Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places Part 8
THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
The traveller up the country from Calcutta does not speedily reach places the names of which vividly recall the episodes of the great Mutiny. It is a chance if, as the train pa.s.ses Dinapore, he remembers the defection of the Sepoy brigade stationed there which Koer Singh seduced from its allegiance. Arrah may possibly recall a dim memory of Wake's splendid defence of Boyle's bungalow and of Vincent Eyre's dashingly executed relief of the indomitable garrison. Benares is a little off the main line-- Benares, on the parade ground of which Neill first put down that peremptory foot of his, where Olpherts was so quick with those guns of his, and where Jim Ellicott did his grim work with noose and cross-beam until long after the going down of the summer sun. But when the traveller's eye first rests on the gray ramparts of Akbar's h.o.a.ry fortress in the angle where the Ganges and the Jumna meet and blend one with another, the reality of the Mutiny begins to impress itself upon him.
Allahabad was the scene of a terrible tragedy; it was also the point of departure whence Havelock set forward on Cawnpore with his column, not indeed of rescue, but of retribution. The journey from Allahabad to Cawnpore, although perchance performed in the night, is not one to be slept through by any student of the story of the great rebellion. The Indian moon pours her flood of light on the little knoll hard by Futtehpore, where Havelock stood when Jwala Pershad's first round shot came lobbing, through his staff in among the camp kettles of the 64th.
That village beyond the mango tope is Futtehpore itself, whence the rebel sowars swept headlong down the trunk road till Maude's guns gave them the word to halt. The pools are dry now through which, when Hamilton's voice had rung out the order--"Forward, at the double!" the light company of the Ross-shire Buffs splashed recklessly past the abandoned Sepoy guns, in their race with the grenadier company of the 64th that had for its goal the Pandy barricade outside the village. In that cl.u.s.ter of mud huts--its name is Aoong--the gallant Renaud fell with a shattered thigh, as he led his "Lambs" up to the _epaulement_ which covered its front. One fight a day is fair allowance anywhere, but those fellows whom Havelock led were gluttons for fighting. Spanning that deep rugged nullah there, down which the Pandoo flows turbulently in the rainy season, is the bridge across which in the afternoon of the morning of Aoong, Stephenson with his Fusiliers dashed into the Sepoy battery and bayoneted the gunners before they could make up their minds to run away. And it was in the gray morning following the day of that double battle (the 15th of July) that the General, having heard for the first time that there were still alive in Cawnpore a number of women and children who had escaped the ma.s.sacre of the boats, told his men what he knew. "With G.o.d's help," shouted Havelock, with a break in his voice that was like a sob, as he stood with his hat off and his hand on his sword--"with G.o.d's help, men, we will save them, or every man die in the attempt!" One answer came back in a great cheer; but a sadder answer to the aspiration, a bitter truth that made that aspiration futile and hopeless, had lain ever since the evening of the day before in the Beebeegur, and almost as the chief was speaking the Well was receiving its dead inmates. Where the train begins to slacken its pace on approaching the station, it is pa.s.sing over the field of the first--the creditable--battle of Cawnpore. Fresh from the butchery Nana Sahib (Dhoondoo Punth) himself had come out to aid in the last stand against the avengers. Yonder is the mango tope which formed the screen for Hamilton's turning movement. It needs little imagination to recall the scene. Close by, at the cross-roads, stands the Sepoy battery, and those hors.e.m.e.n still nearer are reconnoitring sowars. Beyond the road the Highlanders are deploying on the plain as they clear the sheltering flank of the mango trees, amidst a grim silence broken only by the crash of the bursting sh.e.l.ls and the cries of the bullock-drivers as the guns rattle on to open fire from the reverse flank. The flush rises in Hamilton's face and the eyes of him begin to sparkle, as he shouts "Ross-shire Buffs, wheel into line!" and then "Forward!" Quick as lightning the trails of the Sepoy guns are swung round and shot and sh.e.l.l come crashing through the ranks, while the rebel infantry, with a swiftness which speaks well for their British drill, show a front against this inroad on their flank. In silent grim imperturbability the Highland line stalks steadily on with the long springy step to be learned only on the heather. Now they are within eighty yards of the muzzles of the guns, and they can see the colour of the mustaches of the men plying and supporting them. Then Hamilton, with his sword in the air and his face all ablaze with the fighting blood in him, turns round in the saddle, shouts "Charge!" and bids the pipers to strike up. Wild and shrill bursts over that Indian plain the rude notes of the Northern music. But louder yet, drowning them and the roll of the artillery, rings out that Highland war-cry that has so often presaged victory to British arms. The Ross-shire men are in and over the guns ere the gunners have time to drop their lint-stocks and ramming-rods; they fall with bayonets at the charge upon the supporting infantry, and the supporting infantry go down where they huddle together, lacking the opportunity to break and run away in time. But the battle rages all day, and the white soldiers, as they fight their way slowly forward, hear the bursts of military music that greet the Nana as he moves from place to place, _not_ in the immediate front. Barrow and his handful of cavalry volunteers crash into the thick of them with the informal order to his men, "Give point, lads; d.a.m.n cuts and guards." Young Havelock, mounted by the side of the gallant and ill-fated Stirling trudging forward on foot, brings the 64th on at the double against the great 24-pounder on the Cawnpore road that is vomiting grape at point-blank range. The night falls and the battle ceases, but among the wearied fighting men there is none of the elation of victory; for through the ranks, after the going down of the sun, had throbbed the bruit, originating no one knew where, that the women and children in Cawnpore had been butchered on the afternoon of the day before, while Stephenson and his Fusiliers were carrying the bridge of the Pandoo Nuddee.
The railway station of Cawnpore is distant more than a mile from the cantonment. Close to the road and not far from the station, the explorer easily finds the ma.s.sive pile of the "Savada House," now allotted as residences for railway officials. English children play now in the corridors once thronged by the minions of the Nana, for here were his headquarters during part of the siege. Its verandas all day long were full of ministers, diviners, courtiers, and creatures. Here strolled the supple, panther-like Azimoolah, the self-a.s.serted favourite of home society in the pre-Mutiny days. Teeka Sing, the Nana's war minister, had his "bureau" in a tent under the peepul tree there. In that other clump of trees, where an ayah is tickling a white baby into laughter, was the pavilion of the Nana himself, who inherited the Mahratta preference for canvas over bricks and mortar. And here, while the crackle of the musketry fire and the din of the big guns came softened on the ear by distance, sat the adopted son of the Peishwa while Jwala Pershad came for orders about the cavalry, and Bala Rao, his brother, explained his devices for hara.s.sing the sahibs, and Tantia Topee, Hoola.s.s Sing, Azimoolah, and the Nana himself devised the scheme of the treachery. But the Savada House has even a more lurid interest than this. Hither the women and children whom an unkind fate had spared from dying with the men were brought back from the Ghaut of Slaughter. You may see the two rooms into which 125 unfortunates were huddled after that march from before the presence of one death into the presence of another. As they plodded past the intrenchment so long held, and across the plain to the Nana's pavilion, "I saw," says a spectator, "that many of the ladies were wounded. Their clothes had blood upon them. Two were badly hurt and had their heads bound up with handkerchiefs; some were wet, covered with mud and blood, and some had their dresses torn; but all had clothes. I saw one or two children without clothes. There were no men in the party, but only some boys of twelve or thirteen. Some of the ladies were barefoot." Hither, too, were sent later the women of that detachment of the garrison which had got off from the ghaut in the boat defended by Vibart, Ashe, Delafosse, Bolton, Moore, and Thomson, and which had been captured at Nuzzufghur by Baboo Ram Bux. It had been for those people a turbulent departure from the Suttee Chowra Ghaut, but it was a yet more fearful returning. "They were brought back,"
testified a spy; "sixty sahibs, twenty-five memsahibs, and four children.
The Nana ordered the sahibs to be separated from the memsahibs, and shot by the 1st Bengal Native Infantry.... 'Then,' said one of the memsahibs, 'I will not leave my husband. If he must die I will die with him.' So she ran and sat down behind her husband, clasping him round the waist.
Directly she said this, the other memsahibs said, 'We also will die with our husbands,' and they all sat down each by her husband. Then their husbands said, 'Go back,' and they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered his soldiers, and they went in, pulling them forcibly away." ...
The drive from the railway station to the European cantonments is pleasant and shaded. At a bend in the road there comes into view a broad, flat, treeless parade ground. This plain lies within a circle of foliage, above which, on the south-eastern side, rise the balconies and flat tops of a long range of barracks built in detached blocks, while around the rest of the circle the trees shade the bungalows of the cantonment. Near the centre of this level s.p.a.ce there is an irregular enclosure defined by a shallow sunk wall and low quickset hedge, and in the middle of this enclosure rises the ornate and not wholly satisfactory structure known as the "Memorial Church." It is built on the site of the old dragoon hospital, which was the very focus of the agony of the siege. It is impossible to a.n.a.lyse the mingled emotions of amazement, pride, pity, wrath, and sorrow which fill the visitor to this shrine of British valour, endurance, and constancy. The heart swells and the eyes fill as one, standing here with all the arena of the heroism lying under one's eyes, recalls the episodes of the glorious, piteous story. The blood stirs when one remembers the buoyant valour of the gallant Moore, who, "wherever he pa.s.sed, left men something more courageous and women something less unhappy," the reckless audacity of Ashe, the cool daring of Delafosse, the deadly rifle of Stirling, the heroic devotion of Jervis. And a great lump grows in the throat when one bethinks him of the beautiful constancy and fearful sufferings of the women; of British ladies going barefoot and giving up their stockings as cases for grape-shot; of Mrs. Moore's journeys across to No. 2 Barrack; of the hapless gentlewomen, "unshod, unkempt, ragged, and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with drought, and faint with hunger, sitting waiting to hear that they were widows." And what a place it was which the garrison had to defend! Not a foot of all the s.p.a.ce bomb-proof, an apology for an intrenchment such as "an active cow might jump over." The imagination has to do much work here, for most of the landmarks are gone. The outline of the world-famous earthwork is almost wholly obliterated; only in places is it to be dimly recognised by brick-discoloured lines, and a low raised line on the smooth _maidan_. The enclosure now existing has no reference to the outlines of the intrenchment. That enclosure merely surrounds the graveyard, in the midst of which stands the "Memorial Church," a structure that cannot be commended from an architectural point of view. But the s.p.a.ce enclosed around its gaunt red walls is pregnant with painful interest. We come first on a railed-in memorial tomb, bearing an inscription in raised letters, on a cross let into the tessellated pavement: "In three graves within this enclosure lie the remains of Major Edward Vibart, 2nd Bengal Cavalry, and about seventy officers and soldiers, who, after escaping from the ma.s.sacre at Cawnpore on the 27th June 1857, were captured by the rebels at Sheorapore, and murdered on the 1st July." The inmates of these graves were originally buried elsewhere, and were removed hither when the enclosure was formed. In another part of the enclosure is a raised tomb, the slab of which bears the inscription: "This stone marks a spot which lay within Wheeler's intrenchment, and covers the remains and is sacred to the memory of those who were the first to meet their death when beleaguered by mutineers and rebels in June 1857." Two only lie in this grave, Mr. Murphy and a lady who died of fever. These two perished on the first day of the siege and had the exclusive privilege of being decently interred within the precincts of the intrenchment. After the first day of the siege there was scant leisure for funeral rites. To find the last resting-place of the remaining dead of this siege, we must quit the enclosure and walk across the _maidan_ to a spot among the trees by the roadside under the shadow of No. 4 Barrack. There was an empty well here when the siege begun; three weeks after, when the siege ended, this well contained the bodies of 250 British people. With daylight the battle raged around that sepulchre, but when the night came the slain of the day were borne thither with stealthy step and scant attendance. Now the well is filled up, and above it, inside a small ornamental enclosure formed by iron railings, there rises a monument which bears the following inscription: "In a well under this enclosure were laid by the hands of their fellows in suffering the bodies of men, women, and children, who died hard by during the heroic defence of Wheeler's intrenchment when beleaguered by the rebel Nana." Below the inscription is this apposite quotation from Psalm cxli. 7: "Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. But mine eyes are unto Thee, O G.o.d the Lord." At the corners of the flower-plot are small crosses bearing individual names. One commemorates Sir George Parker, the cantonment magistrate; a second, Captain Jenkins; a third, Lieutenant Saunders and the men of the 84th Regiment; a fourth, Lieutenant Glanville and the men of the Madras Fusiliers; and here, too, lies stout-hearted yet tender-hearted John MacKillop of the Civil Service the hero of another well, that from which the team of buffaloes are now drawing water to make the mortar for the Memorial Church. Thence was procured the water for the garrison and it was a target also for the rebel artillery, so that the appearance of a man with a pitcher by day and by night the creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower of grape.
But John MacKillop, "not being a fighting-man," made himself useful as he modestly put it, for a week as captain of the Well, till a grape-shot sent him to that other well thence never to return.
The Memorial Church is in the form of a cross, and now that it has been finished is not dest.i.tute of beauty as regards its interior. Perhaps it is in place, but the n.o.blest monument that could commemorate Cawnpore would have been the maintenance, for the wonder of the world unto all time, of the intrenchment and what it surrounded, as nearly as possible in the condition in which they were left on the evacuation of the garrison. The grandest monument in the world is the Residency of Lucknow, which remains and is kept up substantially in the condition in which it was left when Sir Colin Campbell brought out its garrison in November 1857; and the Cawnpore intrenchment would have been a still n.o.bler memorial as the abiding testimony to a defence even more wonderful, although unfortunately unsuccessful, than that of Lucknow. But the Memorial Church of Cawnpore will always be interesting by reason of its site and of the memorial tablets on the walls of its interior. In the left transept is a tablet "To the memory of the Engineers of the East Indian Railway, who died and were killed in the great insurrection of 1857; erected in affectionate remembrance by their brother Engineers in the North-West Provinces." On the left side of the nave are several tablets. One is to the memory of poor young John Nicklen Martin, killed in the battle at Suttee Chowra Ghaut. Another commemorates three officers, two sergeants, two corporals, a drummer, and twenty privates of the 34th Regiment, killed at the (second) Battle of Cawnpore on the 28th November 1857; the day on which the Gwalior Contingent, seduced into rebellion by Tantia Topee, made itself so unpleasant to General Windham, the "Cawnpore Runners," and other regiments of that officer's command. A third tablet is "To the memory of A.G. Chalwin, 2nd Light Cavalry, and his wife Louisa, who both perished during the siege of Cawnpore in July 1857. These are they which came out of great tribulation." A fourth commemorates Captain Gordon and Lieutenant Hensley, of the 82nd Foot, also victims of the Gwalior Contingent. In the right of the nave there is a tablet "Sacred to the memory of Philip Hayes Jackson, who, with Jane, his wife, and her brother Ralf Blyth Croker, were ma.s.sacred by rebels at Cawnpore on 27th June." Another is to Lieutenant Angelo, of the 16th Grenadiers Bengal Native Infantry, who also fell in the boat ma.s.sacre; and a third is to the memory of the gallant Stuart Beatson, who was Havelock's adjutant-general, and who, dying as he was of cholera, did his work at Pandoo Nuddee and Cawnpore in a _dhoolie_. In the right transept are tablets in memory of the officers of the Connaught Rangers, and of the officers and men of the 32nd Cornwall Regiment "who fell in defence of Lucknow and Cawnpore and subsequent campaign"--fourteen officers and 448 "women and men." And here, too, is perhaps the most affecting memorial of any--a tablet "In memory of Mrs. Moore, Mrs.
Wainwright, Miss Wainwright, Mrs. Hill, forty-three soldiers' wives and fifty-five children, murdered in Cawnpore in 1857."
It is easy enough now to follow the footsteps of Mrs. Moore, dangerous as was that journey of hers, from the intrenchment to the corner of No. 2 Barrack, which she was wont to make when her husband went on duty there to strengthen the hands of Mowbray Thomson. There is no trace now and the very memory of its whereabouts is lost, of the bamboo hut in a sheltered corner which the garrison of this exposed post built for the brave gentlewoman. But No. 2 Barrack, except that it is finished and tenanted, stands now very much as it did when Glanville first, and when he fell then Mowbray Thomson, defended with a success which seems so wonderful when we look at the place defended and its situation. The garrison was not always the same. "My sixteen men," writes Thomson, "consisted in the first instance of Ensign Henderson of the 56th Native Infantry, five or six of the Madras Fusiliers, two plate-layers, and some men of the 84th. The first instalment was soon disabled. The Madras Fusiliers were all shot at their posts. Several of the 84th also fell, but in consequence of the importance of the position, as soon as a loss in my little corps was reported, Captain Moore sent us over a reinforcement from the intrenchment. Sometimes a soldier, sometimes a civilian, came. The orders given us were not to surrender with our lives, and we did our best to obey them." And in a line with No. 2 Barrack is No. 4 Barrack, held with equal stanchness by a party of Civil Engineers who had been employed on the East Indian Railroad, and who had for their commander Captain Jenkins. Seven of the engineers perished in defence of this post.
There is nothing more to see on the _maidan_, and one feels his anger rising at the obliteration of everything that might help towards the localisation of a.s.sociations. Let us leave the scene of the defence and follow the track of the defenders as they marched down to the scene of the great treachery. The distance from the intrenchment to the ghaut is barely a mile. Think of that stirrup-cup--that _doch an dhorras_--of cold water, in which the hapless band pledged one another. The n.o.ble Moore cheerily leads the way down the slope to the bridge with the white rails with an advance guard of a handful of his 32nd men. The palanquins with the women, the children, and the wounded follow, the latter bandaged up with strips of women's gowns and petticoats, and fragments of shirt-sleeves. And then come the fighting-men--a gallant, ragged, indomitable band. A martinet colonel would stand aghast--for save a regimental b.u.t.ton here and there, he would find it hard to recognise the gaunt, hairy, sun-scorched squad for British soldiers. But let who might incline to disown these few war-worn men in their dirty flannel rags and fragmentary nankeen breeches, their foes know them for what they are, and make way for the white sahibs with no dressing indeed in their ranks, but each man with his rifle on his shoulder, the deadly revolver in his belt, and the fearless glance in the hollow eye. The wooden bridge with the white rails spans at right angles a rough irregular glen which widens out as it approaches the river, some three hundred yards distant from the bridge. It is a mere footpath that leaves the road on the hither side of the bridge, and skirting the dry bed of the nullah touches the river close to the old temple. By this footpath it was that our countrymen and countrywomen pa.s.sed down to the cruel ambush which had been laid for them in the mouth of the glen. There are few to whom the details of that fell scene are not familiar. What a contrast between the turmoil and devilry of it and the serene calmness of the all but solitude the ghaut now presents! On the knolls of the farther side snug bungalows nestle among the trees, under the veranda of one of which a lady is playing with her children. The village of Suttee Chowra on the bluff on the left of the ghaut, where Tantia Topee's sepoys were concealed, no longer exists; a pretty bungalow and its compound occupy its site. The little temple on the water's edge by the ghaut is slowly mouldering into decay; on the plaster of the coping of its river wall you may still see the marks of the treacherous bullets. The stair which, built against its wall, led down to the water's edge, has disappeared. Tantia Topee's dispositions for the perpetration of the treachery could not now succeed, for the Ganges has changed its course and there is deep water close in sh.o.r.e at the ghaut. In the stream nearest to the Oude side the river has cast up a long narrow dearah island, in the fertile mud of which melons are cultivated where once whistled the shot from the guns on the Oude side of the river. A Brahmin priest is placidly sunning himself on the river platform of the temple over the dome of which hangs the foliage of a peepul tree. A dhobie is washing the shirts of a sahib in the stream that once was dyed with the blood of the sahibs. There is no monument here, no superfluous reminder of the terrible tragedy. The man is not to be envied whose eyes are dry, and whose heart beats its normal pulsations, while he stands here alone on this spot so densely peopled by a.s.sociations at once so tragic and so glorious.
The scene of the final ma.s.sacre lies some distance higher up the river. As we cross the Ganges ca.n.a.l, the native city lying on our left, there rises up before us the rich ma.s.s of foliage that forms the outer screen of the beautiful Memorial Gardens. The hue of the greenery would be sombre but for the blossoms which relieve it, emblem of the divine hope which mitigated the gloom of despair for our countrywomen who perished so cruelly in this balefully historic spot. Of the Beebeeghur, the term by which among the natives is known the bungalow where the ma.s.sacre was perpetrated, not one stone now remains on another but neither its memory nor its name will be lost for all time. Natives are strolling in the shady flower-bordered walks of the Memorial Gardens, the prohibition which long debarred their entrance having been wisely removed. In the centre of the garden rises, fringed with cypresses, a low mound, the summit of which is crowned by a circular screen, or border, of light and beautiful open-work architecture. The circular s.p.a.ce enclosed is sunken, and from the centre of this sunken s.p.a.ce there rises a pedestal on which stands the marble presentment of an angel. There is no need to explain what episode in the tragic story this monument commemorates; the inscription round the capital of the pedestal tells its tale succinctly indeed, but the words burn.
"Sacred," it runs, "to the perpetual memory of the great company of Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were cruelly ma.s.sacred by the followers of the rebel, Nana Doondoo Punth of Blithoor; and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the 15th day of July 1857." A few paces to the north-west of the monument is the spot where stood the bungalow in which the ma.s.sacre was done; and now, where the sight they saw maddened our countrymen long ago to a frenzy of revenge, there bloom roses and violets. And a step farther on, in a thicket of arbor vitae trees and cypresses, is the Memorial Churchyard, with its many nameless mounds, for here were buried not a few who died during the long occupation of Cawnpore, and in the combats around it. Here there is a monument to Thornhill, the Judge of Futtehghur, Mary his wife, and their two children, who perished in the ma.s.sacre. Thornhill was one of the males brought out from the bungalow and shot earlier in the afternoon than when the women's time came. Another monument bears this inscription: "Sacred to the memory of the women and children of the 32nd, this monument is raised by twenty men of the same regiment, who were pa.s.sing through Cawnpore, 21st Nov. 1857." And among the tombstones are those of gallant Douglas Campbell of the 78th, Woodford of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, and Young of the 4th Bengal Native Infantry.
BISMARCK
BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
The ex-Chancellor of the German Empire owed nothing of his unique career to advent.i.tious advantages. Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who for more than a generation was the most prominent and most powerful personality of Europe, was essentially a self-made man. He was a younger son of a cadet family of a knightly and ancient but somewhat decayed house, ranking among the lesser n.o.bility of the Alt Mark of Brandenburg. The square solid mansion in which he was born, embowered among its trees in the region between the Elbe and the Havel, might be taken by an Englishman for the country residence of a Norfolk or Somersetshire squire of moderate fortune. But memories cling around the ma.s.sive old family place of Schoenhausen, such as can belong to no English residence of equal date. In the library door of the Brandenburg mansion are seen to this day three deep fissures made by the bayonet points of French soldiers fresh from the battlefield of Jena, who in their brutal lawlessness pursued the young and beautiful chatelaine of the house and strove to crush in the door which the fugitive had locked behind her. The lady thus terrified and outraged was the mother of Bismarck; and the story told him in boyhood of his loved mother's narrow escape from worse than death, and of his father's having to conceal her in the depth of the adjoining forest, may well have inspired their son with the ill-feeling against the French nation which he never cared to disguise.
The Bismarcks had been fighting men from time immemorial, and the combatant nature of the great scion of their race displayed itself in frequent duels during his university career at Gottingen. In the series of some eight-and-twenty duels in which he engaged during his first three terms, he was wounded but twice--once in the leg and again on the cheek, the mark of which latter wound he bears to this day. At one time he seems to have all but decided to embrace the military career but for family reasons he became a country gentleman, and if Europe had remained undisturbed by revolution he might have lived and died a bucolic squire, "d.y.k.e Captain" of his district, with a seat in the Provincial Diet, a liking for history and philosophy, a propensity to rowdyism and drinking bouts of champagne and porter, and a character which defined itself in his local appellation of "Mad Bismarck." _Dis aliter visum_. The Revolution of 1848 swept over Europe and Bismarck rallied to the support of his sovereign. When in 1851 the young Landwehr lieutenant was sent to Frankfort by that sovereign as the representative of Prussia in the German Diet, he carried with him a reputation for unflinching devotion to the Crown, for a conservatism which had been styled not only "mediaeval" but "antediluvian," and for startling originality in his views as well as fearlessness in expressing them. The latter attribute he displayed when, in reply to a remark of a French diplomat on a question of policy, "_Cette politique va vous conduire a Jena_," Bismarck significantly retorted, "_Pourquoi pas a Leipsic ou a Waterloo?_" During his tenure of office at Frankfort his conviction steadfastly strengthened that Prussia could become a great nation only by shaking herself free from the Austrian supremacy in Germany. "It is my conviction," he placed on record in a despatch soon after the Crimean War, "that at no distant time we shall have to fight with Austria for our very existence;" and he was yet more emphatic when he wrote just before leaving Frankfort to take up his new position as German Amba.s.sador to Russia in the beginning of 1859: "I recognise in our relations with the Bund a certain weakness affecting Prussia, which, sooner or later, we shall have to cure _ferro et igni_"-- with fire and sword--words which embodied the first distinct enunciation of that policy of "blood and iron" which was destined ultimately to bring about the unification of Germany. His disgust was so strong that Prussia did not a.s.sert herself against Austria in 1858 when the latter's hands were full in Italy, that his continued presence at Frankfort was considered unadvisable. He remained "in ice"--to use his own expression-- at St. Petersburg until early in 1862; and in September of that year, after a few months of service as Prussian Amba.s.sador at Paris, he was appointed by King Wilhelm to the high and onerous post of Minister-President with the portfolio of Foreign Secretary. It was then that his great career as a European statesman really began.
The impression is all but universal that King Wilhelm throughout the eventful years which followed was but the figure-head of the ship at the helm of which stood Bismarck, strong, shrewd, subtle, cynical, and unscrupulous. This conception I believe to be utterly wrong. I hold Wilhelm to have been the virtual maker of the united Germany and the creator of the German Empire; and that the accomplishment of both those objects, the former leading up to the latter, was already quietly in his mind long before he mounted the throne. I consider him to have possessed the shrewdest insight into character. I believe him to have been quite unscrupulous, when once he had brought himself to cross the threshold of a line of action. I discern in him this curious, although not very rare, phase of character, that although resolutely bent on a purpose he was apt to be irresolute and even reluctant in bringing himself to consent to measures whereby that purpose was to be accomplished. He was that apparent contradiction in terms, a bold hesitator; he habitually needed, and knew that he needed, to have his hand apparently forced for the achievement of the end he was most bent upon. He knew full well that his aspirations could be fulfilled only at the bayonet point; and recognising the defects of the army, he had while still Regent set himself energetically to the task of making Prussia the greatest military power of Europe. He it was who had put into the hands of Prussian soldiers the weapon that won Koniggratz. With his clear eye for the right man he had found Moltke and placed the premier strategist of his day at the head of the General Staff.
Roon he picked out as if by intuition from comparative obscurity, and a.s.signed to him the work of preparing and carrying out that scheme of army reform which all continental Europe has copied.
And then, constant in the furtherance of his purposes, Wilhelm deliberately invented Bismarck. He had steadfastly taken note of the man whom he chose to be his minister from the big Landwehr lieutenant's first commission to the Frankfort Diet in 1851; probably, indeed, earlier, when Bismarck was a rare but forcible speaker in Frederick Wilhelm's "quasi-Parliament." In Bismarck Wilhelm saw precisely the man he wanted-- the complement of himself; arbitrary as he was, unscrupulous as he was, but bolder and at the same time more wise. Knowing where he himself was lacking, he recognised the man who, when he himself should have the impulse to balk and hesitate, was of that hardier nature--"grit" the Americans call it--to take him hard by the head and force him over the fence which all the while he had been longing to be on the other side of.
To a monarch of this character Bismarck was simply the ideal guide and support--the man to urge him on when hesitating, to restrain him when over-ardent. Wilhelm had all along thoroughly realised that war with Austria was among the inevitables between him and the accomplishment of his aims, and had accepted it as such when it was yet afar off; but when confronted full with it his nerve failed him, and Bismarck--engaged among other things for just such an emergency--had to act as the spur to p.r.i.c.k the side of his master's intent. The spur having done its work Wilhelm was himself again; he really enjoyed Koniggratz and would fain have dictated peace to Austria from the Hofburg of Vienna. In his zeal for promoting German unity at Prussia's bayonet point he lost his head a little, and on Bismarck devolved, in his own words, "the ungrateful duty of diluting the wine of victory with the water of moderation." One of the beads on the surface of the former fluid was certainly thus early the Imperial idea; but the time for its fulfilment Bismarck wisely judged not yet ripe. As it approached four years later, the diary of the Crown Prince depicts with unconscious humour the amusing progress of the "weakening" of Wilhelm's opposition to the Kaisership; it weakened in good time quite out of the sort of existence it had ever had, and Wilhelm was ready for the Kaisership before the Kaisership was ready for him.
Bismarck as Premier began as he meant to go on, with uncompromising masterfulness. The Chamber and the nation might probably have fallen in willingly with Wilhelm's scheme for the reorganisation and reinforcement of the army, had it been possible to divulge the intent in furtherance of which the increased armament was being created. But since neither monarch nor minister could even hint at the objects in view, the nation was set against that increased armament for which it could discern no apparent use. So the Chamber, session after session, went through the accustomed formula of rejecting the military reorganisation bill as well as the military expenditure estimates. "No surrender" was the steadfast motto of Bismarck and his royal master. The const.i.tution, such as it was, in effect was suspended. The Upper House voted everything it was asked to vote; loans were duly effected, the revenues were collected and the military disburs.e.m.e.nts were made, right in the teeth of the popular will and the veto of the representatives of the nation. Bismarck became the best-hated man in Prussia. He was compared to Catiline and Strafford; he was threatened with impeachment; the House and the nation clamoured to the King for his dismissal and for the sovereign's return to the path of const.i.tutional government.
But the long "conflict-time" was drawing near its close, and the triumph of the monarch and his minister over the const.i.tution was approaching. The policy of doing political evil that national advantage might come was, for once at least, to stand vindicated. War with Austria as the outcome of Bismarck's astute if unscrupulous statecraft was imminent when the hostile parliament was dissolved; and a general election took place amidst the fervid outburst of enthusiasm which the earlier victories of the Prussian arms in the "Seven Weeks' War" stirred throughout the nation. The prospect of war had been unpopular in the extreme, but the tidings of the first success kindled the flame of patriotism. Bismarck lost for ever the t.i.tle of the "best-hated man in Prussia" in the loud volume of the enthusiastic greetings of the populace, and on the day of Munchengratz and Skalitz Prussia now rejoiced to put her stubborn neck under the great minister's foot.
The mingled truculence and tortuousness of the diplomacy by which Bismarck sapped up to the short but decisive war, the issue of which gave to Prussia the virtual headship of Germany and contributed so greatly toward the unification of the Fatherland, const.i.tute a striking ill.u.s.tration of his methods in statecraft. He was fairly ent.i.tled to say, "_Ego qui feci_." He had achieved his aim in defiance of the nation. The Court threw its weight into the scale against the war; to the Crown Prince the strife with Austria was notoriously repugnant. The King himself, as the crisis approached, evinced marked hesitation. How triumphantly the event vindicated the policy of the great Premier, is a matter of history. He has frankly owned that if the decisive battle should have resulted in a Prussian defeat, he had resolved not to survive the shipwreck of his hopes and schemes. And there was a period in the course of the colossal struggle of Koniggratz, when to many men it seemed that the wielders of the needle-gun were having the worst of the battle. An awful hour for Bismarck, conscious of the load of responsibility which he carried. With great effort he could indeed maintain a calm visage, but his heart was beating and every pulse of him throbbing. In his torture of suspense he caught at straws. Moltke asked him for a cigar. As Bismarck handed him his cigar case he s.n.a.t.c.hed a shred of comfort from the inference that if matters were very bad Moltke could hardly care to smoke. But Moltke was not only in a frame for tobacco but Bismarck watched with what deliberate coolness the great strategist inspected and smelt at cigar after cigar before making his final selection; and he dared to infer that the man who best understood the situation was in no perturbation as to the ultimate outcome. The opportune arrival of the Crown Prince's army on the Austrian right flank decided the business, and that arrival Bismarck was the first to discern. Lines were dimly visible on the hither slope of the Chlum heights; but they were p.r.o.nounced to be ploughed ridges. Bismarck closed his field-gla.s.ses with a snap and exclaimed, "No, these are not plough furrows; the s.p.a.ces are not equal; they are marching lines!" And he was right.
Eighteen days after the victory of Koniggratz the Prussian hosts were in line on the historic Marchfeld whence the spires of Vienna could be dimly seen through the heat-haze. The soldiers were eager for the storm of the famous lines of Florisdorf and King Wilhelm was keen to enter the Austrian capital. But now the practical wisdom of Bismarck stepped in and his arguments for moderation prevailed. The peace which ended the Seven Weeks'
War revolutionised the face of Germany. Austria accepted her utter exile from Germany, recognised the dissolution of the old Bund, and consented to non-partic.i.p.ation in the new North German Confederation of which Prussia was to have the unquestioned military and diplomatic leadership. Prussia annexed Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Na.s.sau, Sleswig and Holstein, Frankfort-on-Main, and portions of Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria. Her territorial acquisitions amounted to over 6500 square miles with a population exceeding 4,000,000, and the states with which she had been in conflict paid as war indemnity sums reaching nearly to 10,000,000 sterling. In a material sense, it had not been a bad seven weeks for Prussia; in a sense other than material, she had profited incalculably more. She was now, in fact as in name, one of the "Great Powers" of Europe. The nation realised at length what manner of man this Bismarck was and what it owed to him. When the inner history of the period comes to be written, it will be recognised that at no time of his extraordinary career did Bismarck prove himself a greater statesman than during the five days of armistice in July 1866, when he fought his diplomatic Koniggratz in the Castle of Nikolsburg and a.s.suaged the wounds of the Austrian defeat by terms the moderation of which went far to obliterate the memory of the rancour of the recent strife.
He had been wily enough to secure by vague non-committal half-promises the neutrality of France during the weeks while Prussia was crushing the armed strength of Austria in Bohemia. But the issue of Koniggratz startled Napoleon and set France in ferment. Bismarck dared to refuse point-blank the demand which the French Emperor made for the fortress of Mayence, made though that demand was under threat of war. The Prussian commanders would have liked nothing better than a war with France, and Roon indeed had warned for mobilisation 350,000 soldiers to swell the ranks of the forces already in the field; but Bismarck was wise and could wait. He allowed Napoleon to exercise some influence in the negotiations in the character of a mediator; and to French intervention was owing the stipulation that the South German States should be at liberty to form themselves into a South German Confederation of which Napoleon hoped to be the patron. But Bismarck was a better diplomatist than Napoleon. While he formed and knit together the North German Confederation in which Prussia was dominant, he quietly negotiated an alliance offensive and defensive with each of the Southern States separately. No Southern bund was ever formed, and when the Franco-German War broke out in 1870 Napoleon saw the shipwreck of his abortive devices in the spectacle of the troops of Bavaria and Wurtemberg marching on the Rhine in line with the battalions of Prussia.
The unity of Germany was not yet; that consummation and the Kaisership-- the two greatest triumphs of Bismarck's life--required another and a greater war to bring about their accomplishment. During the interval between 1866 and 1870, while the armed strength of Northern Germany was being quietly but sedulously perfected, Bismarck with dexterous caution was smoothing the rough path toward the ultimate unification. He would not have his hand forced by the enthusiasts for "the consummation of the national destiny." "No horseman can afford to be always at a gallop" was the figure with which he met the clamourers of the Customs Parliament. He invoked the terms of the treaty of Prague against the spokesmen of the Pan-German party inveighing vehemently against the policy of delay. He was staunch in his conviction that the South for its own safety's sake would come into the union the moment that the North should engage in war. He was a few weeks out in his reckoning; the Southern States waited until Sedan had been fought, when the prospect of the spoils of victory was a.s.sured; and this measured delay on their part was the best justification of Bismarck's sagacious deliberateness. The negotiations were tedious, but at length, on the evening of 23rd November 1870 the Convention with Bavaria was signed, and the unity of Germany was an accomplished fact. Busch vividly depicts the great moment:--
The Chief came in from the salon, and sat down at the table. "Now," he exclaimed excitedly, "the Bavarian business is settled and everything is signed. _We have got our German Unity and our German Emperor_." There was silence for a moment. "Bring a bottle of champagne," said the Chief to a servant, "it is a great occasion." After musing a little, he remarked, "The Convention has its defects, but it is all the stronger on account of them. I count it the most important thing that we have accomplished during recent years."
Notwithstanding that there was still before Bismarck a period of twenty years of virtual omnipotence, it was in the memorable years of 1870 and 1871 that the apostle of blood and iron attained the zenith of his extraordinary career. Germany was his wash-pot; over France had he cast his shoe. The years of _Sturm und Drang_ were behind him, during which he had wrought out the military supremacy of Prussia in spite of herself; and in 1870 he had no misgivings as to the ultimate result. So confident indeed was he that before he crossed the French frontier on the second day after the twin victories of Worth and Spicheren, he had already resolved on annexing to the Fatherland the old German province of Alsace which had been part of France for a couple of centuries. Bismarck was at his best in 1870 in certain attributes; in others he was at his worst, and a bitter bad worst that worst was. He was at his best in clear swift insight, in firm masterful grasp of every phase of every situation, in an instinctive prescience of events, in lucid dominance over German and European policy.
If patriotism consists in earnest efforts to advantage and aggrandise one's native land _per fas aut nefas_, than Bismarck during the Franco-German War there never was a grander patriot. His hands were clean, he wanted nothing for himself except, curiously enough, the only thing that his old master was strong enough to deny him, the rank of Field Marshal when that military distinction was conferred on Moltke. He was at his worst in many respects. He had, or affected, a truculence which was simply brutal, its savagery intensified rather than mitigated by a bluff, boisterous bonhomie. Jules Favre complained to him that the German cannon in front of Paris fired upon the sick and blind in the Blind Inst.i.tute, Bismarck in those days of swaggering prosperity had a fine turn of badinage. "I don't know what you find so hard in that," he retorted, "you do far worse; you shoot at our soldiers who are hale and useful fighting men." It is to be hoped that Favre had a sense of humour; he needed it all to relish the grim pleasantry.
I do not suppose, if he had had a free hand, that Bismarck would have exhibited the courage of his opinions; but if his sentiments as expressed count for anything he would fain have seen the methods of warfare in the Dark Ages reverted to. "Prisoners! more prisoners!" he once exclaimed at Versailles, after one of Prince Frederick Charles's victories in the Loire country--"What the devil do we want with prisoners? Why don't they make a battue of them?" His motto, especially as regarded Francs-tireurs, was "No quarter," forgetful of the swarms of free companions and volunteer bands whose gallant services in Prussia's War of Liberation are commemorated to this day in song and story. It was told him that among the French prisoners taken at Le Bourget were a number of Francs-tireurs--by the way, they were the volunteers _de la Presse_ and wore a uniform. "That they should ever take Francs-tireurs prisoners!" roared Bismarck in disgust.
"They ought to have shot them down by files!" Again, when it was reported that Garibaldi with his 13,000 "free companions" had been taken prisoners, the Chancellor exclaimed, "Thirteen thousand Francs-tireurs, who are not even Frenchmen, made prisoners! Why on earth were they not shot?" And when he heard that Voights Rhetz having experienced some resistance from the inhabitants of the open town of Tours, had sh.e.l.led it into submission, Bismarck waxed wrath because the General had ceased firing when the white flag went up. "I would have gone on," said he, "throwing sh.e.l.ls into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious bl.u.s.ter and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified att.i.tude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man of cool and undaunted courage. I have seen him perfectly impa.s.sive under heavy fire. In Bar-le-Duc, in Rheims, and over and over again in Versailles, I have met him walking alone and unarmed through streets thronged with French people who recognised him by the pictures of him, and who glared and spat and hissed in a cowed, furtive, malign fashion that was ugly to see.
I vividly remember the first occasion on which I saw Bismarck. It was on the little tree-shaded _Place_ of St. Johann, the suburb of Saarbrucken, in the early evening of the 8th August, the next day but one after the battle of the Spicheren. Saarbrucken was full to the door-sills with the wounded of the battle and stretcher-parties were continually tramping to the "warriors' trench" in the cemetery, carrying to their graves soldiers who had died of their wounds. The Royal Headquarters had arrived a couple of hours earlier, and I was staring with all my eyes at a fresh-faced, white-haired old gentleman who was sitting in one of the windows of Guepratt's Hotel and whom I knew from the pictures to be King Wilhelm. Two officers in general's undress uniform were walking up and down under the pollarded lime-trees, talking as they walked. Presently from out a house opposite the hotel there emerged a very tall burly man of singularly upright carriage and with a certain air of swashbucklerism in his gait. A long cavalry sabre trailed and clanked on the rough pavement as he advanced to join the two sauntering officers under the trees. He wore the long blue double-breasted frockcoat with yellow cuffs and facings and white cap which I knew to be the undress uniform of the Bismarck Cuira.s.siers, but he was only partially in undress since the long cuira.s.sier thigh-boots in which he strode were conventionally full uniform. The wearer of this costume was Bismarck; nor did I ever see him otherwise attired except on four occasions--at the Chateau Bellevue on the morning after Sedan, in the Galerie des Glaces in the Chateau of Versailles on 18th January, in the Place de la Concorde of capitulated Paris, and in the triumphal entry into Berlin; when he appeared in full uniform. Saluting His Majesty and then the two officers whom I recognised as Moltke and Roon, he joined the pedestrian couple, taking post between them and joining in their promenade and conversation. We heard his voice and laugh above the rumble of the waggon wheels on the causeway; the other two spoke little--Moltke, as he moved with bent head and hands clasped behind his back, scarcely anything.
One would have imagined that those three men, the chief makers of that empire which was soon to come to the grand but not brilliant old gentleman in the window-seat, were on the most intimate and cordial terms. In reality they were jealous of each other with an inconceivable intensity.
Bismarck had umbrage with Moltke because the great strategist withheld from the great statesman the military information which the latter held he ought to share. Moltke has roundly disclosed in his posthumous book his conviction that Roon's place as Minister of War was at home in Germany, not on campaign, embarra.s.sing the former's functions. Roon envied Moltke because of the latter's more elevated military position, and disliked Bismarck because that outspoken man made light of Roon's capacity. I have known the headquarter staff of a British army whose members were on bad terms one with the other, and the result, to put it mildly, was unsatisfactory. But those three high functionaries, each with bitterness in his heart against his fellows, nevertheless co-operated earnestly and loyally in the service of their sovereign and for the advantage of their country. Their common patriotism had the mastery in them of their mutual hatred and jealousy. Ardt's line: _"Sein Vaterland muss grosser sein!"_ was the watchword and inspiration of all three, and dominated their discordancies.
On the 17th August, the day of comparative quietude intervening between the day of Mars-la-Tour and the day of Gravelotte I was wandering about among the hamlets and farmsteads to the southward of Mars-la-Tour, waiting the arrival in their appointed bivouacs about Puxieux of my early friends of the Saxon Army Corps. Since in the battle of the previous day some 32,000 men had fallen killed or wounded within a comparatively small area, it may be imagined--or rather, without having seen the horror of carnage it cannot be imagined--how shambles-like was the aspect of this Aceldama.
Scrambling up through the Bois la Dame with intent to obtain a wider view from the plateau above it, I found in a farmyard in the hamlet of Mariaville a number of wounded men under the care of a single and rather helpless surgeon. The water supply was very short and I volunteered to carry some bucketsful from the stream below. The surgeon told me that among his patients was Count Herbert Bismarck, the Chancellor's eldest son, who--as was also his younger brother Count "Bill"--was a volunteer private in the 2nd Guard Dragoons, and who had been shot in the thigh in the desperate charge made by that fine regiment to extricate from annihilation the Westphalian regiments which had suffered so severely near Bruville. A little later I saw Bismarck who had left the King on the Flavigny height, and who was riding about, as I a.s.sumed, in quest of his wounded son's whereabouts. I ventured to inform him on this point and he thanked me with some emotion. He was greatly moved at the meeting with his son but their interview was short; then he addressed himself to reproving the surgeon for not having had the Mariaville poultry killed for the use of the wounded, and presently rode away to order up a supply of water in barrels. I remember thinking him an exceedingly practical man.
The English Warwick was styled the "King-maker"; but it was for the Prussian Bismarck to be Emperor-breaker and Emperor-maker within the same six months. The most wretched morning of Napoleon's life was that following the fatal day of Sedan, spent in and before the weaver's cottage on the Donchery road with Bismarck by his side, telling him in stern if courteous terms that as a prisoner of war his power to exercise the Imperial functions had fallen from him. It has been said that "the egg from which was hatched the German Empire was laid on the battlefield of Sedan." But, not to speak of the offer of the Imperial Crown to King Frederick Wilhelm by the Frankfort Parliament in 1848, Bismarck more than a year before the Austro-Prussian war had spoken to Lord Augustus Loftus, then British Amba.s.sador to Prussia, of his ultimate intention that the King of Prussia should become the Emperor of an united Germany. The _Kaiserthum_ permeated the air of Northern Germany throughout the years from 1866 to 1870. But Bismarck had the true statesman's sense of the proper sequence of things. He would move no step toward the Kaisership until German unity was in near and clear sight. Then, and not till then, in spite of the Crown Prince's ardour, was the Imperial project brought forward, discussed, and finally carried through by Bismarck's tact and diplomacy.
On the 18th January 1871, the anniversary of the coronation of the first king of his house, Wilhelm was proclaimed German Emperor in the Galerie des Glaces of the Chateau of Versailles. Behind the grand old monarch on the dais were ranged the regimental colours which had been borne to victory at Worth and the Spicheren, at Mars-la-Tour, Gravelotte, and Sedan. On Wilhelm's right was his handsome and princely son; to right and to left stood potentates and princes and the leaders of the hosts of United Germany. Stalwart and square, somewhat apart on the extreme left of the great semicircle of which his sovereign was the centre, with a face of deadly pallor--for he had risen from a sick-bed--stood Bismarck in full cuira.s.sier uniform leaning on his great sword, the man of all others who might that day most truly say, _"Finis Coronat Opus."_ His strong ma.s.sive features were calm and self-possessed, yet elevated as it were by some internal power which drew all eyes to the great immobile figure with the indomitable lineaments instinct with will--force and masterfulness. After the solemn religious service His Majesty in a loud yet broken voice proclaimed the re-establishment of the German Empire, and that the Imperial dignity so revived was vested in him and his descendants for all time in accordance with the unanimous will of the German people. Bismarck then stood forward and read in sonorous tones the proclamation which the Emperor addressed to the German nation. As his final words rang through the hall the Grand Duke of Baden strode forward and shouted with all his force, "Long live the Emperor Wilhelm!" With a tempest of cheering, amidst waving of swords and of helmets the new t.i.tle was acclaimed, and the Emperor with streaming tears received the homage of his liegemen. The first on bended knees to kiss his sovereign's hand was the Crown Prince, the second was Bismarck. The band struck up the National Anthem. Louder than the music, heard above the clamour of the cheering, sounded the thunder of the French cannon from Mont Valerien, the _Ave Caesar_ from the reluctant lips of worsted France. Bismarck, impa.s.sive as he seemed, must have had his emotions as he quitted this scene of triumph for the banquet-table of the Kaiser of his own making. He knew himself for the most conspicuous man in Europe, the greatest subject in the world. It was the proudest day of his life.
There were many proud days still to occur in his long life. One of those was on the occasion of the German entry into Paris during the armistice which resulted in peace. The war had been of his making, and he chose to witness with his own eyes the actual triumph of his craft. It was a strange spectacle. There, helmet on head and sword on thigh, he sat in the shadow of the c.r.a.pe-shrouded statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. About him had gathered a group of extremely sinister French of the Belleville type. They had recognised him, and their lurid upward glances at the ma.s.sive form on the great war-horse were charged with baleful meaning. Bismarck once or twice looked down on them with a grim smile under his moustache. At length the most daring of the "patriots"
emitted a tentative hiss. With a little polite wave of his gloved hand Bismarck bent over his holster and requested "Monsieur" to oblige him with a light for his cigar. The man writhed as he compelled himself to comply.
Little doubt that in his heart he wished the lucifer were a dagger and that he had the courage to use it.
THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
1873
"_Thursday_.--Gathering, hand-shaking, brandy and soda and drams.
"_Friday_.--Drinking, dandering, and feeling the way in the forenoon; the ordinary in the afternoon; at night a spate of drink and bargaining.
"_Sat.u.r.day_.--Bargaining and drink.
"_Sunday morning_.--Bargains, drink, and the kirk."
Such was the skeleton programme of the Inverness "Character" Fair given by a farmer friend to me, who happened to be lazily rusticating in the north of Scotland during the pleasant month of July. My friend asked me to accompany him in his visit to this remarkable inst.i.tution and the programme was too tempting for refusal. As we drove to the station he handed me Henry Dixon's _Field and Fern_, open at a page which gave some particulars of the origin and character of the great annual sheep and wool market of the north. "Its Character Market," wrote "The Druid,"--no longer, alas! among us--"is the great bucolic glory of Inverness. The Fort-William market existed before, but the Sutherland and Caithness men, who sold about 14,000 sheep and 15,000 stones of wool annually so far back as 1816, did not care to go there. They dealt with regular customers year after year, and roving wool-staplers with no regular connection went about and notified their arrival on the church door. Patrick Sellar, 'the agent for the Sutherland a.s.sociation,' saw exactly that some great _caucus_ of buyers and sellers was wanted at a more central spot; and on 27th February 1817 that meeting of the clans was held at Inverness which brought the fair into being. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Burnley, Aberdeen, and Elgin signified that their leading merchants were favourable and ready to attend. Sutherland, Caithness, Wester Ross, Skye, the Orkneys, Harris, and Lewis were represented at the meeting; Bailie Anderson also 'would state with confidence that the market was approved of by William Chisholm, Esq., of Chisholm, and James Laidlaw, tacksman, of Knockfin;' and so the matter was settled for ever and aye, and the _Courier_ and the _Morning Chronicle_ were the London advertising media. This Highland Wool Parliament was originally held on the third Thursday in June, but now it begins on the second Thursday of July and lasts till the Sat.u.r.day; and Argyllshire, Nairnshire, and High Aberdeenshire have gradually joined in.
The plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel have always been the scene of the bargains, which are most truly based on the broad stone of honour; not a sheep or fleece is to be seen and the buyer of the year before gets the first offer of the cast or clip. The previous proving and public character of the different flocks are the purchasers' guide far more than the sellers' description."
Thus far "The Druid"; and my companion as we drove supplemented his information. It is from the circ.u.mstance that not a head of sheep or a tait of wool is brought to the market but that everything is sold and bought unseen and even unsampled, that the market derives its appellation of "character" fair. Of the value of the business transacted, the amount of money turned over, it is impossible to form with confidence even an approximate estimate since there is no source for data; but none with whom I spoke put the turnover at a lower figure than half a million. In a good season such as the past, over 200,000 sheep are disposed of exclusive of lambs, and of lambs about the same number. The stock sold from the hills are for the most part Cheviots and Blackfaces; from the low grounds half-breds, being a cross between Leicester and Cheviot and crosses between the Cheviot and Blackface. All the sales of sheep and lambs are by the "clad score" which contains twenty-one. The odd one is thrown in to meet the contingency of deaths before delivery is effected. Established when there was a long and wearing journey for the flocks from the hills where they were reared down to their purchasers in the lowlands or the south country, the altered conditions of transit have stimulated farmers to efforts for the abolition of the "clad score." Now that sheep are trucked by railway instead of being driven on foot or conveyed from the islands to their destination in steamers specially chartered for the purpose, the farmers grudge the "one in" of the "clad score." In 1866 they seized the opportunity of an exceptionally high market and keen compet.i.tion to combine against the old reckoning and in a measure succeeded. But next year was as dull as '66 had been brisk, and then the buyers and dealers had their revenge and re-established the "clad score"