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It seemed always Forrest’s plan to select his own fighting-ground, and the plan of our commanders to gratify him. Sturgis committed the usual folly of trying to hold every inch he had gained, and of forming his line of battle on the head of the column and under fire.
We breakfasted at three in the morning, and marched at half past four. My command had the advance. The enemy allowed himself to be easily driven until half past eight, when he made some show of resistance. At this time the last of our regiments could hardly have left the camping-ground, and probably a judicious retreat would have drawn Forrest’s whole force back to the open country we had left. But “retreat” was not yet written on our banners (of that day), and orders came from our general to support the advance-guard, form line of battle, and hold our position. So far as the cavalry brigade was concerned this was easily done, and we got into good line near the edge of a wood without difficulty. Here, for four mortal hours, or until half past twelve, we carried on a tolerably equal warfare, both sides blazing away at each other with little effect across the six hundred yards of cleared valley that lay between two skirts of wood. So far as the endurance of our troops was concerned, this engagement could have been kept up until nightfall, though our ranks were slowly thinning. Several desperate charges were made on our position, and were repulsed with considerable loss to both sides. Pending the arrival of the infantry it would have been folly for us to attempt a further advance, but had we been properly supported, or, better, had we at once fallen back upon our support, we might have given, as the post bellum reports of Forrest’s officers show, a better ending to the day’s work. It was only at half past twelve, when our ammunition was reduced to five rounds per man, and when our battery had fired its last shot, that the infantry began to arrive, and then they came a regiment at a time, or only so fast as the Forrest mill could grind them up in detail.
They had taken our place, and we had withdrawn to their rear, where we were joined by one after another of the defeated or exhausted infantry regiments. Little by little the enemy pressed upon us, gaining rod after rod of our position, until finally our last arriving troops, a splendid colored regiment, reached the field of battle at double-quick, breathless and beaten by their own speed, barely in time to check the assault until we could cross the creek and move toward the rear. The retreat was but fairly begun when we came upon our train of two hundred wagons piled pell-mell in a small field and blocked in beyond the possibility of removal. With sad eyes we saw John Ellard cut his traces and leave all that was dear to us—tents, camp-chest, poker-table, and all that we cherished—to inevitable capture. The train was our tub to the whale; and while Forrest’s men were sacking our treasures, and refilling the caissons of all our batteries, which they had captured, we had time to form for the retreat, more or less orderly according as we had come early or late off the field. The demoralizing roar of our own guns, and the howling over our heads of our own shells, together with the sharp rattle of musketry in our rear, hastened and saddened the ignominious flight of the head of our column, though, for some reason, the enemy’s advance upon us was slow.
All that long night we marched on, without food and without rest. At early dawn we reached Ripley, where we paused for breath. Max had been ridden almost uninterruptedly for twenty-four hours, and for four hours had done the constant hard work that the supervision of a long line in active engagement had made necessary; and he was glad to be unsaddled and turned for fifteen minutes into a scantily grown paddock, where he rolled and nibbled and refreshed himself as much as ordinary horses do with a whole night’s rest. The ambulances with our groaning wounded men came pouring into the village, and to our surprise, those women, who had so recently given only evidence of a horrified hatred, pressed round to offer every aid that lay in their power, and to comfort our suffering men as only kind-hearted women can.
With the increasing daylight the pursuit was reopened with vigor, and on we went, and ever on, marching all that day, our rear-guard being constantly engaged, and hundreds of our men being captured, thousands more scattering into the woods. My lieutenant-colonel, Von Helmrich, who had been for twenty-eight years a cavalry officer in Germany, and who, after thirteen months in Libby Prison, had overtaken us as we were leaving Memphis, was recaptured and carried back to Richmond,—to die of a good dinner on his second release, ten months later. At nightfall, the pursuit growing weak, we halted to collect together our stragglers, but not to rest, and after a short half-hour pushed on again; and all that interminable night, and until half past ten the next morning, when we reached Colliersville and the railroad, reinforcements, and supplies, we marched, marched, marched, without rest, without sleep, and without food. The cavalrymen were mainly dismounted and driving their tired jades before them, only Max and a few others carrying their riders to the very end, and coming in with a whinny of content to the familiar stables and back-yards of the little town.
Most other officers whose service had been as constant as mine had had extra horses to ride for relief; but I had never yet found march too long for Max’s wiry sinews, and trusted to him alone. He had now been ridden almost absolutely without intermission, and much of the time at a gallop or a rapid trot, for fifty-four hours. I had had for my own support the excitement and then the anxious despair of responsible service, and Ike had filled his haversack with hard-bread from John Ellard’s abandoned wagon; an occasional nibble at this, and unlimited pipes of tobacco, had fortified me in my endurance of the work; but Max had had in the whole time not the half of what he would have made light of for a single meal. I have known and have written about brilliant feats of other horses, but as I look over the whole range of all the best animals I have seen, I bow with respect to the wonderful courage, endurance, and fidelity of this superbly useful brute.
There is an elasticity in youth and health, trained and hardened by years of active field-service, which asserts itself under the most depressing circumstances. Even this shameful and horrible defeat and flight had their ludicrous incidents, which we were permitted to appreciate. Thus, for instance, during a lull in the engagement at Guntown, I had seated myself in a rush-bottomed chair under the lee of a broad tree-trunk; a prudent pig, suspecting danger, had taken shelter between the legs of the chair, leaving, however, his rear unprotected. Random bullets have an odd way of finding weak places, and it was due to one of these that I was unseated, with an accompaniment of squeal, by the rapid and articulate flight of my companion.
During our last night’s march, my brigade having the advance, and I being at its rear, Grierson ordered me to prevent the pushing ahead of the stragglers of the other brigades, who were to be recognized, he reminded me, by their wearing hats (mine wore caps). The order was peremptory, and was to be enforced even at the cost of cutting the offenders down. Grierson’s adjutant was at my side; we were all sleeping more or less of the time, but constantly some hatted straggler was detected pushing toward the front, and ordered back,—the adjutant being especially sharp-eyed in detecting the mutilated sugar-loaves through the gloom. Finally, close to my right and pushing slowly to the front, in a long-strided walk, came a gray horse with a hatted rider,—an india-rubber poncho covering his uniform. I ordered him back; the adjutant, eager for the enforcement of the order, remonstrated at the man’s disobedience; I ordered again, but without result; the adjutant ejaculated, “Damn him, cut him down!” I drew my sabre and laid its flat in one long, stinging welt across that black poncho: “–! who are you hitting?” Then we both remembered that Grierson too wore a hat; and I tender him here my public acknowledgment of a good-nature so great that an evening reunion in Memphis over a dozen of wine won his generous silence.
One might go on with interminable gossip over incidents of camp and field for which at this late day only scant interest is felt; but nothing that I could say more would probably aid my purpose, which has been simply by a trifling sketch to recall the jollity, the comfort, the suffering, and the misery of campaign life, and to show how in the field more than anywhere else one learns to cherish and to depend upon a faithful and honest and willing comrade like my royal old Max.
HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT
(CIRCUMSTANTIALLY TRUE.)The war was not quite over, but my regiment was old enough to have grown too small for a colonel, and I sat, the dismalest of all men, a “mustered-out” officer, sated with such good things as a suddenly arrested income had allowed me, over an after-dinner table in a little room at the Athenæum Club. My coffee was gone to its dregs; the closing day was shutting down gloomily in such a weary rain as only a New York back-yard ever knows; and I was wondering what was to become of a man whom four years of cavalry service had estranged from every good and useful thing in life. The only career that then seemed worth running was run out for me; and, worst of all, my pay had been finally stopped.
The world was before me for a choice, but I had no choice. The only thing I could do was to command mounted troops, and commanders of mounted troops were not in demand. Ages ago I had known how to do other things, but the knowledge had gone from me, and was not to be recalled so long as I had enough money left with which to be unhappy in idle foreboding. I had not laid down my life in the war, but during its wonderful four years I had laid down, so completely, the ways of life of a sober and industrious citizen, and had soaked my whole nature so full of the subtile ether of idleness and vagabondism, that it seemed as easy and as natural to become the Aladdin I might have dreamed myself to be as the delver I had really been. With a heavy heart, then, and a full stomach, I sat in a half-disconsolate, half-reminiscent, not wholly unhappy mood, relapsing with post-prandial ease into that befogged intellectual condition in which even the drizzle against the window-panes can confuse itself with the patter on a tent roof; and the charm of the old wanderings came over me again, filling my table with the old comrades, even elevating my cigar to a brier-wood, and recalling such fellowship as only tent-life ever knows.
Such dreaming is always interrupted, else it would never end; mine was disturbed by a small card on a small salver, held meekly across the table by the meekest of waiters.
The card bore the name “Adolf zu Dohna-Schlodien,” and a count’s coronet,—a count’s coronet and “zu” (a touch above “von”)! I remembered to have seen a letter from my adjutant to the Prussian Consul in Philadelphia, asking him to obtain information about a handsome young musical “Graf zu” something, who was creating a sensation in St. Louis society, and the “zu” seemed to indicate this as the party in question; he had spoken of him as having defective front teeth, which seemed to be pointing to the “color and distinguishing marks,” known in Herd Book pedigrees, and human passports,—a means of identification I resolved to make use of; for my experience with the German nobility in America had been rather wide than remunerative.
The “Herr zu” had waited in the hall, and was standing under the full light of the lamp. He was very tall, very slight, and very young, apparently not more than twenty, modestly dressed, and quiet in his manner. He was not strikingly handsome, though very well looking. His hands were the most perfect I ever saw, and the ungloved one showed careful attention. There was no defect noticeable in his front teeth. He bowed slightly and handed me a letter. It was from Voisin, my former adjutant, but it was not exactly a letter of introduction. At least, it was less cordial than Voisin’s letters of introduction were wont to be. Yet it was kind. Without commending the Count as a bosom friend, he still said he was much interested in him, had reason to believe in him, was sorry for him, had given him material aid, and was very desirous that he should pull through some pecuniary troubles, which he could do only by enlisting in the Regular Army, and receiving his bounty. From this he would give me money to release his baggage, which was valuable, from some inconveniences that were then attending it in St. Louis. Would I get him enlisted? He said he would enlist, and would prefer to be known under the name Adolph Danforth. The gentleman himself took early occasion to express this preference.
I debated a little what to do. He was not introduced as a friend, only as a person in need of help; yet Voisin believed in him, and he had asked a service that he would not have asked for an unworthy man. I engaged him in conversation and got him to smile. It was a very frank smile, but it displayed a singular defect far up on the front teeth. This decided me. He was the same Graf zu whose position had been asked of the Prussian Consul, and I knew he had learned that the Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien, an officer in the Gardecorps Kürassier, was of the highest nobility and of a family of great wealth. There was evidently no technical reason why the poor fellow should not be received cordially and well treated. So we went back to the smoking-room, and with fresh coffee and cigars opened an acquaintance which resulted not altogether uneventfully.
He was not obtrusive. His story was not forced upon me; but as I already had its thread, I was able to draw it from him in a natural way, and he told it very frankly, though halting a little at its more important turnings, as if wondering how its development would strike me. There was just enough of hesitancy over a harrowing tale to throw on myself the responsibility of learning it.
He had been brought up by the tenderest of mothers at the castle of Schlodien (I think in Silesia), had early joined the Cuirassiers of the Body Guard, had fought a fatal duel in which he had been the aggressor, and had been condemned to the Fortress of Spandau. Only his mother’s great influence (exercised without the knowledge of his stern and much older father, who was then on his distant estates) had secured for him an opportunity to escape. He had come directly to America, and had remained near Boston until he received intimation (again the result of his mother’s influence with Baron Gerolt, the Prussian Minister at Washington) that his return under the Extradition Treaty was being urged at the solicitation of the family of his fallen antagonist. He had then taken refuge in a remote town in South Missouri, where he amused himself with shooting. His mother had written to him but once, and had not been able to send him money. He had at last returned to St. Louis, where he had contracted some small debts which Voisin and another kind friend had assumed. To reimburse them and to gain more perfect seclusion, he had resolved to enlist in the Regular Army. It was a sad conclusion of his career, but as an honorable man (and a pursued one) he had no choice but to accept it.
It was the old story,—noblesse oblige. There was but one way out of a sad affair, and—like a very Graf zu—this stripling, who had been born and bred to a better fate, faced the penalty of his misfortune without flinching. I tried infinite suggestions, but nothing else offered the immediate money which alone could relieve him of debt and restore him his wardrobe and the portraits of his mother and sister, which with a few well-worn letters, were all he had to cheer him in his exile. We sat till far into the night and until my kindest sympathies were fully aroused by the utter and almost childlike simplicity and frankness with which the poor boy told of his sorrows. I had been taught by a very ample experience to look with much caution on German counts and barons,—an experience that, if it was worth what it had cost, I could not prize too highly; but here was an entirely new type, a combination of the gentlest breeding with an unsophistication that argued more of a mother’s care than of garrison influences, and an utter absence of the devil-may-care manner that army life in Germany had hitherto seemed to give. With the improvidence of one who had never known the lack of money, he had lodged himself at the Everett House; and as I left him at its door, I resolved to lose no time in getting him enlisted and stopping an expense that would only add to his troubles. The next day I saw the official who had charge of the making up of the city’s quota, and easily arranged for the examination of my candidate. Dohna begged me to secure his admission to a command whose officers would be able to appreciate his difficult position, and a weary time I had of it. At last it was all arranged; he had passed, with much shock to his sensibilities, the surgeon’s examination, and had been enrolled in a company of Regular Infantry, whose captain (then serving on the general staff of the department) had acquired a sympathy for him not less than my own. His bounty (over seven hundred dollars) he put into my hands, and he went with me to Adams’s Express office, where we sent more than half the sum to St. Louis,—the full amount of his indebtedness. One specified trunk was to be sent to the Everett House, and the rest of his luggage—which Voisin had described as valuable—to me. I received by an early mail the receipt of the St. Louis express-office for it, and found it most convenient to let it lie for the present, addressed to me personally, at the office in New York. It would be useless to Dohna in the army, and I was to take care of it for him.
The captain of the company in which he was enlisted secured him a furlough for ten days, and, to show his gratitude, he invited us both to dine with him at the Everett. We sat down at seven, and we sat long. The best that either cellar or kitchen afforded was spread before us in wasteful profusion, and our host, temperate in his sipping, but eating with the appetite of youth, seemed only to regret the limit of our capacity. As we walked across the square, filled and with the kindest emotions, we planned means for so occupying the remaining days of the furlough as to allow but little opportunity for money-spending. His company was at Fort Trumbull, and after he joined he would be safe.
The next day being Saturday, I took him to my father’s house in the country, where his unfortunate story was already known, and where as much real interest was felt in him as the good people of Connecticut ever accord to a duellist. He had a friend living farther out on the New Haven road, and he took an early train to see her (this was a new feature), returning to me in the evening. I met him at the depot. He wore the superb uniform overcoat of the Gardecorps Kürassier, long, flowing, and rich, with a broad, scarlet-lined fur collar. It was caught across the throat with a scarlet snood, and hung loosely from the shoulders. It made his six feet two really becoming. At home he was easy but very quiet, saying little but saying it very well, and he won as much confidence as the stain on his moral character would allow. Like most of his class, he knew and cared absolutely nothing for what interests the New England mind, and he would early have palled on our taste but for his music. His performance was skilful; he played difficult music, and he played it very well, but without vanity or apparent consciousness. When not occupied in this way, and when not addressed, he neither spoke nor read, apparently he did not even think, but relapsed into a sad and somewhat vacant reticence. But for our knowledge of his misfortunes, he would have been uninteresting. On Sunday he gave me a new confidence. His friend up the road was an Everett House acquaintance, made when he first came from Boston. She was an angel! She knew his sad story, and she had given him her Puritan heart. In the trying days to come I was to be the link that should bind them in their correspondence. She must not know of his degraded position, and all letters were to pass under cover to me. Even noblesse did not hide the tears that this prospect of long separation wrung from him, and he poured out his grief with most touching unrestraint. This was the one sorrow of his life that even his trained equanimity could not conquer. It made me still more respect his simple, honest nature and his unfeigned grief. I was doubly sorry that this last trial of separated love should be added to his cup of bitterness. In our long Sunday talk he told me of his home, and showed me the singularly beautiful photographs of his mother and sister, and—quite incidentally—one of himself in the full uniform of his regiment, bearing on its back the imprint of a Berlin photographer. He evinced a natural curiosity about the mode of our garrison life, and I prepared him as gently as I could for a decided change from his former customs. It was, of course, depressing to him, but he bore the prospect like a man, and gave it no importance as compared with his more essential downfall. He had seen enough of our troops to be especially uneasy at the prospect of an ill-fitting uniform. In the matter of linen he was well provided, but he was really unhappy over the thought of adapting his long and easy figure to a clothing-contractor’s idea of proportion. So it was arranged that he should go to my tailor and be suitably clad, according to regulation of course, but also according to measure. He proposed, too, to leave his overcoat for some repairs and to be cared for while he should have no use for it. I gave the tailor assurances of prompt payment.
One fine morning Dohna came to my room in his new rig and bade me a brave good-by. He was off for Fort Trumbull. I felt an almost parental sorrow over his going, and had much misgiving as to his ability to face his ill-bred soldier comrades. There came soon after a letter to say that he was well treated personally, only the rations were so horrible; pork and salt beef and beans and molasses. He could not eat such things, and he was growing faint for want of food. I had seen such dainty appetites cured too often to have any fear on this score, and only replied in general terms of encouragement, and asked for frequent letters. These came. There were no incidents of his life that were not described almost with wonder, for a noble officer of the Gardecorps of the king of Prussia knows really nothing of the ways of life of the men he is supposed to command. Often there were thick letters for the fiancée, and answers to these (also thick) had often to be forwarded. I felt the enthusiastic glow natural to one who carries alone the tender secrets of younger lovers, and was not altogether unhappy under the subjective romance of my mediation.
Sometimes there were touching tales of trouble. Once he had been detailed to the “police” squad, and had to clean spittoons and do other menial work. This was a touch of reality that fairly opened his eyes to his abasement, and he wrote much more sadly than ever before, making me sad, too, to think how powerless I was to help him in any way. A few days later he sent a wail of real agony. While he had been out on drill, some scoundrel had broken into his satchel and had stolen all his papers,—his letters from his mother, her photograph, and those of his sister and his sweetheart, and all the bundle of affectionate epistles over which he had pored again and again in his desolation. The loss was absolutely heart-breaking and irreparable, and he had passed hours sitting on the rocks at the shore, pouring bitter tears into the Thames. This was a blow to me too. I knew that Dohna was of a simple mind, and utterly without resources within himself; but he was also of a simple heart, and one could only grieve over this last blow as over the sorrows of a helpless little child. However, I wrote all I could to encourage him, and was gratified, though a little surprised, to see how soon he became cheerful again, and how earnestly he seemed to have set about the work of becoming a really good soldier. After a time the captain of his company—still in New York and maintaining a lively interest in the poor fellow’s case—procured an order for him to go to Annapolis to be examined for promotion. He was already a sergeant, and a pretty good one. He stopped in New York a few days on his way through for some refitting,—again at my tailor’s. On his way back he stopped again to tell of his failure. I was delicate about questioning him too closely, but I learned enough to suppose that different ideas as to practical education are entertained by a board of army examiners and by a fond young mother in the remote castle of Schlodien; but I encouraged him to believe that a little more study would enable him to pass the second examination that had been promised him, and he rejoined his company.