Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places Part 5
But there are two of the inmates of each room who do not go to church. The clever pudding-maker and a sub of his selection are left to cook the Christmas dinner. This, as regards the exceptional dainties, is done at the barrack-room fire, the cook-house being in use only for the now despised ration meat and for the still simmering puddings. The handy man cunningly improvises a roasting-jack, and erects a screen consisting of bed-quilts spread on a frame of upright forms, for the purpose of retaining and throwing back the heat. He is a most versatile genius, this handy man. Now we see him in the double character of cook and salamander, and anon he develops a special faculty as a clever table-decorator as well. This latter qualification a.s.serts itself in the face of difficulties which would be utterly discomfiting to one of less fertility of resource.
There is, indeed, a large expanse of table in every barrack-room; but the War Department has not yet thought proper to consider private soldiers worthy to enjoy the luxury of table-linen. Yet bare boards at a Christmas feast are horribly offensive to the eye of taste. Something must be done; something has already been done. Ever since the last issue of clean sheets, one or two whole-souled fellows have magnanimously abjured these luxuries _pro bono publico_. Spartan-like they have lain in blankets, and saved their sheets in their pristine cleanliness wherewithal to cover the Christmas table. So now these are brought forth, not snow-white certainly, nor of a damask texture, being indeed somewhat sackclothy in their appearance, but still they are immeasurably in advance of the bare boards; and when the covers are laid, with each man's best knife and fork, with a little additional crockery-ware borrowed of a beneficent married woman and with the dainty sprigs of evergreen stuck on every available coign, the effect is triumphantly enlivening.
By the time these preparations are complete the men are back from church; and after a brief attendance at stables to water and feed they a.s.semble fully dressed in the barrack-room, hungrily silent. The captain enters the room and _pro forma_ asks whether there are "any complaints?" A chorus of "No, sir," is his reply; and then the oldest soldier in the room with profuse blushing and stammering takes up the running, thanks the officer kindly in the name of his comrades for his generosity, and wishes him a "Happy Christmas and many of 'em" in return. Under cover of the responsive cheer the captain makes his escape, and a deputation visits the sergeant-major's quarters to fetch the allowance of beer which forms part of the treat. Then all fall to and eat! Ye G.o.ds, how they eat! Let the man who affirmed before the Recruiting Commission that the present scale of military rations was liberal enough show himself now, and then for ever hide his head! The troopers seem to have become sudden converts to Carlyle's theory on the eloquence of silence. It reigns supreme, broken only by the rattle of knives and forks and by an occasional gurgle indicative of a man judiciously stratifying the solids and liquids, for a s.p.a.ce of about twenty minutes, by which time--be the fare goose or pork-- it is, barring the bones, only "a memory of the past." The puddings, turned out of the towels in which they have been boiled, then undergo the brunt of a fierce a.s.sault; but the edge of appet.i.te has been blunted by the first course and with most of the men a modic.u.m of pudding goes on the shelf for supper. The soldier is very sensitive on the subject of his Christmas pudding. I remember once seeing a cook put on the table and formally "strapped" for allowing the pudding to stick to the bottom of the pot for lack of stirring.
At length dinner is over. Beds are drawn up from the sides of the room so as to form a wide circle of divans round the fire, and the big barrel's time has come at last. A clever hand whips out the bung, draws a pailful, and reinserts the bung till another pailful is wanted, which will be very soon. The pail is placed upon the hearthstone and its contents are decanted into the pint basins, which do duty in the barrack-room for all purposes from containing coffee and soup to mixing chrome-yellow and pipe-clay water. The married soldiers come dropping in with their wives, for whom the corporal has a special drop of "something short" stowed in reserve on the shelf behind his kit. A song is called for; another follows, and yet another and another. Now it is matter of notice that the songs of soldiers are never of the modern music-hall type. You might go into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's haunts and never hear such a ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for Joseph." The soldier takes especial delight in songs of the sentimental pattern; and even when for a brief period he forsakes the region of sentiment, it is not to indulge in the outrageously comic but to give vent to such st.u.r.dy baccha.n.a.lian outpourings as the "Good Rhine Wine," "Old John Barleycorn," and "Simon the Cellarer." But these are only interludes. "The Soldier's Tear," "The White Squall," "There came a Tale to England," "Ben Bolt," "Sh.e.l.ls of the Ocean," and other melodies of a lugubrious type, are the special favourites of the barrack-room. I remember once hearing a c.o.c.kney recruit attempt "The Perfect Cure" with its accompanying gymnastic efforts; but he was I not appreciated, and indeed, I think broke down in the middle for want of encouragement.
Songs and beer form the staple of the afternoon's enjoyment, intermingled with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of bygone Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are "townies," i.e.
natives of the same district; and there is a good deal of undemonstrative feeling in the way they talk of the scenes and folks of boyhood. There is no speechifying. Your soldier is not an oratorical animal. Not but what he heartily enjoys a speech; but he somehow cannot make one, or will not try.
I remember me, indeed, of a certain quiet Scotsman who one Christmastime being urgently pressed to sing and being unblessed with a tuneful voice, volunteered in utter desperation a speech instead. He referred in feeling language to the various troop-mates who had left us since the preceding Christmas, made a touching allusion to the happy home circle in which the Christmases of our boyhood had been spent, referred to the manner in which the old "Strawboots" had cut their way to glory through the dense ma.s.ses of Russian hors.e.m.e.n on the hillside of Balaclava, and wound up appropriately by proposing the toast of "our n.o.ble selves." He created an immense sensation, was vociferously applauded, and, indeed, was the hero of the hour; but ere next Christmas he was among the "have beens" himself, and his mantle not having devolved upon any successor we had to content ourselves with the songs and the beer.
It is a lucky thing for a good many that there is no roll-call at the Christmas evening stable-hour. The non-commissioned officers mercifully limit their requirements to seeing the horses watered and bedded down by the most presentable of the roisterers, whose desperate efforts to simulate abject sobriety in order to establish their claim for strong-headedness are very comical to witness. It has often been matter of wonderment to me how the orders for the following day which are "read out"
at the evening stable-hour, are realised on Christmas evening with clearness sufficient to ensure their being complied with next day without a hitch; but the truth is that, as we shall presently see, a certain order of things for the morning after Christmas has become stereotyped.
This interruption of the evening stable-hour over the circle re-forms round the fire, and the cask finally becomes a "dead marine." The cap is then sent round for contributions towards a further instalment of the foundation of conviviality, which is fetched from the canteen or the sergeant's mess; and another and yet another supply is sent for, as long as the funds hold out and somebody keeps sober enough to act as Ganymede.
The orderly sergeant is not very particular to-night about his watch-setting report, for he knows that not many have the physical ability to be absent if they were ever so eager. And so the lights go out; the sun of the dragoon may be said to set in beer and he is left to do his best to sleep himself sober. For in the morning the reins of discipline are tightened again. The man who is foolish enough to revivify the drink which "is dying out in him" by a refresher is apt to find himself an inmate of the black-hole on very scant warning. Headaches and thirst are curiously rife, and the consumption of "fizzers"--a temperance beverage of an effervescent character vended by an individual with the profoundest trust in human nature on the subject of deferred payments--is extensive enough to convert the regiment into a series of walking reservoirs of carbonic acid gas. The authorities display a demoniacal ingenuity in working the beer out of the system of the dragoon. The morning duty on the day following Christmas is invariably "watering order with numnahs," the numnah being a felt saddle-cloth without stirrups. Every man without exception rides out--no dodging is permitted--and the moment the malicious fiend of an orderly officer gets clear of the barracks he gives the word "Trot!" Six miles of it without a break is the set allowance; and it beats vinegar, pickles, tea smoked in a tobacco-pipe, or any other nostrum, as an effectual generator of sobriety. Six miles at the full trot without stirrups on a rough horse I can conscientiously recommend to the inebriated gentleman who fears to encounter a justly irate wife at two in the morning. I wont answer for the integrity of his cuticle when it is over; but I will stake my existence on the abject profundity of his sobriety. The process would extract the alcohol from a cask of spirits of wine, let alone dispel an average skinful of beer.
And thus evaporates the last vestige of the dragoon's Christmas festivity.
It may be urged that the enjoyments of which I have endeavoured to give a faithful narrative are gross and have no elevating tendency. I fear the men of the spur and sabre must bow to the justice of the criticism; and I know of nothing to advance in mitigation save the old Scotch proverb: "It is ill to mak' a silk purse out o' a sow's ear."
THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
In these modern days men live fast and forget fast; yet, since it was barely twenty-six years ago, numbers among us must still vividly remember the lurid autumn of 1870. Eastern and Northern France had been deluged with French and German blood. During the month of fighting from the 2nd of August to the 1st of September the regular armies of France had suffered defeat on defeat, and were now blockaded in Metz or were tramping from the catastrophe of Sedan to captivity in Germany. The Empire in France had fallen like a house of cards; Napoleon the Third was a prisoner of war in Ca.s.sel; the Empress and the ill-fated Prince Imperial were forlorn exiles in England. To the Empire had succeeded, at not even a day's notice--for in France a revolution is ever a summary operation--the Government of National Defence with the watchword of "War to the bitter end" rather than cede a foot of territory or one stone of a fortress. The Germans made no delay. The blood-tint had scarcely faded out of the waters of the Meuse, the unburied dead of Sedan yet festered in the sun-heat, and the blackened ruins of Bazeilles still smoked and stank, when their heads of columns set forth on the march to Paris. The troops were full of ardour; but in the Royal headquarters there was not a little disquietude. The old King made a long stay in the old cathedral city of Rheims, while men all over Europe were asking each other whether the catastrophe of Sedan had not virtually ended the war and were hoping for the white dove of peace to alight on the blood-stained land. But that happy consummation was not yet to be. When King Wilhelm crossed the frontier he had proclaimed that he warred not with the French nation but with its ruler. That ruler was now his prisoner; but Wilhelm had for adversary now the French nation, because it had taken up the quarrel which might have gone with the _Decheance_ and in effect had made it its own. In the absence of overtures there was no alternative but to march on Paris.
But Bismarck, although he carried a blithe front, was far from comfortable. He would fain have had peace--always on his own terms; but the question with him was with whom could he negotiate, capable, in the existing confusion, of furnishing adequate guarantees for the fulfilment of conditions? That requisite he could not discern in the self-const.i.tuted body which styled itself the Government of National Defence, but of which he spoke as "the gentlemen of the pavement." He had all the monarchical dislike and distrust of a republic, and before the German army had invested Paris he already had begun to ponder as to the possibility of reinstating the dethroned dynasty. Possibly indeed, he had already felt the pulse of Marshal Bazaine on this subject.
It was on the 23rd of September when the Royal headquarters was at Ferrieres, Baron Rothschild's chateau on the east of Paris, that there either presented himself to Bismarck an intriguant, or that the Chancellor evoked for himself an instrument for whom the way was made open to penetrate the beleaguerment of Metz and submit to Bazaine certain considerations. In connection with this mission we heard a good deal at the time of a mysterious "Mons. M." and an equally mysterious "Mons. N."
Both were myths: "M." and "N." were alike pseudonyms of the real go-between, a certain Edmond Regnier who died in Paris on the 23rd of January 1894, after a strange and varied career of which the episode to be detailed in this article is the most remarkable. In a now very rare pamphlet published by Regnier in November 1870, he describes himself as a French landed proprietor with financial interests in England yielding him an income of 800 per annum, and as having come to England with his family in the end of August of that year in consequence of the proximity of German troops to his French residence. The painstaking compilers of the indictment against Bazaine give rather a different account of the character and antecedents of M. Regnier. Their information is that he received an imperfect education, sufficiently proven by his extraordinary style and vicious orthography. He studied, with little progress, law and medicine; later he took up magnetism. He was curiously mixed up in the events of the revolution of 1848. He had some employment in Algeria as an a.s.sistant surgeon. Returning to France he developed a quarry of paving-stone, and afterwards married in England a wife who brought him a certain competence. "Regnier," continues the Report, "is a sharp, audacious fellow; his manners are vulgar--vain to excess he considers himself a profound politician. Was he induced to throw himself into the midst of events by one of the monomanias which are engendered by periods of storm and revolution? Was he simply an intriguer, plying his trade? It is difficult to tell. But however that may be, the established fact is that we find him in England in September 1870 besieging with his projects the _entourage_ of the Empress."
Regnier's siege of the forlorn colony at Hastings took the form of a bombardment of letters, his princ.i.p.al victim being Madame Le Breton, the lady-in-waiting of the Empress and the sister of the unfortunate General Bourbaki, then in command of the Imperial Guard at Metz. He was about to have his pa.s.sport vised by the German Amba.s.sador in London, rather an equivocal proceeding for a French subject; and on the 12th of September he wrote thus to Madame Le Breton, desiring that the letter should be communicated to Her Majesty:--
The Amba.s.sador in London of the North German Confederation may possibly say, "I think the King of Prussia would prefer treating for peace with the Imperial Government rather than with the Republic." If so, I shall start to-morrow for Wilhelmshohe, after having paid a visit to the Empress. The following are the propositions I intend to submit to the Emperor: (1) That the Empress-Regent ought not to quit French territory; (2) That the Imperial fleet _is_ French territory; (3) That the fleet which greeted Her Majesty so enthusiastically on its departure for the Baltic, or at least a portion of it, however small, be taken by the Regent for her seat of government, thus enabling her to go from one to another of the French ports where she can count upon the largest number of adherents, and so prove that her government exists both _de facto_ and _de jure_. Further, that the Empress-Regent issue from the fleet four proclamations--viz. to foreign governments, to the fleet, to the army, and to the French people.
It will suffice to quote two of those suggested proclamations:--
To foreign governments! To firmly insist upon the fact that the Imperial Government is the _actual_ government, as it is the government by right.
To the fleet! That just as the Emperor remained to the last in the midst of his army, sharing the chances of war, so also does the Regent, the only executive power legally existing, come with gladness to trust her political fortune to the Imperial fleet.
There followed a voluminous screed of irrelevant dissertation.
Regnier confessedly made no way with the Empress. He saw, indeed, Madame Le Breton on the 14th, but only to be told, in language worthy of a patriot sovereign, that "Her Majesty's feeling was that the interests of France should take precedence of those of the dynasty; that she would rather do nothing than incur the suspicion of having acted from an undue regard for dynastic interests, and that she has the greatest horror of any step likely to bring about a civil war." Those high-souled expressions ought to have given definite pause to Regnier's importunity; but that busybody was indefatigable. A second letter to Madame Le Breton for the Empress simply elicited from the gentlemen of her suite the information that Her Majesty, having read his communications, had expressed the greatest horror of anything approaching a civil war. A final letter from him, containing the following significant pa.s.sage:--
I myself, or some other person, ought already to have been secretly and confidentially in communication with M. de Bismarck; our conditions for peace must be more acceptable than those to which the _soi-disant_ Republican Government may have agreed; every action of theirs ought to be turned to our advantage--we ourselves must _act_,
evoked the ultimatum that "the Empress would not stir in the matter."
Regnier then said that as he found no encouragement at Hastings he would probably go to Wilhelmshohe, where he would perhaps be better understood; and he produced a photographic view of Hastings on which he begged that the Prince Imperial would write a line to his father. On the following morning the Prince's equerry returned him the photographic view at the foot of which were the simple and affectionate words: "Mon cher Papa, je vous envoie ces vues d'Hastings; j'espere qu'elles vous plairont.
Louis-Napoleon." I am personally familiar with the late Prince Imperial's handwriting and readily recognise it in this brief sentence. Regnier averred that it was with Her Majesty's consent that this paper was given him; but admitted that he was told she added: "Tell M. Regnier that there must be great danger in carrying out his project, and that I beg him not to attempt its execution." In other words, the Empress was willing that he should visit the Emperor at Ca.s.sel, authenticating him thus far by the Prince Imperial's little note; but she put her veto on his undertaking intrigues detrimental to the interests of France.
Regnier by no means took the road for Wilhelmshohe. At 7 P.M. of Sunday the 18th he read in the special _Observer_ that Jules Favre was next day to have an interview with Bismarck at Meaux. Eager to antic.i.p.ate the Republican Foreign Minister he promptly took the night train for Paris. No trains were running beyond Amiens and he did not reach Meaux until midnight of the 19th, to learn that Bismarck and the headquarters had that day gone to Ferrieres. At 10 A.M. of the 20th he reached that chateau and appealed to Count Hatzfeld, now German Amba.s.sador in London, for an immediate interview with Bismarck, stating that he had come direct from Hastings. He was informed that the Chancellor had an appointment with Jules Favre at eleven and that it was improbable he could be received in advance. But Bismarck having been apprised of his arrival the fortunate Regnier was immediately ushered into his presence. Regnier congratulates himself on having antic.i.p.ated the French Minister, ignorant of the circ.u.mstance that on the previous day the latter had two interviews with Bismarck and that their then impending interview was simply for the purpose of communicating to Favre the German King's final answer to the French proposals.
Regnier says that he drew from his portfolio the photograph of Hastings with the Prince Imperial's little note to his father at its foot and handed the paper in silence to Bismarck; and that after the latter had looked at it for some moments, Regnier said, "I come, Count, to ask you to grant me a pa.s.s which will permit me to go to Wilhelmshohe and give this autograph into the Emperor's hands." Why he should have applied to Bismarck for this is not apparent, since he might have gone direct from Hastings to Wilhelmshohe without any necessity for invoking the Chancellor's offices. It seems extremely probable that the request for a pa.s.s was a mere pretext to gain an interview, and the more so since Bismarck made no allusion to the subject, but after a few moments, according to Regnier, addressed that person as follows:--
Sir, our position is before you; what can you offer us? with whom can we treat? Our determination is fixed so to profit by our present position as to render impossible for the future any war against us on the part of France. To effect this object, an alteration of the French frontier is indispensable. In the presence of two governments--the one _de facto_, the other _de jure_--it is difficult, if not impossible, to treat with either.
The Empress-Regent has quitted French territory, and since then has given no sign. The Provisional Government in Paris refuses to accept this condition of diminution of territory, but proposes an armistice in order to consult the French nation on the subject. We can afford to wait. When we find ourselves face to face with a government _de facto_ and _de jure_, able to treat on the basis we require, then we will treat.
Regnier suggested that Bazaine in Metz and Uhrich in Strasburg, if they should capitulate, might do so in the name of the Imperial Government.
Bismarck replied that Jules Favre was a.s.sured that the garrisons of those fortresses were staunchly Republican; but that his own belief was that Bazaine's army of the Rhine was probably Imperialist. Then Regnier offered to go at once to Metz. "If you had come a week earlier," said Bismarck, "it was yet time; now, I fear, it is too late." Upon this the Chancellor went away to meet Jules Favre with the parting words to Regnier, "Be so good as to present my respectful homage to his Imperial Majesty when you reach Wilhelmshohe." At a subsequent meeting the same evening Regnier repeated his anxiety to go at once to Metz and Strasburg and make an agreement that these places should be surrendered only in the Emperor's name. Bismarck was clearly not sanguine, but he said, "Do what you can to bring us some one with power to treat with us, and you will have rendered great service to your country. I will give orders for a 'general safe-conduct' to be given you. A telegram shall precede you to Metz, which will facilitate your entrance there. You should have come sooner." So these two parted; Regnier received his "safe-conduct" and started from Ferrieres early on the morning of the 21st. But this indefatigable letter-writer could not depart without a farewell letter:--
I shall leave (he wrote to Bismarck) your advanced posts near Metz, giving orders for the carriage to await my return. I shall wrap myself in a shawl, which will hide a portion of my face. In the event of Marshal Bazaine acceding to my conditions, either Marshal Canrobert or General Bourbaki, acquainted with all that will be requisite for the success of my plans, may go out with my papers, dressed in my clothes, wrapped in my shawl, and depart for Hastings, after giving me his word of honour that for every one, except the Empress, he was to be simply Mons. Regnier. If everything succeeded according to my antic.i.p.ation, he might then establish his ident.i.ty, and place himself at the head of the army, with orders to defend the Chamber a.s.sembled, if possible, at a seaport town, where a loyal portion of the fleet should also be present. If the project should miscarry, the Marshal or the General would return and resume his post.
Bismarck must have smiled grimly as he read this strange farrago; yet, whatever may have been his motives, he furthered the errand on which Regnier was going to Metz.
That person reached the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles at Corny, outside of Metz, on the afternoon of 23rd September and was promptly presented to the Prince, who said that Count Bismarck had informed him of his wish to enter Metz and had left it to him to decide as to the expediency of complying with it. This, said the Prince, he was prepared to do and he gave Regnier the requisite pa.s.s. The same evening that active individual presented himself at the French forepost line, and having stated that he had a mission to Marshal Bazaine and desired to see him immediately, he was driven to Ban-Saint-Martin where the Marshal was residing. Bazaine at once received him in his study. At the outset a discrepancy manifests itself in the subsequent testimony of the interlocutors. The Marshal states that Regnier said he came on the part of the Empress with the consent of Bismarck; while Regnier declares that he did not state to the Marshal that he had any mission from the Empress. On other points, with one important exception, the versions given of the interview by the two partic.i.p.ants fairly agree, and Bazaine's account of it may be summarised. After Regnier had stated that his commission was purely verbal he went on to observe that it was to be regretted that a treaty of peace had not put an end to the war after Sedan; that the maintenance of the German armies on French territory was ruinous to the country; and that it would be doing France a great service to obtain an armistice preparatory to the conclusion of peace. That as regarded this, the French army under the walls of Metz--the only army remaining organised--would be in a position to give guarantees to the Germans if it were allowed its liberty of action; but that without doubt they would exact as a pledge the surrender of the fortress of Metz.
I replied (says Bazaine) that certainly if we--the "Army of the Rhine"-- could extricate ourselves from the _impa.s.se_ in which we now were, with the honours of war--that is to say, with arms and baggage--in a word completely const.i.tuted as an army, we would be in a position to maintain order in the interior, and would cause the provisions of the convention to be respected; but a difficulty would occur as to the fortress of Metz, the governor of which, appointed by the Emperor, could not be relieved except by His Majesty himself.
One of Regnier's stated objects, continues the Marshal, was to bring it about that either Marshal Canrobert or General Bourbaki should go to England, inform the Empress of the situation at Metz, and place himself at her disposition. The departure of whichever of the two high officers should undertake this duty was to be surrept.i.tious; and for this Regnier had provided with Prussian a.s.sistance. Seven Luxembourg surgeons who had been in Metz ever since the battle of Gravelotte had written to Marshal Bazaine for leave to go home through the Prussian lines. This letter, sent to the Prussian headquarters, was replied to in a letter carried into Metz by Regnier and by him given to Bazaine, to the effect that the _nine_ surgeons were free to depart. As there were but seven surgeons, the implication is obvious that the safe-conduct was expanded to cover the incognito exit, along with the surgeons, of Regnier and the French officer bound for Hastings.
Regnier gave me (writes Bazaine) so many details of his _soi-disant_ relations with the Empress and her _entourage_ that, notwithstanding the strangeness of the apparition, I put faith in his mission, and believed that I ought not, in the general interest, to neglect the opportunity opened to me of putting myself in communication with the outside world. I consequently told him that he would be duly brought into relations with Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki, whom I would inform in regard to his proposals, and whom I would place at liberty to act as each might choose in the matter.
Finally Regnier produced the photograph of Hastings with the Prince Imperial's signature at the foot, and begged the Marshal to add his, which he did "as a souvenir of the interview" explained Regnier, according to the Marshal; according to Regnier, that he could exhibit the signature to Bismarck in proof that he had the Marshal's a.s.sent to his proposals.
Diplomacy conducted by chance signatures on casual photographs has a certain innocent simplicity, but is not in accordance with modern methods.
Perhaps, however, the strangest thing in connection with this strange interview is Bazaine's final comment:--
All this which I have narrated was only a simple conversation to which I attached a merely secondary importance, since M. Regnier had no written authority from the Empress nor from M. de Bismarck.... This personage, therefore, appeared to act without the knowledge of the German military authorities, and it was not until considerably later that I became convinced of their cognisance, and of their mutual understanding as regards M. Regnier's visit to Metz.
And this in the face of General Stiehle's letter to him in his hand, brought in by Regnier, sanctioning the exit of the _nine_ surgeons; and the Marshal's promise to Regnier that he and the officer who should accept the mission to Hastings should quit the camp incognito along with the Luxembourg surgeons.
Reference has been made to a discordance between the testimony of Marshal Bazaine and of Regnier on a very important point in regard to this interview. In his notes taken at the time the latter writes:--
The Marshal tells me of his excellent position, of the long period for which he can hold out; that he considers himself as the Palladium of the Empire. He speaks of the very healthy condition of the troops; and, if I may judge by his own rosy face, he is quite right. He tells of all the successful sallies he had made, and of the facility with which he can break through the besieging lines whenever he chooses to do so.