 sings.
O God! and why, and why,For princes' whim, renown, and might,To the fight?For court-flies and other crows,To blows?For the nonage of our folk,Into smoke?For must-war-meal and class-tax,To thwacks?For privilege and censordom—Hum—Into battle without winking?But—I was thinking—All sing.
Hark to the heating drum!See how the people come!Flag in the van!We follow, man for man:In battle's roarThe time is o'erTo ask for reasons,—hear, the drumAgain is calling,—tum—tum—tum,—With God for King and Fatherland.Or to put it in two stanzas of his, written on a visit to the Valhalla, or Hall of German Worthies, at Regensburg:—
I salute thee, sacred Hall,Chronicle of German glory!I salute ye, heroes allOf the new time and the hoary!Patriot heroes, from your sleepInto being could ye pass!No, a king would rather keepPatriots in stone and brass.The Danish sea-songs, like those of the English, are far better than the land-songs of the soldiers: but here is one with a true and temperate sentiment, which the present war will readily help us to appreciate. It is found in a book of Danish popular songs.17
(Herlig er Krigerens Faerd.)
Good is the soldier's trade,For envy well made:The lightning-bladeOver force-men he swingeth;A loved one shall prizeThe honor he bringeth;Is there a duty?That's soldier's booty,—To have it he dies.True for his king and landThe Northman will stand;An oath is a band,—He never can rend it;The dear coast, 't is rightA son should defend it;For battle he burneth,Death's smile he returneth,And bleeds with delight.Scars well set off his face,—Each one is a grace;His profit they trace,—No labor shines brighter:A wreath is the scarOn the brow of a fighter;His maid thinks him fairer,His ornament rarerThan coat with a star.Reaches the king his hand,That makes his soul grand,And fast loyal bandRound his heart it is slinging;From Fatherland's goodThe motion was springing:His deeds so requited,Is gratefully lightedA man's highest mood.Bravery's holy fire,Beam nobler and higher,And light our desireA path out of madness!By courage and deedWe conquer peace-gladness:We suffer for that thing,We strike but for that thing,And gladly we bleed.But our material threatens the space we have at command. Four more specimens must suffice for the present. They are all favorite soldier-songs. The first is by Chamisso, known popularly as the author of "Peter Schlemihl's Shadow," and depicts the mood of a soldier who has been detailed to assist in a military execution:—
The muffled drums to our marching play.How distant the spot, and how long the way!Oh, were I at rest, and the bitterness through!Methinks it will break my heart in two!Him only I loved of all below,—Him only who yet to death must go;At the rolling music we parade,And of me too, me, the choice is made!Once more, and the last, he looks uponThe cheering light of heaven's sun;But now his eyes they are binding tight:God grant to him rest and other light!Nine muskets are lifted to the eye,Eight bullets have gone whistling by;They trembled all with comrades' smart,—But I—I hit him in his heart!The next is by Von Holtei:—
THE VETERAN TO HIS CLOAKFull thirty years art thou of age, hast many astorm lived through,Brother-like hast round me tightened,And whenever cannons lightened,Both of us no terror knew.Wet soaking to the skin we lay for many ablessed night,Thou alone hast warmth imparted,And if I was heavy-hearted,Telling thee would make me light.My secrets thou hast never spoke, wert ever still and true;Every tatter did befriend me,Therefore I'll no longer mend thee,Lest, old chap, 't would make thee new.And dearer still art thou to ma when jests about thee roll;For where the rags below are dropping,There went through the bullets popping,—Every bullet makes a hole.And when the final bullet comes to stop a German heart,Then, old cloak, a grave provide me,Weather-beaten friend, still hide me,As I sleep in thee apart.There lie we till the roll-call together in the grave:For the roll I shall be heedful,Therefore it will then be needfulFor me an old cloak to have.The next one is taken from a student-song book, and was probably written in 1814:—
THE CANTEENJust help me, Lottie, as I spring;My arm is feeble, see,—I still must have it in a sling;Be softly now with me!But do not let the canteen slip,—Here, take it first, I pray,—For when that's broken from my lip,All joys will flow away."And why for that so anxious?—pshaw!It is not worth a pin:The common glass, the bit of straw,And not a drop within!"No matter, Lottie, take it out,—'T is past your reckoning:Yes, look it round and round about,—There drank from it—my King!By Leipsic near, if you must know,—'T was just no children's play,—A ball hit me a grievous blow,And in the crowd I lay;Nigh death, they bore me from the scene,My garments off they fling,Yet held I fast by my canteen,—There drank from it—my King!For once our ranks in passing throughHe paused,—we saw his face;Around us keen the volleys flew,He calmly kept his place.He thirsted,—I could see it plain,And courage took to bringMy old canteen for him to drain,—He drank from it—my King!He touched me on the shoulder here,And said, "I thank thee, friend,Thy liquor gives me timely cheer,—Thou didst right well intend."O'erjoyed at this, I cried aloud,"O comrades, who can bringCanteen like this to make him proud?—There drank from it—my King!"That old canteen shall no one have,The best of treasures mine;Put it at last upon my grave,And under it this line:"He fought at Leipsic, whom this greenIs softly covering;Best household good was his canteen,—There drank from it—his King!"And finally, a song for all the campaigns of life:—
Morning-red! morning-red!Lightest me towards the dead!Soon the trumpets will be blowing,Then from life must I be going,I, and comrades many a one.Soon as thought, soon as thought,Pleasure to an end is brought;Yesterday upon proud horses,—Shot to-day, our quiet corsesAre to-morrow in the grave.And how soon, and how soon,Vanish shape and beauty's noon!Of thy cheeks a moment vaunting,Like the milk and purple haunting,—Ah, the roses fade away!And what, then, and what, then,Is the joy and lust of men?Ever caring, ever getting,From the early morn-light frettingTill the day is past and gone.Therefore still, therefore stillI content me, as God will:Fighting stoutly, nought shall shake me:For should death itself o'ertake me,Then a gallant soldier dies.FROUDE'S HENRY THE EIGHTH
The spirit of historical criticism in the present age is on the whole a charitable spirit. Many public characters have been heard through their advocates at the bar of history, and the judgments long since passed upon them and their deeds, and deferentially accepted for centuries, have been set aside, and others of a widely different character pronounced. Julius Caesar, who was wont to stand as the model usurper, and was regarded as having wantonly destroyed Roman liberty in order to gratify his towering ambition, is now regarded as a political reformer of the very highest and best class,—as the man who alone thoroughly understood his age and his country, and who was Heaven's own instrument to rescue unnumbered millions from the misrule of an oligarchy whose members looked upon mankind as their proper prey. He did not overthrow the freedom of Rome, but he took from Romans the power to destroy the personal freedom of all the races by them subdued. He identified the interests of the conquered peoples with those of the central government, so far as that work was possible,—thus proceeding in the spirit of the early Roman conquerors, who sought to comprehend even the victims of their wars in the benefits which proceeded from those wars. This view of his career is a sounder one than that which so long prevailed, and which enabled orators to round periods with references to the Rubicon. It is not thirty years since one of the first of American statesmen told the national Senate that "Julius Caesar struck down Roman liberty at Pharsalia," and probably there was not one man in his audience who supposed that he was uttering anything beyond a truism, though they must have been puzzled to discover any resemblance between "the mighty Julius" and Mr. Martin Van Buren, the gentleman whom the orator was cutting up, and who was actually in the chair while Mr. Calhoun was seeking to kill him, in a political sense, by quotations from Plutarch's Lives. We have learnt something since 1834 concerning Rome and Caesar as well as of our own country and its chiefs, and the man who should now bring forward the conqueror of Gaul as a vulgar usurper would be almost as much laughed at as would be that man who should insist that General Jackson destroyed American liberty when he removed the deposits from the national bank. The facts and fears of one generation often furnish material for nothing but jests and jeers to that generation's successors; and we who behold a million of men in arms, fighting for or against the American Union, and all calling themselves Americans, are astonished when we read or remember that our immediate predecessors in the political world went to the verge of madness on the Currency question. Perhaps the men of 1889 may be equally astonished, when they shall turn to files of newspapers that were published in 1862, and read therein the details of those events that now excite so painful an interest in hundreds of thousands of families. Nothing is so easy as to condemn the past, except the misjudging of the present, and the failure to comprehend the future.
Men of a very different stamp from the first of the Romans have been allowed the benefits that come from a rehearing of their causes. Robespierre, whose deeds are within the memory of many yet living, has found champions, and it is now admitted by all who can effect that greatest of conquests, the subjugation of their prejudices, that he was an honest fanatic, a man of iron will, but of small intellect, who had the misfortune, the greatest that can fall to the lot of humanity, to be placed by the force of circumstances in a position which would have tried the soundest of heads, even had that head been united with the purest of hearts. But the apologists of "the sea-green incorruptible," it must be admitted, have not been very successful, as the sence of mankind revolts at indiscriminate murder, even when the murderer's hands have no other stain than that which comes from blood,—for that is a stain which will not "out"; not even printer's ink can erase or cover it; and the attorney of Arras must remain the Raw-Head and Bloody-Bones of history. Benedict Arnold has found no direct defender or apologist; but those readers who are unable to see how forcibly recent writers have dwelt upon the better points of his character and career, while they have not been insensible to the provocations he received, must have read very carelessly and uncritically indeed. Mr. Paget has all but whitewashed Marlborough, and has shaken many men's faith in the justice of Lord Macauley's judgement and in the accuracy of his assertions. Richard III., by all who can look through the clouds raised by Shakespeare over English history of the fifteenth century, is admitted to have been a much better man and ruler than were the average of British monarchs from the Conquest to the Revolution, thanks to the labors of Horace Walpole and Caroline Halsted, who, however, have only followed in the path struck out by Sir George Buck at a much earlier period. The case of Mary Stuart still remains unsettled, and bids fair to be the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case of history; but this is owing to the circumstance that that unfortunate queen is so closely associated with the origin of our modern parties that justice where her reputation is concerned is scarcely to be looked for. Little has been said for King John; and Mr. Woolryche's kind attempt to reconcile men to the name of Jeffreys has proved a total failure. Strafford has about as many admirers as enemies among those who know his history, but this is due more to the manner of his death than to any love of his life: of so much more importance is it that men should die well than live well, so far as the judgement of posterity is concerned with their actions.
Strafford's master, who so scandalously abandoned him to the headsman, owes the existence of the party that still upholds his conduct to the dignified manner in which he faced death, a death at which the whole world "assisted," or might have done so. Catiline, we believe, has found no formal defender, but the Catilinarian Conspiracy is now generally admitted to have been the Popish Plot of antiquity, with an ounce of truth to a pound of falsehood in the narratives of it that have come down to us from Rome's revolutionary age, in political pamphlets and party orations. Cicero's craze on the subject, and that tendency which all men have to overrate the value of their own actions, have made of the business in his lively pages a much more consequential affair than it really was. The fleas in the microscope, and there it will ever remain, to be mistaken for a monster. Truly, the Tullian gibbeted the gentleman of the Sergian gens. It must be confessed that Catiline was a proper rascal. How could he have been anything else, and be one of Sulla's men? And a proper rascal is an improper character of the very worst kind. Still, we should like to have had his marginal "notes" on Cicero's speeches, and on Sallust's job pamphlet. They would have been mighty interesting reading,—as full of lies, probably, as the matter commented on, but not the less attractive on that account. What dull affairs libraries would be, if they contained nothing but books full of truth! The Greek tyrants have found defenders, and it has been satisfactorily made out that they were the cleverest men of their time, and that, if they did occasionally bear rather hard upon individuals, it was only because those individuals were so unreasonable as not to submit to be robbed or killed in a quiet and decorous manner. Mr. Grote's rehabilitation of the Greek sophists is a miracle of ingenuity and sense, and does as much honor to the man who wrote it as justice to the men of whom it is written.