Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 732
TekstEXPERIENCES IN CAMP AND COURT
An interesting and gossiping volume of personal reminiscences, entitled Camp, Court, and Siege: a Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation during two Wars, 1861-65, 1870-71 (Sampson Low & Co.), has been given to the world by Colonel Hoffman, an officer whose position during two great wars enabled him to record much that escaped the notice of other observers. Colonel Hoffman held an important post in the Federal army during the American civil war, and at its close received an appointment in the diplomatic service of his country. As Secretary to the American Legation in Paris, and chargé d'affaires during the temporary absence of the United States minister, Mr Washburne, he witnessed the events which preceded the Franco-German war, and afterwards remained in Paris, in common with other members of his Embassy, during the siege. The recollections he has strung together relate rather to the byways than to the beaten track of history during these periods; and it is this fact which gives his unpretending volume its chief interest and novelty. Our readers will probably be amused in spending with us a short time over its pages.
Colonel Hoffman was in 1862 captain on the staff of Brigadier-general Williams at Hatteras, an island which lies in the direct route of vessels bound from the West Indies to Baltimore, New York, &c. The ‘guileless natives’ of this place are, we are informed, well known as wreckers, and in pursuit of this calling they adopt a plan which is simple but effective. A half-wild kind of horse called a ‘marsh pony,’ is bred upon the island, and one of these animals is caught, one of its legs is tied up, a lantern slung to its neck, and the pony is thus driven along the beach on a stormy night. The effect is just that of a vessel riding at anchor; but other ships approaching are soon made unpleasantly aware of the difference between a merchantman riding out the gale, and this Hatteras decoy.
From Hatteras, Captain Hoffman was ordered to join General Butler's expedition to New Orleans, and proceeded in a vessel which took three regiments, numbering three thousand souls. A fact which transpired on the voyage he commends to the attention of those parish authorities in England who refuse to enforce the Vaccination Act. A man who had been ill with small-pox, but was supposed to be cured, was on board this vessel, and two days after they had sailed his disease broke out again. The men among whom he lay were packed as close as herrings in a barrel, yet only one took it. They had all been vaccinated within sixty days.
Ship Island, off Mobile in the Gulf of Mexico, was their first destination to await supplies for the expedition. An odd thing here was the abundance of fresh water obtainable everywhere by digging a hole two feet deep in the sand; in two hours it became full, but after using it for a week the water would be found brackish, when all that was necessary to procure another supply was to dig a hole as before. And yet the island scarcely rises five feet above the sea. While staying at this place the writer witnessed a curious freak of lightning. Eight prisoners were sleeping side by side in a circular tent, when a terrible thunderstorm broke out. The sentry stood leaning against the tent-pole, with the butt of his musket on the ground and the bayonet touching his shoulder. The lightning struck the tent-pole, leaped to the bayonet and tore the stock to splinters, but only slightly stunned the sentry; thence it passed along the ground and struck the first prisoner, killing him; glided by the six inside men without injury to them, but struck and killed the eighth man as it disappeared.
We now come to the writer's reminiscences of warfare.
A characteristic anecdote is told of General Sherman's coolness. ‘He had a pleasant way of riding up in full sight of the enemy's batteries accompanied by his staff. Here he held us while he criticised the manner in which the enemy got his guns ready to open on us. Presently a shell would whiz over our heads, followed by another somewhat nearer. Sherman would then quietly remark: “They are getting the range now; you had better scatter.” As a rule we did not wait for a second order.’ On one occasion Sherman sent out a strong party to reconnoitre, and Captain Hoffman asked permission to accompany them. It was given; and the general added: ‘By the way, captain, when you are over there, just ride up and draw their fire, and see where their guns are. They won't hit you.’ The order was obeyed, and Hoffman was not hit; but he does not recommend the experiment to his friends.
There are occasionally amenities in warfare, and imbittered as was the conflict between North and South, still some curious instances occurred. At the siege of Port Hudson the soldiers on both sides established a sort of entente cordiale. Growing weary of trying to pick each other off through loopholes, one would tie a white handkerchief to his bayonet and wave it above the parapet; and presently a similar signal would be made on the other side. This meant a truce; and in a moment the men would swarm out on both sides, and commence chaffing each other. After a while some one would cry out: ‘Get under cover now, Johnnie,’ or ‘Look out now, Yank; we are going to fire,’ when handkerchiefs would be lowered and hostilities recommence. No one dared to violate this tacit truce without notice; had any one done so, his comrades would have roughly handled him.
A striking instance is noted of the effect produced by the imagination when exalted by the excitement of battle. A staff-officer by Captain Hoffman's side dropped his bridle, threw up his arms, and said: ‘I am hit; my boot is full of blood.’ He was helped from his horse, and sent to the ambulance, the captain mentally wishing him farewell. Next day he appeared at headquarters as well as ever; he had been struck by a spent ball, which had broken the skin, but inflicted no serious injury. Captain Hoffman saw the same effect produced on another occasion. A man limped from the field supported by two others, and said his leg was broken. He was pale as death, and had the chaplain to read to him; but the surgeon was surprised to find no hole in his stocking, and cutting it off, nothing was discernible but a black-and-blue mark on the leg. Men notoriously brave may thus occasionally be imposed upon by their imagination.
Woman's wit, in the opinion of Colonel Hoffman, played an important part at times in the conflict, the ‘rebels’ gaining many an advantage over the Northern men by its influence. ‘In such matters,’ he remarks, ‘one woman is worth a wilderness of men. I recollect one day we sent a steam-boat full of rebel officers (exchanged prisoners) into the Confederacy. They were generally accompanied by their wives and children. Our officers noticed the most extraordinary number of dolls on board – every child had a doll – but they had no suspicions. A lady told me afterwards that every doll was filled with quinine; the sawdust was taken out, and quinine substituted. Depend upon it that female wit devised that trick.’
Woman's ingenuity also displayed itself in other ways. A bag of intercepted letters from the Confederate side gave an instance. A Southern young lady, writing to her brother-in-law in Mobile, narrated how she had successfully played a trick upon a Boston newspaper, compelling it to unwittingly belaud its foes. She sent them a poem called The Gypsy's Wassail, the original in Sanscrit, with a translation in English, expressing every patriotic and loyal sentiment. The ‘Sanscrit’ was simply English written backward, and properly adjusted, read as follows:
God bless our brave Confederates, Lord!
Lee, Johnson, Smith, and Beauregard!
Help Jackson, Smith, and Johnson Joe
To give them fits in Dixie, oh!
The Wassail was published with a compliment to the ‘talented contributor;’ but in a few days the trick was discovered and exposed.
We pass on to the writer's European recollections. He received his appointment to the Legation at Paris in 1866, when the imperial court was at the height of its splendour. The Emperor, when he designed to be, was always happy in his reception of diplomates, and the formal introductory speeches were followed by informal conversations. He liked to ventilate his English, but could not speak the language perfectly. To an American officer (Colonel Hay) he observed, for instance: ‘You have made ze war in ze United States?’ (Vous avez fait la guerre?) – meaning, ‘Did you serve?’ The colonel was strongly tempted to tell his Majesty it was not he made the war, but Jeff. Davis. The Empress spoke English not so fluently as the Emperor, but with less accent. American ladies were always well received by her, and her balls were sometimes called by the envious bals américains. If the Embassy desired one or two presentations beyond the usual number, the inquiry was generally made: ‘Is it a young and pretty woman?’ and if it were, there was no difficulty, for the Empress was pleased to have her balls set off by beautiful and well-dressed women.
Comparison is favourable we are told, in American eyes, to British over the French imperial display on a very important occasion – the opening of parliament by the sovereign, as contrasted with that of the Corps Législatif. The spectacle in this country bears the palm, says Colonel Hoffman, both in splendour and interest. Her Majesty's demeanour is much admired. ‘Short and stout as is the Queen, she has the most graceful and stately walk perhaps in Europe. It is a treat to see her move.’ The Empress of the French, however, created great enthusiasm on these occasions. ‘Her beauty, her grace, and her stately bearing carried the enthusiasm to its height. You would have sworn that every man there was ready to die for his sovereign. Within less than four years she sought in vain for one of them to stand by her in her hour of danger.’
In the year of the last Paris Exhibition (1867), Napoleon III. entertained in his capital the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, the latter accompanied by Bismarck and Moltke. Sixty thousand men passed before the sovereigns in review, and it was on the return from the spectacle that the Emperor Alexander was shot at by a Pole. The ball struck the horse of one of the equerries, and blood spurted from the animal upon the Emperor's second son, who was with him in the carriage. It was reported that the Emperor of the French turned to his imperial guest and said: ‘Sire, we have been under fire together for the first time to-day.’ To which the Emperor replied with much solemnity of manner: ‘Sire, we are in the hands of Providence.’ That evening the writer saw the Russian Emperor at a ball at his own Embassy, not more than two hundred persons being present. He looked pale and distrait, and Madame Haussmann, wife of the celebrated baron, was trying, but without much tact, to make conversation with him. ‘He looked over her head, as if he did not see her, and finally turned upon his heel and left her. It was not perhaps polite, but it was very natural. The Emperor and Empress of the French made extraordinary exertions to enliven the ball; but there was a perceptible oppression in the air.’ The would-be assassin was not condemned to death, the jury finding ‘extenuating circumstances.’
On the outbreak of war in 1870, the American Legation was requested to undertake the protection of North German subjects in France, and procured the consent of the French government thereto. Thirteen distinct nationalities, European and South American, eventually came under the same protection, and caused plenty of employment. Partly on this account, when the representatives of the great European powers had left Paris for Tours, after the downfall of the Empire, the United States Legation remained, and its members endured the unpleasant experiences of the siege. To Colonel Hoffman, however, the anticipation of this was a matter of perfect indifference – or rather he looked forward to it with some degree of liking. ‘I had quite a curiosity to be a besieged. I had been a besieger at Port Hudson, and thought that I would like to experience the other sensation. The sensation is not an unpleasant one, especially in a city like Paris. If you have been overworked or harassed, the relief is very great. There is a calm or sort of Sunday rest about it that is quite delightful. In my experience, the life of the besieged is altogether the most comfortable of the two.’ And the writer professes to think that the suffering endured in famous sieges, and the heroism of the inhabitants, have been much exaggerated. There were, however, many points of considerable difference between the circumstances attendant upon the siege of Paris and that, say, of Saragossa or Plevna. The Germans never made a bombardment in earnest. ‘We were being bombarded, but after a very mild fashion. I have since talked with a German general who commanded at the quarter whence most of the shells entered the city. He assured me that there never was the slightest intention to bombard Paris. If there had been, it would have been done in a very different style.’ But shells fell during nineteen days into the city, and nearly two hundred people were killed by the explosions. In both bombardments, that by the Germans and afterwards by the French government troops, much of the mischief done is reported to have been caused by the mere wantonness of the artillerymen, who under such circumstances are eager to hit something, it matters little what it may be. Indifference acts also on the side of the besieged, and during the worst of the bombardment, men and boys were to be seen lurking in the Champs Elysées near the Arch, and darting to secure the fragments of an exploded shell while they were still too hot to hold, or crying Obus! and suddenly squatting, to watch the effect upon elderly gentlemen passing by. A large business was done in these fragments as relics after the siege.
As regards provisions, the members of the Legation were of course as well off as it was possible to be under the circumstances. The staple diet, however, which Mr Washburne and the Secretary preferred to expensive luxuries, was ‘our national pork and beans, and the poetic fish-ball.’ Occasionally they indulged in small portions of elephant, yak, camel, reindeer, porcupine, &c., at an average rate of four dollars a pound. This meat came from the Jardin d'Acclimation, where it was found impossible to get food for the animals. Colonel Hoffman gives the preference among these varieties of flesh to that of the reindeer, which resembles venison, but he thinks all these meats but poor substitutes for beef and mutton. Horseflesh was the main stay of the population in the way of fresh meat; it was rationed and sold by the government at reasonable prices, nine and a half ounces per day being allowed to each adult. It is ‘poor stuff at best,’ says the writer. ‘It has a sweet, sickening flavour. The only way I found it eatable was as mince mixed with potato.’
The transmission and receipt of intelligence gave rise to some of the most memorable experiences of the siege, and what was done by balloons and pigeons is likely to form a precedent for similar episodes in all time. The French had always a fancy for ballooning, and were probably in advance of the rest of the world in this respect. They soon started a service of mail-balloons twice a week from Paris, despatching them at first in the afternoon; but it was found that they did not rise quickly enough to escape Prussian bullets, and the hour of departure was therefore changed to one in the morning. The speed of the balloons was sometimes marvellous. One descended in Norway on the very morning it left Paris. Another fell into the sea off the coast of Holland a few hours after its departure, and the passengers were rescued by a fishing-smack. Out of ninety-seven balloons despatched, ninety-four arrived safely – about the proportion, says Colonel Hoffman, of railway trains in these later times. Two fell into the hands of the enemy, and one was supposed to have been drifted out to sea and lost. A balloon was seen off Eddystone Lighthouse; and a few days afterwards a gentleman spending the winter at Torquay received a letter from the rector at Land's End, stating that a number of letters had drifted ashore, supposed to have been lost from a balloon, and among them was one addressed to him. It proved to be a balloon-letter from Colonel Hoffman, and is still preserved as a souvenir of the siege – and the sea. The pigeon experiment Colonel Hoffman considers proved a failure, as so few birds succeeded in reaching their destination. Two or three times, however, a carrier arrived safely, bringing with it one of those marvels of scientific skill, which under the microscope revealed correspondence equal to the contents of a good-sized newspaper.
Not nearly sufficient, in the writer's opinion, was done in the way of sorties from Paris. He contends that the garrison should have made a sortie every night, with sometimes a thousand and sometimes a hundred thousand men. ‘Had they done so,’ he says, ‘they would have soon worn out the Germans with constant alertes, and with comparatively little fatigue to themselves. But the entire French army was in want of organisation.’ On the other hand, the members of the naval service have Colonel Hoffman's warmest admiration. ‘The officers,’ he says, ‘are a very superior class of men, and the sailors under them fought gallantly during the war, for there was a large number of them detailed to the army. They felt strongly the deterioration of the sister-service.’ The colonel was once dining at a Versailles restaurant near a French naval officer, when one of the army, accompanied by two non-commissioned officers, entered and made a great disturbance. ‘Cette pauvre armée française! cette pauvre armée française!’ muttered the naval officer.